The train puffed and panted as it laboured up the slope which rises
without interruption from Lindau to Munich. We were' already very
high up, for occasional mists of cloud drifted across our carriage.
Wonderful landscapes opened before us; far away peaks tearing the mist
into ribbons, glimpses of deep valleys soon lost to sight, forests of
pines, hills of a fresh velvety green which undulated to the sky, and
at the stations of the infrequent hamlets and villages which we passed,
the blue and white of the royal escutcheons always reappeared upon the
gates and arches.
"_Königreich Bayern_!" How happy we were to be in the domain of King
Charming! We thought and spoke only of him.
This same route, by which we were coming, he once travelled in the
opposite direction, alone and in secret, in order to go and surprise
the Master at Tribschen and, "to experience again during a few
wonderful hours the joy of being with him."
Wagner had told us the story of this journey of the King.
"It was the 22nd of May, 1866, on the fifty-third anniversary of my
birth. Early in the morning the king had started out alone from the
castle of Starnberg, riding his horse to Biesenhofen where he had
taken the train to Lindau; there he disembarked, and to my profound
astonishment, arrived that same afternoon at Tribschen. They set up
a camp-bed for him in my study. He begged me to return with him to
Bavaria, but, for his own sake, I felt that I must refuse.
"In the following year, Ludwig II. was affianced to his cousin, the
Archduchess Sophie, sister to the Empress of Austria, and, in order
to add to the significance of the marriage ceremonies, fixed for the
12th October, they reserved for this date the first representation
of "_Die Meistersinger_." But, before that time arrived, one evening
when "_Tristan_" was being given at the Royal Theatre, the prospective
bride appeared in a box in an unceremonious toilet; she listened to the
work with an absent air, and without attempting to disguise the fact
that she was bored. She was not Wagnerian in her tastes! The discovery
abruptly broke the spell: the King judged that a person who shared so
little in his faith and his enthusiasm ought not to be his wife, and he
closed his heart against her.
"We admired him for that, and Villiers declared that if he understood
German better he would compose a poem in which he would say magnificent
things, and would send it to Ludwig II."
This idea led us back to the dedication printed at the beginning of
the score of _"Die Walküre,"_ those well-known stanzas that Wagner
addressed "To the royal friend," consecrating him in this way to an
ever glorious immortality.
The verses are reputed to be untranslatable into French, and that
fact naturally incited us to make the attempt. One of our number was
thoroughly conversant with the language of Goethe, and for some time
back we had been working at the translation. What a good chance to go
on with it, during these hours of the journey!
In the original, Wagner's poem is very beautiful, with an unusual grace
and exquisite subtlety of expression.
What would it be in French?
Here is our attempt at a translation: