One  day  he  heard  whining  sounds  in  a  ditch  and  found
a  young  puppy.  Knowing  that  no  such  addition  to  the
large  family  at  home  would  receive  official  approval,  he
secretly  smuggled  it  into  his  bedroom,  where  he  fed  it
and  kept  it  warm  until  it  was  betrayed  by  its  whining.
On  another  occasion  his  mother  heard  peculiar  squeaking
sounds  in  his  room,  but  could  not  locate  them.    When

1  AUgemeine  Zeitung,  Munich.
198  POLITICAL  AND  PERSONAL

the  teacher  carae  to  give  the  boy  his  lesson,  he  notiiied
a  peculiai",  disagreeable  odor.  Investigation  brought  to
light,  in  Richard's  bureau,  a  whole  family  of  young
rabbits.  "The  poor  things  would  have  died,"  was  the
boy's  excuse.  He  had  made  an  air-hole  for  them,  and
his  sister  had  provided  the  food.
Only  once  in  his  life  did  he  kill  an  animal  for  amuse-
ment.' He  joined  a  party  of  young  hunters  and  shot  a
rabbit.  Its  dying  look  met  hia  eyes  and  bo  moved  him
to  pity  that  nothing  could  have  induced  him  ever  to  go
hunting  again.  The  impression  then  made  on  him  is
echoed  in  the  libretto  of  hia  early  opera,  The  Fairies,
where  the  doe  is  hit  by  the  arrow:  "Oh  sect  the  animal
weeps,  a  tear  is  in  its  eye.  Oh,  how  its  broken  glances
rest  on  me! "  And  again  in  his  last  work  in  the  pathetic
lines  of  Ournemanz  reproaching  Parsifal  for  killing  the
sacred  awan:  "Was  that  dir  der  treue  Schwan?"  etc,  —
lines  which  teach  the  duty  of  Pity  more  eloquently  than
all  the  essays  of  Scliopenliauer,  whom  Wagner  followed,
from  an  inborn  sympathy,  in  regarding  Pity  as  the
supreme  moral  law.
