It existed just now simply for that reason; to-night, with the curtain of the last act of Parsifal, it had ceased to exist again.

It was not that a patriotic desire to honour one of the national heroes in the home where he had been established by the mad genius of a Bavarian king that moved them; it was because for the moment that Baireuth to Germans meant Germany.
From Berlin, from Dresden, from Frankfurt, from Luxemburg, from a hundred towns those who were most typically German, whether high or low, rich or poor, made their joyous pilgrimage.

Joy and solemnity, exultation and the yearning that could never be satisfied drew them here.

And even as music was in Michael's heart, so Germany was there also.

They were the people who understood; they did not go to the opera as a be-diamonded interlude between a dinner and a dance; they came to this dreadful little town, the discomforts of which, the utter provinciality of which was transformed into the air of the heavenly Jerusalem, as Hermann Falbe had said, because their souls were fed here with wine and manna.