to her the purpose I had in view.  I also looked up the Herold family, who had received me in such a friendly way on my last visit to Paris; but I found Mme. Herold in a strange and morbidly excitable state of mind, the result of ill-health, so that instead of discussing my views with her, my only thought was to keep her calm and avoid upsetting her by even the slightest appeal for help.  In my passionate longing to find a home I decided to get no further information, but set about the matter myself.  At last I discovered in the Rue Newton near the Barriere de l’Etoile, a side street off the Champs Elysees, not yet completed in accordance with a former plan of Paris, a nice little villa with a small garden.  I took this on a three-years’ agreement at a rent of four thousand francs a year.  Here, at all events, I might look for complete quiet and total isolation from the noise of the streets.  This fact alone prepossessed me very much in taking the little house, the late occupier of which had been the well-known author Octave Feuillet, who was at that time under the patronage of the imperial court.  But I was puzzled that the building, in spite of my being unable to detect anything old in its structure, had been so neglected inside.  The proprietor could in no way be induced to do anything to restore the place and make it habitable, even if I had consented to pay a higher rent.  The reason of this I discovered some time afterwards:  the estate itself was doomed in consequence of the plans for the rebuilding of Paris; but the time had not yet come to make the official announcement of the government’s intentions to the proprietors, because, had this been done, their claims to compensation would have become valid at once.  I consequently laboured under the pleasant delusion that whatever I was obliged to spend on interior decoration and on restoring the property would, in the course of years, prove to be money well invested.  I therefore proceeded to give the necessary instructions for the work without hesitating, and ordered my furniture to be sent from Zurich, thinking that as fate had driven me to my choice, I could regard myself as a resident of Paris for the rest of my life.

While the house was being prepared, I tried to get my bearings as to what could be extracted for my future existence out of the popularity of my artistic works.  The first thing I did was to look up M. de Charnal and to get information from him about the translation of the libretto of my Rienzi with which he had been entrusted.  It turned out that M. Carvalho, the director of the Theatre Lyrique, would hear of absolutely nothing but Tannhauser.  I prevailed upon Carvalho to visit me to talk the matter over.  He declared that he was most certainly inclined to produce one of my operas, only it must be Tannhauser, because, as he explained, this opera was identified with me among the Parisians, who would think it ridiculous to produce any other work under the name of ‘Wagner.’