I must give J. Hoffmann, who from this time forward was the manager of the Riga theatre, the credit of having felt the treachery practised upon me very deeply indeed.  He told me that his contract with Dorn bound him only for one year, and that the moment the twelve months had elapsed he wished to come to a fresh agreement with me.  As soon as this was known, my patrons in Riga came forward with offers of teaching engagements and arrangements for sundry concerts, by way of compensating me for the year’s salary which I should lose by being away from my work as a conductor.  Though I was much gratified by these offers, yet, as I have already pointed out, the longing to break loose from the kind of theatrical life which I had experienced up to that time so possessed me that I resolutely seized this chance of abandoning my former vocation for an entirely new one.  Not without some shrewdness, I played upon my wife’s indignation at the treachery I had suffered, in order to make her fall in with my eccentric notion of going to Paris.  Already in my conception of Rienzi I had dreamed of the most magnificent theatrical conditions, but now, without halting at any intermediate stations, my one desire was to reach the very heart of all European grand opera.  While still in Magdeburg I had made H. Konig’s romance, Die Hohe Braut, the subject of a grand opera in five acts, and in the most luxurious French style.  After the scenic draft of this opera, which had been translated into French, was completely worked out, I sent it from Konigsberg to Scribe in Paris.  With this manuscript I sent a letter to the famous operatic poet, in which I suggested that he might make use of my plot, on condition that he would secure me the composition of the music for the Paris Opera House.  To convince him of my ability to compose Parisian operatic music, I also sent him the score of my Liebesverbot.  At the same time I wrote to Meyerbeer, informing him of my plans, and begging him to support me.  I was not at all disheartened at receiving no reply, for I was content to know that now at last ‘I was in communication with Paris.’  When, therefore, I started out upon my daring journey from Riga, I seemed to have a comparatively serious object in view, and my Paris projects no longer struck me as being altogether in the air.  In addition to this I now heard that my youngest sister, Cecilia, had become betrothed to a certain Eduard Avenarius, an employee of the Brockhaus book-selling firm, and that he had undertaken the management of their Paris branch.  To him I applied for news of Scribe, and for an answer to the application I had made to that gentleman some years previously.  Avenarius called on Scribe, and from him received an acknowledgment of the receipt of my earlier communication.  Scribe also showed that he had some recollection of the subject itself; for he said that, so far as he could remember, there was a joueuse de harpe in the piece, who was ill-treated by her brother.  The fact that this merely incidental