Saxonian.  He promised to give me letters of recommendation to Duponchel, the manager of the Opera House, and to Habeneck, the conductor.  I now felt that I had good cause to extol my good fortune which, after many vicissitudes, had sent me precisely to this particular spot in France.  What better fortune could have befallen me than to secure, in so short a time, the sympathetic interest of the most famous composer of French opera!  Meyerbeer took me to see Moscheles, who was then in Boulogne, and also Fraulein Blahedka, a celebrated virtuoso whose name I had known for many years.  I spent a few informal musical evenings at both houses, and thus came into close touch with musical celebrities, an experience quite new to me.

I had written to my future brother-in-law, Avernarius, in Paris, to ask him to find us suitable accommodations, and we started on our journey thither on 16th September in the diligence, my efforts to hoist Robber on to the top being attended by the usual difficulties.

My first impression of Paris proved disappointing in view of the great expectations I had cherished of that city; after London it seemed to me narrow and confined.  I had imagined the famous boulevards to be much vaster, for instance, and was really annoyed, when the huge coach put us down in the Rue de la Juissienne, to think that I should first set foot on Parisian soil in such a wretched little alley.  Neither did the Rue Richelieu, where my brother-in-law had his book-shop, seem imposing after the streets in the west end of London.  As for the chambre garnie, which had been engaged for me in the Rue de la Tonnellerie, one of the narrow side-streets which link the Rue St. Honore with the Marche des Innocents, I felt positively degraded at having to take up my abode there.  I needed all the consolation that could be derived from an inscription, placed under a bust of Moliere, which read:  maison ou naquit Moliere, to raise my courage after the mean impression the house had first made upon me.  The room, which had been prepared for us on the fourth floor, was small but cheerful, decently furnished, and inexpensive.  From the windows we could see the frightful bustle in the market below, which became more and more alarming as we watched it, and I wondered what we were doing in such a quarter.

Shortly after this, Avenarius had to go to Leipzig to bring home his bride, my youngest sister Cecilia, after the wedding in that city.  Before leaving, he gave me an introduction to his only musical acquaintance, a German holding an appointment in the music department of the Bibliotheque Royale, named E. G. Anders, who lost no time in looking us up in Moliere’s house.  He was, as I soon discovered, a man of very unusual character, and, little as he was able to help me, he left an affecting and ineffaceable impression on my memory.  He was a bachelor in the fifties, whose reverses had driven him to the sad necessity of earning a living in Paris entirely without assistance.