that I dared not express this important change in my feelings to any one, especially to my poor wife.  But if I continued to make the best of a bad bargain, I had no longer any illusions as to the possibility of success in Paris.  Face to face with unheard-of misery, I shuddered at the smiling aspect which Paris presented in the bright sunshine of May.  It was the beginning of the slack season for any sort of artistic enterprise in Paris, and from every door at which I knocked with feigned hope I was turned away with the wretchedly monotonous phrase, Monsieur est a la campagne.

On our long walks, when we felt ourselves absolute strangers in the midst of the gay throng, I used to romance to my wife about the South American Free States, far away from all this sinister life, where opera and music were unknown, and the foundations of a sensible livelihood could easily be secured by industry.  I told Minna, who was quite in the dark as to my meaning, of a book I had just read, Zschokke’s Die Grundung von Maryland, in which I found a very seductive account of the sensation of relief experienced by the European settlers after their former sufferings and persecutions.  She, being of a more practical turn of mind, used to point out to me the necessity of procuring means for our continued existence in Paris, for which she had thought out all sorts of economies.

I, for my part, was sketching out the plan of the poem of my Fliegender Hollander, which I kept steadily before me as a possible means of making a debut in Paris.  I put together the material for a single act, influenced by the consideration that I could in this way confine it to the simple dramatic developments between the principal characters, without troubling about the tiresome operatic accessories.  From a practical point of view, I thought I could rely on a better prospect for the acceptance of my proposed work if it were cast in the form of a one-act opera, such as was frequently given as a curtain raiser before a ballet at the Grand Opera.  I wrote about it to Meyerbeer in Berlin, asking for his help.  I also resumed the composition of Rienzi, to the completion of which I was now giving my constant attention.

In the meantime our position became more and more gloomy; I was soon compelled to draw in advance on the subsidies obtained by Laube, but in so doing I gradually alienated the sympathy of my brother-in-law Avenarius, to whom our stay in Paris was incomprehensible.

One morning, when we had been anxiously consulting as to the possibility of raising our first quarter’s rent, a carrier appeared with a parcel addressed to me from London; I thought it was an intervention of Providence, and broke open the seal.  At the same moment a receipt-book was thrust into my face for signature, in which I at once saw that I had to pay seven francs for carriage.  I recognised, moreover, that the parcel contained my overture Rule Britannia, returned to me from the London Philharmonic Society.