As my contributions to the Gazette Musicale proved so unremunerative, Schlesinger one day ordered me to work out a method for the Cornet a pistons.  When I told him about my embarrassment, in not knowing how to deal with the subject, he replied by sending me five different published ‘Methods’ for the Cornet a pistons, at that time the favourite amateur instrument among the younger male population of Paris.  I had merely to devise a new sixth method out of these five, as all Schlesinger wanted was to publish an edition of his own.  I was racking my brains how to start, when Schlesinger, who had just obtained a new complete method, released me from the onerous task.  I was, however, told to write fourteen ‘Suites’ for the Cornet a pistons—­that is to say, airs out of operas arranged for this instrument.  To furnish me with material for this work, Schlesinger sent me no less than sixty complete operas arranged for the piano.  I looked them through for suitable airs for my ‘Suites,’ marked the pages in the volumes with paper strips, and arranged them into a curious-looking structure round my work-table, so that I might have the greatest possible variety of the melodious material within my reach.  When I was in the midst of this work, however, to my great relief and to my poor wife’s consternation, Schlesinger told me that M. Schlitz, the first cornet player in Paris, who had looked my ‘Etudes’ through, preparatory to their being engraved, had declared that I knew absolutely nothing about the instrument, and had generally adopted keys that were too high, which Parisians would never be able to use.  The part of the work I had already done was, however, accepted, Schlitz having agreed to correct it, but on condition that I should share my fee with him.  The remainder of the work was then taken off my hands, and the sixty pianoforte arrangements went back to the curious shop in the Rue Richelieu.

So my exchequer was again in a sorry plight.  The distressing poverty of my home grew more apparent every day, and yet I was now free to give a last touch to Rienzi, and by the 19th of November I had completed this most voluminous of all my operas.  I had decided, some time previously, to offer the first production of this work to the Court Theatre at Dresden, so that, in the event of its being a success, I might thus resume my connection with Germany.  I had decided upon Dresden as I knew that there I should have in Tichatschek the most suitable tenor for the leading part.  I also reckoned on my acquaintance with Schroder-Devrient, who had always been nice to me and who, though her efforts were ineffectual, had been at great pains, out of regard for my family, to get my Feen introduced at the Court Theatre, Dresden.  In the secretary of the theatre, Hofrat Winkler (known as Theodor Hell), I also had an old friend of my family, besides which I had been introduced to the conductor, Reissiger, with whom I and my friend Apel had spent a pleasant evening on the occasion of our excursion to Bohemia in earlier days.  To all these people I now addressed most respectful and eloquent appeals, wrote out an official note to the director, Herr von Luttichau, as well as a formal petition to the King of Saxony, and had everything ready to send off.