Meantime, I had not omitted to indicate the exact tempi in my opera by means of a metronome.  As I did not possess such a thing, I had to borrow one, and one morning I went out to restore the instrument to its owner, carrying it under my thin overcoat.  The day when this occurred was one of the strangest in my life, as it showed in a really horrible way the whole misery of my position at that time.  In addition to the fact that I did not know where to look for the few francs wherewith Minna was to provide for our scanty household requirements, some of the bills which, in accordance with the custom in Paris in those days, I had signed for the purpose of fitting up our apartments, had fallen due.  Hoping to get help from one source or another, I first tried to get those bills prolonged by the holders.  As such documents pass through many hands, I had to call on all the holders across the length and breadth of the city.  That day I was to propitiate a cheese-monger who occupied a fifth-floor apartment in the Cite.  I also intended to ask for help from Heinrich, the brother of my brother-in-law, Brockhaus, as he was then in Paris; and I was going to call at Schlesinger’s to raise the money to pay for the despatch of my score that day by the usual mail service.

As I had also to deliver the metronome, I left Minna early in the morning after a sad good-bye.  She knew from experience that as I was on a money-raising expedition, she would not see me back till late at night.  The streets were enveloped in a dense fog, and the first thing I recognised on leaving the house was my dog Robber, who had been stolen from us a year before.  At first I thought it was a ghost, but I called out to him sharply in a shrill voice.  The animal seemed to recognise me, and approached me cautiously, but my sudden movement towards him with outstretched arms seemed only to revive memories of the few chastisements I had foolishly inflicted on him during the latter part of our association, and this memory prevailed over all others.  He drew timidly away from me and, as I followed him with some eagerness, he ran, only to accelerate his speed when he found he was being pursued.  I became more and more convinced that he had recognised me, because he always looked back anxiously when he reached a corner; but seeing that I was hunting him like a maniac, he started off again each time with renewed energy.  Thus I followed him through a labyrinth of streets, hardly distinguishable in the thick mist, until I eventually lost sight of him altogether, never to see him again.  It was near the church of St. Roch, and I, wet with perspiration and quite breathless, was still bearing the metronome.  For a while I stood motionless, glaring into the mist, and wondered what the ghostly reappearance of the companion of my travelling adventures on this day might portend!  The fact that he had fled from his old master with the terror of a wild beast filled my heart with a strange bitterness and seemed to me a horrible omen.  Sadly shaken, I set out again, with trembling limbs, upon my weary errand.