I adopted the most shameful means for filling the columns of the Abendzeitung; I just strung together whatever I happened to hear in the evening from Anders and Lehrs.  But as they had no very exciting adventures either, they simply told me all they had picked up from papers and table-talk, and this I tried to render with as much piquancy as possible in accordance with the journalistic style created by Heine, which was all the rage at the time.  My one fear was lest old Hofrath Winkler should some day discover the secret of my wide knowledge of Paris.  Among other things which I sent to his declining paper was a long account of the production of Freischutz, He was particularly interested in it, as he was the guardian of Weber’s children; and when in one of his letters he assured me that he would not rest until he had got the definite assurance that Rienzi had been accepted, I sent him, with my most profuse thanks, the German manuscript of my ‘Beethoven’ story for his paper.  The 1841 edition of this gazette, then published by Arnold, but now no longer in existence, contains the only print of this manuscript.

My occasional journalistic work was increased by a request from Lewald, the editor of Europa, a literary monthly, asking me to write something for him.  This man was the first who, from time to time, had mentioned my name to the public.  As he used to publish musical supplements to his elegant and rather widely read magazine, I sent him two of my compositions from Konigsberg for publication.  One of these was the music I had set to a melancholy poem by Scheuerlin, entitled Der Knabe und der Tannenbaum (a work of which even to-day I am still proud), and my beautiful Carnevals Lied out of Liebesverbot.

When I wanted to publish my little French compositions—­Dors, mon enfant, and the music to Hugo’s Attente and Ronsard’s Mignonne—­ Lewald not only sent me a small fee—­the first I had ever received for a composition—­but commissioned some long articles on my Paris impressions, which he begged me to write as entertainingly as possible.  For his paper I wrote Pariser Amusements and Pariser Fatalitaten, in which I gave vent in a humorous style, a la Heine, to all my disappointing experiences in Paris, and to all my contempt for the life led by its inhabitants.  In the second I described the existence of a certain Hermann Pfau, a strange good-for-nothing with whom, during my early Leipzig days, I had become more intimately acquainted than was desirable.  This man had been wandering about Paris like a vagrant ever since the beginning of the previous winter, and the meagre income I derived from arrangements of La Favorita was often partly consumed in helping this completely broken-down fellow.  So it was only fair that I should get back a few francs of the money spent on him in Paris by turning his adventures to some account in Lewald’s newspapers.