An inexpressible feeling of bitterness stimulated my nerves as in anger and despair I quickly left the house to buy the confounded ticket for the journey, and in the beginning of February I actually started on the road to Paris.  I was filled with the most extraordinary feelings, but the spark of hope which was then kindled in my breast certainly had nothing whatever to do with the belief that had been imposed upon me from without, that I was to make a success in Paris as a composer of operas.

I was particularly anxious to find quiet rooms, for peace had now become my first necessity, no matter where I happened to be staying.  The cabman who drove me from street to street through the most isolated quarters, and whom I at last accused of keeping always to the most animated parts of the city, finally protested in despair that one did not come to Paris to live in a convent.  At last it occurred to me to look for what I wanted in one of the cites through which no vehicle seemed to drive, and I decided to engage rooms in the Cite de Provence.

True to the plans which had been forced upon me, I at once called on Herr Seghers about the performance of the Tannhauser Overture.

It turned out that in spite of my late arrival I had missed nothing, for they were still racking their brains as to how to procure the necessary orchestral parts.

I therefore had to write to Liszt, asking him to order the copies, and had to wait for their arrival.  Belloni was not in town, things were therefore at a standstill, and I had plenty of time to think over the object of my visit to Paris, while an unceasing accompaniment was poured out to my meditations by the barrel-organs which infest the cites of Paris.

I had much difficulty in convincing an agent of the government, from whom I received a visit soon after my arrival, that my presence in Paris was due to artistic reasons, and not to my doubtful position as a political refugee.

Fortunately he was impressed by the score, which I showed him, as well as by Liszt’s article on the Tannhauser Overture, written the year before in the Journal des Debats, and he left me, politely inviting me to continue my avocations peacefully and industriously, as the police had no intention of disturbing me,

I also looked up my older Parisian acquaintances.  At the hospitable house of Desplechins I met Semper, who was trying to make his position as tolerable as possible by writing some inferior artistic work.  He had left his family in Dresden, from which town we soon received the most alarming news.  The prisons were gradually filling there with the unfortunate victims of the recent Saxon movement Of Rockel, Bakunin, and Heubner, all we could hear was that they had been charged with high treason, and that they were awaiting the death sentence.

In view of the tidings which continually arrived concerning the cruelty and brutality with which the soldiers treated the prisoners, we could not help considering our own lot a very happy one.