It is true, the result of my writings was hardly less discouraging.  A copy of the Wigand edition of my Kunstwerk der Zukunft was forwarded to me full of horrible misprints, and instead of the expected remuneration of twenty louis d’or, my publisher explained that for the present he could only pay me half this sum, as, owing to the fact that at first the sale of the Kunst und Revolution had been very rapid, he had been led to attach too high a commercial value to my writings, a mistake he had speedily discovered when he found there was no demand for Die Nibelungen.

On the other hand, I received an offer of remunerative work from Adolph Kolatschek, who was also a fugitive, and was just going to bring out a German monthly journal as the organ of the progressive party.  In response to this invitation I wrote a long essay on Kunst und Klima (’Art and Climate’), in which I supplemented the ideas I had already touched upon in my Kunstwerk der Zukunft.  Besides this I had, since my arrival in Paris, worked out a more complete sketch of Wieland der Schmied.  It is true that this work had no longer any value, and I wondered with apprehension what I could write home to my wife, now that the last precious remittance had been so aimlessly sacrificed.  The thought of returning to Zurich was as distasteful to me as the prospect of remaining any longer in Paris.  My feelings with regard to the latter alternative were intensified by the impression made upon me by Meyerbeer’s opera The Prophet, which had just been produced and which I had not heard before.  Rearing itself on the ruins of the hopes for new and more noble endeavour which had animated the better works of the past year—­the only result of the negotiations of the provisional French republic for the encouragement of art—­I saw this work of Meyerbeer’s break upon the world like the dawn heralding this day of disgraceful desolation.  I was so sickened by this performance, that though I was unfortunately placed in the centre of the stalls and would willingly have avoided the disturbance necessarily occasioned by one of the audience moving during the middle of an act, even this consideration did not deter me from getting up and leaving the house.  When the famous mother of the prophet finally gives vent to her grief in the well-known series of ridiculous roulades, I was filled with rage and despair at the thought that I should be called upon to listen to such a thing, and never again did I pay the slightest heed to this opera.

But what was I to do next?  Just as the South American republics had attracted me during my first miserable sojourn in Paris, so now my longing was directed towards the East, where I could live my life in a manner worthy of a human being far away from this modern world.  While I was in this frame of mind I was called upon to answer another inquiry as to my state of health from Mme. Laussot in Bordeaux.  It turned out that my answer prompted her to send