exceedingly melancholy situation by the fact that my
circumstances had so shaped themselves that I dared not express
this important change in my feelings to any one, especially to my
poor wife. But if I continued to make the best of a bad bargain,
I had no longer any illusions as to the possibility of success in
Paris. Face to face with unheard-of misery, I shuddered at the
smiling aspect which Paris presented in the bright sunshine of
May. It was the beginning of the slack season for any sort of
artistic enterprise in Paris, and from every door at which I
knocked with feigned hope I was turned away with the wretchedly
monotonous phrase, Monsieur est a la campagne.

On our long walks, when we felt ourselves absolute strangers in
the midst of the gay throng, I used to romance to my wife about
the South American Free States, far away from all this sinister
life, where opera and music were unknown, and the foundations of
a sensible livelihood could easily be secured by industry. I told
Minna, who was quite in the dark as to my meaning, of a book I
had just read, Zschokke's Die Grundung von Maryland, in which I
found a very seductive account of the sensation of relief
experienced by the European settlers after their former
sufferings and persecutions. She, being of a more practical turn
of mind, used to point out to me the necessity of procuring means
for our continued existence in Paris, for which she had thought
out all sorts of economies.

I, for my part, was sketching out the plan of the poem of my
Fliegender Hollander, which I kept steadily before me as a
possible means of making a debut in Paris. I put together the
material for a single act, influenced by the consideration that I