this work, however, to my great relief and to my poor wife's
consternation, Schlesinger told me that M. Schlitz, the first
cornet player in Paris, who had looked my 'Etudes' through,
preparatory to their being engraved, had declared that I knew
absolutely nothing about the instrument, and had generally
adopted keys that were too high, which Parisians would never be
able to use. The part of the work I had already done was,
however, accepted, Schlitz having agreed to correct it, but on
condition that I should share my fee with him. The remainder of
the work was then taken off my hands, and the sixty pianoforte
arrangements went back to the curious shop in the Rue Richelieu.

So my exchequer was again in a sorry plight. The distressing
poverty of my home grew more apparent every day, and yet I was
now free to give a last touch to Rienzi, and by the 19th of
November I had completed this most voluminous of all my operas. I
had decided, some time previously, to offer the first production
of this work to the Court Theatre at Dresden, so that, in the
event of its being a success, I might thus resume my connection
with Germany. I had decided upon Dresden as I knew that there I
should have in Tichatschek the most suitable tenor for the
leading part. I also reckoned on my acquaintance with Schroder-
Devrient, who had always been nice to me and who, though her
efforts were ineffectual, had been at great pains, out of regard
for my family, to get my Feen introduced at the Court Theatre,
Dresden. In the secretary of the theatre, Hofrat Winkler (known
as Theodor Hell), I also had an old friend of my family, besides
which I had been introduced to the conductor, Reissiger, with
whom I and my friend Apel had spent a pleasant evening on the
occasion of our excursion to Bohemia in earlier days. To all