Curiously enough, when I brought home these five hundred francs
in hard shining five-franc pieces, and piled them up on the table
for our edification, my sister Cecilia Avenarius happened to drop
in to see us. The sight of this abundance of wealth seemed to
produce a good effect on her, as she had hitherto been rather
chary of coming to see us; and after that we used to see rather
more of her, and were often invited to dine with them on Sundays.
But I no longer cared for any amusements. I was so deeply
impressed by my past experiences that I made up my mind to work
through this humiliating, albeit profitable task, with untiring
energy, as though it were a penance imposed on me for the
expiation of my bygone sins. To save fuel, we limited ourselves
to the use of the bedroom, making it serve as a drawing-room,
dining-room, and study, as well as dormitory. It was only a step
from my bed to my work-table; to be seated at the dining-table,
all I had to do was to turn my chair round, and I left my seat
altogether only late at night when I wanted to go to bed again.
Every fourth day I allowed myself a short constitutional. This
penitential process lasted almost all through the winter, and
sowed the seeds of those gastric disorders which were to be more
or less of a trouble to me for the rest of my life.

In return for the minute and almost interminable work of
correcting the score of Donizetti's opera, I managed to get three
hundred francs from Schlesinger, as he could not get any one else
to do it. Besides this, I had to find the time to copy out the
orchestra parts of my overture to Faust, which I was still hoping
to hear at the Conservatoire; and by the way of counteracting the
depression produced by this humiliating occupation, I wrote a
short story, Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven (A Pilgrimage to