look forward with cheerful composure to the much longer period of
trouble and distress I felt was in store for me. This, in fact,
duly set in, for I had only just completed the last scene when I
found that my five hundred francs were coming to an end, and what
was left was not sufficient to secure me the necessary peace and
freedom from worry for composing the overture; I had to postpone
this until my luck should take another favourable turn, and
meanwhile I was forced to engage in the struggle for a bare
subsistence, making efforts of all kinds that left me neither
leisure nor peace of mind. The concierge from the Rue du Helder
brought us the news that the mysterious family to whom we had let
our rooms had left, and that we were now once more responsible
for the rent. I had to tell him that I would not under any
circumstances trouble about the rooms any more, and that the
landlord might recoup himself by the sale of the furniture we had
left there. This was done at a very heavy loss, and the
furniture, the greater part of which was still unpaid for, was
sacrificed to pay the rent of a dwelling which we no longer
occupied.

Under the stress of the most terrible privations I still
endeavoured to secure sufficient leisure for working out the
orchestration of the score of the Fliegender Hollander. The rough
autumn weather set in at an exceptionally early date; people were
all leaving their country houses for Paris, and, among them, the
Avenarius family. We, however, could not dream of doing so, for
we could not even raise the funds for the journey. When M. Jadin
expressed his surprise at this, I pretended to be so pressed with
work that I could not interrupt it, although I felt the cold that
penetrated through the thin walls of the house very severely.