We got back to town on 30th October. Our home was exceedingly
small and cold, and its chilliness in particular made it very bad
for our health. We furnished it scantily with the little we had
saved from the wreck of the Rue du Holder, and awaited the
results of my efforts towards getting my works accepted and
produced in Germany. The first necessity was at all costs to
secure peace and quietness for myself for the short time which I
should have to devote to the overture of the Fliegender
Hollander; I told Kietz that he would have to procure the money
necessary for my household expenses until this work was finished
and the full score of the opera sent off. With the aid of a
pedantic uncle, who had lived in Paris a long time and who was
also a painter, he succeeded in providing me with the necessary
assistance, in instalments of five or ten francs at a time.
During this period I often pointed with cheerful pride to my
boots, which became mere travesties of footgear, as the soles
eventually disappeared altogether.

As long as I was engaged on the Dutchman, and Kietz was looking
after me, this made no difference, for I never went out: but when
I had despatched my completed score to the management of the
Berlin Court Theatre at the beginning of December, the bitterness
of the position could no longer be disguised. It was necessary
for me to buckle to and look for help myself.

What this meant in Paris I learned just about this time from the
hapless fate of the worthy Lehrs. Driven by need such as I myself
had had to surmount a year before at about the same time, he had
been compelled on a broiling hot day in the previous summer to
scour the various quarters of the city breathlessly, to get grace