It should be said that Meyerbeer seems, for the only time, really to have helped Wagner in getting Rienzi accepted, for a letter of his to von Luettichau recommending the opera, has been preserved; wherefore let us gladly acknowledge this deed, which was a good, if a very small, one.  He again paid a visit to Paris, and this time gave Wagner a word of introduction to Pillet, who had assumed the post of director of the Opera.  Owing to this introduction the Flying Dutchman was written.  Wagner sketched a scenario and let Pillet have it.  The customary procrastination set in, and at last Pillet flatly told Wagner he could not produce an opera by him:  he was young, a German, and so on and so on; and in a word he liked the scenario and had determined to have it set by one Dietsch—­which is not a very French-sounding name.  He offered Wagner twenty pounds for it, and if the offer was not accepted—­well, Wagner might do what he chose.  Wagner took it.

He completed his libretto, took lodgings at Meudon, then a lovely suburb of Paris, hired a piano and sat down to compose his Dutchman.  He gives a graphic account of his tremors whilst awaiting the piano:  he feared that during the degrading struggle for bread the power of composing might have deserted him.  The instrument arrived, he sat down, and shouting for joy, struck out the sailors’ chorus.  In seven weeks the draft was complete—­it is dated September 13, 1841.  Want of funds compelled him to leave Meudon and resume his treadmill toil—­this time in the Rue Jacob in Paris; but he began to score his opera in the autumn and by the end of the year it was entirely finished.  He sent it to the Berlin Opera, and at once began to cast round for another subject.  He had demonstrated to his own complete satisfaction that grand historical themes were the only useful material for a thoroughly “up-to-date” (date 1842—­seventy years ago) composer; and while doing what may be called foraging work he had hit upon the story of The Saracen Young Woman.  We may presume that this appealed to him in a mood of reaction after the intensely personal quality of the Dutchman.  That mood sent him back in the direction of Rienzi.  About the Dutchman he never had the slightest illusion.  He knew it to be so far ahead of the time that nothing in the way of a popular success was to be hoped for it.  On the other hand, he had perfect faith—­a faith justified by the subsequent event—­in Rienzi; and since the Wagner of 1842 was by no means the Wagner of 1862, or even of 1852, since also he had been half-starved for a couple of years and money seemed to him a highly desirable thing, he naturally, inevitably, was drawn towards a subject which promised as well, from the box-office point of view, as Rienzi.