Meanwhile other cares, more immediately connected with my personal affairs, pressed heavily upon me, and compelled me to devote every effort to their removal.  With this object in view I decided at once to carry out an undertaking suggested to me by Giacomelli, namely, a repetition of my concerts in Brussels.  A contract had been made with the Theatre de la Monnaie there for three concerts, half the proceeds of which, after the deduction of all expenses, was to be mine.  Accompanied by my agent, I started on 19th March for the Belgian capital, to see whether I could not manage to recoup the money lost on my Paris concerts.  Under the guidance of my mentor I found myself compelled to call upon all sorts of newspaper editors and, among other Belgian worthies, a certain M. Fetis pere.  All I knew about him was that, years before, he had allowed himself to be bribed by Meyerbeer to write articles against me, and I now found it amusing to enter into conversation with this man, who, although he assumed great airs of authority, yet in the end declared himself entirely of my opinion.

Here also I made the acquaintance of a very remarkable man, the Councillor of State Klindworth, whose daughter, or, as some said, his wife, had been recommended to me by Liszt when I was in London.  But I had not seen her on that occasion, and I now had the pleasant surprise of being invited to call upon her in Brussels.  While she, on her part, showed the greatest cordiality towards me, M. Klindworth provided me with inexhaustible entertainment by the narrative of his wonderful career as a diplomatist in numerous transactions of which I had hitherto known nothing.  I dined with them several times, and met Count and Countess Condenhoven, the latter being a daughter of my old friend Mme. Kalergis.  M. Klindworth showed a keen and lasting interest in me, which even prompted him to give me a letter of recommendation, to Prince Metternich, with whose father he said he had been on very familiar terms.  He had a strange habit of interlarding his otherwise frivolous conversation with continual references to an omnipotent Providence, and when, during one of our later interviews, I once hazarded a risky retort, he quite lost his temper, and I fancied he was going to break off our connection.  Fortunately this fear was not realised, either at that time or afterwards.

But except for these interesting acquaintances, I gained nothing in Brussels but anxiety and fruitless exertion.  The first concert, for which season-tickets were suspended, drew a large audience.  But, owing to my misconception of a clause in our agreement, the cost of musical accompaniment, which was put down to me alone, was reckoned at so high a figure by the managers, that next to nothing was left over by way of profit.  This deficiency was to be recouped from the second concert, to which, however, season-ticket holders were admitted free.  But beyond these persons, who, I was told, almost filled the house,