When I came into contact with Leon Pillet, the manager of the Opera, my literary work took yet another direction.  After numerous inquiries I eventually discovered that he had taken a fancy to my draft of the Fliegender Hollander.  He informed me of this, and asked me to sell him the plot, as he was under contract to supply various composers with subjects for operettas.  I tried to explain to Pillet, both verbally and in writing, that he could hardly expect that the plot would be properly treated except by myself, as this draft was in fact my own idea, and that it had only come to his knowledge by my having submitted it to him.  But it was all to no purpose.  He was obliged to admit quite frankly that the expectations I had cherished as to the result of Meyerbeer’s recommendation to him would not come to anything.  He said there was no likelihood of my getting a commission for a composition, even of a light opera, for the next seven years, as his already existing contracts extended over that period.  He asked me to be sensible, and to sell him the draft for a small amount, so that he might have the music written by an author to be selected by him; and he added that if I still wished to try my luck at the Opera House, I had better see the ‘ballet-master,’ as he might want some music for a certain dance.  Seeing that I contemptuously refused this proposal, he left me to my own devices.

After endless and unsuccessful attempts at getting the matter settled, I at last begged Edouard Monnaie, the Commissaire for the Royal Theatres, who was not only a friend of mine, but also editor of the Gazette Musicale, to act as mediator.  He candidly confessed that he could not understand Pillet’s liking for my plot, which he also was acquainted with; but as Pillet seemed to like it—­though he would probably lose it—­he advised me to accept anything for it, as Monsieur Paul Faucher, a brother-in-law of Victor Hugo’s, had had an offer to work out the scheme for a similar libretto.  This gentleman had, moreover, declared that there was nothing new in my plot, as the story of the Vaisseau Fantome was well known in France.  I now saw how I stood, and, in a conversation with Pillet, at which M. Faucher was present, I said I would come to an arrangement.  My plot was generously estimated by Pillet at five hundred francs, and I received that amount from the cash office at the theatre, to be subsequently deducted from the author’s rights of the future poet.

Our summer residence in the Avenue de Meudon now assumed quite a definite character.  These five hundred francs had to help me to work out the words and music of my Fliegender Hollander for Germany, while I abandoned the French Vaisseau Fantome to its fate.