At last I had news from Konigsberg, but it only opened my eyes to the fact that the gay young dog had not meant his promise seriously.  We now looked forward almost with despair to the chilly mists of approaching winter, but Kietz, declaring that it was his place to find help, packed up his portfolio, placed it under his arm with the pillow, and went off to Paris.  On the next day he returned with two hundred francs, that he had managed to procure by means of generous self-sacrifice.  We at once set off for Paris, and took a small apartment near our friends, in the back part of No. 14 Rue Jacob.  I afterwards heard that shortly after we left it was occupied by Proudhon.

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 for bills he had accepted, and which had fallen due.  He foolishly took an iced drink, which he hoped would refresh him in his distressing condition, but it immediately made him lose his voice, and from that day he was the victim of a hoarseness which with terrific rapidity ripened the seeds of consumption, doubtless latent in him, and developed that incurable disease.  For months he had been growing weaker and weaker, filling us at last with the gloomiest anxiety:  he alone believed the supposed chill would be cured, if he could heat his room better for a time.  One day I sought him out in his lodging, where I found him in the icy-cold room, huddled up at his writing-table, and complaining of the difficulty of his work for Didot, which was all the more distressing as his employer was pressing him for advances he had made.