ion always prone to
flame and flare at the slightest suggestion. The libretto was written;
the music was partly written; and in 1839 Wagner took one of the most
momentous steps in all his stormy career--he sailed from Riga,
accompanied by his wife and dog, with the intention of reaching Paris by
way of London.

The voyage itself bore noteworthy artistic fruit; for within three years
the roar and scream of the tempest, the smashing of heavy seas upon the
ship's sides and deck, and (I dare say) the captain's curses, were to be
translated into tone and take artistic shape in _The Flying Dutchman_.
London reached in safety, Wagner stayed first near the Tower and then in
Soho. He lost his dog, found it, and crossed the Channel to Boulogne.
Here he met Meyerbeer, who gave him an introduction to a bankrupt
theatre, the Renaissance, in Paris. In Paris he met many well-known
people, amongst them Heine, who clasped his hands and looked heavenwards
when he heard of a penniless German coming to such a city to seek his
fortune, with nothing save an unfinished opera and an introduction from
Meyerbeer. The late Sir Charles Halle met him at this time, and left
some amusing reminiscences in his Autobiography. Heine's view of the
situation was speedily justified. Not by any efforts could _Rienzi_ be
unloaded upon an opera director, and Wagner began to experience the
bitterness of poverty. To earn a bare living, he thought himself lucky
to be entrusted with the making of transcriptions of popular airs and
the writing of articles for the press.

The three years' stay in Paris did Wagner no particular harm that I
have been able to trace beyond implanting in him that deadly fear of
being hard up which haunted him all his life thenceforward, and is an
offensive and yet pathetic feature of his letters to all his friends. On
the other hand, he heard opera performances on a scale outside and
beyond his past experience; he heard Habenek direct the Choral Symphony
at the Conservatoire, and learnt much, not only about that mighty
work--which he must already have known by heart--but also of the art of
conducting; he finished _Rienzi_ and sent it off to Dresden, where it
was accepted; and he planned and completed _The Flying Dutchman_, which
was accepted for production at Berlin. He had also written the _Faust_
Overture in its first form. And probably also he had acquired that
almost fatal fluency of the pen which was to make so many enemies for
hi