I will not
have my son indebted for anything to a Jew,' he said; and I am only
quoting this instance of prejudice to you because it was not an
individual but a typical one among my father's social equals. The remark
about 'his son's entering a profession in which two Jews had carried off
the highest prizes' is of a much later date. Consequently we landed in
Paris, provided with letters of introduction to M. de Saint-Georges.[11]
Clever, accomplished, refined as was M. de Saint-Georges, he was
scarcely the authority a father with serious intentions about his son's
musical career would have consulted; he was a charming, skilful
librettist and dramatist, a thorough man of the world in the best sense
of the word, but absolutely incapable of judging the higher qualities of
the composer. Nevertheless, I owe him much; but for him I should have
been dragged back to Germany there and then; but for him I should have
been compelled to go back to Germany five years later, or starved in the
streets of Paris.

[Footnote 11: Jules-Henri de Saint-Georges, one of the most
fertile librettists of the time, the principal collaborateur of
Scribe, and best known in England as the author of the book of
Balfe's "Bohemian Girl."--EDITOR.]

"My father's interview with M. de Saint-Georges, and my first
introduction to him," said Flotow on another occasion, "were perhaps the
most comical scenes ever enacted off the stage. You know my old friend,
and have been to his rooms, so I need not describe him nor his
surroundings to you. You have never seen my father; but, to give you an
idea of what he was like, I may tell you that he was an enlarged edition
of myself. A bold rider, a soldier and a sportsman, fairly well
educated, but upon the whole a very rough diamond, and, I am afraid,
with a corresponding contempt for the elegant and artistic side of Paris
life. You may, therefore, picture to yourself the difference between the
two men--M. de Saint-Georges in a beautiful silk dressing-gown and red
morocco slippers, sipping chocolate from a dainty porcelain cup; my
father, who, contrary to German custom, had always refused to don that
comfortable garment, and who, to my knowledge, had never in his life
tasted chocolate. For the moment I thought that everything was lost. I
was mistaken.

"'Monsieur,' said my father in French, which absolutely creaked with the
rust of age, 'I have come to ask your advice and a favour