WAGNER passed two terrible years, 1840-42, in Paris. MEYERBEER had given him introductions, and introduced him later to M. JOLY, a stage-director at Paris, whom he must have known to be on the point of bankruptcy, and who suspended the rehearsal of the Novice of Palermo at the last moment. But this was but the end of a series of checks. He wrote an overture to Faust. His good friend and faithful ally, SCHLESINGER, editor of the Gazette Musicale, got it rehearsed at the Conservatoire. It sounded quite too strange and bizarre to those ears polite, and was instantly snuffed out.