orrectest of _fugues_ and _toccatas_.

"'On my nineteenth birthday, I was playing one of those compositions of
mine to my uncle, when the waiter of our principal hotel came in, and
announced that two foreign ladies, who had just arrived in the town,
were coming to see us.

"Before my uncle had time to throw off his large-flowered dressing-gown
and dress himself, the ladies were in upon us.

"You know the electrical effect which any unusual apparition of this
sort has upon people who live in small provincial places, but the one
which now appeared to me was really such as to produce on me the effect
of the wave of some enchanter's wand.

"'Picture to yourself two tall, handsome Italian girls, dressed in the
latest fashions, walking up to my uncle, with a combination of artistic
ease and charming courtesy of manner, and talking away to him in voices
which were extremely loud, and yet remarkably beautiful in tone. What
was the curious language they were speaking? Now and then but only now
and then it sounded something like German.

"'My uncle didn't understand a word of it. He stepped back, completely
nonplussed, and pointed in silence to the sofa; they sat down there and
talked to each other. _That_ was real music. Ultimately they managed to
explain to my uncle that they were singers on a tour, intended giving
some concerts, and had been recommended to apply to him as a person who
could assist them in the necessary arrangements. While they had been
talking to each other I had gathered their names; Lauretta, who seemed
to be the elder of the two, kept talking away to my bewildered uncle,
with immense energy and eager gesticulation, glancing about her with
beaming eyes the while. Without being to be called "stout," she was
luxuriant of figure to a degree which was at that time something wholly
novel to my inexperienced--and admiring--eyes. Teresina, taller and
slighter, with a long earnest face, spoke, in the intervals, very
little, but much more comprehensibly. Every now and then she would
smile, in a curious way, as if a good deal amused at the aspect of my
poor uncle, who kept shrinking into his flowered dressing-gown as a
snail does into its shell, vainly trying to stick away a certain string
belonging to his nether garments, which would keep fluttering out every
now and then, to the length of an ell or so.

"'At last they rose to go. My uncle had promised to arrange a concert
for the next day but one, and he and I