tever to be
prevailed upon to cross the threshold of the concert-room any more.

"'Teresina had been looking on at all this, biting her lips to keep
back her laughter. Lauretta was now just as conciliatory as she had
previously been the contrary. She thanked me most warmly for all I had
done. She asked if I could play the piano, and, ere I knew where I was,
I found myself occupying the organist's vacant place, with the score
before me. Up to this time I had never accompanied a singer, or
directed an orchestra. Teresina sat down beside me, and indicated the
various _tempi_ to me. Lauretta gave me an encouraging "bravo!" now and
then; the orchestra began to understand, and things went better. At the
second rehearsal all was clear, and the sensation the sisters produced
at the concert was indescribable.

"'There were going to be great doings at the Residenz, on the occasion
of the prince's return from abroad, and the sisters were engaged to
sing there; in the meantime they decided on remaining in our little
town, and giving one or two more concerts. The admiration of the
towns-folk for them amounted to a species of insanity. Only old Mdlle.
Meibel would take a reflective pinch out of her pug-dog snuff-box, and
remark that screeching of that sort was not singing. My organist was no
more to be seen, and I by no means regretted his absence. I was the
happiest creature on earth. I sat with the sisters all day long, playing
their accompaniments, and writing out the parts from the scores for the
concerts at the Residenz. Lauretta was my ideal; all her naughty
tempers, her artistic outbreaks of fury, impatience with her
accompanyist, and so forth, I bore like a lamb. I began to learn
Italian, and wrote a _canzonetta_ or two. How I rose to the empyrean
when Lauretta sang my compositions, and even praised them! I often felt
as if I had never thought and written those things, but as if the ideas
streamed out for the first time when she sang them. With Teresina I did
not get on so well. She sang very seldom; didn't seem to take much
interest in me or my doings, and sometimes gave me the impression of
laughing at me behind my back.

"'The time arrived at last when they had to leave us: then it was that
I fully realized what Lauretta had become to me, and how impossible it
was for me to be parted from her. After she had been unusually
_smorfiosa_ with me, she would be kind and caressing, but always in
such a fashion that, although m