to have it with complete board,
for two hundred francs a month ($40). The price was really higher, but
my arrangement was for the winter. I was to pay extra for light and
heat. The room had an open fireplace with a _grille_ or fire-basket in
it, for which I could buy _boulets_, coal dust pressed into egg-shaped
balls, for three francs a sack. Later, I could have had a _salamandre_,
one of the excellent small stoves which fit into the fireplace, really
warm a room, and require filling only once in twenty-four hours. But I
wanted something to poke, and I had an idea that Paris winters were not
very formidable. As a matter of fact, anything more penetrating than
their damp sunless cold it is impossible to imagine.

For light, there was a huge lamp for which I could buy _luciline_, a
kind of highly refined kerosene which has no odour and burns well. I
made my bath arrangements with Jean, Madame's old servant, who with his
wife, Eugenie, was the real head of the establishment. I had bought a
collapsible rubber tub, and Jean was to bring me a big can of hot water
every morning. I found that I had to tip occasionally or the water
became as cool as Jean's manners. Madame showed me her dining room, and
told me with pride that her cuisine was of an excellence renowned. I
went to fetch my trunks and hire a piano, glad that my long search was
over. The piano was a small upright, a tin pan for tone, as are all
Parisian pianos _en location_, and it was to cost me ten francs a month,
with eight francs for carting. They are more expensive now. When it was
installed, my Lares and Penates on top of it, and my music on a stool
beside it, I felt that my feet were firmly planted on the ladder leading
to success.

Then I began to work. And how I did work that winter! I had two singing
lessons a week, and a session with the opera class lasting three hours
in which we went through the dramatic action of our roles. I slaved at
my repertoire working three hours a week with a coach, and spending
hours and hours a day learning by heart at home. Of course I began with
the very biggest roles--we all do. The personalities of _Amneris_,
_Carmen_, _Dalila_, _Azucena_ in turn, all in their French version of
course, occupied my mind waking and sleeping.

Jacques Bouhy was always kind, grave and courteous with me. The thought
of his having created _Escamillo_ and his real knowledge of French
traditions thrilled me. He lent me his copy of "Samson et Dali