head with an air of defiance, likewise made for the door. The
members of his company, sticking their bows under the strings of their
violins, and unscrewing the mouthpieces of their brass instruments,
followed him. There was nobody but the dilettanti left, and they gazed
about them with disconsolate looks, whilst the receiver of excise
duties exclaimed, with a tragic air, 'O heaven! how mortified I feel!'
All my diffidence was gone,--I threw myself in the bandmaster's way, I
begged, I prayed, in my distress I promised him six new minuets with
double trios for the annual ball. I succeeded in appeasing him. He went
back to his place, his companions followed suit, and soon the orchestra
was reconstituted, except that the organist was wanting. He was slowly
making his way across the market-place, no shouting or beckoning could
make him turn back. Teresina had looked on at the whole scene with
smothered laughter, while Lauretta was now as full of glee as before
she had been of anger. She was unstinted in her praise of my efforts;
she asked me if I played the piano, and ere I knew what I was about, I
sat in the organist's place with the music before me. Never before had
I accompanied a singer, still less directed an orchestra. Teresina sat
down beside me at the piano and gave me every time; Lauretta encouraged
me with repeated 'Bravos!' the orchestra proved manageable, and things
continued to improve. Everything was worked out successfully at the
second rehearsal; and the effect of the sisters' singing at the concert
is not to be described.

"The sovereign's return to his capital was to be celebrated there with
several festive demonstrations; the sisters were summoned to sing in
the theatre and at concerts. Until the time that their presence was
required they resolved to remain in our little town, and thus it came
to pass that they gave us a few more concerts. The admiration of the
public rose to a kind of madness. Old Miss Meibel, however, took with a
deliberate air a pinch of snuff out of her porcelain pug and gave her
opinion that 'such impudent caterwauling was not singing; singing
should be low and melodious.' My friend, the organist, never showed
himself again, and, in truth, I did not miss him in the least I was
the happiest fellow in the world. The whole day long I spent with
the sisters, copying out the vocal scores of what they were to
sing in the capital. Lauretta was my ideal; her vile caprices, her
terribly pass