resent always said, no sound whatever was heard to issue
from the instrument! "Attitude is everything," as we have heard in
connection with other matters; but with dear old Mrs. Stisted at her
harp it was absolutely and literally so to the exclusion of all else!

She and the good old colonel--he _was_ a truly good and benevolent
man, and, indeed, I believe she was a good and charitable woman,
despite her manifold absurdities and eccentricities--used to drive out
in the evening among her subjects--_her_ subjects, for neither I
nor anybody else ever heard him called King of the Baths!--in an
old-fashioned, very shabby and very high-hung phaeton, sometimes with
her niece Charlotte--an excellent creature and universal favourite--by
her side, and the colonel on the seat behind, ready to offer the
hospitality of the place by his side to any mortal so favoured by the
queen as to have received such an invitation.

The poor dear old colonel used to play the violoncello, and did at
least draw some more or less exquisite sounds from it. But one winter
they paid a visit to Rome, and the old man died there. She wished, in
accordance doubtless with his desire, to bring back his body to be
buried in the place they had inhabited for so many years, and with
which their names were so indissolubly entwined in the memory of all
who knew them--which means all the generations of nomad frequenters of
the Baths for many, many years. The Protestant burial-ground also was
recognised as _quasi_ hers, for it is attached to the church which she
was mainly instrumental in building. The colonel's body therefore was
to be brought back from Rome to be buried at Lucca Baths.

But such an enterprise was not the simplest or easiest thing in the
world. There were official difficulties in the way, ecclesiastical
difficulties and custom-house difficulties of all sorts. Where there
is a will, however, there is a way. But the way which the determined
will of the Queen of the Baths discovered for itself upon this
occasion was one which would probably have occurred to few people in
the world save herself. She hired a _vetturino_, and told him that he
was to convey a servant of hers to the baths of Lucca, who would be
in charge of goods which would occupy the entire interior of the
carriage. She then obtained, what was often accorded without much
difficulty in those days, from both the Pontifical and the Tuscan
Governments, a _lascia passare_ for the contents o