Part 15

"I think it was in 1847, or thereabouts," she replied. "Then I went to Paris; but I do not wish to speak of that horrid place."

"Is Paris such a horrid place?" I asked. "I wish you would come while I am there."

"Never, never!" she cried. "They treated me so abominably I vowed that I would never set foot in Paris again, and although they have offered me every possible inducement I have always refused."

"What a pity!" I exclaimed. "Would you not like to see the Exposition in Paris next year? I think it might interest you."

"Yes, that might interest me; but Paris! Paris!"

"Do you know Auber?" I asked.

"Auber. No, I have always wanted to know him, but have never had an opportunity."

"If you will come to Paris, I will arrange that you meet him."

"I will! I will! And then I will sing for him!" she said, with almost girlish glee.

How delighted I was to think that I might be the medium to bring them together.

She asked me a great many questions about my singing. Suddenly she said, "Make a trill for me."

I looked about for a piano to give me a note to start on. But a piano was evidently the thing where the Goldschmidts had drawn the line. I made as good a trill as I could without one.

"Very good!" said she, nodding her head approvingly. "I learned my trill this way." And she made a trill for me, accentuating the upper note.

Pointing her finger at me, she said, "You try it."

I tried it. Unless one has learned to trill so it is very difficult to do; but I managed it somehow.

Then she said, in her abrupt way, "What vocalizes do you sing?"

I replied that I had arranged Chopin's waltz in five flats as a vocalize.

"In the original key?" she asked. "I know it well. It is one of Goldschmidt's favorite concert pieces."

"Not in the original key. I have transposed it two notes lower, and put some sort of words to it. I also sing as a vocalize the first sixteen bars of the overture of Mendelssohn's 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'"

"I don't think that I could do that," she said.

"I am sure you could," I answered, upon which she tried it. She sang it slowly but perfectly, shutting her eyes as if feeling her way cautiously, for the intonations are very difficult.

Twelve o'clock sounded from a cuckoo-clock in the next room, and I felt that my visit, fascinating as my angel was, must come to an end. I left her still standing on the veranda in her white brocade, and as I walked off she made the trill as an adieu.

I reached the villa in time for breakfast, after which our hosts drove us down to the pier, where the little rowboat was waiting to take us out to the yacht.

I said that our trip was a failure! It was more than a failure. It meant a gale, thunder, lightning, and sudden death, and everything in the Litany, and we finished ignominiously by taking refuge in the first port we could reach, and going on to our destination by train.

PARIS, February 12, 1866.

DEAR AUNTY,--There has been a regular deluge of balls in Paris this winter. The Minister of Marine gave a gorgeous one, the clou of which was the entrance at midnight precisely of Les Quatres Continents, being four long cortèges representing Europe, America, Africa, and Asia.

I was quite provoked that they did not ask me to be in the American cortège. I should have loved to have been an Indian squaw, except that a blanket is a rather warm toilette de bal. They wanted me to take a costume of a Spanish lady in the cortège of Europe, but I refused; if I could not be in the American I did not want to be in any of the others.

Taking part in the cortège meant waiting till midnight before appearing, and then, being in it, you did not see it. I had a banal and not a correct costume of an Amazone Louis XIII., and stayed in the ballroom all the evening, and saw the procession when it came in. It was very interesting and really beautifully arranged.