I was asked to sing at a charity concert to be given in the magnificent Salle de Gardes in the Barberini Palace.  The concert was arranged by all the most fashionable ladies in Rome, who with the ladies of the court were dames patronesses.

I accepted, as the Queen expressed the wish that I should.  She even selected the songs she thought best for the occasion, and was present with all the court, which, of course, gave great eclat to the concert.

Every place was taken, and, enormous as was the salle, it was crammed to its limit, people standing up by hundreds.  Sarah Bernhardt, being in Rome, promised to lend her aid; she recited a monologue in her soft, melodious voice, but so low that it could hardly have been heard farther than the first few rows of seats.

I sang the “Rossignol” and Liszt’s “Que disaient ils?” to Sgambati’s accompaniment.  Madame Helbig played the accompaniment of the “Capriciosa” of Blumenthal, the one that has all those wonderful cadenzas which run rampant through the different keys.  Madame Helbig is a marvelous musician.  I must tell you what she did.  When I was soaring all alone up in the clouds without any earthly help in that long cadenza, she foresaw that I was not coming down on the right note and changed the key from four sharps to four flats without any one noticing it, thereby saving me from dire disaster.

Any musician can change from sharps to flats, but she was reading this very difficult accompaniment almost at first sight and before a large audience.  I think that it was a tremendous tour de force.

AALHOLM, August, 1886.

My dear Aunt,—­Did you receive the newspaper cuttings I sent you describing the home-coming of Frederick and Nina?  Did they not read like fairy tales?

Aalholm Castle is situated on the sea.  It is one of the most historic places in the country, and seems to have been bandied back and forth to pay the different kings’ debts.

Christopher II. was imprisoned here (the prisons still exist), and two more moldy and unpleasant places to be shut up in cannot well be imagined.  The guards used to walk up and down in front of the aperture through which food was passed to the unfortunate and damp monarch.

Later Aalholm came into Count Raben’s family (in the eighteenth century).  There are, of course, all sorts of legends and ghostly stories which, as in all ancient castles, are, with the family specter, absolutely necessary.  Women in gauzy drapery have been seen roaming about in dark corridors, horses have been heard rattling their chains in the courtyard.  Mirrors also do something, but I forget what.  However, no phantoms, I believe, have been noticed during this generation; probably the building which is going on now has discouraged them on their prowling tours and routed them from their lairs.  I have watched with interest for the last three weeks the workmen who are making a hole in the massive walls in a room next to mine.  The walls are about ten feet thick and are made of great boulders, the space between being filled with mortar which time has made as hard as iron.