In due time Madame A. arrived and her recital, as such things go, was a brilliant success. So far as I could judge, she had an enthusiastic following in Frankfort, quite as significant, for instance, as a woman like Carreno would have in America. An institution known as the Saalbau, containing a large auditorium, was crowded, and there were flowers in plenty for Madame A. who opened and closed the program. The latter arrangement resulted in an ovation to her, men and women crowding about her feet below the platform and suggesting one composition and another that she might play--selections, obviously, that they had heard her render before. She looked forceful, really brilliant, and tender in a lavender silk gown and wearing a spray of an enormous bouquet of lilacs that I had sent her. This business of dancing attendance upon a national musical favorite was a bit strange for me, although once before in my life it fell to my lot, and tempestuous business it was, too. The artistic temperament! My hair rises! Madame A. I knew, after I saw her, was expecting me to do the unexpected--to give edge as it were to her presence in Frankfort. And so strolling out before dinner I sought a florist’s, and espying a whole jardinière full of lilacs, I said to the woman florist, “How much for all those lilacs?” “You mean all?” she asked. “All,” I said. “Thirty marks,” she replied. “Isn’t that rather high?” I said, assuming that it was wise to bargain a little anywhere. “But this is very early spring,” she said. “These are the very first we’ve had.” “Very good,” I said, “but if I should take them all would you put a nice ribbon on them?” “O-o-oh!” she hesitated, almost pouting, “ribbon is very dear, my good sir. Still--if you wish--it will make a wonderful bouquet.” “Here is my card,” I said, “put that in it.” And then I gave her the address and the hour. I wrote some little nonsense on the card, about tender melodies and spring-time, and then I went back to the hotel to attend Madame. A more bustling, aggressive little artist you would not want to find. When I called at eight-thirty--the recital was at nine--I found several musical satellites dancing attendance upon her. There was one beautiful little girl from Mayence I noticed, of the Jewish type, who followed Madame A. with positively adoring glances. There was another woman of thirty who was also caught in the toils of this woman’s personality and swept along by her quite as one planet dislocates the orbit of another and makes it into a satellite. She had come all the way from Berlin. “Oh, Madame A.,” she confided to me upon introduction, “oh, wonderful! wonderful! Such playing! It is the most wonderful thing in the world to me.”