The Czar was to leave Darmstadt on the Monday, and on Sunday we were to sing "Meistersinger" for him. The day before I had felt frightfully ill, and suffered as I had been doing for several weeks with pains in my side. Sunday morning I sent for a doctor, the pain being so bad I was afraid I would not be able to get through the performance that night. The doctor in turn sent for the surgeon, who packed me off in an hour to the hospital for an appendicitis operation. The next morning I was operated upon, and they told me the Grand Duke had sent to ask how I was, as the Czar wished to know if the operation was successful before he left town. I thought it showed a charming, kindly thoughtfulness of others. The nurses were all most kind to me in the hospital, but the surgeon was utterly uninterested in anything but the healing of the wound itself, and paid absolutely no attention to the other rather distressing occurrences of my illness. One could see that a highly strung, nervous American woman would have fared badly with him. Sazonoff was with the Czar's suite, and I remember the Darmstadtites were much insulted because he always took the train to Frankfurt half an hour away, or to Wiesbaden (one hour), for luncheon or dinner, as he said there was nothing fit to eat at the local hotels. I secretly quite agreed with him. We often went ourselves to Frankfurt for tea, or a wild American craving would come over me for lobster or chicken salad, and we would up and away to Wiesbaden for supper. Darmstadt was very conveniently situated for short trips, surrounded as it is by interesting towns--Heidelberg only a short distance south of us, or Mannheim close enough for a day's visit. I sang _Niklaus_ in "Hoffmann" in Mannheim for the first time without a rehearsal, having learnt the part in my room at the piano without a Kapellmeister to give me the _tempi_, and never having seen the opera. That was a trying experience, not helped by the tenor knocking me flat down in the Venetian scene as I rushed on to tell him that the watch was coming. He weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds, and colliding with him in midcareer, I gave him right of way by going down flat on my back. At Frankfurt we heard a wonderful performance of "Elektra" with Richard Strauss conducting and Bahr-Mildenburg as _Klytemnestra_. I shall never forget her in it, nor the orchestral effects Strauss produced. I felt at the end as if I had been watching an insane woman, so marvellous was Bahr-Mildenburg's portrayal of the half-demented creature. Her large face, pale, with haunting, sick eyes, her scarlet, gold-embroidered draperies, the clutching, bony fingers on her jewelled staff, the swaying body she seemed barely able to keep erect, the psychology of the queen's character, all this together combined to give the exact effect she wanted, and to convey it strongly and clearly to the farthest seat in the big theatre.