S---- afterwards made a trip round the world. Goodness knows how he found out whether I was singing or not, but some night after singing one of my big rôles I would receive a monstrous basket of red roses, or an armful of orchids, cabled for from Honolulu or China. He even remembered my _Dachshund's_ birthday, and cabled the baker to send Peter a wonderful _Torte_ with birthday candles. CHAPTER XX THE GRANDMOTHERS' BALLET All this time I was working very hard at the opera. Our repertoire was very large, including nearly all the Italian operas, from Verdi to Wolf-Ferrari, and the German operas from the time of Weber and Mozart up to Humperdinck. Everything was given in German, some of the translations good and some poor. At first it had seemed terribly difficult to accustom myself to the German sounds in _Dalila_ or _Carmen,_ after the sonorous French, but latterly German came to seem quite as natural, though never so beautiful nor singable. Every one in the audience, however, understood the text, and surely this is the important thing. How can they enter into the spirit of an opera when they are guessing whether that is a love phrase or an insult that the tenor is singing? The prejudice against translating into the vernacular has had to be overcome in nearly all European countries and will, I suppose, be only a question of time with us. In Russia, operatic composers flowered and reached their world prominence only after the Russian language was used for the libretto. In Germany Italian was discarded for the language of the singers only after a long struggle, but the great abundance of German operas came after it was adopted, not before. In France also Italian libretti were used for generations, but can any one imagine a Debussy composing a "Pelléas et Mélisande" to an Italian libretto? Each school must find itself in its own tongue, and I question whether these matters can be hurried. I have always thought a good English translation would contribute more to the general pleasure of the audience than a misunderstood gabble of words, even though English is perhaps lacking in the subtle charm worked upon us by foreign speech.