As we felt that we could not possibly ask a totally unknown Englishwoman to find lodgings for us, my sister set out on the hunt alone. As a foreigner speaking no German, and a woman looking for rooms all by herself, she was received in a very curious manner by most of the landladies she visited, and evidently looked upon with strong suspicion. We were getting desperate, as the time of my début was coming nearer and nearer and we were still unsettled. Finally we resolved to throw ourselves upon the mercy of the unknown Englishwoman after all, and wrote her a note begging her assistance in finding two furnished rooms near the theatre, with a _Hausfrau_ who would look after them and serve our breakfast. We had to find a furnished apartment as we were not like some of my colleagues who possess their own furniture and pass their lives in a sort of singing journey through the country, always surrounded by their own household goods. [Illustration: CARMEN AS I NOW DRESS IT] CHAPTER IX THE MAKINGS OF A SMALL MUNICIPAL OPERA HOUSE Early the next morning, before we were up, our English friend kindly came to see us, and with her help we soon discovered just what we were looking for, in an eminently respectable house, where the _Hausfrau_ was the wife of a policeman, so that we were under the shadow of the majesty of the law. A young doctor had the rooms, but she assured us that he was moving immediately, and that we might send our trunks the following day. We duly arrived the next afternoon with an avalanche of baggage and found that the poor young man had had no intention of leaving before the end of the month and had even invited guests for that very evening! Floods of German ensued between him and the _Hausfrau_, while we sat philosophically on our trunks in the hall and waited. Presently she emerged, rather heated of countenance, to say that it was all arranged, and to begin moving our things into the bedroom. The doctor called us into the sitting-room, waived aside our explanations and thanks for his gallantry, and shutting all the doors mysteriously, proceeded to the only revenge in his power--to defame the character and impugn the honesty of our future hostess. "Keep things locked, I warn you, keep them locked!" he repeated earnestly, all the while cramming books, bottles and garments promiscuously into a trunk. We made allowances for his need of reprisal, and took his warning with a grain of salt; and as a matter of fact our landlady never touched anything of ours except what she doubtless considered her proper "commission" levied upon our coal and kerosene. She was quite satisfactory on the whole, except that she _would_ quarrel very noisily with her policeman from time to time, or rather he with her. When we remonstrated and said that we could not stand it and that she shouldn't, she answered that she would be only too glad to get out of her bargain, but that she had put her money into this marriage and therefore had to stay in it!