It was she who received that astonished and, I fear, disappointed kiss from the German officer at Brussels, when the students drew Margarita's carriage home from the opera house after her astonishing triumph in the last act of _Siegfried_. It was an absurd part for her--she had never done _Elsa_ nor _Elizabeth_, and Mme. M----i was very angry with her. Herr M----l, the great director, spent the summer in Italy and Switzerland and was with our party nearly all of the time. Purely to please himself he taught Margarita the role of _Bruenhilde_ in _Siegfried_ and insisted on her singing it that winter in Brussels under him. It was wonderful, and showed me what her real _forte_ was to be. She was _Bruenhilde_, she did not need to act it. How the Master himself would have revelled in her! She was very teachable--one of the most certain indications of her great capacities. Her _Marguerite_ was almost entirely her own, for she had not learned how to use dramatic instruction; her _Aida_ was almost Madame's own, for she had learned, then, and besides, did not understand the character; her _Bruenhilde_ was herself, trained and assisted into the best canons of interpretation by a loyal Wagnerian. It is a short part, of course, but it showed what she could have done with the rest of it. At thirty-five she could have done the whole _Ring_; at forty I believe no one could have equalled her. Carter got himself snarled hopelessly into a tangle with the government officials in Berlin (he was no diplomat, though a good fellow, and wild about Margarita, so that poor little Alice had more than one bad quarter-hour, I'm afraid) and it took Roger a great deal of Bradley influence with the American consul and a lot of patient correspondence to unravel his unlucky brother-in-law. This gave Roger a good excuse for being in and near Germany; whether he would have stayed without it, I don't know. The work on Napoleon was done: he had laboured over it in Rome during the summer, and Margarita had been very sweet, refusing more than one invitation (at Sue Paynter's earnest request) to stay with him. But it was only too evident that she did not wholly wish to stay and that such a situation could not last long. Herr M----l kept her interested, and Seidl, whom he sent for to hear her practising for _Siegfried_, was most enthusiastic about her and displayed his admiration a little too strongly for our peace of mind. His was a developing, forcing influence, and Margarita showed the effect of it wonderfully; he inspired her to her best efforts, and Mme. M----i was terribly jealous of him. Personally, I could not but feel that his undoubtedly great influence upon her mind and methods represented one of his many invaluable contributions to the musical history of America--but I speak as an observer, merely, of an American artist, not as a husband!