We sent for the leader of the orchestra at the opera to come and test whether I had voice, and if I had, to give me singing lessons. He came, tested, thought the material was good, and gave me lessons; of course only exercises for developing the voice. That was somewhat of a bore to me; I should have liked to learn a bravura aria at once, and I felt it as a disappointment that when I let a beautiful F or G swell to fortissimo and then diminish again till it died away, the Herr Kapellmeister did not spring up to cry out in enthusiasm, “Why, that beats Patti!” And so we gave up the lessons after a week—the more readily because to my mother, whose work often failed of success in most inexplicable fashion, the fee of twenty francs an hour seemed decidedly too high. One afternoon, at the music, Herr von Königswarter said to us, “The Princess of Mingrelia has a keen desire to make the acquaintance of the ladies.” We had long known who the Princess of Mingrelia was, since we saw her daily in the Kurpark and at the theater, and since Herr von Königswarter, who was on friendly terms with her, had told us as much as he knew of the story of her life. Ekaterina Dadiani, formerly princess of the Caucasian country (now incorporated in the Russian empire) of Mingrelia, was a very elegant lady of about forty-six or forty-seven, still goodly to look upon, and must in her youth have been a dazzling beauty of the genuine Georgian type. She had for some years been living in Europe, alternately Paris and St. Petersburg, for the sake of her children’s education; in summer she came regularly to drink the health-giving waters of Homburg. Every morning at seven o’clock she went to the spring; she often made the round of the gambling-rooms, but never played; at the afternoon concert she used to sit in a particular place on the Kurhaus terrace, always surrounded by a whole little court. Her family consisted of two sons and a daughter. Her oldest son Nikolaus, called Niko, was at that time seventeen years old, her daughter Salomé sixteen, and her youngest son André fourteen. Her household (she occupied the whole ground floor of the Weckerlin house) comprised a secretary, the governess for her daughter, the tutor for the boys, a valet, and two maids.