After leaving the Vatican I went at eleven o'clock to the Quirinal Palace. The Marchese di Villamarina was to present me to Queen Margherita. We passed through a suite of five or six rooms and in the one where we waited was a crape-covered glass case in which were souvenirs of Victor Emanuel who had died only recently. There was an upright piano between the windows. The following detail was almost theatrical in its impression. I had noticed that an usher was stationed at the door of each of the salons through which I had come, and I heard a distant voice, evidently in the first room, announce loudly, La Regina, then nearer, La Regina, then nearer still, La Regina, and again and louder, La Regina, and finally in the next salon, in ringing tones, La Regina. And the Queen appeared in the salon where we were. The Marchese di Villamarina presented me, bowed to the Queen, and went out. Her Majesty, in a charming voice, asked me to excuse her for not going to the opera the evening before to hear _Il Capolavoro_ of the French master, and, pointing to the glass case, said, "We are in mourning." Then she added, "As I was deprived of the evening, will you not let me hear some of the motifs of the opera?" As there was no chair beside the piano, I began to play standing. Then I saw the Queen looking about for a chair and I sprang towards one, placed it in front of the piano and continued playing as she had asked so adorably. I was much moved when I left her Majesty and I was deeply gratified by her gracious reception. I passed through the numerous salons and found the Marchese di Villamarina whom I thanked heartily for his great courtesy. A quarter of an hour later I was in the Via delle Carozze, visiting Menotti Garibaldi to whom I had a letter of introduction from a friend in Paris. That was no ordinary morning. Indeed it was unusual in view of the personages I had the honor to see: His Holiness the Pope, her Majesty the Queen, and the son of Garibaldi. I was presented during the day to Prince Massimo of the oldest Roman nobility. When I asked, perhaps indiscreetly but with genuine curiosity nevertheless, whether he were descended from Emperor Maximus, he replied, simply and modestly, "I do not know certainly, but they have been sure of it in my family for eighteen hundred years." After the theater that evening (a superb success), I went to supper at the house of our ambassador, the Duke de Montebello. At the request of the duchess I began to play the same motifs I had given in the morning before her Majesty the Queen. The duchess smoked, and I remember that I smoked many cigarettes while I played. That gave me the opportunity, as the smoke rose to the ceiling, to contemplate the marvellous paintings of the immortal Carrache, the creator of the famous Farnese Gallery. Again, what never to be forgotten hours! I returned to my hotel about three in the morning where the serenade with which they entertained me kept my friend du Locle awake.