Profiting by our stay in Naples, I wanted to take a few lessons on the mandoline, and Sergy bought me a costly pearl-inlaid instrument at Vinacio’s, the best mandoline-maker. A lady-teacher, recommended by our hotel-keeper, was engaged to instruct me in the difficulties of the “tremolo” on the strings, but she proved to be a very mediocre teacher and taught me the “tremolo” with her gloves on. I did not repeat my lesson and Professor D’Ambrosio, a well-known musician and composer, was invited in her place. I spent hours studying my mandoline, playing scales and exercises. During the summer and autumn months, the San-Carlo, one of the biggest theatres in the world, is closed, and we went to see “Faust” at a small theatre, where the performance began very early, at six o’clock in the evening. The chairs in the first row cost only two francs. The conductor of the orchestra seemed little more than a boy and could not be over twenty, and the performance didn’t please me: Faust was too fat and Mephistopheles not diabolical enough; Siebel had a fine mezzo-soprano, but boy’s clothes did not suit the outlines of her stout figure, and Margaret had nothing of the woman but the skirt, and struggled against the almost impossible task of the mature woman impersonating a girl of seventeen, and was listening with all the coyness of forty years and six children at home, to the love-making of Faust. At eight o’clock a new performance of “Don Giovanni” was about to begin, but our eyes closed with sleep and we did not purchase any more tickets.