The artist is often suspicious, and in every Opera Company there are a certain number of conspirators who are always plotting mischief and trying to bring about misunderstandings between the manager on the one hand, and on the other the vocalists, musicians, and even the minor officials of the establishment. Needless to say that the singer on the night he sings, his nerves vibrating with music, cannot at the end of the performance go to bed and get quietly to sleep; and on one occasion, at Edinburgh, I passed on my way to my bed the room in which Signor Giuglini was reposing, with a cigar in his mouth, between the sheets and listening to the tales, the gossip, the scandal, and the malicious suggestions poured into his ears by the _camorristi_ of whom I have above spoken. All I heard was, uttered in exciting tones, such words as "extra performance," "almanac," "imposition," "Mapleson," and so on. I knew that some plot was being hatched against me, but what it could be I was unable to divine; nor, to tell the truth, did I trouble myself much about it. Meanwhile I had spoken to Mr. Wyndham, manager of the Edinburgh Theatre, about the necessity, should Mademoiselle Borchardt still remain ill, of performing some opera in which there was no part for a contralto. He saw the necessity of what I suggested, and agreed with me that _Norma_ would be the best work to play. I, at the same time, informed him that Giuglini had sworn "by the Holy Virgin and Madame Puzzi" never more to appear in that work, and I had no reason for believing that he had forgotten either his impressive oath or his bruised nose. It was resolved, therefore, to announce Signor Corsi for the part of "Pollio." This might have suited Giuglini, from the superstitious point of view; but it put him out in the project which, prompted by the _camorristi_, he had formed for extorting from me a certain sum of money. He was engaged to play sixteen times a month at the rate of sixty pounds a performance. I had wished to have his services four times a week; and in signing for sixteen performances a month it did not occur to me that now and then in the course of the year the tenor might be called upon to give a seventeenth. This was the point which he and his fellow-conspirators had been discussing in his bedroom on the night when it had struck me that some sort of dark scheme was being prepared for my confusion.