Why, it may be asked, as a simple matter of business--indeed, as an act of justice to myself--did I not take proceedings for an enforcement of the agreement which Mdlle. Albani had virtually contracted? I, of course, considered the advisability of doing so, and one reason for which I took no steps in the matter was that Titiens, Nilsson, Murska, and Marimon were members of my Company, and that even if Mdlle. Albani had come to me I should have found it difficult to furnish her with appropriate parts. The young lady duly appeared at Covent Garden about the beginning of April in _La Sonnambula_, and at once achieved a remarkable success, which caused me very much to regret the loss of her. She afterwards appeared as "Elsa" in _Lohengrin_ in an Italian version, which had been made for me by Signor Marchesi, husband of the well-known teacher of operatic singing, and himself an accomplished musician. I had ordered from Signor Marchesi as long before as 1864 an Italian version of _Tannhäuser_, which I duly announced in my prospectus for that year, but which I was dissuaded by some critical friends, who did not believe in Wagner, from presenting to the public. I had been advised, and there was certainly reason in the advice, that if I had quite decided to run such a risk as would be necessarily incurred through the production of an opera by Wagner (whose _Tannhäuser_ had three years previously been hissed and hooted from the stage of the Paris Opera-house) I should at least begin with his most interesting and most attractive work, the poetical _Lohengrin_. Accordingly, reserving _Tannhäuser_ for a future occasion, I determined to begin my Wagnerian operations with the beautiful legend of Elsa and the Knight of the Swan; and I commissioned Signor Marchesi to execute such a version of _Lohengrin_ as he had previously given me of _Tannhäuser_--a version, that is to say, in which, without any departure from the meaning of the words or from the forms of the original versification, the musical accents should be uniformly observed. But in England the laws relating to dramatic property seem to have been made for the advantage only of pirates and smugglers. I had printed the Italian translation of _Lohengrin_ which Signor Marchesi had executed for me, and for which I had paid him the sum of £150. But I had not secured rights of representation in the work by going through the necessary farce of a mock performance before a sham public; and anyone, therefore, was at liberty to perform a translation which in any country but England would have been regarded as my property. How Signor Marchesi's translation of _Lohengrin_ got into Mr. Gye's hands I do not know. But the version prepared for me at my cost was the one which Mr. Gye produced, and which somehow found its way to all the Italian theatres.