Ilma de Murska was punctual with a punctuality which put one out quite as much as utter inability to keep an appointment would have done. She was sure to turn up on the very evening, and at the very hour when she was wanted for a representation. But she had a horror of rehearsals, and never thought it worth while, when she was travelling from some distant place on the Continent, to announce that she had started, or to give any idea as to when she might really be expected. Her geographical knowledge, too, was often at fault, and some of the routes--"short cuts" she called them--by which she reached London from Vienna, were of the most extraordinary kind. She had taken a dislike to the Railway Station at Cologne, where she declared that a German officer had once spoken to her without being introduced; and on one occasion, partly to avoid the station of which she preserved so painful a recollection, partly in order to get to London by a new and expeditious route, she travelled from Vienna to St. Petersburg, and from St. Petersburg took boat to Hull, where she arrived just in time to join my Opera Company at the representations that I was then giving in Edinburgh. We had not heard of her for weeks, and she came into the dressing-room to find Madame Van Zandt already attired for the part Mdlle. de Murska was to have played, that of "Lucia." She argued, with some truth, that she was in time for the performance, and declared, moreover, that in entrusting the part of "Lucia" to another singer she could see a desire on my part to get rid of her. The prima donna has generally a parrot, a pet dog, or an ape, which she loves to distraction, and carries with her wherever she goes. Ilma de Murska, however, travelled with an entire menagerie. Her immense Newfoundland, Pluto, dined with her every day. A cover was laid for him as for her, and he had learned to eat a fowl from a plate without dropping any of the meat or bones on the floor or even on the table cloth. Pluto was a good-natured dog, or he would have made short work of the monkey, the two parrots, and the Angora cat, who were his constant associates. The intelligent animal hated travelling in the dog-truck, and he would resort to any sort of device in order to join his mistress in her first-class carriage, where he would, in spite of his immense bulk, squeeze himself beneath the seat. Once I remember he sprang through the closed window, cutting himself severely about the nose in his daring leap. The other animals were simple nuisances. But I must do the monkey the justice to say that he did his best to kill the cat, and a bare place on Minette's back showed how badly she had once been clawed by her mischievous tormentor.