Nor was I altogether wrong in my hopeful anticipations. With a beaming face Signor Franchi came back and communicated to me the joyful intelligence that Mdme. Patti had got one shoe on. "Send her the £40," he added, "and she will put on the other." Ultimately the other shoe was got on; but not, of course, until the last £40 had been paid. Then Mdme. Patti, her face radiant with benignant smiles, went on to the stage; and the opera already begun was continued brilliantly until the end. Mdme. Adelina Patti is beyond doubt the most successful singer who ever lived. Vocalists as gifted, as accomplished as she might be named, but no one ever approached her in the art of obtaining from a manager the greatest possible sum he could by any possibility contrive to pay. Mdlle. Titiens was comparatively careless on points of this kind; Signor Mario equally so. I am certainly saying very little when I advance the proposition that Mdme. Patti has frequently exacted what I will content myself with describing as extreme terms. She has, indeed, gone beyond this, for I find from my tables of expenditure for the New York season of 1883 that, after paying Mdme. Patti her thousand pounds, and distributing a few hundreds among the other members of the company, I had only from 22 to 23 dollars per night left on the average for myself. Mdme. Patti's fees--just twenty times what was thought ample by Signor Mario and by Mdlle. Titiens, than whom no greater artists have lived in our time--was payable to Mdme. Patti at two o'clock on the day of representation. From Boston we went to Montreal, opening there on Christmas Eve, operatically the worst day in the year; when Mdme. Gerster's receipts for _La Sonnambula_ were very light. We afterwards performed _Elisir d'Amore_, and on Friday, the 4th January, Mdme. Patti made her _début_ before as bad a house as Gerster's. Soon afterwards the most money-making of prime donne was, without being aware of it at the time, seized for debt. It happened in this manner. From Boston we had travelled to Montreal, where, by the way, through the mistake of an agent, gallery seats were charged at the rate of five dollars instead of one. On reaching the Montreal railway station we were met by a demand on the part of the railway company for 300 dollars. The train had been already paid for; but this was a special charge for sending the Patti travelling car along the line. I, of course, resisted the claim, and the more energetically inasmuch as I had not 300 dollars in hand. I could only get the money by going up to the theatre and taking it from the receipts. Meanwhile the sheriffs were upon me; and the Patti travelling car, with Adelina asleep inside, was attached, seized, and ultimately shunted into a stable, of which the iron gates were firmly closed.