"'Picture to yourself two tall, handsome Italian girls, dressed in the latest fashions, walking up to my uncle, with a combination of artistic ease and charming courtesy of manner, and talking away to him in voices which were extremely loud, and yet remarkably beautiful in tone. What was the curious language they were speaking? Now and then but only now and then it sounded something like German. "'My uncle didn't understand a word of it. He stepped back, completely nonplussed, and pointed in silence to the sofa; they sat down there and talked to each other. _That_ was real music. Ultimately they managed to explain to my uncle that they were singers on a tour, intended giving some concerts, and had been recommended to apply to him as a person who could assist them in the necessary arrangements. While they had been talking to each other I had gathered their names; Lauretta, who seemed to be the elder of the two, kept talking away to my bewildered uncle, with immense energy and eager gesticulation, glancing about her with beaming eyes the while. Without being to be called "stout," she was luxuriant of figure to a degree which was at that time something wholly novel to my inexperienced--and admiring--eyes. Teresina, taller and slighter, with a long earnest face, spoke, in the intervals, very little, but much more comprehensibly. Every now and then she would smile, in a curious way, as if a good deal amused at the aspect of my poor uncle, who kept shrinking into his flowered dressing-gown as a snail does into its shell, vainly trying to stick away a certain string belonging to his nether garments, which would keep fluttering out every now and then, to the length of an ell or so. "'At last they rose to go. My uncle had promised to arrange a concert for the next day but one, and he and I (whom he had presented to them as a young _virtuoso_) were invited to go and take chocolate with the sisters that evening. "'When the time came, we walked slowly and solemnly up the stairs accordingly. We both felt very queer: somewhat as if we were going forward to undertake some rather perilous adventure, for which we were by no means adequately prepared. "After my uncle, who had carefully prepared himself beforehand, had spoken much and learnedly about music--(nobody understood a word he said, neither he himself, nor we others)--after I had burnt my tongue, three times, terribly with the scalding chocolate smiling at my tortures with the stoicism of a Scaevola--Lauretta said she would sing something. Teresina took the guitar tuned it, and struck two or three handfuls of chords. I had never heard the instrument before, and was much impressed by the strange, mysterious effect of its hollow vibrations. "'Lauretta commenced a note, very _piano_, swelled it out to a ringing _fortissimo_, and then broke out into a bold warbling _cadenza_, extending over an octave and a half. I remember the words of the beginning of her aria:-- "Sento l'amica speme."