Luncheon over, we repaired for cigarettes and coffee to an upper room, where Calvé was giving Dagnan-Bouveret some sittings for a portrait, and lingered there until four o’clock, when our hostess left us for her siesta, and a “break” took those who cared for the excursion across the valley to inspect the ruins of a Roman bath. A late dinner brought us together again in a small dining room, the convalescents having eaten their simple meal and disappeared an hour before. During this time, another transformation had taken place in our mercurial hostess! It was the Calvé of Paris, Calvé the witch, Calvé the _capiteuse_, who presided at the dainty, flower-decked table and led the laughing conversation. A few notes struck on a guitar by one of the party, as we sat an hour later on the moonlit terrace, were enough to start off the versatile artist, who was in her gayest humor. She sang us stray bits of opera, alternating her music with scenes burlesqued from recent plays. No one escaped her inimitable mimicry, not even the “divine Sarah,” Calvé giving us an unpayable impersonation of the elderly _tragédienne_ as Lorenzaccio, the boy hero of Alfred de Musset’s drama. Burlesquing led to her dancing some Spanish steps with an abandon never attempted on the stage! Which in turn gave place to an imitation of an American whistling an air from _Carmen_, and some “coon songs” she had picked up during her stay at New York. They, again, were succeeded by a superb rendering of the imprecation from Racine’s _Camille_, which made her audience realize that in gaining a soprano the world has lost, perhaps, its greatest _tragédienne_. At eleven o’clock the clatter of hoofs in the court warned us that the pleasant evening had come to an end. A journalist _en route_ for Paris was soon installed with me in the little omnibus that was to take us to the station, Calvé herself lighting our cigars and providing the wraps that were to keep out the cool night air. As we passed under the low archway of the entrance amid a clamor of “adieu“ and “au revoir,” the young Frenchman at my side pointed up to a row of closed windows overhead. “Isn’t it a lesson,” he said, “for all of us, to think of the occupants of those little rooms, whom the generosity and care of that gracious artist are leaning by such pleasant paths back to health and courage for their toilsome lives?” CHAPTER 11—A Cry For Fresh Air “Once upon a time,” reads the familiar nursery tale, while the fairies, invited by a king and queen to the christening of their daughter, were showering good gifts on the baby princess, a disgruntled old witch, whom no one had thought of asking to the ceremony, appeared uninvited on the scene and revenged herself by decreeing that the presents of the good fairies, instead of proving beneficial, should bring only trouble and embarrassment to the royal infant.