In the first saloon were the "Trovatore" party, lounging around a piano, presided at by Bisaccia, the accompanist to the company. Mlle. Adini, _neé_ Chapman, the _Leonora_, was warbling right under the moustache of her husband, _Aramburo_, the tenor who was frantic because Mapleson refused £800 to release him from his engagement; while Del Puente was slapping his leg vigorously with his walking-cane, as he occasionally burst in with a superb note in harmony with the score. Madame Lablache leant with her elbows upon the bar, and knowing every square inch of a role she had performed from St. Petersburg to Gotham, turned from the perusal of a newspaper at the right moment in order to discharge the electricity of her _Azucena_, while her daughter, who is studying for the operatic stage, attended _en amateur_, a toy black-and-tan terrier in her arms. Having listened to a delicious _morceau_ from "Il Trovatore," we ascended to saloon No. 2, from whence a Niagara of melody was grandly thundering. Here we found the chorus, numbering about eighty, seated hatted and bonneted, with Signor Rialp presiding at the pianoforte. The rehearsal was "Marta." After visiting a dozen different departments, every one of which is presided over by a vigilant chief, we again found ourselves on the stage. "_Now_" exclaimed the colonel, "you have some little idea of what I have to look after, and yet when I produce a new opera, a crutch-and-toothpick fellow will coolly ask me, after seeing it twice, when I am going to give something 'new.' Do you know that every one in that chorus you have just seen is an Italian, and selected after considerable trouble and great expense? Do you know what it costs me to operatically rig up each member of that chorus?" [Illustration: GERSTER.] "I cannot tell." "Well, it costs me $600, and it cost me $15,000 to bring the troupe across the Atlantic. Do you know what it costs me every time I ring up my curtain? Two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars, and then add the weekly hotel bills, $2,200. I am doing opera at Her Majesty's at this moment. Here's the bill"--handing me the programme of Her Majesty's--"doing the same operas as here, and that in order to do them here, I am obliged to get a second set of _everything_, from a drinking-cup to a bootlace, and this costs me £120,000 before I started at all, as this is a distinct and separate undertaking." "How many operas does your repertoire include?"