, and getting comfortably ensconced beside
a lovely Limenean, with a little mouth like a slit in a rose-leaf, up
flew the curtain. The scene was similar to one in Fra Diavolo, where
Antonio returns down the mountain-steep after an unsuccessful search for
the devil's brother; lots of peasants, flower-girls, and a horde of
attendants, had already ascended, together with the Contralto, and Linda
herself, who weighed fourteen stone. Tap! tap! led the orchestral baton.
Now began the _cavatina_. I was half entranced in melody, cigar-smoke,
and the smiles of her with the rose-leaf mouth, Dona Margarita, when, as
the sweet notes came trilling forth, in wreaths of exquisite
harmony--crash! scream! crash!--the platforms gave way! The prima donna
made a demi-volte, threw an involuntary summerset, and vanished
head-foremost through Mont Blanc, severely damaging the picturesque
village of Chamouni; our friend the Cantatrice, and the little slashed
trowsers and silk stockings, were seen plunging and struggling in an
Alpine torrent of pasteboard. All was tottering scenery, shrieking
supes, clouds of dust, terror, and confusion. Some villain had cut the
cords that upheld the mountain-pass. Our Contralto warbler escaped
without a blemish, but the unfortunate Prima was pulled out from beneath
the treacherous planks in hysterics, and borne off kicking violently in
the arms of stout peasants. Of course the play was ended: but there
nearly arose a revolution in Lima that night, for it was strongly urged
that the murderous Empressario had conspired against his troupe,
although, poor man, he swore until black in the visage, that he never
dreamed of so heinous a crime; and if he might be allowed a conjecture
he should say, that it had been a little ballet got up among the
_Cantatrici_ themselves, to get rid of performing for a week or two! but
no one believed him.

Our hotel was the _Fonda de los Banos_, the best in Lima--faint praise
this. It faces the cathedral in the plaza, and is a capital point of
view for strangers desirous of seeing the motley panorama of the city
from the balconies without mingling in the dust and fleas below. Our
host was an old, frowsy-wigged Frenchman, pleasant and conversible, who
made out the accounts with a crotchety style of caligraphy--fives and
nines hardly to be distinguished apart--although with never an error in
your favor in the arithmetical _calcule_ at bottom. The lady of the
mansion was a fine-looking,