learnt to associate with hair-combing. Her lower limbs showed off to
great advantage under a heavy striped petticoat; that at least I think
it must have been; if it was meant for a dress, it was certainly cut
several inches too short.

Whilst I was contemplating her, she and her husband were examining the
ham, and commenting upon it _en amateurs_. I was called upon to admire
it, and incidentally introduced to Madame. Disgracefully ignorant as I
was of pork-flesh, and being of those honest youths who call a pig a
pig, I found nothing better to say than, "Voila ce que j'appelle un
cochon." That seemed about as much as they expected, and I was allowed
to pat it on the hip.

And here I cannot help leaping at a bound from 1854 to 1896, and from
Paris to Venice. Just as I was sitting, pen in hand, and trying to
conjure up a correct image of Madame Rossini, a living biographical
dictionary, in the shape of an elderly lady, walked in, who had been
sent round to show me some valuable old lace she had to dispose of. The
grand race of the _decaduti_ (the come-down in the world) is by no means
extinct, and Signora Baldazzi was a pleasant representative of it. I
welcomed her, and, having made the acquisition of some of her lace, I
chanced to elicit, in further friendly conversation, that she was a
teacher of music, and had studied for years at the Liceo Bologna, when
Rossini was director there.

She had plenty of "I well remembers" to start with, so she was soon
telling me how good and kind he was, and how brusque and rude, and how
he spared neither teachers nor pupils. Even _il maestro Cappeletti, il
professore di timpani_, she said, speaking of him with the greatest
respect, came in for his share, when, in a rehearsal under Rossini, he
made some blunder. "Asino," cried Rossini, "That sort of thing was not
unusual," added my informant; "one always expected something hot from
him." "Do I remember Madame Rossini, la Pelissier? Ma che! I see her now
in her red corsage and many-coloured petticoat, leading her dog by a
string. I knew la Collbran, too; his first wife, you know. They had been
married a good many years, when he got tired of her; he told her so, and
said he wanted a change. She did not mind the change, but she would not
leave the house for him or for anybody else; so she lived in one
apartment whilst la Pelissier and Rossini occupied another; but they all
took their meals together, and la Collbran did the housekeeping."