selves in a language of which no word was familiar to our ears. The town itself is pleasant enough with its long streets of cream-washed houses, but nothing could be more dreary than the aspect of the peasants and miners whom we met on the way to the market, and who sulkily vouchsafed a few words of greeting as we passed.
Without, as well as within doors, nothing could be more agreeable than the life led at Craig-y-Nos. Madame Patti expects her guests to do exactly what they please, and only enforces a rule that they should come down punctually to meals, which are always served in a fine conservatory leading from Italian winter gardens. Dinner at 7 o'clock is the event of the day, and then La Diva appears in her highest spirits, full of wit and anecdote. Like many celebrated people, she lives much in the past, and is never weary of talking of the father and mother to whom she was so dutifully attached, and who were taken from her long years ago. Of her childhood's days, as I have already shown, she has much to tell. "I was always merry, yet earnest at the same time, and took pains with everything I undertook the real secret of my success in life."
The afternoon at Craig-y-nos is always occupied in driving in the beautiful neighbourhood surrounding the Castle. Madame Patti is naturally a warm favourite with all the squires and squiresses of the country round, no less than with the poor on her estate; and when the wheels of her carriage are heard in the distance, children, big and small, leave their work and run into the lanes to wave their handkerchiefs, and lustily cheer the Queen of Song as she passes on her way.
Notwithstanding her great talents, Adelina Patti is the most modest and unaffected of women, and of a singularly generous and sympathetic nature. Nowhere is she seen to greater advantage than when entertaining her friends, whose names are legion, beneath the hospitable roof of Craig-y-nos Castle.
