The X.'s had invited about a score of people for the evening, so that I had to play a little, in spite of my fatigue, and to swallow a dozen Scotch ballads. There was a Mrs. X, who made me spend one of the most terrible quarters of an hour that I can remember for a long time ; imagine an oldish woman, very extraordinary in attire, with a bass voice like that of Formes, who stands up, alone, in the middle of the room and, without any accompaniment, sings to improvised melodies with all sorts of old- fashioned shakes and hiccoughs, several of her brother's poems, and by no means the shortest of them. I was seized with such a fear of bursting into laughter that it nearly made me ill.