Signora Duse makes her a savage. But really the result is not at all
Parisian.

It seems possible that the French sense does not well distinguish, and
has no fine perception of that affinity with the peasant which remains
with the great ladies of the old civilisation of Italy, and has so long
disappeared from those of the younger civilisations of France and
England--a paradox. The peasant's gravity, directness, and
carelessness--a kind of uncouthness which is neither graceless nor, in
any intolerable English sense, vulgar--are to be found in the
unceremonious moments of every cisalpine woman, however elect her birth
and select her conditions. In Italy the lady is not a creature described
by negatives, as an author who is always right has defined the lady to be
in England. Even in France she is not that, and between the Frenchwoman
and the Italian there are the Alps. In a word, the educated Italian
_mondaine_ is, in the sense (also untranslatable) of singular, insular,
and absolutely British usage, a Native. None the less would she be
surprised to find herself accused of a lack of dignity.

As to intelligence--a little intelligence is sufficiently dramatic, if it
is single. A child doing one thing at a time and doing it completely,
produces to the eye a better impression of mental life than one receives
from--well, from a lecturer.




DONKEY RACES