qualities was never seen.

To the qualities which I have just mentioned, Silvia added another which
surrounded her with a brilliant halo, and the absence of which would not
have prevented her from being the shining star of the stage: she led a
virtuous life. She had been anxious to have friends, but she had
dismissed all lovers, refusing to avail herself of a privilege which she
could easily have enjoyed, but which would have rendered her contemptible
in her own estimation. The irreproachable conduct obtained for her a
reputation of respectability which, at her age, would have been held as
ridiculous and even insulting by any other woman belonging to the same
profession, and many ladies of the highest rank honoured her with her
friendship more even than with their patronage. Never did the capricious
audience of a Parisian pit dare to hiss Silvia, not even in her
performance of characters which the public disliked, and it was the
general opinion that she was in every way above her profession.

Silvia did not think that her good conduct was a merit, for she knew that
she was virtuous only because her self-love compelled her to be so, and
she never exhibited any pride or assumed any superiority towards her
theatrical sisters, although, satisfied to shine by their talent or their
beauty, they cared little about rendering themselves conspicuous by their
virtue. Silvia loved them all, and they all loved her; she always was the
first to praise, openly and with good faith, the talent of her rivals;
but she lost nothing by it, because, being their superior in talent and
enjoying a spotless reputation, her rivals could not rise above her.

Nature deprived that charming woman of ten year of life; she became
consumptive at the age of sixty, ten years after I had made her
acquaintance. The climate of Paris often proves fatal to our Italian