enthusiasm as loud as it was genuine. You tell me that S------ never
rivalled Pasta, but certainly her Norma is a great performance. Her
voice has lost less of its freshness than I had been told, and what is
lost of it her practised management conceals or carries off.

The Maestro was quite right: I could never vie with her in her own line;
but conceited and vain as I may seem even to you in saying so, I feel in
my own line that I could command as large an applause,--of course taking
into account my brief-lived advantage of youth. Her acting, apart from
her voice, does not please me. It seems to me to want intelligence of
the subtler feelings, the under-current of emotion which constitutes the
chief beauty of the situation and the character. Am I jealous when I say
this? Read on and judge.

On our return that night, when I had seen the Venosta to bed, I went into
my own room, opened the window, and looked out. A lovely night, mild as
in spring at Florence,--the moon at her full, and the stars looking so
calm and so high beyond our reach of their tranquillity. The evergreens
in the gardens of the villas around me silvered over, and the summer
boughs, not yet clothed with leaves, were scarcely visible amid the
changeless smile of the laurels. At the distance lay Paris, only to be
known by its innumerable lights. And then I said to myself,

"No, I cannot be an actress; I cannot resign my real self for that
vamped-up hypocrite before the lamps. Out on those stage-robes and
painted cheeks! Out on that simulated utterance of sentiments learned by
rote and practised before the looking-glass till every gesture has its
drill!"

Then I gazed on those stars which provoke our questionings, and return no