e signal for such a reception as
only a Parisian audience can give, and the first strains that issued
from her lips assured them that their applause was not misplaced.

And surely never was the dark Duchess of Ferrara more faithfully
personated than by the present artiste. This vraisemblance, which is so
seldom witnessed in the opera, seemed to strike every eye. Her figure
was tall and majestic, and voluptuously developed. Her air and bearing
were haughty, dignified, and queen-like. Her complexion was very dark,
but perfectly clear; her forehead broad and high; her brows heavy, but
gracefully arched; her eyes large, black and flashing; her hair dark as
night, and arranged with great simplicity in glossy bands; and her mouth
large, but filled with teeth of pearl-like whiteness, contrasted by lips
of coral wet with the spray. The entire outline of her face was Roman,
and exhibited in its contour and lineaments even more than Roman
sternness and decision; and its effect was still more heightened by a
large mole at one corner of her mouth and the velvet robes in which she
was appropriately costumed.

The scene between the Duchess and the Spaniard, Gubetta, was received
with the utmost applause, and the pathos of that between the son and his
unknown mother, which succeeded, touched the audience to tears; but when
the maskers rushed in and her vizard was torn off, and her true name
proclaimed, and, amid her heart-rending wailings, the curtain fell on
the first act, the shouts were perfectly thunderous with enthusiasm. The
role of Gennaro was performed by the brother of the cantatrice, Leon
d'Armilly, a young man of twenty, of delicate and graceful figure, and
as decidedly blonde as his sister was brunette. Nature seemed to have
made a great mistake in sex when this brother and sister were fashioned.
Indeed, it seemed hardly possible that they could be brother and sister,
a remark constantly made by the audience, and the kindred announced on
the bills was generally viewed as one of those convenient relationships
often assumed on the stage, but having no more reality than those of the
dramatis personae themselves.

"A second Pasta!" cried Chateau-Renaud, entering the stalls immediately
on the descent of the curtain. "Heard you ever such a magnificent
contralto?"

"Saw you ever such a magnificent bust?" asked Beauchamp.

"Were it not for a few manifest impossibilities," thoughtfully remarked
Debray, "I should swear that thi