to please so few people?"
There were scarcely four hundred persons assembled to see this sublime
performance. He answered with honest simplicity, "They have paid their
money, and are entitled to the best I can do for them; besides that,
when I am on the stage I forget the world and all that is in it, and
live the character I represent." "You will," said I, "make a grand
Lear." "Yes," he replied, "I think I shall be able to make something
out of the old king. I have been reading the tragedy for some time,
but it will still take me two years to study it thoroughly."

Salvini related to me several anecdotes which show how quick he is to
master any difficulties accident throws in his way. "Once I bought,"
he said, "a play of a poor young writer which I thought I could make
something of; but when we came to rehearse it for the last time before
representation, it seemed to me utterly flat and unprofitable. The
piece was called _La Suonatrice d'Arpa_ ('The Harp-Girl'). The actors
all said the last act was so stupid that we should make a _fiasco_. I
at last hit upon an idea. We had, however, only a few hours to execute
it in. I changed the story: instead of the play ending happily, I made
the father kill his daughter accidentally, and then die of grief. All
the dialogue had to be improvised by the leading actress and myself.
I played the father, and Signora Piamonti the daughter. Such was the
success of our invention that the piece was played eight nights in
succession, and a rival actor, hearing of the triumph achieved by _The
Harp-Girl_, bought from the author for a handsome sum the privilege of
acting it in certain districts which were not included in my purchase
of the drama. Not being aware of the alterations we had made, and
performing it according to the letter of the text, he made _un fiasco
solenne_--a dead failure."

After the first performance of _Zaire_ I took the liberty of observing
to Salvini that a superb piece of "business" which marks his acting
in the last act was not to be found in the text. "Oh," he replied,
"I will tell you the origin of it. I was playing at Naples, and one
night, when I threw the body of my murdered wife upon the ottoman in
the last act, my burnouse fell off and fixed itself to my waist like
a tail. I saw at once that if I was not careful I should provoke
laughter, and instantly imagined that I would pretend to believe the
clinging drapery was the wounded Zaire grasping me behind. I app