It is a pleasant and exciting role for me to play. Robert Burns did the part to perfection:
O wert thou in the cauld blast On yonder lea, on yonder lea.
How many times does one recite that to all the Ophelias and Gretchens in the world:
How one admires one's bosom in that capacity! Looking down at one's shirt-front, one is filled with strength and pride.
Why are the women so bad at playing this part in real life, this Ophelia-Gretchen role? Why are they so unwilling to go mad and die for our sakes? They do it regularly on the stage.
But perhaps, after all, we write the plays. What a villain I am, what a black-browed, passionate, ruthless, masculine villain I am to the leading lady on the stage; and, on the other hand, dear heart, what a hero, what a fount of chivalrous generosity and faith! I am _anything_ but a dull and law-abiding citizen. I am a Galahad, full of purity and spirituality, I am the Lancelot of valour and lust; I fold my hands, or I cock my hat in one side, as the case may be: I am _myself_. Only, I am not a respectable citizen, not that, in this hour of my glory and my escape.
Dear Heaven, how Adelaida wept, her voice plashing like violin music, at my ruthless, masculine cruelty. Dear heart, how she sighed to rest on my sheltering bosom! And how I enjoyed my dual nature! How I admired myself!
Adelaida chose _La Moglie del Dottore_ for her Evening of Honour. During the following week came a little storm of coloured bills: 'Great Evening of Honour of Enrico Persevalli.'
This is the leader, the actor-manager. What should he choose for his great occasion, this broad, thick-set, ruddy descendant of the peasant proprietors of the plain? No one knew. The title of the play was not revealed.
So we were staying at home, it was cold and wet. But the maestra came inflammably on that Thursday evening, and were we not going to the theatre, to see _Amleto_?
Poor maestra, she is yellow and bitter-skinned, near fifty, but her dark eyes are still corrosively inflammable. She was engaged to a lieutenant in the cavalry, who got drowned when she was twenty-one. Since then she has hung on the tree unripe, growing yellow and bitter-skinned, never developing.
A certain fear comes into her eyes. She is schoolmistress, and has a mortal dread of being wrong.