most enthusiastic welcome. She was an intelligent, industrious, earnest, good woman, with great sensibility and most wonderful talents; but as a successor to Rachel she never seemed to me a genius. She rose early; she attended and managed every rehearsal; she had a most excellent company; she was the strongest and most indefatigable person ever heard of. She used her needle cleverly, took care of her theatrical wardrobe; she was reading, writing letters, attending to her daughter (a beautiful girl), making calls, going to dinners and balls; yet all her excitements were so reduced to a system that she never seemed fatigued. The only woman whom I have met who seemed at all like her is Mrs. Potter Palmer, of Chicago, and she is very like her. The practical was not swallowed up in the ideal in this extraordinary woman, whom I am happy to have known. She never broke an engagement; she was always punctual; her people adored her.
Of her parts I liked best her Marie Antoinette. It was infinitely affecting, tender, and true. Her beauty in it was something astonishing. She must have been fifty years of age; she did not look thirty. And the support was admirable. The king was played by an actor so good that he is always before me when I read of Louis XVI. She told me that she always cried an hour or two after playing this part, which shows that she was an actress at heart; but she declared that hard work had done more for her than inspiration. She was grateful to her father, her grandmother, and her early teachers because they were so severe. She never spoke of Madalena Pomatelli except as "a great beauty." This was her mother; I suppose a very mediocre actress. But she must have been a good woman to have had so serious and so good a daughter. Ristori had the
