"The hostility between Lamoricière and Bugeaud arises, I suppose, from the latter's detestable disposition, his overbearing and dictatorial temper. Lamoricière is not a man, I take it, to be the slave of any one."
"Rivalry in Africa is thought to have originated the feud," remarked Debray, "and political differences in Paris to have inflamed it. Bugeaud is a Legitimist, and Lamoricière a Republican."
"Silence!" cried the musical connoisseurs in the orchestra. "The curtain rises."
As the curtain rose a hush of expectation reigned over the audience. The hum and bustle ceased, and silence most profound succeeded. The appearance of the fair cantatrice was the 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 rôle of Gennaro was performed by the brother of the cantatrice, Léon 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 personæ themselves.