Another picture and I shall have done. Listen. I, many years ago, visited the Fondation Ste. Perine at Auteuil, an institution endowed by the Empress Eugénie, one in which the benevolence is so cloaked as not to hurt the sensibilities of the resident superannuated ladies and gentlemen. The company boasted noble origins. Among the ladies I met was a Polish-born Marquise, with brilliant eyes and wonderful white hair, her own. She had studied with Chopin. She said he was fickle and that George Sand was often jealous of his pupils. For me she sang in a sweet, true, but quavering voice Chopin’s Maiden’s Wish, and compelled tears. The Marquise then tinkled with a still small tone a Nocturne by Field upon a pianoforte whose ivory keys looked as if they exhaled pearly sighs. She gently coquetted with a touch of exquisite Sarmatian evasiveness. For me she was adorable, although if she had laughed her face would have cracked its artistic plastering. What a new Diana of Poitiers! What wit, fire, malice, were in the glance of her soft, faded blue eyes! What a magically youthful heart! She must have been more than fourscore. But yet a woman. IV INTERPRETER TO MARY GARDEN AS CLEOPATRA “_C’est Affreux Mourir_” “And now this scorchèd terrace is your sole domain, Your only subject Roman, dying Anthony; The outer vastnesses they held, the soldiery Of Cæsar; their stout captain will not here refrain. You lived, O Queen, but not to countenance that pain Which is surrender of the body’s sovereignty; You take your part; is it the frightful thing to die And see in dying just the realm you must regain? You have not let the game play you, my Queen, but fed The aspic at a famished breast--the rascal fresh From gluttony a glutton still!--Why, the hot land Is dim, alone lies Anthony save for the dead-- One more ambition, Queen, for your expiring hand. The last adventure, woman of imperious flesh!” --_Pitts Sanborn._ CLEOPATRA Though the first hearing of the work in New York was during the winter of 1919 at the Lexington Theatre, and sung by the Chicago Opera Association, Cleofonte Campanini, director, it had been presented before Chicago audiences when the impersonation of the supersubtle serpent of Old Nile by Mary Garden caused much comment, critical and otherwise. The libretto states that the conception of M. Payen radically differs from Shakespeare’s tragedy--a rather superfluous remark. It does considerably differ, the principal difference being that Shakespeare wrote great poetry as well as great drama.