“I stayed with her in Turin for some time. We used to go out driving in the _Valentino_ every morning, for Duse said she needed to begin the day by looking at ‘green things.’ She was crowding the _Teatro Carignano_, the receipts averaging 10,000 francs for each performance--a stupendous sum for Italy. Yes, Duse certainly makes a great deal of money, but she spends all that she makes. She is exceedingly generous. One day she gave a magnificent diamond ring to a dressmaker whom Worth had sent to her from Paris with her _Dame aux Camélias_ dresses. And she pays her entire company all the year round, although during the last eighteen months she has given only twenty-two performances. “At Monte Carlo we stayed at the Victoria, the dullest if most aristocratic hotel in the place. But Duse has a taste for the dismal and the melancholy. She is very sad--the saddest woman I have ever known. She cannot even bear people’s voices. After the strain of her performance she drives home quite alone, and sits down to her supper in solitude and silence. During the days that I was with her we used to sit at opposite ends of the large table, sometimes without exchanging half a dozen words, and she used to laugh her approval across to me when I absolutely refused to answer her if she made any attempts at polite conversation. “Duse _chez elle_ dresses almost always in white satin. Her gowns are loose and limp, and folded carelessly around her.... She is a charming woman, highly cultured, sincere, brave and good. Her conversation, when she chooses to speak, is startlingly brilliant.” [123] It was her rule not to play more than four performances a week. When she was in her thirties, the world was told that she was a sufferer from “pulmonary phthisis,” and that her impending doom was one of the causes of her seclusion and sadness. All through her career there were periodic reports of her illness, of canceled engagements and interrupted tours. [124] “She spends enormous sums on books and photographs, on bonbons and _scissors_--a curious hobby of hers, as she buys pair after pair, which she afterwards loses.... Another of her fads, which in Italy is a decided novelty, is hygiene; for to the average Italian mind, the simplest rules of health and sanitation, even the combination of warmth and good ventilation, are mysteries, to inquire into which would be useless and ridiculous. That Duse should like to have a fire and to sit with the window open at the same time, quite passes their powers of comprehension.” Helen Zimmern in _Fortnightly Review_, 1900. [125] Her d’Annunzio parts, extending from 1897 to 1902, were: Isabella in _Sogno di Mattino di Primavera_, Anna in _La Citta Morta_, Silvia in _La Gioconda_, Helena in _La Gloria_, and Francesca in _Francesca da Rimini_.