Yet no one can display subsiding emotion more finely than she does. Most of our players turn off emotion as one turns off the gas. In the Sicilian one notices a kind of aftermath; her fury may be succeeded by rapture; her grief by joy; but for a while underneath the rapture or joy one detects signs of the fact that physically she is recovering gradually from the effects of fury or grief. The voice is a little harsh, the gestures are not exactly elegant, she is always somewhat _peuple_, and always magnificent. In some respects, Signor Grasso is quite different; his appearance is unpleasant, he is an ugly man, often with a fatuous air, but his grace of movement is quite extraordinary; occasionally he gives snatches of dance so exquisitely rhythmical that one longs for more. His pantomime is larger in movement than hers; his passion less terrible. He too has tricks; he is over-fond of playing with the chairs; in _Malia_ one might say that he plays skittles with them. There is rather an excess of gesture, of a naturalistic explanatory gesture, apparently borrowed from pantomime; one feels that some of it is deliberately used to aid the ignorant foreigner to understand; he does things which make the Briton squirm; has a habit of kissing the ugly, male members of his troupe with big, resounding smacks on both cheeks, and in a loving fashion pats them like a Graeco-Roman wrestler; but there is always the extraordinarily graceful, lithe movement and, with curious exceptions, a supreme unconsciousness of the audience; whilst the passionate volubility and the almost brutal ferocity thrill the house. They are a queer lot, these village players; supremely unself-conscious when actually acting, yet guilty of taking "calls" in the middle of a scene. If pressed, they probably would give an encore, and with a little urging Signora Mimi would yield to a cry of "bis" and give a repetition of her abominable, appalling, vastly clever fit in _Malia_, to please the friendly Britons. At the end of a scene the players come forward, hand in hand, bobbing and bowing, grinning and smiling, in a way that suggests a troupe of acrobats after a successful turn. It is not difficult to overrate their work as a company, or rather--and this in a sense is the same thing--to underrate that of our own players by comparison. There is one very noteworthy fact: from the point of view of a London manager the scenery and appointments were contemptible, and this apparently did not matter a rap. An audience, five-sixths of it British, was enthralled by these players, although the scenery and the furniture of the indoor sets had no pretension to magnificence, were sometimes almost absurdly squalid.