The Donne Furlane was the piece, a comedy of art as they call it here-- or, as we say, a comedy of masks--wherein the stock characters of Harlequin, Columbine, Brighella and Pantalone are given a rag of a plot, and are expected to embroider that with follies, drolleries and obscenities according as their humour of the moment may dictate. The persons who give the title to this particular farce--the Donne Furlane-- are the lowest class of Venetian women, and their ceremonious name implies what we in England imply when we speak of the nymphs of Drury Lane or the sirens of Radcliffe Highway, calling them, in fact, exactly what they are not. According to the plot of the play, Pantalone is an old merchant of Rimini who arrives in Venice with his family. Colombina is his daughter, and was played, of course, by Belviso; Arlecchino and Brighella are his simpleton sons--they were the manager and myself. Il Nanno was Punchinello, his Neapolitan servant, Il Dottore his travelling physician. They come ashore in the quarter of the Furlani, and all the zest of the play lies in the equivoque which contrasts the knavery of the inhabitants with the naivete of the visitors. Pantalone's family is fair game. A bully called Truffaldino poses as a marchese and wins the affections of Colombina; Brighella is entrapped by a Donna Furlana into a promise of marriage; the Dottore finds himself engaged to cure half a dozen of the same sort of ladies of the maladies incident to their career; finally, Pantalone is claimed as their long-lost uncle, who was supposed to have abandoned them in their days of infant orphanage. Such promise of diversion as this imbroglio had, it was rendered still more to the taste of the audience by the license which the actors allowed themselves. Belviso was perfection as the simple country girl; one could hardly credit a lad of his age with such niceness of observation, such humorous yet whimsical representation of an honest, foolish young woman flattered by the attention of a villain. His "La la," his "Sissioria," and "'Lustrissimo, si!" which marked so well the growth of self-esteem; his finger in the mouth, his twisting apron-corner, which betrayed embarrassment when the siege was too vigorous; his "Io non so gniente," when sheepishness was the only defence--here was the highest art of the stage. I, as Brighella his brother, aped him as well as I could. I was a clown, tickled by, yet pondering, the hardy advances of a baggage, who, in the expert person of Pamfilo, was only too well performed. If it was my business to look a fool, God knows I played better than any. The audience stormed us with delight, and I do believe I was having my share of the triumph, and might have been emboldened by success to have deserved it, had not all my sham tremors been shent--in one moment--by a shaft most real and memorable, whose fatal delivery I must now relate.