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"Now, Tom, he sits humped over in there, a-lookin' in that horn. What does he see? Madame Donatelli? Does he see her show her teeth and bat her eyes when she's fetchin' one of them hand-curled trills of hers? Nay, nay. What he sees is a girl just like the one he used to know " "Whoa! Hold on there; that'll about do," said McKinney. "This country's just as good as "
Neither of the two in the great room heard the footfalls of one who approached in the dusk across the puncheon floor of the wide gallery. Dan Andersen, for reasons of his own, had also come on up the trail to the hotel. Perhaps he intended to make certain inquiries; but he never got even so far as the door. The voice of Donatelli caught and held him as it had her other auditor.
And after a while he did depart, alone, leaving Dan Anderson sitting on the wagon tongue. "You come up after a while, Dan," he called back. "If you don't hear nothing from me, you'd better stroll along up and view the remains." Madame Alicia Donatelli paced up and down the long room in the somewhat dismal hotel building which constituted the main edifice of Sky Top. She was in effect a prisoner.
Donatelli, who impersonated the consumptive heroine, and who was one of the stoutest ladies ever seen on the stage, had but a few days to live, the whole audience broke out into roars of laughter. Time has brought its consolations to the composer, however, for "Traviata" is now one of the most popular operas in the modern repertory.
"I present to you the cool, pink, and well-flavored combination of life and longing with a cherry at the bottom of it. Thanks to Tom Osby, we have Art! We are not quite provincial. Listen at Madame Donatelli tearin' it off in there! . . . Shoot him up, boys!" he cried suddenly. "I'm damned if I'm going to look all my days on the picture of a girl in a blue sash!
He was so well satisfied with this work that he deigned to place his name on it, which he had not done on the others; and it is seen in these words, "Donatelli opus." In the courtyard of the Palace of the said Signori there is a life-size David, nude and in bronze. Having cut off the head of Goliath, he is raising one foot and placing it on him, holding a sword in his right hand.
Donatelli hesitated politely, and Constance made room for her with a smile and gesture, which disarmed the Donatelli hostility for all well-garbed and well-poised young women of class other than her own. "And you're going up the country still farther?" asked Donatelli, catching a remark made by one of the men. "I wish I could go as well. You go by buckboard?" Constance nodded.
He started back from the ominous swish of the Donatelli gown, the deep cadence of the Donatelli voice, the restless Donatelli walk, now resumed. "How dare you!" cried the diva. "How dare you intrude on me?" "The saints!" cried Signer Peruchini. "What service is zere here? I knock, but you do not hear. Madame, what horror is zis place!" "Ah, that Blauring!" cried Madame Donatelli, in her rage.
"The beast! How dare he bring me here me!" Petersburg! I shall not survive this!" "Perfide!" cried Peruchini, in assent. "Perfide! R-r-rascal! Cochon! Pig unspikkab'!" "But, madame," he resumed, with gestures and intonations suitable for the scene. "Behole! It is I who have lofe you so long. To lofe ah, it is so divine! How can you riffuse?" Madame Donatelli withdrew with proper operatic dignity.
Madame Donatelli, for the first time in years jarred from the standards of her artificial life, and so, suddenly, become woman rather than actress, fell into a seat, turning toward the newcomer a gaze of wide-eyed astonishment. She had read in certain journals wild stories of doings of wild men. Was that sort of thing actually true? "Sir," she said, "how dare you!"
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