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And with a dulcet yet demoniacal laugh, the singular creature pushed him into a lightless lobby, slammed a door and seemed to run away, singing the refrain of the waltz which was to haunt him forever-more. After an instant's reflection in the impenetrable shades, Claudius concluded to follow the advice of the variety theatre's prima donna.

While the prima donna was singing her most enchanting melodies, the travelling carriage of Ulrica drove to the door. The king wished to spare himself the agony of a formal parting, and had ordered that she should enter her carriage at the close of the opera, and depart, without saying farewell. The people knew this.

I said to myself; 'Here is a born prima donna I will bring her out! She is the third I have brought out in my time. I shall take her to Italy when her education is sufficiently advanced, and perfect her at Milan. In that unsophisticated girl, my dear lady, you see one of the future Queens of Song. Listen! She is beginning her scales. What a voice! Brava! Brava! Bravissima!"

Among the audience, however, was another gifted woman, who might far more legitimately have been shocked at the utter wreck of every musical means of expression in the singer who might have been more naturally forgiven, if some humour of self-glorification had made her severely just not worse to an old prima donna; I mean Madame Viardot. Then, and not till then, she was hearing Madame Pasta.

Finally business got so bad the crew began to murmur, an' I was at my wits' ends to please 'em; when one mornin', havin' passed a restless night, I picks up a noospaper and sees in it that 'Next Saturday's steamer is a weritable treasure-ship, takin' out twelve million dollars, and the jewels of a certain prima donna valued at five hundred thousand. 'Here's my chance, says I, an' I goes to sea and lies in wait for the steamer.

His bold criticism, which approaches the precipice of infidelity, produced on my mind a singular effect; and had I persevered in the communion of Rome, I should now apply to my own fortune the prediction of the Sibyl, Via prima salutis, Quod minime reris, Graia, pandetur ab urbe. The elegance of style and freedom of argument were repelled by a shield of prejudice.

She seemed to think it was some new sort of a game. When the prima donna raised her arms, the child raised hers; when the prima donna courtesied, she stumbled into one, and straightened herself just in time to get the curls out of her eyes, and to see that the prima donna was laughing at her, and to smile cheerfully back as if to say, "WE are doing our best anyway, aren't we?"

And the anima rationalis, once united with the materia prima of the body, becomes its substantial form, and is the source of all the powers and faculties of man of all the vital and sensitive phenomena which he exhibits just as the substantial form of water is the source of all its qualities.

She understood that the girl was studying for the stage, but recognized in a twinkling that she had a singing voice, and finally prevailed upon her to try it. She herself played the accompaniment with a skill that was a revelation to Elsie, who had never enjoyed singing as she enjoyed it that night. When she had done, the prima donna threw her arms about the girl and drew her to her bosom.

Even questionable prima donnas, in virtue of their sweet voices, have their praises hymned in drawing-room and newspaper, and applause rolls over them, and gold and bouquets shower on them from lips and hands which, except for those said voices, would treat them to a ruder reward. In real fact, we take our places in this world, not according to what we are not, but according to what we are.