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Updated: May 1, 2025
The Improvisatrice. Pardon this digression not much, it must be confessed, in my ordinary strain but let me, dear reader, very seriously advise thee not to judge of me yet. It must be confessed, that flattery comes mighty easily to one's mouth in the presence of royalty. Letters of Stephen Montague. 'Tis he. How came he thence what doth he here? Lara.
Carlo bowed with a smile, and hastily said: "And are you ignorant, your eminence, that a much greater poetess and improvisatrice than our Corilla is in your society?" The cardinal smilingly threatened him with his finger. "Poor Carlo, has it already come to this?" said he. "You are jealous of our delight in Corilla, and would lessen her fame, that you may make her more your own!"
You love music, I understand you are a professional artist?" "I was," I answered, "till my state of health stopped me from working." Heliobas bent his eyes upon me in friendly sympathy. "You were, and you will be again, an improvisatrice" he went on. "Do you not find it difficult to make your audiences understand your aims?"
He had read, of old, of the improvisatrice of Italy, and this was a chastened, modern, American version of the type, a New England Corinna, with a mission instead of a lyre. She was as simple as she was charming, and there was not a glance or motion that did not seem part of the pure, still-burning passion that animated her.
I might hint that the hair of our hero was worn short, combed smoothly over his forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped white flannel cap and tassels that his pea-green jerkin was not after the fashion of those worn by the common class of restaurateurs at that day that the sleeves were something fuller than the reigning costume permitted that the cuffs were turned up, not as usual in that barbarous period, with cloth of the same quality and colour as the garment, but faced in a more fanciful manner with the particoloured velvet of Genoa that his slippers were of bright purple, curiously filigreed, and might have been manufactured in Japan, but for the exquisite pointing of the toes, and the brilliant tints of the binding and embroidery that his breeches were of the yellow satin-like material called aimable that his sky-blue cloak, resembling in form a dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded all over with crimson devices, floated cavaliery upon his shoulders like a mist of the morning and that his tout ensemble gave rise to the remarkable words of Benevenuta, the Improvisatrice of Florence, “that it was difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise, or the rather a very Paradise of perfection.” I might, I say, expatiate upon all these points if I pleased, but I forbear; merely personal details may be left to historical novelists, they are beneath the moral dignity of matter-of-fact.
"I speak the truth," said Carlo; "a poetess is among us whom the muses themselves have consecrated, an improvisatrice, not of human composition, but by the grace of God, to whom the angels whisper the rhymes, and the muses the ideas!" "And who, then, is this divinely-gifted artist, this consecrated daughter of the muses?" wonderingly asked the cardinal.
This Corilla may bribe you poor earthly fools with her smiles and amorous verses, but she will not be able to deceive the Muses!" "You refuse me, then, the crowning of the renowned improvisatrice Corilla?" asked the cardinal, with painfully suppressed rage. "I refuse it!" "And why, then, did you send for me?" exclaimed the cardinal with vehemence. "Was it merely to mock me?"
Yes, I know it was; for it was on the 3rd of September that I had your papa's letter. We were going to a party at Prince K 's, where there was to be a celebrated Italian improvisatrice, and I would not give her the letter till the next morning. Theodora stared at her in incredulous horror.
Sometimes a song or a strain of melody would recall her to a sense of the present, for she was passionately fond of music. A curious instance of this peculiarity of hers occurred at Rome, when a large party were assembled to listen to a celebrated improvisatrice.
With trifling effort she could execute most difficult pieces upon piano and harp. "You have the hand of a master," spake Signor Lanza proudly, to this his favorite pupil. "Il improvisatrice," was she styled by her admiring associates, whom she amused by the hour with her extemporary effusions of rhyme. From all, you would have taken her to be from that land
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