And yet, O dear, these are the things he does not put in his book.  When he was all dressed and ready for the performance, Salvini would go into a dark place and walk and walk and walk; sometimes droopingly, sometimes with martial tread.  Once, I said, “You walk far, signor?”

“Si, signorina,” he made answer, then eagerly, “I walk me into him!” And while the great man was “walking into the character,” the actors who supported him smoked cigarettes at the stage door until the dash for dressing room and costume.

Some women scold because he has not given pictures of the great people whom he met.  “Why,” they ask, “did he not describe Crown Princess Victoria” (the late Empress Frederick) “at least—­how she looked, what she wore?  Such portraits would be interesting.”  But Salvini was not painting portraits, not even his own—­truly.  He was giving a list of his triumphs; and if he has shown self-appreciation, he was at least perfectly honest.  There is no hypocrisy about him.  If he knew Uriah Heep, he did not imitate him; for in no chapter has he proclaimed himself “’umble.”  If one will read Signor Salvini’s book, remembering that the paeans of a world have been sung in his honour, and that he really had no superior in his artistic life, I think the I’s and my’s will seem simply natural.

However he may have been admired in other characters, I do truly believe that only those who have seen him in “Othello” and “Morte Civile” can fully appreciate the marvellous art of the actor.  I carry in my mind two pictures of him,—­Othello, the perfect animal man, in his splendid prime, where, in a very frenzy of conscious strength, he dashes Iago to the earth, man and soldier lost in the ferocity of a jungle male beast, jealously mad—­an awful picture of raging passion.  The other, Conrad, after the escape from prison; a strong man broken in spirit, wasted with disease, a great shell of a man—­one who is legally dead, with the prison pallor, the shambling walk, the cringing manner, the furtive eyes.  But oh, that piteous salute at that point when the priest dismisses him, and the wrecked giant, timid as a child, humbly, deprecatingly touches the priest’s hand with his finger-tips and then kisses them devoutly!  I see that picture yet, through tears, just as I saw for the first time that illustration of supreme humility and veneration.

Oh, never mind a little extravagance with personal pronouns!  A beloved father, a very thorough gentleman, but above all else the greatest actor of his day.  There is but the one Salvini, and how can he help knowing it?  So to book and author—­ready! Viva Salvini!

CHAPTER XX

FRANK SEN:  A CIRCUS EPISODE_

The circus season was over, the animals had gone into comfortable winter quarters, while the performers, less fortunate than the beasts, were scattered far and near, “some in rags and some in tags, and some” (a very few) “in velvet gowns.”  But one small group had found midwinter employment, a party of Japanese men and women, who were jugglers, contortionists, and acrobats; and as their work was pretty as well as novel, they found a place on the programme of some of the leading vaudeville theatres.