The Olliffe girls, very nice. Florence at the readings, prodigiously excited.
Miss Hogarth.
Paris, Sunday, Feb. 1st, 1863.
From my hurried note to Mamie, you will get some faint general idea of a new star's having arisen in Paris. But of its brightness you can have no adequate conception.
[John has locked me up and gone out, and the little bell at the door is ringing demoniacally while I write.]
You have never heard me read yet. I have been twice goaded and lifted out of myself into a state that astonished me almost as much as the audience. I have a cold, but no neuralgia, and am "as well as can be expected."
I forgot to tell Mamie that I went (with Lady Molesworth) to hear "Faust" last night. It is a splendid work, in which that noble and sad story is most nobly and sadly rendered, and perfectly delighted me. But I think it requires too much of the audience to do for a London opera house. The composer must be a very remarkable man indeed. Some management of light throughout the story is also very poetical and fine. We had Carvalho's box. I could hardly bear the thing, it affected me so.
But, as a certain Frenchman said, "No weakness, Danton!" So I leave off.
M. Charles Fechter.
Paris, Wednesday, Feb. 4th, 1863.