MEDON.
Like most of the German actresses—for I never yet saw one who had attained to celebrity, who was not much too embonpoint for our ideas of a youthful or sentimental heroine—
ALDA.
Not Devrient-Schrœder?
MEDON.
Devrient is all impassioned grace; but I think that in time even she will be in danger of becoming a little—how shall I express it with sufficient delicacy?—a little too substantial.
ALDA.
No, not if a soul of music and fire, informing a feverish, excitable temperament, which is to the mantling spirit within, what the high-pitched instrument is to the breeze which sweeps over its chords,—not if these can avert the catastrophe; but what if you had seen Mademoiselle Lindner, with a figure like Mrs. Liston's—all but spherical—enacting Fenella and Clärchen?
MEDON.
I should have said, that only a German imagination could stand it! It is one of Madame de Staël's clever aphorisms, that on the stage, "Il faut menager les caprices des yeux avec le plus grand scrupule, car ils peuvent detruire, sans appel tout effet sérieux;" but the Germans do not appear to be subject to these caprices des yeux; and have not these fastidious scruples about corporeal grace; for them sentiment, however clumsy, is still sentiment. Perhaps they are in the right.