when her passions were
aroused, capable of anything, and I was careful never to give her more
serious cause of offense than the doing of my official duty. Over
those whom she chose to fascinate, she had an extraordinary power, and
I have known young women who were so completely under her control as
to be unable to escape from it when they found out her real nature
except by flight.

If she had been beautiful she might have set the social world
topsy-turvy. I think she was the cleverest woman I ever knew. Her tact
was extraordinary, and she never failed to impress the visitors to
Rome with her sincerity and benevolence, though she really possessed
neither of those qualities. She was an immense illustration of a maxim
of Dante Rossetti to the effect that artists had nothing to do with
morality. She was always on the stage--in the most familiar act and in
the presence of strangers she never lost sight of the footlights,
and the best acting I ever saw her in was in private and in the
representation of some comedy or tragedy of her own interests. She
played with a marvelous power one part, and all others were but
variations of that or failures--it was not art which dominated her,
but the simulation of nature, and that her own, which is not the same
thing as art, as we all ought to know.

Between herself and the sculptor Rogers, who was, in his way, as
clever as she, there was an implacable war, veiled by the ordinary
forms of civility, which both were careful never to break over. Miss
Cushman had begun her career as a singer, but, her voice failing,
she had to be content to remain on the stage of the theatre; but she
always retained a certain dramatic quality of voice, and, within a
very limited register, she sang with great power and pathos. Two of
her favorite songs were Kingsley's "The Sands of Dee" and the "Three
Fishermen," which, as she sang them, rarely failed to affect those who
heard them for the first time to tears. Rogers was an admirable mimic
and sang those songs with such a close rendering of the voice and
manner (for Miss Cushman's voice was rather that of a man than one
belonging to her own sex), with just a touch of burlesque, that he
brought out roars of laughter; and when the two cordial enemies met in
society somebody was sure to ask Rogers to sing "The Sands of Dee,"
which he did with good will, and Miss Cushman was obliged, to her
intense anger, to applaud the caricature of her best performance. It