Mario (Mons. Di Candia; I suppose
you know who I mean) has, it seems, for some reason or other, been
_discharged_. Madame Grisi, who sympathizes with him, refuses to uplift
her voice, that being the case; the new singeress, Frezzolini, does not
please at all; and the new singer, Rouconi, isn't allowed by his wife to
sing with any woman but herself, and she is a perfect _dose_ to the poor
audience. Lumley, the solicitor, manager of these he and she divinities,
declares that if they don't behave better he'll shut the theatre at the
end of the week. In the mean time, underhand proposals have been made to
Adelaide to stop the gap, and sing for a few nights for them--a sort of
proposal which does not suit her, which she has scornfully rejected, and
departed with her tail over her shoulder, leaving the behind scenes of
Her Majesty's Theatre with their tails between their legs....

My dearest Harriet, you ask me if I do not think the spirit of
martyrdom is often alloyed with self-esteem and wilfulness. God alone
knows the measure in which human infirmity and human virtue unite in
inducing the sacrifice of life and all that life loves for a point of
opinion. I confess, for my own part, self-esteeming and wilful as I am,
that to suffer bodily torture for the sake of an abstract question of
what one believes to be right is an effort of courage so much above any
that I am capable of that I do not feel as if I had a right to
undervalue it by the smallest doubt cast upon the merit of those who
have shown themselves capable of it. It may be that, without such
admixture of imperfection as human nature's highest virtues are still
tinged with, the confessors of every good and noble cause would have
left unfulfilled their heroic task of witnessing to the truth by their
death; but if indeed base alloy did mingle with their great and
conscientious sacrifice, let us hope that the pangs of physical torture,
the anguish of injustice and ignominy, and the rending asunder of all
the ties of earthly affection, may have been some expiation for the
imperfection of their most perfect deed....

Will you, my dear, be so good as to remember what a hang-nail is like?
or a grain of dust in your eye? or a blister on your heel? or a corn on
your toe? and then reflect what the word "torture" implies, when it
meant all that the most devilish cruelty could invent. Savonarola! good
gracious me! I would have _canted_ and _re_canted, and called black
white, an