t of their "qualities;" with Camiola it is impossible not to
suspect that her lover's rank must have had some share in the glamor he
throws over her. In some Italian version of the story that I have read,
Camiola is called the "merchant's daughter;" and contrasting her bearing
and demeanor with the easy courtesy and sweet, genial graciousness of
Portia, we feel that she must have been of lower birth and breeding than
the magnificent and charming Venetian. Portia is almost always in an
attitude of (unconscious) condescension in her relations with all around
her; Camiola, in one of self-assertion or self-defense. There is an
element of harshness, bordering upon coarseness, in the texture of her
character, which in spite of her fine qualities makes itself
unpleasantly felt, especially contrasted with that of Portia, to whom
the idea of encountering insolence or insult must have been as
_impossible_ as to the French duchess, who, warned that if she went into
the streets alone at night she would probably be insulted, replied with
ineffable security and simplicity, "Qui? moi!" One can imagine the
merchant's daughter _growing up_ to the possession of her great wealth,
through the narrowing and hardening influences of sordid circumstances
and habits of careful calculation and rigid economy, thrifty, prudent,
just, and eminently conscientious; of Portia one can only think as of a
creature born in the very lap of luxury and nursed in the midst of sunny
magnificence, whose very element was elegant opulence and refined
splendor, and by whose cradle Fortune herself stood godmother. She seems
like a perfect rose, blooming in a precious vase of gold and gems and
exquisite workmanship. Camiola's contemptuous rebuff of her insolent
courtier lover; her merciless ridicule of her fantastical, half-witted
suitor; her bitter and harsh rebuke of Adorni when he draws his sword
upon the man who had insulted her; above all, her hard and cold
insensibility to his unbounded devotion, and the cruelty of making him
the agent for the ransom of her lover from captivity (the selfishness of
her passion inducing her to employ him because she knows how absolutely
she may depend upon the unselfishness of his); and her final stern and
peremptory claim of Bertrand's promise, are all things that Portia could
never have done. Portia is the Lady of Belmont, and Camiola is the
merchant's daughter, a very noble and magnanimous woman. In the
munificent bestowal of t