Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/64

Rh could I describe this sensation without our expressive American (New-England?) use of this word realize?

We went once to the Italian opera, and sat in the pit. The intermixture of gayly-dressed ladies with men in the pit gives it a civilized and lively aspect; it is something like turning a forest into a flower-garden. The pit of the opera is filled with people of respectable condition, as you may suppose from the cost of any box large enough for five or six people being seven or eight guineas. We paid two dollars for a seat Mrs. —— was with us, expounding to us, and enjoying, as none but those who have the genius to the fingers' ends that makes the artist, can enjoy. The people who have the reputation of being the first singers in the world, sang: Grisi, the young Garcia, Perasiani, La Blache, Tamburini, and a very interesting young man, the son of an Italian marquis, whose nom-de-guerre is Mario. The little queen was in her box behind a curtain, as carefully hidden from her people as an Oriental monarch; not from any Oriental ideas of the sacredness of her person, but that she may cast off her royal dignity, and have the privilege of enjoying unobserved, as we humble people do. No chariness of her countenance could make her "like the robe pontifical, ne'er seen but wondered at." She is a plain little body enough, as we saw when she protruded her head to bow to the high people in the box next to her: the queen-dowager, the Princess Esterhazy, and so on. Ordinary is the word for her; you