Читать книгу "O Thou, My Austria!" - Ossip Schubin - Страница 16

I had a long letter to-day from Miss O'Donnel in Italy, full of most interesting things. One of the two nieces whom she is visiting is being trained as an opera-singer. She seems to have a brilliant career before her. In Italy they call her "la Patti blonde," and her singing-teacher, to whom she pays thirty-five francs a lesson, declares that she will certainly make at least a hundred thousand francs a year as a prima donna. What an enviable creature! I, too, have an admirable voice. Ah, if Uncle Paul would only let me be trained! But his opinions are so old-fashioned!

And everything that Miss O'Donnel tells me about the mode of life of the Misses Lyall interests me. They live with their mother in Italy, and receive every evening, principally gentlemen, which, it seems, is the Italian custom. The elder Miss Lyall is as good as engaged to a distinguished Milanese who lost his hair in the war of '59; while the younger, the blonde Patti, will not hear of marriage, but contents herself with turning the head of every man who comes near her.

Ah! I have arrived at the conviction that there can be no finer existence than that of a young girl in training for a prima donna, who amuses herself in the mean time by turning the head of every man who comes near her.----

("Goose!" exclaimed the major at this point.)

----To-day I proposed to Uncle Paul that he should take me to Italy for the winter, to have me educated as a singer. There was a great row. Never before, since I have known him, has he spoken so angrily to me.----

("I should think not!" growled the major at this point.)

----The worst was that he blamed Miss O'Donnel for putting such "stuff" (thus he designated my love for art) into my head, and threatened to forbid her to correspond with me. Ah, I wept for the entire afternoon amid the ruins of my shattered hopes. I am very unhappy. After a long interruption, the idea has occurred to me to-day of continuing my memoirs.