"In this government, where I felt overcome and chilled, I saw that I would not make the progress I dreamed of."
"What do you wish to do? We have never heard anything that approached you, and I do not think there is a more perfect singer in the world. I tell you what I think, and this is not a compliment _à la Frederick._"
"Even if your highness be not mistaken, a matter of which I am ignorant," said Consuelo, with a smile, ("for except La Romanina and La Tesi, I have heard no other singer than myself,) I think there is always something to be attempted, and something more than has been done to be accomplished. Well, this ideal, which I have borne in myself, I might have been able to approach in a life of action, strife, and bold enterprise, of mutual sympathy, and in a word, of enthusiasm. The chilly regularity which reigns here, the military discipline, which extends even to the theatre, the calm and constant benevolence of a public, which minds its own business while it listens to us, the high protection of the king, which guarantees to us successes decreed in advance, the absence of rivalry and novelty in the artists themselves, and in the performances--above all, the idea of indefinite captivity, this every day and icy labor-life, sadly glorious yet compulsory, which we lead in Prussia, has deprived me even of the desire of perfecting myself. There are days when I feel myself so utterly without energy, and so void of that touchy self-love which aids the artist's conscience, that I would pay for the excitement of a hiss. Alas! let me be deficient at my entry, or fail towards the end of the performance, I always receive the same applause. Applause, when I do not deserve it, gives me no pleasure, and it afflicts me sometimes when I really do deserve it, because they are officially measured out and ordered, and I feel that I deserve voluntary praise. All this may seem puerile to you, noble Amelia; but you ask to know the profundity of an actor's life, and I conceal nothing from you."
"You explain all this so naturally, that I feel as if I had experienced it myself. To do you good I would hiss you when you do not sing well, and throw you a crown of roses when you are thereby aroused."