On Saturday I took Mme. Appony, the Johnstons, and Miss Vernon to the Italiens, and there we had Pisaroni, magnificent, wonderful, entraînante, electrifying Pisaroni. Hideous, distorted, deformed, dwarfish Pisaroni. She has an immense head, a remarkably ugly face. When she smiles or sings her mouth is drawn up to her ear, with a look of a person convulsed with pain. She has two legs that stand out like sugar-tongs, one shorter than the other. Her stomach sticks out on one side of her body, and she has a hump on the other, not where stomachs or humps usually are, but sideways, like paniers.

With all this, she had not sung ten minutes before a Paris audience was in ecstasies, forgot all its notions of tournure and grâce, and applauded beyond all hope. I cannot describe her singing, her recitation. Every word is felt, every sound is an expression. Zuchelli’s singing with her and after her made one feel, ‘What is he at? what is he mumbling? why don’t he sing? why don't he feel?’ I came home quite enchanted. Mme. Appony never can sleep after she has heard her. This is perfectly conceivable, though I had a vulgar comfortable night’s rest after it.