Madame Floriani had many friends and they were indulgent to her. Whole families, occupying the pit in various Italian towns showered her with ovations. They loved her; and if it is not impossible that her fame as an author was due to the benevolence of the public, it is at least certain that her character merited such indulgence and affection.

There was never a person more disinterested, more sincere, more modest and more liberal. It was either at Verona or Pavia that she managed a theatre and established a company of actors. She won the esteem of all those with whom she had dealings, was adored by those who needed her assistance and the public rewarded her for all she did. She was moderately successful financially and as soon, as she felt that she had an assured competency, she left the theatre, although at the very height of her talent and charms. For a few years she lived in Milan amid the society of artists and literary people. Her home was pleasant and her conduct so honourable and dignified (which does not mean that it was conventional) that ladies of society sought her company with sympathy and even a certain feeling of deference.

But suddenly she abandoned that world and the town itself, and withdrew to the lakeside at Iseo, which is where we meet her now.

Behind the motives which drove her in these opposite directions, towards this blooming of her dramatic and literary art and towards this sudden disgust of life and noise; towards this activity of theatre administration and towards the idleness of a rustic life – behind these contradictions there lay, without the slightest doubt, an uninterrupted succession of love affairs. I shall not tell you of them now, it would be too long and without direct interest. Nor shall I waste any time in making you grasp the nuances of a character as clear and easy to understand as Prince Karol’s was elusive and indefinable. As you hear it, you will appreciate this uncomplicated nature, as limpid in its faults as in its qualities. It is certain that I shall hide nothing from you in connection with Madame Floriani through prudishness or fear of displeasing you. What she had been in the past, what she was now, of this she would speak to anyone who asked her in a spirit of sympathy. But if people questioned her out of sheer curiosity and with hidden irony, to avenge herself for this patronising impertinence, she took great pleasure in shocking them by her outspokenness.

We cannot define this better than she herself did one day, when, speaking in good French, she said to an old marquis:

“You are in somewhat of a dilemma,” she said to him, “to know what word, accepted in your language, would describe a woman like me. Would you say that I am a courtesan? I don’t think so, since I have always given to my lovers and have never received anything, even from my friends. I owe my comfortable means solely to my work, and vanity has no more dazzled me than greed has led me astray. I have only had lovers who were not only poor, but even obscure.

“Would you say that I am a wanton? My heart, not my senses have ruled me, and I cannot even begin to understand pleasure without rapturous affection.

“Finally, am I a low, immoral woman? We must know what you mean by that. I have never sought scandal Maybe I have caused it without wishing to, and without knowing. I have never loved two men at the same time. I have never in fact and in intention belonged to more than one man during a given time, depending on the duration of my love. When I no longer loved him I did not deceive him. I broke with him absolutely. True, at the height of passion I had sworn to love him for ever; when I did swear it, it was in perfect good faith. Each time I have loved, it was with so much of my heart that I thought it was for the first and last time in my life.

“Yet you will not say that I am a decent woman; whereas I am certain that I am. I even assert before God that I am a virtuous woman, but I know that according to your ideas and public opinion what I have just said is blasphemy. I don’t care. I offer my life to the judgement of the world without rebellion against such judgement, without acknowledging that it is right as far as I am concerned.

“Do you find that I am indulgent to myself and that I suffer from an excess of pride? I agree. I do possess great pride, but I have no vanity and one can say all possible ill of me without offending or distressing me in the slightest. I have never fought against my passions. If I have acted well or badly I have been punished and rewarded by those passions themselves.