Especially our former acquaintance, Miss Ginevra Fanshawe,--who had been selected to take a prominent part in the play--used, in bestowing upon me a large portion of her leisure, to lard her discourse with frequent allusions to his sayings and doings.
She esteemed him hideously plain, and used to profess herself frightened almost into hysterics at the sound of his step or voice.

A dark little man he certainly was; pungent and austere.

Even to me he seemed a harsh apparition, with his close-shorn, black head, his broad, sallow brow, his thin cheek, his wide and quivering nostril, his thorough glance, and hurried bearing.

Irritable he was; one heard that, as he apostrophized with vehemence the awkward squad under his orders.
Sometimes he would break out on these raw amateur actresses with a passion of impatience at their falseness of conception, their coldness of emotion, their feebleness of delivery.

"Ecoutez!" he would cry; and then his voice rang through the premises like a trumpet; and when, mimicking it, came the small pipe of a Ginevra, a Mathilde, or a Blanche, one understood why a hollow groan of scorn, or a fierce hiss of rage, rewarded the tame echo.
"Vous n'etes donc que des poupees," I heard him thunder.