One said that her voice was the most touching in Italy; another, that nobody played tragedy like her; somebody else, that she danced like a nymph, and designed with as much taste as invention: all said that nobody had ever written or improvised such fine verses, and that, in habitual conversation she possessed by turns, a grace and an eloquence which charmed every mind.

Disputes were entered into as to what city of Rome had given her birth; but the Romans maintained, warmly, that she must have been born in Rome to speak Italian in such purity as she did.

No one was acquainted with her family name.

Her first work had appeared five years before, and only bore the name of Corinne; nobody knew where she had lived, nor what she had been before that time: she was, however, nearly twenty-six years of age.

This mystery and publicity both at the same time, this woman of whom everybody spoke, but whose real name was known to nobody, appeared to Lord Nelville one of the wonders of the singular country he had just come to live in.