Signor Fanciullo excelled above all in silent 
parts, or those of few words, which are often 
the principal parts in those fairy dramas whose 
object is to represent symbolically the mystery 
of life. He came upon the scenes lightly and 
perfectly at his ease; a fact which tended to 
confirm in the mind of the public the idea of 
grace and pardon. 
When one says of a comedian, “There is a 
good comedian,” one employs a formula which 
implies that beneath the person represented 
the comedian may still be found; that is to say, 
there is art, effort, will. Now, if a comedian 
succeeded in being, relatively to the character 
which it is his duty to express, that which the 
best statues of antiquity (miraculously ani-
mated, living, walking, seeing, as they are,) 
are relatively to our general confused idea of 
beauty; that would doubtless be a singular and 
altogether unexpected case. 
Fanciullo was that evening a perfect ideali-
zation, which it was impossible not to suppose 
living, possible, real. The buffoon went and 
came, laughed and wept, gesticulated, with an 
indestructible aureole about his head, an aure-
ole invisible for all except for myself, where 
mingled in a strange amalgam the rays of art 
with the halo of the martyr. Fanciullo, by I 
know not what particular grace, introduced the