to sing at the theatre of the Prince Esterhazy.  She was the wife of Anton Polzelli, an insignificant and sickly violinist, with whom she was apparently not in love.  Luigia is pictured—­doubtless by guesswork—­as not beautiful, but of a pleasing appearance, showing the indications of her Italian birth in “her small slim face, her dark complexion, her black eyes, her chestnut-coloured hair; her body of medium height and elegant form.”

“To this woman,” says Schmidt, “Haydn fetched his own deep and lasting sorrow.  Polzelli was in the same position as he:  she lived unhappily with her spouse.  Whether she honestly returned Haydn’s love cannot be known.  Facts hint that she often abused and took advantage of his good nature.  But for all that she beautified his life, so often joyless, by the tenderness which she awoke in him; and the woman who throughout twenty years could do that, deserved well of the man whose friend she was; and she earns our consideration and sympathy besides.  From London the master wrote her the tenderest letters.  Both, as their correspondence shows, only postponed their union, till the day when ‘four eyes shall be closed,’

“Yet when finally both were free, Time had worked his almighty influence; Haydn had grown gray; outwardly as well as spiritually an estrangement had widened between them, and of their once so dear a desire there is no more word.  Yet Haydn never ceased to provide for his friend, as well as to care for the education and the success of her sons.  The elder, Pietro, Haydn’s favourite, on whom he hung with his whole heart, died early.” [Pohl quotes many allusions to him in Haydn’s letters.] “The younger, Anton, who was reported without proper foundation to be Haydn’s natural son, later became musical director of the prince’s chapel, but then gave up music and turned farmer, finally dying of the plague in sad circumstances.”

Pohl is somewhat fuller upon this alliance than Schmidt, who, in fact, merely condenses and paraphrases him.  He says that Polzelli’s maiden name was Moreschi [which, being interpreted, is “Moor,” a name once given to Haydn]; she was a mezzo-soprano, who played secondary roles in the operas.  She earned the same salary as her husband, 465 gulden a year.  The letters Haydn wrote her were always in Italian, and in one of them he wishes her better roles, and “a good master who will take the same interest as thy Haydn.”  Haydn had come to her for sympathy, since, as Pohl says and we have seen, “thanks to his wife he had hell at home” [die Holle im House].

When increasing fame took Haydn by the hand and led him away to royal triumphs in London, he did not take jealousy along with his other luggage.  He seems to have heard that his place was promptly filled in Polzelli’s heart, but with all his geniality, he could write of the rumoured rival as “this man, whose name I do not know, but who is to be so happy as to possess thee.”  Then there was a recrudescence of the old ardour: