While Lassus was in this sad condition he grew petulant over his imagined ill-treatment at the hands of the new duke, and wrote a letter bitterly complaining that he had not carried out his father’s promises.  In fact, Orland in his condition of semi-insanity threatened to resign, and when the insulted Duke Maximilian showed signs of accepting the resignation, it was the wife that saved the family from disgrace and poverty.  Regina made a fervent appeal (quoted in Mathieu’s poem on Lassus) that “his Altesse Serenissime be pleased not to heap on the poor family of Orland the wrongs that the unhappy father may have deserved through his fantaisies bizarres, the result of too much thought for his art and too incessant zeal; but that the duke deign to continue his former treatment; for to put him out of the service of the court chapel would be to kill him.”

He was left undisturbed in his post, but, before long, death forced the acceptance of his resignation.  Over his grave was placed a tomb on which besides the effigy of himself, are shown also his devoted wife and some of their children.

Regina two years later founded a perpetual annual funeral service for him.  By a later intercession, she secured for her son, Ferdinand, the succession to his father’s dignities at the court of Bavaria.  She died June 5, 1600, and on her tomb she is named, “la noble et vertueuse dame Regina de Lassin, veuve de feu Orland de Lassus.”  She had been a good wife to a good husband.  The sadness of her latter years with her beloved and demented husband reminds one of the pathetic fate of Robert Schumann and his wife.

CHAPTER V.

HENRY AND FRANCES PURCELL

If Lassus deserved the name of the Netherlandish Orpheus, Henry Purcell deserved the name his “loveing wife Frances Purcell” gave him when she published after his death a collection of his songs under the name of “Orpheus Britannicus.”  The analogy holds good also in the devotion of these married couples, for Henry willed to Frances the whole of his property absolutely.

Yet the legend of the cause of his death would verify the old theory about the joltiness of the course of true love.  For Sir John Hawkins passes along the gossip that Purcell met his death by “a cold which he caught in the night waiting for admittance into his own house.  It is said that he used to keep late hours, and that his wife had given orders to his servants not to let him in after midnight; unfortunately he came home heated with wine from the tavern at an hour later than that prescribed him, and, through the inclemency of the weather, contracted a disorder of which he died.  If this be true, it reflects but little honour on Madam Purcell, for so she is styled in the advertisements of his works; and but ill agrees with those expressions of grief for her dear lamented husband which she makes use of to Lady Elizabeth Howard in the dedication of the “Orpheus