“Antonia was constantly tormented by the most fearful jealousy.  One day, she happened to be behind my chair when I was writing some lines in the album of a great pianist, and, when she read the few amiable words I had composed in honour of the artist, to whom the book belonged, she tore it from my hands, demolished it on the spot.  So fearful was her rage, she would have assassinated me.”

When he died, he left his son a fortune of $400,000.  Surely this sum alone proves the justice of the popular belief that he had sold himself to the devil, and, knowing it, none can doubt the story Liszt quotes in one of his essays concerning the G string of Paganini’s violin:  “It was the intestine of his wife, whom he had killed with his own hands.”  There is no record of the secret marriage, but there is record enough of the superhuman power of the melodies he drew from that string.

DE BERIOT, SONTAG, AND MALIBRAN

Among the chief contemporaries of Paganini was De Beriot.  When he was not quite thirty, he found himself in Paris at the time of the deadly vocal feud between Sontag and Malibran.  The rivalry of the two singers was ended by the influence of music.  One night, singing together the duet from “Semiramide,” each was so overcome at the beauty of the other’s voice and art, that they embraced and became friends.

De Beriot had an equally strange experience with the two women.  He fell madly in love with Sontag, slight, blue-eyed and blonde as she was, and then only twenty-five.  But De Beriot paid his court in vain, because at this time Sontag was engaged to the young diplomat, Count Rossi; as it would have hurt his influence to be engaged to the child of strolling players, the engagement was kept secret, until the count could persuade the King of Prussia to grant her a patent of nobility.  When they were married, she gave up the stage, and travelled from court to court with her husband, singing only for charity.  As her brother said:  “Rossi made my sister happy, in the best sense of the word.  To the day of their death they loved each other as on their wedding-day.”

But political troubles ruined the count’s fortunes, and it seemed necessary for the countess to return to the stage.  Now again the court wished to separate diplomacy from the drama played on the open stage.  Rossi was told that he might retain his ambassadorship if he would formally separate from his wife, at least until she could again leave the stage.  But Rossi believed that it was his turn to make a sacrifice, and could not bear a separation; so he resigned, and travelled with his wife.  They came to America, and in Mexico the cholera ended her beautiful life at the age of forty-nine.

It was into this ideal romance that De Beriot had wandered unwittingly in 1830.  It was fortunate that he could not prevail against the noble Count Rossi, even though his failure caused him pain.  It almost cost him his health, and he suffered so obviously that his friends were alarmed.  Among those endeavouring to console him was Madame Malibran, whom people, who like exclusive superlatives, have been pleased to select as the greatest singer in the history of music.  Like Sontag, she was the child of stage people, and, indeed, had made her first appearance at the age of five.