grand fourth act, with the exception of one cavatina, was composed in three hours.  Donizetti had been dining at the house of a friend, who was engaged in the evening to go to a ball.  On leaving the house, his host, with profuse apologies, begged the composer to stay and finish his coffee, of which Donizetti was inordinately fond.  The latter sent out for music paper, and, finding himself in the vein for composition, went on writing till the completion of the work.  He had just put the final stroke to the celebrated “Viens dans un autre patrie” when his friend returned at one in the morning to congratulate him on his excellent method of passing the time, and to hear the music sung for the first time from Donizetti’s own lips.

After visiting Rome, Milan, and Vienna, for which last city he wrote “Linda di Chamouni,” our composer returned to Paris, and in 1843 wrote “Don Pasquale” for the Theatre Italien, and “Don Sebastian” for the Academie.  Its lugubrious drama was fatal to the latter, but the brilliant gayety of “Don Pasquale,” rendered specially delightful by such a magnificent cast as Grisi, Mario, Tamburini, and Lablache, made it one of the great art attractions of Paris, and a Fortunatus purse for the manager.  The music of this work perhaps is the best ever written by Donizetti, though it lacks the freshness and sentiment of his “Elisir d’Amore,” which is steeped in rustic poetry and tenderness like a rose wet with dew.  The production of “Maria di Rohan” in Vienna the same year, an opera with some powerful dramatic effects and bold music, gave Ronconi the opportunity to prove himself not merely a fine buffo singer, but a noble tragic actor.  In this work Donizetti displays that rugged earnestness and vigor so characteristic of Verdi; and, had his life been greatly prolonged, we might have seen him ripen into a passion and power at odds with the elegant frivolity which for the most part tainted his musical quality.  Donizetti’s last opera, “Catarina Comaro” the sixty-third one represented, was brought out at Naples in the year 1844 without adding aught to his reputation.  Of this composer’s long list of works only ten or eleven retain any hold on the stage, his best serious operas being “La Favorita,” “Linda,” “Anna Bolena,” “Lucrezia Borgia,” and “Lucia;” the finest comic works, “L’Elisir d’Amore,” “La Fille du Regiment,” and “Don Pasquale.”

In composing Donizetti never used the pianoforte, writing with great rapidity and never making corrections.  Yet curious to say, he could not do anything without a small ivory scraper by his side, though never using it.  It was given him by his father when commencing his career, with the injunction that, as he was determined to become a musician, he should make up his mind to write as little rubbish as possible, advice which Donizetti sometimes forgot.