artist, but that is not sufficient.  You must forget yourself and represent Gualtiero.  Let’s try again.”  The tenor, stung by the admonition, then gave the part magnificently.  After the success of “I Puritani,” the composer received the Cross of the Legion of Honor, an honor then not often bestowed.  The “Puritani” season is still remembered, it is said, with peculiar pleasure by the older connoisseurs of Paris and London, as the enthusiasm awakened in musical circles has rarely been equaled.

Bellini had placed himself under contract to write two new works immediately, one for Paris, the other for Naples, and retired to the villa of a friend at Puteaux to insure the more complete seclusion.  Here, while pursuing his art with almost sleepless ardor, he was attacked by his fatal malady, intestinal fever.

“From his youth up,” says his biographer Mould, “Vincenzo’s eagerness in his art was such as to keep him at the piano night and day, till he was obliged forcibly to leave it.  The ruling passion accompanied him through his short life, and by the assiduity with which he pursued it brought on the dysentery which closed his brilliant career, peopling his last hours with the figures of those to whom his works owed so much of their success.”

During the moments of delirium which preceded his death, he was constantly speaking of Lablache, Tamburini, and Grisi; and one of his last recognizable impressions was that he was present at a brilliant representation of his last opera at the Salle Favart.  His earthly career closed September 23, 1835, at the age of thirty-one.

On the eve of his interment, the Theatre Italien reopened with the “Puritani.”  It was an occasion full of solemn gloom.  Both the musicians and audience broke from time to time into sobs.  Tamburini, in particular, was so oppressed by the death of his young friend that his vocalization, generally so perfect, was often at fault, while the faces of Grisi, Rubini, and Lablache too plainly showed their aching hearts.

Rossini, Cherubini, Paer, and Carafa had charge of the funeral, and M. Habeneck, chef d’orchestre of the Academie Royale, of the music.  The next remarkable piece on the funeral programme was a Lacrymosa for four voices without accompaniment, in which the text of the Latin hymn was united to the beautiful tenor melody in the third act of the “Puritani.”  This was executed by Rubini, Ivanoff, Tamburini, and Lablache.  The services were performed at the Church of the Invalides, and the remains were interred in Pere Lachaise.

Rossini had ever shown great love for Bellini, and Rosario Bellini, the stricken father, wrote to him a touching letter, in which, after speaking of his grief and despair, the old man said: