De Beriot returned to Paris, where Sontag and Malibran were engaged in ardent artistic rivalry, about equally dividing the suffrages of the French public.  Mlle. Sontag was a beautiful, fair-haired, blue-eyed woman, in the very flush of her youth, with an expression of exquisite sweetness and mildness.  De Beriot became madly enamored of her at once, and pressed his suit with vehemence, but without success.  Henrietta Sontag was already the betrothed of Count Rossi, whom she soon afterward married, though the engagement was then a secret.  The lady’s firm refusal of the young Belgian artist’s overtures filled him with a deep melancholy, which he showed so unmistakably that he became an object of solicitude to all his friends.  Among those was Mme. Malibran, whose warm sympathies went out to an artist whose talents she admired.  Malibran, living apart from her husband, was obliged to be careful in her conduct, to avoid giving food for the scandal of a censorious world, but this did not prevent her from exhibiting the utmost pity and kindness in her demeanor toward De Beriot.  The violinist was soothed by this gentle and delightful companion, and it was not long before a fresh affection, even stronger than the other, sprang up in his susceptible nature for the woman whose ardent Spanish frankness found it difficult to conceal the fact that she cherished sentiments different from mere friendship.

The splendid career of Mme. Malibran shines almost without a rival in the records of the lyric stage, and her influence on De Beriot, first her lover and afterward her husband, was most marked.  Maria Garcia, afterward Mme. Malibran, was one of a family of very eminent musicians.  She was trained by her father, Manuel Garcia, who, in addition to being a tenor singer of world-wide reputation, was a composer of some repute, and the greatest teacher of his time.  Her sister, Pauline Garcia, in after years became one of the greatest dramatic singers who ever lived, and her brother Manuel also attained considerable eminence as singer, song-composer, and teacher.  The whole family were richly dowered with musical gifts, and Maria was probably one of the most versatile and accomplished musical artists of any age.  At the age of thirteen she was a professed musician, and at fifteen, when she came with her parents to London, she obtained a complete triumph by accidentally performing in Rossini’s “Il Barbiere,” to supply the place of a prima donna who was unable to appear.

We can not tarry here to enter into the details of her interesting life.  Her father having taken her to America, where she fulfilled a number of engagements with an increasing success, she finally espoused there a rich merchant named Malibran, much older than herself.  It was a most ill-advised marriage, and, to make matters worse, the merchant failed very soon afterward.  Some go so far as to say that he foresaw this catastrophe before he contracted his marriage, in the hope of regaining