like Billington, captivate her hearers by a birdlike softness and brilliancy; she simply astonished.  “She was a florid singer, and nothing but a florid singer, whether grave or airy, in the church, orchestra, or upon the stage.”  With a prodigious volume and richness of tone, and a marvelous rapidity of vocalization, she could execute brilliantly the most florid notation, leaving her audience in breathless amazement; but her intonation was very uncertain.  However, this did not trouble her much.

In the season of 1798 she sang at Leghorn with Crivelli, Marchesi, and Mrs. Billington, and thence she made a triumphal tour through Italy.  From the first she had met with an unequaled success.  Her full, powerful, clear tones, her delivery so pure and true, her instinctive execution of the most difficult music, carried all before her.  Without much art or method, that superb voice, capable by nature of all the things which the most of even gifted singers are obliged to learn by hard work and long experience, was sufficient for the most daring feats.  The Prince Regent of Portugal, attracted by her fame, engaged her, with Crescentini and Mme. Gafforini, for the Italian opera at Lisbon, where she arrived in the year 1804.

The romance of Catalani’s life connects itself, not with those escapades which furnish the most piquant tidbits for the gossip-monger, but with her marriage, which occurred at Lisbon.  Throughout her long career no breath of scandal touched the character of this extraordinary artist.  Her private and domestic life was as exemplary as her public career was dazzling.  One night, as Angelica was singing on the stage, her eyes met those of a handsome man in full French uniform, and especially distinguished by the diamond aigrette in his cap, who sat in full sight in one of the boxes.  When she went off the stage she found the military stranger in the greenroom, waiting for an introduction.  This was M. de Vallebregue, captain in the Eighth Hussars and attache of the French embassy, who in after years received his highest recognition of distinction as the husband of the chief of living singers.  They were both in the full flush of youth and beauty, and they fell passionately in love with each other at first sight.  When the lover asked Signor Catalani’s consent, the latter frowned on the scheme, for the golden harvest was too rich to be yielded up lightly for the asking.  He coldly refused, and bade the suitor think of his love as hopeless, though he found no objection to M. Vallebregue personally.  Poor Angelica was thoroughly wretched, and day after day pined for her young soldier-lover, who had been forbidden the house by the father.  For several days she was in such dejection that she could not sing, and the romance became the talk of Lisbon.  One day an anonymous letter was received by Papa Catalani charging M. Vallebregue with being a proscribed man, who had committed some mysterious crime vaguely hinted at.  Armed with