this, her father sought to reason Angelica out of her passion; but she clung to her lover with more eagerness, and was rewarded, to her great joy, by learning that the crime was only having fought a duel with and severely wounded his superior officer—­an offense against discipline, which had been punished by temporary relief from military duty and a pleasant exile to Lisbon.  The young beauty wept, sighed, pouted, and could be persuaded to sing only with much difficulty.  All day long she said with deep mournfulness, “Ma che bel uffiziale” and pined with genuine heart-sickness.  At last Vallebregue smuggled a letter to his discouraged mistress, in which he said in ardent words that no one had a right to separate them, and urged her to lend all her energies to her professional work, so that, being a favorite at court, she might induce the Prince to intercede in the matter.  Angelica tried in vain to get an interview with the Prince, and found that he was at his country villa twenty miles away.  Her accustomed energy was equal to the difficult.  Calling a coach, she drove out to the royal villa.  Trembling with emotion and fatigue, she threw herself at the feet of the good-natured Prince, whom she found in the garden, and told her story as soon as her timidity could find words.  He could hardly resist the temptation to badinage which the lively Angelica had hitherto been so ready to meet with brilliant repartee, but the anxious girl could only weep and plead.  It was such a genuine love romance that the Prince’s heart was touched, and, after some argument and advice to return to her father, he yielded and gave his sanction to the match.  He accompanied the now radiant Angelica back to Lisbon, and in an hour’s time a ceremony in the court chapel made her Madame de Vallebregue, in presence of General Lannes, the French envoy, and himself.  Signor Catalani was enraged at the turn which things had taken, but he could only acquiesce in the inevitable, especially as his daughter and her husband settled on him a country estate in Italy and a comfortable annuity for life.

Mme. Catalani returned to Italy with a reputation which made her name the first in everybody’s mouth.  Yet at this time her appearance on the dramatic stage always occasioned a feeling of pain, her excessive timidity and nervousness made her action spasmodic, and deprived her of that easy dignity which must be united with passion and sentiment to produce a good artistic personation.  It was in concert that her grand voice at this period shone at its best.  Her intimate friends were wont to say that it was as disagreeable and agitating for her to sing in opera, as it was delightful in the concert-room; for here she poured forth her notes with such a genuine ecstasy in her own performance as that which seems to thrill the skylark or the nightingale.  Though the circumstances of her marriage were of such a romantic kind, and she seems to have been deeply attached to her husband through