During a short Dublin engagement the same year the following incident occurred, showing how passionate were her sensibilities in real life as well as on the stage:  One day, while walking with some friends, a ragged child about three years of age approached and asked charity for her blind mother in such artless and touching accents that the prima donna burst into tears and put into the child’s hands all the money she had.  Her friends began extolling her charity and the goodness of her heart.  “I will not accept your compliments,” said she, wiping the tears from her eyes.  “This child demanded charity in a sublime manner.  I have seen, at one glance, all the miseries of the mother, the wretchedness of their home, the want of clothing, the cold which they suffer.  I should indeed be a great actress if at any time I could find a gesture expressing profound misery with such truth.”

Pasta’s next remarkable impersonation was that of Armando in “Il Crociato in Egitto,” written by Meyerbeer for Signor Velluti, the last of the race of male sopranos.  She had already performed it in Paris, and been overwhelmed with abuse by Velluti’s partisans, who were enraged to see their favorite’s strong part taken from him by one so much superior in genius, however inferior in mere executive vocalism.  Velluti had disfigured his performance by introducing a perfect cascade of roulades and fiorituri, but Pasta’s delivery of the music, while inspired by her great tragic sensibility, was marked by such breadth and fidelity that many thought they heard the music for the first time.  A ludicrous story is told of the first performance in London.  Pasta had flown to her dressing-room at the end of one of the scenes to change her costume, but the audience demanding a repetition of the trio with Mme. Caradori and Mile.  Brambilla, Pasta was obliged to appear, amid shouts of laughter, half Crusader, half Mameluke.

On the occasion of her benefit the same season, the opera being “Otello,” Mme. Pasta essayed the daring experiment of singing and playing the role of the Moor, Mile.  Sontag singing Desdemona.  Though the transposition of the music from a tenor to a mezzo-soprano voice injured the effect of the concerted pieces, the passionate acting redeemed the innovation.  In the last act, where she, as Otello, seized Desdemona and dragged her by the hair to the bed that she might stab her, the effect was one of such tragic horror that many left the theatre.  She thus united the most cultivated vocal excellence with dramatic genius of unequaled power.  “Mme. Pasta,” said a clever writer, “is in fact the founder of a new school, and after her the possession of vocal talent alone is insufficient to secure high favor, or to excite the same degree of interest for any length of time.  Even in Italy, where the mixture of dramatic with musical science was long neglected, and not appreciated for want of persons equally gifted