The great diva’s horizon (since Sontag’s retirement from the stage she had been acknowledged the leading singer of the age) was now destined to be clouded by a portentous event.  M. Malibran arrived in Paris.  He had heard of his wife’s brilliant success, and had come to assert his rights over her.  Maria declined to see him, and no persuasions of her friends could induce her to grant the soi-disant husband, for whose memory she had nothing but rooted aversion, even an interview.  Though she finally arrived at a compromise with him (for his sole interest in resuming relationship with his wife seemed to be the desire of sharing in the emoluments of her profession), she determined not to sing again in the French capital while M. Malibran remained there, and accordingly retired to a chateau near Brussels.  The whole musical world was interested in settling this imbroglio, and there was a final settlement, by the terms of which the singer was not to be troubled or interfered with by her husband as long as he was paid a fixed stipend.  She returned to Paris, and reappeared at the Italiens as Ninetta, the great Rubini being in the same cast.  The two singers vied with each other “till,” observed a French critic, “it seemed as if talent, feeling, and enthusiasm could go no further.”  This engagement, however, was cut short by her frequent and alarming illnesses, and Mme. Malibran, though reckless and short-sighted in regard to her own health, became seriously alarmed.  She suddenly departed from the city, leaving a letter for the director, Severini, avowing a determination not to return, at least till her health was fully reestablished.  This threatened the ruin of the administration, for Malibran was the all-powerful attraction.  M. Viardot, a friend who had her entire confidence (Mlle. Pauline Garcia afterward became Mme. Viardot), was sent to Brussels as ambassador, and he represented the ruin she would entail on the operatic season of the Italiens.  This plea appealed to her generosity, and she returned to fulfill her engagement.  Constant attacks of illness, however, continued to disturb her performances, and the Parisian public chose to attribute this interruption of their pleasures to the caprice of the diva.  She so resented this injustice that she determined, at the close of the engagement, that she would never again sing in Paris.  Her last appearance, on January 8,1832, was as Desdemona, and the fervency of her singing and acting made it a memorable night, as the rumor had crept out that Mme. Malibran was then taking a lasting leave of them as an artist, and the audience sought to repair their former injustice by redoubled expressions of enthusiasm and pleasure.