An amusing instance of her eccentric and impulsive resolution was her hasty tour with La-blache to Italy which occurred a few months afterward.  The great basso, passing through Brussels en route to Naples, called at her villa to pay his respects.  Malibran declared her intention, in spite of his laughing incredulity, of going with him.  Though he was to leave at dawn the next morning, she was waiting at the door of his hotel when he came down the stairs.  As she had no passport, she was detained on the Lombardy frontier till Lablache obtained the needed document.  At Milan she only sang in private concerts, and pressed on to Rome, where she engaged for a short season at the Teatro Valle, and succeeded in offending the amour propre of the Romans by singing French romances of her own composition in the lesson-scene of “Il Barbiere.”  She learned of the death of her father while in Rome, news which plunged her in the deepest despondency, for the memory of his sternness and cruelty had long been effaced by her appreciation of the inestimable value his training had been to her.  She had often remarked to her friend, Mme. Merlin, that without just such a severe system her voice would never have attained its possibilities.

From Rome she went to Naples to fulfill a scrittura with Barbaja, the celebrated impressario of that city, to give twelve performances at one thousand francs a night.  An immense audience greeted her on the opening night at the Fondo Theatre, August 6, 1832, at first with a cold and critical indifference—­a feeling, however, which quickly flamed into all the unrestrained volcanic ardor of the Neapolitan temperament.  Thenceforward she sang at double prices, “notwithstanding the subscribers’ privileges were on most of these occasions suspended, and although ‘Otello,’ ‘La Gazza Ladra,’ and operas of that description were the only ones offered to a public long since tired even of the beauties of Rossini, and proverbial for their love of novelty.”

Her great triumph, however, was on the night when she took her leave, in the character of Ninetta.  “Nothing can be imagined finer than the spectacle afforded by the immense Theatre of San Carlo, crowded to the very ceiling, and ringing with acclamations,” says a correspondent of one of the English papers at the time.  “Six times after the fall of the curtain Mme. Mali-bran was called forward to receive the reiterated plaudits and adieux of the assembled multitude, and indicate by graceful and expressive gestures the degree to which she was overpowered by fatigue and emotion.  The scene did not end within the walls of the theatre; for a crowd of the most enthusiastic rushed from all parts of the house to the stage-door, and, as soon as her sedan came out, escorted it with loud acclamations to the Palazzo Barbaja, and renewed their salutations as the charming vocalist ascended the steps.”