Strange as it may appear to the fairer reader, this grotesque personage had yet formed those ties which ordinary mortals are apt to consider their especial monopoly,—­he was married, and had one child.  What is more strange yet, his wife was a daughter of quiet, sober, unfantastic England:  she was much younger than himself; she was fair and gentle, with a sweet English face; she had married him from choice, and (will you believe it?) she yet loved him.  How she came to marry him, or how this shy, unsocial, wayward creature ever ventured to propose, I can only explain by asking you to look round and explain first to me how half the husbands and half the wives you meet ever found a mate!  Yet, on reflection, this union was not so extraordinary after all.  The girl was a natural child of parents too noble ever to own and claim her.  She was brought into Italy to learn the art by which she was to live, for she had taste and voice; she was a dependant and harshly treated, and poor Pisani was her master, and his voice the only one she had heard from her cradle that seemed without one tone that could scorn or chide.  And so—­well, is the rest natural?  Natural or not, they married.  This young wife loved her husband; and young and gentle as she was, she might almost be said to be the protector of the two.  From how many disgraces with the despots of San Carlo and the Conservatorio had her unknown officious mediation saved him!  In how many ailments—­for his frame was weak—­had she nursed and tended him!  Often, in the dark nights, she would wait at the theatre with her lantern to light him and her steady arm to lean on; otherwise, in his abstract reveries, who knows but the musician would have walked after his “Siren” into the sea!  And then she would so patiently, perhaps (for in true love there is not always the finest taste) so delightedly, listen to those storms of eccentric and fitful melody, and steal him—­whispering praises all the way—­from the unwholesome night-watch to rest and sleep!

I said his music was a part of the man, and this gentle creature seemed a part of the music; it was, in fact, when she sat beside him that whatever was tender or fairy-like in his motley fantasia crept into the harmony as by stealth.  Doubtless her presence acted on the music, and shaped and softened it; but, he, who never examined how or what his inspiration, knew it not.  All that he knew was, that he loved and blessed her.  He fancied he told her so twenty times a day; but he never did, for he was not of many words, even to his wife.  His language was his music,—­as hers, her cares!  He was more communicative to his barbiton, as the learned Mersennus teaches us to call all the varieties of the great viol family.  Certainly barbiton sounds better than fiddle; and barbiton let it be.  He would talk to that by the hour together,—­praise it, scold it, coax it, nay (for such is man, even the most guileless), he had been known to swear at it;