end Gounod's concerts of sacred music
"used to look upon them as a sort of religious orgy."

The details of Gounod's picturesque affairs have been denied us. And
the translator of his "Memoires" regrets that he not only kept silence
on these points, but seems to have destroyed all the documents. His
"Memoires" are disappointing in every way. Even his references to his
marriage are about as thrilling as a page from a blue book. His account
of his love and his wedding are on this ground really worth quoting, as
a curiosity of literature, it being observed how little he has to say
of romance, how much of his relatives-in-law.

"_Ulysse_ was produced the 18th of June, 1852. I had just married a few
days before, a daughter of Zimmerman the celebrated professor of the
piano at the Conservatory, and to whom is due the fine school from
which have come Prudent, Marmontel, Goria, Lefebure-Wely, Ravina,
Bizet, and many others. I became by this alliance the brother-in-law of
the young painter Edouard Dubufe, who was already most ably carrying
his father's name, the heritage and reputation which his own son
Guilliaume Dubufe, promises brilliantly to maintain."

Even to his friend, Lefuel he wrote:

"I am going to be married the next month to Mlle. Anna Zimmerman. We
are all perfectly satisfied with this union which seems to offer the
most reliable assurances of lasting happiness. The family is excellent
and I have the good luck to be loved by all its members."

He mentions briefly in later pages that his father-in-law died a year
after his marriage, and that two years later he lost his sister-in-law,
to whom he gives several lines of a cordial praise, which he singularly
denies his wife, though he states that a year after the marriage she
bore him a girl child, who died at birth, and that four years later she
bore him a son. On the afternoon of this day he was to conduct a very
important concert; when he returned, he found himself a father. He is
here generous enough to say: "On the morning of the day when my son was
born, my brave wife had the force to conceal from me her sufferings."

When the Franco-Prussian war broke out, Gounod took refuge in London,
and there wrote his "Gallia." The soprano role was taken by a certain
Georgina Thomas, who had married Captain Weldon of the 18th Hussars. When
she met Gounod, she was some thirty-three years old, having been born in
1837. She took up professional singing for the sake of chari