schutz." The experiment vindicated Meyerbeer's judgment, and
Jenny Lind could then and there have signed a contract with the manager,
whom Meyerbeer had taken care to have present, had it not been for the
spiteful opposition of a distinguished prima donna, who had an undue
influence over the managerial mind.

The young singer returned to Stockholm a new being, assured of her
powers, self-centered in her ambition, and with a right to expect a
successful career for herself. Her preparation had been accompanied with
much travail of spirit, disappointment, and suffering, but the harvest
was now ripening for the reaper. The people of Stockholm, though they
had let her depart with indifference, received her back right cordially,
and, when she made her first reappearance as _Alice_, in "Robert le
Diable," the welcome had all the fury of a great popular excitement. Her
voice had gained remarkable flexibility and power, the quality of it
was of a bell-like richness, purity, and clearness; her execution
was admirable, and her dramatic power excellent. The good people of
Stockholm discovered that they had been entertaining an angel unawares.
Though Jenny Lind was but little known out of Sweden, she soon received
an offer from the Copenhagen opera, but she dreaded to accept the offer
of the Danish manager. "I have never made my appearance out of Sweden,"
she observed; "everybody in mv native land is so affectionate and kind
to me, and if I made my appearance in Copenhagen and should be hissed!
I dare not venture on it!" However, the temptations held out to her, and
the entreaties of Burnonville, the ballet-master of Copenhagen, who had
married a Swedish friend of Jenny Lind's, at last prevailed over the
nervous apprehensions of the young singer, and Jenny made her first
appearance in Copenhagen as _Alice_, in "Robert le Diable." "It was
like a new revelation in the realms of art," says Andersen ("Story of my
Life"); "the youthful, fresh voice forced itself into every heart;
here reigned truth and nature, and everything was full of meaning and
intelligence. At one concert she sang her Swedish songs. There was
something so peculiar in this, so bewitching, people thought nothing
about the concert-room; the popular melodies uttered by a being so
purely feminine, and bearing the universal stamp of genius, exercised
the omnipotent sway--the whole of Copenhagen was in a rapture." Jenny
Lind was the first singer to whom the Danish students