ptible lovers of the divine art. On one occasion when she was
suffering from a severe accident, she appeared with her arm in a sling
rather then disappoint her audience. During all her Italian seasons,
especially in Naples, where perfection of climate and delightful scenery
combine to stimulate the animal spirits, she pursued the same wild
and reckless course which had so often threatened to cut off her frail
tenure of life. A daring horsewoman and swimmer, she alternated these
exercises with fatiguing studies and incessant social pleasures. She
practiced music five or six hours a day, spent several hours in violent
exercise, and in the evenings not engaged at the theatre would go
to parties, where she amused herself and her friends in a thousand
different ways--making caricatures, doggerel verses, riddles,
conundrums, _bouts-rimes_, dancing, jesting, laughing, and singing. Full
of exhaustless vivacity, she seemed more and more to disdain rest as her
physical powers grew weaker. The enthusiasm with which she was received
and followed everywhere was in itself a dangerous draught on her nervous
energies, which should have been husbanded, not lavishly wasted. One
night at Milan she was deluged with bouquets of which the leaves were of
gold and silver, and recalled by the frantic acclamations of her hearers
twenty times, at the close of which she fainted on the stage. It was
during this engagement at Milan that she heard of the death of the young
composer, Vincentio Bellini, on September 23, 1835, and she set on
foot a subscription for a tribute to his memory, leading the list with
four-hundred francs. It was a premonition of her own departure from the
world of art which she had so splendidly adorned, for exactly a year
from that day she breathed her last sigh.

Her arrival in Venice during this last triumphant tour of her life
was the occasion for an ovation not less flattering than those she had
received elsewhere. As her gondola entered the Grand Canal, she was
welcomed with a deafening _fanfare_ of trumpets, the crash of musical
bands, and the shouts of a vast multitude. It was as if some great
general had just returned from victories in the field, which had saved a
state. Mali-bran was frightened at this enthusiasm, and took refuge in a
church, which speedily became choke-full of people, and a passage had
to be opened for her exit to her hotel. Whenever she appeared, the
multitude so embarrassed her that a way had to be