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; bu