... Should anything happen now!!
Oh, I will not trust myself with such a fancy: it will either kill me
or drive me distracted."

"_Bath, 2nd July_, 1784.--The happiest day of my whole life, I
think--Yes, quite the happiest: my Piozzi came home yesterday and
dined with me; but my spirits were too much agitated, my heart was
too much dilated. I was too _painfully_ happy _then_; my sensations
are more quiet to-day, and my felicity less tumultuous."

Written in the margin of the last entry--"We shall go to London about
the affairs, and there be married in the Romish Church."

"_25th July_, 1784.--I am returned from church the happy wife of my
lovely faithful Piozzi ... subject of my prayers, object of my
wishes, my sighs, my reverence, my esteem.--His nerves have been
horribly shaken, yet he lives, he loves me, and will be mine for
ever. He has sworn, in the face of God and the whole Christian
Church; Catholics, Protestants, all are witnesses."

In one of her memorandum books she has set down:

"We were married according to the Romish Church in one of our
excursions to London, by Mr. Smith, Padre Smit as they called him,
chaplain to the Spanish Ambassador.... Mr. Morgan tacked us together
at St. James's, Bath, 25th July, 1784, and on the first day I think
of September, certainly the first week, we took leave of England."

When her first engagement with Piozzi became known, the newspapers
took up the subject, and rang the changes on the amorous disposition
of the widow, and the adroit cupidity of the fortune-hunter. On the
announcement of the marriage, they recommenced the attack, and people
of our day can hardly form a notion of the storm of obloquy that
broke upon her, except from its traces, which have never been erased.
To this hour, we may see them in the confirmed prejudices of writers
like Mr. Croker and Lord Macaulay, who, agreeing in little else,
agree in denouncing "this miserable _mes_alliance" with one who
figures in their pages sometimes as a music-master, sometimes as a
fiddler, never by any accident in his real character of a
professional singer and musician of established reputation, pleasing
manners, ample means, and unimpeachable integrity. The repugnance of
the daughters to the match was reasonable and intelligible, but to
appreciate the tone taken by her friends, we must bear in mind the
social position of Italian singers and musical performers at the
period. "Amusing vagabonds" are the epithets by