ty, and
Gounod and she became romantically attached. She helped him train his
choir, established an orphanage at her residence for poor children with
musical inclinations, and published songs by Gounod and others,
including herself, the proceeds going to the aid of her orphanage. At
this time she claimed to have acquired the ownership of certain works
of his. Gounod thought, he said, that he had found in her "an apostle
of his art and a fanatic for his works," but he also found that her
charity had an excellent business foundation, for, when their love
affair came to an end, she claimed her property in his compositions.

He refused to acknowledge her right, and when she clung to his
"Polyeucte," he rewrote it from memory. She sued him for damages, and
the English courts ordered him to pay to his former hostess $50,000.
But he evaded payment by staying in France. Mrs. Weldon was also a
composer, and she had edited in 1875 Gounod's autobiography and certain
of his essays with a preface by herself. The lawsuit as usual exposed
to public curiosity many things both would have preferred to keep
secret, and was a pitiful finish generally to what promised to be a
most congenial alliance. The love affair began like a novel and ended
like a cash-book.

DIVERS ITALIANS

As for the Italians, we know that Paesiello, who was a famous intriguer
against his musical rivals, was a devoted husband whose wife was an
invalid and who died soon after her death. Cherubini married
Mademoiselle Cecile Turette, when he was thirty-five, and the marriage
was not a success. He left a son and two daughters. Spontini, one of
whose best operas was based on the life of that much mis-married
enthusiast for divorce, John Milton, took to wife a member of the Erard
family. In the outer world Spontini was famous for his despotism, his
jealousy, his bad temper, and his excessive vanity. None of these
qualities as a rule add much to home comfort, and yet, it is said that
he lived happily with his wife. We may feel sure that some of the bad
light thrown on his character is due purely to the jealousy of rivals,
when we consider his domestic content, his ardent interest in the
welfare of Mozart's widow and children, and the great efforts he made
to secure subscriptions for the widow's biography of Mozart.

Furthermore, Spontini in his later years, when deafness saddened his
lot, deserted the halls of fame and the palaces of royalty, where he
had been promine