a Distinct
Place for herself in the Musical Art.--Great Enthusiasm in Germany
over her Singing.--The Richness of her Art Resources.--Sketches of the
Tenors, Nourrit and Duprez, and of the Great Barytone, Ronconi.--Mine.
Viardot and the Music of Meyerbeer.--Her Creation of the Part of _Fides_
in "Le Prophete," the Crowning Work of a Great Career.--Retirement from
the Stage.--High Position in Private Life.--Connection with the French
Conservatoire.

I.

The genius of the Garcia family flowered not less in Mme. Malibran's
younger sister than in her own brilliant and admired self. Pauline, the
second daughter of Manuel Garcia, was thirteen years the junior of her
sister, and born at Paris, July 18, 1821. The child had for sponsors at
baptism the celebrated Ferdinand Paer, the composer, and the Princess
Pauline Prascovie Galitzin, a distinguished Russian lady, noted for her
musical amateurship, and the full name given was Michelle Ferdinandie
Pauline. The little girl was only three years old when her sister Maria
made her _debut_ in London, and even then she lisped the airs she
heard sung by her sister and her father with something like musical
intelligence, and showed that the hereditary gift was deeply rooted in
her own organization.

Manuel Garcia's project for establishing Italian opera in America and
the disastrous crash in which it ended have already been described in
an earlier chapter. Maria, who had become Mme. Malibran, was left in New
York, while the rest of the Garcia family sailed for Mexico, to give
a series of operatic performances in that ancient city. The precocious
genius of Pauline developed rapidly. She learned in Mexico to play on
the organ and piano as if by instinct, with so much ease did she master
the difficulties of these instruments, and it was her father's
proud boast that never, except in the cases of a few of the greatest
composers, had aptitude for the musical art been so convincingly
displayed at her early years. At the age of six Pauline Garcia could
speak four languages, French, Spanish, Italian, and English, with
facility, and to these she afterward added German. Her passion for
acquirement was ardent and never lost its force, for she was not only
an indefatigable student in music, but extended her researches and
attainments in directions alien to the ordinary tastes of even
brilliant women. It is said that before she had reached the age of
eight-and-twenty, she had learned to read La