been so ready to meet with brilliant repartee, but the anxious girl
could only weep and plead. It was such a genuine love romance that
the Prince's heart was touched, and, after some argument and advice to
return to her father, he yielded and gave his sanction to the match. He
accompanied the now radiant Angelica back to Lisbon, and in an hour's
time a ceremony in the court chapel made her Madame de Vallebrègue,
in presence of General Lannes, the French envoy, and himself. Signor
Catalani was enraged at the turn which things had taken, but he could
only acquiesce in the inevitable, especially as his daughter and her
husband settled on him a country estate in Italy and a comfortable
annuity for life.

Mme. Catalani returned to Italy with a reputation which made her name
the first in everybody's mouth. Yet at this time her appearance on
the dramatic stage always occasioned a feeling of pain, her excessive
timidity and nervousness made her action spasmodic, and deprived her
of that easy dignity which must be united with passion and sentiment to
produce a good artistic personation. It was in concert that her grand
voice at this period shone at its best. Her intimate friends were wont
to say that it was as disagreeable and agitating for her to sing in
opera, as it was delightful in the concert-room; for here she poured
forth her notes with such a genuine ecstasy in her own performance as
that which seems to thrill the skylark or the nightingale. Though the
circumstances of her marriage were of such a romantic kind, and she
seems to have been deeply attached to her husband through life, M.
Valle-brègue appears to have been a stupid, ignorant soldier, and, as is
common with those who make similar matrimonial speculations, to have had
no eyes beyond helping his talented wife to make all the money possible
and spend it with the utmost freedom afterward. Mme. Catalani made a
brief visit to Paris in the spring of 1806, sang twice at St. Cloud, and