ministering to her comfort, except once when she insisted on his fulfilling an important concert engagement.  Racked with pain as she was, her greatest anxiety was as to his artistic success, fearing that his mental anguish would prevent his doing full justice to his talents.  It is said that her friends informed her of the vociferous applause which greeted his playing, and a happy smile brightened her dying face.  She died September 22, 1836, at the age of twenty-eight, but not too soon to have attained one of the most dazzling reputations in the history of the operatic stage.  M. de Beriot was almost frantic with grief, for a profound love had joined this sympathetic and well-matched pair, and their private happiness had not been less than their public fame.*

     * For a full sketch of Mme. Malibran de Beriot’s artistic and
     personal career, the reader is referred to “Great Singers,
     Malibran to Tietjens,” Appletons’ “Handy-Volume Series.”

The news of this calamity to the world of music spread swiftly through the country, and was known in Paris the next day, where M. Mali-bran, the divorced husband of the dead singer, was then living.  As the fortune which Mme. de Beriot had made by her art was principally invested in France, and there were certain irregularities in the French law which opened the way for claims of M. Malibran on her estate, De Beriot was obliged to hasten to Paris before his wife’s funeral to take out letters of administration, and thus protect the future of the only child left by his wife, young Charles de Beriot, who afterward became a distinguished pianist, though never a professional musician.  As the motives of this sudden disappearance were not known, De Beriot was charged with the most callous indifference to his wife.  But it is now well known that his action was guided by a most imperative necessity, the welfare of his infant son, all that was left him of the woman he had loved so passionately.  The remains of Mme. de Beriot were temporarily interred in the Collegiate Church in Manchester, but they were shortly afterward removed to Laeken, near Brussels.  Over her tomb in the Laeken churchyard the magnificent mausoleum surmounted with her statue was erected by De Beriot.  The celebrated sculptor Geefs modeled it, and the work is regarded as one of the chefs-d’ouvre of the artist.

IV.

M. de Beriot did not recover from this shock for more than a year, but remained secluded at his country place near Brussels.  It was not till Pauline Garcia (subsequently Mme. Viardot) made her debut in concert in 1837, that De Beriot again appeared in public before one of the most brilliant audiences which had ever assembled in Brussels.  In honor of this occasion the Philharmonic Society of that city caused two medals to be struck for M. de Beriot and Mlle. Garcia, the molds of which were instantly