out of your turn.  The Saturday is yours; but what I say to you I trust you will not repeat to Mr. Goold, as it might be of serious injury to me.”  “Depend upon it, my dear Kelly,” answered Grassini, “I will not; I look upon you, by what you have just said, to be my sincere friend.”  As he was leaving the room, he turned, as with a sudden thought.  “To be sure, it is rather unlucky you do not sing to-night, for this morning a message came from the Lord Chamberlain’s office to announce the Queen’s intention to come incognita, accompanied by the princesses, purposely to see you perform; and a large grillee is actually ordered to be prepared for them, where they can perfectly see and hear without being seen by the audience; but I’ll step myself to the Lord Chamberlain’s office, say that you are confined to your bed, and express your mortification at disappointing the royal party.”  “Stop, Kelly,” cried the cantatrice, all in a flutter; “what you now say alters the case.  If her Majesty Queen Charlotte wishes to see ‘La Vergine del Sole,’ and to hear me, I am bound to obey her Majesty’s commands.  Go to Goold and say I will sing.”  “When I went into her dressing-room after the first act,” says Kelly, “her Majesty not having arrived, Grassini, suspicious that I had made up a trick to cajole her, taxed me with it; and when I confessed, she took it good-naturedly and laughed at her own credulity.”  The popularity of Grassini in London remained unabated during several seasons; and when she reengaged for the French opera, in 1808, it was to the great regret of musical London.  Talma was a warm admirer of her dramatic genius, and he used to say that no other actress, not even Mars, Darval, or Duchesnois, possessed so expressive and mutable a face.  The Grecian outline of her face, her beautiful forehead, rich black hair and eyebrows, superb dark eyes, “now flashing with tragedy’s fiery passions, then softly languishing with love,” and finally “that astonishing ensemble of perfections which Nature had collected in her as if to review all her gifts in one woman—­all these qualities together exercised on the spectator such a charm as none could resist.  Pasta herself might have looked on and learned, when Grassini had to portray either indignation, grief, anger, or despair.”

Her performance in “Romeo e Giulietta” was so fine that Napoleon sprang to his feet, forgetting his marble coldness, and shouted like a school-boy, while Talma’s eyes streamed with tears; for, as the latter afterward confessed, he had never before been so deeply touched.  Napoleon sent her a check for twenty thousand francs as a testimonial of his admiration, and to Crescentini he sent the order of the Iron Cross.  Many years after, in St. Helena, the dethroned Caesar alluded to this as an illustration of his policy.  “In conformity with my system,” observed he, “of amalgamating all kinds of merit, and of rendering one and the same reward universal,