So great was her
natural facility she could rise with ease from the faintest sound to the
most superb crescendo, could send her tones sweeping through the air
with the most delicious undulations, imitating the swell and fall of a
bell, and could trill like a bird on each note of a chromatic passage.
She dazzled her listeners, but left the heart untouched.
Her domestic life was a happy one, and her husband, Captain de
Vallebregue, adored her, although he knew so little about music that
once when she complained that the piano was too high he had six inches
cut off its legs. Surrounded by adulation at home and abroad, her
self-conceit became inordinate, tempting her to the most absurd feats of
skill. Her excessive love of display and lack of artistic judgment and
knowledge finally led her so far astray in pitch that she lost all
prestige. After seventeen years of retirement, she died of cholera in
1849, in Paris. A few days before she was stricken with the dire
epidemic Jenny Lind sought and received her blessing.
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