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The khan, though doubtless despising her treachery to her people, was quick to close with the offer, and in a short time Friuli was in his hands. This accomplished, he returned to Hungary, taking with him Romilda and her children, of whom there were four sons and four daughters. Cacan kept his compact with the traitress, marrying her with the primitive rites of the Hungarians.
One day, so we are told, Romilda, gazing from the ramparts of the city, beheld Cacan, the young khan of the Avars, engaged in directing the siege.
Meyerbeer himself had to bear much of the expense of preparing the stage-appointments, though not to such an extent as on the production of his "Romilda" in Italy, when he bought the libretto, gave the music gratis, paid the singers, and provided the costumes. Dr. Véron, in his Memoirs, gives an amusing account of the accidents which attended the first production of "Robert."
The children of Romilda were left in the hands of the Avars. Of her daughters, one subsequently married a duke of Bavaria and another a duke of Allemania. The four sons, one of whom was Grimoald, the hero of our story, managed to escape from their savage captors, though they were hotly pursued.
He determined to transplant it into the rugged soil of his own masculine musical science; and three years after the Rossinian revelation at Venice, his first Italian opera, "Romilda e Costanza," was produced at that dismal old metropolis of necromancy, Padua, Signora Pisaroni taking the principal part.
His first opera, "The Two Caliphs," met with complete failure, as it was not written in the Italian form. He at once transformed his style and brought out "Romilda e Costanza," a serio-comic opera, with great success, at Padua. In 1820, "Emma di Resburgo" appeared at Venice, and from this period his star was in the ascendant.
But her married life was of the shortest. He had kept his word, and such honor as he possessed was satisfied. The morning after his marriage, moved perhaps by detestation of her treachery, he caused the hapless Romilda to be impaled alive. It was a dark end to a dark deed, and the perfidy of the woman had been matched by an equal perfidy on the part of the man.
The amorous matron who opened the gates of Friuli passed a short night in the arms of her royal lover; the next evening, Romilda was condemned to the embraces of twelve Avars, and the third day the Lombard princess was impaled in the sight of the camp, while the chagan observed with a cruel smile, that such a husband was the fit recompense of her lewdness and perfidy.
The Avars, led by Cacan, their king, crossed, in the year 611, the mountains of Illyria and Lombardy, killed Gisulph, the grand duke, with all his adherents, in battle, and laid siege to the city of Friuli, behind whose strong walls Romilda, the widow of Gisulph, had taken refuge. These events formed the basis of the romantic, and perhaps largely legendary, story we have to tell.
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