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Thus, Gama was staying in Italy corresponding with Almada and the famous Carvalho, waiting for the dispute to be finished before he returned to Rome. In point of fact this was the only substantial incident in the abbe's story, but he worked in so many episodes of no consequence that it lasted for an hour.
But if Duprez made a wonderful voice at the risk of breaking it, I have always thought that Madame Carvalho owed her admirable diction, so distinguishing a mark of her talent, to Delsarte. Delsarte was a disastrous and deadly teacher of singing. No voice could stand up under his methods, not even his own, although he attributed its loss to teaching at the Conservatoire.
Three special correspondents for London newspapers were present, and all our own Paris reporters. High Mass, full choral; Fauré sang his Pie Jesus, Madame Carvalho and Adelina Patti the Credo. At the entrance, the crowd nearly crushed us. Barbassou-Pasha, Count of Monteclaro, gave his arm to the bride. Poor Kondjé, what agitation, what emotion, what delight she evinced!
Carvalho came here last Saturday to hear the reading of le Sexe faible, and seemed to me to be satisfied with it. He thinks it will be a success. But I put so little confidence in the intelligence of all those rascals, that for my part, I doubt it. I am exhausted, and I am now sleeping ten hours a night, not to mention two hours a day. That is resting my poor brain.
Carvalho said that it would be impossible to get the opera ready before the appearance of the melodrama, and unwise to enter into competition with a theatre the luxury of whose stage mounting would have attracted all Paris before the opera could be produced.
I had to wait two years before Carvalho would consent to hear the music. Finally, worn out by my importunities, they decided to get rid of me, so Carvalho invited me to dine with him and to bring my score. After dinner I went to the piano. Carvalho was on one side and Madame Carvalho on the other. Both were very pleasant and charming, but the real meaning of this friendliness did not escape me.
Counting in Captain Gillespie, with the three mates, us apprentices, the boatswain, sailmaker Adams and carpenter Gregory the three latter all "old hands," having sailed several voyages previously together in the ship the steward Pedro Carvalho, Ching Wang our cook, Billy the boy, our "second-class apprentice," and the eighteen fresh men who had come aboard with the Chinaman at Gravesend, our crew mustered all told some thirty-one hands; and, to complete the description of the vessel and her belongings, the Silver Queen was a sharp-bowed, full-rigged ship, with a tremendous bilge, built for carrying a goodish cargo, which consisted, as I believe I mentioned before, mainly of Manchester goods and Birmingham hardware, besides a private speculation of our captain consisting of a peculiarly novel consignment of Dundee marmalade, packed up in tins like those used for preserved meats and such like dainties.
Madame Carvalho did not refuse to pay Delsarte for her lessons, but she did not want to be called his pupil. Although she had attended the Conservatoire, she wanted to be known solely as a pupil of Duprez. As a matter of fact it was Duprez who knew how to make the "Little Miolan," the delightful warbler, into the great singer with her important place on the French stage.
The Piranga arriving at this juncture with a convoy bringing eight hundred additional troops, preparations were made to attack Carvalho; but the insurgent president, making his escape on a fishing raft, took refuge on board the British corvette Tweed, and afterwards got to sea.
What ultimately became of him was never known. Many years afterwards, it was reported that eight Spaniards had been sold as slaves by the Rajah of Zebut to the Chinese. The two ships, now commanded by Carvalho, proceeded on their way to the Moluccas.
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