Assemblée. There is no King's Theatre now.
There are no routs, leg-of-mutton sleeves, or
chip hats left. No Couriers to praise, no
ladies to admire, no lords to invite. There is
no Teodoro Gaddi, nothing but old Gaddi, the
shabby, broken-down old beggarman, who
hangs about the music shops and professional
people's houses. If you ask Gaddi the cause
of his decadence, he lifts up his hands, and
says piteously, "ma famille, my dear, ma
famille;" but as he notoriously turned all
his sons out of doors, and broke his daughters'
hearts, you can't exactly believe that story.
Gaddi's voice is quite broken and ruined now; he
is immensely old, and pitiably feeble, but he is
full of vitality, and is as shameless a beggar as
the Spanish mendicant with the arquebus, that
Gil Blas met. If you happen to know Gaddi
it is very probable that, descending your stairs
some morning, you will find him, cloak,
umbrella and all, sitting somewhere on the bottom
flight. "I have come," he says, "I,
Gaddi. I die of hunger. I have no charbons,
my dear; give me twopence;" or, reposing
quietly in your bed, you may find the curtains
at the bottom thereof drawn on one side, and
be aware of Gaddi, and of his voice
mumbling, "Twopence, charbons, Gaddi. I knew
your father, I have supped with George
Quatre; I, Gaddi." It is singular that though
Gaddi is always complaining of hunger, he is
almost as continually eating a pie — a large
veal pie; and as he munches, he begs. 'Tis
ten to one that half an hour after you have
relieved him, you will meet with a friend who
will tell you "old Gaddi called on me this
morning, and asked for twopence. He was
eating a pie. He said that he was starving,
and had no coals, and that he knew my
father." Gaddi has known everybody's father.

A quiet-looking gentleman with a sallow
countenance, and bearing a roll of music in
his hand, has entered the music warehouse
while we have been considering Gaddi. He
has a profoundly fatigued, worn-out, ennuyé
expression pervading his whole appearance.
His lustreless black hair is listless, so are his
small hands, on one of which glisten diamonds
of price. His limp hat is negligently thrown
rather than superposed on the back of his
head. He dangles a listless glove, and plays
with a limp watch-chain ornamented with
dully valuable breloques; his eyes are half
closed, and he yawns wearily. His chief care
seems to be for the butt-end of a powerful
cigar, which he has left, in deference to English
prejudices but evidently with much
reluctance, on the railing outside the shop. He
casts a lingering look at this remnant through
the plate glass windows, and twiddles his
listless fingers as though the beloved weed
were yet between his digits. Who may this be?
Who but Polpetti, not the great English, nor
even only the great Italian, but the great
European tenor; the finest Edgardo in the
world; the unrivalled Elviro: the
unapproached Otello; the pride of the Scala and
the Fenice, the Pergola, and the Italiens; the
cynosure of Berlin and Vienna, and St Petersburg;
the decorated of foreign orders; the
millionnaire; the Gaddi of to-day.

So much glory (more than a conqueror's),
so much gold (more than a Hebrew banker's),
has this listless person earned by his delightful
art. I am not going to say that he is over-
paid. I would walk ten miles fasting to be
present at one opera in which he performs.
You cannot resist him. You hang on his
notes, and your heart keeps time with them.
And when he has finished you must needs
clap your hands till they be sore, and yell
bravos till you be hoarse, for you can't
help it.

Polpetti will not go the way of Gaddi. He
has bought a fine estate in Italy, some say an
island, some say a province, whither in a few
months he will retire to enjoy the ample fortune
he has amassed in strange lands — from the
banks of the Neva to those of the Thames
—from the Po to the Potomac — from Liverpool
to Lisbon. Twenty years since, and
Giacinto Polpetti was an olive-faced lad,
running meanly clad among the vines and
olives and staring white houses, and dusty lanes
of an Italian county town. He had an uncle,
perhaps — a snuffy old abbate, fond of garlic,
and olives, and sour wine, who wore a rusty
soutane, and carried a sky blue umbrella, and
could read nothing but his breviary, and not
much of that. His uncle's cross old house-
keeper may have taught him to read, and at
ten he may have been consigned to the shop-
board of a tailor or the farm-house of a vine-
grower, till it was discovered that he had a
voice — and a beautiful voice too — which
caused his promotion to a badly-washed
surplice and the choir of the church; his vocal
duties being varied by swinging a censer and
tinkling a bell, and making the various
genuflexions which the service of the mass
demands. He might have grown up, and
gone back to the tailor or the vine-grower, or
have degenerated into a sacristan, a dirty
monk, with bare feet and a cowl, full of black
bread and sausages, or an abbate like his uncle,
with a rusty soutane and a sky-blue umbrella,
but for a neighbouring magnifico, the Count
di Nessuno-Denaro, who had no money, but
considerable influence; who condescended to
patronise him, and procured his admission
into the Conservatoire of Milan. A weary
time he had of it there. A wearier still when
singing for starvation wages at the smaller
provincial towns of Italy. A weariest when
he fell into the hands of a grasping speculator
who "starred" him at Paris, and Milan, and
Venice, paying him niggardly, and forcing
him to work the rich mine of his youthful
voice as though the ore would never fail.
But he emancipated himself at last, and went
to work in earnest for himself. The last ten
years have been one long triumph, and
Jupiter Success has found in him no unwilling
Danaë. He will retire with his millions