Jenny Lind the Artist by Henry Scott Holland

We have, now, reached the date at which we broke off the story of our heroine, after her farewell to the Opera, while we paused to recall her social intimacies in England, and, then, to recover the thread of those inward motives, which led, from far back in her life, to her final act in abandoning the stage. We are, now, in full possession of her mind and can set out, once again, with her, on the path along which her career, for the future, carries her. It is needless to enter upon the inward troubles that necessarily followed the severe crisis through which she has passed. Gradually her old self stole back to her. She began to delight in the scenery of Paris, which, in May, is enchanting. She had long walks in the Tuileries, and drives in the Bois de Boulogne; and "could have listened for hours," writes Mr. Senior, "to the nightingales. She has paid great attention to the habits of singing-birds, and told us stories of their shyness and coquetry and of the manner in which she used to get them to sing by pretending not to attend to them. "[148] She called on Meyerbeer; she gave a musical lesson every morning to a Swedish girl, Miss Ebeling.

She sang for an hour at the piano, at a five o'clock tea, ending with the farewell song in the _Vestale_. "You have sometimes asked me which is my best part-it is the _Vestale_," she said to Mr. Senior. She went to the _Prophète_, but got quickly tired of it, and came home after the second act. She sang one evening at the house of the Swedish minister, exciting, according to Mrs. Grote's diary, "the most extravagant admiration."