George Sand called her "the personification of poetry and music," and set down her impressions on listening to the singer thus: "The pale, still,--one might at the first glance say lustreless,--countenance, the suave and unconstrained movements, the astonishing freedom from every sort of affectation,--how transfigured all this appears, when she is carried away by her genius on the current of song!" Her first appearance in Paris was greeted by Alfred de Musset, the poet of Romanticism and warm friend of Victor Hugo, in those well-known lines-- "Ainsi donc, quoi qu'on dise, elle ne tarit pas La source immortelle et féconde Que le coursier divin fit jaillir sous ses pas." When de Musset wished to crystallise in prose his feelings on hearing her sing, he expressed himself in these words-- "Si Pauline Garcia a la voix de sa sœur, elle en a l'âme en même temps, et, sans la moindre imitation, c'est le même génie.... Elle chante comme elle respire.... Sa physionomie, pleine d'expression, change avec une rapidité prodigieuse, avec une liberté extrème, non seulement selon le morceau, mais encore selon la phrase qu'elle exécute. Avant d'exprimer, elle sent." Again, Richard Wagner pays a remarkable tribute to her powers in a letter to L. Uhl relating to his stay in Paris in 1859, and to the attempts to arrange for the production of "Tristan" there. In it the composer recounts how the same difficulty of reading the _rôles_ of this work was encountered in Germany, which militated much against its production. "Madame Viardot," he writes, "expressed to me one day her astonishment that in Germany people always spoke of this difficulty of reading the music of 'Tristan.' She asked me if in Germany the artists were not then musicians? I for my part hardly know how to enlighten her on this point; for this grand artiste sang through at sight, with the most perfect expression, a whole act of the _rôle_ of Isolda." Such was the artiste whose _début_ in London in 1839 was followed by so brilliant a career. We now come to 1840--a year made noteworthy in the life of Garcia by another important advance in his career. Since his appointment to a professorship at the Paris Conservatoire, his reputation had continued to be steadily consolidated, and his _clientèle_ included, besides those who were being trained for the musical profession, a great number of amateur pupils, among whom were to be found not only some of the most distinguished names in Paris, but many members of the royal family itself. Throughout this period he had been steadily working to increase his knowledge relative to the mechanism of the voice, and at last, in 1840, he found that his investigations had reached a point at which they might be found of interest to others.