"The effect of this sentence of hopeless condemnation upon an organisation so highly strung as hers may be readily conceived. But her courage was equal to the occasion, though she told Mendelssohn, years afterwards, that the anguish of that moment exceeded all that she had ever suffered in her whole life. Yet her faith in her own powers never wavered for an instant. There was a fire within her that no amount of discouragement could quench. Instead, therefore, of accepting his verdict as a final one, she asked, with tears in her eyes, what she was to do. Her trust in the maestro's judgment was no less firm than that which she felt in the reality of her own vocation. In the full conviction that if she could only persuade him to advise her, his counsel would prove invaluable, she did not hesitate to make the attempt, and the result fully justified the soundness of her conclusions. "Moved by her evident distress, he recommended her to give her voice six weeks of perfect rest,--to abstain during the whole of that time from singing even so much as one single note, and to speak as little as possible. Upon condition that she strictly carried out these injunctions, he gave her permission to come to him again when the period of probation was ended, in order that he might see whether anything could be done for her. Intense indeed must have been the relief when these six weeks had at last expired. "Once more Mdlle. Lind sought an interview with the master, and this time her hopes were crowned with success. Signor Garcia found the voice so far re-established by rest that he was able to give good hope of its complete restoration, provided that the faulty methods which had so nearly resulted in its destruction were abandoned. With the view of attaining this end he agreed to give her two lessons of an hour each regularly every week--an arrangement which set all her anxieties at rest. "The delight of the artist at being once more permitted to sing may be readily imagined. Though discouraged sometimes by the immense amount she had to learn--and, with still greater difficulty, to unlearn--she never lost heart; and so rapidly did the vocal organs recover from the exhaustion from which they had been suffering, that before long she was able to practise her scales and exercises daily for the fullest length of time which a singer could manage without over-exerting the voice." The lessons were commenced about the 25th of August, and were continued without a break from then until the month of July, 1842. Jenny Lind thus describes her first introduction to the new system in a letter to her friend, Fröken Marie Ruckman:-- "PARIS, _Sept. 10, 1841_.