Madame Malibran, as you probably know, is divorced from the man whose name she bears, and has married a violinist of the Italian orchestra. She is just now in a state of health that will require immediate retirement from the stage, and, indeed, has played already too long. She came forward after the curtain dropped, in answer to the continual demand of the audience, leaning heavily on Rubini, and was evidently so exhausted as to be scarcely able to stand. She made a single gesture, and was led off immediately, with her head drooping on her breast, amid the most violent acclamations. She is a perfect passion with the French, and seems to have out-charmed their usual caprice. * * * * * It was a lovely night, and after the opera I walked home. I reside a long distance from the places of public amusement. Dr. Howe and myself had stopped at a _café_ on the Italian Boulevards an hour, and it was very late. The streets were nearly deserted--here and there a solitary cabriolet with the driver asleep under his wooden apron, or the motionless figure of a municipal guardsman, dozing upon his horse, with his helmet and brazen armor glistening in the light of the lamps. Nothing has impressed me more, by the way, than a body of these men passing me in the night. I have once or twice met the King returning from the theatre with a guard, and I saw them once at midnight on an extraordinary patrol winding through the arch into the Place Carrousel. Their equipments are exceedingly warlike (helmets of brass, and coats of mail), and, with the gleam of the breast-plates through their horsemen's cloaks, the tramp of hoofs echoing through the deserted streets, and the silence and order of their march, it was quite a realization of the descriptions of chivalry.