There was another old troubadour, Pierre Vidal, of whom an ancient biographer wrote that he "sang better than any man in the world, and was one of the most foolish men who ever lived, for he believed everything to be just as it pleased him and as he would have it be." But the biographer contradicted his own beautiful portrait by telling how poor Pierre sang once too well to a married woman, whose husband took him, jailed him, and pierced his linnet tongue. MARTIN LUTHER If we cannot omit these troubadours, how can we overlook Martin Luther, whose musical attainments the skeptics are wont to minimise, as others deny his claim to that magnificent ejaculation: "Who loves not wine, women, and song remains a fool his whole life long." No one claims that Luther wrote his own compositions, but that he dictated them to trained musicians who wrote down, and then wrote up such melodies as he played upon the flute. But whatsoever may be the truth of his position as a composer, no one can deny him either a passion for music or a domestic romance. The runaway monk told the truth, when he said: "I married a runaway nun." When he was forty-one, with his connivance, a number of nuns fled, or were abducted, from a convent. One of them, Catherina von Bora, found an asylum in Luther's own home. After looking about for a good husband for her, at the end of a year he married her himself. She was then twenty-six years old. The married life of the jovial reformer was happy; but when he died, he left her so poor that she was obliged to take in boarders, until she met her death by the same means that had brought her marriage,--a runaway. BRITISHERS The earlier English composers have not been without their heart interests. We have already pried into Purcell's romance. Old John Bull, at the age of forty-four, could give up his professorship to marry "Elizabeth Walker, of the Strand, maiden, being about twenty-four, daughter of ---- Walker, citizen of London, deceased, she attending upon the Right Honourable Lady Marchioness of Winchester." Four years later, he became the chief of the prince's music, with the splendid salary of £40 a year. Sir William Sterndale loved a Mary Wood, and wrote an overture called "Marie des Bois," and after this atrocious pun, married the poor girl in 1844, and they lived happily ever after, or at least for thirty years after. Those other oldsters, Blow, Byrd, and Playford, were married men; and Arne, the composer of "Rule Britannia," married, at the age of twenty-six, Cecilia Young, an eminent singer in Händel's company, and the daughter of an organist. She continued to sing, and he to write music for her. At the age of sixty-eight he died, singing a hallelujah. Whether she echoed his sentiments we are not told, but she lived seventeen years longer. Balfe married a German singer, Rosen, who afterward sang in some of his operas.