She could play in I Promessi Sposi with a vim after this. They remained faithful to each other until death.
The young wife retired from the stage for a year to please her husband and placate his mother, but art reclaimed her child, and in 1848, while French bombs threatened Rome, she gave three representations to help Piscenti, one of her former managers, who had been imprisoned for debt, I have forgotten what play she appeared in, but I think it was in Cuores ad Aeti, by Forti. At any rate, her father-in-law went to see her, was completely swamped by her greatness, forgot his prejudices in his enthusiasm, and, in fact, took her to his heart as the Marchesa del Grillo, but allowed her to become once more and forever " Adelaide Ristori" to the public.
Then she began her faithful study of high tragedy. She made her début in Alfieri's masterpiece of Myrrha, and unluckily failed; but she afterwards surpassed all other actresses in this part. She became triumphant through all Italy, and sighed for Paris, which is now, as in antiquity, alone entitled to throw the apple. It is the world's tribunal for art. In 1852 Rachel had visited Italy; why should not Ristori visit Paris? The actress was determined, and in 1855 she was playing Francesca da Rimini to a pit full of kings, with Rossi as Paolo, and in Paris! What a triumph!
Dumas père was her first conquest. Scribe paid court to the new favorite, and Jules Janin, the clever Figaro of the Journal des Débats, sealed her fate by his clever praises. Myrrha followed, la sublime actrice had a furious success, and her triumph was celebrated in verse, marble, prose, and music.
She was most astonished herself. "Why," said she," I played Myrrha to empty benches at Turin, at eighty
