country. She issued a preliminary advertisement, avouching her "pressing debts" and her "desire to pay them" as the reason for her asking the benefit, which, she declared, should be the last she would ever trouble the public with. Old, poor, and almost deprived of her voice by her infirmities, her attempt to revive the interest of the public in her favor was a miserable failure; her star was set forever, and she was obliged to return to Holland more wretched than she came. She had scarcely reappeared there when she was again thrown into prison for debt; but, by entering into an agreement to sing at the theatre every night, under surveillance, she was enabled to obtain her release. Her recklessness and improvidence had brought her to a pitiable condition; and in her latter days, after a career of splendor, caprice, and extravagance, she was obliged to subsist, it is said, by button-making. She died in frightful indigence, the recipient of charity at a hospital at Bologna, in 1770.
A far different fate awaited Faustina. In 1726 she left England for Vienna, where she obtained an appointment of 15,000 florins. The next season she was singing in Venice, in the bloom of her beauty, the object of universal admiration. It happened that Adolfo Hasse was director of the orchestra at the same time, and in the flush of his celebrity; the Italian theatres intrigued for the honor of his services, and he was called Il caro Sassone. Faustina saw him for the first time. "Having once heard Hasse play upon the harpsichord, she immediately fell in love with him," says one biographer. He was appointed chapel-master in the conservatorio degli incurabili; but his increasing reputation attracted the attention of the King of Poland, and his majesty offered him the place of chapel-master at Dresden. Faustina was singing there, for the first time, in 1731, and they consequently met again; they were mutually pleased; they were nearly of the same age (Hasse being one year older than Faustina), and they were married in 1736. The king, desiring to retain both, offered them 12,000 dollars to stay at Dresden, and Hasse accepted the offer; but, being pressed to remain in Italy, he divided his time between the two countries. The couple remained seven years in the service of the court of Dresden. King Augustus, who squandered immense sums on pictures and musicians, gave Hasse unlimited power and ample resources, of which he
