I
In the
year 1828, an old German, a music teacher, came to Paris with his pupil
and settled unostentatiously in one of the quiet faubourgs of the
metropolis. The first rejoiced in the name of Samuel Klaus; the second
answered to the more poetical appellation of Franz Stenio. The younger
man was a violinist, gifted, as rumor went, with extraordinary, almost
miraculous talent. Yet as he was poor and had not hitherto made a name
for himself in Europe, he remained for several years in the capital of
France—the heart and pulse of capricious continental fashion—unknown
and unappreciated. Franz was a Styrian by birth, and, at the time of the
event to be presently described, he was a young man considerably under
thirty. A philosopher and a dreamer by nature, imbued with all the
mystic oddities of true genius, he reminded one of some of the heroes in
Hoffmann’s Contes Fantastiques. His earlier existence had
been a very unusual, in fact, quite an eccentric one, and its history
must be briefly told—for the better understanding of the present
story.
Born of very pious country people, in a quiet burg among the
Styrian Alps; nursed “by the native gnomes who watched over his
cradle”; growing up in the weird atmosphere of the ghouls and vampires
who play such a prominent part in the household of every Styrian and
Slavonian in Southern Austria; educated later, as a student, in the
shadow of the old Rhenish castles of Germany; Franz from his childhood
had passed through every emotional stage on the plane of the so-called
“supernatural.” He had also studied at one the the “occult arts”
with an enthusiastic disciple of Paracelsus and Khunrath; alchemy had
few theoretical secrets for him; and he had dabbled in “ceremonial
magic” and “sorcery” with some Hungarian Tziganes. Yet he loved
above all else music, and above music—his violin.
At the age of twenty-two he suddenly gave up his practical
studies in the occult, and from that day, though as devoted as ever in
thought to the beautiful Grecian Gods, he surrendered himself entirely
to his art. Of his classic studies he had retained only that which
related to the muses—Euterpe especially, at whose altar he
worshipped—and Orpheus whose magic lyre he tried to emulate with his
violin. Except his dreamy belief in the nymphs and the sirens, on
account probably of the double relationship of the latter to the muses
through Calliope and Orpheus, he was interested but little in the
matters of this sublunary world. All his aspirations mounted, like
incense, with the wave of the heavenly harmony that he drew from his
instrument, to a higher and nobler sphere. He dreamed awake, and lived a
real though an enchanted life only during those hours when his magic bow
carried him along the wave of sound to the Pagan Olympus, to the feet of
Euterpe. A strange child he had ever been in his own home, where tales
of magic and witchcraft grow out of every inch of the soil; a still
stranger boy he had become, until finally he had blossomed into manhood,
without one single characteristic of youth. Never had a fair face
attracted his attention; not for one moment had his thoughts turned from
his solitary studies to a life beyond that of a mystic Bohemian. Content
with his own company, he had thus passed the best years of his youth and
manhood with his violin for his chief idol, and with the Gods and
Goddesses of old Greece for his audience, in perfect ignorance of
practical life. His whole existence had been one long day of dreams, of
melody and sunlight, and he had never felt any other aspirations.
How useless, but oh, how glorious those dreams! how vivid! and
why should he desire any better fate? Was he not all that he wanted to
be, transformed in a second of thought into one or another hero; from
Orpheus, who held all nature breathless, to the urchin who piped away
under the plane tree to the naiads of Callirrhoë’s crystal fountain?
Did not the swift-footed nymphs frolic at his beck and call to the sound
of the magic flute of the Arcadian shepherd—who was himself? Behold,
the Goddess of Love and Beauty herself descending from on high,
attracted by the sweet-voiced notes of his violin! . . . Yet there came
a the when he preferred Syrinx to Aphrodite—not as the fair nymph
pursued by Pan, but after her transformation by the merciful Gods into
the reed out of which the frustrated God of the Shepherds had made his
magic pipe. For also, with the, ambition grows and is rarely satisfied.
When he tried to emulate on his violin the enchanting sounds that
resounded in his mind, the whole of Parnassus kept silent under the
spell, or joined in heavenly chorus; but the audience he finally craved
was composed of more than the Gods sung by Hesiod, verily of the most
appreciative mélomanes of European capitals. He felt jealous of
the magic pipe, and would fain have had it at his command.
“Oh! that I could allure a nymph into my beloved
violin!”—he often cried, after awakening from one of his day-dreams.
“Oh, that I could only span in spirit-flight the abyss of The! Oh,
that I could find myself for one short day a partaker of the secret arts
of the Gods, a God myself, in the sight and hearing of enraptured
humanity; and, having learned the mystery of the lyre of Orpheus, or
secured within my violin a siren, thereby benefit mortals to my own
glory!
Thus, having for long years dreamed in the company of the Gods of
his fancy, he now took to dreaming of the transitory glories of fame
upon this earth. But at this the he was suddenly called home by his
widowed mother from one of the German universities where he had lived
for the last year or two. This was an event which brought his plans to
an end, at least so far as the immediate future was concerned, for he
had hitherto drawn upon her alone for his meagre pittance, and his means
were not sufficient for an independent life outside his native place.
His return had a very unexpected result. His mother, whose only
love he was on earth, died soon after she had welcomed her Benjamin
back; and the good wives of the burg exercised their swift tongues for
many a month after as to the real causes of that death.
Frau Stenio, before Franz’s return, was a healthy, buxom,
middle-aged body, strong and hearty. She was a pious and a God-fearing
soul too, who had never failed in saying her prayers, nor had missed an
early mass for years during his absence. On the first Sunday after her
son had settled at home—a day that she had been longing for and had
anticipated for months in joyous visions, in which she saw him kneeling
by her side in the little church on the hill—she called him from the
foot of the stairs. The hour had come when her pious dream was to be
realized, and she was waiting for him, carefully wiping the dust from
the prayer-book he had used in his boyhood. But instead of Franz, it was
his violin that responded to her call, mixing its sonorous voice with
the rather cracked tones of the peal of the merry Sunday bells. The fond
mother was somewhat shocked at hearing the prayer-inspiring sounds
drowned by the weird, fantastic notes of the “Dance of the Witches”;
they seemed to her so unearthly and mocking. But she almost fainted upon
hearing the definite refusal of her well-beloved son to go to church. He
never went to church, he coolly remarked. It was loss of the; besides
which, the loud peals of the old church organ jarred on his nerves.
Nothing should induce him to submit to the torture of listening to that
cracked organ. He was firm, and nothing could move him. To her
supplications and remonstrances he put an end by offering to play for
her a “Hymn to the Sun” he had just composed.
From that memorable Sunday morning, Frau Stenio lost her usual
serenity of mind. She hastened to lay her sorrows and seek for
consolation at the foot of the confessional; but that which she heard in
response from the stern priest filled her gentle and unsophisticated
soul with dismay and almost with despair. A feeling of fear, a sense of
profound terror which soon became a chronic state with her, pursued her
from that moment; her nights became disturbed and sleepless, her days
passed in prayer and lamentations. In her maternal anxiety for the
salvation of her beloved son’s soul, and for his post-mortem
welfare, she made a series of rash vows. Finding that neither the Latin
petition to the Mother of God written for her by her spiritual adviser,
nor yet the humble supplications in German, addressed by herself to
every saint she had reason to believe was residing in Paradise, worked
the desired effect, she took to pilgrimages to distant shrines. During
one of these journeys to a holy chapel situated high up in the
mountains, she caught cold, andst the glaciers of the Tyro, and
redescended only to take to a sick bed, from which she arose no more.
Frau Stenio’s vow had led her, in one sense, to the desired result.
The poor woman was now given an opportunity of seeking out in propriâ
personâ the saints she had believed in so well, and of pleading
face to face for the recreant son, who refused adherence to them and to
the Church, scoffed at monk and confessional, and held the organ in such
horror.
Franz sincerely lamented his mother’s death. Unaware of being
the indirect cause of it, he felt no remorse; but selling the modest
household goods and chattels, light in purse and heart, he resolved to
travel on foot for a year or two, before settling down to any definite
profession.
A hazy desire to see the great cities of Europe, and to try his
luck in France, lurked at the bottom of this travelling project, but his
Bohemian habits of life were too strong to be abruptly abandoned. He
placed his small capital with a banker for a rainy day, and started on
his pedestrian journey viâ Germany and Austria. His violin paid
for his board and lodging in the inns and farms on his way, and he
passed his days in the green fields and in the solemn silent woods, face
to face with Nature, dreaming all the the as usual with his eyes open.
During the three months of his pleasant travels to and fro, he never
descended for one moment from Parnassus; but, as an alchemist transmutes
lead into gold, so he transformed everything on his way into a song of
Hesiod or Anacreon. Every evening, while fiddling for his supper and
bed, whether on a green lawn or in the hall of a rustic inn, his fancy
changed the whole scene for him. Village swains and maidens became
transfigured into Arcadian shepherds and nymphs. The sand-covered floor
was now a green sward; the uncouth couples spinning round in a measured
waltz with the wild grace of tamed bears became priests and priestesses
of Terpsichore; the bulky, cherry-cheeked and blue-eyed daughters of
rural Germany were the Hesperides circling around the trees laden with
the golden apples. Nor did the melodious strains of the Arcadian demi-gods
piping on their syrinxes, and audible but to his own enchanted ear,
vanish with the dawn. For no sooner was the curtain of sleep raised from
his eyes than he would sally forth into a new magic realm of day-dreams.
On his way to some dark and solemn pine forest, he played incessantly,
to himself and to everything else. He fiddled to the green hill, and
forthwith the mountain and the moss-covered rocks moved forward to hear
him the better, as they had done at the sound of the Orphean lyre. He
fiddled to the merry-voiced brook, to the hurrying river, and both
slackened their speed and stopped their waves, and, becoming silent,
seemed to listen to him in an entranced rapture. Even the long-legged
stork who stood meditatively on one leg on the thatched top of the
rustic mill, gravely resolving unto himself the problem of his too-long
existence, sent out after him a long and strident cry, screeching,
“Art thou Orpheus himself, O Stenio?” It was a period of full bliss,
of a daily and almost hourly exaltation. The last words of his dying
mother, whispering to him of the horrors of eternal condemnation, had
left him unaffected, and the only vision her warning evoked in him was
that of Pluto. By a ready association of ideas, he saw the lord of the
dark nether kingdom greeting him as he had greeted the husband of
Eurydice before him. Charmed with the magic sounds of his violin, the
wheel of Ixion was at a standstill once more, thus affording relief to
the wretched seducer of Juno, and giving the lie to those who claim
eternity for the duration of the punishment of condemned sinners. He
perceived Tantalus forgetting his never-ceasing thirst, and smacking his
lips as he drank in the heaven-born melody; the stone of Sisyphus
becoming motionless, the Furies themselves smiling on him, and the
sovereign of the gloomy regions delighted, and awarding preference to
his violin over the lyre of Orpheus. Taken au sérieux, mythology
thus seems a decided antidote to fear, in the face of theological
threats, especially when strengthened with an insane and passionate love
of music; with Franz, Euterpe proved always victorious in every contest,
aye, even with Hell itself!
But there is an end to everything, and very soon Franz had to
give up uninterrupted dreaming. He had reached the university town where
dwelt his old violin teacher, Samuel Klaus. When this antiquated
musician found that his beloved and favourite pupil, Franz, had been
left poor in purse and still poorer in earthly affections, he felt his
strong attachment to the boy awaken with tenfold force. He took Franz to
his heart, and forthwith adopted him as his son.
The old teacher reminded people of one of those grotesque figures
which look as if they had just stepped out of some mediæval panel. And
yet Klaus, with his fantastic allures of a night-goblin, had
the most loving heart, as tender as that of a woman, and the
self-sacrificing nature of an old Christian martyr. When Franz had
briefly narrated to him the history of his last few years, the professor
took him by the hand, and leading him into his study simply said:
“Stop with me, and put an end to your Bohemian life Make
yourself famous. I am old and childless and will be your father. Let us
live together and forget all save fame.”
And forthwith he offered to proceed with Franz to Paris, viâ
several large German cities, where they would stop to give concerts.
In a few days Klaus succeeded in making Franz forget his vagrant
life and its artistic independence, and reawakened in his pupil his now
dormant ambition and desire for worldly fame. Hitherto, since his
mother’s death, he had been content to receive applause only from the
Gods and Goddesses who inhabited his vivid fancy; now he began to crave
once more for the admiration of mortals. Under the clever and careful
training of old Klaus his remarkable talent gained in strength and
powerful charm with every day, and his reputation grew and expanded with
every city and town wherein he made himself heard. His ambition was
being rapidly realized; the presiding genn of various musical centres to
whose patronage his talent was submitted soon proclaimed him the one
violinist of the day, and the public declared loudly that he stood
unrivalled by any one whom they had ever heard. These laudations very
soon made both master and pupil completely lose their heads. But Paris
was less ready with such appreciation. Paris makes reputations for
itself, and will take none on faith. They had been living in it for
almost three years, and were still climbing with difficulty the
artist’s Calvary, when an event occurred which put an end even to
their most modest expectations. The first arrival of Nicolo Paganini was
suddenly heralded, and threw Lutetia into a convulsion of expectation.
The unparallelled artist arrived, and—all Paris fell at once at his
feet.
II
Now it
is a well-known fact that a superstition born in the dark days of mediæval
superstition, and surviving almost to the middle of the present century,
attributed all such abnormal, out-of-the-way talent as that of Paganini
to “supernatural” agency. Every great and marvellous artist had been
accused in his day of dealings with the devil. A few instances will
suffice to refresh the reader’s memory.
Tartini, the great composer and violinist of the XVIIth century,
was denounced as one who got his best inspirations from the Evil One,
with whom he was, it was said, in regular league. This accusation was,
of course, due to the almost magical impression he produced upon his
audiences. His inspired performance on the violin secured for him in his
native country the title of “Master of Nations.” The Sonate du
Diable, also called “Tartini’s Dream”—as every one who
has heard it will be ready to testify—is the most weird melody ever
heard or invented: hence, the marvellous composition has become the
source of endless legends Nor were they entirely baseless, since it was
he, himself; who was shown to have originated them. Tartini confessed to
having written it on awakening from a dream, in which he had heard his
sonata performed by Satan, for his benefit, and in consequence of a
bargain made with his infernal majesty.
Several famous singers, even, whose exceptional voices struck the
hearers with superstitious admiration, have not escaped a like
accusation. Pasta’s splendid voice was attributed in her day to the
fact that three months before her birth, the diva’s mother was carried
during a trance to heaven, and there treated to a vocal concert of
seraphs. Malibran was indebted for her voice to St. Cecilia, while
others said she owed it to a demon who watched over her cradle and sang
the baby to sleep. Finally, Paganini—the unrivalled performer, the
mean Italian, who like Dryden’s Jubal striking on the “chorded
shell” forced the throngs that followed him to worship the divine
sounds produced, and made people say that “less than a God could not
dwell within the hollow of his violin”—Paganini left a legend too.
The almost supernatural art of the greatest violin-player that
the world has ever known was often speculated upon, never understood.
The effect produced by him on his audience was literally marvellous,
overpowering. The great Rossini is said to have wept like a senthental
German maiden on hearing him play for the first the. The Princess Elisa
of Lucca, a sister of the great Napoleon, in whose service Paganini was,
as director of her private orchestra, for a long the was unable to hear
him play without fainting. In women he produced nervous fits and
hysterics at his will; stout-hearted men he drove to frenzy. He changed
cowards into heroes and made the bravest soldiers feel like so many
nervous schoolgirls. Is it to be wondered at, then, that hundreds of
weird tales circulated for long years about and around the mysterious
Genoese, that modern Orpheus of Europe? One of these was especially
ghastly. It was rumoured, and was believed by more people than would
probably like to confess it, that the strings of his violin were made of
human intestines, according to all the rules and requirements of the
Black Art.
Exaggerated as this idea may seem to some, it has nothing
impossible in it; and it is more than probable that it was this legend
that led to the extraordinary events which we are about to narrate.
Human organs are often used by the Eastern Black Magician, so-called,
and it is an averred fact that some Bengâlî Tântrikas (reciters of tantras,
or “invocations to the demon,” as a reverend writer has described
them) use human corpses, and certain internal and external organs
pertaining to them, as powerful magical agents for bad purposes.
However this may be, now that the magnetic and mesmeric potencies
of hypnotism are recognized as facts by most physicians, it may be
suggested with less danger than heretofore that the extraordinary
effects of Paganini’s violin-playing were not, perhaps, entirely due
to his talent and genius. The wonder and awe he so easily excited were
as much caused by his external appearance, “which had something weird
and demoniacal in it,” according to certain of his biographers, as by
the inexpressible charm of his execution and his remarkable mechanical
skill. The latter is demonstrated by his perfect imitation of the
flageolet, and his performance of long and magnificent melodies on the G
string alone. In this performance, which many an artist has tried to
copy without success, he remains unrivalled to this day.
It is owing to this remarkable appearance of his—termed by his
friends eccentric, and by his too nervous victims, diabolical—that he
experienced great difficulties in refuting certain ugly rumours. These
were credited far more easily in his day than they would be now. It was
whispered throughout Italy, and even in his own native town, that
Paganini had murdered his wife, and, later on, a mistress, both of whom
he had loved passionately, and both of whom he had not hesitated to
sacrifice to his fiendish ambition. He had made himself proficient in
magic arts, it was asserted, and had succeeded thereby in imprisoning
the souls of his two victims in his violin—his famous Cremona.
It is maintained by the immediate friends of Ernest T. W.
Hoffmann, the celebrated author of Die Elixire des Teufels,
Meister Martin, and other charming and mystical tales, that
Councillor Crespel, in the Violin of Cremona, was taken
from the legend about Paganini. It is, as all who have read it know, the
history of a celebrated violin, into which the voice and the soul of a
famous diva, a woman whom Crespel had loved and killed, had passed, and
to which was added the voice of his beloved daughter, Antonia.
Nor was this superstition utterly ungrounded, nor was Hoffmann to
be blamed for adopting it, after he had heard Paganini’s playing. The
extraordinary facility with which the artist drew out of his instrument,
not only the most unearthly sounds, but positively human voices,
justified the suspicion. Such effects might well have startled an
audience and thrown terror into many a nervous heart. Add to this the
impenetrable mystery connected with a certain period of Paganini’s
youth, and the most wild tales about him must be found in a measure
justifiable, and even excusable; especially among a nation whose
ancestors knew the Borgias and the Medicis of Black Art fame.
III
In
those pre-telegraphic days, newspapers were limited, and the wings of
fame had a heavier flight than they have now.
Franz had hardly heard of Paganini; and when he did, he swore he
would rival, if not eclipse, the Genoese magician. Yes, he would either
become the most famous of all living violinists, or he would break his
instrument and put an end to his life at the same the.
Old Klaus rejoiced at such a determination. He rubbed his hands
in glee, and jumping about on his lame leg like a crippled satyr, he
flattered and incensed his pupil, believing himself all the while to be
performing a sacred duty to the holy and majestic cause of art.
Upon first setting foot in Paris, three years before, Franz had
all but failed. Musical critics pronounced him a rising star, but had
all agreed that he required a few more years’ practice, before he
could hope to carry his audiences by storm. Therefore, after a desperate
study of over two years and uninterrupted preparations, the Styrian
artist had finally made himself ready for his first serious appearance
in the great Opera House where a public concert before the most exacting
critics of the old world was to be held; at this critical moment
Paganini’s arrival in the European metropolis placed an obstacle in
the way of the realization of his hopes, and the old German professor
wisely postponed his pupil’s début. At first he had simply
smiled at the wild enthusiasm, the laudatory hymns sung about the
Genoese violinist, and the almost superstitious awe with which his name
was pronounced. But very soon Paganini’s name became a burning iron in
the hearts of both the artists. and a threatening phantom in the mind of
Klaus. A few days more, and they shuddered at the very mention of their
great rival, whose success became with every night more unprecedented.
The first series of concerts was over, but neither Klaus nor
Franz had as yet had an opportunity of hearing him and of judging for
themselves. So great and so beyond their means was the charge for
admission, and so small the hope of getting a free pass from a brother
artist justly regarded as the meanest of men in monetary transactions,
that they had to wait for a chance, as did so many others. But the day
came when neither master nor pupil could control their impatience any
longer; so they pawned their watches, and with the proceeds bought two
modest seats.
Who can describe the enthusiasm, the triumphs, of this famous and
at the same the fatal night! The audience was frantic; men wept and
women screamed and fainted; while both Klaus and Stenio sat looking
paler than two ghosts. At the first touch of Paganini’s magic bow,
both Franz and Samuel felt as if the icy hand of death had touched them.
Carried away by an irresistible enthusiasm, which turned into a violent,
unearthly mental torture, they dared neither look into each other’s
faces, nor exchange one word during the whole performance.
At midnight, while the chosen delegates of the Musical Societies
and the Conservatory of Paris unhitched the horses, and dragged the
carriage of the grand artist home in triumph, the two Germans returned
to their modest lodging and it was a pitiful sight to see them. Mournful
and desperate, they placed themselves in their usual seats at the fire
corner, and neither for a while opened his mouth
“Samuel!” at last exclaimed Franz, pale as death itself.
“Samuel—it remains for us now but to die! . . . Do you hear me? . .
. We are worthless! We were two madmen to have ever hoped that any one
in this world would ever rival . . . him!”
The name of Paganini stuck in his throat, as in utter despair he
fell into his arm chair.
The old professor’s wrinkles suddenly became purple. His little
greenish eyes gleamed phosphorescently as, bending toward his pupil, he
whispered to him in hoarse and broken tones:
“Nein, nein! Thou art wrong, my Franz! I have taught
thee, and thou hast learned all of the great art that a simple mortal,
and a Christian by baptism, can learn from another simple mortal. Am I
to blame because these accursed Italians, in order to reign unequalled
in the domain of art, have recourse to Satan and the diabolical effects
of Black Magic?”
Franz turned his eyes upon his old master. There was a sinister
light burning in those glittering orbs; a light telling plainly, that,
to secure such a power, he, too, would not scruple to sell himself, body
and soul, to the Evil One.
But he said not a word, and, turning his eyes from his old master
s face, he gazed dreamily at the dying embers.
The same long-forgotten incoherent dreams, which, after seeming
such realities to him in his younger days, had been given up entirely,
and had gradually faded from his mind, now crowded back into it with the
same force and vividness as of old. The grimacing shades of Ixion,
Sisyphus and Tantalus resurrected and stood before him, saying:
“What matters hell—in which thou believest not. And even if
hell there be, it is the hell described by the old Greeks, not that of
the modern bigots—a locality full of conscious shadows, to whom thou
canst be a second Orpheus.”
Franz felt that he was going mad, and, turning instinctively, he
looked his old master once more right in the face. Then his bloodshot
eye evaded the gaze of Klaus.
Whether Samuel understood the terrible state of mind of his
pupil, or whether he wanted to draw him out, to make him speak, and thus
to divert his thoughts, must remain as hypothetical to the reader as it
is to the writer. Whatever may have been in his mind, the German
enthusiast went on, speaking with a feigned calmness:
“Franz, my dear boy, I tell you that the art of the accursed
Italian is not natural; that it is due neither to study nor to genius.
It never was acquired in the usual, natural way. You need not stare at
me in that wild manner, for what I say is in the mouth of millions of
people. Listen to what I now tell you, and try to understand. You have
heard the strange tale whispered about the famous Tartini? He died one
fine Sabbath night, strangled by his familiar demon, who had taught him
how to endow his violin with a human voice, by shutting up in it, by
means of incantations, the soul of a young virgin. Paganini did more. In
order to endow his instrument with the faculty of emitting human sounds,
such as sobs, despairing cries, supplications, moans of love and
fury—in short, the most heart-rending notes of the human voice—Paganini
became the murderer not only of his wife and his mistress, but also of a
friend, who was more tenderly attached to him than any other being on
this earth. He then made the four chords of his magic violin out of the
intestines of his last victim. This is the secret of his enchanting
talent, of that overpowering melody, that combination of sounds, which
you will never be able to master, unless . . .”
The old man could not finish the sentence. He staggered back
before the fiendish look of his pupil, and covered his face with his
hands.
Franz was breathing heavily, and his eyes had an expression which
reminded Klaus of those of a hyena. His pallor was cadaverous. For some
the he could not speak, but only gasped for breath. At last he slowly
muttered:
“Are you in earnest?”
“I am, as I hope to help you.’`
“And . . . and do you really believe that had I only the means
of obtaining human intestines for strings, I could rival Paganini?”
asked Franz, after a moment’s pause, and casting down his eyes.
The old German unveiled his face, and, with a strange look of
determination upon it, softly answered:
“Human intestines alone are not sufficient for our purpose;
they must have belonged to some one who had loved us well, with an
unselfish holy love. Tartini endowed his violin with the life of a
virgin; but that virgin had died of unrequited love for him. The
fiendish artist had prepared beforehand a tube, in which he managed to
catch her last breath as she expired, pronouncing his beloved name, and
he then transferred this breath to his violin. As to Paganini I have
just told you his tale. It was with the consent of his victim, though,
that he murdered him to get possession of his intestines.
“Oh, for the power of the human voice!” Samuel went on, after
a brief pause. “What can equal the eloquence, the magic spell of the
human voice? Do you think, my poor boy, I would not have taught you this
great, this final secret, were it not that it throws one right into the
clutches of him . . . who must remain unnamed at night?” he added,
with a sudden return to the superstitions of his youth.
Franz did not answer; but with a calmness awful to behold, he
left his place, took down his violin from the wall where it was hanging,
and, with one powerful grasp of the chords, he tore them out and flung
them into the fire.
Samuel suppressed a cry of horror. The chords were hissing upon
the coals, where, among the blazing logs, they wriggled and curled like
so many living snakes.
“By the witches of Thessaly and the dark arts of Circe!” he
exclaimed, with foaming mouth and his eyes burning like coals; “by the
Furies of Hell and Pluto himself, I now swear, in thy presence, O
Samuel, my master, never to touch a violin again until I can string it
with four human chords. May I be accursed for ever and ever if I do!”
He fell senseless on the floor, with a deep sob, that ended like a
funeral wail; old Samuel lifted him up as he would have lifted a child,
and carried him to his bed. Then he sallied forth in search of a
physician.
IV
For
several days after this painful scene Franz was very ill, ill almost
beyond recovery. The physician declared him to be suffering from brain
fever and said that the worst was to be feared. For nine long days the
patient remained delirious; and Klaus, who was nursing him night and day
with the solicitude of the tenderest mother, was horrified at the work
of his own hands. For the first the since their acquaintance began, the
old teacher, owing to the wild ravings of his pupil, was able to
penetrate into the darkest corners of that weird, superstitious, cold,
and, at the same the, passionate nature; and—he trembled at what he
discovered. For he saw that which he had failed to perceive
before—Franz as he was in reality, and not as he seemed to superficial
observers. Music was the life of the young man, and adulation was the
air he breathed, without which that life became a burden; from the
chords of his violin alone, Stenio drew his life and being, but the
applause of men and even of Gods was necessary to its support. He saw
unveiled before his eves a genuine, artistic, earthly soul,
with its divine counterpart totally absent, a son of the Muses, all
fancy and brain poetry, but without a heart. While listening to the
ravings of that delirious and unhinged fancy Klaus felt as if he were
for the first the in his long life exploring a marvellous and
untravelled region, a human nature not of this world but of some
incomplete planet. He saw all this, and shuddered. More than once he
asked himself whether it would not be doing a kindness to his “boy”
to let him die before he returned to consciousness.
But he loved his pupil too well to dwell for long on such an
idea. Franz had bewitched his truly artistic nature, and now old Klaus
felt as though their two lives were inseparably linked together. That he
could thus feel was a revelation to the old man; so he decided to save
Franz, even at the expense of his own old, and, as he thought, useless
life.
The seventh day of the illness brought on a most terrible crisis.
For twenty-four hours the patient never closed his eyes, nor remained
for a moment silent; he raved continuously during the whole the. His
visions were peculiar, and he minutely described each. Fantastic,
ghastly figures kept slowly swimming out of the penumbra of his small,
dark room, in regular and uninterrupted procession, and he greeted each
by name as he might greet old acquaintances. He referred to himself as
Prometheus, bound to the rock by four bands made of human intestines. At
the foot of the Caucasian Mount the black waters of the river Styx were
running . . . They had deserted Arcadia, and were now endeavouring to
encircle within a sevenfold embrace the rock upon which he was suffering
. . .
“Wouldst thou know the name of the Promethean rock, old man?”
he roared into his adopted father’s ear . . . “Listen then . . . its
name is . . . called . . . Samuel Klaus . . .”
“Yes, yes! . . .” the German murmured disconsolately. “It
is I who killed him, while seeking to console. The news of Paganini’s
magic arts struck his fancy too vividly . . . Oh, my poor, poor boy!”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” The patient broke into a loud and
discordant laugh. “Aye, poor old man, sayest thou? . . . So, so, thou
art of poor stuff, anyhow, and wouldst look well only when stretched
upon a fine Cremona violin! . . .”
Klaus shuddered, but said nothing. He only bent over the poor
maniac, and with a kiss upon his brow, a caress as tender and as gentle
as that of a doting mother, he left the sickroom for a few instants, to
seek relief in his own garret. When he returned, the ravings were
following another channel. Franz was singing, trying to imitate the
sounds of a violin.
Toward the evening of that day, the delirium of the sick man
became perfectly ghastly. He saw spirits of fire clutching at his
violin. Their skeleton hands, from each finger of which grew a flaming
claw, beckoned to old Samuel . . . They approached and surrounded the
old master, and were preparing to rip him open . . . him, “the only
man on this earth who loves me with an unselfish, holy love, and . . .
whose intestines can be of any good at all!” he went on whispering,
with glaring eyes and demon laugh . . .
By the next morning, however, the fever had disappeared, and by
the end of the ninth day Stenio had left his bed, having no recollection
of his illness, and no suspicion that he had allowed Klaus to read his
inner thought. Nay; had he himself any knowledge that such a horrible
idea as the sacrifice of his old master to his ambition had ever entered
his mind? Hardly. The only immediate result of his fatal illness was,
that as, by reason of his vow, his artistic passion could find no issue,
another passion awoke, which might avail to feed his ambition and his
insatiable fancy. He plunged headlong into the study of the Occult Arts,
of Alchemy and of Magic. In the practice of Magic the young dreamer
sought to stifle the voice of his passionate longing for his, as he
thought, forever lost violin . . .
Weeks and months passed away, and the conversation about Paganini
was never resumed between the master and the pupil. But a profound
melancholy had taken possession of Franz, the two hardly exchanged a
word, the violin hung mute, chordless, full of dust, in its habitual
place. It was as the presence of a soulless corpse between them.
The young man had become gloomy and sarcastic, even avoiding the
mention of music. Once, as his old professor, after long hesitation,
took out his own violin from its dust-covered case and prepared to play,
Franz gave a convulsive shudder, but said nothing. At the first notes of
the bow, however, he glared like a madman, and rushing out of the house,
remained for hours, wandering in the streets. Then old Samuel in his
turn threw his instrument down, and locked himself up in his room till
the following morning.
One night as Franz sat, looking particularly pale and gloomy, old
Samuel suddenly jumped from his seat, and after hopping about the room
in a magpie fashion, approached his pupil, imprinted a fond kiss upon
the young man’s brow, and squeaked at the top of his shrill voice:
“Is it not the to put an end to all this?” . . .
Whereupon, starting from his usual lethargy, Franz echoed, as in
a dream:
“Yes, it is the to put an end to this.”
Upon which the two separated, and went to bed.
On the following morning, when Franz awoke, he was astonished not
to see his old teacher in his usual place to greet him. But he had
greatly altered during the last few months, and he at first paid no
attention to his absence, unusual as it was. He dressed and went into
the adjoining room, a little parlour where they had their meals, and
which separated their two bedrooms. The fire had not been lighted since
the embers had died out on the previous night, and no sign was anywhere
visible of the professor’s busy hand in his usual housekeeping duties.
Greatly puzzled, but in no way dismayed, Franz took his usual place at
the corner of the now cold fire-place, and fell into an aimless reverie.
As he stretched himself in his old arm-chair, raising both his hands to
clasp them behind his head in a favourite posture of his, his hand came
into contact with something on a shelf at his back; he knocked against a
case, and brought it violently on the ground.
It was old Klaus’ violin-case that came down to the floor with
such a sudden crash that the case opened and the violin fell out of it,
rolling to the feet of Franz. And then the chords, striking against the
brass fender emitted a sound, prolonged, sad and mournful as the sigh of
an unrestful soul; it seemed to fill the whole room, and reverberated in
the head and the very heart of the young man. The effect of that broken
violin-string was magical.
“Samuel!” cried Stenio, with his eyes starting from their
sockets, and an unknown terror suddenly taking possession of his whole
being. “Samuel! what has happened? . . . My good, my dear old
master!” he called out, hastening to the professor’s little room,
and throwing the door violently open. No one answered, all was silent
within.
He staggered back, frightened at the sound of his own voice, so
changed and hoarse it seemed to him at this moment. No reply came in
response to his call. Naught followed but a dead silence . . . that
stillness which, in the domain of sounds, usually denotes death. In the
presence of a corpse, as in the lugubrious stillness of a tomb, such
silence acquires a mysterious power, which strikes the sensitive soul
with a nameless terror . . . The little room was dark, and Franz
hastened to open the shutters.
Samuel was lying on his bed, cold, stiff, and lifeless . . . At
the sight of the corpse of him who had loved him so well, and had been
to him more than a father, Franz experienced a dreadful revulsion of
feeling, a terrible shock. But the ambition of the fanatical artist got
the better of the despair of the man, and smothered the feelings of the
latter in a few seconds.
A note bearing his own name was conspicuously placed upon a table
near the corpse. With trembling hand, the violinist tore open the
envelope, and read the following:
MY BELOVED SON, FRANZ,
When you read this, I shall have made the greatest sacrifice,
that your best and only friend and teacher could have accomplished for
your fame. He, who loved you most, is now but an inanimate lump of clay.
Of your old teacher there now remains but a clod of cold organic matter.
I need not prompt you as to what you have to do with it. Fear not stupid
prejudices. It is for your future fame that I have made an offering of
my body, and you would be guilty of the blackest ingratitude were you
now to render useless this sacrifice. When you shall have replaced the
chords upon your violin, and these chords a portion of my own self,
under your touch it will acquire the power of that accursed sorcerer,
all the magic voices of Paganini’s instrument. You will find therein
my voice, my sighs and groans, my song of welcome, the prayerful sobs of
my infinite and sorrowful sympathy, my love for you. And now, my Franz,
fear nobody! Take your instrument with you, and dog the steps of him who
filled our lives with bitterness and despair! . . . Appear in every
arena, where, hitherto, he has reigned without a rival, and bravely
throw the gauntlet of defiance in his face. O Franz! then only wilt thou
hear with what a magic power the full notes of unselfish love will issue
forth from thy violin. Perchance, with a last caressing touch of its
chords, thou wilt remember that they once formed a portion of thine old
teacher, who now embraces and blesses thee for the last time.
SAMUEL.
Two burning tears sparkled in the eyes of Franz, but they dried
up instantly. Under the fiery rush of passionate hope and pride, the two
orbs of the future magician-artist, riveted to the ghastly face of the
dead man, shone like the eyes of a demon.
Our pen refuses to describe that which took place on that day,
after the legal inquiry was over. As another note, written with the view
of satisfying the authorities, had been prudently provided by the loving
care of the old teacher, the verdict was, “Suicide from causes
unknown”; after this the coroner and the police retired, leaving the
bereaved heir alone in the death room, with the remains of that which
had once been a living man.
Scarcely a fortnight had elapsed from that day, ere the violin
had been dusted, and four new, stout strings had been stretched upon it.
Franz dared not look at them. He tried to play, but the bow trembled in
his hand like a dagger in the grasp of a novice-brigand. He then
determined not to try again, until the portentous night should arrive,
when he should have a chance of rivalling, nay, of surpassing, Paganini.
The famous violinist had meanwhile left Paris, and was giving a
series of triumphant concerts at an old Flemish town in Belgium.
V
One
night, as Paganini, surrounded by a crowd of admirers, was sitting in
the dining-room of the hotel at which he was staying, a visiting card,
with a few words written on it in pencil, was handed to him by a young
man with wild and staring eyes.
Fixing upon the intruder a look which few persons could bear, but
receiving back a glance as calm and determined as his own, Paganini
slightly bowed, and then dryly said:
“Sir, it shall be as you desire. Name the night. I am at your
service.”
On the following morning the whole town was startled by the
appearance of bills posted at the corner of every street, and bearing
the strange notice:
On the night of . . ., at the Grand Theatre of .
. ., and for the first the, will appear before the public, Franz Stenio,
a German violinist, arrived purposely to throw down the gauntlet to the
world-famous Paganini and to challenge him to a duel—upon their
violins. He purposes to compete with the great “virtuoso” in the
execution of the most difficult of his compositions. The famous Paganini
has accepted the challenge. Franz Stenio will play, in competition with
the unrivalled violinist, the celebrated “Fantaisie Caprice” of the
latter, known as “The Witches.”
The effect of the notice was magical. Paganini, who, and his
greatest triumphs, never lost sight of a profitable speculation, doubled
the usual price of admission, but still the theatre could not hold the
crowds that flocked to secure tickets for that memorable performance.
*
* *
At last
the morning of the concert day dawned, and the “duel” was in
everyone’s mouth. Franz Stenio, who, instead of sleeping, had passed
the whole long hours of the preceding midnight in walking up and down
his room like an encaged panther, had, toward morning, fallen on his bed
from mere physical exhaustion. Gradually he passed into a deathlike and
dreamless slumber. At the gloomy winter dawn he awoke, but finding it
too early to rise he fell asleep again. And then he had a vivid
dream—so vivid indeed, so lifelike, that from its terrible realism he
felt sure that it was a vision rather than a dream.
He had left his violin on a table by his bedside, locked in its
case, the key of which never left him. Since he had strung it with those
terrible chords he never let it out of his sight for a moment. In
accordance with his resolution he had not touched it since his first
trial, and his bow had never but once touched the human strings, for he
had since always practised on another instrument. But now in his sleep
he saw himself looking at the locked case. Something in it was
attracting his attention, and he found himself incapable of detaching
his eyes from it. Suddenly he saw the upper part of the case slowly
rising, and, within the chink thus produced, he perceived two small,
phosphorescent green eyes—eyes but too familiar to him—fixing
themselves on his, lovingly, almost beseechingly. Then a thin, shrill
voice, as if issuing from these ghastly orbs—the voice and orbs of
Samuel Klaus himself—resounded in Stenio’s horrified ear, and he
heard it say:
“Franz, my beloved boy . . . Franz, I cannot, no I cannot
separate myself from . . . them!”
And “they” twanged piteously inside the case.
Franz stood speechless, horror-bound. He felt his blood actually
freezing, and his hair moving and standing erect on his head . . .
“It’s but a dream, an empty dream!” he attempted to
formulate in his mind.
“I have tried my best, Franzchen . . . I have tried my best to
sever myself from these accursed strings, without pulling them to pieces
. . .” pleaded the same shrill, familiar voice. “Wilt thou help me
to do so? . . .”
Another twang, still more prolonged and dismal, resounded within
the case, now dragged about the table in every direction, by some
interior power, like some living, wriggling thing, the twangs becoming
sharper and more Jerky with every new pull.
It was not for the first the that Stenio heard those sounds. He
had often remarked them before—indeed, ever since he had used his
master’s viscera as a footstool for his own ambition. But on every
occasion a feeling of creeping horror had prevented him from
investigating their cause, and he had tried to assure himself that the
sounds were only a hallucination.
But now he stood face to face with the terrible fact whether in
dream or in reality he knew not, nor did he care, since the
hallucination—if hallucination it were—was far more real and vivid
than any reality. He tried to speak, to take a step forward; but, as
often happens in nightmares, he could neither utter a word nor move a
finger . . . He felt hopelessly paralyzed.
The pulls and jerks were becoming more desperate with each
moment, and at last something inside the case snapped violently. The
vision of his Stradivarius, devoid of its magical strings, flashed
before his eyes throwing him into a cold sweat of mute and unspeakable
terror.
He made a superhuman effort to rid himself of the incubus that
held him spell-bound. But as the last supplicating whisper of the
invisible Presence repeated:
“Do, oh, do . . . help me to cut myself off—”
Franz sprang to the case with one bound, like an enraged tiger
defending its prey, and with one frantic effort breaking the spell.
“Leave the violin alone, you old fiend from hell!” he cried,
in hoarse and trembling tones.
He violently shut down the self-raising lid, and while firmly
pressing his left hand on it, he seized with the right a piece of rosin
from the table and drew on the leather-covered top the sign of the
six-pointed star—the seal used by King Solomon to bottle up the
rebellious djins inside their prisons.
A wail, like the howl of a she-wolf moaning over her dead little
ones, came out of the violin-case:
“Thou art ungrateful . . . very ungrateful, my Franz!” sobbed
the blubbering “spirit-voice.” “But I forgive . . . for I still
love thee well. Yet thou canst not shut me in . . . boy. Behold!”
And instantly a grayish mist spread over and covered case and
table, and rising upward formed itself first into an indistinct shape.
Then it began growing, and as it grew, Franz felt himself gradually
enfolded in cold and damp coils, slimy as those of a huge snake. He gave
a terrible cry and—awoke; but, strangely enough, not on his bed, but
near the table, just as he had dreamed, pressing the violin case
desperately with both his hands.
“It was but a dream . . . after all,” he muttered, still
terrified, but relieved of the load on his heaving breast.
With a tremendous effort he composed himself, and unlocked the
case to inspect the violin. He found it covered with dust, but otherwise
sound and in order, and he suddenly felt himself as cool and as
determined as ever. Having dusted the instrument he carefully rosined
the bow, tightened the strings and tuned them. He even went so far as to
try upon it the first notes of the “Witches”; first cautiously and
timidly, then using his bow boldly and with full force.
The sound of that loud, solitary note—defiant as the war
trumpet of a conqueror, sweet and majestic as the touch of a seraph on
his golden harp in the fancy of the faithful—thrilled through the very
soul of Franz. It revealed to him a hitherto unsuspected potency in his
bow, which ran on in strains that filled the room with the richest swell
of melody, unheard by the artist until that night. Commencing in
uninterrupted legato tones, his bow sang to him of sun-bright
hope and beauty, of moonlit nights, when the soft and balmy stillness
endowed every blade of grass and all things animate and inanimate with a
voice and a song of love. For a few brief moments it was a torrent of
melody, the harmony of which, “tuned to soft woe,” was calculated to
make mountains weep, had there been any in the room, and to soothe
.
. . even th’ inexorable powers of hell,
the
presence of which was undeniably felt in this modest hotel room.
Suddenly, the solemn legato chant, contrary to all laws of
harmony, quivered, became arpeggios, and ended in shrill staccatos,
like the notes of a hyena laugh. The same creeping sensation of terror,
as he had before felt, came over him, and Franz threw the bow away. He
had recognized the familiar laugh, and would have no more of it.
Dressing, he locked the bedevilled violin securely in its case, and,
taking it with him to the dining-room, determined to await quietly the
hour of trial.
VI
The
terrible hour of the struggle had come, and Stenio was at his
post—calm, resolute, almost smiling.
The theatre was crowded to suffocation, and there was not even
standing room to be got for any amount of hard cash or favouritism. The
singular challenge had reached every quarter to which the post could
carry it, and gold flowed freely into Paganini’s unfathomable pockets,
to an extent almost satisfying even to his insatiate and venal soul.
It was arranged that Paganini should begin. When he appeared upon
the stage, the thick walls of the theatre shook to their foundations
with the applause that greeted him. He began and ended his famous
composition “The Witches” and a storm of cheers. The shouts of
public enthusiasm lasted so long that Franz began to think his turn
would never come. When, at last, Paganini, and the roaring applause of a
frantic public, was allowed to retire behind the scenes, his eye fell
upon Stenio, who was tuning his violin, and he felt amazed at the serene
calmness, the air of assurance, of the unknown German artist.
When Franz approached the footlights, he was received with icy
coldness. But for all that, he did not feel in the least disconcerted.
He looked very pale, but his thin white lips wore a scornful smile as
response to this dumb unwelcome. He was sure of his triumph.
At the first notes of the prelude of “The Witches” a thrill
of astonishment passed over the audience. It was Paganini’s touch,
and—it was something more. Some—and they were the majority—thought
that never, in his best moments of inspiration, had the Italian artist
himself, in executing that diabolical composition of his, exhibited such
an extraordinary diabolical power. Under the pressure of the long
muscular fingers of Franz, the chords shivered like the palpitating
intestines of a disembowelled victim under the vivisector’s knife.
They moaned melodiously, like a dying child. The large blue eye of the
artist, fixed with a satanic expression upon the sounding-board, seemed
to summon forth Orpheus himself from the infernal regions, rather than
the musical notes supposed to be generated in the depths of the violin.
Sounds seemed to transform themselves into objective shapes, thickly and
precipitately gathering as at the evocation of a mighty magician, and to
be whirling around him, like a host of fantastic, infernal figures,
dancing the witches’ “goat dance.” In the empty depths of the
shadowy background of the stage, behind the artist, a nameless
phantasmagoria, produced by the concussion of unearthly vibrations,
seemed to form pictures of shameless orgies, of the voluptuous hymens of
a real witches’ Sabbat . . . A collective hallucination took hold of
the public. Panting for breath, ghastly, and trickling with the icy
perspiration of an inexpressible horror, they sat spellbound, and unable
to break the spell of the music by the slightest motion. They
experienced all the illicit enervating delights of the paradise of
Mahommed, that come into the disordered fancy of an opium-eating
Mussulman, and felt at the same the the abject terror, the agony of one
who struggles against an attack of delirium tremens . . . Many
ladies shrieked aloud others fainted, and strong men gnashed their teeth
in a state of utter helplessness. . . .
Then came the finale. Thundering uninterrupted applause
delayed its beginning, expanding the momentary pause to a duration of
almost a quarter of an hour. The bravos were furious, almost hysterical.
At last, when after a profound and last bow, Stenio, whose smile was as
sardonic as it was triumphant, lifted his bow to attack the famous finale
his eye fell upon Paganini, who, calmly seated in the manager’s box,
had been behind none in zealous applause. The small and piercing black
eyes of the Genoese artist were riveted to the Stradivarius in the hands
of Franz, but otherwise he seemed quite cool and unconcerned. His
rival’s face troubled him for one short instant, but he regained his
self-possession and, lifting once more his bow, drew the first note.
Then the public enthusiasm reached its acme, and soon knew no
bounds. The listeners heard and saw indeed. The witches’ voices
resounded in the air, and beyond all the other voices, one voice was
heard—
Discordant,
and unlike to human sounds;
It
seem’d of dogs the bark, of wolves the howl;
The
doleful screechings of the midnight owl;
The
hiss of snakes, the hungry lion’s roar;
The
sounds of billows beating on the shore;
The
groan of winds among the leafy wood,
And
burst of thunder from the rending cloud,—
’Twas
these, all these in one . . .
The magic bow was drawing forth its last quivering
sounds—famous among prodigious musical feats—imitating the
precipitate flight of the witches before bright dawn; of the unholy
women saturated with the fumes of their nocturnal Saturnalia, when—a
strange thing came to pass on the stage. Without the slightest
transition, the notes suddenly changed. In their aerial flight of
ascension and descent, their melody was unexpectedly altered in
character. The sounds became confused, scattered, disconnected . . . and
then—it seemed from the sounding-board of the violin—came out
squeaking jarring tones, like those of a street Punch, screaming at the
top of a senile voice:
“Art thou satisfied, Franz, my boy? . . . Have not I gloriously
kept my promise, eh?”
The spell was broken. Though still unable to realize the whole
situation, those who heard the voice and the Punchinello-like tones,
were freed, as by enchantment, from the terrible charm under which they
had been held. Loud roars of laughter, mocking exclamations of
half-anger and half-irritation were now heard from every corner of the
vast theatre. The musicians in the orchestra, with faces still blanched
from weird emotion, were now seen shaking with laughter, and the whole
audience rose, like one man, from their seats, unable yet to solve the
enigma; they felt, nevertheless, too disgusted, too disposed to laugh to
remain one moment longer in the building.
But suddenly the sea of moving heads in the stalls and the pit
became once more motionless, and stood petrified as though struck by
lightning. What all saw was terrible enough—the handsome though wild
face of the young artist suddenly aged, and his graceful, erect figure
bent down, as though under the weight of years; but this was nothing to
that which some of the most sensitive clearly perceived. Franz
Stenio’s person was now entirely enveloped in a semi-transparent mist,
cloudlike, creeping with serpentine motion, and gradually tightening
round the living form, as though ready to engulf him. And there were
those also who discerned in this tall and ominous pillar of smoke a
clearly-defined figure, a form showing the unmistakable outlines of a
grotesque and grinning, but terribly awful-looking old man, whose
viscera were protruding and the ends of the intestines stretched on the
violin.
Within this hazy, quivering veil, the violinist was then seen,
driving his bow furiously across the human chords, with the contortions
of a demoniac, as we see them represented on mediæval cathedral
paintings!
An indescribable panic swept over the audience, and breaking now,
for the last the, through the spell which had again bound them
motionless, every living creature in the theatre made one mad rush
towards the door. It was like the sudden outburst of a dam, a human
torrent, roaring and a shower of discordant notes, idiotic squeakings,
prolonged and whining moans, cacophonous cries of frenzy, above which,
like the detonations of pistol shots, was heard the consecutive bursting
of the four strings stretched upon the sound-board of that bewitched
violin.
*
* *
When
the theatre was emptied of the last man of the audience, the terrified
manager rushed on the stage in search of the unfortunate performer. He
was found dead and already stiff, behind the footlights, twisted up into
the most unnatural of postures, with the “catguts” wound curiously
around his neck, and his violin shattered into a thousand fragments . .
.
When it became publicly known that the unfortunate would-be rival
of Nicolo Paganini had not left a cent to pay for his funeral or his
hotel bill, the Genoese, his proverbial meanness notwithstanding,
settled the hotel-bill and had poor Stenio buried at his own expense.
He claimed, however, in exchange, the fragments of the
Stradivarius—as a memento of the strange event.
<<---
From Your Dark Side
