ceremonies. To moulder under marble, or to moulder
under clay, 'tis still to moulder. To have around one's bier
children in red and children in blue, or to have not a creature,
what matters it? And then, look at this wrist, it was stiff as the
devil; the ten fingers, they were so many sticks fastened into a
metacarpus made of wood; and these muscles were like old strings of
catgut, drier, stiffer, harder to bend than if that they had been
used for a turner's wheel; but I have so twisted and broken and
bent them. What, thou wilt not go? And I say that thou shalt....

[And at this, with his right hand he seized the fingers and wrist
of his left hand, and turned them first up and then down. The
extremity of the fingers touched the arm, till the joints cracked
again. I was afraid every instant that the bones would remain
dislocated.]

_I._--Take care, you will do yourself a mischief.

_He._--Don't be afraid, they are used to it. For ten years I have
given it them in a very different style. They had to accustom
themselves to it, however they liked it, and to learn to find their
place on the keys and to leap over the strings. So now they go
where they must.

[At the same moment he threw himself into the attitude of a
violin-player; he hummed an allegro of Locatelli's; his right arm
imitated the movement of the bow; his left hand and his fingers
seemed to be feeling along the handle. If he makes a false note, he
stops, tightens or slackens his string, and strikes it with his
nail, to make sure of its being in tune, and then takes up the
piece where he left off. He beats time with his foot, moves his
head, his feet, his hands, his arms, his body, as you may have seen
Ferrari or Chiabran, or some other virtuoso in the same
convulsions, presenting the image of the same torture, and giving
me nearly as much pain; for is it not a painful thing to watch the
torture of a man who is busy painting pleasure for my benefit? Draw
a curtain to hide the man from me, if he must show me the spectacle
of a victim on the rack. In the midst of all these agitations and
cries, if there occurred one of those harmonious passages where the
bow moves slowly over several of the strings at once, his face put
on an air of ecstasy, his voice softened, he listened to himself