ence was barely earned by giving lessons to females, young and
old, who, while inflicting prolonged tortures on their victim, still
exacted the tribute of smiles and compliments.

Weakened and ill, I shuddered to think of returning and bowing my neck
once more to that detested yoke.

"No! I'll never go back to that!" I cried, jumping up. "I'll sooner earn
a precarious livelihood by turning fisherman in this island! Any labor
will be preferable to that daily renewing torture." I seized my violin
in a desperate clutch, and feverishly leant over the wall, where I could
hear the dirge-like boom of the breakers in the hollow caves.

Only he who is familiar with the violin knows the love one may bear
it--a love keen as that felt for some frail human creature of
exquisitely delicate mold. Caressingly I passed my fingers over its
ever-responsive strings, thinking, feeling rather, that I could endure
no hand to handle it save mine!

No! rather than that it should belong to another, its strings should for
ever render up the ghost of music in one prolonged wail, as it plunged
shivering from this fearful height.

For the last time, I thought, my fingers erred over its familiar chords.
A thrill of horrid exultation possessed me, such as the fell Tiberius
may have experienced when he bade his men hurl the shrinking form of a
soft-limbed favorite from this precipice.

Possibly my shaken nerves were affected by the hideous memories clinging
to these unhallowed ruins; possibly also by the oppressive heat of
the day.

Sea and sky, indeed, looked in harmony with unnatural sensations; as
though some dread burst of passion were gathering intensity under their
apparently sluggish calm.

Though the sky overhead was of a sultry blue, yet above the coast-line
of Naples, standing out with preternatural distinctness, uncouth, livid
clouds straggled chaotically to the upper sky, here and there reaching
lank, shadowy films, like gigantic arms, far into the zenith. Flocks of
sea-birds were uneasily flying landward; screaming, they wheeled round
the sphinx-like rocks, and disappeared by degrees in their red clefts
and fissures.

All at once I was startled in my fitful, half-mechanical playing by a
piercing scream; this was almost immediately followed by a confused
noise of sobs and cries, and a running of people to and fro, which
seemed, however, to be approaching nearer. I was just going to hurry to
the spot whence the noise proceeded, wh