ent will he
wished to break the seven seals wherewith Solomon sealed the iron
vessels in which he had shut up the vanquished demons. The wise
king sank those vessels in the sea and I seemed to hear the voices
of the imprisoned spirits while Paganini's violin growled its most
wrathful bass.

But at last I thought I heard the jubilee of deliverance, and out
of the red billows of blood emerged the heads of the fettered
demons: monsters of legendary horror, crocodiles with bats' wings,
snakes with stags' horns, monkeys with shells on their heads, seals
with long patriarchal beards, women's faces with one eye, green
camels' heads, all staring with cold, crafty eyes, and long,
fin-like claws grasping at the fiddling monk. From the latter,
however, in the furious zeal of his conjuration, the cowl fell back
and the curly hair, fluttering in the wind, fell round his head in
ringlets, like black snakes.

So maddening was this vision that to keep my senses I closed my
ears and shut my eyes. When I again looked up the specter had
vanished, and I saw the poor Genoese in his ordinary form, making
his ordinary bows, while the public applauded in the most rapturous
manner.

"That is the famous performance upon G," remarked my neighbor. "I
myself play the violin, and I know what it is to master the
instrument." Fortunately, the pause was not considerable, or else
the musical furrier would certainly have engaged me in a long
conversation upon art. Paganini again quietly set his violin to his
chin, and with the first stroke of his bow the wonderful
transformation of melodies again began.

They no longer fashioned themselves so brightly and corporeally.
The melody gently developed itself, majestically billowing and
swelling like an organ chorale in a cathedral, and everything
around, stretching larger and higher, had extended into a colossal
space which, not the bodily eye, but only the eye of the spirit
could seize. In the midst of this space hovered a shining sphere,
upon which, gigantic and sublimely haughty, stood a man who played
the violin. Was that sphere the sun? I do not know. But in the
man's features I recognized Paganini, only ideally lovely, divinely
glorious, with a reconciling smile. His body was in the bloom of
powerful manhood, a b