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 bedeviled 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 theater was crowded to suffocation, and there was not even standing room to be got for any amount of hard cash or favoritism. 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 theater shook to their foundations with the applause that greeted him. He began and ended his famous composition “The Witches” amid 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, amid 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 disemboweled 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 phantasmogoria, 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 spell-bound, 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 time 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.
........