"Then the boy was astonished at the devil's generosity, and accepted the gift. But the devil rejoiced, for he said to himself: 'If I have lost one soul, I have taken ten thousand others for it.' But the violinist soon noticed what a curse had fallen to his share.
"Denying all nobility, and still feeling a horror of the degrading power within him, he now goes through the world, restless, joyless, and without power over his own demoniac art--a resisting tool in the devil's hand. And he longs despairingly to find a being who could resist the fiendish charm, but he finds none.
"Thus the Russian tale.
"Now Lensky has grown old and gray in the service of the devil. His friends with fright notice in him the evermore plainly noticeable signs of physical decay. In his art he stands greater than ever, and from his violin sounds out to the public a wild, triumphing, and despairing swan song!"
This somewhat exaggerated production an old lady read aloud with declamatory emphasis, in whom at the first glance one perceived the Englishwoman and the spinster. She sits in a pretty, charming room, furnished with all kinds of rarities, by the hearth, and refreshes herself by turns with the newspaper and with tea.
It is in Paris.
The newspaper in which the old Englishwoman revels is Figaro, and the windows of the pretty little room look out on the Parc Monceau.
Already dressed to go out, a second, much younger lady in the same room busies herself in hastily, and to all appearance disapprovingly, looking through a just-opened package of books.
Somewhat vexed that her reading has called forth no remark from her listener, the old Englishwoman now says:
"Well, what do you say to this legend?"