"Think a little before you discard me entirely," he said, raising again in the soul of the musician all the clouds of pride and ambition that had given him power over it at first; "look into the box where your violin is laid, and decide for the last time."
Frederick obeyed his tempter, and opened the case, but uttered a cry of desperation when he saw his Straduarius in the same state of utter ruin to which he had reduced it before. The neck separated from the body; both faces shivered to fragments—the ebony rests, the gold-headed stops, the bridge, the sides—all a confused mass of wreck and destruction.
"Frederick! Frederick!" cried a voice from the brewery—it was his father's.
"Frederick! Frederick!" repeated a hundred voices under the windows—"Come down, come down, the Stadtholder is impatient! Castero swears you are afraid to face him."
They were his friends who were urging him to make haste.
"Well?" enquired Satan.
"I accept the bargain. I give you my soul!" said Frederick, while his cheek grew pale, and his eye flashed.
"Your soul!" replied Satan, with a shrug of infinite disdain. "Do you think I would have hindered you from jumping into the lake, if I had wished to get it? Do you think that suicides are not mine already?—mine by their own act, without the formality of a bargain?—Your soul!" repeated the Prince of Darkness, with a sneer; "I don't want it, I assure you: at least not to-day—I feel sure of it whenever I require it!"
"My soul, then, belongs to you—my fate is settled beforehand?" enquired Frederick.
"You are an artiste," answered Satan, with a chuckling laugh, "and therefore are vain, jealous, proud, and full of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. You perceive I shall lose nothing by waiting. No, no; 'tis not your own soul I want—but that of your first-born, that you must make over to me this hour!"