ing in the most cutting accents of sorrow. Only from time to time, as a little lamp which hung over him cast a feeble light on his features, could I see his pallid countenance, which still retained traces of youth. His garb was strange indeed—divided in two parts, one red, one yellow. Heavy fetters hung to his feet. Behind him grimaced a face whose physiognomy indicated a jovial, he-goat nature; and I saw long, hairy hands which seemed to belong to it, moving now and then on the strings of the violin which Paganini played, often guiding his hand, while a floating, applauding laugh accompanied the tones which welled forth more painfully, and as if bleeding, from the violin. They were tones like the song of the fallen angels who had wooed and wantoned with the daughters of Earth, and been banished from the kingdom of the blest, and fallen, with cheeks burning with shame, into the under-world: tones in whose bottomless abyss there was neither comfort nor hope. Should the holy in heaven hear such music the praise of God would be mute on their pale lips, and they, weeping, would hide their pious heads. Ever and anon, when in the melodious torments of this piece the obligato goat-laughter came bleating in, I saw in the background a multitude of little female figures, who, spitefully-merry, nodded their horrible heads and rubbed their breasts in mocking mischief.
