There was howling, crashing, cracking, as if the whole world was breaking to fragments, while the monk played more madly on his violin, as if he would, by the power of his raging will, burst the seven seals wherewith Solomon closed the iron jar in which he imprisoned the demons whom he had subdued. That jar the wise king cast into the sea, and it seemed as if I heard the voices of the demons when Paganini's violin growled out its angriest basso notes. But after a while I thought I heard the joyous cry of those set free, and I saw rising one by one out of the red waves of blood the heads of the unchained demons, monsters of incredible hideousness, crocodiles with bat's wings, serpents with stag's horns, monkeys capped with conch shells, seals with patriarchal long beards, women's faces with breasts instead of cheeks, green camels' heads, wild hybrids of inconceivable composition,[1] all glaring greedily with cold crafty eyes, and grasping, with long webbed feet and fingers, at the fiddling monk. Then in the raging zeal of invocation his capote fell back, and the ringlets flying in the wind curled round his head like black serpents.
"It was all so maddening, that not to utterly
- ↑ All of these monsters, excepting perhaps the green camels' heads, which I do not remember, are to be found in pictures by Höllen-Breughel and Callot.—Translator.
