V
One night, as Paganini, surrounded by a crowd of admirers, was sitting in the dining-room of the hotel at which he was staying, a visiting card, with a few words written on it in pencil, was handed to him by a young man with wild and staring eyes.
Fixing upon the intruder a look which few persons could bear, but receiving back a glance as calm and determined as his own, Paganini slightly bowed, and then dryly said:
“Sir, it shall be as you desire. Name the night. I am at your service.”
On the following morning the whole town was startled by the appearance of bills posted at the corner of every street, and bearing the strange notice:
On the night of … at the Grand Theater of … and for the first time, will appear before the public, Franz Stenio, a German violinist, arrived purposely to throw down the gauntlet to the world-famous Paganini and to challenge him to a duel – upon their violins. He purposes to compete with the great “virtuoso” in the execution of the most difficult of his compositions. The famous Paganini has accepted the challenge. Franz Stenio will play, in competition with the unrivaled violinist, the celebrated “Fantaisie Caprice” of the latter, known as “The Witches.”
The effect of the notice was magical. Paganini, who, amid his greatest triumphs, never lost sight of a profitable speculation, doubled the usual price of admission, but still the theater could not hold the crowds that flocked to secure tickets for that memorable performance.
…
At last the morning of the concert day dawned, and the “duel” was in everyone’s mouth. Franz Stenio, who, instead of sleeping, had passed the whole long hours of the preceding midnight in walking up and down his room like an encaged panther, had, toward morning, fallen on his bed from mere physical exhaustion. Gradually he passed into a death-like and dreamless slumber. At the gloomy winter dawn he awoke, but finding it too early to rise he fell to sleep again. And then he had a vivid dream – so vivid indeed, so life-like, that from its terrible realism he felt sure that it was a vision rather than a dream.
He had left his violin on a table by his bedside, locked in its case, the key of which never left him. Since he had strung it with those terrible chords he never let it out of his sight for a moment. In accordance with his resolution he had not touched it since his first trial, and his bow had never but once touched the human strings, for he had since always practised on another instrument. But now in his sleep he saw himself looking at the locked case. Something in it was attracting his attention, and he found himself incapable of detaching his eyes from it. Suddenly he saw the upper part of the case slowly rising, and, within the chink thus produced, he perceived two small, phosphorescent green eyes – eyes but too familiar to him – fixing themselves on his, lovingly, almost beseechingly. Then a thin, shrill voice, as if issuing from these ghastly orbs – the voice and orbs of Samuel Klaus himself – resounded in Stenio’s horrified ear, and he heard it say:
“Franz, my beloved boy… Franz, I cannot, no, I cannot separate myself from … them!”
And “they” twanged piteously inside the case.
Franz stood speechless, horror-bound. He felt his blood actually freezing, and his hair moving and standing erect on his head…
“It’s but a dream, an empty dream!” he attempted to formulate in his mind.
“I have tried my best, Franzchen… I have tried my best to sever myself from these accursed strings, without pulling them to pieces …” pleaded the same shrill, familiar voice. “Wilt thou help me to do so?..”
Another twang, still more prolonged and dismal, resounded within the case, now dragged about the table in every direction, by some interior power, like some living wriggling thing, the twangs becoming sharper and more jerky with every new pull.
It was not for the first time that Stenio heard those sounds. He had often remarked them before – indeed, ever since he had used his master’s viscera as a footstool for his own ambition. But on every occasion a feeling of creeping horror had prevented him from investigating their cause, and he had tried to assure himself that the sounds were only a hallucination.
But now he stood face to face with the terrible fact, whether in dream or in reality he knew not, nor did he care, since the hallucination – if hallucination it were – was far more real and vivid than any reality. He tried to speak, to take a step forward; but, as often happens in nightmares, he could neither utter a word nor move a finger… He felt hopelessly paralyzed.
The pulls and jerks were becoming more desperate with each moment, and at last something inside the case snapped violently. The vision of his Stradivarius, devoid of its magical strings, flashed before his eyes, throwing him into a cold sweat of mute and unspeakable terror.
He made a superhuman effort to rid himself of the incubus that held him spell-bound. But as the last supplicating whisper of the invisible Presence repeated:
“Do, oh, do … help me to cut myself off – ”
Franz sprang to the case with one bound, like an enraged tiger defending its prey, and with one frantic effort breaking the spell.
“Leave the violin alone, you old fiend from hell!” he cried, in hoarse and trembling tones.
He violently shut down the self-raising lid, and while firmly pressing his left hand on it, he seized with the right a piece of rosin from the table and he drew on the leathered-covered top the sign of the six-pointed star – the seal used by King Solomon to bottle up the rebellious djins inside their prisons.
A wail, like the howl of a she-wolf moaning over her dead little ones, came out of the violin-case:
“Thou art ungrateful … very ungrateful, my Franz!” sobbed the blubbering “spirit-voice.” “But I forgive … for I still love thee well. Yet thou canst not shut me in … boy. Behold!”
And instantly a grayish mist spread over and covered case and table, and rising upward formed itself first into an indistinct shape. Then it began growing, and as it grew, Franz felt himself gradually enfolded in cold and damp coils, slimy as those of a huge snake. He gave a terrible cry and – awoke; but, strangely enough, not on his bed, but near the table, just as he had dreamed, pressing the violin-case desperately with both his hands.
“It was but a dream, … after all,” he muttered, still terrified, but relieved of the load on his heaving breast.
With a tremendous effort he composed himself, and unlocked the case to inspect the violin. He found it covered with dust, but otherwise sound and in order, and he suddenly felt himself as cool and determined as ever. Having dusted the instrument he carefully rosined the bow, tightened the strings and tuned them. He even went so far as to try upon it the first notes of the “Witches”; first cautiously and timidly, then using his bow boldly and with full force.
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 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.
… even th’ inexorable powers of hell,
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.
…
Then came the finale. Thundering uninterrupted applause delayed its beginning, expanding the momentary pause to a duration of almost a quarter of an hour. The bravos were furious, almost hysterical. At last, when after a profound and last bow, Stenio, whose smile was as sardonic as it was triumphant, lifted his bow to attack the famous finale, his eye fell upon Paganini, who, calmly seated in the manager’s box, had been behind none in zealous applause. The small and piercing black eyes of the Genoese artist were riveted to the Stradivarius in the hands of Franz, but otherwise he seemed quite cool and unconcerned. His rival’s face troubled him for one short instant, but he regained his self-possession and, lifting once more his bow, drew the first note.
Then the public enthusiasm reached its acme, and soon knew no bounds. The listeners heard and saw indeed. The witches’ voices resounded in the air, and beyond all the other voices, one voice was heard —
Discordant, and unlike to human sounds;
It seem’d of dogs the bark, of wolves the howl;
The doleful screechings of the midnight owl;
The hiss of snakes, the hungry lion’s roar;
The sounds of billows beating on the shore;
The groan of winds among the leafy wood,
And burst of thunder from the rending cloud; —
’Twas these, all these in one…
The magic bow was drawing forth its last quivering sounds – famous among prodigious musical feats – imitating the precipitate flight of the witches before bright dawn; of the unholy women saturated with the fumes of their nocturnal Saturnalia, when – a strange thing came to pass on the stage. Without the slightest transition, the notes suddenly changed. In their aerial flight of ascension and descent, their melody was unexpectedly altered in character. The sounds became confused, scattered, disconnected … and then – it seemed from the sounding-board of the violin – came out squeaking, jarring tones, like those of a street Punch, screaming at the top of a senile voice:
“Art thou satisfied, Franz, my boy?.. Have not I gloriously kept my promise, eh?”
The spell was broken. Though still unable to realize the whole situation, those who heard the voice and the Punchinello-like tones, were freed, as by enchantment, from the terrible charm under which they had been held. Loud roars of laughter, mocking exclamations of half-anger and half-irritation were now heard from every corner of the vast theater. The musicians in the orchestra, with faces still blanched from weird emotion, were now seen shaking with laughter, and the whole audience rose, like one man, from their seats, unable yet to solve the enigma; they felt, nevertheless, too disgusted, too disposed to laugh to remain one moment longer in the building.
But suddenly the sea of moving heads in the stalls and the pit became once more motionless, and stood petrified as though struck by lightning. What all saw was terrible enough – the handsome though wild face of the young artist suddenly aged, and his graceful, erect figure bent down, as though under the weight of years; but this was nothing to that which some of the most sensitive clearly perceived. Franz Stenio’s person was now entirely enveloped in a semi-transparent mist, cloud-like, creeping with serpentine motion, and gradually tightening round the living form, as though ready to engulf him. And there were those also who discerned in this tall and ominous pillar of smoke a clearly-defined figure, a form showing the unmistakable outlines of a grotesque and grinning, but terribly awful-looking old man, whose viscera were protruding and the ends of the intestines stretched on the violin.
Within this hazy, quivering veil, the violinist was then seen, driving his bow furiously across the human chords, with the contortions of a demoniac, as we see them represented on medieval cathedral paintings!
An indescribable panic swept over the audience, and breaking now, for the last time, through the spell which had again bound them motionless, every living creature in the theater made one mad rush towards the door. It was like the sudden outburst of a dam, a human torrent, roaring amid a shower of discordant notes, idiotic squeakings, prolonged and whining moans, cacophonous cries of frenzy, above which, like the detonations of pistol shots, was heard the consecutive bursting of the four strings stretched upon the sound-board of that bewitched violin.
…
When the theater was emptied of the last man of the audience, the terrified manager rushed on the stage in search of the unfortunate performer. He was found dead and already stiff, behind the footlights, twisted up into the most unnatural of postures, with the “catguts” wound curiously around his neck, and his violin shattered into a thousand fragments…
When it became publicly known that the unfortunate would-be rival of Niccolo Paganini had not left a cent to pay for his funeral or his hotel-bill, the Genoese, his proverbial meanness notwithstanding, settled the hotel-bill and had poor Stenio buried at his own expense.
He claimed, however, in exchange, the fragments of the Stradivarius – as a momento of the strange event.