the look of one who is sick unto death, or does there lurk behind
it the mocking cunning of a miser? Is that a mortal who in the agony
of death stands before the public in the art arena, and, like a dying
gladiator, bids for their applause in his last convulsions? or is it
some phantom arisen from the grave, a vampire with a violin, who comes
to suck, if not the blood from our hearts, at least the money from our
pockets? Questions such as these kept chasing each other through the
brain while Paganini continued his apparently interminable series of
complimentary bows; but all such questionings instantly take flight the
moment the great master puts his violin to his chin and began to play.

"Then were heard melodies such as the nightingale pours forth in the
gloaming when the perfume of the rose intoxicates her heart with sweet
forebodings of spring! What melting, sensuously languishing notes of
bliss! Tones that kissed, then poutingly fled from another, and at last
embraced and became one, and died away in the ecstasy of union! Again,
there were heard sounds like the song of the fallen angels, who,
banished from the realms of bliss, sink with shame-red countenance to
the lower world. These were sounds out of whose bottomless depth gleamed
no ray of hope or comfort; when the blessed in heaven hear them, the
praises of God die away upon their pallid lips, and, sighing, they veil
their holy faces." Leigh Hunt, in one of his essays, thus describes the
playing of this greatest of all virtuosos: "Paganini, the first time
I saw and heard him, and the first moment he struck a note, seemed
literally to strike it, to _give_ it a blow. The house was so crammed
that, being among the squeezers in the standing room at the side of the
pit, I happened to catch the first glance of his face through the arms
akimbo of a man who was perched up before me, which made a kind of
frame for it; and there on the stage through that frame, as through a
perspective glass, were the face, the bust, and the raised hand of
the wonderful musician, with the instrument at his chin, just going to
begin, and looking exactly as I describe him in the following lines:

"His hand, Loading the air with dumb expectancy,
Suspended, ere it fell, a nation's breath.
He _smote_; and clinging to the serious chords
With Godlike ravishment drew forth a breath,
So deep, so strong, so fervid, thick with love--
Blissful, yet laden as with twenty