was said, when he
found no place for repentance, and Judas, whom it drove to suicide.
Cain saw it when he murdered his brother, and legend relates that in his
case, and in that of others, it left a physical brand to be borne by
the body to the grave. It was supposed that the Malefic Vision, besides
being thus spontaneously presented to typically abandoned men, had
actually been purposely called up by some few great adepts, and used by
them to blast their enemies. But to do so was considered equivalent to a
conscious surrender to the powers of evil, as the vision once seen took
away all hope of final salvation.

Adrian Temple would undoubtedly be cognisant of this legend, and the
lost experiment may have been an attempt to call up the Malefic Vision.
It is but a vague conjecture at the best, for the tree of the knowledge
of Evil bears many sorts of poisonous fruit, and no one can give full
account of the extravagances of a wayward fancy.

Conjointly with Miss Sophia, Sir John appointed me his executor and
guardian of his only son. Two months later we had lit a great fire
in the library at Worth. In it, after the servants were gone to bed,
we burnt the book containing the "Areopagita" of Graziani, and the
Stradivarius fiddle. The diaries of Temple I had already destroyed, and
wish that I could as easily blot out their foul and debasing memories
from my mind. I shall probably be blamed by those who would exalt
art at the expense of everything else, for burning a unique violin.
This reproach I am content to bear. Though I am not unreasonably
superstitious, and have no sympathy for that potential pantheism to
which Sir John Maltravers surrendered his intellect, yet I felt so great
an aversion to this violin that I would neither suffer it to remain at
Worth, nor pass into other hands. Miss Sophia was entirely at one with
me on this point. It was the same feeling which restrains any except
fools or braggarts from wishing to sleep in "haunted" rooms, or to live
in houses polluted with the memory of a revolting crime. No sane mind
believes in foolish apparitions, but fancy may at times bewitch the best
of us. So the Stradivarius was burnt. It was, after all, perhaps not so
serious a matter, for, as I have said, the bass-bar had given way. There
had always been a question whether it was strong enough to resist the
strain of modern stringing. Experience showed at last that it was not.
With the failure of the bass-bar the belly co