s intention, and seized his arm.

"Think a little before you discard me entirely," he said, raising again
in the soul of the musician all the clouds of pride and ambition that
had given him power over it at first; "look into the box where your
violin is laid, and decide for the last time."

Frederick obeyed his tempter, and opened the case, but uttered a cry of
desperation when he saw his Straduarius in the same state of utter ruin
to which he had reduced it before. The neck separated from the body;
both faces shivered to fragments--the ebony rests, the gold-headed
stops, the bridge, the sides--all a confused mass of wreck and
destruction.

"Frederick! Frederick!" cried a voice from the brewery--it was his
father's.

"Frederick! Frederick!" repeated a hundred voices under the
windows--"Come down, come down, the Stadtholder is impatient! Castero
swears you are afraid to face him."

They were his friends who were urging him to make haste.

"Well?" enquired Satan.

"I accept the bargain. I give you my soul!" said Frederick, while his
cheek grew pale, and his eye flashed.

"_Your_ soul!" replied Satan, with a shrug of infinite disdain. "Do you
think I would have hindered you from jumping into the lake, if I had
wished to get it? Do you think that suicides are not mine already?--mine
by their own act, without the formality of a bargain?--_Your_ soul!"
repeated the Prince of Darkness, with a sneer; "I don't want it, I
assure you: at least not to-day--I feel sure of it whenever I require
it!"

"My soul, then, belongs to you--my fate is settled beforehand?" enquired
Frederick.

"You are an _artiste_," answered Satan, with a chuckling laugh, "and
therefore are vain, jealous, proud, and full of envy, hatred, malice,
and all uncharitableness. You perceive I shall lose nothing by waiting.
No, no; 'tis not your own soul I want--but that of your first-born, that
you must make over to me this hour!"

"What do you want me to do!"

"Here is the deed," said Satan, pulling a parchment from under his
cloak, on which strange characters were drawn, and letters in an unknown
language. "In putting your name to this, you bind and oblige yourself to
let me know when Maina is about to become a mother; and before the
baptismal water shall touch the infant's brow, you shall hang from the
window a piece of lace which shall have been worn by Maina at her
wedding. One of my satellites will be on the watch; he will come and
tell me whe