rs of earth should tremble and fall? Was he the prince of
darkness himself? Was the liberation of the seven seals at hand--that
awful time foretold by the mystic of Patmos? The Metropolitan of the
Greek church did not long hesitate. A hierarchy that became endangered
because a fanatic wielded hypnotic powers, must exert its prerogative.
The aid of the secret police invoked, Illowski was hurried into Austria;
but with him were his men, and he grimly laughed as he sat in a Viennese
cafe and counted the victories of his first campaign.

"It has begun," he told his first violinist, a stolid fellow with black
blood in his veins.

It had begun. After a concert in Vienna, Illowski was politely bidden to
leave Austria. The unsettled political condition, the disaffection of
Czech and Hungarian, were a few of the reasons given for this summary
retirement. Yet Illowski's orchestra did not play the Rakoczy march! The
clergy heard of his impieties; a report obtained credence that the
Russian composer had written music for the black mass, most blasphemous
of missal travesties. When he was told of this he smiled, for he did not
aim at attacking mere sectarian beliefs; with Bakounin, he swore that
there must be total destruction of all existing institutions,
or--nothing!

He went to Germany believing the countrymen of Nietzsche would receive
with joy this Overman from the East. There was no longer any
Bayreuth--the first performance of "Parsifal" elsewhere had killed the
place and the work. In Munich, the authorities forewarned, Illowski was
arrested as a dangerous character and sent to Trieste. Thence he shipped
to Genoa; and once in Italy, free. On the peninsula his progress was
that of a trailing comet. The feminine madness first manifested itself
there and swept the countryside with epidemic fury. Wherever he played
the dancing mania set in, and the soldiery could not put it down by
force of arms. Nietzsche's dancing philosopher, Zarathustra, was
incarnated in Illowski's compositions. Like the nervous obsessions of
mediaeval times, this music set howling, leaping and writhing volatile
Italians, until it began to assume the proportions of a new evangel, an
hysterical hallucination that bade defiance to law, doctors, even the
decencies of life. Terrible stories reached the Vatican, and when it was
related that one of his symphonic pieces delineated Zarathustra's Cave
with its sinister mockery of prelate and king, the hated Quirinal