"She's getting as cold as ice;
the death-damps will be on her if you will not play for my darling."

And all the girls, pointing as with one accord to my violin, chimed in
once again, crying more peremptorily than before, "Musica! Musica!"

There was no arguing with these terror-stricken, imploring creatures, so
I took the instrument that had been doomed to destruction, to call the
seemingly dead to life with it.

What possessed me then I know not: but never before or since did the
music thus waken within the strings of its own demoniacal will and leap
responsive to my fingers.

Perhaps the charm lay in the devout belief which the listeners had in
the efficacy of my playing. They say your fool would cease to be one if
nobody believed in his folly.

Well, I played, beginning with an _andante_, at the very first notes of
which the seemingly lifeless girl rose to her feet as if by enchantment,
and stood there, taller by the head than the ordinary Capri girls her
companions, who were breathlessly watching her. So still she stood, that
with her shut eyes and face of unearthly pallor she might have been
taken for a statue; till, as I slightly quickened the _tempo_, a
convulsive tremor passed through her rigid, exquisitely molded limbs,
and then with measured gestures of inexpressible grace she began slowly
swaying herself to and fro. Softly her eyes unclosed now, and mistily as
yet their gaze dwelt upon me. There was intoxication in their fixed
stare, and almost involuntarily I struck into an impassioned _allegro_.

No sooner had the _tempo_ changed than a spirit of new life seemingly
entered the girl's frame. A smile, transforming her features, wavered
over her countenance, kindling fitful lightnings of returning
consciousness in her dark, mysterious eyes. Looking about her with an
expression of wide-eyed surprise, she eagerly drank in the sounds of the
violin; her graceful movements became more and more violent, till she
whirled in ever-widening circles round about the roofless palace
chamber, athwart which flurried bats swirled noiselessly through the
gathering twilight. Hither and thither she glided, no sooner completing
the circle in one direction than, snapping her fingers with a passionate
cry, she wheeled round in an opposite course, sometimes clapping her
hands together and catching up snatches of my own melody, sometimes
waving aloft or pressing to her bosom the red kerchief or _mucadore_ she
had worn knotted