's excuse.
Doubtless as many believers were found for this baseless tale as for
these others.

[Illustration: Paganini in Prison. From painting by Ferdinand Barth.]

Some declared that he had a league with Satan, and held interviews with
him in an old Florentine castle, much frequented by the artist, from
which, they said, fearful sounds were heard proceeding on stormy
nights, and where the great master was known to have lain as one dead
for hours together, on different occasions. These persons believed
that at such times Paganini had only come back to life by magical
agency. Another swore to having seen a tall, dark shadow bending over
him at one of his concerts, and directing his hand; while a third
testified that he had seen nine or ten shadowy hands hovering about the
strings of the great master's violin.

Many of his admirers warmly upheld it as their opinion that he was in
reality an angel sent down to this world, in pity, for the purpose of
lightening the miseries of earthly life by giving man a foretaste of
what the heavenly harmonies will be hereafter. They said that it was
as if a choir of sweet-voiced spirits lay hid within the instrument,
and that at times it seemed as though this choir turned into a grand
orchestra.

It was not only Paganini's wonderful playing, but his weird appearance
which helped to gain credence for such surprising anecdotes. Leigh
Hunt has left us a graphic description of the renowned fiddler.

"Paganini, the first time I saw and heard him, and the first time 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 arm akimbo of a man who was perched up
before me, which made a kind of frame for it; and there, on the stage
in that frame, as through a perspective glass, were the face bent and
the raised hand of the wonderful musician, with the instrument at his
chin, just going to commence, and looking exactly as I described him:

His hand,
Loading the air with dumb expectancy,
Suspending 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 prayers,
That Juno yearned with no diviner soul
To the first burthen of the lips of Jove.