Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/49

Rh his face, which, in the strong orchestral illumination, seemed more corpse-like than ever, had in it something so bashfully modest that a shuddering pity suppressed our desire to laugh. Had he learned those bows from an automaton or a dog? Was that imploring look that of one in deathly illness, or was there lurking behind it the mockery of a crafty money-grubber? Was that a living man, who knows that he is about to perish and who will delight the public in the arena of art, like a dying gladiator with his convulsions or a dead man risen from the grave, a vampire with a violin, who, if he does not suck blood from our hearts, will, come what may, draw the money from our pockets?

"Such questions crossed one another flitting in our heads while Paganini made his unceasing compliments in gesture, but all such thoughts flitted afar when the wondrous master set his violin to his chin and began to play. As for me, you know well my musical second sight—my gift of seeing with every note which I hear its corresponding figure of sound; and so it came that Paganini, with every stroke of his bow, brought visible forms and facts before my eyes; that he told me in a musical picture-writing all kinds of startling stories; that he juggled before me at the same time a show of coloured Chinese shadows, in all of which he with his violin was