charity, did injury in some degree to truth. Decidedly there were some things which she did not wish to see, and which for her did not exist. She did not believe in evil. In her inveterate innocence-I insist upon it she remained very much a child. Shall we then complain? After all, is there another place on earth where we shall meet with a friendliness so real in the midst of an illusion so adorned? A bitter moralist, La Rochefoucauld, has said: "If we never flattered ourselves, we should have but little pleasure."

I have heard people ask whether Madame Récamier was a woman of intellect. But it seems to me we have the answer already. She had in the highest degree, not the type of mind which seeks to shine for itself, but that which recognizes the ability of others and brings it to the light. She wrote little: very early she had contracted the habit of writing the least possible; but this little was good and of a perfect turn. Her talk was simple, accurate, and pointed. In telling of the past, she liked best to choose something delicate or subtle, a lighthearted or amiable saying, a piquant situation, and she neglected the rest; she remembered with taste.

She was a seductive listener; nothing good that you might say passed by without her letting you know that she saw it. She questioned you with interest, and attended wholly to your answer. On leaving her, were it only for her smiles and her silences, you had a personal interest in thinking well of her mind..

As to the youthfulness, the beauty, of her heart, if it has been given to all to appreciate it, it is especially for those some day to speak of it who have enjoyed it more intimately. After the death of M. Ballanche and M. de Châteaubriand, although she had still about her M. Ampère, the Duke de Noailles, and many other affectionate friends, she only languished and wore out her days. She died May 11, 1849, in her seventy-second year. This unique person, whose memory will live as long as

French society, was very gracefully painted by Gérard, in the freshness of her youth. Her bust was sculptured by Canova in its ideal beauty. Achille Devéria made a faithful sketch of her on the day of her death, expressive of suffering and of

repose.

ARIA is lying upon a couch, ill; Maximilian,

MARI

her only companion, is endeavoring to entertain her with fanciful talk; the conversation turns to the Italian violinist. The episode closes with the entrance of the doctor.

"Do you admire Paganini?" asked Maria.

"I consider him an honor to his country," answered Maximilian, "and he certainly deserves a most distinguished position among the musical celebrities of Italy."

"I have never seen him," said Maria, “but, if report speaks truly, his looks would hardly satisfy a fine eye for beauty. I have seen portraits of him."

"None of which resemble him," said Maximilian, interrupting her. "They all either flatter, or do him injustice. I believe there was but one man who ever succeeded in transferring Paganini's features to paper, and he was a deaf painter named Lyser, who, in his genial eccentricity, with a few rough strokes, made so truthful a likeness of Paganini, that the spectator was at once impressed with a double feeling of mirth and fear. "The devil guided my hand,' said the deaf painter, while he chuckled mysteriously and shook his head with an air of good-natured irony, as was his wont when he indulged in such madcap flights. Ah! he was a strange fellow. In spite of his deafness, he loved music enthusiastically, and when he could get near enough to the orchestra could, it was said, read the music in the faces of the players, and tell whether the performance was more or less successful by watching the

1 From the Florentine Nights. The translation is by Simon Adler Stern, and is reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company.

movements of their fingers. He also wrote operatic criticisms for one of the leading journals of Hamburg. But is there anything remarkable in that? The deaf artist could see tones in the visible characters of playing. Are there not human

beings to whom tones are as invisible characters in which they hear colors and forms?"

"You are such a one!" exclaimed Maria.

"I am sorry that I no longer possess Lyser's little drawing; it might have given you an idea of Paganini's appearance. Those strange features that seemed to belong to the sulphurous land of shadows rather than to the world of sunshine could only be seized in bold, sharp lines. When we stood in front of the Alster pavilion in Hamburg, on the day of Paganini's first concert, the deaf painter again assured me that Satan had directed his hand. 'Yes,' he continued, 'what all the world says about him must be true. He sold himself, body and soul, to the devil; and, in return, was to become the greatest of all violinists, to fiddle millions into his pocket, and to be liberated from the accursed galleys in which he had languished for so many years. For, you see, he got to be chapel-master at Lucca, and fell in love with a theatrical princess, of whom, and a little abate, he became jealous, and by whom, in all probability, he was henpecked; whereupon, he stabbed his amata, in most approved Italian style, was sent to the galleys at Genoa, and, as I told you before, sold himself, in the end, to Satan, in order that he might escape, become the greatest of violinists, and be able to levy a contribution of two thalers upon every one of us. But look! Let all good souls praise God! For there he comes through the allée, accompanied by his ambiguous famulo!'

1 Abbot, priest, clerk, or even layman in clerical garb. Amata, below, is mistress; thalers are German coins of the value of three marks; allée is alley; famulo is attendant on a magician.

"It was, indeed, Paganini who approached. He wore a dark-gray overcoat, reaching down to his feet, and making him appear very tall. His long black hair fell upon his shoulders in wild locks, and, like a frame, encompassed his pale, corpselike face, upon which grief and genius and hell had graven their indestructible characters. A short, self-complacent person in plain attire tripped along at his side. His face, although florid, was full of wrinkles. He wore a light-gray coat, with steel buttons, and bowed in every direction, with most excruciating politeness, while he, now and then, cast halffearful, half-insipid glances at the somber figure walking at his side, serious and wrapt in meditation. It reminded one of Retsch's picture of Faust and Wagner, walking before the gates of Leipzig. The painter, however, criticized both individuals in his droll, peculiar way, and made me take particular notice of Paganini's long and measured step. 'Does it not,' he asked, 'seem as if he still had the iron bar between his legs? He will never get rid of that gait. Do you observe with what contemptuous irony he looks down upon his companion, whenever the latter annoys him with his dull and prosy questions? He cannot get rid of him. A bloody compact binds him to this servant, who is none other than Satan himself. The ignorant imagine his companion to be the dramatist and anecdotist Harris, of Hanover, and believe that Paganini carries him along in his travels in order that he may attend to the financial management of the concerts. They do not know that Satan has merely borrowed the form of Mr. George Harris, and that, along with other trash, the poor soul of that poor creature will remain locked up in a chest in Hanover until the devil returns its carnal envelope; when, in the nobler guise of a black poodle, he will accompany his master Paganini through the world.'

"But if Paganini looked sufficiently wild and remarkable in broad daylight, when he walked toward me, below the Jung