anticipate this? A melancholy sighing tone, a foreboding of some slowly approaching misfortune, glided softly through the enrapturing melodies that were streaming from Paganini's violin. His eyes became moist. Adoringly he knelt down before his _Amata_. But, alas! as he bowed down to kiss her feet, he saw under the bed a little _abbate_! I do not know what he had against the poor man, but the Genoese became pale as death, he seized the little fellow with furious hands, gave him sundry boxes on the ear, as well as a considerable number of kicks, flung him outside, drew a stiletto from its sheath, and buried it in the young beauty's breast. "At this moment, however, a shout of 'Bravo! Bravo!' broke out from all sides. Hamburg's enthusiastic sons and daughters were paying the tribute of their uproarious applause to the great artist, who had just ended the first part of his concert, and was now bowing with even more angles and contortions than before. And on his face the abject humility seemed to me to have become more intense. From his eyes stared a sorrowful anxiety like that of a poor malefactor. 'Divine!' cried my neighbour, the furrier, as he scratched his ears; 'that piece alone was worth two thalers.' "When Paganini began to play again a gloom came before my eyes. The sounds were not transformed into bright forms and colours; the master's form was clothed in gloomy shades, out of the darkness of which his music moaned in the most piercing tones of lamentation. Only at times, when a little lamp that hung above cast its sorrowful light over him, could I catch a glimpse of his pale countenance, on which the youth was not yet extinguished. His costume was singular, in two colours, yellow and red. Heavy chains weighed upon his feet. Behind him moved a face whose physiognomy indicated a lusty goat-nature. And I saw at times long hairy hands seize assistingly the strings of the violin on which Paganini was playing. They often guided the hand which held the bow, and then a bleating laugh of applause accompanied the melody, which gushed from the violin ever more full of sorrow and anguish. They were melodies which were like the song of the fallen angels who had loved the daughters of earth, and, being exiled from the kingdom of the blessed, sank into the under-world with faces red with shame. They were melodies in whose bottomless shallowness glimmered neither consolation nor hope. When the saints in heaven hear such melodies, the praise of God dies upon their paled lips, and they cover their heads weeping. At times when the _obligato_ goat's laugh bleated in among the melodious pangs, I caught a glimpse in the background of a crowd of small women-figures who nodded their odious heads with wicked wantonness. Then a rush of agonising sounds came from the violin, and a fearful groan and a sob, such as was never heard upon earth before, nor will be perhaps heard upon earth again; unless in the valley of Jehoshaphat, when the colossal