Chapter 8

I shall not attempt to describe the strange sensations of Frederick on returning from the burgomaster's house It will have been seen from the glimpses we have had of him already, that he was of a quick and sensitive disposition, and that the chance of defeat in the approaching struggle would sting him into madness. He pictured to himself the ferocious joy of Castero on being declared the victor--the agony of Maïna--the misery of his own degradation; and there is no doubt if the mysterious Unknown, whose appearance he now felt certain was nothing but a dream, had visited him in _propriâ personâ_, that he would have accepted his terms--his soul for triumph over his enemy, for the possession of the girl he loved.

The morrow rose clear and cloudless. At the appointed hour Frederick took his violin, and prepared to set out. But just when he was opening the door, the man in the mantle--the same he had seen the day before--stood before him.

"You did not expect to see me," said the Unknown, following Frederick to the end of the room, where he had retreated. "I told you, nevertheless, that we should meet again," he added, placing himself face to face with the son of the brewer.

"Then it was no dream," murmured the youth, who appeared to have lost all his resolution.

"Certainly not," returned the stranger, looking sarcastically at Frederick from head to foot. "I promised you yesterday, on the banks of the lake, that you would find your fiddle unharmed, and that I would enable you to conquer your rival. But I don't feel that I am bound to do any thing of the kind for nothing; generosity was never my forte, and I have lived long enough among the burghers of Holland to insist on being well paid for every thing I do."

"Who are you, then; and what is it you want?" enquired the Dutch Orpheus, in an agitated voice.

"Who am I!" answered the man in the mantle, with all the muscles of his face in violent convulsions--"Who am I!--I thought I had told you yesterday when you asked me--I am your master. What do I want? I will tell you. But why do you tremble so? you were bold enough when we met. I saw the thought in your heart--if Satan should rise before me, and promise me victory over my rival at the price of my soul, I would agree to the condition!"

"Satan!--you are Satan!" shrieked Frederick, and closed his eyes in horror.

"Didn't you find me out on the side of the lake, when you told me you would exchange your salvation for years of love and glory. Yes, I am that King of Darkness--_your_ master! and that of a great part of mankind. But, come; the hour is at hand--the Burgomaster and the Stadtholder await us. Do you accept the offer I make you?"

After a minute's hesitation, during which his features betrayed the force of the internal contest, the musician made his choice. He had not power to speak, but he raised his hand, and was on the point of making the cross upon his forehead, to guard him from the tempter, when Satan perceived his intention, and seized his arm.

"Think a little before you discard me entirely," he said, raising again in the soul of the musician all the clouds of pride and ambition that had given him power over it at first; "look into the box where your violin is laid, and decide for the last time."

Frederick obeyed his tempter, and opened the case, but uttered a cry of desperation when he saw his Straduarius in the same state of utter ruin to which he had reduced it before. The neck separated from the body; both faces shivered to fragments--the ebony rests, the gold-headed stops, the bridge, the sides--all a confused mass of wreck and destruction.

"Frederick! Frederick!" cried a voice from the brewery--it was his father's.

"Frederick! Frederick!" repeated a hundred voices under the windows--"Come down, come down, the Stadtholder is impatient! Castero swears you are afraid to face him."

They were his friends who were urging him to make haste.

"Well?" enquired Satan.

"I accept the bargain. I give you my soul!" said Frederick, while his cheek grew pale, and his eye flashed.

"_Your_ soul!" replied Satan, with a shrug of infinite disdain. "Do you think I would have hindered you from jumping into the lake, if I had wished to get it? Do you think that suicides are not mine already?--mine by their own act, without the formality of a bargain?--_Your_ soul!" repeated the Prince of Darkness, with a sneer; "I don't want it, I assure you: at least not to-day--I feel sure of it whenever I require it!"

"My soul, then, belongs to you--my fate is settled beforehand?" enquired Frederick.

"You are an _artiste_," answered Satan, with a chuckling laugh, "and therefore are vain, jealous, proud, and full of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. You perceive I shall lose nothing by waiting. No, no; 'tis not your own soul I want--but that of your first-born, that you must make over to me this hour!"

"What do you want me to do!"

"Here is the deed," said Satan, pulling a parchment from under his cloak, on which strange characters were drawn, and letters in an unknown language. "In putting your name to this, you bind and oblige yourself to let me know when Maïna is about to become a mother; and before the baptismal water shall touch the infant's brow, you shall hang from the window a piece of lace which shall have been worn by Maïna at her wedding. One of my satellites will be on the watch; he will come and tell me when the signal is made and--the rest is my own affair! You will find this agreement in your fiddle-case."

"Frederick! Frederick! be quick be quick!" again shouted the father.

"Frederick! Frederick! Castero is boasting about your absence!" cried the chorus of impatient friends.

"I agree!" cried the _artiste_, and affixed his name. While he was signing, the stranger muttered some words of mysterious sound, of which he did not know the meaning; and immediately the pieces of the broken instrument united themselves--rests, bridge, stops, faces, and sides, all took their proper places, and the soul of the noble violin re-entered its musical prison, at the moment when that of the future baby of Maïna was sold to the enemy of mankind!

"Now, then," said Satan, as he sank beneath the floor, "go where glory waits thee."