The floor, too, was better preserved than any I had seen; though cracked and in part overrun by ivy, it showed portions of the original white and black tessellated work.

On this floor, with her head pillowed on a shattered capital, lay a prostrate figure without life or motion, and with limbs rigidly extended as in death.

The old woman, throwing herself on her knees before this lifeless figure, loosened the handkerchief round her neck, and then, as though to feel whether life yet lingered, she put her hand on the heart of the unconscious girl, when, suddenly jumping up again, she ran to me, panting:—­

“O sir, good sir, play, play for the love of the Madonna!” And the others all echoed as with one voice, “Musica!  Musica!”

“Is this a time to make music?” cried I, in angry bewilderment.  “The girl seems dying or dead.  Run quick for a doctor—­or stay, if you will tell me where he lives I will go myself and bring him hither with all speed.”

For all answer the gray-haired woman, who was evidently the girl’s mother, fell at my feet, and clasping my knees, cried in a voice broken by sobs, “O good sir, kind sir, my girl has been bitten by the tarantula!  Nothing in the world can save her but you, if with your playing you can make her rise up and dance!”

Then darting back once more to the girl, who lay as motionless as before, she screamed in shrill despair, “She’s getting as cold as ice; the death-damps will be on her if you will not play for my darling.”

And all the girls, pointing as with one accord to my violin, chimed in once again, crying more peremptorily than before, “Musica!  Musica!”

There was no arguing with these terror-stricken, imploring creatures, so I took the instrument that had been doomed to destruction, to call the seemingly dead to life with it.

What possessed me then I know not:  but never before or since did the music thus waken within the strings of its own demoniacal will and leap responsive to my fingers.

Perhaps the charm lay in the devout belief which the listeners had in the efficacy of my playing.  They say your fool would cease to be one if nobody believed in his folly.

Well, I played, beginning with an andante, at the very first notes of which the seemingly lifeless girl rose to her feet as if by enchantment, and stood there, taller by the head than the ordinary Capri girls her companions, who were breathlessly watching her.  So still she stood, that with her shut eyes and face of unearthly pallor she might have been taken for a statue; till, as I slightly quickened the tempo, a convulsive tremor passed through her rigid, exquisitely molded limbs, and then with measured gestures of inexpressible grace she began slowly swaying herself to and fro.  Softly her eyes unclosed now, and mistily as yet their gaze dwelt upon me.  There was intoxication in their fixed stare, and almost involuntarily I struck into an impassioned allegro.