Pointing to the lightning still flickering and darting overhead, I cried, “But you are risking your lives for some fantastic whim, some wild superstition of yours.  You are mad to brave such a storm!  You expose your child to undoubted peril that you may ward off some illusory evil.  Let me bear her to the inn, and follow me thither.”  And I was going to lift the senseless form in my arms when the woman sternly prevented me.

In vain I argued, pleaded, reasoned with her.  She only shook her head and cried piteously, “Give her music, for the love of the dear Madonna!” And the girls, who by this time had plucked up courage and gathered round us, echoed as with one voice, “Musica!  Musica!”

What was I to do?  I could not drag them away by force, and certainly, for aught I knew, she might have been in equal danger from the poison or the storm, wherever we were.  As for peril to myself, I cared not.  I was in a devil of a mood, and all the pent-up bitter passion of my soul seemed to find a vent and safety-valve in that stupendous commotion of the elements.

So I searched for my instrument on the ground, and now noticed, to my astonishment, that although the storm had swept away from us, the whole ruin was nevertheless brightly illuminated.  On looking up I saw the topmost branches of a solitary stone-pine one dazzle of flames.  Rising straight on high from a gap in the wall which its roots had shattered, it looked a colossal chandelier on which the lightning had kindled a thousand tapers.  There was not a breath of air, not a drop of rain, so that the flames burned clear and steady as under cover of a mighty dome.

By this brilliant light, by which every object, from a human form to a marble acanthus leaf, cast sharp-edged shadows, I soon discovered my violin on a tangle of flowering clematis, and began tuning its strings.

No sooner had I struck into the same lively tune, than the strange being rose again as by magic, and, slowly opening her intoxicating eyes, began swaying herself to and fro with the same graceful gestures and movements that I had already observed.

Thus I played all through the night, long after the rear-guard of the thunder-storm had disappeared below the opposite horizon whence it first arose—­played indefatigably on and on like a man possessed, and still, by the torch of the burning pine, I saw the beautiful maenad-like figure whirling to and fro with miraculous endurance.  Now and then, through the deep silence, I heard a scarred pine-bough come crackling to the earth; now and then I heard the lowing of the stabled cattle in some distant part of the ruin; once and again, smiting like a cry, I heard one string snapping after another under my pitiless hands.

Still I played on, though a misty quiver of sparks was dancing about my eyes, till the fallow-tinted dawn gleamed faintly in the east.