bow turned all other emotions into one of breathless admiration.  He talked to himself continually when alone, a habit which was partly responsible for the popular belief that he was always attended by a familiar demon.  When a stranger was introduced to him, his corpse-like face became galvanized into a ghastly smile, which produced a singular impression, half fascinating, half repulsive.  He was taciturn in society, except among his intimates, when his buoyant spirits bubbled out in the most amusing jokes and anecdotes expressed in a polyglot tongue, for he never knew any language well except his own.  Naturally irritable, his quick temper was inflamed by intestinal disease, which racked him with a suffering that was aggravated by a nostrum, in the use of which he indulged freely.  Indeed, it was said by his friends that his death was accelerated by his devotion to medical quackery, from a belief in which no arguments could wean him.

To his fellow-artists he was always polite and attentive, though they annoyed him by their persistent curiosity as to the means by which he produced his unrivaled effects—­effects which the established technique of violin-playing could not explain.  An Englishman named George Harris, who was an attache of the Hanoverian court, attended Paganini for a year as his private secretary, and he asserts that Paganini was never seen to practice a single note of music in private.  His astonishing dexterity was kept up to its pitch by the numerous concerts which he gave, and by his exquisitely delicate organization.  He was accustomed to say that his whole early life had been one of prodigious and continual study, and that he could afford to repose in after years.  Paganini’s knowledge of music was profound and exact, and the most difficult music was mere child’s play to him.  Pasini, a well-known painter, living at Parma, did not believe the stories told of Paganini’s ability to play the most difficult music at sight.  Being the possessor of a valuable Stradiuarius violin, he challenged our artist to play, at first hand, a manuscript concerto which he placed before him.  “This instrument shall be yours,” he said, “if you can play, in a masterly manner, that concerto at first sight.”  The Genoese took the violin in his hand, saying, “In that case, my friend, you may bid adieu to it at once,” and he immediately threw Pasini into ecstatic admiration by his performance of the piece.  There is little doubt that this is the Stradiuarius instrument left by Paganini to his son, and valued at about six hundred pounds sterling.

Of Antonia Bianchi, the mother of his son Achille, Paganini tells us that, after many years of a most devoted life, the lady’s temper became so violent that a separation was necessary.  “Antonia was constantly tormented,” he says, “by the most fearful jealousy.  One day she happened to be behind my chair when I was writing some lines in the album of a great pianiste, and, when she read the few amiable words I had composed in honor of the artist to whom the book belonged, she tore it from my hands, demolished it on the spot, and, so fearful was her rage, would have assassinated me.”