I can pardon you, since we are both confined in the same mad-house; and you only blame me for deluding myself with the idea that I am God the Father because you imagine yourself to be God the Son.  But how do you dare desire to insinuate yourself into the secrets and lay bare the hidden motives of a life that is strange to you and that must continue so?  She has gone and the mystery is solved.”  He ceased speaking, rose, and traversed the room backwards and forwards several times.  I ventured to ask for an explanation; he fixed his eyes upon me, grasped me by the hand, and led me to the window, which he threw wide open.  Propping himself upon his arms, he leaned out, and, looking down into the garden, told me the history of his life.  When he finished I left him, touched and ashamed.

In a few words, his relations with Antonia rose in the following way.  Twenty years before, the Councillor had been led into Italy by his favorite engrossing passion of hunting up and buying the best violins of the old masters.  At that time he had not yet begun to make them himself, and so of course he had not begun to take to pieces those which he bought.  In Venice he heard the celebrated singer Angela——­i, who at that time was playing with splendid success as prima donna at St. Benedict’s Theatre.  His enthusiasm was awakened, not only in her art—­which Signora Angela had indeed brought to a high pitch of perfection—­but in her angelic beauty as well.  He sought her acquaintance; and in spite of all his rugged manners he succeeded in winning her heart, principally through his bold and yet at the same time masterly violin-playing.  Close intimacy led in a few weeks to marriage, which, however, was kept a secret, because Angela was unwilling to sever her connection with the theatre, neither did she wish to part with her professional name, that by which she was celebrated, nor to add to it the cacophonous “Krespel.”  With the most extravagant irony he described to me what a strange life of worry and torture Angela led him as soon as she became his wife.  Krespel was of opinion that more capriciousness and waywardness were concentrated in Angela’s little person than in all the rest of the prima donnas in the world put together.  If he now and again presumed to stand up in his own defence, she let loose a whole army of abbots, musical composers, and students upon him, who, ignorant of his true connection with Angela, soundly rated him as a most intolerable, ungallant lover for not submitting to all the Signora’s caprices.  It was just after one of these stormy scenes that Krespel fled to Angela’s country seat to try and forget in playing fantasias on his Cremona violin the annoyances of the day.  But he had not been there long before the Signora, who had followed hard after him, stepped into the room.  She was in an affectionate humor; she embraced her husband, overwhelmed him with sweet and languishing glances, and rested her pretty head on his shoulder.  But Krespel, carried away into