Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/112

There was at this time, in the calmness of this man, something peculiarly sad. I felt that I had acted indiscreetly; I asked his pardon, supplicating him to relate to me some particulars of the life of the angel that I mourned. He then took me by the hand, led me to the balcony, and with his eyes bent upon the garden, he confided to me a story, of which my memory has only retained that which related to Antonia. Counsellor Krespel had, in his youth, the passion of collecting at any price violins formerly belonging to the great masters. His researches led him to Italy, to Venice, where he heard, at the Theatre San Benedetto, the famous singer Angela. Her ravishing beauty made no less impression than her talents on the heart of the counsellor. A secret marriage united them; but the beautiful songstress, angel at the theatre, was a devil at home; Krespel, after a thousand and one stormy scenes, made up his mind to take refuge in the country, where he consoled himself as well as he could with an excellent Cremona violin. But the lady, jealous, like a pure-blooded Italian, came to arouse him in his retreat. One day, she entered the summer-house where Krespel was improvising a whole musical world. She placed her pretty head upon her husband's shoulder, and looked at him with an eye filled with love. The counsellor, lost in the regions of the ideal, handled his bow with so much ardor, that he scratched, without intending it, the satin neck of Angela. She sprang up furiously:—"German beast!" exclaimed she; and, angrily seizing the Cremona violin, she broke it into a thousand pieces on the marble table. The counsellor was at first petrified; then one of those nervous movements which cannot be analyzed, contracted his limbs; he threw the beautiful songstress out of the window of his own house, and fled to Germany. But, on the road, when he thought of the strangeness of the event, and although he had not acted with premeditation, he felt the most painful regret; for he remembered that the lady had flattered him incessantly with the sweet hope of making him a father. Imagine then his sur-