He bent over her, passed his thin hands along her averted face, shook his head, and said in a hollow voice,-- "I cannot find them; where are they ?" "Who, dear master?
Oh, have compassion on yourself; they are not here.
Blessed saints! this is terrible; he has touched me; I am dead!" "Dead! who is dead?
Is any one dead ?" "Ah! don't talk so; you must know it well: my poor mistress,--she caught the fever from you; it is infectious enough to kill a whole city.

San Gennaro protect me! My poor mistress, she is dead,--buried, too; and I, your faithful Gionetta, woe is me! Go, go--to--to bed again, dearest master,--go!" The poor musician stood for one moment mute and unmoving, then a slight shiver ran through his frame; he turned and glided back, silent and spectre-like, as he had entered.

He came into the room where he had been accustomed to compose,--where his wife, in her sweet patience, had so often sat by his side, and praised and flattered when the world had but jeered and scorned.

In one corner he found the laurel-wreath she had placed on his brows that happy night of fame and triumph; and near it, half hid by her mantilla, lay in its case the neglected instrument.
Viola was not long gone: she had found the physician; she returned with him; and as they gained the threshold, they heard a strain of music from within,--a strain of piercing, heart-rending anguish.

It was not like some senseless instrument, mechanical in its obedience to a human hand,--it was as some spirit calling, in wail and agony from the forlorn shades, to the angels it beheld afar beyond the Eternal Gulf.