In point of fact, Muzio’s features had undergone but little change:  swarthy from childhood, his face had grown still darker,—­had been burned beneath the rays of a more brilliant sun,—­his eyes seemed more deeply set than of yore, that was all; but the expression of that face had become different:  concentrated, grave, it did not grow animated even when he alluded to the dangers to which he had been subjected by night in the forests, deafened by the roar of tigers, by day on deserted roads where fanatics lie in wait for travellers and strangle them in honour of an iron goddess who demands human blood.  And Muzio’s voice had grown more quiet and even; the movements of his hands, of his whole body, had lost the flourishing ease which is peculiar to the Italian race.

With the aid of his servant, the obsequiously-alert Malay, he showed his host and hostess several tricks which he had been taught by the Brahmins of India.  Thus, for example, having preliminarily concealed himself behind a curtain, he suddenly appeared sitting in the air, with his legs doubled up beneath him, resting the tips of his fingers lightly on a bamboo rod set upright, which not a little amazed and even alarmed Fabio and Valeria....  “Can it be that he is a magician?” the thought occurred to her.—­But when he set to calling out tame snakes from a covered basket by whistling on a small flute,—­when, wiggling their fangs, their dark, flat heads made their appearance from beneath the motley stuff, Valeria became frightened and begged Muzio to hide away those horrors as quickly as possible.

At supper Muzio regaled his friends with wine of Shiraz from a round flask with a long neck; extremely fragrant and thick, of a golden hue, with greenish lights, it sparkled mysteriously when poured into the tiny jasper cups.  In taste it did not resemble European wines:  it was very sweet and spicy; and, quaffed slowly, in small sips, it produced in all the limbs a sensation of agreeable drowsiness.  Muzio made Fabio and Valeria drink a cup apiece, and drank one himself.  Bending over her cup, he whispered something and shook his fingers.  Valeria noticed this; but as there was something strange and unprecedented in all Muzio’s ways in general, and in all his habits, she merely thought:  “I wonder if he has not accepted in India some new faith, or whether they have such customs there?”—­Then, after a brief pause, she asked him:  “Had he continued to occupy himself with music during the time of his journeys?”—­In reply Muzio ordered the Malay to bring him his Indian violin.  It resembled those of the present day, only, instead of four strings it had three; a bluish snake-skin was stretched across its top, and the slender bow of reed was semi-circular in form, and on its very tip glittered a pointed diamond.