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The fossilised old gentleman broke off with a sigh as he recalled the memory of a certain dead-and-gone romance which had happened goodness only knows how many years before when he, like Jan van der Welde, would have thrown the world away for a glance of a certain pair of blue eyes, at the bidding of a certain English tongue, whose broken Nederlandsche taal was to him the sweetest music ever heard on earth sweeter even than the strains of the Stradivari when from under his skilful fingers rose the perfect melodies of old masters.
"This instrument shall be yours," said Pasini, placing in his hands an excellent Stradivari, "if you can play, in a masterly manner, this concerto, at first sight." Paganini accepted the challenge, threw Pasini into ecstasies, and became the owner of the instrument.
The violin belongs to Italy. It was the glory of Cremona, was it not? The tender hands of the Amatis, of Josef Guarnerius, of old Antonio Stradivari, placed a soul within the wooden box; and that soul is the soul of Italy!" "Haupt, a German, wrote a treatise on the violin," said Ashton-Kirk. "If you would read that " "I have read it," cried Spatola. "I have read it!
George Eliot, in her poem, "The Stradivari," probably pictures his life accurately: "That plain white-aproned man, who stood at work, Patient and accurate full fourscore years, Cherished his sight and touch by temperance; And since keen sense is love of perfectness, Made perfect violins, the needed paths For inspiration and high mastery."
The failure of all their children to marry does not indicate a particularly happy home-life, but this is mere speculation. We only know that Stradivari's first wife died, after a marriage lasting thirty-four years. A year and a half later Stradivari married a girl fifteen years his junior; Antonia Zambelli was, indeed, born the very year Francesca's first husband had been assassinated.
There have been the unhappily wed, who, through the fault of themselves, or their wives, found and made misery at home, and sought nepenthe elsewhere, such as Haydn, Berlioz, and Tschaikovski. There have been married lives of mixed nature, neither failure nor success, such as the careers of Lully, Rameau, Stradivari, and Wagner.
She held the bow suspended a moment, then very softly, half unconsciously, played a dreamy lullaby, and laid the violin down in her lap. Adam took her and it into his arms. "Be careful, put it down gently," she said faintly; "it is your soul and mine. Do you not know the secret of Antonio Stradivari, of all the great makers of violins? Ah, they solved our riddle, Love, ages ago.
"Of old Antonio Stradivari, him Who a good quarter century and a half ago Put his true work in the brown instrument, And by the nice adjustment of its frame Gave it responsive life, continuous With the master's finger-tips, and perfected Like them by delicate rectitude of use." The mother listened with painful intentness.
After him came Rameau, who, like Stradivari, fell in love with a widow while he was still in his teens and she well out of hers. He did not wed, however, until he was forty-three, and then he wed an eighteen-year-old girl, who was, they say, a very good woman, and who did her best to make her husband very happy.
Tony crouched by the old fireplace in the winter evenings, dropping his knife or his compasses a moment to read aloud to his mother, who sat in the opposite corner knitting: "Of old Antonio Stradivari him Who a good century and a half ago Put his true work in the brown instrument, And by the nice adjustment of its frame Gave it responsive life, continuous With the master's finger-tips, and perfected Like them by delicate rectitude of use."
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