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"The rooms are nominally occupied by a certain Maitre Turandot, maker of violins, and not even the concierge of the place knows that the hunchbacked and snuffy violin-maker and the meddlesome Scarlet Pimpernel, whom the Committee of Public Safety would so love to lay by the heels, are one and the same person.
For some time his errand was fruitless. He stopped in at a little shop where an old woman sold photographs, etc. "I asked her, 'Did you never hear of Jacob Steiner, the violin-maker? She replied, 'There is no Steiner nor violin-maker living in this town. I then said that a celebrated violin-maker of that name, of whom I desired some information, had lived there two hundred years before.
On the one hand, Lyddy, who though she had scarcely known the meaning of love in all her dreary life, yet was as full to the brim of all sweet, womanly possibilities of loving and giving as any pretty woman; on the other, the blind violin-maker, who had never loved any woman but his mother, and who was in the direst need of womanly sympathy and affection.
One day the man put the violin in a case and took it away on a long journey. When the case was opened, the violin saw that they were in a strange hall full of people, and many of them were talking of this man the violin-maker. The man lifted the violin from the case and went out upon a large platform before the people, and began playing for them.
His musical skill was altogether exceptional, and he was the first possessor of the Stradivarius violin which afterwards fell so unfortunately into Sir John's hands. This violin Temple bought in the autumn of 1738, on the occasion of a first visit to Italy. In that year died the nonagenarian Antonius Stradivarius, the greatest violin-maker the world has ever seen.
Milor told him in his usual light-hearted way that he had given the Committee's spies the slip. "I do that very easily, you know," he explained. "I just slip into my rooms in the Rue Jolivet, change myself into a snuffy and hunchback violin-maker, and walk out of the house under the noses of the spies.
The violin-maker poses, draws forward or back the "soul of a violin" beneath the bridge in the belly of the instrument; a puny piece of wood more or less gives the violin or takes away from it a harmonious soul. We have many industries in which the workmen give the qualification of "soul" to their machines. Never does one hear them dispute about this word. Such is not the case with philosophers.
This was Eustache; he had just come in time to hear the conclusion of the bargain, and, little dreaming that he was so clever a violin-maker, wished to continue a trade that had begun so successfully. However, Viotti was quite satisfied with the one sample he had bought.
Furber the Violin-Maker My cousin did not like to send Hyam to him for a violin: he did not think him worthy to have one. Furber does not want you to buy a violin unless you can appreciate it when you have it. My cousin says of him: "He is generally a little tight on a Saturday afternoon. He always speaks the truth, but on Saturday afternoons it comes pouring out more."
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