life in Florence. He was an old friend of the American
painter's, and paid frequent visits to his studio; and it was
there he first met Madelon and her father. He did not much
affect M. Linders' company, but he took a fancy to the child,
as indeed most people did, and made her promise that she would
come and see him; and when she had once found her way, and
been welcomed to his little bare room, where an old piano, a
violin, and heaps of dusty folios of music, were the principal
furniture, a day seldom passed without her paying him a visit.
She would perch herself at his window, which commanded a wide
view over the city, with its countless roofs, and domes, and
towers, and beyond the encircling hills, with their scattered
villas, and slopes of terraced gardens, and pines, and olives,
all under the soft blue transparent sky; and with her eyes
fixed on this sunny view, Madelon would go off into some
dreamy fit, as she listened to the violinist, of whose playing
she never wearied. He was devoted to his art, though he had
never attained to any remarkable proficiency in it; and at any
hour of the day he might be heard scraping, and tuning, and
practising, for he belonged to the orchestra of one of the
theatres. It was quite a new sensation for Madelon to hear so
much music in private life, and she thought it all beautiful--
tuning and scraping and all.

"But that is all rubbish," the German would cry, after
spending an hour in going through some trashy modern Italian
music. "Now, my child, you shall hear something worth
listening to;" and with a sigh of relief he would turn to some
old piece by Mozart or Bach, some minuet of Haydn's, some
romance of Beethoven's, which he would play with no great