The easiest manner of solving the problem was to go and see what it was.
They approached the spot whence the extraordinary tones issued, and saw
a poor blind man standing near a miserable-looking candle and playing
upon a violin--but the latter was an instrument made of tin-plate.

"Fancy!" exclaimed Viotti, "it is a violin, but a violin of tin-plate!
Did you ever dream of such a curiosity?" and, after listening a while,
he added, "I say, Langlé, I must possess that instrument. Go and ask the
old blind man what he will sell it for."

Langlé approached and asked the question, but the old man was
disinclined to part with it.

"But we will give you enough for it to enable you to purchase a better,"
he added; "and why is not your violin like others?"

The aged fiddler explained that, when he got old and found himself
poor, not being able to work, but still able to scrape a few airs upon a
violin, he had endeavored to procure one, but in vain. At last his good,
kind nephew Eustache, who was apprenticed to a tinker, had made him one
out of a tin-plate. "And an excellent one, too," he added; "and my poor
boy Eustache brings me here in the morning when he goes to work, and
fetches me away in the evening when he returns, and the receipts are
not so bad sometimes--as, when he was out of work, it was I who kept the
house going."

"Well," said Viotti, "I will give you twenty francs for your violin. You
can buy a much better one for that price; but let me try it a little."