Nino looked about him.  He had expected to be ushered into some princely dwelling, for he had judged his interlocutor to be some rich and eccentric noble, unless he were an erratic scamp.  He was somewhat taken aback by the spectacle that met his eyes.  The furniture was scant, and all in the style of the last century.  The dust lay half an inch thick on the old gilded ornaments and chandeliers.  A great pier-glass was cracked from corner to corner, and the metallic backing seemed to be scaling off behind.  There were two or three open valises on the marble floor, which latter, however, seemed to have been lately swept.  A square table was in the centre, also free from dust, and a few high-backed leathern chairs, studded with brass nails, were ranged about it.  On the table stood one of the lamps, and the other was placed on a marble column in a corner, that once must have supported a bust, or something of the kind.  Old curtains, moth-eaten and ragged with age, but of a rich material, covered the windows.  Nino glanced at the open trunks on the floor, and saw that they contained a quantity of wearing apparel and the like.  He guessed that his acquaintance had lately arrived.

“I do not often inhabit this den,” said the old gentleman, who had divested himself of his furs, and now showed his thin figure arrayed in the extreme of full dress.  A couple of decorations hung at his button-hole.  “I seldom come here, and on my return, the other day, I found that the man I had left in charge was dead, with, all his family, and the place has gone to ruin.  That is always my luck,” he added, with a little laugh.

“I should think he must have been dead some time,” said Nino, looking about him.  “There is a great deal of dust here.”

“Yes, as you say, it is some years,” returned his acquaintance, still laughing.  He seemed a merry old soul, fifty years younger than his looks.  He produced from a case a bottle of wine and two silver cups, and placed them on the table.

“But where is your friend, the violinist?” inquired Nino, who was beginning to be impatient; for except that the place was dusty and old, there was nothing about it sufficiently interesting to take his thoughts from the subject nearest his heart.

“I will introduce him to you,” said the other, going to one of the valises and taking out a violin case, which he laid on the table and proceeded to open.  The instrument was apparently of great age, small and well shaped.  The stranger took it up and began to tune it.

“Do you mean to say that you are yourself the violinist?” he asked, in astonishment.  But the stranger vouchsafed no answer, as he steadied the fiddle with his bearded chin and turned the pegs with his left hand, adjusting the strings.