“In my father’s house, where I was ignored by the other members of the family, I occupied a rear room looking out upon our neighbor’s yard.  At first I took my meals with the family, though no one spoke a word to me.  But when my brothers received appointments in other cities and my father was invited out to dinner almost daily—­my mother had been dead for many years—­it was found inconvenient to keep house for me.  The servants were given money for their meals.  So was I; only I didn’t receive mine in cash:  it was paid monthly to the restaurant.  Consequently I spent little time in my room, with the exception of the evening hours; for my father insisted that I should be at home within half an hour after the closing of the office, at the latest.  Then I sat there in the darkness on account of my eyes, which were weak even at that time.  I used to think of one thing and another, and was neither happy nor unhappy.

“When I sat thus I used to hear some one in the neighbor’s yard singing a song—­really several songs, one of which, however, pleased me particularly.  It was so simple, so touching, and the musical expression was so perfect, that it was not necessary to hear the words.  Personally I believe that words spoil the music anyway.”  Now he opened his lips and uttered a few hoarse, rough tones.  “I have no voice,” he said, and took up his violin.  He played, and this time with proper expression, the melody of a pleasing, but by no means remarkable song, his fingers trembling on the strings and some tears finally rolling down his cheeks.

“That was the song,” he said, laying down his violin.  “I heard it with ever-growing pleasure.  However vivid it was in my memory, I never succeeded in getting even two notes right with my voice, and I became almost impatient from listening.  Then my eyes fell upon my violin which, like an old armor, had been hanging unused on the wall since my boyhood.  I took it down and found it in tune, the servant probably having used it during my absence.  As I drew the bow over the strings it seemed to me, sir, as though God’s finger had touched me.  The tone penetrated into my heart, and from my heart it found its way out again.  The air about me was pregnant with intoxicating madness.  The song in the courtyard below and the tones produced by my fingers had become sharers of my solitude.  I fell upon my knees and prayed aloud, and could not understand that I had ever held this exquisite, divine instrument in small esteem, that I had even hated it in my childhood, and I kissed the violin and pressed it to my heart and played on and on.

“The song in the yard—­it was a woman who was singing—­continued in the meantime uninterruptedly.  But it was not so easy to play it after her, for I didn’t have a copy of the notes.  I also noticed that I had pretty nearly forgotten whatever I had once acquired of the art of playing the violin; consequently I couldn’t play anything in particular, but could play only in