The old German screwed up his queer, kind, ugly face.

“It—­it’s not my way,” he said drily.  “As for money, I might have had plenty by this time, if I had not run away from home when I was a boy, because I preferred being a poor musician to a rich merchant.  Money is not the only nor the best thing in the world, my little lady.”

M. Linders apparently saw no danger to Madelon’s principles in these new friendships, or else, perhaps, he was bent on carrying out his plan of letting her get used to things; at any rate, he did not interfere with her spending as much time as she liked with both painter and musician; and every day through the winter she grew fonder of the society of the old violinist.  He was a lonely man, who lived with his music and his books, cared little for company, and had few friends; but he liked to see Madelon flitting about his dusky room, carrying with her bright suggestions of the youth, and gaiety, and hopefulness he had almost forgotten.  He talked to her, taught her songs, played to her as much as she liked, and often gave her and her father orders for the theatre to which he belonged, where, with delight, she would recognise his familiar face as he nodded and smiled at her from the orchestra.  He instructed her, too, in music; made her learn her notes, and practise on the jangling old piano, and even, at her particular request, to scrape a little on the violin; but she cared most for singing, and for hearing him play and talk.  She never felt shy or timid with him, and one day, at the end of a long rhapsody about German music and German composers, she asked him innocently enough—­

“Who was Beethoven, and Mozart, and—­and all those others you talk about?  I never heard of them before.”

“Never before!” he cried, in a sort of comic amazement and dismay.  “Here is a little girl who has lived half her life in Germany, who talks German, and yet never heard of Beethoven, nor of Mozart, nor of—­of all those others!  Listen, then—­they were some of the greatest men that ever lived.”

And, indeed, Madelon heard enough about them after that; for delighted to have a small, patient listener, to whom he could rhapsodize as much as he pleased in his native tongue, the violinist henceforth lost no opportunity of delivering his little lectures, and would harangue for an hour together, not only about music and musicians, but about a thousand other things—­a queer, high-flown, rambling jumble, often enough, which Madelon could not possibly follow nor understand, but to which she nevertheless liked to listen.  A safer teacher she could hardly have had; she gained much positive information from him, and when he got altogether beyond her, she remained impressed with the conviction that he was speaking from the large experiences of deep, mysterious wisdom and knowledge, and sat listening with a reverential awe, as to some strange, lofty strain, coming to her from some higher and nobler region than she could