a touch on the violin as my father has, you never heard.
You feel yourself from top to toe, when my father
plays. I feel as if I breathed music like air.
One day came news from Italy, all in the newspaper,
of my father’s friends and old companions shot
and murdered by the Austrians. He read it in
the evening, after we had a quiet day. I thought
he did not mind it much, for he read it out to us quite
quietly; and then he made me sit on his knee and read
it out. I cried with rage, and he called to
me, ‘Sandra! Peace!’ and began walking
up and down the room, while my mother got the bread
and cheese and spread it on the table, for we were
beginning to be richer. I saw my father take
out his violin. He put it on the cloth and looked
at it. Then he took it up, and laid his chin
on it like a man full of love, and drew the bow across
just once. He whirled away the bow, and knocked
down our candle, and in the darkness I heard something
snap and break with a hollow sound. When I could
see, he had broken it, the neck from the body—the
dear old violin! I could cry still. I—I
was too late to save it. I saw it broken, and
the empty belly, and the loose strings! It was
murdering a spirit—that was! My father
sat in a corner one whole week, moping like such an
old man! I was nearly dead with my mother’s
voice. By-and-by we were all silent, for there
was nothing to eat. So I said to my mother,
“I will earn money.” My mother cried.
I proposed to take a lodging for myself, all by myself;
go there in the morning and return at night, and give
lessons, and get money for them. My landlady’s
good son gave me the brass-plate again. Emilia
Alessandra Belloni! I was glad to see my name.
I got two pupils very quickly one, an old lady, and
one, a young one. The old lady—I
mean, she was not grey—wanted a gentleman
to marry her, and the landlady told me—I
mean my pupil—it makes me laugh—asked
him what he thought of her voice: for I had been
singing. I earned a great deal of money:
two pounds ten shillings a week. I could afford
to pay for lessons myself, I thought. What an
expense! I had to pay ten shillings for one
lesson! Some have to pay twenty; but I would
pay it to learn from the best masters;—and
I had to make my father and mother live on potatoes,
and myself too, of course. If you buy potatoes
carefully, they are extremely cheap things to live
upon, and make you forget your hunger more than anything
else.
“I suppose,” added Emilia, “you have never lived upon potatoes entirely? Oh, no!”
Wilfrid gave a quiet negative.
“But I was pining to learn, and was obliged to keep them low. I could pitch any notes, and I was clear but I was always ornamenting, and what I want is to be an accurate singer. My music-master was a German—not an Austrian—oh, no!—I’m sure he was not. At least, I don’t think so, for I liked him. He was harsh with me, but sometimes he did stretch