Books › Old violins, 1905 › scan 200
Scan 200
Old violins, 1905
14 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 180. See the scan on archive.org.
1In his own land he remained to the end nothing but the quiet, unobtrusive repairer and occasional dealer in dilapidated fiddles.
3It seems he had removed to Milan, where he was quite safely hidden, along with his fiddles, up in an attic at the top of a second-class restaurant in the Via Legnano Porta Tegnaglia.
5No one was ever allowed to enter his room. He locked himself in, and he locked himself out. They saw him going up and down the staircase, and that is all they saw of him.
7One day in 1854 Tarisio dragged himself up those stairs for the last time. Whether he had any premonition of his end, none may know—certainly no one was with him when he died—only it was noticed that he locked himself in, but came out no more; nor had he gone down to the restaurant for any of the necessaries of life.
9At last the neighbours thought it time to ascertain what was taking place in that mysterious attic. They seemed to have watched his strange movements closely, but their efforts to find out who he was and how he lived had been hitherto fruitless, as he made a point of carrying on his particular and nomadic business at a distance from his abode. They were not going to be baulked any longer, so they knocked, but there was no answer.
11At last they broke open the door, and a strange and piteous sight burst upon them. There, on a squalid couch, lay the pedlar, quite dead.
13Around him all seemed chaos—piles of fiddle-boxes,
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