Scan 479
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1875
2 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 325. See the scan on archive.org.
1listened awhile, I might, perhaps, have been fortunate enough to hear and overtake the thieves running off by some side path. But in my blind rage I had far overshot the place where I had last seen the trunk, and only discovered my over-haste when I found myself in the open field. Inconsolable for my loss, I turned back. While my fellow-traveller looked for the inn, I hastened to the police-office and requested that an immediate search might be made in the garden houses outside the gate. To my astonishment and vexation I was informed that the jurisdiction outside the gate belonged to Weende, and that I must address my request there. As Weende was half-a-league from Göttingen, I was compelled to abandon for that evening all further steps for the recovery of my Guarnerius. I passed a sleepless night in a state of mind such as, in my hitherto fortunate career, had been wholly unknown to me. Had I not lost my splendid Guarnerius, the exponent of all the artistic excellence I had till then attained, I could have lightly borne the loss of the rest. On the following morning the police sent to inform me that an empty trunk and a Violin-case had been found in the fields behind the gardens. Full of joy, I hastened thither, in the hope that the thieves might have left the Violin in the case, as an object of no value to them; but unfortunately it did not prove so. The bow of the Violin, a genuine Tourte, secured in the lid of the case, had remained undiscovered."—Spohr's Autobiography. (Longman and Co., 1865).
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