Bertolini came the next day to ask if he might practise with "little Wunder," as he called her. He also came the next day, and the day after, and then every day. He was a second-rate violinist, and a third-rate pianist; but he was an absolutely first-rate musician, an extravagant, impassioned, boisterous musician, whose shouts of excitement, after the first half-hour of polite shyness, could be heard all over the house.
Anne-Marie loved to hear him vociferate. She used to watch his face when she purposely played a false note; she liked to see him crinkle up his nose as if something had stung him, and open a wild mouth to shout. Once she played through an entire piece in F, making every B natural instead of flat. "Si bemolle! B flat!" said Bertolini the first time. "Bemolle!" cried Bertolini the second time. "Bemolle!" he roared, trampling on the pedals, and with his hand grasping his hair, that looked like a curly black mat fitted well over his head.
"What is the matter with Bemolle?" asked Fräulein, raising bland eyes from her needlework.
Anne-Marie laughed. "I don't know what is the matter with him. I think he's crazy." And thus Signor Bertolini was christened Bemolle for all time.
Bemolle, who was a composer, now composed no more. He soon became one of the Devoured. His mornings were given up to the Professor; his afternoons he gave to Anne-Marie. He would arrive soon after lunch, and sit down at the piano, tempting the child from playthings or story-book by rippling accompaniments or dulcet chords. And because the Professor had said: "With this child one can begin at the end," Bemolle lured her long before her ninth birthday across the ditches and pitfalls of Ernst and Paganini, over the peaks and crests of Beethoven and Bach.
On the day that Nancy was called from her writing to hear Anne-Marie play Bach's "Chaconne," Nancy folded up the scarf that she had used to cover her ears with, and put it away. Then she took her manuscripts, and kissed them, and said good-bye to them for ever, and put them away.
Soon afterwards the Ogre came to Prague. He had received Nancy's letter about Italy, and had come to answer it in person. It was good to see him again. His largeness filled the room, his mastery controlled and soothed the spirit. He was the "wall" that Clarissa had spoken of in the Villa Solitudine long ago.
Lucky is the woman who belongs to a wall. When she has bruised and fretted herself in trying to push through it, and get round it, and jump over it, let her sit down quietly in its protecting shadow and be grateful.
An hour after his arrival the imperious Anne-Marie was subjugated and entranced, Fräulein was a-bustle and a-quiver with solicitude as to his physical welfare, and Nancy sat back in a large armchair, and felt that nothing could hurt, or ruffle, or trouble her any more.