“Why, you little sinner,” said Erdmann, laughing and amazed, “I call that perseverance. How long did it take you to copy it?”
“Fully six months, and my eyes are weak in consequence. And after this what do you suppose happened? One day my brother came in, unawares, when I had the exercises, and without saying by your leave carried off my precious treasure. He never brought it back, notwithstanding all my tearful entreaties.”
“Dreadful!” exclaimed Erdmann. “Worse than dreadful! How could he do it? I should have hated him.”
“No! He is still my brother. He has done me many kindnesses, and I am greatly distressed,” his voice trembled again, “greatly distressed at his death, and just as he was cleaning the old violin! He believed it was a genuine Amati and insisted that Antonio Amati’s name and symbols were pasted on it in my grandfather’s time, but I do not believe it. The tone is much too hard and rasping. I think it is an old Tyrolean country violin.”[5]
“So? Will he be buried to-morrow?”
“Yes.”
“And then your fate must be decided?”
“Certainly it must. The cousins then must give me my copy of the book.”
“They ought to do that at least. But tell me, what else must they give you?”
“I shall only claim what belongs to me. On an upper shelf in the cabinet there is a tin box with my christening-money, two medals inherited from my great-uncle, Heinrich, and a little money left me by my good father, which they must give me, must they not, Erdmann?”