Nor was it her last lesson of the same kind.
Her second friend was an old German violinist, who inhabited
two little rooms at the top of the big house, a tall, broad-
shouldered, stooping man, whose thick yellow hair and
moustache, plentifully mixed with grey, blue eyes, and fair
complexion, testified to his nationality, as did his queer,
uncouth accent, though he has spent at least two-thirds of his
life in Florence. He was an old friend of the American
painter's, and paid frequent visits to his studio; and it was
there he first met Madelon and her father. He did not much
affect M. Linders' company, but he took a fancy to the child,
as indeed most people did, and made her promise that she would
come and see him; and when she had once found her way, and
been welcomed to his little bare room, where an old piano, a
violin, and heaps of dusty folios of music, were the principal
furniture, a day seldom passed without her paying him a visit.
She would perch herself at his window, which commanded a wide
view over the city, with its countless roofs, and domes, and
towers, and beyond the encircling hills, with their scattered
villas, and slopes of terraced gardens, and pines, and olives,
all under the soft blue transparent sky; and with her eyes
fixed on this sunny view, Madelon would go off into some
dreamy fit, as she listened to the violinist, of whose playing
she never wearied.
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