“Well, one day Georges Chanot, senior, who is perhaps the best judge of violins left, now Tarisio is gone, made an excursion to Spain, to see if he could find anything there. He found mighty little. But, coming to the shop of a fiddle-maker, one Ortega, he saw the belly of an old bass hung up with other things. Chanot rubbed his eyes, and asked himself, was he dreaming? The belly of a Stradivarius bass roasting in a shop-window! He went in, and very soon bought it for about forty francs. He then ascertained that the bass belonged to a lady of rank. The belly was full of cracks; so, not to make two bites of a cherry, Ortega had made a nice new one. Chanot carried this precious fragment home and hung it up in his shop, but not in the window, for he is too good a judge not to know the sun will take all the colour out of that maker’s varnish. Tarisio came in from Italy, and his eyes lighted instantly on the Stradivarius belly. He pestered Chanot till the latter sold it him for a thousand francs and told him where the rest was. Tarisio no sooner knew this than he flew to Madrid. He learned from Ortega where the lady lived, and called on her to see it. ‘Sir,’ says the lady, ‘it is at your disposition.’ That does not mean much in Spain. When he offered her to buy it, she coquetted with him, said it had been long in her family; money could not replace a thing of that kind, and in short, she put on the screw, _as she thought_, and sold it to him for about four thousand francs. What he did with the Ortega belly is not known--perhaps sold it to some toothpick trade. He sailed exultant for Paris with the Spanish Bass in a case. He never let it out of his sight. The pair were caught by a storm in the Bay of Biscay. The ship rolled; Tarisio clasped his bass tight, and trembled. It was a terrible gale, and for one whole day they were in real danger. Tarisio spoke of it to me with a shudder. I will give you his real words for they struck me at the time, and I have often thought of them since:
“AH, MY POOR MR READE, THE BASS OF SPAIN WAS ALL BUT LOST.
“Was not this a true connoisseur? a genuine enthusiast? Observe! there was also an ephemeral insect called Luigi Tarisio, who would have gone down with the bass; but that made no impression on his mind. _De minimis non curat Ludovicus._