If she only could play like that--if she could have a real violin, all her own and play on it, why, that would be just too wonderfully grand and splendid for anything. There were not words in the French language that could express the pleasure it would give her. She could not speak of it. It was too good to talk about.
For several days she thought about it and dreamed of it and wondered if it would do to tell her father and ask him to give her a violin. At last the secret became unbearable and on creeping into her mother's bed before daylight one morning for her regular petting she ventured to lisp to her mother that she wanted a violin--"a real one, to play upon herself."
The morning star faded away quickly, and there was only the dull grey dawn in the child's sky. Her mother treated her request with laughter and put out the little Camilla's hope with a flat refusal.
It was the town talk. The women gathered round the fountain in the Place Royal and filled their water jars and gossiped about Salvatore Urso's silly whim with his child. Madame Dubois settled her cap and gave it as her opinion that no good would come of such a foolish thing. Madame Tilsit knew better, if the child wanted to play, why, let her play. The priest would not forbid it. Madame Perche knew it was far better than teaching children to read. That would lead them to dreadful infidelity, and what not. Besides, what will you? M. Urso will do as he pleases with the child.
At its best Nantes is a sleepy place, and in those days it was more narrow, petty and gossipy than can be imagined. A small town in New England where every mother's daughter can read is bad enough, but in a compact French town where every one must live next door or next floor to everybody else gossip runs wild. Totally ignorant of books or any matter outside of their own town, the people must needs fall back on themselves and quietly pick each other to pieces. Everybody had heard that Salvatore Urso, the flute player intended to teach his little girl the violin. Part of the town approved of this bold, audacious step and part of the town thought it eminently improper, if not positively wicked. There was the Urso party and the anti-Urso party. They talked and quarrelled over it for a long time in a fashion that was quite as narrow minded and petty as could be imagined and it was more than a year before the excitement subsided.