“Nearly fifty years ago a gaunt Italian called Luigi Tarisio arrived in Paris one day with a lot of old Italian instruments by makers whose names were hardly known. The principal dealers, whose minds were narrowed, as is often the case, to three or four makers, would not deal with him. Monsieur Georges Chanot, younger and more intelligent, purchased largely, and encouraged him to return. He came back next year with a better lot; and yearly increasing his funds, he flew at the highest game; and in the course of thirty years imported nearly all the finest specimens of Stradivarius and Guarnerius France possesses. He was the greatest connoisseur that ever lived or ever can live, because he had the true mind of a connoisseur and vast opportunities. He ransacked Italy before the tickets in the violins of Francesco Stradivarius, Alexander Gagliano, Lorenzo Guadagnini, Geofredus Cappa, Gobetti, Morgilati Morella, Antonio Mariani, Santo Maggini, Matteo Benti of Brescia, Michel Angelo Bergonze, Montagnana, Thomas Balestrieri Storioni, Vicenzo Rugger, the Testori, Petrus Guarnerius of Venice, and full fifty more, had been tampered with, that every brilliant masterpiece might be assigned to some popular name. To his immortal credit, he fought against this mania and his motto was, ‘A tout seigneur tout honneur.’ The man’s whole soul was in his fiddles. He was a great dealer, but a greater amateur. He had gems by him no money would buy from him.... “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