I may as well state here that a few months later she received from
Mademoiselle du Chamorin (with a charming letter) the identical violin
that had once belonged to _la belle Verriere_, and which Count Hector
had found in the possession of an old farmer--the great-grandson of
Gatienne's coachman--and had purchased, that he might present it as a
New-year's gift to her descendant, the Duchess of Towers.
It is now mine, alas! I cannot play it; but it amuses and comforts me to
hold in my hand, when broad and wide awake, an instrument that Mary and
I have so often heard and seen in our dream, and which has so often rung
in by-gone days with the strange melody that has had so great an
influence on our lives. Its aspect, shape, and color, every mark and
stain of it, were familiar to us before we had ever seen it with the
bodily eye or handled it with the hand of flesh. It thus came straight
to us out of the dim and distant past, heralded by the ghost of itself!
* * * * *
To return. Gradually, by practice and the concentration of our united
will, the old-time figures grew to gain substance and color, and their
voices became perceptible; till at length there arrived a day when we
could move among them, and hear them and see them as distinctly as we
could our own immediate progenitors close by--as Gogo and Mimsey, as
Monsieur le Major, and the rest.
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