165.—THE HISTORY OF A VIOLIN.
Ole Bull's favorite violin was one of old Caspar di Salo's creations.
Its history was so varied as to deserve mention. For a hundred and fifty years or so it had reposed in the museum at Innspruck, where it had been placed by a cardinal as being a fine example of the work of its maker. In 1809 the French soldiers sacked that place, and this valuable instrument was carried off by a soldier and subsequently sold to Herr Rhehazek, a Viennese official, who was a collector of violins, and who had put nearly all his wealth into his fine collection of instruments. When Ole Bull visited Vienna, in 1839, he saw this fiddle and determined to possess it. But no, Rhehazek would not part with it, and all Bull could get out of him was that if the violin were to be sold he should have the first opportunity to purchase it at four thousand ducats. The violinist agreed, although he knew it was a big price.
Two years later he was one day dining with Liszt and Mendelssohn in Leipzig, when a letter was handed him bearing an official seal. It was from Vienna, and announced the death of the old violin collector. Rhehazek had told his son that Ole Bull was to have the first opportunity to buy the di Salo violin, and the son faithfully wrote him that he could now purchase it. Liszt declared that Ole must be crazy to pay so much for a violin he had never heard; and Mendelssohn said it was a piece of extravagance that only a fiddler could be capable of. But Ole Bull persisted in buying the violin, and with it won some of his greatest triumphs.