Among many interesting anecdotes current of Viotti, and one which admirably shows his goodness of heart and quickness of resource, is one narrated by Ferdinand Langle to Adolph Adam, the French composer.  The father of the former, Marie Langle, a professor of harmony in the French Conservatoire, was an intimate friend of Viotti, and one charming summer evening the twain were strolling on the Champs Elysees.  They sat down on a retired bench to enjoy the calmness of the night, and became buried in reverie.  But they were brought back to prosaic matters harshly by a babel of discordant noises that grated on the sensitive ears of the two musicians.  They started from their seats, and Viotti said: 

“It can’t be a violin, and yet there is some resemblance to one.”

“Nor a clarionet,” suggested Langle, “though it is something like it.”

The easiest manner of solving the problem was to go and see what it was.  They approached the spot whence the extraordinary tones issued, and saw a poor blind man standing near a miserable-looking candle and playing upon a violin—­but the latter was an instrument made of tin-plate.

“Fancy!” exclaimed Viotti, “it is a violin, but a violin of tin-plate!  Did you ever dream of such a curiosity?” and, after listening a while, he added, “I say, Langle, I must possess that instrument.  Go and ask the old blind man what he will sell it for.”

Langle approached and asked the question, but the old man was disinclined to part with it.

“But we will give you enough for it to enable you to purchase a better,” he added; “and why is not your violin like others?”

The aged fiddler explained that, when he got old and found himself poor, not being able to work, but still able to scrape a few airs upon a violin, he had endeavored to procure one, but in vain.  At last his good, kind nephew Eustache, who was apprenticed to a tinker, had made him one out of a tin-plate.  “And an excellent one, too,” he added; “and my poor boy Eustache brings me here in the morning when he goes to work, and fetches me away in the evening when he returns, and the receipts are not so bad sometimes—­as, when he was out of work, it was I who kept the house going.”

“Well,” said Viotti, “I will give you twenty francs for your violin.  You can buy a much better one for that price; but let me try it a little.”

He took the violin in his hands, and produced some extraordinary effects from it.  A considerable crowd gathered around, and listened with curiosity and astonishment to the performance.  Langle seized on the opportunity, and passed around the hat, gathering a goodly amount of chink from the bystanders, which, with the twenty francs, was handed to the astonished old beggar.

“Stay a moment,” said the blind man, recovering a little from his surprise; “just now I said I would sell the violin for twenty francs, but I did not know it was so good.  I ought to have at least double for it.”