The nearer he drew to her, the more fondly he remembered the story of
the little Swedish singer. Most of the details are still unknown to
the public.
There was once, in a little market-town not far from Upsala, a peasant
who lived there with his family, digging the earth during the week and
singing in the choir on Sundays. This peasant had a little daughter to
whom he taught the musical alphabet before she knew how to read.
Daae's father was a great musician, perhaps without knowing it. Not a
fiddler throughout the length and breadth of Scandinavia played as he
did. His reputation was widespread and he was always invited to set
the couples dancing at weddings and other festivals. His wife died
when Christine was entering upon her sixth year. Then the father, who
cared only for his daughter and his music, sold his patch of ground and
went to Upsala in search of fame and fortune. He found nothing but
poverty.
He returned to the country, wandering from fair to fair, strumming his
Scandinavian melodies, while his child, who never left his side,
listened to him in ecstasy or sang to his playing. One day, at Ljimby
Fair, Professor Valerius heard them and took them to Gothenburg. He
maintained that the father was the first violinist in the world and
that the daughter had the making of a great artist. Her education and
instruction were provided for. She made rapid progress and charmed
everybody with her prettiness, her grace of manner and her genuine
eagerness to please.
When Valerius and his wife went to settle in France, they took Daae and
Christine with them. "Mamma" Valerius treated Christine as her
daughter. As for Daae, he began to pine away with homesickness. He
never went out of doors in Paris, but lived in a sort of dream which he
kept up with his violin. For hours at a time, he remained locked up in
his bedroom with his daughter, fiddling and singing, very, very softly.
Sometimes Mamma Valerius would come and listen behind the door, wipe
away a tear and go down-stairs again on tiptoe, sighing for her
Scandinavian skies.
Daae seemed not to recover his strength until the summer, when the
whole family went to stay at Perros-Guirec, in a far-away corner of
Brittany, where the sea was of the same color as in his own country.
Often he would play his saddest tunes on the beach and pretend that the
sea stopped its roaring to listen to them. And then he induced Mamma
Valerius to indulge a queer whim of his. At the time of the "pardons,"
or Breton pilgrimages, the village festival and dances, he went off
with his fiddle, as in the old days, and was allowed to take his
daughter with him for a week. They gave the smallest hamlets music to
last them for a year and slept at night in a barn, refusing a bed at
the inn, lying close together on the straw, as when they were so poor
in Sweden. At the same time, they were very neatly dressed, made no
collection, refused the halfpence offered them; and the people around
could not understand the conduct of this rustic fiddler, who tramped
the roads with that pretty child who sang like an angel from Heaven.
They followed them from village to village.