At this point I can introduce myself: my name is Cecile and you must be wondering how I am connected to this story. The doctor who found Leclair brutally murdered was an ancestor of mine. Only he was allowed to visit him at his mansion-fortress. They were great friends and Antoine, that's his name, felt a certain tenderness for that man so enslaved to his obsession and to that violin that, commissioned to Stradivari himself, he never abandoned.