Then came the days of the cellar. Dark and damp and haunted with the spirits of long-gone days... stowed away on a cupboard, next to a battered suitcase, overlooking a mess of broken tools, and dreaming of the time when my voice spoke to the hearts of listening people...

Oh how I missed that feeling in the stomach, the twaing of the strings, shaking every fibre of my body, making me laugh, or weep, or even growl with anger...

But now there was the big silence. Only occasionally a strong breeze through the broken window made rock the cupboard a little, and the movement let stirr the srings a bit... but not enough...

and at last there were hands again. Not loving, speaking ones, but strong and careless did they grab me and carried me into the damp rain outside, where I was dumped between an old chair with three legs and my neighbor the suitcase. Together with the moisture of the rain some light did fall through a gap in my case, and I saw my furnish for the first time after my longlasting imprisonment. Oh dear... Surely this was it...

But then again someone held my neck. He was wrapped in a smelly old cloak, his face was red from weather and whiskey. But in his crackling voice I heard something I had missed for a long time: the joy of music!

"Oh deary deary me!" He muttered. "You are as battered as I am, Madam! But you still have got all your strings on you... Well, maybe we will fit together! And maybe we will earn sum money together? People give when you make music for them, eh, Madam?" And tumming my strings more or less rythmically he croaked: "Irene, good Night, Irene, Irene good Niiiiiiiight..." But for me it sounded like heavenly trumpets, and I gave my best to join in ans we stumbled through the rain...