Erlach Court Part 25

[Footnote 1: A play upon the French proverb, '_jeter son bonnet pardessus le moulin_,' as much as to say 'to lose one's reputation.']

"Going already, Zino?"

"Of course," says Zino, stretching himself and yawning as spoiled brothers allow themselves to do in presence of their sisters. "If you suppose I tore myself away from Lyons to drink tea with you, you are mistaken. Be good, Sasa: when will you invite the Meinecks and myself to dine?"

Therese, moving her forefinger to and fro before her face, makes the Roman gesture of refusal.

"Oh, very well; as you please," Zino mutters in an ill-humour.

"Good-evening." "I wonder where I could meet her," he says, musingly, before lighting his cigar in the coupe that awaits him.

"Strange!" Rohritz remarks to his wife; "Edgar described the young Meineck to me as particularly gay and amusing."

"Indeed?"

"Now, for so young a creature, she seems to me particularly quiet."

"What would you have? Punchinello himself would grow melancholy with such a life as hers."

Her husband reflects for a few moments. After a while he says, "I wonder whether, after all, she was not a little smitten with Edgar?"

"Upon what do you base your conjecture?" Therese asks, in astonishment.

"She put on so extraordinarily indifferent an expression whenever he was mentioned."

Therese laughs aloud.

"What is there to laugh at?" her husband asks, rather crossly.

"Forgive me, but you remind me of the Frenchman who proposed to a young lady through her mother, and when he was asked by her what reason he had to suppose that her daughter liked him, replied, 'I am quite sure of it, for she always leaves the room as soon as I enter it.'"

"Laugh away; we shall soon see who is right. Moreover, Edgar must take some interest in her, or he would not have recommended her to us so warmly," replies Rohritz.

"Bah! he recommended her to us at the express request of our common friend Leskjewitsch," his wife rejoins.

"True; but----"

"She is a child in comparison with him. He might be her father."

Edmund is silent for a while, and then says, "That is true; she is a child,--and he is very sensible."

CHAPTER XXIV.

A MUSIC-LESSON.

Following the advice of the little Italian conductor of the orchestra, Stella refers to him in order to procure more reasonable terms from Signor della Seggiola for her singing-lessons.

These 'more reasonable terms' are twenty-five francs for an hour abbreviated at both ends, and sixty francs a month for a share in the singing-cla.s.s,--that is, in the musical dissertations which Signor della Seggiola holds three times a week for six or seven pupils in a small room in the Gerard piano-building.

For the sake of those who consider twenty-five francs an hour a tolerably high price for lessons, and who are inclined to regard the leader's recommendation as a humbug, it may be well to state that twenty-five francs is really a lowered price, and that dilettanti usually pay from thirty to thirty-five francs for a private lesson from della Seggiola.

It is with the maestro's wife that Stella makes the business arrangement, since della Seggiola himself--an artist, an idealist, a child--understands nothing about money. He evidently labours under the delusion that he gives the lessons for nothing, since he does not take the slightest pains to give his scholars an honest equivalent in valuable instruction for their twenty-five, thirty, or thirty-five francs.

As we already know, Stella is tolerably familiar with the singing-teachers of many lands: she knows that, as is the case also with dentists, they all abuse one another and testify the same horror at the misdeeds of their predecessors, declaring with the same tragic shake of the head that it will be necessary to begin with the A, B, C,--that is, with Concone's solfeggi, and that it is indispensable for the scholar that she should procure the work upon the art of singing with which the new teacher, as well as his predecessor, has enriched musical literature. Stella already possesses five exhaustive works upon the 'Bel Canto,' 'L'Art lyrique,' 'L'Art du Chant,' and so forth; each cost twenty francs and contains a more or less valuable collection of solfeggi. Some of these volumes are adorned with the portrait of the author, others have prefaces in which some famous man, such as Rossini, for example, recommends the work to the public as something extraordinary, something destined by its intrinsic merit to outlast the Pyramids.

Delia Seggiola's work differs from all these clumsy compositions.

Adorned neither with the portrait of the author nor with a preface by a celebrity, it displays upon its first page the profile of a human being cut in half,--an imposing proof of the maestro's anatomical knowledge, as well as of his close study of the physical conditions of a true training of the voice.

The large and magnificently-bound volume contains no series of solfeggi, but simply some scanty, musically impossible fiorituri, or musical examples borrowed from other works, which swim like little islands in an ocean of text. As Signora della Seggiola expresses herself, her husband's volume is no compilation of senseless solfeggi, but a Bible for the lovers of song.

A Bible for those who believe in della Seggiola's infallibility.

At the private lessons--the maestro gives these, of course, only at his own home--the accompaniments are played by an ambitious young musician who has once been with Strakosch on a tour; in the cla.s.s, Fraulein Fuhrwesen accompanies, her impresario having postponed for the present the concert tour in South America.

Della Seggiola never touches the piano himself. He is a broad-shouldered, jolly Italian, with a big, kindly, smiling face, and a black velvet cap.

Without ever having possessed even a tolerably good voice, he ranked for a time among the distinguished singers of the world. His fine singing is, however, of little use to his pupils.

He pa.s.ses the time of the lessons chiefly in reading aloud chapters from his 'Bible,' while the accompanist, with unflagging enthusiasm, praises the wisdom of the work; then the pupil sings some trifle, della Seggiola meanwhile gazing at her with a solemn air, sometimes grimacing to show the position of the lips, or tapping alternately her throat and her chest, exclaiming, "_Ne serrez pas!_" or "_Soutenez! soutenez!_"

Then he directs the pupil to rest, tells something funny, clicks with his tongue, throws his velvet cap into the air, and--kling-a-ling-ling Signora della Seggiola gives the signal that the lesson is over.

The cla.s.s is a rather more serious and artistic affair than the private lessons, from the fact that there are no different prices to be paid here, but that every one--with the exception of a _protege_ of Signora della Seggiola's, a barytone from Florence, who pays nothing--pays as in an omnibus the same sixty francs a month, whether the cla.s.s consist of thirty or only three persons.

And the company reminds one somewhat of an omnibus. Against the background of usual shabbiness one or two brilliant social stars stand forth, making one wonder how they came there. It can hardly be a.s.serted that even here among the disciples of della Seggiola, the only true prophet of his art, any great progress in singing is made. During the six weeks for which Stella has now belonged to the cla.s.s it has been singing the same thing, only with less and less voice; that is all the difference.

Condemned by the formation of his throat, which is extraordinarily ill adapted to song, to spare the organ, della Seggiola never allows one of his faithful disciples to sing one natural, healthy note, but condemns them also to a constant mezzo-voce which cannot but contract the throat.

Thus artificially restrained, Stella's warm rich voice diminishes with extraordinary rapidity. When she complains to the maestro that this is so, he remarks that it is a very good sign, her great fault being that she has too much voice, and only when she has lost it entirely can the cultivation of a really _bel canto_ begin.

This astounding a.s.sertion gives Stella food for reflection, and it occurs to her to-day as she sits at the piano preparing for the cla.s.s-lesson and finds that two of her notes break as she sings the scale.

"Della Seggiola ought to be pleased with my progress," she says to herself, with some bitterness, and her heart beats hard as the constantly-recurring question arises in her mind, "If I should really lose my voice----? But where is the use of thinking of it?" she answers herself, with a shrug. The clock on the chimney-piece, the one with the manchineel-tree, strikes a quarter of ten. "It is high time to go," the girl says aloud. Slipping on the still handsome sealskin jacket which her father had given her five years before for a Christmas-present, she hurries along the various thronged streets, broad and narrow, through the pale-yellow January suns.h.i.+ne, to her destination.

The 'hall' in the Gerard piano-warehouse, Rue du Mail, where della Seggiola holds his cla.s.ses, is hardly more s.p.a.cious than an ordinary room in Berlin or Vienna, and, being partly filled with pianos sewed up in linen, leaves something to be desired from an acoustic point of view. The lesson has already begun when Stella enters. Fraulein Fuhrwesen, in her ta.s.sel-bedecked water-proof, is seated at the piano, upon the lid of which the 'Bible' lies open. Della Seggiola, resting his right hand upon its pages, and gesticulating with his left, is delivering an inspiring discourse upon the art of song, while a tall, sallow young man, with very little hair upon his head, but all the more upon his face, is awaiting with ill-disguised impatience the moment when he can burst into song.

This young man's name is Meyer (p.r.o.nounced Meyare): he is clerk in a banking-house, and is studying for the stage.

A second barytone, a young Italian, is also waiting with longing for his turn. He is the star of the cla.s.s, a Florentine, who has wandered to Paris with his two sisters, who regularly come to the cla.s.s with him. They are sallow and elderly, wear very large Rembrandt hats, which, as they privately inform Stella, they purchased in the Temple, sit on each side of their brother, and keep up a constant nod of encouragement.

In strict seclusion from the young men, and guarded by a gray-haired duenna, across whose threadbare brown sacque she gaily ogles the barytone from Florence, sits a dishevelled little soprano, the daughter of a diva and a journalist.