“But I am so ill,” pleaded the boy.

“If you had brought home what you were told, you would not have been beaten, and then you would have had no fever,” returned the woman harshly.

“Ah, me!  I am sick and cold, and want to go away,” wailed the child; “I want to see mammy.”

Even Tantaine felt uneasy at this scene, and gave a gentle cough to announce his presence.  The old woman turned round on him with an angry snarl.  “Who do you want here?” growled she.

“Your master.”

“He has not yet arrived, and may not come at all, for it is not his day; but you can see Poluche.”

“And who may he be?”

“He is the professor,” answered the hag contemptuously.

“And where is he?”

“In the music-room.”

Tantaine went to the stairs, which were so dingy and dilapidated as to make an ascent a work of danger and difficulty.  As he ascended higher, he became aware of a strange sound, something between the grinding of scissors and the snarling of cats.  Then a moment’s silence, a loud execration, and a cry of pain.  Tantaine passed on, and coming to a rickety door, he opened it, and in another moment found himself in what the old hag downstairs had called the music-room.  The partitions of all the rooms on the floor had been roughly torn down to form this apartment; hardly a pane of glass remained intact in the windows; the dingy, whitewashed walls were covered with scrawls and drawings in charcoal.  A suffocating, nauseous odor rose up, absolutely overpowering the smell from the neighboring tanyards.  There was no furniture except a broken chair, upon which lay a dog whip with plaited leather lash.  Round the room, against the wall, stood some twenty children, dirty, and in tattered clothes.  Some had violins in their hands, and others stood behind harps as tall as themselves.  Upon the violins Tantaine noticed there were chalk marks at various distances.  In the middle of the room was a man, tall and erect as a dart, with flat, ugly features and lank, greasy hair hanging down on his shoulders.  He, too, had a violin, and was evidently giving the children a lesson.  Tantaine at once guessed that this was Professor Poluche.

“Listen,” said he; “here, you Ascanie, play the chorus from the Chateau de Marguerite.”  As he spoke he drew his bow across his instrument, while the little Savoyard did his best to imitate him, and in a squeaking voice, in nasal tone, he sang: 

“Ah! great heavens, how fine and grand Is the palace!”

“You young rascal!” cried Poluche.  “Have I not bid you fifty times that at the word ‘palace’ you are to place your bow on the fourth chalkmark and draw it across?  Begin again.”

Once again the boy commenced, but Poluche stopped him.

“I believe, you young villain, that you are doing it on purpose.  Now, go through the whole chorus again; and if you do not do it right, look out for squalls.”