The next morning,by half-past eight,Marie had driven to the quai Conti,stopping at the hotel du Mail on her way.The carriage could not enter the narrow rue de Nevers;but as Schmucke lived in a house at the corner of the quai she was not obliged to walk up its muddy pavement,but could jump from the step of her carriage to the broken step of the dismal old house,mended like porter's crockery,with iron rivets,and bulging out over the street in a way that was quite alarming to pedestrians.The old chapel-master lived on the fourth floor,and enjoyed a fine view of the Seine from the pont Neuf to the heights of Chaillot.
The good soul was so surprised when the countess's footman announced the visit of his former scholar that in his stupefaction he let her enter without going down to receive her.Never did the countess suspect or imagine such an existence as that which suddenly revealed itself to her eyes,though she had long known Schmucke's contempt for dress,and the little interest he held in the affairs of this world.
But who could have believed in such complete indifference,in the utter laisser-aller of such a life?Schmucke was a musical Diogenes,and he felt no shame whatever in his untidiness;in fact,he was so accustomed to it that he would probably have denied its existence.The incessant smoking of a stout German pipe had spread upon the ceiling and over a wretched wall-paper,scratched and defaced by the cat,a yellowish tinge.The cat,a magnificently long-furred,fluffy animal,the envy of all portresses,presided there like the mistress of the house,grave and sedate,and without anxieties.On the top of an excellent Viennese piano he sat majestically,and cast upon the countess,as she entered,that coldly gracious look which a woman,surprised by the beauty of another woman,might have given.He did not move,and merely waved the two silver threads of his right whisker as he turned his golden eyes on Schmucke.
The piano,decrepit on its legs,though made of good wood painted black and gilded,was dirty,defaced,and scratched;and its keys,worn like the teeth of old horses,were yellowed with the fuliginous colors of the pipe.On the desk,a little heap of ashes showed that the night before Schmucke had bestrode the old instrument to some musical Walhalla.The floor,covered with dried mud,torn papers,tobacco-dust,fragments indescribable,was like that of a boy's school-room,unswept for a week,on which a mound of things accumulate,half rags,half filth.
A more practised eye than that of the countess would have seen certain other revelations of Schmucke's mode of life,--chestnut-peels,apple-parings,egg-shells dyed red in broken dishes smeared with sauer-kraut.This German detritus formed a carpet of dusty filth which crackled under foot,joining company near the hearth with a mass of cinders and ashes descending majestically from the fireplace,where lay a block of coal,before which two slender twigs made a show of burning.On the chimney-piece was a mirror in a painted frame,adorned with figures dancing a saraband;on one side hung the glorious pipe,on the other was a Chinese jar in which the musician kept his tobacco.
Two arm-chairs bought at auction,a thin and rickety cot,a worm-eaten bureau without a top,a maimed table on which lay the remains of a frugal breakfast,made up a set of household belongings as plain as those of an Indian wigwam.A shaving-glass,suspended to the fastening of a curtainless window,and surmounted by a rag striped by many wipings of a razor,indicated the only sacrifices paid by Schmucke to the Graces and society.The cat,being the feebler and protected partner,had rather the best of the establishment;he enjoyed the comforts of an old sofa-cushion,near which could be seen a white china cup and plate.But what no pen can describe was the state into which Schmucke,the cat,and the pipe,that existing trinity,had reduced these articles.The pipe had burned the table.The cat and Schmucke's head had greased the green Utrecht velvet of the two arm-chairs and reduced it to a slimy texture.If it had not been for the cat's magnificent tail,which played a useful part in the household,the uncovered places on the bureau and the piano would never have been dusted.In one corner of the room were a pile of shoes which need an epic to describe them.The top of the bureau and that of the piano were encumbered by music-books with ragged backs and whitened corners,through which the pasteboard showed its many layers.Along the walls the names and addresses of pupils written on scraps of paper were stuck on by wafers,--the number of wafers without paper indicating the number of pupils no longer taught.On the wall-papers were many calculations written with chalk.The bureau was decorated with beer-mugs used the night before,their newness appearing very brilliant in the midst of this rubbish of dirt and age.Hygiene was represented by a jug of water with a towel laid upon it,and a bit of common soap.
Two ancient hats hung to their respective nails,near which also hung the self-same blue box-coat with three capes,in which the countess had always seen Schmucke when he came to give his lessons.On the window-sill were three pots of flowers,German flowers,no doubt,and near them a stout holly-wood stick.