Caught in the Net by Emile Gaboriau (the ebook reader .txt) 📕

a few filthy-looking quilts and blankets spread over it. The next room was fitted up as a kitchen; in the centre was a long table composed of boards placed on trestles, and a dirty-looking woman with her head enveloped in a coarse red handkerchief, and grasping a big wooden spoon, was stirring the contents of a large pot in which some terrible-looking ingredients were cooking. On a small bed in a corner lay a little boy. Every now and then a shiver convulsed his frame, his face was deadly pale, and his hands almost transparent, while his great black eyes glittered with the wild delirium of fever. Sometimes he would give a deep groan, and then the old beldame would turn angrily and threaten to strike him with her wooden spoon.

“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.”

Poor Ascanie was so muddled that he forgot all his instructions. Without any appearance of anger, the professor took up the whip and administered half a dozen severe cuts across the bare legs of the child, whose shouts soon filled the room.

“When you are done howling,” remarked Poluche, “you can try again; and if you do not succeed, no supper for you to-night, my lad. Now, Giuseppe, it is your turn.”

Giuseppe, though younger than Ascanie, was a greater proficient on the instrument, and went through his task without a single mistake.

“Good!” said Poluche; “if you get on like that, you will soon be fit to go out. You would like that, I suppose?”

“Yes,” replied the delighted boy, “and I should like to bring in a few coppers too.”

But the Professor did not waste too much time in idle converse.

“It is your turn now, Fabio,” said he.

Fabio, a little mite of seven, with eyes black and sparkling as those of a dormouse, had just seen Tantaine in the doorway and pointed him out to the professor.

Poluche turned quickly round and found himself face to face with Tantaine, who had come quickly forward, his hat in his hand.

Had the professor seen an apparition, he could not have started more violently, for he did not like strangers.

“What do you want?” asked he.

“Reassure yourself, sir,” said Tantaine, after having for a few seconds enjoyed his evident terror; “I am the intimate friend of the gentleman who employs you, and have come here to discuss an important matter of business with him.”

Poluche breathed more freely.

“Take a chair, sir,” said he, offering the only one in the room. “My master will soon be here.”

But Daddy Tantaine refused the offer, saying that he did not wish to intrude, but would wait until the lesson was over.

“I have nearly finished,” remarked Poluche; “it is almost time to let these scamps have their soup.”

Then turning to his pupils, who had not dared to stir a limb, he said,—

“There, that is enough for to-day; you can go.”

The children did not hesitate for a moment, but tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get away, hoping, perhaps, that he might omit to execute certain threats that he had held out during the lesson. The hope was a vain one, for the equitable Poluche went to the head of the stairs and called out in a loud voice,—

“Mother Butor, you will give no soup to Monte and put Ravillet on half allowance.”

Tantaine was much interested, for the scene was an entirely new one.

The professor raised his eyes to heaven.

“Would,” said he, “that I might teach them the divine science as I would wish; but the master would not allow me; indeed, he would dismiss me if I attempted to do so.”

“I do not understand you.”