"He scrapes a fiddle," Koch had explained to the inquiring fishwife. And
perhaps he knew no more than this of Antoine Sebastian. Sebastian was
poor. All the Frauengasse knew that. But the Frauengasse itself was
poor, and no man in Dantzig was so foolish at this time as to admit that
he had possessions.

This was, moreover, not the day of display or snobbery. The king of
snobs, Louis XVI., had died to some purpose, for a wave of manliness had
swept across human thought at the beginning of the century. The world
has rarely been the poorer for the demise of a Bourbon.

The Frauengasse knew that Antoine Sebastian played the fiddle to gain
his daily bread, while his two daughters taught dancing for that same
safest and most satisfactory of all motives.

"But he holds his head so high!" once observed the stout and
matter-of-fact daughter of a Councillor. "Why has he that grand manner?"

"Because he is a dancing-master," replied Desiree with a grave
assurance. "He does it so that you may copy him. Chin up. Oh! how fat
you are."

Desiree herself was slim enough and as yet only half grown. She did not
dance so well as Mathilde, who moved through a quadrille with the air of
a duchess, and threw into a polonaise or mazurka a quiet grace which was
the envy and despair of her pupils. Mathilde was patient with the slow
and heavy of foot, while Desiree told them bluntly that they were fat.
Nevertheless, they were afraid of Mathilde, and only laughed at Desiree
when she rushed angrily at them, and, seizing them by the arms, danced
them round the room with the energy of despair.

Sebastian, who had an oddly judicial air, such as men acquire who are
in authority, held the balance evenly between the sisters, and
smiled apologetically over his fiddle towards the victim of Desiree's
impetuosity.

"Yes," he would reply to watching mothers, who tried to lead him to say
that their daughter was the best dancer in the school: "Yes, Mathilde
puts it into their heads, and Desiree shakes it down to their feet."

In all matters of the household Desiree played a similar part. She was
up early and still astir after nine o'clock at night, when the other
houses in the Frauengasse were quiet, if there were work to do.

"It is because she has no method," said Mathilde, who had herself a
well-ordered mind, and that quickness which never needs to hurry.

CHAPTER V. THE WEISSEN ROSS'L.

The moth will singe her wings, and singed ret