ic.
A spinster in spectacles, who taught singing and the piano in a
neighboring convent, wearied them with exercises; but when the
eldest girl was ten years old, the Comte de Granville insisted on the
importance of giving her a master. Madame de Granville gave all the
value of conjugal obedience to this needed concession,--it is part of a
devote's character to make a merit of doing her duty.

The master was a Catholic German; one of those men born old, who seem
all their lives fifty years of age, even at eighty. And yet, his brown,
sunken, wrinkled face still kept something infantile and artless in its
dark creases. The blue of innocence was in his eyes, and a gay smile of
springtide abode upon his lips. His iron-gray hair, falling naturally
like that of the Christ in art, added to his ecstatic air a certain
solemnity which was absolutely deceptive as to his real nature; for he
was capable of committing any silliness with the most exemplary
gravity. His clothes were a necessary envelope, to which he paid not the
slightest attention, for his eyes looked too high among the clouds to
concern themselves with such materialities. This great unknown artist
belonged to the kindly class of the self-forgetting, who give their time
and their soul to others, just as they leave their gloves on every table
and their umbrella at all doors. His hands were of the kind that are
dirty as soon as washed. In short, his old body, badly poised on its
knotted old legs, proving to what degree a man can make it the mere
accessory of his soul, belonged to those strange creations which have
been properly depicted only by a German,--by Hoffman, the poet of that
which seems not to exist but yet has life.

Such was Schmucke, formerly chapel-master to the Margrave of Anspach; a
musical genius, who was now examined by a council of devotes, and asked
if he kept the fasts. The master was much inclined to answer, "Look at
me!" but how could he venture to joke with pious dowagers and Jansenist
confessors? This apocryphal old fellow held such a place in the lives
of the two Maries, they felt such friendship for the grand and
simple-minded artist, who was happy and contented in the mere
comprehension of his art, that after their marriage, they each gave him
an annuity of three hundred francs a year,--a sum which sufficed to pay
for his lodging, beer, pipes, and clothes. Six hundred francs a year and
his lessons put him in Eden. Schmucke had never found cour