ter'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 th