Hiraux was heart and soul a musician. He got hold of an old violin, and perseveringly scraped away in his odd moments.
The grocer's wife was young, and she was unappreciated by her husband—in all times there have been unappreciated wives;—she played the spinet, and at night she and Hiraux gave concerts which so enchanted the grocer that Hiraux, exalted by his domestic achievements, determined to abandon the grocery trade, and to devote himself entirely to instrumental music.
His talents were genuine enough, and almost entirely self-taught; he attained to such skill on the spinet and on the violin that the town of Villers-Cotterets appointed him organist at a salary of 800 livres per annum.
Hiraux made a little more by giving violin and pianoforte lessons. But all his pupils did not pay him in money; he received some of his fees in kind. The timber merchant would pay him in wood and shavings; the grocer in sugar, in prunes and in jam; the tailor in coats, in trousers and in waistcoats. So, what with his 1600 francs in money, and his income in goods, Hiraux had not only enough to live on but sufficient to enjoy a certain independence, which enabled him to send away pupils who did not satisfy him or who had no taste for music.
My mother, therefore, asked Hiraux to undertake my musical education—and he accepted the office with alacrity, while I, on my side, viewed the arrangement not wholly with repugnance. Hiraux was at that time already sixty years old, but so gay and jolly, so witty, so full of funny stories, possessing such an inexhaustible flow of spirits that he was beloved both by young and old alike. I had known Hiraux as long as I could remember anyone; he had been my sister's first music teacher, before she went to Paris, and he remained her private teacher during her vacations.
During the latter days of my father's illness, who, as I have said, suffered a great deal, and knew he was dying in the heyday of his life, Hiraux used to be invited to come and see us at the château des Fossés; and, as Villers-Cotterets was only a league from Fossés, Hiraux would come and return on foot, sleeping at Villers-Cotterets.
That is to say, to make ourselves quite understood, Hiraux, being always a coward, began by sleeping at Fossés: but it was decreed that persecution should follow this poor man all his life long. The stories of his youth were known by everybody: I have only related a twentieth part of these anecdotes in order to enable everyone else to add another fresh story about his most eventful life.
Now, to our house came secretaries and aides-de-camp,—people as lively and as ingenious at practical jokes as any monks of forty or fifty years back.
The invariable result was that, on going to his room at night, a pot of water placed above the door would fall on Hiraux, or he would find a needle in his bed, or a cock in his wardrobe, until at last he gave up sleeping at Fossés, and would return to Villers-Cotterets no matter what the hour or the weather.
This resolution taken, Hiraux usually came to our house armed with a long sword-stick, enclosed in a leather sheath, to give him courage during his nocturnal walk back.