Tantaine, with all humility, confessed his ignorance of these matters.
“Well,” said the professor, “the only difference between those old women and myself is, that they teach birds and I boys; and I know which I had rather do.”
Tantaine pointed to the whip.
“And how about this?” asked he.
Poluche shrugged his shoulders.
“Put yourself in my place for a little while,” remarked he. “You see my master brings me all sorts of boys, and I have to cram music into them in the briefest period possible. Of course the child revolts, and I thrash him; but do not think he cares for this; the young imps thrive on blows. The only way that I can touch them is through their stomachs. I stop a quarter, a half, and sometimes the whole of their dinner. That fetches them, and you have no idea how a little starvation brings them on in music.”
Daddy Tantaine felt a cold shiver creep over him as he listened to this frank exposition of the professor’s mode of action.
“You can now understand,” remarked the professor, “how some airs become popular in Paris. I have forty pupils all trying the same thing. I am drilling them now in the Marguerite, and in a little time you will have nothing else in the streets.”
Poluche was proceeding to give Tantaine some further information, when a step was heard upon the stairs, and the professor remarked,—
“Here is the master; he never comes up here, because he is afraid of the stairs. You had better go down to him.”