Had Victor obeyed a sentiment of honour or of revenge? In any case, he was no coward.
But his brutality frightened them. Music softens manners. Pécuchet conceived the notion of teaching him the solfeggio.
Victor had much difficulty in reading the notes readily and not confounding the terms adagio, presto, and sforzando. His master strove to explain to him the gamut, perfect harmony, the diatonic, the chromatic, and the two kinds of intervals called major and minor.
He made him stand up straight, with his chest advanced, his shoulders thrown back, his mouth wide open, and, in order to teach by example, gave out intonations in a voice that was out of tune. Victor’s voice came forth painfully from his larynx, so contracted was it. When the bar began with a crotchet rest, he started either too soon or too late.
Nevertheless Pécuchet took up an air in two parts. He used a rod as a substitute for a fiddle-stick, and moved his arm like a conductor, as if he had an orchestra behind him; but, engaged as he was in two tasks, he sometimes made a mistake; his blunder led to others on the part of the pupil; and, knitting their brows, straining the muscles of their necks, they went on at random down to the end of the page.
At length Pécuchet said to Victor:
“You’re not likely to shine in a choral society.”
And he abandoned the teaching of music.
Besides, perhaps Locke is right: “Music is associated with so much profligate company that it is better to occupy oneself with something else.”
Without desiring to make an author of him, it would be convenient for Victor to know how to despatch a letter. A reflection stopped them: the epistolary style cannot be acquired, for it belongs exclusively to women.