'Stop, though!' added the landowner. 'Eh? you mossoo, do you know anything of music?'
'Sauvez-moi, sauvez-moi, mon bon monsieur!' repeated Lejeune.
'There, see what a wretched people they are! Not one of them knows
Russian! Muzeek, muzeek, savey muzeek voo? savey? Well, speak, do!
Compreny? savey muzeek voo? on the piano, savey zhooey?'
Lejeune comprehended at last what the landowner meant, and persistently nodded his head.
'Oui, monsieur, oui, oui, je suis musicien; je joue tous les instruments possibles! Oui, monsieur…. Sauvez-moi, monsieur!'
'Well, thank your lucky star!' replied the landowner. 'Lads, let him go: here's a twenty-copeck piece for vodka.'
'Thank you, your honour, thank you. Take him, your honour.'
They sat Lejeune in the sledge. He was gasping with delight, weeping, shivering, bowing, thanking the landowner, the coachman, the peasants. He had nothing on but a green jacket with pink ribbons, and it was freezing very hard. The landowner looked at his blue and benumbed shoulders in silence, wrapped the unlucky fellow in his own pelisse, and took him home. The household ran out. They soon thawed the Frenchman, fed him, and clothed him. The landowner conducted him to his daughters.
'Here, children!' he said to them, 'a teacher is found for you. You were always entreating me to have you taught music and the French jargon; here you have a Frenchman, and he plays on the piano…. Come, mossoo,' he went on, pointing to a wretched little instrument he had bought five years before of a Jew, whose special line was eau de Cologne, 'give us an example of your art; zhooey!'
Lejeune, with a sinking heart, sat down on the music-stool; he had never touched a piano in his life.