“And I like him—the idle little rascal!” replied Hermann good-humoredly. “He is the queerest little chap, and I like to talk to him. You are paying your good money for that, Madame Marcel—he is not learning to play the violin—he never will learn.”
Madame Marcel sighed, and a great gloom fell on her. She thought she had solved the problem of Toni’s future, and here it was rising up before her, even more complex and more appalling than before.
“Do you think it would do any good,” she asked anxiously, “if I were to whip Toni?”
“Not a bit, Madame,” replied Hermann. “Perhaps if you let me thrash him—”
This was the second proposal of the kind which Madame Marcel had received, the other one being that offer of Sergeant Duval’s to become a father to Toni, and to give him all the thrashings he richly deserved. Some idea of the same sort flashed into her head, and at the same moment it came into Hermann’s mind. He had grown so unreasonably fond of the little rascal, and what a pity it was that the boy should not be made to learn and to behave himself! So he said sentimentally to Madame Marcel, with almost the same words and exactly the same meaning which Sergeant Duval had:
“Madame, you ought to marry in order that Toni may have a man’s strong hand to control him. If I could aspire”—for Hermann was as poor as poverty, and Madame Marcel, with her candy shop, was comfortably off for a widow with one child. Madame Marcel shook her head. Sergeant Duval was far more attractive to her than this big, hulking, blond violinist, but not even the dashing sergeant could win her on his promise to give Toni his deserts.
“No, Monsieur,” said Madame Marcel, fingering her apron as girlish blushes came into her face, “I am not thinking of changing my condition. My life shall be devoted to Toni, and as I firmly believe that he has great talent for music, and really tries to learn, if you will continue to let him go to you, I shall be delighted, and consider it a favor from you!”
“Very well, Madame,” replied Hermann, in a tone of resignation, “if you wish to throw your money away, you may pay it to me, for God knows I need it. But I assure you, I might just as well undertake to teach the town pump to play the violin as your Toni, and Toni has no more notion of learning to play than the town pump has. Good morning, Madame.”
Toni, in this affair, scored a brilliant victory over his mother and Hermann. For two whole years more he kept up this delightful farce of learning to play the violin, and in that time he learned one little air—Sur le Pont d’Avignon—which he played in a most excruciating manner, flatting his notes terrifically, and playing with a reckless disregard of time, which almost broke poor Hermann’s heart. When Toni played this air for the first time before his mother, on a summer afternoon, the good soul began to doubt, for the first time, whether Toni could be made a great musician. Sergeant Duval, happening to be at home on his annual leave, heard these strange sounds proceeding from Madame Marcel’s kitchen behind the shop, and came over in great alarm, explaining that he heard weird noises and feared that Madame Marcel had perhaps fallen into a fit. Madame Marcel was highly offended at this notion of Toni’s performance, and directed Toni to play Sur le Pont d’Avignon for the sergeant, who listened gravely to Toni’s scraping and caterwauling, his only comment on it being:
“I have known a man to be shot for less than that.”