And the company reminds one somewhat of an omnibus. Against the background of usual shabbiness one or two brilliant social stars stand forth, making one wonder how they came there. It can hardly be asserted that even here among the disciples of della Seggiola, the only true prophet of his art, any great progress in singing is made. During the six weeks for which Stella has now belonged to the class it has been singing the same thing, only with less and less voice; that is all the difference.
Condemned by the formation of his throat, which is extraordinarily ill adapted to song, to spare the organ, della Seggiola never allows one of his faithful disciples to sing one natural, healthy note, but condemns them also to a constant mezzo-voce which cannot but contract the throat.
Thus artificially restrained, Stella's warm rich voice diminishes with extraordinary rapidity. When she complains to the maestro that this is so, he remarks that it is a very good sign, her great fault being that she has too much voice, and only when she has lost it entirely can the cultivation of a really bel canto begin.
This astounding assertion gives Stella food for reflection, and it occurs to her to-day as she sits at the piano preparing for the class-lesson and finds that two of her notes break as she sings the scale.
"Della Seggiola ought to be pleased with my progress," she says to herself, with some bitterness, and her heart beats hard as the constantly-recurring question arises in her mind, "If I should really lose my voice----? But where is the use of thinking of it?" she answers herself, with a shrug. The clock on the chimney-piece, the one with the manchineel-tree, strikes a quarter of ten. "It is high time to go," the girl says aloud. Slipping on the still handsome sealskin jacket which her father had given her five years before for a Christmas-present, she hurries along the various thronged streets, broad and narrow, through the pale-yellow January sunshine, to her destination.
The 'hall' in the Gérard piano-warehouse, Rue du Mail, where della Seggiola holds his classes, is hardly more spacious than an ordinary room in Berlin or Vienna, and, being partly filled with pianos sewed up in linen, leaves something to be desired from an acoustic point of view. The lesson has already begun when Stella enters. Fräulein Fuhrwesen, in her tassel-bedecked water-proof, is seated at the piano, upon the lid of which the 'Bible' lies open. Della Seggiola, resting his right hand upon its pages, and gesticulating with his left, is delivering an inspiring discourse upon the art of song, while a tall, sallow young man, with very little hair upon his head, but all the more upon his face, is awaiting with ill-disguised impatience the moment when he can burst into song.
This young man's name is Meyer (pronounced Meyare): he is clerk in a banking-house, and is studying for the stage.
A second barytone, a young Italian, is also waiting with longing for his turn. He is the star of the class, a Florentine, who has wandered to Paris with his two sisters, who regularly come to the class with him. They are sallow and elderly, wear very large Rembrandt hats, which, as they privately inform Stella, they purchased in the Temple, sit on each side of their brother, and keep up a constant nod of encouragement.
In strict seclusion from the young men, and guarded by a gray-haired duenna, across whose threadbare brown sacque she gaily ogles the barytone from Florence, sits a dishevelled little soprano, the daughter of a diva and a journalist.
Of course she has no idea of going on the stage; she speaks with horror of the theatre, and thinks a dramatic career not at all comme il faut.