"Monsieur Rochebrune is going to sing. Silence, if you please!"
Everyone ceased talking, and the room became perfectly still. I began to be afraid that I had gone too fast. To be sure, I sing rather well, but it so rarely happens that I sing before strangers. However, I realized that I must do my best; it was impossible to back out.
I sat down at the piano. My fingers refused to move. What was I to sing? I must make up my mind, for everybody was waiting. I settled upon a romanza by Massini; as is usually the case when one is afraid, I selected the most difficult piece I knew and the one that I sang least well.
At the outset, I forgot the accompaniment and struck two or three discordant notes in the bass—something that had never happened to me before. That was calculated to give my hearers rather a sorry idea of my musical organization.
When I came to the second verse, I forgot the words. I stopped, and began again; but it was of no use, and I mumbled between my teeth:
"Tradera, deri, dera!"
The words of the third verse came to me all right, and I determined to be revenged for the mess I had made of the other two. I attacked it with confidence, and when I came to an ad libitum passage I risked a note which I had taken a hundred times without any trouble. But I had something in my throat that night. Was it fear? was it ill humor? This much is certain, that I made a vile fiasco, and that I ended my song coughing as if I had swallowed something the wrong way.
I left the piano, purple with chagrin, and still coughing. Somebody was malicious enough to applaud me; but I saw in the eyes of the guests that malignant joy which people always feel in society when they have a fair opportunity to laugh at somebody. What distressed me most of all was that I had made an ass of myself before Armantine, who was much given to raillery, and who could hardly restrain her laughter; while Herr von Brunzbrack said to me with the utmost good faith:
"Vat a bity tat you haf ein cold! Id vas going so vell!"
I made no reply; I would have liked to crawl under a sofa. I slunk away to a corner of the salon, where I heard a voice in my ear: