Svengali had heard her sing at the Brasserie des Porcherons in the Rue du Crapaud-volant, and had volunteered to teach her; and she went to see him in his garret, and he played to her, and leered and ogled, and flashed his bold, black, beady Jew's eyes into hers, and she straightway mentally prostrated herself in reverence and adoration before this dazzling specimen of her race.
So that her sordid, mercenary little gutter-draggled soul was filled with the sight and the sound of him, as of a lordly, godlike, shawm-playing, cymbal-banging hero and prophet of the Lord God of Israel – David and Saul in one!
And then he set himself to teach her – kindly and patiently at first, calling her sweet little pet names – his "Rose of Sharon," his "pearl of Pabylon," his "cazelle-eyed liddle Cherusalem skylark" – and promised her that she should be the queen of the nightingales.
But before he could teach her anything he had to unteach her all she knew; her breathing, the production of her voice, its emission – everything was wrong. She worked indefatigably to please him, and soon succeeded in forgetting all the pretty little sympathetic tricks of voice and phrasing Mother Nature had taught her.
But though she had an exquisite ear, she had no real musical intelligence – no intelligence of any kind except about sous and centimes; she was as stupid as a little downy owl, and her voice was just a light native warble, a throstle's pipe, all in the head and nose and throat (a voice he didn't understand, for once), a thing of mere youth and health and bloom and high spirits – like her beauty, such as it was —beauté du diable, beauté damnée.
She did her very best, and practised all she could in this new way, and sang herself hoarse: she scarcely ate or slept for practising. He grew harsh and impatient and coldly severe, and of coarse she loved him all the more; and the more she loved him the more nervous she got and the worse she sang. Her voice cracked; her ear became demoralized; her attempts to vocalize grew almost as comical as Trilby's. So that he lost his temper completely, and called her terrible names, and pinched and punched her with his big bony hands till she wept worse than Niobe, and borrowed money of her – five-franc pieces, even francs and demifrancs – which he never paid her back; and browbeat and bullied and ballyragged her till she went quite mad for love of him, and would have jumped out of his sixth-floor window to give him a moment's pleasure!
He did not ask her to do this – it never occurred to him, and would have given him no pleasure to speak of. But one fine Sabbath morning (a Saturday, of course) he took her by the shoulders and chucked her, neck and crop, out of his garret, with the threat that if she ever dared to show her face there again he would denounce her to the police – an awful threat to the likes of poor Mimi la Salope!
"For where did all those five-franc pieces come from —hein?– with which she had tried to pay for all the singing-lessons that had been thrown away upon her? Not from merely sitting to painters —hein?"
Thus the little gazelle-eyed Jerusalem skylark went back to her native streets again – a mere mud-lark of the Paris slums – her wings clipped, her spirit quenched and broken, and with no more singing left in her than a common or garden sparrow – not so much!
And so, no more of "la betite Honorine!"
The morning after this adventure Svengali woke up in his garret with a tremendous longing to spend a happy day; for it was a Sunday, and a very fine one.
He made a long arm and reached his waistcoat and trousers off the floor, and emptied the contents of their pockets on to his tattered blanket; no silver, no gold, only a few sous and two-sou pieces, just enough to pay for a meagre premier déjeuner!
He had cleared out Gecko the day before, and spent the proceeds (ten francs, at least) in one night's riotous living – pleasures in which Gecko had had no share; and he could think of no one to borrow money from but Little Billee, Taffy, and the Laird, whom he had neglected and left untapped for days.
So he slipped into his clothes, and looked at himself in what remained of a little zinc mirror, and found that his forehead left little to be desired, but that his eyes and temples were decidedly grimy. Wherefore, he poured a little water out of a little jug into a little basin, and, twisting the corner of his pocket-handkerchief round his dirty forefinger, he delicately dipped it, and removed the offending stains. His fingers, he thought, would do very well for another day or two as they were; he ran them through his matted black mane, pushed it behind his ears, and gave it the twist he liked (and that was so much disliked by his English friends). Then he put on his béret and his velveteen cloak, and went forth into the sunny streets, with a sense of the fragrance and freedom and pleasantness of Sunday morning in Paris in the month of May.
He found Little Billee sitting in a zinc hip-bath, busy with soap and sponge; and was so tickled and interested by the sight that he quite forgot for the moment what he had come for.
"Himmel! Why the devil are you doing that?" he asked, in his German-Hebrew-French.
"Doing what?" asked Little Billee, in his French of Stratford-atte-Bowe.
"Sitting in water and playing with a cake of soap and a sponge!"
"Why, to try and get myself clean, I suppose!"
"Ach! And how the devil did you get yourself dirty, then?"
To this Little Billee found no immediate answer, and went on with his ablution after the hissing, splashing, energetic fashion of Englishmen; and Svengali laughed loud and long at the spectacle of a little Englishman trying to get himself clean – "tâchant de se nettoyer!"
When such cleanliness had been attained as was possible under the circumstances, Svengali begged for the loan of two hundred francs, and Little Billee gave him a five-franc piece.
Content with this, faute de mieux, the German asked him when he would be trying to get himself clean again, as he would much like to come and see him do it.
"Demang mattang, à votre sairveece!" said Little Billee, with a courteous bow.
"What!! Monday too!! Gott in Himmel! you try to get yourself clean every day?"
And he laughed himself out of the room, out of the house, out of the Place de l'Odéon – all the way to the Rue de Seine, where dwelt the "Man of Blood," whom he meant to propitiate with the story of that original, Little Billee, trying to get himself clean – that he might borrow another five-franc piece, or perhaps two.
As the reader will no doubt anticipate, he found Taffy in his bath too, and fell to laughing with such convulsive laughter, such twistings, screwings, and doublings of himself up, such pointings of his dirty forefinger at the huge naked Briton, that Taffy was offended, and all but lost his temper.
"What the devil are you cackling at, sacred head of pig that you are? Do you want to be pitched out of that window into the Rue de Seine? You filthy black Hebrew sweep! Just you wait a bit; I'll wash your head for you!"
And Taffy jumped out of his bath, such a towering figure of righteous Herculean wrath that Svengali was appalled, and fled.
"Donnerwetter!" he exclaimed, as he tumbled down the narrow staircase of the Hôtel de Seine; "what for a thick head! what for a pig-dog! what for a rotten, brutal, verfluchter kerl of an Englander!"
Then he paused for thought.
"Now will I go to that Scottish Englander, in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, for that other five-franc piece. But first will I wait a little while till he has perhaps finished trying to get himself clean."
So he breakfasted at the crèmerie Souchet, in the Rue Clopin-Clopant, and, feeling quite safe again, he laughed and laughed till his very sides were sore.
Two Englanders in one day – as naked as your hand! – a big one and a little one, trying to get themselves clean!
He rather flattered himself he'd scored off those two Englanders.
After all, he was right perhaps, from his point of view: you can get as dirty in a week as in a lifetime, so what's the use of taking such a lot of trouble? Besides, so long as you are clean enough to suit your kind, to be any cleaner