his old body, badly poised on its knotted old legs, proving to what
degree a man can make it the mere accessory of his soul, belonged to
those strange creations which have been properly depicted only by a
German,--by Hoffman, the poet of that which seems not to exist but yet
has life.

Such was Schmucke, formerly chapel-master to the Margrave of Anspach;
a musical genius, who was now examined by a council of devotes, and
asked if he kept the fasts. The master was much inclined to answer,
"Look at me!" but how could he venture to joke with pious dowagers and
Jansenist confessors? This apocryphal old fellow held such a place in
the lives of the two Maries, they felt such friendship for the grand
and simple-minded artist, who was happy and contented in the mere
comprehension of his art, that after their marriage, they each gave
him an annuity of three hundred francs a year,--a sum which sufficed
to pay for his lodging, beer, pipes, and clothes. Six hundred francs a
year and his lessons put him in Eden. Schmucke had never found courage
to confide his poverty and his aspirations to any but these two
adorable young girls, whose hearts were blooming beneath the snow of
maternal rigor and the ice of devotion. This fact explains Schmucke
and the girlhood of the two Maries.

No one knew then, or later, what abbe or pious spinster had discovered
the old German then vaguely wandering about Paris, but as soon as
mothers of families learned that the Comtesse de Granville had found a
music-master for her daughters, they all inquired for his name and
address. Before long, Schmucke had thirty pupils in the Marais. This
tardy success was manifested by steel buckles to his shoes, which were
lined with horse-hair soles, and by a more frequent change of linen.
His artless gaiety, long suppressed by noble and decent poverty,