Page:Madame Rolland (Blind 1886).djvu/16

6 Manon's love of reading and thirst for knowledge used to hurry her out of bed at five in the morning. Barefooted, she would steal to her mother's room where her books lay on a table, and do her lessons with such eagerness that her progress took her masters by surprise. Among these we hear of an anomalous sort of personage who had successively figured as chorister-boy, soldier, deserter, capuchin, and discharged clerk, and had come up penniless from the country with a wife and three children. This Jack-of-all-trades, who rejoiced in a fine falsetto voice, was employed to teach her singing, freely borrowing money of her parents the while, and finally disappearing in Russia. Her dancing master, a Savoyard, was wizened, snub-nosed, frightfully ugly, and with a wen on his cheek which showed to advantage as with his chin he nipped his pocket viol. Fourthly, there was a gigantic Spaniard, with hairy hands like Esau, who gave her lessons on the guitar; and, finally, a timid man of fifty, with rubicund face, who taught her to play on the violoncello. As the latter only instructed her for a short time, a Reverend Father Colomb enters on the scene who, to console her, occasionally used to send over his violoncello to accompany her guitar. Besides all this, her uncle used to teach her some Latin; while her father, to complete the curriculum, made her learn drawing and the use of the graving tool.

But the real business of education, as before mentioned, consisted not so much in these lessons as in her insatiable reading of all the books she could find, consisting chiefly of standard works, few in number but of excellent quality. After having devoured all those belonging to her parents, she came one day, while ferreting about the house, on a fresh store which lasted