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Updated: May 10, 2025
"Think for your own good, Mattia," I said, but my voice shook. "Leave my friend?" he cried, linking his arm in mine; "that I never could, but thank you all the same, Monsieur." M. Espinassous insisted, and told Mattia that later they would find the means to send him to the Conservatoire in Paris, because he would surely be a great musician! "Leave Remi? never!"
"Thanks," replied Mattia. I was abashed at his assurance. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, to ask me to wait before getting annoyed. When the man was shaved, M. Espinassous, with towel over his arm, prepared to cut Mattia's hair.
"Monsieur Espinassous?" inquired Mattia. Fluttering like a bird, the dapper little man, who was in the act of shaving a man, replied: "I am Monsieur Espinassous."
Mattia was quite elated at our luck in finding just the kind of musician we wanted. Next morning we took our instruments, Mattia his violin and I my harp, and set out to find M. Espinassous. We did not take Capi, because we thought that it would not do to call on such a celebrated person with a dog. We tied him up in the inn stables.
When we reached the house which our landlady indicated was the professor's, we thought that we must have made a mistake, for before the house two little brass plaques were swinging, which was certainly not the sign of a music professor. The place bore every appearance of a barber's shop. Turning to a man, who was passing, we asked him if he could direct us to M. Espinassous' house.
It was already night when we reached Mendes and, as we were tired out, we decided that we could not take a lesson that evening. We asked the landlady of the inn where we could find a good music master. She said that she was very surprised that we asked such a question; surely, we knew Monsieur Espinassous! "We've come from a distance," I said.
"You must have come from a very great distance, then?" "From Italy," replied Mattia. Then she was no longer astonished, and she admitted that, coming from so far then, we might not have heard of M. Espinassous. "Is this professor very busy?" I asked, fearing that such a celebrated musician might not care to give just one lesson to two little urchins like ourselves.
I did not need to read the article for, although all the world now calls Mattia the Chopin of the violin, I have watched him develop and grow. When we were all three working together under the direction of our tutors, Mattia made little progress in Latin and Greek, but quickly outstripped his professors in music. Espinassous, the barber-musician of Mendes, had been right.
"Why, the youngster's a prodigy!" cried M. Espinassous in rapture; "if you will stay here with me I'll make you a great musician. In the mornings you shall learn to shave my customers and the rest of the day you shall study music. Don't think, because I'm a barber, I don't know music. One has to live!" I looked at Mattia. What was he going to reply? Was I to lose my friend, my chum, my brother?
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