Marie Antoinette Eats Cake, parts 749 - 752

749. From that day on the relationship of the girls to their tutor changed fundamentally. They longed to be good students and to prove to him that they liked him, because they were certain he thought they despised him.  Marie began to work feverishly on the prelude she had been given as an assignment, and Angela began to search for something she could do to please him.

750. The tutor was a bachelor and  it was natural for him to feel towards Angela and Marie Antoinette as he would to his own children if he had had any. That being the situation sometimes the music sessions were devoted to storytelling. He would  tell them some anecdote from his past in Italy. After the incident with his viola he was extremely tempted to punish them, but that impulse combined with  his affection for them resulted in his telling them a story from his childhood. 

751. It was a very curious story and I do not know if it is true. What was remarkable about it was that the music tutor managed to combine the fact that he was a bachelor, that he was devoted to his two students and yet he wanted to punish them.  All of this was combined in an anecdote, not about himself but about Antonio Vivaldi whom his father had worked for in Venice when he as a boy.  What follows is that story.

752. Before the Duck launched into his telling of the music tutors story, I felt that we were getting so far off of the subject of the original conversation that I interrupted him to ask a question. "Duck", I said, "This is very interesting but I don't see what it has to do with those 'French Landscape Painters Easels' with which we began this discussion.