From the ground-floor of this house came a noise, or rather a confusion of voices, like the chirping of young birds when the brood is just hatched under the down.
One of these voices was spelling the alphabet distinctly.

A voice, thick, yet pleasant, at the same time scolded the talkers and corrected the faults of the reader.

D'Artagnan recognized that voice, and as the window of the ground-floor was open, he leant down from his horse under the branches and red fibers of the vine and cried "Bazin, my dear Bazin! good-day to you." A short, fat man, with a flat face, a craniun ornamented with a crown of gray hairs, cut short, in imitation of a tonsure, and covered with an old black velvet cap, arose as soon as he heard D'Artagnan--we ought not to say arose, but bounded up.

In fact, Bazin bounded up, carrying with him his little low chair, which the children tried to take away, with battles more fierce than those of the Greeks endeavoring to recover the body of Patroclus from the hands of the Trojans.

Bazin did more than bound; he let fall both his alphabet and his ferule.