Six of the most accomplished scribes of Mexico were to proceed at once to Tezcuco, there to be instructed in the new art; and the next day Roger found himself established in a room in the palace, with the six Aztec scribes, and six of those most celebrated for their skill in Tezcuco.

Some attendants were told off to mix colors under his directions, and to purchase for him, in the market, all kinds of dyes and colors he might require.
A male and female slave were, at Roger's request, placed at his service to act as models; and the attendants had orders to fetch, from the cages and aviaries, any beasts and birds he might desire to copy.
Roger had, at first, some difficulty in preserving his gravity at thus undertaking charge of an art school.

At first he confined himself to sketching, from the models, with a burnt stick on the white paper, and in seeing that his pupils did the same.

Their drawing had hitherto been purely conventional.

They had always drawn a man in a certain way, not because they saw him so, but because that was the way in which they had been taught to draw him; and he had great difficulty in getting them to depart altogether from these lines, and to draw the model exactly as he stood before them.
What he called his school hours lasted but four hours a day; and as he did this work in the middle of the day, when it was too hot to go out, but very pleasant in the rooms with their thick walls and semi-shaded windows, it interfered but little with his daily life.
He had now a set of apartments next to those of Cuitcatl, with attendants to wait upon him; but his time was spent as much in the young noble's rooms as in his own.