which she carried her work home, as to the business of a sculptor. By
dint of many questions she ended by hearing of the studio kept by
Florent and Chanor, a house that made a special business of casting
and finishing decorative bronzes and handsome silver plate. Thither
she went with Steinbock, recommending him as an apprentice in
sculpture, an idea that was regarded as too eccentric. Their business
was to copy the works of the greatest artists, but they did not teach
the craft. The old maid's persistent obstinacy so far succeeded that
Steinbock was taken on to design ornament. He very soon learned to
model ornament, and invented novelties; he had a gift for it.
Five months after he was out of his apprenticeship as a finisher, he
made acquaintance with Stidmann, the famous head of Florent's studios.
Within twenty months Wenceslas was ahead of his master; but in thirty
months the old maid's savings of sixteen years had melted entirely.
Two thousand five hundred francs in gold!--a sum with which she had
intended to purchase an annuity; and what was there to show for it? A
Pole's receipt! And at this moment Lisbeth was working as hard as in
her young days to supply the needs of her Livonian.
When she found herself the possessor of a piece of paper instead of
her gold louis, she lost her head, and went to consult Monsieur Rivet,
who for fifteen years had been his clever head-worker's friend and
counselor. On hearing her story, Monsieur and Madame Rivet scolded
Lisbeth, told her she was crazy, abused all refugees whose plots for
reconstructing their nation compromised the prosperity of the country
and the maintenance of peace; and they urged Lisbeth to find what in
trade is called security.
"The only hold you have over this fellow is on his liberty," observed
Monsieur Rivet.
Monsieur Achille Rivet was assessor at the Tribunal of Commerce.
"Imprisonment is no joke for a foreigner," said he. "A Frenchman
remains five years in prison and comes out, free of his debts to be
sure, for he is thenceforth bound only by his conscience, and that
never troubles him; but a foreigner never comes out.--Give me your
promissory note; my bookkeeper will take it up; he will get it
protested; you will both be prosecuted and both be condemned to
imprisonment in default of payment; then, when everything is in due
form, you must sign a declaration. By doing this your interest will be
accumulating, and you will have a pistol always primed to fire at your
Pole!"
The old maid allowed these legal steps to be taken, telling her
protege not to be uneasy, as the proceedings were merely to afford a
guarantee to a money-lender who agreed to advance them certain sums.
This subterfuge was due to the inventive genius of Monsieur Rivet. The
guileless artist, blindly trusting to his benefactress, lighted his
pipe with the stamped paper, for he smoked as all men do who have
sorrows or energies that need soothing.
One fine day Monsieur Rivet showed Mademoiselle Fischer a schedule,
and said to her:
"Here you have Wenceslas Steinbock bound hand and foot, and so
effectually, that within twenty-four hours you can have him snug in
Clichy for the rest of his days."
This worthy and honest judge at the Chamber of Commerce experienced
that day the satisfaction that must come of having done a malignant
good action. Beneficence has so many aspects in Paris that this
contradictory expression really represents one of them. The Livonian
being fairly entangled in the toils of commercial procedure, the point
was to obtain payment; for the illustrious tradesman looked on
Wenceslas as a swindler. Feeling, sincerity, poetry, were in his eyes
mere folly in business matters.
So Rivet went off to see, in behalf of that poor Mademoiselle Fischer,
who, as he said, had been "done" by the Pole, the rich manufacturers
for whom Steinbock had worked. It happened that Stidmann--who, with
the help of these distinguished masters of the goldsmiths' art, was
raising French work to the perfection it has now reached, allowing it
to hold its own against Florence and the Renaissance--Stidmann was in
Chanor's private room when the army lace manufacturer called to make
inquiries as to "One Steinbock, a Polish refugee."
"Whom do you call 'One Steinbock'? Do you mean a young Livonian who
was a pupil of mine?" cried Stidmann ironically. "I may tell you,
monsieur, that he is a very great artist. It is said of me that I
believe myself to be the Devil. Well, that poor fellow does not know
that he is capable of becoming a god."
"Indeed," said Rivet, well pleased. And then he added, "Though you
take a rather cavalier tone with a man who has the honor to be an
Assessor on the Tribunal of Commerce of the Department of the Seine."
"Your pardon, Consul!" said Stidmann, with a military salute.
"I am delighted," the Assessor went on, "to hear what you say. The man
may make money then?"
"Certainly," said Chanor; "but he must work. He would have a tidy sum
by now if he had stayed with us. What is to be done? Artists have a
horror of not being free."
"They have a proper sense of their value and dignity," replied
Stidmann. "I do not blame Wenceslas for walking alone, trying to make
a name, and to become a great man; he had a right to do so! But he was
a great loss to me when he left."
"That, you see," exclaimed Rivet, "is what all young students aim at
as soon as they are hatched out of the school-egg. Begin by saving
money, I say, and seek glory afterwards."
"It spoils your touch to be picking up coin," said Stidmann. "It is
Glory's business to bring us wealth."
"And, after all," said Chanor to Rivet, "you cannot tether them."
"They would eat the halter," replied Stidmann.
"All these gentlemen have as much caprice as talent," said Chanor,
looking at Stidmann. "They spend no end of money; they keep their
girls, they throw coin out of window, and then they have no time to
work. They neglect their orders; we have to employ workmen who are
very inferior, but who grow rich; and then they complain of the hard
times, while, if they were but steady, they might have piles of gold."
"You old Lumignon," said Stidmann, "you remind me of the publisher
before the Revolution who said--'If only I could keep Montesquieu,
Voltaire, and Rousseau very poor in my backshed, and lock up their
breeches in a cupboard, what a lot of nice little books they would
write to make my fortune.'--If works of art could be hammered out like
nails, workmen would make them.--Give me a thousand francs, and don't
talk nonsense."
Worthy Monsieur Rivet went home, delighted for poor Mademoiselle
Fischer, who dined with him every Monday, and whom he found waiting
for him.
"If you can only make him work," said he, "you will have more luck
than wisdom; you will be repaid, interest, capital, and costs. This
Pole has talent, he can make a living; but lock up his trousers and
his shoes, do not let him go to the _Chaumiere_ or the parish of
Notre-Dame de Lorette, keep him in leading-strings. If you do not take
such precautions, your artist will take to loafing, and if you only
knew what these artists mean by loafing! Shocking! Why, I have just
heard that they will spend a thousand-franc note in a day!"
This episode had a fatal influence on the home-life of Wenceslas and
Lisbeth. The benefactress flavored the exile's bread with the wormwood
of reproof, now that she saw her money in danger, and often believed
it to be lost. From a kind mother she became a stepmother; she took
the poor boy to task, she nagged him, scolded him for working too
slowly, and blamed him for having chosen so difficult a profession.
She could not believe that those models in red wax--little figures and
sketches for ornamental work--could be of any value. Before long,
vexed with herself for her severity, she would try to efface the tears
by her care and attention.
Then the poor young man, after groaning to think that he was dependent
on this shrew and under the thumb of a peasant of the Vosges, was
bewitched by her coaxing ways and by a maternal affection that
attached itself solely to the physical and material side of life. He
was like a woman who forgives a week of ill-usage for the sake of a
kiss and a brief reconciliation.
Thus Mademoiselle Fischer obtained complete power over his mind. The
love of dominion that lay as a germ in the old maid's heart developed
rapidly. She could now satisfy her pride and her craving for action;
had she not a creature belonging to her, to be schooled, scolded,
flattered, and made happy, without any fear of a rival? Thus the good
and bad sides of her nature alike found play. If she sometimes
victimized the poor artist, she had, on the other hand, delicate
impulses like the grace of wild flowers; it was a joy to her to
provide for all his wants; she would have given her life for him, and
Wenceslas knew it. Like every noble soul, the poor fellow forgot the
bad points, the defects of the woman who had told him the story of her
life as an excuse for her rough ways, and he remembered only the
benefits she had done him.
One day, exasperated with Wenceslas for having gone out walking
instead of sitting at work, she made a great scene.
"You belong to me," said she. "If you were an honest man, you would
try to repay me the money you owe as soon as possible."
The gentleman, in whose veins the blood of the Steinbocks was fired,
turned pale.
"Bless me," she went on, "we soon shall have nothing to live on but
the thirty sous I earn--a poor work-woman!"
The two penniless creatures, worked up by their own war of words, grew
vehement; and for the first time the unhappy artist reproached his
benefactress for having rescued him from death only to make him lead
the life of a galley slave, worse than the bottomless void, where at
least, said he, he would have found rest. And he talked of flight.
"Flight!" cried Lisbeth. "Ah, Monsieur Rivet was right."
And she clearly explained to the Pole that within twenty-four hours he
might be clapped into prison for the rest of his days. It was a
crushing blow. Steinbock sank into deep melancholy and total silence.
In the course of the following night, Lisbeth hearing overhead some
preparations for suicide, went up to her pensioner's room, and gave
him the schedule and a formal release.
"Here, dear child, forgive me," she said with tears in her eyes. "Be
happy; leave me! I am too cruel to you; only tell me that you will
sometimes remember the poor girl who has enabled you to make a living.
--What can I say? You are the cause of my ill-humor. I might die;
where would you be without me? That is the reason of my being
impatient to see you do some salable work. I do not want my money back
for myself, I assure you! I am only frightened at your idleness, which
you call meditation; at your ideas, which take up so many hours when
you sit gazing at the sky; I want you to get into habits of industry."
All this was said with an emphasis, a look, and tears that moved the
high-minded artist; he clasped his benefactress to his heart and
kissed her forehead.
"Keep these pieces," said he with a sort of cheerfulness. "Why should
you send me to Clichy? Am I not a prisoner here out of gratitude?"
This episode of their secret domestic life had occurred six months
previously, and had led to Steinbock's producing three finished works:
the seal in Hortense's possession, the group he had placed with the
curiosity dealer, and a beautiful clock to which he was putting the
last touches, screwing in the last rivets.
This clock represented the twelve Hours, charmingly personified by
twelve female figures whirling round in so mad and swift a dance that
three little Loves perched on a pile of fruit and flowers could not
stop one of them; only the torn skirts of Midnight remained in the
hand of the most daring cherub. The group stood on an admirably
treated base, ornamented with grotesque beasts. The hours were told by
a monstrous mouth that opened to yawn, and each Hour bore some
ingeniously appropriate symbol characteristic of the various
occupations of the day.
It is now easy to understand the extraordinary attachment of
Mademoiselle Fischer for her Livonian; she wanted him to be happy, and
she saw him pining, fading away in his attic. The causes of this
wretched state of affairs may be easily imagined. The peasant woman
watched this son of the North with the affection of a mother, with the
jealousy of a wife, and the spirit of a dragon; hence she managed to
put every kind of folly or dissipation out of his power by leaving him
destitute of money. She longed to keep her victim and companion for
herself alone, well conducted perforce, and she had no conception of
the cruelty of this senseless wish, since she, for her own part, was
accustomed to every privation. She loved Steinbock well enough not to
marry him, and too much to give him up to any other woman; she could
not resign herself to be no more than a mother to him, though she saw
that she was mad to think of playing the other part.
These contradictions, this ferocious jealousy, and the joy of having a
man to herself, all agitated her old maid's heart beyond measure.
Really in love as she had been for four years, she cherished the
foolish hope of prolonging this impossible and aimless way of life in
which her persistence would only be the ruin of the man she thought of
as her child. This contest between her instincts and her reason made
her unjust and tyrannical. She wreaked on the young man her vengeance
for her own lot in being neither young, rich, nor handsome; then,
after each fit of rage, recognizing herself wrong, she stooped to
unlimited humility, infinite tenderness. She never could sacrifice to
her idol till she had asserted her power by blows of the axe. In fact,
it was the converse of Shakespeare's _Tempest_--Caliban ruling Ariel
and Prospero.
As to the poor youth himself, high-minded, meditative, and inclined to
be lazy, the desert that his protectress made in his soul might be
seen in his eyes, as in those of a caged lion. The penal servitude
forced on him by Lisbeth did not fulfil the cravings of his heart. His
weariness became a physical malady, and he was dying without daring to
ask, or knowing where to procure, the price of some little necessary
dissipation. On some days of special energy, when a feeling of utter
ill-luck added to his exasperation, he would look at Lisbeth as a
thirsty traveler on a sandy shore must look at the bitter sea-water.
These harsh fruits of indigence, and this isolation in the midst of
Paris, Lisbeth relished with delight. And besides, she foresaw that
the first passion would rob her of her slave. Sometimes she even
blamed herself because her own tyranny and reproaches had compelled
the poetic youth to become so great an artist of delicate work, and
she had thus given him the means of casting her off.
On the day after, these three lives, so differently but so utterly
wretched--that of a mother in despair, that of the Marneffe household,
and that of the unhappy exile--were all to be influenced by Hortense's
guileless passion, and by the strange outcome of the Baron's luckless
passion for Josepha.
Just as Hulot was going into the opera-house, he was stopped by the
darkened appearance of the building and of the Rue le Peletier, where
there were no gendarmes, no lights, no theatre-servants, no barrier to
regulate the crowd. He looked up at the announcement-board, and beheld
a strip of white paper, on which was printed the solemn notice:
"CLOSED ON ACCOUNT OF ILLNESS."
He rushed off to Josepha's lodgings in the Rue Chauchat; for, like all
the singers, she lived close at hand.
"Whom do you want, sir?" asked the porter, to the Baron's great
astonishment.
"Have you forgotten me?" said Hulot, much puzzled.
"On the contrary, sir, it is because I have the honor to remember you
that I ask you, Where are you going?"
A mortal chill fell upon the Baron.
"What has happened?" he asked.
"If you go up to Mademoiselle Mirah's rooms, Monsieur le Baron, you
will find Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout there--and Monsieur Bixiou,
Monsieur Leon de Lora, Monsieur Lousteau, Monsieur de Vernisset,
Monsieur Stidmann; and ladies smelling of patchouli--holding a
housewarming."
"Then, where--where is----?"
"Mademoiselle Mirah?--I don't know that I ought to tell you."
The Baron slipped two five-franc pieces into the porter's hand.
"Well, she is now in the Rue de la Ville l'Eveque, in a fine house,
given to her, they say, by the Duc d'Herouville," replied the man in a
whisper.
Having ascertained the number of the house, Monsieur Hulot called a
_milord_ and drove to one of those pretty modern houses with double
doors, where everything, from the gaslight at the entrance, proclaims
luxury.
The Baron, in his blue cloth coat, white neckcloth, nankeen trousers,
patent leather boots, and stiffly starched shirt-frill, was supposed
to be a guest, though a late arrival, by the janitor of this new Eden.
His alacrity of manner and quick step justified this opinion.
The porter rang a bell, and a footman appeared in the hall. This man,
as new as the house, admitted the visitor, who said to him in an
imperious tone, and with a lordly gesture:
"Take in this card to Mademoiselle Josepha."
The victim mechanically looked round the room in which he found
himself--an anteroom full of choice flowers and of furniture that must
have cost twenty thousand francs. The servant, on his return, begged
monsieur to wait in the drawing-room till the company came to their
coffee.
Though the Baron had been familiar with Imperial luxury, which was
undoubtedly prodigious, while its productions, though not durable in
kind, had nevertheless cost enormous sums, he stood dazzled,
dumfounded, in this drawing-room with three windows looking out on a
garden like fairyland, one of those gardens that are created in a
month with a made soil and transplanted shrubs, while the grass seems
as if it must be made to grow by some chemical process. He admired not
only the decoration, the gilding, the carving, in the most expensive
Pompadour style, as it is called, and the magnificent brocades, all of
which any enriched tradesman could have procured for money; but he
also noted such treasures as only princes can select and find, can pay
for and give away; two pictures by Greuze, two by Watteau, two heads
by Vandyck, two landscapes by Ruysdael, and two by le Guaspre, a
Rembrandt, a Holbein, a Murillo, and a Titian, two paintings, by
Teniers, and a pair by Metzu, a Van Huysum, and an Abraham Mignon--in
short, two hundred thousand francs' worth of pictures superbly framed.
The gilding was worth almost as much as the paintings.
"Ah, ha! Now you understand, my good man?" said Josepha.
She had stolen in on tiptoe through a noiseless door, over Persian
carpets, and came upon her adorer, standing lost in amazement--in the
stupid amazement when a man's ears tingle so loudly that he hears
nothing but that fatal knell.
The words "my good man," spoken to an official of such high
importance, so perfectly exemplified the audacity with which these
creatures pour contempt on the loftiest, that the Baron was nailed to
the spot. Josepha, in white and yellow, was so beautifully dressed for
the banquet, that amid all this lavish magnificence she still shone
like a rare jewel.
"Isn't this really fine?" said she. "The Duke has spent all the money
on it that he got out of floating a company, of which the shares all
sold at a premium. He is no fool, is my little Duke. There is nothing
like a man who has been a grandee in his time for turning coals into
gold. Just before dinner the notary brought me the title-deeds to sign
and the bills receipted!--They are all a first-class set in there
--d'Esgrignon, Rastignac, Maxime, Lenoncourt, Verneuil, Laginski,
Rochefide, la Palferine, and from among the bankers Nucingen and du
Tillet, with Antonia, Malaga, Carabine, and la Schontz; and they all
feel for you deeply.--Yes, old boy, and they hope you will join them,
but on condition that you forthwith drink up to two bottles full of
Hungarian wine, Champagne, or Cape, just to bring you up to their
mark.--My dear fellow, we are all so much _on_ here, that it was
necessary to close the Opera. The manager is as drunk as a
cornet-a-piston; he is hiccuping already."
"Oh, Josepha!----" cried the Baron.
"Now, can anything be more absurd than explanations?" she broke in
with a smile. "Look here; can you stand six hundred thousand francs
which this house and furniture cost? Can you give me a bond to the
tune of thirty thousand francs a year, which is what the Duke has just
given me in a packet of common sugared almonds from the grocer's?--a
pretty notion that----"
"What an atrocity!" cried Hulot, who in his fury would have given his
wife's diamonds to stand in the Duc d'Herouville's shoes for
twenty-four hours.
"Atrocity is my trade," said she. "So that is how you take it? Well,
why don't you float a company? Goodness me! my poor dyed Tom, you
ought to be grateful to me; I have thrown you over just when you would
have spent on me your widow's fortune, your daughter's portion.--What,
tears! The Empire is a thing of the past--I hail the coming Empire!"
She struck a tragic attitude, and exclaimed:
"They call you Hulot! Nay, I know you not--"
And she went into the other room.
Through the door, left ajar, there came, like a lightning-flash, a
streak of light with an accompaniment of the crescendo of the orgy and
the fragrance of a banquet of the choicest description.
The singer peeped through the partly open door, and seeing Hulot
transfixed as if he had been a bronze image, she came one step forward
into the room.
"Monsieur," said she, "I have handed over the rubbish in the Rue
Chauchat to Bixiou's little Heloise Brisetout. If you wish to claim
your cotton nightcap, your bootjack, your belt, and your wax dye, I
have stipulated for their return."
This insolent banter made the Baron leave the room as precipitately as
Lot departed from Gomorrah, but he did not look back like Mrs. Lot.
Hulot went home, striding along in a fury, and talking to himself; he
found his family still playing the game of whist at two sous a point,
at which he left them. On seeing her husband return, poor Adeline
imagined something dreadful, some dishonor; she gave her cards to
Hortense, and led Hector away into the very room where, only five
hours since, Crevel had foretold her the utmost disgrace of poverty.
"What is the matter?" she said, terrified.
"Oh, forgive me--but let me tell you all these horrors." And for ten
minutes he poured out his wrath.
"But, my dear," said the unhappy woman, with heroic courage, "these
creatures do not know what love means--such pure and devoted love as
you deserve. How could you, so clear-sighted as you are, dream of
competing with millions?"
"Dearest Adeline!" cried the Baron, clasping her to his heart.
The Baroness' words had shed balm on the bleeding wounds to his
vanity.
"To be sure, take away the Duc d'Herouville's fortune, and she could
not hesitate between us!" said the Baron.
"My dear," said Adeline with a final effort, "if you positively must
have mistresses, why do you not seek them, like Crevel, among women
who are less extravagant, and of a class that can for a time be
content with little? We should all gain by that arrangement.--I
understand your need--but I do not understand that vanity----"
"Oh, what a kind and perfect wife you are!" cried he. "I am an old
lunatic, I do not deserve to have such a wife!"
"I am simply the Josephine of my Napoleon," she replied, with a touch
of melancholy.
"Josephine was not to compare with you!" said he. "Come; I will play a
game of whist with my brother and the children. I must try my hand at
the business of a family man; I must get Hortense a husband, and bury
the libertine."
His frankness so greatly touched poor Adeline, that she said:
"The creature has no taste to prefer any man in the world to my
Hector. Oh, I would not give you up for all the gold on earth. How can
any woman throw you over who is so happy as to be loved by you?"
The look with which the Baron rewarded his wife's fanaticism confirmed
her in her opinion that gentleness and docility were a woman's
strongest weapons.