"And do you think that she loves him?"

"At his age!" said the old maid.

"Oh, what an owl I am!" cried Crevel, "when I myself allowed Heloise to keep her artist exactly as Henri IX. allowed Gabrielle her Bellegrade.

Alas! old age, old age!--Good-morning, Celestine. How do, my jewel!--And the brat? Ah! here he comes; on my honor, he is beginning to be like me!--Good-day, Hulot--quite well? We shall soon be having another wedding in the family."

Celestine and her husband, as a hint to their father, glanced at the old maid, who audaciously asked, in reply to Crevel:

"Indeed--whose?"

Crevel put on an air of reserve which was meant to convey that he would make up for her indiscretions.

"That of Hortense," he replied; "but it is not yet quite settled. I have just come from the Lebas', and they were talking of Mademoiselle Popinot as a suitable match for their son, the young councillor, for he would like to get the presidency of a provincial court.--Now, come to dinner."

By seven o'clock Lisbeth had returned home in an omnibus, for she was eager to see Wenceslas, whose dupe she had been for three weeks, and to whom she was carrying a basket filled with fruit by the hands of Crevel himself, whose attentions were doubled towards _his_ Cousin Betty.

She flew up to the attic at a pace that took her breath away, and found the artist finishing the ornamentation of a box to be presented to the adored Hortense. The framework of the lid represented hydrangeas--in French called _Hortensias_--among which little Loves were playing. The poor lover, to enable him to pay for the materials of the box, of which the panels were of malachite, had designed two candlesticks for Florent and Chanor, and sold them the copyright--two admirable pieces of work.

"You have been working too hard these last few days, my dear fellow,"

said Lisbeth, wiping the perspiration from his brow, and giving him a kiss. "Such laborious diligence is really dangerous in the month of August. Seriously, you may injure your health. Look, here are some peaches and plums from Monsieur Crevel.--Now, do not worry yourself so much; I have borrowed two thousand francs, and, short of some disaster, we can repay them when you sell your clock. At the same time, the lender seems to me suspicious, for he has just sent in this doc.u.ment."

She laid the writ under the model sketch of the statue of General Montcornet.

"For whom are you making this pretty thing?" said she, taking up the model sprays of hydrangea in red wax which Wenceslas had laid down while eating the fruit.

"For a jeweler."

"For what jeweler?"

"I do not know. Stidmann asked me to make something out of them, as he is very busy."

"But these," she said in a deep voice, "are _Hortensias_. How is it that you have never made anything in wax for me? Is it so difficult to design a pin, a little box--what not, as a keepsake?" and she shot a fearful glance at the artist, whose eyes were happily lowered. "And yet you say you love me?"

"Can you doubt it, mademoiselle?"

"That is indeed an ardent _mademoiselle_!--Why, you have been my only thought since I found you dying--just there. When I saved you, you vowed you were mine, I mean to hold you to that pledge; but I made a vow to myself! I said to myself, 'Since the boy says he is mine, I mean to make him rich and happy!' Well, and I can make your fortune."

"How?" said the hapless artist, at the height of joy, and too artless to dream of a snare.

"Why, thus," said she.

Lisbeth could not deprive herself of the savage pleasure of gazing at Wenceslas, who looked up at her with filial affection, the expression really of his love for Hortense, which deluded the old maid. Seeing in a man's eyes, for the first time in her life, the blazing torch of pa.s.sion, she fancied it was for her that it was lighted.

"Monsieur Crevel will back us to the extent of a hundred thousand francs to start in business, if, as he says, you will marry me. He has queer ideas, has the worthy man.--Well, what do you say to it?" she added.

The artist, as pale as the dead, looked at his benefactress with a l.u.s.treless eye, which plainly spoke his thoughts. He stood stupefied and open-mouthed.

"I never before was so distinctly told that I am hideous," said she, with a bitter laugh.

"Mademoiselle," said Steinbock, "my benefactress can never be ugly in my eyes; I have the greatest affection for you. But I am not yet thirty, and----"

"I am forty-three," said Lisbeth. "My cousin Adeline is forty-eight, and men are still madly in love with her; but then she is handsome--she is!"

"Fifteen years between us, mademoiselle! How could we get on together!

For both our sakes I think we should be wise to think it over. My grat.i.tude shall be fully equal to your great kindness.--And your money shall be repaid in a few days."

"My money!" cried she. "You treat me as if I were nothing but an unfeeling usurer."

"Forgive me," said Wenceslas, "but you remind me of it so often.--Well, it is you who have made me; do not crush me."

"You mean to be rid of me, I can see," said she, shaking her head. "Who has endowed you with this strength of ingrat.i.tude--you who are a man of papier-mache? Have you ceased to trust me--your good genius?--me, when I have spent so many nights working for you--when I have given you every franc I have saved in my lifetime--when for four years I have shared my bread with you, the bread of a hard-worked woman, and given you all I had, to my very courage."

"Mademoiselle--no more, no more!" he cried, kneeling before her with uplifted hands. "Say not another word! In three days I will tell you, you shall know all.--Let me, let me be happy," and he kissed her hands.

"I love--and I am loved."

"Well, well, my child, be happy," she said, lifting him up. And she kissed his forehead and hair with the eagerness that a man condemned to death must feel as he lives through the last morning.

"Ah! you are of all creatures the n.o.blest and best! You are a match for the woman I love," said the poor artist.

"I love you well enough to tremble for your future fate," said she gloomily. "Judas hanged himself--the ungrateful always come to a bad end! You are deserting me, and you will never again do any good work.

Consider whether, without being married--for I know I am an old maid, and I do not want to smother the blossom of your youth, your poetry, as you call it, in my arms, that are like vine-stocks--but whether, without being married, we could not get on together? Listen; I have the commercial spirit; I could save you a fortune in the course of ten years' work, for Economy is my name!--while, with a young wife, who would be sheer Expenditure, you would squander everything; you would work only to indulge her. But happiness creates nothing but memories.

Even I, when I am thinking of you, sit for hours with my hands in my lap----

"Come, Wenceslas, stay with me.--Look here, I understand all about it; you shall have your mistresses; pretty ones too, like that little Marneffe woman who wants to see you, and who will give you happiness you could never find with me. Then, when I have saved you thirty thousand francs a year in the funds----"

"Mademoiselle, you are an angel, and I shall never forget this hour,"

said Wenceslas, wiping away his tears.

"That is how I like to see you, my child," said she, gazing at him with rapture.

Vanity is so strong a power in us all that Lisbeth believed in her triumph. She had conceded so much when offering him Madame Marneffe. It was the crowning emotion of her life; for the first time she felt the full tide of joy rising in her heart. To go through such an experience again she would have sold her soul to the Devil.

"I am engaged to be married," Steinbock replied, "and I love a woman with whom no other can compete or compare.--But you are, and always will be, to me the mother I have lost."

The words fell like an avalanche of snow on a burning crater. Lisbeth sat down. She gazed with despondent eyes on the youth before her, on his aristocratic beauty--the artist's brow, the splendid hair, everything that appealed to her suppressed feminine instincts, and tiny tears moistened her eyes for an instant and immediately dried up. She looked like one of those meagre statues which the sculptors of the Middle Ages carved on monuments.

"I cannot curse you," said she, suddenly rising. "You--you are but a boy. G.o.d preserve you!"

She went downstairs and shut herself into her own room.

"She is in love with me, poor creature!" said Wenceslas to himself. "And how fervently eloquent! She is crazy."

This last effort on the part of an arid and narrow nature to keep hold on an embodiment of beauty and poetry was, in truth, so violent that it can only be compared to the frenzied vehemence of a shipwrecked creature making the last struggle to reach sh.o.r.e.

On the next day but one, at half-past four in the morning, when Count Steinbock was sunk in the deepest sleep, he heard a knock at the door of his attic; he rose to open it, and saw two men in shabby clothing, and a third, whose dress proclaimed him a bailiff down on his luck.