Two days later, at half past four in the morning, when Count Steinbock was fast asleep, he heard a knock at his attic door. He went to open it and saw two badly dressed men come in. They were accompanied by a third man whose dress indicated a bailiff in poor circumstances.
‘You are Monsieur Wenceslas Count Steinbock?’ asked this third man.
‘Yes, Monsieur.’
‘My name is Grasset, Monsieur, successor to Monsieur Louchard, sheriff’s officer …’
‘Well?’
‘You are under arrest, Monsieur. You must come with us to the Clichy prison. Please get dressed. We’ve done this with due consideration for you, as you see. I haven’t brought any police, and there’s a cab downstairs.’
‘You’re properly caught,’ said one of the bailiff’s men, ‘so we count on your causing no trouble.’
Steinbock got dressed, went downstairs with a bailiff’s man holding each arm, and was put in the cab, the driver setting off without any order being given, as a man who knows where to go. In half an hour the poor foreigner found himself well and truly locked up without having made the slightest protest, so great was his surprise.
At ten o’clock, he was summoned to the prison office. There he found Lisbeth, who, all in tears, gave him money so that he could live comfortably and have a room large enough to work in.
‘My child,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell anyone about your arrest. Don’t write to a living soul; that would ruin your future. This blot on your reputation must be concealed. I’ll soon have you set free. I’ll raise the money…. Don’t worry. Write down what I should bring you for your work. I’ll die or you’ll soon be free.’
‘Oh, I’ll owe you my life twice over!’ he cried. ‘For I’d lose more than my life if I was thought to be disreputable.’
Lisbeth left with joy in her heart. In keeping her artist locked up she hoped to destroy his plans for marriage to Hortense by saying that he was married, had been pardoned thanks to his wife’s efforts, and had left for Russia.
To carry out this plan, she went to the Baroness’s house about three o’clock, although it was not her usual day for dining there. But she wanted to enjoy the tortures that her young cousin would endure at the time that Wenceslas normally came.
‘Are you staying to dinner, Bette?’ asked the Baroness, concealing her disappointment.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Good!’ answered Hortense. ‘I’ll go and tell them to serve it on time, for you don’t like to be kept waiting.’
Hortense signed to her mother not to worry, for she intended to tell the footman to send Monsieur Steinbock away when he arrived; but, as the footman was out, Hortense had to give her order to the maid, and the maid went up to her room to fetch her needlework so as to do it as she waited in the ante-room.
‘And what about my admirer?’ Cousin Bette asked Hortense. ‘You don’t talk about him any more.’
‘Oh, now that you raise the subject, what’s happened to him, for he’s famous now?’ Hortense asked. ‘You must be pleased; everyone’s talking of Monsieur Wenceslas Steinbock,’ she added, whispering in her cousin’s ear.
‘Far too much,’ answered Bette aloud. ‘Monsieur is getting quite unsettled. If it were only a question of enticing him away from the pleasures of Paris, I know my power. But they say that, to attract so gifted an artist to his own court, the Emperor Nicholas is going to pardon him.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ replied the Baroness.
‘How do you know that?’ asked Hortense, whose heart suddenly almost stopped beating.
‘Well, a person to whom he is bound by the most sacred ties, his wife, told him so in a letter he got yesterday. He wants to go. Oh, he’d be very foolish to leave France for Russia.’
Hortense looked at her mother, her head falling to one side, and the Baroness was just in time to catch her daughter as she fainted, white as the lace of her fichu.
‘Lisbeth, you’ve killed my daughter!’ cried the Baroness. ‘You were born to bring us misfortune.’
‘But how am I to blame for this, Adeline?’ asked the Lorraine peasant woman, getting up and assuming a threatening attitude which the Baroness, in her distress, did not notice.
‘I was wrong,’ replied Adeline, supporting Hortense. ‘Ring the bell.’
At that moment the door opened. The two women looked round simultaneously and saw Wenceslas Steinbock, who, in the maid’s absence, had been admitted by the cook.
‘Hortense!’ cried the artist, rushing forward to the group formed by the three women.
And he kissed his fiancée’s brow before her mother’s eyes, but so respectfully that the Baroness could not be angry. It was a better antidote to a faint than any English smelling-salts. Hortense opened her eyes, saw Wenceslas, and her colour returned. A moment later she had entirely recovered.
‘So this is what you were concealing from me,’ said Cousin Bette, smiling at Wenceslas and appearing to guess the truth from the embarrassment of her two cousins.
‘How did you manage to steal my admirer from me?’ she asked Hortense as she led her into the garden.
Hortense naïvely told her cousin the romantic story of her love. She said that her parents, convinced that Bette would never marry, had allowed Count Steinbock’s visits. Only, like a fully fledged Agnès,* Hortense ascribed to chance the purchase of the group and the arrival of the artist who, according to her, had wanted to know the name of his first customer.
Steinbock soon came out to join the two cousins and thanked the old maid effusively for his prompt deliverance. Lisbeth replied to Wenceslas, jesuitically, that as the creditor had made her only vague promises, she did not expect to obtain the artist’s release till the following day and that their money-lender, ashamed of an unjust persecution, had, no doubt, taken the initiative. The old maid, moreover, seemed to be pleased and congratulated Wenceslas on his good fortune.
‘Naughty boy!’ she said in front of Hortense and her mother. ‘If, two evenings ago, you had confessed to me that you loved my cousin Hortense and that she loved you, you would have spared me many tears. I thought you were deserting your old friend, your mentor, while, on the contrary, you are going to be my cousin. From now on, you will be linked to me by ties, weak ones it is true, but sufficient for the feelings I have for you.’
And she kissed Wenceslas on the forehead. Hortense flung herself into her cousin’s arms and burst into tears.
‘I owe you my happiness,’ she said. ‘I’ll never forget it.’
‘Cousin Bette,’ the Baroness added, kissing Lisbeth in her ecstatic delight at seeing things turn out so well, ‘the Baron and I are greatly indebted to you and we’ll repay you. Come and talk things over in the garden,’ she said, leading the way there.
So, to all appearances, Lisbeth played the part of the good angel of the family. She found herself the darling of Crevel, Hulot, Adeline, and Hortense.
‘We don’t want you to go on working,’ said the Baroness. ‘Assuming you can earn forty sous a day, except Sundays, that makes six hundred francs a year. And how much do your savings amount to?’
‘Four thousand five hundred francs.’
‘Poor Cousin!’ said the Baroness.
She raised her eyes to heaven, so greatly was she touched by the thought of all the hardships and privations represented by this sum of money, the savings of thirty years. Lisbeth, misunderstanding Adeline’s exclamation, saw in it the mocking disdain of a woman who had risen in the world and her hatred was enhanced by a formidable dose of gall, just when her cousin was relinquishing all mistrust of the tyrant of her youth.
‘We’ll increase that amount by ten thousand five hundred francs,’ continued Adeline. ‘We’ll invest it so that the interest will go to you, the capital to revert to Hortense. That will give you an income of six hundred francs a year.’
Lisbeth appeared to be overjoyed. When she returned to the house, holding her handkerchief to her eyes, wiping away tears of joy, Hortense told her of all the favours that were being rained down on Wenceslas, the darling of the whole family.