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What Poland has been politically, almost every Pole is in private life, especially under the stress of disaster. Thus Wenceslas Steinbock, after worshiping his wife for three years and knowing that he was a god to her, was so much nettled at finding himself barely noticed by Madame Marneffe, that he made it a point of honor to attract her attention.
Our witnesses are Stidmann, Steinbock, Vignon, and Massol, all wide-awake men, who will be at the mairie by chance, and who will so far sacrifice themselves as to attend mass. "Your colleague will perform the civil marriage, for once in a way, as early as half-past nine. Mass is at ten; we shall be at home to breakfast by half-past eleven.
"Do not be hurried," said she to her husband, "our whole future life is bound up with that statue. Take your time and produce a masterpiece." She would go to the studio, and then the enraptured Steinbock wasted five hours out of seven in describing the statue instead of working at it. He thus spent eighteen months in finishing the design, which to him was all-important.
Steinbock dressed and went downstairs, a man holding each arm; when he was in the cab, the driver started without orders, as knowing where he was to go, and within half an hour the unhappy foreigner found himself safely under bolt and bar without even a remonstrance, so utterly amazed was he.
In a fortnight, Hulot, as lean as a spectre, looked to his family the mere shadow of himself. "I must decide on something," said he in a husky voice, as he seated himself in an easy-chair, and looked round at the party, of whom Crevel and Steinbock were absent. "We cannot stay here, the rent is too high," Hortense was saying just as her father came in.
She would never marry Doppelkinn never. That horrible Steinbock! She was glad, glad that she had struck him, again and again, across his lying eyes and evil mouth. She had believed that she knew the world; it was all yet a mystery; the older she grew the less she understood. Wasn't anybody good? Was everybody to be distrusted? Which way should she turn now?
Have you really asked her to sit for your group? Come up to my rooms first. Ah! I was sure of it," she added, as she caught the look which Steinbock flashed at Valerie, "I knew you were a profligate in the bud! Well, Valerie is lovely but try not to bring trouble on Hortense."
Valerie could already see herself in this delightful residence, with a fore-court and a garden, and keeping a carriage! "What respectable life can ever procure so much in so short a time, or so easily?" said she to Lisbeth as she finished dressing. Lisbeth was to dine with Valerie that evening, to tell Steinbock those things about the lady which nobody can say about herself.
"I will go and tell them to be punctual, for you do not like to be kept waiting." Hortense nodded reassuringly to her mother, for she intended to tell the man-servant to send away Monsieur Steinbock if he should call; the man, however, happened to be out, so Hortense was obliged to give her orders to the maid, and the girl went upstairs to fetch her needlework and sit in the ante-room.
"My dear Steinbock," said the Baron, with elaborate grace of diction and the most perfect manners, as soon as he and the artist were alone, "I promised my son a fortune of two hundred thousand francs, of which the poor boy has never had a sou; and he never will get any of it. My daughter's fortune will also be two hundred thousand francs, for which you will give a receipt "
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