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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.
This candor unlocked his wife's heart. All really lofty women like the truth better than lies. They cannot bear to see their idol smirched; they want to be proud of the despotism they bow to. There is a strain of this feeling in the devotion of the Russians to their Czar. "Now, listen, dear mother," Wenceslas went on.
Oh, long before I knew you," said she, in reply to a movement from Wenceslas. "And those promises, of which he avails himself to plague me, oblige me to get married almost secretly; for if he should hear that I am marrying Crevel, he is the sort of man that that would kill me."
Falbe laughed. "Very well indeed," he said. "Now for 'Good King Wenceslas. Wasn't it " "Yes; I got awfully interested over it, Hermann. I thought I would try and work it up into a few variations." "Let's hear," said Falbe. This was a vastly different affair.
"For his pleasure what would he not do?" said Lisbeth. "He robbed the State, he will rob private persons, commit murder who knows?" "Oh, Lisbeth!" cried the Baroness, "keep such thoughts to yourself." At this moment Louise came up to the family group, now increased by the arrival of the two Hulot children and little Wenceslas to see if their grandmother's pockets did not contain some sweetmeats.
"And about my lover?" said Cousin Betty to Hortense, when the girl came back. "You never ask about him now?" "To be sure, what is he doing?" said Hortense. "He has become famous. You ought to be very happy," she added in an undertone to Lisbeth. "Everybody is talking of Monsieur Wenceslas Steinbock." "A great deal too much," replied she in her clear tones. "Monsieur is departing.
Lisbeth, at Adeline's request, had told her all the circumstances of Wenceslas' infidelity; and the Baroness had learned to her utter amazement, that in one evening in one moment, Madame Marneffe had made herself the mistress of the bewitched artist. "How do these women do it?" the Baroness had asked Lisbeth.
Whenever Lisbeth called on the Steinbocks, there had been nobody at home. Monsieur and madame lived in the studio. Lisbeth, following the turtle doves to their nest at le Gros-Caillou, found Wenceslas hard at work, and was informed by the cook that madame never left monsieur's side. Wenceslas was a slave to the autocracy of love.
"Ah, if only you knew how I longed for some fellow-creature, even a tyrant, who would have something to say to me when I was struggling in the vast solitude of Paris!" exclaimed Wenceslas. "I regretted Siberia, whither I should be sent by the Emperor if I went home. Be my Providence! I will work; I will be a better man than I am, though I am not such a bad fellow!"
This group by Wenceslas was to his later works what the Marriage of the Virgin is to the great mass of Raphael's, the first step of a gifted artist taken with the inimitable grace, the eagerness, and delightful overflowingness of a child, whose strength is concealed under the pink-and-white flesh full of dimples which seem to echo to a mother's laughter.
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