Poor Relations

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.