Cousin Betty

This present was a silver seal formed of three little figures back to back, wreathed with foliage, and supporting the Globe. They represented Faith, Hope, and Charity; their feet rested on monsters rending each other, among them the symbolical serpent. In 1846, now that such immense strides have been made in the art of which Benvenuto Cellini was the master, by Mademoiselle de Fauveau, Wagner, Jeanest, Froment-Meurice, and wood-carvers like Lienard, this little masterpiece would amaze nobody; but at that time a girl who understood the silversmith’s art stood astonished as she held the seal which Lisbeth put into her hands, saying:

“There! what do you think of that?”

In design, attitude, and drapery the figures were of the school of Raphael; but the execution was in the style of the Florentine metal workers – the school created by Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Benvenuto Cellini, John of Bologna, and others. The French masters of the Renaissance had never invented more strangely twining monsters than these that symbolized the evil passions. The palms, ferns, reeds, and foliage that wreathed the Virtues showed a style, a taste, a handling that might have driven a practised craftsman to despair; a scroll floated above the three figures; and on its surface, between the heads, were a W, a chamois, and the word fecit.

“Who carved this?” asked Hortense.

“Well, just my lover,” replied Lisbeth. “There are ten months’ work in it; I could earn more at making sword-knots. – He told me that Steinbock means a rock goat, a chamois, in German. And he intends to mark all his work in that way. – Ah, ha! I shall have the shawl.”

“What for?”

“Do you suppose I could buy such a thing, or order it? Impossible! Well, then, it must have been given to me. And who would make me such a present? A lover!”

Hortense, with an artfulness that would have frightened Lisbeth Fischer if she had detected it, took care not to express all her admiration, though she was full of the delight which every soul that is open to a sense of beauty must feel on seeing a faultless piece of work – perfect and unexpected.

“On my word,” said she, “it is very pretty.”

“Yes, it is pretty,” said her cousin; “but I like an orange-colored shawl better. – Well, child, my lover spends his time in doing such work as that. Since he came to Paris he has turned out three or four little trifles in that style, and that is the fruit of four years’ study and toil. He has served as apprentice to founders, metal-casters, and goldsmiths. – There he has paid away thousands and hundreds of francs. And my gentleman tells me that in a few months now he will be famous and rich – ”

“Then you often see him?”

“Bless me, do you think it is all a fable? I told you truth in jest.”

“And he is in love with you?” asked Hortense eagerly.

“He adores me,” replied Lisbeth very seriously. “You see, child, he had never seen any women but the washed out, pale things they all are in the north, and a slender, brown, youthful thing like me warmed his heart. – But, mum; you promised, you know!”

“And he will fare like the five others,” said the girl ironically, as she looked at the seal.

“Six others, miss. I left one in Lorraine, who, to this day, would fetch the moon down for me.”

“This one does better than that,” said Hortense; “he has brought down the sun.”

“Where can that be turned into money?” asked her cousin. “It takes wide lands to benefit by the sunshine.”

These witticisms, fired in quick retort, and leading to the sort of giddy play that may be imagined, had given cause for the laughter which had added to the Baroness’ troubles by making her compare her daughter’s future lot with the present, when she was free to indulge the light-heartedness of youth.

“But to give you a gem which cost him six months of work, he must be under some great obligations to you?” said Hortense, in whom the silver seal had suggested very serious reflections.

“Oh, you want to know too much at once!” said her cousin. “But, listen, I will let you into a little plot.”

“Is your lover in it too?”

“Oh, ho! you want so much to see him! But, as you may suppose, an old maid like Cousin Betty, who had managed to keep a lover for five years, keeps him well hidden. – Now, just let me alone. You see, I have neither cat nor canary, neither dog nor a parrot, and the old Nanny Goat wanted something to pet and tease – so I treated myself to a Polish Count.”

“Has he a moustache?”

“As long as that,” said Lisbeth, holding up her shuttle filled with gold thread. She always took her lace-work with her, and worked till dinner was served.

“If you ask too many questions, you will be told nothing,” she went on. “You are but two-and-twenty, and you chatter more than I do though I am forty-two – not to say forty-three.”

“I am listening; I am a wooden image,” said Hortense.

“My lover has finished a bronze group ten inches high,” Lisbeth went on. “It represents Samson slaying a lion, and he has kept it buried till it is so rusty that you might believe it to be as old as Samson himself. This fine piece is shown at the shop of one of the old curiosity sellers on the Place du Carrousel, near my lodgings. Now, your father knows Monsieur Popinot, the Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, and the Comte de Rastignac, and if he would mention the group to them as a fine antique he had seen by chance! It seems that such things take the fancy of your grand folks, who don’t care so much about gold lace, and that my man’s fortune would be made if one of them would buy or even look at the wretched piece of metal. The poor fellow is sure that it might be mistaken for old work, and that the rubbish is worth a great deal of money. And then, if one of the ministers should purchase the group, he would go to pay his respects, and prove that he was the maker, and be almost carried in triumph! Oh! he believes he has reached the pinnacle; poor young man, and he is as proud as two newly-made Counts.”

“Michael Angelo over again; but, for a lover, he has kept his head on his shoulders!” said Hortense. “And how much does he want for it?”

“Fifteen hundred francs. The dealer will not let it go for less, since he must take his commission.”

“Papa is in the King’s household just now,” said Hortense. “He sees those two ministers every day at the Chamber, and he will do the thing – I undertake that. You will be a rich woman, Madame la Comtesse de Steinbock.”

“No, the boy is too lazy; for whole weeks he sits twiddling with bits of red wax, and nothing comes of it. Why, he spends all his days at the Louvre and the Library, looking at prints and sketching things. He is an idler!”

The cousins chatted and giggled; Hortense laughing a forced laugh, for she was invaded by a kind of love which every girl has gone through – the love of the unknown, love in its vaguest form, when every thought is accreted round some form which is suggested by a chance word, as the efflorescence of hoar-frost gathers about a straw that the wind has blown against the window-sill.

For the past ten months she had made a reality of her cousin’s imaginary romance, believing, like her mother, that Lisbeth would never marry; and now, within a week, this visionary being had become Comte Wenceslas Steinbock, the dream had a certificate of birth, the wraith had solidified into a young man of thirty. The seal she held in her hand – a sort of Annunciation in which genius shone like an immanent light – had the powers of a talisman. Hortense felt such a surge of happiness, that she almost doubted whether the tale were true; there was a ferment in her blood, and she laughed wildly to deceive her cousin.

“But I think the drawing-room door is open,” said Lisbeth; “let us go and see if Monsieur Crevel is gone.”

“Mamma has been very much out of spirits these two days. I suppose the marriage under discussion has come to nothing!”

“Oh, it may come on again. He is – I may tell you so much – a Councillor of the Supreme Court. How would you like to be Madame la Presidente? If Monsieur Crevel has a finger in it, he will tell me about it if I ask him. I shall know by to-morrow if there is any hope.”

“Leave the seal with me,” said Hortense; “I will not show it – mamma’s birthday is not for a month yet; I will give it to you that morning.”

“No, no. Give it back to me; it must have a case.”

“But I will let papa see it, that he may know what he is talking about to the ministers, for men in authority must be careful what they say,” urged the girl.

“Well, do not show it to your mother – that is all I ask; for if she believed I had a lover, she would make game of me.”

“I promise.”

The cousins reached the drawing-room just as the Baroness turned faint. Her daughter’s cry of alarm recalled her to herself. Lisbeth went off to fetch some salts. When she came back, she found the mother and daughter in each other’s arms, the Baroness soothing her daughter’s fears, and saying:

“It was nothing; a little nervous attack. – There is your father,” she added, recognizing the Baron’s way of ringing the bell. “Say not a word to him.”

Adeline rose and went to meet her husband, intending to take him into the garden and talk to him till dinner should be served of the difficulties about the proposed match, getting him to come to some decision as to the future, and trying to hint at some warning advice.

Baron Hector Hulot came in, in a dress at once lawyer-like and Napoleonic, for Imperial men – men who had been attached to the Emperor – were easily distinguishable by their military deportment, their blue coats with gilt buttons, buttoned to the chin, their black silk stock, and an authoritative demeanor acquired from a habit of command in circumstances requiring despotic rapidity. There was nothing of the old man in the Baron, it must be admitted; his sight was still so good, that he could read without spectacles; his handsome oval face, framed in whiskers that were indeed too black, showed a brilliant complexion, ruddy with the veins that characterize a sanguine temperament; and his stomach, kept in order by a belt, had not exceeded the limits of “the majestic,” as Brillat-Savarin says. A fine aristocratic air and great affability served to conceal the libertine with whom Crevel had had such high times. He was one of those men whose eyes always light up at the sight of a pretty woman, even of such as merely pass by, never to be seen again.

“Have you been speaking, my dear?” asked Adeline, seeing him with an anxious brow.

“No,” replied Hector, “but I am worn out with hearing others speak for two hours without coming to a vote. They carry on a war of words, in which their speeches are like a cavalry charge which has no effect on the enemy. Talk has taken the place of action, which goes very much against the grain with men who are accustomed to marching orders, as I said to the Marshal when I left him. However, I have enough of being bored on the ministers’ bench; here I may play. – How do, la Chevre! – Good morning, little kid,” and he took his daughter round the neck, kissed her, and made her sit on his knee, resting her head on his shoulder, that he might feel her soft golden hair against his cheek.

“He is tired and worried,” said his wife to herself. “I shall only worry him more. – I will wait. – Are you going to be at home this evening?” she asked him.

“No, children. After dinner I must go out. If it had not been the day when Lisbeth and the children and my brother come to dinner, you would not have seen me at all.”