"Nos petits sont mignons,
Beaux, bienfaits, et jolis sur touts leurs compagnons."
had not described very faithfully the attractions of poor Gottlieb. Had they done so, Consuelo, it is probable, would not have refused to receive in her cell a young man of nineteen, five feet eight inches high, who made the mouth of all the recruiters of the country water, but who, unfortunately for his health, but fortunately for his independence, was weak in the arms and legs, so as to be unfit for a soldier. The prisoner thought that the society of a child of that age and stature was not exactly proper, and refused positively to receive him. This was an insult the female Swartz made her atone for, by adding a pint of water every day to her bouillon.
On her way to the esplanade, where she was permitted to walk every day, Consuelo was forced to pass the filthy home of the Swartz, and also to go through it under the escort, and with the permission of her keeper, who ever insisted on persuasion, (the article of ceaseless complaisance being highly charged in his bills.) It happened, then, that in passing through this kitchen, one door of which opened on the esplanade, Consuelo observed Gottlieb. A child's head on a giant's frame, badly formed too, at first disgusted her; but, gradually, she learned to pity him; questioned him kindly, and tried to make him talk. Ere long, she discovered that his mind was paralysed either by disease or extreme timidity. He would not accompany her to the rampart, until his parents forced him to do so, and replied to her questions only by monosyllables. In talking to him, therefore, she was afraid of aggravating the ennui she fancied he suffered from, and would not either speak or talk to him. She had told his father she saw not the slightest disposition for the oratorical art in him.
Consuelo had been searched a second time by Madame Swartz, on the day when she had met Porporino and sang to the Berlinese public. She contrived, however, to deceive the vigilance of the female Cerberus. The hour was late, and the old woman was out of humor at being disturbed in her first slumber. While Gottlieb slept in one room, or rather in a closet which opened into the kitchen, and the jailer went up stairs to open her cell, Consuelo had approached the fire, which was smothered by the ashes, and while pretending to caress Belzebub, managed to save her funds from the hands of the searcher, so as to be no longer fully at her control. While Madame Swartz was lighting her lamp and putting on her spectacles, Consuelo observed in the chimney-corner, where Gottlieb habitually sat, a recess in the wall about the elevation of her arm, and in this mysterious recess lay his library and tools. This hole, blackened by soot and smoke, contained all Gottlieb's wealth and riches. By an adroit movement, Consuelo slipped her purse into the recess, and then suffered herself to be patiently examined by the old vixen, who persisted for a long time in passing her oily fingers over all the folds of her dress, and who was surprised and angry at finding nothing. The sang froid of Consuelo, who after all, was not very anxious to succeed in her enterprise, at last satisfied the jailer that she had nothing hidden; and, as soon as the examination was over, she contrived to recover her purse, and keep it in her hand under her cloak until she reached her cell. There she set about concealing it, being well aware that when she was taking her walk, her cell was searched regularly. She could do nothing better than keep her little fortune always about her, sewed up in a girdle, the female Swartz having no right to search her except when she had left the prison.
By and by, the first sum which had been found on the person of the prisoner, when she reached the fortress, was exhausted, thanks to the ingenious bills of Swartz. When he had given her a few very meagre meals and a round bill, being, as usual, too timid to speak of business, and ask a person condemned to poverty for money, in consonance with information had from her, on the day of her incarceration, in relation to the money in Porporino's hands, Swartz went to Berlin, and presented his bill to the contralto. Porporino, in obedience to Cousuelo's directions, refused to pay the bill until the prisoner directed it, and bade the creditor ask his prisoner, whom he knew to have a comfortable sum of money, to pay it.
Swartz returned, pale and in despair, asserting that he was ruined. He looked on himself as robbed, although the hundred ducats he first found on the prisoner would have paid him four-fold for all she had consumed during two entire months. The old woman bore this pretended loss with the philosophy of a stronger head and more persevering mind.
"We are robbed," said she, "of a surety; but you never relied on this prisoner certainly? I told you what would happen. An actress—bah! those sort of people never save anything. An actor as her banker!—what would you expect? We have lost two hundred ducats—we will make this loss up on others, however, who have means. This will teach you to go headlong and offer your services to the first comer. I am not sorry, Swartz, you have had this lesson. I will now do myself the pleasure of putting her on dry bread, and that, too, rather stale, for being so careless as not to put a single 'Frederick' in her pocket to pay the searcher, and for treating Gottlieb as a fool, because he would not make love to her."
Thus scolding and shrugging her shoulders, the old woman seating herself near the chimney by Gottlieb, said—"What do you think of all this, my clever fellow?"
She talked merely to hear herself, being well aware that Gottlieb paid no more attention than the cat Belzebub did to her words.
"My shoe is almost done, mother; I will soon begin a new pair."