“You mean to be rid of me, I can see,” said she, shaking her head. “Who has endowed you with this strength of ingratitude—you who are a man of papier-mache? Have you ceased to trust me—your good genius?—me, when I have spent so many nights working for you—when I have given you every franc I have saved in my lifetime—when for four years I have shared my bread with you, the bread of a hard-worked woman, and given you all I had, to my very courage.”
“Mademoiselle—no more, no more!” he cried, kneeling before her with uplifted hands. “Say not another word! In three days I will tell you, you shall know all.—Let me, let me be happy,” and he kissed her hands. “I love—and I am loved.”
“Well, well, my child, be happy,” she said, lifting him up. And she kissed his forehead and hair with the eagerness that a man condemned to death must feel as he lives through the last morning.
“Ah! you are of all creatures the noblest and best! You are a match for the woman I love,” said the poor artist.
“I love you well enough to tremble for your future fate,” said she gloomily. “Judas hanged himself—the ungrateful always come to a bad end! You are deserting me, and you will never again do any good work. Consider whether, without being married—for I know I am an old maid, and I do not want to smother the blossom of your youth, your poetry, as you call it, in my arms, that are like vine-stocks—but whether, without being married, we could not get on together? Listen; I have the commercial spirit; I could save you a fortune in the course of ten years’ work, for Economy is my name!—while, with a young wife, who would be sheer Expenditure, you would squander everything; you would work only to indulge her. But happiness creates nothing but memories. Even I, when I am thinking of you, sit for hours with my hands in my lap——
“Come, Wenceslas, stay with me.—Look here, I understand all about it; you shall have your mistresses; pretty ones too, like that little Marneffe woman who wants to see you, and who will give you happiness you could never find with me. Then, when I have saved you thirty thousand francs a year in the funds——”
“Mademoiselle, you are an angel, and I shall never forget this hour,” said Wenceslas, wiping away his tears.
“That is how I like to see you, my child,” said she, gazing at him with rapture.
Vanity is so strong a power in us all that Lisbeth believed in her triumph. She had conceded so much when offering him Madame Marneffe. It was the crowning emotion of her life; for the first time she felt the full tide of joy rising in her heart. To go through such an experience again she would have sold her soul to the Devil.
“I am engaged to be married,” Steinbock replied, “and I love a woman with whom no other can compete or compare.—But you are, and always will be, to me the mother I have lost.”