"That is true," said Wenceslas. "Hortense is an angel; I should be a wretch."
"And one is enough in the family!" said Lisbeth.
"Artists ought never to marry!" exclaimed Steinbock.
"Ah! that is what I always told you in the Rue du Doyenne. Your groups, your statues, your great works, ought to be your children."
"What are you talking about?" Valerie asked, joining Lisbeth.—"Give us tea, Cousin."
Steinbock, with Polish vainglory, wanted to appear familiar with this drawing-room fairy. After defying Stidmann, Vignon, and Crevel with a look, he took Valerie's hand and forced her to sit down by him on the settee.
"You are rather too lordly, Count Steinbock," said she, resisting a little. But she laughed as she dropped on to the seat, not without arranging the rosebud pinned into her bodice.
"Alas! if I were really lordly," said he, "I should not be here to borrow money."
"Poor boy! I remember how you worked all night in the Rue du Doyenne. You really were rather a spooney; you married as a starving man snatches a loaf. You knew nothing of Paris, and you see where you are landed. But you turned a deaf ear to Lisbeth's devotion, as you did to the love of a woman who knows her Paris by heart."
"Say no more!" cried Steinbock; "I am done for!"