“Well, then, child, Wenceslas had better come with me to see the lender, who will oblige him at my request. It is Madame Marneffe. If you flatter her a little--for she is as vain as a _parvenue_--she will get you out of the scrape in the most obliging way. Come yourself and see her, my dear Hortense.” Hortense looked at her husband with the expression a man condemned to death must wear on his way to the scaffold. “Claude Vignon took Stidmann there,” said Wenceslas. “He says it is a very pleasant house.” Hortense’s head fell. What she felt can only be expressed in one word; it was not pain; it was illness. “But, my dear Hortense, you must learn something of life!” exclaimed Lisbeth, understanding the eloquence of her cousin’s looks. “Otherwise, like your mother, you will find yourself abandoned in a deserted room, where you will weep like Calypso on the departure of Ulysses, and at an age when there is no hope of Telemachus--” she added, repeating a jest of Madame Marneffe’s. “We have to regard the people in the world as tools which we can make use of or let alone, according as they can serve our turn. Make use of Madame Marneffe now, my dears, and let her alone by and by. Are you afraid lest Wenceslas, who worships you, should fall in love with a woman four or five years older than himself, as yellow as a bundle of field peas, and----?” “I would far rather pawn my diamonds,” said Hortense. “Oh, never go there, Wenceslas!--It is hell!” “Hortense is right,” said Steinbock, kissing his wife. “Thank you, my dearest,” said Hortense, delighted. “My husband is an angel, you see, Lisbeth. He does not gamble, he goes nowhere without me; if he only could stick to work--oh, I should be too happy. Why take us on show to my father’s mistress, a woman who is ruining him and is the cause of troubles that are killing my heroic mother?” “My child, that is not where the cause of your father’s ruin lies. It was his singer who ruined him, and then your marriage!” replied her cousin. “Bless me! why, Madame Marneffe is of the greatest use to him. However, I must tell no tales.” “You have a good word for everybody, dear Betty--” Hortense was called into the garden by hearing the child cry; Lisbeth was left alone with Wenceslas. “You have an angel for your wife, Wenceslas!” said she. “Love her as you ought; never give her cause for grief.” “Yes, indeed, I love her so well that I do not tell her all,” replied Wenceslas; “but to you, Lisbeth, I may confess the truth.--If I took my wife’s diamonds to the Monte-de-Piete, we should be no further forward.” “Then borrow of Madame Marneffe,” said Lisbeth. “Persuade Hortense, Wenceslas, to let you go there, or else, bless me! go there without telling her.” “That is what I was thinking of,” replied Wenceslas, “when I refused for fear of grieving Hortense.”