“Very well; I shall be delighted,” said Crevel, who had recovered himself. “Good-bye, my children, for the present; good-bye, Lisbeth.” “See him out, Lisbeth,” said Celestine in an undertone. “And is this the way you take yourself off?” cried Lisbeth to Crevel. “Ah, ha!” said Crevel, “my son-in-law is too clever by half; he is getting on. The Courts and the Chamber, judicial trickery and political dodges, are making a man of him with a vengeance!--So he knows I am to be married on Wednesday, and on a Sunday my gentleman proposes to fix the hour, within three days, when he can prove that my wife is unworthy of me. That is a good story!--Well, I am going back to sign the contract. Come with me, Lisbeth--yes, come. They will never know. I meant to have left Celestine forty thousand francs a year; but Hulot has just behaved in a way to alienate my affection for ever.” “Give me ten minutes, Pere Crevel; wait for me in your carriage at the gate. I will make some excuse for going out.” “Very well--all right.” “My dears,” said Lisbeth, who found all the family reassembled in the drawing-room, “I am going with Crevel: the marriage contract is to be signed this afternoon, and I shall hear what he has settled. It will probably be my last visit to that woman. Your father is furious; he will disinherit you--” “His vanity will prevent that,” said the son-in-law. “He was bent on owning the estate of Presles, and he will keep it; I know him. Even if he were to have children, Celestine would still have half of what he might leave; the law forbids his giving away all his fortune.--Still, these questions are nothing to me; I am only thinking of our honor.--Go then, cousin,” and he pressed Lisbeth’s hand, “and listen carefully to the contract.” Twenty minutes after, Lisbeth and Crevel reached the house in the Rue Barbet, where Madame Marneffe was awaiting, in mild impatience, the result of a step taken by her commands. Valerie had in the end fallen a prey to the absorbing love which, once in her life, masters a woman’s heart. Wenceslas was its object, and, a failure as an artist, he became in Madame Marneffe’s hands a lover so perfect that he was to her what she had been to Baron Hulot. Valerie was holding a slipper in one hand, and Steinbock clasped the other, while her head rested on his shoulder. The rambling conversation in which they had been engaged ever since Crevel went out may be ticketed, like certain lengthy literary efforts of our day, “_All rights reserved_,” for it cannot be reproduced. This masterpiece of personal poetry naturally brought a regret to the artist’s lips, and he said, not without some bitterness: “What a pity it is that I married; for if I had but waited, as Lisbeth told me, I might now have married you.” “Who but a Pole would wish to make a wife of a devoted mistress?” cried Valerie. “To change love into duty, and pleasure into a bore.”