Cousin Bette (11 page)

And the energetic spinster at once took off her gloves, her cape and hat, and briskly set to work like a servant to make the narrow camp-bed on which the artist slept. The combination of brusqueness, of downright roughness even, and kindness in Lisbeth's treatment of him may account for the ascendancy she had acquired over this man, of whom she was taking complete possession. Life binds us, surely, by both the good and the evil that come our way, fortuitously. If the Livonian had encountered Madame Marneffe instead of Lisbeth Fischer, he would have found a complaisance in his patroness that would have led him into some miry and dishonourable path, in which he would have been lost. He would certainly not have worked, and the artist in him would not have burst the bud. And indeed, even while he groaned under the old maid's bitter tongue and grasping ways, his good sense told him that he should prefer her iron rule to the idle and precarious existence which some of his compatriots led.

Here is the story of the events which brought about that alliance of feminine energy and masculine weakness – a kind of reversal of attributes said to be not uncommon in Poland.

In 1833, Mademoiselle Fischer, who sometimes used to work late at night when she had a great deal of work on hand, at about one o'clock in the morning noticed a strong smell of carbonic acid gas and heard the groans of a man at the point of death. The charcoal fumes and the throat-rattle came from an attic above the two rooms of her apartment. She surmised that a young man who had recently come to the house and rented the attic, empty for the previous three years, was attempting to commit suicide. She rushed upstairs, threw herself against the door, and with her peasant strength succeeded in bursting it open. She found the tenant of the room writhing on a camp-bed, in the convulsions, apparently, of his death-agony. She extinguished the stove. With the door opened, fresh air flowed in, and the exile was saved. Later, when Lisbeth had put him to bed like a nurse, she was able to deduce the reason for his suicide from the extreme bareness of the two rooms of the attic, which contained nothing but a rickety table, the camp-bed, and a couple of chairs.

On the table was the following statement, which she read:

I am Count Wenceslas Steinbock, born at Prelia, in Livonia.

Let no one be blamed for my death; the reasons for my suicide are in these words of Kosciusko's:
Finis Poloniae
!

The great-nephew of à brave general of Charles XII could not beg. A delicate constitution made military service impossible for me, and yesterday saw the end of the hundred thalers with which I came to Paris from Dresden. I leave twenty-five francs in the drawer of this table to pay the rent that I owe to the landlord.

As I no longer have relatives living, my death concerns no one. I beg my compatriots not to blame the French Government. I did not make myself known as a refugee; I did not ask for aid; I met no other exile; no one in Paris knows that I exist.

I die in Christian faith. May God forgive the last of the Stein-bocks!

WENCESLAS

Mademoiselle Fischer, profoundly touched by the honesty of a dying man who paid his rent, opened the drawer and saw that there were in fact five five-franc pieces there.

‘Poor young man!' she exclaimed. ‘And there's no one in the world to care about him!‘

She ran down to her room, fetched her sewing, and went back to work in the attic while keeping watch over the Livonian nobleman. When the refugee awoke, one may imagine his surprise when he saw a woman sitting by his bed: he thought he was still dreaming. As she sat stitching gold aiguillettes for a uniform, the old maid had been making up her mind to look after this poor boy, whom she had watched with admiration as he slept. When the young Count was quite conscious again, Lisbeth spoke cheerfully to him and questioned him in order to find out how she might possibly enable him to make a living. After telling his story, Wenceslas added that he had owed his post as teacher to his acknowledged talent for the arts; he had always felt a natural bent towards sculpture, but the time necessary for study seemed too long for a man without money, and he felt that he was not nearly robust enough at the moment to devote himself to a profession demanding manual labour, or undertake large works of sculpture. This was so much Greek to Lisbeth
Fischer. She answered the unfortunate young man by saying that Paris offered so many opportunities that a man who was resolved would always find a living there; men with pluck never came to grief in Paris, provided that they brought with them a certain fund of patience.

‘I am just a poor woman, a countrywoman, myself, and I have managed very well to make my own way and earn my own living,' she said in conclusion. ‘Listen to me. If you are willing to give your whole mind to working in earnest, I have some savings, and I will lend you the money you need to live on, month by month; but only for living frugally, not for leading a gay life and gadding about the town! It is possible to dine in Paris on twenty-five sous a day, and I will make your lunch with my own every morning. And I'll furnish your room, and pay for whatever apprenticeship you think you need. You shall give me formal receipts for the money I spend for you; and when you are rich you can repay it all. But if you don't work, I shall not regard myself as bound to do anything further for you, and I'll leave you to your fate.'

‘Ah!' exclaimed the unfortunate refugee, who was still feeling the bitterness of his first encounter with death. ‘The exiles from every country have good reason to stretch out their hands to France like souls in purgatory straining upwards to paradise. Among what other nation could one find help and generous hearts everywhere, even in a garret like this? You shall be the whole world to me, my dear benefactress. I'll be your slave! Be my sweetheart,' he said caressingly, in one of those impulsive demonstrations of feeling so characteristic of Poles, which make people accuse them, quite unjustly, of toadyism.

‘Oh, no! I am much too jealous, I should make you unhappy; but I will gladly be something like your comrade,' Lisbeth replied.

‘Oh, if you only knew how fervently I longed for any human creature, even a tyrant, who had some use for me, when I was struggling in the empty loneliness of Paris!' Wenceslas went on. ‘I wished myself in Siberia, where the Emperor would send me if I returned! Be you my Providence.… I'll
work, I'll be better than I am, although I am not a bad fellow.'

‘Will you do everything I tell you?' she asked.

‘Yes!'

‘Well then, I adopt you as my child,' she said gaily. ‘Here I am with a boy who has risen from the grave. Come! we'll begin now. I'm going down to do my marketing. You get dressed, and come to have lunch with me when I knock on the ceiling with my broom-handle.'

Next day, when Mademoiselle Fischer called on the firm who took her work, she made inquiries about a sculptor's profession. By persistent questioning she succeeded in finding out about the studio of Florent and Chanor, a firm specializing in casting and foundry work and the chasing of fine bronzes and silver services. She presented Steinbock there for employment as an apprentice sculptor, which seemed an odd proposition to the partners. Leading sculptors sent their clay models to the firm to be cast; it did not teach the art of sculpture. Thanks to the old maid's stubborn persistence, however, her protégé was in the end taken on as an ornament designer.

Steinbock soon learned to model ornaments, and created new ones, for he had genuine talent. Five months after completing his apprenticeship as an engraver and carver, he made the acquaintance of the famous Stidmann, the principal sculptor working for the Florent firm. By the end of twenty months Wenceslas knew more of the art than his master, but in thirty months the savings amassed by the old maid, coin by coin for more than sixteen years, were completely gone. Two thousand five hundred francs in gold, a sum which she had intended for buying a life annuity, were now represented by what? A Pole's
IOU
! Moreover, Lisbeth was now working as she had worked in her youth, in order to meet the Livonian's expenses. When she found herself with a piece of paper in her hands in place of her gold coins, she lost her head and went to consult Monsieur Rivet, who for the last fifteen years had been the adviser and friend of his forewoman and most able worker. On hearing of this escapade, Monsieur and Madame Rivet scolded Lisbeth, told her she was crazy, abused all
refugees whose plots to achieve national independence again were a threat to the prosperity of trade and the policy of peace at any price, and urged the old maid to obtain what in business are known as securities.

‘The only security this fellow can offer is his liberty,' Monsieur Rivet said in conclusion.

Monsieur Achille Rivet was a magistrate in the Commercial Court.

‘And for foreigners that's no joke,' he went on. ‘A Frenchman stays five years in jail and then he gets out, without paying his debts indeed, for only his conscience can force him to do so then and that never troubles him; but a foreigner is kept locked up permanently. Give me your IOU. You must pass it to my bookkeeper; he will have it protested, sue both you and the Pole, and in default of the money obtain a writ of arrest for debt; and then, when everything has been done in proper form, he will sign a defeasance to you. If you do that your interest will run on, and you will always have a pistol to hold at your Pole's head!'

The old maid let herself be advised, and told her protégé not to be alarmed at the legal proceedings, for they were taken only in order to provide security for a moneylender, who would then be willing to advance some money. This yarn originated in the Commercial Court magistrate's fertile imagination. The unsuspecting artist, hoodwinked by his trust in his benefactress, lit his pipe with the stamped papers, for he was a smoker, like all men with worries or unused energies that make them require the effects of narcotics. One fine day, Monsieur Rivet showed Mademoiselle Fischer a file of documents, saying:

‘Wenceslas Steinbock is in your hands now, bound hand and foot, and tied up so thoroughly that within twenty-four hours he could be landed in Clichy for the rest of his days.'

This worthy and respected magistrate felt that day the satisfaction naturally resulting from the consciousness of having done a wrong-headed good deed. Benevolence takes so many different forms in Paris, that this odd phrase applies to one of its varieties. The Livonian being now entangled in the
toils of Commercial Court proceedings, the next question was how to get payment, for Wenceslas Steinbock was regarded by the successful businessman as a confidence trickster. Sentiment, reliance on a man's integrity, poetry, were in his eyes, in matters of business,
disastrous
. In the interests of poor Mademoiselle Fischer, who, according to him, had been
diddled
by a Pole, Rivet went to see the prosperous firm that Steinbock had recently left. It so happened that Stidmann was in Chanor's office when the embroiderer arrived, to ask for information about'the man Steinbock, a Polish refugee'. This was the same Stidmann who, seconded by the notable Parisian goldsmiths referred to above, is responsible for the present excellence of French decorative art, which can stand comparison with the Florentine masters and the Renaissance.

‘Whom do you mean by “the man Steinbock”?' Stidmann exclaimed jovially. ‘Can it by any chance be a young Livonian who was a pupil of mine? Let me tell you, sir, he's a great artist. I think myself a devil of a fellow, so they say; but that poor boy doesn't know that he has the capacity to become a god.…'

‘Ah!' said Rivet, with satisfaction. Then he went on:

‘Although you have a very cavalier manner of speaking to a man who has the honour to be a magistrate of the Seine Department…'

‘Pardon me, Consul!' interrupted Stidmann, saluting.

‘… I am very pleased to hear what you tell me,' the magistrate continued. ‘It's true then that this young man is capable of earning money?'

‘Certainly,' said old Chanor; ‘but he will have to work hard. He would have made a good deal already if he had stayed with us. But what can you expect of artists? They have a horror of not being their own masters.'

‘They have a sense of their own worth and their dignity,' rejoined Stidmann. ‘I do not blame Wenceslas for going off on his own, for trying to make a name for himself and become a great man; he has a right to do so! But it was a great loss to me, all the same, when he left me.'

‘There you are,' exclaimed Rivet; ‘you see the conceit of these young fellows when they emerge from their tutelary
egg.… Make an income for yourself first, and look for fame after: that's what I say!'

‘Money-grubbing spoils one's hands!' Stidmann replied. ‘It's for fame to bring us money.'

‘What can you do?' Chanor said to Rivet. ‘You can't tie them up.'

‘They would gnaw through the halter!' declared Stidmann.

‘These gentlemen,' said Chanor, looking at Stidmann, ‘may be very talented, but the talent seems to go with a head full of freakish notions. They all spend right and left, keep light-o'-loves, throw their money out of the windows, and have no time to do their work. They neglect their commissions; and so we have to go to workers who are not nearly so good, and
they
make money. Then they complain of hard times, while if they had applied themselves to their work they would have gold by the cartload.'

‘You remind me, Papa Lumignon,' said Stidmann, ‘of the bookseller who used to say, before the Revolution: “Ah! if I could only keep Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau properly short of cash, in my garret, with their breeches locked up, what good little books they would write for me and I should make my fortune!” If fine works of art could be turned out like nails, commissionaires would be making them.… Give me a thousand francs, and shut up!'

The worthy Rivet returned home, delighted on poor Mademoiselle Fischer's account. She was in the habit of dining at his house every Monday, and he now found her there.