the misery you would bring on Hortense."

"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!"

"You shall have your ten thousand francs, my dear Wenceslas; but on
one condition," she went on, playing with his handsome curls.

"What is that?"

"I will take no interest----"

"Madame!"

"Oh, you need not be indignant; you shall make it good by giving me a
bronze group. You began the story of Samson; finish it.--Do a Delilah
cutting off the Jewish Hercules' hair. And you, who, if you will
listen to me, will be a great artist, must enter into the subject.
What you have to show is the power of woman. Samson is a secondary
consideration. He is the corpse of dead strength. It is Delilah
--passion--that ruins everything. How far more beautiful is that
_replica_--That is what you call it, I think--" She skilfully
interpolated, as Claude Vignon and Stidmann came up to them on hearing
her talk of sculpture--"how far more beautiful than the Greek myth is
that _replica_ of Hercules at Omphale's feet.--Did Greece copy Judaea,
or did Judaea borrow the symbolism from Greece?"

"There, madame, you raise an important question--that of the date of
the various writings in the Bible. The great and immortal Spinoza
--most foolishly r