try, she refused the
Baron's offers of help, and he thought she must be mad. She confirmed
this opinion by quarreling with Monsieur Rivet, who bought the
business of Pons Brothers, and with whom the Baron wished to place her
in partnership; she would be no more than a workwoman. Thus the
Fischer family had relapsed into the precarious mediocrity from which
Baron Hulot had raised it.

The three brothers Fischer, who had been ruined by the abdication at
Fontainebleau, in despair joined the irregular troops in 1815. The
eldest, Lisbeth's father, was killed. Adeline's father, sentenced to
death by court-martial, fled to Germany, and died at Treves in 1820.
Johann, the youngest, came to Paris, a petitioner to the queen of the
family, who was said to dine off gold and silver plate, and never to
be seen at a party but with diamonds in her hair as big as hazel-nuts,
given to her by the Emperor.

Johann Fischer, then aged forty-three, obtained from Baron Hulot a
capital of ten thousand francs with which to start a small business as
forage-dealer at Versailles, under the patronage of the War Office,
through the influence of the friends still in office, of the late
Commissary-General.

These family catastrophes, Baron Hulot's dismissal, and the knowledge
that he was a mere cipher in that immense stir of men and interests
and things which makes Paris at once a paradise and a hell, quite
quelled Lisbeth Fischer. She gave up all idea of rivalry and
comparison with her cousin after feeling her great superiority; but
envy still lurked in her heart, like a plague-germ that may hatch and
devastate a city if the fatal bale of wool is opened in which it is
concealed.

Now and again, indeed, she said to herself:

"Adeline and I are the same flesh and blood, our fathers were brothers
--and she is in a mansion, while I am in a garret."

But every New Year Lisbeth had presents from the Baron and Baroness;
the Baron, who was always good to her, paid for her firewood in the
winter; old General Hulot had her to dinner once a week; and there was
always a cover laid for her at her cousin's table. They laughed at her
no doubt, but they never were ashamed to own her. In short, they had
made her independent in Paris, where she lived as she pleased.

The old maid had, in fact, a terror of any kind of tie. Her cousin had
offered her a room in her own house--Lisbeth suspected the halter of
domestic servitude; several times the Baron had found a