"
Worthy Monsieur Rivet went home, delighted for poor Mademoiselle
Fischer, who dined with him every Monday, and whom he found waiting
for him.
"If you can only make him work," said he, "you will have more luck
than wisdom; you will be repaid, interest, capital, and costs. This
Pole has talent, he can make a living; but lock up his trousers and
his shoes, do not let him go to the _Chaumiere_ or the parish of
Notre-Dame de Lorette, keep him in leading-strings. If you do not take
such precautions, your artist will take to loafing, and if you only
knew what these artists mean by loafing! Shocking! Why, I have just
heard that they will spend a thousand-franc note in a day!"
This episode had a fatal influence on the home-life of Wenceslas and
Lisbeth. The benefactress flavored the exile's bread with the wormwood
of reproof, now that she saw her money in danger, and often believed
it to be lost. From a kind mother she became a stepmother; she took
the poor boy to task, she nagged him, scolded him for working too
slowly, and blamed him for having chosen so difficult a profession.
She could not believe that those models in red wax--little figures and
sketches for ornamental work--could be of any value. Before long,
vexed with herself for her severity, she would try to efface the tears
by her care and attention.
Then the poor young man, after groaning to think that he was dependent
on this shrew and under the thumb of a peasant of the Vosges, was
bewitched by her coaxing ways and by a maternal affection that
attached itself solely to the physical and material side of life.
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