Wenceslas, by nature a dreamer, had expended so much energy in
production, in study, and in work under Lisbeth's despotic rule, that
love and happiness resulted in reaction. His real character
reappeared, the weakness, recklessness, and indolence of the Sarmatian
returned to nestle in the comfortable corners of his soul, whence the
schoolmaster's rod had routed them.
For the first few months the artist adored his wife. Hortense and
Wenceslas abandoned themselves to the happy childishness of a
legitimate and unbounded passion. Hortense was the first to release
her husband from his labors, proud to triumph over her rival, his Art.
And, indeed, a woman's caresses scare away the Muse, and break down
the sturdy, brutal resolution of the worker.
Six or seven months slipped by, and the artist's fingers had forgotten
the use of the modeling tool. When the need for work began to be felt,
when the Prince de Wissembourg, president of the committee of
subscribers, asked to see the statue, Wenceslas spoke the inevitable
byword of the idler, "I am just going to work on it," and he lulled
his dear Hortense with fallacious promises and the magnificent schemes
of the artist as he smokes. Hortense loved her poet more than ever;
she dreamed of a sublime statue of Marshal Montcornet. Montcornet
would be the embodied ideal of bravery, the type of the cavalry
officer, of courage _a la Murat_. Yes, yes; at the mere sight of that
statue all the Emperor's victories were to seem a foregone conclusion.
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