"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.
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