"Then, I hope you mean to work, my dear treasure," said Hortense.

"Yes, indeed," said the artist. "I will begin to-morrow."

"To-morrow is our ruin!" said his wife, with a smile.

"Now, my dear child! say yourself whether some hindrance has not come
in the way every day; some obstacle or business?"

"Yes, very true, my love."

"Here!" cried Steinbock, striking his brow, "here I have swarms of
ideas! I mean to astonish all my enemies. I am going to design a
service in the German style of the sixteenth century; the romantic
style: foliage twined with insects, sleeping children, newly invented
monsters, chimeras--real chimeras, such as we dream of!--I see it all!
It will be undercut, light, and yet crowded. Chanor was quite amazed.
--And I wanted some encouragement, for the last article on
Montcornet's monument had been crushing."

At a moment in the course of the day when Lisbeth and Wenceslas were
left together, the artist agreed to go on the morrow to see Madame
Marneffe--he either would win his wife's consent, or he would go
without telling her.

Valerie, informed the same evening of this success, insisted that
Hulot should go to invite Stidmann, Claude Vignon, and Steinbock to
dinner; for she was beginning to tyrannize over him as women of that
type tyrannize over old men, who trot round town, and go to make
interest with every one who is necessary to the interests or the
vanity of their task-mistress.

Next evening Valerie armed herself for conquest by making such a
toilet as a Frenchwoman can devise when she wishes to make the most of
herself. She studied her appearance in this great work as a man going
out to fight a duel practises his feints and lunges. Not a speck, not
a wrinkle was to be seen. Valerie was at her whitest, her softest, her
sweetest. And certain little "patches" attracted the eye.

It is commonly supposed that the patch of the eighteenth century is
out of date or out of fashion; that is a mistake. In these days women,
more ingenious perhaps than of yore, invite a glance through the
opera-glass by other audacious devices. One is the first to hit on a
rosette in her hair with a diamond in the centre, and she attracts
every eye for a whole evening; another revives the hair-net, or sticks
a dagger through the twist to suggest a garter; this one wears velvet
bands round her wrists, that one appears in lace lippets. These
valiant efforts, an Austerlitz of vanity or of love, then set the