h 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. And then such
workmanship! The pencil was accommodating and answered to the word.

By way of a statue the result was a delightful little Wenceslas.

When the progress of affairs required that he should go to the studio
at le Gros-Caillou to mould the clay and set up the life-size model,
Steinbock found one day that the Prince's clock required his presence
in the workshop of Florent and Chanor, where the figures were being
finished; or, again, the light was gray and dull; to-day he had
business to do, to-morrow they had a family dinner, to say nothing of
indispositions of mind and body, and the days when he stayed at home to
toy with his adored wife.

Marshal the Prince de Wissembourg was obliged to be angry to get the
clay model finished; he declared that he must put the work into other
hands. It was only by dint of endless complaints and much strong
language that the committee of subscribers succeeded in seeing the
plaster-cast. Day after day Steinbock came home, evidently tired,
complaining of this "hodman's work" and his own physical weakness.
During that first year the household felt no pinch; the Countess
Steinbock, desperately in love with her husband cursed the War Minister.
She went to see him; she told him that great works of art were not to be
manufactured like cannon; and that the State--like Louis XIV., Francis
I., and Leo X.--ought to be at the beck and call of genius. Poor
Hortense, believing she held a Phidias in her embrace, had the sort of
motherly cowardice for her Wenceslas that is in every wife who carries
her love to the pitch of idolatry.

"Do not be hurried," said she to her husband, "our whole future life is
bound up with that statue. Take your time and produce a masterpiece."

She would go to the studio, and then the enraptured Steinbock wasted
five hours out of seven in describing the statue instead of working at
it. He thus spent eighteen months in finishing the design, which to him
was all-important.

When the plaster was cast and the model complete, poor Hortense, who had
looked on at her husband's toil,