"Well, then, child, Wenceslas had better come with me to see the
lender, who will oblige him at my request. It is Madame Marneffe. If
you flatter her a little--for she is as vain as a _parvenue_--she will
get you out of the scrape in the most obliging way. Come yourself and
see her, my dear Hortense."

Hortense looked at her husband with the expression a man condemned to
death must wear on his way to the scaffold.

"Claude Vignon took Stidmann there," said Wenceslas. "He says it is a
very pleasant house."

Hortense's head fell. What she felt can only be expressed in one word;
it was not pain; it was illness.

"But, my dear Hortense, you must learn something of life!" exclaimed
Lisbeth, understanding the eloquence of her cousin's looks.
"Otherwise, like your mother, you will find yourself abandoned in a
deserted room, where you will weep like Calypso on the departure of
Ulysses, and at an age when there is no hope of Telemachus--" she
added, repeating a jest of Madame Marneffe's. "We have to regard the
people in the world as tools which we can make use of or let alone,
according as they can serve our turn. Make use of Madame Marneffe now,
my dears, and let her alone by and by. Are you afraid lest Wenceslas,
who worships you, should fall in love with a woman four or five years
older than himself, as yellow as a bundle of field peas, and----?"

"I would far rather pawn my diamonds," said Hortense. "Oh, never go
there, Wenceslas!--It is hell!"