the third floor across the court in their block, especially when the old maid has Mademoiselle Fischerâs habits.
The first person to stir in the house, Lisbeth would go to bring in her milk, bread, and charcoal without exchanging a word with anyone, and she went to bed with the sun. She never received either letters or visitors, and was not on neighbourly terms with her fellow tenants. Hers was one of those anonymous insect-like existences to be found in certain houses, in which one may discover at the end of four years that there is an old gentleman living on the fourth floor who once knew Voltaire, Pilâtre de Rozier, Beaujon, Marcel,Molé, Sophie Arnould, Franklin, and Robespierre. What Monsieur and Madame Marneffe had just said about Lisbeth Fischer they had come to know because the quarter was so isolated and because of the friendly relations with the porters which their financial embarrassment had obliged them to establish, for they were too dependent on the portersâ good-will not to have carefully cultivated it. It so happened that the old maidâs pride, closed lips, and reserve had provoked in the porters that exaggerated show of respect and cold attitude which spring from an unacknowledged discontent and a sense of being treated as inferior. The porters, moreover, in the case in question, as they say in the law courts, considered themselves just as good as a tenant paying a rent of two hundred and fifty francs. Since Cousin Betteâs confidences to her second cousin Hortense were in fact true, one can understand how the portress, gossiping with the Marneffes, might have slandered Mademoiselle Fischer in the belief that she was simply passing on a scandalous piece of news.
When the spinster had taken her candlestick from the hands of the portress, the respectable Madame Olivier, she moved forward to see whether there was a light in the attic windows above her apartment. At that hour, even in July, it was so dark at the end of the court that the old maid could not go to bed without a light.
âOh, you neednât worry; Monsieur Steinbock is in. He hasnât even been out,â Madame Olivier said to Mademoiselle Fischer, maliciously.
The spinster made no reply. She had remained a peasant in this respect, that she cared little for what people not close to her might say. Peasants are aware of nothing outside their own village, and to her the opinion of the little circle in the midst of which she lived was still the only one that mattered. She climbed the stairs, then, purposefully, to the attic instead of her own apartment. At dessert, she had put some fruit and sweetmeats into her bag for her sweetheart, and she was going up to present them, for all the world like an old maid bringing home a titbit for her dog.
She found the hero of Hortenseâs dreams working by the light of a little lamp, whose rays were concentrated bypassing through a globe filled with water â a pale, fair young man, sitting at a kind of work-bench littered with sculptorâs tools, red wax, chisels, roughed out bases, bronze copies of models, wearing a workmanâs blouse, with a little group in modelling wax in his hand, which he was scrutinizing with the concentration of a poet at work.
âHere, Wenceslas, look what Iâve brought you,â she said, spreading her handkerchief on a corner of the bench. Then she carefully took the sweets and fruit from her reticule.
âYou are very kind, Mademoiselle,â the poor exile replied, in a melancholy voice.
âThese will refresh you, my poor child. You heat your blood working like this. You werenât born for such hard work.â
Wenceslas Steinbock looked at the old maid in some surprise.
âWell, eat them,â she said then, roughly, âand donât gaze at me as if I were one of your figures that youâre feeling pleased with.â
This verbal cuff on the ear put an end to the young manâs astonishment; for he
The first person to stir in the house, Lisbeth would go to bring in her milk, bread, and charcoal without exchanging a word with anyone, and she went to bed with the sun. She never received either letters or visitors, and was not on neighbourly terms with her fellow tenants. Hers was one of those anonymous insect-like existences to be found in certain houses, in which one may discover at the end of four years that there is an old gentleman living on the fourth floor who once knew Voltaire, Pilâtre de Rozier, Beaujon, Marcel,Molé, Sophie Arnould, Franklin, and Robespierre. What Monsieur and Madame Marneffe had just said about Lisbeth Fischer they had come to know because the quarter was so isolated and because of the friendly relations with the porters which their financial embarrassment had obliged them to establish, for they were too dependent on the portersâ good-will not to have carefully cultivated it. It so happened that the old maidâs pride, closed lips, and reserve had provoked in the porters that exaggerated show of respect and cold attitude which spring from an unacknowledged discontent and a sense of being treated as inferior. The porters, moreover, in the case in question, as they say in the law courts, considered themselves just as good as a tenant paying a rent of two hundred and fifty francs. Since Cousin Betteâs confidences to her second cousin Hortense were in fact true, one can understand how the portress, gossiping with the Marneffes, might have slandered Mademoiselle Fischer in the belief that she was simply passing on a scandalous piece of news.
When the spinster had taken her candlestick from the hands of the portress, the respectable Madame Olivier, she moved forward to see whether there was a light in the attic windows above her apartment. At that hour, even in July, it was so dark at the end of the court that the old maid could not go to bed without a light.
âOh, you neednât worry; Monsieur Steinbock is in. He hasnât even been out,â Madame Olivier said to Mademoiselle Fischer, maliciously.
The spinster made no reply. She had remained a peasant in this respect, that she cared little for what people not close to her might say. Peasants are aware of nothing outside their own village, and to her the opinion of the little circle in the midst of which she lived was still the only one that mattered. She climbed the stairs, then, purposefully, to the attic instead of her own apartment. At dessert, she had put some fruit and sweetmeats into her bag for her sweetheart, and she was going up to present them, for all the world like an old maid bringing home a titbit for her dog.
She found the hero of Hortenseâs dreams working by the light of a little lamp, whose rays were concentrated bypassing through a globe filled with water â a pale, fair young man, sitting at a kind of work-bench littered with sculptorâs tools, red wax, chisels, roughed out bases, bronze copies of models, wearing a workmanâs blouse, with a little group in modelling wax in his hand, which he was scrutinizing with the concentration of a poet at work.
âHere, Wenceslas, look what Iâve brought you,â she said, spreading her handkerchief on a corner of the bench. Then she carefully took the sweets and fruit from her reticule.
âYou are very kind, Mademoiselle,â the poor exile replied, in a melancholy voice.
âThese will refresh you, my poor child. You heat your blood working like this. You werenât born for such hard work.â
Wenceslas Steinbock looked at the old maid in some surprise.
âWell, eat them,â she said then, roughly, âand donât gaze at me as if I were one of your figures that youâre feeling pleased with.â
This verbal cuff on the ear put an end to the young manâs astonishment; for he
Similar Books
