When Lisbeth had taken her candle from the hands of worthy Madame Olivier the portress, she looked up to see whether the windows of the garret over her own rooms were lighted up.  At that hour, even in July, it was so dark within the courtyard that the old maid could not get to bed without a light.

“Oh, you may be quite easy, Monsieur Steinbock is in his room.  He has not been out even,” said Madame Olivier, with meaning.

Lisbeth made no reply.  She was still a peasant, in so far that she was indifferent to the gossip of persons unconnected with her.  Just as a peasant sees nothing beyond his village, she cared for nobody’s opinion outside the little circle in which she lived.  So she boldly went up, not to her own room, but to the garret; and this is why.  At dessert she had filled her bag with fruit and sweets for her lover, and she went to give them to him, exactly as an old lady brings home a biscuit for her dog.

She found the hero of Hortense’s dreams working by the light of a small lamp, of which the light was intensified by the use of a bottle of water as a lens—­a pale young man, seated at a workman’s bench covered with a modeler’s tools, wax, chisels, rough-hewn stone, and bronze castings; he wore a blouse, and had in his hand a little group in red wax, which he gazed at like a poet absorbed in his labors.

“Here, Wenceslas, see what I have brought you,” said she, laying her handkerchief on a corner of the table; then she carefully took the sweetmeats and fruit out of her bag.

“You are very kind, mademoiselle,” replied the exile in melancholy tones.

“It will do you good, poor boy.  You get feverish by working so hard; you were not born to such a rough life.”

Wenceslas Steinbock looked at her with a bewildered air.

“Eat—­come, eat,” said she sharply, “instead of looking at me as you do at one of your images when you are satisfied with it.”

On being thus smacked with words, the young man seemed less puzzled, for this, indeed, was the female Mentor whose tender moods were always a surprise to him, so much more accustomed was he to be scolded.

Though Steinbock was nine-and-twenty, like many fair men, he looked five or six years younger; and seeing his youth, though its freshness had faded under the fatigue and stress of life in exile, by the side of that dry, hard face, it seemed as though Nature had blundered in the distribution of sex.  He rose and threw himself into a deep chair of Louis XV. pattern, covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, as if to rest himself.  The old maid took a greengage and offered it to him.

“Thank you,” said he, taking the plum.

“Are you tired?” said she, giving him another.

“I am not tired with work, but tired of life,” said he.

“What absurd notions you have!” she exclaimed with some annoyance.  “Have you not had a good genius to keep an eye on you?” she said, offering him the sweetmeats, and watching him with pleasure as he ate them all.  “You see, I thought of you when dining with my cousin.”