“The only hold you have over this fellow is on his liberty,” observed Monsieur Rivet.

Monsieur Achille Rivet was assessor at the Tribunal of Commerce.

“Imprisonment is no joke for a foreigner,” said he.  “A Frenchman remains five years in prison and comes out, free of his debts to be sure, for he is thenceforth bound only by his conscience, and that never troubles him; but a foreigner never comes out.—­Give me your promissory note; my bookkeeper will take it up; he will get it protested; you will both be prosecuted and both be condemned to imprisonment in default of payment; then, when everything is in due form, you must sign a declaration.  By doing this your interest will be accumulating, and you will have a pistol always primed to fire at your Pole!”

The old maid allowed these legal steps to be taken, telling her protege not to be uneasy, as the proceedings were merely to afford a guarantee to a money-lender who agreed to advance them certain sums.  This subterfuge was due to the inventive genius of Monsieur Rivet.  The guileless artist, blindly trusting to his benefactress, lighted his pipe with the stamped paper, for he smoked as all men do who have sorrows or energies that need soothing.

One fine day Monsieur Rivet showed Mademoiselle Fischer a schedule, and said to her: 

“Here you have Wenceslas Steinbock bound hand and foot, and so effectually, that within twenty-four hours you can have him snug in Clichy for the rest of his days.”

This worthy and honest judge at the Chamber of Commerce experienced that day the satisfaction that must come of having done a malignant good action.  Beneficence has so many aspects in Paris that this contradictory expression really represents one of them.  The Livonian being fairly entangled in the toils of commercial procedure, the point was to obtain payment; for the illustrious tradesman looked on Wenceslas as a swindler.  Feeling, sincerity, poetry, were in his eyes mere folly in business matters.

So Rivet went off to see, in behalf of that poor Mademoiselle Fischer, who, as he said, had been “done” by the Pole, the rich manufacturers for whom Steinbock had worked.  It happened that Stidmann—­who, with the help of these distinguished masters of the goldsmiths’ art, was raising French work to the perfection it has now reached, allowing it to hold its own against Florence and the Renaissance—­Stidmann was in Chanor’s private room when the army lace manufacturer called to make inquiries as to “One Steinbock, a Polish refugee.”

“Whom do you call ‘One Steinbock’?  Do you mean a young Livonian who was a pupil of mine?” cried Stidmann ironically.  “I may tell you, monsieur, that he is a very great artist.  It is said of me that I believe myself to be the Devil.  Well, that poor fellow does not know that he is capable of becoming a god.”

“Indeed,” said Rivet, well pleased.  And then he added, “Though you take a rather cavalier tone with a man who has the honor to be an Assessor on the Tribunal of Commerce of the Department of the Seine.”