“Your pardon, Consul!” said Stidmann, with a military salute.

“I am delighted,” the Assessor went on, “to hear what you say.  The man may make money then?”

“Certainly,” said Chanor; “but he must work.  He would have a tidy sum by now if he had stayed with us.  What is to be done?  Artists have a horror of not being free.”

“They have a proper sense of their value and dignity,” replied Stidmann.  “I do not blame Wenceslas for walking alone, trying to make a name, and to become a great man; he had a right to do so!  But he was a great loss to me when he left.”

“That, you see,” exclaimed Rivet, “is what all young students aim at as soon as they are hatched out of the school-egg.  Begin by saving money, I say, and seek glory afterwards.”

“It spoils your touch to be picking up coin,” said Stidmann.  “It is Glory’s business to bring us wealth.”

“And, after all,” said Chanor to Rivet, “you cannot tether them.”

“They would eat the halter,” replied Stidmann.

“All these gentlemen have as much caprice as talent,” said Chanor, looking at Stidmann.  “They spend no end of money; they keep their girls, they throw coin out of window, and then they have no time to work.  They neglect their orders; we have to employ workmen who are very inferior, but who grow rich; and then they complain of the hard times, while, if they were but steady, they might have piles of gold.”

“You old Lumignon,” said Stidmann, “you remind me of the publisher before the Revolution who said—­’If only I could keep Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau very poor in my backshed, and lock up their breeches in a cupboard, what a lot of nice little books they would write to make my fortune.’—­If works of art could be hammered out like nails, workmen would make them.—­Give me a thousand francs, and don’t talk nonsense.”

Worthy Monsieur Rivet went home, delighted for poor Mademoiselle Fischer, who dined with him every Monday, and whom he found waiting for him.

“If you can only make him work,” said he, “you will have more luck than wisdom; you will be repaid, interest, capital, and costs.  This Pole has talent, he can make a living; but lock up his trousers and his shoes, do not let him go to the Chaumiere or the parish of Notre-Dame de Lorette, keep him in leading-strings.  If you do not take such precautions, your artist will take to loafing, and if you only knew what these artists mean by loafing!  Shocking!  Why, I have just heard that they will spend a thousand-franc note in a day!”

This episode had a fatal influence on the home-life of Wenceslas and Lisbeth.  The benefactress flavored the exile’s bread with the wormwood of reproof, now that she saw her money in danger, and often believed it to be lost.  From a kind mother she became a stepmother; she took the poor boy to task, she nagged him, scolded him for working too slowly, and blamed him for having chosen so difficult a profession.  She could not believe that those models in red wax—­little figures and sketches for ornamental work—­could be of any value.  Before long, vexed with herself for her severity, she would try to efface the tears by her care and attention.