“It is very poor business,” replied Hulot, shaking his head.  “It needs high patronage as well as great talent, for Government is the only purchaser.  It is an art with no demand nowadays, where there are no princely houses, no great fortunes, no entailed mansions, no hereditary estates.  Only small pictures and small figures can find a place; the arts are endangered by this need of small things.”

“But if a great artist could find a demand?” said Hortense.

“That indeed would solve the problem.”

“Or had some one to back him?”

“That would be even better.”

“If he were of noble birth?”

“Pooh!”

“A Count.”

“And a sculptor?”

“He has no money.”

“And so he counts on that of Mademoiselle Hortense Hulot?” said the Baron ironically, with an inquisitorial look into his daughter’s eyes.

“This great artist, a Count and a sculptor, has just seen your daughter for the first time in his life, and for the space of five minutes, Monsieur le Baron,” Hortense calmly replied.  “Yesterday, you must know, dear little father, while you were at the Chamber, mamma had a fainting fit.  This, which she ascribed to a nervous attack, was the result of some worry that had to do with the failure of my marriage, for she told me that to get rid of me—–­”

“She is too fond of you to have used an expression——­”

“So unparliamentary!” Hortense put in with a laugh.  “No, she did not use those words; but I know that a girl old enough to marry and who does not find a husband is a heavy cross for respectable parents to bear.—­Well, she thinks that if a man of energy and talent could be found, who would be satisfied with thirty thousand francs for my marriage portion, we might all be happy.  In fact, she thought it advisable to prepare me for the modesty of my future lot, and to hinder me from indulging in too fervid dreams.—­Which evidently meant an end to the intended marriage, and no settlements for me!”

“Your mother is a very good woman, noble, admirable!” replied the father, deeply humiliated, though not sorry to hear this confession.

“She told me yesterday that she had your permission to sell her diamonds so as to give me something to marry on; but I should like her to keep her jewels, and to find a husband myself.  I think I have found the man, the possible husband, answering to mamma’s prospectus——­”

“There?—­in the Place du Carrousel?—­and in one morning?”

“Oh, papa, the mischief lies deeper!” said she archly.

“Well, come, my child, tell the whole story to your good old father,” said he persuasively, and concealing his uneasiness.

Under promise of absolute secrecy, Hortense repeated the upshot of her various conversations with her Cousin Betty.  Then, when they got home, she showed the much-talked-of-seal to her father in evidence of the sagacity of her views.  The father, in the depth of his heart, wondered at the skill and acumen of girls who act on instinct, discerning the simplicity of the scheme which her idealized love had suggested in the course of a single night to his guileless daughter.