The Baron found it impossible to marry off this girl with the black eyes and sooty eyebrows, who could neither read nor write, as quickly as Adeline would have liked. So, as a first step, he gave her a trade: he apprenticed Lisbeth to the Court embroiderers, the well-known Pons Brothers.

This cousin, called Bette for short, had the vigorous energy of all mountain-bred people, and, when she became a worker in gold and silver braid embroidery, applied her capacity for hard work to learning to read, write, and reckon; for her cousin, the Baron, had impressed upon her the necessity of possessing these techniques if she was to run an embroidering business of her own. She was determined to make her way, and within two years she had achieved a metamorphosis. By 1811, the peasant girl had become a passably pleasant-mannered, sufficiently skilled and dexterous forewoman.

Her line of business, passementerie – gold and silver lace-work – included the making of epaulettes, sword-knots, aiguillettes, and in fact all the vast variety of brilliant decoration that formerly glittered on the handsome uniforms of the French army, and on civilian dress clothes. The Emperor, with a true Italian fondness of finery, had embroidered gold and silver lace on every uniform in his service, and his empire comprised one hundred and thirty-three Departments. The supplying of these braid trimmings, in the ordinary way to substantial, solidly-established tailoring firms, but sometimes directly to important officials, was good business, a sound trade.

Just when Cousin Bette, the best workwoman in the Pons establishment where she was in charge of the workroom, might have set up in business for herself, the Empire fell to its ruin. The olive branch of peace borne in the hands of the Bourbons alarmed Lisbeth; she was apprehensive of a slump in this trade, which would in future have only eighty-six Departments to exploit instead of a hundred and thirty-three, to say nothing of its loss of clients through the enormous reduction of the Army. Taking fright at the uncertain prospects of the industry, she refused the offers made her by the Baron, who thought her mad. She justified this opinion by quarrelling with Monsieur Rivet, the purchaser of the Pons Brothers’ business, with whom the Baron had proposed to set her up in partnership, and she went back to being just an ordinary workwoman.

Meanwhile the Fischer family had relapsed into the precarious situation from which Baron Hulot had rescued it.

Ruined by the disaster of Fontainebleau, the three Fischer brothers had fought with the Volunteer Corps of 1815 with the recklessness of despair. The eldest, Lisbeth’s father, was killed. Adeline’s father, sentenced to death by a court-martial, fled to Germany and died at Trèves in 1820. The youngest, Johann, came to Paris to entreat the help of the queen of the family, who was said to eat off gold and silver, and who never appeared on public occasions without diamonds in her hair and round her neck, diamonds that were as big as hazelnuts and had been given to her by the Emperor. Johann Fischer, at that time aged forty-three, received a sum of ten thousand francs from Baron Hulot in order to start a small business supplying forage at Versailles, the contract for which was obtained from the Ministry of War by the private influence of friends whom the former Commissary general still had there.

These family misfortunes, Baron Hulot’s fall from favour, the knowledge borne in upon her that she counted for little in the immense turmoil of contending people, ambitions, and enterprises that makes Paris both a heaven and an inferno, intimidated Bette. The young woman at that time gave up all idea of competing with or rivalling her cousin, whose many and various points of superiority she had realized; but envy remained hidden in her heart, like a plague germ which may come to life and devastate a city if the fatal bale of wool in which it lies hidden is ever opened. From time to time, indeed, she would say to herself: ‘Adeline and I are of the same blood; our fathers were brothers. Yet she lives in a mansion, and I in a garret.’ However, year in year out, Lisbeth received presents from the Baroness and the Baron, on her birthday and on New Year’s Day. The Baron, who was exceedingly kind to her, paid for her winter firewood. Old General Hulot entertained her to dinner one day a week. Her place was always laid at her cousin’s table. They laughed at her, certainly, but they never blushed to acknowledge her. They had in fact enabled her to live independently in Paris, where she led the life that suited her.

Lisbeth was, indeed, very apprehensive of possible restriction of her liberty. Should her cousin invite her to live under her roof… Bette at once caught sight of the halter of domestic servitude. Several times the Baron had found a solution to the difficult problem of arranging a marriage for her; but on each occasion, although the prospect attracted her at first, she soon refused to entertain it, afraid that she might see her lack of education, ignorance, and want of fortune, cast in her face. Then, when the Baroness suggested that she should live with their uncle and look after his household in place of his housekeeper, who must be expensive, she replied that she would make a match in that position even less easily.

Cousin Bette had that kind of oddity in her cast of mind that one notices in people who have developed late, and among savages, who think much but say little. Her native peasant intelligence had, however, acquired through her workshop conversations, in her constant contacts with the men and women of her trade, a Parisian keenness of edge. This young woman, who had a temperament notably resembling the Cor-sican temperament, in whom the active instincts of a strong nature were frustrated, would have found a happy outlet in protecting some less robust-natured man. In her years of living in the capital, the capital had changed her superficially, yet the Parisian veneer left her spirit of strongly-tempered metal to rust. Endowed with an insight that had become profoundly penetrating, as are all men and women who live genuinely celibate lives, with the original twist which she gave to all her ideas, she would have appeared formidable in any other situation. With ill will, she could have sown discord in the most united family.

In the early days, when she had still cherished some hopes, the secret of which she had confided to no one, she had brought herself to wear stays, to follow the fashion, and had then achieved a brief season of splendour during which the Baron considered her marriageable. Lisbeth was at that time the piquante nut-brown maid of old French romance.