You don’t know what it means to love.’

‘We all know that from birth!’ said her cousin.

‘No, some women love and yet remain egoists, which is what you are doing!’

Cousin Bette had bowed her head, and the look in her eyes would have made anyone who saw it shudder, but she kept her gaze fixed on her reel of silk.

‘If you introduced your sweetheart to us, Hector might be able to find him a place, and help him to make his way in the world.’

‘That is not possible,’ Cousin Bette had said.

‘Why not?’

‘He’s a sort of Pole, a refugee…’

‘A conspirator?’ exclaimed Hortense. ‘How lucky you are! Has he had exciting adventures?’

‘He fought for Poland. He was a teacher in the school whose students started the revolt, and as it was the Grand Duke Constantine who placed him there he can’t hope to be pardoned.’

‘Teacher of what?’

‘Art!’

‘And he came to Paris after the revolt had been suppressed?’

‘In 1833. He had crossed Germany on foot.…’

‘Poor young man! And how old is he?’

‘He was only just twenty-four at the time of the insurrection. He is twenty-nine now.…’

‘Fifteen years younger than you,’ the Baroness had said then.

‘How does he live?’ asked Hortense.

‘By his talent.…’

‘Ah! he gives lessons?’

‘No,’ Bette had answered, ‘he takes them, and hard ones too!’

‘And what’s his Christian name? Has he a nice one?’

‘Wenceslas!’

‘What imaginations old maids have!’ the Baroness had exclaimed. ‘From the way you talk, anyone would believe that you were telling the truth, Lisbeth.’

‘Don’t you see, Mama? He’s a Pole brought up on the knout, and Bette reminds him of that little amenity of his native land!’

They had all three burst out laughing, and Hortense had sung: ‘Wenceslas! O my heart’s dearest love!’ instead of ‘O Mathilde…’, and for a few moments there had been something like an armistice.

‘These little girls,’ said Cousin Bette next time she came, looking at Hortense, ‘imagine that no one but themselves can have sweethearts.’

‘Now,’ said Hortense, as soon as she and her cousin were alone, ‘prove to me that Wenceslas isn’t a fairytale, and I’ll give you my yellow cashmere shawl.’

‘But Wenceslas is a Count!’

‘All Poles are Counts!’

‘But he isn’t a Pole, he’s a Li… va… Lith…’

‘Lithuanian?’

‘No…’

‘Livonian?’

‘Yes. That’s what he is!’

‘But what’s his name?’

‘Tell me, are you sure you can keep a secret?’

‘Oh, Cousin, I’ll be dumb!’

‘As a fish?’

‘As a fish!’

‘You swear by your eternal salvation?’

‘By my eternal salvation!’

‘No, by your happiness in this world?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, he’s Count Wenceslas Steinbock!’

‘That’s the name of one of Charles XII of Sweden’s generals.’

‘That was his great-uncle! His father settled in Livonia after the death of the King of Sweden; but he lost all his money in the 1812 campaign, and died, leaving the poor child, aged eight, penniless. The Grand Duke Constantine, for the sake of the name of Steinbock, took him under his protection and sent him to school.’

‘I’ll keep my word,’ Hortense had said. ‘Give me proof of his existence and my yellow shawl is yours! Ah, yellow is a brunette’s colour – it does as much for her as cosmetics!’

‘You will keep my secret?’

‘I’ll give you all mine.’

‘Well, the next time I come, I shall have the proof.’

‘But the proof is the sweetheart,’ Hortense had said.

Cousin Bette’s fancy had been greatly taken by the wraps that she had seen in Paris, and she had been fascinated by the prospect of possessing the yellow shawl, which the Baron had given to his wife in 1808, and which, in 1830, had passed from mother to daughter, in accordance with the custom in some families. The shawl had become somewhat the worse for wear in the past ten years’ use, but the precious web, always kept in a sandal-wood box, seemed, like the Baroness’s furniture, unalterably new to the old maid’s eyes. So she had brought a present in her reticule that she intended to give the Baroness for her birthday, and that she considered convincing proof of the legendary lover’s existence.

The present consisted of a silver seal composed of three figures wreathed in foliage, standing back to back and bearing the globe aloft. The three figures represented Faith, Hope, and Charity. Their feet rested on snarling snapping monsters, among which the symbolic serpent writhed. In 1846, after the tremendous impetus given to Benvenuto Cellini’s art by the work of Mademoiselle de Faveau and such artists as Wagner, Jeanest, Froment-Meurice, and wood-carvers like Liénard, this fine piece of work would surprise no one, but at that time a girl with some interest in jewellery could hardly fail to be impressed as she examined the seal, which Cousin Bette handed to her with the words: ‘Here, what do you think of this?’

The figures, with their flowing draperies, had the composition and rhythm of the style of Raphael. In execution they suggested the Florentine school of workers in bronze created by Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Benvenuto Cellini, John of Bologna, and their peers. The French Renaissance had produced no more fantastic whimsical monsters than those symbolizing the evil passions. The palms, ferns, rushes, reeds, springing up around the Virtues showed a virtuosity, and a style and taste, that expert craftsmen might despair of rivalling. A ribbon twined among the three heads, and where it appeared between them displayed a W, a chamois, and the word fecit.

‘Who can have made this?’ Hortense asked.

‘My sweetheart, of course,’ Cousin Bette replied. ‘there are ten months of work in it. I earn more by making sword-knots. He told me that Steinbock means creature of the rocks or chamois, in German. He intends to sign everything he makes like this… Ah! your shawl is mine!’

‘Just tell me why.’

‘Could I buy a thing like this? Or commission it? Impossible – so it must have been given to me. Who would give such a present? Why, only a sweetheart!’

Hortense, with a lack of candour that would have alarmed Lisbeth if she had perceived it, carefully refrained from expressing all her admiration, although she experienced the thrill that people sensitive to beauty feel when they see a masterpiece: faultless, complete, and unexpected.

‘Certainly,’ she said, ‘it’s very pretty.’

‘Yes, it’s pretty,’ answered the old maid; ‘but I would rather have an orange shawl. Well, my dear, my sweetheart spends his time working at things like this. Since he came to Paris he has made three or four trinkets of the same sort, and that’s the fruit of four years’ study and work. He has been serving an apprenticeship with founders, moulders, jewellers.… Bah! a mint of money has gone on it all. The young man tells me that in only a few months, now, he will be rich and famous.’

‘So you do really see him?’

‘Well, do you think I’m inventing all this? I was laughing, but I told you the truth.’

‘And he loves you?’ Hortense asked, with intense interest.

‘He adores me!’ her cousin replied solemnly. ‘You see, my dear, he has only known insipid, die-away women; they’re all like that in the north. A young, dark, slender girl, like me, soon warmed the cockles of his heart. But mum’s the word! You promised!’

‘He’ll go the same way as the five others,’ the girl said teasingly, still looking at the seal.

‘Six, Mademoiselle! I left one in Lorraine who would have fetched the moon out of the sky for me, and still would to this day.’

‘This one does even better.