She rushed upstairs, threw herself against the door, and with her peasant strength succeeded in bursting it open. She found the tenant of the room writhing on a camp-bed, in the convulsions, apparently, of his death-agony. She extinguished the stove. With the door opened, fresh air flowed in, and the exile was saved. Later, when Lisbeth had put him to bed like a nurse, she was able to deduce the reason for his suicide from the extreme bareness of the two rooms of the attic, which contained nothing but a rickety table, the camp-bed, and a couple of chairs.

On the table was the following statement, which she read:

I am Count Wenceslas Steinbock, born at Prelia, in Livonia.

Let no one be blamed for my death; the reasons for my suicide are in these words of Kosciusko’s: Finis Poloniae!

The great-nephew of à brave general of Charles XII could not beg. A delicate constitution made military service impossible for me, and yesterday saw the end of the hundred thalers with which I came to Paris from Dresden. I leave twenty-five francs in the drawer of this table to pay the rent that I owe to the landlord.

As I no longer have relatives living, my death concerns no one. I beg my compatriots not to blame the French Government. I did not make myself known as a refugee; I did not ask for aid; I met no other exile; no one in Paris knows that I exist.

I die in Christian faith. May God forgive the last of the Stein-bocks!

WENCESLAS

Mademoiselle Fischer, profoundly touched by the honesty of a dying man who paid his rent, opened the drawer and saw that there were in fact five five-franc pieces there.

‘Poor young man!’ she exclaimed. ‘And there’s no one in the world to care about him!‘

She ran down to her room, fetched her sewing, and went back to work in the attic while keeping watch over the Livonian nobleman. When the refugee awoke, one may imagine his surprise when he saw a woman sitting by his bed: he thought he was still dreaming. As she sat stitching gold aiguillettes for a uniform, the old maid had been making up her mind to look after this poor boy, whom she had watched with admiration as he slept. When the young Count was quite conscious again, Lisbeth spoke cheerfully to him and questioned him in order to find out how she might possibly enable him to make a living. After telling his story, Wenceslas added that he had owed his post as teacher to his acknowledged talent for the arts; he had always felt a natural bent towards sculpture, but the time necessary for study seemed too long for a man without money, and he felt that he was not nearly robust enough at the moment to devote himself to a profession demanding manual labour, or undertake large works of sculpture. This was so much Greek to Lisbeth Fischer. She answered the unfortunate young man by saying that Paris offered so many opportunities that a man who was resolved would always find a living there; men with pluck never came to grief in Paris, provided that they brought with them a certain fund of patience.

‘I am just a poor woman, a countrywoman, myself, and I have managed very well to make my own way and earn my own living,’ she said in conclusion. ‘Listen to me. If you are willing to give your whole mind to working in earnest, I have some savings, and I will lend you the money you need to live on, month by month; but only for living frugally, not for leading a gay life and gadding about the town! It is possible to dine in Paris on twenty-five sous a day, and I will make your lunch with my own every morning. And I’ll furnish your room, and pay for whatever apprenticeship you think you need. You shall give me formal receipts for the money I spend for you; and when you are rich you can repay it all. But if you don’t work, I shall not regard myself as bound to do anything further for you, and I’ll leave you to your fate.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed the unfortunate refugee, who was still feeling the bitterness of his first encounter with death. ‘The exiles from every country have good reason to stretch out their hands to France like souls in purgatory straining upwards to paradise. Among what other nation could one find help and generous hearts everywhere, even in a garret like this? You shall be the whole world to me, my dear benefactress. I’ll be your slave! Be my sweetheart,’ he said caressingly, in one of those impulsive demonstrations of feeling so characteristic of Poles, which make people accuse them, quite unjustly, of toadyism.

‘Oh, no! I am much too jealous, I should make you unhappy; but I will gladly be something like your comrade,’ Lisbeth replied.

‘Oh, if you only knew how fervently I longed for any human creature, even a tyrant, who had some use for me, when I was struggling in the empty loneliness of Paris!’ Wenceslas went on. ‘I wished myself in Siberia, where the Emperor would send me if I returned! Be you my Providence.… I’ll work, I’ll be better than I am, although I am not a bad fellow.’

‘Will you do everything I tell you?’ she asked.

‘Yes!’

‘Well then, I adopt you as my child,’ she said gaily. ‘Here I am with a boy who has risen from the grave. Come! we’ll begin now. I’m going down to do my marketing. You get dressed, and come to have lunch with me when I knock on the ceiling with my broom-handle.’

Next day, when Mademoiselle Fischer called on the firm who took her work, she made inquiries about a sculptor’s profession.