"If you ask too many questions, you will be told nothing," she went
on. "You are but two-and-twenty, and you chatter more than I do though
I am forty-two--not to say forty-three."
"I am listening; I am a wooden image," said Hortense.
"My lover has finished a bronze group ten inches high," Lisbeth went
on. "It represents Samson slaying a lion, and he has kept it buried
till it is so rusty that you might believe it to be as old as Samson
himself. This fine piece is shown at the shop of one of the old
curiosity sellers on the Place du Carrousel, near my lodgings. Now,
your father knows Monsieur Popinot, the Minister of Commerce and
Agriculture, and the Comte de Rastignac, and if he would mention the
group to them as a fine antique he had seen by chance! It seems that
such things take the fancy of your grand folks, who don't care so much
about gold lace, and that my man's fortune would be made if one of
them would buy or even look at the wretched piece of metal. The poor
fellow is sure that it might be mistaken for old work, and that the
rubbish is worth a great deal of money. And then, if one of the
ministers should purchase the group, he would go to pay his respects,
and prove that he was the maker, and be almost carried in triumph! Oh!
he believes he has reached the pinnacle; poor young man, and he is as
proud as two newly-made Counts.
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