We should live very happily together.--But for the moment, listen to
the voice of my long experience. Do not fly to the Mont-de-Piete; it
is the ruin of the borrower. I have always found that when the
interest was due, those who had pledged their things had nothing
wherewith to pay up, and then all is lost. I can get you a loan at
five per cent on your note of hand."
"Oh, we are saved!" said Hortense.
"Well, then, child, Wenceslas had better come with me to see the
lender, who will oblige him at my request. It is Madame Marneffe. If
you flatter her a little--for she is as vain as a _parvenue_--she will
get you out of the scrape in the most obliging way. Come yourself and
see her, my dear Hortense."
Hortense looked at her husband with the expression a man condemned to
death must wear on his way to the scaffold.
"Claude Vignon took Stidmann there," said Wenceslas. "He says it is a
very pleasant house."
Hortense's head fell. What she felt can only be expressed in one word;
it was not pain; it was illness.
"But, my dear Hortense, you must learn something of life!" exclaimed
Lisbeth, understanding the eloquence of her cousin's looks.
"Otherwise, like your mother, you will find yourself abandoned in a
deserted room, where you will weep like Calypso on the departure of
Ulysses, and at an age when there is no hope of Telemachus--" she
added, repeating a jest of Madame Marneffe's.
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