What a change in children formerly so respectful, and kept so long by their mother in blind worship of their father!  They knew him now for what he was.

“But for me,” said Lisbeth, “your father’s ruin would be more complete than it is.”

“Come in to mamma,” said Hortense; “she is very sharp, and will suspect something; as our kind Lisbeth says, let us keep everything from her—­let us be cheerful.”

“Victorin,” said Lisbeth, “you have no notion of what your father will be brought to by his passion for women.  Try to secure some future resource by getting the Marshal to marry me.  Say something about it this evening; I will leave early on purpose.”

Victorin went into the bedroom.

“And you, poor little thing!” said Lisbeth in an undertone to Hortense, “what can you do?”

“Come to dinner with us to-morrow, and we will talk it over,” answered Hortense.  “I do not know which way to turn; you know how hard life is, and you will advise me.”

While the whole family with one consent tried to persuade the Marshal to marry, and while Lisbeth was making her way home to the Rue Vanneau, one of those incidents occurred which, in such women as Madame Marneffe, are a stimulus to vice by compelling them to exert their energy and every resource of depravity.  One fact, at any rate, must however be acknowledged:  life in Paris is too full for vicious persons to do wrong instinctively and unprovoked; vice is only a weapon of defence against aggressors—­that is all.

Madame Marneffe’s drawing-room was full of her faithful admirers, and she had just started the whist-tables, when the footman, a pensioned soldier recruited by the Baron, announced: 

“Monsieur le Baron Montes de Montejanos.”

Valerie’s heart jumped, but she hurried to the door, exclaiming: 

“My cousin!” and as she met the Brazilian, she whispered: 

“You are my relation—­or all is at an end between us!—­And so you were not wrecked, Henri?” she went on audibly, as she led him to the fire.  “I heard you were lost, and have mourned for you these three years.”

“How are you, my good fellow?” said Marneffe, offering his hand to the stranger, whose get-up was indeed that of a Brazilian and a millionaire.

Monsieur le Baron Henri Montes de Montejanos, to whom the climate of the equator had given the color and stature we expect to see in Othello on the stage, had an alarming look of gloom, but it was a merely pictorial illusion; for, sweet and affectionate by nature, he was predestined to be the victim that a strong man often is to a weak woman.  The scorn expressed in his countenance, the muscular strength of his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile.  Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron’s costume was a large diamond, worth about a hundred thousand francs, which blazed like a star on a handsome blue silk cravat, tucked into a white waistcoat in such a way as to show corners of a fabulously fine shirt front.