He found Crevel with Valerie.  The mayor, puffed up with pride, marched up and down the room, agitated by a storm of feelings.  He put himself into position as if he were about to speak, but he dared not.  His countenance was beaming, and he went now and again to the window, where he drummed on the pane with his fingers.  He kept looking at Valerie with a glance of tender pathos.  Happily for him, Lisbeth presently came in.

“Cousin Betty,” he said in her ear, “have you heard the news?  I am a father!  It seems to me I love my poor Celestine the less.—­Oh! what a thing it is to have a child by the woman one idolizes!  It is the fatherhood of the heart added to that of the flesh!  I say—­tell Valerie that I will work for that child—­it shall be rich.  She tells me she has some reason for believing that it will be a boy!  If it is a boy, I shall insist on his being called Crevel.  I will consult my notary about it.”

“I know how much she loves you,” said Lisbeth.  “But for her sake in the future, and for your own, control yourself.  Do not rub your hands every five minutes.”

While Lisbeth was speaking aside on this wise to Crevel, Valerie had asked Wenceslas to give her back her letter, and she was saying things that dispelled all his griefs.

“So now you are free, my dear,” said she.  “Ought any great artist to marry?  You live only by fancy and freedom!  There, I shall love you so much, beloved poet, that you shall never regret your wife.  At the same time, if, like so many people, you want to keep up appearances, I undertake to bring Hortense back to you in a very short time.”

“Oh, if only that were possible!”

“I am certain of it,” said Valerie, nettled.  “Your poor father-in-law is a man who is in every way utterly done for; who wants to appear as though he could be loved, out of conceit, and to make the world believe that he has a mistress; and he is so excessively vain on this point, that I can do what I please with him.  The Baroness is still so devoted to her old Hector—­I always feel as if I were talking of the Iliad—­that these two old folks will contrive to patch up matters between you and Hortense.  Only, if you want to avoid storms at home for the future, do not leave me for three weeks without coming to see your mistress—­I was dying of it.  My dear boy, some consideration is due from a gentleman to a woman he has so deeply compromised, especially when, as in my case, she has to be very careful of her reputation.

“Stay to dinner, my darling—­and remember that I must treat you with all the more apparent coldness because you are guilty of this too obvious mishap.”

Baron Montes was presently announced; Valerie rose and hurried forward to meet him; she spoke a few sentences in his ear, enjoining on him the same reserve as she had impressed on Wenceslas; the Brazilian assumed a diplomatic reticence suitable to the great news which filled him with delight, for he, at any rate was sure of his paternity.