But this success was nothing.  The Heir, who wished to be accepted as a wit, had formed a plan of consorting with clever celebrities and so reflecting their fame,—­a plan somewhat hard to execute on a basis of an exchequer limited to eight thousand francs a year.  With this end in view, Fabien du Ronceret had addressed himself again and again, without success, to Bixiou, Stidmann, and Leon de Lora, asking them to present him to Madame Schontz, and allow him to take part in that menageria of lions of all kinds.  Failing in those directions he applied to Couture, for whose dinners he had so often paid that the late speculator felt obliged to prove categorically to Madame Schontz that she ought to acquire such an original, if it was only to make him one of those elegant footmen without wages whom the mistresses of households employ to do errands, when servants are lacking.

In the course of three evenings Madame Schontz read Fabien like a book and said to herself,—­

“If Couture does not suit me, I am certain of saddling that one.  My future can go on two legs now.”

This queer fellow whom everybody laughed at was really the chosen one, —­chosen, however, with an intention which made such preference insulting.  The choice escaped all public suspicion by its very improbability.  Madame Schontz intoxicated Fabien with smiles given secretly, with little scenes played on the threshold when she bade him good-night, if Monsieur de Rochefide stayed behind.  She often made Fabien a third with Arthur in her opera-box and at first representations; this she excused by saying he had done her such or such a service and she did not know how else to repay him.  Men have a natural conceit as common to them as to women,—­that of being loved exclusively.  Now of all flattering passions there is none more prized than that of a Madame Schontz, for the man she makes the object of a love she calls “from the heart,” in distinction from another sort of love.  A woman like Madame Schontz, who plays the great lady, and whose intrinsic value is real, was sure to be an object of pride to Fabien, who fell in love with her to the point of never presenting himself before her eyes except in full dress, varnished boots, lemon-kid gloves, embroidered shirt and frill, waistcoat more or less variegated,—­in short, with all the external symptoms of profound worship.

A month before the conference of the duchess and her confessor, Madame Schontz had confided the secret of her birth and her real name to Fabien, who did not in the least understand the motive of the confidence.  A fortnight later, Madame Schontz, surprised at this want of intelligence, suddenly exclaimed to herself:—­

“Heavens! how stupid I am! he expects me to love him for himself.”

Accordingly the next day she took the Heir in her caleche to the Bois, for she now had two little carriages, drawn by two horses.  In the course of this public tete-a-tete she opened the question of her future, and declared that she wished to marry.