The third phase now began. Madame Schontz became the tenderest of mothers to Arthur's son; she fetched him from school and took him back herself; she overwhelmed with presents and dainties and pocket-money the child who called her his "little mamma," and who adored her. She took part in the management of Arthur's property; she made him buy into the Funds when low, just before the famous treaty of London which overturned the ministry of March 1st. Arthur gained two hundred thousand francs by that transaction and Aurelie did not ask for a penny of it. Like the gentleman that he was, Rochefide invested his six hundred thousand francs in stock of the Bank of France and put half of that sum in the name of Josephine Schiltz. A little house was now hired in the rue de La Bruyere and given to Grindot, that great decorative architect, with orders to make it a perfect bonbon-box.
Henceforth, Rochefide no longer managed his affairs. Madame Schontz received the revenues and paid the bills. Become, as it were, practically his wife, his woman of business, she justified the position by making her /gros papa/ more comfortable than ever; she had learned all his fancies, and gratified them as Madame de Pompadour gratified those of Louis XV. In short, Madame Schontz reigned an absolute mistress. She then began to patronize a few young men, artists, men of letters, new-fledged to fame, who rejected both ancients and moderns, and strove to make themselves a great reputation by accomplishing little or nothing.
The conduct of Madame Schontz, a triumph of tactics, ought to reveal to you her superiority. In the first place, these ten or a dozen young fellows amused Arthur; they supplied him with witty sayings and clever opinions on all sorts of topics, and did not put in doubt the fidelity of the mistress; moreover, they proclaimed her a woman who was eminently intelligent. These living advertisements, these perambulating articles, soon set up Madame Schontz as the most agreeable woman to be found in the borderland which separates the thirteenth arrondissement from the twelve others. Her rivals--Suzanne Gaillard, who, in 1838, had won the advantage over her of becoming a wife married in legitimate marriage, Fanny Beaupre, Mariette, Antonia --spread calumnies that were more than droll about the beauty of those young men and the complacent good-nature with which Monsieur de Rochefide welcomed them. Madame Schontz, who could distance, as she said, by three /blagues/ the wit of those ladies, said to them one night at a supper given by Nathan to Florine, after recounting her fortune and her success, "Do as much yourselves!"--a speech which remained in their memory.
It was during this period that Madame Schontz made Arthur sell his race-horses, through a series of considerations which she no doubt derived from the critical mind of Claude Vignon, one of her /habitues/.
