Consuelo had been searched a second time by Madame Swartz, on the day when she had met Porporino and sang to the Berlinese public. She contrived, however, to deceive the vigilance of the female Cerberus. The hour was late, and the old woman was out of humor at being disturbed in her first slumber. While Gottlieb slept in one room, or rather in a closet which opened into the kitchen, and the jailer went up stairs to open her cell, Consuelo had approached the fire, which was smothered by the ashes, and while pretending to caress Belzebub, managed to save her funds from the hands of the searcher, so as to be no longer fully at her control. While Madame Swartz was lighting her lamp and putting on her spectacles, Consuelo observed in the chimney-corner, where Gottlieb habitually sat, a recess in the wall about the elevation of her arm, and in this mysterious recess lay his library and tools. This hole, blackened by soot and smoke, contained all Gottlieb's wealth and riches. By an adroit movement, Consuelo slipped her purse into the recess, and then suffered herself to be patiently examined by the old vixen, who persisted for a long time in passing her oily fingers over all the folds of her dress, and who was surprised and angry at finding nothing. The _sang froid_ of Consuelo, who after all, was not very anxious to succeed in her enterprise, at last satisfied the jailer that she had nothing hidden; and, as soon as the examination was over, she contrived to recover her purse, and keep it in her hand under her cloak until she reached her cell. There she set about concealing it, being well aware that when she was taking her walk, her cell was searched regularly. She could do nothing better than keep her little fortune always about her, sewed up in a girdle, the female Swartz having no right to search her except when she had left the prison.
By and by, the first sum which had been found on the person of the prisoner, when she reached the fortress, was exhausted, thanks to the ingenious bills of Swartz. When he had given her a few very meagre meals and a round bill, being, as usual, too timid to speak of business, and ask a person condemned to poverty for money, in consonance with information had from her, on the day of her incarceration, in relation to the money in Porporino's hands, Swartz went to Berlin, and presented his bill to the contralto. Porporino, in obedience to Cousuelo's directions, refused to pay the bill until the prisoner directed it, and bade the creditor ask his prisoner, whom he knew to have a comfortable sum of money, to pay it.