The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cousin Betty, by Honore de Balzac #66 in our series by Honore de Balzac Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: Cousin Betty Author: Honore de Balzac Release Date: May, 1999 [EBook #1749] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 6, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: US-ASCII *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUSIN BETTY *** HTM version produced by Walter Debeuf, the original eBook was prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com and John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
To Don Michele Angelo Cajetani, Prince of Teano.
It is neither to the Roman Prince, nor to the representative
of
the illustrious house of Cajetani, which has given more than
one
Pope to the Christian Church, that I dedicate this short
portion
of a long history; it is to the learned commentator of
Dante.
It was you who led me to understand the marvelous framework
of
ideas on which the great Italian poet built his poem, the
only
work which the moderns can place by that of Homer. Till I
heard
you, the Divine Comedy was to me a vast enigma to which none
had
found the clue--the commentators least of all. Thus, to
understand
Dante is to be as great as he; but every form of greatness
is
familiar to you.
A French savant could make a reputation, earn a professor's
chair,
and a dozen decorations, by publishing in a dogmatic volume
the
improvised lecture by which you lent enchantment to one of
those
evenings which are rest after seeing Rome. You do not know,
perhaps, that most of our professors live on Germany, on
England,
on the East, or on the North, as an insect lives on a tree;
and,
like the insect, become an integral part of it, borrowing
their
merit from that of what they feed on. Now, Italy hitherto has
not
yet been worked out in public lectures. No one will ever give
me
credit for my literary honesty. Merely by plundering you I
might
have been as learned as three Schlegels in one, whereas I mean
to
remain a humble Doctor of the Faculty of Social Medicine, a
veterinary surgeon for incurable maladies. Were it only to lay
a
token of gratitude at the feet of my cicerone, I would fain
add
your illustrious name to those of Porcia, of San-Severino,
of
Pareto, of di Negro, and of Belgiojoso, who will represent in
this
"Human Comedy" the close and constant alliance between Italy
and
France, to which Bandello did honor in the same way in the
sixteenth century--Bandello, the bishop and author of some
strange
tales indeed, who left us the splendid collection of
romances
whence Shakespeare derived many of his plots and even
complete
characters, word for word.
The two sketches I dedicate to you are the two eternal aspects
of
one and the same fact. Homo duplex, said the great Buffon: why
not
add Res duplex? Everything has two sides, even virtue. Hence
Moliere always shows us both sides of every human problem;
and
Diderot, imitating him, once wrote, "This is not a mere
tale"--in
what is perhaps Diderot's masterpiece, where he shows us the
beautiful picture of Mademoiselle de Lachaux sacrificed by
Gardanne, side by side with that of a perfect lover dying for
his
mistress.
In the same way, these two romances form a pair, like twins
of
opposite sexes. This is a literary vagary to which a writer
may
for once give way, especially as part of a work in which I
am
endeavoring to depict every form that can serve as a garb to
mind.
Most human quarrels arise from the fact that both wise men
and
dunces exist who are so constituted as to be incapable of
seeing
more than one side of any fact or idea, while each asserts
that
the side he sees is the only true and right one. Thus it is
written in the Holy Book, "God will deliver the world over
to
divisions." I must confess that this passage of Scripture
alone
should persuade the Papal See to give you the control of the
two
Chambers to carry out the text which found its commentary in
1814,
in the decree of Louis XVIII.
May your wit and the poetry that is in you extend a
protecting
hand over these two histories of "The Poor Relations"
Of your affectionate humble servant,
DE BALZAC.
PARIS, August-September, 1846.
One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages,
then
lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as
Milords, was
driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of
middle
height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard.
Among the Paris crowd, who are supposed to be so clever, there
are
some men who fancy themselves infinitely more attractive in
uniform
than in their ordinary clothes, and who attribute to women so
depraved
a taste that they believe they will be favorably impressed by
the
aspect of a busby and of military accoutrements.
The countenance of this Captain of the Second Company beamed
with a
self-satisfaction that added splendor to his ruddy and somewhat
chubby
face. The halo of glory that a fortune made in business gives to
a
retired tradesman sat on his brow, and stamped him as one of the
elect
of Paris--at least a retired deputy-mayor of his quarter of the
town.
And you may be sure that the ribbon of the Legion of Honor was
not
missing from his breast, gallantly padded a la
Prussienne. Proudly
seated in one corner of the milord, this splendid person
let his
gaze wander over the passers-by, who, in Paris, often thus meet
an
ingratiating smile meant for sweet eyes that are absent.
The vehicle stopped in the part of the street between the Rue
de
Bellechasse and the Rue de Bourgogne, at the door of a large,
newly-
build house, standing on part of the court-yard of an ancient
mansion
that had a garden. The old house remained in its original
state,
beyond the courtyard curtailed by half its extent.
Only from the way in which the officer accepted the assistance
of the
coachman to help him out, it was plain that he was past fifty.
There
are certain movements so undisguisedly heavy that they are as
tell-
tale as a register of birth. The captain put on his
lemon-colored
right-hand glove, and, without any question to the gatekeeper,
went up
the outer steps to the ground of the new house with a look
that
proclaimed, "She is mine!"
The concierges of Paris have sharp eyes; they do not
stop visitors
who wear an order, have a blue uniform, and walk ponderously;
in
short, they know a rich man when they see him.
This ground floor was entirely occupied by Monsieur le Baron
Hulot
d'Ervy, Commissary General under the Republic, retired army
contractor, and at the present time at the head of one of the
most
important departments of the War Office, Councillor of State,
officer
of the Legion of Honor, and so forth.
This Baron Hulot had taken the name of d'Ervy--the place of
his birth
--to distinguish him from his brother, the famous General
Hulot,
Colonel of the Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, created by
the
Emperor Comte de Forzheim after the campaign of 1809. The Count,
the
elder brother, being responsible for his junior, had, with
paternal
care, placed him in the commissariat, where, thanks to the
services of
the two brothers, the Baron deserved and won Napoleon's good
graces.
After 1807, Baron Hulot was Commissary General for the army in
Spain.
Having rung the bell, the citizen-captain made strenuous
efforts to
pull his coat into place, for it had rucked up as much at the
back as
in front, pushed out of shape by the working of a piriform
stomach.
Being admitted as soon as the servant in livery saw him, the
important
and imposing personage followed the man, who opened the door of
the
drawing-room, announcing:
"Monsieur Crevel."
On hearing the name, singularly appropriate to the figure of
the man
who bore it, a tall, fair woman, evidently young-looking for her
age,
rose as if she had received an electric shock.
"Hortense, my darling, go into the garden with your Cousin
Betty," she
said hastily to her daughter, who was working at some embroidery
at
her mother's side.
After curtseying prettily to the captain, Mademoiselle
Hortense went
out by a glass door, taking with her a withered-looking
spinster, who
looked older than the Baroness, though she was five years
younger.
"They are settling your marriage," said Cousin Betty in the
girl's
ear, without seeming at all offended at the way in which the
Baroness
had dismissed them, counting her almost as zero.
The cousin's dress might, at need, have explained this
free-and-easy
demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color,
of
which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the
Restoration; a
little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common
straw
hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the
old-
clothes buyers wear at market. On looking down at her kid shoes,
made,
it was evident, by the veriest cobbler, a stranger would
have
hesitated to recognize Cousin Betty as a member of the family,
for she
looked exactly like a journeywoman sempstress. But she did not
leave
the room without bestowing a little friendly nod on Monsieur
Crevel,
to which that gentleman responded by a look of mutual
understanding.
"You are coming to us to-morrow, I hope, Mademoiselle
Fischer?" said
he.
"You have no company?" asked Cousin Betty.
"My children and yourself, no one else," replied the visitor.
"Very well," replied she; "depend on me."
"And here am I, madame, at your orders," said the
citizen-captain,
bowing again to Madame Hulot.
He gave such a look at Madame Hulot as Tartuffe casts at
Elmire--when
a provincial actor plays the part and thinks it necessary to
emphasize
its meaning--at Poitiers, or at Coutances.
"If you will come into this room with me, we shall be more
conveniently placed for talking business than we are in this
room,"
said Madame Hulot, going to an adjoining room, which, as the
apartment
was arranged, served as a cardroom.
It was divided by a slight partition from a boudoir looking
out on the
garden, and Madame Hulot left her visitor to himself for a
minute, for
she thought it wise to shut the window and the door of the
boudoir, so
that no one should get in and listen. She even took the
precaution of
shutting the glass door of the drawing-room, smiling on her
daughter
and her cousin, whom she saw seated in an old summer-house at
the end
of the garden. As she came back she left the cardroom door open,
so as
to hear if any one should open that of the drawing-room to come
in.
As she came and went, the Baroness, seen by nobody, allowed
her face
to betray all her thoughts, and any one who could have seen her
would
have been shocked to see her agitation. But when she finally
came back
from the glass door of the drawing-room, as she entered the
cardroom,
her face was hidden behind the impenetrable reserve which every
woman,
even the most candid, seems to have at her command.
During all these preparations--odd, to say the least--the
National
Guardsman studied the furniture of the room in which he found
himself.
As he noted the silk curtains, once red, now faded to dull
purple by
the sunshine, and frayed in the pleats by long wear; the carpet,
from
which the hues had faded; the discolored gilding of the
furniture; and
the silk seats, discolored in patches, and wearing into
strips--
expressions of scorn, satisfaction, and hope dawned in
succession
without disguise on his stupid tradesman's face. He looked at
himself
in the glass over an old clock of the Empire, and was
contemplating
the general effect, when the rustle of her silk skirt announced
the
Baroness. He at once struck at attitude.
After dropping on to a sofa, which had been a very handsome
one in the
year 1809, the Baroness, pointing to an armchair with the arms
ending
in bronze sphinxes' heads, while the paint was peeling from the
wood,
which showed through in many places, signed to Crevel to be
seated.
"All the precautions you are taking, madame, would seem full
of
promise to a----"
"To a lover," said she, interrupting him.
"The word is too feeble," said he, placing his right hand on
his
heart, and rolling his eyes in a way which almost always makes a
woman
laugh when she, in cold blood, sees such a look. "A lover! A
lover?
Say a man bewitched----"
"Listen, Monsieur Crevel," said the Baroness, too anxious to
be able
to laugh, "you are fifty--ten years younger than Monsieur Hulot,
I
know; but at my age a woman's follies ought to be justified by
beauty,
youth, fame, superior merit--some one of the splendid qualities
which
can dazzle us to the point of making us forget all else--even at
our
age. Though you may have fifty thousand francs a year, your
age
counterbalances your fortune; thus you have nothing whatever of
what a
woman looks for----"
"But love!" said the officer, rising and coming forward. "Such
love
as----"
"No, monsieur, such obstinacy!" said the Baroness,
interrupting him to
put an end to his absurdity.
"Yes, obstinacy," said he, "and love; but something stronger
still--a
claim----"
"A claim!" cried Madame Hulot, rising sublime with scorn,
defiance,
and indignation. "But," she went on, "this will bring us to no
issues;
I did not ask you to come here to discuss the matter which led
to your
banishment in spite of the connection between our
families----"
"I had fancied so."
"What! still?" cried she. "Do you not see, monsieur, by the
entire
ease and freedom with which I can speak of lovers and love,
of
everything least creditable to a woman, that I am perfectly
secure in
my own virtue? I fear nothing--not even to shut myself in alone
with
you. Is that the conduct of a weak woman? You know full well why
I
begged you to come."
"No, madame," replied Crevel, with an assumption of great
coldness. He
pursed up his lips, and again struck an attitude.
"Well, I will be brief, to shorten our common discomfort,"
said the
Baroness, looking at Crevel.
Crevel made an ironical bow, in which a man who knew the race
would
have recognized the graces of a bagman.
"Our son married your daughter----"
"And if it were to do again----" said Crevel.
"It would not be done at all, I suspect," said the baroness
hastily.
"However, you have nothing to complain of. My son is not only
one of
the leading pleaders of Paris, but for the last year he has sat
as
Deputy, and his maiden speech was brilliant enough to lead us
to
suppose that ere long he will be in office. Victorin has twice
been
called upon to report on important measures; and he might even
now, if
he chose, be made Attorney-General in the Court of Appeal. So,
if you
mean to say that your son-in-law has no fortune----"
"Worse than that, madame, a son-in-law whom I am obliged to
maintain,"
replied Crevel. "Of the five hundred thousand francs that formed
my
daughter's marriage portion, two hundred thousand have
vanished--God
knows how!--in paying the young gentleman's debts, in furnishing
his
house splendaciously--a house costing five hundred thousand
francs,
and bringing in scarcely fifteen thousand, since he occupies
the
larger part of it, while he owes two hundred and sixty thousand
francs
of the purchase-money. The rent he gets barely pays the interest
on
the debt. I have had to give my daughter twenty thousand francs
this
year to help her to make both ends meet. And then my son-in-law,
who
was making thirty thousand francs a year at the Assizes, I am
told, is
going to throw that up for the Chamber----"
"This, again, Monsieur Crevel, is beside the mark; we are
wandering
from the point. Still, to dispose of it finally, it may be said
that
if my son gets into office, if he has you made an officer of
the
Legion of Honor and councillor of the municipality of Paris,
you, as a
retired perfumer, will not have much to complain of----"
"Ah! there we are again, madame! Yes, I am a tradesman, a
shopkeeper,
a retail dealer in almond-paste, eau-de-Portugal, and hair-oil,
and
was only too much honored when my only daughter was married to
the son
of Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy--my daughter will be a
Baroness!
This is Regency, Louis XV., (Eil-de-boeuf--quite tip-top!--very
good.)
I love Celestine as a man loves his only child--so well indeed,
that,
to preserve her from having either brother or sister, I
resigned
myself to all the privations of a widower--in Paris, and in the
prime
of life, madame. But you must understand that, in spite of
this
extravagant affection for my daughter, I do not intend to reduce
my
fortune for the sake of your son, whose expenses are not
wholly
accounted for--in my eyes, as an old man of business."
"Monsieur, you may at this day see in the Ministry of
Commerce
Monsieur Popinot, formerly a druggist in the Rue des
Lombards----"
"And a friend of mine, madame," said the ex-perfumer. "For I,
Celestin
Crevel, foreman once to old Cesar Birotteau, brought up the said
Cesar
Birotteau's stock; and he was Popinot's father-in-law. Why, that
very
Popinot was no more than a shopman in the establishment, and he
is the
first to remind me of it; for he is not proud, to do him
justice, to
men in a good position with an income of sixty thousand francs
in the
funds."
"Well then, monsieur, the notions you term 'Regency' are quite
out of
date at a time when a man is taken at his personal worth; and
that is
what you did when you married your daughter to my son."
"But you do not know how the marriage was brought about!"
cried
Crevel. "Oh, that cursed bachelor life! But for my misconduct,
my
Celestine might at this day be Vicomtesse Popinot!"
"Once more have done with recriminations over accomplished
facts,"
said the Baroness anxiously. "Let us rather discuss the
complaints I
have found on your strange behavior. My daughter Hortense had a
chance
of marrying; the match depended entirely on you; I believed you
felt
some sentiments of generosity; I thought you would do justice to
a
woman who has never had a thought in her heart for any man but
her
husband, that you would have understood how necessary it is for
her
not to receive a man who may compromise her, and that for the
honor of
the family with which you are allied you would have been eager
to
promote Hortense's settlement with Monsieur le Conseiller
Lebas.--And
it is you, monsieur, you have hindered the marriage."
"Madame," said the ex-perfumer, "I acted the part of an honest
man. I
was asked whether the two hundred thousand francs to be settled
on
Mademoiselle Hortense would be forthcoming. I replied exactly in
these
words: 'I would not answer for it. My son-in-law, to whom the
Hulots
had promised the same sum, was in debt; and I believe that if
Monsieur
Hulot d'Ervy were to die to-morrow, his widow would have nothing
to
live on.'--There, fair lady."
"And would you have said as much, monsieur," asked Madame
Hulot,
looking Crevel steadily in the face, "if I had been false to my
duty?"
"I should not be in a position to say it, dearest Adeline,"
cried this
singular adorer, interrupting the Baroness, "for you would have
found
the amount in my pocket-book."
And adding action to word, the fat guardsman knelt down on one
knee
and kissed Madame Hulot's hand, seeing that his speech had
filled her
with speechless horror, which he took for hesitancy.
"What, buy my daughter's fortune at the cost of----? Rise,
monsieur--
or I ring the bell."
Crevel rose with great difficulty. This fact made him so
furious that
he again struck his favorite attitude. Most men have some
habitual
position by which they fancy that they show to the best
advantage the
good points bestowed on them by nature. This attitude in
Crevel
consisted in crossing his arms like Napoleon, his head showing
three-
quarters face, and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as the painter
has
shown the Emperor in his portrait.
"To be faithful," he began, with well-acted indignation, "so
faithful
to a liber----"
"To a husband who is worthy of such fidelity," Madame Hulot
put in, to
hinder Crevel from saying a word she did not choose to hear.
"Come, madame; you wrote to bid me here, you ask the reasons
for my
conduct, you drive me to extremities with your imperial airs,
your
scorn, and your contempt! Any one might think I was a Negro. But
I
repeat it, and you may believe me, I have a right to--to make
love to
you, for---- But no; I love you well enough to hold my
tongue."
"You may speak, monsieur. In a few days I shall be
eight-and-forty; I
am no prude; I can hear whatever you can say."
"Then will you give me your word of honor as an honest
woman--for you
are, alas for me! an honest woman--never to mention my name or
to say
that it was I who betrayed the secret?"
"If that is the condition on which you speak, I will swear
never to
tell any one from whom I heard the horrors you propose to tell
me, not
even my husband."
"I should think not indeed, for only you and he are concerned."
Madame Hulot turned pale.
"Oh, if you still really love Hulot, it will distress you.
Shall I say
no more?"
"Speak, monsieur; for by your account you wish to justify in
my eyes
the extraordinary declarations you have chosen to make me, and
your
persistency in tormenting a woman of my age, whose only wish is
to see
her daughter married, and then--to die in peace----"
"You see; you are unhappy."
"I, monsieur?"
"Yes, beautiful, noble creature!" cried Crevel. "You have
indeed been
too wretched!"
"Monsieur, be silent and go--or speak to me as you ought."
"Do you know, madame, how Master Hulot and I first made
acquaintance?
--At our mistresses', madame."
"Oh, monsieur!"
"Yes, madame, at our mistresses'," Crevel repeated in a
melodramatic
tone, and leaving his position to wave his right hand.
"Well, and what then?" said the Baroness coolly, to Crevel's
great
amazement.
Such mean seducers cannot understand a great soul.
"I, a widower five years since," Crevel began, in the tone of
a man
who has a story to tell, "and not wishing to marry again for the
sake
of the daughter I adore, not choosing either to cultivate any
such
connection in my own establishment, though I had at the time a
very
pretty lady-accountant. I set up, 'on her own account,' as they
say, a
little sempstress of fifteen--really a miracle of beauty, with
whom I
fell desperately in love. And in fact, madame, I asked an aunt
of my
own, my mother's sister, whom I sent for from the country, to
live
with the sweet creature and keep an eye on her, that she might
behave
as well as might be in this rather--what shall I
say--shady?--no,
delicate position.
"The child, whose talent for music was striking, had masters,
she was
educated--I had to give her something to do. Besides, I wished
to be
at once her father, her benefactor, and--well, out with it--her
lover;
to kill two birds with one stone, a good action and a
sweetheart. For
five years I was very happy. The girl had one of those voices
that
make the fortune of a theatre; I can only describe her by saying
that
she is a Duprez in petticoats. It cost me two thousand francs a
year
only to cultivate her talent as a singer. She made me music-mad;
I
took a box at the opera for her and for my daughter, and went
there
alternate evenings with Celestine or Josepha."
"What, the famous singer?"
"Yes, madame," said Crevel with pride, "the famous Josepha
owes
everything to me.--At last, in 1834, when the child was
twenty,
believing that I had attached her to me for ever, and being very
weak
where she was concerned, I thought I would give her a little
amusement, and I introduced her to a pretty little actress,
Jenny
Cadine, whose life had been somewhat like her own. This actress
also
owed everything to a protector who had brought her up in
leading-
strings. That protector was Baron Hulot."
"I know that," said the Baroness, in a calm voice without the
least
agitation.
"Bless me!" cried Crevel, more and more astounded. "Well! But
do you
know that your monster of a husband took Jenny Cadine in hand at
the
age of thirteen?"
"What then?" said the Baroness.
"As Jenny Cadine and Josepha were both aged twenty when they
first
met," the ex-tradesman went on, "the Baron had been playing the
part
of Louis XV. to Mademoiselle de Romans ever since 1826, and you
were
twelve years younger then----"
"I had my reasons, monsieur, for leaving Monsieur Hulot his liberty."
"That falsehood, madame, will surely be enough to wipe out
every sin
you have ever committed, and to open to you the gates of
Paradise,"
replied Crevel, with a knowing air that brought the color to
the
Baroness' cheeks. "Sublime and adored woman, tell that to those
who
will believe it, but not to old Crevel, who has, I may tell
you,
feasted too often as one of four with your rascally husband not
to
know what your high merits are! Many a time has he blamed
himself when
half tipsy as he has expatiated on your perfections. Oh, I know
you
well!--A libertine might hesitate between you and a girl of
twenty. I
do not hesitate----"
"Monsieur!"
"Well, I say no more. But you must know, saintly and noble
woman, that
a husband under certain circumstances will tell things about his
wife
to his mistress that will mightily amuse her."
Tears of shame hanging to Madame Hulot's long lashes checked
the
National Guardsman. He stopped short, and forgot his
attitude.
"To proceed," said he. "We became intimate, the Baron and I,
through
the two hussies. The Baron, like all bad lots, is very pleasant,
a
thoroughly jolly good fellow. Yes, he took my fancy, the old
rascal.
He could be so funny!--Well, enough of those reminiscences. We
got to
be like brothers. The scoundrel--quite Regency in his
notions--tried
indeed to deprave me altogether, preached Saint-Simonism as to
women,
and all sorts of lordly ideas; but, you see, I was fond enough
of my
girl to have married her, only I was afraid of having
children.
"Then between two old daddies, such friends as--as we were,
what more
natural than that we should think of our children marrying each
other?
--Three months after his son had married my Celestine, Hulot--I
don't
know how I can utter the wretch's name! he has cheated us both,
madame
--well, the villain did me out of my little Josepha. The
scoundrel
knew that he was supplanted in the heart of Jenny Cadine by a
young
lawyer and by an artist--only two of them!--for the girl had
more and
more of a howling success, and he stole my sweet little girl,
a
perfect darling--but you must have seen her at the opera; he got
her
an engagement there. Your husband is not so well behaved as I
am. I am
ruled as straight as a sheet of music-paper. He had dropped a
good
deal of money on Jenny Cadine, who must have cost him near on
thirty
thousand francs a year. Well, I can only tell you that he is
ruining
himself outright for Josepha.
"Josepha, madame, is a Jewess. Her name is Mirah, the anagram
of
Hiram, an Israelite mark that stamps her, for she was a
foundling
picked up in Germany, and the inquiries I have made prove that
she is
the illegitimate child of a rich Jew banker. The life of the
theatre,
and, above all, the teaching of Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz,
Malaga,
and Carabine, as to the way to treat an old man, have developed,
in
the child whom I had kept in a respectable and not too expensive
way
of life, all the native Hebrew instinct for gold and jewels--for
the
golden calf.
"So this famous singer, hungering for plunder, now wants to be
rich,
very rich. She tried her 'prentice hand on Baron Hulot, and
soon
plucked him bare--plucked him, ay, and singed him to the skin.
The
miserable man, after trying to vie with one of the Kellers and
with
the Marquis d'Esgrignon, both perfectly mad about Josepha, to
say
nothing of unknown worshipers, is about to see her carried off
by that
very rich Duke, who is such a patron of the arts. Oh, what is
his
name?--a dwarf.--Ah, the Duc d'Herouville. This fine gentleman
insists
on having Josepha for his very own, and all that set are talking
about
it; the Baron knows nothing of it as yet; for it is the same in
the
Thirteenth Arrondissement as in every other: the lover, like
the
husband, is last to get the news.
"Now, do you understand my claim? Your husband, dear lady, has
robbed
me of my joy in life, the only happiness I have known since I
became a
widower. Yes, if I had not been so unlucky as to come across
that old
rip, Josepha would still be mine; for I, you know, should never
have
placed her on the stage. She would have lived obscure, well
conducted,
and mine. Oh! if you could but have seen her eight years ago,
slight
and wiry, with the golden skin of an Andalusian, as they say,
black
hair as shiny as satin, an eye that flashed lightning under long
brown
lashes, the style of a duchess in every movement, the modesty of
a
dependent, decent grace, and the pretty ways of a wild fawn. And
by
that Hulot's doing all this charm and purity has been degraded
to a
man-trap, a money-box for five-franc pieces! The girl is the
Queen of
Trollops; and nowadays she humbugs every one--she who knew
nothing,
not even that word."
At this stage the retired perfumer wiped his eyes, which were
full of
tears. The sincerity of his grief touched Madame Hulot, and
roused her
from the meditation into which she had sunk.
"Tell me, madame, is a man of fifty-two likely to find such
another
jewel? At my age love costs thirty thousand francs a year. It
is
through your husband's experience that I know the price, and I
love
Celestine too truly to be her ruin. When I saw you, at the
first
evening party you gave in our honor, I wondered how that
scoundrel
Hulot could keep a Jenny Cadine--you had the manner of an
Empress. You
do not look thirty," he went on. "To me, madame, you look young,
and
you are beautiful. On my word of honor, that evening I was
struck to
the heart. I said to myself, 'If I had not Josepha, since old
Hulot
neglects his wife, she would fit me like a glove.' Forgive
me--it is a
reminiscence of my old business. The perfumer will crop up now
and
then, and that is what keeps me from standing to be elected
deputy.
"And then, when I was so abominably deceived by the Baron, for
really
between old rips like us our friend's mistress should be sacred,
I
swore I would have his wife. It is but justice. The Baron could
say
nothing; we are certain of impunity. You showed me the door like
a
mangy dog at the first words I uttered as to the state of my
feelings;
you only made my passion--my obstinacy, if you will--twice as
strong,
and you shall be mine."
"Indeed; how?"
"I do not know; but it will come to pass. You see, madame, an
idiot of
a perfumer--retired from business--who has but one idea in his
head,
is stronger than a clever fellow who has a thousand. I am
smitten with
you, and you are the means of my revenge; it is like being in
love
twice over. I am speaking to you quite frankly, as a man who
knows
what he means. I speak coldly to you, just as you do to me, when
you
say, 'I never will be yours,' In fact, as they say, I play the
game
with the cards on the table. Yes, you shall be mine, sooner or
later;
if you were fifty, you should still be my mistress. And it will
be;
for I expect anything from your husband!"
Madame Hulot looked at this vulgar intriguer with such a fixed
stare
of terror, that he thought she had gone mad, and he stopped.
"You insisted on it, you heaped me with scorn, you defied
me--and I
have spoken," said he, feeling that he must justify the ferocity
of
his last words.
"Oh, my daughter, my daughter," moaned the Baroness in a voice
like a
dying woman's.
"Oh! I have forgotten all else," Crevel went on. "The day when
I was
robbed of Josepha I was like a tigress robbed of her cubs; in
short,
as you see me now.--Your daughter? Yes, I regard her as the
means of
winning you. Yes, I put a spoke in her marriage--and you will
not get
her married without my help! Handsome as Mademoiselle Hortense
is, she
needs a fortune----"
"Alas! yes," said the Baroness, wiping her eyes.
"Well, just ask your husband for ten thousand francs," said
Crevel,
striking his attitude once more. He waited a minute, like an
actor who
has made a point.
"If he had the money, he would give it to the woman who will
take
Josepha's place," he went on, emphasizing his tones. "Does a man
ever
pull up on the road he has taken? In the first place, he is too
sweet
on women. There is a happy medium in all things, as our King has
told
us. And then his vanity is implicated! He is a handsome man!--He
would
bring you all to ruin for his pleasure; in fact, you are already
on
the highroad to the workhouse. Why, look, never since I set foot
in
your house have you been able to do up your drawing-room
furniture.
'Hard up' is the word shouted by every slit in the stuff. Where
will
you find a son-in-law who would not turn his back in horror of
the
ill-concealed evidence of the most cruel misery there is--that
of
people in decent society? I have kept shop, and I know. There is
no
eye so quick as that of the Paris tradesman to detect real
wealth from
its sham.--You have no money," he said, in a lower voice. "It
is
written everywhere, even on your man-servant's coat.
"Would you like me to disclose any more hideous mysteries that
are
kept from you?"
"Monsieur," cried Madame Hulot, whose handkerchief was wet
through
with her tears, "enough, enough!"
"My son-in-law, I tell you, gives his father money, and this
is what I
particularly wanted to come to when I began by speaking of your
son's
expenses. But I keep an eye on my daughter's interests, be
easy."
"Oh, if I could but see my daughter married, and die!" cried
the poor
woman, quite losing her head.
"Well, then, this is the way," said the ex-perfumer.
Madame Hulot looked at Crevel with a hopeful expression, which
so
completely changed her countenance, that this alone ought to
have
touched the man's feelings and have led him to abandon his
monstrous
schemes.
"You will still be handsome ten years hence," Crevel went on,
with his
arms folded; "be kind to me, and Mademoiselle Hulot will marry.
Hulot
has given me the right, as I have explained to you, to put the
matter
crudely, and he will not be angry. In three years I have saved
the
interest on my capital, for my dissipations have been
restricted. I
have three hundred thousand francs in the bank over and above
my
invested fortune--they are yours----"
"Go," said Madame Hulot. "Go, monsieur, and never let me see
you
again. But for the necessity in which you placed me to learn
the
secret of your cowardly conduct with regard to the match I had
planned
for Hortense--yes, cowardly!" she repeated, in answer to a
gesture
from Crevel. "How can you load a poor girl, a pretty,
innocent
creature, with such a weight of enmity? But for the necessity
that
goaded me as a mother, you would never have spoken to me again,
never
again have come within my doors. Thirty-two years of an
honorable and
loyal life shall not be swept away by a blow from Monsieur
Crevel----"
"The retired perfumer, successor to Cesar Birotteau at the
Queen of
the Roses, Rue Saint-Honore," added Crevel, in mocking
tones.
"Deputy-mayor, captain in the National Guard, Chevalier of the
Legion
of Honor--exactly what my predecessor was!"
"Monsieur," said the Baroness, "if, after twenty years of
constancy,
Monsieur Hulot is tired of his wife, that is nobody's concern
but
mine. As you see, he has kept his infidelity a mystery, for I
did not
know that he had succeeded you in the affections of
Mademoiselle
Josepha----"
"Oh, it has cost him a pretty penny, madame. His singing-bird
has cost
him more than a hundred thousand francs in these two years. Ah,
ha!
you have not seen the end of it!"
"Have done with all this, Monsieur Crevel. I will not, for
your sake,
forego the happiness a mother knows who can embrace her
children
without a single pang of remorse in her heart, who sees
herself
respected and loved by her family; and I will give up my soul to
God
unspotted----"
"Amen!" exclaimed Crevel, with the diabolical rage that
embitters the
face of these pretenders when they fail for the second time in
such an
attempt. "You do not yet know the latter end of
poverty--shame,
disgrace.--I have tried to warn you; I would have saved you, you
and
your daughter. Well, you must study the modern parable of
the
Prodigal Father from A to Z. Your tears and your pride
move me
deeply," said Crevel, seating himself, "for it is frightful to
see the
woman one loves weeping. All I can promise you, dear Adeline, is
to do
nothing against your interests or your husband's. Only never
send to
me for information. That is all."
"What is to be done?" cried Madame Hulot.
Up to now the Baroness had bravely faced the threefold torment
which
this explanation inflicted on her; for she was wounded as a
woman, as
a mother, and as a wife. In fact, so long as her son's
father-in-law
was insolent and offensive, she had found the strength in
her
resistance to the aggressive tradesman; but the sort of
good-nature he
showed, in spite of his exasperation as a mortified adorer and
as a
humiliated National Guardsman, broke down her nerve, strung to
the
point of snapping. She wrung her hands, melted into tears, and
was in
a state of such helpless dejection, that she allowed Crevel to
kneel
at her feet, kissing her hands.
"Good God! what will become of us!" she went on, wiping away
her
tears. "Can a mother sit still and see her child pine away
before her
eyes? What is to be the fate of that splendid creature, as
strong in
her pure life under her mother's care as she is by every gift
of
nature? There are days when she wanders round the garden, out
of
spirits without knowing why; I find her with tears in her
eyes----"
"She is one-and-twenty," said Crevel.
"Must I place her in a convent?" asked the Baroness. "But in
such
cases religion is impotent to subdue nature, and the most
piously
trained girls lose their head!--Get up, pray, monsieur; do you
not
understand that everything is final between us? that I look upon
you
with horror? that you have crushed a mother's last
hopes----"
"But if I were to restore them," asked he.
Madame Hulot looked at Crevel with a frenzied expression that
really
touched him. But he drove pity back to the depths of his heart;
she
had said, "I look upon you with horror."
Virtue is always a little too rigid; it overlooks the shades
and
instincts by help of which we are able to tack when in a
false
position.
"So handsome a girl as Mademoiselle Hortense does not find a
husband
nowadays if she is penniless," Crevel remarked, resuming his
starchiest manner. "Your daughter is one of those beauties who
rather
alarm intending husbands; like a thoroughbred horse, which is
too
expensive to keep up to find a ready purchaser. If you go out
walking
with such a woman on your arm, every one will turn to look at
you, and
follow and covet his neighbor's wife. Such success is a source
of much
uneasiness to men who do not want to be killing lovers; for,
after
all, no man kills more than one. In the position in which you
find
yourself there are just three ways of getting your daughter
married:
Either by my help--and you will have none of it! That is
one.--Or by
finding some old man of sixty, very rich, childless, and anxious
to
have children; that is difficult, still such men are to be met
with.
Many old men take up with a Josepha, a Jenny Cadine, why should
not
one be found who is ready to make a fool of himself under
legal
formalities? If it were not for Celestine and our two
grandchildren, I
would marry Hortense myself. That is two.--The last way is
the
easiest----"
Madame Hulot raised her head, and looked uneasily at the ex-perfumer.
"Paris is a town whither every man of energy--and they sprout
like
saplings on French soil--comes to meet his kind; talent swarms
here
without hearth or home, and energy equal to anything, even to
making a
fortune. Well, these youngsters--your humble servant was such a
one in
his time, and how many he has known! What had du Tillet or
Popinot
twenty years since? They were both pottering round in Daddy
Birotteau's shop, with not a penny of capital but their
determination
to get on, which, in my opinion, is the best capital a man can
have.
Money may be eaten through, but you don't eat through your
determination. Why, what had I? The will to get on, and plenty
of
pluck. At this day du Tillet is a match for the greatest folks;
little
Popinot, the richest druggist of the Rue des Lombards, became
a
deputy, now he is in office.--Well, one of these free lances, as
we
say on the stock market, of the pen, or of the brush, is the
only man
in Paris who would marry a penniless beauty, for they have
courage
enough for anything. Monsieur Popinot married Mademoiselle
Birotteau
without asking for a farthing. Those men are madmen, to be sure!
They
trust in love as they trust in good luck and brains!--Find a man
of
energy who will fall in love with your daughter, and he will
marry
without a thought of money. You must confess that by way of an
enemy I
am not ungenerous, for this advice is against my own
interests."
"Oh, Monsieur Crevel, if you would indeed be my friend and
give up
your ridiculous notions----"
"Ridiculous? Madame, do not run yourself down. Look at
yourself--I
love you, and you will come to be mine. The day will come when I
shall
say to Hulot, 'You took Josepha, I have taken your wife!'
"It is the old law of tit-for-tat! And I will persevere till I
have
attained my end, unless you should become extremely ugly.--I
shall
succeed; and I will tell you why," he went on, resuming his
attitude,
and looking at Madame Hulot. "You will not meet with such an old
man,
or such a young lover," he said after a pause, "because you love
your
daughter too well to hand her over to the manoeuvres of an
old
libertine, and because you--the Baronne Hulot, sister of the
old
Lieutenant-General who commanded the veteran Grenadiers of the
Old
Guard--will not condescend to take a man of spirit wherever you
may
find him; for he might be a mere craftsman, as many a
millionaire of
to-day was ten years ago, a working artisan, or the foreman of
a
factory.
"And then, when you see the girl, urged by her twenty years,
capable
of dishonoring you all, you will say to yourself, 'It will be
better
that I should fall! If Monsieur Crevel will but keep my secret,
I will
earn my daughter's portion--two hundred thousand francs for ten
years'
attachment to that old gloveseller--old Crevel!'--I disgust you
no
doubt, and what I am saying is horribly immoral, you think? But
if you
happened to have been bitten by an overwhelming passion, you
would
find a thousand arguments in favor of yielding--as women do when
they
are in love.--Yes, and Hortense's interests will suggest to
your
feelings such terms of surrendering your conscience----"
"Hortense has still an uncle."
"What! Old Fischer? He is winding up his concerns, and that
again is
the Baron's fault; his rake is dragged over every till within
his
reach."
"Comte Hulot----"
"Oh, madame, your husband has already made thin air of the
old
General's savings. He spent them in furnishing his singer's
rooms.--
Now, come; am I to go without a hope?"
"Good-bye, monsieur. A man easily gets over a passion for a
woman of
my age, and you will fall back on Christian principles. God
takes care
of the wretched----"
The Baroness rose to oblige the captain to retreat, and drove
him back
into the drawing-room.
"Ought the beautiful Madame Hulot to be living amid such
squalor?"
said he, and he pointed to an old lamp, a chandelier bereft of
its
gilding, the threadbare carpet, the very rags of wealth which
made the
large room, with its red, white, and gold, look like a corpse
of
Imperial festivities.
"Monsieur, virtue shines on it all. I have no wish to owe a
handsome
abode to having made of the beauty you are pleased to ascribe to
me a
man-trap and a money-box for five-franc
pieces!"
The captain bit his lips as he recognized the words he had
used to
vilify Josepha's avarice.
"And for whom are you so magnanimous?" said he. By this time
the
baroness had got her rejected admirer as far as the door.--"For
a
libertine!" said he, with a lofty grimace of virtue and
superior
wealth.
"If you are right, my constancy has some merit, monsieur. That
is
all."
After bowing to the officer as a woman bows to dismiss an
importune
visitor, she turned away too quickly to see him once more fold
his
arms. She unlocked the doors she had closed, and did not see
the
threatening gesture which was Crevel's parting greeting. She
walked
with a proud, defiant step, like a martyr to the Coliseum, but
her
strength was exhausted; she sank on the sofa in her blue room,
as if
she were ready to faint, and sat there with her eyes fixed on
the
tumble-down summer-house, where her daughter was gossiping with
Cousin
Betty.
From the first days of her married life to the present time
the
Baroness had loved her husband, as Josephine in the end had
loved
Napoleon, with an admiring, maternal, and cowardly devotion.
Though
ignorant of the details given her by Crevel, she knew that for
twenty
years past Baron Hulot been anything rather than a faithful
husband;
but she had sealed her eyes with lead, she had wept in silence,
and no
word of reproach had ever escaped her. In return for this
angelic
sweetness, she had won her husband's veneration and
something
approaching to worship from all who were about her.
A wife's affection for her husband and the respect she pays
him are
infectious in a family. Hortense believed her father to be a
perfect
model of conjugal affection; as to their son, brought up to
admire the
Baron, whom everybody regarded as one of the giants who so
effectually
backed Napoleon, he knew that he owed his advancement to his
father's
name, position, and credit; and besides, the impressions of
childhood
exert an enduring influence. He still was afraid of his father;
and if
he had suspected the misdeeds revealed by Crevel, as he was too
much
overawed by him to find fault, he would have found excuses in
the view
every man takes of such matters.
It now will be necessary to give the reasons for the
extraordinary
self-devotion of a good and beautiful woman; and this, in a few
words,
is her past history.
Three brothers, simple laboring men, named Fischer, and living
in a
village situated on the furthest frontier of Lorraine, were
compelled
by the Republican conscription to set out with the so-called
army of
the Rhine.
In 1799 the second brother, Andre, a widower, and Madame
Hulot's
father, left his daughter to the care of his elder brother,
Pierre
Fischer, disabled from service by a wound received in 1797, and
made a
small private venture in the military transport service, an
opening he
owed to the favor of Hulot d'Ervy, who was high in the
commissariat.
By a very obvious chance Hulot, coming to Strasbourg, saw the
Fischer
family. Adeline's father and his younger brother were at that
time
contractors for forage in the province of Alsace.
Adeline, then sixteen years of age, might be compared with the
famous
Madame du Barry, like her, a daughter of Lorraine. She was one
of
those perfect and striking beauties--a woman like Madame
Tallien,
finished with peculiar care by Nature, who bestows on them all
her
choicest gifts--distinction, dignity, grace, refinement,
elegance,
flesh of a superior texture, and a complexion mingled in the
unknown
laboratory where good luck presides. These beautiful creatures
all
have something in common: Bianca Capella, whose portrait is one
of
Bronzino's masterpieces; Jean Goujon's Venus, painted from the
famous
Diane de Poitiers; Signora Olympia, whose picture adorns the
Doria
gallery; Ninon, Madame du Barry, Madame Tallien, Mademoiselle
Georges,
Madame Recamier.--all these women who preserved their beauty in
spite
of years, of passion, and of their life of excess and pleasure,
have
in figure, frame, and in the character of their beauty
certain
striking resemblances, enough to make one believe that there is
in the
ocean of generations an Aphrodisian current whence every such
Venus is
born, all daughters of the same salt wave.
Adeline Fischer, one of the loveliest of this race of
goddesses, had
the splendid type, the flowing lines, the exquisite texture of a
woman
born a queen. The fair hair that our mother Eve received from
the hand
of God, the form of an Empress, an air of grandeur, and an
august line
of profile, with her rural modesty, made every man pause in
delight as
she passed, like amateurs in front of a Raphael; in short,
having once
seen her, the Commissariat officer made Mademoiselle Adeline
Fischer
his wife as quickly as the law would permit, to the great
astonishment
of the Fischers, who had all been brought up in the fear of
their
betters.
The eldest, a soldier of 1792, severely wounded in the attack
on the
lines at Wissembourg, adored the Emperor Napoleon and everything
that
had to do with the Grande Armee. Andre and Johann spoke
with respect
of Commissary Hulot, the Emperor's protege, to whom indeed they
owed
their prosperity; for Hulot d'Ervy, finding them intelligent
and
honest, had taken them from the army provision wagons to place
them in
charge of a government contract needing despatch. The brothers
Fischer
had done further service during the campaign of 1804. At the
peace
Hulot had secured for them the contract for forage from Alsace,
not
knowing that he would presently be sent to Strasbourg to prepare
for
the campaign of 1806.
This marriage was like an Assumption to the young peasant
girl. The
beautiful Adeline was translated at once from the mire of her
village
to the paradise of the Imperial Court; for the contractor, one
of the
most conscientious and hard-working of the Commissariat staff,
was
made a Baron, obtained a place near the Emperor, and was
attached to
the Imperial Guard. The handsome rustic bravely set to work to
educate
herself for love of her husband, for she was simply crazy about
him;
and, indeed, the Commissariat office was as a man a perfect
match for
Adeline as a woman. He was one of the picked corps of fine men.
Tall,
well-built, fair, with beautiful blue eyes full of irresistible
fire
and life, his elegant appearance made him remarkable by the side
of
d'Orsay, Forbin, Ouvrard; in short, in the battalion of fine men
that
surrounded the Emperor. A conquering "buck," and holding the
ideas of
the Directoire with regard to women, his career of gallantry
was
interrupted for some long time by his conjugal affection.
To Adeline the Baron was from the first a sort of god who
could do no
wrong. To him she owed everything: fortune--she had a carriage,
a fine
house, every luxury of the day; happiness--he was devoted to her
in
the face of the world; a title, for she was a Baroness; fame,
for she
was spoken of as the beautiful Madame Hulot--and in Paris!
Finally,
she had the honor of refusing the Emperor's advances, for
Napoleon
made her a present of a diamond necklace, and always remembered
her,
asking now and again, "And is the beautiful Madame Hulot still a
model
of virtue?" in the tone of a man who might have taken his
revenge on
one who should have triumphed where he had failed.
So it needs no great intuition to discern what were the
motives in a
simple, guileless, and noble soul for the fanaticism of Madame
Hulot's
love. Having fully persuaded herself that her husband could do
her no
wrong, she made herself in the depths of her heart the humble,
abject,
and blindfold slave of the man who had made her. It must be
noted,
too, that she was gifted with great good sense--the good sense
of the
people, which made her education sound. In society she spoke
little,
and never spoke evil of any one; she did not try to shine; she
thought
out many things, listened well, and formed herself on the model
of the
best-conducted women of good birth.
In 1815 Hulot followed the lead of the Prince de Wissembourg,
his
intimate friend, and became one of the officers who organized
the
improvised troops whose rout brought the Napoleonic cycle to a
close
at Waterloo. In 1816 the Baron was one of the men best hated by
the
Feltre administration, and was not reinstated in the
Commissariat till
1823, when he was needed for the Spanish war. In 1830 he took
office
as the fourth wheel of the coach, at the time of the levies, a
sort of
conscription made by Louis Philippe on the old Napoleonic
soldiery.
From the time when the younger branch ascended the throne,
having
taken an active part in bringing that about, he was regarded as
an
indispensable authority at the War Office. He had already won
his
Marshal's baton, and the King could do no more for him unless
by
making him minister or a peer of France.
From 1818 till 1823, having no official occupation, Baron
Hulot had
gone on active service to womankind. Madame Hulot dated her
Hector's
first infidelities from the grand finale of the Empire.
Thus, for
twelve years the Baroness had filled the part in her household
of
prima donna assoluta, without a rival. She still could
boast of the
old-fashioned, inveterate affection which husbands feel for
wives who
are resigned to be gentle and virtuous helpmates; she knew that
if she
had a rival, that rival would not subsist for two hours under a
word
of reproof from herself; but she shut her eyes, she stopped her
ears,
she would know nothing of her husband's proceedings outside his
home.
In short, she treated her Hector as a mother treats a spoilt
child.
Three years before the conversation reported above, Hortense,
at the
Theatre des Varietes, had recognized her father in a lower tier
stage-
box with Jenny Cadine, and had exclaimed:
"There is papa!"
"You are mistaken, my darling; he is at the Marshal's," the
Baroness
replied.
She too had seen Jenny Cadine; but instead of feeling a pang
when she
saw how pretty she was, she said to herself, "That rascal Hector
must
think himself very lucky."
She suffered nevertheless; she gave herself up in secret to
rages of
torment; but as soon as she saw Hector, she always remembered
her
twelve years of perfect happiness, and could not find it in her
to
utter a word of complaint. She would have been glad if the Baron
would
have taken her into his confidence; but she never dared to let
him see
that she knew of his kicking over the traces, out of respect for
her
husband. Such an excess of delicacy is never met with but in
those
grand creatures, daughters of the soil, whose instinct it is to
take
blows without ever returning them; the blood of the early
martyrs
still lives in their veins. Well-born women, their husbands'
equals,
feel the impulse to annoy them, to mark the points of their
tolerance,
like points at billiards, by some stinging word, partly in the
spirit
of diabolical malice, and to secure the upper hand or the right
of
turning the tables.
The Baroness had an ardent admirer in her brother-in-law,
Lieutenant-
General Hulot, the venerable Colonel of the Grenadiers of the
Imperial
Infantry Guard, who was to have a Marshal's baton in his old
age. This
veteran, after having served from 1830 to 1834 as Commandant of
the
military division, including the departments of Brittany, the
scene of
his exploits in 1799 and 1800, had come to settle in Paris near
his
brother, for whom he had a fatherly affection.
This old soldier's heart was in sympathy with his
sister-in-law; he
admired her as the noblest and saintliest of her sex. He had
never
married, because he hoped to find a second Adeline, though he
had
vainly sought for her through twenty campaigns in as many lands.
To
maintain her place in the esteem of this blameless and spotless
old
republican--of whom Napoleon had said, "That brave old Hulot is
the
most obstinate republican, but he will never be false to
me"--Adeline
would have endured griefs even greater than those that had just
come
upon her. But the old soldier, seventy-two years of age,
battered by
thirty campaigns, and wounded for the twenty-seventh time at
Waterloo,
was Adeline's admirer, and not a "protector." The poor old
Count,
among other infirmities, could only hear through a speaking
trumpet.
So long as Baron Hulot d'Ervy was a fine man, his flirtations
did not
damage his fortune; but when a man is fifty, the Graces claim
payment.
At that age love becomes vice; insensate vanities come into
play.
Thus, at about that time, Adeline saw that her husband was
incredibly
particular about his dress; he dyed his hair and whiskers, and
wore a
belt and stays. He was determined to remain handsome at any
cost. This
care of his person, a weakness he had once mercilessly mocked
at, was
carried out in the minutest details.
At last Adeline perceived that the Pactolus poured out before
the
Baron's mistresses had its source in her pocket. In eight years
he had
dissipated a considerable amount of money; and so effectually,
that,
on his son's marriage two years previously, the Baron had
been
compelled to explain to his wife that his pay constituted their
whole
income.
"What shall we come to?" asked Adeline.
"Be quite easy," said the official, "I will leave the whole of
my
salary in your hands, and I will make a fortune for Hortense,
and some
savings for the future, in business."
The wife's deep belief in her husband's power and superior
talents, in
his capabilities and character, had, in fact, for the moment
allayed
her anxiety.
What the Baroness' reflections and tears were after Crevel's
departure
may now be clearly imagined. The poor woman had for two years
past
known that she was at the bottom of a pit, but she had fancied
herself
alone in it. How her son's marriage had been finally arranged
she had
not known; she had known nothing of Hector's connection with
the
grasping Jewess; and, above all, she hoped that no one in the
world
knew anything of her troubles. Now, if Crevel went about so
ready to
talk of the Baron's excesses, Hector's reputation would suffer.
She
could see, under the angry ex-perfumer's coarse harangue, the
odious
gossip behind the scenes which led to her son's marriage.
Two
reprobate hussies had been the priestesses of this union planned
at
some orgy amid the degrading familiarities of two tipsy old
sinners.
"And has he forgotten Hortense!" she wondered.
"But he sees her every day; will he try to find her a husband
among
his good-for-nothing sluts?"
At this moment it was the mother that spoke rather than the
wife, for
she saw Hortense laughing with her Cousin Betty--the reckless
laughter
of heedless youth; and she knew that such hysterical laughter
was
quite as distressing a symptom as the tearful reverie of
solitary
walks in the garden.
Hortense was like her mother, with golden hair that waved
naturally,
and was amazingly long and thick. Her skin had the lustre of
mother-
of-pearl. She was visibly the offspring of a true marriage, of a
pure
and noble love in its prime. There was a passionate vitality in
her
countenance, a brilliancy of feature, a full fount of youth, a
fresh
vigor and abundance of health, which radiated from her with
electric
flashes. Hortense invited the eye.
When her eye, of deep ultramarine blue, liquid with the
moisture of
innocent youth, rested on a passer-by, he was involuntarily
thrilled.
Nor did a single freckle mar her skin, such as those with which
many a
white and golden maid pays toll for her milky whiteness. Tall,
round
without being fat, with a slender dignity as noble as her
mother's,
she really deserved the name of goddess, of which old authors
were so
lavish. In fact, those who saw Hortense in the street could
hardly
restrain the exclamation, "What a beautiful girl!"
She was so genuinely innocent, that she could say to her mother:
"What do they mean, mamma, by calling me a beautiful girl when
I am
with you? Are not you much handsomer than I am?"
And, in point of fact, at seven-and-forty the Baroness might
have been
preferred to her daughter by amateurs of sunset beauty; for she
had
not yet lost any of her charms, by one of those phenomena which
are
especially rare in Paris, where Ninon was regarded as
scandalous,
simply because she thus seemed to enjoy such an unfair advantage
over
the plainer women of the seventeenth century.
Thinking of her daughter brought her back to the father; she
saw him
sinking by degrees, day after day, down to the social mire, and
even
dismissed some day from his appointment. The idea of her idol's
fall,
with a vague vision of the disasters prophesied by Crevel, was
such a
terror to the poor woman, that she became rapt in the
contemplation
like an ecstatic.
Cousin Betty, from time to time, as she chatted with Hortense,
looked
round to see when they might return to the drawing-room; but her
young
cousin was pelting her with questions, and at the moment when
the
Baroness opened the glass door she did not happen to be
looking.
Lisbeth Fischer, though the daughter of the eldest of the
three
brothers, was five years younger than Madame Hulot; she was far
from
being as handsome as her cousin, and had been desperately
jealous of
Adeline. Jealousy was the fundamental passion of this
character,
marked by eccentricities--a word invented by the English to
describe
the craziness not of the asylum, but of respectable households.
A
native of the Vosges, a peasant in the fullest sense of the
word,
lean, brown, with shining black hair and thick eyebrows joining
in a
tuft, with long, strong arms, thick feet, and some moles on her
narrow
simian face--such is a brief description of the elderly
virgin.
The family, living all under one roof, had sacrificed the
common-
looking girl to the beauty, the bitter fruit to the splendid
flower.
Lisbeth worked in the fields, while her cousin was indulged; and
one
day, when they were alone together, she had tried to destroy
Adeline's
nose, a truly Greek nose, which the old mothers admired. Though
she
was beaten for this misdeed, she persisted nevertheless in
tearing the
favorite's gowns and crumpling her collars.
At the time of Adeline's wonderful marriage, Lisbeth had bowed
to
fate, as Napoleon's brothers and sisters bowed before the
splendor of
the throne and the force of authority.
Adeline, who was extremely sweet and kind, remembered Lisbeth
when she
found herself in Paris, and invited her there in 1809, intending
to
rescue her from poverty by finding her a husband. But seeing
that it
was impossible to marry the girl out of hand, with her black
eyes and
sooty brows, unable, too, to read or write, the Baron began
by
apprenticing her to a business; he placed her as a learner with
the
embroiderers to the Imperial Court, the well-known Pons
Brothers.
Lisbeth, called Betty for short, having learned to embroider
in gold
and silver, and possessing all the energy of a mountain race,
had
determination enough to learn to read, write, and keep accounts;
for
her cousin the Baron had pointed out the necessity for these
accomplishments if she hoped to set up in business as an
embroiderer.
She was bent on making a fortune; in two years she was
another
creature. In 1811 the peasant woman had become a very
presentable,
skilled, and intelligent forewoman.
Her department, that of gold and silver lace-work, as it is
called,
included epaulettes, sword-knots, aiguillettes; in short, the
immense
mass of glittering ornaments that sparkled on the rich uniforms
of the
French army and civil officials. The Emperor, a true Italian in
his
love of dress, had overlaid the coats of all his servants with
silver
and gold, and the Empire included a hundred and thirty-three
Departments. These ornaments, usually supplied to tailors who
were
solvent and wealthy paymasters, were a very secure branch of
trade.
Just when Cousin Betty, the best hand in the house of Pons
Brothers,
where she was forewoman of the embroidery department, might have
set
up in business on her own account, the Empire collapsed. The
olive-
branch of peace held out by the Bourbons did not reassure
Lisbeth; she
feared a diminution of this branch of trade, since henceforth
there
were to be but eighty-six Departments to plunder, instead of a
hundred
and thirty-three, to say nothing of the immense reduction of the
army.
Utterly scared by the ups and downs of industry, she refused
the
Baron's offers of help, and he thought she must be mad. She
confirmed
this opinion by quarreling with Monsieur Rivet, who bought
the
business of Pons Brothers, and with whom the Baron wished to
place her
in partnership; she would be no more than a workwoman. Thus
the
Fischer family had relapsed into the precarious mediocrity from
which
Baron Hulot had raised it.
The three brothers Fischer, who had been ruined by the
abdication at
Fontainebleau, in despair joined the irregular troops in 1815.
The
eldest, Lisbeth's father, was killed. Adeline's father,
sentenced to
death by court-martial, fled to Germany, and died at Treves in
1820.
Johann, the youngest, came to Paris, a petitioner to the queen
of the
family, who was said to dine off gold and silver plate, and
never to
be seen at a party but with diamonds in her hair as big as
hazel-nuts,
given to her by the Emperor.
Johann Fischer, then aged forty-three, obtained from Baron
Hulot a
capital of ten thousand francs with which to start a small
business as
forage-dealer at Versailles, under the patronage of the War
Office,
through the influence of the friends still in office, of the
late
Commissary-General.
These family catastrophes, Baron Hulot's dismissal, and the
knowledge
that he was a mere cipher in that immense stir of men and
interests
and things which makes Paris at once a paradise and a hell,
quite
quelled Lisbeth Fischer. She gave up all idea of rivalry and
comparison with her cousin after feeling her great superiority;
but
envy still lurked in her heart, like a plague-germ that may
hatch and
devastate a city if the fatal bale of wool is opened in which it
is
concealed.
Now and again, indeed, she said to herself:
"Adeline and I are the same flesh and blood, our fathers were
brothers
--and she is in a mansion, while I am in a garret."
But every New Year Lisbeth had presents from the Baron and
Baroness;
the Baron, who was always good to her, paid for her firewood in
the
winter; old General Hulot had her to dinner once a week; and
there was
always a cover laid for her at her cousin's table. They laughed
at her
no doubt, but they never were ashamed to own her. In short, they
had
made her independent in Paris, where she lived as she
pleased.
The old maid had, in fact, a terror of any kind of tie. Her
cousin had
offered her a room in her own house--Lisbeth suspected the
halter of
domestic servitude; several times the Baron had found a solution
of
the difficult problem of her marriage; but though tempted in the
first
instance, she would presently decline, fearing lest she should
be
scorned for her want of education, her general ignorance, and
her
poverty; finally, when the Baroness suggested that she should
live
with their uncle Johann, and keep house for him, instead of the
upper
servant, who must cost him dear, Lisbeth replied that that was
the
very last way she should think of marrying.
Lisbeth Fischer had the sort of strangeness in her ideas which
is
often noticeable in characters that have developed late, in
savages,
who think much and speak little. Her peasant's wit had acquired
a good
deal of Parisian asperity from hearing the talk of workshops
and
mixing with workmen and workwomen. She, whose character had a
marked
resemblance to that of the Corsicans, worked upon without
fruition by
the instincts of a strong nature, would have liked to be the
protectress of a weak man; but, as a result of living in the
capital,
the capital had altered her superficially. Parisian polish
became rust
on this coarsely tempered soul. Gifted with a cunning which had
become
unfathomable, as it always does in those whose celibacy is
genuine,
with the originality and sharpness with which she clothed her
ideas,
in any other position she would have been formidable. Full of
spite,
she was capable of bringing discord into the most united
family.
In early days, when she indulged in certain secret hopes which
she
confided to none, she took to wearing stays, and dressing in
the
fashion, and so shone in splendor for a short time, that the
Baron
thought her marriageable. Lisbeth at that stage was the
piquante
brunette of old-fashioned novels. Her piercing glance, her olive
skin,
her reed-like figure, might invite a half-pay major; but she
was
satisfied, she would say laughing, with her own admiration.
And, indeed, she found her life pleasant enough when she had
freed it
from practical anxieties, for she dined out every evening
after
working hard from sunrise. Thus she had only her rent and her
midday
meal to provide for; she had most of her clothes given her, and
a
variety of very acceptable stores, such as coffee, sugar, wine,
and so
forth.
In 1837, after living for twenty-seven years, half maintained
by the
Hulots and her Uncle Fischer, Cousin Betty, resigned to being
nobody,
allowed herself to be treated so. She herself refused to appear
at any
grand dinners, preferring the family party, where she held her
own and
was spared all slights to her pride.
Wherever she went--at General Hulot's, at Crevel's, at the
house of
the young Hulots, or at Rivet's (Pons' successor, with whom she
made
up her quarrel, and who made much of her), and at the Baroness'
table
--she was treated as one of the family; in fact, she managed to
make
friends of the servants by making them an occasional small
present,
and always gossiping with them for a few minutes before going
into the
drawing-room. This familiarity, by which she uncompromisingly
put
herself on their level, conciliated their servile good-nature,
which
is indispensable to a parasite. "She is a good, steady woman,"
was
everybody's verdict.
Her willingness to oblige, which knew no bounds when it was
not
demanded of her, was indeed, like her assumed bluntness, a
necessity
of her position. She had at length understood what her life must
be,
seeing that she was at everybody's mercy; and needing to
please
everybody, she would laugh with young people, who liked her for
a sort
of wheedling flattery which always wins them; guessing and
taking part
with their fancies, she would make herself their spokeswoman,
and they
thought her a delightful confidante, since she had no
right to find
fault with them.
Her absolute secrecy also won her the confidence of their
seniors;
for, like Ninon, she had certain manly qualities. As a rule,
our
confidence is given to those below rather than above us. We
employ our
inferiors rather than our betters in secret transactions, and
they
thus become the recipients of our inmost thoughts, and look on
at our
meditations; Richelieu thought he had achieved success when he
was
admitted to the Council. This penniless woman was supposed to be
so
dependent on every one about her, that she seemed doomed to
perfect
silence. She herself called herself the Family Confessional.
The Baroness only, remembering her ill-usage in childhood by
the
cousin who, though younger, was stronger than herself, never
wholly
trusted her. Besides, out of sheer modesty, she would never have
told
her domestic sorrows to any one but God.
It may here be well to add that the Baron's house preserved
all its
magnificence in the eyes of Lisbeth Fischer, who was not struck,
as
the parvenu perfumer had been, with the penury stamped on the
shabby
chairs, the dirty hangings, and the ripped silk. The furniture
we live
with is in some sort like our own person; seeing ourselves every
day,
we end, like the Baron, by thinking ourselves but little
altered, and
still youthful, when others see that our head is covered
with
chinchilla, our forehead scarred with circumflex accents, our
stomach
assuming the rotundity of a pumpkin. So these rooms, always
blazing in
Betty's eyes with the Bengal fire of Imperial victory, were to
her
perennially splendid.
As time went on, Lisbeth had contracted some rather strange
old-
maidish habits. For instance, instead of following the fashions,
she
expected the fashion to accept her ways and yield to her always
out-
of-date notions. When the Baroness gave her a pretty new bonnet,
or a
gown in the fashion of the day, Betty remade it completely at
home,
and spoilt it by producing a dress of the style of the Empire or
of
her old Lorraine costume. A thirty-franc bonnet came out a rag,
and
the gown a disgrace. On this point, Lisbeth was as obstinate as
a
mule; she would please no one but herself and believed
herself
charming; whereas this assimilative process--harmonious, no
doubt, in
so far as that it stamped her for an old maid from head to
foot--made
her so ridiculous, that, with the best will in the world, no one
could
admit her on any smart occasion.
This refractory, capricious, and independent spirit, and
the
inexplicable wild shyness of the woman for whom the Baron had
four
times found a match--an employe in his office, a retired major,
an
army contractor, and a half-pay captain--while she had refused
an army
lacemaker, who had since made his fortune, had won her the name
of the
Nanny Goat, which the Baron gave her in jest. But this nickname
only
met the peculiarities that lay on the surface, the
eccentricities
which each of us displays to his neighbors in social life. This
woman,
who, if closely studied, would have shown the most savage traits
of
the peasant class, was still the girl who had clawed her
cousin's
nose, and who, if she had not been trained to reason, would
perhaps
have killed her in a fit of jealousy.
It was only her knowledge of the laws and of the world that
enabled
her to control the swift instinct with which country folk, like
wild
men, reduce impulse to action. In this alone, perhaps, lies
the
difference between natural and civilized man. The savage has
only
impulse; the civilized man has impulses and ideas. And in the
savage
the brain retains, as we may say, but few impressions, it is
wholly at
the mercy of the feeling that rushes in upon it; while in
the
civilized man, ideas sink into the heart and change it; he has
a
thousand interests and many feelings, where the savage has but
one at
a time. This is the cause of the transient ascendency of a child
over
its parents, which ceases as soon as it is satisfied; in the man
who
is still one with nature, this contrast is constant. Cousin
Betty, a
savage of Lorraine, somewhat treacherous too, was of this class
of
natures, which are commoner among the lower orders than is
supposed,
accounting for the conduct of the populace during
revolutions.
At the time when this Drama opens, if Cousin Betty
would have
allowed herself to be dressed like other people; if, like the
women of
Paris, she had been accustomed to wear each fashion in its turn,
she
would have been presentable and acceptable, but she preserved
the
stiffness of a stick. Now a woman devoid of all the graces, in
Paris
simply does not exist. The fine but hard eyes, the severe
features,
the Calabrian fixity of complexion which made Lisbeth like a
figure by
Giotto, and of which a true Parisian would have taken advantage,
above
all, her strange way of dressing, gave her such an
extraordinary
appearance that she sometimes looked like one of those monkeys
in
petticoats taken about by little Savoyards. As she was well
known in
the houses connected by family which she frequented, and
restricted
her social efforts to that little circle, as she liked her own
home,
her singularities no longer astonished anybody; and out of doors
they
were lost in the immense stir of Paris street-life, where only
pretty
women are ever looked at.
Hortense's laughter was at this moment caused by a victory won
over
her Cousin Lisbeth's perversity; she had just wrung from her an
avowal
she had been hoping for these three years past. However
secretive an
old maid may be, there is one sentiment which will always avail
to
make her break her fast from words, and that is her vanity. For
the
last three years, Hortense, having become very inquisitive on
such
matters, had pestered her cousin with questions, which, however,
bore
the stamp of perfect innocence. She wanted to know why her
cousin had
never married. Hortense, who knew of the five offers that she
had
refused, had constructed her little romance; she supposed that
Lisbeth
had had a passionate attachment, and a war of banter was the
result.
Hortense would talk of "We young girls!" when speaking of
herself and
her cousin.
Cousin Betty had on several occasions answered in the same
tone--"And
who says I have not a lover?" So Cousin Betty's lover, real
or
fictitious, became a subject of mild jesting. At last, after two
years
of this petty warfare, the last time Lisbeth had come to the
house
Hortense's first question had been:
"And how is your lover?"
"Pretty well, thank you," was the answer. "He is rather
ailing, poor
young man."
"He has delicate health?" asked the Baroness, laughing.
"I should think so! He is fair. A sooty thing like me can love
none
but a fair man with a color like the moon."
"But who is he? What does he do?" asked Hortense. "Is he a prince?"
"A prince of artisans, as I am queen of the bobbin. Is a poor
woman
like me likely to find a lover in a man with a fine house and
money in
the funds, or in a duke of the realm, or some Prince Charming
out of a
fairy tale?"
"Oh, I should so much like to see him!" cried Hortense, smiling.
"To see what a man can be like who can love the Nanny Goat?"
retorted
Lisbeth.
"He must be some monster of an old clerk, with a goat's
beard!"
Hortense said to her mother.
"Well, then, you are quite mistaken, mademoiselle."
"Then you mean that you really have a lover?" Hortense
exclaimed in
triumph.
"As sure as you have not!" retorted Lisbeth, nettled.
"But if you have a lover, why don't you marry him, Lisbeth?"
said the
Baroness, shaking her head at her daughter. "We have been
hearing
rumors about him these three years. You have had time to study
him;
and if he has been faithful so long, you should not persist in a
delay
which must be hard upon him. After all, it is a matter of
conscience;
and if he is young, it is time to take a brevet of dignity."
Cousin Betty had fixed her gaze on Adeline, and seeing that
she was
jesting, she replied:
"It would be marrying hunger and thirst; he is a workman, I am
a
workwoman. If we had children, they would be workmen.--No, no;
we love
each other spiritually; it is less expensive."
"Why do you keep him in hiding?" Hortense asked.
"He wears a round jacket," replied the old maid, laughing.
"You truly love him?" the Baroness inquired.
"I believe you! I love him for his own sake, the dear cherub.
For four
years his home has been in my heart."
"Well, then, if you love him for himself," said the Baroness
gravely,
"and if he really exists, you are treating him criminally. You
do not
know how to love truly."
"We all know that from our birth," said Lisbeth.
"No, there are women who love and yet are selfish, and that is
your
case."
Cousin Betty's head fell, and her glance would have made any
one
shiver who had seen it; but her eyes were on her reel of
thread.
"If you would introduce your so-called lover to us, Hector
might find
him employment, or put him in a position to make money."
"That is out of the question," said Cousin Betty.
"And why?"
"He is a sort of Pole--a refugee----"
"A conspirator?" cried Hortense. "What luck for you!--Has he
had any
adventures?"
"He has fought for Poland. He was a professor in the school
where the
students began the rebellion; and as he had been placed there by
the
Grand Duke Constantine, he has no hope of mercy----"
"A professor of what?"
"Of fine arts."
"And he came to Paris when the rebellion was quelled?"
"In 1833. He came through Germany on foot."
"Poor young man! And how old is he?"
"He was just four-and-twenty when the insurrection broke
out--he is
twenty-nine now."
"Fifteen years your junior," said the Baroness.
"And what does he live on?" asked Hortense.
"His talent."
"Oh, he gives lessons?"
"No," said Cousin Betty; "he gets them, and hard ones too!"
"And his Christian name--is it a pretty name?"
"Wenceslas."
"What a wonderful imagination you old maids have!" exclaimed
the
Baroness. "To hear you talk, Lisbeth, one might really believe
you."
"You see, mamma, he is a Pole, and so accustomed to the knout
that
Lisbeth reminds him of the joys of his native land."
They all three laughed, and Hortense sang Wenceslas! idole
de mon
ame! instead of O Mathilde.
Then for a few minutes there was a truce.
"These children," said Cousin Betty, looking at Hortense as
she went
up to her, "fancy that no one but themselves can have
lovers."
"Listen," Hortense replied, finding herself alone with her
cousin, "if
you prove to me that Wenceslas is not a pure invention, I will
give
you my yellow cashmere shawl."
"He is a Count."
"Every Pole is a Count!"
"But he is not a Pole; he comes from Liva--Litha----"
"Lithuania?"
"No."
"Livonia?"
"Yes, that's it!"
"But what is his name?"
"I wonder if you are capable of keeping a secret."
"Cousin Betty, I will be as mute!----"
"As a fish?"
"As a fish."
"By your life eternal?"
"By my life eternal!"
"No, by your happiness in this world?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, his name is Wenceslas Steinbock."
"One of Charles XII.'s Generals was named Steinbock."
"He was his grand-uncle. His own father settled in Livonia
after the
death of the King of Sweden; but he lost all his fortune during
the
campaign of 1812, and died, leaving the poor boy at the age of
eight
without a penny. The Grand Duke Constantine, for the honor of
the name
of Steinbock, took him under his protection and sent him to
school."
"I will not break my word," Hortense replied; "prove his
existence,
and you shall have the yellow shawl. The color is most becoming
to
dark skins."
"And you will keep my secret?"
"And tell you mine."
"Well, then, the next time I come you shall have the proof."
"But the proof will be the lover," said Hortense.
Cousin Betty, who, since her first arrival in Paris, had been
bitten
by a mania for shawls, was bewitched by the idea of owning the
yellow
cashmere given to his wife by the Baron in 1808, and handed down
from
mother to daughter after the manner of some families in 1830.
The
shawl had been a good deal worn ten years ago; but the costly
object,
now always kept in its sandal-wood box, seemed to the old maid
ever
new, like the drawing-room furniture. So she brought in her
handbag a
present for the Baroness' birthday, by which she proposed to
prove the
existence of her romantic lover.
This present was a silver seal formed of three little figures
back to
back, wreathed with foliage, and supporting the Globe. They
represented Faith, Hope, and Charity; their feet rested on
monsters
rending each other, among them the symbolical serpent. In 1846,
now
that such immense strides have been made in the art of which
Benvenuto
Cellini was the master, by Mademoiselle de Fauveau, Wagner,
Jeanest,
Froment-Meurice, and wood-carvers like Lienard, this little
masterpiece would amaze nobody; but at that time a girl who
understood
the silversmith's art stood astonished as she held the seal
which
Lisbeth put into her hands, saying:
"There! what do you think of that?"
In design, attitude, and drapery the figures were of the
school of
Raphael; but the execution was in the style of the Florentine
metal
workers--the school created by Donatello, Brunelleschi,
Ghiberti,
Benvenuto Cellini, John of Bologna, and others. The French
masters of
the Renaissance had never invented more strangely twining
monsters
than these that symbolized the evil passions. The palms, ferns,
reeds,
and foliage that wreathed the Virtues showed a style, a taste,
a
handling that might have driven a practised craftsman to
despair; a
scroll floated above the three figures; and on its surface,
between
the heads, were a W, a chamois, and the word fecit.
"Who carved this?" asked Hortense.
"Well, just my lover," replied Lisbeth. "There are ten months'
work in
it; I could earn more at making sword-knots.--He told me
that
Steinbock means a rock goat, a chamois, in German. And he
intends to
mark all his work in that way.--Ah, ha! I shall have the
shawl."
"What for?"
"Do you suppose I could buy such a thing, or order it?
Impossible!
Well, then, it must have been given to me. And who would make me
such
a present? A lover!"
Hortense, with an artfulness that would have frightened
Lisbeth
Fischer if she had detected it, took care not to express all
her
admiration, though she was full of the delight which every soul
that
is open to a sense of beauty must feel on seeing a faultless
piece of
work--perfect and unexpected.
"On my word," said she, "it is very pretty."
"Yes, it is pretty," said her cousin; "but I like an
orange-colored
shawl better.--Well, child, my lover spends his time in doing
such
work as that. Since he came to Paris he has turned out three or
four
little trifles in that style, and that is the fruit of four
years'
study and toil. He has served as apprentice to founders,
metal-
casters, and goldsmiths.--There he has paid away thousands
and
hundreds of francs. And my gentleman tells me that in a few
months now
he will be famous and rich----"
"Then you often see him?"
"Bless me, do you think it is all a fable? I told you truth in jest."
"And he is in love with you?" asked Hortense eagerly.
"He adores me," replied Lisbeth very seriously. "You see,
child, he
had never seen any women but the washed out, pale things they
all are
in the north, and a slender, brown, youthful thing like me
warmed his
heart.--But, mum; you promised, you know!"
"And he will fare like the five others," said the girl
ironically, as
she looked at the seal.
"Six others, miss. I left one in Lorraine, who, to this day,
would
fetch the moon down for me."
"This one does better than that," said Hortense; "he has
brought down
the sun."
"Where can that be turned into money?" asked her cousin. "It
takes
wide lands to benefit by the sunshine."
These witticisms, fired in quick retort, and leading to the
sort of
giddy play that may be imagined, had given cause for the
laughter
which had added to the Baroness' troubles by making her compare
her
daughter's future lot with the present, when she was free to
indulge
the light-heartedness of youth.
"But to give you a gem which cost him six months of work, he
must be
under some great obligations to you?" said Hortense, in whom
the
silver seal had suggested very serious reflections.
"Oh, you want to know too much at once!" said her cousin.
"But,
listen, I will let you into a little plot."
"Is your lover in it too?"
"Oh, ho! you want so much to see him! But, as you may suppose,
an old
maid like Cousin Betty, who had managed to keep a lover for
five
years, keeps him well hidden.--Now, just let me alone. You see,
I have
neither cat nor canary, neither dog nor a parrot, and the old
Nanny
Goat wanted something to pet and tease--so I treated myself to
a
Polish Count."
"Has he a moustache?"
"As long as that," said Lisbeth, holding up her shuttle filled
with
gold thread. She always took her lace-work with her, and worked
till
dinner was served.
"If you ask too many questions, you will be told nothing," she
went
on. "You are but two-and-twenty, and you chatter more than I do
though
I am forty-two--not to say forty-three."
"I am listening; I am a wooden image," said Hortense.
"My lover has finished a bronze group ten inches high,"
Lisbeth went
on. "It represents Samson slaying a lion, and he has kept it
buried
till it is so rusty that you might believe it to be as old as
Samson
himself. This fine piece is shown at the shop of one of the
old
curiosity sellers on the Place du Carrousel, near my lodgings.
Now,
your father knows Monsieur Popinot, the Minister of Commerce
and
Agriculture, and the Comte de Rastignac, and if he would mention
the
group to them as a fine antique he had seen by chance! It seems
that
such things take the fancy of your grand folks, who don't care
so much
about gold lace, and that my man's fortune would be made if one
of
them would buy or even look at the wretched piece of metal. The
poor
fellow is sure that it might be mistaken for old work, and that
the
rubbish is worth a great deal of money. And then, if one of
the
ministers should purchase the group, he would go to pay his
respects,
and prove that he was the maker, and be almost carried in
triumph! Oh!
he believes he has reached the pinnacle; poor young man, and he
is as
proud as two newly-made Counts."
"Michael Angelo over again; but, for a lover, he has kept his
head on
his shoulders!" said Hortense. "And how much does he want for
it?"
"Fifteen hundred francs. The dealer will not let it go for
less, since
he must take his commission."
"Papa is in the King's household just now," said Hortense. "He
sees
those two ministers every day at the Chamber, and he will do the
thing
--I undertake that. You will be a rich woman, Madame la Comtesse
de
Steinbock."
"No, the boy is too lazy; for whole weeks he sits twiddling
with bits
of red wax, and nothing comes of it. Why, he spends all his days
at
the Louvre and the Library, looking at prints and sketching
things. He
is an idler!"
The cousins chatted and giggled; Hortense laughing a forced
laugh, for
she was invaded by a kind of love which every girl has gone
through--
the love of the unknown, love in its vaguest form, when every
thought
is accreted round some form which is suggested by a chance word,
as
the efflorescence of hoar-frost gathers about a straw that the
wind
has blown against the window-sill.
For the past ten months she had made a reality of her
cousin's
imaginary romance, believing, like her mother, that Lisbeth
would
never marry; and now, within a week, this visionary being had
become
Comte Wenceslas Steinbock, the dream had a certificate of birth,
the
wraith had solidified into a young man of thirty. The seal she
held in
her hand--a sort of Annunciation in which genius shone like
an
immanent light--had the powers of a talisman. Hortense felt such
a
surge of happiness, that she almost doubted whether the tale
were
true; there was a ferment in her blood, and she laughed wildly
to
deceive her cousin.
"But I think the drawing-room door is open," said Lisbeth; "let
us go
and see if Monsieur Crevel is gone."
"Mamma has been very much out of spirits these two days. I
suppose the
marriage under discussion has come to nothing!"
"Oh, it may come on again. He is--I may tell you so much--a
Councillor
of the Supreme Court. How would you like to be Madame la
Presidente?
If Monsieur Crevel has a finger in it, he will tell me about it
if I
ask him. I shall know by to-morrow if there is any hope."
"Leave the seal with me," said Hortense; "I will not show
it--mamma's
birthday is not for a month yet; I will give it to you that
morning."
"No, no. Give it back to me; it must have a case."
"But I will let papa see it, that he may know what he is
talking about
to the ministers, for men in authority must be careful what they
say,"
urged the girl.
"Well, do not show it to your mother--that is all I ask; for
if she
believed I had a lover, she would make game of me."
"I promise."
The cousins reached the drawing-room just as the Baroness
turned
faint. Her daughter's cry of alarm recalled her to herself.
Lisbeth
went off to fetch some salts. When she came back, she found the
mother
and daughter in each other's arms, the Baroness soothing her
daughter's fears, and saying:
"It was nothing; a little nervous attack.--There is your
father," she
added, recognizing the Baron's way of ringing the bell. "Say not
a
word to him."
Adeline rose and went to meet her husband, intending to take
him into
the garden and talk to him till dinner should be served of
the
difficulties about the proposed match, getting him to come to
some
decision as to the future, and trying to hint at some warning
advice.
Baron Hector Hulot came in, in a dress at once lawyer-like
and
Napoleonic, for Imperial men--men who had been attached to the
Emperor
--were easily distinguishable by their military deportment,
their blue
coats with gilt buttons, buttoned to the chin, their black silk
stock,
and an authoritative demeanor acquired from a habit of command
in
circumstances requiring despotic rapidity. There was nothing of
the
old man in the Baron, it must be admitted; his sight was still
so
good, that he could read without spectacles; his handsome oval
face,
framed in whiskers that were indeed too black, showed a
brilliant
complexion, ruddy with the veins that characterize a
sanguine
temperament; and his stomach, kept in order by a belt, had
not
exceeded the limits of "the majestic," as Brillat-Savarin says.
A fine
aristocratic air and great affability served to conceal the
libertine
with whom Crevel had had such high times. He was one of those
men
whose eyes always light up at the sight of a pretty woman, even
of
such as merely pass by, never to be seen again.
"Have you been speaking, my dear?" asked Adeline, seeing him
with an
anxious brow.
"No," replied Hector, "but I am worn out with hearing others
speak for
two hours without coming to a vote. They carry on a war of
words, in
which their speeches are like a cavalry charge which has no
effect on
the enemy. Talk has taken the place of action, which goes very
much
against the grain with men who are accustomed to marching
orders, as I
said to the Marshal when I left him. However, I have enough of
being
bored on the ministers' bench; here I may play.--How do, la
Chevre!--
Good morning, little kid," and he took his daughter round the
neck,
kissed her, and made her sit on his knee, resting her head on
his
shoulder, that he might feel her soft golden hair against his
cheek.
"He is tired and worried," said his wife to herself. "I shall
only
worry him more.--I will wait.--Are you going to be at home
this
evening?" she asked him.
"No, children. After dinner I must go out. If it had not been
the day
when Lisbeth and the children and my brother come to dinner, you
would
not have seen me at all."
The Baroness took up the newspaper, looked down the list of
theatres,
and laid it down again when she had seen that Robert le
Diable was
to be given at the Opera. Josepha, who had left the Italian
Opera six
months since for the French Opera, was to take the part of
Alice.
This little pantomime did not escape the Baron, who looked
hard at his
wife. Adeline cast down her eyes and went out into the garden;
her
husband followed her.
"Come, what is it, Adeline?" said he, putting his arm round
her waist
and pressing her to his side. "Do not you know that I love you
more
than----"
"More than Jenny Cadine or Josepha!" said she, boldly
interrupting
him.
"Who put that into your head?" exclaimed the Baron, releasing
his
wife, and starting back a step or two.
"I got an anonymous letter, which I burnt at once, in which I
was
told, my dear, that the reason Hortense's marriage was broken
off was
the poverty of our circumstances. Your wife, my dear Hector,
would
never have said a word; she knew of your connection with Jenny
Cadine,
and did she ever complain?--But as the mother of Hortense, I am
bound
to speak the truth."
Hulot, after a short silence, which was terrible to his wife,
whose
heart beat loud enough to be heard, opened his arms, clasped her
to
his heart, kissed her forehead, and said with the vehemence
of
enthusiasm:
"Adeline, you are an angel, and I am a wretch----"
"No, no," cried the Baroness, hastily laying her hand upon his
lips to
hinder him from speaking evil of himself.
"Yes, for I have not at this moment a sou to give to Hortense,
and I
am most unhappy. But since you open your heart to me, I may pour
into
it the trouble that is crushing me.--Your Uncle Fischer is
in
difficulties, and it is I who dragged him there, for he has
accepted
bills for me to the amount of twenty-five thousand francs! And
all for
a woman who deceives me, who laughs at me behind my back, and
calls me
an old dyed Tom. It is frightful! A vice which costs me more
than it
would to maintain a family!--And I cannot resist!--I would
promise you
here and now never to see that abominable Jewess again; but if
she
wrote me two lines, I should go to her, as we marched into fire
under
the Emperor."
"Do not be so distressed," cried the poor woman in despair,
but
forgetting her daughter as she saw the tears in her husband's
eyes.
"There are my diamonds; whatever happens, save my uncle."
"Your diamonds are worth scarcely twenty thousand francs
nowadays.
That would not be enough for old Fischer, so keep them for
Hortense; I
will see the Marshal to-morrow."
"My poor dear!" said the Baroness, taking her Hector's hands
and
kissing them.
This was all the scolding he got. Adeline sacrificed her
jewels, the
father made them a present to Hortense, she regarded this as a
sublime
action, and she was helpless.
"He is the master; he could take everything, and he leaves me
my
diamonds; he is divine!"
This was the current of her thoughts; and indeed the wife had
gained
more by her sweetness than another perhaps could have achieved
by a
fit of angry jealousy.
The moralist cannot deny that, as a rule, well-bred though
very wicked
men are far more attractive and lovable than virtuous men;
having
crimes to atone for, they crave indulgence by anticipation, by
being
lenient to the shortcomings of those who judge them, and they
are
thought most kind. Though there are no doubt some charming
people
among the virtuous, Virtue considers itself fair enough,
unadorned, to
be at no pains to please; and then all really virtuous persons,
for
the hypocrites do not count, have some slight doubts as to
their
position; they believe that they are cheated in the bargain of
life on
the whole, and they indulge in acid comments after the fashion
of
those who think themselves unappreciated.
Hence the Baron, who accused himself of ruining his family,
displayed
all his charm of wit and his most seductive graces for the
benefit of
his wife, for his children, and his Cousin Lisbeth.
Then, when his son arrived with Celestine, Crevel's daughter,
who was
nursing the infant Hulot, he was delightful to his
daughter-in-law,
loading her with compliments--a treat to which Celestine's
vanity was
little accustomed for no moneyed bride more commonplace or
more
utterly insignificant was ever seen. The grandfather took the
baby
from her, kissed it, declared it was a beauty and a darling; he
spoke
to it in baby language, prophesied that it would grow to be
taller
than himself, insinuated compliments for his son's benefit,
and
restored the child to the Normandy nurse who had charge of
it.
Celestine, on her part, gave the Baroness a look, as much as to
say,
"What a delightful man!" and she naturally took her
father-in-law's
part against her father.
After thus playing the charming father-in-law and the
indulgent
grandpapa, the Baron took his son into the garden, and laid
before him
a variety of observations full of good sense as to the attitude
to be
taken up by the Chamber on a certain ticklish question which had
that
morning come under discussion. The young lawyer was struck
with
admiration for the depth of his father's insight, touched by
his
cordiality, and especially by the deferential tone which seemed
to
place the two men on a footing of equality.
Monsieur Hulot junior was in every respect the young
Frenchman, as
he has been moulded by the Revolution of 1830; his mind
infatuated
with politics, respectful of his own hopes, and concealing them
under
an affectation of gravity, very envious of successful men,
making
sententiousness do the duty of witty rejoinders--the gems of
the
French language--with a high sense of importance, and
mistaking
arrogance for dignity.
Such men are walking coffins, each containing a Frenchman of
the past;
now and again the Frenchman wakes up and kicks against his
English-
made casing; but ambition stifles him, and he submits to be
smothered.
The coffin is always covered with black cloth.
"Ah, here is my brother!" said Baron Hulot, going to meet the
Count at
the drawing-room door.
Having greeted the probable successor of the late Marshal
Montcornet,
he led him forward by the arm with every show of affection
and
respect.
The older man, a member of the Chamber of Peers, but excused
from
attendance on account of his deafness, had a handsome head,
chilled by
age, but with enough gray hair still to be marked in a circle by
the
pressure of his hat. He was short, square, and shrunken, but
carried
his hale old age with a free-and-easy air; and as he was full
of
excessive activity, which had now no purpose, he divided his
time
between reading and taking exercise. In a drawing-room he
devoted his
attention to waiting on the wishes of the ladies.
"You are very merry here," said he, seeing that the Baron shed
a
spirit of animation on the little family gathering. "And yet
Hortense
is not married," he added, noticing a trace of melancholy on
his
sister-in-law's countenance.
"That will come all in good time," Lisbeth shouted in his ear
in a
formidable voice.
"So there you are, you wretched seedling that could never
blossom,"
said he, laughing.
The hero of Forzheim rather liked Cousin Betty, for there were
certain
points of resemblance between them. A man of the ranks, without
any
education, his courage had been the sole mainspring of his
military
promotion, and sound sense had taken the place of brilliancy. Of
the
highest honor and clean-handed, he was ending a noble life in
full
contentment in the centre of his family, which claimed all
his
affections, and without a suspicion of his brother's still
undiscovered misconduct. No one enjoyed more than he the
pleasing
sight of this family party, where there never was the
smallest
disagreement, for the brothers and sisters were all equally
attached,
Celestine having been at once accepted as one of the family. But
the
worthy little Count wondered now and then why Monsieur Crevel
never
joined the party. "Papa is in the country," Celestine shouted,
and it
was explained to him that the ex-perfumer was away from
home.
This perfect union of all her family made Madame Hulot say to
herself,
"This, after all, is the best kind of happiness, and who can
deprive
us of it?"
The General, on seeing his favorite Adeline the object of
her
husband's attentions, laughed so much about it that the Baron,
fearing
to seem ridiculous, transferred his gallantries to his
daughter-in-
law, who at these family dinners was always the object of his
flattery
and kind care, for he hoped to win Crevel back through her, and
make
him forego his resentment.
Any one seeing this domestic scene would have found it hard to
believe
that the father was at his wits' end, the mother in despair, the
son
anxious beyond words as to his father's future fate, and the
daughter
on the point of robbing her cousin of her lover.
At seven o'clock the Baron, seeing his brother, his son, the
Baroness,
and Hortense all engaged at whist, went off to applaud his
mistress at
the Opera, taking with him Lisbeth Fischer, who lived in the Rue
du
Doyenne, and who always made an excuse of the solitude of
that
deserted quarter to take herself off as soon as dinner was
over.
Parisians will all admit that the old maid's prudence was
but
rational.
The existence of the maze of houses under the wing of the old
Louvre
is one of those protests against obvious good sense which
Frenchmen
love, that Europe may reassure itself as to the quantum of
brains they
are known to have, and not be too much alarmed. Perhaps
without
knowing it, this reveals some profound political idea.
It will surely not be a work of supererogation to describe
this part
of Paris as it is even now, when we could hardly expect its
survival;
and our grandsons, who will no doubt see the Louvre finished,
may
refuse to believe that such a relic of barbarism should have
survived
for six-and-thirty years in the heart of Paris and in the face
of the
palace where three dynasties of kings have received, during
those
thirty-six years, the elite of France and of Europe.
Between the little gate leading to the Bridge of the Carrousel
and the
Rue du Musee, every one having come to Paris, were it but for a
few
days, must have seen a dozen of houses with a decayed frontage
where
the dejected owners have attempted no repairs, the remains of an
old
block of buildings of which the destruction was begun at the
time when
Napoleon determined to complete the Louvre. This street, and the
blind
alley known as the Impasse du Doyenne, are the only passages
into this
gloomy and forsaken block, inhabited perhaps by ghosts, for
there
never is anybody to be seen. The pavement is much below the
footway of
the Rue du Musee, on a level with that of the Rue Froidmanteau.
Thus,
half sunken by the raising of the soil, these houses are also
wrapped
in the perpetual shadow cast by the lofty buildings of the
Louvre,
darkened on that side by the northern blast. Darkness, silence,
an icy
chill, and the cavernous depth of the soil combine to make
these
houses a kind of crypt, tombs of the living. As we drive in a
hackney
cab past this dead-alive spot, and chance to look down the
little Rue
du Doyenne, a shudder freezes the soul, and we wonder who can
lie
there, and what things may be done there at night, at an hour
when the
alley is a cut-throat pit, and the vices of Paris run riot there
under
the cloak of night. This question, frightful in itself,
becomes
appalling when we note that these dwelling-houses are shut in on
the
side towards the Rue de Richelieu by marshy ground, by a sea
of
tumbled paving-stones between them and the Tuileries, by
little
garden-plots and suspicious-looking hovels on the side of the
great
galleries, and by a desert of building-stone and old rubbish on
the
side towards the old Louvre. Henri III. and his favorites in
search of
their trunk-hose, and Marguerite's lovers in search of their
heads,
must dance sarabands by moonlight in this wilderness overlooked
by the
roof of a chapel still standing there as if to prove that the
Catholic
religion--so deeply rooted in France--survives all else.
For forty years now has the Louvre been crying out by every gap
in
these damaged walls, by every yawning window, "Rid me of these
warts
upon my face!" This cutthroat lane has no doubt been regarded
as
useful, and has been thought necessary as symbolizing in the
heart of
Paris the intimate connection between poverty and the splendor
that is
characteristic of the queen of cities. And indeed these chill
ruins,
among which the Legitimist newspaper contracted the disease it
is
dying of--the abominable hovels of the Rue du Musee, and the
hoarding
appropriated by the shop stalls that flourish there--will
perhaps live
longer and more prosperously than three successive
dynasties.
In 1823 the low rents in these already condemned houses had
tempted
Lisbeth Fischer to settle there, notwithstanding the necessity
imposed
upon her by the state of the neighborhood to get home before
nightfall. This necessity, however, was in accordance with the
country
habits she retained, of rising and going to bed with the sun,
an
arrangement which saves country folk considerable sums in lights
and
fuel. She lived in one of the houses which, since the demolition
of
the famous Hotel Cambaceres, command a view of the square.
Just as Baron Hulot set his wife's cousin down at the door of
this
house, saying, "Good-night, Cousin," an elegant-looking woman,
young,
small, slender, pretty, beautifully dressed, and redolent of
some
delicate perfume, passed between the wall and the carriage to go
in.
This lady, without any premeditation, glanced up at the Baron
merely
to see the lodger's cousin, and the libertine at once felt the
swift
impression which all Parisians know on meeting a pretty
woman,
realizing, as entomologists have it, their desiderata; so
he waited
to put on one of his gloves with judicious deliberation before
getting
into the carriage again, to give himself an excuse for allowing
his
eye to follow the young woman, whose skirts were pleasingly set
out by
something else than these odious and delusive crinoline
bustles.
"That," said he to himself, "is a nice little person whose
happiness I
should like to provide for, as she would certainly secure
mine."
When the unknown fair had gone into the hall at the foot of
the stairs
going up to the front rooms, she glanced at the gate out of the
corner
of her eye without precisely looking round, and she could see
the
Baron riveted to the spot in admiration, consumed by curiosity
and
desire. This is to every Parisian woman a sort of flower which
she
smells at with delight, if she meets it on her way. Nay,
certain
women, though faithful to their duties, pretty, and virtuous,
come
home much put out if they have failed to cull such a posy in
the
course of their walk.
The lady ran upstairs, and in a moment a window on the second
floor
was thrown open, and she appeared at it, but accompanied by a
man
whose baldhead and somewhat scowling looks announced him as
her
husband.
"If they aren't sharp and ingenious, the cunning jades!"
thought the
Baron. "She does that to show me where she lives. But this is
getting
rather warm, especially for this part of Paris. We must mind
what we
are at."
As he got into the milord, he looked up, and the lady
and the
husband hastily vanished, as though the Baron's face had
affected them
like the mythological head of Medusa.
"It would seem that they know me," thought the Baron. "That
would
account for everything."
As the carriage went up the Rue du Musee, he leaned forward to
see the
lady again, and in fact she was again at the window. Ashamed of
being
caught gazing at the hood under which her admirer was sitting,
the
unknown started back at once.
"Nanny shall tell me who it is," said the Baron to himself.
The sight of the Government official had, as will be seen,
made a deep
impression on this couple.
"Why, it is Baron Hulot, the chief of the department to which
my
office belongs!" exclaimed the husband as he left the
window.
"Well, Marneffe, the old maid on the third floor at the back
of the
courtyard, who lives with that young man, is his cousin. Is it
not odd
that we should never have known that till to-day, and now find
it out
by chance?"
"Mademoiselle Fischer living with a young man?" repeated the
husband.
"That is porter's gossip; do not speak so lightly of the cousin
of a
Councillor of State who can blow hot and cold in the office as
he
pleases. Now, come to dinner; I have been waiting for you since
four
o'clock."
Pretty--very pretty--Madame Marneffe, the natural daughter of
Comte
Montcornet, one of Napoleon's most famous officers, had, on
the
strength of a marriage portion of twenty thousand francs, found
a
husband in an inferior official at the War Office. Through
the
interest of the famous lieutenant-general--made marshal of
France six
months before his death--this quill-driver had risen to
unhoped-for
dignity as head-clerk of his office; but just as he was to be
promoted
to be deputy-chief, the marshal's death had cut off
Marneffe's
ambitions and his wife's at the root. The very small salary
enjoyed by
Sieur Marneffe had compelled the couple to economize in the
matter of
rent; for in his hands Mademoiselle Valerie Fortin's fortune
had
already melted away--partly in paying his debts, and partly in
the
purchase of necessaries for furnishing a house, but chiefly
in
gratifying the requirements of a pretty young wife, accustomed
in her
mother's house to luxuries she did not choose to dispense with.
The
situation of the Rue du Doyenne, within easy distance of the
War
Office, and the gay part of Paris, smiled on Monsieur and
Madame
Marneffe, and for the last four years they had dwelt under the
same
roof as Lisbeth Fischer.
Monsieur Jean-Paul-Stanislas Marneffe was one of the class of
employes
who escape sheer brutishness by the kind of power that comes
of
depravity. The small, lean creature, with thin hair and a
starved
beard, an unwholesome pasty face, worn rather than wrinkled,
with red-
lidded eyes harnessed with spectacles, shuffling in his gait,
and yet
meaner in his appearance, realized the type of man that any one
would
conceive of as likely to be placed in the dock for an offence
against
decency.
The rooms inhabited by this couple had the illusory appearance
of sham
luxury seen in many Paris homes, and typical of a certain class
of
household. In the drawing-room, the furniture covered with
shabby
cotton velvet, the plaster statuettes pretending to be
Florentine
bronze, the clumsy cast chandelier merely lacquered, with cheap
glass
saucers, the carpet, whose small cost was accounted for in
advancing
life by the quality of cotton used in the manufacture, now
visible to
the naked eye,--everything, down to the curtains, which plainly
showed
that worsted damask has not three years of prime, proclaimed
poverty
as loudly as a beggar in rags at a church door.
The dining-room, badly kept by a single servant, had the
sickening
aspect of a country inn; everything looked greasy and
unclean.
Monsieur's room, very like a schoolboy's, furnished with the
bed and
fittings remaining from his bachelor days, as shabby and worn as
he
was, dusted perhaps once a week--that horrible room where
everything
was in a litter, with old socks hanging over the
horsehair-seated
chairs, the pattern outlined in dust, was that of a man to whom
home
is a matter of indifference, who lives out of doors, gambling in
cafes
or elsewhere.
Madame's room was an exception to the squalid slovenliness
that
disgraced the living rooms, where the curtains were yellow with
smoke
and dust, and where the child, evidently left to himself,
littered
every spot with his toys. Valerie's room and dressing-room
were
situated in the part of the house which, on one side of the
courtyard,
joined the front half, looking out on the street, to the wing
forming
the inner side of the court backing against the adjoining
property.
Handsomely hung with chintz, furnished with rosewood, and
thickly
carpeted, they proclaimed themselves as belonging to a pretty
woman--
and indeed suggested the kept mistress. A clock in the
fashionable
style stood on the velvet-covered mantelpiece. There was a
nicely
fitted cabinet, and the Chinese flower-stands were handsomely
filled.
The bed, the toilet-table, the wardrobe with its mirror, the
little
sofa, and all the lady's frippery bore the stamp of fashion
or
caprice. Though everything was quite third-rate as to elegance
or
quality, and nothing was absolutely newer than three years old,
a
dandy would have had no fault to find but that the taste of all
this
luxury was commonplace. Art, and the distinction that comes of
the
choice of things that taste assimilates, was entirely wanting.
A
doctor of social science would have detected a lover in two or
three
specimens of costly trumpery, which could only have come there
through
that demi-god--always absent, but always present if the lady
is
married.
The dinner, four hours behind time, to which the husband, wife,
and
child sat down, betrayed the financial straits in which the
household
found itself, for the table is the surest thermometer for
gauging the
income of a Parisian family. Vegetable soup made with the
water
haricot beans had been boiled in, a piece of stewed veal and
potatoes