“Mademoiselle,” said Steinbock, “my benefactress can never be ugly in

my eyes; I have the greatest affection for you. But I am not yet thirty,

and----”

“I am forty-three,” said Lisbeth. “My cousin Adeline is forty-eight, and

men are still madly in love with her; but then she is handsome--she is!”

“Fifteen years between us, mademoiselle! How could we get on together!

For both our sakes I think we should be wise to think it over. My

gratitude shall be fully equal to your great kindness.--And your money

shall be repaid in a few days.”

“My money!” cried she. “You treat me as if I were nothing but an

unfeeling usurer.”

“Forgive me,” said Wenceslas, “but you remind me of it so often.--Well,

it is you who have made me; do not crush me.”

“You mean to be rid of me, I can see,” said she, shaking her head. “Who

has endowed you with this strength of ingratitude--you who are a man of

papier-mache? Have you ceased to trust me--your good genius?--me, when

I have spent so many nights working for you--when I have given you every

franc I have saved in my lifetime--when for four years I have shared my

bread with you, the bread of a hard-worked woman, and given you all I

had, to my very courage.”

“Mademoiselle--no more, no more!” he cried, kneeling before her with

uplifted hands. “Say not another word! In three days I will tell you,

you shall know all.--Let me, let me be happy,” and he kissed her hands.

“I love--and I am loved.”

“Well, well, my child, be happy,” she said, lifting him up. And she

kissed his forehead and hair with the eagerness that a man condemned to

death must feel as he lives through the last morning.

“Ah! you are of all creatures the noblest and best! You are a match for

the woman I love,” said the poor artist.

“I love you well enough to tremble for your future fate,” said she

gloomily. “Judas hanged himself--the ungrateful always come to a bad

end! You are deserting me, and you will never again do any good work.

Consider whether, without being married--for I know I am an old maid,

and I do not want to smother the blossom of your youth, your poetry, as

you call it, in my arms, that are like vine-stocks--but whether,

without being married, we could not get on together? Listen; I have

the commercial spirit; I could save you a fortune in the course of ten

years’ work, for Economy is my name!--while, with a young wife, who

would be sheer Expenditure, you would squander everything; you would

work only to indulge her. But happiness creates nothing but memories.

Even I, when I am thinking of you, sit for hours with my hands in my

lap----

“Come, Wenceslas, stay with me.--Look here, I understand all about

it; you shall have your mistresses; pretty ones too, like that little

Marneffe woman who wants to see you, and who will give you happiness you

could never find with me. Then, when I have saved you thirty thousand

francs a year in the funds----”

“Mademoiselle, you are an angel, and I shall never forget this hour,”

said Wenceslas, wiping away his tears.

“That is how I like to see you, my child,” said she, gazing at him with

rapture.

Vanity is so strong a power in us all that Lisbeth believed in her

triumph. She had conceded so much when offering him Madame Marneffe. It

was the crowning emotion of her life; for the first time she felt the

full tide of joy rising in her heart. To go through such an experience

again she would have sold her soul to the Devil.

“I am engaged to be married,” Steinbock replied, “and I love a woman

with whom no other can compete or compare.--But you are, and always will

be, to me the mother I have lost.”

The words fell like an avalanche of snow on a burning crater. Lisbeth

sat down. She gazed with despondent eyes on the youth before her, on his

aristocratic beauty--the artist’s brow, the splendid hair, everything

that appealed to her suppressed feminine instincts, and tiny tears

moistened her eyes for an instant and immediately dried up. She looked

like one of those meagre statues which the sculptors of the Middle Ages

carved on monuments.

“I cannot curse you,” said she, suddenly rising. “You--you are but a

boy. God preserve you!”

She went downstairs and shut herself into her own room.

“She is in love with me, poor creature!” said Wenceslas to himself. “And

how fervently eloquent! She is crazy.”

This last effort on the part of an arid and narrow nature to keep hold

on an embodiment of beauty and poetry was, in truth, so violent that it

can only be compared to the frenzied vehemence of a shipwrecked creature

making the last struggle to reach shore.

On the next day but one, at half-past four in the morning, when Count

Steinbock was sunk in the deepest sleep, he heard a knock at the door of

his attic; he rose to open it, and saw two men in shabby clothing, and a

third, whose dress proclaimed him a bailiff down on his luck.

“You are Monsieur Wenceslas, Count Steinbock?” said this man.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“My name is Grasset, sir, successor to Louchard, sheriff’s officer----”

“What then?”

“You are under arrest, sir. You must come with us to prison--to

Clichy.--Please to get dressed.--We have done the civil, as you see; I

have brought no police, and there is a hackney cab below.”

“You are safely nabbed, you see,” said one of the bailiffs; “and we look

to you to be liberal.”

Steinbock dressed and went downstairs, a man holding each arm; when he

was in the cab, the driver started without orders, as knowing where he

was to go, and within half an hour the unhappy foreigner found himself

safely under bolt and bar without even a remonstrance, so utterly amazed

was he.

At ten o’clock he was sent for to the prison-office, where he found

Lisbeth, who, in tears, gave him some money to feed himself adequately

and to pay for a room large enough to work in.

“My dear boy,” said she, “never say a word of your arrest to anybody,

do not write to a living soul; it would ruin you for life; we must hide

this blot on your character. I will soon have you out. I will collect

the money--be quite easy. Write down what you want for your work. You

shall soon be free, or I will die for it.”

“Oh, I shall owe you my life a second time!” cried he, “for I should

lose more than my life if I were thought a bad fellow.”

Lisbeth went off in great glee; she hoped, by keeping her artist under

lock and key, to put a stop to his marriage by announcing that he was

a married man, pardoned by the efforts of his wife, and gone off to

Russia.

To carry out this plan, at about three o’clock she went to the Baroness,

though it was not the day when she was due to dine with her; but she

wished to enjoy the anguish which Hortense must endure at the hour when

Wenceslas was in the habit of making his appearance.

“Have you come to dinner?” asked the Baroness, concealing her

disappointment.

“Well, yes.”

“That’s well,” replied Hortense. “I will go and tell them to be

punctual, for you do not like to be kept waiting.”

Hortense nodded reassuringly to her mother, for she intended to tell the

man-servant to send away Monsieur Steinbock if he should call; the man,

however, happened to be out, so Hortense was obliged to give her orders

to the maid, and the girl went upstairs to fetch her needlework and sit

in the ante-room.

“And about my lover?” said Cousin Betty to Hortense, when the girl came

back. “You never ask about him now?”

“To be sure, what is he doing?” said Hortense. “He has become famous.

You ought to be very happy,” she added in an undertone to Lisbeth.

“Everybody is talking of Monsieur Wenceslas Steinbock.”

“A great deal too much,” replied she in her clear tones. “Monsieur is

departing.--If it were only a matter of charming him so far as to defy

the attractions of Paris, I know my power; but they say that in order to

secure the services of such an artist, the Emperor Nichols has pardoned

him----”

“Nonsense!” said the Baroness.

“When did you hear that?” asked Hortense, who felt as if her heart had

the cramp.

“Well,” said the villainous Lisbeth, “a person to whom he is bound by

the most sacred ties--his wife--wrote yesterday to tell him so. He

wants to be off. Oh, he will be a great fool to give up France to go to

Russia!--”

Hortense looked at her mother, but her head sank on one side; the

Baroness was only just in time to support her daughter, who dropped

fainting, and as white as her lace kerchief.

“Lisbeth! you have killed my child!” cried the Baroness. “You were born

to be our curse!”

“Bless me! what fault of mine is this, Adeline?” replied Lisbeth, as she

rose with a menacing aspect, of which the Baroness, in her alarm, took

no notice.

“I was wrong,” said Adeline, supporting the girl. “Ring.”

At this instant the door opened, the women both looked round, and saw

Wenceslas Steinbock, who had been admitted by the cook in the maid’s

absence.

“Hortense!” cried the artist, with one spring to the group of women. And

he kissed his betrothed before her mother’s eyes, on the forehead, and

so reverently, that the Baroness could not be angry. It was a better

restorative than any smelling salts. Hortense opened her eyes, saw

Wenceslas, and her color came back. In a few minutes she had quite

recovered.

“So this was your secret?” said Lisbeth, smiling at Wenceslas, and

affecting to guess the facts from her two cousins’ confusion.

“But how did you steal away my lover?” said she, leading Hortense into

the garden.

Hortense artlessly told the romance of her love. Her father and mother,

she said, being convinced that Lisbeth would never marry, had authorized

the Count’s visits. Only Hortense, like a full-blown Agnes, attributed

to chance her purchase of the group and the introduction of the artist,

who, by her account, had insisted on knowing the name of his first

purchaser.

Presently Steinbock came out to join the cousins, and thanked the old

maid effusively for his prompt release. Lisbeth replied Jesuitically

that the creditor having given very vague promises, she had not hoped

to be able to get him out before the morrow, and that the person who

had lent her the money, ashamed, perhaps, of such mean conduct, had been

beforehand with her. The old maid appeared to be perfectly content, and

congratulated Wenceslas on his happiness.

“You bad boy!” said she, before Hortense and her mother, “if you had

only told me the evening before last that you loved my cousin Hortense,

and that she loved you, you would have spared me many tears. I thought

that you were deserting your old friend, your governess; while, on the

contrary, you are to become my cousin; henceforth, you will be connected

with me, remotely, it is true, but by ties that amply justify the

feelings I have for you.” And she kissed Wenceslas on the forehead.

Hortense threw herself into Lisbeth’s arms and melted into tears.

“I owe my happiness to you,” said she, “and I will never forget it.”

“Cousin Betty,” said the Baroness, embracing Lisbeth in her excitement

at seeing matters so happily settled, “the Baron and I owe you a debt of

gratitude, and we will pay it. Come and talk things over with me,” she

added, leading her away.

So Lisbeth, to all appearances, was playing the part of a good angel

to the whole family; she was adored by Crevel and Hulot, by Adeline and

Hortense.

“We wish you to give up working,” said the Baroness. “If you earn forty

sous a day, Sundays excepted, that makes six hundred francs a year.

Well, then, how much have you saved?”

“Four thousand five hundred francs.”

“Poor Betty!” said her cousin.

She raised her eyes to heaven, so deeply was she moved at the thought of

all the labor and privation such a sum must represent accumulated during

thirty years.

Lisbeth, misunderstanding the meaning of the exclamation, took it as the

ironical pity of the successful woman, and her hatred was strengthened

by a large infusion of venom at the very moment when her cousin had cast

off her last shred of distrust of the tyrant of her childhood.

“We will add ten thousand five hundred francs to that sum,” said

Adeline, “and put it in trust so that you shall draw the interest for

life with reversion to Hortense. Thus, you will have six hundred francs

a year.”

Lisbeth feigned the utmost satisfaction. When she went in, her

handkerchief to her eyes, wiping away tears of joy, Hortense told her of

all the favors being showered on Wenceslas, beloved of the family.

So when the Baron came home, he found his family all present; for the

Baroness had formally accepted Wenceslas by the title of Son, and the

wedding was fixed, if her husband should approve, for a day a fortnight

hence. The moment he came into the drawing-room, Hulot was rushed at

by his wife and daughter, who ran to meet him, Adeline to speak to him

privately, and Hortense to kiss him.

“You have gone too far in pledging me to this, madame,” said the Baron

sternly. “You are not married yet,” he added with a look at Steinbock,

who turned pale.

“He has heard of my imprisonment,” said the luckless artist to himself.

“Come, children,” said he, leading his daughter and the young man

into the garden; they all sat down on the moss-eaten seat in the

summer-house.

“Monsieur le Comte, do you love my daughter as well as I loved her

mother?” he asked.

“More, monsieur,” said the sculptor.

“Her mother was a peasant’s daughter, and had not a farthing of her

own.”

“Only give me Mademoiselle Hortense just as she is, without a trousseau

even----”

“So I should think!” said the Baron, smiling. “Hortense is the daughter

of the Baron Hulot d’Ervy, Councillor of State, high up in the War

Office, Grand Commander of the Legion of Honor, and the brother to Count

Hulot, whose glory is immortal, and who will ere long be Marshal of

France! And--she has a marriage portion.

“It is true,” said the impassioned artist. “I must seem very ambitious.

But if my dear Hortense were a laborer’s daughter, I would marry

her----”

“That is just what I wanted to know,” replied the Baron. “Run away,

Hortense, and leave me to talk business with Monsieur le Comte.--He

really loves you, you see!”

“Oh, papa, I was sure you were only in jest,” said the happy girl.

“My dear Steinbock,” said the Baron, with elaborate grace of diction and

the most perfect manners, as soon as he and the artist were alone, “I

promised my son a fortune of two hundred thousand francs, of which

the poor boy has never had a sou; and he never will get any of it. My

daughter’s fortune will also be two hundred thousand francs, for which

you will give a receipt----”

“Yes, Monsieur le Baron.”

“You go too fast,” said Hulot. “Have the goodness to hear me out. I

cannot expect from a son-in-law such devotion as I look for from my son.

My son knew exactly all I could and would do for his future promotion:

he will be a Minister, and will easily make good his two hundred

thousand francs. But with you, young man, matters are different. I shall

give you a bond for sixty thousand francs in State funds at five per

cent, in your wife’s name. This income will be diminished by a small

charge in the form of an annuity to Lisbeth; but she will not live long;

she is consumptive, I know. Tell no one; it is a secret; let the poor

soul die in peace.--My daughter will have a trousseau worth twenty

thousand francs; her mother will give her six thousand francs worth of

diamonds.

“Monsieur, you overpower me!” said Steinbock, quite bewildered.

“As to the remaining hundred and twenty thousand francs----”

“Say no more, monsieur,” said Wenceslas. “I ask only for my beloved

Hortense----”

“Will you listen to me, effervescent youth!--As to the remaining hundred

and twenty thousand francs, I have not got them; but you will have

them--”

“Monsieur?”

“You will get them from the Government, in payment for commissions which

I will secure for you, I pledge you my word of honor. You are to have

a studio, you see, at the Government depot. Exhibit a few fine statues,

and I will get you received at the Institute. The highest personages

have a regard for my brother and for me, and I hope to succeed in

securing for you a commission for sculpture at Versailles up to a

quarter of the whole sum. You will have orders from the City of Paris

and from the Chamber of Peers; in short, my dear fellow, you will have

so many that you will be obliged to get assistants. In that way I

shall pay off my debt to you. You must say whether this way of giving a

portion will suit you; whether you are equal to it.”

“I am equal to making a fortune for my wife single-handed if all else

failed!” cried the artist-nobleman.

“That is what I admire!” cried the Baron. “High-minded youth that fears

nothing. Come,” he added, clasping hands with the young sculptor to

conclude the bargain, “you have my consent. We will sign the contract

on Sunday next, and the wedding shall be on the following Saturday, my

wife’s fete-day.”

“It is all right,” said the Baroness to her daughter, who stood glued to

the window. “Your suitor and your father are embracing each other.”

On going home in the evening, Wenceslas found the solution of the

mystery of his release. The porter handed him a thick sealed packet,

containing the schedule of his debts, with a signed receipt affixed at

the bottom of the writ, and accompanied by this letter:--

“MY DEAR WENCESLAS,--I went to fetch you at ten o’clock this

morning to introduce you to a Royal Highness who wishes to see

you. There I learned that the duns had had you conveyed to a

certain little domain--chief town, _Clichy Castle_.

“So off I went to Leon de Lora, and told him, for a joke, that you

could not leave your country quarters for lack of four thousand

francs, and that you would spoil your future prospects if you did

not make your bow to your royal patron. Happily, Bridau was there

--a man of genius, who has known what it is to be poor, and has

heard your story. My boy, between them they have found the money,

and I went off to pay the Turk who committed treason against

genius by putting you in quod. As I had to be at the Tuileries at

noon, I could not wait to see you sniffing the outer air. I know

you to be a gentleman, and I answered for you to my two friends

--but look them up to-morrow.

“Leon and Bridau do not want your cash; they will ask you to do

them each a group--and they are right. At least, so thinks the man

who wishes he could sign himself your rival, but is only your

faithful ally,

“STIDMANN.

“P. S.--I told the Prince you were away, and would not return till

to-morrow, so he said, ‘Very good--to-morrow.’”

Count Wenceslas went to bed in sheets of purple, without a rose-leaf to

wrinkle them, that Favor can make for us--Favor, the halting divinity

who moves more slowly for men of genius than either Justice or Fortune,

because Jove has not chosen to bandage her eyes. Hence, lightly deceived

by the display of impostors, and attracted by their frippery and

trumpets, she spends the time in seeing them and the money in paying

them which she ought to devote to seeking out men of merit in the nooks

where they hide.

It will now be necessary to explain how Monsieur le Baron Hulot had

contrived to count up his expenditure on Hortense’s wedding portion,

and at the same time to defray the frightful cost of the charming rooms

where Madame Marneffe was to make her home. His financial scheme bore

that stamp of talent which leads prodigals and men in love into the

quagmires where so many disasters await them. Nothing can demonstrate

more completely the strange capacity communicated by vice, to which

we owe the strokes of skill which ambitious or voluptuous men can

occasionally achieve--or, in short, any of the Devil’s pupils.

On the day before, old Johann Fischer, unable to pay thirty thousand

francs drawn for on him by his nephew, had found himself under the

necessity of stopping payment unless the Baron could remit the sum.

This ancient worthy, with the white hairs of seventy years, had such

blind confidence in Hulot--who, to the old Bonapartist, was an emanation

from the Napoleonic sun--that he was calmly pacing his anteroom with

the bank clerk, in the little ground-floor apartment that he rented

for eight hundred francs a year as the headquarters of his extensive

dealings in corn and forage.

“Marguerite is gone to fetch the money from close by,” said he.

The official, in his gray uniform braided with silver, was so convinced

of the old Alsatian’s honesty, that he was prepared to leave the thirty

thousand francs’ worth of bills in his hands; but the old man would not

let him go, observing that the clock had not yet struck eight. A cab

drew up, the old man rushed into the street, and held out his hand

to the Baron with sublime confidence--Hulot handed him out thirty

thousand-franc notes.

“Go on three doors further, and I will tell you why,” said Fischer.

“Here, young man,” he said, returning to count out the money to the bank

emissary, whom he then saw to the door.

When the clerk was out of sight, Fischer called back the cab containing

his august nephew, Napoleon’s right hand, and said, as he led him into

the house:

“You do not want them to know at the Bank of France that you paid me the

thirty thousand francs, after endorsing the bills?--It was bad enough to

see them signed by such a man as you!--”

“Come to the bottom of your little garden, Father Fischer,” said the

important man. “You are hearty?” he went on, sitting down under a vine

arbor and scanning the old man from head to foot, as a dealer in human

flesh scans a substitute for the conscription.

“Ay, hearty enough for a tontine,” said the lean little old man; his

sinews were wiry, and his eye bright.

“Does heat disagree with you?”

“Quite the contrary.”

“What do you say to Africa?”

“A very nice country!--The French went there with the little Corporal”

(Napoleon).

“To get us all out of the present scrape, you must go to Algiers,” said

the Baron.

“And how about my business?”

“An official in the War Office, who has to retire, and has not enough to

live on with his pension, will buy your business.”

“And what am I to do in Algiers?”

“Supply the Commissariat with victuals, corn, and forage; I have your

commission ready filled in and signed. You can collect supplies in the

country at seventy per cent below the prices at which you can credit

us.”

“How shall we get them?”

“Oh, by raids, by taxes in kind, and the Khaliphat.--The country is

little known, though we settled there eight years ago; Algeria produces

vast quantities of corn and forage. When this produce belongs to Arabs,

we take it from them under various pretences; when it belongs to us, the

Arabs try to get it back again. There is a great deal of fighting over

the corn, and no one ever knows exactly how much each party has stolen

from the other. There is not time in the open field to measure the

corn as we do in the Paris market, or the hay as it is sold in the Rue

d’Enfer. The Arab chiefs, like our Spahis, prefer hard cash, and sell

the plunder at a very low price. The Commissariat needs a fixed quantity

and must have it. It winks at exorbitant prices calculated on the

difficulty of procuring food, and the dangers to which every form of

transport is exposed. That is Algiers from the army contractor’s point

of view.

“It is a muddle tempered by the ink-bottle, like every incipient

government. We shall not see our way through it for another ten

years--we who have to do the governing; but private enterprise has sharp

eyes.--So I am sending you there to make a fortune; I give you the job,

as Napoleon put an impoverished Marshal at the head of a kingdom where

smuggling might be secretly encouraged.

“I am ruined, my dear Fischer; I must have a hundred thousand francs

within a year.”

“I see no harm in getting it out of the Bedouins,” said the Alsatian

calmly. “It was always done under the Empire----”

“The man who wants to buy your business will be here this morning, and

pay you ten thousand francs down,” the Baron went on. “That will be

enough, I suppose, to take you to Africa?”

The old man nodded assent.

“As to capital out there, be quite easy. I will draw the remainder of

the money due if I find it necessary.”

“All I have is yours--my very blood,” said old Fischer.

“Oh, do not be uneasy,” said Hulot, fancying that his uncle saw more

clearly than was the fact. “As to our excise dealings, your character

will not be impugned. Everything depends on the authority at your back;

now I myself appointed the authorities out there; I am sure of them.

This, Uncle Fischer, is a dead secret between us. I know you well, and I

have spoken out without concealment or circumlocution.”

“It shall be done,” said the old man. “And it will go on----?”

“For two years, You will have made a hundred thousand francs of your own

to live happy on in the Vosges.”

“I will do as you wish; my honor is yours,” said the little old man

quietly.

“That is the sort of man I like.--However, you must not go till you have

seen your grand-niece happily married. She is to be a Countess.”

But even taxes and raids and the money paid by the War Office clerk for

Fischer’s business could not forthwith provide sixty thousand francs to

give Hortense, to say nothing of her trousseau, which was to cost about

five thousand, and the forty thousand spent--or to be spent--on Madame

Marneffe.

Where, then had the Baron found the thirty thousand francs he had just

produced? This was the history.

A few days previously Hulot had insured his life for the sum of a

hundred and fifty thousand francs, for three years, in two separate

companies. Armed with the policies, of which he paid the premium, he had

spoken as follows to the Baron de Nucingen, a peer of the Chamber, in

whose carriage he found himself after a sitting, driving home, in fact,

to dine with him:--

“Baron, I want seventy thousand francs, and I apply to you. You must

find some one to lend his name, to whom I will make over the right to

draw my pay for three years; it amounts to twenty-five thousand francs a

year--that is, seventy-five thousand francs.--You will say, ‘But you

may die’”--the banker signified his assent--“Here, then, is a policy of

insurance for a hundred and fifty thousand francs, which I will deposit

with you till you have drawn up the eighty thousand francs,” said Hulot,

producing the document form his pocket.

“But if you should lose your place?” said the millionaire Baron,

laughing.

The other Baron--not a millionaire--looked grave.

“Be quite easy; I only raised the question to show you that I was not

devoid of merit in handing you the sum. Are you so short of cash? for

the Bank will take your signature.”

“My daughter is to be married,” said Baron Hulot, “and I have no

fortune--like every one else who remains in office in these thankless

times, when five hundred ordinary men seated on benches will never

reward the men who devote themselves to the service as handsomely as the

Emperor did.”

“Well, well; but you had Josepha on your hands!” replied Nucingen, “and

that accounts for everything. Between ourselves, the Duc d’Herouville

has done you a very good turn by removing that leech from sucking your

purse dry. ‘I have known what that is, and can pity your case,’” he

quoted. “Take a friend’s advice: Shut up shop, or you will be done for.”

This dirty business was carried out in the name of one Vauvinet, a small

money-lender; one of those jobbers who stand forward to screen great

banking houses, like the little fish that is said to attend the shark.

This stock-jobber’s apprentice was so anxious to gain the patronage of

Monsieur le Baron Hulot, that he promised the great man to negotiate

bills of exchange for thirty thousand francs at eighty days, and pledged

himself to renew them four times, and never pass them out of his hands.

Fischer’s successor was to pay forty thousand francs for the house

and the business, with the promise that he should supply forage to a

department close to Paris.

This was the desperate maze of affairs into which a man who had

hitherto been absolutely honest was led by his passions--one of the

best administrative officials under Napoleon--peculation to pay the

money-lenders, and borrowing of the money-lenders to gratify his

passions and provide for his daughter. All the efforts of this elaborate

prodigality were directed at making a display before Madame Marneffe,

and to playing Jupiter to this middle-class Danae. A man could not

expend more activity, intelligence, and presence of mind in the honest

acquisition of a fortune than the Baron displayed in shoving his head

into a wasp’s nest: He did all the business of his department, he

hurried on the upholsterers, he talked to the workmen, he kept a sharp

lookout on the smallest details of the house in the Rue Vanneau. Wholly

devoted to Madame Marneffe, he nevertheless attended the sittings of the

Chambers; he was everywhere at once, and neither his family nor anybody

else discovered where his thoughts were.

Adeline, quite amazed to hear that her uncle was rescued, and to see a

handsome sum figure in the marriage-contract, was not altogether easy,

in spite of her joy at seeing her daughter married under such creditable

circumstances. But, on the day before the wedding, fixed by the Baron

to coincide with Madame Marneffe’s removal to her new apartment, Hector

allayed his wife’s astonishment by this ministerial communication:--

“Now, Adeline, our girl is married; all our anxieties on the subject are

at an end. The time is come for us to retire from the world: I shall not

remain in office more than three years longer--only the time necessary

to secure my pension. Why, henceforth, should we be at any unnecessary

expense? Our apartment costs us six thousand francs a year in rent, we

have four servants, we eat thirty thousand francs’ worth of food in a

year. If you want me to pay off my bills--for I have pledged my salary

for the sums I needed to give Hortense her little money, and pay off

your uncle----”

“You did very right!” said she, interrupting her husband, and kissing

his hands.

This explanation relieved Adeline of all her fears.

“I shall have to ask some little sacrifices of you,” he went on,

disengaging his hands and kissing his wife’s brow. “I have found in the

Rue Plumet a very good flat on the first floor, handsome, splendidly

paneled, at only fifteen hundred francs a year, where you would only

need one woman to wait on you, and I could be quite content with a boy.”

“Yes, my dear.”

“If we keep house in a quiet way, keeping up a proper appearance of

course, we should not spend more than six thousand francs a year,

excepting my private account, which I will provide for.”

The generous-hearted woman threw her arms round her husband’s neck in

her joy.

“How happy I shall be, beginning again to show you how truly I love

you!” she exclaimed. “And what a capital manager you are!”

“We will have the children to dine with us once a week. I, as you know,

rarely dine at home. You can very well dine twice a week with Victorin

and twice a week with Hortense. And, as I believe, I may succeed in

making matters up completely between Crevel and us; we can dine once a

week with him. These five dinners and our own at home will fill up the

week all but one day, supposing that we may occasionally be invited to

dine elsewhere.”

“I shall save a great deal for you,” said Adeline.

“Oh!” he cried, “you are the pearl of women!”

“My kind, divine Hector, I shall bless you with my latest breath,” said

she, “for you have done well for my dear Hortense.”

This was the beginning of the end of the beautiful Madame Hulot’s home;

and, it may be added, of her being totally neglected, as Hulot had

solemnly promised Madame Marneffe.

Crevel, the important and burly, being invited as a matter of course

to the party given for the signing of the marriage-contract, behaved as

though the scene with which this drama opened had never taken place, as

though he had no grievance against the Baron. Celestin Crevel was quite

amiable; he was perhaps rather too much the ex-perfumer, but as a Major

he was beginning to acquire majestic dignity. He talked of dancing at

the wedding.

“Fair lady,” said he politely to the Baroness, “people like us know how

to forget. Do not banish me from your home; honor me, pray, by gracing

my house with your presence now and then to meet your children. Be quite

easy; I will never say anything of what lies buried at the bottom of my

heart. I behaved, indeed, like an idiot, for I should lose too much by

cutting myself off from seeing you.”

“Monsieur, an honest woman has no ears for such speeches as those you

refer to. If you keep your word, you need not doubt that it will give me

pleasure to see the end of a coolness which must always be painful in a

family.”

“Well, you sulky old fellow,” said Hulot, dragging Crevel out into the

garden, “you avoid me everywhere, even in my own house. Are two admirers

of the fair sex to quarrel for ever over a petticoat? Come; this is

really too plebeian!”

“I, monsieur, am not such a fine man as you are, and my small

attractions hinder me from repairing my losses so easily as you can----”

“Sarcastic!” said the Baron.

“Irony is allowable from the vanquished to the conquerer.”

The conversation, begun in this strain, ended in a complete

reconciliation; still Crevel maintained his right to take his revenge.

Madame Marneffe particularly wished to be invited to Mademoiselle

Hulot’s wedding. To enable him to receive his future mistress in his

drawing-room, the great official was obliged to invite all the clerks of

his division down to the deputy head-clerks inclusive. Thus a grand ball

was a necessity. The Baroness, as a prudent housewife, calculated that

an evening party would cost less than a dinner, and allow of a larger

number of invitations; so Hortense’s wedding was much talked about.

Marshal Prince Wissembourg and the Baron de Nucingen signed in behalf of

the bride, the Comtes de Rastignac and Popinot in behalf of Steinbock.

Then, as the highest nobility among the Polish emigrants had been

civil to Count Steinbock since he had become famous, the artist thought

himself bound to invite them. The State Council, and the War Office to

which the Baron belonged, and the army, anxious to do honor to the Comte

de Forzheim, were all represented by their magnates. There were nearly

two hundred indispensable invitations. How natural, then, that little

Madame Marneffe was bent on figuring in all her glory amid such an

assembly. The Baroness had, a month since, sold her diamonds to set up

her daughter’s house, while keeping the finest for the trousseau. The

sale realized fifteen thousand francs, of which five thousand were

sunk in Hortense’s clothes. And what was ten thousand francs for the

furniture of the young folks’ apartment, considering the demands of

modern luxury? However, young Monsieur and Madame Hulot, old Crevel, and

the Comte de Forzheim made very handsome presents, for the old

soldier had set aside a sum for the purchase of plate. Thanks to these

contributions, even an exacting Parisian would have been pleased with

the rooms the young couple had taken in the Rue Saint-Dominique, near

the Invalides. Everything seemed in harmony with their love, pure,

honest, and sincere.

At last the great day dawned--for it was to be a great day not only for

Wenceslas and Hortense, but for old Hulot too. Madame Marneffe was to

give a house-warming in her new apartment the day after becoming Hulot’s

mistress _en titre_, and after the marriage of the lovers.

Who but has once in his life been a guest at a wedding-ball? Every

reader can refer to his reminiscences, and will probably smile as he

calls up the images of all that company in their Sunday-best faces as

well as their finest frippery.

If any social event can prove the influence of environment, is it not

this? In fact, the Sunday-best mood of some reacts so effectually on

the rest that the men who are most accustomed to wearing full dress look

just like those to whom the party is a high festival, unique in their

life. And think too of the serious old men to whom such things are

so completely a matter of indifference, that they are wearing their

everyday black coats; the long-married men, whose faces betray their sad

experience of the life the young pair are but just entering on; and the

lighter elements, present as carbonic-acid gas is in champagne; and

the envious girls, the women absorbed in wondering if their dress is a

success, the poor relations whose parsimonious “get-up” contrasts with

that of the officials in uniform; and the greedy ones, thinking only of

the supper; and the gamblers, thinking only of cards.

There are some of every sort, rich and poor, envious and envied,

philosophers and dreamers, all grouped like the plants in a flower-bed

round the rare, choice blossom, the bride. A wedding-ball is an epitome

of the world.

At the liveliest moment of the evening Crevel led the Baron aside, and

said in a whisper, with the most natural manner possible:

“By Jove! that’s a pretty woman--the little lady in pink who has opened

a racking fire on you from her eyes.”

“Which?”

“The wife of that clerk you are promoting, heaven knows how!--Madame

Marneffe.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Listen, Hulot; I will try to forgive you the ill you have done me if

only you will introduce me to her--I will take you to Heloise. Everybody

is asking who is that charming creature. Are you sure that it will

strike no one how and why her husband’s appointment got itself

signed?--You happy rascal, she is worth a whole office.--I would serve

in her office only too gladly.--Come, cinna, let us be friends.”

“Better friends than ever,” said the Baron to the perfumer, “and I

promise you I will be a good fellow. Within a month you shall dine with

that little angel.--For it is an angel this time, old boy. And I advise

you, like me, to have done with the devils.”

Cousin Betty, who had moved to the Rue Vanneau, into a nice little

apartment on the third floor, left the ball at ten o’clock, but came

back to see with her own eyes the two bonds bearing twelve hundred

francs interest; one of them was the property of the Countess Steinbock,

the other was in the name of Madame Hulot.

It is thus intelligible that Monsieur Crevel should have spoken to Hulot

about Madame Marneffe, as knowing what was a secret to the rest of the

world; for, as Monsieur Marneffe was away, no one but Lisbeth Fischer,

besides the Baron and Valerie, was initiated into the mystery.

The Baron had made a blunder in giving Madame Marneffe a dress far too

magnificent for the wife of a subordinate official; other women were

jealous alike of her beauty and of her gown. There was much whispering

behind fans, for the poverty of the Marneffes was known to every one in

the office; the husband had been petitioning for help at the very moment

when the Baron had been so smitten with madame. Also, Hector could not

conceal his exultation at seeing Valerie’s success; and she, severely

proper, very lady-like, and greatly envied, was the object of that

strict examination which women so greatly fear when they appear for the

first time in a new circle of society.

After seeing his wife into a carriage with his daughter and his

son-in-law, Hulot managed to escape unperceived, leaving his son and

Celestine to do the honors of the house. He got into Madame Marneffe’s

carriage to see her home, but he found her silent and pensive, almost

melancholy.

“My happiness makes you very sad, Valerie,” said he, putting his arm

round her and drawing her to him.

“Can you wonder, my dear,” said she, “that a hapless woman should be a

little depressed at the thought of her first fall from virtue, even when

her husband’s atrocities have set her free? Do you suppose that I have

no soul, no beliefs, no religion? Your glee this evening has been really

too barefaced; you have paraded me odiously. Really, a schoolboy would

have been less of a coxcomb. And the ladies have dissected me with their

side-glances and their satirical remarks. Every woman has some care for

her reputation, and you have wrecked mine.

“Oh, I am yours and no mistake! And I have not an excuse left but that

of being faithful to you.--Monster that you are!” she added, laughing,

and allowing him to kiss her, “you knew very well what you were doing!

Madame Coquet, our chief clerk’s wife, came to sit down by me, and

admired my lace. ‘English point!’ said she. ‘Was it very expensive,

madame?’--‘I do not know. This lace was my mother’s. I am not rich

enough to buy the like,’ said I.”

Madame Marneffe, in short, had so bewitched the old beau, that he really

believed she was sinning for the first time for his sake, and that he

had inspired such a passion as had led her to this breach of duty. She

told him that the wretch Marneffe had neglected her after they had been

three days married, and for the most odious reasons. Since then she had

lived as innocently as a girl; marriage had seemed to her so horrible.

This was the cause of her present melancholy.

“If love should prove to be like marriage----” said she in tears.

These insinuating lies, with which almost every woman in Valerie’s

predicament is ready, gave the Baron distant visions of the roses of

the seventh heaven. And so Valerie coquetted with her lover, while

the artist and Hortense were impatiently awaiting the moment when the

Baroness should have given the girl her last kiss and blessing.

At seven in the morning the Baron, perfectly happy--for his Valerie

was at once the most guileless of girls and the most consummate of

demons--went back to release his son and Celestine from their duties.

All the dancers, for the most part strangers, had taken possession of

the territory, as they do at every wedding-ball, and were keeping up

the endless figures of the cotillions, while the gamblers were still

crowding round the _bouillotte_ tables, and old Crevel had won six

thousand francs.

The morning papers, carried round the town, contained this paragraph in

the Paris article:--

“The marriage was celebrated this morning, at the Church of

Saint-Thomas d’Aquin, between Monsieur le Comte Steinbock and

Mademoiselle Hortense Hulot, daughter of Baron Hulot d’Ervy,

Councillor of State, and a Director at the War Office; niece of

the famous General Comte de Forzheim. The ceremony attracted a

large gathering. There were present some of the most distinguished

artists of the day: Leon de Lora, Joseph Bridau, Stidmann, and

Bixiou; the magnates of the War Office, of the Council of State,

and many members of the two Chambers; also the most distinguished

of the Polish exiles living in Paris: Counts Paz, Laginski, and

others.

“Monsieur le Comte Wenceslas Steinbock is grandnephew to the

famous general who served under Charles XII., King of Sweden. The

young Count, having taken part in the Polish rebellion, found a

refuge in France, where his well-earned fame as a sculptor has

procured him a patent of naturalization.”

And so, in spite of the Baron’s cruel lack of money, nothing was lacking

that public opinion could require, not even the trumpeting of the

newspapers over his daughter’s marriage, which was solemnized in the

same way, in every particular, as his son’s had been to Mademoiselle

Crevel. This display moderated the reports current as to the Baron’s

financial position, while the fortune assigned to his daughter explained

the need for having borrowed money.

Here ends what is, in a way, the introduction to this story. It is to

the drama that follows that the premise is to a syllogism, what the

prologue is to a classical tragedy.

In Paris, when a woman determines to make a business, a trade, of

her beauty, it does not follow that she will make a fortune. Lovely

creatures may be found there, and full of wit, who are in wretched

circumstances, ending in misery a life begun in pleasure. And this is

why. It is not enough merely to accept the shameful life of a courtesan

with a view to earning its profits, and at the same time to bear the

simple garb of a respectable middle-class wife. Vice does not triumph so

easily; it resembles genius in so far that they both need a concurrence

of favorable conditions to develop the coalition of fortune and gifts.

Eliminate the strange prologue of the Revolution, and the Emperor would

never have existed; he would have been no more than a second edition of

Fabert. Venal beauty, if it finds no amateurs, no celebrity, no cross

of dishonor earned by squandering men’s fortunes, is Correggio in a

hay-loft, is genius starving in a garret. Lais, in Paris, must first and

foremost find a rich man mad enough to pay her price. She must keep up a

very elegant style, for this is her shop-sign; she must be sufficiently

well bred to flatter the vanity of her lovers; she must have the

brilliant wit of a Sophie Arnould, which diverts the apathy of rich men;

finally, she must arouse the passions of libertines by appearing to be

mistress to one man only who is envied by the rest.

These conditions, which a woman of that class calls being in luck, are

difficult to combine in Paris, although it is a city of millionaires, of

idlers, of used-up and capricious men.

Providence has, no doubt, vouchsafed protection to clerks and

middle-class citizens, for whom obstacles of this kind are at least

double in the sphere in which they move. At the same time, there are

enough Madame Marneffes in Paris to allow of our taking Valerie to

figure as a type in this picture of manners. Some of these women yield

to the double pressure of a genuine passion and of hard necessity,

like Madame Colleville, who was for long attached to one of the famous

orators of the left, Keller the banker. Others are spurred by vanity,

like Madame de la Baudraye, who remained almost respectable in spite of

her elopement with Lousteau. Some, again, are led astray by the love of

fine clothes, and some by the impossibility of keeping a house going

on obviously too narrow means. The stinginess of the State--or of

Parliament--leads to many disasters and to much corruption.

At the present moment the laboring classes are the fashionable object

of compassion; they are being murdered--it is said--by the manufacturing

capitalist; but the Government is a hundred times harder than the

meanest tradesman, it carries its economy in the article of salaries to

absolute folly. If you work harder, the merchant will pay you more in

proportion; but what does the State do for its crowd of obscure and

devoted toilers?

In a married woman it is an inexcusable crime when she wanders from the

path of honor; still, there are degrees even in such a case. Some

women, far from being depraved, conceal their fall and remain to all

appearances quite respectable, like those two just referred to, while

others add to their fault the disgrace of speculation. Thus Madame

Marneffe is, as it were, the type of those ambitious married courtesans

who from the first accept depravity with all its consequences, and

determine to make a fortune while taking their pleasure, perfectly

unscrupulous as to the means. But almost always a woman like Madame

Marneffe has a husband who is her confederate and accomplice. These

Machiavellis in petticoats are the most dangerous of the sisterhood; of

every evil class of Parisian woman, they are the worst.

A mere courtesan--a Josepha, a Malaga, a Madame Schontz, a Jenny

Cadine--carries in her frank dishonor a warning signal as conspicuous as

the red lamp of a house of ill-fame or the flaring lights of a gambling

hell. A man knows that they light him to his ruin.

But mealy-mouthed propriety, the semblance of virtue, the hypocritical

ways of a married woman who never allows anything to be seen but the

vulgar needs of the household, and affects to refuse every kind of

extravagance, leads to silent ruin, dumb disaster, which is all the more

startling because, though condoned, it remains unaccounted for. It is

the ignoble bill of daily expenses and not gay dissipation that devours

the largest fortune. The father of a family ruins himself ingloriously,

and the great consolation of gratified vanity is wanting in his misery.

This little sermon will go like a javelin to the heart of many a home.

Madame Marneffes are to be seen in every sphere of social life, even at

Court; for Valerie is a melancholy fact, modeled from the life in the

smallest details. And, alas! the portrait will not cure any man of the

folly of loving these sweetly-smiling angels, with pensive looks and

candid faces, whose heart is a cash-box.

About three years after Hortense’s marriage, in 1841, Baron Hulot d’Ervy

was supposed to have sown his wild oats, to have “put up his horses,”

to quote the expression used by Louis XV.’s head surgeon, and yet Madame

Marneffe was costing him twice as much as Josepha had ever cost him.

Still, Valerie, though always nicely dressed, affected the simplicity

of a subordinate official’s wife; she kept her luxury for her

dressing-gowns, her home wear. She thus sacrificed her Parisian vanity

to her dear Hector. At the theatre, however, she always appeared in a

pretty bonnet and a dress of extreme elegance; and the Baron took her in

a carriage to a private box.

Her rooms, the whole of the second floor of a modern house in the

Rue Vanneau, between a fore-court and a garden, was redolent of

respectability. All its luxury was in good chintz hangings and handsome

convenient furniture.

Her bedroom, indeed, was the exception, and rich with such profusion

as Jenny Cadine or Madame Schontz might have displayed. There were

lace curtains, cashmere hangings, brocade portieres, a set of chimney

ornaments modeled by Stidmann, a glass cabinet filled with dainty

nicknacks. Hulot could not bear to see his Valerie in a bower of

inferior magnificence to the dunghill of gold and pearls owned by

a Josepha. The drawing-room was furnished with red damask, and the

dining-room had carved oak panels. But the Baron, carried away by his

wish to have everything in keeping, had at the end of six months,

added solid luxury to mere fashion, and had given her handsome portable

property, as, for instance, a service of plate that was to cost more

than twenty-four thousand francs.

Madame Marneffe’s house had in a couple of years achieved a reputation

for being a very pleasant one. Gambling went on there. Valerie herself

was soon spoken of as an agreeable and witty woman. To account for her

change of style, a rumor was set going of an immense legacy bequeathed

to her by her “natural father,” Marshal Montcornet, and left in trust.

With an eye to the future, Valerie had added religious to social

hypocrisy. Punctual at the Sunday services, she enjoyed all the honors

due to the pious. She carried the bag for the offertory, she was a

member of a charitable association, presented bread for the sacrament,

and did some good among the poor, all at Hector’s expense. Thus

everything about the house was extremely seemly. And a great many

persons maintained that her friendship with the Baron was entirely

innocent, supporting the view by the gentleman’s mature age, and

ascribing to him a Platonic liking for Madame Marneffe’s pleasant wit,

charming manners, and conversation--such a liking as that of the late

lamented Louis XVIII. for a well-turned note.

The Baron always withdrew with the other company at about midnight, and

came back a quarter of an hour later.

The secret of this secrecy was as follows. The lodge-keepers of the

house were a Monsieur and Madame Olivier, who, under the Baron’s

patronage, had been promoted from their humble and not very lucrative

post in the Rue du Doyenne to the highly-paid and handsome one in

the Rue Vanneau. Now, Madame Olivier, formerly a needlewoman in the

household of Charles X., who had fallen in the world with the legitimate

branch, had three children. The eldest, an under-clerk in a notary’s

office, was object of his parents’ adoration. This Benjamin, for six

years in danger of being drawn for the army, was on the point of being

interrupted in his legal career, when Madame Marneffe contrived to have

him declared exempt for one of those little malformations which the

Examining Board can always discern when requested in a whisper by some

power in the ministry. So Olivier, formerly a huntsman to the King, and

his wife would have crucified the Lord again for the Baron or for Madame

Marneffe.

What could the world have to say? It knew nothing of the former episode

of the Brazilian, Monsieur Montes de Montejanos--it could say nothing.

Besides, the world is very indulgent to the mistress of a house where

amusement is to be found.

And then to all her charms Valerie added the highly-prized advantage

of being an occult power. Claude Vignon, now secretary to Marshal the

Prince de Wissembourg, and dreaming of promotion to the Council of State

as a Master of Appeals, was constantly seen in her rooms, to which came

also some Deputies--good fellows and gamblers. Madame Marneffe had got

her circle together with prudent deliberation; only men whose opinions

and habits agreed foregathered there, men whose interest it was to

hold together and to proclaim the many merits of the lady of the house.

Scandal is the true Holy Alliance in Paris. Take that as an axiom.

Interests invariably fall asunder in the end; vicious natures can always

agree.

Within three months of settling in the Rue Vanneau, Madame Marneffe

had entertained Monsieur Crevel, who by that time was Mayor of his

_arrondissement_ and Officer of the Legion of Honor. Crevel had

hesitated; he would have to give up the famous uniform of the National

Guard in which he strutted at the Tuileries, believing himself quite

as much a soldier as the Emperor himself; but ambition, urged by Madame

Marneffe, had proved stronger than vanity. Then Monsieur le Maire had

considered his connection with Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout as quite

incompatible with his political position.

Indeed, long before his accession to the civic chair of the Mayoralty,

his gallant intimacies had been wrapped in the deepest mystery. But,

as the reader may have guessed, Crevel had soon purchased the right of

taking his revenge, as often as circumstances allowed, for having been

bereft of Josepha, at the cost of a bond bearing six thousand francs of

interest in the name of Valerie Fortin, wife of Sieur Marneffe, for her

sole and separate use. Valerie, inheriting perhaps from her mother the

special acumen of the kept woman, read the character of her grotesque

adorer at a glance. The phrase “I never had a lady for a mistress,”

spoken by Crevel to Lisbeth, and repeated by Lisbeth to her dear

Valerie, had been handsomely discounted in the bargain by which she got

her six thousand francs a year in five per cents. And since then she had

never allowed her prestige to grow less in the eyes of Cesar Birotteau’s

erewhile bagman.

Crevel himself had married for money the daughter of a miller of la

Brie, an only child indeed, whose inheritance constituted three-quarters

of his fortune; for when retail-dealers grow rich, it is generally not

so much by trade as through some alliance between the shop and rural

thrift. A large proportion of the farmers, corn-factors, dairy-keepers,

and market-gardeners in the neighborhood of Paris, dream of the glories

of the desk for their daughters, and look upon a shopkeeper, a jeweler,

or a money-changer as a son-in-law after their own heart, in preference

to a notary or an attorney, whose superior social position is a ground

of suspicion; they are afraid of being scorned in the future by these

citizen bigwigs.

Madame Crevel, ugly, vulgar, and silly, had given her husband no

pleasures but those of paternity; she died young. Her libertine husband,

fettered at the beginning of his commercial career by the necessity

for working, and held in thrall by want of money, had led the life of

Tantalus. Thrown in--as he phrased it--with the most elegant women in

Paris, he let them out of the shop with servile homage, while admiring

their grace, their way of wearing the fashions, and all the nameless

charms of what is called breeding. To rise to the level of one of these

fairies of the drawing-room was a desire formed in his youth, but buried

in the depths of his heart. Thus to win the favors of Madame Marneffe

was to him not merely the realization of his chimera, but, as has been

shown, a point of pride, of vanity, of self-satisfaction. His ambition

grew with success; his brain was turned with elation; and when the

mind is captivated, the heart feels more keenly, every gratification is

doubled.

Also, it must be said that Madame Marneffe offered to Crevel a

refinement of pleasure of which he had no idea; neither Josepha nor

Heloise had loved him; and Madame Marneffe thought it necessary

to deceive him thoroughly, for this man, she saw, would prove an

inexhaustible till. The deceptions of a venal passion are more

delightful than the real thing. True love is mixed up with birdlike

squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a

quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, a piece of flattery to the

dupe’s conceit.

The rare interviews granted to Crevel kept his passion at white heat.

He was constantly blocked by Valerie’s virtuous severity; she acted

remorse, and wondered what her father must be thinking of her in the

paradise of the brave. Again and again he had to contend with a sort

of coldness, which the cunning slut made him believe he had overcome

by seeming to surrender to the man’s crazy passion; and then, as if

ashamed, she entrenched herself once more in her pride of respectability

and airs of virtue, just like an Englishwoman, neither more nor less;

and she always crushed her Crevel under the weight of her dignity--for

Crevel had, in the first instance, swallowed her pretensions to virtue.

In short, Valerie had special veins of affections which made her equally

indispensable to Crevel and to the Baron. Before the world she

displayed the attractive combination of modest and pensive innocence,

of irreproachable propriety, with a bright humor enhanced by the

suppleness, the grace and softness of the Creole; but in a _tete-a-tete_

she would outdo any courtesan; she was audacious, amusing, and full of

original inventiveness. Such a contrast is irresistible to a man of the

Crevel type; he is flattered by believing himself sole author of the

comedy, thinking it is performed for his benefit alone, and he laughs at

the exquisite hypocrisy while admiring the hypocrite.

Valerie had taken entire possession of Baron Hulot; she had persuaded

him to grow old by one of those subtle touches of flattery which reveal

the diabolical wit of women like her. In all evergreen constitutions a

moment arrives when the truth suddenly comes out, as in a besieged

town which puts a good face on affairs as long as possible. Valerie,

foreseeing the approaching collapse of the old beau of the Empire,

determined to forestall it.

“Why give yourself so much bother, my dear old veteran?” said she one

day, six months after their doubly adulterous union. “Do you want to be

flirting? To be unfaithful to me? I assure you, I should like you better

without your make-up. Oblige me by giving up all your artificial charms.

Do you suppose that it is for two sous’ worth of polish on your boots

that I love you? For your india-rubber belt, your strait-waistcoat,

and your false hair? And then, the older you look, the less need I fear

seeing my Hulot carried off by a rival.”

And Hulot, trusting to Madame Marneffe’s heavenly friendship as much as

to her love, intending, too, to end his days with her, had taken this

confidential hint, and ceased to dye his whiskers and hair. After

this touching declaration from his Valerie, handsome Hector made his

appearance one morning perfectly white. Madame Marneffe could assure him

that she had a hundred times detected the white line of the growth of

the hair.

“And white hair suits your face to perfection,” said she; “it softens

it. You look a thousand times better, quite charming.”

The Baron, once started on this path of reform, gave up his leather

waistcoat and stays; he threw off all his bracing. His stomach fell

and increased in size. The oak became a tower, and the heaviness of his

movements was all the more alarming because the Baron grew immensely

older by playing the part of Louis XII. His eyebrows were still black,

and left a ghostly reminiscence of Handsome Hulot, as sometimes on the

wall of some feudal building a faint trace of sculpture remains to show

what the castle was in the days of its glory. This discordant detail

made his eyes, still bright and youthful, all the more remarkable in his

tanned face, because it had so long been ruddy with the florid hues of

a Rubens; and now a certain discoloration and the deep tension of the

wrinkles betrayed the efforts of a passion at odds with natural decay.

Hulot was now one of those stalwart ruins in which virile force asserts

itself by tufts of hair in the ears and nostrils and on the fingers, as

moss grows on the almost eternal monuments of the Roman Empire.

How had Valerie contrived to keep Crevel and Hulot side by side, each

tied to an apron-string, when the vindictive Mayor only longed to

triumph openly over Hulot? Without immediately giving an answer to this

question, which the course of the story will supply, it may be said that

Lisbeth and Valerie had contrived a powerful piece of machinery which

tended to this result. Marneffe, as he saw his wife improved in beauty

by the setting in which she was enthroned, like the sun at the centre of

the sidereal system, appeared, in the eyes of the world, to have fallen

in love with her again himself; he was quite crazy about her. Now,

though his jealousy made him somewhat of a marplot, it gave enhanced

value to Valerie’s favors. Marneffe meanwhile showed a blind confidence

in his chief, which degenerated into ridiculous complaisance. The only

person whom he really would not stand was Crevel.

Marneffe, wrecked by the debauchery of great cities, described by Roman

authors, though modern decency has no name for it, was as hideous as

an anatomical figure in wax. But this disease on feet, clothed in good

broadcloth, encased his lathlike legs in elegant trousers. The hollow

chest was scented with fine linen, and musk disguised the odors of

rotten humanity. This hideous specimen of decaying vice, trotting in red

heels--for Valerie dressed the man as beseemed his income, his cross,

and his appointment--horrified Crevel, who could not meet the colorless

eyes of the Government clerk. Marneffe was an incubus to the Mayor. And

the mean rascal, aware of the strange power conferred on him by Lisbeth

and his wife, was amused by it; he played on it as on an instrument; and

cards being the last resource of a mind as completely played out as

the body, he plucked Crevel again and again, the Mayor thinking himself

bound to subserviency to the worthy official whom _he was cheating_.

Seeing Crevel a mere child in the hands of that hideous and atrocious

mummy, of whose utter vileness the Mayor knew nothing; and seeing him,

yet more, an object of deep contempt to Valerie, who made game of Crevel

as of some mountebank, the Baron apparently thought him so impossible as

a rival that he constantly invited him to dinner.

Valerie, protected by two lovers on guard, and by a jealous husband,

attracted every eye, and excited every desire in the circle she shone

upon. And thus, while keeping up appearances, she had, in the course

of three years, achieved the most difficult conditions of the success a

courtesan most cares for and most rarely attains, even with the help

of audacity and the glitter of an existence in the light of the sun.

Valerie’s beauty, formerly buried in the mud of the Rue du Doyenne, now,

like a well-cut diamond exquisitely set by Chanor, was worth more than

its real value--it could break hearts. Claude Vignon adored Valerie in

secret.

This retrospective explanation, quite necessary after the lapse of

three years, shows Valerie’s balance-sheet. Now for that of her partner,

Lisbeth.

Lisbeth Fischer filled the place in the Marneffe household of a relation

who combines the functions of a lady companion and a housekeeper; but

she suffered from none of the humiliations which, for the most part,

weigh upon the women who are so unhappy as to be obliged to fill these

ambiguous situations. Lisbeth and Valerie offered the touching spectacle

of one of those friendships between women, so cordial and so improbable,

that men, always too keen-tongued in Paris, forthwith slander them. The

contrast between Lisbeth’s dry masculine nature and Valerie’s creole

prettiness encouraged calumny. And Madame Marneffe had unconsciously

given weight to the scandal by the care she took of her friend, with

matrimonial views, which were, as will be seen, to complete Lisbeth’s

revenge.

An immense change had taken place in Cousin Betty; and Valerie, who

wanted to smarten her, had turned it to the best account. The strange

woman had submitted to stays, and laced tightly, she used bandoline to

keep her hair smooth, wore her gowns as the dressmaker sent them home,

neat little boots, and gray silk stockings, all of which were included

in Valerie’s bills, and paid for by the gentleman in possession. Thus

furbished up, and wearing the yellow cashmere shawl, Lisbeth would have

been unrecognizable by any one who had not seen her for three years.

This other diamond--a black diamond, the rarest of all--cut by a skilled

hand, and set as best became her, was appreciated at her full value by

certain ambitious clerks. Any one seeing her for the first time might

have shuddered involuntarily at the look of poetic wildness which the

clever Valerie had succeeded in bringing out by the arts of dress in

this Bleeding Nun, framing the ascetic olive face in thick bands of

hair as black as the fiery eyes, and making the most of the rigid, slim

figure. Lisbeth, like a Virgin by Cranach or Van Eyck, or a Byzantine

Madonna stepped out of its frame, had all the stiffness, the precision

of those mysterious figures, the more modern cousins of Isis and her

sister goddesses sheathed in marble folds by Egyptian sculptors. It was

granite, basalt, porphyry, with life and movement.

Saved from want for the rest of her life, Lisbeth was most amiable;

wherever she dined she brought merriment. And the Baron paid the rent

of her little apartment, furnished, as we know, with the leavings of her

friend Valerie’s former boudoir and bedroom.

“I began,” she would say, “as a hungry nanny goat, and I am ending as a

_lionne_.”

She still worked for Monsieur Rivet at the more elaborate kinds of

gold-trimming, merely, as she said, not to lose her time. At the

same time, she was, as we shall see, very full of business; but it is

inherent in the nature of country-folks never to give up bread-winning;

in this they are like the Jews.

Every morning, very early, Cousin Betty went off to market with the

cook. It was part of Lisbeth’s scheme that the house-book, which was

ruining Baron Hulot, was to enrich her dear Valerie--as it did indeed.

Is there a housewife who, since 1838, has not suffered from the evil

effects of Socialist doctrines diffused among the lower classes by

incendiary writers? In every household the plague of servants is

nowadays the worst of financial afflictions. With very few exceptions,

who ought to be rewarded with the Montyon prize, the cook, male or

female, is a domestic robber, a thief taking wages, and perfectly

barefaced, with the Government for a fence, developing the tendency to

dishonesty, which is almost authorized in the cook by the time-honored

jest as to the “handle of the basket.” The women who formerly picked up

their forty sous to buy a lottery ticket now take fifty francs to put

into the savings bank. And the smug Puritans who amuse themselves in

France with philanthropic experiments fancy that they are making the

common people moral!

Between the market and the master’s table the servants have their secret

toll, and the municipality of Paris is less sharp in collecting the

city-dues than the servants are in taking theirs on every single thing.

To say nothing of fifty per cent charged on every form of food, they

demand large New Year’s premiums from the tradesmen. The best class of

dealers tremble before this occult power, and subsidize it without a

word--coachmakers, jewelers, tailors, and all. If any attempt is made

to interfere with them, the servants reply with impudent retorts, or

revenge themselves by the costly blunders of assumed clumsiness; and in

these days they inquire into their master’s character as, formerly, the

master inquired into theirs. This mischief is now really at its height,

and the law-courts are beginning to take cognizance of it; but in vain,

for it cannot be remedied but by a law which shall compel domestic

servants, like laborers, to have a pass-book as a guarantee of conduct.

Then the evil will vanish as if by magic. If every servant were obliged

to show his pass-book, and if masters were required to state in it the

cause of his dismissal, this would certainly prove a powerful check to

the evil.

The men who are giving their attentions to the politics of the day

know not to what lengths the depravity of the lower classes has gone.

Statistics are silent as to the startling number of working men of

twenty who marry cooks of between forty and fifty enriched by robbery.

We shudder to think of the result of such unions from the three points

of view of increasing crime, degeneracy of the race, and miserable

households.

As to the mere financial mischief that results from domestic peculation,

that too is immense from a political point of view. Life being made to

cost double, any superfluity becomes impossible in most households.

Now superfluity means half the trade of the world, as it is half the

elegance of life. Books and flowers are to many persons as necessary as

bread.

Lisbeth, well aware of this dreadful scourge of Parisian households,

determined to manage Valerie’s, promising her every assistance in the

terrible scene when the two women had sworn to be like sisters. So

she had brought from the depths of the Vosges a humble relation on her

mother’s side, a very pious and honest soul, who had been cook to the

Bishop of Nancy. Fearing, however, her inexperience of Paris ways, and

yet more the evil counsel which wrecks such fragile virtue, at first

Lisbeth always went to market with Mathurine, and tried to teach

her what to buy. To know the real prices of things and command the

salesman’s respect; to purchase unnecessary delicacies, such as fish,

only when they were cheap; to be well informed as to the price current

of groceries and provisions, so as to buy when prices are low in

anticipation of a rise,--all this housekeeping skill is in Paris

essential to domestic economy. As Mathurine got good wages and many

presents, she liked the house well enough to be glad to drive good

bargains. And by this time Lisbeth had made her quite a match for

herself, sufficiently experienced and trustworthy to be sent to market

alone, unless Valerie was giving a dinner--which, in fact, was not

unfrequently the case. And this was how it came about.

The Baron had at first observed the strictest decorum; but his passion

for Madame Marneffe had ere long become so vehement, so greedy, that he

would never quit her if he could help it. At first he dined there four

times a week; then he thought it delightful to dine with her every day.

Six months after his daughter’s marriage he was paying her two thousand

francs a month for his board. Madame Marneffe invited any one her dear

Baron wished to entertain. The dinner was always arranged for six; he

could bring in three unexpected guests. Lisbeth’s economy enabled her

to solve the extraordinary problem of keeping up the table in the best

style for a thousand francs a month, giving the other thousand to Madame

Marneffe. Valerie’s dress being chiefly paid for by Crevel and the

Baron, the two women saved another thousand francs a month on this.

And so this pure and innocent being had already accumulated a hundred

and fifty thousand francs in savings. She had capitalized her income

and monthly bonus, and swelled the amount by enormous interest, due to

Crevel’s liberality in allowing his “little Duchess” to invest her money

in partnership with him in his financial operations. Crevel had taught

Valerie the slang and the procedure of the money market, and, like every

Parisian woman, she had soon outstripped her master. Lisbeth, who never

spent a sou of her twelve hundred francs, whose rent and dress were

given to her, and who never put her hand in her pocket, had likewise

a small capital of five or six thousand francs, of which Crevel took

fatherly care.

At the same time, two such lovers were a heavy burthen on Valerie.

On the day when this drama reopens, Valerie, spurred by one of those

incidents which have the effect in life that the ringing of a bell has

in inducing a swarm of bees to settle, went up to Lisbeth’s rooms to

give vent to one of those comforting lamentations--a sort of cigarette

blown off from the tongue--by which women alleviate the minor miseries

of life.

“Oh, Lisbeth, my love, two hours of Crevel this morning! It is crushing!

How I wish I could send you in my place!”

“That, unluckily, is impossible,” said Lisbeth, smiling. “I shall die a

maid.”

“Two old men lovers! Really, I am ashamed sometimes! If my poor mother

could see me.”

“You are mistaking me for Crevel!” said Lisbeth.

“Tell me, my little Betty, do you not despise me?”

“Oh! if I had but been pretty, what adventures I would have had!” cried

Lisbeth. “That is your justification.”

“But you would have acted only at the dictates of your heart,” said

Madame Marneffe, with a sigh.

“Pooh! Marneffe is a dead man they have forgotten to bury,” replied

Lisbeth. “The Baron is as good as your husband; Crevel is your adorer;

it seems to me that you are quite in order--like every other married

woman.”

“No, it is not that, dear, adorable thing; that is not where the shoe

pinches; you do not choose to understand.”

“Yes, I do,” said Lisbeth. “The unexpressed factor is part of my

revenge; what can I do? I am working it out.”

“I love Wenceslas so that I am positively growing thin, and I can never

see him,” said Valerie, throwing up her arms. “Hulot asks him to dinner,

and my artist declines. He does not know that I idolize him, the wretch!

What is his wife after all? Fine flesh! Yes, she is handsome, but I--I

know myself--I am worse!”

“Be quite easy, my child, he will come,” said Lisbeth, in the tone of a

nurse to an impatient child. “He shall.”

“But when?”

“This week perhaps.”

“Give me a kiss.”

As may be seen, these two women were but one. Everything Valerie did,

even her most reckless actions, her pleasures, her little sulks, were

decided on after serious deliberation between them.

Lisbeth, strangely excited by this harlot existence, advised Valerie on

every step, and pursued her course of revenge with pitiless logic. She

really adored Valerie; she had taken her to be her child, her friend,

her love; she found her docile, as Creoles are, yielding from voluptuous

indolence; she chattered with her morning after morning with more

pleasure than with Wenceslas; they could laugh together over the

mischief they plotted, and over the folly of men, and count up the

swelling interest on their respective savings.

Indeed, in this new enterprise and new affection, Lisbeth had found food

for her activity that was far more satisfying than her insane passion

for Wenceslas. The joys of gratified hatred are the fiercest and

strongest the heart can know. Love is the gold, hatred the iron of

the mine of feeling that lies buried in us. And then, Valerie was,

to Lisbeth, Beauty in all its glory--the beauty she worshiped, as we

worship what we have not, beauty far more plastic to her hand than that

of Wenceslas, who had always been cold to her and distant.

At the end of nearly three years, Lisbeth was beginning to perceive the

progress of the underground mine on which she was expending her life and

concentrating her mind. Lisbeth planned, Madame Marneffe acted. Madame

Marneffe was the axe, Lisbeth was the hand the wielded it, and that hand

was rapidly demolishing the family which was every day more odious

to her; for we can hate more and more, just as, when we love, we love

better every day.

Love and hatred are feelings that feed on themselves; but of the two,

hatred has the longer vitality. Love is restricted within limits of

power; it derives its energies from life and from lavishness. Hatred

is like death, like avarice; it is, so to speak, an active abstraction,

above beings and things.

Lisbeth, embarked on the existence that was natural to her, expended in

it all her faculties; governing, like the Jesuits, by occult influences.

The regeneration of her person was equally complete; her face was

radiant. Lisbeth dreamed of becoming Madame la Marechale Hulot.

This little scene, in which the two friends had bluntly uttered

their ideas without any circumlocution in expressing them, took place

immediately on Lisbeth’s return from market, whither she had been to

procure the materials for an elegant dinner. Marneffe, who hoped to get

Coquet’s place, was to entertain him and the virtuous Madame Coquet,

and Valerie hoped to persuade Hulot, that very evening, to consider the

head-clerk’s resignation.

Lisbeth dressed to go to the Baroness, with whom she was to dine.

“You will come back in time to make tea for us, my Betty?” said Valerie.

“I hope so.”

“You hope so--why? Have you come to sleeping with Adeline to drink her

tears while she is asleep?”

“If only I could!” said Lisbeth, laughing. “I would not refuse. She is

expiating her happiness--and I am glad, for I remember our young days.

It is my turn now. She will be in the mire, and I shall be Comtesse de

Forzheim!”

Lisbeth set out for the Rue Plumet, where she now went as to the

theatre--to indulge her emotions.

The residence Hulot had found for his wife consisted of a large,

bare entrance-room, a drawing-room, and a bed and dressing-room. The

dining-room was next the drawing-room on one side. Two servants’ rooms

and a kitchen on the third floor completed the accommodation, which was

not unworthy of a Councillor of State, high up in the War Office. The

house, the court-yard, and the stairs were extremely handsome.

The Baroness, who had to furnish her drawing-room, bed-room, and

dining-room with the relics of her splendor, had brought away the best

of the remains from the house in the Rue de l’Universite. Indeed, the

poor woman was attached to these mute witnesses of her happier life;

to her they had an almost consoling eloquence. In memory she saw her

flowers, as in the carpets she could trace patterns hardly visible now

to other eyes.

On going into the spacious anteroom, where twelve chairs, a barometer,

a large stove, and long, white cotton curtains, bordered with red,

suggested the dreadful waiting-room of a Government office, the visitor

felt oppressed, conscious at once of the isolation in which the mistress

lived. Grief, like pleasure, infects the atmosphere. A first glance into

any home is enough to tell you whether love or despair reigns there.

Adeline would be found sitting in an immense bedroom with beautiful

furniture by Jacob Desmalters, of mahogany finished in the Empire style

with ormolu, which looks even less inviting than the brass-work of Louis

XVI.! It gave one a shiver to see this lonely woman sitting on a Roman

chair, a work-table with sphinxes before her, colorless, affecting false

cheerfulness, but preserving her imperial air, as she had preserved

the blue velvet gown she always wore in the house. Her proud spirit

sustained her strength and preserved her beauty.

The Baroness, by the end of her first year of banishment to this

apartment, had gauged every depth of misfortune.

“Still, even here my Hector has made my life much handsomer than it

should be for a mere peasant,” said she to herself. “He chooses that it

should be so; his will be done! I am Baroness Hulot, the sister-in-law

of a Marshal of France. I have done nothing wrong; my two children are

settled in life; I can wait for death, wrapped in the spotless veil of

an immaculate wife and the crape of departed happiness.”

A portrait of Hulot, in the uniform of a Commissary General of the

Imperial Guard, painted in 1810 by Robert Lefebvre, hung above the

work-table, and when visitors were announced, Adeline threw into

a drawer an _Imitation of Jesus Christ_, her habitual study. This

blameless Magdalen thus heard the Voice of the Spirit in her desert.

“Mariette, my child,” said Lisbeth to the woman who opened the door,

“how is my dear Adeline to-day?”

“Oh, she looks pretty well, mademoiselle; but between you and me, if she

goes on in this way, she will kill herself,” said Mariette in a whisper.

“You really ought to persuade her to live better. Now, yesterday madame

told me to give her two sous’ worth of milk and a roll for one sou; to

get her a herring for dinner and a bit of cold veal; she had a pound

cooked to last her the week--of course, for the days when she dines

at home and alone. She will not spend more than ten sous a day for her

food. It is unreasonable. If I were to say anything about it to Monsieur

le Marechal, he might quarrel with Monsieur le Baron and leave him

nothing, whereas you, who are so kind and clever, can manage things----”

“But why do you not apply to my cousin the Baron?” said Lisbeth.

“Oh, dear mademoiselle, he has not been here for three weeks or more; in

fact, not since we last had the pleasure of seeing you! Besides, madame

has forbidden me, under threat of dismissal, ever to ask the master for

money. But as for grief!--oh, poor lady, she has been very unhappy. It

is the first time that monsieur has neglected her for so long. Every

time the bell rang she rushed to the window--but for the last five days

she has sat still in her chair. She reads. Whenever she goes out to see

Madame la Comtesse, she says, ‘Mariette, if monsieur comes in,’ says

she, ‘tell him I am at home, and send the porter to fetch me; he shall

be well paid for his trouble.’”

“Poor soul!” said Lisbeth; “it goes to my heart. I speak of her to the

Baron every day. What can I do? ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘Betty, you are right;

I am a wretch. My wife is an angel, and I am a monster! I will go

to-morrow----’ And he stays with Madame Marneffe. That woman is ruining

him, and he worships her; he lives only in her sight.--I do what I can;

if I were not there, and if I had not Mathurine to depend upon, he would

spend twice as much as he does; and as he has hardly any money in the

world, he would have blown his brains out by this time. And, I tell

you, Mariette, Adeline would die of her husband’s death, I am perfectly

certain. At any rate, I pull to make both ends meet, and prevent my

cousin from throwing too much money into the fire.”

“Yes, that is what madame says, poor soul! She knows how much she owes

you,” replied Mariette. “She said she had judged you unjustly for many

years----”

“Indeed!” said Lisbeth. “And did she say anything else?”

“No, mademoiselle. If you wish to please her, talk to her about Monsieur

le Baron; she envies you your happiness in seeing him every day.”

“Is she alone?”

“I beg pardon, no; the Marshal is with her. He comes every day, and she

always tells him she saw monsieur in the morning, but that he comes in

very late at night.”

“And is there a good dinner to-day?”

Mariette hesitated; she could not meet Lisbeth’s eye. The drawing-room

door opened, and Marshal Hulot rushed out in such haste that he bowed to

Lisbeth without looking at her, and dropped a paper. Lisbeth picked it

up and ran after him downstairs, for it was vain to hail a deaf man; but

she managed not to overtake the Marshal, and as she came up again she

furtively read the following lines written in pencil:--

“MY DEAR BROTHER,--My husband has given me the money for my

quarter’s expenses; but my daughter Hortense was in such need of

it, that I lent her the whole sum, which was scarcely enough to

set her straight. Could you lend me a few hundred francs? For I

cannot ask Hector for more; if he were to blame me, I could not

bear it.”

“My word!” thought Lisbeth, “she must be in extremities to bend her

pride to such a degree!”

Lisbeth went in. She saw tears in Adeline’s eyes, and threw her arms

round her neck.

“Adeline, my dearest, I know all,” cried Cousin Betty. “Here, the

Marshal dropped this paper--he was in such a state of mind, and

running like a greyhound.--Has that dreadful Hector given you no money

since----?”

“He gives it me quite regularly,” replied the Baroness, “but Hortense

needed it, and--”

“And you had not enough to pay for dinner to-night,” said Lisbeth,

interrupting her. “Now I understand why Mariette looked so confused when

I said something about the soup. You really are childish, Adeline; come,

take my savings.”

“Thank you, my kind cousin,” said Adeline, wiping away a tear. “This

little difficulty is only temporary, and I have provided for the future.

My expenses henceforth will be no more than two thousand four hundred

francs a year, rent inclusive, and I shall have the money.--Above all,

Betty, not a word to Hector. Is he well?”

“As strong as the Pont Neuf, and as gay as a lark; he thinks of nothing

but his charmer Valerie.”

Madame Hulot looked out at a tall silver-fir in front of the window, and

Lisbeth could not see her cousin’s eyes to read their expression.

“Did you mention that it was the day when we all dine together here?”

“Yes. But, dear me! Madame Marneffe is giving a grand dinner; she

hopes to get Monsieur Coquet to resign, and that is of the first

importance.--Now, Adeline, listen to me. You know that I am fiercely

proud as to my independence. Your husband, my dear, will certainly bring

you to ruin. I fancied I could be of use to you all by living near this

woman, but she is a creature of unfathomable depravity, and she will

make your husband promise things which will bring you all to disgrace.”

Adeline writhed like a person stabbed to the heart. “My dear Adeline, I

am sure of what I say. I feel it is my duty to enlighten you.--Well, let

us think of the future. The Marshal is an old man, but he will last a

long time yet--he draws good pay; when he dies his widow would have a

pension of six thousand francs. On such an income I would undertake to

maintain you all. Use your influence over the good man to get him to

marry me. It is not for the sake of being Madame la Marechale; I value

such nonsense at no more than I value Madame Marneffe’s conscience; but

you will all have bread. I see that Hortense must be wanting it, since

you give her yours.”

The Marshal now came in; he had made such haste, that he was mopping his

forehead with his bandana.

“I have given Mariette two thousand francs,” he whispered to his

sister-in-law.

Adeline colored to the roots of her hair. Two tears hung on the fringes

of the still long lashes, and she silently pressed the old man’s hand;

his beaming face expressed the glee of a favored lover.

“I intended to spend the money in a present for you, Adeline,” said

he. “Instead of repaying me, you must choose for yourself the thing you

would like best.”

He took Lisbeth’s hand, which she held out to him, and so bewildered was

he by his satisfaction, that he kissed it.

“That looks promising,” said Adeline to Lisbeth, smiling so far as she

was able to smile.

The younger Hulot and his wife now came in.

“Is my brother coming to dinner?” asked the Marshal sharply.

Adeline took up a pencil and wrote these words on a scrap of paper:

“I expect him; he promised this morning that he would be here; but if

he should not come, it would be because the Marshal kept him. He is

overwhelmed with business.”

And she handed him the paper. She had invented this way of conversing

with Marshal Hulot, and kept a little collection of paper scraps and a

pencil at hand on the work-table.

“I know,” said the Marshal, “he is worked very hard over the business in

Algiers.”

At this moment, Hortense and Wenceslas arrived, and the Baroness, as

she saw all her family about her, gave the Marshal a significant glance

understood by none but Lisbeth.

Happiness had greatly improved the artist, who was adored by his wife

and flattered by the world. His face had become almost round, and his

graceful figure did justice to the advantages which blood gives to men

of birth. His early fame, his important position, the delusive eulogies

that the world sheds on artists as lightly as we say, “How d’ye do?” or

discuss the weather, gave him that high sense of merit which degenerates

into sheer fatuity when talent wanes. The Cross of the Legion of Honor

was the crowning stamp of the great man he believed himself to be.

After three years of married life, Hortense was to her husband what a

dog is to its master; she watched his every movement with a look that

seemed a constant inquiry, her eyes were always on him, like those of

a miser on his treasure; her admiring abnegation was quite pathetic. In

her might be seen her mother’s spirit and teaching. Her beauty, as

great as ever, was poetically touched by the gentle shadow of concealed

melancholy.

On seeing Hortense come in, it struck Lisbeth that some long-suppressed

complaint was about to break through the thin veil of reticence.

Lisbeth, from the first days of the honeymoon, had been sure that this

couple had too small an income for so great a passion.

Hortense, as she embraced her mother, exchanged with her a few whispered

phrases, heart to heart, of which the mystery was betrayed to Lisbeth by

certain shakes of the head.

“Adeline, like me, must work for her living,” thought Cousin Betty. “She

shall be made to tell me what she will do! Those pretty fingers will

know at last, like mine, what it is to work because they must.”

At six o’clock the family party went in to dinner. A place was laid for

Hector.

“Leave it so,” said the Baroness to Mariette, “monsieur sometimes comes

in late.”

“Oh, my father will certainly come,” said Victorin to his mother. “He

promised me he would when we parted at the Chamber.”

Lisbeth, like a spider in the middle of its net, gloated over all these

countenances. Having known Victorin and Hortense from their birth, their

faces were to her like panes of glass, through which she could read

their young souls. Now, from certain stolen looks directed by Victorin

on his mother, she saw that some disaster was hanging over Adeline which

Victorin hesitated to reveal. The famous young lawyer had some covert

anxiety. His deep reverence for his mother was evident in the regret

with which he gazed at her.

Hortense was evidently absorbed in her own woes; for a fortnight past,

as Lisbeth knew, she had been suffering the first uneasiness which want

of money brings to honest souls, and to young wives on whom life

has hitherto smiled, and who conceal their alarms. Also Lisbeth had

immediately guessed that her mother had given her no money. Adeline’s

delicacy had brought her so low as to use the fallacious excuses that

necessity suggests to borrowers.

Hortense’s absence of mind, with her brother’s and the Baroness’ deep

dejection, made the dinner a melancholy meal, especially with the added

chill of the Marshal’s utter deafness. Three persons gave a little life

to the scene: Lisbeth, Celestine, and Wenceslas. Hortense’s affection

had developed the artist’s natural liveliness as a Pole, the somewhat

swaggering vivacity and noisy high spirits that characterize these

Frenchmen of the North. His frame of mind and the expression of his

face showed plainly that he believed in himself, and that poor Hortense,

faithful to her mother’s training, kept all domestic difficulties to

herself.

“You must be content, at any rate,” said Lisbeth to her young cousin, as

they rose from table, “since your mother has helped you with her money.”

“Mamma!” replied Hortense in astonishment. “Oh, poor mamma! It is for me

that she would like to make money. You do not know, Lisbeth, but I have

a horrible suspicion that she works for it in secret.”

They were crossing the large, dark drawing-room where there were

no candles, all following Mariette, who was carrying the lamp into

Adeline’s bedroom. At this instant Victorin just touched Lisbeth

and Hortense on the arm. The two women, understanding the hint, left

Wenceslas, Celestine, the Marshal, and the Baroness to go on together,

and remained standing in a window-bay.

“What is it, Victorin?” said Lisbeth. “Some disaster caused by your

father, I dare wager.”

“Yes, alas!” replied Victorin. “A money-lender named Vauvinet has bills

of my father’s to the amount of sixty thousand francs, and wants to

prosecute. I tried to speak of the matter to my father at the Chamber,

but he would not understand me; he almost avoided me. Had we better tell

my mother?”

“No, no,” said Lisbeth, “she has too many troubles; it would be a

death-blow; you must spare her. You have no idea how low she has fallen.

But for your uncle, you would have found no dinner here this evening.”

“Dear Heaven! Victorin, what wretches we are!” said Hortense to her

brother. “We ought to have guessed what Lisbeth has told us. My dinner

is choking me!”

Hortense could say no more; she covered her mouth with her handkerchief

to smother a sob, and melted into tears.

“I told the fellow Vauvinet to call on me to-morrow,” replied Victorin,

“but will he be satisfied by my guarantee on a mortgage? I doubt it.

Those men insist on ready money to sweat others on usurious terms.”

“Let us sell out of the funds!” said Lisbeth to Hortense.

“What good would that do?” replied Victorin. “It would bring fifteen or

sixteen thousand francs, and we want sixty thousand.”

“Dear cousin!” cried Hortense, embracing Lisbeth with the enthusiasm of

guilelessness.

“No, Lisbeth, keep your little fortune,” said Victorin, pressing the old

maid’s hand. “I shall see to-morrow what this man would be up to.

With my wife’s consent, I can at least hinder or postpone the

prosecution--for it would really be frightful to see my father’s honor

impugned. What would the War Minister say? My father’s salary, which

he pledged for three years, will not be released before the month of

December, so we cannot offer that as a guarantee. This Vauvinet has

renewed the bills eleven times; so you may imagine what my father must

pay in interest. We must close this pit.”

“If only Madame Marneffe would throw him over!” said Hortense bitterly.

“Heaven forbid!” exclaimed Victorin. “He would take up some one else;

and with her, at any rate, the worst outlay is over.”

What a change in children formerly so respectful, and kept so long by

their mother in blind worship of their father! They knew him now for

what he was.

“But for me,” said Lisbeth, “your father’s ruin would be more complete

than it is.”

“Come in to mamma,” said Hortense; “she is very sharp, and will suspect

something; as our kind Lisbeth says, let us keep everything from

her--let us be cheerful.”

“Victorin,” said Lisbeth, “you have no notion of what your father

will be brought to by his passion for women. Try to secure some future

resource by getting the Marshal to marry me. Say something about it this

evening; I will leave early on purpose.”

Victorin went into the bedroom.

“And you, poor little thing!” said Lisbeth in an undertone to Hortense,

“what can you do?”

“Come to dinner with us to-morrow, and we will talk it over,” answered

Hortense. “I do not know which way to turn; you know how hard life is,

and you will advise me.”

While the whole family with one consent tried to persuade the Marshal to

marry, and while Lisbeth was making her way home to the Rue Vanneau, one

of those incidents occurred which, in such women as Madame Marneffe, are

a stimulus to vice by compelling them to exert their energy and

every resource of depravity. One fact, at any rate, must however be

acknowledged: life in Paris is too full for vicious persons to do wrong

instinctively and unprovoked; vice is only a weapon of defence against

aggressors--that is all.

Madame Marneffe’s drawing-room was full of her faithful admirers, and

she had just started the whist-tables, when the footman, a pensioned

soldier recruited by the Baron, announced:

“Monsieur le Baron Montes de Montejanos.”

Valerie’s heart jumped, but she hurried to the door, exclaiming:

“My cousin!” and as she met the Brazilian, she whispered:

“You are my relation--or all is at an end between us!--And so you were

not wrecked, Henri?” she went on audibly, as she led him to the fire. “I

heard you were lost, and have mourned for you these three years.”

“How are you, my good fellow?” said Marneffe, offering his hand to the

stranger, whose get-up was indeed that of a Brazilian and a millionaire.

Monsieur le Baron Henri Montes de Montejanos, to whom the climate of the

equator had given the color and stature we expect to see in Othello on

the stage, had an alarming look of gloom, but it was a merely pictorial

illusion; for, sweet and affectionate by nature, he was predestined

to be the victim that a strong man often is to a weak woman. The scorn

expressed in his countenance, the muscular strength of his stalwart

frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form

of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that

every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that

provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with

solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots,

and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron’s

costume was a large diamond, worth about a hundred thousand francs,

which blazed like a star on a handsome blue silk cravat, tucked into a

white waistcoat in such a way as to show corners of a fabulously fine

shirt front.

His brow, bossy like that of a satyr, a sign of tenacity in his

passions, was crowned by thick jet-black hair like a virgin forest, and

under it flashed a pair of hazel eyes, so wild looking as to suggest

that before his birth his mother must have been scared by a jaguar.

This fine specimen of the Portuguese race in Brazil took his stand with

his back to the fire, in an attitude that showed familiarity with

Paris manners; holding his hat in one hand, his elbow resting on the

velvet-covered shelf, he bent over Madame Marneffe, talking to her in an

undertone, and troubling himself very little about the dreadful people

who, in his opinion, were so very much in the way.

This fashion of taking the stage, with the Brazilian’s attitude and

expression, gave, alike to Crevel and to the baron, an identical shock

of curiosity and anxiety. Both were struck by the same impression and

the same surmise. And the manoeuvre suggested in each by their very

genuine passion was so comical in its simultaneous results, that it

made everybody smile who was sharp enough to read its meaning. Crevel,

a tradesman and shopkeeper to the backbone, though a mayor of Paris,

unluckily, was a little slower to move than his rival partner, and

this enabled the Baron to read at a glance Crevel’s involuntary

self-betrayal. This was a fresh arrow to rankle in the very amorous old

man’s heart, and he resolved to have an explanation from Valerie.

“This evening,” said Crevel to himself too, as he sorted his hand, “I

must know where I stand.”

“You have a heart!” cried Marneffe. “You have just revoked.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Crevel, trying to withdraw his card.--“This

Baron seems to me very much in the way,” he went on, thinking to

himself. “If Valerie carries on with my Baron, well and good--it is a

means to my revenge, and I can get rid of him if I choose; but as for

this cousin!--He is one Baron too many; I do not mean to be made a fool

of. I will know how they are related.”

That evening, by one of those strokes of luck which come to pretty

women, Valerie was charmingly dressed. Her white bosom gleamed under a

lace tucker of rusty white, which showed off the satin texture of her

beautiful shoulders--for Parisian women, Heaven knows how, have some way

of preserving their fine flesh and remaining slender. She wore a black

velvet gown that looked as if it might at any moment slip off her

shoulders, and her hair was dressed with lace and drooping flowers. Her

arms, not fat but dimpled, were graced by deep ruffles to her sleeves.

She was like a luscious fruit coquettishly served in a handsome dish,

and making the knife-blade long to be cutting it.

“Valerie,” the Brazilian was saying in her ear, “I have come back

faithful to you. My uncle is dead; I am twice as rich as I was when I

went away. I mean to live and die in Paris, for you and with you.”

“Lower, Henri, I implore you----”

“Pooh! I mean to speak to you this evening, even if I should have to

pitch all these creatures out of window, especially as I have lost two

days in looking for you. I shall stay till the last.--I can, I suppose?”

Valerie smiled at her adopted cousin, and said:

“Remember that you are the son of my mother’s sister, who married your

father during Junot’s campaign in Portugal.”

“What, I, Montes de Montejanos, great grandson of a conquerer of Brazil!

Tell a lie?”

“Hush, lower, or we shall never meet again.”

“Pray, why?”

“Marneffe, like all dying wretches, who always take up some last whim,

has a revived passion for me----”

“That cur?” said the Brazilian, who knew his Marneffe; “I will settle

him!”

“What violence!”

“And where did you get all this splendor?” the Brazilian went on, just

struck by the magnificence of the apartment.

She began to laugh.

“Henri! what bad taste!” said she.

She had felt two burning flashes of jealousy which had moved her so

far as to make her look at the two souls in purgatory. Crevel, playing

against Baron Hulot and Monsieur Coquet, had Marneffe for his

partner. The game was even, because Crevel and the Baron were equally

absent-minded, and made blunder after blunder. Thus, in one instant, the

old men both confessed the passion which Valerie had persuaded them to

keep secret for the past three years; but she too had failed to hide

the joy in her eyes at seeing the man who had first taught her heart

to beat, the object of her first love. The rights of such happy mortals

survive as long as the woman lives over whom they have acquired them.

With these three passions at her side--one supported by the insolence of

wealth, the second by the claims of possession, and the third by youth,

strength, fortune, and priority--Madame Marneffe preserved her coolness

and presence of mind, like General Bonaparte when, at the siege of

Mantua, he had to fight two armies, and at the same time maintain the

blockade.

Jealousy, distorting Hulot’s face, made him look as terrible as the late

Marshal Montcornet leading a cavalry charge against a Russian square.

Being such a handsome man, he had never known any ground for jealousy,

any more than Murat knew what it was to be afraid. He had always felt

sure that he should triumph. His rebuff by Josepha, the first he

had ever met, he ascribed to her love of money; “he was conquered by

millions, and not by a changeling,” he would say when speaking of the

Duc d’Herouville. And now, in one instant, the poison and delirium

that the mad passion sheds in a flood had rushed to his heart. He kept

turning from the whist-table towards the fireplace with an action _a la_

Mirabeau; and as he laid down his cards to cast a challenging glance

at the Brazilian and Valerie, the rest of the company felt the sort of

alarm mingled with curiosity that is caused by evident violence ready

to break out at any moment. The sham cousin stared at Hulot as he might

have looked at some big China mandarin.

This state of things could not last; it was bound to end in some

tremendous outbreak. Marneffe was as much afraid of Hulot as Crevel was

of Marneffe, for he was anxious not to die a mere clerk. Men marked for

death believe in life as galley-slaves believe in liberty; this man was

bent on being a first-class clerk at any cost. Thoroughly frightened by

the pantomime of the Baron and Crevel, he rose, said a few words in

his wife’s ear, and then, to the surprise of all, Valerie went into the

adjoining bedroom with the Brazilian and her husband.

“Did Madame Marneffe ever speak to you of this cousin of hers?” said

Crevel to Hulot.

“Never!” replied the Baron, getting up. “That is enough for this

evening,” said he. “I have lost two louis--there they are.”

He threw the two gold pieces on the table, and seated himself on the

sofa with a look which everybody else took as a hint to go. Monsieur and

Madame Coquet, after exchanging a few words, left the room, and Claude

Vignon, in despair, followed their example. These two departures were

a hint to less intelligent persons, who now found that they were not

wanted. The Baron and Crevel were left together, and spoke never a word.

Hulot, at last, ignoring Crevel, went on tiptoe to listen at the bedroom

door; but he bounded back with a prodigious jump, for Marneffe opened

the door and appeared with a calm face, astonished to find only the two

men.

“And the tea?” said he.

“Where is Valerie?” replied the Baron in a rage.

“My wife,” said Marneffe. “She is gone upstairs to speak to mademoiselle

your cousin. She will come down directly.”

“And why has she deserted us for that stupid creature?”

“Well,” said Marneffe, “Mademoiselle Lisbeth came back from dining with

the Baroness with an attack of indigestion and Mathurine asked Valerie

for some tea for her, so my wife went up to see what was the matter.”

“And _her_ cousin?”

“He is gone.”

“Do you really believe that?” said the Baron.

“I have seen him to his carriage,” replied Marneffe, with a hideous

smirk.

The wheels of a departing carriage were audible in the street. The

Baron, counting Marneffe for nothing, went upstairs to Lisbeth. An idea

flashed through him such as the heart sends to the brain when it is on

fire with jealousy. Marneffe’s baseness was so well known to him, that

he could imagine the most degrading connivance between husband and wife.

“What has become of all the ladies and gentlemen?” said Marneffe,

finding himself alone with Crevel.

“When the sun goes to bed, the cocks and hens follow suit,” said Crevel.

“Madame Marneffe disappeared, and her adorers departed. Will you play a

game of piquet?” added Crevel, who meant to remain.

He too believed that the Brazilian was in the house.

Monsieur Marneffe agreed. The Mayor was a match for the Baron. Simply

by playing cards with the husband he could stay on indefinitely;

and Marneffe, since the suppression of the public tables, was quite

satisfied with the more limited opportunities of private play.

Baron Hulot went quickly up to Lisbeth’s apartment, but the door was

locked, and the usual inquiries through the door took up time enough to

enable the two light-handed and cunning women to arrange the scene of an

attack of indigestion with the accessories of tea. Lisbeth was in such

pain that Valerie was very much alarmed, and consequently hardly paid

any heed to the Baron’s furious entrance. Indisposition is one of the

screens most often placed by women to ward off a quarrel. Hulot peeped

about, here and there, but could see no spot in Cousin Betty’s room

where a Brazilian might lie hidden.

“Your indigestion does honor to my wife’s dinner, Lisbeth,” said he,

scrutinizing her, for Lisbeth was perfectly well, trying to imitate the

hiccough of spasmodic indigestion as she drank her tea.

“How lucky it is that dear Betty should be living under my roof!” said

Madame Marneffe. “But for me, the poor thing would have died.”

“You look as if you only half believed it,” added Lisbeth, turning to

the Baron, “and that would be a shame----”

“Why?” asked the Baron. “Do you know the purpose of my visit?”

And he leered at the door of a dressing-closet from which the key had

been withdrawn.

“Are you talking Greek?” said Madame Marneffe, with an appealing look of

misprized tenderness and devotedness.

“But it is all through you, my dear cousin; yes, it is your doing that I

am in such a state,” said Lisbeth vehemently.

This speech diverted the Baron’s attention; he looked at the old maid

with the greatest astonishment.

“You know that I am devoted to you,” said Lisbeth. “I am here, that says

everything. I am wearing out the last shreds of my strength in watching

over your interests, since they are one with our dear Valerie’s. Her

house costs one-tenth of what any other does that is kept on the same

scale. But for me, Cousin, instead of two thousand francs a month, you

would be obliged to spend three or four thousand.”

“I know all that,” replied the Baron out of patience; “you are our

protectress in many ways,” he added, turning to Madame Marneffe and

putting his arm round her neck.--“Is not she, my pretty sweet?”

“On my honor,” exclaimed Valerie, “I believe you are gone mad!”

“Well, you cannot doubt my attachment,” said Lisbeth. “But I am also

very fond of my cousin Adeline, and I found her in tears. She has not

seen you for a month. Now that is really too bad; you leave my poor

Adeline without a sou. Your daughter Hortense almost died of it when

she was told that it is thanks to your brother that we had any dinner at

all. There was not even bread in your house this day.

“Adeline is heroically resolved to keep her sufferings to herself. She

said to me, ‘I will do as you have done!’ The speech went to my heart;

and after dinner, as I thought of what my cousin had been in 1811,

and of what she is in 1841--thirty years after--I had a violent

indigestion.--I fancied I should get over it; but when I got home, I

thought I was dying--”

“You see, Valerie, to what my adoration of you has brought me! To

crime--domestic crime!”

“Oh! I was wise never to marry!” cried Lisbeth, with savage joy. “You

are a kind, good man; Adeline is a perfect angel;--and this is the

reward of her blind devotion.”

“An elderly angel!” said Madame Marneffe softly, as she looked half

tenderly, half mockingly, at her Hector, who was gazing at her as an

examining judge gazes at the accused.

“My poor wife!” said Hulot. “For more than nine months I have given her

no money, though I find it for you, Valerie; but at what a cost! No

one else will ever love you so, and what torments you inflict on me in

return!”

“Torments?” she echoed. “Then what do you call happiness?”

“I do not yet know on what terms you have been with this so-called

cousin whom you never mentioned to me,” said the Baron, paying no heed

to Valerie’s interjection. “But when he came in I felt as if a penknife

had been stuck into my heart. Blinded I may be, but I am not blind. I

could read his eyes, and yours. In short, from under that ape’s eyelids

there flashed sparks that he flung at you--and your eyes!--Oh! you have

never looked at me so, never! As to this mystery, Valerie, it shall all

be cleared up. You are the only woman who ever made me know the meaning

of jealousy, so you need not be surprised by what I say.--But another

mystery which has rent its cloud, and it seems to me infamous----”

“Go on, go on,” said Valerie.

“It is that Crevel, that square lump of flesh and stupidity, is in love

with you, and that you accept his attentions with so good a grace that

the idiot flaunts his passion before everybody.”

“Only three! Can you discover no more?” asked Madame Marneffe.

“There may be more!” retorted the Baron.

“If Monsieur Crevel is in love with me, he is in his rights as a man

after all; if I favored his passion, that would indeed be the act of

a coquette, or of a woman who would leave much to be desired on your

part.--Well, love me as you find me, or let me alone. If you restore

me to freedom, neither you nor Monsieur Crevel will ever enter my doors

again. But I will take up with my cousin, just to keep my hand in, in

those charming habits you suppose me to indulge.--Good-bye, Monsieur le

Baron Hulot.”

She rose, but the Baron took her by the arm and made her sit down

again. The old man could not do without Valerie. She had become more

imperatively indispensable to him than the necessaries of life; he

preferred remaining in uncertainty to having any proof of Valerie’s

infidelity.

“My dearest Valerie,” said he, “do you not see how miserable I am? I

only ask you to justify yourself. Give me sufficient reasons--”

“Well, go downstairs and wait for me; for I suppose you do not wish to

look on at the various ceremonies required by your cousin’s state.”

Hulot slowly turned away.

“You old profligate,” cried Lisbeth, “you have not even asked me how

your children are? What are you going to do for Adeline? I, at any rate,

will take her my savings to-morrow.”

“You owe your wife white bread to eat at least,” said Madame Marneffe,

smiling.

The Baron, without taking offence at Lisbeth’s tone, as despotic as

Josepha’s, got out of the room, only too glad to escape so importunate a

question.

The door bolted once more, the Brazilian came out of the

dressing-closet, where he had been waiting, and he appeared with his

eyes full of tears, in a really pitiable condition. Montes had heard

everything.

“Henri, you must have ceased to love me, I know it!” said Madame

Marneffe, hiding her face in her handkerchief and bursting into tears.

It was the outcry of real affection. The cry of a woman’s despair is

so convincing that it wins the forgiveness that lurks at the bottom of

every lover’s heart--when she is young and pretty, and wears a gown so

low that she could slip out at the top and stand in the garb of Eve.

“But why, if you love me, do you not leave everything for my sake?”

asked the Brazilian.

This South American born, being logical, as men are who have lived the

life of nature, at once resumed the conversation at the point where it

had been broken off, putting his arm round Valerie’s waist.

“Why?” she repeated, gazing up at Henri, whom she subjugated at once by

a look charged with passion, “why, my dear boy, I am married; we are in

Paris, not in the savannah, the pampas, the backwoods of America.--My

dear Henri, my first and only love, listen to me. That husband of mine,

a second clerk in the War Office, is bent on being a head-clerk and

officer of the Legion of Honor; can I help his being ambitious? Now for

the very reason that made him leave us our liberty--nearly four years

ago, do you remember, you bad boy?--he now abandons me to Monsieur

Hulot. I cannot get rid of that dreadful official, who snorts like a

grampus, who has fins in his nostrils, who is sixty-three years old, and

who had grown ten years older by dint of trying to be young; who is so

odious to me that the very day when Marneffe is promoted, and gets his

Cross of the Legion of Honor----”

“How much more will your husband get then?”

“A thousand crowns.”

“I will pay him as much in an annuity,” said Baron Montes. “We will

leave Paris and go----”

“Where?” said Valerie, with one of the pretty sneers by which a woman

makes fun of a man she is sure of. “Paris is the only place where we can

live happy. I care too much for your love to risk seeing it die out in

a _tete-a-tete_ in the wilderness. Listen, Henri, you are the only man

I care for in the whole world. Write that down clearly in your tiger’s

brain.”

For women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he

is a lion with a will of iron.

“Now, attend to me. Monsieur Marneffe has not five years to live; he is

rotten to the marrow of his bones. He spends seven months of the twelve

in swallowing drugs and decoctions; he lives wrapped in flannel; in

short, as the doctor says, he lives under the scythe, and may be cut off

at any moment. An illness that would not harm another man would be fatal

to him; his blood is corrupt, his life undermined at the root. For five

years I have never allowed him to kiss me--he is poisonous! Some day,

and the day is not far off, I shall be a widow. Well, then, I--who have

already had an offer from a man with sixty thousand francs a year, I who

am as completely mistress of that man as I am of this lump of sugar--I

swear to you that if you were as poor as Hulot and as foul as Marneffe,

if you beat me even, still you are the only man I will have for a

husband, the only man I love, or whose name I will ever bear. And I am

ready to give any pledge of my love that you may require.”

“Well, then, to-night----”

“But you, son of the South, my splendid jaguar, come expressly for me

from the virgin forest of Brazil,” said she, taking his hand and kissing

and fondling it, “I have some consideration for the poor creature you

mean to make your wife.--Shall I be your wife, Henri?”

“Yes,” said the Brazilian, overpowered by this unbridled volubility of

passion. And he knelt at her feet.

“Well, then, Henri,” said Valerie, taking his two hands and looking

straight into his eyes, “swear to me now, in the presence of Lisbeth, my

best and only friend, my sister--that you will make me your wife at the

end of my year’s widowhood.”

“I swear it.”

“That is not enough. Swear by your mother’s ashes and eternal salvation,

swear by the Virgin Mary and by all your hopes as a Catholic!”

Valerie knew that the Brazilian would keep that oath even if she should

have fallen into the foulest social slough.

The Baron solemnly swore it, his nose almost touching Valerie’s white

bosom, and his eyes spellbound. He was drunk, drunk as a man is when he

sees the woman he loves once more, after a sea voyage of a hundred and

twenty days.

“Good. Now be quite easy. And in Madame Marneffe respect the future

Baroness de Montejanos. You are not to spend a sou upon me; I forbid

it.--Stay here in the outer room; sleep on the sofa. I myself will come

and tell you when you may move.--We will breakfast to-morrow morning,

and you can be leaving at about one o’clock as if you had come to call

at noon. There is nothing to fear; the gate-keepers love me as much as

if they were my father and mother.--Now I must go down and make tea.”

She beckoned to Lisbeth, who followed her out on to the landing. There

Valerie whispered in the old maid’s ear:

“My darkie has come back too soon. I shall die if I cannot avenge you on

Hortense!”

“Make your mind easy, my pretty little devil!” said Lisbeth, kissing her

forehead. “Love and Revenge on the same track will never lose the game.

Hortense expects me to-morrow; she is in beggary. For a thousand francs

you may have a thousand kisses from Wenceslas.”

On leaving Valerie, Hulot had gone down to the porter’s lodge and made a

sudden invasion there.

“Madame Olivier?”

On hearing the imperious tone of this address, and seeing the action

by which the Baron emphasized it, Madame Olivier came out into the

courtyard as far as the Baron led her.

“You know that if any one can help your son to a connection by and by,

it is I; it is owing to me that he is already third clerk in a notary’s

office, and is finishing his studies.”

“Yes, Monsieur le Baron; and indeed, sir, you may depend on our

gratitude. Not a day passes that I do not pray to God for Monsieur le

Baron’s happiness.”

“Not so many words, my good woman,” said Hulot, “but deeds----”

“What can I do, sir?” asked Madame Olivier.

“A man came here to-night in a carriage. Do you know him?”

Madame Olivier had recognized Montes well enough. How could she have

forgotten him? In the Rue du Doyenne the Brazilian had always slipped a

five-franc piece into her hand as he went out in the morning, rather too

early. If the Baron had applied to Monsieur Olivier, he would perhaps

have learned all he wanted to know. But Olivier was in bed. In the

lower orders the woman is not merely the superior of the man--she almost

always has the upper hand. Madame Olivier had long since made up her

mind as to which side to take in case of a collision between her two

benefactors; she regarded Madame Marneffe as the stronger power.

“Do I know him?” she repeated. “No, indeed, no. I never saw him before!”

“What! Did Madame Marneffe’s cousin never go to see her when she was

living in the Rue du Doyenne?”

“Oh! Was it her cousin?” cried Madame Olivier. “I dare say he did come,

but I did not know him again. Next time, sir, I will look at him----”

“He will be coming out,” said Hulot, hastily interrupting Madame

Olivier.

“He has left,” said Madame Olivier, understanding the situation. “The

carriage is gone.”

“Did you see him go?”

“As plainly as I see you. He told his servant to drive to the Embassy.”

This audacious statement wrung a sigh of relief from the Baron; he took

Madame Olivier’s hand and squeezed it.

“Thank you, my good Madame Olivier. But that is not all.--Monsieur

Crevel?”

“Monsieur Crevel? What can you mean, sir? I do not understand,” said

Madame Olivier.

“Listen to me. He is Madame Marneffe’s lover----”

“Impossible, Monsieur le Baron; impossible,” said she, clasping her

hands.

“He is Madame Marneffe’s lover,” the Baron repeated very positively.

“How do they manage it? I don’t know; but I mean to know, and you are to

find out. If you can put me on the tracks of this intrigue, your son is

a notary.”

“Don’t you fret yourself so, Monsieur le Baron,” said Madame Olivier.

“Madame cares for you, and for no one but you; her maid knows that for

true, and we say, between her and me, that you are the luckiest man in

this world--for you know what madame is.--Just perfection!

“She gets up at ten every morning; then she breakfasts. Well and good.

After that she takes an hour or so to dress; that carries her on till

two; then she goes for a walk in the Tuileries in the sight of all

men, and she is always in by four to be ready for you. She lives like

clockwork. She keeps no secrets from her maid, and Reine keeps nothing

from me, you may be sure. Reine can’t if she would--along of my son, for

she is very sweet upon him. So, you see, if madame had any intimacy with

Monsieur Crevel, we should be bound to know it.”