“MONSIEUR LE COMTE,--
“The letter I enclose will sufficiently account for the
determination I have come to.
“When you read this, I shall have left your house and have found
refuge with my mother, taking our child with me.
“Do not imagine that I shall retrace my steps. Do not imagine that
I am acting with the rash haste of youth, without reflection, with
the anger of offended affection; you will be greatly mistaken.
“I have been thinking very deeply during the last fortnight of
life, of love, of our marriage, of our duties to each other. I
have known the perfect devotion of my mother; she has told me all
her sorrows! She has been heroical--every day for twenty-three
years. But I have not the strength to imitate her, not because I
love you less than she loves my father, but for reasons of spirit
and nature. Our home would be a hell; I might lose my head so far
as to disgrace you--disgrace myself and our child.
“I refuse to be a Madame Marneffe; once launched on such a course,
a woman of my temper might not, perhaps, be able to stop. I am,
unfortunately for myself, a Hulot, not a Fischer.
“Alone, and absent from the scene of your dissipations, I am sure
of myself, especially with my child to occupy me, and by the side
of a strong and noble mother, whose life cannot fail to influence
the vehement impetuousness of my feelings. There, I can be a good
mother, bring our boy up well, and live. Under your roof the wife
would oust the mother; and constant contention would sour my
temper.
“I can accept a death-blow, but I will not endure for
twenty-five years, like my mother. If, at the end of three years of
perfect, unwavering love, you can be unfaithful to me with your
father-in-law’s mistress, what rivals may I expect to have in later
years? Indeed, monsieur, you have begun your career of profligacy
much earlier than my father did, the life of dissipation, which is
a disgrace to the father of a family, which undermines the respect
of his children, and which ends in shame and despair.
“I am not unforgiving. Unrelenting feelings do not beseem erring
creatures living under the eye of God. If you win fame and fortune
by sustained work, if you have nothing to do with courtesans and
ignoble, defiling ways, you will find me still a wife worthy of
you.
“I believe you to be too much a gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, to
have recourse to the law. You will respect my wishes, and leave me
under my mother’s roof. Above all, never let me see you there. I
have left all the money lent to you by that odious woman.--
Farewell.
“HORTENSE HULOT.”
This letter was written in anguish. Hortense abandoned herself to the
tears, the outcries of murdered love. She laid down her pen and took
it up again, to express as simply as possible all that passion commonly
proclaims in this sort of testamentary letter. Her heart went forth in
exclamations, wailing and weeping; but reason dictated the words.
Informed by Louise that all was ready, the young wife slowly went round
the little garden, through the bedroom and drawing-room, looking at
everything for the last time. Then she earnestly enjoined the cook to
take the greatest care for her master’s comfort, promising to reward
her handsomely if she would be honest. At last she got into the hackney
coach to drive to her mother’s house, her heart quite broken, crying so
much as to distress the maid, and covering little Wenceslas with kisses,
which betrayed her still unfailing love for his father.
The Baroness knew already from Lisbeth that the father-in-law was
largely to blame for the son-in-law’s fault; nor was she surprised to
see her daughter, whose conduct she approved, and she consented to give
her shelter. Adeline, perceiving that her own gentleness and patience
had never checked Hector, for whom her respect was indeed fast
diminishing, thought her daughter very right to adopt another course.
In three weeks the poor mother had suffered two wounds of which the pain
was greater than any ill-fortune she had hitherto endured. The Baron
had placed Victorin and his wife in great difficulties; and then, by
Lisbeth’s account, he was the cause of his son-in-law’s misconduct, and
had corrupted Wenceslas. The dignity of the father of the family, so
long upheld by her really foolish self-sacrifice, was now overthrown.
Though they did not regret the money the young Hulots were full alike of
doubts and uneasiness as regarded the Baron. This sentiment, which was
evidence enough, distressed the Baroness; she foresaw a break-up of the
family tie.
Hortense was accommodated in the dining-room, arranged as a bedroom
with the help of the Marshal’s money, and the anteroom became the
dining-room, as it is in many apartments.
When Wenceslas returned home and had read the two letters, he felt
a kind of gladness mingled with regret. Kept so constantly under his
wife’s eye, so to speak, he had inwardly rebelled against this fresh
thraldom, _a la_ Lisbeth. Full fed with love for three years past, he
too had been reflecting during the last fortnight; and he found a family
heavy on his hands. He had just been congratulated by Stidmann on the
passion he had inspired in Valerie; for Stidmann, with an under-thought
that was not unnatural, saw that he might flatter the husband’s vanity
in the hope of consoling the victim. And Wenceslas was glad to be able
to return to Madame Marneffe.
Still, he remembered the pure and unsullied happiness he had known,
the perfections of his wife, her judgment, her innocent and guileless
affection,--and he regretted her acutely. He thought of going at once to
his mother-in-law’s to crave forgiveness; but, in fact, like Hulot and
Crevel, he went to Madame Marneffe, to whom he carried his wife’s
letter to show her what a disaster she had caused, and to discount
his misfortune, so to speak, by claiming in return the pleasures his
mistress could give him.
He found Crevel with Valerie. The mayor, puffed up with pride, marched
up and down the room, agitated by a storm of feelings. He put himself
into position as if he were about to speak, but he dared not. His
countenance was beaming, and he went now and again to the window, where
he drummed on the pane with his fingers. He kept looking at Valerie with
a glance of tender pathos. Happily for him, Lisbeth presently came in.
“Cousin Betty,” he said in her ear, “have you heard the news? I am a
father! It seems to me I love my poor Celestine the less.--Oh! what
a thing it is to have a child by the woman one idolizes! It is the
fatherhood of the heart added to that of the flesh! I say--tell Valerie
that I will work for that child--it shall be rich. She tells me she has
some reason for believing that it will be a boy! If it is a boy, I shall
insist on his being called Crevel. I will consult my notary about it.”
“I know how much she loves you,” said Lisbeth. “But for her sake in the
future, and for your own, control yourself. Do not rub your hands every
five minutes.”
While Lisbeth was speaking aside on this wise to Crevel, Valerie had
asked Wenceslas to give her back her letter, and she was saying things
that dispelled all his griefs.
“So now you are free, my dear,” said she. “Ought any great artist to
marry? You live only by fancy and freedom! There, I shall love you so
much, beloved poet, that you shall never regret your wife. At the
same time, if, like so many people, you want to keep up appearances, I
undertake to bring Hortense back to you in a very short time.”
“Oh, if only that were possible!”
“I am certain of it,” said Valerie, nettled. “Your poor father-in-law
is a man who is in every way utterly done for; who wants to appear as
though he could be loved, out of conceit, and to make the world believe
that he has a mistress; and he is so excessively vain on this point,
that I can do what I please with him. The Baroness is still so
devoted to her old Hector--I always feel as if I were talking of the
_Iliad_--that these two old folks will contrive to patch up matters
between you and Hortense. Only, if you want to avoid storms at home for
the future, do not leave me for three weeks without coming to see your
mistress--I was dying of it. My dear boy, some consideration is due from
a gentleman to a woman he has so deeply compromised, especially when, as
in my case, she has to be very careful of her reputation.
“Stay to dinner, my darling--and remember that I must treat you with all
the more apparent coldness because you are guilty of this too obvious
mishap.”
Baron Montes was presently announced; Valerie rose and hurried forward
to meet him; she spoke a few sentences in his ear, enjoining on him the
same reserve as she had impressed on Wenceslas; the Brazilian assumed
a diplomatic reticence suitable to the great news which filled him with
delight, for he, at any rate was sure of his paternity.
Thanks to these tactics, based on the vanity of the man in the lover
stage of his existence, Valerie sat down to table with four men, all
pleased and eager to please, all charmed, and each believing himself
adored; called by Marneffe, who included himself, in speaking to
Lisbeth, the five Fathers of the Church.
Baron Hulot alone at first showed an anxious countenance, and this was
why. Just as he was leaving the office, the head of the staff of clerks
had come to his private room--a General with whom he had served for
thirty years--and Hulot had spoken to him as to appointing Marneffe to
Coquet’s place, Coquet having consented to retire.
“My dear fellow,” said he, “I would not ask this favor of the Prince
without our having agreed on the matter, and knowing that you approved.”
“My good friend,” replied the other, “you must allow me to observe that,
for your own sake, you should not insist on this nomination. I have
already told you my opinion. There would be a scandal in the office,
where there is a great deal too much talk already about you and Madame
Marneffe. This, of course, is between ourselves. I have no wish to touch
you on a sensitive spot, or disoblige you in any way, and I will prove
it. If you are determined to get Monsieur Coquet’s place, and he will
really be a loss in the War Office, for he has been here since 1809, I
will go into the country for a fortnight, so as to leave the field open
between you and the Marshal, who loves you as a son. Then I shall
take neither part, and shall have nothing on my conscience as an
administrator.”
“Thank you very much,” said Hulot. “I will reflect on what you have
said.”
“In allowing myself to say so much, my dear friend, it is because your
personal interest is far more deeply implicated than any concern or
vanity of mine. In the first place, the matter lies entirely with the
Marshal. And then, my good fellow, we are blamed for so many things,
that one more or less! We are not at the maiden stage in our experience
of fault-finding. Under the Restoration, men were put in simply to give
them places, without any regard for the office.--We are old friends----”
“Yes,” the Baron put in; “and it is in order not to impair our old and
valued friendship that I--”
“Well, well,” said the departmental manager, seeing Hulot’s face clouded
with embarrassment, “I will take myself off, old fellow.--But I warn
you! you have enemies--that is to say, men who covet your splendid
appointment, and you have but one anchor out. Now if, like me, you were
a Deputy, you would have nothing to fear; so mind what you are about.”
This speech, in the most friendly spirit, made a deep impression on the
Councillor of State.
“But, after all, Roger, what is it that is wrong? Do not make any
mysteries with me.”
The individual addressed as Roger looked at Hulot, took his hand, and
pressed it.
“We are such old friends, that I am bound to give you warning. If you
want to keep your place, you must make a bed for yourself, and instead
of asking the Marshal to give Coquet’s place to Marneffe, in your place
I would beg him to use his influence to reserve a seat for me on the
General Council of State; there you may die in peace, and, like the
beaver, abandon all else to the pursuers.”
“What, do you think the Marshal would forget--”
“The Marshal has already taken your part so warmly at a General Meeting
of the Ministers, that you will not now be turned out; but it was
seriously discussed! So give them no excuse. I can say no more. At this
moment you may make your own terms; you may sit on the Council of State
and be made a Peer of the Chamber. If you delay too long, if you give
any one a hold against you, I can answer for nothing.--Now, am I to go?”
“Wait a little. I will see the Marshal,” replied Hulot, “and I will send
my brother to see which way the wind blows at headquarters.”
The humor in which the Baron came back to Madame Marneffe’s may be
imagined; he had almost forgotten his fatherhood, for Roger had taken
the part of a true and kind friend in explaining the position. At
the same time Valerie’s influence was so great that, by the middle
of dinner, the Baron was tuned up to the pitch, and was all the more
cheerful for having unwonted anxieties to conceal; but the hapless
man was not yet aware that in the course of that evening he would find
himself in a cleft stick, between his happiness and the danger pointed
out by his friend--compelled, in short, to choose between Madame
Marneffe and his official position.
At eleven o’clock, when the evening was at its gayest, for the room was
full of company, Valerie drew Hector into a corner of her sofa.
“My dear old boy,” said she, “your daughter is so annoyed at knowing
that Wenceslas comes here, that she has left him ‘planted.’ Hortense is
wrong-headed. Ask Wenceslas to show you the letter the little fool has
written to him.
“This division of two lovers, of which I am reputed to be the cause, may
do me the greatest harm, for this is how virtuous women undermine each
other. It is disgraceful to pose as a victim in order to cast the blame
on a woman whose only crime is that she keeps a pleasant house. If
you love me, you will clear my character by reconciling the sweet
turtle-doves.
“I do not in the least care about your son-in-law’s visits; you brought
him here--take him away again! If you have any authority in your family,
it seems to me that you may very well insist on your wife’s patching up
this squabble. Tell the worthy old lady from me, that if I am unjustly
charged with having caused a young couple to quarrel, with upsetting the
unity of a family, and annexing both the father and the son-in-law, I
will deserve my reputation by annoying them in my own way! Why, here is
Lisbeth talking of throwing me over! She prefers to stick to her family,
and I cannot blame her for it. She will throw me over, says she, unless
the young people make friends again. A pretty state of things! Our
expenses here will be trebled!”
“Oh, as for that!” said the Baron, on hearing of his daughter’s strong
measures, “I will have no nonsense of that kind.”
“Very well,” said Valerie. “And now for the next thing.--What about
Coquet’s place?”
“That,” said Hector, looking away, “is more difficult, not to say
impossible.”
“Impossible, my dear Hector?” said Madame Marneffe in the Baron’s ear.
“But you do not know to what lengths Marneffe will go. I am completely
in his power; he is immoral for his own gratification, like most men,
but he is excessively vindictive, like all weak and impotent natures. In
the position to which you have reduced me, I am in his power. I am
bound to be on terms with him for a few days, and he is quite capable of
refusing to leave my room any more.”
Hulot started with horror.
“He would leave me alone on condition of being head-clerk. It is
abominable--but logical.”
“Valerie, do you love me?”
“In the state in which I am, my dear, the question is the meanest
insult.”
“Well, then--if I were to attempt, merely to attempt, to ask the Prince
for a place for Marneffe, I should be done for, and Marneffe would be
turned out.”
“I thought that you and the Prince were such intimate friends.”
“We are, and he has amply proved it; but, my child, there is authority
above the Marshal’s--for instance, the whole Council of Ministers. With
time and a little tacking, we shall get there. But, to succeed, I must
wait till the moment when some service is required of me. Then I can say
one good turn deserves another--”
“If I tell Marneffe this tale, my poor Hector, he will play us some
mean trick. You must tell him yourself that he has to wait. I will not
undertake to do so. Oh! I know what my fate would be. He knows how to
punish me! He will henceforth share my room----
“Do not forget to settle the twelve hundred francs a year on the little
one!”
Hulot, seeing his pleasures in danger, took Monsieur Marneffe aside, and
for the first time derogated from the haughty tone he had always
assumed towards him, so greatly was he horrified by the thought of that
half-dead creature in his pretty young wife’s bedroom.
“Marneffe, my dear fellow,” said he, “I have been talking of you to-day.
But you cannot be promoted to the first class just yet. We must have
time.”
“I will be, Monsieur le Baron,” said Marneffe shortly.
“But, my dear fellow--”
“I _will_ be, Monsieur le Baron,” Marneffe coldly repeated, looking
alternately at the Baron and at Valerie. “You have placed my wife in a
position that necessitates her making up her differences with me, and I
mean to keep her; for, _my dear fellow_, she is a charming creature,” he
added, with crushing irony. “I am master here--more than you are at the
War Office.”
The Baron felt one of those pangs of fury which have the effect, in the
heart, of a fit of raging toothache, and he could hardly conceal the
tears in his eyes.
During this little scene, Valerie had been explaining Marneffe’s
imaginary determination to Montes, and thus had rid herself of him for a
time.
Of her four adherents, Crevel alone was exempted from the rule--Crevel,
the master of the little “bijou” apartment; and he displayed on his
countenance an air of really insolent beatitude, notwithstanding
the wordless reproofs administered by Valerie in frowns and meaning
grimaces. His triumphant paternity beamed in every feature.
When Valerie was whispering a word of correction in his ear, he snatched
her hand, and put in:
“To-morrow, my Duchess, you shall have your own little house! The papers
are to be signed to-morrow.”
“And the furniture?” said she, with a smile.
“I have a thousand shares in the Versailles _rive gauche_ railway. I
bought them at twenty-five, and they will go up to three hundred in
consequence of the amalgamation of the two lines, which is a secret told
to me. You shall have furniture fit for a queen. But then you will be
mine alone henceforth?”
“Yes, burly Maire,” said this middle-class Madame de Merteuil. “But
behave yourself; respect the future Madame Crevel.”
“My dear cousin,” Lisbeth was saying to the Baron, “I shall go to
see Adeline early to-morrow; for, as you must see, I cannot, with any
decency, remain here. I will go and keep house for your brother the
Marshal.”
“I am going home this evening,” said Hulot.
“Very well, you will see me at breakfast to-morrow,” said Lisbeth,
smiling.
She understood that her presence would be necessary at the family scene
that would take place on the morrow. And the very first thing in the
morning she went to see Victorin and to tell him that Hortense and
Wenceslas had parted.
When the Baron went home at half-past ten, Mariette and Louise, who had
had a hard day, were locking up the apartment. Hulot had not to ring.
Very much put out at this compulsory virtue, the husband went straight
to his wife’s room, and through the half-open door he saw her kneeling
before her Crucifix, absorbed in prayer, in one of those attitudes
which make the fortune of the painter or the sculptor who is so happy
to invent and then to express them. Adeline, carried away by her
enthusiasm, was praying aloud:
“O God, have mercy and enlighten him!”
The Baroness was praying for her Hector.
At this sight, so unlike what he had just left, and on hearing this
petition founded on the events of the day, the Baron heaved a sigh of
deep emotion. Adeline looked round, her face drowned in tears. She was
so convinced that her prayer had been heard, that, with one spring, she
threw her arms round Hector with the impetuosity of happy affection.
Adeline had given up all a wife’s instincts; sorrow had effaced even the
memory of them. No feeling survived in her but those of motherhood,
of the family honor, and the pure attachment of a Christian wife for a
husband who has gone astray--the saintly tenderness which survives all
else in a woman’s soul.
“Hector!” she said, “are you come back to us? Has God taken pity on our
family?”
“Dear Adeline,” replied the Baron, coming in and seating his wife by his
side on a couch, “you are the saintliest creature I ever knew; I have
long known myself to be unworthy of you.”
“You would have very little to do, my dear,” said she, holding Hulot’s
hand and trembling so violently that it was as though she had a palsy,
“very little to set things in order--”
She dared not proceed; she felt that every word would be a reproof,
and she did not wish to mar the happiness with which this meeting was
inundating her soul.
“It is Hortense who has brought me here,” said Hulot. “That child may
do us far more harm by her hasty proceeding than my absurd passion for
Valerie has ever done. But we will discuss all this to-morrow morning.
Hortense is asleep, Mariette tells me; we will not disturb her.”
“Yes,” said Madame Hulot, suddenly plunged into the depths of grief.
She understood that the Baron’s return was prompted not so much by the
wish to see his family as by some ulterior interest.
“Leave her in peace till to-morrow,” said the mother. “The poor child is
in a deplorable condition; she has been crying all day.”
At nine the next morning, the Baron, awaiting his daughter, whom he had
sent for, was pacing the large, deserted drawing-room, trying to find
arguments by which to conquer the most difficult form of obstinacy
there is to deal with--that of a young wife, offended and implacable, as
blameless youth ever is, in its ignorance of the disgraceful compromises
of the world, of its passions and interests.
“Here I am, papa,” said Hortense in a tremulous voice, and looking pale
from her miseries.
Hulot, sitting down, took his daughter round the waist, and drew her
down to sit on his knee.
“Well, my child,” said he, kissing her forehead, “so there are troubles
at home, and you have been hasty and headstrong? That is not like a
well-bred child. My Hortense ought not to have taken such a decisive
step as that of leaving her house and deserting her husband on her own
account, and without consulting her parents. If my darling girl had come
to see her kind and admirable mother, she would not have given me
this cruel pain I feel!--You do not know the world; it is malignantly
spiteful. People will perhaps say that your husband sent you back to
your parents. Children brought up as you were, on your mother’s
lap, remain artless; maidenly passion like yours for Wenceslas,
unfortunately, makes no allowances; it acts on every impulse. The little
heart is moved, the head follows suit. You would burn down Paris to be
revenged, with no thought of the courts of justice!
“When your old father tells you that you have outraged the proprieties,
you may take his word for it.--I say nothing of the cruel pain you have
given me. It is bitter, I assure you, for you throw all the blame on a
woman of whose heart you know nothing, and whose hostility may become
disastrous. And you, alas! so full of guileless innocence and purity,
can have no suspicions; but you may be vilified and slandered.--Besides,
my darling pet, you have taken a foolish jest too seriously. I can
assure you, on my honor, that your husband is blameless. Madame
Marneffe--”
So far the Baron, artistically diplomatic, had formulated his
remonstrances very judiciously. He had, as may be observed, worked up to
the mention of this name with superior skill; and yet Hortense, as she
heard it, winced as if stung to the quick.
“Listen to me; I have had great experience, and I have seen much,” he
went on, stopping his daughter’s attempt to speak. “That lady is very
cold to your husband. Yes, you have been made the victim of a practical
joke, and I will prove it to you. Yesterday Wenceslas was dining with
her--”
“Dining with her!” cried the young wife, starting to her feet, and
looking at her father with horror in every feature. “Yesterday! After
having had my letter! Oh, great God!--Why did I not take the veil rather
than marry? But now my life is not my own! I have the child!” and she
sobbed.
Her weeping went to Madame Hulot’s heart. She came out of her room
and ran to her daughter, taking her in her arms, and asking her those
questions, stupid with grief, which first rose to her lips.
“Now we have tears,” said the Baron to himself, “and all was going so
well! What is to be done with women who cry?”
“My child,” said the Baroness, “listen to your father! He loves us
all--come, come--”
“Come, Hortense, my dear little girl, cry no more, you make yourself too
ugly!” said the Baron, “Now, be a little reasonable. Go sensibly home,
and I promise you that Wenceslas shall never set foot in that woman’s
house. I ask you to make the sacrifice, if it is a sacrifice to forgive
the husband you love so small a fault. I ask you--for the sake of my
gray hairs, and of the love you owe your mother. You do not want to
blight my later years with bitterness and regret?”
Hortense fell at her father’s feet like a crazed thing, with the
vehemence of despair; her hair, loosely pinned up, fell about her, and
she held out her hands with an expression that painted her misery.
“Father,” she said, “ask my life! Take it if you will, but at least take
it pure and spotless, and I will yield it up gladly. Do not ask me to
die in dishonor and crime. I am not at all like my husband; I cannot
swallow an outrage. If I went back under my husband’s roof, I should be
capable of smothering him in a fit of jealousy--or of doing worse! Do no
exact from me a thing that is beyond my powers. Do not have to mourn for
me still living, for the least that can befall me is to go mad. I feel
madness close upon me!
“Yesterday, yesterday, he could dine with that woman, after having read
my letter?--Are other men made so? My life I give you, but do not let my
death be ignominious!--His fault?--A small one! When he has a child by
that woman!”
“A child!” cried Hulot, starting back a step or two. “Come. This is
really some fooling.”
At this juncture Victorin and Lisbeth arrived, and stood dumfounded
at the scene. The daughter was prostrate at her father’s feet. The
Baroness, speechless between her maternal feelings and her conjugal
duty, showed a harassed face bathed in tears.
“Lisbeth,” said the Baron, seizing his cousin by the hand and pointing
to Hortense, “you can help me here. My poor child’s brain is turned; she
believes that her Wenceslas is Madame Marneffe’s lover, while all that
Valerie wanted was to have a group by him.”
“_Delilah_!” cried the young wife. “The only thing he has done since
our marriage. The man would not work for me or for his son, and he has
worked with frenzy for that good-for-nothing creature.--Oh, father, kill
me outright, for every word stabs like a knife!”
Lisbeth turned to the Baroness and Victorin, pointing with a pitying
shrug to the Baron, who could not see her.
“Listen to me,” said she to him. “I had no idea--when you asked me to go
to lodge over Madame Marneffe and keep house for her--I had no idea
of what she was; but many things may be learned in three years. That
creature is a prostitute, and one whose depravity can only be compared
with that of her infamous and horrible husband. You are the dupe, my
lord pot-boiler, of those people; you will be led further by them than
you dream of! I speak plainly, for you are at the bottom of a pit.”
The Baroness and her daughter, hearing Lisbeth speak in this style, cast
adoring looks at her, such as the devout cast at a Madonna for having
saved their life.
“That horrible woman was bent on destroying your son-in-law’s home.
To what end?--I know not. My brain is not equal to seeing clearly into
these dark intrigues--perverse, ignoble, infamous! Your Madame Marneffe
does not love your son-in-law, but she will have him at her feet out of
revenge. I have just spoken to the wretched woman as she deserves. She
is a shameless courtesan; I have told her that I am leaving her house,
that I would not have my honor smirched in that muck-heap.--I owe myself
to my family before all else.
“I knew that Hortense had left her husband, so here I am. Your
Valerie, whom you believe to be a saint, is the cause of this miserable
separation; can I remain with such a woman? Our poor little Hortense,”
said she, touching the Baron’s arm, with peculiar meaning, “is perhaps
the dupe of a wish of such women as these, who, to possess a toy, would
sacrifice a family.
“I do not think Wenceslas guilty; but I think him weak, and I cannot
promise that he will not yield to her refinements of temptation.--My
mind is made up. The woman is fatal to you; she will bring you all to
utter ruin. I will not even seem to be concerned in the destruction of
my own family, after living there for three years solely to hinder it.
“You are cheated, Baron; say very positively that you will have nothing
to say to the promotion of that dreadful Marneffe, and you will see
then! There is a fine rod in pickle for you in that case.”
Lisbeth lifted up Hortense and kissed her enthusiastically.
“My dear Hortense, stand firm,” she whispered.
The Baroness embraced Lisbeth with the vehemence of a woman who sees
herself avenged. The whole family stood in perfect silence round the
father, who had wit enough to know what that silence implied. A storm
of fury swept across his brow and face with evident signs; the veins
swelled, his eyes were bloodshot, his flesh showed patches of color.
Adeline fell on her knees before him and seized his hands.
“My dear, forgive, my dear!”
“You loathe me!” cried the Baron--the cry of his conscience.
For we all know the secret of our own wrong-doing. We almost always
ascribe to our victims the hateful feelings which must fill them with
the hope of revenge; and in spite of every effort of hypocrisy, our
tongue or our face makes confession under the rack of some unexpected
anguish, as the criminal of old confessed under the hands of the
torturer.
“Our children,” he went on, to retract the avowal, “turn at last to be
our enemies--”
“Father!” Victorin began.
“You dare to interrupt your father!” said the Baron in a voice of
thunder, glaring at his son.
“Father, listen to me,” Victorin went on in a clear, firm voice, the
voice of a puritanical deputy. “I know the respect I owe you too well
ever to fail in it, and you will always find me the most respectful and
submissive of sons.”
Those who are in the habit of attending the sittings of the Chamber
will recognize the tactics of parliamentary warfare in these fine-drawn
phrases, used to calm the factions while gaining time.
“We are far from being your enemies,” his son went on. “I have quarreled
with my father-in-law, Monsieur Crevel, for having rescued your notes of
hand for sixty thousand francs from Vauvinet, and that money is, beyond
doubt, in Madame Marneffe’s pocket.--I am not finding fault with you,
father,” said he, in reply to an impatient gesture of the Baron’s; “I
simply wish to add my protest to my cousin Lisbeth’s, and to point
out to you that though my devotion to you as a father is blind and
unlimited, my dear father, our pecuniary resources, unfortunately, are
very limited.”
“Money!” cried the excitable old man, dropping on to a chair, quite
crushed by this argument. “From my son!--You shall be repaid your money,
sir,” said he, rising, and he went to the door.
“Hector!”
At this cry the Baron turned round, suddenly showing his wife a face
bathed in tears; she threw her arms round him with the strength of
despair.
“Do not leave us thus--do not go away in anger. I have not said a
word--not I!”
At this heart-wrung speech the children fell at their father’s feet.
“We all love you,” said Hortense.
Lisbeth, as rigid as a statue, watched the group with a superior smile
on her lips. Just then Marshal Hulot’s voice was heard in the anteroom.
The family all felt the importance of secrecy, and the scene suddenly
changed. The young people rose, and every one tried to hide all traces
of emotion.
A discussion was going on at the door between Mariette and a soldier,
who was so persistent that the cook came in.
“Monsieur, a regimental quartermaster, who says he is just come from
Algiers, insists on seeing you.”
“Tell him to wait.”
“Monsieur,” said Mariette to her master in an undertone, “he told me to
tell you privately that it has to do with your uncle there.”
The Baron started; he believed that the funds had been sent at last
which he had been asking for these two months, to pay up his bills; he
left the family-party, and hurried out to the anteroom.
“You are Monsieur de Paron Hulot?”
“Yes.”
“Your own self?”
“My own self.”
The man, who had been fumbling meanwhile in the lining of his cap, drew
out a letter, of which the Baron hastily broke the seal, and read as
follows:--
“DEAR NEPHEW,--Far from being able to send you the hundred
thousand francs you ask of me, my present position is not tenable
unless you can take some decisive steps to save me. We are saddled
with a public prosecutor who talks goody, and rhodomontades
nonsense about the management. It is impossible to get the
black-chokered pump to hold his tongue. If the War Minister allows
civilians to feed out of his hand, I am done for. I can trust the
bearer; try to get him promoted; he has done us good service. Do
not abandon me to the crows!”
This letter was a thunderbolt; the Baron could read in it the intestine
warfare between civil and military authorities, which to this day
hampers the Government, and he was required to invent on the spot some
palliative for the difficulty that stared him in the face. He desired
the soldier to come back next day, dismissing him with splendid promises
of promotion, and he returned to the drawing-room. “Good-day
and good-bye, brother,” said he to the Marshal.--“Good-bye,
children.--Good-bye, my dear Adeline.--And what are you going to do,
Lisbeth?” he asked.
“I?--I am going to keep house for the Marshal, for I must end my days
doing what I can for one or another of you.”
“Do not leave Valerie till I have seen you again,” said Hulot in his
cousin’s ear.--“Good-bye, Hortense, refractory little puss; try to be
reasonable. I have important business to be attended to at once; we will
discuss your reconciliation another time. Now, think it over, my child,”
said he as he kissed her.
And he went away, so evidently uneasy, that his wife and children felt
the gravest apprehensions.
“Lisbeth,” said the Baroness, “I must find out what is wrong with
Hector; I never saw him in such a state. Stay a day or two longer with
that woman; he tells her everything, and we can then learn what has so
suddenly upset him. Be quite easy; we will arrange your marriage to the
Marshal, for it is really necessary.”
“I shall never forget the courage you have shown this morning,” said
Hortense, embracing Lisbeth.
“You have avenged our poor mother,” said Victorin.
The Marshal looked on with curiosity at all the display of affection
lavished on Lisbeth, who went off to report the scene to Valerie.
This sketch will enable guileless souls to understand what various
mischief Madame Marneffes may do in a family, and the means by which
they reach poor virtuous wives apparently so far out of their ken. And
then, if we only transfer, in fancy, such doings to the upper class of
society about a throne, and if we consider what kings’ mistresses must
have cost them, we may estimate the debt owed by a nation to a sovereign
who sets the example of a decent and domestic life.
In Paris each ministry is a little town by itself, whence women are
banished; but there is just as much detraction and scandal as though
the feminine population were admitted there. At the end of three years,
Monsieur Marneffe’s position was perfectly clear and open to the day,
and in every room one and another asked, “Is Marneffe to be, or not to
be, Coquet’s successor?” Exactly as the question might have been put
to the Chamber, “Will the estimates pass or not pass?” The smallest
initiative on the part of the board of Management was commented on;
everything in Baron Hulot’s department was carefully noted. The astute
State Councillor had enlisted on his side the victim of Marneffe’s
promotion, a hard-working clerk, telling him that if he could fill
Marneffe’s place, he would certainly succeed to it; he had told him
that the man was dying. So this clerk was scheming for Marneffe’s
advancement.
When Hulot went through his anteroom, full of visitors, he saw
Marneffe’s colorless face in a corner, and sent for him before any one
else.
“What do you want of me, my dear fellow?” said the Baron, disguising his
anxiety.
“Monsieur le Directeur, I am the laughing-stock of the office, for it
has become known that the chief of the clerks has left this morning for
a holiday, on the ground of his health. He is to be away a month. Now,
we all know what waiting for a month means. You deliver me over to the
mockery of my enemies, and it is bad enough to be drummed upon one side;
drumming on both at once, monsieur, is apt to burst the drum.”
“My dear Marneffe, it takes long patience to gain an end. You cannot be
made head-clerk in less than two months, if ever. Just when I must, as
far as possible, secure my own position, is not the time to be applying
for your promotion, which would raise a scandal.”
“If you are broke, I shall never get it,” said Marneffe coolly. “And if
you get me the place, it will make no difference in the end.”
“Then I am to sacrifice myself for you?” said the Baron.
“If you do not, I shall be much mistaken in you.”
“You are too exclusively Marneffe, Monsieur Marneffe,” said Hulot,
rising and showing the clerk the door.
“I have the honor to wish you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron,” said
Marneffe humbly.
“What an infamous rascal!” thought the Baron. “This is uncommonly like a
summons to pay within twenty-four hours on pain of distraint.”
Two hours later, just when the Baron had been instructing Claude Vignon,
whom he was sending to the Ministry of Justice to obtain information
as to the judicial authorities under whose jurisdiction Johann Fischer
might fall, Reine opened the door of his private room and gave him a
note, saying she would wait for the answer.
“Valerie is mad!” said the Baron to himself. “To send Reine! It is
enough to compromise us all, and it certainly compromises that dreadful
Marneffe’s chances of promotion!”
But he dismissed the minister’s private secretary, and read as
follows:--
“Oh, my dear friend, what a scene I have had to endure! Though you
have made me happy for three years, I have paid dearly for it! He
came in from the office in a rage that made me quake. I knew he
was ugly; I have seen him a monster! His four real teeth
chattered, and he threatened me with his odious presence without
respite if I should continue to receive you. My poor, dear old
boy, our door is closed against you henceforth. You see my tears;
they are dropping on the paper and soaking it; can you read what I
write, dear Hector? Oh, to think of never seeing you, of giving
you up when I bear in me some of your life, as I flatter myself I
have your heart--it is enough to kill me. Think of our little
Hector!
“Do not forsake me, but do not disgrace yourself for Marneffe’s
sake; do not yield to his threats.
“I love you as I have never loved! I remember all the sacrifices
you have made for your Valerie; she is not, and never will be,
ungrateful; you are, and will ever be, my only husband. Think no
more of the twelve hundred francs a year I asked you to settle on
the dear little Hector who is to come some months hence; I will
not cost you anything more. And besides, my money will always be
yours.
“Oh, if you only loved me as I love you, my Hector, you would
retire on your pension; we should both take leave of our family,
our worries, our surroundings, so full of hatred, and we should go
to live with Lisbeth in some pretty country place--in Brittany, or
wherever you like. There we should see nobody, and we should be
happy away from the world. Your pension and the little property I
can call my own would be enough for us. You say you are jealous;
well, you would then have your Valerie entirely devoted to her
Hector, and you would never have to talk in a loud voice, as you
did the other day. I shall have but one child--ours--you may be
sure, my dearly loved old veteran.
“You cannot conceive of my fury, for you cannot know how he
treated me, and the foul words he vomited on your Valerie. Such
words would disgrace my paper; a woman such as I am--Montcornet’s
daughter--ought never to have heard one of them in her life. I
only wish you had been there, that I might have punished him with
the sight of the mad passion I felt for you. My father would have
killed the wretch; I can only do as women do--love you devotedly!
Indeed, my love, in the state of exasperation in which I am, I
cannot possibly give up seeing you. I must positively see you, in
secret, every day! That is what we are, we women. Your resentment
is mine. If you love me, I implore you, do not let him be
promoted; leave him to die a second-class clerk.
“At this moment I have lost my head; I still seem to hear him
abusing me. Betty, who had meant to leave me, has pity on me, and
will stay for a few days.
“My dear kind love, I do not know yet what is to be done. I see
nothing for it but flight. I always delight in the country
--Brittany, Languedoc, what you will, so long as I am free to love
you. Poor dear, how I pity you! Forced now to go back to your old
Adeline, to that lachrymal urn--for, as he no doubt told you, the
monster means to watch me night and day; he spoke of a detective!
Do not come here, he is capable of anything I know, since he could
make use of me for the basest purposes of speculation. I only wish
I could return you all the things I have received from your
generosity.
“Ah! my kind Hector, I may have flirted, and have seemed to you to
be fickle, but you did not know your Valerie; she liked to tease
you, but she loves you better than any one in the world.
“He cannot prevent your coming to see your cousin; I will arrange
with her that we have speech with each other. My dear old boy,
write me just a line, pray, to comfort me in the absence of your
dear self. (Oh, I would give one of my hands to have you by me on
our sofa!) A letter will work like a charm; write me something
full of your noble soul; I will return your note to you, for I
must be cautious; I should not know where to hide it, he pokes his
nose in everywhere. In short, comfort your Valerie, your little
wife, the mother of your child.--To think of my having to write to
you, when I used to see you every day. As I say to Lisbeth, ‘I did
not know how happy I was.’ A thousand kisses, dear boy. Be true to
your
“VALERIE.”
“And tears!” said Hulot to himself as he finished this letter, “tears
which have blotted out her name.--How is she?” said he to Reine.
“Madame is in bed; she has dreadful spasms,” replied Reine. “She had a
fit of hysterics that twisted her like a withy round a faggot. It came
on after writing. It comes of crying so much. She heard monsieur’s voice
on the stairs.”
The Baron in his distress wrote the following note on office paper with
a printed heading:--
“Be quite easy, my angel, he will die a second-class clerk!--Your
idea is admirable; we will go and live far from Paris, where we
shall be happy with our little Hector; I will retire on my
pension, and I shall be sure to find some good appointment on a
railway.
“Ah, my sweet friend, I feel so much the younger for your letter!
I shall begin life again and make a fortune, you will see, for our
dear little one. As I read your letter, a thousand times more
ardent than those of the _Nouvelle Heloise_, it worked a miracle!
I had not believed it possible that I could love you more. This
evening, at Lisbeth’s you will see
“YOUR HECTOR, FOR LIFE.”
Reine carried off this reply, the first letter the Baron had written
to his “sweet friend.” Such emotions to some extent counterbalanced
the disasters growling in the distance; but the Baron, at this moment
believing he could certainly avert the blows aimed at his uncle, Johann
Fischer, thought only of the deficit.
One of the characteristics of the Bonapartist temperament is a firm
belief in the power of the sword, and confidence in the superiority
of the military over civilians. Hulot laughed to scorn the Public
Prosecutor in Algiers, where the War Office is supreme. Man is always
what he has once been. How can the officers of the Imperial Guard forget
that time was when the mayors of the largest towns in the Empire and the
Emperor’s prefects, Emperors themselves on a minute scale, would come
out to meet the Imperial Guard, to pay their respects on the borders
of the Departments through which it passed, and to do it, in short, the
homage due to sovereigns?
At half-past four the baron went straight to Madame Marneffe’s; his
heart beat as high as a young man’s as he went upstairs, for he was
asking himself this question, “Shall I see her? or shall I not?”
How was he now to remember the scene of the morning when his weeping
children had knelt at his feet? Valerie’s note, enshrined for ever in a
thin pocket-book over his heart, proved to him that she loved him more
than the most charming of young men.
Having rung, the unhappy visitor heard within the shuffling slippers and
vexatious scraping cough of the detestable master. Marneffe opened the
door, but only to put himself into an attitude and point to the stairs,
exactly as Hulot had shown him the door of his private room.
“You are too exclusively Hulot, Monsieur Hulot!” said he.
The Baron tried to pass him, Marneffe took a pistol out of his pocket
and cocked it.
“Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “when a man is as vile as I am--for you
think me very vile, don’t you?--he would be the meanest galley-slave if
he did not get the full benefit of his betrayed honor.--You are for
war; it will be hot work and no quarter. Come here no more, and do not
attempt to get past me. I have given the police notice of my position
with regard to you.”
And taking advantage of Hulot’s amazement, he pushed him out and shut
the door.
“What a low scoundrel!” said Hulot to himself, as he went upstairs to
Lisbeth. “I understand her letter now. Valerie and I will go away from
Paris. Valerie is wholly mine for the remainder of my days; she will
close my eyes.”
Lisbeth was out. Madame Olivier told the Baron that she had gone to his
wife’s house, thinking that she would find him there.
“Poor thing! I should never have expected her to be so sharp as she was
this morning,” thought Hulot, recalling Lisbeth’s behavior as he made
his way from the Rue Vanneau to the Rue Plumet.
As he turned the corner of the Rue Vanneau and the Rue de Babylone, he
looked back at the Eden whence Hymen had expelled him with the sword
of the law. Valerie, at her window, was watching his departure; as he
glanced up, she waved her handkerchief, but the rascally Marneffe hit
his wife’s cap and dragged her violently away from the window. A tear
rose to the great official’s eye.
“Oh! to be so well loved! To see a woman so ill used, and to be so
nearly seventy years old!” thought he.
Lisbeth had come to give the family the good news. Adeline and Hortense
had already heard that the Baron, not choosing to compromise himself in
the eyes of the whole office by appointing Marneffe to the first class,
would be turned from the door by the Hulot-hating husband. Adeline, very
happy, had ordered a dinner that her Hector was to like better than
any of Valerie’s; and Lisbeth, in her devotion, was helping Mariette to
achieve this difficult result. Cousin Betty was the idol of the hour.
Mother and daughter kissed her hands, and had told her with touching
delight that the Marshal consented to have her as his housekeeper.
“And from that, my dear, there is but one step to becoming his wife!”
said Adeline.
“In fact, he did not say no when Victorin mentioned it,” added the
Countess.
The Baron was welcomed home with such charming proofs of affection,
so pathetically overflowing with love, that he was fain to conceal his
troubles.
Marshal Hulot came to dinner. After dinner, Hector did not go out.
Victorin and his wife joined them, and they made up a rubber.
“It is a long time, Hector,” said the Marshal gravely, “since you gave
us the treat of such an evening.”
This speech from the old soldier, who spoiled his brother though he thus
implicitly blamed him, made a deep impression. It showed how wide and
deep were the wounds in a heart where all the woes he had divined had
found an echo. At eight o’clock the Baron insisted on seeing Lisbeth
home, promising to return.
“Do you know, Lisbeth, he ill-treats her!” said he in the street. “Oh, I
never loved her so well!”
“I never imagined that Valerie loved you so well,” replied Lisbeth. “She
is frivolous and a coquette, she loves to have attentions paid her, and
to have the comedy of love-making performed for her, as she says; but
you are her only real attachment.”
“What message did she send me?”
“Why, this,” said Lisbeth. “She has, as you know, been on intimate terms
with Crevel. You must owe her no grudge, for that, in fact, is what has
raised her above utter poverty for the rest of her life; but she detests
him, and matters are nearly at an end.--Well, she has kept the key of
some rooms--”
“Rue du Dauphin!” cried the thrice-blest Baron. “If it were for that
alone, I would overlook Crevel.--I have been there; I know.”
“Here, then, is the key,” said Lisbeth. “Have another made from it in
the course of to-morrow--two if you can.”
“And then,” said Hulot eagerly.
“Well, I will dine at your house again to-morrow; you must give me back
Valerie’s key, for old Crevel might ask her to return it to him, and you
can meet her there the day after; then you can decide what your facts
are to be. You will be quite safe, as there are two ways out. If by
chance Crevel, who is _Regence_ in his habits, as he is fond of saying,
should come in by the side street, you could go out through the shop, or
_vice versa_.
“You owe all this to me, you old villain; now what will you do for me?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Then you will not oppose my marrying your brother?”
“You! the Marechale Hulot, the Comtesse de Frozheim?” cried Hector,
startled.
“Well, Adeline is a Baroness!” retorted Betty in a vicious and
formidable tone. “Listen to me, you old libertine. You know how matters
stand; your family may find itself starving in the gutter--”
“That is what I dread,” said Hulot in dismay.
“And if your brother were to die, who would maintain your wife and
daughter? The widow of a Marshal gets at least six thousand francs
pension, doesn’t she? Well, then, I wish to marry to secure bread for
your wife and daughter--old dotard!”
“I had not seen it in that light!” said the Baron. “I will talk to my
brother--for we are sure of you.--Tell my angel that my life is hers.”
And the Baron, having seen Lisbeth go into the house in the Rue Vanneau,
went back to his whist and stayed at home. The Baroness was at the
height of happiness; her husband seemed to be returning to domestic
habits; for about a fortnight he went to his office at nine every
morning, he came in to dinner at six, and spent the evening with his
family. He twice took Adeline and Hortense to the play. The mother and
daughter paid for three thanksgiving masses, and prayed to God to suffer
them to keep the husband and father He had restored to them.
One evening Victorin Hulot, seeing his father retire for the night, said
to his mother:
“Well, we are at any rate so far happy that my father has come back to
us. My wife and I shall never regret our capital if only this lasts--”
“Your father is nearly seventy,” said the Baroness. “He still thinks
of Madame Marneffe, that I can see; but he will forget her in time.
A passion for women is not like gambling, or speculation, or avarice;
there is an end to it.”
But Adeline, still beautiful in spite of her fifty years and her
sorrows, in this was mistaken. Profligates, men whom Nature has gifted
with the precious power of loving beyond the limits ordinarily set to
love, rarely are as old as their age.
During this relapse into virtue Baron Hulot had been three times to
the Rue du Dauphin, and had certainly not been the man of seventy. His
rekindled passion made him young again, and he would have sacrificed his
honor to Valerie, his family, his all, without a regret. But Valerie,
now completely altered, never mentioned money, not even the twelve
hundred francs a year to be settled on their son; on the contrary, she
offered him money, she loved Hulot as a woman of six-and-thirty loves a
handsome law-student--a poor, poetical, ardent boy. And the hapless wife
fancied she had reconquered her dear Hector!
The fourth meeting between this couple had been agreed upon at the
end of the third, exactly as formerly in Italian theatres the play was
announced for the next night. The hour fixed was nine in the morning.
On the next day when the happiness was due for which the amorous old man
had resigned himself to domestic rules, at about eight in the morning,
Reine came and asked to see the Baron. Hulot, fearing some catastrophe,
went out to speak with Reine, who would not come into the anteroom. The
faithful waiting-maid gave him the following note:--
“DEAR OLD MAN,--Do not go to the Rue du Dauphin. Our incubus is
ill, and I must nurse him; but be there this evening at nine.
Crevel is at Corbeil with Monsieur Lebas; so I am sure he will
bring no princess to his little palace. I have made arrangements
here to be free for the night and get back before Marneffe is
awake. Answer me as to all this, for perhaps your long elegy of a
wife no longer allows you your liberty as she did. I am told she
is still so handsome that you might play me false, you are such a
gay dog! Burn this note; I am suspicious of every one.”
Hulot wrote this scrap in reply:
“MY LOVE,--As I have told you, my wife has not for five-and-twenty
years interfered with my pleasures. For you I would give up a
hundred Adelines.--I will be in the Crevel sanctum at nine this
evening awaiting my divinity. Oh that your clerk might soon die!
We should part no more. And this is the dearest wish of
“YOUR HECTOR.”
That evening the Baron told his wife that he had business with the
Minister at Saint-Cloud, that he would come home at about four or five
in the morning; and he went to the Rue du Dauphin. It was towards the
end of the month of June.
Few men have in the course of their life known really the dreadful
sensation of going to their death; those who have returned from the
foot of the scaffold may be easily counted. But some have had a vivid
experience of it in dreams; they have gone through it all, to the
sensation of the knife at their throat, at the moment when waking
and daylight come to release them.--Well, the sensation to which the
Councillor of State was a victim at five in the morning in Crevel’s
handsome and elegant bed, was immeasurably worse than that of feeling
himself bound to the fatal block in the presence of ten thousand
spectators looking at you with twenty thousand sparks of fire.
Valerie was asleep in a graceful attitude. She was lovely, as a woman
is who is lovely enough to look so even in sleep. It is art invading
nature; in short, a living picture.
In his horizontal position the Baron’s eyes were but three feet above
the floor. His gaze, wandering idly, as that of a man who is just awake
and collecting his ideas, fell on a door painted with flowers by Jan, an
artist disdainful of fame. The Baron did not indeed see twenty thousand
flaming eyes, like the man condemned to death; he saw but one, of which
the shaft was really more piercing than the thousands on the Public
Square.
Now this sensation, far rarer in the midst of enjoyment even than
that of a man condemned to death, was one for which many a splenetic
Englishman would certainly pay a high price. The Baron lay there,
horizontal still, and literally bathed in cold sweat. He tried to doubt
the fact; but this murderous eye had a voice. A sound of whispering was
heard through the door.
“So long as it is nobody but Crevel playing a trick on me!” said the
Baron to himself, only too certain of an intruder in the temple.
The door was opened. The Majesty of the French Law, which in all
documents follows next to the King, became visible in the person of a
worthy little police-officer supported by a tall Justice of the Peace,
both shown in by Monsieur Marneffe. The police functionary, rooted in
shoes of which the straps were tied together with flapping bows, ended
at top in a yellow skull almost bare of hair, and a face betraying him
as a wide-awake, cheerful, and cunning dog, from whom Paris life had no
secrets. His eyes, though garnished with spectacles, pierced the
glasses with a keen mocking glance. The Justice of the Peace, a retired
attorney, and an old admirer of the fair sex, envied the delinquent.
“Pray excuse the strong measures required by our office, Monsieur
le Baron!” said the constable; “we are acting for the plaintiff.
The Justice of the Peace is here to authorize the visitation of the
premises.--I know who you are, and who the lady is who is accused.”
Valerie opened her astonished eyes, gave such a shriek as actresses use
to depict madness on the stage, writhed in convulsions on the bed, like
a witch of the Middle Ages in her sulphur-colored frock on a bed of
faggots.
“Death, and I am ready! my dear Hector--but a police court?--Oh! never.”
With one bound she passed the three spectators and crouched under the
little writing-table, hiding her face in her hands.
“Ruin! Death!” she cried.
“Monsieur,” said Marneffe to Hulot, “if Madame Marneffe goes mad, you
are worse than a profligate; you will be a murderer.”
What can a man do, what can he say, when he is discovered in a bed which
is not his, even on the score of hiring, with a woman who is no more his
than the bed is?--Well, this:
“Monsieur the Justice of the Peace, Monsieur the Police Officer,” said
the Baron with some dignity, “be good enough to take proper care of
that unhappy woman, whose reason seems to me to be in danger.--You can
harangue me afterwards. The doors are locked, no doubt; you need not
fear that she will get away, or I either, seeing the costume we wear.”
The two functionaries bowed to the magnate’s injunctions.
“You, come here, miserable cur!” said Hulot in a low voice to Marneffe,
taking him by the arm and drawing him closer. “It is not I, but you, who
will be the murderer! You want to be head-clerk of your room and officer
of the Legion of Honor?”
“That in the first place, Chief!” replied Marneffe, with a bow.
“You shall be all that, only soothe your wife and dismiss these
fellows.”
“Nay, nay!” said Marneffe knowingly. “These gentlemen must draw up their
report as eyewitnesses to the fact; without that, the chief evidence in
my case, where should I be? The higher official ranks are chokeful of
rascalities. You have done me out of my wife, and you have not promoted
me, Monsieur le Baron; I give you only two days to get out of the
scrape. Here are some letters--”
“Some letters!” interrupted Hulot.
“Yes; letters which prove that you are the father of the child my wife
expects to give birth to.--You understand? And you ought to settle on my
son a sum equal to what he will lose through this bastard. But I will
be reasonable; this does not distress me, I have no mania for paternity
myself. A hundred louis a year will satisfy me. By to-morrow I must be
Monsieur Coquet’s successor and see my name on the list for promotion in
the Legion of Honor at the July fetes, or else--the documentary evidence
and my charge against you will be laid before the Bench. I am not so
hard to deal with after all, you see.”
“Bless me, and such a pretty woman!” said the Justice of the Peace to
the police constable. “What a loss to the world if she should go mad!”
“She is not mad,” said the constable sententiously. The police is always
the incarnation of scepticism.--“Monsieur le Baron Hulot has been caught
by a trick,” he added, loud enough for Valerie to hear him.
Valerie shot a flash from her eye which would have killed him on
the spot if looks could effect the vengeance they express. The
police-officer smiled; he had laid a snare, and the woman had fallen
into it. Marneffe desired his wife to go into the other room and clothe
herself decently, for he and the Baron had come to an agreement on all
points, and Hulot fetched his dressing-gown and came out again.
“Gentlemen,” said he to the two officials, “I need not impress on you to
be secret.”
The functionaries bowed.
The police-officer rapped twice on the door; his clerk came in, sat down
at the “bonheur-du-jour,” and wrote what the constable dictated to him
in an undertone. Valerie still wept vehemently. When she was dressed,
Hulot went into the other room and put on his clothes. Meanwhile the
report was written.
Marneffe then wanted to take his wife home; but Hulot, believing that
he saw her for the last time, begged the favor of being allowed to speak
with her.
“Monsieur, your wife has cost me dear enough for me to be allowed to say
good-bye to her--in the presence of you all, of course.”
Valerie went up to Hulot, and he whispered in her ear:
“There is nothing left for us but to fly, but how can we correspond? We
have been betrayed--”
“Through Reine,” she answered. “But my dear friend, after this scandal
we can never meet again. I am disgraced. Besides, you will hear dreadful
things about me--you will believe them--”
The Baron made a gesture of denial.
“You will believe them, and I can thank God for that, for then perhaps
you will not regret me.”
“He will _not_ die a second-class clerk!” said Marneffe to Hulot, as
he led his wife away, saying roughly, “Come, madame; if I am foolish to
you, I do not choose to be a fool to others.”
Valerie left the house, Crevel’s Eden, with a last glance at the Baron,
so cunning that he thought she adored him. The Justice of the Peace
gave Madame Marneffe his arm to the hackney coach with a flourish of
gallantry. The Baron, who was required to witness the report, remained
quite bewildered, alone with the police-officer. When the Baron had
signed, the officer looked at him keenly, over his glasses.
“You are very sweet on the little lady, Monsieur le Baron?”
“To my sorrow, as you see.”
“Suppose that she does not care for you?” the man went on, “that she is
deceiving you?”
“I have long known that, monsieur--here, in this very spot, Monsieur
Crevel and I told each other----”
“Oh! Then you knew that you were in Monsieur le Maire’s private
snuggery?”
“Perfectly.”
The constable lightly touched his hat with a respectful gesture.
“You are very much in love,” said he. “I say no more. I respect an
inveterate passion, as a doctor respects an inveterate complaint.--I saw
Monsieur de Nucingen, the banker, attacked in the same way--”
“He is a friend of mine,” said the Baron. “Many a time have I supped
with his handsome Esther. She was worth the two million francs she cost
him.”
“And more,” said the officer. “That caprice of the old Baron’s cost four
persons their lives. Oh! such passions as these are like the cholera!”
“What had you to say to me?” asked the Baron, who took this indirect
warning very ill.
“Oh! why should I deprive you of your illusions?” replied the officer.
“Men rarely have any left at your age!”
“Rid me of them!” cried the Councillor.
“You will curse the physician later,” replied the officer, smiling.
“I beg of you, monsieur.”
“Well, then, that woman was in collusion with her husband.”
“Oh!----”
“Yes, sir, and so it is in two cases out of every ten. Oh! we know it
well.”
“What proof have you of such a conspiracy?”
“In the first place, the husband!” said the other, with the calm acumen
of a surgeon practised in unbinding wounds. “Mean speculation is stamped
in every line of that villainous face. But you, no doubt, set great
store by a certain letter written by that woman with regard to the
child?”
“So much so, that I always have it about me,” replied Hulot, feeling in
his breast-pocket for the little pocketbook which he always kept there.
“Leave your pocketbook where it is,” said the man, as crushing as a
thunder-clap. “Here is the letter.--I now know all I want to know.
Madame Marneffe, of course, was aware of what that pocketbook
contained?”
“She alone in the world.”
“So I supposed.--Now for the proof you asked for of her collusion with
her husband.”
“Let us hear!” said the Baron, still incredulous.
“When we came in here, Monsieur le Baron, that wretched creature
Marneffe led the way, and he took up this letter, which his wife,
no doubt, had placed on this writing-table,” and he pointed to the
_bonheur-du-jour_. “That evidently was the spot agreed upon by the
couple, in case she should succeed in stealing the letter while you were
asleep; for this letter, as written to you by the lady, is, combined
with those you wrote to her, decisive evidence in a police-court.”
He showed Hulot the note that Reine had delivered to him in his private
room at the office.
“It is one of the documents in the case,” said the police-agent; “return
it to me, monsieur.”
“Well, monsieur,” replied Hulot with bitter expression, “that woman is
profligacy itself in fixed ratios. I am certain at this moment that she
has three lovers.”
“That is perfectly evident,” said the officer. “Oh, they are not all
on the streets! When a woman follows that trade in a carriage and
a drawing-room, and her own house, it is not a case for francs and
centimes, Monsieur le Baron. Mademoiselle Esther, of whom you spoke,
and who poisoned herself, made away with millions.--If you will take
my advice, you will get out of it, monsieur. This last little game will
have cost you dear. That scoundrel of a husband has the law on his side.
And indeed, but for me, that little woman would have caught you again!”
“Thank you, monsieur,” said the Baron, trying to maintain his dignity.
“Now we will lock up; the farce is played out, and you can send your key
to Monsieur the Mayor.”
Hulot went home in a state of dejection bordering on helplessness, and
sunk in the gloomiest thoughts. He woke his noble and saintly wife, and
poured into her heart the history of the past three years, sobbing like
a child deprived of a toy. This confession from an old man young in
feeling, this frightful and heart-rending narrative, while it filled
Adeline with pity, also gave her the greatest joy; she thanked Heaven
for this last catastrophe, for in fancy she saw the husband settled at
last in the bosom of his family.
“Lisbeth was right,” said Madame Hulot gently and without any useless
recrimination, “she told us how it would be.”
“Yes. If only I had listened to her, instead of flying into a rage, that
day when I wanted poor Hortense to go home rather than compromise the
reputation of that--Oh! my dear Adeline, we must save Wenceslas. He is
up to his chin in that mire!”
“My poor old man, the respectable middle-classes have turned out no
better than the actresses,” said Adeline, with a smile.
The Baroness was alarmed at the change in her Hector; when she saw him
so unhappy, ailing, crushed under his weight of woes, she was all heart,
all pity, all love; she would have shed her blood to make Hulot happy.
“Stay with us, my dear Hector. Tell me what is it that such women do to
attract you so powerfully. I too will try. Why have you not taught me
to be what you want? Am I deficient in intelligence? Men still think me
handsome enough to court my favor.”
Many a married woman, attached to her duty and to her husband, may here
pause to ask herself why strong and affectionate men, so tender-hearted
to the Madame Marneffes, do not take their wives for the object of their
fancies and passions, especially wives like the Baronne Adeline Hulot.
This is, indeed, one of the most recondite mysteries of human nature.
Love, which is debauch of reason, the strong and austere joy of a lofty
soul, and pleasure, the vulgar counterfeit sold in the market-place,
are two aspects of the same thing. The woman who can satisfy both these
devouring appetites is as rare in her sex as a great general, a great
writer, a great artist, a great inventor in a nation. A man of superior
intellect or an idiot--a Hulot or a Crevel--equally crave for the ideal
and for enjoyment; all alike go in search of the mysterious compound, so
rare that at last it is usually found to be a work in two volumes. This
craving is a depraved impulse due to society.
Marriage, no doubt, must be accepted as a tie; it is life, with its
duties and its stern sacrifices on both parts equally. Libertines, who
seek for hidden treasure, are as guilty as other evil-doers who are more
hardly dealt with than they. These reflections are not a mere veneer of
moralizing; they show the reason of many unexplained misfortunes. But,
indeed, this drama points its own moral--or morals, for they are of many
kinds.
The Baron presently went to call on the Marshal Prince de Wissembourg,
whose powerful patronage was now his only chance. Having dwelt under his
protection for five-and-thirty years, he was a visitor at all hours, and
would be admitted to his rooms as soon as he was up.