“What is the matter? You look anxious. And yet the session is ended.
One more over! I speak of that now as I used to speak of a campaign.
And indeed I believe the newspapers nowadays speak of the sessions as
parliamentary campaigns.”
“We have been in difficulties, I must confess, Marshal; but the times
are hard!” said Hulot. “It cannot be helped; the world was made so.
Every phase has its own drawbacks. The worst misfortunes in the year
1841 is that neither the King nor the ministers are free to act as
Napoleon was.”
The Marshal gave Hulot one of those eagle flashes which in its pride,
clearness, and perspicacity showed that, in spite of years, that lofty
soul was still upright and vigorous.
“You want me to so something for you?” said he, in a hearty tone.
“I find myself under the necessity of applying to you for the promotion
of one of my second clerks to the head of a room--as a personal favor to
myself--and his advancement to be officer of the Legion of Honor.”
“What is his name?” said the Marshal, with a look like a lightning
flash.
“Marneffe.”
“He has a pretty wife; I saw her on the occasion of your daughter’s
marriage.--If Roger--but Roger is away!--Hector, my boy, this is
concerned with your pleasures. What, you still indulge--? Well, you
are a credit to the old Guard. That is what comes of having been in
the Commissariat; you have reserves!--But have nothing to do with this
little job, my dear boy; it is too strong of the petticoat to be good
business.”
“No, Marshal; it is bad business, for the police courts have a finger in
it. Would you like to see me go there?”
“The devil!” said the Prince uneasily. “Go on!”
“Well, I am in the predicament of a trapped fox. You have always been so
kind to me, that you will, I am sure, condescend to help me out of the
shameful position in which I am placed.”
Hulot related his misadventures, as wittily and as lightly as he could.
“And you, Prince, will you allow my brother to die of grief, a man you
love so well; or leave one of your staff in the War Office, a Councillor
of State, to live in disgrace. This Marneffe is a wretched creature; he
can be shelved in two or three years.”
“How you talk of two or three years, my dear fellow!” said the Marshal.
“But, Prince, the Imperial Guard is immortal.”
“I am the last of the first batch of Marshals,” said the Prince.
“Listen, Hector. You do not know the extent of my attachment to you; you
shall see. On the day when I retire from office, we will go together.
But you are not a Deputy, my friend. Many men want your place; but
for me, you would be out of it by this time. Yes, I have fought many a
pitched battle to keep you in it.--Well, I grant you your two requests;
it would be too bad to see you riding the bar at your age and in the
position you hold. But you stretch your credit a little too far. If this
appointment gives rise to discussion, we shall not be held blameless. I
can laugh at such things; but you will find it a thorn under your feet.
And the next session will see your dismissal. Your place is held out as
a bait to five or six influential men, and you have been enabled to keep
it solely by the force of my arguments. I tell you, on the day when you
retire, there will be five malcontents to one happy man; whereas, by
keeping you hanging on by a thread for two or three years, we shall
secure all six votes. There was a great laugh at the Council meeting;
the Veteran of the Old Guard, as they say, was becoming desperately
wide awake in parliamentary tactics! I am frank with you.--And you
are growing gray; you are a happy man to be able to get into such
difficulties as these! How long is it since I--Lieutenant Cottin--had a
mistress?”
He rang the bell.
“That police report must be destroyed,” he added.
“Monseigneur, you are as a father to me! I dared not mention my anxiety
on that point.”
“I still wish I had Roger here,” cried the Prince, as Mitouflet, his
groom of the chambers, came in. “I was just going to send for him!--You
may go, Mitouflet.--Go you, my dear old fellow, go and have the
nomination made out; I will sign it. At the same time, that low schemer
will not long enjoy the fruit of his crimes. He will be sharply watched,
and drummed out of the regiment for the smallest fault.--You are saved
this time, my dear Hector; take care for the future. Do not exhaust your
friends’ patience. You shall have the nomination this morning, and your
man shall get his promotion in the Legion of Honor.--How old are you
now?”
“Within three months of seventy.”
“What a scapegrace!” said the Prince, laughing. “It is you who deserve a
promotion, but, by thunder! we are not under Louis XV.!”
Such is the sense of comradeship that binds the glorious survivors of
the Napoleonic phalanx, that they always feel as if they were in camp
together, and bound to stand together through thick and thin.
“One more favor such as this,” Hulot reflected as he crossed the
courtyard, “and I am done for!”
The luckless official went to Baron de Nucingen, to whom he now owed a
mere trifle, and succeeded in borrowing forty thousand francs, on his
salary pledged for two years more; the banker stipulated that in the
event of Hulot’s retirement on his pension, the whole of it should
be devoted to the repayment of the sum borrowed till the capital and
interest were all cleared off.
This new bargain, like the first, was made in the name of Vauvinet, to
whom the Baron signed notes of hand to the amount of twelve thousand
francs.
On the following day, the fateful police report, the husband’s charge,
the letters--all the papers--were destroyed. The scandalous promotion of
Monsieur Marneffe, hardly heeded in the midst of the July fetes, was not
commented on in any newspaper.
Lisbeth, to all appearance at war with Madame Marneffe, had taken up
her abode with Marshal Hulot. Ten days after these events, the banns of
marriage were published between the old maid and the distinguished old
officer, to whom, to win his consent, Adeline had related the financial
disaster that had befallen her Hector, begging him never to mention it
to the Baron, who was, as she said, much saddened, quite depressed and
crushed.
“Alas! he is as old as his years,” she added.
So Lisbeth had triumphed. She was achieving the object of her ambition,
she would see the success of her scheme, and her hatred gratified. She
delighted in the anticipated joy of reigning supreme over the family who
had so long looked down upon her. Yes, she would patronize her patrons,
she would be the rescuing angel who would dole out a livelihood to the
ruined family; she addressed herself as “Madame la Comtesse” and “Madame
la Marechale,” courtesying in front of a glass. Adeline and Hortense
should end their days in struggling with poverty, while she, a visitor
at the Tuileries, would lord it in the fashionable world.
A terrible disaster overthrew the old maid from the social heights where
she so proudly enthroned herself.
On the very day when the banns were first published, the Baron received
a second message from Africa. Another Alsatian arrived, handed him a
letter, after assuring himself that he spoke to Baron Hulot, and after
giving the Baron the address of his lodgings, bowed himself out, leaving
the great man stricken by the opening lines of this letter:--
“DEAR NEPHEW,--You will receive this letter, by my calculations,
on the 7th of August. Supposing it takes you three days to send us
the help we need, and that it is a fortnight on the way here, that
brings us to the 1st of September.
“If you can act decisively within that time, you will have saved
the honor and the life of yours sincerely, Johann Fischer.
“This is what I am required to demand by the clerk you have made
my accomplice; for I am amenable, it would seem, to the law, at
the Assizes, or before a council of war. Of course, you understand
that Johann Fischer will never be brought to the bar of any
tribunal; he will go of his own act to appear at that of God.
“Your clerk seems to me a bad lot, quite capable of getting you
into hot water; but he is as clever as any rogue. He says the line
for you to take is to call out louder than any one, and to send
out an inspector, a special commissioner, to discover who is
really guilty, rake up abuses, and make a fuss, in short; but if
we stir up the struggle, who will stand between us and the law?
“If your commissioner arrives here by the 1st of September, and
you have given him your orders, sending by him two hundred
thousand francs to place in our storehouses the supplies we
profess to have secured in remote country places, we shall be
absolutely solvent and regarded as blameless. You can trust the
soldier who is the bearer of this letter with a draft in my name
on a house in Algiers. He is a trustworthy fellow, a relation of
mine, incapable of trying to find out what he is the bearer of. I
have taken measures to guarantee the fellow’s safe return. If you
can do nothing, I am ready and willing to die for the man to whom
we owe our Adeline’s happiness!”
The anguish and raptures of passion and the catastrophe which had
checked his career of profligacy had prevented Baron Hulot’s ever
thinking of poor Johann Fischer, though his first letter had given
warning of the danger now become so pressing. The Baron went out of the
dining-room in such agitation that he literally dropped on to a sofa in
the drawing-room. He was stunned, sunk in the dull numbness of a heavy
fall. He stared at a flower on the carpet, quite unconscious that he
still held in his hand Johann’s fatal letter.
Adeline, in her room, heard her husband throw himself on the sofa, like
a lifeless mass; the noise was so peculiar that she fancied he had an
apoplectic attack. She looked through the door at the mirror, in such
dread as stops the breath and hinders motion, and she saw her Hector in
the attitude of a man crushed. The Baroness stole in on tiptoe; Hector
heard nothing; she went close up to him, saw the letter, took it, read
it, trembling in every limb. She went through one of those violent
nervous shocks that leave their traces for ever on the sufferer. Within
a few days she became subject to a constant trembling, for after the
first instant the need for action gave her such strength as can only be
drawn from the very wellspring of the vital powers.
“Hector, come into my room,” said she, in a voice that was no more than
a breath. “Do not let your daughter see you in this state! Come, my
dear, come!”
“Two hundred thousand francs? Where can I find them? I can get Claude
Vignon sent out there as commissioner. He is a clever, intelligent
fellow.--That is a matter of a couple of days.--But two hundred thousand
francs! My son has not so much; his house is loaded with mortgages for
three hundred thousand. My brother has saved thirty thousand francs at
most. Nucingen would simply laugh at me!--Vauvinet?--he was not very
ready to lend me the ten thousand francs I wanted to make up the sum
for that villain Marneffe’s boy. No, it is all up with me; I must throw
myself at the Prince’s feet, confess how matters stand, hear myself told
that I am a low scoundrel, and take his broadside so as to go decently
to the bottom.”
“But, Hector, this is not merely ruin, it is disgrace,” said Adeline.
“My poor uncle will kill himself. Only kill us--yourself and me; you
have a right to do that, but do not be a murderer! Come, take courage;
there must be some way out of it.”
“Not one,” said Hulot. “No one in the Government could find two
hundred thousand francs, not if it were to save an Administration!--Oh,
Napoleon! where art thou?”
“My uncle! poor man! Hector, he must not be allowed to kill himself in
disgrace.”
“There is one more chance,” said he, “but a very remote one.--Yes,
Crevel is at daggers drawn with his daughter.--He has plenty of money,
he alone could--”
“Listen, Hector it will be better for your wife to perish than to leave
our uncle to perish--and your brother--the honor of the family!”
cried the Baroness, struck by a flash of light. “Yes, I can save you
all.--Good God! what a degrading thought! How could it have occurred to
me?”
She clasped her hands, dropped on her knees, and put up a prayer. On
rising, she saw such a crazy expression of joy on her husband’s face,
that the diabolical suggestion returned, and then Adeline sank into a
sort of idiotic melancholy.
“Go, my dear, at once to the War Office,” said she, rousing herself from
this torpor; “try to send out a commission; it must be done. Get
round the Marshal. And on your return, at five o’clock, you will
find--perhaps--yes! you shall find two hundred thousand francs. Your
family, your honor as a man, as a State official, a Councillor of State,
your honesty--your son--all shall be saved;--but your Adeline will be
lost, and you will see her no more. Hector, my dear,” said she, kneeling
before him, clasping and kissing his hand, “give me your blessing! Say
farewell.”
It was so heart-rending that Hulot put his arms round his wife, raised
her and kissed her, saying:
“I do not understand.”
“If you did,” said she, “I should die of shame, or I should not have the
strength to carry out this last sacrifice.”
“Breakfast is served,” said Mariette.
Hortense came in to wish her parents good-morning. They had to go to
breakfast and assume a false face.
“Begin without me; I will join you,” said the Baroness.
She sat down to her desk and wrote as follows:
“MY DEAR MONSIEUR CREVEL,--I have to ask a service of you; I shall
expect you this morning, and I count on your gallantry, which is
well known to me, to save me from having too long to wait for you.
--Your faithful servant,
“ADELINE HULOT.”
“Louise,” said she to her daughter’s maid, who waited on her, “take
this note down to the porter and desire him to carry it at once to this
address and wait for an answer.”
The Baron, who was reading the news, held out a Republican paper to his
wife, pointing to an article, and saying:
“Is there time?”
This was the paragraph, one of the terrible “notes” with which the
papers spice their political bread and butter:--
“A correspondent in Algiers writes that such abuses have been
discovered in the commissariate transactions of the province of
Oran, that the Law is making inquiries. The peculation is
self-evident, and the guilty persons are known. If severe measures
are not taken, we shall continue to lose more men through the
extortion that limits their rations than by Arab steel or the
fierce heat of the climate. We await further information before
enlarging on this deplorable business. We need no longer wonder at
the terror caused by the establishment of the Press in Africa, as
was contemplated by the Charter of 1830.”
“I will dress and go to the Minister,” said the Baron, as they rose from
table. “Time is precious; a man’s life hangs on every minute.”
“Oh, mamma, there is no hope for me!” cried Hortense. And unable to
check her tears, she handed to her mother a number of the _Revue des
Beaux Arts_.
Madame Hulot’s eye fell on a print of the group of “Delilah” by
Count Steinbock, under which were the words, “The property of Madame
Marneffe.”
The very first lines of the article, signed V., showed the talent and
friendliness of Claude Vignon.
“Poor child!” said the Baroness.
Alarmed by her mother’s tone of indifference, Hortense looked up, saw
the expression of a sorrow before which her own paled, and rose to kiss
her mother, saying:
“What is the matter, mamma? What is happening? Can we be more wretched
than we are already?”
“My child, it seems to me that in what I am going through to-day my past
dreadful sorrows are as nothing. When shall I have ceased to suffer?”
“In heaven, mother,” said Hortense solemnly.
“Come, my angel, help me to dress.--No, no; I will not have you help me
in this! Send me Louise.”
Adeline, in her room, went to study herself in the glass. She looked at
herself closely and sadly, wondering to herself:
“Am I still handsome? Can I still be desirable? Am I not wrinkled?”
She lifted up her fine golden hair, uncovering her temples; they were
as fresh as a girl’s. She went further; she uncovered her shoulders,
and was satisfied; nay, she had a little feeling of pride. The beauty
of really handsome shoulders is one of the last charms a woman loses,
especially if she has lived chastely.
Adeline chose her dress carefully, but the pious and blameless woman is
decent to the end, in spite of her little coquettish graces. Of what use
were brand-new gray silk stockings and high heeled satin shoes when
she was absolutely ignorant of the art of displaying a pretty foot at
a critical moment, by obtruding it an inch or two beyond a half-lifted
skirt, opening horizons to desire? She put on, indeed, her prettiest
flowered muslin dress, with a low body and short sleeves; but horrified
at so much bareness, she covered her fine arms with clear gauze
sleeves and hid her shoulders under an embroidered cape. Her curls,
_a l’Anglaise_, struck her as too fly-away; she subdued their airy
lightness by putting on a very pretty cap; but, with or without the cap,
would she have known how to twist the golden ringlets so as to show off
her taper fingers to admiration?
As to rouge--the consciousness of guilt, the preparations for a
deliberate fall, threw this saintly woman into a state of high fever,
which, for the time, revived the brilliant coloring of youth. Her eyes
were bright, her cheeks glowed. Instead of assuming a seductive air, she
saw in herself a look of barefaced audacity which shocked her.
Lisbeth, at Adeline’s request, had told her all the circumstances
of Wenceslas’ infidelity; and the Baroness had learned to her utter
amazement, that in one evening in one moment, Madame Marneffe had made
herself the mistress of the bewitched artist.
“How do these women do it?” the Baroness had asked Lisbeth.
There is no curiosity so great as that of virtuous women on such
subjects; they would like to know the arts of vice and remain
immaculate.
“Why, they are seductive; it is their business,” said Cousin Betty.
“Valerie that evening, my dear, was, I declare, enough to bring an angel
to perdition.”
“But tell me how she set to work.”
“There is no principle, only practice in that walk of life,” said
Lisbeth ironically.
The Baroness, recalling this conversation, would have liked to consult
Cousin Betty; but there was no time for that. Poor Adeline, incapable of
imagining a patch, of pinning a rosebud in the very middle of her bosom,
of devising the tricks of the toilet intended to resuscitate the ardors
of exhausted nature, was merely well dressed. A woman is not a courtesan
for the wishing!
“Woman is soup for man,” as Moliere says by the mouth of the judicious
Gros-Rene. This comparison suggests a sort of culinary art in love. Then
the virtuous wife would be a Homeric meal, flesh laid on hot cinders.
The courtesan, on the contrary, is a dish by Careme, with its
condiments, spices, and elegant arrangement. The Baroness could not--did
not know how to serve up her fair bosom in a lordly dish of lace,
after the manner of Madame Marneffe. She knew nothing of the secrets of
certain attitudes. This high-souled woman might have turned round and
round a hundred times, and she would have betrayed nothing to the keen
glance of a profligate.
To be a good woman and a prude to all the world, and a courtesan to her
husband, is the gift of a woman of genius, and they are few. This is the
secret of long fidelity, inexplicable to the women who are not blessed
with the double and splendid faculty. Imagine Madame Marneffe virtuous,
and you have the Marchesa di Pescara. But such lofty and illustrious
women, beautiful as Diane de Poitiers, but virtuous, may be easily
counted.
So the scene with which this serious and terrible drama of Paris manners
opened was about to be repeated, with this singular difference--that the
calamities prophesied then by the captain of the municipal Militia
had reversed the parts. Madame Hulot was awaiting Crevel with the same
intentions as had brought him to her, smiling down at the Paris crowd
from his _milord_, three years ago. And, strangest thing of all, the
Baroness was true to herself and to her love, while preparing to yield
to the grossest infidelity, such as the storm of passion even does not
justify in the eyes of some judges.
“What can I do to become a Madame Marneffe?” she asked herself as she
heard the door-bell.
She restrained her tears, fever gave brilliancy to her face, and she
meant to be quite the courtesan, poor, noble soul.
“What the devil can that worthy Baronne Hulot want of me?” Crevel
wondered as he mounted the stairs. “She is going to discuss my quarrel
with Celestine and Victorin, no doubt; but I will not give way!”
As he went into the drawing-room, shown in by Louise, he said to himself
as he noted the bareness of the place (Crevel’s word):
“Poor woman! She lives here like some fine picture stowed in a loft by a
man who knows nothing of painting.”
Crevel, seeing Comte Popinot, the Minister of Commerce, buy pictures and
statues, wanted also to figure as a Maecenas of Paris, whose love of Art
consists in making good investments.
Adeline smiled graciously at Crevel, pointing to a chair facing her.
“Here I am, fair lady, at your command,” said Crevel.
Monsieur the Mayor, a political personage, now wore black broadcloth.
His face, at the top of this solemn suit, shone like a full moon rising
above a mass of dark clouds. His shirt, buttoned with three large pearls
worth five hundred francs apiece, gave a great idea of his thoracic
capacity, and he was apt to say, “In me you see the coming athlete of
the tribune!” His enormous vulgar hands were encased in yellow
gloves even in the morning; his patent leather boots spoke of the
chocolate-colored coupe with one horse in which he drove.
In the course of three years ambition had altered Crevel’s pretensions.
Like all great artists, he had come to his second manner. In the great
world, when he went to the Prince de Wissembourg’s, to the Prefecture,
to Comte Popinot’s, and the like, he held his hat in his hand in an airy
manner taught him by Valerie, and he inserted the thumb of the other
hand in the armhole of his waistcoat with a knowing air, and a simpering
face and expression. This new grace of attitude was due to the satirical
inventiveness of Valerie, who, under pretence of rejuvenating her mayor,
had given him an added touch of the ridiculous.
“I begged you to come, my dear kind Monsieur Crevel,” said the Baroness
in a husky voice, “on a matter of the greatest importance--”
“I can guess what it is, madame,” said Crevel, with a knowing air,
“but what you would ask is impossible.--Oh, I am not a brutal father, a
man--to use Napoleon’s words--set hard and fast on sheer avarice. Listen
to me, fair lady. If my children were ruining themselves for their own
benefit, I would help them out of the scrape; but as for backing your
husband, madame? It is like trying to fill the vat of the Danaides!
Their house is mortgaged for three hundred thousand francs for an
incorrigible father! Why, they have nothing left, poor wretches! And
they have no fun for their money. All they have to live upon is what
Victorin may make in Court. He must wag his tongue more, must monsieur
your son! And he was to have been a Minister, that learned youth! Our
hope and pride. A pretty pilot, who runs aground like a land-lubber; for
if he had borrowed to enable him to get on, if he had run into debt for
feasting Deputies, winning votes, and increasing his influence, I should
be the first to say, ‘Here is my purse--dip your hand in, my friend!’
But when it comes of paying for papa’s folly--folly I warned you
of!--Ah! his father has deprived him of every chance of power.--It is I
who shall be Minister!”
“Alas, my dear Crevel, it has nothing to do with the children, poor
devoted souls!--If your heart is closed to Victorin and Celestine, I
shall love them so much that perhaps I may soften the bitterness of
their souls caused by your anger. You are punishing your children for a
good action!”
“Yes, for a good action badly done! That is half a crime,” said Crevel,
much pleased with his epigram.
“Doing good, my dear Crevel, does not mean sparing money out of a purse
that is bursting with it; it means enduring privations to be generous,
suffering for liberality! It is being prepared for ingratitude! Heaven
does not see the charity that costs us nothing--”
“Saints, madame, may if they please go to the workhouse; they know that
it is for them the door of heaven. For my part, I am worldly-minded; I
fear God, but yet more I fear the hell of poverty. To be destitute is
the last depth of misfortune in society as now constituted. I am a man
of my time; I respect money.”
“And you are right,” said Adeline, “from the worldly point of view.”
She was a thousand miles from her point, and she felt herself on a
gridiron, like Saint Laurence, as she thought of her uncle, for she
could see him blowing his brains out.
She looked down; then she raised her eyes to gaze at Crevel with angelic
sweetness--not with the inviting suggestiveness which was part of
Valerie’s wit. Three years ago she could have bewitched Crevel by that
beautiful look.
“I have known the time,” said she, “when you were more generous--you
used to talk of three hundred thousand francs like a grand gentleman--”
Crevel looked at Madame Hulot; he beheld her like a lily in the last of
its bloom, vague sensations rose within him, but he felt such respect
for this saintly creature that he spurned all suspicions and buried them
in the most profligate corner of his heart.
“I, madame, am still the same; but a retired merchant, if he is a grand
gentleman, plays, and must play, the part with method and economy; he
carries his ideas of order into everything. He opens an account for
his little amusements, and devotes certain profits to that head of
expenditure; but as to touching his capital! it would be folly. My
children will have their fortune intact, mine and my wife’s; but I do
not suppose that they wish their father to be dull, a monk and a mummy!
My life is a very jolly one; I float gaily down the stream. I fulfil all
the duties imposed on me by law, by my affections, and by family ties,
just as I always used to be punctual in paying my bills when they fell
due. If only my children conduct themselves in their domestic life as
I do, I shall be satisfied; and for the present, so long as my
follies--for I have committed follies--are no loss to any one but the
gulls--excuse me, you do not perhaps understand the slang word--they
will have nothing to blame me for, and will find a tidy little sum still
left when I die. Your children cannot say as much of their father, who
is ruining his son and my daughter by his pranks--”
The Baroness was getting further from her object as he went on.
“You are very unkind about my husband, my dear Crevel--and yet, if you
had found his wife obliging, you would have been his best friend----”
She shot a burning glance at Crevel; but, like Dubois, who gave the
Regent three kicks, she affected too much, and the rakish perfumer’s
thoughts jumped at such profligate suggestions, that he said to himself,
“Does she want to turn the tables on Hulot?--Does she think me more
attractive as a Mayor than as a National Guardsman? Women are strange
creatures!”
And he assumed the position of his second manner, looking at the
Baroness with his _Regency_ leer.
“I could almost fancy,” she went on, “that you want to visit on him your
resentment against the virtue that resisted you--in a woman whom you
loved well enough--to--to buy her,” she added in a low voice.
“In a divine woman,” Crevel replied, with a meaning smile at the
Baroness, who looked down while tears rose to her eyes. “For you
have swallowed not a few bitter pills!--in these three years--hey, my
beauty?”
“Do not talk of my troubles, dear Crevel; they are too much for the
endurance of a mere human being. Ah! if you still love me, you may
drag me out of the pit in which I lie. Yes, I am in hell torment! The
regicides who were racked and nipped and torn into quarters by four
horses were on roses compared with me, for their bodies only were
dismembered, and my heart is torn in quarters----”
Crevel’s thumb moved from his armhole, he placed his hand on the
work-table, he abandoned his attitude, he smiled! The smile was so
vacuous that it misled the Baroness; she took it for an expression of
kindness.
“You see a woman, not indeed in despair, but with her honor at the
point of death, and prepared for everything, my dear friend, to hinder a
crime.”
Fearing that Hortense might come in, she bolted the door; then with
equal impetuosity she fell at Crevel’s feet, took his hand and kissed
it.
“Be my deliverer!” she cried.
She thought there was some generous fibre in this mercantile soul, and
full of sudden hope that she might get the two hundred thousand francs
without degrading herself:
“Buy a soul--you were once ready to buy virtue!” she went on, with a
frenzied gaze. “Trust to my honesty as a woman, to my honor, of which
you know the worth! Be my friend! Save a whole family from ruin, shame,
despair; keep it from falling into a bog where the quicksands are
mingled with blood! Oh! ask for no explanations,” she exclaimed, at a
movement on Crevel’s part, who was about to speak. “Above all, do not
say to me, ‘I told you so!’ like a friend who is glad at a misfortune.
Come now, yield to her whom you used to love, to the woman whose
humiliation at your feet is perhaps the crowning moment of her glory;
ask nothing of her, expect what you will from her gratitude!--No, no.
Give me nothing, but lend--lend to me whom you used to call Adeline----”
At this point her tears flowed so fast, Adeline was sobbing so
passionately, that Crevel’s gloves were wet. The words, “I need two
hundred thousand francs,” were scarcely articulate in the torrent of
weeping, as stones, however large, are invisible in Alpine cataracts
swollen by the melting of the snows.
This is the inexperience of virtue. Vice asks for nothing, as we have
seen in Madame Marneffe; it gets everything offered to it. Women of that
stamp are never exacting till they have made themselves indispensable,
or when a man has to be worked as a quarry is worked where the lime is
rather scarce--going to ruin, as the quarry-men say.
On hearing these words, “Two hundred thousand francs,” Crevel understood
all. He cheerfully raised the Baroness, saying insolently:
“Come, come, bear up, mother,” which Adeline, in her distraction, failed
to hear. The scene was changing its character. Crevel was becoming
“master of the situation,” to use his own words. The vastness of the
sum startled Crevel so greatly that his emotion at seeing this handsome
woman in tears at his feet was forgotten. Besides, however angelical
and saintly a woman may be, when she is crying bitterly her beauty
disappears. A Madame Marneffe, as has been seen, whimpers now and then,
a tear trickles down her cheek; but as to melting into tears and making
her eyes and nose red!--never would she commit such a blunder.
“Come, child, compose yourself.--Deuce take it!” Crevel went on, taking
Madame Hulot’s hands in his own and patting them. “Why do you apply to
me for two hundred thousand francs? What do you want with them? Whom are
they for?”
“Do not,” said she, “insist on any explanations. Give me the money!--You
will save three lives and the honor of our children.”
“And do you suppose, my good mother, that in all Paris you will find a
man who at a word from a half-crazy woman will go off _hic et nunc_,
and bring out of some drawer, Heaven knows where, two hundred thousand
francs that have been lying simmering there till she is pleased to scoop
them up? Is that all you know of life and of business, my beauty? Your
folks are in a bad way; you may send them the last sacraments; for no
one in Paris but her Divine Highness Madame la Banque, or the great
Nucingen, or some miserable miser who is in love with gold as we other
folks are with a woman, could produce such a miracle! The civil list,
civil as it may be, would beg you to call again tomorrow. Every one
invests his money, and turns it over to the best of his powers.
“You are quite mistaken, my angel, if you suppose that King
Louis-Philippe rules us; he himself knows better than that. He knows as
well as we do that supreme above the Charter reigns the holy, venerated,
substantial, delightful, obliging, beautiful, noble, ever-youthful,
and all-powerful five-franc piece! But money, my beauty, insists on
interest, and is always engaged in seeking it! ‘God of the Jews, thou
art supreme!’ says Racine. The perennial parable of the golden calf, you
see!--In the days of Moses there was stock-jobbing in the desert!
“We have reverted to Biblical traditions; the Golden Calf was the first
State ledger,” he went on. “You, my Adeline, have not gone beyond the
Rue Plumet. The Egyptians had lent enormous sums to the Hebrews, and
what they ran after was not God’s people, but their capital.”
He looked at the Baroness with an expression which said, “How clever I
am!”
“You know nothing of the devotion of every city man to his sacred
hoard!” he went on, after a pause. “Excuse me. Listen to me. Get this
well into your head.--You want two hundred thousand francs? No one can
produce the sum without selling some security. Now consider! To have two
hundred thousand francs in hard cash it would be needful to sell about
seven hundred thousand francs’ worth of stock at three per cent. Well;
and then you would only get the money on the third day. That is the
quickest way. To persuade a man to part with a fortune--for two hundred
thousand francs is the whole fortune of many a man--he ought at least to
know where it is all going to, and for what purpose--”
“It is going, my dear kind Crevel, to save the lives of two men, one of
whom will die of grief and the other will kill himself! And to save me
too from going mad! Am I not a little mad already?”
“Not so mad!” said he, taking Madame Hulot round the knees; “old Crevel
has his price, since you thought of applying to him, my angel.”
“They submit to have a man’s arms round their knees, it would seem!”
thought the saintly woman, covering her face with her hands.
“Once you offered me a fortune!” said she, turning red.
“Ay, mother! but that was three years ago!” replied Crevel. “Well, you
are handsomer now than ever I saw you!” he went on, taking the Baroness’
arm and pressing it to his heart. “You have a good memory, my dear, by
Jove!--And now you see how wrong you were to be so prudish, for those
three hundred thousand francs that you refused so magnanimously are in
another woman’s pocket. I loved you then, I love you still; but just
look back these three years.
“When I said to you, ‘You shall be mine,’ what object had I in view? I
meant to be revenged on that rascal Hulot. But your husband, my beauty,
found himself a mistress--a jewel of a woman, a pearl, a cunning hussy
then aged three-and-twenty, for she is six-and-twenty now. It struck
me as more amusing, more complete, more Louis XV., more Marechal de
Richelieu, more first-class altogether, to filch away that charmer, who,
in point of fact, never cared for Hulot, and who for these three years
has been madly in love with your humble servant.”
As he spoke, Crevel, from whose hands the Baroness had released her
own, had resumed his favorite attitude; both thumbs were stuck into
his armholes, and he was patting his ribs with his fingers, like two
flapping wings, fancying that he was thus making himself very attractive
and charming. It was as much as to say, “And this is the man you would
have nothing to say to!”
“There you are my dear; I had my revenge, and your husband knows it. I
proved to him clearly that he was basketed--just where he was before, as
we say. Madame Marneffe is my mistress, and when her precious Marneffe
kicks the bucket, she will be my wife.”
Madame Hulot stared at Crevel with a fixed and almost dazed look.
“Hector knew it?” she said.
“And went back to her,” replied Crevel. “And I allowed it, because
Valerie wished to be the wife of a head-clerk; but she promised me
that she would manage things so that our Baron should be so effectually
bowled over that he can never interfere any more. And my little
duchess--for that woman is a born duchess, on my soul!--kept her word.
She restores you your Hector, madame, virtuous in perpetuity, as she
says--she is so witty! He has had a good lesson, I can tell you! The
Baron has had some hard knocks; he will help no more actresses or fine
ladies; he is radically cured; cleaned out like a beer-glass.
“If you had listened to Crevel in the first instance, instead of
scorning him and turning him out of the house, you might have had four
hundred thousand francs, for my revenge has cost me all of that.--But I
shall get my change back, I hope, when Marneffe dies--I have invested
in a wife, you see; that is the secret of my extravagance. I have solved
the problem of playing the lord on easy terms.”
“Would you give your daughter such a mother-in-law? cried Madame Hulot.
“You do not know Valerie, madame,” replied Crevel gravely, striking the
attitude of his first manner. “She is a woman with good blood in her
veins, a lady, and a woman who enjoys the highest consideration. Why,
only yesterday the vicar of the parish was dining with her. She is
pious, and we have presented a splendid monstrance to the church.
“Oh! she is clever, she is witty, she is delightful, well informed--she
has everything in her favor. For my part, my dear Adeline, I owe
everything to that charming woman; she has opened my mind, polished my
speech, as you may have noticed; she corrects my impetuosity, and gives
me words and ideas. I never say anything now that I ought not. I have
greatly improved; you must have noticed it. And then she has encouraged
my ambition. I shall be a Deputy; and I shall make no blunders, for
I shall consult my Egeria. Every great politician, from Numa to our
present Prime Minister, has had his Sibyl of the fountain. A score of
deputies visit Valerie; she is acquiring considerable influence; and
now that she is about to be established in a charming house, with a
carriage, she will be one of the occult rulers of Paris.
“A fine locomotive! That is what such a woman is. Oh, I have blessed you
many a time for your stern virtue.”
“It is enough to make one doubt the goodness of God!” cried Adeline,
whose indignation had dried her tears. “But, no! Divine justice must be
hanging over her head.”
“You know nothing of the world, my beauty,” said the great politician,
deeply offended. “The world, my Adeline, loves success! Say, now, has
it come to seek out your sublime virtue, priced at two hundred thousand
francs?”
The words made Madame Hulot shudder; the nervous trembling attacked her
once more. She saw that the ex-perfumer was taking a mean revenge on her
as he had on Hulot; she felt sick with disgust, and a spasm rose to her
throat, hindering speech.
“Money!” she said at last. “Always money!”
“You touched me deeply,” said Crevel, reminded by these words of the
woman’s humiliation, “when I beheld you there, weeping at my feet!--You
perhaps will not believe me, but if I had my pocket-book about me, it
would have been yours.--Come, do you really want such a sum?”
As she heard this question, big with two hundred thousand francs,
Adeline forgot the odious insults heaped on her by this cheap-jack
fine gentleman, before the tempting picture of success described by
Machiavelli-Crevel, who only wanted to find out her secrets and laugh
over them with Valerie.
“Oh! I will do anything, everything,” cried the unhappy woman.
“Monsieur, I will sell myself--I will be a Valerie, if I must.”
“You will find that difficult,” replied Crevel. “Valerie is a
masterpiece in her way. My good mother, twenty-five years of virtue
are always repellent, like a badly treated disease. And your virtue has
grown very mouldy, my dear child. But you shall see how much I love you.
I will manage to get you your two hundred thousand francs.”
Adeline, incapable of uttering a word, seized his hand and laid it on
her heart; a tear of joy trembled in her eyes.
“Oh! don’t be in a hurry; there will be some hard pulling. I am a jolly
good fellow, a good soul with no prejudices, and I will put things
plainly to you. You want to do as Valerie does--very good. But that is
not all; you must have a gull, a stockholder, a Hulot.--Well, I know
a retired tradesman--in fact, a hosier. He is heavy, dull, has not an
idea, I am licking him into shape, but I don’t know when he will do
me credit. My man is a deputy, stupid and conceited; the tyranny of
a turbaned wife, in the depths of the country, has preserved him in a
state of utter virginity as to the luxury and pleasures of Paris life.
But Beauvisage--his name is Beauvisage--is a millionaire, and, like me,
my dear, three years ago, he will give a hundred thousand crowns to be
the lover of a real lady.--Yes, you see,” he went on, misunderstanding a
gesture on Adeline’s part, “he is jealous of me, you understand; jealous
of my happiness with Madame Marneffe, and he is a fellow quite capable
of selling an estate to purchase a--”
“Enough, Monsieur Crevel!” said Madame Hulot, no longer controlling her
disgust, and showing all her shame in her face. “I am punished beyond
my deserts. My conscience, so sternly repressed by the iron hand of
necessity, tells me, at this final insult, that such sacrifices are
impossible.--My pride is gone; I do not say now, as I did the first
time, ‘Go!’ after receiving this mortal thrust. I have lost the right to
do so. I have flung myself before you like a prostitute.
“Yes,” she went on, in reply to a negative on Crevel’s part, “I have
fouled my life, till now so pure, by a degrading thought; and I am
inexcusable!--I know it!--I deserve every insult you can offer me! God’s
will be done! If, indeed, He desires the death of two creatures worthy
to appear before Him, they must die! I shall mourn them, and pray for
them! If it is His will that my family should be humbled to the dust,
we must bow to His avenging sword, nay, and kiss it, since we are
Christians.--I know how to expiate this disgrace, which will be the
torment of all my remaining days.
“I who speak to you, monsieur, am not Madame Hulot, but a wretched,
humble sinner, a Christian whose heart henceforth will know but one
feeling, and that is repentance, all my time given up to prayer and
charity. With such a sin on my soul, I am the last of women, the first
only of penitents.--You have been the means of bringing me to a right
mind; I can hear the Voice of God speaking within me, and I can thank
you!”
She was shaking with the nervous trembling which from that hour never
left her. Her low, sweet tones were quite unlike the fevered accents of
the woman who was ready for dishonor to save her family. The blood faded
from her cheeks, her face was colorless, and her eyes were dry.
“And I played my part very badly, did I not?” she went on, looking at
Crevel with the sweetness that martyrs must have shown in their eyes
as they looked up at the Proconsul. “True love, the sacred love of a
devoted woman, gives other pleasures, no doubt, than those that are
bought in the open market!--But why so many words?” said she, suddenly
bethinking herself, and advancing a step further in the way to
perfection. “They sound like irony, but I am not ironical! Forgive me.
Besides, monsieur, I did not want to hurt any one but myself--”
The dignity of virtue and its holy flame had expelled the transient
impurity of the woman who, splendid in her own peculiar beauty, looked
taller in Crevel’s eyes. Adeline had, at this moment, the majesty of
the figures of Religion clinging to the Cross, as painted by the old
Venetians; but she expressed, too, the immensity of her love and the
grandeur of the Catholic Church, to which she flew like a wounded dove.
Crevel was dazzled, astounded.
“Madame, I am your slave, without conditions,” said he, in an
inspiration of generosity. “We will look into this matter--and--whatever
you want--the impossible even--I will do. I will pledge my securities at
the Bank, and in two hours you shall have the money.”
“Good God! a miracle!” said poor Adeline, falling on her knees.
She prayed to Heaven with such fervor as touched Crevel deeply; Madame
Hulot saw that he had tears in his eyes when, having ended her prayer,
she rose to her feet.
“Be a friend to me, monsieur,” said she. “Your heart is better than your
words and conduct. God gave you your soul; your passions and the world
have given you your ideas. Oh, I will love you truly,” she exclaimed,
with an angelic tenderness in strange contrast with her attempts at
coquettish trickery.
“But cease to tremble so,” said Crevel.
“Am I trembling?” said the Baroness, unconscious of the infirmity that
had so suddenly come upon her.
“Yes; why, look,” said Crevel, taking Adeline by the arm and showing
her that she was shaking with nervousness. “Come, madame,” he added
respectfully, “compose yourself; I am going to the Bank at once.”
“And come back quickly! Remember,” she added, betraying all her secrets,
“that the first point is to prevent the suicide of our poor Uncle
Fischer involved by my husband--for I trust you now, and I am
telling you everything. Oh, if we should not be on time, I know my
brother-in-law, the Marshal, and he has such a delicate soul, that he
would die of it in a few days.”
“I am off, then,” said Crevel, kissing the Baroness’ hand. “But what has
that unhappy Hulot done?”
“He has swindled the Government.”
“Good Heavens! I fly, madame; I understand, I admire you!”
Crevel bent one knee, kissed Madame Hulot’s skirt, and vanished, saying,
“You will see me soon.”
Unluckily, on his way from the Rue Plumet to his own house, to fetch the
securities, Crevel went along the Rue Vanneau, and he could not resist
going in to see his little Duchess. His face still bore an agitated
expression.
He went straight into Valerie’s room, who was having her hair dressed.
She looked at Crevel in her glass, and, like every woman of that sort,
was annoyed, before she knew anything about it, to see that he was moved
by some strong feeling of which she was not the cause.
“What is the matter, my dear?” said she. “Is that a face to bring in to
your little Duchess? I will not be your Duchess any more, monsieur, no
more than I will be your ‘little duck,’ you old monster.”
Crevel replied by a melancholy smile and a glance at the maid.
“Reine, child, that will do for to-day; I can finish my hair myself.
Give me my Chinese wrapper; my gentleman seems to me out of sorts.”
Reine, whose face was pitted like a colander, and who seemed to have
been made on purpose to wait on Valerie, smiled meaningly in reply, and
brought the dressing-gown. Valerie took off her combing-wrapper; she was
in her shift, and she wriggled into the dressing-gown like a snake into
a clump of grass.
“Madame is not at home?”
“What a question!” said Valerie.--“Come, tell me, my big puss, have
_Rives Gauches_ gone down?”
“No.”
“They have raised the price of the house?”
“No.”
“You fancy that you are not the father of our little Crevel?”
“What nonsense!” replied he, sure of his paternity.
“On my honor, I give it up!” said Madame Marneffe. “If I am expected
to extract my friend’s woes as you pull the cork out of a bottle of
Bordeaux, I let it alone.--Go away, you bore me.”
“It is nothing,” said Crevel. “I must find two hundred thousand francs
in two hours.”
“Oh, you can easily get them.--I have not spent the fifty thousand
francs we got out of Hulot for that report, and I can ask Henri for
fifty thousand--”
“Henri--it is always Henri!” exclaimed Crevel.
“And do you suppose, you great baby of a Machiavelli, that I will cast
off Henri? Would France disarm her fleet?--Henri! why, he is a dagger in
a sheath hanging on a nail. That boy serves as a weather-glass to show
me if you love me--and you don’t love me this morning.”
“I don’t love you, Valerie?” cried Crevel. “I love you as much as a
million.”
“That is not nearly enough!” cried she, jumping on to Crevel’s knee, and
throwing both arms round his neck as if it were a peg to hang on by. “I
want to be loved as much as ten millions, as much as all the gold in the
world, and more to that. Henri would never wait a minute before telling
me all he had on his mind. What is it, my great pet? Have it out. Make a
clean breast of it to your own little duck!”
And she swept her hair over Crevel’s face, while she jestingly pulled
his nose.
“Can a man with a nose like that,” she went on, “have any secrets from
his _Vava--lele--ririe_?”
And at the _Vava_ she tweaked his nose to the right; at _lele_ it went
to the left; at _ririe_ she nipped it straight again.
“Well, I have just seen--” Crevel stopped and looked at Madame Marneffe.
“Valerie, my treasure, promise me on your honor--ours, you know?--not to
repeat a single word of what I tell you.”
“Of course, Mayor, we know all about that. One hand up--so--and one
foot--so!” And she put herself in an attitude which, to use Rabelais’
phrase, stripped Crevel bare from his brain to his heels, so quaint and
delicious was the nudity revealed through the light film of lawn.
“I have just seen virtue in despair.”
“Can despair possess virtue?” said she, nodding gravely and crossing her
arms like Napoleon.
“It is poor Madame Hulot. She wants two hundred thousand francs, or else
Marshal Hulot and old Johann Fischer will blow their brains out; and as
you, my little Duchess, are partly at the bottom of the mischief, I am
going to patch matters up. She is a saintly creature, I know her well;
she will repay you every penny.”
At the name of Hulot, at the words two hundred thousand francs, a gleam
from Valerie’s eyes flashed from between her long eyelids like the flame
of a cannon through the smoke.
“What did the old thing do to move you to compassion? Did she show
you--what?--her--her religion?”
“Do not make game of her, sweetheart; she is a very saintly, a very
noble and pious woman, worthy of all respect.”
“Am I not worthy of respect then, heh?” answered Valerie, with a
threatening gaze at Crevel.
“I never said so,” replied he, understanding that the praise of virtue
might not be gratifying to Madame Marneffe.
“I am pious too,” Valerie went on, taking her seat in an armchair; “but
I do not make a trade of my religion. I go to church in secret.”
She sat in silence, and paid no further heed to Crevel. He, extremely
ill at ease, came to stand in front of the chair into which Valerie
had thrown herself, and saw her lost in the reflections he had been so
foolish as to suggest.
“Valerie, my little Angel!”
Utter silence. A highly problematical tear was furtively dashed away.
“One word, my little duck?”
“Monsieur!”
“What are you thinking of, my darling?”
“Oh, Monsieur Crevel, I was thinking of the day of my first communion!
How pretty I was! How pure, how saintly!--immaculate!--Oh! if any one
had come to my mother and said, ‘Your daughter will be a hussy, and
unfaithful to her husband; one day a police-officer will find her in
a disreputable house; she will sell herself to a Crevel to cheat a
Hulot--two horrible old men--’ Poof! horrible--she would have died
before the end of the sentence, she was so fond of me, poor dear!--”
“Nay, be calm.”
“You cannot think how well a woman must love a man before she can
silence the remorse that gnaws at the heart of an adulterous wife. I
am quite sorry that Reine is not here; she would have told you that she
found me this morning praying with tears in my eyes. I, Monsieur Crevel,
for my part, do not make a mockery of religion. Have you ever heard me
say a word I ought not on such a subject?”
Crevel shook his head in negation.
“I will never allow it to be mentioned in my presence. I can make fun
of anything under the sun: Kings, politics, finance, everything that is
sacred in the eyes of the world--judges, matrimony, and love--old men
and maidens. But the Church and God!--There I draw the line.--I know
I am wicked; I am sacrificing my future life to you. And you have no
conception of the immensity of my love.”
Crevel clasped his hands.
“No, unless you could see into my heart, and fathom the depth of my
conviction so as to know the extent of my sacrifice! I feel in me the
making of a Magdalen.--And see how respectfully I treat the priests;
think of the gifts I make to the Church! My mother brought me up in the
Catholic Faith, and I know what is meant by God! It is to sinners like
us that His voice is most awful.”
Valerie wiped away two tears that trickled down her cheeks. Crevel was
in dismay. Madame Marneffe stood up in her excitement.
“Be calm, my darling--you alarm me!”
Madame Marneffe fell on her knees.
“Dear Heaven! I am not bad all through!” she cried, clasping her hands.
“Vouchsafe to rescue Thy wandering lamb, strike her, crush her, snatch
her from foul and adulterous hands, and how gladly she will nestle on
Thy shoulder! How willingly she will return to the fold!”
She got up and looked at Crevel; her colorless eyes frightened him.
“Yes, Crevel, and, do you know? I, too, am frightened sometimes. The
justice of God is exerted in this nether world as well as in the next.
What mercy can I expect at God’s hands? His vengeance overtakes the
guilty in many ways; it assumes every aspect of disaster. That is what
my mother told me on her death-bed, speaking of her own old age.--But
if I should lose you,” she added, hugging Crevel with a sort of savage
frenzy--“oh! I should die!”
Madame Marneffe released Crevel, knelt down again at the armchair,
folded her hands--and in what a bewitching attitude!--and with
incredible fervor poured out the following prayer:--
“And thou, Saint Valerie, my patron saint, why dost thou so rarely visit
the pillow of her who was intrusted to thy care? Oh, come this evening,
as thou didst this morning, to inspire me with holy thoughts, and I will
quit the path of sin; like the Magdalen, I will give up deluding joys
and the false glitter of the world, even the man I love so well--”
“My precious duck!”
“No more of the ‘precious duck,’ monsieur!” said she, turning round
like a virtuous wife, her eyes full of tears, but dignified, cold, and
indifferent.
“Leave me,” she went on, pushing him from her. “What is my duty? To
belong wholly to my husband.--He is a dying man, and what am I doing?
Deceiving him on the edge of the grave. He believes your child to be
his. I will tell him the truth, and begin by securing his pardon before
I ask for God’s.--We must part. Good-bye, Monsieur Crevel,” and she
stood up to offer him an icy cold hand. “Good-bye, my friend; we shall
meet no more till we meet in a better world.--You have to thank me for
some enjoyment, criminal indeed; now I want--oh yes, I shall have your
esteem.”
Crevel was weeping bitter tears.
“You great pumpkin!” she exclaimed, with an infernal peal of laughter.
“That is how your pious women go about it to drag from you a plum of two
hundred thousand francs. And you, who talk of the Marechal de Richelieu,
the prototype of Lovelace, you could be taken in by such a stale trick
as that! I could get hundreds of thousands of francs out of you any day,
if I chose, you old ninny!--Keep your money! If you have more than
you know what to do with, it is mine. If you give two sous to that
‘respectable’ woman, who is pious forsooth, because she is fifty-six
years of age, we shall never meet again, and you may take her for your
mistress! You could come back to me next day bruised all over from
her bony caresses and sodden with her tears, and sick of her little
barmaid’s caps and her whimpering, which must turn her favors into
showers--”
“In point of fact,” said Crevel, “two hundred thousand francs is a round
sum of money.”
“They have fine appetites, have the goody sort! By the poker! they
sell their sermons dearer than we sell the rarest and realest thing on
earth--pleasure.--And they can spin a yarn! There, I know them. I have
seen plenty in my mother’s house. They think everything is allowable
for the Church and for--Really, my dear love, you ought to be ashamed
of yourself--for you are not so open-handed! You have not given me two
hundred thousand francs all told!”
“Oh yes,” said Crevel, “your little house will cost as much as that.”
“Then you have four hundred thousand francs?” said she thoughtfully.
“No.”
“Then, sir, you meant to lend that old horror the two hundred thousand
francs due for my hotel? What a crime, what high treason!”
“Only listen to me.”
“If you were giving the money to some idiotic philanthropic scheme,
you would be regarded as a coming man,” she went on, with increasing
eagerness, “and I should be the first to advise it; for you are too
simple to write a big political book that might make you famous; as for
style, you have not enough to butter a pamphlet; but you might do as
other men do who are in your predicament, and who get a halo of glory
about their name by putting it at the top of some social, or moral,
or general, or national enterprise. Benevolence is out of date, quite
vulgar. Providing for old offenders, and making them more comfortable
than the poor devils who are honest, is played out. What I should like
to see is some invention of your own with an endowment of two hundred
thousand francs--something difficult and really useful. Then you would
be talked about as a man of mark, a Montyon, and I should be very proud
of you!
“But as to throwing two hundred thousand francs into a holy-water shell,
or lending them to a bigot--cast off by her husband, and who knows why?
there is always some reason: does any one cast me off, I ask you?--is
a piece of idiocy which in our days could only come into the head of a
retired perfumer. It reeks of the counter. You would not dare look at
yourself in the glass two days after.
“Go and pay the money in where it will be safe--run, fly; I will not
admit you again without the receipt in your hand. Go, as fast and soon
as you can!”
She pushed Crevel out of the room by the shoulders, seeing avarice
blossoming in his face once more. When she heard the outer door shut,
she exclaimed:
“Then Lisbeth is revenged over and over again! What a pity that she is
at her old Marshal’s now! We would have had a good laugh! So that old
woman wants to take the bread out of my mouth. I will startle her a
little!”
Marshal Hulot, being obliged to live in a style suited to the highest
military rank, had taken a handsome house in the Rue du Mont-Parnasse,
where there are three or four princely residences. Though he rented the
whole house, he inhabited only the ground floor. When Lisbeth went to
keep house for him, she at once wished to let the first floor, which, as
she said, would pay the whole rent, so that the Count would live almost
rent-free; but the old soldier would not hear of it.
For some months past the Marshal had had many sad thoughts. He had
guessed how miserably poor his sister-in-law was, and suspected her
griefs without understanding their cause. The old man, so cheerful in
his deafness, became taciturn; he could not help thinking that his house
would one day be a refuge for the Baroness and her daughter; and it was
for them that he kept the first floor. The smallness of his fortune
was so well known at headquarters, that the War Minister, the Prince
de Wissembourg, begged his old comrade to accept a sum of money for his
household expenses. This sum the Marshal spent in furnishing the ground
floor, which was in every way suitable; for, as he said, he would not
accept the Marshal’s baton to walk the streets with.
The house had belonged to a senator under the Empire, and the ground
floor drawing-rooms had been very magnificently fitted with carved wood,
white-and-gold, still in very good preservation. The Marshal had found
some good old furniture in the same style; in the coach-house he had
a carriage with two batons in saltire on the panels; and when he was
expected to appear in full fig, at the Minister’s, at the Tuileries, for
some ceremony or high festival, he hired horses for the job.
His servant for more than thirty years was an old soldier of sixty,
whose sister was the cook, so he had saved ten thousand francs, adding
it by degrees to a little hoard he intended for Hortense. Every day the
old man walked along the boulevard, from the Rue du Mont-Parnasse to the
Rue Plumet; and every pensioner as he passed stood at attention, without
fail, to salute him: then the Marshal rewarded the veteran with a smile.
“Who is the man you always stand at attention to salute?” said a young
workman one day to an old captain and pensioner.
“I will tell you, boy,” replied the officer.
The “boy” stood resigned, as a man does to listen to an old gossip.
“In 1809,” said the captain, “we were covering the flank of the main
army, marching on Vienna under the Emperor’s command. We came to a
bridge defended by three batteries of cannon, one above another, on a
sort of cliff; three redoubts like three shelves, and commanding the
bridge. We were under Marshal Massena. That man whom you see there was
Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and I was one of them. Our columns held
one bank of the river, the batteries were on the other. Three times they
tried for the bridge, and three times they were driven back. ‘Go and
find Hulot!’ said the Marshal; ‘nobody but he and his men can bolt that
morsel.’ So we came. The General, who was just retiring from the bridge,
stopped Hulot under fire, to tell him how to do it, and he was in the
way. ‘I don’t want advice, but room to pass,’ said our General coolly,
marching across at the head of his men. And then, rattle, thirty guns
raking us at once.”
“By Heaven!” cried the workman, “that accounts for some of these
crutches!”
“And if you, like me, my boy, had heard those words so quietly spoken,
you would bow before that man down to the ground! It is not so famous as
Arcole, but perhaps it was finer. We followed Hulot at the double, right
up to those batteries. All honor to those we left there!” and the old
man lifted his hat. “The Austrians were amazed at the dash of it.--The
Emperor made the man you saw a Count; he honored us all by honoring our
leader; and the King of to-day was very right to make him a Marshal.”
“Hurrah for the Marshal!” cried the workman.
“Oh, you may shout--shout away! The Marshal is as deaf as a post from
the roar of cannon.”
This anecdote may give some idea of the respect with which the
_Invalides_ regarded Marshal Hulot, whose Republican proclivities
secured him the popular sympathy of the whole quarter of the town.
Sorrow taking hold on a spirit so calm and strict and noble, was a
heart-breaking spectacle. The Baroness could only tell lies, with
a woman’s ingenuity, to conceal the whole dreadful truth from her
brother-in-law.
In the course of this miserable morning, the Marshal, who, like all old
men, slept but little, had extracted from Lisbeth full particulars as
to his brother’s situation, promising to marry her as the reward of her
revelations. Any one can imagine with what glee the old maid allowed
the secrets to be dragged from her which she had been dying to tell
ever since she had come into the house; for by this means she made her
marriage more certain.
“Your brother is incorrigible!” Lisbeth shouted into the Marshal’s best
ear.
Her strong, clear tones enabled her to talk to him, but she wore out her
lungs, so anxious was she to prove to her future husband that to her he
would never be deaf.
“He has had three mistresses,” said the old man, “and his wife was an
Adeline! Poor Adeline!”
“If you will take my advice,” shrieked Lisbeth, “you will use your
influence with the Prince de Wissembourg to secure her some suitable
appointment. She will need it, for the Baron’s pay is pledged for three
years.”
“I will go to the War Office,” said he, “and see the Prince, to find
out what he thinks of my brother, and ask for his interest to help my
sister. Think of some place that is fit for her.”
“The charitable ladies of Paris, in concert with the Archbishop, have
formed various beneficent associations; they employ superintendents,
very decently paid, whose business it is to seek out cases of real want.
Such an occupation would exactly suit dear Adeline; it would be work
after her own heart.”
“Send to order the horses,” said the Marshal. “I will go and dress. I
will drive to Neuilly if necessary.”
“How fond he is of her! She will always cross my path wherever I turn!”
said Lisbeth to herself.
Lisbeth was already supreme in the house, but not with the Marshal’s
cognizance. She had struck terror into the three servants--for she had
allowed herself a housemaid, and she exerted her old-maidish energy in
taking stock of everything, examining everything, and arranging in
every respect for the comfort of her dear Marshal. Lisbeth, quite as
Republican as he could be, pleased him by her democratic opinions, and
she flattered him with amazing dexterity; for the last fortnight the old
man, whose house was better kept, and who was cared for as a child by
its mother, had begun to regard Lisbeth as a part of what he had dreamed
of.
“My dear Marshal,” she shouted, following him out on to the steps, “pull
up the windows, do not sit in a draught, to oblige me!”
The Marshal, who had never been so cosseted in his life, went off
smiling at Lisbeth, though his heart was aching.
At the same hour Baron Hulot was quitting the War Office to call on his
chief, Marshal the Prince de Wissembourg, who had sent for him. Though
there was nothing extraordinary in one of the Generals on the Board
being sent for, Hulot’s conscience was so uneasy that he fancied he saw
a cold and sinister expression in Mitouflet’s face.
“Mitouflet, how is the Prince?” he asked, locking the door of his
private room and following the messenger who led the way.
“He must have a crow to pluck with you, Monsieur le Baron,” replied the
man, “for his face is set at stormy.”
Hulot turned pale, and said no more; he crossed the anteroom and
reception rooms, and, with a violently beating heart, found himself at
the door of the Prince’s private study.
The chief, at this time seventy years old, with perfectly white hair,
and the tanned complexion of a soldier of that age, commanded attention
by a brow so vast that imagination saw in it a field of battle. Under
this dome, crowned with snow, sparkled a pair of eyes, of the Napoleon
blue, usually sad-looking and full of bitter thoughts and regrets, their
fire overshadowed by the penthouse of the strongly projecting brow. This
man, Bernadotte’s rival, had hoped to find his seat on a throne. But
those eyes could flash formidable lightnings when they expressed strong
feelings.
Then, his voice, always somewhat hollow, rang with strident tones. When
he was angry, the Prince was a soldier once more; he spoke the language
of Lieutenant Cottin; he spared nothing--nobody. Hulot d’Ervy found the
old lion, his hair shaggy like a mane, standing by the fireplace, his
brows knit, his back against the mantel-shelf, and his eyes apparently
fixed on vacancy.
“Here! At your orders, Prince!” said Hulot, affecting a graceful ease of
manner.
The Marshal looked hard at the Baron, without saying a word, during the
time it took him to come from the door to within a few steps of where
the chief stood. This leaden stare was like the eye of God; Hulot could
not meet it; he looked down in confusion.
“He knows everything!” said he to himself.
“Does your conscience tell you nothing?” asked the Marshal, in his deep,
hollow tones.
“It tells me, sir, that I have been wrong, no doubt, in ordering
_razzias_ in Algeria without referring the matter to you. At my age,
and with my tastes, after forty-five years of service, I have
no fortune.--You know the principles of the four hundred elect
representatives of France. Those gentlemen are envious of every
distinction; they have pared down even the Ministers’ pay--that says
everything! Ask them for money for an old servant!--What can you expect
of men who pay a whole class so badly as they pay the Government legal
officials?--who give thirty sous a day to the laborers on the works at
Toulon, when it is a physical impossibility to live there and keep a
family on less than forty sous?--who never think of the atrocity of
giving salaries of six hundred francs, up to a thousand or twelve
hundred perhaps, to clerks living in Paris; and who want to secure our
places for themselves as soon as the pay rises to forty thousand?--who,
finally, refuse to restore to the Crown a piece of Crown property
confiscated from the Crown in 1830--property acquired, too, by Louis
XVI. out of his privy purse!--If you had no private fortune, Prince,
you would be left high and dry, like my brother, with your pay and not
another sou, and no thought of your having saved the army, and me with
it, in the boggy plains of Poland.”
“You have robbed the State! You have made yourself liable to be brought
before the bench at Assizes,” said the Marshal, “like that clerk of the
Treasury! And you take this, monsieur, with such levity.”
“But there is a great difference, monseigneur!” cried the baron. “Have I
dipped my hands into a cash box intrusted to my care?”
“When a man of your rank commits such an infamous crime,” said
the Marshal, “he is doubly guilty if he does it clumsily. You have
compromised the honor of our official administration, which hitherto has
been the purest in Europe!--And all for two hundred thousand francs and
a hussy!” said the Marshal, in a terrible voice. “You are a Councillor
of State--and a private soldier who sells anything belonging to his
regiment is punished with death! Here is a story told to me one day by
Colonel Pourin of the Second Lancers. At Saverne, one of his men fell in
love with a little Alsatian girl who had a fancy for a shawl. The jade
teased this poor devil of a lancer so effectually, that though he
could show twenty years’ service, and was about to be promoted to be
quartermaster--the pride of the regiment--to buy this shawl he sold some
of his company’s kit.--Do you know what this lancer did, Baron d’Ervy?
He swallowed some window-glass after pounding it down, and died in
eleven hours, of an illness, in hospital.--Try, if you please, to die of
apoplexy, that we may not see you dishonored.”
Hulot looked with haggard eyes at the old warrior; and the Prince,
reading the look which betrayed the coward, felt a flush rise to his
cheeks; his eyes flamed.
“Will you, sir, abandon me?” Hulot stammered.
Marshal Hulot, hearing that only his brother was with the Minister,
ventured at this juncture to come in, and, like all deaf people, went
straight up to the Prince.
“Oh,” cried the hero of Poland, “I know what you are here for, my old
friend! But we can do nothing.”
“Do nothing!” echoed Marshal Hulot, who had heard only the last word.
“Nothing; you have come to intercede for your brother. But do you know
what your brother is?”
“My brother?” asked the deaf man.
“Yes, he is a damned infernal blackguard, and unworthy of you.”
The Marshal in his rage shot from his eyes those fulminating fires
which, like Napoleon’s, broke a man’s will and judgment.
“You lie, Cottin!” said Marshal Hulot, turning white. “Throw down your
baton as I throw mine! I am ready.”
The Prince went up to his old comrade, looked him in the face, and
shouted in his ear as he grasped his hand:
“Are you a man?”
“You will see that I am.”
“Well, then, pull yourself together! You must face the worst misfortune
that can befall you.”
The Prince turned round, took some papers from the table, and placed
them in the Marshal’s hands, saying, “Read that.”