“To his Excellency the President of the Council.
“_Private and Confidential_.
“ALGIERS.
“MY DEAR PRINCE,--We have a very ugly business on our hands, as
you will see by the accompanying documents.
“The story, briefly told, is this: Baron Hulot d’Ervy sent out to
the province of Oran an uncle of his as a broker in grain and
forage, and gave him an accomplice in the person of a storekeeper.
This storekeeper, to curry favor, has made a confession, and
finally made his escape. The Public Prosecutor took the matter up
very thoroughly, seeing, as he supposed, that only two inferior
agents were implicated; but Johann Fischer, uncle to your Chief of
the Commissariat Department, finding that he was to be brought up
at the Assizes, stabbed himself in prison with a nail.
“That would have been the end of the matter if this worthy and
honest man, deceived, it would seem, by his agent and by his
nephew, had not thought proper to write to Baron Hulot. This
letter, seized as a document, so greatly surprised the Public
Prosecutor, that he came to see me. Now, the arrest and public
trial of a Councillor of State would be such a terrible thing--of
a man high in office too, who has a good record for loyal service
--for after the Beresina, it was he who saved us all by
reorganizing the administration--that I desired to have all the
papers sent to me.
“Is the matter to take its course? Now that the principal agent is
dead, will it not be better to smother up the affair and sentence
the storekeeper in default?
“The Public Prosecutor has consented to my forwarding the
documents for your perusal; the Baron Hulot d’Ervy, being resident
in Paris, the proceedings will lie with your Supreme Court. We
have hit on this rather shabby way of ridding ourselves of the
difficulty for the moment.
“Only, my dear Marshal, decide quickly. This miserable business is
too much talked about already, and it will do as much harm to us
as to you all if the name of the principal culprit--known at
present only to the Public Prosecutor, the examining judge, and
myself--should happen to leak out.”
At this point the letter fell from Marshal Hulot’s hands; he looked at
his brother; he saw that there was no need to examine the evidence. But
he looked for Johann Fischer’s letter, and after reading it at a glance,
held it out to Hector:--
“FROM THE PRISON AT ORAN.
“DEAR NEPHEW,--When you read this letter, I shall have ceased to
live.
“Be quite easy, no proof can be found to incriminate you. When I
am dead and your Jesuit of a Chardin fled, the trial must
collapse. The face of our Adeline, made so happy by you, makes
death easy to me. Now you need not send the two hundred thousand
francs. Good-bye.
“This letter will be delivered by a prisoner for a short term whom
I can trust, I believe.
“JOHANN FISCHER.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Marshal Hulot to the Prince de Wissembourg
with pathetic pride.
“Come, come, say _tu_, not the formal _vous_,” replied the Minister,
clasping his old friend’s hand. “The poor lancer killed no one but
himself,” he added, with a thunderous look at Hulot d’Ervy.
“How much have you had?” said the Comte de Forzheim to his brother.
“Two hundred thousand francs.”
“My dear friend,” said the Count, addressing the Minister, “you shall
have the two hundred thousand francs within forty-eight hours. It shall
never be said that a man bearing the name of Hulot has wronged the
public treasury of a single sou.”
“What nonsense!” said the Prince. “I know where the money is, and I can
get it back.--Send in your resignation and ask for your pension!” he
went on, sending a double sheet of foolscap flying across to where the
Councillor of State had sat down by the table, for his legs gave way
under him. “To bring you to trial would disgrace us all. I have already
obtained from the superior Board their sanction to this line of
action. Since you can accept life with dishonor--in my opinion the last
degradation--you will get the pension you have earned. Only take care to
be forgotten.”
The Minister rang.
“Is Marneffe, the head-clerk, out there?”
“Yes, monseigneur.”
“Show him in!”
“You,” said the Minister as Marneffe came in, “you and your wife have
wittingly and intentionally ruined the Baron d’Ervy whom you see.”
“Monsieur le Ministre, I beg your pardon. We are very poor. I have
nothing to live on but my pay, and I have two children, and the one that
is coming will have been brought into the family by Monsieur le Baron.”
“What a villain he looks!” said the Prince, pointing to Marneffe and
addressing Marshal Hulot.--“No more of Sganarelle speeches,” he went
on; “you will disgorge two hundred thousand francs, or be packed off to
Algiers.”
“But, Monsieur le Ministre, you do not know my wife. She has spent it
all. Monsieur le Baron asked six persons to dinner every evening.--Fifty
thousand francs a year are spent in my house.”
“Leave the room!” said the Minister, in the formidable tones that
had given the word to charge in battle. “You will have notice of your
transfer within two hours. Go!”
“I prefer to send in my resignation,” said Marneffe insolently. “For it
is too much to be what I am already, and thrashed into the bargain. That
would not satisfy me at all.”
And he left the room.
“What an impudent scoundrel!” said the Prince.
Marshal Hulot, who had stood up throughout this scene, as pale as a
corpse, studying his brother out of the corner of his eye, went up to
the Prince, and took his hand, repeating:
“In forty-eight hours the pecuniary mischief shall be repaired; but
honor!--Good-bye, Marshal. It is the last shot that kills. Yes, I shall
die of it!” he said in his ear.
“What the devil brought you here this morning?” said the Prince, much
moved.
“I came to see what can be done for his wife,” replied the Count,
pointing to his brother. “She is wanting bread--especially now!”
“He has his pension.”
“It is pledged!”
“The Devil must possess such a man,” said the Prince, with a shrug.
“What philtre do those baggages give you to rob you of your wits?”
he went on to Hulot d’Ervy. “How could you--you, who know the precise
details with which in French offices everything is written down at full
length, consuming reams of paper to certify to the receipt or outlay
of a few centimes--you, who have so often complained that a hundred
signatures are needed for a mere trifle, to discharge a soldier, to buy
a curry-comb--how could you hope to conceal a theft for any length of
time? To say nothing of the newspapers, and the envious, and the people
who would like to steal!--those women must rob you of your common-sense!
Do they cover your eyes with walnut-shells? or are you yourself made of
different stuff from us?--You ought to have left the office as soon as
you found that you were no longer a man, but a temperament. If you have
complicated your crime with such gross folly, you will end--I will not
say where----”
“Promise me, Cottin, that you will do what you can for her,” said the
Marshal, who heard nothing, and was still thinking of his sister-in-law.
“Depend on me!” said the Minister.
“Thank you, and good-bye then!--Come, monsieur,” he said to his brother.
The Prince looked with apparent calmness at the two brothers, so
different in their demeanor, conduct, and character--the brave man
and the coward, the ascetic and the profligate, the honest man and the
peculator--and he said to himself:
“That mean creature will not have courage to die! And my poor Hulot,
such an honest fellow! has death in his knapsack, I know!”
He sat down again in his big chair and went on reading the despatches
from Africa with a look characteristic at once of the coolness of a
leader and of the pity roused by the sight of a battle-field! For in
reality no one is so humane as a soldier, stern as he may seem in the
icy determination acquired by the habit of fighting, and so absolutely
essential in the battle-field.
Next morning some of the newspapers contained, under various headings,
the following paragraphs:--
“Monsieur le Baron Hulot d’Ervy has applied for his retiring
pension. The unsatisfactory state of the Algerian exchequer, which
has come out in consequence of the death and disappearance of two
employes, has had some share in this distinguished official’s
decision. On hearing of the delinquencies of the agents whom he
had unfortunately trusted, Monsieur le Baron Hulot had a paralytic
stroke in the War Minister’s private room.
“Monsieur Hulot d’Ervy, brother to the Marshal Comte de Forzheim,
has been forty-five years in the service. His determination has
been vainly opposed, and is greatly regretted by all who know
Monsieur Hulot, whose private virtues are as conspicuous as his
administrative capacity. No one can have forgotten the devoted
conduct of the Commissary General of the Imperial Guard at Warsaw,
or the marvelous promptitude with which he organized supplies for
the various sections of the army so suddenly required by Napoleon
in 1815.
“One more of the heroes of the Empire is retiring from the stage.
Monsieur le Baron Hulot has never ceased, since 1830, to be one of
the guiding lights of the State Council and of the War Office.”
“ALGIERS.--The case known as the forage supply case, to which some
of our contemporaries have given absurd prominence, has been
closed by the death of the chief culprit. Johann Wisch has
committed suicide in his cell; his accomplice, who had absconded,
will be sentenced in default.
“Wisch, formerly an army contractor, was an honest man and highly
respected, who could not survive the idea of having been the dupe
of Chardin, the storekeeper who has disappeared.”
And in the _Paris News_ the following paragraph appeared:
“Monsieur le Marechal the Minister of War, to prevent the
recurrence of such scandals for the future, has arranged for a
regular Commissariat office in Africa. A head-clerk in the War
Office, Monsieur Marneffe, is spoken of as likely to be appointed
to the post of director.”
“The office vacated by Baron Hulot is the object of much ambition.
The appointment is promised, it is said, to Monsieur le Comte
Martial de la Roche-Hugon, Deputy, brother-in-law to Monsieur le
Comte de Rastignac. Monsieur Massol, Master of Appeals, will fill
his seat on the Council of State, and Monsieur Claude Vignon
becomes Master of Appeals.”
Of all kinds of false gossip, the most dangerous for the Opposition
newspapers is the official bogus paragraph. However keen journalists
may be, they are sometimes the voluntary or involuntary dupes of the
cleverness of those who have risen from the ranks of the Press, like
Claude Vignon, to the higher realms of power. The newspaper can only be
circumvented by the journalist. It may be said, as a parody on a line by
Voltaire:
“The Paris news is never what the foolish folk believe.”
Marshal Hulot drove home with his brother, who took the front seat,
respectfully leaving the whole of the back of the carriage to his
senior. The two men spoke not a word. Hector was helpless. The Marshal
was lost in thought, like a man who is collecting all his strength, and
bracing himself to bear a crushing weight. On arriving at his own house,
still without speaking, but by an imperious gesture, he beckoned his
brother into his study. The Count had received from the Emperor Napoleon
a splendid pair of pistols from the Versailles factory; he took the
box, with its inscription. “_Given by the Emperor Napoleon to General
Hulot_,” out of his desk, and placing it on the top, he showed it to his
brother, saying, “There is your remedy.”
Lisbeth, peeping through the chink of the door, flew down to the
carriage and ordered the coachman to go as fast as he could gallop
to the Rue Plumet. Within about twenty minutes she had brought back
Adeline, whom she had told of the Marshal’s threat to his brother.
The Marshal, without looking at Hector, rang the bell for his factotum,
the old soldier who had served him for thirty years.
“Beau-Pied,” said he, “fetch my notary, and Count Steinbock, and my
niece Hortense, and the stockbroker to the Treasury. It is now half-past
ten; they must all be here by twelve. Take hackney cabs--and go faster
than _that_!” he added, a republican allusion which in past days had
been often on his lips. And he put on the scowl that had brought his
soldiers to attention when he was beating the broom on the heaths of
Brittany in 1799. (See _Les Chouans_.)
“You shall be obeyed, Marechal,” said Beau-Pied, with a military salute.
Still paying no heed to his brother, the old man came back into his
study, took a key out of his desk, and opened a little malachite box
mounted in steel, the gift of the Emperor Alexander.
By Napoleon’s orders he had gone to restore to the Russian Emperor the
private property seized at the battle of Dresden, in exchange for which
Napoleon hoped to get back Vandamme. The Czar rewarded General Hulot
very handsomely, giving him this casket, and saying that he hoped one
day to show the same courtesy to the Emperor of the French; but he kept
Vandamme. The Imperial arms of Russia were displayed in gold on the lid
of the box, which was inlaid with gold.
The Marshal counted the bank-notes it contained; he had a hundred and
fifty-two thousand francs. He saw this with satisfaction. At the same
moment Madame Hulot came into the room in a state to touch the heart
of the sternest judge. She flew into Hector’s arms, looking alternately
with a crazy eye at the Marshal and at the case of pistols.
“What have you to say against your brother? What has my husband done to
you?” said she, in such a voice that the Marshal heard her.
“He has disgraced us all!” replied the Republican veteran, who spoke
with a vehemence that reopened one of his old wounds. “He has robbed
the Government! He has cast odium on my name, he makes me wish I were
dead--he has killed me!--I have only strength enough left to make
restitution!
“I have been abased before the Conde of the Republic, the man I esteem
above all others, and to whom I unjustifiably gave the lie--the Prince
of Wissembourg!--Is that nothing? That is the score his country has
against him!”
He wiped away a tear.
“Now, as to his family,” he went on. “He is robbing you of the bread I
had saved for you, the fruit of thirty years’ economy, of the privations
of an old soldier! Here is what was intended for you,” and he held up
the bank-notes. “He has killed his Uncle Fischer, a noble and worthy son
of Alsace who could not--as he can--endure the thought of a stain on his
peasant’s honor.
“To crown all, God, in His adorable clemency, had allowed him to choose
an angel among women; he has had the unspeakable happiness of having
an Adeline for his wife! And he has deceived her, he has soaked her in
sorrows, he has neglected her for prostitutes, for street-hussies, for
ballet-girls, actresses--Cadine, Josepha, Marneffe!--And that is the
brother I treated as a son and made my pride!
“Go, wretched man; if you can accept the life of degradation you have
made for yourself, leave my house! I have not the heart to curse a
brother I have loved so well--I am as foolish about him as you are,
Adeline--but never let me see him again. I forbid his attending my
funeral or following me to the grave. Let him show the decency of a
criminal if he can feel no remorse.”
The Marshal, as pale as death, fell back on the settee, exhausted by
his solemn speech. And, for the first time in his life perhaps, tears
gathered in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
“My poor uncle!” cried Lisbeth, putting a handkerchief to her eyes.
“Brother!” said Adeline, kneeling down by the Marshal, “live for my
sake. Help me in the task of reconciling Hector to the world and making
him redeem the past.”
“He!” cried the Marshal. “If he lives, he is not at the end of his
crimes. A man who has misprized an Adeline, who has smothered in his
own soul the feelings of a true Republican which I tried to instill into
him, the love of his country, of his family, and of the poor--that man
is a monster, a swine!--Take him away if you still care for him, for a
voice within me cries to me to load my pistols and blow his brains out.
By killing him I should save you all, and I should save him too from
himself.”
The old man started to his feet with such a terrifying gesture that poor
Adeline exclaimed:
“Hector--come!”
She seized her husband’s arm, dragged him away, and out of the house;
but the Baron was so broken down, that she was obliged to call a coach
to take him to the Rue Plumet, where he went to bed. The man remained
there for several days in a sort of half-dissolution, refusing all
nourishment without a word. By floods of tears, Adeline persuaded him to
swallow a little broth; she nursed him, sitting by his bed, and feeling
only, of all the emotions that once had filled her heart, the deepest
pity for him.
At half-past twelve, Lisbeth showed into her dear Marshal’s room--for
she would not leave him, so much was she alarmed at the evident change
in him--Count Steinbock and the notary.
“Monsieur le Comte,” said the Marshal, “I would beg you to be so good as
to put your signature to a document authorizing my niece, your wife,
to sell a bond for certain funds of which she at present holds only the
reversion.--You, Mademoiselle Fischer, will agree to this sale, thus
losing your life interest in the securities.”
“Yes, dear Count,” said Lisbeth without hesitation.
“Good, my dear,” said the old soldier. “I hope I may live to reward you.
But I did not doubt you; you are a true Republican, a daughter of the
people.” He took the old maid’s hand and kissed it.
“Monsieur Hannequin,” he went on, speaking to the notary, “draw up the
necessary document in the form of a power of attorney, and let me have
it within two hours, so that I may sell the stock on the Bourse to-day.
My niece, the Countess, holds the security; she will be here to sign the
power of attorney when you bring it, and so will mademoiselle. Monsieur
le Comte will be good enough to go with you and sign it at your office.”
The artist, at a nod from Lisbeth, bowed respectfully to the Marshal and
went away.
Next morning, at ten o’clock, the Comte de Forzheim sent in to announce
himself to the Prince, and was at once admitted.
“Well, my dear Hulot,” said the Prince, holding out the newspapers to
his old friend, “we have saved appearances, you see.--Read.”
Marshal Hulot laid the papers on his comrade’s table, and held out to
him the two hundred thousand francs.
“Here is the money of which my brother robbed the State,” said he.
“What madness!” cried the Minister. “It is impossible,” he said into
the speaking-trumpet handed to him by the Marshal, “to manage this
restitution. We should be obliged to declare your brother’s dishonest
dealings, and we have done everything to hide them.”
“Do what you like with the money; but the family shall not owe one sou
of its fortune to a robbery on the funds of the State,” said the Count.
“I will take the King’s commands in the matter. We will discuss it no
further,” replied the Prince, perceiving that it would be impossible to
conquer the old man’s sublime obstinacy on the point.
“Good-bye, Cottin,” said the old soldier, taking the Prince’s hand. “I
feel as if my soul were frozen--”
Then, after going a step towards the door, he turned round, looked at
the Prince, and seeing that he was deeply moved, he opened his arms to
clasp him in them; the two old soldiers embraced each other.
“I feel as if I were taking leave of the whole of the old army in you,”
said the Count.
“Good-bye, my good old comrade!” said the Minister.
“Yes, it is good-bye; for I am going where all our brave men are for
whom we have mourned--”
Just then Claude Vignon was shown in. The two relics of the Napoleonic
phalanx bowed gravely to each other, effacing every trace of emotion.
“You have, I hope, been satisfied by the papers,” said the Master of
Appeals-elect. “I contrived to let the Opposition papers believe that
they were letting out our secrets.”
“Unfortunately, it is all in vain,” replied the Minister, watching Hulot
as he left the room. “I have just gone through a leave-taking that has
been a great grief to me. For, indeed, Marshal Hulot has not three days
to live; I saw that plainly enough yesterday. That man, one of those
honest souls that are above proof, a soldier respected by the bullets
in spite of his valor, received his death-blow--there, in that
armchair--and dealt by my hand, in a letter!--Ring and order my
carriage. I must go to Neuilly,” said he, putting the two hundred
thousand francs into his official portfolio.
Notwithstanding Lisbeth’s nursing, Marshal Hulot three days later was
a dead man. Such men are the glory of the party they support. To
Republicans, the Marshal was the ideal of patriotism; and they all
attended his funeral, which was followed by an immense crowd. The army,
the State officials, the Court, and the populace all came to do homage
to this lofty virtue, this spotless honesty, this immaculate glory. Such
a last tribute of the people is not a thing to be had for the asking.
This funeral was distinguished by one of those tributes of delicate
feeling, of good taste, and sincere respect which from time to time
remind us of the virtues and dignity of the old French nobility.
Following the Marshal’s bier came the old Marquis de Montauran, the
brother of him who, in the great rising of the Chouans in 1799, had been
the foe, the luckless foe, of Hulot. That Marquis, killed by the balls
of the “Blues,” had confided the interests of his young brother to the
Republican soldier. (See _Les Chouans_.) Hulot had so faithfully acted
on the noble Royalist’s verbal will, that he succeeded in saving the
young man’s estates, though he himself was at the time an emigre. And so
the homage of the old French nobility was not wanting to the leader who,
nine years since, had conquered MADAME.
This death, happening just four days before the banns were cried for
the last time, came upon Lisbeth like the thunderbolt that burns the
garnered harvest with the barn. The peasant of Lorraine, as often
happens, had succeeded too well. The Marshal had died of the blows dealt
to the family by herself and Madame Marneffe.
The old maid’s vindictiveness, which success seemed to have somewhat
mollified, was aggravated by this disappointment of her hopes. Lisbeth
went, crying with rage, to Madame Marneffe; for she was homeless, the
Marshal having agreed that his lease was at any time to terminate
with his life. Crevel, to console Valerie’s friend, took charge of her
savings, added to them considerably, and invested the capital in five
per cents, giving her the life interest, and putting the securities
into Celestine’s name. Thanks to this stroke of business, Lisbeth had an
income of about two thousand francs.
When the Marshal’s property was examined and valued, a note was found,
addressed to his sister-in-law, to his niece Hortense, and to his nephew
Victorin, desiring that they would pay among them an annuity of twelve
hundred francs to Mademoiselle Lisbeth Fischer, who was to have been his
wife.
Adeline, seeing her husband between life and death, succeeded for some
days in hiding from him the fact of his brother’s death; but Lisbeth
came, in mourning, and the terrible truth was told him eleven days after
the funeral.
The crushing blow revived the sick man’s energies. He got up, found his
family collected in the drawing-room, all in black, and suddenly silent
as he came in. In a fortnight, Hulot, as lean as a spectre, looked to
his family the mere shadow of himself.
“I must decide on something,” said he in a husky voice, as he seated
himself in an easy-chair, and looked round at the party, of whom Crevel
and Steinbock were absent.
“We cannot stay here, the rent is too high,” Hortense was saying just as
her father came in.
“As to a home,” said Victorin, breaking the painful silence, “I can
offer my mother----”
As he heard these words, which excluded him, the Baron raised his head,
which was sunk on his breast as though he were studying the pattern of
the carpet, though he did not even see it, and he gave the young lawyer
an appealing look. The rights of a father are so indefeasibly sacred,
even when he is a villain and devoid of honor, that Victorin paused.
“To your mother,” the Baron repeated. “You are right, my son.”
“The rooms over ours in our wing,” said Celestine, finishing her
husband’s sentence.
“I am in your way, my dears?” said the Baron, with the mildness of a man
who has judged himself. “But do not be uneasy as to the future; you will
have no further cause for complaint of your father; you will not see him
till the time when you need no longer blush for him.”
He went up to Hortense and kissed her brow. He opened his arms to his
son, who rushed into his embrace, guessing his father’s purpose. The
Baron signed to Lisbeth, who came to him, and he kissed her forehead.
Then he went to his room, whither Adeline followed him in an agony of
dread.
“My brother was quite right, Adeline,” he said, holding her hand. “I
am unworthy of my home life. I dared not bless my children, who have
behaved so nobly, but in my heart; tell them that I could only venture
to kiss them; for the blessing of a bad man, a father who has been an
assassin and the scourge of his family instead of its protector and its
glory, might bring evil on them; but assure them that I shall bless them
every day.--As to you, God alone, for He is Almighty, can ever reward
you according to your merits!--I can only ask your forgiveness!” and he
knelt at her feet, taking her hands and wetting them with his tears.
“Hector, Hector! Your sins have been great, but Divine Mercy is
infinite, and you may repair all by staying with me.--Rise up in
Christian charity, my dear--I am your wife, and not your judge. I am
your possession; do what you will with me; take me wherever you go, I
feel strong enough comfort you, to make life endurable to you, by the
strength of my love, my care, and respect.--Our children are settled
in life; they need me no more. Let me try to be an amusement to you,
an occupation. Let me share the pain of your banishment and of your
poverty, and help to mitigate it. I could always be of some use, if it
were only to save the expense of a servant.”
“Can you forgive, my dearly-beloved Adeline?”
“Yes, only get up, my dear!”
“Well, with that forgiveness I can live,” said he, rising to his feet.
“I came back into this room that my children should not see their
father’s humiliation. Oh! the sight constantly before their eyes of a
father so guilty as I am is a terrible thing; it must undermine parental
influence and break every family tie. So I cannot remain among you,
and I must go to spare you the odious spectacle of a father bereft of
dignity. Do not oppose my departure Adeline. It would only be to load
with your own hand the pistol to blow my brains out. Above all, do not
seek me in my hiding-place; you would deprive me of the only strong
motive remaining in me, that of remorse.”
Hector’s decisiveness silenced his dejected wife. Adeline, lofty in the
midst of all this ruin, had derived her courage from her perfect union
with her husband; for she had dreamed of having him for her own, of the
beautiful task of comforting him, of leading him back to family life,
and reconciling him to himself.
“But, Hector, would you leave me to die of despair, anxiety, and
alarms!” said she, seeing herself bereft of the mainspring of her
strength.
“I will come back to you, dear angel--sent from Heaven expressly for me,
I believe. I will come back, if not rich, at least with enough to live
in ease.--Listen, my sweet Adeline, I cannot stay here for many reasons.
In the first place, my pension of six thousand francs is pledged for
four years, so I have nothing. That is not all. I shall be committed to
prison within a few days in consequence of the bills held by Vauvinet.
So I must keep out of the way until my son, to whom I will give full
instructions, shall have bought in the bills. My disappearance will
facilitate that. As soon as my pension is my own, and Vauvinet is paid
off, I will return to you.--You would be sure to let out the secret of
my hiding-place. Be calm; do not cry, Adeline--it is only for a month--”
“Where will you go? What will you do? What will become of you? Who
will take care of you now that you are no longer young? Let me go with
you--we will go abroad--” said she.
“Well, well, we will see,” he replied.
The Baron rang and ordered Mariette to collect all his things and pack
them quickly and secretly. Then, after embracing his wife with a warmth
of affection to which she was unaccustomed, he begged her to leave him
alone for a few minutes while he wrote his instructions for Victorin,
promising that he would not leave the house till dark, or without her.
As soon as the Baroness was in the drawing-room, the cunning old man
stole out through the dressing-closet to the anteroom, and went away,
giving Mariette a slip of paper, on which was written, “Address my
trunks to go by railway to Corbeil--to Monsieur Hector, cloak-room,
Corbeil.”
The Baron jumped into a hackney coach, and was rushing across Paris by
the time Mariette came to give the Baroness this note, and say that her
master had gone out. Adeline flew back into her room, trembling more
violently than ever; her children followed on hearing her give a
piercing cry. They found her in a dead faint; and they put her to bed,
for she was seized by a nervous fever which held her for a month between
life and death.
“Where is he?” was the only thing she would say.
Victorin sought for him in vain.
And this is why. The Baron had driven to the Place du Palais Royal.
There this man, who had recovered all his wits to work out a scheme
which he had premeditated during the days he had spent crushed with
pain and grief, crossed the Palais Royal on foot, and took a handsome
carriage from a livery-stable in the Rue Joquelet. In obedience to his
orders, the coachman went to the Rue de la Ville l’Eveque, and into the
courtyard of Josepha’s mansion, the gates opening at once at the call
of the driver of such a splendid vehicle. Josepha came out, prompted
by curiosity, for her man-servant had told her that a helpless old
gentleman, unable to get out of his carriage, begged her to come to him
for a moment.
“Josepha!--it is I----”
The singer recognized her Hulot only by his voice.
“What? you, poor old man?--On my honor, you look like a twenty-franc
piece that the Jews have sweated and the money-changers refuse.”
“Alas, yes,” replied Hulot; “I am snatched from the jaws of death! But
you are as lovely as ever. Will you be kind?”
“That depends,” said she; “everything is relative.”
“Listen,” said Hulot; “can you put me up for a few days in a servant’s
room under the roof? I have nothing--not a farthing, not a hope; no
food, no pension, no wife, no children, no roof over my head; without
honor, without courage, without a friend; and worse than all that,
liable to imprisonment for not meeting a bill.”
“Poor old fellow! you are without most things.--Are you also _sans
culotte_?”
“You laugh at me! I am done for,” cried the Baron. “And I counted on you
as Gourville did on Ninon.”
“And it was a ‘real lady,’ I am told who brought you to this,” said
Josepha. “Those precious sluts know how to pluck a goose even better
than we do!--Why, you are like a corpse that the crows have done with--I
can see daylight through!”
“Time is short, Josepha!”
“Come in, old boy, I am alone, as it happens, and my people don’t know
you. Send away your trap. Is it paid for?”
“Yes,” said the Baron, getting out with the help of Josepha’s arm.
“You may call yourself my father if you like,” said the singer, moved to
pity.
She made Hulot sit down in the splendid drawing-room where he had last
seen her.
“And is it the fact, old man,” she went on, “that you have killed your
brother and your uncle, ruined your family, mortgaged your children’s
house over and over again, and robbed the Government till in Africa, all
for your princess?”
Hulot sadly bent his head.
“Well, I admire that!” cried Josepha, starting up in her enthusiasm.
“It is a general flare-up! It is Sardanapalus! Splendid, thoroughly
complete! I may be a hussy, but I have a soul! I tell you, I like a
spendthrift, like you, crazy over a woman, a thousand times better than
those torpid, heartless bankers, who are supposed to be so good, and who
ruin no end of families with their rails--gold for them, and iron for
their gulls! You have only ruined those who belong to you, you have sold
no one but yourself; and then you have excuses, physical and moral.”
She struck a tragic attitude, and spouted:
“‘Tis Venus whose grasp never parts from her prey.
And there you are!” and she pirouetted on her toe.
Vice, Hulot found, could forgive him; vice smiled on him from the midst
of unbridled luxury. Here, as before a jury, the magnitude of a crime
was an extenuating circumstance. “And is your lady pretty at any rate?”
asked Josepha, trying as a preliminary act of charity, to divert Hulot’s
thoughts, for his depression grieved her.
“On my word, almost as pretty as you are,” said the Baron artfully.
“And monstrously droll? So I have been told. What does she do, I say? Is
she better fun than I am?”
“I don’t want to talk about her,” said Hulot.
“And I hear she has come round my Crevel, and little Steinbock, and a
gorgeous Brazilian?”
“Very likely.”
“And that she has got a house as good as this, that Crevel has given
her. The baggage! She is my provost-marshal, and finishes off those I
have spoiled. I tell you why I am so curious to know what she is
like, old boy; I just caught sight of her in the Bois, in an open
carriage--but a long way off. She is a most accomplished harpy, Carabine
says. She is trying to eat up Crevel, but he only lets her nibble.
Crevel is a knowing hand, good-natured but hard-headed, who will always
say Yes, and then go his own way. He is vain and passionate; but his
cash is cold. You can never get anything out of such fellows beyond
a thousand to three thousand francs a month; they jib at any serious
outlay, as a donkey does at a running stream.
“Not like you, old boy. You are a man of passions; you would sell your
country for a woman. And, look here, I am ready to do anything for you!
You are my father; you started me in life; it is a sacred duty. What do
you want? Do you want a hundred thousand francs? I will wear myself to
a rag to gain them. As to giving you bed and board--that is nothing. A
place will be laid for you here every day; you can have a good room on
the second floor, and a hundred crowns a month for pocket-money.”
The Baron, deeply touched by such a welcome, had a last qualm of honor.
“No, my dear child, no; I did not come here for you to keep me,” said
he.
“At your age it is something to be proud of,” said she.
“This is what I wish, my child. Your Duc d’Herouville has immense
estates in Normandy, and I want to be his steward, under the name of
Thoul. I have the capacity, and I am honest. A man may borrow of the
Government, and yet not steal from a cash-box----”
“H’m, h’m,” said Josepha. “Once drunk, drinks again.”
“In short, I only want to live out of sight for three years--”
“Well, it is soon done,” said Josepha. “This evening, after dinner, I
have only to speak. The Duke would marry me if I wished it, but I have
his fortune, and I want something better--his esteem. He is a Duke of
the first water. He is high-minded, as noble and great as Louis XIV. and
Napoleon rolled into one, though he is a dwarf. Besides, I have done for
him what la Schontz did for Rochefide; by taking my advice he has made
two millions.
“Now, listen to me, old popgun. I know you; you are always after the
women, and you would be dancing attendance on the Normandy girls, who
are splendid creatures, and getting your ribs cracked by their lovers
and fathers, and the Duke would have to get you out of the scrape. Why,
can’t I see by the way you look at me that the _young_ man is not dead
in you--as Fenelon put it.--No, this stewardship is not the thing for
you. A man cannot be off with his Paris and with us, old boy, for the
saying! You would die of weariness at Herouville.”
“What is to become of me?” said the Baron, “for I will only stay here
till I see my way.”
“Well, shall I find a pigeon-hole for you? Listen, you old pirate. Women
are what you want. They are consolation in all circumstances. Attend
now.--At the end of the Alley, Rue Saint-Maur-du-Temple, there is a poor
family I know of where there is a jewel of a little girl, prettier than
I was at sixteen.--Ah! there is a twinkle in your eye already!--The
child works sixteen hours a day at embroidering costly pieces for the
silk merchants, and earns sixteen sous a day--one sou an hour!--and
feeds like the Irish, on potatoes fried in rats’ dripping, with bread
five times a week--and drinks canal water out of the town pipes, because
the Seine water costs too much; and she cannot set up on her own account
for lack of six or seven thousand francs. Your wife and children bore
you to death, don’t they?--Besides, one cannot submit to be nobody where
one has been a little Almighty. A father who has neither money nor honor
can only be stuffed and kept in a glass case.”
The Baron could not help smiling at these abominable jests.
“Well, now, Bijou is to come to-morrow morning to bring me an
embroidered wrapper, a gem! It has taken six months to make; no one
else will have any stuff like it! Bijou is very fond of me; I give her
tidbits and my old gowns. And I send orders for bread and meat and wood
to the family, who would break the shin-bones of the first comer if I
bid them.--I try to do a little good. Ah! I know what I endured from
hunger myself!--Bijou has confided to me all her little sorrows. There
is the making of a super at the Ambigu-Comique in that child. Her dream
is to wear fine dresses like mine; above all, to ride in a carriage.
I shall say to her, ‘Look here, little one, would you like to have
a friend of--’ How old are you?” she asked, interrupting herself.
“Seventy-two?”
“I have given up counting.”
“‘Would you like an old gentleman of seventy-two?’ I shall say. ‘Very
clean and neat, and who does not take snuff, who is as sound as a
bell, and as good as a young man? He will marry you (in the Thirteenth
Arrondissement) and be very kind to you; he will place seven thousand
francs in your account, and furnish you a room all in mahogany, and if
you are good, he will sometimes take you to the play. He will give you
a hundred francs a month for pocket-money, and fifty francs for
housekeeping.’--I know Bijou; she is myself at fourteen. I jumped for
joy when that horrible Crevel made me his atrocious offers. Well, and
you, old man, will be disposed of for three years. She is a good child,
well behaved; for three or four years she will have her illusions--not
for longer.”
Hulot did not hesitate; he had made up his mind to refuse; but to
seem grateful to the kind-hearted singer, who was benevolent after her
lights, he affected to hesitate between vice and virtue.
“Why, you are as cold as a paving-stone in winter!” she exclaimed in
amazement. “Come, now. You will make a whole family happy--a grandfather
who runs all the errands, a mother who is being worn out with work,
and two sisters--one of them very plain--who make thirty-two sous a day
while putting their eyes out. It will make up for the misery you have
caused at home, and you will expiate your sin while you are having as
much fun as a minx at Mabille.”
Hulot, to put an end to this temptation, moved his fingers as if he were
counting out money.
“Oh! be quite easy as to ways and means,” replied Josepha. “My Duke will
lend you ten thousand francs; seven thousand to start an embroidery
shop in Bijou’s name, and three thousand for furnishing; and every three
months you will find a cheque here for six hundred and fifty francs.
When you get your pension paid you, you can repay the seventeen thousand
francs. Meanwhile you will be as happy as a cow in clover, and hidden in
a hole where the police will never find you. You must wear a loose serge
coat, and you will look like a comfortable householder. Call yourself
Thoul, if that is your fancy. I will tell Bijou that you are an uncle
of mine come from Germany, having failed in business, and you will be
cosseted like a divinity.--There now, Daddy!--And who knows! you may
have no regrets. In case you should be bored, keep one Sunday rig-out,
and you can come and ask me for a dinner and spend the evening here.”
“I!--and I meant to settle down and behave myself!--Look here, borrow
twenty thousand francs for me, and I will set out to make my fortune in
America, like my friend d’Aiglemont when Nucingen cleaned him out.”
“You!” cried Josepha. “Nay, leave morals to work-a-day folks, to raw
recruits, to the _worrrthy_ citizens who have nothing to boast of
but their virtue. You! You were born to be something better than a
nincompoop; you are as a man what I am as a woman--a spendthrift of
genius.”
“We will sleep on it and discuss it all to-morrow morning.”
“You will dine with the Duke. My d’Herouville will receive you as
civilly as if you were the saviour of the State; and to-morrow you can
decide. Come, be jolly, old boy! Life is a garment; when it is dirty, we
must brush it; when it is ragged, it must be patched; but we keep it on
as long as we can.”
This philosophy of life, and her high spirits, postponed Hulot’s keenest
pangs.
At noon next day, after a capital breakfast, Hulot saw the arrival of
one of those living masterpieces which Paris alone of all the cities in
the world can produce, by means of the constant concubinage of luxury
and poverty, of vice and decent honesty, of suppressed desire and
renewed temptation, which makes the French capital the daughter of
Ninevah, of Babylon, and of Imperial Rome.
Mademoiselle Olympe Bijou, a child of sixteen, had the exquisite face
which Raphael drew for his Virgins; eyes of pathetic innocence, weary
with overwork--black eyes, with long lashes, their moisture parched with
the heat of laborious nights, and darkened with fatigue; a complexion
like porcelain, almost too delicate; a mouth like a partly opened
pomegranate; a heaving bosom, a full figure, pretty hands, the whitest
teeth, and a mass of black hair; and the whole meagrely set off by a
cotton frock at seventy-five centimes the metre, leather shoes without
heels, and the cheapest gloves. The girl, all unconscious of her charms,
had put on her best frock to wait on the fine lady.
The Baron, gripped again by the clutch of profligacy, felt all his
life concentrated in his eyes. He forgot everything on beholding this
delightful creature. He was like a sportsman in sight of the game; if an
emperor were present, he must take aim!
“And warranted sound,” said Josepha in his ear. “An honest child, and
wanting bread. This is Paris--I have been there!”
“It is a bargain,” replied the old man, getting up and rubbing his
hands.
When Olympe Bijou was gone, Josepha looked mischievously at the Baron.
“If you want things to keep straight, Daddy,” said she, “be as firm
as the Public Prosecutor on the bench. Keep a tight hand on her, be a
Bartholo! Ware Auguste, Hippolyte, Nestor, Victor--_or_, that is gold,
in every form. When once the child is fed and dressed, if she gets the
upper hand, she will drive you like a serf.--I will see to settling
you comfortably. The Duke does the handsome; he will lend--that is,
give--you ten thousand francs; and he deposits eight thousand with his
notary, who will pay you six hundred francs every quarter, for I cannot
trust you.--Now, am I nice?”
“Adorable.”
Ten days after deserting his family, when they were gathered round
Adeline, who seemed to be dying, as she said again and again, in a weak
voice, “Where is he?” Hector, under the name of Thoul, was established
in the Rue Saint-Maur, at the head of a business as embroiderer, under
the name of Thoul and Bijou.
Victorin Hulot, under the overwhelming disasters of his family, had
received the finishing touch which makes or mars the man. He was
perfection. In the great storms of life we act like the captain of a
ship who, under the stress of a hurricane, lightens the ship of its
heaviest cargo. The young lawyer lost his self-conscious pride, his
too evident assertiveness, his arrogance as an orator and his political
pretensions. He was as a man what his wife was as a woman. He made
up his mind to make the best of his Celestine--who certainly did not
realize his dreams--and was wise enough to estimate life at its true
value by contenting himself in all things with the second best. He
vowed to fulfil his duties, so much had he been shocked by his father’s
example.
These feelings were confirmed as he stood by his mother’s bed on the day
when she was out of danger. Nor did this happiness come single. Claude
Vignon, who called every day from the Prince de Wissembourg to inquire
as to Madame Hulot’s progress, desired the re-elected deputy to go with
him to see the Minister.
“His Excellency,” said he, “wants to talk over your family affairs with
you.”
The Prince had long known Victorin Hulot, and received him with a
friendliness that promised well.
“My dear fellow,” said the old soldier, “I promised your uncle, in this
room, that I would take care of your mother. That saintly woman, I
am told, is getting well again; now is the time to pour oil into your
wounds. I have for you here two hundred thousand francs; I will give
them to you----”
The lawyer’s gesture was worthy of his uncle the Marshal.
“Be quite easy,” said the Prince, smiling; “it is money in trust. My
days are numbered; I shall not always be here; so take this sum, and
fill my place towards your family. You may use this money to pay off
the mortgage on your house. These two hundred thousand francs are the
property of your mother and your sister. If I gave the money to Madame
Hulot, I fear that, in her devotion to her husband, she would be tempted
to waste it. And the intention of those who restore it to you is, that
it should produce bread for Madame Hulot and her daughter, the Countess
Steinbock. You are a steady man, the worthy son of your noble mother,
the true nephew of my friend the Marshal; you are appreciated here, you
see--and elsewhere. So be the guardian angel of your family, and take
this as a legacy from your uncle and me.”
“Monseigneur,” said Hulot, taking the Minister’s hand and pressing it,
“such men as you know that thanks in words mean nothing; gratitude must
be proven.”
“Prove yours--” said the old man.
“In what way?”
“By accepting what I have to offer you,” said the Minister. “We propose
to appoint you to be attorney to the War Office, which just now is
involved in litigations in consequence of the plan for fortifying Paris;
consulting clerk also to the Prefecture of Police; and a member of
the Board of the Civil List. These three appointments will secure you
salaries amounting to eighteen thousand francs, and will leave you
politically free. You can vote in the Chamber in obedience to your
opinions and your conscience. Act in perfect freedom on that score. It
would be a bad thing for us if there were no national opposition!
“Also, a few lines from your uncle, written a day or two before he
breathed his last, suggested what I could do for your mother, whom
he loved very truly.--Mesdames Popinot, de Rastignac, de Navarreins,
d’Espard, de Grandlieu, de Carigliano, de Lenoncourt, and de la Batie
have made a place for your mother as a Lady Superintendent of their
charities. These ladies, presidents of various branches of benevolent
work, cannot do everything themselves; they need a lady of character
who can act for them by going to see the objects of their beneficence,
ascertaining that charity is not imposed upon, and whether the help
given really reaches those who applied for it, finding out that the poor
who are ashamed to beg, and so forth. Your mother will fulfil an
angelic function; she will be thrown in with none but priests and these
charitable ladies; she will be paid six thousand francs and the cost of
her hackney coaches.
“You see, young man, that a pure and nobly virtuous man can still assist
his family, even from the grave. Such a name as your uncle’s is, and
ought to be, a buckler against misfortune in a well-organized scheme of
society. Follow in his path; you have started in it, I know; continue in
it.”
“Such delicate kindness cannot surprise me in my mother’s friend,” said
Victorin. “I will try to come up to all your hopes.”
“Go at once, and take comfort to your family.--By the way,” added the
Prince, as he shook hands with Victorin, “your father has disappeared?”
“Alas! yes.”
“So much the better. That unhappy man has shown his wit, in which,
indeed, he is not lacking.”
“There are bills of his to be met.”
“Well, you shall have six months’ pay of your three appointments in
advance. This pre-payment will help you, perhaps, to get the notes out
of the hands of the money-lender. And I will see Nucingen, and perhaps
may succeed in releasing your father’s pension, pledged to him, without
its costing you or our office a sou. The peer has not killed the banker
in Nucingen; he is insatiable; he wants some concession.--I know not
what----”
So on his return to the Rue Plumet, Victorin could carry out his plan of
lodging his mother and sister under his roof.
The young lawyer, already famous, had, for his sole fortune, one of the
handsomest houses in Paris, purchased in 1834 in preparation for his
marriage, situated on the boulevard between the Rue de la Paix and
the Rue Louis-le-Grand. A speculator had built two houses between
the boulevard and the street; and between these, with the gardens
and courtyards to the front and back, there remained still standing a
splendid wing, the remains of the magnificent mansion of the Verneuils.
The younger Hulot had purchased this fine property, on the strength of
Mademoiselle Crevel’s marriage-portion, for one million francs, when it
was put up to auction, paying five hundred thousand down. He lived on
the ground floor, expecting to pay the remainder out of letting the
rest; but though it is safe to speculate in house-property in Paris,
such investments are capricious or hang fire, depending on unforeseen
circumstances.
As the Parisian lounger may have observed, the boulevard between the Rue
de la Paix and the Rue Louis-le-Grand prospered but slowly; it took
so long to furbish and beautify itself, that trade did not set up its
display there till 1840--the gold of the money-changers, the fairy-work
of fashion, and the luxurious splendor of shop-fronts.
In spite of two hundred thousand francs given by Crevel to his daughter
at the time when his vanity was flattered by this marriage, before the
Baron had robbed him of Josepha; in spite of the two hundred thousand
francs paid off by Victorin in the course of seven years, the property
was still burdened with a debt of five hundred thousand francs, in
consequence of Victorin’s devotion to his father. Happily, a rise in
rents and the advantages of the situation had at this time improved the
value of the houses. The speculation was justifying itself after eight
years’ patience, during which the lawyer had strained every nerve to pay
the interest and some trifling amounts of the capital borrowed.
The tradespeople were ready to offer good rents for the shops, on
condition of being granted leases for eighteen years. The dwelling
apartments rose in value by the shifting of the centre in Paris
life--henceforth transferred to the region between the Bourse and the
Madeleine, now the seat of the political power and financial authority
in Paris. The money paid to him by the Minister, added to a year’s rent
in advance and the premiums paid by his tenants, would finally reduce
the outstanding debt to two hundred thousand francs. The two houses, if
entirely let, would bring in a hundred thousand francs a year. Within
two years more, during which the Hulots could live on his salaries,
added to by the Marshal’s investments, Victorin would be in a splendid
position.
This was manna from heaven. Victorin could give up the first floor of
his own house to his mother, and the second to Hortense, excepting two
rooms reserved for Lisbeth. With Cousin Betty as the housekeeper, this
compound household could bear all these charges, and yet keep up a
good appearance, as beseemed a pleader of note. The great stars of the
law-courts were rapidly disappearing; and Victorin Hulot, gifted with
a shrewd tongue and strict honesty, was listened to by the Bench and
Councillors; he studied his cases thoroughly, and advanced nothing that
he could not prove. He would not hold every brief that offered; in fact,
he was a credit to the bar.
The Baroness’ home in the Rue Plumet had become so odious to her, that
she allowed herself to be taken to the Rue Louis-le-Grand. Thus, by her
son’s care, Adeline occupied a fine apartment; she was spared all the
daily worries of life; for Lisbeth consented to begin again, working
wonders of domestic economy, such as she had achieved for Madame
Marneffe, seeing here a way of exerting her silent vengeance on those
three noble lives, the object, each, of her hatred, which was kept
growing by the overthrow of all her hopes.
Once a month she went to see Valerie, sent, indeed, by Hortense, who
wanted news of Wenceslas, and by Celestine, who was seriously uneasy
at the acknowledged and well-known connection between her father and a
woman to whom her mother-in-law and sister-in-law owed their ruin and
their sorrows. As may be supposed, Lisbeth took advantage of this to see
Valerie as often as possible.
Thus, about twenty months passed by, during which the Baroness recovered
her health, though her palsied trembling never left her. She made
herself familiar with her duties, which afforded her a noble distraction
from her sorrow and constant food for the divine goodness of her heart.
She also regarded it as an opportunity for finding her husband in the
course of one of those expeditions which took her into every part of
Paris.
During this time, Vauvinet had been paid, and the pension of six
thousand francs was almost redeemed. Victorin could maintain his mother
as well as Hortense out of the ten thousand francs interest on the money
left by Marshal Hulot in trust for them. Adeline’s salary amounted to
six thousand francs a year; and this, added to the Baron’s pension when
it was freed, would presently secure an income of twelve thousand francs
a year to the mother and daughter.
Thus, the poor woman would have been almost happy but for her perpetual
anxieties as to the Baron’s fate; for she longed to have him with her to
share the improved fortunes that smiled on the family; and but for
the constant sight of her forsaken daughter; and but for the terrible
thrusts constantly and _unconsciously_ dealt her by Lisbeth, whose
diabolical character had free course.
A scene which took place at the beginning of the month of March 1843
will show the results of Lisbeth’s latent and persistent hatred, still
seconded, as she always was, by Madame Marneffe.
Two great events had occurred in the Marneffe household. In the first
place, Valerie had given birth to a still-born child, whose little
coffin had cost her two thousand francs a year. And then, as to Marneffe
himself, eleven months since, this is the report given by Lisbeth to
the Hulot family one day on her return from a visit of discovery at the
hotel Marneffe.
“This morning,” said she, “that dreadful Valerie sent for Doctor
Bianchon to ask whether the medical men who had condemned her husband
yesterday had made no mistake. Bianchon pronounced that to-night at the
latest that horrible creature will depart to the torments that await
him. Old Crevel and Madame Marneffe saw the doctor out; and your father,
my dear Celestine, gave him five gold pieces for his good news.
“When he came back into the drawing-room, Crevel cut capers like a
dancer; he embraced that woman, exclaiming, ‘Then, at last, you will
be Madame Crevel!’--And to me, when she had gone back to her husband’s
bedside, for he was at his last gasp, your noble father said to me,
‘With Valerie as my wife, I can become a peer of France! I shall buy an
estate I have my eye on--Presles, which Madame de Serizy wants to
sell. I shall be Crevel de Presles, member of the Common Council of
Seine-et-Oise, and Deputy. I shall have a son! I shall be everything
I have ever wished to be.’--‘Heh!’ said I, ‘and what about your
daughter?’--‘Bah!’ says he, ‘she is only a woman! And she is quite too
much of a Hulot. Valerie has a horror of them all.--My son-in-law has
never chosen to come to this house; why has he given himself such airs
as a Mentor, a Spartan, a Puritan, a philanthropist? Besides, I have
squared accounts with my daughter; she has had all her mother’s fortune,
and two hundred thousand francs to that. So I am free to act as I
please.--I shall judge of my son-in-law and Celestine by their conduct
on my marriage; as they behave, so shall I. If they are nice to their
stepmother, I will receive them. I am a man, after all!’--In short, all
this rhodomontade! And an attitude like Napoleon on the column.”
The ten months’ widowhood insisted on by the law had now elapsed some
few days since. The estate of Presles was purchased. Victorin and
Celestine had that very morning sent Lisbeth to make inquiries as to the
marriage of the fascinating widow to the Mayor of Paris, now a member of
the Common Council of the Department of Seine-et-Oise.
Celestine and Hortense, in whom the ties of affection had been
drawn closer since they had lived under the same roof, were almost
inseparable. The Baroness, carried away by a sense of honesty which led
her to exaggerate the duties of her place, devoted herself to the work
of charity of which she was the agent; she was out almost every day
from eleven till five. The sisters-in-law, united in their cares for
the children whom they kept together, sat at home and worked. They had
arrived at the intimacy which thinks aloud, and were a touching picture
of two sisters, one cheerful and the other sad. The less happy of the
two, handsome, lively, high-spirited, and clever, seemed by her manner
to defy her painful situation; while the melancholy Celestine, sweet and
calm, and as equable as reason itself, might have been supposed to have
some secret grief. It was this contradiction, perhaps, that added to
their warm friendship. Each supplied the other with what she lacked.
Seated in a little summer-house in the garden, which the speculator’s
trowel had spared by some fancy of the builder’s, who believed that he
was preserving these hundred feet square of earth for his own pleasure,
they were admiring the first green shoots of the lilac-trees, a
spring festival which can only be fully appreciated in Paris when the
inhabitants have lived for six months oblivious of what vegetation
means, among the cliffs of stone where the ocean of humanity tosses to
and fro.
“Celestine,” said Hortense to her sister-in-law, who had complained that
in such fine weather her husband should be kept at the Chamber, “I think
you do not fully appreciate your happiness. Victorin is a perfect angel,
and you sometimes torment him.”
“My dear, men like to be tormented! Certain ways of teasing are a
proof of affection. If your poor mother had only been--I will not say
exacting, but always prepared to be exacting, you would not have had so
much to grieve over.”
“Lisbeth is not come back. I shall have to sing the song
of _Malbrouck_,” said Hortense. “I do long for some news of
Wenceslas!--What does he live on? He has not done a thing these two
years.”
“Victorin saw him, he told me, with that horrible woman not long ago;
and he fancied that she maintains him in idleness.--If you only would,
dear soul, you might bring your husband back to you yet.”
Hortense shook her head.
“Believe me,” Celestine went on, “the position will ere long be
intolerable. In the first instance, rage, despair, indignation, gave you
strength. The awful disasters that have come upon us since--two deaths,
ruin, and the disappearance of Baron Hulot--have occupied your mind and
heart; but now you live in peace and silence, you will find it hard to
bear the void in your life; and as you cannot, and will never leave the
path of virtue, you will have to be reconciled to Wenceslas. Victorin,
who loves you so much, is of that opinion. There is something stronger
than one’s feelings even, and that is Nature!”
“But such a mean creature!” cried the proud Hortense. “He cares for
that woman because she feeds him.--And has she paid his debts, do you
suppose?--Good Heaven! I think of that man’s position day and night! He
is the father of my child, and he is degrading himself.”
“But look at your mother, my dear,” said Celestine.
Celestine was one of those women who, when you have given them reasons
enough to convince a Breton peasant, still go back for the hundredth
time to their original argument. The character of her face, somewhat
flat, dull, and common, her light-brown hair in stiff, neat bands, her
very complexion spoke of a sensible woman, devoid of charm, but also
devoid of weakness.
“The Baroness would willingly go to join her husband in his disgrace,
to comfort him and hide him in her heart from every eye,” Celestine went
on. “Why, she has a room made ready upstairs for Monsieur Hulot, as if
she expected to find him and bring him home from one day to the next.”
“Oh yes, my mother is sublime!” replied Hortense. “She has been so every
minute of every day for six-and-twenty years; but I am not like her, it
is not my nature.--How can I help it? I am angry with myself sometimes;
but you do not know, Celestine, what it would be to make terms with
infamy.”
“There is my father!” said Celestine placidly. “He has certainly started
on the road that ruined yours. He is ten years younger than the Baron,
to be sure, and was only a tradesman; but how can it end? This Madame
Marneffe has made a slave of my father; he is her dog; she is mistress
of his fortune and his opinions, and nothing can open his eyes. I
tremble when I remember that their banns of marriage are already
published!--My husband means to make a last attempt; he thinks it a duty
to try to avenge society and the family, and bring that woman to account
for all her crimes. Alas! my dear Hortense, such lofty souls as Victorin
and hearts like ours come too late to a comprehension of the world and
its ways!--This is a secret, dear, and I have told you because you are
interested in it, but never by a word or a look betray it to Lisbeth, or
your mother, or anybody, for--”
“Here is Lisbeth!” said Hortense. “Well, cousin, and how is the Inferno
of the Rue Barbet going on?”
“Badly for you, my children.--Your husband, my dear Hortense, is more
crazy about that woman than ever, and she, I must own, is madly in love
with him.--Your father, dear Celestine, is gloriously blind. That, to
be sure, is nothing; I have had occasion to see it once a fortnight;
really, I am lucky never to have had anything to do with men, they are
besotted creatures.--Five days hence you, dear child, and Victorin will
have lost your father’s fortune.”
“Then the banns are cried?” said Celestine.
“Yes,” said Lisbeth, “and I have just been arguing your case. I pointed
out to that monster, who is going the way of the other, that if he
would only get you out of the difficulties you are in by paying off the
mortgage on the house, you would show your gratitude and receive your
stepmother--”
Hortense started in horror.
“Victorin will see about that,” said Celestine coldly.
“But do you know what Monsieur le Maire’s answer was?” said Lisbeth. “‘I
mean to leave them where they are. Horses can only be broken in by lack
of food, sleep, and sugar.’--Why, Baron Hulot was not so bad as Monsieur
Crevel.
“So, my poor dears, you may say good-bye to the money. And such a fine
fortune! Your father paid three million francs for the Presles estate,
and he has thirty thousand francs a year in stocks! Oh!--he has no
secrets from me. He talks of buying the Hotel de Navarreins, in the
Rue du Bac. Madame Marneffe herself has forty thousand francs a
year.--Ah!--here is our guardian angel, here comes your mother!” she
exclaimed, hearing the rumble of wheels.
And presently the Baroness came down the garden steps and joined the
party. At fifty-five, though crushed by so many troubles, and constantly
trembling as if shivering with ague, Adeline, whose face was indeed
pale and wrinkled, still had a fine figure, a noble outline, and natural
dignity. Those who saw her said, “She must have been beautiful!” Worn
with the grief of not knowing her husband’s fate, of being unable
to share with him this oasis in the heart of Paris, this peace and
seclusion and the better fortune that was dawning on the family, her
beauty was the beauty of a ruin. As each gleam of hope died out, each
day of search proved vain, Adeline sank into fits of deep melancholy
that drove her children to despair.
The Baroness had gone out that morning with fresh hopes, and was
anxiously expected. An official, who was under obligations to Hulot, to
whom he owed his position and advancement, declared that he had seen
the Baron in a box at the Ambigu-Comique theatre with a woman of
extraordinary beauty. So Adeline had gone to call on the Baron Verneuil.
This important personage, while asserting that he had positively seen
his old patron, and that his behaviour to the woman indicated an illicit
establishment, told Madame Hulot that to avoid meeting him the Baron had
left long before the end of the play.
“He looked like a man at home with the damsel, but his dress betrayed
some lack of means,” said he in conclusion.
“Well?” said the three women as the Baroness came towards them.
“Well, Monsieur Hulot is in Paris; and to me,” said Adeline, “it is a
gleam of happiness only to know that he is within reach of us.”
“But he does not seem to have mended his ways,” Lisbeth remarked when
Adeline had finished her report of her visit to Baron Verneuil. “He has
taken up some little work-girl. But where can he get the money from?
I could bet that he begs of his former mistresses--Mademoiselle Jenny
Cadine or Josepha.”
The Baroness trembled more severely than ever; every nerve quivered; she
wiped away the tears that rose to her eyes and looked mournfully up to
heaven.
“I cannot think that a Grand Commander of the Legion of Honor will have
fallen so low,” said she.
“For his pleasure what would he not do?” said Lisbeth. “He robbed the
State, he will rob private persons, commit murder--who knows?”
“Oh, Lisbeth!” cried the Baroness, “keep such thoughts to yourself.”
At this moment Louise came up to the family group, now increased by the
arrival of the two Hulot children and little Wenceslas to see if their
grandmother’s pockets did not contain some sweetmeats.
“What is it, Louise?” asked one and another.
“A man who wants to see Mademoiselle Fischer.”
“Who is the man?” asked Lisbeth.
“He is in rags, mademoiselle, and covered with flue like a
mattress-picker; his nose is red, and he smells of brandy.--He is one of
those men who work half of the week at most.”
This uninviting picture had the effect of making Lisbeth hurry into the
courtyard of the house in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, where she found a man
smoking a pipe colored in a style that showed him an artist in tobacco.
“Why have you come here, Pere Chardin?” she asked. “It is understood
that you go, on the first Saturday in every month, to the gate of the
Hotel Marneffe, Rue Barbet-de-Jouy. I have just come back after waiting
there for five hours, and you did not come.”
“I did go there, good and charitable lady!” replied the mattress-picker.
“But there was a game at pool going on at the Cafe des Savants, Rue du
Cerf-Volant, and every man has his fancy. Now, mine is billiards. If it
wasn’t for billiards, I might be eating off silver plate. For, I tell
you this,” and he fumbled for a scrap of paper in his ragged trousers
pocket, “it is billiards that leads on to a dram and plum-brandy.--It
is ruinous, like all fine things, in the things it leads to. I know
your orders, but the old ‘un is in such a quandary that I came on to
forbidden grounds.--If the hair was all hair, we might sleep sound on
it; but it is mixed. God is not for all, as the saying goes. He has
His favorites--well, He has the right. Now, here is the writing of your
estimable relative and my very good friend--his political opinion.”
Chardin attempted to trace some zigzag lines in the air with the
forefinger of his right hand.
Lisbeth, not listening to him, read these few words:
“DEAR COUSIN,--Be my Providence; give me three hundred francs this
day.
“HECTOR.”
“What does he want so much money for?”
“The lan’lord!” said Chardin, still trying to sketch arabesques. “And
then my son, you see, has come back from Algiers through Spain and
Bayonee, and, and--he has _found_ nothing--against his rule, for a sharp
cove is my son, saving your presence. How can he help it, he is in want
of food; but he will repay all we lend him, for he is going to get up a
company. He has ideas, he has, that will carry him--”
“To the police court,” Lisbeth put in. “He murdered my uncle; I shall
not forget that.”
“He--why, he could not bleed a chicken, honorable lady.”
“Here are the three hundred francs,” said Lisbeth, taking fifteen gold
pieces out of her purse. “Now, go, and never come here again.”
She saw the father of the Oran storekeeper off the premises, and pointed
out the drunken old creature to the porter.
“At any time when that man comes here, if by chance he should come
again, do not let him in. If he should ask whether Monsieur Hulot junior
or Madame la Baronne Hulot lives here, tell him you know of no such
persons.”
“Very good, mademoiselle.”
“Your place depends on it if you make any mistake, even without
intending it,” said Lisbeth, in the woman’s ear.--“Cousin,” she went on
to Victorin, who just now came in, “a great misfortune is hanging over
your head.”
“What is that?” said Victorin.
“Within a few days Madame Marneffe will be your wife’s stepmother.”
“That remains to be seen,” replied Victorin.
For six months past Lisbeth had very regularly paid a little allowance
to Baron Hulot, her former protector, whom she now protected; she knew
the secret of his dwelling-place, and relished Adeline’s tears, saying
to her, as we have seen, when she saw her cheerful and hopeful, “You may
expect to find my poor cousin’s name in the papers some day under the
heading ‘Police Report.’”
But in this, as on a former occasion, she let her vengeance carry her
too far. She had aroused the prudent suspicions of Victorin. He had
resolved to be rid of this Damocles’ sword so constantly flourished
over them by Lisbeth, and of the female demon to whom his mother and the
family owed so many woes. The Prince de Wissembourg, knowing all
about Madame Marneffe’s conduct, approved of the young lawyer’s secret
project; he had promised him, as a President of the Council can promise,
the secret assistance of the police, to enlighten Crevel and rescue
a fine fortune from the clutches of the diabolical courtesan, whom he
could not forgive either for causing the death of Marshal Hulot or for
the Baron’s utter ruin.
The words spoken by Lisbeth, “He begs of his former mistresses,” haunted
the Baroness all night. Like sick men given over by the physicians,
who have recourse to quacks, like men who have fallen into the lowest
Dantesque circle of despair, or drowning creatures who mistake a
floating stick for a hawser, she ended by believing in the baseness of
which the mere idea had horrified her; and it occurred to her that she
might apply for help to one of those terrible women.
Next morning, without consulting her children or saying a word to
anybody, she went to see Mademoiselle Josepha Mirah, prima donna of the
Royal Academy of Music, to find or to lose the hope that had gleamed
before her like a will-o’-the-wisp. At midday, the great singer’s
waiting-maid brought her in the card of the Baronne Hulot, saying that
this person was waiting at the door, having asked whether Mademoiselle
could receive her.
“Are the rooms done?”
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
“And the flowers fresh?”
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
“Just tell Jean to look round and see that everything is as it should be
before showing the lady in, and treat her with the greatest respect. Go,
and come back to dress me--I must look my very best.”
She went to study herself in the long glass.
“Now, to put our best foot foremost!” said she to herself. “Vice under
arms to meet virtue!--Poor woman, what can she want of me? I cannot bear
to see.
“The noble victim of outrageous fortune!”
And she sang through the famous aria as the maid came in again.
“Madame,” said the girl, “the lady has a nervous trembling--”
“Offer her some orange-water, some rum, some broth--”
“I did, mademoiselle; but she declines everything, and says it is an
infirmity, a nervous complaint--”
“Where is she?”
“In the big drawing-room.”
“Well, make haste, child. Give me my smartest slippers, the
dressing-gown embroidered by Bijou, and no end of lace frills. Do my
hair in a way to astonish a woman.--This woman plays a part against
mine; and tell the lady--for she is a real, great lady, my girl, nay,
more, she is what you will never be, a woman whose prayers can rescue
souls from your purgatory--tell her I was in bed, as I was playing last
night, and that I am just getting up.”
The Baroness, shown into Josepha’s handsome drawing-room, did not note
how long she was kept waiting there, though it was a long half hour.
This room, entirely redecorated even since Josepha had had the house,
was hung with silk in purple and gold color. The luxury which fine
gentlemen were wont to lavish on their _petites maisons_, the scenes of
their profligacy, of which the remains still bear witness to the follies
from which they were so aptly named, was displayed to perfection, thanks
to modern inventiveness, in the four rooms opening into each other,
where the warm temperature was maintained by a system of hot-air pipes
with invisible openings.
The Baroness, quite bewildered, examined each work of art with the
greatest amazement. Here she found fortunes accounted for that melt in
the crucible under which pleasure and vanity feed the devouring flames.
This woman, who for twenty-six years had lived among the dead relics of
imperial magnificence, whose eyes were accustomed to carpets patterned
with faded flowers, rubbed gilding, silks as forlorn as her heart, half
understood the powerful fascinations of vice as she studied its results.
It was impossible not to wish to possess these beautiful things, these
admirable works of art, the creation of the unknown talent which abounds
in Paris in our day and produces treasures for all Europe. Each thing
had the novel charm of unique perfection. The models being destroyed,
every vase, every figure, every piece of sculpture was the original.
This is the crowning grace of modern luxury. To own the thing which
is not vulgarized by the two thousand wealthy citizens whose notion of
luxury is the lavish display of the splendors that shops can supply, is
the stamp of true luxury--the luxury of the fine gentlemen of the day,
the shooting stars of the Paris firmament.
As she examined the flower-stands, filled with the choicest exotic
plants, mounted in chased brass and inlaid in the style of Boulle, the
Baroness was scared by the idea of the wealth in this apartment. And
this impression naturally shed a glamour over the person round whom all
this profusion was heaped. Adeline imagined that Josepha Mirah--whose
portrait by Joseph Bridau was the glory of the adjoining boudoir--must
be a singer of genius, a Malibran, and she expected to see a real star.
She was sorry she had come. But she had been prompted by a strong and
so natural a feeling, by such purely disinterested devotion, that she
collected all her courage for the interview. Besides, she was about to
satisfy her urgent curiosity, to see for herself what was the charm
of this kind of women, that they could extract so much gold from the
miserly ore of Paris mud.
The Baroness looked at herself to see if she were not a blot on all this
splendor; but she was well dressed in her velvet gown, with a little
cape trimmed with beautiful lace, and her velvet bonnet of the same
shade was becoming. Seeing herself still as imposing as any queen,
always a queen even in her fall, she reflected that the dignity of
sorrow was a match for the dignity of talent.
At last, after much opening and shutting of doors, she saw Josepha. The
singer bore a strong resemblance to Allori’s _Judith_, which dwells in
the memory of all who have ever seen it in the Pitti palace, near the
door of one of the great rooms. She had the same haughty mien, the same
fine features, black hair simply knotted, and a yellow wrapper with
little embroidered flowers, exactly like the brocade worn by the
immortal homicide conceived of by Bronzino’s nephew.
“Madame la Baronne, I am quite overwhelmed by the honor you do me in
coming here,” said the singer, resolved to play her part as a great lady
with a grace.
She pushed forward an easy-chair for the Baroness and seated herself on
a stool. She discerned the faded beauty of the woman before her, and was
filled with pity as she saw her shaken by the nervous palsy that, on
the least excitement, became convulsive. She could read at a glance the
saintly life described to her of old by Hulot and Crevel; and she not
only ceased to think of a contest with her, she humiliated herself
before a superiority she appreciated. The great artist could admire what
the courtesan laughed to scorn.
“Mademoiselle, despair brought me here. It reduces us to any means--”
A look in Josepha’s face made the Baroness feel that she had wounded
the woman from whom she hoped for so much, and she looked at her. Her
beseeching eyes extinguished the flash in Josepha’s; the singer smiled.
It was a wordless dialogue of pathetic eloquence.
“It is now two years and a half since Monsieur Hulot left his family,
and I do not know where to find him, though I know that he lives in
Paris,” said the Baroness with emotion. “A dream suggested to me the
idea--an absurd one perhaps--that you may have interested yourself in
Monsieur Hulot. If you could enable me to see him--oh! mademoiselle, I
would pray Heaven for you every day as long as I live in this world--”
Two large tears in the singer’s eyes told what her reply would be.
“Madame,” said she, “I have done you an injury without knowing you; but,
now that I have the happiness of seeing in you the most perfect virtue
on earth, believe me I am sensible of the extent of my fault; I repent
sincerely, and believe me, I will do all in my power to remedy it!”
She took Madame Hulot’s hand and before the lady could do anything to
hinder her, she kissed it respectfully, even humbling herself to bend
one knee. Then she rose, as proud as when she stood on the stage in the
part of _Mathilde_, and rang the bell.
“Go on horseback,” said she to the man-servant, “and kill the horse if
you must, to find little Bijou, Rue Saint-Maur-du-Temple, and bring her
here. Put her into a coach and pay the coachman to come at a gallop. Do
not lose a moment--or you lose your place.
“Madame,” she went on, coming back to the Baroness, and speaking to
her in respectful tones, “you must forgive me. As soon as the Duc
d’Herouville became my protector, I dismissed the Baron, having heard
that he was ruining his family for me. What more could I do? In an
actress’ career a protector is indispensable from the first day of her
appearance on the boards. Our salaries do not pay half our expenses; we
must have a temporary husband. I did not value Monsieur Hulot, who took
me away from a rich man, a conceited idiot. Old Crevel would undoubtedly
have married me--”
“So he told me,” said the Baroness, interrupting her.
“Well, then, you see, madame, I might at this day have been an honest
woman, with only one legitimate husband!”
“You have many excuses, mademoiselle,” said Adeline, “and God will take
them into account. But, for my part, far from reproaching you, I came,
on the contrary, to make myself your debtor in gratitude--”
“Madame, for nearly three years I have provided for Monsieur le Baron’s
necessities--”
“You?” interrupted the Baroness, with tears in her eyes. “Oh, what can I
do for you? I can only pray--”
“I and Monsieur le Duc d’Herouville,” the singer said, “a noble soul,
a true gentleman--” and Josepha related the settling and _marriage_ of
Monsieur Thoul.
“And so, thanks to you, mademoiselle, the Baron has wanted nothing?”
“We have done our best to that end, madame.”
“And where is he now?”
“About six months ago, Monsieur le Duc told me that the Baron, known to
the notary by the name of Thoul, had drawn all the eight thousand
francs that were to have been paid to him in fixed sums once a quarter,”
replied Josepha. “We have heard no more of the Baron, neither I nor
Monsieur d’Herouville. Our lives are so full, we artists are so busy,
that I really have not time to run after old Thoul. As it happens, for
the last six months, Bijou, who works for me--his--what shall I say--?”
“His mistress,” said Madame Hulot.
“His mistress,” repeated Josepha, “has not been here. Mademoiselle
Olympe Bijou is perhaps divorced. Divorce is common in the thirteenth
arrondissement.”
Josepha rose, and foraging among the rare plants in her stands, made a
charming bouquet for Madame Hulot, whose expectations, it may be said,
were by no means fulfilled. Like those worthy fold, who take men of
genius to be a sort of monsters, eating, drinking, walking, and speaking
unlike other people, the Baroness had hoped to see Josepha the opera
singer, the witch, the amorous and amusing courtesan; she saw a calm and
well-mannered woman, with the dignity of talent, the simplicity of an
actress who knows herself to be at night a queen, and also, better than
all, a woman of the town whose eyes, attitude, and demeanor paid full
and ungrudging homage to the virtuous wife, the _Mater dolorosa_ of
the sacred hymn, and who was crowning her sorrows with flowers, as the
Madonna is crowned in Italy.
“Madame,” said the man-servant, reappearing at the end of half an hour,
“Madame Bijou is on her way, but you are not to expect little Olympe.
Your needle-woman, madame, is settled in life; she is married--”
“More or less?” said Josepha.
“No, madame, really married. She is at the head of a very fine business;
she has married the owner of a large and fashionable shop, on which they
have spent millions of francs, on the Boulevard des Italiens; and she
has left the embroidery business to her sister and mother. She is Madame
Grenouville. The fat tradesman--”
“A Crevel?”
“Yes, madame,” said the man. “Well, he has settled thirty thousand
francs a year on Mademoiselle Bijou by the marriage articles. And her
elder sister, they say, is going to be married to a rich butcher.”
“Your business looks rather hopeless, I am afraid,” said Josepha to the
Baroness. “Monsieur le Baron is no longer where I lodged him.”
Ten minutes later Madame Bijou was announced. Josepha very prudently
placed the Baroness in the boudoir, and drew the curtain over the door.
“You would scare her,” said she to Madame Hulot. “She would let nothing
out if she suspected that you were interested in the information. Leave
me to catechise her. Hide there, and you will hear everything. It is a
scene that is played quite as often in real life as on the stage--”
“Well, Mother Bijou,” she said to an old woman dressed in tartan stuff,
and who looked like a porter’s wife in her Sunday best, “so you are all
very happy? Your daughter is in luck.”
“Oh, happy? As for that!--My daughter gives us a hundred francs a
month, while she rides in a carriage and eats off silver plate--she is a
millionary, is my daughter! Olympe might have lifted me above labor. To
have to work at my age? Is that being good to me?”
“She ought not to be ungrateful, for she owes her beauty to you,”
replied Josepha; “but why did she not come to see me? It was I who
placed her in ease by settling her with my uncle.”
“Yes, madame, with old Monsieur Thoul, but he is very old and broken--”
“But what have you done with him? Is he with you? She was very foolish
to leave him; he is worth millions now.”
“Heaven above us!” cried the mother. “What did I tell her when she
behaved so badly to him, and he as mild as milk, poor old fellow? Oh!
didn’t she just give it him hot?--Olympe was perverted, madame?”
“But how?”
“She got to know a _claqueur_, madame, saving your presence, a man paid
to clap, you know, the grand nephew of an old mattress-picker of the
Faubourg Saint-Marceau. This good-for-naught, as all your good-looking
fellows are, paid to make a piece go, is the cock of the walk out on
the Boulevard du Temple, where he works up the new plays, and takes care
that the actresses get a reception, as he calls it. First, he has a good
breakfast in the morning; then, before the play, he dines, to be ‘up
to the mark,’ as he says; in short, he is a born lover of billiards and
drams. ‘But that is not following a trade,’ as I said to Olympe.”
“It is a trade men follow, unfortunately,” said Josepha.
“Well, the rascal turned Olympe’s head, and he, madame, did not keep
good company--when I tell you he was very near being nabbed by the
police in a tavern where thieves meet. ‘Wever, Monsieur Braulard, the
leader of the claque, got him out of that. He wears gold earrings, and
he lives by doing nothing, hanging on to women, who are fools about
these good-looking scamps. He spent all the money Monsieur Thoul used to
give the child.
“Then the business was going to grief; what embroidery brought in went
out across the billiard table. ‘Wever, the young fellow had a pretty
sister, madame, who, like her brother, lived by hook and by crook, and
no better than she should be neither, over in the students’ quarter.”
“One of the sluts at the Chaumiere,” said Josepha.
“So, madame,” said the old woman. “So Idamore, his name is Idamore,
leastways that is what he calls himself, for his real name is
Chardin--Idamore fancied that your uncle had a deal more money than he
owned to, and he managed to send his sister Elodie--and that was a stage
name he gave her--to send her to be a workwoman at our place, without
my daughter’s knowing who she was; and, gracious goodness! but that girl
turned the whole place topsy-turvy; she got all those poor girls into
mischief--impossible to whitewash them, saving your presence----
“And she was so sharp, she won over poor old Thoul, and took him away,
and we don’t know where, and left us in a pretty fix, with a lot of
bills coming in. To this day as ever is we have not been able to settle
up; but my daughter, who knows all about such things, keeps an eye on
them as they fall due.--Then, when Idamore saw he had got hold of the
old man, through his sister, you understand, he threw over my daughter,
and now he has got hold of a little actress at the _Funambules_.--And
that was how my daughter came to get married, as you will see--”
“But you must know where the mattress-picker lives?” said Josepha.
“What! old Chardin? As if he lived anywhere at all!--He is drunk by six
in the morning; he makes a mattress once a month; he hangs about the
wineshops all day; he plays at pools--”
“He plays at pools?” said Josepha.
“You do not understand, madame, pools of billiards, I mean, and he wins
three or four a day, and then he drinks.”
“Water out of the pools, I suppose?” said Josepha. “But if Idamore
haunts the Boulevard, by inquiring through my friend Vraulard, we could
find him.”
“I don’t know, madame; all this was six months ago. Idamore was one of
the sort who are bound to find their way into the police courts, and
from that to Melun--and the--who knows--?”
“To the prison yard!” said Josepha.
“Well, madame, you know everything,” said the old woman, smiling. “Well,
if my girl had never known that scamp, she would now be--Still, she was
in luck, all the same, you will say, for Monsieur Grenouville fell so
much in love with her that he married her--”
“And what brought that about?”
“Olympe was desperate, madame. When she found herself left in the lurch
for that little actress--and she took a rod out of pickle for her, I can
tell you; my word, but she gave her a dressing!--and when she had lost
poor old Thoul, who worshiped her, she would have nothing more to say to
the men. ‘Wever, Monsieur Grenouville, who had been dealing largely
with us--to the tune of two hundred embroidered China-crape shawls every
quarter--he wanted to console her; but whether or no, she would not
listen to anything without the mayor and the priest. ‘I mean to be
respectable,’ said she, ‘or perish!’ and she stuck to it. Monsieur
Grenouville consented to marry her, on condition of her giving us all
up, and we agreed--”
“For a handsome consideration?” said Josepha, with her usual
perspicacity.
“Yes, madame, ten thousand francs, and an allowance to my father, who is
past work.”
“I begged your daughter to make old Thoul happy, and she has thrown
me over. That is not fair. I will take no interest in any one for the
future! That is what comes of trying to do good! Benevolence certainly
does not answer as a speculation!--Olympe ought, at least, to have given
me notice of this jobbing. Now, if you find the old man Thoul within a
fortnight, I will give you a thousand francs.”
“It will be a hard task, my good lady; still, there are a good many
five-franc pieces in a thousand francs, and I will try to earn your
money.”
“Good-morning, then, Madame Bijou.”
On going into the boudoir, the singer found that Madame Hulot had
fainted; but in spite of having lost consciousness, her nervous
trembling kept her still perpetually shaking, as the pieces of a snake
that has been cut up still wriggle and move. Strong salts, cold water,
and all the ordinary remedies were applied to recall the Baroness to her
senses, or rather, to the apprehension of her sorrows.
“Ah! mademoiselle, how far has he fallen!” cried she, recognizing
Josepha, and finding that she was alone with her.
“Take heart, madame,” replied the actress, who had seated herself on
a cushion at Adeline’s feet, and was kissing her hands. “We shall find
him; and if he is in the mire, well, he must wash himself. Believe me,
with people of good breeding it is a matter of clothes.--Allow me to
make up for you the harm I have done you, for I see how much you are
attached to your husband, in spite of his misconduct--or you should not
have come here.--Well, you see, the poor man is so fond of women. If you
had had a little of our dash, you would have kept him from running about
the world; for you would have been what we can never be--all the women
man wants.
“The State ought to subsidize a school of manners for honest women!
But governments are so prudish! Still, they are guided by men, whom we
privately guide. My word, I pity nations!
“But the matter in question is how you can be helped, and not to laugh
at the world.--Well, madame, be easy, go home again, and do not worry. I
will bring your Hector back to you as he was as a man of thirty.”
“Ah, mademoiselle, let us go to see that Madame Grenouville,” said the
Baroness. “She surely knows something! Perhaps I may see the Baron this
very day, and be able to snatch him at once from poverty and disgrace.”
“Madame, I will show you the deep gratitude I feel towards you by not
displaying the stage-singer Josepha, the Duc d’Herouville’s mistress,
in the company of the noblest, saintliest image of virtue. I respect
you too much to be seen by your side. This is not acted humility; it is
sincere homage. You make me sorry, madame, that I cannot tread in your
footsteps, in spite of the thorns that tear your feet and hands.--But it
cannot be helped! I am one with art, as you are one with virtue.”
“Poor child!” said the Baroness, moved amid her own sorrows by a strange
sense of compassionate sympathy; “I will pray to God for you; for you
are the victim of society, which must have theatres. When you are old,
repent--you will be heard if God vouchsafes to hear the prayers of a--”
“Of a martyr, madame,” Josepha put in, and she respectfully kissed the
Baroness’ skirt.
But Adeline took the actress’ hand, and drawing her towards her, kissed
her on the forehead. Coloring with pleasure Josepha saw the Baroness
into the hackney coach with the humblest politeness.
“It must be some visiting Lady of Charity,” said the man-servant to the
maid, “for she does not do so much for any one, not even for her dear
friend Madame Jenny Cadine.”
“Wait a few days,” said she, “and you will see him, madame, or I
renounce the God of my fathers--and that from a Jewess, you know, is a
promise of success.”
At the very time when Madame Hulot was calling on Josepha, Victorin,
in his study, was receiving an old woman of about seventy-five, who, to
gain admission to the lawyer, had used the terrible name of the head of
the detective force. The man in waiting announced:
“Madame de Saint-Esteve.”
“I have assumed one of my business names,” said she, taking a seat.
Victorin felt a sort of internal chill at the sight of this dreadful old
woman. Though handsomely dressed, she was terrible to look upon, for her
flat, colorless, strongly-marked face, furrowed with wrinkles, expressed
a sort of cold malignity. Marat, as a woman of that age, might have been
like this creature, a living embodiment of the Reign of Terror.
This sinister old woman’s small, pale eyes twinkled with a tiger’s
bloodthirsty greed. Her broad, flat nose, with nostrils expanded into
oval cavities, breathed the fires of hell, and resembled the beak of
some evil bird of prey. The spirit of intrigue lurked behind her low,
cruel brow. Long hairs had grown from her wrinkled chin, betraying the
masculine character of her schemes. Any one seeing that woman’s
face would have said that artists had failed in their conceptions of
Mephistopheles.
“My dear sir,” she began, with a patronizing air, “I have long since
given up active business of any kind. What I have come to you to do, I
have undertaken, for the sake of my dear nephew, whom I love more than
I could love a son of my own.--Now, the Head of the Police--to whom
the President of the Council said a few words in his ear as regards
yourself, in talking to Monsieur Chapuzot--thinks as the police ought
not to appear in a matter of this description, you understand. They gave
my nephew a free hand, but my nephew will have nothing to say to it,
except as before the Council; he will not be seen in it.”
“Then your nephew is--”
“You have hit it, and I am rather proud of him,” said she, interrupting
the lawyer, “for he is my pupil, and he soon could teach his
teacher.--We have considered this case, and have come to our own
conclusions. Will you hand over thirty thousand francs to have the whole
thing taken off your hands? I will make a clean sweep of all, and you
need not pay till the job is done.”
“Do you know the persons concerned?”
“No, my dear sir; I look for information from you. What we are told is,
that a certain old idiot has fallen into the clutches of a widow. This
widow, of nine-and-twenty, has played her cards so well, that she has
forty thousand francs a year, of which she has robbed two fathers of
families. She is now about to swallow down eighty thousand francs a year
by marrying an old boy of sixty-one. She will thus ruin a respectable
family, and hand over this vast fortune to the child of some lover by
getting rid at once of the old husband.--That is the case as stated.”
“Quite correct,” said Victorin. “My father-in-law, Monsieur Crevel--”
“Formerly a perfumer, a mayor--yes, I live in his district under the
name of Ma’ame Nourrisson,” said the woman.
“The other person is Madame Marneffe.”
“I do not know,” said Madame de Saint-Esteve. “But within three days I
will be in a position to count her shifts.”
“Can you hinder the marriage?” asked Victorin.
“How far have they got?”
“To the second time of asking.”
“We must carry off the woman.--To-day is Sunday--there are but
three days, for they will be married on Wednesday, no doubt; it is
impossible.--But she may be killed--”
Victorin Hulot started with an honest man’s horror at hearing these five
words uttered in cold blood.
“Murder?” said he. “And how could you do it?”
“For forty years, now, monsieur, we have played the part of fate,”
replied she, with terrible pride, “and do just what we will in Paris.
More than one family--even in the Faubourg Saint-Germain--has told me
all its secrets, I can tell you. I have made and spoiled many a match,
I have destroyed many a will and saved many a man’s honor. I have in
there,” and she tapped her forehead, “a store of secrets which are worth
thirty-six thousand francs a year to me; and you--you will be one of my
lambs, hoh! Could such a woman as I am be what I am if she revealed her
ways and means? I act.
“Whatever I may do, sir, will be the result of an accident; you need
feel no remorse. You will be like a man cured by a clairvoyant; by the
end of a month, it seems all the work of Nature.”
Victorin broke out in a cold sweat. The sight of an executioner would
have shocked him less than this prolix and pretentious Sister of the
Hulks. As he looked at her purple-red gown, she seemed to him dyed in
blood.
“Madame, I do not accept the help of your experience and skill if
success is to cost anybody’s life, or the least criminal act is to come
of it.”
“You are a great baby, monsieur,” replied the woman; “you wish to remain
blameless in your own eyes, while you want your enemy to be overthrown.”
Victorin shook his head in denial.
“Yes,” she went on, “you want this Madame Marneffe to drop the prey she
has between her teeth. But how do you expect to make a tiger drop his
piece of beef? Can you do it by patting his back and saying, ‘Poor
Puss’? You are illogical. You want a battle fought, but you object to
blows.--Well, I grant you the innocence you are so careful over. I have
always found that there was material for hypocrisy in honesty! One day,
three months hence, a poor priest will come to beg of you forty thousand
francs for a pious work--a convent to be rebuilt in the Levant--in
the desert.--If you are satisfied with your lot, give the good man the
money. You will pay more than that into the treasury. It will be a mere
trifle in comparison with what you will get, I can tell you.”
She rose, standing on the broad feet that seemed to overflow her satin
shoes; she smiled, bowed, and vanished.
“The Devil has a sister,” said Victorin, rising.
He saw the hideous stranger to the door, a creature called up from the
dens of the police, as on the stage a monster comes up from the third
cellar at the touch of a fairy’s wand in a ballet-extravaganza.
After finishing what he had to do at the Courts, Victorin went to call
on Monsieur Chapuzot, the head of one of the most important branches of
the Central Police, to make some inquiries about the stranger. Finding
Monsieur Chapuzot alone in his office, Victorin thanked him for his
help.
“You sent me an old woman who might stand for the incarnation of the
criminal side of Paris.”
Monsieur Chapuzot laid his spectacles on his papers and looked at the
lawyer with astonishment.
“I should not have taken the liberty of sending anybody to see you
without giving you notice beforehand, or a line of introduction,” said
he.
“Then it was Monsieur le Prefet--?”
“I think not,” said Chapuzot. “The last time that the Prince de
Wissembourg dined with the Minister of the Interior, he spoke to
the Prefet of the position in which you find yourself--a deplorable
position--and asked him if you could be helped in any friendly way. The
Prefet, who was interested by the regrets his Excellency expressed as to
this family affair, did me the honor to consult me about it.
“Ever since the present Prefet has held the reins of this department--so
useful and so vilified--he has made it a rule that family matters are
never to be interfered in. He is right in principle and in morality; but
in practice he is wrong. In the forty-five years that I have served
in the police, it did, from 1799 till 1815, great services in family
concerns. Since 1820 a constitutional government and the press have
completely altered the conditions of existence. So my advice, indeed,
was not to intervene in such a case, and the Prefet did me the honor to
agree with my remarks. The Head of the detective branch has orders, in
my presence, to take no steps; so if you have had any one sent to you
by him, he will be reprimanded. It might cost him his place. ‘The Police
will do this or that,’ is easily said; the Police, the Police! But, my
dear sir, the Marshal and the Ministerial Council do not know what the
Police is. The Police alone knows the Police; but as for ours, only
Fouche, Monsieur Lenoir, and Monsieur de Sartines have had any notion of
it.--Everything is changed now; we are reduced and disarmed! I have seen
many private disasters develop, which I could have checked with five
grains of despotic power.--We shall be regretted by the very men who
have crippled us when they, like you, stand face to face with some moral
monstrosities, which ought to be swept away as we sweep away mud! In
public affairs the Police is expected to foresee everything, or when the
safety of the public is involved--but the family?--It is sacred! I would
do my utmost to discover and hinder a plot against the King’s life, I
would see through the walls of a house; but as to laying a finger on a
household, or peeping into private interests--never, so long as I sit in
this office. I should be afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of the Press, Monsieur le Depute, of the left centre.”
“What, then, can I do?” said Hulot, after a pause.
“Well, you are the Family,” said the official. “That settles it; you can
do what you please. But as to helping you, as to using the Police as an
instrument of private feelings, and interests, how is it possible? There
lies, you see, the secret of the persecution, necessary, but pronounced
illegal, by the Bench, which was brought to bear against the predecessor
of our present chief detective. Bibi-Lupin undertook investigations
for the benefit of private persons. This might have led to great
social dangers. With the means at his command, the man would have been
formidable, an underlying fate--”
“But in my place?” said Hulot.
“Why, you ask my advice? You who sell it!” replied Monsieur Chapuzot.
“Come, come, my dear sir, you are making fun of me.”
Hulot bowed to the functionary, and went away without seeing that
gentleman’s almost imperceptible shrug as he rose to open the door.
“And he wants to be a statesman!” said Chapuzot to himself as he
returned to his reports.
Victorin went home, still full of perplexities which he could confide to
no one.
At dinner the Baroness joyfully announced to her children that within a
month their father might be sharing their comforts, and end his days in
peace among his family.
“Oh, I would gladly give my three thousand six hundred francs a year to
see the Baron here!” cried Lisbeth. “But, my dear Adeline, do not dream
beforehand of such happiness, I entreat you!”
“Lisbeth is right,” said Celestine. “My dear mother, wait till the end.”
The Baroness, all feeling and all hope, related her visit to Josepha,
expressed her sense of the misery of such women in the midst of good
fortune, and mentioned Chardin the mattress-picker, the father of the
Oran storekeeper, thus showing that her hopes were not groundless.
By seven next morning Lisbeth had driven in a hackney coach to the Quai
de la Tournelle, and stopped the vehicle at the corner of the Rue de
Poissy.
“Go to the Rue des Bernardins,” said she to the driver, “No. 7, a house
with an entry and no porter. Go up to the fourth floor, ring at the
door to the left, on which you will see ‘Mademoiselle Chardin--Lace and
shawls mended.’ She will answer the door. Ask for the Chevalier. She
will say he is out. Say in reply, ‘Yes, I know, but find him, for his
_bonne_ is out on the quay in a coach, and wants to see him.’”
Twenty minutes later, an old man, who looked about eighty, with
perfectly white hair, and a nose reddened by the cold, and a pale,
wrinkled face like an old woman’s, came shuffling slowly along in list
slippers, a shiny alpaca overcoat hanging on his stooping shoulders, no
ribbon at his buttonhole, the sleeves of an under-vest showing below
his coat-cuffs, and his shirt-front unpleasantly dingy. He approached
timidly, looked at the coach, recognized Lisbeth, and came to the
window.
“Why, my dear cousin, what a state you are in!”
“Elodie keeps everything for herself,” said Baron Hulot. “Those Chardins
are a blackguard crew.”
“Will you come home to us?”
“Oh, no, no!” cried the old man. “I would rather go to America.”
“Adeline is on the scent.”
“Oh, if only some one would pay my debts!” said the Baron, with a
suspicious look, “for Samanon is after me.”
“We have not paid up the arrears yet; your son still owes a hundred
thousand francs.”
“Poor boy!”
“And your pension will not be free before seven or eight months.--If you
will wait a minute, I have two thousand francs here.”
The Baron held out his hand with fearful avidity.
“Give it me, Lisbeth, and may God reward you! Give it me; I know where
to go.”
“But you will tell me, old wretch?”
“Yes, yes. Then I can wait eight months, for I have discovered a little
angel, a good child, an innocent thing not old enough to be depraved.”
“Do not forget the police-court,” said Lisbeth, who flattered herself
that she would some day see Hulot there.
“No.--It is in the Rue de Charonne,” said the Baron, “a part of the town
where no fuss is made about anything. No one will ever find me there.
I am called Pere Thorec, Lisbeth, and I shall be taken for a retired
cabinet-maker; the girl is fond of me, and I will not allow my back to
be shorn any more.”
“No, that has been done,” said Lisbeth, looking at his coat. “Supposing
I take you there.”
Baron Hulot got into the coach, deserting Mademoiselle Elodie without
taking leave of her, as he might have tossed aside a novel he had
finished.
In half an hour, during which Baron Hulot talked to Lisbeth of nothing
but little Atala Judici--for he had fallen by degrees to those base
passions that ruin old men--she set him down with two thousand francs in
his pocket, in the Rue de Charonne, Faubourg Saint-Antoine, at the door
of a doubtful and sinister-looking house.
“Good-day, cousin; so now you are to be called Thorec, I suppose? Send
none but commissionaires if you need me, and always take them from
different parts.”
“Trust me! Oh, I am really very lucky!” said the Baron, his face beaming
with the prospect of new and future happiness.
“No one can find him there,” said Lisbeth; and she paid the coach at the
Boulevard Beaumarchais, and returned to the Rue Louis-le-Grand in the
omnibus.
On the following day Crevel was announced at the hour when all the
family were together in the drawing-room, just after breakfast.
Celestine flew to throw her arms round her father’s neck, and behaved
as if she had seen him only the day before, though in fact he had not
called there for more than two years.
“Good-morning, father,” said Victorin, offering his hand.
“Good-morning, children,” said the pompous Crevel. “Madame la Baronne, I
throw myself at your feet! Good Heavens, how the children grow! they are
pushing us off the perch--‘Grand-pa,’ they say, ‘we want our turn in the
sunshine.’--Madame la Comtesse, you are as lovely as ever,” he went
on, addressing Hortense.--“Ah, ha! and here is the best of good money:
Cousin Betty, the Wise Virgin.”
“Why, you are really very comfortable here,” said he, after scattering
these greetings with a cackle of loud laughter that hardly moved the
rubicund muscles of his broad face.
He looked at his daughter with some contempt.
“My dear Celestine, I will make you a present of all my furniture out
of the Rue des Saussayes; it will just do here. Your drawing-room wants
furnishing up.--Ha! there is that little rogue Wenceslas. Well, and
are we very good children, I wonder? You must have pretty manners, you
know.”
“To make up for those who have none,” said Lisbeth.
“That sarcasm, my dear Lisbeth, has lost its sting. I am going, my dear
children, to put an end to the false position in which I have so long
been placed; I have come, like a good father, to announce my approaching
marriage without any circumlocution.”
“You have a perfect right to marry,” said Victorin. “And for my part,
I give you back the promise you made me when you gave me the hand of my
dear Celestine--”
“What promise?” said Crevel.
“Not to marry,” replied the lawyer. “You will do me the justice to allow
that I did not ask you to pledge yourself, that you gave your word quite
voluntarily and in spite of my desire, for I pointed out to you at the
time that you were unwise to bind yourself.”
“Yes, I do remember, my dear fellow,” said Crevel, ashamed of himself.
“But, on my honor, if you will but live with Madame Crevel, my children,
you will find no reason to repent.--Your good feeling touches
me, Victorin, and you will find that generosity to me is not
unrewarded.--Come, by the Poker! welcome your stepmother and come to the
wedding.”
“But you have not told us the lady’s name, papa,” said Celestine.
“Why, it is an open secret,” replied Crevel. “Do not let us play at
guess who can! Lisbeth must have told you.”
“My dear Monsieur Crevel,” replied Lisbeth, “there are certain names we
never utter here--”
“Well, then, it is Madame Marneffe.”
“Monsieur Crevel,” said the lawyer very sternly, “neither my wife nor I
can be present at that marriage; not out of interest, for I spoke in
all sincerity just now. Yes, I am most happy to think that you may find
happiness in this union; but I act on considerations of honor and good
feeling which you must understand, and which I cannot speak of here, as
they reopen wounds still ready to bleed----”
The Baroness telegraphed a signal to Hortense, who tucked her little one
under her arm, saying, “Come Wenceslas, and have your bath!--Good-bye,
Monsieur Crevel.”
The Baroness also bowed to Crevel without a word; and Crevel could
not help smiling at the child’s astonishment when threatened with this
impromptu tubbing.
“You, monsieur,” said Victorin, when he found himself alone with
Lisbeth, his wife, and his father-in-law, “are about to marry a woman
loaded with the spoils of my father; it was she who, in cold blood,
brought him down to such depths; a woman who is the son-in-law’s
mistress after ruining the father-in-law; who is the cause of constant
grief to my sister!--And you fancy that I shall seem to sanction your
madness by my presence? I deeply pity you, dear Monsieur Crevel; you
have no family feeling; you do not understand the unity of the honor
which binds the members of it together. There is no arguing with
passion--as I have too much reason to know. The slaves of their passions
are as deaf as they are blind. Your daughter Celestine has too strong a
sense of her duty to proffer a word of reproach.”
“That would, indeed, be a pretty thing!” cried Crevel, trying to cut
short this harangue.