the lawyer went on. “But I, at least, may try to stop you before you
step over the precipice, especially after giving you ample proof of my
disinterestedness. It is not your fortune, it is you that I care about.
Nay, to make it quite plain to you, I may add, if it were only to set
your mind at ease with regard to your marriage contract, that I am now
in a position which leaves me with nothing to wish for--”
“Thanks to me!” exclaimed Crevel, whose face was purple.
“Thanks to Celestine’s fortune,” replied Victorin. “And if you regret
having given to your daughter as a present from yourself, a sum which is
not half what her mother left her, I can only say that we are prepared
to give it back.”
“And do you not know, my respected son-in-law,” said Crevel, striking
an attitude, “that under the shelter of my name Madame Marneffe is not
called upon to answer for her conduct excepting as my wife--as Madame
Crevel?”
“That is, no doubt, quite the correct thing,” said the lawyer; “very
generous so far as the affections are concerned and the vagaries of
passion; but I know of no name, nor law, nor title that can shelter
the theft of three hundred thousand francs so meanly wrung from my
father!--I tell you plainly, my dear father-in-law, your future wife
is unworthy of you, she is false to you, and is madly in love with my
brother-in-law, Steinbock, whose debts she had paid.”
“It is I who paid them!”
“Very good,” said Hulot; “I am glad for Count Steinbock’s sake; he may
some day repay the money. But he is loved, much loved, and often--”
“Loved!” cried Crevel, whose face showed his utter bewilderment. “It is
cowardly, and dirty, and mean, and cheap, to calumniate a woman!--When a
man says such things, monsieur, he must bring proof.”
“I will bring proof.”
“I shall expect it.”
“By the day after to-morrow, my dear Monsieur Crevel, I shall be able
to tell you the day, the hour, the very minute when I can expose the
horrible depravity of your future wife.”
“Very well; I shall be delighted,” said Crevel, who had recovered
himself.
“Good-bye, my children, for the present; good-bye, Lisbeth.”
“See him out, Lisbeth,” said Celestine in an undertone.
“And is this the way you take yourself off?” cried Lisbeth to Crevel.
“Ah, ha!” said Crevel, “my son-in-law is too clever by half; he is
getting on. The Courts and the Chamber, judicial trickery and political
dodges, are making a man of him with a vengeance!--So he knows I am to
be married on Wednesday, and on a Sunday my gentleman proposes to fix
the hour, within three days, when he can prove that my wife is unworthy
of me. That is a good story!--Well, I am going back to sign the
contract. Come with me, Lisbeth--yes, come. They will never know. I
meant to have left Celestine forty thousand francs a year; but Hulot has
just behaved in a way to alienate my affection for ever.”
“Give me ten minutes, Pere Crevel; wait for me in your carriage at the
gate. I will make some excuse for going out.”
“Very well--all right.”
“My dears,” said Lisbeth, who found all the family reassembled in the
drawing-room, “I am going with Crevel: the marriage contract is to be
signed this afternoon, and I shall hear what he has settled. It will
probably be my last visit to that woman. Your father is furious; he will
disinherit you--”
“His vanity will prevent that,” said the son-in-law. “He was bent on
owning the estate of Presles, and he will keep it; I know him. Even if
he were to have children, Celestine would still have half of what he
might leave; the law forbids his giving away all his fortune.--Still,
these questions are nothing to me; I am only thinking of our honor.--Go
then, cousin,” and he pressed Lisbeth’s hand, “and listen carefully to
the contract.”
Twenty minutes after, Lisbeth and Crevel reached the house in the Rue
Barbet, where Madame Marneffe was awaiting, in mild impatience, the
result of a step taken by her commands. Valerie had in the end fallen
a prey to the absorbing love which, once in her life, masters a woman’s
heart. Wenceslas was its object, and, a failure as an artist, he became
in Madame Marneffe’s hands a lover so perfect that he was to her what
she had been to Baron Hulot.
Valerie was holding a slipper in one hand, and Steinbock clasped the
other, while her head rested on his shoulder. The rambling conversation
in which they had been engaged ever since Crevel went out may be
ticketed, like certain lengthy literary efforts of our day, “_All rights
reserved_,” for it cannot be reproduced. This masterpiece of personal
poetry naturally brought a regret to the artist’s lips, and he said, not
without some bitterness:
“What a pity it is that I married; for if I had but waited, as Lisbeth
told me, I might now have married you.”
“Who but a Pole would wish to make a wife of a devoted mistress?” cried
Valerie. “To change love into duty, and pleasure into a bore.”
“I know you to be so fickle,” replied Steinbock. “Did I not hear you
talking to Lisbeth of that Brazilian, Baron Montes?”
“Do you want to rid me of him?”
“It would be the only way to hinder his seeing you,” said the
ex-sculptor.
“Let me tell you, my darling--for I tell you everything,” said
Valerie--“I was saving him up for a husband.--The promises I have made
to that man!--Oh, long before I knew you,” said she, in reply to a
movement from Wenceslas. “And those promises, of which he avails himself
to plague me, oblige me to get married almost secretly; for if he should
hear that I am marrying Crevel, he is the sort of man that--that would
kill me.”
“Oh, as to that!” said Steinbock, with a scornful expression, which
conveyed that such a danger was small indeed for a woman beloved by a
Pole.
And in the matter of valor there is no brag or bravado in a Pole, so
thoroughly and seriously brave are they all.
“And that idiot Crevel,” she went on, “who wants to make a great display
and indulge his taste for inexpensive magnificence in honor of the
wedding, places me in difficulties from which I see no escape.”
Could Valerie confess to this man, whom she adored, that since the
discomfiture of Baron Hulot, this Baron Henri Montes had inherited the
privilege of calling on her at all hours of the day or night; and that,
notwithstanding her cleverness, she was still puzzled to find a cause of
quarrel in which the Brazilian might seem to be solely in the wrong? She
knew the Baron’s almost savage temper--not unlike Lisbeth’s--too well
not to quake as she thought of this Othello of Rio de Janeiro.
As the carriage drove up, Steinbock released Valerie, for his arm
was round her waist, and took up a newspaper, in which he was found
absorbed. Valerie was stitching with elaborate care at the slippers she
was working for Crevel.
“How they slander her!” whispered Lisbeth to Crevel, pointing to this
picture as they opened the door. “Look at her hair--not in the
least tumbled. To hear Victorin, you might have expected to find two
turtle-doves in a nest.”
“My dear Lisbeth,” cried Crevel, in his favorite position, “you see that
to turn Lucretia into Aspasia, you have only to inspire a passion!”
“And have I not always told you,” said Lisbeth, “that women like a burly
profligate like you?”
“And she would be most ungrateful, too,” said Crevel; “for as to the
money I have spent here, Grindot and I alone can tell!”
And he waved a hand at the staircase.
In decorating this house, which Crevel regarded as his own, Grindot had
tried to compete with Cleretti, in whose hands the Duc d’Herouville had
placed Josepha’s villa. But Crevel, incapable of understanding art, had,
like all sordid souls, wanted to spend a certain sum fixed beforehand.
Grindot, fettered by a contract, had found it impossible to embody his
architectural dream.
The difference between Josepha’s house and that in the Rue Barbet was
just that between the individual stamp on things and commonness. The
objects you admired at Crevel’s were to be bought in any shop. These two
types of luxury are divided by the river Million. A mirror, if unique,
is worth six thousand francs; a mirror designed by a manufacturer who
turns them out by the dozen costs five hundred. A genuine lustre by
Boulle will sell at a public auction for three thousand francs; the
same thing reproduced by casting may be made for a thousand or twelve
hundred; one is archaeologically what a picture by Raphael is in
painting, the other is a copy. At what would you value a copy of a
Raphael? Thus Crevel’s mansion was a splendid example of the luxury of
idiots, while Josepha’s was a perfect model of an artist’s home.
“War is declared,” said Crevel, going up to Madame Marneffe.
She rang the bell.
“Go and find Monsieur Berthier,” said she to the man-servant, “and
do not return without him. If you had succeeded,” said she, embracing
Crevel, “we would have postponed our happiness, my dear Daddy, and have
given a really splendid entertainment; but when a whole family is set
against a match, my dear, decency requires that the wedding shall be a
quiet one, especially when the lady is a widow.”
“On the contrary, I intend to make a display of magnificence _a la_
Louis XIV.,” said Crevel, who of late had held the eighteenth century
rather cheap. “I have ordered new carriages; there is one for monsieur
and one for madame, two neat coupes; and a chaise, a handsome traveling
carriage with a splendid hammercloth, on springs that tremble like
Madame Hulot.”
“Oh, ho! _You intend?_--Then you have ceased to be my lamb?--No, no,
my friend, you will do what _I_ intend. We will sign the contract
quietly--just ourselves--this afternoon. Then, on Wednesday, we will
be regularly married, really married, in mufti, as my poor mother would
have said. We will walk to church, plainly dressed, and have only a low
mass. Our witnesses are Stidmann, Steinbock, Vignon, and Massol, all
wide-awake men, who will be at the mairie by chance, and who will so far
sacrifice themselves as to attend mass.
“Your colleague will perform the civil marriage, for once in a way,
as early as half-past nine. Mass is at ten; we shall be at home to
breakfast by half-past eleven.
“I have promised our guests that we will sit at table till the evening.
There will be Bixiou, your old official chum du Tillet, Lousteau,
Vernisset, Leon de Lora, Vernou, all the wittiest men in Paris, who will
not know that we are married. We will play them a little trick, we will
get just a little tipsy, and Lisbeth must join us. I want her to
study matrimony; Bixiou shall make love to her, and--and enlighten her
darkness.”
For two hours Madame Marneffe went on talking nonsense, and Crevel made
this judicious reflection:
“How can so light-hearted a creature be utterly depraved?
Feather-brained, yes! but wicked? Nonsense!”
“Well, and what did the young people say about me?” said Valerie to
Crevel at a moment when he sat down by her on the sofa. “All sorts of
horrors?”
“They will have it that you have a criminal passion for Wenceslas--you,
who are virtue itself.”
“I love him!--I should think so, my little Wenceslas!” cried Valerie,
calling the artist to her, taking his face in her hands, and kissing his
forehead. “A poor boy with no fortune, and no one to depend on! Cast off
by a carrotty giraffe! What do you expect, Crevel? Wenceslas is my poet,
and I love him as if he were my own child, and make no secret of it.
Bah! your virtuous women see evil everywhere and in everything. Bless
me, could they not sit by a man without doing wrong? I am a spoilt child
who has had all it ever wanted, and bonbons no longer excite me.--Poor
things! I am sorry for them!
“And who slandered me so?”
“Victorin,” said Crevel.
“Then why did you not stop his mouth, the odious legal macaw! with the
story of the two hundred thousand francs and his mamma?”
“Oh, the Baroness had fled,” said Lisbeth.
“They had better take care, Lisbeth,” said Madame Marneffe, with a
frown. “Either they will receive me and do it handsomely, and come to
their stepmother’s house--all the party!--or I will see them in lower
depths than the Baron has reached, and you may tell them I said so!--At
last I shall turn nasty. On my honor, I believe that evil is the scythe
with which to cut down the good.”
At three o’clock Monsieur Berthier, Cardot’s successor, read the
marriage-contract, after a short conference with Crevel, for some of
the articles were made conditional on the action taken by Monsieur and
Madame Victorin Hulot.
Crevel settled on his wife a fortune consisting, in the first place, of
forty thousand francs in dividends on specified securities; secondly, of
the house and all its contents; and thirdly, of three million francs not
invested. He also assigned to his wife every benefit allowed by law;
he left all the property free of duty; and in the event of their dying
without issue, each devised to the survivor the whole of their property
and real estate.
By this arrangement the fortune left to Celestine and her husband was
reduced to two millions of francs in capital. If Crevel and his second
wife should have children, Celestine’s share was limited to five hundred
thousand francs, as the life-interest in the rest was to accrue to
Valerie. This would be about the ninth part of his whole real and
personal estate.
Lisbeth returned to dine in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, despair written on
her face. She explained and bewailed the terms of the marriage-contract,
but found Celestine and her husband insensible to the disastrous news.
“You have provoked your father, my children. Madame Marneffe swears that
you shall receive Monsieur Crevel’s wife and go to her house,” said she.
“Never!” said Victorin.
“Never!” said Celestine.
“Never!” said Hortense.
Lisbeth was possessed by the wish to crush the haughty attitude assumed
by all the Hulots.
“She seems to have arms that she can turn against you,” she replied.
“I do not know all about it, but I shall find out. She spoke vaguely
of some history of two hundred thousand francs in which Adeline is
implicated.”
The Baroness fell gently backward on the sofa she was sitting on in a
fit of hysterical sobbing.
“Go there, go, my children!” she cried. “Receive the woman! Monsieur
Crevel is an infamous wretch. He deserves the worst punishment
imaginable.--Do as the woman desires you! She is a monster--she knows
all!”
After gasping out these words with tears and sobs, Madame Hulot
collected her strength to go to her room, leaning on her daughter and
Celestine.
“What is the meaning of all this?” cried Lisbeth, left alone with
Victorin.
The lawyer stood rigid, in very natural dismay, and did not hear her.
“What is the matter, my dear Victorin?”
“I am horrified!” said he, and his face scowled darkly. “Woe to anybody
who hurts my mother! I have no scruples then. I would crush that woman
like a viper if I could!--What, does she attack my mother’s life, my
mother’s honor?”
“She said, but do not repeat it, my dear Victorin--she said you should
all fall lower even than your father. And she scolded Crevel roundly
for not having shut your mouths with this secret that seems to be such a
terror to Adeline.”
A doctor was sent for, for the Baroness was evidently worse. He gave
her a draught containing a large dose of opium, and Adeline, having
swallowed it, fell into a deep sleep; but the whole family were greatly
alarmed.
Early next morning Victorin went out, and on his way to the Courts
called at the Prefecture of the Police, where he begged Vautrin, the
head of the detective department, to send him Madame de Saint-Esteve.
“We are forbidden, monsieur, to meddle in your affairs; but Madame de
Saint-Esteve is in business, and will attend to your orders,” replied
this famous police officer.
On his return home, the unhappy lawyer was told that his mother’s reason
was in danger. Doctor Bianchon, Doctor Larabit, and Professor Angard
had met in consultation, and were prepared to apply heroic remedies to
hinder the rush of blood to the head. At the moment when Victorin was
listening to Doctor Bianchon, who was giving him, at some length, his
reasons for hoping that the crisis might be got over, the man-servant
announced that a client, Madame de Saint-Esteve, was waiting to see him.
Victorin left Bianchon in the middle of a sentence and flew downstairs
like a madman.
“Is there any hereditary lunacy in the family?” said Bianchon,
addressing Larabit.
The doctors departed, leaving a hospital attendant, instructed by them,
to watch Madame Hulot.
“A whole life of virtue!----” was the only sentence the sufferer had
spoken since the attack.
Lisbeth never left Adeline’s bedside; she sat up all night, and was much
admired by the two younger women.
“Well, my dear Madame de Saint-Esteve,” said Victorin, showing the
dreadful old woman into his study and carefully shutting the doors, “how
are we getting on?”
“Ah, ha! my dear friend,” said she, looking at Victorin with cold irony.
“So you have thought things over?”
“Have you done anything?”
“Will you pay fifty thousand francs?”
“Yes,” replied Victorin, “for we must get on. Do you know that by one
single phrase that woman has endangered my mother’s life and reason? So,
I say, get on.”
“We have got on!” replied the old woman.
“Well?” cried Victorin, with a gulp.
“Well, you do not cry off the expenses?”
“On the contrary.”
“They run up to twenty-three thousand francs already.”
Victorin looked helplessly at the woman.
“Well, could we hoodwink you, you, one of the shining lights of the
law?” said she. “For that sum we have secured a maid’s conscience and a
picture by Raphael.--It is not dear.”
Hulot, still bewildered, sat with wide open eyes.
“Well, then,” his visitor went on, “we have purchased the honesty of
Mademoiselle Reine Tousard, a damsel from whom Madame Marneffe has no
secrets--”
“I understand!”
“But if you shy, say so.”
“I will play blindfold,” he replied. “My mother has told me that that
couple deserve the worst torments--”
“The rack is out of date,” said the old woman.
“You answer for the result?”
“Leave it all to me,” said the woman; “your vengeance is simmering.”
She looked at the clock; it was six.
“Your avenger is dressing; the fires are lighted at the _Rocher de
Cancale_; the horses are pawing the ground; my irons are getting
hot.--Oh, I know your Madame Marneffe by heart!--Everything is ready.
And there are some boluses in the rat-trap; I will tell you to-morrow
morning if the mouse is poisoned. I believe she will be; good evening,
my son.”
“Good-bye, madame.”
“Do you know English?”
“Yes.”
“Well, my son, thou shalt be King. That is to say, you shall come into
your inheritance,” said the dreadful old witch, foreseen by Shakespeare,
and who seemed to know her Shakespeare.
She left Hulot amazed at the door of his study.
“The consultation is for to-morrow!” said she, with the gracious air of
a regular client.
She saw two persons coming, and wished to pass in their eyes a pinchbeck
countess.
“What impudence!” thought Hulot, bowing to his pretended client.
Baron Montes de Montejanos was a _lion_, but a lion not accounted
for. Fashionable Paris, Paris of the turf and of the town, admired
the ineffable waistcoats of this foreign gentleman, his spotless
patent-leather boots, his incomparable sticks, his much-coveted horses,
and the negro servants who rode the horses and who were entirely slaves
and most consumedly thrashed.
His fortune was well known; he had a credit account up to seven hundred
thousand francs in the great banking house of du Tillet; but he was
always seen alone. When he went to “first nights,” he was in a stall. He
frequented no drawing-rooms. He had never given his arm to a girl on the
streets. His name would not be coupled with that of any pretty woman
of the world. To pass his time he played whist at the Jockey-Club. The
world was reduced to calumny, or, which it thought funnier, to laughing
at his peculiarities; he went by the name of Combabus.
Bixiou, Leon de Lora, Lousteau, Florine, Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout,
and Nathan, supping one evening with the notorious Carabine, with a
large party of _lions_ and _lionesses_, had invented this name with an
excessively burlesque explanation. Massol, as being on the Council of
State, and Claude Vignon, erewhile Professor of Greek, had related to
the ignorant damsels the famous anecdote, preserved in Rollin’s _Ancient
History_, concerning Combabus, that voluntary Abelard who was placed in
charge of the wife of a King of Assyria, Persia, Bactria, Mesopotamia,
and other geographical divisions peculiar to old Professor du Bocage,
who continued the work of d’Anville, the creator of the East of
antiquity. This nickname, which gave Carabine’s guests laughter for a
quarter of an hour, gave rise to a series of over-free jests, to which
the Academy could not award the Montyon prize; but among which the name
was taken up, to rest thenceforth on the curly mane of the handsome
Baron, called by Josepha the splendid Brazilian--as one might say a
splendid _Catoxantha_.
Carabine, the loveliest of her tribe, whose delicate beauty and amusing
wit had snatched the sceptre of the Thirteenth Arrondissement from
the hands of Mademoiselle Turquet, better known by the name of
Malaga--Mademoiselle Seraphine Sinet (this was her real name) was to du
Tillet the banker what Josepha Mirah was to the Duc d’Herouville.
Now, on the morning of the very day when Madame de Saint-Esteve had
prophesied success to Victorin, Carabine had said to du Tillet at about
seven o’clock:
“If you want to be very nice, you will give me a dinner at the _Rocher
de Cancale_ and bring Combabus. We want to know, once for all, whether
he has a mistress.--I bet that he has, and I should like to win.”
“He is still at the Hotel des Princes; I will call,” replied du Tillet.
“We will have some fun. Ask all the youngsters--the youngster Bixiou,
the youngster Lora, in short, all the clan.”
At half-past seven that evening, in the handsomest room of the
restaurant where all Europe has dined, a splendid silver service was
spread, made on purpose for entertainments where vanity pays the bill
in bank-notes. A flood of light fell in ripples on the chased rims;
waiters, whom a provincial might have taken for diplomatists but for
their age, stood solemnly, as knowing themselves to be overpaid.
Five guests had arrived, and were waiting for nine more. These were
first and foremost Bixiou, still flourishing in 1843, the salt of every
intellectual dish, always supplied with fresh wit--a phenomenon as rare
in Paris as virtue is; Leon de Lora, the greatest living painter of
landscape and the sea who has this great advantage over all his rivals,
that he has never fallen below his first successes. The courtesans could
never dispense with these two kings of ready wit. No supper, no dinner,
was possible without them.
Seraphine Sinet, _dite_ Carabine, as the mistress _en titre_ of the
Amphitryon, was one of the first to arrive; and the brilliant lighting
showed off her shoulders, unrivaled in Paris, her throat, as round as if
turned in a lathe, without a crease, her saucy face, and dress of satin
brocade in two shades of blue, trimmed with Honiton lace enough to have
fed a whole village for a month.
Pretty Jenny Cadine, not acting that evening, came in a dress of
incredible splendor; her portrait is too well known to need any
description. A party is always a Longchamps of evening dress for these
ladies, each anxious to win the prize for her millionaire by thus
announcing to her rivals:
“This is the price I am worth!”
A third woman, evidently at the initial stage of her career, gazed,
almost shamefaced, at the luxury of her two established and wealthy
companions. Simply dressed in white cashmere trimmed with blue, her head
had been dressed with real flowers by a coiffeur of the old-fashioned
school, whose awkward hands had unconsciously given the charm of
ineptitude to her fair hair. Still unaccustomed to any finery, she
showed the timidity--to use a hackneyed phrase--inseparable from a first
appearance. She had come from Valognes to find in Paris some use for
her distracting youthfulness, her innocence that might have stirred the
senses of a dying man, and her beauty, worthy to hold its own with any
that Normandy has ever supplied to the theatres of the capital. The
lines of that unblemished face were the ideal of angelic purity. Her
milk-white skin reflected the light like a mirror. The delicate pink
in her cheeks might have been laid on with a brush. She was called
Cydalise, and, as will be seen, she was an important pawn in the game
played by Ma’ame Nourrisson to defeat Madame Marneffe.
“Your arm is not a match for your name, my child,” said Jenny Cadine, to
whom Carabine had introduced this masterpiece of sixteen, having brought
her with her.
And, in fact, Cydalise displayed to public admiration a fine pair of
arms, smooth and satiny, but red with healthy young blood.
“What do you want for her?” said Jenny Cadine, in an undertone to
Carabine.
“A fortune.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
“Well--Madame Combabus!”
“And what are you to get for such a job?”
“Guess.”
“A service of plate?”
“I have three.”
“Diamonds?”
“I am selling them.”
“A green monkey?”
“No. A picture by Raphael.”
“What maggot is that in your brain?”
“Josepha makes me sick with her pictures,” said Carabine. “I want some
better than hers.”
Du Tillet came with the Brazilian, the hero of the feast; the Duc
d’Herouville followed with Josepha. The singer wore a plain velvet gown,
but she had on a necklace worth a hundred and twenty thousand francs,
pearls hardly distinguishable from her skin like white camellia petals.
She had stuck one scarlet camellia in her black hair--a patch--the
effect was dazzling, and she had amused herself by putting eleven rows
of pearls on each arm. As she shook hands with Jenny Cadine, the actress
said, “Lend me your mittens!”
Josepha unclasped them one by one and handed them to her friend on a
plate.
“There’s style!” said Carabine. “Quite the Duchess! You have robbed the
ocean to dress the nymph, Monsieur le Duc,” she added turning to the
little Duc d’Herouville.
The actress took two of the bracelets; she clasped the other twenty on
the singer’s beautiful arms, which she kissed.
Lousteau, the literary cadger, la Palferine and Malaga, Massol,
Vauvinet, and Theodore Gaillard, a proprietor of one of the most
important political newspapers, completed the party. The Duc
d’Herouville, polite to everybody, as a fine gentleman knows how to be,
greeted the Comte de la Palferine with the particular nod which, while
it does not imply either esteem or intimacy, conveys to all the world,
“We are of the same race, the same blood--equals!”--And this greeting,
the shibboleth of the aristocracy, was invented to be the despair of the
upper citizen class.
Carabine placed Combabus on her left, and the Duc d’Herouville on her
right. Cydalise was next to the Brazilian, and beyond her was Bixiou.
Malaga sat by the Duke.
Oysters appeared at seven o’clock; at eight they were drinking iced
punch. Every one is familiar with the bill of fare of such a banquet. By
nine o’clock they were talking as people talk after forty-two bottles of
various wines, drunk by fourteen persons. Dessert was on the table, the
odious dessert of the month of April. Of all the party, the only one
affected by the heady atmosphere was Cydalise, who was humming a tune.
None of the party, with the exception of the poor country girl, had lost
their reason; the drinkers and the women were the experienced _elite_ of
the society that sups. Their wits were bright, their eyes glistened,
but with no loss of intelligence, though the talk drifted into satire,
anecdote, and gossip. Conversation, hitherto confined to the inevitable
circle of racing, horses, hammerings on the Bourse, the different
occupations of the _lions_ themselves, and the scandals of the town,
showed a tendency to break up into intimate _tete-a-tete_, the dialogues
of two hearts.
And at this stage, at a signal from Carabine to Leon de Lora, Bixiou, la
Palferine, and du Tillet, love came under discussion.
“A doctor in good society never talks of medicine, true nobles never
speak of their ancestors, men of genius do not discuss their works,”
said Josepha; “why should we talk business? If I got the opera put off
in order to dine here, it was assuredly not to work.--So let us change
the subject, dear children.”
“But we are speaking of real love, my beauty,” said Malaga, “of the
love that makes a man fling all to the dogs--father, mother, wife,
children--and retire to Clichy.”
“Talk away, then, ‘don’t know yer,’” said the singer.
The slang words, borrowed from the Street Arab, and spoken by these
women, may be a poem on their lips, helped by the expression of the eyes
and face.
“What, do not I love you, Josepha?” said the Duke in a low voice.
“You, perhaps, may love me truly,” said she in his ear, and she smiled.
“But I do not love you in the way they describe, with such love as makes
the world dark in the absence of the man beloved. You are delightful
to me, useful--but not indispensable; and if you were to throw me over
to-morrow, I could have three dukes for one.”
“Is true love to be found in Paris?” asked Leon de Lora. “Men have not
even time to make a fortune; how can they give themselves over to true
love, which swamps a man as water melts sugar? A man must be enormously
rich to indulge in it, for love annihilates him--for instance, like
our Brazilian friend over there. As I said long ago, ‘Extremes
defeat--themselves.’ A true lover is like an eunuch; women have ceased
to exist for him. He is mystical; he is like the true Christian, an
anchorite of the desert!--See our noble Brazilian.”
Every one at table looked at Henri Montes de Montejanos, who was shy at
finding every eye centred on him.
“He has been feeding there for an hour without discovering, any more
than an ox at pasture, that he is sitting next to--I will not say, in
such company, the loveliest--but the freshest woman in all Paris.”
“Everything is fresh here, even the fish; it is what the house is famous
for,” said Carabine.
Baron Montes looked good-naturedly at the painter, and said:
“Very good! I drink to your very good health,” and bowing to Leon de
Lora, he lifted his glass of port wine and drank it with much dignity.
“Are you then truly in love?” asked Malaga of her neighbor, thus
interpreting his toast.
The Brazilian refilled his glass, bowed to Carabine, and drank again.
“To the lady’s health then!” said the courtesan, in such a droll tone
that Lora, du Tillet, and Bixiou burst out laughing.
The Brazilian sat like a bronze statue. This impassibility provoked
Carabine. She knew perfectly well that Montes was devoted to Madame
Marneffe, but she had not expected this dogged fidelity, this obstinate
silence of conviction.
A woman is as often gauged by the attitude of her lover as a man
is judged from the tone of his mistress. The Baron was proud of his
attachment to Valerie, and of hers to him; his smile had, to these
experienced connoisseurs, a touch of irony; he was really grand to look
upon; wine had not flushed him; and his eyes, with their peculiar lustre
as of tarnished gold, kept the secrets of his soul. Even Carabine said
to herself:
“What a woman she must be! How she has sealed up that heart!”
“He is a rock!” said Bixiou in an undertone, imagining that the whole
thing was a practical joke, and never suspecting the importance to
Carabine of reducing this fortress.
While this conversation, apparently so frivolous, was going on at
Carabine’s right, the discussion of love was continued on her left
between the Duc d’Herouville, Lousteau, Josepha, Jenny Cadine, and
Massol. They were wondering whether such rare phenomena were the result
of passion, obstinacy, or affection. Josepha, bored to death by it all,
tried to change the subject.
“You are talking of what you know nothing about. Is there a man among
you who ever loved a woman--a woman beneath him--enough to squander his
fortune and his children’s, to sacrifice his future and blight his past,
to risk going to the hulks for robbing the Government, to kill an uncle
and a brother, to let his eye be so effectually blinded that he did
not even perceive that it was done to hinder his seeing the abyss into
which, as a crowning jest, he was being driven? Du Tillet has a cash-box
under his left breast; Leon de Lora has his wit; Bixiou would laugh
at himself for a fool if he loved any one but himself; Massol has a
minister’s portfolio in the place of a heart; Lousteau can have nothing
but viscera, since he could endure to be thrown over by Madame de
Baudraye; Monsieur le Duc is too rich to prove his love by his ruin;
Vauvinet is not in it--I do not regard a bill-broker as one of the human
race; and you have never loved, nor I, nor Jenny Cadine, nor Malaga. For
my part, I never but once even saw the phenomenon I have described. It
was,” and she turned to Jenny Cadine, “that poor Baron Hulot, whom I am
going to advertise for like a lost dog, for I want to find him.”
“Oh, ho!” said Carabine to herself, and looking keenly at Josepha, “then
Madame Nourrisson has two pictures by Raphael, since Josepha is playing
my hand!”
“Poor fellow,” said Vauvinet, “he was a great man! Magnificent! And what
a figure, what a style, the air of Francis I.! What a volcano! and how
full of ingenious ways of getting money! He must be looking for it now,
wherever he is, and I make no doubt he extracts it even from the walls
built of bones that you may see in the suburbs of Paris near the city
gates--”
“And all that,” said Bixiou, “for that little Madame Marneffe! There is
a precious hussy for you!”
“She is just going to marry my friend Crevel,” said du Tillet.
“And she is madly in love with my friend Steinbock,” Leon de Lora put
in.
These three phrases were like so many pistol-shots fired point-blank at
Montes. He turned white, and the shock was so painful that he rose with
difficulty.
“You are a set of blackguards!” cried he. “You have no right to speak
the name of an honest woman in the same breath with those fallen
creatures--above all, not to make it a mark for your slander!”
He was interrupted by unanimous bravos and applause. Bixiou, Leon de
Lora, Vauvinet, du Tillet, and Massol set the example, and there was a
chorus.
“Hurrah for the Emperor!” said Bixiou.
“Crown him! crown him!” cried Vauvinet.
“Three groans for such a good dog! Hurrah for Brazil!” cried Lousteau.
“So, my copper-colored Baron, it is our Valerie that you love; and you
are not disgusted?” said Leon de Lora.
“His remark is not parliamentary, but it is grand!” observed Massol.
“But, my most delightful customer,” said du Tillet, “you were
recommended to me; I am your banker; your innocence reflects on my
credit.”
“Yes, tell me, you are a reasonable creature----” said the Brazilian to
the banker.
“Thanks on behalf of the company,” said Bixiou with a bow.
“Tell me the real facts,” Montes went on, heedless of Bixiou’s
interjection.
“Well, then,” replied du Tillet, “I have the honor to tell you that I am
asked to the Crevel wedding.”
“Ah, ha! Combabus holds a brief for Madame Marneffe!” said Josepha,
rising solemnly.
She went round to Montes with a tragic look, patted him kindly on the
head, looked at him for a moment with comical admiration, and nodded
sagely.
“Hulot was the first instance of love through fire and water,” said she;
“this is the second. But it ought not to count, as it comes from the
Tropics.”
Montes had dropped into his chair again, when Josepha gently touched his
forehead, and looked at du Tillet as he said:
“If I am the victim of a Paris jest, if you only wanted to get at my
secret----” and he sent a flashing look round the table, embracing all
the guests in a flaming glance that blazed with the sun of Brazil,--“I
beg of you as a favor to tell me so,” he went on, in a tone of almost
childlike entreaty; “but do not vilify the woman I love.”
“Nay, indeed,” said Carabine in a low voice; “but if, on the contrary,
you are shamefully betrayed, cheated, tricked by Valerie, if I should
give you the proof in an hour, in my own house, what then?”
“I cannot tell you before all these Iagos,” said the Brazilian.
Carabine understood him to say _magots_ (baboons).
“Well, well, say no more!” she replied, smiling. “Do not make yourself
a laughing-stock for all the wittiest men in Paris; come to my house, we
will talk it over.”
Montes was crushed. “Proofs,” he stammered, “consider--”
“Only too many,” replied Carabine; “and if the mere suspicion hits you
so hard, I fear for your reason.”
“Is this creature obstinate, I ask you? He is worse than the late
lamented King of Holland!--I say, Lousteau, Bixiou, Massol, all the crew
of you, are you not invited to breakfast with Madame Marneffe the day
after to-morrow?” said Leon de Lora.
“_Ya_,” said du Tillet; “I have the honor of assuring you, Baron, that
if you had by any chance thought of marrying Madame Marneffe, you are
thrown out like a bill in Parliament, beaten by a blackball called
Crevel. My friend, my old comrade Crevel, has eighty thousand francs a
year; and you, I suppose, did not show such a good hand, for if you had,
you, I imagine, would have been preferred.”
Montes listened with a half-absent, half-smiling expression, which
struck them all with terror.
At this moment the head-waiter came to whisper to Carabine that a lady,
a relation of hers, was in the drawing-room and wished to speak to her.
Carabine rose and went out to find Madame Nourrisson, decently veiled
with black lace.
“Well, child, am I to go to your house? Has he taken the hook?”
“Yes, mother; and the pistol is so fully loaded, that my only fear is
that it will burst,” said Carabine.
About an hour later, Montes, Cydalise, and Carabine, returning from the
_Rocher de Cancale_, entered Carabine’s little sitting-room in the Rue
Saint-Georges. Madame Nourrisson was sitting in an armchair by the fire.
“Here is my worthy old aunt,” said Carabine.
“Yes, child, I came in person to fetch my little allowance. You would
have forgotten me, though you are kind-hearted, and I have some bills
to pay to-morrow. Buying and selling clothes, I am always short of cash.
Who is this at your heels? The gentleman looks very much put out about
something.”
The dreadful Madame Nourrisson, at this moment so completely disguised
as to look like a respectable old body, rose to embrace Carabine, one of
the hundred and odd courtesans she had launched on their horrible career
of vice.
“He is an Othello who is not to be taken in, whom I have the honor of
introducing to you--Monsieur le Baron Montes de Montejanos.”
“Oh! I have heard him talked about, and know his name.--You are
nicknamed Combabus, because you love but one woman, and in Paris, that
is the same as loving no one at all. And is it by chance the object of
your affections who is fretting you? Madame Marneffe, Crevel’s woman? I
tell you what, my dear sir, you may bless your stars instead of cursing
them. She is a good-for-nothing baggage, is that little woman. I know
her tricks!”
“Get along,” said Carabine, into whose hand Madame Nourrisson had
slipped a note while embracing her, “you do not know your Brazilians.
They are wrong-headed creatures that insist on being impaled through
the heart. The more jealous they are, the more jealous they want to
be. Monsieur talks of dealing death all round, but he will kill nobody
because he is in love.--However, I have brought him here to give him
the proofs of his discomfiture, which I have got from that little
Steinbock.”
Montes was drunk; he listened as if the women were talking about
somebody else.
Carabine went to take off her velvet wrap, and read a facsimile of a
note, as follows:--
“DEAR PUSS.--He dines with Popinot this evening, and will come
to fetch me from the Opera at eleven. I shall go out at about
half-past five and count on finding you at our paradise. Order
dinner to be sent in from the _Maison d’or_. Dress, so as to be
able to take me to the Opera. We shall have four hours to ourselves.
Return this note to me; not that your Valerie doubts you--I would
give you my life, my fortune, and my honor, but I am afraid of the
tricks of chance.”
“Here, Baron, this is the note sent to Count Steinbock this morning;
read the address. The original document is burnt.”
Montes turned the note over and over, recognized the writing, and was
struck by a rational idea, which is sufficient evidence of the disorder
of his brain.
“And, pray,” said he, looking at Carabine, “what object have you in
torturing my heart, for you must have paid very dear for the
privilege of having the note in your possession long enough to get it
lithographed?”
“Foolish man!” said Carabine, at a nod from Madame Nourrisson, “don’t
you see that poor child Cydalise--a girl of sixteen, who has been pining
for you these three months, till she has lost her appetite for food or
drink, and who is heart-broken because you have never even glanced at
her?”
Cydalise put her handkerchief to her eyes with an appearance of
emotion--“She is furious,” Carabine went on, “though she looks as if
butter would not melt in her mouth, furious to see the man she adores
duped by a villainous hussy; she would kill Valerie--”
“Oh, as for that,” said the Brazilian, “that is my business!”
“What, killing?” said old Nourrisson. “No, my son, we don’t do that here
nowadays.”
“Oh!” said Montes, “I am not a native of this country. I live in a
parish where I can laugh at your laws; and if you give me proof--”
“Well, that note. Is that nothing?”
“No,” said the Brazilian. “I do not believe in the writing. I must see
for myself.”
“See!” cried Carabine, taking the hint at once from a gesture of her
supposed aunt. “You shall see, my dear Tiger, all you wish to see--on
one condition.”
“And that is?”
“Look at Cydalise.”
At a wink from Madame Nourrisson, Cydalise cast a tender look at the
Baron.
“Will you be good to her? Will you make her a home?” asked Carabine. “A
girl of such beauty is well worth a house and a carriage! It would be a
monstrous shame to leave her to walk the streets. And besides--she is in
debt.--How much do you owe?” asked Carabine, nipping Cydalise’s arm.
“She is worth all she can get,” said the old woman. “The point is that
she can find a buyer.”
“Listen!” cried Montes, fully aware at last of this masterpiece of
womankind “you will show me Valerie--”
“And Count Steinbock.--Certainly!” said Madame Nourrisson.
For the past ten minutes the old woman had been watching the Brazilian;
she saw that he was an instrument tuned up to the murderous pitch she
needed; and, above all, so effectually blinded, that he would never heed
who had led him on to it, and she spoke:--
“Cydalise, my Brazilian jewel, is my niece, so her concerns are partly
mine. All this catastrophe will be the work of a few minutes, for a
friend of mine lets the furnished room to Count Steinbock where Valerie
is at this moment taking coffee--a queer sort of coffee, but she calls
it her coffee. So let us understand each other, Brazil!--I like Brazil,
it is a hot country.--What is to become of my niece?”
“You old ostrich,” said Montes, the plumes in the woman’s bonnet
catching his eye, “you interrupted me.--If you show me--if I see Valerie
and that artist together--”
“As you would wish to be--” said Carabine; “that is understood.”
“Then I will take this girl and carry her away--”
“Where?” asked Carabine.
“To Brazil,” replied the Baron. “I will make her my wife. My uncle left
me ten leagues square of entailed estate; that is how I still have
that house and home. I have a hundred negroes--nothing but negroes and
negresses and negro brats, all bought by my uncle--”
“Nephew to a nigger-driver,” said Carabine, with a grimace. “That needs
some consideration.--Cydalise, child, are you fond of the blacks?”
“Pooh! Carabine, no nonsense,” said the old woman. “The deuce is in it!
Monsieur and I are doing business.”
“If I take up another Frenchwoman, I mean to have her to myself,” the
Brazilian went on. “I warn you, mademoiselle, I am king there, and not a
constitutional king. I am Czar; my subjects are mine by purchase, and
no one can escape from my kingdom, which is a hundred leagues from any
human settlement, hemmed in by savages on the interior, and divided from
the sea by a wilderness as wide as France.”
“I should prefer a garret here.”
“So thought I,” said Montes, “since I sold all my land and possessions
at Rio to come back to Madame Marneffe.”
“A man does not make such a voyage for nothing,” remarked Madame
Nourrisson. “You have a right to look for love for your own sake,
particularly being so good-looking.--Oh, he is very handsome!” said she
to Carabine.
“Very handsome, handsomer than the _Postillon de Longjumeau_,” replied
the courtesan.
Cydalise took the Brazilian’s hand, but he released it as politely as he
could.
“I came back for Madame Marneffe,” the man went on where he had left
off, “but you do not know why I was three years thinking about it.”
“No, savage!” said Carabine.
“Well, she had so repeatedly told me that she longed to live with me
alone in a desert--”
“Oh, ho! he is not a savage after all,” cried Carabine, with a shout of
laughter. “He is of the highly-civilized tribe of Flats!”
“She had told me this so often,” Montes went on, regardless of the
courtesan’s mockery, “that I had a lovely house fitted up in the heart
of that vast estate. I came back to France to fetch Valerie, and the
first evening I saw her--”
“Saw her is very proper!” said Carabine. “I will remember it.”
“She told me to wait till that wretched Marneffe was dead; and I agreed,
and forgave her for having admitted the attentions of Hulot. Whether the
devil had her in hand I don’t know, but from that instant that woman
has humored my every whim, complied with all my demands--never for one
moment has she given me cause to suspect her!--”
“That is supremely clever!” said Carabine to Madame Nourrisson, who
nodded in sign of assent.
“My faith in that woman,” said Montes, and he shed a tear, “was a match
for my love. Just now, I was ready to fight everybody at table--”
“So I saw,” said Carabine.
“And if I am cheated, if she is going to be married, if she is at this
moment in Steinbock’s arms, she deserves a thousand deaths! I will kill
her as I would smash a fly--”
“And how about the gendarmes, my son?” said Madame Nourrisson, with a
smile that made your flesh creep.
“And the police agents, and the judges, and the assizes, and all the
set-out?” added Carabine.
“You are bragging, my dear fellow,” said the old woman, who wanted to
know all the Brazilian’s schemes of vengeance.
“I will kill her,” he calmly repeated. “You called me a savage.--Do you
imagine that I am fool enough to go, like a Frenchman, and buy poison
at the chemist’s shop?--During the time while we were driving her, I
thought out my means of revenge, if you should prove to be right as
concerns Valerie. One of my negroes has the most deadly of animal
poisons, and incurable anywhere but in Brazil. I will administer it
to Cydalise, who will give it to me; then by the time when death is a
certainty to Crevel and his wife, I shall be beyond the Azores with your
cousin, who will be cured, and I will marry her. We have our own little
tricks, we savages!--Cydalise,” said he, looking at the country girl,
“is the animal I need.--How much does she owe?”
“A hundred thousand francs,” said Cydalise.
“She says little--but to the purpose,” said Carabine, in a low tone to
Madame Nourrisson.
“I am going mad!” cried the Brazilian, in a husky voice, dropping on to
a sofa. “I shall die of this! But I must see, for it is impossible!--A
lithographed note! What is to assure me that it is not a forgery?--Baron
Hulot was in love with Valerie?” said he, recalling Josepha’s harangue.
“Nay; the proof that he did not love is that she is still alive--I will
not leave her living for anybody else, if she is not wholly mine.”
Montes was terrible to behold. He bellowed, he stormed; he broke
everything he touched; rosewood was as brittle as glass.
“How he destroys things!” said Carabine, looking at the old woman. “My
good boy,” said she, giving the Brazilian a little slap, “Roland the
Furious is very fine in a poem; but in a drawing-room he is prosaic and
expensive.”
“My son,” said old Nourrisson, rising to stand in front of the
crestfallen Baron, “I am of your way of thinking. When you love in that
way, and are joined ‘till death does you part,’ life must answer for
love. The one who first goes, carries everything away; it is a general
wreck. You command my esteem, my admiration, my consent, especially for
your inoculation, which will make me a Friend of the Negro.--But you
love her! You will hark back?”
“I?--If she is so infamous, I--”
“Well, come now, you are talking too much, it strikes me. A man who
means to be avenged, and who says he has the ways and means of a savage,
doesn’t do that.--If you want to see your ‘object’ in her paradise, you
must take Cydalise and walk straight in with her on your arm, as if the
servant had made a mistake. But no scandal! If you mean to be revenged,
you must eat the leek, seem to be in despair, and allow her to bully
you.--Do you see?” said Madame Nourrisson, finding the Brazilian quite
amazed by so subtle a scheme.
“All right, old ostrich,” he replied. “Come along: I understand.”
“Good-bye, little one!” said the old woman to Carabine.
She signed to Cydalise to go on with Montes, and remained a minute with
Carabine.
“Now, child, I have but one fear, and that is that he will strangle
her! I should be in a very tight place; we must do everything gently.
I believe you have won your picture by Raphael; but they tell me it is
only a Mignard. Never mind, it is much prettier; all the Raphaels are
gone black, I am told, whereas this one is as bright as a Girodet.”
“All I want is to crow over Josepha; and it is all the same to me
whether I have a Mignard or a Raphael!--That thief had on such pearls
this evening!--you would sell your soul for them.”
Cydalise, Montes, and Madame Nourrisson got into a hackney coach that
was waiting at the door. Madame Nourrisson whispered to the driver the
address of a house in the same block as the Italian Opera House,
which they could have reached in five or six minutes from the Rue
Saint-Georges; but Madame Nourrisson desired the man to drive along the
Rue le Peletier, and to go very slowly, so as to be able to examine the
carriages in waiting.
“Brazilian,” said the old woman, “look out for your angel’s carriage and
servants.”
The Baron pointed out Valerie’s carriage as they passed it.
“She has told them to come for her at ten o’clock, and she is gone in a
cab to the house where she visits Count Steinbock. She has dined there,
and will come to the Opera in half an hour.--It is well contrived!” said
Madame Nourrisson. “Thus you see how she has kept you so long in the
dark.”
The Brazilian made no reply. He had become the tiger, and had recovered
the imperturbable cool ferocity that had been so striking at dinner. He
was as calm as a bankrupt the day after he has stopped payment.
At the door of the house stood a hackney coach with two horses, of the
kind known as a _Compagnie Generale_, from the Company that runs them.
“Stay here in the box,” said the old woman to Montes. “This is not an
open house like a tavern. I will send for you.”
The paradise of Madame Marneffe and Wenceslas was not at all like that
of Crevel--who, finding it useless now, had just sold his to the Comte
Maxime de Trailles. This paradise, the paradise of all comers, consisted
of a room on the fourth floor opening to the landing, in a house close
to the Italian Opera. On each floor of this house there was a room which
had originally served as the kitchen to the apartments on that floor.
But the house having become a sort of inn, let out for clandestine love
affairs at an exorbitant price, the owner, the real Madame Nourrisson,
an old-clothes buyer in the Rue Nueve Saint-Marc, had wisely appreciated
the great value of these kitchens, and had turned them into a sort of
dining-rooms. Each of these rooms, built between thick party-walls and
with windows to the street, was entirely shut in by very thick double
doors on the landing. Thus the most important secrets could be discussed
over a dinner, with no risk of being overheard. For greater security,
the windows had shutters inside and out. These rooms, in consequence of
this peculiarity, were let for twelve hundred francs a month. The
whole house, full of such paradises and mysteries was rented by Madame
Nourrisson the First for twenty-eight thousand francs of clear profit,
after paying her housekeeper, Madame Nourrisson the Second, for she did
not manage it herself.
The paradise let to Count Steinbock had been hung with chintz; the
cold, hard floor, of common tiles reddened with encaustic, was not
felt through a soft thick carpet. The furniture consisted of two pretty
chairs and a bed in an alcove, just now half hidden by a table loaded
with the remains of an elegant dinner, while two bottles with long
necks and an empty champagne-bottle in ice strewed the field of bacchus
cultivated by Venus.
There were also--the property, no doubt, of Valerie--a low easy-chair
and a man’s smoking-chair, and a pretty toilet chest of drawers in
rosewood, the mirror handsomely framed _a la_ Pompadour. A lamp hanging
from the ceiling gave a subdued light, increased by wax candles on the
table and on the chimney-shelf.
This sketch will suffice to give an idea, _urbi et orbi_, of clandestine
passion in the squalid style stamped on it in Paris in 1840. How far,
alas! from the adulterous love, symbolized by Vulcan’s nets, three
thousand years ago.
When Montes and Cydalise came upstairs, Valerie, standing before the
fire, where a log was blazing, was allowing Wenceslas to lace her stays.
This is a moment when a woman who is neither too fat nor too thin, but
like Valerie, elegant and slender, displays divine beauty. The rosy
skin, mostly soft, invites the sleepiest eye. The lines of her figure,
so little hidden, are so charmingly outlined by the white pleats of
the shift and the support of the stays, that she is irresistible--like
everything that must be parted from.
With a happy face smiling at the glass, a foot impatiently marking
time, a hand put up to restore order among the tumbled curls, and eyes
expressive of gratitude; with the glow of satisfaction which, like a
sunset, warms the least details of the countenance--everything makes
such a moment a mine of memories.
Any man who dares look back on the early errors of his life may,
perhaps, recall some such reminiscences, and understand, though not
excuse, the follies of Hulot and Crevel. Women are so well aware of
their power at such a moment, that they find in it what may be called
the aftermath of the meeting.
“Come, come; after two years’ practice, you do not yet know how to lace
a woman’s stays! You are too much a Pole!--There, it is ten o’clock, my
Wenceslas!” said Valerie, laughing at him.
At this very moment, a mischievous waiting-woman, by inserting a knife,
pushed up the hook of the double doors that formed the whole security
of Adam and Eve. She hastily pulled the door open--for the servants
of these dens have little time to waste--and discovered one of the
bewitching _tableaux de genre_ which Gavarni has so often shown at the
Salon.
“In here, madame,” said the girl; and Cydalise went in, followed by
Montes.
“But there is some one here.--Excuse me, madame,” said the country girl,
in alarm.
“What?--Why! it is Valerie!” cried Montes, violently slamming the door.
Madame Marneffe, too genuinely agitated to dissemble her feelings,
dropped on to the chair by the fireplace. Two tears rose to her eyes,
and at once dried away. She looked at Montes, saw the girl, and burst
into a cackle of forced laughter. The dignity of the insulted woman
redeemed the scantiness of her attire; she walked close up to the
Brazilian, and looked at him so defiantly that her eyes glittered like
knives.
“So that,” said she, standing face to face with the Baron, and pointing
to Cydalise--“that is the other side of your fidelity? You, who have
made me promises that might convert a disbeliever in love! You, for
whom I have done so much--have even committed crimes!--You are right,
monsieur, I am not to compare with a child of her age and of such
beauty!
“I know what you are going to say,” she went on, looking at Wenceslas,
whose undress was proof too clear to be denied. “This is my concern. If
I could love you after such gross treachery--for you have spied upon me,
you have paid for every step up these stairs, paid the mistress of the
house, and the servant, perhaps even Reine--a noble deed!--If I had any
remnant of affection for such a mean wretch, I could give him reasons
that would renew his passion!--But I leave you, monsieur, to your
doubts, which will become remorse.--Wenceslas, my gown!”
She took her dress and put it on, looked at herself in the glass, and
finished dressing without heeding the Baron, as calmly as if she had
been alone in the room.
“Wenceslas, are you ready?--Go first.”
She had been watching Montes in the glass and out of the corner of
her eye, and fancied she could see in his pallor an indication of the
weakness which delivers a strong man over to a woman’s fascinations; she
now took his hand, going so close to him that he could not help inhaling
the terrible perfumes which men love, and by which they intoxicate
themselves; then, feeling his pulses beat high, she looked at him
reproachfully.
“You have my full permission to go and tell your history to Monsieur
Crevel; he will never believe you. I have a perfect right to marry him,
and he becomes my husband the day after to-morrow.--I shall make him
very happy.--Good-bye; try to forget me.”
“Oh! Valerie,” cried Henri Montes, clasping her in his arms, “that is
impossible!--Come to Brazil!”
Valerie looked in his face, and saw him her slave.
“Well, if you still love me, Henri, two years hence I will be your wife;
but your expression at this moment strikes me as very suspicious.”
“I swear to you that they made me drink, that false friends threw this
girl on my hands, and that the whole thing is the outcome of chance!”
said Montes.
“Then I am to forgive you?” she asked, with a smile.
“But you will marry, all the same?” asked the Baron, in an agony of
jealousy.
“Eighty thousand francs a year!” said she, with almost comical
enthusiasm. “And Crevel loves me so much that he will die of it!”
“Ah! I understand,” said Montes.
“Well, then, in a few days we will come to an understanding,” said she.
And she departed triumphant.
“I have no scruples,” thought the Baron, standing transfixed for a few
minutes. “What! That woman believes she can make use of his passion to
be quit of that dolt, as she counted on Marneffe’s decease!--I shall be
the instrument of divine wrath.”
Two days later those of du Tillet’s guests who had demolished Madame
Marneffe tooth and nail, were seated round her table an hour after she
has shed her skin and changed her name for the illustrious name of
a Paris mayor. This verbal treason is one of the commonest forms of
Parisian levity.
Valerie had had the satisfaction of seeing the Brazilian in the church;
for Crevel, now so entirely the husband, had invited him out of bravado.
And the Baron’s presence at the breakfast astonished no one. All these
men of wit and of the world were familiar with the meanness of passion,
the compromises of pleasure.
Steinbock’s deep melancholy--for he was beginning to despise the woman
whom he had adored as an angel--was considered to be in excellent taste.
The Pole thus seemed to convey that all was at an end between Valerie
and himself. Lisbeth came to embrace her dear Madame Crevel, and
to excuse herself for not staying to the breakfast on the score of
Adeline’s sad state of health.
“Be quite easy,” said she to Valerie, “they will call on you, and
you will call on them. Simply hearing the words _two hundred thousand
francs_ has brought the Baroness to death’s door. Oh, you have them all
hard and fast by that tale!--But you must tell it to me.”
Within a month of her marriage, Valerie was at her tenth quarrel with
Steinbock; he insisted on explanations as to Henri Montes, reminding her
of the words spoken in their paradise; and, not content with speaking
to her in terms of scorn, he watched her so closely that she never had a
moment of liberty, so much was she fettered by his jealousy on one side
and Crevel’s devotion on the other.
Bereft now of Lisbeth, whose advice had always been so valuable she flew
into such a rage as to reproach Wenceslas for the money she had lent
him. This so effectually roused Steinbock’s pride, that he came no more
to the Crevels’ house. So Valerie had gained her point, which was to be
rid of him for a time, and enjoy some freedom. She waited till Crevel
should make a little journey into the country to see Comte Popinot, with
a view to arranging for her introduction to the Countess, and was then
able to make an appointment to meet the Baron, whom she wanted to have
at her command for a whole day to give him those “reasons” which were to
make him love her more than ever.
On the morning of that day, Reine, who estimated the magnitude of her
crime by that of the bribe she received, tried to warn her mistress, in
whom she naturally took more interest than in strangers. Still, as she
had been threatened with madness, and ending her days in the Salpetriere
in case of indiscretion, she was cautious.
“Madame, you are so well off now,” said she. “Why take on again with
that Brazilian?--I do not trust him at all.”
“You are very right, Reine, and I mean to be rid of him.”
“Oh, madame, I am glad to hear it; he frightens me, does that big Moor!
I believe him to be capable of anything.”
“Silly child! you have more reason to be afraid for him when he is with
me.”
At this moment Lisbeth came in.
“My dear little pet Nanny, what an age since we met!” cried Valerie.
“I am so unhappy! Crevel bores me to death; and Wenceslas is gone--we
quarreled.”
“I know,” said Lisbeth, “and that is what brings me here. Victorin
met him at about five in the afternoon going into an eating-house at
five-and-twenty sous, and he brought him home, hungry, by working on his
feelings, to the Rue Louis-le-Grand.--Hortense, seeing Wenceslas lean
and ill and badly dressed, held out her hand. This is how you throw me
over--”
“Monsieur Henri, madame,” the man-servant announced in a low voice to
Valerie.
“Leave me now, Lisbeth; I will explain it all to-morrow.” But, as will
be seen, Valerie was ere long not in a state to explain anything to
anybody.
Towards the end of May, Baron Hulot’s pension was released by Victorin’s
regular payment to Baron Nucingen. As everybody knows, pensions are
paid half-yearly, and only on the presentation of a certificate that the
recipient is alive: and as Hulot’s residence was unknown, the arrears
unpaid on Vauvinet’s demand remained to his credit in the Treasury.
Vauvinet now signed his renunciation of any further claims, and it was
still indispensable to find the pensioner before the arrears could be
drawn.
Thanks to Bianchon’s care, the Baroness had recovered her health; and
to this Josepha’s good heart had contributed by a letter, of which the
orthography betrayed the collaboration of the Duc d’Herouville. This
was what the singer wrote to the Baroness, after twenty days of anxious
search:--
“MADAME LA BARONNE,--Monsieur Hulot was living, two months since,
in the Rue des Bernardins, with Elodie Chardin, a lace-mender, for
whom he had left Mademoiselle Bijou; but he went away without a
word, leaving everything behind him, and no one knows where he
went. I am not without hope, however, and I have put a man on this
track who believes he has already seen him in the Boulevard
Bourdon.
“The poor Jewess means to keep the promise she made to the
Christian. Will the angel pray for the devil? That must sometimes
happen in heaven.--I remain, with the deepest respect, always your
humble servant,
“JOSEPHA MIRAH.”
The lawyer, Maitre Hulot d’Ervy, hearing no more of the dreadful Madame
Nourrisson, seeing his father-in-law married, having brought back his
brother-in-law to the family fold, suffering from no importunity on
the part of his new stepmother, and seeing his mother’s health improve
daily, gave himself up to his political and judicial duties, swept along
by the tide of Paris life, in which the hours count for days.
One night, towards the end of the session, having occasion to write up
a report to the Chamber of Deputies, he was obliged to sit at work till
late at night. He had gone into his study at nine o’clock, and, while
waiting till the man-servant should bring in the candles with green
shades, his thoughts turned to his father. He was blaming himself for
leaving the inquiry so much to the singer, and had resolved to see
Monsieur Chapuzot himself on the morrow, when he saw in the twilight,
outside the window, a handsome old head, bald and yellow, with a fringe
of white hair.
“Would you please to give orders, sir, that a poor hermit is to be
admitted, just come from the Desert, and who is instructed to beg for
contributions towards rebuilding a holy house.”
This apparition, which suddenly reminded the lawyer of a prophecy
uttered by the terrible Nourrisson, gave him a shock.
“Let in that old man,” said he to the servant.
“He will poison the place, sir,” replied the man. “He has on a brown
gown which he has never changed since he left Syria, and he has no
shirt--”
“Show him in,” repeated the master.
The old man came in. Victorin’s keen eye examined this so-called pilgrim
hermit, and he saw a fine specimen of the Neapolitan friars, whose
frocks are akin to the rags of the _lazzaroni_, whose sandals are
tatters of leather, as the friars are tatters of humanity. The get-up
was so perfect that the lawyer, though still on his guard, was vexed
with himself for having believed it to be one of Madame Nourrisson’s
tricks.
“How much to you want of me?”
“Whatever you feel that you ought to give me.”
Victorin took a five-franc piece from a little pile on his table, and
handed it to the stranger.
“That is not much on account of fifty thousand francs,” said the pilgrim
of the desert.
This speech removed all Victorin’s doubts.
“And has Heaven kept its word?” he said, with a frown.
“The question is an offence, my son,” said the hermit. “If you do not
choose to pay till after the funeral, you are in your rights. I will
return in a week’s time.”
“The funeral!” cried the lawyer, starting up.
“The world moves on,” said the old man, as he withdrew, “and the dead
move quickly in Paris!”
When Hulot, who stood looking down, was about to reply, the stalwart old
man had vanished.
“I don’t understand one word of all this,” said Victorin to himself.
“But at the end of the week I will ask him again about my father, if we
have not yet found him. Where does Madame Nourrisson--yes, that was her
name--pick up such actors?”
On the following day, Doctor Bianchon allowed the Baroness to go down
into the garden, after examining Lisbeth, who had been obliged to
keep to her room for a month by a slight bronchial attack. The learned
doctor, who dared not pronounce a definite opinion on Lisbeth’s case
till he had seen some decisive symptoms, went into the garden with
Adeline to observe the effect of the fresh air on her nervous trembling
after two months of seclusion. He was interested and allured by the hope
of curing this nervous complaint. On seeing the great physician sitting
with them and sparing them a few minutes, the Baroness and her family
conversed with him on general subjects.
“You life is a very full and a very sad one,” said Madame Hulot. “I
know what it is to spend one’s days in seeing poverty and physical
suffering.”
“I know, madame,” replied the doctor, “all the scenes of which charity
compels you to be a spectator; but you will get used to it in time, as
we all do. It is the law of existence. The confessor, the magistrate,
the lawyer would find life unendurable if the spirit of the State did
not assert itself above the feelings of the individual. Could we live at
all but for that? Is not the soldier in time of war brought face to face
with spectacles even more dreadful than those we see? And every soldier
that has been under fire is kind-hearted. We medical men have the
pleasure now and again of a successful cure, as you have that of saving
a family from the horrors of hunger, depravity, or misery, and of
restoring it to social respectability. But what comfort can the
magistrate find, the police agent, or the attorney, who spend their
lives in investigating the basest schemes of self-interest, the social
monster whose only regret is when it fails, but on whom repentance never
dawns?
“One-half of society spends its life in watching the other half. A very
old friend of mine is an attorney, now retired, who told me that for
fifteen years past notaries and lawyers have distrusted their clients
quite as much as their adversaries. Your son is a pleader; has he never
found himself compromised by the client for whom he held a brief?”
“Very often,” said Victorin, with a smile.
“And what is the cause of this deep-seated evil?” asked the Baroness.
“The decay of religion,” said Bianchon, “and the pre-eminence of
finance, which is simply solidified selfishness. Money used not to
be everything; there were some kinds of superiority that ranked above
it--nobility, genius, service done to the State. But nowadays the law
takes wealth as the universal standard, and regards it as the measure
of public capacity. Certain magistrates are ineligible to the Chamber;
Jean-Jacques Rousseau would be ineligible! The perpetual subdivision of
estate compels every man to take care of himself from the age of twenty.
“Well, then, between the necessity for making a fortune and the
depravity of speculation there is no check or hindrance; for the
religious sense is wholly lacking in France, in spite of the laudable
endeavors of those who are working for a Catholic revival. And this is
the opinion of every man who, like me, studies society at the core.”
“And you have few pleasures?” said Hortense.
“The true physician, madame, is in love with his science,” replied the
doctor. “He is sustained by that passion as much as by the sense of his
usefulness to society.
“At this very time you see in me a sort of scientific rapture, and many
superficial judges would regard me as a man devoid of feeling. I have
to announce a discovery to-morrow to the College of Medicine, for I am
studying a disease that had disappeared--a mortal disease for which no
cure is known in temperate climates, though it is curable in the West
Indies--a malady known here in the Middle Ages. A noble fight is that
of the physician against such a disease. For the last ten days I have
thought of nothing but these cases--for there are two, a husband and
wife.--Are they not connections of yours? For you, madame, are surely
Monsieur Crevel’s daughter?” said he, addressing Celestine.
“What, is my father your patient?” asked Celestine. “Living in the Rue
Barbet-de-Jouy?”
“Precisely so,” said Bianchon.
“And the disease is inevitably fatal?” said Victorin in dismay.
“I will go to see him,” said Celestine, rising.
“I positively forbid it, madame,” Bianchon quietly said. “The disease is
contagious.”
“But you go there, monsieur,” replied the young woman. “Do you think
that a daughter’s duty is less binding than a doctor’s?”
“Madame, a physician knows how to protect himself against infection, and
the rashness of your devotion proves to me that you would probably be
less prudent than I.”
Celestine, however, got up and went to her room, where she dressed to go
out.
“Monsieur,” said Victorin to Bianchon, “have you any hope of saving
Monsieur and Madame Crevel?”
“I hope, but I do not believe that I may,” said Bianchon. “The case is
to me quite inexplicable. The disease is peculiar to negroes and the
American tribes, whose skin is differently constituted to that of the
white races. Now I can trace no connection with the copper-colored
tribes, with negroes or half-castes, in Monsieur or Madame Crevel.
“And though it is a very interesting disease to us, it is a terrible
thing for the sufferers. The poor woman, who is said to have been very
pretty, is punished for her sins, for she is now squalidly hideous if
she is still anything at all. She is losing her hair and teeth, her skin
is like a leper’s, she is a horror to herself; her hands are horrible,
covered with greenish pustules, her nails are loose, and the flesh is
eaten away by the poisoned humors.”
“And the cause of such a disease?” asked the lawyer.
“Oh!” said the doctor, “the cause lies in a form of rapid
blood-poisoning; it degenerates with terrific rapidity. I hope to act on
the blood; I am having it analyzed; and I am now going home to ascertain
the result of the labors of my friend Professor Duval, the famous
chemist, with a view to trying one of those desperate measures by which
we sometimes attempt to defeat death.”
“The hand of God is there!” said Adeline, in a voice husky with emotion.
“Though that woman has brought sorrows on me which have led me in
moments of madness to invoke the vengeance of Heaven, I hope--God knows
I hope--you may succeed, doctor.”
Victorin felt dizzy. He looked at his mother, his sister, and the
physician by turns, quaking lest they should read his thoughts. He felt
himself a murderer.
Hortense, for her part, thought God was just.
Celestine came back to beg her husband to accompany her.
“If you insist on going, madame, and you too, monsieur, keep at least
a foot between you and the bed of the sufferer, that is the chief
precaution. Neither you nor your wife must dream of kissing the dying
man. And, indeed, you ought to go with your wife, Monsieur Hulot, to
hinder her from disobeying my injunctions.”
Adeline and Hortense, when they were left alone, went to sit with
Lisbeth. Hortense had such a virulent hatred of Valerie that she could
not contain the expression of it.
“Cousin Lisbeth,” she exclaimed, “my mother and I are avenged! that
venomous snake is herself bitten--she is rotting in her bed!”
“Hortense, at this moment you are not a Christian. You ought to pray to
God to vouchsafe repentance to this wretched woman.”
“What are you talking about?” said Betty, rising from her couch. “Are
you speaking of Valerie?”
“Yes,” replied Adeline; “she is past hope--dying of some horrible
disease of which the mere description makes one shudder----”
Lisbeth’s teeth chattered, a cold sweat broke out all over her; the
violence of the shock showed how passionate her attachment to Valerie
had been.
“I must go there,” said she.
“But the doctor forbids your going out.”
“I do not care--I must go!--Poor Crevel! what a state he must be in; for
he loves that woman.”
“He is dying too,” replied Countess Steinbock. “Ah! all our enemies are
in the devil’s clutches--”
“In God’s hands, my child--”
Lisbeth dressed in the famous yellow Indian shawl and her black velvet
bonnet, and put on her boots; in spite of her relations’ remonstrances,
she set out as if driven by some irresistible power.
She arrived in the Rue Barbet a few minutes after Monsieur and Madame
Hulot, and found seven physicians there, brought by Bianchon to study
this unique case; he had just joined them. The physicians, assembled in
the drawing-room, were discussing the disease; now one and now another
went into Valerie’s room or Crevel’s to take a note, and returned with
an opinion based on this rapid study.
These princes of science were divided in their opinions. One, who
stood alone in his views, considered it a case of poisoning, of private
revenge, and denied its identity with the disease known in the Middle
Ages. Three others regarded it as a specific deterioration of the blood
and the humors. The rest, agreeing with Bianchon, maintained that the
blood was poisoned by some hitherto unknown morbid infection. Bianchon
produced Professor Duval’s analysis of the blood. The remedies to be
applied, though absolutely empirical and without hope, depended on the
verdict in this medical dilemma.
Lisbeth stood as if petrified three yards away from the bed where
Valerie lay dying, as she saw a priest from Saint-Thomas d’Aquin
standing by her friend’s pillow, and a sister of charity in attendance.
Religion could find a soul to save in a mass of rottenness which, of the
five senses of man, had now only that of sight. The sister of charity
who alone had been found to nurse Valerie stood apart. Thus the Catholic
religion, that divine institution, always actuated by the spirit of
self-sacrifice, under its twofold aspect of the Spirit and the Flesh,
was tending this horrible and atrocious creature, soothing her death-bed
by its infinite benevolence and inexhaustible stores of mercy.
The servants, in horror, refused to go into the room of either their
master or mistress; they thought only of themselves, and judged their
betters as righteously stricken. The smell was so foul that in spite of
open windows and strong perfumes, no one could remain long in Valerie’s
room. Religion alone kept guard there.
How could a woman so clever as Valerie fail to ask herself to what end
these two representatives of the Church remained with her? The dying
woman had listened to the words of the priest. Repentance had risen on
her darkened soul as the devouring malady had consumed her beauty. The
fragile Valerie had been less able to resist the inroads of the disease
than Crevel; she would be the first to succumb, and, indeed, had been
the first attacked.
“If I had not been ill myself, I would have come to nurse you,” said
Lisbeth at last, after a glance at her friend’s sunken eyes. “I have
kept my room this fortnight or three weeks; but when I heard of your
state from the doctor, I came at once.”
“Poor Lisbeth, you at least love me still, I see!” said Valerie.
“Listen. I have only a day or two left to think, for I cannot say to
live. You see, there is nothing left of me--I am a heap of mud! They
will not let me see myself in a glass.--Well, it is no more than I
deserve. Oh, if I might only win mercy, I would gladly undo all the
mischief I have done.”
“Oh!” said Lisbeth, “if you can talk like that, you are indeed a dead
woman.”
“Do not hinder this woman’s repentance, leave her in her Christian
mind,” said the priest.
“There is nothing left!” said Lisbeth in consternation. “I cannot
recognize her eyes or her mouth! Not a feature of her is there! And her
wit has deserted her! Oh, it is awful!”
“You don’t know,” said Valerie, “what death is; what it is to be obliged
to think of the morrow of your last day on earth, and of what is to
be found in the grave.--Worms for the body--and for the soul,
what?--Lisbeth, I know there is another life! And I am given over to
terrors which prevent my feeling the pangs of my decomposing body.--I,
who could laugh at a saint, and say to Crevel that the vengeance of God
took every form of disaster.--Well, I was a true prophet.--Do not trifle
with sacred things, Lisbeth; if you love me, repent as I do.”
“I!” said Lisbeth. “I see vengeance wherever I turn in nature; insects
even die to satisfy the craving for revenge when they are attacked. And
do not these gentlemen tell us”--and she looked at the priest--“that God
is revenged, and that His vengeance lasts through all eternity?”
The priest looked mildly at Lisbeth and said:
“You, madame, are an atheist!”
“But look what I have come to,” said Valerie.
“And where did you get this gangrene?” asked the old maid, unmoved from
her peasant incredulity.
“I had a letter from Henri which leaves me in no doubt as to my fate.
He has murdered me. And--just when I meant to live honestly--to die an
object of disgust!
“Lisbeth, give up all notions of revenge. Be kind to that family to whom
I have left by my will everything I can dispose of. Go, child, though
you are the only creature who, at this hour, does not avoid me with
horror--go, I beseech you, and leave me.--I have only time to make my
peace with God!”
“She is wandering in her wits,” said Lisbeth to herself, as she left the
room.
The strongest affection known, that of a woman for a woman, had not such
heroic constancy as the Church. Lisbeth, stifled by the miasma, went
away. She found the physicians still in consultation. But Bianchon’s
opinion carried the day, and the only question now was how to try the
remedies.
“At any rate, we shall have a splendid _post-mortem_,” said one of
his opponents, “and there will be two cases to enable us to make
comparisons.”
Lisbeth went in again with Bianchon, who went up to the sick woman
without seeming aware of the malodorous atmosphere.
“Madame,” said he, “we intend to try a powerful remedy which may save
you--”
“And if you save my life,” said she, “shall I be as good-looking as
ever?”
“Possibly,” said the judicious physician.
“I know your _possibly_,” said Valerie. “I shall look like a woman who
has fallen into the fire! No, leave me to the Church. I can please no
one now but God. I will try to be reconciled to Him, and that will be my
last flirtation; yes, I must try to come round God!”
“That is my poor Valerie’s last jest; that is all herself!” said Lisbeth
in tears.
Lisbeth thought it her duty to go into Crevel’s room, where she found
Victorin and his wife sitting about a yard away from the stricken man’s
bed.
“Lisbeth,” said he, “they will not tell me what state my wife is in; you
have just seen her--how is she?”
“She is better; she says she is saved,” replied Lisbeth, allowing
herself this play on the word to soothe Crevel’s mind.
“That is well,” said the Mayor. “I feared lest I had been the cause of
her illness. A man is not a traveler in perfumery for nothing; I had
blamed myself.--If I should lose her, what would become of me? On my
honor, my children, I worship that woman.”
He sat up in bed and tried to assume his favorite position.
“Oh, Papa!” cried Celestine, “if only you could be well again, I would
make friends with my stepmother--I make a vow!”
“Poor little Celestine!” said Crevel, “come and kiss me.”
Victorin held back his wife, who was rushing forward.
“You do not know, perhaps,” said the lawyer gently, “that your disease
is contagious, monsieur.”
“To be sure,” replied Crevel. “And the doctors are quite proud of having
rediscovered in me some long lost plague of the Middle Ages, which the
Faculty has had cried like lost property--it is very funny!”
“Papa,” said Celestine, “be brave, and you will get the better of this
disease.”
“Be quite easy, my children; Death thinks twice of it before carrying
off a Mayor of Paris,” said he, with monstrous composure. “And if, after
all, my district is so unfortunate as to lose a man it has twice honored
with its suffrages--you see, what a flow of words I have!--Well, I shall
know how to pack up and go. I have been a commercial traveler; I am
experienced in such matters. Ah! my children, I am a man of strong
mind.”
“Papa, promise me to admit the Church--”
“Never,” replied Crevel. “What is to be said? I drank the milk of
Revolution; I have not Baron Holbach’s wit, but I have his strength of
mind. I am more _Regence_ than ever, more Musketeer, Abbe Dubois, and
Marechal de Richelieu! By the Holy Poker!--My wife, who is wandering
in her head, has just sent me a man in a gown--to me! the admirer of
Beranger, the friend of Lisette, the son of Voltaire and Rousseau.--The
doctor, to feel my pulse, as it were, and see if sickness had subdued
me--‘You saw Monsieur l’Abbe?’ said he.--Well, I imitated the great
Montesquieu. Yes, I looked at the doctor--see, like this,” and he turned
to show three-quarters face, like his portrait, and extended his hand
authoritatively--“and I said:
“The slave was here,
He showed his order, but he nothing gained.
“_His order_ is a pretty jest, showing that even in death Monsieur le
President de Montesquieu preserved his elegant wit, for they had sent
him a Jesuit. I admire that passage--I cannot say of his life, but
of his death--the passage--another joke!--The passage from life to
death--the Passage Montesquieu!”
Victorin gazed sadly at his father-in-law, wondering whether folly and
vanity were not forces on a par with true greatness of soul. The causes
that act on the springs of the soul seem to be quite independent of the
results. Can it be that the fortitude which upholds a great criminal is
the same as that which a Champcenetz so proudly walks to the scaffold?
By the end of the week Madame Crevel was buried, after dreadful
sufferings; and Crevel followed her within two days. Thus the
marriage-contract was annulled. Crevel was heir to Valerie.
On the very day after the funeral, the friar called again on the lawyer,
who received him in perfect silence. The monk held out his hand without
a word, and without a word Victorin Hulot gave him eighty thousand-franc
notes, taken from a sum of money found in Crevel’s desk.
Young Madame Hulot inherited the estate of Presles and thirty thousand
francs a year.
Madame Crevel had bequeathed a sum of three hundred thousand francs
to Baron Hulot. Her scrofulous boy Stanislas was to inherit, at his
majority, the Hotel Crevel and eighty thousand francs a year.
Among the many noble associations founded in Paris by Catholic charity,
there is one, originated by Madame de la Chanterie, for promoting civil
and religious marriages between persons who have formed a voluntary
but illicit union. Legislators, who draw large revenues from the
registration fees, and the Bourgeois dynasty, which benefits by the
notary’s profits, affect to overlook the fact that three-fourths of the
poorer class cannot afford fifteen francs for the marriage-contract. The
pleaders, a sufficiently vilified body, gratuitously defend the cases
of the indigent, while the notaries have not as yet agreed to charge
nothing for the marriage-contract of the poor. As to the revenue
collectors, the whole machinery of Government would have to be
dislocated to induce the authorities to relax their demands. The
registrar’s office is deaf and dumb.
Then the Church, too, receives a duty on marriages. In France the Church
depends largely on such revenues; even in the House of God it traffics
in chairs and kneeling stools in a way that offends foreigners;
though it cannot have forgotten the anger of the Saviour who drove
the money-changers out of the Temple. If the Church is so loath to
relinquish its dues, it must be supposed that these dues, known as
Vestry dues, are one of its sources of maintenance, and then the fault
of the Church is the fault of the State.
The co-operation of these conditions, at a time when charity is too
greatly concerned with the negroes and the petty offenders discharged
from prison to trouble itself about honest folks in difficulties,
results in the existence of a number of decent couples who have never
been legally married for lack of thirty francs, the lowest figure for
which the Notary, the Registrar, the Mayor and the Church will unite
two citizens of Paris. Madame de la Chanterie’s fund, founded to restore
poor households to their religious and legal status, hunts up such
couples, and with all the more success because it helps them in their
poverty before attacking their unlawful union.
As soon as Madame Hulot had recovered, she returned to her occupations.
And then it was that the admirable Madame de la Chanterie came to beg
that Adeline would add the legalization of these voluntary unions to the
other good works of which she was the instrument.
One of the Baroness’ first efforts in this cause was made in the
ominous-looking district, formerly known as la Petite Pologne--Little
Poland--bounded by the Rue du Rocher, Rue de la Pepiniere, and Rue
de Miromenil. There exists there a sort of offshoot of the Faubourg
Saint-Marceau. To give an idea of this part of the town, it is enough
to say that the landlords of some of the houses tenanted by working men
without work, by dangerous characters, and by the very poor employed in
unhealthy toil, dare not demand their rents, and can find no bailiffs
bold enough to evict insolvent lodgers. At the present time speculating
builders, who are fast changing the aspect of this corner of Paris, and
covering the waste ground lying between the Rue d’Amsterdam and the Rue
Faubourg-du-Roule, will no doubt alter the character of the inhabitants;
for the trowel is a more civilizing agent than is generally supposed. By
erecting substantial and handsome houses, with porters at the doors,
by bordering the streets with footwalks and shops, speculation, while
raising the rents, disperses the squalid class, families bereft of
furniture, and lodgers that cannot pay. And so these districts are
cleared of such objectionable residents, and the dens vanish into which
the police never venture but under the sanction of the law.
In June 1844, the purlieus of the Place de Laborde were still far from
inviting. The genteel pedestrian, who by chance should turn out of the
Rue de la Pepiniere into one of those dreadful side-streets, would have
been dismayed to see how vile a bohemia dwelt cheek by jowl with the
aristocracy. In such places as these, haunted by ignorant poverty and
misery driven to bay, flourish the last public letter-writers who are
to be found in Paris. Wherever you see the two words “Ecrivain Public”
written in a fine copy hand on a sheet of letter-paper stuck to the
window pane of some low entresol or mud-splashed ground-floor room, you
may safely conclude that the neighborhood is the lurking place of many
unlettered folks, and of much vice and crime, the outcome of misery; for
ignorance is the mother of all sorts of crime. A crime is, in the first
instance, a defect of reasoning powers.
While the Baroness had been ill, this quarter, to which she was a minor
Providence, had seen the advent of a public writer who settled in the
Passage du Soleil--Sun Alley--a spot of which the name is one of the
antitheses dear to the Parisian, for the passage is especially dark.
This writer, supposed to be a German, was named Vyder, and he lived on
matrimonial terms with a young creature of whom he was so jealous that
he never allowed her to go anywhere excepting to some honest stove and
flue-fitters, in the Rue Saint-Lazare, Italians, as such fitters always
are, but long since established in Paris. These people had been saved
from a bankruptcy, which would have reduced them to misery, by the
Baroness, acting in behalf of Madame de la Chanterie. In a few months
comfort had taken the place of poverty, and Religion had found a home in
hearts which once had cursed Heaven with the energy peculiar to Italian
stove-fitters. So one of Madame Hulot’s first visits was to this family.
She was pleased at the scene that presented itself to her eyes at
the back of the house where these worthy folks lived in the Rue
Saint-Lazare, not far from the Rue du Rocher. High above the stores
and workshops, now well filled, where toiled a swarm of apprentices and
workmen--all Italians from the valley of Domo d’Ossola--the master’s
family occupied a set of rooms, which hard work had blessed with
abundance. The Baroness was hailed like the Virgin Mary in person.
After a quarter of an hour’s questioning, Adeline, having to wait for
the father to inquire how his business was prospering, pursued her
saintly calling as a spy by asking whether they knew of any families
needing help.
“Ah, dear lady, you who could save the damned from hell!” said the
Italian wife, “there is a girl quite near here to be saved from
perdition.”
“A girl well known to you?” asked the Baroness.
“She is the granddaughter of a master my husband formerly worked for,
who came to France in 1798, after the Revolution, by name Judici. Old
Judici, in Napoleon’s time, was one of the principal stove-fitters in
Paris; he died in 1819, leaving his son a fine fortune. But the younger
Judici wasted all his money on bad women; till, at last, he married one
who was sharper than the rest, and she had this poor little girl, who is
just turned fifteen.”
“And what is wrong with her?” asked Adeline, struck by the resemblance
between this Judici and her husband.
“Well, madame, this child, named Atala, ran away from her father, and
came to live close by here with an old German of eighty at least, named
Vyder, who does odd jobs for people who cannot read and write. Now,
if this old sinner, who bought the child of her mother, they say for
fifteen hundred francs, would but marry her, as he certainly has not
long to live, and as he is said to have some few thousand of francs a
year--well, the poor thing, who is a sweet little angel, would be out of
mischief, and above want, which must be the ruin of her.”
“Thank you very much for the information. I may do some good, but I must
act with caution.--Who is the old man?”
“Oh! madame, he is a good old fellow; he makes the child very happy, and
he has some sense too, for he left the part of town where the Judicis
live, as I believe, to snatch the child from her mother’s clutches. The
mother was jealous of her, and I dare say she thought she could make
money out of her beauty and make a _mademoiselle_ of the girl.
“Atala remembered us, and advised her gentleman to settle near us; and
as the good man sees how decent we are, he allows her to come here. But
get them married, madame, and you will do an action worthy of you. Once
married, the child will be independent and free from her mother, who
keeps an eye on her, and who, if she could make money by her, would like
to see her on the stage, or successful in the wicked life she meant her
to lead.”
“Why doesn’t the old man marry her?”
“There was no necessity for it, you see,” said the Italian. “And though
old Vyder is not a bad old fellow, I fancy he is sharp enough to wish
to remain the master, while if he once got married--why, the poor man is
afraid of the stone that hangs round every old man’s neck.”
“Could you send for the girl to come here?” said Madame Hulot. “I should
see her quietly, and find out what could be done--”
The stove-fitter’s wife signed to her eldest girl, who ran off. Ten
minutes later she returned, leading by the hand a child of fifteen and
a half, a beauty of the Italian type. Mademoiselle Judici inherited from
her father that ivory skin which, rather yellow by day, is by artificial
light of lily-whiteness; eyes of Oriental beauty, form, and brilliancy,
close curling lashes like black feathers, hair of ebony hue, and that
native dignity of the Lombard race which makes the foreigner, as he
walks through Milan on a Sunday, fancy that every porter’s daughter is a
princess.
Atala, told by the stove-fitter’s daughter that she was to meet the
great lady of whom she had heard so much, had hastily dressed in a
black silk gown, a smart little cape, and neat boots. A cap with a
cherry-colored bow added to the brilliant effect of her coloring. The
child stood in an attitude of artless curiosity, studying the Baroness
out of the corner of her eye, for her palsied trembling puzzled her
greatly.
Adeline sighed deeply as she saw this jewel of womanhood in the mire of
prostitution, and determined to rescue her to virtue.
“What is your name, my dear?”
“Atala, madame.”
“And can you read and write?”
“No, madame; but that does not matter, as monsieur can.”
“Did your parents ever take you to church? Have you been to your first
Communion? Do you know your Catechism?”
“Madame, papa wanted to make me do something of the kind you speak of,
but mamma would not have it--”
“Your mother?” exclaimed the Baroness. “Is she bad to you, then?”
“She was always beating me. I don’t know why, but I was always being
quarreled over by my father and mother--”
“Did you ever hear of God?” cried the Baroness.
The girl looked up wide-eyed.
“Oh, yes, papa and mamma often said ‘Good God,’ and ‘In God’s name,’ and
‘God’s thunder,’” said she, with perfect simplicity.
“Then you never saw a church? Did you never think of going into one?”
“A church?--Notre-Dame, the Pantheon?--I have seen them from a distance,
when papa took me into town; but that was not very often. There are no
churches like those in the Faubourg.”
“Which Faubourg did you live in?”
“In the Faubourg.”
“Yes, but which?”
“In the Rue de Charonne, madame.”
The inhabitants of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine never call that notorious
district other than _the_ Faubourg. To them it is the one and only
Faubourg; and manufacturers generally understand the words as meaning
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
“Did no one ever tell you what was right or wrong?”
“Mamma used to beat me when I did not do what pleased her.”
“But did you not know that it was very wicked to run away from your
father and mother to go to live with an old man?”
Atala Judici gazed at the Baroness with a haughty stare, but made no
reply.
“She is a perfect little savage,” murmured Adeline.
“There are a great many like her in the Faubourg, madame,” said the
stove-fitter’s wife.
“But she knows nothing--not even what is wrong. Good Heavens!--Why do
you not answer me?” said Madame Hulot, putting out her hand to take
Atala’s.
Atala indignantly withdrew a step.
“You are an old fool!” said she. “Why, my father and mother had had
nothing to eat for a week. My mother wanted me to do much worse than
that, I think, for my father thrashed her and called her a thief!
However, Monsieur Vyder paid all their debts, and gave them some
money--oh, a bagful! And he brought me away, and poor papa was crying.
But we had to part!--Was it wicked?” she asked.
“And are you very fond of Monsieur Vyder?”
“Fond of him?” said she. “I should think so! He tells me beautiful
stories, madame, every evening; and he has given me nice gowns, and
linen, and a shawl. Why, I am figged out like a princess, and I never
wear sabots now. And then, I have not known what it is to be hungry
these two months past. And I don’t live on potatoes now. He brings me
bonbons and burnt almonds, and chocolate almonds.--Aren’t they good?--I
do anything he pleases for a bag of chocolate.--Then my old Daddy is
very kind; he takes such care of me, and is so nice; I know now what my
mother ought to have been.--He is going to get an old woman to help
me, for he doesn’t like me to dirty my hands with cooking. For the past
month, too, he has been making a little money, and he gives me three
francs every evening that I put into a money-box. Only he will never
let me out except to come here--and he calls me his little kitten! Mamma
never called me anything but bad names--and thief, and vermin!”
“Well, then, my child, why should not Daddy Vyder be your husband?”
“But he is, madame,” said the girl, looking at Adeline with calm pride,
without a blush, her brow smooth, her eyes steady. “He told me that I
was his little wife; but it is a horrid bore to be a man’s wife--if it
were not for the burnt almonds!”
“Good Heaven!” said the Baroness to herself, “what monster can have had
the heart to betray such perfect, such holy innocence? To restore this
child to the ways of virtue would surely atone for many sins.--I knew
what I was doing.” thought she, remembering the scene with Crevel. “But
she--she knows nothing.”
“Do you know Monsieur Samanon?” asked Atala, with an insinuating look.
“No, my child; but why do you ask?”
“Really and truly?” said the artless girl.
“You have nothing to fear from this lady,” said the Italian woman. “She
is an angel.”
“It is because my good old boy is afraid of being caught by Samanon. He
is hiding, and I wish he could be free--”
“Why?”
“On! then he would take me to Bobino, perhaps to the Ambigu.”
“What a delightful creature!” said the Baroness, kissing the girl.
“Are you rich?” asked Atala, who was fingering the Baroness’ lace
ruffles.
“Yes, and No,” replied Madame Hulot. “I am rich for dear little girls
like you when they are willing to be taught their duties as Christians
by a priest, and to walk in the right way.”
“What way is that?” said Atala; “I walk on my two feet.”
“The way of virtue.”
Atala looked at the Baroness with a crafty smile.
“Look at madame,” said the Baroness, pointing to the stove-fitter’s
wife, “she has been quite happy because she was received into the bosom
of the Church. You married like the beasts that perish.”
“I?” said Atala. “Why, if you will give me as much as Daddy Vyder gives
me, I shall be quite happy unmarried again. It is a grind.--Do you know
what it is to--?”
“But when once you are united to a man as you are,” the Baroness put in,
“virtue requires you to remain faithful to him.”
“Till he dies,” said Atala, with a knowing flash. “I shall not have to
wait long. If you only knew how Daddy Vyder coughs and blows.--Poof,
poof,” and she imitated the old man.
“Virtue and morality require that the Church, representing God, and the
Mayor, representing the law, should consecrate your marriage,” Madame
Hulot went on. “Look at madame; she is legally married--”
“Will it make it more amusing?” asked the girl.
“You will be happier,” said the Baroness, “for no one could then blame
you. You would satisfy God! Ask her if she was married without the
sacrament of marriage!”
Atala looked at the Italian.
“How is she any better than I am?” she asked. “I am prettier than she
is.”
“Yes, but I am an honest woman,” said the wife, “and you may be called
by a bad name.”
“How can you expect God to protect you if you trample every law, human
and divine, under foot?” said the Baroness. “Don’t you know that God has
Paradise in store for those who obey the injunctions of His Church?”
“What is there in Paradise? Are there playhouses?”
“Paradise!” said Adeline, “is every joy you can conceive of. It is full
of angels with white wings. You see God in all His glory, you share His
power, you are happy for every minute of eternity!”
Atala listened to the lady as she might have listened to music; but
Adeline, seeing that she was incapable of understanding her, thought she
had better take another line of action and speak to the old man.
“Go home, then, my child, and I will go to see Monsieur Vyder. Is he a
Frenchman?”
“He is an Alsatian, madame. But he will be quite rich soon. If you
would pay what he owes to that vile Samanon, he would give you back
your money, for in a few months he will be getting six thousand francs
a year, he says, and we are to go to live in the country a long way off,
in the Vosges.”
At the word _Vosges_ the Baroness sat lost in reverie. It called up
the vision of her native village. She was roused from her melancholy
meditation by the entrance of the stove-fitter, who came to assure her
of his prosperity.
“In a year’s time, madame, I can repay the money you lent us, for it
is God’s money, the money of the poor and wretched. If ever I make a
fortune, come to me for what you want, and I will render through you the
help to others which you first brought us.”
“Just now,” said Madame Hulot, “I do not need your money, but I ask your
assistance in a good work. I have just seen that little Judici, who is
living with an old man, and I mean to see them regularly and legally
married.”
“Ah! old Vyder; he is a very worthy old fellow, with plenty of good
sense. The poor old man has already made friends in the neighborhood,
though he has been here but two months. He keeps my accounts for me. He
is, I believe, a brave Colonel who served the Emperor well. And how he
adores Napoleon!--He has some orders, but he never wears them. He is
waiting till he is straight again, for he is in debt, poor old boy! In
fact, I believe he is hiding, threatened by the law--”
“Tell him that I will pay his debts if he will marry the child.”
“Oh, that will soon be settled.--Suppose you were to see him, madame; it
is not two steps away, in the Passage du Soleil.”
So the lady and the stove-fitter went out.
“This way, madame,” said the man, turning down the Rue de la Pepiniere.
The alley runs, in fact, from the bottom of this street through to the
Rue du Rocher. Halfway down this passage, recently opened through, where
the shops let at a very low rent, the Baroness saw on a window, screened
up to a height with a green, gauze curtain, which excluded the prying
eyes of the passer-by, the words:
“ECRIVAIN PUBLIC”; and on the door the announcement: