POOR RELATIONS
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
INTRODUCTION
_La Cousine Bette_ was perhaps the last really great thing that Balzac
did--for _Le Cousin Pons_, which now follows it, was actually written
before--and it is beyond all question one of the very greatest of his
works. It was written at the highest possible pressure, and (contrary
to the author's more usual system) in parts, without even seeing a
proof, for the _Constitutionnel_ in the autumn, winter, and early
spring of 1846-47, before his departure from Vierzschovnia, the object
being to secure a certain sum of ready money to clear off
indebtedness. And it has been sometimes asserted that this labor,
coming on the top of many years of scarcely less hard works, was
almost the last straw which broke down Balzac's gigantic strength. Of
these things it is never possible to be certain; as to the greatness
of _La Cousine Bette_, there is no uncertainty.
In the first place, it is a very long book for Balzac; it is, I think,
putting aside books like _Les Illusions Perdues_, and _Les
Celibataires_, and _Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes_, which are
really groups of work written at different times, the longest of all
his novels, if we except the still later and rather doubtful _Petits
Bourgeois_. In the second place, this length is not obtained--as
length with him is too often obtained--by digressions, by long
retrospective narrations, or even by the insertion of such "padding"
as the collection business in _Le Cousin Pons_. The whole stuff and
substance of _La Cousine Bette_ is honestly woven novel-stuff, of one
piece and one tenor and texture, with for constant subject the
subterranean malignity of the heroine, the erotomania of Hulot and
Crevel, the sufferings of Adeline, and the _pieuvre_ operations of
Marneffe and his wife,--all of which fit in and work together with
each other as exactly as the cogs and gear of a harmonious piece of
machinery do. Even such much simpler and shorter books as _Le Pere
Goriot_ by no means possess this seamless unity of construction, this
even march, shoulder to shoulder, of all the personages of the story.
In the second place, this story itself strikes hold on the reader with
a force not less irresistible than that of the older and simpler
stories just referred to. As compared even with its companion, this
force of grasp is remarkable. It is not absolutely criminal or
contemptible to feel that _Le Cousin Pons_ sometimes languishes and
loses itself; this can never be said of the history of the evil
destiny partly personified in Elizabeth Fischer, which hovers over the
house of Hulot.
Some, I believe, have felt inclined to question the propriety of the
title of the book, and to assign the true heroineship to Valerie
Marneffe, whom also the same and other persons are fond of comparing
with her contemporary Becky Sharp, not to the advantage of the latter.
This is no place for a detailed examination of the comparison, as to
which I shall only say that I do not think Thackeray has anything to
fear from it. Valerie herself is, beyond all doubt, a powerful study
of the "strange woman," enforcing the Biblical view of that personage
with singular force and effectiveness. But her methods are coarser and
more commonplace than Becky's; she never could have long sustained
such an ordeal as the tenure of the house in Curzon Street without
losing even an equivocal position in decent English society; and it
must always be remembered that she was under the orders, so to speak,
of Lisbeth, and inspired by her.
Lisbeth herself, on the other hand, is not one of a class; she stands
alone as much as Becky herself does. It is, no doubt, an arduous and,
some milky-veined critics would say, a doubtfully healthy or
praiseworthy task to depict almost pure wickedness; it is excessively
hard to render it human; and if the difficulty is not increased, it is
certainly not much lessened by the artist's determination to represent
the malefactress as undiscovered and even unsuspected throughout.
Balzac, however, has surmounted these difficulties with almost
complete success. The only advantage--it is no doubt a considerable
one--which he has taken over Shakespeare, when Shakespeare devised
Iago, is that of making Mademoiselle Fischer a person of low birth,
narrow education, and intellectual faculties narrower still, for all
their keenness and intensity. The largeness of brain with which
Shakespeare endows his human devil, and the largeness of heart of
which he does not seem to wish us to imagine him as in certain
circumstances incapable, contrast sharply enough with the peasant
meanness of Lisbeth. Indeed, Balzac, whose seldom erring instinct in
fixing on the viler parts of human nature may have been somewhat too
much dwelt on, but is undeniable, has here and elsewhere hit the fault
of the lower class generally very well. It does not appear that the
Hulots, though they treated her without much ceremony, gave Bette any
real cause of complaint, or that there was anything in their conduct
corresponding to that of the Camusots to the luckless Pons. That her
cousin Adeline had been prettier than herself in childhood, and was
richer and more highly placed in middle life, was enough for Lisbeth
--the incarnation of the Radical hatred of superiority in any kind.
And so she set to work to ruin and degrade the unhappy family, to set
it at variance, and make it miserable, as best she could.
The way of her doing this is wonderfully told, and the various
characters, minor as well as major, muster in wonderful strength. I do
not know that Balzac has made quite the most of Hector Hulot's vice
--in fact, here, as elsewhere, I think the novelist is not happy in
treating this particular deadly sin. The man is a rather disgusting
and wholly idiotic old fribble rather than a tragic victim of
Libitina. So also his wife is too angelic. But Crevel, the very
pattern and model of the vicious bourgeois who had made his fortune;
and Wenceslas Steinbock, pattern again and model of the foibles of
_Polen aus der Polackei_; and Hortense, with the better energy of the
Hulots in her; and the loathsome reptile Marneffe, and Victoria, and
Celestine, and the Brazilian (though he, to be sure, is rather a
transpontine _rastaqouere_), and all the rest are capital, and do their
work capitally. But they would not be half so fine as they are if,
behind them, there were not the savage Pagan naturalism of Lisbeth
Fischer, the "angel of the family"--and a black angel indeed.
One of the last and largest of Balzac's great works--the very last of
them, if we accept _La Cousine Bette_, to which is pendant and
contrast--_Le Cousin Pons_ has always united suffrages from very
different classes of admirers. In the first place, it is not
"disagreeable," as the common euphemism has it, and as _La Cousine
Bette_ certainly is. In the second, it cannot be accused of being a
_berquinade_, as those who like Balzac best when he is doing moral
rag-picking are apt to describe books like _Le Medecin de Campagne_
and _Le Lys dans la Vallee_, if not even like _Eugenie Grandet_. It
has a considerable variety of interest; its central figure is
curiously pathetic and attractive, even though the curse of something
like folly, which so often attends Balzac's good characters, may a
little weigh on him. It would be a book of exceptional charm even if
it were anonymous, or if we knew no more about the author than we know
about Shakespeare.
As it happens, however, _Le Cousin Pons_ has other attractions than
this. In the first place, Balzac is always great--perhaps he is at his
greatest--in depicting a mania, a passion, whether the subject be
pleasure or gold-hunger or parental affection. Pons has two manias,
and the one does not interfere with, but rather helps, the other. But
this would be nothing if it were not that his chief mania, his ruling
passion, is one of Balzac's own. For, as we have often had occasion to
notice, Balzac is not by any means one of the great impersonal
artists. He can do many things; but he is never at his best in doing
any unless his own personal interests, his likings and hatreds, his
sufferings and enjoyments, are concerned. He was a kind of
actor-manager in his _Comedie Humaine_; and perhaps, like other
actor-managers, he took rather disproportionate care of the parts
which he played himself.
Now, he was even more desperate as a collector and fancier of bibelots
than he was as a speculator; and while the one mania was nearly as
responsible for his pecuniary troubles and his need to overwork
himself as the other, it certainly gave him more constant and more
comparatively harmless satisfactions. His connoisseurship would be
nothing if he did not question the competence of another, if not of
all others. It seems certain that Balzac frequently bought things for
what they were not; and probable that his own acquisitions went, in
his own eyes, through that succession of stages which Charles Lamb (a
sort of Cousin Pons in his way too) described inimitably. His
pictures, like John Lamb's, were apt to begin as Raphaels, and end as
Carlo Marattis. Balzac, too, like Pons, was even more addicted to
bric-a-brac than to art proper; and after many vicissitudes, he and
Madame Hanska seem to have succeeded in getting together a very
considerable, if also a very miscellaneous and unequal collection in
the house in the Rue du Paradis, the contents of which were dispersed
in part (though, I believe, the Rochschild who bought it, bought most
of them too) not many years ago. Pons, indeed, was too poor, and
probably too queer, to indulge in one fancy which Balzac had, and
which, I think, all collectors of the nobler and more poetic class
have, though this number may not be large. Balzac liked to have new
beautiful things as well as old--to have beautiful things made for
him. He was an unwearied customer, though not an uncomplaining one, of
the great jeweler Froment Meurice, whose tardiness in carrying out his
behests he pathetically upbraids in more than one extant letter.
Therefore, Balzac "did more than sympathize, he felt"--and it has been
well put--with Pons in the bric-a-brac matter; and would appear that
he did so likewise in that of music, though we have rather less direct
evidence. This other sympathy has resulted in the addition to Pons
himself of the figure of Schmucke, a minor and more parochial figure,
but good in itself, and very much appreciated, I believe, by fellow
_melomanes_.
It is with even more than his usual art that Balzac has surrounded
these two originals--these "humorists," as our own ancestors would
have called them--with figures much, very much, more of the ordinary
world than themselves. The grasping worldliness of the _parvenue_
family of Camusot in one degree and the greed of the portress, Madame
Cibot, in the other, are admirably represented; the latter, in
particular, must always hold a very high place among Balzac's greatest
successes. She is, indeed a sort of companion sketch to Cousine Bette
herself in a still lower rank of life representing the diabolical in
woman; and perhaps we should not wrong the author's intentions if we
suspected that Diane de Maufrigneuse has some claims to make up the
trio in a sphere even more above Lisbeth's than Lisbeth's is above
Madame Cibot's own.
Different opinions have been held of the actual "bric-a-bracery" of
this piece--that is to say, not of Balzac's competence in the matter
but of the artistic value of his introduction of it. Perhaps his
enthusiasm does a little run away with him; perhaps he gives us a
little too much of it, and avails himself too freely of the license,
at least of the temptation, to digress which the introduction of such
persons as Elie Magus affords. And it is also open to any one to say
that the climax, or what is in effect the climax, is introduced
somewhat too soon; that the struggle, first over the body and then
over the property of Patroclus-Pons, is inordinately spun out, and
that, even granting the author's mania, he might have utilized it
better by giving us more of the harmless and ill-treated cousin's
happy hunts, and less of the disputes over his accumulated quarry.
This, however, means simply the old, and generally rather impertinent,
suggestion to the artist that he shall do with his art something
different from that which he has himself chosen to do. It is, or
should be, sufficient that _Le Cousin Pons_ is a very agreeable book,
more pathetic if less "grimy," than its companion, full of its
author's idiosyncracy, and characteristic of his genius. It may not be
uninteresting to add that _Le Cousin Pons_ was originally called _Le
Deux Musiciens_, or _Le Parasite_, and that the change, which is a
great improvement, was due to the instances of Madame Hanska.
The bibliography of the two divisions of _Les Parents Pauvres_ is so
closely connected, that it is difficult to extricate the separate
histories. Originally the author had intended to begin with _Le Cousin
Pons_ (which then bore the title of _Les Deux Musiciens_), and to make
it the more important of the two; but _La Cousine Bette_ grew under
his hands, and became, in more than one sense, the leader. Both
appeared in the _Constitutionnel_; the first between October 8th and
December 3rd, 1846, the second between March 18th and May of the next
year. In the winter of 1847-48 the two were published as a book in
twelve volumes by Chlendowski and Petion. In the newspaper (where
Balzac received--a rarely exact detail--12,836 francs for the
_Cousine_, and 9,238 for the _Cousin_) the first-named had
thirty-eight headed chapter-divisions, which in book form became a
hundred and thirty-two. _Le Cousin Pons_ had two parts in _feuilleton_,
and thirty-one chapters, which in book form became no parts and
seventy-eight chapters. All divisions were swept away when, at the end
of 1848, the books were added together to the _Comedie_.
George Saintsbury
I
COUSIN BETTY
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated by
James Waring
DEDICATION
To Don Michele Angelo Cajetani, Prince of Teano.
It is neither to the Roman Prince, nor to the representative of
the illustrious house of Cajetani, which has given more than one
Pope to the Christian Church, that I dedicate this short portion
of a long history; it is to the learned commentator of Dante.
It was you who led me to understand the marvelous framework of
ideas on which the great Italian poet built his poem, the only
work which the moderns can place by that of Homer. Till I heard
you, the Divine Comedy was to me a vast enigma to which none had
found the clue--the commentators least of all. Thus, to understand
Dante is to be as great as he; but every form of greatness is
familiar to you.
A French savant could make a reputation, earn a professor's chair,
and a dozen decorations, by publishing in a dogmatic volume the
improvised lecture by which you lent enchantment to one of those
evenings which are rest after seeing Rome. You do not know,
perhaps, that most of our professors live on Germany, on England,
on the East, or on the North, as an insect lives on a tree; and,
like the insect, become an integral part of it, borrowing their
merit from that of what they feed on. Now, Italy hitherto has not
yet been worked out in public lectures. No one will ever give me
credit for my literary honesty. Merely by plundering you I might
have been as learned as three Schlegels in one, whereas I mean to
remain a humble Doctor of the Faculty of Social Medicine, a
veterinary surgeon for incurable maladies. Were it only to lay a
token of gratitude at the feet of my cicerone, I would fain add
your illustrious name to those of Porcia, of San-Severino, of
Pareto, of di Negro, and of Belgiojoso, who will represent in this
"Human Comedy" the close and constant alliance between Italy and
France, to which Bandello did honor in the same way in the
sixteenth century--Bandello, the bishop and author of some strange
tales indeed, who left us the splendid collection of romances
whence Shakespeare derived many of his plots and even complete
characters, word for word.
The two sketches I dedicate to you are the two eternal aspects of
one and the same fact. Homo duplex, said the great Buffon: why not
add Res duplex? Everything has two sides, even virtue. Hence
Moliere always shows us both sides of every human problem; and
Diderot, imitating him, once wrote, "This is not a mere tale"--in
what is perhaps Diderot's masterpiece, where he shows us the
beautiful picture of Mademoiselle de Lachaux sacrificed by
Gardanne, side by side with that of a perfect lover dying for his
mistress.
In the same way, these two romances form a pair, like twins of
opposite sexes. This is a literary vagary to which a writer may
for once give way, especially as part of a work in which I am
endeavoring to depict every form that can serve as a garb to mind.
Most human quarrels arise from the fact that both wise men and
dunces exist who are so constituted as to be incapable of seeing
more than one side of any fact or idea, while each asserts that
the side he sees is the only true and right one. Thus it is
written in the Holy Book, "God will deliver the world over to
divisions." I must confess that this passage of Scripture alone
should persuade the Papal See to give you the control of the two
Chambers to carry out the text which found its commentary in 1814,
in the decree of Louis XVIII.
May your wit and the poetry that is in you extend a protecting
hand over these two histories of "The Poor Relations"
Of your affectionate humble servant,
DE BALZAC.
PARIS, August-September, 1846.
COUSIN BETTY
One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, then
lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as _Milords_, was
driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle
height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard.
Among the Paris crowd, who are supposed to be so clever, there are
some men who fancy themselves infinitely more attractive in uniform
than in their ordinary clothes, and who attribute to women so depraved
a taste that they believe they will be favorably impressed by the
aspect of a busby and of military accoutrements.
The countenance of this Captain of the Second Company beamed with a
self-satisfaction that added splendor to his ruddy and somewhat chubby
face. The halo of glory that a fortune made in business gives to a
retired tradesman sat on his brow, and stamped him as one of the elect
of Paris--at least a retired deputy-mayor of his quarter of the town.
And you may be sure that the ribbon of the Legion of Honor was not
missing from his breast, gallantly padded _a la Prussienne_. Proudly
seated in one corner of the _milord_, this splendid person let his
gaze wander over the passers-by, who, in Paris, often thus meet an
ingratiating smile meant for sweet eyes that are absent.
The vehicle stopped in the part of the street between the Rue de
Bellechasse and the Rue de Bourgogne, at the door of a large,
newly-build house, standing on part of the court-yard of an ancient
mansion that had a garden. The old house remained in its original
state, beyond the courtyard curtailed by half its extent.
Only from the way in which the officer accepted the assistance of the
coachman to help him out, it was plain that he was past fifty. There
are certain movements so undisguisedly heavy that they are as
tell-tale as a register of birth. The captain put on his lemon-colored
right-hand glove, and, without any question to the gatekeeper, went up
the outer steps to the ground of the new house with a look that
proclaimed, "She is mine!"
The _concierges_ of Paris have sharp eyes; they do not stop visitors
who wear an order, have a blue uniform, and walk ponderously; in
short, they know a rich man when they see him.
This ground floor was entirely occupied by Monsieur le Baron Hulot
d'Ervy, Commissary General under the Republic, retired army
contractor, and at the present time at the head of one of the most
important departments of the War Office, Councillor of State, officer
of the Legion of Honor, and so forth.
This Baron Hulot had taken the name of d'Ervy--the place of his birth
--to distinguish him from his brother, the famous General Hulot,
Colonel of the Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, created by the
Emperor Comte de Forzheim after the campaign of 1809. The Count, the
elder brother, being responsible for his junior, had, with paternal
care, placed him in the commissariat, where, thanks to the services of
the two brothers, the Baron deserved and won Napoleon's good graces.
After 1807, Baron Hulot was Commissary General for the army in Spain.
Having rung the bell, the citizen-captain made strenuous efforts to
pull his coat into place, for it had rucked up as much at the back as
in front, pushed out of shape by the working of a piriform stomach.
Being admitted as soon as the servant in livery saw him, the important
and imposing personage followed the man, who opened the door of the
drawing-room, announcing:
"Monsieur Crevel."
On hearing the name, singularly appropriate to the figure of the man
who bore it, a tall, fair woman, evidently young-looking for her age,
rose as if she had received an electric shock.
"Hortense, my darling, go into the garden with your Cousin Betty," she
said hastily to her daughter, who was working at some embroidery at
her mother's side.
After curtseying prettily to the captain, Mademoiselle Hortense went
out by a glass door, taking with her a withered-looking spinster, who
looked older than the Baroness, though she was five years younger.
"They are settling your marriage," said Cousin Betty in the girl's
ear, without seeming at all offended at the way in which the Baroness
had dismissed them, counting her almost as zero.
The cousin's dress might, at need, have explained this free-and-easy
demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of
which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a
little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw
hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the
old-clothes buyers wear at market. On looking down at her kid shoes,
made, it was evident, by the veriest cobbler, a stranger would have
hesitated to recognize Cousin Betty as a member of the family, for she
looked exactly like a journeywoman sempstress. But she did not leave
the room without bestowing a little friendly nod on Monsieur Crevel,
to which that gentleman responded by a look of mutual understanding.
"You are coming to us to-morrow, I hope, Mademoiselle Fischer?" said
he.
"You have no company?" asked Cousin Betty.
"My children and yourself, no one else," replied the visitor.
"Very well," replied she; "depend on me."
"And here am I, madame, at your orders," said the citizen-captain,
bowing again to Madame Hulot.
He gave such a look at Madame Hulot as Tartuffe casts at Elmire--when
a provincial actor plays the part and thinks it necessary to emphasize
its meaning--at Poitiers, or at Coutances.
"If you will come into this room with me, we shall be more
conveniently placed for talking business than we are in this room,"
said Madame Hulot, going to an adjoining room, which, as the apartment
was arranged, served as a cardroom.
It was divided by a slight partition from a boudoir looking out on the
garden, and Madame Hulot left her visitor to himself for a minute, for
she thought it wise to shut the window and the door of the boudoir, so
that no one should get in and listen. She even took the precaution of
shutting the glass door of the drawing-room, smiling on her daughter
and her cousin, whom she saw seated in an old summer-house at the end
of the garden. As she came back she left the cardroom door open, so as
to hear if any one should open that of the drawing-room to come in.
As she came and went, the Baroness, seen by nobody, allowed her face
to betray all her thoughts, and any one who could have seen her would
have been shocked to see her agitation. But when she finally came back
from the glass door of the drawing-room, as she entered the cardroom,
her face was hidden behind the impenetrable reserve which every woman,
even the most candid, seems to have at her command.
During all these preparations--odd, to say the least--the National
Guardsman studied the furniture of the room in which he found himself.
As he noted the silk curtains, once red, now faded to dull purple by
the sunshine, and frayed in the pleats by long wear; the carpet, from
which the hues had faded; the discolored gilding of the furniture; and
the silk seats, discolored in patches, and wearing into strips
--expressions of scorn, satisfaction, and hope dawned in succession
without disguise on his stupid tradesman's face. He looked at himself
in the glass over an old clock of the Empire, and was contemplating
the general effect, when the rustle of her silk skirt announced the
Baroness. He at once struck at attitude.
After dropping on to a sofa, which had been a very handsome one in the
year 1809, the Baroness, pointing to an armchair with the arms ending
in bronze sphinxes' heads, while the paint was peeling from the wood,
which showed through in many places, signed to Crevel to be seated.
"All the precautions you are taking, madame, would seem full of
promise to a----"
"To a lover," said she, interrupting him.
"The word is too feeble," said he, placing his right hand on his
heart, and rolling his eyes in a way which almost always makes a woman
laugh when she, in cold blood, sees such a look. "A lover! A lover?
Say a man bewitched----"
"Listen, Monsieur Crevel," said the Baroness, too anxious to be able
to laugh, "you are fifty--ten years younger than Monsieur Hulot, I
know; but at my age a woman's follies ought to be justified by beauty,
youth, fame, superior merit--some one of the splendid qualities which
can dazzle us to the point of making us forget all else--even at our
age. Though you may have fifty thousand francs a year, your age
counterbalances your fortune; thus you have nothing whatever of what a
woman looks for----"
"But love!" said the officer, rising and coming forward. "Such love
as----"
"No, monsieur, such obstinacy!" said the Baroness, interrupting him to
put an end to his absurdity.
"Yes, obstinacy," said he, "and love; but something stronger still--a
claim----"
"A claim!" cried Madame Hulot, rising sublime with scorn, defiance,
and indignation. "But," she went on, "this will bring us to no issues;
I did not ask you to come here to discuss the matter which led to your
banishment in spite of the connection between our families----"
"I had fancied so."
"What! still?" cried she. "Do you not see, monsieur, by the entire
ease and freedom with which I can speak of lovers and love, of
everything least creditable to a woman, that I am perfectly secure in
my own virtue? I fear nothing--not even to shut myself in alone with
you. Is that the conduct of a weak woman? You know full well why I
begged you to come."
"No, madame," replied Crevel, with an assumption of great coldness. He
pursed up his lips, and again struck an attitude.
"Well, I will be brief, to shorten our common discomfort," said the
Baroness, looking at Crevel.
Crevel made an ironical bow, in which a man who knew the race would
have recognized the graces of a bagman.
"Our son married your daughter----"
"And if it were to do again----" said Crevel.
"It would not be done at all, I suspect," said the baroness hastily.
"However, you have nothing to complain of. My son is not only one of
the leading pleaders of Paris, but for the last year he has sat as
Deputy, and his maiden speech was brilliant enough to lead us to
suppose that ere long he will be in office. Victorin has twice been
called upon to report on important measures; and he might even now, if
he chose, be made Attorney-General in the Court of Appeal. So, if you
mean to say that your son-in-law has no fortune----"
"Worse than that, madame, a son-in-law whom I am obliged to maintain,"
replied Crevel. "Of the five hundred thousand francs that formed my
daughter's marriage portion, two hundred thousand have vanished--God
knows how!--in paying the young gentleman's debts, in furnishing his
house splendaciously--a house costing five hundred thousand francs,
and bringing in scarcely fifteen thousand, since he occupies the
larger part of it, while he owes two hundred and sixty thousand francs
of the purchase-money. The rent he gets barely pays the interest on
the debt. I have had to give my daughter twenty thousand francs this
year to help her to make both ends meet. And then my son-in-law, who
was making thirty thousand francs a year at the Assizes, I am told, is
going to throw that up for the Chamber----"
"This, again, Monsieur Crevel, is beside the mark; we are wandering
from the point. Still, to dispose of it finally, it may be said that
if my son gets into office, if he has you made an officer of the
Legion of Honor and councillor of the municipality of Paris, you, as a
retired perfumer, will not have much to complain of----"
"Ah! there we are again, madame! Yes, I am a tradesman, a shopkeeper,
a retail dealer in almond-paste, eau-de-Portugal, and hair-oil, and
was only too much honored when my only daughter was married to the son
of Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy--my daughter will be a Baroness!
This is Regency, Louis XV., (Eil-de-boeuf--quite tip-top!--very good.)
I love Celestine as a man loves his only child--so well indeed, that,
to preserve her from having either brother or sister, I resigned
myself to all the privations of a widower--in Paris, and in the prime
of life, madame. But you must understand that, in spite of this
extravagant affection for my daughter, I do not intend to reduce my
fortune for the sake of your son, whose expenses are not wholly
accounted for--in my eyes, as an old man of business."
"Monsieur, you may at this day see in the Ministry of Commerce
Monsieur Popinot, formerly a druggist in the Rue des Lombards----"
"And a friend of mine, madame," said the ex-perfumer. "For I, Celestin
Crevel, foreman once to old Cesar Birotteau, brought up the said Cesar
Birotteau's stock; and he was Popinot's father-in-law. Why, that very
Popinot was no more than a shopman in the establishment, and he is the
first to remind me of it; for he is not proud, to do him justice, to
men in a good position with an income of sixty thousand francs in the
funds."
"Well then, monsieur, the notions you term 'Regency' are quite out of
date at a time when a man is taken at his personal worth; and that is
what you did when you married your daughter to my son."
"But you do not know how the marriage was brought about!" cried
Crevel. "Oh, that cursed bachelor life! But for my misconduct, my
Celestine might at this day be Vicomtesse Popinot!"
"Once more have done with recriminations over accomplished facts,"
said the Baroness anxiously. "Let us rather discuss the complaints I
have found on your strange behavior. My daughter Hortense had a chance
of marrying; the match depended entirely on you; I believed you felt
some sentiments of generosity; I thought you would do justice to a
woman who has never had a thought in her heart for any man but her
husband, that you would have understood how necessary it is for her
not to receive a man who may compromise her, and that for the honor of
the family with which you are allied you would have been eager to
promote Hortense's settlement with Monsieur le Conseiller Lebas.--And
it is you, monsieur, you have hindered the marriage."
"Madame," said the ex-perfumer, "I acted the part of an honest man. I
was asked whether the two hundred thousand francs to be settled on
Mademoiselle Hortense would be forthcoming. I replied exactly in these
words: 'I would not answer for it. My son-in-law, to whom the Hulots
had promised the same sum, was in debt; and I believe that if Monsieur
Hulot d'Ervy were to die to-morrow, his widow would have nothing to
live on.'--There, fair lady."
"And would you have said as much, monsieur," asked Madame Hulot,
looking Crevel steadily in the face, "if I had been false to my duty?"
"I should not be in a position to say it, dearest Adeline," cried this
singular adorer, interrupting the Baroness, "for you would have found
the amount in my pocket-book."
And adding action to word, the fat guardsman knelt down on one knee
and kissed Madame Hulot's hand, seeing that his speech had filled her
with speechless horror, which he took for hesitancy.
"What, buy my daughter's fortune at the cost of----? Rise, monsieur
--or I ring the bell."
Crevel rose with great difficulty. This fact made him so furious that
he again struck his favorite attitude. Most men have some habitual
position by which they fancy that they show to the best advantage the
good points bestowed on them by nature. This attitude in Crevel
consisted in crossing his arms like Napoleon, his head showing
three-quarters face, and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as the painter
has shown the Emperor in his portrait.
"To be faithful," he began, with well-acted indignation, "so faithful
to a liber----"
"To a husband who is worthy of such fidelity," Madame Hulot put in, to
hinder Crevel from saying a word she did not choose to hear.
"Come, madame; you wrote to bid me here, you ask the reasons for my
conduct, you drive me to extremities with your imperial airs, your
scorn, and your contempt! Any one might think I was a Negro. But I
repeat it, and you may believe me, I have a right to--to make love to
you, for---- But no; I love you well enough to hold my tongue."
"You may speak, monsieur. In a few days I shall be eight-and-forty; I
am no prude; I can hear whatever you can say."
"Then will you give me your word of honor as an honest woman--for you
are, alas for me! an honest woman--never to mention my name or to say
that it was I who betrayed the secret?"
"If that is the condition on which you speak, I will swear never to
tell any one from whom I heard the horrors you propose to tell me, not
even my husband."
"I should think not indeed, for only you and he are concerned."
Madame Hulot turned pale.
"Oh, if you still really love Hulot, it will distress you. Shall I say
no more?"
"Speak, monsieur; for by your account you wish to justify in my eyes
the extraordinary declarations you have chosen to make me, and your
persistency in tormenting a woman of my age, whose only wish is to see
her daughter married, and then--to die in peace----"
"You see; you are unhappy."
"I, monsieur?"
"Yes, beautiful, noble creature!" cried Crevel. "You have indeed been
too wretched!"
"Monsieur, be silent and go--or speak to me as you ought."
"Do you know, madame, how Master Hulot and I first made acquaintance?
--At our mistresses', madame."
"Oh, monsieur!"
"Yes, madame, at our mistresses'," Crevel repeated in a melodramatic
tone, and leaving his position to wave his right hand.
"Well, and what then?" said the Baroness coolly, to Crevel's great
amazement.
Such mean seducers cannot understand a great soul.
"I, a widower five years since," Crevel began, in the tone of a man
who has a story to tell, "and not wishing to marry again for the sake
of the daughter I adore, not choosing either to cultivate any such
connection in my own establishment, though I had at the time a very
pretty lady-accountant. I set up, 'on her own account,' as they say, a
little sempstress of fifteen--really a miracle of beauty, with whom I
fell desperately in love. And in fact, madame, I asked an aunt of my
own, my mother's sister, whom I sent for from the country, to live
with the sweet creature and keep an eye on her, that she might behave
as well as might be in this rather--what shall I say--shady?--no,
delicate position.
"The child, whose talent for music was striking, had masters, she was
educated--I had to give her something to do. Besides, I wished to be
at once her father, her benefactor, and--well, out with it--her lover;
to kill two birds with one stone, a good action and a sweetheart. For
five years I was very happy. The girl had one of those voices that
make the fortune of a theatre; I can only describe her by saying that
she is a Duprez in petticoats. It cost me two thousand francs a year
only to cultivate her talent as a singer. She made me music-mad; I
took a box at the opera for her and for my daughter, and went there
alternate evenings with Celestine or Josepha."
"What, the famous singer?"
"Yes, madame," said Crevel with pride, "the famous Josepha owes
everything to me.--At last, in 1834, when the child was twenty,
believing that I had attached her to me for ever, and being very weak
where she was concerned, I thought I would give her a little
amusement, and I introduced her to a pretty little actress, Jenny
Cadine, whose life had been somewhat like her own. This actress also
owed everything to a protector who had brought her up in
leading-strings. That protector was Baron Hulot."
"I know that," said the Baroness, in a calm voice without the least
agitation.
"Bless me!" cried Crevel, more and more astounded. "Well! But do you
know that your monster of a husband took Jenny Cadine in hand at the
age of thirteen?"
"What then?" said the Baroness.
"As Jenny Cadine and Josepha were both aged twenty when they first
met," the ex-tradesman went on, "the Baron had been playing the part
of Louis XV. to Mademoiselle de Romans ever since 1826, and you were
twelve years younger then----"
"I had my reasons, monsieur, for leaving Monsieur Hulot his liberty."
"That falsehood, madame, will surely be enough to wipe out every sin
you have ever committed, and to open to you the gates of Paradise,"
replied Crevel, with a knowing air that brought the color to the
Baroness' cheeks. "Sublime and adored woman, tell that to those who
will believe it, but not to old Crevel, who has, I may tell you,
feasted too often as one of four with your rascally husband not to
know what your high merits are! Many a time has he blamed himself when
half tipsy as he has expatiated on your perfections. Oh, I know you
well!--A libertine might hesitate between you and a girl of twenty. I
do not hesitate----"
"Monsieur!"
"Well, I say no more. But you must know, saintly and noble woman, that
a husband under certain circumstances will tell things about his wife
to his mistress that will mightily amuse her."
Tears of shame hanging to Madame Hulot's long lashes checked the
National Guardsman. He stopped short, and forgot his attitude.
"To proceed," said he. "We became intimate, the Baron and I, through
the two hussies. The Baron, like all bad lots, is very pleasant, a
thoroughly jolly good fellow. Yes, he took my fancy, the old rascal.
He could be so funny!--Well, enough of those reminiscences. We got to
be like brothers. The scoundrel--quite Regency in his notions--tried
indeed to deprave me altogether, preached Saint-Simonism as to women,
and all sorts of lordly ideas; but, you see, I was fond enough of my
girl to have married her, only I was afraid of having children.
"Then between two old daddies, such friends as--as we were, what more
natural than that we should think of our children marrying each other?
--Three months after his son had married my Celestine, Hulot--I don't
know how I can utter the wretch's name! he has cheated us both, madame
--well, the villain did me out of my little Josepha. The scoundrel
knew that he was supplanted in the heart of Jenny Cadine by a young
lawyer and by an artist--only two of them!--for the girl had more and
more of a howling success, and he stole my sweet little girl, a
perfect darling--but you must have seen her at the opera; he got her
an engagement there. Your husband is not so well behaved as I am. I am
ruled as straight as a sheet of music-paper. He had dropped a good
deal of money on Jenny Cadine, who must have cost him near on thirty
thousand francs a year. Well, I can only tell you that he is ruining
himself outright for Josepha.
"Josepha, madame, is a Jewess. Her name is Mirah, the anagram of
Hiram, an Israelite mark that stamps her, for she was a foundling
picked up in Germany, and the inquiries I have made prove that she is
the illegitimate child of a rich Jew banker. The life of the theatre,
and, above all, the teaching of Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga,
and Carabine, as to the way to treat an old man, have developed, in
the child whom I had kept in a respectable and not too expensive way
of life, all the native Hebrew instinct for gold and jewels--for the
golden calf.
"So this famous singer, hungering for plunder, now wants to be rich,
very rich. She tried her 'prentice hand on Baron Hulot, and soon
plucked him bare--plucked him, ay, and singed him to the skin. The
miserable man, after trying to vie with one of the Kellers and with
the Marquis d'Esgrignon, both perfectly mad about Josepha, to say
nothing of unknown worshipers, is about to see her carried off by that
very rich Duke, who is such a patron of the arts. Oh, what is his
name?--a dwarf.--Ah, the Duc d'Herouville. This fine gentleman insists
on having Josepha for his very own, and all that set are talking about
it; the Baron knows nothing of it as yet; for it is the same in the
Thirteenth Arrondissement as in every other: the lover, like the
husband, is last to get the news.
"Now, do you understand my claim? Your husband, dear lady, has robbed
me of my joy in life, the only happiness I have known since I became a
widower. Yes, if I had not been so unlucky as to come across that old
rip, Josepha would still be mine; for I, you know, should never have
placed her on the stage. She would have lived obscure, well conducted,
and mine. Oh! if you could but have seen her eight years ago, slight
and wiry, with the golden skin of an Andalusian, as they say, black
hair as shiny as satin, an eye that flashed lightning under long brown
lashes, the style of a duchess in every movement, the modesty of a
dependent, decent grace, and the pretty ways of a wild fawn. And by
that Hulot's doing all this charm and purity has been degraded to a
man-trap, a money-box for five-franc pieces! The girl is the Queen of
Trollops; and nowadays she humbugs every one--she who knew nothing,
not even that word."
At this stage the retired perfumer wiped his eyes, which were full of
tears. The sincerity of his grief touched Madame Hulot, and roused her
from the meditation into which she had sunk.
"Tell me, madame, is a man of fifty-two likely to find such another
jewel? At my age love costs thirty thousand francs a year. It is
through your husband's experience that I know the price, and I love
Celestine too truly to be her ruin. When I saw you, at the first
evening party you gave in our honor, I wondered how that scoundrel
Hulot could keep a Jenny Cadine--you had the manner of an Empress. You
do not look thirty," he went on. "To me, madame, you look young, and
you are beautiful. On my word of honor, that evening I was struck to
the heart. I said to myself, 'If I had not Josepha, since old Hulot
neglects his wife, she would fit me like a glove.' Forgive me--it is a
reminiscence of my old business. The perfumer will crop up now and
then, and that is what keeps me from standing to be elected deputy.
"And then, when I was so abominably deceived by the Baron, for really
between old rips like us our friend's mistress should be sacred, I
swore I would have his wife. It is but justice. The Baron could say
nothing; we are certain of impunity. You showed me the door like a
mangy dog at the first words I uttered as to the state of my feelings;
you only made my passion--my obstinacy, if you will--twice as strong,
and you shall be mine."
"Indeed; how?"
"I do not know; but it will come to pass. You see, madame, an idiot of
a perfumer--retired from business--who has but one idea in his head,
is stronger than a clever fellow who has a thousand. I am smitten with
you, and you are the means of my revenge; it is like being in love
twice over. I am speaking to you quite frankly, as a man who knows
what he means. I speak coldly to you, just as you do to me, when you
say, 'I never will be yours,' In fact, as they say, I play the game
with the cards on the table. Yes, you shall be mine, sooner or later;
if you were fifty, you should still be my mistress. And it will be;
for I expect anything from your husband!"
Madame Hulot looked at this vulgar intriguer with such a fixed stare
of terror, that he thought she had gone mad, and he stopped.
"You insisted on it, you heaped me with scorn, you defied me--and I
have spoken," said he, feeling that he must justify the ferocity of
his last words.
"Oh, my daughter, my daughter," moaned the Baroness in a voice like a
dying woman's.
"Oh! I have forgotten all else," Crevel went on. "The day when I was
robbed of Josepha I was like a tigress robbed of her cubs; in short,
as you see me now.--Your daughter? Yes, I regard her as the means of
winning you. Yes, I put a spoke in her marriage--and you will not get
her married without my help! Handsome as Mademoiselle Hortense is, she
needs a fortune----"
"Alas! yes," said the Baroness, wiping her eyes.
"Well, just ask your husband for ten thousand francs," said Crevel,
striking his attitude once more. He waited a minute, like an actor who
has made a point.
"If he had the money, he would give it to the woman who will take
Josepha's place," he went on, emphasizing his tones. "Does a man ever
pull up on the road he has taken? In the first place, he is too sweet
on women. There is a happy medium in all things, as our King has told
us. And then his vanity is implicated! He is a handsome man!--He would
bring you all to ruin for his pleasure; in fact, you are already on
the highroad to the workhouse. Why, look, never since I set foot in
your house have you been able to do up your drawing-room furniture.
'Hard up' is the word shouted by every slit in the stuff. Where will
you find a son-in-law who would not turn his back in horror of the
ill-concealed evidence of the most cruel misery there is--that of
people in decent society? I have kept shop, and I know. There is no
eye so quick as that of the Paris tradesman to detect real wealth from
its sham.--You have no money," he said, in a lower voice. "It is
written everywhere, even on your man-servant's coat.
"Would you like me to disclose any more hideous mysteries that are
kept from you?"
"Monsieur," cried Madame Hulot, whose handkerchief was wet through
with her tears, "enough, enough!"
"My son-in-law, I tell you, gives his father money, and this is what I
particularly wanted to come to when I began by speaking of your son's
expenses. But I keep an eye on my daughter's interests, be easy."
"Oh, if I could but see my daughter married, and die!" cried the poor
woman, quite losing her head.
"Well, then, this is the way," said the ex-perfumer.
Madame Hulot looked at Crevel with a hopeful expression, which so
completely changed her countenance, that this alone ought to have
touched the man's feelings and have led him to abandon his monstrous
schemes.
"You will still be handsome ten years hence," Crevel went on, with his
arms folded; "be kind to me, and Mademoiselle Hulot will marry. Hulot
has given me the right, as I have explained to you, to put the matter
crudely, and he will not be angry. In three years I have saved the
interest on my capital, for my dissipations have been restricted. I
have three hundred thousand francs in the bank over and above my
invested fortune--they are yours----"
"Go," said Madame Hulot. "Go, monsieur, and never let me see you
again. But for the necessity in which you placed me to learn the
secret of your cowardly conduct with regard to the match I had planned
for Hortense--yes, cowardly!" she repeated, in answer to a gesture
from Crevel. "How can you load a poor girl, a pretty, innocent
creature, with such a weight of enmity? But for the necessity that
goaded me as a mother, you would never have spoken to me again, never
again have come within my doors. Thirty-two years of an honorable and
loyal life shall not be swept away by a blow from Monsieur Crevel----"
"The retired perfumer, successor to Cesar Birotteau at the _Queen of
the Roses_, Rue Saint-Honore," added Crevel, in mocking tones.
"Deputy-mayor, captain in the National Guard, Chevalier of the Legion
of Honor--exactly what my predecessor was!"
"Monsieur," said the Baroness, "if, after twenty years of constancy,
Monsieur Hulot is tired of his wife, that is nobody's concern but
mine. As you see, he has kept his infidelity a mystery, for I did not
know that he had succeeded you in the affections of Mademoiselle
Josepha----"