"Do you suppose I could buy such a thing, or order it? Impossible!
Well, then, it must have been given to me. And who would make me such
a present? A lover!"
Hortense, with an artfulness that would have frightened Lisbeth
Fischer if she had detected it, took care not to express all her
admiration, though she was full of the delight which every soul that
is open to a sense of beauty must feel on seeing a faultless piece of
work--perfect and unexpected.
"On my word," said she, "it is very pretty."
"Yes, it is pretty," said her cousin; "but I like an orange-colored
shawl better.--Well, child, my lover spends his time in doing such
work as that. Since he came to Paris he has turned out three or four
little trifles in that style, and that is the fruit of four years'
study and toil. He has served as apprentice to founders,
metal-casters, and goldsmiths.--There he has paid away thousands and
hundreds of francs. And my gentleman tells me that in a few months now
he will be famous and rich----"
"Then you often see him?"
"Bless me, do you think it is all a fable? I told you truth in jest."
"And he is in love with you?" asked Hortense eagerly.
"He adores me," replied Lisbeth very seriously. "You see, child, he
had never seen any women but the washed out, pale things they all are
in the north, and a slender, brown, youthful thing like me warmed his
heart.--But, mum; you promised, you know!"
"And he will fare like the five others," said the girl ironically, as
she looked at the seal.
"Six others, miss. I left one in Lorraine, who, to this day, would
fetch the moon down for me."
"This one does better than that," said Hortense; "he has brought down
the sun."
"Where can that be turned into money?" asked her cousin. "It takes
wide lands to benefit by the sunshine."
These witticisms, fired in quick retort, and leading to the sort of
giddy play that may be imagined, had given cause for the laughter
which had added to the Baroness' troubles by making her compare her
daughter's future lot with the present, when she was free to indulge
the light-heartedness of youth.
"But to give you a gem which cost him six months of work, he must be
under some great obligations to you?" said Hortense, in whom the
silver seal had suggested very serious reflections.
"Oh, you want to know too much at once!" said her cousin. "But,
listen, I will let you into a little plot."
"Is your lover in it too?"
"Oh, ho! you want so much to see him! But, as you may suppose, an old
maid like Cousin Betty, who had managed to keep a lover for five
years, keeps him well hidden.--Now, just let me alone. You see, I have
neither cat nor canary, neither dog nor a parrot, and the old Nanny
Goat wanted something to pet and tease--so I treated myself to a
Polish Count."
"Has he a moustache?"
"As long as that," said Lisbeth, holding up her shuttle filled with
gold thread. She always took her lace-work with her, and worked till
dinner was served.
"If you ask too many questions, you will be told nothing," she went
on. "You are but two-and-twenty, and you chatter more than I do though
I am forty-two--not to say forty-three."
"I am listening; I am a wooden image," said Hortense.
"My lover has finished a bronze group ten inches high," Lisbeth went
on. "It represents Samson slaying a lion, and he has kept it buried
till it is so rusty that you might believe it to be as old as Samson
himself. This fine piece is shown at the shop of one of the old
curiosity sellers on the Place du Carrousel, near my lodgings. Now,
your father knows Monsieur Popinot, the Minister of Commerce and
Agriculture, and the Comte de Rastignac, and if he would mention the
group to them as a fine antique he had seen by chance! It seems that
such things take the fancy of your grand folks, who don't care so much
about gold lace, and that my man's fortune would be made if one of
them would buy or even look at the wretched piece of metal. The poor
fellow is sure that it might be mistaken for old work, and that the
rubbish is worth a great deal of money. And then, if one of the
ministers should purchase the group, he would go to pay his respects,
and prove that he was the maker, and be almost carried in triumph! Oh!
he believes he has reached the pinnacle; poor young man, and he is as
proud as two newly-made Counts."
"Michael Angelo over again; but, for a lover, he has kept his head on
his shoulders!" said Hortense. "And how much does he want for it?"
"Fifteen hundred francs. The dealer will not let it go for less, since
he must take his commission."
"Papa is in the King's household just now," said Hortense. "He sees
those two ministers every day at the Chamber, and he will do the thing
--I undertake that. You will be a rich woman, Madame la Comtesse de
Steinbock."
"No, the boy is too lazy; for whole weeks he sits twiddling with bits
of red wax, and nothing comes of it. Why, he spends all his days at
the Louvre and the Library, looking at prints and sketching things. He
is an idler!"
The cousins chatted and giggled; Hortense laughing a forced laugh, for
she was invaded by a kind of love which every girl has gone through
--the love of the unknown, love in its vaguest form, when every thought
is accreted round some form which is suggested by a chance word, as
the efflorescence of hoar-frost gathers about a straw that the wind
has blown against the window-sill.
For the past ten months she had made a reality of her cousin's
imaginary romance, believing, like her mother, that Lisbeth would
never marry; and now, within a week, this visionary being had become
Comte Wenceslas Steinbock, the dream had a certificate of birth, the
wraith had solidified into a young man of thirty. The seal she held in
her hand--a sort of Annunciation in which genius shone like an
immanent light--had the powers of a talisman. Hortense felt such a
surge of happiness, that she almost doubted whether the tale were
true; there was a ferment in her blood, and she laughed wildly to
deceive her cousin.
"But I think the drawing-room door is open," said Lisbeth; "let us go
and see if Monsieur Crevel is gone."
"Mamma has been very much out of spirits these two days. I suppose the
marriage under discussion has come to nothing!"
"Oh, it may come on again. He is--I may tell you so much--a Councillor
of the Supreme Court. How would you like to be Madame la Presidente?
If Monsieur Crevel has a finger in it, he will tell me about it if I
ask him. I shall know by to-morrow if there is any hope."
"Leave the seal with me," said Hortense; "I will not show it--mamma's
birthday is not for a month yet; I will give it to you that morning."
"No, no. Give it back to me; it must have a case."
"But I will let papa see it, that he may know what he is talking about
to the ministers, for men in authority must be careful what they say,"
urged the girl.
"Well, do not show it to your mother--that is all I ask; for if she
believed I had a lover, she would make game of me."
"I promise."
The cousins reached the drawing-room just as the Baroness turned
faint. Her daughter's cry of alarm recalled her to herself. Lisbeth
went off to fetch some salts. When she came back, she found the mother
and daughter in each other's arms, the Baroness soothing her
daughter's fears, and saying:
"It was nothing; a little nervous attack.--There is your father," she
added, recognizing the Baron's way of ringing the bell. "Say not a
word to him."
Adeline rose and went to meet her husband, intending to take him into
the garden and talk to him till dinner should be served of the
difficulties about the proposed match, getting him to come to some
decision as to the future, and trying to hint at some warning advice.
Baron Hector Hulot came in, in a dress at once lawyer-like and
Napoleonic, for Imperial men--men who had been attached to the Emperor
--were easily distinguishable by their military deportment, their blue
coats with gilt buttons, buttoned to the chin, their black silk stock,
and an authoritative demeanor acquired from a habit of command in
circumstances requiring despotic rapidity. There was nothing of the
old man in the Baron, it must be admitted; his sight was still so
good, that he could read without spectacles; his handsome oval face,
framed in whiskers that were indeed too black, showed a brilliant
complexion, ruddy with the veins that characterize a sanguine
temperament; and his stomach, kept in order by a belt, had not
exceeded the limits of "the majestic," as Brillat-Savarin says. A fine
aristocratic air and great affability served to conceal the libertine
with whom Crevel had had such high times. He was one of those men
whose eyes always light up at the sight of a pretty woman, even of
such as merely pass by, never to be seen again.
"Have you been speaking, my dear?" asked Adeline, seeing him with an
anxious brow.
"No," replied Hector, "but I am worn out with hearing others speak for
two hours without coming to a vote. They carry on a war of words, in
which their speeches are like a cavalry charge which has no effect on
the enemy. Talk has taken the place of action, which goes very much
against the grain with men who are accustomed to marching orders, as I
said to the Marshal when I left him. However, I have enough of being
bored on the ministers' bench; here I may play.--How do, la Chevre!
--Good morning, little kid," and he took his daughter round the neck,
kissed her, and made her sit on his knee, resting her head on his
shoulder, that he might feel her soft golden hair against his cheek.
"He is tired and worried," said his wife to herself. "I shall only
worry him more.--I will wait.--Are you going to be at home this
evening?" she asked him.
"No, children. After dinner I must go out. If it had not been the day
when Lisbeth and the children and my brother come to dinner, you would
not have seen me at all."
The Baroness took up the newspaper, looked down the list of theatres,
and laid it down again when she had seen that Robert _le Diable_ was
to be given at the Opera. Josepha, who had left the Italian Opera six
months since for the French Opera, was to take the part of Alice.
This little pantomime did not escape the Baron, who looked hard at his
wife. Adeline cast down her eyes and went out into the garden; her
husband followed her.
"Come, what is it, Adeline?" said he, putting his arm round her waist
and pressing her to his side. "Do not you know that I love you more
than----"
"More than Jenny Cadine or Josepha!" said she, boldly interrupting
him.
"Who put that into your head?" exclaimed the Baron, releasing his
wife, and starting back a step or two.
"I got an anonymous letter, which I burnt at once, in which I was
told, my dear, that the reason Hortense's marriage was broken off was
the poverty of our circumstances. Your wife, my dear Hector, would
never have said a word; she knew of your connection with Jenny Cadine,
and did she ever complain?--But as the mother of Hortense, I am bound
to speak the truth."
Hulot, after a short silence, which was terrible to his wife, whose
heart beat loud enough to be heard, opened his arms, clasped her to
his heart, kissed her forehead, and said with the vehemence of
enthusiasm:
"Adeline, you are an angel, and I am a wretch----"
"No, no," cried the Baroness, hastily laying her hand upon his lips to
hinder him from speaking evil of himself.
"Yes, for I have not at this moment a sou to give to Hortense, and I
am most unhappy. But since you open your heart to me, I may pour into
it the trouble that is crushing me.--Your Uncle Fischer is in
difficulties, and it is I who dragged him there, for he has accepted
bills for me to the amount of twenty-five thousand francs! And all for
a woman who deceives me, who laughs at me behind my back, and calls me
an old dyed Tom. It is frightful! A vice which costs me more than it
would to maintain a family!--And I cannot resist!--I would promise you
here and now never to see that abominable Jewess again; but if she
wrote me two lines, I should go to her, as we marched into fire under
the Emperor."
"Do not be so distressed," cried the poor woman in despair, but
forgetting her daughter as she saw the tears in her husband's eyes.
"There are my diamonds; whatever happens, save my uncle."
"Your diamonds are worth scarcely twenty thousand francs nowadays.
That would not be enough for old Fischer, so keep them for Hortense; I
will see the Marshal to-morrow."
"My poor dear!" said the Baroness, taking her Hector's hands and
kissing them.
This was all the scolding he got. Adeline sacrificed her jewels, the
father made them a present to Hortense, she regarded this as a sublime
action, and she was helpless.
"He is the master; he could take everything, and he leaves me my
diamonds; he is divine!"
This was the current of her thoughts; and indeed the wife had gained
more by her sweetness than another perhaps could have achieved by a
fit of angry jealousy.
The moralist cannot deny that, as a rule, well-bred though very wicked
men are far more attractive and lovable than virtuous men; having
crimes to atone for, they crave indulgence by anticipation, by being
lenient to the shortcomings of those who judge them, and they are
thought most kind. Though there are no doubt some charming people
among the virtuous, Virtue considers itself fair enough, unadorned, to
be at no pains to please; and then all really virtuous persons, for
the hypocrites do not count, have some slight doubts as to their
position; they believe that they are cheated in the bargain of life on
the whole, and they indulge in acid comments after the fashion of
those who think themselves unappreciated.
Hence the Baron, who accused himself of ruining his family, displayed
all his charm of wit and his most seductive graces for the benefit of
his wife, for his children, and his Cousin Lisbeth.
Then, when his son arrived with Celestine, Crevel's daughter, who was
nursing the infant Hulot, he was delightful to his daughter-in-law,
loading her with compliments--a treat to which Celestine's vanity was
little accustomed for no moneyed bride more commonplace or more
utterly insignificant was ever seen. The grandfather took the baby
from her, kissed it, declared it was a beauty and a darling; he spoke
to it in baby language, prophesied that it would grow to be taller
than himself, insinuated compliments for his son's benefit, and
restored the child to the Normandy nurse who had charge of it.
Celestine, on her part, gave the Baroness a look, as much as to say,
"What a delightful man!" and she naturally took her father-in-law's
part against her father.
After thus playing the charming father-in-law and the indulgent
grandpapa, the Baron took his son into the garden, and laid before him
a variety of observations full of good sense as to the attitude to be
taken up by the Chamber on a certain ticklish question which had that
morning come under discussion. The young lawyer was struck with
admiration for the depth of his father's insight, touched by his
cordiality, and especially by the deferential tone which seemed to
place the two men on a footing of equality.
Monsieur Hulot _junior_ was in every respect the young Frenchman, as
he has been moulded by the Revolution of 1830; his mind infatuated
with politics, respectful of his own hopes, and concealing them under
an affectation of gravity, very envious of successful men, making
sententiousness do the duty of witty rejoinders--the gems of the
French language--with a high sense of importance, and mistaking
arrogance for dignity.
Such men are walking coffins, each containing a Frenchman of the past;
now and again the Frenchman wakes up and kicks against his
English-made casing; but ambition stifles him, and he submits to be
smothered. The coffin is always covered with black cloth.
"Ah, here is my brother!" said Baron Hulot, going to meet the Count at
the drawing-room door.
Having greeted the probable successor of the late Marshal Montcornet,
he led him forward by the arm with every show of affection and
respect.
The older man, a member of the Chamber of Peers, but excused from
attendance on account of his deafness, had a handsome head, chilled by
age, but with enough gray hair still to be marked in a circle by the
pressure of his hat. He was short, square, and shrunken, but carried
his hale old age with a free-and-easy air; and as he was full of
excessive activity, which had now no purpose, he divided his time
between reading and taking exercise. In a drawing-room he devoted his
attention to waiting on the wishes of the ladies.
"You are very merry here," said he, seeing that the Baron shed a
spirit of animation on the little family gathering. "And yet Hortense
is not married," he added, noticing a trace of melancholy on his
sister-in-law's countenance.
"That will come all in good time," Lisbeth shouted in his ear in a
formidable voice.
"So there you are, you wretched seedling that could never blossom,"
said he, laughing.
The hero of Forzheim rather liked Cousin Betty, for there were certain
points of resemblance between them. A man of the ranks, without any
education, his courage had been the sole mainspring of his military
promotion, and sound sense had taken the place of brilliancy. Of the
highest honor and clean-handed, he was ending a noble life in full
contentment in the centre of his family, which claimed all his
affections, and without a suspicion of his brother's still
undiscovered misconduct. No one enjoyed more than he the pleasing
sight of this family party, where there never was the smallest
disagreement, for the brothers and sisters were all equally attached,
Celestine having been at once accepted as one of the family. But the
worthy little Count wondered now and then why Monsieur Crevel never
joined the party. "Papa is in the country," Celestine shouted, and it
was explained to him that the ex-perfumer was away from home.
This perfect union of all her family made Madame Hulot say to herself,
"This, after all, is the best kind of happiness, and who can deprive
us of it?"
The General, on seeing his favorite Adeline the object of her
husband's attentions, laughed so much about it that the Baron, fearing
to seem ridiculous, transferred his gallantries to his
daughter-in-law, who at these family dinners was always the object of
his flattery and kind care, for he hoped to win Crevel back through
her, and make him forego his resentment.
Any one seeing this domestic scene would have found it hard to believe
that the father was at his wits' end, the mother in despair, the son
anxious beyond words as to his father's future fate, and the daughter
on the point of robbing her cousin of her lover.
At seven o'clock the Baron, seeing his brother, his son, the Baroness,
and Hortense all engaged at whist, went off to applaud his mistress at
the Opera, taking with him Lisbeth Fischer, who lived in the Rue du
Doyenne, and who always made an excuse of the solitude of that
deserted quarter to take herself off as soon as dinner was over.
Parisians will all admit that the old maid's prudence was but
rational.
The existence of the maze of houses under the wing of the old Louvre
is one of those protests against obvious good sense which Frenchmen
love, that Europe may reassure itself as to the quantum of brains they
are known to have, and not be too much alarmed. Perhaps without
knowing it, this reveals some profound political idea.
It will surely not be a work of supererogation to describe this part
of Paris as it is even now, when we could hardly expect its survival;
and our grandsons, who will no doubt see the Louvre finished, may
refuse to believe that such a relic of barbarism should have survived
for six-and-thirty years in the heart of Paris and in the face of the
palace where three dynasties of kings have received, during those
thirty-six years, the elite of France and of Europe.
Between the little gate leading to the Bridge of the Carrousel and the
Rue du Musee, every one having come to Paris, were it but for a few
days, must have seen a dozen of houses with a decayed frontage where
the dejected owners have attempted no repairs, the remains of an old
block of buildings of which the destruction was begun at the time when
Napoleon determined to complete the Louvre. This street, and the blind
alley known as the Impasse du Doyenne, are the only passages into this
gloomy and forsaken block, inhabited perhaps by ghosts, for there
never is anybody to be seen. The pavement is much below the footway of
the Rue du Musee, on a level with that of the Rue Froidmanteau. Thus,
half sunken by the raising of the soil, these houses are also wrapped
in the perpetual shadow cast by the lofty buildings of the Louvre,
darkened on that side by the northern blast. Darkness, silence, an icy
chill, and the cavernous depth of the soil combine to make these
houses a kind of crypt, tombs of the living. As we drive in a hackney
cab past this dead-alive spot, and chance to look down the little Rue
du Doyenne, a shudder freezes the soul, and we wonder who can lie
there, and what things may be done there at night, at an hour when the
alley is a cut-throat pit, and the vices of Paris run riot there under
the cloak of night. This question, frightful in itself, becomes
appalling when we note that these dwelling-houses are shut in on the
side towards the Rue de Richelieu by marshy ground, by a sea of
tumbled paving-stones between them and the Tuileries, by little
garden-plots and suspicious-looking hovels on the side of the great
galleries, and by a desert of building-stone and old rubbish on the
side towards the old Louvre. Henri III. and his favorites in search of
their trunk-hose, and Marguerite's lovers in search of their heads,
must dance sarabands by moonlight in this wilderness overlooked by the
roof of a chapel still standing there as if to prove that the Catholic
religion--so deeply rooted in France--survives all else.
For forty years now has the Louvre been crying out by every gap in
these damaged walls, by every yawning window, "Rid me of these warts
upon my face!" This cutthroat lane has no doubt been regarded as
useful, and has been thought necessary as symbolizing in the heart of
Paris the intimate connection between poverty and the splendor that is
characteristic of the queen of cities. And indeed these chill ruins,
among which the Legitimist newspaper contracted the disease it is
dying of--the abominable hovels of the Rue du Musee, and the hoarding
appropriated by the shop stalls that flourish there--will perhaps live
longer and more prosperously than three successive dynasties.
In 1823 the low rents in these already condemned houses had tempted
Lisbeth Fischer to settle there, notwithstanding the necessity imposed
upon her by the state of the neighborhood to get home before
nightfall. This necessity, however, was in accordance with the country
habits she retained, of rising and going to bed with the sun, an
arrangement which saves country folk considerable sums in lights and
fuel. She lived in one of the houses which, since the demolition of
the famous Hotel Cambaceres, command a view of the square.
Just as Baron Hulot set his wife's cousin down at the door of this
house, saying, "Good-night, Cousin," an elegant-looking woman, young,
small, slender, pretty, beautifully dressed, and redolent of some
delicate perfume, passed between the wall and the carriage to go in.
This lady, without any premeditation, glanced up at the Baron merely
to see the lodger's cousin, and the libertine at once felt the swift
impression which all Parisians know on meeting a pretty woman,
realizing, as entomologists have it, their _desiderata_; so he waited
to put on one of his gloves with judicious deliberation before getting
into the carriage again, to give himself an excuse for allowing his
eye to follow the young woman, whose skirts were pleasingly set out by
something else than these odious and delusive crinoline bustles.
"That," said he to himself, "is a nice little person whose happiness I
should like to provide for, as she would certainly secure mine."