I hope, is mine. But shut your eyes, know nothing. Good Heavens! I was
to keep it all from you, and I cannot help telling you everything----"
"Good-bye, children!" said the Baron, kissing his wife and daughter;
"I shall perhaps go to call on the Nanny, and from her I shall hear a
great deal about our young man."
"Papa, be cautious!" said Hortense.
"Oh! little girl!" cried the Baroness when Hortense had poured out her
poem, of which the morning's adventure was the last canto, "dear
little girl, Artlessness will always be the artfulest puss on earth!"
Genuine passions have an unerring instinct. Set a greedy man before a
dish of fruit and he will make no mistake, but take the choicest even
without seeing it. In the same way, if you allow a girl who is well
brought up to choose a husband for herself, if she is in a position to
meet the man of her heart, rarely will she blunder. The act of nature
in such cases is known as love at first sight; and in love, first
sight is practically second sight.
The Baroness' satisfaction, though disguised under maternal dignity,
was as great as her daughter's; for, of the three ways of marrying
Hortense of which Crevel had spoken, the best, as she opined, was
about to be realized. And she regarded this little drama as an answer
by Providence to her fervent prayers.
Mademoiselle Fischer's galley slave, obliged at last to go home,
thought he might hide his joy as a lover under his glee as an artist
rejoicing over his first success.
"Victory! my group is sold to the Duc d'Herouville, who is going to
give me some commissions," cried he, throwing the twelve hundred
francs in gold on the table before the old maid.
He had, as may be supposed concealed Hortense's purse; it lay next to
his heart.
"And a very good thing too," said Lisbeth. "I was working myself to
death. You see, child, money comes in slowly in the business you have
taken up, for this is the first you have earned, and you have been
grinding at it for near on five years now. That money barely repays me
for what you have cost me since I took your promissory note; that is
all I have got by my savings. But be sure of one thing," she said,
after counting the gold, "this money will all be spent on you. There
is enough there to keep us going for a year. In a year you may now be
able to pay your debt and have a snug little sum of your own, if you
go on in the same way."
Wenceslas, finding his trick successful, expatiated on the Duc
d'Herouville.
"I will fit you out in a black suit, and get you some new linen," said
Lisbeth, "for you must appear presentably before your patrons; and
then you must have a larger and better apartment than your horrible
garret, and furnish it property.--You look so bright, you are not like
the same creature," she added, gazing at Wenceslas.
"But my work is pronounced a masterpiece."
"Well, so much the better! Do some more," said the arid creature, who
was nothing but practical, and incapable of understanding the joy of
triumph or of beauty in Art. "Trouble your head no further about what
you have sold; make something else to sell. You have spent two hundred
francs in money, to say nothing of your time and your labor, on that
devil of a _Samson_. Your clock will cost you more than two thousand
francs to execute. I tell you what, if you will listen to me, you will
finish the two little boys crowning the little girl with cornflowers;
that would just suit the Parisians.--I will go round to Monsieur Graff
the tailor before going to Monsieur Crevel.--Go up now and leave me to
dress."
Next day the Baron, perfectly crazy about Madame Marneffe, went to see
Cousin Betty, who was considerably amazed on opening the door to see
who her visitor was, for he had never called on her before. She at
once said to herself, "Can it be that Hortense wants my lover?"--for
she had heard the evening before, at Monsieur Crevel's, that the
marriage with the Councillor of the Supreme Court was broken off.
"What, Cousin! you here? This is the first time you have ever been to
see me, and it is certainly not for love of my fine eyes that you have
come now."
"Fine eyes is the truth," said the Baron; "you have as fine eyes as I
have ever seen----"
"Come, what are you here for? I really am ashamed to receive you in
such a kennel."
The outer room of the two inhabited by Lisbeth served her as
sitting-room, dining-room, kitchen, and workroom. The furniture was such
as beseemed a well-to-do artisan--walnut-wood chairs with straw seats, a
small walnut-wood dining table, a work table, some colored prints in
black wooden frames, short muslin curtains to the windows, the floor
well polished and shining with cleanliness, not a speck of dust
anywhere, but all cold and dingy, like a picture by Terburg in every
particular, even to the gray tone given by a wall paper once blue and
now faded to gray. As to the bedroom, no human being had ever
penetrated its secrets.
The Baron took it all in at a glance, saw the sign-manual of
commonness on every detail, from the cast-iron stove to the household
utensils, and his gorge rose as he said to himself, "And _this_ is
virtue!--What am I here for?" said he aloud. "You are far too cunning
not to guess, and I had better tell you plainly," cried he, sitting
down and looking out across the courtyard through an opening he made
in the puckered curtain. "There is a very pretty woman in the
house----"
"Madame Marneffe! Now I understand!" she exclaimed, seeing it all.
"But Josepha?"
"Alas, Cousin, Josepha is no more. I was turned out of doors like a
discarded footman."
"And you would like . . .?" said Lisbeth, looking at the Baron with
the dignity of a prude on her guard a quarter of an hour too soon.
"As Madame Marneffe is very much the lady, and the wife of an employe,
you can meet her without compromising yourself," the Baron went on,
"and I should like to see you neighborly. Oh! you need not be alarmed;
she will have the greatest consideration for the cousin of her
husband's chief."
At this moment the rustle of a gown was heard on the stairs and the
footstep of a woman wearing the thinnest boots. The sound ceased on
the landing. There was a tap at the door, and Madame Marneffe came in.
"Pray excuse me, mademoiselle, for thus intruding upon you, but I
failed to find you yesterday when I came to call; we are near
neighbors; and if I had known that you were related to Monsieur le
Baron, I should long since have craved your kind interest with him. I
saw him come in, so I took the liberty of coming across; for my
husband, Monsieur le Baron, spoke to me of a report on the office
clerks which is to be laid before the minister to-morrow."
She seemed quite agitated and nervous--but she had only run upstairs.
"You have no need to play the petitioner, fair lady," replied the
Baron. "It is I who should ask the favor of seeing you."
"Very well, if mademoiselle allows it, pray come!" said Madame
Marneffe.
"Yes--go, Cousin, I will join you," said Lisbeth judiciously.
The Parisienne had so confidently counted on the chief's visit and
intelligence, that not only had she dressed herself for so important
an interview--she had dressed her room. Early in the day it had been
furnished with flowers purchased on credit. Marneffe had helped his
wife to polish the furniture, down to the smallest objects, washing,
brushing, and dusting everything. Valerie wished to be found in an
atmosphere of sweetness, to attract the chief and to please him enough
to have a right to be cruel; to tantalize him as a child would, with
all the tricks of fashionable tactics. She had gauged Hulot. Give a
Paris woman at bay four-and-twenty hours, and she will overthrow a
ministry.
The man of the Empire, accustomed to the ways to the Empire, was no
doubt quite ignorant of the ways of modern love-making, of the
scruples in vogue and the various styles of conversation invented
since 1830, which led to the poor weak woman being regarded as the
victim of her lover's desires--a Sister of Charity salving a wound, an
angel sacrificing herself.
This modern art of love uses a vast amount of evangelical phrases in
the service of the Devil. Passion is martyrdom. Both parties aspire to
the Ideal, to the Infinite; love is to make them so much better. All
these fine words are but a pretext for putting increased ardor into
the practical side of it, more frenzy into a fall than of old. This
hypocrisy, a characteristic of the times, is a gangrene in gallantry.
The lovers are both angels, and they behave, if they can, like two
devils.
Love had no time for such subtle analysis between two campaigns, and
in 1809 its successes were as rapid as those of the Empire. So, under
the Restoration, the handsome Baron, a lady's man once more, had begun
by consoling some old friends now fallen from the political firmament,
like extinguished stars, and then, as he grew old, was captured by
Jenny Cadine and Josepha.
Madame Marneffe had placed her batteries after due study of the
Baron's past life, which her husband had narrated in much detail,
after picking up some information in the offices. The comedy of modern
sentiment might have the charm of novelty to the Baron; Valerie had
made up her mind as to her scheme; and we may say the trial of her
power that she made this morning answered her highest expectations.
Thanks to her manoeuvres, sentimental, high-flown, and romantic,
Valerie, without committing herself to any promises, obtained for her
husband the appointment as deputy head of the office and the Cross of
the Legion of Honor.
The campaign was not carried out without little dinners at the _Rocher
de Cancale_, parties to the play, and gifts in the form of lace,
scarves, gowns, and jewelry. The apartment in the Rue du Doyenne was
not satisfactory; the Baron proposed to furnish another magnificently
in a charming new house in the Rue Vanneau.
Monsieur Marneffe got a fortnight's leave, to be taken a month hence
for urgent private affairs in the country, and a present in money; he
promised himself that he would spend both in a little town in
Switzerland, studying the fair sex.
While Monsieur Hulot thus devoted himself to the lady he was
"protecting," he did not forget the young artist. Comte Popinot,
Minister of Commerce, was a patron of Art; he paid two thousand francs
for a copy of the _Samson_ on condition that the mould should be
broken, and that there should be no _Samson_ but his and Mademoiselle
Hulot's. The group was admired by a Prince, to whom the model sketch
for the clock was also shown, and who ordered it; but that again was
to be unique, and he offered thirty thousand francs for it.
Artists who were consulted, and among them Stidmann, were of opinion
that the man who had sketched those two models was capable of
achieving a statue. The Marshal Prince de Wissembourg, Minister of
War, and President of the Committee for the subscriptions to the
monument of Marshal Montcornet, called a meeting, at which it was
decided that the execution of the work should be placed in Steinbock's
hands. The Comte de Rastignac, at that time Under-secretary of State,
wished to possess a work by the artist, whose glory was waxing amid
the acclamations of his rivals. Steinbock sold to him the charming
group of two little boys crowning a little girl, and he promised to
secure for the sculptor a studio attached to the Government
marble-quarries, situated, as all the world knows, at Le Gros-Caillou.
This was a success, such success as is won in Paris, that is to say,
stupendous success, that crushes those whose shoulders and loins are
not strong enough to bear it--as, be it said, not unfrequently is the
case. Count Wenceslas Steinbock was written about in all the
newspapers and reviews without his having the least suspicion of it,
any more than had Mademoiselle Fischer. Every day, as soon as Lisbeth
had gone out to dinner, Wenceslas went to the Baroness' and spent an
hour or two there, excepting on the evenings when Lisbeth dined with
the Hulots.
This state of things lasted for several days.
The Baron, assured of Count Steinbock's titles and position; the
Baroness, pleased with his character and habits; Hortense, proud of
her permitted love and of her suitor's fame, none of them hesitated to
speak of the marriage; in short, the artist was in the seventh heaven,
when an indiscretion on Madame Marneffe's part spoilt all.
And this was how.
Lisbeth, whom the Baron wished to see intimate with Madame Marneffe,
that she might keep an eye on the couple, had already dined with
Valerie; and she, on her part, anxious to have an ear in the Hulot
house, made much of the old maid. It occurred to Valerie to invite
Mademoiselle Fischer to a house-warming in the new apartments she was
about to move into. Lisbeth, glad to have found another house to dine
in, and bewitched by Madame Marneffe, had taken a great fancy to
Valerie. Of all the persons she had made acquaintance with, no one had
taken so much pains to please her. In fact, Madame Marneffe, full of
attentions for Mademoiselle Fischer, found herself in the position
towards Lisbeth that Lisbeth held towards the Baroness, Monsieur
Rivet, Crevel, and the others who invited her to dinner.
The Marneffes had excited Lisbeth's compassion by allowing her to see
the extreme poverty of the house, while varnishing it as usual with
the fairest colors; their friends were under obligations to them and
ungrateful; they had had much illness; Madame Fortin, her mother, had
never known of their distress, and had died believing herself wealthy
to the end, thanks to their superhuman efforts--and so forth.
"Poor people!" said she to her Cousin Hulot, "you are right to do what
you can for them; they are so brave and so kind! They can hardly live
on the thousand crowns he gets as deputy-head of the office, for they
have got into debt since Marshal Montcornet's death. It is barbarity
on the part of the Government to suppose that a clerk with a wife and
family can live in Paris on two thousand four hundred francs a year."
And so, within a very short time, a young woman who affected regard
for her, who told her everything, and consulted her, who flattered
her, and seemed ready to yield to her guidance, had become dearer to
the eccentric Cousin Lisbeth than all her relations.
The Baron, on his part, admiring in Madame Marneffe such propriety,
education, and breeding as neither Jenny Cadine nor Josepha, nor any
friend of theirs had to show, had fallen in love with her in a month,
developing a senile passion, a senseless passion, which had an
appearance of reason. In fact, he found here neither the banter, nor
the orgies, nor the reckless expenditure, nor the depravity, nor the
scorn of social decencies, nor the insolent independence which had
brought him to grief alike with the actress and the singer. He was
spared, too, the rapacity of the courtesan, like unto the thirst of
dry sand.
Madame Marneffe, of whom he had made a friend and confidante, made the
greatest difficulties over accepting any gift from him.
"Appointments, official presents, anything you can extract from the
Government; but do not begin by insulting a woman whom you profess to
love," said Valerie. "If you do, I shall cease to believe you--and I
like to believe you," she added, with a glance like Saint Theresa
leering at heaven.
Every time he made her a present there was a fortress to be stormed, a
conscience to be over-persuaded. The hapless Baron laid deep
stratagems to offer her some trifle--costly, nevertheless--proud of
having at last met with virtue and the realization of his dreams. In
this primitive household, as he assured himself, he was the god as
much as in his own. And Monsieur Marneffe seemed at a thousand leagues
from suspecting that the Jupiter of his office intended to descend on
his wife in a shower of gold; he was his august chief's humblest
slave.
Madame Marneffe, twenty-three years of age, a pure and bashful
middle-class wife, a blossom hidden in the Rue du Doyenne, could know
nothing of the depravity and demoralizing harlotry which the Baron
could no longer think of without disgust, for he had never known the
charm of recalcitrant virtue, and the coy Valerie made him enjoy it to
the utmost--all along the line, as the saying goes.
The question having come to this point between Hector and Valerie, it
is not astonishing that Valerie should have heard from Hector the
secret of the intended marriage between the great sculptor Steinbock
and Hortense Hulot. Between a lover on his promotion and a lady who
hesitates long before becoming his mistress, there are contests,
uttered or unexpressed, in which a word often betrays a thought; as,
in fencing, the foils fly as briskly as the swords in duel. Then a
prudent man follows the example of Monsieur de Turenne. Thus the Baron
had hinted at the greater freedom his daughter's marriage would allow
him, in reply to the tender Valerie, who more than once had exclaimed:
"I cannot imagine how a woman can go wrong for a man who is not wholly
hers."
And a thousand times already the Baron had declared that for
five-and-twenty years all had been at an end between Madame Hulot and
himself.
"And they say she is so handsome!" replied Madame Marneffe. "I want
proof."
"You shall have it," said the Baron, made happy by this demand, by
which his Valerie committed herself.
Hector had then been compelled to reveal his plans, already being
carried into effect in the Rue Vanneau, to prove to Valerie that he
intended to devote to her that half of his life which belonged to his
lawful wife, supposing that day and night equally divide the existence
of civilized humanity. He spoke of decently deserting his wife,
leaving her to herself as soon as Hortense should be married. The
Baroness would then spend all her time with Hortense or the young
Hulot couple; he was sure of her submission.
"And then, my angel, my true life, my real home will be in the Rue
Vanneau."
"Bless me, how you dispose of me!" said Madame Marneffe. "And my
husband----"
"That rag!"
"To be sure, as compared with you so he is!" said she with a laugh.
Madame Marneffe, having heard Steinbock's history, was frantically
eager to see the young Count; perhaps she wished to have some trifle
of his work while they still lived under the same roof. This curiosity
so seriously annoyed the Baron that Valerie swore to him that she
would never even look at Wenceslas. But though she obtained, as the
reward of her surrender of this wish, a little tea-service of old
Sevres _pate tendre_, she kept her wish at the bottom of her heart, as
if written on tablets.
So one day when she had begged "_my_ Cousin Betty" to come to take
coffee with her in her room, she opened on the subject of her lover,
to know how she might see him without risk.
"My dear child," said she, for they called each my dear, "why have you
never introduced your lover to me? Do you know that within a short
time he has become famous?"
"He famous?"
"He is the one subject of conversation."
"Pooh!" cried Lisbeth.
"He is going to execute the statue of my father, and I could be of
great use to him and help him to succeed in the work; for Madame
Montcornet cannot lend him, as I can, a miniature by Sain, a beautiful
thing done in 1809, before the Wagram Campaign, and given to my poor
mother--Montcornet when he was young and handsome."
Sain and Augustin between them held the sceptre of miniature painting
under the Empire.
"He is going to make a statue, my dear, did you say?"
"Nine feet high--by the orders of the Minister of War. Why, where have
you dropped from that I should tell you the news? Why, the Government
is going to give Count Steinbock rooms and a studio at Le
Gros-Caillou, the depot for marble; your Pole will be made the Director,
I should not wonder, with two thousand francs a year and a ring on his
finger."
"How do you know all this when I have heard nothing about it?" said
Lisbeth at last, shaking off her amazement.
"Now, my dear little Cousin Betty," said Madame Marneffe, in an
insinuating voice, "are you capable of devoted friendship, put to any
test? Shall we henceforth be sisters? Will you swear to me never to
have a secret from me any more than I from you--to act as my spy, as I
will be yours?--Above all, will you pledge yourself never to betray me
either to my husband or to Monsieur Hulot, and never reveal that it
was I who told you----?"
Madame Marneffe broke off in this spurring harangue; Lisbeth
frightened her. The peasant-woman's face was terrible; her piercing
black eyes had the glare of the tiger's; her face was like that we
ascribe to a pythoness; she set her teeth to keep them from
chattering, and her whole frame quivered convulsively. She had pushed
her clenched fingers under her cap to clutch her hair and support her
head, which felt too heavy; she was on fire. The smoke of the flame
that scorched her seemed to emanate from her wrinkles as from the
crevasses rent by a volcanic eruption. It was a startling spectacle.
"Well, why do you stop?" she asked in a hollow voice. "I will be all
to you that I have been to him.--Oh, I would have given him my
life-blood!"
"You loved him then?"
"Like a child of my own!"
"Well, then," said Madame Marneffe, with a breath of relief, "if you
only love him in that way, you will be very happy--for you wish him to
be happy?"
Lisbeth replied by a nod as hasty as a madwoman's.
"He is to marry your Cousin Hortense in a month's time."
"Hortense!" shrieked the old maid, striking her forehead, and starting
to her feet.
"Well, but then you were really in love with this young man?" asked
Valerie.
"My dear, we are bound for life and death, you and I," said
Mademoiselle Fischer. "Yes, if you have any love affairs, to me they
are sacred. Your vices will be virtues in my eyes.--For I shall need
your vices!"
"Then did you live with him?" asked Valerie.
"No; I meant to be a mother to him."
"I give it up. I cannot understand," said Valerie. "In that case you
are neither betrayed nor cheated, and you ought to be very happy to
see him so well married; he is now fairly afloat. And, at any rate,
your day is over. Our artist goes to Madame Hulot's every evening as
soon as you go out to dinner."
"Adeline!" muttered Lisbeth. "Oh, Adeline, you shall pay for this! I
will make you uglier than I am."
"You are as pale as death!" exclaimed Valerie. "There is something
wrong?--Oh, what a fool I am! The mother and daughter must have
suspected that you would raise some obstacles in the way of this
affair since they have kept it from you," said Madame Marneffe. "But
if you did not live with the young man, my dear, all this is a greater
puzzle to me than my husband's feelings----"
"Ah, you don't know," said Lisbeth; "you have no idea of all their
tricks. It is the last blow that kills. And how many such blows have I
had to bruise my soul! You don't know that from the time when I could
first feel, I have been victimized for Adeline. I was beaten, and she
was petted; I was dressed like a scullion, and she had clothes like a
lady's; I dug in the garden and cleaned the vegetables, and she--she
never lifted a finger for anything but to make up some finery!--She
married the Baron, she came to shine at the Emperor's Court, while I
stayed in our village till 1809, waiting for four years for a suitable
match; they brought me away, to be sure, but only to make me a
work-woman, and to offer me clerks or captains like coalheavers for a
husband! I have had their leavings for twenty-six years!--And now like
the story in the Old Testament, the poor relation has one ewe-lamb
which is all her joy, and the rich man who has flocks covets the
ewe-lamb and steals it--without warning, without asking. Adeline has
meanly robbed me of my happiness!--Adeline! Adeline! I will see you in
the mire, and sunk lower than myself!--And Hortense--I loved her, and
she has cheated me. The Baron.--No, it is impossible. Tell me again
what is really true of all this."
"Be calm, my dear child."
"Valerie, my darling, I will be calm," said the strange creature,
sitting down again. "One thing only can restore me to reason; give me
proofs."
"Your Cousin Hortense has the _Samson_ group--here is a lithograph
from it published in a review. She paid for it out of her
pocket-money, and it is the Baron who, to benefit his future
son-in-law, is pushing him, getting everything for him."