to understand that Lisbeth had spoken of the matter, and I should have
the money. Between Hortense's despair on one hand, and the dinner on
the other, I could not hesitate.--That is all.
"What! could Hortense, at four-and-twenty, lovely, pure, and virtuous,
and all my pride and glory, imagine that, when I have never left her
since we married, I could now prefer--what?--a tawny, painted, ruddled
creature?" said he, using the vulgar exaggeration of the studio to
convince his wife by the vehemence that women like.
"Oh! if only your father had ever spoken so----!" cried the Baroness.
Hortense threw her arms round her husband's neck.
"Yes, that is what I should have done," said her mother. "Wenceslas,
my dear fellow, your wife was near dying of it," she went on very
seriously. "You see how well she loves you. And, alas--she is yours!"
She sighed deeply.
"He may make a martyr of her, or a happy woman," thought she to
herself, as every mother thinks when she sees her daughter married.
--"It seems to me," she said aloud, "that I am miserable enough to
hope to see my children happy."
"Be quite easy, dear mamma," said Wenceslas, only too glad to see this
critical moment end happily. "In two months I shall have repaid that
dreadful woman. How could I help it," he went on, repeating this
essentially Polish excuse with a Pole's grace; "there are times when a
man would borrow of the Devil.--And, after all, the money belongs to
the family. When once she had invited me, should I have got the money
at all if I had responded to her civility with a rude refusal?"
"Oh, mamma, what mischief papa is bringing on us!" cried Hortense.
The Baroness laid her finger on her daughter's lips, aggrieved by this
complaint, the first blame she had ever uttered of a father so
heroically screened by her mother's magnanimous silence.
"Now, good-bye, my children," said Madame Hulot. "The storm is over.
But do not quarrel any more."
When Wenceslas and his wife returned to their room after letting out
the Baroness, Hortense said to her husband:
"Tell me all about last evening."
And she watched his face all through the narrative, interrupting him
by the questions that crowd on a wife's mind in such circumstances.
The story made Hortense reflect; she had a glimpse of the infernal
dissipation which an artist must find in such vicious company.
"Be honest, my Wenceslas; Stidmann was there, Claude Vignon,
Vernisset.--Who else? In short, it was good fun?"
"I, I was thinking of nothing but our ten thousand francs, and I was
saying to myself, 'My Hortense will be freed from anxiety.'"
This catechism bored the Livonian excessively; he seized a gayer
moment to say:
"And you, my dearest, what would you have done if your artist had
proved guilty?"
"I," said she, with an air of prompt decision, "I should have taken up
Stidmann--not that I love him, of course!"
"Hortense!" cried Steinbock, starting to his feet with a sudden and
theatrical emphasis. "You would not have had the chance--I would have
killed you!"
Hortense threw herself into his arms, clasping him closely enough to
stifle him, and covered him with kisses, saying:
"Ah, you do love me! I fear nothing!--But no more Marneffe. Never go
plunging into such horrible bogs."
"I swear to you, my dear Hortense, that I will go there no more,
excepting to redeem my note of hand."
She pouted at this, but only as a loving woman sulks to get something
for it. Wenceslas, tired out with such a morning's work, went off to
his studio to make a clay sketch of the _Samson and Delilah_, for
which he had the drawings in his pocket.
Hortense, penitent for her little temper, and fancying that her
husband was annoyed with her, went to the studio just as the sculptor
had finished handling the clay with the impetuosity that spurs an
artist when the mood is on him. On seeing his wife, Wenceslas hastily
threw the wet wrapper over the group, and putting both arms round her,
he said:
"We were not really angry, were we, my pretty puss?"
Hortense had caught sight of the group, had seen the linen thrown over
it, and had said nothing; but as she was leaving, she took off the
rag, looked at the model, and asked:
"What is that?"
"A group for which I had just had an idea."
"And why did you hide it?"
"I did not mean you to see it till it was finished."
"The woman is very pretty," said Hortense.
And a thousand suspicions cropped up in her mind, as, in India, tall,
rank plants spring up in a night-time.
By the end of three weeks, Madame Marneffe was intensely irritated by
Hortense. Women of that stamp have a pride of their own; they insist
that men shall kiss the devil's hoof; they have no forgiveness for the
virtue that does not quail before their dominion, or that even holds
its own against them. Now, in all that time Wenceslas had not paid one
visit in the Rue Vanneau, not even that which politeness required to a
woman who had sat for Delilah.
Whenever Lisbeth called on the Steinbocks, there had been nobody at
home. Monsieur and madame lived in the studio. Lisbeth, following the
turtle doves to their nest at le Gros-Caillou, found Wenceslas hard at
work, and was informed by the cook that madame never left monsieur's
side. Wenceslas was a slave to the autocracy of love. So now Valerie,
on her own account, took part with Lisbeth in her hatred of Hortense.
Women cling to a lover that another woman is fighting for, just as
much as men do to women round whom many coxcombs are buzzing. Thus any
reflections _a propos_ to Madame Marneffe are equally applicable to
any lady-killing rake; he is, in fact, a sort of male courtesan.
Valerie's last fancy was a madness; above all, she was bent on getting
her group; she was even thinking of going one morning to the studio to
see Wenceslas, when a serious incident arose of the kind which, to a
woman of that class, may be called the spoil of war.
This is how Valerie announced this wholly personal event.
She was breakfasting with Lisbeth and her husband.
"I say, Marneffe, what would you say to being a second time a father?"
"You don't mean it--a baby?--Oh, let me kiss you!"
He rose and went round the table; his wife held up her head so that he
could just kiss her hair.
"If that is so," he went on, "I am head-clerk and officer of the
Legion of Honor at once. But you must understand, my dear, Stanislas
is not to be the sufferer, poor little man."
"Poor little man?" Lisbeth put in. "You have not set your eyes on him
these seven months. I am supposed to be his mother at the school; I am
the only person in the house who takes any trouble about him."
"A brat that costs us a hundred crowns a quarter!" said Valerie. "And
he, at any rate, is your own child, Marneffe. You ought to pay for his
schooling out of your salary.--The newcomer, far from reminding us of
butcher's bills, will rescue us from want."
"Valerie," replied Marneffe, assuming an attitude like Crevel, "I hope
that Monsieur le Baron Hulot will take proper charge of his son, and
not lay the burden on a poor clerk. I intend to keep him well up to
the mark. So take the necessary steps, madame! Get him to write you
letters in which he alludes to his satisfaction, for he is rather
backward in coming forward in regard to my appointment."
And Marneffe went away to the office, where his chief's precious
leniency allowed him to come in at about eleven o'clock. And, indeed,
he did little enough, for his incapacity was notorious, and he
detested work.
No sooner were they alone than Lisbeth and Valerie looked at each
other for a moment like Augurs, and both together burst into a loud
fit of laughter.
"I say, Valerie--is it the fact?" said Lisbeth, "or merely a farce?"
"It is a physical fact!" replied Valerie. "Now, I am sick and tired of
Hortense; and it occurred to me in the night that I might fire this
infant, like a bomb, into the Steinbock household."
Valerie went back to her room, followed by Lisbeth, to whom she showed
the following letter:--
"WENCESLAS MY DEAR,--I still believe in your love, though it is
nearly three weeks since I saw you. Is this scorn? Delilah can
scarcely believe that. Does it not rather result from the tyranny
of a woman whom, as you told me, you can no longer love?
Wenceslas, you are too great an artist to submit to such dominion.
Home is the grave of glory.--Consider now, are you the Wenceslas
of the Rue du Doyenne? You missed fire with my father's statue;
but in you the lover is greater than the artist, and you have had
better luck with his daughter. You are a father, my beloved
Wenceslas.
"If you do not come to me in the state I am in, your friends would
think very badly of you. But I love you so madly, that I feel I
should never have the strength to curse you. May I sign myself as
ever,
"YOUR VALERIE."
"What do you say to my scheme for sending this note to the studio at a
time when our dear Hortense is there by herself?" asked Valerie. "Last
evening I heard from Stidmann that Wenceslas is to pick him up at
eleven this morning to go on business to Chanor's; so that gawk
Hortense will be there alone."
"But after such a trick as that," replied Lisbeth, "I cannot continue
to be your friend in the eyes of the world; I shall have to break with
you, to be supposed never to visit you, or even to speak to you."
"Evidently," said Valerie; "but--"
"Oh! be quite easy," interrupted Lisbeth; "we shall often meet when I
am Madame la Marechale. They are all set upon it now. Only the Baron
is in ignorance of the plan, but you can talk him over."
"Well," said Valerie, "but it is quite likely that the Baron and I may
be on distant terms before long."
"Madame Olivier is the only person who can make Hortense demand to see
the letter," said Lisbeth. "And you must send her to the Rue
Saint-Dominique before she goes on to the studio."
"Our beauty will be at home, no doubt," said Valerie, ringing for
Reine to call up Madame Olivier.
Ten minutes after the despatch of this fateful letter, Baron Hulot
arrived. Madame Marneffe threw her arms round the old man's neck with
kittenish impetuosity.
"Hector, you are a father!" she said in his ear. "That is what comes
of quarreling and making friends again----"
Perceiving a look of surprise, which the Baron did not at once
conceal, Valerie assumed a reserve which brought the old man to
despair. She made him wring the proofs from her one by one. When
conviction, led on by vanity, had at last entered his mind, she
enlarged on Monsieur Marneffe's wrath.
"My dear old veteran," said she, "you can hardly avoid getting your
responsible editor, our representative partner if you like, appointed
head-clerk and officer of the Legion of Honor, for you really have
done for the poor man, he adores his Stanislas, the little monstrosity
who is so like him, that to me he is insufferable. Unless you prefer
to settle twelve hundred francs a year on Stanislas--the capital to be
his, and the life-interest payable to me, of course--"
"But if I am to settle securities, I would rather it should be on my
own son, and not on the monstrosity," said the Baron.
This rash speech, in which the words "my own son" came out as full as
a river in flood, was, by the end of the hour, ratified as a formal
promise to settle twelve hundred francs a year on the future boy. And
this promise became, on Valerie's tongue and in her countenance, what
a drum is in the hands of a child; for three weeks she played on it
incessantly.
At the moment when Baron Hulot was leaving the Rue Vanneau, as happy
as a man who after a year of married life still desires an heir,
Madame Olivier had yielded to Hortense, and given up the note she was
instructed to give only into the Count's own hands. The young wife
paid twenty francs for that letter. The wretch who commits suicide
must pay for the opium, the pistol, the charcoal.
Hortense read and re-read the note; she saw nothing but this sheet of
white paper streaked with black lines; the universe held for her
nothing but that paper; everything was dark around her. The glare of
the conflagration that was consuming the edifice of her happiness
lighted up the page, for blackest night enfolded her. The shouts of
her little Wenceslas at play fell on her ear, as if he had been in the
depths of a valley and she on a high mountain. Thus insulted at
four-and-twenty, in all the splendor of her beauty, enhanced by pure
and devoted love--it was not a stab, it was death. The first shock had
been merely on the nerves, the physical frame had struggled in the
grip of jealousy; but now certainty had seized her soul, her body was
unconscious.
For about ten minutes Hortense sat under the incubus of this
oppression. Then a vision of her mother appeared before her, and
revulsion ensued; she was calm and cool, and mistress of her reason.
She rang.
"Get Louise to help you, child," said she to the cook. "As quickly as
you can, pack up everything that belongs to me and everything wanted
for the little boy. I give you an hour. When all is ready, fetch a
hackney coach from the stand, and call me.
"Make no remarks! I am leaving the house, and shall take Louise with
me. You must stay here with monsieur; take good care of him----"
She went into her room, and wrote the following letter:--
"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,--
"The letter I enclose will sufficiently account for the
determination I have come to.
"When you read this, I shall have left your house and have found
refuge with my mother, taking our child with me.
"Do not imagine that I shall retrace my steps. Do not imagine that
I am acting with the rash haste of youth, without reflection, with
the anger of offended affection; you will be greatly mistaken.
"I have been thinking very deeply during the last fortnight of
life, of love, of our marriage, of our duties to each other. I
have known the perfect devotion of my mother; she has told me all
her sorrows! She has been heroical--every day for twenty-three
years. But I have not the strength to imitate her, not because I
love you less than she loves my father, but for reasons of spirit
and nature. Our home would be a hell; I might lose my head so far
as to disgrace you--disgrace myself and our child.
"I refuse to be a Madame Marneffe; once launched on such a course,
a woman of my temper might not, perhaps, be able to stop. I am,
unfortunately for myself, a Hulot, not a Fischer.
"Alone, and absent from the scene of your dissipations, I am sure
of myself, especially with my child to occupy me, and by the side
of a strong and noble mother, whose life cannot fail to influence
the vehement impetuousness of my feelings. There, I can be a good
mother, bring our boy up well, and live. Under your roof the wife
would oust the mother; and constant contention would sour my
temper.
"I can accept a death-blow, but I will not endure for
twenty-five years, like my mother. If, at the end of three years of
perfect, unwavering love, you can be unfaithful to me with your
father-in-law's mistress, what rivals may I expect to have in later
years? Indeed, monsieur, you have begun your career of profligacy
much earlier than my father did, the life of dissipation, which is
a disgrace to the father of a family, which undermines the respect
of his children, and which ends in shame and despair.
"I am not unforgiving. Unrelenting feelings do not beseem erring
creatures living under the eye of God. If you win fame and fortune
by sustained work, if you have nothing to do with courtesans and
ignoble, defiling ways, you will find me still a wife worthy of
you.
"I believe you to be too much a gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, to
have recourse to the law. You will respect my wishes, and leave me
under my mother's roof. Above all, never let me see you there. I
have left all the money lent to you by that odious woman.--
Farewell.
"HORTENSE HULOT."
This letter was written in anguish. Hortense abandoned herself to the
tears, the outcries of murdered love. She laid down her pen and took
it up again, to express as simply as possible all that passion
commonly proclaims in this sort of testamentary letter. Her heart went
forth in exclamations, wailing and weeping; but reason dictated the
words.
Informed by Louise that all was ready, the young wife slowly went
round the little garden, through the bedroom and drawing-room, looking
at everything for the last time. Then she earnestly enjoined the cook
to take the greatest care for her master's comfort, promising to
reward her handsomely if she would be honest. At last she got into the
hackney coach to drive to her mother's house, her heart quite broken,
crying so much as to distress the maid, and covering little Wenceslas
with kisses, which betrayed her still unfailing love for his father.
The Baroness knew already from Lisbeth that the father-in-law was
largely to blame for the son-in-law's fault; nor was she surprised to
see her daughter, whose conduct she approved, and she consented to
give her shelter. Adeline, perceiving that her own gentleness and
patience had never checked Hector, for whom her respect was indeed
fast diminishing, thought her daughter very right to adopt another
course.
In three weeks the poor mother had suffered two wounds of which the
pain was greater than any ill-fortune she had hitherto endured. The
Baron had placed Victorin and his wife in great difficulties; and
then, by Lisbeth's account, he was the cause of his son-in-law's
misconduct, and had corrupted Wenceslas. The dignity of the father of
the family, so long upheld by her really foolish self-sacrifice, was
now overthrown. Though they did not regret the money the young Hulots
were full alike of doubts and uneasiness as regarded the Baron. This
sentiment, which was evidence enough, distressed the Baroness; she
foresaw a break-up of the family tie.
Hortense was accommodated in the dining-room, arranged as a bedroom
with the help of the Marshal's money, and the anteroom became the
dining-room, as it is in many apartments.
When Wenceslas returned home and had read the two letters, he felt a
kind of gladness mingled with regret. Kept so constantly under his
wife's eye, so to speak, he had inwardly rebelled against this fresh
thraldom, _a la_ Lisbeth. Full fed with love for three years past, he
too had been reflecting during the last fortnight; and he found a
family heavy on his hands. He had just been congratulated by Stidmann
on the passion he had inspired in Valerie; for Stidmann, with an
under-thought that was not unnatural, saw that he might flatter the
husband's vanity in the hope of consoling the victim. And Wenceslas
was glad to be able to return to Madame Marneffe.
Still, he remembered the pure and unsullied happiness he had known,
the perfections of his wife, her judgment, her innocent and guileless
affection,--and he regretted her acutely. He thought of going at once
to his mother-in-law's to crave forgiveness; but, in fact, like Hulot
and Crevel, he went to Madame Marneffe, to whom he carried his wife's
letter to show her what a disaster she had caused, and to discount his
misfortune, so to speak, by claiming in return the pleasures his
mistress could give him.
He found Crevel with Valerie. The mayor, puffed up with pride, marched
up and down the room, agitated by a storm of feelings. He put himself
into position as if he were about to speak, but he dared not. His
countenance was beaming, and he went now and again to the window,
where he drummed on the pane with his fingers. He kept looking at
Valerie with a glance of tender pathos. Happily for him, Lisbeth
presently came in.
"Cousin Betty," he said in her ear, "have you heard the news? I am a
father! It seems to me I love my poor Celestine the less.--Oh! what a
thing it is to have a child by the woman one idolizes! It is the
fatherhood of the heart added to that of the flesh! I say--tell
Valerie that I will work for that child--it shall be rich. She tells
me she has some reason for believing that it will be a boy! If it is a
boy, I shall insist on his being called Crevel. I will consult my
notary about it."
"I know how much she loves you," said Lisbeth. "But for her sake in
the future, and for your own, control yourself. Do not rub your hands
every five minutes."
While Lisbeth was speaking aside on this wise to Crevel, Valerie had
asked Wenceslas to give her back her letter, and she was saying things
that dispelled all his griefs.
"So now you are free, my dear," said she. "Ought any great artist to
marry? You live only by fancy and freedom! There, I shall love you so
much, beloved poet, that you shall never regret your wife. At the same
time, if, like so many people, you want to keep up appearances, I
undertake to bring Hortense back to you in a very short time."
"Oh, if only that were possible!"
"I am certain of it," said Valerie, nettled. "Your poor father-in-law
is a man who is in every way utterly done for; who wants to appear as
though he could be loved, out of conceit, and to make the world
believe that he has a mistress; and he is so excessively vain on this
point, that I can do what I please with him. The Baroness is still so
devoted to her old Hector--I always feel as if I were talking of the
_Iliad_--that these two old folks will contrive to patch up matters
between you and Hortense. Only, if you want to avoid storms at home
for the future, do not leave me for three weeks without coming to see
your mistress--I was dying of it. My dear boy, some consideration is
due from a gentleman to a woman he has so deeply compromised,
especially when, as in my case, she has to be very careful of her
reputation.
"Stay to dinner, my darling--and remember that I must treat you with
all the more apparent coldness because you are guilty of this too
obvious mishap."
Baron Montes was presently announced; Valerie rose and hurried forward
to meet him; she spoke a few sentences in his ear, enjoining on him
the same reserve as she had impressed on Wenceslas; the Brazilian
assumed a diplomatic reticence suitable to the great news which filled
him with delight, for he, at any rate was sure of his paternity.
Thanks to these tactics, based on the vanity of the man in the lover
stage of his existence, Valerie sat down to table with four men, all
pleased and eager to please, all charmed, and each believing himself
adored; called by Marneffe, who included himself, in speaking to
Lisbeth, the five Fathers of the Church.
Baron Hulot alone at first showed an anxious countenance, and this was
why. Just as he was leaving the office, the head of the staff of
clerks had come to his private room--a General with whom he had served
for thirty years--and Hulot had spoken to him as to appointing
Marneffe to Coquet's place, Coquet having consented to retire.
"My dear fellow," said he, "I would not ask this favor of the Prince
without our having agreed on the matter, and knowing that you
approved."
"My good friend," replied the other, "you must allow me to observe
that, for your own sake, you should not insist on this nomination. I
have already told you my opinion. There would be a scandal in the
office, where there is a great deal too much talk already about you
and Madame Marneffe. This, of course, is between ourselves. I have no
wish to touch you on a sensitive spot, or disoblige you in any way,
and I will prove it. If you are determined to get Monsieur Coquet's
place, and he will really be a loss in the War Office, for he has been
here since 1809, I will go into the country for a fortnight, so as to
leave the field open between you and the Marshal, who loves you as a
son. Then I shall take neither part, and shall have nothing on my
conscience as an administrator."
"Thank you very much," said Hulot. "I will reflect on what you have
said."
"In allowing myself to say so much, my dear friend, it is because your
personal interest is far more deeply implicated than any concern or
vanity of mine. In the first place, the matter lies entirely with the
Marshal. And then, my good fellow, we are blamed for so many things,
that one more or less! We are not at the maiden stage in our
experience of fault-finding. Under the Restoration, men were put in
simply to give them places, without any regard for the office.--We are
old friends----"
"Yes," the Baron put in; "and it is in order not to impair our old and
valued friendship that I--"