Steinbock, under which were the words, "The property of Madame
Marneffe."
The very first lines of the article, signed V., showed the talent and
friendliness of Claude Vignon.
"Poor child!" said the Baroness.
Alarmed by her mother's tone of indifference, Hortense looked up, saw
the expression of a sorrow before which her own paled, and rose to
kiss her mother, saying:
"What is the matter, mamma? What is happening? Can we be more wretched
than we are already?"
"My child, it seems to me that in what I am going through to-day my
past dreadful sorrows are as nothing. When shall I have ceased to
suffer?"
"In heaven, mother," said Hortense solemnly.
"Come, my angel, help me to dress.--No, no; I will not have you help
me in this! Send me Louise."
Adeline, in her room, went to study herself in the glass. She looked
at herself closely and sadly, wondering to herself:
"Am I still handsome? Can I still be desirable? Am I not wrinkled?"
She lifted up her fine golden hair, uncovering her temples; they were
as fresh as a girl's. She went further; she uncovered her shoulders,
and was satisfied; nay, she had a little feeling of pride. The beauty
of really handsome shoulders is one of the last charms a woman loses,
especially if she has lived chastely.
Adeline chose her dress carefully, but the pious and blameless woman
is decent to the end, in spite of her little coquettish graces. Of
what use were brand-new gray silk stockings and high heeled satin
shoes when she was absolutely ignorant of the art of displaying a
pretty foot at a critical moment, by obtruding it an inch or two
beyond a half-lifted skirt, opening horizons to desire? She put on,
indeed, her prettiest flowered muslin dress, with a low body and short
sleeves; but horrified at so much bareness, she covered her fine arms
with clear gauze sleeves and hid her shoulders under an embroidered
cape. Her curls, _a l'Anglaise_, struck her as too fly-away; she
subdued their airy lightness by putting on a very pretty cap; but,
with or without the cap, would she have known how to twist the golden
ringlets so as to show off her taper fingers to admiration?
As to rouge--the consciousness of guilt, the preparations for a
deliberate fall, threw this saintly woman into a state of high fever,
which, for the time, revived the brilliant coloring of youth. Her eyes
were bright, her cheeks glowed. Instead of assuming a seductive air,
she saw in herself a look of barefaced audacity which shocked her.
Lisbeth, at Adeline's request, had told her all the circumstances of
Wenceslas' infidelity; and the Baroness had learned to her utter
amazement, that in one evening in one moment, Madame Marneffe had made
herself the mistress of the bewitched artist.
"How do these women do it?" the Baroness had asked Lisbeth.
There is no curiosity so great as that of virtuous women on such
subjects; they would like to know the arts of vice and remain
immaculate.
"Why, they are seductive; it is their business," said Cousin Betty.
"Valerie that evening, my dear, was, I declare, enough to bring an
angel to perdition."
"But tell me how she set to work."
"There is no principle, only practice in that walk of life," said
Lisbeth ironically.
The Baroness, recalling this conversation, would have liked to consult
Cousin Betty; but there was no time for that. Poor Adeline, incapable
of imagining a patch, of pinning a rosebud in the very middle of her
bosom, of devising the tricks of the toilet intended to resuscitate
the ardors of exhausted nature, was merely well dressed. A woman is
not a courtesan for the wishing!
"Woman is soup for man," as Moliere says by the mouth of the judicious
Gros-Rene. This comparison suggests a sort of culinary art in love.
Then the virtuous wife would be a Homeric meal, flesh laid on hot
cinders. The courtesan, on the contrary, is a dish by Careme, with its
condiments, spices, and elegant arrangement. The Baroness could not
--did not know how to serve up her fair bosom in a lordly dish of lace,
after the manner of Madame Marneffe. She knew nothing of the secrets
of certain attitudes. This high-souled woman might have turned round
and round a hundred times, and she would have betrayed nothing to the
keen glance of a profligate.
To be a good woman and a prude to all the world, and a courtesan to
her husband, is the gift of a woman of genius, and they are few. This
is the secret of long fidelity, inexplicable to the women who are not
blessed with the double and splendid faculty. Imagine Madame Marneffe
virtuous, and you have the Marchesa di Pescara. But such lofty and
illustrious women, beautiful as Diane de Poitiers, but virtuous, may
be easily counted.
So the scene with which this serious and terrible drama of Paris
manners opened was about to be repeated, with this singular difference
--that the calamities prophesied then by the captain of the municipal
Militia had reversed the parts. Madame Hulot was awaiting Crevel with
the same intentions as had brought him to her, smiling down at the
Paris crowd from his _milord_, three years ago. And, strangest thing
of all, the Baroness was true to herself and to her love, while
preparing to yield to the grossest infidelity, such as the storm of
passion even does not justify in the eyes of some judges.
"What can I do to become a Madame Marneffe?" she asked herself as she
heard the door-bell.
She restrained her tears, fever gave brilliancy to her face, and she
meant to be quite the courtesan, poor, noble soul.
"What the devil can that worthy Baronne Hulot want of me?" Crevel
wondered as he mounted the stairs. "She is going to discuss my quarrel
with Celestine and Victorin, no doubt; but I will not give way!"
As he went into the drawing-room, shown in by Louise, he said to
himself as he noted the bareness of the place (Crevel's word):
"Poor woman! She lives here like some fine picture stowed in a loft by
a man who knows nothing of painting."
Crevel, seeing Comte Popinot, the Minister of Commerce, buy pictures
and statues, wanted also to figure as a Maecenas of Paris, whose love
of Art consists in making good investments.
Adeline smiled graciously at Crevel, pointing to a chair facing her.
"Here I am, fair lady, at your command," said Crevel.
Monsieur the Mayor, a political personage, now wore black broadcloth.
His face, at the top of this solemn suit, shone like a full moon
rising above a mass of dark clouds. His shirt, buttoned with three
large pearls worth five hundred francs apiece, gave a great idea of
his thoracic capacity, and he was apt to say, "In me you see the
coming athlete of the tribune!" His enormous vulgar hands were encased
in yellow gloves even in the morning; his patent leather boots spoke
of the chocolate-colored coupe with one horse in which he drove.
In the course of three years ambition had altered Crevel's
pretensions. Like all great artists, he had come to his second manner.
In the great world, when he went to the Prince de Wissembourg's, to
the Prefecture, to Comte Popinot's, and the like, he held his hat in
his hand in an airy manner taught him by Valerie, and he inserted the
thumb of the other hand in the armhole of his waistcoat with a knowing
air, and a simpering face and expression. This new grace of attitude
was due to the satirical inventiveness of Valerie, who, under pretence
of rejuvenating her mayor, had given him an added touch of the
ridiculous.
"I begged you to come, my dear kind Monsieur Crevel," said the
Baroness in a husky voice, "on a matter of the greatest importance--"
"I can guess what it is, madame," said Crevel, with a knowing air,
"but what you would ask is impossible.--Oh, I am not a brutal father,
a man--to use Napoleon's words--set hard and fast on sheer avarice.
Listen to me, fair lady. If my children were ruining themselves for
their own benefit, I would help them out of the scrape; but as for
backing your husband, madame? It is like trying to fill the vat of the
Danaides! Their house is mortgaged for three hundred thousand francs
for an incorrigible father! Why, they have nothing left, poor
wretches! And they have no fun for their money. All they have to live
upon is what Victorin may make in Court. He must wag his tongue more,
must monsieur your son! And he was to have been a Minister, that
learned youth! Our hope and pride. A pretty pilot, who runs aground
like a land-lubber; for if he had borrowed to enable him to get on, if
he had run into debt for feasting Deputies, winning votes, and
increasing his influence, I should be the first to say, 'Here is my
purse--dip your hand in, my friend!' But when it comes of paying for
papa's folly--folly I warned you of!--Ah! his father has deprived him
of every chance of power.--It is I who shall be Minister!"
"Alas, my dear Crevel, it has nothing to do with the children, poor
devoted souls!--If your heart is closed to Victorin and Celestine, I
shall love them so much that perhaps I may soften the bitterness of
their souls caused by your anger. You are punishing your children for
a good action!"
"Yes, for a good action badly done! That is half a crime," said
Crevel, much pleased with his epigram.
"Doing good, my dear Crevel, does not mean sparing money out of a
purse that is bursting with it; it means enduring privations to be
generous, suffering for liberality! It is being prepared for
ingratitude! Heaven does not see the charity that costs us nothing--"
"Saints, madame, may if they please go to the workhouse; they know
that it is for them the door of heaven. For my part, I am
worldly-minded; I fear God, but yet more I fear the hell of poverty.
To be destitute is the last depth of misfortune in society as now
constituted. I am a man of my time; I respect money."
"And you are right," said Adeline, "from the worldly point of view."
She was a thousand miles from her point, and she felt herself on a
gridiron, like Saint Laurence, as she thought of her uncle, for she
could see him blowing his brains out.
She looked down; then she raised her eyes to gaze at Crevel with
angelic sweetness--not with the inviting suggestiveness which was part
of Valerie's wit. Three years ago she could have bewitched Crevel by
that beautiful look.
"I have known the time," said she, "when you were more generous--you
used to talk of three hundred thousand francs like a grand
gentleman--"
Crevel looked at Madame Hulot; he beheld her like a lily in the last
of its bloom, vague sensations rose within him, but he felt such
respect for this saintly creature that he spurned all suspicions and
buried them in the most profligate corner of his heart.
"I, madame, am still the same; but a retired merchant, if he is a
grand gentleman, plays, and must play, the part with method and
economy; he carries his ideas of order into everything. He opens an
account for his little amusements, and devotes certain profits to that
head of expenditure; but as to touching his capital! it would be
folly. My children will have their fortune intact, mine and my wife's;
but I do not suppose that they wish their father to be dull, a monk
and a mummy! My life is a very jolly one; I float gaily down the
stream. I fulfil all the duties imposed on me by law, by my
affections, and by family ties, just as I always used to be punctual
in paying my bills when they fell due. If only my children conduct
themselves in their domestic life as I do, I shall be satisfied; and
for the present, so long as my follies--for I have committed follies
--are no loss to any one but the gulls--excuse me, you do not perhaps
understand the slang word--they will have nothing to blame me for, and
will find a tidy little sum still left when I die. Your children
cannot say as much of their father, who is ruining his son and my
daughter by his pranks--"
The Baroness was getting further from her object as he went on.
"You are very unkind about my husband, my dear Crevel--and yet, if you
had found his wife obliging, you would have been his best friend----"
She shot a burning glance at Crevel; but, like Dubois, who gave the
Regent three kicks, she affected too much, and the rakish perfumer's
thoughts jumped at such profligate suggestions, that he said to
himself, "Does she want to turn the tables on Hulot?--Does she think
me more attractive as a Mayor than as a National Guardsman? Women are
strange creatures!"
And he assumed the position of his second manner, looking at the
Baroness with his _Regency_ leer.
"I could almost fancy," she went on, "that you want to visit on him
your resentment against the virtue that resisted you--in a woman whom
you loved well enough--to--to buy her," she added in a low voice.
"In a divine woman," Crevel replied, with a meaning smile at the
Baroness, who looked down while tears rose to her eyes. "For you have
swallowed not a few bitter pills!--in these three years--hey, my
beauty?"
"Do not talk of my troubles, dear Crevel; they are too much for the
endurance of a mere human being. Ah! if you still love me, you may
drag me out of the pit in which I lie. Yes, I am in hell torment! The
regicides who were racked and nipped and torn into quarters by four
horses were on roses compared with me, for their bodies only were
dismembered, and my heart is torn in quarters----"
Crevel's thumb moved from his armhole, he placed his hand on the
work-table, he abandoned his attitude, he smiled! The smile was so
vacuous that it misled the Baroness; she took it for an expression
of kindness.
"You see a woman, not indeed in despair, but with her honor at the
point of death, and prepared for everything, my dear friend, to hinder
a crime."
Fearing that Hortense might come in, she bolted the door; then with
equal impetuosity she fell at Crevel's feet, took his hand and kissed
it.
"Be my deliverer!" she cried.
She thought there was some generous fibre in this mercantile soul, and
full of sudden hope that she might get the two hundred thousand francs
without degrading herself:
"Buy a soul--you were once ready to buy virtue!" she went on, with a
frenzied gaze. "Trust to my honesty as a woman, to my honor, of which
you know the worth! Be my friend! Save a whole family from ruin,
shame, despair; keep it from falling into a bog where the quicksands
are mingled with blood! Oh! ask for no explanations," she exclaimed,
at a movement on Crevel's part, who was about to speak. "Above all, do
not say to me, 'I told you so!' like a friend who is glad at a
misfortune. Come now, yield to her whom you used to love, to the woman
whose humiliation at your feet is perhaps the crowning moment of her
glory; ask nothing of her, expect what you will from her gratitude!
--No, no. Give me nothing, but lend--lend to me whom you used to call
Adeline----"
At this point her tears flowed so fast, Adeline was sobbing so
passionately, that Crevel's gloves were wet. The words, "I need two
hundred thousand francs," were scarcely articulate in the torrent of
weeping, as stones, however large, are invisible in Alpine cataracts
swollen by the melting of the snows.
This is the inexperience of virtue. Vice asks for nothing, as we have
seen in Madame Marneffe; it gets everything offered to it. Women of
that stamp are never exacting till they have made themselves
indispensable, or when a man has to be worked as a quarry is worked
where the lime is rather scarce--going to ruin, as the quarry-men say.
On hearing these words, "Two hundred thousand francs," Crevel
understood all. He cheerfully raised the Baroness, saying insolently:
"Come, come, bear up, mother," which Adeline, in her distraction,
failed to hear. The scene was changing its character. Crevel was
becoming "master of the situation," to use his own words. The vastness
of the sum startled Crevel so greatly that his emotion at seeing this
handsome woman in tears at his feet was forgotten. Besides, however
angelical and saintly a woman may be, when she is crying bitterly her
beauty disappears. A Madame Marneffe, as has been seen, whimpers now
and then, a tear trickles down her cheek; but as to melting into tears
and making her eyes and nose red!--never would she commit such a
blunder.
"Come, child, compose yourself.--Deuce take it!" Crevel went on,
taking Madame Hulot's hands in his own and patting them. "Why do you
apply to me for two hundred thousand francs? What do you want with
them? Whom are they for?"
"Do not," said she, "insist on any explanations. Give me the money!
--You will save three lives and the honor of our children."
"And do you suppose, my good mother, that in all Paris you will find a
man who at a word from a half-crazy woman will go off _hic et nunc_,
and bring out of some drawer, Heaven knows where, two hundred thousand
francs that have been lying simmering there till she is pleased to
scoop them up? Is that all you know of life and of business, my
beauty? Your folks are in a bad way; you may send them the last
sacraments; for no one in Paris but her Divine Highness Madame la
Banque, or the great Nucingen, or some miserable miser who is in love
with gold as we other folks are with a woman, could produce such a
miracle! The civil list, civil as it may be, would beg you to call
again tomorrow. Every one invests his money, and turns it over to the
best of his powers.
"You are quite mistaken, my angel, if you suppose that King
Louis-Philippe rules us; he himself knows better than that. He knows
as well as we do that supreme above the Charter reigns the holy,
venerated, substantial, delightful, obliging, beautiful, noble,
ever-youthful, and all-powerful five-franc piece! But money, my beauty,
insists on interest, and is always engaged in seeking it! 'God of the
Jews, thou art supreme!' says Racine. The perennial parable of the
golden calf, you see!--In the days of Moses there was stock-jobbing in
the desert!
"We have reverted to Biblical traditions; the Golden Calf was the
first State ledger," he went on. "You, my Adeline, have not gone
beyond the Rue Plumet. The Egyptians had lent enormous sums to the
Hebrews, and what they ran after was not God's people, but their
capital."
He looked at the Baroness with an expression which said, "How clever I
am!"
"You know nothing of the devotion of every city man to his sacred
hoard!" he went on, after a pause. "Excuse me. Listen to me. Get this
well into your head.--You want two hundred thousand francs? No one can
produce the sum without selling some security. Now consider! To have
two hundred thousand francs in hard cash it would be needful to sell
about seven hundred thousand francs' worth of stock at three per cent.
Well; and then you would only get the money on the third day. That is
the quickest way. To persuade a man to part with a fortune--for two
hundred thousand francs is the whole fortune of many a man--he ought
at least to know where it is all going to, and for what purpose--"
"It is going, my dear kind Crevel, to save the lives of two men, one
of whom will die of grief and the other will kill himself! And to save
me too from going mad! Am I not a little mad already?"
"Not so mad!" said he, taking Madame Hulot round the knees; "old
Crevel has his price, since you thought of applying to him, my angel."
"They submit to have a man's arms round their knees, it would seem!"
thought the saintly woman, covering her face with her hands.
"Once you offered me a fortune!" said she, turning red.
"Ay, mother! but that was three years ago!" replied Crevel. "Well, you
are handsomer now than ever I saw you!" he went on, taking the
Baroness' arm and pressing it to his heart. "You have a good memory,
my dear, by Jove!--And now you see how wrong you were to be so
prudish, for those three hundred thousand francs that you refused so
magnanimously are in another woman's pocket. I loved you then, I love
you still; but just look back these three years.
"When I said to you, 'You shall be mine,' what object had I in view? I
meant to be revenged on that rascal Hulot. But your husband, my
beauty, found himself a mistress--a jewel of a woman, a pearl, a
cunning hussy then aged three-and-twenty, for she is six-and-twenty
now. It struck me as more amusing, more complete, more Louis XV., more
Marechal de Richelieu, more first-class altogether, to filch away that
charmer, who, in point of fact, never cared for Hulot, and who for
these three years has been madly in love with your humble servant."
As he spoke, Crevel, from whose hands the Baroness had released her
own, had resumed his favorite attitude; both thumbs were stuck into
his armholes, and he was patting his ribs with his fingers, like two
flapping wings, fancying that he was thus making himself very
attractive and charming. It was as much as to say, "And this is the
man you would have nothing to say to!"
"There you are my dear; I had my revenge, and your husband knows it. I
proved to him clearly that he was basketed--just where he was before,
as we say. Madame Marneffe is my mistress, and when her precious
Marneffe kicks the bucket, she will be my wife."
Madame Hulot stared at Crevel with a fixed and almost dazed look.
"Hector knew it?" she said.
"And went back to her," replied Crevel. "And I allowed it, because
Valerie wished to be the wife of a head-clerk; but she promised me
that she would manage things so that our Baron should be so
effectually bowled over that he can never interfere any more. And my
little duchess--for that woman is a born duchess, on my soul!--kept
her word. She restores you your Hector, madame, virtuous in
perpetuity, as she says--she is so witty! He has had a good lesson, I
can tell you! The Baron has had some hard knocks; he will help no more
actresses or fine ladies; he is radically cured; cleaned out like a
beer-glass.
"If you had listened to Crevel in the first instance, instead of
scorning him and turning him out of the house, you might have had four
hundred thousand francs, for my revenge has cost me all of that.--But
I shall get my change back, I hope, when Marneffe dies--I have
invested in a wife, you see; that is the secret of my extravagance. I
have solved the problem of playing the lord on easy terms."
"Would you give your daughter such a mother-in-law? cried Madame
Hulot.
"You do not know Valerie, madame," replied Crevel gravely, striking
the attitude of his first manner. "She is a woman with good blood in
her veins, a lady, and a woman who enjoys the highest consideration.
Why, only yesterday the vicar of the parish was dining with her. She
is pious, and we have presented a splendid monstrance to the church.
"Oh! she is clever, she is witty, she is delightful, well informed
--she has everything in her favor. For my part, my dear Adeline, I owe
everything to that charming woman; she has opened my mind, polished my
speech, as you may have noticed; she corrects my impetuosity, and
gives me words and ideas. I never say anything now that I ought not. I
have greatly improved; you must have noticed it. And then she has
encouraged my ambition. I shall be a Deputy; and I shall make no
blunders, for I shall consult my Egeria. Every great politician, from
Numa to our present Prime Minister, has had his Sibyl of the fountain.
A score of deputies visit Valerie; she is acquiring considerable
influence; and now that she is about to be established in a charming
house, with a carriage, she will be one of the occult rulers of Paris.
"A fine locomotive! That is what such a woman is. Oh, I have blessed
you many a time for your stern virtue."
"It is enough to make one doubt the goodness of God!" cried Adeline,
whose indignation had dried her tears. "But, no! Divine justice must
be hanging over her head."
"You know nothing of the world, my beauty," said the great politician,
deeply offended. "The world, my Adeline, loves success! Say, now, has
it come to seek out your sublime virtue, priced at two hundred
thousand francs?"
The words made Madame Hulot shudder; the nervous trembling attacked
her once more. She saw that the ex-perfumer was taking a mean revenge
on her as he had on Hulot; she felt sick with disgust, and a spasm
rose to her throat, hindering speech.
"Money!" she said at last. "Always money!"
"You touched me deeply," said Crevel, reminded by these words of the
woman's humiliation, "when I beheld you there, weeping at my feet!
--You perhaps will not believe me, but if I had my pocket-book about
me, it would have been yours.--Come, do you really want such a sum?"