Adeline forgot the odious insults heaped on her by this cheap-jack
fine gentleman, before the tempting picture of success described by
Machiavelli-Crevel, who only wanted to find out her secrets and laugh
over them with Valerie.
"Oh! I will do anything, everything," cried the unhappy woman.
"Monsieur, I will sell myself--I will be a Valerie, if I must."
"You will find that difficult," replied Crevel. "Valerie is a
masterpiece in her way. My good mother, twenty-five years of virtue
are always repellent, like a badly treated disease. And your virtue
has grown very mouldy, my dear child. But you shall see how much I
love you. I will manage to get you your two hundred thousand francs."
Adeline, incapable of uttering a word, seized his hand and laid it on
her heart; a tear of joy trembled in her eyes.
"Oh! don't be in a hurry; there will be some hard pulling. I am a
jolly good fellow, a good soul with no prejudices, and I will put
things plainly to you. You want to do as Valerie does--very good. But
that is not all; you must have a gull, a stockholder, a Hulot.--Well,
I know a retired tradesman--in fact, a hosier. He is heavy, dull, has
not an idea, I am licking him into shape, but I don't know when he
will do me credit. My man is a deputy, stupid and conceited; the
tyranny of a turbaned wife, in the depths of the country, has
preserved him in a state of utter virginity as to the luxury and
pleasures of Paris life. But Beauvisage--his name is Beauvisage--is a
millionaire, and, like me, my dear, three years ago, he will give a
hundred thousand crowns to be the lover of a real lady.--Yes, you
see," he went on, misunderstanding a gesture on Adeline's part, "he is
jealous of me, you understand; jealous of my happiness with Madame
Marneffe, and he is a fellow quite capable of selling an estate to
purchase a--"
"Enough, Monsieur Crevel!" said Madame Hulot, no longer controlling
her disgust, and showing all her shame in her face. "I am punished
beyond my deserts. My conscience, so sternly repressed by the iron
hand of necessity, tells me, at this final insult, that such
sacrifices are impossible.--My pride is gone; I do not say now, as I
did the first time, 'Go!' after receiving this mortal thrust. I have
lost the right to do so. I have flung myself before you like a
prostitute.
"Yes," she went on, in reply to a negative on Crevel's part, "I have
fouled my life, till now so pure, by a degrading thought; and I am
inexcusable!--I know it!--I deserve every insult you can offer me!
God's will be done! If, indeed, He desires the death of two creatures
worthy to appear before Him, they must die! I shall mourn them, and
pray for them! If it is His will that my family should be humbled to
the dust, we must bow to His avenging sword, nay, and kiss it, since
we are Christians.--I know how to expiate this disgrace, which will be
the torment of all my remaining days.
"I who speak to you, monsieur, am not Madame Hulot, but a wretched,
humble sinner, a Christian whose heart henceforth will know but one
feeling, and that is repentance, all my time given up to prayer and
charity. With such a sin on my soul, I am the last of women, the first
only of penitents.--You have been the means of bringing me to a right
mind; I can hear the Voice of God speaking within me, and I can thank
you!"
She was shaking with the nervous trembling which from that hour never
left her. Her low, sweet tones were quite unlike the fevered accents
of the woman who was ready for dishonor to save her family. The blood
faded from her cheeks, her face was colorless, and her eyes were dry.
"And I played my part very badly, did I not?" she went on, looking at
Crevel with the sweetness that martyrs must have shown in their eyes
as they looked up at the Proconsul. "True love, the sacred love of a
devoted woman, gives other pleasures, no doubt, than those that are
bought in the open market!--But why so many words?" said she, suddenly
bethinking herself, and advancing a step further in the way to
perfection. "They sound like irony, but I am not ironical! Forgive me.
Besides, monsieur, I did not want to hurt any one but myself--"
The dignity of virtue and its holy flame had expelled the transient
impurity of the woman who, splendid in her own peculiar beauty, looked
taller in Crevel's eyes. Adeline had, at this moment, the majesty of
the figures of Religion clinging to the Cross, as painted by the old
Venetians; but she expressed, too, the immensity of her love and the
grandeur of the Catholic Church, to which she flew like a wounded
dove.
Crevel was dazzled, astounded.
"Madame, I am your slave, without conditions," said he, in an
inspiration of generosity. "We will look into this matter--and
--whatever you want--the impossible even--I will do. I will pledge my
securities at the Bank, and in two hours you shall have the money."
"Good God! a miracle!" said poor Adeline, falling on her knees.
She prayed to Heaven with such fervor as touched Crevel deeply; Madame
Hulot saw that he had tears in his eyes when, having ended her prayer,
she rose to her feet.
"Be a friend to me, monsieur," said she. "Your heart is better than
your words and conduct. God gave you your soul; your passions and the
world have given you your ideas. Oh, I will love you truly," she
exclaimed, with an angelic tenderness in strange contrast with her
attempts at coquettish trickery.
"But cease to tremble so," said Crevel.
"Am I trembling?" said the Baroness, unconscious of the infirmity that
had so suddenly come upon her.
"Yes; why, look," said Crevel, taking Adeline by the arm and showing
her that she was shaking with nervousness. "Come, madame," he added
respectfully, "compose yourself; I am going to the Bank at once."
"And come back quickly! Remember," she added, betraying all her
secrets, "that the first point is to prevent the suicide of our poor
Uncle Fischer involved by my husband--for I trust you now, and I am
telling you everything. Oh, if we should not be on time, I know my
brother-in-law, the Marshal, and he has such a delicate soul, that he
would die of it in a few days."
"I am off, then," said Crevel, kissing the Baroness' hand. "But what
has that unhappy Hulot done?"
"He has swindled the Government."
"Good Heavens! I fly, madame; I understand, I admire you!"
Crevel bent one knee, kissed Madame Hulot's skirt, and vanished,
saying, "You will see me soon."
Unluckily, on his way from the Rue Plumet to his own house, to fetch
the securities, Crevel went along the Rue Vanneau, and he could not
resist going in to see his little Duchess. His face still bore an
agitated expression.
He went straight into Valerie's room, who was having her hair dressed.
She looked at Crevel in her glass, and, like every woman of that sort,
was annoyed, before she knew anything about it, to see that he was
moved by some strong feeling of which she was not the cause.
"What is the matter, my dear?" said she. "Is that a face to bring in
to your little Duchess? I will not be your Duchess any more, monsieur,
no more than I will be your 'little duck,' you old monster."
Crevel replied by a melancholy smile and a glance at the maid.
"Reine, child, that will do for to-day; I can finish my hair myself.
Give me my Chinese wrapper; my gentleman seems to me out of sorts."
Reine, whose face was pitted like a colander, and who seemed to have
been made on purpose to wait on Valerie, smiled meaningly in reply,
and brought the dressing-gown. Valerie took off her combing-wrapper;
she was in her shift, and she wriggled into the dressing-gown like a
snake into a clump of grass.
"Madame is not at home?"
"What a question!" said Valerie.--"Come, tell me, my big puss, have
_Rives Gauches_ gone down?"
"No."
"They have raised the price of the house?"
"No."
"You fancy that you are not the father of our little Crevel?"
"What nonsense!" replied he, sure of his paternity.
"On my honor, I give it up!" said Madame Marneffe. "If I am expected
to extract my friend's woes as you pull the cork out of a bottle of
Bordeaux, I let it alone.--Go away, you bore me."
"It is nothing," said Crevel. "I must find two hundred thousand francs
in two hours."
"Oh, you can easily get them.--I have not spent the fifty thousand
francs we got out of Hulot for that report, and I can ask Henri for
fifty thousand--"
"Henri--it is always Henri!" exclaimed Crevel.
"And do you suppose, you great baby of a Machiavelli, that I will cast
off Henri? Would France disarm her fleet?--Henri! why, he is a dagger
in a sheath hanging on a nail. That boy serves as a weather-glass to
show me if you love me--and you don't love me this morning."
"I don't love you, Valerie?" cried Crevel. "I love you as much as a
million."
"That is not nearly enough!" cried she, jumping on to Crevel's knee,
and throwing both arms round his neck as if it were a peg to hang on
by. "I want to be loved as much as ten millions, as much as all the
gold in the world, and more to that. Henri would never wait a minute
before telling me all he had on his mind. What is it, my great pet?
Have it out. Make a clean breast of it to your own little duck!"
And she swept her hair over Crevel's face, while she jestingly pulled
his nose.
"Can a man with a nose like that," she went on, "have any secrets from
his _Vava--lele--ririe_?"
And at the _Vava_ she tweaked his nose to the right; at _lele_ it went
to the left; at _ririe_ she nipped it straight again.
"Well, I have just seen--" Crevel stopped and looked at Madame
Marneffe.
"Valerie, my treasure, promise me on your honor--ours, you know?--not
to repeat a single word of what I tell you."
"Of course, Mayor, we know all about that. One hand up--so--and one
foot--so!" And she put herself in an attitude which, to use Rabelais'
phrase, stripped Crevel bare from his brain to his heels, so quaint
and delicious was the nudity revealed through the light film of lawn.
"I have just seen virtue in despair."
"Can despair possess virtue?" said she, nodding gravely and crossing
her arms like Napoleon.
"It is poor Madame Hulot. She wants two hundred thousand francs, or
else Marshal Hulot and old Johann Fischer will blow their brains out;
and as you, my little Duchess, are partly at the bottom of the
mischief, I am going to patch matters up. She is a saintly creature, I
know her well; she will repay you every penny."
At the name of Hulot, at the words two hundred thousand francs, a
gleam from Valerie's eyes flashed from between her long eyelids like
the flame of a cannon through the smoke.
"What did the old thing do to move you to compassion? Did she show you
--what?--her--her religion?"
"Do not make game of her, sweetheart; she is a very saintly, a very
noble and pious woman, worthy of all respect."
"Am I not worthy of respect then, heh?" answered Valerie, with a
threatening gaze at Crevel.
"I never said so," replied he, understanding that the praise of virtue
might not be gratifying to Madame Marneffe.
"I am pious too," Valerie went on, taking her seat in an armchair;
"but I do not make a trade of my religion. I go to church in secret."
She sat in silence, and paid no further heed to Crevel. He, extremely
ill at ease, came to stand in front of the chair into which Valerie
had thrown herself, and saw her lost in the reflections he had been so
foolish as to suggest.
"Valerie, my little Angel!"
Utter silence. A highly problematical tear was furtively dashed away.
"One word, my little duck?"
"Monsieur!"
"What are you thinking of, my darling?"
"Oh, Monsieur Crevel, I was thinking of the day of my first communion!
How pretty I was! How pure, how saintly!--immaculate!--Oh! if any one
had come to my mother and said, 'Your daughter will be a hussy, and
unfaithful to her husband; one day a police-officer will find her in a
disreputable house; she will sell herself to a Crevel to cheat a Hulot
--two horrible old men--' Poof! horrible--she would have died before
the end of the sentence, she was so fond of me, poor dear!--"
"Nay, be calm."
"You cannot think how well a woman must love a man before she can
silence the remorse that gnaws at the heart of an adulterous wife. I
am quite sorry that Reine is not here; she would have told you that
she found me this morning praying with tears in my eyes. I, Monsieur
Crevel, for my part, do not make a mockery of religion. Have you ever
heard me say a word I ought not on such a subject?"
Crevel shook his head in negation.
"I will never allow it to be mentioned in my presence. I can make fun
of anything under the sun: Kings, politics, finance, everything that
is sacred in the eyes of the world--judges, matrimony, and love--old
men and maidens. But the Church and God!--There I draw the line.--I
know I am wicked; I am sacrificing my future life to you. And you have
no conception of the immensity of my love."
Crevel clasped his hands.
"No, unless you could see into my heart, and fathom the depth of my
conviction so as to know the extent of my sacrifice! I feel in me the
making of a Magdalen.--And see how respectfully I treat the priests;
think of the gifts I make to the Church! My mother brought me up in
the Catholic Faith, and I know what is meant by God! It is to sinners
like us that His voice is most awful."
Valerie wiped away two tears that trickled down her cheeks. Crevel was
in dismay. Madame Marneffe stood up in her excitement.
"Be calm, my darling--you alarm me!"
Madame Marneffe fell on her knees.
"Dear Heaven! I am not bad all through!" she cried, clasping her
hands. "Vouchsafe to rescue Thy wandering lamb, strike her, crush her,
snatch her from foul and adulterous hands, and how gladly she will
nestle on Thy shoulder! How willingly she will return to the fold!"
She got up and looked at Crevel; her colorless eyes frightened him.
"Yes, Crevel, and, do you know? I, too, am frightened sometimes. The
justice of God is exerted in this nether world as well as in the next.
What mercy can I expect at God's hands? His vengeance overtakes the
guilty in many ways; it assumes every aspect of disaster. That is what
my mother told me on her death-bed, speaking of her own old age.--But
if I should lose you," she added, hugging Crevel with a sort of savage
frenzy--"oh! I should die!"
Madame Marneffe released Crevel, knelt down again at the armchair,
folded her hands--and in what a bewitching attitude!--and with
incredible fervor poured out the following prayer:--
"And thou, Saint Valerie, my patron saint, why dost thou so rarely
visit the pillow of her who was intrusted to thy care? Oh, come this
evening, as thou didst this morning, to inspire me with holy thoughts,
and I will quit the path of sin; like the Magdalen, I will give up
deluding joys and the false glitter of the world, even the man I love
so well--"
"My precious duck!"
"No more of the 'precious duck,' monsieur!" said she, turning round
like a virtuous wife, her eyes full of tears, but dignified, cold, and
indifferent.
"Leave me," she went on, pushing him from her. "What is my duty? To
belong wholly to my husband.--He is a dying man, and what am I doing?
Deceiving him on the edge of the grave. He believes your child to be
his. I will tell him the truth, and begin by securing his pardon
before I ask for God's.--We must part. Good-bye, Monsieur Crevel," and
she stood up to offer him an icy cold hand. "Good-bye, my friend; we
shall meet no more till we meet in a better world.--You have to thank
me for some enjoyment, criminal indeed; now I want--oh yes, I shall
have your esteem."
Crevel was weeping bitter tears.
"You great pumpkin!" she exclaimed, with an infernal peal of laughter.
"That is how your pious women go about it to drag from you a plum of
two hundred thousand francs. And you, who talk of the Marechal de
Richelieu, the prototype of Lovelace, you could be taken in by such a
stale trick as that! I could get hundreds of thousands of francs out
of you any day, if I chose, you old ninny!--Keep your money! If you
have more than you know what to do with, it is mine. If you give two
sous to that 'respectable' woman, who is pious forsooth, because she
is fifty-six years of age, we shall never meet again, and you may take
her for your mistress! You could come back to me next day bruised all
over from her bony caresses and sodden with her tears, and sick of her
little barmaid's caps and her whimpering, which must turn her favors
into showers--"
"In point of fact," said Crevel, "two hundred thousand francs is a
round sum of money."
"They have fine appetites, have the goody sort! By the poker! they
sell their sermons dearer than we sell the rarest and realest thing on
earth--pleasure.--And they can spin a yarn! There, I know them. I have
seen plenty in my mother's house. They think everything is allowable
for the Church and for--Really, my dear love, you ought to be ashamed
of yourself--for you are not so open-handed! You have not given me two
hundred thousand francs all told!"
"Oh yes," said Crevel, "your little house will cost as much as that."
"Then you have four hundred thousand francs?" said she thoughtfully.
"No."
"Then, sir, you meant to lend that old horror the two hundred thousand
francs due for my hotel? What a crime, what high treason!"
"Only listen to me."
"If you were giving the money to some idiotic philanthropic scheme,
you would be regarded as a coming man," she went on, with increasing
eagerness, "and I should be the first to advise it; for you are too
simple to write a big political book that might make you famous; as
for style, you have not enough to butter a pamphlet; but you might do
as other men do who are in your predicament, and who get a halo of
glory about their name by putting it at the top of some social, or
moral, or general, or national enterprise. Benevolence is out of date,
quite vulgar. Providing for old offenders, and making them more
comfortable than the poor devils who are honest, is played out. What I
should like to see is some invention of your own with an endowment of
two hundred thousand francs--something difficult and really useful.
Then you would be talked about as a man of mark, a Montyon, and I
should be very proud of you!
"But as to throwing two hundred thousand francs into a holy-water
shell, or lending them to a bigot--cast off by her husband, and who
knows why? there is always some reason: does any one cast me off, I
ask you?--is a piece of idiocy which in our days could only come into
the head of a retired perfumer. It reeks of the counter. You would not
dare look at yourself in the glass two days after.
"Go and pay the money in where it will be safe--run, fly; I will not
admit you again without the receipt in your hand. Go, as fast and soon
as you can!"
She pushed Crevel out of the room by the shoulders, seeing avarice
blossoming in his face once more. When she heard the outer door shut,
she exclaimed:
"Then Lisbeth is revenged over and over again! What a pity that she is
at her old Marshal's now! We would have had a good laugh! So that old
woman wants to take the bread out of my mouth. I will startle her a
little!"
Marshal Hulot, being obliged to live in a style suited to the highest
military rank, had taken a handsome house in the Rue du Mont-Parnasse,
where there are three or four princely residences. Though he rented
the whole house, he inhabited only the ground floor. When Lisbeth went
to keep house for him, she at once wished to let the first floor,
which, as she said, would pay the whole rent, so that the Count would
live almost rent-free; but the old soldier would not hear of it.
For some months past the Marshal had had many sad thoughts. He had
guessed how miserably poor his sister-in-law was, and suspected her
griefs without understanding their cause. The old man, so cheerful in
his deafness, became taciturn; he could not help thinking that his
house would one day be a refuge for the Baroness and her daughter; and
it was for them that he kept the first floor. The smallness of his
fortune was so well known at headquarters, that the War Minister, the
Prince de Wissembourg, begged his old comrade to accept a sum of money
for his household expenses. This sum the Marshal spent in furnishing
the ground floor, which was in every way suitable; for, as he said, he
would not accept the Marshal's baton to walk the streets with.
The house had belonged to a senator under the Empire, and the ground
floor drawing-rooms had been very magnificently fitted with carved
wood, white-and-gold, still in very good preservation. The Marshal had
found some good old furniture in the same style; in the coach-house he
had a carriage with two batons in saltire on the panels; and when he
was expected to appear in full fig, at the Minister's, at the
Tuileries, for some ceremony or high festival, he hired horses for the
job.
His servant for more than thirty years was an old soldier of sixty,
whose sister was the cook, so he had saved ten thousand francs, adding
it by degrees to a little hoard he intended for Hortense. Every day
the old man walked along the boulevard, from the Rue du Mont-Parnasse
to the Rue Plumet; and every pensioner as he passed stood at
attention, without fail, to salute him: then the Marshal rewarded the
veteran with a smile.
"Who is the man you always stand at attention to salute?" said a young
workman one day to an old captain and pensioner.
"I will tell you, boy," replied the officer.
The "boy" stood resigned, as a man does to listen to an old gossip.
"In 1809," said the captain, "we were covering the flank of the main
army, marching on Vienna under the Emperor's command. We came to a
bridge defended by three batteries of cannon, one above another, on a
sort of cliff; three redoubts like three shelves, and commanding the
bridge. We were under Marshal Massena. That man whom you see there was
Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and I was one of them. Our columns
held one bank of the river, the batteries were on the other. Three
times they tried for the bridge, and three times they were driven
back. 'Go and find Hulot!' said the Marshal; 'nobody but he and his
men can bolt that morsel.' So we came. The General, who was just
retiring from the bridge, stopped Hulot under fire, to tell him how to
do it, and he was in the way. 'I don't want advice, but room to pass,'
said our General coolly, marching across at the head of his men. And
then, rattle, thirty guns raking us at once."
"By Heaven!" cried the workman, "that accounts for some of these
crutches!"
"And if you, like me, my boy, had heard those words so quietly spoken,
you would bow before that man down to the ground! It is not so famous
as Arcole, but perhaps it was finer. We followed Hulot at the double,
right up to those batteries. All honor to those we left there!" and
the old man lifted his hat. "The Austrians were amazed at the dash of
it.--The Emperor made the man you saw a Count; he honored us all by
honoring our leader; and the King of to-day was very right to make him
a Marshal."
"Hurrah for the Marshal!" cried the workman.
"Oh, you may shout--shout away! The Marshal is as deaf as a post from
the roar of cannon."
This anecdote may give some idea of the respect with which the
_Invalides_ regarded Marshal Hulot, whose Republican proclivities
secured him the popular sympathy of the whole quarter of the town.
Sorrow taking hold on a spirit so calm and strict and noble, was a
heart-breaking spectacle. The Baroness could only tell lies, with a
woman's ingenuity, to conceal the whole dreadful truth from her
brother-in-law.
In the course of this miserable morning, the Marshal, who, like all
old men, slept but little, had extracted from Lisbeth full particulars
as to his brother's situation, promising to marry her as the reward of
her revelations. Any one can imagine with what glee the old maid
allowed the secrets to be dragged from her which she had been dying to
tell ever since she had come into the house; for by this means she
made her marriage more certain.
"Your brother is incorrigible!" Lisbeth shouted into the Marshal's
best ear.
Her strong, clear tones enabled her to talk to him, but she wore out
her lungs, so anxious was she to prove to her future husband that to
her he would never be deaf.
"He has had three mistresses," said the old man, "and his wife was an
Adeline! Poor Adeline!"
"If you will take my advice," shrieked Lisbeth, "you will use your
influence with the Prince de Wissembourg to secure her some suitable
appointment. She will need it, for the Baron's pay is pledged for
three years."