anxiously expected. An official, who was under obligations to Hulot,
to whom he owed his position and advancement, declared that he had
seen the Baron in a box at the Ambigu-Comique theatre with a woman of
extraordinary beauty. So Adeline had gone to call on the Baron
Verneuil. This important personage, while asserting that he had
positively seen his old patron, and that his behaviour to the woman
indicated an illicit establishment, told Madame Hulot that to avoid
meeting him the Baron had left long before the end of the play.
"He looked like a man at home with the damsel, but his dress betrayed
some lack of means," said he in conclusion.
"Well?" said the three women as the Baroness came towards them.
"Well, Monsieur Hulot is in Paris; and to me," said Adeline, "it is a
gleam of happiness only to know that he is within reach of us."
"But he does not seem to have mended his ways," Lisbeth remarked when
Adeline had finished her report of her visit to Baron Verneuil. "He
has taken up some little work-girl. But where can he get the money
from? I could bet that he begs of his former mistresses--Mademoiselle
Jenny Cadine or Josepha."
The Baroness trembled more severely than ever; every nerve quivered;
she wiped away the tears that rose to her eyes and looked mournfully
up to heaven.
"I cannot think that a Grand Commander of the Legion of Honor will
have fallen so low," said she.
"For his pleasure what would he not do?" said Lisbeth. "He robbed the
State, he will rob private persons, commit murder--who knows?"
"Oh, Lisbeth!" cried the Baroness, "keep such thoughts to yourself."
At this moment Louise came up to the family group, now increased by
the arrival of the two Hulot children and little Wenceslas to see if
their grandmother's pockets did not contain some sweetmeats.
"What is it, Louise?" asked one and another.
"A man who wants to see Mademoiselle Fischer."
"Who is the man?" asked Lisbeth.
"He is in rags, mademoiselle, and covered with flue like a
mattress-picker; his nose is red, and he smells of brandy.--He is
one of those men who work half of the week at most."
This uninviting picture had the effect of making Lisbeth hurry into
the courtyard of the house in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, where she found
a man smoking a pipe colored in a style that showed him an artist in
tobacco.
"Why have you come here, Pere Chardin?" she asked. "It is understood
that you go, on the first Saturday in every month, to the gate of the
Hotel Marneffe, Rue Barbet-de-Jouy. I have just come back after
waiting there for five hours, and you did not come."
"I did go there, good and charitable lady!" replied the
mattress-picker. "But there was a game at pool going on at the Cafe
des Savants, Rue du Cerf-Volant, and every man has his fancy. Now, mine
is billiards. If it wasn't for billiards, I might be eating off silver
plate. For, I tell you this," and he fumbled for a scrap of paper in
his ragged trousers pocket, "it is billiards that leads on to a dram
and plum-brandy.--It is ruinous, like all fine things, in the things
it leads to. I know your orders, but the old 'un is in such a quandary
that I came on to forbidden grounds.--If the hair was all hair, we
might sleep sound on it; but it is mixed. God is not for all, as the
saying goes. He has His favorites--well, He has the right. Now, here
is the writing of your estimable relative and my very good friend--his
political opinion."
Chardin attempted to trace some zigzag lines in the air with the
forefinger of his right hand.
Lisbeth, not listening to him, read these few words:
"DEAR COUSIN,--Be my Providence; give me three hundred francs this
day.
"HECTOR."
"What does he want so much money for?"
"The lan'lord!" said Chardin, still trying to sketch arabesques. "And
then my son, you see, has come back from Algiers through Spain and
Bayonee, and, and--he has _found_ nothing--against his rule, for a
sharp cove is my son, saving your presence. How can he help it, he is
in want of food; but he will repay all we lend him, for he is going to
get up a company. He has ideas, he has, that will carry him--"
"To the police court," Lisbeth put in. "He murdered my uncle; I shall
not forget that."
"He--why, he could not bleed a chicken, honorable lady."
"Here are the three hundred francs," said Lisbeth, taking fifteen gold
pieces out of her purse. "Now, go, and never come here again."
She saw the father of the Oran storekeeper off the premises, and
pointed out the drunken old creature to the porter.
"At any time when that man comes here, if by chance he should come
again, do not let him in. If he should ask whether Monsieur Hulot
junior or Madame la Baronne Hulot lives here, tell him you know of no
such persons."
"Very good, mademoiselle."
"Your place depends on it if you make any mistake, even without
intending it," said Lisbeth, in the woman's ear.--"Cousin," she went
on to Victorin, who just now came in, "a great misfortune is hanging
over your head."
"What is that?" said Victorin.
"Within a few days Madame Marneffe will be your wife's stepmother."
"That remains to be seen," replied Victorin.
For six months past Lisbeth had very regularly paid a little allowance
to Baron Hulot, her former protector, whom she now protected; she knew
the secret of his dwelling-place, and relished Adeline's tears, saying
to her, as we have seen, when she saw her cheerful and hopeful, "You
may expect to find my poor cousin's name in the papers some day under
the heading 'Police Report.'"
But in this, as on a former occasion, she let her vengeance carry her
too far. She had aroused the prudent suspicions of Victorin. He had
resolved to be rid of this Damocles' sword so constantly flourished
over them by Lisbeth, and of the female demon to whom his mother and
the family owed so many woes. The Prince de Wissembourg, knowing all
about Madame Marneffe's conduct, approved of the young lawyer's secret
project; he had promised him, as a President of the Council can
promise, the secret assistance of the police, to enlighten Crevel and
rescue a fine fortune from the clutches of the diabolical courtesan,
whom he could not forgive either for causing the death of Marshal
Hulot or for the Baron's utter ruin.
The words spoken by Lisbeth, "He begs of his former mistresses,"
haunted the Baroness all night. Like sick men given over by the
physicians, who have recourse to quacks, like men who have fallen into
the lowest Dantesque circle of despair, or drowning creatures who
mistake a floating stick for a hawser, she ended by believing in the
baseness of which the mere idea had horrified her; and it occurred to
her that she might apply for help to one of those terrible women.
Next morning, without consulting her children or saying a word to
anybody, she went to see Mademoiselle Josepha Mirah, prima donna of
the Royal Academy of Music, to find or to lose the hope that had
gleamed before her like a will-o'-the-wisp. At midday, the great
singer's waiting-maid brought her in the card of the Baronne Hulot,
saying that this person was waiting at the door, having asked whether
Mademoiselle could receive her.
"Are the rooms done?"
"Yes, mademoiselle."
"And the flowers fresh?"
"Yes, mademoiselle."
"Just tell Jean to look round and see that everything is as it should
be before showing the lady in, and treat her with the greatest
respect. Go, and come back to dress me--I must look my very best."
She went to study herself in the long glass.
"Now, to put our best foot foremost!" said she to herself. "Vice under
arms to meet virtue!--Poor woman, what can she want of me? I cannot
bear to see.
"The noble victim of outrageous fortune!"
And she sang through the famous aria as the maid came in again.
"Madame," said the girl, "the lady has a nervous trembling--"
"Offer her some orange-water, some rum, some broth--"
"I did, mademoiselle; but she declines everything, and says it is an
infirmity, a nervous complaint--"
"Where is she?"
"In the big drawing-room."
"Well, make haste, child. Give me my smartest slippers, the
dressing-gown embroidered by Bijou, and no end of lace frills. Do my
hair in a way to astonish a woman.--This woman plays a part against
mine; and tell the lady--for she is a real, great lady, my girl, nay,
more, she is what you will never be, a woman whose prayers can rescue
souls from your purgatory--tell her I was in bed, as I was playing
last night, and that I am just getting up."
The Baroness, shown into Josepha's handsome drawing-room, did not note
how long she was kept waiting there, though it was a long half hour.
This room, entirely redecorated even since Josepha had had the house,
was hung with silk in purple and gold color. The luxury which fine
gentlemen were wont to lavish on their _petites maisons_, the scenes
of their profligacy, of which the remains still bear witness to the
follies from which they were so aptly named, was displayed to
perfection, thanks to modern inventiveness, in the four rooms opening
into each other, where the warm temperature was maintained by a system
of hot-air pipes with invisible openings.
The Baroness, quite bewildered, examined each work of art with the
greatest amazement. Here she found fortunes accounted for that melt in
the crucible under which pleasure and vanity feed the devouring
flames. This woman, who for twenty-six years had lived among the dead
relics of imperial magnificence, whose eyes were accustomed to carpets
patterned with faded flowers, rubbed gilding, silks as forlorn as her
heart, half understood the powerful fascinations of vice as she
studied its results. It was impossible not to wish to possess these
beautiful things, these admirable works of art, the creation of the
unknown talent which abounds in Paris in our day and produces
treasures for all Europe. Each thing had the novel charm of unique
perfection. The models being destroyed, every vase, every figure,
every piece of sculpture was the original. This is the crowning grace
of modern luxury. To own the thing which is not vulgarized by the two
thousand wealthy citizens whose notion of luxury is the lavish display
of the splendors that shops can supply, is the stamp of true luxury
--the luxury of the fine gentlemen of the day, the shooting stars of
the Paris firmament.
As she examined the flower-stands, filled with the choicest exotic
plants, mounted in chased brass and inlaid in the style of Boulle, the
Baroness was scared by the idea of the wealth in this apartment. And
this impression naturally shed a glamour over the person round whom
all this profusion was heaped. Adeline imagined that Josepha Mirah
--whose portrait by Joseph Bridau was the glory of the adjoining
boudoir--must be a singer of genius, a Malibran, and she expected to
see a real star. She was sorry she had come. But she had been prompted
by a strong and so natural a feeling, by such purely disinterested
devotion, that she collected all her courage for the interview.
Besides, she was about to satisfy her urgent curiosity, to see for
herself what was the charm of this kind of women, that they could
extract so much gold from the miserly ore of Paris mud.
The Baroness looked at herself to see if she were not a blot on all
this splendor; but she was well dressed in her velvet gown, with a
little cape trimmed with beautiful lace, and her velvet bonnet of the
same shade was becoming. Seeing herself still as imposing as any
queen, always a queen even in her fall, she reflected that the dignity
of sorrow was a match for the dignity of talent.
At last, after much opening and shutting of doors, she saw Josepha.
The singer bore a strong resemblance to Allori's _Judith_, which
dwells in the memory of all who have ever seen it in the Pitti palace,
near the door of one of the great rooms. She had the same haughty
mien, the same fine features, black hair simply knotted, and a yellow
wrapper with little embroidered flowers, exactly like the brocade worn
by the immortal homicide conceived of by Bronzino's nephew.
"Madame la Baronne, I am quite overwhelmed by the honor you do me in
coming here," said the singer, resolved to play her part as a great
lady with a grace.
She pushed forward an easy-chair for the Baroness and seated herself
on a stool. She discerned the faded beauty of the woman before her,
and was filled with pity as she saw her shaken by the nervous palsy
that, on the least excitement, became convulsive. She could read at a
glance the saintly life described to her of old by Hulot and Crevel;
and she not only ceased to think of a contest with her, she humiliated
herself before a superiority she appreciated. The great artist could
admire what the courtesan laughed to scorn.
"Mademoiselle, despair brought me here. It reduces us to any means--"
A look in Josepha's face made the Baroness feel that she had wounded
the woman from whom she hoped for so much, and she looked at her. Her
beseeching eyes extinguished the flash in Josepha's; the singer
smiled. It was a wordless dialogue of pathetic eloquence.
"It is now two years and a half since Monsieur Hulot left his family,
and I do not know where to find him, though I know that he lives in
Paris," said the Baroness with emotion. "A dream suggested to me the
idea--an absurd one perhaps--that you may have interested yourself in
Monsieur Hulot. If you could enable me to see him--oh! mademoiselle, I
would pray Heaven for you every day as long as I live in this world--"
Two large tears in the singer's eyes told what her reply would be.
"Madame," said she, "I have done you an injury without knowing you;
but, now that I have the happiness of seeing in you the most perfect
virtue on earth, believe me I am sensible of the extent of my fault; I
repent sincerely, and believe me, I will do all in my power to remedy
it!"
She took Madame Hulot's hand and before the lady could do anything to
hinder her, she kissed it respectfully, even humbling herself to bend
one knee. Then she rose, as proud as when she stood on the stage in
the part of _Mathilde_, and rang the bell.
"Go on horseback," said she to the man-servant, "and kill the horse if
you must, to find little Bijou, Rue Saint-Maur-du-Temple, and bring
her here. Put her into a coach and pay the coachman to come at a
gallop. Do not lose a moment--or you lose your place.
"Madame," she went on, coming back to the Baroness, and speaking to
her in respectful tones, "you must forgive me. As soon as the Duc
d'Herouville became my protector, I dismissed the Baron, having heard
that he was ruining his family for me. What more could I do? In an
actress' career a protector is indispensable from the first day of her
appearance on the boards. Our salaries do not pay half our expenses;
we must have a temporary husband. I did not value Monsieur Hulot, who
took me away from a rich man, a conceited idiot. Old Crevel would
undoubtedly have married me--"
"So he told me," said the Baroness, interrupting her.
"Well, then, you see, madame, I might at this day have been an honest
woman, with only one legitimate husband!"
"You have many excuses, mademoiselle," said Adeline, "and God will
take them into account. But, for my part, far from reproaching you, I
came, on the contrary, to make myself your debtor in gratitude--"
"Madame, for nearly three years I have provided for Monsieur le
Baron's necessities--"
"You?" interrupted the Baroness, with tears in her eyes. "Oh, what can
I do for you? I can only pray--"
"I and Monsieur le Duc d'Herouville," the singer said, "a noble soul,
a true gentleman--" and Josepha related the settling and _marriage_ of
Monsieur Thoul.
"And so, thanks to you, mademoiselle, the Baron has wanted nothing?"
"We have done our best to that end, madame."
"And where is he now?"
"About six months ago, Monsieur le Duc told me that the Baron, known
to the notary by the name of Thoul, had drawn all the eight thousand
francs that were to have been paid to him in fixed sums once a
quarter," replied Josepha. "We have heard no more of the Baron,
neither I nor Monsieur d'Herouville. Our lives are so full, we artists
are so busy, that I really have not time to run after old Thoul. As it
happens, for the last six months, Bijou, who works for me--his--what
shall I say--?"
"His mistress," said Madame Hulot.
"His mistress," repeated Josepha, "has not been here. Mademoiselle
Olympe Bijou is perhaps divorced. Divorce is common in the thirteenth
arrondissement."
Josepha rose, and foraging among the rare plants in her stands, made a
charming bouquet for Madame Hulot, whose expectations, it may be said,
were by no means fulfilled. Like those worthy fold, who take men of
genius to be a sort of monsters, eating, drinking, walking, and
speaking unlike other people, the Baroness had hoped to see Josepha
the opera singer, the witch, the amorous and amusing courtesan; she
saw a calm and well-mannered woman, with the dignity of talent, the
simplicity of an actress who knows herself to be at night a queen, and
also, better than all, a woman of the town whose eyes, attitude, and
demeanor paid full and ungrudging homage to the virtuous wife, the
_Mater dolorosa_ of the sacred hymn, and who was crowning her sorrows
with flowers, as the Madonna is crowned in Italy.
"Madame," said the man-servant, reappearing at the end of half an
hour, "Madame Bijou is on her way, but you are not to expect little
Olympe. Your needle-woman, madame, is settled in life; she is
married--"
"More or less?" said Josepha.
"No, madame, really married. She is at the head of a very fine
business; she has married the owner of a large and fashionable shop,
on which they have spent millions of francs, on the Boulevard des
Italiens; and she has left the embroidery business to her sister and
mother. She is Madame Grenouville. The fat tradesman--"
"A Crevel?"
"Yes, madame," said the man. "Well, he has settled thirty thousand
francs a year on Mademoiselle Bijou by the marriage articles. And her
elder sister, they say, is going to be married to a rich butcher."
"Your business looks rather hopeless, I am afraid," said Josepha to
the Baroness. "Monsieur le Baron is no longer where I lodged him."
Ten minutes later Madame Bijou was announced. Josepha very prudently
placed the Baroness in the boudoir, and drew the curtain over the
door.
"You would scare her," said she to Madame Hulot. "She would let
nothing out if she suspected that you were interested in the
information. Leave me to catechise her. Hide there, and you will hear
everything. It is a scene that is played quite as often in real life
as on the stage--"
"Well, Mother Bijou," she said to an old woman dressed in tartan
stuff, and who looked like a porter's wife in her Sunday best, "so you
are all very happy? Your daughter is in luck."
"Oh, happy? As for that!--My daughter gives us a hundred francs a
month, while she rides in a carriage and eats off silver plate--she is
a millionary, is my daughter! Olympe might have lifted me above labor.
To have to work at my age? Is that being good to me?"
"She ought not to be ungrateful, for she owes her beauty to you,"
replied Josepha; "but why did she not come to see me? It was I who
placed her in ease by settling her with my uncle."
"Yes, madame, with old Monsieur Thoul, but he is very old and
broken--"
"But what have you done with him? Is he with you? She was very foolish
to leave him; he is worth millions now."
"Heaven above us!" cried the mother. "What did I tell her when she
behaved so badly to him, and he as mild as milk, poor old fellow? Oh!
didn't she just give it him hot?--Olympe was perverted, madame?"
"But how?"
"She got to know a _claqueur_, madame, saving your presence, a man
paid to clap, you know, the grand nephew of an old mattress-picker of
the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. This good-for-naught, as all your
good-looking fellows are, paid to make a piece go, is the cock of the
walk out on the Boulevard du Temple, where he works up the new plays,
and takes care that the actresses get a reception, as he calls it.
First, he has a good breakfast in the morning; then, before the play,
he dines, to be 'up to the mark,' as he says; in short, he is a born
lover of billiards and drams. 'But that is not following a trade,' as
I said to Olympe."
"It is a trade men follow, unfortunately," said Josepha.
"Well, the rascal turned Olympe's head, and he, madame, did not keep
good company--when I tell you he was very near being nabbed by the
police in a tavern where thieves meet. 'Wever, Monsieur Braulard, the
leader of the claque, got him out of that. He wears gold earrings, and
he lives by doing nothing, hanging on to women, who are fools about
these good-looking scamps. He spent all the money Monsieur Thoul used
to give the child.
"Then the business was going to grief; what embroidery brought in went
out across the billiard table. 'Wever, the young fellow had a pretty
sister, madame, who, like her brother, lived by hook and by crook, and
no better than she should be neither, over in the students' quarter."
"One of the sluts at the Chaumiere," said Josepha.
"So, madame," said the old woman. "So Idamore, his name is Idamore,
leastways that is what he calls himself, for his real name is Chardin
--Idamore fancied that your uncle had a deal more money than he owned
to, and he managed to send his sister Elodie--and that was a stage
name he gave her--to send her to be a workwoman at our place, without
my daughter's knowing who she was; and, gracious goodness! but that
girl turned the whole place topsy-turvy; she got all those poor girls
into mischief--impossible to whitewash them, saving your presence----
"And she was so sharp, she won over poor old Thoul, and took him away,
and we don't know where, and left us in a pretty fix, with a lot of
bills coming in. To this day as ever is we have not been able to
settle up; but my daughter, who knows all about such things, keeps an
eye on them as they fall due.--Then, when Idamore saw he had got hold
of the old man, through his sister, you understand, he threw over my
daughter, and now he has got hold of a little actress at the
_Funambules_.--And that was how my daughter came to get married, as
you will see--"
"But you must know where the mattress-picker lives?" said Josepha.
"What! old Chardin? As if he lived anywhere at all!--He is drunk by
six in the morning; he makes a mattress once a month; he hangs about
the wineshops all day; he plays at pools--"
"He plays at pools?" said Josepha.
"You do not understand, madame, pools of billiards, I mean, and he
wins three or four a day, and then he drinks."
"Water out of the pools, I suppose?" said Josepha. "But if Idamore
haunts the Boulevard, by inquiring through my friend Vraulard, we
could find him."
"I don't know, madame; all this was six months ago. Idamore was one of
the sort who are bound to find their way into the police courts, and
from that to Melun--and the--who knows--?"
"To the prison yard!" said Josepha.
"Well, madame, you know everything," said the old woman, smiling.
"Well, if my girl had never known that scamp, she would now be--Still,
she was in luck, all the same, you will say, for Monsieur Grenouville
fell so much in love with her that he married her--"
"And what brought that about?"
"Olympe was desperate, madame. When she found herself left in the
lurch for that little actress--and she took a rod out of pickle for
her, I can tell you; my word, but she gave her a dressing!--and when
she had lost poor old Thoul, who worshiped her, she would have nothing
more to say to the men. 'Wever, Monsieur Grenouville, who had been
dealing largely with us--to the tune of two hundred embroidered
China-crape shawls every quarter--he wanted to console her; but whether
or no, she would not listen to anything without the mayor and the
priest. 'I mean to be respectable,' said she, 'or perish!' and she
stuck to it. Monsieur Grenouville consented to marry her, on condition
of her giving us all up, and we agreed--"
"For a handsome consideration?" said Josepha, with her usual
perspicacity.
"Yes, madame, ten thousand francs, and an allowance to my father, who
is past work."
"I begged your daughter to make old Thoul happy, and she has thrown me
over. That is not fair. I will take no interest in any one for the
future! That is what comes of trying to do good! Benevolence certainly
does not answer as a speculation!--Olympe ought, at least, to have
given me notice of this jobbing. Now, if you find the old man Thoul
within a fortnight, I will give you a thousand francs."