open house like a tavern. I will send for you."
The paradise of Madame Marneffe and Wenceslas was not at all like that
of Crevel--who, finding it useless now, had just sold his to the Comte
Maxime de Trailles. This paradise, the paradise of all comers,
consisted of a room on the fourth floor opening to the landing, in a
house close to the Italian Opera. On each floor of this house there
was a room which had originally served as the kitchen to the
apartments on that floor. But the house having become a sort of inn,
let out for clandestine love affairs at an exorbitant price, the
owner, the real Madame Nourrisson, an old-clothes buyer in the Rue
Nueve Saint-Marc, had wisely appreciated the great value of these
kitchens, and had turned them into a sort of dining-rooms. Each of
these rooms, built between thick party-walls and with windows to the
street, was entirely shut in by very thick double doors on the
landing. Thus the most important secrets could be discussed over a
dinner, with no risk of being overheard. For greater security, the
windows had shutters inside and out. These rooms, in consequence of
this peculiarity, were let for twelve hundred francs a month. The
whole house, full of such paradises and mysteries was rented by Madame
Nourrisson the First for twenty-eight thousand francs of clear profit,
after paying her housekeeper, Madame Nourrisson the Second, for she
did not manage it herself.
The paradise let to Count Steinbock had been hung with chintz; the
cold, hard floor, of common tiles reddened with encaustic, was not
felt through a soft thick carpet. The furniture consisted of two
pretty chairs and a bed in an alcove, just now half hidden by a table
loaded with the remains of an elegant dinner, while two bottles with
long necks and an empty champagne-bottle in ice strewed the field of
bacchus cultivated by Venus.
There were also--the property, no doubt, of Valerie--a low easy-chair
and a man's smoking-chair, and a pretty toilet chest of drawers in
rosewood, the mirror handsomely framed _a la_ Pompadour. A lamp
hanging from the ceiling gave a subdued light, increased by wax
candles on the table and on the chimney-shelf.
This sketch will suffice to give an idea, _urbi et orbi_, of
clandestine passion in the squalid style stamped on it in Paris in
1840. How far, alas! from the adulterous love, symbolized by Vulcan's
nets, three thousand years ago.
When Montes and Cydalise came upstairs, Valerie, standing before the
fire, where a log was blazing, was allowing Wenceslas to lace her
stays.
This is a moment when a woman who is neither too fat nor too thin, but
like Valerie, elegant and slender, displays divine beauty. The rosy
skin, mostly soft, invites the sleepiest eye. The lines of her figure,
so little hidden, are so charmingly outlined by the white pleats of
the shift and the support of the stays, that she is irresistible--like
everything that must be parted from.
With a happy face smiling at the glass, a foot impatiently marking
time, a hand put up to restore order among the tumbled curls, and eyes
expressive of gratitude; with the glow of satisfaction which, like a
sunset, warms the least details of the countenance--everything makes
such a moment a mine of memories.
Any man who dares look back on the early errors of his life may,
perhaps, recall some such reminiscences, and understand, though not
excuse, the follies of Hulot and Crevel. Women are so well aware of
their power at such a moment, that they find in it what may be called
the aftermath of the meeting.
"Come, come; after two years' practice, you do not yet know how to
lace a woman's stays! You are too much a Pole!--There, it is ten
o'clock, my Wenceslas!" said Valerie, laughing at him.
At this very moment, a mischievous waiting-woman, by inserting a
knife, pushed up the hook of the double doors that formed the whole
security of Adam and Eve. She hastily pulled the door open--for the
servants of these dens have little time to waste--and discovered one
of the bewitching _tableaux de genre_ which Gavarni has so often shown
at the Salon.
"In here, madame," said the girl; and Cydalise went in, followed by
Montes.
"But there is some one here.--Excuse me, madame," said the country
girl, in alarm.
"What?--Why! it is Valerie!" cried Montes, violently slamming the
door.
Madame Marneffe, too genuinely agitated to dissemble her feelings,
dropped on to the chair by the fireplace. Two tears rose to her eyes,
and at once dried away. She looked at Montes, saw the girl, and burst
into a cackle of forced laughter. The dignity of the insulted woman
redeemed the scantiness of her attire; she walked close up to the
Brazilian, and looked at him so defiantly that her eyes glittered like
knives.
"So that," said she, standing face to face with the Baron, and
pointing to Cydalise--"that is the other side of your fidelity? You,
who have made me promises that might convert a disbeliever in love!
You, for whom I have done so much--have even committed crimes!--You
are right, monsieur, I am not to compare with a child of her age and
of such beauty!
"I know what you are going to say," she went on, looking at Wenceslas,
whose undress was proof too clear to be denied. "This is my concern.
If I could love you after such gross treachery--for you have spied
upon me, you have paid for every step up these stairs, paid the
mistress of the house, and the servant, perhaps even Reine--a noble
deed!--If I had any remnant of affection for such a mean wretch, I
could give him reasons that would renew his passion!--But I leave you,
monsieur, to your doubts, which will become remorse.--Wenceslas, my
gown!"
She took her dress and put it on, looked at herself in the glass, and
finished dressing without heeding the Baron, as calmly as if she had
been alone in the room.
"Wenceslas, are you ready?--Go first."
She had been watching Montes in the glass and out of the corner of her
eye, and fancied she could see in his pallor an indication of the
weakness which delivers a strong man over to a woman's fascinations;
she now took his hand, going so close to him that he could not help
inhaling the terrible perfumes which men love, and by which they
intoxicate themselves; then, feeling his pulses beat high, she looked
at him reproachfully.
"You have my full permission to go and tell your history to Monsieur
Crevel; he will never believe you. I have a perfect right to marry
him, and he becomes my husband the day after to-morrow.--I shall make
him very happy.--Good-bye; try to forget me."
"Oh! Valerie," cried Henri Montes, clasping her in his arms, "that is
impossible!--Come to Brazil!"
Valerie looked in his face, and saw him her slave.
"Well, if you still love me, Henri, two years hence I will be your
wife; but your expression at this moment strikes me as very
suspicious."
"I swear to you that they made me drink, that false friends threw this
girl on my hands, and that the whole thing is the outcome of chance!"
said Montes.
"Then I am to forgive you?" she asked, with a smile.
"But you will marry, all the same?" asked the Baron, in an agony of
jealousy.
"Eighty thousand francs a year!" said she, with almost comical
enthusiasm. "And Crevel loves me so much that he will die of it!"
"Ah! I understand," said Montes.
"Well, then, in a few days we will come to an understanding," said
she.
And she departed triumphant.
"I have no scruples," thought the Baron, standing transfixed for a few
minutes. "What! That woman believes she can make use of his passion to
be quit of that dolt, as she counted on Marneffe's decease!--I shall
be the instrument of divine wrath."
Two days later those of du Tillet's guests who had demolished Madame
Marneffe tooth and nail, were seated round her table an hour after she
has shed her skin and changed her name for the illustrious name of a
Paris mayor. This verbal treason is one of the commonest forms of
Parisian levity.
Valerie had had the satisfaction of seeing the Brazilian in the
church; for Crevel, now so entirely the husband, had invited him out
of bravado. And the Baron's presence at the breakfast astonished no
one. All these men of wit and of the world were familiar with the
meanness of passion, the compromises of pleasure.
Steinbock's deep melancholy--for he was beginning to despise the woman
whom he had adored as an angel--was considered to be in excellent
taste. The Pole thus seemed to convey that all was at an end between
Valerie and himself. Lisbeth came to embrace her dear Madame Crevel,
and to excuse herself for not staying to the breakfast on the score of
Adeline's sad state of health.
"Be quite easy," said she to Valerie, "they will call on you, and you
will call on them. Simply hearing the words _two hundred thousand
francs_ has brought the Baroness to death's door. Oh, you have them
all hard and fast by that tale!--But you must tell it to me."
Within a month of her marriage, Valerie was at her tenth quarrel with
Steinbock; he insisted on explanations as to Henri Montes, reminding
her of the words spoken in their paradise; and, not content with
speaking to her in terms of scorn, he watched her so closely that she
never had a moment of liberty, so much was she fettered by his
jealousy on one side and Crevel's devotion on the other.
Bereft now of Lisbeth, whose advice had always been so valuable she
flew into such a rage as to reproach Wenceslas for the money she had
lent him. This so effectually roused Steinbock's pride, that he came
no more to the Crevels' house. So Valerie had gained her point, which
was to be rid of him for a time, and enjoy some freedom. She waited
till Crevel should make a little journey into the country to see Comte
Popinot, with a view to arranging for her introduction to the
Countess, and was then able to make an appointment to meet the Baron,
whom she wanted to have at her command for a whole day to give him
those "reasons" which were to make him love her more than ever.
On the morning of that day, Reine, who estimated the magnitude of her
crime by that of the bribe she received, tried to warn her mistress,
in whom she naturally took more interest than in strangers. Still, as
she had been threatened with madness, and ending her days in the
Salpetriere in case of indiscretion, she was cautious.
"Madame, you are so well off now," said she. "Why take on again with
that Brazilian?--I do not trust him at all."
"You are very right, Reine, and I mean to be rid of him."
"Oh, madame, I am glad to hear it; he frightens me, does that big
Moor! I believe him to be capable of anything."
"Silly child! you have more reason to be afraid for him when he is
with me."
At this moment Lisbeth came in.
"My dear little pet Nanny, what an age since we met!" cried Valerie.
"I am so unhappy! Crevel bores me to death; and Wenceslas is gone--we
quarreled."
"I know," said Lisbeth, "and that is what brings me here. Victorin met
him at about five in the afternoon going into an eating-house at
five-and-twenty sous, and he brought him home, hungry, by working on
his feelings, to the Rue Louis-le-Grand.--Hortense, seeing Wenceslas
lean and ill and badly dressed, held out her hand. This is how you
throw me over--"
"Monsieur Henri, madame," the man-servant announced in a low voice to
Valerie.
"Leave me now, Lisbeth; I will explain it all to-morrow." But, as will
be seen, Valerie was ere long not in a state to explain anything to
anybody.
Towards the end of May, Baron Hulot's pension was released by
Victorin's regular payment to Baron Nucingen. As everybody knows,
pensions are paid half-yearly, and only on the presentation of a
certificate that the recipient is alive: and as Hulot's residence was
unknown, the arrears unpaid on Vauvinet's demand remained to his
credit in the Treasury. Vauvinet now signed his renunciation of any
further claims, and it was still indispensable to find the pensioner
before the arrears could be drawn.
Thanks to Bianchon's care, the Baroness had recovered her health; and
to this Josepha's good heart had contributed by a letter, of which the
orthography betrayed the collaboration of the Duc d'Herouville. This
was what the singer wrote to the Baroness, after twenty days of
anxious search:--
"MADAME LA BARONNE,--Monsieur Hulot was living, two months since,
in the Rue des Bernardins, with Elodie Chardin, a lace-mender, for
whom he had left Mademoiselle Bijou; but he went away without a
word, leaving everything behind him, and no one knows where he
went. I am not without hope, however, and I have put a man on this
track who believes he has already seen him in the Boulevard
Bourdon.
"The poor Jewess means to keep the promise she made to the
Christian. Will the angel pray for the devil? That must sometimes
happen in heaven.--I remain, with the deepest respect, always your
humble servant,
"JOSEPHA MIRAH."
The lawyer, Maitre Hulot d'Ervy, hearing no more of the dreadful
Madame Nourrisson, seeing his father-in-law married, having brought
back his brother-in-law to the family fold, suffering from no
importunity on the part of his new stepmother, and seeing his mother's
health improve daily, gave himself up to his political and judicial
duties, swept along by the tide of Paris life, in which the hours
count for days.
One night, towards the end of the session, having occasion to write up
a report to the Chamber of Deputies, he was obliged to sit at work
till late at night. He had gone into his study at nine o'clock, and,
while waiting till the man-servant should bring in the candles with
green shades, his thoughts turned to his father. He was blaming
himself for leaving the inquiry so much to the singer, and had
resolved to see Monsieur Chapuzot himself on the morrow, when he saw
in the twilight, outside the window, a handsome old head, bald and
yellow, with a fringe of white hair.
"Would you please to give orders, sir, that a poor hermit is to be
admitted, just come from the Desert, and who is instructed to beg for
contributions towards rebuilding a holy house."
This apparition, which suddenly reminded the lawyer of a prophecy
uttered by the terrible Nourrisson, gave him a shock.
"Let in that old man," said he to the servant.
"He will poison the place, sir," replied the man. "He has on a brown
gown which he has never changed since he left Syria, and he has no
shirt--"
"Show him in," repeated the master.
The old man came in. Victorin's keen eye examined this so-called
pilgrim hermit, and he saw a fine specimen of the Neapolitan friars,
whose frocks are akin to the rags of the _lazzaroni_, whose sandals
are tatters of leather, as the friars are tatters of humanity. The
get-up was so perfect that the lawyer, though still on his guard, was
vexed with himself for having believed it to be one of Madame
Nourrisson's tricks.
"How much to you want of me?"
"Whatever you feel that you ought to give me."
Victorin took a five-franc piece from a little pile on his table, and
handed it to the stranger.
"That is not much on account of fifty thousand francs," said the
pilgrim of the desert.
This speech removed all Victorin's doubts.
"And has Heaven kept its word?" he said, with a frown.
"The question is an offence, my son," said the hermit. "If you do not
choose to pay till after the funeral, you are in your rights. I will
return in a week's time."
"The funeral!" cried the lawyer, starting up.
"The world moves on," said the old man, as he withdrew, "and the dead
move quickly in Paris!"
When Hulot, who stood looking down, was about to reply, the stalwart
old man had vanished.
"I don't understand one word of all this," said Victorin to himself.
"But at the end of the week I will ask him again about my father, if
we have not yet found him. Where does Madame Nourrisson--yes, that was
her name--pick up such actors?"
On the following day, Doctor Bianchon allowed the Baroness to go down
into the garden, after examining Lisbeth, who had been obliged to keep
to her room for a month by a slight bronchial attack. The learned
doctor, who dared not pronounce a definite opinion on Lisbeth's case
till he had seen some decisive symptoms, went into the garden with
Adeline to observe the effect of the fresh air on her nervous
trembling after two months of seclusion. He was interested and allured
by the hope of curing this nervous complaint. On seeing the great
physician sitting with them and sparing them a few minutes, the
Baroness and her family conversed with him on general subjects.
"You life is a very full and a very sad one," said Madame Hulot. "I
know what it is to spend one's days in seeing poverty and physical
suffering."
"I know, madame," replied the doctor, "all the scenes of which charity
compels you to be a spectator; but you will get used to it in time, as
we all do. It is the law of existence. The confessor, the magistrate,
the lawyer would find life unendurable if the spirit of the State did
not assert itself above the feelings of the individual. Could we live
at all but for that? Is not the soldier in time of war brought face to
face with spectacles even more dreadful than those we see? And every
soldier that has been under fire is kind-hearted. We medical men have
the pleasure now and again of a successful cure, as you have that of
saving a family from the horrors of hunger, depravity, or misery, and
of restoring it to social respectability. But what comfort can the
magistrate find, the police agent, or the attorney, who spend their
lives in investigating the basest schemes of self-interest, the social
monster whose only regret is when it fails, but on whom repentance
never dawns?
"One-half of society spends its life in watching the other half. A
very old friend of mine is an attorney, now retired, who told me that
for fifteen years past notaries and lawyers have distrusted their
clients quite as much as their adversaries. Your son is a pleader; has
he never found himself compromised by the client for whom he held a
brief?"
"Very often," said Victorin, with a smile.
"And what is the cause of this deep-seated evil?" asked the Baroness.
"The decay of religion," said Bianchon, "and the pre-eminence of
finance, which is simply solidified selfishness. Money used not to be
everything; there were some kinds of superiority that ranked above it
--nobility, genius, service done to the State. But nowadays the law
takes wealth as the universal standard, and regards it as the measure
of public capacity. Certain magistrates are ineligible to the Chamber;
Jean-Jacques Rousseau would be ineligible! The perpetual subdivision
of estate compels every man to take care of himself from the age of
twenty.
"Well, then, between the necessity for making a fortune and the
depravity of speculation there is no check or hindrance; for the
religious sense is wholly lacking in France, in spite of the laudable
endeavors of those who are working for a Catholic revival. And this is
the opinion of every man who, like me, studies society at the core."
"And you have few pleasures?" said Hortense.
"The true physician, madame, is in love with his science," replied the
doctor. "He is sustained by that passion as much as by the sense of
his usefulness to society.
"At this very time you see in me a sort of scientific rapture, and
many superficial judges would regard me as a man devoid of feeling. I
have to announce a discovery to-morrow to the College of Medicine, for
I am studying a disease that had disappeared--a mortal disease for
which no cure is known in temperate climates, though it is curable in
the West Indies--a malady known here in the Middle Ages. A noble fight
is that of the physician against such a disease. For the last ten days
I have thought of nothing but these cases--for there are two, a
husband and wife.--Are they not connections of yours? For you, madame,
are surely Monsieur Crevel's daughter?" said he, addressing Celestine.
"What, is my father your patient?" asked Celestine. "Living in the Rue
Barbet-de-Jouy?"
"Precisely so," said Bianchon.
"And the disease is inevitably fatal?" said Victorin in dismay.
"I will go to see him," said Celestine, rising.
"I positively forbid it, madame," Bianchon quietly said. "The disease
is contagious."
"But you go there, monsieur," replied the young woman. "Do you think
that a daughter's duty is less binding than a doctor's?"
"Madame, a physician knows how to protect himself against infection,
and the rashness of your devotion proves to me that you would probably
be less prudent than I."
Celestine, however, got up and went to her room, where she dressed to
go out.
"Monsieur," said Victorin to Bianchon, "have you any hope of saving
Monsieur and Madame Crevel?"
"I hope, but I do not believe that I may," said Bianchon. "The case is
to me quite inexplicable. The disease is peculiar to negroes and the
American tribes, whose skin is differently constituted to that of the
white races. Now I can trace no connection with the copper-colored
tribes, with negroes or half-castes, in Monsieur or Madame Crevel.
"And though it is a very interesting disease to us, it is a terrible
thing for the sufferers. The poor woman, who is said to have been very
pretty, is punished for her sins, for she is now squalidly hideous if
she is still anything at all. She is losing her hair and teeth, her
skin is like a leper's, she is a horror to herself; her hands are
horrible, covered with greenish pustules, her nails are loose, and the
flesh is eaten away by the poisoned humors."
"And the cause of such a disease?" asked the lawyer.
"Oh!" said the doctor, "the cause lies in a form of rapid
blood-poisoning; it degenerates with terrific rapidity. I hope to act
on the blood; I am having it analyzed; and I am now going home to
ascertain the result of the labors of my friend Professor Duval, the
famous chemist, with a view to trying one of those desperate measures
by which we sometimes attempt to defeat death."
"The hand of God is there!" said Adeline, in a voice husky with
emotion. "Though that woman has brought sorrows on me which have led
me in moments of madness to invoke the vengeance of Heaven, I hope
--God knows I hope--you may succeed, doctor."
Victorin felt dizzy. He looked at his mother, his sister, and the
physician by turns, quaking lest they should read his thoughts. He
felt himself a murderer.
Hortense, for her part, thought God was just.
Celestine came back to beg her husband to accompany her.
"If you insist on going, madame, and you too, monsieur, keep at least
a foot between you and the bed of the sufferer, that is the chief
precaution. Neither you nor your wife must dream of kissing the dying
man. And, indeed, you ought to go with your wife, Monsieur Hulot, to
hinder her from disobeying my injunctions."
Adeline and Hortense, when they were left alone, went to sit with
Lisbeth. Hortense had such a virulent hatred of Valerie that she could
not contain the expression of it.
"Cousin Lisbeth," she exclaimed, "my mother and I are avenged! that
venomous snake is herself bitten--she is rotting in her bed!"
"Hortense, at this moment you are not a Christian. You ought to pray
to God to vouchsafe repentance to this wretched woman."
"What are you talking about?" said Betty, rising from her couch. "Are
you speaking of Valerie?"
"Yes," replied Adeline; "she is past hope--dying of some horrible
disease of which the mere description makes one shudder----"
Lisbeth's teeth chattered, a cold sweat broke out all over her; the
violence of the shock showed how passionate her attachment to Valerie
had been.
"I must go there," said she.
"But the doctor forbids your going out."
"I do not care--I must go!--Poor Crevel! what a state he must be in;
for he loves that woman."
"He is dying too," replied Countess Steinbock. "Ah! all our enemies
are in the devil's clutches--"
"In God's hands, my child--"
Lisbeth dressed in the famous yellow Indian shawl and her black velvet
bonnet, and put on her boots; in spite of her relations'
remonstrances, she set out as if driven by some irresistible power.