Hulot, and found seven physicians there, brought by Bianchon to study
this unique case; he had just joined them. The physicians, assembled
in the drawing-room, were discussing the disease; now one and now
another went into Valerie's room or Crevel's to take a note, and
returned with an opinion based on this rapid study.
These princes of science were divided in their opinions. One, who
stood alone in his views, considered it a case of poisoning, of
private revenge, and denied its identity with the disease known in the
Middle Ages. Three others regarded it as a specific deterioration of
the blood and the humors. The rest, agreeing with Bianchon, maintained
that the blood was poisoned by some hitherto unknown morbid infection.
Bianchon produced Professor Duval's analysis of the blood. The
remedies to be applied, though absolutely empirical and without hope,
depended on the verdict in this medical dilemma.
Lisbeth stood as if petrified three yards away from the bed where
Valerie lay dying, as she saw a priest from Saint-Thomas d'Aquin
standing by her friend's pillow, and a sister of charity in
attendance. Religion could find a soul to save in a mass of rottenness
which, of the five senses of man, had now only that of sight. The
sister of charity who alone had been found to nurse Valerie stood
apart. Thus the Catholic religion, that divine institution, always
actuated by the spirit of self-sacrifice, under its twofold aspect of
the Spirit and the Flesh, was tending this horrible and atrocious
creature, soothing her death-bed by its infinite benevolence and
inexhaustible stores of mercy.
The servants, in horror, refused to go into the room of either their
master or mistress; they thought only of themselves, and judged their
betters as righteously stricken. The smell was so foul that in spite
of open windows and strong perfumes, no one could remain long in
Valerie's room. Religion alone kept guard there.
How could a woman so clever as Valerie fail to ask herself to what end
these two representatives of the Church remained with her? The dying
woman had listened to the words of the priest. Repentance had risen on
her darkened soul as the devouring malady had consumed her beauty. The
fragile Valerie had been less able to resist the inroads of the
disease than Crevel; she would be the first to succumb, and, indeed,
had been the first attacked.
"If I had not been ill myself, I would have come to nurse you," said
Lisbeth at last, after a glance at her friend's sunken eyes. "I have
kept my room this fortnight or three weeks; but when I heard of your
state from the doctor, I came at once."
"Poor Lisbeth, you at least love me still, I see!" said Valerie.
"Listen. I have only a day or two left to think, for I cannot say to
live. You see, there is nothing left of me--I am a heap of mud! They
will not let me see myself in a glass.--Well, it is no more than I
deserve. Oh, if I might only win mercy, I would gladly undo all the
mischief I have done."
"Oh!" said Lisbeth, "if you can talk like that, you are indeed a dead
woman."
"Do not hinder this woman's repentance, leave her in her Christian
mind," said the priest.
"There is nothing left!" said Lisbeth in consternation. "I cannot
recognize her eyes or her mouth! Not a feature of her is there! And
her wit has deserted her! Oh, it is awful!"
"You don't know," said Valerie, "what death is; what it is to be
obliged to think of the morrow of your last day on earth, and of what
is to be found in the grave.--Worms for the body--and for the soul,
what?--Lisbeth, I know there is another life! And I am given over to
terrors which prevent my feeling the pangs of my decomposing body.--I,
who could laugh at a saint, and say to Crevel that the vengeance of
God took every form of disaster.--Well, I was a true prophet.--Do not
trifle with sacred things, Lisbeth; if you love me, repent as I do."
"I!" said Lisbeth. "I see vengeance wherever I turn in nature; insects
even die to satisfy the craving for revenge when they are attacked.
And do not these gentlemen tell us"--and she looked at the priest
--"that God is revenged, and that His vengeance lasts through all
eternity?"
The priest looked mildly at Lisbeth and said:
"You, madame, are an atheist!"
"But look what I have come to," said Valerie.
"And where did you get this gangrene?" asked the old maid, unmoved
from her peasant incredulity.
"I had a letter from Henri which leaves me in no doubt as to my fate.
He has murdered me. And--just when I meant to live honestly--to die an
object of disgust!
"Lisbeth, give up all notions of revenge. Be kind to that family to
whom I have left by my will everything I can dispose of. Go, child,
though you are the only creature who, at this hour, does not avoid me
with horror--go, I beseech you, and leave me.--I have only time to
make my peace with God!"
"She is wandering in her wits," said Lisbeth to herself, as she left
the room.
The strongest affection known, that of a woman for a woman, had not
such heroic constancy as the Church. Lisbeth, stifled by the miasma,
went away. She found the physicians still in consultation. But
Bianchon's opinion carried the day, and the only question now was how
to try the remedies.
"At any rate, we shall have a splendid _post-mortem_," said one of his
opponents, "and there will be two cases to enable us to make
comparisons."
Lisbeth went in again with Bianchon, who went up to the sick woman
without seeming aware of the malodorous atmosphere.
"Madame," said he, "we intend to try a powerful remedy which may save
you--"
"And if you save my life," said she, "shall I be as good-looking as
ever?"
"Possibly," said the judicious physician.
"I know your _possibly_," said Valerie. "I shall look like a woman who
has fallen into the fire! No, leave me to the Church. I can please no
one now but God. I will try to be reconciled to Him, and that will be
my last flirtation; yes, I must try to come round God!"
"That is my poor Valerie's last jest; that is all herself!" said
Lisbeth in tears.
Lisbeth thought it her duty to go into Crevel's room, where she found
Victorin and his wife sitting about a yard away from the stricken
man's bed.
"Lisbeth," said he, "they will not tell me what state my wife is in;
you have just seen her--how is she?"
"She is better; she says she is saved," replied Lisbeth, allowing
herself this play on the word to soothe Crevel's mind.
"That is well," said the Mayor. "I feared lest I had been the cause of
her illness. A man is not a traveler in perfumery for nothing; I had
blamed myself.--If I should lose her, what would become of me? On my
honor, my children, I worship that woman."
He sat up in bed and tried to assume his favorite position.
"Oh, Papa!" cried Celestine, "if only you could be well again, I would
make friends with my stepmother--I make a vow!"
"Poor little Celestine!" said Crevel, "come and kiss me."
Victorin held back his wife, who was rushing forward.
"You do not know, perhaps," said the lawyer gently, "that your disease
is contagious, monsieur."
"To be sure," replied Crevel. "And the doctors are quite proud of
having rediscovered in me some long lost plague of the Middle Ages,
which the Faculty has had cried like lost property--it is very funny!"
"Papa," said Celestine, "be brave, and you will get the better of this
disease."
"Be quite easy, my children; Death thinks twice of it before carrying
off a Mayor of Paris," said he, with monstrous composure. "And if,
after all, my district is so unfortunate as to lose a man it has twice
honored with its suffrages--you see, what a flow of words I have!
--Well, I shall know how to pack up and go. I have been a commercial
traveler; I am experienced in such matters. Ah! my children, I am a
man of strong mind."
"Papa, promise me to admit the Church--"
"Never," replied Crevel. "What is to be said? I drank the milk of
Revolution; I have not Baron Holbach's wit, but I have his strength of
mind. I am more _Regence_ than ever, more Musketeer, Abbe Dubois, and
Marechal de Richelieu! By the Holy Poker!--My wife, who is wandering
in her head, has just sent me a man in a gown--to me! the admirer of
Beranger, the friend of Lisette, the son of Voltaire and Rousseau.
--The doctor, to feel my pulse, as it were, and see if sickness had
subdued me--'You saw Monsieur l'Abbe?' said he.--Well, I imitated the
great Montesquieu. Yes, I looked at the doctor--see, like this," and
he turned to show three-quarters face, like his portrait, and extended
his hand authoritatively--"and I said:
"The slave was here,
He showed his order, but he nothing gained.
"_His order_ is a pretty jest, showing that even in death Monsieur le
President de Montesquieu preserved his elegant wit, for they had sent
him a Jesuit. I admire that passage--I cannot say of his life, but of
his death--the passage--another joke!--The passage from life to death
--the Passage Montesquieu!"
Victorin gazed sadly at his father-in-law, wondering whether folly and
vanity were not forces on a par with true greatness of soul. The
causes that act on the springs of the soul seem to be quite
independent of the results. Can it be that the fortitude which upholds
a great criminal is the same as that which a Champcenetz so proudly
walks to the scaffold?
By the end of the week Madame Crevel was buried, after dreadful
sufferings; and Crevel followed her within two days. Thus the
marriage-contract was annulled. Crevel was heir to Valerie.
On the very day after the funeral, the friar called again on the
lawyer, who received him in perfect silence. The monk held out his
hand without a word, and without a word Victorin Hulot gave him eighty
thousand-franc notes, taken from a sum of money found in Crevel's
desk.
Young Madame Hulot inherited the estate of Presles and thirty thousand
francs a year.
Madame Crevel had bequeathed a sum of three hundred thousand francs to
Baron Hulot. Her scrofulous boy Stanislas was to inherit, at his
majority, the Hotel Crevel and eighty thousand francs a year.
Among the many noble associations founded in Paris by Catholic
charity, there is one, originated by Madame de la Chanterie, for
promoting civil and religious marriages between persons who have
formed a voluntary but illicit union. Legislators, who draw large
revenues from the registration fees, and the Bourgeois dynasty, which
benefits by the notary's profits, affect to overlook the fact that
three-fourths of the poorer class cannot afford fifteen francs for the
marriage-contract. The pleaders, a sufficiently vilified body,
gratuitously defend the cases of the indigent, while the notaries have
not as yet agreed to charge nothing for the marriage-contract of the
poor. As to the revenue collectors, the whole machinery of Government
would have to be dislocated to induce the authorities to relax their
demands. The registrar's office is deaf and dumb.
Then the Church, too, receives a duty on marriages. In France the
Church depends largely on such revenues; even in the House of God it
traffics in chairs and kneeling stools in a way that offends
foreigners; though it cannot have forgotten the anger of the Saviour
who drove the money-changers out of the Temple. If the Church is so
loath to relinquish its dues, it must be supposed that these dues,
known as Vestry dues, are one of its sources of maintenance, and then
the fault of the Church is the fault of the State.
The co-operation of these conditions, at a time when charity is too
greatly concerned with the negroes and the petty offenders discharged
from prison to trouble itself about honest folks in difficulties,
results in the existence of a number of decent couples who have never
been legally married for lack of thirty francs, the lowest figure for
which the Notary, the Registrar, the Mayor and the Church will unite
two citizens of Paris. Madame de la Chanterie's fund, founded to
restore poor households to their religious and legal status, hunts up
such couples, and with all the more success because it helps them in
their poverty before attacking their unlawful union.
As soon as Madame Hulot had recovered, she returned to her
occupations. And then it was that the admirable Madame de la Chanterie
came to beg that Adeline would add the legalization of these voluntary
unions to the other good works of which she was the instrument.
One of the Baroness' first efforts in this cause was made in the
ominous-looking district, formerly known as la Petite Pologne--Little
Poland--bounded by the Rue du Rocher, Rue de la Pepiniere, and Rue de
Miromenil. There exists there a sort of offshoot of the Faubourg
Saint-Marceau. To give an idea of this part of the town, it is enough
to say that the landlords of some of the houses tenanted by working
men without work, by dangerous characters, and by the very poor
employed in unhealthy toil, dare not demand their rents, and can find
no bailiffs bold enough to evict insolvent lodgers. At the present
time speculating builders, who are fast changing the aspect of this
corner of Paris, and covering the waste ground lying between the Rue
d'Amsterdam and the Rue Faubourg-du-Roule, will no doubt alter the
character of the inhabitants; for the trowel is a more civilizing
agent than is generally supposed. By erecting substantial and handsome
houses, with porters at the doors, by bordering the streets with
footwalks and shops, speculation, while raising the rents, disperses
the squalid class, families bereft of furniture, and lodgers that
cannot pay. And so these districts are cleared of such objectionable
residents, and the dens vanish into which the police never venture but
under the sanction of the law.
In June 1844, the purlieus of the Place de Laborde were still far from
inviting. The genteel pedestrian, who by chance should turn out of the
Rue de la Pepiniere into one of those dreadful side-streets, would
have been dismayed to see how vile a bohemia dwelt cheek by jowl with
the aristocracy. In such places as these, haunted by ignorant poverty
and misery driven to bay, flourish the last public letter-writers who
are to be found in Paris. Wherever you see the two words "Ecrivain
Public" written in a fine copy hand on a sheet of letter-paper stuck
to the window pane of some low entresol or mud-splashed ground-floor
room, you may safely conclude that the neighborhood is the lurking
place of many unlettered folks, and of much vice and crime, the
outcome of misery; for ignorance is the mother of all sorts of crime.
A crime is, in the first instance, a defect of reasoning powers.
While the Baroness had been ill, this quarter, to which she was a
minor Providence, had seen the advent of a public writer who settled
in the Passage du Soleil--Sun Alley--a spot of which the name is one
of the antitheses dear to the Parisian, for the passage is especially
dark. This writer, supposed to be a German, was named Vyder, and he
lived on matrimonial terms with a young creature of whom he was so
jealous that he never allowed her to go anywhere excepting to some
honest stove and flue-fitters, in the Rue Saint-Lazare, Italians, as
such fitters always are, but long since established in Paris. These
people had been saved from a bankruptcy, which would have reduced them
to misery, by the Baroness, acting in behalf of Madame de la
Chanterie. In a few months comfort had taken the place of poverty, and
Religion had found a home in hearts which once had cursed Heaven with
the energy peculiar to Italian stove-fitters. So one of Madame Hulot's
first visits was to this family.
She was pleased at the scene that presented itself to her eyes at the
back of the house where these worthy folks lived in the Rue
Saint-Lazare, not far from the Rue du Rocher. High above the stores
and workshops, now well filled, where toiled a swarm of apprentices and
workmen--all Italians from the valley of Domo d'Ossola--the master's
family occupied a set of rooms, which hard work had blessed with
abundance. The Baroness was hailed like the Virgin Mary in person.
After a quarter of an hour's questioning, Adeline, having to wait for
the father to inquire how his business was prospering, pursued her
saintly calling as a spy by asking whether they knew of any families
needing help.
"Ah, dear lady, you who could save the damned from hell!" said the
Italian wife, "there is a girl quite near here to be saved from
perdition."
"A girl well known to you?" asked the Baroness.
"She is the granddaughter of a master my husband formerly worked for,
who came to France in 1798, after the Revolution, by name Judici. Old
Judici, in Napoleon's time, was one of the principal stove-fitters in
Paris; he died in 1819, leaving his son a fine fortune. But the
younger Judici wasted all his money on bad women; till, at last, he
married one who was sharper than the rest, and she had this poor
little girl, who is just turned fifteen."
"And what is wrong with her?" asked Adeline, struck by the resemblance
between this Judici and her husband.
"Well, madame, this child, named Atala, ran away from her father, and
came to live close by here with an old German of eighty at least,
named Vyder, who does odd jobs for people who cannot read and write.
Now, if this old sinner, who bought the child of her mother, they say
for fifteen hundred francs, would but marry her, as he certainly has
not long to live, and as he is said to have some few thousand of
francs a year--well, the poor thing, who is a sweet little angel,
would be out of mischief, and above want, which must be the ruin of
her."
"Thank you very much for the information. I may do some good, but I
must act with caution.--Who is the old man?"
"Oh! madame, he is a good old fellow; he makes the child very happy,
and he has some sense too, for he left the part of town where the
Judicis live, as I believe, to snatch the child from her mother's
clutches. The mother was jealous of her, and I dare say she thought
she could make money out of her beauty and make a _mademoiselle_ of
the girl.
"Atala remembered us, and advised her gentleman to settle near us; and
as the good man sees how decent we are, he allows her to come here.
But get them married, madame, and you will do an action worthy of you.
Once married, the child will be independent and free from her mother,
who keeps an eye on her, and who, if she could make money by her,
would like to see her on the stage, or successful in the wicked life
she meant her to lead."
"Why doesn't the old man marry her?"
"There was no necessity for it, you see," said the Italian. "And
though old Vyder is not a bad old fellow, I fancy he is sharp enough
to wish to remain the master, while if he once got married--why, the
poor man is afraid of the stone that hangs round every old man's
neck."
"Could you send for the girl to come here?" said Madame Hulot. "I
should see her quietly, and find out what could be done--"
The stove-fitter's wife signed to her eldest girl, who ran off. Ten
minutes later she returned, leading by the hand a child of fifteen and
a half, a beauty of the Italian type. Mademoiselle Judici inherited
from her father that ivory skin which, rather yellow by day, is by
artificial light of lily-whiteness; eyes of Oriental beauty, form, and
brilliancy, close curling lashes like black feathers, hair of ebony
hue, and that native dignity of the Lombard race which makes the
foreigner, as he walks through Milan on a Sunday, fancy that every
porter's daughter is a princess.
Atala, told by the stove-fitter's daughter that she was to meet the
great lady of whom she had heard so much, had hastily dressed in a
black silk gown, a smart little cape, and neat boots. A cap with a
cherry-colored bow added to the brilliant effect of her coloring. The
child stood in an attitude of artless curiosity, studying the Baroness
out of the corner of her eye, for her palsied trembling puzzled her
greatly.
Adeline sighed deeply as she saw this jewel of womanhood in the mire
of prostitution, and determined to rescue her to virtue.
"What is your name, my dear?"
"Atala, madame."
"And can you read and write?"
"No, madame; but that does not matter, as monsieur can."
"Did your parents ever take you to church? Have you been to your first
Communion? Do you know your Catechism?"
"Madame, papa wanted to make me do something of the kind you speak of,
but mamma would not have it--"
"Your mother?" exclaimed the Baroness. "Is she bad to you, then?"
"She was always beating me. I don't know why, but I was always being
quarreled over by my father and mother--"
"Did you ever hear of God?" cried the Baroness.
The girl looked up wide-eyed.
"Oh, yes, papa and mamma often said 'Good God,' and 'In God's name,'
and 'God's thunder,'" said she, with perfect simplicity.
"Then you never saw a church? Did you never think of going into one?"
"A church?--Notre-Dame, the Pantheon?--I have seen them from a
distance, when papa took me into town; but that was not very often.
There are no churches like those in the Faubourg."
"Which Faubourg did you live in?"
"In the Faubourg."
"Yes, but which?"
"In the Rue de Charonne, madame."
The inhabitants of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine never call that
notorious district other than _the_ Faubourg. To them it is the one
and only Faubourg; and manufacturers generally understand the words as
meaning the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
"Did no one ever tell you what was right or wrong?"
"Mamma used to beat me when I did not do what pleased her."
"But did you not know that it was very wicked to run away from your
father and mother to go to live with an old man?"
Atala Judici gazed at the Baroness with a haughty stare, but made no
reply.
"She is a perfect little savage," murmured Adeline.
"There are a great many like her in the Faubourg, madame," said the
stove-fitter's wife.
"But she knows nothing--not even what is wrong. Good Heavens!--Why do
you not answer me?" said Madame Hulot, putting out her hand to take
Atala's.
Atala indignantly withdrew a step.
"You are an old fool!" said she. "Why, my father and mother had had
nothing to eat for a week. My mother wanted me to do much worse than
that, I think, for my father thrashed her and called her a thief!
However, Monsieur Vyder paid all their debts, and gave them some money
--oh, a bagful! And he brought me away, and poor papa was crying. But
we had to part!--Was it wicked?" she asked.
"And are you very fond of Monsieur Vyder?"
"Fond of him?" said she. "I should think so! He tells me beautiful
stories, madame, every evening; and he has given me nice gowns, and
linen, and a shawl. Why, I am figged out like a princess, and I never
wear sabots now. And then, I have not known what it is to be hungry
these two months past. And I don't live on potatoes now. He brings me
bonbons and burnt almonds, and chocolate almonds.--Aren't they good?
--I do anything he pleases for a bag of chocolate.--Then my old Daddy
is very kind; he takes such care of me, and is so nice; I know now what
my mother ought to have been.--He is going to get an old woman to help
me, for he doesn't like me to dirty my hands with cooking. For the
past month, too, he has been making a little money, and he gives me
three francs every evening that I put into a money-box. Only he will
never let me out except to come here--and he calls me his little
kitten! Mamma never called me anything but bad names--and thief, and
vermin!"
"Well, then, my child, why should not Daddy Vyder be your husband?"
"But he is, madame," said the girl, looking at Adeline with calm
pride, without a blush, her brow smooth, her eyes steady. "He told me
that I was his little wife; but it is a horrid bore to be a man's wife
--if it were not for the burnt almonds!"
"Good Heaven!" said the Baroness to herself, "what monster can have
had the heart to betray such perfect, such holy innocence? To restore
this child to the ways of virtue would surely atone for many sins.--I
knew what I was doing." thought she, remembering the scene with
Crevel. "But she--she knows nothing."
"Do you know Monsieur Samanon?" asked Atala, with an insinuating look.
"No, my child; but why do you ask?"
"Really and truly?" said the artless girl.
"You have nothing to fear from this lady," said the Italian woman.
"She is an angel."
"It is because my good old boy is afraid of being caught by Samanon.
He is hiding, and I wish he could be free--"
"Why?"
"On! then he would take me to Bobino, perhaps to the Ambigu."
"What a delightful creature!" said the Baroness, kissing the girl.
"Are you rich?" asked Atala, who was fingering the Baroness' lace
ruffles.
"Yes, and No," replied Madame Hulot. "I am rich for dear little girls
like you when they are willing to be taught their duties as Christians
by a priest, and to walk in the right way."