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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cousin Betty, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Cousin Betty
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: James Waring
+
+Release Date: May, 1999  [Etext #1749]
+Posting Date: March 1, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUSIN BETTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+COUSIN BETTY
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+Translated by James Waring
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+  To Don Michele Angelo Cajetani, Prince of Teano.
+
+  It is neither to the Roman Prince, nor to the representative of
+  the illustrious house of Cajetani, which has given more than one
+  Pope to the Christian Church, that I dedicate this short portion
+  of a long history; it is to the learned commentator of Dante.
+
+  It was you who led me to understand the marvelous framework of
+  ideas on which the great Italian poet built his poem, the only
+  work which the moderns can place by that of Homer. Till I heard
+  you, the Divine Comedy was to me a vast enigma to which none had
+  found the clue--the commentators least of all. Thus, to understand
+  Dante is to be as great as he; but every form of greatness is
+  familiar to you.
+
+  A French savant could make a reputation, earn a professor's chair,
+  and a dozen decorations, by publishing in a dogmatic volume the
+  improvised lecture by which you lent enchantment to one of those
+  evenings which are rest after seeing Rome. You do not know,
+  perhaps, that most of our professors live on Germany, on England,
+  on the East, or on the North, as an insect lives on a tree; and,
+  like the insect, become an integral part of it, borrowing their
+  merit from that of what they feed on. Now, Italy hitherto has not
+  yet been worked out in public lectures. No one will ever give me
+  credit for my literary honesty. Merely by plundering you I might
+  have been as learned as three Schlegels in one, whereas I mean to
+  remain a humble Doctor of the Faculty of Social Medicine, a
+  veterinary surgeon for incurable maladies. Were it only to lay a
+  token of gratitude at the feet of my cicerone, I would fain add
+  your illustrious name to those of Porcia, of San-Severino, of
+  Pareto, of di Negro, and of Belgiojoso, who will represent in this
+  "Human Comedy" the close and constant alliance between Italy and
+  France, to which Bandello did honor in the same way in the
+  sixteenth century--Bandello, the bishop and author of some strange
+  tales indeed, who left us the splendid collection of romances
+  whence Shakespeare derived many of his plots and even complete
+  characters, word for word.
+
+  The two sketches I dedicate to you are the two eternal aspects of
+  one and the same fact. Homo duplex, said the great Buffon: why not
+  add Res duplex? Everything has two sides, even virtue. Hence
+  Moliere always shows us both sides of every human problem; and
+  Diderot, imitating him, once wrote, "This is not a mere tale"--in
+  what is perhaps Diderot's masterpiece, where he shows us the
+  beautiful picture of Mademoiselle de Lachaux sacrificed by
+  Gardanne, side by side with that of a perfect lover dying for his
+  mistress.
+
+  In the same way, these two romances form a pair, like twins of
+  opposite sexes. This is a literary vagary to which a writer may
+  for once give way, especially as part of a work in which I am
+  endeavoring to depict every form that can serve as a garb to mind.
+
+  Most human quarrels arise from the fact that both wise men and
+  dunces exist who are so constituted as to be incapable of seeing
+  more than one side of any fact or idea, while each asserts that
+  the side he sees is the only true and right one. Thus it is
+  written in the Holy Book, "God will deliver the world over to
+  divisions." I must confess that this passage of Scripture alone
+  should persuade the Papal See to give you the control of the two
+  Chambers to carry out the text which found its commentary in 1814,
+  in the decree of Louis XVIII.
+
+  May your wit and the poetry that is in you extend a protecting
+  hand over these two histories of "The Poor Relations"
+
+  Of your affectionate humble servant,
+
+  DE BALZAC.
+  PARIS, August-September, 1846.
+
+
+
+
+
+COUSIN BETTY
+
+
+One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, then
+lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as _Milords_, was
+driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle
+height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard.
+
+Among the Paris crowd, who are supposed to be so clever, there are some
+men who fancy themselves infinitely more attractive in uniform than in
+their ordinary clothes, and who attribute to women so depraved a taste
+that they believe they will be favorably impressed by the aspect of a
+busby and of military accoutrements.
+
+The countenance of this Captain of the Second Company beamed with a
+self-satisfaction that added splendor to his ruddy and somewhat chubby
+face. The halo of glory that a fortune made in business gives to a
+retired tradesman sat on his brow, and stamped him as one of the elect
+of Paris--at least a retired deputy-mayor of his quarter of the town.
+And you may be sure that the ribbon of the Legion of Honor was not
+missing from his breast, gallantly padded _a la Prussienne_. Proudly
+seated in one corner of the _milord_, this splendid person let his
+gaze wander over the passers-by, who, in Paris, often thus meet an
+ingratiating smile meant for sweet eyes that are absent.
+
+The vehicle stopped in the part of the street between the Rue
+de Bellechasse and the Rue de Bourgogne, at the door of a large,
+newly-build house, standing on part of the court-yard of an ancient
+mansion that had a garden. The old house remained in its original state,
+beyond the courtyard curtailed by half its extent.
+
+Only from the way in which the officer accepted the assistance of the
+coachman to help him out, it was plain that he was past fifty. There are
+certain movements so undisguisedly heavy that they are as tell-tale as
+a register of birth. The captain put on his lemon-colored right-hand
+glove, and, without any question to the gatekeeper, went up the outer
+steps to the ground of the new house with a look that proclaimed, "She
+is mine!"
+
+The _concierges_ of Paris have sharp eyes; they do not stop visitors who
+wear an order, have a blue uniform, and walk ponderously; in short, they
+know a rich man when they see him.
+
+This ground floor was entirely occupied by Monsieur le Baron Hulot
+d'Ervy, Commissary General under the Republic, retired army contractor,
+and at the present time at the head of one of the most important
+departments of the War Office, Councillor of State, officer of the
+Legion of Honor, and so forth.
+
+This Baron Hulot had taken the name of d'Ervy--the place of his
+birth--to distinguish him from his brother, the famous General Hulot,
+Colonel of the Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, created by the Emperor
+Comte de Forzheim after the campaign of 1809. The Count, the elder
+brother, being responsible for his junior, had, with paternal care,
+placed him in the commissariat, where, thanks to the services of the two
+brothers, the Baron deserved and won Napoleon's good graces. After 1807,
+Baron Hulot was Commissary General for the army in Spain.
+
+Having rung the bell, the citizen-captain made strenuous efforts to
+pull his coat into place, for it had rucked up as much at the back as in
+front, pushed out of shape by the working of a piriform stomach. Being
+admitted as soon as the servant in livery saw him, the important
+and imposing personage followed the man, who opened the door of the
+drawing-room, announcing:
+
+"Monsieur Crevel."
+
+On hearing the name, singularly appropriate to the figure of the man who
+bore it, a tall, fair woman, evidently young-looking for her age, rose
+as if she had received an electric shock.
+
+"Hortense, my darling, go into the garden with your Cousin Betty," she
+said hastily to her daughter, who was working at some embroidery at her
+mother's side.
+
+After curtseying prettily to the captain, Mademoiselle Hortense went out
+by a glass door, taking with her a withered-looking spinster, who looked
+older than the Baroness, though she was five years younger.
+
+"They are settling your marriage," said Cousin Betty in the girl's ear,
+without seeming at all offended at the way in which the Baroness had
+dismissed them, counting her almost as zero.
+
+The cousin's dress might, at need, have explained this free-and-easy
+demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of which
+the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a little
+worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw hat with
+blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the old-clothes
+buyers wear at market. On looking down at her kid shoes, made, it was
+evident, by the veriest cobbler, a stranger would have hesitated to
+recognize Cousin Betty as a member of the family, for she looked exactly
+like a journeywoman sempstress. But she did not leave the room without
+bestowing a little friendly nod on Monsieur Crevel, to which that
+gentleman responded by a look of mutual understanding.
+
+"You are coming to us to-morrow, I hope, Mademoiselle Fischer?" said he.
+
+"You have no company?" asked Cousin Betty.
+
+"My children and yourself, no one else," replied the visitor.
+
+"Very well," replied she; "depend on me."
+
+"And here am I, madame, at your orders," said the citizen-captain,
+bowing again to Madame Hulot.
+
+He gave such a look at Madame Hulot as Tartuffe casts at Elmire--when a
+provincial actor plays the part and thinks it necessary to emphasize its
+meaning--at Poitiers, or at Coutances.
+
+"If you will come into this room with me, we shall be more conveniently
+placed for talking business than we are in this room," said Madame
+Hulot, going to an adjoining room, which, as the apartment was arranged,
+served as a cardroom.
+
+It was divided by a slight partition from a boudoir looking out on the
+garden, and Madame Hulot left her visitor to himself for a minute, for
+she thought it wise to shut the window and the door of the boudoir, so
+that no one should get in and listen. She even took the precaution of
+shutting the glass door of the drawing-room, smiling on her daughter and
+her cousin, whom she saw seated in an old summer-house at the end of the
+garden. As she came back she left the cardroom door open, so as to hear
+if any one should open that of the drawing-room to come in.
+
+As she came and went, the Baroness, seen by nobody, allowed her face to
+betray all her thoughts, and any one who could have seen her would have
+been shocked to see her agitation. But when she finally came back from
+the glass door of the drawing-room, as she entered the cardroom, her
+face was hidden behind the impenetrable reserve which every woman, even
+the most candid, seems to have at her command.
+
+During all these preparations--odd, to say the least--the National
+Guardsman studied the furniture of the room in which he found himself.
+As he noted the silk curtains, once red, now faded to dull purple by the
+sunshine, and frayed in the pleats by long wear; the carpet, from which
+the hues had faded; the discolored gilding of the furniture; and the
+silk seats, discolored in patches, and wearing into strips--expressions
+of scorn, satisfaction, and hope dawned in succession without disguise
+on his stupid tradesman's face. He looked at himself in the glass over
+an old clock of the Empire, and was contemplating the general effect,
+when the rustle of her silk skirt announced the Baroness. He at once
+struck at attitude.
+
+After dropping on to a sofa, which had been a very handsome one in the
+year 1809, the Baroness, pointing to an armchair with the arms ending in
+bronze sphinxes' heads, while the paint was peeling from the wood, which
+showed through in many places, signed to Crevel to be seated.
+
+"All the precautions you are taking, madame, would seem full of promise
+to a----"
+
+"To a lover," said she, interrupting him.
+
+"The word is too feeble," said he, placing his right hand on his heart,
+and rolling his eyes in a way which almost always makes a woman laugh
+when she, in cold blood, sees such a look. "A lover! A lover? Say a man
+bewitched----"
+
+"Listen, Monsieur Crevel," said the Baroness, too anxious to be able to
+laugh, "you are fifty--ten years younger than Monsieur Hulot, I know;
+but at my age a woman's follies ought to be justified by beauty, youth,
+fame, superior merit--some one of the splendid qualities which can
+dazzle us to the point of making us forget all else--even at our
+age. Though you may have fifty thousand francs a year, your age
+counterbalances your fortune; thus you have nothing whatever of what a
+woman looks for----"
+
+"But love!" said the officer, rising and coming forward. "Such love
+as----"
+
+"No, monsieur, such obstinacy!" said the Baroness, interrupting him to
+put an end to his absurdity.
+
+"Yes, obstinacy," said he, "and love; but something stronger still--a
+claim----"
+
+"A claim!" cried Madame Hulot, rising sublime with scorn, defiance, and
+indignation. "But," she went on, "this will bring us to no issues; I
+did not ask you to come here to discuss the matter which led to your
+banishment in spite of the connection between our families----"
+
+"I had fancied so."
+
+"What! still?" cried she. "Do you not see, monsieur, by the entire ease
+and freedom with which I can speak of lovers and love, of everything
+least creditable to a woman, that I am perfectly secure in my own
+virtue? I fear nothing--not even to shut myself in alone with you. Is
+that the conduct of a weak woman? You know full well why I begged you to
+come."
+
+"No, madame," replied Crevel, with an assumption of great coldness. He
+pursed up his lips, and again struck an attitude.
+
+"Well, I will be brief, to shorten our common discomfort," said the
+Baroness, looking at Crevel.
+
+Crevel made an ironical bow, in which a man who knew the race would have
+recognized the graces of a bagman.
+
+"Our son married your daughter----"
+
+"And if it were to do again----" said Crevel.
+
+"It would not be done at all, I suspect," said the baroness hastily.
+"However, you have nothing to complain of. My son is not only one of the
+leading pleaders of Paris, but for the last year he has sat as Deputy,
+and his maiden speech was brilliant enough to lead us to suppose that
+ere long he will be in office. Victorin has twice been called upon to
+report on important measures; and he might even now, if he chose, be
+made Attorney-General in the Court of Appeal. So, if you mean to say
+that your son-in-law has no fortune----"
+
+"Worse than that, madame, a son-in-law whom I am obliged to maintain,"
+replied Crevel. "Of the five hundred thousand francs that formed my
+daughter's marriage portion, two hundred thousand have vanished--God
+knows how!--in paying the young gentleman's debts, in furnishing his
+house splendaciously--a house costing five hundred thousand francs, and
+bringing in scarcely fifteen thousand, since he occupies the larger
+part of it, while he owes two hundred and sixty thousand francs of the
+purchase-money. The rent he gets barely pays the interest on the debt.
+I have had to give my daughter twenty thousand francs this year to
+help her to make both ends meet. And then my son-in-law, who was making
+thirty thousand francs a year at the Assizes, I am told, is going to
+throw that up for the Chamber----"
+
+"This, again, Monsieur Crevel, is beside the mark; we are wandering from
+the point. Still, to dispose of it finally, it may be said that if my
+son gets into office, if he has you made an officer of the Legion of
+Honor and councillor of the municipality of Paris, you, as a retired
+perfumer, will not have much to complain of----"
+
+"Ah! there we are again, madame! Yes, I am a tradesman, a shopkeeper,
+a retail dealer in almond-paste, eau-de-Portugal, and hair-oil, and was
+only too much honored when my only daughter was married to the son of
+Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy--my daughter will be a Baroness! This is
+Regency, Louis XV., (Eil-de-boeuf--quite tip-top!--very good.) I love
+Celestine as a man loves his only child--so well indeed, that, to
+preserve her from having either brother or sister, I resigned myself
+to all the privations of a widower--in Paris, and in the prime of life,
+madame. But you must understand that, in spite of this extravagant
+affection for my daughter, I do not intend to reduce my fortune for the
+sake of your son, whose expenses are not wholly accounted for--in my
+eyes, as an old man of business."
+
+"Monsieur, you may at this day see in the Ministry of Commerce Monsieur
+Popinot, formerly a druggist in the Rue des Lombards----"
+
+"And a friend of mine, madame," said the ex-perfumer. "For I, Celestin
+Crevel, foreman once to old Cesar Birotteau, brought up the said Cesar
+Birotteau's stock; and he was Popinot's father-in-law. Why, that very
+Popinot was no more than a shopman in the establishment, and he is the
+first to remind me of it; for he is not proud, to do him justice, to
+men in a good position with an income of sixty thousand francs in the
+funds."
+
+"Well then, monsieur, the notions you term 'Regency' are quite out of
+date at a time when a man is taken at his personal worth; and that is
+what you did when you married your daughter to my son."
+
+"But you do not know how the marriage was brought about!" cried Crevel.
+"Oh, that cursed bachelor life! But for my misconduct, my Celestine
+might at this day be Vicomtesse Popinot!"
+
+"Once more have done with recriminations over accomplished facts," said
+the Baroness anxiously. "Let us rather discuss the complaints I have
+found on your strange behavior. My daughter Hortense had a chance of
+marrying; the match depended entirely on you; I believed you felt some
+sentiments of generosity; I thought you would do justice to a woman who
+has never had a thought in her heart for any man but her husband, that
+you would have understood how necessary it is for her not to receive a
+man who may compromise her, and that for the honor of the family with
+which you are allied you would have been eager to promote Hortense's
+settlement with Monsieur le Conseiller Lebas.--And it is you, monsieur,
+you have hindered the marriage."
+
+"Madame," said the ex-perfumer, "I acted the part of an honest man.
+I was asked whether the two hundred thousand francs to be settled on
+Mademoiselle Hortense would be forthcoming. I replied exactly in these
+words: 'I would not answer for it. My son-in-law, to whom the Hulots had
+promised the same sum, was in debt; and I believe that if Monsieur
+Hulot d'Ervy were to die to-morrow, his widow would have nothing to live
+on.'--There, fair lady."
+
+"And would you have said as much, monsieur," asked Madame Hulot, looking
+Crevel steadily in the face, "if I had been false to my duty?"
+
+"I should not be in a position to say it, dearest Adeline," cried this
+singular adorer, interrupting the Baroness, "for you would have found
+the amount in my pocket-book."
+
+And adding action to word, the fat guardsman knelt down on one knee and
+kissed Madame Hulot's hand, seeing that his speech had filled her with
+speechless horror, which he took for hesitancy.
+
+"What, buy my daughter's fortune at the cost of----? Rise, monsieur--or
+I ring the bell."
+
+Crevel rose with great difficulty. This fact made him so furious that he
+again struck his favorite attitude. Most men have some habitual position
+by which they fancy that they show to the best advantage the good
+points bestowed on them by nature. This attitude in Crevel consisted in
+crossing his arms like Napoleon, his head showing three-quarters face,
+and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as the painter has shown the Emperor
+in his portrait.
+
+"To be faithful," he began, with well-acted indignation, "so faithful to
+a liber----"
+
+"To a husband who is worthy of such fidelity," Madame Hulot put in, to
+hinder Crevel from saying a word she did not choose to hear.
+
+"Come, madame; you wrote to bid me here, you ask the reasons for my
+conduct, you drive me to extremities with your imperial airs, your
+scorn, and your contempt! Any one might think I was a Negro. But I
+repeat it, and you may believe me, I have a right to--to make love to
+you, for---- But no; I love you well enough to hold my tongue."
+
+"You may speak, monsieur. In a few days I shall be eight-and-forty; I am
+no prude; I can hear whatever you can say."
+
+"Then will you give me your word of honor as an honest woman--for you
+are, alas for me! an honest woman--never to mention my name or to say
+that it was I who betrayed the secret?"
+
+"If that is the condition on which you speak, I will swear never to tell
+any one from whom I heard the horrors you propose to tell me, not even
+my husband."
+
+"I should think not indeed, for only you and he are concerned."
+
+Madame Hulot turned pale.
+
+"Oh, if you still really love Hulot, it will distress you. Shall I say
+no more?"
+
+"Speak, monsieur; for by your account you wish to justify in my eyes
+the extraordinary declarations you have chosen to make me, and your
+persistency in tormenting a woman of my age, whose only wish is to see
+her daughter married, and then--to die in peace----"
+
+"You see; you are unhappy."
+
+"I, monsieur?"
+
+"Yes, beautiful, noble creature!" cried Crevel. "You have indeed been
+too wretched!"
+
+"Monsieur, be silent and go--or speak to me as you ought."
+
+"Do you know, madame, how Master Hulot and I first made
+acquaintance?--At our mistresses', madame."
+
+"Oh, monsieur!"
+
+"Yes, madame, at our mistresses'," Crevel repeated in a melodramatic
+tone, and leaving his position to wave his right hand.
+
+"Well, and what then?" said the Baroness coolly, to Crevel's great
+amazement.
+
+Such mean seducers cannot understand a great soul.
+
+"I, a widower five years since," Crevel began, in the tone of a man who
+has a story to tell, "and not wishing to marry again for the sake of the
+daughter I adore, not choosing either to cultivate any such connection
+in my own establishment, though I had at the time a very pretty
+lady-accountant. I set up, 'on her own account,' as they say, a little
+sempstress of fifteen--really a miracle of beauty, with whom I fell
+desperately in love. And in fact, madame, I asked an aunt of my own,
+my mother's sister, whom I sent for from the country, to live with the
+sweet creature and keep an eye on her, that she might behave as well
+as might be in this rather--what shall I say--shady?--no, delicate
+position.
+
+"The child, whose talent for music was striking, had masters, she was
+educated--I had to give her something to do. Besides, I wished to be at
+once her father, her benefactor, and--well, out with it--her lover; to
+kill two birds with one stone, a good action and a sweetheart. For five
+years I was very happy. The girl had one of those voices that make the
+fortune of a theatre; I can only describe her by saying that she is
+a Duprez in petticoats. It cost me two thousand francs a year only to
+cultivate her talent as a singer. She made me music-mad; I took a box at
+the opera for her and for my daughter, and went there alternate evenings
+with Celestine or Josepha."
+
+"What, the famous singer?"
+
+"Yes, madame," said Crevel with pride, "the famous Josepha owes
+everything to me.--At last, in 1834, when the child was twenty,
+believing that I had attached her to me for ever, and being very weak
+where she was concerned, I thought I would give her a little amusement,
+and I introduced her to a pretty little actress, Jenny Cadine, whose
+life had been somewhat like her own. This actress also owed everything
+to a protector who had brought her up in leading-strings. That protector
+was Baron Hulot."
+
+"I know that," said the Baroness, in a calm voice without the least
+agitation.
+
+"Bless me!" cried Crevel, more and more astounded. "Well! But do you
+know that your monster of a husband took Jenny Cadine in hand at the age
+of thirteen?"
+
+"What then?" said the Baroness.
+
+"As Jenny Cadine and Josepha were both aged twenty when they first met,"
+the ex-tradesman went on, "the Baron had been playing the part of Louis
+XV. to Mademoiselle de Romans ever since 1826, and you were twelve years
+younger then----"
+
+"I had my reasons, monsieur, for leaving Monsieur Hulot his liberty."
+
+"That falsehood, madame, will surely be enough to wipe out every sin you
+have ever committed, and to open to you the gates of Paradise," replied
+Crevel, with a knowing air that brought the color to the Baroness'
+cheeks. "Sublime and adored woman, tell that to those who will believe
+it, but not to old Crevel, who has, I may tell you, feasted too often as
+one of four with your rascally husband not to know what your high
+merits are! Many a time has he blamed himself when half tipsy as he has
+expatiated on your perfections. Oh, I know you well!--A libertine might
+hesitate between you and a girl of twenty. I do not hesitate----"
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Well, I say no more. But you must know, saintly and noble woman, that
+a husband under certain circumstances will tell things about his wife to
+his mistress that will mightily amuse her."
+
+Tears of shame hanging to Madame Hulot's long lashes checked the
+National Guardsman. He stopped short, and forgot his attitude.
+
+"To proceed," said he. "We became intimate, the Baron and I, through
+the two hussies. The Baron, like all bad lots, is very pleasant, a
+thoroughly jolly good fellow. Yes, he took my fancy, the old rascal. He
+could be so funny!--Well, enough of those reminiscences. We got to be
+like brothers. The scoundrel--quite Regency in his notions--tried indeed
+to deprave me altogether, preached Saint-Simonism as to women, and all
+sorts of lordly ideas; but, you see, I was fond enough of my girl to
+have married her, only I was afraid of having children.
+
+"Then between two old daddies, such friends as--as we were, what
+more natural than that we should think of our children marrying each
+other?--Three months after his son had married my Celestine, Hulot--I
+don't know how I can utter the wretch's name! he has cheated us both,
+madame--well, the villain did me out of my little Josepha. The scoundrel
+knew that he was supplanted in the heart of Jenny Cadine by a young
+lawyer and by an artist--only two of them!--for the girl had more and
+more of a howling success, and he stole my sweet little girl, a
+perfect darling--but you must have seen her at the opera; he got her
+an engagement there. Your husband is not so well behaved as I am. I am
+ruled as straight as a sheet of music-paper. He had dropped a good deal
+of money on Jenny Cadine, who must have cost him near on thirty thousand
+francs a year. Well, I can only tell you that he is ruining himself
+outright for Josepha.
+
+"Josepha, madame, is a Jewess. Her name is Mirah, the anagram of Hiram,
+an Israelite mark that stamps her, for she was a foundling picked up
+in Germany, and the inquiries I have made prove that she is the
+illegitimate child of a rich Jew banker. The life of the theatre, and,
+above all, the teaching of Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga, and
+Carabine, as to the way to treat an old man, have developed, in the
+child whom I had kept in a respectable and not too expensive way of
+life, all the native Hebrew instinct for gold and jewels--for the golden
+calf.
+
+"So this famous singer, hungering for plunder, now wants to be rich,
+very rich. She tried her 'prentice hand on Baron Hulot, and soon plucked
+him bare--plucked him, ay, and singed him to the skin. The miserable
+man, after trying to vie with one of the Kellers and with the Marquis
+d'Esgrignon, both perfectly mad about Josepha, to say nothing of unknown
+worshipers, is about to see her carried off by that very rich Duke, who
+is such a patron of the arts. Oh, what is his name?--a dwarf.--Ah, the
+Duc d'Herouville. This fine gentleman insists on having Josepha for his
+very own, and all that set are talking about it; the Baron knows nothing
+of it as yet; for it is the same in the Thirteenth Arrondissement as in
+every other: the lover, like the husband, is last to get the news.
+
+"Now, do you understand my claim? Your husband, dear lady, has robbed
+me of my joy in life, the only happiness I have known since I became a
+widower. Yes, if I had not been so unlucky as to come across that old
+rip, Josepha would still be mine; for I, you know, should never have
+placed her on the stage. She would have lived obscure, well conducted,
+and mine. Oh! if you could but have seen her eight years ago, slight and
+wiry, with the golden skin of an Andalusian, as they say, black hair as
+shiny as satin, an eye that flashed lightning under long brown lashes,
+the style of a duchess in every movement, the modesty of a dependent,
+decent grace, and the pretty ways of a wild fawn. And by that Hulot's
+doing all this charm and purity has been degraded to a man-trap, a
+money-box for five-franc pieces! The girl is the Queen of Trollops;
+and nowadays she humbugs every one--she who knew nothing, not even that
+word."
+
+At this stage the retired perfumer wiped his eyes, which were full of
+tears. The sincerity of his grief touched Madame Hulot, and roused her
+from the meditation into which she had sunk.
+
+"Tell me, madame, is a man of fifty-two likely to find such another
+jewel? At my age love costs thirty thousand francs a year. It is through
+your husband's experience that I know the price, and I love Celestine
+too truly to be her ruin. When I saw you, at the first evening party
+you gave in our honor, I wondered how that scoundrel Hulot could keep a
+Jenny Cadine--you had the manner of an Empress. You do not look thirty,"
+he went on. "To me, madame, you look young, and you are beautiful. On my
+word of honor, that evening I was struck to the heart. I said to myself,
+'If I had not Josepha, since old Hulot neglects his wife, she would fit
+me like a glove.' Forgive me--it is a reminiscence of my old business.
+The perfumer will crop up now and then, and that is what keeps me from
+standing to be elected deputy.
+
+"And then, when I was so abominably deceived by the Baron, for really
+between old rips like us our friend's mistress should be sacred, I swore
+I would have his wife. It is but justice. The Baron could say nothing;
+we are certain of impunity. You showed me the door like a mangy dog at
+the first words I uttered as to the state of my feelings; you only made
+my passion--my obstinacy, if you will--twice as strong, and you shall be
+mine."
+
+"Indeed; how?"
+
+"I do not know; but it will come to pass. You see, madame, an idiot of
+a perfumer--retired from business--who has but one idea in his head, is
+stronger than a clever fellow who has a thousand. I am smitten with
+you, and you are the means of my revenge; it is like being in love twice
+over. I am speaking to you quite frankly, as a man who knows what he
+means. I speak coldly to you, just as you do to me, when you say, 'I
+never will be yours,' In fact, as they say, I play the game with the
+cards on the table. Yes, you shall be mine, sooner or later; if you were
+fifty, you should still be my mistress. And it will be; for I expect
+anything from your husband!"
+
+Madame Hulot looked at this vulgar intriguer with such a fixed stare of
+terror, that he thought she had gone mad, and he stopped.
+
+"You insisted on it, you heaped me with scorn, you defied me--and I have
+spoken," said he, feeling that he must justify the ferocity of his last
+words.
+
+"Oh, my daughter, my daughter," moaned the Baroness in a voice like a
+dying woman's.
+
+"Oh! I have forgotten all else," Crevel went on. "The day when I was
+robbed of Josepha I was like a tigress robbed of her cubs; in short,
+as you see me now.--Your daughter? Yes, I regard her as the means of
+winning you. Yes, I put a spoke in her marriage--and you will not get
+her married without my help! Handsome as Mademoiselle Hortense is, she
+needs a fortune----"
+
+"Alas! yes," said the Baroness, wiping her eyes.
+
+"Well, just ask your husband for ten thousand francs," said Crevel,
+striking his attitude once more. He waited a minute, like an actor who
+has made a point.
+
+"If he had the money, he would give it to the woman who will take
+Josepha's place," he went on, emphasizing his tones. "Does a man ever
+pull up on the road he has taken? In the first place, he is too sweet on
+women. There is a happy medium in all things, as our King has told us.
+And then his vanity is implicated! He is a handsome man!--He would
+bring you all to ruin for his pleasure; in fact, you are already on the
+highroad to the workhouse. Why, look, never since I set foot in your
+house have you been able to do up your drawing-room furniture. 'Hard up'
+is the word shouted by every slit in the stuff. Where will you find a
+son-in-law who would not turn his back in horror of the ill-concealed
+evidence of the most cruel misery there is--that of people in decent
+society? I have kept shop, and I know. There is no eye so quick as that
+of the Paris tradesman to detect real wealth from its sham.--You have
+no money," he said, in a lower voice. "It is written everywhere, even on
+your man-servant's coat.
+
+"Would you like me to disclose any more hideous mysteries that are kept
+from you?"
+
+"Monsieur," cried Madame Hulot, whose handkerchief was wet through with
+her tears, "enough, enough!"
+
+"My son-in-law, I tell you, gives his father money, and this is what I
+particularly wanted to come to when I began by speaking of your son's
+expenses. But I keep an eye on my daughter's interests, be easy."
+
+"Oh, if I could but see my daughter married, and die!" cried the poor
+woman, quite losing her head.
+
+"Well, then, this is the way," said the ex-perfumer.
+
+Madame Hulot looked at Crevel with a hopeful expression, which so
+completely changed her countenance, that this alone ought to have
+touched the man's feelings and have led him to abandon his monstrous
+schemes.
+
+"You will still be handsome ten years hence," Crevel went on, with his
+arms folded; "be kind to me, and Mademoiselle Hulot will marry. Hulot
+has given me the right, as I have explained to you, to put the matter
+crudely, and he will not be angry. In three years I have saved the
+interest on my capital, for my dissipations have been restricted. I have
+three hundred thousand francs in the bank over and above my invested
+fortune--they are yours----"
+
+"Go," said Madame Hulot. "Go, monsieur, and never let me see you again.
+But for the necessity in which you placed me to learn the secret of
+your cowardly conduct with regard to the match I had planned for
+Hortense--yes, cowardly!" she repeated, in answer to a gesture from
+Crevel. "How can you load a poor girl, a pretty, innocent creature,
+with such a weight of enmity? But for the necessity that goaded me as a
+mother, you would never have spoken to me again, never again have come
+within my doors. Thirty-two years of an honorable and loyal life shall
+not be swept away by a blow from Monsieur Crevel----"
+
+"The retired perfumer, successor to Cesar Birotteau at the _Queen of
+the Roses_, Rue Saint-Honore," added Crevel, in mocking tones.
+"Deputy-mayor, captain in the National Guard, Chevalier of the Legion of
+Honor--exactly what my predecessor was!"
+
+"Monsieur," said the Baroness, "if, after twenty years of constancy,
+Monsieur Hulot is tired of his wife, that is nobody's concern but mine.
+As you see, he has kept his infidelity a mystery, for I did not know
+that he had succeeded you in the affections of Mademoiselle Josepha----"
+
+"Oh, it has cost him a pretty penny, madame. His singing-bird has cost
+him more than a hundred thousand francs in these two years. Ah, ha! you
+have not seen the end of it!"
+
+"Have done with all this, Monsieur Crevel. I will not, for your sake,
+forego the happiness a mother knows who can embrace her children without
+a single pang of remorse in her heart, who sees herself respected and
+loved by her family; and I will give up my soul to God unspotted----"
+
+"Amen!" exclaimed Crevel, with the diabolical rage that embitters the
+face of these pretenders when they fail for the second time in such
+an attempt. "You do not yet know the latter end of poverty--shame,
+disgrace.--I have tried to warn you; I would have saved you, you and
+your daughter. Well, you must study the modern parable of the _Prodigal
+Father_ from A to Z. Your tears and your pride move me deeply," said
+Crevel, seating himself, "for it is frightful to see the woman one loves
+weeping. All I can promise you, dear Adeline, is to do nothing against
+your interests or your husband's. Only never send to me for information.
+That is all."
+
+"What is to be done?" cried Madame Hulot.
+
+Up to now the Baroness had bravely faced the threefold torment which
+this explanation inflicted on her; for she was wounded as a woman, as a
+mother, and as a wife. In fact, so long as her son's father-in-law was
+insolent and offensive, she had found the strength in her resistance
+to the aggressive tradesman; but the sort of good-nature he showed,
+in spite of his exasperation as a mortified adorer and as a humiliated
+National Guardsman, broke down her nerve, strung to the point of
+snapping. She wrung her hands, melted into tears, and was in a state of
+such helpless dejection, that she allowed Crevel to kneel at her feet,
+kissing her hands.
+
+"Good God! what will become of us!" she went on, wiping away her tears.
+"Can a mother sit still and see her child pine away before her eyes?
+What is to be the fate of that splendid creature, as strong in her pure
+life under her mother's care as she is by every gift of nature? There
+are days when she wanders round the garden, out of spirits without
+knowing why; I find her with tears in her eyes----"
+
+"She is one-and-twenty," said Crevel.
+
+"Must I place her in a convent?" asked the Baroness. "But in such cases
+religion is impotent to subdue nature, and the most piously trained
+girls lose their head!--Get up, pray, monsieur; do you not understand
+that everything is final between us? that I look upon you with horror?
+that you have crushed a mother's last hopes----"
+
+"But if I were to restore them," asked he.
+
+Madame Hulot looked at Crevel with a frenzied expression that really
+touched him. But he drove pity back to the depths of his heart; she had
+said, "I look upon you with horror."
+
+Virtue is always a little too rigid; it overlooks the shades and
+instincts by help of which we are able to tack when in a false position.
+
+"So handsome a girl as Mademoiselle Hortense does not find a husband
+nowadays if she is penniless," Crevel remarked, resuming his starchiest
+manner. "Your daughter is one of those beauties who rather alarm
+intending husbands; like a thoroughbred horse, which is too expensive
+to keep up to find a ready purchaser. If you go out walking with such
+a woman on your arm, every one will turn to look at you, and follow and
+covet his neighbor's wife. Such success is a source of much uneasiness
+to men who do not want to be killing lovers; for, after all, no man
+kills more than one. In the position in which you find yourself there
+are just three ways of getting your daughter married: Either by my
+help--and you will have none of it! That is one.--Or by finding some old
+man of sixty, very rich, childless, and anxious to have children; that
+is difficult, still such men are to be met with. Many old men take up
+with a Josepha, a Jenny Cadine, why should not one be found who is ready
+to make a fool of himself under legal formalities? If it were not for
+Celestine and our two grandchildren, I would marry Hortense myself. That
+is two.--The last way is the easiest----"
+
+Madame Hulot raised her head, and looked uneasily at the ex-perfumer.
+
+"Paris is a town whither every man of energy--and they sprout like
+saplings on French soil--comes to meet his kind; talent swarms here
+without hearth or home, and energy equal to anything, even to making a
+fortune. Well, these youngsters--your humble servant was such a one
+in his time, and how many he has known! What had du Tillet or Popinot
+twenty years since? They were both pottering round in Daddy Birotteau's
+shop, with not a penny of capital but their determination to get on,
+which, in my opinion, is the best capital a man can have. Money may be
+eaten through, but you don't eat through your determination. Why, what
+had I? The will to get on, and plenty of pluck. At this day du Tillet is
+a match for the greatest folks; little Popinot, the richest druggist of
+the Rue des Lombards, became a deputy, now he is in office.--Well, one
+of these free lances, as we say on the stock market, of the pen, or of
+the brush, is the only man in Paris who would marry a penniless beauty,
+for they have courage enough for anything. Monsieur Popinot married
+Mademoiselle Birotteau without asking for a farthing. Those men are
+madmen, to be sure! They trust in love as they trust in good luck and
+brains!--Find a man of energy who will fall in love with your daughter,
+and he will marry without a thought of money. You must confess that by
+way of an enemy I am not ungenerous, for this advice is against my own
+interests."
+
+"Oh, Monsieur Crevel, if you would indeed be my friend and give up your
+ridiculous notions----"
+
+"Ridiculous? Madame, do not run yourself down. Look at yourself--I love
+you, and you will come to be mine. The day will come when I shall say to
+Hulot, 'You took Josepha, I have taken your wife!'
+
+"It is the old law of tit-for-tat! And I will persevere till I have
+attained my end, unless you should become extremely ugly.--I shall
+succeed; and I will tell you why," he went on, resuming his attitude,
+and looking at Madame Hulot. "You will not meet with such an old man,
+or such a young lover," he said after a pause, "because you love
+your daughter too well to hand her over to the manoeuvres of an old
+libertine, and because you--the Baronne Hulot, sister of the old
+Lieutenant-General who commanded the veteran Grenadiers of the Old
+Guard--will not condescend to take a man of spirit wherever you may find
+him; for he might be a mere craftsman, as many a millionaire of to-day
+was ten years ago, a working artisan, or the foreman of a factory.
+
+"And then, when you see the girl, urged by her twenty years, capable of
+dishonoring you all, you will say to yourself, 'It will be better that I
+should fall! If Monsieur Crevel will but keep my secret, I will earn
+my daughter's portion--two hundred thousand francs for ten years'
+attachment to that old gloveseller--old Crevel!'--I disgust you no
+doubt, and what I am saying is horribly immoral, you think? But if you
+happened to have been bitten by an overwhelming passion, you would find
+a thousand arguments in favor of yielding--as women do when they are in
+love.--Yes, and Hortense's interests will suggest to your feelings such
+terms of surrendering your conscience----"
+
+"Hortense has still an uncle."
+
+"What! Old Fischer? He is winding up his concerns, and that again is the
+Baron's fault; his rake is dragged over every till within his reach."
+
+"Comte Hulot----"
+
+"Oh, madame, your husband has already made thin air of the old General's
+savings. He spent them in furnishing his singer's rooms.--Now, come; am
+I to go without a hope?"
+
+"Good-bye, monsieur. A man easily gets over a passion for a woman of my
+age, and you will fall back on Christian principles. God takes care of
+the wretched----"
+
+The Baroness rose to oblige the captain to retreat, and drove him back
+into the drawing-room.
+
+"Ought the beautiful Madame Hulot to be living amid such squalor?" said
+he, and he pointed to an old lamp, a chandelier bereft of its gilding,
+the threadbare carpet, the very rags of wealth which made the large
+room, with its red, white, and gold, look like a corpse of Imperial
+festivities.
+
+"Monsieur, virtue shines on it all. I have no wish to owe a handsome
+abode to having made of the beauty you are pleased to ascribe to me a
+_man-trap_ and _a money-box for five-franc pieces_!"
+
+The captain bit his lips as he recognized the words he had used to
+vilify Josepha's avarice.
+
+"And for whom are you so magnanimous?" said he. By this time the
+baroness had got her rejected admirer as far as the door.--"For a
+libertine!" said he, with a lofty grimace of virtue and superior wealth.
+
+"If you are right, my constancy has some merit, monsieur. That is all."
+
+After bowing to the officer as a woman bows to dismiss an importune
+visitor, she turned away too quickly to see him once more fold his arms.
+She unlocked the doors she had closed, and did not see the threatening
+gesture which was Crevel's parting greeting. She walked with a proud,
+defiant step, like a martyr to the Coliseum, but her strength was
+exhausted; she sank on the sofa in her blue room, as if she were
+ready to faint, and sat there with her eyes fixed on the tumble-down
+summer-house, where her daughter was gossiping with Cousin Betty.
+
+
+
+From the first days of her married life to the present time the Baroness
+had loved her husband, as Josephine in the end had loved Napoleon, with
+an admiring, maternal, and cowardly devotion. Though ignorant of the
+details given her by Crevel, she knew that for twenty years past Baron
+Hulot been anything rather than a faithful husband; but she had sealed
+her eyes with lead, she had wept in silence, and no word of reproach had
+ever escaped her. In return for this angelic sweetness, she had won her
+husband's veneration and something approaching to worship from all who
+were about her.
+
+A wife's affection for her husband and the respect she pays him are
+infectious in a family. Hortense believed her father to be a perfect
+model of conjugal affection; as to their son, brought up to admire the
+Baron, whom everybody regarded as one of the giants who so effectually
+backed Napoleon, he knew that he owed his advancement to his father's
+name, position, and credit; and besides, the impressions of childhood
+exert an enduring influence. He still was afraid of his father; and if
+he had suspected the misdeeds revealed by Crevel, as he was too much
+overawed by him to find fault, he would have found excuses in the view
+every man takes of such matters.
+
+It now will be necessary to give the reasons for the extraordinary
+self-devotion of a good and beautiful woman; and this, in a few words,
+is her past history.
+
+
+
+Three brothers, simple laboring men, named Fischer, and living in a
+village situated on the furthest frontier of Lorraine, were compelled
+by the Republican conscription to set out with the so-called army of the
+Rhine.
+
+In 1799 the second brother, Andre, a widower, and Madame Hulot's father,
+left his daughter to the care of his elder brother, Pierre Fischer,
+disabled from service by a wound received in 1797, and made a small
+private venture in the military transport service, an opening he owed to
+the favor of Hulot d'Ervy, who was high in the commissariat. By a very
+obvious chance Hulot, coming to Strasbourg, saw the Fischer family.
+Adeline's father and his younger brother were at that time contractors
+for forage in the province of Alsace.
+
+Adeline, then sixteen years of age, might be compared with the famous
+Madame du Barry, like her, a daughter of Lorraine. She was one of those
+perfect and striking beauties--a woman like Madame Tallien, finished
+with peculiar care by Nature, who bestows on them all her choicest
+gifts--distinction, dignity, grace, refinement, elegance, flesh of a
+superior texture, and a complexion mingled in the unknown laboratory
+where good luck presides. These beautiful creatures all have something
+in common: Bianca Capella, whose portrait is one of Bronzino's
+masterpieces; Jean Goujon's Venus, painted from the famous Diane de
+Poitiers; Signora Olympia, whose picture adorns the Doria gallery;
+Ninon, Madame du Barry, Madame Tallien, Mademoiselle Georges, Madame
+Recamier.--all these women who preserved their beauty in spite of years,
+of passion, and of their life of excess and pleasure, have in
+figure, frame, and in the character of their beauty certain striking
+resemblances, enough to make one believe that there is in the ocean of
+generations an Aphrodisian current whence every such Venus is born, all
+daughters of the same salt wave.
+
+Adeline Fischer, one of the loveliest of this race of goddesses, had the
+splendid type, the flowing lines, the exquisite texture of a woman born
+a queen. The fair hair that our mother Eve received from the hand of
+God, the form of an Empress, an air of grandeur, and an august line of
+profile, with her rural modesty, made every man pause in delight as she
+passed, like amateurs in front of a Raphael; in short, having once seen
+her, the Commissariat officer made Mademoiselle Adeline Fischer his wife
+as quickly as the law would permit, to the great astonishment of the
+Fischers, who had all been brought up in the fear of their betters.
+
+The eldest, a soldier of 1792, severely wounded in the attack on the
+lines at Wissembourg, adored the Emperor Napoleon and everything that
+had to do with the _Grande Armee_. Andre and Johann spoke with respect
+of Commissary Hulot, the Emperor's protege, to whom indeed they owed
+their prosperity; for Hulot d'Ervy, finding them intelligent and honest,
+had taken them from the army provision wagons to place them in charge
+of a government contract needing despatch. The brothers Fischer had
+done further service during the campaign of 1804. At the peace Hulot had
+secured for them the contract for forage from Alsace, not knowing that
+he would presently be sent to Strasbourg to prepare for the campaign of
+1806.
+
+This marriage was like an Assumption to the young peasant girl. The
+beautiful Adeline was translated at once from the mire of her village to
+the paradise of the Imperial Court; for the contractor, one of the most
+conscientious and hard-working of the Commissariat staff, was made
+a Baron, obtained a place near the Emperor, and was attached to the
+Imperial Guard. The handsome rustic bravely set to work to educate
+herself for love of her husband, for she was simply crazy about him;
+and, indeed, the Commissariat office was as a man a perfect match for
+Adeline as a woman. He was one of the picked corps of fine men. Tall,
+well-built, fair, with beautiful blue eyes full of irresistible fire and
+life, his elegant appearance made him remarkable by the side of d'Orsay,
+Forbin, Ouvrard; in short, in the battalion of fine men that surrounded
+the Emperor. A conquering "buck," and holding the ideas of the
+Directoire with regard to women, his career of gallantry was interrupted
+for some long time by his conjugal affection.
+
+To Adeline the Baron was from the first a sort of god who could do no
+wrong. To him she owed everything: fortune--she had a carriage, a fine
+house, every luxury of the day; happiness--he was devoted to her in the
+face of the world; a title, for she was a Baroness; fame, for she was
+spoken of as the beautiful Madame Hulot--and in Paris! Finally, she had
+the honor of refusing the Emperor's advances, for Napoleon made her a
+present of a diamond necklace, and always remembered her, asking now and
+again, "And is the beautiful Madame Hulot still a model of virtue?" in
+the tone of a man who might have taken his revenge on one who should
+have triumphed where he had failed.
+
+So it needs no great intuition to discern what were the motives in a
+simple, guileless, and noble soul for the fanaticism of Madame Hulot's
+love. Having fully persuaded herself that her husband could do her no
+wrong, she made herself in the depths of her heart the humble, abject,
+and blindfold slave of the man who had made her. It must be noted, too,
+that she was gifted with great good sense--the good sense of the people,
+which made her education sound. In society she spoke little, and never
+spoke evil of any one; she did not try to shine; she thought out
+many things, listened well, and formed herself on the model of the
+best-conducted women of good birth.
+
+In 1815 Hulot followed the lead of the Prince de Wissembourg, his
+intimate friend, and became one of the officers who organized the
+improvised troops whose rout brought the Napoleonic cycle to a close at
+Waterloo. In 1816 the Baron was one of the men best hated by the Feltre
+administration, and was not reinstated in the Commissariat till 1823,
+when he was needed for the Spanish war. In 1830 he took office as
+the fourth wheel of the coach, at the time of the levies, a sort of
+conscription made by Louis Philippe on the old Napoleonic soldiery. From
+the time when the younger branch ascended the throne, having taken an
+active part in bringing that about, he was regarded as an indispensable
+authority at the War Office. He had already won his Marshal's baton,
+and the King could do no more for him unless by making him minister or a
+peer of France.
+
+From 1818 till 1823, having no official occupation, Baron Hulot had gone
+on active service to womankind. Madame Hulot dated her Hector's first
+infidelities from the grand _finale_ of the Empire. Thus, for twelve
+years the Baroness had filled the part in her household of _prima donna
+assoluta_, without a rival. She still could boast of the old-fashioned,
+inveterate affection which husbands feel for wives who are resigned to
+be gentle and virtuous helpmates; she knew that if she had a rival,
+that rival would not subsist for two hours under a word of reproof from
+herself; but she shut her eyes, she stopped her ears, she would know
+nothing of her husband's proceedings outside his home. In short, she
+treated her Hector as a mother treats a spoilt child.
+
+Three years before the conversation reported above, Hortense, at
+the Theatre des Varietes, had recognized her father in a lower tier
+stage-box with Jenny Cadine, and had exclaimed:
+
+"There is papa!"
+
+"You are mistaken, my darling; he is at the Marshal's," the Baroness
+replied.
+
+She too had seen Jenny Cadine; but instead of feeling a pang when she
+saw how pretty she was, she said to herself, "That rascal Hector must
+think himself very lucky."
+
+She suffered nevertheless; she gave herself up in secret to rages of
+torment; but as soon as she saw Hector, she always remembered her twelve
+years of perfect happiness, and could not find it in her to utter a word
+of complaint. She would have been glad if the Baron would have taken her
+into his confidence; but she never dared to let him see that she knew
+of his kicking over the traces, out of respect for her husband. Such
+an excess of delicacy is never met with but in those grand creatures,
+daughters of the soil, whose instinct it is to take blows without ever
+returning them; the blood of the early martyrs still lives in their
+veins. Well-born women, their husbands' equals, feel the impulse to
+annoy them, to mark the points of their tolerance, like points at
+billiards, by some stinging word, partly in the spirit of diabolical
+malice, and to secure the upper hand or the right of turning the tables.
+
+The Baroness had an ardent admirer in her brother-in-law,
+Lieutenant-General Hulot, the venerable Colonel of the Grenadiers of the
+Imperial Infantry Guard, who was to have a Marshal's baton in his old
+age. This veteran, after having served from 1830 to 1834 as Commandant
+of the military division, including the departments of Brittany, the
+scene of his exploits in 1799 and 1800, had come to settle in Paris near
+his brother, for whom he had a fatherly affection.
+
+This old soldier's heart was in sympathy with his sister-in-law; he
+admired her as the noblest and saintliest of her sex. He had never
+married, because he hoped to find a second Adeline, though he had vainly
+sought for her through twenty campaigns in as many lands. To
+maintain her place in the esteem of this blameless and spotless old
+republican--of whom Napoleon had said, "That brave old Hulot is the most
+obstinate republican, but he will never be false to me"--Adeline would
+have endured griefs even greater than those that had just come upon
+her. But the old soldier, seventy-two years of age, battered by thirty
+campaigns, and wounded for the twenty-seventh time at Waterloo, was
+Adeline's admirer, and not a "protector." The poor old Count, among
+other infirmities, could only hear through a speaking trumpet.
+
+So long as Baron Hulot d'Ervy was a fine man, his flirtations did not
+damage his fortune; but when a man is fifty, the Graces claim payment.
+At that age love becomes vice; insensate vanities come into play.
+Thus, at about that time, Adeline saw that her husband was incredibly
+particular about his dress; he dyed his hair and whiskers, and wore a
+belt and stays. He was determined to remain handsome at any cost. This
+care of his person, a weakness he had once mercilessly mocked at, was
+carried out in the minutest details.
+
+At last Adeline perceived that the Pactolus poured out before the
+Baron's mistresses had its source in her pocket. In eight years he had
+dissipated a considerable amount of money; and so effectually, that, on
+his son's marriage two years previously, the Baron had been compelled to
+explain to his wife that his pay constituted their whole income.
+
+"What shall we come to?" asked Adeline.
+
+"Be quite easy," said the official, "I will leave the whole of my salary
+in your hands, and I will make a fortune for Hortense, and some savings
+for the future, in business."
+
+The wife's deep belief in her husband's power and superior talents, in
+his capabilities and character, had, in fact, for the moment allayed her
+anxiety.
+
+What the Baroness' reflections and tears were after Crevel's departure
+may now be clearly imagined. The poor woman had for two years past known
+that she was at the bottom of a pit, but she had fancied herself alone
+in it. How her son's marriage had been finally arranged she had not
+known; she had known nothing of Hector's connection with the grasping
+Jewess; and, above all, she hoped that no one in the world knew anything
+of her troubles. Now, if Crevel went about so ready to talk of the
+Baron's excesses, Hector's reputation would suffer. She could see, under
+the angry ex-perfumer's coarse harangue, the odious gossip behind the
+scenes which led to her son's marriage. Two reprobate hussies had been
+the priestesses of this union planned at some orgy amid the degrading
+familiarities of two tipsy old sinners.
+
+"And has he forgotten Hortense!" she wondered.
+
+"But he sees her every day; will he try to find her a husband among his
+good-for-nothing sluts?"
+
+At this moment it was the mother that spoke rather than the wife, for
+she saw Hortense laughing with her Cousin Betty--the reckless laughter
+of heedless youth; and she knew that such hysterical laughter was quite
+as distressing a symptom as the tearful reverie of solitary walks in the
+garden.
+
+Hortense was like her mother, with golden hair that waved naturally,
+and was amazingly long and thick. Her skin had the lustre of
+mother-of-pearl. She was visibly the offspring of a true marriage, of a
+pure and noble love in its prime. There was a passionate vitality in
+her countenance, a brilliancy of feature, a full fount of youth, a fresh
+vigor and abundance of health, which radiated from her with electric
+flashes. Hortense invited the eye.
+
+When her eye, of deep ultramarine blue, liquid with the moisture of
+innocent youth, rested on a passer-by, he was involuntarily thrilled.
+Nor did a single freckle mar her skin, such as those with which many
+a white and golden maid pays toll for her milky whiteness. Tall, round
+without being fat, with a slender dignity as noble as her mother's,
+she really deserved the name of goddess, of which old authors were
+so lavish. In fact, those who saw Hortense in the street could hardly
+restrain the exclamation, "What a beautiful girl!"
+
+She was so genuinely innocent, that she could say to her mother:
+
+"What do they mean, mamma, by calling me a beautiful girl when I am with
+you? Are not you much handsomer than I am?"
+
+And, in point of fact, at seven-and-forty the Baroness might have been
+preferred to her daughter by amateurs of sunset beauty; for she had
+not yet lost any of her charms, by one of those phenomena which are
+especially rare in Paris, where Ninon was regarded as scandalous, simply
+because she thus seemed to enjoy such an unfair advantage over the
+plainer women of the seventeenth century.
+
+Thinking of her daughter brought her back to the father; she saw him
+sinking by degrees, day after day, down to the social mire, and even
+dismissed some day from his appointment. The idea of her idol's fall,
+with a vague vision of the disasters prophesied by Crevel, was such a
+terror to the poor woman, that she became rapt in the contemplation like
+an ecstatic.
+
+Cousin Betty, from time to time, as she chatted with Hortense, looked
+round to see when they might return to the drawing-room; but her young
+cousin was pelting her with questions, and at the moment when the
+Baroness opened the glass door she did not happen to be looking.
+
+
+
+Lisbeth Fischer, though the daughter of the eldest of the three
+brothers, was five years younger than Madame Hulot; she was far from
+being as handsome as her cousin, and had been desperately jealous of
+Adeline. Jealousy was the fundamental passion of this character, marked
+by eccentricities--a word invented by the English to describe the
+craziness not of the asylum, but of respectable households. A native
+of the Vosges, a peasant in the fullest sense of the word, lean, brown,
+with shining black hair and thick eyebrows joining in a tuft, with long,
+strong arms, thick feet, and some moles on her narrow simian face--such
+is a brief description of the elderly virgin.
+
+The family, living all under one roof, had sacrificed the common-looking
+girl to the beauty, the bitter fruit to the splendid flower. Lisbeth
+worked in the fields, while her cousin was indulged; and one day, when
+they were alone together, she had tried to destroy Adeline's nose, a
+truly Greek nose, which the old mothers admired. Though she was beaten
+for this misdeed, she persisted nevertheless in tearing the favorite's
+gowns and crumpling her collars.
+
+At the time of Adeline's wonderful marriage, Lisbeth had bowed to fate,
+as Napoleon's brothers and sisters bowed before the splendor of the
+throne and the force of authority.
+
+Adeline, who was extremely sweet and kind, remembered Lisbeth when she
+found herself in Paris, and invited her there in 1809, intending to
+rescue her from poverty by finding her a husband. But seeing that it was
+impossible to marry the girl out of hand, with her black eyes and sooty
+brows, unable, too, to read or write, the Baron began by apprenticing
+her to a business; he placed her as a learner with the embroiderers to
+the Imperial Court, the well-known Pons Brothers.
+
+Lisbeth, called Betty for short, having learned to embroider in gold
+and silver, and possessing all the energy of a mountain race, had
+determination enough to learn to read, write, and keep accounts; for her
+cousin the Baron had pointed out the necessity for these accomplishments
+if she hoped to set up in business as an embroiderer.
+
+She was bent on making a fortune; in two years she was another creature.
+In 1811 the peasant woman had become a very presentable, skilled, and
+intelligent forewoman.
+
+Her department, that of gold and silver lace-work, as it is called,
+included epaulettes, sword-knots, aiguillettes; in short, the immense
+mass of glittering ornaments that sparkled on the rich uniforms of the
+French army and civil officials. The Emperor, a true Italian in his love
+of dress, had overlaid the coats of all his servants with silver and
+gold, and the Empire included a hundred and thirty-three Departments.
+These ornaments, usually supplied to tailors who were solvent and
+wealthy paymasters, were a very secure branch of trade.
+
+Just when Cousin Betty, the best hand in the house of Pons Brothers,
+where she was forewoman of the embroidery department, might have set up
+in business on her own account, the Empire collapsed. The olive-branch
+of peace held out by the Bourbons did not reassure Lisbeth; she feared
+a diminution of this branch of trade, since henceforth there were to
+be but eighty-six Departments to plunder, instead of a hundred and
+thirty-three, to say nothing of the immense reduction of the army.
+Utterly scared by the ups and downs of industry, she refused the Baron's
+offers of help, and he thought she must be mad. She confirmed this
+opinion by quarreling with Monsieur Rivet, who bought the business
+of Pons Brothers, and with whom the Baron wished to place her in
+partnership; she would be no more than a workwoman. Thus the Fischer
+family had relapsed into the precarious mediocrity from which Baron
+Hulot had raised it.
+
+The three brothers Fischer, who had been ruined by the abdication at
+Fontainebleau, in despair joined the irregular troops in 1815. The
+eldest, Lisbeth's father, was killed. Adeline's father, sentenced to
+death by court-martial, fled to Germany, and died at Treves in 1820.
+Johann, the youngest, came to Paris, a petitioner to the queen of the
+family, who was said to dine off gold and silver plate, and never to
+be seen at a party but with diamonds in her hair as big as hazel-nuts,
+given to her by the Emperor.
+
+Johann Fischer, then aged forty-three, obtained from Baron Hulot a
+capital of ten thousand francs with which to start a small business
+as forage-dealer at Versailles, under the patronage of the War Office,
+through the influence of the friends still in office, of the late
+Commissary-General.
+
+These family catastrophes, Baron Hulot's dismissal, and the knowledge
+that he was a mere cipher in that immense stir of men and interests and
+things which makes Paris at once a paradise and a hell, quite quelled
+Lisbeth Fischer. She gave up all idea of rivalry and comparison with her
+cousin after feeling her great superiority; but envy still lurked in
+her heart, like a plague-germ that may hatch and devastate a city if the
+fatal bale of wool is opened in which it is concealed.
+
+Now and again, indeed, she said to herself:
+
+"Adeline and I are the same flesh and blood, our fathers were
+brothers--and she is in a mansion, while I am in a garret."
+
+But every New Year Lisbeth had presents from the Baron and Baroness; the
+Baron, who was always good to her, paid for her firewood in the winter;
+old General Hulot had her to dinner once a week; and there was always a
+cover laid for her at her cousin's table. They laughed at her no doubt,
+but they never were ashamed to own her. In short, they had made her
+independent in Paris, where she lived as she pleased.
+
+The old maid had, in fact, a terror of any kind of tie. Her cousin had
+offered her a room in her own house--Lisbeth suspected the halter of
+domestic servitude; several times the Baron had found a solution of
+the difficult problem of her marriage; but though tempted in the first
+instance, she would presently decline, fearing lest she should be
+scorned for her want of education, her general ignorance, and her
+poverty; finally, when the Baroness suggested that she should live
+with their uncle Johann, and keep house for him, instead of the upper
+servant, who must cost him dear, Lisbeth replied that that was the very
+last way she should think of marrying.
+
+Lisbeth Fischer had the sort of strangeness in her ideas which is often
+noticeable in characters that have developed late, in savages, who think
+much and speak little. Her peasant's wit had acquired a good deal of
+Parisian asperity from hearing the talk of workshops and mixing with
+workmen and workwomen. She, whose character had a marked resemblance to
+that of the Corsicans, worked upon without fruition by the instincts of
+a strong nature, would have liked to be the protectress of a weak man;
+but, as a result of living in the capital, the capital had altered her
+superficially. Parisian polish became rust on this coarsely tempered
+soul. Gifted with a cunning which had become unfathomable, as it always
+does in those whose celibacy is genuine, with the originality and
+sharpness with which she clothed her ideas, in any other position she
+would have been formidable. Full of spite, she was capable of bringing
+discord into the most united family.
+
+In early days, when she indulged in certain secret hopes which she
+confided to none, she took to wearing stays, and dressing in the
+fashion, and so shone in splendor for a short time, that the Baron
+thought her marriageable. Lisbeth at that stage was the piquante
+brunette of old-fashioned novels. Her piercing glance, her olive
+skin, her reed-like figure, might invite a half-pay major; but she was
+satisfied, she would say laughing, with her own admiration.
+
+And, indeed, she found her life pleasant enough when she had freed it
+from practical anxieties, for she dined out every evening after working
+hard from sunrise. Thus she had only her rent and her midday meal to
+provide for; she had most of her clothes given her, and a variety of
+very acceptable stores, such as coffee, sugar, wine, and so forth.
+
+In 1837, after living for twenty-seven years, half maintained by the
+Hulots and her Uncle Fischer, Cousin Betty, resigned to being nobody,
+allowed herself to be treated so. She herself refused to appear at any
+grand dinners, preferring the family party, where she held her own and
+was spared all slights to her pride.
+
+Wherever she went--at General Hulot's, at Crevel's, at the house of the
+young Hulots, or at Rivet's (Pons' successor, with whom she made up her
+quarrel, and who made much of her), and at the Baroness' table--she was
+treated as one of the family; in fact, she managed to make friends of
+the servants by making them an occasional small present, and
+always gossiping with them for a few minutes before going into the
+drawing-room. This familiarity, by which she uncompromisingly put
+herself on their level, conciliated their servile good-nature, which
+is indispensable to a parasite. "She is a good, steady woman," was
+everybody's verdict.
+
+Her willingness to oblige, which knew no bounds when it was not demanded
+of her, was indeed, like her assumed bluntness, a necessity of her
+position. She had at length understood what her life must be, seeing
+that she was at everybody's mercy; and needing to please everybody, she
+would laugh with young people, who liked her for a sort of wheedling
+flattery which always wins them; guessing and taking part with their
+fancies, she would make herself their spokeswoman, and they thought her
+a delightful _confidante_, since she had no right to find fault with
+them.
+
+Her absolute secrecy also won her the confidence of their seniors; for,
+like Ninon, she had certain manly qualities. As a rule, our confidence
+is given to those below rather than above us. We employ our inferiors
+rather than our betters in secret transactions, and they thus become
+the recipients of our inmost thoughts, and look on at our meditations;
+Richelieu thought he had achieved success when he was admitted to the
+Council. This penniless woman was supposed to be so dependent on every
+one about her, that she seemed doomed to perfect silence. She herself
+called herself the Family Confessional.
+
+The Baroness only, remembering her ill-usage in childhood by the cousin
+who, though younger, was stronger than herself, never wholly trusted
+her. Besides, out of sheer modesty, she would never have told her
+domestic sorrows to any one but God.
+
+It may here be well to add that the Baron's house preserved all its
+magnificence in the eyes of Lisbeth Fischer, who was not struck, as the
+parvenu perfumer had been, with the penury stamped on the shabby chairs,
+the dirty hangings, and the ripped silk. The furniture we live with is
+in some sort like our own person; seeing ourselves every day, we end,
+like the Baron, by thinking ourselves but little altered, and still
+youthful, when others see that our head is covered with chinchilla,
+our forehead scarred with circumflex accents, our stomach assuming the
+rotundity of a pumpkin. So these rooms, always blazing in Betty's
+eyes with the Bengal fire of Imperial victory, were to her perennially
+splendid.
+
+As time went on, Lisbeth had contracted some rather strange old-maidish
+habits. For instance, instead of following the fashions, she expected
+the fashion to accept her ways and yield to her always out-of-date
+notions. When the Baroness gave her a pretty new bonnet, or a gown in
+the fashion of the day, Betty remade it completely at home, and spoilt
+it by producing a dress of the style of the Empire or of her old
+Lorraine costume. A thirty-franc bonnet came out a rag, and the gown a
+disgrace. On this point, Lisbeth was as obstinate as a mule; she would
+please no one but herself and believed herself charming; whereas this
+assimilative process--harmonious, no doubt, in so far as that it stamped
+her for an old maid from head to foot--made her so ridiculous, that,
+with the best will in the world, no one could admit her on any smart
+occasion.
+
+This refractory, capricious, and independent spirit, and the
+inexplicable wild shyness of the woman for whom the Baron had four
+times found a match--an employe in his office, a retired major, an
+army contractor, and a half-pay captain--while she had refused an army
+lacemaker, who had since made his fortune, had won her the name of the
+Nanny Goat, which the Baron gave her in jest. But this nickname only met
+the peculiarities that lay on the surface, the eccentricities which
+each of us displays to his neighbors in social life. This woman, who, if
+closely studied, would have shown the most savage traits of the peasant
+class, was still the girl who had clawed her cousin's nose, and who, if
+she had not been trained to reason, would perhaps have killed her in a
+fit of jealousy.
+
+It was only her knowledge of the laws and of the world that enabled her
+to control the swift instinct with which country folk, like wild men,
+reduce impulse to action. In this alone, perhaps, lies the difference
+between natural and civilized man. The savage has only impulse; the
+civilized man has impulses and ideas. And in the savage the brain
+retains, as we may say, but few impressions, it is wholly at the mercy
+of the feeling that rushes in upon it; while in the civilized man, ideas
+sink into the heart and change it; he has a thousand interests and many
+feelings, where the savage has but one at a time. This is the cause of
+the transient ascendency of a child over its parents, which ceases as
+soon as it is satisfied; in the man who is still one with nature, this
+contrast is constant. Cousin Betty, a savage of Lorraine, somewhat
+treacherous too, was of this class of natures, which are commoner among
+the lower orders than is supposed, accounting for the conduct of the
+populace during revolutions.
+
+
+
+At the time when this _Drama_ opens, if Cousin Betty would have allowed
+herself to be dressed like other people; if, like the women of Paris,
+she had been accustomed to wear each fashion in its turn, she would have
+been presentable and acceptable, but she preserved the stiffness of a
+stick. Now a woman devoid of all the graces, in Paris simply does not
+exist. The fine but hard eyes, the severe features, the Calabrian fixity
+of complexion which made Lisbeth like a figure by Giotto, and of which a
+true Parisian would have taken advantage, above all, her strange way of
+dressing, gave her such an extraordinary appearance that she sometimes
+looked like one of those monkeys in petticoats taken about by little
+Savoyards. As she was well known in the houses connected by family which
+she frequented, and restricted her social efforts to that little circle,
+as she liked her own home, her singularities no longer astonished
+anybody; and out of doors they were lost in the immense stir of Paris
+street-life, where only pretty women are ever looked at.
+
+Hortense's laughter was at this moment caused by a victory won over her
+Cousin Lisbeth's perversity; she had just wrung from her an avowal she
+had been hoping for these three years past. However secretive an old
+maid may be, there is one sentiment which will always avail to make her
+break her fast from words, and that is her vanity. For the last three
+years, Hortense, having become very inquisitive on such matters, had
+pestered her cousin with questions, which, however, bore the stamp of
+perfect innocence. She wanted to know why her cousin had never married.
+Hortense, who knew of the five offers that she had refused, had
+constructed her little romance; she supposed that Lisbeth had had a
+passionate attachment, and a war of banter was the result. Hortense
+would talk of "We young girls!" when speaking of herself and her cousin.
+
+Cousin Betty had on several occasions answered in the same tone--"And
+who says I have not a lover?" So Cousin Betty's lover, real or
+fictitious, became a subject of mild jesting. At last, after two years
+of this petty warfare, the last time Lisbeth had come to the house
+Hortense's first question had been:
+
+"And how is your lover?"
+
+"Pretty well, thank you," was the answer. "He is rather ailing, poor
+young man."
+
+"He has delicate health?" asked the Baroness, laughing.
+
+"I should think so! He is fair. A sooty thing like me can love none but
+a fair man with a color like the moon."
+
+"But who is he? What does he do?" asked Hortense. "Is he a prince?"
+
+"A prince of artisans, as I am queen of the bobbin. Is a poor woman like
+me likely to find a lover in a man with a fine house and money in the
+funds, or in a duke of the realm, or some Prince Charming out of a fairy
+tale?"
+
+"Oh, I should so much like to see him!" cried Hortense, smiling.
+
+"To see what a man can be like who can love the Nanny Goat?" retorted
+Lisbeth.
+
+"He must be some monster of an old clerk, with a goat's beard!" Hortense
+said to her mother.
+
+"Well, then, you are quite mistaken, mademoiselle."
+
+"Then you mean that you really have a lover?" Hortense exclaimed in
+triumph.
+
+"As sure as you have not!" retorted Lisbeth, nettled.
+
+"But if you have a lover, why don't you marry him, Lisbeth?" said the
+Baroness, shaking her head at her daughter. "We have been hearing rumors
+about him these three years. You have had time to study him; and if he
+has been faithful so long, you should not persist in a delay which must
+be hard upon him. After all, it is a matter of conscience; and if he is
+young, it is time to take a brevet of dignity."
+
+Cousin Betty had fixed her gaze on Adeline, and seeing that she was
+jesting, she replied:
+
+"It would be marrying hunger and thirst; he is a workman, I am a
+workwoman. If we had children, they would be workmen.--No, no; we love
+each other spiritually; it is less expensive."
+
+"Why do you keep him in hiding?" Hortense asked.
+
+"He wears a round jacket," replied the old maid, laughing.
+
+"You truly love him?" the Baroness inquired.
+
+"I believe you! I love him for his own sake, the dear cherub. For four
+years his home has been in my heart."
+
+"Well, then, if you love him for himself," said the Baroness gravely,
+"and if he really exists, you are treating him criminally. You do not
+know how to love truly."
+
+"We all know that from our birth," said Lisbeth.
+
+"No, there are women who love and yet are selfish, and that is your
+case."
+
+Cousin Betty's head fell, and her glance would have made any one shiver
+who had seen it; but her eyes were on her reel of thread.
+
+"If you would introduce your so-called lover to us, Hector might find
+him employment, or put him in a position to make money."
+
+"That is out of the question," said Cousin Betty.
+
+"And why?"
+
+"He is a sort of Pole--a refugee----"
+
+"A conspirator?" cried Hortense. "What luck for you!--Has he had any
+adventures?"
+
+"He has fought for Poland. He was a professor in the school where the
+students began the rebellion; and as he had been placed there by the
+Grand Duke Constantine, he has no hope of mercy----"
+
+"A professor of what?"
+
+"Of fine arts."
+
+"And he came to Paris when the rebellion was quelled?"
+
+"In 1833. He came through Germany on foot."
+
+"Poor young man! And how old is he?"
+
+"He was just four-and-twenty when the insurrection broke out--he is
+twenty-nine now."
+
+"Fifteen years your junior," said the Baroness.
+
+"And what does he live on?" asked Hortense.
+
+"His talent."
+
+"Oh, he gives lessons?"
+
+"No," said Cousin Betty; "he gets them, and hard ones too!"
+
+"And his Christian name--is it a pretty name?"
+
+"Wenceslas."
+
+"What a wonderful imagination you old maids have!" exclaimed the
+Baroness. "To hear you talk, Lisbeth, one might really believe you."
+
+"You see, mamma, he is a Pole, and so accustomed to the knout that
+Lisbeth reminds him of the joys of his native land."
+
+They all three laughed, and Hortense sang _Wenceslas! idole de mon ame!_
+instead of _O Mathilde_.
+
+Then for a few minutes there was a truce.
+
+"These children," said Cousin Betty, looking at Hortense as she went up
+to her, "fancy that no one but themselves can have lovers."
+
+"Listen," Hortense replied, finding herself alone with her cousin, "if
+you prove to me that Wenceslas is not a pure invention, I will give you
+my yellow cashmere shawl."
+
+"He is a Count."
+
+"Every Pole is a Count!"
+
+"But he is not a Pole; he comes from Liva--Litha----"
+
+"Lithuania?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Livonia?"
+
+"Yes, that's it!"
+
+"But what is his name?"
+
+"I wonder if you are capable of keeping a secret."
+
+"Cousin Betty, I will be as mute!----"
+
+"As a fish?"
+
+"As a fish."
+
+"By your life eternal?"
+
+"By my life eternal!"
+
+"No, by your happiness in this world?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then, his name is Wenceslas Steinbock."
+
+"One of Charles XII.'s Generals was named Steinbock."
+
+"He was his grand-uncle. His own father settled in Livonia after the
+death of the King of Sweden; but he lost all his fortune during the
+campaign of 1812, and died, leaving the poor boy at the age of eight
+without a penny. The Grand Duke Constantine, for the honor of the name
+of Steinbock, took him under his protection and sent him to school."
+
+"I will not break my word," Hortense replied; "prove his existence,
+and you shall have the yellow shawl. The color is most becoming to dark
+skins."
+
+"And you will keep my secret?"
+
+"And tell you mine."
+
+"Well, then, the next time I come you shall have the proof."
+
+"But the proof will be the lover," said Hortense.
+
+Cousin Betty, who, since her first arrival in Paris, had been bitten
+by a mania for shawls, was bewitched by the idea of owning the yellow
+cashmere given to his wife by the Baron in 1808, and handed down from
+mother to daughter after the manner of some families in 1830. The shawl
+had been a good deal worn ten years ago; but the costly object, now
+always kept in its sandal-wood box, seemed to the old maid ever new,
+like the drawing-room furniture. So she brought in her handbag a present
+for the Baroness' birthday, by which she proposed to prove the existence
+of her romantic lover.
+
+This present was a silver seal formed of three little figures back to
+back, wreathed with foliage, and supporting the Globe. They represented
+Faith, Hope, and Charity; their feet rested on monsters rending each
+other, among them the symbolical serpent. In 1846, now that such immense
+strides have been made in the art of which Benvenuto Cellini was the
+master, by Mademoiselle de Fauveau, Wagner, Jeanest, Froment-Meurice,
+and wood-carvers like Lienard, this little masterpiece would amaze
+nobody; but at that time a girl who understood the silversmith's art
+stood astonished as she held the seal which Lisbeth put into her hands,
+saying:
+
+"There! what do you think of that?"
+
+In design, attitude, and drapery the figures were of the school of
+Raphael; but the execution was in the style of the Florentine metal
+workers--the school created by Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti,
+Benvenuto Cellini, John of Bologna, and others. The French masters of
+the Renaissance had never invented more strangely twining monsters than
+these that symbolized the evil passions. The palms, ferns, reeds, and
+foliage that wreathed the Virtues showed a style, a taste, a handling
+that might have driven a practised craftsman to despair; a scroll
+floated above the three figures; and on its surface, between the heads,
+were a W, a chamois, and the word _fecit_.
+
+"Who carved this?" asked Hortense.
+
+"Well, just my lover," replied Lisbeth. "There are ten months' work in
+it; I could earn more at making sword-knots.--He told me that Steinbock
+means a rock goat, a chamois, in German. And he intends to mark all his
+work in that way.--Ah, ha! I shall have the shawl."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Do you suppose I could buy such a thing, or order it? Impossible!
+Well, then, it must have been given to me. And who would make me such a
+present? A lover!"
+
+Hortense, with an artfulness that would have frightened Lisbeth Fischer
+if she had detected it, took care not to express all her admiration,
+though she was full of the delight which every soul that is open to a
+sense of beauty must feel on seeing a faultless piece of work--perfect
+and unexpected.
+
+"On my word," said she, "it is very pretty."
+
+"Yes, it is pretty," said her cousin; "but I like an orange-colored
+shawl better.--Well, child, my lover spends his time in doing such work
+as that. Since he came to Paris he has turned out three or four little
+trifles in that style, and that is the fruit of four years' study
+and toil. He has served as apprentice to founders, metal-casters, and
+goldsmiths.--There he has paid away thousands and hundreds of francs.
+And my gentleman tells me that in a few months now he will be famous and
+rich----"
+
+"Then you often see him?"
+
+"Bless me, do you think it is all a fable? I told you truth in jest."
+
+"And he is in love with you?" asked Hortense eagerly.
+
+"He adores me," replied Lisbeth very seriously. "You see, child, he had
+never seen any women but the washed out, pale things they all are in
+the north, and a slender, brown, youthful thing like me warmed his
+heart.--But, mum; you promised, you know!"
+
+"And he will fare like the five others," said the girl ironically, as
+she looked at the seal.
+
+"Six others, miss. I left one in Lorraine, who, to this day, would fetch
+the moon down for me."
+
+"This one does better than that," said Hortense; "he has brought down
+the sun."
+
+"Where can that be turned into money?" asked her cousin. "It takes wide
+lands to benefit by the sunshine."
+
+These witticisms, fired in quick retort, and leading to the sort of
+giddy play that may be imagined, had given cause for the laughter which
+had added to the Baroness' troubles by making her compare her
+daughter's future lot with the present, when she was free to indulge the
+light-heartedness of youth.
+
+"But to give you a gem which cost him six months of work, he must be
+under some great obligations to you?" said Hortense, in whom the silver
+seal had suggested very serious reflections.
+
+"Oh, you want to know too much at once!" said her cousin. "But, listen,
+I will let you into a little plot."
+
+"Is your lover in it too?"
+
+"Oh, ho! you want so much to see him! But, as you may suppose, an old
+maid like Cousin Betty, who had managed to keep a lover for five years,
+keeps him well hidden.--Now, just let me alone. You see, I have neither
+cat nor canary, neither dog nor a parrot, and the old Nanny Goat wanted
+something to pet and tease--so I treated myself to a Polish Count."
+
+"Has he a moustache?"
+
+"As long as that," said Lisbeth, holding up her shuttle filled with gold
+thread. She always took her lace-work with her, and worked till dinner
+was served.
+
+"If you ask too many questions, you will be told nothing," she went on.
+"You are but two-and-twenty, and you chatter more than I do though I am
+forty-two--not to say forty-three."
+
+"I am listening; I am a wooden image," said Hortense.
+
+"My lover has finished a bronze group ten inches high," Lisbeth went on.
+"It represents Samson slaying a lion, and he has kept it buried till it
+is so rusty that you might believe it to be as old as Samson himself.
+This fine piece is shown at the shop of one of the old curiosity sellers
+on the Place du Carrousel, near my lodgings. Now, your father knows
+Monsieur Popinot, the Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, and the
+Comte de Rastignac, and if he would mention the group to them as a fine
+antique he had seen by chance! It seems that such things take the fancy
+of your grand folks, who don't care so much about gold lace, and that my
+man's fortune would be made if one of them would buy or even look at
+the wretched piece of metal. The poor fellow is sure that it might be
+mistaken for old work, and that the rubbish is worth a great deal of
+money. And then, if one of the ministers should purchase the group, he
+would go to pay his respects, and prove that he was the maker, and be
+almost carried in triumph! Oh! he believes he has reached the pinnacle;
+poor young man, and he is as proud as two newly-made Counts."
+
+"Michael Angelo over again; but, for a lover, he has kept his head on
+his shoulders!" said Hortense. "And how much does he want for it?"
+
+"Fifteen hundred francs. The dealer will not let it go for less, since
+he must take his commission."
+
+"Papa is in the King's household just now," said Hortense. "He sees
+those two ministers every day at the Chamber, and he will do the
+thing--I undertake that. You will be a rich woman, Madame la Comtesse de
+Steinbock."
+
+"No, the boy is too lazy; for whole weeks he sits twiddling with bits
+of red wax, and nothing comes of it. Why, he spends all his days at the
+Louvre and the Library, looking at prints and sketching things. He is an
+idler!"
+
+The cousins chatted and giggled; Hortense laughing a forced laugh, for
+she was invaded by a kind of love which every girl has gone through--the
+love of the unknown, love in its vaguest form, when every thought is
+accreted round some form which is suggested by a chance word, as the
+efflorescence of hoar-frost gathers about a straw that the wind has
+blown against the window-sill.
+
+For the past ten months she had made a reality of her cousin's imaginary
+romance, believing, like her mother, that Lisbeth would never marry;
+and now, within a week, this visionary being had become Comte Wenceslas
+Steinbock, the dream had a certificate of birth, the wraith had
+solidified into a young man of thirty. The seal she held in her hand--a
+sort of Annunciation in which genius shone like an immanent light--had
+the powers of a talisman. Hortense felt such a surge of happiness, that
+she almost doubted whether the tale were true; there was a ferment in
+her blood, and she laughed wildly to deceive her cousin.
+
+"But I think the drawing-room door is open," said Lisbeth; "let us go
+and see if Monsieur Crevel is gone."
+
+"Mamma has been very much out of spirits these two days. I suppose the
+marriage under discussion has come to nothing!"
+
+"Oh, it may come on again. He is--I may tell you so much--a Councillor
+of the Supreme Court. How would you like to be Madame la Presidente? If
+Monsieur Crevel has a finger in it, he will tell me about it if I ask
+him. I shall know by to-morrow if there is any hope."
+
+"Leave the seal with me," said Hortense; "I will not show it--mamma's
+birthday is not for a month yet; I will give it to you that morning."
+
+"No, no. Give it back to me; it must have a case."
+
+"But I will let papa see it, that he may know what he is talking about
+to the ministers, for men in authority must be careful what they say,"
+urged the girl.
+
+"Well, do not show it to your mother--that is all I ask; for if she
+believed I had a lover, she would make game of me."
+
+"I promise."
+
+The cousins reached the drawing-room just as the Baroness turned faint.
+Her daughter's cry of alarm recalled her to herself. Lisbeth went off to
+fetch some salts. When she came back, she found the mother and daughter
+in each other's arms, the Baroness soothing her daughter's fears, and
+saying:
+
+"It was nothing; a little nervous attack.--There is your father," she
+added, recognizing the Baron's way of ringing the bell. "Say not a word
+to him."
+
+Adeline rose and went to meet her husband, intending to take him
+into the garden and talk to him till dinner should be served of the
+difficulties about the proposed match, getting him to come to some
+decision as to the future, and trying to hint at some warning advice.
+
+
+
+Baron Hector Hulot came in, in a dress at once lawyer-like and
+Napoleonic, for Imperial men--men who had been attached to the
+Emperor--were easily distinguishable by their military deportment, their
+blue coats with gilt buttons, buttoned to the chin, their black silk
+stock, and an authoritative demeanor acquired from a habit of command in
+circumstances requiring despotic rapidity. There was nothing of the old
+man in the Baron, it must be admitted; his sight was still so good,
+that he could read without spectacles; his handsome oval face, framed
+in whiskers that were indeed too black, showed a brilliant complexion,
+ruddy with the veins that characterize a sanguine temperament; and his
+stomach, kept in order by a belt, had not exceeded the limits of "the
+majestic," as Brillat-Savarin says. A fine aristocratic air and great
+affability served to conceal the libertine with whom Crevel had had such
+high times. He was one of those men whose eyes always light up at the
+sight of a pretty woman, even of such as merely pass by, never to be
+seen again.
+
+"Have you been speaking, my dear?" asked Adeline, seeing him with an
+anxious brow.
+
+"No," replied Hector, "but I am worn out with hearing others speak for
+two hours without coming to a vote. They carry on a war of words, in
+which their speeches are like a cavalry charge which has no effect on
+the enemy. Talk has taken the place of action, which goes very much
+against the grain with men who are accustomed to marching orders, as
+I said to the Marshal when I left him. However, I have enough of
+being bored on the ministers' bench; here I may play.--How do, la
+Chevre!--Good morning, little kid," and he took his daughter round the
+neck, kissed her, and made her sit on his knee, resting her head on his
+shoulder, that he might feel her soft golden hair against his cheek.
+
+"He is tired and worried," said his wife to herself. "I shall only worry
+him more.--I will wait.--Are you going to be at home this evening?" she
+asked him.
+
+"No, children. After dinner I must go out. If it had not been the day
+when Lisbeth and the children and my brother come to dinner, you would
+not have seen me at all."
+
+The Baroness took up the newspaper, looked down the list of theatres,
+and laid it down again when she had seen that Robert _le Diable_ was
+to be given at the Opera. Josepha, who had left the Italian Opera six
+months since for the French Opera, was to take the part of Alice.
+
+This little pantomime did not escape the Baron, who looked hard at
+his wife. Adeline cast down her eyes and went out into the garden; her
+husband followed her.
+
+"Come, what is it, Adeline?" said he, putting his arm round her waist
+and pressing her to his side. "Do not you know that I love you more
+than----"
+
+"More than Jenny Cadine or Josepha!" said she, boldly interrupting him.
+
+"Who put that into your head?" exclaimed the Baron, releasing his wife,
+and starting back a step or two.
+
+"I got an anonymous letter, which I burnt at once, in which I was told,
+my dear, that the reason Hortense's marriage was broken off was the
+poverty of our circumstances. Your wife, my dear Hector, would never
+have said a word; she knew of your connection with Jenny Cadine, and did
+she ever complain?--But as the mother of Hortense, I am bound to speak
+the truth."
+
+Hulot, after a short silence, which was terrible to his wife, whose
+heart beat loud enough to be heard, opened his arms, clasped her to his
+heart, kissed her forehead, and said with the vehemence of enthusiasm:
+
+"Adeline, you are an angel, and I am a wretch----"
+
+"No, no," cried the Baroness, hastily laying her hand upon his lips to
+hinder him from speaking evil of himself.
+
+"Yes, for I have not at this moment a sou to give to Hortense, and I am
+most unhappy. But since you open your heart to me, I may pour into it
+the trouble that is crushing me.--Your Uncle Fischer is in difficulties,
+and it is I who dragged him there, for he has accepted bills for me
+to the amount of twenty-five thousand francs! And all for a woman who
+deceives me, who laughs at me behind my back, and calls me an old
+dyed Tom. It is frightful! A vice which costs me more than it would to
+maintain a family!--And I cannot resist!--I would promise you here and
+now never to see that abominable Jewess again; but if she wrote me two
+lines, I should go to her, as we marched into fire under the Emperor."
+
+"Do not be so distressed," cried the poor woman in despair, but
+forgetting her daughter as she saw the tears in her husband's eyes.
+"There are my diamonds; whatever happens, save my uncle."
+
+"Your diamonds are worth scarcely twenty thousand francs nowadays. That
+would not be enough for old Fischer, so keep them for Hortense; I will
+see the Marshal to-morrow."
+
+"My poor dear!" said the Baroness, taking her Hector's hands and kissing
+them.
+
+This was all the scolding he got. Adeline sacrificed her jewels, the
+father made them a present to Hortense, she regarded this as a sublime
+action, and she was helpless.
+
+"He is the master; he could take everything, and he leaves me my
+diamonds; he is divine!"
+
+This was the current of her thoughts; and indeed the wife had gained
+more by her sweetness than another perhaps could have achieved by a fit
+of angry jealousy.
+
+The moralist cannot deny that, as a rule, well-bred though very wicked
+men are far more attractive and lovable than virtuous men; having crimes
+to atone for, they crave indulgence by anticipation, by being lenient
+to the shortcomings of those who judge them, and they are thought most
+kind. Though there are no doubt some charming people among the virtuous,
+Virtue considers itself fair enough, unadorned, to be at no pains to
+please; and then all really virtuous persons, for the hypocrites do not
+count, have some slight doubts as to their position; they believe that
+they are cheated in the bargain of life on the whole, and they indulge
+in acid comments after the fashion of those who think themselves
+unappreciated.
+
+Hence the Baron, who accused himself of ruining his family, displayed
+all his charm of wit and his most seductive graces for the benefit of
+his wife, for his children, and his Cousin Lisbeth.
+
+Then, when his son arrived with Celestine, Crevel's daughter, who was
+nursing the infant Hulot, he was delightful to his daughter-in-law,
+loading her with compliments--a treat to which Celestine's vanity was
+little accustomed for no moneyed bride more commonplace or more utterly
+insignificant was ever seen. The grandfather took the baby from her,
+kissed it, declared it was a beauty and a darling; he spoke to it in
+baby language, prophesied that it would grow to be taller than himself,
+insinuated compliments for his son's benefit, and restored the child to
+the Normandy nurse who had charge of it. Celestine, on her part, gave
+the Baroness a look, as much as to say, "What a delightful man!" and she
+naturally took her father-in-law's part against her father.
+
+After thus playing the charming father-in-law and the indulgent
+grandpapa, the Baron took his son into the garden, and laid before him
+a variety of observations full of good sense as to the attitude to be
+taken up by the Chamber on a certain ticklish question which had
+that morning come under discussion. The young lawyer was struck with
+admiration for the depth of his father's insight, touched by his
+cordiality, and especially by the deferential tone which seemed to place
+the two men on a footing of equality.
+
+Monsieur Hulot _junior_ was in every respect the young Frenchman, as
+he has been moulded by the Revolution of 1830; his mind infatuated with
+politics, respectful of his own hopes, and concealing them under
+an affectation of gravity, very envious of successful men, making
+sententiousness do the duty of witty rejoinders--the gems of the French
+language--with a high sense of importance, and mistaking arrogance for
+dignity.
+
+Such men are walking coffins, each containing a Frenchman of the past;
+now and again the Frenchman wakes up and kicks against his English-made
+casing; but ambition stifles him, and he submits to be smothered. The
+coffin is always covered with black cloth.
+
+"Ah, here is my brother!" said Baron Hulot, going to meet the Count at
+the drawing-room door.
+
+Having greeted the probable successor of the late Marshal Montcornet, he
+led him forward by the arm with every show of affection and respect.
+
+The older man, a member of the Chamber of Peers, but excused from
+attendance on account of his deafness, had a handsome head, chilled by
+age, but with enough gray hair still to be marked in a circle by the
+pressure of his hat. He was short, square, and shrunken, but carried his
+hale old age with a free-and-easy air; and as he was full of excessive
+activity, which had now no purpose, he divided his time between reading
+and taking exercise. In a drawing-room he devoted his attention to
+waiting on the wishes of the ladies.
+
+"You are very merry here," said he, seeing that the Baron shed a spirit
+of animation on the little family gathering. "And yet Hortense is
+not married," he added, noticing a trace of melancholy on his
+sister-in-law's countenance.
+
+"That will come all in good time," Lisbeth shouted in his ear in a
+formidable voice.
+
+"So there you are, you wretched seedling that could never blossom," said
+he, laughing.
+
+The hero of Forzheim rather liked Cousin Betty, for there were certain
+points of resemblance between them. A man of the ranks, without any
+education, his courage had been the sole mainspring of his military
+promotion, and sound sense had taken the place of brilliancy. Of the
+highest honor and clean-handed, he was ending a noble life in full
+contentment in the centre of his family, which claimed all his
+affections, and without a suspicion of his brother's still undiscovered
+misconduct. No one enjoyed more than he the pleasing sight of this
+family party, where there never was the smallest disagreement, for the
+brothers and sisters were all equally attached, Celestine having been at
+once accepted as one of the family. But the worthy little Count wondered
+now and then why Monsieur Crevel never joined the party. "Papa is in
+the country," Celestine shouted, and it was explained to him that the
+ex-perfumer was away from home.
+
+This perfect union of all her family made Madame Hulot say to herself,
+"This, after all, is the best kind of happiness, and who can deprive us
+of it?"
+
+The General, on seeing his favorite Adeline the object of her husband's
+attentions, laughed so much about it that the Baron, fearing to seem
+ridiculous, transferred his gallantries to his daughter-in-law, who
+at these family dinners was always the object of his flattery and kind
+care, for he hoped to win Crevel back through her, and make him forego
+his resentment.
+
+Any one seeing this domestic scene would have found it hard to believe
+that the father was at his wits' end, the mother in despair, the son
+anxious beyond words as to his father's future fate, and the daughter on
+the point of robbing her cousin of her lover.
+
+
+
+At seven o'clock the Baron, seeing his brother, his son, the Baroness,
+and Hortense all engaged at whist, went off to applaud his mistress
+at the Opera, taking with him Lisbeth Fischer, who lived in the Rue du
+Doyenne, and who always made an excuse of the solitude of that deserted
+quarter to take herself off as soon as dinner was over. Parisians will
+all admit that the old maid's prudence was but rational.
+
+The existence of the maze of houses under the wing of the old Louvre is
+one of those protests against obvious good sense which Frenchmen love,
+that Europe may reassure itself as to the quantum of brains they are
+known to have, and not be too much alarmed. Perhaps without knowing it,
+this reveals some profound political idea.
+
+It will surely not be a work of supererogation to describe this part of
+Paris as it is even now, when we could hardly expect its survival; and
+our grandsons, who will no doubt see the Louvre finished, may refuse
+to believe that such a relic of barbarism should have survived for
+six-and-thirty years in the heart of Paris and in the face of the palace
+where three dynasties of kings have received, during those thirty-six
+years, the elite of France and of Europe.
+
+Between the little gate leading to the Bridge of the Carrousel and the
+Rue du Musee, every one having come to Paris, were it but for a few
+days, must have seen a dozen of houses with a decayed frontage where the
+dejected owners have attempted no repairs, the remains of an old
+block of buildings of which the destruction was begun at the time when
+Napoleon determined to complete the Louvre. This street, and the blind
+alley known as the Impasse du Doyenne, are the only passages into this
+gloomy and forsaken block, inhabited perhaps by ghosts, for there never
+is anybody to be seen. The pavement is much below the footway of the
+Rue du Musee, on a level with that of the Rue Froidmanteau. Thus, half
+sunken by the raising of the soil, these houses are also wrapped in the
+perpetual shadow cast by the lofty buildings of the Louvre, darkened on
+that side by the northern blast. Darkness, silence, an icy chill, and
+the cavernous depth of the soil combine to make these houses a kind
+of crypt, tombs of the living. As we drive in a hackney cab past this
+dead-alive spot, and chance to look down the little Rue du Doyenne,
+a shudder freezes the soul, and we wonder who can lie there, and what
+things may be done there at night, at an hour when the alley is a
+cut-throat pit, and the vices of Paris run riot there under the cloak
+of night. This question, frightful in itself, becomes appalling when we
+note that these dwelling-houses are shut in on the side towards the Rue
+de Richelieu by marshy ground, by a sea of tumbled paving-stones between
+them and the Tuileries, by little garden-plots and suspicious-looking
+hovels on the side of the great galleries, and by a desert of
+building-stone and old rubbish on the side towards the old Louvre. Henri
+III. and his favorites in search of their trunk-hose, and Marguerite's
+lovers in search of their heads, must dance sarabands by moonlight in
+this wilderness overlooked by the roof of a chapel still standing
+there as if to prove that the Catholic religion--so deeply rooted in
+France--survives all else.
+
+For forty years now has the Louvre been crying out by every gap in these
+damaged walls, by every yawning window, "Rid me of these warts upon my
+face!" This cutthroat lane has no doubt been regarded as useful, and has
+been thought necessary as symbolizing in the heart of Paris the intimate
+connection between poverty and the splendor that is characteristic
+of the queen of cities. And indeed these chill ruins, among which
+the Legitimist newspaper contracted the disease it is dying of--the
+abominable hovels of the Rue du Musee, and the hoarding appropriated by
+the shop stalls that flourish there--will perhaps live longer and more
+prosperously than three successive dynasties.
+
+In 1823 the low rents in these already condemned houses had tempted
+Lisbeth Fischer to settle there, notwithstanding the necessity imposed
+upon her by the state of the neighborhood to get home before nightfall.
+This necessity, however, was in accordance with the country habits she
+retained, of rising and going to bed with the sun, an arrangement which
+saves country folk considerable sums in lights and fuel. She lived
+in one of the houses which, since the demolition of the famous Hotel
+Cambaceres, command a view of the square.
+
+Just as Baron Hulot set his wife's cousin down at the door of this
+house, saying, "Good-night, Cousin," an elegant-looking woman, young,
+small, slender, pretty, beautifully dressed, and redolent of some
+delicate perfume, passed between the wall and the carriage to go in.
+This lady, without any premeditation, glanced up at the Baron merely
+to see the lodger's cousin, and the libertine at once felt the
+swift impression which all Parisians know on meeting a pretty woman,
+realizing, as entomologists have it, their _desiderata_; so he waited to
+put on one of his gloves with judicious deliberation before getting into
+the carriage again, to give himself an excuse for allowing his eye
+to follow the young woman, whose skirts were pleasingly set out by
+something else than these odious and delusive crinoline bustles.
+
+"That," said he to himself, "is a nice little person whose happiness I
+should like to provide for, as she would certainly secure mine."
+
+When the unknown fair had gone into the hall at the foot of the stairs
+going up to the front rooms, she glanced at the gate out of the corner
+of her eye without precisely looking round, and she could see the Baron
+riveted to the spot in admiration, consumed by curiosity and desire.
+This is to every Parisian woman a sort of flower which she smells at
+with delight, if she meets it on her way. Nay, certain women, though
+faithful to their duties, pretty, and virtuous, come home much put out
+if they have failed to cull such a posy in the course of their walk.
+
+The lady ran upstairs, and in a moment a window on the second floor
+was thrown open, and she appeared at it, but accompanied by a man whose
+baldhead and somewhat scowling looks announced him as her husband.
+
+"If they aren't sharp and ingenious, the cunning jades!" thought the
+Baron. "She does that to show me where she lives. But this is getting
+rather warm, especially for this part of Paris. We must mind what we are
+at."
+
+As he got into the _milord_, he looked up, and the lady and the husband
+hastily vanished, as though the Baron's face had affected them like the
+mythological head of Medusa.
+
+"It would seem that they know me," thought the Baron. "That would
+account for everything."
+
+As the carriage went up the Rue du Musee, he leaned forward to see the
+lady again, and in fact she was again at the window. Ashamed of being
+caught gazing at the hood under which her admirer was sitting, the
+unknown started back at once.
+
+"Nanny shall tell me who it is," said the Baron to himself.
+
+The sight of the Government official had, as will be seen, made a deep
+impression on this couple.
+
+"Why, it is Baron Hulot, the chief of the department to which my office
+belongs!" exclaimed the husband as he left the window.
+
+"Well, Marneffe, the old maid on the third floor at the back of the
+courtyard, who lives with that young man, is his cousin. Is it not odd
+that we should never have known that till to-day, and now find it out by
+chance?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Fischer living with a young man?" repeated the husband.
+"That is porter's gossip; do not speak so lightly of the cousin of
+a Councillor of State who can blow hot and cold in the office as he
+pleases. Now, come to dinner; I have been waiting for you since four
+o'clock."
+
+Pretty--very pretty--Madame Marneffe, the natural daughter of Comte
+Montcornet, one of Napoleon's most famous officers, had, on the strength
+of a marriage portion of twenty thousand francs, found a husband in an
+inferior official at the War Office. Through the interest of the
+famous lieutenant-general--made marshal of France six months before his
+death--this quill-driver had risen to unhoped-for dignity as head-clerk
+of his office; but just as he was to be promoted to be deputy-chief, the
+marshal's death had cut off Marneffe's ambitions and his wife's at the
+root. The very small salary enjoyed by Sieur Marneffe had compelled the
+couple to economize in the matter of rent; for in his hands Mademoiselle
+Valerie Fortin's fortune had already melted away--partly in paying his
+debts, and partly in the purchase of necessaries for furnishing a house,
+but chiefly in gratifying the requirements of a pretty young wife,
+accustomed in her mother's house to luxuries she did not choose to
+dispense with. The situation of the Rue du Doyenne, within easy distance
+of the War Office, and the gay part of Paris, smiled on Monsieur and
+Madame Marneffe, and for the last four years they had dwelt under the
+same roof as Lisbeth Fischer.
+
+Monsieur Jean-Paul-Stanislas Marneffe was one of the class of employes
+who escape sheer brutishness by the kind of power that comes of
+depravity. The small, lean creature, with thin hair and a starved beard,
+an unwholesome pasty face, worn rather than wrinkled, with red-lidded
+eyes harnessed with spectacles, shuffling in his gait, and yet meaner in
+his appearance, realized the type of man that any one would conceive of
+as likely to be placed in the dock for an offence against decency.
+
+The rooms inhabited by this couple had the illusory appearance of sham
+luxury seen in many Paris homes, and typical of a certain class of
+household. In the drawing-room, the furniture covered with shabby cotton
+velvet, the plaster statuettes pretending to be Florentine bronze, the
+clumsy cast chandelier merely lacquered, with cheap glass saucers, the
+carpet, whose small cost was accounted for in advancing life by the
+quality of cotton used in the manufacture, now visible to the naked
+eye,--everything, down to the curtains, which plainly showed that
+worsted damask has not three years of prime, proclaimed poverty as
+loudly as a beggar in rags at a church door.
+
+The dining-room, badly kept by a single servant, had the sickening
+aspect of a country inn; everything looked greasy and unclean.
+
+Monsieur's room, very like a schoolboy's, furnished with the bed and
+fittings remaining from his bachelor days, as shabby and worn as he was,
+dusted perhaps once a week--that horrible room where everything was in
+a litter, with old socks hanging over the horsehair-seated chairs, the
+pattern outlined in dust, was that of a man to whom home is a matter of
+indifference, who lives out of doors, gambling in cafes or elsewhere.
+
+Madame's room was an exception to the squalid slovenliness that
+disgraced the living rooms, where the curtains were yellow with smoke
+and dust, and where the child, evidently left to himself, littered every
+spot with his toys. Valerie's room and dressing-room were situated in
+the part of the house which, on one side of the courtyard, joined the
+front half, looking out on the street, to the wing forming the inner
+side of the court backing against the adjoining property. Handsomely
+hung with chintz, furnished with rosewood, and thickly carpeted,
+they proclaimed themselves as belonging to a pretty woman--and indeed
+suggested the kept mistress. A clock in the fashionable style stood on
+the velvet-covered mantelpiece. There was a nicely fitted cabinet,
+and the Chinese flower-stands were handsomely filled. The bed, the
+toilet-table, the wardrobe with its mirror, the little sofa, and all the
+lady's frippery bore the stamp of fashion or caprice. Though everything
+was quite third-rate as to elegance or quality, and nothing was
+absolutely newer than three years old, a dandy would have had no fault
+to find but that the taste of all this luxury was commonplace. Art,
+and the distinction that comes of the choice of things that taste
+assimilates, was entirely wanting. A doctor of social science would have
+detected a lover in two or three specimens of costly trumpery, which
+could only have come there through that demi-god--always absent, but
+always present if the lady is married.
+
+The dinner, four hours behind time, to which the husband, wife, and
+child sat down, betrayed the financial straits in which the household
+found itself, for the table is the surest thermometer for gauging the
+income of a Parisian family. Vegetable soup made with the water haricot
+beans had been boiled in, a piece of stewed veal and potatoes sodden
+with water by way of gravy, a dish of haricot beans, and cheap cherries,
+served and eaten in cracked plates and dishes, with the dull-looking and
+dull-sounding forks of German silver--was this a banquet worthy of this
+pretty young woman? The Baron would have wept could he have seen it. The
+dingy decanters could not disguise the vile hue of wine bought by the
+pint at the nearest wineshop. The table-napkins had seen a week's
+use. In short, everything betrayed undignified penury, and the equal
+indifference of the husband and wife to the decencies of home. The
+most superficial observer on seeing them would have said that these two
+beings had come to the stage when the necessity of living had prepared
+them for any kind of dishonor that might bring luck to them. Valerie's
+first words to her husband will explain the delay that had postponed the
+dinner by the not disinterested devotion of the cook.
+
+"Samanon will only take your bills at fifty per cent, and insists on a
+lien on your salary as security."
+
+So poverty, still unconfessed in the house of the superior official, and
+hidden under a stipend of twenty-four thousand francs, irrespective of
+presents, had reached its lowest stage in that of the clerk.
+
+"You have caught on with the chief," said the man, looking at his wife.
+
+"I rather think so," replied she, understanding the full meaning of his
+slang expression.
+
+"What is to become of us?" Marneffe went on. "The landlord will be down
+on us to-morrow. And to think of your father dying without making a
+will! On my honor, those men of the Empire all think themselves as
+immortal as their Emperor."
+
+"Poor father!" said she. "I was his only child, and he was very fond of
+me. The Countess probably burned the will. How could he forget me when
+he used to give us as much as three or four thousand-franc notes at
+once, from time to time?"
+
+"We owe four quarters' rent, fifteen hundred francs. Is the furniture
+worth so much? _That is the question_, as Shakespeare says."
+
+"Now, good-bye, ducky!" said Valerie, who had only eaten a few mouthfuls
+of the veal, from which the maid had extracted all the gravy for a brave
+soldier just home from Algiers. "Great evils demand heroic remedies."
+
+"Valerie, where are you off to?" cried Marneffe, standing between his
+wife and the door.
+
+"I am going to see the landlord," she replied, arranging her ringlets
+under her smart bonnet. "You had better try to make friends with that
+old maid, if she really is your chief's cousin."
+
+
+
+The ignorance in which the dwellers under one roof can exist as to the
+social position of their fellow-lodgers is a permanent fact which, as
+much as any other, shows what the rush of Paris life is. Still, it is
+easily conceivable that a clerk who goes early every morning to his
+office, comes home only to dinner, and spends every evening out, and a
+woman swallowed up in a round of pleasures, should know nothing of an
+old maid living on the third floor beyond the courtyard of the house
+they dwell in, especially when she lives as Mademoiselle Fischer did.
+
+Up in the morning before any one else, Lisbeth went out to buy her
+bread, milk, and live charcoal, never speaking to any one, and she went
+to bed with the sun; she never had a letter or a visitor, nor chatted
+with her neighbors. Here was one of those anonymous, entomological
+existences such as are to be met with in many large tenements where,
+at the end of four years, you unexpectedly learn that up on the fourth
+floor there is an old man lodging who knew Voltaire, Pilatre de Rozier,
+Beaujon, Marcel, Mole, Sophie Arnould, Franklin, and Robespierre. What
+Monsieur and Madame Marneffe had just said concerning Lisbeth Fischer
+they had come to know, in consequence, partly, of the loneliness of the
+neighborhood, and of the alliance, to which their necessities had led,
+between them and the doorkeepers, whose goodwill was too important to
+them not to have been carefully encouraged.
+
+Now, the old maid's pride, silence, and reserve had engendered in the
+porter and his wife the exaggerated respect and cold civility which
+betray the unconfessed annoyance of an inferior. Also, the porter
+thought himself in all essentials the equal of any lodger whose rent was
+no more than two hundred and fifty francs. Cousin Betty's confidences
+to Hortense were true; and it is evident that the porter's wife might be
+very likely to slander Mademoiselle Fischer in her intimate gossip with
+the Marneffes, while only intending to tell tales.
+
+When Lisbeth had taken her candle from the hands of worthy Madame
+Olivier the portress, she looked up to see whether the windows of the
+garret over her own rooms were lighted up. At that hour, even in July,
+it was so dark within the courtyard that the old maid could not get to
+bed without a light.
+
+"Oh, you may be quite easy, Monsieur Steinbock is in his room. He has
+not been out even," said Madame Olivier, with meaning.
+
+Lisbeth made no reply. She was still a peasant, in so far that she was
+indifferent to the gossip of persons unconnected with her. Just as a
+peasant sees nothing beyond his village, she cared for nobody's opinion
+outside the little circle in which she lived. So she boldly went up, not
+to her own room, but to the garret; and this is why. At dessert she had
+filled her bag with fruit and sweets for her lover, and she went to give
+them to him, exactly as an old lady brings home a biscuit for her dog.
+
+She found the hero of Hortense's dreams working by the light of a small
+lamp, of which the light was intensified by the use of a bottle of water
+as a lens--a pale young man, seated at a workman's bench covered with a
+modeler's tools, wax, chisels, rough-hewn stone, and bronze castings; he
+wore a blouse, and had in his hand a little group in red wax, which he
+gazed at like a poet absorbed in his labors.
+
+"Here, Wenceslas, see what I have brought you," said she, laying her
+handkerchief on a corner of the table; then she carefully took the
+sweetmeats and fruit out of her bag.
+
+"You are very kind, mademoiselle," replied the exile in melancholy
+tones.
+
+"It will do you good, poor boy. You get feverish by working so hard; you
+were not born to such a rough life."
+
+Wenceslas Steinbock looked at her with a bewildered air.
+
+"Eat--come, eat," said she sharply, "instead of looking at me as you do
+at one of your images when you are satisfied with it."
+
+On being thus smacked with words, the young man seemed less puzzled,
+for this, indeed, was the female Mentor whose tender moods were always a
+surprise to him, so much more accustomed was he to be scolded.
+
+Though Steinbock was nine-and-twenty, like many fair men, he looked five
+or six years younger; and seeing his youth, though its freshness had
+faded under the fatigue and stress of life in exile, by the side of
+that dry, hard face, it seemed as though Nature had blundered in the
+distribution of sex. He rose and threw himself into a deep chair of
+Louis XV. pattern, covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, as if to rest
+himself. The old maid took a greengage and offered it to him.
+
+"Thank you," said he, taking the plum.
+
+"Are you tired?" said she, giving him another.
+
+"I am not tired with work, but tired of life," said he.
+
+"What absurd notions you have!" she exclaimed with some annoyance. "Have
+you not had a good genius to keep an eye on you?" she said, offering him
+the sweetmeats, and watching him with pleasure as he ate them all. "You
+see, I thought of you when dining with my cousin."
+
+"I know," said he, with a look at Lisbeth that was at once affectionate
+and plaintive, "but for you I should long since have ceased to live.
+But, my dear lady, artists require relaxation----"
+
+"Ah! there we come to the point!" cried she, interrupting him, her hands
+on her hips, and her flashing eyes fixed on him. "You want to go wasting
+your health in the vile resorts of Paris, like so many artisans, who end
+by dying in the workhouse. No, no, make a fortune, and then, when you
+have money in the funds, you may amuse yourself, child; then you will
+have enough to pay for the doctor and for your pleasure, libertine that
+you are."
+
+Wenceslas Steinbock, on receiving this broadside, with an accompaniment
+of looks that pierced him like a magnetic flame, bent his head. The most
+malignant slanderer on seeing this scene would at once have understood
+that the hints thrown out by the Oliviers were false. Everything in this
+couple, their tone, manner, and way of looking at each other, proved the
+purity of their private live. The old maid showed the affection of
+rough but very genuine maternal feeling; the young man submitted, as a
+respectful son yields to the tyranny of a mother. The strange alliance
+seemed to be the outcome of a strong will acting constantly on a weak
+character, on the fluid nature peculiar to the Slavs, which, while it
+does not hinder them from showing heroic courage in battle, gives
+them an amazing incoherency of conduct, a moral softness of which
+physiologists ought to try to detect the causes, since physiologists are
+to political life what entomologists are to agriculture.
+
+"But if I die before I am rich?" said Wenceslas dolefully.
+
+"Die!" cried she. "Oh, I will not let you die. I have life enough for
+both, and I would have my blood injected into your veins if necessary."
+
+Tears rose to Steinbock's eyes as he heard her vehement and artless
+speech.
+
+"Do not be unhappy, my little Wenceslas," said Lisbeth with feeling. "My
+cousin Hortense thought your seal quite pretty, I am sure; and I will
+manage to sell your bronze group, you will see; you will have paid me
+off, you will be able to do as you please, you will soon be free. Come,
+smile a little!"
+
+"I can never repay you, mademoiselle," said the exile.
+
+"And why not?" asked the peasant woman, taking the Livonian's part
+against herself.
+
+"Because you not only fed me, lodged me, cared for me in my poverty, but
+you also gave me strength. You have made me what I am; you have often
+been stern, you have made me very unhappy----"
+
+"I?" said the old maid. "Are you going to pour out all your nonsense
+once more about poetry and the arts, and to crack your fingers and
+stretch your arms while you spout about the ideal, and beauty, and all
+your northern madness?--Beauty is not to compare with solid pudding--and
+what am I!--You have ideas in your brain? What is the use of them? I too
+have ideas. What is the good of all the fine things you may have in your
+soul if you can make no use of them? Those who have ideas do not get so
+far as those who have none, if they don't know which way to go.
+
+"Instead of thinking over your ideas you must work.--Now, what have you
+done while I was out?"
+
+"What did your pretty cousin say?"
+
+"Who told you she was pretty?" asked Lisbeth sharply, in a tone hollow
+with tiger-like jealousy.
+
+"Why, you did."
+
+"That was only to see your face. Do you want to go trotting after
+petticoats? You who are so fond of women, well, make them in bronze.
+Let us see a cast of your desires, for you will have to do without the
+ladies for some little time yet, and certainly without my cousin, my
+good fellow. She is not game for your bag; that young lady wants a man
+with sixty thousand francs a year--and has found him!
+
+"Why, your bed is not made!" she exclaimed, looking into the adjoining
+room. "Poor dear boy, I quite forgot you!"
+
+The sturdy woman pulled off her gloves, her cape and bonnet, and remade
+the artist's little camp bed as briskly as any housemaid. This mixture
+of abruptness, of roughness even, with real kindness, perhaps accounts
+for the ascendency Lisbeth had acquired over the man whom she regarded
+as her personal property. Is not our attachment to life based on its
+alternations of good and evil?
+
+If the Livonian had happened to meet Madame Marneffe instead of Lisbeth
+Fischer, he would have found a protectress whose complaisance must have
+led him into some boggy or discreditable path, where he would have been
+lost. He would certainly never have worked, nor the artist have been
+hatched out. Thus, while he deplored the old maid's grasping avarice,
+his reason bid him prefer her iron hand to the life of idleness and
+peril led by many of his fellow-countrymen.
+
+
+
+This was the incident that had given rise to the coalition of female
+energy and masculine feebleness--a contrast in union said not to be
+uncommon in Poland.
+
+In 1833 Mademoiselle Fischer, who sometimes worked into the night when
+business was good, at about one o'clock one morning perceived a strong
+smell of carbonic acid gas, and heard the groans of a dying man. The
+fumes and the gasping came from a garret over the two rooms forming her
+dwelling, and she supposed that a young man who had but lately come
+to lodge in this attic--which had been vacant for three years--was
+committing suicide. She ran upstairs, broke in the door by a push with
+her peasant strength, and found the lodger writhing on a camp-bed in the
+convulsions of death. She extinguished the brazier; the door was open,
+the air rushed in, and the exile was saved. Then, when Lisbeth had
+put him to bed like a patient, and he was asleep, she could detect the
+motives of his suicide in the destitution of the rooms, where there was
+nothing whatever but a wretched table, the camp-bed, and two chairs.
+
+On the table lay a document, which she read:
+
+  "I am Count Wenceslas Steinbock, born at Prelia, in Livonia.
+
+  "No one is to be accused of my death; my reasons for killing
+  myself are, in the words of Kosciusko, _Finis Polonioe_!
+
+  "The grand-nephew of a valiant General under Charles XII. could
+  not beg. My weakly constitution forbids my taking military
+  service, and I yesterday saw the last of the hundred thalers which
+  I had brought with me from Dresden to Paris. I have left
+  twenty-five francs in the drawer of this table to pay the rent I owe
+  to the landlord.
+
+  "My parents being dead, my death will affect nobody. I desire that
+  my countrymen will not blame the French Government. I have never
+  registered myself as a refugee, and I have asked for nothing; I
+  have met none of my fellow-exiles; no one in Paris knows of my
+  existence.
+
+  "I am dying in Christian beliefs. May God forgive the last of the
+  Steinbocks!
+
+"WENCESLAS."
+
+
+Mademoiselle Fischer, deeply touched by the dying man's honesty, opened
+the drawer and found the five five-franc pieces to pay his rent.
+
+"Poor young man!" cried she. "And with no one in the world to care about
+him!"
+
+She went downstairs to fetch her work, and sat stitching in the garret,
+watching over the Livonian gentleman.
+
+When he awoke his astonishment may be imagined on finding a woman
+sitting by his bed; it was like the prolongation of a dream. As she sat
+there, covering aiguillettes with gold thread, the old maid had resolved
+to take charge of the poor youth whom she admired as he lay sleeping.
+
+As soon as the young Count was fully awake, Lisbeth talked to give him
+courage, and questioned him to find out how he might make a living.
+Wenceslas, after telling his story, added that he owed his position
+to his acknowledged talent for the fine arts. He had always had a
+preference for sculpture; the necessary time for study had, however,
+seemed to him too long for a man without money; and at this moment he
+was far too weak to do any hard manual labor or undertake an important
+work in sculpture. All this was Greek to Lisbeth Fischer. She replied
+to the unhappy man that Paris offered so many openings that any man with
+will and courage might find a living there. A man of spirit need never
+perish if he had a certain stock of endurance.
+
+"I am but a poor girl myself, a peasant, and I have managed to make
+myself independent," said she in conclusion. "If you will work in
+earnest, I have saved a little money, and I will lend you, month by
+month, enough to live upon; but to live frugally, and not to play ducks
+and drakes with or squander in the streets. You can dine in Paris for
+twenty-five sous a day, and I will get you your breakfast with mine
+every day. I will furnish your rooms and pay for such teaching as you
+may think necessary. You shall give me formal acknowledgment for the
+money I may lay out for you, and when you are rich you shall repay me
+all. But if you do not work, I shall not regard myself as in any way
+pledged to you, and I shall leave you to your fate."
+
+"Ah!" cried the poor fellow, still smarting from the bitterness of his
+first struggle with death, "exiles from every land may well stretch out
+their hands to France, as the souls in Purgatory do to Paradise. In what
+other country is such help to be found, and generous hearts even in such
+a garret as this? You will be everything to me, my beloved benefactress;
+I am your slave! Be my sweetheart," he added, with one of the caressing
+gestures familiar to the Poles, for which they are unjustly accused of
+servility.
+
+"Oh, no; I am too jealous, I should make you unhappy; but I will gladly
+be a sort of comrade," replied Lisbeth.
+
+"Ah, if only you knew how I longed for some fellow-creature, even a
+tyrant, who would have something to say to me when I was struggling in
+the vast solitude of Paris!" exclaimed Wenceslas. "I regretted
+Siberia, whither I should be sent by the Emperor if I went home.--Be my
+Providence!--I will work; I will be a better man than I am, though I am
+not such a bad fellow!"
+
+"Will you do whatever I bid you?" she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then, I will adopt you as my child," said she lightly. "Here I am
+with a son risen from the grave. Come! we will begin at once. I will go
+out and get what I want; you can dress, and come down to breakfast with
+me when I knock on the ceiling with the broomstick."
+
+That day, Mademoiselle Fischer made some inquiries, at the houses to
+which she carried her work home, as to the business of a sculptor.
+By dint of many questions she ended by hearing of the studio kept by
+Florent and Chanor, a house that made a special business of casting and
+finishing decorative bronzes and handsome silver plate. Thither she went
+with Steinbock, recommending him as an apprentice in sculpture, an idea
+that was regarded as too eccentric. Their business was to copy the
+works of the greatest artists, but they did not teach the craft. The old
+maid's persistent obstinacy so far succeeded that Steinbock was taken on
+to design ornament. He very soon learned to model ornament, and invented
+novelties; he had a gift for it.
+
+Five months after he was out of his apprenticeship as a finisher, he
+made acquaintance with Stidmann, the famous head of Florent's studios.
+Within twenty months Wenceslas was ahead of his master; but in thirty
+months the old maid's savings of sixteen years had melted entirely. Two
+thousand five hundred francs in gold!--a sum with which she had intended
+to purchase an annuity; and what was there to show for it? A Pole's
+receipt! And at this moment Lisbeth was working as hard as in her young
+days to supply the needs of her Livonian.
+
+When she found herself the possessor of a piece of paper instead of her
+gold louis, she lost her head, and went to consult Monsieur Rivet,
+who for fifteen years had been his clever head-worker's friend and
+counselor. On hearing her story, Monsieur and Madame Rivet scolded
+Lisbeth, told her she was crazy, abused all refugees whose plots for
+reconstructing their nation compromised the prosperity of the country
+and the maintenance of peace; and they urged Lisbeth to find what in
+trade is called security.
+
+"The only hold you have over this fellow is on his liberty," observed
+Monsieur Rivet.
+
+Monsieur Achille Rivet was assessor at the Tribunal of Commerce.
+
+"Imprisonment is no joke for a foreigner," said he. "A Frenchman remains
+five years in prison and comes out, free of his debts to be sure, for
+he is thenceforth bound only by his conscience, and that never troubles
+him; but a foreigner never comes out.--Give me your promissory note; my
+bookkeeper will take it up; he will get it protested; you will both be
+prosecuted and both be condemned to imprisonment in default of payment;
+then, when everything is in due form, you must sign a declaration.
+By doing this your interest will be accumulating, and you will have a
+pistol always primed to fire at your Pole!"
+
+The old maid allowed these legal steps to be taken, telling her protege
+not to be uneasy, as the proceedings were merely to afford a guarantee
+to a money-lender who agreed to advance them certain sums. This
+subterfuge was due to the inventive genius of Monsieur Rivet. The
+guileless artist, blindly trusting to his benefactress, lighted his pipe
+with the stamped paper, for he smoked as all men do who have sorrows or
+energies that need soothing.
+
+One fine day Monsieur Rivet showed Mademoiselle Fischer a schedule, and
+said to her:
+
+"Here you have Wenceslas Steinbock bound hand and foot, and so
+effectually, that within twenty-four hours you can have him snug in
+Clichy for the rest of his days."
+
+This worthy and honest judge at the Chamber of Commerce experienced
+that day the satisfaction that must come of having done a malignant good
+action. Beneficence has so many aspects in Paris that this contradictory
+expression really represents one of them. The Livonian being fairly
+entangled in the toils of commercial procedure, the point was to
+obtain payment; for the illustrious tradesman looked on Wenceslas as
+a swindler. Feeling, sincerity, poetry, were in his eyes mere folly in
+business matters.
+
+So Rivet went off to see, in behalf of that poor Mademoiselle Fischer,
+who, as he said, had been "done" by the Pole, the rich manufacturers for
+whom Steinbock had worked. It happened that Stidmann--who, with the
+help of these distinguished masters of the goldsmiths' art, was raising
+French work to the perfection it has now reached, allowing it to hold
+its own against Florence and the Renaissance--Stidmann was in Chanor's
+private room when the army lace manufacturer called to make inquiries as
+to "One Steinbock, a Polish refugee."
+
+"Whom do you call 'One Steinbock'? Do you mean a young Livonian who was
+a pupil of mine?" cried Stidmann ironically. "I may tell you, monsieur,
+that he is a very great artist. It is said of me that I believe myself
+to be the Devil. Well, that poor fellow does not know that he is capable
+of becoming a god."
+
+"Indeed," said Rivet, well pleased. And then he added, "Though you take
+a rather cavalier tone with a man who has the honor to be an Assessor on
+the Tribunal of Commerce of the Department of the Seine."
+
+"Your pardon, Consul!" said Stidmann, with a military salute.
+
+"I am delighted," the Assessor went on, "to hear what you say. The man
+may make money then?"
+
+"Certainly," said Chanor; "but he must work. He would have a tidy sum by
+now if he had stayed with us. What is to be done? Artists have a horror
+of not being free."
+
+"They have a proper sense of their value and dignity," replied Stidmann.
+"I do not blame Wenceslas for walking alone, trying to make a name, and
+to become a great man; he had a right to do so! But he was a great loss
+to me when he left."
+
+"That, you see," exclaimed Rivet, "is what all young students aim at as
+soon as they are hatched out of the school-egg. Begin by saving money, I
+say, and seek glory afterwards."
+
+"It spoils your touch to be picking up coin," said Stidmann. "It is
+Glory's business to bring us wealth."
+
+"And, after all," said Chanor to Rivet, "you cannot tether them."
+
+"They would eat the halter," replied Stidmann.
+
+"All these gentlemen have as much caprice as talent," said Chanor,
+looking at Stidmann. "They spend no end of money; they keep their girls,
+they throw coin out of window, and then they have no time to work. They
+neglect their orders; we have to employ workmen who are very inferior,
+but who grow rich; and then they complain of the hard times, while, if
+they were but steady, they might have piles of gold."
+
+"You old Lumignon," said Stidmann, "you remind me of the publisher
+before the Revolution who said--'If only I could keep Montesquieu,
+Voltaire, and Rousseau very poor in my backshed, and lock up their
+breeches in a cupboard, what a lot of nice little books they would write
+to make my fortune.'--If works of art could be hammered out like nails,
+workmen would make them.--Give me a thousand francs, and don't talk
+nonsense."
+
+Worthy Monsieur Rivet went home, delighted for poor Mademoiselle
+Fischer, who dined with him every Monday, and whom he found waiting for
+him.
+
+"If you can only make him work," said he, "you will have more luck than
+wisdom; you will be repaid, interest, capital, and costs. This Pole has
+talent, he can make a living; but lock up his trousers and his shoes,
+do not let him go to the _Chaumiere_ or the parish of Notre-Dame
+de Lorette, keep him in leading-strings. If you do not take such
+precautions, your artist will take to loafing, and if you only knew what
+these artists mean by loafing! Shocking! Why, I have just heard that
+they will spend a thousand-franc note in a day!"
+
+This episode had a fatal influence on the home-life of Wenceslas and
+Lisbeth. The benefactress flavored the exile's bread with the wormwood
+of reproof, now that she saw her money in danger, and often believed
+it to be lost. From a kind mother she became a stepmother; she took the
+poor boy to task, she nagged him, scolded him for working too slowly,
+and blamed him for having chosen so difficult a profession. She could
+not believe that those models in red wax--little figures and sketches
+for ornamental work--could be of any value. Before long, vexed with
+herself for her severity, she would try to efface the tears by her care
+and attention.
+
+Then the poor young man, after groaning to think that he was dependent
+on this shrew and under the thumb of a peasant of the Vosges, was
+bewitched by her coaxing ways and by a maternal affection that attached
+itself solely to the physical and material side of life. He was like
+a woman who forgives a week of ill-usage for the sake of a kiss and a
+brief reconciliation.
+
+Thus Mademoiselle Fischer obtained complete power over his mind. The
+love of dominion that lay as a germ in the old maid's heart developed
+rapidly. She could now satisfy her pride and her craving for action; had
+she not a creature belonging to her, to be schooled, scolded, flattered,
+and made happy, without any fear of a rival? Thus the good and bad sides
+of her nature alike found play. If she sometimes victimized the poor
+artist, she had, on the other hand, delicate impulses like the grace
+of wild flowers; it was a joy to her to provide for all his wants; she
+would have given her life for him, and Wenceslas knew it. Like every
+noble soul, the poor fellow forgot the bad points, the defects of the
+woman who had told him the story of her life as an excuse for her rough
+ways, and he remembered only the benefits she had done him.
+
+One day, exasperated with Wenceslas for having gone out walking instead
+of sitting at work, she made a great scene.
+
+"You belong to me," said she. "If you were an honest man, you would try
+to repay me the money you owe as soon as possible."
+
+The gentleman, in whose veins the blood of the Steinbocks was fired,
+turned pale.
+
+"Bless me," she went on, "we soon shall have nothing to live on but the
+thirty sous I earn--a poor work-woman!"
+
+The two penniless creatures, worked up by their own war of words, grew
+vehement; and for the first time the unhappy artist reproached his
+benefactress for having rescued him from death only to make him lead the
+life of a galley slave, worse than the bottomless void, where at least,
+said he, he would have found rest. And he talked of flight.
+
+"Flight!" cried Lisbeth. "Ah, Monsieur Rivet was right."
+
+And she clearly explained to the Pole that within twenty-four hours he
+might be clapped into prison for the rest of his days. It was a crushing
+blow. Steinbock sank into deep melancholy and total silence.
+
+In the course of the following night, Lisbeth hearing overhead some
+preparations for suicide, went up to her pensioner's room, and gave him
+the schedule and a formal release.
+
+"Here, dear child, forgive me," she said with tears in her eyes. "Be
+happy; leave me! I am too cruel to you; only tell me that you will
+sometimes remember the poor girl who has enabled you to make a
+living.--What can I say? You are the cause of my ill-humor. I might die;
+where would you be without me? That is the reason of my being impatient
+to see you do some salable work. I do not want my money back for myself,
+I assure you! I am only frightened at your idleness, which you call
+meditation; at your ideas, which take up so many hours when you sit
+gazing at the sky; I want you to get into habits of industry."
+
+All this was said with an emphasis, a look, and tears that moved the
+high-minded artist; he clasped his benefactress to his heart and kissed
+her forehead.
+
+"Keep these pieces," said he with a sort of cheerfulness. "Why should
+you send me to Clichy? Am I not a prisoner here out of gratitude?"
+
+This episode of their secret domestic life had occurred six months
+previously, and had led to Steinbock's producing three finished works:
+the seal in Hortense's possession, the group he had placed with the
+curiosity dealer, and a beautiful clock to which he was putting the last
+touches, screwing in the last rivets.
+
+This clock represented the twelve Hours, charmingly personified by
+twelve female figures whirling round in so mad and swift a dance that
+three little Loves perched on a pile of fruit and flowers could not stop
+one of them; only the torn skirts of Midnight remained in the hand of
+the most daring cherub. The group stood on an admirably treated base,
+ornamented with grotesque beasts. The hours were told by a monstrous
+mouth that opened to yawn, and each Hour bore some ingeniously
+appropriate symbol characteristic of the various occupations of the day.
+
+It is now easy to understand the extraordinary attachment of
+Mademoiselle Fischer for her Livonian; she wanted him to be happy,
+and she saw him pining, fading away in his attic. The causes of this
+wretched state of affairs may be easily imagined. The peasant woman
+watched this son of the North with the affection of a mother, with the
+jealousy of a wife, and the spirit of a dragon; hence she managed to
+put every kind of folly or dissipation out of his power by leaving him
+destitute of money. She longed to keep her victim and companion for
+herself alone, well conducted perforce, and she had no conception of
+the cruelty of this senseless wish, since she, for her own part, was
+accustomed to every privation. She loved Steinbock well enough not to
+marry him, and too much to give him up to any other woman; she could not
+resign herself to be no more than a mother to him, though she saw that
+she was mad to think of playing the other part.
+
+These contradictions, this ferocious jealousy, and the joy of having a
+man to herself, all agitated her old maid's heart beyond measure. Really
+in love as she had been for four years, she cherished the foolish hope
+of prolonging this impossible and aimless way of life in which her
+persistence would only be the ruin of the man she thought of as her
+child. This contest between her instincts and her reason made her unjust
+and tyrannical. She wreaked on the young man her vengeance for her own
+lot in being neither young, rich, nor handsome; then, after each fit
+of rage, recognizing herself wrong, she stooped to unlimited humility,
+infinite tenderness. She never could sacrifice to her idol till she had
+asserted her power by blows of the axe. In fact, it was the converse of
+Shakespeare's _Tempest_--Caliban ruling Ariel and Prospero.
+
+As to the poor youth himself, high-minded, meditative, and inclined to
+be lazy, the desert that his protectress made in his soul might be seen
+in his eyes, as in those of a caged lion. The penal servitude forced on
+him by Lisbeth did not fulfil the cravings of his heart. His weariness
+became a physical malady, and he was dying without daring to ask,
+or knowing where to procure, the price of some little necessary
+dissipation. On some days of special energy, when a feeling of utter
+ill-luck added to his exasperation, he would look at Lisbeth as a
+thirsty traveler on a sandy shore must look at the bitter sea-water.
+
+These harsh fruits of indigence, and this isolation in the midst of
+Paris, Lisbeth relished with delight. And besides, she foresaw that
+the first passion would rob her of her slave. Sometimes she even blamed
+herself because her own tyranny and reproaches had compelled the poetic
+youth to become so great an artist of delicate work, and she had thus
+given him the means of casting her off.
+
+
+
+On the day after, these three lives, so differently but so utterly
+wretched--that of a mother in despair, that of the Marneffe household,
+and that of the unhappy exile--were all to be influenced by Hortense's
+guileless passion, and by the strange outcome of the Baron's luckless
+passion for Josepha.
+
+Just as Hulot was going into the opera-house, he was stopped by the
+darkened appearance of the building and of the Rue le Peletier, where
+there were no gendarmes, no lights, no theatre-servants, no barrier to
+regulate the crowd. He looked up at the announcement-board, and beheld a
+strip of white paper, on which was printed the solemn notice:
+
+"CLOSED ON ACCOUNT OF ILLNESS."
+
+He rushed off to Josepha's lodgings in the Rue Chauchat; for, like all
+the singers, she lived close at hand.
+
+"Whom do you want, sir?" asked the porter, to the Baron's great
+astonishment.
+
+"Have you forgotten me?" said Hulot, much puzzled.
+
+"On the contrary, sir, it is because I have the honor to remember you
+that I ask you, Where are you going?"
+
+A mortal chill fell upon the Baron.
+
+"What has happened?" he asked.
+
+"If you go up to Mademoiselle Mirah's rooms, Monsieur le Baron, you will
+find Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout there--and Monsieur Bixiou, Monsieur
+Leon de Lora, Monsieur Lousteau, Monsieur de Vernisset, Monsieur
+Stidmann; and ladies smelling of patchouli--holding a housewarming."
+
+"Then, where--where is----?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Mirah?--I don't know that I ought to tell you."
+
+The Baron slipped two five-franc pieces into the porter's hand.
+
+"Well, she is now in the Rue de la Ville l'Eveque, in a fine house,
+given to her, they say, by the Duc d'Herouville," replied the man in a
+whisper.
+
+Having ascertained the number of the house, Monsieur Hulot called a
+_milord_ and drove to one of those pretty modern houses with double
+doors, where everything, from the gaslight at the entrance, proclaims
+luxury.
+
+The Baron, in his blue cloth coat, white neckcloth, nankeen trousers,
+patent leather boots, and stiffly starched shirt-frill, was supposed to
+be a guest, though a late arrival, by the janitor of this new Eden. His
+alacrity of manner and quick step justified this opinion.
+
+The porter rang a bell, and a footman appeared in the hall. This man, as
+new as the house, admitted the visitor, who said to him in an imperious
+tone, and with a lordly gesture:
+
+"Take in this card to Mademoiselle Josepha."
+
+The victim mechanically looked round the room in which he found
+himself--an anteroom full of choice flowers and of furniture that must
+have cost twenty thousand francs. The servant, on his return, begged
+monsieur to wait in the drawing-room till the company came to their
+coffee.
+
+Though the Baron had been familiar with Imperial luxury, which was
+undoubtedly prodigious, while its productions, though not durable in
+kind, had nevertheless cost enormous sums, he stood dazzled, dumfounded,
+in this drawing-room with three windows looking out on a garden like
+fairyland, one of those gardens that are created in a month with a made
+soil and transplanted shrubs, while the grass seems as if it must
+be made to grow by some chemical process. He admired not only the
+decoration, the gilding, the carving, in the most expensive Pompadour
+style, as it is called, and the magnificent brocades, all of which any
+enriched tradesman could have procured for money; but he also noted
+such treasures as only princes can select and find, can pay for and give
+away; two pictures by Greuze, two by Watteau, two heads by Vandyck, two
+landscapes by Ruysdael, and two by le Guaspre, a Rembrandt, a Holbein, a
+Murillo, and a Titian, two paintings, by Teniers, and a pair by Metzu,
+a Van Huysum, and an Abraham Mignon--in short, two hundred thousand
+francs' worth of pictures superbly framed. The gilding was worth almost
+as much as the paintings.
+
+"Ah, ha! Now you understand, my good man?" said Josepha.
+
+She had stolen in on tiptoe through a noiseless door, over Persian
+carpets, and came upon her adorer, standing lost in amazement--in
+the stupid amazement when a man's ears tingle so loudly that he hears
+nothing but that fatal knell.
+
+The words "my good man," spoken to an official of such high importance,
+so perfectly exemplified the audacity with which these creatures
+pour contempt on the loftiest, that the Baron was nailed to the spot.
+Josepha, in white and yellow, was so beautifully dressed for the
+banquet, that amid all this lavish magnificence she still shone like a
+rare jewel.
+
+"Isn't this really fine?" said she. "The Duke has spent all the money on
+it that he got out of floating a company, of which the shares all sold
+at a premium. He is no fool, is my little Duke. There is nothing like a
+man who has been a grandee in his time for turning coals into gold.
+Just before dinner the notary brought me the title-deeds to sign and the
+bills receipted!--They are all a first-class set in there--d'Esgrignon,
+Rastignac, Maxime, Lenoncourt, Verneuil, Laginski, Rochefide, la
+Palferine, and from among the bankers Nucingen and du Tillet, with
+Antonia, Malaga, Carabine, and la Schontz; and they all feel for
+you deeply.--Yes, old boy, and they hope you will join them, but on
+condition that you forthwith drink up to two bottles full of Hungarian
+wine, Champagne, or Cape, just to bring you up to their mark.--My dear
+fellow, we are all so much _on_ here, that it was necessary to close
+the Opera. The manager is as drunk as a cornet-a-piston; he is hiccuping
+already."
+
+"Oh, Josepha!----" cried the Baron.
+
+"Now, can anything be more absurd than explanations?" she broke in with
+a smile. "Look here; can you stand six hundred thousand francs which
+this house and furniture cost? Can you give me a bond to the tune of
+thirty thousand francs a year, which is what the Duke has just given
+me in a packet of common sugared almonds from the grocer's?--a pretty
+notion that----"
+
+"What an atrocity!" cried Hulot, who in his fury would have given his
+wife's diamonds to stand in the Duc d'Herouville's shoes for twenty-four
+hours.
+
+"Atrocity is my trade," said she. "So that is how you take it? Well, why
+don't you float a company? Goodness me! my poor dyed Tom, you ought to
+be grateful to me; I have thrown you over just when you would have spent
+on me your widow's fortune, your daughter's portion.--What, tears! The
+Empire is a thing of the past--I hail the coming Empire!"
+
+She struck a tragic attitude, and exclaimed:
+
+  "They call you Hulot! Nay, I know you not--"
+
+And she went into the other room.
+
+Through the door, left ajar, there came, like a lightning-flash, a
+streak of light with an accompaniment of the crescendo of the orgy and
+the fragrance of a banquet of the choicest description.
+
+The singer peeped through the partly open door, and seeing Hulot
+transfixed as if he had been a bronze image, she came one step forward
+into the room.
+
+"Monsieur," said she, "I have handed over the rubbish in the Rue
+Chauchat to Bixiou's little Heloise Brisetout. If you wish to claim
+your cotton nightcap, your bootjack, your belt, and your wax dye, I have
+stipulated for their return."
+
+This insolent banter made the Baron leave the room as precipitately as
+Lot departed from Gomorrah, but he did not look back like Mrs. Lot.
+
+Hulot went home, striding along in a fury, and talking to himself; he
+found his family still playing the game of whist at two sous a point, at
+which he left them. On seeing her husband return, poor Adeline imagined
+something dreadful, some dishonor; she gave her cards to Hortense, and
+led Hector away into the very room where, only five hours since, Crevel
+had foretold her the utmost disgrace of poverty.
+
+"What is the matter?" she said, terrified.
+
+"Oh, forgive me--but let me tell you all these horrors." And for ten
+minutes he poured out his wrath.
+
+"But, my dear," said the unhappy woman, with heroic courage, "these
+creatures do not know what love means--such pure and devoted love as you
+deserve. How could you, so clear-sighted as you are, dream of competing
+with millions?"
+
+"Dearest Adeline!" cried the Baron, clasping her to his heart.
+
+The Baroness' words had shed balm on the bleeding wounds to his vanity.
+
+"To be sure, take away the Duc d'Herouville's fortune, and she could not
+hesitate between us!" said the Baron.
+
+"My dear," said Adeline with a final effort, "if you positively must
+have mistresses, why do you not seek them, like Crevel, among women who
+are less extravagant, and of a class that can for a time be content
+with little? We should all gain by that arrangement.--I understand your
+need--but I do not understand that vanity----"
+
+"Oh, what a kind and perfect wife you are!" cried he. "I am an old
+lunatic, I do not deserve to have such a wife!"
+
+"I am simply the Josephine of my Napoleon," she replied, with a touch of
+melancholy.
+
+"Josephine was not to compare with you!" said he. "Come; I will play a
+game of whist with my brother and the children. I must try my hand at
+the business of a family man; I must get Hortense a husband, and bury
+the libertine."
+
+His frankness so greatly touched poor Adeline, that she said:
+
+"The creature has no taste to prefer any man in the world to my Hector.
+Oh, I would not give you up for all the gold on earth. How can any woman
+throw you over who is so happy as to be loved by you?"
+
+The look with which the Baron rewarded his wife's fanaticism confirmed
+her in her opinion that gentleness and docility were a woman's strongest
+weapons.
+
+But in this she was mistaken. The noblest sentiments, carried to an
+excess, can produce mischief as great as do the worst vices. Bonaparte
+was made Emperor for having fired on the people, at a stone's throw from
+the spot where Louis XVI. lost his throne and his head because he would
+not allow a certain Monsieur Sauce to be hurt.
+
+
+
+On the following morning, Hortense, who had slept with the seal under
+her pillow, so as to have it close to her all night, dressed very early,
+and sent to beg her father to join her in the garden as soon as he
+should be down.
+
+By about half-past nine, the father, acceding to his daughter's
+petition, gave her his arm for a walk, and they went along the quays by
+the Pont Royal to the Place du Carrousel.
+
+"Let us look into the shop windows, papa," said Hortense, as they went
+through the little gate to cross the wide square.
+
+"What--here?" said her father, laughing at her.
+
+"We are supposed to have come to see the pictures, and over there"--and
+she pointed to the stalls in front of the houses at a right angle to
+the Rue du Doyenne--"look! there are dealers in curiosities and
+pictures----"
+
+"Your cousin lives there."
+
+"I know it, but she must not see us."
+
+"And what do you want to do?" said the Baron, who, finding himself
+within thirty yards of Madame Marneffe's windows, suddenly remembered
+her.
+
+Hortense had dragged her father in front of one of the shops forming the
+angle of a block of houses built along the front of the Old Louvre, and
+facing the Hotel de Nantes. She went into this shop; her father stood
+outside, absorbed in gazing at the windows of the pretty little lady,
+who, the evening before, had left her image stamped on the old beau's
+heart, as if to alleviate the wound he was so soon to receive; and he
+could not help putting his wife's sage advice into practice.
+
+"I will fall back on a simple little citizen's wife," said he to
+himself, recalling Madame Marneffe's adorable graces. "Such a woman as
+that will soon make me forget that grasping Josepha."
+
+Now, this was what was happening at the same moment outside and inside
+the curiosity shop.
+
+As he fixed his eyes on the windows of his new _belle_, the Baron
+saw the husband, who, while brushing his coat with his own hands, was
+apparently on the lookout, expecting to see some one on the square.
+Fearing lest he should be seen, and subsequently recognized, the
+amorous Baron turned his back on the Rue du Doyenne, or rather stood at
+three-quarters' face, as it were, so as to be able to glance round
+from time to time. This manoeuvre brought him face to face with Madame
+Marneffe, who, coming up from the quay, was doubling the promontory of
+houses to go home.
+
+Valerie was evidently startled as she met the Baron's astonished eye,
+and she responded with a prudish dropping of her eyelids.
+
+"A pretty woman," exclaimed he, "for whom a man would do many foolish
+things."
+
+"Indeed, monsieur?" said she, turning suddenly, like a woman who has
+just come to some vehement decision, "you are Monsieur le Baron Hulot, I
+believe?"
+
+The Baron, more and more bewildered, bowed assent.
+
+"Then, as chance has twice made our eyes meet, and I am so fortunate as
+to have interested or puzzled you, I may tell you that, instead of doing
+anything foolish, you ought to do justice.--My husband's fate rests with
+you."
+
+"And how may that be?" asked the gallant Baron.
+
+"He is employed in your department in the War Office, under Monsieur
+Lebrun, in Monsieur Coquet's room," said she with a smile.
+
+"I am quite disposed, Madame--Madame----?"
+
+"Madame Marneffe."
+
+"Dear little Madame Marneffe, to do injustice for your sake.--I have a
+cousin living in your house; I will go to see her one day soon--as soon
+as possible; bring your petition to me in her rooms."
+
+"Pardon my boldness, Monsieur le Baron; you must understand that if
+I dare to address you thus, it is because I have no friend to protect
+me----"
+
+"Ah, ha!"
+
+"Monsieur, you misunderstand me," said she, lowering her eyelids.
+
+Hulot felt as if the sun had disappeared.
+
+"I am at my wits' end, but I am an honest woman!" she went on. "About
+six months ago my only protector died, Marshal Montcornet--"
+
+"Ah! You are his daughter?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; but he never acknowledged me."
+
+"That was that he might leave you part of his fortune."
+
+"He left me nothing; he made no will."
+
+"Indeed! Poor little woman! The Marshal died suddenly of apoplexy. But,
+come, madame, hope for the best. The State must do something for the
+daughter of one of the Chevalier Bayards of the Empire."
+
+Madame Marneffe bowed gracefully and went off, as proud of her success
+as the Baron was of his.
+
+"Where the devil has she been so early?" thought he watching the flow
+of her skirts, to which she contrived to impart a somewhat exaggerated
+grace. "She looks too tired to have just come from a bath, and her
+husband is waiting for her. It is strange, and puzzles me altogether."
+
+Madame Marneffe having vanished within, the Baron wondered what his
+daughter was doing in the shop. As he went in, still staring at Madame
+Marneffe's windows, he ran against a young man with a pale brow and
+sparkling gray eyes, wearing a summer coat of black merino, coarse drill
+trousers, and tan shoes, with gaiters, rushing away headlong; he saw him
+run to the house in the Rue du Doyenne, into which he went.
+
+Hortense, on going into the shop, had at once recognized the famous
+group, conspicuously placed on a table in the middle and in front of the
+door. Even without the circumstances to which she owed her knowledge
+of this masterpiece, it would probably have struck her by the peculiar
+power which we must call the _brio_--the _go_--of great works; and
+the girl herself might in Italy have been taken as a model for the
+personification of _Brio_.
+
+Not every work by a man of genius has in the same degree that
+brilliancy, that glory which is at once patent even to the most
+ignoble beholder. Thus, certain pictures by Raphael, such as the famous
+_Transfiguration_, the _Madonna di Foligno_, and the frescoes of the
+_Stanze_ in the Vatican, do not at first captivate our admiration, as
+do the _Violin-player_ in the Sciarra Palace, the portraits of the Doria
+family, and the _Vision of Ezekiel_ in the Pitti Gallery, the _Christ
+bearing His Cross_ in the Borghese collection, and the _Marriage of
+the Virgin_ in the Brera at Milan. The _Saint John the Baptist_ of
+the Tribuna, and _Saint Luke painting the Virgin's portrait_ in the
+Accademia at Rome, have not the charm of the _Portrait of Leo X._, and
+of the _Virgin_ at Dresden.
+
+And yet they are all of equal merit. Nay, more. The _Stanze_, the
+_Transfiguration_, the panels, and the three easel pictures in the
+Vatican are in the highest degree perfect and sublime. But they demand
+a stress of attention, even from the most accomplished beholder, and
+serious study, to be fully understood; while the _Violin-player_, the
+_Marriage of the Virgin_, and the _Vision of Ezekiel_ go straight to the
+heart through the portal of sight, and make their home there. It is
+a pleasure to receive them thus without an effort; if it is not the
+highest phase of art, it is the happiest. This fact proves that, in the
+begetting of works of art, there is as much chance in the character of
+the offspring as there is in a family of children; that some will
+be happily graced, born beautiful, and costing their mothers little
+suffering, creatures on whom everything smiles, and with whom everything
+succeeds; in short, genius, like love, has its fairer blossoms.
+
+This _brio_, an Italian word which the French have begun to use, is
+characteristic of youthful work. It is the fruit of an impetus and fire
+of early talent--an impetus which is met with again later in some happy
+hours; but this particular _brio_ no longer comes from the artist's
+heart; instead of his flinging it into his work as a volcano flings up
+its fires, it comes to him from outside, inspired by circumstances, by
+love, or rivalry, often by hatred, and more often still by the imperious
+need of glory to be lived up to.
+
+This group by Wenceslas was to his later works what the _Marriage of the
+Virgin_ is to the great mass of Raphael's, the first step of a gifted
+artist taken with the inimitable grace, the eagerness, and delightful
+overflowingness of a child, whose strength is concealed under the
+pink-and-white flesh full of dimples which seem to echo to a mother's
+laughter. Prince Eugene is said to have paid four hundred thousand
+francs for this picture, which would be worth a million to any nation
+that owned no picture by Raphael, but no one would give that sum for the
+finest of the frescoes, though their value is far greater as works of
+art.
+
+Hortense restrained her admiration, for she reflected on the amount of
+her girlish savings; she assumed an air of indifference, and said to the
+dealer:
+
+"What is the price of that?"
+
+"Fifteen hundred francs," replied the man, sending a glance of
+intelligence to a young man seated on a stool in the corner.
+
+The young man himself gazed in a stupefaction at Monsieur Hulot's living
+masterpiece. Hortense, forewarned, at once identified him as the artist,
+from the color that flushed a face pale with endurance; she saw the
+spark lighted up in his gray eyes by her question; she looked on the
+thin, drawn features, like those of a monk consumed by asceticism; she
+loved the red, well-formed mouth, the delicate chin, and the Pole's
+silky chestnut hair.
+
+"If it were twelve hundred," said she, "I would beg you to send it to
+me."
+
+"It is antique, mademoiselle," the dealer remarked, thinking, like
+all his fraternity, that, having uttered this _ne plus ultra_ of
+bric-a-brac, there was no more to be said.
+
+"Excuse me, monsieur," she replied very quietly, "it was made this year;
+I came expressly to beg you, if my price is accepted, to send the
+artist to see us, as it might be possible to procure him some important
+commissions."
+
+"And if he is to have the twelve hundred francs, what am I to get? I am
+the dealer," said the man, with candid good-humor.
+
+"To be sure!" replied the girl, with a slight curl of disdain.
+
+"Oh! mademoiselle, take it; I will make terms with the dealer," cried
+the Livonian, beside himself.
+
+Fascinated by Hortense's wonderful beauty and the love of art she
+displayed, he added:
+
+"I am the sculptor of the group, and for ten days I have come here three
+times a day to see if anybody would recognize its merit and bargain for
+it. You are my first admirer--take it!"
+
+"Come, then, monsieur, with the dealer, an hour hence.--Here is my
+father's card," replied Hortense.
+
+Then, seeing the shopkeeper go into a back room to wrap the group in a
+piece of linen rag, she added in a low voice, to the great astonishment
+of the artist, who thought he must be dreaming:
+
+"For the benefit of your future prospects, Monsieur Wenceslas, do not
+mention the name of the purchaser to Mademoiselle Fischer, for she is
+our cousin."
+
+The word cousin dazzled the artist's mind; he had a glimpse of Paradise
+whence this daughter of Eve had come to him. He had dreamed of the
+beautiful girl of whom Lisbeth had told him, as Hortense had dreamed of
+her cousin's lover; and, as she had entered the shop--
+
+"Ah!" thought he, "if she could but be like this!"
+
+The look that passed between the lovers may be imagined; it was a flame,
+for virtuous lovers have no hypocrisies.
+
+"Well, what the deuce are you doing here?" her father asked her.
+
+"I have been spending twelve hundred francs that I had saved. Come." And
+she took her father's arm.
+
+"Twelve hundred francs?" he repeated.
+
+"To be exact, thirteen hundred; you will lend me the odd hundred?"
+
+"And on what, in such a place, could you spend so much?"
+
+"Ah! that is the question!" replied the happy girl. "If I have got a
+husband, he is not dear at the money."
+
+"A husband! In that shop, my child?"
+
+"Listen, dear little father; would you forbid my marrying a great
+artist?"
+
+"No, my dear. A great artist in these days is a prince without a
+title--he has glory and fortune, the two chief social advantages--next
+to virtue," he added, in a smug tone.
+
+"Oh, of course!" said Hortense. "And what do you think of sculpture?"
+
+"It is very poor business," replied Hulot, shaking his head. "It needs
+high patronage as well as great talent, for Government is the only
+purchaser. It is an art with no demand nowadays, where there are no
+princely houses, no great fortunes, no entailed mansions, no hereditary
+estates. Only small pictures and small figures can find a place; the
+arts are endangered by this need of small things."
+
+"But if a great artist could find a demand?" said Hortense.
+
+"That indeed would solve the problem."
+
+"Or had some one to back him?"
+
+"That would be even better."
+
+"If he were of noble birth?"
+
+"Pooh!"
+
+"A Count."
+
+"And a sculptor?"
+
+"He has no money."
+
+"And so he counts on that of Mademoiselle Hortense Hulot?" said the
+Baron ironically, with an inquisitorial look into his daughter's eyes.
+
+"This great artist, a Count and a sculptor, has just seen your daughter
+for the first time in his life, and for the space of five minutes,
+Monsieur le Baron," Hortense calmly replied. "Yesterday, you must know,
+dear little father, while you were at the Chamber, mamma had a fainting
+fit. This, which she ascribed to a nervous attack, was the result of
+some worry that had to do with the failure of my marriage, for she told
+me that to get rid of me---"
+
+"She is too fond of you to have used an expression----"
+
+"So unparliamentary!" Hortense put in with a laugh. "No, she did not use
+those words; but I know that a girl old enough to marry and who does not
+find a husband is a heavy cross for respectable parents to bear.--Well,
+she thinks that if a man of energy and talent could be found, who would
+be satisfied with thirty thousand francs for my marriage portion, we
+might all be happy. In fact, she thought it advisable to prepare me for
+the modesty of my future lot, and to hinder me from indulging in too
+fervid dreams.--Which evidently meant an end to the intended marriage,
+and no settlements for me!"
+
+"Your mother is a very good woman, noble, admirable!" replied the
+father, deeply humiliated, though not sorry to hear this confession.
+
+"She told me yesterday that she had your permission to sell her diamonds
+so as to give me something to marry on; but I should like her to keep
+her jewels, and to find a husband myself. I think I have found the man,
+the possible husband, answering to mamma's prospectus----"
+
+"There?--in the Place du Carrousel?--and in one morning?"
+
+"Oh, papa, the mischief lies deeper!" said she archly.
+
+"Well, come, my child, tell the whole story to your good old father,"
+said he persuasively, and concealing his uneasiness.
+
+Under promise of absolute secrecy, Hortense repeated the upshot of her
+various conversations with her Cousin Betty. Then, when they got home,
+she showed the much-talked-of-seal to her father in evidence of the
+sagacity of her views. The father, in the depth of his heart, wondered
+at the skill and acumen of girls who act on instinct, discerning the
+simplicity of the scheme which her idealized love had suggested in the
+course of a single night to his guileless daughter.
+
+"You will see the masterpiece I have just bought; it is to be brought
+home, and that dear Wenceslas is to come with the dealer.--The man who
+made that group ought to make a fortune; only use your influence to get
+him an order for a statue, and rooms at the Institut----"
+
+"How you run on!" cried her father. "Why, if you had your own way, you
+would be man and wife within the legal period--in eleven days----"
+
+"Must we wait so long?" said she, laughing. "But I fell in love with him
+in five minutes, as you fell in love with mamma at first sight. And he
+loves me as if we had known each other for two years. Yes," she said in
+reply to her father's look, "I read ten volumes of love in his eyes. And
+will not you and mamma accept him as my husband when you see that he
+is a man of genius? Sculpture is the greatest of the Arts," she cried,
+clapping her hands and jumping. "I will tell you everything----"
+
+"What, is there more to come?" asked her father, smiling.
+
+The child's complete and effervescent innocence had restored her
+father's peace of mind.
+
+"A confession of the first importance," said she. "I loved him without
+knowing him; and, for the last hour, since seeing him, I am crazy about
+him."
+
+"A little too crazy!" said the Baron, who was enjoying the sight of this
+guileless passion.
+
+"Do not punish me for confiding in you," replied she. "It is so
+delightful to say to my father's heart, 'I love him! I am so happy in
+loving him!'--You will see my Wenceslas! His brow is so sad. The sun
+of genius shines in his gray eyes--and what an air he has! What do you
+think of Livonia? Is it a fine country?--The idea of Cousin Betty's
+marrying that young fellow! She might be his mother. It would be murder!
+I am quite jealous of all she has ever done for him. But I don't think
+my marriage will please her."
+
+"See, my darling, we must hide nothing from your mother."
+
+"I should have to show her the seal, and I promised not to betray Cousin
+Lisbeth, who is afraid, she says, of mamma's laughing at her," said
+Hortense.
+
+"You have scruples about the seal, and none about robbing your cousin of
+her lover."
+
+"I promised about the seal--I made no promise about the sculptor."
+
+This adventure, patriarchal in its simplicity, came admirably _a propos_
+to the unconfessed poverty of the family; the Baron, while praising
+his daughter for her candor, explained to her that she must now leave
+matters to the discretion of her parents.
+
+"You understand, my child, that it is not your part to ascertain whether
+your cousin's lover is a Count, if he has all his papers properly
+certified, and if his conduct is a guarantee for his respectability.--As
+for your cousin, she refused five offers when she was twenty years
+younger; that will prove no obstacle, I undertake to say."
+
+"Listen to me, papa; if you really wish to see me married, never say a
+word to Lisbeth about it till just before the contract is signed. I have
+been catechizing her about this business for the last six months! Well,
+there is something about her quite inexplicable----"
+
+"What?" said her father, puzzled.
+
+"Well, she looks evil when I say too much, even in joke, about her
+lover. Make inquiries, but leave me to row my own boat. My confidence
+ought to reassure you."
+
+"The Lord said, 'Suffer little children to come unto Me.' You are one
+of those who have come back again," replied the Baron with a touch of
+irony.
+
+After breakfast the dealer was announced, and the artist with his group.
+The sudden flush that reddened her daughter's face at once made the
+Baroness suspicious and then watchful, and the girl's confusion and
+the light in her eyes soon betrayed the mystery so badly guarded in her
+simple heart.
+
+Count Steinbock, dressed in black, struck the Baron as a very
+gentlemanly young man.
+
+"Would you undertake a bronze statue?" he asked, as he held up the
+group.
+
+After admiring it on trust, he passed it on to his wife, who knew
+nothing about sculpture.
+
+"It is beautiful, isn't it, mamma?" said Hortense in her mother' ear.
+
+"A statue! Monsieur, it is less difficult to execute a statue than to
+make a clock like this, which my friend here has been kind enough to
+bring," said the artist in reply.
+
+The dealer was placing on the dining-room sideboard the wax model of the
+twelve Hours that the Loves were trying to delay.
+
+"Leave the clock with me," said the Baron, astounded at the beauty of
+the sketch. "I should like to show it to the Ministers of the Interior
+and of Commerce."
+
+"Who is the young man in whom you take so much interest?" the Baroness
+asked her daughter.
+
+"An artist who could afford to execute this model could get a hundred
+thousand francs for it," said the curiosity-dealer, putting on a
+knowing and mysterious look as he saw that the artist and the girl were
+interchanging glances. "He would only need to sell twenty copies
+at eight thousand francs each--for the materials would cost about a
+thousand crowns for each example. But if each copy were numbered and
+the mould destroyed, it would certainly be possible to meet with twenty
+amateurs only too glad to possess a replica of such a work."
+
+"A hundred thousand francs!" cried Steinbock, looking from the dealer to
+Hortense, the Baron, and the Baroness.
+
+"Yes, a hundred thousand francs," repeated the dealer. "If I were rich
+enough, I would buy it of you myself for twenty thousand francs; for by
+destroying the mould it would become a valuable property. But one of the
+princes ought to pay thirty or forty thousand francs for such a work to
+ornament his drawing-room. No man has ever succeeded in making a clock
+satisfactory alike to the vulgar and to the connoisseur, and this one,
+sir, solves the difficulty."
+
+"This is for yourself, monsieur," said Hortense, giving six gold pieces
+to the dealer.
+
+"Never breath a word of this visit to any one living," said the artist
+to his friend, at the door. "If you should be asked where we sold the
+group, mention the Duc d'Herouville, the famous collector in the Rue de
+Varenne."
+
+The dealer nodded assent.
+
+"And your name?" said Hulot to the artist when he came back.
+
+"Count Steinbock."
+
+"Have you the papers that prove your identity?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Baron. They are in Russian and in German, but not
+legalized."
+
+"Do you feel equal to undertaking a statue nine feet high?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Well, then, if the persons whom I shall consult are satisfied with
+your work, I can secure you the commission for the statue of Marshal
+Montcornet, which is to be erected on his monument at Pere-Lachaise.
+The Minister of War and the old officers of the Imperial Guard have
+subscribed a sum large enough to enable us to select our artist."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, it will make my fortune!" exclaimed Steinbock,
+overpowered by so much happiness at once.
+
+"Be easy," replied the Baron graciously. "If the two ministers to whom
+I propose to show your group and this sketch in wax are delighted with
+these two pieces, your prospects of a fortune are good."
+
+Hortense hugged her father's arm so tightly as to hurt him.
+
+"Bring me your papers, and say nothing of your hopes to anybody, not
+even to our old Cousin Betty."
+
+"Lisbeth?" said Madame Hulot, at last understanding the end of all this,
+though unable to guess the means.
+
+"I could give proof of my skill by making a bust of the Baroness," added
+Wenceslas.
+
+The artist, struck by Madame Hulot's beauty, was comparing the mother
+and daughter.
+
+"Indeed, monsieur, life may smile upon you," said the Baron, quite
+charmed by Count Steinbock's refined and elegant manner. "You will find
+out that in Paris no man is clever for nothing, and that persevering
+toil always finds its reward here."
+
+Hortense, with a blush, held out to the young man a pretty Algerine
+purse containing sixty gold pieces. The artist, with something still
+of a gentleman's pride, responded with a mounting color easy enough to
+interpret.
+
+"This, perhaps, is the first money your works have brought you?" said
+Adeline.
+
+"Yes, madame--my works of art. It is not the first-fruits of my labor,
+for I have been a workman."
+
+"Well, we must hope my daughter's money will bring you good luck," said
+she.
+
+"And take it without scruple," added the Baron, seeing that Wenceslas
+held the purse in his hand instead of pocketing it. "The sum will
+be repaid by some rich man, a prince perhaps, who will offer it with
+interest to possess so fine a work."
+
+"Oh, I want it too much myself, papa, to give it up to anybody in the
+world, even a royal prince!"
+
+"I can make a far prettier thing than that for you, mademoiselle."
+
+"But it would not be this one," replied she; and then, as if ashamed of
+having said too much, she ran out into the garden.
+
+"Then I shall break the mould and the model as soon as I go home," said
+Steinbock.
+
+"Fetch me your papers, and you will hear of me before long, if you are
+equal to what I expect of you, monsieur."
+
+The artist on this could but take leave. After bowing to Madame Hulot
+and Hortense, who came in from the garden on purpose, he went off to
+walk in the Tuileries, not bearing--not daring--to return to his attic,
+where his tyrant would pelt him with questions and wring his secret from
+him.
+
+Hortense's adorer conceived of groups and statues by the hundred; he
+felt strong enough to hew the marble himself, like Canova, who was also
+a feeble man, and nearly died of it. He was transfigured by Hortense,
+who was to him inspiration made visible.
+
+"Now then," said the Baroness to her daughter, "what does all this
+mean?"
+
+"Well, dear mamma, you have just seen Cousin Lisbeth's lover, who now, I
+hope, is mine. But shut your eyes, know nothing. Good Heavens! I was to
+keep it all from you, and I cannot help telling you everything----"
+
+"Good-bye, children!" said the Baron, kissing his wife and daughter; "I
+shall perhaps go to call on the Nanny, and from her I shall hear a great
+deal about our young man."
+
+"Papa, be cautious!" said Hortense.
+
+"Oh! little girl!" cried the Baroness when Hortense had poured out her
+poem, of which the morning's adventure was the last canto, "dear little
+girl, Artlessness will always be the artfulest puss on earth!"
+
+Genuine passions have an unerring instinct. Set a greedy man before a
+dish of fruit and he will make no mistake, but take the choicest even
+without seeing it. In the same way, if you allow a girl who is well
+brought up to choose a husband for herself, if she is in a position to
+meet the man of her heart, rarely will she blunder. The act of nature in
+such cases is known as love at first sight; and in love, first sight is
+practically second sight.
+
+The Baroness' satisfaction, though disguised under maternal dignity, was
+as great as her daughter's; for, of the three ways of marrying Hortense
+of which Crevel had spoken, the best, as she opined, was about to be
+realized. And she regarded this little drama as an answer by Providence
+to her fervent prayers.
+
+
+
+Mademoiselle Fischer's galley slave, obliged at last to go home, thought
+he might hide his joy as a lover under his glee as an artist rejoicing
+over his first success.
+
+"Victory! my group is sold to the Duc d'Herouville, who is going to give
+me some commissions," cried he, throwing the twelve hundred francs in
+gold on the table before the old maid.
+
+He had, as may be supposed concealed Hortense's purse; it lay next to
+his heart.
+
+"And a very good thing too," said Lisbeth. "I was working myself to
+death. You see, child, money comes in slowly in the business you have
+taken up, for this is the first you have earned, and you have been
+grinding at it for near on five years now. That money barely repays me
+for what you have cost me since I took your promissory note; that is
+all I have got by my savings. But be sure of one thing," she said, after
+counting the gold, "this money will all be spent on you. There is enough
+there to keep us going for a year. In a year you may now be able to pay
+your debt and have a snug little sum of your own, if you go on in the
+same way."
+
+Wenceslas, finding his trick successful, expatiated on the Duc
+d'Herouville.
+
+"I will fit you out in a black suit, and get you some new linen," said
+Lisbeth, "for you must appear presentably before your patrons; and then
+you must have a larger and better apartment than your horrible garret,
+and furnish it property.--You look so bright, you are not like the same
+creature," she added, gazing at Wenceslas.
+
+"But my work is pronounced a masterpiece."
+
+"Well, so much the better! Do some more," said the arid creature, who
+was nothing but practical, and incapable of understanding the joy of
+triumph or of beauty in Art. "Trouble your head no further about what
+you have sold; make something else to sell. You have spent two hundred
+francs in money, to say nothing of your time and your labor, on that
+devil of a _Samson_. Your clock will cost you more than two thousand
+francs to execute. I tell you what, if you will listen to me, you will
+finish the two little boys crowning the little girl with cornflowers;
+that would just suit the Parisians.--I will go round to Monsieur Graff
+the tailor before going to Monsieur Crevel.--Go up now and leave me to
+dress."
+
+Next day the Baron, perfectly crazy about Madame Marneffe, went to see
+Cousin Betty, who was considerably amazed on opening the door to see who
+her visitor was, for he had never called on her before. She at once said
+to herself, "Can it be that Hortense wants my lover?"--for she had heard
+the evening before, at Monsieur Crevel's, that the marriage with the
+Councillor of the Supreme Court was broken off.
+
+"What, Cousin! you here? This is the first time you have ever been to
+see me, and it is certainly not for love of my fine eyes that you have
+come now."
+
+"Fine eyes is the truth," said the Baron; "you have as fine eyes as I
+have ever seen----"
+
+"Come, what are you here for? I really am ashamed to receive you in such
+a kennel."
+
+The outer room of the two inhabited by Lisbeth served her as
+sitting-room, dining-room, kitchen, and workroom. The furniture was such
+as beseemed a well-to-do artisan--walnut-wood chairs with straw seats,
+a small walnut-wood dining table, a work table, some colored prints in
+black wooden frames, short muslin curtains to the windows, the floor
+well polished and shining with cleanliness, not a speck of dust
+anywhere, but all cold and dingy, like a picture by Terburg in every
+particular, even to the gray tone given by a wall paper once blue and
+now faded to gray. As to the bedroom, no human being had ever penetrated
+its secrets.
+
+The Baron took it all in at a glance, saw the sign-manual of commonness
+on every detail, from the cast-iron stove to the household utensils, and
+his gorge rose as he said to himself, "And _this_ is virtue!--What am I
+here for?" said he aloud. "You are far too cunning not to guess, and
+I had better tell you plainly," cried he, sitting down and looking out
+across the courtyard through an opening he made in the puckered curtain.
+"There is a very pretty woman in the house----"
+
+"Madame Marneffe! Now I understand!" she exclaimed, seeing it all. "But
+Josepha?"
+
+"Alas, Cousin, Josepha is no more. I was turned out of doors like a
+discarded footman."
+
+"And you would like...?" said Lisbeth, looking at the Baron with the
+dignity of a prude on her guard a quarter of an hour too soon.
+
+"As Madame Marneffe is very much the lady, and the wife of an employe,
+you can meet her without compromising yourself," the Baron went on, "and
+I should like to see you neighborly. Oh! you need not be alarmed; she
+will have the greatest consideration for the cousin of her husband's
+chief."
+
+At this moment the rustle of a gown was heard on the stairs and the
+footstep of a woman wearing the thinnest boots. The sound ceased on the
+landing. There was a tap at the door, and Madame Marneffe came in.
+
+"Pray excuse me, mademoiselle, for thus intruding upon you, but I failed
+to find you yesterday when I came to call; we are near neighbors; and
+if I had known that you were related to Monsieur le Baron, I should long
+since have craved your kind interest with him. I saw him come in, so I
+took the liberty of coming across; for my husband, Monsieur le Baron,
+spoke to me of a report on the office clerks which is to be laid before
+the minister to-morrow."
+
+She seemed quite agitated and nervous--but she had only run upstairs.
+
+"You have no need to play the petitioner, fair lady," replied the Baron.
+"It is I who should ask the favor of seeing you."
+
+"Very well, if mademoiselle allows it, pray come!" said Madame Marneffe.
+
+"Yes--go, Cousin, I will join you," said Lisbeth judiciously.
+
+The Parisienne had so confidently counted on the chief's visit and
+intelligence, that not only had she dressed herself for so important
+an interview--she had dressed her room. Early in the day it had been
+furnished with flowers purchased on credit. Marneffe had helped his
+wife to polish the furniture, down to the smallest objects, washing,
+brushing, and dusting everything. Valerie wished to be found in an
+atmosphere of sweetness, to attract the chief and to please him enough
+to have a right to be cruel; to tantalize him as a child would, with all
+the tricks of fashionable tactics. She had gauged Hulot. Give a Paris
+woman at bay four-and-twenty hours, and she will overthrow a ministry.
+
+The man of the Empire, accustomed to the ways to the Empire, was no
+doubt quite ignorant of the ways of modern love-making, of the scruples
+in vogue and the various styles of conversation invented since 1830,
+which led to the poor weak woman being regarded as the victim of
+her lover's desires--a Sister of Charity salving a wound, an angel
+sacrificing herself.
+
+This modern art of love uses a vast amount of evangelical phrases in the
+service of the Devil. Passion is martyrdom. Both parties aspire to the
+Ideal, to the Infinite; love is to make them so much better. All these
+fine words are but a pretext for putting increased ardor into the
+practical side of it, more frenzy into a fall than of old. This
+hypocrisy, a characteristic of the times, is a gangrene in gallantry.
+The lovers are both angels, and they behave, if they can, like two
+devils.
+
+Love had no time for such subtle analysis between two campaigns, and in
+1809 its successes were as rapid as those of the Empire. So, under the
+Restoration, the handsome Baron, a lady's man once more, had begun by
+consoling some old friends now fallen from the political firmament,
+like extinguished stars, and then, as he grew old, was captured by Jenny
+Cadine and Josepha.
+
+Madame Marneffe had placed her batteries after due study of the Baron's
+past life, which her husband had narrated in much detail, after picking
+up some information in the offices. The comedy of modern sentiment might
+have the charm of novelty to the Baron; Valerie had made up her mind as
+to her scheme; and we may say the trial of her power that she made this
+morning answered her highest expectations. Thanks to her manoeuvres,
+sentimental, high-flown, and romantic, Valerie, without committing
+herself to any promises, obtained for her husband the appointment as
+deputy head of the office and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
+
+The campaign was not carried out without little dinners at the _Rocher
+de Cancale_, parties to the play, and gifts in the form of lace,
+scarves, gowns, and jewelry. The apartment in the Rue du Doyenne was not
+satisfactory; the Baron proposed to furnish another magnificently in a
+charming new house in the Rue Vanneau.
+
+Monsieur Marneffe got a fortnight's leave, to be taken a month hence
+for urgent private affairs in the country, and a present in money;
+he promised himself that he would spend both in a little town in
+Switzerland, studying the fair sex.
+
+While Monsieur Hulot thus devoted himself to the lady he was
+"protecting," he did not forget the young artist. Comte Popinot,
+Minister of Commerce, was a patron of Art; he paid two thousand francs
+for a copy of the _Samson_ on condition that the mould should be broken,
+and that there should be no _Samson_ but his and Mademoiselle Hulot's.
+The group was admired by a Prince, to whom the model sketch for the
+clock was also shown, and who ordered it; but that again was to be
+unique, and he offered thirty thousand francs for it.
+
+Artists who were consulted, and among them Stidmann, were of opinion
+that the man who had sketched those two models was capable of achieving
+a statue. The Marshal Prince de Wissembourg, Minister of War, and
+President of the Committee for the subscriptions to the monument of
+Marshal Montcornet, called a meeting, at which it was decided that the
+execution of the work should be placed in Steinbock's hands. The Comte
+de Rastignac, at that time Under-secretary of State, wished to possess a
+work by the artist, whose glory was waxing amid the acclamations of
+his rivals. Steinbock sold to him the charming group of two little boys
+crowning a little girl, and he promised to secure for the sculptor a
+studio attached to the Government marble-quarries, situated, as all the
+world knows, at Le Gros-Caillou.
+
+This was a success, such success as is won in Paris, that is to say,
+stupendous success, that crushes those whose shoulders and loins are not
+strong enough to bear it--as, be it said, not unfrequently is the case.
+Count Wenceslas Steinbock was written about in all the newspapers and
+reviews without his having the least suspicion of it, any more than
+had Mademoiselle Fischer. Every day, as soon as Lisbeth had gone out to
+dinner, Wenceslas went to the Baroness' and spent an hour or two there,
+excepting on the evenings when Lisbeth dined with the Hulots.
+
+
+
+This state of things lasted for several days.
+
+The Baron, assured of Count Steinbock's titles and position; the
+Baroness, pleased with his character and habits; Hortense, proud of her
+permitted love and of her suitor's fame, none of them hesitated to speak
+of the marriage; in short, the artist was in the seventh heaven, when an
+indiscretion on Madame Marneffe's part spoilt all.
+
+And this was how.
+
+Lisbeth, whom the Baron wished to see intimate with Madame Marneffe,
+that she might keep an eye on the couple, had already dined with
+Valerie; and she, on her part, anxious to have an ear in the Hulot
+house, made much of the old maid. It occurred to Valerie to invite
+Mademoiselle Fischer to a house-warming in the new apartments she was
+about to move into. Lisbeth, glad to have found another house to
+dine in, and bewitched by Madame Marneffe, had taken a great fancy to
+Valerie. Of all the persons she had made acquaintance with, no one had
+taken so much pains to please her. In fact, Madame Marneffe, full of
+attentions for Mademoiselle Fischer, found herself in the position
+towards Lisbeth that Lisbeth held towards the Baroness, Monsieur Rivet,
+Crevel, and the others who invited her to dinner.
+
+The Marneffes had excited Lisbeth's compassion by allowing her to see
+the extreme poverty of the house, while varnishing it as usual with
+the fairest colors; their friends were under obligations to them and
+ungrateful; they had had much illness; Madame Fortin, her mother, had
+never known of their distress, and had died believing herself wealthy to
+the end, thanks to their superhuman efforts--and so forth.
+
+"Poor people!" said she to her Cousin Hulot, "you are right to do what
+you can for them; they are so brave and so kind! They can hardly live on
+the thousand crowns he gets as deputy-head of the office, for they have
+got into debt since Marshal Montcornet's death. It is barbarity on the
+part of the Government to suppose that a clerk with a wife and family
+can live in Paris on two thousand four hundred francs a year."
+
+And so, within a very short time, a young woman who affected regard for
+her, who told her everything, and consulted her, who flattered her,
+and seemed ready to yield to her guidance, had become dearer to the
+eccentric Cousin Lisbeth than all her relations.
+
+The Baron, on his part, admiring in Madame Marneffe such propriety,
+education, and breeding as neither Jenny Cadine nor Josepha, nor any
+friend of theirs had to show, had fallen in love with her in a
+month, developing a senile passion, a senseless passion, which had an
+appearance of reason. In fact, he found here neither the banter, nor the
+orgies, nor the reckless expenditure, nor the depravity, nor the scorn
+of social decencies, nor the insolent independence which had brought him
+to grief alike with the actress and the singer. He was spared, too, the
+rapacity of the courtesan, like unto the thirst of dry sand.
+
+Madame Marneffe, of whom he had made a friend and confidante, made the
+greatest difficulties over accepting any gift from him.
+
+"Appointments, official presents, anything you can extract from the
+Government; but do not begin by insulting a woman whom you profess to
+love," said Valerie. "If you do, I shall cease to believe you--and
+I like to believe you," she added, with a glance like Saint Theresa
+leering at heaven.
+
+Every time he made her a present there was a fortress to be stormed, a
+conscience to be over-persuaded. The hapless Baron laid deep stratagems
+to offer her some trifle--costly, nevertheless--proud of having at last
+met with virtue and the realization of his dreams. In this primitive
+household, as he assured himself, he was the god as much as in his own.
+And Monsieur Marneffe seemed at a thousand leagues from suspecting that
+the Jupiter of his office intended to descend on his wife in a shower of
+gold; he was his august chief's humblest slave.
+
+Madame Marneffe, twenty-three years of age, a pure and bashful
+middle-class wife, a blossom hidden in the Rue du Doyenne, could know
+nothing of the depravity and demoralizing harlotry which the Baron could
+no longer think of without disgust, for he had never known the charm
+of recalcitrant virtue, and the coy Valerie made him enjoy it to the
+utmost--all along the line, as the saying goes.
+
+The question having come to this point between Hector and Valerie, it is
+not astonishing that Valerie should have heard from Hector the secret of
+the intended marriage between the great sculptor Steinbock and Hortense
+Hulot. Between a lover on his promotion and a lady who hesitates
+long before becoming his mistress, there are contests, uttered or
+unexpressed, in which a word often betrays a thought; as, in fencing,
+the foils fly as briskly as the swords in duel. Then a prudent man
+follows the example of Monsieur de Turenne. Thus the Baron had hinted at
+the greater freedom his daughter's marriage would allow him, in reply to
+the tender Valerie, who more than once had exclaimed:
+
+"I cannot imagine how a woman can go wrong for a man who is not wholly
+hers."
+
+And a thousand times already the Baron had declared that for
+five-and-twenty years all had been at an end between Madame Hulot and
+himself.
+
+"And they say she is so handsome!" replied Madame Marneffe. "I want
+proof."
+
+"You shall have it," said the Baron, made happy by this demand, by which
+his Valerie committed herself.
+
+Hector had then been compelled to reveal his plans, already being
+carried into effect in the Rue Vanneau, to prove to Valerie that he
+intended to devote to her that half of his life which belonged to his
+lawful wife, supposing that day and night equally divide the existence
+of civilized humanity. He spoke of decently deserting his wife, leaving
+her to herself as soon as Hortense should be married. The Baroness would
+then spend all her time with Hortense or the young Hulot couple; he was
+sure of her submission.
+
+"And then, my angel, my true life, my real home will be in the Rue
+Vanneau."
+
+"Bless me, how you dispose of me!" said Madame Marneffe. "And my
+husband----"
+
+"That rag!"
+
+"To be sure, as compared with you so he is!" said she with a laugh.
+
+Madame Marneffe, having heard Steinbock's history, was frantically eager
+to see the young Count; perhaps she wished to have some trifle of his
+work while they still lived under the same roof. This curiosity so
+seriously annoyed the Baron that Valerie swore to him that she would
+never even look at Wenceslas. But though she obtained, as the reward
+of her surrender of this wish, a little tea-service of old Sevres _pate
+tendre_, she kept her wish at the bottom of her heart, as if written on
+tablets.
+
+So one day when she had begged "_my_ Cousin Betty" to come to take
+coffee with her in her room, she opened on the subject of her lover, to
+know how she might see him without risk.
+
+"My dear child," said she, for they called each my dear, "why have you
+never introduced your lover to me? Do you know that within a short time
+he has become famous?"
+
+"He famous?"
+
+"He is the one subject of conversation."
+
+"Pooh!" cried Lisbeth.
+
+"He is going to execute the statue of my father, and I could be of great
+use to him and help him to succeed in the work; for Madame Montcornet
+cannot lend him, as I can, a miniature by Sain, a beautiful thing
+done in 1809, before the Wagram Campaign, and given to my poor
+mother--Montcornet when he was young and handsome."
+
+Sain and Augustin between them held the sceptre of miniature painting
+under the Empire.
+
+"He is going to make a statue, my dear, did you say?"
+
+"Nine feet high--by the orders of the Minister of War. Why, where have
+you dropped from that I should tell you the news? Why, the Government is
+going to give Count Steinbock rooms and a studio at Le Gros-Caillou,
+the depot for marble; your Pole will be made the Director, I should not
+wonder, with two thousand francs a year and a ring on his finger."
+
+"How do you know all this when I have heard nothing about it?" said
+Lisbeth at last, shaking off her amazement.
+
+"Now, my dear little Cousin Betty," said Madame Marneffe, in an
+insinuating voice, "are you capable of devoted friendship, put to any
+test? Shall we henceforth be sisters? Will you swear to me never to have
+a secret from me any more than I from you--to act as my spy, as I will
+be yours?--Above all, will you pledge yourself never to betray me either
+to my husband or to Monsieur Hulot, and never reveal that it was I who
+told you----?"
+
+Madame Marneffe broke off in this spurring harangue; Lisbeth frightened
+her. The peasant-woman's face was terrible; her piercing black eyes
+had the glare of the tiger's; her face was like that we ascribe to a
+pythoness; she set her teeth to keep them from chattering, and her whole
+frame quivered convulsively. She had pushed her clenched fingers under
+her cap to clutch her hair and support her head, which felt too heavy;
+she was on fire. The smoke of the flame that scorched her seemed to
+emanate from her wrinkles as from the crevasses rent by a volcanic
+eruption. It was a startling spectacle.
+
+"Well, why do you stop?" she asked in a hollow voice. "I will be all to
+you that I have been to him.--Oh, I would have given him my life-blood!"
+
+"You loved him then?"
+
+"Like a child of my own!"
+
+"Well, then," said Madame Marneffe, with a breath of relief, "if you
+only love him in that way, you will be very happy--for you wish him to
+be happy?"
+
+Lisbeth replied by a nod as hasty as a madwoman's.
+
+"He is to marry your Cousin Hortense in a month's time."
+
+"Hortense!" shrieked the old maid, striking her forehead, and starting
+to her feet.
+
+"Well, but then you were really in love with this young man?" asked
+Valerie.
+
+"My dear, we are bound for life and death, you and I," said Mademoiselle
+Fischer. "Yes, if you have any love affairs, to me they are sacred. Your
+vices will be virtues in my eyes.--For I shall need your vices!"
+
+"Then did you live with him?" asked Valerie.
+
+"No; I meant to be a mother to him."
+
+"I give it up. I cannot understand," said Valerie. "In that case you are
+neither betrayed nor cheated, and you ought to be very happy to see him
+so well married; he is now fairly afloat. And, at any rate, your day is
+over. Our artist goes to Madame Hulot's every evening as soon as you go
+out to dinner."
+
+"Adeline!" muttered Lisbeth. "Oh, Adeline, you shall pay for this! I
+will make you uglier than I am."
+
+"You are as pale as death!" exclaimed Valerie. "There is something
+wrong?--Oh, what a fool I am! The mother and daughter must have
+suspected that you would raise some obstacles in the way of this affair
+since they have kept it from you," said Madame Marneffe. "But if you did
+not live with the young man, my dear, all this is a greater puzzle to me
+than my husband's feelings----"
+
+"Ah, you don't know," said Lisbeth; "you have no idea of all their
+tricks. It is the last blow that kills. And how many such blows have I
+had to bruise my soul! You don't know that from the time when I could
+first feel, I have been victimized for Adeline. I was beaten, and she
+was petted; I was dressed like a scullion, and she had clothes like a
+lady's; I dug in the garden and cleaned the vegetables, and she--she
+never lifted a finger for anything but to make up some finery!--She
+married the Baron, she came to shine at the Emperor's Court, while I
+stayed in our village till 1809, waiting for four years for a suitable
+match; they brought me away, to be sure, but only to make me a
+work-woman, and to offer me clerks or captains like coalheavers for a
+husband! I have had their leavings for twenty-six years!--And now like
+the story in the Old Testament, the poor relation has one ewe-lamb which
+is all her joy, and the rich man who has flocks covets the ewe-lamb and
+steals it--without warning, without asking. Adeline has meanly robbed me
+of my happiness!--Adeline! Adeline! I will see you in the mire, and sunk
+lower than myself!--And Hortense--I loved her, and she has cheated me.
+The Baron.--No, it is impossible. Tell me again what is really true of
+all this."
+
+"Be calm, my dear child."
+
+"Valerie, my darling, I will be calm," said the strange creature,
+sitting down again. "One thing only can restore me to reason; give me
+proofs."
+
+"Your Cousin Hortense has the _Samson_ group--here is a lithograph from
+it published in a review. She paid for it out of her pocket-money, and
+it is the Baron who, to benefit his future son-in-law, is pushing him,
+getting everything for him."
+
+"Water!--water!" said Lisbeth, after glancing at the print, below which
+she read, "A group belonging to Mademoiselle Hulot d'Ervy." "Water! my
+head is burning, I am going mad!"
+
+Madame Marneffe fetched some water. Lisbeth took off her cap, unfastened
+her black hair, and plunged her head into the basin her new friend held
+for her. She dipped her forehead into it several times, and checked the
+incipient inflammation. After this douche she completely recovered her
+self-command.
+
+"Not a word," said she to Madame Marneffe as she wiped her face--"not a
+word of all this.--You see, I am quite calm; everything is forgotten. I
+am thinking of something very different."
+
+"She will be in Charenton to-morrow, that is very certain," thought
+Madame Marneffe, looking at the old maid.
+
+"What is to be done?" Lisbeth went on. "You see, my angel, there is
+nothing for it but to hold my tongue, bow my head, and drift to the
+grave, as all water runs to the river. What could I try to do? I should
+like to grind them all--Adeline, her daughter, and the Baron--all to
+dust! But what can a poor relation do against a rich family? It would be
+the story of the earthen pot and the iron pot."
+
+"Yes; you are right," said Valerie. "You can only pull as much hay as
+you can to your side of the manger. That is all the upshot of life in
+Paris."
+
+"Besides," said Lisbeth, "I shall soon die, I can tell you, if I lose
+that boy to whom I fancied I could always be a mother, and with whom I
+counted on living all my days----"
+
+There were tears in her eyes, and she paused. Such emotion in this woman
+made of sulphur and flame, made Valerie shudder.
+
+"Well, at any rate, I have found you," said Lisbeth, taking Valerie's
+hand, "that is some consolation in this dreadful trouble.--We shall
+be true friends; and why should we ever part? I shall never cross
+your track. No one will ever be in love with me!--Those who would
+have married me, would only have done it to secure my Cousin Hulot's
+interest. With energy enough to scale Paradise, to have to devote it to
+procuring bread and water, a few rags, and a garret!--That is martyrdom,
+my dear, and I have withered under it."
+
+She broke off suddenly, and shot a black flash into Madame Marneffe's
+blue eyes, a glance that pierced the pretty woman's soul, as the point
+of a dagger might have pierced her heart.
+
+"And what is the use of talking?" she exclaimed in reproof to herself.
+"I never said so much before, believe me! The tables will be turned
+yet!" she added after a pause. "As you so wisely say, let us sharpen our
+teeth, and pull down all the hay we can get."
+
+"You are very wise," said Madame Marneffe, who had been frightened by
+this scene, and had no remembrance of having uttered this maxim. "I am
+sure you are right, my dear child. Life is not so long after all, and
+we must make the best of it, and make use of others to contribute to our
+enjoyment. Even I have learned that, young as I am. I was brought up a
+spoilt child, my father married ambitiously, and almost forgot me, after
+making me his idol and bringing me up like a queen's daughter! My poor
+mother, who filled my head with splendid visions, died of grief at
+seeing me married to an office clerk with twelve hundred francs a year,
+at nine-and-thirty an aged and hardened libertine, as corrupt as
+the hulks, looking on me, as others looked on you, as a means of
+fortune!--Well, in that wretched man, I have found the best of husbands.
+He prefers the squalid sluts he picks up at the street corners, and
+leaves me free. Though he keeps all his salary to himself, he never asks
+me where I get money to live on----"
+
+And she in her turn stopped short, as a woman does who feels herself
+carried away by the torrent of her confessions; struck, too, by
+Lisbeth's eager attention, she thought well to make sure of Lisbeth
+before revealing her last secrets.
+
+"You see, dear child, how entire is my confidence in you!" she presently
+added, to which Lisbeth replied by a most comforting nod.
+
+An oath may be taken by a look and a nod more solemnly than in a court
+of justice.
+
+"I keep up every appearance of respectability," Valerie went on, laying
+her hand on Lisbeth's as if to accept her pledge. "I am a married
+woman, and my own mistress, to such a degree, that in the morning, when
+Marneffe sets out for the office, if he takes it into his head to say
+good-bye and finds my door locked, he goes off without a word. He cares
+less for his boy than I care for one of the marble children that play
+at the feet of one of the river-gods in the Tuileries. If I do not come
+home to dinner, he dines quite contentedly with the maid, for the maid
+is devoted to monsieur; and he goes out every evening after dinner, and
+does not come in till twelve or one o'clock. Unfortunately, for a year
+past, I have had no ladies' maid, which is as much as to say that I am a
+widow!
+
+"I have had one passion, once have been happy--a rich Brazilian--who
+went away a year ago--my only lapse!--He went away to sell his estates,
+to realize his land, and come back to live in France. What will he find
+left of his Valerie? A dunghill. Well! it is his fault and not mine;
+why does he delay coming so long? Perhaps he has been wrecked--like my
+virtue."
+
+"Good-bye, my dear," said Lisbeth abruptly; "we are friends for ever. I
+love you, I esteem you, I am wholly yours! My cousin is tormenting me
+to go and live in the house you are moving to, in the Rue Vanneau; but
+I would not go, for I saw at once the reasons for this fresh piece of
+kindness----"
+
+"Yes; you would have kept an eye on me, I know!" said Madame Marneffe.
+
+"That was, no doubt, the motive of his generosity," replied Lisbeth. "In
+Paris, most beneficence is a speculation, as most acts of ingratitude
+are revenge! To a poor relation you behave as you do to rats to whom
+you offer a bit of bacon. Now, I will accept the Baron's offer, for this
+house has grown intolerable to me. You and I have wit enough to hold our
+tongues about everything that would damage us, and tell all that needs
+telling. So, no blabbing--and we are friends."
+
+"Through thick and thin!" cried Madame Marneffe, delighted to have a
+sheep-dog, a confidante, a sort of respectable aunt. "Listen to me; the
+Baron is doing a great deal in the Rue Vanneau----"
+
+"I believe you!" interrupted Lisbeth. "He has spent thirty thousand
+francs! Where he got the money, I am sure I don't know, for Josepha
+the singer bled him dry.--Oh! you are in luck," she went on. "The Baron
+would steal for a woman who held his heart in two little white satin
+hands like yours!"
+
+"Well, then," said Madame Marneffe, with the liberality of such
+creatures, which is mere recklessness, "look here, my dear child;
+take away from here everything that may serve your turn in your new
+quarters--that chest of drawers, that wardrobe and mirror, the carpet,
+the curtains----"
+
+Lisbeth's eyes dilated with excessive joy; she was incredulous of such a
+gift.
+
+"You are doing more for me in a breath than my rich relations have done
+in thirty years!" she exclaimed. "They have never even asked themselves
+whether I had any furniture at all. On his first visit, a few weeks ago,
+the Baron made a rich man's face on seeing how poor I was.--Thank you,
+my dear; and I will give you your money's worth, you will see how by and
+by."
+
+Valerie went out on the landing with _her_ Cousin Betty, and the two
+women embraced.
+
+"Pouh! How she stinks of hard work!" said the pretty little woman to
+herself when she was alone. "I shall not embrace you often, my dear
+cousin! At the same time, I must look sharp. She must be skilfully
+managed, for she can be of use, and help me to make my fortune."
+
+
+
+Like the true Creole of Paris, Madame Marneffe abhorred trouble; she had
+the calm indifference of a cat, which never jumps or runs but when
+urged by necessity. To her, life must be all pleasure; and the pleasure
+without difficulties. She loved flowers, provided they were brought to
+her. She could not imagine going to the play but to a good box, at her
+own command, and in a carriage to take her there. Valerie inherited
+these courtesan tastes from her mother, on whom General Montcornet had
+lavished luxury when he was in Paris, and who for twenty years had
+seen all the world at her feet; who had been wasteful and prodigal,
+squandering her all in the luxurious living of which the programme has
+been lost since the fall of Napoleon.
+
+The grandees of the Empire were a match in their follies for the great
+nobles of the last century. Under the Restoration the nobility cannot
+forget that it has been beaten and robbed, and so, with two or three
+exceptions, it has become thrifty, prudent, and stay-at-home, in short,
+bourgeois and penurious. Since then, 1830 has crowned the work of 1793.
+In France, henceforth, there will be great names, but no great houses,
+unless there should be political changes which we can hardly foresee.
+Everything takes the stamp of individuality. The wisest invest in
+annuities. Family pride is destroyed.
+
+The bitter pressure of poverty which had stung Valerie to the quick on
+the day when, to use Marneffe's expression, she had "caught on" with
+Hulot, had brought the young woman to the conclusion that she would make
+a fortune by means of her good looks. So, for some days, she had been
+feeling the need of having a friend about her to take the place of a
+mother--a devoted friend, to whom such things may be told as must be
+hidden from a waiting-maid, and who could act, come and go, and think
+for her, a beast of burden resigned to an unequal share of life. Now,
+she, quite as keenly as Lisbeth, had understood the Baron's motives for
+fostering the intimacy between his cousin and herself.
+
+Prompted by the formidable perspicacity of the Parisian half-breed,
+who spends her days stretched on a sofa, turning the lantern of her
+detective spirit on the obscurest depths of souls, sentiments, and
+intrigues, she had decided on making an ally of the spy. This supremely
+rash step was, perhaps premeditated; she had discerned the true nature
+of this ardent creature, burning with wasted passion, and meant to
+attach her to herself. Thus, their conversation was like the stone
+a traveler casts into an abyss to demonstrate its depth. And Madame
+Marneffe had been terrified to find this old maid a combination of Iago
+and Richard III., so feeble as she seemed, so humble, and so little to
+be feared.
+
+For that instant, Lisbeth Fischer had been her real self; that Corsican
+and savage temperament, bursting the slender bonds that held it under,
+had sprung up to its terrible height, as the branch of a tree flies
+up from the hand of a child that has bent it down to gather the green
+fruit.
+
+To those who study the social world, it must always be a matter of
+astonishment to see the fulness, the perfection, and the rapidity with
+which an idea develops in a virgin nature.
+
+Virginity, like every other monstrosity, has its special richness, its
+absorbing greatness. Life, whose forces are always economized,
+assumes in the virgin creature an incalculable power of resistance and
+endurance. The brain is reinforced in the sum-total of its reserved
+energy. When really chaste natures need to call on the resources of
+body or soul, and are required to act or to think, they have muscles
+of steel, or intuitive knowledge in their intelligence--diabolical
+strength, or the black magic of the Will.
+
+From this point of view the Virgin Mary, even if we regard her only as
+a symbol, is supremely great above every other type, whether Hindoo,
+Egyptian, or Greek. Virginity, the mother of great things, _magna parens
+rerum_, holds in her fair white hands the keys of the upper worlds. In
+short, that grand and terrible exception deserves all the honors decreed
+to her by the Catholic Church.
+
+Thus, in one moment, Lisbeth Fischer had become the Mohican whose
+snares none can escape, whose dissimulation is inscrutable, whose swift
+decisiveness is the outcome of the incredible perfection of every organ
+of sense. She was Hatred and Revenge, as implacable as they are
+in Italy, Spain, and the East. These two feelings, the obverse of
+friendship and love carried to the utmost, are known only in lands
+scorched by the sun. But Lisbeth was also a daughter of Lorraine, bent
+on deceit.
+
+She accepted this detail of her part against her will; she began by
+making a curious attempt, due to her ignorance. She fancied, as children
+do, that being imprisoned meant the same thing as solitary confinement.
+But this is the superlative degree of imprisonment, and that superlative
+is the privilege of the Criminal Bench.
+
+As soon as she left Madame Marneffe, Lisbeth hurried off to Monsieur
+Rivet, and found him in his office.
+
+"Well, my dear Monsieur Rivet," she began, when she had bolted the
+door of the room. "You were quite right. Those Poles! They are low
+villains--all alike, men who know neither law nor fidelity."
+
+"And who want to set Europe on fire," said the peaceable Rivet, "to
+ruin every trade and every trader for the sake of a country that is all
+bog-land, they say, and full of horrible Jews, to say nothing of the
+Cossacks and the peasants--a sort of wild beasts classed by mistake with
+human beings. Your Poles do not understand the times we live in; we are
+no longer barbarians. War is coming to an end, my dear mademoiselle; it
+went out with the Monarchy. This is the age of triumph for commerce, and
+industry, and middle-class prudence, such as were the making of Holland.
+
+"Yes," he went on with animation, "we live in a period when nations must
+obtain all they need by the legal extension of their liberties and by
+the pacific action of Constitutional Institutions; that is what the
+Poles do not see, and I hope----
+
+"You were saying, my dear?--" he added, interrupting himself when he
+saw from his work-woman's face that high politics were beyond her
+comprehension.
+
+"Here is the schedule," said Lisbeth. "If I don't want to lose my
+three thousand two hundred and ten francs, I must clap this rogue into
+prison."
+
+"Didn't I tell you so?" cried the oracle of the Saint-Denis quarter.
+
+The Rivets, successor to Pons Brothers, had kept their shop still in the
+Rue des Mauvaises-Paroles, in the ancient Hotel Langeais, built by that
+illustrious family at the time when the nobility still gathered round
+the Louvre.
+
+"Yes, and I blessed you on my way here," replied Lisbeth.
+
+"If he suspects nothing, he can be safe in prison by eight o'clock in
+the morning," said Rivet, consulting the almanac to ascertain the hour
+of sunrise; "but not till the day after to-morrow, for he cannot be
+imprisoned till he has had notice that he is to be arrested by writ,
+with the option of payment or imprisonment. And so----"
+
+"What an idiotic law!" exclaimed Lisbeth. "Of course the debtor
+escapes."
+
+"He has every right to do so," said the Assessor, smiling. "So this is
+the way----"
+
+"As to that," said Lisbeth, interrupting him, "I will take the paper and
+hand it to him, saying that I have been obliged to raise the money, and
+that the lender insists on this formality. I know my gentleman. He will
+not even look at the paper; he will light his pipe with it."
+
+"Not a bad idea, not bad, Mademoiselle Fischer! Well, make your mind
+easy; the job shall be done.--But stop a minute; to put your man in
+prison is not the only point to be considered; you only want to indulge
+in that legal luxury in order to get your money. Who is to pay you?"
+
+"Those who give him money."
+
+"To be sure; I forgot that the Minister of War had commissioned him
+to erect a monument to one of our late customers. Ah! the house has
+supplied many an uniform to General Montcornet; he soon blackened them
+with the smoke of cannon. A brave man, he was! and he paid on the nail."
+
+A marshal of France may have saved the Emperor or his country; "He
+paid on the nail" will always be the highest praise he can have from a
+tradesman.
+
+"Very well. And on Saturday, Monsieur Rivet, you shall have the flat
+tassels.--By the way, I am moving from the Rue du Doyenne; I am going to
+live in the Rue Vanneau."
+
+"You are very right. I could not bear to see you in that hole which,
+in spite of my aversion to the Opposition, I must say is a disgrace; I
+repeat it, yes! is a disgrace to the Louvre and the Place du Carrousel.
+I am devoted to Louis-Philippe, he is my idol; he is the august and
+exact representative of the class on whom he founded his dynasty, and
+I can never forget what he did for the trimming-makers by restoring the
+National Guard----"
+
+"When I hear you speak so, Monsieur Rivet, I cannot help wondering why
+you are not made a deputy."
+
+"They are afraid of my attachment to the dynasty," replied Rivet. "My
+political enemies are the King's. He has a noble character! They are
+a fine family; in short," said he, returning to the charge, "he is our
+ideal: morality, economy, everything. But the completion of the Louvre
+is one of the conditions on which we gave him the crown, and the civil
+list, which, I admit, had no limits set to it, leaves the heart of Paris
+in a most melancholy state.--It is because I am so strongly in favor
+of the middle course that I should like to see the middle of Paris in
+a better condition. Your part of the town is positively terrifying.
+You would have been murdered there one fine day.--And so your Monsieur
+Crevel has been made Major of his division! He will come to us, I hope,
+for his big epaulette."
+
+"I am dining with him to-night, and will send him to you."
+
+Lisbeth believed that she had secured her Livonian to herself by cutting
+him off from all communication with the outer world. If he could no
+longer work, the artist would be forgotten as completely as a man buried
+in a cellar, where she alone would go to see him. Thus she had two
+happy days, for she hoped to deal a mortal blow at the Baroness and her
+daughter.
+
+To go to Crevel's house, in the Rue des Saussayes, she crossed the Pont
+du Carrousel, went along the Quai Voltaire, the Quai d'Orsay, the Rue
+Bellechasse, Rue de l'Universite, the Pont de la Concorde, and the
+Avenue de Marigny. This illogical route was traced by the logic of
+passion, always the foe of the legs.
+
+Cousin Betty, as long as she followed the line of the quays, kept watch
+on the opposite shore of the Seine, walking very slowly. She had guessed
+rightly. She had left Wenceslas dressing; she at once understood that,
+as soon as he should be rid of her, the lover would go off to the
+Baroness' by the shortest road. And, in fact, as she wandered along by
+the parapet of the Quai Voltaire, in fancy suppressing the river and
+walking along the opposite bank, she recognized the artist as he came
+out of the Tuileries to cross the Pont Royal. She there came up with
+the faithless one, and could follow him unseen, for lovers rarely look
+behind them. She escorted him as far as Madame Hulot's house, where he
+went in like an accustomed visitor.
+
+This crowning proof, confirming Madame Marneffe's revelations, put
+Lisbeth quite beside herself.
+
+She arrived at the newly promoted Major's door in the state of mental
+irritation which prompts men to commit murder, and found Monsieur Crevel
+_senior_ in his drawing-room awaiting his children, Monsieur and Madame
+Hulot _junior_.
+
+But Celestin Crevel was so unconscious and so perfect a type of the
+Parisian parvenu, that we can scarcely venture so unceremoniously into
+the presence of Cesar Birotteau's successor. Celestin Crevel was a world
+in himself; and he, even more than Rivet, deserves the honors of the
+palette by reason of his importance in this domestic drama.
+
+
+
+Have you ever observed how in childhood, or at the early stages of
+social life, we create a model for our own imitation, with our own
+hands as it were, and often without knowing it? The banker's clerk, for
+instance, as he enters his master's drawing-room, dreams of possessing
+such another. If he makes a fortune, it will not be the luxury of
+the day, twenty years later, that you will find in his house, but the
+old-fashioned splendor that fascinated him of yore. It is impossible to
+tell how many absurdities are due to this retrospective jealousy; and
+in the same way we know nothing of the follies due to the covert rivalry
+that urges men to copy the type they have set themselves, and exhaust
+their powers in shining with a reflected light, like the moon.
+
+Crevel was deputy mayor because his predecessor had been; he was Major
+because he coveted Cesar Birotteau's epaulettes. In the same way,
+struck by the marvels wrought by Grindot the architect, at the time
+when Fortune had carried his master to the top of the wheel, Crevel had
+"never looked at both sides of a crown-piece," to use his own language,
+when he wanted to "do up" his rooms; he had gone with his purse open and
+his eyes shut to Grindot, who by this time was quite forgotten. It
+is impossible to guess how long an extinct reputation may survive,
+supported by such stale admiration.
+
+So Grindot, for the thousandth time had displayed his white-and-gold
+drawing-room paneled with crimson damask. The furniture, of rosewood,
+clumsily carved, as such work is done for the trade, had in the country
+been the source of just pride in Paris workmanship on the occasion of
+an industrial exhibition. The candelabra, the fire-dogs, the fender,
+the chandelier, the clock, were all in the most unmeaning style of
+scroll-work; the round table, a fixture in the middle of the room, was
+a mosaic of fragments of Italian and antique marbles, brought from Rome,
+where these dissected maps are made of mineralogical specimens--for all
+the world like tailors' patterns--an object of perennial admiration
+to Crevel's citizen friends. The portraits of the late lamented Madame
+Crevel, of Crevel himself, of his daughter and his son-in-law, hung
+on the walls, two and two; they were the work of Pierre Grassou, the
+favored painter of the bourgeoisie, to whom Crevel owed his ridiculous
+Byronic attitude. The frames, costing a thousand francs each, were quite
+in harmony with this coffee-house magnificence, which would have made
+any true artist shrug his shoulders.
+
+Money never yet missed the smallest opportunity of being stupid. We
+should have in Paris ten Venices if our retired merchants had had the
+instinct for fine things characteristic of the Italians. Even in our own
+day a Milanese merchant could leave five hundred thousand francs to
+the Duomo, to regild the colossal statue of the Virgin that crowns the
+edifice. Canova, in his will, desired his brother to build a church
+costing four million francs, and that brother adds something on his own
+account. Would a citizen of Paris--and they all, like Rivet, love their
+Paris in their heart--ever dream of building the spires that are lacking
+to the towers of Notre-Dame? And only think of the sums that revert to
+the State in property for which no heirs are found.
+
+All the improvements of Paris might have been completed with the money
+spent on stucco castings, gilt mouldings, and sham sculpture during the
+last fifteen years by individuals of the Crevel stamp.
+
+Beyond this drawing-room was a splendid boudoir furnished with tables
+and cabinets in imitation of Boulle.
+
+The bedroom, smart with chintz, also opened out of the drawing-room.
+Mahogany in all its glory infested the dining-room, and Swiss views,
+gorgeously framed, graced the panels. Crevel, who hoped to travel in
+Switzerland, had set his heart on possessing the scenery in painting
+till the time should come when he might see it in reality.
+
+So, as will have been seen, Crevel, the Mayor's deputy, of the Legion
+of Honor and of the National Guard, had faithfully reproduced all the
+magnificence, even as to furniture, of his luckless predecessor. Under
+the Restoration, where one had sunk, this other, quite overlooked, had
+come to the top--not by any strange stroke of fortune, but by the force
+of circumstance. In revolutions, as in storms at sea, solid treasure
+goes to the bottom, and light trifles are floated to the surface. Cesar
+Birotteau, a Royalist, in favor and envied, had been made the mark of
+bourgeois hostility, while bourgeoisie triumphant found its incarnation
+in Crevel.
+
+This apartment, at a rent of a thousand crowns, crammed with all the
+vulgar magnificence that money can buy, occupied the first floor of
+a fine old house between a courtyard and a garden. Everything was as
+spick-and-span as the beetles in an entomological case, for Crevel lived
+very little at home.
+
+This gorgeous residence was the ambitious citizen's legal domicile. His
+establishment consisted of a woman-cook and a valet; he hired two extra
+men, and had a dinner sent in by Chevet, whenever he gave a banquet to
+his political friends, to men he wanted to dazzle or to a family party.
+
+The seat of Crevel's real domesticity, formerly in the Rue Notre-Dame
+de Lorette, with Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout, had lately been
+transferred, as we have seen, to the Rue Chauchat. Every morning the
+retired merchant--every ex-tradesman is a retired merchant--spent two
+hours in the Rue des Saussayes to attend to business, and gave the
+rest of his time to Mademoiselle Zaire, which annoyed Zaire very much.
+Orosmanes-Crevel had a fixed bargain with Mademoiselle Heloise; she owed
+him five hundred francs worth of enjoyment every month, and no "bills
+delivered." He paid separately for his dinner and all extras. This
+agreement, with certain bonuses, for he made her a good many presents,
+seemed cheap to the ex-attache of the great singer; and he would say to
+widowers who were fond of their daughters, that it paid better to job
+your horses than to have a stable of your own. At the same time, if the
+reader remembers the speech made to the Baron by the porter at the Rue
+Chauchat, Crevel did not escape the coachman and the groom.
+
+Crevel, as may be seen, had turned his passionate affection for his
+daughter to the advantage of his self-indulgence. The immoral aspect
+of the situation was justified by the highest morality. And then the
+ex-perfumer derived from this style of living--it was the inevitable,
+a free-and-easy life, _Regence, Pompadour, Marechal de Richelieu_, what
+not--a certain veneer of superiority. Crevel set up for being a man of
+broad views, a fine gentleman with an air and grace, a liberal man with
+nothing narrow in his ideas--and all for the small sum of about
+twelve to fifteen hundred francs a month. This was the result not of
+hypocritical policy, but of middle-class vanity, though it came to the
+same in the end.
+
+On the Bourse Crevel was regarded as a man superior to his time, and
+especially as a man of pleasure, a _bon vivant_. In this particular
+Crevel flattered himself that he had overtopped his worthy friend
+Birotteau by a hundred cubits.
+
+"And is it you?" cried Crevel, flying into a rage as he saw Lisbeth
+enter the room, "who have plotted this marriage between Mademoiselle
+Hulot and your young Count, whom you have been bringing up by hand for
+her?"
+
+"You don't seem best pleased at it?" said Lisbeth, fixing a piercing
+eye on Crevel. "What interest can you have in hindering my cousin's
+marriage? For it was you, I am told, who hindered her marrying Monsieur
+Lebas' son."
+
+"You are a good soul and to be trusted," said Crevel. "Well, then, do
+you suppose that I will ever forgive Monsieur Hulot for the crime of
+having robbed me of Josepha--especially when he turned a decent girl,
+whom I should have married in my old age, into a good-for-nothing slut,
+a mountebank, an opera singer!--No, no. Never!"
+
+"He is a very good fellow, too, is Monsieur Hulot," said Cousin Betty.
+
+"Amiable, very amiable--too amiable," replied Crevel. "I wish him no
+harm; but I do wish to have my revenge, and I will have it. It is my one
+idea."
+
+"And is that desire the reason why you no longer visit Madame Hulot?"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"Ah, ha! then you were courting my fair cousin?" said Lisbeth, with a
+smile. "I thought as much."
+
+"And she treated me like a dog!--worse, like a footman; nay, I might say
+like a political prisoner.--But I will succeed yet," said he, striking
+his brow with his clenched fist.
+
+"Poor man! It would be dreadful to catch his wife deceiving him after
+being packed off by his mistress."
+
+"Josepha?" cried Crevel. "Has Josepha thrown him over, packed him off,
+turned him out neck and crop? Bravo, Josepha, you have avenged me!
+I will send you a pair of pearls to hang in your ears, my
+ex-sweetheart!--I knew nothing of it; for after I had seen you, on the
+day after that when the fair Adeline had shown me the door, I went back
+to visit the Lebas, at Corbeil, and have but just come back. Heloise
+played the very devil to get me into the country, and I have found out
+the purpose of her game; she wanted me out of the way while she gave a
+house-warming in the Rue Chauchat, with some artists, and players, and
+writers.--She took me in! But I can forgive her, for Heloise amuses me.
+She is a Dejazet under a bushel. What a character the hussy is! There is
+the note I found last evening:
+
+  "'DEAR OLD CHAP,--I have pitched my tent in the Rue Chauchat. I
+  have taken the precaution of getting a few friends to clean up the
+  paint. All is well. Come when you please, monsieur; Hagar awaits
+  her Abraham.'
+
+"Heloise will have some news for me, for she has her bohemia at her
+fingers' end."
+
+"But Monsieur Hulot took the disaster very calmly," said Lisbeth.
+
+"Impossible!" cried Crevel, stopping in a parade as regular as the swing
+of a pendulum.
+
+"Monsieur Hulot is not as young as he was," Lisbeth remarked
+significantly.
+
+"I know that," said Crevel, "but in one point we are alike: Hulot cannot
+do without an attachment. He is capable of going back to his wife.
+It would be a novelty for him, but an end to my vengeance. You smile,
+Mademoiselle Fischer--ah! perhaps you know something?"
+
+"I am smiling at your notions," replied Lisbeth. "Yes, my cousin is
+still handsome enough to inspire a passion. I should certainly fall in
+love with her if I were a man."
+
+"Cut and come again!" exclaimed Crevel. "You are laughing at me.--The
+Baron has already found consolation?"
+
+Lisbeth bowed affirmatively.
+
+"He is a lucky man if he can find a second Josepha within twenty-four
+hours!" said Crevel. "But I am not altogether surprised, for he told me
+one evening at supper that when he was a young man he always had three
+mistresses on hand that he might not be left high and dry--the one he
+was giving over, the one in possession, and the one he was courting for
+a future emergency. He had some smart little work-woman in reserve, no
+doubt--in his fish-pond--his _Parc-aux-cerfs_! He is very Louis XV., is
+my gentleman. He is in luck to be so handsome!--However, he is ageing;
+his face shows it.--He has taken up with some little milliner?"
+
+"Dear me, no," replied Lisbeth.
+
+"Oh!" cried Crevel, "what would I not do to hinder him from hanging up
+his hat! I could not win back Josepha; women of that kind never come
+back to their first love.--Besides, it is truly said, such a return
+is not love.--But, Cousin Betty, I would pay down fifty thousand
+francs--that is to say, I would spend it--to rob that great good-looking
+fellow of his mistress, and to show him that a Major with a portly
+stomach and a brain made to become Mayor of Paris, though he is a
+grandfather, is not to have his mistress tickled away by a poacher
+without turning the tables."
+
+"My position," said Lisbeth, "compels me to hear everything and know
+nothing. You may talk to me without fear; I never repeat a word of what
+any one may choose to tell me. How can you suppose I should ever break
+that rule of conduct? No one would ever trust me again."
+
+"I know," said Crevel; "you are the very jewel of old maids. Still,
+come, there are exceptions. Look here, the family have never settled an
+allowance on you?"
+
+"But I have my pride," said Lisbeth. "I do not choose to be an expense
+to anybody."
+
+"If you will but help me to my revenge," the tradesman went on, "I will
+sink ten thousand francs in an annuity for you. Tell me, my fair cousin,
+tell me who has stepped into Josepha's shoes, and you will have money to
+pay your rent, your little breakfast in the morning, the good coffee you
+love so well--you might allow yourself pure Mocha, heh! And a very good
+thing is pure Mocha!"
+
+"I do not care so much for the ten thousand francs in an annuity,
+which would bring me nearly five hundred francs a year, as for absolute
+secrecy," said Lisbeth. "For, you see, my dear Monsieur Crevel, the
+Baron is very good to me; he is to pay my rent----"
+
+"Oh yes, long may that last! I advise you to trust him," cried Crevel.
+"Where will he find the money?"
+
+"Ah, that I don't know. At the same time, he is spending more than
+thirty thousand francs on the rooms he is furnishing for this little
+lady."
+
+"A lady! What, a woman in society; the rascal, what luck he has! He is
+the only favorite!"
+
+"A married woman, and quite the lady," Lisbeth affirmed.
+
+"Really and truly?" cried Crevel, opening wide eyes flashing with envy,
+quite as much as at the magic words _quite the lady_.
+
+"Yes, really," said Lisbeth. "Clever, a musician, three-and-twenty, a
+pretty, innocent face, a dazzling white skin, teeth like a puppy's, eyes
+like stars, a beautiful forehead--and tiny feet, I never saw the like,
+they are not wider than her stay-busk."
+
+"And ears?" asked Crevel, keenly alive to this catalogue of charms.
+
+"Ears for a model," she replied.
+
+"And small hands?"
+
+"I tell you, in few words, a gem of a woman--and high-minded, and
+modest, and refined! A beautiful soul, an angel--and with every
+distinction, for her father was a Marshal of France----"
+
+"A Marshal of France!" shrieked Crevel, positively bounding with
+excitement. "Good Heavens! by the Holy Piper! By all the joys in
+Paradise!--The rascal!--I beg your pardon, Cousin, I am going crazy!--I
+think I would give a hundred thousand francs----"
+
+"I dare say you would, and, I tell you, she is a respectable woman--a
+woman of virtue. The Baron has forked out handsomely."
+
+"He has not a sou, I tell you."
+
+"There is a husband he has pushed----"
+
+"Where did he push him?" asked Crevel, with a bitter laugh.
+
+"He is promoted to be second in his office--this husband who will
+oblige, no doubt;--and his name is down for the Cross of the Legion of
+Honor."
+
+"The Government ought to be judicious and respect those who have the
+Cross by not flinging it broadcast," said Crevel, with the look of an
+aggrieved politician. "But what is there about the man--that old bulldog
+of a Baron?" he went on. "It seems to me that I am quite a match for
+him," and he struck an attitude as he looked at himself in the glass.
+"Heloise has told me many a time, at moments when a woman speaks the
+truth, that I was wonderful."
+
+"Oh," said Lisbeth, "women like big men; they are almost always
+good-natured; and if I had to decide between you and the Baron, I should
+choose you. Monsieur Hulot is amusing, handsome, and has a figure; but
+you, you are substantial, and then--you see--you look an even greater
+scamp than he does."
+
+"It is incredible how all women, even pious women, take to men who have
+that about them!" exclaimed Crevel, putting his arm round Lisbeth's
+waist, he was so jubilant.
+
+"The difficulty does not lie there," said Betty. "You must see that a
+woman who is getting so many advantages will not be unfaithful to
+her patron for nothing; and it would cost you more than a hundred odd
+thousand francs, for our little friend can look forward to seeing her
+husband at the head of his office within two years' time.--It is poverty
+that is dragging the poor little angel into that pit."
+
+Crevel was striding up and down the drawing-room in a state of frenzy.
+
+"He must be uncommonly fond of the woman?" he inquired after a pause,
+while his desires, thus goaded by Lisbeth, rose to a sort of madness.
+
+"You may judge for yourself," replied Lisbeth. "I don't believe he has
+had _that_ of her," said she, snapping her thumbnail against one of her
+enormous white teeth, "and he has given her ten thousand francs' worth
+of presents already."
+
+"What a good joke it would be!" cried Crevel, "if I got to the winning
+post first!"
+
+"Good heavens! It is too bad of me to be telling you all this
+tittle-tattle," said Lisbeth, with an air of compunction.
+
+"No.--I mean to put your relations to the blush. To-morrow I shall
+invest in your name such a sum in five-per-cents as will give you
+six hundred francs a year; but then you must tell me everything--his
+Dulcinea's name and residence. To you I will make a clean breast of
+it.--I never have had a real lady for a mistress, and it is the height
+of my ambition. Mahomet's houris are nothing in comparison with what I
+fancy a woman of fashion must be. In short, it is my dream, my mania,
+and to such a point, that I declare to you the Baroness Hulot to me will
+never be fifty," said he, unconsciously plagiarizing one of the greatest
+wits of the last century. "I assure you, my good Lisbeth, I am prepared
+to sacrifice a hundred, two hundred--Hush! Here are the young people,
+I see them crossing the courtyard. I shall never have learned anything
+through you, I give you my word of honor; for I do not want you to lose
+the Baron's confidence, quite the contrary. He must be amazingly fond of
+this woman--that old boy."
+
+"He is crazy about her," said Lisbeth. "He could not find forty thousand
+francs to marry his daughter off, but he has got them somehow for his
+new passion."
+
+"And do you think that she loves him?"
+
+"At his age!" said the old maid.
+
+"Oh, what an owl I am!" cried Crevel, "when I myself allowed Heloise to
+keep her artist exactly as Henri IX. allowed Gabrielle her Bellegrade.
+Alas! old age, old age!--Good-morning, Celestine. How do, my jewel!--And
+the brat? Ah! here he comes; on my honor, he is beginning to be like
+me!--Good-day, Hulot--quite well? We shall soon be having another
+wedding in the family."
+
+Celestine and her husband, as a hint to their father, glanced at the old
+maid, who audaciously asked, in reply to Crevel:
+
+"Indeed--whose?"
+
+Crevel put on an air of reserve which was meant to convey that he would
+make up for her indiscretions.
+
+"That of Hortense," he replied; "but it is not yet quite settled. I have
+just come from the Lebas', and they were talking of Mademoiselle Popinot
+as a suitable match for their son, the young councillor, for he would
+like to get the presidency of a provincial court.--Now, come to dinner."
+
+
+
+By seven o'clock Lisbeth had returned home in an omnibus, for she was
+eager to see Wenceslas, whose dupe she had been for three weeks, and to
+whom she was carrying a basket filled with fruit by the hands of Crevel
+himself, whose attentions were doubled towards _his_ Cousin Betty.
+
+She flew up to the attic at a pace that took her breath away, and found
+the artist finishing the ornamentation of a box to be presented to the
+adored Hortense. The framework of the lid represented hydrangeas--in
+French called _Hortensias_--among which little Loves were playing. The
+poor lover, to enable him to pay for the materials of the box, of which
+the panels were of malachite, had designed two candlesticks for Florent
+and Chanor, and sold them the copyright--two admirable pieces of work.
+
+"You have been working too hard these last few days, my dear fellow,"
+said Lisbeth, wiping the perspiration from his brow, and giving him
+a kiss. "Such laborious diligence is really dangerous in the month
+of August. Seriously, you may injure your health. Look, here are some
+peaches and plums from Monsieur Crevel.--Now, do not worry yourself so
+much; I have borrowed two thousand francs, and, short of some disaster,
+we can repay them when you sell your clock. At the same time, the lender
+seems to me suspicious, for he has just sent in this document."
+
+She laid the writ under the model sketch of the statue of General
+Montcornet.
+
+"For whom are you making this pretty thing?" said she, taking up the
+model sprays of hydrangea in red wax which Wenceslas had laid down while
+eating the fruit.
+
+"For a jeweler."
+
+"For what jeweler?"
+
+"I do not know. Stidmann asked me to make something out of them, as he
+is very busy."
+
+"But these," she said in a deep voice, "are _Hortensias_. How is it that
+you have never made anything in wax for me? Is it so difficult to design
+a pin, a little box--what not, as a keepsake?" and she shot a fearful
+glance at the artist, whose eyes were happily lowered. "And yet you say
+you love me?"
+
+"Can you doubt it, mademoiselle?"
+
+"That is indeed an ardent _mademoiselle_!--Why, you have been my only
+thought since I found you dying--just there. When I saved you, you vowed
+you were mine, I mean to hold you to that pledge; but I made a vow to
+myself! I said to myself, 'Since the boy says he is mine, I mean to make
+him rich and happy!' Well, and I can make your fortune."
+
+"How?" said the hapless artist, at the height of joy, and too artless to
+dream of a snare.
+
+"Why, thus," said she.
+
+Lisbeth could not deprive herself of the savage pleasure of gazing at
+Wenceslas, who looked up at her with filial affection, the expression
+really of his love for Hortense, which deluded the old maid. Seeing in
+a man's eyes, for the first time in her life, the blazing torch of
+passion, she fancied it was for her that it was lighted.
+
+"Monsieur Crevel will back us to the extent of a hundred thousand francs
+to start in business, if, as he says, you will marry me. He has queer
+ideas, has the worthy man.--Well, what do you say to it?" she added.
+
+The artist, as pale as the dead, looked at his benefactress with a
+lustreless eye, which plainly spoke his thoughts. He stood stupefied and
+open-mouthed.
+
+"I never before was so distinctly told that I am hideous," said she,
+with a bitter laugh.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Steinbock, "my benefactress can never be ugly in
+my eyes; I have the greatest affection for you. But I am not yet thirty,
+and----"
+
+"I am forty-three," said Lisbeth. "My cousin Adeline is forty-eight, and
+men are still madly in love with her; but then she is handsome--she is!"
+
+"Fifteen years between us, mademoiselle! How could we get on together!
+For both our sakes I think we should be wise to think it over. My
+gratitude shall be fully equal to your great kindness.--And your money
+shall be repaid in a few days."
+
+"My money!" cried she. "You treat me as if I were nothing but an
+unfeeling usurer."
+
+"Forgive me," said Wenceslas, "but you remind me of it so often.--Well,
+it is you who have made me; do not crush me."
+
+"You mean to be rid of me, I can see," said she, shaking her head. "Who
+has endowed you with this strength of ingratitude--you who are a man of
+papier-mache? Have you ceased to trust me--your good genius?--me, when
+I have spent so many nights working for you--when I have given you every
+franc I have saved in my lifetime--when for four years I have shared my
+bread with you, the bread of a hard-worked woman, and given you all I
+had, to my very courage."
+
+"Mademoiselle--no more, no more!" he cried, kneeling before her with
+uplifted hands. "Say not another word! In three days I will tell you,
+you shall know all.--Let me, let me be happy," and he kissed her hands.
+"I love--and I am loved."
+
+"Well, well, my child, be happy," she said, lifting him up. And she
+kissed his forehead and hair with the eagerness that a man condemned to
+death must feel as he lives through the last morning.
+
+"Ah! you are of all creatures the noblest and best! You are a match for
+the woman I love," said the poor artist.
+
+"I love you well enough to tremble for your future fate," said she
+gloomily. "Judas hanged himself--the ungrateful always come to a bad
+end! You are deserting me, and you will never again do any good work.
+Consider whether, without being married--for I know I am an old maid,
+and I do not want to smother the blossom of your youth, your poetry, as
+you call it, in my arms, that are like vine-stocks--but whether,
+without being married, we could not get on together? Listen; I have
+the commercial spirit; I could save you a fortune in the course of ten
+years' work, for Economy is my name!--while, with a young wife, who
+would be sheer Expenditure, you would squander everything; you would
+work only to indulge her. But happiness creates nothing but memories.
+Even I, when I am thinking of you, sit for hours with my hands in my
+lap----
+
+"Come, Wenceslas, stay with me.--Look here, I understand all about
+it; you shall have your mistresses; pretty ones too, like that little
+Marneffe woman who wants to see you, and who will give you happiness you
+could never find with me. Then, when I have saved you thirty thousand
+francs a year in the funds----"
+
+"Mademoiselle, you are an angel, and I shall never forget this hour,"
+said Wenceslas, wiping away his tears.
+
+"That is how I like to see you, my child," said she, gazing at him with
+rapture.
+
+Vanity is so strong a power in us all that Lisbeth believed in her
+triumph. She had conceded so much when offering him Madame Marneffe. It
+was the crowning emotion of her life; for the first time she felt the
+full tide of joy rising in her heart. To go through such an experience
+again she would have sold her soul to the Devil.
+
+"I am engaged to be married," Steinbock replied, "and I love a woman
+with whom no other can compete or compare.--But you are, and always will
+be, to me the mother I have lost."
+
+The words fell like an avalanche of snow on a burning crater. Lisbeth
+sat down. She gazed with despondent eyes on the youth before her, on his
+aristocratic beauty--the artist's brow, the splendid hair, everything
+that appealed to her suppressed feminine instincts, and tiny tears
+moistened her eyes for an instant and immediately dried up. She looked
+like one of those meagre statues which the sculptors of the Middle Ages
+carved on monuments.
+
+"I cannot curse you," said she, suddenly rising. "You--you are but a
+boy. God preserve you!"
+
+She went downstairs and shut herself into her own room.
+
+"She is in love with me, poor creature!" said Wenceslas to himself. "And
+how fervently eloquent! She is crazy."
+
+This last effort on the part of an arid and narrow nature to keep hold
+on an embodiment of beauty and poetry was, in truth, so violent that it
+can only be compared to the frenzied vehemence of a shipwrecked creature
+making the last struggle to reach shore.
+
+On the next day but one, at half-past four in the morning, when Count
+Steinbock was sunk in the deepest sleep, he heard a knock at the door of
+his attic; he rose to open it, and saw two men in shabby clothing, and a
+third, whose dress proclaimed him a bailiff down on his luck.
+
+"You are Monsieur Wenceslas, Count Steinbock?" said this man.
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"My name is Grasset, sir, successor to Louchard, sheriff's officer----"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"You are under arrest, sir. You must come with us to prison--to
+Clichy.--Please to get dressed.--We have done the civil, as you see; I
+have brought no police, and there is a hackney cab below."
+
+"You are safely nabbed, you see," said one of the bailiffs; "and we look
+to you to be liberal."
+
+Steinbock dressed and went downstairs, a man holding each arm; when he
+was in the cab, the driver started without orders, as knowing where he
+was to go, and within half an hour the unhappy foreigner found himself
+safely under bolt and bar without even a remonstrance, so utterly amazed
+was he.
+
+At ten o'clock he was sent for to the prison-office, where he found
+Lisbeth, who, in tears, gave him some money to feed himself adequately
+and to pay for a room large enough to work in.
+
+"My dear boy," said she, "never say a word of your arrest to anybody,
+do not write to a living soul; it would ruin you for life; we must hide
+this blot on your character. I will soon have you out. I will collect
+the money--be quite easy. Write down what you want for your work. You
+shall soon be free, or I will die for it."
+
+"Oh, I shall owe you my life a second time!" cried he, "for I should
+lose more than my life if I were thought a bad fellow."
+
+Lisbeth went off in great glee; she hoped, by keeping her artist under
+lock and key, to put a stop to his marriage by announcing that he was
+a married man, pardoned by the efforts of his wife, and gone off to
+Russia.
+
+To carry out this plan, at about three o'clock she went to the Baroness,
+though it was not the day when she was due to dine with her; but she
+wished to enjoy the anguish which Hortense must endure at the hour when
+Wenceslas was in the habit of making his appearance.
+
+"Have you come to dinner?" asked the Baroness, concealing her
+disappointment.
+
+"Well, yes."
+
+"That's well," replied Hortense. "I will go and tell them to be
+punctual, for you do not like to be kept waiting."
+
+Hortense nodded reassuringly to her mother, for she intended to tell the
+man-servant to send away Monsieur Steinbock if he should call; the man,
+however, happened to be out, so Hortense was obliged to give her orders
+to the maid, and the girl went upstairs to fetch her needlework and sit
+in the ante-room.
+
+"And about my lover?" said Cousin Betty to Hortense, when the girl came
+back. "You never ask about him now?"
+
+"To be sure, what is he doing?" said Hortense. "He has become famous.
+You ought to be very happy," she added in an undertone to Lisbeth.
+"Everybody is talking of Monsieur Wenceslas Steinbock."
+
+"A great deal too much," replied she in her clear tones. "Monsieur is
+departing.--If it were only a matter of charming him so far as to defy
+the attractions of Paris, I know my power; but they say that in order to
+secure the services of such an artist, the Emperor Nichols has pardoned
+him----"
+
+"Nonsense!" said the Baroness.
+
+"When did you hear that?" asked Hortense, who felt as if her heart had
+the cramp.
+
+"Well," said the villainous Lisbeth, "a person to whom he is bound by
+the most sacred ties--his wife--wrote yesterday to tell him so. He
+wants to be off. Oh, he will be a great fool to give up France to go to
+Russia!--"
+
+Hortense looked at her mother, but her head sank on one side; the
+Baroness was only just in time to support her daughter, who dropped
+fainting, and as white as her lace kerchief.
+
+"Lisbeth! you have killed my child!" cried the Baroness. "You were born
+to be our curse!"
+
+"Bless me! what fault of mine is this, Adeline?" replied Lisbeth, as she
+rose with a menacing aspect, of which the Baroness, in her alarm, took
+no notice.
+
+"I was wrong," said Adeline, supporting the girl. "Ring."
+
+At this instant the door opened, the women both looked round, and saw
+Wenceslas Steinbock, who had been admitted by the cook in the maid's
+absence.
+
+"Hortense!" cried the artist, with one spring to the group of women. And
+he kissed his betrothed before her mother's eyes, on the forehead, and
+so reverently, that the Baroness could not be angry. It was a better
+restorative than any smelling salts. Hortense opened her eyes, saw
+Wenceslas, and her color came back. In a few minutes she had quite
+recovered.
+
+"So this was your secret?" said Lisbeth, smiling at Wenceslas, and
+affecting to guess the facts from her two cousins' confusion.
+
+"But how did you steal away my lover?" said she, leading Hortense into
+the garden.
+
+Hortense artlessly told the romance of her love. Her father and mother,
+she said, being convinced that Lisbeth would never marry, had authorized
+the Count's visits. Only Hortense, like a full-blown Agnes, attributed
+to chance her purchase of the group and the introduction of the artist,
+who, by her account, had insisted on knowing the name of his first
+purchaser.
+
+Presently Steinbock came out to join the cousins, and thanked the old
+maid effusively for his prompt release. Lisbeth replied Jesuitically
+that the creditor having given very vague promises, she had not hoped
+to be able to get him out before the morrow, and that the person who
+had lent her the money, ashamed, perhaps, of such mean conduct, had been
+beforehand with her. The old maid appeared to be perfectly content, and
+congratulated Wenceslas on his happiness.
+
+"You bad boy!" said she, before Hortense and her mother, "if you had
+only told me the evening before last that you loved my cousin Hortense,
+and that she loved you, you would have spared me many tears. I thought
+that you were deserting your old friend, your governess; while, on the
+contrary, you are to become my cousin; henceforth, you will be connected
+with me, remotely, it is true, but by ties that amply justify the
+feelings I have for you." And she kissed Wenceslas on the forehead.
+
+Hortense threw herself into Lisbeth's arms and melted into tears.
+
+"I owe my happiness to you," said she, "and I will never forget it."
+
+"Cousin Betty," said the Baroness, embracing Lisbeth in her excitement
+at seeing matters so happily settled, "the Baron and I owe you a debt of
+gratitude, and we will pay it. Come and talk things over with me," she
+added, leading her away.
+
+So Lisbeth, to all appearances, was playing the part of a good angel
+to the whole family; she was adored by Crevel and Hulot, by Adeline and
+Hortense.
+
+"We wish you to give up working," said the Baroness. "If you earn forty
+sous a day, Sundays excepted, that makes six hundred francs a year.
+Well, then, how much have you saved?"
+
+"Four thousand five hundred francs."
+
+"Poor Betty!" said her cousin.
+
+She raised her eyes to heaven, so deeply was she moved at the thought of
+all the labor and privation such a sum must represent accumulated during
+thirty years.
+
+Lisbeth, misunderstanding the meaning of the exclamation, took it as the
+ironical pity of the successful woman, and her hatred was strengthened
+by a large infusion of venom at the very moment when her cousin had cast
+off her last shred of distrust of the tyrant of her childhood.
+
+"We will add ten thousand five hundred francs to that sum," said
+Adeline, "and put it in trust so that you shall draw the interest for
+life with reversion to Hortense. Thus, you will have six hundred francs
+a year."
+
+Lisbeth feigned the utmost satisfaction. When she went in, her
+handkerchief to her eyes, wiping away tears of joy, Hortense told her of
+all the favors being showered on Wenceslas, beloved of the family.
+
+So when the Baron came home, he found his family all present; for the
+Baroness had formally accepted Wenceslas by the title of Son, and the
+wedding was fixed, if her husband should approve, for a day a fortnight
+hence. The moment he came into the drawing-room, Hulot was rushed at
+by his wife and daughter, who ran to meet him, Adeline to speak to him
+privately, and Hortense to kiss him.
+
+"You have gone too far in pledging me to this, madame," said the Baron
+sternly. "You are not married yet," he added with a look at Steinbock,
+who turned pale.
+
+"He has heard of my imprisonment," said the luckless artist to himself.
+
+"Come, children," said he, leading his daughter and the young man
+into the garden; they all sat down on the moss-eaten seat in the
+summer-house.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte, do you love my daughter as well as I loved her
+mother?" he asked.
+
+"More, monsieur," said the sculptor.
+
+"Her mother was a peasant's daughter, and had not a farthing of her
+own."
+
+"Only give me Mademoiselle Hortense just as she is, without a trousseau
+even----"
+
+"So I should think!" said the Baron, smiling. "Hortense is the daughter
+of the Baron Hulot d'Ervy, Councillor of State, high up in the War
+Office, Grand Commander of the Legion of Honor, and the brother to Count
+Hulot, whose glory is immortal, and who will ere long be Marshal of
+France! And--she has a marriage portion.
+
+"It is true," said the impassioned artist. "I must seem very ambitious.
+But if my dear Hortense were a laborer's daughter, I would marry
+her----"
+
+"That is just what I wanted to know," replied the Baron. "Run away,
+Hortense, and leave me to talk business with Monsieur le Comte.--He
+really loves you, you see!"
+
+"Oh, papa, I was sure you were only in jest," said the happy girl.
+
+"My dear Steinbock," said the Baron, with elaborate grace of diction and
+the most perfect manners, as soon as he and the artist were alone, "I
+promised my son a fortune of two hundred thousand francs, of which
+the poor boy has never had a sou; and he never will get any of it. My
+daughter's fortune will also be two hundred thousand francs, for which
+you will give a receipt----"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Baron."
+
+"You go too fast," said Hulot. "Have the goodness to hear me out. I
+cannot expect from a son-in-law such devotion as I look for from my son.
+My son knew exactly all I could and would do for his future promotion:
+he will be a Minister, and will easily make good his two hundred
+thousand francs. But with you, young man, matters are different. I shall
+give you a bond for sixty thousand francs in State funds at five per
+cent, in your wife's name. This income will be diminished by a small
+charge in the form of an annuity to Lisbeth; but she will not live long;
+she is consumptive, I know. Tell no one; it is a secret; let the poor
+soul die in peace.--My daughter will have a trousseau worth twenty
+thousand francs; her mother will give her six thousand francs worth of
+diamonds.
+
+"Monsieur, you overpower me!" said Steinbock, quite bewildered.
+
+"As to the remaining hundred and twenty thousand francs----"
+
+"Say no more, monsieur," said Wenceslas. "I ask only for my beloved
+Hortense----"
+
+"Will you listen to me, effervescent youth!--As to the remaining hundred
+and twenty thousand francs, I have not got them; but you will have
+them--"
+
+"Monsieur?"
+
+"You will get them from the Government, in payment for commissions which
+I will secure for you, I pledge you my word of honor. You are to have
+a studio, you see, at the Government depot. Exhibit a few fine statues,
+and I will get you received at the Institute. The highest personages
+have a regard for my brother and for me, and I hope to succeed in
+securing for you a commission for sculpture at Versailles up to a
+quarter of the whole sum. You will have orders from the City of Paris
+and from the Chamber of Peers; in short, my dear fellow, you will have
+so many that you will be obliged to get assistants. In that way I
+shall pay off my debt to you. You must say whether this way of giving a
+portion will suit you; whether you are equal to it."
+
+"I am equal to making a fortune for my wife single-handed if all else
+failed!" cried the artist-nobleman.
+
+"That is what I admire!" cried the Baron. "High-minded youth that fears
+nothing. Come," he added, clasping hands with the young sculptor to
+conclude the bargain, "you have my consent. We will sign the contract
+on Sunday next, and the wedding shall be on the following Saturday, my
+wife's fete-day."
+
+"It is all right," said the Baroness to her daughter, who stood glued to
+the window. "Your suitor and your father are embracing each other."
+
+On going home in the evening, Wenceslas found the solution of the
+mystery of his release. The porter handed him a thick sealed packet,
+containing the schedule of his debts, with a signed receipt affixed at
+the bottom of the writ, and accompanied by this letter:--
+
+  "MY DEAR WENCESLAS,--I went to fetch you at ten o'clock this
+  morning to introduce you to a Royal Highness who wishes to see
+  you. There I learned that the duns had had you conveyed to a
+  certain little domain--chief town, _Clichy Castle_.
+
+  "So off I went to Leon de Lora, and told him, for a joke, that you
+  could not leave your country quarters for lack of four thousand
+  francs, and that you would spoil your future prospects if you did
+  not make your bow to your royal patron. Happily, Bridau was there
+  --a man of genius, who has known what it is to be poor, and has
+  heard your story. My boy, between them they have found the money,
+  and I went off to pay the Turk who committed treason against
+  genius by putting you in quod. As I had to be at the Tuileries at
+  noon, I could not wait to see you sniffing the outer air. I know
+  you to be a gentleman, and I answered for you to my two friends
+  --but look them up to-morrow.
+
+  "Leon and Bridau do not want your cash; they will ask you to do
+  them each a group--and they are right. At least, so thinks the man
+  who wishes he could sign himself your rival, but is only your
+  faithful ally,
+
+  "STIDMANN.
+
+  "P. S.--I told the Prince you were away, and would not return till
+  to-morrow, so he said, 'Very good--to-morrow.'"
+
+
+Count Wenceslas went to bed in sheets of purple, without a rose-leaf to
+wrinkle them, that Favor can make for us--Favor, the halting divinity
+who moves more slowly for men of genius than either Justice or Fortune,
+because Jove has not chosen to bandage her eyes. Hence, lightly deceived
+by the display of impostors, and attracted by their frippery and
+trumpets, she spends the time in seeing them and the money in paying
+them which she ought to devote to seeking out men of merit in the nooks
+where they hide.
+
+It will now be necessary to explain how Monsieur le Baron Hulot had
+contrived to count up his expenditure on Hortense's wedding portion,
+and at the same time to defray the frightful cost of the charming rooms
+where Madame Marneffe was to make her home. His financial scheme bore
+that stamp of talent which leads prodigals and men in love into the
+quagmires where so many disasters await them. Nothing can demonstrate
+more completely the strange capacity communicated by vice, to which
+we owe the strokes of skill which ambitious or voluptuous men can
+occasionally achieve--or, in short, any of the Devil's pupils.
+
+On the day before, old Johann Fischer, unable to pay thirty thousand
+francs drawn for on him by his nephew, had found himself under the
+necessity of stopping payment unless the Baron could remit the sum.
+
+This ancient worthy, with the white hairs of seventy years, had such
+blind confidence in Hulot--who, to the old Bonapartist, was an emanation
+from the Napoleonic sun--that he was calmly pacing his anteroom with
+the bank clerk, in the little ground-floor apartment that he rented
+for eight hundred francs a year as the headquarters of his extensive
+dealings in corn and forage.
+
+"Marguerite is gone to fetch the money from close by," said he.
+
+The official, in his gray uniform braided with silver, was so convinced
+of the old Alsatian's honesty, that he was prepared to leave the thirty
+thousand francs' worth of bills in his hands; but the old man would not
+let him go, observing that the clock had not yet struck eight. A cab
+drew up, the old man rushed into the street, and held out his hand
+to the Baron with sublime confidence--Hulot handed him out thirty
+thousand-franc notes.
+
+"Go on three doors further, and I will tell you why," said Fischer.
+
+"Here, young man," he said, returning to count out the money to the bank
+emissary, whom he then saw to the door.
+
+When the clerk was out of sight, Fischer called back the cab containing
+his august nephew, Napoleon's right hand, and said, as he led him into
+the house:
+
+"You do not want them to know at the Bank of France that you paid me the
+thirty thousand francs, after endorsing the bills?--It was bad enough to
+see them signed by such a man as you!--"
+
+"Come to the bottom of your little garden, Father Fischer," said the
+important man. "You are hearty?" he went on, sitting down under a vine
+arbor and scanning the old man from head to foot, as a dealer in human
+flesh scans a substitute for the conscription.
+
+"Ay, hearty enough for a tontine," said the lean little old man; his
+sinews were wiry, and his eye bright.
+
+"Does heat disagree with you?"
+
+"Quite the contrary."
+
+"What do you say to Africa?"
+
+"A very nice country!--The French went there with the little Corporal"
+(Napoleon).
+
+"To get us all out of the present scrape, you must go to Algiers," said
+the Baron.
+
+"And how about my business?"
+
+"An official in the War Office, who has to retire, and has not enough to
+live on with his pension, will buy your business."
+
+"And what am I to do in Algiers?"
+
+"Supply the Commissariat with victuals, corn, and forage; I have your
+commission ready filled in and signed. You can collect supplies in the
+country at seventy per cent below the prices at which you can credit
+us."
+
+"How shall we get them?"
+
+"Oh, by raids, by taxes in kind, and the Khaliphat.--The country is
+little known, though we settled there eight years ago; Algeria produces
+vast quantities of corn and forage. When this produce belongs to Arabs,
+we take it from them under various pretences; when it belongs to us, the
+Arabs try to get it back again. There is a great deal of fighting over
+the corn, and no one ever knows exactly how much each party has stolen
+from the other. There is not time in the open field to measure the
+corn as we do in the Paris market, or the hay as it is sold in the Rue
+d'Enfer. The Arab chiefs, like our Spahis, prefer hard cash, and sell
+the plunder at a very low price. The Commissariat needs a fixed quantity
+and must have it. It winks at exorbitant prices calculated on the
+difficulty of procuring food, and the dangers to which every form of
+transport is exposed. That is Algiers from the army contractor's point
+of view.
+
+"It is a muddle tempered by the ink-bottle, like every incipient
+government. We shall not see our way through it for another ten
+years--we who have to do the governing; but private enterprise has sharp
+eyes.--So I am sending you there to make a fortune; I give you the job,
+as Napoleon put an impoverished Marshal at the head of a kingdom where
+smuggling might be secretly encouraged.
+
+"I am ruined, my dear Fischer; I must have a hundred thousand francs
+within a year."
+
+"I see no harm in getting it out of the Bedouins," said the Alsatian
+calmly. "It was always done under the Empire----"
+
+"The man who wants to buy your business will be here this morning, and
+pay you ten thousand francs down," the Baron went on. "That will be
+enough, I suppose, to take you to Africa?"
+
+The old man nodded assent.
+
+"As to capital out there, be quite easy. I will draw the remainder of
+the money due if I find it necessary."
+
+"All I have is yours--my very blood," said old Fischer.
+
+"Oh, do not be uneasy," said Hulot, fancying that his uncle saw more
+clearly than was the fact. "As to our excise dealings, your character
+will not be impugned. Everything depends on the authority at your back;
+now I myself appointed the authorities out there; I am sure of them.
+This, Uncle Fischer, is a dead secret between us. I know you well, and I
+have spoken out without concealment or circumlocution."
+
+"It shall be done," said the old man. "And it will go on----?"
+
+"For two years, You will have made a hundred thousand francs of your own
+to live happy on in the Vosges."
+
+"I will do as you wish; my honor is yours," said the little old man
+quietly.
+
+"That is the sort of man I like.--However, you must not go till you have
+seen your grand-niece happily married. She is to be a Countess."
+
+But even taxes and raids and the money paid by the War Office clerk for
+Fischer's business could not forthwith provide sixty thousand francs to
+give Hortense, to say nothing of her trousseau, which was to cost about
+five thousand, and the forty thousand spent--or to be spent--on Madame
+Marneffe.
+
+Where, then had the Baron found the thirty thousand francs he had just
+produced? This was the history.
+
+A few days previously Hulot had insured his life for the sum of a
+hundred and fifty thousand francs, for three years, in two separate
+companies. Armed with the policies, of which he paid the premium, he had
+spoken as follows to the Baron de Nucingen, a peer of the Chamber, in
+whose carriage he found himself after a sitting, driving home, in fact,
+to dine with him:--
+
+"Baron, I want seventy thousand francs, and I apply to you. You must
+find some one to lend his name, to whom I will make over the right to
+draw my pay for three years; it amounts to twenty-five thousand francs a
+year--that is, seventy-five thousand francs.--You will say, 'But you
+may die'"--the banker signified his assent--"Here, then, is a policy of
+insurance for a hundred and fifty thousand francs, which I will deposit
+with you till you have drawn up the eighty thousand francs," said Hulot,
+producing the document form his pocket.
+
+"But if you should lose your place?" said the millionaire Baron,
+laughing.
+
+The other Baron--not a millionaire--looked grave.
+
+"Be quite easy; I only raised the question to show you that I was not
+devoid of merit in handing you the sum. Are you so short of cash? for
+the Bank will take your signature."
+
+"My daughter is to be married," said Baron Hulot, "and I have no
+fortune--like every one else who remains in office in these thankless
+times, when five hundred ordinary men seated on benches will never
+reward the men who devote themselves to the service as handsomely as the
+Emperor did."
+
+"Well, well; but you had Josepha on your hands!" replied Nucingen, "and
+that accounts for everything. Between ourselves, the Duc d'Herouville
+has done you a very good turn by removing that leech from sucking your
+purse dry. 'I have known what that is, and can pity your case,'" he
+quoted. "Take a friend's advice: Shut up shop, or you will be done for."
+
+This dirty business was carried out in the name of one Vauvinet, a small
+money-lender; one of those jobbers who stand forward to screen great
+banking houses, like the little fish that is said to attend the shark.
+This stock-jobber's apprentice was so anxious to gain the patronage of
+Monsieur le Baron Hulot, that he promised the great man to negotiate
+bills of exchange for thirty thousand francs at eighty days, and pledged
+himself to renew them four times, and never pass them out of his hands.
+
+Fischer's successor was to pay forty thousand francs for the house
+and the business, with the promise that he should supply forage to a
+department close to Paris.
+
+This was the desperate maze of affairs into which a man who had
+hitherto been absolutely honest was led by his passions--one of the
+best administrative officials under Napoleon--peculation to pay the
+money-lenders, and borrowing of the money-lenders to gratify his
+passions and provide for his daughter. All the efforts of this elaborate
+prodigality were directed at making a display before Madame Marneffe,
+and to playing Jupiter to this middle-class Danae. A man could not
+expend more activity, intelligence, and presence of mind in the honest
+acquisition of a fortune than the Baron displayed in shoving his head
+into a wasp's nest: He did all the business of his department, he
+hurried on the upholsterers, he talked to the workmen, he kept a sharp
+lookout on the smallest details of the house in the Rue Vanneau. Wholly
+devoted to Madame Marneffe, he nevertheless attended the sittings of the
+Chambers; he was everywhere at once, and neither his family nor anybody
+else discovered where his thoughts were.
+
+Adeline, quite amazed to hear that her uncle was rescued, and to see a
+handsome sum figure in the marriage-contract, was not altogether easy,
+in spite of her joy at seeing her daughter married under such creditable
+circumstances. But, on the day before the wedding, fixed by the Baron
+to coincide with Madame Marneffe's removal to her new apartment, Hector
+allayed his wife's astonishment by this ministerial communication:--
+
+"Now, Adeline, our girl is married; all our anxieties on the subject are
+at an end. The time is come for us to retire from the world: I shall not
+remain in office more than three years longer--only the time necessary
+to secure my pension. Why, henceforth, should we be at any unnecessary
+expense? Our apartment costs us six thousand francs a year in rent, we
+have four servants, we eat thirty thousand francs' worth of food in a
+year. If you want me to pay off my bills--for I have pledged my salary
+for the sums I needed to give Hortense her little money, and pay off
+your uncle----"
+
+"You did very right!" said she, interrupting her husband, and kissing
+his hands.
+
+This explanation relieved Adeline of all her fears.
+
+"I shall have to ask some little sacrifices of you," he went on,
+disengaging his hands and kissing his wife's brow. "I have found in the
+Rue Plumet a very good flat on the first floor, handsome, splendidly
+paneled, at only fifteen hundred francs a year, where you would only
+need one woman to wait on you, and I could be quite content with a boy."
+
+"Yes, my dear."
+
+"If we keep house in a quiet way, keeping up a proper appearance of
+course, we should not spend more than six thousand francs a year,
+excepting my private account, which I will provide for."
+
+The generous-hearted woman threw her arms round her husband's neck in
+her joy.
+
+"How happy I shall be, beginning again to show you how truly I love
+you!" she exclaimed. "And what a capital manager you are!"
+
+"We will have the children to dine with us once a week. I, as you know,
+rarely dine at home. You can very well dine twice a week with Victorin
+and twice a week with Hortense. And, as I believe, I may succeed in
+making matters up completely between Crevel and us; we can dine once a
+week with him. These five dinners and our own at home will fill up the
+week all but one day, supposing that we may occasionally be invited to
+dine elsewhere."
+
+"I shall save a great deal for you," said Adeline.
+
+"Oh!" he cried, "you are the pearl of women!"
+
+"My kind, divine Hector, I shall bless you with my latest breath," said
+she, "for you have done well for my dear Hortense."
+
+This was the beginning of the end of the beautiful Madame Hulot's home;
+and, it may be added, of her being totally neglected, as Hulot had
+solemnly promised Madame Marneffe.
+
+Crevel, the important and burly, being invited as a matter of course
+to the party given for the signing of the marriage-contract, behaved as
+though the scene with which this drama opened had never taken place, as
+though he had no grievance against the Baron. Celestin Crevel was quite
+amiable; he was perhaps rather too much the ex-perfumer, but as a Major
+he was beginning to acquire majestic dignity. He talked of dancing at
+the wedding.
+
+"Fair lady," said he politely to the Baroness, "people like us know how
+to forget. Do not banish me from your home; honor me, pray, by gracing
+my house with your presence now and then to meet your children. Be quite
+easy; I will never say anything of what lies buried at the bottom of my
+heart. I behaved, indeed, like an idiot, for I should lose too much by
+cutting myself off from seeing you."
+
+"Monsieur, an honest woman has no ears for such speeches as those you
+refer to. If you keep your word, you need not doubt that it will give me
+pleasure to see the end of a coolness which must always be painful in a
+family."
+
+"Well, you sulky old fellow," said Hulot, dragging Crevel out into the
+garden, "you avoid me everywhere, even in my own house. Are two admirers
+of the fair sex to quarrel for ever over a petticoat? Come; this is
+really too plebeian!"
+
+"I, monsieur, am not such a fine man as you are, and my small
+attractions hinder me from repairing my losses so easily as you can----"
+
+"Sarcastic!" said the Baron.
+
+"Irony is allowable from the vanquished to the conquerer."
+
+The conversation, begun in this strain, ended in a complete
+reconciliation; still Crevel maintained his right to take his revenge.
+
+
+
+Madame Marneffe particularly wished to be invited to Mademoiselle
+Hulot's wedding. To enable him to receive his future mistress in his
+drawing-room, the great official was obliged to invite all the clerks of
+his division down to the deputy head-clerks inclusive. Thus a grand ball
+was a necessity. The Baroness, as a prudent housewife, calculated that
+an evening party would cost less than a dinner, and allow of a larger
+number of invitations; so Hortense's wedding was much talked about.
+
+Marshal Prince Wissembourg and the Baron de Nucingen signed in behalf of
+the bride, the Comtes de Rastignac and Popinot in behalf of Steinbock.
+Then, as the highest nobility among the Polish emigrants had been
+civil to Count Steinbock since he had become famous, the artist thought
+himself bound to invite them. The State Council, and the War Office to
+which the Baron belonged, and the army, anxious to do honor to the Comte
+de Forzheim, were all represented by their magnates. There were nearly
+two hundred indispensable invitations. How natural, then, that little
+Madame Marneffe was bent on figuring in all her glory amid such an
+assembly. The Baroness had, a month since, sold her diamonds to set up
+her daughter's house, while keeping the finest for the trousseau. The
+sale realized fifteen thousand francs, of which five thousand were
+sunk in Hortense's clothes. And what was ten thousand francs for the
+furniture of the young folks' apartment, considering the demands of
+modern luxury? However, young Monsieur and Madame Hulot, old Crevel, and
+the Comte de Forzheim made very handsome presents, for the old
+soldier had set aside a sum for the purchase of plate. Thanks to these
+contributions, even an exacting Parisian would have been pleased with
+the rooms the young couple had taken in the Rue Saint-Dominique, near
+the Invalides. Everything seemed in harmony with their love, pure,
+honest, and sincere.
+
+At last the great day dawned--for it was to be a great day not only for
+Wenceslas and Hortense, but for old Hulot too. Madame Marneffe was to
+give a house-warming in her new apartment the day after becoming Hulot's
+mistress _en titre_, and after the marriage of the lovers.
+
+Who but has once in his life been a guest at a wedding-ball? Every
+reader can refer to his reminiscences, and will probably smile as he
+calls up the images of all that company in their Sunday-best faces as
+well as their finest frippery.
+
+If any social event can prove the influence of environment, is it not
+this? In fact, the Sunday-best mood of some reacts so effectually on
+the rest that the men who are most accustomed to wearing full dress look
+just like those to whom the party is a high festival, unique in their
+life. And think too of the serious old men to whom such things are
+so completely a matter of indifference, that they are wearing their
+everyday black coats; the long-married men, whose faces betray their sad
+experience of the life the young pair are but just entering on; and the
+lighter elements, present as carbonic-acid gas is in champagne; and
+the envious girls, the women absorbed in wondering if their dress is a
+success, the poor relations whose parsimonious "get-up" contrasts with
+that of the officials in uniform; and the greedy ones, thinking only of
+the supper; and the gamblers, thinking only of cards.
+
+There are some of every sort, rich and poor, envious and envied,
+philosophers and dreamers, all grouped like the plants in a flower-bed
+round the rare, choice blossom, the bride. A wedding-ball is an epitome
+of the world.
+
+At the liveliest moment of the evening Crevel led the Baron aside, and
+said in a whisper, with the most natural manner possible:
+
+"By Jove! that's a pretty woman--the little lady in pink who has opened
+a racking fire on you from her eyes."
+
+"Which?"
+
+"The wife of that clerk you are promoting, heaven knows how!--Madame
+Marneffe."
+
+"What do you know about it?"
+
+"Listen, Hulot; I will try to forgive you the ill you have done me if
+only you will introduce me to her--I will take you to Heloise. Everybody
+is asking who is that charming creature. Are you sure that it will
+strike no one how and why her husband's appointment got itself
+signed?--You happy rascal, she is worth a whole office.--I would serve
+in her office only too gladly.--Come, cinna, let us be friends."
+
+"Better friends than ever," said the Baron to the perfumer, "and I
+promise you I will be a good fellow. Within a month you shall dine with
+that little angel.--For it is an angel this time, old boy. And I advise
+you, like me, to have done with the devils."
+
+Cousin Betty, who had moved to the Rue Vanneau, into a nice little
+apartment on the third floor, left the ball at ten o'clock, but came
+back to see with her own eyes the two bonds bearing twelve hundred
+francs interest; one of them was the property of the Countess Steinbock,
+the other was in the name of Madame Hulot.
+
+It is thus intelligible that Monsieur Crevel should have spoken to Hulot
+about Madame Marneffe, as knowing what was a secret to the rest of the
+world; for, as Monsieur Marneffe was away, no one but Lisbeth Fischer,
+besides the Baron and Valerie, was initiated into the mystery.
+
+The Baron had made a blunder in giving Madame Marneffe a dress far too
+magnificent for the wife of a subordinate official; other women were
+jealous alike of her beauty and of her gown. There was much whispering
+behind fans, for the poverty of the Marneffes was known to every one in
+the office; the husband had been petitioning for help at the very moment
+when the Baron had been so smitten with madame. Also, Hector could not
+conceal his exultation at seeing Valerie's success; and she, severely
+proper, very lady-like, and greatly envied, was the object of that
+strict examination which women so greatly fear when they appear for the
+first time in a new circle of society.
+
+After seeing his wife into a carriage with his daughter and his
+son-in-law, Hulot managed to escape unperceived, leaving his son and
+Celestine to do the honors of the house. He got into Madame Marneffe's
+carriage to see her home, but he found her silent and pensive, almost
+melancholy.
+
+"My happiness makes you very sad, Valerie," said he, putting his arm
+round her and drawing her to him.
+
+"Can you wonder, my dear," said she, "that a hapless woman should be a
+little depressed at the thought of her first fall from virtue, even when
+her husband's atrocities have set her free? Do you suppose that I have
+no soul, no beliefs, no religion? Your glee this evening has been really
+too barefaced; you have paraded me odiously. Really, a schoolboy would
+have been less of a coxcomb. And the ladies have dissected me with their
+side-glances and their satirical remarks. Every woman has some care for
+her reputation, and you have wrecked mine.
+
+"Oh, I am yours and no mistake! And I have not an excuse left but that
+of being faithful to you.--Monster that you are!" she added, laughing,
+and allowing him to kiss her, "you knew very well what you were doing!
+Madame Coquet, our chief clerk's wife, came to sit down by me, and
+admired my lace. 'English point!' said she. 'Was it very expensive,
+madame?'--'I do not know. This lace was my mother's. I am not rich
+enough to buy the like,' said I."
+
+Madame Marneffe, in short, had so bewitched the old beau, that he really
+believed she was sinning for the first time for his sake, and that he
+had inspired such a passion as had led her to this breach of duty. She
+told him that the wretch Marneffe had neglected her after they had been
+three days married, and for the most odious reasons. Since then she had
+lived as innocently as a girl; marriage had seemed to her so horrible.
+This was the cause of her present melancholy.
+
+"If love should prove to be like marriage----" said she in tears.
+
+These insinuating lies, with which almost every woman in Valerie's
+predicament is ready, gave the Baron distant visions of the roses of
+the seventh heaven. And so Valerie coquetted with her lover, while
+the artist and Hortense were impatiently awaiting the moment when the
+Baroness should have given the girl her last kiss and blessing.
+
+At seven in the morning the Baron, perfectly happy--for his Valerie
+was at once the most guileless of girls and the most consummate of
+demons--went back to release his son and Celestine from their duties.
+All the dancers, for the most part strangers, had taken possession of
+the territory, as they do at every wedding-ball, and were keeping up
+the endless figures of the cotillions, while the gamblers were still
+crowding round the _bouillotte_ tables, and old Crevel had won six
+thousand francs.
+
+The morning papers, carried round the town, contained this paragraph in
+the Paris article:--
+
+  "The marriage was celebrated this morning, at the Church of
+  Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, between Monsieur le Comte Steinbock and
+  Mademoiselle Hortense Hulot, daughter of Baron Hulot d'Ervy,
+  Councillor of State, and a Director at the War Office; niece of
+  the famous General Comte de Forzheim. The ceremony attracted a
+  large gathering. There were present some of the most distinguished
+  artists of the day: Leon de Lora, Joseph Bridau, Stidmann, and
+  Bixiou; the magnates of the War Office, of the Council of State,
+  and many members of the two Chambers; also the most distinguished
+  of the Polish exiles living in Paris: Counts Paz, Laginski, and
+  others.
+
+  "Monsieur le Comte Wenceslas Steinbock is grandnephew to the
+  famous general who served under Charles XII., King of Sweden. The
+  young Count, having taken part in the Polish rebellion, found a
+  refuge in France, where his well-earned fame as a sculptor has
+  procured him a patent of naturalization."
+
+And so, in spite of the Baron's cruel lack of money, nothing was lacking
+that public opinion could require, not even the trumpeting of the
+newspapers over his daughter's marriage, which was solemnized in the
+same way, in every particular, as his son's had been to Mademoiselle
+Crevel. This display moderated the reports current as to the Baron's
+financial position, while the fortune assigned to his daughter explained
+the need for having borrowed money.
+
+Here ends what is, in a way, the introduction to this story. It is to
+the drama that follows that the premise is to a syllogism, what the
+prologue is to a classical tragedy.
+
+
+
+In Paris, when a woman determines to make a business, a trade, of
+her beauty, it does not follow that she will make a fortune. Lovely
+creatures may be found there, and full of wit, who are in wretched
+circumstances, ending in misery a life begun in pleasure. And this is
+why. It is not enough merely to accept the shameful life of a courtesan
+with a view to earning its profits, and at the same time to bear the
+simple garb of a respectable middle-class wife. Vice does not triumph so
+easily; it resembles genius in so far that they both need a concurrence
+of favorable conditions to develop the coalition of fortune and gifts.
+Eliminate the strange prologue of the Revolution, and the Emperor would
+never have existed; he would have been no more than a second edition of
+Fabert. Venal beauty, if it finds no amateurs, no celebrity, no cross
+of dishonor earned by squandering men's fortunes, is Correggio in a
+hay-loft, is genius starving in a garret. Lais, in Paris, must first and
+foremost find a rich man mad enough to pay her price. She must keep up a
+very elegant style, for this is her shop-sign; she must be sufficiently
+well bred to flatter the vanity of her lovers; she must have the
+brilliant wit of a Sophie Arnould, which diverts the apathy of rich men;
+finally, she must arouse the passions of libertines by appearing to be
+mistress to one man only who is envied by the rest.
+
+These conditions, which a woman of that class calls being in luck, are
+difficult to combine in Paris, although it is a city of millionaires, of
+idlers, of used-up and capricious men.
+
+Providence has, no doubt, vouchsafed protection to clerks and
+middle-class citizens, for whom obstacles of this kind are at least
+double in the sphere in which they move. At the same time, there are
+enough Madame Marneffes in Paris to allow of our taking Valerie to
+figure as a type in this picture of manners. Some of these women yield
+to the double pressure of a genuine passion and of hard necessity,
+like Madame Colleville, who was for long attached to one of the famous
+orators of the left, Keller the banker. Others are spurred by vanity,
+like Madame de la Baudraye, who remained almost respectable in spite of
+her elopement with Lousteau. Some, again, are led astray by the love of
+fine clothes, and some by the impossibility of keeping a house going
+on obviously too narrow means. The stinginess of the State--or of
+Parliament--leads to many disasters and to much corruption.
+
+At the present moment the laboring classes are the fashionable object
+of compassion; they are being murdered--it is said--by the manufacturing
+capitalist; but the Government is a hundred times harder than the
+meanest tradesman, it carries its economy in the article of salaries to
+absolute folly. If you work harder, the merchant will pay you more in
+proportion; but what does the State do for its crowd of obscure and
+devoted toilers?
+
+In a married woman it is an inexcusable crime when she wanders from the
+path of honor; still, there are degrees even in such a case. Some
+women, far from being depraved, conceal their fall and remain to all
+appearances quite respectable, like those two just referred to, while
+others add to their fault the disgrace of speculation. Thus Madame
+Marneffe is, as it were, the type of those ambitious married courtesans
+who from the first accept depravity with all its consequences, and
+determine to make a fortune while taking their pleasure, perfectly
+unscrupulous as to the means. But almost always a woman like Madame
+Marneffe has a husband who is her confederate and accomplice. These
+Machiavellis in petticoats are the most dangerous of the sisterhood; of
+every evil class of Parisian woman, they are the worst.
+
+A mere courtesan--a Josepha, a Malaga, a Madame Schontz, a Jenny
+Cadine--carries in her frank dishonor a warning signal as conspicuous as
+the red lamp of a house of ill-fame or the flaring lights of a gambling
+hell. A man knows that they light him to his ruin.
+
+But mealy-mouthed propriety, the semblance of virtue, the hypocritical
+ways of a married woman who never allows anything to be seen but the
+vulgar needs of the household, and affects to refuse every kind of
+extravagance, leads to silent ruin, dumb disaster, which is all the more
+startling because, though condoned, it remains unaccounted for. It is
+the ignoble bill of daily expenses and not gay dissipation that devours
+the largest fortune. The father of a family ruins himself ingloriously,
+and the great consolation of gratified vanity is wanting in his misery.
+
+This little sermon will go like a javelin to the heart of many a home.
+Madame Marneffes are to be seen in every sphere of social life, even at
+Court; for Valerie is a melancholy fact, modeled from the life in the
+smallest details. And, alas! the portrait will not cure any man of the
+folly of loving these sweetly-smiling angels, with pensive looks and
+candid faces, whose heart is a cash-box.
+
+
+
+About three years after Hortense's marriage, in 1841, Baron Hulot d'Ervy
+was supposed to have sown his wild oats, to have "put up his horses,"
+to quote the expression used by Louis XV.'s head surgeon, and yet Madame
+Marneffe was costing him twice as much as Josepha had ever cost him.
+Still, Valerie, though always nicely dressed, affected the simplicity
+of a subordinate official's wife; she kept her luxury for her
+dressing-gowns, her home wear. She thus sacrificed her Parisian vanity
+to her dear Hector. At the theatre, however, she always appeared in a
+pretty bonnet and a dress of extreme elegance; and the Baron took her in
+a carriage to a private box.
+
+Her rooms, the whole of the second floor of a modern house in the
+Rue Vanneau, between a fore-court and a garden, was redolent of
+respectability. All its luxury was in good chintz hangings and handsome
+convenient furniture.
+
+Her bedroom, indeed, was the exception, and rich with such profusion
+as Jenny Cadine or Madame Schontz might have displayed. There were
+lace curtains, cashmere hangings, brocade portieres, a set of chimney
+ornaments modeled by Stidmann, a glass cabinet filled with dainty
+nicknacks. Hulot could not bear to see his Valerie in a bower of
+inferior magnificence to the dunghill of gold and pearls owned by
+a Josepha. The drawing-room was furnished with red damask, and the
+dining-room had carved oak panels. But the Baron, carried away by his
+wish to have everything in keeping, had at the end of six months,
+added solid luxury to mere fashion, and had given her handsome portable
+property, as, for instance, a service of plate that was to cost more
+than twenty-four thousand francs.
+
+Madame Marneffe's house had in a couple of years achieved a reputation
+for being a very pleasant one. Gambling went on there. Valerie herself
+was soon spoken of as an agreeable and witty woman. To account for her
+change of style, a rumor was set going of an immense legacy bequeathed
+to her by her "natural father," Marshal Montcornet, and left in trust.
+
+With an eye to the future, Valerie had added religious to social
+hypocrisy. Punctual at the Sunday services, she enjoyed all the honors
+due to the pious. She carried the bag for the offertory, she was a
+member of a charitable association, presented bread for the sacrament,
+and did some good among the poor, all at Hector's expense. Thus
+everything about the house was extremely seemly. And a great many
+persons maintained that her friendship with the Baron was entirely
+innocent, supporting the view by the gentleman's mature age, and
+ascribing to him a Platonic liking for Madame Marneffe's pleasant wit,
+charming manners, and conversation--such a liking as that of the late
+lamented Louis XVIII. for a well-turned note.
+
+The Baron always withdrew with the other company at about midnight, and
+came back a quarter of an hour later.
+
+The secret of this secrecy was as follows. The lodge-keepers of the
+house were a Monsieur and Madame Olivier, who, under the Baron's
+patronage, had been promoted from their humble and not very lucrative
+post in the Rue du Doyenne to the highly-paid and handsome one in
+the Rue Vanneau. Now, Madame Olivier, formerly a needlewoman in the
+household of Charles X., who had fallen in the world with the legitimate
+branch, had three children. The eldest, an under-clerk in a notary's
+office, was object of his parents' adoration. This Benjamin, for six
+years in danger of being drawn for the army, was on the point of being
+interrupted in his legal career, when Madame Marneffe contrived to have
+him declared exempt for one of those little malformations which the
+Examining Board can always discern when requested in a whisper by some
+power in the ministry. So Olivier, formerly a huntsman to the King, and
+his wife would have crucified the Lord again for the Baron or for Madame
+Marneffe.
+
+What could the world have to say? It knew nothing of the former episode
+of the Brazilian, Monsieur Montes de Montejanos--it could say nothing.
+Besides, the world is very indulgent to the mistress of a house where
+amusement is to be found.
+
+And then to all her charms Valerie added the highly-prized advantage
+of being an occult power. Claude Vignon, now secretary to Marshal the
+Prince de Wissembourg, and dreaming of promotion to the Council of State
+as a Master of Appeals, was constantly seen in her rooms, to which came
+also some Deputies--good fellows and gamblers. Madame Marneffe had got
+her circle together with prudent deliberation; only men whose opinions
+and habits agreed foregathered there, men whose interest it was to
+hold together and to proclaim the many merits of the lady of the house.
+Scandal is the true Holy Alliance in Paris. Take that as an axiom.
+Interests invariably fall asunder in the end; vicious natures can always
+agree.
+
+Within three months of settling in the Rue Vanneau, Madame Marneffe
+had entertained Monsieur Crevel, who by that time was Mayor of his
+_arrondissement_ and Officer of the Legion of Honor. Crevel had
+hesitated; he would have to give up the famous uniform of the National
+Guard in which he strutted at the Tuileries, believing himself quite
+as much a soldier as the Emperor himself; but ambition, urged by Madame
+Marneffe, had proved stronger than vanity. Then Monsieur le Maire had
+considered his connection with Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout as quite
+incompatible with his political position.
+
+Indeed, long before his accession to the civic chair of the Mayoralty,
+his gallant intimacies had been wrapped in the deepest mystery. But,
+as the reader may have guessed, Crevel had soon purchased the right of
+taking his revenge, as often as circumstances allowed, for having been
+bereft of Josepha, at the cost of a bond bearing six thousand francs of
+interest in the name of Valerie Fortin, wife of Sieur Marneffe, for her
+sole and separate use. Valerie, inheriting perhaps from her mother the
+special acumen of the kept woman, read the character of her grotesque
+adorer at a glance. The phrase "I never had a lady for a mistress,"
+spoken by Crevel to Lisbeth, and repeated by Lisbeth to her dear
+Valerie, had been handsomely discounted in the bargain by which she got
+her six thousand francs a year in five per cents. And since then she had
+never allowed her prestige to grow less in the eyes of Cesar Birotteau's
+erewhile bagman.
+
+Crevel himself had married for money the daughter of a miller of la
+Brie, an only child indeed, whose inheritance constituted three-quarters
+of his fortune; for when retail-dealers grow rich, it is generally not
+so much by trade as through some alliance between the shop and rural
+thrift. A large proportion of the farmers, corn-factors, dairy-keepers,
+and market-gardeners in the neighborhood of Paris, dream of the glories
+of the desk for their daughters, and look upon a shopkeeper, a jeweler,
+or a money-changer as a son-in-law after their own heart, in preference
+to a notary or an attorney, whose superior social position is a ground
+of suspicion; they are afraid of being scorned in the future by these
+citizen bigwigs.
+
+Madame Crevel, ugly, vulgar, and silly, had given her husband no
+pleasures but those of paternity; she died young. Her libertine husband,
+fettered at the beginning of his commercial career by the necessity
+for working, and held in thrall by want of money, had led the life of
+Tantalus. Thrown in--as he phrased it--with the most elegant women in
+Paris, he let them out of the shop with servile homage, while admiring
+their grace, their way of wearing the fashions, and all the nameless
+charms of what is called breeding. To rise to the level of one of these
+fairies of the drawing-room was a desire formed in his youth, but buried
+in the depths of his heart. Thus to win the favors of Madame Marneffe
+was to him not merely the realization of his chimera, but, as has been
+shown, a point of pride, of vanity, of self-satisfaction. His ambition
+grew with success; his brain was turned with elation; and when the
+mind is captivated, the heart feels more keenly, every gratification is
+doubled.
+
+Also, it must be said that Madame Marneffe offered to Crevel a
+refinement of pleasure of which he had no idea; neither Josepha nor
+Heloise had loved him; and Madame Marneffe thought it necessary
+to deceive him thoroughly, for this man, she saw, would prove an
+inexhaustible till. The deceptions of a venal passion are more
+delightful than the real thing. True love is mixed up with birdlike
+squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a
+quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, a piece of flattery to the
+dupe's conceit.
+
+The rare interviews granted to Crevel kept his passion at white heat.
+He was constantly blocked by Valerie's virtuous severity; she acted
+remorse, and wondered what her father must be thinking of her in the
+paradise of the brave. Again and again he had to contend with a sort
+of coldness, which the cunning slut made him believe he had overcome
+by seeming to surrender to the man's crazy passion; and then, as if
+ashamed, she entrenched herself once more in her pride of respectability
+and airs of virtue, just like an Englishwoman, neither more nor less;
+and she always crushed her Crevel under the weight of her dignity--for
+Crevel had, in the first instance, swallowed her pretensions to virtue.
+
+In short, Valerie had special veins of affections which made her equally
+indispensable to Crevel and to the Baron. Before the world she
+displayed the attractive combination of modest and pensive innocence,
+of irreproachable propriety, with a bright humor enhanced by the
+suppleness, the grace and softness of the Creole; but in a _tete-a-tete_
+she would outdo any courtesan; she was audacious, amusing, and full of
+original inventiveness. Such a contrast is irresistible to a man of the
+Crevel type; he is flattered by believing himself sole author of the
+comedy, thinking it is performed for his benefit alone, and he laughs at
+the exquisite hypocrisy while admiring the hypocrite.
+
+Valerie had taken entire possession of Baron Hulot; she had persuaded
+him to grow old by one of those subtle touches of flattery which reveal
+the diabolical wit of women like her. In all evergreen constitutions a
+moment arrives when the truth suddenly comes out, as in a besieged
+town which puts a good face on affairs as long as possible. Valerie,
+foreseeing the approaching collapse of the old beau of the Empire,
+determined to forestall it.
+
+"Why give yourself so much bother, my dear old veteran?" said she one
+day, six months after their doubly adulterous union. "Do you want to be
+flirting? To be unfaithful to me? I assure you, I should like you better
+without your make-up. Oblige me by giving up all your artificial charms.
+Do you suppose that it is for two sous' worth of polish on your boots
+that I love you? For your india-rubber belt, your strait-waistcoat,
+and your false hair? And then, the older you look, the less need I fear
+seeing my Hulot carried off by a rival."
+
+And Hulot, trusting to Madame Marneffe's heavenly friendship as much as
+to her love, intending, too, to end his days with her, had taken this
+confidential hint, and ceased to dye his whiskers and hair. After
+this touching declaration from his Valerie, handsome Hector made his
+appearance one morning perfectly white. Madame Marneffe could assure him
+that she had a hundred times detected the white line of the growth of
+the hair.
+
+"And white hair suits your face to perfection," said she; "it softens
+it. You look a thousand times better, quite charming."
+
+The Baron, once started on this path of reform, gave up his leather
+waistcoat and stays; he threw off all his bracing. His stomach fell
+and increased in size. The oak became a tower, and the heaviness of his
+movements was all the more alarming because the Baron grew immensely
+older by playing the part of Louis XII. His eyebrows were still black,
+and left a ghostly reminiscence of Handsome Hulot, as sometimes on the
+wall of some feudal building a faint trace of sculpture remains to show
+what the castle was in the days of its glory. This discordant detail
+made his eyes, still bright and youthful, all the more remarkable in his
+tanned face, because it had so long been ruddy with the florid hues of
+a Rubens; and now a certain discoloration and the deep tension of the
+wrinkles betrayed the efforts of a passion at odds with natural decay.
+Hulot was now one of those stalwart ruins in which virile force asserts
+itself by tufts of hair in the ears and nostrils and on the fingers, as
+moss grows on the almost eternal monuments of the Roman Empire.
+
+How had Valerie contrived to keep Crevel and Hulot side by side, each
+tied to an apron-string, when the vindictive Mayor only longed to
+triumph openly over Hulot? Without immediately giving an answer to this
+question, which the course of the story will supply, it may be said that
+Lisbeth and Valerie had contrived a powerful piece of machinery which
+tended to this result. Marneffe, as he saw his wife improved in beauty
+by the setting in which she was enthroned, like the sun at the centre of
+the sidereal system, appeared, in the eyes of the world, to have fallen
+in love with her again himself; he was quite crazy about her. Now,
+though his jealousy made him somewhat of a marplot, it gave enhanced
+value to Valerie's favors. Marneffe meanwhile showed a blind confidence
+in his chief, which degenerated into ridiculous complaisance. The only
+person whom he really would not stand was Crevel.
+
+Marneffe, wrecked by the debauchery of great cities, described by Roman
+authors, though modern decency has no name for it, was as hideous as
+an anatomical figure in wax. But this disease on feet, clothed in good
+broadcloth, encased his lathlike legs in elegant trousers. The hollow
+chest was scented with fine linen, and musk disguised the odors of
+rotten humanity. This hideous specimen of decaying vice, trotting in red
+heels--for Valerie dressed the man as beseemed his income, his cross,
+and his appointment--horrified Crevel, who could not meet the colorless
+eyes of the Government clerk. Marneffe was an incubus to the Mayor. And
+the mean rascal, aware of the strange power conferred on him by Lisbeth
+and his wife, was amused by it; he played on it as on an instrument; and
+cards being the last resource of a mind as completely played out as
+the body, he plucked Crevel again and again, the Mayor thinking himself
+bound to subserviency to the worthy official whom _he was cheating_.
+
+Seeing Crevel a mere child in the hands of that hideous and atrocious
+mummy, of whose utter vileness the Mayor knew nothing; and seeing him,
+yet more, an object of deep contempt to Valerie, who made game of Crevel
+as of some mountebank, the Baron apparently thought him so impossible as
+a rival that he constantly invited him to dinner.
+
+Valerie, protected by two lovers on guard, and by a jealous husband,
+attracted every eye, and excited every desire in the circle she shone
+upon. And thus, while keeping up appearances, she had, in the course
+of three years, achieved the most difficult conditions of the success a
+courtesan most cares for and most rarely attains, even with the help
+of audacity and the glitter of an existence in the light of the sun.
+Valerie's beauty, formerly buried in the mud of the Rue du Doyenne, now,
+like a well-cut diamond exquisitely set by Chanor, was worth more than
+its real value--it could break hearts. Claude Vignon adored Valerie in
+secret.
+
+
+
+This retrospective explanation, quite necessary after the lapse of
+three years, shows Valerie's balance-sheet. Now for that of her partner,
+Lisbeth.
+
+Lisbeth Fischer filled the place in the Marneffe household of a relation
+who combines the functions of a lady companion and a housekeeper; but
+she suffered from none of the humiliations which, for the most part,
+weigh upon the women who are so unhappy as to be obliged to fill these
+ambiguous situations. Lisbeth and Valerie offered the touching spectacle
+of one of those friendships between women, so cordial and so improbable,
+that men, always too keen-tongued in Paris, forthwith slander them. The
+contrast between Lisbeth's dry masculine nature and Valerie's creole
+prettiness encouraged calumny. And Madame Marneffe had unconsciously
+given weight to the scandal by the care she took of her friend, with
+matrimonial views, which were, as will be seen, to complete Lisbeth's
+revenge.
+
+An immense change had taken place in Cousin Betty; and Valerie, who
+wanted to smarten her, had turned it to the best account. The strange
+woman had submitted to stays, and laced tightly, she used bandoline to
+keep her hair smooth, wore her gowns as the dressmaker sent them home,
+neat little boots, and gray silk stockings, all of which were included
+in Valerie's bills, and paid for by the gentleman in possession. Thus
+furbished up, and wearing the yellow cashmere shawl, Lisbeth would have
+been unrecognizable by any one who had not seen her for three years.
+
+This other diamond--a black diamond, the rarest of all--cut by a skilled
+hand, and set as best became her, was appreciated at her full value by
+certain ambitious clerks. Any one seeing her for the first time might
+have shuddered involuntarily at the look of poetic wildness which the
+clever Valerie had succeeded in bringing out by the arts of dress in
+this Bleeding Nun, framing the ascetic olive face in thick bands of
+hair as black as the fiery eyes, and making the most of the rigid, slim
+figure. Lisbeth, like a Virgin by Cranach or Van Eyck, or a Byzantine
+Madonna stepped out of its frame, had all the stiffness, the precision
+of those mysterious figures, the more modern cousins of Isis and her
+sister goddesses sheathed in marble folds by Egyptian sculptors. It was
+granite, basalt, porphyry, with life and movement.
+
+Saved from want for the rest of her life, Lisbeth was most amiable;
+wherever she dined she brought merriment. And the Baron paid the rent
+of her little apartment, furnished, as we know, with the leavings of her
+friend Valerie's former boudoir and bedroom.
+
+"I began," she would say, "as a hungry nanny goat, and I am ending as a
+_lionne_."
+
+She still worked for Monsieur Rivet at the more elaborate kinds of
+gold-trimming, merely, as she said, not to lose her time. At the
+same time, she was, as we shall see, very full of business; but it is
+inherent in the nature of country-folks never to give up bread-winning;
+in this they are like the Jews.
+
+Every morning, very early, Cousin Betty went off to market with the
+cook. It was part of Lisbeth's scheme that the house-book, which was
+ruining Baron Hulot, was to enrich her dear Valerie--as it did indeed.
+
+Is there a housewife who, since 1838, has not suffered from the evil
+effects of Socialist doctrines diffused among the lower classes by
+incendiary writers? In every household the plague of servants is
+nowadays the worst of financial afflictions. With very few exceptions,
+who ought to be rewarded with the Montyon prize, the cook, male or
+female, is a domestic robber, a thief taking wages, and perfectly
+barefaced, with the Government for a fence, developing the tendency to
+dishonesty, which is almost authorized in the cook by the time-honored
+jest as to the "handle of the basket." The women who formerly picked up
+their forty sous to buy a lottery ticket now take fifty francs to put
+into the savings bank. And the smug Puritans who amuse themselves in
+France with philanthropic experiments fancy that they are making the
+common people moral!
+
+Between the market and the master's table the servants have their secret
+toll, and the municipality of Paris is less sharp in collecting the
+city-dues than the servants are in taking theirs on every single thing.
+To say nothing of fifty per cent charged on every form of food, they
+demand large New Year's premiums from the tradesmen. The best class of
+dealers tremble before this occult power, and subsidize it without a
+word--coachmakers, jewelers, tailors, and all. If any attempt is made
+to interfere with them, the servants reply with impudent retorts, or
+revenge themselves by the costly blunders of assumed clumsiness; and in
+these days they inquire into their master's character as, formerly, the
+master inquired into theirs. This mischief is now really at its height,
+and the law-courts are beginning to take cognizance of it; but in vain,
+for it cannot be remedied but by a law which shall compel domestic
+servants, like laborers, to have a pass-book as a guarantee of conduct.
+Then the evil will vanish as if by magic. If every servant were obliged
+to show his pass-book, and if masters were required to state in it the
+cause of his dismissal, this would certainly prove a powerful check to
+the evil.
+
+The men who are giving their attentions to the politics of the day
+know not to what lengths the depravity of the lower classes has gone.
+Statistics are silent as to the startling number of working men of
+twenty who marry cooks of between forty and fifty enriched by robbery.
+We shudder to think of the result of such unions from the three points
+of view of increasing crime, degeneracy of the race, and miserable
+households.
+
+As to the mere financial mischief that results from domestic peculation,
+that too is immense from a political point of view. Life being made to
+cost double, any superfluity becomes impossible in most households.
+Now superfluity means half the trade of the world, as it is half the
+elegance of life. Books and flowers are to many persons as necessary as
+bread.
+
+Lisbeth, well aware of this dreadful scourge of Parisian households,
+determined to manage Valerie's, promising her every assistance in the
+terrible scene when the two women had sworn to be like sisters. So
+she had brought from the depths of the Vosges a humble relation on her
+mother's side, a very pious and honest soul, who had been cook to the
+Bishop of Nancy. Fearing, however, her inexperience of Paris ways, and
+yet more the evil counsel which wrecks such fragile virtue, at first
+Lisbeth always went to market with Mathurine, and tried to teach
+her what to buy. To know the real prices of things and command the
+salesman's respect; to purchase unnecessary delicacies, such as fish,
+only when they were cheap; to be well informed as to the price current
+of groceries and provisions, so as to buy when prices are low in
+anticipation of a rise,--all this housekeeping skill is in Paris
+essential to domestic economy. As Mathurine got good wages and many
+presents, she liked the house well enough to be glad to drive good
+bargains. And by this time Lisbeth had made her quite a match for
+herself, sufficiently experienced and trustworthy to be sent to market
+alone, unless Valerie was giving a dinner--which, in fact, was not
+unfrequently the case. And this was how it came about.
+
+The Baron had at first observed the strictest decorum; but his passion
+for Madame Marneffe had ere long become so vehement, so greedy, that he
+would never quit her if he could help it. At first he dined there four
+times a week; then he thought it delightful to dine with her every day.
+Six months after his daughter's marriage he was paying her two thousand
+francs a month for his board. Madame Marneffe invited any one her dear
+Baron wished to entertain. The dinner was always arranged for six; he
+could bring in three unexpected guests. Lisbeth's economy enabled her
+to solve the extraordinary problem of keeping up the table in the best
+style for a thousand francs a month, giving the other thousand to Madame
+Marneffe. Valerie's dress being chiefly paid for by Crevel and the
+Baron, the two women saved another thousand francs a month on this.
+
+And so this pure and innocent being had already accumulated a hundred
+and fifty thousand francs in savings. She had capitalized her income
+and monthly bonus, and swelled the amount by enormous interest, due to
+Crevel's liberality in allowing his "little Duchess" to invest her money
+in partnership with him in his financial operations. Crevel had taught
+Valerie the slang and the procedure of the money market, and, like every
+Parisian woman, she had soon outstripped her master. Lisbeth, who never
+spent a sou of her twelve hundred francs, whose rent and dress were
+given to her, and who never put her hand in her pocket, had likewise
+a small capital of five or six thousand francs, of which Crevel took
+fatherly care.
+
+At the same time, two such lovers were a heavy burthen on Valerie.
+On the day when this drama reopens, Valerie, spurred by one of those
+incidents which have the effect in life that the ringing of a bell has
+in inducing a swarm of bees to settle, went up to Lisbeth's rooms to
+give vent to one of those comforting lamentations--a sort of cigarette
+blown off from the tongue--by which women alleviate the minor miseries
+of life.
+
+"Oh, Lisbeth, my love, two hours of Crevel this morning! It is crushing!
+How I wish I could send you in my place!"
+
+"That, unluckily, is impossible," said Lisbeth, smiling. "I shall die a
+maid."
+
+"Two old men lovers! Really, I am ashamed sometimes! If my poor mother
+could see me."
+
+"You are mistaking me for Crevel!" said Lisbeth.
+
+"Tell me, my little Betty, do you not despise me?"
+
+"Oh! if I had but been pretty, what adventures I would have had!" cried
+Lisbeth. "That is your justification."
+
+"But you would have acted only at the dictates of your heart," said
+Madame Marneffe, with a sigh.
+
+"Pooh! Marneffe is a dead man they have forgotten to bury," replied
+Lisbeth. "The Baron is as good as your husband; Crevel is your adorer;
+it seems to me that you are quite in order--like every other married
+woman."
+
+"No, it is not that, dear, adorable thing; that is not where the shoe
+pinches; you do not choose to understand."
+
+"Yes, I do," said Lisbeth. "The unexpressed factor is part of my
+revenge; what can I do? I am working it out."
+
+"I love Wenceslas so that I am positively growing thin, and I can never
+see him," said Valerie, throwing up her arms. "Hulot asks him to dinner,
+and my artist declines. He does not know that I idolize him, the wretch!
+What is his wife after all? Fine flesh! Yes, she is handsome, but I--I
+know myself--I am worse!"
+
+"Be quite easy, my child, he will come," said Lisbeth, in the tone of a
+nurse to an impatient child. "He shall."
+
+"But when?"
+
+"This week perhaps."
+
+"Give me a kiss."
+
+As may be seen, these two women were but one. Everything Valerie did,
+even her most reckless actions, her pleasures, her little sulks, were
+decided on after serious deliberation between them.
+
+Lisbeth, strangely excited by this harlot existence, advised Valerie on
+every step, and pursued her course of revenge with pitiless logic. She
+really adored Valerie; she had taken her to be her child, her friend,
+her love; she found her docile, as Creoles are, yielding from voluptuous
+indolence; she chattered with her morning after morning with more
+pleasure than with Wenceslas; they could laugh together over the
+mischief they plotted, and over the folly of men, and count up the
+swelling interest on their respective savings.
+
+Indeed, in this new enterprise and new affection, Lisbeth had found food
+for her activity that was far more satisfying than her insane passion
+for Wenceslas. The joys of gratified hatred are the fiercest and
+strongest the heart can know. Love is the gold, hatred the iron of
+the mine of feeling that lies buried in us. And then, Valerie was,
+to Lisbeth, Beauty in all its glory--the beauty she worshiped, as we
+worship what we have not, beauty far more plastic to her hand than that
+of Wenceslas, who had always been cold to her and distant.
+
+At the end of nearly three years, Lisbeth was beginning to perceive the
+progress of the underground mine on which she was expending her life and
+concentrating her mind. Lisbeth planned, Madame Marneffe acted. Madame
+Marneffe was the axe, Lisbeth was the hand the wielded it, and that hand
+was rapidly demolishing the family which was every day more odious
+to her; for we can hate more and more, just as, when we love, we love
+better every day.
+
+Love and hatred are feelings that feed on themselves; but of the two,
+hatred has the longer vitality. Love is restricted within limits of
+power; it derives its energies from life and from lavishness. Hatred
+is like death, like avarice; it is, so to speak, an active abstraction,
+above beings and things.
+
+Lisbeth, embarked on the existence that was natural to her, expended in
+it all her faculties; governing, like the Jesuits, by occult influences.
+The regeneration of her person was equally complete; her face was
+radiant. Lisbeth dreamed of becoming Madame la Marechale Hulot.
+
+This little scene, in which the two friends had bluntly uttered
+their ideas without any circumlocution in expressing them, took place
+immediately on Lisbeth's return from market, whither she had been to
+procure the materials for an elegant dinner. Marneffe, who hoped to get
+Coquet's place, was to entertain him and the virtuous Madame Coquet,
+and Valerie hoped to persuade Hulot, that very evening, to consider the
+head-clerk's resignation.
+
+Lisbeth dressed to go to the Baroness, with whom she was to dine.
+
+"You will come back in time to make tea for us, my Betty?" said Valerie.
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"You hope so--why? Have you come to sleeping with Adeline to drink her
+tears while she is asleep?"
+
+"If only I could!" said Lisbeth, laughing. "I would not refuse. She is
+expiating her happiness--and I am glad, for I remember our young days.
+It is my turn now. She will be in the mire, and I shall be Comtesse de
+Forzheim!"
+
+Lisbeth set out for the Rue Plumet, where she now went as to the
+theatre--to indulge her emotions.
+
+
+
+The residence Hulot had found for his wife consisted of a large,
+bare entrance-room, a drawing-room, and a bed and dressing-room. The
+dining-room was next the drawing-room on one side. Two servants' rooms
+and a kitchen on the third floor completed the accommodation, which was
+not unworthy of a Councillor of State, high up in the War Office. The
+house, the court-yard, and the stairs were extremely handsome.
+
+The Baroness, who had to furnish her drawing-room, bed-room, and
+dining-room with the relics of her splendor, had brought away the best
+of the remains from the house in the Rue de l'Universite. Indeed, the
+poor woman was attached to these mute witnesses of her happier life;
+to her they had an almost consoling eloquence. In memory she saw her
+flowers, as in the carpets she could trace patterns hardly visible now
+to other eyes.
+
+On going into the spacious anteroom, where twelve chairs, a barometer,
+a large stove, and long, white cotton curtains, bordered with red,
+suggested the dreadful waiting-room of a Government office, the visitor
+felt oppressed, conscious at once of the isolation in which the mistress
+lived. Grief, like pleasure, infects the atmosphere. A first glance into
+any home is enough to tell you whether love or despair reigns there.
+
+Adeline would be found sitting in an immense bedroom with beautiful
+furniture by Jacob Desmalters, of mahogany finished in the Empire style
+with ormolu, which looks even less inviting than the brass-work of Louis
+XVI.! It gave one a shiver to see this lonely woman sitting on a Roman
+chair, a work-table with sphinxes before her, colorless, affecting false
+cheerfulness, but preserving her imperial air, as she had preserved
+the blue velvet gown she always wore in the house. Her proud spirit
+sustained her strength and preserved her beauty.
+
+The Baroness, by the end of her first year of banishment to this
+apartment, had gauged every depth of misfortune.
+
+"Still, even here my Hector has made my life much handsomer than it
+should be for a mere peasant," said she to herself. "He chooses that it
+should be so; his will be done! I am Baroness Hulot, the sister-in-law
+of a Marshal of France. I have done nothing wrong; my two children are
+settled in life; I can wait for death, wrapped in the spotless veil of
+an immaculate wife and the crape of departed happiness."
+
+A portrait of Hulot, in the uniform of a Commissary General of the
+Imperial Guard, painted in 1810 by Robert Lefebvre, hung above the
+work-table, and when visitors were announced, Adeline threw into
+a drawer an _Imitation of Jesus Christ_, her habitual study. This
+blameless Magdalen thus heard the Voice of the Spirit in her desert.
+
+"Mariette, my child," said Lisbeth to the woman who opened the door,
+"how is my dear Adeline to-day?"
+
+"Oh, she looks pretty well, mademoiselle; but between you and me, if she
+goes on in this way, she will kill herself," said Mariette in a whisper.
+"You really ought to persuade her to live better. Now, yesterday madame
+told me to give her two sous' worth of milk and a roll for one sou; to
+get her a herring for dinner and a bit of cold veal; she had a pound
+cooked to last her the week--of course, for the days when she dines
+at home and alone. She will not spend more than ten sous a day for her
+food. It is unreasonable. If I were to say anything about it to Monsieur
+le Marechal, he might quarrel with Monsieur le Baron and leave him
+nothing, whereas you, who are so kind and clever, can manage things----"
+
+"But why do you not apply to my cousin the Baron?" said Lisbeth.
+
+"Oh, dear mademoiselle, he has not been here for three weeks or more; in
+fact, not since we last had the pleasure of seeing you! Besides, madame
+has forbidden me, under threat of dismissal, ever to ask the master for
+money. But as for grief!--oh, poor lady, she has been very unhappy. It
+is the first time that monsieur has neglected her for so long. Every
+time the bell rang she rushed to the window--but for the last five days
+she has sat still in her chair. She reads. Whenever she goes out to see
+Madame la Comtesse, she says, 'Mariette, if monsieur comes in,' says
+she, 'tell him I am at home, and send the porter to fetch me; he shall
+be well paid for his trouble.'"
+
+"Poor soul!" said Lisbeth; "it goes to my heart. I speak of her to the
+Baron every day. What can I do? 'Yes,' says he, 'Betty, you are right;
+I am a wretch. My wife is an angel, and I am a monster! I will go
+to-morrow----' And he stays with Madame Marneffe. That woman is ruining
+him, and he worships her; he lives only in her sight.--I do what I can;
+if I were not there, and if I had not Mathurine to depend upon, he would
+spend twice as much as he does; and as he has hardly any money in the
+world, he would have blown his brains out by this time. And, I tell
+you, Mariette, Adeline would die of her husband's death, I am perfectly
+certain. At any rate, I pull to make both ends meet, and prevent my
+cousin from throwing too much money into the fire."
+
+"Yes, that is what madame says, poor soul! She knows how much she owes
+you," replied Mariette. "She said she had judged you unjustly for many
+years----"
+
+"Indeed!" said Lisbeth. "And did she say anything else?"
+
+"No, mademoiselle. If you wish to please her, talk to her about Monsieur
+le Baron; she envies you your happiness in seeing him every day."
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+"I beg pardon, no; the Marshal is with her. He comes every day, and she
+always tells him she saw monsieur in the morning, but that he comes in
+very late at night."
+
+"And is there a good dinner to-day?"
+
+Mariette hesitated; she could not meet Lisbeth's eye. The drawing-room
+door opened, and Marshal Hulot rushed out in such haste that he bowed to
+Lisbeth without looking at her, and dropped a paper. Lisbeth picked it
+up and ran after him downstairs, for it was vain to hail a deaf man; but
+she managed not to overtake the Marshal, and as she came up again she
+furtively read the following lines written in pencil:--
+
+  "MY DEAR BROTHER,--My husband has given me the money for my
+  quarter's expenses; but my daughter Hortense was in such need of
+  it, that I lent her the whole sum, which was scarcely enough to
+  set her straight. Could you lend me a few hundred francs? For I
+  cannot ask Hector for more; if he were to blame me, I could not
+  bear it."
+
+"My word!" thought Lisbeth, "she must be in extremities to bend her
+pride to such a degree!"
+
+Lisbeth went in. She saw tears in Adeline's eyes, and threw her arms
+round her neck.
+
+"Adeline, my dearest, I know all," cried Cousin Betty. "Here, the
+Marshal dropped this paper--he was in such a state of mind, and
+running like a greyhound.--Has that dreadful Hector given you no money
+since----?"
+
+"He gives it me quite regularly," replied the Baroness, "but Hortense
+needed it, and--"
+
+"And you had not enough to pay for dinner to-night," said Lisbeth,
+interrupting her. "Now I understand why Mariette looked so confused when
+I said something about the soup. You really are childish, Adeline; come,
+take my savings."
+
+"Thank you, my kind cousin," said Adeline, wiping away a tear. "This
+little difficulty is only temporary, and I have provided for the future.
+My expenses henceforth will be no more than two thousand four hundred
+francs a year, rent inclusive, and I shall have the money.--Above all,
+Betty, not a word to Hector. Is he well?"
+
+"As strong as the Pont Neuf, and as gay as a lark; he thinks of nothing
+but his charmer Valerie."
+
+Madame Hulot looked out at a tall silver-fir in front of the window, and
+Lisbeth could not see her cousin's eyes to read their expression.
+
+"Did you mention that it was the day when we all dine together here?"
+
+"Yes. But, dear me! Madame Marneffe is giving a grand dinner; she
+hopes to get Monsieur Coquet to resign, and that is of the first
+importance.--Now, Adeline, listen to me. You know that I am fiercely
+proud as to my independence. Your husband, my dear, will certainly bring
+you to ruin. I fancied I could be of use to you all by living near this
+woman, but she is a creature of unfathomable depravity, and she will
+make your husband promise things which will bring you all to disgrace."
+Adeline writhed like a person stabbed to the heart. "My dear Adeline, I
+am sure of what I say. I feel it is my duty to enlighten you.--Well, let
+us think of the future. The Marshal is an old man, but he will last a
+long time yet--he draws good pay; when he dies his widow would have a
+pension of six thousand francs. On such an income I would undertake to
+maintain you all. Use your influence over the good man to get him to
+marry me. It is not for the sake of being Madame la Marechale; I value
+such nonsense at no more than I value Madame Marneffe's conscience; but
+you will all have bread. I see that Hortense must be wanting it, since
+you give her yours."
+
+The Marshal now came in; he had made such haste, that he was mopping his
+forehead with his bandana.
+
+"I have given Mariette two thousand francs," he whispered to his
+sister-in-law.
+
+Adeline colored to the roots of her hair. Two tears hung on the fringes
+of the still long lashes, and she silently pressed the old man's hand;
+his beaming face expressed the glee of a favored lover.
+
+"I intended to spend the money in a present for you, Adeline," said
+he. "Instead of repaying me, you must choose for yourself the thing you
+would like best."
+
+He took Lisbeth's hand, which she held out to him, and so bewildered was
+he by his satisfaction, that he kissed it.
+
+"That looks promising," said Adeline to Lisbeth, smiling so far as she
+was able to smile.
+
+The younger Hulot and his wife now came in.
+
+"Is my brother coming to dinner?" asked the Marshal sharply.
+
+Adeline took up a pencil and wrote these words on a scrap of paper:
+
+"I expect him; he promised this morning that he would be here; but if
+he should not come, it would be because the Marshal kept him. He is
+overwhelmed with business."
+
+And she handed him the paper. She had invented this way of conversing
+with Marshal Hulot, and kept a little collection of paper scraps and a
+pencil at hand on the work-table.
+
+"I know," said the Marshal, "he is worked very hard over the business in
+Algiers."
+
+At this moment, Hortense and Wenceslas arrived, and the Baroness, as
+she saw all her family about her, gave the Marshal a significant glance
+understood by none but Lisbeth.
+
+Happiness had greatly improved the artist, who was adored by his wife
+and flattered by the world. His face had become almost round, and his
+graceful figure did justice to the advantages which blood gives to men
+of birth. His early fame, his important position, the delusive eulogies
+that the world sheds on artists as lightly as we say, "How d'ye do?" or
+discuss the weather, gave him that high sense of merit which degenerates
+into sheer fatuity when talent wanes. The Cross of the Legion of Honor
+was the crowning stamp of the great man he believed himself to be.
+
+After three years of married life, Hortense was to her husband what a
+dog is to its master; she watched his every movement with a look that
+seemed a constant inquiry, her eyes were always on him, like those of
+a miser on his treasure; her admiring abnegation was quite pathetic. In
+her might be seen her mother's spirit and teaching. Her beauty, as
+great as ever, was poetically touched by the gentle shadow of concealed
+melancholy.
+
+On seeing Hortense come in, it struck Lisbeth that some long-suppressed
+complaint was about to break through the thin veil of reticence.
+Lisbeth, from the first days of the honeymoon, had been sure that this
+couple had too small an income for so great a passion.
+
+Hortense, as she embraced her mother, exchanged with her a few whispered
+phrases, heart to heart, of which the mystery was betrayed to Lisbeth by
+certain shakes of the head.
+
+"Adeline, like me, must work for her living," thought Cousin Betty. "She
+shall be made to tell me what she will do! Those pretty fingers will
+know at last, like mine, what it is to work because they must."
+
+At six o'clock the family party went in to dinner. A place was laid for
+Hector.
+
+"Leave it so," said the Baroness to Mariette, "monsieur sometimes comes
+in late."
+
+"Oh, my father will certainly come," said Victorin to his mother. "He
+promised me he would when we parted at the Chamber."
+
+Lisbeth, like a spider in the middle of its net, gloated over all these
+countenances. Having known Victorin and Hortense from their birth, their
+faces were to her like panes of glass, through which she could read
+their young souls. Now, from certain stolen looks directed by Victorin
+on his mother, she saw that some disaster was hanging over Adeline which
+Victorin hesitated to reveal. The famous young lawyer had some covert
+anxiety. His deep reverence for his mother was evident in the regret
+with which he gazed at her.
+
+Hortense was evidently absorbed in her own woes; for a fortnight past,
+as Lisbeth knew, she had been suffering the first uneasiness which want
+of money brings to honest souls, and to young wives on whom life
+has hitherto smiled, and who conceal their alarms. Also Lisbeth had
+immediately guessed that her mother had given her no money. Adeline's
+delicacy had brought her so low as to use the fallacious excuses that
+necessity suggests to borrowers.
+
+Hortense's absence of mind, with her brother's and the Baroness' deep
+dejection, made the dinner a melancholy meal, especially with the added
+chill of the Marshal's utter deafness. Three persons gave a little life
+to the scene: Lisbeth, Celestine, and Wenceslas. Hortense's affection
+had developed the artist's natural liveliness as a Pole, the somewhat
+swaggering vivacity and noisy high spirits that characterize these
+Frenchmen of the North. His frame of mind and the expression of his
+face showed plainly that he believed in himself, and that poor Hortense,
+faithful to her mother's training, kept all domestic difficulties to
+herself.
+
+"You must be content, at any rate," said Lisbeth to her young cousin, as
+they rose from table, "since your mother has helped you with her money."
+
+"Mamma!" replied Hortense in astonishment. "Oh, poor mamma! It is for me
+that she would like to make money. You do not know, Lisbeth, but I have
+a horrible suspicion that she works for it in secret."
+
+They were crossing the large, dark drawing-room where there were
+no candles, all following Mariette, who was carrying the lamp into
+Adeline's bedroom. At this instant Victorin just touched Lisbeth
+and Hortense on the arm. The two women, understanding the hint, left
+Wenceslas, Celestine, the Marshal, and the Baroness to go on together,
+and remained standing in a window-bay.
+
+"What is it, Victorin?" said Lisbeth. "Some disaster caused by your
+father, I dare wager."
+
+"Yes, alas!" replied Victorin. "A money-lender named Vauvinet has bills
+of my father's to the amount of sixty thousand francs, and wants to
+prosecute. I tried to speak of the matter to my father at the Chamber,
+but he would not understand me; he almost avoided me. Had we better tell
+my mother?"
+
+"No, no," said Lisbeth, "she has too many troubles; it would be a
+death-blow; you must spare her. You have no idea how low she has fallen.
+But for your uncle, you would have found no dinner here this evening."
+
+"Dear Heaven! Victorin, what wretches we are!" said Hortense to her
+brother. "We ought to have guessed what Lisbeth has told us. My dinner
+is choking me!"
+
+Hortense could say no more; she covered her mouth with her handkerchief
+to smother a sob, and melted into tears.
+
+"I told the fellow Vauvinet to call on me to-morrow," replied Victorin,
+"but will he be satisfied by my guarantee on a mortgage? I doubt it.
+Those men insist on ready money to sweat others on usurious terms."
+
+"Let us sell out of the funds!" said Lisbeth to Hortense.
+
+"What good would that do?" replied Victorin. "It would bring fifteen or
+sixteen thousand francs, and we want sixty thousand."
+
+"Dear cousin!" cried Hortense, embracing Lisbeth with the enthusiasm of
+guilelessness.
+
+"No, Lisbeth, keep your little fortune," said Victorin, pressing the old
+maid's hand. "I shall see to-morrow what this man would be up to.
+With my wife's consent, I can at least hinder or postpone the
+prosecution--for it would really be frightful to see my father's honor
+impugned. What would the War Minister say? My father's salary, which
+he pledged for three years, will not be released before the month of
+December, so we cannot offer that as a guarantee. This Vauvinet has
+renewed the bills eleven times; so you may imagine what my father must
+pay in interest. We must close this pit."
+
+"If only Madame Marneffe would throw him over!" said Hortense bitterly.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Victorin. "He would take up some one else;
+and with her, at any rate, the worst outlay is over."
+
+What a change in children formerly so respectful, and kept so long by
+their mother in blind worship of their father! They knew him now for
+what he was.
+
+"But for me," said Lisbeth, "your father's ruin would be more complete
+than it is."
+
+"Come in to mamma," said Hortense; "she is very sharp, and will suspect
+something; as our kind Lisbeth says, let us keep everything from
+her--let us be cheerful."
+
+"Victorin," said Lisbeth, "you have no notion of what your father
+will be brought to by his passion for women. Try to secure some future
+resource by getting the Marshal to marry me. Say something about it this
+evening; I will leave early on purpose."
+
+Victorin went into the bedroom.
+
+"And you, poor little thing!" said Lisbeth in an undertone to Hortense,
+"what can you do?"
+
+"Come to dinner with us to-morrow, and we will talk it over," answered
+Hortense. "I do not know which way to turn; you know how hard life is,
+and you will advise me."
+
+
+
+While the whole family with one consent tried to persuade the Marshal to
+marry, and while Lisbeth was making her way home to the Rue Vanneau, one
+of those incidents occurred which, in such women as Madame Marneffe, are
+a stimulus to vice by compelling them to exert their energy and
+every resource of depravity. One fact, at any rate, must however be
+acknowledged: life in Paris is too full for vicious persons to do wrong
+instinctively and unprovoked; vice is only a weapon of defence against
+aggressors--that is all.
+
+Madame Marneffe's drawing-room was full of her faithful admirers, and
+she had just started the whist-tables, when the footman, a pensioned
+soldier recruited by the Baron, announced:
+
+"Monsieur le Baron Montes de Montejanos."
+
+Valerie's heart jumped, but she hurried to the door, exclaiming:
+
+"My cousin!" and as she met the Brazilian, she whispered:
+
+"You are my relation--or all is at an end between us!--And so you were
+not wrecked, Henri?" she went on audibly, as she led him to the fire. "I
+heard you were lost, and have mourned for you these three years."
+
+"How are you, my good fellow?" said Marneffe, offering his hand to the
+stranger, whose get-up was indeed that of a Brazilian and a millionaire.
+
+Monsieur le Baron Henri Montes de Montejanos, to whom the climate of the
+equator had given the color and stature we expect to see in Othello on
+the stage, had an alarming look of gloom, but it was a merely pictorial
+illusion; for, sweet and affectionate by nature, he was predestined
+to be the victim that a strong man often is to a weak woman. The scorn
+expressed in his countenance, the muscular strength of his stalwart
+frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form
+of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that
+every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that
+provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with
+solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots,
+and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron's
+costume was a large diamond, worth about a hundred thousand francs,
+which blazed like a star on a handsome blue silk cravat, tucked into a
+white waistcoat in such a way as to show corners of a fabulously fine
+shirt front.
+
+His brow, bossy like that of a satyr, a sign of tenacity in his
+passions, was crowned by thick jet-black hair like a virgin forest, and
+under it flashed a pair of hazel eyes, so wild looking as to suggest
+that before his birth his mother must have been scared by a jaguar.
+
+This fine specimen of the Portuguese race in Brazil took his stand with
+his back to the fire, in an attitude that showed familiarity with
+Paris manners; holding his hat in one hand, his elbow resting on the
+velvet-covered shelf, he bent over Madame Marneffe, talking to her in an
+undertone, and troubling himself very little about the dreadful people
+who, in his opinion, were so very much in the way.
+
+This fashion of taking the stage, with the Brazilian's attitude and
+expression, gave, alike to Crevel and to the baron, an identical shock
+of curiosity and anxiety. Both were struck by the same impression and
+the same surmise. And the manoeuvre suggested in each by their very
+genuine passion was so comical in its simultaneous results, that it
+made everybody smile who was sharp enough to read its meaning. Crevel,
+a tradesman and shopkeeper to the backbone, though a mayor of Paris,
+unluckily, was a little slower to move than his rival partner, and
+this enabled the Baron to read at a glance Crevel's involuntary
+self-betrayal. This was a fresh arrow to rankle in the very amorous old
+man's heart, and he resolved to have an explanation from Valerie.
+
+"This evening," said Crevel to himself too, as he sorted his hand, "I
+must know where I stand."
+
+"You have a heart!" cried Marneffe. "You have just revoked."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Crevel, trying to withdraw his card.--"This
+Baron seems to me very much in the way," he went on, thinking to
+himself. "If Valerie carries on with my Baron, well and good--it is a
+means to my revenge, and I can get rid of him if I choose; but as for
+this cousin!--He is one Baron too many; I do not mean to be made a fool
+of. I will know how they are related."
+
+That evening, by one of those strokes of luck which come to pretty
+women, Valerie was charmingly dressed. Her white bosom gleamed under a
+lace tucker of rusty white, which showed off the satin texture of her
+beautiful shoulders--for Parisian women, Heaven knows how, have some way
+of preserving their fine flesh and remaining slender. She wore a black
+velvet gown that looked as if it might at any moment slip off her
+shoulders, and her hair was dressed with lace and drooping flowers. Her
+arms, not fat but dimpled, were graced by deep ruffles to her sleeves.
+She was like a luscious fruit coquettishly served in a handsome dish,
+and making the knife-blade long to be cutting it.
+
+"Valerie," the Brazilian was saying in her ear, "I have come back
+faithful to you. My uncle is dead; I am twice as rich as I was when I
+went away. I mean to live and die in Paris, for you and with you."
+
+"Lower, Henri, I implore you----"
+
+"Pooh! I mean to speak to you this evening, even if I should have to
+pitch all these creatures out of window, especially as I have lost two
+days in looking for you. I shall stay till the last.--I can, I suppose?"
+
+Valerie smiled at her adopted cousin, and said:
+
+"Remember that you are the son of my mother's sister, who married your
+father during Junot's campaign in Portugal."
+
+"What, I, Montes de Montejanos, great grandson of a conquerer of Brazil!
+Tell a lie?"
+
+"Hush, lower, or we shall never meet again."
+
+"Pray, why?"
+
+"Marneffe, like all dying wretches, who always take up some last whim,
+has a revived passion for me----"
+
+"That cur?" said the Brazilian, who knew his Marneffe; "I will settle
+him!"
+
+"What violence!"
+
+"And where did you get all this splendor?" the Brazilian went on, just
+struck by the magnificence of the apartment.
+
+She began to laugh.
+
+"Henri! what bad taste!" said she.
+
+She had felt two burning flashes of jealousy which had moved her so
+far as to make her look at the two souls in purgatory. Crevel, playing
+against Baron Hulot and Monsieur Coquet, had Marneffe for his
+partner. The game was even, because Crevel and the Baron were equally
+absent-minded, and made blunder after blunder. Thus, in one instant, the
+old men both confessed the passion which Valerie had persuaded them to
+keep secret for the past three years; but she too had failed to hide
+the joy in her eyes at seeing the man who had first taught her heart
+to beat, the object of her first love. The rights of such happy mortals
+survive as long as the woman lives over whom they have acquired them.
+
+With these three passions at her side--one supported by the insolence of
+wealth, the second by the claims of possession, and the third by youth,
+strength, fortune, and priority--Madame Marneffe preserved her coolness
+and presence of mind, like General Bonaparte when, at the siege of
+Mantua, he had to fight two armies, and at the same time maintain the
+blockade.
+
+Jealousy, distorting Hulot's face, made him look as terrible as the late
+Marshal Montcornet leading a cavalry charge against a Russian square.
+Being such a handsome man, he had never known any ground for jealousy,
+any more than Murat knew what it was to be afraid. He had always felt
+sure that he should triumph. His rebuff by Josepha, the first he
+had ever met, he ascribed to her love of money; "he was conquered by
+millions, and not by a changeling," he would say when speaking of the
+Duc d'Herouville. And now, in one instant, the poison and delirium
+that the mad passion sheds in a flood had rushed to his heart. He kept
+turning from the whist-table towards the fireplace with an action _a la_
+Mirabeau; and as he laid down his cards to cast a challenging glance
+at the Brazilian and Valerie, the rest of the company felt the sort of
+alarm mingled with curiosity that is caused by evident violence ready
+to break out at any moment. The sham cousin stared at Hulot as he might
+have looked at some big China mandarin.
+
+This state of things could not last; it was bound to end in some
+tremendous outbreak. Marneffe was as much afraid of Hulot as Crevel was
+of Marneffe, for he was anxious not to die a mere clerk. Men marked for
+death believe in life as galley-slaves believe in liberty; this man was
+bent on being a first-class clerk at any cost. Thoroughly frightened by
+the pantomime of the Baron and Crevel, he rose, said a few words in
+his wife's ear, and then, to the surprise of all, Valerie went into the
+adjoining bedroom with the Brazilian and her husband.
+
+"Did Madame Marneffe ever speak to you of this cousin of hers?" said
+Crevel to Hulot.
+
+"Never!" replied the Baron, getting up. "That is enough for this
+evening," said he. "I have lost two louis--there they are."
+
+He threw the two gold pieces on the table, and seated himself on the
+sofa with a look which everybody else took as a hint to go. Monsieur and
+Madame Coquet, after exchanging a few words, left the room, and Claude
+Vignon, in despair, followed their example. These two departures were
+a hint to less intelligent persons, who now found that they were not
+wanted. The Baron and Crevel were left together, and spoke never a word.
+Hulot, at last, ignoring Crevel, went on tiptoe to listen at the bedroom
+door; but he bounded back with a prodigious jump, for Marneffe opened
+the door and appeared with a calm face, astonished to find only the two
+men.
+
+"And the tea?" said he.
+
+"Where is Valerie?" replied the Baron in a rage.
+
+"My wife," said Marneffe. "She is gone upstairs to speak to mademoiselle
+your cousin. She will come down directly."
+
+"And why has she deserted us for that stupid creature?"
+
+"Well," said Marneffe, "Mademoiselle Lisbeth came back from dining with
+the Baroness with an attack of indigestion and Mathurine asked Valerie
+for some tea for her, so my wife went up to see what was the matter."
+
+"And _her_ cousin?"
+
+"He is gone."
+
+"Do you really believe that?" said the Baron.
+
+"I have seen him to his carriage," replied Marneffe, with a hideous
+smirk.
+
+The wheels of a departing carriage were audible in the street. The
+Baron, counting Marneffe for nothing, went upstairs to Lisbeth. An idea
+flashed through him such as the heart sends to the brain when it is on
+fire with jealousy. Marneffe's baseness was so well known to him, that
+he could imagine the most degrading connivance between husband and wife.
+
+"What has become of all the ladies and gentlemen?" said Marneffe,
+finding himself alone with Crevel.
+
+"When the sun goes to bed, the cocks and hens follow suit," said Crevel.
+"Madame Marneffe disappeared, and her adorers departed. Will you play a
+game of piquet?" added Crevel, who meant to remain.
+
+He too believed that the Brazilian was in the house.
+
+Monsieur Marneffe agreed. The Mayor was a match for the Baron. Simply
+by playing cards with the husband he could stay on indefinitely;
+and Marneffe, since the suppression of the public tables, was quite
+satisfied with the more limited opportunities of private play.
+
+Baron Hulot went quickly up to Lisbeth's apartment, but the door was
+locked, and the usual inquiries through the door took up time enough to
+enable the two light-handed and cunning women to arrange the scene of an
+attack of indigestion with the accessories of tea. Lisbeth was in such
+pain that Valerie was very much alarmed, and consequently hardly paid
+any heed to the Baron's furious entrance. Indisposition is one of the
+screens most often placed by women to ward off a quarrel. Hulot peeped
+about, here and there, but could see no spot in Cousin Betty's room
+where a Brazilian might lie hidden.
+
+"Your indigestion does honor to my wife's dinner, Lisbeth," said he,
+scrutinizing her, for Lisbeth was perfectly well, trying to imitate the
+hiccough of spasmodic indigestion as she drank her tea.
+
+"How lucky it is that dear Betty should be living under my roof!" said
+Madame Marneffe. "But for me, the poor thing would have died."
+
+"You look as if you only half believed it," added Lisbeth, turning to
+the Baron, "and that would be a shame----"
+
+"Why?" asked the Baron. "Do you know the purpose of my visit?"
+
+And he leered at the door of a dressing-closet from which the key had
+been withdrawn.
+
+"Are you talking Greek?" said Madame Marneffe, with an appealing look of
+misprized tenderness and devotedness.
+
+"But it is all through you, my dear cousin; yes, it is your doing that I
+am in such a state," said Lisbeth vehemently.
+
+This speech diverted the Baron's attention; he looked at the old maid
+with the greatest astonishment.
+
+"You know that I am devoted to you," said Lisbeth. "I am here, that says
+everything. I am wearing out the last shreds of my strength in watching
+over your interests, since they are one with our dear Valerie's. Her
+house costs one-tenth of what any other does that is kept on the same
+scale. But for me, Cousin, instead of two thousand francs a month, you
+would be obliged to spend three or four thousand."
+
+"I know all that," replied the Baron out of patience; "you are our
+protectress in many ways," he added, turning to Madame Marneffe and
+putting his arm round her neck.--"Is not she, my pretty sweet?"
+
+"On my honor," exclaimed Valerie, "I believe you are gone mad!"
+
+"Well, you cannot doubt my attachment," said Lisbeth. "But I am also
+very fond of my cousin Adeline, and I found her in tears. She has not
+seen you for a month. Now that is really too bad; you leave my poor
+Adeline without a sou. Your daughter Hortense almost died of it when
+she was told that it is thanks to your brother that we had any dinner at
+all. There was not even bread in your house this day.
+
+"Adeline is heroically resolved to keep her sufferings to herself. She
+said to me, 'I will do as you have done!' The speech went to my heart;
+and after dinner, as I thought of what my cousin had been in 1811,
+and of what she is in 1841--thirty years after--I had a violent
+indigestion.--I fancied I should get over it; but when I got home, I
+thought I was dying--"
+
+"You see, Valerie, to what my adoration of you has brought me! To
+crime--domestic crime!"
+
+"Oh! I was wise never to marry!" cried Lisbeth, with savage joy. "You
+are a kind, good man; Adeline is a perfect angel;--and this is the
+reward of her blind devotion."
+
+"An elderly angel!" said Madame Marneffe softly, as she looked half
+tenderly, half mockingly, at her Hector, who was gazing at her as an
+examining judge gazes at the accused.
+
+"My poor wife!" said Hulot. "For more than nine months I have given her
+no money, though I find it for you, Valerie; but at what a cost! No
+one else will ever love you so, and what torments you inflict on me in
+return!"
+
+"Torments?" she echoed. "Then what do you call happiness?"
+
+"I do not yet know on what terms you have been with this so-called
+cousin whom you never mentioned to me," said the Baron, paying no heed
+to Valerie's interjection. "But when he came in I felt as if a penknife
+had been stuck into my heart. Blinded I may be, but I am not blind. I
+could read his eyes, and yours. In short, from under that ape's eyelids
+there flashed sparks that he flung at you--and your eyes!--Oh! you have
+never looked at me so, never! As to this mystery, Valerie, it shall all
+be cleared up. You are the only woman who ever made me know the meaning
+of jealousy, so you need not be surprised by what I say.--But another
+mystery which has rent its cloud, and it seems to me infamous----"
+
+"Go on, go on," said Valerie.
+
+"It is that Crevel, that square lump of flesh and stupidity, is in love
+with you, and that you accept his attentions with so good a grace that
+the idiot flaunts his passion before everybody."
+
+"Only three! Can you discover no more?" asked Madame Marneffe.
+
+"There may be more!" retorted the Baron.
+
+"If Monsieur Crevel is in love with me, he is in his rights as a man
+after all; if I favored his passion, that would indeed be the act of
+a coquette, or of a woman who would leave much to be desired on your
+part.--Well, love me as you find me, or let me alone. If you restore
+me to freedom, neither you nor Monsieur Crevel will ever enter my doors
+again. But I will take up with my cousin, just to keep my hand in, in
+those charming habits you suppose me to indulge.--Good-bye, Monsieur le
+Baron Hulot."
+
+She rose, but the Baron took her by the arm and made her sit down
+again. The old man could not do without Valerie. She had become more
+imperatively indispensable to him than the necessaries of life; he
+preferred remaining in uncertainty to having any proof of Valerie's
+infidelity.
+
+"My dearest Valerie," said he, "do you not see how miserable I am? I
+only ask you to justify yourself. Give me sufficient reasons--"
+
+"Well, go downstairs and wait for me; for I suppose you do not wish to
+look on at the various ceremonies required by your cousin's state."
+
+Hulot slowly turned away.
+
+"You old profligate," cried Lisbeth, "you have not even asked me how
+your children are? What are you going to do for Adeline? I, at any rate,
+will take her my savings to-morrow."
+
+"You owe your wife white bread to eat at least," said Madame Marneffe,
+smiling.
+
+The Baron, without taking offence at Lisbeth's tone, as despotic as
+Josepha's, got out of the room, only too glad to escape so importunate a
+question.
+
+
+
+The door bolted once more, the Brazilian came out of the
+dressing-closet, where he had been waiting, and he appeared with his
+eyes full of tears, in a really pitiable condition. Montes had heard
+everything.
+
+"Henri, you must have ceased to love me, I know it!" said Madame
+Marneffe, hiding her face in her handkerchief and bursting into tears.
+
+It was the outcry of real affection. The cry of a woman's despair is
+so convincing that it wins the forgiveness that lurks at the bottom of
+every lover's heart--when she is young and pretty, and wears a gown so
+low that she could slip out at the top and stand in the garb of Eve.
+
+"But why, if you love me, do you not leave everything for my sake?"
+asked the Brazilian.
+
+This South American born, being logical, as men are who have lived the
+life of nature, at once resumed the conversation at the point where it
+had been broken off, putting his arm round Valerie's waist.
+
+"Why?" she repeated, gazing up at Henri, whom she subjugated at once by
+a look charged with passion, "why, my dear boy, I am married; we are in
+Paris, not in the savannah, the pampas, the backwoods of America.--My
+dear Henri, my first and only love, listen to me. That husband of mine,
+a second clerk in the War Office, is bent on being a head-clerk and
+officer of the Legion of Honor; can I help his being ambitious? Now for
+the very reason that made him leave us our liberty--nearly four years
+ago, do you remember, you bad boy?--he now abandons me to Monsieur
+Hulot. I cannot get rid of that dreadful official, who snorts like a
+grampus, who has fins in his nostrils, who is sixty-three years old, and
+who had grown ten years older by dint of trying to be young; who is so
+odious to me that the very day when Marneffe is promoted, and gets his
+Cross of the Legion of Honor----"
+
+"How much more will your husband get then?"
+
+"A thousand crowns."
+
+"I will pay him as much in an annuity," said Baron Montes. "We will
+leave Paris and go----"
+
+"Where?" said Valerie, with one of the pretty sneers by which a woman
+makes fun of a man she is sure of. "Paris is the only place where we can
+live happy. I care too much for your love to risk seeing it die out in
+a _tete-a-tete_ in the wilderness. Listen, Henri, you are the only man
+I care for in the whole world. Write that down clearly in your tiger's
+brain."
+
+For women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he
+is a lion with a will of iron.
+
+"Now, attend to me. Monsieur Marneffe has not five years to live; he is
+rotten to the marrow of his bones. He spends seven months of the twelve
+in swallowing drugs and decoctions; he lives wrapped in flannel; in
+short, as the doctor says, he lives under the scythe, and may be cut off
+at any moment. An illness that would not harm another man would be fatal
+to him; his blood is corrupt, his life undermined at the root. For five
+years I have never allowed him to kiss me--he is poisonous! Some day,
+and the day is not far off, I shall be a widow. Well, then, I--who have
+already had an offer from a man with sixty thousand francs a year, I who
+am as completely mistress of that man as I am of this lump of sugar--I
+swear to you that if you were as poor as Hulot and as foul as Marneffe,
+if you beat me even, still you are the only man I will have for a
+husband, the only man I love, or whose name I will ever bear. And I am
+ready to give any pledge of my love that you may require."
+
+"Well, then, to-night----"
+
+"But you, son of the South, my splendid jaguar, come expressly for me
+from the virgin forest of Brazil," said she, taking his hand and kissing
+and fondling it, "I have some consideration for the poor creature you
+mean to make your wife.--Shall I be your wife, Henri?"
+
+"Yes," said the Brazilian, overpowered by this unbridled volubility of
+passion. And he knelt at her feet.
+
+"Well, then, Henri," said Valerie, taking his two hands and looking
+straight into his eyes, "swear to me now, in the presence of Lisbeth, my
+best and only friend, my sister--that you will make me your wife at the
+end of my year's widowhood."
+
+"I swear it."
+
+"That is not enough. Swear by your mother's ashes and eternal salvation,
+swear by the Virgin Mary and by all your hopes as a Catholic!"
+
+Valerie knew that the Brazilian would keep that oath even if she should
+have fallen into the foulest social slough.
+
+The Baron solemnly swore it, his nose almost touching Valerie's white
+bosom, and his eyes spellbound. He was drunk, drunk as a man is when he
+sees the woman he loves once more, after a sea voyage of a hundred and
+twenty days.
+
+"Good. Now be quite easy. And in Madame Marneffe respect the future
+Baroness de Montejanos. You are not to spend a sou upon me; I forbid
+it.--Stay here in the outer room; sleep on the sofa. I myself will come
+and tell you when you may move.--We will breakfast to-morrow morning,
+and you can be leaving at about one o'clock as if you had come to call
+at noon. There is nothing to fear; the gate-keepers love me as much as
+if they were my father and mother.--Now I must go down and make tea."
+
+She beckoned to Lisbeth, who followed her out on to the landing. There
+Valerie whispered in the old maid's ear:
+
+"My darkie has come back too soon. I shall die if I cannot avenge you on
+Hortense!"
+
+"Make your mind easy, my pretty little devil!" said Lisbeth, kissing her
+forehead. "Love and Revenge on the same track will never lose the game.
+Hortense expects me to-morrow; she is in beggary. For a thousand francs
+you may have a thousand kisses from Wenceslas."
+
+On leaving Valerie, Hulot had gone down to the porter's lodge and made a
+sudden invasion there.
+
+"Madame Olivier?"
+
+On hearing the imperious tone of this address, and seeing the action
+by which the Baron emphasized it, Madame Olivier came out into the
+courtyard as far as the Baron led her.
+
+"You know that if any one can help your son to a connection by and by,
+it is I; it is owing to me that he is already third clerk in a notary's
+office, and is finishing his studies."
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Baron; and indeed, sir, you may depend on our
+gratitude. Not a day passes that I do not pray to God for Monsieur le
+Baron's happiness."
+
+"Not so many words, my good woman," said Hulot, "but deeds----"
+
+"What can I do, sir?" asked Madame Olivier.
+
+"A man came here to-night in a carriage. Do you know him?"
+
+Madame Olivier had recognized Montes well enough. How could she have
+forgotten him? In the Rue du Doyenne the Brazilian had always slipped a
+five-franc piece into her hand as he went out in the morning, rather too
+early. If the Baron had applied to Monsieur Olivier, he would perhaps
+have learned all he wanted to know. But Olivier was in bed. In the
+lower orders the woman is not merely the superior of the man--she almost
+always has the upper hand. Madame Olivier had long since made up her
+mind as to which side to take in case of a collision between her two
+benefactors; she regarded Madame Marneffe as the stronger power.
+
+"Do I know him?" she repeated. "No, indeed, no. I never saw him before!"
+
+"What! Did Madame Marneffe's cousin never go to see her when she was
+living in the Rue du Doyenne?"
+
+"Oh! Was it her cousin?" cried Madame Olivier. "I dare say he did come,
+but I did not know him again. Next time, sir, I will look at him----"
+
+"He will be coming out," said Hulot, hastily interrupting Madame
+Olivier.
+
+"He has left," said Madame Olivier, understanding the situation. "The
+carriage is gone."
+
+"Did you see him go?"
+
+"As plainly as I see you. He told his servant to drive to the Embassy."
+
+This audacious statement wrung a sigh of relief from the Baron; he took
+Madame Olivier's hand and squeezed it.
+
+"Thank you, my good Madame Olivier. But that is not all.--Monsieur
+Crevel?"
+
+"Monsieur Crevel? What can you mean, sir? I do not understand," said
+Madame Olivier.
+
+"Listen to me. He is Madame Marneffe's lover----"
+
+"Impossible, Monsieur le Baron; impossible," said she, clasping her
+hands.
+
+"He is Madame Marneffe's lover," the Baron repeated very positively.
+"How do they manage it? I don't know; but I mean to know, and you are to
+find out. If you can put me on the tracks of this intrigue, your son is
+a notary."
+
+"Don't you fret yourself so, Monsieur le Baron," said Madame Olivier.
+"Madame cares for you, and for no one but you; her maid knows that for
+true, and we say, between her and me, that you are the luckiest man in
+this world--for you know what madame is.--Just perfection!
+
+"She gets up at ten every morning; then she breakfasts. Well and good.
+After that she takes an hour or so to dress; that carries her on till
+two; then she goes for a walk in the Tuileries in the sight of all
+men, and she is always in by four to be ready for you. She lives like
+clockwork. She keeps no secrets from her maid, and Reine keeps nothing
+from me, you may be sure. Reine can't if she would--along of my son, for
+she is very sweet upon him. So, you see, if madame had any intimacy with
+Monsieur Crevel, we should be bound to know it."
+
+The Baron went upstairs again with a beaming countenance, convinced that
+he was the only man in the world to that shameless slut, as treacherous,
+but as lovely and as engaging as a siren.
+
+Crevel and Marneffe had begun a second rubber at piquet. Crevel was
+losing, as a man must who is not giving his thoughts to his game.
+Marneffe, who knew the cause of the Mayor's absence of mind, took
+unscrupulous advantage of it; he looked at the cards in reverse, and
+discarded accordingly; thus, knowing his adversary's hand, he played
+to beat him. The stake being a franc a point, he had already robbed the
+Mayor of thirty francs when Hulot came in.
+
+"Hey day!" said he, amazed to find no company. "Are you alone? Where is
+everybody gone?"
+
+"Your pleasant temper put them all to flight," said Crevel.
+
+"No, it was my wife's cousin," replied Marneffe. "The ladies and
+gentlemen supposed that Valerie and Henri might have something to say
+to each other after three years' separation, and they very discreetly
+retired.--If I had been in the room, I would have kept them; but then,
+as it happens, it would have been a mistake, for Lisbeth, who always
+comes down to make tea at half-past ten, was taken ill, and that upset
+everything--"
+
+"Then is Lisbeth really unwell?" asked Crevel in a fury.
+
+"So I was told," replied Marneffe, with the heartless indifference of a
+man to whom women have ceased to exist.
+
+The Mayor looked at the clock; and, calculating the time, the Baron
+seemed to have spent forty minutes in Lisbeth's rooms. Hector's jubilant
+expression seriously incriminated Valerie, Lisbeth, and himself.
+
+"I have just seen her; she is in great pain, poor soul!" said the Baron.
+
+"Then the sufferings of others must afford you much joy, my friend,"
+retorted Crevel with acrimony, "for you have come down with a face that
+is positively beaming. Is Lisbeth likely to die? For your daughter, they
+say, is her heiress. You are not like the same man. You left this room
+looking like the Moor of Venice, and you come back with the air
+of Saint-Preux!--I wish I could see Madame Marneffe's face at this
+minute----"
+
+"And pray, what do you mean by that?" said Marneffe to Crevel, packing
+his cards and laying them down in front of him.
+
+A light kindled in the eyes of this man, decrepit at the age of
+forty-seven; a faint color flushed his flaccid cold cheeks, his
+ill-furnished mouth was half open, and on his blackened lips a sort
+of foam gathered, thick, and as white as chalk. This fury in such a
+helpless wretch, whose life hung on a thread, and who in a duel would
+risk nothing while Crevel had everything to lose, frightened the Mayor.
+
+"I said," repeated Crevel, "that I should like to see Madame Marneffe's
+face. And with all the more reason since yours, at this moment, is most
+unpleasant. On my honor, you are horribly ugly, my dear Marneffe----"
+
+"Do you know that you are very uncivil?"
+
+"A man who has won thirty francs of me in forty-five minutes cannot look
+handsome in my eyes."
+
+"Ah, if you had but seen me seventeen years ago!" replied the clerk.
+
+"You were so good-looking?" asked Crevel.
+
+"That was my ruin; now, if I had been like you--I might be a mayor and a
+peer."
+
+"Yes," said Crevel, with a smile, "you have been too much in the wars;
+and of the two forms of metal that may be earned by worshiping the
+god of trade, you have taken the worse--the dross!" [This dialogue
+is garnished with puns for which it is difficult to find any English
+equivalent.] And Crevel roared with laughter. Though Marneffe could
+take offence if his honor were in peril, he always took these rough
+pleasantries in good part; they were the small coin of conversation
+between him and Crevel.
+
+"The daughters of Eve cost me dear, no doubt; but, by the powers! 'Short
+and sweet' is my motto."
+
+"'Long and happy' is more to my mind," returned Crevel.
+
+Madame Marneffe now came in; she saw that her husband was at cards with
+Crevel, and only the Baron in the room besides; a mere glance at the
+municipal dignitary showed her the frame of mind he was in, and her line
+of conduct was at once decided on.
+
+"Marneffe, my dear boy," said she, leaning on her husband's shoulder,
+and passing her pretty fingers through his dingy gray hair, but without
+succeeding in covering his bald head with it, "it is very late for you;
+you ought to be in bed. To-morrow, you know, you must dose yourself by
+the doctor's orders. Reine will give you your herb tea at seven. If you
+wish to live, give up your game."
+
+"We will pay it out up to five points," said Marneffe to Crevel.
+
+"Very good--I have scored two," replied the Mayor.
+
+"How long will it take you?"
+
+"Ten minutes," said Marneffe.
+
+"It is eleven o'clock," replied Valerie. "Really, Monsieur Crevel, one
+might fancy you meant to kill my husband. Make haste, at any rate."
+
+This double-barreled speech made Crevel and Hulot smile, and even
+Marneffe himself. Valerie sat down to talk to Hector.
+
+"You must leave, my dearest," said she in Hulot's ear. "Walk up and down
+the Rue Vanneau, and come in again when you see Crevel go out."
+
+"I would rather leave this room and go into your room through the
+dressing-room door. You could tell Reine to let me in."
+
+"Reine is upstairs attending to Lisbeth."
+
+"Well, suppose then I go up to Lisbeth's rooms?"
+
+Danger hemmed in Valerie on every side; she foresaw a discussion with
+Crevel, and could not allow Hulot to be in her room, where he could hear
+all that went on.--And the Brazilian was upstairs with Lisbeth.
+
+"Really, you men, when you have a notion in your head, you would burn
+a house down to get into it!" exclaimed she. "Lisbeth is not in a fit
+state to admit you.--Are you afraid of catching cold in the street? Be
+off there--or good-night."
+
+"Good evening, gentlemen," said the Baron to the other two.
+
+Hulot, when piqued in his old man's vanity, was bent on proving that he
+could play the young man by waiting for the happy hour in the open air,
+and he went away.
+
+Marneffe bid his wife good-night, taking her hands with a semblance of
+devotion. Valerie pressed her husband's hand with a significant glance,
+conveying:
+
+"Get rid of Crevel."
+
+"Good-night, Crevel," said Marneffe. "I hope you will not stay long with
+Valerie. Yes! I am jealous--a little late in the day, but it has me hard
+and fast. I shall come back to see if you are gone."
+
+"We have a little business to discuss, but I shall not stay long," said
+Crevel.
+
+"Speak low.--What is it?" said Valerie, raising her voice, and looking
+at him with a mingled expression of haughtiness and scorn.
+
+Crevel, as he met this arrogant stare, though he was doing Valerie
+important services, and had hoped to plume himself on the fact, was at
+once reduced to submission.
+
+"That Brazilian----" he began, but, overpowered by Valerie's fixed look
+of contempt, he broke off.
+
+"What of him?" said she.
+
+"That cousin--"
+
+"Is no cousin of mine," said she. "He is my cousin to the world and to
+Monsieur Marneffe. And if he were my lover, it would be no concern of
+yours. A tradesman who pays a woman to be revenged on another man, is,
+in my opinion, beneath the man who pays her for love of her. You did not
+care for me; all you saw in me was Monsieur Hulot's mistress. You bought
+me as a man buys a pistol to kill his adversary. I wanted bread--I
+accepted the bargain."
+
+"But you have not carried it out," said Crevel, the tradesman once more.
+
+"You want Baron Hulot to be told that you have robbed him of his
+mistress, to pay him out for having robbed you of Josepha? Nothing can
+more clearly prove your baseness. You say you love a woman, you treat
+her like a duchess, and then you want to degrade her? Well, my good
+fellow, and you are right. This woman is no match for Josepha. That
+young person has the courage of her disgrace, while I--I am a hypocrite,
+and deserve to be publicly whipped.--Alas! Josepha is protected by
+her cleverness and her wealth. I have nothing to shelter me but my
+reputation; I am still the worthy and blameless wife of a plain citizen;
+if you create a scandal, what is to become of me? If I were rich, then
+indeed; but my income is fifteen thousand francs a year at most, I
+suppose."
+
+"Much more than that," said Crevel. "I have doubled your savings in
+these last two months by investing in _Orleans_."
+
+"Well, a position in Paris begins with fifty thousand. And you certainly
+will not make up to me for the position I should surrender.--What was
+my aim? I want to see Marneffe a first-class clerk; he will then draw
+a salary of six thousand francs. He has been twenty-seven years in his
+office; within three years I shall have a right to a pension of fifteen
+hundred francs when he dies. You, to whom I have been entirely kind, to
+whom I have given your fill of happiness--you cannot wait!--And that is
+what men call love!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Though I began with an ulterior purpose," said Crevel, "I have become
+your poodle. You trample on my heart, you crush me, you stultify me, and
+I love you as I have never loved in my life. Valerie, I love you as much
+as I love my Celestine. I am capable of anything for your sake.--Listen,
+instead of coming twice a week to the Rue du Dauphin, come three times."
+
+"Is that all! You are quite young again, my dear boy!"
+
+"Only let me pack off Hulot, humiliate him, rid you of him," said
+Crevel, not heeding her impertinence! "Have nothing to say to the
+Brazilian, be mine alone; you shall not repent of it. To begin with, I
+will give you eight thousand francs a year, secured by bond, but only as
+an annuity; I will not give you the capital till the end of five years'
+constancy--"
+
+"Always a bargain! A tradesman can never learn to give. You want to stop
+for refreshments on the road of love--in the form of Government bonds!
+Bah! Shopman, pomatum seller! you put a price on everything!--Hector
+told me that the Duc d'Herouville gave Josepha a bond for thirty
+thousand francs a year in a packet of sugar almonds! And I am worth six
+of Josepha.
+
+"Oh! to be loved!" she went on, twisting her ringlets round her fingers,
+and looking at herself in the glass. "Henri loves me. He would smash
+you like a fly if I winked at him! Hulot loves me; he leaves his wife in
+beggary! As for you, go my good man, be the worthy father of a family.
+You have three hundred thousand francs over and above your fortune,
+only to amuse yourself, a hoard, in fact, and you think of nothing but
+increasing it--"
+
+"For you, Valerie, since I offer you half," said he, falling on his
+knees.
+
+"What, still here!" cried Marneffe, hideous in his dressing-gown. "What
+are you about?"
+
+"He is begging my pardon, my dear, for an insulting proposal he has
+dared to make me. Unable to obtain my consent, my gentleman proposed to
+pay me----"
+
+Crevel only longed to vanish into the cellar, through a trap, as is done
+on the stage.
+
+"Get up, Crevel," said Marneffe, laughing, "you are ridiculous. I can
+see by Valerie's manner that my honor is in no danger."
+
+"Go to bed and sleep in peace," said Madame Marneffe.
+
+"Isn't she clever?" thought Crevel. "She has saved me. She is adorable!"
+
+As Marneffe disappeared, the Mayor took Valerie's hands and kissed them,
+leaving on them the traces of tears.
+
+"It shall all stand in your name," he said.
+
+"That is true love," she whispered in his ear. "Well, love for love.
+Hulot is below, in the street. The poor old thing is waiting to return
+when I place a candle in one of the windows of my bedroom. I give you
+leave to tell him that you are the man I love; he will refuse to believe
+you; take him to the Rue du Dauphin, give him every proof, crush him; I
+allow it--I order it! I am tired of that old seal; he bores me to death.
+Keep your man all night in the Rue du Dauphin, grill him over a slow
+fire, be revenged for the loss of Josepha. Hulot may die of it perhaps,
+but we shall save his wife and children from utter ruin. Madame Hulot is
+working for her bread--"
+
+"Oh! poor woman! On my word, it is quite shocking!" exclaimed Crevel,
+his natural feeling coming to the top.
+
+"If you love me, Celestin," said she in Crevel's ear, which she
+touched with her lips, "keep him there, or I am done for. Marneffe is
+suspicious. Hector has a key of the outer gate, and will certainly come
+back."
+
+Crevel clasped Madame Marneffe to his heart, and went away in the
+seventh heaven of delight. Valerie fondly escorted him to the landing,
+and then followed him, like a woman magnetized, down the stairs to the
+very bottom.
+
+"My Valerie, go back, do not compromise yourself before the porters.--Go
+back; my life, my treasure, all is yours.--Go in, my duchess!"
+
+"Madame Olivier," Valerie called gently when the gate was closed.
+
+"Why, madame! You here?" said the woman in bewilderment.
+
+"Bolt the gates at top and bottom, and let no one in."
+
+"Very good, madame."
+
+Having barred the gate, Madame Olivier told of the bribe that the War
+Office chief had tried to offer her.
+
+"You behaved like an angel, my dear Olivier; we shall talk of that
+to-morrow."
+
+Valerie flew like an arrow to the third floor, tapped three times
+at Lisbeth's door, and then went down to her room, where she gave
+instructions to Mademoiselle Reine, for a woman must make the most of
+the opportunity when a Montes arrives from Brazil.
+
+
+
+"By Heaven! only a woman of the world is capable of such love," said
+Crevel to himself. "How she came down those stairs, lighting them
+up with her eyes, following me! Never did Josepha--Josepha! she is
+cag-mag!" cried the ex-bagman. "What have I said? _Cag-mag_--why, I
+might have let the word slip out at the Tuileries! I can never do
+any good unless Valerie educates me--and I was so bent on being a
+gentleman.--What a woman she is! She upsets me like a fit of the colic
+when she looks at me coldly. What grace! What wit! Never did Josepha
+move me so. And what perfection when you come to know her!--Ha, there is
+my man!"
+
+He perceived in the gloom of the Rue de Babylone the tall, somewhat
+stooping figure of Hulot, stealing along close to a boarding, and he
+went straight up to him.
+
+"Good-morning, Baron, for it is past midnight, my dear fellow. What
+the devil are your doing here? You are airing yourself under a pleasant
+drizzle. That is not wholesome at our time of life. Will you let me give
+you a little piece of advice? Let each of us go home; for, between you
+and me, you will not see the candle in the window."
+
+The last words made the Baron suddenly aware that he was sixty-three,
+and that his cloak was wet.
+
+"Who on earth told you--?" he began.
+
+"Valerie, of course, _our_ Valerie, who means henceforth to be _my_
+Valerie. We are even now, Baron; we will play off the tie when you
+please. You have nothing to complain of; you know, I always stipulated
+for the right of taking my revenge; it took you three months to rob me
+of Josepha; I took Valerie from you in--We will say no more about that.
+Now I mean to have her all to myself. But we can be very good friends,
+all the same."
+
+"Crevel, no jesting," said Hulot, in a voice choked by rage. "It is a
+matter of life and death."
+
+"Bless me, is that how you take it!--Baron, do you not remember what you
+said to me the day of Hortense's marriage: 'Can two old gaffers like us
+quarrel over a petticoat? It is too low, too common. We are _Regence_,
+we agreed, Pompadour, eighteenth century, quite the Marechal Richelieu,
+Louis XV., nay, and I may say, _Liaisons dangereuses_!"
+
+Crevel might have gone on with his string of literary allusions; the
+Baron heard him as a deaf man listens when he is but half deaf. But,
+seeing in the gaslight the ghastly pallor of his face, the triumphant
+Mayor stopped short. This was, indeed, a thunderbolt after Madame
+Olivier's asservations and Valerie's parting glance.
+
+"Good God! And there are so many other women in Paris!" he said at last.
+
+"That is what I said to you when you took Josepha," said Crevel.
+
+"Look here, Crevel, it is impossible. Give me some proof.--Have you a
+key, as I have, to let yourself in?"
+
+And having reached the house, the Baron put the key into the lock; but
+the gate was immovable; he tried in vain to open it.
+
+"Do not make a noise in the streets at night," said Crevel coolly. "I
+tell you, Baron, I have far better proof than you can show."
+
+"Proofs! give me proof!" cried the Baron, almost crazy with
+exasperation.
+
+"Come, and you shall have them," said Crevel.
+
+And in obedience to Valerie's instructions, he led the Baron away
+towards the quay, down the Rue Hillerin-Bertin. The unhappy Baron walked
+on, as a merchant walks on the day before he stops payment; he was lost
+in conjectures as to the reasons of the depravity buried in the depths
+of Valerie's heart, and still believed himself the victim of some
+practical joke. As they crossed the Pont Royal, life seemed to him
+so blank, so utterly a void, and so out of joint from his financial
+difficulties, that he was within an ace of yielding to the evil
+prompting that bid him fling Crevel into the river and throw himself in
+after.
+
+On reaching the Rue du Dauphin, which had not yet been widened, Crevel
+stopped before a door in a wall. It opened into a long corridor paved
+with black-and-white marble, and serving as an entrance-hall, at the end
+of which there was a flight of stairs and a doorkeeper's lodge, lighted
+from an inner courtyard, as is often the case in Paris. This courtyard,
+which was shared with another house, was oddly divided into two unequal
+portions. Crevel's little house, for he owned it, had additional
+rooms with a glass skylight, built out on to the adjoining plot, under
+conditions that it should have no story added above the ground floor, so
+that the structure was entirely hidden by the lodge and the projecting
+mass of the staircase.
+
+This back building had long served as a store-room, backshop, and
+kitchen to one of the shops facing the street. Crevel had cut off
+these three rooms from the rest of the ground floor, and Grindot had
+transformed them into an inexpensive private residence. There were two
+ways in--from the front, through the shop of a furniture-dealer, to whom
+Crevel let it at a low price, and only from month to month, so as to be
+able to get rid of him in case of his telling tales, and also through a
+door in the wall of the passage, so ingeniously hidden as to be almost
+invisible. The little apartment, comprising a dining-room, drawing-room,
+and bedroom, all lighted from above, and standing partly on Crevel's
+ground and partly on his neighbor's, was very difficult to find. With
+the exception of the second-hand furniture-dealer, the tenants knew
+nothing of the existence of this little paradise.
+
+The doorkeeper, paid to keep Crevel's secrets, was a capital cook. So
+Monsieur le Maire could go in and out of his inexpensive retreat at any
+hour of the night without any fear of being spied upon. By day, a lady,
+dressed as Paris women dress to go shopping, and having a key, ran
+no risk in coming to Crevel's lodgings; she would stop to look at the
+cheapened goods, ask the price, go into the shop, and come out again,
+without exciting the smallest suspicion if any one should happen to meet
+her.
+
+As soon as Crevel had lighted the candles in the sitting-room, the Baron
+was surprised at the elegance and refinement it displayed. The perfumer
+had given the architect a free hand, and Grindot had done himself
+credit by fittings in the Pompadour style, which had in fact cost sixty
+thousand francs.
+
+"What I want," said Crevel to Grindot, "is that a duchess, if I brought
+one there, should be surprised at it."
+
+He wanted to have a perfect Parisian Eden for his Eve, his "real lady,"
+his Valerie, his duchess.
+
+"There are two beds," said Crevel to Hulot, showing him a sofa that
+could be made wide enough by pulling out a drawer. "This is one, the
+other is in the bedroom. We can both spend the night here."
+
+"Proof!" was all the Baron could say.
+
+Crevel took a flat candlestick and led Hulot into the adjoining room,
+where he saw, on a sofa, a superb dressing-gown belonging to Valerie,
+which he had seen her wear in the Rue Vanneau, to display it before
+wearing it in Crevel's little apartment. The Mayor pressed the spring of
+a little writing-table of inlaid work, known as a _bonheur-du-jour_, and
+took out of it a letter that he handed to the Baron.
+
+"Read that," said he.
+
+The Councillor read these words written in pencil:
+
+  "I have waited in vain, you old wretch! A woman of my quality does
+  not expect to be kept waiting by a retired perfumer. There was no
+  dinner ordered--no cigarettes. I will make you pay for this!"
+
+"Well, is that her writing?"
+
+"Good God!" gasped Hulot, sitting down in dismay. "I see all the things
+she uses--her caps, her slippers. Why, how long since--?"
+
+Crevel nodded that he understood, and took a packet of bills out of the
+little inlaid cabinet.
+
+"You can see, old man. I paid the decorators in December, 1838. In
+October, two months before, this charming little place was first used."
+
+Hulot bent his head.
+
+"How the devil do you manage it? I know how she spends every hour of her
+day."
+
+"How about her walk in the Tuileries?" said Crevel, rubbing his hands in
+triumph.
+
+"What then?" said Hulot, mystified.
+
+"Your lady love comes to the Tuileries, she is supposed to be airing
+herself from one till four. But, hop, skip, and jump, and she is here.
+You know your Moliere? Well, Baron, there is nothing imaginary in your
+title."
+
+Hulot, left without a shred of doubt, sat sunk in ominous silence.
+Catastrophes lead intelligent and strong-minded men to be philosophical.
+The Baron, morally, was at this moment like a man trying to find his
+way by night through a forest. This gloomy taciturnity and the change in
+that dejected countenance made Crevel very uneasy, for he did not wish
+the death of his colleague.
+
+"As I said, old fellow, we are now even; let us play for the odd. Will
+you play off the tie by hook and by crook? Come!"
+
+"Why," said Hulot, talking to himself--"why is it that out of ten pretty
+women at least seven are false?"
+
+But the Baron was too much upset to answer his own question. Beauty
+is the greatest of human gifts for power. Every power that has no
+counterpoise, no autocratic control, leads to abuses and folly.
+Despotism is the madness of power; in women the despot is caprice.
+
+"You have nothing to complain of, my good friend; you have a beautiful
+wife, and she is virtuous."
+
+"I deserve my fate," said Hulot. "I have undervalued my wife and
+made her miserable, and she is an angel! Oh, my poor Adeline! you are
+avenged! She suffers in solitude and silence, and she is worthy of my
+love; I ought--for she is still charming, fair and girlish even--But was
+there ever a woman known more base, more ignoble, more villainous than
+this Valerie?"
+
+"She is a good-for-nothing slut," said Crevel, "a hussy that deserves
+whipping on the Place du Chatelet. But, my dear Canillac, though we are
+such blades, so Marechal de Richelieu, Louis XV., Pompadour, Madame du
+Barry, gay dogs, and everything that is most eighteenth century, there
+is no longer a lieutenant of police."
+
+"How can we make them love us?" Hulot wondered to himself without
+heeding Crevel.
+
+"It is sheer folly in us to expect to be loved, my dear fellow," said
+Crevel. "We can only be endured; for Madame Marneffe is a hundred times
+more profligate than Josepha."
+
+"And avaricious! she costs me a hundred and ninety-two thousand francs a
+year!" cried Hulot.
+
+"And how many centimes!" sneered Crevel, with the insolence of a
+financier who scorns so small a sum.
+
+"You do not love her, that is very evident," said the Baron dolefully.
+
+"I have had enough of her," replied Crevel, "for she has had more than
+three hundred thousand francs of mine!"
+
+"Where is it? Where does it all go?" said the Baron, clasping his head
+in his hands.
+
+"If we had come to an agreement, like the simple young men who combine
+to maintain a twopenny baggage, she would have cost us less."
+
+"That is an idea"! replied the Baron. "But she would still be cheating
+us; for, my burly friend, what do you say to this Brazilian?"
+
+"Ay, old sly fox, you are right, we are swindled like--like
+shareholders!" said Crevel. "All such women are an unlimited liability,
+and we the sleeping partners."
+
+"Then it was she who told you about the candle in the window?"
+
+"My good man," replied Crevel, striking an attitude, "she has fooled us
+both. Valerie is a--She told me to keep you here.--Now I see it all. She
+has got her Brazilian!--Oh, I have done with her, for if you hold her
+hands, she would find a way to cheat you with her feet! There! she is a
+minx, a jade!"
+
+"She is lower than a prostitute," said the Baron. "Josepha and Jenny
+Cadine were in their rights when they were false to us; they make a
+trade of their charms."
+
+"But she, who affects the saint--the prude!" said Crevel. "I tell you
+what, Hulot, do you go back to your wife; your money matters are not
+looking well; I have heard talk of certain notes of hand given to a low
+usurer whose special line of business is lending to these sluts, a man
+named Vauvinet. For my part, I am cured of your 'real ladies.' And,
+after all, at our time of life what do we want of these swindling
+hussies, who, to be honest, cannot help playing us false? You have white
+hair and false teeth; I am of the shape of Silenus. I shall go in for
+saving. Money never deceives one. Though the Treasury is indeed open
+to all the world twice a year, it pays you interest, and this woman
+swallows it. With you, my worthy friend, as Gubetta, as my partner in
+the concern, I might have resigned myself to a shady bargain--no, a
+philosophical calm. But with a Brazilian who has possibly smuggled in
+some doubtful colonial produce----"
+
+"Woman is an inexplicable creature!" said Hulot.
+
+"I can explain her," said Crevel. "We are old; the Brazilian is young
+and handsome."
+
+"Yes; that, I own, is true," said Hulot; "we are older than we
+were. But, my dear fellow, how is one to do without these pretty
+creatures--seeing them undress, twist up their hair, smile cunningly
+through their fingers as they screw up their curl-papers, put on all
+their airs and graces, tell all their lies, declare that we don't love
+them when we are worried with business; and they cheer us in spite of
+everything."
+
+"Yes, by the Power! It is the only pleasure in life!" cried Crevel.
+"When a saucy little mug smiles at you and says, 'My old dear, you don't
+know how nice you are! I am not like other women, I suppose, who go
+crazy over mere boys with goats' beards, smelling of smoke, and as
+coarse as serving-men! For in their youth they are so insolent!--They
+come in and they bid you good-morning, and out they go.--I, whom you
+think such a flirt, I prefer a man of fifty to these brats. A man who
+will stick by me, who is devoted, who knows a woman is not to be picked
+up every day, and appreciates us.--That is what I love you for, you
+old monster!'--and they fill up these avowals with little pettings and
+prettinesses and--Faugh! they are as false as the bills on the Hotel de
+Ville."
+
+"A lie is sometimes better than the truth," said Hulot, remembering
+sundry bewitching scenes called up by Crevel, who mimicked Valerie.
+"They are obliged to act upon their lies, to sew spangles on their stage
+frocks--"
+
+"And they are ours, after all, the lying jades!" said Crevel coarsely.
+
+"Valerie is a witch," said the Baron. "She can turn an old man into a
+young one."
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Crevel, "she is an eel that wriggles through your
+hands; but the prettiest eel, as white and sweet as sugar, as amusing as
+Arnal--and ingenious!"
+
+"Yes, she is full of fun," said Hulot, who had now quite forgotten his
+wife.
+
+The colleagues went to bed the best friends in the world, reminding each
+other of Valerie's perfections, the tones of her voice, her kittenish
+way, her movements, her fun, her sallies of wit, and of affections; for
+she was an artist in love, and had charming impulses, as tenors may sing
+a scena better one day than another. And they fell asleep, cradled in
+tempting and diabolical visions lighted by the fires of hell.
+
+At nine o'clock next morning Hulot went off to the War Office, Crevel
+had business out of town; they left the house together, and Crevel held
+out his hand to the Baron, saying:
+
+"To show that there is no ill-feeling. For we, neither of us, will have
+anything more to say to Madame Marneffe?"
+
+"Oh, this is the end of everything," replied Hulot with a sort of
+horror.
+
+
+
+By half-past ten Crevel was mounting the stairs, four at a time, up to
+Madame Marneffe's apartment. He found the infamous wretch, the adorable
+enchantress, in the most becoming morning wrapper, enjoying an elegant
+little breakfast in the society of the Baron Montes de Montejanos and
+Lisbeth. Though the sight of the Brazilian gave him a shock, Crevel
+begged Madame Marneffe to grant him two minutes' speech with her.
+Valerie led Crevel into the drawing-room.
+
+"Valerie, my angel," said the amorous Mayor, "Monsieur Marneffe cannot
+have long to live. If you will be faithful to me, when he dies we will
+be married. Think it over. I have rid you of Hulot.--So just consider
+whether this Brazilian is to compare with a Mayor of Paris, a man who,
+for your sake, will make his way to the highest dignities, and who can
+already offer you eighty-odd thousand francs a year."
+
+"I will think it over," said she. "You will see me in the Rue du Dauphin
+at two o'clock, and we can discuss the matter. But be a good boy--and do
+not forget the bond you promised to transfer to me."
+
+She returned to the dining-room, followed by Crevel, who flattered
+himself that he had hit on a plan for keeping Valerie to himself; but
+there he found Baron Hulot, who, during this short colloquy, had also
+arrived with the same end in view. He, like Crevel, begged for a brief
+interview. Madame Marneffe again rose to go to the drawing-room, with a
+smile at the Brazilian that seemed to say, "What fools they are! Cannot
+they see you?"
+
+"Valerie," said the official, "my child, that cousin of yours is an
+American cousin--"
+
+"Oh, that is enough!" she cried, interrupting the Baron. "Marneffe never
+has been, and never will be, never can be my husband! The first, the
+only man I ever loved, has come back quite unexpectedly. It is no fault
+of mine! But look at Henri and look at yourself. Then ask yourself
+whether a woman, and a woman in love, can hesitate for a moment. My dear
+fellow, I am not a kept mistress. From this day forth I refuse to play
+the part of Susannah between the two Elders. If you really care for me,
+you and Crevel, you will be our friends; but all else is at an end, for
+I am six-and-twenty, and henceforth I mean to be a saint, an admirable
+and worthy wife--as yours is."
+
+"Is that what you have to say?" answered Hulot. "Is this the way
+you receive me when I come like a Pope with my hands full of
+Indulgences?--Well, your husband will never be a first-class clerk, nor
+be promoted in the Legion of Honor."
+
+"That remains to be seen," said Madame Marneffe, with a meaning look at
+Hulot.
+
+"Well, well, no temper," said Hulot in despair. "I will call this
+evening, and we will come to an understanding."
+
+"In Lisbeth's rooms then."
+
+"Very good--at Lisbeth's," said the old dotard.
+
+Hulot and Crevel went downstairs together without speaking a word till
+they were in the street; but outside on the sidewalk they looked at each
+other with a dreary laugh.
+
+"We are a couple of old fools," said Crevel.
+
+"I have got rid of them," said Madame Marneffe to Lisbeth, as she sat
+down once more. "I never loved and I never shall love any man but my
+Jaguar," she added, smiling at Henri Montes. "Lisbeth, my dear, you
+don't know. Henri has forgiven me the infamy to which I was reduced by
+poverty."
+
+"It was my own fault," said the Brazilian. "I ought to have sent you a
+hundred thousand francs."
+
+"Poor boy!" said Valerie; "I might have worked for my living, but my
+fingers were not made for that--ask Lisbeth."
+
+The Brazilian went away the happiest man in Paris.
+
+At noon Valerie and Lisbeth were chatting in the splendid bedroom where
+this dangerous woman was giving to her dress those finishing touches
+which a lady alone can give. The doors were bolted, the curtains drawn
+over them, and Valerie related in every detail all the events of the
+evening, the night, the morning.
+
+"What do you think of it all, my darling?" she said to Lisbeth in
+conclusion. "Which shall I be when the time comes--Madame Crevel, or
+Madame Montes?"
+
+"Crevel will not last more than ten years, such a profligate as he is,"
+replied Lisbeth. "Montes is young. Crevel will leave you about thirty
+thousand francs a year. Let Montes wait; he will be happy enough as
+Benjamin. And so, by the time you are three-and-thirty, if you take care
+of your looks, you may marry your Brazilian and make a fine show with
+sixty thousand francs a year of your own--especially under the wing of a
+Marechale."
+
+"Yes, but Montes is a Brazilian; he will never make his mark," observed
+Valerie.
+
+"We live in the day of railways," said Lisbeth, "when foreigners rise to
+high positions in France."
+
+"We shall see," replied Valerie, "when Marneffe is dead. He has not much
+longer to suffer."
+
+"These attacks that return so often are a sort of physical remorse,"
+said Lisbeth. "Well, I am off to see Hortense."
+
+"Yes--go, my angel!" replied Valerie. "And bring me my artist.--Three
+years, and I have not gained an inch of ground! It is a disgrace to both
+of us!--Wenceslas and Henri--these are my two passions--one for love,
+the other for fancy."
+
+"You are lovely this morning," said Lisbeth, putting her arm round
+Valerie's waist and kissing her forehead. "I enjoy all your pleasures,
+your good fortune, your dresses--I never really lived till the day when
+we became sisters."
+
+"Wait a moment, my tiger-cat!" cried Valerie, laughing; "your shawl is
+crooked. You cannot put a shawl on yet in spite of my lessons for three
+years--and you want to be Madame la Marechale Hulot!"
+
+Shod in prunella boots, over gray silk stockings, in a gown of handsome
+corded silk, her hair in smooth bands under a very pretty black velvet
+bonnet, lined with yellow satin, Lisbeth made her way to the Rue
+Saint-Dominique by the Boulevard des Invalides, wondering whether sheer
+dejection would at last break down Hortense's brave spirit, and whether
+Sarmatian instability, taken at a moment when, with such a character,
+everything is possible, would be too much for Steinbock's constancy.
+
+
+
+Hortense and Wenceslas had the ground floor of a house situated at the
+corner of the Rue Saint-Dominique and the Esplanade des Invalides.
+These rooms, once in harmony with the honeymoon, now had that half-new,
+half-faded look that may be called the autumnal aspect of furniture.
+Newly married folks are as lavish and wasteful, without knowing it or
+intending it, of everything about them as they are of their affection.
+Thinking only of themselves, they reck little of the future, which, at a
+later time, weighs on the mother of a family.
+
+Lisbeth found Hortense just as she had finished dressing a baby
+Wenceslas, who had been carried into the garden.
+
+"Good-morning, Betty," said Hortense, opening the door herself to her
+cousin. The cook was gone out, and the house-servant, who was also the
+nurse, was doing some washing.
+
+"Good-morning, dear child," replied Lisbeth, kissing her. "Is Wenceslas
+in the studio?" she added in a whisper.
+
+"No; he is in the drawing-room talking to Stidmann and Chanor."
+
+"Can we be alone?" asked Lisbeth.
+
+"Come into my room."
+
+In this room, the hangings of pink-flowered chintz with green leaves on
+a white ground, constantly exposed to the sun, were much faded, as was
+the carpet. The muslin curtains had not been washed for many a day. The
+smell of tobacco hung about the room; for Wenceslas, now an artist of
+repute, and born a fine gentleman, left his cigar-ash on the arms of the
+chairs and the prettiest pieces of furniture, as a man does to whom love
+allows everything--a man rich enough to scorn vulgar carefulness.
+
+"Now, then, let us talk over your affairs," said Lisbeth, seeing her
+pretty cousin silent in the armchair into which she had dropped. "But
+what ails you? You look rather pale, my dear."
+
+"Two articles have just come out in which my poor Wenceslas is pulled
+to pieces; I have read them, but I have hidden them from him, for they
+would completely depress him. The marble statue of Marshal Montcornet
+is pronounced utterly bad. The bas-reliefs are allowed to pass muster,
+simply to allow of the most perfidious praise of his talent as a
+decorative artist, and to give the greater emphasis to the statement
+that serious art is quite out of his reach! Stidmann, whom I besought
+to tell me the truth, broke my heart by confessing that his own opinion
+agreed with that of every other artist, of the critics, and the public.
+He said to me in the garden before breakfast, 'If Wenceslas cannot
+exhibit a masterpiece next season, he must give up heroic sculpture
+and be content to execute idyllic subjects, small figures, pieces of
+jewelry, and high-class goldsmiths' work!' This verdict is dreadful to
+me, for Wenceslas, I know, will never accept it; he feels he has so many
+fine ideas."
+
+"Ideas will not pay the tradesman's bills," remarked Lisbeth. "I was
+always telling him so--nothing but money. Money is only to be had for
+work done--things that ordinary folks like well enough to buy them. When
+an artist has to live and keep a family, he had far better have a design
+for a candlestick on his counter, or for a fender or a table, than for
+groups or statues. Everybody must have such things, while he may wait
+months for the admirer of the group--and for his money---"
+
+"You are right, my good Lisbeth. Tell him all that; I have not the
+courage.--Besides, as he was saying to Stidmann, if he goes back to
+ornamental work and small sculpture, he must give up all hope of the
+Institute and grand works of art, and we should not get the three
+hundred thousand francs' worth of work promised at Versailles and by the
+City of Paris and the Ministers. That is what we are robbed of by those
+dreadful articles, written by rivals who want to step into our shoes."
+
+"And that is not what you dreamed of, poor little puss!" said Lisbeth,
+kissing Hortense on the brow. "You expected to find a gentleman, a
+leader of Art, the chief of all living sculptors.--But that is poetry,
+you see, a dream requiring fifty thousand francs a year, and you have
+only two thousand four hundred--so long as I live. After my death three
+thousand."
+
+A few tears rose to Hortense's eyes, and Lisbeth drank them with her
+eyes as a cat laps milk.
+
+This is the story of their honeymoon--the tale will perhaps not be lost
+on some artists.
+
+Intellectual work, labor in the upper regions of mental effort, is one
+of the grandest achievements of man. That which deserves real glory
+in Art--for by Art we must understand every creation of the mind--is
+courage above all things--a sort of courage of which the vulgar have no
+conception, and which has never perhaps been described till now.
+
+Driven by the dreadful stress of poverty, goaded by Lisbeth, and kept
+by her in blinders, as a horse is, to hinder it from seeing to the right
+and left of its road, lashed on by that hard woman, the personification
+of Necessity, a sort of deputy Fate, Wenceslas, a born poet and dreamer,
+had gone on from conception to execution, and overleaped, without
+sounding it, the gulf that divides these two hemispheres of Art. To
+muse, to dream, to conceive of fine works, is a delightful occupation.
+It is like smoking a magic cigar or leading the life of a courtesan who
+follows her own fancy. The work then floats in all the grace of infancy,
+in the mad joy of conception, with the fragrant beauty of a flower, and
+the aromatic juices of a fruit enjoyed in anticipation.
+
+The man who can sketch his purpose beforehand in words is regarded as
+a wonder, and every artist and writer possesses that faculty. But
+gestation, fruition, the laborious rearing of the offspring, putting it
+to bed every night full fed with milk, embracing it anew every morning
+with the inexhaustible affection of a mother's heart, licking it clean,
+dressing it a hundred times in the richest garb only to be instantly
+destroyed; then never to be cast down at the convulsions of this
+headlong life till the living masterpiece is perfected which in
+sculpture speaks to every eye, in literature to every intellect, in
+painting to every memory, in music to every heart!--This is the task of
+execution. The hand must be ready at every instant to come forward and
+obey the brain. But the brain has no more a creative power at command
+than love has a perennial spring.
+
+The habit of creativeness, the indefatigable love of motherhood which
+makes a mother--that miracle of nature which Raphael so perfectly
+understood--the maternity of the brain, in short, which is so difficult
+to develop, is lost with prodigious ease. Inspiration is the opportunity
+of genius. She does not indeed dance on the razor's edge, she is in the
+air and flies away with the suspicious swiftness of a crow; she wears
+no scarf by which the poet can clutch her; her hair is a flame; she
+vanishes like the lovely rose and white flamingo, the sportsman's
+despair. And work, again, is a weariful struggle, alike dreaded and
+delighted in by these lofty and powerful natures who are often broken
+by it. A great poet of our day has said in speaking of this overwhelming
+labor, "I sit down to it in despair, but I leave it with regret." Be it
+known to all who are ignorant! If the artist does not throw himself into
+his work as Curtius sprang into the gulf, as a soldier leads a forlorn
+hope without a moment's thought, and if when he is in the crater he does
+not dig on as a miner does when the earth has fallen in on him; if he
+contemplates the difficulties before him instead of conquering them
+one by one, like the lovers in fairy tales, who to win their princesses
+overcome ever new enchantments, the work remains incomplete; it perishes
+in the studio where creativeness becomes impossible, and the artist
+looks on at the suicide of his own talent.
+
+Rossini, a brother genius to Raphael, is a striking instance in his
+poverty-stricken youth, compared with his latter years of opulence. This
+is the reason why the same prize, the same triumph, the same bays are
+awarded to great poets and to great generals.
+
+Wenceslas, by nature a dreamer, had expended so much energy in
+production, in study, and in work under Lisbeth's despotic rule, that
+love and happiness resulted in reaction. His real character reappeared,
+the weakness, recklessness, and indolence of the Sarmatian returned to
+nestle in the comfortable corners of his soul, whence the schoolmaster's
+rod had routed them.
+
+For the first few months the artist adored his wife. Hortense and
+Wenceslas abandoned themselves to the happy childishness of a legitimate
+and unbounded passion. Hortense was the first to release her husband
+from his labors, proud to triumph over her rival, his Art. And, indeed,
+a woman's caresses scare away the Muse, and break down the sturdy,
+brutal resolution of the worker.
+
+Six or seven months slipped by, and the artist's fingers had forgotten
+the use of the modeling tool. When the need for work began to be
+felt, when the Prince de Wissembourg, president of the committee of
+subscribers, asked to see the statue, Wenceslas spoke the inevitable
+byword of the idler, "I am just going to work on it," and he lulled his
+dear Hortense with fallacious promises and the magnificent schemes of
+the artist as he smokes. Hortense loved her poet more than ever; she
+dreamed of a sublime statue of Marshal Montcornet. Montcornet would
+be the embodied ideal of bravery, the type of the cavalry officer, of
+courage _a la Murat_. Yes, yes; at the mere sight of that statue all the
+Emperor's victories were to seem a foregone conclusion. And then such
+workmanship! The pencil was accommodating and answered to the word.
+
+By way of a statue the result was a delightful little Wenceslas.
+
+When the progress of affairs required that he should go to the studio
+at le Gros-Caillou to mould the clay and set up the life-size model,
+Steinbock found one day that the Prince's clock required his presence
+in the workshop of Florent and Chanor, where the figures were being
+finished; or, again, the light was gray and dull; to-day he had
+business to do, to-morrow they had a family dinner, to say nothing of
+indispositions of mind and body, and the days when he stayed at home to
+toy with his adored wife.
+
+Marshal the Prince de Wissembourg was obliged to be angry to get the
+clay model finished; he declared that he must put the work into other
+hands. It was only by dint of endless complaints and much strong
+language that the committee of subscribers succeeded in seeing the
+plaster-cast. Day after day Steinbock came home, evidently tired,
+complaining of this "hodman's work" and his own physical weakness.
+During that first year the household felt no pinch; the Countess
+Steinbock, desperately in love with her husband cursed the War Minister.
+She went to see him; she told him that great works of art were not to be
+manufactured like cannon; and that the State--like Louis XIV., Francis
+I., and Leo X.--ought to be at the beck and call of genius. Poor
+Hortense, believing she held a Phidias in her embrace, had the sort of
+motherly cowardice for her Wenceslas that is in every wife who carries
+her love to the pitch of idolatry.
+
+"Do not be hurried," said she to her husband, "our whole future life is
+bound up with that statue. Take your time and produce a masterpiece."
+
+She would go to the studio, and then the enraptured Steinbock wasted
+five hours out of seven in describing the statue instead of working at
+it. He thus spent eighteen months in finishing the design, which to him
+was all-important.
+
+When the plaster was cast and the model complete, poor Hortense, who had
+looked on at her husband's toil, seeing his health really suffer
+from the exertions which exhaust a sculptor's frame and arms and
+hands--Hortense thought the result admirable. Her father, who knew
+nothing of sculpture, and her mother, no less ignorant, lauded it as a
+triumph; the War Minister came with them to see it, and, overruled by
+them, expressed approval of the figure, standing as it did alone, in a
+favorable light, thrown up against a green baize background.
+
+Alas! at the exhibition of 1841, the disapprobation of the public soon
+took the form of abuse and mockery in the mouths of those who were
+indignant with the idol too hastily set up for worship. Stidmann tried
+to advise his friend, but was accused of jealousy. Every article in a
+newspaper was to Hortense an outcry of envy. Stidmann, the best of
+good fellows, got articles written, in which adverse criticism was
+contravened, and it was pointed out that sculptors altered their works
+in translating the plaster into marble, and that the marble would be the
+test.
+
+"In reproducing the plaster sketch in marble," wrote Claude Vignon, "a
+masterpiece may be ruined, or a bad design made beautiful. The plaster
+is the manuscript, the marble is the book."
+
+So in two years and a half Wenceslas had produced a statue and a son.
+The child was a picture of beauty; the statue was execrable.
+
+The clock for the Prince and the price of the statue paid off the young
+couple's debts. Steinbock had acquired fashionable habits; he went to
+the play, to the opera; he talked admirably about art; and in the eyes
+of the world he maintained his reputation as a great artist by his
+powers of conversation and criticism. There are many clever men in Paris
+who spend their lives in talking themselves out, and are content with a
+sort of drawing-room celebrity. Steinbock, emulating these emasculated
+but charming men, grew every day more averse to hard work. As soon as
+he began a thing, he was conscious of all its difficulties, and the
+discouragement that came over him enervated his will. Inspiration, the
+frenzy of intellectual procreation, flew swiftly away at the sight of
+this effete lover.
+
+Sculpture--like dramatic art--is at once the most difficult and the
+easiest of all arts. You have but to copy a model, and the task is
+done; but to give it a soul, to make it typical by creating a man or
+a woman--this is the sin of Prometheus. Such triumphs in the annals
+of sculpture may be counted, as we may count the few poets among
+men. Michael Angelo, Michel Columb, Jean Goujon, Phidias, Praxiteles,
+Polycletes, Puget, Canova, Albert Durer, are the brothers of Milton,
+Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Tasso, Homer, and Moliere. And such an
+achievement is so stupendous that a single statue is enough to make a
+man immortal, as Figaro, Lovelace, and Manon Lescaut have immortalized
+Beaumarchais, Richardson, and the Abbe Prevost.
+
+Superficial thinkers--and there are many in the artist world--have
+asserted that sculpture lives only by the nude, that it died with the
+Greeks, and that modern vesture makes it impossible. But, in the first
+place, the Ancients have left sublime statues entirely clothed--the
+_Polyhymnia_, the _Julia_, and others, and we have not found one-tenth
+of all their works; and then, let any lover of art go to Florence and
+see Michael Angelo's _Penseroso_, or to the Cathedral of Mainz, and
+behold the _Virgin_ by Albert Durer, who has created a living woman
+out of ebony, under her threefold drapery, with the most flowing,
+the softest hair that ever a waiting-maid combed through; let all the
+ignorant flock thither, and they will acknowledge that genius can give
+mind to drapery, to armor, to a robe, and fill it with a body, just as
+a man leaves the stamp of his individuality and habits of life on the
+clothes he wears.
+
+Sculpture is the perpetual realization of the fact which once, and never
+again, was, in painting called Raphael!
+
+The solution of this hard problem is to be found only in constant
+persevering toil; for, merely to overcome the material difficulties
+to such an extent, the hand must be so practised, so dexterous and
+obedient, that the sculptor may be free to struggle soul to soul with
+the elusive moral element that he has to transfigure as he embodies it.
+If Paganini, who uttered his soul through the strings of his violin,
+spent three days without practising, he lost what he called the _stops_
+of his instrument, meaning the sympathy between the wooden frame, the
+strings, the bow, and himself; if he had lost this alliance, he would
+have been no more than an ordinary player.
+
+Perpetual work is the law of art, as it is the law of life, for art is
+idealized creation. Hence great artists and perfect poets wait neither
+for commission nor for purchasers. They are constantly creating--to-day,
+to-morrow, always. The result is the habit of work, the unfailing
+apprehension of the difficulties which keep them in close intercourse
+with the Muse and her productive forces. Canova lived in his studio, as
+Voltaire lived in his study; and so must Homer and Phidias have lived.
+
+While Lisbeth kept Wenceslas Steinbock in thraldom in his garret, he was
+on the thorny road trodden by all these great men, which leads to the
+Alpine heights of glory. Then happiness, in the person of Hortense, had
+reduced the poet to idleness--the normal condition of all artists, since
+to them idleness is fully occupied. Their joy is such as that of the
+pasha of a seraglio; they revel with ideas, they get drunk at the founts
+of intellect. Great artists, such as Steinbock, wrapped in reverie, are
+rightly spoken of as dreamers. They, like opium-eaters, all sink into
+poverty, whereas if they had been kept up to the mark by the stern
+demands of life, they might have been great men.
+
+At the same time, these half-artists are delightful; men like them and
+cram them with praise; they even seem superior to the true artists, who
+are taxed with conceit, unsociableness, contempt of the laws of society.
+This is why: Great men are the slaves of their work. Their indifference
+to outer things, their devotion to their work, make simpletons regard
+them as egotists, and they are expected to wear the same garb as the
+dandy who fulfils the trivial evolutions called social duties. These
+men want the lions of the Atlas to be combed and scented like a lady's
+poodle.
+
+These artists, who are too rarely matched to meet their fellows, fall
+into habits of solitary exclusiveness; they are inexplicable to the
+majority, which, as we know, consists mostly of fools--of the envious,
+the ignorant, and the superficial.
+
+Now you may imagine what part a wife should play in the life of these
+glorious and exceptional beings. She ought to be what, for five years,
+Lisbeth had been, but with the added offering of love, humble and
+patient love, always ready and always smiling.
+
+Hortense, enlightened by her anxieties as a mother, and driven by
+dire necessity, had discovered too late the mistakes she had been
+involuntarily led into by her excessive love. Still, the worthy daughter
+of her mother, her heart ached at the thought of worrying Wenceslas;
+she loved her dear poet too much to become his torturer; and she could
+foresee the hour when beggary awaited her, her child, and her husband.
+
+"Come, come, my child," said Lisbeth, seeing the tears in her cousin's
+lovely eyes, "you must not despair. A glassful of tears will not buy a
+plate of soup. How much do you want?"
+
+"Well, five or six thousand francs."
+
+"I have but three thousand at the most," said Lisbeth. "And what is
+Wenceslas doing now?"
+
+"He has had an offer to work in partnership with Stidmann at a table
+service for the Duc d'Herouville for six thousand francs. Then Monsieur
+Chanor will advance four thousand to repay Monsieur de Lora and
+Bridau--a debt of honor."
+
+"What, you have had the money for the statue and the bas-reliefs for
+Marshal Montcornet's monument, and you have not paid them yet?"
+
+"For the last three years," said Hortense, "we have spent twelve
+thousand francs a year, and I have but a hundred louis a year of my own.
+The Marshal's monument, when all the expenses were paid, brought us no
+more than sixteen thousand francs. Really and truly, if Wenceslas gets
+no work, I do not know what is to become of us. Oh, if only I could
+learn to make statues, I would handle the clay!" she cried, holding up
+her fine arms.
+
+The woman, it was plain, fulfilled the promise of the girl; there was
+a flash in her eye; impetuous blood, strong with iron, flowed in her
+veins; she felt that she was wasting her energy in carrying her infant.
+
+"Ah, my poor little thing! a sensible girl should not marry an artist
+till his fortune is made--not while it is still to make."
+
+At this moment they heard voices; Stidmann and Wenceslas were seeing
+Chanor to the door; then Wenceslas and Stidmann came in again.
+
+Stidmann, an artist in vogue in the world of journalists, famous
+actresses, and courtesans of the better class, was a young man of
+fashion whom Valerie much wished to see in her rooms; indeed, he had
+already been introduced to her by Claude Vignon. Stidmann had lately
+broken off an intimacy with Madame Schontz, who had married some months
+since and gone to live in the country. Valerie and Lisbeth, hearing of
+this upheaval from Claude Vignon, thought it well to get Steinbock's
+friend to visit in the Rue Vanneau.
+
+Stidmann, out of good feeling, went rarely to the Steinbocks'; and as it
+happened that Lisbeth was not present when he was introduced by Claude
+Vignon, she now saw him for the first time. As she watched this noted
+artist, she caught certain glances from his eyes at Hortense, which
+suggested to her the possibility of offering him to the Countess
+Steinbock as a consolation if Wenceslas should be false to her. In point
+of fact, Stidmann was reflecting that if Steinbock were not his friend,
+Hortense, the young and superbly beautiful countess, would be an
+adorable mistress; it was this very notion, controlled by honor, that
+kept him away from the house. Lisbeth was quick to mark the significant
+awkwardness that troubles a man in the presence of a woman with whom he
+will not allow himself to flirt.
+
+"Very good-looking--that young man," said she in a whisper to Hortense.
+
+"Oh, do you think so?" she replied. "I never noticed him."
+
+"Stidmann, my good fellow," said Wenceslas, in an undertone to his
+friend, "we are on no ceremony, you and I--we have some business to
+settle with this old girl."
+
+Stidmann bowed to the ladies and went away.
+
+"It is settled," said Wenceslas, when he came in from taking leave of
+Stidmann. "But there are six months' work to be done, and we must live
+meanwhile."
+
+"There are my diamonds," cried the young Countess, with the impetuous
+heroism of a loving woman.
+
+A tear rose in Wenceslas' eye.
+
+"Oh, I am going to work," said he, sitting down by his wife and drawing
+her on to his knee. "I will do odd jobs--a wedding chest, bronze
+groups----"
+
+"But, my children," said Lisbeth; "for, as you know, you will be
+my heirs, and I shall leave you a very comfortable sum, believe me,
+especially if you help me to marry the Marshal; nay, if we succeed in
+that quickly, I will take you all to board with me--you and Adeline. We
+should live very happily together.--But for the moment, listen to the
+voice of my long experience. Do not fly to the Mont-de-Piete; it is the
+ruin of the borrower. I have always found that when the interest was
+due, those who had pledged their things had nothing wherewith to pay up,
+and then all is lost. I can get you a loan at five per cent on your note
+of hand."
+
+"Oh, we are saved!" said Hortense.
+
+"Well, then, child, Wenceslas had better come with me to see the lender,
+who will oblige him at my request. It is Madame Marneffe. If you flatter
+her a little--for she is as vain as a _parvenue_--she will get you out
+of the scrape in the most obliging way. Come yourself and see her, my
+dear Hortense."
+
+Hortense looked at her husband with the expression a man condemned to
+death must wear on his way to the scaffold.
+
+"Claude Vignon took Stidmann there," said Wenceslas. "He says it is a
+very pleasant house."
+
+Hortense's head fell. What she felt can only be expressed in one word;
+it was not pain; it was illness.
+
+"But, my dear Hortense, you must learn something of life!" exclaimed
+Lisbeth, understanding the eloquence of her cousin's looks. "Otherwise,
+like your mother, you will find yourself abandoned in a deserted room,
+where you will weep like Calypso on the departure of Ulysses, and at an
+age when there is no hope of Telemachus--" she added, repeating a jest
+of Madame Marneffe's. "We have to regard the people in the world as
+tools which we can make use of or let alone, according as they can serve
+our turn. Make use of Madame Marneffe now, my dears, and let her alone
+by and by. Are you afraid lest Wenceslas, who worships you, should fall
+in love with a woman four or five years older than himself, as yellow as
+a bundle of field peas, and----?"
+
+"I would far rather pawn my diamonds," said Hortense. "Oh, never go
+there, Wenceslas!--It is hell!"
+
+"Hortense is right," said Steinbock, kissing his wife.
+
+"Thank you, my dearest," said Hortense, delighted. "My husband is an
+angel, you see, Lisbeth. He does not gamble, he goes nowhere without me;
+if he only could stick to work--oh, I should be too happy. Why take us
+on show to my father's mistress, a woman who is ruining him and is the
+cause of troubles that are killing my heroic mother?"
+
+"My child, that is not where the cause of your father's ruin lies. It
+was his singer who ruined him, and then your marriage!" replied her
+cousin. "Bless me! why, Madame Marneffe is of the greatest use to him.
+However, I must tell no tales."
+
+"You have a good word for everybody, dear Betty--"
+
+Hortense was called into the garden by hearing the child cry; Lisbeth
+was left alone with Wenceslas.
+
+"You have an angel for your wife, Wenceslas!" said she. "Love her as you
+ought; never give her cause for grief."
+
+"Yes, indeed, I love her so well that I do not tell her all," replied
+Wenceslas; "but to you, Lisbeth, I may confess the truth.--If I took my
+wife's diamonds to the Monte-de-Piete, we should be no further forward."
+
+"Then borrow of Madame Marneffe," said Lisbeth. "Persuade Hortense,
+Wenceslas, to let you go there, or else, bless me! go there without
+telling her."
+
+"That is what I was thinking of," replied Wenceslas, "when I refused for
+fear of grieving Hortense."
+
+"Listen to me; I care too much for you both not to warn you of your
+danger. If you go there, hold your heart tight in both hands, for
+the woman is a witch. All who see her adore her; she is so wicked, so
+inviting! She fascinates men like a masterpiece. Borrow her money, but
+do not leave your soul in pledge. I should never be happy again if you
+were false to Hortense--here she is! not another word! I will settle the
+matter."
+
+"Kiss Lisbeth, my darling," said Wenceslas to his wife. "She will help
+us out of our difficulties by lending us her savings."
+
+And he gave Lisbeth a look which she understood.
+
+"Then, I hope you mean to work, my dear treasure," said Hortense.
+
+"Yes, indeed," said the artist. "I will begin to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow is our ruin!" said his wife, with a smile.
+
+"Now, my dear child! say yourself whether some hindrance has not come in
+the way every day; some obstacle or business?"
+
+"Yes, very true, my love."
+
+"Here!" cried Steinbock, striking his brow, "here I have swarms of
+ideas! I mean to astonish all my enemies. I am going to design a service
+in the German style of the sixteenth century; the romantic style:
+foliage twined with insects, sleeping children, newly invented monsters,
+chimeras--real chimeras, such as we dream of!--I see it all! It will be
+undercut, light, and yet crowded. Chanor was quite amazed.--And I wanted
+some encouragement, for the last article on Montcornet's monument had
+been crushing."
+
+At a moment in the course of the day when Lisbeth and Wenceslas were
+left together, the artist agreed to go on the morrow to see Madame
+Marneffe--he either would win his wife's consent, or he would go without
+telling her.
+
+
+
+Valerie, informed the same evening of this success, insisted that Hulot
+should go to invite Stidmann, Claude Vignon, and Steinbock to dinner;
+for she was beginning to tyrannize over him as women of that type
+tyrannize over old men, who trot round town, and go to make interest
+with every one who is necessary to the interests or the vanity of their
+task-mistress.
+
+Next evening Valerie armed herself for conquest by making such a toilet
+as a Frenchwoman can devise when she wishes to make the most of herself.
+She studied her appearance in this great work as a man going out to
+fight a duel practises his feints and lunges. Not a speck, not a wrinkle
+was to be seen. Valerie was at her whitest, her softest, her sweetest.
+And certain little "patches" attracted the eye.
+
+It is commonly supposed that the patch of the eighteenth century is out
+of date or out of fashion; that is a mistake. In these days women, more
+ingenious perhaps than of yore, invite a glance through the opera-glass
+by other audacious devices. One is the first to hit on a rosette in
+her hair with a diamond in the centre, and she attracts every eye for a
+whole evening; another revives the hair-net, or sticks a dagger through
+the twist to suggest a garter; this one wears velvet bands round her
+wrists, that one appears in lace lippets. These valiant efforts, an
+Austerlitz of vanity or of love, then set the fashion for lower spheres
+by the time the inventive creatress has originated something new. This
+evening, which Valerie meant to be a success for her, she had placed
+three patches. She had washed her hair with some lye, which changed
+its hue for a few days from a gold color to a duller shade. Madame
+Steinbock's was almost red, and she would be in every point unlike her.
+This new effect gave her a piquant and strange appearance, which puzzled
+her followers so much, that Montes asked her:
+
+"What have you done to yourself this evening?"--Then she put on a rather
+wide black velvet neck-ribbon, which showed off the whiteness of her
+skin. One patch took the place of the _assassine_ of our grandmothers.
+And Valerie pinned the sweetest rosebud into her bodice, just in the
+middle above the stay-busk, and in the daintiest little hollow! It was
+enough to make every man under thirty drop his eyelids.
+
+"I am as sweet as a sugar-plum," said she to herself, going through her
+attitudes before the glass, exactly as a dancer practises her curtesies.
+
+Lisbeth had been to market, and the dinner was to be one of those
+superfine meals which Mathurine had been wont to cook for her Bishop
+when he entertained the prelate of the adjoining diocese.
+
+Stidmann, Claude Vignon, and Count Steinbock arrived almost together,
+just at six. An ordinary, or, if you will, a natural woman would have
+hastened at the announcement of a name so eagerly longed for; but
+Valerie, though ready since five o'clock, remained in her room, leaving
+her three guests together, certain that she was the subject of their
+conversation or of their secret thoughts. She herself had arranged
+the drawing-room, laying out the pretty trifles produced in Paris and
+nowhere else, which reveal the woman and announce her presence: albums
+bound in enamel or embroidered with beads, saucers full of pretty rings,
+marvels of Sevres or Dresden mounted exquisitely by Florent and Chanor,
+statues, books, all the frivolities which cost insane sums, and which
+passion orders of the makers in its first delirium--or to patch up its
+last quarrel.
+
+Besides, Valerie was in the state of intoxication that comes of triumph.
+She had promised to marry Crevel if Marneffe should die; and the amorous
+Crevel had transferred to the name of Valerie Fortin bonds bearing ten
+thousand francs a year, the sum-total of what he had made in railway
+speculations during the past three years, the returns on the capital of
+a hundred thousand crowns which he had at first offered to the Baronne
+Hulot. So Valerie now had an income of thirty-two thousand francs.
+
+Crevel had just committed himself to a promise of far greater magnitude
+than this gift of his surplus. In the paroxysm of rapture which _his
+Duchess_ had given him from two to four--he gave this fine title to
+Madame _de_ Marneffe to complete the illusion--for Valerie had surpassed
+herself in the Rue du Dauphin that afternoon, he had thought well to
+encourage her in her promised fidelity by giving her the prospect of
+a certain little mansion, built in the Rue Barbette by an imprudent
+contractor, who now wanted to sell it. Valerie could already see herself
+in this delightful residence, with a fore-court and a garden, and
+keeping a carriage!
+
+"What respectable life can ever procure so much in so short a time, or
+so easily?" said she to Lisbeth as she finished dressing. Lisbeth was to
+dine with Valerie that evening, to tell Steinbock those things about the
+lady which nobody can say about herself.
+
+Madame Marneffe, radiant with satisfaction, came into the drawing-room
+with modest grace, followed by Lisbeth dressed in black and yellow to
+set her off.
+
+"Good-evening, Claude," said she, giving her hand to the famous old
+critic.
+
+Claude Vignon, like many another, had become a political personage--a
+word describing an ambitious man at the first stage of his career. The
+_political personage_ of 1840 represents, in some degree, the _Abbe_ of
+the eighteenth century. No drawing-room circle is complete without one.
+
+"My dear, this is my cousin, Count Steinbock," said Lisbeth, introducing
+Wenceslas, whom Valerie seemed to have overlooked.
+
+"Oh yes, I recognized Monsieur le Comte," replied Valerie with a
+gracious bow to the artist. "I often saw you in the Rue du Doyenne,
+and I had the pleasure of being present at your wedding.--It would be
+difficult, my dear," said she to Lisbeth, "to forget your adopted son
+after once seeing him.--It is most kind of you, Monsieur Stidmann,"
+she went on, "to have accepted my invitation at such short notice;
+but necessity knows no law. I knew you to be the friend of both these
+gentlemen. Nothing is more dreary, more sulky, than a dinner where all
+the guests are strangers, so it was for their sake that I hailed you
+in--but you will come another time for mine, I hope?--Say that you
+will."
+
+And for a few minutes she moved about the room with Stidmann, wholly
+occupied with him.
+
+Crevel and Hulot were announced separately, and then a deputy named
+Beauvisage.
+
+This individual, a provincial Crevel, one of the men created to make
+up the crowd in the world, voted under the banner of Giraud, a State
+Councillor, and Victorin Hulot. These two politicians were trying to
+form a nucleus of progressives in the loose array of the Conservative
+Party. Giraud himself occasionally spent the evening at Madame
+Marneffe's, and she flattered herself that she should also capture
+Victorin Hulot; but the puritanical lawyer had hitherto found excuses
+for refusing to accompany his father and father-in-law. It seemed to
+him criminal to be seen in the house of the woman who cost his mother so
+many tears. Victorin Hulot was to the puritans of political life what a
+pious woman is among bigots.
+
+Beauvisage, formerly a stocking manufacturer at Arcis, was anxious to
+_pick up the Paris style_. This man, one of the outer stones of the
+Chamber, was forming himself under the auspices of this delicious and
+fascinating Madame Marneffe. Introduced here by Crevel, he had accepted
+him, at her instigation, as his model and master. He consulted him on
+every point, took the address of his tailor, imitated him, and tried to
+strike the same attitudes. In short, Crevel was his Great Man.
+
+Valerie, surrounded by these bigwigs and the three artists, and
+supported by Lisbeth, struck Wenceslas as a really superior woman, all
+the more so because Claude Vignon spoke of her like a man in love.
+
+"She is Madame de Maintenon in Ninon's petticoats!" said the veteran
+critic. "You may please her in an evening if you have the wit; but
+as for making her love you--that would be a triumph to crown a man's
+ambition and fill up his life."
+
+Valerie, while seeming cold and heedless of her former neighbor, piqued
+his vanity, quite unconsciously indeed, for she knew nothing of the
+Polish character. There is in the Slav a childish element, as there
+is in all these primitively wild nations which have overflowed into
+civilization rather than that they have become civilized. The race has
+spread like an inundation, and has covered a large portion of the globe.
+It inhabits deserts whose extent is so vast that it expands at its ease;
+there is no jostling there, as there is in Europe, and civilization is
+impossible without the constant friction of minds and interests. The
+Ukraine, Russia, the plains by the Danube, in short, the Slav nations,
+are a connecting link between Europe and Asia, between civilization and
+barbarism. Thus the Pole, the wealthiest member of the Slav family, has
+in his character all the childishness and inconsistency of a
+beardless race. He has courage, spirit, and strength; but, cursed with
+instability, that courage, strength, and energy have neither method nor
+guidance; for the Pole displays a variability resembling that of the
+winds which blow across that vast plain broken with swamps; and though
+he has the impetuosity of the snow squalls that wrench and sweep away
+buildings, like those aerial avalanches he is lost in the first pool and
+melts into water. Man always assimilates something from the surroundings
+in which he lives. Perpetually at strife with the Turk, the Pole has
+imbibed a taste for Oriental splendor; he often sacrifices what is
+needful for the sake of display. The men dress themselves out like
+women, yet the climate has given them the tough constitution of Arabs.
+
+The Pole, sublime in suffering, has tired his oppressors' arms by sheer
+endurance of beating; and, in the nineteenth century, has reproduced the
+spectacle presented by the early Christians. Infuse only ten per cent
+of English cautiousness into the frank and open Polish nature, and
+the magnanimous white eagle would at this day be supreme wherever
+the two-headed eagle has sneaked in. A little Machiavelism would have
+hindered Poland from helping to save Austria, who has taken a share of
+it; from borrowing from Prussia, the usurer who had undermined it; and
+from breaking up as soon as a division was first made.
+
+At the christening of Poland, no doubt, the Fairy Carabosse, overlooked
+by the genii who endowed that attractive people with the most brilliant
+gifts, came in to say:
+
+"Keep all the gifts that my sisters have bestowed on you; but you shall
+never know what you wish for!"
+
+If, in its heroic duel with Russia, Poland had won the day, the Poles
+would now be fighting among themselves, as they formerly fought in their
+Diets to hinder each other from being chosen King. When that nation,
+composed entirely of hot-headed dare-devils, has good sense enough to
+seek a Louis XI. among her own offspring, to accept his despotism and a
+dynasty, she will be saved.
+
+What Poland has been politically, almost every Pole is in private life,
+especially under the stress of disaster. Thus Wenceslas Steinbock, after
+worshiping his wife for three years and knowing that he was a god to
+her, was so much nettled at finding himself barely noticed by Madame
+Marneffe, that he made it a point of honor to attract her attention.
+He compared Valerie with his wife and gave her the palm. Hortense was
+beautiful flesh, as Valerie had said to Lisbeth; but Madame Marneffe had
+spirit in her very shape, and the savor of vice.
+
+Such devotion as Hortense's is a feeling which a husband takes as his
+due; the sense of the immense preciousness of such perfect love soon
+wears off, as a debtor, in the course of time, begins to fancy that the
+borrowed money is his own. This noble loyalty becomes the daily bread of
+the soul, and an infidelity is as tempting as a dainty. The woman who
+is scornful, and yet more the woman who is reputed dangerous, excites
+curiosity, as spices add flavor to good food. Indeed, the disdain so
+cleverly acted by Valerie was a novelty to Wenceslas, after three years
+of too easy enjoyment. Hortense was a wife; Valerie a mistress.
+
+Many men desire to have two editions of the same work, though it is in
+fact a proof of inferiority when a man cannot make his mistress of his
+wife. Variety in this particular is a sign of weakness. Constancy will
+always be the real genius of love, the evidence of immense power--the
+power that makes the poet! A man ought to find every woman in his wife,
+as the squalid poets of the seventeenth century made their Manons figure
+as Iris and Chloe.
+
+"Well," said Lisbeth to the Pole, as she beheld him fascinated, "what do
+you think of Valerie?"
+
+"She is too charming," replied Wenceslas.
+
+"You would not listen to me," said Betty. "Oh! my little Wenceslas, if
+you and I had never parted, you would have been that siren's lover; you
+might have married her when she was a widow, and you would have had her
+forty thousand francs a year----"
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Certainly," replied Lisbeth. "Now, take care of yourself; I warned you
+of the danger; do not singe your wings in the candle!--Come, give me
+your arm, dinner is served."
+
+No language could be so thoroughly demoralizing as this; for if you show
+a Pole a precipice, he is bound to leap it. As a nation they have the
+very spirit of cavalry; they fancy they can ride down every obstacle and
+come out victorious. The spur applied by Lisbeth to Steinbock's vanity
+was intensified by the appearance of the dining-room, bright with
+handsome silver plate; the dinner was served with every refinement and
+extravagance of Parisian luxury.
+
+"I should have done better to take Celimene," thought he to himself.
+
+All through the dinner Hulot was charming; pleased to see his son-in-law
+at that table, and yet more happy in the prospect of a reconciliation
+with Valerie, whose fidelity he proposed to secure by the promise of
+Coquet's head-clerkship. Stidmann responded to the Baron's amiability by
+shafts of Parisian banter and an artist's high spirits. Steinbock would
+not allow himself to be eclipsed by his friend; he too was witty, said
+amusing things, made his mark, and was pleased with himself; Madame
+Marneffe smiled at him several times to show that she quite understood
+him.
+
+The good meal and heady wines completed the work; Wenceslas was deep in
+what must be called the slough of dissipation. Excited by just a
+glass too much, he stretched himself on a settee after dinner, sunk
+in physical and mental ecstasy, which Madame Marneffe wrought to the
+highest pitch by coming to sit down by him--airy, scented, pretty enough
+to damn an angel. She bent over Wenceslas and almost touched his ear as
+she whispered to him:
+
+"We cannot talk over business matters this evening, unless you will
+remain till the last. Between us--you, Lisbeth, and me--we can settle
+everything to suit you."
+
+"Ah, Madame, you are an angel!" replied Wenceslas, also in a murmur. "I
+was a pretty fool not to listen to Lisbeth--"
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"She declared, in the Rue du Doyenne, that you loved me!"
+
+Madame Marneffe looked at him, seemed covered with confusion, and
+hastily left her seat. A young and pretty woman never rouses the hope of
+immediate success with impunity. This retreat, the impulse of a virtuous
+woman who is crushing a passion in the depths of her heart, was a
+thousand times more effective than the most reckless avowal. Desire was
+so thoroughly aroused in Wenceslas that he doubled his attentions to
+Valerie. A woman seen by all is a woman wished for. Hence the terrible
+power of actresses. Madame Marneffe, knowing that she was watched,
+behaved like an admired actress. She was quite charming, and her success
+was immense.
+
+"I no longer wonder at my father-in-law's follies," said Steinbock to
+Lisbeth.
+
+"If you say such things, Wenceslas, I shall to my dying day repent of
+having got you the loan of these ten thousand francs. Are you, like
+all these men," and she indicated the guests, "madly in love with that
+creature? Remember, you would be your father-in-law's rival. And think
+of the misery you would bring on Hortense."
+
+"That is true," said Wenceslas. "Hortense is an angel; I should be a
+wretch."
+
+"And one is enough in the family!" said Lisbeth.
+
+"Artists ought never to marry!" exclaimed Steinbock.
+
+"Ah! that is what I always told you in the Rue du Doyenne. Your groups,
+your statues, your great works, ought to be your children."
+
+"What are you talking about?" Valerie asked, joining Lisbeth.--"Give us
+tea, Cousin."
+
+Steinbock, with Polish vainglory, wanted to appear familiar with this
+drawing-room fairy. After defying Stidmann, Vignon, and Crevel with a
+look, he took Valerie's hand and forced her to sit down by him on the
+settee.
+
+"You are rather too lordly, Count Steinbock," said she, resisting a
+little. But she laughed as she dropped on to the seat, not without
+arranging the rosebud pinned into her bodice.
+
+"Alas! if I were really lordly," said he, "I should not be here to
+borrow money."
+
+"Poor boy! I remember how you worked all night in the Rue du Doyenne.
+You really were rather a spooney; you married as a starving man snatches
+a loaf. You knew nothing of Paris, and you see where you are landed. But
+you turned a deaf ear to Lisbeth's devotion, as you did to the love of a
+woman who knows her Paris by heart."
+
+"Say no more!" cried Steinbock; "I am done for!"
+
+"You shall have your ten thousand francs, my dear Wenceslas; but on one
+condition," she went on, playing with his handsome curls.
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"I will take no interest----"
+
+"Madame!"
+
+"Oh, you need not be indignant; you shall make it good by giving me a
+bronze group. You began the story of Samson; finish it.--Do a Delilah
+cutting off the Jewish Hercules' hair. And you, who, if you will listen
+to me, will be a great artist, must enter into the subject. What you
+have to show is the power of woman. Samson is a secondary consideration.
+He is the corpse of dead strength. It is Delilah--passion--that ruins
+everything. How far more beautiful is that _replica_--That is what you
+call it, I think--" She skilfully interpolated, as Claude Vignon and
+Stidmann came up to them on hearing her talk of sculpture--"how far more
+beautiful than the Greek myth is that _replica_ of Hercules at Omphale's
+feet.--Did Greece copy Judaea, or did Judaea borrow the symbolism from
+Greece?"
+
+"There, madame, you raise an important question--that of the date of
+the various writings in the Bible. The great and immortal Spinoza--most
+foolishly ranked as an atheist, whereas he gave mathematical proof
+of the existence of God--asserts that the Book of Genesis and all
+the political history of the Bible are of the time of Moses, and he
+demonstrates the interpolated passages by philological evidence. And he
+was thrice stabbed as he went into the synagogue."
+
+"I had no idea I was so learned," said Valerie, annoyed at this
+interruption to her _tete-a-tete_.
+
+"Women know everything by instinct," replied Claude Vignon.
+
+"Well, then, you promise me?" she said to Steinbock, taking his hand
+with the timidity of a girl in love.
+
+"You are indeed a happy man, my dear fellow," cried Stidmann, "if madame
+asks a favor of you!"
+
+"What is it?" asked Claude Vignon.
+
+"A small bronze group," replied Steinbock, "Delilah cutting off Samson's
+hair."
+
+"It is difficult," remarked Vignon. "A bed----"
+
+"On the contrary, it is exceedingly easy," replied Valerie, smiling.
+
+"Ah ha! teach us sculpture!" said Stidmann.
+
+"You should take madame for your subject," replied Vignon, with a keen
+glance at Valerie.
+
+"Well," she went on, "this is my notion of the composition. Samson on
+waking finds he has no hair, like many a dandy with a false top-knot.
+The hero is sitting on the bed, so you need only show the foot of it,
+covered with hangings and drapery. There he is, like Marius among
+the ruins of Carthage, his arms folded, his head shaven--Napoleon at
+Saint-Helena--what you will! Delilah is on her knees, a good deal like
+Canova's Magdalen. When a hussy has ruined her man, she adores him. As I
+see it, the Jewess was afraid of Samson in his strength and terrors, but
+she must have loved him when she saw him a child again. So Delilah is
+bewailing her sin, she would like to give her lover his hair again. She
+hardly dares to look at him; but she does look, with a smile, for she
+reads forgiveness in Samson's weakness. Such a group as this, and one of
+the ferocious Judith, would epitomize woman. Virtue cuts off your head;
+vice only cuts off your hair. Take care of your wigs, gentlemen!"
+
+And she left the artists quite overpowered, to sing her praises in
+concert with the critic.
+
+"It is impossible to be more bewitching!" cried Stidmann.
+
+"Oh! she is the most intelligent and desirable woman I have ever met,"
+said Claude Vignon. "Such a combination of beauty and cleverness is so
+rare."
+
+"And if you who had the honor of being intimate with Camille Maupin can
+pronounce such a verdict," replied Stidmann, "what are we to think?"
+
+"If you will make your Delilah a portrait of Valerie, my dear Count,"
+said Crevel, who had risen for a moment from the card-table, and who
+had heard what had been said, "I will give you a thousand crowns for an
+example--yes, by the Powers! I will shell out to the tune of a thousand
+crowns!"
+
+"Shell out! What does that mean?" asked Beauvisage of Claude Vignon.
+
+"Madame must do me the honor to sit for it then," said Steinbock to
+Crevel. "Ask her--"
+
+At this moment Valerie herself brought Steinbock a cup of tea. This was
+more than a compliment, it was a favor. There is a complete language
+in the manner in which a woman does this little civility; but women
+are fully aware of the fact, and it is a curious thing to study their
+movements, their manner, their look, tone, and accent when they perform
+this apparently simple act of politeness.--From the question, "Do you
+take tea?"--"Will you have some tea?"--"A cup of tea?" coldly asked,
+and followed by instructions to the nymph of the urn to bring it, to the
+eloquent poem of the odalisque coming from the tea-table, cup in hand,
+towards the pasha of her heart, presenting it submissively, offering it
+in an insinuating voice, with a look full of intoxicating promises,
+a physiologist could deduce the whole scale of feminine emotion, from
+aversion or indifference to Phaedra's declaration to Hippolytus. Women
+can make it, at will, contemptuous to the verge of insult, or humble to
+the expression of Oriental servility.
+
+And Valerie was more than woman; she was the serpent made woman; she
+crowned her diabolical work by going up to Steinbock, a cup of tea in
+her hand.
+
+"I will drink as many cups of tea as you will give me," said the artist,
+murmuring in her ear as he rose, and touching her fingers with his, "to
+have them given to me thus!"
+
+"What were you saying about sitting?" said she, without betraying that
+this declaration, so frantically desired, had gone straight to her
+heart.
+
+"Old Crevel promises me a thousand crowns for a copy of your group."
+
+"He! a thousand crowns for a bronze group?"
+
+"Yes--if you will sit for Delilah," said Steinbock.
+
+"He will not be there to see, I hope!" replied she. "The group would
+be worth more than all his fortune, for Delilah's costume is rather
+un-dressy."
+
+Just as Crevel loved to strike an attitude, every woman has a victorious
+gesture, a studied movement, which she knows must win admiration. You
+may see in a drawing-room how one spends all her time looking down at
+her tucker or pulling up the shoulder-piece of her gown, how another
+makes play with the brightness of her eyes by glancing up at the
+cornice. Madame Marneffe's triumph, however, was not face to face like
+that of other women. She turned sharply round to return to Lisbeth at
+the tea-table. This ballet-dancer's pirouette, whisking her skirts, by
+which she had overthrown Hulot, now fascinated Steinbock.
+
+"Your vengeance is secure," said Valerie to Lisbeth in a whisper.
+"Hortense will cry out all her tears, and curse the day when she robbed
+you of Wenceslas."
+
+"Till I am Madame la Marechale I shall not think myself successful,"
+replied the cousin; "but they are all beginning to wish for it.--This
+morning I went to Victorin's--I forgot to tell you.--The young Hulots
+have bought up their father's notes of hand given to Vauvinet, and
+to-morrow they will endorse a bill for seventy-two thousand francs at
+five per cent, payable in three years, and secured by a mortgage on
+their house. So the young people are in straits for three years;
+they can raise no more money on that property. Victorin is dreadfully
+distressed; he understands his father. And Crevel is capable of refusing
+to see them; he will be so angry at this piece of self-sacrifice."
+
+"The Baron cannot have a sou now," said Valerie, and she smiled at
+Hulot.
+
+"I don't see where he can get it. But he will draw his salary again in
+September."
+
+"And he has his policy of insurance; he has renewed it. Come, it is
+high time he should get Marneffe promoted. I will drive it home this
+evening."
+
+"My dear cousin," said Lisbeth to Wenceslas, "go home, I beg. You are
+quite ridiculous. Your eyes are fixed on Valerie in a way that is enough
+to compromise her, and her husband is insanely jealous. Do not tread in
+your father-in-law's footsteps. Go home; I am sure Hortense is sitting
+up for you."
+
+"Madame Marneffe told me to stay till the last to settle my little
+business with you and her," replied Wenceslas.
+
+"No, no," said Lisbeth; "I will bring you the ten thousand francs, for
+her husband has his eye on you. It would be rash to remain. To-morrow
+at eleven o'clock bring your note of hand; at that hour that mandarin
+Marneffe is at his office, Valerie is free.--Have you really asked her
+to sit for your group?--Come up to my rooms first.--Ah! I was sure
+of it," she added, as she caught the look which Steinbock flashed at
+Valerie, "I knew you were a profligate in the bud! Well, Valerie is
+lovely--but try not to bring trouble on Hortense."
+
+
+
+Nothing annoys a married man so much as finding his wife perpetually
+interposing between himself and his wishes, however transient.
+
+Wenceslas got home at about one in the morning; Hortense had expected
+him ever since half-past nine. From half-past nine till ten she had
+listened to the passing carriages, telling herself that never before had
+her husband come in so late from dining with Florent and Chanor. She sat
+sewing by the child's cot, for she had begun to save a needlewoman's pay
+for the day by doing the mending herself.--From ten till half-past, a
+suspicion crossed her mind; she sat wondering:
+
+"Is he really gone to dinner, as he told me, with Chanor and Florent? He
+put on his best cravat and his handsomest pin when he dressed. He took
+as long over his toilet as a woman when she wants to make the best of
+herself.--I am crazy! He loves me!--And here he is!"
+
+But instead of stopping, the cab she heard went past.
+
+From eleven till midnight Hortense was a victim to terrible alarms; the
+quarter where they lived was now deserted.
+
+"If he has set out on foot, some accident may have happened," thought
+she. "A man may be killed by tumbling over a curbstone or failing to
+see a gap. Artists are so heedless! Or if he should have been stopped
+by robbers!--It is the first time he has ever left me alone here for six
+hours and a half!--But why should I worry myself? He cares for no one
+but me."
+
+Men ought to be faithful to the wives who love them, were it only on
+account of the perpetual miracles wrought by true love in the sublime
+regions of the spiritual world. The woman who loves is, in relation
+to the man she loves, in the position of a somnambulist to whom the
+magnetizer should give the painful power, when she ceases to be the
+mirror of the world, of being conscious as a woman of what she has seen
+as a somnambulist. Passion raises the nervous tension of a woman to the
+ecstatic pitch at which presentiment is as acute as the insight of a
+clairvoyant. A wife knows she is betrayed; she will not let herself say
+so, she doubts still--she loves so much! She gives the lie to the outcry
+of her own Pythian power. This paroxysm of love deserves a special form
+of worship.
+
+In noble souls, admiration of this divine phenomenon will always be a
+safeguard to protect them from infidelity. How should a man not worship
+a beautiful and intellectual creature whose soul can soar to such
+manifestations?
+
+By one in the morning Hortense was in a state of such intense anguish,
+that she flew to the door as she recognized her husband's ring at the
+bell, and clasped him in her arms like a mother.
+
+"At last--here you are!" cried she, finding her voice again. "My
+dearest, henceforth where you go I go, for I cannot again endure the
+torture of such waiting.--I pictured you stumbling over a curbstone,
+with a fractured skull! Killed by thieves!--No, a second time I know I
+should go mad.--Have you enjoyed yourself so much?--And without me!--Bad
+boy!"
+
+"What can I say, my darling? There was Bixiou, who drew fresh
+caricatures for us; Leon de Lora, as witty as ever; Claude Vignon, to
+whom I owe the only consolatory article that has come out about the
+Montcornet statue. There were--"
+
+"Were there no ladies?" Hortense eagerly inquired.
+
+"Worthy Madame Florent--"
+
+"You said the Rocher de Cancale.--Were you at the Florents'?"
+
+"Yes, at their house; I made a mistake."
+
+"You did not take a coach to come home?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And you have walked from the Rue des Tournelles?"
+
+"Stidmann and Bixiou came back with me along the boulevards as far as
+the Madeleine, talking all the way."
+
+"It is dry then on the boulevards and the Place de la Concorde and the
+Rue de Bourgogne? You are not muddy at all!" said Hortense, looking at
+her husband's patent leather boots.
+
+It had been raining, but between the Rue Vanneau and the Rue
+Saint-Dominique Wenceslas had not got his boots soiled.
+
+"Here--here are five thousand francs Chanor has been so generous as to
+lend me," said Wenceslas, to cut short this lawyer-like examination.
+
+He had made a division of the ten thousand-franc notes, half for
+Hortense and half for himself, for he had five thousand francs' worth of
+debts of which Hortense knew nothing. He owed money to his foreman and
+his workmen.
+
+"Now your anxieties are relieved," said he, kissing his wife. "I am
+going to work to-morrow morning. So I am going to bed this minute to get
+up early, by your leave, my pet."
+
+The suspicion that had dawned in Hortense's mind vanished; she was miles
+away from the truth. Madame Marneffe! She had never thought of her.
+Her fear for her Wenceslas was that he should fall in with street
+prostitutes. The names of Bixiou and Leon de Lora, two artists noted for
+their wild dissipations, had alarmed her.
+
+Next morning she saw Wenceslas go out at nine o'clock, and was quite
+reassured.
+
+"Now he is at work again," said she to herself, as she proceeded to
+dress her boy. "I see he is quite in the vein! Well, well, if we
+cannot have the glory of Michael Angelo, we may have that of Benvenuto
+Cellini!"
+
+Lulled by her own hopes, Hortense believed in a happy future; and
+she was chattering to her son of twenty months in the language of
+onomatopoeia that amuses babes when, at about eleven o'clock, the cook,
+who had not seen Wenceslas go out, showed in Stidmann.
+
+"I beg pardon, madame," said he. "Is Wenceslas gone out already?"
+
+"He is at the studio."
+
+"I came to talk over the work with him."
+
+"I will send for him," said Hortense, offering Stidmann a chair.
+
+Thanking Heaven for this piece of luck, Hortense was glad to detain
+Stidmann to ask some questions about the evening before. Stidmann bowed
+in acknowledgment of her kindness. The Countess Steinbock rang; the cook
+appeared, and was desired to go at once and fetch her master from the
+studio.
+
+"You had an amusing dinner last night?" said Hortense. "Wenceslas did
+not come in till past one in the morning."
+
+"Amusing? not exactly," replied the artist, who had intended to
+fascinate Madame Marneffe. "Society is not very amusing unless one is
+interested in it. That little Madame Marneffe is clever, but a great
+flirt."
+
+"And what did Wenceslas think of her?" asked poor Hortense, trying to
+keep calm. "He said nothing about her to me."
+
+"I will only say one thing," said Stidmann, "and that is, that I think
+her a very dangerous woman."
+
+Hortense turned as pale as a woman after childbirth.
+
+"So--it was at--at Madame Marneffe's that you dined--and not--not with
+Chanor?" said she, "yesterday--and Wenceslas--and he----"
+
+Stidmann, without knowing what mischief he had done, saw that he had
+blundered.
+
+The Countess did not finish her sentence; she simply fainted away. The
+artist rang, and the maid came in. When Louise tried to get her mistress
+into her bedroom, a serious nervous attack came on, with violent
+hysterics. Stidmann, like any man who by an involuntary indiscretion has
+overthrown the structure built on a husband's lie to his wife, could not
+conceive that his words should produce such an effect; he supposed
+that the Countess was in such delicate health that the slightest
+contradiction was mischievous.
+
+The cook presently returned to say, unfortunately in loud tones, that
+her master was not in the studio. In the midst of her anguish, Hortense
+heard, and the hysterical fit came on again.
+
+"Go and fetch madame's mother," said Louise to the cook. "Quick--run!"
+
+"If I knew where to find Steinbock, I would go and fetch him!" exclaimed
+Stidmann in despair.
+
+"He is with that woman!" cried the unhappy wife. "He was not dressed to
+go to his work!"
+
+Stidmann hurried off to Madame Marneffe's, struck by the truth of this
+conclusion, due to the second-sight of passion.
+
+At that moment Valerie was posed as Delilah. Stidmann, too sharp to ask
+for Madame Marneffe, walked straight in past the lodge, and ran quickly
+up to the second floor, arguing thus: "If I ask for Madame Marneffe, she
+will be out. If I inquire point-blank for Steinbock, I shall be laughed
+at to my face.--Take the bull by the horns!"
+
+Reine appeared in answer to his ring.
+
+"Tell Monsieur le Comte Steinbock to come at once, his wife is dying--"
+
+Reine, quite a match for Stidmann, looked at him with blank surprise.
+
+"But, sir--I don't know--did you suppose----"
+
+"I tell you that my friend Monsieur Steinbock is here; his wife is very
+ill. It is quite serious enough for you to disturb your mistress." And
+Stidmann turned on his heel.
+
+"He is there, sure enough!" said he to himself.
+
+And in point of fact, after waiting a few minutes in the Rue Vanneau,
+he saw Wenceslas come out, and beckoned to him to come quickly. After
+telling him of the tragedy enacted in the Rue Saint-Dominique, Stidmann
+scolded Steinbock for not having warned him to keep the secret of
+yesterday's dinner.
+
+"I am done for," said Wenceslas, "but you are forgiven. I had totally
+forgotten that you were to call this morning, and I blundered in not
+telling you that we were to have dined with Florent.--What can I say?
+That Valerie has turned my head; but, my dear fellow, for her glory is
+well lost, misfortune well won! She really is!--Good Heavens!--But I am
+in a dreadful fix. Advise me. What can I say? How can I excuse myself?"
+
+"I! advise you! I don't know," replied Stidmann. "But your wife loves
+you, I imagine? Well, then, she will believe anything. Tell her that you
+were on your way to me when I was on my way to you; that, at any rate,
+will set this morning's business right. Good-bye."
+
+Lisbeth, called down by Reine, ran after Wenceslas and caught him up
+at the corner of the Rue Hillerin-Bertin; she was afraid of his Polish
+artlessness. Not wishing to be involved in the matter, she said a few
+words to Wenceslas, who in his joy hugged her then and there. She had
+no doubt pushed out a plank to enable the artist to cross this awkward
+place in his conjugal affairs.
+
+At the sight of her mother, who had flown to her aid, Hortense burst
+into floods of tears. This happily changed the character of the
+hysterical attack.
+
+"Treachery, dear mamma!" cried she. "Wenceslas, after giving me his word
+of honor that he would not go near Madame Marneffe, dined with her last
+night, and did not come in till a quarter-past one in the morning.--If
+you only knew! The day before we had had a discussion, not a quarrel,
+and I had appealed to him so touchingly. I told him I was jealous, that
+I should die if he were unfaithful; that I was easily suspicious, but
+that he ought to have some consideration for my weaknesses, as they came
+of my love for him; that I had my father's blood in my veins as well as
+yours; that at the first moment of such discovery I should be mad, and
+capable of mad deeds--of avenging myself--of dishonoring us all, him,
+his child, and myself; that I might even kill him first and myself
+after--and so on.
+
+"And yet he went there; he is there!--That woman is bent on breaking all
+our hearts! Only yesterday my brother and Celestine pledged their all
+to pay off seventy thousand francs on notes of hand signed for that
+good-for-nothing creature.--Yes, mamma, my father would have been
+arrested and put into prison. Cannot that dreadful woman be content with
+having my father, and with all your tears? Why take my Wenceslas?--I
+will go to see her and stab her!"
+
+Madame Hulot, struck to the heart by the dreadful secrets Hortense
+was unwittingly letting out, controlled her grief by one of the heroic
+efforts which a magnanimous mother can make, and drew her daughter's
+head on to her bosom to cover it with kisses.
+
+"Wait for Wenceslas, my child; all will be explained. The evil cannot
+be so great as you picture it!--I, too, have been deceived, my dear
+Hortense; you think me handsome, I have lived blameless; and yet I have
+been utterly forsaken for three-and-twenty years--for a Jenny Cadine, a
+Josepha, a Madame Marneffe!--Did you know that?"
+
+"You, mamma, you! You have endured this for twenty----"
+
+She broke off, staggered by her own thoughts.
+
+"Do as I have done, my child," said her mother. "Be gentle and kind, and
+your conscience will be at peace. On his death-bed a man may say, 'My
+wife has never cost me a pang!' And God, who hears that dying breath,
+credits it to us. If I had abandoned myself to fury like you, what would
+have happened? Your father would have been embittered, perhaps he would
+have left me altogether, and he would not have been withheld by any fear
+of paining me. Our ruin, utter as it now is, would have been complete
+ten years sooner, and we should have shown the world the spectacle of
+a husband and wife living quite apart--a scandal of the most horrible,
+heart-breaking kind, for it is the destruction of the family. Neither
+your brother nor you could have married.
+
+"I sacrificed myself, and that so bravely, that, till this last
+connection of your father's, the world has believed me happy. My
+serviceable and indeed courageous falsehood has, till now, screened
+Hector; he is still respected; but this old man's passion is taking him
+too far, that I see. His own folly, I fear, will break through the veil
+I have kept between the world and our home. However, I have held
+that curtain steady for twenty-three years, and have wept behind
+it--motherless, I, without a friend to trust, with no help but in
+religion--I have for twenty-three years secured the family honor----"
+
+Hortense listened with a fixed gaze. The calm tone of resignation and
+of such crowning sorrow soothed the smart of her first wound; the tears
+rose again and flowed in torrents. In a frenzy of filial affection,
+overcome by her mother's noble heroism, she fell on her knees before
+Adeline, took up the hem of her dress and kissed it, as pious Catholics
+kiss the holy relics of a martyr.
+
+"Nay, get up, Hortense," said the Baroness. "Such homage from my
+daughter wipes out many sad memories. Come to my heart, and weep for no
+sorrows but your own. It is the despair of my dear little girl, whose
+joy was my only joy, that broke the solemn seal which nothing ought to
+have removed from my lips. Indeed, I meant to have taken my woes to
+the tomb, as a shroud the more. It was to soothe your anguish that I
+spoke.--God will forgive me!
+
+"Oh! if my life were to be your life, what would I not do? Men, the
+world, Fate, Nature, God Himself, I believe, make us pay for love
+with the most cruel grief. I must pay for ten years of happiness and
+twenty-four years of despair, of ceaseless sorrow, of bitterness--"
+
+"But you had ten years, dear mamma, and I have had but three!" said the
+self-absorbed girl.
+
+"Nothing is lost yet," said Adeline. "Only wait till Wenceslas comes."
+
+"Mother," said she, "he lied, he deceived me. He said, 'I will not go,'
+and he went. And that over his child's cradle."
+
+"For pleasure, my child, men will commit the most cowardly, the most
+infamous actions--even crimes; it lies in their nature, it would seem.
+We wives are set apart for sacrifice. I believed my troubles were ended,
+and they are beginning again, for I never thought to suffer doubly by
+suffering with my child. Courage--and silence!--My Hortense, swear that
+you will never discuss your griefs with anybody but me, never let them
+be suspected by any third person. Oh! be as proud as your mother has
+been."
+
+Hortense started; she had heard her husband's step.
+
+"So it would seem," said Wenceslas, as he came in, "that Stidmann has
+been here while I went to see him."
+
+"Indeed!" said Hortense, with the angry irony of an offended woman who
+uses words to stab.
+
+"Certainly," said Wenceslas, affecting surprise. "We have just met."
+
+"And yesterday?"
+
+"Well, yesterday I deceived you, my darling love; and your mother shall
+judge between us."
+
+This candor unlocked his wife's heart. All really lofty women like the
+truth better than lies. They cannot bear to see their idol smirched;
+they want to be proud of the despotism they bow to.
+
+There is a strain of this feeling in the devotion of the Russians to
+their Czar.
+
+"Now, listen, dear mother," Wenceslas went on. "I so truly love my sweet
+and kind Hortense, that I concealed from her the extent of our poverty.
+What could I do? She was still nursing the boy, and such troubles would
+have done her harm; you know what the risk is for a woman. Her beauty,
+youth, and health are imperiled. Did I do wrong?--She believes that we
+owe five thousand francs; but I owe five thousand more. The day before
+yesterday we were in the depths! No one on earth will lend to us
+artists. Our talents are not less untrustworthy than our whims. I
+knocked in vain at every door. Lisbeth, indeed, offered us her savings."
+
+"Poor soul!" said Hortense.
+
+"Poor soul!" said the Baroness.
+
+"But what are Lisbeth's two thousand francs? Everything to her, nothing
+to us.--Then, as you know, Hortense, she spoke to us of Madame Marneffe,
+who, as she owes so much to the Baron, out of a sense of honor,
+will take no interest. Hortense wanted to send her diamonds to the
+Mont-de-Piete; they would have brought in a few thousand francs, but we
+needed ten thousand. Those ten thousand francs were to be had free
+of interest for a year!--I said to myself, 'Hortense will be none the
+wiser; I will go and get them.'
+
+"Then the woman asked me to dinner through my father-in-law, giving me
+to understand that Lisbeth had spoken of the matter, and I should have
+the money. Between Hortense's despair on one hand, and the dinner on the
+other, I could not hesitate.--That is all.
+
+"What! could Hortense, at four-and-twenty, lovely, pure, and virtuous,
+and all my pride and glory, imagine that, when I have never left her
+since we married, I could now prefer--what?--a tawny, painted, ruddled
+creature?" said he, using the vulgar exaggeration of the studio to
+convince his wife by the vehemence that women like.
+
+"Oh! if only your father had ever spoken so----!" cried the Baroness.
+
+Hortense threw her arms round her husband's neck.
+
+"Yes, that is what I should have done," said her mother. "Wenceslas,
+my dear fellow, your wife was near dying of it," she went on very
+seriously. "You see how well she loves you. And, alas--she is yours!"
+
+She sighed deeply.
+
+"He may make a martyr of her, or a happy woman," thought she to herself,
+as every mother thinks when she sees her daughter married.--"It seems
+to me," she said aloud, "that I am miserable enough to hope to see my
+children happy."
+
+"Be quite easy, dear mamma," said Wenceslas, only too glad to see this
+critical moment end happily. "In two months I shall have repaid that
+dreadful woman. How could I help it," he went on, repeating this
+essentially Polish excuse with a Pole's grace; "there are times when a
+man would borrow of the Devil.--And, after all, the money belongs to the
+family. When once she had invited me, should I have got the money at all
+if I had responded to her civility with a rude refusal?"
+
+"Oh, mamma, what mischief papa is bringing on us!" cried Hortense.
+
+The Baroness laid her finger on her daughter's lips, aggrieved by
+this complaint, the first blame she had ever uttered of a father so
+heroically screened by her mother's magnanimous silence.
+
+"Now, good-bye, my children," said Madame Hulot. "The storm is over. But
+do not quarrel any more."
+
+When Wenceslas and his wife returned to their room after letting out the
+Baroness, Hortense said to her husband:
+
+"Tell me all about last evening."
+
+And she watched his face all through the narrative, interrupting him
+by the questions that crowd on a wife's mind in such circumstances.
+The story made Hortense reflect; she had a glimpse of the infernal
+dissipation which an artist must find in such vicious company.
+
+"Be honest, my Wenceslas; Stidmann was there, Claude Vignon,
+Vernisset.--Who else? In short, it was good fun?"
+
+"I, I was thinking of nothing but our ten thousand francs, and I was
+saying to myself, 'My Hortense will be freed from anxiety.'"
+
+This catechism bored the Livonian excessively; he seized a gayer moment
+to say:
+
+"And you, my dearest, what would you have done if your artist had proved
+guilty?"
+
+"I," said she, with an air of prompt decision, "I should have taken up
+Stidmann--not that I love him, of course!"
+
+"Hortense!" cried Steinbock, starting to his feet with a sudden and
+theatrical emphasis. "You would not have had the chance--I would have
+killed you!"
+
+Hortense threw herself into his arms, clasping him closely enough to
+stifle him, and covered him with kisses, saying:
+
+"Ah, you do love me! I fear nothing!--But no more Marneffe. Never go
+plunging into such horrible bogs."
+
+"I swear to you, my dear Hortense, that I will go there no more,
+excepting to redeem my note of hand."
+
+She pouted at this, but only as a loving woman sulks to get something
+for it. Wenceslas, tired out with such a morning's work, went off to his
+studio to make a clay sketch of the _Samson and Delilah_, for which he
+had the drawings in his pocket.
+
+Hortense, penitent for her little temper, and fancying that her husband
+was annoyed with her, went to the studio just as the sculptor had
+finished handling the clay with the impetuosity that spurs an artist
+when the mood is on him. On seeing his wife, Wenceslas hastily threw the
+wet wrapper over the group, and putting both arms round her, he said:
+
+"We were not really angry, were we, my pretty puss?"
+
+Hortense had caught sight of the group, had seen the linen thrown over
+it, and had said nothing; but as she was leaving, she took off the rag,
+looked at the model, and asked:
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"A group for which I had just had an idea."
+
+"And why did you hide it?"
+
+"I did not mean you to see it till it was finished."
+
+"The woman is very pretty," said Hortense.
+
+And a thousand suspicions cropped up in her mind, as, in India, tall,
+rank plants spring up in a night-time.
+
+
+
+By the end of three weeks, Madame Marneffe was intensely irritated by
+Hortense. Women of that stamp have a pride of their own; they insist
+that men shall kiss the devil's hoof; they have no forgiveness for the
+virtue that does not quail before their dominion, or that even holds its
+own against them. Now, in all that time Wenceslas had not paid one visit
+in the Rue Vanneau, not even that which politeness required to a woman
+who had sat for Delilah.
+
+Whenever Lisbeth called on the Steinbocks, there had been nobody at
+home. Monsieur and madame lived in the studio. Lisbeth, following the
+turtle doves to their nest at le Gros-Caillou, found Wenceslas hard at
+work, and was informed by the cook that madame never left monsieur's
+side. Wenceslas was a slave to the autocracy of love. So now Valerie, on
+her own account, took part with Lisbeth in her hatred of Hortense.
+
+Women cling to a lover that another woman is fighting for, just as
+much as men do to women round whom many coxcombs are buzzing. Thus any
+reflections _a propos_ to Madame Marneffe are equally applicable to any
+lady-killing rake; he is, in fact, a sort of male courtesan. Valerie's
+last fancy was a madness; above all, she was bent on getting her
+group; she was even thinking of going one morning to the studio to see
+Wenceslas, when a serious incident arose of the kind which, to a woman
+of that class, may be called the spoil of war.
+
+This is how Valerie announced this wholly personal event.
+
+She was breakfasting with Lisbeth and her husband.
+
+"I say, Marneffe, what would you say to being a second time a father?"
+
+"You don't mean it--a baby?--Oh, let me kiss you!"
+
+He rose and went round the table; his wife held up her head so that he
+could just kiss her hair.
+
+"If that is so," he went on, "I am head-clerk and officer of the Legion
+of Honor at once. But you must understand, my dear, Stanislas is not to
+be the sufferer, poor little man."
+
+"Poor little man?" Lisbeth put in. "You have not set your eyes on him
+these seven months. I am supposed to be his mother at the school; I am
+the only person in the house who takes any trouble about him."
+
+"A brat that costs us a hundred crowns a quarter!" said Valerie. "And
+he, at any rate, is your own child, Marneffe. You ought to pay for his
+schooling out of your salary.--The newcomer, far from reminding us of
+butcher's bills, will rescue us from want."
+
+"Valerie," replied Marneffe, assuming an attitude like Crevel, "I hope
+that Monsieur le Baron Hulot will take proper charge of his son, and
+not lay the burden on a poor clerk. I intend to keep him well up to the
+mark. So take the necessary steps, madame! Get him to write you letters
+in which he alludes to his satisfaction, for he is rather backward in
+coming forward in regard to my appointment."
+
+And Marneffe went away to the office, where his chief's precious
+leniency allowed him to come in at about eleven o'clock. And, indeed,
+he did little enough, for his incapacity was notorious, and he detested
+work.
+
+No sooner were they alone than Lisbeth and Valerie looked at each other
+for a moment like Augurs, and both together burst into a loud fit of
+laughter.
+
+"I say, Valerie--is it the fact?" said Lisbeth, "or merely a farce?"
+
+"It is a physical fact!" replied Valerie. "Now, I am sick and tired
+of Hortense; and it occurred to me in the night that I might fire this
+infant, like a bomb, into the Steinbock household."
+
+Valerie went back to her room, followed by Lisbeth, to whom she showed
+the following letter:--
+
+  "WENCESLAS MY DEAR,--I still believe in your love, though it is
+  nearly three weeks since I saw you. Is this scorn? Delilah can
+  scarcely believe that. Does it not rather result from the tyranny
+  of a woman whom, as you told me, you can no longer love?
+  Wenceslas, you are too great an artist to submit to such dominion.
+  Home is the grave of glory.--Consider now, are you the Wenceslas
+  of the Rue du Doyenne? You missed fire with my father's statue;
+  but in you the lover is greater than the artist, and you have had
+  better luck with his daughter. You are a father, my beloved
+  Wenceslas.
+
+  "If you do not come to me in the state I am in, your friends would
+  think very badly of you. But I love you so madly, that I feel I
+  should never have the strength to curse you. May I sign myself as
+  ever,
+
+  "YOUR VALERIE."
+
+
+"What do you say to my scheme for sending this note to the studio at a
+time when our dear Hortense is there by herself?" asked Valerie. "Last
+evening I heard from Stidmann that Wenceslas is to pick him up at eleven
+this morning to go on business to Chanor's; so that gawk Hortense will
+be there alone."
+
+"But after such a trick as that," replied Lisbeth, "I cannot continue to
+be your friend in the eyes of the world; I shall have to break with you,
+to be supposed never to visit you, or even to speak to you."
+
+"Evidently," said Valerie; "but--"
+
+"Oh! be quite easy," interrupted Lisbeth; "we shall often meet when I am
+Madame la Marechale. They are all set upon it now. Only the Baron is in
+ignorance of the plan, but you can talk him over."
+
+"Well," said Valerie, "but it is quite likely that the Baron and I may
+be on distant terms before long."
+
+"Madame Olivier is the only person who can make Hortense demand to
+see the letter," said Lisbeth. "And you must send her to the Rue
+Saint-Dominique before she goes on to the studio."
+
+"Our beauty will be at home, no doubt," said Valerie, ringing for Reine
+to call up Madame Olivier.
+
+Ten minutes after the despatch of this fateful letter, Baron Hulot
+arrived. Madame Marneffe threw her arms round the old man's neck with
+kittenish impetuosity.
+
+"Hector, you are a father!" she said in his ear. "That is what comes of
+quarreling and making friends again----"
+
+Perceiving a look of surprise, which the Baron did not at once conceal,
+Valerie assumed a reserve which brought the old man to despair. She made
+him wring the proofs from her one by one. When conviction, led on
+by vanity, had at last entered his mind, she enlarged on Monsieur
+Marneffe's wrath.
+
+"My dear old veteran," said she, "you can hardly avoid getting your
+responsible editor, our representative partner if you like, appointed
+head-clerk and officer of the Legion of Honor, for you really have done
+for the poor man, he adores his Stanislas, the little monstrosity who is
+so like him, that to me he is insufferable. Unless you prefer to settle
+twelve hundred francs a year on Stanislas--the capital to be his, and
+the life-interest payable to me, of course--"
+
+"But if I am to settle securities, I would rather it should be on my own
+son, and not on the monstrosity," said the Baron.
+
+This rash speech, in which the words "my own son" came out as full as
+a river in flood, was, by the end of the hour, ratified as a formal
+promise to settle twelve hundred francs a year on the future boy. And
+this promise became, on Valerie's tongue and in her countenance, what
+a drum is in the hands of a child; for three weeks she played on it
+incessantly.
+
+At the moment when Baron Hulot was leaving the Rue Vanneau, as happy
+as a man who after a year of married life still desires an heir,
+Madame Olivier had yielded to Hortense, and given up the note she was
+instructed to give only into the Count's own hands. The young wife paid
+twenty francs for that letter. The wretch who commits suicide must pay
+for the opium, the pistol, the charcoal.
+
+Hortense read and re-read the note; she saw nothing but this sheet of
+white paper streaked with black lines; the universe held for her
+nothing but that paper; everything was dark around her. The glare of the
+conflagration that was consuming the edifice of her happiness lighted
+up the page, for blackest night enfolded her. The shouts of her little
+Wenceslas at play fell on her ear, as if he had been in the depths of a
+valley and she on a high mountain. Thus insulted at four-and-twenty, in
+all the splendor of her beauty, enhanced by pure and devoted love--it
+was not a stab, it was death. The first shock had been merely on the
+nerves, the physical frame had struggled in the grip of jealousy; but
+now certainty had seized her soul, her body was unconscious.
+
+For about ten minutes Hortense sat under the incubus of this oppression.
+Then a vision of her mother appeared before her, and revulsion ensued;
+she was calm and cool, and mistress of her reason.
+
+She rang.
+
+"Get Louise to help you, child," said she to the cook. "As quickly as
+you can, pack up everything that belongs to me and everything wanted for
+the little boy. I give you an hour. When all is ready, fetch a hackney
+coach from the stand, and call me.
+
+"Make no remarks! I am leaving the house, and shall take Louise with me.
+You must stay here with monsieur; take good care of him----"
+
+She went into her room, and wrote the following letter:--
+
+  "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,--
+
+  "The letter I enclose will sufficiently account for the
+  determination I have come to.
+
+  "When you read this, I shall have left your house and have found
+  refuge with my mother, taking our child with me.
+
+  "Do not imagine that I shall retrace my steps. Do not imagine that
+  I am acting with the rash haste of youth, without reflection, with
+  the anger of offended affection; you will be greatly mistaken.
+
+  "I have been thinking very deeply during the last fortnight of
+  life, of love, of our marriage, of our duties to each other. I
+  have known the perfect devotion of my mother; she has told me all
+  her sorrows! She has been heroical--every day for twenty-three
+  years. But I have not the strength to imitate her, not because I
+  love you less than she loves my father, but for reasons of spirit
+  and nature. Our home would be a hell; I might lose my head so far
+  as to disgrace you--disgrace myself and our child.
+
+  "I refuse to be a Madame Marneffe; once launched on such a course,
+  a woman of my temper might not, perhaps, be able to stop. I am,
+  unfortunately for myself, a Hulot, not a Fischer.
+
+  "Alone, and absent from the scene of your dissipations, I am sure
+  of myself, especially with my child to occupy me, and by the side
+  of a strong and noble mother, whose life cannot fail to influence
+  the vehement impetuousness of my feelings. There, I can be a good
+  mother, bring our boy up well, and live. Under your roof the wife
+  would oust the mother; and constant contention would sour my
+  temper.
+
+  "I can accept a death-blow, but I will not endure for
+  twenty-five years, like my mother. If, at the end of three years of
+  perfect, unwavering love, you can be unfaithful to me with your
+  father-in-law's mistress, what rivals may I expect to have in later
+  years? Indeed, monsieur, you have begun your career of profligacy
+  much earlier than my father did, the life of dissipation, which is
+  a disgrace to the father of a family, which undermines the respect
+  of his children, and which ends in shame and despair.
+
+  "I am not unforgiving. Unrelenting feelings do not beseem erring
+  creatures living under the eye of God. If you win fame and fortune
+  by sustained work, if you have nothing to do with courtesans and
+  ignoble, defiling ways, you will find me still a wife worthy of
+  you.
+
+  "I believe you to be too much a gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, to
+  have recourse to the law. You will respect my wishes, and leave me
+  under my mother's roof. Above all, never let me see you there. I
+  have left all the money lent to you by that odious woman.--
+  Farewell.
+
+  "HORTENSE HULOT."
+
+
+This letter was written in anguish. Hortense abandoned herself to the
+tears, the outcries of murdered love. She laid down her pen and took
+it up again, to express as simply as possible all that passion commonly
+proclaims in this sort of testamentary letter. Her heart went forth in
+exclamations, wailing and weeping; but reason dictated the words.
+
+Informed by Louise that all was ready, the young wife slowly went round
+the little garden, through the bedroom and drawing-room, looking at
+everything for the last time. Then she earnestly enjoined the cook to
+take the greatest care for her master's comfort, promising to reward
+her handsomely if she would be honest. At last she got into the hackney
+coach to drive to her mother's house, her heart quite broken, crying so
+much as to distress the maid, and covering little Wenceslas with kisses,
+which betrayed her still unfailing love for his father.
+
+The Baroness knew already from Lisbeth that the father-in-law was
+largely to blame for the son-in-law's fault; nor was she surprised to
+see her daughter, whose conduct she approved, and she consented to give
+her shelter. Adeline, perceiving that her own gentleness and patience
+had never checked Hector, for whom her respect was indeed fast
+diminishing, thought her daughter very right to adopt another course.
+
+In three weeks the poor mother had suffered two wounds of which the pain
+was greater than any ill-fortune she had hitherto endured. The Baron
+had placed Victorin and his wife in great difficulties; and then, by
+Lisbeth's account, he was the cause of his son-in-law's misconduct, and
+had corrupted Wenceslas. The dignity of the father of the family, so
+long upheld by her really foolish self-sacrifice, was now overthrown.
+Though they did not regret the money the young Hulots were full alike of
+doubts and uneasiness as regarded the Baron. This sentiment, which was
+evidence enough, distressed the Baroness; she foresaw a break-up of the
+family tie.
+
+Hortense was accommodated in the dining-room, arranged as a bedroom
+with the help of the Marshal's money, and the anteroom became the
+dining-room, as it is in many apartments.
+
+
+
+When Wenceslas returned home and had read the two letters, he felt
+a kind of gladness mingled with regret. Kept so constantly under his
+wife's eye, so to speak, he had inwardly rebelled against this fresh
+thraldom, _a la_ Lisbeth. Full fed with love for three years past, he
+too had been reflecting during the last fortnight; and he found a family
+heavy on his hands. He had just been congratulated by Stidmann on the
+passion he had inspired in Valerie; for Stidmann, with an under-thought
+that was not unnatural, saw that he might flatter the husband's vanity
+in the hope of consoling the victim. And Wenceslas was glad to be able
+to return to Madame Marneffe.
+
+Still, he remembered the pure and unsullied happiness he had known,
+the perfections of his wife, her judgment, her innocent and guileless
+affection,--and he regretted her acutely. He thought of going at once to
+his mother-in-law's to crave forgiveness; but, in fact, like Hulot and
+Crevel, he went to Madame Marneffe, to whom he carried his wife's
+letter to show her what a disaster she had caused, and to discount
+his misfortune, so to speak, by claiming in return the pleasures his
+mistress could give him.
+
+He found Crevel with Valerie. The mayor, puffed up with pride, marched
+up and down the room, agitated by a storm of feelings. He put himself
+into position as if he were about to speak, but he dared not. His
+countenance was beaming, and he went now and again to the window, where
+he drummed on the pane with his fingers. He kept looking at Valerie with
+a glance of tender pathos. Happily for him, Lisbeth presently came in.
+
+"Cousin Betty," he said in her ear, "have you heard the news? I am a
+father! It seems to me I love my poor Celestine the less.--Oh! what
+a thing it is to have a child by the woman one idolizes! It is the
+fatherhood of the heart added to that of the flesh! I say--tell Valerie
+that I will work for that child--it shall be rich. She tells me she has
+some reason for believing that it will be a boy! If it is a boy, I shall
+insist on his being called Crevel. I will consult my notary about it."
+
+"I know how much she loves you," said Lisbeth. "But for her sake in the
+future, and for your own, control yourself. Do not rub your hands every
+five minutes."
+
+While Lisbeth was speaking aside on this wise to Crevel, Valerie had
+asked Wenceslas to give her back her letter, and she was saying things
+that dispelled all his griefs.
+
+"So now you are free, my dear," said she. "Ought any great artist to
+marry? You live only by fancy and freedom! There, I shall love you so
+much, beloved poet, that you shall never regret your wife. At the
+same time, if, like so many people, you want to keep up appearances, I
+undertake to bring Hortense back to you in a very short time."
+
+"Oh, if only that were possible!"
+
+"I am certain of it," said Valerie, nettled. "Your poor father-in-law
+is a man who is in every way utterly done for; who wants to appear as
+though he could be loved, out of conceit, and to make the world believe
+that he has a mistress; and he is so excessively vain on this point,
+that I can do what I please with him. The Baroness is still so
+devoted to her old Hector--I always feel as if I were talking of the
+_Iliad_--that these two old folks will contrive to patch up matters
+between you and Hortense. Only, if you want to avoid storms at home for
+the future, do not leave me for three weeks without coming to see your
+mistress--I was dying of it. My dear boy, some consideration is due from
+a gentleman to a woman he has so deeply compromised, especially when, as
+in my case, she has to be very careful of her reputation.
+
+"Stay to dinner, my darling--and remember that I must treat you with all
+the more apparent coldness because you are guilty of this too obvious
+mishap."
+
+Baron Montes was presently announced; Valerie rose and hurried forward
+to meet him; she spoke a few sentences in his ear, enjoining on him the
+same reserve as she had impressed on Wenceslas; the Brazilian assumed
+a diplomatic reticence suitable to the great news which filled him with
+delight, for he, at any rate was sure of his paternity.
+
+Thanks to these tactics, based on the vanity of the man in the lover
+stage of his existence, Valerie sat down to table with four men, all
+pleased and eager to please, all charmed, and each believing himself
+adored; called by Marneffe, who included himself, in speaking to
+Lisbeth, the five Fathers of the Church.
+
+Baron Hulot alone at first showed an anxious countenance, and this was
+why. Just as he was leaving the office, the head of the staff of clerks
+had come to his private room--a General with whom he had served for
+thirty years--and Hulot had spoken to him as to appointing Marneffe to
+Coquet's place, Coquet having consented to retire.
+
+"My dear fellow," said he, "I would not ask this favor of the Prince
+without our having agreed on the matter, and knowing that you approved."
+
+"My good friend," replied the other, "you must allow me to observe that,
+for your own sake, you should not insist on this nomination. I have
+already told you my opinion. There would be a scandal in the office,
+where there is a great deal too much talk already about you and Madame
+Marneffe. This, of course, is between ourselves. I have no wish to touch
+you on a sensitive spot, or disoblige you in any way, and I will prove
+it. If you are determined to get Monsieur Coquet's place, and he will
+really be a loss in the War Office, for he has been here since 1809, I
+will go into the country for a fortnight, so as to leave the field open
+between you and the Marshal, who loves you as a son. Then I shall
+take neither part, and shall have nothing on my conscience as an
+administrator."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Hulot. "I will reflect on what you have
+said."
+
+"In allowing myself to say so much, my dear friend, it is because your
+personal interest is far more deeply implicated than any concern or
+vanity of mine. In the first place, the matter lies entirely with the
+Marshal. And then, my good fellow, we are blamed for so many things,
+that one more or less! We are not at the maiden stage in our experience
+of fault-finding. Under the Restoration, men were put in simply to give
+them places, without any regard for the office.--We are old friends----"
+
+"Yes," the Baron put in; "and it is in order not to impair our old and
+valued friendship that I--"
+
+"Well, well," said the departmental manager, seeing Hulot's face clouded
+with embarrassment, "I will take myself off, old fellow.--But I warn
+you! you have enemies--that is to say, men who covet your splendid
+appointment, and you have but one anchor out. Now if, like me, you were
+a Deputy, you would have nothing to fear; so mind what you are about."
+
+This speech, in the most friendly spirit, made a deep impression on the
+Councillor of State.
+
+"But, after all, Roger, what is it that is wrong? Do not make any
+mysteries with me."
+
+The individual addressed as Roger looked at Hulot, took his hand, and
+pressed it.
+
+"We are such old friends, that I am bound to give you warning. If you
+want to keep your place, you must make a bed for yourself, and instead
+of asking the Marshal to give Coquet's place to Marneffe, in your place
+I would beg him to use his influence to reserve a seat for me on the
+General Council of State; there you may die in peace, and, like the
+beaver, abandon all else to the pursuers."
+
+"What, do you think the Marshal would forget--"
+
+"The Marshal has already taken your part so warmly at a General Meeting
+of the Ministers, that you will not now be turned out; but it was
+seriously discussed! So give them no excuse. I can say no more. At this
+moment you may make your own terms; you may sit on the Council of State
+and be made a Peer of the Chamber. If you delay too long, if you give
+any one a hold against you, I can answer for nothing.--Now, am I to go?"
+
+"Wait a little. I will see the Marshal," replied Hulot, "and I will send
+my brother to see which way the wind blows at headquarters."
+
+The humor in which the Baron came back to Madame Marneffe's may be
+imagined; he had almost forgotten his fatherhood, for Roger had taken
+the part of a true and kind friend in explaining the position. At
+the same time Valerie's influence was so great that, by the middle
+of dinner, the Baron was tuned up to the pitch, and was all the more
+cheerful for having unwonted anxieties to conceal; but the hapless
+man was not yet aware that in the course of that evening he would find
+himself in a cleft stick, between his happiness and the danger pointed
+out by his friend--compelled, in short, to choose between Madame
+Marneffe and his official position.
+
+At eleven o'clock, when the evening was at its gayest, for the room was
+full of company, Valerie drew Hector into a corner of her sofa.
+
+"My dear old boy," said she, "your daughter is so annoyed at knowing
+that Wenceslas comes here, that she has left him 'planted.' Hortense is
+wrong-headed. Ask Wenceslas to show you the letter the little fool has
+written to him.
+
+"This division of two lovers, of which I am reputed to be the cause, may
+do me the greatest harm, for this is how virtuous women undermine each
+other. It is disgraceful to pose as a victim in order to cast the blame
+on a woman whose only crime is that she keeps a pleasant house. If
+you love me, you will clear my character by reconciling the sweet
+turtle-doves.
+
+"I do not in the least care about your son-in-law's visits; you brought
+him here--take him away again! If you have any authority in your family,
+it seems to me that you may very well insist on your wife's patching up
+this squabble. Tell the worthy old lady from me, that if I am unjustly
+charged with having caused a young couple to quarrel, with upsetting the
+unity of a family, and annexing both the father and the son-in-law, I
+will deserve my reputation by annoying them in my own way! Why, here is
+Lisbeth talking of throwing me over! She prefers to stick to her family,
+and I cannot blame her for it. She will throw me over, says she, unless
+the young people make friends again. A pretty state of things! Our
+expenses here will be trebled!"
+
+"Oh, as for that!" said the Baron, on hearing of his daughter's strong
+measures, "I will have no nonsense of that kind."
+
+"Very well," said Valerie. "And now for the next thing.--What about
+Coquet's place?"
+
+"That," said Hector, looking away, "is more difficult, not to say
+impossible."
+
+"Impossible, my dear Hector?" said Madame Marneffe in the Baron's ear.
+"But you do not know to what lengths Marneffe will go. I am completely
+in his power; he is immoral for his own gratification, like most men,
+but he is excessively vindictive, like all weak and impotent natures. In
+the position to which you have reduced me, I am in his power. I am
+bound to be on terms with him for a few days, and he is quite capable of
+refusing to leave my room any more."
+
+Hulot started with horror.
+
+"He would leave me alone on condition of being head-clerk. It is
+abominable--but logical."
+
+"Valerie, do you love me?"
+
+"In the state in which I am, my dear, the question is the meanest
+insult."
+
+"Well, then--if I were to attempt, merely to attempt, to ask the Prince
+for a place for Marneffe, I should be done for, and Marneffe would be
+turned out."
+
+"I thought that you and the Prince were such intimate friends."
+
+"We are, and he has amply proved it; but, my child, there is authority
+above the Marshal's--for instance, the whole Council of Ministers. With
+time and a little tacking, we shall get there. But, to succeed, I must
+wait till the moment when some service is required of me. Then I can say
+one good turn deserves another--"
+
+"If I tell Marneffe this tale, my poor Hector, he will play us some
+mean trick. You must tell him yourself that he has to wait. I will not
+undertake to do so. Oh! I know what my fate would be. He knows how to
+punish me! He will henceforth share my room----
+
+"Do not forget to settle the twelve hundred francs a year on the little
+one!"
+
+Hulot, seeing his pleasures in danger, took Monsieur Marneffe aside, and
+for the first time derogated from the haughty tone he had always
+assumed towards him, so greatly was he horrified by the thought of that
+half-dead creature in his pretty young wife's bedroom.
+
+"Marneffe, my dear fellow," said he, "I have been talking of you to-day.
+But you cannot be promoted to the first class just yet. We must have
+time."
+
+"I will be, Monsieur le Baron," said Marneffe shortly.
+
+"But, my dear fellow--"
+
+"I _will_ be, Monsieur le Baron," Marneffe coldly repeated, looking
+alternately at the Baron and at Valerie. "You have placed my wife in a
+position that necessitates her making up her differences with me, and I
+mean to keep her; for, _my dear fellow_, she is a charming creature," he
+added, with crushing irony. "I am master here--more than you are at the
+War Office."
+
+The Baron felt one of those pangs of fury which have the effect, in the
+heart, of a fit of raging toothache, and he could hardly conceal the
+tears in his eyes.
+
+During this little scene, Valerie had been explaining Marneffe's
+imaginary determination to Montes, and thus had rid herself of him for a
+time.
+
+Of her four adherents, Crevel alone was exempted from the rule--Crevel,
+the master of the little "bijou" apartment; and he displayed on his
+countenance an air of really insolent beatitude, notwithstanding
+the wordless reproofs administered by Valerie in frowns and meaning
+grimaces. His triumphant paternity beamed in every feature.
+
+When Valerie was whispering a word of correction in his ear, he snatched
+her hand, and put in:
+
+"To-morrow, my Duchess, you shall have your own little house! The papers
+are to be signed to-morrow."
+
+"And the furniture?" said she, with a smile.
+
+"I have a thousand shares in the Versailles _rive gauche_ railway. I
+bought them at twenty-five, and they will go up to three hundred in
+consequence of the amalgamation of the two lines, which is a secret told
+to me. You shall have furniture fit for a queen. But then you will be
+mine alone henceforth?"
+
+"Yes, burly Maire," said this middle-class Madame de Merteuil. "But
+behave yourself; respect the future Madame Crevel."
+
+"My dear cousin," Lisbeth was saying to the Baron, "I shall go to
+see Adeline early to-morrow; for, as you must see, I cannot, with any
+decency, remain here. I will go and keep house for your brother the
+Marshal."
+
+"I am going home this evening," said Hulot.
+
+"Very well, you will see me at breakfast to-morrow," said Lisbeth,
+smiling.
+
+She understood that her presence would be necessary at the family scene
+that would take place on the morrow. And the very first thing in the
+morning she went to see Victorin and to tell him that Hortense and
+Wenceslas had parted.
+
+When the Baron went home at half-past ten, Mariette and Louise, who had
+had a hard day, were locking up the apartment. Hulot had not to ring.
+
+Very much put out at this compulsory virtue, the husband went straight
+to his wife's room, and through the half-open door he saw her kneeling
+before her Crucifix, absorbed in prayer, in one of those attitudes
+which make the fortune of the painter or the sculptor who is so happy
+to invent and then to express them. Adeline, carried away by her
+enthusiasm, was praying aloud:
+
+"O God, have mercy and enlighten him!"
+
+The Baroness was praying for her Hector.
+
+At this sight, so unlike what he had just left, and on hearing this
+petition founded on the events of the day, the Baron heaved a sigh of
+deep emotion. Adeline looked round, her face drowned in tears. She was
+so convinced that her prayer had been heard, that, with one spring, she
+threw her arms round Hector with the impetuosity of happy affection.
+Adeline had given up all a wife's instincts; sorrow had effaced even the
+memory of them. No feeling survived in her but those of motherhood,
+of the family honor, and the pure attachment of a Christian wife for a
+husband who has gone astray--the saintly tenderness which survives all
+else in a woman's soul.
+
+"Hector!" she said, "are you come back to us? Has God taken pity on our
+family?"
+
+"Dear Adeline," replied the Baron, coming in and seating his wife by his
+side on a couch, "you are the saintliest creature I ever knew; I have
+long known myself to be unworthy of you."
+
+"You would have very little to do, my dear," said she, holding Hulot's
+hand and trembling so violently that it was as though she had a palsy,
+"very little to set things in order--"
+
+She dared not proceed; she felt that every word would be a reproof,
+and she did not wish to mar the happiness with which this meeting was
+inundating her soul.
+
+"It is Hortense who has brought me here," said Hulot. "That child may
+do us far more harm by her hasty proceeding than my absurd passion for
+Valerie has ever done. But we will discuss all this to-morrow morning.
+Hortense is asleep, Mariette tells me; we will not disturb her."
+
+"Yes," said Madame Hulot, suddenly plunged into the depths of grief.
+
+She understood that the Baron's return was prompted not so much by the
+wish to see his family as by some ulterior interest.
+
+"Leave her in peace till to-morrow," said the mother. "The poor child is
+in a deplorable condition; she has been crying all day."
+
+
+
+At nine the next morning, the Baron, awaiting his daughter, whom he had
+sent for, was pacing the large, deserted drawing-room, trying to find
+arguments by which to conquer the most difficult form of obstinacy
+there is to deal with--that of a young wife, offended and implacable, as
+blameless youth ever is, in its ignorance of the disgraceful compromises
+of the world, of its passions and interests.
+
+"Here I am, papa," said Hortense in a tremulous voice, and looking pale
+from her miseries.
+
+Hulot, sitting down, took his daughter round the waist, and drew her
+down to sit on his knee.
+
+"Well, my child," said he, kissing her forehead, "so there are troubles
+at home, and you have been hasty and headstrong? That is not like a
+well-bred child. My Hortense ought not to have taken such a decisive
+step as that of leaving her house and deserting her husband on her own
+account, and without consulting her parents. If my darling girl had come
+to see her kind and admirable mother, she would not have given me
+this cruel pain I feel!--You do not know the world; it is malignantly
+spiteful. People will perhaps say that your husband sent you back to
+your parents. Children brought up as you were, on your mother's
+lap, remain artless; maidenly passion like yours for Wenceslas,
+unfortunately, makes no allowances; it acts on every impulse. The little
+heart is moved, the head follows suit. You would burn down Paris to be
+revenged, with no thought of the courts of justice!
+
+"When your old father tells you that you have outraged the proprieties,
+you may take his word for it.--I say nothing of the cruel pain you have
+given me. It is bitter, I assure you, for you throw all the blame on a
+woman of whose heart you know nothing, and whose hostility may become
+disastrous. And you, alas! so full of guileless innocence and purity,
+can have no suspicions; but you may be vilified and slandered.--Besides,
+my darling pet, you have taken a foolish jest too seriously. I can
+assure you, on my honor, that your husband is blameless. Madame
+Marneffe--"
+
+So far the Baron, artistically diplomatic, had formulated his
+remonstrances very judiciously. He had, as may be observed, worked up to
+the mention of this name with superior skill; and yet Hortense, as she
+heard it, winced as if stung to the quick.
+
+"Listen to me; I have had great experience, and I have seen much," he
+went on, stopping his daughter's attempt to speak. "That lady is very
+cold to your husband. Yes, you have been made the victim of a practical
+joke, and I will prove it to you. Yesterday Wenceslas was dining with
+her--"
+
+"Dining with her!" cried the young wife, starting to her feet, and
+looking at her father with horror in every feature. "Yesterday! After
+having had my letter! Oh, great God!--Why did I not take the veil rather
+than marry? But now my life is not my own! I have the child!" and she
+sobbed.
+
+Her weeping went to Madame Hulot's heart. She came out of her room
+and ran to her daughter, taking her in her arms, and asking her those
+questions, stupid with grief, which first rose to her lips.
+
+"Now we have tears," said the Baron to himself, "and all was going so
+well! What is to be done with women who cry?"
+
+"My child," said the Baroness, "listen to your father! He loves us
+all--come, come--"
+
+"Come, Hortense, my dear little girl, cry no more, you make yourself too
+ugly!" said the Baron, "Now, be a little reasonable. Go sensibly home,
+and I promise you that Wenceslas shall never set foot in that woman's
+house. I ask you to make the sacrifice, if it is a sacrifice to forgive
+the husband you love so small a fault. I ask you--for the sake of my
+gray hairs, and of the love you owe your mother. You do not want to
+blight my later years with bitterness and regret?"
+
+Hortense fell at her father's feet like a crazed thing, with the
+vehemence of despair; her hair, loosely pinned up, fell about her, and
+she held out her hands with an expression that painted her misery.
+
+"Father," she said, "ask my life! Take it if you will, but at least take
+it pure and spotless, and I will yield it up gladly. Do not ask me to
+die in dishonor and crime. I am not at all like my husband; I cannot
+swallow an outrage. If I went back under my husband's roof, I should be
+capable of smothering him in a fit of jealousy--or of doing worse! Do no
+exact from me a thing that is beyond my powers. Do not have to mourn for
+me still living, for the least that can befall me is to go mad. I feel
+madness close upon me!
+
+"Yesterday, yesterday, he could dine with that woman, after having read
+my letter?--Are other men made so? My life I give you, but do not let my
+death be ignominious!--His fault?--A small one! When he has a child by
+that woman!"
+
+"A child!" cried Hulot, starting back a step or two. "Come. This is
+really some fooling."
+
+At this juncture Victorin and Lisbeth arrived, and stood dumfounded
+at the scene. The daughter was prostrate at her father's feet. The
+Baroness, speechless between her maternal feelings and her conjugal
+duty, showed a harassed face bathed in tears.
+
+"Lisbeth," said the Baron, seizing his cousin by the hand and pointing
+to Hortense, "you can help me here. My poor child's brain is turned; she
+believes that her Wenceslas is Madame Marneffe's lover, while all that
+Valerie wanted was to have a group by him."
+
+"_Delilah_!" cried the young wife. "The only thing he has done since
+our marriage. The man would not work for me or for his son, and he has
+worked with frenzy for that good-for-nothing creature.--Oh, father, kill
+me outright, for every word stabs like a knife!"
+
+Lisbeth turned to the Baroness and Victorin, pointing with a pitying
+shrug to the Baron, who could not see her.
+
+"Listen to me," said she to him. "I had no idea--when you asked me to go
+to lodge over Madame Marneffe and keep house for her--I had no idea
+of what she was; but many things may be learned in three years. That
+creature is a prostitute, and one whose depravity can only be compared
+with that of her infamous and horrible husband. You are the dupe, my
+lord pot-boiler, of those people; you will be led further by them than
+you dream of! I speak plainly, for you are at the bottom of a pit."
+
+The Baroness and her daughter, hearing Lisbeth speak in this style, cast
+adoring looks at her, such as the devout cast at a Madonna for having
+saved their life.
+
+"That horrible woman was bent on destroying your son-in-law's home.
+To what end?--I know not. My brain is not equal to seeing clearly into
+these dark intrigues--perverse, ignoble, infamous! Your Madame Marneffe
+does not love your son-in-law, but she will have him at her feet out of
+revenge. I have just spoken to the wretched woman as she deserves. She
+is a shameless courtesan; I have told her that I am leaving her house,
+that I would not have my honor smirched in that muck-heap.--I owe myself
+to my family before all else.
+
+"I knew that Hortense had left her husband, so here I am. Your
+Valerie, whom you believe to be a saint, is the cause of this miserable
+separation; can I remain with such a woman? Our poor little Hortense,"
+said she, touching the Baron's arm, with peculiar meaning, "is perhaps
+the dupe of a wish of such women as these, who, to possess a toy, would
+sacrifice a family.
+
+"I do not think Wenceslas guilty; but I think him weak, and I cannot
+promise that he will not yield to her refinements of temptation.--My
+mind is made up. The woman is fatal to you; she will bring you all to
+utter ruin. I will not even seem to be concerned in the destruction of
+my own family, after living there for three years solely to hinder it.
+
+"You are cheated, Baron; say very positively that you will have nothing
+to say to the promotion of that dreadful Marneffe, and you will see
+then! There is a fine rod in pickle for you in that case."
+
+Lisbeth lifted up Hortense and kissed her enthusiastically.
+
+"My dear Hortense, stand firm," she whispered.
+
+The Baroness embraced Lisbeth with the vehemence of a woman who sees
+herself avenged. The whole family stood in perfect silence round the
+father, who had wit enough to know what that silence implied. A storm
+of fury swept across his brow and face with evident signs; the veins
+swelled, his eyes were bloodshot, his flesh showed patches of color.
+Adeline fell on her knees before him and seized his hands.
+
+"My dear, forgive, my dear!"
+
+"You loathe me!" cried the Baron--the cry of his conscience.
+
+For we all know the secret of our own wrong-doing. We almost always
+ascribe to our victims the hateful feelings which must fill them with
+the hope of revenge; and in spite of every effort of hypocrisy, our
+tongue or our face makes confession under the rack of some unexpected
+anguish, as the criminal of old confessed under the hands of the
+torturer.
+
+"Our children," he went on, to retract the avowal, "turn at last to be
+our enemies--"
+
+"Father!" Victorin began.
+
+"You dare to interrupt your father!" said the Baron in a voice of
+thunder, glaring at his son.
+
+"Father, listen to me," Victorin went on in a clear, firm voice, the
+voice of a puritanical deputy. "I know the respect I owe you too well
+ever to fail in it, and you will always find me the most respectful and
+submissive of sons."
+
+Those who are in the habit of attending the sittings of the Chamber
+will recognize the tactics of parliamentary warfare in these fine-drawn
+phrases, used to calm the factions while gaining time.
+
+"We are far from being your enemies," his son went on. "I have quarreled
+with my father-in-law, Monsieur Crevel, for having rescued your notes of
+hand for sixty thousand francs from Vauvinet, and that money is, beyond
+doubt, in Madame Marneffe's pocket.--I am not finding fault with you,
+father," said he, in reply to an impatient gesture of the Baron's; "I
+simply wish to add my protest to my cousin Lisbeth's, and to point
+out to you that though my devotion to you as a father is blind and
+unlimited, my dear father, our pecuniary resources, unfortunately, are
+very limited."
+
+"Money!" cried the excitable old man, dropping on to a chair, quite
+crushed by this argument. "From my son!--You shall be repaid your money,
+sir," said he, rising, and he went to the door.
+
+"Hector!"
+
+At this cry the Baron turned round, suddenly showing his wife a face
+bathed in tears; she threw her arms round him with the strength of
+despair.
+
+"Do not leave us thus--do not go away in anger. I have not said a
+word--not I!"
+
+At this heart-wrung speech the children fell at their father's feet.
+
+"We all love you," said Hortense.
+
+Lisbeth, as rigid as a statue, watched the group with a superior smile
+on her lips. Just then Marshal Hulot's voice was heard in the anteroom.
+The family all felt the importance of secrecy, and the scene suddenly
+changed. The young people rose, and every one tried to hide all traces
+of emotion.
+
+A discussion was going on at the door between Mariette and a soldier,
+who was so persistent that the cook came in.
+
+"Monsieur, a regimental quartermaster, who says he is just come from
+Algiers, insists on seeing you."
+
+"Tell him to wait."
+
+"Monsieur," said Mariette to her master in an undertone, "he told me to
+tell you privately that it has to do with your uncle there."
+
+The Baron started; he believed that the funds had been sent at last
+which he had been asking for these two months, to pay up his bills; he
+left the family-party, and hurried out to the anteroom.
+
+"You are Monsieur de Paron Hulot?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Your own self?"
+
+"My own self."
+
+The man, who had been fumbling meanwhile in the lining of his cap, drew
+out a letter, of which the Baron hastily broke the seal, and read as
+follows:--
+
+  "DEAR NEPHEW,--Far from being able to send you the hundred
+  thousand francs you ask of me, my present position is not tenable
+  unless you can take some decisive steps to save me. We are saddled
+  with a public prosecutor who talks goody, and rhodomontades
+  nonsense about the management. It is impossible to get the
+  black-chokered pump to hold his tongue. If the War Minister allows
+  civilians to feed out of his hand, I am done for. I can trust the
+  bearer; try to get him promoted; he has done us good service. Do
+  not abandon me to the crows!"
+
+This letter was a thunderbolt; the Baron could read in it the intestine
+warfare between civil and military authorities, which to this day
+hampers the Government, and he was required to invent on the spot some
+palliative for the difficulty that stared him in the face. He desired
+the soldier to come back next day, dismissing him with splendid promises
+of promotion, and he returned to the drawing-room. "Good-day
+and good-bye, brother," said he to the Marshal.--"Good-bye,
+children.--Good-bye, my dear Adeline.--And what are you going to do,
+Lisbeth?" he asked.
+
+"I?--I am going to keep house for the Marshal, for I must end my days
+doing what I can for one or another of you."
+
+"Do not leave Valerie till I have seen you again," said Hulot in his
+cousin's ear.--"Good-bye, Hortense, refractory little puss; try to be
+reasonable. I have important business to be attended to at once; we will
+discuss your reconciliation another time. Now, think it over, my child,"
+said he as he kissed her.
+
+And he went away, so evidently uneasy, that his wife and children felt
+the gravest apprehensions.
+
+"Lisbeth," said the Baroness, "I must find out what is wrong with
+Hector; I never saw him in such a state. Stay a day or two longer with
+that woman; he tells her everything, and we can then learn what has so
+suddenly upset him. Be quite easy; we will arrange your marriage to the
+Marshal, for it is really necessary."
+
+"I shall never forget the courage you have shown this morning," said
+Hortense, embracing Lisbeth.
+
+"You have avenged our poor mother," said Victorin.
+
+The Marshal looked on with curiosity at all the display of affection
+lavished on Lisbeth, who went off to report the scene to Valerie.
+
+This sketch will enable guileless souls to understand what various
+mischief Madame Marneffes may do in a family, and the means by which
+they reach poor virtuous wives apparently so far out of their ken. And
+then, if we only transfer, in fancy, such doings to the upper class of
+society about a throne, and if we consider what kings' mistresses must
+have cost them, we may estimate the debt owed by a nation to a sovereign
+who sets the example of a decent and domestic life.
+
+
+
+In Paris each ministry is a little town by itself, whence women are
+banished; but there is just as much detraction and scandal as though
+the feminine population were admitted there. At the end of three years,
+Monsieur Marneffe's position was perfectly clear and open to the day,
+and in every room one and another asked, "Is Marneffe to be, or not to
+be, Coquet's successor?" Exactly as the question might have been put
+to the Chamber, "Will the estimates pass or not pass?" The smallest
+initiative on the part of the board of Management was commented on;
+everything in Baron Hulot's department was carefully noted. The astute
+State Councillor had enlisted on his side the victim of Marneffe's
+promotion, a hard-working clerk, telling him that if he could fill
+Marneffe's place, he would certainly succeed to it; he had told him
+that the man was dying. So this clerk was scheming for Marneffe's
+advancement.
+
+When Hulot went through his anteroom, full of visitors, he saw
+Marneffe's colorless face in a corner, and sent for him before any one
+else.
+
+"What do you want of me, my dear fellow?" said the Baron, disguising his
+anxiety.
+
+"Monsieur le Directeur, I am the laughing-stock of the office, for it
+has become known that the chief of the clerks has left this morning for
+a holiday, on the ground of his health. He is to be away a month. Now,
+we all know what waiting for a month means. You deliver me over to the
+mockery of my enemies, and it is bad enough to be drummed upon one side;
+drumming on both at once, monsieur, is apt to burst the drum."
+
+"My dear Marneffe, it takes long patience to gain an end. You cannot be
+made head-clerk in less than two months, if ever. Just when I must, as
+far as possible, secure my own position, is not the time to be applying
+for your promotion, which would raise a scandal."
+
+"If you are broke, I shall never get it," said Marneffe coolly. "And if
+you get me the place, it will make no difference in the end."
+
+"Then I am to sacrifice myself for you?" said the Baron.
+
+"If you do not, I shall be much mistaken in you."
+
+"You are too exclusively Marneffe, Monsieur Marneffe," said Hulot,
+rising and showing the clerk the door.
+
+"I have the honor to wish you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron," said
+Marneffe humbly.
+
+"What an infamous rascal!" thought the Baron. "This is uncommonly like a
+summons to pay within twenty-four hours on pain of distraint."
+
+Two hours later, just when the Baron had been instructing Claude Vignon,
+whom he was sending to the Ministry of Justice to obtain information
+as to the judicial authorities under whose jurisdiction Johann Fischer
+might fall, Reine opened the door of his private room and gave him a
+note, saying she would wait for the answer.
+
+"Valerie is mad!" said the Baron to himself. "To send Reine! It is
+enough to compromise us all, and it certainly compromises that dreadful
+Marneffe's chances of promotion!"
+
+But he dismissed the minister's private secretary, and read as
+follows:--
+
+  "Oh, my dear friend, what a scene I have had to endure! Though you
+  have made me happy for three years, I have paid dearly for it! He
+  came in from the office in a rage that made me quake. I knew he
+  was ugly; I have seen him a monster! His four real teeth
+  chattered, and he threatened me with his odious presence without
+  respite if I should continue to receive you. My poor, dear old
+  boy, our door is closed against you henceforth. You see my tears;
+  they are dropping on the paper and soaking it; can you read what I
+  write, dear Hector? Oh, to think of never seeing you, of giving
+  you up when I bear in me some of your life, as I flatter myself I
+  have your heart--it is enough to kill me. Think of our little
+  Hector!
+
+  "Do not forsake me, but do not disgrace yourself for Marneffe's
+  sake; do not yield to his threats.
+
+  "I love you as I have never loved! I remember all the sacrifices
+  you have made for your Valerie; she is not, and never will be,
+  ungrateful; you are, and will ever be, my only husband. Think no
+  more of the twelve hundred francs a year I asked you to settle on
+  the dear little Hector who is to come some months hence; I will
+  not cost you anything more. And besides, my money will always be
+  yours.
+
+  "Oh, if you only loved me as I love you, my Hector, you would
+  retire on your pension; we should both take leave of our family,
+  our worries, our surroundings, so full of hatred, and we should go
+  to live with Lisbeth in some pretty country place--in Brittany, or
+  wherever you like. There we should see nobody, and we should be
+  happy away from the world. Your pension and the little property I
+  can call my own would be enough for us. You say you are jealous;
+  well, you would then have your Valerie entirely devoted to her
+  Hector, and you would never have to talk in a loud voice, as you
+  did the other day. I shall have but one child--ours--you may be
+  sure, my dearly loved old veteran.
+
+  "You cannot conceive of my fury, for you cannot know how he
+  treated me, and the foul words he vomited on your Valerie. Such
+  words would disgrace my paper; a woman such as I am--Montcornet's
+  daughter--ought never to have heard one of them in her life. I
+  only wish you had been there, that I might have punished him with
+  the sight of the mad passion I felt for you. My father would have
+  killed the wretch; I can only do as women do--love you devotedly!
+  Indeed, my love, in the state of exasperation in which I am, I
+  cannot possibly give up seeing you. I must positively see you, in
+  secret, every day! That is what we are, we women. Your resentment
+  is mine. If you love me, I implore you, do not let him be
+  promoted; leave him to die a second-class clerk.
+
+  "At this moment I have lost my head; I still seem to hear him
+  abusing me. Betty, who had meant to leave me, has pity on me, and
+  will stay for a few days.
+
+  "My dear kind love, I do not know yet what is to be done. I see
+  nothing for it but flight. I always delight in the country
+  --Brittany, Languedoc, what you will, so long as I am free to love
+  you. Poor dear, how I pity you! Forced now to go back to your old
+  Adeline, to that lachrymal urn--for, as he no doubt told you, the
+  monster means to watch me night and day; he spoke of a detective!
+  Do not come here, he is capable of anything I know, since he could
+  make use of me for the basest purposes of speculation. I only wish
+  I could return you all the things I have received from your
+  generosity.
+
+  "Ah! my kind Hector, I may have flirted, and have seemed to you to
+  be fickle, but you did not know your Valerie; she liked to tease
+  you, but she loves you better than any one in the world.
+
+  "He cannot prevent your coming to see your cousin; I will arrange
+  with her that we have speech with each other. My dear old boy,
+  write me just a line, pray, to comfort me in the absence of your
+  dear self. (Oh, I would give one of my hands to have you by me on
+  our sofa!) A letter will work like a charm; write me something
+  full of your noble soul; I will return your note to you, for I
+  must be cautious; I should not know where to hide it, he pokes his
+  nose in everywhere. In short, comfort your Valerie, your little
+  wife, the mother of your child.--To think of my having to write to
+  you, when I used to see you every day. As I say to Lisbeth, 'I did
+  not know how happy I was.' A thousand kisses, dear boy. Be true to
+  your
+
+"VALERIE."
+
+
+"And tears!" said Hulot to himself as he finished this letter, "tears
+which have blotted out her name.--How is she?" said he to Reine.
+
+"Madame is in bed; she has dreadful spasms," replied Reine. "She had a
+fit of hysterics that twisted her like a withy round a faggot. It came
+on after writing. It comes of crying so much. She heard monsieur's voice
+on the stairs."
+
+The Baron in his distress wrote the following note on office paper with
+a printed heading:--
+
+  "Be quite easy, my angel, he will die a second-class clerk!--Your
+  idea is admirable; we will go and live far from Paris, where we
+  shall be happy with our little Hector; I will retire on my
+  pension, and I shall be sure to find some good appointment on a
+  railway.
+
+  "Ah, my sweet friend, I feel so much the younger for your letter!
+  I shall begin life again and make a fortune, you will see, for our
+  dear little one. As I read your letter, a thousand times more
+  ardent than those of the _Nouvelle Heloise_, it worked a miracle!
+  I had not believed it possible that I could love you more. This
+  evening, at Lisbeth's you will see
+
+"YOUR HECTOR, FOR LIFE."
+
+
+Reine carried off this reply, the first letter the Baron had written
+to his "sweet friend." Such emotions to some extent counterbalanced
+the disasters growling in the distance; but the Baron, at this moment
+believing he could certainly avert the blows aimed at his uncle, Johann
+Fischer, thought only of the deficit.
+
+One of the characteristics of the Bonapartist temperament is a firm
+belief in the power of the sword, and confidence in the superiority
+of the military over civilians. Hulot laughed to scorn the Public
+Prosecutor in Algiers, where the War Office is supreme. Man is always
+what he has once been. How can the officers of the Imperial Guard forget
+that time was when the mayors of the largest towns in the Empire and the
+Emperor's prefects, Emperors themselves on a minute scale, would come
+out to meet the Imperial Guard, to pay their respects on the borders
+of the Departments through which it passed, and to do it, in short, the
+homage due to sovereigns?
+
+At half-past four the baron went straight to Madame Marneffe's; his
+heart beat as high as a young man's as he went upstairs, for he was
+asking himself this question, "Shall I see her? or shall I not?"
+
+How was he now to remember the scene of the morning when his weeping
+children had knelt at his feet? Valerie's note, enshrined for ever in a
+thin pocket-book over his heart, proved to him that she loved him more
+than the most charming of young men.
+
+Having rung, the unhappy visitor heard within the shuffling slippers and
+vexatious scraping cough of the detestable master. Marneffe opened the
+door, but only to put himself into an attitude and point to the stairs,
+exactly as Hulot had shown him the door of his private room.
+
+"You are too exclusively Hulot, Monsieur Hulot!" said he.
+
+The Baron tried to pass him, Marneffe took a pistol out of his pocket
+and cocked it.
+
+"Monsieur le Baron," said he, "when a man is as vile as I am--for you
+think me very vile, don't you?--he would be the meanest galley-slave if
+he did not get the full benefit of his betrayed honor.--You are for
+war; it will be hot work and no quarter. Come here no more, and do not
+attempt to get past me. I have given the police notice of my position
+with regard to you."
+
+And taking advantage of Hulot's amazement, he pushed him out and shut
+the door.
+
+"What a low scoundrel!" said Hulot to himself, as he went upstairs to
+Lisbeth. "I understand her letter now. Valerie and I will go away from
+Paris. Valerie is wholly mine for the remainder of my days; she will
+close my eyes."
+
+Lisbeth was out. Madame Olivier told the Baron that she had gone to his
+wife's house, thinking that she would find him there.
+
+"Poor thing! I should never have expected her to be so sharp as she was
+this morning," thought Hulot, recalling Lisbeth's behavior as he made
+his way from the Rue Vanneau to the Rue Plumet.
+
+As he turned the corner of the Rue Vanneau and the Rue de Babylone, he
+looked back at the Eden whence Hymen had expelled him with the sword
+of the law. Valerie, at her window, was watching his departure; as he
+glanced up, she waved her handkerchief, but the rascally Marneffe hit
+his wife's cap and dragged her violently away from the window. A tear
+rose to the great official's eye.
+
+"Oh! to be so well loved! To see a woman so ill used, and to be so
+nearly seventy years old!" thought he.
+
+Lisbeth had come to give the family the good news. Adeline and Hortense
+had already heard that the Baron, not choosing to compromise himself in
+the eyes of the whole office by appointing Marneffe to the first class,
+would be turned from the door by the Hulot-hating husband. Adeline, very
+happy, had ordered a dinner that her Hector was to like better than
+any of Valerie's; and Lisbeth, in her devotion, was helping Mariette to
+achieve this difficult result. Cousin Betty was the idol of the hour.
+Mother and daughter kissed her hands, and had told her with touching
+delight that the Marshal consented to have her as his housekeeper.
+
+"And from that, my dear, there is but one step to becoming his wife!"
+said Adeline.
+
+"In fact, he did not say no when Victorin mentioned it," added the
+Countess.
+
+The Baron was welcomed home with such charming proofs of affection,
+so pathetically overflowing with love, that he was fain to conceal his
+troubles.
+
+Marshal Hulot came to dinner. After dinner, Hector did not go out.
+Victorin and his wife joined them, and they made up a rubber.
+
+"It is a long time, Hector," said the Marshal gravely, "since you gave
+us the treat of such an evening."
+
+This speech from the old soldier, who spoiled his brother though he thus
+implicitly blamed him, made a deep impression. It showed how wide and
+deep were the wounds in a heart where all the woes he had divined had
+found an echo. At eight o'clock the Baron insisted on seeing Lisbeth
+home, promising to return.
+
+"Do you know, Lisbeth, he ill-treats her!" said he in the street. "Oh, I
+never loved her so well!"
+
+"I never imagined that Valerie loved you so well," replied Lisbeth. "She
+is frivolous and a coquette, she loves to have attentions paid her, and
+to have the comedy of love-making performed for her, as she says; but
+you are her only real attachment."
+
+"What message did she send me?"
+
+"Why, this," said Lisbeth. "She has, as you know, been on intimate terms
+with Crevel. You must owe her no grudge, for that, in fact, is what has
+raised her above utter poverty for the rest of her life; but she detests
+him, and matters are nearly at an end.--Well, she has kept the key of
+some rooms--"
+
+"Rue du Dauphin!" cried the thrice-blest Baron. "If it were for that
+alone, I would overlook Crevel.--I have been there; I know."
+
+"Here, then, is the key," said Lisbeth. "Have another made from it in
+the course of to-morrow--two if you can."
+
+"And then," said Hulot eagerly.
+
+"Well, I will dine at your house again to-morrow; you must give me back
+Valerie's key, for old Crevel might ask her to return it to him, and you
+can meet her there the day after; then you can decide what your facts
+are to be. You will be quite safe, as there are two ways out. If by
+chance Crevel, who is _Regence_ in his habits, as he is fond of saying,
+should come in by the side street, you could go out through the shop, or
+_vice versa_.
+
+"You owe all this to me, you old villain; now what will you do for me?"
+
+"Whatever you want."
+
+"Then you will not oppose my marrying your brother?"
+
+"You! the Marechale Hulot, the Comtesse de Frozheim?" cried Hector,
+startled.
+
+"Well, Adeline is a Baroness!" retorted Betty in a vicious and
+formidable tone. "Listen to me, you old libertine. You know how matters
+stand; your family may find itself starving in the gutter--"
+
+"That is what I dread," said Hulot in dismay.
+
+"And if your brother were to die, who would maintain your wife and
+daughter? The widow of a Marshal gets at least six thousand francs
+pension, doesn't she? Well, then, I wish to marry to secure bread for
+your wife and daughter--old dotard!"
+
+"I had not seen it in that light!" said the Baron. "I will talk to my
+brother--for we are sure of you.--Tell my angel that my life is hers."
+
+And the Baron, having seen Lisbeth go into the house in the Rue Vanneau,
+went back to his whist and stayed at home. The Baroness was at the
+height of happiness; her husband seemed to be returning to domestic
+habits; for about a fortnight he went to his office at nine every
+morning, he came in to dinner at six, and spent the evening with his
+family. He twice took Adeline and Hortense to the play. The mother and
+daughter paid for three thanksgiving masses, and prayed to God to suffer
+them to keep the husband and father He had restored to them.
+
+One evening Victorin Hulot, seeing his father retire for the night, said
+to his mother:
+
+"Well, we are at any rate so far happy that my father has come back to
+us. My wife and I shall never regret our capital if only this lasts--"
+
+"Your father is nearly seventy," said the Baroness. "He still thinks
+of Madame Marneffe, that I can see; but he will forget her in time.
+A passion for women is not like gambling, or speculation, or avarice;
+there is an end to it."
+
+But Adeline, still beautiful in spite of her fifty years and her
+sorrows, in this was mistaken. Profligates, men whom Nature has gifted
+with the precious power of loving beyond the limits ordinarily set to
+love, rarely are as old as their age.
+
+
+
+During this relapse into virtue Baron Hulot had been three times to
+the Rue du Dauphin, and had certainly not been the man of seventy. His
+rekindled passion made him young again, and he would have sacrificed his
+honor to Valerie, his family, his all, without a regret. But Valerie,
+now completely altered, never mentioned money, not even the twelve
+hundred francs a year to be settled on their son; on the contrary, she
+offered him money, she loved Hulot as a woman of six-and-thirty loves a
+handsome law-student--a poor, poetical, ardent boy. And the hapless wife
+fancied she had reconquered her dear Hector!
+
+The fourth meeting between this couple had been agreed upon at the
+end of the third, exactly as formerly in Italian theatres the play was
+announced for the next night. The hour fixed was nine in the morning.
+On the next day when the happiness was due for which the amorous old man
+had resigned himself to domestic rules, at about eight in the morning,
+Reine came and asked to see the Baron. Hulot, fearing some catastrophe,
+went out to speak with Reine, who would not come into the anteroom. The
+faithful waiting-maid gave him the following note:--
+
+  "DEAR OLD MAN,--Do not go to the Rue du Dauphin. Our incubus is
+  ill, and I must nurse him; but be there this evening at nine.
+  Crevel is at Corbeil with Monsieur Lebas; so I am sure he will
+  bring no princess to his little palace. I have made arrangements
+  here to be free for the night and get back before Marneffe is
+  awake. Answer me as to all this, for perhaps your long elegy of a
+  wife no longer allows you your liberty as she did. I am told she
+  is still so handsome that you might play me false, you are such a
+  gay dog! Burn this note; I am suspicious of every one."
+
+Hulot wrote this scrap in reply:
+
+  "MY LOVE,--As I have told you, my wife has not for five-and-twenty
+  years interfered with my pleasures. For you I would give up a
+  hundred Adelines.--I will be in the Crevel sanctum at nine this
+  evening awaiting my divinity. Oh that your clerk might soon die!
+  We should part no more. And this is the dearest wish of
+
+"YOUR HECTOR."
+
+
+That evening the Baron told his wife that he had business with the
+Minister at Saint-Cloud, that he would come home at about four or five
+in the morning; and he went to the Rue du Dauphin. It was towards the
+end of the month of June.
+
+Few men have in the course of their life known really the dreadful
+sensation of going to their death; those who have returned from the
+foot of the scaffold may be easily counted. But some have had a vivid
+experience of it in dreams; they have gone through it all, to the
+sensation of the knife at their throat, at the moment when waking
+and daylight come to release them.--Well, the sensation to which the
+Councillor of State was a victim at five in the morning in Crevel's
+handsome and elegant bed, was immeasurably worse than that of feeling
+himself bound to the fatal block in the presence of ten thousand
+spectators looking at you with twenty thousand sparks of fire.
+
+Valerie was asleep in a graceful attitude. She was lovely, as a woman
+is who is lovely enough to look so even in sleep. It is art invading
+nature; in short, a living picture.
+
+In his horizontal position the Baron's eyes were but three feet above
+the floor. His gaze, wandering idly, as that of a man who is just awake
+and collecting his ideas, fell on a door painted with flowers by Jan, an
+artist disdainful of fame. The Baron did not indeed see twenty thousand
+flaming eyes, like the man condemned to death; he saw but one, of which
+the shaft was really more piercing than the thousands on the Public
+Square.
+
+Now this sensation, far rarer in the midst of enjoyment even than
+that of a man condemned to death, was one for which many a splenetic
+Englishman would certainly pay a high price. The Baron lay there,
+horizontal still, and literally bathed in cold sweat. He tried to doubt
+the fact; but this murderous eye had a voice. A sound of whispering was
+heard through the door.
+
+"So long as it is nobody but Crevel playing a trick on me!" said the
+Baron to himself, only too certain of an intruder in the temple.
+
+The door was opened. The Majesty of the French Law, which in all
+documents follows next to the King, became visible in the person of a
+worthy little police-officer supported by a tall Justice of the Peace,
+both shown in by Monsieur Marneffe. The police functionary, rooted in
+shoes of which the straps were tied together with flapping bows, ended
+at top in a yellow skull almost bare of hair, and a face betraying him
+as a wide-awake, cheerful, and cunning dog, from whom Paris life had no
+secrets. His eyes, though garnished with spectacles, pierced the
+glasses with a keen mocking glance. The Justice of the Peace, a retired
+attorney, and an old admirer of the fair sex, envied the delinquent.
+
+"Pray excuse the strong measures required by our office, Monsieur
+le Baron!" said the constable; "we are acting for the plaintiff.
+The Justice of the Peace is here to authorize the visitation of the
+premises.--I know who you are, and who the lady is who is accused."
+
+Valerie opened her astonished eyes, gave such a shriek as actresses use
+to depict madness on the stage, writhed in convulsions on the bed, like
+a witch of the Middle Ages in her sulphur-colored frock on a bed of
+faggots.
+
+"Death, and I am ready! my dear Hector--but a police court?--Oh! never."
+
+With one bound she passed the three spectators and crouched under the
+little writing-table, hiding her face in her hands.
+
+"Ruin! Death!" she cried.
+
+"Monsieur," said Marneffe to Hulot, "if Madame Marneffe goes mad, you
+are worse than a profligate; you will be a murderer."
+
+What can a man do, what can he say, when he is discovered in a bed which
+is not his, even on the score of hiring, with a woman who is no more his
+than the bed is?--Well, this:
+
+"Monsieur the Justice of the Peace, Monsieur the Police Officer," said
+the Baron with some dignity, "be good enough to take proper care of
+that unhappy woman, whose reason seems to me to be in danger.--You can
+harangue me afterwards. The doors are locked, no doubt; you need not
+fear that she will get away, or I either, seeing the costume we wear."
+
+The two functionaries bowed to the magnate's injunctions.
+
+"You, come here, miserable cur!" said Hulot in a low voice to Marneffe,
+taking him by the arm and drawing him closer. "It is not I, but you, who
+will be the murderer! You want to be head-clerk of your room and officer
+of the Legion of Honor?"
+
+"That in the first place, Chief!" replied Marneffe, with a bow.
+
+"You shall be all that, only soothe your wife and dismiss these
+fellows."
+
+"Nay, nay!" said Marneffe knowingly. "These gentlemen must draw up their
+report as eyewitnesses to the fact; without that, the chief evidence in
+my case, where should I be? The higher official ranks are chokeful of
+rascalities. You have done me out of my wife, and you have not promoted
+me, Monsieur le Baron; I give you only two days to get out of the
+scrape. Here are some letters--"
+
+"Some letters!" interrupted Hulot.
+
+"Yes; letters which prove that you are the father of the child my wife
+expects to give birth to.--You understand? And you ought to settle on my
+son a sum equal to what he will lose through this bastard. But I will
+be reasonable; this does not distress me, I have no mania for paternity
+myself. A hundred louis a year will satisfy me. By to-morrow I must be
+Monsieur Coquet's successor and see my name on the list for promotion in
+the Legion of Honor at the July fetes, or else--the documentary evidence
+and my charge against you will be laid before the Bench. I am not so
+hard to deal with after all, you see."
+
+"Bless me, and such a pretty woman!" said the Justice of the Peace to
+the police constable. "What a loss to the world if she should go mad!"
+
+"She is not mad," said the constable sententiously. The police is always
+the incarnation of scepticism.--"Monsieur le Baron Hulot has been caught
+by a trick," he added, loud enough for Valerie to hear him.
+
+Valerie shot a flash from her eye which would have killed him on
+the spot if looks could effect the vengeance they express. The
+police-officer smiled; he had laid a snare, and the woman had fallen
+into it. Marneffe desired his wife to go into the other room and clothe
+herself decently, for he and the Baron had come to an agreement on all
+points, and Hulot fetched his dressing-gown and came out again.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he to the two officials, "I need not impress on you to
+be secret."
+
+The functionaries bowed.
+
+The police-officer rapped twice on the door; his clerk came in, sat down
+at the "bonheur-du-jour," and wrote what the constable dictated to him
+in an undertone. Valerie still wept vehemently. When she was dressed,
+Hulot went into the other room and put on his clothes. Meanwhile the
+report was written.
+
+Marneffe then wanted to take his wife home; but Hulot, believing that
+he saw her for the last time, begged the favor of being allowed to speak
+with her.
+
+"Monsieur, your wife has cost me dear enough for me to be allowed to say
+good-bye to her--in the presence of you all, of course."
+
+Valerie went up to Hulot, and he whispered in her ear:
+
+"There is nothing left for us but to fly, but how can we correspond? We
+have been betrayed--"
+
+"Through Reine," she answered. "But my dear friend, after this scandal
+we can never meet again. I am disgraced. Besides, you will hear dreadful
+things about me--you will believe them--"
+
+The Baron made a gesture of denial.
+
+"You will believe them, and I can thank God for that, for then perhaps
+you will not regret me."
+
+"He will _not_ die a second-class clerk!" said Marneffe to Hulot, as
+he led his wife away, saying roughly, "Come, madame; if I am foolish to
+you, I do not choose to be a fool to others."
+
+Valerie left the house, Crevel's Eden, with a last glance at the Baron,
+so cunning that he thought she adored him. The Justice of the Peace
+gave Madame Marneffe his arm to the hackney coach with a flourish of
+gallantry. The Baron, who was required to witness the report, remained
+quite bewildered, alone with the police-officer. When the Baron had
+signed, the officer looked at him keenly, over his glasses.
+
+"You are very sweet on the little lady, Monsieur le Baron?"
+
+"To my sorrow, as you see."
+
+"Suppose that she does not care for you?" the man went on, "that she is
+deceiving you?"
+
+"I have long known that, monsieur--here, in this very spot, Monsieur
+Crevel and I told each other----"
+
+"Oh! Then you knew that you were in Monsieur le Maire's private
+snuggery?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+The constable lightly touched his hat with a respectful gesture.
+
+"You are very much in love," said he. "I say no more. I respect an
+inveterate passion, as a doctor respects an inveterate complaint.--I saw
+Monsieur de Nucingen, the banker, attacked in the same way--"
+
+"He is a friend of mine," said the Baron. "Many a time have I supped
+with his handsome Esther. She was worth the two million francs she cost
+him."
+
+"And more," said the officer. "That caprice of the old Baron's cost four
+persons their lives. Oh! such passions as these are like the cholera!"
+
+"What had you to say to me?" asked the Baron, who took this indirect
+warning very ill.
+
+"Oh! why should I deprive you of your illusions?" replied the officer.
+"Men rarely have any left at your age!"
+
+"Rid me of them!" cried the Councillor.
+
+"You will curse the physician later," replied the officer, smiling.
+
+"I beg of you, monsieur."
+
+"Well, then, that woman was in collusion with her husband."
+
+"Oh!----"
+
+"Yes, sir, and so it is in two cases out of every ten. Oh! we know it
+well."
+
+"What proof have you of such a conspiracy?"
+
+"In the first place, the husband!" said the other, with the calm acumen
+of a surgeon practised in unbinding wounds. "Mean speculation is stamped
+in every line of that villainous face. But you, no doubt, set great
+store by a certain letter written by that woman with regard to the
+child?"
+
+"So much so, that I always have it about me," replied Hulot, feeling in
+his breast-pocket for the little pocketbook which he always kept there.
+
+"Leave your pocketbook where it is," said the man, as crushing as a
+thunder-clap. "Here is the letter.--I now know all I want to know.
+Madame Marneffe, of course, was aware of what that pocketbook
+contained?"
+
+"She alone in the world."
+
+"So I supposed.--Now for the proof you asked for of her collusion with
+her husband."
+
+"Let us hear!" said the Baron, still incredulous.
+
+"When we came in here, Monsieur le Baron, that wretched creature
+Marneffe led the way, and he took up this letter, which his wife,
+no doubt, had placed on this writing-table," and he pointed to the
+_bonheur-du-jour_. "That evidently was the spot agreed upon by the
+couple, in case she should succeed in stealing the letter while you were
+asleep; for this letter, as written to you by the lady, is, combined
+with those you wrote to her, decisive evidence in a police-court."
+
+He showed Hulot the note that Reine had delivered to him in his private
+room at the office.
+
+"It is one of the documents in the case," said the police-agent; "return
+it to me, monsieur."
+
+"Well, monsieur," replied Hulot with bitter expression, "that woman is
+profligacy itself in fixed ratios. I am certain at this moment that she
+has three lovers."
+
+"That is perfectly evident," said the officer. "Oh, they are not all
+on the streets! When a woman follows that trade in a carriage and
+a drawing-room, and her own house, it is not a case for francs and
+centimes, Monsieur le Baron. Mademoiselle Esther, of whom you spoke,
+and who poisoned herself, made away with millions.--If you will take
+my advice, you will get out of it, monsieur. This last little game will
+have cost you dear. That scoundrel of a husband has the law on his side.
+And indeed, but for me, that little woman would have caught you again!"
+
+"Thank you, monsieur," said the Baron, trying to maintain his dignity.
+
+"Now we will lock up; the farce is played out, and you can send your key
+to Monsieur the Mayor."
+
+Hulot went home in a state of dejection bordering on helplessness, and
+sunk in the gloomiest thoughts. He woke his noble and saintly wife, and
+poured into her heart the history of the past three years, sobbing like
+a child deprived of a toy. This confession from an old man young in
+feeling, this frightful and heart-rending narrative, while it filled
+Adeline with pity, also gave her the greatest joy; she thanked Heaven
+for this last catastrophe, for in fancy she saw the husband settled at
+last in the bosom of his family.
+
+"Lisbeth was right," said Madame Hulot gently and without any useless
+recrimination, "she told us how it would be."
+
+"Yes. If only I had listened to her, instead of flying into a rage, that
+day when I wanted poor Hortense to go home rather than compromise the
+reputation of that--Oh! my dear Adeline, we must save Wenceslas. He is
+up to his chin in that mire!"
+
+"My poor old man, the respectable middle-classes have turned out no
+better than the actresses," said Adeline, with a smile.
+
+The Baroness was alarmed at the change in her Hector; when she saw him
+so unhappy, ailing, crushed under his weight of woes, she was all heart,
+all pity, all love; she would have shed her blood to make Hulot happy.
+
+"Stay with us, my dear Hector. Tell me what is it that such women do to
+attract you so powerfully. I too will try. Why have you not taught me
+to be what you want? Am I deficient in intelligence? Men still think me
+handsome enough to court my favor."
+
+Many a married woman, attached to her duty and to her husband, may here
+pause to ask herself why strong and affectionate men, so tender-hearted
+to the Madame Marneffes, do not take their wives for the object of their
+fancies and passions, especially wives like the Baronne Adeline Hulot.
+
+This is, indeed, one of the most recondite mysteries of human nature.
+Love, which is debauch of reason, the strong and austere joy of a lofty
+soul, and pleasure, the vulgar counterfeit sold in the market-place,
+are two aspects of the same thing. The woman who can satisfy both these
+devouring appetites is as rare in her sex as a great general, a great
+writer, a great artist, a great inventor in a nation. A man of superior
+intellect or an idiot--a Hulot or a Crevel--equally crave for the ideal
+and for enjoyment; all alike go in search of the mysterious compound, so
+rare that at last it is usually found to be a work in two volumes. This
+craving is a depraved impulse due to society.
+
+Marriage, no doubt, must be accepted as a tie; it is life, with its
+duties and its stern sacrifices on both parts equally. Libertines, who
+seek for hidden treasure, are as guilty as other evil-doers who are more
+hardly dealt with than they. These reflections are not a mere veneer of
+moralizing; they show the reason of many unexplained misfortunes. But,
+indeed, this drama points its own moral--or morals, for they are of many
+kinds.
+
+The Baron presently went to call on the Marshal Prince de Wissembourg,
+whose powerful patronage was now his only chance. Having dwelt under his
+protection for five-and-thirty years, he was a visitor at all hours, and
+would be admitted to his rooms as soon as he was up.
+
+"Ah! How are you, my dear Hector?" said the great and worthy leader.
+"What is the matter? You look anxious. And yet the session is ended.
+One more over! I speak of that now as I used to speak of a campaign.
+And indeed I believe the newspapers nowadays speak of the sessions as
+parliamentary campaigns."
+
+"We have been in difficulties, I must confess, Marshal; but the times
+are hard!" said Hulot. "It cannot be helped; the world was made so.
+Every phase has its own drawbacks. The worst misfortunes in the year
+1841 is that neither the King nor the ministers are free to act as
+Napoleon was."
+
+The Marshal gave Hulot one of those eagle flashes which in its pride,
+clearness, and perspicacity showed that, in spite of years, that lofty
+soul was still upright and vigorous.
+
+"You want me to so something for you?" said he, in a hearty tone.
+
+"I find myself under the necessity of applying to you for the promotion
+of one of my second clerks to the head of a room--as a personal favor to
+myself--and his advancement to be officer of the Legion of Honor."
+
+"What is his name?" said the Marshal, with a look like a lightning
+flash.
+
+"Marneffe."
+
+"He has a pretty wife; I saw her on the occasion of your daughter's
+marriage.--If Roger--but Roger is away!--Hector, my boy, this is
+concerned with your pleasures. What, you still indulge--? Well, you
+are a credit to the old Guard. That is what comes of having been in
+the Commissariat; you have reserves!--But have nothing to do with this
+little job, my dear boy; it is too strong of the petticoat to be good
+business."
+
+"No, Marshal; it is bad business, for the police courts have a finger in
+it. Would you like to see me go there?"
+
+"The devil!" said the Prince uneasily. "Go on!"
+
+"Well, I am in the predicament of a trapped fox. You have always been so
+kind to me, that you will, I am sure, condescend to help me out of the
+shameful position in which I am placed."
+
+Hulot related his misadventures, as wittily and as lightly as he could.
+
+"And you, Prince, will you allow my brother to die of grief, a man you
+love so well; or leave one of your staff in the War Office, a Councillor
+of State, to live in disgrace. This Marneffe is a wretched creature; he
+can be shelved in two or three years."
+
+"How you talk of two or three years, my dear fellow!" said the Marshal.
+
+"But, Prince, the Imperial Guard is immortal."
+
+"I am the last of the first batch of Marshals," said the Prince.
+"Listen, Hector. You do not know the extent of my attachment to you; you
+shall see. On the day when I retire from office, we will go together.
+But you are not a Deputy, my friend. Many men want your place; but
+for me, you would be out of it by this time. Yes, I have fought many a
+pitched battle to keep you in it.--Well, I grant you your two requests;
+it would be too bad to see you riding the bar at your age and in the
+position you hold. But you stretch your credit a little too far. If this
+appointment gives rise to discussion, we shall not be held blameless. I
+can laugh at such things; but you will find it a thorn under your feet.
+And the next session will see your dismissal. Your place is held out as
+a bait to five or six influential men, and you have been enabled to keep
+it solely by the force of my arguments. I tell you, on the day when you
+retire, there will be five malcontents to one happy man; whereas, by
+keeping you hanging on by a thread for two or three years, we shall
+secure all six votes. There was a great laugh at the Council meeting;
+the Veteran of the Old Guard, as they say, was becoming desperately
+wide awake in parliamentary tactics! I am frank with you.--And you
+are growing gray; you are a happy man to be able to get into such
+difficulties as these! How long is it since I--Lieutenant Cottin--had a
+mistress?"
+
+He rang the bell.
+
+"That police report must be destroyed," he added.
+
+"Monseigneur, you are as a father to me! I dared not mention my anxiety
+on that point."
+
+"I still wish I had Roger here," cried the Prince, as Mitouflet, his
+groom of the chambers, came in. "I was just going to send for him!--You
+may go, Mitouflet.--Go you, my dear old fellow, go and have the
+nomination made out; I will sign it. At the same time, that low schemer
+will not long enjoy the fruit of his crimes. He will be sharply watched,
+and drummed out of the regiment for the smallest fault.--You are saved
+this time, my dear Hector; take care for the future. Do not exhaust your
+friends' patience. You shall have the nomination this morning, and your
+man shall get his promotion in the Legion of Honor.--How old are you
+now?"
+
+"Within three months of seventy."
+
+"What a scapegrace!" said the Prince, laughing. "It is you who deserve a
+promotion, but, by thunder! we are not under Louis XV.!"
+
+Such is the sense of comradeship that binds the glorious survivors of
+the Napoleonic phalanx, that they always feel as if they were in camp
+together, and bound to stand together through thick and thin.
+
+"One more favor such as this," Hulot reflected as he crossed the
+courtyard, "and I am done for!"
+
+The luckless official went to Baron de Nucingen, to whom he now owed a
+mere trifle, and succeeded in borrowing forty thousand francs, on his
+salary pledged for two years more; the banker stipulated that in the
+event of Hulot's retirement on his pension, the whole of it should
+be devoted to the repayment of the sum borrowed till the capital and
+interest were all cleared off.
+
+This new bargain, like the first, was made in the name of Vauvinet, to
+whom the Baron signed notes of hand to the amount of twelve thousand
+francs.
+
+On the following day, the fateful police report, the husband's charge,
+the letters--all the papers--were destroyed. The scandalous promotion of
+Monsieur Marneffe, hardly heeded in the midst of the July fetes, was not
+commented on in any newspaper.
+
+Lisbeth, to all appearance at war with Madame Marneffe, had taken up
+her abode with Marshal Hulot. Ten days after these events, the banns of
+marriage were published between the old maid and the distinguished old
+officer, to whom, to win his consent, Adeline had related the financial
+disaster that had befallen her Hector, begging him never to mention it
+to the Baron, who was, as she said, much saddened, quite depressed and
+crushed.
+
+"Alas! he is as old as his years," she added.
+
+So Lisbeth had triumphed. She was achieving the object of her ambition,
+she would see the success of her scheme, and her hatred gratified. She
+delighted in the anticipated joy of reigning supreme over the family who
+had so long looked down upon her. Yes, she would patronize her patrons,
+she would be the rescuing angel who would dole out a livelihood to the
+ruined family; she addressed herself as "Madame la Comtesse" and "Madame
+la Marechale," courtesying in front of a glass. Adeline and Hortense
+should end their days in struggling with poverty, while she, a visitor
+at the Tuileries, would lord it in the fashionable world.
+
+
+
+A terrible disaster overthrew the old maid from the social heights where
+she so proudly enthroned herself.
+
+On the very day when the banns were first published, the Baron received
+a second message from Africa. Another Alsatian arrived, handed him a
+letter, after assuring himself that he spoke to Baron Hulot, and after
+giving the Baron the address of his lodgings, bowed himself out, leaving
+the great man stricken by the opening lines of this letter:--
+
+  "DEAR NEPHEW,--You will receive this letter, by my calculations,
+  on the 7th of August. Supposing it takes you three days to send us
+  the help we need, and that it is a fortnight on the way here, that
+  brings us to the 1st of September.
+
+  "If you can act decisively within that time, you will have saved
+  the honor and the life of yours sincerely, Johann Fischer.
+
+  "This is what I am required to demand by the clerk you have made
+  my accomplice; for I am amenable, it would seem, to the law, at
+  the Assizes, or before a council of war. Of course, you understand
+  that Johann Fischer will never be brought to the bar of any
+  tribunal; he will go of his own act to appear at that of God.
+
+  "Your clerk seems to me a bad lot, quite capable of getting you
+  into hot water; but he is as clever as any rogue. He says the line
+  for you to take is to call out louder than any one, and to send
+  out an inspector, a special commissioner, to discover who is
+  really guilty, rake up abuses, and make a fuss, in short; but if
+  we stir up the struggle, who will stand between us and the law?
+
+  "If your commissioner arrives here by the 1st of September, and
+  you have given him your orders, sending by him two hundred
+  thousand francs to place in our storehouses the supplies we
+  profess to have secured in remote country places, we shall be
+  absolutely solvent and regarded as blameless. You can trust the
+  soldier who is the bearer of this letter with a draft in my name
+  on a house in Algiers. He is a trustworthy fellow, a relation of
+  mine, incapable of trying to find out what he is the bearer of. I
+  have taken measures to guarantee the fellow's safe return. If you
+  can do nothing, I am ready and willing to die for the man to whom
+  we owe our Adeline's happiness!"
+
+The anguish and raptures of passion and the catastrophe which had
+checked his career of profligacy had prevented Baron Hulot's ever
+thinking of poor Johann Fischer, though his first letter had given
+warning of the danger now become so pressing. The Baron went out of the
+dining-room in such agitation that he literally dropped on to a sofa in
+the drawing-room. He was stunned, sunk in the dull numbness of a heavy
+fall. He stared at a flower on the carpet, quite unconscious that he
+still held in his hand Johann's fatal letter.
+
+Adeline, in her room, heard her husband throw himself on the sofa, like
+a lifeless mass; the noise was so peculiar that she fancied he had an
+apoplectic attack. She looked through the door at the mirror, in such
+dread as stops the breath and hinders motion, and she saw her Hector in
+the attitude of a man crushed. The Baroness stole in on tiptoe; Hector
+heard nothing; she went close up to him, saw the letter, took it, read
+it, trembling in every limb. She went through one of those violent
+nervous shocks that leave their traces for ever on the sufferer. Within
+a few days she became subject to a constant trembling, for after the
+first instant the need for action gave her such strength as can only be
+drawn from the very wellspring of the vital powers.
+
+"Hector, come into my room," said she, in a voice that was no more than
+a breath. "Do not let your daughter see you in this state! Come, my
+dear, come!"
+
+"Two hundred thousand francs? Where can I find them? I can get Claude
+Vignon sent out there as commissioner. He is a clever, intelligent
+fellow.--That is a matter of a couple of days.--But two hundred thousand
+francs! My son has not so much; his house is loaded with mortgages for
+three hundred thousand. My brother has saved thirty thousand francs at
+most. Nucingen would simply laugh at me!--Vauvinet?--he was not very
+ready to lend me the ten thousand francs I wanted to make up the sum
+for that villain Marneffe's boy. No, it is all up with me; I must throw
+myself at the Prince's feet, confess how matters stand, hear myself told
+that I am a low scoundrel, and take his broadside so as to go decently
+to the bottom."
+
+"But, Hector, this is not merely ruin, it is disgrace," said Adeline.
+"My poor uncle will kill himself. Only kill us--yourself and me; you
+have a right to do that, but do not be a murderer! Come, take courage;
+there must be some way out of it."
+
+"Not one," said Hulot. "No one in the Government could find two
+hundred thousand francs, not if it were to save an Administration!--Oh,
+Napoleon! where art thou?"
+
+"My uncle! poor man! Hector, he must not be allowed to kill himself in
+disgrace."
+
+"There is one more chance," said he, "but a very remote one.--Yes,
+Crevel is at daggers drawn with his daughter.--He has plenty of money,
+he alone could--"
+
+"Listen, Hector it will be better for your wife to perish than to leave
+our uncle to perish--and your brother--the honor of the family!"
+cried the Baroness, struck by a flash of light. "Yes, I can save you
+all.--Good God! what a degrading thought! How could it have occurred to
+me?"
+
+She clasped her hands, dropped on her knees, and put up a prayer. On
+rising, she saw such a crazy expression of joy on her husband's face,
+that the diabolical suggestion returned, and then Adeline sank into a
+sort of idiotic melancholy.
+
+"Go, my dear, at once to the War Office," said she, rousing herself from
+this torpor; "try to send out a commission; it must be done. Get
+round the Marshal. And on your return, at five o'clock, you will
+find--perhaps--yes! you shall find two hundred thousand francs. Your
+family, your honor as a man, as a State official, a Councillor of State,
+your honesty--your son--all shall be saved;--but your Adeline will be
+lost, and you will see her no more. Hector, my dear," said she, kneeling
+before him, clasping and kissing his hand, "give me your blessing! Say
+farewell."
+
+It was so heart-rending that Hulot put his arms round his wife, raised
+her and kissed her, saying:
+
+"I do not understand."
+
+"If you did," said she, "I should die of shame, or I should not have the
+strength to carry out this last sacrifice."
+
+"Breakfast is served," said Mariette.
+
+Hortense came in to wish her parents good-morning. They had to go to
+breakfast and assume a false face.
+
+"Begin without me; I will join you," said the Baroness.
+
+She sat down to her desk and wrote as follows:
+
+  "MY DEAR MONSIEUR CREVEL,--I have to ask a service of you; I shall
+  expect you this morning, and I count on your gallantry, which is
+  well known to me, to save me from having too long to wait for you.
+  --Your faithful servant,
+
+  "ADELINE HULOT."
+
+
+"Louise," said she to her daughter's maid, who waited on her, "take
+this note down to the porter and desire him to carry it at once to this
+address and wait for an answer."
+
+The Baron, who was reading the news, held out a Republican paper to his
+wife, pointing to an article, and saying:
+
+"Is there time?"
+
+This was the paragraph, one of the terrible "notes" with which the
+papers spice their political bread and butter:--
+
+  "A correspondent in Algiers writes that such abuses have been
+  discovered in the commissariate transactions of the province of
+  Oran, that the Law is making inquiries. The peculation is
+  self-evident, and the guilty persons are known. If severe measures
+  are not taken, we shall continue to lose more men through the
+  extortion that limits their rations than by Arab steel or the
+  fierce heat of the climate. We await further information before
+  enlarging on this deplorable business. We need no longer wonder at
+  the terror caused by the establishment of the Press in Africa, as
+  was contemplated by the Charter of 1830."
+
+"I will dress and go to the Minister," said the Baron, as they rose from
+table. "Time is precious; a man's life hangs on every minute."
+
+"Oh, mamma, there is no hope for me!" cried Hortense. And unable to
+check her tears, she handed to her mother a number of the _Revue des
+Beaux Arts_.
+
+Madame Hulot's eye fell on a print of the group of "Delilah" by
+Count Steinbock, under which were the words, "The property of Madame
+Marneffe."
+
+The very first lines of the article, signed V., showed the talent and
+friendliness of Claude Vignon.
+
+"Poor child!" said the Baroness.
+
+Alarmed by her mother's tone of indifference, Hortense looked up, saw
+the expression of a sorrow before which her own paled, and rose to kiss
+her mother, saying:
+
+"What is the matter, mamma? What is happening? Can we be more wretched
+than we are already?"
+
+"My child, it seems to me that in what I am going through to-day my past
+dreadful sorrows are as nothing. When shall I have ceased to suffer?"
+
+"In heaven, mother," said Hortense solemnly.
+
+"Come, my angel, help me to dress.--No, no; I will not have you help me
+in this! Send me Louise."
+
+Adeline, in her room, went to study herself in the glass. She looked at
+herself closely and sadly, wondering to herself:
+
+"Am I still handsome? Can I still be desirable? Am I not wrinkled?"
+
+She lifted up her fine golden hair, uncovering her temples; they were
+as fresh as a girl's. She went further; she uncovered her shoulders,
+and was satisfied; nay, she had a little feeling of pride. The beauty
+of really handsome shoulders is one of the last charms a woman loses,
+especially if she has lived chastely.
+
+Adeline chose her dress carefully, but the pious and blameless woman is
+decent to the end, in spite of her little coquettish graces. Of what use
+were brand-new gray silk stockings and high heeled satin shoes when
+she was absolutely ignorant of the art of displaying a pretty foot at
+a critical moment, by obtruding it an inch or two beyond a half-lifted
+skirt, opening horizons to desire? She put on, indeed, her prettiest
+flowered muslin dress, with a low body and short sleeves; but horrified
+at so much bareness, she covered her fine arms with clear gauze
+sleeves and hid her shoulders under an embroidered cape. Her curls,
+_a l'Anglaise_, struck her as too fly-away; she subdued their airy
+lightness by putting on a very pretty cap; but, with or without the cap,
+would she have known how to twist the golden ringlets so as to show off
+her taper fingers to admiration?
+
+As to rouge--the consciousness of guilt, the preparations for a
+deliberate fall, threw this saintly woman into a state of high fever,
+which, for the time, revived the brilliant coloring of youth. Her eyes
+were bright, her cheeks glowed. Instead of assuming a seductive air, she
+saw in herself a look of barefaced audacity which shocked her.
+
+Lisbeth, at Adeline's request, had told her all the circumstances
+of Wenceslas' infidelity; and the Baroness had learned to her utter
+amazement, that in one evening in one moment, Madame Marneffe had made
+herself the mistress of the bewitched artist.
+
+"How do these women do it?" the Baroness had asked Lisbeth.
+
+There is no curiosity so great as that of virtuous women on such
+subjects; they would like to know the arts of vice and remain
+immaculate.
+
+"Why, they are seductive; it is their business," said Cousin Betty.
+"Valerie that evening, my dear, was, I declare, enough to bring an angel
+to perdition."
+
+"But tell me how she set to work."
+
+"There is no principle, only practice in that walk of life," said
+Lisbeth ironically.
+
+The Baroness, recalling this conversation, would have liked to consult
+Cousin Betty; but there was no time for that. Poor Adeline, incapable of
+imagining a patch, of pinning a rosebud in the very middle of her bosom,
+of devising the tricks of the toilet intended to resuscitate the ardors
+of exhausted nature, was merely well dressed. A woman is not a courtesan
+for the wishing!
+
+"Woman is soup for man," as Moliere says by the mouth of the judicious
+Gros-Rene. This comparison suggests a sort of culinary art in love. Then
+the virtuous wife would be a Homeric meal, flesh laid on hot cinders.
+The courtesan, on the contrary, is a dish by Careme, with its
+condiments, spices, and elegant arrangement. The Baroness could not--did
+not know how to serve up her fair bosom in a lordly dish of lace,
+after the manner of Madame Marneffe. She knew nothing of the secrets of
+certain attitudes. This high-souled woman might have turned round and
+round a hundred times, and she would have betrayed nothing to the keen
+glance of a profligate.
+
+To be a good woman and a prude to all the world, and a courtesan to her
+husband, is the gift of a woman of genius, and they are few. This is the
+secret of long fidelity, inexplicable to the women who are not blessed
+with the double and splendid faculty. Imagine Madame Marneffe virtuous,
+and you have the Marchesa di Pescara. But such lofty and illustrious
+women, beautiful as Diane de Poitiers, but virtuous, may be easily
+counted.
+
+So the scene with which this serious and terrible drama of Paris manners
+opened was about to be repeated, with this singular difference--that the
+calamities prophesied then by the captain of the municipal Militia
+had reversed the parts. Madame Hulot was awaiting Crevel with the same
+intentions as had brought him to her, smiling down at the Paris crowd
+from his _milord_, three years ago. And, strangest thing of all, the
+Baroness was true to herself and to her love, while preparing to yield
+to the grossest infidelity, such as the storm of passion even does not
+justify in the eyes of some judges.
+
+"What can I do to become a Madame Marneffe?" she asked herself as she
+heard the door-bell.
+
+She restrained her tears, fever gave brilliancy to her face, and she
+meant to be quite the courtesan, poor, noble soul.
+
+
+
+"What the devil can that worthy Baronne Hulot want of me?" Crevel
+wondered as he mounted the stairs. "She is going to discuss my quarrel
+with Celestine and Victorin, no doubt; but I will not give way!"
+
+As he went into the drawing-room, shown in by Louise, he said to himself
+as he noted the bareness of the place (Crevel's word):
+
+"Poor woman! She lives here like some fine picture stowed in a loft by a
+man who knows nothing of painting."
+
+Crevel, seeing Comte Popinot, the Minister of Commerce, buy pictures and
+statues, wanted also to figure as a Maecenas of Paris, whose love of Art
+consists in making good investments.
+
+Adeline smiled graciously at Crevel, pointing to a chair facing her.
+
+"Here I am, fair lady, at your command," said Crevel.
+
+Monsieur the Mayor, a political personage, now wore black broadcloth.
+His face, at the top of this solemn suit, shone like a full moon rising
+above a mass of dark clouds. His shirt, buttoned with three large pearls
+worth five hundred francs apiece, gave a great idea of his thoracic
+capacity, and he was apt to say, "In me you see the coming athlete of
+the tribune!" His enormous vulgar hands were encased in yellow
+gloves even in the morning; his patent leather boots spoke of the
+chocolate-colored coupe with one horse in which he drove.
+
+In the course of three years ambition had altered Crevel's pretensions.
+Like all great artists, he had come to his second manner. In the great
+world, when he went to the Prince de Wissembourg's, to the Prefecture,
+to Comte Popinot's, and the like, he held his hat in his hand in an airy
+manner taught him by Valerie, and he inserted the thumb of the other
+hand in the armhole of his waistcoat with a knowing air, and a simpering
+face and expression. This new grace of attitude was due to the satirical
+inventiveness of Valerie, who, under pretence of rejuvenating her mayor,
+had given him an added touch of the ridiculous.
+
+"I begged you to come, my dear kind Monsieur Crevel," said the Baroness
+in a husky voice, "on a matter of the greatest importance--"
+
+"I can guess what it is, madame," said Crevel, with a knowing air,
+"but what you would ask is impossible.--Oh, I am not a brutal father, a
+man--to use Napoleon's words--set hard and fast on sheer avarice. Listen
+to me, fair lady. If my children were ruining themselves for their own
+benefit, I would help them out of the scrape; but as for backing your
+husband, madame? It is like trying to fill the vat of the Danaides!
+Their house is mortgaged for three hundred thousand francs for an
+incorrigible father! Why, they have nothing left, poor wretches! And
+they have no fun for their money. All they have to live upon is what
+Victorin may make in Court. He must wag his tongue more, must monsieur
+your son! And he was to have been a Minister, that learned youth! Our
+hope and pride. A pretty pilot, who runs aground like a land-lubber; for
+if he had borrowed to enable him to get on, if he had run into debt for
+feasting Deputies, winning votes, and increasing his influence, I should
+be the first to say, 'Here is my purse--dip your hand in, my friend!'
+But when it comes of paying for papa's folly--folly I warned you
+of!--Ah! his father has deprived him of every chance of power.--It is I
+who shall be Minister!"
+
+"Alas, my dear Crevel, it has nothing to do with the children, poor
+devoted souls!--If your heart is closed to Victorin and Celestine, I
+shall love them so much that perhaps I may soften the bitterness of
+their souls caused by your anger. You are punishing your children for a
+good action!"
+
+"Yes, for a good action badly done! That is half a crime," said Crevel,
+much pleased with his epigram.
+
+"Doing good, my dear Crevel, does not mean sparing money out of a purse
+that is bursting with it; it means enduring privations to be generous,
+suffering for liberality! It is being prepared for ingratitude! Heaven
+does not see the charity that costs us nothing--"
+
+"Saints, madame, may if they please go to the workhouse; they know that
+it is for them the door of heaven. For my part, I am worldly-minded; I
+fear God, but yet more I fear the hell of poverty. To be destitute is
+the last depth of misfortune in society as now constituted. I am a man
+of my time; I respect money."
+
+"And you are right," said Adeline, "from the worldly point of view."
+
+She was a thousand miles from her point, and she felt herself on a
+gridiron, like Saint Laurence, as she thought of her uncle, for she
+could see him blowing his brains out.
+
+She looked down; then she raised her eyes to gaze at Crevel with angelic
+sweetness--not with the inviting suggestiveness which was part of
+Valerie's wit. Three years ago she could have bewitched Crevel by that
+beautiful look.
+
+"I have known the time," said she, "when you were more generous--you
+used to talk of three hundred thousand francs like a grand gentleman--"
+
+Crevel looked at Madame Hulot; he beheld her like a lily in the last of
+its bloom, vague sensations rose within him, but he felt such respect
+for this saintly creature that he spurned all suspicions and buried them
+in the most profligate corner of his heart.
+
+"I, madame, am still the same; but a retired merchant, if he is a grand
+gentleman, plays, and must play, the part with method and economy; he
+carries his ideas of order into everything. He opens an account for
+his little amusements, and devotes certain profits to that head of
+expenditure; but as to touching his capital! it would be folly. My
+children will have their fortune intact, mine and my wife's; but I do
+not suppose that they wish their father to be dull, a monk and a mummy!
+My life is a very jolly one; I float gaily down the stream. I fulfil all
+the duties imposed on me by law, by my affections, and by family ties,
+just as I always used to be punctual in paying my bills when they fell
+due. If only my children conduct themselves in their domestic life as
+I do, I shall be satisfied; and for the present, so long as my
+follies--for I have committed follies--are no loss to any one but the
+gulls--excuse me, you do not perhaps understand the slang word--they
+will have nothing to blame me for, and will find a tidy little sum still
+left when I die. Your children cannot say as much of their father, who
+is ruining his son and my daughter by his pranks--"
+
+The Baroness was getting further from her object as he went on.
+
+"You are very unkind about my husband, my dear Crevel--and yet, if you
+had found his wife obliging, you would have been his best friend----"
+
+She shot a burning glance at Crevel; but, like Dubois, who gave the
+Regent three kicks, she affected too much, and the rakish perfumer's
+thoughts jumped at such profligate suggestions, that he said to himself,
+"Does she want to turn the tables on Hulot?--Does she think me more
+attractive as a Mayor than as a National Guardsman? Women are strange
+creatures!"
+
+And he assumed the position of his second manner, looking at the
+Baroness with his _Regency_ leer.
+
+"I could almost fancy," she went on, "that you want to visit on him your
+resentment against the virtue that resisted you--in a woman whom you
+loved well enough--to--to buy her," she added in a low voice.
+
+"In a divine woman," Crevel replied, with a meaning smile at the
+Baroness, who looked down while tears rose to her eyes. "For you
+have swallowed not a few bitter pills!--in these three years--hey, my
+beauty?"
+
+"Do not talk of my troubles, dear Crevel; they are too much for the
+endurance of a mere human being. Ah! if you still love me, you may
+drag me out of the pit in which I lie. Yes, I am in hell torment! The
+regicides who were racked and nipped and torn into quarters by four
+horses were on roses compared with me, for their bodies only were
+dismembered, and my heart is torn in quarters----"
+
+Crevel's thumb moved from his armhole, he placed his hand on the
+work-table, he abandoned his attitude, he smiled! The smile was so
+vacuous that it misled the Baroness; she took it for an expression of
+kindness.
+
+"You see a woman, not indeed in despair, but with her honor at the
+point of death, and prepared for everything, my dear friend, to hinder a
+crime."
+
+Fearing that Hortense might come in, she bolted the door; then with
+equal impetuosity she fell at Crevel's feet, took his hand and kissed
+it.
+
+"Be my deliverer!" she cried.
+
+She thought there was some generous fibre in this mercantile soul, and
+full of sudden hope that she might get the two hundred thousand francs
+without degrading herself:
+
+"Buy a soul--you were once ready to buy virtue!" she went on, with a
+frenzied gaze. "Trust to my honesty as a woman, to my honor, of which
+you know the worth! Be my friend! Save a whole family from ruin, shame,
+despair; keep it from falling into a bog where the quicksands are
+mingled with blood! Oh! ask for no explanations," she exclaimed, at a
+movement on Crevel's part, who was about to speak. "Above all, do not
+say to me, 'I told you so!' like a friend who is glad at a misfortune.
+Come now, yield to her whom you used to love, to the woman whose
+humiliation at your feet is perhaps the crowning moment of her glory;
+ask nothing of her, expect what you will from her gratitude!--No, no.
+Give me nothing, but lend--lend to me whom you used to call Adeline----"
+
+At this point her tears flowed so fast, Adeline was sobbing so
+passionately, that Crevel's gloves were wet. The words, "I need two
+hundred thousand francs," were scarcely articulate in the torrent of
+weeping, as stones, however large, are invisible in Alpine cataracts
+swollen by the melting of the snows.
+
+This is the inexperience of virtue. Vice asks for nothing, as we have
+seen in Madame Marneffe; it gets everything offered to it. Women of that
+stamp are never exacting till they have made themselves indispensable,
+or when a man has to be worked as a quarry is worked where the lime is
+rather scarce--going to ruin, as the quarry-men say.
+
+On hearing these words, "Two hundred thousand francs," Crevel understood
+all. He cheerfully raised the Baroness, saying insolently:
+
+"Come, come, bear up, mother," which Adeline, in her distraction, failed
+to hear. The scene was changing its character. Crevel was becoming
+"master of the situation," to use his own words. The vastness of the
+sum startled Crevel so greatly that his emotion at seeing this handsome
+woman in tears at his feet was forgotten. Besides, however angelical
+and saintly a woman may be, when she is crying bitterly her beauty
+disappears. A Madame Marneffe, as has been seen, whimpers now and then,
+a tear trickles down her cheek; but as to melting into tears and making
+her eyes and nose red!--never would she commit such a blunder.
+
+"Come, child, compose yourself.--Deuce take it!" Crevel went on, taking
+Madame Hulot's hands in his own and patting them. "Why do you apply to
+me for two hundred thousand francs? What do you want with them? Whom are
+they for?"
+
+"Do not," said she, "insist on any explanations. Give me the money!--You
+will save three lives and the honor of our children."
+
+"And do you suppose, my good mother, that in all Paris you will find a
+man who at a word from a half-crazy woman will go off _hic et nunc_,
+and bring out of some drawer, Heaven knows where, two hundred thousand
+francs that have been lying simmering there till she is pleased to scoop
+them up? Is that all you know of life and of business, my beauty? Your
+folks are in a bad way; you may send them the last sacraments; for no
+one in Paris but her Divine Highness Madame la Banque, or the great
+Nucingen, or some miserable miser who is in love with gold as we other
+folks are with a woman, could produce such a miracle! The civil list,
+civil as it may be, would beg you to call again tomorrow. Every one
+invests his money, and turns it over to the best of his powers.
+
+"You are quite mistaken, my angel, if you suppose that King
+Louis-Philippe rules us; he himself knows better than that. He knows as
+well as we do that supreme above the Charter reigns the holy, venerated,
+substantial, delightful, obliging, beautiful, noble, ever-youthful,
+and all-powerful five-franc piece! But money, my beauty, insists on
+interest, and is always engaged in seeking it! 'God of the Jews, thou
+art supreme!' says Racine. The perennial parable of the golden calf, you
+see!--In the days of Moses there was stock-jobbing in the desert!
+
+"We have reverted to Biblical traditions; the Golden Calf was the first
+State ledger," he went on. "You, my Adeline, have not gone beyond the
+Rue Plumet. The Egyptians had lent enormous sums to the Hebrews, and
+what they ran after was not God's people, but their capital."
+
+He looked at the Baroness with an expression which said, "How clever I
+am!"
+
+"You know nothing of the devotion of every city man to his sacred
+hoard!" he went on, after a pause. "Excuse me. Listen to me. Get this
+well into your head.--You want two hundred thousand francs? No one can
+produce the sum without selling some security. Now consider! To have two
+hundred thousand francs in hard cash it would be needful to sell about
+seven hundred thousand francs' worth of stock at three per cent. Well;
+and then you would only get the money on the third day. That is the
+quickest way. To persuade a man to part with a fortune--for two hundred
+thousand francs is the whole fortune of many a man--he ought at least to
+know where it is all going to, and for what purpose--"
+
+"It is going, my dear kind Crevel, to save the lives of two men, one of
+whom will die of grief and the other will kill himself! And to save me
+too from going mad! Am I not a little mad already?"
+
+"Not so mad!" said he, taking Madame Hulot round the knees; "old Crevel
+has his price, since you thought of applying to him, my angel."
+
+"They submit to have a man's arms round their knees, it would seem!"
+thought the saintly woman, covering her face with her hands.
+
+"Once you offered me a fortune!" said she, turning red.
+
+"Ay, mother! but that was three years ago!" replied Crevel. "Well, you
+are handsomer now than ever I saw you!" he went on, taking the Baroness'
+arm and pressing it to his heart. "You have a good memory, my dear, by
+Jove!--And now you see how wrong you were to be so prudish, for those
+three hundred thousand francs that you refused so magnanimously are in
+another woman's pocket. I loved you then, I love you still; but just
+look back these three years.
+
+"When I said to you, 'You shall be mine,' what object had I in view? I
+meant to be revenged on that rascal Hulot. But your husband, my beauty,
+found himself a mistress--a jewel of a woman, a pearl, a cunning hussy
+then aged three-and-twenty, for she is six-and-twenty now. It struck
+me as more amusing, more complete, more Louis XV., more Marechal de
+Richelieu, more first-class altogether, to filch away that charmer, who,
+in point of fact, never cared for Hulot, and who for these three years
+has been madly in love with your humble servant."
+
+As he spoke, Crevel, from whose hands the Baroness had released her
+own, had resumed his favorite attitude; both thumbs were stuck into
+his armholes, and he was patting his ribs with his fingers, like two
+flapping wings, fancying that he was thus making himself very attractive
+and charming. It was as much as to say, "And this is the man you would
+have nothing to say to!"
+
+"There you are my dear; I had my revenge, and your husband knows it. I
+proved to him clearly that he was basketed--just where he was before, as
+we say. Madame Marneffe is my mistress, and when her precious Marneffe
+kicks the bucket, she will be my wife."
+
+Madame Hulot stared at Crevel with a fixed and almost dazed look.
+
+"Hector knew it?" she said.
+
+"And went back to her," replied Crevel. "And I allowed it, because
+Valerie wished to be the wife of a head-clerk; but she promised me
+that she would manage things so that our Baron should be so effectually
+bowled over that he can never interfere any more. And my little
+duchess--for that woman is a born duchess, on my soul!--kept her word.
+She restores you your Hector, madame, virtuous in perpetuity, as she
+says--she is so witty! He has had a good lesson, I can tell you! The
+Baron has had some hard knocks; he will help no more actresses or fine
+ladies; he is radically cured; cleaned out like a beer-glass.
+
+"If you had listened to Crevel in the first instance, instead of
+scorning him and turning him out of the house, you might have had four
+hundred thousand francs, for my revenge has cost me all of that.--But I
+shall get my change back, I hope, when Marneffe dies--I have invested
+in a wife, you see; that is the secret of my extravagance. I have solved
+the problem of playing the lord on easy terms."
+
+"Would you give your daughter such a mother-in-law? cried Madame Hulot.
+
+"You do not know Valerie, madame," replied Crevel gravely, striking the
+attitude of his first manner. "She is a woman with good blood in her
+veins, a lady, and a woman who enjoys the highest consideration. Why,
+only yesterday the vicar of the parish was dining with her. She is
+pious, and we have presented a splendid monstrance to the church.
+
+"Oh! she is clever, she is witty, she is delightful, well informed--she
+has everything in her favor. For my part, my dear Adeline, I owe
+everything to that charming woman; she has opened my mind, polished my
+speech, as you may have noticed; she corrects my impetuosity, and gives
+me words and ideas. I never say anything now that I ought not. I have
+greatly improved; you must have noticed it. And then she has encouraged
+my ambition. I shall be a Deputy; and I shall make no blunders, for
+I shall consult my Egeria. Every great politician, from Numa to our
+present Prime Minister, has had his Sibyl of the fountain. A score of
+deputies visit Valerie; she is acquiring considerable influence; and
+now that she is about to be established in a charming house, with a
+carriage, she will be one of the occult rulers of Paris.
+
+"A fine locomotive! That is what such a woman is. Oh, I have blessed you
+many a time for your stern virtue."
+
+"It is enough to make one doubt the goodness of God!" cried Adeline,
+whose indignation had dried her tears. "But, no! Divine justice must be
+hanging over her head."
+
+"You know nothing of the world, my beauty," said the great politician,
+deeply offended. "The world, my Adeline, loves success! Say, now, has
+it come to seek out your sublime virtue, priced at two hundred thousand
+francs?"
+
+The words made Madame Hulot shudder; the nervous trembling attacked her
+once more. She saw that the ex-perfumer was taking a mean revenge on her
+as he had on Hulot; she felt sick with disgust, and a spasm rose to her
+throat, hindering speech.
+
+"Money!" she said at last. "Always money!"
+
+"You touched me deeply," said Crevel, reminded by these words of the
+woman's humiliation, "when I beheld you there, weeping at my feet!--You
+perhaps will not believe me, but if I had my pocket-book about me, it
+would have been yours.--Come, do you really want such a sum?"
+
+As she heard this question, big with two hundred thousand francs,
+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."
+
+"I will go to the War Office," said he, "and see the Prince, to find
+out what he thinks of my brother, and ask for his interest to help my
+sister. Think of some place that is fit for her."
+
+"The charitable ladies of Paris, in concert with the Archbishop, have
+formed various beneficent associations; they employ superintendents,
+very decently paid, whose business it is to seek out cases of real want.
+Such an occupation would exactly suit dear Adeline; it would be work
+after her own heart."
+
+"Send to order the horses," said the Marshal. "I will go and dress. I
+will drive to Neuilly if necessary."
+
+"How fond he is of her! She will always cross my path wherever I turn!"
+said Lisbeth to herself.
+
+Lisbeth was already supreme in the house, but not with the Marshal's
+cognizance. She had struck terror into the three servants--for she had
+allowed herself a housemaid, and she exerted her old-maidish energy in
+taking stock of everything, examining everything, and arranging in
+every respect for the comfort of her dear Marshal. Lisbeth, quite as
+Republican as he could be, pleased him by her democratic opinions, and
+she flattered him with amazing dexterity; for the last fortnight the old
+man, whose house was better kept, and who was cared for as a child by
+its mother, had begun to regard Lisbeth as a part of what he had dreamed
+of.
+
+"My dear Marshal," she shouted, following him out on to the steps, "pull
+up the windows, do not sit in a draught, to oblige me!"
+
+The Marshal, who had never been so cosseted in his life, went off
+smiling at Lisbeth, though his heart was aching.
+
+At the same hour Baron Hulot was quitting the War Office to call on his
+chief, Marshal the Prince de Wissembourg, who had sent for him. Though
+there was nothing extraordinary in one of the Generals on the Board
+being sent for, Hulot's conscience was so uneasy that he fancied he saw
+a cold and sinister expression in Mitouflet's face.
+
+"Mitouflet, how is the Prince?" he asked, locking the door of his
+private room and following the messenger who led the way.
+
+"He must have a crow to pluck with you, Monsieur le Baron," replied the
+man, "for his face is set at stormy."
+
+Hulot turned pale, and said no more; he crossed the anteroom and
+reception rooms, and, with a violently beating heart, found himself at
+the door of the Prince's private study.
+
+The chief, at this time seventy years old, with perfectly white hair,
+and the tanned complexion of a soldier of that age, commanded attention
+by a brow so vast that imagination saw in it a field of battle. Under
+this dome, crowned with snow, sparkled a pair of eyes, of the Napoleon
+blue, usually sad-looking and full of bitter thoughts and regrets, their
+fire overshadowed by the penthouse of the strongly projecting brow. This
+man, Bernadotte's rival, had hoped to find his seat on a throne. But
+those eyes could flash formidable lightnings when they expressed strong
+feelings.
+
+Then, his voice, always somewhat hollow, rang with strident tones. When
+he was angry, the Prince was a soldier once more; he spoke the language
+of Lieutenant Cottin; he spared nothing--nobody. Hulot d'Ervy found the
+old lion, his hair shaggy like a mane, standing by the fireplace, his
+brows knit, his back against the mantel-shelf, and his eyes apparently
+fixed on vacancy.
+
+"Here! At your orders, Prince!" said Hulot, affecting a graceful ease of
+manner.
+
+The Marshal looked hard at the Baron, without saying a word, during the
+time it took him to come from the door to within a few steps of where
+the chief stood. This leaden stare was like the eye of God; Hulot could
+not meet it; he looked down in confusion.
+
+"He knows everything!" said he to himself.
+
+"Does your conscience tell you nothing?" asked the Marshal, in his deep,
+hollow tones.
+
+"It tells me, sir, that I have been wrong, no doubt, in ordering
+_razzias_ in Algeria without referring the matter to you. At my age,
+and with my tastes, after forty-five years of service, I have
+no fortune.--You know the principles of the four hundred elect
+representatives of France. Those gentlemen are envious of every
+distinction; they have pared down even the Ministers' pay--that says
+everything! Ask them for money for an old servant!--What can you expect
+of men who pay a whole class so badly as they pay the Government legal
+officials?--who give thirty sous a day to the laborers on the works at
+Toulon, when it is a physical impossibility to live there and keep a
+family on less than forty sous?--who never think of the atrocity of
+giving salaries of six hundred francs, up to a thousand or twelve
+hundred perhaps, to clerks living in Paris; and who want to secure our
+places for themselves as soon as the pay rises to forty thousand?--who,
+finally, refuse to restore to the Crown a piece of Crown property
+confiscated from the Crown in 1830--property acquired, too, by Louis
+XVI. out of his privy purse!--If you had no private fortune, Prince,
+you would be left high and dry, like my brother, with your pay and not
+another sou, and no thought of your having saved the army, and me with
+it, in the boggy plains of Poland."
+
+"You have robbed the State! You have made yourself liable to be brought
+before the bench at Assizes," said the Marshal, "like that clerk of the
+Treasury! And you take this, monsieur, with such levity."
+
+"But there is a great difference, monseigneur!" cried the baron. "Have I
+dipped my hands into a cash box intrusted to my care?"
+
+"When a man of your rank commits such an infamous crime," said
+the Marshal, "he is doubly guilty if he does it clumsily. You have
+compromised the honor of our official administration, which hitherto has
+been the purest in Europe!--And all for two hundred thousand francs and
+a hussy!" said the Marshal, in a terrible voice. "You are a Councillor
+of State--and a private soldier who sells anything belonging to his
+regiment is punished with death! Here is a story told to me one day by
+Colonel Pourin of the Second Lancers. At Saverne, one of his men fell in
+love with a little Alsatian girl who had a fancy for a shawl. The jade
+teased this poor devil of a lancer so effectually, that though he
+could show twenty years' service, and was about to be promoted to be
+quartermaster--the pride of the regiment--to buy this shawl he sold some
+of his company's kit.--Do you know what this lancer did, Baron d'Ervy?
+He swallowed some window-glass after pounding it down, and died in
+eleven hours, of an illness, in hospital.--Try, if you please, to die of
+apoplexy, that we may not see you dishonored."
+
+Hulot looked with haggard eyes at the old warrior; and the Prince,
+reading the look which betrayed the coward, felt a flush rise to his
+cheeks; his eyes flamed.
+
+"Will you, sir, abandon me?" Hulot stammered.
+
+Marshal Hulot, hearing that only his brother was with the Minister,
+ventured at this juncture to come in, and, like all deaf people, went
+straight up to the Prince.
+
+"Oh," cried the hero of Poland, "I know what you are here for, my old
+friend! But we can do nothing."
+
+"Do nothing!" echoed Marshal Hulot, who had heard only the last word.
+
+"Nothing; you have come to intercede for your brother. But do you know
+what your brother is?"
+
+"My brother?" asked the deaf man.
+
+"Yes, he is a damned infernal blackguard, and unworthy of you."
+
+The Marshal in his rage shot from his eyes those fulminating fires
+which, like Napoleon's, broke a man's will and judgment.
+
+"You lie, Cottin!" said Marshal Hulot, turning white. "Throw down your
+baton as I throw mine! I am ready."
+
+The Prince went up to his old comrade, looked him in the face, and
+shouted in his ear as he grasped his hand:
+
+"Are you a man?"
+
+"You will see that I am."
+
+"Well, then, pull yourself together! You must face the worst misfortune
+that can befall you."
+
+The Prince turned round, took some papers from the table, and placed
+them in the Marshal's hands, saying, "Read that."
+
+The Comte de Forzheim read the following letter, which lay uppermost:--
+
+  "To his Excellency the President of the Council.
+
+"_Private and Confidential_.
+
+"ALGIERS.
+
+  "MY DEAR PRINCE,--We have a very ugly business on our hands, as
+  you will see by the accompanying documents.
+
+  "The story, briefly told, is this: Baron Hulot d'Ervy sent out to
+  the province of Oran an uncle of his as a broker in grain and
+  forage, and gave him an accomplice in the person of a storekeeper.
+  This storekeeper, to curry favor, has made a confession, and
+  finally made his escape. The Public Prosecutor took the matter up
+  very thoroughly, seeing, as he supposed, that only two inferior
+  agents were implicated; but Johann Fischer, uncle to your Chief of
+  the Commissariat Department, finding that he was to be brought up
+  at the Assizes, stabbed himself in prison with a nail.
+
+  "That would have been the end of the matter if this worthy and
+  honest man, deceived, it would seem, by his agent and by his
+  nephew, had not thought proper to write to Baron Hulot. This
+  letter, seized as a document, so greatly surprised the Public
+  Prosecutor, that he came to see me. Now, the arrest and public
+  trial of a Councillor of State would be such a terrible thing--of
+  a man high in office too, who has a good record for loyal service
+  --for after the Beresina, it was he who saved us all by
+  reorganizing the administration--that I desired to have all the
+  papers sent to me.
+
+  "Is the matter to take its course? Now that the principal agent is
+  dead, will it not be better to smother up the affair and sentence
+  the storekeeper in default?
+
+  "The Public Prosecutor has consented to my forwarding the
+  documents for your perusal; the Baron Hulot d'Ervy, being resident
+  in Paris, the proceedings will lie with your Supreme Court. We
+  have hit on this rather shabby way of ridding ourselves of the
+  difficulty for the moment.
+
+  "Only, my dear Marshal, decide quickly. This miserable business is
+  too much talked about already, and it will do as much harm to us
+  as to you all if the name of the principal culprit--known at
+  present only to the Public Prosecutor, the examining judge, and
+  myself--should happen to leak out."
+
+At this point the letter fell from Marshal Hulot's hands; he looked at
+his brother; he saw that there was no need to examine the evidence. But
+he looked for Johann Fischer's letter, and after reading it at a glance,
+held it out to Hector:--
+
+"FROM THE PRISON AT ORAN.
+
+  "DEAR NEPHEW,--When you read this letter, I shall have ceased to
+  live.
+
+  "Be quite easy, no proof can be found to incriminate you. When I
+  am dead and your Jesuit of a Chardin fled, the trial must
+  collapse. The face of our Adeline, made so happy by you, makes
+  death easy to me. Now you need not send the two hundred thousand
+  francs. Good-bye.
+
+  "This letter will be delivered by a prisoner for a short term whom
+  I can trust, I believe.
+
+"JOHANN FISCHER."
+
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Marshal Hulot to the Prince de Wissembourg
+with pathetic pride.
+
+"Come, come, say _tu_, not the formal _vous_," replied the Minister,
+clasping his old friend's hand. "The poor lancer killed no one but
+himself," he added, with a thunderous look at Hulot d'Ervy.
+
+"How much have you had?" said the Comte de Forzheim to his brother.
+
+"Two hundred thousand francs."
+
+"My dear friend," said the Count, addressing the Minister, "you shall
+have the two hundred thousand francs within forty-eight hours. It shall
+never be said that a man bearing the name of Hulot has wronged the
+public treasury of a single sou."
+
+"What nonsense!" said the Prince. "I know where the money is, and I can
+get it back.--Send in your resignation and ask for your pension!" he
+went on, sending a double sheet of foolscap flying across to where the
+Councillor of State had sat down by the table, for his legs gave way
+under him. "To bring you to trial would disgrace us all. I have already
+obtained from the superior Board their sanction to this line of
+action. Since you can accept life with dishonor--in my opinion the last
+degradation--you will get the pension you have earned. Only take care to
+be forgotten."
+
+The Minister rang.
+
+"Is Marneffe, the head-clerk, out there?"
+
+"Yes, monseigneur."
+
+"Show him in!"
+
+"You," said the Minister as Marneffe came in, "you and your wife have
+wittingly and intentionally ruined the Baron d'Ervy whom you see."
+
+"Monsieur le Ministre, I beg your pardon. We are very poor. I have
+nothing to live on but my pay, and I have two children, and the one that
+is coming will have been brought into the family by Monsieur le Baron."
+
+"What a villain he looks!" said the Prince, pointing to Marneffe and
+addressing Marshal Hulot.--"No more of Sganarelle speeches," he went
+on; "you will disgorge two hundred thousand francs, or be packed off to
+Algiers."
+
+"But, Monsieur le Ministre, you do not know my wife. She has spent it
+all. Monsieur le Baron asked six persons to dinner every evening.--Fifty
+thousand francs a year are spent in my house."
+
+"Leave the room!" said the Minister, in the formidable tones that
+had given the word to charge in battle. "You will have notice of your
+transfer within two hours. Go!"
+
+"I prefer to send in my resignation," said Marneffe insolently. "For it
+is too much to be what I am already, and thrashed into the bargain. That
+would not satisfy me at all."
+
+And he left the room.
+
+"What an impudent scoundrel!" said the Prince.
+
+Marshal Hulot, who had stood up throughout this scene, as pale as a
+corpse, studying his brother out of the corner of his eye, went up to
+the Prince, and took his hand, repeating:
+
+"In forty-eight hours the pecuniary mischief shall be repaired; but
+honor!--Good-bye, Marshal. It is the last shot that kills. Yes, I shall
+die of it!" he said in his ear.
+
+"What the devil brought you here this morning?" said the Prince, much
+moved.
+
+"I came to see what can be done for his wife," replied the Count,
+pointing to his brother. "She is wanting bread--especially now!"
+
+"He has his pension."
+
+"It is pledged!"
+
+"The Devil must possess such a man," said the Prince, with a shrug.
+"What philtre do those baggages give you to rob you of your wits?"
+he went on to Hulot d'Ervy. "How could you--you, who know the precise
+details with which in French offices everything is written down at full
+length, consuming reams of paper to certify to the receipt or outlay
+of a few centimes--you, who have so often complained that a hundred
+signatures are needed for a mere trifle, to discharge a soldier, to buy
+a curry-comb--how could you hope to conceal a theft for any length of
+time? To say nothing of the newspapers, and the envious, and the people
+who would like to steal!--those women must rob you of your common-sense!
+Do they cover your eyes with walnut-shells? or are you yourself made of
+different stuff from us?--You ought to have left the office as soon as
+you found that you were no longer a man, but a temperament. If you have
+complicated your crime with such gross folly, you will end--I will not
+say where----"
+
+"Promise me, Cottin, that you will do what you can for her," said the
+Marshal, who heard nothing, and was still thinking of his sister-in-law.
+
+"Depend on me!" said the Minister.
+
+"Thank you, and good-bye then!--Come, monsieur," he said to his brother.
+
+The Prince looked with apparent calmness at the two brothers, so
+different in their demeanor, conduct, and character--the brave man
+and the coward, the ascetic and the profligate, the honest man and the
+peculator--and he said to himself:
+
+"That mean creature will not have courage to die! And my poor Hulot,
+such an honest fellow! has death in his knapsack, I know!"
+
+He sat down again in his big chair and went on reading the despatches
+from Africa with a look characteristic at once of the coolness of a
+leader and of the pity roused by the sight of a battle-field! For in
+reality no one is so humane as a soldier, stern as he may seem in the
+icy determination acquired by the habit of fighting, and so absolutely
+essential in the battle-field.
+
+Next morning some of the newspapers contained, under various headings,
+the following paragraphs:--
+
+  "Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy has applied for his retiring
+  pension. The unsatisfactory state of the Algerian exchequer, which
+  has come out in consequence of the death and disappearance of two
+  employes, has had some share in this distinguished official's
+  decision. On hearing of the delinquencies of the agents whom he
+  had unfortunately trusted, Monsieur le Baron Hulot had a paralytic
+  stroke in the War Minister's private room.
+
+  "Monsieur Hulot d'Ervy, brother to the Marshal Comte de Forzheim,
+  has been forty-five years in the service. His determination has
+  been vainly opposed, and is greatly regretted by all who know
+  Monsieur Hulot, whose private virtues are as conspicuous as his
+  administrative capacity. No one can have forgotten the devoted
+  conduct of the Commissary General of the Imperial Guard at Warsaw,
+  or the marvelous promptitude with which he organized supplies for
+  the various sections of the army so suddenly required by Napoleon
+  in 1815.
+
+  "One more of the heroes of the Empire is retiring from the stage.
+  Monsieur le Baron Hulot has never ceased, since 1830, to be one of
+  the guiding lights of the State Council and of the War Office."
+
+  "ALGIERS.--The case known as the forage supply case, to which some
+  of our contemporaries have given absurd prominence, has been
+  closed by the death of the chief culprit. Johann Wisch has
+  committed suicide in his cell; his accomplice, who had absconded,
+  will be sentenced in default.
+
+  "Wisch, formerly an army contractor, was an honest man and highly
+  respected, who could not survive the idea of having been the dupe
+  of Chardin, the storekeeper who has disappeared."
+
+And in the _Paris News_ the following paragraph appeared:
+
+  "Monsieur le Marechal the Minister of War, to prevent the
+  recurrence of such scandals for the future, has arranged for a
+  regular Commissariat office in Africa. A head-clerk in the War
+  Office, Monsieur Marneffe, is spoken of as likely to be appointed
+  to the post of director."
+
+
+
+  "The office vacated by Baron Hulot is the object of much ambition.
+  The appointment is promised, it is said, to Monsieur le Comte
+  Martial de la Roche-Hugon, Deputy, brother-in-law to Monsieur le
+  Comte de Rastignac. Monsieur Massol, Master of Appeals, will fill
+  his seat on the Council of State, and Monsieur Claude Vignon
+  becomes Master of Appeals."
+
+Of all kinds of false gossip, the most dangerous for the Opposition
+newspapers is the official bogus paragraph. However keen journalists
+may be, they are sometimes the voluntary or involuntary dupes of the
+cleverness of those who have risen from the ranks of the Press, like
+Claude Vignon, to the higher realms of power. The newspaper can only be
+circumvented by the journalist. It may be said, as a parody on a line by
+Voltaire:
+
+"The Paris news is never what the foolish folk believe."
+
+Marshal Hulot drove home with his brother, who took the front seat,
+respectfully leaving the whole of the back of the carriage to his
+senior. The two men spoke not a word. Hector was helpless. The Marshal
+was lost in thought, like a man who is collecting all his strength, and
+bracing himself to bear a crushing weight. On arriving at his own house,
+still without speaking, but by an imperious gesture, he beckoned his
+brother into his study. The Count had received from the Emperor Napoleon
+a splendid pair of pistols from the Versailles factory; he took the
+box, with its inscription. "_Given by the Emperor Napoleon to General
+Hulot_," out of his desk, and placing it on the top, he showed it to his
+brother, saying, "There is your remedy."
+
+Lisbeth, peeping through the chink of the door, flew down to the
+carriage and ordered the coachman to go as fast as he could gallop
+to the Rue Plumet. Within about twenty minutes she had brought back
+Adeline, whom she had told of the Marshal's threat to his brother.
+
+The Marshal, without looking at Hector, rang the bell for his factotum,
+the old soldier who had served him for thirty years.
+
+"Beau-Pied," said he, "fetch my notary, and Count Steinbock, and my
+niece Hortense, and the stockbroker to the Treasury. It is now half-past
+ten; they must all be here by twelve. Take hackney cabs--and go faster
+than _that_!" he added, a republican allusion which in past days had
+been often on his lips. And he put on the scowl that had brought his
+soldiers to attention when he was beating the broom on the heaths of
+Brittany in 1799. (See _Les Chouans_.)
+
+"You shall be obeyed, Marechal," said Beau-Pied, with a military salute.
+
+Still paying no heed to his brother, the old man came back into his
+study, took a key out of his desk, and opened a little malachite box
+mounted in steel, the gift of the Emperor Alexander.
+
+By Napoleon's orders he had gone to restore to the Russian Emperor the
+private property seized at the battle of Dresden, in exchange for which
+Napoleon hoped to get back Vandamme. The Czar rewarded General Hulot
+very handsomely, giving him this casket, and saying that he hoped one
+day to show the same courtesy to the Emperor of the French; but he kept
+Vandamme. The Imperial arms of Russia were displayed in gold on the lid
+of the box, which was inlaid with gold.
+
+The Marshal counted the bank-notes it contained; he had a hundred and
+fifty-two thousand francs. He saw this with satisfaction. At the same
+moment Madame Hulot came into the room in a state to touch the heart
+of the sternest judge. She flew into Hector's arms, looking alternately
+with a crazy eye at the Marshal and at the case of pistols.
+
+"What have you to say against your brother? What has my husband done to
+you?" said she, in such a voice that the Marshal heard her.
+
+"He has disgraced us all!" replied the Republican veteran, who spoke
+with a vehemence that reopened one of his old wounds. "He has robbed
+the Government! He has cast odium on my name, he makes me wish I were
+dead--he has killed me!--I have only strength enough left to make
+restitution!
+
+"I have been abased before the Conde of the Republic, the man I esteem
+above all others, and to whom I unjustifiably gave the lie--the Prince
+of Wissembourg!--Is that nothing? That is the score his country has
+against him!"
+
+He wiped away a tear.
+
+"Now, as to his family," he went on. "He is robbing you of the bread I
+had saved for you, the fruit of thirty years' economy, of the privations
+of an old soldier! Here is what was intended for you," and he held up
+the bank-notes. "He has killed his Uncle Fischer, a noble and worthy son
+of Alsace who could not--as he can--endure the thought of a stain on his
+peasant's honor.
+
+"To crown all, God, in His adorable clemency, had allowed him to choose
+an angel among women; he has had the unspeakable happiness of having
+an Adeline for his wife! And he has deceived her, he has soaked her in
+sorrows, he has neglected her for prostitutes, for street-hussies, for
+ballet-girls, actresses--Cadine, Josepha, Marneffe!--And that is the
+brother I treated as a son and made my pride!
+
+"Go, wretched man; if you can accept the life of degradation you have
+made for yourself, leave my house! I have not the heart to curse a
+brother I have loved so well--I am as foolish about him as you are,
+Adeline--but never let me see him again. I forbid his attending my
+funeral or following me to the grave. Let him show the decency of a
+criminal if he can feel no remorse."
+
+The Marshal, as pale as death, fell back on the settee, exhausted by
+his solemn speech. And, for the first time in his life perhaps, tears
+gathered in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
+
+"My poor uncle!" cried Lisbeth, putting a handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+"Brother!" said Adeline, kneeling down by the Marshal, "live for my
+sake. Help me in the task of reconciling Hector to the world and making
+him redeem the past."
+
+"He!" cried the Marshal. "If he lives, he is not at the end of his
+crimes. A man who has misprized an Adeline, who has smothered in his
+own soul the feelings of a true Republican which I tried to instill into
+him, the love of his country, of his family, and of the poor--that man
+is a monster, a swine!--Take him away if you still care for him, for a
+voice within me cries to me to load my pistols and blow his brains out.
+By killing him I should save you all, and I should save him too from
+himself."
+
+The old man started to his feet with such a terrifying gesture that poor
+Adeline exclaimed:
+
+"Hector--come!"
+
+She seized her husband's arm, dragged him away, and out of the house;
+but the Baron was so broken down, that she was obliged to call a coach
+to take him to the Rue Plumet, where he went to bed. The man remained
+there for several days in a sort of half-dissolution, refusing all
+nourishment without a word. By floods of tears, Adeline persuaded him to
+swallow a little broth; she nursed him, sitting by his bed, and feeling
+only, of all the emotions that once had filled her heart, the deepest
+pity for him.
+
+At half-past twelve, Lisbeth showed into her dear Marshal's room--for
+she would not leave him, so much was she alarmed at the evident change
+in him--Count Steinbock and the notary.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte," said the Marshal, "I would beg you to be so good as
+to put your signature to a document authorizing my niece, your wife,
+to sell a bond for certain funds of which she at present holds only the
+reversion.--You, Mademoiselle Fischer, will agree to this sale, thus
+losing your life interest in the securities."
+
+"Yes, dear Count," said Lisbeth without hesitation.
+
+"Good, my dear," said the old soldier. "I hope I may live to reward you.
+But I did not doubt you; you are a true Republican, a daughter of the
+people." He took the old maid's hand and kissed it.
+
+"Monsieur Hannequin," he went on, speaking to the notary, "draw up the
+necessary document in the form of a power of attorney, and let me have
+it within two hours, so that I may sell the stock on the Bourse to-day.
+My niece, the Countess, holds the security; she will be here to sign the
+power of attorney when you bring it, and so will mademoiselle. Monsieur
+le Comte will be good enough to go with you and sign it at your office."
+
+The artist, at a nod from Lisbeth, bowed respectfully to the Marshal and
+went away.
+
+Next morning, at ten o'clock, the Comte de Forzheim sent in to announce
+himself to the Prince, and was at once admitted.
+
+"Well, my dear Hulot," said the Prince, holding out the newspapers to
+his old friend, "we have saved appearances, you see.--Read."
+
+Marshal Hulot laid the papers on his comrade's table, and held out to
+him the two hundred thousand francs.
+
+"Here is the money of which my brother robbed the State," said he.
+
+"What madness!" cried the Minister. "It is impossible," he said into
+the speaking-trumpet handed to him by the Marshal, "to manage this
+restitution. We should be obliged to declare your brother's dishonest
+dealings, and we have done everything to hide them."
+
+"Do what you like with the money; but the family shall not owe one sou
+of its fortune to a robbery on the funds of the State," said the Count.
+
+"I will take the King's commands in the matter. We will discuss it no
+further," replied the Prince, perceiving that it would be impossible to
+conquer the old man's sublime obstinacy on the point.
+
+"Good-bye, Cottin," said the old soldier, taking the Prince's hand. "I
+feel as if my soul were frozen--"
+
+Then, after going a step towards the door, he turned round, looked at
+the Prince, and seeing that he was deeply moved, he opened his arms to
+clasp him in them; the two old soldiers embraced each other.
+
+"I feel as if I were taking leave of the whole of the old army in you,"
+said the Count.
+
+"Good-bye, my good old comrade!" said the Minister.
+
+"Yes, it is good-bye; for I am going where all our brave men are for
+whom we have mourned--"
+
+Just then Claude Vignon was shown in. The two relics of the Napoleonic
+phalanx bowed gravely to each other, effacing every trace of emotion.
+
+"You have, I hope, been satisfied by the papers," said the Master of
+Appeals-elect. "I contrived to let the Opposition papers believe that
+they were letting out our secrets."
+
+"Unfortunately, it is all in vain," replied the Minister, watching Hulot
+as he left the room. "I have just gone through a leave-taking that has
+been a great grief to me. For, indeed, Marshal Hulot has not three days
+to live; I saw that plainly enough yesterday. That man, one of those
+honest souls that are above proof, a soldier respected by the bullets
+in spite of his valor, received his death-blow--there, in that
+armchair--and dealt by my hand, in a letter!--Ring and order my
+carriage. I must go to Neuilly," said he, putting the two hundred
+thousand francs into his official portfolio.
+
+
+
+Notwithstanding Lisbeth's nursing, Marshal Hulot three days later was
+a dead man. Such men are the glory of the party they support. To
+Republicans, the Marshal was the ideal of patriotism; and they all
+attended his funeral, which was followed by an immense crowd. The army,
+the State officials, the Court, and the populace all came to do homage
+to this lofty virtue, this spotless honesty, this immaculate glory. Such
+a last tribute of the people is not a thing to be had for the asking.
+
+This funeral was distinguished by one of those tributes of delicate
+feeling, of good taste, and sincere respect which from time to time
+remind us of the virtues and dignity of the old French nobility.
+Following the Marshal's bier came the old Marquis de Montauran, the
+brother of him who, in the great rising of the Chouans in 1799, had been
+the foe, the luckless foe, of Hulot. That Marquis, killed by the balls
+of the "Blues," had confided the interests of his young brother to the
+Republican soldier. (See _Les Chouans_.) Hulot had so faithfully acted
+on the noble Royalist's verbal will, that he succeeded in saving the
+young man's estates, though he himself was at the time an emigre. And so
+the homage of the old French nobility was not wanting to the leader who,
+nine years since, had conquered MADAME.
+
+This death, happening just four days before the banns were cried for
+the last time, came upon Lisbeth like the thunderbolt that burns the
+garnered harvest with the barn. The peasant of Lorraine, as often
+happens, had succeeded too well. The Marshal had died of the blows dealt
+to the family by herself and Madame Marneffe.
+
+The old maid's vindictiveness, which success seemed to have somewhat
+mollified, was aggravated by this disappointment of her hopes. Lisbeth
+went, crying with rage, to Madame Marneffe; for she was homeless, the
+Marshal having agreed that his lease was at any time to terminate
+with his life. Crevel, to console Valerie's friend, took charge of her
+savings, added to them considerably, and invested the capital in five
+per cents, giving her the life interest, and putting the securities
+into Celestine's name. Thanks to this stroke of business, Lisbeth had an
+income of about two thousand francs.
+
+When the Marshal's property was examined and valued, a note was found,
+addressed to his sister-in-law, to his niece Hortense, and to his nephew
+Victorin, desiring that they would pay among them an annuity of twelve
+hundred francs to Mademoiselle Lisbeth Fischer, who was to have been his
+wife.
+
+Adeline, seeing her husband between life and death, succeeded for some
+days in hiding from him the fact of his brother's death; but Lisbeth
+came, in mourning, and the terrible truth was told him eleven days after
+the funeral.
+
+The crushing blow revived the sick man's energies. He got up, found his
+family collected in the drawing-room, all in black, and suddenly silent
+as he came in. In a fortnight, Hulot, as lean as a spectre, looked to
+his family the mere shadow of himself.
+
+"I must decide on something," said he in a husky voice, as he seated
+himself in an easy-chair, and looked round at the party, of whom Crevel
+and Steinbock were absent.
+
+"We cannot stay here, the rent is too high," Hortense was saying just as
+her father came in.
+
+"As to a home," said Victorin, breaking the painful silence, "I can
+offer my mother----"
+
+As he heard these words, which excluded him, the Baron raised his head,
+which was sunk on his breast as though he were studying the pattern of
+the carpet, though he did not even see it, and he gave the young lawyer
+an appealing look. The rights of a father are so indefeasibly sacred,
+even when he is a villain and devoid of honor, that Victorin paused.
+
+"To your mother," the Baron repeated. "You are right, my son."
+
+"The rooms over ours in our wing," said Celestine, finishing her
+husband's sentence.
+
+"I am in your way, my dears?" said the Baron, with the mildness of a man
+who has judged himself. "But do not be uneasy as to the future; you will
+have no further cause for complaint of your father; you will not see him
+till the time when you need no longer blush for him."
+
+He went up to Hortense and kissed her brow. He opened his arms to his
+son, who rushed into his embrace, guessing his father's purpose. The
+Baron signed to Lisbeth, who came to him, and he kissed her forehead.
+Then he went to his room, whither Adeline followed him in an agony of
+dread.
+
+"My brother was quite right, Adeline," he said, holding her hand. "I
+am unworthy of my home life. I dared not bless my children, who have
+behaved so nobly, but in my heart; tell them that I could only venture
+to kiss them; for the blessing of a bad man, a father who has been an
+assassin and the scourge of his family instead of its protector and its
+glory, might bring evil on them; but assure them that I shall bless them
+every day.--As to you, God alone, for He is Almighty, can ever reward
+you according to your merits!--I can only ask your forgiveness!" and he
+knelt at her feet, taking her hands and wetting them with his tears.
+
+"Hector, Hector! Your sins have been great, but Divine Mercy is
+infinite, and you may repair all by staying with me.--Rise up in
+Christian charity, my dear--I am your wife, and not your judge. I am
+your possession; do what you will with me; take me wherever you go, I
+feel strong enough comfort you, to make life endurable to you, by the
+strength of my love, my care, and respect.--Our children are settled
+in life; they need me no more. Let me try to be an amusement to you,
+an occupation. Let me share the pain of your banishment and of your
+poverty, and help to mitigate it. I could always be of some use, if it
+were only to save the expense of a servant."
+
+"Can you forgive, my dearly-beloved Adeline?"
+
+"Yes, only get up, my dear!"
+
+"Well, with that forgiveness I can live," said he, rising to his feet.
+"I came back into this room that my children should not see their
+father's humiliation. Oh! the sight constantly before their eyes of a
+father so guilty as I am is a terrible thing; it must undermine parental
+influence and break every family tie. So I cannot remain among you,
+and I must go to spare you the odious spectacle of a father bereft of
+dignity. Do not oppose my departure Adeline. It would only be to load
+with your own hand the pistol to blow my brains out. Above all, do not
+seek me in my hiding-place; you would deprive me of the only strong
+motive remaining in me, that of remorse."
+
+Hector's decisiveness silenced his dejected wife. Adeline, lofty in the
+midst of all this ruin, had derived her courage from her perfect union
+with her husband; for she had dreamed of having him for her own, of the
+beautiful task of comforting him, of leading him back to family life,
+and reconciling him to himself.
+
+"But, Hector, would you leave me to die of despair, anxiety, and
+alarms!" said she, seeing herself bereft of the mainspring of her
+strength.
+
+"I will come back to you, dear angel--sent from Heaven expressly for me,
+I believe. I will come back, if not rich, at least with enough to live
+in ease.--Listen, my sweet Adeline, I cannot stay here for many reasons.
+In the first place, my pension of six thousand francs is pledged for
+four years, so I have nothing. That is not all. I shall be committed to
+prison within a few days in consequence of the bills held by Vauvinet.
+So I must keep out of the way until my son, to whom I will give full
+instructions, shall have bought in the bills. My disappearance will
+facilitate that. As soon as my pension is my own, and Vauvinet is paid
+off, I will return to you.--You would be sure to let out the secret of
+my hiding-place. Be calm; do not cry, Adeline--it is only for a month--"
+
+"Where will you go? What will you do? What will become of you? Who
+will take care of you now that you are no longer young? Let me go with
+you--we will go abroad--" said she.
+
+"Well, well, we will see," he replied.
+
+The Baron rang and ordered Mariette to collect all his things and pack
+them quickly and secretly. Then, after embracing his wife with a warmth
+of affection to which she was unaccustomed, he begged her to leave him
+alone for a few minutes while he wrote his instructions for Victorin,
+promising that he would not leave the house till dark, or without her.
+
+As soon as the Baroness was in the drawing-room, the cunning old man
+stole out through the dressing-closet to the anteroom, and went away,
+giving Mariette a slip of paper, on which was written, "Address my
+trunks to go by railway to Corbeil--to Monsieur Hector, cloak-room,
+Corbeil."
+
+The Baron jumped into a hackney coach, and was rushing across Paris by
+the time Mariette came to give the Baroness this note, and say that her
+master had gone out. Adeline flew back into her room, trembling more
+violently than ever; her children followed on hearing her give a
+piercing cry. They found her in a dead faint; and they put her to bed,
+for she was seized by a nervous fever which held her for a month between
+life and death.
+
+"Where is he?" was the only thing she would say.
+
+Victorin sought for him in vain.
+
+And this is why. The Baron had driven to the Place du Palais Royal.
+There this man, who had recovered all his wits to work out a scheme
+which he had premeditated during the days he had spent crushed with
+pain and grief, crossed the Palais Royal on foot, and took a handsome
+carriage from a livery-stable in the Rue Joquelet. In obedience to his
+orders, the coachman went to the Rue de la Ville l'Eveque, and into the
+courtyard of Josepha's mansion, the gates opening at once at the call
+of the driver of such a splendid vehicle. Josepha came out, prompted
+by curiosity, for her man-servant had told her that a helpless old
+gentleman, unable to get out of his carriage, begged her to come to him
+for a moment.
+
+"Josepha!--it is I----"
+
+The singer recognized her Hulot only by his voice.
+
+"What? you, poor old man?--On my honor, you look like a twenty-franc
+piece that the Jews have sweated and the money-changers refuse."
+
+"Alas, yes," replied Hulot; "I am snatched from the jaws of death! But
+you are as lovely as ever. Will you be kind?"
+
+"That depends," said she; "everything is relative."
+
+"Listen," said Hulot; "can you put me up for a few days in a servant's
+room under the roof? I have nothing--not a farthing, not a hope; no
+food, no pension, no wife, no children, no roof over my head; without
+honor, without courage, without a friend; and worse than all that,
+liable to imprisonment for not meeting a bill."
+
+"Poor old fellow! you are without most things.--Are you also _sans
+culotte_?"
+
+"You laugh at me! I am done for," cried the Baron. "And I counted on you
+as Gourville did on Ninon."
+
+"And it was a 'real lady,' I am told who brought you to this," said
+Josepha. "Those precious sluts know how to pluck a goose even better
+than we do!--Why, you are like a corpse that the crows have done with--I
+can see daylight through!"
+
+"Time is short, Josepha!"
+
+"Come in, old boy, I am alone, as it happens, and my people don't know
+you. Send away your trap. Is it paid for?"
+
+"Yes," said the Baron, getting out with the help of Josepha's arm.
+
+"You may call yourself my father if you like," said the singer, moved to
+pity.
+
+She made Hulot sit down in the splendid drawing-room where he had last
+seen her.
+
+"And is it the fact, old man," she went on, "that you have killed your
+brother and your uncle, ruined your family, mortgaged your children's
+house over and over again, and robbed the Government till in Africa, all
+for your princess?"
+
+Hulot sadly bent his head.
+
+"Well, I admire that!" cried Josepha, starting up in her enthusiasm.
+"It is a general flare-up! It is Sardanapalus! Splendid, thoroughly
+complete! I may be a hussy, but I have a soul! I tell you, I like a
+spendthrift, like you, crazy over a woman, a thousand times better than
+those torpid, heartless bankers, who are supposed to be so good, and who
+ruin no end of families with their rails--gold for them, and iron for
+their gulls! You have only ruined those who belong to you, you have sold
+no one but yourself; and then you have excuses, physical and moral."
+
+She struck a tragic attitude, and spouted:
+
+  "'Tis Venus whose grasp never parts from her prey.
+
+And there you are!" and she pirouetted on her toe.
+
+Vice, Hulot found, could forgive him; vice smiled on him from the midst
+of unbridled luxury. Here, as before a jury, the magnitude of a crime
+was an extenuating circumstance. "And is your lady pretty at any rate?"
+asked Josepha, trying as a preliminary act of charity, to divert Hulot's
+thoughts, for his depression grieved her.
+
+"On my word, almost as pretty as you are," said the Baron artfully.
+
+"And monstrously droll? So I have been told. What does she do, I say? Is
+she better fun than I am?"
+
+"I don't want to talk about her," said Hulot.
+
+"And I hear she has come round my Crevel, and little Steinbock, and a
+gorgeous Brazilian?"
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"And that she has got a house as good as this, that Crevel has given
+her. The baggage! She is my provost-marshal, and finishes off those I
+have spoiled. I tell you why I am so curious to know what she is
+like, old boy; I just caught sight of her in the Bois, in an open
+carriage--but a long way off. She is a most accomplished harpy, Carabine
+says. She is trying to eat up Crevel, but he only lets her nibble.
+Crevel is a knowing hand, good-natured but hard-headed, who will always
+say Yes, and then go his own way. He is vain and passionate; but his
+cash is cold. You can never get anything out of such fellows beyond
+a thousand to three thousand francs a month; they jib at any serious
+outlay, as a donkey does at a running stream.
+
+"Not like you, old boy. You are a man of passions; you would sell your
+country for a woman. And, look here, I am ready to do anything for you!
+You are my father; you started me in life; it is a sacred duty. What do
+you want? Do you want a hundred thousand francs? I will wear myself to
+a rag to gain them. As to giving you bed and board--that is nothing. A
+place will be laid for you here every day; you can have a good room on
+the second floor, and a hundred crowns a month for pocket-money."
+
+The Baron, deeply touched by such a welcome, had a last qualm of honor.
+
+"No, my dear child, no; I did not come here for you to keep me," said
+he.
+
+"At your age it is something to be proud of," said she.
+
+"This is what I wish, my child. Your Duc d'Herouville has immense
+estates in Normandy, and I want to be his steward, under the name of
+Thoul. I have the capacity, and I am honest. A man may borrow of the
+Government, and yet not steal from a cash-box----"
+
+"H'm, h'm," said Josepha. "Once drunk, drinks again."
+
+"In short, I only want to live out of sight for three years--"
+
+"Well, it is soon done," said Josepha. "This evening, after dinner, I
+have only to speak. The Duke would marry me if I wished it, but I have
+his fortune, and I want something better--his esteem. He is a Duke of
+the first water. He is high-minded, as noble and great as Louis XIV. and
+Napoleon rolled into one, though he is a dwarf. Besides, I have done for
+him what la Schontz did for Rochefide; by taking my advice he has made
+two millions.
+
+"Now, listen to me, old popgun. I know you; you are always after the
+women, and you would be dancing attendance on the Normandy girls, who
+are splendid creatures, and getting your ribs cracked by their lovers
+and fathers, and the Duke would have to get you out of the scrape. Why,
+can't I see by the way you look at me that the _young_ man is not dead
+in you--as Fenelon put it.--No, this stewardship is not the thing for
+you. A man cannot be off with his Paris and with us, old boy, for the
+saying! You would die of weariness at Herouville."
+
+"What is to become of me?" said the Baron, "for I will only stay here
+till I see my way."
+
+"Well, shall I find a pigeon-hole for you? Listen, you old pirate. Women
+are what you want. They are consolation in all circumstances. Attend
+now.--At the end of the Alley, Rue Saint-Maur-du-Temple, there is a poor
+family I know of where there is a jewel of a little girl, prettier than
+I was at sixteen.--Ah! there is a twinkle in your eye already!--The
+child works sixteen hours a day at embroidering costly pieces for the
+silk merchants, and earns sixteen sous a day--one sou an hour!--and
+feeds like the Irish, on potatoes fried in rats' dripping, with bread
+five times a week--and drinks canal water out of the town pipes, because
+the Seine water costs too much; and she cannot set up on her own account
+for lack of six or seven thousand francs. Your wife and children bore
+you to death, don't they?--Besides, one cannot submit to be nobody where
+one has been a little Almighty. A father who has neither money nor honor
+can only be stuffed and kept in a glass case."
+
+The Baron could not help smiling at these abominable jests.
+
+"Well, now, Bijou is to come to-morrow morning to bring me an
+embroidered wrapper, a gem! It has taken six months to make; no one
+else will have any stuff like it! Bijou is very fond of me; I give her
+tidbits and my old gowns. And I send orders for bread and meat and wood
+to the family, who would break the shin-bones of the first comer if I
+bid them.--I try to do a little good. Ah! I know what I endured from
+hunger myself!--Bijou has confided to me all her little sorrows. There
+is the making of a super at the Ambigu-Comique in that child. Her dream
+is to wear fine dresses like mine; above all, to ride in a carriage.
+I shall say to her, 'Look here, little one, would you like to have
+a friend of--' How old are you?" she asked, interrupting herself.
+"Seventy-two?"
+
+"I have given up counting."
+
+"'Would you like an old gentleman of seventy-two?' I shall say. 'Very
+clean and neat, and who does not take snuff, who is as sound as a
+bell, and as good as a young man? He will marry you (in the Thirteenth
+Arrondissement) and be very kind to you; he will place seven thousand
+francs in your account, and furnish you a room all in mahogany, and if
+you are good, he will sometimes take you to the play. He will give you
+a hundred francs a month for pocket-money, and fifty francs for
+housekeeping.'--I know Bijou; she is myself at fourteen. I jumped for
+joy when that horrible Crevel made me his atrocious offers. Well, and
+you, old man, will be disposed of for three years. She is a good child,
+well behaved; for three or four years she will have her illusions--not
+for longer."
+
+Hulot did not hesitate; he had made up his mind to refuse; but to
+seem grateful to the kind-hearted singer, who was benevolent after her
+lights, he affected to hesitate between vice and virtue.
+
+"Why, you are as cold as a paving-stone in winter!" she exclaimed in
+amazement. "Come, now. You will make a whole family happy--a grandfather
+who runs all the errands, a mother who is being worn out with work,
+and two sisters--one of them very plain--who make thirty-two sous a day
+while putting their eyes out. It will make up for the misery you have
+caused at home, and you will expiate your sin while you are having as
+much fun as a minx at Mabille."
+
+Hulot, to put an end to this temptation, moved his fingers as if he were
+counting out money.
+
+"Oh! be quite easy as to ways and means," replied Josepha. "My Duke will
+lend you ten thousand francs; seven thousand to start an embroidery
+shop in Bijou's name, and three thousand for furnishing; and every three
+months you will find a cheque here for six hundred and fifty francs.
+When you get your pension paid you, you can repay the seventeen thousand
+francs. Meanwhile you will be as happy as a cow in clover, and hidden in
+a hole where the police will never find you. You must wear a loose serge
+coat, and you will look like a comfortable householder. Call yourself
+Thoul, if that is your fancy. I will tell Bijou that you are an uncle
+of mine come from Germany, having failed in business, and you will be
+cosseted like a divinity.--There now, Daddy!--And who knows! you may
+have no regrets. In case you should be bored, keep one Sunday rig-out,
+and you can come and ask me for a dinner and spend the evening here."
+
+"I!--and I meant to settle down and behave myself!--Look here, borrow
+twenty thousand francs for me, and I will set out to make my fortune in
+America, like my friend d'Aiglemont when Nucingen cleaned him out."
+
+"You!" cried Josepha. "Nay, leave morals to work-a-day folks, to raw
+recruits, to the _worrrthy_ citizens who have nothing to boast of
+but their virtue. You! You were born to be something better than a
+nincompoop; you are as a man what I am as a woman--a spendthrift of
+genius."
+
+"We will sleep on it and discuss it all to-morrow morning."
+
+"You will dine with the Duke. My d'Herouville will receive you as
+civilly as if you were the saviour of the State; and to-morrow you can
+decide. Come, be jolly, old boy! Life is a garment; when it is dirty, we
+must brush it; when it is ragged, it must be patched; but we keep it on
+as long as we can."
+
+This philosophy of life, and her high spirits, postponed Hulot's keenest
+pangs.
+
+At noon next day, after a capital breakfast, Hulot saw the arrival of
+one of those living masterpieces which Paris alone of all the cities in
+the world can produce, by means of the constant concubinage of luxury
+and poverty, of vice and decent honesty, of suppressed desire and
+renewed temptation, which makes the French capital the daughter of
+Ninevah, of Babylon, and of Imperial Rome.
+
+Mademoiselle Olympe Bijou, a child of sixteen, had the exquisite face
+which Raphael drew for his Virgins; eyes of pathetic innocence, weary
+with overwork--black eyes, with long lashes, their moisture parched with
+the heat of laborious nights, and darkened with fatigue; a complexion
+like porcelain, almost too delicate; a mouth like a partly opened
+pomegranate; a heaving bosom, a full figure, pretty hands, the whitest
+teeth, and a mass of black hair; and the whole meagrely set off by a
+cotton frock at seventy-five centimes the metre, leather shoes without
+heels, and the cheapest gloves. The girl, all unconscious of her charms,
+had put on her best frock to wait on the fine lady.
+
+The Baron, gripped again by the clutch of profligacy, felt all his
+life concentrated in his eyes. He forgot everything on beholding this
+delightful creature. He was like a sportsman in sight of the game; if an
+emperor were present, he must take aim!
+
+"And warranted sound," said Josepha in his ear. "An honest child, and
+wanting bread. This is Paris--I have been there!"
+
+"It is a bargain," replied the old man, getting up and rubbing his
+hands.
+
+When Olympe Bijou was gone, Josepha looked mischievously at the Baron.
+
+"If you want things to keep straight, Daddy," said she, "be as firm
+as the Public Prosecutor on the bench. Keep a tight hand on her, be a
+Bartholo! Ware Auguste, Hippolyte, Nestor, Victor--_or_, that is gold,
+in every form. When once the child is fed and dressed, if she gets the
+upper hand, she will drive you like a serf.--I will see to settling
+you comfortably. The Duke does the handsome; he will lend--that is,
+give--you ten thousand francs; and he deposits eight thousand with his
+notary, who will pay you six hundred francs every quarter, for I cannot
+trust you.--Now, am I nice?"
+
+"Adorable."
+
+Ten days after deserting his family, when they were gathered round
+Adeline, who seemed to be dying, as she said again and again, in a weak
+voice, "Where is he?" Hector, under the name of Thoul, was established
+in the Rue Saint-Maur, at the head of a business as embroiderer, under
+the name of Thoul and Bijou.
+
+
+
+Victorin Hulot, under the overwhelming disasters of his family, had
+received the finishing touch which makes or mars the man. He was
+perfection. In the great storms of life we act like the captain of a
+ship who, under the stress of a hurricane, lightens the ship of its
+heaviest cargo. The young lawyer lost his self-conscious pride, his
+too evident assertiveness, his arrogance as an orator and his political
+pretensions. He was as a man what his wife was as a woman. He made
+up his mind to make the best of his Celestine--who certainly did not
+realize his dreams--and was wise enough to estimate life at its true
+value by contenting himself in all things with the second best. He
+vowed to fulfil his duties, so much had he been shocked by his father's
+example.
+
+These feelings were confirmed as he stood by his mother's bed on the day
+when she was out of danger. Nor did this happiness come single. Claude
+Vignon, who called every day from the Prince de Wissembourg to inquire
+as to Madame Hulot's progress, desired the re-elected deputy to go with
+him to see the Minister.
+
+"His Excellency," said he, "wants to talk over your family affairs with
+you."
+
+The Prince had long known Victorin Hulot, and received him with a
+friendliness that promised well.
+
+"My dear fellow," said the old soldier, "I promised your uncle, in this
+room, that I would take care of your mother. That saintly woman, I
+am told, is getting well again; now is the time to pour oil into your
+wounds. I have for you here two hundred thousand francs; I will give
+them to you----"
+
+The lawyer's gesture was worthy of his uncle the Marshal.
+
+"Be quite easy," said the Prince, smiling; "it is money in trust. My
+days are numbered; I shall not always be here; so take this sum, and
+fill my place towards your family. You may use this money to pay off
+the mortgage on your house. These two hundred thousand francs are the
+property of your mother and your sister. If I gave the money to Madame
+Hulot, I fear that, in her devotion to her husband, she would be tempted
+to waste it. And the intention of those who restore it to you is, that
+it should produce bread for Madame Hulot and her daughter, the Countess
+Steinbock. You are a steady man, the worthy son of your noble mother,
+the true nephew of my friend the Marshal; you are appreciated here, you
+see--and elsewhere. So be the guardian angel of your family, and take
+this as a legacy from your uncle and me."
+
+"Monseigneur," said Hulot, taking the Minister's hand and pressing it,
+"such men as you know that thanks in words mean nothing; gratitude must
+be proven."
+
+"Prove yours--" said the old man.
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"By accepting what I have to offer you," said the Minister. "We propose
+to appoint you to be attorney to the War Office, which just now is
+involved in litigations in consequence of the plan for fortifying Paris;
+consulting clerk also to the Prefecture of Police; and a member of
+the Board of the Civil List. These three appointments will secure you
+salaries amounting to eighteen thousand francs, and will leave you
+politically free. You can vote in the Chamber in obedience to your
+opinions and your conscience. Act in perfect freedom on that score. It
+would be a bad thing for us if there were no national opposition!
+
+"Also, a few lines from your uncle, written a day or two before he
+breathed his last, suggested what I could do for your mother, whom
+he loved very truly.--Mesdames Popinot, de Rastignac, de Navarreins,
+d'Espard, de Grandlieu, de Carigliano, de Lenoncourt, and de la Batie
+have made a place for your mother as a Lady Superintendent of their
+charities. These ladies, presidents of various branches of benevolent
+work, cannot do everything themselves; they need a lady of character
+who can act for them by going to see the objects of their beneficence,
+ascertaining that charity is not imposed upon, and whether the help
+given really reaches those who applied for it, finding out that the poor
+who are ashamed to beg, and so forth. Your mother will fulfil an
+angelic function; she will be thrown in with none but priests and these
+charitable ladies; she will be paid six thousand francs and the cost of
+her hackney coaches.
+
+"You see, young man, that a pure and nobly virtuous man can still assist
+his family, even from the grave. Such a name as your uncle's is, and
+ought to be, a buckler against misfortune in a well-organized scheme of
+society. Follow in his path; you have started in it, I know; continue in
+it."
+
+"Such delicate kindness cannot surprise me in my mother's friend," said
+Victorin. "I will try to come up to all your hopes."
+
+"Go at once, and take comfort to your family.--By the way," added the
+Prince, as he shook hands with Victorin, "your father has disappeared?"
+
+"Alas! yes."
+
+"So much the better. That unhappy man has shown his wit, in which,
+indeed, he is not lacking."
+
+"There are bills of his to be met."
+
+"Well, you shall have six months' pay of your three appointments in
+advance. This pre-payment will help you, perhaps, to get the notes out
+of the hands of the money-lender. And I will see Nucingen, and perhaps
+may succeed in releasing your father's pension, pledged to him, without
+its costing you or our office a sou. The peer has not killed the banker
+in Nucingen; he is insatiable; he wants some concession.--I know not
+what----"
+
+So on his return to the Rue Plumet, Victorin could carry out his plan of
+lodging his mother and sister under his roof.
+
+The young lawyer, already famous, had, for his sole fortune, one of the
+handsomest houses in Paris, purchased in 1834 in preparation for his
+marriage, situated on the boulevard between the Rue de la Paix and
+the Rue Louis-le-Grand. A speculator had built two houses between
+the boulevard and the street; and between these, with the gardens
+and courtyards to the front and back, there remained still standing a
+splendid wing, the remains of the magnificent mansion of the Verneuils.
+The younger Hulot had purchased this fine property, on the strength of
+Mademoiselle Crevel's marriage-portion, for one million francs, when it
+was put up to auction, paying five hundred thousand down. He lived on
+the ground floor, expecting to pay the remainder out of letting the
+rest; but though it is safe to speculate in house-property in Paris,
+such investments are capricious or hang fire, depending on unforeseen
+circumstances.
+
+As the Parisian lounger may have observed, the boulevard between the Rue
+de la Paix and the Rue Louis-le-Grand prospered but slowly; it took
+so long to furbish and beautify itself, that trade did not set up its
+display there till 1840--the gold of the money-changers, the fairy-work
+of fashion, and the luxurious splendor of shop-fronts.
+
+In spite of two hundred thousand francs given by Crevel to his daughter
+at the time when his vanity was flattered by this marriage, before the
+Baron had robbed him of Josepha; in spite of the two hundred thousand
+francs paid off by Victorin in the course of seven years, the property
+was still burdened with a debt of five hundred thousand francs, in
+consequence of Victorin's devotion to his father. Happily, a rise in
+rents and the advantages of the situation had at this time improved the
+value of the houses. The speculation was justifying itself after eight
+years' patience, during which the lawyer had strained every nerve to pay
+the interest and some trifling amounts of the capital borrowed.
+
+The tradespeople were ready to offer good rents for the shops, on
+condition of being granted leases for eighteen years. The dwelling
+apartments rose in value by the shifting of the centre in Paris
+life--henceforth transferred to the region between the Bourse and the
+Madeleine, now the seat of the political power and financial authority
+in Paris. The money paid to him by the Minister, added to a year's rent
+in advance and the premiums paid by his tenants, would finally reduce
+the outstanding debt to two hundred thousand francs. The two houses, if
+entirely let, would bring in a hundred thousand francs a year. Within
+two years more, during which the Hulots could live on his salaries,
+added to by the Marshal's investments, Victorin would be in a splendid
+position.
+
+This was manna from heaven. Victorin could give up the first floor of
+his own house to his mother, and the second to Hortense, excepting two
+rooms reserved for Lisbeth. With Cousin Betty as the housekeeper, this
+compound household could bear all these charges, and yet keep up a
+good appearance, as beseemed a pleader of note. The great stars of the
+law-courts were rapidly disappearing; and Victorin Hulot, gifted with
+a shrewd tongue and strict honesty, was listened to by the Bench and
+Councillors; he studied his cases thoroughly, and advanced nothing that
+he could not prove. He would not hold every brief that offered; in fact,
+he was a credit to the bar.
+
+The Baroness' home in the Rue Plumet had become so odious to her, that
+she allowed herself to be taken to the Rue Louis-le-Grand. Thus, by her
+son's care, Adeline occupied a fine apartment; she was spared all the
+daily worries of life; for Lisbeth consented to begin again, working
+wonders of domestic economy, such as she had achieved for Madame
+Marneffe, seeing here a way of exerting her silent vengeance on those
+three noble lives, the object, each, of her hatred, which was kept
+growing by the overthrow of all her hopes.
+
+Once a month she went to see Valerie, sent, indeed, by Hortense, who
+wanted news of Wenceslas, and by Celestine, who was seriously uneasy
+at the acknowledged and well-known connection between her father and a
+woman to whom her mother-in-law and sister-in-law owed their ruin and
+their sorrows. As may be supposed, Lisbeth took advantage of this to see
+Valerie as often as possible.
+
+
+
+Thus, about twenty months passed by, during which the Baroness recovered
+her health, though her palsied trembling never left her. She made
+herself familiar with her duties, which afforded her a noble distraction
+from her sorrow and constant food for the divine goodness of her heart.
+She also regarded it as an opportunity for finding her husband in the
+course of one of those expeditions which took her into every part of
+Paris.
+
+During this time, Vauvinet had been paid, and the pension of six
+thousand francs was almost redeemed. Victorin could maintain his mother
+as well as Hortense out of the ten thousand francs interest on the money
+left by Marshal Hulot in trust for them. Adeline's salary amounted to
+six thousand francs a year; and this, added to the Baron's pension when
+it was freed, would presently secure an income of twelve thousand francs
+a year to the mother and daughter.
+
+Thus, the poor woman would have been almost happy but for her perpetual
+anxieties as to the Baron's fate; for she longed to have him with her to
+share the improved fortunes that smiled on the family; and but for
+the constant sight of her forsaken daughter; and but for the terrible
+thrusts constantly and _unconsciously_ dealt her by Lisbeth, whose
+diabolical character had free course.
+
+A scene which took place at the beginning of the month of March 1843
+will show the results of Lisbeth's latent and persistent hatred, still
+seconded, as she always was, by Madame Marneffe.
+
+Two great events had occurred in the Marneffe household. In the first
+place, Valerie had given birth to a still-born child, whose little
+coffin had cost her two thousand francs a year. And then, as to Marneffe
+himself, eleven months since, this is the report given by Lisbeth to
+the Hulot family one day on her return from a visit of discovery at the
+hotel Marneffe.
+
+"This morning," said she, "that dreadful Valerie sent for Doctor
+Bianchon to ask whether the medical men who had condemned her husband
+yesterday had made no mistake. Bianchon pronounced that to-night at the
+latest that horrible creature will depart to the torments that await
+him. Old Crevel and Madame Marneffe saw the doctor out; and your father,
+my dear Celestine, gave him five gold pieces for his good news.
+
+"When he came back into the drawing-room, Crevel cut capers like a
+dancer; he embraced that woman, exclaiming, 'Then, at last, you will
+be Madame Crevel!'--And to me, when she had gone back to her husband's
+bedside, for he was at his last gasp, your noble father said to me,
+'With Valerie as my wife, I can become a peer of France! I shall buy an
+estate I have my eye on--Presles, which Madame de Serizy wants to
+sell. I shall be Crevel de Presles, member of the Common Council of
+Seine-et-Oise, and Deputy. I shall have a son! I shall be everything
+I have ever wished to be.'--'Heh!' said I, 'and what about your
+daughter?'--'Bah!' says he, 'she is only a woman! And she is quite too
+much of a Hulot. Valerie has a horror of them all.--My son-in-law has
+never chosen to come to this house; why has he given himself such airs
+as a Mentor, a Spartan, a Puritan, a philanthropist? Besides, I have
+squared accounts with my daughter; she has had all her mother's fortune,
+and two hundred thousand francs to that. So I am free to act as I
+please.--I shall judge of my son-in-law and Celestine by their conduct
+on my marriage; as they behave, so shall I. If they are nice to their
+stepmother, I will receive them. I am a man, after all!'--In short, all
+this rhodomontade! And an attitude like Napoleon on the column."
+
+The ten months' widowhood insisted on by the law had now elapsed some
+few days since. The estate of Presles was purchased. Victorin and
+Celestine had that very morning sent Lisbeth to make inquiries as to the
+marriage of the fascinating widow to the Mayor of Paris, now a member of
+the Common Council of the Department of Seine-et-Oise.
+
+Celestine and Hortense, in whom the ties of affection had been
+drawn closer since they had lived under the same roof, were almost
+inseparable. The Baroness, carried away by a sense of honesty which led
+her to exaggerate the duties of her place, devoted herself to the work
+of charity of which she was the agent; she was out almost every day
+from eleven till five. The sisters-in-law, united in their cares for
+the children whom they kept together, sat at home and worked. They had
+arrived at the intimacy which thinks aloud, and were a touching picture
+of two sisters, one cheerful and the other sad. The less happy of the
+two, handsome, lively, high-spirited, and clever, seemed by her manner
+to defy her painful situation; while the melancholy Celestine, sweet and
+calm, and as equable as reason itself, might have been supposed to have
+some secret grief. It was this contradiction, perhaps, that added to
+their warm friendship. Each supplied the other with what she lacked.
+
+Seated in a little summer-house in the garden, which the speculator's
+trowel had spared by some fancy of the builder's, who believed that he
+was preserving these hundred feet square of earth for his own pleasure,
+they were admiring the first green shoots of the lilac-trees, a
+spring festival which can only be fully appreciated in Paris when the
+inhabitants have lived for six months oblivious of what vegetation
+means, among the cliffs of stone where the ocean of humanity tosses to
+and fro.
+
+"Celestine," said Hortense to her sister-in-law, who had complained that
+in such fine weather her husband should be kept at the Chamber, "I think
+you do not fully appreciate your happiness. Victorin is a perfect angel,
+and you sometimes torment him."
+
+"My dear, men like to be tormented! Certain ways of teasing are a
+proof of affection. If your poor mother had only been--I will not say
+exacting, but always prepared to be exacting, you would not have had so
+much to grieve over."
+
+"Lisbeth is not come back. I shall have to sing the song
+of _Malbrouck_," said Hortense. "I do long for some news of
+Wenceslas!--What does he live on? He has not done a thing these two
+years."
+
+"Victorin saw him, he told me, with that horrible woman not long ago;
+and he fancied that she maintains him in idleness.--If you only would,
+dear soul, you might bring your husband back to you yet."
+
+Hortense shook her head.
+
+"Believe me," Celestine went on, "the position will ere long be
+intolerable. In the first instance, rage, despair, indignation, gave you
+strength. The awful disasters that have come upon us since--two deaths,
+ruin, and the disappearance of Baron Hulot--have occupied your mind and
+heart; but now you live in peace and silence, you will find it hard to
+bear the void in your life; and as you cannot, and will never leave the
+path of virtue, you will have to be reconciled to Wenceslas. Victorin,
+who loves you so much, is of that opinion. There is something stronger
+than one's feelings even, and that is Nature!"
+
+"But such a mean creature!" cried the proud Hortense. "He cares for
+that woman because she feeds him.--And has she paid his debts, do you
+suppose?--Good Heaven! I think of that man's position day and night! He
+is the father of my child, and he is degrading himself."
+
+"But look at your mother, my dear," said Celestine.
+
+Celestine was one of those women who, when you have given them reasons
+enough to convince a Breton peasant, still go back for the hundredth
+time to their original argument. The character of her face, somewhat
+flat, dull, and common, her light-brown hair in stiff, neat bands, her
+very complexion spoke of a sensible woman, devoid of charm, but also
+devoid of weakness.
+
+"The Baroness would willingly go to join her husband in his disgrace,
+to comfort him and hide him in her heart from every eye," Celestine went
+on. "Why, she has a room made ready upstairs for Monsieur Hulot, as if
+she expected to find him and bring him home from one day to the next."
+
+"Oh yes, my mother is sublime!" replied Hortense. "She has been so every
+minute of every day for six-and-twenty years; but I am not like her, it
+is not my nature.--How can I help it? I am angry with myself sometimes;
+but you do not know, Celestine, what it would be to make terms with
+infamy."
+
+"There is my father!" said Celestine placidly. "He has certainly started
+on the road that ruined yours. He is ten years younger than the Baron,
+to be sure, and was only a tradesman; but how can it end? This Madame
+Marneffe has made a slave of my father; he is her dog; she is mistress
+of his fortune and his opinions, and nothing can open his eyes. I
+tremble when I remember that their banns of marriage are already
+published!--My husband means to make a last attempt; he thinks it a duty
+to try to avenge society and the family, and bring that woman to account
+for all her crimes. Alas! my dear Hortense, such lofty souls as Victorin
+and hearts like ours come too late to a comprehension of the world and
+its ways!--This is a secret, dear, and I have told you because you are
+interested in it, but never by a word or a look betray it to Lisbeth, or
+your mother, or anybody, for--"
+
+"Here is Lisbeth!" said Hortense. "Well, cousin, and how is the Inferno
+of the Rue Barbet going on?"
+
+"Badly for you, my children.--Your husband, my dear Hortense, is more
+crazy about that woman than ever, and she, I must own, is madly in love
+with him.--Your father, dear Celestine, is gloriously blind. That, to
+be sure, is nothing; I have had occasion to see it once a fortnight;
+really, I am lucky never to have had anything to do with men, they are
+besotted creatures.--Five days hence you, dear child, and Victorin will
+have lost your father's fortune."
+
+"Then the banns are cried?" said Celestine.
+
+"Yes," said Lisbeth, "and I have just been arguing your case. I pointed
+out to that monster, who is going the way of the other, that if he
+would only get you out of the difficulties you are in by paying off the
+mortgage on the house, you would show your gratitude and receive your
+stepmother--"
+
+Hortense started in horror.
+
+"Victorin will see about that," said Celestine coldly.
+
+"But do you know what Monsieur le Maire's answer was?" said Lisbeth. "'I
+mean to leave them where they are. Horses can only be broken in by lack
+of food, sleep, and sugar.'--Why, Baron Hulot was not so bad as Monsieur
+Crevel.
+
+"So, my poor dears, you may say good-bye to the money. And such a fine
+fortune! Your father paid three million francs for the Presles estate,
+and he has thirty thousand francs a year in stocks! Oh!--he has no
+secrets from me. He talks of buying the Hotel de Navarreins, in the
+Rue du Bac. Madame Marneffe herself has forty thousand francs a
+year.--Ah!--here is our guardian angel, here comes your mother!" she
+exclaimed, hearing the rumble of wheels.
+
+And presently the Baroness came down the garden steps and joined the
+party. At fifty-five, though crushed by so many troubles, and constantly
+trembling as if shivering with ague, Adeline, whose face was indeed
+pale and wrinkled, still had a fine figure, a noble outline, and natural
+dignity. Those who saw her said, "She must have been beautiful!" Worn
+with the grief of not knowing her husband's fate, of being unable
+to share with him this oasis in the heart of Paris, this peace and
+seclusion and the better fortune that was dawning on the family, her
+beauty was the beauty of a ruin. As each gleam of hope died out, each
+day of search proved vain, Adeline sank into fits of deep melancholy
+that drove her children to despair.
+
+The Baroness had gone out that morning with fresh hopes, and was
+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."
+
+"It will be a hard task, my good lady; still, there are a good many
+five-franc pieces in a thousand francs, and I will try to earn your
+money."
+
+"Good-morning, then, Madame Bijou."
+
+On going into the boudoir, the singer found that Madame Hulot had
+fainted; but in spite of having lost consciousness, her nervous
+trembling kept her still perpetually shaking, as the pieces of a snake
+that has been cut up still wriggle and move. Strong salts, cold water,
+and all the ordinary remedies were applied to recall the Baroness to her
+senses, or rather, to the apprehension of her sorrows.
+
+"Ah! mademoiselle, how far has he fallen!" cried she, recognizing
+Josepha, and finding that she was alone with her.
+
+"Take heart, madame," replied the actress, who had seated herself on
+a cushion at Adeline's feet, and was kissing her hands. "We shall find
+him; and if he is in the mire, well, he must wash himself. Believe me,
+with people of good breeding it is a matter of clothes.--Allow me to
+make up for you the harm I have done you, for I see how much you are
+attached to your husband, in spite of his misconduct--or you should not
+have come here.--Well, you see, the poor man is so fond of women. If you
+had had a little of our dash, you would have kept him from running about
+the world; for you would have been what we can never be--all the women
+man wants.
+
+"The State ought to subsidize a school of manners for honest women!
+But governments are so prudish! Still, they are guided by men, whom we
+privately guide. My word, I pity nations!
+
+"But the matter in question is how you can be helped, and not to laugh
+at the world.--Well, madame, be easy, go home again, and do not worry. I
+will bring your Hector back to you as he was as a man of thirty."
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle, let us go to see that Madame Grenouville," said the
+Baroness. "She surely knows something! Perhaps I may see the Baron this
+very day, and be able to snatch him at once from poverty and disgrace."
+
+"Madame, I will show you the deep gratitude I feel towards you by not
+displaying the stage-singer Josepha, the Duc d'Herouville's mistress,
+in the company of the noblest, saintliest image of virtue. I respect
+you too much to be seen by your side. This is not acted humility; it is
+sincere homage. You make me sorry, madame, that I cannot tread in your
+footsteps, in spite of the thorns that tear your feet and hands.--But it
+cannot be helped! I am one with art, as you are one with virtue."
+
+"Poor child!" said the Baroness, moved amid her own sorrows by a strange
+sense of compassionate sympathy; "I will pray to God for you; for you
+are the victim of society, which must have theatres. When you are old,
+repent--you will be heard if God vouchsafes to hear the prayers of a--"
+
+"Of a martyr, madame," Josepha put in, and she respectfully kissed the
+Baroness' skirt.
+
+But Adeline took the actress' hand, and drawing her towards her, kissed
+her on the forehead. Coloring with pleasure Josepha saw the Baroness
+into the hackney coach with the humblest politeness.
+
+"It must be some visiting Lady of Charity," said the man-servant to the
+maid, "for she does not do so much for any one, not even for her dear
+friend Madame Jenny Cadine."
+
+"Wait a few days," said she, "and you will see him, madame, or I
+renounce the God of my fathers--and that from a Jewess, you know, is a
+promise of success."
+
+
+
+At the very time when Madame Hulot was calling on Josepha, Victorin,
+in his study, was receiving an old woman of about seventy-five, who, to
+gain admission to the lawyer, had used the terrible name of the head of
+the detective force. The man in waiting announced:
+
+"Madame de Saint-Esteve."
+
+"I have assumed one of my business names," said she, taking a seat.
+
+Victorin felt a sort of internal chill at the sight of this dreadful old
+woman. Though handsomely dressed, she was terrible to look upon, for her
+flat, colorless, strongly-marked face, furrowed with wrinkles, expressed
+a sort of cold malignity. Marat, as a woman of that age, might have been
+like this creature, a living embodiment of the Reign of Terror.
+
+This sinister old woman's small, pale eyes twinkled with a tiger's
+bloodthirsty greed. Her broad, flat nose, with nostrils expanded into
+oval cavities, breathed the fires of hell, and resembled the beak of
+some evil bird of prey. The spirit of intrigue lurked behind her low,
+cruel brow. Long hairs had grown from her wrinkled chin, betraying the
+masculine character of her schemes. Any one seeing that woman's
+face would have said that artists had failed in their conceptions of
+Mephistopheles.
+
+"My dear sir," she began, with a patronizing air, "I have long since
+given up active business of any kind. What I have come to you to do, I
+have undertaken, for the sake of my dear nephew, whom I love more than
+I could love a son of my own.--Now, the Head of the Police--to whom
+the President of the Council said a few words in his ear as regards
+yourself, in talking to Monsieur Chapuzot--thinks as the police ought
+not to appear in a matter of this description, you understand. They gave
+my nephew a free hand, but my nephew will have nothing to say to it,
+except as before the Council; he will not be seen in it."
+
+"Then your nephew is--"
+
+"You have hit it, and I am rather proud of him," said she, interrupting
+the lawyer, "for he is my pupil, and he soon could teach his
+teacher.--We have considered this case, and have come to our own
+conclusions. Will you hand over thirty thousand francs to have the whole
+thing taken off your hands? I will make a clean sweep of all, and you
+need not pay till the job is done."
+
+"Do you know the persons concerned?"
+
+"No, my dear sir; I look for information from you. What we are told is,
+that a certain old idiot has fallen into the clutches of a widow. This
+widow, of nine-and-twenty, has played her cards so well, that she has
+forty thousand francs a year, of which she has robbed two fathers of
+families. She is now about to swallow down eighty thousand francs a year
+by marrying an old boy of sixty-one. She will thus ruin a respectable
+family, and hand over this vast fortune to the child of some lover by
+getting rid at once of the old husband.--That is the case as stated."
+
+"Quite correct," said Victorin. "My father-in-law, Monsieur Crevel--"
+
+"Formerly a perfumer, a mayor--yes, I live in his district under the
+name of Ma'ame Nourrisson," said the woman.
+
+"The other person is Madame Marneffe."
+
+"I do not know," said Madame de Saint-Esteve. "But within three days I
+will be in a position to count her shifts."
+
+"Can you hinder the marriage?" asked Victorin.
+
+"How far have they got?"
+
+"To the second time of asking."
+
+"We must carry off the woman.--To-day is Sunday--there are but
+three days, for they will be married on Wednesday, no doubt; it is
+impossible.--But she may be killed--"
+
+Victorin Hulot started with an honest man's horror at hearing these five
+words uttered in cold blood.
+
+"Murder?" said he. "And how could you do it?"
+
+"For forty years, now, monsieur, we have played the part of fate,"
+replied she, with terrible pride, "and do just what we will in Paris.
+More than one family--even in the Faubourg Saint-Germain--has told me
+all its secrets, I can tell you. I have made and spoiled many a match,
+I have destroyed many a will and saved many a man's honor. I have in
+there," and she tapped her forehead, "a store of secrets which are worth
+thirty-six thousand francs a year to me; and you--you will be one of my
+lambs, hoh! Could such a woman as I am be what I am if she revealed her
+ways and means? I act.
+
+"Whatever I may do, sir, will be the result of an accident; you need
+feel no remorse. You will be like a man cured by a clairvoyant; by the
+end of a month, it seems all the work of Nature."
+
+Victorin broke out in a cold sweat. The sight of an executioner would
+have shocked him less than this prolix and pretentious Sister of the
+Hulks. As he looked at her purple-red gown, she seemed to him dyed in
+blood.
+
+"Madame, I do not accept the help of your experience and skill if
+success is to cost anybody's life, or the least criminal act is to come
+of it."
+
+"You are a great baby, monsieur," replied the woman; "you wish to remain
+blameless in your own eyes, while you want your enemy to be overthrown."
+
+Victorin shook his head in denial.
+
+"Yes," she went on, "you want this Madame Marneffe to drop the prey she
+has between her teeth. But how do you expect to make a tiger drop his
+piece of beef? Can you do it by patting his back and saying, 'Poor
+Puss'? You are illogical. You want a battle fought, but you object to
+blows.--Well, I grant you the innocence you are so careful over. I have
+always found that there was material for hypocrisy in honesty! One day,
+three months hence, a poor priest will come to beg of you forty thousand
+francs for a pious work--a convent to be rebuilt in the Levant--in
+the desert.--If you are satisfied with your lot, give the good man the
+money. You will pay more than that into the treasury. It will be a mere
+trifle in comparison with what you will get, I can tell you."
+
+She rose, standing on the broad feet that seemed to overflow her satin
+shoes; she smiled, bowed, and vanished.
+
+"The Devil has a sister," said Victorin, rising.
+
+He saw the hideous stranger to the door, a creature called up from the
+dens of the police, as on the stage a monster comes up from the third
+cellar at the touch of a fairy's wand in a ballet-extravaganza.
+
+After finishing what he had to do at the Courts, Victorin went to call
+on Monsieur Chapuzot, the head of one of the most important branches of
+the Central Police, to make some inquiries about the stranger. Finding
+Monsieur Chapuzot alone in his office, Victorin thanked him for his
+help.
+
+"You sent me an old woman who might stand for the incarnation of the
+criminal side of Paris."
+
+Monsieur Chapuzot laid his spectacles on his papers and looked at the
+lawyer with astonishment.
+
+"I should not have taken the liberty of sending anybody to see you
+without giving you notice beforehand, or a line of introduction," said
+he.
+
+"Then it was Monsieur le Prefet--?"
+
+"I think not," said Chapuzot. "The last time that the Prince de
+Wissembourg dined with the Minister of the Interior, he spoke to
+the Prefet of the position in which you find yourself--a deplorable
+position--and asked him if you could be helped in any friendly way. The
+Prefet, who was interested by the regrets his Excellency expressed as to
+this family affair, did me the honor to consult me about it.
+
+"Ever since the present Prefet has held the reins of this department--so
+useful and so vilified--he has made it a rule that family matters are
+never to be interfered in. He is right in principle and in morality; but
+in practice he is wrong. In the forty-five years that I have served
+in the police, it did, from 1799 till 1815, great services in family
+concerns. Since 1820 a constitutional government and the press have
+completely altered the conditions of existence. So my advice, indeed,
+was not to intervene in such a case, and the Prefet did me the honor to
+agree with my remarks. The Head of the detective branch has orders, in
+my presence, to take no steps; so if you have had any one sent to you
+by him, he will be reprimanded. It might cost him his place. 'The Police
+will do this or that,' is easily said; the Police, the Police! But, my
+dear sir, the Marshal and the Ministerial Council do not know what the
+Police is. The Police alone knows the Police; but as for ours, only
+Fouche, Monsieur Lenoir, and Monsieur de Sartines have had any notion of
+it.--Everything is changed now; we are reduced and disarmed! I have seen
+many private disasters develop, which I could have checked with five
+grains of despotic power.--We shall be regretted by the very men who
+have crippled us when they, like you, stand face to face with some moral
+monstrosities, which ought to be swept away as we sweep away mud! In
+public affairs the Police is expected to foresee everything, or when the
+safety of the public is involved--but the family?--It is sacred! I would
+do my utmost to discover and hinder a plot against the King's life, I
+would see through the walls of a house; but as to laying a finger on a
+household, or peeping into private interests--never, so long as I sit in
+this office. I should be afraid."
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Of the Press, Monsieur le Depute, of the left centre."
+
+"What, then, can I do?" said Hulot, after a pause.
+
+"Well, you are the Family," said the official. "That settles it; you can
+do what you please. But as to helping you, as to using the Police as an
+instrument of private feelings, and interests, how is it possible? There
+lies, you see, the secret of the persecution, necessary, but pronounced
+illegal, by the Bench, which was brought to bear against the predecessor
+of our present chief detective. Bibi-Lupin undertook investigations
+for the benefit of private persons. This might have led to great
+social dangers. With the means at his command, the man would have been
+formidable, an underlying fate--"
+
+"But in my place?" said Hulot.
+
+"Why, you ask my advice? You who sell it!" replied Monsieur Chapuzot.
+"Come, come, my dear sir, you are making fun of me."
+
+Hulot bowed to the functionary, and went away without seeing that
+gentleman's almost imperceptible shrug as he rose to open the door.
+
+"And he wants to be a statesman!" said Chapuzot to himself as he
+returned to his reports.
+
+Victorin went home, still full of perplexities which he could confide to
+no one.
+
+At dinner the Baroness joyfully announced to her children that within a
+month their father might be sharing their comforts, and end his days in
+peace among his family.
+
+"Oh, I would gladly give my three thousand six hundred francs a year to
+see the Baron here!" cried Lisbeth. "But, my dear Adeline, do not dream
+beforehand of such happiness, I entreat you!"
+
+"Lisbeth is right," said Celestine. "My dear mother, wait till the end."
+
+The Baroness, all feeling and all hope, related her visit to Josepha,
+expressed her sense of the misery of such women in the midst of good
+fortune, and mentioned Chardin the mattress-picker, the father of the
+Oran storekeeper, thus showing that her hopes were not groundless.
+
+
+
+By seven next morning Lisbeth had driven in a hackney coach to the Quai
+de la Tournelle, and stopped the vehicle at the corner of the Rue de
+Poissy.
+
+"Go to the Rue des Bernardins," said she to the driver, "No. 7, a house
+with an entry and no porter. Go up to the fourth floor, ring at the
+door to the left, on which you will see 'Mademoiselle Chardin--Lace and
+shawls mended.' She will answer the door. Ask for the Chevalier. She
+will say he is out. Say in reply, 'Yes, I know, but find him, for his
+_bonne_ is out on the quay in a coach, and wants to see him.'"
+
+Twenty minutes later, an old man, who looked about eighty, with
+perfectly white hair, and a nose reddened by the cold, and a pale,
+wrinkled face like an old woman's, came shuffling slowly along in list
+slippers, a shiny alpaca overcoat hanging on his stooping shoulders, no
+ribbon at his buttonhole, the sleeves of an under-vest showing below
+his coat-cuffs, and his shirt-front unpleasantly dingy. He approached
+timidly, looked at the coach, recognized Lisbeth, and came to the
+window.
+
+"Why, my dear cousin, what a state you are in!"
+
+"Elodie keeps everything for herself," said Baron Hulot. "Those Chardins
+are a blackguard crew."
+
+"Will you come home to us?"
+
+"Oh, no, no!" cried the old man. "I would rather go to America."
+
+"Adeline is on the scent."
+
+"Oh, if only some one would pay my debts!" said the Baron, with a
+suspicious look, "for Samanon is after me."
+
+"We have not paid up the arrears yet; your son still owes a hundred
+thousand francs."
+
+"Poor boy!"
+
+"And your pension will not be free before seven or eight months.--If you
+will wait a minute, I have two thousand francs here."
+
+The Baron held out his hand with fearful avidity.
+
+"Give it me, Lisbeth, and may God reward you! Give it me; I know where
+to go."
+
+"But you will tell me, old wretch?"
+
+"Yes, yes. Then I can wait eight months, for I have discovered a little
+angel, a good child, an innocent thing not old enough to be depraved."
+
+"Do not forget the police-court," said Lisbeth, who flattered herself
+that she would some day see Hulot there.
+
+"No.--It is in the Rue de Charonne," said the Baron, "a part of the town
+where no fuss is made about anything. No one will ever find me there.
+I am called Pere Thorec, Lisbeth, and I shall be taken for a retired
+cabinet-maker; the girl is fond of me, and I will not allow my back to
+be shorn any more."
+
+"No, that has been done," said Lisbeth, looking at his coat. "Supposing
+I take you there."
+
+Baron Hulot got into the coach, deserting Mademoiselle Elodie without
+taking leave of her, as he might have tossed aside a novel he had
+finished.
+
+In half an hour, during which Baron Hulot talked to Lisbeth of nothing
+but little Atala Judici--for he had fallen by degrees to those base
+passions that ruin old men--she set him down with two thousand francs in
+his pocket, in the Rue de Charonne, Faubourg Saint-Antoine, at the door
+of a doubtful and sinister-looking house.
+
+"Good-day, cousin; so now you are to be called Thorec, I suppose? Send
+none but commissionaires if you need me, and always take them from
+different parts."
+
+"Trust me! Oh, I am really very lucky!" said the Baron, his face beaming
+with the prospect of new and future happiness.
+
+"No one can find him there," said Lisbeth; and she paid the coach at the
+Boulevard Beaumarchais, and returned to the Rue Louis-le-Grand in the
+omnibus.
+
+On the following day Crevel was announced at the hour when all the
+family were together in the drawing-room, just after breakfast.
+Celestine flew to throw her arms round her father's neck, and behaved
+as if she had seen him only the day before, though in fact he had not
+called there for more than two years.
+
+"Good-morning, father," said Victorin, offering his hand.
+
+"Good-morning, children," said the pompous Crevel. "Madame la Baronne, I
+throw myself at your feet! Good Heavens, how the children grow! they are
+pushing us off the perch--'Grand-pa,' they say, 'we want our turn in the
+sunshine.'--Madame la Comtesse, you are as lovely as ever," he went
+on, addressing Hortense.--"Ah, ha! and here is the best of good money:
+Cousin Betty, the Wise Virgin."
+
+"Why, you are really very comfortable here," said he, after scattering
+these greetings with a cackle of loud laughter that hardly moved the
+rubicund muscles of his broad face.
+
+He looked at his daughter with some contempt.
+
+"My dear Celestine, I will make you a present of all my furniture out
+of the Rue des Saussayes; it will just do here. Your drawing-room wants
+furnishing up.--Ha! there is that little rogue Wenceslas. Well, and
+are we very good children, I wonder? You must have pretty manners, you
+know."
+
+"To make up for those who have none," said Lisbeth.
+
+"That sarcasm, my dear Lisbeth, has lost its sting. I am going, my dear
+children, to put an end to the false position in which I have so long
+been placed; I have come, like a good father, to announce my approaching
+marriage without any circumlocution."
+
+"You have a perfect right to marry," said Victorin. "And for my part,
+I give you back the promise you made me when you gave me the hand of my
+dear Celestine--"
+
+"What promise?" said Crevel.
+
+"Not to marry," replied the lawyer. "You will do me the justice to allow
+that I did not ask you to pledge yourself, that you gave your word quite
+voluntarily and in spite of my desire, for I pointed out to you at the
+time that you were unwise to bind yourself."
+
+"Yes, I do remember, my dear fellow," said Crevel, ashamed of himself.
+"But, on my honor, if you will but live with Madame Crevel, my children,
+you will find no reason to repent.--Your good feeling touches
+me, Victorin, and you will find that generosity to me is not
+unrewarded.--Come, by the Poker! welcome your stepmother and come to the
+wedding."
+
+"But you have not told us the lady's name, papa," said Celestine.
+
+"Why, it is an open secret," replied Crevel. "Do not let us play at
+guess who can! Lisbeth must have told you."
+
+"My dear Monsieur Crevel," replied Lisbeth, "there are certain names we
+never utter here--"
+
+"Well, then, it is Madame Marneffe."
+
+"Monsieur Crevel," said the lawyer very sternly, "neither my wife nor I
+can be present at that marriage; not out of interest, for I spoke in
+all sincerity just now. Yes, I am most happy to think that you may find
+happiness in this union; but I act on considerations of honor and good
+feeling which you must understand, and which I cannot speak of here, as
+they reopen wounds still ready to bleed----"
+
+The Baroness telegraphed a signal to Hortense, who tucked her little one
+under her arm, saying, "Come Wenceslas, and have your bath!--Good-bye,
+Monsieur Crevel."
+
+The Baroness also bowed to Crevel without a word; and Crevel could
+not help smiling at the child's astonishment when threatened with this
+impromptu tubbing.
+
+"You, monsieur," said Victorin, when he found himself alone with
+Lisbeth, his wife, and his father-in-law, "are about to marry a woman
+loaded with the spoils of my father; it was she who, in cold blood,
+brought him down to such depths; a woman who is the son-in-law's
+mistress after ruining the father-in-law; who is the cause of constant
+grief to my sister!--And you fancy that I shall seem to sanction your
+madness by my presence? I deeply pity you, dear Monsieur Crevel; you
+have no family feeling; you do not understand the unity of the honor
+which binds the members of it together. There is no arguing with
+passion--as I have too much reason to know. The slaves of their passions
+are as deaf as they are blind. Your daughter Celestine has too strong a
+sense of her duty to proffer a word of reproach."
+
+"That would, indeed, be a pretty thing!" cried Crevel, trying to cut
+short this harangue.
+
+"Celestine would not be my wife if she made the slightest remonstrance,"
+the lawyer went on. "But I, at least, may try to stop you before you
+step over the precipice, especially after giving you ample proof of my
+disinterestedness. It is not your fortune, it is you that I care about.
+Nay, to make it quite plain to you, I may add, if it were only to set
+your mind at ease with regard to your marriage contract, that I am now
+in a position which leaves me with nothing to wish for--"
+
+"Thanks to me!" exclaimed Crevel, whose face was purple.
+
+"Thanks to Celestine's fortune," replied Victorin. "And if you regret
+having given to your daughter as a present from yourself, a sum which is
+not half what her mother left her, I can only say that we are prepared
+to give it back."
+
+"And do you not know, my respected son-in-law," said Crevel, striking
+an attitude, "that under the shelter of my name Madame Marneffe is not
+called upon to answer for her conduct excepting as my wife--as Madame
+Crevel?"
+
+"That is, no doubt, quite the correct thing," said the lawyer; "very
+generous so far as the affections are concerned and the vagaries of
+passion; but I know of no name, nor law, nor title that can shelter
+the theft of three hundred thousand francs so meanly wrung from my
+father!--I tell you plainly, my dear father-in-law, your future wife
+is unworthy of you, she is false to you, and is madly in love with my
+brother-in-law, Steinbock, whose debts she had paid."
+
+"It is I who paid them!"
+
+"Very good," said Hulot; "I am glad for Count Steinbock's sake; he may
+some day repay the money. But he is loved, much loved, and often--"
+
+"Loved!" cried Crevel, whose face showed his utter bewilderment. "It is
+cowardly, and dirty, and mean, and cheap, to calumniate a woman!--When a
+man says such things, monsieur, he must bring proof."
+
+"I will bring proof."
+
+"I shall expect it."
+
+"By the day after to-morrow, my dear Monsieur Crevel, I shall be able
+to tell you the day, the hour, the very minute when I can expose the
+horrible depravity of your future wife."
+
+"Very well; I shall be delighted," said Crevel, who had recovered
+himself.
+
+"Good-bye, my children, for the present; good-bye, Lisbeth."
+
+"See him out, Lisbeth," said Celestine in an undertone.
+
+"And is this the way you take yourself off?" cried Lisbeth to Crevel.
+
+"Ah, ha!" said Crevel, "my son-in-law is too clever by half; he is
+getting on. The Courts and the Chamber, judicial trickery and political
+dodges, are making a man of him with a vengeance!--So he knows I am to
+be married on Wednesday, and on a Sunday my gentleman proposes to fix
+the hour, within three days, when he can prove that my wife is unworthy
+of me. That is a good story!--Well, I am going back to sign the
+contract. Come with me, Lisbeth--yes, come. They will never know. I
+meant to have left Celestine forty thousand francs a year; but Hulot has
+just behaved in a way to alienate my affection for ever."
+
+"Give me ten minutes, Pere Crevel; wait for me in your carriage at the
+gate. I will make some excuse for going out."
+
+"Very well--all right."
+
+"My dears," said Lisbeth, who found all the family reassembled in the
+drawing-room, "I am going with Crevel: the marriage contract is to be
+signed this afternoon, and I shall hear what he has settled. It will
+probably be my last visit to that woman. Your father is furious; he will
+disinherit you--"
+
+"His vanity will prevent that," said the son-in-law. "He was bent on
+owning the estate of Presles, and he will keep it; I know him. Even if
+he were to have children, Celestine would still have half of what he
+might leave; the law forbids his giving away all his fortune.--Still,
+these questions are nothing to me; I am only thinking of our honor.--Go
+then, cousin," and he pressed Lisbeth's hand, "and listen carefully to
+the contract."
+
+
+
+Twenty minutes after, Lisbeth and Crevel reached the house in the Rue
+Barbet, where Madame Marneffe was awaiting, in mild impatience, the
+result of a step taken by her commands. Valerie had in the end fallen
+a prey to the absorbing love which, once in her life, masters a woman's
+heart. Wenceslas was its object, and, a failure as an artist, he became
+in Madame Marneffe's hands a lover so perfect that he was to her what
+she had been to Baron Hulot.
+
+Valerie was holding a slipper in one hand, and Steinbock clasped the
+other, while her head rested on his shoulder. The rambling conversation
+in which they had been engaged ever since Crevel went out may be
+ticketed, like certain lengthy literary efforts of our day, "_All rights
+reserved_," for it cannot be reproduced. This masterpiece of personal
+poetry naturally brought a regret to the artist's lips, and he said, not
+without some bitterness:
+
+"What a pity it is that I married; for if I had but waited, as Lisbeth
+told me, I might now have married you."
+
+"Who but a Pole would wish to make a wife of a devoted mistress?" cried
+Valerie. "To change love into duty, and pleasure into a bore."
+
+"I know you to be so fickle," replied Steinbock. "Did I not hear you
+talking to Lisbeth of that Brazilian, Baron Montes?"
+
+"Do you want to rid me of him?"
+
+"It would be the only way to hinder his seeing you," said the
+ex-sculptor.
+
+"Let me tell you, my darling--for I tell you everything," said
+Valerie--"I was saving him up for a husband.--The promises I have made
+to that man!--Oh, long before I knew you," said she, in reply to a
+movement from Wenceslas. "And those promises, of which he avails himself
+to plague me, oblige me to get married almost secretly; for if he should
+hear that I am marrying Crevel, he is the sort of man that--that would
+kill me."
+
+"Oh, as to that!" said Steinbock, with a scornful expression, which
+conveyed that such a danger was small indeed for a woman beloved by a
+Pole.
+
+And in the matter of valor there is no brag or bravado in a Pole, so
+thoroughly and seriously brave are they all.
+
+"And that idiot Crevel," she went on, "who wants to make a great display
+and indulge his taste for inexpensive magnificence in honor of the
+wedding, places me in difficulties from which I see no escape."
+
+Could Valerie confess to this man, whom she adored, that since the
+discomfiture of Baron Hulot, this Baron Henri Montes had inherited the
+privilege of calling on her at all hours of the day or night; and that,
+notwithstanding her cleverness, she was still puzzled to find a cause of
+quarrel in which the Brazilian might seem to be solely in the wrong? She
+knew the Baron's almost savage temper--not unlike Lisbeth's--too well
+not to quake as she thought of this Othello of Rio de Janeiro.
+
+As the carriage drove up, Steinbock released Valerie, for his arm
+was round her waist, and took up a newspaper, in which he was found
+absorbed. Valerie was stitching with elaborate care at the slippers she
+was working for Crevel.
+
+"How they slander her!" whispered Lisbeth to Crevel, pointing to this
+picture as they opened the door. "Look at her hair--not in the
+least tumbled. To hear Victorin, you might have expected to find two
+turtle-doves in a nest."
+
+"My dear Lisbeth," cried Crevel, in his favorite position, "you see that
+to turn Lucretia into Aspasia, you have only to inspire a passion!"
+
+"And have I not always told you," said Lisbeth, "that women like a burly
+profligate like you?"
+
+"And she would be most ungrateful, too," said Crevel; "for as to the
+money I have spent here, Grindot and I alone can tell!"
+
+And he waved a hand at the staircase.
+
+In decorating this house, which Crevel regarded as his own, Grindot had
+tried to compete with Cleretti, in whose hands the Duc d'Herouville had
+placed Josepha's villa. But Crevel, incapable of understanding art, had,
+like all sordid souls, wanted to spend a certain sum fixed beforehand.
+Grindot, fettered by a contract, had found it impossible to embody his
+architectural dream.
+
+The difference between Josepha's house and that in the Rue Barbet was
+just that between the individual stamp on things and commonness. The
+objects you admired at Crevel's were to be bought in any shop. These two
+types of luxury are divided by the river Million. A mirror, if unique,
+is worth six thousand francs; a mirror designed by a manufacturer who
+turns them out by the dozen costs five hundred. A genuine lustre by
+Boulle will sell at a public auction for three thousand francs; the
+same thing reproduced by casting may be made for a thousand or twelve
+hundred; one is archaeologically what a picture by Raphael is in
+painting, the other is a copy. At what would you value a copy of a
+Raphael? Thus Crevel's mansion was a splendid example of the luxury of
+idiots, while Josepha's was a perfect model of an artist's home.
+
+"War is declared," said Crevel, going up to Madame Marneffe.
+
+She rang the bell.
+
+"Go and find Monsieur Berthier," said she to the man-servant, "and
+do not return without him. If you had succeeded," said she, embracing
+Crevel, "we would have postponed our happiness, my dear Daddy, and have
+given a really splendid entertainment; but when a whole family is set
+against a match, my dear, decency requires that the wedding shall be a
+quiet one, especially when the lady is a widow."
+
+"On the contrary, I intend to make a display of magnificence _a la_
+Louis XIV.," said Crevel, who of late had held the eighteenth century
+rather cheap. "I have ordered new carriages; there is one for monsieur
+and one for madame, two neat coupes; and a chaise, a handsome traveling
+carriage with a splendid hammercloth, on springs that tremble like
+Madame Hulot."
+
+"Oh, ho! _You intend?_--Then you have ceased to be my lamb?--No, no,
+my friend, you will do what _I_ intend. We will sign the contract
+quietly--just ourselves--this afternoon. Then, on Wednesday, we will
+be regularly married, really married, in mufti, as my poor mother would
+have said. We will walk to church, plainly dressed, and have only a low
+mass. Our witnesses are Stidmann, Steinbock, Vignon, and Massol, all
+wide-awake men, who will be at the mairie by chance, and who will so far
+sacrifice themselves as to attend mass.
+
+"Your colleague will perform the civil marriage, for once in a way,
+as early as half-past nine. Mass is at ten; we shall be at home to
+breakfast by half-past eleven.
+
+"I have promised our guests that we will sit at table till the evening.
+There will be Bixiou, your old official chum du Tillet, Lousteau,
+Vernisset, Leon de Lora, Vernou, all the wittiest men in Paris, who will
+not know that we are married. We will play them a little trick, we will
+get just a little tipsy, and Lisbeth must join us. I want her to
+study matrimony; Bixiou shall make love to her, and--and enlighten her
+darkness."
+
+For two hours Madame Marneffe went on talking nonsense, and Crevel made
+this judicious reflection:
+
+"How can so light-hearted a creature be utterly depraved?
+Feather-brained, yes! but wicked? Nonsense!"
+
+"Well, and what did the young people say about me?" said Valerie to
+Crevel at a moment when he sat down by her on the sofa. "All sorts of
+horrors?"
+
+"They will have it that you have a criminal passion for Wenceslas--you,
+who are virtue itself."
+
+"I love him!--I should think so, my little Wenceslas!" cried Valerie,
+calling the artist to her, taking his face in her hands, and kissing his
+forehead. "A poor boy with no fortune, and no one to depend on! Cast off
+by a carrotty giraffe! What do you expect, Crevel? Wenceslas is my poet,
+and I love him as if he were my own child, and make no secret of it.
+Bah! your virtuous women see evil everywhere and in everything. Bless
+me, could they not sit by a man without doing wrong? I am a spoilt child
+who has had all it ever wanted, and bonbons no longer excite me.--Poor
+things! I am sorry for them!
+
+"And who slandered me so?"
+
+"Victorin," said Crevel.
+
+"Then why did you not stop his mouth, the odious legal macaw! with the
+story of the two hundred thousand francs and his mamma?"
+
+"Oh, the Baroness had fled," said Lisbeth.
+
+"They had better take care, Lisbeth," said Madame Marneffe, with a
+frown. "Either they will receive me and do it handsomely, and come to
+their stepmother's house--all the party!--or I will see them in lower
+depths than the Baron has reached, and you may tell them I said so!--At
+last I shall turn nasty. On my honor, I believe that evil is the scythe
+with which to cut down the good."
+
+At three o'clock Monsieur Berthier, Cardot's successor, read the
+marriage-contract, after a short conference with Crevel, for some of
+the articles were made conditional on the action taken by Monsieur and
+Madame Victorin Hulot.
+
+Crevel settled on his wife a fortune consisting, in the first place, of
+forty thousand francs in dividends on specified securities; secondly, of
+the house and all its contents; and thirdly, of three million francs not
+invested. He also assigned to his wife every benefit allowed by law;
+he left all the property free of duty; and in the event of their dying
+without issue, each devised to the survivor the whole of their property
+and real estate.
+
+By this arrangement the fortune left to Celestine and her husband was
+reduced to two millions of francs in capital. If Crevel and his second
+wife should have children, Celestine's share was limited to five hundred
+thousand francs, as the life-interest in the rest was to accrue to
+Valerie. This would be about the ninth part of his whole real and
+personal estate.
+
+
+
+Lisbeth returned to dine in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, despair written on
+her face. She explained and bewailed the terms of the marriage-contract,
+but found Celestine and her husband insensible to the disastrous news.
+
+"You have provoked your father, my children. Madame Marneffe swears that
+you shall receive Monsieur Crevel's wife and go to her house," said she.
+
+"Never!" said Victorin.
+
+"Never!" said Celestine.
+
+"Never!" said Hortense.
+
+Lisbeth was possessed by the wish to crush the haughty attitude assumed
+by all the Hulots.
+
+"She seems to have arms that she can turn against you," she replied.
+"I do not know all about it, but I shall find out. She spoke vaguely
+of some history of two hundred thousand francs in which Adeline is
+implicated."
+
+The Baroness fell gently backward on the sofa she was sitting on in a
+fit of hysterical sobbing.
+
+"Go there, go, my children!" she cried. "Receive the woman! Monsieur
+Crevel is an infamous wretch. He deserves the worst punishment
+imaginable.--Do as the woman desires you! She is a monster--she knows
+all!"
+
+After gasping out these words with tears and sobs, Madame Hulot
+collected her strength to go to her room, leaning on her daughter and
+Celestine.
+
+"What is the meaning of all this?" cried Lisbeth, left alone with
+Victorin.
+
+The lawyer stood rigid, in very natural dismay, and did not hear her.
+
+"What is the matter, my dear Victorin?"
+
+"I am horrified!" said he, and his face scowled darkly. "Woe to anybody
+who hurts my mother! I have no scruples then. I would crush that woman
+like a viper if I could!--What, does she attack my mother's life, my
+mother's honor?"
+
+"She said, but do not repeat it, my dear Victorin--she said you should
+all fall lower even than your father. And she scolded Crevel roundly
+for not having shut your mouths with this secret that seems to be such a
+terror to Adeline."
+
+A doctor was sent for, for the Baroness was evidently worse. He gave
+her a draught containing a large dose of opium, and Adeline, having
+swallowed it, fell into a deep sleep; but the whole family were greatly
+alarmed.
+
+Early next morning Victorin went out, and on his way to the Courts
+called at the Prefecture of the Police, where he begged Vautrin, the
+head of the detective department, to send him Madame de Saint-Esteve.
+
+"We are forbidden, monsieur, to meddle in your affairs; but Madame de
+Saint-Esteve is in business, and will attend to your orders," replied
+this famous police officer.
+
+On his return home, the unhappy lawyer was told that his mother's reason
+was in danger. Doctor Bianchon, Doctor Larabit, and Professor Angard
+had met in consultation, and were prepared to apply heroic remedies to
+hinder the rush of blood to the head. At the moment when Victorin was
+listening to Doctor Bianchon, who was giving him, at some length, his
+reasons for hoping that the crisis might be got over, the man-servant
+announced that a client, Madame de Saint-Esteve, was waiting to see him.
+Victorin left Bianchon in the middle of a sentence and flew downstairs
+like a madman.
+
+"Is there any hereditary lunacy in the family?" said Bianchon,
+addressing Larabit.
+
+The doctors departed, leaving a hospital attendant, instructed by them,
+to watch Madame Hulot.
+
+"A whole life of virtue!----" was the only sentence the sufferer had
+spoken since the attack.
+
+Lisbeth never left Adeline's bedside; she sat up all night, and was much
+admired by the two younger women.
+
+"Well, my dear Madame de Saint-Esteve," said Victorin, showing the
+dreadful old woman into his study and carefully shutting the doors, "how
+are we getting on?"
+
+"Ah, ha! my dear friend," said she, looking at Victorin with cold irony.
+"So you have thought things over?"
+
+"Have you done anything?"
+
+"Will you pay fifty thousand francs?"
+
+"Yes," replied Victorin, "for we must get on. Do you know that by one
+single phrase that woman has endangered my mother's life and reason? So,
+I say, get on."
+
+"We have got on!" replied the old woman.
+
+"Well?" cried Victorin, with a gulp.
+
+"Well, you do not cry off the expenses?"
+
+"On the contrary."
+
+"They run up to twenty-three thousand francs already."
+
+Victorin looked helplessly at the woman.
+
+"Well, could we hoodwink you, you, one of the shining lights of the
+law?" said she. "For that sum we have secured a maid's conscience and a
+picture by Raphael.--It is not dear."
+
+Hulot, still bewildered, sat with wide open eyes.
+
+"Well, then," his visitor went on, "we have purchased the honesty of
+Mademoiselle Reine Tousard, a damsel from whom Madame Marneffe has no
+secrets--"
+
+"I understand!"
+
+"But if you shy, say so."
+
+"I will play blindfold," he replied. "My mother has told me that that
+couple deserve the worst torments--"
+
+"The rack is out of date," said the old woman.
+
+"You answer for the result?"
+
+"Leave it all to me," said the woman; "your vengeance is simmering."
+
+She looked at the clock; it was six.
+
+"Your avenger is dressing; the fires are lighted at the _Rocher de
+Cancale_; the horses are pawing the ground; my irons are getting
+hot.--Oh, I know your Madame Marneffe by heart!--Everything is ready.
+And there are some boluses in the rat-trap; I will tell you to-morrow
+morning if the mouse is poisoned. I believe she will be; good evening,
+my son."
+
+"Good-bye, madame."
+
+"Do you know English?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, my son, thou shalt be King. That is to say, you shall come into
+your inheritance," said the dreadful old witch, foreseen by Shakespeare,
+and who seemed to know her Shakespeare.
+
+She left Hulot amazed at the door of his study.
+
+"The consultation is for to-morrow!" said she, with the gracious air of
+a regular client.
+
+She saw two persons coming, and wished to pass in their eyes a pinchbeck
+countess.
+
+"What impudence!" thought Hulot, bowing to his pretended client.
+
+
+
+Baron Montes de Montejanos was a _lion_, but a lion not accounted
+for. Fashionable Paris, Paris of the turf and of the town, admired
+the ineffable waistcoats of this foreign gentleman, his spotless
+patent-leather boots, his incomparable sticks, his much-coveted horses,
+and the negro servants who rode the horses and who were entirely slaves
+and most consumedly thrashed.
+
+His fortune was well known; he had a credit account up to seven hundred
+thousand francs in the great banking house of du Tillet; but he was
+always seen alone. When he went to "first nights," he was in a stall. He
+frequented no drawing-rooms. He had never given his arm to a girl on the
+streets. His name would not be coupled with that of any pretty woman
+of the world. To pass his time he played whist at the Jockey-Club. The
+world was reduced to calumny, or, which it thought funnier, to laughing
+at his peculiarities; he went by the name of Combabus.
+
+Bixiou, Leon de Lora, Lousteau, Florine, Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout,
+and Nathan, supping one evening with the notorious Carabine, with a
+large party of _lions_ and _lionesses_, had invented this name with an
+excessively burlesque explanation. Massol, as being on the Council of
+State, and Claude Vignon, erewhile Professor of Greek, had related to
+the ignorant damsels the famous anecdote, preserved in Rollin's _Ancient
+History_, concerning Combabus, that voluntary Abelard who was placed in
+charge of the wife of a King of Assyria, Persia, Bactria, Mesopotamia,
+and other geographical divisions peculiar to old Professor du Bocage,
+who continued the work of d'Anville, the creator of the East of
+antiquity. This nickname, which gave Carabine's guests laughter for a
+quarter of an hour, gave rise to a series of over-free jests, to which
+the Academy could not award the Montyon prize; but among which the name
+was taken up, to rest thenceforth on the curly mane of the handsome
+Baron, called by Josepha the splendid Brazilian--as one might say a
+splendid _Catoxantha_.
+
+Carabine, the loveliest of her tribe, whose delicate beauty and amusing
+wit had snatched the sceptre of the Thirteenth Arrondissement from
+the hands of Mademoiselle Turquet, better known by the name of
+Malaga--Mademoiselle Seraphine Sinet (this was her real name) was to du
+Tillet the banker what Josepha Mirah was to the Duc d'Herouville.
+
+Now, on the morning of the very day when Madame de Saint-Esteve had
+prophesied success to Victorin, Carabine had said to du Tillet at about
+seven o'clock:
+
+"If you want to be very nice, you will give me a dinner at the _Rocher
+de Cancale_ and bring Combabus. We want to know, once for all, whether
+he has a mistress.--I bet that he has, and I should like to win."
+
+"He is still at the Hotel des Princes; I will call," replied du Tillet.
+"We will have some fun. Ask all the youngsters--the youngster Bixiou,
+the youngster Lora, in short, all the clan."
+
+At half-past seven that evening, in the handsomest room of the
+restaurant where all Europe has dined, a splendid silver service was
+spread, made on purpose for entertainments where vanity pays the bill
+in bank-notes. A flood of light fell in ripples on the chased rims;
+waiters, whom a provincial might have taken for diplomatists but for
+their age, stood solemnly, as knowing themselves to be overpaid.
+
+Five guests had arrived, and were waiting for nine more. These were
+first and foremost Bixiou, still flourishing in 1843, the salt of every
+intellectual dish, always supplied with fresh wit--a phenomenon as rare
+in Paris as virtue is; Leon de Lora, the greatest living painter of
+landscape and the sea who has this great advantage over all his rivals,
+that he has never fallen below his first successes. The courtesans could
+never dispense with these two kings of ready wit. No supper, no dinner,
+was possible without them.
+
+Seraphine Sinet, _dite_ Carabine, as the mistress _en titre_ of the
+Amphitryon, was one of the first to arrive; and the brilliant lighting
+showed off her shoulders, unrivaled in Paris, her throat, as round as if
+turned in a lathe, without a crease, her saucy face, and dress of satin
+brocade in two shades of blue, trimmed with Honiton lace enough to have
+fed a whole village for a month.
+
+Pretty Jenny Cadine, not acting that evening, came in a dress of
+incredible splendor; her portrait is too well known to need any
+description. A party is always a Longchamps of evening dress for these
+ladies, each anxious to win the prize for her millionaire by thus
+announcing to her rivals:
+
+"This is the price I am worth!"
+
+A third woman, evidently at the initial stage of her career, gazed,
+almost shamefaced, at the luxury of her two established and wealthy
+companions. Simply dressed in white cashmere trimmed with blue, her head
+had been dressed with real flowers by a coiffeur of the old-fashioned
+school, whose awkward hands had unconsciously given the charm of
+ineptitude to her fair hair. Still unaccustomed to any finery, she
+showed the timidity--to use a hackneyed phrase--inseparable from a first
+appearance. She had come from Valognes to find in Paris some use for
+her distracting youthfulness, her innocence that might have stirred the
+senses of a dying man, and her beauty, worthy to hold its own with any
+that Normandy has ever supplied to the theatres of the capital. The
+lines of that unblemished face were the ideal of angelic purity. Her
+milk-white skin reflected the light like a mirror. The delicate pink
+in her cheeks might have been laid on with a brush. She was called
+Cydalise, and, as will be seen, she was an important pawn in the game
+played by Ma'ame Nourrisson to defeat Madame Marneffe.
+
+"Your arm is not a match for your name, my child," said Jenny Cadine, to
+whom Carabine had introduced this masterpiece of sixteen, having brought
+her with her.
+
+And, in fact, Cydalise displayed to public admiration a fine pair of
+arms, smooth and satiny, but red with healthy young blood.
+
+"What do you want for her?" said Jenny Cadine, in an undertone to
+Carabine.
+
+"A fortune."
+
+"What are you going to do with her?"
+
+"Well--Madame Combabus!"
+
+"And what are you to get for such a job?"
+
+"Guess."
+
+"A service of plate?"
+
+"I have three."
+
+"Diamonds?"
+
+"I am selling them."
+
+"A green monkey?"
+
+"No. A picture by Raphael."
+
+"What maggot is that in your brain?"
+
+"Josepha makes me sick with her pictures," said Carabine. "I want some
+better than hers."
+
+Du Tillet came with the Brazilian, the hero of the feast; the Duc
+d'Herouville followed with Josepha. The singer wore a plain velvet gown,
+but she had on a necklace worth a hundred and twenty thousand francs,
+pearls hardly distinguishable from her skin like white camellia petals.
+She had stuck one scarlet camellia in her black hair--a patch--the
+effect was dazzling, and she had amused herself by putting eleven rows
+of pearls on each arm. As she shook hands with Jenny Cadine, the actress
+said, "Lend me your mittens!"
+
+Josepha unclasped them one by one and handed them to her friend on a
+plate.
+
+"There's style!" said Carabine. "Quite the Duchess! You have robbed the
+ocean to dress the nymph, Monsieur le Duc," she added turning to the
+little Duc d'Herouville.
+
+The actress took two of the bracelets; she clasped the other twenty on
+the singer's beautiful arms, which she kissed.
+
+Lousteau, the literary cadger, la Palferine and Malaga, Massol,
+Vauvinet, and Theodore Gaillard, a proprietor of one of the most
+important political newspapers, completed the party. The Duc
+d'Herouville, polite to everybody, as a fine gentleman knows how to be,
+greeted the Comte de la Palferine with the particular nod which, while
+it does not imply either esteem or intimacy, conveys to all the world,
+"We are of the same race, the same blood--equals!"--And this greeting,
+the shibboleth of the aristocracy, was invented to be the despair of the
+upper citizen class.
+
+Carabine placed Combabus on her left, and the Duc d'Herouville on her
+right. Cydalise was next to the Brazilian, and beyond her was Bixiou.
+Malaga sat by the Duke.
+
+Oysters appeared at seven o'clock; at eight they were drinking iced
+punch. Every one is familiar with the bill of fare of such a banquet. By
+nine o'clock they were talking as people talk after forty-two bottles of
+various wines, drunk by fourteen persons. Dessert was on the table, the
+odious dessert of the month of April. Of all the party, the only one
+affected by the heady atmosphere was Cydalise, who was humming a tune.
+None of the party, with the exception of the poor country girl, had lost
+their reason; the drinkers and the women were the experienced _elite_ of
+the society that sups. Their wits were bright, their eyes glistened,
+but with no loss of intelligence, though the talk drifted into satire,
+anecdote, and gossip. Conversation, hitherto confined to the inevitable
+circle of racing, horses, hammerings on the Bourse, the different
+occupations of the _lions_ themselves, and the scandals of the town,
+showed a tendency to break up into intimate _tete-a-tete_, the dialogues
+of two hearts.
+
+And at this stage, at a signal from Carabine to Leon de Lora, Bixiou, la
+Palferine, and du Tillet, love came under discussion.
+
+"A doctor in good society never talks of medicine, true nobles never
+speak of their ancestors, men of genius do not discuss their works,"
+said Josepha; "why should we talk business? If I got the opera put off
+in order to dine here, it was assuredly not to work.--So let us change
+the subject, dear children."
+
+"But we are speaking of real love, my beauty," said Malaga, "of the
+love that makes a man fling all to the dogs--father, mother, wife,
+children--and retire to Clichy."
+
+"Talk away, then, 'don't know yer,'" said the singer.
+
+The slang words, borrowed from the Street Arab, and spoken by these
+women, may be a poem on their lips, helped by the expression of the eyes
+and face.
+
+"What, do not I love you, Josepha?" said the Duke in a low voice.
+
+"You, perhaps, may love me truly," said she in his ear, and she smiled.
+"But I do not love you in the way they describe, with such love as makes
+the world dark in the absence of the man beloved. You are delightful
+to me, useful--but not indispensable; and if you were to throw me over
+to-morrow, I could have three dukes for one."
+
+"Is true love to be found in Paris?" asked Leon de Lora. "Men have not
+even time to make a fortune; how can they give themselves over to true
+love, which swamps a man as water melts sugar? A man must be enormously
+rich to indulge in it, for love annihilates him--for instance, like
+our Brazilian friend over there. As I said long ago, 'Extremes
+defeat--themselves.' A true lover is like an eunuch; women have ceased
+to exist for him. He is mystical; he is like the true Christian, an
+anchorite of the desert!--See our noble Brazilian."
+
+Every one at table looked at Henri Montes de Montejanos, who was shy at
+finding every eye centred on him.
+
+"He has been feeding there for an hour without discovering, any more
+than an ox at pasture, that he is sitting next to--I will not say, in
+such company, the loveliest--but the freshest woman in all Paris."
+
+"Everything is fresh here, even the fish; it is what the house is famous
+for," said Carabine.
+
+Baron Montes looked good-naturedly at the painter, and said:
+
+"Very good! I drink to your very good health," and bowing to Leon de
+Lora, he lifted his glass of port wine and drank it with much dignity.
+
+"Are you then truly in love?" asked Malaga of her neighbor, thus
+interpreting his toast.
+
+The Brazilian refilled his glass, bowed to Carabine, and drank again.
+
+"To the lady's health then!" said the courtesan, in such a droll tone
+that Lora, du Tillet, and Bixiou burst out laughing.
+
+The Brazilian sat like a bronze statue. This impassibility provoked
+Carabine. She knew perfectly well that Montes was devoted to Madame
+Marneffe, but she had not expected this dogged fidelity, this obstinate
+silence of conviction.
+
+A woman is as often gauged by the attitude of her lover as a man
+is judged from the tone of his mistress. The Baron was proud of his
+attachment to Valerie, and of hers to him; his smile had, to these
+experienced connoisseurs, a touch of irony; he was really grand to look
+upon; wine had not flushed him; and his eyes, with their peculiar lustre
+as of tarnished gold, kept the secrets of his soul. Even Carabine said
+to herself:
+
+"What a woman she must be! How she has sealed up that heart!"
+
+"He is a rock!" said Bixiou in an undertone, imagining that the whole
+thing was a practical joke, and never suspecting the importance to
+Carabine of reducing this fortress.
+
+While this conversation, apparently so frivolous, was going on at
+Carabine's right, the discussion of love was continued on her left
+between the Duc d'Herouville, Lousteau, Josepha, Jenny Cadine, and
+Massol. They were wondering whether such rare phenomena were the result
+of passion, obstinacy, or affection. Josepha, bored to death by it all,
+tried to change the subject.
+
+"You are talking of what you know nothing about. Is there a man among
+you who ever loved a woman--a woman beneath him--enough to squander his
+fortune and his children's, to sacrifice his future and blight his past,
+to risk going to the hulks for robbing the Government, to kill an uncle
+and a brother, to let his eye be so effectually blinded that he did
+not even perceive that it was done to hinder his seeing the abyss into
+which, as a crowning jest, he was being driven? Du Tillet has a cash-box
+under his left breast; Leon de Lora has his wit; Bixiou would laugh
+at himself for a fool if he loved any one but himself; Massol has a
+minister's portfolio in the place of a heart; Lousteau can have nothing
+but viscera, since he could endure to be thrown over by Madame de
+Baudraye; Monsieur le Duc is too rich to prove his love by his ruin;
+Vauvinet is not in it--I do not regard a bill-broker as one of the human
+race; and you have never loved, nor I, nor Jenny Cadine, nor Malaga. For
+my part, I never but once even saw the phenomenon I have described. It
+was," and she turned to Jenny Cadine, "that poor Baron Hulot, whom I am
+going to advertise for like a lost dog, for I want to find him."
+
+"Oh, ho!" said Carabine to herself, and looking keenly at Josepha, "then
+Madame Nourrisson has two pictures by Raphael, since Josepha is playing
+my hand!"
+
+"Poor fellow," said Vauvinet, "he was a great man! Magnificent! And what
+a figure, what a style, the air of Francis I.! What a volcano! and how
+full of ingenious ways of getting money! He must be looking for it now,
+wherever he is, and I make no doubt he extracts it even from the walls
+built of bones that you may see in the suburbs of Paris near the city
+gates--"
+
+"And all that," said Bixiou, "for that little Madame Marneffe! There is
+a precious hussy for you!"
+
+"She is just going to marry my friend Crevel," said du Tillet.
+
+"And she is madly in love with my friend Steinbock," Leon de Lora put
+in.
+
+These three phrases were like so many pistol-shots fired point-blank at
+Montes. He turned white, and the shock was so painful that he rose with
+difficulty.
+
+"You are a set of blackguards!" cried he. "You have no right to speak
+the name of an honest woman in the same breath with those fallen
+creatures--above all, not to make it a mark for your slander!"
+
+He was interrupted by unanimous bravos and applause. Bixiou, Leon de
+Lora, Vauvinet, du Tillet, and Massol set the example, and there was a
+chorus.
+
+"Hurrah for the Emperor!" said Bixiou.
+
+"Crown him! crown him!" cried Vauvinet.
+
+"Three groans for such a good dog! Hurrah for Brazil!" cried Lousteau.
+
+"So, my copper-colored Baron, it is our Valerie that you love; and you
+are not disgusted?" said Leon de Lora.
+
+"His remark is not parliamentary, but it is grand!" observed Massol.
+
+"But, my most delightful customer," said du Tillet, "you were
+recommended to me; I am your banker; your innocence reflects on my
+credit."
+
+"Yes, tell me, you are a reasonable creature----" said the Brazilian to
+the banker.
+
+"Thanks on behalf of the company," said Bixiou with a bow.
+
+"Tell me the real facts," Montes went on, heedless of Bixiou's
+interjection.
+
+"Well, then," replied du Tillet, "I have the honor to tell you that I am
+asked to the Crevel wedding."
+
+"Ah, ha! Combabus holds a brief for Madame Marneffe!" said Josepha,
+rising solemnly.
+
+She went round to Montes with a tragic look, patted him kindly on the
+head, looked at him for a moment with comical admiration, and nodded
+sagely.
+
+"Hulot was the first instance of love through fire and water," said she;
+"this is the second. But it ought not to count, as it comes from the
+Tropics."
+
+Montes had dropped into his chair again, when Josepha gently touched his
+forehead, and looked at du Tillet as he said:
+
+"If I am the victim of a Paris jest, if you only wanted to get at my
+secret----" and he sent a flashing look round the table, embracing all
+the guests in a flaming glance that blazed with the sun of Brazil,--"I
+beg of you as a favor to tell me so," he went on, in a tone of almost
+childlike entreaty; "but do not vilify the woman I love."
+
+"Nay, indeed," said Carabine in a low voice; "but if, on the contrary,
+you are shamefully betrayed, cheated, tricked by Valerie, if I should
+give you the proof in an hour, in my own house, what then?"
+
+"I cannot tell you before all these Iagos," said the Brazilian.
+
+Carabine understood him to say _magots_ (baboons).
+
+"Well, well, say no more!" she replied, smiling. "Do not make yourself
+a laughing-stock for all the wittiest men in Paris; come to my house, we
+will talk it over."
+
+Montes was crushed. "Proofs," he stammered, "consider--"
+
+"Only too many," replied Carabine; "and if the mere suspicion hits you
+so hard, I fear for your reason."
+
+"Is this creature obstinate, I ask you? He is worse than the late
+lamented King of Holland!--I say, Lousteau, Bixiou, Massol, all the crew
+of you, are you not invited to breakfast with Madame Marneffe the day
+after to-morrow?" said Leon de Lora.
+
+"_Ya_," said du Tillet; "I have the honor of assuring you, Baron, that
+if you had by any chance thought of marrying Madame Marneffe, you are
+thrown out like a bill in Parliament, beaten by a blackball called
+Crevel. My friend, my old comrade Crevel, has eighty thousand francs a
+year; and you, I suppose, did not show such a good hand, for if you had,
+you, I imagine, would have been preferred."
+
+Montes listened with a half-absent, half-smiling expression, which
+struck them all with terror.
+
+At this moment the head-waiter came to whisper to Carabine that a lady,
+a relation of hers, was in the drawing-room and wished to speak to her.
+
+Carabine rose and went out to find Madame Nourrisson, decently veiled
+with black lace.
+
+"Well, child, am I to go to your house? Has he taken the hook?"
+
+"Yes, mother; and the pistol is so fully loaded, that my only fear is
+that it will burst," said Carabine.
+
+About an hour later, Montes, Cydalise, and Carabine, returning from the
+_Rocher de Cancale_, entered Carabine's little sitting-room in the Rue
+Saint-Georges. Madame Nourrisson was sitting in an armchair by the fire.
+
+"Here is my worthy old aunt," said Carabine.
+
+"Yes, child, I came in person to fetch my little allowance. You would
+have forgotten me, though you are kind-hearted, and I have some bills
+to pay to-morrow. Buying and selling clothes, I am always short of cash.
+Who is this at your heels? The gentleman looks very much put out about
+something."
+
+The dreadful Madame Nourrisson, at this moment so completely disguised
+as to look like a respectable old body, rose to embrace Carabine, one of
+the hundred and odd courtesans she had launched on their horrible career
+of vice.
+
+"He is an Othello who is not to be taken in, whom I have the honor of
+introducing to you--Monsieur le Baron Montes de Montejanos."
+
+"Oh! I have heard him talked about, and know his name.--You are
+nicknamed Combabus, because you love but one woman, and in Paris, that
+is the same as loving no one at all. And is it by chance the object of
+your affections who is fretting you? Madame Marneffe, Crevel's woman? I
+tell you what, my dear sir, you may bless your stars instead of cursing
+them. She is a good-for-nothing baggage, is that little woman. I know
+her tricks!"
+
+"Get along," said Carabine, into whose hand Madame Nourrisson had
+slipped a note while embracing her, "you do not know your Brazilians.
+They are wrong-headed creatures that insist on being impaled through
+the heart. The more jealous they are, the more jealous they want to
+be. Monsieur talks of dealing death all round, but he will kill nobody
+because he is in love.--However, I have brought him here to give him
+the proofs of his discomfiture, which I have got from that little
+Steinbock."
+
+Montes was drunk; he listened as if the women were talking about
+somebody else.
+
+Carabine went to take off her velvet wrap, and read a facsimile of a
+note, as follows:--
+
+  "DEAR PUSS.--He dines with Popinot this evening, and will come
+  to fetch me from the Opera at eleven. I shall go out at about
+  half-past five and count on finding you at our paradise. Order
+  dinner to be sent in from the _Maison d'or_. Dress, so as to be
+  able to take me to the Opera. We shall have four hours to ourselves.
+  Return this note to me; not that your Valerie doubts you--I would
+  give you my life, my fortune, and my honor, but I am afraid of the
+  tricks of chance."
+
+"Here, Baron, this is the note sent to Count Steinbock this morning;
+read the address. The original document is burnt."
+
+Montes turned the note over and over, recognized the writing, and was
+struck by a rational idea, which is sufficient evidence of the disorder
+of his brain.
+
+"And, pray," said he, looking at Carabine, "what object have you in
+torturing my heart, for you must have paid very dear for the
+privilege of having the note in your possession long enough to get it
+lithographed?"
+
+"Foolish man!" said Carabine, at a nod from Madame Nourrisson, "don't
+you see that poor child Cydalise--a girl of sixteen, who has been pining
+for you these three months, till she has lost her appetite for food or
+drink, and who is heart-broken because you have never even glanced at
+her?"
+
+Cydalise put her handkerchief to her eyes with an appearance of
+emotion--"She is furious," Carabine went on, "though she looks as if
+butter would not melt in her mouth, furious to see the man she adores
+duped by a villainous hussy; she would kill Valerie--"
+
+"Oh, as for that," said the Brazilian, "that is my business!"
+
+"What, killing?" said old Nourrisson. "No, my son, we don't do that here
+nowadays."
+
+"Oh!" said Montes, "I am not a native of this country. I live in a
+parish where I can laugh at your laws; and if you give me proof--"
+
+"Well, that note. Is that nothing?"
+
+"No," said the Brazilian. "I do not believe in the writing. I must see
+for myself."
+
+"See!" cried Carabine, taking the hint at once from a gesture of her
+supposed aunt. "You shall see, my dear Tiger, all you wish to see--on
+one condition."
+
+"And that is?"
+
+"Look at Cydalise."
+
+At a wink from Madame Nourrisson, Cydalise cast a tender look at the
+Baron.
+
+"Will you be good to her? Will you make her a home?" asked Carabine. "A
+girl of such beauty is well worth a house and a carriage! It would be a
+monstrous shame to leave her to walk the streets. And besides--she is in
+debt.--How much do you owe?" asked Carabine, nipping Cydalise's arm.
+
+"She is worth all she can get," said the old woman. "The point is that
+she can find a buyer."
+
+"Listen!" cried Montes, fully aware at last of this masterpiece of
+womankind "you will show me Valerie--"
+
+"And Count Steinbock.--Certainly!" said Madame Nourrisson.
+
+For the past ten minutes the old woman had been watching the Brazilian;
+she saw that he was an instrument tuned up to the murderous pitch she
+needed; and, above all, so effectually blinded, that he would never heed
+who had led him on to it, and she spoke:--
+
+"Cydalise, my Brazilian jewel, is my niece, so her concerns are partly
+mine. All this catastrophe will be the work of a few minutes, for a
+friend of mine lets the furnished room to Count Steinbock where Valerie
+is at this moment taking coffee--a queer sort of coffee, but she calls
+it her coffee. So let us understand each other, Brazil!--I like Brazil,
+it is a hot country.--What is to become of my niece?"
+
+"You old ostrich," said Montes, the plumes in the woman's bonnet
+catching his eye, "you interrupted me.--If you show me--if I see Valerie
+and that artist together--"
+
+"As you would wish to be--" said Carabine; "that is understood."
+
+"Then I will take this girl and carry her away--"
+
+"Where?" asked Carabine.
+
+"To Brazil," replied the Baron. "I will make her my wife. My uncle left
+me ten leagues square of entailed estate; that is how I still have
+that house and home. I have a hundred negroes--nothing but negroes and
+negresses and negro brats, all bought by my uncle--"
+
+"Nephew to a nigger-driver," said Carabine, with a grimace. "That needs
+some consideration.--Cydalise, child, are you fond of the blacks?"
+
+"Pooh! Carabine, no nonsense," said the old woman. "The deuce is in it!
+Monsieur and I are doing business."
+
+"If I take up another Frenchwoman, I mean to have her to myself," the
+Brazilian went on. "I warn you, mademoiselle, I am king there, and not a
+constitutional king. I am Czar; my subjects are mine by purchase, and
+no one can escape from my kingdom, which is a hundred leagues from any
+human settlement, hemmed in by savages on the interior, and divided from
+the sea by a wilderness as wide as France."
+
+"I should prefer a garret here."
+
+"So thought I," said Montes, "since I sold all my land and possessions
+at Rio to come back to Madame Marneffe."
+
+"A man does not make such a voyage for nothing," remarked Madame
+Nourrisson. "You have a right to look for love for your own sake,
+particularly being so good-looking.--Oh, he is very handsome!" said she
+to Carabine.
+
+"Very handsome, handsomer than the _Postillon de Longjumeau_," replied
+the courtesan.
+
+Cydalise took the Brazilian's hand, but he released it as politely as he
+could.
+
+"I came back for Madame Marneffe," the man went on where he had left
+off, "but you do not know why I was three years thinking about it."
+
+"No, savage!" said Carabine.
+
+"Well, she had so repeatedly told me that she longed to live with me
+alone in a desert--"
+
+"Oh, ho! he is not a savage after all," cried Carabine, with a shout of
+laughter. "He is of the highly-civilized tribe of Flats!"
+
+"She had told me this so often," Montes went on, regardless of the
+courtesan's mockery, "that I had a lovely house fitted up in the heart
+of that vast estate. I came back to France to fetch Valerie, and the
+first evening I saw her--"
+
+"Saw her is very proper!" said Carabine. "I will remember it."
+
+"She told me to wait till that wretched Marneffe was dead; and I agreed,
+and forgave her for having admitted the attentions of Hulot. Whether the
+devil had her in hand I don't know, but from that instant that woman
+has humored my every whim, complied with all my demands--never for one
+moment has she given me cause to suspect her!--"
+
+"That is supremely clever!" said Carabine to Madame Nourrisson, who
+nodded in sign of assent.
+
+"My faith in that woman," said Montes, and he shed a tear, "was a match
+for my love. Just now, I was ready to fight everybody at table--"
+
+"So I saw," said Carabine.
+
+"And if I am cheated, if she is going to be married, if she is at this
+moment in Steinbock's arms, she deserves a thousand deaths! I will kill
+her as I would smash a fly--"
+
+"And how about the gendarmes, my son?" said Madame Nourrisson, with a
+smile that made your flesh creep.
+
+"And the police agents, and the judges, and the assizes, and all the
+set-out?" added Carabine.
+
+"You are bragging, my dear fellow," said the old woman, who wanted to
+know all the Brazilian's schemes of vengeance.
+
+"I will kill her," he calmly repeated. "You called me a savage.--Do you
+imagine that I am fool enough to go, like a Frenchman, and buy poison
+at the chemist's shop?--During the time while we were driving her, I
+thought out my means of revenge, if you should prove to be right as
+concerns Valerie. One of my negroes has the most deadly of animal
+poisons, and incurable anywhere but in Brazil. I will administer it
+to Cydalise, who will give it to me; then by the time when death is a
+certainty to Crevel and his wife, I shall be beyond the Azores with your
+cousin, who will be cured, and I will marry her. We have our own little
+tricks, we savages!--Cydalise," said he, looking at the country girl,
+"is the animal I need.--How much does she owe?"
+
+"A hundred thousand francs," said Cydalise.
+
+"She says little--but to the purpose," said Carabine, in a low tone to
+Madame Nourrisson.
+
+"I am going mad!" cried the Brazilian, in a husky voice, dropping on to
+a sofa. "I shall die of this! But I must see, for it is impossible!--A
+lithographed note! What is to assure me that it is not a forgery?--Baron
+Hulot was in love with Valerie?" said he, recalling Josepha's harangue.
+"Nay; the proof that he did not love is that she is still alive--I will
+not leave her living for anybody else, if she is not wholly mine."
+
+Montes was terrible to behold. He bellowed, he stormed; he broke
+everything he touched; rosewood was as brittle as glass.
+
+"How he destroys things!" said Carabine, looking at the old woman. "My
+good boy," said she, giving the Brazilian a little slap, "Roland the
+Furious is very fine in a poem; but in a drawing-room he is prosaic and
+expensive."
+
+"My son," said old Nourrisson, rising to stand in front of the
+crestfallen Baron, "I am of your way of thinking. When you love in that
+way, and are joined 'till death does you part,' life must answer for
+love. The one who first goes, carries everything away; it is a general
+wreck. You command my esteem, my admiration, my consent, especially for
+your inoculation, which will make me a Friend of the Negro.--But you
+love her! You will hark back?"
+
+"I?--If she is so infamous, I--"
+
+"Well, come now, you are talking too much, it strikes me. A man who
+means to be avenged, and who says he has the ways and means of a savage,
+doesn't do that.--If you want to see your 'object' in her paradise, you
+must take Cydalise and walk straight in with her on your arm, as if the
+servant had made a mistake. But no scandal! If you mean to be revenged,
+you must eat the leek, seem to be in despair, and allow her to bully
+you.--Do you see?" said Madame Nourrisson, finding the Brazilian quite
+amazed by so subtle a scheme.
+
+"All right, old ostrich," he replied. "Come along: I understand."
+
+"Good-bye, little one!" said the old woman to Carabine.
+
+She signed to Cydalise to go on with Montes, and remained a minute with
+Carabine.
+
+"Now, child, I have but one fear, and that is that he will strangle
+her! I should be in a very tight place; we must do everything gently.
+I believe you have won your picture by Raphael; but they tell me it is
+only a Mignard. Never mind, it is much prettier; all the Raphaels are
+gone black, I am told, whereas this one is as bright as a Girodet."
+
+"All I want is to crow over Josepha; and it is all the same to me
+whether I have a Mignard or a Raphael!--That thief had on such pearls
+this evening!--you would sell your soul for them."
+
+Cydalise, Montes, and Madame Nourrisson got into a hackney coach that
+was waiting at the door. Madame Nourrisson whispered to the driver the
+address of a house in the same block as the Italian Opera House,
+which they could have reached in five or six minutes from the Rue
+Saint-Georges; but Madame Nourrisson desired the man to drive along the
+Rue le Peletier, and to go very slowly, so as to be able to examine the
+carriages in waiting.
+
+"Brazilian," said the old woman, "look out for your angel's carriage and
+servants."
+
+The Baron pointed out Valerie's carriage as they passed it.
+
+"She has told them to come for her at ten o'clock, and she is gone in a
+cab to the house where she visits Count Steinbock. She has dined there,
+and will come to the Opera in half an hour.--It is well contrived!" said
+Madame Nourrisson. "Thus you see how she has kept you so long in the
+dark."
+
+The Brazilian made no reply. He had become the tiger, and had recovered
+the imperturbable cool ferocity that had been so striking at dinner. He
+was as calm as a bankrupt the day after he has stopped payment.
+
+At the door of the house stood a hackney coach with two horses, of the
+kind known as a _Compagnie Generale_, from the Company that runs them.
+
+"Stay here in the box," said the old woman to Montes. "This is not an
+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.
+
+She arrived in the Rue Barbet a few minutes after Monsieur and Madame
+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."
+
+"What way is that?" said Atala; "I walk on my two feet."
+
+"The way of virtue."
+
+Atala looked at the Baroness with a crafty smile.
+
+"Look at madame," said the Baroness, pointing to the stove-fitter's
+wife, "she has been quite happy because she was received into the bosom
+of the Church. You married like the beasts that perish."
+
+"I?" said Atala. "Why, if you will give me as much as Daddy Vyder gives
+me, I shall be quite happy unmarried again. It is a grind.--Do you know
+what it is to--?"
+
+"But when once you are united to a man as you are," the Baroness put in,
+"virtue requires you to remain faithful to him."
+
+"Till he dies," said Atala, with a knowing flash. "I shall not have to
+wait long. If you only knew how Daddy Vyder coughs and blows.--Poof,
+poof," and she imitated the old man.
+
+"Virtue and morality require that the Church, representing God, and the
+Mayor, representing the law, should consecrate your marriage," Madame
+Hulot went on. "Look at madame; she is legally married--"
+
+"Will it make it more amusing?" asked the girl.
+
+"You will be happier," said the Baroness, "for no one could then blame
+you. You would satisfy God! Ask her if she was married without the
+sacrament of marriage!"
+
+Atala looked at the Italian.
+
+"How is she any better than I am?" she asked. "I am prettier than she
+is."
+
+"Yes, but I am an honest woman," said the wife, "and you may be called
+by a bad name."
+
+"How can you expect God to protect you if you trample every law, human
+and divine, under foot?" said the Baroness. "Don't you know that God has
+Paradise in store for those who obey the injunctions of His Church?"
+
+"What is there in Paradise? Are there playhouses?"
+
+"Paradise!" said Adeline, "is every joy you can conceive of. It is full
+of angels with white wings. You see God in all His glory, you share His
+power, you are happy for every minute of eternity!"
+
+Atala listened to the lady as she might have listened to music; but
+Adeline, seeing that she was incapable of understanding her, thought she
+had better take another line of action and speak to the old man.
+
+"Go home, then, my child, and I will go to see Monsieur Vyder. Is he a
+Frenchman?"
+
+"He is an Alsatian, madame. But he will be quite rich soon. If you
+would pay what he owes to that vile Samanon, he would give you back
+your money, for in a few months he will be getting six thousand francs
+a year, he says, and we are to go to live in the country a long way off,
+in the Vosges."
+
+At the word _Vosges_ the Baroness sat lost in reverie. It called up
+the vision of her native village. She was roused from her melancholy
+meditation by the entrance of the stove-fitter, who came to assure her
+of his prosperity.
+
+"In a year's time, madame, I can repay the money you lent us, for it
+is God's money, the money of the poor and wretched. If ever I make a
+fortune, come to me for what you want, and I will render through you the
+help to others which you first brought us."
+
+"Just now," said Madame Hulot, "I do not need your money, but I ask your
+assistance in a good work. I have just seen that little Judici, who is
+living with an old man, and I mean to see them regularly and legally
+married."
+
+"Ah! old Vyder; he is a very worthy old fellow, with plenty of good
+sense. The poor old man has already made friends in the neighborhood,
+though he has been here but two months. He keeps my accounts for me. He
+is, I believe, a brave Colonel who served the Emperor well. And how he
+adores Napoleon!--He has some orders, but he never wears them. He is
+waiting till he is straight again, for he is in debt, poor old boy! In
+fact, I believe he is hiding, threatened by the law--"
+
+"Tell him that I will pay his debts if he will marry the child."
+
+"Oh, that will soon be settled.--Suppose you were to see him, madame; it
+is not two steps away, in the Passage du Soleil."
+
+So the lady and the stove-fitter went out.
+
+"This way, madame," said the man, turning down the Rue de la Pepiniere.
+
+The alley runs, in fact, from the bottom of this street through to the
+Rue du Rocher. Halfway down this passage, recently opened through, where
+the shops let at a very low rent, the Baroness saw on a window, screened
+up to a height with a green, gauze curtain, which excluded the prying
+eyes of the passer-by, the words:
+
+
+"ECRIVAIN PUBLIC"; and on the door the announcement:
+
+                         BUSINESS TRANSACTED.
+
+             _Petitions Drawn Up, Accounts Audited, Etc._
+
+                     _With Secrecy and Dispatch._
+
+
+The shop was like one of those little offices where travelers by omnibus
+wait the vehicles to take them on to their destination. A private
+staircase led up, no doubt, to the living-rooms on the entresol which
+were let with the shop. Madame Hulot saw a dirty writing-table of some
+light wood, some letter-boxes, and a wretched second-hand chair. A
+cap with a peak and a greasy green shade for the eyes suggested either
+precautions for disguise, or weak eyes, which was not unlikely in an old
+man.
+
+"He is upstairs," said the stove-fitter. "I will go up and tell him to
+come down."
+
+Adeline lowered her veil and took a seat. A heavy step made the narrow
+stairs creak, and Adeline could not restrain a piercing cry when she
+saw her husband, Baron Hulot, in a gray knitted jersey, old gray flannel
+trousers, and slippers.
+
+"What is your business, madame?" said Hulot, with a flourish.
+
+She rose, seized Hulot by the arm, and said in a voice hoarse with
+emotion:
+
+"At last--I have found you!"
+
+"Adeline!" exclaimed the Baron in bewilderment, and he locked the shop
+door. "Joseph, go out the back way," he added to the stove-fitter.
+
+"My dear!" she said, forgetting everything in her excessive joy, "you
+can come home to us all; we are rich. Your son draws a hundred and sixty
+thousand francs a year! Your pension is released; there are fifteen
+thousand francs of arrears you can get on showing that you are alive.
+Valerie is dead, and left you three hundred thousand francs.
+
+"Your name is quite forgotten by this time; you may reappear in the
+world, and you will find a fortune awaiting you at your son's house.
+Come; our happiness will be complete. For nearly three years I have
+been seeking you, and I felt so sure of finding you that a room is ready
+waiting for you. Oh! come away from this, come away from the dreadful
+state I see you in!"
+
+"I am very willing," said the bewildered Baron, "but can I take the
+girl?"
+
+"Hector, give her up! Do that much for your Adeline, who has never
+before asked you to make the smallest sacrifice. I promise you I will
+give the child a marriage portion; I will see that she marries well, and
+has some education. Let it be said of one of the women who have given
+you happiness that she too is happy; and do not relapse into vice, into
+the mire."
+
+"So it was you," said the Baron, with a smile, "who wanted to see me
+married?--Wait a few minutes," he added; "I will go upstairs and dress;
+I have some decent clothes in a trunk."
+
+Adeline, left alone, and looking round the squalid shop, melted into
+tears.
+
+"He has been living here, and we rolling in wealth!" said she to
+herself. "Poor man, he has indeed been punished--he who was elegance
+itself."
+
+The stove-fitter returned to make his bow to his benefactress, and she
+desired him to fetch a coach. When he came back, she begged him to give
+little Atala Judici a home, and to take her away at once.
+
+"And tell her that if she will place herself under the guidance of
+Monsieur the Cure of the Madeleine, on the day when she attends her
+first Communion I will give her thirty thousand francs and find her a
+good husband, some worthy young man."
+
+"My eldest son, then madame! He is two-and-twenty, and he worships the
+child."
+
+The Baron now came down; there were tears in his eyes.
+
+"You are forcing me to desert the only creature who had ever begun to
+love me at all as you do!" said he in a whisper to his wife. "She is
+crying bitterly, and I cannot abandon her so--"
+
+"Be quite easy, Hector. She will find a home with honest people, and I
+will answer for her conduct."
+
+"Well, then, I can go with you," said the Baron, escorting his wife to
+the cab.
+
+Hector, the Baron d'Ervy once more, had put on a blue coat and trousers,
+a white waistcoat, a black stock, and gloves. When the Baroness had
+taken her seat in the vehicle, Atala slipped in like an eel.
+
+"Oh, madame," she said, "let me go with you. I will be so good, so
+obedient; I will do whatever you wish; but do not part me from my Daddy
+Vyder, my kind Daddy who gives me such nice things. I shall be beaten--"
+
+"Come, come, Atala," said the Baron, "this lady is my wife--we must
+part--"
+
+"She! As old as that! and shaking like a leaf!" said the child. "Look at
+her head!" and she laughingly mimicked the Baroness' palsy.
+
+The stove-fitter, who had run after the girl, came to the carriage door.
+
+"Take her away!" said Adeline. The man put his arms round Atala and
+fairly carried her off.
+
+"Thanks for such a sacrifice, my dearest," said Adeline, taking the
+Baron's hand and clutching it with delirious joy. "How much you are
+altered! you must have suffered so much! What a surprise for Hortense
+and for your son!"
+
+Adeline talked as lovers talk who meet after a long absence, of a
+hundred things at once.
+
+In ten minutes the Baron and his wife reached the Rue Louis-le-Grand,
+and there Adeline found this note awaiting her:--
+
+  "MADAME LA BARONNE,--
+
+  "Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy lived for one month in the Rue de
+  Charonne under the name of Thorec, an anagram of Hector. He is now
+  in the Passage du Soleil by the name of Vyder. He says he is an
+  Alsatian, and does writing, and he lives with a girl named Atala
+  Judici. Be very cautious, madame, for search is on foot; the Baron
+  is wanted, on what score I know not.
+
+  "The actress has kept her word, and remains, as ever,
+
+  "Madame la Baronne, your humble servant,
+
+  "J. M."
+
+
+The Baron's return was hailed with such joy as reconciled him to
+domestic life. He forgot little Atala Judici, for excesses of profligacy
+had reduced him to the volatility of feeling that is characteristic of
+childhood. But the happiness of the family was dashed by the change that
+had come over him. He had been still hale when he had gone away from
+his home; he had come back almost a hundred, broken, bent, and his
+expression even debased.
+
+A splendid dinner, improvised by Celestine, reminded the old man of the
+singer's banquets; he was dazzled by the splendor of his home.
+
+"A feast in honor of the return of the prodigal father?" said he in a
+murmur to Adeline.
+
+"Hush!" said she, "all is forgotten."
+
+"And Lisbeth?" he asked, not seeing the old maid.
+
+"I am sorry to say that she is in bed," replied Hortense. "She can never
+get up, and we shall have the grief of losing her ere long. She hopes to
+see you after dinner."
+
+At daybreak next morning Victorin Hulot was informed by the porter's
+wife that soldiers of the municipal guard were posted all round the
+premises; the police demanded Baron Hulot. The bailiff, who had followed
+the woman, laid a summons in due form before the lawyer, and asked
+him whether he meant to pay his father's debts. The claim was for ten
+thousand francs at the suit of an usurer named Samanon, who had probably
+lent the Baron two or three thousand at most. Victorin desired the
+bailiff to dismiss his men, and paid.
+
+"But is it the last?" he anxiously wondered.
+
+Lisbeth, miserable already at seeing the family so prosperous, could not
+survive this happy event. She grew so rapidly worse that Bianchon gave
+her but a week to live, conquered at last in the long struggle in which
+she had scored so many victories.
+
+She kept the secret of her hatred even through a painful death from
+pulmonary consumption. And, indeed, she had the supreme satisfaction
+of seeing Adeline, Hortense, Hulot, Victorin, Steinbock, Celestine, and
+their children standing in tears round her bed and mourning for her as
+the angel of the family.
+
+Baron Hulot, enjoying a course of solid food such as he had not known
+for nearly three years, recovered flesh and strength, and was almost
+himself again. This improvement was such a joy to Adeline that her
+nervous trembling perceptibly diminished.
+
+"She will be happy after all," said Lisbeth to herself on the day before
+she died, as she saw the veneration with which the Baron regarded his
+wife, of whose sufferings he had heard from Hortense and Victorin.
+
+And vindictiveness hastened Cousin Betty's end. The family followed her,
+weeping, to the grave.
+
+The Baron and Baroness, having reached the age which looks for perfect
+rest, gave up the handsome rooms on the first floor to the Count
+and Countess Steinbock, and took those above. The Baron by his son's
+exertions found an official position in the management of a railroad,
+in 1845, with a salary of six thousand francs, which, added to the six
+thousand of his pension and the money left to him by Madame Crevel,
+secured him an income of twenty-four thousand francs. Hortense having
+enjoyed her independent income during the three years of separation from
+Wenceslas, Victorin now invested the two hundred thousand francs he
+had in trust, in his sister's name and he allowed her twelve thousand
+francs.
+
+Wenceslas, as the husband of a rich woman, was not unfaithful, but he
+was an idler; he could not make up his mind to begin any work, however
+trifling. Once more he became the artist _in partibus_; he was popular
+in society, and consulted by amateurs; in short, he became a critic,
+like all the feeble folk who fall below their promise.
+
+Thus each household, though living as one family, had its own fortune.
+The Baroness, taught by bitter experience, left the management of
+matters to her son, and the Baron was thus reduced to his salary, in
+hope that the smallness of his income would prevent his relapsing into
+mischief. And by some singular good fortune, on which neither the mother
+nor the son had reckoned, Hulot seemed to have foresworn the fair sex.
+His subdued behaviour, ascribed to the course of nature, so completely
+reassured the family, that they enjoyed to the full his recovered
+amiability and delightful qualities. He was unfailingly attentive to his
+wife and children, escorted them to the play, reappeared in society, and
+did the honors to his son's house with exquisite grace. In short, this
+reclaimed prodigal was the joy of his family.
+
+He was a most agreeable old man, a ruin, but full of wit, having
+retained no more of his vice than made it an added social grace.
+
+Of course, everybody was quite satisfied and easy. The young people and
+the Baroness lauded the model father to the skies, forgetting the death
+of the two uncles. Life cannot go on without much forgetting!
+
+Madame Victorin, who managed this enormous household with great skill,
+due, no doubt, to Lisbeth's training, had found it necessary to have a
+man-cook. This again necessitated a kitchen-maid. Kitchen-maids are in
+these days ambitious creatures, eager to detect the _chef's_ secrets,
+and to become cooks as soon as they have learnt to stir a sauce.
+Consequently, the kitchen-maid is liable to frequent change.
+
+At the beginning of 1845 Celestine engaged as kitchen-maid a sturdy
+Normandy peasant come from Isigny--short-waisted, with strong red arms,
+a common face, as dull as an "occasional piece" at the play, and hardly
+to be persuaded out of wearing the classical linen cap peculiar to the
+women of Lower Normandy. This girl, as buxom as a wet-nurse, looked
+as if she would burst the blue cotton check in which she clothed her
+person. Her florid face might have been hewn out of stone, so hard were
+its tawny outlines.
+
+Of course no attention was paid to the advent in the house of this girl,
+whose name was Agathe--an ordinary, wide-awake specimen, such as is
+daily imported from the provinces. Agathe had no attractions for the
+cook, her tongue was too rough, for she had served in a suburban inn,
+waiting on carters; and instead of making a conquest of her chief and
+winning from him the secrets of the high art of the kitchen, she was
+the object of his great contempt. The _chef's_ attentions were, in fact,
+devoted to Louise, the Countess Steinbock's maid. The country girl,
+thinking herself ill-used, complained bitterly that she was always sent
+out of the way on some pretext when the _chef_ was finishing a dish or
+putting the crowning touch to a sauce.
+
+"I am out of luck," said she, "and I shall go to another place."
+
+And yet she stayed though she had twice given notice to quit.
+
+One night, Adeline, roused by some unusual noise, did not see Hector in
+the bed he occupied near hers; for they slept side by side in two beds,
+as beseemed an old couple. She lay awake an hour, but he did not return.
+Seized with a panic, fancying some tragic end had overtaken him--an
+apoplectic attack, perhaps--she went upstairs to the floor occupied by
+the servants, and then was attracted to the room where Agathe slept,
+partly by seeing a light below the door, and partly by the murmur
+of voices. She stood still in dismay on recognizing the voice of her
+husband, who, a victim to Agathe's charms, to vanquish this strapping
+wench's not disinterested resistance, went to the length of saying:
+
+"My wife has not long to live, and if you like you may be a Baroness."
+
+Adeline gave a cry, dropped her candlestick, and fled.
+
+Three days later the Baroness, who had received the last sacraments, was
+dying, surrounded by her weeping family.
+
+Just before she died, she took her husband's hand and pressed it,
+murmuring in his ear:
+
+"My dear, I had nothing left to give up to you but my life. In a minute
+or two you will be free, and can make another Baronne Hulot."
+
+And, rare sight, tears oozed from her dead eyes.
+
+This desperateness of vice had vanquished the patience of the angel,
+who, on the brink of eternity, gave utterance to the only reproach she
+had ever spoken in her life.
+
+The Baron left Paris three days after his wife's funeral. Eleven months
+after Victorin heard indirectly of his father's marriage to Mademoiselle
+Agathe Piquetard, solemnized at Isigny, on the 1st February 1846.
+
+"Parents may hinder their children's marriage, but children cannot
+interfere with the insane acts of their parents in their second
+childhood," said Maitre Hulot to Maitre Popinot, the second son of the
+Minister of Commerce, who was discussing this marriage.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Beauvisage, Phileas
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Berthier (Parisian notary)
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Bianchon, Horace
+       Father Goriot
+       The Atheist's Mass
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       The Government Clerks
+       Pierrette
+       A Study of Woman
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Honorine
+       The Seamy Side of History
+       The Magic Skin
+       A Second Home
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       The Muse of the Department
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Middle Classes
+       The Country Parson
+     In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
+       Another Study of Woman
+       La Grande Breteche
+
+     Bixiou, Jean-Jacques
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       The Government Clerks
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       The Muse of the Department
+       The Member for Arcis
+       Beatrix
+       A Man of Business
+       Gaudissart II.
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Braulard
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Bridau, Joseph
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Start in Life
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Pierre Grassou
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Brisetout, Heloise
+       Cousin Pons
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Cadine, Jenny
+       Beatrix
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Chanor
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Chocardelle, Mademoiselle
+       Beatrix
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+       A Man of Business
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Colleville, Flavie Minoret, Madame
+       The Government Clerks
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Collin, Jacqueline
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Crevel, Celestin
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Esgrignon, Victurnien, Comte (then Marquis d')
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       A Man of Business
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+
+     Falcon, Jean
+       The Chouans
+       The Muse of the Department
+
+     Graff, Wolfgang
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Grassou, Pierre
+       Pierre Grassou
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Grindot
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Start in Life
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Beatrix
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Hannequin, Leopold
+       Albert Savarus
+       Beatrix
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Herouville, Duc d'
+       The Hated Son
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       Modeste Mignon
+
+     Hulot (Marshal)
+       The Chouans
+       The Muse of the Department
+
+     Hulot, Victorin
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     La Bastie la Briere, Madame Ernest de
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     La Baudraye, Madame Polydore Milaud de
+       The Muse of the Department
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+
+     La Chanterie, Baronne Henri le Chantre de
+       The Seamy Side of History
+
+     Laginski, Comte Adam Mitgislas
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     La Palferine, Comte de
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+       A Man of Business
+       Beatrix
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     La Roche-Hugon, Martial de
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Peasantry
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Lebas, Joseph
+       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+       Cesar Birotteau
+
+     Lebas, Madame Joseph (Virginie)
+       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+       Cesar Birotteau
+
+     Lebas
+       The Muse of the Department
+
+     Lefebvre, Robert
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Lenoncourt-Givry, Duc de
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Lora, Leon de
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       Pierre Grassou
+       Honorine
+       Beatrix
+
+     Lousteau, Etienne
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       Beatrix
+       The Muse of the Department
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Massol
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Magic Skin
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Montauran, Marquis de (younger brother of Alphonse de)
+       The Chouans
+       The Seamy Side of History
+
+     Montcornet, Marechal, Comte de
+       Domestic Peace
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Peasantry
+       A Man of Business
+
+     Navarreins, Duc de
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Colonel Chabert
+       The Muse of the Department
+       The Thirteen
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       The Peasantry
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Country Parson
+       The Magic Skin
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+
+     Nourrisson, Madame
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Nucingen, Baron Frederic de
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       Father Goriot
+       Pierrette
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Man of Business
+       The Muse of the Department
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Paz, Thaddee
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Popinot, Anselme
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Gaudissart the Great
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Popinot, Madame Anselme
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       A Prince of Bohemia
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Popinot, Vicomte
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Rastignac, Eugene de
+       Father Goriot
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Ball at Sceaux
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       A Study of Woman
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Magic Skin
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       The Member for Arcis
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Rivet, Achille
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Rochefide, Marquis Arthur de
+       Beatrix
+
+     Ronceret, Madame Fabien du
+       Beatrix
+       The Muse of the Department
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Samanon
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Man of Business
+
+     Sinet, Seraphine
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Steinbock, Count Wenceslas
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Stidmann
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Beatrix
+       The Member for Arcis
+       Cousin Pons
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Tillet, Ferdinand du
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       The Middle Classes
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Pierrette
+       Melmoth Reconciled
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Trailles, Comte Maxime de
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Father Goriot
+       Gobseck
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Man of Business
+       The Member for Arcis
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       The Member for Arcis
+       Beatrix
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Turquet, Marguerite
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Muse of the Department
+       A Man of Business
+
+     Vauvinet
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Vernisset, Victor de
+       The Seamy Side of History
+       Beatrix
+
+     Vernou, Felicien
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Vignon, Claude
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       Honorine
+       Beatrix
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cousin Betty, by Honore de Balzac
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