“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 fi
rmament.
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.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 716