Cousin Bette

by Honore Balzac

  At this point Adeline sobbed uncontrollably, and tears came in such floods that Crevel’s gloves were soaked. The words ‘I need two hundred thousand francs!’ were barely distinguishable amid the torrent of tears, like the boulders, substantial as they are, just breaking the surface in Alpine torrents swollen at the melting of the snows.

  Such is virtue’s inexperience! Vice asks for nothing, as Madame Marneffe’s case has shown; it causes everything to be offered to it. Women of Valérie’s kind become demanding only when they have become indispensable, or when it is a matter of extracting all that a man has left, like working a quarry when the lime becomes scarce, ‘worked out’, as the quarrymen say. Hearing the words ‘Two hundred thousand francs!’ Crevel understood everything. He gallantly raised the Baroness to her feet with the insolent words, ‘Come, mother, let’s keep calm,’ which Adeline in her distracted state did not hear. The scene was changing its aspect. Crevel was becoming, as he put it, master of the situation. The magnitude of the sum produced such strong reaction in Crevel that his considerable emotion at seeing this beautiful woman in tears at his feet was dissipated. And then, however angelic and saintly a woman may be, when she weeps unrestrainedly her beauty disappears. Women like Madame Marneffe, as we have seen, may cry a little sometimes, let a tear roll down their cheeks; but burst into floods of tears, redden their eyes and noses… never! They would not make such a mistake.

  ‘Come now, my child, keep cool now, hang it!’ Crevel said, taking the lovely Madame Hulot’s hands in his and patting them. ‘Why do you want two hundred thousand francs from me? What do you want it for? Who needs it?’

  ‘Don’t ask me to explain, but give it to me,’ she answered.

  ‘You will have saved the lives of three people and our children’s honour.’

  ‘And do you believe, my dear little woman,’ said Crevel, ‘that you could find a single man in Paris ready, at the say-so of a woman half off her head, to go, there and then, and take out of some drawer or other two hundred thousand francs, which are quietly stewing in their own juice there, waiting till she is good enough to come along and lift the gravy? Is that all you know of life and business, my pretty? Your relations are in a very bad way, better send them the Sacraments, for no one in Paris except Her Holiness the Bank, the great and illustrious Nucingen, or a few misers with a kink (as mad about gold as men like us are about a woman), could work a miracle like that. The Civil List, however civil it may be, the Civil List itself would ask you to call back tomorrow. Everybody puts out his money at interest and turns it over as best he can. You’re deluding yourself, dear angel, if you imagine that it’s King Louis-Philippe that we’re ruled by, and he has no illusions himself on that score. He knows, as we all do, that above the Charter there stands the holy, venerable, solid, the adored, gracious, beautiful, noble, ever young, almighty, franc! Now, my fair angel, money calls for interest, and it is for ever busy about gathering it. “God of the Jews, you prevail!” as the great Racine said. In fact, the eternal allegory of the golden calf. Even in the days of Moses they had jobbers in the desert! We have returned to Old Testament ideas. The golden calf was the first great book of the national debt,’ he went on. ‘You live far too much in the rue Plumet, my Adeline. The Egyptians borrowed enormous sums from the Jews, and it wasn’t God’s chosen people they ran after, it was cash.’

  He looked at the Baroness, and his expression said, ‘I hope you admire my cleverness!’

  ‘You don’t know how devoted every citizen is to his sacred pile,’ he continued, after this pause. ‘If you’ll pardon me, let me tell you this! Get hold of these facts. You want two hundred thousand francs?… No one can give you that sort of money without selling capital. Now just reckon it up. To have two hundred thousand francs in ready money you would have to sell investments bringing in an income of about seven thousand francs, at three per cent. Well, you can’t have your money in less than two days; you can’t do it quicker than that. And if you mean to persuade someone to hand over a fortune, for that’s a whole fortune to plenty of people – two hundred thousand francs – you’ll certainly have to tell him where it’s going, what you want it for.…’

  ‘It’s a question, my kind dear Crevel, of saving the lives of two men, of whom one will die of grief and the other will kill himself! And then it affects me too, for I’ll go mad! Perhaps I am a little mad already?’

  ‘Not so mad!’ he said, squeezing Madame Hulot’s knees. ‘Papa Crevel has his price, since you have deigned to think of him, my angel.’

  ‘It seems it’s necessary to let my knees be squeezed!’ thought the noble saintly woman, burying her face in her hands. ‘You offered me a fortune once!’ she said, blushing.

  ‘Ah, mother mine, three years ago!’ said Crevel. ‘Oh! you are more beautiful than ever!’ he exclaimed, seizing the Baroness’s arm and pressing it against his heart. ‘You have a good memory, my child, upon my soul! Well, see how wrong you were to act the prude! Now the three hundred thousand francs that you high-mindedly refused are in another woman’s purse. I loved you then and I love you still; but let’s carry our minds back to three years ago. When I said to you “I mean to have you!” what was my purpose? I wanted to have my revenge on that blackguard Hulot. Well, your husband, my belle, took a jewel of a woman as his mistress, a pearl, a sly little puss, then aged twenty-three for she’s twenty-six now. I thought it would be more comical, more complete, more Louis XV, more Maréchal de Richelieu, more succulent, to steal the charming creature from him, and in any case she never loved Hulot and for the past three years she has been crazy about your humble servant.’

  As he said this, Crevel, from whose hands the Baroness had withdrawn her own, struck his pose again. He stuck his thumbs in his armholes and flapped his hands against his chest like a pair of wings, thinking that this made him look desirable and charming. It was a way of saying ‘this is the man whom you chucked out!’

  ‘There you are, my dear; I’ve had my revenge and your husband knows it! I categorically demonstrated to him that he had been made a goose of, properly what you call paid back in his own coin… Madame Marneffe is my mistress, and if our friend Marneffe pops off, she will be my wife.’

  Madame Hulot stared at Crevel with fixed distraught eyes.

  ‘Hector knew that!’ she said.

  ‘And he went back to her!’ Crevel replied. ‘I put up with it because Valérie wanted to be the wife of a head clerk, but she swore to me that she would fix things so that our Baron should get such a drubbing that he wouldn’t appear again. And my little duchess (for she was born a duchess, that woman, word of honour!) has kept her word. She has given you back your Hector “virtuous in perpetuity” as she said so wittily! He’s been taught a good lesson, believe me! The Baron has had some hard knocks; he’ll keep no more dancers, nor real ladies either. He’s been reformed root and branch, as clean as a whistle, rinsed like a beer-glass. If you had listened to Papa Crevel instead of humiliating him, showing him the door, you would have had four hundred thousand francs, for my revenge has cost me at least that much. But I’ll get my money back, I hope, when Marneffe dies… I have invested in my future wife. That’s the secret of my extravagant spending. I have solved the problem of being lordly on the cheap.’

  ‘You would give a step-mother like that to your daughter?’ exclaimed Madame Hulot.

  ‘You don’t know Valérie, Madame,’ replied Crevel solemnly, striking an attitude in his first manner. ‘She’s a well-born woman, a well-bred woman, and a woman who enjoys the highest public esteem, as well. Why, yesterday the vicar of her parish dined at her house. We have given a magnificent monstrance to the church, for she’s devout. Oh! she is clever, she is witty, she’s delightful, she knows everything, she has everything. As for me, dear Adeline, I owe everything to that charming woman. She has smartened me up, improved my way of speaking, as you see; she prunes the jokes I crack, gives me words to say, and ideas. I never say anything that’s not quite proper any more. One can see great change
s in me; you must have noticed it. And what’s more too, she has stirred up my ambition. I might be a Deputy and I should not make any bloomers, for I would consult my Egeria about every single thing. All great men in politics, like Numa and our present illustrious Prime Minister, have had their Comical… Comfortean… Cumaean Sibyl. Valérie entertains a score of Deputies; she’s becoming very influential, and now that she’s going to have a charming house and a carriage she’ll be one of the secret ruling powers of Paris. She’s a famous locomotive, a woman like that! Ah! I have very often thanked you for being so stubborn!’

  ‘It’s enough to make one doubt the goodness of God,’ said Adeline, whose indignation had dried her tears. ‘But no. Divine Justice must surely hover over that head!’

  ‘You don’t know the world, fair lady,’ retorted Crevel, that great politician, deeply offended. ‘The world, my dear Adeline, loves success. Well, look, does it come in search of your sublime virtue, with its price of two hundred thousand francs?’

  This shot made Adeline shudder, and she was seized again with her nervous trembling. She understood that the retired perfumer was meanly revenging himself upon her, as he had revenged himself on Hulot. Disgust sickened her, and made her nerves so tense that her throat was constricted and she could not speak.

  ‘Money!… always money!’ she said, at last.

  ‘You certainly made me feel sorry,’ Crevel went on, remembering, as he heard the exclamation, this woman’s humiliation, ‘when I saw you there crying, at my feet! Well, you won’t believe me perhaps, but, well, if I’d had my wallet it would have been yours. You really need all that money?’

  When she heard the question, big with two hundred thousand francs, Adeline forgot the abominable insults of this fine gentleman on the cheap, seeing the bait of success dangled before her with such Machiavellian cunning by Crevel, whose only motive was to penetrate Adeline’s secrets in order to laugh at them with Valérie.

  ‘Oh! I’ll do anything!’ cried the unfortunate woman. ‘Monsieur, I’ll sell myself… I’ll become, if need be, a Valérie.’

  ‘You would find it hard to do that,’ replied Crevel. ‘Valérie is the supreme achievement of her kind. Dear old lady, twenty-five years of virtue are always rather off-putting, like a neglected disease. And your virtue has grown mouldy here, my child. But you are going to see just how fond I am of you. I’m going to arrange for you to have your two hundred thousand francs.’

  Adeline seized Crevel’s hand, held it, and laid it on her heart, incapable of articulating a word; and her eyelids were wet with tears of joy.

  ‘Oh, wait a minute! It will have to be worked for. I’m a good-natured chap, a fellow who enjoys a good time, with no prejudices, and I’m going to tell you quite plainly just how things are. You want to be like Valérie; well and good. But that’s not enough, you need a gogo, a sucker, a shareholder, a Hulot. Now, I know a big retired tradesman, a hosier as it happens. He’s rather thick-headed and heavy in the hand, and very dull. I’m licking him into shape, and I don’t know when he’ll be in a state to do me credit. My man is a Deputy, a conceited boring sort of chap, who has been kept buried in the depths of the country by a female tyrant, a kind of virago, and he’s a complete greenhorn with regard to the luxury and pleasures of life in Paris. But Beauvisage (he’s called Beau-visage) is a millionaire, and he would give, as three years ago I would have given, my child, a hundred thousand crowns to have a lady for his mistress. Yes,’ he said, thinking that he had interpreted aright the gesture that Adeline made, ‘he is jealous of me, you seel Yes, jealous of my happiness with Madame Marneffe, and the lad is just the fellow to sell a piece of property in order to become proprietor of a…’

  ‘That’s enough, Monsieur Crevel!’ said Madame Hulot, no longer dissembling her disgust, and allowing all her shame to be seen on her face. ‘I am punished now beyond what my sin deserves. My conscience, that has been so fiercely repressed by necessity’s iron hand, cries out to me, at this supreme insult, that such sacrifices are impossible. I have no pride left; I do not blaze with anger against you as I did once before, I shall not say to you “Leave this house!” now that I have been dealt this mortal blow. I have lost the right to do so. I offered myself to you like a prostitute… Yes,’ she went on, in answer to his protesting gesture, ‘I have defiled my life, that was pure until now, by a vile intention, and… I have no excuse, I knew what I was doing… I deserve all the insults that you are heaping upon me! May God’s will be done! If he desires the death of two beings worthy to go to him, may they die. I will weep for them. I will pray for their souls. If he wills the humiliation of our family, let us bow under the avenging sword, and kiss it like the Christians we are! I know how I must expiate the shame of a few moments whose memory will afflict me all my remaining days. It is not Madame Hulot, Monsieur, who is speaking to you now, it is the poor humble sinner, the Christian whose heart from now on will hold only one emotion – repentance, and for whom prayer and charity will be her only purpose in life. I can be only the humblest of women and the first among penitents with a sin of such magnitude to atone for. You have been the instrument of my return to reason, to the voice of God that now speaks in me, and I thank you for it!’

  She was trembling with the nervous tremor which from that moment was not to leave her again. Her voice was gentle, in contrast with the earlier feverish utterance of a woman resolved on dishonour in order to save her family. The blood left her cheeks, she grew pale, and her eyes were dry.

  ‘I acted my part very badly, in any case, didn’t I?’ she added, regarding Crevel with the same sweetness that the martyrs must have shown as they looked on the proconsul. ‘True love, the holy and devoted love of a wife, offers different pleasures from those that are bought in the market from prostitutes!… Why do I use such words?’ she said, reflecting, and taking another step forward on the way of perfection. ‘They seem to show a wish to taunt, and I have none at all! Forgive me for them. In any case, Monsieur, it was perhaps only myself that I wanted to hurt.…’

  The majesty of virtue and its celestial light had swept away the fleeting stain upon this woman’s purity, and, resplendent in the beauty that was properly her own, she appeared to Crevel to have grown taller. Adeline in that sublime moment resembled those symbolic figures of Religion, upheld by a cross, that we see in the paintings of the early Venetians. She expressed all the magnitude of her misfortune, and all the greatness of the Catholic Church to which she was taking flight for refuge like a wounded dove. Crevel was dazzled, astounded.

  ‘Madame, I will do whatever you wish, without conditions!’ he said in an inspired burst of generosity. ‘We will look into things, and… What’s to be done? The impossible? Well! I’ll do it! I’ll deposit securities at the bank, and within two hours you shall have your money.…’

  ‘Oh God, a miracle!’ said poor Adeline, throwing herself upon her knees.

  She recited a prayer with a fervour which affected Crevel so powerfully that Madame Hulot saw tears in his eyes when she rose, her prayer ended.

  ‘Be my friend, Monsieur!’ she said to him. ‘Your heart is better than your conduct and your words suggest. God gave you your heart, and you take your ideas from the world and from your passions! Oh! I will love you sincerely!’ she exclaimed, with an angelic ardour which contrasted strangely with her futile attempts at coquetry.

  ‘Don’t go on trembling so,’ said Crevel.

  ‘Am I trembling?’ asked the Baroness, who had not noticed the infirmity that had manifested itself so suddenly.

  ‘Yes. Look here,’ said Crevel, taking Adeline’s arm and demonstrating its nervous shaking to her. ‘Come, Madame,’ he continued, with respect, ‘keep calm. I’m going to the bank.…’

  ‘Come back quickly! Just think, my friend,’ she said, giving up her secrets, ‘it is to prevent my poor Uncle Fischer from suicide, as he has been compromised by my husband. You see I can trust you now and so I am telling you everything! Ah! if we can’t raise the money in time, I know
what will happen. I know the Marshal – his honour is so sensitive that he would not survive the knowledge of this for more than a day or two.’

  ‘I’m off then,’ said Crevel, kissing the Baroness’s hand. ‘But what has poor Hulot been up to?’

  ‘He has robbed the state!’

  ‘Good God! I’ll be quick, Madame. I understand, and I admire you.’

  Crevel bent a knee, kissed Madame Hulot’s dress, and vanished with the words, ‘I’ll be back again soon.’

  Unfortunately, on his way from the rue Plumet to get his share certificates from his own house, Crevel passed the rue Vanneau, and he could not resist the pleasure of going to see his little duchess. He arrived there with a face still showing traces of emotional storm. He went into Valérie’s bedroom, and found her maid doing her hair. She studied Crevel in the glass, and even before hearing anything of the occasion, was shocked, as any woman of her kind would be, to see him showing strong emotion of which she was not the cause.

  ‘What’s the matter, my pet?’ she asked him. ‘Is this the way a man comes into his little duchess’s room? I won’t be your duchess any more, Monsieur, or even your little ducky darling, you old monster!’

  Crevel answered with a sad smile, and a glance at Reine.

  ‘Reine, my girl, that’ll do for today. I’ll finish my hair myself. Give me my Chinese dressing-gown, for my Monsieur looks as rum as an old Mandarin.’