Cousin Bette

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Fa’ replied du Tillet. ‘With all respect, I repeat, Baron, that if by any chance you had the idea of marrying Madame Marneffe, you are thrown out like a Bill in Parliament, blackballed, by a fat ball called Crevel. My old comrade Crevel has eighty thousand livres a year, and you, my friend, have not flashed so much money, or so I imagine, for if you had, then you, no doubt, would have been the preferred one.’

  Montès listened with a half-absent air, with a half-smile on his lips, that everyone there found terrifying. The head waiter came in just then to announce discreetly to Carabine that a relative of hers was in the hall and wished to speak to her. The girl rose, went out, and found Madame Nourrisson waiting, swathed in black lace.

  ‘Well, am I to go to your house, daughter? Has he taken the bait?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. The pistol is rammed so full that I’m afraid of its exploding.’

  An hour later, Montès, Cydalise, and Carabine, returning from the Rocher de Cancale, walked into Carabine’s little drawing-room in the rue Saint-Georges. The courtesan found Madame Nourrisson sitting in a low chair by the fire.

  ‘Ah, here’s Aunt…’ she said.

  ‘Yes, girl. I’ve come to fetch my bit of money myself. You might forget all about me, although you are a good-hearted child, and I have bills to pay tomorrow. A ladies’ wardrobe-dealer, you know, is always pinched for cash. Who’s this you’ve got lagging behind you? This gentleman looks as if he were in some sort of trouble.’

  The hideous Madame Nourrisson, who had undergone a complete metamorphosis and now looked like a respectable old woman, rose to kiss Carabine, one of the hundred and one prostitutes whom she had launched in their horrible profession of vice.

  ‘He’s an Othello who has made no mistake about the grounds for his jealousy. I have the honour to present to you Monsieur le Baron Montès de Montejanos…’

  ‘Oh, I know Monsieur, I’ve heard such a lot about him. They call you Combabus because you love only one woman; in Paris that’s just the same as having none at all. Now is it by any chance the object of your affection that’s the trouble? Madame Marneffe, Crevel’s woman? Well, my dear sir, you ought to bless your lucky stars instead of blaming them. She’s a complete bad lot, that little woman. I know her goings-on!’

  ‘Ah, bah!’ said Carabine, into whose hand Madame Nourrisson had slipped a letter as she kissed her. ‘You don’t know these Brazilians. They’re fire-eaters, absolutely set on having knives stuck in their hearts! The more jealous they are, the more jealous they want to be. Monsieur here is talking of wading through blood, but he’s in love so he’s not likely to massacre anyone. Well, I’ve brought Monsieur le Baron here to give him proofs of his bad luck that I got from little Stein-bock.’

  Montès was drunk. He listened as if the matter concerned someone else. Carabine went to take off her short velvet cape, and read a facsimile of the following note:

  My pet, be is going to dinner with Popinot this evening, and is to call for me at the Opera at eleven. I will leave the house at half past five, and count on finding you in our paradise; you can have dinner sent in from the Maison d’Or. Dress, so that you can escort me to the Opera. We shall have four hours together. Send me back this little note – not that your Valérie doesn’t trust you, for you know I would give you my life, my fortune, and my honour, but I am afraid of some trick that accident may play us.

  ‘Well, Baron, this is the billet doux sent this morning to Count Steinbock; read the address! The original has been burned.’

  Montès turned the note over and over, recognized the handwriting, and was struck by a thought, suggesting a gleam of hope, which showed the perturbed state of his mind.

  ‘Ah, indeed? And what is your motive? What do you get out of inflicting this misery on me? For you must have paid solid cash to have this note in your hands long enough to get it lithographed!’ he said, staring at Carabine.

  ‘Idiot!’ said Carabine, at a nod from Madame Nourrisson. ‘Don’t you see poor Cydalise… only sixteen, and so much in love with you that neither a bite nor a sup has passed her lips in three months, and breaking her heart because you won’t even give her a glance?’

  Cydalise held her handkerchief to her eyes.

  ‘She’s furious, even though she looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, to see the man she’s mad about given the run around by a crafty bitch,’ Carabine went on, ‘and she could kill Valérie.…’

  ‘Oh, that!’ said the Brazilian. ‘That’s my business!’

  ‘Kill her? You, my lad? We don’t do that sort of thing here, these days.’

  ‘Oh!’ returned Montès. ‘I don’t belong here! I live in a jurisdiction where the law is in my hands, where I bite my thumb at your laws, and if you give me proof…’

  ‘Why, is this note not proof enough?’

  ‘No,’ said the Brazilian. ‘I don’t trust writing. I must see…’

  ‘Oh, as to seeing!’ said Carabine, interpreting another nod from her so-called aunt. ‘We’ll let you see as much as you want to, dear tiger, but on one condition.…’

  ‘What condition?’

  ‘Look at Cydalise!’

  Madame Nourrisson signed to Cydalise, who looked languishingly at the Baron.

  ‘Will you be her lover? Will you set her up in life?’ demanded Carabine. ‘A girl as beautiful as that is worth a house and a carriage. It would be a crying shame to let her go about on foot. And she has… a few debts. How much do you owe?’ asked Carabine, pinching Cydalise’s arm.

  ‘She’s worth what she’s worth!’ said the old woman. ‘So long as the condition is agreed, let that do!’

  ‘Listen!’ exclaimed Montès, at last waking up to the girl’s beauty. ‘You will show me Valérie?…’

  ‘And Count Steinbock, naturally!’ agreed Madame Nourrisson, nodding again.

  During the past ten minutes, as the old woman watched, he had seen that the Brazilian was the instrument tuned to murderous pitch that she required. She saw that he was sufficiently blinded, too, to be no longer on his guard against those who were leading him on; and now she intervened.

  ‘Cydalise, my dear friend from Brazil, is my niece, so I must take an interest in this arrangement. All the old affair can be cleared up and swept off in ten minutes, because it’s one of my friends who lets the furnished room to Count Steinbock, where Valérie is taking her coffee at this moment – odd coffee, but that’s what she calls it, her coffee. So now let’s come to business, Brazil! I like Brazil, a hot country. What are you going to do about my niece?’

  ‘Old ostrich!’ said Montès, struck by the feathers in the woman’s hat. ‘Don’t interrupt me. If you show me… show me Valérie and that artist together…’

  ‘As you would like to be with her yourself,’ said Carabine. ‘That’s understood.’

  ‘Well, I’ll take this Norman girl, I’ll take her…’

  ‘Take her where?…’ demanded Carabine.

  ‘To Brazil!’ replied the Baron. ‘I’ll marry her. My uncle left me an estate twenty-five miles square, entailed, which is why I

  still possess the place. I have a hundred Negroes there, no one but Negroes, and Negresses, and piccaninnies, bought by my uncle…’

  ‘A slave-dealer’s nephew!…’ said Carabine, making a face. ‘That needs thinking about. Cydalise, my child, are you fond of black men?’

  ‘That’s enough, Carabine; no more tomfoolery, now,’ said Madame Nourrisson. ‘A nice way to behave! This gentleman and I are talking business.’

  ‘If I take a Frenchwoman again, I intend her to be entirely mine,’ the Baron went on. ‘I warn you, Mademoiselle, I am a king, but not a constitutional monarch. I am a czar. All my subjects have been bought, and no one ever leaves the confines of my kingdom, which is two hundred and fifty miles away from any inhabited place. Savages live beyond it in the interior, and it is separated from the coast by a wilderness as large as the whole of your France.…’

  ‘Give me an attic here!’ said Carabine.

/>   ‘That’s what I thought,’ said the Brazilian, ‘and I sold all my property and possessions in Rio de Janeiro to come back to Madame Marneffe.’

  ‘Journeys like that are not made for nothing,’ said Madame Nourrisson. ‘You have a right to be loved for yourself, especially being so handsome.… Oh! isn’t he handsome?’ she said to Carabine.

  ‘Handsome! He’s handsomer than the postilion at Long-jumeau,’ replied the girl.

  Cydalise took the Brazilian’s hand, and he disengaged himself as politely as he could.

  ‘I came back to carry Madame Marneffe off!’ said the Baron, going on with his story. ‘And do you know why I was away three years?’

  ‘No, dear savage,’ said Carabine.

  ‘Well, she had told me so many times that she wanted to live with me, alone, in some wilderness!…’

  ‘Oh, not a savage after all,’ said Carabine, bursting out laughing; ‘just a member of the tribe of civilized innocents.’

  ‘She had said it so often,’ went on the Baron, not even hearing Carabine’s gibes,’that I had a delightful place to live made ready, in the middle of that immense estate. I came back to France to fetch Valérie, and on the night when I saw her again…’

  ‘Saw her again is proper,’ said Carabine. ‘I’ll remember the expression!’

  ‘… She told me to wait until that wretched Marneffe died, and I agreed, and forgave her for accepting Hulot’s attentions. I don’t know whether the devil has put on petticoats, but from that moment that woman was all I could ask, all I could wish for; and truly never for a moment has she given me any cause to suspect her!’

  ‘Now, that’s piling it on a bit!’ said Carabine to Madame Nourrisson.

  Madame Nourrisson nodded in agreement.

  ‘My faith in that woman,’ said Montès, giving way to tears, ‘was as strong as my love. I nearly slapped the faces of all those people round the table, just now.…’

  ‘So I noticed!’ said Carabine.

  ‘If I have been betrayed, if she is going to marry, if she is in Steinbock’s arms at this minute, she has earned death a thousand times over, and I will kill her as I would crush a fly…’

  ‘And what about the gendarmes, my boy?’ said Madame Nourrisson, with an old crone’s leer that made the flesh creep.

  ‘And the police superintendent, and the magistrates, and the assize court, and the whole boiling!’ said Carabine.

  ‘You’re talking big, dearie!’ went on Madame Nourrisson, for she was anxious to learn what the Brazilian’s plans for vengeance were.

  ‘I will kill her!’ the Brazilian coldly repeated. ‘You called me a savage, did you?… Do you imagine that I mean to imitate your countrymen’s stupidity and buy poison from the druggists?… I was planning, on the way here, how I should execute my vengeance if you were right about Valérie. One of my Negroes carries on him the most deadly of animal poisons, a terrible disease much more effective than any vegetable poison and that can only be cured in Brazil. I will give it to Cydalise to take, and she shall infect me. Then when death is in the veins of Crevel and his wife, I shall be beyond the Azores with your cousin, whom I shall cure, and take for my wife. We savages have our own methods! Cydalise,’ he said, looking at the Norman girl, ‘is the simple creature that I need. How much money does she owe?’

  ‘A hundred thousand francs!’ said Cydalise.

  ‘She doesn’t talk much, but when she does she says a mouthful,’ Carabine whispered to Madame Nourrisson.

  ‘I am going mad!’ groaned the Brazilian hollowly, collapsing on a sofa. ‘I cannot survive it! But I must see for myself – it’s not possible! A lithographed note.… Who can say that it isn’t a forgery?… Baron Hulot – Valérie’s lover?…’ He recalled what Josépha had said. ‘But the proof that he could not have been is that she’s still alive!… But I will not leave her alive if she is not mine.… She shall not be another man’s!’

  Montès was a terrifying sight, and it was even more frightening to hear him. He roared like a lion, and threw himself about the room. Everything he laid hands on was broken; the rosewood splintered like glass.

  ‘How he breaks up the place!’ said Carabine, looking at Madame Nourrisson. ‘My child,’ she went on, tapping the Brazilian on the arm, ‘Orlando furioso sounds very well in a poem; but in a flat he’s just Roland in a rage, plain prose – and plain expensive!’

  ‘I am of your way of thinking, son!’ said Nourrisson, rising and moving to stand facing the exhausted Brazilian. ‘When two people have that kind of love, when they are fatally, inextricably, booked together, they must answer for love with their lives. The one who pulls away tears everything asunder, that’s plain! It’s total ruin. You have my esteem, my admiration, and above all my approval of the way you refuse to take things lying down, and from now on I’m going to be a firm friend of Negroes. But then, after all, you’re in love! You’ll stop on the brink!’

  ‘I… If she’s a trollop, I’ll…’

  ‘See here, you talk too much. Better cut the cackle and come to business!’ returned Madame Nourrisson, speaking now as her practical down-to-earth self. ‘A man who means vengeance and calls his methods savage should not behave like this. We’ll let you see your loved one in her paradise, but you must take Cydalise and go in there with your sweetheart on your arm, as if a maid had given you the wrong room by mistake. And you must not make a scene! If you want your revenge, you must sing small, look as if you are in despair, and let yourself be bowled over by your mistress! Isn’t that the right way to do it?’ she asked, seeing the Baron look surprised at such an elaborate, well-plotted scheme.

  ‘Very well, old ostrich,’ he replied; ‘so be it.… I understand.’

  ‘Good-bye, love,’ said Madame Nourrisson to Carabine. She signed to Cydalise to go downstairs with Montès, and remained alone for a moment with Carabine.

  ‘Now, pet, I’m afraid of only one thing – that he may strangle her! I should be in a fine pickle if he did; we can only get along by keeping things quiet. Oh, I think you have won your Raphael picture, only they do say it’s a Mignard. Never mind; that’s much finer. They told me that Raphaels are all blackened, and the one I’ve got is just as nice as a Girodet.’

  ‘All I care about is going one better than Josépha,’ declared Carabine, ‘and it’s all the same to me whether it’s with a Mignard or a Raphael. You wouldn’t believe the pearls that gold-digger had on this evening.… You would have bartered your soul for them!’

  Cydalise, Montès, and Madame Nourrisson took a cab that was standing by Carabine’s door. Madame Nourrisson, in a low voice, directed the driver to a house in the same block as the Italian Opera, only seven or eight minutes’ drive from the rue Saint-Georges, but she told the man to go along the rue Lepelletier, and very slowly, so that they could examine the waiting carriages.

  ‘Brazilian!’ Madame Nourrisson commanded. ‘Look out for your angel’s carriage and servants.’

  The Baron pointed out Valérie’s carriage as the cab drove past.

  ‘She told her servants to be here at ten o’clock and took a cab to the house, and she’s there now with Count Steinbock. She has had dinner there, and in half an hour she’ll be on her way to the Opera. It’s very neatly worked out! It shows you how she has been able to keep the blinkers over your eyes for so long,’ said Madame Nourrisson.

  The Brazilian did not answer. He had reassumed, together with a tiger’s savage ferocity, the imperturbable composure that had been so much admired at the dinner party. His calm now, however, was that of a bankrupt the day after his bankruptcy has been declared.

  At the door of the fateful house a hackney-carriage with two horses was standing, one of those called a ‘General Company’ from the name of the firm that runs them.

  ‘Stay in your box,’ Madame Nourrisson commanded Montès. ‘You can’t walk in there as if it were a tap-room. You’ll be fetched.’

  The paradise that was shared by Madame Marneffe and Wenceslas was not in the least like C
revel’s little house, which Crevel had sold to the Comte Maxime de Trailles, as it seemed to him that he had no further use for it. This paradise, by no means their exclusive possession, was a room on the fourth floor, opening on the staircase, in a house in the same block as the Italian Opera. On each floor of this house, on every landing, there was a room once intended to serve as a kitchen for each set of rooms. When the house had become a place of assignation, with rooms let out at an exorbitant rent, the owner, the real Madame Nourrisson, second-hand-clothes dealer in the rue Neuve-Saint-Marc, had realized the enormous potential value of these kitchens, and converted them into something like private dining-rooms. Each of these rooms, shut off on two sides by thick party-walls, with windows looking on the street, was completely isolated by heavy double doors on the fourth side, on the landing. Important secrets could therefore be discussed over dinner in this place without risk of being overheard. For greater security, the windows were provided with sun-blinds on the outside and shutters within. The privacy of the rooms was worth a rent of three hundred francs a month. The entire house, big with paradise and mysteries, was let out for twenty-four thousand francs by Madame Nourrisson the First, and made a profit of twenty thousand francs a year – taking one year with another – when her manageress (Madame Nourrisson the Second) had been paid, for she did not run the business herself.

  The paradise rented by Count Steinbock had been hung with chintz. The humble flooring, of cold, hard, red-wax-polished tiles, no longer offended the senses under a soft deep-piled carpet. For furniture, it had two pretty chairs and a bed in an alcove, before which just then, and half-concealing it, stood a table covered with what was left of an excellent dinner, amid which two long-necked bottles and an empty champagne bottle, sunk in its melting ice, were landmarks in the fields of Bacchus tilled by Venus. The eye was caught by a handsome, luxuriously upholstered easy-chair, no doubt sent in by Valérie, beside a low fireside seat, and a rosewood chest-of-drawers with a looking-glass gracefully framed in the Pompadour style. A hanging lamp shed subdued light, augmented by the candles standing on the table and the chimney-piece.