Cousin Bette

by Honoré de Balzac

  This sketch will serve to give some idea, urbi et orbi, of the sordid shabbiness of clandestine love in the Paris of 1840. We are so far away, alas! from adulterous passion as symbolized by Vulcan’s nets three thousand years ago.

  As Cydalise and the Baron were on their way upstairs, Valérie, standing before the logs burning in the fireplace, was having her stays laced up by Wenceslas. It is at such moments that a woman who is neither too plump nor too slender, like the finely-made, elegant, Valérie, seems more than ordinarily beautiful. The rose-tinted flesh and dewy skin invite the most somnolent eye. The lines of the body, then so lightly veiled, are so clearly suggested by the shining folds of the petticoat and the lower part of the stays that a woman becomes quite irresistible, like every joy when we must say good-bye to it. The happy smiling face in the glass, the tapping foot, the raised hand busily tucking up the still disordered curls, eyes brimming with grateful love, the glow of content, like a setting sun, illuminating every detail of the countenance – everything that the eye rests on makes this hour a treasure-house of memories! Any man, indeed, who throws a backward glance at his youthful wild oats will remember some such charming details, and may perhaps, without excusing them, understand the follies of the Hulots and the Crevels. Women are so well aware of their power at such times that they always find in them what may be called the aftermath of love.

  ‘Well, well! Just fancy not knowing how to lace up a woman after two years! You’re far too much of a Pole, my boy! It’s ten o’clock, my Wences… las!’ said Valérie, laughing.

  At this moment a malicious servant adroitly raised the door-latch with the blade of a knife, the latch of that double door on which the whole security of Adam and Eve depended. She opened the door abruptly, because those who hire such Edens can only count on a short time as their own, and disclosed to view a tableau like one of those charming genre paintings, after Gavarni, that are so often hung in the Paris Exhibition.

  ‘This way, Madame!’ said the maid.

  And Cydalise entered, followed by Baron Montès.

  ‘But there are people here! Excuse me, Madame,’ said the Norman girl, in a fright.

  ‘What! It’s Valérie!’ exclaimed Montès, violently slamming the door.

  Madame Marneffe, overwhelmed by feelings too keen to be dissembled, sank into a chair by the fireside. Tears sprang to her eyes, and dried instantly. She looked at Montès, took in the girl, and gave a forced peal of laughter. The dignity of a woman outraged effaced all thought of the impropriety of her half-clothed state. She walked up to Montès, and looked at him so proudly that her eyes seemed to scintillate like swords.

  ‘So this,’ she said, coming to a standstill facing the Brazilian, and pointing to Cydalise, ‘this is the other face of your fidelity? You, who made promises to me that would have convinced an unbeliever in love! – for whose sake I have done so much, to the point of committing crimes!… You are fight, Monsieur: I cannot compete with a girl of that age, and so beautiful!… I know what you are going to say,’ she went on, indicating Wenceslas, whose confusion was proof too evident to be denied. ‘That’s my affair. If I were still able to love you, after such a mean betrayal, for you must have spied on me, you must have bought every step up these stairs, and the mistress of the house, and the servant, and even Reine perhaps.… Oh! what a pleasant thing that is! If it were possible for me to have any affection still for a man so shamefully treacherous, I could give him such reasons that he would love me twice as much! But I can only leave you, Monsieur, with all your doubts, which will soon turn to regrets… Wenceslas, my dress!’

  She took her dress, slipped it on, examined herself in the glass, and calmly finished dressing without a glance at the Brazilian, absolutely as if she were alone.

  ‘Wenceslas, are you ready? You go first!’

  She had watched Montès’s face from the corner of her eye and in the glass, and thought that in his pallor she saw an indication of the weakness that betrays such strong men to a woman’s wiles. She took him by the hand, going so close to him that he breathed the fatal loved scents that intoxicate lovers and, feeling him tremble and breathe deeply, she looked at him reproachfully.

  ‘I give you permission to go and tell Monsieur Crevel of your incursion here. He will never believe you; and I have every right to marry him. He will be my husband the day after tomorrow… and I shall make him very happy! Good-bye! Try to forget me.…’

  ‘Ah, Valérie!’ exclaimed Henri Montès, clasping her in his arms. ‘It is impossible! Come to Brazil!’

  Valérie looked at the Baron and saw that she had her slave again.

  ‘Ah! if you still loved me, Henri! In two years I should be your wife! But at this moment it seems to me that you appear in a very dubious light.’

  ‘I swear to you that they made me drunk, false friends planted this woman upon me, and all this happened quite by chance!’ said Montès.

  ‘So it might still be possible to forgive you?’ she said, smiling.

  ‘And you will still get married?’ asked the Baron, in acute anxiety.

  ‘Eighty thousand francs a year!’ she answered, with half-comical enthusiasm. ‘And Crevel loves me so much that he will die of it!’

  ‘Ah! I understand you,’ said the Brazilian.

  ‘Well… in a few days’ time, we will consider things again,’ she said. And she swept downstairs, triumphant.

  ‘I have no scruples now,’ thought the Baron, standing for a moment where he had been left. ‘The woman counts on using that imbecile’s love to rid herself of him, just as she made her plans counting on Marneffe’s death! I shall be the instrument of Divine wrath!’

  Two days later, those same fellow-guests of du Tillet’s who had ruthlessly torn Madame Marneffe’s character to shreds were sitting round her table, an hour after she had cast her slough and put on a new woman by changing her name for the glorious name of a Mayor of Paris. Sharpening one’s tongue on one’s friend’s reputation is a kind of treachery lightly regarded in Paris society.

  Valérie had had the pleasure of seeing the Brazilian Baron at the church: Crevel, now a complete husband, had invited him in a spirit of boastful ownership. Montès’s presence at the wedding breakfast surprised no one. All these sophisticated people had been long familiar with the dereliction of principle in passion, with the base compromises of desire.

  Steinbock, who was beginning to despise the woman of whom he had made an angel, showed a profound melancholy that was thought to be in excellent taste. The Pole was evidently making it clear that all was over between himself and Valérie.

  Lisbeth came to embrace her dear Madame Crevel, excusing herself from staying to take part in the wedding breakfast because of the sad state of Adeline’s health.

  ‘Never fear,’ she said to Valérie, as she left; ‘they will receive you, and call on you. Just hearing those four words “two hundred thousand francs” has brought the Baroness to death’s door. Oh! you hold them all on a string with that little story; but don’t forget to tell me what it is all about.…’

  A month after her marriage, Valérie was marking up her tenth quarrel with Steinbock, who kept seeking some explanation from her regarding Henri Montès, reminding her of what had been said during the scene in the paradise; and who, not content with withering Valérie with contemptuous reproaches, watched her so closely that she had not a moment’s freedom, hard pressed as she was between Wenceslas’s jealousy and Crevel’s enthusiasm.

  Not having Lisbeth at hand now to provide her with excellent advice, she so far forgot herself one day as to reproach Wenceslas harshly with the money she had lent him. Stein-bock’s pride was up in arms, and he came no more to the Crevel house. Valérie had at least achieved what she was wishing for – Wenceslas’s absence for a time and the recovery of her liberty. She was expecting Crevel’s departure on a visit that he had to make to the country to see Count Popinot in order to arrange for Madame Crevel’s introduction, and so she was able to make an appointment with the Baron,
whom she wanted to have to herself for a whole day in order to provide him with those reasons that were to make the Brazilian love her twice as much as before.

  On the morning of that day, Reine, estimating the heinous-ness of the crime she was committing by the size of the bribe she had received, tried to warn her mistress, in whom she naturally had a greater interest than she had in strangers; but as she had been threatened with being treated as a madwoman and shut up in La Salpétrière if she were indiscreet, she was hesitant.

  ‘Madame is so nicely fixed now,’ she said; ‘why go on bothering with that Brazilian? If you ask me, I don’t trust him!’

  ‘You’re right, Reine!’ Valérie answered. ‘And I’m going to get rid of him.’

  ‘Ah, Madame, I’m very glad. That darky frightens me. I’m sure he might do anything.…’

  ‘Don’t be silly! You should keep your alarm for him, when he’s with me!’

  Lisbeth came in at that moment.

  ‘My dear darling Nanny! It’s been so long since we saw each other,’ said Valérie. ‘I am quite miserable. Crevel teases me to death, and I haven’t Wencelas now; we’ve quarrelled.’

  ‘So I know,’ replied Lisbeth; ‘and it’s because of him that I’m here. Victorin met him about five yesterday evening, just about to go into a cheap restaurant in the rue de Valois. He worked on his feelings and took him straight back to the rue Louis-le-Grand.… When Hortense saw Wenceslas, thin, wretched and badly dressed, she held out her arms to him.… And that’s the way you let me down!’

  ‘Monsieur Henri, Madame!’ the manservant announced discreetly to Valérie.

  ‘Leave me, Lisbeth. I’ll explain everything tomorrow.’

  But, as will be seen, Valérie was soon to be in no condition to explain anything to anyone.

  *

  By the end of May, Baron Hulot’s pension had been completely freed by the successive payments that Victorin had made to Baron Nucingen. As is well known, the half-yearly pension payments are made only on presentation of a certificate that the recipient is still alive; and as Baron Hulot’s residence was unknown, the payments set aside for paying off the debt to Vauvinet were accumulating in the Treasury. Vauvinet having signed his withdrawal of claim, it became urgently necessary to find the recipient in order to obtain the arrears.

  The Baroness, thanks to Dr Bianchon’s care, had regained her health. Josépha’s kindness had contributed, by a letter whose spelling revealed the Duc d’Hérouville’s collaboration, to Adeline’s complete recovery. This is what the singer wrote to the Baroness, after six weeks of energetic search:

  Madame la Baronne,

  Two months ago, Monsieur Hulot was living in the rue des Bernardins, with Élodie Chardin, the lace-mender, who had taken him away from Mademoiselle Bijou; but he went off from there, leaving everything he possessed behind, without saying a word to anyone, and no one knows where he has gone. I have not given up hope, and have set a man to trace him, who believes that he has already seen him on the boulevard Bourdon.

  The poor Jewess will keep the promise made to the Christian. She begs the angel to pray for the demon! That must sometimes happen in heaven.

  I am, with deep respect and always, your humble servant,

  JOSÉPHA MIRAH

  Maître Hulot d’Ervy, hearing no more word of the terrible Madame Nourrisson, seeing his father-in-law married, having retrieved his brother-in-law and brought him back under the family roof, experiencing no trouble from his new mother-in-law, and finding his mother’s health improving every day, became engrossed in political and legal work, swept along in the swift current of Paris life, whose hours are as full as days. Having a report to write for the Chamber of Deputies one evening towards the end of the Session, he decided to spend the whole night working. He had come back to his study about nine o’clock; and as he waited for his servant to bring his shaded candles, he was thinking about his father. He was reproaching himself for leaving the search for him to the singer, and saying to himself that he would see Monsieur Chapuzot about the matter next day, when he saw at the window in the evening dusk an old man with a fine head, his bald yellow skull fringed with white hair.

  ‘Tell your servant, my dear sir, to open the door to a poor hermit from the desert, seeking charity for the rebuilding of a holy sanctuary.’

  The apparition, in finding a voice, instantly reminded the lawyer of a prediction that the horrible Nourrisson had made, and he shuddered.

  ‘Let that old man in,’ he said to his servant.

  ‘He will bring a stink into Monsieur’s study,’ the man protested. ‘That brown habit he’s wearing hasn’t been off his back since he left Syria, and he has no vest…’

  ‘Let him in,’ the lawyer repeated.

  The old man entered. Victorin examined this so-called pilgrim hermit with a mistrustful eye, and saw a superb specimen of those monks of Naples whose habits are indistinguishable from lazzaroni’s rags, whose sandals are rags of leather, and who themselves are tatters of humanity. He was so evidently genuine that the lawyer, though still on his guard, rebuked himself for believing in Madame Nourrisson’s sorcery.

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘What you think you ought to give.’

  Victorin took five francs from a pile of small change, and held out the coin to the stranger.

  ‘As payment on account for fifty thousand francs, that’s not much,’ said the mendicant from the desert.

  That observation removed all Victorin’s doubts.

  ‘And has heaven kept its promises?’ the lawyer said, frowning.

  ‘To doubt is a sin, my son,’ replied the hermit. ‘If you wish to pay only when the funeral is over, you are within your rights. I will return in a week.’

  ‘The funeral!’ exclaimed the lawyer, rising to his feet.

  ‘Action has been taken,’ said the old man as he turned to go, ‘and the dead are soon disposed of in Paris!’

  When Hulot, who had bowed his head, raised it to reply, the active old man had disappeared.

  ‘I don’t understand a word,’ Hulot told himself. ‘But in a week’s time I’ll ask him to find my father, if we haven’t found him in the meantime. Where can Madame Nourrisson (yes, that’s her name) find such actors?’

  On the following day Dr Bianchon allowed the Baroness to leave her room to sit in the garden. He had just examined Lisbeth, who had been kept to her room for the past month with a mild attack of bronchitis. This distinguished doctor, who did not care to reveal his opinion about Lisbeth’s case before he had observed decisive symptoms, accompanied the Baroness to the garden in order to note the effect of fresh air, after two months of seclusion, upon the nervous tremor that he was treating. The curing of this nervous condition was a challenge to Bianchon’s professional skill. When the Baroness and her children saw this eminent doctor sit down and prepare to give them some minutes of his time, they politely started to make conversation.

  ‘You must have a very fully occupied life, and very sadly occupied,’ said the Baroness. ‘I know what it means to spend one’s whole day watching people in distress, or suffering physical pain.’

  ‘Madame,’ answered the doctor, ‘I know very well the kind of scenes that you must meet with in your charitable work, but you’ll get used to them in the end, as we all do. It is the social rule. The confessor, the magistrate, the lawyer, could not do their work if their sense of social duty did not override their human heart. How could we doctors go on living if we had not this detachment? The soldier, too, in time of war, has to face sights even more harrowing than ours; and all soldiers who have been in action are kindhearted.

  ‘Moreover, we enjoy the pleasure of curing people, and, in your work, too, you have the joy of saving a family from hunger, moral depravity, and misery, and bringing its members back to work, to life within the social framework. But what consolation can the magistrate, the police officer, and the lawyer have? They spend their lives disentangling the sordid schemes of selfish individuals, mons
trous parasites on society, who may feel regret when they fail, but are incapable of feeling remorse. One half of society spends its life keeping watch on the other half.

  ‘An old friend of mine, a lawyer, retired now, used to tell me that for the past fifteen years solicitors and barristers have trusted their own clients as little as they trust their clients’ opponents. Your son is a lawyer. Has he never been let down by the man he was defending?’

  ‘Oh, often!’ said Victorin, smiling.

  ‘What has caused this wide-spread social evil?’ asked the Baroness.

  ‘Lack of religion,’ answered the doctor, ‘and the encroachment on everything of finance, which is just another name for organized self-seeking. Money, once, was not everything; it was recognized that there were higher and more important values. Noble disinterestedness, and talent, and service to the state, were thought worthy of esteem; but nowadays the law makes money the standard to measure everything. It takes the possession of money as the basis of political qualification, and some magistrates are not eligible. Jean-Jacques Rousseau would not be eligible!

  ‘As inherited estates continue to be divided up, everyone is forced to think of his own interests first, from the age of twenty. And then, a young man faced with the necessity of making money, and the temptation to seek criminal ways of making it, has nothing to restrain him; because there is now no belief or religious principle in France, in spite of the praiseworthy efforts of those who are working for a Catholic revival. Everyone who, like me, observes society from the inside, thinks as I do about these matters.’

  ‘You can have few pleasures,’ said Hortense.

  ‘A true doctor has an absorbing interest,’ answered Bianchon, ‘a passion for the advancement of knowledge. His devotion to it gives him courage; and of course he is sure that he is doing socially useful work, and that helps him too. At this very moment, as it happens, I feel very elated, I am rejoicing as a scientist and a medical man; and there are plenty of people who don’t look beneath the surface who would think me quite heartless. Tomorrow I am going to announce a discovery to the Academy of Medicine. I am at present observing a lost disease, endemic in Europe in the Middle Ages but quite unknown here now; a fatal disease, too, which we have no remedy for in temperate climates, although it can be cured in the tropics.… It is a fine war a doctor wages against such an enemy as that. For the past ten days my mind has been preoccupied, every hour of the day, with my patients: I have two, a husband and wife. But surely they are connexions of yours! Are you not Monsieur Crevel’s daughter, Madame?’ he said, turning to Célestine.