Cousin Bette

  ‘Where will you go? What will you do? What will become of you? Who will look after you, now that you’re no longer young? Let me disappear with you – we will go abroad,’ she said.

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ he replied.

  The Baron rang, and ordered Mariette to collect his things and pack them at once in secret. Then, after embracing his wife with a demonstrative tenderness to which she was little accustomed, he begged her to leave him alone for a few moments to write out the instructions that Victorin needed, promising her not to leave the house before nightfall, nor without her. As soon as the Baroness had returned to the drawing-room, the experienced old campaigner walked through the dressing-room to the hall and went, leaving a piece of paper with Mariette, on which he had written: ‘Send on my baggage, by rail, addressed to Monsieur Hector, at Corbeil, to be left till called for.’ The Baron was already in a cab on his way across Paris when Mariette went to show this note to the Baroness, saying that Monsieur had just gone out. Adeline, increasingly shaken by her tremulous agitation, rushed to the bedroom, where her children followed her in alarm, on hearing a piercing cry. They found the Baroness unconscious. She had to be put to bed, and lay there for a month in a nervous fever, between life and death.

  ‘Where is he?’ That was all anyone could induce her to say.

  Victorin’s search for him, and inquiries, produced no result, because the Baron had confused the trail. He had driven to the place du Palais-Royal. Then, summoning up all his old ability to get out of a tight corner, he proceeded to put into effect a scheme that he had thought out during the days when he lay, crushed by grief and chagrin, in bed. He crossed the Palais-Royal, and hired a splendid carriage in the rue Joquelet. The coachman, as he was ordered, drove to the rue de! a Ville-l’Éveque and into the courtyard of Josépha’s house, whose gates opened for this showy vehicle at the coachman’s shout. Curiosity brought Josépha to investigate, when her footman carried the message that an invalid old gentleman, unable to leave his carriage, asked her to come down for a moment.

  ’Josépha! Don’t you know me?’

  The famous singer recognized Hulot only by his voice.

  ‘What! It’s you, poor old soul! Word of honour, you look like one of those twenty-franc pieces clipped by the German Jews that the money-changers won’t take.’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately,’ said Hulot. ‘I’ve been at death’s door. But you are as beautiful as ever. Are you as kind, I wonder?’

  ‘That’s according. Everything is relative!’ she said.

  ‘See here,’ Hulot went on; ‘can you put me up in a servant’s room in the attics for a few days? I haven’t a farthing. I have no hope, no way of earning a living, no pension, no wife, no children, no place of refuge, no honour, no courage, no friend, and, worst of all, I’m threatened with arrest for debt.…’

  ‘Poor old chap! That’s a lot of things to have none of! Have you lost your breeches too – sans culotte?’

  ‘If you mock, I’m done for!’ exclaimed the Baron. ‘And I counted on you, like Gourville counting on Ninon de Lenclos.’

  ‘They tell me that it was a society lady that left you in this pickle?’ said Josépha inquiringly. ‘Those jokers know how to pluck the turkey better than we do! Oh! you’re just like a carcass the crows have done with. One can see daylight through you!’

  ‘The matter’s urgent, Josépha!’

  ‘Come in, old dear! I’m alone, and my servants don’t know you. Send away your carriage. Is it paid for?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Baron, getting down with the help of Josépha’s arm.

  ‘You can say you’re my father, if you like,’ said the singer, with a sudden access of pity.

  She took Hulot to sit in the magnificent drawing-room where he had seen her last.

  ‘Is it true,’ she began again, ‘that you have killed your brother and your uncle, ruined your family, mortgaged your children’s house, and run off with the money-bags of the Government in Africa, you and the princess between you?’

  The Baron sadly bowed his head.

  ‘Well, I really like that!’ cried Josépha, jumping up, full of enthusiasm. ‘That’s a real bust-up! You’re just like Sardana-palus over again! It’s grand! It’s going the whole hog! You may be a blackguard, but you have a heart. If you ask me, I’d rather have a proper spendthrift, mad about women, like you, than one of those cold soul-less bankers who are supposed to be so virtuous, and ruin thousands of families with their golden railways – golden for them, and iron for their unlucky suckers, their gogos! You have only ruined your own family; the only property you’ve sold is you! And then, you have excuses, physical and moral’

  She struck a tragic pose and declaimed:

  ‘“Venus, with teeth and claws fast fixed in her prey.”… That’s how it is!’ she concluded, with a pirouette.

  So Hulot found that he was absolved by vice; vice smiled at him from its surroundings of sumptuous luxury. The immensity of the crimes was there, as it is for members of a jury, an extenuating circumstance.

  ‘Is your society lady pretty, at least?’ the singer asked, seeking as a first kindness to distract Hulot, for his despondent sadness was distressing.

  ‘Indeed, nearly as pretty as you,’ replied the Baron tactfully.

  ‘And… good fun, so they say? What did she do? Is she more of a comic turn than me?’

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about her,’ said Hulot.

  ‘They say that she has caught my Crevel, and little Stein-bock, and a marvellous Brazilian?’

  ‘Very likely…’

  ‘And she’s living in a house as fine as this one, that Crevel gave her. That hussy is my first assistant chief scullery-maid and disher-up, she finishes off the men that I’ve made the first cut in! That’s why I’m so anxious to know what she’s like, old dear. I’ve seen her driving in the Bois de Boulogne, in an open carriage, but only in the distance.… She’s an accomplished gold-digger, so Carabine says. She’s trying to make a meal of Crevel! But she won’t be able to do more than nibble at him. Crevel is a tough old piece of cheese! A jolly good sort who always says yes, and does just what he wants to do and no more. He’s as vain as you like, and hot-blooded, but his cash is frozen cold. You can get nothing more out of that kind than about a thousand to three thousand francs a month, and they stick their feet in and baulk before anything big, like donkeys before a river. They’re not like you, old boy; you’re a man of passions – anyone could set you on to sell your country! And so, you see, I’m willing to do anything for you! You are my father; you started me out in the world! It’s a pious duty! How much do you need? What about a hundred thousand francs? I would work like a cart-horse, till I dropped, to get it for you. As for a crust of bread and a spot to tuck yourself up in, that’s nothing. You shall have your place laid for you here every day, you can take a nice room on the second floor, and there’ll be a hundred crowns a month to put in your pocket.’

  The Baron, touched by this reception, had a last honourable scruple.

  ‘No, my dear child, no. I didn’t come here to sponge on you,’ he said.

  ‘At your age it’s a rare triumph to be able to!’ she said.

  ‘This is what I want, child. Your Duc d’Hérouville has large estates in Normandy, and I would like to be his steward, under the name of Thoul. I have the ability for the job, and the trustworthiness, for though a man may diddle the Government, one doesn’t pilfer money from a cash-box.…’

  ‘Aha!’ mocked Josépha. ‘He who once drinks of that well will drink again!’

  ‘In fact, all I want is to live out of sight and mind for three years.…’

  ‘Oh, that’s soon arranged,’ said Josépha. ‘This evening, after dinner, I only have to ask him. The Duke would marry me, if I wanted him to; but I have his money, and I want something more… his esteem! He’s a duke from the top of the tree. He’s noble. He’s distinguished. He’s as big a man as Napoleon and Louis XIV put together, although he’s a dwarf. And then I have played the pa
rt Schontz played with Rochefide: what I told him has just earned him two millions. But listen to me, my old son of a gun… I know you, you’ve a weakness for women, and away there in Normandy you would always be chasing after the little Norman girls – they’re wonderful-looking. You would have your bones broken by sweethearts or fathers, and the Duke would be forced to throw you out. Can’t I just see by the way you look at me that the young man inside you is not dead, as Fénelon said! That job isn’t what you want. You can’t break away from Paris and us girls just for the wanting to, you know, old boy! You would die of boredom at Hérouville!’

  ‘But what am I to do?’ said the Baron. ‘I want to stay with you only until I can find the next step to take.’

  ‘See here, would you like me to fix you up according to my notion? Listen, my old fireman! You need women. They’re a consolation for everything. Listen to me now. Down in La Courtille, in the rue Saint-Maur-du-Temple, I know a poor family who possess a treasure: a little girl, prettier than I was at sixteen! Ah! there’s a glint in your eye already! The creature works sixteen hours a day embroidering fine materials for the silk merchants, and earns sixteen sous a day, a sou an hour, a pittance! And all she has to eat, like the Irish, is potatoes; and potatoes fried in rat grease, with bread five times a week, perhaps. She drinks water from the Ourcq out of the town taps, because Seine water is too dear, and she can’t have her own workshop for want of six or seven thousand francs. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do to get hold of seven or eight thousand francs. Your family and your wife are a nuisance, aren’t they?… Besides, one can’t see oneself a nobody where one has been set up as a god. A father with no money, who has lost everyone’s respect, is only good for stuffing with straw and putting in a glass case…’

  The Baron could not help smiling at these outrageous sallies.

  ‘Well, little Bijou is coming tomorrow to bring me an embroidered dressing-gown, a perfect dream! They have been working on it for six months; no one else will have anything like it! Bijou is fond of me because I give her sweets and my old dresses. And besides I send the family notes for the shopkeepers, good for bread, firewood, and meat, and they would break a leading citizen’s two shin bones for me, if I wanted them to. I try to do a little good if I can! Oh, I know what it is like to go hungry! Bijou pours out her heart to me, and confides all her little secrets. There’s the stuff of a character actress at the Ambigu-Comique in that little girl. Bijou has rosy dreams of wearing fine dresses like mine, and, more wonderful than anything, going about in a carriage. I’ll say to her: “Child, how would you like a gentleman of…” How old are you?…’ she interrupted her flow of words to ask. ‘seventy-two?…’

  ‘I have stopped counting.’

  ‘“How would you like,” I’ll say to her, “a gentleman of seventy-two, very natty, who doesn’t take tobacco, as sound as my eye, as good as a young man? You’ll marry him, without a licence, of course, and you’ll live very nicely together; he’ll give you seven thousand francs to set up for yourself; he’ll furnish a flat for you, all in mahogany. Then if you’re good, he’ll take you sometimes to the theatre. He’ll give you a hundred francs a month for yourself, and fifty francs for the housekeeping!” I know Bijou, she’s like me at fourteen. I jumped for joy when that abominable Crevel made me those very same atrocious propositions. Well, old boy, you will be snugly stowed away there for three years. That’s sensible and straightforward; and the arrangement will hold illusions for three or four years, though not longer.’

  Hulot had no hesitation, his mind was made up to refuse; but in order not to seem ungrateful to the kind-hearted singer who was doing her best for him in her own fashion, he pretended to waver between vice and virtue.

  ‘Bless me! You’re as slow to warm up as a paving-stone in December!’ she said, astonished. ‘Look, you will be creating the happiness of a whole family, a grandfather who totters about, a mother who wears herself out working, and two sisters, one of them no beauty, who between them earn thirty-two sous by ruining their eyes. That will make up for the unhappiness you have caused in your own home. You will be redeeming your sins, and having a good time like a tart at Mabille.’

  Hulot, to put an end to this temptation, made the gesture of counting money.

  ‘Don’t worry about ways and means,’ Josépha took him up. ‘My duke will lend you ten thousand francs: seven thousand for an embroidering workshop in Bijou’s name, three thousand for furnishing; and every three months you will find six hundred and fifty francs here, on your note of hand. When you get your pension back, you can repay the seventeen thousand francs to the Duke. Meantime you’ll be as well off as a pig in clover, and hidden away in a corner the police will never find. You can dress yourself up in a big beaver overcoat and look like a comfortable householder of the district. Call yourself Thoul, if that’s your fancy. I’ll introduce you to Bijou as an uncle of mine, gone bankrupt in Germany, and you’ll be pampered like a little tin god. There you are, Papa!… Who knows? Perhaps you’ll have no reason to regret anything that’s happened. And in case by any chance you might ever feel bored, you should keep one of your fine onionskins, and then you can come and invite yourself to dinner and spend the evening here.’

  ‘But I’m the man who only asked to reform and lead a virtuous life! Here, borrow twenty thousand francs for me and I’ll be off to America to make my fortune, like my friend d’Aiglemont when Nucingen ruined him.…’

  ‘You!’ cried Josépha. ‘Leave orderly living to shopkeepers and simple soldier-boys and good Fr-r-r-rench citizens who have only their virtue to distinguish them! But you were born for something better than to be a milk-and-water ninny. You are just like me, in a man’s shape: a bad lot with a talent and a bent that way!’

  ‘I had better sleep on it. We can talk about this tomorrow.’

  ‘You shall dine with the Duke. My Hérouville will receive you as politely as if you had saved the state! And tomorrow you can make up your mind. Come, cheer up, old boy! Life is an overcoat: when it’s dirty, we brush it; when there are holes in it, we patch them; but we keep ourselves covered as well as we can!’

  This philosophy of vice, and her spirited gaiety, dissipated Hulot’s bitter griefs.

  Next day, at midday, after a delicious meal, Hulot saw walk in one of those living masterpieces that only Paris in the whole world can create; for only in Paris exists the endless concubinage of luxury and want, of vice and sober virtue, of repressed desire and ever-renewed temptation, which makes this city the heir of Nineveh, Babylon, and Imperial Rome. Mademoiselle Olympe Bijou, a girl of sixteen, had the exquisite face that Raphael found for his Virgins, with innocent eyes saddened by overwork, dreamy dark eyes, shaded by long lashes, their limpidity suffering from long nights of toil, eyes heavy with fatigue; and a complexion with the fineness of porcelain and an almost chlorotic transparency; and a mouth like a half-burst pomegranate, a passionate breast, a rounded figure, pretty hands, dazzlingly pretty white teeth, luxuriant black hair: and all this beauty was done up in cotton at seventy-five centimes a metre, adorned with an embroidered collar, mounted on stitched leather slippers, and garnished with gloves at twenty-nine sous. The child, quite unconscious of her rare value, had put on her best to come to the grand lady’s house. The Baron, seized afresh in the taloned grip of sensuality, felt his whole life centred in his eyes. He forgot everything before this divine creation. He was like a hunter sighting the game: not even the presence of an emperor will prevent him from taking aim!

  ‘And,’ Josépha whispered in his ear, ‘it’s guaranteed mint-new; it’s a decent girl! And with no bread to eat. That’s Paris! I was just like her!’

  ‘It’s a bargain,’ replied the old man, rising to his feet and rubbing his hands.

  When Olympe Bijou had gone, Josépha looked at the Baron slyly.

  ‘If you don’t want trouble, Papa,’ she said, ‘be as strict as the High Court Judge on his judgement seat. Keep the little girl on a short rein. Be a Bartholo! Beware of the Augustes
and Hippolytes and Nestors and Victors and all the other ors, including gold ore!… Bless you, once the creature is properly dressed and fed, if it raises its head you’ll be led a dance just like one of the Russian dances.… I’ll look after your settling in. The Duke does things in proper style; he is going to lend you, that is to say give you, ten thousand francs, and he is depositing eight thousand of them with his lawyer, who will be told to hand you out six hundred francs every three months, for I don’t trust you… Now, don’t you think I’m a nice girl?’

  ‘Adorable!’

  Ten days after deserting his family, while they, in tears, were gathered round Adeline’s bed, where she lay apparently dying, and while her faint whisper asked ‘Where is he?,’ Hulot, now Thoul of the rue Saint-Maur, was established with Olympe at the head of an embroidery business, under the odd style of Thoul and Bijou.

  From the misfortunes implacably pursuing his family, Victorin Hulot received the hammering that makes a man or breaks him. It perfected Victorin. In the great storms of life we act like ships’ captains at sea, and lighten ship by throwing the heavy cargo overboard. The lawyer abandoned his inner arrogance, his air of complacency, his pride in his eloquence, and his political pretensions. He grew to be Adeline’s masculine counterpart. He resolved to make the best of his Célestine, although she was certainly not the wife he had dreamed of, and achieved a balanced view of life, realizing that we are obliged by the universal law to be content with a more or less imperfect approximation to the ideal. He solemnly vowed, in his profound sense of shock at his father’s behaviour, to do all his duty. His resolution was confirmed as he sat at his mother’s bedside on the day that she passed the crisis of her illness. That stroke of good fortune did not come singly. Claude Vignon, who called to inquire after Madame Hulot’s health, every day, on behalf of Prince de Wissembourg, asked the Deputy, now re-elected, to go with him to see the Minister.