Cousin Bette Read online

  During these preparations, singular to say the least, the National Guardsman was examining the furnishings of the room in which he found himself. As he remarked the silk curtains, once red, but now faded to violet by the sun and frayed along the folds by long use, a carpet from which the colours had disappeared, chairs with their gilding rubbed off and their silk spotted with stains and worn threadbare in patches, his contemptuous expression was followed by satisfaction, and then by hope, in naïve succession on his successful-shopkeeper’s commonplace face. He was surveying himself in a glass above an old Empire clock, taking stock of himself, when the rustle of the Baroness’s silk dress warned him of her approach. He at once struck an attitude.

  The Baroness sat down on a little sofa that must certainly have been very pretty about the year 1809, and motioned Crevel to an armchair decorated with bronzed sphinx heads, from which the paint was scaling off, leaving the bare wood exposed in places.

  ‘These precautions of yours, Madame, would be a delightfully promising sign for a…’

  ‘A lover,’ she interrupted him.

  ‘The word is weak,’ he said, placing his right hand on his heart, and rolling his eyes in a fashion that a woman nearly always finds comic when she meets them with no sympathy in her own. ‘A lover! A lover! Say rather – a man bewitched!’

  ‘Listen, Monsieur Crevel,’ the Baroness went on, too much in earnest to feel like laughing. ‘You are fifty – that’s ten years younger than Monsieur Hulot, I know; but if a woman is to commit follies at my age she has to have something to justify her: good looks, youth, celebrity, distinction, brilliant gifts to dazzle her to the point of making her oblivious of everything, even of her age. You may have an income of fifty thousand francs, but your age must be weighed in the balance against your fortune; and you have nothing that a woman needs.’

  ‘And love?’ said the Captain, rising and coming towards her. ‘A love that…’

  ‘No, Monsieur, infatuation!’ said the Baroness, interrupting him to try to put an end to this ridiculous scene.

  ‘Yes, infatuation and love,’ he went on, ‘but something more than that too, a right…’

  ‘A right!’ exclaimed Madame Hulot, suddenly impressive in her scorn, defiance, and indignation. ‘But if you go on in this strain, we shall never have done; and I did not ask you to come here to talk about something that has made you an unwelcome visitor in this house, in spite of the connexion between our two families.’

  ‘I thought you did.…’

  ‘What – again?’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you not see, Monsieur, by the detached and unconcerned way in which I speak of a lover and love and everything that is most indecorous on a woman’s lips, that I am perfectly certain of remaining virtuous? I am not afraid of anything, even of incurring suspicion by shutting myself in this room alone with you. Does a frail woman behave so? You know very well why I asked you to come!’

  ‘No, Madame,’ Crevel replied, with a sudden chill in his manner. He pursed his lips and struck his pose.

  ‘Well, I’ll be brief, and cut short the embarrassment this causes both of us,’ said the Baroness, looking him in the face.

  Crevel made an ironic bow, in which a man of his trade would have recognized the affected courtesy of a one-time commercial traveller.

  ‘Our son has married your daughter…’

  ‘And if that were to do again!…’

  ‘The marriage would not take place,’ rejoined the Baroness, with spirit. ‘I have little doubt of it. All the same, you have no cause for complaint. My son is not only one of the leading lawyers in Paris, but a Deputy since last year, and he has made such a brilliant début in the Chamber that it seems likely that he will be in the Government before long. My son has been consulted twice in the drafting of important Bills, and if he wanted the post he could be Solicitor-General, representing the Government in the Court of Appeal, tomorrow. So that if you mean to imply that you have a son-in-law with no fortune…’

  ‘A son-in-law whom I am obliged to keep,’ returned Crevel; ‘which seems to me worse, Madame. Of the five hundred thousand francs settled on my daughter as her dowry, two hundred thousand have gone heaven knows where! In paying your fine son’s debts, in buying high-class furniture for his house, a house worth five hundred thousand francs that brings in barely fifteen thousand because he occupies the best part of it himself, and on which he still owes two hundred and sixty thousand francs – the rent from it barely covers the interest on the debt. This year I have had to give my daughter something like twenty thousand francs to enable her to make ends meet. And my son-in-law who, they say, was making thirty thousand francs in the law-courts is going to throw that up for the Chamber.…’

  ‘That, Monsieur Crevel, is a side issue, quite beside the point. But, to have done with it, if my son gets into office, if he has you made Officer of the Legion of Honour and Municipal Councillor of Paris, as a retired perfume-seller you will not have much to complain of.’

  ‘Ah! now we have it, Madame! I am a tradesman, a shopkeeper, a former retailer of almond paste, eau-de-Portugal, cephalic oil for hair troubles. I must consider myself highly honoured to have married my only daughter to the son of Monsieur le Baron Hulot d’Ervy. My daughter will be a Baroness. That’s Regency, that’s Louis XV, that belongs to the Oeil-de-Boeuf ante-room at Versailles! All very fine… I love Célestine as a man cannot help loving his only child. I love her so much that rather than give her brothers and sisters I have put up with all the inconveniences of being a widower in Paris – and in my prime, Madame! – but you may take it from me that although I may dote on my daughter I do not intend to make a hole in my capital for your son, whose expenses seem to an old businessman like myself to need some explanation.’

  ‘Monsieur, you see that Monsieur Popinot, who was once a druggist in the rue des Lombards, is Minister of Commerce now, at this very moment.…’

  ‘A friend of mine, Madame!’ said the ex-perfumer. ‘For I, Célestin Crevel, once head salesman to old César Birotteau, bought the business of the said Birotteau, Popinot’s father-in-law, Popinot being just an ordinary assistant in the business; and he himself reminds me of the fact, for he is not stuck-up – I’ll say that for him – with people in good positions, worth sixty thousand francs a year.’

  ‘Well, Monsieur, so the ideas that you describe as Regency are not in fashion now, in times when people accept a man on his personal merits; which is what you did when you married your daughter to my son.’

  ‘And you don’t know how that marriage came about!’ exclaimed Crevel. ‘Ah! confound this bachelor life! If it had not been for my libertine ways my Célestine would be the Vicomtesse Popinot today!’

  ‘But let me repeat, let’s have no recriminations over what is done!’ the Baroness said, with emphasis. ‘We have to talk of the reasons I have to protest about your strange conduct. My daughter Hortense had an opportunity to marry. The marriage depended entirely upon you, and I believed I could rely on your generosity. I thought that you would be fair to a woman whose heart has never held any image but her husband’s, that you would have realized how necessary it was for her not to receive a man who might compromise her, and that you would have been eager, out of regard for the family with which you have allied your own, to promote Hortense’s marriage with Councillor Lebas.… And you, Monsieur, have wrecked the marriage.’

  ‘Madame,’ replied the retired perfume-seller, ‘I acted like an honest man. I was asked whether the two hundred thousand francs of Mademoiselle Hortense’s dowry would be paid. I replied in these words precisely: “I would not answer for it. My son-in-law, on whom the Hulot family settled that sum on his marriage, had debts, and I believe that if Monsieur Hulot d’Ervy were to die tomorrow, his widow would be left to beg her bread.” And that’s how it is, my dear lady.’

  ‘And would you have spoken in the same way, Monsieur,’ asked Madame Hulot, looking Crevel steadily in the face, ‘if I had been untrue to my vows for your sake?’

  ‘
I should have had no right to say it, dear Adeline,’ exclaimed this singular lover, cutting the Baroness short, ‘for you would have found the dowry in my note-case.…’

  And suiting action to words, stout Crevel dropped on one knee and kissed Madame Hulot’s hand, attributing to hesitation her speechless horror at his words.

  ‘Buy my daughter’s happiness at the price of – get up at once, Monsieur, or I’ll ring the bell.’

  The retired perfumer got to his feet with considerable difficulty, a circumstance which made him so furious that he struck his pose again. Nearly all men cherish a fondness for some posture that they think shows off to best advantage the good points with which nature has endowed them. In Crevel’s case this pose consisted in crossing his arms like Napoleon, turning his head to show a three-quarter profile, and gazing, as the artist painting his portrait had made him gaze, at the horizon.

  ‘Faithful,’ he said, with well-calculated rage, ‘faithful to a libert –’

  ‘To a husband, Monsieur, worthy of my fidelity,’ Madame Hulot interrupted, before Crevel could get out a word that she had no wish to hear.

  ‘Look here, Madame, you wrote asking me to come. You want to know the reasons for my conduct. You drive me out of patience with your airs, as if you were an empress, your disdain and your… contempt! Anyone would think I was a black. I tell you again, and you may believe me! I have a right to… to court you… because… No, I love you well enough to hold my tongue.’

  ‘Go on, Monsieur. In a few days’ time I shall be forty-eight years old. I am not unnecessarily prudish. I can hear anything you may have to say.’

  ‘Well then, do you give me your word as a virtuous woman – since, unluckily for me, that’s what you are – never to give me away, never to say that I told you this secret?’

  ‘If that’s the condition of your telling me, I swear not to reveal to anyone, not even to my husband, who it was that told me the dreadful things I’m about to hear.’

  ‘I may believe you, for it concerns only you and him.’

  Madame Hulot turned pale.

  ‘Ah! if you still love Hulot, this will hurt you! Would you rather I said nothing?’

  ‘Go on, Monsieur, if it is true that what you say will justify the strange declarations you have made to me, and your persistence in annoying a woman of my age, who only wishes to see her daughter married, and then… die in peace!’

  ‘You see, you are unhappy!’

  ‘I, Monsieur?’

  ‘Yes, lovely and noble creature!’ cried Crevel. ‘You have suffered only too much.…’

  ‘Monsieur, say nothing more, and go! Or speak to me in a proper way.’

  ‘Are you aware, Madame, how our fine Monsieur Hulot and I became acquainted?… Through our mistresses, Madame.’

  ‘Oh, Monsieur!’

  ‘Through our mistresses, Madame,’ repeated Crevel melodramatically, breaking his pose to raise his right hand.

  ‘Well, what then, Monsieur?…’ said the Baroness calmly, to Crevel’s great discomfiture.

  Seducers, whose motives are mean, can never understand magnanimous minds.

  ‘Having been a widower for five years,’ Crevel went on, like a man who has a story to tell, ‘not wishing to marry again, for the sake of my daughter whom I idolize, not wishing to have intrigues in my own establishment either, although at that time I had a very pretty cashier, I set up, as they call it, a little seamstress, fifteen years old, a miracle of beauty, whom I confess I fell head over in love with.

  And so, Madame, I even asked my own aunt, whom I brought from my old home in the country (my mother’s sister!), to live with this charming creature and look after her and see that she remained as good as she could in her circumstances, which were what you might call… chocnoso?… improper?… no, compromising!…

  ‘The little girl, who plainly had a vocation for music, had masters to teach her, was given an education (she had to be kept out of mischief somehow!). And besides I wanted to be three persons in one to her, at the same time a father, a benefactor, and, not to mince matters, a lover: to kill two birds with one stone, do a kind deed and make a kind friend.

  ‘I had five years’ happiness. The child has a singing voice of a quality that would make any theatre’s fortune, and I can only say that she is a Duprez in petticoats. She cost me two thousand francs a year, only to develop her talent as a singer. She made me an enthusiast for music: I took a box at the Italian Opera for her and my daughter. I went there on alternate evenings with them, one night with Célestine, the next night with Josépha…’

  ‘What, you mean the famous singer?’

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ Crevel continued proudly, ‘the famous Josépha owes everything to me. Well, when she was twenty, in 1834 (I thought I had bound her to me for life and had become very soft with her), I wanted to give her some amusement and I let her meet a pretty little actress, Jenny Cadine, whose career had some similarity with her own. That actress too, owed everything to a protector who had brought her up as a cherished darling. Her protector was Baron Hulot.’

  ‘I know, Monsieur,’ said the Baroness calmly, without the slightest tremor in her voice.

  ‘Ah bah!’ exclaimed Crevel, more and more taken aback. ‘All very well! But do you know that your monster of a husband was protecting Jenny Cadine when she was thirteen years old?’

  ‘Well, Monsieur, what then?’

  ‘As Jenny Cadine,’ the retired shopkeeper went on, ‘like Josépha, was twenty when they met, the Baron must have been playing Louis XV to her Mademoiselle de Romans since 1826, and you were twelve years younger then.…’

  ‘Monsieur, I had my reasons for leaving Monsieur Hulot free.’

  ‘That lie, Madame, is enough to wipe out all your sins, no doubt, and will open the gate of Paradise to you,’ Crevel replied, with a knowing air that made the Baroness turn crimson. ‘Tell that story, sublime and adored woman, to others, but not to old Crevel, who, I may tell you, has roistered too often at two-couple parties with your rascal of a husband not to know your full worth! When he was half-seas over, he sometimes used to reproach himself and enlarge on all your perfections to me. Oh, I know you very well: you are an angel. Between a girl of twenty and you a rake might hesitate, but not me.’

  ‘Monsieur!’

  ‘Very well, I’ll stop. But you may as well know, saintly and worshipful woman, that husbands in their cups tell a great many things about their wives while their mistresses are listening, and their mistresses split their sides at them.’

  Tears of outraged modesty, appearing between Madame Hulot’s fine lashes, stopped the National Guardsman short, and he quite forgot to strike his pose.

  ‘To return to the point,’ he said, ‘there is a bond between the Baron and me, because of our mistresses. The Baron, like all rips, is a very good sort, really a genial type. Oh I enjoyed him, the rascal! No, really, the things he thought of.… Well, no more of these reminiscences. We became like two brothers. The rogue, very Regency, did his best to lead me astray, to preach Saint-Simonism where women were concerned, give me notions of behaving like a lord, like a blue-jerkined swashbuckler; but, you see, I loved my little dear well enough to marry her, if I had not been afraid of having children. Between two old papas, such good friends as we were, naturally the idea couldn’t but occur to us of marrying our children. Three months after the marriage of his son and my Célestine, Hulot… (I don’t know how I can bear to utter his name, the scoundrel! For he has fooled us both, Madame!)… well, the scoundrel stole my little Josépha. The cunning devil knew that he had been supplanted by a young Councillor of State and by an artist (no less!) in Jenny Cadine’s heart (because her successes were making more and more of a splash), and he took my poor little mistress from me, a love of a girl; but you surely must have seen her at the Italian Opera, where he got her in by influence.

  ‘Your man is not so careful as me. No one twists me round their fingers – I do everything methodically, according to rule. Jenny Cadine had alr
eady had a good cut out of him; she must have cost him pretty near thirty thousand francs a year. Well, you had better know that he has completely ruined himself now for Josépha. Josépha, Madame, is a Jewess; she is called Mirah, an anagram of Hiram, and that’s a Jewish label to identify her, for she’s a deserted child who was picked up in Germany. I have made some inquiries and found out that she’s the natural child of a rich Jewish banker.

  ‘The theatre, and above all what Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga, and Carabine taught her about the right fashion to treat old men, developed in that little girl whom I was bringing up in a proper, decent way – not expensive either – the instinct that the ancient Hebrews had for gold and jewels, for the Golden Calf! The famous singer now has a keen eye for the main chance; she wants to be rich, very rich. And she doesn’t squander a sou of all the money that’s squandered upon her. She tried her claws on Hulot, and she has plucked him clean – oh, plucked isn’t the word, you can call it skinned!

  ‘And now, poor wretch, after struggling to keep her against one of the Kellars, and the Marquis d’Esgrignon – both mad about Josépha – not to mention unknown worshippers at her shrine, he’s about to see her carried off by that Duke who’s rolling in money and patronizes the arts – what’s he called, now?… he’s a dwarf – ah! the Duc d’Hérouville. This grand lord wants to keep Josépha for himself alone. The whole courtesan world is talking about it, and the Baron knows nothing at all; for it’s just the same in the Thirteenth District as in all the others: the lover, like the husband, is the last to learn the truth.