Cousin Bette Read online

  They had all three burst out laughing, and Hortense had sung: ‘Wenceslas! O my heart’s dearest love!’ instead of ‘O Mathilde…’, and for a few moments there had been something like an armistice.

  ‘These little girls,’ said Cousin Bette next time she came, looking at Hortense, ‘imagine that no one but themselves can have sweethearts.’

  ‘Now,’ said Hortense, as soon as she and her cousin were alone, ‘prove to me that Wenceslas isn’t a fairytale, and I’ll give you my yellow cashmere shawl.’

  ‘But Wenceslas is a Count!’

  ‘All Poles are Counts!’

  ‘But he isn’t a Pole, he’s a Li… va… Lith…’

  ‘Lithuanian?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Livonian?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what he is!’

  ‘But what’s his name?’

  ‘Tell me, are you sure you can keep a secret?’

  ‘Oh, Cousin, I’ll be dumb!’

  ‘As a fish?’

  ‘As a fish!’

  ‘You swear by your eternal salvation?’

  ‘By my eternal salvation!’

  ‘No, by your happiness in this world?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, he’s Count Wenceslas Steinbock!’

  ‘That’s the name of one of Charles XII of Sweden’s generals.’

  ‘That was his great-uncle! His father settled in Livonia after the death of the King of Sweden; but he lost all his money in the 1812 campaign, and died, leaving the poor child, aged eight, penniless. The Grand Duke Constantine, for the sake of the name of Steinbock, took him under his protection and sent him to school.’

  ‘I’ll keep my word,’ Hortense had said. ‘Give me proof of his existence and my yellow shawl is yours! Ah, yellow is a brunette’s colour – it does as much for her as cosmetics!’

  ‘You will keep my secret?’

  ‘I’ll give you all mine.’

  ‘Well, the next time I come, I shall have the proof.’

  ‘But the proof is the sweetheart,’ Hortense had said.

  Cousin Bette’s fancy had been greatly taken by the wraps that she had seen in Paris, and she had been fascinated by the prospect of possessing the yellow shawl, which the Baron had given to his wife in 1808, and which, in 1830, had passed from mother to daughter, in accordance with the custom in some families. The shawl had become somewhat the worse for wear in the past ten years’ use, but the precious web, always kept in a sandal-wood box, seemed, like the Baroness’s furniture, unalterably new to the old maid’s eyes. So she had brought a present in her reticule that she intended to give the Baroness for her birthday, and that she considered convincing proof of the legendary lover’s existence.

  The present consisted of a silver seal composed of three figures wreathed in foliage, standing back to back and bearing the globe aloft. The three figures represented Faith, Hope, and Charity. Their feet rested on snarling snapping monsters, among which the symbolic serpent writhed. In 1846, after the tremendous impetus given to Benvenuto Cellini’s art by the work of Mademoiselle de Faveau and such artists as Wagner, Jeanest, Froment-Meurice, and wood-carvers like Liénard, this fine piece of work would surprise no one, but at that time a girl with some interest in jewellery could hardly fail to be impressed as she examined the seal, which Cousin Bette handed to her with the words: ‘Here, what do you think of this?’

  The figures, with their flowing draperies, had the composition and rhythm of the style of Raphael. In execution they suggested the Florentine school of workers in bronze created by Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Benvenuto Cellini, John of Bologna, and their peers. The French Renaissance had produced no more fantastic whimsical monsters than those symbolizing the evil passions. The palms, ferns, rushes, reeds, springing up around the Virtues showed a virtuosity, and a style and taste, that expert craftsmen might despair of rivalling. A ribbon twined among the three heads, and where it appeared between them displayed a W, a chamois, and the word fecit.

  ‘Who can have made this?’ Hortense asked.

  ‘My sweetheart, of course,’ Cousin Bette replied. ‘there are ten months of work in it. I earn more by making sword-knots. He told me that Steinbock means creature of the rocks or chamois, in German. He intends to sign everything he makes like this… Ah! your shawl is mine!’

  ‘Just tell me why.’

  ‘Could I buy a thing like this? Or commission it? Impossible – so it must have been given to me. Who would give such a present? Why, only a sweetheart!’

  Hortense, with a lack of candour that would have alarmed Lisbeth if she had perceived it, carefully refrained from expressing all her admiration, although she experienced the thrill that people sensitive to beauty feel when they see a masterpiece: faultless, complete, and unexpected.

  ‘Certainly,’ she said, ‘it’s very pretty.’

  ‘Yes, it’s pretty,’ answered the old maid; ‘but I would rather have an orange shawl. Well, my dear, my sweetheart spends his time working at things like this. Since he came to Paris he has made three or four trinkets of the same sort, and that’s the fruit of four years’ study and work. He has been serving an apprenticeship with founders, moulders, jewellers.… Bah! a mint of money has gone on it all. The young man tells me that in only a few months, now, he will be rich and famous.’

  ‘So you do really see him?’

  ‘Well, do you think I’m inventing all this? I was laughing, but I told you the truth.’

  ‘And he loves you?’ Hortense asked, with intense interest.

  ‘He adores me!’ her cousin replied solemnly. ‘You see, my dear, he has only known insipid, die-away women; they’re all like that in the north. A young, dark, slender girl, like me, soon warmed the cockles of his heart. But mum’s the word! You promised!’

  ‘He’ll go the same way as the five others,’ the girl said teasingly, still looking at the seal.

  ‘Six, Mademoiselle! I left one in Lorraine who would have fetched the moon out of the sky for me, and still would to this day.’

  ‘This one does even better. He brings you the sun.’

  ‘How can I make money out of that?’ Cousin Bette demanded. ‘You need to own a lot of land for the sun to be of any use to you.’

  Capping each other’s pleasantries with nonsense that may be imagined, they had burst into the laughter that had caused the Baroness such poignant distress as she saw her daughter unrestrainedly enjoying the gaiety natural at her age and was forced to think what her future might be.

  ‘But if he gives you jewels that have taken six months to make, it must be because he owes you a great deal?’ said Hortense, her mind profoundly exercised by the seal.

  ‘Ah, you want to know too much all at once!’ Cousin Bette replied. ‘But listen… now I’m going to let you into a secret.’

  ‘Shall I be with your sweetheart in it?’

  ‘Ah! you would like to see him, wouldn’t you? But, you know, when an old maid like your Bette has managed to keep a sweetheart for five years, she has him well tucked away. So you may leave us alone. I don’t possess a cat or a canary, you see, or a dog or a parrot, and an old nanny like me needs some little thing to love and make a fuss over; well… I give myself a Pole.’

  ‘Has he got moustaches?’

  ‘As long as that,’ said Bette, holding up a large needle filled with gold thread. She always took her sewing out with her, and worked while waiting for dinner.

  ‘If you keep interrupting me with questions,’ she went on, ‘you shall not be told anything. Here you are, only twenty-two, and you have much more to say than I have at forty-two, almost forty-three.’

  ‘I’m all ears. I’m as dumb as a doorpost,’ said Hortense.

  ‘My sweetheart has made a bronze group ten inches high of Samson tearing a lion to pieces,’ Cousin Bette continued; ‘and he buried it in the ground and got it covered with verdigris, so that anyone would think that it’s as old as Samson. It’s for sale as a work of art in one of the antique shops in the place
du Carrousel, near my house. If only your father, knowing Monsieur Popinot, the Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, and Count de Rastignac, as he does, would speak to them about this group as a fine antique that he had happened to notice in passing! It seems that the great have a taste for that kind of thing instead of keeping their minds on our sword-knots, and that my sweetheart’s fortune would be made if they bought or even came to look at this worn-looking lump of metal. The poor boy declares that the thing would be taken for an antique, and fetch a handsome price. And then, if it was one of the Ministers who took the group, he would go and present himself, prove that he made it, and bays would crown his head! Oh, he thinks no small beer of himself, that young man! He’s as full of pride as two new-made Counts!’

  ‘He’s Michelangelo over again,’ said Hortense; ‘and for a lover he has kept his wits… How much does he want for it?’

  ‘Fifteen hundred francs! The dealer can’t take less, because he has to have his share.’

  ‘Papa is King’s Commissioner at present,’ said Hortense. ‘He sees the two Ministers every day in the Chamber and he’ll arrange what you want, I’ll see to it. You’ll be a rich woman, Madame la Comtesse Steinbock!’

  ‘No, my young man is too lazy. He spends whole weeks twisting and playing with red wax, and nothing gets done. Ah bah! he spends his life in the Louvre, in the Library, looking at engravings and making sketches. He’s an idler.’

  So the conversation went gaily between the two cousins. Hortense’s laughter sounded forced, for the kind of dreaming romantic love that seizes all young girls had overwhelmed her, love of a stranger, with thoughts crystallizing round some figure cast in the way by chance, like frost flowers forming on straw drifted to a window ledge by the wind. For ten months she had been building up the image of a real person from the stories about her cousin’s lover, a fabulous lover, because she believed, as her mother also did, in her cousin’s perpetual celibacy; and, a week before, this phantom had become Count Wenceslas Steinbock, the dream had a birth certificate, a mist had materialized as a young man of thirty. The seal that she held in her hand, a kind of Annunciation, in which genius sprang forth like a light, had the power of a talisman. Hortense felt so overflowing with happiness that she grasped at the thought that the legend might be true. There was an effervescence in her blood, and she laughed wildly in order to prevent her cousin from reading her mind.

  ‘Ah, I think the drawing-room door is open,’ said Cousin Bette;‘so let’s go and see whether Monsieur Crevel has gone.’

  ‘Mama has been very sad ever since the day before yesterday. The marriage that was being discussed must have fallen through.’

  ‘Bah! that can be put right. I can tell you this much – a Councillor of the Supreme Court is the person in question. How would you like to be Madame la Présidente? Well, if it rests with Monsieur Crevel, he will certainly say something to me about it, and I shall know tomorrow whether there is any hope!’

  ‘Cousin, leave the seal with me,’ begged Hortense. ‘I won’t show it to anyone. It’s a month till Mama’s birthday. I’ll give it back to you that morning.’

  ‘No, give it to me now. I must have a case made for it.’

  ‘But I want to let Papa see it, so that he can speak to the Minister with all the facts before him, because people in authority have to be careful not to put themselves in a false position,’ she said.

  ‘Well, don’t show it to your mother, that’s all I ask; for if she knew I had a sweetheart she would laugh at me…’

  ‘I promise you I won’t.’

  The two cousins reached the boudoir door just as the Baroness fainted, and Hortense’s cry was enough to bring her back to consciousness. Bette went in search of smelling salts. When she returned she found daughter and mother in each other’s arms, the mother soothing her daughter’s fears, telling her:‘It’s nothing: just an attack of nerves.… Here is your father,’ she added, recognizing the Baron’s ring. ‘On no account are you to mention this to him.…’

  Adeline rose to go to meet her husband, with the intention of taking him into the garden before dinner, meaning to speak to him about the broken-off marriage negotiations, ask him for information about his intentions, and try to give him some advice.

  Baron Hector Hulot presented an appearance at once parliamentary and Napoleonic, for it is easy to distinguish the Imperials, men who served under the Empire, by their military erectness, their blue coats with gold buttons, buttoned high, their black silk cravats, and the air of command developed in them by the habitual exercise of despotic authority necessary in the rapidly changing circumstances of their careers. In the Baron, it must be agreed, nothing suggested age. His sight was still so good that he read without glasses; his handsome oval face, framed in black side-whiskers – too black, alas! – had a high colour, with the veining that indicates a sanguine temperament; and his figure, controlled by a belt, was still, as Brillat-Savarin would have described it, majestic. A high aristocratic air and great affability cloaked the libertine with whom Crevel had had so many joyous sprees. He was, indeed, one of those men whose eyes light up at the sight of a pretty woman, who smile at every beautiful creature, even at a passer-by whom they will never see again.

  ‘Did you speak in the debate, my dear?’ Adeline asked, noticing that he looked preoccupied and worried.

  ‘No,’ replied Hector, ‘but I am tired to death of listening to speeches dragged out for two hours before they put the question to the vote. They fight battles of words, with speeches like cavalry charges that fail to scatter the enemy! Words have taken the place of action now, which is not very enjoyable for men who are used to marching, as I said to the Marshal when I left him. But it’s quite bad enough to be bored on the Ministers’ benches, let’s enjoy ourselves here.… Good evening, Nanny! How are you, little kid?’

  And he put his arm round his daughter’s neck, kissed her and pinched her cheek, drew her to his knee with her head on his shoulder and her beautiful golden hair against his face.

  ‘He is tired and harassed,’ Madame Hulot said to herself;‘and now I’m about to add to his worries. Perhaps I ought to wait.… Are you going to spend this evening with us?’ she said aloud.

  ‘No, my dear children. I must leave you after dinner; and if it had not been the day that Nanny comes, and my children, and my brother, you would not have seen me at all.’

  The Baroness picked up the newspaper, looked at the theatre list, and laid it down again when she had read the announcement of Robert le Diable at the Opera. Josépha, whom the Italian Opera had surrendered to the French Opera six months before, was singing the part of Alice. This pantomime did not escape the Baron’s notice, and he stared at his wife. Adeline lowered her eyes. She went out to the garden, and he followed her.

  ‘What is it, Adeline?’ he said, putting his arm round her, drawing her to him and holding her close. ‘Surely you know that I love you more than…’

  ‘More than Jenny Cadine and Josépha!’ she boldly interrupted him.

  ‘And who told you that?’ demanded the Baron, releasing his wife and stepping back.

  ‘I received an anonymous letter, which I burned, and it told me, my dear, that Hortense’s marriage came to nothing because of our financial difficulties. As your wife, my dear Hector, I would never have uttered a word. I knew of your liaison with Jenny Cadine – did I ever complain? But as Hortense’s mother I must not shrink from the truth.’

  Hulot, after a moment’s silence most painful to his wife in which the heavy beating of her heart could be heard, uncrossed his arms and put them round her, pressed her to his heart and kissed her brow, saying with the intensity of strong emotion:

  ‘Adeline, you are an angel, and I’m a miserable wretch.…’

  ‘No, no,’ answered the Baroness, at once laying her fingers on his lips to stop his denigration of himself.

  ‘Yes, I haven’t a sou at this moment to give Hortense, and I feel desperately worried; but since you open your heart to me like
this, I can confide in you, pour out troubles that are stifling me.… If your Uncle Fischer is finding himself in difficulties, it’s my fault; he has backed bills of exchange for me for twenty-five thousand francs. And all that for the sake of a woman who deceives me, who ridicules me behind my back, who calls me an old dyed tom-cat! Oh, it’s appalling that it should cost more to satisfy a vice than to support a family! And it is impossible to resist.… I might promise you here and now never to return to that abominable Jewess, and yet if she scrawled me a couple of lines I would go, like a man going into battle under the Emperor.’

  ‘Don’t torment yourself, Hector,’ said the poor woman, in despair, forgetting her daughter at the sight of tears in her husband’s eyes. ‘You know, I have my diamonds. You must save my uncle, no matter what happens.’

  ‘Your diamonds are hardly worth twenty thousand francs today. That would not be enough for old Fischer; so keep them for Hortense. I’ll see the Marshal tomorrow.’

  ‘My poor dear!’ exclaimed the Baroness, taking her Hector’s hands and kissing them.

  That was all she said in rebuke. Adeline offered her diamonds; the father gave them to Hortense. The gesture seemed to her sublime, and she was completely disarmed.

  ‘He is the master – he has the right to take everything, and he leaves me my diamonds! How noble he is!’

  So this woman thought, and indeed she had gained more by her gentleness than another might have done by jealous anger.

  The moralist cannot deny that, generally speaking, well-bred people addicted to a vice are much more likeable than the virtuous are. Being conscious of their own shortcomings, they are careful to show a broadminded attitude towards their critics’ weaknesses; and so they purchase lenience for themselves, and are considered first-class fellows. There may be some delightful people among the virtuous, but virtue usually believes that it is fair enough of itself to be able to dispense with trying to please. Besides, really virtuous people, leaving hypocrites out of account, have nearly all certain misgivings about their situation. They think that they have had the worst of a bargain in life’s market, and their remarks are apt to be charged with acid, in the tone of those who consider themselves not properly appreciated.