Cousin Bette (25 page)

The evil has indeed gone beyond all bounds, and the law-courts are at last beginning to deal with it severely, though ineffectively. Only a law compelling wage-earning servants to hold a workman's testimonial-book will eradicate it. That would end it as if by magic. If servants were obliged to produce their book, and masters to enter the reasons for dismissal, corruption would undoubtedly receive a powerful check. The heads of government, absorbed in the high politics of the moment, have no idea of the extreme dishonesty of the lower classes in Paris: it is equalled only by their consuming greed. No statistics are available to reveal the alarming number of twenty-year-old working men who marry cooks of forty or fifty, enriched by theft. One trembles at the thought of the consequences of such unions, considering the possible effects in increase of crime, degeneracy of the race, and unhappy family life. As for the economic consequences of the merely financial loss caused by domestic thieving, they are enormous. The cost of living, doubled in this way, deprives many households of a margin for luxury. Luxury! It is responsible for half the trade of a nation, as well as for life's elegance. Books and flowers are as necessary as bread to a very great many people.

Lisbeth, who knew all about this shocking imposition on Paris households, had had management of Valérie's housekeeping in mind when she had promised her support during that terrible scene in the course of which they had sworn to be like sisters. She had therefore brought from the depths of the Vosges to Paris a relative on her mother's side, a former cook to the Bishop of Nancy, a pious spinster of the strictest honesty. Because she was afraid, nevertheless, of the dangers of her inexperience in Paris, above all the danger of evil counsels, which destroy so many necessarily fragile loyalties,
Lisbeth accompanied Mathurine to the central market, and tried to train her in the art of buying.

She taught her to know the proper price of goods in order to command the salesmen's respect, to include luxuries, fish for example, in the menu when they were least expensive, to watch prices and be able to forecast a rise in order to buy before it occurred. In Paris such housewifely thrift is most necessary for the domestic economy. As Mathurine was paid good wages and given generous presents, she was sufficiently attached to the household to delight in making bargains on its behalf. For some time now her judgement had been almost equal to Lisbeth's, and Lisbeth thought her sufficiently well-trained, sufficiently dependable, to do the marketing alone, except on the days when Valérie was entertaining guests – which, by the way, were frequent, and for this reason:

The Baron had at first observed unimpeachable propriety; but his passion for Madame Marneffe was, within a very short time, so ardent, so all-absorbing, that he became anxious to spend as little time away from her as possible. He began by dining with her four times a week, and soon found it delightful to dine there every day. Six months after his daughter's marriage, he was paying an allowance of two thousand francs a month for his board. Madame Marneffe invited to her table any friends that the dear Baron wished to entertain. Dinner, then, was always prepared for six, for the Baron might bring in three guests without warning. Lisbeth, by her good management, solved the difficult problem of keeping a lavish table for an expenditure of one thousand francs, so handing over a thousand francs a month to Madame Marneffe. As Valérie's wardrobe was amply paid for by both Crevel and the Baron, the two friends made another thousand francs a month on that.

In this way, the candid, transparently open creature had already amassed about a hundred and fifty thousand francs. She had saved her yearly allowance and monthly benefits, used them as capital to invest, and increased them by vast profits gained through Crevel's generosity in making the capital of his ‘little duchess' share in the successes of his own financial speculation. Crevel had initiated Valérie into the jargon and procedure of the Bourse; and, like all Parisian
women, she had rapidly become more adept than her master. Lisbeth, who never spent a sou of her twelve hundred francs, whose rent and clothes were paid for, who did not need to put her hand into her pocket for anything, also possessed a little capital of five or six thousand francs, which Crevel, in a fatherly way, made the most of for her.

The Baron's love and Crevel's were, all the same, a heavy burden for Valérie. On the day on which this drama is taken up again, Valérie, irritated by one of those crisis-provoking incidents that are rather like the bell whose clamour induces swarming bees to settle, had gone upstairs to Lisbeth. She wanted to indulge in the soothingly long-drawn lamentations, the equivalent of sociably smoked cigarettes, with which women alleviate the minor miseries of their lives.

‘Lisbeth, my love, two hours of Crevel this morning! What a frightful bore! Oh, how I wish I could send you in my place!'

‘That can't be done, unfortunately,' said Lisbeth, with a smile. ‘I'm an old maid for life.'

‘Belonging to those two old men! There are times when I'm ashamed of myself! Ah, if my poor mother could only see me!'

‘No need to talk to me as if I were Crevel,' replied Lisbeth.

‘Tell me, my own little Bette, you don't despise me, do you?'

‘Ah! if I had been pretty… such adventures I would have had!' exclaimed Lisbeth. ‘That's how I excuse you.'

‘But you would only have listened to your heart,' said Madame Marneffe, sighing.

‘Bah!' replied Lisbeth. ‘Marneffe is a corpse that they've forgotten to bury, the Baron is practically your husband, Crevel is your admirer. As I see it, you're like any other married woman, perfectly in order.'

‘No, that's not the point, my sweet, my trouble's different. But you don't choose to understand me.…'

‘Oh, yes, I understand you all right!' said the peasant from Lorraine. ‘For what you are hinting at is part of my revenge. But what do you want me to do? I'm doing my best.'

‘Loving Wenceslas to the pitch of pining away for him!'
cried Valérie, flinging her arms wide, ‘and not being able to contrive to see him – how can I bear it? Hulot suggests that he should come to dinner here, and my artist declines I He doesn't know how he's idolized, that monster of a man. What has his wife got? A good figure, that's all! She's beautiful, there's no denying; but I am a good deal more than that, I should think!'

‘Set your mind at rest, my child; he shall come,' said Lisbeth, in the tone of voice nurses use to impatient children. ‘I'll see to that.'

‘But when?'

‘Perhaps this week.'

‘Here's a kiss for you.'

As may be seen, these two women were in complete accord. All Valérie's actions, even the most apparently wilful, her pleasures, her fits of the sulks, were decided upon only after mature deliberation on the part of the two women.

Lisbeth, who found this courtesan existence strangely exciting, advised Valérie in everything, and pursued the course of her vengeance with relentless logic. She adored Valérie, moreover; she had made a daughter of her, a friend, someone to love. She found in her a creole docility, a voluptuary's yielding temper. She chatted with her all morning, with much more pleasure than she had taken in talking to Wenceslas. They could laugh together over the mischief they were plotting and the stupidity of men; and count up in company the accumulating interest of their respective treasure hoards. In both her new plot and her new friendship, Lisbeth had indeed found an outlet for her energy much more rewarding than her insensate love for Wenceslas. The delights of gratified hatred are among the fiercest and most ardent that the heart can feel. Love is the gold, but hate is the iron of that mine of the emotions that lies within us. And then Lisbeth saw beauty in Valérie, in all its splendour, the beauty that she worshipped as we adore what can never be our own, embodied in a person much more sympathetic than Wenceslas, who towards her had always been cold and unresponsive.

By the end of nearly three years Lisbeth was beginning to see some progress in the undermining tunnel, in the driving of
which her whole existence was consumed and the energies of her mind absorbed. Lisbeth plotted; Madame Marneffe acted. Madame Marneffe was the axe, Lisbeth the hand that wielded it; and the hand was striking blow upon rapid blow to demolish that family which from day to day became ever more hateful to her; for hatred continually grows, just as love every day increases, when we love. Love and hatred are passions that feed on their own fuel; but of the two, hatred is the more enduring. Love is limited by our human limits; its strength derives from life and giving. Hate is like death and avarice, a denial, a negation, although active, above human beings and human concerns. Lisbeth, having entered upon the life that was congenial to her nature, was devoting to it the strength of all her faculties. She was to be reckoned with, like the Jesuits, as an underground force. Her physical regeneration, too, was complete. Her countenance shone. And Lisbeth dreamed of becoming the wife of Marshal Hulot.

This scene, in which the two friends bluntly told each other all that was in their minds, without the least reserve, took place on Lisbeth's return from the market, where she had gone to buy the materials for a choice dinner. Marneffe, who coveted Monsieur Coquet's position, had invited him and the staid, respectable Madame Coquet, and Valérie was hoping to have the subject of the head clerk's resignation discussed by Hulot that same evening. Lisbeth was dressing for a visit to the Baroness, with whom she was going to dine.

‘You will be back in time to pour out tea, Bette dear?' asked Valérie.

‘I hope so.…'

‘What do you mean, you hope so? Have you reached the point of staying the night with Adeline, to gloat over her tears while she sleeps?'

‘If only I could!' replied Lisbeth, with a laugh. ‘I would not refuse. She is paying for the days of her good fortune now, and that suits me, for I remember my childhood. Turn about is fair play. It's her turn to bite the dust, and I shall be Countess de Forzheim!'

*

Lisbeth went off to the rue Plumet, where she now usually
went in the mood of a person visiting the theatre, to indulge in an emotional feast.

The apartment that Hulot had chosen for his wife comprised a large high-ceilinged hall, a drawing-room, and a bedroom with a dressing-room. The dining-room lay beyond the drawing-room and opened into it. Two servants' rooms and a kitchen, on the third floor, completed the suite, which was not unworthy of a Councillor of State and Director at the War Office. The house, the courtyard, and the staircase were of imposing proportions. The Baroness, as she had to furnish her drawing-room, bedroom, and dining-room with the relics of her days of splendour, had taken the best of the worn-out furniture from her home in the rue de l'Université. The poor woman was fond of these silent witnesses to her happiness: for her they spoke with an eloquence which was almost consoling. In these remembrances of happier days she caught glimpses of flowers, just as she could see on the carpets the patterned roses barely visible to others.

Entering the vast hall, where a dozen chairs, a barometer, a huge stove, and long white calico curtains bordered with red suggested the comfortless waiting-rooms in government buildings, one felt one's heart contract; one had an oppressive sense of the solitude in which this woman lived. Sorrow, like pleasure, creates its own atmosphere. A first glance into any home tells one whether love reigns there, or despair.

Adeline was to be found in an enormous bedroom, surrounded by the fine furniture created by Jacob Desmalters, in speckled mahogany, with that Empire ornament of ormolu that contrives to look colder even than Louis XVI bronzes. And it was a chilling sight to see this woman, seated on a Roman chair before her work-table decorated with sphinxes, her colour gone, affecting a show of gaiety, preserving her proud Imperial air, as she had so carefully preserved the blue velvet dress that she wore in the house. Her proud spirit sustained her body and maintained her beauty. The Baroness, by the end of the first year of her exile in this place, had taken the full measure of the extent of her misfortune.

‘He may banish me here, but my Hector has still given me a better life than a simple peasant woman has any right to
expect,' she said to herself. ‘This is the decision he has made: his will be done! I am Baroness Hulot, sister-in-law of a Marshal of France. I have done nothing that I can reproach myself with. My two children are established in life. I am able to wait for death, wrapped in the immaculate veils of a virtuous wife, in the crape of my vanished happiness.'

A portrait of Hulot in the uniform of a Commissary general of the Imperial Guard, painted by Robert Lefebvre in 1810, hung above the worktable. When a visitor was announced, Adeline would put away in a drawer of the table a copy of the
Imitation of Christ
which was her constant study. This blameless Magdalen in her retreat heard the voice of the Holy Spirit.

‘Mariette, my girl,' said Lisbeth to the cook, who opened the door to her, ‘how is my dear Adeline?'

‘Oh, well enough, she
seems
, Mademoiselle. But, between ourselves, if she goes on with her notions, they'll be the end of her,' said Mariette, in a whisper. ‘Indeed, you really ought to make her promise to eat more. Yesterday, Madame told me to give her only two sous' worth of milk and one little roll in the morning, and for dinner either a herring or a little cold veal, and to cook a pound of veal to last the week, with her dining here alone, of course. She won't spend more than ten sous a day on her food. It's not right. If I said a word about this pinching and scrimping to Monsieur le Maréchal, he could easily have a quarrel with Monsieur le Baron about it and cut him out of his will; instead of which, you are so good and clever, perhaps you'll be able to fix things up.…'

‘But why don't you speak to Monsieur le Baron?' inquired Lisbeth.