Cousin Bette (38 page)

I could accept death at one stroke; but I cannot bear to suffer for twenty-five years, like my mother. If you have betrayed me after three years of absolute, unwavering, love, for your father-in-law's mistress, what rivals would you not give me later? Ah, Monsieur, you have begun much earlier in life than my father the rake's progress, the vicious way of life, that disgraces the father of a family, loses him his children's respect, and leads in the end to shame and despair.

I am not irreconcilable. Unforgiving resentment does not befit frail human beings who live under the eye of God. If you achieve fame and success by sustained effort, if you give up courtesans, ignoble and defiling courses, in me you will find a wife worthy of you again.

I believe you have too much dignity to have recourse to law-courts. You will respect my wish, Monsieur le Comte, and leave me with my mother; and above all, never present yourself there. I have left you all the money that that vile woman lent you. Good-bye.

HORTENSE HULOT

The letter was written painfully. As she wrote Hortense gave way to tears, to the outcries of slaughtered passion. She laid down her pen, but took it up again to write simply what love usually, in such testamentary letters, declaims in unmeasured terms. Her heart poured out its emotion in exclamations, cries, and tears; but what she wrote was dictated by reason.

The young wife, informed by Louise that all was ready, slowly wandered through the little garden, the bedroom, the drawing-room, looking at everything for the last time. Then to the cook she gave the most earnest injunctions to look after Monsieur well, promising to reward her if she behaved like an honest reliable girl. And at last she got into the cab to go
to her mother's, her heart broken, weeping so bitterly that her maid was distressed, covering the baby Wenceslas with kisses, with a feverish joy in him that revealed much love still remaining for his father.

The Baroness had already been told by Lisbeth that Wenceslas's father-in-law was much to blame for his son-in-law's fault. She was not surprised to see her daughter arrive; she approved of the action she had taken, and agreed to keep her with her. Adeline, perceiving that gentleness and devotion had never done anything to check Hector, for whom her regard was beginning to diminish, considered that her daughter was right to take another way. Within three weeks the poor mother had received two blows that had given her greater pain than even the tortures previously endured. Through the Baron, Victorin and his wife had been impoverished; and now, according to Lisbeth, it was his fault that Wenceslas had gone astray, he had corrupted his son-in-law. The veneration in which the head of this family had been held, for so long maintained by means of extravagant sacrifices, was losing its authority. While not bewailing the lost money, the younger Hulots began to feel both mistrust and anxiety with regard to the Baron. This feeling of theirs, which was obvious enough, deeply distressed Adeline; she had a foreboding of the dissolution of the family.

The Baroness gave up her dining-room to her daughter's use, and it was quickly transformed into a bedroom, with the help of the Marshal's money; and the hall became, as it is in many households, the dining-room.

When, on his return home, Wenceslas had read and laid down the two letters, he experienced something like a feeling of joy amidst his sadness. Not allowed to stray, so to speak, out of sight of his wife, he had inwardly rebelled against this new form of the imprisonment that Lisbeth had imposed upon him. He had been gorged with love for three years. He too had had reason to reflect during the past fortnight; and the outcome was that he found family life a tiresome burden to bear. He had just heard himself congratulated by Stidmann on the passion he had aroused in Valérie; for Stidmann, with an ulterior motive easy to guess, deemed it an opportune moment
to flatter the vanity of Hortense's husband in the hope of consoling the victim. And so Wenceslas was glad to be able to return to Madame Marneffe. Yet at the same time he could not help remembering the entire and undiluted happiness that he had enjoyed with Hortense, all her perfections, her wisdom, her innocent and uncomplicated love, and he acutely regretted her. He had an impulse to hurry after her to his mother-in-law's and beg forgiveness, but he did as Hulot and Crevel had done, he went to see Madame Marneffe, and he took his wife's letter with him in order to show her what a disaster she had caused and, so to speak, profit by this misfortune to demand favours from his mistress as a recompense.

He found Crevel with Valérie. The Mayor, swollen with pride, was restlessly moving about the drawing-room as if blown before a gusty wind of emotion. He repeatedly struck his pose as if about to burst into speech, and then, not daring, stopped the words on his lips. He looked radiant. Time and again he was drawn to the window to drum with his fingers on the panes. He followed Valérie with his eyes, with a touched and tender expression on his face. Fortunately for Crevel, Lisbeth came in.

‘Cousin,' he whispered to her, ‘have you heard the news? I am a father! It seems to me that I love my poor Célestine less. Oh! what a wonderful thing it is to have a child by a woman whom one idolizes, to be a father in one's heart as well as by blood! Oh, do tell Valérie what I say. I intend to work for this child, I mean him to be rich! She told me that from certain signs she believes it is to be a boy! If it's a boy I want him to have the name Crevel: I'll see my lawyer about it.'

‘I know how much she loves you,' said Lisbeth; ‘but for the sake of your own future and hers, control yourself; don't keep rubbing your hands every two minutes.'

While Lisbeth and Crevel were talking aside, Valérie had asked Wenceslas for her letter; and her whisperings soon dispelled his sadness.

‘Now that you're free, my dear,' she said, ‘do you really think great artists ought to marry? You only live by your imagination and your liberty! Don't worry. I'll love you so
much, my dear poet, that you'll never miss your wife. However, if you want to preserve appearances, as many people do, I'll undertake to see to it that Hortense returns to you, without delay.…'

‘Oh, if only that were possible!'

‘I'm sure it is,' said Valérie, rather piqued. ‘Your poor father-in-law is in every way a finished man. Out of vanity he wants to appear as a man who is loved, he likes people to think that he has a mistress, and the point means so much to his pride that I can twist him round my fingers. The Baroness still loves her old Hector so much (I seem to be perpetually talking about the
Iliad
) that the old people will induce Hortense to make it up with you. Only, if you don't want to raise storms at home, don't leave your mistress for three weeks without a visit from you… I felt like dying. My sweet, an aristocrat like you owes a certain respect and consideration to a woman whom he has compromised to the degree that you have compromised me, especially when the woman has to be very careful about what she does, for the sake of her reputation. Stay to dinner, my angel… and remember that I must treat you with great coldness, all the more so since you are responsible for my only too apparent fall.'

Baron Montès was announced. Valérie rose and ran to meet him, and whispered to him for a few moments, and gave him the same injunctions as to his behaviour and the reserve he must show as she had just given Wenceslas, for the Brazilian wore an exalted expression appropriate to the great news that had raised him to the seventh heaven – he, at least, had no doubt of his paternity!

Thanks to these tactics, based on the pride and conceit of man in his capacity as lover, Valérie had four delighted men round her table, all excited and under her spell, each believing that he was adored; Marneffe dubbed them in a jocose aside to Lisbeth, including himself in the band, the five Fathers of the Church.

Only Baron Hulot, at first, looked care-ridden, and for this reason. When he was ready to leave his office, he had gone to see the head of the Personnel Department, a general, his comrade for thirty years, and had spoken to him about
appointing Marneffe to Coquet's place, for Coquet had agreed to send in his resignation.

‘My dear fellow,' the Baron had said, ‘I would not ask this favour of the Marshal without discussing the matter first with you, and having your concurrence.'

‘My dear fellow,' replied the Director of Personnel, ‘allow me to point out to you that for your own sake you ought not to press this nomination. I have already given you my views. It would cause scandalous talk in the Department, where there is already far too much interest in you and Madame Marneffe. This is between ourselves, of course. I do not want to hurt your feelings, or to go against your wishes in any way, and I'll prove it to you. If you are absolutely set on this thing, if you must ask for Coquet's place (and he will be a real loss to the Ministry – he's been here since 1809), I'll take a fortnight's leave and go away to the country to leave you a clear field with the Marshal, who is as fond of you as if you were his son. In this way I'll be neither for nor against, and I'll have done nothing against my conscience as responsible Director.'

‘Thank you,' said the Baron. ‘I'll think over what you say.'

‘I may perhaps be allowed to make these comments, my dear fellow, since the matter affects your personal interests more than it does me, or my position. The Marshal has the last word, after all. And of course, my dear fellow, we are blamed for so many things – what does one more or less matter? We can reckon ourselves hardened to criticism. Under the Restoration men were appointed just to give them a salary, without too much concern about the advantage to the Civil Service.… We are old comrades.…'

‘Quite so,' said the Baron, ‘and it's just because I do not want to do anything that might impair an old and valued friendship that I…'

‘Ah, well,' said the Director of Personnel, seeing embarrassment painted on Hulot's face, ‘I'll go off for a short time, my dear fellow. But take care! You haveenemies, people who covet your fine salary, and you have only one anchor to hold you. Ah! if you were a Deputy, like me, you would have nothing to fear. So be careful!'

These remarks, so full of friendly feeling, made a strong impression on the Councillor of State.

‘But why do you make so much of this, Roger? Is there something behind these mysterious warnings?'

The person addressed as Roger looked at Hulot, took his hand and clasped it.

‘We have been friends for too long for me not to give you a piece of advice. If you want to maintain your position you must look after your own interests, make the bed you mean to lie in. In your place, instead of asking the Marshal to give Coquet's place to Marneffe, I would beg him to use his influence to ensure a place for me on the General Council of State, where I could end my days in peace. I should act like the beaver retreating before the hunters, and give up what they're attacking – the Director-generalship.'

‘What do you mean? The Marshal would surely never forget…'

‘My friend, the Marshal defended you so hotly in one Council of Ministers that no one now thinks of giving you the sack; but there was some question of it! So don't give them a pretext. I don't want to say more. Just at present you can make what conditions you like, be a Councillor of State and Peer of France. If you wait too long, if you give them a handle to use against you, I don't answer for anything.… Do you still want me to go off on leave?'

‘Wait for a while. I'll see the Marshal,' Hulot answered; ‘and I'll send my brother to sound him first and see how matters stand.'

The frame of mind in which the Baron returned to Madame Marneffe's may be imagined; he had almost forgotten that he was to be a father. Roger, in warning him of the realities of his situation, had acted as a true and kind friend. Yet such was Valérie's influence that by the time dinner was half over the Baron was in harmony with the rest, and waxed all the louder in his merriment because he had more worries to silence. The unfortunate man did not suspect that that very evening he was to find himself caught between the prospect of losing his happiness and the danger that the Personnel Director had
warned him of, forced to choose between Madame Marneffe and his position.

About eleven o'clock, when the party was at its height and very gay, for the room was full of people, Valérie beckoned Hector to a corner of her sofa.

‘My dear old thing,' she said to him, in a lowered voice, ‘your daughter is so vexed with Wenceslas for coming here that she has left him. She's a bit too hot-headed is Hortense. Ask Wenceslas to let you see the letter the little fool wrote him. This separation of two lovers, of which I'm made out to be the cause, might do me an enormous amount of harm; for that's the sort of slanderous gossip by which virtuous women assert their superiority. It's a shocking thing that a person should pretend to be injured in order to throw blame on a woman who is guilty of nothing but having a house that people find agreeable. If you love me, you will clear me by sending the two turtle-doves home to their nest. I'm not at all anxious, anyway, to receive your son-in-law; it was you who brought him here, so you take him away again! If you have any authority over your family, it seems to me that you might well make your wife arrange a reconciliation. Tell the good old lady from me that if I am unjustly credited with coming between a young husband and wife, breaking up a family and grabbing both father and son-in-law, then I'll live up to my reputation by harrying them in my own fashion! Haven't I got Lisbeth, here, talking of leaving me? She prefers her family to mine, and I can't very well blame her. She has told me she will stay only if the young people patch up their quarrel. Just see the fix that leaves us in! Expenses in this house will be tripled!'

‘Oh, leave that to me,' said the Baron, when he had heard the scandalous story of his daughter's flight. ‘I'll soon put that right.'