Cousin Bette (53 page)

And the Baroness presently came down the steps to join the family group. At fifty-five years of age, tried by so many sorrows, incessantly trembling as if shaking with fever, grown pale and wrinkled, Adeline still preserved her fine figure, noble carriage, and natural dignity. Seeing her, people said: ‘She must have been lovely!' Fretted as she was by her devastating ignorance of her husband's fate, by her inability
to let him share the prosperity that the family was beginning to enjoy in the peace and seclusion of this oasis of Paris, she had the imposing charm of timeworn ruins. With the extinguishing of each new gleam of hope, after each fruitless search, Adeline fell into a dark fit of melancholy that was the despair of her children.

The Baroness's return was eagerly awaited that day, for she had set off in the morning with some hope. An official, under an obligation to Hulot for advancement in his career, had said that he had seen the Baron in a box at the Ambigu-Comique Theatre, with a strikingly beautiful woman. Adeline had gone to call on Baron Vernier. That high official, while confirming that he had indeed seen his former patron, and saying that from the Baron's manner and behaviour towards the woman during the play he had received the impression that there was a clandestine bond between them, had told Madame Hulot that her husband had left well before the end of the performance, in order to avoid meeting him.

‘He looked like a man on a family outing, and his appearance suggested straitened circumstances,' he said in conclusion.

‘Well?' the three women interrogated the Baroness.

‘Well, Monsieur Hulot is in Paris,' replied Adeline; ‘and it's some happiness even to know that he is near us.'

‘He does not appear to have mended his ways!' said Lisbeth, when Adeline had given them an account of her interview with Baron Vernier. ‘He must have set up house with some little work-girl. But where can he be getting money from? I'll lay a wager he asks his former mistresses for it – Mademoiselle Jenny Cadine or Josépha.'

The nervous trembling that constantly shook the Baroness increased in violence. She wiped away tears that rose to her eyes, and looked sadly up.

‘I do not believe that a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour would have fallen so low,' she said.

‘For the sake of his pleasure,' returned Lisbeth, ‘is there anything that he would not do? He has embezzled from the state, so he will steal from individuals; he may come to commit murder perhaps…'

‘Oh! Lisbeth!' exclaimed the Baroness. ‘Keep such thoughts to yourself.'

Just then Louise approached the family group, which had been joined by the two little Hulots and little Wenceslas, come to see if there were sweets in their grandmother's pockets.

‘What is it, Louise?' someone asked.

‘There's a man asking for Mademoiselle Fischer.'

‘What kind of man?' asked Lisbeth.

‘Mademoiselle, he's all in rags, with fluff all over him like a mattress-maker. He has a red nose, and smells of wine and brandy.… He's like one of those workmen who don't work more than half the week.'

The effect of this not very attractive description was to send Lisbeth hurrying to the court of the house in the rue Louis-le-Grand. There she found a man smoking a pipe obviously coloured by someone practised in that smoker's art.

‘Why have you come here, Chardin?' she said. ‘It was arranged that you should be at the door of Madame Marneffe's house in the rue Barbet-de-Jouy on the first Saturday of every month. I have just come back after staying five hours there, and you didn't appear!'

‘I did go, respected and kind young lady!' answered the mattress-maker; ‘but there was a prize game of pool on at the café des Savants, in the rue du Coeur-Volant, and everybody has his weaknesses. Mine is billiards. Without billiards, I might have silver plates to eat off. Because I'll tell you this!' he said, as he fumbled in the pocket of his torn trousers and took out a scrap of paper. ‘Billiards means a dram of spirits here and a drop of plum brandy there.… It ruins a man, just like everything good does, because of the things that go with it. I know what the orders are, but the old man is in such a corner that I tried my chance on forbidden ground.… If our horsehair were all horsehair, we might sleep on it, but it's a mixture! God isn't on everyone's side, as they say; he helps the ones he likes best – he has a right to, after all. Here's the writing of your esteemed relation; very friendly to the mattress trade, he is.… It goes with his political opinions.'

And old Chardin sketched shaky zigzags in the air with his right forefinger.

Lisbeth, unheeding, read the following note:

Dear Cousin,

Be my Providence I Send me three hundred francs, today.

HECTOR

‘Why does he need so much money?'

‘It's for the landlord!'said old Chardin, still trying to work out his squiggles. ‘And then there's my son has come back from Algeria, through Spain and Bayonne, and… he hasn't knocked off anything, which isn't like him at all, for he's a sharp knocker-off, saving your presence, my son is. That's the way it is! The boy has to eat. But he'll give you back all we lend him, for he means to start up a what-you-may-call-it; he's got ideas that will take him far.…'

‘To the police courts!' returned Lisbeth. ‘He murdered my uncle! I'll not forget it.'

‘Him? He wouldn't wring a hen's neck; he couldn't do it, respected miss!'

‘Here, take this – three hundred francs,' said Lisbeth, taking fifteen coins from her purse. ‘Be off with you, and don't ever come here again.'

She went to the gate with the father of the storekeeper from Oran, and pointed out the tipsy old man to the porter.

‘If that man should ever come back, don't let him in, and tell him that I am not here. If he asks whether Monsieur Hulot or Madame la Baronne Hulot lives here, say that you do not know anyone of that name.'

‘Very well, Mademoiselle.'

‘It might cost you your place if you did anything stupid, even by accident,' the spinster added in a low voice, to the man's wife.

‘Cousin,' she said, turning to meet the lawyer as he came in, ‘there's a serious misfortune threatening.'

‘What misfortune?'

‘In a few days your wife will have Madame Marneffe for her step-mother.'

‘We'll see about that!' replied Victorin.

For the past six months Lisbeth had been paying a small
pension regularly to her patron, Baron Hulot, of whom she was now the patroness. She was in the secret of his whereabouts; and she relished the sight of Adeline's tears, saying, as we have seen, whenever she saw her cousin gay and hopeful: ‘You may be prepared to read my poor cousin's name in the papers, in the police court news, any day'.

In this she overreached herself, as she had done once before. She had awakened Victorin's suspicions. Victorin had made up his mind to get rid of the sword of Damocles for ever being pointed out by Lisbeth, and of the she-devil who had brought so much misfortune on his mother and his whole family. Prince de Wissembourg, who knew the damage Madame Marneffe had wreaked, supported the lawyer in his resolve; and he had promised him, as President of the Council, the secret help of the police, in order to disillusion Crevel and save a fortune from the talons of the diabolical courtesan, whom he had not forgiven for Marshal Hulot's death and the destruction of the Councillor of State.

Lisbeth's words ‘He gets money from his former mistresses' echoed in the Baroness's mind all night. Clutching at any hope, like drowning men at straws, or the doomed sick flying to quack doctors, or the souls fallen to Dante's nethermost circle of despair, she came in the end to believe in the degradation, the bare suggestion of which had at first aroused her indignation; and it occurred to her that she might call on one of those odious women to help her.

Next morning, without consulting her children, without a word to anyone, she went to the house of Mademoiselle Josépha Mirah,
prima donna
of the Royal Academy of Music, in order to grasp at last or finally lose the hope that had appeared and glimmered before her like a will o' the wisp. At noon the great singer's maid brought her Baroness Hulot's card, saying that the lady was waiting at the door, having asked if Mademoiselle could receive her.

‘Have the rooms been tidied?'

‘Yes, Mademoiselle.'

‘Are there fresh flowers?'

‘Yes, Mademoiselle.'

‘Tell Jean to go through the rooms to see that everything
is in order before showing the lady in, and say that she is to be treated with the greatest respect. When you have done that, come back to help me dress, because I mean to look my smartest!'

And she went to survey herself in her cheval-glass.

‘It's a time to put on all we've got,' she told herself. ‘Vice needs to be well-armed before confronting virtue! Poor woman! What can she want of me? It disturbs me to see

The noble sacrifice, struck down by ruthless fate!…'

She was still singing the well-known aria when her maid returned.

‘Madame,' the maid said, ‘the lady has had a nervous attack, a fit of trembling.'

‘Offer her something: orange-flower water, rum, soup!'

‘I did do that, Mademoiselle; but she won't take anything. She says it's a weakness she has, because of her nerves.'

‘Which room did you show her into?'

‘The large drawing-room.'

‘Hurry, girl! Bring me my prettiest slippers, the flowered wrap that Bijou embroidered, all the lace frills we can muster. Do my hair up in an imposing style. We have to impress a woman who… That woman is playing the role opposite mine! And send someone to tell the lady… (for she is a great lady, girl! She's more than that, she's what you can never be: a woman whose prayers are able to deliver souls from the purgatory you talk of!)… let someone tell her that I'm resting, that I was singing last night, that I'm just getting up.…'

The Baroness, in Josépha's large drawing-room, did not notice time passing, although she waited there a good half hour. This room, already redecorated since Josépha had come to live in her little residence, was hung with purple and gold silk. It was one of four intercommunicating rooms, kept at a mild temperature by warm air circulating from hidden vents; and they were a perfect example, in a modern setting, of the kind of luxury formerly lavished by aristocrats on such little dwellings, many of whose splendours still survive in aptly named ‘follies'.

The Baroness, taken completely by surprise, examined all the objects and works of art about her in utter astonishment. In this room she found an explanation of the wasting of great fortunes in the melting-pot under which Pleasure and Vanity blow up a consuming flame. The woman who for twenty-six years had lived among the cold relics of Empire luxury, whose eyes habitually rested on faded carpets, tarnished bronzes, silk hangings as worn and tired as her heart, caught an impression of the strength of the seductive power of vice as she saw what it had accomplished in this place. It was impossible not to envy the possession of such things, such beautiful and admirable creations, among which were represented all the great anonymous artists whose work makes Paris and its contribution to Europe what it is.

It was
unique
perfection that here held the eye. The models had been broken; the ornaments, statuettes, sculptures, were all original works. That is the gift most worth having of modern luxury. To possess things not vulgarized by the taste of two thousand rich bourgeois citizens, who think splendid living is the display of the expensive objects that cram the shops: that is true luxury, the luxury of modern aristocrats, those ephemeral stars in the Parisian firmament.

The Baroness, as she examined the flower-stands inlaid with bronze cut in ornamental patterns in the style called Boule, holding rare exotic flowers, was frightened to think how much wealth these rooms contained. Her wonder was inevitably transferred to the person about whom all this profusion was heaped up. Adeline thought that Josépha Mirah, whose portrait, by Joseph Bridau, adorned the adjoining boudoir, must be a singer of genius, a Malibran, and she was prepared to see an idolized star. She regretted having come. But she was driven on by an emotion so powerful and so natural, by a devotion so little self-regarding, that she summoned up all her courage to go through with the interview. Then, too, she would satisfy her piercing curiosity to see the attractions that kind of woman must possess to be able to mine so much gold from the unyielding measures of Parisian soil.

The Baroness considered her appearance, wondering whether she did not seem a blot upon all this luxury; but she
looked well in her velvet dress with its high-necked inset and deep collar of beautiful lace, and her velvet bonnet of the same colour suited her. Seeing herself to be still as imposing as a queen, who is still a queen even when dethroned, she reflected that the dignity of suffering must equal the dignity conferred by talent. She heard doors open and shut, and at last saw Josépha.

The singer resembled Allori's
Judith
, which remains graven in the memory of those who have seen it in the Pitti Palace, by the door of one of the great galleries. She had the same proud pose, the same sublimity of face, black hair knotted without ornament, a yellow loose gown embroidered with innumerable flowers, exactly like the brocade worn by the immortal murderess as Bronzino's nephew depicted her.

‘Madame la Baronne, you find me overwhelmed by the honour you have done me in coming here,' said the singer, who had promised herself to play her role of great lady with an air.

She pushed forward an easy-chair for the Baroness, and herself took a folding-chair. She saw that this woman had been beautiful, and was moved by profound pity as she watched her nervous shaking, that the least agitation made convulsive. She could read in a single glance the saintly life that Hulot and Crevel had long ago described for her; and she not only lost all idea of matching herself against this woman, but bowed before a greatness that she could recognize. The sublime artist admired what the courtesan might have mocked.