Cousin Bette (55 page)

'Oh, Mademoiselle, let us go and see this Madame Grenouville!' said the Baroness. ‘She is bound to know something. I might see Monsieur Hulot today, and rescue him from poverty and shame at once.…'

‘Madame, I shall prove to you, here and now, the deep gratitude I shall always feel for the honour you have done me. I will not allow the singer Josépha, the Duc d'Hérouville's mistress, to be seen in the same carriage as the beautiful and saintly image of virtue. I respect you too much to appear in public with you. I am not affecting humility, like an actress: this is homage that I properly pay you. You make me sorry, Madame, that I cannot follow your path, in spite of the thorns in your bleeding hands and feet! But what can one do? I belong to Art, as you belong to Virtue.…'

‘Poor girl!' said the Baroness, moved, in the midst of her own sorrows, by an unusual sympathy and compassion. ‘I will pray for you. You are the victim of our society, which has to have its entertainment. When old age comes, your penitent
voice will be hearkened to… if God deigns to hear the prayers of a…'

‘Of a martyr, Madame,' said Josépha, reverentially kissing the hem of the Baroness's dress.

But Adeline took the singer's hand, drew her to her, and kissed her forehead. Blushing with pleasure, the singer saw Adeline to her cab, with every mark of the deepest respect.

‘It must be some lady of charity,' said the man-servant to the maid. ‘
She
doesn't treat anybody like that, not even her best friend, Madame Jenny Cadine!'

‘Wait a few more days, Madame,' Josépha said, ‘and you shall see him, or I'll deny the God of my fathers; and for a Jewess to say that, you know, is to promise success.'

About the time of the Baroness's arrival at Josépha's house, Victorin was interviewing an old woman of about seventy-five, who in order to obtain admission to the distinguished lawyer had made use of the awful name of the chief of the Sûreté. The attendant announced:

‘Madame de Saint-Estèvel'

‘That's just one of the names I use,' she said, as she sat down.

Victorin felt something like an inner shudder at the sight of that hideous beldame. Her expensive dress did nothing to soften the effect of the cold malignity of her horribly wrinkled, pallid, sinewy face. Marat, if he had been a woman of her age, would have looked like her, a figure of the Terror incarnate. The sharp little eyes of the sinister old hag showed a tiger's blood-thirsty greed. Her flattened nose, the nostrils elongated to oval holes that seemed to exhale the fires of hell, suggested the purposefully evil beaks of birds of prey. Behind her low cruel forehead manifestly lay an intriguing mind. The long hairs springing haphazard from every crevice of her face seemed to indicate a masculine enterprise and capacity for organization. Anyone seeing this woman would have reflected that none of the painters ever found the right model for Mephistopheles.

‘My dear Monsieur,' she said patronizingly, ‘it's a very long time since I took a hand in any business. Anything I do for you I'm doing for the sake of my dear nephew, who means
more to me than a son. The President of the Council dropped a couple of words in the ear of the Prefect of Police about you, but he, after conferring with Monsieur Chapuzot, is of the opinion that the police should not appear at all in an affair of this kind. My nephew has been given a free hand, but my nephew will only act in an advisory capacity, he must not be compromised.…'

‘Your nephew is…?'

‘Quite so, and I'm rather proud of the fact,' she cut the lawyer short; ‘for he's my pupil, a pupil who soon surpassed his master.… We have considered your business, and we have taken its measure! Will you give thirty thousand francs to be rid of this matter, once for all? I liquidate the business for you, and you pay only when the thing is done.…'

‘You know the persons concerned?'

‘No, my dear Monsieur, you must inform us further. We've been told: “There's a moonstruck old man that a widow's got her hooks in. The widow, aged twenty-nine, knows how to play her cards, and she has cleaned up forty thousand francs a year from two heads of families. Now she's on the point of raking in eighty thousand francs a year by marriage with an old fellow of sixty-one. She will ruin an entire respected family, and pass that enormous fortune on to some lover's child by getting rid of her old husband as soon as may be…”. That is the situation.'

‘That is correct,' said Victorin. ‘My father-in-law, Monsieur Crevel…'

‘A former perfumer, a Mayor. I live in his district, under the name of Ma'am Nourrisson,' she took him up.

‘The other person is Madame Marneffe.'

‘I don't know her,' said Madame de Saint-Estève; ‘but in three days I'll be in a position to count her shifts.'

‘Could you prevent the marrage?' asked the lawyer.

‘How far have things gone?'

‘The second reading of the banns.'

‘The woman would have to be kidnapped. Today's Sunday… there are only three days, for they'll marry on Wednesday. No, it's impossible! But we could kill her for you.…'

Victorin Hulot jumped, with any law-abiding citizen's reaction to hearing those six words spoken in a business-like tone.

‘Murder!…' he said. ‘And how would you do it?'

‘For the last forty years, Monsieur, we have played the part of fate,' she answered with a formidable pride, ‘and have done just as we please in Paris. More families than one, and many from the faubourg Saint-Germain, have told me their secrets, believe me! I have made and broken many a marriage, and torn up many a will, and saved many a threatened reputation. I keep a flock of secrets tucked away in their pen in here,' and she tapped her forehead; ‘and they're worth thirty-six thousand francs a year to me. And you'll be one of my lambs, naturally! A woman like me, would she be what I am if she talked about how she did things? I don't talk, I act! Everything that happens, my dear Monsieur, will be an accident, and you will not feel the slightest remorse. You will be like people cured by hypnotists; at the end of a month they believe that nature did it all.'

A cold sweat broke out on Victorin. Sight of the headsman would have disturbed him less than this sententious and portentous sister of the hulks. Looking at her dress, the colour of wine lees, he fancied her clothed in blood.

‘Madame, I cannot accept the assistance of your experience and energy if success is to cost a life, or if any action in the least criminal is implied.'

‘You are a great baby, Monsieur!' replied Madame de Saint-Estève. ‘You want to preserve your rectitude whole in your own eyes, and at the same time you want your enemy to die.'

Victorin shook his head.

‘Yes,' she went on. ‘You want this Madame Marneffe to release the prey she's holding in her jaws! And how would you set about making a tiger drop his chunk of meat?… Would you do it by rubbing your hand along his back and saying “
Pussy
!…
Pussy
!…”? You are not logical. You declare war, and don't want any bloodshed! Very well, I'll make you a present of your innocence since it's so dear to you. I have always seen that rectitude is the raw material of which hypocrisy is made! One day within the next three
months a poor priest will come to ask you for forty thousand francs for a benefaction – for a ruined monastery in the desert, in the Levant! If you are pleased with the way things have fallen out, give the fellow the forty thousand francs. It's not any more than you'll pay, anyway, to the Inland Revenue! It's a trifle, come now, compared with what you'll gain.'

She got to her feet – broad feet, the flesh bulging over the satin slippers that barely contained them. She smiled, and bowed, and moved towards the door.

‘The devil has a sister,' said Victorin, as he rose.

He went to the door with this horrifying stranger, conjured up from the haunts of the secret agents of espionage as a monster rises from subterranean depths at the Opera in a ballet, at the wave of a fairy's wand.

When he had finished his business in the law courts, Victorin went to see Monsieur Chapuzot, head of one of the most important departments of the Prefecture of Police, in order to make some inquiries about the stranger. Finding Monsieur Chapuzot alone in his office, Victorin Hulot thanked him for his help.

‘You sent me an old woman,' he said, ‘who might be called criminal Paris personified.'

Monsieur Chapuzot laid his spectacles down on his papers, and looked at the lawyer with raised eyebrows.

‘I should certainly not have taken the liberty of sending you anyone without letting you know beforehand, or sending a note of introduction,' he replied.

‘It must have been Monsieur le Préfet then…'

‘That is unlikely,' said Chapuzot. ‘The last time that Prince de Wissembourg dined with the Minister of Home Affairs, he saw the Prefect and spoke to him about your position, a most deplorable situation, and asked him if it was possible in a friendly way to come to your assistance. The concern His Excellency showed about this family matter naturally enlisted Monsieur le Préfet's keen interest, and he was good enough to consult me. Ever since Monsieur le Préfet took over the administration of this department, which has been so much reviled and does so much useful work, he has made it a rule
not to intervene in any way in family matters. He was right in principle and theory; although he was going contrary to traditional practice. Speaking of the forty-five years of my experience, the police between 1799 and 1815 rendered great services to families, but since 1820 the Press and constitutional government have completely altered the conditions of our service. So my advice was not to have anything to do with an affair of this kind, and Monsieur le Préfet was so good as to concur with my observations. The chief of the Sûreté, in my presence, received the order not to take any steps in the matter; and if it is true that you have had a visit from someone sent by him, I shall reprimand him – it would be grounds for his dismissal.

‘It is easy to say “That's a matter for the police!” The police! They all call for the police! But, my dear sir, the Marshal, the Council of Ministers, simply do not know what the police are. Only the police themselves know their powers. The kings, Napoleon, Louis XVIII, knew their own police; but as for ours, only Fouché, Monsieur Lenoir, Monsieur de Sartines, and a few perspicacious Prefects, have realized how it has been limited.… Nowadays everything is changed. We have been diminished, disarmed!

‘I have seen many an abuse spring up in private affairs that I could have swept away with just five scruples of arbitrary action! We shall be regretted by the very men who have cut us down when, like you, they find themselves faced with some monstrous wrong that we ought to have the same power to put right as we have to clear away dirt! In public affairs the police are held responsible for anticipating anything that may affect public security; but the family is sacred. I would do everything possible to discover and prevent an attempt against the King's life – I would look into a house as if its walls were transparent. But to go and lay our fingers on family affairs, concern ourselves with private interests! Never, so long as I sit in this office – because I'm afraid.…'

‘Of what?'

‘Of the Press, Monsionr le Député, of the Left Centre Party!'

‘What ought I to do?' said Hulot, after a pause.

‘Well, you represent the family!' returned the departmental chief. ‘That says all there is to say. Act as you think best. But as to helping you, making the police the instrument of private passions and private interests, do you imagine that is possible? That, do you know, was the reason behind the inevitable prosecution, which the magistrates found illegal, of the predecessor of our present Sûreté chief. Bibi-Lupin used the police on behalf of private individuals. There was a far-reaching social danger implied in that! With the powers he could use, that man would have been formidable, he would have been the hand of Fate!'

‘But, in my place…?' said Hulot.

‘Ah! You're asking me for advice, you – a man who sells it!' replied Monsieur Chapuzot. ‘Come, now, my dear sir, you're making fun of me.'

Hulot bowed to the departmental chief and went away, without noticing that official's almost imperceptible shrug as he rose to show him out.

‘And that man aspires to be a statesman!' said Monsieur Chapuzot to himself, taking up his reports again.

Victorin returned home, his perplexities unresolved, unable to confide them to anyone. At dinner, the Baroness joyfully announced to her family that within a month their father might be sharing their prosperity, and ending his days peacefully with them all.

‘Ah, I would gladly give my three thousand six hundred francs a year to see the Baron here!' cried Lisbeth. ‘But dear Adeline, do not count on such happiness too soon, I beg of you!'

‘Lisbeth is right,' said Célestine. ‘My dear Mother, wait until it happens.'

The Baroness, her heart overflowing with tenderness and hope, told the story of her visit to Josépha, said that she thought poor creatures like her unhappy, in spite of all their success, and spoke of Chardin, the mattress-maker, father of the Oran storekeeper, as proof that she was not cherishing empty hopes.

Next morning, by seven o'clock, Lisbeth was in a cab on her way to the quai de la Tournelle. She stopped the vehicle at the corner of the rue de Poissy.

‘Go to the rue des Bernardins, number seven,' she said to the driver. ‘It is a house with an entry and no porter. Go up to the fourth floor and ring at the door to the left, on which you will see a notice “Mademoiselle Chardin. Lace and cashmere shawls mended”. When someone comes to the door, you will ask for the
gentleman
. You will get the reply “He is out”. You will say “I know, but find him. His
maid
is waiting in a cab on the quai, and wants to see him”.'