Works of Honore De Balzac, page 691
“He is a very good fellow, too, is Monsieur Hulot,” said Cousin Betty.
“Amiable, very amiable — too amiable,” replied Crevel. “I wish him no harm; but I do wish to have my revenge, and I will have it. It is my one idea.”
“And is that desire the reason why you no longer visit Madame Hulot?”
“Possibly.”
“Ah, ha! then you were courting my fair cousin?” said Lisbeth, with a smile. “I thought as much.”
“And she treated me like a dog! — worse, like a footman; nay, I might say like a political prisoner. — But I will succeed yet,” said he, striking his brow with his clenched fist.
“Poor man! It would be dreadful to catch his wife deceiving him after being packed off by his mistress.”
“Josepha?” cried Crevel. “Has Josepha thrown him over, packed him off, turned him out neck and crop? Bravo, Josepha, you have avenged me! I will send you a pair of pearls to hang in your ears, my ex-sweetheart! — I knew nothing of it; for after I had seen you, on the day after that when the fair Adeline had shown me the door, I went back to visit the Lebas, at Corbeil, and have but just come back. Heloise played the very devil to get me into the country, and I have found out the purpose of her game; she wanted me out of the way while she gave a house-warming in the Rue Chauchat, with some artists, and players, and writers. — She took me in! But I can forgive her, for Heloise amuses me. She is a Dejazet under a bushel. What a character the hussy is! There is the note I found last evening:
“‘DEAR OLD CHAP, — I have pitched my tent in the Rue Chauchat. I
have taken the precaution of getting a few friends to clean up the
paint. All is well. Come when you please, monsieur; Hagar awaits
her Abraham.’
“Heloise will have some news for me, for she has her bohemia at her fingers’ end.”
“But Monsieur Hulot took the disaster very calmly,” said Lisbeth.
“Impossible!” cried Crevel, stopping in a parade as regular as the swing of a pendulum.
“Monsieur Hulot is not as young as he was,” Lisbeth remarked significantly.
“I know that,” said Crevel, “but in one point we are alike: Hulot cannot do without an attachment. He is capable of going back to his wife. It would be a novelty for him, but an end to my vengeance. You smile, Mademoiselle Fischer — ah! perhaps you know something?”
“I am smiling at your notions,” replied Lisbeth. “Yes, my cousin is still handsome enough to inspire a passion. I should certainly fall in love with her if I were a man.”
“Cut and come again!” exclaimed Crevel. “You are laughing at me. — The Baron has already found consolation?”
Lisbeth bowed affirmatively.
“He is a lucky man if he can find a second Josepha within twenty-four hours!” said Crevel. “But I am not altogether surprised, for he told me one evening at supper that when he was a young man he always had three mistresses on hand that he might not be left high and dry — the one he was giving over, the one in possession, and the one he was courting for a future emergency. He had some smart little work-woman in reserve, no doubt — in his fish-pond — his Parc-aux-cerfs! He is very Louis XV., is my gentleman. He is in luck to be so handsome! — However, he is ageing; his face shows it. — He has taken up with some little milliner?”
“Dear me, no,” replied Lisbeth.
“Oh!” cried Crevel, “what would I not do to hinder him from hanging up his hat! I could not win back Josepha; women of that kind never come back to their first love. — Besides, it is truly said, such a return is not love. — But, Cousin Betty, I would pay down fifty thousand francs — that is to say, I would spend it — to rob that great good-looking fellow of his mistress, and to show him that a Major with a portly stomach and a brain made to become Mayor of Paris, though he is a grandfather, is not to have his mistress tickled away by a poacher without turning the tables.”
“My position,” said Lisbeth, “compels me to hear everything and know nothing. You may talk to me without fear; I never repeat a word of what any one may choose to tell me. How can you suppose I should ever break that rule of conduct? No one would ever trust me again.”
“I know,” said Crevel; “you are the very jewel of old maids. Still, come, there are exceptions. Look here, the family have never settled an allowance on you?”
“But I have my pride,” said Lisbeth. “I do not choose to be an expense to anybody.”
“If you will but help me to my revenge,” the tradesman went on, “I will sink ten thousand francs in an annuity for you. Tell me, my fair cousin, tell me who has stepped into Josepha’s shoes, and you will have money to pay your rent, your little breakfast in the morning, the good coffee you love so well — you might allow yourself pure Mocha, heh! And a very good thing is pure Mocha!”
“I do not care so much for the ten thousand francs in an annuity, which would bring me nearly five hundred francs a year, as for absolute secrecy,” said Lisbeth. “For, you see, my dear Monsieur Crevel, the Baron is very good to me; he is to pay my rent — — ”
“Oh yes, long may that last! I advise you to trust him,” cried Crevel. “Where will he find the money?”
“Ah, that I don’t know. At the same time, he is spending more than thirty thousand francs on the rooms he is furnishing for this little lady.”
“A lady! What, a woman in society; the rascal, what luck he has! He is the only favorite!”
“A married woman, and quite the lady,” Lisbeth affirmed.
“Really and truly?” cried Crevel, opening wide eyes flashing with envy, quite as much as at the magic words quite the lady.
“Yes, really,” said Lisbeth. “Clever, a musician, three-and-twenty, a pretty, innocent face, a dazzling white skin, teeth like a puppy’s, eyes like stars, a beautiful forehead — and tiny feet, I never saw the like, they are not wider than her stay-busk.”
“And ears?” asked Crevel, keenly alive to this catalogue of charms.
“Ears for a model,” she replied.
“And small hands?”
“I tell you, in few words, a gem of a woman — and high-minded, and modest, and refined! A beautiful soul, an angel — and with every distinction, for her father was a Marshal of France — — ”
“A Marshal of France!” shrieked Crevel, positively bounding with excitement. “Good Heavens! by the Holy Piper! By all the joys in Paradise! — The rascal! — I beg your pardon, Cousin, I am going crazy! — I think I would give a hundred thousand francs — — ”
“I dare say you would, and, I tell you, she is a respectable woman — a woman of virtue. The Baron has forked out handsomely.”
“He has not a sou, I tell you.”
“There is a husband he has pushed — — ”
“Where did he push him?” asked Crevel, with a bitter laugh.
“He is promoted to be second in his office — this husband who will oblige, no doubt; — and his name is down for the Cross of the Legion of Honor.”
“The Government ought to be judicious and respect those who have the Cross by not flinging it broadcast,” said Crevel, with the look of an aggrieved politician. “But what is there about the man — that old bulldog of a Baron?” he went on. “It seems to me that I am quite a match for him,” and he struck an attitude as he looked at himself in the glass. “Heloise has told me many a time, at moments when a woman speaks the truth, that I was wonderful.”
“Oh,” said Lisbeth, “women like big men; they are almost always good-natured; and if I had to decide between you and the Baron, I should choose you. Monsieur Hulot is amusing, handsome, and has a figure; but you, you are substantial, and then — you see — you look an even greater scamp than he does.”
“It is incredible how all women, even pious women, take to men who have that about them!” exclaimed Crevel, putting his arm round Lisbeth’s waist, he was so jubilant.
“The difficulty does not lie there,” said Betty. “You must see that a woman who is getting so many advantages will not be unfaithful to her patron for nothing; and it would cost you more than a hundred odd thousand francs, for our little friend can look forward to seeing her husband at the head of his office within two years’ time. — It is poverty that is dragging the poor little angel into that pit.”
Crevel was striding up and down the drawing-room in a state of frenzy.
“He must be uncommonly fond of the woman?” he inquired after a pause, while his desires, thus goaded by Lisbeth, rose to a sort of madness.
“You may judge for yourself,” replied Lisbeth. “I don’t believe he has had that of her,” said she, snapping her thumbnail against one of her enormous white teeth, “and he has given her ten thousand francs’ worth of presents already.”
“What a good joke it would be!” cried Crevel, “if I got to the winning post first!”
“Good heavens! It is too bad of me to be telling you all this tittle-tattle,” said Lisbeth, with an air of compunction.
“No. — I mean to put your relations to the blush. To-morrow I shall invest in your name such a sum in five-per-cents as will give you six hundred francs a year; but then you must tell me everything — his Dulcinea’s name and residence. To you I will make a clean breast of it. — I never have had a real lady for a mistress, and it is the height of my ambition. Mahomet’s houris are nothing in comparison with what I fancy a woman of fashion must be. In short, it is my dream, my mania, and to such a point, that I declare to you the Baroness Hulot to me will never be fifty,” said he, unconsciously plagiarizing one of the greatest wits of the last century. “I assure you, my good Lisbeth, I am prepared to sacrifice a hundred, two hundred — Hush! Here are the young people, I see them crossing the courtyard. I shall never have learned anything through you, I give you my word of honor; for I do not want you to lose the Baron’s confidence, quite the contrary. He must be amazingly fond of this woman — that old boy.”
“He is crazy about her,” said Lisbeth. “He could not find forty thousand francs to marry his daughter off, but he has got them somehow for his new passion.”
“And do you think that she loves him?”
“At his age!” said the old maid.
“Oh, what an owl I am!” cried Crevel, “when I myself allowed Heloise to keep her artist exactly as Henri IX. allowed Gabrielle her Bellegrade. Alas! old age, old age! — Good-morning, Celestine. How do, my jewel! — And the brat? Ah! here he comes; on my honor, he is beginning to be like me! — Good-day, Hulot — quite well? We shall soon be having another wedding in the family.”
Celestine and her husband, as a hint to their father, glanced at the old maid, who audaciously asked, in reply to Crevel:
“Indeed — whose?”
Crevel put on an air of reserve which was meant to convey that he would make up for her indiscretions.
“That of Hortense,” he replied; “but it is not yet quite settled. I have just come from the Lebas’, and they were talking of Mademoiselle Popinot as a suitable match for their son, the young councillor, for he would like to get the presidency of a provincial court. — Now, come to dinner.”
By seven o’clock Lisbeth had returned home in an omnibus, for she was eager to see Wenceslas, whose dupe she had been for three weeks, and to whom she was carrying a basket filled with fruit by the hands of Crevel himself, whose attentions were doubled towards his Cousin Betty.
She flew up to the attic at a pace that took her breath away, and found the artist finishing the ornamentation of a box to be presented to the adored Hortense. The framework of the lid represented hydrangeas — in French called Hortensias — among which little Loves were playing. The poor lover, to enable him to pay for the materials of the box, of which the panels were of malachite, had designed two candlesticks for Florent and Chanor, and sold them the copyright — two admirable pieces of work.
“You have been working too hard these last few days, my dear fellow,” said Lisbeth, wiping the perspiration from his brow, and giving him a kiss. “Such laborious diligence is really dangerous in the month of August. Seriously, you may injure your health. Look, here are some peaches and plums from Monsieur Crevel. — Now, do not worry yourself so much; I have borrowed two thousand francs, and, short of some disaster, we can repay them when you sell your clock. At the same time, the lender seems to me suspicious, for he has just sent in this document.”
She laid the writ under the model sketch of the statue of General Montcornet.
“For whom are you making this pretty thing?” said she, taking up the model sprays of hydrangea in red wax which Wenceslas had laid down while eating the fruit.
“For a jeweler.”
“For what jeweler?”
“I do not know. Stidmann asked me to make something out of them, as he is very busy.”
“But these,” she said in a deep voice, “are Hortensias. How is it that you have never made anything in wax for me? Is it so difficult to design a pin, a little box — what not, as a keepsake?” and she shot a fearful glance at the artist, whose eyes were happily lowered. “And yet you say you love me?”
“Can you doubt it, mademoiselle?”
“That is indeed an ardent mademoiselle! — Why, you have been my only thought since I found you dying — just there. When I saved you, you vowed you were mine, I mean to hold you to that pledge; but I made a vow to myself! I said to myself, ‘Since the boy says he is mine, I mean to make him rich and happy!’ Well, and I can make your fortune.”
“How?” said the hapless artist, at the height of joy, and too artless to dream of a snare.
“Why, thus,” said she.
Lisbeth could not deprive herself of the savage pleasure of gazing at Wenceslas, who looked up at her with filial affection, the expression really of his love for Hortense, which deluded the old maid. Seeing in a man’s eyes, for the first time in her life, the blazing torch of passion, she fancied it was for her that it was lighted.
“Monsieur Crevel will back us to the extent of a hundred thousand francs to start in business, if, as he says, you will marry me. He has queer ideas, has the worthy man. — Well, what do you say to it?” she added.
The artist, as pale as the dead, looked at his benefactress with a lustreless eye, which plainly spoke his thoughts. He stood stupefied and open-mouthed.
“I never before was so distinctly told that I am hideous,” said she, with a bitter laugh.
“Mademoiselle,” said Steinbock, “my benefactress can never be ugly in my eyes; I have the greatest affection for you. But I am not yet thirty, and — — ”
“I am forty-three,” said Lisbeth. “My cousin Adeline is forty-eight, and men are still madly in love with her; but then she is handsome — she is!”
“Fifteen years between us, mademoiselle! How could we get on together! For both our sakes I think we should be wise to think it over. My gratitude shall be fully equal to your great kindness. — And your money shall be repaid in a few days.”
“My money!” cried she. “You treat me as if I were nothing but an unfeeling usurer.”
“Forgive me,” said Wenceslas, “but you remind me of it so often. — Well, it is you who have made me; do not crush me.”
“You mean to be rid of me, I can see,” said she, shaking her head. “Who has endowed you with this strength of ingratitude — you who are a man of papier-mache? Have you ceased to trust me — your good genius? — me, when I have spent so many nights working for you — when I have given you every franc I have saved in my lifetime — when for four years I have shared my bread with you, the bread of a hard-worked woman, and given you all I had, to my very courage.”
“Mademoiselle — no more, no more!” he cried, kneeling before her with uplifted hands. “Say not another word! In three days I will tell you, you shall know all. — Let me, let me be happy,” and he kissed her hands. “I love — and I am loved.”
“Well, well, my child, be happy,” she said, lifting him up. And she kissed his forehead and hair with the eagerness that a man condemned to death must feel as he lives through the last morning.
“Ah! you are of all creatures the noblest and best! You are a match for the woman I love,” said the poor artist.
“I love you well enough to tremble for your future fate,” said she gloomily. “Judas hanged himself — the ungrateful always come to a bad end! You are deserting me, and you will never again do any good work. Consider whether, without being married — for I know I am an old maid, and I do not want to smother the blossom of your youth, your poetry, as you call it, in my arms, that are like vine-stocks — but whether, without being married, we could not get on together? Listen; I have the commercial spirit; I could save you a fortune in the course of ten years’ work, for Economy is my name! — while, with a young wife, who would be sheer Expenditure, you would squander everything; you would work only to indulge her. But happiness creates nothing but memories. Even I, when I am thinking of you, sit for hours with my hands in my lap — —
“Come, Wenceslas, stay with me. — Look here, I understand all about it; you shall have your mistresses; pretty ones too, like that little Marneffe woman who wants to see you, and who will give you happiness you could never find with me. Then, when I have saved you thirty thousand francs a year in the funds — — ”
“Mademoiselle, you are an angel, and I shall never forget this hour,” said Wenceslas, wiping away his tears.
“That is how I like to see you, my child,” said she, gazing at him with rapture.
Vanity is so strong a power in us all that Lisbeth believed in her triumph. She had conceded so much when offering him Madame Marneffe. It was the crowning emotion of her life; for the first time she felt the full tide of joy rising in her heart. To go through such an experience again she would have sold her soul to the Devil.
“I am engaged to be married,” Steinbock replied, “and I love a woman with whom no other can compete or compare. — But you are, and always will be, to me the mother I have lost.”
