Cousin Bette (15 page)

‘I could give you some proof of my talent by making a bust of Madame,' Wenceslas added. Struck by Madame Hulot's beauty, the artist had been standing for the last moment or two comparing mother and daughter.

‘Well, Monsieur, life promises well for you,' the Baron said, completely won over by Count Steinbock's fine and distinguished appearance. ‘You will soon discover that talent does not go unrecognized for long in Paris, and that hard work always brings its reward here.'

Hortense, blushing, handed the young man a pretty Algerian purse containing sixty gold pieces. The artist's colour rose in response, with a reaction – easy enough to interpret – of shocked pride, of insulted patrician dignity.

‘Is this, by any chance, the first money you have received for your work?' the Baroness asked.

‘Yes, Madame, for my art, though not for my labour, for I have been a workman.'

‘Well, we may hope that my daughter's money brings you good luck!' said Monsieur Hulot.

‘And have no hesitation in accepting it,' the Baron added, seeing that Wenceslas was still holding the purse in his hand, and making no move to pocket it. ‘We shall get back that sum
from some nobleman, or perhaps one of the Princes, who may be glad to repay it with interest in order to possess this fine work.'

‘Oh, I like it too much, Papa, to give it to anyone, even the Prince Royal, the Duc d'Orléans!'

‘I could make another group, prettier than this, for Mademoiselle.…'

‘It would not be this one,' she answered. And, as if ashamed at having said too much, she walked out into the garden.

‘Well, I shall break the mould and the model when I get home,' said Steinbock.

‘Bring me your papers, then, and you shall hear from me shortly if I find what my impression of you leads me to expect, Monsieur.'

Thus dismissed, the artist was obliged to take his leave. He bowed to Madame Hulot and to Hortense, who had come in from the garden again expressly to receive that bow; then he went to wander in the Tuileries, unable, not daring, to return to his attic, where the tyrant who ruled his days would wear him out with questions and wrest his secret from him.

Hortense's lover designed in his mind groups and single figures by the hundred; he felt strong enough to hew the marble with his own hand – like Canova, a manof frail physique too, who all but killed himself in so doing. He was transfigured by Hortense, who was now for him a living, visible inspiration.

‘Now then!' said the Baroness to her daughter. ‘What does all this mean?'

‘Well, dear Mama, you have just seen Cousin Bette's sweetheart, who, I hope, is now mine.… But shut your eyes, pretend to know nothing about it. Oh, dear! I meant to keep it all from you, and here I am telling you everything!.…'

‘Good-bye, children,' broke in the Baron, kissing his daughter and wife. ‘I'll go, perhaps, to see our Nanny. I may find out a good deal about the young man from her.'

‘Be careful, Papa,' Hortense said again.

‘Oh, my child!' the Baroness exclaimed, when Hortense had finished reciting her poem, the last canto of which was
that morning's adventure. ‘My dear little girl! The deepest guile on earth is the guile of innocence!'

Genuine passions have an instinct of their own. Set a dish of fruit before an epicure: he will unerringly, without even looking, pick out the best. In the same way, if well-bred young girls are left absolutely free to choose their own husbands, when they are in a position to have those they naturally select they will rarely make a mistake. Natural instincts are infallible; and nature's action in such cases is called ‘love at first sight'. Love at first sight is quite simply
second sight
.

The Baroness's happiness, though veiled by maternal dignity, was as great as her daughter's; for of the three ways in which Hortense might be married of which Crevel had spoken, the best, the one most to her taste, seemed likely to be achieved. She saw in this turn of events an answer from Providence to her fervent prayers.

It occurred to Mademoiselle Fischer's prisoner, obliged in the end to return to his lodging, to disguise his lover's joy as the joy of the artist, delighted at his first success.

‘Victory! My group has been sold to the Duc d'Hérouville, and he is going to commission some work from me,' he said, throwing twelve hundred francs in gold on the table before the old maid.

As one may imagine, he had hidden Hortense's purse; he wore it next his heart.

‘Well,' answered Lisbeth, ‘that's a good thing, for I have been wearing myself out working. You see, my boy, that money comes in very slowly in the trade you've chosen, for this is the first you have received, and here you've been grinding away for nearly five years. This money is barely enough to repay what you have cost me since I got that
IOU
in return for my savings. But don't worry,' she added, when she had counted it, ‘this money will all be spent on you. We have enough here to last for a year. After that, in a year from now you'll be able to pay off your debts and have a good sum for yourself too, if you keep on at this rate.'

When he saw that his ruse was successful, Wenceslas embroidered his tale about the Duc d'Hérouville.

‘I want to get you fashionable black clothes and buy you
some new linen, for you must be well dressed when you go to see your patrons,' was Bette's response. ‘And then you'll have to have larger and more suitable rooms than your horrible attic, and furnish them comfortably. How gay you are! You've changed somehow,' she added, scrutinizing Wenceslas.

‘They say my group's a masterpiece!'

‘Well, so much the better. Make more!' replied the unsympathetic old maid, matter-of-fact to the last degree and quite incapable of understanding the joy of triumph or of apprehending beauty in the arts. ‘Don't go on thinking of what has been sold; make something new to sell. You have spent two hundred silver francs, to say nothing of your labour and time, on that wretched
Samson
. Your clock will cost you more than two thousand francs to cast and have completed. Come, if you take my advice you'll finish those two little boys crowning a little girl with cornflowers – that will take the Parisians' fancy! I shall call on Monsieur Graff, the tailor, on my way to Monsieur Crevel. Now go up to your own room, and let me get dressed.'

Next day the Baron, now quite taken in Madame Marneffe's toils, went to see Cousin Bette, who was much surprised to find him on the threshold when she opened the door for he had never paid her a visit before. And the thought crossed her mind: ‘Can Hortense be after my sweetheart?' She had heard the evening before, from Monsieur Crevel, that marriage discussions with the Councillor of the Supreme Court had been broken off.

‘What, Cousin! You here? This is the first time in your life that you have come to see me, so it certainly can't be for love of my beautiful eyes!'

‘Beautiful indeed! That's true,' replied the Baron. ‘You have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.…'

‘What have you come for? I'm really quite ashamed to receive you in such a miserable place.'

The first of Cousin Bette's two rooms served as drawing-room, dining-room, kitchen, and workroom. The furniture was that of a prosperous working-class home, with straw-bottomed walnut chairs, a small walnut dining-table, a
work-table. There were colour prints framed in dark stained wood, short muslin curtains at the windows, a large walnut cupboard. The floor was well rubbed up, shining with cleanliness and polish, and there was not a speck of dust anywhere in the room. But the whole scene was very cold in general effect: a perfect Terborch picture complete in every detail, even to the grey tone produced by a wallpaper, once bluish, but now faded to the colour of linen. As for the bedroom, no one had ever set foot inside that.

The Baron, glancing about him, took it all in; saw the stamp of indifferent taste and indifferent circumstances on every piece, from the cast-iron stove to the kitchen utensils, and felt a sickened repulsion as he reflected: ‘So this is virtue!'

‘Why have I come?' he said aloud. ‘You are much too sharp-witted not to guess in the end, so I had better tell you.' He sat down as he spoke, and, pulling the pleated muslin curtains apart a little way, looked across the court. ‘In this house there is a very pretty woman…'

‘Madame Marneffe! Oh, now I see!' she said, in complete comprehension. ‘And what about Josépha?'

‘Alas, Cousin, there's an end of Josépha. I've been dismissed like a lackey.'

‘And you want…?' the cousin asked, regarding the Baron with the dignity of a prude taking offence a quarter of an hour before she need.

‘As Madame Marneffe is a lady, an official's wife, and you can visit her without compromising yourself, I would like to see you on neighbourly good terms with her. Oh! don't be afraid; she will have the greatest respect for the Director's cousin.'

At that moment the rustle of a dress was heard on the stair, and the light pad of a woman's feet wearing fine soft ankle-boots. The footsteps came to a stop on the landing. There was a double tap on the door, and Madame Marneffe appeared.

‘Forgive me, Mademoiselle, for this intrusion; but I did not find you in yesterday when I came to call on you. We are neighbours, and if I had known that you were the Councillor of State's cousin, I should long ago have asked you to speak
to him on my behalf. I saw Monsieur le Directeur go in, and so I ventured to come; because my husband, Monsieur le Baron, has talked to me about a report on the Ministry personnel that is to be submitted to the Minister tomorrow.'

She appeared to be agitated, fluttering with emotion. She had in fact simply run upstairs.

‘You have no need to ask favours, fair lady,' the Baron replied. ‘It is for me to ask the favour of an interview with you.'

‘Very well, if Mademoiselle does not mind, please come!' said Madame Marneffe.

‘Yes, go, Cousin. I'll see you presently,' said Cousin Bette discreetly.

The Parisienne was banking so heavily on Monsieur le Directeur's visit and helpful understanding, that she had not only made a toilet suitable for such an interview herself, but had adorned her apartment too. Since early morning, flowers – bought on credit – had decorated it. Marneffe had helped his wife to clean the furniture, polishing up the smallest objects to reflect the light, using soap, brushes, dusters in all directions. Valérie was anxious to be seen in fresh bright surroundings, in order to appear attractive to Monsieur le Directeur, attractive enough to have the right to be cruel, to play hard to get, with all the art of modern tactics; as if she were holding a sweetmeat out of reach to tantalize a child. She had taken Hulot's measure. Give a hard-pressed Parisian woman twenty-four hours to work, and she can bring down a government.

A man of the Empire, accustomed to Empire manners, could know nothing at all of the conventions of modern love, the new fashionable scruples, the different mode of conversation invented since 1830, in which the poor weak woman succeeds in being accepted as the victim of her lover's desires, a kind of sister of charity binding up wounds, a self-sacrificing angel. This new art of love uses an enormous number of evangelical phrases in the devil's work. Passion, for example, is a martyrdom. One aspires towards the ideal, the infinite. Both parties desire to be refined through love. All these fine phrases are a pretext for heaping fuel on the flames, adding
more ardour to the act, more frenzy to the fall, than in the past. This hypocrisy, characteristic of our times, has corrupted gallantry. A pair of lovers profess to be two angels, and behave like two demons if they have a chance. Love had no time to analyse itself like this between two campaigns, and in 1809 its victories were achieved as swiftly as the Empire's victories. During the Restoration, the handsome Hulot, now a ladies' man again, had begun by consoling some former partners who had fallen, at that time, like extinguished stars from the political firmament; and gone on, as an old man, to let himself be captured by the Jenny Cadines and Joséphas.

Madame Marneffe had placed her guns in position according to what she had learned of the Director's background, which her husband had filled in for her in detail after making some inquiries at the office. The comedy of modern sentiment might have the charm of novelty for the Baron, so Valérie's plans were laid, and it may be said at once that the trial of its effectiveness that she made that morning answered all her hopes.

Thanks to these romantic, sentimental, novelettish manoeuvres, Valérie, without having promised anything, obtained for her husband the position of deputy head clerk of his office and the Cross of the Legion of Honour.

This campaign was naturally not conducted without dinners at the Rocher de Cancale, visits to the theatre, numerous presents of mantillas, scarves, dresses, and jewellery. The apartment in the rue du Doyenné was not satisfactory; the Baron meditated a scheme for furnishing one in magnificent style in the rue Vanneau, in a charming modern house.

Monsieur Marneffe obtained a fortnight's leave of absence, to be taken in a month's time, in order to attend to some affairs in the country; and a bonus as well. He promised himself a little trip to Switzerland, to study female form there.

Although Baron Hulot was busy in the interests of the lady, he did not forget the young man whose patron he also was. The Minister of Commerce, Count Popinot, was a lover of the arts; he gave two thousand francs for a replica of the Samson group on condition that the mould was broken, so that his Samson and Mademoiselle Hulot's should be the only two in
existence. This group excited the admiration of a Prince. He was shown the model of the clock, ordered it on condition that no replica should be made, and offered thirty thousand francs for it. The artists consulted, among them Stidmann, were satisfied that the man who had designed these two works could undertake a statue. Marshal le Prince de Wis-sembourg, Minister of War and President of the Committee in charge of the fund for Marshal Montcornet's memorial statue, at once called a meeting, which agreed to entrust the commission for the work to Steinbock. Comte de Rastignac, at that time Under-Secretary of State, wanted an example of the work of the artist, whose fellow-competitors for the commission for the statue acclaimed his success, and who was becoming increasingly celebrated. He bought from Steinbock the delightful group of two little boys crowning a little girl, and promised him a studio at the government marble depot, which is situated, as everyone knows, at Le Gros-Caillou.