Cousin Bette (41 page)

Your
VALÉRIE

‘And tears on it!' said Hector to himself, as he finished reading this letter. ‘Tears blotting her name!– How is she?' he asked Reine.

‘Madame is in bed; she had frightening hysterics,' replied Reine. ‘Her nervous attack twisted Madame up in knots like a piece of string. It took her after writing. Oh! it was because of the way she cried.… We heard Monsieur's voice on the stairs.'

The Baron in his distress wrote the following letter, on his official notepaper with its printed heading:

Don't worry, my angel; he shall die a deputy head clerk! Your idea is excellent; we will go away, and live far from Paris and be happy with our little Hector. I shall retire, and can find a good position as director of some Railway Company. Ah, my dear love, your letter makes me feel young again! Yes, I shall begin life again, and I'll make a fortune, you'll see, for our little child. Reading your letter, a thousand times more ardent than the letters of
La Nouvelle Heloise
, I saw a miracle happen!I had not imagined that my love for you could increase. This evening at Lisbeth's you shall see your

HECTOR
(yours for life!)

Reine went off with this reply, the first letter that the Baron had written to his ‘dear love'! Such emotions as these counterbalanced the heavy news of disaster grumbling like thunder on the horizon. At this moment, indeed, the Baron, certain of his ability to ward off the blows aimed at his uncle, Johann Fischer, was only concerned about the deficit.

One of the peculiar traits of the Bonapartist character is its belief in the power of the sword, its conviction of the superr iority of the military to the civil authority. Hulot did not care a straw for the Public Prosecutor in Algeria, where the Ministry of War ruled. A man is conditioned by his past. How could the officers of the Imperial Guard forget having seen the Mayors of the fair cities of the Empire, and the Emperor's Prefects, lesser emperors themselves, come to pay homage to the Imperial Guard at the frontiers of the Departments it was
passing through, and in fact accord it sovereign honours?

At half past four, the Baron went straight to Madame Marneffe's. His heart was beating like a young man's as he walked upstairs, his brain repeating the questions,'Shall I see her? Shall I not see her?' How should he remember that morning's scene, and his family in tears, kneeling at his feet? Did not Valérie's letter, placed in a thin note-case to be kept always over his heart, prove that he was more greatly loved than the most attractive of young men? When he had rung, the unlucky Baron heard the dragging slippers and execrable coughing of the invalid Marneffe. Marneffe opened the door, only to strike an attitude, and motion Hulot down the stairs, with a gesture identical with Hulot's own when he had shown Marneffe his office door.

‘You are much too Hulot altogether, Monsieur Hulot!' he said.

The Baron attempted to pass him. Marneffe drew a pistol from his pocket, and cocked it.

‘Monsieur le Conseiller d'État, when a man is as vile as you think me – for you think me extremely vile, don't you – he would be the most incompetent kind of criminal if he did not collect all the proceeds of his sold honour. You ask for war. You shall have it: war to the hilt, with no quarter given. Don't come back here again, and don't try to pass me. I have given notice to the police of my situation with regard to you.'

And, taking advantage of Hulot's state of stupefaction, he pushed him outside and shut the door.

‘What a downright rascal the fellow is!' Hulot said to himself as he climbed the stair to Lisbeth's apartment. ‘Oh, I understand her letter now! We'll leave Paris, Valérie and I. Valérie is mine for the rest of my days; she will close my eyes.'

Lisbeth was not at home. Madame Olivier informed Hulot that she had gone to call on Madame la Baronne, expecting to find Monsieur le Baron there.

‘Poor woman! I should not have thought her capable of such a grasp of the situation as she showed this morning,' thought the Baron, recalling Lisbeth's behaviour, as he walked from the rue Vanneau to the rue Plumet.

At the corner of the rue Vanneau and the rue de Babylone
he looked back at the Eden from which Conjugal Right was banishing him, armed with the sword of the Law. Valérie, at her window, was watching Hulot on his way. When he looked up she waved her handkerchief; but the miserable Marneffe aimed a cuff at his wife's cap and pulled her violently from the window. Tears rose to the Councillor of State's eyes.

‘How can a man bear to be loved as I am loved, see a woman ill-treated, and be nearly seventy years old!' he thought.

Lisbeth had gone to carry the good news to the family. Adeline and Hortense already knew that the Baron, unwilling to dishonour himself in the eyes of the entire Ministry by appointing Marneffe chief clerk, was to be shown the door by the husband, who, now turned Hulotophobe, was violently against him. And so Adeline, rejoicing, had ordered such a dinner as her Hector should find superior to those that Valérie could provide, and the devoted Lisbeth was helping Mariette to achieve this difficult aim. Cousin Bette was the heroine of the hour, almost the idol. Mother and daughter kissed her hands, and they had told her with a touching joy that the Marshal had consented to take her as his housekeeper.

‘And from that, my dear, to becoming his wife, there is only one step,' said Adeline.

‘In fact, he didn't say no when Victorin spoke to him about it,' added Countess Steinbock.

The Baron was welcomed by his family with such graceful, touching marks of affection, with such overflowing love for him, that he was forced to conceal his anxieties. The Marshal came to dinner. After dinner Hulot stayed at home. Victorin and his wife came in. A rubber of whist was started.

‘It's a long time, Hector,' said the Marshal gravely, ‘since you have given
us
a pleasant evening like this.'

This speech from the old soldier, who was so indulgent to his brother and who in these words was implicitly rebuking him, made a profound impression. It was realized then that during the past months his heart, in which all the sorrows that he had divined had found an echo, had been deeply hurt. At eight o'clock, when Lisbeth took her departure, the Baron insisted on escorting her home, promising to return.

‘Do you know, Lisbeth,
he
ill-treats her!' he said to her, in the street. ‘Ah! I have never before felt so deeply in love with her.'

‘I should never have believed that Valérie could be so much in love with you,' Lisbeth replied. ‘She is volatile and flirtatious, she likes to see herself a centre of attraction, to have the comedy of love played out for her, as she says; but she is really attached only to you.'

‘What message did she give you for me?'

‘Here it is,' answered Lisbeth. ‘You know she has been kind to Crevel. You must not bear her a grudge for that, for it has spared her poverty for the rest of her life. But she detests him, and the affair is practically finished. Well, she has kept the key of some rooms…'

‘In the rue du Dauphin!' exclaimed the delighted Hulot. ‘If it were only for that, I would forgive her Crevel. I have been there; I know.'

‘Here is the key,' said Lisbeth. ‘Have a duplicate made tomorrow – two if you can.'

‘And then?' said Hulot, avidly.

‘Well, I will come to dinner with you again tomorrow. You ought to return Valérie's key, for old Crevel may ask for the one he gave her, and you can go and meet her the day after. Then you can make up your minds about what you are going to do. You will be quite safe there, for there are two entrances. If, by any chance, Crevel, who has Regency habits, or so he says, should come in by the passage, you would go out through the shop, and vice versa. Now you see, you rascal, you owe all this to me. What are you going to do for me?'

‘Anything you like!'

‘Well then, don't oppose my marrying your brother I'

‘You, the Maréchale Hulot I The Comtesse de Forzheim!' exclaimed Hulot, in some surprise.

‘Adeline is a Baroness, after all!' returned Bette, in an acid and formidable tone. ‘See here, my old rake, you know the state your affairs are in! Your family may find itself begging bread, in the gutter.…'

‘That's what I'm terrified of!' said Hulot, with a sudden shock.

‘If your brother should die, who would look after your wife and daughter? The widow of a Marshal of France could get a pension of six thousand francs at least, couldn't she? Well, I only want to marry in order to make sure that your daughter and wife will have bread to eat, you old fool!'

‘That didn't occur to me,' said the Baron. ‘I will talk to my brother, for we can rely on you.… Tell my angel that my life is
bers
!'

And the Baron, after seeing Lisbeth home to the rue Vanneau, returned to play whist, and stayed at home. The Baroness's cup of happiness was full. Her husband apparently had returned to family life; and for nearly a fortnight he left every morning for the Ministry at nine o'clock, came back at six for dinner, and spent the evening with his family. He twice took Adeline and Hortense to the theatre. Mother and daughter had three thanksgiving masses said, and prayed to God to keep safely with them the husband and father he had restored. Victorin Hulot, seeing his father go off to bed one evening, said to his mother:

‘Well, we are fortunate my father has come back to us; and my wife and I will not regret our lost capital, if only this lasts.…'

‘Your father is nearly seventy years old,' answered the Baroness. ‘He still thinks of Madame Marneffe, I realize that, but it will not be for long. A passion for women is not like a passion for gambling or speculation or hoarding money; one can see an end to it.'

The beautiful Adeline – and she was still beautiful, at fifty, and in spite of her sorrows – was mistaken in this. Libertines, those men endowed by nature with the precious faculty of loving beyond the usual term of love, rarely appear to be their age. During this virtuous interlude the Baron had gone three times to the rue du Dauphin, and there he had never seemed to be seventy. The new lease of life granted to his passion made him young again, and he would have thrown away his reputation for Valérie, and his family, everything and anyone, without a qualm. But Valérie, now completely changed, never mentioned money to him, nor spoke of the twelve hundred francs a year to be settled on their son. On the contrary, she
offered him money, and loved Hulot as a woman of thirty-six might love a handsome law student who is very poor, very romantic, and very much in love. And poor Adeline believed that she had recaptured her dear Hector!

The fourth rendez-vous of the two lovers had been arranged in the last moment of the third, exactly as the next day's play used to be announced in the old days, at the end of a play by the Comédie-Italienne. Nine in the morning was the appointed time. About eight o'clock on the day when this felicity was due, the expectation of which made it possible for the passionately fond old man to accept family life, Reine asked to see the Baron. Hulot, apprehensive of catastrophe, went out to speak to her, as she would not enter the apartment. The faithful maid handed the following letter to the Baron:

Dear Old Soldier,

Don't go to the rue du Dauphin now; our nightmare is ill and I must look after him; but be there this evening at nine o'clock. Crevel is at Corbeil, with Monsieur Lebas, and I am sure that he will not be bringing a princess to his little house. I'll make arrangements to spend the night there; I can be home before Marneffe wakes. Send me an answer o this, for perhaps your long elegy of a wife doesn't let you do as you please, as you used to. They say she is sufficiently beautiful still to make you unfaithful to me, you are such a rake! Burn my letter; I don't trust anything.

In reply, the Baron wrote this little note:

My love,

In twenty-five years, my wife, as I have told you, has never stood in the way of my pleasure. I would sacrifice a hundred Adelines for you! I will be there this evening, at nine o'clock, in Crevel's temple, awaiting my divinity. May the deputy clerk soon expire, and then we need never be separated again I That is the dearest wish of

Your

HECTOR

That evening the Baron told his wife that he had some work to do with the Minister at Saint-Cloud, and would be back between four and five in the morning, and he went to the rue du Dauphin. It was then the end of June.

Few living men have actually experienced the terrible sensation of going to their death, for few return from the
scaffold; but there are some who have been vividly conscious of that agony in dreams. They have felt everything, to the very edge of the knife laid against their necks at the moment when dawn woke them up and brought deliverance.… The Councillor of State's sensations at five in the morning, in Crevel's elegant and stylish bed, were far more horrible than those of a man laid on the fatal block, in the presence of ten thousand spectators, watching him with eyes that seared him with twenty thousand jets of flame.

Valérie was sleeping in a charming pose. She was lovely, with the superb loveliness of women who can even look lovely sleeping – an instance of art invading nature, literally a living picture.

In his horizontal position, the Baron's eyes were three feet from the ground. His eyes, straying vaguely as eyes do when a man wakes and collects his scattered thoughts, fell on the door sprinkled with flowers painted by Jan, an artist who despises fame. Unlike a man being executed, the Baron did not see twenty thousand seeing rays of flame, he saw only one, but that one was more acutely painful than the gaze of ten thousand in the public square. Such a sensation in mid-pleasure, much rarer than the sensations of condemned prisoners, would certainly be paid for highly by a great many Englishmen suffering from spleen.

The Baron lay where he was, still stretched out horizontally, bathed in a cold sweat. He tried to doubt his senses; but that murderous eye was talking. A murmur of voices whispered behind the door.