Оноре де Бальзак
Cousin Betty
“When your old father tells you that you have outraged the proprieties, you may take his word for it. – I say nothing of the cruel pain you have given me. It is bitter, I assure you, for you throw all the blame on a woman of whose heart you know nothing, and whose hostility may become disastrous. And you, alas! so full of guileless innocence and purity, can have no suspicions; but you may be vilified and slandered. – Besides, my darling pet, you have taken a foolish jest too seriously. I can assure you, on my honor, that your husband is blameless. Madame Marneffe – ”
So far the Baron, artistically diplomatic, had formulated his remonstrances very judiciously. He had, as may be observed, worked up to the mention of this name with superior skill; and yet Hortense, as she heard it, winced as if stung to the quick.
“Listen to me; I have had great experience, and I have seen much,” he went on, stopping his daughter’s attempt to speak. “That lady is very cold to your husband. Yes, you have been made the victim of a practical joke, and I will prove it to you. Yesterday Wenceslas was dining with her – ”
“Dining with her!” cried the young wife, starting to her feet, and looking at her father with horror in every feature. “Yesterday! After having had my letter! Oh, great God! – Why did I not take the veil rather than marry? But now my life is not my own! I have the child!” and she sobbed.
Her weeping went to Madame Hulot’s heart. She came out of her room and ran to her daughter, taking her in her arms, and asking her those questions, stupid with grief, which first rose to her lips.
“Now we have tears,” said the Baron to himself, “and all was going so well! What is to be done with women who cry?”
“My child,” said the Baroness, “listen to your father! He loves us all – come, come – ”
“Come, Hortense, my dear little girl, cry no more, you make yourself too ugly!” said the Baron, “Now, be a little reasonable. Go sensibly home, and I promise you that Wenceslas shall never set foot in that woman’s house. I ask you to make the sacrifice, if it is a sacrifice to forgive the husband you love so small a fault. I ask you – for the sake of my gray hairs, and of the love you owe your mother. You do not want to blight my later years with bitterness and regret?”
Hortense fell at her father’s feet like a crazed thing, with the vehemence of despair; her hair, loosely pinned up, fell about her, and she held out her hands with an expression that painted her misery.
“Father,” she said, “ask my life! Take it if you will, but at least take it pure and spotless, and I will yield it up gladly. Do not ask me to die in dishonor and crime. I am not at all like my husband; I cannot swallow an outrage. If I went back under my husband’s roof, I should be capable of smothering him in a fit of jealousy – or of doing worse! Do no exact from me a thing that is beyond my powers. Do not have to mourn for me still living, for the least that can befall me is to go mad. I feel madness close upon me!
“Yesterday, yesterday, he could dine with that woman, after having read my letter? – Are other men made so? My life I give you, but do not let my death be ignominious! – His fault? – A small one! When he has a child by that woman!”
“A child!” cried Hulot, starting back a step or two. “Come. This is really some fooling.”
At this juncture Victorin and Lisbeth arrived, and stood dumfounded at the scene. The daughter was prostrate at her father’s feet. The Baroness, speechless between her maternal feelings and her conjugal duty, showed a harassed face bathed in tears.
“Lisbeth,” said the Baron, seizing his cousin by the hand and pointing to Hortense, “you can help me here. My poor child’s brain is turned; she believes that her Wenceslas is Madame Marneffe’s lover, while all that Valerie wanted was to have a group by him.”
“Delilah!” cried the young wife. “The only thing he has done since our marriage. The man would not work for me or for his son, and he has worked with frenzy for that good-for-nothing creature. – Oh, father, kill me outright, for every word stabs like a knife!”
Lisbeth turned to the Baroness and Victorin, pointing with a pitying shrug to the Baron, who could not see her.
“Listen to me,” said she to him. “I had no idea – when you asked me to go to lodge over Madame Marneffe and keep house for her – I had no idea of what she was; but many things may be learned in three years. That creature is a prostitute, and one whose depravity can only be compared with that of her infamous and horrible husband. You are the dupe, my lord pot-boiler, of those people; you will be led further by them than you dream of! I speak plainly, for you are at the bottom of a pit.”
The Baroness and her daughter, hearing Lisbeth speak in this style, cast adoring looks at her, such as the devout cast at a Madonna for having saved their life.
“That horrible woman was bent on destroying your son-in-law’s home. To what end? – I know not. My brain is not equal to seeing clearly into these dark intrigues – perverse, ignoble, infamous! Your Madame Marneffe does not love your son-in-law, but she will have him at her feet out of revenge. I have just spoken to the wretched woman as she deserves. She is a shameless courtesan; I have told her that I am leaving her house, that I would not have my honor smirched in that muck-heap. – I owe myself to my family before all else.
“I knew that Hortense had left her husband, so here I am. Your Valerie, whom you believe to be a saint, is the cause of this miserable separation; can I remain with such a woman? Our poor little Hortense,” said she, touching the Baron’s arm, with peculiar meaning, “is perhaps the dupe of a wish of such women as these, who, to possess a toy, would sacrifice a family.
“I do not think Wenceslas guilty; but I think him weak, and I cannot promise that he will not yield to her refinements of temptation. – My mind is made up. The woman is fatal to you; she will bring you all to utter ruin. I will not even seem to be concerned in the destruction of my own family, after living there for three years solely to hinder it.
“You are cheated, Baron; say very positively that you will have nothing to say to the promotion of that dreadful Marneffe, and you will see then! There is a fine rod in pickle for you in that case.”
Lisbeth lifted up Hortense and kissed her enthusiastically.
“My dear Hortense, stand firm,” she whispered.
The Baroness embraced Lisbeth with the vehemence of a woman who sees herself avenged. The whole family stood in perfect silence round the father, who had wit enough to know what that silence implied. A storm of fury swept across his brow and face with evident signs; the veins swelled, his eyes were bloodshot, his flesh showed patches of color. Adeline fell on her knees before him and seized his hands.
“My dear, forgive, my dear!”
“You loathe me!” cried the Baron – the cry of his conscience.
For we all know the secret of our own wrong-doing. We almost always ascribe to our victims the hateful feelings which must fill them with the hope of revenge; and in spite of every effort of hypocrisy, our tongue or our face makes confession under the rack of some unexpected anguish, as the criminal of old confessed under the hands of the torturer.
“Our children,” he went on, to retract the avowal, “turn at last to be our enemies – ”
“Father!” Victorin began.
“You dare to interrupt your father!” said the Baron in a voice of thunder, glaring at his son.
“Father, listen to me,” Victorin went on in a clear, firm voice, the voice of a puritanical deputy. “I know the respect I owe you too well ever to fail in it, and you will always find me the most respectful and submissive of sons.”
Those who are in the habit of attending the sittings of the Chamber will recognize the tactics of parliamentary warfare in these fine-drawn phrases, used to calm the factions while gaining time.
“We are far from being your enemies,” his son went on. “I have quarreled with my father-in-law, Monsieur Crevel, for having rescued your notes of hand for sixty thousand francs from Vauvinet, and that money is, beyond doubt, in Madame Marneffe’s pocket. – I am not finding fault with you, father,” said he, in reply to an impatient gesture of the Baron’s; “I simply wish to add my protest to my cousin Lisbeth’s, and to point out to you that though my devotion to you as a father is blind and unlimited, my dear father, our pecuniary resources, unfortunately, are very limited.”
“Money!” cried the excitable old man, dropping on to a chair, quite crushed by this argument. “From my son! – You shall be repaid your money, sir,” said he, rising, and he went to the door.
“Hector!”
At this cry the Baron turned round, suddenly showing his wife a face bathed in tears; she threw her arms round him with the strength of despair.
“Do not leave us thus – do not go away in anger. I have not said a word – not I!”
At this heart-wrung speech the children fell at their father’s feet.
“We all love you,” said Hortense.
Lisbeth, as rigid as a statue, watched the group with a superior smile on her lips. Just then Marshal Hulot’s voice was heard in the anteroom. The family all felt the importance of secrecy, and the scene suddenly changed. The young people rose, and every one tried to hide all traces of emotion.
A discussion was going on at the door between Mariette and a soldier, who was so persistent that the cook came in.
“Monsieur, a regimental quartermaster, who says he is just come from Algiers, insists on seeing you.”
“Tell him to wait.”
“Monsieur,” said Mariette to her master in an undertone, “he told me to tell you privately that it has to do with your uncle there.”
The Baron started; he believed that the funds had been sent at last which he had been asking for these two months, to pay up his bills; he left the family-party, and hurried out to the anteroom.
“You are Monsieur de Paron Hulot?”
“Yes.”
“Your own self?”
“My own self.”
The man, who had been fumbling meanwhile in the lining of his cap, drew out a letter, of which the Baron hastily broke the seal, and read as follows: —
“DEAR NEPHEW, – Far from being able to send you the hundred thousand francs you ask of me, my present position is not tenable unless you can take some decisive steps to save me. We are saddled with a public prosecutor who talks goody, and rhodomontades nonsense about the management. It is impossible to get the black-chokered pump to hold his tongue. If the War Minister allows civilians to feed out of his hand, I am done for. I can trust the bearer; try to get him promoted; he has done us good service. Do not abandon me to the crows!”
This letter was a thunderbolt; the Baron could read in it the intestine warfare between civil and military authorities, which to this day hampers the Government, and he was required to invent on the spot some palliative for the difficulty that stared him in the face. He desired the soldier to come back next day, dismissing him with splendid promises of promotion, and he returned to the drawing-room. “Good-day and good-bye, brother,” said he to the Marshal. – “Good-bye, children. – Good-bye, my dear Adeline. – And what are you going to do, Lisbeth?” he asked.
“I? – I am going to keep house for the Marshal, for I must end my days doing what I can for one or another of you.”
“Do not leave Valerie till I have seen you again,” said Hulot in his cousin’s ear. – “Good-bye, Hortense, refractory little puss; try to be reasonable. I have important business to be attended to at once; we will discuss your reconciliation another time. Now, think it over, my child,” said he as he kissed her.
And he went away, so evidently uneasy, that his wife and children felt the gravest apprehensions.
“Lisbeth,” said the Baroness, “I must find out what is wrong with Hector; I never saw him in such a state. Stay a day or two longer with that woman; he tells her everything, and we can then learn what has so suddenly upset him. Be quite easy; we will arrange your marriage to the Marshal, for it is really necessary.”
“I shall never forget the courage you have shown this morning,” said Hortense, embracing Lisbeth.
“You have avenged our poor mother,” said Victorin.
The Marshal looked on with curiosity at all the display of affection lavished on Lisbeth, who went off to report the scene to Valerie.
This sketch will enable guileless souls to understand what various mischief Madame Marneffes may do in a family, and the means by which they reach poor virtuous wives apparently so far out of their ken. And then, if we only transfer, in fancy, such doings to the upper class of society about a throne, and if we consider what kings’ mistresses must have cost them, we may estimate the debt owed by a nation to a sovereign who sets the example of a decent and domestic life.
In Paris each ministry is a little town by itself, whence women are banished; but there is just as much detraction and scandal as though the feminine population were admitted there. At the end of three years, Monsieur Marneffe’s position was perfectly clear and open to the day, and in every room one and another asked, “Is Marneffe to be, or not to be, Coquet’s successor?” Exactly as the question might have been put to the Chamber, “Will the estimates pass or not pass?” The smallest initiative on the part of the board of Management was commented on; everything in Baron Hulot’s department was carefully noted. The astute State Councillor had enlisted on his side the victim of Marneffe’s promotion, a hard-working clerk, telling him that if he could fill Marneffe’s place, he would certainly succeed to it; he had told him that the man was dying. So this clerk was scheming for Marneffe’s advancement.
When Hulot went through his anteroom, full of visitors, he saw Marneffe’s colorless face in a corner, and sent for him before any one else.
“What do you want of me, my dear fellow?” said the Baron, disguising his anxiety.
“Monsieur le Directeur, I am the laughing-stock of the office, for it has become known that the chief of the clerks has left this morning for a holiday, on the ground of his health. He is to be away a month. Now, we all know what waiting for a month means. You deliver me over to the mockery of my enemies, and it is bad enough to be drummed upon one side; drumming on both at once, monsieur, is apt to burst the drum.”
“My dear Marneffe, it takes long patience to gain an end. You cannot be made head-clerk in less than two months, if ever. Just when I must, as far as possible, secure my own position, is not the time to be applying for your promotion, which would raise a scandal.”
“If you are broke, I shall never get it,” said Marneffe coolly. “And if you get me the place, it will make no difference in the end.”
“Then I am to sacrifice myself for you?” said the Baron.
“If you do not, I shall be much mistaken in you.”
“You are too exclusively Marneffe, Monsieur Marneffe,” said Hulot, rising and showing the clerk the door.
“I have the honor to wish you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron,” said Marneffe humbly.
“What an infamous rascal!” thought the Baron. “This is uncommonly like a summons to pay within twenty-four hours on pain of distraint.”
Two hours later, just when the Baron had been instructing Claude Vignon, whom he was sending to the Ministry of Justice to obtain information as to the judicial authorities under whose jurisdiction Johann Fischer might fall, Reine opened the door of his private room and gave him a note, saying she would wait for the answer.
“Valerie is mad!” said the Baron to himself. “To send Reine! It is enough to compromise us all, and it certainly compromises that dreadful Marneffe’s chances of promotion!”
But he dismissed the minister’s private secretary, and read as follows: —
“Oh, my dear friend, what a scene I have had to endure! Though you have made me happy for three years, I have paid dearly for it! He came in from the office in a rage that made me quake. I knew he was ugly; I have seen him a monster! His four real teeth chattered, and he threatened me with his odious presence without respite if I should continue to receive you. My poor, dear old boy, our door is closed against you henceforth. You see my tears; they are dropping on the paper and soaking it; can you read what I write, dear Hector? Oh, to think of never seeing you, of giving you up when I bear in me some of your life, as I flatter myself I have your heart – it is enough to kill me. Think of our little Hector!
“Do not forsake me, but do not disgrace yourself for Marneffe’s sake; do not yield to his threats.
“I love you as I have never loved! I remember all the sacrifices you have made for your Valerie; she is not, and never will be, ungrateful; you are, and will ever be, my only husband. Think no more of the twelve hundred francs a year I asked you to settle on the dear little Hector who is to come some months hence; I will not cost you anything more. And besides, my money will always be yours.
“Oh, if you only loved me as I love you, my Hector, you would retire on your pension; we should both take leave of our family, our worries, our surroundings, so full of hatred, and we should go to live with Lisbeth in some pretty country place – in Brittany, or wherever you like. There we should see nobody, and we should be happy away from the world. Your pension and the little property I can call my own would be enough for us. You say you are jealous; well, you would then have your Valerie entirely devoted to her Hector, and you would never have to talk in a loud voice, as you did the other day. I shall have but one child – ours – you may be sure, my dearly loved old veteran.
“You cannot conceive of my fury, for you cannot know how he treated me, and the foul words he vomited on your Valerie. Such words would disgrace my paper; a woman such as I am – Montcornet’s daughter – ought never to have heard one of them in her life. I only wish you had been there, that I might have punished him with the sight of the mad passion I felt for you. My father would have killed the wretch; I can only do as women do – love you devotedly! Indeed, my love, in the state of exasperation in which I am, I cannot possibly give up seeing you. I must positively see you, in secret, every day! That is what we are, we women. Your resentment is mine. If you love me, I implore you, do not let him be promoted; leave him to die a second-class clerk.
“At this moment I have lost my head; I still seem to hear him abusing me. Betty, who had meant to leave me, has pity on me, and will stay for a few days.
“My dear kind love, I do not know yet what is to be done. I see nothing for it but flight. I always delight in the country – Brittany, Languedoc, what you will, so long as I am free to love you. Poor dear, how I pity you! Forced now to go back to your old Adeline, to that lachrymal urn – for, as he no doubt told you, the monster means to watch me night and day; he spoke of a detective! Do not come here, he is capable of anything I know, since he could make use of me for the basest purposes of speculation. I only wish I could return you all the things I have received from your generosity.
“Ah! my kind Hector, I may have flirted, and have seemed to you to be fickle, but you did not know your Valerie; she liked to tease you, but she loves you better than any one in the world.
“He cannot prevent your coming to see your cousin; I will arrange with her that we have speech with each other. My dear old boy, write me just a line, pray, to comfort me in the absence of your dear self. (Oh, I would give one of my hands to have you by me on our sofa!) A letter will work like a charm; write me something full of your noble soul; I will return your note to you, for I must be cautious; I should not know where to hide it, he pokes his nose in everywhere. In short, comfort your Valerie, your little wife, the mother of your child. – To think of my having to write to you, when I used to see you every day. As I say to Lisbeth, ‘I did not know how happy I was.’ A thousand kisses, dear boy. Be true to your