Cousin Bette (47 page)

‘My darling duck!' said Crevel.

‘No longer a darling duck, Monsieur!'

She turned her head proudly, like a virtuous wife; and with her eyes full of tears still looked dignified, cold, indifferent.

‘Leave me,' she said, repulsing Crevel. ‘Where lies my
duty? It is to be my husband's. That husband is a dying man, and what do I do? I deceive him on the very verge of the tomb! He believes your son is his.… I shall tell him the truth, begin by begging his forgiveness and then ask for God's. We must part! Adieu, Monsieur Crevell' and, rising, she held out a glacial hand. ‘Good-bye, my friend; we shall meet again only in a better world. You owe some happiness to me, very sinful happiness, but now I want… yes, I mean to have, your respect.'

Crevel was weeping bitter tears.

‘Why, you great donkey!' she exclaimed, with a peal of diabolical laughter. ‘That's the method pious women use to diddle you out of two hundred thousand francs! You talk about Maréchal de Richelieu, the original of Lovelace, and you let yourself be taken in by that tired old confidence trick, as Steinbock would call it. I could soon part you from two hundred thousand francs, if I wanted to, you great idiot! Just keep your money! If you have too much, it belongs to me! If you give two sous to that worthy dame who has taken up religion because she is fifty-seven years old, you'll never see me again, and you can have her as your mistress. You'll come back to me next morning all black and blue from her bony caresses, and saturated with her tears, and sick of her provincial little bonnets and her weeping and wailing that must make the recipient of her favours feel as if he were out in a rain-storm!'

‘It's true enough,' said Crevel, ‘that two hundred thousand francs – well, it's a lot of money.…'

‘Pious women open their mouths wide! Ah, it seems to me, they can sell their sermons at a better price than we can sell the most precious and most certain thing on earth – pleasure.… And what yarns they can tell! It's incredible! Ah, I know them. I have seen them at my mother's. They think it right to go to any lengths for the sake of the Church, for… Well, really, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, my pet – you who aren't an open-handed man at all. Why, you haven't given
me
two hundred thousand francs, all told!'

‘Oh, indeed I have,' protested Crevel. ‘The little house alone will cost that.…'

‘So you must have four hundred thousand francs?' she said reflectively.

‘No.'

‘Well then, Monsieur, you were going to lend the two hundred thousand francs for my house to that old horror? That's high treason against your darling duck!'

‘But, just listen to me!'

‘If you were giving that money to some silly philanthropic scheme, you would be accepted as a coming man,' she said, warming to her theme, ‘and I would be the first to urge you to do it; because, after all, you are too simple to write big books about politics to make a reputation for yourself, and you haven't a good enough style to cook up those long-winded pamphlets. You might be able to set yourself up in the way other people in your position have done, advertise yourself and write your name big, in gold letters, by leading some cause or other, social, moral, national, or what not.… Relief Committees – that's no good; nobody thinks much of them nowadays. Young criminals saved from a life of crime and given a better chance than the poor honest devils – that's hackneyed too. For two hundred thousand francs I would like you to think up something more difficult, something really worth while. Then you would be talked about as another Edme Champion,
*
or a Montyon,
*
and I should be proud of you! But to throw two hundred thousand francs into a stoup of holy water, lend it to a religious fanatic deserted by her husband for whatever reason you like – you needn't tell me there isn't always a reason (does anyone desert me?) – that's an idiotic notion that only an ex-perfumer's noddle would think up nowadays! It smells of the shop counter. Two days after doing it you wouldn't dare to look at your face in the glass! Go away and deposit the money for the house quick, for I won't let you in here again without the receipt! Go now, at once, and be quick about it!'

She pushed Crevel out of her room by the shoulders, having seen the flame of ambition re-kindle in his face. When the outer door had closed behind him, she said:

‘And there goes Lisbeth's revenge, heaped up and running
over! What a pity she's at her old Marshal's! How we would have laughed! So the old lady would like to take the bread out of my mouth, would she?… That'll shake her!'

*

It was necessary for Marshal Hulot to live in a style befitting his high military rank, and he had taken a fine house in the rue du Montparnasse, in which there are two or three princely residences. Although he rented the whole house, he occupied only the ground floor. When Lisbeth came to keep house for him, she immediately wanted to let the first floor. That, as she said, would pay for the whole place, so that the Count would be able to live almost rent free; but the old soldier refused to allow it.

In the past few months, sad thoughts had troubled the Marshal. He had remarked his sister-in-law's poverty, and was aware of her deep distress, although he had no knowledge of the cause. The deaf old man, who had been so gay in his deafness, became taciturn. He had it in mind that his house might one day be a refuge for Baroness Hulot and her daughter, and so he was keeping the first floor for them.

It was so well known that the Count de Forzheim had only very modest means of his own that the Minister of War, Prince de Wissembourg, had insisted on his old comrade's accepting a grant of money for the furnishing of his house. Hulot had used this money to furnish the ground floor fittingly, for, as he himself put it, he had not accepted a Marshal's baton in order to treat it as if it were not worth a brass farthing. The house had belonged to a Senator under the Empire, and the ground floor reception rooms had been decorated with great splendour for him, all in white and gold, with carved panelling; they were in a very good state of preservation. The Marshal had put in suitable good old furniture. He kept a carriage in the coachhouse, with the two crossed batons painted on the panels, and hired horses when he had to go anywhere
in fiocchi
, in style, to the Minister's or the Palace, for some ceremony or reception. For the last thirty years he had had an old soldier, now aged sixty, for his servant, whose sister was his cook, and so he was able to save something like ten
thousand francs, and add it to a little nest-egg destined for Hortense.

Every day the old man walked along the boulevard from the rue du Montparnasse to rue Plumet; and no old pensioner from the Invalides, seeing him coming, ever failed to stand at attention and salute him, and be rewarded by the Marshal's smile.

‘Who's that you come to attention for?' a young workman asked an old pensioner, a captain from the Invalides, one day.

‘I'll tell you the story, boy,' the officer answered, and the ‘boy' leaned back against the wall, as if resigning himself to listen to a garrulous old man.

‘In 1809,' said the pensioner, ‘we were covering the flank of the Grande Armée, marching on Vienna, under the command of the Emperor. We came upon a bridge defended by three batteries disposed one above the other on a projecting rocky cliff, like three redoubts, enfilading the bridge. We were commanded by Marshal Masséna. The man you see there was then Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and I was one of them.… Our columns held one bank of the river; the batteries were on the other. Three times they attacked the bridge, and three times they were driven back. “Go and fetch Hulotl” the Marshal said. “No one but him and his men can make mincemeat of that mouthful!” So we marched up. The General who was pulling out of the last attack on the bridge stopped Hulot under fire to tell him what he should do, and he was blocking our way. “I don't need advice, but room to pass,” our Colonel said coolly, going on to reach the bridge at the head of his men. And then-rrrattle! Booooom! Thirty guns letting fly at us!'

‘Ah! by gosh!' exclaimed the workman. ‘That must have brought out some of these crutches!'

‘If you had heard him calmly making that remark, my boy, you would bow down to the ground before a man like that! It's not so famous as the bridge of Arcoli, but it was perhaps even finer. So we followed Hulot at the double right up to those batteries. All honour to those who did not return!' said the officer, raising his cap. ‘The
kaiserlicks
were knocked out by that stroke. And so the Emperor made that veteran there a
Count – he honoured us all when he honoured our leader; and these new fellows were quite right to make him a Marshal in the end.'

‘Long live the Marshall' said the workman.

‘Oh, you had better shout! The sound of gunfire has made the Marshal deaf.'

This anecdote may serve to show the respect in which the disabled pensioners held Marshal Hulot, whose unchanging Republican views, moreover, won popular affection for him in the whole neighbourhood.

It was a desolating sight to see suffering enter such a serene, pure, noble soul. The Baroness could only lie, and use all her feminine tact and skill to hide the whole dreadful truth from her brother-in-law. In the course of that disastrous morning, the Marshal, who like all old men slept little, had extracted the truth from Lisbeth about his brother's situation, promising to marry her as the price of her indiscretion. The old maid's pleasure at having confidences drawn from her, which since she entered the house she had been longing to make to her intended husband, may be imagined; for in this way she made her marriage more certain.

‘Your brother is incorrigible!' shouted Lisbeth in the Marshal's good ear. Her loud clear peasant's voice made it possible for her to talk to the old man. And she strained her lungs, she was so anxious to demonstrate to her future husband that he would never be deaf to her.

‘He has had three mistresses,' the old man said, ‘and his wife is an Adeline!… Poor Adeline!'

‘If you take my advice,' shouted Lisbeth, ‘you will use your influence with Prince de Wissembourg to find some suitable employment for my cousin. She will need it, for the Baron's salary has a claim against it for three years.'

‘I'll go to the Ministry,' he replied, ‘and see the Marshal, find out what he thinks of my brother, and ask him if he can do something for my sister. Try to think of some employment worthy of her.'

‘The Charitable Association of Ladies of Paris has created a number of benevolent societies under the patronage of the Archbishop, and they need inspectors, who are quite well
paid, to sift the genuinely needy cases. Duties of that kind would suit dear Adeline; it would be work after her own heart.'

‘Order the horses,' said the Marshal. ‘I'm going to dress. I'll go to Neuilly, if need be!'

‘How fond he is of her! I must needs find her always in the way, wherever I go!' said Lisbeth.

Lisbeth already was the boss of that household, but behind the Marshal's back. The three servants had been intimidated and put in their places. She had engaged a personal maid, and found an outlet for her unused energy in holding all the strings in her hands, poking her nose into everything, and making it her business to see to the well-being of her dear Marshal in every possible way. Being just as Republican as her future husband, Lisbeth pleased him greatly by her democratic ideas. She Battered him, besides, with immense skill; and in the past fortnight, the Marshal, living in greater comfort and taken care of like a child by its mother, had begun to regard Lisbeth as an ideal partner.

‘My dear Marshal,' she shouted, accompanying him to the steps, ‘put up the windows; don't sit in a draught. Please do this, for my sake!'

The Marshal, an old bachelor who had never had any coddling in his life, went off smiling at Lisbeth, in spite of his distressed heart.

At that very moment Baron Hulot was leaving the War Office on his way to see Maréchal Prince de Wissembourg, who had sent for him. Although there was nothing unusual in the Minister's sending for one of his Directors, Hulot's conscience was so tender that he imagined something sinister and cold in Mitouflet's face.

‘How is the Prince, Mitouflet?' he asked, closing his office door and overtaking the messenger, who had gone ahead.

‘He must have a bone to pick with you, Monsieur le Baron,' replied the messenger, ‘because his voice, his eyes, his face are set stormy.'

Hulot turned ghastly pale and said no more. He crossed the hall, the various reception rooms, and with a fast-beating heart reached the Minister's door.

The Marshal, then aged seventy, had the pure white hair and the weather-beaten skin to be expected in a veteran of his age, and a charming broad forehead of such amplitude that to the imaginative it seemed to extend like a battlefield. Under that snow-capped hoary cupola, in the shadow of very bony projecting eye-sockets, shone eyes of a Napoleonic blue, usually sad in expression, full of bitter thoughts and regrets. This rival of Bernadotte's had hoped to attain a throne. But those eyes could flash formidable lightning when animated by strong feeling, and then his voice, always deep, rang out stridently. In anger, the Prince was a soldier again; he spoke the language of Sub-Lieutenant Cottin; he spared no one's feelings. Hulot d'Ervy found this old lion, his hair shaken back like a mane, standing frowning with his back to the fireplace, his eyes remote, apparently lost in abstraction.

‘You sent for me, Prince?' Hulot said deferentially, affecting nonchalance.

The Marshal kept his eyes fixed on the Director, in silence, during the time he took to walk towards him from the door. This oppressive stare was like the eye of God. Hulot did not sustain it; he lowered his eyes in embarrassment.

‘He knows everything,' he told himself.