Cousin Bette (6 page)

And, indeed, at past forty-seven, the Baroness might have been preferred to her daughter by those who admire the setting sun; for she had lost nothing yet of what women call their ‘good points,' by a rare chance – especially rare in Paris, where, in the seventeenth century, Ninon was notorious for a similarly long-lived beauty, stealing the limelight at a time of life when women are plain.

From her daughter, the Baroness's thoughts passed to Hortense's father. She imagined him declining day by day by slow degrees, to end among the dregs of society, dismissed some day, perhaps, from the Ministry. This dream of her idol's downfall, accompanied by a dim prevision of the misfortunes that Crevel had prophesied, was so excruciating that the poor woman lost consciousness and lay in a kind of trance.

Cousin Bette, as Hortense was talking, looked up from time to time to see whether they might return to the drawing-room; but her young cousin was pressing her so closely with teasing questions just when the Baroness reopened the french window, that she did not notice her.

Lisbeth Fischer, five years younger than Madame Hulot although she was the daughter of the eldest of the Fischer brothers, was far from being as beautiful as her cousin; and for that reason she had been desperately jealous of Adeline. Jealousy lay at the root of her character, which was full of eccentricities – a word that the English have coined to describe freakish behaviour in members of distinguished families, not ordinarily used of the socially unimportant. A peasant girl from the Vosges, with everything that that implies: thin, dark, with glossy black hair, heavy eyebrows meeting across the
nose in a tuft, long and powerful arms, and broad solid feet, with some warts on her long, simian face: there is a quick sketch of the spinster.

The family, who lived as one household, had sacrificed the plebeian daughter to the pretty one, the astringent fruit to the brilliant flower. Lisbeth worked in the fields while her cousin was cosseted; and so it had happened one day that Lisbeth, finding Adeline alone, had done her best to pull Adeline's nose off, a true Grecian nose, much admired by all the old women. Although she was beaten for this misdeed, that did not prevent her from continuing to tear her favoured cousin's dresses and crumple her collars.

When her cousin's amazing marriage took place, Lisbeth had bowed before her elevation by destiny, as Napoleon's brothers and sisters bowed before the glory of the throne and the authority of power. Adeline, who was good and kind to an exceptional degree, in Paris remembered Lisbeth and brought her there about 1809, intending to rescue her from poverty and find her a husband. The Baron found it impossible to marry off this girl with the black eyes and sooty eyebrows, who could neither read nor write, as quickly as Adeline would have liked. So, as a first step, he gave her a trade: he apprenticed Lisbeth to the Court embroiderers, the well-known Pons Brothers.

This cousin, called Bette for short, had the vigorous energy of all mountain-bred people, and, when she became a worker in gold and silver braid embroidery, applied her capacity for hard work to learning to read, write, and reckon; for her cousin, the Baron, had impressed upon her the necessity of possessing these techniques if she was to run an embroidering business of her own. She was determined to make her way, and within two years she had achieved a metamorphosis. By 1811, the peasant girl had become a passably pleasant-mannered, sufficiently skilled and dexterous forewoman.

Her line of business,
passementerie
– gold and silver lace-work – included the making of epaulettes, sword-knots, aiguillettes, and in fact all the vast variety of brilliant decoration that formerly glittered on the handsome uniforms of the French army, and on civilian dress clothes. The Emperor, with
a true Italian fondness of finery, had embroidered gold and silver lace on every uniform in his service, and his empire comprised one hundred and thirty-three Departments. The supplying of these braid trimmings, in the ordinary way to substantial, solidly-established tailoring firms, but sometimes directly to important officials, was good business, a sound trade.

Just when Cousin Bette, the best workwoman in the Pons establishment where she was in charge of the workroom, might have set up in business for herself, the Empire fell to its ruin. The olive branch of peace borne in the hands of the Bourbons alarmed Lisbeth; she was apprehensive of a slump in this trade, which would in future have only eighty-six Departments to exploit instead of a hundred and thirty-three, to say nothing of its loss of clients through the enormous reduction of the Army. Taking fright at the uncertain prospects of the industry, she refused the offers made her by the Baron, who thought her mad. She justified this opinion by quarrelling with Monsieur Rivet, the purchaser of the Pons Brothers' business, with whom the Baron had proposed to set her up in partnership, and she went back to being just an ordinary workwoman.

Meanwhile the Fischer family had relapsed into the precarious situation from which Baron Hulot had rescued it.

Ruined by the disaster of Fontainebleau, the three Fischer brothers had fought with the Volunteer Corps of 1815 with the recklessness of despair. The eldest, Lisbeth's father, was killed. Adeline's father, sentenced to death by a court-martial, fled to Germany and died at Trèves in 1820. The youngest, Johann, came to Paris to entreat the help of the queen of the family, who was said to eat off gold and silver, and who never appeared on public occasions without diamonds in her hair and round her neck, diamonds that were as big as hazelnuts and had been given to her by the Emperor. Johann Fischer, at that time aged forty-three, received a sum of ten thousand francs from Baron Hulot in order to start a small business supplying forage at Versailles, the contract for which was obtained from the Ministry of War by the private influence of friends whom the former Commissary general still had there.

These family misfortunes, Baron Hulot's fall from favour, the knowledge borne in upon her that she counted for little in the immense turmoil of contending people, ambitions, and enterprises that makes Paris both a heaven and an inferno, intimidated Bette. The young woman at that time gave up all idea of competing with or rivalling her cousin, whose many and various points of superiority she had realized; but envy remained hidden in her heart, like a plague germ which may come to life and devastate a city if the fatal bale of wool in which it lies hidden is ever opened. From time to time, indeed, she would say to herself: ‘Adeline and I are of the same blood; our fathers were brothers. Yet she lives in a mansion, and I in a garret.' However, year in year out, Lisbeth received presents from the Baroness and the Baron, on her birthday and on New Year's Day. The Baron, who was exceedingly kind to her, paid for her winter firewood. Old General Hulot entertained her to dinner one day a week. Her place was always laid at her cousin's table. They laughed at her, certainly, but they never blushed to acknowledge her. They had in fact enabled her to live independently in Paris, where she led the life that suited her.

Lisbeth was, indeed, very apprehensive of possible restriction of her liberty. Should her cousin invite her to live under her roof… Bette at once caught sight of the halter of domestic servitude. Several times the Baron had found a solution to the difficult problem of arranging a marriage for her; but on each occasion, although the prospect attracted her at first, she soon refused to entertain it, afraid that she might see her lack of education, ignorance, and want of fortune, cast in her face. Then, when the Baroness suggested that she should live with their uncle and look after his household in place of his housekeeper, who must be expensive, she replied that she would make a match in that position even less easily.

Cousin Bette had that kind of oddity in her cast of mind that one notices in people who have developed late, and among savages, who think much but say little. Her native peasant intelligence had, however, acquired through her workshop conversations, in her constant contacts with the men and women of her trade, a Parisian keenness of edge. This young
woman, who had a temperament notably resembling the Cor-sican temperament, in whom the active instincts of a strong nature were frustrated, would have found a happy outlet in protecting some less robust-natured man. In her years of living in the capital, the capital had changed her superficially, yet the Parisian veneer left her spirit of strongly-tempered metal to rust. Endowed with an insight that had become profoundly penetrating, as are all men and women who live genuinely celibate lives, with the original twist which she gave to all her ideas, she would have appeared formidable in any other situation. With ill will, she could have sown discord in the most united family.

In the early days, when she had still cherished some hopes, the secret of which she had confided to no one, she had brought herself to wear stays, to follow the fashion, and had then achieved a brief season of splendour during which the Baron considered her marriageable. Lisbeth was at that time the piquante nut-brown maid of old French romance. Her piercing eye, her olive skin, her reed-like slenderness, might have brought her an admirer in the shape of a major on half-pay, but she was content – so she said, laughing – with her own admiration. She came indeed to find her life a sufficiently pleasant one, once she had eliminated the need to concern herself about material comfort, for she went out to dinner every evening at houses in town, after a day of work that began at sunrise. With dinner provided, she had only her lunches and her rent to pay for. In addition she was given most of her clothes, and many acceptable provisions for her household supplies such as sugar, coffee, wine, etc.

By 1837, after twenty-seven years of an existence largely paid for by the Hulot family and her Uncle Fischer, Cousin Bette had resigned herself to being a nobody and allowed herself to be treated with scant ceremony. She refused, of her own accord, to go to large dinner-parties because she preferred the intimacy of family gatherings in which she had her own importance; and so she avoided wounds to her pride. Where-ever she went she seemed to be at home: in the houses of General Hulot, Crevel, the younger Hulots, Rivet – the successor to the Pons brothers, with whom she had made up
her differences and who welcomed and made much of her – and with the Baroness. She knew how to ingratiate herself with the servants in these houses, too, giving them small tips from time to time and never forgetting to spend a few minutes chatting with them before going into the drawing-room. The absence of patronage with which she put herself frankly on their level earned her the servants' good will, which it is absolutely essential for parasites to have. ‘She's an excellent woman, and a really good sort tool' – that was what everyone said about her. Her willingness to oblige, unlimited when not taken for granted, like her air of friendly good nature, was of course a necessary consequence of her position. She had come at last to understand what life was like in her world, having seen herself at everyone's mercy. In the wish to be generally agreeable, she laughed in sympathy with the young people, who liked her because of that kind of adulation in her manner that always beguiles the young. She guessed and made herself the champion of the things that lay near their hearts; she was their go-between. She struck them as being the best possible person to confide in, since she had not the right to shake her head at them. Her absolute discretion earned her the trust of older people too, for, like Ninon, she had some masculine qualities. As a general rule, confidences are made to persons below one socially rather than to those above. Much more readily than we can employ our superiors in secret affairs, we make use of our inferiors, who consequently become committed sharers in our most hidden thoughts; they are present at our deliberations. Now, Richelieu considered that he had achieved success when he had the right to take part in privy councils. Everyone believed this poor spinster to be so dependent that she had no alternative but to keep her mouth shut. Cousin Bette herself called herself the family confessional. Only the Baroness, with the memory of the harsh usage that she had received in childhood from this cousin, then stronger – though younger – than she, still felt some mistrust. In any case, in shame, she would not have confided her domestic sorrows to anyone but God.

Here, perhaps, it should be remarked that the Baroness's house preserved all its former splendour in the eyes of
Cousin Bette, who was not impressed, as the newly rich ex-perfumer had been, by the signs of distress written on the worn chairs, the discoloured hangings, and the split silk. The furniture with which we live is in the same case as ourselves. Seeing ourselves every day, we come, like the Baron, to think ourselves little changed, still young, while other people see on our heads hair turning to chinchilla, V-shaped furrows on our foreheads, and great pumpkins in our bellies. These rooms were still lit for Cousin Bette by the Bengal lights of Imperial victories and shone with perennial splendour.

With the years, Cousin Bette had developed some very odd old-maidish quirks. For example, instead of following the fashion, she tried to make fashion fit her peculiarities and conform to what she liked, which was always a long way behind the mode. If the Baroness gave her a pretty new hat, or a dress cut in the style of the moment, Cousin Bette at once took it home and remodelled it according to her own ideas, completely spoiling it in the process of producing a garment or headgear reminiscent of Empire styles and the clothes she used to wear long ago in Lorraine. Her thirty-franc hat after that treatment was just a shapeless head-covering, and her dress like something out of the rag-bag. Bette was, in such matters, as obstinate as a mule; she was determined to please herself and consult no one else, and she thought herself charming in her own mode. Certainly the assimilation of the style of the day to her own style was harmonious, giving her from head to foot the appearance of an old maid; but it made her such a figure of fun that, with the best will in the world, no one could invite her on smart occasions.