Cousin Betty

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Cousin Betty


As she examined the flower-stands, filled with the choicest exotic
plants, mounted in chased brass and inlaid in the style of Boulle, the
Baroness was scared by the idea of the wealth in this apartment. And
this impression naturally shed a glamour over the person round whom
all this profusion was heaped. Adeline imagined that Josepha Mirah
--whose portrait by Joseph Bridau was the glory of the adjoining
boudoir--must be a singer of genius, a Malibran, and she expected to
see a real star. She was sorry she had come. But she had been prompted
by a strong and so natural a feeling, by such purely disinterested
devotion, that she collected all her courage for the interview.
Besides, she was about to satisfy her urgent curiosity, to see for
herself what was the charm of this kind of women, that they could
extract so much gold from the miserly ore of Paris mud.

The Baroness looked at herself to see if she were not a blot on all
this splendor; but she was well dressed in her velvet gown, with a
little cape trimmed with beautiful lace, and her velvet bonnet of the
same shade was becoming. Seeing herself still as imposing as any
queen, always a queen even in her fall, she reflected that the dignity
of sorrow was a match for the dignity of talent.

At last, after much opening and shutting of doors, she saw Josepha.
The singer bore a strong resemblance to Allori's _Judith_, which
dwells in the memory of all who have ever seen it in the Pitti palace,
near the door of one of the great rooms. She had the same haughty
mien, the same fine features, black hair simply knotted, and a yellow
wrapper with little embroidered flowers, exactly like the brocade worn
by the immortal homicide conceived of by Bronzino's nephew.

"Madame la Baronne, I am quite overwhelmed by the honor you do me in
coming here," said the singer, resolved to play her part as a great
lady with a grace.

She pushed forward an easy-chair for the Baroness and seated herself
on a stool. She discerned the faded beauty of the woman before her,
and was filled with pity as she saw her shaken by the nervous palsy
that, on the least excitement, became convulsive. She could read at a
glance the saintly life described to her of old by Hulot and Crevel;
and she not only ceased to think of a contest with her, she humiliated
herself before a superiority she appreciated. The great artist could
admire what the courtesan laughed to scorn.

"Mademoiselle, despair brought me here. It reduces us to any means--"

A look in Josepha's face made the Baroness feel that she had wounded
the woman from whom she hoped for so much, and she looked at her. Her
beseeching eyes extinguished the flash in Josepha's; the singer
smiled. It was a wordless dialogue of pathetic eloquence.

"It is now two years and a half since Monsieur Hulot left his family,
and I do not know where to find him, though I know that he lives in
Paris," said the Baroness with emotion. "A dream suggested to me the
idea--an absurd one perhaps--that you may have interested yourself in
Monsieur Hulot. If you could enable me to see him--oh! mademoiselle, I
would pray Heaven for you every day as long as I live in this world--"

Two large tears in the singer's eyes told what her reply would be.

"Madame," said she, "I have done you an injury without knowing you;
but, now that I have the happiness of seeing in you the most perfect
virtue on earth, believe me I am sensible of the extent of my fault; I
repent sincerely, and believe me, I will do all in my power to remedy
it!"

She took Madame Hulot's hand and before the lady could do anything to
hinder her, she kissed it respectfully, even humbling herself to bend
one knee. Then she rose, as proud as when she stood on the stage in
the part of _Mathilde_, and rang the bell.

"Go on horseback," said she to the man-servant, "and kill the horse if
you must, to find little Bijou, Rue Saint-Maur-du-Temple, and bring
her here. Put her into a coach and pay the coachman to come at a
gallop. Do not lose a moment--or you lose your place.

"Madame," she went on, coming back to the Baroness, and speaking to
her in respectful tones, "you must forgive me. As soon as the Duc
d'Herouville became my protector, I dismissed the Baron, having heard
that he was ruining his family for me. What more could I do? In an
actress' career a protector is indispensable from the first day of her
appearance on the boards. Our salaries do not pay half our expenses;
we must have a temporary husband. I did not value Monsieur Hulot, who
took me away from a rich man, a conceited idiot. Old Crevel would
undoubtedly have married me--"

"So he told me," said the Baroness, interrupting her.

"Well, then, you see, madame, I might at this day have been an honest
woman, with only one legitimate husband!"

"You have many excuses, mademoiselle," said Adeline, "and God will
take them into account. But, for my part, far from reproaching you, I
came, on the contrary, to make myself your debtor in gratitude--"

"Madame, for nearly three years I have provided for Monsieur le
Baron's necessities--"

"You?" interrupted the Baroness, with tears in her eyes. "Oh, what can
I do for you? I can only pray--"

"I and Monsieur le Duc d'Herouville," the singer said, "a noble soul,
a true gentleman--" and Josepha related the settling and _marriage_ of
Monsieur Thoul.

"And so, thanks to you, mademoiselle, the Baron has wanted nothing?"

"We have done our best to that end, madame."

"And where is he now?"

"About six months ago, Monsieur le Duc told me that the Baron, known
to the notary by the name of Thoul, had drawn all the eight thousand
francs that were to have been paid to him in fixed sums once a
quarter," replied Josepha. "We have heard no more of the Baron,
neither I nor Monsieur d'Herouville. Our lives are so full, we artists
are so busy, that I really have not time to run after old Thoul. As it
happens, for the last six months, Bijou, who works for me--his--what
shall I say--?"

"His mistress," said Madame Hulot.

"His mistress," repeated Josepha, "has not been here. Mademoiselle
Olympe Bijou is perhaps divorced. Divorce is common in the thirteenth
arrondissement."

Josepha rose, and foraging among the rare plants in her stands, made a
charming bouquet for Madame Hulot, whose expectations, it may be said,
were by no means fulfilled. Like those worthy fold, who take men of
genius to be a sort of monsters, eating, drinking, walking, and
speaking unlike other people, the Baroness had hoped to see Josepha
the opera singer, the witch, the amorous and amusing courtesan; she
saw a calm and well-mannered woman, with the dignity of talent, the
simplicity of an actress who knows herself to be at night a queen, and
also, better than all, a woman of the town whose eyes, attitude, and
demeanor paid full and ungrudging homage to the virtuous wife, the
_Mater dolorosa_ of the sacred hymn, and who was crowning her sorrows
with flowers, as the Madonna is crowned in Italy.

"Madame," said the man-servant, reappearing at the end of half an
hour, "Madame Bijou is on her way, but you are not to expect little
Olympe. Your needle-woman, madame, is settled in life; she is
married--"

"More or less?" said Josepha.

"No, madame, really married. She is at the head of a very fine
business; she has married the owner of a large and fashionable shop,
on which they have spent millions of francs, on the Boulevard des
Italiens; and she has left the embroidery business to her sister and
mother. She is Madame Grenouville. The fat tradesman--"

"A Crevel?"

"Yes, madame," said the man. "Well, he has settled thirty thousand
francs a year on Mademoiselle Bijou by the marriage articles. And her
elder sister, they say, is going to be married to a rich butcher."

"Your business looks rather hopeless, I am afraid," said Josepha to
the Baroness. "Monsieur le Baron is no longer where I lodged him."

Ten minutes later Madame Bijou was announced. Josepha very prudently
placed the Baroness in the boudoir, and drew the curtain over the
door.

"You would scare her," said she to Madame Hulot. "She would let
nothing out if she suspected that you were interested in the
information. Leave me to catechise her. Hide there, and you will hear
everything. It is a scene that is played quite as often in real life
as on the stage--"

"Well, Mother Bijou," she said to an old woman dressed in tartan
stuff, and who looked like a porter's wife in her Sunday best, "so you
are all very happy? Your daughter is in luck."

"Oh, happy? As for that!--My daughter gives us a hundred francs a
month, while she rides in a carriage and eats off silver plate--she is
a millionary, is my daughter! Olympe might have lifted me above labor.
To have to work at my age? Is that being good to me?"

"She ought not to be ungrateful, for she owes her beauty to you,"
replied Josepha; "but why did she not come to see me? It was I who
placed her in ease by settling her with my uncle."

"Yes, madame, with old Monsieur Thoul, but he is very old and
broken--"

"But what have you done with him? Is he with you? She was very foolish
to leave him; he is worth millions now."

"Heaven above us!" cried the mother. "What did I tell her when she
behaved so badly to him, and he as mild as milk, poor old fellow? Oh!
didn't she just give it him hot?--Olympe was perverted, madame?"

"But how?"

"She got to know a _claqueur_, madame, saving your presence, a man
paid to clap, you know, the grand nephew of an old mattress-picker of
the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. This good-for-naught, as all your
good-looking fellows are, paid to make a piece go, is the cock of the
walk out on the Boulevard du Temple, where he works up the new plays,
and takes care that the actresses get a reception, as he calls it.
First, he has a good breakfast in the morning; then, before the play,
he dines, to be 'up to the mark,' as he says; in short, he is a born
lover of billiards and drams. 'But that is not following a trade,' as
I said to Olympe."

"It is a trade men follow, unfortunately," said Josepha.

"Well, the rascal turned Olympe's head, and he, madame, did not keep
good company--when I tell you he was very near being nabbed by the
police in a tavern where thieves meet. 'Wever, Monsieur Braulard, the
leader of the claque, got him out of that. He wears gold earrings, and
he lives by doing nothing, hanging on to women, who are fools about
these good-looking scamps. He spent all the money Monsieur Thoul used
to give the child.

"Then the business was going to grief; what embroidery brought in went
out across the billiard table. 'Wever, the young fellow had a pretty
sister, madame, who, like her brother, lived by hook and by crook, and
no better than she should be neither, over in the students' quarter."

"One of the sluts at the Chaumiere," said Josepha.

"So, madame," said the old woman. "So Idamore, his name is Idamore,
leastways that is what he calls himself, for his real name is Chardin
--Idamore fancied that your uncle had a deal more money than he owned
to, and he managed to send his sister Elodie--and that was a stage
name he gave her--to send her to be a workwoman at our place, without
my daughter's knowing who she was; and, gracious goodness! but that
girl turned the whole place topsy-turvy; she got all those poor girls
into mischief--impossible to whitewash them, saving your presence----

"And she was so sharp, she won over poor old Thoul, and took him away,
and we don't know where, and left us in a pretty fix, with a lot of
bills coming in. To this day as ever is we have not been able to
settle up; but my daughter, who knows all about such things, keeps an
eye on them as they fall due.--Then, when Idamore saw he had got hold
of the old man, through his sister, you understand, he threw over my
daughter, and now he has got hold of a little actress at the
_Funambules_.--And that was how my daughter came to get married, as
you will see--"

"But you must know where the mattress-picker lives?" said Josepha.

"What! old Chardin? As if he lived anywhere at all!--He is drunk by
six in the morning; he makes a mattress once a month; he hangs about
the wineshops all day; he plays at pools--"

"He plays at pools?" said Josepha.

"You do not understand, madame, pools of billiards, I mean, and he
wins three or four a day, and then he drinks."

"Water out of the pools, I suppose?" said Josepha. "But if Idamore
haunts the Boulevard, by inquiring through my friend Vraulard, we
could find him."

"I don't know, madame; all this was six months ago. Idamore was one of
the sort who are bound to find their way into the police courts, and
from that to Melun--and the--who knows--?"

"To the prison yard!" said Josepha.

"Well, madame, you know everything," said the old woman, smiling.
"Well, if my girl had never known that scamp, she would now be--Still,
she was in luck, all the same, you will say, for Monsieur Grenouville
fell so much in love with her that he married her--"

"And what brought that about?"

"Olympe was desperate, madame. When she found herself left in the
lurch for that little actress--and she took a rod out of pickle for
her, I can tell you; my word, but she gave her a dressing!--and when
she had lost poor old Thoul, who worshiped her, she would have nothing
more to say to the men. 'Wever, Monsieur Grenouville, who had been
dealing largely with us--to the tune of two hundred embroidered
China-crape shawls every quarter--he wanted to console her; but whether
or no, she would not listen to anything without the mayor and the
priest. 'I mean to be respectable,' said she, 'or perish!' and she
stuck to it. Monsieur Grenouville consented to marry her, on condition
of her giving us all up, and we agreed--"

"For a handsome consideration?" said Josepha, with her usual
perspicacity.

"Yes, madame, ten thousand francs, and an allowance to my father, who
is past work."

"I begged your daughter to make old Thoul happy, and she has thrown me
over. That is not fair. I will take no interest in any one for the
future! That is what comes of trying to do good! Benevolence certainly
does not answer as a speculation!--Olympe ought, at least, to have
given me notice of this jobbing. Now, if you find the old man Thoul
within a fortnight, I will give you a thousand francs."

"It will be a hard task, my good lady; still, there are a good many
five-franc pieces in a thousand francs, and I will try to earn your
money."

"Good-morning, then, Madame Bijou."

On going into the boudoir, the singer found that Madame Hulot had
fainted; but in spite of having lost consciousness, her nervous
trembling kept her still perpetually shaking, as the pieces of a snake
that has been cut up still wriggle and move. Strong salts, cold water,
and all the ordinary remedies were applied to recall the Baroness to
her senses, or rather, to the apprehension of her sorrows.

"Ah! mademoiselle, how far has he fallen!" cried she, recognizing
Josepha, and finding that she was alone with her.

"Take heart, madame," replied the actress, who had seated herself on a
cushion at Adeline's feet, and was kissing her hands. "We shall find
him; and if he is in the mire, well, he must wash himself. Believe me,
with people of good breeding it is a matter of clothes.--Allow me to
make up for you the harm I have done you, for I see how much you are
attached to your husband, in spite of his misconduct--or you should
not have come here.--Well, you see, the poor man is so fond of women.
If you had had a little of our dash, you would have kept him from
running about the world; for you would have been what we can never be
--all the women man wants.

"The State ought to subsidize a school of manners for honest women!
But governments are so prudish! Still, they are guided by men, whom we
privately guide. My word, I pity nations!

"But the matter in question is how you can be helped, and not to laugh
at the world.--Well, madame, be easy, go home again, and do not worry.
I will bring your Hector back to you as he was as a man of thirty."

"Ah, mademoiselle, let us go to see that Madame Grenouville," said the
Baroness. "She surely knows something! Perhaps I may see the Baron
this very day, and be able to snatch him at once from poverty and
disgrace."

"Madame, I will show you the deep gratitude I feel towards you by not
displaying the stage-singer Josepha, the Duc d'Herouville's mistress,
in the company of the noblest, saintliest image of virtue. I respect
you too much to be seen by your side. This is not acted humility; it
is sincere homage. You make me sorry, madame, that I cannot tread in
your footsteps, in spite of the thorns that tear your feet and hands.
--But it cannot be helped! I am one with art, as you are one with
virtue."

"Poor child!" said the Baroness, moved amid her own sorrows by a
strange sense of compassionate sympathy; "I will pray to God for you;
for you are the victim of society, which must have theatres. When you
are old, repent--you will be heard if God vouchsafes to hear the
prayers of a--"

"Of a martyr, madame," Josepha put in, and she respectfully kissed the
Baroness' skirt.

But Adeline took the actress' hand, and drawing her towards her,
kissed her on the forehead. Coloring with pleasure Josepha saw the
Baroness into the hackney coach with the humblest politeness.

"It must be some visiting Lady of Charity," said the man-servant to
the maid, "for she does not do so much for any one, not even for her
dear friend Madame Jenny Cadine."

"Wait a few days," said she, "and you will see him, madame, or I
renounce the God of my fathers--and that from a Jewess, you know, is a
promise of success."



At the very time when Madame Hulot was calling on Josepha, Victorin,
in his study, was receiving an old woman of about seventy-five, who,
to gain admission to the lawyer, had used the terrible name of the
head of the detective force. The man in waiting announced:

"Madame de Saint-Esteve."

"I have assumed one of my business names," said she, taking a seat.

Victorin felt a sort of internal chill at the sight of this dreadful
old woman. Though handsomely dressed, she was terrible to look upon,
for her flat, colorless, strongly-marked face, furrowed with wrinkles,
expressed a sort of cold malignity. Marat, as a woman of that age,
might have been like this creature, a living embodiment of the Reign
of Terror.

This sinister old woman's small, pale eyes twinkled with a tiger's
bloodthirsty greed. Her broad, flat nose, with nostrils expanded into
oval cavities, breathed the fires of hell, and resembled the beak of
some evil bird of prey. The spirit of intrigue lurked behind her low,
cruel brow. Long hairs had grown from her wrinkled chin, betraying the
masculine character of her schemes. Any one seeing that woman's face
would have said that artists had failed in their conceptions of
Mephistopheles.

"My dear sir," she began, with a patronizing air, "I have long since
given up active business of any kind. What I have come to you to do, I
have undertaken, for the sake of my dear nephew, whom I love more than
I could love a son of my own.--Now, the Head of the Police--to whom
the President of the Council said a few words in his ear as regards
yourself, in talking to Monsieur Chapuzot--thinks as the police ought
not to appear in a matter of this description, you understand. They
gave my nephew a free hand, but my nephew will have nothing to say to
it, except as before the Council; he will not be seen in it."

"Then your nephew is--"

"You have hit it, and I am rather proud of him," said she,
interrupting the lawyer, "for he is my pupil, and he soon could teach
his teacher.--We have considered this case, and have come to our own
conclusions. Will you hand over thirty thousand francs to have the
whole thing taken off your hands? I will make a clean sweep of all,
and you need not pay till the job is done."

"Do you know the persons concerned?"

"No, my dear sir; I look for information from you. What we are told
is, that a certain old idiot has fallen into the clutches of a widow.
This widow, of nine-and-twenty, has played her cards so well, that she
has forty thousand francs a year, of which she has robbed two fathers
of families. She is now about to swallow down eighty thousand francs a
year by marrying an old boy of sixty-one. She will thus ruin a
respectable family, and hand over this vast fortune to the child of
some lover by getting rid at once of the old husband.--That is the
case as stated."

"Quite correct," said Victorin. "My father-in-law, Monsieur Crevel--"

"Formerly a perfumer, a mayor--yes, I live in his district under the
name of Ma'ame Nourrisson," said the woman.

"The other person is Madame Marneffe."

"I do not know," said Madame de Saint-Esteve. "But within three days I
will be in a position to count her shifts."

"Can you hinder the marriage?" asked Victorin.

"How far have they got?"

"To the second time of asking."

"We must carry off the woman.--To-day is Sunday--there are but three
days, for they will be married on Wednesday, no doubt; it is
impossible.--But she may be killed--"

Victorin Hulot started with an honest man's horror at hearing these
five words uttered in cold blood.

"Murder?" said he. "And how could you do it?"

"For forty years, now, monsieur, we have played the part of fate,"
replied she, with terrible pride, "and do just what we will in Paris.
More than one family--even in the Faubourg Saint-Germain--has told me
all its secrets, I can tell you. I have made and spoiled many a match,
I have destroyed many a will and saved many a man's honor. I have in
there," and she tapped her forehead, "a store of secrets which are
worth thirty-six thousand francs a year to me; and you--you will be
one of my lambs, hoh! Could such a woman as I am be what I am if she
revealed her ways and means? I act.

"Whatever I may do, sir, will be the result of an accident; you need
feel no remorse. You will be like a man cured by a clairvoyant; by the
end of a month, it seems all the work of Nature."

Victorin broke out in a cold sweat. The sight of an executioner would
have shocked him less than this prolix and pretentious Sister of the
Hulks. As he looked at her purple-red gown, she seemed to him dyed in
blood.

"Madame, I do not accept the help of your experience and skill if
success is to cost anybody's life, or the least criminal act is to
come of it."

"You are a great baby, monsieur," replied the woman; "you wish to
remain blameless in your own eyes, while you want your enemy to be
overthrown."

Victorin shook his head in denial.

"Yes," she went on, "you want this Madame Marneffe to drop the prey
she has between her teeth. But how do you expect to make a tiger drop
his piece of beef? Can you do it by patting his back and saying, 'Poor
Puss'? You are illogical. You want a battle fought, but you object to
blows.--Well, I grant you the innocence you are so careful over. I
have always found that there was material for hypocrisy in honesty!
One day, three months hence, a poor priest will come to beg of you
forty thousand francs for a pious work--a convent to be rebuilt in the
Levant--in the desert.--If you are satisfied with your lot, give the
good man the money. You will pay more than that into the treasury. It
will be a mere trifle in comparison with what you will get, I can tell
you."

She rose, standing on the broad feet that seemed to overflow her satin
shoes; she smiled, bowed, and vanished.

"The Devil has a sister," said Victorin, rising.

He saw the hideous stranger to the door, a creature called up from the
dens of the police, as on the stage a monster comes up from the third
cellar at the touch of a fairy's wand in a ballet-extravaganza.

After finishing what he had to do at the Courts, Victorin went to call
on Monsieur Chapuzot, the head of one of the most important branches
of the Central Police, to make some inquiries about the stranger.
Finding Monsieur Chapuzot alone in his office, Victorin thanked him
for his help.

"You sent me an old woman who might stand for the incarnation of the
criminal side of Paris."

Monsieur Chapuzot laid his spectacles on his papers and looked at the
lawyer with astonishment.

"I should not have taken the liberty of sending anybody to see you
without giving you notice beforehand, or a line of introduction," said
he.

"Then it was Monsieur le Prefet--?"

"I think not," said Chapuzot. "The last time that the Prince de
Wissembourg dined with the Minister of the Interior, he spoke to the
Prefet of the position in which you find yourself--a deplorable
position--and asked him if you could be helped in any friendly way.
The Prefet, who was interested by the regrets his Excellency expressed
as to this family affair, did me the honor to consult me about it.

"Ever since the present Prefet has held the reins of this department
--so useful and so vilified--he has made it a rule that family matters
are never to be interfered in. He is right in principle and in
morality; but in practice he is wrong. In the forty-five years that I
have served in the police, it did, from 1799 till 1815, great services
in family concerns. Since 1820 a constitutional government and the
press have completely altered the conditions of existence. So my
advice, indeed, was not to intervene in such a case, and the Prefet
did me the honor to agree with my remarks. The Head of the detective
branch has orders, in my presence, to take no steps; so if you have
had any one sent to you by him, he will be reprimanded. It might cost
him his place. 'The Police will do this or that,' is easily said; the
Police, the Police! But, my dear sir, the Marshal and the Ministerial
Council do not know what the Police is. The Police alone knows the
Police; but as for ours, only Fouche, Monsieur Lenoir, and Monsieur de
Sartines have had any notion of it.--Everything is changed now; we are
reduced and disarmed! I have seen many private disasters develop,
which I could have checked with five grains of despotic power.--We
shall be regretted by the very men who have crippled us when they,
like you, stand face to face with some moral monstrosities, which
ought to be swept away as we sweep away mud! In public affairs the
Police is expected to foresee everything, or when the safety of the
public is involved--but the family?--It is sacred! I would do my
utmost to discover and hinder a plot against the King's life, I would
see through the walls of a house; but as to laying a finger on a
household, or peeping into private interests--never, so long as I sit
in this office. I should be afraid."