Cousin Betty

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Cousin Betty


"Hortense!" shrieked the old maid, striking her forehead, and starting
to her feet.

"Well, but then you were really in love with this young man?" asked
Valerie.

"My dear, we are bound for life and death, you and I," said
Mademoiselle Fischer. "Yes, if you have any love affairs, to me they
are sacred. Your vices will be virtues in my eyes.--For I shall need
your vices!"

"Then did you live with him?" asked Valerie.

"No; I meant to be a mother to him."

"I give it up. I cannot understand," said Valerie. "In that case you
are neither betrayed nor cheated, and you ought to be very happy to
see him so well married; he is now fairly afloat. And, at any rate,
your day is over. Our artist goes to Madame Hulot's every evening as
soon as you go out to dinner."

"Adeline!" muttered Lisbeth. "Oh, Adeline, you shall pay for this! I
will make you uglier than I am."

"You are as pale as death!" exclaimed Valerie. "There is something
wrong?--Oh, what a fool I am! The mother and daughter must have
suspected that you would raise some obstacles in the way of this
affair since they have kept it from you," said Madame Marneffe. "But
if you did not live with the young man, my dear, all this is a greater
puzzle to me than my husband's feelings----"

"Ah, you don't know," said Lisbeth; "you have no idea of all their
tricks. It is the last blow that kills. And how many such blows have I
had to bruise my soul! You don't know that from the time when I could
first feel, I have been victimized for Adeline. I was beaten, and she
was petted; I was dressed like a scullion, and she had clothes like a
lady's; I dug in the garden and cleaned the vegetables, and she--she
never lifted a finger for anything but to make up some finery!--She
married the Baron, she came to shine at the Emperor's Court, while I
stayed in our village till 1809, waiting for four years for a suitable
match; they brought me away, to be sure, but only to make me a
work-woman, and to offer me clerks or captains like coalheavers for a
husband! I have had their leavings for twenty-six years!--And now like
the story in the Old Testament, the poor relation has one ewe-lamb
which is all her joy, and the rich man who has flocks covets the
ewe-lamb and steals it--without warning, without asking. Adeline has
meanly robbed me of my happiness!--Adeline! Adeline! I will see you in
the mire, and sunk lower than myself!--And Hortense--I loved her, and
she has cheated me. The Baron.--No, it is impossible. Tell me again
what is really true of all this."

"Be calm, my dear child."

"Valerie, my darling, I will be calm," said the strange creature,
sitting down again. "One thing only can restore me to reason; give me
proofs."

"Your Cousin Hortense has the _Samson_ group--here is a lithograph
from it published in a review. She paid for it out of her
pocket-money, and it is the Baron who, to benefit his future
son-in-law, is pushing him, getting everything for him."

"Water!--water!" said Lisbeth, after glancing at the print, below
which she read, "A group belonging to Mademoiselle Hulot d'Ervy."
"Water! my head is burning, I am going mad!"

Madame Marneffe fetched some water. Lisbeth took off her cap,
unfastened her black hair, and plunged her head into the basin her new
friend held for her. She dipped her forehead into it several times,
and checked the incipient inflammation. After this douche she
completely recovered her self-command.

"Not a word," said she to Madame Marneffe as she wiped her face--"not
a word of all this.--You see, I am quite calm; everything is
forgotten. I am thinking of something very different."

"She will be in Charenton to-morrow, that is very certain," thought
Madame Marneffe, looking at the old maid.

"What is to be done?" Lisbeth went on. "You see, my angel, there is
nothing for it but to hold my tongue, bow my head, and drift to the
grave, as all water runs to the river. What could I try to do? I
should like to grind them all--Adeline, her daughter, and the Baron
--all to dust! But what can a poor relation do against a rich family?
It would be the story of the earthen pot and the iron pot."

"Yes; you are right," said Valerie. "You can only pull as much hay as
you can to your side of the manger. That is all the upshot of life in
Paris."

"Besides," said Lisbeth, "I shall soon die, I can tell you, if I lose
that boy to whom I fancied I could always be a mother, and with whom I
counted on living all my days----"

There were tears in her eyes, and she paused. Such emotion in this
woman made of sulphur and flame, made Valerie shudder.

"Well, at any rate, I have found you," said Lisbeth, taking Valerie's
hand, "that is some consolation in this dreadful trouble.--We shall be
true friends; and why should we ever part? I shall never cross your
track. No one will ever be in love with me!--Those who would have
married me, would only have done it to secure my Cousin Hulot's
interest. With energy enough to scale Paradise, to have to devote it
to procuring bread and water, a few rags, and a garret!--That is
martyrdom, my dear, and I have withered under it."

She broke off suddenly, and shot a black flash into Madame Marneffe's
blue eyes, a glance that pierced the pretty woman's soul, as the point
of a dagger might have pierced her heart.

"And what is the use of talking?" she exclaimed in reproof to herself.
"I never said so much before, believe me! The tables will be turned
yet!" she added after a pause. "As you so wisely say, let us sharpen
our teeth, and pull down all the hay we can get."

"You are very wise," said Madame Marneffe, who had been frightened by
this scene, and had no remembrance of having uttered this maxim. "I am
sure you are right, my dear child. Life is not so long after all, and
we must make the best of it, and make use of others to contribute to
our enjoyment. Even I have learned that, young as I am. I was brought
up a spoilt child, my father married ambitiously, and almost forgot
me, after making me his idol and bringing me up like a queen's
daughter! My poor mother, who filled my head with splendid visions,
died of grief at seeing me married to an office clerk with twelve
hundred francs a year, at nine-and-thirty an aged and hardened
libertine, as corrupt as the hulks, looking on me, as others looked on
you, as a means of fortune!--Well, in that wretched man, I have found
the best of husbands. He prefers the squalid sluts he picks up at the
street corners, and leaves me free. Though he keeps all his salary to
himself, he never asks me where I get money to live on----"

And she in her turn stopped short, as a woman does who feels herself
carried away by the torrent of her confessions; struck, too, by
Lisbeth's eager attention, she thought well to make sure of Lisbeth
before revealing her last secrets.

"You see, dear child, how entire is my confidence in you!" she
presently added, to which Lisbeth replied by a most comforting nod.

An oath may be taken by a look and a nod more solemnly than in a court
of justice.

"I keep up every appearance of respectability," Valerie went on,
laying her hand on Lisbeth's as if to accept her pledge. "I am a
married woman, and my own mistress, to such a degree, that in the
morning, when Marneffe sets out for the office, if he takes it into
his head to say good-bye and finds my door locked, he goes off without
a word. He cares less for his boy than I care for one of the marble
children that play at the feet of one of the river-gods in the
Tuileries. If I do not come home to dinner, he dines quite contentedly
with the maid, for the maid is devoted to monsieur; and he goes out
every evening after dinner, and does not come in till twelve or one
o'clock. Unfortunately, for a year past, I have had no ladies' maid,
which is as much as to say that I am a widow!

"I have had one passion, once have been happy--a rich Brazilian--who
went away a year ago--my only lapse!--He went away to sell his
estates, to realize his land, and come back to live in France. What
will he find left of his Valerie? A dunghill. Well! it is his fault
and not mine; why does he delay coming so long? Perhaps he has been
wrecked--like my virtue."

"Good-bye, my dear," said Lisbeth abruptly; "we are friends for ever.
I love you, I esteem you, I am wholly yours! My cousin is tormenting
me to go and live in the house you are moving to, in the Rue Vanneau;
but I would not go, for I saw at once the reasons for this fresh piece
of kindness----"

"Yes; you would have kept an eye on me, I know!" said Madame Marneffe.

"That was, no doubt, the motive of his generosity," replied Lisbeth.
"In Paris, most beneficence is a speculation, as most acts of
ingratitude are revenge! To a poor relation you behave as you do to
rats to whom you offer a bit of bacon. Now, I will accept the Baron's
offer, for this house has grown intolerable to me. You and I have wit
enough to hold our tongues about everything that would damage us, and
tell all that needs telling. So, no blabbing--and we are friends."

"Through thick and thin!" cried Madame Marneffe, delighted to have a
sheep-dog, a confidante, a sort of respectable aunt. "Listen to me;
the Baron is doing a great deal in the Rue Vanneau----"

"I believe you!" interrupted Lisbeth. "He has spent thirty thousand
francs! Where he got the money, I am sure I don't know, for Josepha
the singer bled him dry.--Oh! you are in luck," she went on. "The
Baron would steal for a woman who held his heart in two little white
satin hands like yours!"

"Well, then," said Madame Marneffe, with the liberality of such
creatures, which is mere recklessness, "look here, my dear child; take
away from here everything that may serve your turn in your new
quarters--that chest of drawers, that wardrobe and mirror, the carpet,
the curtains----"

Lisbeth's eyes dilated with excessive joy; she was incredulous of such
a gift.

"You are doing more for me in a breath than my rich relations have
done in thirty years!" she exclaimed. "They have never even asked
themselves whether I had any furniture at all. On his first visit, a
few weeks ago, the Baron made a rich man's face on seeing how poor I
was.--Thank you, my dear; and I will give you your money's worth, you
will see how by and by."

Valerie went out on the landing with _her_ Cousin Betty, and the two
women embraced.

"Pouh! How she stinks of hard work!" said the pretty little woman to
herself when she was alone. "I shall not embrace you often, my dear
cousin! At the same time, I must look sharp. She must be skilfully
managed, for she can be of use, and help me to make my fortune."



Like the true Creole of Paris, Madame Marneffe abhorred trouble; she
had the calm indifference of a cat, which never jumps or runs but when
urged by necessity. To her, life must be all pleasure; and the
pleasure without difficulties. She loved flowers, provided they were
brought to her. She could not imagine going to the play but to a good
box, at her own command, and in a carriage to take her there. Valerie
inherited these courtesan tastes from her mother, on whom General
Montcornet had lavished luxury when he was in Paris, and who for
twenty years had seen all the world at her feet; who had been wasteful
and prodigal, squandering her all in the luxurious living of which the
programme has been lost since the fall of Napoleon.

The grandees of the Empire were a match in their follies for the great
nobles of the last century. Under the Restoration the nobility cannot
forget that it has been beaten and robbed, and so, with two or three
exceptions, it has become thrifty, prudent, and stay-at-home, in
short, bourgeois and penurious. Since then, 1830 has crowned the work
of 1793. In France, henceforth, there will be great names, but no
great houses, unless there should be political changes which we can
hardly foresee. Everything takes the stamp of individuality. The
wisest invest in annuities. Family pride is destroyed.

The bitter pressure of poverty which had stung Valerie to the quick on
the day when, to use Marneffe's expression, she had "caught on" with
Hulot, had brought the young woman to the conclusion that she would
make a fortune by means of her good looks. So, for some days, she had
been feeling the need of having a friend about her to take the place
of a mother--a devoted friend, to whom such things may be told as must
be hidden from a waiting-maid, and who could act, come and go, and
think for her, a beast of burden resigned to an unequal share of life.
Now, she, quite as keenly as Lisbeth, had understood the Baron's
motives for fostering the intimacy between his cousin and herself.

Prompted by the formidable perspicacity of the Parisian half-breed,
who spends her days stretched on a sofa, turning the lantern of her
detective spirit on the obscurest depths of souls, sentiments, and
intrigues, she had decided on making an ally of the spy. This
supremely rash step was, perhaps premeditated; she had discerned the
true nature of this ardent creature, burning with wasted passion, and
meant to attach her to herself. Thus, their conversation was like the
stone a traveler casts into an abyss to demonstrate its depth. And
Madame Marneffe had been terrified to find this old maid a combination
of Iago and Richard III., so feeble as she seemed, so humble, and so
little to be feared.

For that instant, Lisbeth Fischer had been her real self; that
Corsican and savage temperament, bursting the slender bonds that held
it under, had sprung up to its terrible height, as the branch of a
tree flies up from the hand of a child that has bent it down to gather
the green fruit.

To those who study the social world, it must always be a matter of
astonishment to see the fulness, the perfection, and the rapidity with
which an idea develops in a virgin nature.

Virginity, like every other monstrosity, has its special richness, its
absorbing greatness. Life, whose forces are always economized, assumes
in the virgin creature an incalculable power of resistance and
endurance. The brain is reinforced in the sum-total of its reserved
energy. When really chaste natures need to call on the resources of
body or soul, and are required to act or to think, they have muscles
of steel, or intuitive knowledge in their intelligence--diabolical
strength, or the black magic of the Will.

From this point of view the Virgin Mary, even if we regard her only as
a symbol, is supremely great above every other type, whether Hindoo,
Egyptian, or Greek. Virginity, the mother of great things, _magna
parens rerum_, holds in her fair white hands the keys of the upper
worlds. In short, that grand and terrible exception deserves all the
honors decreed to her by the Catholic Church.

Thus, in one moment, Lisbeth Fischer had become the Mohican whose
snares none can escape, whose dissimulation is inscrutable, whose
swift decisiveness is the outcome of the incredible perfection of
every organ of sense. She was Hatred and Revenge, as implacable as
they are in Italy, Spain, and the East. These two feelings, the
obverse of friendship and love carried to the utmost, are known only
in lands scorched by the sun. But Lisbeth was also a daughter of
Lorraine, bent on deceit.

She accepted this detail of her part against her will; she began by
making a curious attempt, due to her ignorance. She fancied, as
children do, that being imprisoned meant the same thing as solitary
confinement. But this is the superlative degree of imprisonment, and
that superlative is the privilege of the Criminal Bench.

As soon as she left Madame Marneffe, Lisbeth hurried off to Monsieur
Rivet, and found him in his office.

"Well, my dear Monsieur Rivet," she began, when she had bolted the
door of the room. "You were quite right. Those Poles! They are low
villains--all alike, men who know neither law nor fidelity."

"And who want to set Europe on fire," said the peaceable Rivet, "to
ruin every trade and every trader for the sake of a country that is
all bog-land, they say, and full of horrible Jews, to say nothing of
the Cossacks and the peasants--a sort of wild beasts classed by
mistake with human beings. Your Poles do not understand the times we
live in; we are no longer barbarians. War is coming to an end, my dear
mademoiselle; it went out with the Monarchy. This is the age of
triumph for commerce, and industry, and middle-class prudence, such as
were the making of Holland.

"Yes," he went on with animation, "we live in a period when nations
must obtain all they need by the legal extension of their liberties
and by the pacific action of Constitutional Institutions; that is what
the Poles do not see, and I hope----

"You were saying, my dear?--" he added, interrupting himself when he
saw from his work-woman's face that high politics were beyond her
comprehension.

"Here is the schedule," said Lisbeth. "If I don't want to lose my
three thousand two hundred and ten francs, I must clap this rogue into
prison."

"Didn't I tell you so?" cried the oracle of the Saint-Denis quarter.

The Rivets, successor to Pons Brothers, had kept their shop still in
the Rue des Mauvaises-Paroles, in the ancient Hotel Langeais, built by
that illustrious family at the time when the nobility still gathered
round the Louvre.

"Yes, and I blessed you on my way here," replied Lisbeth.

"If he suspects nothing, he can be safe in prison by eight o'clock in
the morning," said Rivet, consulting the almanac to ascertain the hour
of sunrise; "but not till the day after to-morrow, for he cannot be
imprisoned till he has had notice that he is to be arrested by writ,
with the option of payment or imprisonment. And so----"

"What an idiotic law!" exclaimed Lisbeth. "Of course the debtor
escapes."

"He has every right to do so," said the Assessor, smiling. "So this is
the way----"

"As to that," said Lisbeth, interrupting him, "I will take the paper
and hand it to him, saying that I have been obliged to raise the
money, and that the lender insists on this formality. I know my
gentleman. He will not even look at the paper; he will light his pipe
with it."

"Not a bad idea, not bad, Mademoiselle Fischer! Well, make your mind
easy; the job shall be done.--But stop a minute; to put your man in
prison is not the only point to be considered; you only want to
indulge in that legal luxury in order to get your money. Who is to pay
you?"

"Those who give him money."

"To be sure; I forgot that the Minister of War had commissioned him to
erect a monument to one of our late customers. Ah! the house has
supplied many an uniform to General Montcornet; he soon blackened them
with the smoke of cannon. A brave man, he was! and he paid on the
nail."

A marshal of France may have saved the Emperor or his country; "He
paid on the nail" will always be the highest praise he can have from a
tradesman.

"Very well. And on Saturday, Monsieur Rivet, you shall have the flat
tassels.--By the way, I am moving from the Rue du Doyenne; I am going
to live in the Rue Vanneau."

"You are very right. I could not bear to see you in that hole which,
in spite of my aversion to the Opposition, I must say is a disgrace; I
repeat it, yes! is a disgrace to the Louvre and the Place du
Carrousel. I am devoted to Louis-Philippe, he is my idol; he is the
august and exact representative of the class on whom he founded his
dynasty, and I can never forget what he did for the trimming-makers by
restoring the National Guard----"

"When I hear you speak so, Monsieur Rivet, I cannot help wondering why
you are not made a deputy."

"They are afraid of my attachment to the dynasty," replied Rivet. "My
political enemies are the King's. He has a noble character! They are a
fine family; in short," said he, returning to the charge, "he is our
ideal: morality, economy, everything. But the completion of the Louvre
is one of the conditions on which we gave him the crown, and the civil
list, which, I admit, had no limits set to it, leaves the heart of
Paris in a most melancholy state.--It is because I am so strongly in
favor of the middle course that I should like to see the middle of
Paris in a better condition. Your part of the town is positively
terrifying. You would have been murdered there one fine day.--And so
your Monsieur Crevel has been made Major of his division! He will come
to us, I hope, for his big epaulette."

"I am dining with him to-night, and will send him to you."

Lisbeth believed that she had secured her Livonian to herself by
cutting him off from all communication with the outer world. If he
could no longer work, the artist would be forgotten as completely as a
man buried in a cellar, where she alone would go to see him. Thus she
had two happy days, for she hoped to deal a mortal blow at the
Baroness and her daughter.

To go to Crevel's house, in the Rue des Saussayes, she crossed the
Pont du Carrousel, went along the Quai Voltaire, the Quai d'Orsay, the
Rue Bellechasse, Rue de l'Universite, the Pont de la Concorde, and the
Avenue de Marigny. This illogical route was traced by the logic of
passion, always the foe of the legs.

Cousin Betty, as long as she followed the line of the quays, kept
watch on the opposite shore of the Seine, walking very slowly. She had
guessed rightly. She had left Wenceslas dressing; she at once
understood that, as soon as he should be rid of her, the lover would
go off to the Baroness' by the shortest road. And, in fact, as she
wandered along by the parapet of the Quai Voltaire, in fancy
suppressing the river and walking along the opposite bank, she
recognized the artist as he came out of the Tuileries to cross the
Pont Royal. She there came up with the faithless one, and could follow
him unseen, for lovers rarely look behind them. She escorted him as
far as Madame Hulot's house, where he went in like an accustomed
visitor.

This crowning proof, confirming Madame Marneffe's revelations, put
Lisbeth quite beside herself.

She arrived at the newly promoted Major's door in the state of mental
irritation which prompts men to commit murder, and found Monsieur
Crevel _senior_ in his drawing-room awaiting his children, Monsieur
and Madame Hulot _junior_.

But Celestin Crevel was so unconscious and so perfect a type of the
Parisian parvenu, that we can scarcely venture so unceremoniously into
the presence of Cesar Birotteau's successor. Celestin Crevel was a
world in himself; and he, even more than Rivet, deserves the honors of
the palette by reason of his importance in this domestic drama.



Have you ever observed how in childhood, or at the early stages of
social life, we create a model for our own imitation, with our own
hands as it were, and often without knowing it? The banker's clerk,
for instance, as he enters his master's drawing-room, dreams of
possessing such another. If he makes a fortune, it will not be the
luxury of the day, twenty years later, that you will find in his
house, but the old-fashioned splendor that fascinated him of yore. It
is impossible to tell how many absurdities are due to this
retrospective jealousy; and in the same way we know nothing of the
follies due to the covert rivalry that urges men to copy the type they
have set themselves, and exhaust their powers in shining with a
reflected light, like the moon.

Crevel was deputy mayor because his predecessor had been; he was Major
because he coveted Cesar Birotteau's epaulettes. In the same way,
struck by the marvels wrought by Grindot the architect, at the time
when Fortune had carried his master to the top of the wheel, Crevel
had "never looked at both sides of a crown-piece," to use his own
language, when he wanted to "do up" his rooms; he had gone with his
purse open and his eyes shut to Grindot, who by this time was quite
forgotten. It is impossible to guess how long an extinct reputation
may survive, supported by such stale admiration.

So Grindot, for the thousandth time had displayed his white-and-gold
drawing-room paneled with crimson damask. The furniture, of rosewood,
clumsily carved, as such work is done for the trade, had in the
country been the source of just pride in Paris workmanship on the
occasion of an industrial exhibition. The candelabra, the fire-dogs,
the fender, the chandelier, the clock, were all in the most unmeaning
style of scroll-work; the round table, a fixture in the middle of the
room, was a mosaic of fragments of Italian and antique marbles,
brought from Rome, where these dissected maps are made of
mineralogical specimens--for all the world like tailors' patterns--an
object of perennial admiration to Crevel's citizen friends. The
portraits of the late lamented Madame Crevel, of Crevel himself, of
his daughter and his son-in-law, hung on the walls, two and two; they
were the work of Pierre Grassou, the favored painter of the
bourgeoisie, to whom Crevel owed his ridiculous Byronic attitude. The
frames, costing a thousand francs each, were quite in harmony with
this coffee-house magnificence, which would have made any true artist
shrug his shoulders.

Money never yet missed the smallest opportunity of being stupid. We
should have in Paris ten Venices if our retired merchants had had the
instinct for fine things characteristic of the Italians. Even in our
own day a Milanese merchant could leave five hundred thousand francs
to the Duomo, to regild the colossal statue of the Virgin that crowns
the edifice. Canova, in his will, desired his brother to build a
church costing four million francs, and that brother adds something on
his own account. Would a citizen of Paris--and they all, like Rivet,
love their Paris in their heart--ever dream of building the spires
that are lacking to the towers of Notre-Dame? And only think of the
sums that revert to the State in property for which no heirs are
found.