Cousin Betty. Honore de Balzac
officer, rising and coming forward. “Such love as——”
“No, monsieur, such obstinacy!” said the Baroness, interrupting him to put an end to his absurdity.
“Yes, obstinacy,” said he, “and love; but something stronger still—a claim——”
“A claim!” cried Madame Hulot, rising sublime with scorn, defiance, and indignation. “But,” she went on, “this will bring us to no issues; I did not ask you to come here to discuss the matter which led to your banishment in spite of the connection between our families——”
“I had fancied so.”
“What! still?” cried she. “Do you not see, monsieur, by the entire ease and freedom with which I can speak of lovers and love, of everything least creditable to a woman, that I am perfectly secure in my own virtue? I fear nothing—not even to shut myself in alone with you. Is that the conduct of a weak woman? You know full well why I begged you to come.”
“No, madame,” replied Crevel, with an assumption of great coldness. He pursed up his lips, and again struck an attitude.
“Well, I will be brief, to shorten our common discomfort,” said the Baroness, looking at Crevel.
Crevel made an ironical bow, in which a man who knew the race would have recognized the graces of a bagman.
“Our son married your daughter——”
“And if it were to do again——” said Crevel.
“It would not be done at all, I suspect,” said the baroness hastily. “However, you have nothing to complain of. My son is not only one of the leading pleaders of Paris, but for the last year he has sat as Deputy, and his maiden speech was brilliant enough to lead us to suppose that ere long he will be in office. Victorin has twice been called upon to report on important measures; and he might even now, if he chose, be made Attorney-General in the Court of Appeal. So, if you mean to say that your son-in-law has no fortune——”
“Worse than that, madame, a son-in-law whom I am obliged to maintain,” replied Crevel. “Of the five hundred thousand francs that formed my daughter’s marriage portion, two hundred thousand have vanished—God knows how!—in paying the young gentleman’s debts, in furnishing his house splendaciously—a house costing five hundred thousand francs, and bringing in scarcely fifteen thousand, since he occupies the larger part of it, while he owes two hundred and sixty thousand francs of the purchase-money. The rent he gets barely pays the interest on the debt. I have had to give my daughter twenty thousand francs this year to help her to make both ends meet. And then my son-in-law, who was making thirty thousand francs a year at the Assizes, I am told, is going to throw that up for the Chamber——”
“This, again, Monsieur Crevel, is beside the mark; we are wandering from the point. Still, to dispose of it finally, it may be said that if my son gets into office, if he has you made an officer of the Legion of Honor and councillor of the municipality of Paris, you, as a retired perfumer, will not have much to complain of——”
“Ah! there we are again, madame! Yes, I am a tradesman, a shopkeeper, a retail dealer in almond-paste, eau-de-Portugal, and hair-oil, and was only too much honored when my only daughter was married to the son of Monsieur le Baron Hulot d’Ervy—my daughter will be a Baroness! This is Regency, Louis XV., (Eil-de-boeuf—quite tip-top!—very good.) I love Celestine as a man loves his only child—so well indeed, that, to preserve her from having either brother or sister, I resigned myself to all the privations of a widower—in Paris, and in the prime of life, madame. But you must understand that, in spite of this extravagant affection for my daughter, I do not intend to reduce my fortune for the sake of your son, whose expenses are not wholly accounted for—in my eyes, as an old man of business.”
“Monsieur, you may at this day see in the Ministry of Commerce Monsieur Popinot, formerly a druggist in the Rue des Lombards——”
“And a friend of mine, madame,” said the ex-perfumer. “For I, Celestin Crevel, foreman once to old Cesar Birotteau, brought up the said Cesar Birotteau’s stock; and he was Popinot’s father-in-law. Why, that very Popinot was no more than a shopman in the establishment, and he is the first to remind me of it; for he is not proud, to do him justice, to men in a good position with an income of sixty thousand francs in the funds.”
“Well then, monsieur, the notions you term ‘Regency’ are quite out of date at a time when a man is taken at his personal worth; and that is what you did when you married your daughter to my son.”
“But you do not know how the marriage was brought about!” cried Crevel. “Oh, that cursed bachelor life! But for my misconduct, my Celestine might at this day be Vicomtesse Popinot!”
“Once more have done with recriminations over accomplished facts,” said the Baroness anxiously. “Let us rather discuss the complaints I have found on your strange behavior. My daughter Hortense had a chance of marrying; the match depended entirely on you; I believed you felt some sentiments of generosity; I thought you would do justice to a woman who has never had a thought in her heart for any man but her husband, that you would have understood how necessary it is for her not to receive a man who may compromise her, and that for the honor of the family with which you are allied you would have been eager to promote Hortense’s settlement with Monsieur le Conseiller Lebas.—And it is you, monsieur, you have hindered the marriage.”
“Madame,” said the ex-perfumer, “I acted the part of an honest man. I was asked whether the two hundred thousand francs to be settled on Mademoiselle Hortense would be forthcoming. I replied exactly in these words: ‘I would not answer for it. My son-in-law, to whom the Hulots had promised the same sum, was in debt; and I believe that if Monsieur Hulot d’Ervy were to die to-morrow, his widow would have nothing to live on.’—There, fair lady.”
“And would you have said as much, monsieur,” asked Madame Hulot, looking Crevel steadily in the face, “if I had been false to my duty?”
“I should not be in a position to say it, dearest Adeline,” cried this singular adorer, interrupting the Baroness, “for you would have found the amount in my pocket-book.”
And adding action to word, the fat guardsman knelt down on one knee and kissed Madame Hulot’s hand, seeing that his speech had filled her with speechless horror, which he took for hesitancy.
“What, buy my daughter’s fortune at the cost of——? Rise, monsieur—or I ring the bell.”
Crevel rose with great difficulty. This fact made him so furious that he again struck his favorite attitude. Most men have some habitual position by which they fancy that they show to the best advantage the good points bestowed on them by nature. This attitude in Crevel consisted in crossing his arms like Napoleon, his head showing three-quarters face, and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as the painter has shown the Emperor in his portrait.
“To be faithful,” he began, with well-acted indignation, “so faithful to a liber——”
“To a husband who is worthy of such fidelity,” Madame Hulot put in, to hinder Crevel from saying a word she did not choose to hear.
“Come, madame; you wrote to bid me here, you ask the reasons for my conduct, you drive me to extremities with your imperial airs, your scorn, and your contempt! Any one might think I was a Negro. But I repeat it, and you may believe me, I have a right to—to make love to you, for—— But no; I love you well enough to hold my tongue.”
“You may speak, monsieur. In a few days I shall be eight-and-forty; I am no prude; I can hear whatever you can say.”
“Then will you give me your word of honor as an honest woman—for you are, alas for me! an honest woman—never to mention my name or to say that it was I who betrayed the secret?”
“If that is the condition on which you speak, I will swear never to tell any one from whom I heard the horrors you propose to tell me, not even my husband.”
“I