Cousin Bette (23 page)

Clearly, Madame Marneffe had succeeded in fascinating the old Empire beau so completely that he believed that he was persuading her to be unfaithful for the first time and that he had inspired her with a passion strong enough to make her forget all her vows. She told him that the odious Marneffe had completely neglected her after three days of marriage, and for the vilest of motives. Since then she had been living a quiet virtuous life like a well-behaved child, and been glad to do so, for marriage seemed horrible to her. That was the reason for her present sadness.

‘Suppose love should be like marriage!' she said, in tears.

These coy fairy-tales, invented by nearly all women in Valérie's situation, raised the Baron to a rose-strewn seventh heaven. So Valérie coquettishly delayed her surrender, while the love-sick artist and Hortense were waiting, perhaps impatiently, until the Baroness should have given her last blessing and her final kiss to the girl.

At seven in the morning, the Baron, full of bliss – for he had found a girl's innocence and the most consummate devilry in his Valérie – returned to relieve his son and daughter-in-law at their post of duty. Those dancers, almost strangers to the house, who at all weddings soon take possession of the floor, were still engaged in the final interminable figure-dances called cotillions, the bouillotte players were intent on their tables, old Crevel was in process of winning six thousand francs.

The morning papers being distributed by the newsvendors carried the following short notice among the social news of Paris:

The marriage of Monsieur le Comte Steinbock and Mademoiselle Hortense Hulot, daughter of Baron Hulot d'Ervy, Councillor of State and a Director of the Ministry of War, niece of the illustrious Comte de Forzheim, was solemnized this morning at the Church of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin. The ceremony was attended by a large gathering. Among those present were a number of our best-known artistic celebrities: Léon de Lora, Joseph Bridau, Stidmann, Bixiou; eminent representatives of the Ministry of War and the Council of State; and several Members of both the Upper and Lower Chambers; as well as distinguished members of the Polish colony, Count Paz, Count Laginski, and others.

Monsieur le Comte Wenceslas Steinbock is the grand-nephew of the famous general who served under King Charles XII of Sweden. The young Count took part in the Polish rising, and has found political refuge in France, where his high reputation as a sculptor has made it possible for him to obtain naturalization papers.

And so, in spite of Baron Hulot's desperate financial straits, his daughter's wedding lacked nothing that public opinion requires, not even newspaper publicity, and was in all respects similar to the celebration of his son's marriage with Mademoiselle Crevel. This occasion did something to kill the rumours that were being spread about the Director's financial position; and the dowry given to his daughter, too, explained his need to borrow money.

Here ends what may be called the introduction to this story. This account is to the drama that completes it, as the premises to a syllogism, or the exposition to a classical tragedy.

*

In Paris, when a woman has made up her mind to use her beauty as her livelihood and merchandise, it does not necessarily follow that she will make her fortune. Lovely spirited creatures are to be met with in that city in desperately poor circumstances, ending in squalor a life that began in pleasure. The reason is this. It is not enough simply to take the decision to adopt a courtesan's shameful profession and reap its fruits, while still preserving the appearances of a respectable middle-class wife. Vice does not achieve its triumphs easily. It is like genius in this respect: that both require a conjunction of favouring circumstances, so that they may use both fortune and talent to the best effect.

If the strange events of the Revolution had never taken place, the Emperor would not have existed either; he would have been no more than a second Fabert. Venal beauty, with no admirers, with no celebrity, without the Cross of Dishonour awarded by squandered fortunes, is like a Correggio in a lumber-room; it is genius dying in a garret.

A Laïs in Paris, then, must first of all find a rich man sufficiently enamoured of her to pay her price. She must, most important of all, maintain a high standard of elegance, for that is her hallmark of quality; be sufficiently cultured and polished to flatter men's self-esteem; possess the sparkle of a Sophie Arnould, with her power to stimulate the indifferent rich man's interest. Finally, she must make libertines desire her by appearing to be faithful to one, whose good fortune then becomes envied by the rest.

The conditions she needs, which women of that kind call
luck
, are quite hard to realize in Paris, for all that the city is full of millionaires, idlers, the bored and the sophisticated. For Providence seems to have set a strong wall about the homes of clerks and the lower middle class, whose wives find their difficulties at least doubled by the social environment in which they move. There are enough Madame Marneffes in Paris, however, for Valérie to represent a type in this record of manners.

Of such women, some yield to a combination of true passion and financial necessity, like Madame Colleyille, who was for so long attached to one of the most distinguished orators
of the Left, the banker Keller; and others are impelled by vanity, like Madame de la Baudraye, whose reputation remained almost unblemished, in spite of her elopement with Lousteau. Some are led astray by their love of fine clothes, and some by the impossibility of making ends meet on a salary obviously inadequate to the running of a household. The parsimony of the state, or of the Chambers, if you like, is the cause of a great deal of unhappiness, the source of much corruption. A considerable amount of sympathy is expressed at the present time with the hard lot of the working classes: they are represented as the manufacturers' sweated victims. But the state is a hundred times harder than the most grasping industrialist – in the matter of salaries it carries economy to absurd extremes. If you work hard, Industry rewards you in proportion to your effort; but what does the state do for its hosts of obscure and devoted toilers?

To stray from the path of virtue is for the married woman an inexcusable fault; but there are degrees of guilt. Some women, far from becoming depraved, conceal their frailty, and remain apparently worthy of respect, like the two whose stories have just been recalled; while certain others add to their disgrace the shame of deliberate investment in their dishonour. Madame Marneffe may be considered a type of the ambitious married courtesan who from the start accepts moral depravity and all that it implies, resolving to make her fortune and enjoy herself too, with no scruples about the means. Like Madame Marneffe, such women almost always have their husbands as their agents and accomplices.

Machiavellis in petticoats such as these are the most dangerous and the worst among all the evil kinds of women in Paris. A true courtesan – like Josépha, Madame Schontz, Malaga, Jenny Cadine, and the rest – conveys in the unmistakable nature of her situation a warning as brightly shining as prostitution's red lamp or the blazing lights of gambling dens. A man knows that he risks ruin in such company. But the sweetly prim respectability, the outer semblance of virtue, the hypocritical ways of a married woman who never spends anything, apparently, but the day-to-day housekeeping expenses, who demurs at any show of
extravagance, lead men to unsignposted, unspectacular ruin, ruin all the stranger because the victim finds excuses, and cannot find a cause for his disaster. It is inglorious household bills that consume fortunes, not gay dissipation. The father of a family beggars himself ignominiously, and does not even have, in his ruin, the major consolation of gratified vanity.

This cap will fit in many a household: this little sermon should fly like an arrow home to many a heart. Madame Marneffes are to be seen at every level in society, even at Court; for Valérie is a sad reality of existence, modelled from life, correct in every particular. Unfortunately, painting her portrait will cure no one of an addiction to loving sweetly smiling angels with a dreamy air, an innocent face, and a strong-box for a heart.

About three years after Hortense's marriage, in 1841, everyone thought that Baron Hulot d'Ervy had settled down – ‘laid by his horses', to use the expression of Louis XV's first surgeon – and yet he was spending more than twice as much on Madame Marneffe as he had ever done on Josépha. But Valérie, although always charmingly dressed, affected the simplicity suitable in the wife of a junior official. She kept luxury for private occasions, for her dress when she was at home, and in this way offered up her Parisian vanities as a sacrifice to her dear Hector. All the same, when she went to the theatre, she always appeared wearing a pretty hat and a very smart, fashionable dress. The Baron escorted her there in a carriage, to one of the best boxes.

The apartment in the rue Vanneau, which occupied the whole of the second floor of a modern house standing between a court and a garden, exhaled respectability. Its luxury consisted in nothing more than chintz hangings and handsome comfortable furniture, except in the bedroom, which displayed the extravagant profusion of a Jenny Cadine or a Schontz. It was all lace curtains, cashmere draperies, brocade door-hangings; with a set of chimneypiece ornaments designed by Stidmann and a little cabinet of knick-knacks crammed with treasures. Hulot had not wished to see his Valérie in a nest in any way inferior in magnificence to a
Josépha's gold-and-pearl-bedecked den of wickedness. Of the two principal rooms, the drawing-room was furnished in red damask, and the dining-room with carved oak. And, led on by the wish to have everything in keeping, the Baron, by the end of six months, had added more solid luxury to the knick-knacks, and given some very valuable household possessions: silver plate, for instance, worth more than twenty-four thousand francs.

Madame Marneffe's house within two years had acquired the reputation of being a very pleasant place to visit. People went there to play cards. Valérie herself quickly became known as an agreeable and amusing woman. In order to explain the change in her circumstances, the story was put about of a huge legacy left to her by her natural father, Marshal Mont-cornet, in trust. With some thought for the future, Valérie had added religious hypocrisy to her social kind. She was a regular attender at church services on Sunday, and was given due credit for her piety. She collected for the church, became a member of a women's charitable organization, contributed the consecrated bread, and did some good work among the poor in the neighbourhood, all at Hector's expense. Everything in her household, indeed, bore the mark of respectability. Many people affirmed that her relations with the Baron were quite innocent, pointing out the age of the Councillor of State, and believing that he had a platonic taste for Madame Marneffe's pleasing wit, charming manners, and lively conversation, rather like the late Louis XVIII's pleasure in a neatly turned love-letter.

The Baron always left the house with everyone else, about midnight, and returned a quarter of an hour later. The secret of the profound secrecy of this secret was as follows:

The doorkeepers of the house were Monsieur and Madame Olivier, and it was through the Baron's influence, as a friend of the landlord, who was looking for a caretaker, that they had left their obscure and ill-paid place in the rue du Doyenné for the lucrative and splendid position in the rue Vanneau house. Now, Madame Olivier, a former linen-maid in Charles X's household who had fallen from that estate like the occupant of the throne, had three children. The eldest,
already junior clerk to a lawyer, was adored by his parents. This Benjamin, with the threat of six years of military service hanging over his head, had seen his brilliant career about to be broken off, when Madame Marneffe managed to secure his exemption on account of one of those physical defects that examining boards can always find when a word is spoken in their ear by some power in the War Office. Olivier, a former groom in Charles X's stables, and his wife would therefore have put Christ on the cross again for Baron Hulot and Madame Marneffe.

What could the world say, to whom the earlier episode of the Brazilian, Monsieur Montès de Montejanos, was quite unknown? Nothing at all. The world, besides, looks with an indulgent eye on the mistress of a house where it finds good entertainment. In addition to all her pleasant attractions Madame Marneffe had the much prized advantage of undercover power. For this reason Claude Vignon, who had become secretary to Marshal Prince de Wissembourg and who dreamed of being a member of the Council of State as Master of Requests, frequented her drawing-room, to which also came several Deputies who were convivial fellows and liked a flutter. Madame Marneffe's set was built up by careful slow degrees; a coterie was formed exclusively of men of similar tastes and outlook, with an eye open to their own interest and a voice to proclaim the infinite merits of the mistress of the house. Complicity in vice, remember this, is the real Holy Alliance in Paris. Men pursuing some financial interest in the end break away from one other; those with a vice have always a common interest.

Within three months of moving to the rue Vanneau, Madame Marneffe was entertaining Monsieur Crevel, who quite soon afterwards became Mayor of his borough and Officer of the Legion of Honour. Crevel had hesitated for a time before taking that step: it meant laying aside the famous uniform of the National Guard in which he was accustomed to peacock at the Tuileries, thinking himself as much a soldier as the Emperor himself. But ambition, with Madame Marneffe's advice to back it, proved stronger than vanity. The Mayor had deemed his liaison with Mademoiselle Héloïse
Brisetout to be quite incompatible with his political status. For some time before his accession to the bourgeois throne of the Mayoralty, his gallantries had been wrapped in complete mystery. But Crevel, it may be guessed, had paid for the right to take, as often as he could, his revenge for Josépha's carrying off, by a settlement worth six thousand francs a year in the name of Valérie Fortin, a wife holding property independently of her husband. Valérie, perhaps inheriting from her mother the kept woman's sharpness of eye, had understood in the flicker of an eyelid the character of that grotesque admirer. Crevel's exclamation to Lisbeth ‘I have never had a real lady!' reported by Lisbeth to her dear Valérie, had greatly strengthened Valérie's hand in the transaction to which she owed her six thousand francs a year in five per cents. From that time she had never allowed her prestige to suffer diminution in the eyes of César Birotteau's former traveller.