Cousin Bette (3 page)

‘And would you have spoken in the same way, Monsieur,' asked Madame Hulot, looking Crevel steadily in the face, ‘if I had been untrue to my vows for your sake?'

‘I should have had no right to say it, dear Adeline,' exclaimed this singular lover, cutting the Baroness short, ‘for you would have found the dowry in my note-case.…'

And suiting action to words, stout Crevel dropped on one knee and kissed Madame Hulot's hand, attributing to hesitation her speechless horror at his words.

‘Buy my daughter's happiness at the price of – get up at once, Monsieur, or I'll ring the bell.'

The retired perfumer got to his feet with considerable difficulty, a circumstance which made him so furious that he struck his pose again. Nearly all men cherish a fondness for some posture that they think shows off to best advantage the good points with which nature has endowed them. In Crevel's case this pose consisted in crossing his arms like Napoleon, turning his head to show a three-quarter profile, and gazing, as the artist painting his portrait had made him gaze, at the horizon.

‘Faithful,' he said, with well-calculated rage, ‘faithful to a libert –'

‘To a husband, Monsieur, worthy of my fidelity,' Madame Hulot interrupted, before Crevel could get out a word that she had no wish to hear.

‘Look here, Madame, you wrote asking me to come. You want to know the reasons for my conduct. You drive me out of patience with your airs, as if you were an empress, your disdain and your… contempt! Anyone would think I was a black. I tell you again, and you may believe me! I have a right to… to court you… because… No, I love you well enough to hold my tongue.'

‘Go on, Monsieur. In a few days' time I shall be forty-eight
years old. I am not unnecessarily prudish. I can hear anything you may have to say.'

‘Well then, do you give me your word as a virtuous woman – since, unluckily for me, that's what you are – never to give me away, never to say that I told you this secret?'

‘If that's the condition of your telling me, I swear not to reveal to anyone, not even to my husband, who it was that told me the dreadful things I'm about to hear.'

‘I may believe you, for it concerns only you and him.'

Madame Hulot turned pale.

‘Ah! if you still love Hulot, this will hurt you! Would you rather I said nothing?'

‘Go on, Monsieur, if it is true that what you say will justify the strange declarations you have made to me, and your persistence in annoying a woman of my age, who only wishes to see her daughter married, and then… die in peace!'

‘You see, you are unhappy!'

‘I, Monsieur?'

‘Yes, lovely and noble creature!' cried Crevel. ‘You have suffered only too much.…'

‘Monsieur, say nothing more, and go! Or speak to me in a proper way.'

‘Are you aware, Madame, how our fine Monsieur Hulot and I became acquainted?… Through our mistresses, Madame.'

‘Oh, Monsieur!'

‘Through our mistresses, Madame,' repeated Crevel melodramatically, breaking his pose to raise his right hand.

‘Well, what then, Monsieur?…' said the Baroness calmly, to Crevel's great discomfiture.

Seducers, whose motives are mean, can never understand magnanimous minds.

‘Having been a widower for five years,' Crevel went on, like a man who has a story to tell, ‘not wishing to marry again, for the sake of my daughter whom I idolize, not wishing to have intrigues in my own establishment either, although at that time I had a very pretty cashier, I set up, as they call it, a little seamstress, fifteen years old, a miracle of beauty, whom I confess I fell head over in love with.

And so, Madame, I even asked my own aunt, whom I brought from my old home in the country (my mother's sister!), to live with this charming creature and look after her and see that she remained as good as she could in her circumstances, which were what you might call…
chocnoso
?… improper?… no, compromising!…

‘The little girl, who plainly had a vocation for music, had masters to teach her, was given an education (she had to be kept out of mischief somehow!). And besides I wanted to be three persons in one to her, at the same time a father, a benefactor, and, not to mince matters, a lover: to kill two birds with one stone, do a kind deed and make a kind friend.

‘I had five years' happiness. The child has a singing voice of a quality that would make any theatre's fortune, and I can only say that she is a Duprez in petticoats. She cost me two thousand francs a year, only to develop her talent as a singer. She made me an enthusiast for music: I took a box at the Italian Opera for her and my daughter. I went there on alternate evenings with them, one night with Célestine, the next night with Josépha…'

‘What, you mean the famous singer?'

‘Yes, Madame,' Crevel continued proudly, ‘the famous Josépha owes everything to me. Well, when she was twenty, in 1834 (I thought I had bound her to me for life and had become very soft with her), I wanted to give her some amusement and I let her meet a pretty little actress, Jenny Cadine, whose career had some similarity with her own. That actress too, owed everything to a protector who had brought her up as a cherished darling. Her protector was Baron Hulot.'

‘I know, Monsieur,' said the Baroness calmly, without the slightest tremor in her voice.

‘Ah bah!' exclaimed Crevel, more and more taken aback. ‘All very well! But do you know that your monster of a husband was
protecting
Jenny Cadine when she was thirteen years old?'

‘Well, Monsieur, what then?'

‘As Jenny Cadine,' the retired shopkeeper went on, ‘like Josépha, was twenty when they met, the Baron must have
been playing Louis XV to her Mademoiselle de Romans since 1826, and you were twelve years younger then.…'

‘Monsieur, I had my reasons for leaving Monsieur Hulot free.'

‘That lie, Madame, is enough to wipe out all your sins, no doubt, and will open the gate of Paradise to you,' Crevel replied, with a knowing air that made the Baroness turn crimson. ‘Tell that story, sublime and adored woman, to others, but not to old Crevel, who, I may tell you, has roistered too often at two-couple parties with your rascal of a husband not to know your full worth! When he was half-seas over, he sometimes used to reproach himself and enlarge on all your perfections to me. Oh, I know you very well: you are an angel. Between a girl of twenty and you a rake might hesitate, but not me.'

‘Monsieur!'

‘Very well, I'll stop. But you may as well know, saintly and worshipful woman, that husbands in their cups tell a great many things about their wives while their mistresses are listening, and their mistresses split their sides at them.'

Tears of outraged modesty, appearing between Madame Hulot's fine lashes, stopped the National Guardsman short, and he quite forgot to strike his pose.

‘To return to the point,' he said, ‘there is a bond between the Baron and me, because of our mistresses. The Baron, like all rips, is a very good sort, really a genial type. Oh I enjoyed him, the rascal! No, really, the things he thought of.… Well, no more of these reminiscences. We became like two brothers. The rogue, very Regency, did his best to lead me astray, to preach Saint-Simonism where women were concerned, give me notions of behaving like a lord, like a blue-jerkined swashbuckler; but, you see, I loved my little dear well enough to marry her, if I had not been afraid of having children. Between two old papas, such good friends as we were, naturally the idea couldn't but occur to us of marrying our children. Three months after the marriage of his son and my Célestine, Hulot… (I don't know how I can bear to utter his name, the scoundrel! For he has fooled us both, Madame!)… well, the scoundrel stole my little Josépha. The
cunning devil knew that he had been supplanted by a young Councillor of State and by an artist (no less!) in Jenny Cadine's heart (because her successes were making more and more of a splash), and he took my poor little mistress from me, a love of a girl; but you surely must have seen her at the Italian Opera, where he got her in by influence.

‘Your man is not so careful as me. No one twists me round their fingers – I do everything methodically, according to rule. Jenny Cadine had already had a good cut out of him; she must have cost him pretty near thirty thousand francs a year. Well, you had better know that he has completely ruined himself now for Josépha. Josépha, Madame, is a Jewess; she is called Mirah, an anagram of Hiram, and that's a Jewish label to identify her, for she's a deserted child who was picked up in Germany. I have made some inquiries and found out that she's the natural child of a rich Jewish banker.

‘The theatre, and above all what Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga, and Carabine taught her about the right fashion to treat old men, developed in that little girl whom I was bringing up in a proper, decent way – not expensive either – the instinct that the ancient Hebrews had for gold and jewels, for the Golden Calf! The famous singer now has a keen eye for the main chance; she wants to be rich, very rich. And she doesn't squander a sou of all the money that's squandered upon her. She tried her claws on Hulot, and she has plucked him clean – oh, plucked isn't the word, you can call it
skinned
!

‘And now, poor wretch, after struggling to keep her against one of the Kellars, and the Marquis d'Esgrignon – both mad about Josépha – not to mention unknown worshippers at her shrine, he's about to see her carried off by that Duke who's rolling in money and patronizes the arts – what's he called, now?… he's a dwarf – ah! the Duc d'Hérouville. This grand lord wants to keep Josépha for himself alone. The whole courtesan world is talking about it, and the Baron knows nothing at all; for it's just the same in the Thirteenth District as in all the others: the lover, like the husband, is the last to learn the truth.

‘Now do you understand my right? Your husband, my
dear lady, snatched my happiness from me, the only joy I have had since I lost my wife. Yes, if I had not had the bad luck to meet that old beau I should still possess Josépha, for, you know, I would never have let her go into the theatre; she would have stayed obscure, good, and my own.

‘Oh! if you had seen her eight years ago! Slight and highly-strung, a golden Andalusian, as they call it, with black hair shining like satin, an eye that could flash lightning, and long dark lashes, with the distinction of a duchess in every movement that she made, with a poor girl's modesty and an unassuming grace, as sweet and pretty in her ways as a wild deer. And now, because of Hulot, her charm and innocence have all become bird-lime, a trap set to catch five-franc pieces. The child is now queen of the demi-reps, as they say. She's up to all the artful dodges now, she who used to know nothing at all, hardly even the meaning of the expression!'

As he said this, the retired perfumer wiped away tears that had risen to his eyes. The sincerity of his grief had its effect on Madame Hulot, and she roused herself from the reverie into which she had fallen.

‘Well, Madame, is a man likely to find a treasure like that again at fifty-two years of age? At fifty-two love costs thirty thousand francs per annum: I have the figures from your husband; and I love Célestine too well to ruin her. Seeing you on that first evening when you received us, I could not understand how that scoundrel Hulot could keep a Jenny Cadine. You looked like an empress. You were not thirty, Madame,' he went on; ‘to me you seemed young; you were lovely. Ton my word of honour, that day, I was stirred to the depths. I said to myself, “Old Hulot neglects his wife, and if I had not my Josépha she would suit me to a T.” Ah! pardon me, that's an expression from my old trade. The perfumer breaks through now and again; that's what stands in the way of my aspiring to be a Deputy.

‘And so when I was done down in such a treacherous way by the Baron – for between old cronies like us our friends' mistresses should have been sacrosanct – I swore to myself that I would take his wife. It was only fair. The Baron would not be able to say a word, and there was nothing at all he
could do. When I told you of the state of my heart, you showed me the door as if I were a dog with mange at the first words, and in doing that you made my love twice as strong – my infatuation if you like – and you shall be mine!'

‘Indeed? How?'

‘I do not know how, but that's the way it's going to be. You see, Madame, an idiot of a perfumer – retired!– who has only one idea in his head, is in a stronger position than a clever man with thousands. I am mad about you, and you are my revenge! That's as if I were in love twice over. I speak my mind to you, a man with his mind made up. Just as bluntly as you say to me “I will not be yours”, I tell you soberly what I think. I'm putting my cards on the table, as the saying is. Yes, you'll be mine, when the right moment comes. Oh! even if you were fifty, you should still be my mistress. And you shall, for I don't expect any difficulty with your husband.…'

Madame Hulot cast a look of such frozen horror at this calculating businessman that he thought she had gone out of her mind, and stopped.

‘You asked for it; you covered me with your contempt; you defied me, and now I have told you!' he said, feeling some need to justify the brutality of his last words.

‘Oh! my daughter, my daughter!' cried the Baroness despairingly.

‘Ah! there's nothing more I can say!' Crevel went on. ‘The day Josépha was taken from me I was like a tigress robbed of her whelps.… In fact, I was in just the same state as I see you in now. Your daughter! For me, she is the means of getting you. Yes, I wrecked your daughter's marriage!… and you will not marry her without my help! However beautiful Mademoiselle Hortense may be, she needs a dowry.'

‘Alas! yes,' said the Baroness, wiping her eyes.

‘Well, try asking the Baron for ten thousand francs,' returned Crevel, striking his attitude again.