Cousin Bette

by Honoré de Balzac

  Once the door was bolted, the Brazilian appeared from the dressing-room where he had been waiting, his eyes full of tears, in a pitiable state. Montès had clearly overheard everything.

  ‘You don’t love me any more, Henri, I can see,’ said Madame Marneffe, hiding her face in her handkerchief and dissolving in tears.

  It was a cry of real love. A woman’s outburst of despair melts a lover’s heart, and the forgiveness that he is secretly eager to give her is easily yielded, especially when the woman is young, beautiful, and wearing a dress so low cut that she could rise from the top of it in the costume of Eve.

  ‘But if you love me, why don’t you leave everything for me?’ the Brazilian demanded.

  This son of America, logical like all children of nature, immediately took up the conversation at the point where he had left it, and seized possession again of Valérie’s waist.

  ‘Why?’ she said, raising her head and looking at Henri, her gaze so full of love that he was silent. ‘Because, my darling, I am married; because we’re in Paris and not in the savannahs, or the pampas, or the wide, open spaces of America! Henri, my sweet, my first and only love, you must listen to me. This husband of mine, an ordinary under clerk at the War Office, is determined to be head clerk and an Officer of the Legion of Honour. Can I help his being ambitious? And so, for the same reason that he used to leave us entirely free (nearly four years ago, do you remember, wretch?…), Marneffe forces Baron Hulot on me now. I can’t get rid of that frightful chief of his, who puffs like a grampus and has whiskers in his nostrils, and is sixty-three years old, and has aged ten in the last three years in his attempt to keep young. I detest him so much that when the day dawns that sees Marneffe head clerk and an Officer of the Legion of Honour…’

  ‘How much more will your husband be paid then?’

  ‘A thousand crowns.’

  ‘I will pay him that, as an annuity,’ said Montès. ‘Let’s leave Paris and go…’

  ‘Where?’ said Valérie, pulling one of those charming pouting faces with which women challenge men of whom they are sure. ‘You know we could only be happy in Paris. I care too much for your love to want to watch it fade away when we found ourselves alone in a desert. Listen, Henri; you are the only man in the whole universe who means anything to me. Get that into your tiger’s skull!’

  Women always persuade men that they are lions, with a will of iron, when they are making sheep of them.

  ‘Now, listen to me! Marneffe has not five years to live. There is disease in the very marrow of his bones. Of the twelve months of the year, he spends seven drinking medicine and herb infusions; he lives wrapped in flannel. In fact, as the doctor says, he’s ripe for the scythe at any moment. An illness that would be trifling to a healthy man will be mortal to him. His blood is infected, his life attacked at its source. In the past five years I have not let him kiss me once, for the man is pestilence! One day, and the day is not far distant, I shall be a widow. Well then, I declare to you – and I have already had a proposal from a man with sixty thousand francs a year, and I hold him in the hollow of my hand like this lump of sugar – I swear that if you were as poor as Hulot, as leprous as Marneffe, and beat me as well, you are the man I would choose for my husband; you are the only man I love, whose name I want to bear. And I am ready to give you any pledge of love you ask.’

  ‘Well then, tonight…’

  ‘But, dear child of Rio, my handsome jaguar come from the virgin forests of Brazil in search of me,’ she said, taking his hand, kissing it, and caressing it, ‘have a little mercy on the creature you want to make your wife.… Shall I be your wife, Henri?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Brazilian, overwhelmed by her frank declaration of passion. And he fell on his knees.

  ‘Listen, Henri,’ said Valérie, taking both his hands and looking steadily into the depths of his eyes; ‘do you swear to me here, in the presence of Lisbeth, my best and only friend, my sister, to take me for your wife at the end of my year of widowhood?’

  ‘I swear it.’

  ‘That’s not enough! Swear by your mother’s ashes and her eternal salvation; swear it by the Virgin and your hopes as a Catholic!’

  Valérie knew that the Brazilian would keep that oath, no matter into what social mire she should have fallen. The Brazilian took the solemn oath, his face almost touching Valérie’s white bosom, and his eyes held fascinated. He was as intoxicated as a man may be, seeing the woman he loves, once more, after a four-months’ voyage!

  ‘Well, now you can be quite calm and happy. You must treat Madame Marneffe with the respect that’s due to the future Baroness de Montejanos! Don’t spend a farthing on me, I forbid you to. Wait here, in this room; you can rest on the sofa. I’ll come myself and tell you when you can leave. Tomorrow we’ll have lunch together, and you can depart about one o’clock, as if you had come to pay me a visit at twelve. Don’t worry about anything; the porters are as devoted to me as if I were their daughter. And now I must go down to my own apartment to serve tea.’

  She beckoned to Lisbeth, who went with her as far as the landing. There Valérie whispered in the old maid’s ear:

  ‘This blackamoor has come back a little too soon! I’ll die if I can’t help you to your revenge on Hortense!’

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear kind little demon,’ said the old maid, kissing her on the forehead. ‘Love and vengeance, hunting together, will always strike down their prey. Hortense expects me tomorrow; she is in distress. Wenceslas needs a thousand francs and is ready to give you a thousand kisses for them.’

  When he left Valérie, Hulot had gone down to the porters’ lodge, taking Madame Olivier by surprise.

  ‘Madame Olivier!’

  At this imperious call, noting the beckoning gesture with which the Baron emphasized it, Madame Olivier left her lodge and followed the Baron to the court.

  ‘You know that if anyone can help your son to acquire a practice some day, I can. It’s thanks to me that he is now third clerk in a solicitor’s office and reading for the law.’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur le Baron. And Monsieur le Baron can count on our gratitude. There’s not a day passes but what I don’t pray to God for Monsieur le Baron’s happiness.’

  ‘Not so many words, my good woman,’ said Hulot. ‘Deeds!’

  ‘What I am to do?’ asked Madame Olivier.

  ‘A man came here tonight in a carriage. Do you know him?’

  Madame Olivier had of course recognized Montès. How should she have forgotten him? In the rue du Doyenné house, Montès had always slipped a five-franc piece into her hand whenever he left a little too early in the morning. If the Baron had addressed himself to Monsieur Olivier, he might perhaps have learned the whole story. But Olivier was asleep. Among the lower classes, a man’s wife is not only superior to the man, she is usually the dominant partner as well. Madame Olivier had long before made up her mind which side she should support if her two benefactors should come into collision; and she regarded Madame Marneffe as the stronger power.

  ‘Do I know him?’ she replied. ‘No, indeed. No, I’ve never seen him before!’

  ‘What! Madame Marneffe’s cousin never came to see her when she lived in the rue du Doyenné?’

  ‘Ah! Was that her cousin?’ exclaimed Madame Olivier. ‘He did come perhaps, but I didn’t recognize him. The very next time he comes, Monsieur, I’ll take a good look at him.’

  ‘He’ll be coming down,’ said Hulot sharply, cutting her short.

  ‘But he has gone,’ replied Madame Olivier, understanding the situation now. ‘His carriage has left.…’

  ‘Did you see him go?’

  ‘As plain as I see you. He said to his man “To the Embassy!” he said.’

  Her tone of conviction, the assurance she gave, drew a sigh of relief from the Baron. He took Madame Olivier’s hand and pressed it.

  ‘Thank you, my dear Madame Olivier; but there’s another thing.… What about Monsieur Crevel?’

  ‘Monsieur Crevel? What do you
mean? I don’t understand,’ said Madame Olivier.

  ‘Listen to me! He’s in love with Madame Marneffe.…’

  ‘That’s not possible, Monsieur le Baron! Not possible at all!’ she said, clasping her hands.

  ‘He’s in love with Madame Marneffe!’ repeated the Baron emphatically. ‘What’s going on, I don’t know; but I mean to know, and you must find out. If you can help me unravel this intrigue, your son shall be a solicitor.’

  ‘Monsieur le Baron, don’t you fret and worry yourself like this,’ said Madame Olivier. ‘Madame loves you and nobody else; and well enough her maid knows it. We say to each other sometimes, just like that, that you’re surely the luckiest man alive, because you know what Madame is… Ah! just perfection.… She gets up at ten o’clock every day; and then she has lunch; well. Then there’s an hour it takes her to get dressed, and all that brings her to two o’clock. And then she goes to walk about in the Tuileries, in sight and nod of everyone, and is always back at four o’clock for when you come. Oh! she’s that regular, she’s like a clock. She has no secrets from her maid, and Reine has none from me. Well, naturally not. Reine couldn’t have on account of my son, that she’s a fancy for.… So you see very well if Madame had anything to do with Monsieur Crevel we couldn’t not know about it.’

  The Baron climbed the stairs again to Madame Marneffe’s apartment with a radiant face, convinced that he was the man, the only man, loved by that shameless courtesan, as treacherous, but also as beautiful and enchanting, as a siren.

  Crevel and Marneffe were beginning their second piquet. Crevel was losing, as a man cannot help losing when his mind is not on the game. Marneffe, who was well aware of the cause of the Mayor’s distraction, had no scruples about taking full advantage of it. He was looking at the cards to be drawn, and discarding accordingly; then, knowing his opponent’s hand, he played with confidence. Playing for twenty-sou stakes, he had already rooked the Mayor of thirty francs when the Baron came in again.

  ‘Well, well,’ said the Councillor of State, surprised to find all the guests gone; ‘so you’re all alone! Where is everyone?’

  ‘Your charming display of temper frightened them all away,’ answered Crevel.

  ‘No, it was my wife’s cousin arriving,’ said Marneffe. ‘The visitors thought that Valérie and Henri must have something to say to each other after three years, so they showed their tact by going away. If I had been here I would have made them stay; but as it happens I should have been doing the wrong thing, because Lisbeth always serves tea at half past ten, and her indisposition has put everything at sixes and sevens.’

  ‘Is Lisbeth really not well?’ asked Crevel angrily.

  ‘So they told me,’ replied Marnefte with the amoral unconcern of a man for whom women have ceased to exist.

  The Mayor looked at the clock. By his reckoning the Baron had spent forty minutes in Lisbeth’s room. Hulot’s joyful expression cast the gravest suspicion upon Hector, Valérie, and Lisbeth.

  ‘I have just seen her. She’s in dreadful pain, poor thing,’ said the Baron.

  ‘Other people’s pain is your pleasure, then, is it?’ returned Crevel acidly. ‘Because you’ve come back to us, my dear friend, with a face positively beaming with jubilation! Can it be that Lisbeth is in serious danger? Your daughter is her heir, I think. You look like a different person: you went off with a face like the Moor of Venice, and come back looking like Saint-Preux! I would very much like to see Madame Marneffe’s face.…’

  ‘Just what do you mean by that?’ demanded Marneffe, gathering his cards together and slapping them down in front of him.

  The dull eyes of this worn-out man, decrepit at forty-seven, kindled; faint colour suffused his cold and flabby cheeks; he opened his denuded mouth with its discoloured lips, to which rose a white chalky foam. The rage of this impotent man, whose life hung on a thread, who in a duel would be risking nothing, while Crevel would have everything to lose, inspired the Mayor with fear.

  ‘I say,’ Crevel replied, ‘that I would like to see Madame Marneffe’s face, and I have all the more reason, because yours at this moment is a very unpleasant sight. Upon my word, you are as ugly as sin, my dear Marneffe.’

  ‘Do you know that you are not very polite?’

  ‘A man who wins thirty francs from me in forty-five minutes never looks very handsome to me.’

  ‘Ah! if you had only seen me,’ the deputy head clerk said, ‘seventeen years ago.…’

  ‘You were captivating?’ inquired Crevel.

  ‘That’s what’s been my ruin. Now if I had been like you, I should be a Mayor and a Peer too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Crevel, with a smile, ‘you have gone to the wars too often. There are two different metals to be won by cultivating the god of commerce, and you’ve got the baser – dross, dregs, drugs!’ And Crevel burst into a roar of laughter.

  Although Marneffe might take offence when his honour was imperilled, he always took such coarse and vulgar pleasantries well. They were the ordinary small change of conversation between Crevel and himself.

  ‘Eve has cost me dear, that’s true enough; but, faith – short and sweet is my motto.’

  ‘A better one, to my mind, is happy ever after,’ said Crevel.

  Madame Marneffe, coming in, saw her husband and Crevel playing cards, and the Baron: the three remaining occupants of the drawing-room. One glance at the Mayor’s face told her all the agitating thoughts that had passed through that dignitary’s mind, and her line of action was at once determined.

  ‘Marneffe, my pet,’ she said, going to lean on her husband’s shoulder, and drawing her pretty fingers through his uninviting grey hair in an unsuccessful attempt to cover his scalp, ‘it is very late for you; you ought to go to bed. You know that tomorrow you have to take a dose; the doctor said so, and Reine is to give you some herb tea at seven. If you want to go on living, that’s enough piquet.…’

  ‘Shall we do five more?’ Marneffe asked Crevel.

  ‘All right… I have two already,’ replied Crevel.

  ‘How long will that take?’ Valérie asked.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ replied Marneffe.

  ‘It’s eleven o’clock,’ said Valérie. ‘Really, Monsieur Crevel, anyone would think that you wanted to kill my husband. Well, at least, don’t be too long about it.’

  This ambiguous command made both Crevel and Hulot smile, and even Marneffe himself. Valérie went over to speak to her Hector.

  ‘Leave now, my dear,’ she whispered in Hector’s ear. ‘Go for a little walk in the rue Vanneau, and come back when you see Crevel leave.’

  ‘I would rather leave the apartment, and then come back to your room by the dressing-room door. You could tell Reine to open it for me.’

  ‘Reine is upstairs, looking after Lisbeth.’

  ‘Well, suppose I went up to Lisbeth’s room?’

  Danger awaited Valérie on all sides. Knowing that there would be a scene with Crevel, she did not want Hulot in her room, where he might overhear everything.… And the Brazilian was waiting in Lisbeth’s apartment.

  ‘Really, you men,’ she said to Hulot, ‘when you get an idea into your heads, you would burn down the house to force your way in. In Lisbeth’s present state she’s not fit to receive you. Are you afraid of catching cold in the street? Off you go… or good night to you!’

  ‘Good night, gentlemen,’ said the Baron, aloud.

  Once piqued in his old man’s vanity, Hulot was set on proving that he could play the young man and wait for the lovers’ hour in the street, and he departed.

  Marneffe said good night to his wife, and took her hands with a show of affection. Valérie pressed her husband’s hand significantly, meaning ‘Get rid of Crevel for me’.

  ‘Good night, Crevel,’ said Marneffe. ‘I hope you don’t intend to stay long with Valérie. I’m a jealous man. Ah! jealousy’s caught me a bit late in life, but it has fairly got me in its clutches.… And I’ll come back to see if you have gone.’

&n
bsp; ‘We have business to discuss, but I won’t stay long,’ said Crevel.

  ‘Speak softly!’ said Valérie under her breath, and then aloud, ‘Well, what is it?’ And she looked Crevel up and down with a mixture of arrogance and contempt.

  When he met her haughty stare, Crevel, who had rendered great services to Valérie, and had been counting on making the most of the fact, subsided into humility and submission.

  ‘That Brazilian…’

  Quailing before Valérie’s fixed contemptuous stare, Crevel broke off.

  ‘What of him?’ she said.

  ‘That cousin…’

  ‘He’s not my cousin,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s my cousin to the world, and to Monsieur Marneffe. If he were my lover, you would have no right to say a word. A tradesman who buys a woman in order to have his revenge, in my opinion, is lower than the man who buys her for love. You did not fall in love with me. You saw only Monsieur Hulot’s mistress in me, and you bought me like a man buying a pistol to do his enemy to death. I needed money to buy my bread, and I agreed!’

  ‘And you haven’t kept your part of the bargain,’ replied Crevel, the shopkeeper coming uppermost in him again.

  ‘Ah! you want Baron Hulot to know that you have robbed him of his mistress, to have your revenge for his carrying Josépha off? Could anything prove more clearly how despicable you are? You say you love a woman, call her a duchess, and then you want to bring dishonour upon her! Well, perhaps, my dear, you are right. This woman that you have bought is not to be compared with Josépha. That young lady stands up bravely in her shame, while I’m just a hypocrite who deserves to be publicly whipped. Josépha, of course, is protected by her talent and her wealth. The only protection I possess is my reputation. I am still a respectable middle-class wife of good repute; but if you create a scandal, what shall I be? If I had a lot of money, it wouldn’t matter so much; but all I have, as you know very well, is fifteen thousand francs a year at most.’

  ‘Oh, much more,’ said Crevel; ‘I have doubled your savings during the last couple of months, in Paris–Orléans Railway shares.’

  ‘Well, no one counts for anything in Paris who has less than fifty thousand francs a year; you needn’t try to tell me in francs the value of the reputation I shall lose! And all I am asking is to see Marneffe made a head clerk. Then his salary would be six thousand francs. He has twenty-seven years’ service, so that in three more years I should be entitled to a pension of fifteen hundred francs when he dies. And yet you, on whom I have lavished kindness, whom I have gorged with happiness, you can’t wait. And that’s what you call love!’ she exclaimed.