Cousin Bette

by Honoré de Balzac

  Hortense was twice as deeply in love with her poet. She pictured a sublime statue of Marshal Montcornet. Mont-cornet was to be valiance personified, the type of the cavalry officer, courage itself, in Murat’s style. This statue would make it easy to understand how the Emperor had won all his victories! And how finely it would be executed! The facile pencil was accommodating: it confirmed the artist’s words.

  The only statue produced was a ravishing little Wenceslas.

  Whenever Wenceslas was about to go to the studio at Gros-Caillou to complete the clay model, the Prince’s clock was likely to require his presence at the studio of Florent and Chanor, where the figures were being finished; or the sky would be overcast and grey. On one occasion there might be business to attend to, and a family dinner on the day after. Then there were the days, hardly worth mentioning, when the artist was not in the mood, or did not feel well; besides those spent in dalliance with an adored wife. Marshal Prince de Wissembourg had actually to show anger, and say that he would go back on his decision to give the commission to Wenceslas, before he could succeed in seeing the model. It was only after innumerable complaints and many heated words that the subscribers’ committee were allowed to see the plaster cast. Steinbock came home visibly fatigued at the end of each day he spent at work, complaining of having to labour like a mason, and of his own lack of robustness.

  During the first year this household was comfortably off. Countess Steinbock, madly in love with her husband, in the flush of requited passion, inveighed against the War Minister. She went to see him, and told him that great works could not be manufactured like cannon, and that the state should take orders from genius, as Louis XIV, Francis I, and Pope Leo X had done. Poor Hortense believed that she held a Phidias in her arms, and treated her Wenceslas with fond weakness, like an idolized son.

  ‘Don’t hurry,’ she told her husband. ‘Our whole future is in this statue. Take your time. Create a masterpiece.’

  She used to go to the studio. Steinbock, in love, would waste five hours out of seven with his wife, describing his statue to her instead of working on it. And so he took eighteen months to complete this work, of such cardinal importance for him.

  When the plaster was cast, and the model was actually in existence, poor Hortense thought the piece admirable. She had witnessed the tremendous effort her husband had made, and seen his health suffer from the extreme fatigue to which the muscles, arms, and hands of sculptors are subject. Her father, who knew nothing about sculpture, and the Baroness, equally ignorant, acclaimed it as a masterpiece. The War Minister then came, brought by them to admire it, and, infected by their enthusiasm, he was pleased with this model, placed by itself before a green cloth, shown in the best light and to the best possible advantage.

  Alas! at the 1841 Exhibition, unanimous condemnation in the mouths of people antagonized by the speed with which Steinbock had become an idol raised upon a pedestal degenerated into shouts of mockery and derision. Stidmann tried to tell his friend the truth; he was accused of jealousy. The newspaper articles, to Hortense, were so many shrieks of envy. Stidmann, a loyal friend, had articles written, challenging the critics, and pointing out that sculptors modify their works greatly in transposing them from the plaster model to the finished marble, and that it was the marble they were judged by. ‘Between the plaster and the marble a masterpiece may be ruined, or a great work created from a poor model,’ so wrote Claude Vignon. ‘The plaster is the manuscript; the marble is the book.’

  In two and a half years Steinbock produced a statue and a child. The child was of exquisite beauty; the statue execrable.

  The Prince’s clock and the statue paid the young couple’s debts. Steinbock had by that time formed the habit of going into society, to the theatre, to the Italian Opera. He could talk admirably about art. He maintained his reputation as a great artist, in the eyes of the social world, by his conversation, his critical disquisitions. There are talented men in Paris who spend their lives talking their life-work, and are satisfied with a kind of drawing-room fame. Steinbock, following the usual course of such charming eunuchs, developed an aversion to work that grew from day to day. In the very moment of feeling the impulse to begin his work, he became conscious of all the difficulties of the task, and was so discouraged that his will to tackle them collapsed. Inspiration, the frenzy that leads to intellectual procreation, took flight with a flip of her wings at sight of this sick lover.

  Sculpture is like Drama; at once more difficult and easier than all the other arts. One can copy a model and the work is done; but to impart a soul to it, in the representing of a man or woman to create a type, is to snatch fire from heaven like Prometheus. Sculptors who have succeeded in this are rare and glorious landmarks in human history, like poets. Michelangelo, Michel Colomb, Jean Goujon, Phidias, Praxiteles, Polyclitus, Puget, Canova, Albrecht Dürer, are brothers of Milton, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Tasso, Homer, and Molière. Their work is so impressive that one statue is enough to make a man immortal, just as it took only Figaro, Lovelace, and Manon Lescaut to immortalize Beaumarchais, Richardson, and the Abbé Prévost.

  Superficial minds (and there are to many of them among sculptors) have said that sculpture of the nude is the only viable sculpture, that the art died with the Greeks, and is made impossible by modern dress. But, for one thing, there were sublime statues fully draped in the ancient world, the Polyhymnia, the Julia, for example; and not more than one tenth of the sculpture of antiquity survives today to furnish examples. True lovers of art, besides, need only go to see Michelangelo’s Thinker in Florence, and, in Mainz Cathedral, to see Albrecht Dürer’s ebony Virgin, a living woman in her triple robes, with rippling hair as airy in texture and vital as ever maid combed. Let the ignorant go at once to see them, and they will all acknowledge that genius may inform drapery, armour, a gown, with thought and feeling about the substance of a body, just as convincingly as a man impresses his nature and the habits of his life upon his envelope. Sculpture is the constant creation of reality in a way that, in painting, was achieved once and uniquely by Raphael!

  The solution of the sculptor’s tremendous problem is only to be found in untiring unremitting labour, for the material difficulties must be so completely mastered, the hand must be so disciplined, so ready and obedient, as to enable the sculptor to struggle, in a combat of spirit with spirit, with that inapprehensible moral element that he must transfigure and embody. If Paganini, who made the strings of his violin tell his whole soul, had let three days pass without practising, he would have lost, together with his power of expression, what he called the register of his instrument, by which he meant the close union existing between the wood, bow, strings, and himself. If this accord were broken, he would at once become no more than an ordinary violinist. Constant labour is the law of art as well as the law of life, for art is the creative activity of the mind. And so great artists, true poets, do not wait for either commissions or clients; they create today, tomorrow, ceaselessly. And there results a habit of toil, a perpetual consciousness of the difficulties, that keeps them in a state of marriage with the Muse, and her creative forces. Canova lived in his studio, and Voltaire in his study. Homer and Phidias must have so lived, too.

  Wenceslas Steinbock had had his feet set on the hard road trodden by those great men, leading to the heights, when Lisbeth had kept him on the chain in his garret. Happiness, in the person of Hortense, had delivered the poet over to idleness, a state quite natural to all artists, for their kind of idleness is an occupation in itself. They enjoy the pleasure of the pasha in his seraglio: they toy with ideas, intoxicating themselves at the fountains of the mind. Certain gifted artists who, like Steinbock, have wasted themselves in reverie, have been rightly termed dreamers. Such opium-eaters all fall into penury, although if they had been driven by harsh necessity they would have risen to greatness. These demi-artists are, for the most part, charming people. The world delights in them, and turns their heads with adulation. They appear superior to real artist
s, who are taxed with aloofness, unsociability, rebellion against the conventions and civilized living; because great men belong to their creations. The entire detachment from all worldly concerns of true artists, and their devotion to their work, stamp them as egoists in the eyes of fools, who think that such men ought to go dressed like men about town performing the gyration that they call ‘their social duties’. People would like to see the lions of Atlas combed and scented like a marchioness’s lapdogs. Such men, who have few peers and rarely meet them, grow accustomed to shutting out the world, in their habit of solitude. They become incomprehensible to the majority, which, as we know, is composed of blockheads, the envious, ignoramuses, and skaters upon the surface of life.

  Do you now understand the part a wife must play in the life of these impressive exceptional beings? A wife must be what Lisbeth had been for five years, and in addition give love, a humble and tactful love, ever ready, ever smiling.

  Hortense, her eyes opened by her sufferings as a mother, beset by dire necessity, realized too late the mistakes that she had made in her excessively indulgent love; but she was a true daughter of her mother, and the thought of nagging Wenceslas broke her heart. She loved her dear poet too much to be his scourge, though she saw the day approaching when she, her son, and her husband would be destitute.

  ‘Now, now, my dear,’ said Bette, seeing tears gather in her cousin’s beautiful eyes, ‘you mustn’t give way to despair. A whole cupful of tears wouldn’t pay for one plate of soup! How much do you need?’

  ‘Between five and six thousand francs.’

  ‘I have only three thousand, or barely that,’ said Lisbeth. ‘What is Wenceslas doing at present?’

  ‘He’s been asked to make a dessert service for the Duc d’ Hérouville, in collaboration with Stidmann, for six thousand francs. If he does, Monsieur Chanor will advance four thousand francs that we owe to Monsieur Léon de Lora and Monsieur Brideau – a debt of honour.’

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that you have been paid for the statue and the bas-reliefs of Marshal Montcornet’s monument, and that you haven’t settled that debt?’

  ‘But,’ said Hortense, ‘for the past three years we have been spending twelve thousand francs a year, on an income of two thousand francs. The Marshal’s monument, when all the expenses were paid, did not give us more than sixteen thousand francs. In plain fact, if Wenceslas does not work, I don’t know what is going to become of us. Ah! if only I could learn to make statues, how I would make the clay fly!’ she said, throwing wide her lovely arms.

  In the mature woman, the young girl’s promise was fulfilled. Hortense’s eyes sparkled. In her veins the impetuous blood ran red. She lamented that her energy should be only partly used in looking after her baby.

  ’Ah, my dear innocent child, a sensible girl marries an artist after he has made his fortune, not when it is still to make.’

  Just then they heard footsteps and the voices of Stidmann and Wenceslas, who came in after showing Chanor to the door. Stidmann, an artist popular in the world of journalists, prominent actresses, and socially well known courtesans, was a distinguished young man whom Valérie was anxious to have in her own circle, and whom Claude Vignon had already introduced to her. Stidmann’s liaison with the celebrated Madame Schontz had recently been broken off. She had married some months before and gone to live in the country. Valérie and Lisbeth, who had learned of the break through Claude Vignon, thought it good policy to attract this friend of Wenceslas’s to the rue Vanneau. Stidmann, through a feeling of delicacy, visited the Steinbocks infrequently, and Lisbeth had not been present when Claude Vignon had introduced him, so she was meeting him for the first time. As she watched the artist, she several times surprised him glancing in Hortense’s direction, and this suggested to her the possibility of giving him by way of consolation to Countess Steinbock, if Wenceslas should be unfaithful. The thought had occurred to Stidmann, as a matter of fact, that, if Wenceslas were not his friend, the wonderfully lovely young Countess, Hortense, would be an adorable mistress; but he had honourably repressed the thought and kept away from the house. Lisbeth took note of his revealing embarrassment, as of a man in the presence of a woman with whom he refuses to allow himself to flirt.

  ‘He’s a very good-looking young man,’ she whispered to Hortense.

  ‘Oh, do you think so?’ she replied. ‘I have never noticed him.…’

  ‘Stidmann, my boy,’ said Wenceslas in a low voice to his friend. ‘You know we don’t stand on ceremony with each other. Well, we’ve some business to discuss with this old girl.’

  Stidmann took his leave of the two cousins, and departed.

  ‘That’s arranged,’ said Wenceslas, returning after seeing Stidmann out. ‘But the work will take six months, and we have to live meantime.’

  ‘I have my diamonds!’ cried young Countess Steinbock, with the superb impulsive generosity of a woman in love.

  Wenceslas suddenly had tears in his eyes.

  ‘Oh, but I’m going to work,’ he said, sitting down beside his wife and drawing her to his knee. ‘I’ll do knick-knacks, wedding presents for bridegrooms, bronze groups…’

  ‘Well, my dear children,’ said Lisbeth,’ – for you are my heirs, you know, and believe me I’ll have a nice little pocketful to leave you some day, especially if you help me to marry the Marshal; if we could manage to fix that up quickly, I would have you all to live with me, you and Adeline. Ah, we could live very happily together! But meantime listen to what long experience has taught me. Don’t borrow money on the security of your possessions: that spells ruin for the borrower. I have seen it happen time and again that when the interest had to be paid there was no money to pay it, and so the borrowers lost everything. I can get someone to lend you the money at five per cent, on your note of hand.’

  ‘Ah, that would save us!’ said Hortense.

  ‘Well, child, Wenceslas should come with me to see the person who will help him if I ask her. It is Madame Marneffe. If you flatter her, for she’s very vain like all newly rich climbers, she’ll be quite ready to help you out. Come and see her too, my dear Hortense.’

  Hortense gazed at Wenceslas, looking like a condemned prisoner mounting the scaffold.

  ‘Claude Vignon took Stidmann there,’ said Wenceslas. ‘It’s a very pleasant house.’

  Hortense bowed her head. One word only is adequate to describe what she felt: it was not a mere agonizing pang, it was death.

  ‘But, my dear Hortense, you must learn what life is like!’ exclaimed Lisbeth, rightly interpreting Hortense’s eloquent gesture. ‘If you don’t face it, you’ll be like your mother – relegated to a deserted lodging to weep like Calypso after the departure of Ulysses, and at an age when there’s no hope of a Telemachus!’ she went on, repeating one of Madame Marneffe’s witticisms. ‘You must look on people in the social world as tools to be made use of, taken up or laid down as serves one’s purpose. Make use of Madame Marneffe, my dear children, and drop her later. Are you afraid of Wenceslas, who adores you, being overwhelmed with passion for a woman four or five years older than you, and as withered as a bundle of lucerne hay, and…’

  ‘I would rather pawn my diamonds,’ said Hortense. ‘Oh, don’t ever go there, Wenceslas! It’s hell itself!’

  ‘Hortense is quite right!’ said Wenceslas, kissing his wife.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ the young wife said, her cup full. ‘You see, Lisbeth, what an angel my husband is. He doesn’t gamble, we go everywhere together, and if he could only settle down to work… no, that would be just too much joy. Why should we publicly call on our father’s mistress, a woman who is ruining him, and who is the cause of the troubles which are killing our heroic Mama?’

  ‘That’s not what ruined your father, child. It was his opera-singer that ruined him, and then your marriage!’ returned Cousin Bette. ‘Heavens! Madame Marneffe is very useful to him, if you only knew! But I mustn’t say anything.…’

  ‘Dear Bette, you stand up for everyone.’ />
  Screams from her baby called Hortense to the garden, and Lisbeth was alone with Wenceslas.

  ‘You have an angel for a wife, Wenceslas!’ said Cousin Bette. ‘Love her well; never give her cause for sorrow.’

  ‘Yes, I love her so much that I’m hiding our situation from her,’ Wenceslas answered; ‘but I can talk to you, Lisbeth. Well, if we did pawn my wife’s diamonds, we should be no better off.’

  ‘Borrow from Madame Marneffe, then,’ said Lisbeth. ‘Persuade Hortense to let you go there, Wenceslas; or, goodness me, go without her knowing!’

  ‘I thought of that,’ said Wenceslas, ‘when I said I would not go, in order to spare Hortense’s feelings.’

  ‘Listen, Wenceslas. I love you both too much not to warn you of the danger. If you go there you must hold fast to your heart, for that woman is a demon. Everyone who sees her, adores her; she is so wicked, and so enticing! She fascinates men like a work of art. Borrow her money, but don’t leave your heart as a pledge. I should never forgive myself if you were unfaithful to my cousin.… Here she comes! Say nothing more. I will arrange things for you.