Cousin Bette
Page 38
The question of who is to succeed Baron Hulot is exercising many ambitious minds. We hear that this Directorship has been offered to Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon, the Deputy, who, is brother-in-law to Comte de Rastignac. Monsieur Massol, Master of Requests, is to be appointed Councillor of State, according to report, and Monsieur Claude Vignon may become Master of Requests.
Of all the kinds of political rumours the most full of pitfalls for opposition newspapers is the official rumour. However wary journalists may be, the skilful leakage of news may make them the acquiescent or unconscious mouthpieces of men like Claude Vignon who have left journalism for the higher spheres of politics. It takes a journalist to make use of a journal for an undisclosed purpose. So, to misquote Voltaire, we may say:
The people vainly take the Paris news for truth.
Marshal Hulot drove home with his brother, the Baron sitting in front, respectfully leaving the elder brother alone inside the carriage. The two brothers did not exchange a word. Hector was shattered. The Marshal remained absorbed in his own thoughts, like a man putting forth all his strength, concentrating all his forces, to hold up a crushing weight. When they reached his house, the Marshal, without speaking, imperatively motioned the Baron to his study. The Count had been presented by the Emperor Napoleon with a magnificent pair of pistols of Versailles workmanship. He took the box, engraved with the inscription ‘Presented by the Emperor Napoleon to General Hulot,’ from his desk, laid it in full view, and indicating it to his brother said:
‘There is your medicine.’
Lisbeth, who was watching through the half-open door, ran to the carriage and ordered the coachman to take her at top speed to the rue Plumet. Within about twenty minutes she returned with the Baroness, whom she had told of the Marshal’s threat to his brother.
The Count, without a glance at his brother, rang for his factotum, the old soldier who had served him for thirty years.
‘Beau-Pied,’ he said, ‘fetch my lawyer and Count Stein-bock, my niece Hortense, and the Treasury stockbroker. It is half past ten now – I want them all here by twelve o’clock. Go by cab… and go faster than that!…’ he said, reverting to a Republican expression that had been often on his lips in earlier days. And the lines of his face hardened into the awe-inspiring frown that his soldiers had known and respected when he was searching the furze thickets of Brittany in 1799 [See Les Chouans].
‘As you command, Marshal,’ said Beau-Pied, saluting.
Ignoring his brother, the old man returned to his study, took a key from his writing-desk and opened a malachite cash-box mounted in steel, the gift of the Emperor Alexander. By the Emperor Napoleon’s orders, he had gone to return to the Russian Emperor personal effects taken at the battle of Dresden, in exchange for which Napoleon was hoping to get Vandamme. The Czar had presented this splendid gift to General Hulot in acknowledgement of his services, telling him that he hoped one day to be in a position to render a similar courtesy to the French Emperor; but he kept Van-damme. The imperial arms of Russia were inlaid in gold on the cover of the box, which was richly ornamented with gold. The Marshal counted the notes and gold coins it contained. He had a hundred and fifty-two thousand francs, and he nodded as if satisfied.
At that moment Madame Hulot appeared, in a state that would have melted the heart of the most case-hardened judge. She threw herself into Hulot’s arms, looking frantically from the case of pistols to the Marshal and back at the pistols again.
‘What have you against your brother? What has my husband done to you?’ she said, in such a ringing voice that the Marshal heard her.
“He has cast dishonour upon us all!” said the old Republican soldier, with an effort that reopened one of his old wounds. ‘He has embezzled from the state! He has made my name hateful to me; he makes me long for death, he has killed me.… I only live now to make restitution.… I have been humiliated before the Condé of the Republic, the man I most venerate, to whom I unjustly gave the lie, the Prince de Wissembourg! Is all that nothing? That is how his account stands with his country!’
He wiped away a tear.
‘And now for his account with his family!’ he went on. ‘He robs you of the bread that I was keeping for you, the fruit of thirty years of saving, the money hoarded through an old soldier’s life of privation! This was meant for you!’ he said, pointing to the notes. ‘He has killed your Uncle Fischer, a noble and worthy son of Alsace, a working man who could not bear, as he can, the thought of a stain on his name. And that is not all. God in his wonderful mercy allowed him to choose an angel among women! He had the ineffable good fortune to marry an Adeline! And he has betrayed her, filled her cup with sorrow, left her for harlots, strumpets, dancers, actresses, Cadines, Joséphas, Marneffes!… And this is the man whom I made my son, my pride!… Go, wretched man, if you can accept the life you have disgraced! Leave this house! I have not the strength to curse a brother whom I have loved so dearly; I am as weak where he is concerned as you are, Adeline; but let me never see his face again. I forbid him to attend my funeral, to follow my coffin. Let him at least bear the shame of his crime, if he feels no remorse!’
The Marshal, who had turned ghastly pale, sank back on the sofa, exhausted, after these solemn words. And for the first time in his life, perhaps, tears fell from his eyes and traced furrows down his cheeks.
‘Poor Uncle Fischer!’ exclaimed Lisbeth, putting her handkerchief to her eyes.
‘My brother!’ said Adeline, kneeling at the Marshal’s feet. ‘Live for my sake! Help me in the task that I must undertake, to reconcile Hector with life, to make him atone for his crimes!’
‘Make him atone?’ said the Marshal. ‘If he lives, he has not reached the end of his crimes! A man who could not appreciate an Adeline, who has destroyed in his own soul the feelings of a true Republican, that love of his country, his family, and the unfortunate, that I tried to inculcate in him – such a man is a monster, not a human being.… Take him away if you still love him, for I hear a voice within me crying to me to load my pistols and blow his brains out! By killing him I should save you all, and I should save him from himself.’
The old Marshal rose with such a menacing gesture that poor Adeline exclaimed:
‘Come, Hector!’
She seized her husband’s arm, drew him with her and left the house, supporting the Baron, for he was in such a state of collapse that she had to put him into a cab to get him to the rue Plumet, where he took to his bed. Utterly broken, he remained there for several days, refusing all food, saying nothing. Then by dint of tears Adeline persuaded him to swallow some broth. She watched over him, sitting by his bed, no longer feeling, of all the emotions that had once filled her heart, anything but profound pity.
At half past twelve Lisbeth showed the lawyer and Count Steinbock into her dear Marshal’s study, where she had stayed with him, in great alarm at the change visibly taking place in him.
‘Monsieur le Comte,’ said the Marshal, ‘I ask you to sign an authorization which would enable my niece, your wife, to sell a bond for certain stock of which she at present possesses only the capital. Mademoiselle Fischer, you will consent to this sale, giving up the interest you receive.’
‘Yes, dear Count,’ said Lisbeth, without hesitating.
‘Good, my dear,’ said the old soldier. ‘I hope I shall live long enough to recompense you. I had no doubt of your agreement. You are a true Republican, a woman of the people.’
He took the old maid’s hand, and kissed it.
‘Monsieur Hannequin,’ he said to the lawyer, ‘draw up the necessary document for the sale by power of attorney, and let me have it here by two o’clock, so that the stock may be sold on the Bourse today. My niece, the Countess, holds the certificates. She will be here presently, and will sign the power of attorney when you bring it, and so will Mademoiselle. Monsieur le Comte will go back with you and give you bis signature in your office.’
The artist, at a sign from Lisbeth, bowed respectfully to the Marshal and left the room.
‘Well, my dear Hulot,’ said Marshal Cottin, holding out newspapers to his old friend, ‘we have saved appearances, you see.… Read this.’
Marshal Hulot laid down the newspapers on his old comrade’s desk, and handed him two hundred thousand francs.
‘This is the sum that my brother took from the state,’ he said.
‘But this is folly!’ exclaimed the Minister. ‘It’s not possible,’ he added, speaking into the ear-trumpet that the Marshal held out towards him, ‘for us to arrange the restitution of this money. We should be obliged to admit your brother’s peculation, and we have done everything possible to cover it.…’
‘Do what you like with it; but I do not wish the Hulot family to hold one farthing that has been stolen from the state,’ said the Count.
‘I’ll lay the matter before the King. We need say no more about it,’ replied the Minister, realizing the impossibility of overcoming the old man’s sublime determined obstinacy.
‘Good-bye, Cottin,’ said the old man, taking Prince de Wissembourg’s hand. ‘I feel as if my soul were frozen.…’
Then when he had taken a step towards the door, he turned again, and gazed at the Prince, whom he saw to be deeply moved; he opened his arms to clasp him, and the two old soldiers embraced each other.
‘It seems to me,’ he said, ‘that I am saying good-bye to the whole Grand Army in your person.…’
‘Good-bye then, my dear old comrade!’ said the Minister.
‘Yes, it is good-bye indeed, for I am going the way of all those soldiers of ours whom we have mourned.…’
As he finished speaking, Claude Vignon came in. The two old survivors of the Napoleonic armies gravely saluted each other, effacing all sign of emotion.
‘I hope you were pleased with the notices in the papers, Sir,’ said the future Master of Requests. ‘I went to work on the Opposition sheets to plant the idea that they were publishing our secrets.’
‘It is all useless, unfortunately,’ the Minister replied, as he watched the Marshal making his way out across the room beyond. ‘I have just said a last good-bye which I found most painful. Marshal Hulot has not three days to live; I saw that plainly yesterday. That man, a model of integrity, a soldier that the very bullets respected in spite of his daring… there… sitting there, in that chair… was given his death-blow, and from my hand, by a piece of paper! Ring and order my carriage. I am going to Neuilly,’ he said, locking the two hundred thousand francs in his ministerial portfolio.
In spite of all Lisbeth’s care and attention, three days later Marshal Hulot was dead. Such men are the pride of the causes they have embraced. To Republicans the Marshal was the ideal patriot, and they all came to take part in his funeral procession, which was followed by an enormous crowd. The Army, the Government, the Court, the ordinary people, all came to render homage to his high virtue, his untouched integrity, his undimmed glory. Not for the asking do the representatives of a whole nation follow a man’s coffin. This funeral was marked by one of those gestures, showing the greatest delicacy, good taste, and true feeling, that from time to time recall the qualities and the glory of the French aristocrats. For, following the Marshal’s coffin, the old Marquis de Montauran was to be seen, the brother of the man who in the rising of the Chouans in 1799 had been the opponent, the defeated and fatally wounded opponent, of Hulot. The Marquis, falling under the bullets of the Republican bluecoats, the Blues, had entrusted his young brother’s interests to the Republican soldier [see Les Chouans]. Hulot had accepted the nobleman’s charge thus laid upon him, and executed it so well that he had succeeded in preserving his estates for the young man, who was at that time an émigré. And for that reason the old French nobility, too, paid their homage to the soldier who nine years before, in 1832, had vanquished Madame, when she tried to recover the throne for her son, the Duc de Berry, by force of arms.
For Lisbeth, this death, falling four days before the last publication of the banns of her marriage, was the bolt from heaven that destroys the harvest in the barn. The peasant woman had succeeded, as often happens, only too well. The Marshal had died of the blows struck at the family by herself and Madame Marneffe. The old maid’s hatred, that had seemed to be quenched by success, had fresh fuel added in the disappointment of all her hopes. Lisbeth went to weep with rage to Madame Marneffe’s, for she no longer had a place to live, the Marshal’s lease of his house terminating with his death. Crevel, to console his Valérie’s friend, took her savings and considerably increased them, and invested this capital in five-per-cents in Célestine’s name, giving Lisbeth the life interest. Thanks to him, Lisbeth possessed an annuity of two thousand francs. When the inventory of the Marshal’s property came to be taken, a note from the Marshal was found addressed to his sister-in-law, his niece Hortense, and his nephew Victorin, charging them with the payment, between them, of twelve hundred francs a year to Mademoiselle Lisbeth Fischer, who was to have been his wife.
Adeline, seeing the Baron lying between life and death, managed to keep the Marshal’s death from him for several days; but then Lisbeth came in, in mourning, and he discovered the fatal truth, eleven days after the funeral. This terrible blow galvanized the sick man into new energy. He rose from his bed and went to find his family. They were gathered in the drawing-room, dressed in black, and fell silent when he appeared. In a fortnight, Hulot, grown as thin as a spectre, seemed to his family to have become only a shadow of himself.
‘We must decide what we are going to do,’ he said in a colourless voice, sitting down and looking at the family group, from which only Crevel and Steinbock were absent.
‘We can’t stay here any longer,’ Hortense was saying as her father came in; ‘the rent is too high.’
‘As to rooms,’ said Victorin, breaking the painful silence, ‘I can offer my mother…’
When he heard these words, which seemed meant to exclude him, the Baron raised his eyes which had been bent unseeingly on the floor, gazing at the pattern on the carpet, and looked miserably at the lawyer. A father’s rights are still so sacred, even when he is disgraced and stripped of all honour, that Victorin stopped.
‘Your mother…’ repeated the Baron. ‘You are quite right, my son!’
‘The rooms above ours, in our house,’ Célestine finished her husband’s sentence.
‘Do I stand in your way, children?’ said the Baron, with the gentleness of a man self-condemned. ‘Oh, you need not worry about the future. You will have no more cause to complain of your father, and you shall not see him again until you need no longer blush for him.’
He took Hortense by the hand and kissed her brow. He opened his arms to his son, who despairingly threw himself into them, guessing what his father intended to do. The Baron beckoned Lisbeth, who came to him, and he kissed her forehead. Then he returned to his room, where Adeline, acutely anxious, followed him.
‘My brother was right, Adeline,’ he said to her, taking her hand. ‘I am not worthy to live with my family. I did not dare to bless my children, except in my heart. They have behaved wonderfully. Tell them that I could only embrace them; for from a disgraced man, a father who becomes his family’s murderer and scourge, instead of being its protector and its pride, a blessing would be inappropriate. But I will bless them, all the same, every day, when I am separated from them. As for you, only almighty God can reward you as you deserve!… I beg your forgiveness,’ he said, kneeling before his wife, taking her hands, and shedding tears.
‘Hector! Hector! You have sinned greatly, but Divine mercy is infinite, and it is possible to atone for everything, if you stay with me.… Don’t kneel; rise with Christian faith and hope in your mind, my dear. I am your wife, not your judge. I am yours, to do as you will, to go where you go. I am, I know, strong enough to console you. My love, respect, and care will make life endurable for you! Our children are established in life; they no
longer need me. Let me try to distract your mind from your troubles and seek new interests with you. Allow me to share the hardships of your exile and your poverty, to soften their edge. I shall always be of some use to you, even if only to spare you the expense of a servant.…’
‘Do you forgive me, my dear beloved Adeline?’
‘I do; but get up, dear!’
‘Well, with your forgiveness I can live!’ he said, rising. ‘I came back to our room so that our children should not witness their father’s humiliation. Ah! to have a father as guilty as I before their eyes every day – I cannot let them suffer such a shocking reversal of the proper order of things. The debasement of paternal authority means the disintegration of the family. So I cannot remain here; I must go, to spare you the odious spectacle of a father deprived of his dignity. Do not try to prevent my going, Adeline. You would be loading with your own hands the pistol I would use to blow my brains out. And do not follow me into hiding; you would make me lose the only strength remaining in me, the strength brought by remorse.’
Hector’s emphasis silenced his wife, who saw her life failing. It was from her close union with her husband that this wife, so great, with so much lying in ruins about her, derived her courage. She had dreamed of his being all hers, seen opening before her the sublime mission of comforting him, of bringing him back to family life and reconciling him with himself.
‘Hector, do you mean to leave me to die of despair, fretting and anxious about you?’ she said, as she saw the mainspring of her existence about to be taken from her.
‘I will come back to you, my angel, come from heaven, expressly, I think, for my sake. I will come back, if not rich, at least with money enough. Listen, my dear Adeline. I cannot stay here, for a host of reasons. To begin with, my pension, which will be about six thousand francs, is held for four years for repayment, so that I have nothing. And that’s not all! I shall be in danger of arrest for debt in a few days, because of the notes of hand held by Vauvinet. So I must keep out of sight until my son – I’ll leave precise instructions with him – has redeemed them. My disappearance will make that much easier. When my pension is free of claims, when Vauvinet is paid, I’ll come back to you.… With you I could not hope to keep the secret of my hiding-place. Don’t worry, Adeline, don’t cry. It’s only a matter of a month.…’