Cousin Bette

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘What! Can your patient be my father?’ said Célestine.

  ‘Does he live in the rue Barbet-de-Jouy?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ replied Bianchon.

  ‘And the disease is fatal?’ repeated Victorin, horrified.

  ‘I must go to my father!’ exclaimed Célestine, jumping to her feet.

  ‘I forbid it, absolutely, Madame!’ Bianchon said calmly. ‘This disease is contagious.’

  ‘You go there yourself, Monsieur,’ the young woman replied. ‘Do you imagine that a daughter’s duty is less compelling than a doctor’s?’

  ‘A doctor knows how to protect himself against contagion, Madame. The fact that you do not consider the possible consequences of your devotion suggests that you may not be so careful as I am.’

  Célestine rose to go into the house and prepare to go out.

  ‘Monsieur,’ Victorin said to Bianchon, ‘have you any hope of saving Monsieur and Madame Crevel?’

  ‘I hope, but fear that it may prove impossible,’ replied Bianchon. ‘I find the case quite inexplicable.… This disease affects Negroes and native American peoples, whose epidermic structure is different from that of the white races. Now, I cannot trace any contact between Negroes, red-skins, or half-castes, and Monsieur or Madame Crevel. And though we doctors may think it a fascinating disease, everyone else finds it appalling. The poor woman, who was pretty so I am told, is well punished for it now if she was proud of her beauty, for she’s hideously ugly, if indeed she may be said to exist as a human being at all!… Her teeth and hair are falling out; she looks like a leper; she’s an object of horror to herself. Her hands are a dreadful sight, swollen and covered with greenish pustules; the nails, loose at the roots, remain in the sores she scratches – in fact the extremities are all in process of destruction, decomposing into running ulcers.’

  ‘But what is the underlying cause of these symptoms?’ asked the lawyer.

  ‘Oh,’ said Bianchon, ‘the cause is a rapid change in the structure of the blood; it is breaking down at a formidable rate. I am hoping to attack the disease in the blood. I am on my way home to pick up the result of a blood analysis made by my friend Professor Duval, the famous chemist, before attempting one of those desperate throws we try sometimes against death.’

  ‘God’s hand is in this!’ said the Baroness, with deep emotion. ‘Although that woman has brought sorrows upon me that sometimes, in moments of madness, have made me invoke Divine justice upon her head, I wish, God knows, that you may be successful, Monsieur.’

  Victorin Hulot was seized with vertigo. He looked in turn at his mother, his sister, and the doctor, and trembled lest they should divine his thoughts. He saw himself a murderer. Hortense, for her part, found that God was just. Célestine returned and asked her husband to go with her.

  ‘If you go there, Madame, and you, Monsieur, stay a foot away from the patients’ bedsides; that is the only precaution you can take. On no account should you or your wife dream of kissing the dying man! I think that you ought to go with your wife, Monsieur Hulot, to see that she does not break this rule.’

  Adeline and Hortense, left alone, went to keep Lisbeth company. Hortense’s hatred of Valérie was so intense that she could not contain it, and she burst out:

  ‘Cousin! My Mother and I are avenged!… That venomous creature must have bitten herself. She is in a state of decomposition!’

  ‘Hortense,’ said the Baroness, ‘you are not Christian at this moment. You ought to pray to God to vouchsafe to inspire repentance in that unhappy woman.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ exclaimed Bette, rising from her chair. ‘Are you speaking of Valérie?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Adeline. ‘There is no hope for her. She is dying of a horrible disease, the very description of which makes one’s blood run cold.’

  Cousin Bette’s teeth chattered. A cold sweat broke out on her skin. The terrible shock she experienced revealed the depth of her passionate attachment to Valérie.

  ‘I’m going there!’ she said.

  ‘But the doctor has forbidden you to go out!’

  ‘That’s unimportant. I must go. Poor Crevel, what a state he must be in, for he loves his wife.…’

  ‘He’s dying too,’ replied Countess Steinbock. ‘Ah! all our enemies are in the devil’s clutches.…’

  ‘In God’s hands, girl!’

  Lisbeth dressed, took her famous yellow cashmere shawl, her black velvet bonnet, put on her ankle-boots, and, heedless to the remonstrances of Adeline and Hortense, left the house as if impelled by an irresistible force. When she arrived at rue Barbet, a few minutes after Monsieur and Madame Hulot, Lisbeth found seven doctors that Bianchon had called in to observe these unique cases, and whom he had just joined. These doctors were standing about in the drawing-room, discussing the cases. Occasionally one, and then another, of them would go into Valérie’s room, or Crevel’s, to note some point, and then return with some argument based on this rapid examination.

  An important difference of opinion split these eminent scientists into two main parties. One man alone held that it was an instance of poisoning and suspected an act of private revenge, refusing to believe that the disease described in the Middle Ages had reappeared. Three others saw in the symptoms the results of a breaking down of the lymph and humours. The other party held Bianchon’s view, maintaining that the disease was a destruction of the blood caused by some unknown fatal element in it. Bianchon had just brought the blood analysis made by Professor Duval. The methods of treatment, desperate and quite empirical as they were, depended on the diagnosis.

  Lisbeth stood petrified, three steps from the bed on which Valérie lay dying, on seeing a priest from Saint-Thomas d’Aquin at her friend’s bedhead, and a Sister of Charity tending her. Religion had found a soul to save in a creature that was a putrefying mass, who of the five senses retained only one, the power of sight. The Sister of Charity, the only being who would accept the task of caring for Valérie, stood a little apart. And so the Catholic Church, that blessed body, always and in all things inspired by the spirit of self-sacrifice, gave aid, ministering to the two-fold form of being, to the flesh and to the spirit, to the wicked and corrupt dying woman, lavishing upon her its infinite compassion, and the inexhaustible riches of Divine mercy.

  The terrified servants refused to enter Monsieur or Madame’s bedroom; they thought only of themselves, and considered that the striking down of their master and mistress was a just punishment. The stench in the atmosphere was such that, in spite of open windows and the most pungent scents, no one could remain long in Valérie’s room. Only Religion watched there. How could a woman of Valérie’s sharp intelligence help asking herself what interest made these two representatives of the Church remain with her? In fact, the dying woman had listened to the priest’s voice. Repentance had made headway in this perverse soul, in proportion as the ravages of the disease consumed her beauty. The delicate Valérie had offered less resistance to the malady than Crevel, and she must be the first to die. She had been, besides, the first attacked.

  ‘If I had not been ill, I would have been here to look after you,’ said Lisbeth at last, after meeting her friend’s dull eyes. ‘I have been kept in my room for the past fortnight or three weeks; but when I learned about your illness from the doctor, I came at once.’

  ‘Poor Lisbeth; you, at least, still love me! I can see that,’ said Valérie. ‘Listen! I have only one day or two left to think, I can’t say live. As you see, I haven’t a body any more, I’m a heap of clay.… They won’t let me look at myself in a glass.… And I have only got what I deserve. Ah! how I wish I could repair all the harm I have done, and so hope to receive mercy.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Lisbeth. ‘If you are talking like this, you must be done for indeed!’

  ‘Do not hinder this woman’s repentance; leave her in her Christian thoughts,’ said the priest.

  ‘There’s nothing left!’ Lisbeth said to herself, appalled. ‘I don’t recognize her eyes or he
r mouth! There’s not a feature remaining recognizable as hers, and her mind is wandering! Oh, it’s frightening!’

  ‘You don’t know,’ Valérie went on, ‘what death is, what it’s like to have to think of the morning after one’s last day, of what will be found in one’s coffin: there are worms for the body, and what is there for the soul?… Oh, Lisbeth, I feel that there is another life… and a terror possesses me that keeps me from feeling the pain of my perishing flesh! And I used to say to Crevel, as a joke, jeering at a saintly woman, that God’s vengeance took every form of misfortune.… Well, I was a true prophet! Do not trifle with sacred things, Lisbeth! If you love me, follow my example; repent!’

  ‘I?’ said the Lorraine peasant. ‘I have seen vengeance exacted everywhere throughout creation. Even insects die to satisfy their need to avenge themselves when they are attacked! And these gentlemen,’ she said, with a gesture towards the priest, ‘don’t they tell us that God avenges himself, and that his vengeance is eternal?’

  The priest bent a mild, benign, look upon Lisbeth, and said:

  ‘You do not believe in God, Madame.’

  ‘But just see what has happened to me!’ said Valérie.

  ‘And where did you get this infection?’ the spinster asked, unmoved in her peasant scepticism.

  ‘Oh! I’ve had a note from Henri which leaves me in no doubt about my fate.… He has killed me. I have to die just when I want to live an honourable life – and die a spectacle of horror!… Lisbeth, give up all idea of revenge! Be good to that family. I have already left them in my will all the property the law allows me to dispose of. Leave me now, my dear, even though you are the only being who doesn’t flee from me in horror. I beg you to go and leave me… I have no more than time to give myself to God!’

  ‘She’s delirious,’ Lisbeth said to herself, looking back from the threshold of the room.

  The most fervent affection that we know, a woman’s friendship for another woman, had not the heroic constancy of the Church. Lisbeth, stifled by noxious exhalations, left the room. She saw the doctors still busy in discussion. But Bianchon’s theory had won the day, and they were now only debating the best way of trying their experiment.…

  ‘In any case, there will be a splendid autopsy,’ said one of the opposing group, ‘and we shall have two subjects for comparison.’

  Lisbeth returned with Bianchon, who went up to the sick woman’s bed without appearing to notice the fetid odours emanating from it.

  ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘we are going to try a powerful drug on you, and it may perhaps save you.…’

  ‘If you save me,’ she said, ‘shall I be as beautiful as I was?’

  ‘Perhaps!’ said the wise doctor.

  ‘We know what you mean by perhaps!’ said Valérie. ‘I’ll look like someone who has fallen in the fire! No, leave me to the Church. It’s only God who can find me attractive now. I must try to be reconciled to him – that will be my last flirtation. Yes, I needs must try to make merciful God!’

  ‘That’s my poor Valérie’s last flash of wit. I can see her again as she was, now!’ said Lisbeth, weeping.

  The Lorraine peasant thought it her duty to go into Crevel’s room, where she found Victorin and his wife sitting three feet away from the plague-stricken man.

  ‘Lisbeth,’ he said, ‘they won’t tell me about my wife’s condition. You have just seen her. How is she?’

  ‘She’s better; she says she is saved,’ said Lisbeth, permitting herself the equivocation in order to ease Crevel’s mind.

  ‘Ah, good!’ replied the Mayor. ‘Because I am afraid that she has caught her illness from me.… A man doesn’t travel in perfumes without running some risks. I blame myself. Suppose I lost her, what would become of me? Upon my word, children, I adore that woman.’ And Crevel sat up and tried to strike his pose.

  ‘Oh, Papa!’ said Célestine. ‘If you could only get well again, I would receive my stepmother, I promise you I would!’

  ‘Poor little Célestine!’ answered Crevel. ‘Come here and kiss me!’

  Victorin restrained his wife as she jumped up to obey.

  ‘Perhaps you are not aware, Monsieur,’ the lawyer said gently, ‘that your illness is contagious…’

  ‘Oh, so it is,’ said Crevel. ‘The doctors are congratulating themselves upon having found I don’t know what plague or other of the Middle Ages that was thought to be lost, on me; and they’re beating the big drum about it, through the whole Faculty.… It’s very funny!’

  ‘Papa,’ said Célestine, ‘be brave, and you will get the better of this illness.’

  ‘Keep calm, children. Death thinks twice before striking at a Mayor of Paris!’ he said, with a comical nonchalance. ‘And there, suppose my borough is so unhappy as to sustain the loss of the man whom it has twice honoured with its suffrage – listen to that! You hear how eloquently the words trip off my tongue! – well, I shall know how to pack my bags and go. I am a seasoned commercial traveller; I’m accustomed to taking off. Ah! my children, I’m a man who thinks for himself, a strong-minded man.’

  ‘Papa, promise me to allow a priest to come to see you.’

  ‘Never!’ said Crevel. ‘Just think – I have sucked the milk of the Revolution. I may not have Baton d’Holbach’s wit, but I have his strength of mind. I was never more Regency, Musketeer, Abbé Dubois, and Maréchal de Richelieu in my life! Upon my soul, my poor wife must be out of her mind – she has just sent a man in a soutane to me, to me, Béranger’s admirer, Lisette’s friend, the child of Voltaire and Rousseau!… The doctor said, in order to sound me, to see whether the illness was getting me down: “Have you seen Monsieur I’ Abbé?”… Well, I played the part of the great Montesquieu. Yes, I looked at the doctor; see here, just like this,’ and he turned to show a three-quarter profile, as in his portrait, and extended his hand authoritatively; ‘and I said:

  … Ah, that slave came to see,

  With his order displayed, but got no change from me.

  His order is a pretty pun, which shows that on the point of death Monsieur le Président de Montesquieu still kept all his graceful wit, for they had sent him a Jesuit!… I like that passage of… you can’t say his life, his death rather. Ah! Passage! Another pun! The passage Montesquieu!’

  Victorin Hulot sadly contemplated his father-in-law, and wondered whether silliness and vanity had not just as much sustaining power as true greatness of soul. In the soul, like results seem to be produced by very unlike causes. Can it be that a major criminal’s fortitude is of the same nature as that of a Champcenetz going proudly to the guillotine?

  At the end of the week Madame Crevel was buried, after extreme suffering, and Crevel followed his wife two days later to the grave. So the provisions of the marriage contract were annulled, and Crevel inherited Valérie’s property.

  On the day after the funeral, the lawyer saw the old monk appear again, and received him without a word. The monk held out his hand in silence, and in silence Maître Victorin Hulot handed him eighty thousand-franc notes, taken from a sum of money found in Crevel’s desk. The younger Madame Hulot inherited the estate at Presles and thirty thousand francs a year. Madame Crevel had bequeathed three hundred thousand francs to Baron Hulot. The scrofulous Stanislas, when he came of age, was to have Crevel’s house and twenty-four thousand francs a year.

  *

  Among the many philanthropic associations set up by Catholic charity in Paris, there is one, founded by Madame de la Chanterie, which exists to provide a civil and religious marriage for working-class couples who are living together.

  Our legislators, with their eyes fixed on the revenue produced by registration, and our dominant middle-class, with a tight grip on notaries’ fees, feign ignorance of the fact that three-quarters of the working classes cannot afford to pay fifteen francs for a marriage certificate. The Chamber of Notaries lags far behind the Chamber of Advocates in practical charity. The Paris advocates, a much-maligned body, provide free legal aid for indigent people, whi
le notaries are still unable to make up their minds to drawing up poor people’s marriage certificates gratis. As for the tax, the whole machinery of legislation would have to be set in motion to induce the Treasury to relax its grasp. The Registrar’s Office is deaf and dumb. The Church, on its side, claims its levy on marriages.

  The Church is exceedingly revenue-minded in France. It stoops, in the house of God, to a disgraceful traffic in pew rents and chairs which shocks foreigners, although it cannot have forgotten Christ’s anger when he drove the moneychangers from the Temple. But if the Church finds it difficult to forgo its dues, it must be remembered that its fees, stated to be for the maintenance of the fabric of its edifices, constitute nowadays one of its resources, so that responsibility for this questionable practice of the Church lies at the door of the state.

  As a result of this combination of circumstances, in times when people are much too busy worrying about the lot of Negroes and the petty criminals of the police courts to trouble about the difficulties of honest citizens, a large number of well-meaning couples live together without marriage, for want of thirty francs, which is the least sum for which the legal profession, the Registrar, the Mayor, and the Church are able to unite two Parisians. Madame de la Chanterie’s organization, founded for the purpose of regularizing such unions according to the laws of Church and state, seeks out couples of this kind, and finds them the more easily because aid is given to persons in distress before their civil status is inquired into.