Cousin Bette

by Honoré de Balzac

  When Baroness Hulot had quite recovered her health, she took up her occupation again. It was then that the worthy Madame de la Chanterie asked Adeline to add the regularization of informal marriages to the charitable work she was already doing.

  The Baroness made one of her first efforts in this work in the sinister quarter, formerly called Little Poland, that lies between the rue du Rocher, the rue de la Péinière, and the rue de Miroménil, like an offshoot of the faubourg Saint-Marceau. To describe this quarter, it is enough to say that the owners of the various houses, occupied by out-of-work labourers, ugly customers looking for trouble, and men with empty pockets ready to undertake any risky job on the shady side of the law, do not dare to collect their rents, and cannot find bailiffs willing to evict the insolvent tenants. At the present time, it looks as if speculative building, which is changing the face of this corner of Paris and building up the undeveloped ground between the rue d’Amsterdam and the rue du Faubourg-du-Roule, may alter its population for the better, for the builder’s trowel is a more effective civilizing influence in Paris than is generally realized. In building fine and elegant houses with a porter’s lodge, laying footpaths and putting in shops, speculative builders, by the high rents that they charge, tend to drive away undesirable characters, families without possessions, and every kind of bad tenant. And it is in this way that such districts rid themselves of their disreputable population, and of the kind of dens which the police set foot in only when duty compels them.

  In June 1844, the aspect of the place de Laborde and its surrounding streets was still very far from reassuring. The elegant infantryman who might chance to to wander from the rue de la Pépinière into these sinister side-streets would be astonished to find noblemen rubbing shoulders with the dregs of Bohemia. In such districts, where ignorant poverty and distress in desperate straits proliferate like weeds, there flourish the last public letter-writers, or scriveners, to be seen in Paris. Wherever you see the word Scrivener written up in a fair running hand, on a white sheet of paper affixed to the window of some entresol or dirty ground-floor room, you may assume with some certainty that the quarter gives shelter to a large illiterate population, and the vice and crime that result from the circumstances of the unfortunate poor. Lack of education is the mother of all crime. A crime is due, primarily, to an inability to reason.

  During the Baroness’s illness, this quarter – her charge as a deputy of Providence – had acquired a scrivener who had set up business in Sun Alley, so named by a kind of antithesis familiar to Parisians, for it is overshadowed on both sides. This writer, thought to be a German, was called Vyder, and was living with a young girl of whom he was so jealous that he never let her go out, except to visit a respectable family of stove-fitters living in the rue Saint-Lazare, Italians like all stove-fitters, but settled for years in Paris. These people had been saved from impending bankruptcy and consequent destitution by Baroness Hulot, as Madame de la Chanterie’s agent. In the course of some months, prosperity had succeeded poverty, and religion had entered hearts that previously had cursed Providence with the vehemence characteristic of Italian stove-fitters. So it was to this family that the Baroness paid one of her first visits.

  She was pleased with the scene that met her eyes at the back of the house where these good people lived, in the rue Saint-Lazare near the rue du Rocher. Above the shops and workshop, now well fitted out and swarming with apprentices and workmen, all Italians from the valley of Domo d’Ossola, the family occupied a little flat to which work had brought plenty. The Baroness was received as if she were the Blessed Virgin in person. After some fifteen minutes spent in inquiry about the family’s circumstances, as she was waiting to see the husband in order to learn how the business was going, Adeline set about doing her duty as a benevolent spy by asking whether there were any unfortunate people known to the stove-fitter’s family.

  ‘Ah, you are so kind, my dear lady, you would rescue the damned souls from hell!’ said the Italian woman. ‘Yes, indeed. There is a girl quite near here who needs to be saved from perdition.’

  ‘Do you know her well?’ asked the Baroness.

  ‘She’s the grand-daughter of a man my husband once worked for, called Judici, who came to France in 1798, about the time of the Revolution. Old Judici was one of the best stove-fitters in Paris under the Emperor Napoleon. He died in 1819, leaving a fine fortune to his son. But the son squandered it all with loose women, and ended by marrying one of them who was cleverer than the rest, and she gave him this poor little girl, who has just turned fifteen.’

  ‘What has become of him?’ asked the Baroness, struck by a resemblance to her husband in the character of this Judici.

  ‘Well, now, Madame, the little girl, whose name is Atala, has left her father and mother, and come to live near here, with an old German, who is eighty if he’s a day, called Vyder, who does all their business for people who can’t read or write. If the old libertine who bought the little girl from her mother for fifteen hundred francs, so they say, would even marry her – because he can’t have long to live, and they do say that he’s worth some thousands of francs a year – well then the poor child, who’s a little angel, would be saved from harm, and want of money in particular, which is bound to make her go to the bad.’

  ‘Thank you for letting me know of this good work to be done,’ said Adeline; ‘but I must be careful how I go about it. What is this old man like?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a very decent fellow, Madame. He makes the child happy, and he has a certain amount of common sense; for you see what he’s done? He’s left the neighbourhood the Judicis live in, I believe in order to save the child from her mother’s clutches. The mother is jealous of her daughter, and perhaps her notion was to turn the child’s beauty to some use, to make her a young madam!… Atala thought of us, she told her Monsieur he ought to set her up near our house; and as the old fellow saw what kind we are, he lets her come here. But get them married, Madame, and you will be doing something worthy of you.… Once she’s married, the child will be free, and she’ll be able to escape her mother, who would like to make some money by her, see her in the theatre, or getting on in the shocking career she’s started her in.’

  ‘Why has this old man not married her?…’

  ‘He didn’t need to,’ said the Italian; ‘and besides, although old Vyder is not really ill-natured, I think he knows what’s best for himself well enough to want to keep the child under his thumb; and if he married her, well, poor old fellow, he’s afraid he might find himself getting what comes to all old husbands in the end.…’

  ‘Can you send for the girl?’ said the Baroness. ‘If I saw her here, I should know if there is anything I can do.’

  The stove-fitter’s wife made a sign to her eldest daughter, who left the room. Ten minutes later the young person came in again, hand in hand with a girl of fifteen and a half, of wholly Italian beauty.

  From her father’s race Mademoiselle Judici had inherited the kind of skin that seems olive by daylight, but whose pallor in the evening by artificial light takes on a dazzling quality, eyes of an almost Eastern size, shape, and brilliance, thick curling eyelashes like little black feathers, ebon-black hair, and the native dignity of carriage of Lombardy, which makes the foreigner think, as he walks through the streets on a Sunday in Milan, that the porters’ daughters are all queens.

  Atala, told by the stove-fitter’s daughter that the great lady of whom she had heard was at the house, had hastily put on a pretty silk dress, low-cut boots, and an elegant little cape. A bonnet with cherry ribbons strikingly set off her beautiful head. The child’s attitude was one of naive curiosity, and she stood examining the Baroness, whose nervous tremor much surprised her, out of the corners of her eyes.

  The Baroness sighed deeply when she saw this perfect creation of feminine loveliness that had been set in the mire of prostitution, and she inwardly vowed that she would bring the girl back to the paths of virtue.

  ‘What is your name, child?’r />
  ‘Atala, Madame.’

  ‘Can you read and write?’

  ‘No, Madame; but it doesn’t matter, because Monsieur can.…’

  ‘Did your parents ever take you to church? Have you made your first communion? Do you know your catechism?’

  ‘Papa wanted me to do things like what you say, Madame, but Mama wouldn’t let me.…’

  ‘Your mother wouldn’t let you?’ exclaimed the Baroness. ‘Your mother is very unkind to you, then, is she?’

  ‘She always used to beat me! I don’t know why, but my father and mother were for ever quarrelling about me.…’

  ‘Then no one has ever spoken to you about God?’ asked the Baroness.

  The child opened wide eyes.

  ‘Oh, Mama and Papa often used to say “my God” and “for God’s sake” and “God damn and blast”,’ she answered, with a charming simplicity.

  ‘Have you never been inside a church? Did you never think of going in?’

  ‘Churches?… Ah! Notre-Dame, the Panthéon. I have seen them in the distance when Papa took me into Paris, but that didn’t happen very often. There are no churches like that in the Faubourg.’

  ‘In which faubourg did you live?’

  ‘In the Faubourg.…’

  ‘Yes, but which?’

  ‘Oh, rue de Charonne, Madame.’

  The inhabitants of the faubourg Saint-Antoine never call that notorious district anything but ‘the Faubourg’. To them it is the only faubourg worth mentioning, the faubourg, and even factory-owners understand by the term specifically the faubourg Saint-Antoine.

  ‘Has no one ever taught you the difference between right and wrong?’

  ‘Mama used to beat me when I didn’t do things like what she wanted.…’

  ‘But did you not know that you were doing wrong when you left your father and mother to go and live with an old man?’

  Atala Judici looked haughtily at the Baroness, and did not answer.

  ‘The girl is a complete heathen!’ Adeline said, as if to herself.

  ‘Oh, there are plenty more like her in the Faubourg, Madame!’ said the stove-fitter’s wife.

  ‘But, good heavens, she knows nothing – not even the simple meaning of the word wrong! Why don’t you answer me?’ the Baroness asked the child, trying to take her hand.

  Atala angrily drew back a step.

  ‘You’re a silly old woman!’ she said. ‘My father and mother had had nothing to eat all week I My mother wanted to make something very bad of me, because my father beat her and called her names. And then Monsieur Vyder paid all my father’s and mother’s debts, and gave them money.… Oh! a whole bagful! And he took me away with him, and my poor Papa cried… but we had to part! Well, was that wrong?’

  ‘And are you very fond of this Monsieur Vyder?’

  ‘Am I fond of him?…’ she said. ‘I should just think I am, Madame! He tells me nice stories every evening! And he has given me fine dresses, and underclothes, and a shawl. I’m dressed up like a princess, and don’t wear sabots any more! And for the past two months I haven’t known what it is to be hungry. I don’t live on potatoes now! He brings me sweets, burnt almonds! Oh, what delicious things chocolate almonds are.… I do anything he wants for a bag of chocolates! And then my old Papa Vyder is so kind, he looks after me so well, he’s so good that it makes me see what my mother might have been like.… He is going to get an old servant to help me, because he doesn’t like me to get my hands dirty doing the cooking. This month he has been earning a fair lot of money. He brings me three francs every evening… and I put them away in a money-box! The only thing is he doesn’t like me going out, except to come here.… He’s a love of a man really, so he does whatever he wants with me.… He calls me his little kitten! And my mother only called me a little bitch, or all sorts of bad names, thief, varmint, goodness knows what!’

  ‘Well, why, child, don’t you marry Papa Vyder?’

  ‘But I have, Madame!’ said the girl, full of pride, looking at the Baroness without a blush, her brow serene, her eyes untroubled. ‘He told me that I was his little wife; but it’s very tiresome to be a man’s wife! Well, if it wasn’t for the chocolate almonds!’

  ‘Good God!’ said the Baroness under her breath. ‘What kind of monster can this man be to have taken advantage of such complete and blessed innocence? To set this child on the right path again surely would redeem many of my sins! I knew what I was doing,’ she said to herself, thinking of her scene with Crevel, ‘but she – she knows nothing!’

  ‘Do you know Monsieur Samanon?’ Atala asked cajolingly.

  ‘No, my dear; but why do you ask?’

  ‘Really and truly?’ said the artless creature.

  ‘You don’t distrust Madame, do you, Atala?’ said the stove-fitter’s wife. ‘She’s an angel!’

  ‘It’s because my nice gentleman is afraid of being found by that Samanon, and that’s why he’s hiding… and I only wish he was free.…’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, of course, because he would take me to see Bobino! Perhaps to the Ambigu-Comique!’

  ‘What a charming creature!’ said the Baroness, putting her arms round the little girl.

  ‘Are you rich?’ asked Atala, playing with the lace at the Baroness’s wrists.

  ‘Yes, and no,’ replied the Baroness. ‘I am rich for good little girls like you, when they are willing to let themselves be taught Christian duties by a priest, and walk in the right path.’

  ‘What path?’ said Atala. ‘I have stout legs for walking.’

  ‘The path of virtue!’

  Atala gave the Baroness a sly and laughing look.

  ‘You see Madame. She is happy since she returned to the bosom of the Church,’ said the Baroness, indicating the stove-fitter’s wife. ‘You have got married like the animals that mate.’

  ‘Me?’ said Atala. ‘But if you are ready to give me what Papa Vyder does, I would be very pleased not to be married. It’s a dreadful bore! Do you know what it means?’

  ‘Once you are united with a man, as you are,’ said the Baroness, ‘virtue means that you have to remain faithful to him.’

  ‘Until he dies?’ said Atala knowingly. ‘I shan’t have it too long. If you knew how Papa Vyder coughs and puffs!… Peuh! Peuh!’ she coughed, in imitation of the old man.

  ‘Virtue and morality require your marriage to be consecrated by the Church, which represents God, and the Mayor representing the law. You see Madame – she is properly married.…’

  ‘Is that more fun?’ the child asked.

  ‘You will be happier,’ answered the Baroness, ‘for no one will be able to blame you for this marriage. You will be pleasing God! Ask Madame if she married without receiving the sacrament of marriage.’

  ‘What has she got that I haven’t?’ she demanded. ‘I am prettier than she is.…’

  ‘Yes, but I am a proper wife… and they can call you by a nasty name.…’

  ‘How can you ask God to protect you, if you trample divine and human laws underfoot?’ said the Baroness. ‘Do you know that God keeps a paradise in store for those who obey his Church’s laws?’

  ‘What happens in paradise? Are there theatre shows?’ said Atala.

  ‘Oh, paradise!’ said the Baroness. ‘That’s all the joy that you can possibly imagine. It’s full of angels with white wings. One can see God in his glory; one can be a sharer in his power; one is happy every moment and for ever more!…’

  Atala Judici listened to the Baroness as she might have listened to music; and, seeing that she was incapable of understanding, Adeline thought that she should perhaps try a different course and speak to the old man.

  ‘Go home, child, and I’ll come and talk to Monsieur Vyder. Is he French?’

  ‘He is Alsatian, Madame; but he’s going to be rich, I can tell you! If you would pay the money he owes that horrid Samanon, he would pay you back! Because he says that in a few months he’ll be getting six thousand francs a year, and we’re goin
g to go and live in the country then, ever so far away, in the Vosges.…’

  The memories evoked by her mention of the Vosges plunged the Baroness into a profound reverie. In her mind she saw her own village again. From this painful meditation she was roused by the stove-fitter’s greeting, as he came in to tell her how his business had prospered.

  ‘In a year, Madame, I’ll be able to pay back the money you have lent us. It is God’s money – it belongs to the poor and unfortunate. If I do well, one day you will be able to use our purse. I mean to repay to others, through you, the help that you brought us.’

  ‘At the moment,’ said the Baroness, ‘I don’t want money, I want your cooperation in a good deed. I have just seen the little Judici girl, who is living with an old man, and I would like to have them married in church, and legally.’

  ‘Ah, old Vyder! He’s a very decent chap, a man worth asking for his advice. Poor and old as he is, he’s already made friends in the neighbourhood in the two months he’s been here. He keeps my accounts straight for me. He’s a brave colonel, I believe, who once served the Emperor well.… Ah! how he worships Napoleon! He has a decoration, but he never wears it. He’s waiting till he has cleared off his debts, for he owes money, poor fellow!… I think he may even be in hiding, with process-servers on his track.…’

  ‘Tell him that I’ll pay his debts, if he is willing to marry the child.…’

  ‘Well, that will be easily done! Why, Madame, we could go and see him.… It’s only a step away, in Sun Alley.’

  The Baroness and the stove-fitter set out for Sun Alley.

  ‘This way, Madame,’ the man said, pointing down the rue de la Pépinière.

  Sun Alley – the passage du Soleil – runs, in fact, from the top of the rue de la Pépinière through to the rue du Rocher. About half way down the alley, recently made, with shops let at a very modest rent, the Baroness saw, above a shop-window screened with green taffeta curtains to a height that prevented passers-by from gazing in, a sign with the words: Public Letterwriter; and on the door: