Cousin Betty, Honoré de Balzac [best short books to read txt] 📗

own, my mother's sister, whom I sent for from the country, to live with the sweet creature and keep an eye on her, that she might behave as well as might be in this rather--what shall I say--shady?--no, delicate position.

"The child, whose talent for music was striking, had masters, she was educated--I had to give her something to do. Besides, I wished to be at once her father, her benefactor, and--well, out with it--her lover; to kill two birds with one stone, a good action and a sweetheart. For five years I was very happy. The girl had one of those voices that make the fortune of a theatre; I can only describe her by saying that she is a Duprez in petticoats. It cost me two thousand francs a year only to cultivate her talent as a singer. She made me music-mad; I took a box at the opera for her and for my daughter, and went there alternate evenings with Celestine or Josepha."

"What, the famous singer?"

"Yes, madame," said Crevel with pride, "the famous Josepha owes everything to me.--At last, in 1834, when the child was twenty, believing that I had attached her to me for ever, and being very weak where she was concerned, I thought I would give her a little amusement, and I introduced her to a pretty little actress, Jenny Cadine, whose life had been somewhat like her own. This actress also owed everything to a protector who had brought her up in leading-strings. That protector was Baron Hulot."

"I know that," said the Baroness, in a calm voice without the least agitation.

"Bless me!" cried Crevel, more and more astounded. "Well! But do you know that your monster of a husband took Jenny Cadine in hand at the age of thirteen?"

"What then?" said the Baroness.

"As Jenny Cadine and Josepha were both aged twenty when they first met," the ex-tradesman went on, "the Baron had been playing the part of Louis XV. to Mademoiselle de Romans ever since 1826, and you were twelve years younger then----"

"I had my reasons, monsieur, for leaving Monsieur Hulot his liberty."

"That falsehood, madame, will surely be enough to wipe out every sin you have ever committed, and to open to you the gates of Paradise," replied Crevel, with a knowing air that brought the color to the Baroness' cheeks. "Sublime and adored woman, tell that to those who will believe it, but not to old Crevel, who has, I may tell you, feasted too often as one of four with your rascally husband not to know what your high merits are! Many a time has he blamed himself when half tipsy as he has expatiated on your perfections. Oh, I know you well!--A libertine might hesitate between you and a girl of twenty. I do not hesitate----"

"Monsieur!"

"Well, I say no more. But you must know, saintly and noble woman, that a husband under certain circumstances will tell things about his wife to his mistress that will mightily amuse her."

Tears of shame hanging to Madame Hulot's long lashes checked the National Guardsman. He stopped short, and forgot his attitude.

"To proceed," said he. "We became intimate, the Baron and I, through the two hussies. The Baron, like all bad lots, is very pleasant, a thoroughly jolly good fellow. Yes, he took my fancy, the old rascal. He could be so funny!--Well, enough of those reminiscences. We got to be like brothers. The scoundrel--quite Regency in his notions--tried indeed to deprave me altogether, preached Saint-Simonism as to women, and all sorts of lordly ideas; but, you see, I was fond enough of my girl to have married her, only I was afraid of having children.

"Then between two old daddies, such friends as--as we were, what more natural than that we should think of our children marrying each other?--Three months after his son had married my Celestine, Hulot--I don't know how I can utter the wretch's name! he has cheated us both, madame--well, the villain did me out of my little Josepha. The scoundrel knew that he was supplanted in the heart of Jenny Cadine by a young lawyer and by an artist--only two of them!--for the girl had more and more of a howling success, and he stole my sweet little girl, a perfect darling--but you must have seen her at the opera; he got her an engagement there. Your husband is not so well behaved as I am. I am ruled as straight as a sheet of music-paper. He had dropped a good deal of money on Jenny Cadine, who must have cost him near on thirty thousand francs a year. Well, I can only tell you that he is ruining himself outright for Josepha.

"Josepha, madame, is a Jewess. Her name is Mirah, the anagram of Hiram, an Israelite mark that stamps her, for she was a foundling picked up in Germany, and the inquiries I have made prove that she is the illegitimate child of a rich Jew banker. The life of the theatre, and, above all, the teaching of Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga, and Carabine, as to the way to treat an old man, have developed, in the child whom I had kept in a respectable and not too expensive way of life, all the native Hebrew instinct for gold and jewels--for the golden calf.

"So this famous singer, hungering for plunder, now wants to be rich, very rich. She tried her 'prentice hand on Baron Hulot, and soon plucked him bare--plucked him, ay, and singed him to the skin. The miserable man, after trying to vie with one of the Kellers and with the Marquis d'Esgrignon, both perfectly mad about Josepha, to say nothing of unknown worshipers, is about to see her carried off by that very rich Duke, who is such a patron of the arts. Oh, what is his name?--a dwarf.--Ah, the Duc d'Herouville. This fine gentleman insists on having Josepha for his very own, and all that set are talking about it; the Baron knows nothing of it as yet; for it is the same in the Thirteenth Arrondissement as in every other: the lover, like the husband, is last to get the news.

"Now, do you understand my claim? Your husband, dear lady, has robbed me of my joy in life, the only happiness I have known since I became a widower. Yes, if I had not been so unlucky as to come across that old rip, Josepha would still be mine; for I, you know, should never have placed her on the stage. She would have lived obscure, well conducted, and mine. Oh! if you could but have seen her eight years ago, slight and wiry, with the golden skin of an Andalusian, as they say, black hair as shiny as satin, an eye that flashed lightning under long brown lashes, the style of a duchess in every movement, the modesty of a dependent, decent grace, and the pretty ways of a wild fawn. And by that Hulot's doing all this charm and purity has been degraded to a man-trap, a money-box for five-franc pieces! The girl is the Queen of Trollops; and nowadays she humbugs every one--she who knew nothing, not even that word."

At this stage the retired perfumer wiped his eyes, which were full of tears. The sincerity of his grief touched Madame Hulot, and roused her from the meditation into which she had sunk.

"Tell me, madame, is a man of fifty-two likely to find such another jewel? At my age love costs thirty thousand francs a year. It is through your husband's experience that I know the price, and I love Celestine too truly to be her ruin. When I saw you, at the first evening party you gave in our honor, I wondered how that scoundrel Hulot could keep a Jenny Cadine--you had the manner of an Empress. You do not look thirty," he went on. "To me, madame, you look young, and you are beautiful. On my word of honor, that evening I was struck to the heart. I said to myself, 'If I had not Josepha, since old Hulot neglects his wife, she would fit me like a glove.' Forgive me--it is a reminiscence of my old business. The perfumer will crop up now and then, and that is what keeps me from standing to be elected deputy.

"And then, when I was so abominably deceived by the Baron, for really between old rips like us our friend's mistress should be sacred, I swore I would have his wife. It is but justice. The Baron could say nothing; we are certain of impunity. You showed me the door like a mangy dog at the first words I uttered as to the state of my feelings; you only made my passion--my obstinacy, if you will--twice as strong, and you shall be mine."

"Indeed; how?"

"I do not know; but it will come to pass. You see, madame, an idiot of a perfumer--retired from business--who has but one idea in his head, is stronger than a clever fellow who has a thousand. I am smitten with you, and you are the means of my revenge; it is like being in love twice over. I am speaking to you quite frankly, as a man who knows what he means. I speak coldly to you, just as you do to me, when you say, 'I never will be yours,' In fact, as they say, I play the game with the cards on the table. Yes, you shall be mine, sooner or later; if you were fifty, you should still be my mistress. And it will be; for I expect anything from your husband!"

Madame Hulot looked at this vulgar intriguer with such a fixed stare of terror, that he thought she had gone mad, and he stopped.

"You insisted on it, you heaped me with scorn, you defied me--and I have spoken," said he, feeling that he must justify the ferocity of his last words.

"Oh, my daughter, my daughter," moaned the Baroness in a voice like a dying woman's.

"Oh! I have forgotten all else," Crevel went on. "The day when I was robbed of Josepha I was like a tigress robbed of her cubs; in short, as you see me now.--Your daughter? Yes, I regard her as the means of winning you. Yes, I put a spoke in her marriage--and you will not get her married without my help! Handsome as Mademoiselle Hortense is, she needs a fortune----"

"Alas! yes," said the Baroness, wiping her eyes.

"Well, just ask your husband for ten thousand francs," said Crevel, striking his attitude once more. He waited a minute, like an actor who has made a point.

"If he had the money, he would give it to the woman who will take Josepha's place," he went on, emphasizing his tones. "Does a man ever pull up on the road he has taken? In the first place, he is too sweet on women. There is a happy medium in all things, as our King has told us. And then his vanity is implicated! He is a handsome man!--He would bring you all to ruin for his pleasure; in fact, you are already on the highroad to the workhouse. Why, look, never since I set foot in your house have you been able to do up your drawing-room furniture. 'Hard up' is the word shouted by every slit in the stuff. Where will you find a son-in-law who would not turn his back in horror of the ill-concealed evidence of the most cruel misery there is--that of people in decent society? I have kept shop, and I know. There is no eye so quick as that of the Paris tradesman