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

the man you saw a Count; he honored us all by honoring our leader; and the King of to-day was very right to make him a Marshal."

"Hurrah for the Marshal!" cried the workman.

"Oh, you may shout--shout away! The Marshal is as deaf as a post from the roar of cannon."

This anecdote may give some idea of the respect with which the _Invalides_ regarded Marshal Hulot, whose Republican proclivities secured him the popular sympathy of the whole quarter of the town.

Sorrow taking hold on a spirit so calm and strict and noble, was a heart-breaking spectacle. The Baroness could only tell lies, with a woman's ingenuity, to conceal the whole dreadful truth from her brother-in-law.

In the course of this miserable morning, the Marshal, who, like all old men, slept but little, had extracted from Lisbeth full particulars as to his brother's situation, promising to marry her as the reward of her revelations. Any one can imagine with what glee the old maid allowed the secrets to be dragged from her which she had been dying to tell ever since she had come into the house; for by this means she made her marriage more certain.

"Your brother is incorrigible!" Lisbeth shouted into the Marshal's best ear.

Her strong, clear tones enabled her to talk to him, but she wore out her lungs, so anxious was she to prove to her future husband that to her he would never be deaf.

"He has had three mistresses," said the old man, "and his wife was an Adeline! Poor Adeline!"

"If you will take my advice," shrieked Lisbeth, "you will use your influence with the Prince de Wissembourg to secure her some suitable appointment. She will need it, for the Baron's pay is pledged for three years."

"I will go to the War Office," said he, "and see the Prince, to find out what he thinks of my brother, and ask for his interest to help my sister. Think of some place that is fit for her."

"The charitable ladies of Paris, in concert with the Archbishop, have formed various beneficent associations; they employ superintendents, very decently paid, whose business it is to seek out cases of real want. Such an occupation would exactly suit dear Adeline; it would be work after her own heart."

"Send to order the horses," said the Marshal. "I will go and dress. I will drive to Neuilly if necessary."

"How fond he is of her! She will always cross my path wherever I turn!" said Lisbeth to herself.

Lisbeth was already supreme in the house, but not with the Marshal's cognizance. She had struck terror into the three servants--for she had allowed herself a housemaid, and she exerted her old-maidish energy in taking stock of everything, examining everything, and arranging in every respect for the comfort of her dear Marshal. Lisbeth, quite as Republican as he could be, pleased him by her democratic opinions, and she flattered him with amazing dexterity; for the last fortnight the old man, whose house was better kept, and who was cared for as a child by its mother, had begun to regard Lisbeth as a part of what he had dreamed of.

"My dear Marshal," she shouted, following him out on to the steps, "pull up the windows, do not sit in a draught, to oblige me!"

The Marshal, who had never been so cosseted in his life, went off smiling at Lisbeth, though his heart was aching.

At the same hour Baron Hulot was quitting the War Office to call on his chief, Marshal the Prince de Wissembourg, who had sent for him. Though there was nothing extraordinary in one of the Generals on the Board being sent for, Hulot's conscience was so uneasy that he fancied he saw a cold and sinister expression in Mitouflet's face.

"Mitouflet, how is the Prince?" he asked, locking the door of his private room and following the messenger who led the way.

"He must have a crow to pluck with you, Monsieur le Baron," replied the man, "for his face is set at stormy."

Hulot turned pale, and said no more; he crossed the anteroom and reception rooms, and, with a violently beating heart, found himself at the door of the Prince's private study.

The chief, at this time seventy years old, with perfectly white hair, and the tanned complexion of a soldier of that age, commanded attention by a brow so vast that imagination saw in it a field of battle. Under this dome, crowned with snow, sparkled a pair of eyes, of the Napoleon blue, usually sad-looking and full of bitter thoughts and regrets, their fire overshadowed by the penthouse of the strongly projecting brow. This man, Bernadotte's rival, had hoped to find his seat on a throne. But those eyes could flash formidable lightnings when they expressed strong feelings.

Then, his voice, always somewhat hollow, rang with strident tones. When he was angry, the Prince was a soldier once more; he spoke the language of Lieutenant Cottin; he spared nothing--nobody. Hulot d'Ervy found the old lion, his hair shaggy like a mane, standing by the fireplace, his brows knit, his back against the mantel-shelf, and his eyes apparently fixed on vacancy.

"Here! At your orders, Prince!" said Hulot, affecting a graceful ease of manner.

The Marshal looked hard at the Baron, without saying a word, during the time it took him to come from the door to within a few steps of where the chief stood. This leaden stare was like the eye of God; Hulot could not meet it; he looked down in confusion.

"He knows everything!" said he to himself.

"Does your conscience tell you nothing?" asked the Marshal, in his deep, hollow tones.

"It tells me, sir, that I have been wrong, no doubt, in ordering _razzias_ in Algeria without referring the matter to you. At my age, and with my tastes, after forty-five years of service, I have no fortune.--You know the principles of the four hundred elect representatives of France. Those gentlemen are envious of every distinction; they have pared down even the Ministers' pay--that says everything! Ask them for money for an old servant!--What can you expect of men who pay a whole class so badly as they pay the Government legal officials?--who give thirty sous a day to the laborers on the works at Toulon, when it is a physical impossibility to live there and keep a family on less than forty sous?--who never think of the atrocity of giving salaries of six hundred francs, up to a thousand or twelve hundred perhaps, to clerks living in Paris; and who want to secure our places for themselves as soon as the pay rises to forty thousand?--who, finally, refuse to restore to the Crown a piece of Crown property confiscated from the Crown in 1830--property acquired, too, by Louis XVI. out of his privy purse!--If you had no private fortune, Prince, you would be left high and dry, like my brother, with your pay and not another sou, and no thought of your having saved the army, and me with it, in the boggy plains of Poland."

"You have robbed the State! You have made yourself liable to be brought before the bench at Assizes," said the Marshal, "like that clerk of the Treasury! And you take this, monsieur, with such levity."

"But there is a great difference, monseigneur!" cried the baron. "Have I dipped my hands into a cash box intrusted to my care?"

"When a man of your rank commits such an infamous crime," said the Marshal, "he is doubly guilty if he does it clumsily. You have compromised the honor of our official administration, which hitherto has been the purest in Europe!--And all for two hundred thousand francs and a hussy!" said the Marshal, in a terrible voice. "You are a Councillor of State--and a private soldier who sells anything belonging to his regiment is punished with death! Here is a story told to me one day by Colonel Pourin of the Second Lancers. At Saverne, one of his men fell in love with a little Alsatian girl who had a fancy for a shawl. The jade teased this poor devil of a lancer so effectually, that though he could show twenty years' service, and was about to be promoted to be quartermaster--the pride of the regiment--to buy this shawl he sold some of his company's kit.--Do you know what this lancer did, Baron d'Ervy? He swallowed some window-glass after pounding it down, and died in eleven hours, of an illness, in hospital.--Try, if you please, to die of apoplexy, that we may not see you dishonored."

Hulot looked with haggard eyes at the old warrior; and the Prince, reading the look which betrayed the coward, felt a flush rise to his cheeks; his eyes flamed.

"Will you, sir, abandon me?" Hulot stammered.

Marshal Hulot, hearing that only his brother was with the Minister, ventured at this juncture to come in, and, like all deaf people, went straight up to the Prince.

"Oh," cried the hero of Poland, "I know what you are here for, my old friend! But we can do nothing."

"Do nothing!" echoed Marshal Hulot, who had heard only the last word.

"Nothing; you have come to intercede for your brother. But do you know what your brother is?"

"My brother?" asked the deaf man.

"Yes, he is a damned infernal blackguard, and unworthy of you."

The Marshal in his rage shot from his eyes those fulminating fires which, like Napoleon's, broke a man's will and judgment.

"You lie, Cottin!" said Marshal Hulot, turning white. "Throw down your baton as I throw mine! I am ready."

The Prince went up to his old comrade, looked him in the face, and shouted in his ear as he grasped his hand:

"Are you a man?"

"You will see that I am."

"Well, then, pull yourself together! You must face the worst misfortune that can befall you."

The Prince turned round, took some papers from the table, and placed them in the Marshal's hands, saying, "Read that."

The Comte de Forzheim read the following letter, which lay uppermost:--

"To his Excellency the President of the Council.

"_Private and Confidential_.

"ALGIERS.

"MY DEAR PRINCE,--We have a very ugly business on our hands, as
you will see by the accompanying documents.

"The story, briefly told, is this: Baron Hulot d'Ervy sent out to
the province of Oran an uncle of his as a broker in grain and
forage, and gave him an accomplice in the person of a storekeeper.
This storekeeper, to curry favor, has made a confession, and
finally made his escape. The Public Prosecutor took the matter up
very thoroughly, seeing, as he supposed, that only two inferior
agents were implicated; but Johann Fischer, uncle to your Chief of
the Commissariat Department, finding that he was to be brought up
at the Assizes, stabbed himself in prison with a nail.

"That would have been the end of the matter if this worthy and
honest man, deceived, it would seem, by his agent and by his
nephew, had not thought proper to write to Baron Hulot. This
letter, seized as a document, so greatly surprised the Public
Prosecutor, that he came to see me. Now, the arrest and public
trial of a Councillor of State would be such a terrible thing--of
a man high in office too, who