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

judged from the tone of his mistress. The Baron was proud of his attachment to Valerie, and of hers to him; his smile had, to these experienced connoisseurs, a touch of irony; he was really grand to look upon; wine had not flushed him; and his eyes, with their peculiar lustre as of tarnished gold, kept the secrets of his soul. Even Carabine said to herself:

"What a woman she must be! How she has sealed up that heart!"

"He is a rock!" said Bixiou in an undertone, imagining that the whole thing was a practical joke, and never suspecting the importance to Carabine of reducing this fortress.

While this conversation, apparently so frivolous, was going on at Carabine's right, the discussion of love was continued on her left between the Duc d'Herouville, Lousteau, Josepha, Jenny Cadine, and Massol. They were wondering whether such rare phenomena were the result of passion, obstinacy, or affection. Josepha, bored to death by it all, tried to change the subject.

"You are talking of what you know nothing about. Is there a man among you who ever loved a woman--a woman beneath him--enough to squander his fortune and his children's, to sacrifice his future and blight his past, to risk going to the hulks for robbing the Government, to kill an uncle and a brother, to let his eye be so effectually blinded that he did not even perceive that it was done to hinder his seeing the abyss into which, as a crowning jest, he was being driven? Du Tillet has a cash-box under his left breast; Leon de Lora has his wit; Bixiou would laugh at himself for a fool if he loved any one but himself; Massol has a minister's portfolio in the place of a heart; Lousteau can have nothing but viscera, since he could endure to be thrown over by Madame de Baudraye; Monsieur le Duc is too rich to prove his love by his ruin; Vauvinet is not in it--I do not regard a bill-broker as one of the human race; and you have never loved, nor I, nor Jenny Cadine, nor Malaga. For my part, I never but once even saw the phenomenon I have described. It was," and she turned to Jenny Cadine, "that poor Baron Hulot, whom I am going to advertise for like a lost dog, for I want to find him."

"Oh, ho!" said Carabine to herself, and looking keenly at Josepha, "then Madame Nourrisson has two pictures by Raphael, since Josepha is playing my hand!"

"Poor fellow," said Vauvinet, "he was a great man! Magnificent! And what a figure, what a style, the air of Francis I.! What a volcano! and how full of ingenious ways of getting money! He must be looking for it now, wherever he is, and I make no doubt he extracts it even from the walls built of bones that you may see in the suburbs of Paris near the city gates--"

"And all that," said Bixiou, "for that little Madame Marneffe! There is a precious hussy for you!"

"She is just going to marry my friend Crevel," said du Tillet.

"And she is madly in love with my friend Steinbock," Leon de Lora put in.

These three phrases were like so many pistol-shots fired point-blank at Montes. He turned white, and the shock was so painful that he rose with difficulty.

"You are a set of blackguards!" cried he. "You have no right to speak the name of an honest woman in the same breath with those fallen creatures--above all, not to make it a mark for your slander!"

He was interrupted by unanimous bravos and applause. Bixiou, Leon de Lora, Vauvinet, du Tillet, and Massol set the example, and there was a chorus.

"Hurrah for the Emperor!" said Bixiou.

"Crown him! crown him!" cried Vauvinet.

"Three groans for such a good dog! Hurrah for Brazil!" cried Lousteau.

"So, my copper-colored Baron, it is our Valerie that you love; and you are not disgusted?" said Leon de Lora.

"His remark is not parliamentary, but it is grand!" observed Massol.

"But, my most delightful customer," said du Tillet, "you were recommended to me; I am your banker; your innocence reflects on my credit."

"Yes, tell me, you are a reasonable creature----" said the Brazilian to the banker.

"Thanks on behalf of the company," said Bixiou with a bow.

"Tell me the real facts," Montes went on, heedless of Bixiou's interjection.

"Well, then," replied du Tillet, "I have the honor to tell you that I am asked to the Crevel wedding."

"Ah, ha! Combabus holds a brief for Madame Marneffe!" said Josepha, rising solemnly.

She went round to Montes with a tragic look, patted him kindly on the head, looked at him for a moment with comical admiration, and nodded sagely.

"Hulot was the first instance of love through fire and water," said she; "this is the second. But it ought not to count, as it comes from the Tropics."

Montes had dropped into his chair again, when Josepha gently touched his forehead, and looked at du Tillet as he said:

"If I am the victim of a Paris jest, if you only wanted to get at my secret----" and he sent a flashing look round the table, embracing all the guests in a flaming glance that blazed with the sun of Brazil,--"I beg of you as a favor to tell me so," he went on, in a tone of almost childlike entreaty; "but do not vilify the woman I love."

"Nay, indeed," said Carabine in a low voice; "but if, on the contrary, you are shamefully betrayed, cheated, tricked by Valerie, if I should give you the proof in an hour, in my own house, what then?"

"I cannot tell you before all these Iagos," said the Brazilian.

Carabine understood him to say _magots_ (baboons).

"Well, well, say no more!" she replied, smiling. "Do not make yourself a laughing-stock for all the wittiest men in Paris; come to my house, we will talk it over."

Montes was crushed. "Proofs," he stammered, "consider--"

"Only too many," replied Carabine; "and if the mere suspicion hits you so hard, I fear for your reason."

"Is this creature obstinate, I ask you? He is worse than the late lamented King of Holland!--I say, Lousteau, Bixiou, Massol, all the crew of you, are you not invited to breakfast with Madame Marneffe the day after to-morrow?" said Leon de Lora.

"_Ya_," said du Tillet; "I have the honor of assuring you, Baron, that if you had by any chance thought of marrying Madame Marneffe, you are thrown out like a bill in Parliament, beaten by a blackball called Crevel. My friend, my old comrade Crevel, has eighty thousand francs a year; and you, I suppose, did not show such a good hand, for if you had, you, I imagine, would have been preferred."

Montes listened with a half-absent, half-smiling expression, which struck them all with terror.

At this moment the head-waiter came to whisper to Carabine that a lady, a relation of hers, was in the drawing-room and wished to speak to her.

Carabine rose and went out to find Madame Nourrisson, decently veiled with black lace.

"Well, child, am I to go to your house? Has he taken the hook?"

"Yes, mother; and the pistol is so fully loaded, that my only fear is that it will burst," said Carabine.

About an hour later, Montes, Cydalise, and Carabine, returning from the _Rocher de Cancale_, entered Carabine's little sitting-room in the Rue Saint-Georges. Madame Nourrisson was sitting in an armchair by the fire.

"Here is my worthy old aunt," said Carabine.

"Yes, child, I came in person to fetch my little allowance. You would have forgotten me, though you are kind-hearted, and I have some bills to pay to-morrow. Buying and selling clothes, I am always short of cash. Who is this at your heels? The gentleman looks very much put out about something."

The dreadful Madame Nourrisson, at this moment so completely disguised as to look like a respectable old body, rose to embrace Carabine, one of the hundred and odd courtesans she had launched on their horrible career of vice.

"He is an Othello who is not to be taken in, whom I have the honor of introducing to you--Monsieur le Baron Montes de Montejanos."

"Oh! I have heard him talked about, and know his name.--You are nicknamed Combabus, because you love but one woman, and in Paris, that is the same as loving no one at all. And is it by chance the object of your affections who is fretting you? Madame Marneffe, Crevel's woman? I tell you what, my dear sir, you may bless your stars instead of cursing them. She is a good-for-nothing baggage, is that little woman. I know her tricks!"

"Get along," said Carabine, into whose hand Madame Nourrisson had slipped a note while embracing her, "you do not know your Brazilians. They are wrong-headed creatures that insist on being impaled through the heart. The more jealous they are, the more jealous they want to be. Monsieur talks of dealing death all round, but he will kill nobody because he is in love.--However, I have brought him here to give him the proofs of his discomfiture, which I have got from that little Steinbock."

Montes was drunk; he listened as if the women were talking about somebody else.

Carabine went to take off her velvet wrap, and read a facsimile of a note, as follows:--

"DEAR PUSS.--He dines with Popinot this evening, and will come
to fetch me from the Opera at eleven. I shall go out at about
half-past five and count on finding you at our paradise. Order
dinner to be sent in from the _Maison d'or_. Dress, so as to be
able to take me to the Opera. We shall have four hours to ourselves.
Return this note to me; not that your Valerie doubts you--I would
give you my life, my fortune, and my honor, but I am afraid of the
tricks of chance."

"Here, Baron, this is the note sent to Count Steinbock this morning; read the address. The original document is burnt."

Montes turned the note over and over, recognized the writing, and was struck by a rational idea, which is sufficient evidence of the disorder of his brain.

"And, pray," said he, looking at Carabine, "what object have you in torturing my heart, for you must have paid very dear for the privilege of having the note in your possession long enough to get it lithographed?"

"Foolish man!" said Carabine, at a nod from Madame Nourrisson, "don't you see that poor child Cydalise--a girl of sixteen, who has been pining for you these three months, till she has lost her appetite for food or drink, and who is heart-broken because you have never even glanced at her?"

Cydalise put her handkerchief to her eyes with an appearance of emotion--"She is furious," Carabine went on, "though she looks as if butter would not melt in her mouth, furious to see the man she adores duped by a villainous hussy; she would kill Valerie--"

"Oh, as for that," said the Brazilian, "that is my business!"

"What, killing?" said old Nourrisson. "No, my son, we don't do that here nowadays."

"Oh!" said Montes, "I am not a native of this country. I live in a parish where I can laugh at your laws; and if you give me proof--"

"Well, that note. Is that