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Ebook has 3387 lines and 156862 words, and 68 pages

Translator: James Waring

COUSIN BETTY

Translated by James Waring

DEDICATION

To Don Michele Angelo Cajetani, Prince of Teano.

It is neither to the Roman Prince, nor to the representative of the illustrious house of Cajetani, which has given more than one Pope to the Christian Church, that I dedicate this short portion of a long history; it is to the learned commentator of Dante.

It was you who led me to understand the marvelous framework of ideas on which the great Italian poet built his poem, the only work which the moderns can place by that of Homer. Till I heard you, the Divine Comedy was to me a vast enigma to which none had found the clue--the commentators least of all. Thus, to understand Dante is to be as great as he; but every form of greatness is familiar to you.

A French savant could make a reputation, earn a professor's chair, and a dozen decorations, by publishing in a dogmatic volume the improvised lecture by which you lent enchantment to one of those evenings which are rest after seeing Rome. You do not know, perhaps, that most of our professors live on Germany, on England, on the East, or on the North, as an insect lives on a tree; and, like the insect, become an integral part of it, borrowing their merit from that of what they feed on. Now, Italy hitherto has not yet been worked out in public lectures. No one will ever give me credit for my literary honesty. Merely by plundering you I might have been as learned as three Schlegels in one, whereas I mean to remain a humble Doctor of the Faculty of Social Medicine, a veterinary surgeon for incurable maladies. Were it only to lay a token of gratitude at the feet of my cicerone, I would fain add your illustrious name to those of Porcia, of San-Severino, of Pareto, of di Negro, and of Belgiojoso, who will represent in this "Human Comedy" the close and constant alliance between Italy and France, to which Bandello did honor in the same way in the sixteenth century--Bandello, the bishop and author of some strange tales indeed, who left us the splendid collection of romances whence Shakespeare derived many of his plots and even complete characters, word for word.

The two sketches I dedicate to you are the two eternal aspects of one and the same fact. Homo duplex, said the great Buffon: why not add Res duplex? Everything has two sides, even virtue. Hence Moliere always shows us both sides of every human problem; and Diderot, imitating him, once wrote, "This is not a mere tale"--in what is perhaps Diderot's masterpiece, where he shows us the beautiful picture of Mademoiselle de Lachaux sacrificed by Gardanne, side by side with that of a perfect lover dying for his mistress.

In the same way, these two romances form a pair, like twins of opposite sexes. This is a literary vagary to which a writer may for once give way, especially as part of a work in which I am endeavoring to depict every form that can serve as a garb to mind.

May your wit and the poetry that is in you extend a protecting hand over these two histories of "The Poor Relations"

Of your affectionate humble servant,

DE BALZAC. PARIS, August-September, 1846.

COUSIN BETTY

Among the Paris crowd, who are supposed to be so clever, there are some men who fancy themselves infinitely more attractive in uniform than in their ordinary clothes, and who attribute to women so depraved a taste that they believe they will be favorably impressed by the aspect of a busby and of military accoutrements.

The vehicle stopped in the part of the street between the Rue de Bellechasse and the Rue de Bourgogne, at the door of a large, newly-build house, standing on part of the court-yard of an ancient mansion that had a garden. The old house remained in its original state, beyond the courtyard curtailed by half its extent.

Only from the way in which the officer accepted the assistance of the coachman to help him out, it was plain that he was past fifty. There are certain movements so undisguisedly heavy that they are as tell-tale as a register of birth. The captain put on his lemon-colored right-hand glove, and, without any question to the gatekeeper, went up the outer steps to the ground of the new house with a look that proclaimed, "She is mine!"

This ground floor was entirely occupied by Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy, Commissary General under the Republic, retired army contractor, and at the present time at the head of one of the most important departments of the War Office, Councillor of State, officer of the Legion of Honor, and so forth.

This Baron Hulot had taken the name of d'Ervy--the place of his birth--to distinguish him from his brother, the famous General Hulot, Colonel of the Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, created by the Emperor Comte de Forzheim after the campaign of 1809. The Count, the elder brother, being responsible for his junior, had, with paternal care, placed him in the commissariat, where, thanks to the services of the two brothers, the Baron deserved and won Napoleon's good graces. After 1807, Baron Hulot was Commissary General for the army in Spain.

Having rung the bell, the citizen-captain made strenuous efforts to pull his coat into place, for it had rucked up as much at the back as in front, pushed out of shape by the working of a piriform stomach. Being admitted as soon as the servant in livery saw him, the important and imposing personage followed the man, who opened the door of the drawing-room, announcing:

"Monsieur Crevel."

On hearing the name, singularly appropriate to the figure of the man who bore it, a tall, fair woman, evidently young-looking for her age, rose as if she had received an electric shock.

"Hortense, my darling, go into the garden with your Cousin Betty," she said hastily to her daughter, who was working at some embroidery at her mother's side.

After curtseying prettily to the captain, Mademoiselle Hortense went out by a glass door, taking with her a withered-looking spinster, who looked older than the Baroness, though she was five years younger.

"They are settling your marriage," said Cousin Betty in the girl's ear, without seeming at all offended at the way in which the Baroness had dismissed them, counting her almost as zero.

The cousin's dress might, at need, have explained this free-and-easy demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the old-clothes buyers wear at market. On looking down at her kid shoes, made, it was evident, by the veriest cobbler, a stranger would have hesitated to recognize Cousin Betty as a member of the family, for she looked exactly like a journeywoman sempstress. But she did not leave the room without bestowing a little friendly nod on Monsieur Crevel, to which that gentleman responded by a look of mutual understanding.

"You are coming to us to-morrow, I hope, Mademoiselle Fischer?" said he.

"You have no company?" asked Cousin Betty.

"My children and yourself, no one else," replied the visitor.

"Very well," replied she; "depend on me."

"And here am I, madame, at your orders," said the citizen-captain, bowing again to Madame Hulot.

He gave such a look at Madame Hulot as Tartuffe casts at Elmire--when a provincial actor plays the part and thinks it necessary to emphasize its meaning--at Poitiers, or at Coutances.

"If you will come into this room with me, we shall be more conveniently placed for talking business than we are in this room," said Madame Hulot, going to an adjoining room, which, as the apartment was arranged, served as a cardroom.

It was divided by a slight partition from a boudoir looking out on the garden, and Madame Hulot left her visitor to himself for a minute, for she thought it wise to shut the window and the door of the boudoir, so that no one should get in and listen. She even took the precaution of shutting the glass door of the drawing-room, smiling on her daughter and her cousin, whom she saw seated in an old summer-house at the end of the garden. As she came back she left the cardroom door open, so as to hear if any one should open that of the drawing-room to come in.

As she came and went, the Baroness, seen by nobody, allowed her face to betray all her thoughts, and any one who could have seen her would have been shocked to see her agitation. But when she finally came back from the glass door of the drawing-room, as she entered the cardroom, her face was hidden behind the impenetrable reserve which every woman, even the most candid, seems to have at her command.

During all these preparations--odd, to say the least--the National Guardsman studied the furniture of the room in which he found himself. As he noted the silk curtains, once red, now faded to dull purple by the sunshine, and frayed in the pleats by long wear; the carpet, from which the hues had faded; the discolored gilding of the furniture; and the silk seats, discolored in patches, and wearing into strips--expressions of scorn, satisfaction, and hope dawned in succession without disguise on his stupid tradesman's face. He looked at himself in the glass over an old clock of the Empire, and was contemplating the general effect, when the rustle of her silk skirt announced the Baroness. He at once struck at attitude.

After dropping on to a sofa, which had been a very handsome one in the year 1809, the Baroness, pointing to an armchair with the arms ending in bronze sphinxes' heads, while the paint was peeling from the wood, which showed through in many places, signed to Crevel to be seated.

"To a lover," said she, interrupting him.

"No, monsieur, such obstinacy!" said the Baroness, interrupting him to put an end to his absurdity.

"I had fancied so."

"What! still?" cried she. "Do you not see, monsieur, by the entire ease and freedom with which I can speak of lovers and love, of everything least creditable to a woman, that I am perfectly secure in my own virtue? I fear nothing--not even to shut myself in alone with you. Is that the conduct of a weak woman? You know full well why I begged you to come."

"No, madame," replied Crevel, with an assumption of great coldness. He pursed up his lips, and again struck an attitude.

"Well, I will be brief, to shorten our common discomfort," said the Baroness, looking at Crevel.

Crevel made an ironical bow, in which a man who knew the race would have recognized the graces of a bagman.

"And a friend of mine, madame," said the ex-perfumer. "For I, Celestin Crevel, foreman once to old Cesar Birotteau, brought up the said Cesar Birotteau's stock; and he was Popinot's father-in-law. Why, that very Popinot was no more than a shopman in the establishment, and he is the first to remind me of it; for he is not proud, to do him justice, to men in a good position with an income of sixty thousand francs in the funds."

"Well then, monsieur, the notions you term 'Regency' are quite out of date at a time when a man is taken at his personal worth; and that is what you did when you married your daughter to my son."

"But you do not know how the marriage was brought about!" cried Crevel. "Oh, that cursed bachelor life! But for my misconduct, my Celestine might at this day be Vicomtesse Popinot!"

"Once more have done with recriminations over accomplished facts," said the Baroness anxiously. "Let us rather discuss the complaints I have found on your strange behavior. My daughter Hortense had a chance of marrying; the match depended entirely on you; I believed you felt some sentiments of generosity; I thought you would do justice to a woman who has never had a thought in her heart for any man but her husband, that you would have understood how necessary it is for her not to receive a man who may compromise her, and that for the honor of the family with which you are allied you would have been eager to promote Hortense's settlement with Monsieur le Conseiller Lebas.--And it is you, monsieur, you have hindered the marriage."

"Madame," said the ex-perfumer, "I acted the part of an honest man. I was asked whether the two hundred thousand francs to be settled on Mademoiselle Hortense would be forthcoming. I replied exactly in these words: 'I would not answer for it. My son-in-law, to whom the Hulots had promised the same sum, was in debt; and I believe that if Monsieur Hulot d'Ervy were to die to-morrow, his widow would have nothing to live on.'--There, fair lady."

"And would you have said as much, monsieur," asked Madame Hulot, looking Crevel steadily in the face, "if I had been false to my duty?"

"I should not be in a position to say it, dearest Adeline," cried this singular adorer, interrupting the Baroness, "for you would have found the amount in my pocket-book."

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