Оноре де Бальзак
Poor Relations
"But you had ten years, dear mamma, and I have had but three!" said the self-absorbed girl.
"Nothing is lost yet," said Adeline. "Only wait till Wenceslas comes."
"Mother," said she, "he lied, he deceived me. He said, 'I will not go,' and he went. And that over his child's cradle."
"For pleasure, my child, men will commit the most cowardly, the most infamous actions – even crimes; it lies in their nature, it would seem. We wives are set apart for sacrifice. I believed my troubles were ended, and they are beginning again, for I never thought to suffer doubly by suffering with my child. Courage – and silence! – My Hortense, swear that you will never discuss your griefs with anybody but me, never let them be suspected by any third person. Oh! be as proud as your mother has been."
Hortense started; she had heard her husband's step.
"So it would seem," said Wenceslas, as he came in, "that Stidmann has been here while I went to see him."
"Indeed!" said Hortense, with the angry irony of an offended woman who uses words to stab.
"Certainly," said Wenceslas, affecting surprise. "We have just met."
"And yesterday?"
"Well, yesterday I deceived you, my darling love; and your mother shall judge between us."
This candor unlocked his wife's heart. All really lofty women like the truth better than lies. They cannot bear to see their idol smirched; they want to be proud of the despotism they bow to.
There is a strain of this feeling in the devotion of the Russians to their Czar.
"Now, listen, dear mother," Wenceslas went on. "I so truly love my sweet and kind Hortense, that I concealed from her the extent of our poverty. What could I do? She was still nursing the boy, and such troubles would have done her harm; you know what the risk is for a woman. Her beauty, youth, and health are imperiled. Did I do wrong? – She believes that we owe five thousand francs; but I owe five thousand more. The day before yesterday we were in the depths! No one on earth will lend to us artists. Our talents are not less untrustworthy than our whims. I knocked in vain at every door. Lisbeth, indeed, offered us her savings."
"Poor soul!" said Hortense.
"Poor soul!" said the Baroness.
"But what are Lisbeth's two thousand francs? Everything to her, nothing to us. – Then, as you know, Hortense, she spoke to us of Madame Marneffe, who, as she owes so much to the Baron, out of a sense of honor, will take no interest. Hortense wanted to send her diamonds to the Mont-de-Piete; they would have brought in a few thousand francs, but we needed ten thousand. Those ten thousand francs were to be had free of interest for a year! – I said to myself, 'Hortense will be none the wiser; I will go and get them.'
"Then the woman asked me to dinner through my father-in-law, giving me to understand that Lisbeth had spoken of the matter, and I should have the money. Between Hortense's despair on one hand, and the dinner on the other, I could not hesitate. – That is all.
"What! could Hortense, at four-and-twenty, lovely, pure, and virtuous, and all my pride and glory, imagine that, when I have never left her since we married, I could now prefer – what? – a tawny, painted, ruddled creature?" said he, using the vulgar exaggeration of the studio to convince his wife by the vehemence that women like.
"Oh! if only your father had ever spoken so – !" cried the Baroness.
Hortense threw her arms round her husband's neck.
"Yes, that is what I should have done," said her mother. "Wenceslas, my dear fellow, your wife was near dying of it," she went on very seriously. "You see how well she loves you. And, alas – she is yours!"
She sighed deeply.
"He may make a martyr of her, or a happy woman," thought she to herself, as every mother thinks when she sees her daughter married. – "It seems to me," she said aloud, "that I am miserable enough to hope to see my children happy."
"Be quite easy, dear mamma," said Wenceslas, only too glad to see this critical moment end happily. "In two months I shall have repaid that dreadful woman. How could I help it," he went on, repeating this essentially Polish excuse with a Pole's grace; "there are times when a man would borrow of the Devil. – And, after all, the money belongs to the family. When once she had invited me, should I have got the money at all if I had responded to her civility with a rude refusal?"
"Oh, mamma, what mischief papa is bringing on us!" cried Hortense.
The Baroness laid her finger on her daughter's lips, aggrieved by this complaint, the first blame she had ever uttered of a father so heroically screened by her mother's magnanimous silence.
"Now, good-bye, my children," said Madame Hulot. "The storm is over. But do not quarrel any more."
When Wenceslas and his wife returned to their room after letting out the Baroness, Hortense said to her husband:
"Tell me all about last evening."
And she watched his face all through the narrative, interrupting him by the questions that crowd on a wife's mind in such circumstances. The story made Hortense reflect; she had a glimpse of the infernal dissipation which an artist must find in such vicious company.
"Be honest, my Wenceslas; Stidmann was there, Claude Vignon, Vernisset. – Who else? In short, it was good fun?"
"I, I was thinking of nothing but our ten thousand francs, and I was saying to myself, 'My Hortense will be freed from anxiety.'"
This catechism bored the Livonian excessively; he seized a gayer moment to say:
"And you, my dearest, what would you have done if your artist had proved guilty?"
"I," said she, with an air of prompt decision, "I should have taken up Stidmann – not that I love him, of course!"
"Hortense!" cried Steinbock, starting to his feet with a sudden and theatrical emphasis. "You would not have had the chance – I would have killed you!"
Hortense threw herself into his arms, clasping him closely enough to stifle him, and covered him with kisses, saying:
"Ah, you do love me! I fear nothing! – But no more Marneffe. Never go plunging into such horrible bogs."
"I swear to you, my dear Hortense, that I will go there no more, excepting to redeem my note of hand."
She pouted at this, but only as a loving woman sulks to get something for it. Wenceslas, tired out with such a morning's work, went off to his studio to make a clay sketch of the Samson and Delilah, for which he had the drawings in his pocket.
Hortense, penitent for her little temper, and fancying that her husband was annoyed with her, went to the studio just as the sculptor had finished handling the clay with the impetuosity that spurs an artist when the mood is on him. On seeing his wife, Wenceslas hastily threw the wet wrapper over the group, and putting both arms round her, he said:
"We were not really angry, were we, my pretty puss?"
Hortense had caught sight of the group, had seen the linen thrown over it, and had said nothing; but as she was leaving, she took off the rag, looked at the model, and asked:
"What is that?"
"A group for which I had just had an idea."
"And why did you hide it?"
"I did not mean you to see it till it was finished."
"The woman is very pretty," said Hortense.
And a thousand suspicions cropped up in her mind, as, in India, tall, rank plants spring up in a night-time.
By the end of three weeks, Madame Marneffe was intensely irritated by Hortense. Women of that stamp have a pride of their own; they insist that men shall kiss the devil's hoof; they have no forgiveness for the virtue that does not quail before their dominion, or that even holds its own against them. Now, in all that time Wenceslas had not paid one visit in the Rue Vanneau, not even that which politeness required to a woman who had sat for Delilah.
Whenever Lisbeth called on the Steinbocks, there had been nobody at home. Monsieur and madame lived in the studio. Lisbeth, following the turtle doves to their nest at le Gros-Caillou, found Wenceslas hard at work, and was informed by the cook that madame never left monsieur's side. Wenceslas was a slave to the autocracy of love. So now Valerie, on her own account, took part with Lisbeth in her hatred of Hortense.
Women cling to a lover that another woman is fighting for, just as much as men do to women round whom many coxcombs are buzzing. Thus any reflections a propos to Madame Marneffe are equally applicable to any lady-killing rake; he is, in fact, a sort of male courtesan. Valerie's last fancy was a madness; above all, she was bent on getting her group; she was even thinking of going one morning to the studio to see Wenceslas, when a serious incident arose of the kind which, to a woman of that class, may be called the spoil of war.
This is how Valerie announced this wholly personal event.
She was breakfasting with Lisbeth and her husband.
"I say, Marneffe, what would you say to being a second time a father?"
"You don't mean it – a baby? – Oh, let me kiss you!"
He rose and went round the table; his wife held up her head so that he could just kiss her hair.
"If that is so," he went on, "I am head-clerk and officer of the Legion of Honor at once. But you must understand, my dear, Stanislas is not to be the sufferer, poor little man."
"Poor little man?" Lisbeth put in. "You have not set your eyes on him these seven months. I am supposed to be his mother at the school; I am the only person in the house who takes any trouble about him."
"A brat that costs us a hundred crowns a quarter!" said Valerie. "And he, at any rate, is your own child, Marneffe. You ought to pay for his schooling out of your salary. – The newcomer, far from reminding us of butcher's bills, will rescue us from want."
"Valerie," replied Marneffe, assuming an attitude like Crevel, "I hope that Monsieur le Baron Hulot will take proper charge of his son, and not lay the burden on a poor clerk. I intend to keep him well up to the mark. So take the necessary steps, madame! Get him to write you letters in which he alludes to his satisfaction, for he is rather backward in coming forward in regard to my appointment."
And Marneffe went away to the office, where his chief's precious leniency allowed him to come in at about eleven o'clock. And, indeed, he did little enough, for his incapacity was notorious, and he detested work.
No sooner were they alone than Lisbeth and Valerie looked at each other for a moment like Augurs, and both together burst into a loud fit of laughter.
"I say, Valerie – is it the fact?" said Lisbeth, "or merely a farce?"
"It is a physical fact!" replied Valerie. "Now, I am sick and tired of Hortense; and it occurred to me in the night that I might fire this infant, like a bomb, into the Steinbock household."
Valerie went back to her room, followed by Lisbeth, to whom she showed the following letter: —
"WENCESLAS MY DEAR, – I still believe in your love, though it is nearly three weeks since I saw you. Is this scorn? Delilah can scarcely believe that. Does it not rather result from the tyranny of a woman whom, as you told me, you can no longer love?Wenceslas, you are too great an artist to submit to such dominion. Home is the grave of glory. – Consider now, are you the Wenceslas of the Rue du Doyenne? You missed fire with my father's statue; but in you the lover is greater than the artist, and you have had better luck with his daughter. You are a father, my beloved Wenceslas.
"If you do not come to me in the state I am in, your friends would think very badly of you. But I love you so madly, that I feel I should never have the strength to curse you. May I sign myself as ever,
"YOUR VALERIE."
"What do you say to my scheme for sending this note to the studio at a time when our dear Hortense is there by herself?" asked Valerie. "Last evening I heard from Stidmann that Wenceslas is to pick him up at eleven this morning to go on business to Chanor's; so that gawk Hortense will be there alone."
"But after such a trick as that," replied Lisbeth, "I cannot continue to be your friend in the eyes of the world; I shall have to break with you, to be supposed never to visit you, or even to speak to you."
"Evidently," said Valerie; "but – "
"Oh! be quite easy," interrupted Lisbeth; "we shall often meet when I am Madame la Marechale. They are all set upon it now. Only the Baron is in ignorance of the plan, but you can talk him over."
"Well," said Valerie, "but it is quite likely that the Baron and I may be on distant terms before long."
"Madame Olivier is the only person who can make Hortense demand to see the letter," said Lisbeth. "And you must send her to the Rue Saint-Dominique before she goes on to the studio."
"Our beauty will be at home, no doubt," said Valerie, ringing for Reine to call up Madame Olivier.
Ten minutes after the despatch of this fateful letter, Baron Hulot arrived. Madame Marneffe threw her arms round the old man's neck with kittenish impetuosity.
"Hector, you are a father!" she said in his ear. "That is what comes of quarreling and making friends again – "
Perceiving a look of surprise, which the Baron did not at once conceal, Valerie assumed a reserve which brought the old man to despair. She made him wring the proofs from her one by one. When conviction, led on by vanity, had at last entered his mind, she enlarged on Monsieur Marneffe's wrath.
"My dear old veteran," said she, "you can hardly avoid getting your responsible editor, our representative partner if you like, appointed head-clerk and officer of the Legion of Honor, for you really have done for the poor man, he adores his Stanislas, the little monstrosity who is so like him, that to me he is insufferable. Unless you prefer to settle twelve hundred francs a year on Stanislas – the capital to be his, and the life-interest payable to me, of course – "
"But if I am to settle securities, I would rather it should be on my own son, and not on the monstrosity," said the Baron.
This rash speech, in which the words "my own son" came out as full as a river in flood, was, by the end of the hour, ratified as a formal promise to settle twelve hundred francs a year on the future boy. And this promise became, on Valerie's tongue and in her countenance, what a drum is in the hands of a child; for three weeks she played on it incessantly.
At the moment when Baron Hulot was leaving the Rue Vanneau, as happy as a man who after a year of married life still desires an heir, Madame Olivier had yielded to Hortense, and given up the note she was instructed to give only into the Count's own hands. The young wife paid twenty francs for that letter. The wretch who commits suicide must pay for the opium, the pistol, the charcoal.
Hortense read and re-read the note; she saw nothing but this sheet of white paper streaked with black lines; the universe held for her nothing but that paper; everything was dark around her. The glare of the conflagration that was consuming the edifice of her happiness lighted up the page, for blackest night enfolded her. The shouts of her little Wenceslas at play fell on her ear, as if he had been in the depths of a valley and she on a high mountain. Thus insulted at four-and-twenty, in all the splendor of her beauty, enhanced by pure and devoted love – it was not a stab, it was death. The first shock had been merely on the nerves, the physical frame had struggled in the grip of jealousy; but now certainty had seized her soul, her body was unconscious.
For about ten minutes Hortense sat under the incubus of this oppression. Then a vision of her mother appeared before her, and revulsion ensued; she was calm and cool, and mistress of her reason.
She rang.
"Get Louise to help you, child," said she to the cook. "As quickly as you can, pack up everything that belongs to me and everything wanted for the little boy. I give you an hour. When all is ready, fetch a hackney coach from the stand, and call me.
"Make no remarks! I am leaving the house, and shall take Louise with me. You must stay here with monsieur; take good care of him – "
She went into her room, and wrote the following letter: —
"MONSIEUR LE COMTE, —
"The letter I enclose will sufficiently account for the determination I have come to.
"When you read this, I shall have left your house and have found refuge with my mother, taking our child with me.
"Do not imagine that I shall retrace my steps. Do not imagine that I am acting with the rash haste of youth, without reflection, with the anger of offended affection; you will be greatly mistaken.
"I have been thinking very deeply during the last fortnight of life, of love, of our marriage, of our duties to each other. I have known the perfect devotion of my mother; she has told me all her sorrows! She has been heroical – every day for twenty-three years. But I have not the strength to imitate her, not because I love you less than she loves my father, but for reasons of spirit and nature. Our home would be a hell; I might lose my head so far as to disgrace you – disgrace myself and our child.
"I refuse to be a Madame Marneffe; once launched on such a course, a woman of my temper might not, perhaps, be able to stop. I am, unfortunately for myself, a Hulot, not a Fischer.
"Alone, and absent from the scene of your dissipations, I am sure of myself, especially with my child to occupy me, and by the side of a strong and noble mother, whose life cannot fail to influence the vehement impetuousness of my feelings. There, I can be a good mother, bring our boy up well, and live. Under your roof the wife would oust the mother; and constant contention would sour my temper.
"I can accept a death-blow, but I will not endure for twenty-five years, like my mother. If, at the end of three years of perfect, unwavering love, you can be unfaithful to me with your father-in-law's mistress, what rivals may I expect to have in later years? Indeed, monsieur, you have begun your career of profligacy much earlier than my father did, the life of dissipation, which is a disgrace to the father of a family, which undermines the respect of his children, and which ends in shame and despair.
"I am not unforgiving. Unrelenting feelings do not beseem erring creatures living under the eye of God. If you win fame and fortune by sustained work, if you have nothing to do with courtesans and ignoble, defiling ways, you will find me still a wife worthy of you.
"I believe you to be too much a gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, to have recourse to the law. You will respect my wishes, and leave me under my mother's roof. Above all, never let me see you there. I have left all the money lent to you by that odious woman. – Farewell.
"HORTENSE HULOT."
This letter was written in anguish. Hortense abandoned herself to the tears, the outcries of murdered love. She laid down her pen and took it up again, to express as simply as possible all that passion commonly proclaims in this sort of testamentary letter. Her heart went forth in exclamations, wailing and weeping; but reason dictated the words.
Informed by Louise that all was ready, the young wife slowly went round the little garden, through the bedroom and drawing-room, looking at everything for the last time. Then she earnestly enjoined the cook to take the greatest care for her master's comfort, promising to reward her handsomely if she would be honest. At last she got into the hackney coach to drive to her mother's house, her heart quite broken, crying so much as to distress the maid, and covering little Wenceslas with kisses, which betrayed her still unfailing love for his father.
The Baroness knew already from Lisbeth that the father-in-law was largely to blame for the son-in-law's fault; nor was she surprised to see her daughter, whose conduct she approved, and she consented to give her shelter. Adeline, perceiving that her own gentleness and patience had never checked Hector, for whom her respect was indeed fast diminishing, thought her daughter very right to adopt another course.
In three weeks the poor mother had suffered two wounds of which the pain was greater than any ill-fortune she had hitherto endured. The Baron had placed Victorin and his wife in great difficulties; and then, by Lisbeth's account, he was the cause of his son-in-law's misconduct, and had corrupted Wenceslas. The dignity of the father of the family, so long upheld by her really foolish self-sacrifice, was now overthrown. Though they did not regret the money the young Hulots were full alike of doubts and uneasiness as regarded the Baron. This sentiment, which was evidence enough, distressed the Baroness; she foresaw a break-up of the family tie.
Hortense was accommodated in the dining-room, arranged as a bedroom with the help of the Marshal's money, and the anteroom became the dining-room, as it is in many apartments.
When Wenceslas returned home and had read the two letters, he felt a kind of gladness mingled with regret. Kept so constantly under his wife's eye, so to speak, he had inwardly rebelled against this fresh thraldom, a la Lisbeth. Full fed with love for three years past, he too had been reflecting during the last fortnight; and he found a family heavy on his hands. He had just been congratulated by Stidmann on the passion he had inspired in Valerie; for Stidmann, with an under-thought that was not unnatural, saw that he might flatter the husband's vanity in the hope of consoling the victim. And Wenceslas was glad to be able to return to Madame Marneffe.
Still, he remembered the pure and unsullied happiness he had known, the perfections of his wife, her judgment, her innocent and guileless affection, – and he regretted her acutely. He thought of going at once to his mother-in-law's to crave forgiveness; but, in fact, like Hulot and Crevel, he went to Madame Marneffe, to whom he carried his wife's letter to show her what a disaster she had caused, and to discount his misfortune, so to speak, by claiming in return the pleasures his mistress could give him.
He found Crevel with Valerie. The mayor, puffed up with pride, marched up and down the room, agitated by a storm of feelings. He put himself into position as if he were about to speak, but he dared not. His countenance was beaming, and he went now and again to the window, where he drummed on the pane with his fingers. He kept looking at Valerie with a glance of tender pathos. Happily for him, Lisbeth presently came in.
"Cousin Betty," he said in her ear, "have you heard the news? I am a father! It seems to me I love my poor Celestine the less. – Oh! what a thing it is to have a child by the woman one idolizes! It is the fatherhood of the heart added to that of the flesh! I say – tell Valerie that I will work for that child – it shall be rich. She tells me she has some reason for believing that it will be a boy! If it is a boy, I shall insist on his being called Crevel. I will consult my notary about it."
"I know how much she loves you," said Lisbeth. "But for her sake in the future, and for your own, control yourself. Do not rub your hands every five minutes."
While Lisbeth was speaking aside on this wise to Crevel, Valerie had asked Wenceslas to give her back her letter, and she was saying things that dispelled all his griefs.
"So now you are free, my dear," said she. "Ought any great artist to marry? You live only by fancy and freedom! There, I shall love you so much, beloved poet, that you shall never regret your wife. At the same time, if, like so many people, you want to keep up appearances, I undertake to bring Hortense back to you in a very short time."
"Oh, if only that were possible!"
"I am certain of it," said Valerie, nettled. "Your poor father-in-law is a man who is in every way utterly done for; who wants to appear as though he could be loved, out of conceit, and to make the world believe that he has a mistress; and he is so excessively vain on this point, that I can do what I please with him. The Baroness is still so devoted to her old Hector – I always feel as if I were talking of the Iliad– that these two old folks will contrive to patch up matters between you and Hortense. Only, if you want to avoid storms at home for the future, do not leave me for three weeks without coming to see your mistress – I was dying of it. My dear boy, some consideration is due from a gentleman to a woman he has so deeply compromised, especially when, as in my case, she has to be very careful of her reputation.
"Stay to dinner, my darling – and remember that I must treat you with all the more apparent coldness because you are guilty of this too obvious mishap."
Baron Montes was presently announced; Valerie rose and hurried forward to meet him; she spoke a few sentences in his ear, enjoining on him the same reserve as she had impressed on Wenceslas; the Brazilian assumed a diplomatic reticence suitable to the great news which filled him with delight, for he, at any rate was sure of his paternity.
Thanks to these tactics, based on the vanity of the man in the lover stage of his existence, Valerie sat down to table with four men, all pleased and eager to please, all charmed, and each believing himself adored; called by Marneffe, who included himself, in speaking to Lisbeth, the five Fathers of the Church.
Baron Hulot alone at first showed an anxious countenance, and this was why. Just as he was leaving the office, the head of the staff of clerks had come to his private room – a General with whom he had served for thirty years – and Hulot had spoken to him as to appointing Marneffe to Coquet's place, Coquet having consented to retire.
"My dear fellow," said he, "I would not ask this favor of the Prince without our having agreed on the matter, and knowing that you approved."
"My good friend," replied the other, "you must allow me to observe that, for your own sake, you should not insist on this nomination. I have already told you my opinion. There would be a scandal in the office, where there is a great deal too much talk already about you and Madame Marneffe. This, of course, is between ourselves. I have no wish to touch you on a sensitive spot, or disoblige you in any way, and I will prove it. If you are determined to get Monsieur Coquet's place, and he will really be a loss in the War Office, for he has been here since 1809, I will go into the country for a fortnight, so as to leave the field open between you and the Marshal, who loves you as a son. Then I shall take neither part, and shall have nothing on my conscience as an administrator."
"Thank you very much," said Hulot. "I will reflect on what you have said."
"In allowing myself to say so much, my dear friend, it is because your personal interest is far more deeply implicated than any concern or vanity of mine. In the first place, the matter lies entirely with the Marshal. And then, my good fellow, we are blamed for so many things, that one more or less! We are not at the maiden stage in our experience of fault-finding. Under the Restoration, men were put in simply to give them places, without any regard for the office. – We are old friends – "
"Yes," the Baron put in; "and it is in order not to impair our old and valued friendship that I – "
"Well, well," said the departmental manager, seeing Hulot's face clouded with embarrassment, "I will take myself off, old fellow. – But I warn you! you have enemies – that is to say, men who covet your splendid appointment, and you have but one anchor out. Now if, like me, you were a Deputy, you would have nothing to fear; so mind what you are about."
This speech, in the most friendly spirit, made a deep impression on the Councillor of State.
"But, after all, Roger, what is it that is wrong? Do not make any mysteries with me."
The individual addressed as Roger looked at Hulot, took his hand, and pressed it.
"We are such old friends, that I am bound to give you warning. If you want to keep your place, you must make a bed for yourself, and instead of asking the Marshal to give Coquet's place to Marneffe, in your place I would beg him to use his influence to reserve a seat for me on the General Council of State; there you may die in peace, and, like the beaver, abandon all else to the pursuers."
"What, do you think the Marshal would forget – "
"The Marshal has already taken your part so warmly at a General Meeting of the Ministers, that you will not now be turned out; but it was seriously discussed! So give them no excuse. I can say no more. At this moment you may make your own terms; you may sit on the Council of State and be made a Peer of the Chamber. If you delay too long, if you give any one a hold against you, I can answer for nothing. – Now, am I to go?"
"Wait a little. I will see the Marshal," replied Hulot, "and I will send my brother to see which way the wind blows at headquarters."
The humor in which the Baron came back to Madame Marneffe's may be imagined; he had almost forgotten his fatherhood, for Roger had taken the part of a true and kind friend in explaining the position. At the same time Valerie's influence was so great that, by the middle of dinner, the Baron was tuned up to the pitch, and was all the more cheerful for having unwonted anxieties to conceal; but the hapless man was not yet aware that in the course of that evening he would find himself in a cleft stick, between his happiness and the danger pointed out by his friend – compelled, in short, to choose between Madame Marneffe and his official position.
At eleven o'clock, when the evening was at its gayest, for the room was full of company, Valerie drew Hector into a corner of her sofa.
"My dear old boy," said she, "your daughter is so annoyed at knowing that Wenceslas comes here, that she has left him 'planted.' Hortense is wrong-headed. Ask Wenceslas to show you the letter the little fool has written to him.
"This division of two lovers, of which I am reputed to be the cause, may do me the greatest harm, for this is how virtuous women undermine each other. It is disgraceful to pose as a victim in order to cast the blame on a woman whose only crime is that she keeps a pleasant house. If you love me, you will clear my character by reconciling the sweet turtle-doves.