‘You are a great baby, Monsieur!’ replied Madame de Saint-Estève. ‘You want to preserve your rectitude whole in your own eyes, and at the same time you want your enemy to die.’
Victorin shook his head.
‘Yes,’ she went on. ‘You want this Madame Marneffe to release the prey she’s holding in her jaws! And how would you set about making a tiger drop his chunk of meat?… Would you do it by rubbing your hand along his back and saying “Pussy!… Pussy!…”? You are not logical. You declare war, and don’t want any bloodshed! Very well, I’ll make you a present of your innocence since it’s so dear to you. I have always seen that rectitude is the raw material of which hypocrisy is made! One day within the next three months a poor priest will come to ask you for forty thousand francs for a benefaction – for a ruined monastery in the desert, in the Levant! If you are pleased with the way things have fallen out, give the fellow the forty thousand francs. It’s not any more than you’ll pay, anyway, to the Inland Revenue! It’s a trifle, come now, compared with what you’ll gain.’
She got to her feet – broad feet, the flesh bulging over the satin slippers that barely contained them. She smiled, and bowed, and moved towards the door.
‘The devil has a sister,’ said Victorin, as he rose.
He went to the door with this horrifying stranger, conjured up from the haunts of the secret agents of espionage as a monster rises from subterranean depths at the Opera in a ballet, at the wave of a fairy’s wand.
When he had finished his business in the law courts, Victorin went to see Monsieur Chapuzot, head of one of the most important departments of the Prefecture of Police, in order to make some inquiries about the stranger. Finding Monsieur Chapuzot alone in his office, Victorin Hulot thanked him for his help.
‘You sent me an old woman,’ he said, ‘who might be called criminal Paris personified.’
Monsieur Chapuzot laid his spectacles down on his papers, and looked at the lawyer with raised eyebrows.
‘I should certainly not have taken the liberty of sending you anyone without letting you know beforehand, or sending a note of introduction,’ he replied.
‘It must have been Monsieur le Préfet then…’
‘That is unlikely,’ said Chapuzot. ‘The last time that Prince de Wissembourg dined with the Minister of Home Affairs, he saw the Prefect and spoke to him about your position, a most deplorable situation, and asked him if it was possible in a friendly way to come to your assistance. The concern His Excellency showed about this family matter naturally enlisted Monsieur le Préfet’s keen interest, and he was good enough to consult me. Ever since Monsieur le Préfet took over the administration of this department, which has been so much reviled and does so much useful work, he has made it a rule not to intervene in any way in family matters. He was right in principle and theory; although he was going contrary to traditional practice. Speaking of the forty-five years of my experience, the police between 1799 and 1815 rendered great services to families, but since 1820 the Press and constitutional government have completely altered the conditions of our service. So my advice was not to have anything to do with an affair of this kind, and Monsieur le Préfet was so good as to concur with my observations. The chief of the Sûreté, in my presence, received the order not to take any steps in the matter; and if it is true that you have had a visit from someone sent by him, I shall reprimand him – it would be grounds for his dismissal.
‘It is easy to say “That’s a matter for the police!” The police! They all call for the police! But, my dear sir, the Marshal, the Council of Ministers, simply do not know what the police are. Only the police themselves know their powers. The kings, Napoleon, Louis XVIII, knew their own police; but as for ours, only Fouché, Monsieur Lenoir, Monsieur de Sartines, and a few perspicacious Prefects, have realized how it has been limited.… Nowadays everything is changed. We have been diminished, disarmed!
‘I have seen many an abuse spring up in private affairs that I could have swept away with just five scruples of arbitrary action! We shall be regretted by the very men who have cut us down when, like you, they find themselves faced with some monstrous wrong that we ought to have the same power to put right as we have to clear away dirt! In public affairs the police are held responsible for anticipating anything that may affect public security; but the family is sacred. I would do everything possible to discover and prevent an attempt against the King’s life – I would look into a house as if its walls were transparent. But to go and lay our fingers on family affairs, concern ourselves with private interests! Never, so long as I sit in this office – because I’m afraid.…’
‘Of what?’
‘Of the Press, Monsionr le Député, of the Left Centre Party!’
‘What ought I to do?’ said Hulot, after a pause.
‘Well, you represent the family!’ returned the departmental chief. ‘That says all there is to say. Act as you think best. But as to helping you, making the police the instrument of private passions and private interests, do you imagine that is possible? That, do you know, was the reason behind the inevitable prosecution, which the magistrates found illegal, of the predecessor of our present Sûreté chief. Bibi-Lupin used the police on behalf of private individuals. There was a far-reaching social danger implied in that! With the powers he could use, that man would have been formidable, he would have been the hand of Fate!’
‘But, in my place…?’ said Hulot.
‘Ah! You’re asking me for advice, you – a man who sells it!’ replied Monsieur Chapuzot. ‘Come, now, my dear sir, you’re making fun of me.’
Hulot bowed to the departmental chief and went away, without noticing that official’s almost imperceptible shrug as he rose to show him out.
‘And that man aspires to be a statesman!’ said Monsieur Chapuzot to himself, taking up his reports again.
Victorin returned home, his perplexities unresolved, unable to confide them to anyone. At dinner, the Baroness joyfully announced to her family that within a month their father might be sharing their prosperity, and ending his days peacefully with them all.
‘Ah, I would gladly give my three thousand six hundred francs a year to see the Baron here!’ cried Lisbeth. ‘But dear Adeline, do not count on such happiness too soon, I beg of you!’
‘Lisbeth is right,’ said Célestine. ‘My dear Mother, wait until it happens.’
The Baroness, her heart overflowing with tenderness and hope, told the story of her visit to Josépha, said that she thought poor creatures like her unhappy, in spite of all their success, and spoke of Chardin, the mattress-maker, father of the Oran storekeeper, as proof that she was not cherishing empty hopes.
Next morning, by seven o’clock, Lisbeth was in a cab on her way to the quai de la Tournelle. She stopped the vehicle at the corner of the rue de Poissy.
‘Go to the rue des Bernardins, number seven,’ she said to the driver. ‘It is a house with an entry and no porter. Go up to the fourth floor and ring at the door to the left, on which you will see a notice “Mademoiselle Chardin. Lace and cashmere shawls mended”. When someone comes to the door, you will ask for the gentleman. You will get the reply “He is out”. You will say “I know, but find him. His maid is waiting in a cab on the quai, and wants to see him”.’
Twenty minutes later, an old man who looked about eighty, with perfectly white hair, and a nose reddened by the cold in a pale and wrinkled face like an old woman’s, shuffled up in carpet slippers, his back bent. He was wearing a threadbare alpaca coat with no decoration, and at his wrists protruded the sleeves of a knitted woollen garment, and shirt-cuffs of doubtful cleanliness. He came timidly up, looked at the cab, recognized Lisbeth, and appeared at the door.
‘Ah, my dear Cousin,’ she said. ‘What a sad state you are in!’
‘Élodie takes all the money for herself!’ said Baron Hulot. ‘Those Chardins are low scum.…’
‘Do you want to come back to us?’
‘Oh, no, no!’ said the old man. ‘I wish I
could go to America.…’
‘Adeline is on your track.’
‘Ah, if my debts could only be paid!’ said the Baron questioningly, with a furtive look. ‘For Samanon is after me.’
‘We haven’t yet paid off your arrears. Your son still owes a hundred thousand francs.’
‘Poor boy!’
‘And your pension will not be free for seven or eight months.… If you’ll wait, I have two thousand francs here!’
The Baron held out his hand in a gesture of shocking avidity.
‘Give it to me, Lisbeth! God bless you for it! Give it to me! I know where I can go!’
‘But you will tell me where, you old monster?’
‘Yes, I can wait eight months, because I have found a little angel, a good creature, an innocent soul, not old enough yet to have been corrupted.’
‘Remember the police court,’ said Lisbeth, who cherished the hope of seeing Hulot there one day.
‘Oh, she lives in the rue de Charonne!’ said Baron Hulot. ‘That’s a quarter where there’s no scandal, whatever happens. Oh, no one will ever find me there. I’m disguised, Lisbeth, as Père Thorec; they think I’m a retired cabinet-maker. The child loves me, and I’m not going to let them shear me like a sheep any more.’
‘No, that’s been done!’ said Lisbeth, looking at his coat. ‘Suppose I drive you there, Cousin?…’
Baron Hulot climbed into the cab, casting off Mademoiselle Élodie, like a novel read and thrown away, without even saying good-bye.
Half an hour later, a half hour spent by the Baron in talking to Lisbeth uninterruptedly of little Atala Judici, for he had by degrees become the victim of the terrible obsessive passions that destroy old men, his cousin set him down with two thousand francs in his pocket in the rue de Charonne, in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, at the door of a dubious and sinister-looking house.
‘Good-bye, Cousin. You will be Père Thorec now, is that right? Don’t send anyone to me except porters, and always hire them from different places.’
‘Agreed. Oh! I’m very lucky I’ said the Baron, his face alight with anticipation of a quite new happiness.
‘They’ll not find him there!’ said Lisbeth to herself; and she stopped her cab on the boulevard Beaumarchais, and from there returned by omnibus to the rue Louis-le-Grand.
*
On the following day, when the whole family was gathered in the drawing-room after lunch, Crevel was announced. Célestine ran to throw her arms round her father’s neck, and behaved as if he had been there only the evening before, although this was his first visit in two years.
‘How do you do, Father?’ said Victorin, holding out his hand.
‘Good morning, my children,’ said Crevel pompously. ‘Madame la Baronne, I lay my homage at your feet. Heavens, how these children grow! This crowd is treading on our heels! They’re saying to us “Grandpapa, I want my place in the sun!” Madame la Comtesse, you are still as wonderfully beautiful as ever!’ he went on, looking at Hortense. ‘Ah, and here’s the balance of our pocketful, Cousin Bette, the wise virgin! Well, you are all very comfortable here…’ he said, after he had handed out these remarks to each in turn, with an accompaniment of hearty laughs that moved the rubicund flesh of his heavy cheeks only with difficulty. And he looked round his daughter’s drawing-room with some contempt.
‘My dear Célestine, I’ll make you a present of all my furniture from the rue des Saussayes; it will do very well here. Your drawing-room is in need of a bit of furbishing up.… Ah, here’s Wenceslas, funny little chap! Well, now, grandchildren, are we all good children? We must mind our manners and morals, you know.’
‘To make up for those who haven’t any,’ said Lisbeth.
‘That sarcasm, my dear Lisbeth, doesn’t affect me now. I am going to put an end to the false position I have been in for so long, my children. I am here, like a proper father and head of the family, to announce to you that I am going to be married, just like that, without any bones about it.’
‘You have a perfect right to get married,’ said Victorin. ‘And for my part I release you from the promise you made me when you gave me my dear Célestine’s hand.…’
‘What promise?’ demanded Crevel.
‘A promise that you would not remarry,’ answered the lawyer. ‘You will do me the justice of agreeing that I did not ask you to give such a promise, that you made it quite voluntarily, in spite of what I said, for at the time I pointed out that you ought not to bind yourself in that way.’
‘Yes, I remember, my dear fellow,’ said Crevel, rather taken aback.’And see here, bless me, upon my word!… my dear children, if you will only get on well with Madame Crevel, you will have no reason to regret it. I am grateful for your proper feeling, Victorin. No one treats me with generosity without having his reward.… See here, now, come on! Accept your stepmother in a friendly way and come to the wedding!’
‘You don’t tell us, Father, who your fiancée is?’ said Célestine.
‘Why that’s no secret to anyone,’ returned Crevel. ‘Let’s not play hide and seek! Lisbeth must have told you…’
‘My dear Monsieur Crevel,’ answered Lisbeth, ‘there are names that are not mentioned here.…’
‘Well, it’s Madame Marneffe!’
‘Monsieur Crevel,’ said the lawyer sternly, ‘neither I nor my wife will be present at that marriage, not because it affects our interests, for what I said just now was meant sincerely. Yes, indeed, I should be very glad to know that you would find happiness in marriage. But there are considerations of honour and delicacy that you will understand, which I must not put into words, because it would mean reopening wounds here that are still fresh.’
The Baroness made a sign to the Countess, who picked up her son, saying:
‘Come, it’s time for your bath, Wenceslas! Good-bye, Monsieur Crevel.’
The Baroness bowed to Crevel silently. Crevel could not help smiling at the child’s surprise at finding himself threatened with this unexpected bath.
‘The woman you intend to marry, Monsieur,’ said the lawyer sharply, when he was alone with Lisbeth, his wife, and his father-in-law, ‘is a woman loaded with spoils from my father, who in cold blood has brought him to his present state, who after destroying him is living with his son-in-law, and has caused my sister intense suffering.… And do you imagine that we will publicly approve your folly by my presence? I am sincerely sorry for you, my dear Monsieur Crevel! You lack family feeling; you do not understand the solidarity that in honour binds a family’s several members. One cannot reason with the passions – I know that, unfortunately, only too well. Men swept by passion are both deaf and blind. Your daughter Célestine’s sense of filial duty is too strong to allow her to reproach you.’
‘It would be a pretty thing if she did!’ said Crevel, endeavouring to stem this harangue.
‘Célestine would not be my wife if she made a single protest,’ the lawyer went on; ‘but I am free to try to stop you when you are about to step over a precipice, especially as I have given you proof of my disinterestedness. It is certainly not your fortune, it is yourself that I am concerned about.… And in order to make my feelings quite clear to you, I may add, if only to set your mind at rest in the matter of your future marriage contract, that my position now leaves nothing to be desired.’
‘Thanks to me!’ exclaimed Crevel, whose face had turned purple.
‘Thanks to Célestine’s fortune,’ the lawyer replied; ‘and if you regret having given your daughter, as your share of her dowry, a sum that is less than half of what her mother left her, we are quite prepared to return it to you.…’
‘Do you know, my learned son-in-law,’ said Crevel, striking his pose, ‘that when I give Madame Marneffe the protection of my name, she is not required to answer to the world for her conduct, otherwise than as Madame Crevel?’
‘That is perhaps very chivalrous,’ said the lawyer; ‘it is treating matters of the heart, the aberrations of passion, generously. But I do not kno
w a name, or law, or title, that can cover the theft of three hundred thousand francs meanly extorted from my father! I tell you plainly my dear father-in-law, that your future wife is unworthy of you, that she is deceiving you, that she is madly in love with my brother-in-law, Steinbock, whose debts she has paid.’
‘I paid them!’
‘Very well,’ returned the lawyer; ‘I’m happy to hear it, for Count Steinbock’s sake – he may be able to pay what he owes some day. But he is the lover, very much loved, very often loved.…’
‘He is her lover!’ said Crevel, whose face showed how upset he was. ‘It is cowardly and filthy and mean and vulgar to slander a woman! When a man says that sort of thing, Monsieur, he must be prepared to prove it.’
‘I will give you proofs.’
‘I’ll wait to see them!’
‘The day after tomorrow, my dear Monsieur Crevel, I’ll tell you the day and the hour and the minute when I shall be in a position to expose the dreadful depravity of your future wife.’
‘Very well, I shall be charmed,’ said Crevel, recovering his composure. ‘Good-bye, my children, au revoir. Good-bye, Lisbeth…’
‘Go after him, Lisbeth,’ said Célestine in Cousin Bette’s ear.
‘Well, well, is that how you go off?’ Lisbeth cried after Crevel.
‘Ah!’ Crevel said to her. ‘He takes a high and mighty line nowadays, my son-in-law; he’s outgrown his boots. What with the law courts, the Chamber, the sharp practice of lawyers, and the sharp practice of politicians, they’ve put a keen edge on him. Aha! he knows that I’m getting married next Wednesday, and on Sunday this gentleman claims that in three days he’ll be able to fix the day on which he’ll demonstrate to me that my wife is unworthy of me… that’s a good one! I’m going back now to sign the contract. Well, you can come with me, Lisbeth; come on! They won’t know anything about it! I meant to leave forty thousand francs a year to Célestine; but after the way Hulot has just behaved, how can I ever feel any affection for them again?’
‘Give me ten minutes, Papa Crevel. Wait for me in your carriage at the door. I’ll find some excuse for going out.’