Cousin Betty

“The Paris news is never what the foolish folk believe.”

Marshal Hulot drove home with his brother, who took the front seat, respectfully leaving the whole of the back of the carriage to his senior. The two men spoke not a word. Hector was helpless. The Marshal was lost in thought, like a man who is collecting all his strength, and bracing himself to bear a crushing weight. On arriving at his own house, still without speaking, but by an imperious gesture, he beckoned his brother into his study. The Count had received from the Emperor Napoleon a splendid pair of pistols from the Versailles factory; he took the box, with its inscription. “Given by the Emperor Napoleon to General Hulot,” out of his desk, and placing it on the top, he showed it to his brother, saying, “There is your remedy.”

Lisbeth, peeping through the chink of the door, flew down to the carriage and ordered the coachman to go as fast as he could gallop to the Rue Plumet. Within about twenty minutes she had brought back Adeline, whom she had told of the Marshal’s threat to his brother.

The Marshal, without looking at Hector, rang the bell for his factotum, the old soldier who had served him for thirty years.

“Beau-Pied,” said he, “fetch my notary, and Count Steinbock, and my niece Hortense, and the stockbroker to the Treasury. It is now half-past ten; they must all be here by twelve. Take hackney cabs – and go faster than that!” he added, a republican allusion which in past days had been often on his lips. And he put on the scowl that had brought his soldiers to attention when he was beating the broom on the heaths of Brittany in 1799. (See Les Chouans.)

“You shall be obeyed, Marechal,” said Beau-Pied, with a military salute.

Still paying no heed to his brother, the old man came back into his study, took a key out of his desk, and opened a little malachite box mounted in steel, the gift of the Emperor Alexander.

By Napoleon’s orders he had gone to restore to the Russian Emperor the private property seized at the battle of Dresden, in exchange for which Napoleon hoped to get back Vandamme. The Czar rewarded General Hulot very handsomely, giving him this casket, and saying that he hoped one day to show the same courtesy to the Emperor of the French; but he kept Vandamme. The Imperial arms of Russia were displayed in gold on the lid of the box, which was inlaid with gold.

The Marshal counted the bank-notes it contained; he had a hundred and fifty-two thousand francs. He saw this with satisfaction. At the same moment Madame Hulot came into the room in a state to touch the heart of the sternest judge. She flew into Hector’s arms, looking alternately with a crazy eye at the Marshal and at the case of pistols.

“What have you to say against your brother? What has my husband done to you?” said she, in such a voice that the Marshal heard her.

“He has disgraced us all!” replied the Republican veteran, who spoke with a vehemence that reopened one of his old wounds. “He has robbed the Government! He has cast odium on my name, he makes me wish I were dead – he has killed me! – I have only strength enough left to make restitution!

“I have been abased before the Conde of the Republic, the man I esteem above all others, and to whom I unjustifiably gave the lie – the Prince of Wissembourg! – Is that nothing? That is the score his country has against him!”

He wiped away a tear.

“Now, as to his family,” he went on. “He is robbing you of the bread I had saved for you, the fruit of thirty years’ economy, of the privations of an old soldier! Here is what was intended for you,” and he held up the bank-notes. “He has killed his Uncle Fischer, a noble and worthy son of Alsace who could not – as he can – endure the thought of a stain on his peasant’s honor.

“To crown all, God, in His adorable clemency, had allowed him to choose an angel among women; he has had the unspeakable happiness of having an Adeline for his wife! And he has deceived her, he has soaked her in sorrows, he has neglected her for prostitutes, for street-hussies, for ballet-girls, actresses – Cadine, Josepha, Marneffe! – And that is the brother I treated as a son and made my pride!

“Go, wretched man; if you can accept the life of degradation you have made for yourself, leave my house! I have not the heart to curse a brother I have loved so well – I am as foolish about him as you are, Adeline – but never let me see him again. I forbid his attending my funeral or following me to the grave. Let him show the decency of a criminal if he can feel no remorse.”

The Marshal, as pale as death, fell back on the settee, exhausted by his solemn speech. And, for the first time in his life perhaps, tears gathered in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.

“My poor uncle!” cried Lisbeth, putting a handkerchief to her eyes.

“Brother!” said Adeline, kneeling down by the Marshal, “live for my sake. Help me in the task of reconciling Hector to the world and making him redeem the past.”

“He!” cried the Marshal. “If he lives, he is not at the end of his crimes. A man who has misprized an Adeline, who has smothered in his own soul the feelings of a true Republican which I tried to instill into him, the love of his country, of his family, and of the poor – that man is a monster, a swine! – Take him away if you still care for him, for a voice within me cries to me to load my pistols and blow his brains out. By killing him I should save you all, and I should save him too from himself.”

The old man started to his feet with such a terrifying gesture that poor Adeline exclaimed:

“Hector – come!”

She seized her husband’s arm, dragged him away, and out of the house; but the Baron was so broken down, that she was obliged to call a coach to take him to the Rue Plumet, where he went to bed. The man remained there for several days in a sort of half-dissolution, refusing all nourishment without a word. By floods of tears, Adeline persuaded him to swallow a little broth; she nursed him, sitting by his bed, and feeling only, of all the emotions that once had filled her heart, the deepest pity for him.

At half-past twelve, Lisbeth showed into her dear Marshal’s room – for she would not leave him, so much was she alarmed at the evident change in him – Count Steinbock and the notary.

“Monsieur le Comte,” said the Marshal, “I would beg you to be so good as to put your signature to a document authorizing my niece, your wife, to sell a bond for certain funds of which she at present holds only the reversion. – You, Mademoiselle Fischer, will agree to this sale, thus losing your life interest in the securities.”

“Yes, dear Count,” said Lisbeth without hesitation.

“Good, my dear,” said the old soldier. “I hope I may live to reward you. But I did not doubt you; you are a true Republican, a daughter of the people.” He took the old maid’s hand and kissed it.

“Monsieur Hannequin,” he went on, speaking to the notary, “draw up the necessary document in the form of a power of attorney, and let me have it within two hours, so that I may sell the stock on the Bourse to-day. My niece, the Countess, holds the security; she will be here to sign the power of attorney when you bring it, and so will mademoiselle. Monsieur le Comte will be good enough to go with you and sign it at your office.”

The artist, at a nod from Lisbeth, bowed respectfully to the Marshal and went away.

Next morning, at ten o’clock, the Comte de Forzheim sent in to announce himself to the Prince, and was at once admitted.

“Well, my dear Hulot,” said the Prince, holding out the newspapers to his old friend, “we have saved appearances, you see. – Read.”

Marshal Hulot laid the papers on his comrade’s table, and held out to him the two hundred thousand francs.

“Here is the money of which my brother robbed the State,” said he.

“What madness!” cried the Minister. “It is impossible,” he said into the speaking-trumpet handed to him by the Marshal, “to manage this restitution. We should be obliged to declare your brother’s dishonest dealings, and we have done everything to hide them.”

“Do what you like with the money; but the family shall not owe one sou of its fortune to a robbery on the funds of the State,” said the Count.

“I will take the King’s commands in the matter. We will discuss it no further,” replied the Prince, perceiving that it would be impossible to conquer the old man’s sublime obstinacy on the point.

“Good-bye, Cottin,” said the old soldier, taking the Prince’s hand. “I feel as if my soul were frozen – ”

Then, after going a step towards the door, he turned round, looked at the Prince, and seeing that he was deeply moved, he opened his arms to clasp him in them; the two old soldiers embraced each other.

“I feel as if I were taking leave of the whole of the old army in you,” said the Count.

“Good-bye, my good old comrade!” said the Minister.

“Yes, it is good-bye; for I am going where all our brave men are for whom we have mourned – ”

Just then Claude Vignon was shown in. The two relics of the Napoleonic phalanx bowed gravely to each other, effacing every trace of emotion.

“You have, I hope, been satisfied by the papers,” said the Master of Appeals-elect. “I contrived to let the Opposition papers believe that they were letting out our secrets.”

“Unfortunately, it is all in vain,” replied the Minister, watching Hulot as he left the room. “I have just gone through a leave-taking that has been a great grief to me. For, indeed, Marshal Hulot has not three days to live; I saw that plainly enough yesterday. That man, one of those honest souls that are above proof, a soldier respected by the bullets in spite of his valor, received his death-blow – there, in that armchair – and dealt by my hand, in a letter! – Ring and order my carriage. I must go to Neuilly,” said he, putting the two hundred thousand francs into his official portfolio.

Notwithstanding Lisbeth’s nursing, Marshal Hulot three days later was a dead man. Such men are the glory of the party they support. To Republicans, the Marshal was the ideal of patriotism; and they all attended his funeral, which was followed by an immense crowd. The army, the State officials, the Court, and the populace all came to do homage to this lofty virtue, this spotless honesty, this immaculate glory. Such a last tribute of the people is not a thing to be had for the asking.

This funeral was distinguished by one of those tributes of delicate feeling, of good taste, and sincere respect which from time to time remind us of the virtues and dignity of the old French nobility. Following the Marshal’s bier came the old Marquis de Montauran, the brother of him who, in the great rising of the Chouans in 1799, had been the foe, the luckless foe, of Hulot. That Marquis, killed by the balls of the “Blues,” had confided the interests of his young brother to the Republican soldier. (See Les Chouans.) Hulot had so faithfully acted on the noble Royalist’s verbal will, that he succeeded in saving the young man’s estates, though he himself was at the time an emigre. And so the homage of the old French nobility was not wanting to the leader who, nine years since, had conquered MADAME.

This death, happening just four days before the banns were cried for the last time, came upon Lisbeth like the thunderbolt that burns the garnered harvest with the barn. The peasant of Lorraine, as often happens, had succeeded too well. The Marshal had died of the blows dealt to the family by herself and Madame Marneffe.

The old maid’s vindictiveness, which success seemed to have somewhat mollified, was aggravated by this disappointment of her hopes. Lisbeth went, crying with rage, to Madame Marneffe; for she was homeless, the Marshal having agreed that his lease was at any time to terminate with his life. Crevel, to console Valerie’s friend, took charge of her savings, added to them considerably, and invested the capital in five per cents, giving her the life interest, and putting the securities into Celestine’s name. Thanks to this stroke of business, Lisbeth had an income of about two thousand francs.

When the Marshal’s property was examined and valued, a note was found, addressed to his sister-in-law, to his niece Hortense, and to his nephew Victorin, desiring that they would pay among them an annuity of twelve hundred francs to Mademoiselle Lisbeth Fischer, who was to have been his wife.

Adeline, seeing her husband between life and death, succeeded for some days in hiding from him the fact of his brother’s death; but Lisbeth came, in mourning, and the terrible truth was told him eleven days after the funeral.

The crushing blow revived the sick man’s energies. He got up, found his family collected in the drawing-room, all in black, and suddenly silent as he came in. In a fortnight, Hulot, as lean as a spectre, looked to his family the mere shadow of himself.

“I must decide on something,” said he in a husky voice, as he seated himself in an easy-chair, and looked round at the party, of whom Crevel and Steinbock were absent.

“We cannot stay here, the rent is too high,” Hortense was saying just as her father came in.

“As to a home,” said Victorin, breaking the painful silence, “I can offer my mother – ”

As he heard these words, which excluded him, the Baron raised his head, which was sunk on his breast as though he were studying the pattern of the carpet, though he did not even see it, and he gave the young lawyer an appealing look. The rights of a father are so indefeasibly sacred, even when he is a villain and devoid of honor, that Victorin paused.

“To your mother,” the Baron repeated. “You are right, my son.”

“The rooms over ours in our wing,” said Celestine, finishing her husband’s sentence.

“I am in your way, my dears?” said the Baron, with the mildness of a man who has judged himself. “But do not be uneasy as to the future; you will have no further cause for complaint of your father; you will not see him till the time when you need no longer blush for him.”

He went up to Hortense and kissed her brow. He opened his arms to his son, who rushed into his embrace, guessing his father’s purpose. The Baron signed to Lisbeth, who came to him, and he kissed her forehead. Then he went to his room, whither Adeline followed him in an agony of dread.

“My brother was quite right, Adeline,” he said, holding her hand. “I am unworthy of my home life. I dared not bless my children, who have behaved so nobly, but in my heart; tell them that I could only venture to kiss them; for the blessing of a bad man, a father who has been an assassin and the scourge of his family instead of its protector and its glory, might bring evil on them; but assure them that I shall bless them every day. – As to you, God alone, for He is Almighty, can ever reward you according to your merits! – I can only ask your forgiveness!” and he knelt at her feet, taking her hands and wetting them with his tears.

“Hector, Hector! Your sins have been great, but Divine Mercy is infinite, and you may repair all by staying with me. – Rise up in Christian charity, my dear – I am your wife, and not your judge. I am your possession; do what you will with me; take me wherever you go, I feel strong enough comfort you, to make life endurable to you, by the strength of my love, my care, and respect. – Our children are settled in life; they need me no more. Let me try to be an amusement to you, an occupation. Let me share the pain of your banishment and of your poverty, and help to mitigate it. I could always be of some use, if it were only to save the expense of a servant.”

“Can you forgive, my dearly-beloved Adeline?”

“Yes, only get up, my dear!”

“Well, with that forgiveness I can live,” said he, rising to his feet. “I came back into this room that my children should not see their father’s humiliation. Oh! the sight constantly before their eyes of a father so guilty as I am is a terrible thing; it must undermine parental influence and break every family tie. So I cannot remain among you, and I must go to spare you the odious spectacle of a father bereft of dignity. Do not oppose my departure Adeline. It would only be to load with your own hand the pistol to blow my brains out. Above all, do not seek me in my hiding-place; you would deprive me of the only strong motive remaining in me, that of remorse.”

Hector’s decisiveness silenced his dejected wife. Adeline, lofty in the midst of all this ruin, had derived her courage from her perfect union with her husband; for she had dreamed of having him for her own, of the beautiful task of comforting him, of leading him back to family life, and reconciling him to himself.

“But, Hector, would you leave me to die of despair, anxiety, and alarms!” said she, seeing herself bereft of the mainspring of her strength.

“I will come back to you, dear angel – sent from Heaven expressly for me, I believe. I will come back, if not rich, at least with enough to live in ease. – Listen, my sweet Adeline, I cannot stay here for many reasons. In the first place, my pension of six thousand francs is pledged for four years, so I have nothing. That is not all. I shall be committed to prison within a few days in consequence of the bills held by Vauvinet. So I must keep out of the way until my son, to whom I will give full instructions, shall have bought in the bills. My disappearance will facilitate that. As soon as my pension is my own, and Vauvinet is paid off, I will return to you. – You would be sure to let out the secret of my hiding-place. Be calm; do not cry, Adeline – it is only for a month – ”

“Where will you go? What will you do? What will become of you? Who will take care of you now that you are no longer young? Let me go with you – we will go abroad – ” said she.

“Well, well, we will see,” he replied.

The Baron rang and ordered Mariette to collect all his things and pack them quickly and secretly. Then, after embracing his wife with a warmth of affection to which she was unaccustomed, he begged her to leave him alone for a few minutes while he wrote his instructions for Victorin, promising that he would not leave the house till dark, or without her.

As soon as the Baroness was in the drawing-room, the cunning old man stole out through the dressing-closet to the anteroom, and went away, giving Mariette a slip of paper, on which was written, “Address my trunks to go by railway to Corbeil – to Monsieur Hector, cloak-room, Corbeil.”

The Baron jumped into a hackney coach, and was rushing across Paris by the time Mariette came to give the Baroness this note, and say that her master had gone out. Adeline flew back into her room, trembling more violently than ever; her children followed on hearing her give a piercing cry. They found her in a dead faint; and they put her to bed, for she was seized by a nervous fever which held her for a month between life and death.

“Where is he?” was the only thing she would say.

Victorin sought for him in vain.

And this is why. The Baron had driven to the Place du Palais Royal. There this man, who had recovered all his wits to work out a scheme which he had premeditated during the days he had spent crushed with pain and grief, crossed the Palais Royal on foot, and took a handsome carriage from a livery-stable in the Rue Joquelet. In obedience to his orders, the coachman went to the Rue de la Ville l’Eveque, and into the courtyard of Josepha’s mansion, the gates opening at once at the call of the driver of such a splendid vehicle. Josepha came out, prompted by curiosity, for her man-servant had told her that a helpless old gentleman, unable to get out of his carriage, begged her to come to him for a moment.

“Josepha! – it is I – ”

The singer recognized her Hulot only by his voice.

“What? you, poor old man? – On my honor, you look like a twenty-franc piece that the Jews have sweated and the money-changers refuse.”

“Alas, yes,” replied Hulot; “I am snatched from the jaws of death! But you are as lovely as ever. Will you be kind?”

“That depends,” said she; “everything is relative.”

“Listen,” said Hulot; “can you put me up for a few days in a servant’s room under the roof? I have nothing – not a farthing, not a hope; no food, no pension, no wife, no children, no roof over my head; without honor, without courage, without a friend; and worse than all that, liable to imprisonment for not meeting a bill.”

“Poor old fellow! you are without most things. – Are you also sans culotte?”

“You laugh at me! I am done for,” cried the Baron. “And I counted on you as Gourville did on Ninon.”

“And it was a ‘real lady,’ I am told who brought you to this,” said Josepha. “Those precious sluts know how to pluck a goose even better than we do! – Why, you are like a corpse that the crows have done with – I can see daylight through!”

“Time is short, Josepha!”

“Come in, old boy, I am alone, as it happens, and my people don’t know you. Send away your trap. Is it paid for?”

“Yes,” said the Baron, getting out with the help of Josepha’s arm.

“You may call yourself my father if you like,” said the singer, moved to pity.

She made Hulot sit down in the splendid drawing-room where he had last seen her.

“And is it the fact, old man,” she went on, “that you have killed your brother and your uncle, ruined your family, mortgaged your children’s house over and over again, and robbed the Government till in Africa, all for your princess?”

Hulot sadly bent his head.

“Well, I admire that!” cried Josepha, starting up in her enthusiasm. “It is a general flare-up! It is Sardanapalus! Splendid, thoroughly complete! I may be a hussy, but I have a soul! I tell you, I like a spendthrift, like you, crazy over a woman, a thousand times better than those torpid, heartless bankers, who are supposed to be so good, and who ruin no end of families with their rails – gold for them, and iron for their gulls! You have only ruined those who belong to you, you have sold no one but yourself; and then you have excuses, physical and moral.”

She struck a tragic attitude, and spouted:

“‘Tis Venus whose grasp never parts from her prey.

And there you are!” and she pirouetted on her toe.

Vice, Hulot found, could forgive him; vice smiled on him from the midst of unbridled luxury. Here, as before a jury, the magnitude of a crime was an extenuating circumstance. “And is your lady pretty at any rate?” asked Josepha, trying as a preliminary act of charity, to divert Hulot’s thoughts, for his depression grieved her.

“On my word, almost as pretty as you are,” said the Baron artfully.

“And monstrously droll? So I have been told. What does she do, I say? Is she better fun than I am?”

“I don’t want to talk about her,” said Hulot.

“And I hear she has come round my Crevel, and little Steinbock, and a gorgeous Brazilian?”

“Very likely.”

“And that she has got a house as good as this, that Crevel has given her. The baggage! She is my provost-marshal, and finishes off those I have spoiled. I tell you why I am so curious to know what she is like, old boy; I just caught sight of her in the Bois, in an open carriage – but a long way off. She is a most accomplished harpy, Carabine says. She is trying to eat up Crevel, but he only lets her nibble. Crevel is a knowing hand, good-natured but hard-headed, who will always say Yes, and then go his own way. He is vain and passionate; but his cash is cold. You can never get anything out of such fellows beyond a thousand to three thousand francs a month; they jib at any serious outlay, as a donkey does at a running stream.

“Not like you, old boy. You are a man of passions; you would sell your country for a woman. And, look here, I am ready to do anything for you! You are my father; you started me in life; it is a sacred duty. What do you want? Do you want a hundred thousand francs? I will wear myself to a rag to gain them. As to giving you bed and board – that is nothing. A place will be laid for you here every day; you can have a good room on the second floor, and a hundred crowns a month for pocket-money.”

The Baron, deeply touched by such a welcome, had a last qualm of honor.

“No, my dear child, no; I did not come here for you to keep me,” said he.

“At your age it is something to be proud of,” said she.

“This is what I wish, my child. Your Duc d’Herouville has immense estates in Normandy, and I want to be his steward, under the name of Thoul. I have the capacity, and I am honest. A man may borrow of the Government, and yet not steal from a cash-box – ”