The Baroness had a fervent admirer in her brother-in-law, Lieutenant-General Hulot, the venerable commander of the Infantry Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, who was to be awarded a marshal’s baton in his declining years. The old man, who from 1830 to 1834 had commanded the military region that included the Brittany departments, the scene of his exploits in 1799 and 1800,* had settled in Paris, near his brother, for whom he still had a fatherly affection.
His old soldier’s heart was strongly drawn to his sister-in-law’s. He admired her as the most noble and saintly of her sex. He had not married, because he wanted to find a second Adeline, whom he had sought in vain throughout twenty countries and in twenty campaigns. So as not to fall from grace in the heart of this irreproachable, blameless old republican, of whom Napoleon used to say, ‘That good old Hulot is the most stubborn of republicans, but he will never betray me’, Adeline would have endured sufferings far more acute than those she had just experienced. But the old man, at the age of 72, his health broken by thirty campaigns, wounded for the twenty-seventh time at Waterloo, gave Adeline admiration but not protection. The poor Count, among other infirmities, could hear only with the help of an ear-trumpet!
As long as Baron Hulot d’Ervy was a handsome man, his love affairs did not affect his fortune, but at the age of 50 he had to pay attention to his appearance. Love in old men of that age becomes a vice; absurd vanities are mingled with it. So, about this time, Adeline noticed that her husband had become extremely fussy about his grooming, dyeing his hair and whiskers and wearing belts and corsets. He was determined to stay handsome at any price.
He carried this cult of his person, a fault that he used to make fun of, to the minutest details. Adeline became aware that the Pactolus* which flowed to the houses of the Baron’s mistresses had its source in her own home. During the last eight years a considerable fortune had been squandered, and so completely that, at the time of young Hulot’s marriage, the Baron was forced to admit to his wife that his salary was their whole fortune.
‘Where will that lead us?’ asked Adeline.
‘Set your mind at ease,’ replied the Councillor of State. I’ll turn my salary over to you, and I’ll provide for Hortense’s marriage settlement and our future by going into business.’
Madame Hulot’s profound faith in the power and great merit of her husband, in his abilities and character, had calmed her momentary anxiety.
Now the nature of the Baroness’s reflections and her tears after Crevel’s departure can be readily imagined.
For two years the poor woman had known that she was at the bottom of an abyss, but she thought she was there alone. She had not known how her son’s marriage had been arranged, she had not known about Hector’s liaison with the greedy Josépha, and she had hoped that no one in the world knew of her sorrows. But if Crevel spoke so lightly of the Baron’s dissipations, Hector would lose the high esteem in which he was held. From the vulgar talk of the annoyed ex-perfumer she could form an idea of the hateful scheming to which the young lawyer owed his marriage. Two fallen women had been the priestesses of that union which had been mooted at some orgy in the midst of the degrading liberties taken by two tipsy old men!
‘So he’s forgetting Hortense,’ she thought, ‘yet he sees her every day. Will he then try to find a husband for her amongst those good-for-nothings?’
At that moment, Adeline was dominated more by maternal than by conjugal feelings, for she could see Hortense with her cousin Bette, laughing with the unrestrained laughter of heedless youth, and she knew that this nervous laughter was a symptom no less alarming than the tearful reverie of a solitary walk in the garden.
Hortense resembled her mother, but she had golden hair, naturally wavy and remarkably thick. Her complexion was like mother-of-pearl. She was obviously the child of a true marriage, of a pure and noble love at its height. Her lively, mobile face, her laughing expression, her youthful animation, her fresh vitality, her abundant good health all seemed to vibrate and to radiate electric waves around her. Hortense attracted all eyes.
When her deep-blue eyes, with their pure, innocent look, fell on a passer-by, he would feel an involuntary thrill. And not one of the freckles, which are the price these golden blonds often have to pay for their milk-white skins, marred her complexion.
Tall, rounded but not too plump, with a slender figure and a noble bearing equal to her mother’s, she deserved the title of goddess so lavishly used by the authors of antiquity. So no one who saw Hortense in the street could help exclaiming, ‘My goodness, what a lovely girl!’ She was so absolutely innocent that when she returned home, she would say, ‘But Mama, what makes them all say, “What a lovely girl!” when you’re with me? Aren’t you more beautiful than me?’
And indeed, though she was over 47, the Baroness might be preferred to her daughter by lovers of sunsets. For, as women say, she had not yet lost any of her advantages—a rare phenomenon, particularly in Paris, where Ninon* was notorious in this respect, so much did she outshine the plainer women in the seventeenth century.
From thinking of her daughter, the Baroness’s mind returned to the father. She saw him falling gradually, from day to day, into the dregs of society, and perhaps dismissed one day from the ministry.
The idea of her idol’s downfall, together with a vague picture of the misfortunes prophesied by Crevel, was so painful to the poor woman that she lost consciousness, like someone in a trance.