Cousin Bette, with whom Hortense was chatting, looked from time to time to see when they could go back to the drawing-room, but her young cousin was teasing her so much with her questions just as the Baroness re-opened the french window, that Bette did not notice her doing so.
Though Lisbeth Fischer was five years younger than Madame Hulot, she was the daughter of the eldest of the Fischer brothers. She was far from being beautiful like her cousin, and so she had been extremely jealous of Adeline. Jealousy was the fundamental feature of her character, full of eccentricities, a word invented by the English to indicate the follies not of ordinary but of great families.
A peasant woman from the Vosges in the full meaning of those words, thin, dark, with shiny black hair, thick eyebrows joined by a tuft of hair, long, strong arms, large feet, one or two warts on her long, monkey-like face—that, in brief, is a portrait of this spinster.
The family, who lived as one household, had sacrificed the plain girl to the pretty one, the sharp fruit to the brilliant flower. Lisbeth worked in the fields while her cousin was spoiled; and so it happened that one day, finding Adeline alone, the ugly girl tried to pull off the beauty’s nose, a real Grecian nose, of the kind old ladies admire.
Although she was smacked for this misdeed, she continued none the less to tear the favourite’s dresses and to spoil her collars.
At the time of her cousin’s remarkable marriage, Lisbeth bowed to fate, as Napoleon’s brothers and sisters bowed before the splendour of the throne and the power of commanding authority. When the almost too kind and sweet-natured Adeline was in Paris, she remembered Lisbeth and sent for her about 1809, with the intention of rescuing her from poverty and arranging a marriage for her.
As it was impossible to arrange a marriage immediately for this dark-eyed girl with coal-black eyebrows, who could neither read nor write, the Baron began by giving her a trade. He apprenticed Lisbeth to the embroiderers to the Imperial court, the famous Pons brothers.
The cousin, called Bette for short, having become an embroiderer in silver and gold, was energetic, as mountain people are, and had the courage to learn to read and write and do arithmetic; her cousin the Baron had convinced her that these skills were necessary if she wanted to run her own embroidery business. She was determined to make her fortune. In two years she was completely transformed. By 1811, the peasant girl had become a rather pleasing, skilful, and intelligent forewoman.
What was called the silver and gold embroidery trade included epaulettes, sword-tassels, and shoulder-knots, in short the countless brilliant decorations which glittered on the rich uniforms of the French army and on civilian formal dress.
The Emperor, with an Italian love of official garb, had gold and silver embroidered on the seams of the uniforms of everyone in his service, and his Empire contained a hundred and thirty-three departments. The supply of these trimmings, usually to wealthy and well-established tailors, or directly to high officials, was a reliable trade.
Just when Cousin Bette, the most skilful worker in the Pons establishment, where she was in charge of the workroom, might have set up on her own, the Empire collapsed. The olive-branch proffered by the Bourbons alarmed Lisbeth. She was afraid of a decline in her trade, which would now have a market of only eighty-six departments instead of a hundred and thirty-three, without taking account of the huge reduction in the size of the army.
Becoming alarmed at the various risks of the trade, she refused the offers of help from the Baron, who thought her mad. She justified her opinion by quarrelling with Monsieur Rivet, the purchaser of the firm of Pons, with whom the Baron had wanted to set her up in partnership, and reverted to being an ordinary worker.
By that time, the Fischer family had relapsed into the precarious situation from which Baron Hulot had rescued it.
Ruined by the disaster at Fontainebleau,* the three Fischer brothers, in desperation, served in the volunteer units of 1815.* The oldest, Lisbeth’s father, was killed.
Adeline’s father, condemned to death by court-martial, fled to Germany and died at Trier in 1820.
The youngest, Johann, came to Paris to beg for help from the queen of the family, who, they said, ate from silver and gold dishes and never appeared at receptions without wearing in her hair and round her neck diamonds as large as hazelnuts, that the Emperor had given her. Johann Fischer, then 43 years old, was given a sum of ten thousand francs by Baron Hulot to set up a little forage business in Versailles; this was obtained from the War Ministry through the secret influence of friends whom the former Head of Department still had there.
These family misfortunes, Baron Hulot’s fall from office, a conviction of being of little importance in the immense turmoil of men, private interests, and public affairs which makes Paris both an inferno and a paradise, were too much for Bette.
Having become fully aware of her cousin’s various kinds of superiority, Bette then gave up all idea of rivalry and comparison with Adeline. But envy remained hidden in the depths of her heart, like the germ of a disease which can break out and ravage a town if one opens the fatal bale of wool in which it is enclosed.
From time to time, however, she would say to herself, ‘Adeline and I are of the same blood; our fathers were brothers; she lives in a grand house but I live in an attic’ Yet every year, on her birthday and on New Year’s Day, Lisbeth would receive presents from the Baroness and the Baron. The Baron, who was very good to her, paid for her winter supply of wood. Old General Hulot had her to dinner once a week and her place was always set at her cousin’s table. They made fun of her but they never blushed for her. In fact they had obtained independence for her in Paris, where she lived in her own way.
Bette, in fact, dreaded any kind of tie. If her cousin invited her to live with her, Bette would be aware of the yoke of domestic life. Many times the Baron had solved the problem of finding her a husband, but although attracted at first, she would soon refuse, afraid of being reproached for her lack of education, her ignorance, or her poverty. And if the Baroness suggested that she should live with their uncle and keep house for him, instead of his having a housekeeper who must cost a lot, she would reply that she was still less likely to marry in that situation.
Cousin Bette’s ideas had the unusual quality that can be seen in very late developers and in savages, who think a lot and say little. Her peasant intelligence had, moreover, acquired a touch of caustic Parisian wit through her conversations in the workshop and her association with the workers, both men and women. This young woman, whose character was very much like the Corsicans’, with no outlet for the instincts of a strong nature, would have loved to look after a man of weak character. But life in the capital had superficially changed her. The Parisian polish turned to rust on that strongly tempered spirit. Like all those dedicated to genuine celibacy, she was gifted with an insight that had become penetrating, and as she expressed her thoughts with a sharp wit, she would have appeared formidable in any other situation. With a malicious nature, she would have disrupted the most united family.
In the early days, when she nursed hopes that she confided to no one, she decided to wear corsets and follow the fashion, and so she had a moment of splendour when the Baron thought her marriageable. Lisbeth was, at that time, the piquant brunette of the old French romances. Her piercing look, her olive complexion, her slender figure, might have tempted a major on half-pay. But she was content with her own admiration, she would say, laughing.
In the end, however, she found her life a happy one after pruning it of all material cares, for she used to dine in town every day having worked from sunrise, and so she had to provide only for her lunches and her rent. She was also given clothes and many useful items of food, such as sugar, coffee, wine, and so on.
In 1837, after twenty-seven years of life half paid for by the Hulot family and her uncle Fischer, Cousin Bette, resigned to being a nobody, let herself be treated without ceremony. She herself refused to come to large dinnerparties, preferring the intimate family meals where her worth could be appreciated and she could avoid blows to her pride. Everywhere, at General Hulot’s, at the young Hulots’, at the home of Rivet (Pons’s successor, with whom she had become reconciled and who made her very welcome), at the Baroness’s, she was like one of the family.
Moreover, she knew how to conciliate the servants everywhere, by giving them little tips from time to time and always chatting with them for a few moments before going in to the drawing-room. This familiarity, by which she put herself frankly on the servants’ level, won her the underlings’ goodwill, something essential for parasites.
‘She’s a good, decent girl,’ was what everyone said of her.
Her willingness to oblige, unlimited when it was not asked for, as well as her assumed good-nature, were, moreover, necessities of her position.
Seeing herself at everyone’s mercy, she had come at last to understand life. As she wanted to please everyone, she would laugh with the young people, who liked her because she flattered them in a kind of ingratiating way which always took them in. She understood and championed their wishes; she became their go-between and seemed to them a good confidant, for she had not the right to scold them. Her absolute discretion earned her the confidence of people of mature years, for, like Ninon,* she had some masculine qualities.
Usually, confidences are made to those below us rather than to those above us. We employ our inferiors far more than our superiors in secret affairs, and so they become the accomplices of our inmost thoughts; they are present at our deliberations. Richelieu,* for instance, looked on himself as having reached the top when he had the right to be present at Council meetings.
The poor young woman was so dependent on everyone that she seemed condemned to absolute silence. The cousin called herself the family confessional. Only the Baroness, because of the ill-treatment she had received in childhood from her stronger though younger cousin, retained a certain mistrust. And then, out of shame, she would have confided her domestic sorrows only to God.
Perhaps here attention should be drawn to the fact that the Baroness’s house had retained all its splendour in the eyes of Cousin Bette, who, unlike the parvenu trader in perfumery, did not notice the poverty displayed by the worm-eaten armchairs, the faded hangings, and the tattered silk. It is with our furniture as with ourselves. By looking ourselves over every day, we finally, like the Baron, think that we have not changed much, that we are young, when others see our hair becoming tufted like a chinchilla’s, circumflex accents on our foreheads, and huge pumpkins on our stomachs. So for Cousin Bette, these rooms, still illuminated by the fireworks of the Imperial victories, were still resplendent.
With time, Cousin Bette had contracted some rather eccentric old maid’s habits.
Thus, for instance, instead of following fashion, she wanted fashion to be adapted to her ways and fit in with her wishes, which were always out of date. If the Baroness gave her a pretty new hat, or a dress cut in the style of the day, Cousin Bette immediately took it home and altered it according to her own ideas and spoilt it, turning it into a garment in the style of the Empire period and of the clothes she used to wear in Lorraine. The thirty-franc hat became a limp rag and the dress was wrecked.
In this respect Bette was mulishly obstinate. She wanted to please no one but herself and thought she was charming dressed as she was. In fact, this style of dress, appropriate in that it turned her into an old maid from head to foot, made her so ridiculous that, with the best will in the world, no one could receive her at formal parties.
The stubborn, capricious, independent spirit and the inexplicable unsociability of this young woman, for whom the Baron had four times found a suitable match (a civil servant, a major, a provision merchant, and a retired captain), and who had refused an embroiderer (later to become rich), earned her the nickname of ‘Nanny-Goat’ which the Baron laughingly gave her. But this name corresponded only to her superficial eccentricities, to those different traits that we all display to each other in social life. A close observation of the young woman would have discerned the fierce side of the peasantry; she was still the child who wanted to pull off her cousin’s nose, who, if she had not become more reasonable, would perhaps have killed her in a paroxysm of jealousy. Only her knowledge of the law and of the world enabled her to control that natural quickness of temper with which country people, like savages, pass from feeling to action.
And that, perhaps, is the whole difference between natural man and civilized man. The savage has feeling only, the civilized man has feelings and ideas. Moreover, the savage’s brain receives, as it were, few impressions. He is then entirely at the mercy of the feeling that pervades him, while in the civilized man ideas descend into the heart, which they transform. The civilized man has a thousand interests, several feelings, while the savage accepts only one idea at a time. That is the cause of the momentary advantage of a child over his parents, an advantage which is no longer there once his desire is satisfied. In man in a state of nature, however, the cause persists.
Cousin Bette, the primitive woman from Lorraine, a little inclined to treachery, belonged to that class of characters which are more common among the masses than you might think, and may explain their behaviour during revolutions.
At the time when this story begins, if Cousin Bette had been willing to be fashionably dressed, if, like Parisian women, she had become used to wearing every new style, she would have been presentable and acceptable, but she remained as stiff as a poker. Now an unattractive woman counts for nothing in Paris. So the black hair, the beautiful stern eyes, the firm outlines of the face, the tough Calabrian-like* complexion, which made Cousin Bette a Giotto*-like figure, and which a true Parisian woman would have turned to her advantage, above all her strange dress, made her look so odd that sometimes she resembled those monkeys, dressed up as women, that the little Savoyard chimney-sweeps carry about.
As she was well known in the households united by family ties which she frequented, as she restricted her social activities to this circle, and as she liked being in her own home, her eccentricities no longer surprised anyone, and, out of doors, they disappeared in the crowded activity of the Paris streets, where people only look at pretty women.