‘I have all the outward appearance of virtue,’ Madame Marneffe continued, laying her hand on Lisbeth’s as if to accept her good faith. ‘I’m a married woman and I’m my own mistress; so much so that if Marneffe feels like saying goodbye to me before he goes to the Ministry in the morning, and finds my bedroom door locked, he goes off quite unconcerned. He cares less for his child than I do for one of the marble children playing at the foot of one of the statues of the river gods in the Tuileries. If I don’t come home to dinner, he dines very comfortably with the maid, for the maid is devoted to Monsieur. And every evening, after dinner, he goes out and doesn’t come home till twelve or one. Unfortunately, for the last year I have had no personal maid, which means that for a year I have been a widow. … I have had only one real love, one happiness…. He was a rich Brazilian, who went away a year ago, my only lapse! He went to sell his property, to realize all his assets so that he could settle in France. What will he find left of his Valérie? Filthy scum! Bah! That will be his fault, not mine. Why is he so long in coming back? Perhaps he has been shipwrecked too, like my virtue.’
‘Goodbye, my dear,’ Lisbeth said abruptly. ‘We shall never separate. I love and esteem you, and I am at your disposal. My cousin has been badgering me to go and live in the house you’re going to have in the Rue Vaneau. I didn’t want to go, for I easily guessed the reason for this new act of kindness.’
‘Oh, yes, you would have kept an eye on me. I’m well aware of that,’ said Madame Marneffe.
‘It’s certainly the reason for his generosity,’ replied Lisbeth. ‘In Paris, half the good turns are speculations, just as half the manifestations of ingratitude are acts of vengeance! … Poor relations are treated like rats who are given a scrap of bacon. I shall take up the Baron’s offer, for this house has become hateful to me. Anyway, we’re both smart enough to know how to keep quiet about things that would harm us, and to say what has to be said. So be discreet, and a friendship …’
‘Through thick and thin!’ cried Madame Marneffe joyfully, delighted to have a guarantor of respectability, a confidant, a kind of honest aunt. ‘Do you know? The Baron is doing things handsomely at the Rue Vaneau.’
‘I well believe it,’ replied Lisbeth. ‘He’s spent up to thirty thousand francs; I can’t think where he got them from, for Josépha, the singer, had bled him white. Oh, you’ve landed on your feet,’ she added. ‘The Baron would steal for the woman who holds his heart between two smooth, little white hands like yours.’
‘Well, my dear,’ Madame Marneffe went on with a courtesan’s confident generosity, which is really a lack of concern, ‘just take anything you like from here, anything you like for your new home … the chest, the wardrobe with the mirror, the carpet, the curtains.’
Lisbeth’s eyes dilated with inordinate delight. She hardly dared believe in the reality of such a gift.
‘You do more for me in one moment than my rich relations have done in thirty years,’ she exclaimed. ‘They never asked themselves whether I had any furniture! Some weeks ago, on his first visit, the Baron pulled a rich man’s face at the sight of my poverty. Well, thank you, my dear. I’ll repay you for this. You’ll see later how.’
Valérie saw her Cousin Bette out on to the landing, where the two women kissed.
‘How she reeks of penny-pinching industry,’ the pretty woman said to herself. ‘I shan’t kiss her often, that cousin of mine. Yet I must be careful; I must humour her. She’ll be very useful to me; she’ll help me make my fortune.’
Like a true Parisian créole, Madame Marneffe hated having to exert herself. She had the indifference of a cat which runs and pounces only when forced to by necessity. In her eyes, life should be all pleasure and pleasure should be easily obtainable. She loved flowers, provided someone sent them to her. She could not conceive of going to the theatre without a good box at her disposal and a carriage to take her there.
These courtesan’s tastes Valérie learned from her mother who had been loaded with presents by General Montcornet during his visits to Paris and who, for twenty years, had seen the world at her feet. An extravagant spendthrift, she had squandered her wealth and consumed it all in that life of luxury whose recipe has been lost since the fall of Napoleon.
The notables of the Empire, in their follies, were as bad as the great noblemen of former times. Under the Restoration, the aristocracy never forgot that they had been defeated and robbed, and so, with a few exceptions, they became economical, prudent, and careful, in a word, middle-class and devoid of grandeur. Since then, 1830* has completed the work of 1793.* In France, from now on, there will be great names but no more great families, unless there are political changes which are difficult to foresee. Everything bears the stamp of the individual. The fortune of the most prudent lasts only for a lifetime. The family has been destroyed.
The powerful grip of poverty which was oppressing Valérie’s heart on the day when, as Marneffe put it, she had done Hulot, had made that young woman decide to use her beauty as a means of fortune. So, for some days, she had, like her mother, felt the need of a devoted friend, to whom she could confide what must be hidden from a maid and who could take action, come and go, and think on her behalf, in short a tool, ready to accept an unequal share in life.
Just as much as Lisbeth, she had understood the Báron’s purpose in wanting her to become friendly with Cousin Bette. With the formidable insight of the Parisian créole who spends her time lying on a sofa, turning the lantern of her observation on all the dark corners of human hearts, feelings, and intrigues, she had hit on the idea of turning the spy into an accomplice.
Her terrible indiscretion was probably premeditated. She had recognized the true character of the fiery spinster, deprived of an outlet for her passionate nature, and she wanted to make an ally of her. This conversation was, then, like the stone a traveller throws into a gully in order to ascertain its depths. And Madame Marneffe had been appalled to find both an Iago and a Richard III* in an old maid who was apparently so weak, so humble, and so inoffensive.