‘Well!’ exclaimed Crevel, turning angry at the sight of Cousin Bette. ‘So it’s you who are arranging Mademoiselle Hulot’s marriage to a young count whom you’ve brought up for her with the greatest care?’
‘Anyone would think you don’t like the idea,’ replied Lisbeth, casting a searching glance at Crevel. ‘What’s your interest, then, in preventing my cousin from getting married? For you were responsible for the failure of her proposed marriage to Monsieur Lebas’ son, so I’m told.’
‘You’re a good sort, and you don’t tell tales,’ continued Père Crevel. ‘Well, do you think I’ll ever forgive Monsieur Hulot for the crime of taking Josépha away from me? Especially as he turned an honest girl, whom I would have ended up by marrying in my old age, into a good-for-nothing, a show-girl, an Opera singer…. No, no, never!’
‘Yet he’s a good fellow, is Monsieur Hulot,’ said Cousin Bette.
‘Likeable, very likeable, too likeable!’ Crevel went on. ‘I don’t wish him any harm; but I want to take my revenge and I’ll take it. I’m determined on it.’
‘Would that be why you don’t come to Madame Hulot’s any more?’
‘Perhaps …’
‘Oh, so you were courting my cousin?’ said Lisbeth with a smile. ‘I suspected as much.’
‘And she treated me like a dog, worse than that, like a lackey. I’ll put it even better, like a political prisoner. But I’ll get there in the end,’ he said, striking his forehead with his clenched fist.
‘Poor man, it would be terrible to find his wife was deceiving him, after he has been cast off by his mistress.’
‘Josépha!’ cried Crevel. ‘You say Josépha has left him, sent him packing, turned him out? Bravo, Josépha! Josépha, you have avenged me! I’ll send you two pearls to wear in your ears, my ex-darling! This is all news to me, for after seeing you the day after the day the beautiful Adeline once again showed me the door, I went to see the Lebas at Corbeil; I’ve just come back from there. Héloïse kicked up a terrific fuss to make me go to the country and I’ve found out why she carried on like that. She wanted to have a house-warming party at the Rue Chauchat without me, with artists, third-rate actors, literary chaps. … I was tricked! I’ll forgive her, for Héloïse amuses me. She’s an unknown Déjazet.* What a comic she is, that girl! Here’s the note I found yesterday evening:
‘Dear old chap, I’ve pitched my tent in the Rue Chauchat. I’ve taken the precaution of having the house warmed up by friends. All goes well. Come when you like, Monsieur. Hagar* awaits her Abraham.’
‘Héloïse will tell me all the news, for she has all the bohemian gossip at her fingertips.’
‘But my cousin has taken this discomfiture very well,’ replied Cousin Bette.
‘That’s not possible,’ said Crevel, stopping his walk to and fro like the pendulum of a clock.
‘Monsieur Hulot is no longer young,’ remarked Lisbeth maliciously.
‘I know that,’ continued Crevel. ‘But we are like each other in one respect; Hulot will not be able to do without an attachment. He is capable of returning to his wife,’ he muttered to himself. ‘That would be a novelty for him, but farewell to my revenge. You’re smiling, Mademoiselle Fischer? Ah, you know something?’
‘I’m laughing at your ideas,’ replied Lisbeth. ‘Yes, my cousin is still beautiful enough to inspire passions. I’d fall in love with her myself, if I were a man.’
‘He who has drunk will drink again!’ exclaimed Crevel. ‘You’re making fun of me. The Baron must have found some consolation.’
Lisbeth gave a nod of assent.
‘Oh, he’s very lucky to replace Josépha overnight,’ continued Crevel. ‘But I’m not surprised, for he told me one evening at supper that in his youth he always had three mistresses so as not to be caught without one: the one he was about to leave, the reigning one, and the one he was courting for the future. He must have kept some little shop-girl in reserve in his fishpond! In his deer-park!* He’s very much in the style of Louis XV, the lusty fellow! Oh, how lucky he is to be a handsome man! Still, he’s getting old, it’s beginning to show. He must have taken up with some little working girl.’
‘Oh, no!’ answered Lisbeth.
‘Ah,’ said Crevel, ‘what wouldn’t I give to stop him hanging his hat up! I couldn’t possibly take Josépha from him. Women of that kind never come back to their first love. Besides, as they say, a return is never the same as love. But, Cousin Bette, I would gladly give, that is to say I would willingly spend, fifty thousand francs to take that tall, handsome fellow’s mistress away from him and show him that a fat old chap with the paunch of a major and the bald pate of a future mayor of Paris doesn’t let his lady friend be filched from him without getting his own back!’
‘In my situation, I have to hear everything and know nothing,’ replied Bette. ‘You needn’t be afraid to talk to me. I never repeat a word of what people choose to confide in me. Why should I break that rule of my behaviour? No one would ever trust me again.’
‘I know,’ Crevel replied. ‘You are the pearl of old maids…. Yet, hang it all, there are exceptions. I wonder, has the family ever made you any allowance?’
‘But I have my pride. I don’t want to be a charge on anyone,’ said Bette.
‘Oh, if you were willing to help me get my revenge, I’d invest ten thousand francs in an annuity for you,’ the retired merchant went on. ‘Tell me, fair cousin, who has taken Josépha’s place, and you’ll have the wherewithal to pay your rent, and your breakfast in the morning with that good coffee you’re so fond of; you’ll be able to buy pure Mocha…. What about it? Oh, how delicious it is, that pure Mocha!’
‘I’m not so keen on the ten thousand franc annuity, which would yield an income of nearly five hundred francs a year, as on observing complete secrecy,’ said Lisbeth. ‘For you see, my good Monsieur Crevel, the Baron’s extremely good to me; he’s going to pay my rent.’
‘Yes, for a long time! Count on that!’ exclaimed Crevel. ‘Where will the Baron get the money from?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. But he’s spending more than thirty thousand francs on the flat he’s intending to give this little lady.’
‘A lady! What, could it be a society woman? The scoundrel, what a fortunate fellow he is! He has all the luck!’
‘A married woman and very respectable,’ continued Cousin Bette.
‘Really!’ cried Crevel, his eyes opening wide as much with desire as with the effect of the magic words: a respectable married woman.
‘Yes,’ said Bette, ‘talented, musical, 23 years old, a pretty, innocent face, a dazzling white skin, teeth like a puppy’s, eyes like stars, a magnificent forehead … and tiny feet. I have never seen any like them; they’re no wider than her corset busks.’
‘And her ears?’ asked Crevel, keenly excited by this lover’s description.
‘Ears fit to be modelled,’ she replied.
‘Little hands?’
‘I tell you, in a word, she’s a jewel of a woman, and so virtuous, so modest, so refined! A lovely nature, an angel, distinguished in every way, for her father was a marshal of France.’
‘A marshal of France!’ exclaimed Crevel, with a violent, excited start. ‘Good God! Heavens above! My goodness! In the name of …! Oh, the rascal! Excuse me, Cousin, I’m going mad! I’d give a hundred thousand francs, I think.’
‘Well, yes, I tell you she’s a respectable woman, a virtuous woman. And the Baron has done things in style.’
‘He hasn’t a penny, I tell you.’
‘There’s a husband whose career he has furthered.’
‘In what way?’ asked Crevel with a bitter laugh.
‘He’s already been appointed assistant-manager, this husband, who’ll no doubt turn a blind eye … and been nominated for the Cross of the Legion of Honour.’
‘The Government ought to take care and respect the people it has decorated by not being lavish with the Cross,’ said Crevel, looking piqued because of his political views. ‘But what has he got so much in his favour, that great hound of an old Baron?’ he continued. ‘It seems to me that I’m as good as he is,’ he added, admiring himself in a glass and taking up his pose. ‘Héloïse has often told me, at a time when women don’t lie, that I’m marvellous.’
‘Oh,’ replied Cousin Bette, ‘women love fat men; they’re nearly all kind. And as between you and the Baron, I would choose you. Monsieur Hulot is clever and handsome, he has style, but you, you are reliable, and then, well … you seem to be even more of a scapegrace than he is!’
‘It’s incredible how all women, even religious ones, love men who have that look about them,’ cried Crevel, coming up to Bette and putting his arm round her waist, he was so delighted.
‘That’s not where the difficulty lies,’ continued Bette. ‘You must appreciate that a woman who’s doing so well for herself won’t be unfaithful to her protector for a mere trifle, and that would cost at least a hundred thousand francs, for the little lady sees her husband head of a department two years from now…. It’s poverty that’s driving the poor little angel into the abyss.’
Crevel walked up and down his drawing-room like a madman.
‘He must be very keen on this woman?’ he asked after a moment’s pause, during which his desire, thus inflamed by Lisbeth, became a kind of frenzy.
‘Judge for yourself,’ replied Lisbeth. ‘I don’t think he’s had that from her yet,’ she said, clicking her thumbnail against one of her huge white teeth, ‘and he’s already spent about ten thousand francs on presents.’
‘Oh, what a joke if I got in before him!’ cried Crevel.
‘My goodness! It’s very wrong of me to tell you all this gossip,’ continued Lisbeth, as if stricken with remorse.
‘No. I want to make your family blush with shame. Tomorrow I shall invest a sum in the 5-per-cents, to provide an annuity for you of six hundred francs a year, but you must tell me everything: the name and the address of this Dulcinea.* I may as well tell you, I’ve never had a real lady, and the greatest of my ambitions has been to have one for a mistress. Mahomet’s houris are nothing in comparison with what I imagine society women to be like. In fact that’s my ideal, my mania, and so much so, you see, that Baroness Hulot will never be 50 years old to me,’ he said, unwittingly repeating the thought of one of the cleverest wits of the last century.* ‘Listen, my good Lisbeth, I have decided to sacrifice a hundred, two hundred … Hush! Here come the young people. I see them crossing the courtyard. I shall deny having learned anything from you, I give you my word of honour; for I don’t want you to lose the Baron’s confidence, quite the contrary. He must be terribly in love with this woman, my old crony!’
‘Oh, he’s crazy about her,’ said Cousin Bette. ‘He couldn’t raise forty thousand francs to settle his daughter but he has dug them up for his passion.’
‘And do you think she loves him?’ asked Crevel.
‘At his age …’ replied the old maid.
‘Oh, what a fool I am!’ exclaimed Crevel. ‘After all, I put up with Héloïse’s artist, just as Henri IV let Gabrielle have Bellegarde.* Oh, old age! old age!—Hello, Célestine, how are you, my pet, and where’s the little fellow? Oh, there he is. Upon my word, he’s beginning to look like me. How are you, Hulot my boy? All right? … We’re going to have another marriage soon in the family.’
Célestine and her husband made a sign, indicating Lisbeth, and the daughter unashamedly asked her father:
‘But whose?’
Crevel put on a knowing look, implying that he was going to cover up his indiscretion.
‘Hortense’s,’ he replied. ‘But it’s not quite settled yet. I’ve just been visiting the Lebas, and they were talking of Mademoiselle Popinot for our young councillor at the Paris royal court. He’s very keen to become president of a provincial court…. Let’s go in to dinner.’