In Paris, when a woman has decided to make a profession of selling her beauty, it does not mean that she will make a fortune. One can meet lovely, quick-witted creatures there, who eke out a squalid existence and end in misery a life begun in pleasure. The reason is this. It is not enough to decide to adopt the shameful career of the courtesan, intending to pocket all the benefits while retaining the external appearance of a respectable middle-class wife.
Vice does not achieve its triumphs easily. It is like Genius in this respect, that they both require a conjunction of favourable circumstances to bring about the combined effect of fortune and talent. Without the extraordinary phases of the Revolution there would have been no Emperor; he would have been no more than a second Fabert.*
Venal beauty without admirers, without fame, without the cross of dishonour which is earned by the fortunes squandered on it, is a Correggio* in a garret; it is genius dying in an attic.
So a Laïs* in Paris must first of all find a rich man who conceives such a passion for her that he will pay her price. Above all, she must maintain a high standard of elegance which is her trade-mark, she must have such good breeding that it flatters a man’s vanity, and she must have a wit as sharp as Sophie Arnould’s,* which arouses the rich from their apathy. Finally she must arouse the desire of libertines by appearing to be faithful to one, whose happiness is then envied by the others.
These conditions, which women of that kind call luck, are quite hard to come by in Paris, although the town is full of millionaires and idlers, of the bored and the capricious. In this way Providence has no doubt protected the homes of clerks and the lower middle-class, whose difficulties are at least doubled by the environment in which they live and work.
Nevertheless, there are still enough Madame Marneffes in Paris for Valérie to represent a type in this history of manners.
Some of these women are motivated by a combination of real passion and financial necessity, like Madame Colleville, who was attached for so long to one of the most famous orators of the left, the banker Keller; others are impelled by vanity, like Madame de la Baudraye,* who in a way remained virtuous, despite eloping with Lousteau; some are led astray by their need for fine clothes, others by the impossibility of providing for a household on an obviously inadequate salary. The niggardliness of the State or, if you like, of the two Houses, is the cause of many misfortunes and the source of a great deal of corruption. At the present time, much pity is expended on the lot of the working-classes; they are represented as being cruelly exploited by the manufacturers. But the State is a hundred times harder than the greediest industrialist. As far as salaries are concerned, it carried economy to the point of absurdity. If you work hard, industry will pay you according to what you do; but what does the State give to so many obscure and devoted workers?
To stray from the path of honour is an unforgivable sin in a married woman, but there are degrees in this kind of behaviour. Some women, far from being depraved, hide their lapses from virtue and remain apparently respectable women, like the two whose activities have just been recalled, while others add to their misdemeanours by shamelessly trading on them. So Madame Marneffe is, in a way, representative of those ambitious married courtesans who, right from the start, accept depravity and all that it implies and have decided to make their fortunes while having a good time, with no scruples about the means. But, like Madame Marneffe, such women nearly always have their husbands as agents and accomplices.
These Machiavellis in petticoats are the most dangerous women, and of all the evil kinds of Parisian female, they are the worst. A true courtesan, like Josépha, Madame Schontz, Malaga, Jenny Cadine, etc., in the openness of her situation carries a warning as clear as the red lamp of a house of prostitution or the bright lights of a gambling den. Then a man knows that is the way to his ruin. But the simpering respectability, the semblance of virtue, the hypocritical behaviour of a married woman who never lets anything be seen but ordinary household needs and appears to deny herself any extravagance, leads a man to unspectacular ruin, all the more strange in that he can excuse it without being able to explain it. It is sordid household expenses, not gay extravagance, that eat up fortunes. The father of a family goes unostentatiously to his ruin and without even satisfied vanity to console him in his poverty.
This tirade will pierce the hearts of many families like an arrow. Madame Marneffes can be seen at all levels of society and even at royal courts; for Valérie is a sad reality, modelled from life down to the smallest detail. Unfortunately her portrait will cure no one of the addiction to loving sweetly smiling angels with dreamy looks, innocent faces, and a strong-box for a heart.