Valérie had taken over Baron Hulot in quite a remarkable way. She had induced him to grow old by one of those subtle forms of flattery which can usefully serve to illustrate the diabolical cleverness of this kind of woman.
Even in the strongest constitutions, there comes a moment when, as in a besieged fortress which has put up a brave showing for a long time, the true situation becomes apparent. Foreseeing the approaching disintegration of the old Empire beau, Valérie thought it advisable to hasten the process.
‘Why do you bother, my old veteran?’ she said, six months after their clandestine and doubly adulterous union. ‘Do you have pretensions to further conquests? Do you want to be unfaithful to me? I’d find you much more attractive if you’d stop using make-up. For my sake, sacrifice your artificial charms. Do you think it’s two sous’ worth of polish on your boots, your rubber belt, your tight waistcoat, and your false hair-piece that I love in you? Besides, the older you look, the less I’ll be afraid of seeing my Hulot carried off by a rival.’
So, believing in Madame Marneffe’s divine friendship as much as in her love, and expecting to end his days with her, the Councillor of State had followed this confidential advice and no longer dyed his whiskers and hair.
After receiving Valérie’s touching declaration, the tall, handsome Hector appeared one fine morning completely white-haired. Madame Marneffe easily convinced her dear Hector that she had seen the white line formed by the growth of the hair a hundred times.
‘White hair suits your face admirably,’ she said when she saw him. ‘It has a softening effect. You look infinitely nicer; you look charming.’
Once started on this course, the Baron in the end left off his leather waistcoat and his corset; he discarded all his harness. His stomach sagged, his obesity became obvious. The oak tree became a tower, and the heaviness of his movements was all the more alarming in that the Baron was ageing enormously in the role of Louis XII.*
His eyebrows were still black and were a vague reminder of the handsome Hulot, just as in some segments of feudal walls a faint detail of sculpture remains to give a glimpse of what the castle was like in its heyday. This discrepancy made the expression of his eyes, still lively and youthful, all the more strange in his tanned face, for there, where Rubens-like flesh tones had bloomed for so long, livid patches and long, deep wrinkles revealed the struggles of a passion in rebellion against nature. Hulot, at this time, was one of those fine human ruins whose virility is proclaimed by bushy tufts of hair in the ears and nose and on the fingers, giving an effect like that of moss growing on the almost everlasting monuments of the Roman Empire.
How had Valérie managed to keep Crevel and Hulot side by side in her home, when the vindictive Major wanted to triumph openly over Hulot?
Without giving an immediate reply to that question, which will be answered in the course of the drama, we may note that Lisbeth and Valérie between them had invented a complicated device whose powerful mechanism helped to achieve this end.
Marneffe, seeing his wife’s beauty enhanced by the milieu where she reigned supreme like the sun of a solar system, seemed, in the eyes of the world, to have felt a renewal of his passion for her; he had become crazy about her. If his jealousy made the worthy Marneffe a kill-joy, it gave an exceptional value to Valérie’s favours. Nevertheless Marneffe showed a trust in his director which degenerated into an almost ridiculous affability. The only person whose presence he resented was precisely Crevel.
Marneffe, destroyed by the debaucheries peculiar to great capital cities, described by the Roman poets but for which our modern sense of decency has no name, had become as hideous as a wax anatomical model. But this walking specimen of disease, dressed in fine cloth, was supported on spindle-shanks clad in elegant trousers. His shrivelled chest was clothed in perfumed white linen, and musk smothered the fetid odours of human decay.
This hideous personification of vice in its death throes, yet wearing red-heeled shoes (for Valérie dressed Marneffe in conformity with his status, his decoration, and his post), terrified Crevel, who found it difficult to meet the assistant-manager’s pale eyes. Marneffe was the Mayor’s nightmare.
When he realized the extraordinary power which Lisbeth and his wife had conferred upon him, the evil rascal used it for his own enjoyment; he played on it as on a musical instrument. And as drawing-room gambling was the last resource of a mind as worn out as his body, he fleeced Crevel, who felt obliged to go easy with the respectable official whom he was deceiving.
Seeing Crevel tremble like a child in the presence of this hideous, vile mummy, whose corruption was a closed book to the Mayor, seeing him above all so profoundly despised by Valérie, who laughed at Crevel as if he were a clown, the Baron felt he had reason to believe himself so safe from all rivalry that he frequently invited Crevel to dinner.
Valérie, protected by these two passions standing sentinel on either side of her, and by a jealous husband, attracted all eyes, excited everyone’s desire in the circle where she shone.
So, while keeping up appearances, in about three years she had succeeded in realizing the very difficult conditions of the success that courtesans strive for but so rarely achieve, with the aid of scandal, of their flaunting behaviour, and of the brilliance of their lives in the glare of publicity. Like a well-cut diamond charmingly set by Chanor, Valérie’s beauty, formerly buried in the mine of the Rue du Doyenné, was worth more than its real value; it aroused some men’s unhappy love. Claude Vignon was secretly in love with Valérie.
This retrospective explanation, very necessary when we meet people again after an interval of three years, is, as it were, Valérie’s balance-sheet. Here now is that of her partner Lisbeth.