Stidmann, Claude Vignon, and Count Steinbock arrived almost all at the same time, about six o’clock.
Any ordinary or, if you like, unsophisticated woman would have hurried to greet the man whose presence she had so ardently desired, when his name was announced. But Valérie, who had been waiting in her room since five o’clock, left the three guests alone together, certain that she would be the subject of their conversation or of their secret thoughts.
She herself, in supervising the arrangement of her drawing-room, had prominently displayed those delightful trinkets that Paris produces and that no other city could, keepsakes bound in enamel and set with pearls, bowls full of charming rings, masterpieces of Sèvres or Dresden china mounted with exquisite taste by Florent and Chanor, and statuettes and albums as well, all those wildly expensive baubles which are ordered from the makers by passion in its first frenzy or in its last reconciliation.
Success, moreover, had gone to Valérie’s head. She had promised Crevel to be his wife if Marneffe died.
The love-stricken Crevel had accordingly transferred to the name of Valérie Fortin ten thousand francs a year, the total profit earned from his railway investments over the last three years, all the earnings from the capital of a hundred thousand crowns that he had offered to Baroness Hulot. So Valérie had an income of thirty-two thousand francs a year.
Crevel had just let himself in for another promise worth even more than the gift of his profits. In the paroxysm of passion in which his duchess had engulfed him from two o’clock to four (he gave Madame de Marneffe this title so as to complete his illusions), for Valérie had excelled herself at the Rue du Dauphin, he thought he ought to encourage the promised fidelity by holding out the prospect of a pretty little house, which a rash speculator had built for himself in the Rue Barbette and which was now going to be sold. Valérie envisaged herself in this charming house, with its courtyard and garden, and her own carriage.
‘What virtuous life can produce all this in so short a time and so easily?’ she had asked Lisbeth as she finished dressing.
Lisbeth was dining that day with Valérie so that she could say to Steinbock the things that no one can say about herself.
Madame Marneffe, radiant with happiness, entered the room with graceful modesty; she was followed by Bette, who, dressed all in black and yellow, served as a foil, to use the language of the studio.
‘Good evening, Claude,’ she said, giving her hand to the celebrated former critic.
Like so many others, Claude Vignon had become a politician, a new word used for an ambitious man on the first stage of his career path. The politician of 1840 fills, in a way, the role of the abbé of the eighteenth century. No salon would be complete without its politician.
‘My dear, this is my young cousin, the Comte de Steinbock,’ said Lisbeth, introducing Wenceslas, whom Valérie appeared not to notice.
‘Oh yes, I recognized Monsieur le Comte,’ replied Valérie, with a gracious inclination of the head to the artist. ‘I often used to see you at the Rue du Doyenné. I had the pleasure of being at your wedding. My dear,’ she said, turning to Lisbeth, ‘it would be difficult to forget your ex-child, even if one had seen him only once. Monsieur Stidmann is very kind,’ she continued, greeting the sculptor, ‘to have accepted my invitation at such short notice. But necessity knows no law. I knew you were a friend of these two gentlemen. Nothing is more lifeless or dreary than a dinner-party where the guests don’t know each other, so I drafted you for their sakes. But you’ll come another time for mine, won’t you? Do say yes.’
Then she walked to and fro for a few minutes with Stidmann, appearing to be entirely engrossed with him.
One after the other, Crevel, Baron Hulot, and a deputy called Beauvisage were announced.
A provincial Crevel, Beauvisage was one of those people sent into the world to swell the crowd, and he voted under the banner of Giraud, the Councillor of State, and of Victorin Hulot. These two politicians were trying to form a kernel of progressives in the solid block of the Conservative party. Giraud used to come sometimes in the evening to visit Madame Marneffe, and she nurtured hopes of having Victorin Hulot as well. But so far the puritanical lawyer had found pretexts for resisting his father and father-in-law. To frequent the house of the woman who was the cause of his mother’s tears seemed to him a crime. Victorin Hulot was to the puritans in politics what a truly pious woman is to the ostensibly devout.
Beauvisage, a former hosier from Arcis, wanted to adopt the Parisian style. On the fringe of the Chamber, he was learning the ropes in the drawing-room of the delightful, charming Madame Marneffe, where, greatly admiring Crevel, he had, at Valérie’s instigation, accepted him as model and master. He consulted him about everything; he asked him for his tailor’s address; he imitated him; he tried to adopt a pose like him. In short, Crevel was his great man.
Valérie, surrounded by these three public figures and by the three artists, well supported by Lisbeth, seemed to Wenceslas all the more an exceptional woman in that Claude Vignon sang Madame Marneffe’s praises with the enthusiasm of a man in love.
‘She’s Madame de Maintenon* dressed up as Ninon,’* said the former critic. ‘You need only to be witty for an evening for her to like you, but to be loved by her is a triumph which can satisfy a man’s pride and fill his life.’
By her apparent coldness and indifference to her former neighbour, Valérie wounded his vanity, but without realizing it, for she did not know the Polish temperament.