The Baroness put up her daughter in the dining-room, which was quickly transformed into a bedroom thanks to the Marshal’s money; the hall became the dining-room, as it is in many households.
When Wenceslas returned home and had finished reading the two letters, he felt a kind of joy mingled with sadness.
Kept under close watch, as it were, by his wife, he had inwardly rebelled against this new imprisonment of the same kind that Lisbeth had imposed on him. Sated with love for three years, he, too, had been thinking during the last fortnight, and he found the family a heavy burden.
He had just been congratulated by Stidmann on the passion he had aroused in Valérie, for Stidmann, with an ulterior motive easy enough to understand, thought it opportune to flatter the vanity of Hortense’s husband, in the hope of consoling the victim. So Wenceslas was happy to be able to go back to Madame Marneffe’s. But he remembered the complete, unsullied happiness he had enjoyed, Hortense’s perfections, her purity, her innocent, wholehearted love, and he regretted her keenly.
He wanted to rush round to his mother-in-law’s to obtain forgiveness, but he did as Hulot and Crevel had done; he went to see Madame Marneffe. He brought her his wife’s letter, to show her the extent of the disaster she had caused, and to cash in on his misfortune, so to speak, by demanding pleasures from his mistress in compensation.
He found Crevel with Valérie. The Mayor, puffed up with pride, was pacing up and down the drawing-room like a man excited by violent feeling. He kept striking his attitude as if he wanted to speak and did not dare to. His face was beaming, and he kept going to the window and drumming on the panes with his fingers. He gave Valérie touching and tender looks. Fortunately for Crevel, Lisbeth came in.
‘Cousin,’ he whispered, ‘have you heard the news? I’m a father. It seems to me that I love my poor Célestine less. Oh, what it is to have a child by a woman one idolizes! To combine paternity of the heart with paternity of the blood! Oh, but you must tell Valérie. I’ll work for that child; I want him to be rich. She told me that, judging from certain signs, she thought it would be a boy. If it’s a boy, I want him to be called Crevel. I’ll consult my lawyer.’
I know how much she loves you,’ Lisbeth said, ‘but for the sake of your future and hers, control yourself. Don’t keep rubbing your hands all the time.’
While Lisbeth was having this aside with Crevel, Valérie had asked Wenceslas for her letter back, and was whispering words to him which dispelled his sadness.
‘You’re free now, my dear,’ she said. ‘Great artists should never marry. Your imagination and your liberty are the essentials of your life. Never mind, I’ll love you so much that you’ll never regret your wife. But still, if, like many people, you want to keep up appearances, I undertake to make Hortense come back to you in a very short time.’
‘Oh, if that were possible!’
‘I’m sure it is,’ said Valérie, rather piqued. ‘Your poor father-in-law is finished in every way. Out of vanity he wants to appear to be loved, wants people to believe that he has a mistress, and he is so vain on that score that I rule him absolutely. The Baroness still loves her old Hector so much (I always feel as if I were talking about the Iliad) that the two old folks will persuade Hortense to be reconciled to you. Only, if you don’t want to have storms at home, don’t let three weeks go by without coming to see your mistress. I was dying for want of you. My dear, a gentleman owes consideration to a woman he has compromised to the degree that I have been compromised, especially when the woman must take great care of her reputation. Stay to dinner, my darling. And remember that I must behave all the more coldly to you, as you are the author of this all too obvious lapse.’