The police commissioner, standing firmly in shoes tied with bedraggled laces, was topped by a yellow cranium with scanty hair; he looked a crafty, ribald, facetious fellow, for whom Parisian life held no secrets. His eyes pierced the glass of his spectacles with a shrewd, cynical look.
The justice of the peace, a retired solicitor, an old admirer of the fair sex, envied the man who was being subjected to the law.
‘Please excuse the severity of our duty, Monsieur le Baron,’ said the commissioner. ‘We have been required to act by a complainant. Monsieur le Juge de Paix is present to authorize entry into a private house. I know who you are and who the lady delinquent is.’
Valérie opened her eyes in amazement, uttered the piercing shriek which actresses have invented to represent the onset of madness on the stage, and writhed in hysterics on the bed like a woman possessed of the devil in the Middle Ages, in her sulphur shift, on a bed of faggots.
‘Death! … My dear Hector, but the police court? Oh, never!’
She leaped up, swept like a white cloud between the three spectators, and crouched under the writing-desk, hiding her face in her hands.
‘Lost! Dead!’ she screamed.
‘Monsieur, if Madame Marneffe goes mad, you would be worse than a libertine, you would be a murderer,’ Marneffe said to Hulot.
What can a man do or say when he is taken by surprise in a bed that is not his, that he has not even hired, with a woman who is not his either? He can behave in this way.
‘Monsieur le Juge de Paix, Monsieur le Commissaire,’ said the Baron with dignity. ‘Be so good as to look after this unfortunate lady whose reason seems to me to be in danger … and you can make your report afterwards. The doors are no doubt locked and you needn’t be afraid that either she or I will escape, given the state we’re in …’
The two officials acceded to the request of the Councillor of State.
‘Come and have a word with me, miserable wretch,’ said Hulot aside to Marneffe, taking him by the arm and pulling him over to him. ‘It’s not I who would be the murderer, but you! You want to be an office-manager and an Officer of the Legion of Honour?’
‘More than anything, Monsieur le Directeur,’ replied Marneffe with a slight bow.
‘You’ll be all that. Reassure your wife and send these gentlemen away.’
‘Certainly not,’ Marneffe replied shrewdly. ‘These gentlemen must draw up their official report that you were caught in the act, for without such a document, the basis of my action against you, where should I be? The top of the Civil Service is riddled with swindlers. You’ve stolen my wife but you haven’t made me an office-manager. Monsieur le Baron, I give you just two days to do the necessary. I have letters …’
‘Letters!’ cried the Baron, interrupting Marneffe.
‘Yes, letters which prove that the child my wife is carrying at this moment is yours. Do you understand? You ought to provide for my son an income equal to the amount this bastard takes from him. But I’ll be modest in my claims; it’s not my business, I’m not crazy about paternity. A hundred louis a year will do. Tomorrow morning I’ll be Monsieur Coquet’s successor and put on the list of people who are to be promoted Officers of the Legion of Honour at the July celebrations,* or … the official report will be lodged with my charge, in court. I’m behaving generously, don’t you think?’
‘My goodness, what a pretty woman! What a loss to the world if she goes mad!’ said the Justice of the Peace to the police officer.
‘She’s not mad,’ replied the police officer pointedly.
The police are always the embodiment of scepticism.
‘Monsieur le Baron Hulot has walked into a trap,’ added the police officer, loudly enough for Valérie to hear him.
Valérie gave the officer a look which would have killed him if looks could give vent to the rage they express. The officer smiled. He too had set his trap and the woman had fallen into it.
Marneffe requested his wife to go back to the bedroom and get dressed decently, for he had come to an agreement on all points with the Baron, who put on a dressing-gown and returned to the other room.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said to the two officials. ‘I don’t need to ask you to keep this matter secret.’
The two representatives of the law bowed. The police officer tapped twice on the door. His secretary came in, sat down at the little writing-desk, and began to write as the officer dictated to him in a low voice.
Valérie continued to weep bitterly. When she had finished dressing, Hulot went into the bedroom and got dressed. Meanwhile the official report was drawn up.
Marneffe then proceeded to take his wife away, but Hulot, thinking he was seeing her for the last time, implored with a gesture the favour of speaking to her.
‘Monsieur, Madame is costing me dear enough for you to allow me to say goodbye to her—in the presence of you all, of course.’
Valérie came up to him and Hulot whispered to her:
‘The only thing left to us now is flight. But how can we correspond? We’ve been betrayed.’
‘By Reine,’ she replied. ‘But, my dear, after this scandal, we ought not to see each other again. I’m dishonoured. Besides, people will say awful things about me and you’ll believe them.’
The Baron made a gesture of denial.
‘He won’t die an assistant-manager’ Marneffe muttered to the Councillor of State, as he came back to fetch his wife, to whom he said roughly:
‘That’s enough, Madame. I may be weak towards you but I don’t want others to think I’m a fool.’
Valérie left Crevel’s little house with such a mischievous parting look at the Baron that he believed she adored him. The Justice of the Peace gallantly gave his hand to Madame Marneffe as he escorted her to the carriage.