Crevel was so impressed by the enormity of the amount that his keen emotion on seeing this beautiful woman in tears at his feet subsided.
But however angelic and saintly a woman may be, when she is weeping bitterly her beauty disappears. As we have seen, the Madame Marneffes of this world grizzle a little sometimes, let a tear trickle down their cheeks; but burst into tears, make their eyes and noses red … they never make that mistake.
‘Come now, my child, calm yourself, for heaven’s sake,’ continued Crevel, taking the beautiful Madame Hulot’s hands in his own and patting them. ‘Why are you asking me for two hundred thousand francs? What do you want to do with them? Whom are they for?’
‘Don’t require me to give any explanation, give them to me!…. You will have saved three people’s lives and your children’s honour.’
‘And do you think, little mother,’ said Crevel, ‘that you will find in Paris a man who, on the word of a half-crazy woman, will go, hic et nunc, and take out of a drawer or from anywhere two hundred thousand francs which are quietly simmering away there, waiting till she condescends to skim them off? Is that all you know of life and business matters, my lovely one? Your people are very sick; send them the sacraments, for no one in Paris, except her Divine Highness Madame la Banque, the celebrated Nucingen, or some insane miser, as much in love with gold as we other men are with women, can perform a miracle like that. The Civil List, however civil it may be, the Civil List itself would ask you to call back tomorrow. Everyone invests his money and speculates to his best advantage. You are much mistaken, my dear, if you think it’s King Louis-Philippe who reigns, but he’s not mistaken about that. He knows, as we all do, that above the Charter* there is the holy, venerated, tangible, charming, gracious, beautiful, noble, young, all-powerful hundred-sou piece. Now, my lovely one, money demands interest and it’s always busy gathering it. ‘God of the Jews, you prevail!’* as the great Racine said. In short, it’s the eternal allegory of the Golden Calf.* In Moses’ day, there was stockjobbing in the desert. We have returned to biblical times. The Golden Calf was the first register of public loans,’ he went on. ‘You live too much in the Rue Plumet, my dear Adeline. The Egyptians owed enormous amounts borrowed from the Hebrews and they didn’t pursue God’s people, but financial capital.’
He looked at the Baroness with an expression which seemed to say, ‘See how witty I am!’
‘You don’t know how much every citizen loves his filthy lucre,’ he continued after a pause. ‘Now just listen to me carefully; try to understand my line of argument. You want two hundred thousand francs. Nobody can come up with that amount without realizing investments. Do a few sums. To raise two hundred thousand francs in cash, you’d have to sell investments bringing in about seven thousand francs a year at 3 per cent. Well, you wouldn’t get your money in less than two days. That’s the quickest way. To induce someone to part with a fortune (for that’s a fortune to many people—two hundred thousand francs!), you’d also have to tell him what it’s all in aid of, what you want it for …’
‘My dear, kind Crevel, it’s a question of two men’s lives; one will die of grief and the other will kill himself. And it concerns me too, for I shall go mad. Am I not a little mad already?’
‘Not as mad as all that,’ he said, grasping Madame Hulot’s knees. ‘Père Crevel has his price, since you deigned to think of him, my angel.’
‘It seems that I have to let him grasp my knees,’ thought the noble, saintly woman, hiding her face in her hands. ‘You offered me a fortune once,’ she said, blushing.
‘Oh, little mother, that was three years ago,’ replied Crevel. ‘Oh, you’re more beautiful now than I’ve ever seen you,’ he cried, taking hold of the Baroness’s arm and pressing it to his heart. ‘By heaven, you’ve a good memory, my dear girl! Well, now you see how wrong you were to be so strait-laced; for the three hundred thousand francs that you high-mindedly refused are in another woman’s purse. I loved you then and I love you still, but let’s cast our minds back to three years ago. When I said to you, ‘You shall be mine!’, what was my motive? I wanted to take my revenge on that scoundrel Hulot. Well, your husband, my beauty, took as his mistress a gem of a woman, a pearl, an artful little hussy, then aged 23, for she’s 26 now. I thought it would be more amusing, more perfect, more Louis XV, more Maréchal de Richelieu,* more satisfying, to pinch that charming creature from him; in any case she never loved Hulot and for the last three years she has been crazy about your humble servant.’
As he said these words Crevel, from whose hands the Baroness had withdrawn her own, struck his attitude again. He stuck his thumbs in his armholes and flapped his hands against his chest like a pair of wings, thinking that made him desirable and charming. It was as if he were saying, ‘This is the man you showed the door to!’
‘So there we are, my dear girl, I’ve had my revenge and your husband knew it. I’ve proved to him convincingly that he was fooled, given tit for tat as we say. Madame Marneffe is my mistress, and if Master Marneffe dies she will be my wife.’
Madame Hulot looked at Crevel with a fixed, distraught gaze.
‘Hector knew that!’ she said.
‘And he went back to her!’ replied Crevel. ‘And I put up with it because Valérie wanted to be the wife of an office-manager. But she swore to me that she’d arrange things so that our Baron would be so thoroughly licked that he’d never turn up again. And my little duchess (for she was born a duchess, that woman, on my word of honour) has kept her word. She has returned your Hector to you virtuous in perpetuity, as she so wittily puts it. The lesson was a good one, that’s a fact. The Baron has had some hard knocks. He won’t keep any more dancers or respectable women either. He’s thoroughly cured, rinsed out like a beer glass. If you’d listened to Crevel instead of humiliating him and throwing him out, you’d have had four hundred thousand francs, for my revenge cost me fully that amount. But I hope I’ll get my cash back when Marneffe dies. I’ve invested in my future wife. That’s the secret of my extravagance. I’ve solved the problem of behaving like a highborn aristocrat on the cheap.’
‘You’d give your daughter a stepmother like that!’ cried Madame Hulot.