‘You can’t live without women. That makes up for everything. At the foot of la Courtille, Rue Saint-Maur-du-Temple, I know a poor family which has a treasure: a little girl, even prettier than I was at 16. Oh, there’s a glint in your eye already! She works sixteen hours a day embroidering luxury materials for silk-merchants, and she earns sixteen sous a day, one sou an hour, a pittance. And, like the Irish, she lives on potatoes, but fried in rat fat, with bread five times a week. She drinks Ourcq water* out of the town pipes, because Seine water is too dear. And she can’t set up her own business, because she hasn’t got six or seven thousand francs. She would commit a hundred horrors to get seven or eight thousand francs. Your wife and family bore you, don’t they? Besides, one can’t put up with being a nobody where one used to be worshipped like a god. A penniless, dishonourd father can only be stuffed and put in a glass case.’
The Baron could not help smiling at this outrageous flippancy.
‘Well, little Bijou is coming tomorrow to bring me an embroidered housecoat, a beauty. They’ve spent six months working at it; no one else will have material like that. Bijou is fond of me because I give her nice titbits and my old dresses. Then I send the family vouchers for bread, wood, and meat, and they would break anyone’s shins for me if I wanted them to. I try to do a little good. Oh, I know what I suffered when I was hungry! Bijou has poured out her little secrets into my heart. There’s the makings of a dancer at the Ambigu-Comique* in that little girl. Bijou dreams of wearing beautiful dresses like mine and, above all, of riding in a carriage. I’ll say to her, “Little one, would you like a gentleman of …” But how old are you? ‘ she asked, interrupting herself. ‘Seventy-two?’
‘I’m ageless now!’
‘“Would you like a gentleman of 72?”, I’ll say to her, “very well turned out, who doesn’t take snuff, sound as a bell, who’s as good as a young man? You’ll get married to him in the thirteenth district* and he’ll be very nice to you. He’ll give you seven thousand francs to set up your own business. He’ll furnish a flat for you all in mahogany, and then if you’re good he’ll take you to the theatre sometimes. He’ll give you a hundred francs a month for yourself and fifty francs for household expenses.” I know Bijou; she’s just as I was at 14. I jumped for joy when that ghastly Crevel made me those same appalling propositions. Well, old man, you’ll be stowed away there for three years. She’s well-behaved and honest, and she’ll retain her illusions for three or four years, not more.’
Hulot did not hesitate. He had made up his mind to refuse. But to show his gratitude to the kind-hearted, good-natured singer, who was doing good according to her lights, he appeared to hesitate between vice and virtue.
‘Goodness me! You’re as cold as the pavement in December,’ she went on, in surprise. ‘Come now, you’ll be giving happiness to a whole family, made up of a tottering grandfather, a mother who’s wearing herself out with work, and two sisters, one very ugly, who between them earn thirty-two sous and ruin their eyesight in the process. That makes up for the distress you’ve caused in your own home. You can redeem your sins and have a good time like a lorette at Mabille.’*
To put an end to this temptation, Hulot went through the motions of counting out money.
‘Don’t worry about ways and means,’ resumed Josépha. ‘My Duke will lend you ten thousand francs: six thousand for an embroidery business in Bijou’s name, three thousand for furniture. And every three months you’ll find a note of hand for six hundred and fifty francs. When you get your pension back, you’ll give the Duke back that seventeen thousand francs. Meanwhile you’ll be as happy as a sand-boy, and buried in a hole where the police can’t find you. You’ll wear a big beaver coat and you’ll look like a well-off householder of the district. Call yourself Thoul if you fancy. I’ll tell Bijou you’re a bankrupt uncle of mine from Germany and you’ll be cosseted like a god. How about it, Papa? Who knows? Perhaps you’ll regret nothing. If by chance you’re bored, keep some of your smart togs and you could come here, invite yourself to dinner, and spend the evening.’
‘But I wanted to become a virtuous and orderly character! Look, get me a loan of twenty thousand francs, and I’ll off to America to make my fortune, like my friend d’Aiglemont* when Nucingen ruined him.’
‘You!’ cried Josépha. ‘Leave morals to grocers, to ordinary clodhoppers, to French citizens who have nothing but their virtue to distinguish them. You were born to be something better than a mug. You are as a man what I am as a woman, a rogue of genius.’
‘I’ll sleep on it. We’ll talk of all this tomorrow.’
‘You’ll have dinner with the Duke. My d’Hérouville will receive you as courteously as if you had saved the State, and you can make up your mind tomorrow. Come on, cheer up, old man. Life’s like a suit of clothes, when it’s dirty, we brush it; when it’s torn, we mend it. But we stay clothed as best we can.’
This philosophy of vice and her good spirits dissipated Hulot’s burning sorrows.
At noon the next day, after a delicious lunch, there appeared before Hulot’s eyes one of those living masterpieces that only Paris in the whole world can produce; for only there is the continual concubinage of luxury and poverty, of vice and virtue, of repressed desire and recurrent temptation, which makes the town the successor to Nineveh, Babylon, and Imperial Rome.
Mademoiselle Olympe Bijou, a young girl of 16 had the sublime face that Raphael painted for his Virgins. Her innocent eyes were saddened by excessive work, dark, dreamy eyes with long lashes, their natural moisture dried up by wearing, nightly toil, eyes dulled by fatigue. But she had a complexion like fine porcelain, of an almost unhealthy pallor, and her mouth was like a half-open pomegranate. She had a heaving bosom, a rounded figure, pretty hands, remarkably white teeth, and luxuriant black hair. All this beauty was done up in cotton at seventy-five francs a meter, trimmed with an embroidered collar, mounted on leather shoes without nails, and ornamented with gloves at twenty-nine sous.
The child, unconscious of her worth, had put on her best clothes to come to the fine lady’s house. The Baron, gripped once more by the claws of sensuality, felt all his life flowing out through his eyes. He forgot everything at the sight of this sublime creature.
He was like the hunter who espies game; even in an emperor’s presence, he takes aim at it.
‘And she’s guaranteed brand-new, virtuous with nothing to eat. That’s Paris. That’s what I was like,’ Josépha whispered to him.
‘Agreed,’ replied the old man, getting up and rubbing his hands.
When Olympe Bijou had gone, Josépha looked at the Baron mischievously.
‘If you don’t want trouble, Papa, be as strict as a judge on the bench. Keep a tight rein on the child; be a Bartholo.* Beware of the Augustes, the Hippolytes, the Nestors, the Victors,* of all the ors.* Damn it all! Once she’s properly clothed and fed, if she raises her head, you’ll be led by the nose like a Russian. I’ll see about getting rooms ready for you. The Duke does things handsomely. He’ll lend you, that is to say give you, ten thousand francs. He’ll deposit eight thousand with his lawyer, who’ll be instructed to pay you six hundred francs every quarter, for I fear you’ll squander it. Aren’t I nice!’
‘Adorable!’
Ten days after Hector had deserted his family they were gathered all in tears round Adeline, who was lying in bed at death’s door, and was saying in a faint voice, ‘What is he doing?’
Under the name of Thoul, he was by then living with Olympe as head of an embroidery business with the unusual name of Thoul and Bijou.