Lisbeth, already quite wretched at the good fortune that was shining on the family, could not withstand this happy event. She became so much worse that Bianchon gave her no more than a week to live; she was conquered at the end of that long struggle that was marked for her by so many victories. All through the terrible death throes of pulmonary tuberculosis, she kept the secret of her hatred. What is more, she had the supreme satisfaction of seeing Adeline, Hortense, Hulot, Victorin, Steinbock, Célestine, and their children all in tears, around her bed, mourning her as the good angel of the family.
Baron Hulot, on a nourishing diet that he had not known for nearly three years, regained his strength and was almost himself again. His recovery made Adeline so happy that her nervous trembling abated considerably.
‘She’ll be happy in the end,’ Lisbeth said to herself, the day before she died, as she saw the kind of veneration with which the Baron treated his wife, whose sufferings had been described to him by Hortense and Victorin.
This thought hastened the end of Cousin Bette, whose funeral was attended by a whole family in tears.
Baron and Baroness Hulot, realizing they had reached the age when complete rest is desirable, gave Count and Countess Steinbock the magnificent first-floor flat and went to live on the second floor.
Through his son’s efforts, at the beginning of 1845, the Baron obtained a post in a railway company, with a salary of six thousand francs; that, together with his six thousand francs’ retirement pension and the money left to him by Madame Crevel, gave him an income of twenty-four thousand francs a year.
As Hortense’s financial affairs had been separated from her husband’s during the three years of their estrangement, Victorin no longer hesitated to invest in his sister’s name the two hundred thousand francs left in trust, and he gave Hortense an allowance of twelve thousand francs. Wenceslas, now the husband of a rich woman, was in no way unfaithful to her. But he idled his time away, unable to make up his mind to start any piece of work, however small. Once more an artist in partibus,* he was a great drawing-room success; he was consulted by many art-lovers. In short, he became a critic, like all ineffectual men who do not fulfil their early promise.
Each household, then, enjoyed its own income, although they all lived together as one family.
Having learned from her many misfortunes, the Baroness left the management of financial affairs to her son and so limited the Baron to his salary and pension. She hoped that the smallness of his income would prevent him from relapsing into his old bad ways. But, by a strange good fortune that neither mother nor son expected, the Baron seemed to have given up the fair sex. His calm way of life, ascribed to natural causes, at last so reassured his family that they enjoyed to the full Baron d’Ervy’s restored amiability and charming qualities. He was invariably attentive to his wife and children; he went with them to the theatre and into society, where he reappeared, and he did the honours of his son’s drawing-room with infinite charm. In short, the reformed prodigal father gave his family the liveliest satisfaction. He was a pleasant old man, completely finished, no doubt, but witty and retaining only those elements of his old vice that could be turned into a social virtue. Naturally, everyone at last felt completely reassured. His wife and children praised the father of the family to the skies, forgetting the deaths of the two uncles! Life cannot go on without a great deal of forgetting.