“And here am I, madame, at your orders,” said the citizen-captain, bowing again to Madame Hulot.
He gave such a look at Madame Hulot as Tartuffe casts at Elmire – when a provincial actor plays the part and thinks it necessary to emphasize its meaning – at Poitiers, or at Coutances.
“If you will come into this room with me, we shall be more conveniently placed for talking business than we are in this room,” said Madame Hulot, going to an adjoining room, which, as the apartment was arranged, served as a cardroom.
It was divided by a slight partition from a boudoir looking out on the garden, and Madame Hulot left her visitor to himself for a minute, for she thought it wise to shut the window and the door of the boudoir, so that no one should get in and listen. She even took the precaution of shutting the glass door of the drawing-room, smiling on her daughter and her cousin, whom she saw seated in an old summer-house at the end of the garden. As she came back she left the cardroom door open, so as to hear if any one should open that of the drawing-room to come in.
As she came and went, the Baroness, seen by nobody, allowed her face to betray all her thoughts, and any one who could have seen her would have been shocked to see her agitation. But when she finally came back from the glass door of the drawing-room, as she entered the cardroom, her face was hidden behind the impenetrable reserve which every woman, even the most candid, seems to have at her command.
During all these preparations – odd, to say the least – the National Guardsman studied the furniture of the room in which he found himself. As he noted the silk curtains, once red, now faded to dull purple by the sunshine, and frayed in the pleats by long wear; the carpet, from which the hues had faded; the discolored gilding of the furniture; and the silk seats, discolored in patches, and wearing into strips – expressions of scorn, satisfaction, and hope dawned in succession without disguise on his stupid tradesman’s face. He looked at himself in the glass over an old clock of the Empire, and was contemplating the general effect, when the rustle of her silk skirt announced the Baroness. He at once struck at attitude.
After dropping on to a sofa, which had been a very handsome one in the year 1809, the Baroness, pointing to an armchair with the arms ending in bronze sphinxes’ heads, while the paint was peeling from the wood, which showed through in many places, signed to Crevel to be seated.
“All the precautions you are taking, madame, would seem full of promise to a – ”
“To a lover,” said she, interrupting him.
“The word is too feeble,” said he, placing his right hand on his heart, and rolling his eyes in a way which almost always makes a woman laugh when she, in cold blood, sees such a look. “A lover! A lover? Say a man bewitched – ”
“Listen, Monsieur Crevel,” said the Baroness, too anxious to be able to laugh, “you are fifty – ten years younger than Monsieur Hulot, I know; but at my age a woman’s follies ought to be justified by beauty, youth, fame, superior merit – some one of the splendid qualities which can dazzle us to the point of making us forget all else – even at our age. Though you may have fifty thousand francs a year, your age counterbalances your fortune; thus you have nothing whatever of what a woman looks for – ”
“But love!” said the officer, rising and coming forward. “Such love as – ”
“No, monsieur, such obstinacy!” said the Baroness, interrupting him to put an end to his absurdity.
“Yes, obstinacy,” said he, “and love; but something stronger still – a claim – ”
“A claim!” cried Madame Hulot, rising sublime with scorn, defiance, and indignation. “But,” she went on, “this will bring us to no issues; I did not ask you to come here to discuss the matter which led to your banishment in spite of the connection between our families – ”
“I had fancied so.”
“What! still?” cried she. “Do you not see, monsieur, by the entire ease and freedom with which I can speak of lovers and love, of everything least creditable to a woman, that I am perfectly secure in my own virtue? I fear nothing – not even to shut myself in alone with you. Is that the conduct of a weak woman? You know full well why I begged you to come.”
“No, madame,” replied Crevel, with an assumption of great coldness. He pursed up his lips, and again struck an attitude.
“Well, I will be brief, to shorten our common discomfort,” said the Baroness, looking at Crevel.
Crevel made an ironical bow, in which a man who knew the race would have recognized the graces of a bagman.
“Our son married your daughter – ”
“And if it were to do again – ” said Crevel.
“It would not be done at all, I suspect,” said the baroness hastily. “However, you have nothing to complain of. My son is not only one of the leading pleaders of Paris, but for the last year he has sat as Deputy, and his maiden speech was brilliant enough to lead us to suppose that ere long he will be in office. Victorin has twice been called upon to report on important measures; and he might even now, if he chose, be made Attorney-General in the Court of Appeal. So, if you mean to say that your son-in-law has no fortune – ”
“Worse than that, madame, a son-in-law whom I am obliged to maintain,” replied Crevel. “Of the five hundred thousand francs that formed my daughter’s marriage portion, two hundred thousand have vanished – God knows how! – in paying the young gentleman’s debts, in furnishing his house splendaciously – a house costing five hundred thousand francs, and bringing in scarcely fifteen thousand, since he occupies the larger part of it, while he owes two hundred and sixty thousand francs of the purchase-money. The rent he gets barely pays the interest on the debt. I have had to give my daughter twenty thousand francs this year to help her to make both ends meet. And then my son-in-law, who was making thirty thousand francs a year at the Assizes, I am told, is going to throw that up for the Chamber – ”
“This, again, Monsieur Crevel, is beside the mark; we are wandering from the point. Still, to dispose of it finally, it may be said that if my son gets into office, if he has you made an officer of the Legion of Honor and councillor of the municipality of Paris, you, as a retired perfumer, will not have much to complain of – ”
“Ah! there we are again, madame! Yes, I am a tradesman, a shopkeeper, a retail dealer in almond-paste, eau-de-Portugal, and hair-oil, and was only too much honored when my only daughter was married to the son of Monsieur le Baron Hulot d’Ervy – my daughter will be a Baroness! This is Regency, Louis XV., (Eil-de-boeuf – quite tip-top! – very good.) I love Celestine as a man loves his only child – so well indeed, that, to preserve her from having either brother or sister, I resigned myself to all the privations of a widower – in Paris, and in the prime of life, madame. But you must understand that, in spite of this extravagant affection for my daughter, I do not intend to reduce my fortune for the sake of your son, whose expenses are not wholly accounted for – in my eyes, as an old man of business.”
“Monsieur, you may at this day see in the Ministry of Commerce Monsieur Popinot, formerly a druggist in the Rue des Lombards – ”
“And a friend of mine, madame,” said the ex-perfumer. “For I, Celestin Crevel, foreman once to old Cesar Birotteau, brought up the said Cesar Birotteau’s stock; and he was Popinot’s father-in-law. Why, that very Popinot was no more than a shopman in the establishment, and he is the first to remind me of it; for he is not proud, to do him justice, to men in a good position with an income of sixty thousand francs in the funds.”
“Well then, monsieur, the notions you term ‘Regency’ are quite out of date at a time when a man is taken at his personal worth; and that is what you did when you married your daughter to my son.”
“But you do not know how the marriage was brought about!” cried Crevel. “Oh, that cursed bachelor life! But for my misconduct, my Celestine might at this day be Vicomtesse Popinot!”
“Once more have done with recriminations over accomplished facts,” said the Baroness anxiously.