“Speak, monsieur; for by your account you wish to justify in my eyes the extraordinary declarations you have chosen to make me, and your persistency in tormenting a woman of my age, whose only wish is to see her daughter married, and then—to die in peace——”
“You see; you are unhappy.”
“I, monsieur?”
“Yes, beautiful, noble creature!” cried Crevel. “You have indeed been too wretched!”
“Monsieur, be silent and go—or speak to me as you ought.”
“Do you know, madame, how Master Hulot and I first made acquaintance?—At our mistresses’, madame.”
“Oh, monsieur!”
“Yes, madame, at our mistresses’,” Crevel repeated in a melodramatic tone, and leaving his position to wave his right hand.
“Well, and what then?” said the Baroness coolly, to Crevel’s great amazement.
Such mean seducers cannot understand a great soul.
“I, a widower five years since,” Crevel began, in the tone of a man who has a story to tell, “and not wishing to marry again for the sake of the daughter I adore, not choosing either to cultivate any such connection in my own establishment, though I had at the time a very pretty lady-accountant. I set up, ‘on her own account,’ as they say, a little sempstress of fifteen—really a miracle of beauty, with whom I fell desperately in love. And in fact, madame, I asked an aunt of my own, my mother’s sister, whom I sent for from the country, to live with the sweet creature and keep an eye on her, that she might behave as well as might be in this rather—what shall I say—shady?—no, delicate position.
“The child, whose talent for music was striking, had masters, she was educated—I had to give her something to do. Besides, I wished to be at once her father, her benefactor, and—well, out with it—her lover; to kill two birds with one stone, a good action and a sweetheart. For five years I was very happy. The girl had one of those voices that make the fortune of a theatre; I can only describe her by saying that she is a Duprez in petticoats. It cost me two thousand francs a year only to cultivate her talent as a singer. She made me music-mad; I took a box at the opera for her and for my daughter, and went there alternate evenings with Celestine or Josepha.”
“What, the famous singer?”
“Yes, madame,” said Crevel with pride, “the famous Josepha owes everything to me.—At last, in 1834, when the child was twenty, believing that I had attached her to me for ever, and being very weak where she was concerned, I thought I would give her a little amusement, and I introduced her to a pretty little actress, Jenny Cadine, whose life had been somewhat like her own. This actress also owed everything to a protector who had brought her up in leading-strings. That protector was Baron Hulot.”
“I know that,” said the Baroness, in a calm voice without the least agitation.
“Bless me!” cried Crevel, more and more astounded. “Well! But do you know that your monster of a husband took Jenny Cadine in hand at the age of thirteen?”
“What then?” said the Baroness.
“As Jenny Cadine and Josepha were both aged twenty when they first met,” the ex-tradesman went on, “the Baron had been playing the part of Louis XV. to Mademoiselle de Romans ever since 1826, and you were twelve years younger then——”
“I had my reasons, monsieur, for leaving Monsieur Hulot his liberty.”
“That falsehood, madame, will surely be enough to wipe out every sin you have ever committed, and to open to you the gates of Paradise,” replied Crevel, with a knowing air that brought the color to the Baroness’ cheeks. “Sublime and adored woman, tell that to those who will believe it, but not to old Crevel, who has, I may tell you, feasted too often as one of four with your rascally husband not to know what your high merits are! Many a time has he blamed himself when half tipsy as he has expatiated on your perfections. Oh, I know you well!—A libertine might hesitate between you and a girl of twenty. I do not hesitate——”
“Monsieur!”
“Well, I say no more. But you must know, saintly and noble woman, that a husband under certain circumstances will tell things about his wife to his mistress that will mightily amuse her.”
Tears of shame hanging to Madame Hulot’s long lashes checked the National Guardsman. He stopped short, and forgot his attitude.
“To proceed,” said he. “We became intimate, the Baron and I, through the two hussies. The Baron, like all bad lots, is very pleasant, a thoroughly jolly good fellow. Yes, he took my fancy, the old rascal. He could be so funny!—Well, enough of those reminiscences. We got to be like brothers. The scoundrel—quite Regency in his notions—tried indeed to deprave me altogether, preached Saint-Simonism as to women, and all sorts of lordly ideas; but, you see, I was fond enough of my girl to have married her, only I was afraid of having children.
“Then between two old daddies, such friends as—as we were, what more natural than that we should think of our children marrying each other?—Three months after his son had married my Celestine, Hulot—I don’t know how I can utter the wretch’s name! he has cheated us both, madame—well, the villain did me out of my little Josepha. The scoundrel knew that he was supplanted in the heart of Jenny Cadine by a young lawyer and by an artist—only two of them!—for the girl had more and more of a howling success, and he stole my sweet little girl, a perfect darling—but you must have seen her at the opera; he got her an engagement there. Your husband is not so well behaved as I am. I am ruled as straight as a sheet of music-paper. He had dropped a good deal of money on Jenny Cadine, who must have cost him near on thirty thousand francs a year. Well, I can only tell you that he is ruining himself outright for Josepha.
“Josepha, madame, is a Jewess. Her name is Mirah, the anagram of Hiram, an Israelite mark that stamps her, for she was a foundling picked up in Germany, and the inquiries I have made prove that she is the illegitimate child of a rich Jew banker. The life of the theatre, and, above all, the teaching of Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga, and Carabine, as to the way to treat an old man, have developed, in the child whom I had kept in a respectable and not too expensive way of life, all the native Hebrew instinct for gold and jewels—for the golden calf.
“So this famous singer, hungering for plunder, now wants to be rich, very rich. She tried her ‘prentice hand on Baron Hulot, and soon plucked him bare—plucked him, ay, and singed him to the skin. The miserable man, after trying to vie with one of the Kellers and with the Marquis d’Esgrignon, both perfectly mad about Josepha, to say nothing of unknown worshipers, is about to see her carried off by that very rich Duke, who is such a patron of the arts. Oh, what is his name?—a dwarf.—Ah, the Duc d’Herouville. This fine gentleman insists on having Josepha for his very own, and all that set are talking about it; the Baron knows nothing of it as yet; for it is the same in the Thirteenth Arrondissement as in every other: the lover, like the husband, is last to get the news.
“Now, do you understand my claim? Your husband, dear lady, has robbed me of my joy in life, the only happiness I have known since I became a widower. Yes, if I had not been so unlucky as to come across that old rip, Josepha would still be mine; for I, you know, should never have placed her on the stage. She would have lived obscure, well conducted, and mine. Oh! if you could but have seen her eight years ago, slight and wiry, with the golden skin of an Andalusian, as they say, black hair as shiny as satin, an eye that flashed lightning under long brown lashes, the style of a duchess in every movement, the modesty of a dependent, decent grace, and the pretty ways of a wild fawn. And by that Hulot’s doing all this charm and purity has been degraded to a man-trap, a money-box for five-franc pieces! The girl is the Queen of Trollops; and nowadays she humbugs every one—she who knew nothing, not even that word.”
At this stage the retired perfumer wiped his eyes, which were full of tears. The sincerity of his grief touched Madame