mother, "if you had only told me the evening before last
that you loved my cousin Hortense, and that she loved you,
you would have spared me many tears. I thought that you
were deserting your old friend, your governess; while, on
the contrary, you are to become my cousin; henceforth, you
will be connected with me, remotely, 'it is true, but by ties
that amply justify the feelings I have for you." And she
kissed Wenceslas on the forehead.

Hortense threw herself into Lisbeth's arms and melted
into tears.

"I owe my happiness to you," said she, "and I will
never forget it."

"Cousin Betty," said the Baroness, embracing Lisbeth
in her excitement at seeing matters so happily settled, "the
Baron and I owe you a debt of gratitude, and we will pay
it. Come and talk things over with me, ' ' she added, lead-
ing her away.

So Lisbeth, to all appearance, was playing the part of a
good angel to the whole family; she was adored by Crevel
and Hulot, by Adeline and Hortense.

"We wish you to give up working," said the Baroness.
"If you earn forty sous a day, Sundays excepted, that



COUSIN BETTY 169

makes six hundred francs a year. Well, then, how much
have you saved?"

"Four thousand five hundred francs."

"Poor Betty!" said her cousin.

She raised her eyes to heaven, so deeply was she moved
at the thought of all the labor and privation such a sum
must represent accumulated during thirty years.

Lisbeth, misunderstanding the meaning of the exclama-
tion, took it as the ironical pity of the successful woman,
and her hatred was strengthened by a large infusion of
venom at the very moment when her cousin had cast off
her last shred of distrust of the tyrant of her childhood.

' ' We will add ten thousand five hundred francs to that
sum," said Adeline, "and put it in trust so that you shall
draw the interest for life with reversion to Hortense. Thus,
you will have six hundred francs a year."

Lisbeth feigned the utmost satisfaction. When she went
in, her handkerchief to her eyes, wiping away tears of joy,
Hortense told her of all the favors that were being showered
on Wenceslas, beloved of all the family.

So when the Baron came home, he found his family all
present; for the Baroness had formally accepted Wenceslas
by the title of Son, and the wedding was fixed, if her hus-
band should approve, for a day a fortnight hence. The
moment he came into the drawing-room, Hulot was rushed
at by his wife and daughter, who ran to meet him, Adeline
to speak to him privately, and Hortense to kiss him.

"You have gone too far in pledging me to this, Ma-
dame," said the Baron sternly. "You are not married
yet," he added, with a look at Steinbock, who turned pale.

"He has heard of my imprisonment," said the luckless

artist to himself.
VoL 10 <H)



170 BALZAC'S WORKS

"Come, children," said he, leading his daughter and the
young man into the garden; they all sat down on a moss-
eaten seat in the summer-house.

"Monsieur le Comte, do you love my daughter as well
as I loved her mother?" he asked.

"More, Monsieur, " said the sculptor.

"Her mother was a peasant's daughter, and had not a
farthing of her own."

"Only give me Mademoiselle Hortense just as she is.
without a trousseau even "

"So I should think!" said the Baron, smiling. "Hor-
tense is the daughter of the Baron Hulot d'Ervy, Councillor
of State, high up in the War Office, Grand Commander of
the Legion of Honor, and brother to Count Hulot, whose
glory is immortal, and who will ere long be Marshal of
France! And she has a marriage portion."

"It is true," said the impassioned artist, "I must seem
very ambitious. But if my dear Hortense were a laborer's
daughter, I would marry her "

"That is just what I wanted to know," replied the
Baron. "Run away, Hortense, and leave me to talk busi-
ness with Monsieur le Comte. He really loves you, you
see!"

"Oh, papa, I was sure you were only in jest," said the
happy girl.

"My dear Steinbock, " said the Baron, with elaborate
grace of diction and the most perfect manners, as soon as
he and the artist were alone, "I promised my son a fortune
of two hundred thousand francs, of which the poor boy has
never had a sou; and he never will get any of it. My
daughter's fortune will also be two hundred thousand francs,
for which you will give a receipt "



COUSIN BETTY 171

"Yes, Monsieur le Baron."

"You go too fast," said Hulot. "Have the goodness
to hear me out. I cannot expect from a son-in-law such
devotion as I look for from my son. My son knew exactly
all I could and would do for his future promotion: he will
be a Minister, and will easily make good his two hundred
thousand francs. But with you, young man, matters are
different. I shall give you a bond for sixty thousand francs
in State funds at five per cent in your wife's name. This
income will be diminished by a small charge in the form of
an annuity to Lisbeth; but she will not live long; she is
consumptive, I know. Tell no one; it is a secret; let the
poor soul die in peace. My daughter will have a trousseau
worth twenty thousand francs; her mother will give her six
thousand francs' worth of diamonds."

"Monsieur, you overpower me!" said Steinbock, quite
bewildered.

"As to the remaining hundred and twenty thousand
francs "

"Say no more, Monsieur," said Wenceslas. "I ask only
for my beloved Hortense "

11 Will you listen to me, effervescent youth! As to the
remaining hundred and twenty thousand francs, I have not
got them; but you will have them "

"Monsieur?"

"You will get them from the Government, in payment
for commissions which I will secure for you, I pledge you
my word of honor. You are to have a studio, you see, at
the Government depot. Exhibit a few fine statues, and
I will get you received at the Institute. The highest per-
sonages have a regard for my brother and for me, and I
hope to succeed in securing for you a commission for sculp-



172 BALZAC'S WORKS

ture at Versailles up to a quarter of tlie whole sum. You
will have orders from the City of Paris and from the Cham-
ber of Peers ; in short, my dear fellow, you will have so
many that you will be obliged to get assistants. In that
way I shall pay off my debt to you. You must say whether
this way of giving a portion will suit you; whether you are
equal to it."

''I am equal to making a fortune for my wife single-
handed if all else failed!" cried the artist-nobleman.

"That is what I admire!" cried the Baron. "High-
minded youth that fears nothing. Come," he added, clasp-
ing hands with the young sculptor to conclude the bargain,
"you have my consent. We will sign the contract on Sun-
day next, and the wedding shall be on the following Sat-
urday, my wife's fe'te-day."

" It is all right, ' ' said the Baroness to her daughter, who
stood glued to the window. ' ' Your suitor and your father
are embracing each other."

On going home in the evening, Wenceslas found the solu-
tion of the mystery of his release. The porter handed him
a thick sealed packet, containing the schedule of his debts,
with a signed receipt affixed at the bottom of the writ, and
accompanied by this letter:

"My DEAE WENCESLAS I went to fetch you at ten
o'clock this morning to introduce you to a Koyal High-
ness who wishes to see you. There I learned that the duns
had had you conveyed to a certain little domain chief
town, Glichy Castle.

"So off I went to Leon de Lora, and told him, for a
joke, that you could not leave your country quarters for
lack of four thousand francs, and that you would spoil your



COUSIN BETTY 173

future prospects if yon did not make your bow to your
royal patron. Happily, Bridau was there a man of genius,
who has known what it is to be poor, and has heard your
story. My boy. between them they have found the money,
and I went off to pay the Turk who committed treason
against genius by putting you in quod. As I had to be
at the Tuileries at noon, I could not wait to see you sniff -
ing the outer air. I know you to be a gentleman, and I
answered for you to my two friends but look them up
to-morrow.

"Leon and Bridau do not want your cash; they will ask
you to do them each a group and they are right. At least,
so thinks the man who wishes he could sign himself your
rival, but is only your faithful ally, STIDMAXN.

"P.S. I told the Prince you were away, and would not
return till to-morrow, so he said, 'Very good to-morrow.' '

Count Wenceslas went to bed in the sheets of purple,
without a rose-leaf to wrinkle them, that Favor can make
for us Favor, the baiting divinity who moves more slowly
for men of genius than either Justice or Fortune, because
Jove has not chosen to bandage her eyes. Hence, lightly
deceived by the display of impostors, and attracted by their
frippery and trumpets, she spends the time in seeing them
and the money in paying them which she ought to devote
to seeking out men of merit in the nooks where they hide.

It will now be necessary to explain how Monsieur le
Baron Hulot had contrived to count up his expenditure
on Hortense's wedding portion, and at the same time to
defray the frightful cost of the charming rooms where



174 BALZAC'S WORKS

Madame Marneffe was to make her home. His financial
scheme bore that stamp of talent which leads prodigals
and men in love into the quagmires where so many dis-
asters await them. Nothing can demonstrate more com-
pletely the strange capacity communicated by vice, to which
we owe the strokes of skill which ambitious or voluptuous
men can occasionally achieve or, in short, any of the
Devil's pupils.

On the day before, old Johann Fischer, unable to pay
thirty thousand francs drawn for on him by his nephew,
had found himself under the necessity of stopping payment
unless the Baron could remit the sum.

This ancient worthy, with the white hairs of seventy
years, had such blind confidence in Hulot who, to the
old Bonapartist, was an emanation from the Napoleonic
sun that he was calmly pacing his anteroom with the bank
clerk, in the little ground -floor apartment that he rented for
eight hundred francs a year as the headquarters of his
extensive dealings in corn and forage.

"Marguerite is gone to fetch the money from close by,"
said he.

The official, in his gray uniform braided with silver, was
so convinced of the old Alsatian's honesty that he was pre-
pared to leave the thirty thousand francs' worth of bills in
his hands; but the old man would not let him go, observ-
ing that the clock had not yet struck eight. A cab drew
up, the old man rushed into the street, and held out his
hand to the Baron with sublime confidence Hulot handed
him out thirty thousand-franc notes.

"(TO on three doors further, and I will tell you why,"
said Fischer.

"Here, young man," he said, returning to count out the



COUSIN BETTY 175

money to the bank emissary, whom he then saw to the
door.

When the clerk was out of sight, Fischer called back the
cab containing his august nephew, Napoleon's right hand,
and said, as he led him into the house:

"You do not want them to know at the Bank of France
that you paid me the thirty thousand francs, after indorsing
the bills ? It was bad enough to see them signed by such
a man as you !"

"Come to the bottom of your little garden, Father
Fischer," said the important man. "You are hearty?"
he went on, sitting down under a vine arbor and scanning
the old man from head to foot, as a dealer in human flesh
scans a substitute for the conscription.

"Ay, hearty enough for a tontine," said the lean little
old man ; his sinews were wiry, and his eye bright.

"Does heat disagree with you?"

"Quite the contrary."

"What do you say to Africa?"

"A very nice country! The French went there with the
little Corporal" (Napoleon).

"To get us all out of the present scrape, you must go
to Algiers," said the Baron.

"And how about my business?"

"An official in the War Office, who has to retire, and
has not enough to live on with his pension, will buy your
business."

"And what am I to do in Algiers?"

"Supply the Commissariat with victuals, corn, and for-
age; I have your commission ready filled in and signed.
You can collect supplies in the country at seventy per cent
below the prices at which you can credit us."



176 BALZAC'S WORKS

"How shall we get them?"

"Oh, by raids, by taxes in kind, and the Khaliphat.
The country is little known, though we settled there eight
years ago; Algeria produces vast quantities of corn and
forage. When this produce belongs to Arabs, we take it
from them under various pretences; when it belongs to us,
the Arabs try to get it back again. There is a great deal
of fighting over the corn, and no one ever knows exactly
how much each party has stolen from the other. There is
not time in the open field to measure the corn as we do in
the Paris market, or the hay as it is sold in the Eue d'Enfer.
The Arab chiefs, like our Spahis, prefer hard cash, and sell
the plunder at a very low price. The Commissariat needs
a fixed quantity, and must have it. It winks at exorbitant
prices calculated on the difficulty of procuring food, and
the dangers to which every form of transport is ex-
posed. That is Algiers from the army contractor's point
of view.

"It is a muddle tempered by the ink-bottle, like every
incipient government. We shall not see our way through
it for another ten years we who have to do the governing;
but private enterprise has sharp eyes. So I am sending you
there to make a fortune; I give you the job, as Napoleon
put an impoverished Marshal at the head of a kingdom
where smuggling might be secretly encouraged.

"I am ruined, my dear Fischer; I must have a hundred
thousand francs within a year."

"I see no harm in getting it out of the Bedouins," said
the Alsatian calmly. "It was always done under the
Empire"

"The man who wants to buy your business will be here
this morning, and pay you ten thousand francs down, ' ' the



COUSIN BETTY 177

Baron went on. "That will be enough, I suppose, to take
you to Africa?"

The old man nodded assent.

"As to capital out there, be quite easy. I will draw the
remainder of the money due if I find it necessary."

"All I have is yours my very blood," said old Fischer.

"Oh, do not be uneasy," said Hulot, fancying that his
uncle saw more clearly than was the fact. "As to our
excise dealings, your character will not be impugned.
Everything depends on the authority at your back; now
I myself appointed the authorities out there; I am sui^ of
them. This, Uncle Fischer, is a dead secret between us.
I know you well, and I have spoken out without conceal-
ment or circumlocution."

"It shall be done," said the old man. "And it will
go on ?"

"For two years. You will have made a hundred thou-
sand francs of your own to live happy on in the Yosges."

"I will do as you wish; my honor is yours," said the
little old man quietly.

. "That is the sort of man I like. However, you must
not go till you have seen your grandniece happily married.
She is to be a Countess."

But even taxes and raids and the money paid by the
War Office clerk for Fischer's business could not forthwith
provide sixty thousand francs to give to Hortense, to say
nothing of her trousseau, which was to cost about five
thousand, and the forty thousand spent or to be spent
on Madame Marneffe.

Where, then, had the Baron found the thirty thousand
francs he had just produced? This was the history.

A few days previously Hulot had insured his life for the



178 BALZAC'S WORKS

sum of a hundred and fifty thousand francs, for three years,
in two separate companies. Armed with the policies, of
which he paid the premium, he had spoken as follows to
the Baron de Nucingen, a peer of the Chamber, in whose
carriage he found himself after a sitting, driving home, in
fact, to dine with him:

"Baron, I want seventy thousand francs, and I apply to
you. You must find some one to lend his name, to whom I
will make over the right to draw my pay for three years; it
amounts to twenty-five thousand francs a year that is,
seventy-five thousand francs. You will say, 'But you may
die' the banker signified his assent. "Here, then, is a
policy of insurance for a hundred and fifty thousand francs,
which I will deposit with you till you have drawn up to
eighty thousand francs," said Hulot, producing the docu-
ment from his pocket.

"But if you should lose your place?" said the million-
naire Baron, laughing.

The other Baron not a millionnaire looked grave.

"Be quite easy; I only raised the question to show you
that I was not devoid of merit in handing you the sum. Are
you so very short of cash ? for the Bank will take your sig-
nature."

"My daughter is to be married," said Baron Hulot, "and
I have no fortune like every one else who remains in office
in these thankless times, when five hundred ordinary men.
seated on benches will never reward the men who devote
themselves to the service as handsomely as the Emperor
did."

"Well, well; but you had Jose'pha on your hands!" re-
plied Nucingen, "and that accounts for everything. Be-
tween ourselves, the Due d'Herouville has done you a very



COUSIN BETTY 179

good turn by removing that leech from sticking your purse
dry. 'I have known what it is, and can pity your case,' '
he quoted. "Take a friend's advice: Shut up shop, or you
will be done for. ' '

This dirty business was carried out in the name of one
Vauvinet, a small money-lender; one of those jobbers who
stand forward to screen great banking houses, like the little
fish that is said to attend the shark. This stock-jobber's ap-
prentice was so anxious to gain the patronage of Monsieur le
Baron Hulot that he promised the great man to negotiate
bills of exchange for thirty thousand francs at eighty days,
and pledged himself to renew them four times, and never
pass them out of his hands.

Fischer's successor was to pay forty thousand francs for
the house and business, with the promise that he should
supply forage to a department close to Paris.

This was the desperate maze of affairs into which a man
who had hitherto been absolutely honest was led by his pas-
sions one of the best administrative officials under Napo-
leon peculation to pay the money-lenders, and borrowing
of the money-lenders to gratify his passions and provide for
his daughter. All the efforts of this elaborate prodigality
were directed to making a display before Madame Marneffe,
and to playing Jupiter to this middle-class Danae. A man
could not expend more activity, intelligence, and presence
of mind in the honest acquisition of a fortune than the
Baron displayed in shoving his head into a wasp's nest: He
did all the business of his department, he hurried on the up-
holsterers, he talked to the workmen, he kept a sharp look-
out on the smallest details of the house in the Rue Yanneau.
Wholly devoted to Madame Marneffe, he nevertheless at-
tended the sittings of the Chambers; he was everywhere at



180 BALZAC'S WORKS

once, and neither his family nor anybody else discovered
where his thoughts were.

Adeline, quite amazed to hear that her uncle was rescued,
and to see a handsome sum figure in the marriage-contract,
was not altogether easy, in spite of her joy at seeing her
daughter married under such creditable circumstances.
But, on the day before the wedding, fixed by the Baron to
coincide with Madame Marneffe's removal to her new apart-
ment, Hector allayed his wife's astonishment by this minis-
terial communication:

"Now, Adeline, our girl is married; all our anxieties on
that subject are at an end. The time is come for us to retire
from the world : I shall not remain in office more than three
years longer only the time necessary to secure my pension.
Why, henceforth, should we be at any unnecessary expense?
Our apartment costs us six thousand francs a year in rent,
we have four servants, we eat thirty thousand francs' worth '
of food in the year. If you want me to pay off my bills
for I have pledged my salary for the sums I needed to give
Hortense her little money, and pay off your uncle

"You did very right!" said she, interrupting her hus-
band, and kissing his hands.

This explanation relieved Adeline of all her fears.

"I shall have to ask some little sacrifices of you," he
went on, disengaging his hands and kissing his wife's brow.
"I have found in the Eue Plumet a very good flat on the
first floor, handsome, splendidly panelled, at only fifteen
hundred francs a year, where you would only need one
woman to wait on you, and I could be quite content with
a boy."

"Yes, my dear."

"If we keep house in a quiet way, keeping up a proper



COUSIN BETTY 181

appearance of course, we should not spend more than six
thousand francs a year, excepting my private account,
which I will provide for."

The generous-hearted woman threw her arms round her
husband's neck in her joy.

"How happy I shall be, beginning again to show you
how truly I love you!" she exclaimed. "And what a
capital manager you are!"

"We will have the children to dine with us once a week.
I, as you know, rarely dine at home. You can very well
dine twice a week with Victorin and twice a week with
Hortense. And, as 1 believe, I may succeed in making
matters up completely between Crevel and us; we can
dine once a week with him. These five dinners and
our own at home will fill up the week all but one day,
supposing that we may occasionally be invited to dine
elsewhere."

"I shall save a great deal for you," said Adeline.

"Oh!" he cried, "you are the pearl of women!"

"My kind, divine Hector, 1 shall bless you with my
latest breath," said she, "for you have done well for my
dear Hortense."

This was the beginning of the end of the beautiful Ma-
dame Hulot's home; and, it may be added, of her being
totally neglected, as Hulot had solemnly promised Madame
Marneffe.

Crevel, the important and burly, being invited as a mat-
ter of course to the party given for the signing of the mar-
riage-contract, behaved as though the scene with which this
drama opened had never taken place, as though he had no
grievance against the Baron. Celestin Crevel was quite
amiable; he was perhaps rather too much the ex-perfumer,



182 BALZAC'S WORKS

but as a Major lie was beginning to acquire majestic dignity.
He talked of dancing at the wedding.

"Fair lady," said he politely to the Baroness, "people
like us- know how to forget. Do not banish me from your
home; honor rne, pray, by gracing my "house with your
presence now and then to meet your children. Be quite
easy; I will never say anything oi what lies buried at the
bottom of my heart. I behaved, indeed, like an idiot, for I
should lose too much by cutting myself off from seeing you. ' '

"Monsieur, an honest woman has no ears for such
speeches as those you refer to. If you keep your word,
you need not doubt that it will give me pleasure to see
the end of a coolness which must always be painful in a
family."

"Well, you sulky old fellow," said Hulot, dragging
Crevel out into the garden, "you avoid me everywhere,
even in my own house. Are two admirers of the fair sex
to quarrel forever over a petticoat ? Come ; that is really
too plebeian!"

"I, Monsieur, am not such a fine man as you are, and
my small attractions hinder me from repairing my losses so
easily as you can "

"Sarcastic!" said the Baron.

"irony is allowable irom the vanquished to the con-
queror."

The conversation, begun in this strain, ended in a com-
plete reconciliation; still Crevel maintained his right to take
his revenge.

Madame Marneffe particularly wished to be invited to
Mademoiselle Hulot's wedding. To enable him to receive
his future mistress in his drawing-room, the great official



COUSIN BETTT 183

was obliged to invite all the clerks of his division down to
the deputy head-clerks inclusive. Thus a grand ball was a
necessity. The Baroness, as a prudent housewife, calculated
that an evening party would cost less than a dinner, and
allow of a larger number of invitations; so Hortense's
wedding was much talked about.

Marshal Prince Wissembourg and the Baron de Nu-
cingen signed in behalf of the bride, the Comtes de Bas-
tignac and Popinot in behalf of Steinbock. Then, as the
highest nobility among the Polish emigrants had been civil
to Count Steinbock since he had become famous, the artist
thought himself bound to invite them. The State Council,
and the War Office to which the Baron belonged, and the
army, anxious to do honor to the Comte de Forzheim, were
all represented by their magnates. There were nearly two
hundred indispensable invitations. How natural, then, that