Look at yourself I love you, and you will come to be
mine. The day will come when I shall say to Hulot, 'You
took Josepha, I have taken your wife!'

"It is the old law of tit-for-tat! And I will persevere
till I have attained my end, unless you should become ex-
tremely ugly. I shall succeed; and I will tell you why,"
he went on, resuming his attitude, and looking at Madame
Hulot. "You will not meet with such an old man, or such
a young lover," he said after a pause, "because you love
your daughter too well to hand her over to the manoeuvres
of an old libertine, and because you the Baronne Hulot,
sister of the old Lieutenant -General who commanded the
veteran Grenadiers of the Old Guard will not condescend
to take a man of spirit wherever you may find him; for he
might be a mere craftsman, as many a millionnaire of to-day



3t> BALZAC'S WORKS

was ten years ago, a working artisan, or the foreman of a
factory.

"And then, when you see the girl, urged by her twenty
years, capable of dishonoring you all, you will say to your-
self, 'It will be better that I should fall! If Monsieur
Orevel will but keep my secret, 1 will earn my daughter's
portion two hundred thousand francs for ten years' attach-
ment to that old glove-seller old Crevel!' I disgust you
no doubt, and what I am saying is horribly immoral, you
think? But if you happened to have been bitten by an
overwhelming passion, you would find a thousand argu-
ments in favor of yielding as women do when they are in
love. Yes, and Hortense's interests will suggest to your
feelings such terms of surrendering your conscience "

"Hortense has still an uncle."

"What! Old Fischer? He is winding up his concerns,
and that again is the Baron's fault; his rake is dragged over
every till within his reach."

"Cointe Hulot "

"Oh, Madame, your husband has already made thin air
of the old General's savings. He spent them in furnishing
his singer's rooms. Now, come; am I to go without a
hope?"

"Good-by, Monsieur. A man easily gets over a passion
for a woman of my age, and you will fall back on Christian
principles. God takes care of the wretched "

The Baroness rose to oblige the captain to retreat, and
drove him back into the drawing-room.

"Ought the beautiful Madame Hulot to be living amid
such squalor?" said he, and he pointed to an old lamp, a
chandelier bereft of its gilding, the threadbare carpet, the
very rags of wealth which made the large room, with



COUSIN BETTY 37

its red, white, and gold, look like a corpse oi imperial

festivities.

"Monsieur, virtue shines on it all. I have no wish to
owe a handsome abode to having made of the beauty you
are pleased to ascribe to me a man-trap and a money-box for
five-franc pieces!"

The captain bit his lip as he recognized the words he had
used to vilify Josepha's avarice.

"And for whom are you so magnanimous?" said he.
By this time the Baroness had got her rejected admirer as
far as the door. "For a libertine!" said he, with a lofty
grimace of virtue and superior wealth.

"If you are right, my constancy has some merit, Mon-
sieur. That is all."

After bowing to the officer as a woman bows to dismiss
an importunate visitor, she turned away too quickly to see
.him once more fold his arms. She unlocked the doors she
had closed, and did not see the threatening gesture which
was Crevel's parting greeting. She walked with a proud,
defiant step, like a martyr to the Coliseum, but her strength
was exhausted; she sank on the sofa in her blue room, as if
she were ready to faint, and sat there with her eyes fixed
on the tumble-down summer-house, where her daughter was
gossiping with Cousin Betty.

From the first days of her married life to the present time
the Baroness had loved her husband, as Josephine in the end
had loved Napoleon, with an admiring, maternal, and cow-
ardly devotion. Though ignorant of the details given her
by Crevel, she knew that for twenty years past Baron Hulot
had been anything rather than a faithful husband; but she
had sealed her eyes with lead, she had wept in silence, and



38 BALZAC'S WORKS

no word of reproach had ever escaped her. In return for
this angelic sweetness, she had won her husband's venera-
tion and something approaching to worship from all who
were about her.

A wife's affection for her husband and the respect she
pays him are infectious in a family. Hortense believed her
father to be a perfect model of conjugal affection; as to their
son, brought up to admire the Baron, whom everybody
regarded as one of the giants who so effectually backed
Napoleon, he knew that he owed his advancement to his
father's name, position, and credit; and besides, the impres-
sions of childhood exert an enduring influence. He still
was afraid of his father; and if he had suspected the mis-
deeds revealed by Crevel, as he was too much overawed by
him to find fault, he would have found excuses in the view
every man takes of such matters.

It now will be necessary to give the reasons for the
extraordinary self-devotion of a good and beautiful woman;
and this, in a few words, is her past history.

Three brothers, simple laboring men, named Fischer,
and living in a village situated on the furthest frontier of
Lorraine, were compelled by the Republican conscription
to set out with the so-called army of the Rhine.

In 1799 the second brother, Andre, a widower, and Ma-
dame Hulot's father, left his daughter to the care of his
elder brother, Pierre Fischer, disabled from service by a
wound received in 1797, and made a small private venture
in the military transport service, an opening he owed to the
favor of Hulot d'Ervy, who was high in the commissariat.
By a very obvious chance Hulot, coming to Strasburg,
saw the Fischer family. Adeline's father and his younger



COUSIN BETTY 39

brother were at that time contractors for forage in the

province of Alsace.

Adeline, then sixteen years of age, might be compared
with the famous Madame du Barry, like her, a daughter of
Lorraine. She was one of those perfect and striking beau-
ties a woman like Madame Tallien, finished with peculiar
care by Nature, who bestows on them all her choicest gifts
distinction, dignity, grace, refinement, elegance, flesh of
a superior texture, and a complexion mingled in the un-
known laboratory where good luck presides. These beauti-
ful creatures all have something in common: Bianca Capella,
whose portrait is one of Bronzino's masterpieces; Jean Grou-
jon's "Venus," painted from the famous Diane de Poitiers;
Signora Olympia, whose picture adorns the Doria Gallery;
iSinon, Madame du Barry, Madame Tallien, Mademoiselle
Greorges, Madame Recamier all these women who preserved
their beauty in spite of years, of passion, and of their life
of excess and pleasure, have in figure, frame, and in the
character of their beauty certain striking resemblances,
enough to make one believe that there is in the ocean of
generations an Aphrodisian current whence every such
Venus is born, all daughters of the same salt wave.

Adeline Fischer, one of the loveliest of this race of
goddesses, had the splendid type, the flowing lines, the
exquisite texture of a woman born a queen. The fair hair
that our mother Eve received from the hand of God, the
form of an Empress, an air of grandeur, and an august line
of profile, with her rural modesty, made every man pause
in delight as she passed, like amateurs in front of a Rafael;
in short, having once seen her, the Commissariat officer
made Mademoiselle Adeline Fischer his wife as quickly as
the law would permit, to the great astonishment of the



40 BALZAC'S WORKS

Fischers, who had all been brought up in the fear of their
betters.

The eldest, a soldier of 1792, severely wounded in the
attack on the lines at Wissembourg, adored the Emperor
Napoleon and everything that had to do with the Grande
Armee. Andre and Johann spoke with respect of Commis-
sary Hulot, the Emperor's protege, to whom indeed they
owed their prosperity; for Hulot d'Ervy, finding them in-
telligent and honest, had taken them from the army pro-
vision wagons to place them in charge of a government
contract needing despatch. The brothers Fischer had
done further service during the campaign of 1804. At
the peace Hulot had secured for them the contract for
forage from Alsace, not knowing that he would pres-
ently be sent to Strasburg to prepare for the campaign
of 1806.

This marriage was like an Assumption to the young
peasant girl. The beautiful Adeline was translated at once
from the mire of her village to the paradise of the Imperial
Court; for the contractor, one of the most conscientious and
hardworking of the Commissariat staff, was made a Baron,
obtained a place near the Emperor, and was attached to
the Imperial Gruard. The handsome rustic bravely set to
work to educate herself for love of her husband, for she
was simply crazy about him; and, indeed, the Commissariat
officer was as a man a perfect match for Adeline as a woman.
He was one of the picked corps of fine men. Tall, well-built,
fair, with beautiful blue eyes full of irresistible fire and life,
his elegant appearance made him remarkable by the side of
d'Orsay, Forbin, Ouvrard; in short, in the battalion of fine
men that surrounded the Emperor. A conquering "buck,"
and holding the ideas of the Directoire with regard to women,



COUSIN BETTY 1

his career of gallantry was interrupted for some long time
by his conjugal affection.

To Adeline the Baron was from the first a sort of god
who could do no wrong. To him she owed everything:
fortune she had a carriage, a fine house, every luxury of
the day; happiness he was devoted to her in the face of
the world; a title, for she was a Baroness; fame, for she
was spoken of as the beautiful Madame Hulot and in Paris!
Finally, she had the honor of refusing the Emperor's ad-
vances, for Napoleon made her a present of a diamond neck-
lace, and always remembered her, asking now and again,
"And is the beautiful Madame Hulot still a model of
virtue ? " in the tone of a man who might have taken his
revenge on one who should have triumphed where he had
failed.

So it needs no great intuition to discern what were the
motives in a simple, guileless, and noble soul for the fanat-
icism of Madame Hulot's love. Having fully persuaded
herself that her husband could do her no wrong, she made
herself in the depths of her heart the humble, abject, and
blindfold slave of a man who had made her. It must be
noted, too, that she was gifted with great good sense the
good sense of the people, which made her education sound.
In society she spoke little, and never spoke evil of any one;
she did not try to shine ; she thought out many things, lis-
tened well, and formed herself on the model of the best-
conducted women of good birth.

In 1815 Hulot followed the lead of the Prince de Wissem-
bourg, his intimate friend, and became one of the officers
who organized the improvised troops whose rout brought
the Napoleonic cycle to a close at Waterloo. In 1816 the
Baron was one of the men best hated by the Feltre admin-



42 BALZAC'S WORKS

istration, and was not reinstated in the Commissariat till
1823, when he was needed for the Spanish war. In 1830
he took office as the fourth wheel of the coach, at the time
of the levies, a sort of conscription made by Louis Philippe
on the old Napoleonic soldiery. From the time when the
younger branch ascended the throne, having taken an active
part in bringing that about, he was regarded as an indis-
pensable authority at the War Office. He had already won
his Marshal's baton, and the King could do no more for him
unless by making him minister or a peer of France.

From 1818 till 1823, having no official occupation, Baron
Hulot had gone on active service to womankind. Madame
Hulot dated her Hector's first infidelities from the grand
finale of the Empire. Thus, for twelve years the Baroness
had filled the part in her household of prima donna assoluta,
without a rival. She still could boast of the old-fashioned,
inveterate affection which husbands feel for wives who are
resigned to be gentle and virtuous helpmates; she knew
that if she had a rival, that rival would not subsist for two
hours under a word of reproof from herself; but she shut
her eyes, she stopped her ears, she would know nothing of
her husband's proceedings outside his home. In short, she
treated her Hector as a mother treats a spoiled child.

Three years before the conversation reported above,
Hortense, at the Theatre des Varietes, had recognized her
father in a lower tier stage-box with Jenny Cadine, and
had exclaimed: "There is papa!"

"You are mistaken, my darling; he is at the Marshal's,"
the Baroness replied.

She too had seen Jenny Cadine; but instead of feeling
a pang when she saw how pretty she was, she said to herself,
"That rascal Hector must think himself very lucky."



COUSIN BETTY 43

She suffered nevertheless; she gave herself up in secret
to rages of torment; but as soon as she saw Hector, she al-
ways remembered her twelve years of perfect happiness, and
could not find it in her to utter a word of complaint. She
would have been glad if the Baron would have taken her
into his confidence; but she never dared to let him see that
she knew of his kicking over the traces, out of respect for
her husband. Such an excess of delicacy is never met with
but in those grand creatures, daughters of the soil, whose
instinct it is to take blo\\ r s without ever returning them; the
blood of the early martyrs still lives in their veins. Well-
born women, their husbands' equals, feel the impulse to
annoy them, to mark the points of their tolerance, like
points at billiards, by some stinging word, partly in a spirit
of diabolical malice, and to secure the upper hand or the
right of turning the tables.

The Baroness had an ardent admirer in her brother-in-
law, Lieutenant- General Hulot, the venerable Colonel of
the Grenadiers of the Imperial Infantry Guard, who was
to have a Marshal's baton in his old age. This veteran,
after having served from 1830 to 1834 as Commandant of
the military division, including the departments of Brittany,
the scene of his exploits in 1799 and 1800, had come to set-
tle in Paris near his brother, for whom he had a fatherly
affection.

This old soldier's heart was in sympathy with his sister-
in-law; he admired her as the noblest and saintliest of her
sex. He had never married, because he hoped to find a
second Adeline, though he had vainly sought for her through
twenty campaigns in as many lands. To maintain her place
in the esteem of this blameless and spotless old republican
of whom Napoleon had said, "That brave old Hulot is the



44 BALZAC'S WORKS

most obstinate republican, but he will never be false to me"
Adeline would have endured griefs even greater than those
that had just come upon her. But the old soldier, seventy-
two years of age, battered by thirty campaigns, and wounded
for the twenty-seventh time at Waterloo, was Adeline's ad-
mirer, and not a "protector." The poor old Count, among
other infirmities, could only hear through a speaking tnimpet.

So long as Baron Hulot d'Ervy was a fine man, his flirta-
tions did not damage his fortune ; but when a man is fifty,
the Graces claim payment. At that age love becomes vice;
insensate vanities come into play. Thus, at about that time,
Adeline saw that her husband was incredibly particular
about his dress; he dyed his hair and whiskers, and wore
a belt and stays. He was determined to remain handsome
at any cost. This care of his person, a weakness he had
once mercilessly mocked at, was carried out in the minutest
details.

At last Adeline perceived that the Pactolus poured out
before the Baron's mistresses had its source in her pocket.
In eight years he had dissipated a considerable amount of
money; and so effectually, that, on his son's marriage two
years previously, the Baron had been compelled to ex-
plain to his wife that his pay constituted their whole
income.

"What shall we come to?" asked Adeline.

"Be quite easy," said the official, "I will leave the
whole of my salary in your hands, and I will make a for-
tune for Hortense, and some savings for the future, in
business."

The wife's deep belief in her husband's power and supe-
rior talents, in his capabilities and character, had, in fact,
for the moment allayed her anxiety.



COUSIN BETTY 45

What the Baroness's reflections and tears were after
Crevel's departure may now be clearly imagined. The
poor woman had for two years past known that she was
at the bottom of a pit, but she had fancied herself alone in
it. How her son's marriage had been finally arranged she
had not known; she had known nothing of Hector's con-
nection with the grasping Jewess; and, above all, she hoped
that no one in the world knew anything of her troubles.
Now, if Crevel went about so ready to talk of the Baron's
excesses, Hector's reputation would suffer. She could see,
under the angry ex-perfurner's coarse harangue, the odious
gossip behind the scenes which had led to her son's marriage.
Two reprobate hussies had been the priestesses of this union
planned at some orgy amid the degrading familiarities of two
tipsy old sinners.

"And has he forgotten Hortense!" she wondered. "But
he sees her every day; will he try to find her a husband
among his good-for-nothing sluts?"

At this moment it was the mother that spoke rather than
the wife, for she saw Hortense laughing with her Cousin
Betty the reckless laughter of heedless youth; and she
knew that such hysterical laughter was quite as distressing
a symptom as the tearful revery of solitary walks in the
garden.

Hortense was like her mother, with golden hair that
waved naturally, and was amazingly long and thick. Her
skin had the lustre of mother-of-pearl. She was visibly the
offspring of a true marriage, of a pure and noble love in its
prime. There was a passionate vitality in her countenance,
a brilliancy of feature, a full fount of youth, a fresh vigor
and abundance of health, which radiated from her with
electric flashes. Hortense invited the eye.



46 BALZAC'S WORKS

When her eye, of a deep ultramarine blue, liquid with
the moisture of innocent youth, rested on a passer-by, he
was involuntarily thrilled. Nor did a single freckle mar
her skin, such as those with which many a white and golden
maid pays toll for her milky whiteness. Tall, round with-
out being fat, with a slender dignity as noble as her moth-
er's, she really deserved the name of goddess, of. which old
authors were so lavish. In fact, those who saw Hortense
in the street could hardly restrain the exclamation, "What
a beautiful girl!"

She was so genuinely innocent that she could say to
her mother:

"What do they mean, mamma, by calling me a beautiful
girl when I am with you ? Are not you much handsomer
than I am?''

And, in point of fact, at seven -and-forty the Baroness
might have been preferred to her daughter by amateurs of
sunset beauty; for she had not yet lost any of her charms,
by one of those phenomena which are especially rare in
Paris, where Ninon was regarded as scandalous, simply
because she thus seemed to enjoy such an unfair advantage
over the plainer women of the seventeenth century.

Thinking of her daughter brought her back to the father;
she saw him sinking by degrees, day after day, down to the
social mire, and even dismissed some day from his appoint-
ment. The idea of her idol's fall, with a vague vision of
the disasters prophesied by Crevel, was such a terror to the
poor woman that she became rapt in the contemplation like
an ecstatic.

Cousin Betty, from time to time, as she chatted with
Hortense, looked round to see when they might return to
the drawing-room; but her young cousin was pelting her



COUSIN BETTY 47

with questions, and at the moment when the Baroness
opened the glass door she did not happen to be looking.

Lisbeth Fischer, though the daughter of the eldest of
the three brothers, was five years younger than Madame
Hulot; she was far from being as handsome as her cousin,
and had been desperately jealous of Adeline. Jealousy was
the fundamental passion of this character, marked by eccen-
tricities a word invented by the English to describe the
craziness not of the asylum, but of respectable households.
A native of the Vosges, a peasant in the fullest sense of the
word, lean, brown, with shining black hair and thick eye-
brows joining in a tuft, with long, strong arms, thick feet,
and some moles on her narrow simian face such is a brief
description of the elderly virgin.

The family, living all under one roof, had sacrificed the
common -looking girl to the beauty, the bitter fruit to the
splendid flower. Lisbeth worked in the fields, while her
cousin was indulged; and one day, when they were alone
together, she had tried to destroy Adeline's nose, a truly
Greek nose, which the old mothers admired. Though she
was beaten for this misdeed, she persisted nevertheless in
tearing the favorite's gowns and crumpling her collars.

At the time of Adeline's wonderful marriage, Lisbeth
had bowed to fate, as Napoleon's brothers and sisters bowed
before the splendor of the throne and the force of authority.

Adeline, who was extremely sweet and kind, remem-
bered Lisbeth when she found herself in Paris, and invited
her there in 1809, intending to rescue her from poverty by
finding her a husband. But seeing that it was impossible
to marry the girl out of hand, with her black eyes and sooty
brows, unable too to read or write, the Baron began by ap-



48 BALZAC 'S WORKS

prenticing her to a business ; he placed her as a learner with
the embroiderers to the Imperial Court, the well-known
Pons Brothers.

Lisbeth, called Betty for short, having learned to em-
broider in gold and silver, and possessing all the energy of
a mountain race, had determination enough to learn to read,
write, and keep accounts; for her cousin the Baron had
pointed out the necessity for these accomplishments if she
hoped to set up in business as an embroiderer.

She was bent on making a fortune; in two years she
was another creature. In 1811 the peasant woman had
become a very presentable, skilled, and intelligent fore-
woman.

Her department, that of gold and silver lace-work, as it
is called, included epaulets, sword-knots, aigulets; in short,
the immense mass of glittering ornaments that sparkled on
the rich uniforms of the French army and civil officials.
The Emperor, a true Italian in his love of dress, had over-
laid the coats of all his servants with silver and gold, and
the Empire included a hundred and thirty-three Depart-
ments. These ornaments, usually supplied to tailors who
were solvent and wealthy paymasters, were a very secure
branch of trade.

Just when Cousin Betty, the best hand in the house of
Pons Brothers, where she was forewoman of the embroidery
department, might have set up in business on her own ac-
count, the Empire collapsed. The olive-branch of peace
held out by the Bourbons did not reassure Lisbeth; she
feared a diminution of this branch of trade, since hence-
forth there were to be but the eighty-six Departments to
plunder, instead of a hundred and thirty-three, to say noth-
ing of the immense reduction of the army. Utterly scared



COUSIN BETTY 49

by the ups and downs of industry, she refused the Baron's
offers of help, and he thought she must be mad. She con-
firmed this opinion by quarrelling with Monsieur Rivet,
who bought the business of Pons Brothers, and with whom
the Baron wished to place her in partnership; she would
be no more than a workwoman. Thus the Fischer family
had relapsed into the precarious mediocrity from which
Baron Hulot had raised it.

The three brothers Fischer, who had been ruined by the
abdication at Fontainebleau, in despair joined the irregular
troops in 1815. The eldest, Lisbeth's father, was killed.
Adeline's father, sentenced to death by court-martial, fled
to Germany, and died at Treves in 1820. Johann, the
youngest, came to Paris, a petitioner to the queen of the
family, who was said to dine off gold and silver plate, and
never to be seen at a party but with diamonds in her hair
as big as hazel-nuts, given to her by the Emperor.

Johann Fischer, then aged forty-three, obtained from
Baron Hulot a capital of ten thousand francs with which
to start a small business as forage-dealer at Versailles, un-
der the patronage of the War Office, through the influence
of the friends, still in office, of the late Commissary-General.

These family catastrophes, Baron Hulot' s dismissal, and