sters the youngster Bixiou, the youngster Lora, in short,
all the clan."

At half -past seven that evening, in the handsomest room
of the restaurant where all Europe has dined, a splendid
silver service was spread, made on purpose for entertain-
ments where vanity pays the bill in bank-notes. A flood
of light fell in ripples on the chased rims; waiters, whom
a provincial might have taken for diplomatists but for their
age, stood solemnly, as knowing themselves to be overpaid.

Five guests had arrived, and were waiting for nine more.



COUSIN BETTY 481

These were first and foremost Bixiou, still flourishing in
1843, the salt of every intellectual dish, always supplied
with fresh wit a phenomenon as rare in Paris as virtue is ;
Leon de Lora, the greatest living painter of landscape and
the sea, who has this great advantage over all his rivals,
that he has never fallen below his first successes. The
courtesans could never dispense with these two kings of
ready wit. No supper, no dinner, was possible without
them.

Seraphine Sinet, dite Carabine, as the mistress en titre
of the Amphitryon, was one of the first to arrive; and the
brilliant lighting showed off her shoulders, unrivalled in
Paris, her throat, as round as if turned in a lathe, without
a crease, her saucy face, and dress of satin brocade in two
shades of blue, trimmed with Honiton lace enough to have
fed a whole village for a month.

Pretty Jenny Cadine, not acting that evening, came in a
dress of incredible splendor; her portrait is too well known
to need any description. A party is always a Longchamps
of evening dress for these ladies, each anxious to win the
prize for her millionnaire by thus announcing to her rivals

"This is the price I am worth!"

A third woman, evidently at the initial stage of her
career, gazed, almost shamefaced, at the luxury of her two
established and wealthy companions. Simply dressed in
white cashmere trimmed with blue, her head had been
dressed with real flowers by a coiffeur of the old-fashioned
school, whose awkward hands had unconsciously given the
charm of ineptitude to her fair hair. Still unaccustomed to
any finery, she showed the timidity to use a hackneyed
phrase inseparable from a first appearance. She had come

from Valognes to find in Paris some use for her distracting
Vol. 10 (U)



482 BALZAC'S WORKS

youthf illness, her innocence that might 'have stirred the
senses of a dying man, and her beauty, worthy to hold its
own with any that Normandy has ever supplied to the
theatres of the capital. The lines of that unblemished face
were the ideal of angelic purity. Her milk-white skin re-
flected the light like a mirror. The delicate pink in her
cheeks might have been laid on with a brush. She was
called Cydalise, and, as will be seen, she was an important
pawn in the game played by Ma'ame Nourrisson to defeat
Madame Marneffe.

"Your arm is not a match for your name, my child,"
said Jenny Cadine, to whom Carabine had introduced this
masterpiece of sixteen, having brought her with her.

And, in fact, Cydalise displayed to public admiration
a fine pair of arms, smooth and satiny, but red with healthy
young blood.

"What do you want for her?" said Jenny Cadine, in an
undertone to Carabine.

"A fortune."

"What are you going to do with her?"

"Well Madame Combabusl"

"And what are you to get for such a job?"

"Guess."

"A service of plate?"

"I have three."

"Diamonds?"

''I am selling them."

"A green monkey?"

:; No. A picture by Rafael."

"What maggot is that in your brain?"

"Jose'pha makes me sick with her pictures," said Cara-
bine. "I want some better than hers."



COUSIN BETTY 483

Du Tillet came with the Brazilian, the hero of the feast;
the Due de Herouville followed with Josepha. The singer
wore a plain velvet gown, but she had on a necklace worth
a hundred and twenty thousand francs, pearls hardly dis-
tinguishable from her skin like white camellia petals. She
had stuck one scarlet camellia in her black hair a patch
the effect was dazzling, and she had amused herself by put-
ting eleven rows of pearls on each arm. As she shook
hands with Jenny Cadine, the actress said, "Lend me your
mittens!"

Josepha unclasped them one by one and handed them
to her friend on a plate.

"There's style 1" said Carabine. "Quite the Duchess!
You have robbed the ocean to dress the nymph, Monsieur
le Due," she added, turning to the little Due d'He'rouville.

The actress took two of the bracelets; she clasped the
other twenty on the singer's beautiful arms, which she
kissed.

Lousteau, the literary cadger, la Palfdrine and Malaga,
Massol, "Vauvinet, and Theodore Graillard, a proprietor of
one of the most important political newspapers, completed
the party. The Due d'He'rouville, polite to everybody,
as a fine gentleman knows how to be, greeted the Comte
de la Palfe'rine with the particular nod which, while it does
not imply either esteem or intimacy, conveys to all the
world, "We are of the same race, the same blood equals!"
And this greeting, the shibboleth of the aristocracy, was
invented to be the despair of the upper citizen class.

Carabine placed Combabus on her left, and the Due
d'He'rouville on her right Cydalise was next to the Bra-
zilian, and beyond her was Bixiou. Malaga sat by the
Duke.



484 BALZAC'S WORKS

Oysters appeared at seven o'clock; at eight they were
drinking iced punch. Every one is familiar with the bill
of fare of such a banquet. By nine o'clock they were talk-
ing as people talk after forty-two bottles of various wines,
drunk by fourteen persons. Dessert was on the table, the
odious dessert of the month of April. Of all the party,
the only one affected by the heady atmosphere was Cydalise,
who was humming a tune. None of the party, with the
exception of the poor country girl, had lost their reason;
the drinkers and the women were the experienced elite of
the society that sups. Their wits were bright, their eyes
glistened, but with no loss of intelligence, though the talk
drifted into satire, anecdote, and gossip. Conversation,
hitherto confined to the inevitable circle of racing, horses,
hammerings on the Bourse, the different occupations of the
lions themselves, and the scandals of the town, showed a
tendency to break up into intimate tete-a-t8te, the dialogues
of two hearts.

And at this stage, at a signal from Carabine to Leon
de Lora, Bixiou, la Palferine, and du Tillet, love came
under discussion.

"A doctor in good society never talks of medicine, true
nobles never speak of their ancestors, men of genius do not
discuss their works," said Josepha; "why should we talk
business? If I got the opera put off in order to dine here,
it was assuredly not to work. So let us change the subject,
dear children."

"But we are speaking of real love, my beauty," said
Malaga, "of the love that makes a man fling all to the dogs
father, mother, wife, children and retire to Clichy. "

"Talk away, then, 'don't know yer,' " said the singer.

The slang words, borrowed from the street Arab, and



COUSIN BETTY 485

spoken by these women, may be a poem on their lips,
helped by the expression of the eyes and face.

"What, do I not love you, Jose'pha?" said the Duke
in a low voice.

"You, perhaps, may love me truly," said she in his ear,
and she smiled. "But I do not love you in the way they
describe, with such love as makes the world dark in the
absence of the man beloved. You are delightful to me,
useful but not indispensable; and if you were to throw
me over to-morrow, I could have three dukes for one."

"Is true love to be found in Paris?" asked Le*on de
Lora. "Men have not even time to make a fortune; how
can they give themselves over to true love, which swamps
a man as water melts sugar? A man must be enormously
rich to indulge in it, for love annihilates him for instance,
like our Brazilian friend over there. As I said long ago,
'Extremes defeat themselves.' A true lover is like a
eunuch; women have ceased to exist for him. He is mys-
tical; he is like the true Christian, an anchorite of the
desert! See our noble Brazilian."

Every one at table looked at Henri Months de Mon-
tejanos, who was shy at finding every eye centred on
him.

"He has been feeding there for an hour without discov-
ering, any more than an ox at pasture, that he is sitting
next to I will not say, in such company, the loveliest
but the freshest woman in all Paris."

"Everything is fresh here, even the fish; it is what the
house is famous for," said Carabine.

Baron Months looked good-naturedly at the painter, and
said:

"Very good! I drink to your very good health," and



486 BALZAC'S WORKS

bowing to Leon de Lora, he lifted his glass of port wine
and drank it with much dignity.

"Are you, then, truly in love?" asked Malaga of her
neighbor, thus interpreting his toast.

The Brazilian refilled his glass, bowed to Carabine, and
drank again.

"To the lady's health, then I" said the courtesan, in such
a droll tone that Lora, du Tillet, and Bixiou burst out
laughing.

The Brazilian sat like a bronze statue. This impassi-
bility provoked Carabine. She knew perfectly well that
Montes was devoted to Madame Marneffe, but she had
not expected this dogged fidelity, this obstinate silence
of conviction.

A woman is as often gauged by the attitude of her lover
as a man is judged from the tone of his mistress. The
Baron was proud of his attachment to Valerie, and of hers
to him; his smile had, to these experienced connoisseurs,
a touch of irony; he was really grand to look upon; wine
had not flushed him; and his eyes, with their peculiar
lustre as of tarnished gold, kept the secrets of his soul.
Even Carabine said to herself:

"What a woman she must be! How she has sealed up
that heart!"

"He is a rock!" said Bixiou in an undertone, imagining
that the whole thing was a practical joke, and never sus-
pecting the importance to Carabine of reducing this fortress.

While this conversation, apparently so frivolous, was
going on at Carabine's right, the discussion of love was
continued on her left between the Due d'He'rouville, Lou-
steau, Jose'pha, Jenny Cadine, and Massol. They were
wondering whether such rare phenomena were the result



COUSIN BETTY 487

of passion, obstinacy, or affection. Jose'pha, bored to death
by it all, tried to change the subject.

"You are talking of what you know nothing about. Is
there a man among you who ever loved a woman a woman
beneath him enough to squander his fortune and his chil-
dren's, to sacrifice his future and blight his past, to risk
going to the hulks for robbing the Government, to kill an
uncle and a brother, to let his eyes be so effectually blinded
that he did not even perceive that it was done to hinder his
seeing the abyss into which, as a crowning jest, he was
being driven? Du Tillet has a cash-box under the left
breast; Leon de Lora has his wit; Bixiou would laugh at
himself for a fool if he loved any one but himself; Massol
has a minister's portfolio in the place of a heart; Lousteau
can have nothing but viscera, since he could endure to be
thrown over by Madame de Baudraye; Monsieur le Due
is too rich to prove his love by his ruin; Yauvinet is not
in it I do not regard a bill-broker as one of the human
race; and you have never loved, nor I, nor Jenny Cadine,
nor Malaga. For my part, I never but once even saw the
phenomenon I have described. It was," and she turned
to Jenny Cadine, "that poor Baron Hulot, whom I am
going to advertise for like a lost dog, for I want to find
him."

"Oh, ho!" said Carabine to herself, and looking keenly
at Jose'pha, "then Madame Nourrisson has two pictures by
Eafael, since Jose'pha is playing my hand!"

"Poor fellow," said Vauvinet, "he was a great man!
Magnificent! And what a figure, what a style, the air of
Francis I.! "What a volcano! and how full of ingenious
ways of getting money! He must be looking for it now,
wherever he is, and I make no doubt he extracts it even



488 BALZAC'S WORKS

from the walls built of bones that you may see in the
suburbs of Paris near the city gates "

"And all that," said Bixiou, "for that little Madame
Marneffe! There is a precious hussy for you!"

"She is just going to marry my friend Crevel, " said du
Tillet.

"And she is madly in love with my friend Steinbock,"
Leon de Lora put in.

These three phrases were like so many pistol-shots fired
pointblank at Montes. He turned white, and the shock
was so painful that he rose with difficulty.

"You are a set of blackguards!" cried he. "You have
no right to speak the name of an honest woman in the same
breath with those of fallen creatures above all, not to make
it a mark for your slander!"

He was interrupted by unanimous bravos and applause.
Bixiou, Le*on de Lora, Yauvinet, du Tillet, and Massol set
the example, and there was a chorus.

"Hurrah for the Emperor!" said Bixiou.

"Crown him! crown him!" cried Yauvinet.

"Three groans for such a good dog! Hurrah for Bra-
zil!" cried Lousteau.

"So, my copper-colored Baron, it is our Yale"rie that
you love; and you are not disgusted?" said Le*on de
Lora.

"His remark is not parliamentary, but it is grand!"
observed Massol.

"But, my most delightful customer," said du Tillet,
"you were recommended to me; I am your banker; your
innocence reflects on my credit."

"Yes, tell me, you who are a reasonable creature " said
the Brazilian to the banker.



COUSIN BETTY 489

"Thanks on behalf of the company," said Bixiou with
a bow.

"Tell me the real facts," Montes went on, heedless of
Bixiou's interjection.

"Well, then," replied du Tillet, "I have the honor to
tell you that I am asked to the Crevel wedding."

"Ah, ha! Coinbabus holds a brief for Madame MarneffeF'
said Josepha, rising solemnly.

She went round to Months with a tragic look, patted him
kindly on the head, looked at him for a moment with comi-
cal admiration, and nodded sagely.

"Hulot was the first instance of love through fire and
water," said she; "this is the second. But it ought not to
count, as it conies from the Tropics. ' '

Montes had dropped into his chair again, when Josepha
gently touched his forehead and looked at du Tillet as he
said

"If I am the victim of a Paris jest, if you only wanted
to get at my secret " and he sent a flashing look round the
table, embracing all the guests in a flaming glance that
blazed with the sun of Brazil "I beg of you as a favor to
tell me so," he went on, in a tone of almost childlike en-
treaty; "but do not vilify the woman I love."

"Nay, indeed," said Carabine in a low voice; "but if,
on the contrary, you are shamefully betrayed, cheated,
tricked by Valerie, if I should give you the proof in an
hour, in my own house, what then?"

"I cannot tell you before all these lagos, " said the
Brazilian.

Carabine understood him to say magots (baboons).

"Well, well, say no more!" she replied, smiling.
"Do not make yourself a laughing-stock for all the



90 BALZAC'S WORKS

wittiest men in Paris; come to my house, we will talk
it over."

Montes was crushed. "Proofs," he stammered; "con-
sider ' '

"Only too many," replied Carabine; "and if the mere
suspicion hits you so hard, I fear for your reason."

"Is this creature obstinate, I ask you? He is worse
than the late lamented King of Holland ! I say, Lousteau,
Bixiou, Massol, all the crew of you, are you not invited to
breakfast with Madame Marneffe the day after to-morrow?"
said Le"on de Lora.

"Ya," said du Tillet; "I have the honor of assuring
you, Baron, that if you had by any chance thought of
marrying Madame Marneffe, you are thrown out like a bill
in Parliament, beaten by a blackball called Crevel. My
friend, my old comrade Crevel, has eighty thousand francs
a year; and you, I suppose, did not show such a good
hand, for if you had, you, I imagine, would have been
preferred. ' '

Montes listened with a half -absent, half-smiling expres-
sion, which struck them all with terror.

At this moment the head-waiter came to whisper to
Carabine that a lady, a relation of hers, was in the
drawing-room and wished to speak to her.

Carabine rose and went out to find Madame Nourrisson,
decently veiled with black lace.

"Well, child, am I to go to your house ? Has he taken
the hook?"

"Yes, mother; and the pistol is so fully loaded that my
only fear is that it will burst," said Carabine.

About an hour later, Montes, Cydalise, and Carabine,
returning from the Eocher de Cancale, entered Carabine's



COUSIN BETTY 491

little sitting-room in the Rue Saint- Georges. Madame
Nourrisson was sitting in an armchair by the fire.

"Here is my worthy old aunt," said Carabine.

"Yes, child, I came in person to fetch my little allow-
ance. You would have forgotten me, though you are
kind-hearted, and I have some bills to pay to-morrow.
Buying and selling clothes, I am always short of cash.
W ho is this at your heels ? The gentleman looks very
much put out about something."

The dreadful Madame Nourrisson, at this moment so
completely disguised as to look like a respectable old body,
rose to embrace Carabine, one of the hundred and odd
courtesans she had launched on their horrible career of
vice.

"He is an Othello who is not to be taken in, whom I
have the honor of introducing to you Monsieur le Baron
Months de Montejanos."

"Oh! I have heard him talked about, and know his
name. You are nicknamed Combabus, because you love
but one woman; and in Paris that is the same as loving
no one at all. And is it by chance the object of your affec-
tions who is fretting you? Madame Marneffe, Crevel's
woman ? I tell you what, my dear sir, you may bless your
stars instead of cursing them. She is a good-for-nothing
baggage, is that little woman. I know her tricks!"

"Get along," said Carabine, into whose hand Madame
Nourrisson had slipped a note while embracing her, "you
do not know your Brazilians. They are wrong-headed
creatures that insist on being impaled through the heart.
The more jealous they are, the more jealous they want to
be. Mosieur talks of dealing death all round, but he will
kill nobody because he is in love. However, I have brought



492 BALZAC'S WORKS

him here to give him the proofs of his discomfiture, which
I have got from that little Steinbock. "

Montes was drunk; he listened as if the women were
talking about somebody else.

Carabine went to take off her velvet wrap, and read a
fac-simile of a note, as follows:

"DEAR Puss He dines with Popinot this evening, and
will come to fetch me from the Opera at eleven. I shall go
out at about half -past five and count on finding you at our
paradise. Order dinner to be sent in from the Maison d'or.
Dress, so as to be able to take me to the Opera. We shall
have four hours to ourselves. Eeturn this note to me; not
that your Valerie doubts you I would give you my life,
my fortune, and my honor, but I am afraid of the tricks
of chance."

"Here, Baron, this is the note sent to Count Steinbock
this morning ; read the address. The original document is
burned."

Montes turned the note over and over, recognized the
writing, and was struck by a rational idea, which is suffi-
cient evidence of the disorder of his brain.

"And, pray," said he, looking at Carabine, "what object
have you in torturing my heart, for you must have paid
very dear for the privilege of having the note in your pos-
session long enough to get it lithographed ? ' '

"Foolish man!" said Carabine, at a nod from Madame
Nourrisson, "don't you see that poor child Cydalise a girl
of sixteen, who has been pining for you these three months,
till she has lost her appetite for food or drink, and who is
heartbroken because you have never even glanced at her?"



COUSIN BETTY 493

Cydalise put her handkerchief to her eyes with an ap-
pearance of emotion "She is furious," Carabine went on,
"though she looks as if butter would not melt in her mouth,
furious to see the man she adores duped by a villanous
hussy; she would kill Vale'rie "

"Oh, as for that," said the Brazilian, "that is my
business ! ' '

"What, killing?" said old Nourrisson. "No, my son,
we don't do that here nowadays."

"Oh!" said Months, "I am not a native of this country.
I live in a parish where I can laugh at your laws; and if
you give me proof "

"Well, that note. Is that nothing?"

"No," said the Brazilian. "I do not believe in the
writing. I must see for myself."

"See!" cried Carabine, taking the hint at once from
a gesture of her supposed aunt. "You shall see, my dear
Tiger, all you can wish to see on one condition."

"And that is?"

"Look at Cydalise."

At a wink from Madame Nourrisson, Cydalise cast a
tender look at the Baron.

"Will you be good to her? Will you make her a
home ? ' ' asked Carabine. ' ' A girl of such beauty is well
worth a house and a carriage! It would be a monstrous
shame to leave her to walk the streets. And besides she
is in debt. How much do you owe?" asked Carabine,
nipping Cydalise 's arm.

"She is worth all she can get," said the old woman.
"The point is that she can find a buyer."

"Listen!" cried Montes, fully aware at last of this mas-
terpiece of womankind, "you will show me Valerie "



BALZAC'S WORKS

"And Count Steinbock. Certainly!" said Madame
Nourrisson.

For the past ten minutes the old woman had been watch
ing the Brazilian; she saw that he was an instrument tuned
up to the murderous pitch she needed; and, above all, so
effectually blinded that he would never heed who had led
him on to it, and she spoke:

"Cydalise, my Brazilian jewel, is my niece, so her con-
cerns are partly mine. All this catastrophe will be the
work of a few minutes, for a friend of mine lets the fur-
nished room to Count Steinbock where Valerie is at this
moment taking coffee a queer sort of coffee, but she
calls it her coffee. So let us understand each other,
Brazil! I like Brazil, it is a hot country. What is to
become of my niece?"

"You old ostrich," said Months, the plumes in the
woman's bonnet catching his eye, "you interrupted me.
If you show me if I see Valerie and that artist
together "

"As you would wish to be " said Carabine; "that
is understood."

"Then I will take this girl and carry her away "

"Where?" asked Carabine.

"To Brazil," replied the Baron. "I will make her my
wife. My uncle left me ten leagues square of entailed
estate; that is how I still have that house and home, i
have a hundred negroes nothing but negroes and negresses
and negro brats, all bought by my uncle "

"Nephew to a nigger- driver," said Carabine, with a
grimace. "That needs some consideration. Cydalise,
child, are you fond of the blacks?"

"Poohl Carabine, no nonsense," said the old woman.



COUSIN BETTY 495

"The deuce is in it! Monsieur and I are doing busi-
ness. ' '

"If I take up another Frenchwoman, I mean to have her
to myself," the Brazilian went on. "I warn you, Madem-
oiselle, I am king there, and not a constitutional king.
I am Czar; my subjects are mine by purchase, and no one
can escape from my kingdom, which is a hundred leagues
from any human settlement, hemmed in by savages on the
interior, and divided from the sea by a wilderness as wide
as France."

"I should prefer a garret here."

"So thought I," said Montes. "since I sold all my land
and possessions at Bio to come back to Madame Marneffe."

"A man does not make such a voyage for nothing,"
remarked Madame Nourrisson. "You have a right to look
for love for your own sake, particularly being so good
looking. Oh, he is very handsome!" said she to Carabine.

"Very handsome, handsomer than the Postilion de Long-
jumeau," replied the courtesan.

Cydalise took the Brazilian's hand, but he released it as
politely as he could.

"I came back for Madame Marneffe." the man went on
where he had left off. "but you do not know why I was
three years thinking about it."

"No, Savage!" said Carabine.

"Well, she had so repeatedly told me that she longed
to live with me alone in a desert "

"Oh, ho! he is not a savage after all," cried Carabine,
with a shout of laughter. "He is of the highly-civilized
tribe of Flats!"

"She had told me this so often," Montes went on, re-
gardless of the courtesan's mockery, u that I had a lovely



496 BALZAC'S WORKS

house fitted up in the heart of that vast estate. I came
back to France to fetch Valerie, and the first evening I
saw her

"Saw her is very proper?" said Carabine. "I will
remember it."

"She told me to wait till that wretched Marneffe was
dead; and I agreed, and forgave her for having admitted
the attentions of Hulot. Whether the devil had her in
hand I don't know, but from that instant that woman has