Chapter 12

“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----”

“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 personages have a regard for my brother and for me, and I hope to succeed in securing for you a commission for sculpture at Versailles up to a quarter of the whole sum. You will have orders from the City of Paris and from the Chamber 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, clasping hands with the young sculptor to conclude the bargain, “you have my consent. We will sign the contract on Sunday next, and the wedding shall be on the following Saturday, my wife’s fete-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 solution 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 DEAR WENCESLAS,--I went to fetch you at ten o’clock this morning to introduce you to a Royal Highness who wishes to see you. There I learned that the duns had had you conveyed to a certain little domain--chief town, _Clichy 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 future prospects if you 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 sniffing 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,

“STIDMANN.

“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 sheets of purple, without a rose-leaf to wrinkle them, that Favor can make for us--Favor, the halting 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 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 disasters await them. Nothing can demonstrate more completely 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 prepared to leave the thirty thousand francs’ worth of bills in his hands; but the old man would not let him go, observing 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.

“Go on three doors further, and I will tell you why,” said Fischer.

“Here, young man,” he said, returning to count out the 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 endorsing 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 forage; 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.”

“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 Rue 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 exposed. 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 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 sure of them. This, Uncle Fischer, is a dead secret between us. I know you well, and I have spoken out without concealment or circumlocution.”

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

“For two years, You will have made a hundred thousand francs of your own to live happy on in the Vosges.”

“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 grand-niece 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 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 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 the eighty thousand francs,” said Hulot, producing the document form his pocket.

“But if you should lose your place?” said the millionaire Baron, laughing.

The other Baron--not a millionaire--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 short of cash? for the Bank will take your signature.”

“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 Josepha on your hands!” replied Nucingen, “and that accounts for everything. Between ourselves, the Duc d’Herouville has done you a very good turn by removing that leech from sucking your purse dry. ‘I have known what that 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 apprentice 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 the 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 passions--one of the best administrative officials under Napoleon--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 at 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 upholsterers, he talked to the workmen, he kept a sharp lookout on the smallest details of the house in the Rue Vanneau. Wholly devoted to Madame Marneffe, he nevertheless attended the sittings of the Chambers; he was everywhere at 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 apartment, Hector allayed his wife’s astonishment by this ministerial communication:--

“Now, Adeline, our girl is married; all our anxieties on the 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 a 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 husband, 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 Rue Plumet a very good flat on the first floor, handsome, splendidly paneled, 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 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 I 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, I 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 Madame 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 matter of course to the party given for the signing of the marriage-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, but as a Major he 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 me, pray, by gracing my house with your presence now and then to meet your children. Be quite easy; I will never say anything of 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 for ever over a petticoat? Come; this 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 from the vanquished to the conquerer.”

The conversation, begun in this strain, ended in a complete 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 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 Nucingen signed in behalf of the bride, the Comtes de Rastignac 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 little Madame Marneffe was bent on figuring in all her glory amid such an assembly. The Baroness had, a month since, sold her diamonds to set up her daughter’s house, while keeping the finest for the trousseau. The sale realized fifteen thousand francs, of which five thousand were sunk in Hortense’s clothes. And what was ten thousand francs for the furniture of the young folks’ apartment, considering the demands of modern luxury? However, young Monsieur and Madame Hulot, old Crevel, and the Comte de Forzheim made very handsome presents, for the old soldier had set aside a sum for the purchase of plate. Thanks to these contributions, even an exacting Parisian would have been pleased with the rooms the young couple had taken in the Rue Saint-Dominique, near the Invalides. Everything seemed in harmony with their love, pure, honest, and sincere.

At last the great day dawned--for it was to be a great day not only for Wenceslas and Hortense, but for old Hulot too. Madame Marneffe was to give a house-warming in her new apartment the day after becoming Hulot’s mistress _en titre_, and after the marriage of the lovers.

Who but has once in his life been a guest at a wedding-ball? Every reader can refer to his reminiscences, and will probably smile as he calls up the images of all that company in their Sunday-best faces as well as their finest frippery.

If any social event can prove the influence of environment, is it not this? In fact, the Sunday-best mood of some reacts so effectually on the rest that the men who are most accustomed to wearing full dress look just like those to whom the party is a high festival, unique in their life. And think too of the serious old men to whom such things are so completely a matter of indifference, that they are wearing their everyday black coats; the long-married men, whose faces betray their sad experience of the life the young pair are but just entering on; and the lighter elements, present as carbonic-acid gas is in champagne; and the envious girls, the women absorbed in wondering if their dress is a success, the poor relations whose parsimonious “get-up” contrasts with that of the officials in uniform; and the greedy ones, thinking only of the supper; and the gamblers, thinking only of cards.

There are some of every sort, rich and poor, envious and envied, philosophers and dreamers, all grouped like the plants in a flower-bed round the rare, choice blossom, the bride. A wedding-ball is an epitome of the world.

At the liveliest moment of the evening Crevel led the Baron aside, and said in a whisper, with the most natural manner possible:

“By Jove! that’s a pretty woman--the little lady in pink who has opened a racking fire on you from her eyes.”

“Which?”

“The wife of that clerk you are promoting, heaven knows how!--Madame Marneffe.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Listen, Hulot; I will try to forgive you the ill you have done me if only you will introduce me to her--I will take you to Heloise. Everybody is asking who is that charming creature. Are you sure that it will strike no one how and why her husband’s appointment got itself signed?--You happy rascal, she is worth a whole office.--I would serve in her office only too gladly.--Come, cinna, let us be friends.”

“Better friends than ever,” said the Baron to the perfumer, “and I promise you I will be a good fellow. Within a month you shall dine with that little angel.--For it is an angel this time, old boy. And I advise you, like me, to have done with the devils.”

Cousin Betty, who had moved to the Rue Vanneau, into a nice little apartment on the third floor, left the ball at ten o’clock, but came back to see with her own eyes the two bonds bearing twelve hundred francs interest; one of them was the property of the Countess Steinbock, the other was in the name of Madame Hulot.