Poor Relations

_La Cousine Bette_ was perhaps the last really great thing that Balzac did--for _Le Cousin Pons_, which now follows it, was actually written before--and it is beyond all questio...

As she came and went, the Baroness, seen by nobody, allowed her face to betray all her thoughts, and any one who could have seen her would have been shocked to see her agitation...

"Go," said Madame Hulot. "Go, monsieur, and never let me see you again. But for the necessity in which you placed me to learn the secret of your cowardly conduct with regard to...

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...

Cousin Betty, who, since her first arrival in Paris, had been bitten by a mania for shawls, was bewitched by the idea of owning the yellow cashmere given to his wife by the Baro...

Between the little gate leading to the Bridge of the Carrousel and the Rue du Musee, every one having come to Paris, were it but for a few days, must have seen a dozen of houses...

In 1833 Mademoiselle Fischer, who sometimes worked into the night when business was good, at about one o'clock one morning perceived a strong smell of carbonic acid gas, and hea...

Though the Baron had been familiar with Imperial luxury, which was undoubtedly prodigious, while its productions, though not durable in kind, had nevertheless cost enormous sums...

This adventure, patriarchal in its simplicity, came admirably _a propos_ to the unconfessed poverty of the family; the Baron, while praising his daughter for her candor, explain...

The question having come to this point between Hector and Valerie, it is not astonishing that Valerie should have heard from Hector the secret of the intended marriage between t...

"Very well. And on Saturday, Monsieur Rivet, you shall have the flat tassels.--By the way, I am moving from the Rue du Doyenne; I am going to live in the Rue Vanneau."

"But these," she said in a deep voice, "are _Hortensias_. How is it that you have never made anything in wax for me? Is it so difficult to design a pin, a little box--what not,...

"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 th...

Providence has, no doubt, vouchsafed protection to clerks and middle-class citizens, for whom obstacles of this kind are at least double in the sphere in which they move. At the...

Between the market and the master's table the servants have their secret toll, and the municipality of Paris is less sharp in collecting the city-dues than the servants are in t...

Hortense's absence of mind, with her brother's and the Baroness' deep dejection, made the dinner a melancholy meal, especially with the added chill of the Marshal's utter deafne...

"Where?" said Valerie, with one of the pretty sneers by which a woman makes fun of a man she is sure of. "Paris is the only place where we can live happy. I care too much for yo...

On reaching the Rue du Dauphin, which had not yet been widened, Crevel stopped before a door in a wall. It opened into a long corridor paved with black-and-white marble, and ser...

The habit of creativeness, the indefatigable love of motherhood which makes a mother--that miracle of nature which Raphael so perfectly understood--the maternity of the brain, i...

Lisbeth had been to market, and the dinner was to be one of those superfine meals which Mathurine had been wont to cook for her Bishop when he entertained the prelate of the adj...

Wenceslas got home at about one in the morning; Hortense had expected him ever since half-past nine. From half-past nine till ten she had listened to the passing carriages, tell...

"Valerie," replied Marneffe, assuming an attitude like Crevel, "I hope that Monsieur le Baron Hulot will take proper charge of his son, and not lay the burden on a poor clerk. I...

"I _will_ be, Monsieur le Baron," Marneffe coldly repeated, looking alternately at the Baron and at Valerie. "You have placed my wife in a position that necessitates her making...

"You cannot conceive of my fury, for you cannot know how he treated me, and the foul words he vomited on your Valerie. Such words would disgrace my paper; a woman such as I am--...

"Leave your pocketbook where it is," said the man, as crushing as a thunder-clap. "Here is the letter.--I now know all I want to know. Madame Marneffe, of course, was aware of w...

The Baroness, recalling this conversation, would have liked to consult Cousin Betty; but there was no time for that. Poor Adeline, incapable of imagining a patch, of pinning a r...

"Yes," she went on, in reply to a negative on Crevel's part, "I have fouled my life, till now so pure, by a degrading thought; and I am inexcusable!--I know it!--I deserve every...

At the same hour Baron Hulot was quitting the War Office to call on his chief, Marshal the Prince de Wissembourg, who had sent for him. Though there was nothing extraordinary in...

"Good, my dear," said the old soldier. "I hope I may live to reward you. But I did not doubt you; you are a true Republican, a daughter of the people." He took the old maid's ha...

"You will dine with the Duke. My d'Herouville will receive you as civilly as if you were the saviour of the State; and to-morrow you can decide. Come, be jolly, old boy! Life is...

And presently the Baroness came down the garden steps and joined the party. At fifty-five, though crushed by so many troubles, and constantly trembling as if shivering with ague...

"Well, madame, you know everything," said the old woman, smiling. "Well, if my girl had never known that scamp, she would now be--Still, she was in luck, all the same, you will...

"Thanks to Celestine's fortune," replied Victorin. "And if you regret having given to your daughter as a present from yourself, a sum which is not half what her mother left her,...

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 cashm...

"I will kill her," he calmly repeated. "You called me a savage.--Do you imagine that I am fool enough to go, like a Frenchman, and buy poison at the chemist's shop?--During the...

"At this very time you see in me a sort of scientific rapture, and many superficial judges would regard me as a man devoid of feeling. I have to announce a discovery to-morrow t...

The stove-fitter's wife signed to her eldest girl, who ran off. Ten minutes later she returned, leading by the hand a child of fifteen and a half, a beauty of the Italian type....

"Parents may hinder their children's marriage, but children cannot interfere with the insane acts of their parents in their second childhood," said Maitre Hulot to Maitre Popino...

Pons was of the opinion of Chenavard, the print-collector, who laid it down as an axiom--that you only fully enjoy the pleasure of looking at your Ruysdael, Hobbema, Holbein, Ra...

One thing remains to be said of the characters of the pair of friends; but this one thing is precisely the hardest to make clear to ninety-nine readers out of a hundred in this...

Mme. de Marville, ignorant and vain, was unwilling to appear to receive the slightest trifle from the parasite; and here her ignorance served her admirably, she did not even kno...

Any one passing along the Rue de Normandie might be pardoned for thinking that he was in some small provincial town. Grass runs to seed in the street, everybody knows everybody...

For nearly three months Pons and Schmucke dined together every day. Pons was obliged to retrench at once; for dinner at forty-five francs a month and wine at thirty-five meant p...

Like most men who are ruled by their wives, the President asserted his independence in trifles, in which his wife was very careful not to thwart him. For a month he was satisfie...

All the demonstrative friendliness of mother and daughter was lined with a formidable longing for revenge, evidently postponed. For the first time in Amelie de Marville's life s...

Camusot senior, the President and his wife, Cecile, Brunner, Berthier, and Pons were now left together; for it was assumed that the formal demand for Cecile's hand was about to...

"Poor man! who can have vexed him? There isn't nobody like him on earth except his friend M. Schmucke. I will find out what is the matter, and I will undertake to give them that...

"You are a ruffian to treat me so," wept La Cibot, now released,--"me that would go through fire and water for you both! Ah! well, well, they say that that is the way with men--...

"The mistress will not put herself in that state twice in a month," said the servant, as she went with La Cibot to the landing. "She would do herself to death if she did, it tir...

"That is right," said the portress, as she took away the empty glass. "That is the way to get better. Dr. Poulain had another patient ill of your complaint; but he had nobody to...

Again the three thieves looked each other in the face, each one of them overcome with the keenest of all joys--sated greed. All of a sudden the sick man's voice rang through the...

Are the hatreds and jealousies of democracy incomprehensible after this? Ambitious and continually thwarted, he could not reproach himself. He had once already tried his fortune...

The room was a complete picture of a third-rate solicitor's office; with the stained wooden cases, the letter-files so old that they had grown beards (in ecclesiastical language...

"And feel no remorse?" he interrupted quickly. "Eh! it is precisely for that that men of business were invented; unless you keep within the law, you get nothing. You know nothin...

"Come here, I have something to say to you," said La Cibot. "M. Pons' heirs are about to make a stir; they are capable of giving us a lot of trouble. God knows what might come o...

"Yes. Wait a moment, and I will write to ask him to dine with us to-morrow. I want to see him, so that he may act in concert to repair the injustice to which you have fallen a v...

"Buy shares in the Orleans Railway," said he; "they are thirty francs below par, you will double your capital in three years. They will give you scraps of paper, which you keep...

Then Dr. Poulain fell back on himself and science and got out of the difficulty with a theory. A sedentary life in a damp room; a cramped position before the barred window--thes...

"Dear child, I can trust no one else to find me a notary, an honest man, and send him here to make my will to-morrow morning at half-past nine precisely. I want to leave all tha...

At daybreak, when Remonencq had taken down his shutters and left his sister in charge of the shop, he came, after his wont of late, to inquire for his good friend Cibot. The por...

Schmucke, left alone in the room, smiled to himself like a madman free at last to gratify a desire like the longing of pregnancy. He flung himself down beside Pons, and yet agai...

The cold-blooded lawyer remained a moment to speak to the two women on the landing. "Stop here, and let nobody come in," he said, "especially if you wish to remain in charge, Mm...

"Oh, under any circumstances a man has a right to die," the clerk answered, laughing; "most of our business relates to wills. But, in my experience, the universal legatee very s...

"Oh! Here are two hundred vrancs to bay for eferydings . . ." said Schmucke. "But, mein friend, your Montame Dobinard is ver' nice; you shall marry her, is it not so? I shall gi...