"Who is the man you always stand at attention to salute?" said a young workman one day to an old captain and pensioner.

"I will tell you, boy," replied the officer.

The "boy" stood resigned, as a man does to listen to an old gossip.

"In 1809," said the captain, "we were covering the flank of the main army, marching on Vienna under the Emperor's command. We came to a bridge defended by three batteries of cannon, one above another, on a sort of cliff; three redoubts like three shelves, and commanding the bridge. We were under Marshal Massena. That man whom you see there was Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and I was one of them. Our columns held one bank of the river, the batteries were on the other. Three times they tried for the bridge, and three times they were driven back. 'Go and find Hulot!' said the Marshal; 'nobody but he and his men can bolt that morsel.' So we came. The General, who was just retiring from the bridge, stopped Hulot under fire, to tell him how to do it, and he was in the way. 'I don't want advice, but room to pass,' said our General coolly, marching across at the head of his men. And then, rattle, thirty guns raking us at once."

"By Heaven!" cried the workman, "that accounts for some of these crutches!"

"And if you, like me, my boy, had heard those words so quietly spoken, you would bow before that man down to the ground! It is not so famous as Arcole, but perhaps it was finer. We followed Hulot at the double, right up to those batteries. All honor to those we left there!" and the old man lifted his hat. "The Austrians were amazed at the dash of it.—The Emperor made the man you saw a Count; he honored us all by honoring our leader; and the King of to-day was very right to make him a Marshal."

"Hurrah for the Marshal!" cried the workman.

"Oh, you may shout—shout away! The Marshal is as deaf as a post from the roar of cannon."

This anecdote may give some idea of the respect with which the Invalides regarded Marshal Hulot, whose Republican proclivities secured him the popular sympathy of the whole quarter of the town.

Sorrow taking hold on a spirit so calm and strict and noble, was a heart-breaking spectacle. The Baroness could only tell lies, with a woman's ingenuity, to conceal the whole dreadful truth from her brother-in-law.

In the course of this miserable morning, the Marshal, who, like all old men, slept but little, had extracted from Lisbeth full particulars as to his brother's situation, promising to marry her as the reward of her revelations. Any one can imagine with what glee the old maid allowed the secrets to be dragged from her which she had been dying to tell ever since she had come into the house; for by this means she made her marriage more certain.

"Your brother is incorrigible!" Lisbeth shouted into the Marshal's best ear.

Her strong, clear tones enabled her to talk to him, but she wore out her lungs, so anxious was she to prove to her future husband that to her he would never be deaf.

"He has had three mistresses," said the old man, "and his wife was an Adeline! Poor Adeline!"

"If you will take my advice," shrieked Lisbeth, "you will use your influence with the Prince de Wissembourg to secure her some suitable appointment. She will need it, for the Baron's pay is pledged for three years."

"I will go to the War Office," said he, "and see the Prince, to find out what he thinks of my brother, and ask for his interest to help my sister. Think of some place that is fit for her."

"The charitable ladies of Paris, in concert with the Archbishop, have formed various beneficent associations; they employ superintendents, very decently paid, whose business it is to seek out cases of real want. Such an occupation would exactly suit dear Adeline; it would be work after her own heart."

"Send to order the horses," said the Marshal. "I will go and dress. I will drive to Neuilly if necessary."

"How fond he is of her! She will always cross my path wherever I turn!" said Lisbeth to herself.

Lisbeth was already supreme in the house, but not with the Marshal's cognizance. She had struck terror into the three servants—for she had allowed herself a housemaid, and she exerted her old-maidish energy in taking stock of everything, examining everything, and arranging in every respect for the comfort of her dear Marshal. Lisbeth, quite as Republican as he could be, pleased him by her democratic opinions, and she flattered him with amazing dexterity; for the last fortnight the old man, whose house was better kept, and who was cared for as a child by its mother, had begun to regard Lisbeth as a part of what he had dreamed of.

"My dear Marshal," she shouted, following him out on to the steps, "pull up the windows, do not sit in a draught, to oblige me!"

The Marshal, who had never been so cosseted in his life, went off smiling at Lisbeth, though his heart was aching.

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 one of the Generals on the Board being sent for, Hulot's conscience was so uneasy that he fancied he saw a cold and sinister expression in Mitouflet's face.

"Mitouflet, how is the Prince?" he asked, locking the door of his private room and following the messenger who led the way.

"He must have a crow to pluck with you, Monsieur le Baron," replied the man, "for his face is set at stormy."

Hulot turned pale, and said no more; he crossed the anteroom and reception rooms, and, with a violently beating heart, found himself at the door of the Prince's private study.

The chief, at this time seventy years old, with perfectly white hair, and the tanned complexion of a soldier of that age, commanded attention by a brow so vast that imagination saw in it a field of battle. Under this dome, crowned with snow, sparkled a pair of eyes, of the Napoleon blue, usually sad-looking and full of bitter thoughts and regrets, their fire overshadowed by the penthouse of the strongly projecting brow. This man, Bernadotte's rival, had hoped to find his seat on a throne. But those eyes could flash formidable lightnings when they expressed strong feelings.

Then, his voice, always somewhat hollow, rang with strident tones. When he was angry, the Prince was a soldier once more; he spoke the language of Lieutenant Cottin; he spared nothing—nobody. Hulot d'Ervy found the old lion, his hair shaggy like a mane, standing by the fireplace, his brows knit, his back against the mantel-shelf, and his eyes apparently fixed on vacancy.

"Here! At your orders, Prince!" said Hulot, affecting a graceful ease of manner.

The Marshal looked hard at the Baron, without saying a word, during the time it took him to come from the door to within a few steps of where the chief stood. This leaden stare was like the eye of God; Hulot could not meet it; he looked down in confusion.

"He knows everything!" said he to himself.

"Does your conscience tell you nothing?" asked the Marshal, in his deep, hollow tones.

"It tells me, sir, that I have been wrong, no doubt, in ordering razzias in Algeria without referring the matter to you. At my age, and with my tastes, after forty-five years of service, I have no fortune.—You know the principles of the four hundred elect representatives of France. Those gentlemen are envious of every distinction; they have pared down even the Ministers' pay—that says everything! Ask them for money for an old servant!—What can you expect of men who pay a whole class so badly as they pay the Government legal officials?—who give thirty sous a day to the laborers on the works at Toulon, when it is a physical impossibility to live there and keep a family on less than forty sous?—who never think of the atrocity of giving salaries of six hundred francs, up to a thousand or twelve hundred perhaps, to clerks living in Paris; and who want to secure our places for themselves as soon as the pay rises to forty thousand?—who, finally, refuse to restore to the Crown a piece of Crown property confiscated from the Crown in 1830—property acquired, too, by Louis XVI. out of his privy purse!—If you had no private fortune, Prince, you would be left high and dry, like my brother, with your pay and not another sou, and no thought of your having saved the army, and me with it, in the boggy plains of Poland."

"You have robbed the State! You have made yourself liable to be brought before the bench at Assizes," said the Marshal, "like that clerk of the Treasury! And you take this, monsieur, with such levity."

"But there is a great difference, monseigneur!" cried the baron. "Have I dipped my hands into a cash box intrusted to my care?"

"When a man of your rank commits such an infamous crime," said the Marshal, "he is doubly guilty if he does it clumsily. You have compromised the honor of our official administration, which hitherto has been the purest in Europe!—And all for two hundred thousand francs and a hussy!" said the Marshal, in a terrible voice. "You are a Councillor of State—and a private soldier who sells anything belonging to his regiment is punished with death! Here is a story told to me one day by Colonel Pourin of the Second Lancers. At Saverne, one of his men fell in love with a little Alsatian girl who had a fancy for a shawl. The jade teased this poor devil of a lancer so effectually, that though he could show twenty years' service, and was about to be promoted to be quartermaster—the pride of the regiment —to buy this shawl he sold some of his company's kit.—Do you know what this lancer did, Baron d'Ervy? He swallowed some window-glass after pounding it down, and died in eleven hours, of an illness, in hospital.—Try, if you please, to die of apoplexy, that we may not see you dishonored."

Hulot looked with haggard eyes at the old warrior; and the Prince, reading the look which betrayed the coward, felt a flush rise to his cheeks; his eyes flamed.

"Will you, sir, abandon me?" Hulot stammered.

Marshal Hulot, hearing that only his brother was with the Minister, ventured at this juncture to come in, and, like all deaf people, went straight up to the Prince.

"Oh," cried the hero of Poland, "I know what you are here for, my old friend! But we can do nothing."

"Do nothing!" echoed Marshal Hulot, who had heard only the last word.

"Nothing; you have come to intercede for your brother. But do you know what your brother is?"

"My brother?" asked the deaf man.

"Yes, he is a damned infernal blackguard, and unworthy of you."

The Marshal in his rage shot from his eyes those fulminating fires which, like Napoleon's, broke a man's will and judgment.

"You lie, Cottin!" said Marshal Hulot, turning white. "Throw down your baton as I throw mine! I am ready."

The Prince went up to his old comrade, looked him in the face, and shouted in his ear as he grasped his hand:

"Are you a man?"

"You will see that I am."

"Well, then, pull yourself together! You must face the worst misfortune that can befall you."

The Prince turned round, took some papers from the table, and placed them in the Marshal's hands, saying, "Read that."

The Comte de Forzheim read the following letter, which lay uppermost:—

"To his Excellency the President of the Council.

"Private and Confidential.

"ALGIERS.

"MY DEAR PRINCE,—We have a very ugly business on our hands, as you will see by the accompanying documents.

"The story, briefly told, is this: Baron Hulot d'Ervy sent out to the province of Oran an uncle of his as a broker in grain and forage, and gave him an accomplice in the person of a storekeeper. This storekeeper, to curry favor, has made a confession, and finally made his escape. The Public Prosecutor took the matter up very thoroughly, seeing, as he supposed, that only two inferior agents were implicated; but Johann Fischer, uncle to your Chief of the Commissariat Department, finding that he was to be brought up at the Assizes, stabbed himself in prison with a nail.

"That would have been the end of the matter if this worthy and honest man, deceived, it would seem, by his agent and by his nephew, had not thought proper to write to Baron Hulot. This letter, seized as a document, so greatly surprised the Public Prosecutor, that he came to see me. Now, the arrest and public trial of a Councillor of State would be such a terrible thing—of a man high in office too, who has a good record for loyal service —for after the Beresina, it was he who saved us all by reorganizing the administration—that I desired to have all the papers sent to me.

"Is the matter to take its course? Now that the principal agent is dead, will it not be better to smother up the affair and sentence the storekeeper in default?

"The Public Prosecutor has consented to my forwarding the documents for your perusal; the Baron Hulot d'Ervy, being resident in Paris, the proceedings will lie with your Supreme Court. We have hit on this rather shabby way of ridding ourselves of the difficulty for the moment.

"Only, my dear Marshal, decide quickly. This miserable business is too much talked about already, and it will do as much harm to us as to you all if the name of the principal culprit—known at present only to the Public Prosecutor, the examining judge, and myself—should happen to leak out."

At this point the letter fell from Marshal Hulot's hands; he looked at his brother; he saw that there was no need to examine the evidence. But he looked for Johann Fischer's letter, and after reading it at a glance, held it out to Hector:—

"FROM THE PRISON AT ORAN.

"DEAR NEPHEW,—When you read this letter, I shall have ceased to live.

"Be quite easy, no proof can be found to incriminate you. When I am dead and your Jesuit of a Chardin fled, the trial must collapse. The face of our Adeline, made so happy by you, makes death easy to me. Now you need not send the two hundred thousand francs. Good-bye.

"This letter will be delivered by a prisoner for a short term whom I can trust, I believe.

"JOHANN FISCHER."

"I beg your pardon," said Marshal Hulot to the Prince de Wissembourg with pathetic pride.

"Come, come, say tu, not the formal vous," replied the Minister, clasping his old friend's hand. "The poor lancer killed no one but himself," he added, with a thunderous look at Hulot d'Ervy.

"How much have you had?" said the Comte de Forzheim to his brother.

"Two hundred thousand francs."

"My dear friend," said the Count, addressing the Minister, "you shall have the two hundred thousand francs within forty-eight hours. It shall never be said that a man bearing the name of Hulot has wronged the public treasury of a single sou."

"What nonsense!" said the Prince. "I know where the money is, and I can get it back.—Send in your resignation and ask for your pension!" he went on, sending a double sheet of foolscap flying across to where the Councillor of State had sat down by the table, for his legs gave way under him. "To bring you to trial would disgrace us all. I have already obtained from the superior Board their sanction to this line of action. Since you can accept life with dishonor—in my opinion the last degradation—you will get the pension you have earned. Only take care to be forgotten."

The Minister rang.

"Is Marneffe, the head-clerk, out there?"

"Yes, monseigneur."

"Show him in!"

"You," said the Minister as Marneffe came in, "you and your wife have wittingly and intentionally ruined the Baron d'Ervy whom you see."

"Monsieur le Ministre, I beg your pardon. We are very poor. I have nothing to live on but my pay, and I have two children, and the one that is coming will have been brought into the family by Monsieur le Baron."

"What a villain he looks!" said the Prince, pointing to Marneffe and addressing Marshal Hulot.—"No more of Sganarelle speeches," he went on; "you will disgorge two hundred thousand francs, or be packed off to Algiers."

"But, Monsieur le Ministre, you do not know my wife. She has spent it all. Monsieur le Baron asked six persons to dinner every evening. —Fifty thousand francs a year are spent in my house."

"Leave the room!" said the Minister, in the formidable tones that had given the word to charge in battle. "You will have notice of your transfer within two hours. Go!"

"I prefer to send in my resignation," said Marneffe insolently. "For it is too much to be what I am already, and thrashed into the bargain. That would not satisfy me at all."

And he left the room.

"What an impudent scoundrel!" said the Prince.

Marshal Hulot, who had stood up throughout this scene, as pale as a corpse, studying his brother out of the corner of his eye, went up to the Prince, and took his hand, repeating:

"In forty-eight hours the pecuniary mischief shall be repaired; but honor!—Good-bye, Marshal. It is the last shot that kills. Yes, I shall die of it!" he said in his ear.

"What the devil brought you here this morning?" said the Prince, much moved.

"I came to see what can be done for his wife," replied the Count, pointing to his brother. "She is wanting bread—especially now!"

"He has his pension."

"It is pledged!"

"The Devil must possess such a man," said the Prince, with a shrug. "What philtre do those baggages give you to rob you of your wits?" he went on to Hulot d'Ervy. "How could you—you, who know the precise details with which in French offices everything is written down at full length, consuming reams of paper to certify to the receipt or outlay of a few centimes—you, who have so often complained that a hundred signatures are needed for a mere trifle, to discharge a soldier, to buy a curry-comb—how could you hope to conceal a theft for any length of time? To say nothing of the newspapers, and the envious, and the people who would like to steal!—those women must rob you of your common-sense! Do they cover your eyes with walnut-shells? or are you yourself made of different stuff from us?—You ought to have left the office as soon as you found that you were no longer a man, but a temperament. If you have complicated your crime with such gross folly, you will end—I will not say where——"

"Promise me, Cottin, that you will do what you can for her," said the Marshal, who heard nothing, and was still thinking of his sister-in-law.

"Depend on me!" said the Minister.

"Thank you, and good-bye then!—Come, monsieur," he said to his brother.

The Prince looked with apparent calmness at the two brothers, so different in their demeanor, conduct, and character—the brave man and the coward, the ascetic and the profligate, the honest man and the peculator—and he said to himself:

"That mean creature will not have courage to die! And my poor Hulot, such an honest fellow! has death in his knapsack, I know!"

He sat down again in his big chair and went on reading the despatches from Africa with a look characteristic at once of the coolness of a leader and of the pity roused by the sight of a battle-field! For in reality no one is so humane as a soldier, stern as he may seem in the icy determination acquired by the habit of fighting, and so absolutely essential in the battle-field.

Next morning some of the newspapers contained, under various headings, the following paragraphs:—

"Monsieur le Baron Hulot d'Ervy has applied for his retiring pension. The unsatisfactory state of the Algerian exchequer, which has come out in consequence of the death and disappearance of two employes, has had some share in this distinguished official's decision. On hearing of the delinquencies of the agents whom he had unfortunately trusted, Monsieur le Baron Hulot had a paralytic stroke in the War Minister's private room.

"Monsieur Hulot d'Ervy, brother to the Marshal Comte de Forzheim, has been forty-five years in the service. His determination has been vainly opposed, and is greatly regretted by all who know Monsieur Hulot, whose private virtues are as conspicuous as his administrative capacity. No one can have forgotten the devoted conduct of the Commissary General of the Imperial Guard at Warsaw, or the marvelous promptitude with which he organized supplies for the various sections of the army so suddenly required by Napoleon in 1815.

"One more of the heroes of the Empire is retiring from the stage. Monsieur le Baron Hulot has never ceased, since 1830, to be one of the guiding lights of the State Council and of the War Office."

"ALGIERS.—The case known as the forage supply case, to which some of our contemporaries have given absurd prominence, has been closed by the death of the chief culprit. Johann Wisch has committed suicide in his cell; his accomplice, who had absconded, will be sentenced in default.

"Wisch, formerly an army contractor, was an honest man and highly respected, who could not survive the idea of having been the dupe of Chardin, the storekeeper who has disappeared."

And in the Paris News the following paragraph appeared:

"Monsieur le Marechal the Minister of War, to prevent the recurrence of such scandals for the future, has arranged for a regular Commissariat office in Africa. A head-clerk in the War Office, Monsieur Marneffe, is spoken of as likely to be appointed to the post of director."



"The office vacated by Baron Hulot is the object of much ambition. The appointment is promised, it is said, to Monsieur le Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon, Deputy, brother-in-law to Monsieur le Comte de Rastignac. Monsieur Massol, Master of Appeals, will fill his seat on the Council of State, and Monsieur Claude Vignon becomes Master of Appeals."

Of all kinds of false gossip, the most dangerous for the Opposition newspapers is the official bogus paragraph. However keen journalists may be, they are sometimes the voluntary or involuntary dupes of the cleverness of those who have risen from the ranks of the Press, like Claude Vignon, to the higher realms of power. The newspaper can only be circumvented by the journalist. It may be said, as a parody on a line by Voltaire:

"The Paris news is never what the foolish folk believe."

Marshal Hulot drove home with his brother, who took the front seat, respectfully leaving the whole of the back of the carriage to his senior. The two men spoke not a word. Hector was helpless. The Marshal was lost in thought, like a man who is collecting all his strength, and bracing himself to bear a crushing weight. On arriving at his own house, still without speaking, but by an imperious gesture, he beckoned his brother into his study. The Count had received from the Emperor Napoleon a splendid pair of pistols from the Versailles factory; he took the box, with its inscription. "Given by the Emperor Napoleon to General Hulot," out of his desk, and placing it on the top, he showed it to his brother, saying, "There is your remedy."

Lisbeth, peeping through the chink of the door, flew down to the carriage and ordered the coachman to go as fast as he could gallop to the Rue Plumet. Within about twenty minutes she had brought back Adeline, whom she had told of the Marshal's threat to his brother.

The Marshal, without looking at Hector, rang the bell for his factotum, the old soldier who had served him for thirty years.

"Beau-Pied," said he, "fetch my notary, and Count Steinbock, and my niece Hortense, and the stockbroker to the Treasury. It is now half-past ten; they must all be here by twelve. Take hackney cabs —and go faster than that!" he added, a republican allusion which in past days had been often on his lips. And he put on the scowl that had brought his soldiers to attention when he was beating the broom on the heaths of Brittany in 1799. (See Les Chouans.)

"You shall be obeyed, Marechal," said Beau-Pied, with a military salute.

Still paying no heed to his brother, the old man came back into his study, took a key out of his desk, and opened a little malachite box mounted in steel, the gift of the Emperor Alexander.

By Napoleon's orders he had gone to restore to the Russian Emperor the private property seized at the battle of Dresden, in exchange for which Napoleon hoped to get back Vandamme. The Czar rewarded General Hulot very handsomely, giving him this casket, and saying that he hoped one day to show the same courtesy to the Emperor of the French; but he kept Vandamme. The Imperial arms of Russia were displayed in gold on the lid of the box, which was inlaid with gold.

The Marshal counted the bank-notes it contained; he had a hundred and fifty-two thousand francs. He saw this with satisfaction. At the same moment Madame Hulot came into the room in a state to touch the heart of the sternest judge. She flew into Hector's arms, looking alternately with a crazy eye at the Marshal and at the case of pistols.

"What have you to say against your brother? What has my husband done to you?" said she, in such a voice that the Marshal heard her.

"He has disgraced us all!" replied the Republican veteran, who spoke with a vehemence that reopened one of his old wounds. "He has robbed the Government! He has cast odium on my name, he makes me wish I were dead—he has killed me!—I have only strength enough left to make restitution!

"I have been abased before the Conde of the Republic, the man I esteem above all others, and to whom I unjustifiably gave the lie—the Prince of Wissembourg!—Is that nothing? That is the score his country has against him!"

He wiped away a tear.

"Now, as to his family," he went on. "He is robbing you of the bread I had saved for you, the fruit of thirty years' economy, of the privations of an old soldier! Here is what was intended for you," and he held up the bank-notes. "He has killed his Uncle Fischer, a noble and worthy son of Alsace who could not—as he can—endure the thought of a stain on his peasant's honor.

"To crown all, God, in His adorable clemency, had allowed him to choose an angel among women; he has had the unspeakable happiness of having an Adeline for his wife! And he has deceived her, he has soaked her in sorrows, he has neglected her for prostitutes, for street-hussies, for ballet-girls, actresses—Cadine, Josepha, Marneffe! —And that is the brother I treated as a son and made my pride!

"Go, wretched man; if you can accept the life of degradation you have made for yourself, leave my house! I have not the heart to curse a brother I have loved so well—I am as foolish about him as you are, Adeline—but never let me see him again. I forbid his attending my funeral or following me to the grave. Let him show the decency of a criminal if he can feel no remorse."

The Marshal, as pale as death, fell back on the settee, exhausted by his solemn speech. And, for the first time in his life perhaps, tears gathered in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.

"My poor uncle!" cried Lisbeth, putting a handkerchief to her eyes.

"Brother!" said Adeline, kneeling down by the Marshal, "live for my sake. Help me in the task of reconciling Hector to the world and making him redeem the past."

"He!" cried the Marshal. "If he lives, he is not at the end of his crimes. A man who has misprized an Adeline, who has smothered in his own soul the feelings of a true Republican which I tried to instill into him, the love of his country, of his family, and of the poor —that man is a monster, a swine!—Take him away if you still care for him, for a voice within me cries to me to load my pistols and blow his brains out. By killing him I should save you all, and I should save him too from himself."

The old man started to his feet with such a terrifying gesture that poor Adeline exclaimed:

"Hector—come!"

She seized her husband's arm, dragged him away, and out of the house; but the Baron was so broken down, that she was obliged to call a coach to take him to the Rue Plumet, where he went to bed. The man remained there for several days in a sort of half-dissolution, refusing all nourishment without a word. By floods of tears, Adeline persuaded him to swallow a little broth; she nursed him, sitting by his bed, and feeling only, of all the emotions that once had filled her heart, the deepest pity for him.

At half-past twelve, Lisbeth showed into her dear Marshal's room—for she would not leave him, so much was she alarmed at the evident change in him—Count Steinbock and the notary.

"Monsieur le Comte," said the Marshal, "I would beg you to be so good as to put your signature to a document authorizing my niece, your wife, to sell a bond for certain funds of which she at present holds only the reversion.—You, Mademoiselle Fischer, will agree to this sale, thus losing your life interest in the securities."

"Yes, dear Count," said Lisbeth without hesitation.

"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 hand and kissed it.

"Monsieur Hannequin," he went on, speaking to the notary, "draw up the necessary document in the form of a power of attorney, and let me have it within two hours, so that I may sell the stock on the Bourse to-day. My niece, the Countess, holds the security; she will be here to sign the power of attorney when you bring it, and so will mademoiselle. Monsieur le Comte will be good enough to go with you and sign it at your office."

The artist, at a nod from Lisbeth, bowed respectfully to the Marshal and went away.

Next morning, at ten o'clock, the Comte de Forzheim sent in to announce himself to the Prince, and was at once admitted.

"Well, my dear Hulot," said the Prince, holding out the newspapers to his old friend, "we have saved appearances, you see.—Read."

Marshal Hulot laid the papers on his comrade's table, and held out to him the two hundred thousand francs.

"Here is the money of which my brother robbed the State," said he.

"What madness!" cried the Minister. "It is impossible," he said into the speaking-trumpet handed to him by the Marshal, "to manage this restitution. We should be obliged to declare your brother's dishonest dealings, and we have done everything to hide them."

"Do what you like with the money; but the family shall not owe one sou of its fortune to a robbery on the funds of the State," said the Count.

"I will take the King's commands in the matter. We will discuss it no further," replied the Prince, perceiving that it would be impossible to conquer the old man's sublime obstinacy on the point.

"Good-bye, Cottin," said the old soldier, taking the Prince's hand. "I feel as if my soul were frozen—"

Then, after going a step towards the door, he turned round, looked at the Prince, and seeing that he was deeply moved, he opened his arms to clasp him in them; the two old soldiers embraced each other.

"I feel as if I were taking leave of the whole of the old army in you," said the Count.

"Good-bye, my good old comrade!" said the Minister.

"Yes, it is good-bye; for I am going where all our brave men are for whom we have mourned—"

Just then Claude Vignon was shown in. The two relics of the Napoleonic phalanx bowed gravely to each other, effacing every trace of emotion.

"You have, I hope, been satisfied by the papers," said the Master of Appeals-elect. "I contrived to let the Opposition papers believe that they were letting out our secrets."

"Unfortunately, it is all in vain," replied the Minister, watching Hulot as he left the room. "I have just gone through a leave-taking that has been a great grief to me. For, indeed, Marshal Hulot has not three days to live; I saw that plainly enough yesterday. That man, one of those honest souls that are above proof, a soldier respected by the bullets in spite of his valor, received his death-blow—there, in that armchair—and dealt by my hand, in a letter!—Ring and order my carriage. I must go to Neuilly," said he, putting the two hundred thousand francs into his official portfolio.



Notwithstanding Lisbeth's nursing, Marshal Hulot three days later was a dead man. Such men are the glory of the party they support. To Republicans, the Marshal was the ideal of patriotism; and they all attended his funeral, which was followed by an immense crowd. The army, the State officials, the Court, and the populace all came to do homage to this lofty virtue, this spotless honesty, this immaculate glory. Such a last tribute of the people is not a thing to be had for the asking.

This funeral was distinguished by one of those tributes of delicate feeling, of good taste, and sincere respect which from time to time remind us of the virtues and dignity of the old French nobility. Following the Marshal's bier came the old Marquis de Montauran, the brother of him who, in the great rising of the Chouans in 1799, had been the foe, the luckless foe, of Hulot. That Marquis, killed by the balls of the "Blues," had confided the interests of his young brother to the Republican soldier. (See Les Chouans.) Hulot had so faithfully acted on the noble Royalist's verbal will, that he succeeded in saving the young man's estates, though he himself was at the time an emigre. And so the homage of the old French nobility was not wanting to the leader who, nine years since, had conquered MADAME.

This death, happening just four days before the banns were cried for the last time, came upon Lisbeth like the thunderbolt that burns the garnered harvest with the barn. The peasant of Lorraine, as often happens, had succeeded too well. The Marshal had died of the blows dealt to the family by herself and Madame Marneffe.

The old maid's vindictiveness, which success seemed to have somewhat mollified, was aggravated by this disappointment of her hopes. Lisbeth went, crying with rage, to Madame Marneffe; for she was homeless, the Marshal having agreed that his lease was at any time to terminate with his life. Crevel, to console Valerie's friend, took charge of her savings, added to them considerably, and invested the capital in five per cents, giving her the life interest, and putting the securities into Celestine's name. Thanks to this stroke of business, Lisbeth had an income of about two thousand francs.

When the Marshal's property was examined and valued, a note was found, addressed to his sister-in-law, to his niece Hortense, and to his nephew Victorin, desiring that they would pay among them an annuity of twelve hundred francs to Mademoiselle Lisbeth Fischer, who was to have been his wife.

Adeline, seeing her husband between life and death, succeeded for some days in hiding from him the fact of his brother's death; but Lisbeth came, in mourning, and the terrible truth was told him eleven days after the funeral.

The crushing blow revived the sick man's energies. He got up, found his family collected in the drawing-room, all in black, and suddenly silent as he came in. In a fortnight, Hulot, as lean as a spectre, looked to his family the mere shadow of himself.

"I must decide on something," said he in a husky voice, as he seated himself in an easy-chair, and looked round at the party, of whom Crevel and Steinbock were absent.

"We cannot stay here, the rent is too high," Hortense was saying just as her father came in.

"As to a home," said Victorin, breaking the painful silence, "I can offer my mother——"

As he heard these words, which excluded him, the Baron raised his head, which was sunk on his breast as though he were studying the pattern of the carpet, though he did not even see it, and he gave the young lawyer an appealing look. The rights of a father are so indefeasibly sacred, even when he is a villain and devoid of honor, that Victorin paused.

"To your mother," the Baron repeated. "You are right, my son."

"The rooms over ours in our wing," said Celestine, finishing her husband's sentence.

"I am in your way, my dears?" said the Baron, with the mildness of a man who has judged himself. "But do not be uneasy as to the future; you will have no further cause for complaint of your father; you will not see him till the time when you need no longer blush for him."

He went up to Hortense and kissed her brow. He opened his arms to his son, who rushed into his embrace, guessing his father's purpose. The Baron signed to Lisbeth, who came to him, and he kissed her forehead. Then he went to his room, whither Adeline followed him in an agony of dread.

"My brother was quite right, Adeline," he said, holding her hand. "I am unworthy of my home life. I dared not bless my children, who have behaved so nobly, but in my heart; tell them that I could only venture to kiss them; for the blessing of a bad man, a father who has been an assassin and the scourge of his family instead of its protector and its glory, might bring evil on them; but assure them that I shall bless them every day.—As to you, God alone, for He is Almighty, can ever reward you according to your merits!—I can only ask your forgiveness!" and he knelt at her feet, taking her hands and wetting them with his tears.

"Hector, Hector! Your sins have been great, but Divine Mercy is infinite, and you may repair all by staying with me.—Rise up in Christian charity, my dear—I am your wife, and not your judge. I am your possession; do what you will with me; take me wherever you go, I feel strong enough comfort you, to make life endurable to you, by the strength of my love, my care, and respect.—Our children are settled in life; they need me no more. Let me try to be an amusement to you, an occupation. Let me share the pain of your banishment and of your poverty, and help to mitigate it. I could always be of some use, if it were only to save the expense of a servant."

"Can you forgive, my dearly-beloved Adeline?"

"Yes, only get up, my dear!"

"Well, with that forgiveness I can live," said he, rising to his feet. "I came back into this room that my children should not see their father's humiliation. Oh! the sight constantly before their eyes of a father so guilty as I am is a terrible thing; it must undermine parental influence and break every family tie. So I cannot remain among you, and I must go to spare you the odious spectacle of a father bereft of dignity. Do not oppose my departure Adeline. It would only be to load with your own hand the pistol to blow my brains out. Above all, do not seek me in my hiding-place; you would deprive me of the only strong motive remaining in me, that of remorse."

Hector's decisiveness silenced his dejected wife. Adeline, lofty in the midst of all this ruin, had derived her courage from her perfect union with her husband; for she had dreamed of having him for her own, of the beautiful task of comforting him, of leading him back to family life, and reconciling him to himself.

"But, Hector, would you leave me to die of despair, anxiety, and alarms!" said she, seeing herself bereft of the mainspring of her strength.

"I will come back to you, dear angel—sent from Heaven expressly for me, I believe. I will come back, if not rich, at least with enough to live in ease.—Listen, my sweet Adeline, I cannot stay here for many reasons. In the first place, my pension of six thousand francs is pledged for four years, so I have nothing. That is not all. I shall be committed to prison within a few days in consequence of the bills held by Vauvinet. So I must keep out of the way until my son, to whom I will give full instructions, shall have bought in the bills. My disappearance will facilitate that. As soon as my pension is my own, and Vauvinet is paid off, I will return to you.—You would be sure to let out the secret of my hiding-place. Be calm; do not cry, Adeline —it is only for a month—"

"Where will you go? What will you do? What will become of you? Who will take care of you now that you are no longer young? Let me go with you—we will go abroad—" said she.

"Well, well, we will see," he replied.

The Baron rang and ordered Mariette to collect all his things and pack them quickly and secretly. Then, after embracing his wife with a warmth of affection to which she was unaccustomed, he begged her to leave him alone for a few minutes while he wrote his instructions for Victorin, promising that he would not leave the house till dark, or without her.

As soon as the Baroness was in the drawing-room, the cunning old man stole out through the dressing-closet to the anteroom, and went away, giving Mariette a slip of paper, on which was written, "Address my trunks to go by railway to Corbeil—to Monsieur Hector, cloak-room, Corbeil."

The Baron jumped into a hackney coach, and was rushing across Paris by the time Mariette came to give the Baroness this note, and say that her master had gone out. Adeline flew back into her room, trembling more violently than ever; her children followed on hearing her give a piercing cry. They found her in a dead faint; and they put her to bed, for she was seized by a nervous fever which held her for a month between life and death.

"Where is he?" was the only thing she would say.

Victorin sought for him in vain.

And this is why. The Baron had driven to the Place du Palais Royal. There this man, who had recovered all his wits to work out a scheme which he had premeditated during the days he had spent crushed with pain and grief, crossed the Palais Royal on foot, and took a handsome carriage from a livery-stable in the Rue Joquelet. In obedience to his orders, the coachman went to the Rue de la Ville l'Eveque, and into the courtyard of Josepha's mansion, the gates opening at once at the call of the driver of such a splendid vehicle. Josepha came out, prompted by curiosity, for her man-servant had told her that a helpless old gentleman, unable to get out of his carriage, begged her to come to him for a moment.

"Josepha!—it is I——"

The singer recognized her Hulot only by his voice.

"What? you, poor old man?—On my honor, you look like a twenty-franc piece that the Jews have sweated and the money-changers refuse."

"Alas, yes," replied Hulot; "I am snatched from the jaws of death! But you are as lovely as ever. Will you be kind?"

"That depends," said she; "everything is relative."

"Listen," said Hulot; "can you put me up for a few days in a servant's room under the roof? I have nothing—not a farthing, not a hope; no food, no pension, no wife, no children, no roof over my head; without honor, without courage, without a friend; and worse than all that, liable to imprisonment for not meeting a bill."

"Poor old fellow! you are without most things.—Are you also sans culotte?"

"You laugh at me! I am done for," cried the Baron. "And I counted on you as Gourville did on Ninon."

"And it was a 'real lady,' I am told who brought you to this," said Josepha. "Those precious sluts know how to pluck a goose even better than we do!—Why, you are like a corpse that the crows have done with —I can see daylight through!"

"Time is short, Josepha!"

"Come in, old boy, I am alone, as it happens, and my people don't know you. Send away your trap. Is it paid for?"

"Yes," said the Baron, getting out with the help of Josepha's arm.

"You may call yourself my father if you like," said the singer, moved to pity.

She made Hulot sit down in the splendid drawing-room where he had last seen her.

"And is it the fact, old man," she went on, "that you have killed your brother and your uncle, ruined your family, mortgaged your children's house over and over again, and robbed the Government till in Africa, all for your princess?"

Hulot sadly bent his head.

"Well, I admire that!" cried Josepha, starting up in her enthusiasm. "It is a general flare-up! It is Sardanapalus! Splendid, thoroughly complete! I may be a hussy, but I have a soul! I tell you, I like a spendthrift, like you, crazy over a woman, a thousand times better than those torpid, heartless bankers, who are supposed to be so good, and who ruin no end of families with their rails—gold for them, and iron for their gulls! You have only ruined those who belong to you, you have sold no one but yourself; and then you have excuses, physical and moral."

She struck a tragic attitude, and spouted:

"'Tis Venus whose grasp never parts from her prey.

And there you are!" and she pirouetted on her toe.

Vice, Hulot found, could forgive him; vice smiled on him from the midst of unbridled luxury. Here, as before a jury, the magnitude of a crime was an extenuating circumstance. "And is your lady pretty at any rate?" asked Josepha, trying as a preliminary act of charity, to divert Hulot's thoughts, for his depression grieved her.

"On my word, almost as pretty as you are," said the Baron artfully.

"And monstrously droll? So I have been told. What does she do, I say? Is she better fun than I am?"

"I don't want to talk about her," said Hulot.

"And I hear she has come round my Crevel, and little Steinbock, and a gorgeous Brazilian?"

"Very likely."

"And that she has got a house as good as this, that Crevel has given her. The baggage! She is my provost-marshal, and finishes off those I have spoiled. I tell you why I am so curious to know what she is like, old boy; I just caught sight of her in the Bois, in an open carriage —but a long way off. She is a most accomplished harpy, Carabine says. She is trying to eat up Crevel, but he only lets her nibble. Crevel is a knowing hand, good-natured but hard-headed, who will always say Yes, and then go his own way. He is vain and passionate; but his cash is cold. You can never get anything out of such fellows beyond a thousand to three thousand francs a month; they jib at any serious outlay, as a donkey does at a running stream.

"Not like you, old boy. You are a man of passions; you would sell your country for a woman. And, look here, I am ready to do anything for you! You are my father; you started me in life; it is a sacred duty. What do you want? Do you want a hundred thousand francs? I will wear myself to a rag to gain them. As to giving you bed and board—that is nothing. A place will be laid for you here every day; you can have a good room on the second floor, and a hundred crowns a month for pocket-money."

The Baron, deeply touched by such a welcome, had a last qualm of honor.

"No, my dear child, no; I did not come here for you to keep me," said he.

"At your age it is something to be proud of," said she.

"This is what I wish, my child. Your Duc d'Herouville has immense estates in Normandy, and I want to be his steward, under the name of Thoul. I have the capacity, and I am honest. A man may borrow of the Government, and yet not steal from a cash-box——"

"H'm, h'm," said Josepha. "Once drunk, drinks again."

"In short, I only want to live out of sight for three years—"

"Well, it is soon done," said Josepha. "This evening, after dinner, I have only to speak. The Duke would marry me if I wished it, but I have his fortune, and I want something better—his esteem. He is a Duke of the first water. He is high-minded, as noble and great as Louis XIV. and Napoleon rolled into one, though he is a dwarf. Besides, I have done for him what la Schontz did for Rochefide; by taking my advice he has made two millions.

"Now, listen to me, old popgun. I know you; you are always after the women, and you would be dancing attendance on the Normandy girls, who are splendid creatures, and getting your ribs cracked by their lovers and fathers, and the Duke would have to get you out of the scrape. Why, can't I see by the way you look at me that the young man is not dead in you—as Fenelon put it.—No, this stewardship is not the thing for you. A man cannot be off with his Paris and with us, old boy, for the saying! You would die of weariness at Herouville."

"What is to become of me?" said the Baron, "for I will only stay here till I see my way."

"Well, shall I find a pigeon-hole for you? Listen, you old pirate. Women are what you want. They are consolation in all circumstances. Attend now.—At the end of the Alley, Rue Saint-Maur-du-Temple, there is a poor family I know of where there is a jewel of a little girl, prettier than I was at sixteen.—Ah! there is a twinkle in your eye already!—The child works sixteen hours a day at embroidering costly pieces for the silk merchants, and earns sixteen sous a day—one sou an hour!—and feeds like the Irish, on potatoes fried in rats' dripping, with bread five times a week—and drinks canal water out of the town pipes, because the Seine water costs too much; and she cannot set up on her own account for lack of six or seven thousand francs. Your wife and children bore you to death, don't they?—Besides, one cannot submit to be nobody where one has been a little Almighty. A father who has neither money nor honor can only be stuffed and kept in a glass case."

The Baron could not help smiling at these abominable jests.

"Well, now, Bijou is to come to-morrow morning to bring me an embroidered wrapper, a gem! It has taken six months to make; no one else will have any stuff like it! Bijou is very fond of me; I give her tidbits and my old gowns. And I send orders for bread and meat and wood to the family, who would break the shin-bones of the first comer if I bid them.—I try to do a little good. Ah! I know what I endured from hunger myself!—Bijou has confided to me all her little sorrows. There is the making of a super at the Ambigu-Comique in that child. Her dream is to wear fine dresses like mine; above all, to ride in a carriage. I shall say to her, 'Look here, little one, would you like to have a friend of—' How old are you?" she asked, interrupting herself. "Seventy-two?"

"I have given up counting."

"'Would you like an old gentleman of seventy-two?' I shall say. 'Very clean and neat, and who does not take snuff, who is as sound as a bell, and as good as a young man? He will marry you (in the Thirteenth Arrondissement) and be very kind to you; he will place seven thousand francs in your account, and furnish you a room all in mahogany, and if you are good, he will sometimes take you to the play. He will give you a hundred francs a month for pocket-money, and fifty francs for housekeeping.'—I know Bijou; she is myself at fourteen. I jumped for joy when that horrible Crevel made me his atrocious offers. Well, and you, old man, will be disposed of for three years. She is a good child, well behaved; for three or four years she will have her illusions—not for longer."

Hulot did not hesitate; he had made up his mind to refuse; but to seem grateful to the kind-hearted singer, who was benevolent after her lights, he affected to hesitate between vice and virtue.

"Why, you are as cold as a paving-stone in winter!" she exclaimed in amazement. "Come, now. You will make a whole family happy—a grandfather who runs all the errands, a mother who is being worn out with work, and two sisters—one of them very plain—who make thirty-two sous a day while putting their eyes out. It will make up for the misery you have caused at home, and you will expiate your sin while you are having as much fun as a minx at Mabille."

Hulot, to put an end to this temptation, moved his fingers as if he were counting out money.

"Oh! be quite easy as to ways and means," replied Josepha. "My Duke will lend you ten thousand francs; seven thousand to start an embroidery shop in Bijou's name, and three thousand for furnishing; and every three months you will find a cheque here for six hundred and fifty francs. When you get your pension paid you, you can repay the seventeen thousand francs. Meanwhile you will be as happy as a cow in clover, and hidden in a hole where the police will never find you. You must wear a loose serge coat, and you will look like a comfortable householder. Call yourself Thoul, if that is your fancy. I will tell Bijou that you are an uncle of mine come from Germany, having failed in business, and you will be cosseted like a divinity.—There now, Daddy!—And who knows! you may have no regrets. In case you should be bored, keep one Sunday rig-out, and you can come and ask me for a dinner and spend the evening here."

"I!—and I meant to settle down and behave myself!—Look here, borrow twenty thousand francs for me, and I will set out to make my fortune in America, like my friend d'Aiglemont when Nucingen cleaned him out."

"You!" cried Josepha. "Nay, leave morals to work-a-day folks, to raw recruits, to the worrrthy citizens who have nothing to boast of but their virtue. You! You were born to be something better than a nincompoop; you are as a man what I am as a woman—a spendthrift of genius."

"We will sleep on it and discuss it all to-morrow morning."

"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 a garment; when it is dirty, we must brush it; when it is ragged, it must be patched; but we keep it on as long as we can."

This philosophy of life, and her high spirits, postponed Hulot's keenest pangs.

At noon next day, after a capital breakfast, Hulot saw the arrival of one of those living masterpieces which Paris alone of all the cities in the world can produce, by means of the constant concubinage of luxury and poverty, of vice and decent honesty, of suppressed desire and renewed temptation, which makes the French capital the daughter of Ninevah, of Babylon, and of Imperial Rome.

Mademoiselle Olympe Bijou, a child of sixteen, had the exquisite face which Raphael drew for his Virgins; eyes of pathetic innocence, weary with overwork—black eyes, with long lashes, their moisture parched with the heat of laborious nights, and darkened with fatigue; a complexion like porcelain, almost too delicate; a mouth like a partly opened pomegranate; a heaving bosom, a full figure, pretty hands, the whitest teeth, and a mass of black hair; and the whole meagrely set off by a cotton frock at seventy-five centimes the metre, leather shoes without heels, and the cheapest gloves. The girl, all unconscious of her charms, had put on her best frock to wait on the fine lady.

The Baron, gripped again by the clutch of profligacy, felt all his life concentrated in his eyes. He forgot everything on beholding this delightful creature. He was like a sportsman in sight of the game; if an emperor were present, he must take aim!

"And warranted sound," said Josepha in his ear. "An honest child, and wanting bread. This is Paris—I have been there!"

"It is a bargain," replied the old man, getting up and rubbing his hands.

When Olympe Bijou was gone, Josepha looked mischievously at the Baron.

"If you want things to keep straight, Daddy," said she, "be as firm as the Public Prosecutor on the bench. Keep a tight hand on her, be a Bartholo! Ware Auguste, Hippolyte, Nestor, Victor—or, that is gold, in every form. When once the child is fed and dressed, if she gets the upper hand, she will drive you like a serf.—I will see to settling you comfortably. The Duke does the handsome; he will lend—that is, give—you ten thousand francs; and he deposits eight thousand with his notary, who will pay you six hundred francs every quarter, for I cannot trust you.—Now, am I nice?"

"Adorable."

Ten days after deserting his family, when they were gathered round Adeline, who seemed to be dying, as she said again and again, in a weak voice, "Where is he?" Hector, under the name of Thoul, was established in the Rue Saint-Maur, at the head of a business as embroiderer, under the name of Thoul and Bijou.



Victorin Hulot, under the overwhelming disasters of his family, had received the finishing touch which makes or mars the man. He was perfection. In the great storms of life we act like the captain of a ship who, under the stress of a hurricane, lightens the ship of its heaviest cargo. The young lawyer lost his self-conscious pride, his too evident assertiveness, his arrogance as an orator and his political pretensions. He was as a man what his wife was as a woman. He made up his mind to make the best of his Celestine—who certainly did not realize his dreams—and was wise enough to estimate life at its true value by contenting himself in all things with the second best. He vowed to fulfil his duties, so much had he been shocked by his father's example.

These feelings were confirmed as he stood by his mother's bed on the day when she was out of danger. Nor did this happiness come single. Claude Vignon, who called every day from the Prince de Wissembourg to inquire as to Madame Hulot's progress, desired the re-elected deputy to go with him to see the Minister.

"His Excellency," said he, "wants to talk over your family affairs with you."

The Prince had long known Victorin Hulot, and received him with a friendliness that promised well.

"My dear fellow," said the old soldier, "I promised your uncle, in this room, that I would take care of your mother. That saintly woman, I am told, is getting well again; now is the time to pour oil into your wounds. I have for you here two hundred thousand francs; I will give them to you——"

The lawyer's gesture was worthy of his uncle the Marshal.

"Be quite easy," said the Prince, smiling; "it is money in trust. My days are numbered; I shall not always be here; so take this sum, and fill my place towards your family. You may use this money to pay off the mortgage on your house. These two hundred thousand francs are the property of your mother and your sister. If I gave the money to Madame Hulot, I fear that, in her devotion to her husband, she would be tempted to waste it. And the intention of those who restore it to you is, that it should produce bread for Madame Hulot and her daughter, the Countess Steinbock. You are a steady man, the worthy son of your noble mother, the true nephew of my friend the Marshal; you are appreciated here, you see—and elsewhere. So be the guardian angel of your family, and take this as a legacy from your uncle and me."

"Monseigneur," said Hulot, taking the Minister's hand and pressing it, "such men as you know that thanks in words mean nothing; gratitude must be proven."

"Prove yours—" said the old man.

"In what way?"

"By accepting what I have to offer you," said the Minister. "We propose to appoint you to be attorney to the War Office, which just now is involved in litigations in consequence of the plan for fortifying Paris; consulting clerk also to the Prefecture of Police; and a member of the Board of the Civil List. These three appointments will secure you salaries amounting to eighteen thousand francs, and will leave you politically free. You can vote in the Chamber in obedience to your opinions and your conscience. Act in perfect freedom on that score. It would be a bad thing for us if there were no national opposition!

"Also, a few lines from your uncle, written a day or two before he breathed his last, suggested what I could do for your mother, whom he loved very truly.—Mesdames Popinot, de Rastignac, de Navarreins, d'Espard, de Grandlieu, de Carigliano, de Lenoncourt, and de la Batie have made a place for your mother as a Lady Superintendent of their charities. These ladies, presidents of various branches of benevolent work, cannot do everything themselves; they need a lady of character who can act for them by going to see the objects of their beneficence, ascertaining that charity is not imposed upon, and whether the help given really reaches those who applied for it, finding out that the poor who are ashamed to beg, and so forth. Your mother will fulfil an angelic function; she will be thrown in with none but priests and these charitable ladies; she will be paid six thousand francs and the cost of her hackney coaches.

"You see, young man, that a pure and nobly virtuous man can still assist his family, even from the grave. Such a name as your uncle's is, and ought to be, a buckler against misfortune in a well-organized scheme of society. Follow in his path; you have started in it, I know; continue in it."

"Such delicate kindness cannot surprise me in my mother's friend," said Victorin. "I will try to come up to all your hopes."

"Go at once, and take comfort to your family.—By the way," added the Prince, as he shook hands with Victorin, "your father has disappeared?"

"Alas! yes."

"So much the better. That unhappy man has shown his wit, in which, indeed, he is not lacking."

"There are bills of his to be met."

"Well, you shall have six months' pay of your three appointments in advance. This pre-payment will help you, perhaps, to get the notes out of the hands of the money-lender. And I will see Nucingen, and perhaps may succeed in releasing your father's pension, pledged to him, without its costing you or our office a sou. The peer has not killed the banker in Nucingen; he is insatiable; he wants some concession.—I know not what——"

So on his return to the Rue Plumet, Victorin could carry out his plan of lodging his mother and sister under his roof.

The young lawyer, already famous, had, for his sole fortune, one of the handsomest houses in Paris, purchased in 1834 in preparation for his marriage, situated on the boulevard between the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Louis-le-Grand. A speculator had built two houses between the boulevard and the street; and between these, with the gardens and courtyards to the front and back, there remained still standing a splendid wing, the remains of the magnificent mansion of the Verneuils. The younger Hulot had purchased this fine property, on the strength of Mademoiselle Crevel's marriage-portion, for one million francs, when it was put up to auction, paying five hundred thousand down. He lived on the ground floor, expecting to pay the remainder out of letting the rest; but though it is safe to speculate in house-property in Paris, such investments are capricious or hang fire, depending on unforeseen circumstances.

As the Parisian lounger may have observed, the boulevard between the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Louis-le-Grand prospered but slowly; it took so long to furbish and beautify itself, that trade did not set up its display there till 1840—the gold of the money-changers, the fairy-work of fashion, and the luxurious splendor of shop-fronts.

In spite of two hundred thousand francs given by Crevel to his daughter at the time when his vanity was flattered by this marriage, before the Baron had robbed him of Josepha; in spite of the two hundred thousand francs paid off by Victorin in the course of seven years, the property was still burdened with a debt of five hundred thousand francs, in consequence of Victorin's devotion to his father. Happily, a rise in rents and the advantages of the situation had at this time improved the value of the houses. The speculation was justifying itself after eight years' patience, during which the lawyer had strained every nerve to pay the interest and some trifling amounts of the capital borrowed.

The tradespeople were ready to offer good rents for the shops, on condition of being granted leases for eighteen years. The dwelling apartments rose in value by the shifting of the centre in Paris life —henceforth transferred to the region between the Bourse and the Madeleine, now the seat of the political power and financial authority in Paris. The money paid to him by the Minister, added to a year's rent in advance and the premiums paid by his tenants, would finally reduce the outstanding debt to two hundred thousand francs. The two houses, if entirely let, would bring in a hundred thousand francs a year. Within two years more, during which the Hulots could live on his salaries, added to by the Marshal's investments, Victorin would be in a splendid position.

This was manna from heaven. Victorin could give up the first floor of his own house to his mother, and the second to Hortense, excepting two rooms reserved for Lisbeth. With Cousin Betty as the housekeeper, this compound household could bear all these charges, and yet keep up a good appearance, as beseemed a pleader of note. The great stars of the law-courts were rapidly disappearing; and Victorin Hulot, gifted with a shrewd tongue and strict honesty, was listened to by the Bench and Councillors; he studied his cases thoroughly, and advanced nothing that he could not prove. He would not hold every brief that offered; in fact, he was a credit to the bar.

The Baroness' home in the Rue Plumet had become so odious to her, that she allowed herself to be taken to the Rue Louis-le-Grand. Thus, by her son's care, Adeline occupied a fine apartment; she was spared all the daily worries of life; for Lisbeth consented to begin again, working wonders of domestic economy, such as she had achieved for Madame Marneffe, seeing here a way of exerting her silent vengeance on those three noble lives, the object, each, of her hatred, which was kept growing by the overthrow of all her hopes.

Once a month she went to see Valerie, sent, indeed, by Hortense, who wanted news of Wenceslas, and by Celestine, who was seriously uneasy at the acknowledged and well-known connection between her father and a woman to whom her mother-in-law and sister-in-law owed their ruin and their sorrows. As may be supposed, Lisbeth took advantage of this to see Valerie as often as possible.



Thus, about twenty months passed by, during which the Baroness recovered her health, though her palsied trembling never left her. She made herself familiar with her duties, which afforded her a noble distraction from her sorrow and constant food for the divine goodness of her heart. She also regarded it as an opportunity for finding her husband in the course of one of those expeditions which took her into every part of Paris.

During this time, Vauvinet had been paid, and the pension of six thousand francs was almost redeemed. Victorin could maintain his mother as well as Hortense out of the ten thousand francs interest on the money left by Marshal Hulot in trust for them. Adeline's salary amounted to six thousand francs a year; and this, added to the Baron's pension when it was freed, would presently secure an income of twelve thousand francs a year to the mother and daughter.

Thus, the poor woman would have been almost happy but for her perpetual anxieties as to the Baron's fate; for she longed to have him with her to share the improved fortunes that smiled on the family; and but for the constant sight of her forsaken daughter; and but for the terrible thrusts constantly and unconsciously dealt her by Lisbeth, whose diabolical character had free course.

A scene which took place at the beginning of the month of March 1843 will show the results of Lisbeth's latent and persistent hatred, still seconded, as she always was, by Madame Marneffe.

Two great events had occurred in the Marneffe household. In the first place, Valerie had given birth to a still-born child, whose little coffin had cost her two thousand francs a year. And then, as to Marneffe himself, eleven months since, this is the report given by Lisbeth to the Hulot family one day on her return from a visit of discovery at the hotel Marneffe.

"This morning," said she, "that dreadful Valerie sent for Doctor Bianchon to ask whether the medical men who had condemned her husband yesterday had made no mistake. Bianchon pronounced that to-night at the latest that horrible creature will depart to the torments that await him. Old Crevel and Madame Marneffe saw the doctor out; and your father, my dear Celestine, gave him five gold pieces for his good news.

"When he came back into the drawing-room, Crevel cut capers like a dancer; he embraced that woman, exclaiming, 'Then, at last, you will be Madame Crevel!'—And to me, when she had gone back to her husband's bedside, for he was at his last gasp, your noble father said to me, 'With Valerie as my wife, I can become a peer of France! I shall buy an estate I have my eye on—Presles, which Madame de Serizy wants to sell. I shall be Crevel de Presles, member of the Common Council of Seine-et-Oise, and Deputy. I shall have a son! I shall be everything I have ever wished to be.'—'Heh!' said I, 'and what about your daughter?'—'Bah!' says he, 'she is only a woman! And she is quite too much of a Hulot. Valerie has a horror of them all.—My son-in-law has never chosen to come to this house; why has he given himself such airs as a Mentor, a Spartan, a Puritan, a philanthropist? Besides, I have squared accounts with my daughter; she has had all her mother's fortune, and two hundred thousand francs to that. So I am free to act as I please.—I shall judge of my son-in-law and Celestine by their conduct on my marriage; as they behave, so shall I. If they are nice to their stepmother, I will receive them. I am a man, after all!'—In short, all this rhodomontade! And an attitude like Napoleon on the column."

The ten months' widowhood insisted on by the law had now elapsed some few days since. The estate of Presles was purchased. Victorin and Celestine had that very morning sent Lisbeth to make inquiries as to the marriage of the fascinating widow to the Mayor of Paris, now a member of the Common Council of the Department of Seine-et-Oise.

Celestine and Hortense, in whom the ties of affection had been drawn closer since they had lived under the same roof, were almost inseparable. The Baroness, carried away by a sense of honesty which led her to exaggerate the duties of her place, devoted herself to the work of charity of which she was the agent; she was out almost every day from eleven till five. The sisters-in-law, united in their cares for the children whom they kept together, sat at home and worked. They had arrived at the intimacy which thinks aloud, and were a touching picture of two sisters, one cheerful and the other sad. The less happy of the two, handsome, lively, high-spirited, and clever, seemed by her manner to defy her painful situation; while the melancholy Celestine, sweet and calm, and as equable as reason itself, might have been supposed to have some secret grief. It was this contradiction, perhaps, that added to their warm friendship. Each supplied the other with what she lacked.

Seated in a little summer-house in the garden, which the speculator's trowel had spared by some fancy of the builder's, who believed that he was preserving these hundred feet square of earth for his own pleasure, they were admiring the first green shoots of the lilac-trees, a spring festival which can only be fully appreciated in Paris when the inhabitants have lived for six months oblivious of what vegetation means, among the cliffs of stone where the ocean of humanity tosses to and fro.

"Celestine," said Hortense to her sister-in-law, who had complained that in such fine weather her husband should be kept at the Chamber, "I think you do not fully appreciate your happiness. Victorin is a perfect angel, and you sometimes torment him."

"My dear, men like to be tormented! Certain ways of teasing are a proof of affection. If your poor mother had only been—I will not say exacting, but always prepared to be exacting, you would not have had so much to grieve over."

"Lisbeth is not come back. I shall have to sing the song of Malbrouck," said Hortense. "I do long for some news of Wenceslas! —What does he live on? He has not done a thing these two years."

"Victorin saw him, he told me, with that horrible woman not long ago; and he fancied that she maintains him in idleness.—If you only would, dear soul, you might bring your husband back to you yet."

Hortense shook her head.

"Believe me," Celestine went on, "the position will ere long be intolerable. In the first instance, rage, despair, indignation, gave you strength. The awful disasters that have come upon us since—two deaths, ruin, and the disappearance of Baron Hulot—have occupied your mind and heart; but now you live in peace and silence, you will find it hard to bear the void in your life; and as you cannot, and will never leave the path of virtue, you will have to be reconciled to Wenceslas. Victorin, who loves you so much, is of that opinion. There is something stronger than one's feelings even, and that is Nature!"

"But such a mean creature!" cried the proud Hortense. "He cares for that woman because she feeds him.—And has she paid his debts, do you suppose?—Good Heaven! I think of that man's position day and night! He is the father of my child, and he is degrading himself."

"But look at your mother, my dear," said Celestine.

Celestine was one of those women who, when you have given them reasons enough to convince a Breton peasant, still go back for the hundredth time to their original argument. The character of her face, somewhat flat, dull, and common, her light-brown hair in stiff, neat bands, her very complexion spoke of a sensible woman, devoid of charm, but also devoid of weakness.

"The Baroness would willingly go to join her husband in his disgrace, to comfort him and hide him in her heart from every eye," Celestine went on. "Why, she has a room made ready upstairs for Monsieur Hulot, as if she expected to find him and bring him home from one day to the next."

"Oh yes, my mother is sublime!" replied Hortense. "She has been so every minute of every day for six-and-twenty years; but I am not like her, it is not my nature.—How can I help it? I am angry with myself sometimes; but you do not know, Celestine, what it would be to make terms with infamy."

"There is my father!" said Celestine placidly. "He has certainly started on the road that ruined yours. He is ten years younger than the Baron, to be sure, and was only a tradesman; but how can it end? This Madame Marneffe has made a slave of my father; he is her dog; she is mistress of his fortune and his opinions, and nothing can open his eyes. I tremble when I remember that their banns of marriage are already published!—My husband means to make a last attempt; he thinks it a duty to try to avenge society and the family, and bring that woman to account for all her crimes. Alas! my dear Hortense, such lofty souls as Victorin and hearts like ours come too late to a comprehension of the world and its ways!—This is a secret, dear, and I have told you because you are interested in it, but never by a word or a look betray it to Lisbeth, or your mother, or anybody, for—"

"Here is Lisbeth!" said Hortense. "Well, cousin, and how is the Inferno of the Rue Barbet going on?"

"Badly for you, my children.—Your husband, my dear Hortense, is more crazy about that woman than ever, and she, I must own, is madly in love with him.—Your father, dear Celestine, is gloriously blind. That, to be sure, is nothing; I have had occasion to see it once a fortnight; really, I am lucky never to have had anything to do with men, they are besotted creatures.—Five days hence you, dear child, and Victorin will have lost your father's fortune."

"Then the banns are cried?" said Celestine.

"Yes," said Lisbeth, "and I have just been arguing your case. I pointed out to that monster, who is going the way of the other, that if he would only get you out of the difficulties you are in by paying off the mortgage on the house, you would show your gratitude and receive your stepmother—"

Hortense started in horror.

"Victorin will see about that," said Celestine coldly.

"But do you know what Monsieur le Maire's answer was?" said Lisbeth. "'I mean to leave them where they are. Horses can only be broken in by lack of food, sleep, and sugar.'—Why, Baron Hulot was not so bad as Monsieur Crevel.

"So, my poor dears, you may say good-bye to the money. And such a fine fortune! Your father paid three million francs for the Presles estate, and he has thirty thousand francs a year in stocks! Oh!—he has no secrets from me. He talks of buying the Hotel de Navarreins, in the Rue du Bac. Madame Marneffe herself has forty thousand francs a year. —Ah!—here is our guardian angel, here comes your mother!" she exclaimed, hearing the rumble of wheels.

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, Adeline, whose face was indeed pale and wrinkled, still had a fine figure, a noble outline, and natural dignity. Those who saw her said, "She must have been beautiful!" Worn with the grief of not knowing her husband's fate, of being unable to share with him this oasis in the heart of Paris, this peace and seclusion and the better fortune that was dawning on the family, her beauty was the beauty of a ruin. As each gleam of hope died out, each day of search proved vain, Adeline sank into fits of deep melancholy that drove her children to despair.

The Baroness had gone out that morning with fresh hopes, and was anxiously expected. An official, who was under obligations to Hulot, to whom he owed his position and advancement, declared that he had seen the Baron in a box at the Ambigu-Comique theatre with a woman of extraordinary beauty. So Adeline had gone to call on the Baron Verneuil. This important personage, while asserting that he had positively seen his old patron, and that his behaviour to the woman indicated an illicit establishment, told Madame Hulot that to avoid meeting him the Baron had left long before the end of the play.

"He looked like a man at home with the damsel, but his dress betrayed some lack of means," said he in conclusion.

"Well?" said the three women as the Baroness came towards them.

"Well, Monsieur Hulot is in Paris; and to me," said Adeline, "it is a gleam of happiness only to know that he is within reach of us."

"But he does not seem to have mended his ways," Lisbeth remarked when Adeline had finished her report of her visit to Baron Verneuil. "He has taken up some little work-girl. But where can he get the money from? I could bet that he begs of his former mistresses—Mademoiselle Jenny Cadine or Josepha."

The Baroness trembled more severely than ever; every nerve quivered; she wiped away the tears that rose to her eyes and looked mournfully up to heaven.

"I cannot think that a Grand Commander of the Legion of Honor will have fallen so low," said she.

"For his pleasure what would he not do?" said Lisbeth. "He robbed the State, he will rob private persons, commit murder—who knows?"

"Oh, Lisbeth!" cried the Baroness, "keep such thoughts to yourself."

At this moment Louise came up to the family group, now increased by the arrival of the two Hulot children and little Wenceslas to see if their grandmother's pockets did not contain some sweetmeats.

"What is it, Louise?" asked one and another.

"A man who wants to see Mademoiselle Fischer."

"Who is the man?" asked Lisbeth.

"He is in rags, mademoiselle, and covered with flue like a mattress-picker; his nose is red, and he smells of brandy.—He is one of those men who work half of the week at most."

This uninviting picture had the effect of making Lisbeth hurry into the courtyard of the house in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, where she found a man smoking a pipe colored in a style that showed him an artist in tobacco.

"Why have you come here, Pere Chardin?" she asked. "It is understood that you go, on the first Saturday in every month, to the gate of the Hotel Marneffe, Rue Barbet-de-Jouy. I have just come back after waiting there for five hours, and you did not come."

"I did go there, good and charitable lady!" replied the mattress-picker. "But there was a game at pool going on at the Cafe des Savants, Rue du Cerf-Volant, and every man has his fancy. Now, mine is billiards. If it wasn't for billiards, I might be eating off silver plate. For, I tell you this," and he fumbled for a scrap of paper in his ragged trousers pocket, "it is billiards that leads on to a dram and plum-brandy.—It is ruinous, like all fine things, in the things it leads to. I know your orders, but the old 'un is in such a quandary that I came on to forbidden grounds.—If the hair was all hair, we might sleep sound on it; but it is mixed. God is not for all, as the saying goes. He has His favorites—well, He has the right. Now, here is the writing of your estimable relative and my very good friend—his political opinion."

Chardin attempted to trace some zigzag lines in the air with the forefinger of his right hand.

Lisbeth, not listening to him, read these few words:

"DEAR COUSIN,—Be my Providence; give me three hundred francs this day.

"HECTOR."

"What does he want so much money for?"

"The lan'lord!" said Chardin, still trying to sketch arabesques. "And then my son, you see, has come back from Algiers through Spain and Bayonee, and, and—he has found nothing—against his rule, for a sharp cove is my son, saving your presence. How can he help it, he is in want of food; but he will repay all we lend him, for he is going to get up a company. He has ideas, he has, that will carry him—"

"To the police court," Lisbeth put in. "He murdered my uncle; I shall not forget that."

"He—why, he could not bleed a chicken, honorable lady."

"Here are the three hundred francs," said Lisbeth, taking fifteen gold pieces out of her purse. "Now, go, and never come here again."

She saw the father of the Oran storekeeper off the premises, and pointed out the drunken old creature to the porter.

"At any time when that man comes here, if by chance he should come again, do not let him in. If he should ask whether Monsieur Hulot junior or Madame la Baronne Hulot lives here, tell him you know of no such persons."

"Very good, mademoiselle."

"Your place depends on it if you make any mistake, even without intending it," said Lisbeth, in the woman's ear.—"Cousin," she went on to Victorin, who just now came in, "a great misfortune is hanging over your head."

"What is that?" said Victorin.

"Within a few days Madame Marneffe will be your wife's stepmother."

"That remains to be seen," replied Victorin.

For six months past Lisbeth had very regularly paid a little allowance to Baron Hulot, her former protector, whom she now protected; she knew the secret of his dwelling-place, and relished Adeline's tears, saying to her, as we have seen, when she saw her cheerful and hopeful, "You may expect to find my poor cousin's name in the papers some day under the heading 'Police Report.'"

But in this, as on a former occasion, she let her vengeance carry her too far. She had aroused the prudent suspicions of Victorin. He had resolved to be rid of this Damocles' sword so constantly flourished over them by Lisbeth, and of the female demon to whom his mother and the family owed so many woes. The Prince de Wissembourg, knowing all about Madame Marneffe's conduct, approved of the young lawyer's secret project; he had promised him, as a President of the Council can promise, the secret assistance of the police, to enlighten Crevel and rescue a fine fortune from the clutches of the diabolical courtesan, whom he could not forgive either for causing the death of Marshal Hulot or for the Baron's utter ruin.



The words spoken by Lisbeth, "He begs of his former mistresses," haunted the Baroness all night. Like sick men given over by the physicians, who have recourse to quacks, like men who have fallen into the lowest Dantesque circle of despair, or drowning creatures who mistake a floating stick for a hawser, she ended by believing in the baseness of which the mere idea had horrified her; and it occurred to her that she might apply for help to one of those terrible women.

Next morning, without consulting her children or saying a word to anybody, she went to see Mademoiselle Josepha Mirah, prima donna of the Royal Academy of Music, to find or to lose the hope that had gleamed before her like a will-o'-the-wisp. At midday, the great singer's waiting-maid brought her in the card of the Baronne Hulot, saying that this person was waiting at the door, having asked whether Mademoiselle could receive her.

"Are the rooms done?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"And the flowers fresh?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"Just tell Jean to look round and see that everything is as it should be before showing the lady in, and treat her with the greatest respect. Go, and come back to dress me—I must look my very best."

She went to study herself in the long glass.

"Now, to put our best foot foremost!" said she to herself. "Vice under arms to meet virtue!—Poor woman, what can she want of me? I cannot bear to see.

"The noble victim of outrageous fortune!"

And she sang through the famous aria as the maid came in again.

"Madame," said the girl, "the lady has a nervous trembling—"

"Offer her some orange-water, some rum, some broth—"

"I did, mademoiselle; but she declines everything, and says it is an infirmity, a nervous complaint—"

"Where is she?"

"In the big drawing-room."

"Well, make haste, child. Give me my smartest slippers, the dressing-gown embroidered by Bijou, and no end of lace frills. Do my hair in a way to astonish a woman.—This woman plays a part against mine; and tell the lady—for she is a real, great lady, my girl, nay, more, she is what you will never be, a woman whose prayers can rescue souls from your purgatory—tell her I was in bed, as I was playing last night, and that I am just getting up."

The Baroness, shown into Josepha's handsome drawing-room, did not note how long she was kept waiting there, though it was a long half hour. This room, entirely redecorated even since Josepha had had the house, was hung with silk in purple and gold color. The luxury which fine gentlemen were wont to lavish on their petites maisons, the scenes of their profligacy, of which the remains still bear witness to the follies from which they were so aptly named, was displayed to perfection, thanks to modern inventiveness, in the four rooms opening into each other, where the warm temperature was maintained by a system of hot-air pipes with invisible openings.

The Baroness, quite bewildered, examined each work of art with the greatest amazement. Here she found fortunes accounted for that melt in the crucible under which pleasure and vanity feed the devouring flames. This woman, who for twenty-six years had lived among the dead relics of imperial magnificence, whose eyes were accustomed to carpets patterned with faded flowers, rubbed gilding, silks as forlorn as her heart, half understood the powerful fascinations of vice as she studied its results. It was impossible not to wish to possess these beautiful things, these admirable works of art, the creation of the unknown talent which abounds in Paris in our day and produces treasures for all Europe. Each thing had the novel charm of unique perfection. The models being destroyed, every vase, every figure, every piece of sculpture was the original. This is the crowning grace of modern luxury. To own the thing which is not vulgarized by the two thousand wealthy citizens whose notion of luxury is the lavish display of the splendors that shops can supply, is the stamp of true luxury —the luxury of the fine gentlemen of the day, the shooting stars of the Paris firmament.

As she examined the flower-stands, filled with the choicest exotic plants, mounted in chased brass and inlaid in the style of Boulle, the Baroness was scared by the idea of the wealth in this apartment. And this impression naturally shed a glamour over the person round whom all this profusion was heaped. Adeline imagined that Josepha Mirah —whose portrait by Joseph Bridau was the glory of the adjoining boudoir—must be a singer of genius, a Malibran, and she expected to see a real star. She was sorry she had come. But she had been prompted by a strong and so natural a feeling, by such purely disinterested devotion, that she collected all her courage for the interview. Besides, she was about to satisfy her urgent curiosity, to see for herself what was the charm of this kind of women, that they could extract so much gold from the miserly ore of Paris mud.

The Baroness looked at herself to see if she were not a blot on all this splendor; but she was well dressed in her velvet gown, with a little cape trimmed with beautiful lace, and her velvet bonnet of the same shade was becoming. Seeing herself still as imposing as any queen, always a queen even in her fall, she reflected that the dignity of sorrow was a match for the dignity of talent.

At last, after much opening and shutting of doors, she saw Josepha. The singer bore a strong resemblance to Allori's Judith, which dwells in the memory of all who have ever seen it in the Pitti palace, near the door of one of the great rooms. She had the same haughty mien, the same fine features, black hair simply knotted, and a yellow wrapper with little embroidered flowers, exactly like the brocade worn by the immortal homicide conceived of by Bronzino's nephew.

"Madame la Baronne, I am quite overwhelmed by the honor you do me in coming here," said the singer, resolved to play her part as a great lady with a grace.

She pushed forward an easy-chair for the Baroness and seated herself on a stool. She discerned the faded beauty of the woman before her, and was filled with pity as she saw her shaken by the nervous palsy that, on the least excitement, became convulsive. She could read at a glance the saintly life described to her of old by Hulot and Crevel; and she not only ceased to think of a contest with her, she humiliated herself before a superiority she appreciated. The great artist could admire what the courtesan laughed to scorn.

"Mademoiselle, despair brought me here. It reduces us to any means—"

A look in Josepha's face made the Baroness feel that she had wounded the woman from whom she hoped for so much, and she looked at her. Her beseeching eyes extinguished the flash in Josepha's; the singer smiled. It was a wordless dialogue of pathetic eloquence.

"It is now two years and a half since Monsieur Hulot left his family, and I do not know where to find him, though I know that he lives in Paris," said the Baroness with emotion. "A dream suggested to me the idea—an absurd one perhaps—that you may have interested yourself in Monsieur Hulot. If you could enable me to see him—oh! mademoiselle, I would pray Heaven for you every day as long as I live in this world—"