This little scene, in which the two friends had bluntly uttered their ideas without any circumlocution in expressing them, took place immediately on Lisbeth's return from market, whither she had been to procure the materials for an elegant dinner. Marneffe, who hoped to get Coquet's place, was to entertain him and the virtuous Madame Coquet, and Valerie hoped to persuade Hulot, that very evening, to consider the head-clerk's resignation.
Lisbeth dressed to go to the Baroness, with whom she was to dine.
"You will come back in time to make tea for us, my Betty?" said Valerie.
"I hope so."
"You hope so--why? Have you come to sleeping with Adeline to drink her tears while she is asleep?"
"If only I could!" said Lisbeth, laughing. "I would not refuse. She is expiating her happiness--and I am glad, for I remember our young days.
It is my turn now. She will be in the mire, and I shall be Comtesse de Forzheim!"
Lisbeth set out for the Rue Plumet, where she now went as to the theatre--to indulge her emotions.
The residence Hulot had found for his wife consisted of a large, bare entrance-room, a drawing-room, and a bed and dressing-room. The dining-room was next the drawing-room on one side. Two servants' rooms and a kitchen on the third floor completed the accommodation, which was not unworthy of a Councillor of State, high up in the War Office.
The house, the court-yard, and the stairs were extremely handsome.
The Baroness, who had to furnish her drawing-room, bed-room, and dining-room with the relics of her splendor, had brought away the best of the remains from the house in the Rue de l'Universite. Indeed, the poor woman was attached to these mute witnesses of her happier life; to her they had an almost consoling eloquence. In memory she saw her flowers, as in the carpets she could trace patterns hardly visible now to other eyes.
On going into the spacious anteroom, where twelve chairs, a barometer, a large stove, and long, white cotton curtains, bordered with red, suggested the dreadful waiting-room of a Government office, the visitor felt oppressed, conscious at once of the isolation in which the mistress lived. Grief, like pleasure, infects the atmosphere. A first glance into any home is enough to tell you whether love or despair reigns there.
Adeline would be found sitting in an immense bedroom with beautiful furniture by Jacob Desmalters, of mahogany finished in the Empire style with ormolu, which looks even less inviting than the brass-work of Louis XVI.! It gave one a shiver to see this lonely woman sitting on a Roman chair, a work-table with sphinxes before her, colorless, affecting false cheerfulness, but preserving her imperial air, as she had preserved the blue velvet gown she always wore in the house. Her proud spirit sustained her strength and preserved her beauty.
The Baroness, by the end of her first year of banishment to this apartment, had gauged every depth of misfortune.
"Still, even here my Hector has made my life much handsomer than it should be for a mere peasant," said she to herself. "He chooses that it should be so; his will be done! I am Baroness Hulot, the sister-in-law of a Marshal of France. I have done nothing wrong; my two children are settled in life; I can wait for death, wrapped in the spotless veil of an immaculate wife and the crape of departed happiness."
A portrait of Hulot, in the uniform of a Commissary General of the Imperial Guard, painted in 1810 by Robert Lefebvre, hung above the work-table, and when visitors were announced, Adeline threw into a drawer an /Imitation of Jesus Christ/, her habitual study. This blameless Magdalen thus heard the Voice of the Spirit in her desert.
"Mariette, my child," said Lisbeth to the woman who opened the door, "how is my dear Adeline to-day?"
"Oh, she looks pretty well, mademoiselle; but between you and me, if she goes on in this way, she will kill herself," said Mariette in a whisper. "You really ought to persuade her to live better. Now, yesterday madame told me to give her two sous' worth of milk and a roll for one sou; to get her a herring for dinner and a bit of cold veal; she had a pound cooked to last her the week--of course, for the days when she dines at home and alone. She will not spend more than ten sous a day for her food. It is unreasonable. If I were to say anything about it to Monsieur le Marechal, he might quarrel with Monsieur le Baron and leave him nothing, whereas you, who are so kind and clever, can manage things----"
"But why do you not apply to my cousin the Baron?" said Lisbeth.
"Oh, dear mademoiselle, he has not been here for three weeks or more; in fact, not since we last had the pleasure of seeing you! Besides, madame has forbidden me, under threat of dismissal, ever to ask the master for money. But as for grief!--oh, poor lady, she has been very unhappy. It is the first time that monsieur has neglected her for so long. Every time the bell rang she rushed to the window--but for the last five days she has sat still in her chair. She reads. Whenever she goes out to see Madame la Comtesse, she says, 'Mariette, if monsieur comes in,' says she, 'tell him I am at home, and send the porter to fetch me; he shall be well paid for his trouble.' "
"Poor soul!" said Lisbeth; "it goes to my heart. I speak of her to the Baron every day. What can I do? 'Yes,' says he, 'Betty, you are right;
I am a wretch. My wife is an angel, and I am a monster! I will go to-morrow----' And he stays with Madame Marneffe. That woman is ruining him, and he worships her; he lives only in her sight.--I do what I can; if I were not there, and if I had not Mathurine to depend upon, he would spend twice as much as he does; and as he has hardly any money in the world, he would have blown his brains out by this time. And, I tell you, Mariette, Adeline would die of her husband's death, I am perfectly certain. At any rate, I pull to make both ends meet, and prevent my cousin from throwing too much money into the fire."
