Cousin Betty | Page 9

Hulot--I
don't know how I can utter the wretch's name! he has cheated us both,
madame --well, the villain did me out of my little Josepha. The
scoundrel knew that he was supplanted in the heart of Jenny Cadine by
a young lawyer and by an artist--only two of them!--for the girl had
more and more of a howling success, and he stole my sweet little girl, a
perfect darling--but you must have seen her at the opera; he got her an
engagement there. Your husband is not so well behaved as I am. I am
ruled as straight as a sheet of music-paper. He had dropped a good deal
of money on Jenny Cadine, who must have cost him near on thirty

thousand francs a year. Well, I can only tell you that he is ruining
himself outright for Josepha.
"Josepha, madame, is a Jewess. Her name is Mirah, the anagram of
Hiram, an Israelite mark that stamps her, for she was a foundling
picked up in Germany, and the inquiries I have made prove that she is
the illegitimate child of a rich Jew banker. The life of the theatre, and,
above all, the teaching of Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga, and
Carabine, as to the way to treat an old man, have developed, in the
child whom I had kept in a respectable and not too expensive way of
life, all the native Hebrew instinct for gold and jewels--for the golden
calf.
"So this famous singer, hungering for plunder, now wants to be rich,
very rich. She tried her 'prentice hand on Baron Hulot, and soon
plucked him bare--plucked him, ay, and singed him to the skin. The
miserable man, after trying to vie with one of the Kellers and with the
Marquis d'Esgrignon, both perfectly mad about Josepha, to say nothing
of unknown worshipers, is about to see her carried off by that very rich
Duke, who is such a patron of the arts. Oh, what is his name?--a
dwarf.--Ah, the Duc d'Herouville. This fine gentleman insists on having
Josepha for his very own, and all that set are talking about it; the Baron
knows nothing of it as yet; for it is the same in the Thirteenth
Arrondissement as in every other: the lover, like the husband, is last to
get the news.
"Now, do you understand my claim? Your husband, dear lady, has
robbed me of my joy in life, the only happiness I have known since I
became a widower. Yes, if I had not been so unlucky as to come across
that old rip, Josepha would still be mine; for I, you know, should never
have placed her on the stage. She would have lived obscure, well
conducted, and mine. Oh! if you could but have seen her eight years
ago, slight and wiry, with the golden skin of an Andalusian, as they say,
black hair as shiny as satin, an eye that flashed lightning under long
brown lashes, the style of a duchess in every movement, the modesty of
a dependent, decent grace, and the pretty ways of a wild fawn. And by
that Hulot's doing all this charm and purity has been degraded to a

man-trap, a money-box for five-franc pieces! The girl is the Queen of
Trollops; and nowadays she humbugs every one--she who knew
nothing, not even that word."
At this stage the retired perfumer wiped his eyes, which were full of
tears. The sincerity of his grief touched Madame Hulot, and roused her
from the meditation into which she had sunk.
"Tell me, madame, is a man of fifty-two likely to find such another
jewel? At my age love costs thirty thousand francs a year. It is through
your husband's experience that I know the price, and I love Celestine
too truly to be her ruin. When I saw you, at the first evening party you
gave in our honor, I wondered how that scoundrel Hulot could keep a
Jenny Cadine--you had the manner of an Empress. You do not look
thirty," he went on. "To me, madame, you look young, and you are
beautiful. On my word of honor, that evening I was struck to the heart.
I said to myself, 'If I had not Josepha, since old Hulot neglects his wife,
she would fit me like a glove.' Forgive me--it is a reminiscence of my
old business. The perfumer will crop up now and then, and that is what
keeps me from standing to be elected deputy.
"And then, when I was so abominably deceived by the Baron, for really
between old rips like us our friend's mistress should be sacred, I swore I
would have his wife. It is but justice. The Baron could say nothing; we
are certain of impunity. You showed me the door