Cousin Betty

“Monsieur, you overpower me!” said Steinbock, quite bewildered.

“As to the remaining hundred and twenty thousand francs – ”

“Say no more, monsieur,” said Wenceslas. “I ask only for my beloved Hortense – ”

“Will you listen to me, effervescent youth! – As to the remaining hundred and twenty thousand francs, I have not got them; but you will have them – ”

“Monsieur?”

“You will get them from the Government, in payment for commissions which I will secure for you, I pledge you my word of honor. You are to have a studio, you see, at the Government depot. Exhibit a few fine statues, and I will get you received at the Institute. The highest personages have a regard for my brother and for me, and I hope to succeed in securing for you a commission for sculpture at Versailles up to a quarter of the whole sum. You will have orders from the City of Paris and from the Chamber of Peers; in short, my dear fellow, you will have so many that you will be obliged to get assistants. In that way I shall pay off my debt to you. You must say whether this way of giving a portion will suit you; whether you are equal to it.”

“I am equal to making a fortune for my wife single-handed if all else failed!” cried the artist-nobleman.

“That is what I admire!” cried the Baron. “High-minded youth that fears nothing. Come,” he added, clasping hands with the young sculptor to conclude the bargain, “you have my consent. We will sign the contract on Sunday next, and the wedding shall be on the following Saturday, my wife’s fete-day.”

“It is all right,” said the Baroness to her daughter, who stood glued to the window. “Your suitor and your father are embracing each other.”

On going home in the evening, Wenceslas found the solution of the mystery of his release. The porter handed him a thick sealed packet, containing the schedule of his debts, with a signed receipt affixed at the bottom of the writ, and accompanied by this letter: —

“MY DEAR WENCESLAS, – I went to fetch you at ten o’clock this morning to introduce you to a Royal Highness who wishes to see you. There I learned that the duns had had you conveyed to a certain little domain – chief town, Clichy Castle.

“So off I went to Leon de Lora, and told him, for a joke, that you could not leave your country quarters for lack of four thousand francs, and that you would spoil your future prospects if you did not make your bow to your royal patron. Happily, Bridau was there – a man of genius, who has known what it is to be poor, and has heard your story. My boy, between them they have found the money, and I went off to pay the Turk who committed treason against genius by putting you in quod. As I had to be at the Tuileries at noon, I could not wait to see you sniffing the outer air. I know you to be a gentleman, and I answered for you to my two friends – but look them up to-morrow.

“Leon and Bridau do not want your cash; they will ask you to do them each a group – and they are right. At least, so thinks the man who wishes he could sign himself your rival, but is only your faithful ally,

    “STIDMANN.

“P. S. – I told the Prince you were away, and would not return till to-morrow, so he said, ‘Very good – to-morrow.’”

Count Wenceslas went to bed in sheets of purple, without a rose-leaf to wrinkle them, that Favor can make for us – Favor, the halting divinity who moves more slowly for men of genius than either Justice or Fortune, because Jove has not chosen to bandage her eyes. Hence, lightly deceived by the display of impostors, and attracted by their frippery and trumpets, she spends the time in seeing them and the money in paying them which she ought to devote to seeking out men of merit in the nooks where they hide.

It will now be necessary to explain how Monsieur le Baron Hulot had contrived to count up his expenditure on Hortense’s wedding portion, and at the same time to defray the frightful cost of the charming rooms where Madame Marneffe was to make her home. His financial scheme bore that stamp of talent which leads prodigals and men in love into the quagmires where so many disasters await them. Nothing can demonstrate more completely the strange capacity communicated by vice, to which we owe the strokes of skill which ambitious or voluptuous men can occasionally achieve – or, in short, any of the Devil’s pupils.

On the day before, old Johann Fischer, unable to pay thirty thousand francs drawn for on him by his nephew, had found himself under the necessity of stopping payment unless the Baron could remit the sum.

This ancient worthy, with the white hairs of seventy years, had such blind confidence in Hulot – who, to the old Bonapartist, was an emanation from the Napoleonic sun – that he was calmly pacing his anteroom with the bank clerk, in the little ground-floor apartment that he rented for eight hundred francs a year as the headquarters of his extensive dealings in corn and forage.

“Marguerite is gone to fetch the money from close by,” said he.

The official, in his gray uniform braided with silver, was so convinced of the old Alsatian’s honesty, that he was prepared to leave the thirty thousand francs’ worth of bills in his hands; but the old man would not let him go, observing that the clock had not yet struck eight. A cab drew up, the old man rushed into the street, and held out his hand to the Baron with sublime confidence – Hulot handed him out thirty thousand-franc notes.

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

“Here, young man,” he said, returning to count out the money to the bank emissary, whom he then saw to the door.

When the clerk was out of sight, Fischer called back the cab containing his august nephew, Napoleon’s right hand, and said, as he led him into the house:

“You do not want them to know at the Bank of France that you paid me the thirty thousand francs, after endorsing the bills? – It was bad enough to see them signed by such a man as you! – ”

“Come to the bottom of your little garden, Father Fischer,” said the important man. “You are hearty?” he went on, sitting down under a vine arbor and scanning the old man from head to foot, as a dealer in human flesh scans a substitute for the conscription.

“Ay, hearty enough for a tontine,” said the lean little old man; his sinews were wiry, and his eye bright.

“Does heat disagree with you?”

“Quite the contrary.”

“What do you say to Africa?”

“A very nice country! – The French went there with the little Corporal” (Napoleon).

“To get us all out of the present scrape, you must go to Algiers,” said the Baron.

“And how about my business?”

“An official in the War Office, who has to retire, and has not enough to live on with his pension, will buy your business.”

“And what am I to do in Algiers?”

“Supply the Commissariat with victuals, corn, and forage; I have your commission ready filled in and signed. You can collect supplies in the country at seventy per cent below the prices at which you can credit us.”

“How shall we get them?”

“Oh, by raids, by taxes in kind, and the Khaliphat. – The country is little known, though we settled there eight years ago; Algeria produces vast quantities of corn and forage. When this produce belongs to Arabs, we take it from them under various pretences; when it belongs to us, the Arabs try to get it back again. There is a great deal of fighting over the corn, and no one ever knows exactly how much each party has stolen from the other. There is not time in the open field to measure the corn as we do in the Paris market, or the hay as it is sold in the Rue d’Enfer. The Arab chiefs, like our Spahis, prefer hard cash, and sell the plunder at a very low price. The Commissariat needs a fixed quantity and must have it. It winks at exorbitant prices calculated on the difficulty of procuring food, and the dangers to which every form of transport is exposed. That is Algiers from the army contractor’s point of view.

“It is a muddle tempered by the ink-bottle, like every incipient government. We shall not see our way through it for another ten years – we who have to do the governing; but private enterprise has sharp eyes. – So I am sending you there to make a fortune; I give you the job, as Napoleon put an impoverished Marshal at the head of a kingdom where smuggling might be secretly encouraged.

“I am ruined, my dear Fischer; I must have a hundred thousand francs within a year.”

“I see no harm in getting it out of the Bedouins,” said the Alsatian calmly. “It was always done under the Empire – ”

“The man who wants to buy your business will be here this morning, and pay you ten thousand francs down,” the Baron went on. “That will be enough, I suppose, to take you to Africa?”

The old man nodded assent.

“As to capital out there, be quite easy. I will draw the remainder of the money due if I find it necessary.”

“All I have is yours – my very blood,” said old Fischer.

“Oh, do not be uneasy,” said Hulot, fancying that his uncle saw more clearly than was the fact. “As to our excise dealings, your character will not be impugned. Everything depends on the authority at your back; now I myself appointed the authorities out there; I am sure of them. This, Uncle Fischer, is a dead secret between us. I know you well, and I have spoken out without concealment or circumlocution.”

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

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

“I will do as you wish; my honor is yours,” said the little old man quietly.

“That is the sort of man I like. – However, you must not go till you have seen your grand-niece happily married. She is to be a Countess.”