Part 33 (1/2)

”Well, is that her writing?”

”Good G.o.d!” gasped Hulot, sitting down in dismay. ”I see all the things she uses--her caps, her slippers. Why, how long since--?”

Crevel nodded that he understood, and took a packet of bills out of the little inlaid cabinet.

”You can see, old man. I paid the decorators in December, 1838. In October, two months before, this charming little place was first used.”

Hulot bent his head.

”How the devil do you manage it? I know how she spends every hour of her day.”

”How about her walk in the Tuileries?” said Crevel, rubbing his hands in triumph.

”What then?” said Hulot, mystified.

”Your lady love comes to the Tuileries, she is supposed to be airing herself from one till four. But, hop, skip, and jump, and she is here.

You know your Moliere? Well, Baron, there is nothing imaginary in your t.i.tle.”

Hulot, left without a shred of doubt, sat sunk in ominous silence.

Catastrophes lead intelligent and strong-minded men to be philosophical.

The Baron, morally, was at this moment like a man trying to find his way by night through a forest. This gloomy taciturnity and the change in that dejected countenance made Crevel very uneasy, for he did not wish the death of his colleague.

”As I said, old fellow, we are now even; let us play for the odd. Will you play off the tie by hook and by crook? Come!”

”Why,” said Hulot, talking to himself--”why is it that out of ten pretty women at least seven are false?”

But the Baron was too much upset to answer his own question. Beauty is the greatest of human gifts for power. Every power that has no counterpoise, no autocratic control, leads to abuses and folly.

Despotism is the madness of power; in women the despot is caprice.

”You have nothing to complain of, my good friend; you have a beautiful wife, and she is virtuous.”

”I deserve my fate,” said Hulot. ”I have undervalued my wife and made her miserable, and she is an angel! Oh, my poor Adeline! you are avenged! She suffers in solitude and silence, and she is worthy of my love; I ought--for she is still charming, fair and girlish even--But was there ever a woman known more base, more ign.o.ble, more villainous than this Valerie?”

”She is a good-for-nothing s.l.u.t,” said Crevel, ”a hussy that deserves whipping on the Place du Chatelet. But, my dear Canillac, though we are such blades, so Marechal de Richelieu, Louis XV., Pompadour, Madame du Barry, gay dogs, and everything that is most eighteenth century, there is no longer a lieutenant of police.”

”How can we make them love us?” Hulot wondered to himself without heeding Crevel.

”It is sheer folly in us to expect to be loved, my dear fellow,” said Crevel. ”We can only be endured; for Madame Marneffe is a hundred times more profligate than Josepha.”

”And avaricious! she costs me a hundred and ninety-two thousand francs a year!” cried Hulot.

”And how many centimes!” sneered Crevel, with the insolence of a financier who scorns so small a sum.

”You do not love her, that is very evident,” said the Baron dolefully.

”I have had enough of her,” replied Crevel, ”for she has had more than three hundred thousand francs of mine!”

”Where is it? Where does it all go?” said the Baron, clasping his head in his hands.