‘We have to talk of the reasons I have to protest about your strange conduct. My daughter Hortense had an opportunity to marry. The marriage depended entirely upon you, and I believed I could rely on your generosity. I thought that you would be fair to a woman whose heart has never held any image but her husband’s, that you would have realized how necessary it was for her not to receive a man who might compromise her, and that you would have been eager, out of regard for the family with which you have allied your own, to promote Hortense’s marriage with Councillor Lebas.… And you, Monsieur, have wrecked the marriage.’

‘Madame,’ replied the retired perfume-seller, ‘I acted like an honest man. I was asked whether the two hundred thousand francs of Mademoiselle Hortense’s dowry would be paid. I replied in these words precisely: “I would not answer for it. My son-in-law, on whom the Hulot family settled that sum on his marriage, had debts, and I believe that if Monsieur Hulot d’Ervy were to die tomorrow, his widow would be left to beg her bread.” And that’s how it is, my dear lady.’

‘And would you have spoken in the same way, Monsieur,’ asked Madame Hulot, looking Crevel steadily in the face, ‘if I had been untrue to my vows for your sake?’

‘I should have had no right to say it, dear Adeline,’ exclaimed this singular lover, cutting the Baroness short, ‘for you would have found the dowry in my note-case.…’

And suiting action to words, stout Crevel dropped on one knee and kissed Madame Hulot’s hand, attributing to hesitation her speechless horror at his words.

‘Buy my daughter’s happiness at the price of – get up at once, Monsieur, or I’ll ring the bell.’

The retired perfumer got to his feet with considerable difficulty, a circumstance which made him so furious that he struck his pose again. Nearly all men cherish a fondness for some posture that they think shows off to best advantage the good points with which nature has endowed them. In Crevel’s case this pose consisted in crossing his arms like Napoleon, turning his head to show a three-quarter profile, and gazing, as the artist painting his portrait had made him gaze, at the horizon.

‘Faithful,’ he said, with well-calculated rage, ‘faithful to a libert –’

‘To a husband, Monsieur, worthy of my fidelity,’ Madame Hulot interrupted, before Crevel could get out a word that she had no wish to hear.

‘Look here, Madame, you wrote asking me to come. You want to know the reasons for my conduct. You drive me out of patience with your airs, as if you were an empress, your disdain and your… contempt! Anyone would think I was a black. I tell you again, and you may believe me! I have a right to… to court you… because… No, I love you well enough to hold my tongue.’

‘Go on, Monsieur. In a few days’ time I shall be forty-eight years old. I am not unnecessarily prudish. I can hear anything you may have to say.’

‘Well then, do you give me your word as a virtuous woman – since, unluckily for me, that’s what you are – never to give me away, never to say that I told you this secret?’

‘If that’s the condition of your telling me, I swear not to reveal to anyone, not even to my husband, who it was that told me the dreadful things I’m about to hear.’

‘I may believe you, for it concerns only you and him.’

Madame Hulot turned pale.

‘Ah! if you still love Hulot, this will hurt you! Would you rather I said nothing?’

‘Go on, Monsieur, if it is true that what you say will justify the strange declarations you have made to me, and your persistence in annoying a woman of my age, who only wishes to see her daughter married, and then… die in peace!’

‘You see, you are unhappy!’

‘I, Monsieur?’

‘Yes, lovely and noble creature!’ cried Crevel. ‘You have suffered only too much.…’

‘Monsieur, say nothing more, and go! Or speak to me in a proper way.’

‘Are you aware, Madame, how our fine Monsieur Hulot and I became acquainted?… Through our mistresses, Madame.’

‘Oh, Monsieur!’

‘Through our mistresses, Madame,’ repeated Crevel melodramatically, breaking his pose to raise his right hand.

‘Well, what then, Monsieur?…’ said the Baroness calmly, to Crevel’s great discomfiture.

Seducers, whose motives are mean, can never understand magnanimous minds.

‘Having been a widower for five years,’ Crevel went on, like a man who has a story to tell, ‘not wishing to marry again, for the sake of my daughter whom I idolize, not wishing to have intrigues in my own establishment either, although at that time I had a very pretty cashier, I set up, as they call it, a little seamstress, fifteen years old, a miracle of beauty, whom I confess I fell head over in love with.

And so, Madame, I even asked my own aunt, whom I brought from my old home in the country (my mother’s sister!), to live with this charming creature and look after her and see that she remained as good as she could in her circumstances, which were what you might call… chocnoso?… improper?… no, compromising!…

‘The little girl, who plainly had a vocation for music, had masters to teach her, was given an education (she had to be kept out of mischief somehow!). And besides I wanted to be three persons in one to her, at the same time a father, a benefactor, and, not to mince matters, a lover: to kill two birds with one stone, do a kind deed and make a kind friend.

‘I had five years’ happiness. The child has a singing voice of a quality that would make any theatre’s fortune, and I can only say that she is a Duprez in petticoats. She cost me two thousand francs a year, only to develop her talent as a singer. She made me an enthusiast for music: I took a box at the Italian Opera for her and my daughter. I went there on alternate evenings with them, one night with Célestine, the next night with Josépha…’

‘What, you mean the famous singer?’

‘Yes, Madame,’ Crevel continued proudly, ‘the famous Josépha owes everything to me. Well, when she was twenty, in 1834 (I thought I had bound her to me for life and had become very soft with her), I wanted to give her some amusement and I let her meet a pretty little actress, Jenny Cadine, whose career had some similarity with her own. That actress too, owed everything to a protector who had brought her up as a cherished darling. Her protector was Baron Hulot.’

‘I know, Monsieur,’ said the Baroness calmly, without the slightest tremor in her voice.

‘Ah bah!’ exclaimed Crevel, more and more taken aback. ‘All very well! But do you know that your monster of a husband was protecting Jenny Cadine when she was thirteen years old?’

‘Well, Monsieur, what then?’

‘As Jenny Cadine,’ the retired shopkeeper went on, ‘like Josépha, was twenty when they met, the Baron must have been playing Louis XV to her Mademoiselle de Romans since 1826, and you were twelve years younger then.…’

‘Monsieur, I had my reasons for leaving Monsieur Hulot free.’

‘That lie, Madame, is enough to wipe out all your sins, no doubt, and will open the gate of Paradise to you,’ Crevel replied, with a knowing air that made the Baroness turn crimson. ‘Tell that story, sublime and adored woman, to others, but not to old Crevel, who, I may tell you, has roistered too often at two-couple parties with your rascal of a husband not to know your full worth! When he was half-seas over, he sometimes used to reproach himself and enlarge on all your perfections to me. Oh, I know you very well: you are an angel. Between a girl of twenty and you a rake might hesitate, but not me.’

‘Monsieur!’

‘Very well, I’ll stop. But you may as well know, saintly and worshipful woman, that husbands in their cups tell a great many things about their wives while their mistresses are listening, and their mistresses split their sides at them.’

Tears of outraged modesty, appearing between Madame Hulot’s fine lashes, stopped the National Guardsman short, and he quite forgot to strike his pose.

‘To return to the point,’ he said, ‘there is a bond between the Baron and me, because of our mistresses. The Baron, like all rips, is a very good sort, really a genial type.