The Poor Relations: Cousin Betty & Cousin Pons. Оноре де Бальзак

Crevel will back us to the extent of a hundred thousand francs to start in business, if, as he says, you will marry me. He has queer ideas, has the worthy man.—Well, what do you say to it?” she added.

      The artist, as pale as the dead, looked at his benefactress with a lustreless eye, which plainly spoke his thoughts. He stood stupefied and open-mouthed.

      “I never before was so distinctly told that I am hideous,” said she, with a bitter laugh.

      “Mademoiselle,” said Steinbock, “my benefactress can never be ugly in my eyes; I have the greatest affection for you. But I am not yet thirty, and——”

      “I am forty-three,” said Lisbeth. “My cousin Adeline is forty-eight, and men are still madly in love with her; but then she is handsome—she is!”

      “Fifteen years between us, mademoiselle! How could we get on together! For both our sakes I think we should be wise to think it over. My gratitude shall be fully equal to your great kindness.—And your money shall be repaid in a few days.”

      “My money!” cried she. “You treat me as if I were nothing but an unfeeling usurer.”

      “Forgive me,” said Wenceslas, “but you remind me of it so often.—Well, it is you who have made me; do not crush me.”

      “You mean to be rid of me, I can see,” said she, shaking her head. “Who has endowed you with this strength of ingratitude—you who are a man of papier-mache? Have you ceased to trust me—your good genius?—me, when I have spent so many nights working for you—when I have given you every franc I have saved in my lifetime—when for four years I have shared my bread with you, the bread of a hard-worked woman, and given you all I had, to my very courage.”

      “Mademoiselle—no more, no more!” he cried, kneeling before her with uplifted hands. “Say not another word! In three days I will tell you, you shall know all.—Let me, let me be happy,” and he kissed her hands. “I love—and I am loved.”

      “Well, well, my child, be happy,” she said, lifting him up. And she kissed his forehead and hair with the eagerness that a man condemned to death must feel as he lives through the last morning.

      “Ah! you are of all creatures the noblest and best! You are a match for the woman I love,” said the poor artist.

      “I love you well enough to tremble for your future fate,” said she gloomily. “Judas hanged himself—the ungrateful always come to a bad end! You are deserting me, and you will never again do any good work. Consider whether, without being married—for I know I am an old maid, and I do not want to smother the blossom of your youth, your poetry, as you call it, in my arms, that are like vine-stocks—but whether, without being married, we could not get on together? Listen; I have the commercial spirit; I could save you a fortune in the course of ten years’ work, for Economy is my name!—while, with a young wife, who would be sheer Expenditure, you would squander everything; you would work only to indulge her. But happiness creates nothing but memories. Even I, when I am thinking of you, sit for hours with my hands in my lap——

      “Come, Wenceslas, stay with me.—Look here, I understand all about it; you shall have your mistresses; pretty ones too, like that little Marneffe woman who wants to see you, and who will give you happiness you could never find with me. Then, when I have saved you thirty thousand francs a year in the funds——”

      “Mademoiselle, you are an angel, and I shall never forget this hour,” said Wenceslas, wiping away his tears.

      “That is how I like to see you, my child,” said she, gazing at him with rapture.

      Vanity is so strong a power in us all that Lisbeth believed in her triumph. She had conceded so much when offering him Madame Marneffe. It was the crowning emotion of her life; for the first time she felt the full tide of joy rising in her heart. To go through such an experience again she would have sold her soul to the Devil.

      “I am engaged to be married,” Steinbock replied, “and I love a woman with whom no other can compete or compare.—But you are, and always will be, to me the mother I have lost.”

      The words fell like an avalanche of snow on a burning crater. Lisbeth sat down. She gazed with despondent eyes on the youth before her, on his aristocratic beauty—the artist’s brow, the splendid hair, everything that appealed to her suppressed feminine instincts, and tiny tears moistened her eyes for an instant and immediately dried up. She looked like one of those meagre statues which the sculptors of the Middle Ages carved on monuments.

      “I cannot curse you,” said she, suddenly rising. “You—you are but a boy. God preserve you!”

      She went downstairs and shut herself into her own room.

      “She is in love with me, poor creature!” said Wenceslas to himself. “And how fervently eloquent! She is crazy.”