Free Cousin Bette by Honore Balzac Page B

making sketches. He’s an idler.’
    So the conversation went gaily between the two cousins. Hortense’s laughter sounded forced, for the kind of dreaming romantic love that seizes all young girls had overwhelmed her, love of a stranger, with thoughts crystallizing round some figure cast in the way by chance, like frost flowers forming on straw drifted to a window ledge by the wind. For ten months she had been building up the image of a real person from the stories about her cousin’s lover, a fabulous lover, because she believed, as her mother also did, in her cousin’s perpetual celibacy; and, a week before, this phantom had become Count Wenceslas Steinbock, the dream had a birth certificate, a mist had materialized as a young man of thirty. The seal that she held in her hand, a kind of Annunciation, in which genius sprang forth like a light, had the power of a talisman. Hortense felt so overflowing with happiness that she graspedat the thought that the legend might be true. There was an effervescence in her blood, and she laughed wildly in order to prevent her cousin from reading her mind.
    â€˜Ah, I think the drawing-room door is open,’ said Cousin Bette;‘so let’s go and see whether Monsieur Crevel has gone.’
    â€˜Mama has been very sad ever since the day before yesterday. The marriage that was being discussed must have fallen through.’
    â€˜Bah! that can be put right. I can tell you this much – a Councillor of the Supreme Court is the person in question. How would you like to be Madame la Présidente? Well, if it rests with Monsieur Crevel, he will certainly say something to me about it, and I shall know tomorrow whether there is any hope!’
    â€˜Cousin, leave the seal with me,’ begged Hortense. ‘I won’t show it to anyone. It’s a month till Mama’s birthday. I’ll give it back to you that morning.’
    â€˜No, give it to me now. I must have a case made for it.’
    â€˜But I want to let Papa see it, so that he can speak to the Minister with all the facts before him, because people in authority have to be careful not to put themselves in a false position,’ she said.
    â€˜Well, don’t show it to your mother, that’s all I ask; for if she knew I had a sweetheart she would laugh at me…’
    â€˜I promise you I won’t.’
    The two cousins reached the boudoir door just as the Baroness fainted, and Hortense’s cry was enough to bring her back to consciousness. Bette went in search of smelling salts. When she returned she found daughter and mother in each other’s arms, the mother soothing her daughter’s fears, telling her:‘It’s nothing: just an attack of nerves.… Here is your father,’ she added, recognizing the Baron’s ring. ‘On no account are you to mention this to him.…’
    Adeline rose to go to meet her husband, with the intention of taking him into the garden before dinner, meaning to speak to him about the broken-off marriage negotiations, ask him for information about his intentions, and try to give him some advice.
    Baron Hector Hulot presented an appearance at once parliamentary and Napoleonic, for it is easy to distinguish the Imperials, men who served under the Empire, by their military erectness, their blue coats with gold buttons, buttoned high, their black silk cravats, and the air of command developed in them by the habitual exercise of despotic authority necessary in the rapidly changing circumstances of their careers. In the Baron, it must be agreed, nothing suggested age. His sight was still so good that he read without glasses; his handsome oval face, framed in black side-whiskers – too black, alas! – had a high colour, with the veining that indicates a sanguine temperament; and his figure, controlled by a belt, was still, as Brillat-Savarin would have described it, majestic. A high aristocratic air and great affability