Part 90

“Valerie, my little Angel!”

Utter silence. A highly problematical tear was furtively dashed away.

“One word, my little duck?”

“Monsieur!”

“What are you thinking of, my darling?”

“Oh, Monsieur Crevel, I was thinking of the day of my first communion! How pretty I was! How pure, how saintly!--immaculate!--Oh! if any one had come to my mother and said, ‘Your daughter will be a hussy, and unfaithful to her husband; one day a police-officer will find her in a disreputable house; she will sell herself to a Crevel to cheat a Hulot--two horrible old men--’ Poof! horrible--she would have died before the end of the sentence, she was so fond of me, poor dear!--”

“Nay, be calm.”

“You cannot think how well a woman must love a man before she can silence the remorse that gnaws at the heart of an adulterous wife. I am quite sorry that Reine is not here; she would have told you that she found me this morning praying with tears in my eyes. I, Monsieur Crevel, for my part, do not make a mockery of religion. Have you ever heard me say a word I ought not on such a subject?”

Crevel shook his head in negation.

“I will never allow it to be mentioned in my presence. I can make fun of anything under the sun: Kings, politics, finance, everything that is sacred in the eyes of the world--judges, matrimony, and love--old men and maidens. But the Church and God!--There I draw the line.--I know I am wicked; I am sacrificing my future life to you. And you have no conception of the immensity of my love.”

Crevel clasped his hands.

“No, unless you could see into my heart, and fathom the depth of my conviction so as to know the extent of my sacrifice! I feel in me the making of a Magdalen.--And see how respectfully I treat the priests; think of the gifts I make to the Church! My mother brought me up in the Catholic Faith, and I know what is meant by God! It is to sinners like us that His voice is most awful.”

Valerie wiped away two tears that trickled down her cheeks. Crevel was in dismay. Madame Marneffe stood up in her excitement.

“Be calm, my darling--you alarm me!”

Madame Marneffe fell on her knees.

“Dear Heaven! I am not bad all through!” she cried, clasping her hands. “Vouchsafe to rescue Thy wandering lamb, strike her, crush her, snatch her from foul and adulterous hands, and how gladly she will nestle on Thy shoulder! How willingly she will return to the fold!”

She got up and looked at Crevel; her colorless eyes frightened him.

“Yes, Crevel, and, do you know? I, too, am frightened sometimes. The justice of God is exerted in this nether world as well as in the next. What mercy can I expect at God’s hands? His vengeance overtakes the guilty in many ways; it assumes every aspect of disaster. That is what my mother told me on her death-bed, speaking of her own old age.--But if I should lose you,” she added, hugging Crevel with a sort of savage frenzy--“oh! I should die!”

Madame Marneffe released Crevel, knelt down again at the armchair, folded her hands--and in what a bewitching attitude!--and with incredible fervor poured out the following prayer:--

“And thou, Saint Valerie, my patron saint, why dost thou so rarely visit the pillow of her who was intrusted to thy care? Oh, come this evening, as thou didst this morning, to inspire me with holy thoughts, and I will quit the path of sin; like the Magdalen, I will give up deluding joys and the false glitter of the world, even the man I love so well--”

“My precious duck!”

“No more of the ‘precious duck,’ monsieur!” said she, turning round like a virtuous wife, her eyes full of tears, but dignified, cold, and indifferent.

“Leave me,” she went on, pushing him from her. “What is my duty? To belong wholly to my husband.--He is a dying man, and what am I doing? Deceiving him on the edge of the grave. He believes your child to be his. I will tell him the truth, and begin by securing his pardon before I ask for God’s.--We must part. Good-bye, Monsieur Crevel,” and she stood up to offer him an icy cold hand. “Good-bye, my friend; we shall meet no more till we meet in a better world.--You have to thank me for some enjoyment, criminal indeed; now I want--oh yes, I shall have your esteem.”

Crevel was weeping bitter tears.

“You great pumpkin!” she exclaimed, with an infernal peal of laughter. “That is how your pious women go about it to drag from you a plum of two hundred thousand francs. And you, who talk of the Marechal de Richelieu, the prototype of Lovelace, you could be taken in by such a stale trick as that! I could get hundreds of thousands of francs out of you any day, if I chose, you old ninny!--Keep your money! If you have more than you know what to do with, it is mine. If you give two sous to that ‘respectable’ woman, who is pious forsooth, because she is fifty-six years of age, we shall never meet again, and you may take her for your mistress! You could come back to me next day bruised all over from her bony caresses and sodden with her tears, and sick of her little barmaid’s caps and her whimpering, which must turn her favors into showers--”

“In point of fact,” said Crevel, “two hundred thousand francs is a round sum of money.”

“They have fine appetites, have the goody sort! By the poker! they sell their sermons dearer than we sell the rarest and realest thing on earth--pleasure.--And they can spin a yarn! There, I know them. I have seen plenty in my mother’s house. They think everything is allowable for the Church and for--Really, my dear love, you ought to be ashamed of yourself--for you are not so open-handed! You have not given me two hundred thousand francs all told!”

“Oh yes,” said Crevel, “your little house will cost as much as that.”