Cousin Bette

THE HUMAN COMEDY – Honoré de Balzac Seventeenth volume of works of Honoré de Balzac edited by widow André Houssiaux, publisher, Hebert and Co, successors, 7 rue Perronet – Paris (1877) Scenes from Parisian life

COUSIN BETTE

Signed, TO DON MICHELE ANGELO CAJETANI PRINCE OF TEANO It’s not for therince, nor to the heir of the illustrious illustrious house of Cajetani of Cajetani, who has provided Christendom with popes, it is to the learned commentator of Dante of Dante that I dedicate this small fragment of a long story. You’ve given me a glimpse of the marvellous framework of ideas on which the greatest Italian poet has built his poem, the only one that moderns can oppose to Homer’s. Until I hear from you, The Divine Comedy me seemed like an immense enigma, the answer to which had been by no one, least of all the commentators. than by anyone else. Understanding this Dante is to be great like him; but all greatness are familiar to you. A French scholar would make a name for himself, win a chair and many crosses, by publishing, in one volume dogmatic, the improvisation with which you charmed one of those evenings when one rests from having seen Rome. You may not know that most of our teachers live on Germany, England, the East or the North, like insects on a tree; and like the insect, they become part of it, borrowing their value from that of the subject. However, Italy has not yet been exploited as an open-pit mine. No one will ever hold me accountable for my literary discretion. I could have, by stripping you, become a learned man of the strength of three Schlegels; whereas I’m going to remain a simple doctor of social medicine, the veterinarian of incurable ills, if only to offer a token of gratitude to my cicerone, and join your illustrious name to those of the Porciathe San Severino, the Pareto, the di Negro, the Belgiojoso, who will represent in Visit Human comedy this intimate and continuous alliance between Italy and France that Bandello, that bishop and author of very droll tales, was already consecrating in the same way, in the sixteenth century, in that magnificent collection of short stories from which several of Shakespeare’s plays, sometimes even entire roles, were taken, and textually. The two sketches I dedicate to you are two eternal sides of the same coin. Homo Duplex, said our great Buffon, why not add: Res Duplex? Everything is double, even virtue. So Molière always presents both sides of every human problem; in his imitation, Diderot once wrote THIS IS NOT A FAIRY TALE perhaps Diderot’s masterpiece, in which he presents the sublime figure of Mademoiselle de Lachaux immolated by Gardanne, opposite that of a perfect lover killed by his mistress. So my two short stories are placed side by side, like twins of different sexes. It’s a literary fantasy that can be sacrificed once, especially in a work where we’re trying to represent all the forms that serve as clothing for thought. Most human disputes arise from the fact that there are both the learned and the ignorant, so constituted as to never see but one side of facts or ideas; and each claims that the side he has seen is the only true, the only good. Also the Holy Book did he prophetic words: God gave the world over to discussion. I confess that this passage of Scripture should prompt the Holy See to give you the government of both Houses, in obedience to this sentence commented on in 1814 by Louis XVIII’s ordinance. May your spirit, may the poetry in you protect the two episodes of Poor Parents. POOR RELATIONS. From your affectionate servant, De Balzac. Paris, August-September 1846.

Analysis of the work Alongside Le Père Goriot and Le Cousin Pons, La Cousine Bette is one of Balzac’s best-known novels. But while Le Père Goriot, published in 1834, is the starting point for La Comédie Humaine, the other two, published in 1846 and 1847, shortly before Balzac’s death, are its crowning glory. So their meaning is not quite the same. Le Père Goriot indicting an entire society that thinks only of money and the satisfactions of vanity, the novel, by this very meaning, is a kind of keystone around which the rest of the story will be organized. The Human Comedy while La Cousine Bette and Le Cousin Pons are like efflorescences grown on this stem, showing results, but results that are produced by individual passions, and, therefore, bear a more general meaning that links them to the painting of passions as conceived in all literature by the great classical writers. It’s this classicism that gives these two works the special status they’ve earned. They both have their faults: the temptation of the detective story in La Cousine Betteexaggeration in Le Cousin Pons But in both, the truth and power of the characters, the verve and solidity of the painting, the drama of the situations draw the reader in, leaving nothing but admiration. La Cousine Bette and Le Cousin Pons were presented by Balzac from the moment they were published as twin works, united under the title Les parents pauvres. This is the title History of poor parents which is used in the newspaper serial Le Constitutionnel where La Cousine Bette appeared for the first time: in this serial, the full title is : A tale of poor relations: La Cousine Bette and Les Deux Musiciens by M. de Balzac. It was also under this title that the first edition of La Cousine Bette and the first edition of Le Cousin Pons appeared in bookshops a few months later, all in twelve in-8° volumes. The print run was one thousand copies. This modest figure takes into account, of course, the serial publication, which reached a wide audience and was followed immediately afterwards by a separate print run of the serial for the newspaper’s subscribers. This similarity is all the more remarkable given that the two works were also written in tandem. Balzac began by writing Le Cousin Pons, then interrupted himself to write La Cousine Bette, published it, and then went back to writing Le Cousin Pons, which he completed. These are, he told Madame Hanska, “two capital works”, and he described them as follows: ” The Old Musician is the poor relation, overwhelmed by insults, full of heart. La Cousine Bette is the poor, insulted relative , living inside three or four families and taking revenge for all her pain. ” La Cousine Bette was written with exceptional speed. The letter describing the two subjects is dated June 16, 1846, a first version of Le Cousin Pons between June 20 and the first half of August, and then Balzac began writing La Cousine Bette. of which he wrote 36 pages in one week between August 18 and 25, after which he went to join Madame Hanska in Mainz, returned to Paris and dealt with the purchase of her house in the rue Fortunée, then went back to Germany to attend the wedding of Madame Hanska’s daughter Anna, and didn’t get back to work until mid-October. Publication of the feuilleton in the Constitutionnel has already begun. Fortunately, this is not a daily soap opera. Balzac wrote most of his novel at the same time as the newspaper published it, at the end of October and the beginning of November, at the rate of 10 sheets a day and, as he explains, ” currente calamo, done the day before for the day after, without proofs”.

These drafting conditions are frightening. They recall the worst moments in the history of The Human Comedythe feats of strength Balzac had to perform to complete César Birotteauthe wording at the end ofLost illusionson a camp bed at the Lagny printing works before leaving for St Petersburg, writing the last pages of the Cabinet des Antiques. It’s true that in the summer of 1846, Balzac was sailing in the sky. His marriage seemed secure, his future as bright as he had hoped. He wrote this astonishing sentence to his sister Laure: “If I’m not great because of La Comédie Humaine, I’ll be great because of this success, if it comes. “He already sees himself as a great lord. Madame Hanska gave him enough money to pay off his debts, and he bought a house on rue Fortunée, next to the Chartreuse Beaujon that would one day be the Rothschild mansion. Finally, after a period of despair, he has come back to life, and this rebirth gives him strength. From the very first serials, success exceeded all expectations. The public had already returned to him with the last panels of his great fresco, Splendors and miseries of courtesans. A criminal investigation had been particularly admired. Balzac was back. The first chapters of La Cousine Bette confirmed this renaissance. The success was “stunning”. “I’ve conquered!” cried Balzac triumphantly. He was back at the forefront of his generation’s novelists, a position he had been denied for so long. But the effort had been overwhelming. In his letters of December 1846, Balzac admits his exhaustion. He sees his friend, Dr Nacquart, who makes no secret of his concern. It was these oft-repeated feats of strength that tired out his vigorous constitution and led to his premature demise. In hisIntroduction to Etudes de mœurs au XIXe siècle, Balzac quoted Félix Davin as saying: “In Scènes de la vie parisienne, existence gradually reaches the age of decrepitude. A capital city was the only possible setting for these paintings of a climactic age when infirmities afflict no less the human heart than the human body…passions give way to ruinous tastes…it’s a bazaar where everything is quoted, calculations are made in broad daylight and without modesty… It’s a bazaar where everything is quoted, where calculations are made in broad daylight and without modesty…it’s up to the one who will subjugate civilization and squeeze it for himself…everything is exploited and debited…The blasement of the soul and implacable necessities in presence have produced the extremes of Parisian life. “These lines were written in 1835, just as Balzac was publishing Le Père Goriot. They apply perfectly to La Cousine Bette, written ten years later. Baron Hulot-d’Ervy, a high-ranking civil servant, State Councillor and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, the novel’s main character, is one of the finest and perhaps the most perfect specimen of those monomaniacs who provided Balzac with some of his most powerful creations. A single, imperious, implacable and consequently destructive passion is for them the preoccupation of their whole life: they devote all their strength to it, they rush into it blindly, they sacrifice to it everything that opposes it or simply everything that is foreign to it. The greed for gain in Le Père Grandet, the passion for alchemy in Balthazar Claës’s The Search for the Absolute, and even paternal love in Le Père Goriot are all devouring passions that wreak the same havoc around them, even though they seem to lead to very different results. Eugénie Grandet’s isolation and distress, despite the millions left to her by her father, the ruin of the powerful House of Claës, the bed on which Father Goriot agonizes in the sad Pension Vauquer, repeat in seemingly unrecognizable forms the same spectacle of destruction left behind by these implacable passions. The story told in La Cousine Bette is basically the same as that which is the subject of La Recherche de l’Absolu : in both cases, a powerful family, a great fortune, a prestigious father and, in the end, destruction and desolation. This ferocious passion has devoured everything, fortunes, lives, love, even honor: in the end, a miracle is needed to avert total disaster.

This fatal passion of Baron Hulot’s is named after one of the seven deadly sins: lust. He’s a lover of pretty women. A very handsome man, he was initially overwhelmed. As the years went by, it thickened. And, as luck would have it, that’s when he met the “woman of his life”, no longer one of those little theatrical girls who used to make him so happy, but a petite bourgeoise, Valérie Marneffe, the wife of one of the employees in his department, who will end up costing him a lot more than all the little rouées he used to make his regular menu. The whole novel is the story of this senile passion, sharpened by vanity, exploited by an ingenious rascal who concocts a disinterested love as costly as the upkeep of a prince’s mistress. With the complicity of Cousin Bette, who hates Baron Hulot’s wife, her cousin, and takes revenge for her subordinate position in the family. Valérie Marneffe made her handsome baron a slave to her every whim, ruined him, pushed him into dangerous expedients, and then into serious misappropriation of funds in Algeria, forcing him to resign under dishonorable conditions. The end of the novel is one of Balzac’s most chilling denouements. The tragedy uprooted everything, causing irreparable damage and death. The family courageously faces up to the disaster; it gathers like a herd in a storm, but does not disintegrate in the wreckage. Cousin Bette dies of grief, seeing her revenge incomplete, her plans destroyed by the sheer scale of the victory. But unstoppable passion has not abandoned its prey. The aged baron, himself destroyed like his family, now an old man held in a vice, can’t do without the drug that has been his whole life. Nothing matters more to him than the pleasures that age and decay have deprived him of. So he escapes, runs away, hides under a false name in a miserable suburb where he lives in a squalid hovel: but happy, appeased, because he has set up house with a little thirteen-year-old “pierreuse” he bought from her parents. He lovingly embraces his latest prey, the tragic image of all the world’s drug addicts who are consoled from their dereliction and misery by the possession of a single good, the satisfaction of a single desire. This last image, so symbolic, so frightening, wasn’t enough for Balzac. We find the old baron in his suburb and bring him back. But his desire alone, unfulfilled, ties him to life. Imprisoned in the family home, under surveillance, he still finds a way to procure his last pleasures, paying for them with what’s left to him, his name, his title, which he offers to a juvenile maritoress he joins in her maid’s room. This is his last murder. His wife, who has put up with everything admirably, who has kept her affection for him despite his madness, dies of grief when she hears him counting on her death to convince this slut. Around this central character, the proliferation of other protagonists testifies to Balzac’s renaissance in 1846 after the crisis that had slowed his production in 1842, when Madame Hanska announced that she was abandoning their plans to marry. This sudden flowering is all the more astonishing given that none of these characters are drawn from the pool of characters in La Comédie Humaine : almost all are newcomers. The novel itself, or rather l’Histoire des parents pauvres as a whole, also appeared in his work as a kind of aerolith. It was not mentioned in a list of subjects still to be dealt with to complete the picture in La Comédie Humaine. It all came together like a perennial cutting. All these characters remain etched in the reader’s memory. La Cousine BetteA figure of envy, but so strongly individualized by her ferocious peasant side, and even more so by that “possessive” frenzy that drives her to attach herself to whatever prey she exercises her will to dominate; later, her fierce attachment to Valérie Marneffe, the instrument of her revenge and her accomplice, to whom she devotes herself with all the violence of a strong organization that feeds on a single thought and desire: She’s an admirable Balzacian character who only acts behind the curtain, seemingly patinian, concealed, devious, but as impressive in this half-light as Baron Hulot in the foreground. Next to her, Valérie, cold despite her three lovers, greedy, a comedienne, profoundly feminine in her perfidy, only female for a moment when the return of a handsome Brazilian awakens her senses numbed by her perpetual prostitution: and Marneffe, her husband, ravaged by vices, slimy, gangrened by mysterious turpitudes, an indulgent husband, cynical and flat, dragging his slippers and his dead face that someone forgot to bury. And the other lover, Crevel, a pompous fool whose libidinous tastes are restrained by his vulgarity and meanness as a cautious businessman, stingy and calculating, limiting his bamboozler’s pomp with an accountant’s wisdom and devoting only his interests to his follies without touching his capital. It’s an astonishing gallery of lush, rich, colorful characters, but all of them, with the exception of Crevel, retain something of the mysterious, a disquieting double aspect that makes them more alive and, at all times, fearsome. The amazing thing about this gallery is that the characters are both candid and invented. In this respect, Balzac’s research is an invaluable source of information: it shows us the models, but it also shows us that these models are no more than benchmarks, and that Balzac’s genius is not one of recording, but of invention. The most significant document in this respect comes from Balzac himself. In announcing his novel to Madame Hanska, Balzac, speaking of the poor relative he was portraying, defined her as follows: “The main character will be a composite of my mother, Madame Valmore and your Aunt Rosalie. It will be the story of many families. These three names would not have occurred to the best of Balzac’s historians, but they perfectly illustrate the composite nature of the character and the elements that went into inventing him. Balzac’s mother, at the very least, was a possibility, especially after the publication of Balzac’s correspondence and the recent edition of his letters to Madame Hanska, both of which were produced with impeccable care and scholarship by Roger Pierrot. These texts, perfectly illuminated by the notes and references that accompany them, enable us to reconstruct the rather unfair indictment that Balzac drew up against his mother, and which his imagination nourished with real sufferings, tendentious grievances and singular omissions. His childhood as a foster child, his relegation to the Collège de Vendôme, his obvious maternal preference for his brother, born of a relationship with M. de Margonne, had left him with a feeling of abandonment, of rejection, a resentment that one can guess despite the respectful forms. He had forgotten that his mother had sacrificed part of her fortune to save him from bankruptcy when his printing business collapsed, and that she had borne the consequences all her life without her son, who apparently led a brilliant life, ever managing to return what she had lent him. At the time Balzac was writing La Cousine Bette, his mother, more or less informed of his plans and guessing at some source of fortune, was complaining, exposing her discomfort and insisting on a settlement of her debt. He’d formed an image of her as an acrimonious, jealous, slyly hostile relative, and he indulged in this image, which allowed him to avoid thinking about his own ingratitude. This sourness, these bad dispositions he assumed, this feigned solicitude and the sweet manners that dressed it up, are certainly part of the character he invented. But that’s just the bark. The savagery of the Bette, its peasant energy, its fury, are of a different model. The reference to Marceline-Desbordes-Valmore is even more enigmatic. She was a poetess of some repute at the time, whom Balzac knew well because she was a friend of his “gouvernante”, Mme de Brugnol, with whom he lived in a marital relationship, a discovery that greatly displeased Mme Hanska. She was skinny and black-haired, not unlike La Cousine Bette, whom Balzac compared to a Calabrian goat. Her husband, the actor Valmore, was a childhood friend of hers, seven years younger than her: like the Polish boy incubated by Bette, he was an artist, a dreamer, and Marceline ran the household. She was as poor as Bette, unofficial, a confidante and a willing go-between. There’s a whole side of Bette here, minus the nastiness. This reserve is important. It’s easy to see how Marceline’s example might have suggested something to Balzac, providing him with the entire prologue to his novel, the idyll of Bette and Steinbock, which is almost a carbon copy of the Valmore household. Then he abandons his model after following her for a while, in which Bette is still neither mean nor jealous. It’s the theft of his Polonais, an incident invented by Balzac, that triggers the hatred. He then abandons his initial trail: his character has taken on another character and another weight, those that Balzac added to him on his own initiative. Aunt Rosalie’s name is no less astonishing. It’s even more enigmatic for us because we know so little about the original. She’s the opposite of a poor relation. She was not Madame Hanska’s aunt, as she was known in the family, but her cousin. In her name, she was a Lubomirska, one of the most illustrious Polish families since the early 17th century, who had become Rzewuska by marriage: she had a very high social standing in Saint Petersburg. And she hated Balzac, whom she saw as a parvenu, an ill-mannered, unclean dowry chaser, an immoral being, whose title as a writer gave him a rank intermediate between that of tutor and that of family chaplain. She had always reproached Madame Hanska for her affair with Balzac, which was unworthy of a Rzewuska, and from which she foresaw, with some reason, that it would bring only the greatest misfortune. Bette’s hatred and perfidy no doubt stem from this model. But the context is quite different. The hatred, ill-temper and intrigues are not directed at his cousin, but at Balzac, nor do they stem from plebeian envy, but, on the contrary, from princely arrogance and, it must be admitted, a certain sense of rank. It’s hard to see what Balzac could have borrowed from her to build Bette’s character. One might even wonder if she’s only on this list to slander the troublesome Aunt Rosalie through this imaginary reflection. Another trail, which Balzac did not indicate, leads in an entirely different direction. His sister Laure Surville wrote children’s stories. One of these tales had already provided Balzac with the subject forUn début dans la vie. In her book about her brother, Laure is somewhat coquettish in claiming her role. She wrote of La Cousine Bette: “The great figure of Cousine Bette in Poor Parents was painted after the modest pastel of La Cousine Rosalie (a tale she had published in Le Journal des Enfants). In this bluette, I wanted to preserve the memory of an old relative of ours. My brother claimed that I had seen her beautiful and that the portrait was flattered. He was astonished that two people could see the same character so differently, claimed that I’d given in to idealism and sentimentality, and wanted to show me the truth. As it happens, out of this light-hearted discussion came a masterpiece, Les parents pauvres. ” In the life of this cousin Rosalie, whose real name was Cousin Victoire from Balzac’s maternal family, the Sallembier embroiderers, Pierre-Georges Castex, an authority among specialists in Balzac studies, has discovered traits that are very close to those Balzac retained in his portrait of Bette. Like her, she was a trimmings worker, an old maid, related to a military steward, and had had a secret love affair with a young scientist. Like Cousin Bette, she wore eccentric, old-fashioned toilettes. The Balzacs received her every two weeks, gave her small, acceptable gifts and acknowledged her. This is the situation of cousin Bette in the Hulot d’Ervy household. Was she mean, scheming, indiscreet? The information available does not allow us to say. But Pierre-Georges Castex’s survey already points to a family model that is much closer, at least in outward features, than the models cited by Balzac in his letter to Madame Hanska. But the uncertainty surrounding the interpretation of this cousin Victoire’s character makes it impossible to decide whether this is a copy or Balzac’s imaginary construction of an innocent, picturesque relative. These uncertainties in the documentation itself suggest that we should be cautious when naming the models that may have inspired Balzac’s creations. The names quoted are accurate, the comparisons made are suggestive, but they provide only partial explanations. The alchemy of creation remains mysterious. Genius is always a catalyst that transforms the ingredients put into the retort into something else, something stronger. The same mechanisms come into play when Balzac sets his novel against a backdrop of bourgeois society and administration during the July Monarchy. There was no shortage of models to choose from. The same redesign transforms them into more powerful, more vigorously typified characters than the originals. Crevel, Baron Hulot’s compère and rival, is a distant copy of a famous profiteer of the regime, the notorious Docteur Véron, who in 1846 was the director of the newspaper Le Constitutionnel , where La Cousine Bette appeared in serial form. Balzac’s cheerful impertinence is hardly to be believed. But André Lorant’s recent thesis on Les parents pauvres leaves little room for doubt. Doctor Véron, a “very Parisian” figure under the July regime, founder of the famous Revue de Paris, director of the Opéra and then of the Constitutionnel, was a completely different character to Crevel. But the vulgarity of his manners, his protruding belly, his smugness, his imitation of Regency mores, as described by Hyppolyte Castille in Men and manners in France during the reign of Louis-PhilippeIn fact, Crevel – who is Mayor of Paris and soon to be a member of Parliament – is clearly reminiscent of Crevel’s physical appearance and manners. Crevel’s mistress was the actress Josepha, a good match for Dr. Véron’s mistress Rachel. It’s the same character, but socially and intellectually out of step, the wealthy, important bourgeois. Balzac uses transposition to make him a “typical” character. In the same way, Balzac makes use of the scandals caused by complacent ministers and administrators at the same time. Serious incidents had arisen in 1836 in connection with contracts concluded by Marshal Maison, Minister of War, with suppliers: like Baron Hulot, he maintained actresses. In 1838, General Brossard, commander of the province of Oran, had to be brought before a council of war for embezzlement and corruption of civil servants in Algeria: the same charge was brought against Baron Hulot, forcing him to resign. Finally, in 1846, just as Balzac was writing La Cousine Bette, the Teste and Cubières affair broke out, perhaps one of the causes of the regime’s downfall. The two Teste brothers, both loyal servants of Napoleon, both reinstated and showered with honors, one a general, count and peer of France, the other, the younger, Minister of Commerce and then of Public Works, also a peer of France, and, in addition, President of the Cour de Cassation, correspond fairly well to the tandem formed by the two Hulot brothers. The case was rigorously pursued and the minister, sentenced to three years in prison, attempted suicide. Here again, there’s a transcription: Balzac makes an amalgam that feeds his plot, just as he uses different models from whom he borrows a particular trait that he assembles with other traits provided by other models, as he does with Bette, as he does with Crevel. Like the peasants, he takes demolition materials here and there and drowns them in masonry to create a new wall. This is one of Balzac’s rules for creating his characters. He had explained this seven years earlier in the Preface he had written for Le Cabinet des Antiques, describing “the manner of proceeding (which) must be that of a historian of manners”. “Literature uses the same process as painting, which, to make a beautiful figure, takes the hands of one model, the feet of another, the chest of this one, the shoulders of that one. The painter’s business is to give life to these chosen limbs and make it probable.”

The story The prodigal father The story takes place in 1838, in a well-to-do family. This was the home of Baron Hector Hulot d’Ervy, State Councillor and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. His wife Adeline, a woman of great kindness, took in his poor cousin, Elisabeth Fischer from Lorraine. Bette, as she’s known, has harbored resentment and jealousy towards her beautiful cousin Adeline since childhood. She envies her cousin’s happiness. Hortense had married well and had two children (Hortense and Victorin), while Victorin, a passementerie worker and ugly, old-fashioned girl with a rebellious, stubborn spirit, was unable to find a husband to match her expectations. The sickly hatred buried deep in this spinster’s heart will be unleashed to a climax when she learns that Hortense has stolen the young man she says is her lover. This man is in fact a young Polish chiseler, Count Wenceslas Steinbock, destitute after his family’s ruin in the 1812 campaign, and to whom Bette has offered help – help that is entirely self-serving for Bette, who takes advantage of the young man’s material distress to make him her own and oppress him. Patinacious and benevolent, the devious Bette is in every family confidence. She speculates on the trust she inspires in the family to weave her web and trap her prey. To plot her revenge, she befriends her beautiful neighbor Valérie Marneffe, a greedy bourgeoise, to seduce and rob Baron Hulot. She then throws her into the arms of Hortense’s husband, Count Wenceslas. In order to support Valérie’s lifestyle and cater to her every whim, Hector Hulot gets involved in fraudulent financial dealings that will be uncovered and cause a scandal. Convicted of embezzlement in Algeria and disgraced, the Baron was forced to resign. Riddled with debt, Hector decides to run away and forget about his creditors. He found anonymity in a miserable suburb of Paris under various aliases. Ever more greedy and perverse, Valérie also maintains a guilty relationship with Célestin Crevel, Célestine’s father and Victorin Hulot’s father-in-law. In addition to her old lovers, whose wallets she’s only after, Valérie is also romantically involved with Count Wenceslas and Baron Montès de Montéjanos.

Bette is happy – avenged at last! The hated families are reduced to nothing, both socially and emotionally. Her last plan to complete her victory is to marry old Marshal Hulot and become Madame la maréchale. His plan came to nothing, as the marshal did not survive the disgrace of his corrupt brother’s embezzlement of state assets, and died of grief a few days before his wedding date with Bette. Mad with rage, Bette continued to wage war on the poor family, planning to disinherit Célestine (Victorin Hulot’s wife), Célestin Crevel’s daughter, by marrying him off to Valérie, now the widow of Sieur Marneffe. Betrayed by the news of Valérie’s marriage to Célestin, her young Brazilian lover, Baron Montès de Montéjanos, who saw his sweetheart as a virtuous woman, cleanses his honor by poisoning the future couple. Célestin and Valérie perish in agony. Agonizing on her deathbed, Valérie eased her conscience by bequeathing her fortune to Baron Hulot. Adeline Hulot gets her husband back, Hortense forgives Wenceslas and the family finds happiness again. Suffocated by spite and a heart full of gall, Bette dies of phthisis. Damaged by years of libertinism, Baron Hulot can’t get rid of his old pleasures. He will sacrifice his wife for a servant, a young maritorne, Agathe, to whom he promises his name and title in order to obtain her gallant favors. Adeline died and the Baron married Agathe Piquetard. Source analysis: Preface and story compiled from the complete works of the Comédie Humaine (Tome XV) published by France Loisirs 1985 under the auspices of the Société des Amis d’Honoré de Balzac.

The characters Lisbeth Fischer: Bette is the poor cousin of the Hulot family. With her surly, belligerent nature, this country girl from the Vosges was taken in by her cousin Adeline. Nurturing a blind jealousy of the pretty Adeline since childhood, Bette, a disgraceful, spiteful, manipulative and devious woman, will never stop trying to harm her benefactress, and will do her utmost to bring misfortune upon Baroness Hulot and her family. Count Wencenslas Steinbock: Young Polish count (Livonia) exiled to Paris. The ravages of the 1812 campaign left him penniless and without family. Rescued by Bette, his neighbor, during a suicide attempt, the young man soon finds himself under the total control of this dangerous woman. In love with Hortense, Wencenslas courts her without Bette’s knowledge. Bette would learn of their marriage only a few days before the celebration. Drunk with rage and jealousy, she set about destroying the young couple by throwing Wenceslas into Valérie’s arms. The young Count will eventually return to his family. Baron Hector Hulot: A member of the elite corps of handsome men, Hector Hulot is a great seducer. Used to pleasing pretty women, he won’t resign himself in his fifties to living wisely. Bette, with the help of the beautiful Madame Marneffe, hatches a plan to keep the old man in his vices and lose him. Like an orchestra conductor, Valérie will take the Baron’s passion to the extreme and ruin him. His blind love for Valérie even led him to compromise himself and his uncle in fraudulent operations in Algeria. The debacle will be total: material, sentimental, mortal. Adeline Hulot: From her native Lorraine, Adeline Fisher was 16 when she met Hector Hulot. Her great beauty, her blond hair, her empress’s waist and her distinguished airs brought her to the attention of Hulot, who married her. Moving from the countryside to the imperial court, Adeline’s passion and admiration for her great husband were unwavering. She kept quiet about her amorous escapades, always remaining a great lady. Her unconditional love for the Baron will lead her to make every concession and sacrifice, from misery to dishonor. She will die of grief. Victorin Hulot: son of Baron Hector Hulot. Victorin is a man of honor who embraces the legal profession. He married Célestine, daughter of Célestin Crevel, a former perfumer and successor to César Birotteau. Célestine Hulot: Only daughter of Célestin Crevel, she was married to Victorin Hulot. The couple will stand by the family, bravely fighting against adversity and the traps set by Valérie and Bette. Hortense Hulot: Victorin’s sister, she marries Count Wenceslas Steinbock, Bette’s protégé. She will be one of the victims of the diabolical Bette-Marneffe tandem. The mother of a little Wenceslas, she is neglected by Count Steinbock, whom Bette throws into Valérie’s arms out of revenge. Endowed with her mother’s great human qualities, Hortense will welcome Wenceslas back when he no longer wants Valérie. Valérie Marneffe: Valérie Fortin, natural daughter of the Comte de Montcornet, one of Napoleon’s most famous lieutenants. Wife of Jean-Paul Stanislas Marneffe, a clerk at the Ministry of War. M. Marneffe: An insignificant, depraved little man, skinny, with sparse hair and beard, pale and with a sickly face, Jean-Paul Stanislas Marneffe, is an abject, detestable being. Depraved to the last degree, he is Valérie’s complaisant husband. All that’s left of their relationship is an organization of criminals who get along perfectly well to abuse and defraud their fellow man. Célestin Crevel: Former perfumer at La Reine des Roses, and Birotteau’s successor. He is the father of Victorin Hulot’s wife, Célestine. A bourgeois with pride and vanity, he seeks revenge on Baron Hulot, who has stolen the favors of his mistress, the famous opera singer Josépha, by lifting Valérie from him. Once his revenge is consummated, he too will fall prey to the infernal trap set by Bette and Valérie, which consists in ruining the Hulot family and its allies. Baron Montès de Montéjanos : Montès is Valérie Marneffe’s Brazilian lover. The young man sincerely loves the young coquette he believes to be a virtuous bourgeoise. He waits patiently for death, which should quickly take Marneffe away from his wife and marry Valérie. A passionate and jealous African, he can’t stand Valérie’s betrayal as she prepares to marry Célestin Crevel without his knowledge. He will destroy Bette’s enduring success by poisoning the bride and groom.

Source : Universal Encyclopedia Wikipedia