Honore de Balzac: Cousin Betty

1. PART I: THE PRODIGAL FATHER (continued)

Madame Hulot looked at this vulgar intriguer with such a fixed stare of terror, that he thought she had gone mad, and he stopped.

"You insisted on it, you heaped me with scorn, you defied me--and I have spoken," said he, feeling that he must justify the ferocity of his last words.

"Oh, my daughter, my daughter," moaned the Baroness in a voice like a dying woman's.

"Oh! I have forgotten all else," Crevel went on. "The day when I was robbed of Josepha I was like a tigress robbed of her cubs; in short, as you see me now.--Your daughter? Yes, I regard her as the means of winning you. Yes, I put a spoke in her marriage--and you will not get her married without my help! Handsome as Mademoiselle Hortense is, she needs a fortune----"

"Alas! yes," said the Baroness, wiping her eyes.

"Well, just ask your husband for ten thousand francs," said Crevel, striking his attitude once more. He waited a minute, like an actor who has made a point.

"If he had the money, he would give it to the woman who will take Josepha's place," he went on, emphasizing his tones. "Does a man ever pull up on the road he has taken? In the first place, he is too sweet on women. There is a happy medium in all things, as our King has told us. And then his vanity is implicated! He is a handsome man!--He would bring you all to ruin for his pleasure; in fact, you are already on the highroad to the workhouse. Why, look, never since I set foot in your house have you been able to do up your drawing-room furniture. 'Hard up' is the word shouted by every slit in the stuff. Where will you find a son-in-law who would not turn his back in horror of the ill-concealed evidence of the most cruel misery there is--that of people in decent society? I have kept shop, and I know. There is no eye so quick as that of the Paris tradesman to detect real wealth from its sham.--You have no money," he said, in a lower voice. "It is written everywhere, even on your man-servant's coat.