Honore de Balzac: Cousin Betty

1. PART I: THE PRODIGAL FATHER (continued)

"Would you like me to disclose any more hideous mysteries that are kept from you?"

"Monsieur," cried Madame Hulot, whose handkerchief was wet through with her tears, "enough, enough!"

"My son-in-law, I tell you, gives his father money, and this is what I particularly wanted to come to when I began by speaking of your son's expenses. But I keep an eye on my daughter's interests, be easy."

"Oh, if I could but see my daughter married, and die!" cried the poor woman, quite losing her head.

"Well, then, this is the way," said the ex-perfumer.

Madame Hulot looked at Crevel with a hopeful expression, which so completely changed her countenance, that this alone ought to have touched the man's feelings and have led him to abandon his monstrous schemes.

"You will still be handsome ten years hence," Crevel went on, with his arms folded; "be kind to me, and Mademoiselle Hulot will marry. Hulot has given me the right, as I have explained to you, to put the matter crudely, and he will not be angry. In three years I have saved the interest on my capital, for my dissipations have been restricted. I have three hundred thousand francs in the bank over and above my invested fortune--they are yours----"

"Go," said Madame Hulot. "Go, monsieur, and never let me see you again. But for the necessity in which you placed me to learn the secret of your cowardly conduct with regard to the match I had planned for Hortense--yes, cowardly!" she repeated, in answer to a gesture from Crevel. "How can you load a poor girl, a pretty, innocent creature, with such a weight of enmity? But for the necessity that goaded me as a mother, you would never have spoken to me again, never again have come within my doors. Thirty-two years of an honorable and loyal life shall not be swept away by a blow from Monsieur Crevel----"