Honore de Balzac: Cousin Betty

1. PART I: THE PRODIGAL FATHER (continued)

These harsh fruits of indigence, and this isolation in the midst of Paris, Lisbeth relished with delight. And besides, she foresaw that the first passion would rob her of her slave. Sometimes she even blamed herself because her own tyranny and reproaches had compelled the poetic youth to become so great an artist of delicate work, and she had thus given him the means of casting her off.

On the day after, these three lives, so differently but so utterly wretched--that of a mother in despair, that of the Marneffe household, and that of the unhappy exile--were all to be influenced by Hortense's guileless passion, and by the strange outcome of the Baron's luckless passion for Josepha.

Just as Hulot was going into the opera-house, he was stopped by the darkened appearance of the building and of the Rue le Peletier, where there were no gendarmes, no lights, no theatre-servants, no barrier to regulate the crowd. He looked up at the announcement-board, and beheld a strip of white paper, on which was printed the solemn notice:

"CLOSED ON ACCOUNT OF ILLNESS."

He rushed off to Josepha's lodgings in the Rue Chauchat; for, like all the singers, she lived close at hand.

"Whom do you want, sir?" asked the porter, to the Baron's great astonishment.

"Have you forgotten me?" said Hulot, much puzzled.

"On the contrary, sir, it is because I have the honor to remember you that I ask you, Where are you going?"

A mortal chill fell upon the Baron.

"What has happened?" he asked.

"If you go up to Mademoiselle Mirah's rooms, Monsieur le Baron, you will find Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout there--and Monsieur Bixiou, Monsieur Leon de Lora, Monsieur Lousteau, Monsieur de Vernisset, Monsieur Stidmann; and ladies smelling of patchouli--holding a housewarming."