Cousin Bette by Honore Balzac Page A

received a sum of ten thousand francs from Baron Hulot in order to start a small business supplying forage at Versailles, the contract for which was obtained from the Ministry of War by the private influence of friends whom the former Commissary general still had there.
    These family misfortunes, Baron Hulot’s fall from favour, the knowledge borne in upon her that she counted for little in the immense turmoil of contending people, ambitions, and enterprises that makes Paris both a heaven and an inferno, intimidated Bette. The young woman at that time gave up all idea of competing with or rivalling her cousin, whose many and various points of superiority she had realized; but envy remained hidden in her heart, like a plague germ which may come to life and devastate a city if the fatal bale of wool in which it lies hidden is ever opened. From time to time, indeed, she would say to herself: ‘Adeline and I are of the same blood; our fathers were brothers. Yet she lives in a mansion, and I in a garret.’ However, year in year out, Lisbeth received presents from the Baroness and the Baron, on her birthday and on New Year’s Day. The Baron, who was exceedingly kind to her, paid for her winter firewood. Old General Hulot entertained her to dinner one day a week. Her place was always laid at her cousin’s table. They laughed at her, certainly, but they never blushed to acknowledge her. They had in fact enabled her to live independently in Paris, where she led the life that suited her.
    Lisbeth was, indeed, very apprehensive of possible restriction of her liberty. Should her cousin invite her to live under her roof… Bette at once caught sight of the halter of domestic servitude. Several times the Baron had found a solution to the difficult problem of arranging a marriage for her; but on each occasion, although the prospect attracted her at first, she soon refused to entertain it, afraid that she might see her lack of education, ignorance, and want of fortune, cast in her face. Then, when the Baroness suggested that she should live with their uncle and look after his household in place of his housekeeper, who must be expensive, she replied that she would make a match in that position even less easily.
    Cousin Bette had that kind of oddity in her cast of mind that one notices in people who have developed late, and among savages, who think much but say little. Her native peasant intelligence had, however, acquired through her workshop conversations, in her constant contacts with the men and women of her trade, a Parisian keenness of edge. This youngwoman, who had a temperament notably resembling the Cor-sican temperament, in whom the active instincts of a strong nature were frustrated, would have found a happy outlet in protecting some less robust-natured man. In her years of living in the capital, the capital had changed her superficially, yet the Parisian veneer left her spirit of strongly-tempered metal to rust. Endowed with an insight that had become profoundly penetrating, as are all men and women who live genuinely celibate lives, with the original twist which she gave to all her ideas, she would have appeared formidable in any other situation. With ill will, she could have sown discord in the most united family.
    In the early days, when she had still cherished some hopes, the secret of which she had confided to no one, she had brought herself to wear stays, to follow the fashion, and had then achieved a brief season of splendour during which the Baron considered her marriageable. Lisbeth was at that time the piquante nut-brown maid of old French romance. Her piercing eye, her olive skin, her reed-like slenderness, might have brought her an admirer in the shape of a major on half-pay, but she was content – so she said, laughing – with her own admiration. She came indeed to find her life a sufficiently pleasant one, once she had eliminated the need to concern herself about material comfort, for she