Honore de Balzac: Cousin Betty

1. PART I: THE PRODIGAL FATHER (continued)

Madame Marneffe released Crevel, knelt down again at the armchair, folded her hands--and in what a bewitching attitude!--and with incredible fervor poured out the following prayer:--

"And thou, Saint Valerie, my patron saint, why dost thou so rarely visit the pillow of her who was intrusted to thy care? Oh, come this evening, as thou didst this morning, to inspire me with holy thoughts, and I will quit the path of sin; like the Magdalen, I will give up deluding joys and the false glitter of the world, even the man I love so well--"

"My precious duck!"

"No more of the 'precious duck,' monsieur!" said she, turning round like a virtuous wife, her eyes full of tears, but dignified, cold, and indifferent.

"Leave me," she went on, pushing him from her. "What is my duty? To belong wholly to my husband.--He is a dying man, and what am I doing? Deceiving him on the edge of the grave. He believes your child to be his. I will tell him the truth, and begin by securing his pardon before I ask for God's.--We must part. Good-bye, Monsieur Crevel," and she stood up to offer him an icy cold hand. "Good-bye, my friend; we shall meet no more till we meet in a better world.--You have to thank me for some enjoyment, criminal indeed; now I want--oh yes, I shall have your esteem."

Crevel was weeping bitter tears.

"You great pumpkin!" she exclaimed, with an infernal peal of laughter. "That is how your pious women go about it to drag from you a plum of two hundred thousand francs. And you, who talk of the Marechal de Richelieu, the prototype of Lovelace, you could be taken in by such a stale trick as that! I could get hundreds of thousands of francs out of you any day, if I chose, you old ninny!--Keep your money! If you have more than you know what to do with, it is mine. If you give two sous to that 'respectable' woman, who is pious forsooth, because she is fifty-six years of age, we shall never meet again, and you may take her for your mistress! You could come back to me next day bruised all over from her bony caresses and sodden with her tears, and sick of her little barmaid's caps and her whimpering, which must turn her favors into showers--"