Honoré de Balzac’s Cousin Bette
It is available on Overdrive, and elsewhere on the Internet.
La Cousine Bette is a classic of French literature. It is one of Balzac's later novels, and in the scheme of the Comédie humaine it forms part of the division Scènes de la vie Parisienne. It is one of the best-written of his novels; unlike many of them it never drags and the descriptions are subordinated to the plot. It is also unusual among his novels in that it moves among all the social classes and layers of the time. At the risk of anachronism, one could describe it as a "black comedy" which exposes the moral depravity of Paris society under the reign of Louis Philippe.
The novel opens with a secret conversation between the rich retired merchant M. Crevel and the Baroness Adeline Hulot, in which Crevel offers to pay the dowry of her daughter Hortense if Adeline will become his mistress, which she indignantly rejects. In the course of the discussion, we learn that the Baron Hulot and Crevel are "libertines" who met through their mistresses; that Victorin, the son of the Baron, and Célestin, the daughter of Crevel, are recently married; that the Baron has stolen the mistress of Crevel, the singer Josépha; and that between the expenses of his mistresses and the establishment of Victorin, he has lost most of his money and cannot provide Hortense with a dowry.
While these two are having their conversation, Hortense is talking in the garden with her mother's cousin, Lisbeth Fischer, the Cousine Bette of the title. Cousine Bette is apparently an old maid, a poor relative who is patronized by the Hulots; but she claims to have a lover, a younger Polish count. Hortense thinks at first that he is imaginary, but she and the reader later meet him -- Count Wenceslas Steinbock, a talented but impoverished sculptor. Hortense decides to steal him away from Cousine Bette and marries him. We also learn the history of Cousine Bette -- she is the less attractive cousin who has always since childhood been in the shadow of the beautiful Adeline, and while on the surface she seems humble and good-natured, she is actually consumed by hatred of Adeline and her family, which of course is further fanned by the loss of her lover.
Soon after, Baron Hulot is in turn dumped by Josépha for a rich duke, and takes up with a new mistress, Mme. Marneffe (Valérie), who goes beyond the simple greed of Josépha -- she is evil incarnate and has decided to ruin both Hulot and Crevel, whom she plays against each other. Valérie forms a secret alliance with Cousine Bette, and furthers her revenge by stealing Wenceslas. This all happens early in the novel, and is basically the "set-up". The remainder of the novel consists in plots and counterplots of Valérie and Cousine Bette against the Hulot family and their friends, where Valérie always gets the upper hand because the Hulots implicitly trust their dear cousin. I can't summarize all the many twists and turns of the plot and the many characters who come to play important roles on one side or the other, and I won't reveal how the novel ends.
When all is said and done, the real protagonist of this novel, as of many of Balzac's novels, is money.
