With an eye to the future, Valerie had added religious to social
hypocrisy. Punctual at the Sunday services, she enjoyed all the honors
due to the pious. She carried the bag for the offertory, she was a
member of a charitable association, presented bread for the sacrament,
and did some good among the poor, all at Hector's expense. Thus
everything about the house was extremely seemly. And a great many
persons maintained that her friendship with the Baron was entirely
innocent, supporting the view by the gentleman's mature age, and
ascribing to him a Platonic liking for Madame Marneffe's pleasant wit,
charming manners, and conversation--such a liking as that of the late
lamented Louis XVIII. for a well-turned note.
The Baron always withdrew with the other company at about midnight,
and came back a quarter of an hour later.
The secret of this secrecy was as follows. The lodge-keepers of the
house were a Monsieur and Madame Olivier, who, under the Baron's
patronage, had been promoted from their humble and not very lucrative
post in the Rue du Doyenne to the highly-paid and handsome one in the
Rue Vanneau. Now, Madame Olivier, formerly a needlewoman in the
household of Charles X., who had fallen in the world with the
legitimate branch, had three children. The eldest, an under-clerk in a
notary's office, was object of his parents' adoration. This Benjamin,
for six years in danger of being drawn for the army, was on the point
of being interrupted in his legal career, when Madame Marneffe
contrived to have him declared exempt for one of those little
malformations which the Examining Board can always discern when
requested in a whisper by some power in the ministry.
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