These people are
devoting what remains to them of their existence to alleviating pain
and distress. Godefroi is admitted into the association, and, during
his novice expedition, has a curious experience which leads to the
disclosure of Madame de la Chanterie's past. This is narrated in the
second half of the book. We get the whole of that lady's tragic
history, an unjust trial of which she was the victim, the Nemesis
which punished the bad judge in his daughter's frightful malady and
his poverty, and the heaping of coals of fire on his head by the woman
who had suffered so direly through him. On arriving at the end of the
story we cannot recognize it as the one we were made acquainted with
at the outset. The tangle of episode and explanation--the latter
confusing more than it explains--which intervenes in the middle,
issues in a coarser thread that persists till the close. And yet the
start was a fair one.
With _Cousin Bette_, we are back among the monstrosities. Bette is the
poor relation who, unlike Pons, revenges herself for her humiliations
and the insults bestowed on her. She aids in the pecuniary and moral
ruin of the Hulot family, acts in cold blood, and attains her object
before she dies.
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