Valérie and Crevel lie dying from the mysterious poison. When his daughter urges him to meet with a priest, Crevel angrily refuses, mocking the church and indicating that his social stature will be his salvation: "la mort regarde à deux fois avant de frapper un maire de Paris!" ("Death thinks twice of it before carrying off a Mayor of Paris.") Valérie, meanwhile, makes a deathbed conversion and urges Bette to abandon her quest for revenge. Ever the courtesan, Valérie describes her new Christianity in terms of seduction: "je ne puis maintenant plaire qu'à Dieu! je vais tâcher de me réconcilier avec lui, ce sera ma dernière coquetterie!" ("I can please no one now but God. I will try to be reconciled to Him, and that will be my last flirtation ...!") Reception and adaptations The critical reaction to La Cousine Bette was immediate and positive, which Balzac did not expect. Whether due to the intensity of its creation or the tumult of his personal life, the author was surprised by the praise he received. He wrote: "I did not realize how good La Cousine Bette is ... There is an immense reaction in my favour. I have won!" The collected edition sold consistently well, and was reprinted nineteen times before the turn of the 20th century. 20th-century critics remain enthusiastic in their praise for the novel; Saintsbury insists it is "beyond all question one of the very greatest of [Balzac's] works". Biographer Graham Robb calls La Cousine Bette "the masterpiece of his premature old age". Some 19th-century critics attacked the book, on the grounds that it normalized vice and corrupt living. Chief among these were disciples of the utopian theorist Charles Fourier; they disapproved of the "immorality" inherent in the novel's bleak resolution. Critics like Alfred Nettement and Eugène Marron declared that Balzac's sympathy lay with Baron Hulot and Valérie Marneffe. They lambasted him for not commenting more on the characters' degenerate behavior – the same stylistic choice later celebrated by naturalist writers Émile Zola and Hippolyte Taine. Balzac's novel has been adapted several times for the screen. The first was in 1928, when French filmmaker Max DeRieux directed Alice Tissot in the title role. Margaret Tyzack played the role of Bette in the five part serial Cousin Bette made in 1971 by the BBC, which also starred Helen Mirren as Valérie Marneffe. The film Cousin Bette was released in