THE RUSH FOR THE SPOIL

_(LA CURÉE)._


A REALISTIC NOVEL.


BY EMILE ZOLA.


WITH A PREFACE BY GEORGE MOORE.


TRANSLATED WITHOUT ABRIDGMENT FROM THE 34TH FRENCH EDITION.


Illustrated with Twelve Page Engravings.


LONDON:

_VIZETELLY & Co., 42 CATHERINE STREET, STRAND._

1886.




TABLE OF CONTENTS


 PREFACE.

 CHAPTER I.
 CHAPTER II.
 CHAPTER III.
 CHAPTER IV.
 CHAPTER V.
 CHAPTER VI.
 CHAPTER VII.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


 DE MUSSY MEETING RENÉE AND MAXIME DRIVING IN THE BOIS.

 RENÉE WATCHING MAXIME AND LOUISE IN THE LITTLE DRAWING ROOM.

 THE DEATH OF ANGÈLE.

 RENÉE AND MAXIME MEETING FOR THE FIRST TIME.

 MAXIME DISCOVERS HIS FATHER AT THE MAISON DORÉE.

 THE EMPEROR AND THE OLD GENERAL OGLING RENÉE AT THE BALL AT THE TUILERIES.

 RENÉE AND MAXIME IN THE PRIVATE ROOM AT THE RESTAURANT.

 RENÉE AND MAXIME SKATING IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE.

 MAXIME ASSISTING AT RENÉE'S TOILET FOR THE NIGHT.

 THE TABLEAUX VIVANTS AT SACCARD'S MANSION IN THE PARC MONCEAUX.

 SACCARD SURPRISES RENÉE AND MAXIME.

 THE COMMISSIONERS FOR THE PARIS IMPROVEMENTS INSPECTING THE DEMOLITIONS.





PREFACE.


The public and the press have agreed that "L'Assommoir" is M. Zola's
_chef d'œuvre_. Against this verdict I have no objection to offer.
I believe it will meet with posterity's endorsement. But although
"L'Assommoir" may lift its head the highest, there are many other
volumes in the Rougon-Macquart series which stand on, and speak from
equally lofty platforms of art. In my opinion, these are "La Faute de
l'Abbé Mouret," "La Conquête de Plassans," and "La Curée."

I have spoken before of Zola as an epic poet: he is this more than
he is anything, and as he is more epic in "La Curée" than elsewhere
("L'Assommoir" and "La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret" always excepted), it
follows that it must be one of the best and most characteristic of
his works. The qualities that endow a book with immortality exist
independent of the artist's will, and the process of penetrating,
of animating the whole with life, is accomplished as silently and
unconsciously as the seed-grain germinates in the earth, as the child
quickens with life in the womb. And, doubtless, Zola intended in the
beginning to write merely the passionate love story of a woman who,
oppressed and wearied of luxury, is forced to seek, in violent ways and
fierce fancies, oblivion of golden idleness, of an aimless and satiated
existence. This idea might have been worked out, and adequately worked
out, in the analysis of the mind of a duke's daughter, who, after five
years of husband hunting in London drawing-rooms, runs away and lives
with her groom at Hampstead. And taken out of its setting, M. Zola's
story is quite as simple. Renée is a young girl of the upper middle
classes; she has been seduced; she is enceinte; it is necessary to find
her a husband. Under such circumstances, it would be vain to be too
particular, and an adventurer called Saccard is chosen. He is a genius
who is waiting for a few pounds to make a million. Renée's fortune
enables him to do this; he places her in a magnificent house in the
Parc Monceaux; he gives her everything but an interest in life: to gain
this she falls in love with her stepson, Maxime Saccard. The story of
this incestuous passion becomes the theme of the book; and when Maxime
deserts his stepmother to get married, she dies of consumption. That
is all; but this slight outline soon began to grow, to take gigantic
proportions in Zola's mind; and it was not long before he saw that
his story was an allegory of the Second Empire. Renée became Paris;
her dressmaker--Worms--became the Emperor; her dresses, the material
of which costs sixty, the making-up of which, with the accumulated
interest, costs six hundred, are the boulevards and buildings with
which the city was adorned at ruinous expense. In the clamour of the
fêtes in the Parc Monceaux, the demands of the creditors are silenced,
and when Renée dies her debts are paid by her father--that is to say,
by the Republic of M. Thiers.

Renée is a Venus, but not the Greek Venus--the white-breasted woman
born of the sea foam and heralded by cupids and tritons; she is not
even "the obscure Venus of the hollow Hill" that Baudelaire describes
as having grown diabolic among ages that would not accept her as
divine. Renée is the Venus of the counting house. Her hair is yellow
as pale gold, her drawing-room is hung with yellow draperies, and her
golden head, seen thereon as she leans back in her richly upholstered
chairs, seems like a setting sun that sinks little by little, drowned
in a bath of gold. But, unlike her earlier prototypes, she does not
find the flesh sufficient; her sensualities are not the dark desire of
the animal, but the nervous erethism of a human mind that, satiated
with pleasure, longs and hungers for some strange and acute note
to break the cloying sweetness--the monotonous melody of her life.
Here there is no touch of pagan or mediæval thought. Maxime fears
no god, he knows not remorse nor even desire; he is the son of the
capitalist; he is the weed sprung from, but not the intelligence that
has built up, the gold-heap, and he festers and rots like a weed in an
overpoweringly rich soil. Saccard is Mammon. Nothing exists for him
but gold. Thoughts, dreams, love, have long since disappeared; he is
not even vicious: in the lust of speculation all other passions have
been submerged, have sunk out of sight for ever. Men and things only
suggest to him ideas for the accumulation of wealth; and from the
heights of Montmartre he looks down upon Paris like a wolf upon its
prey. His eyes flash with fierce light, his lips twitch with a wild
mental hunger that manifests itself in physical actions: with his hand
he divides Paris into sections, he sees how he will distribute it into
boulevards, squares, and streets; and he hears in vision the cries of
the huntsmen, and he longs to put himself at the head of the hounds,
and to descend with open jaws upon the splendid quarry that even now
run to death lies panting and bleeding before him.

The book is Paris--Paris as she feasted and flattered under the Second
Empire--a Paris of adventurers, of courtezans--a Paris of debts--a
Paris of women's shoulders, cotillons, champagne, of violins and
pianos--a Paris of opera hats--a Paris of gold pieces, of fraud, of
liars, of speculation, of supper tables--a Paris sonorous and empty as
a wheel of fortune--a Paris of sweetmeats, rendezvous, bank-notes--a
Paris of tresses of false hair forgotten in hackney carriages.

Yes, a Paris of this and of little else. There is the famous scene
of the return from the Bois. Under the pale October sky, in which
towards the Porte de la Muette, there still floats the dim light of an
autumn sunset, the carriages are blocked; and the uncertain rays dance
through the brightly painted wheels, touching with intense splendour
the buckles of the harness, the large buttons on the liveries, and the
burnished cockades. The artificial lake lies still, reflecting in its
crystal clarity the innumerable graces of the poplars and pine trees
that grow down to the very banks of the trim island. The walks are as
bits of grey ribbon lost in the dark foliage. The scene looks like a
newly varnished toy. All Paris is there--courtezans, diplomatists, and
speculators. Renée is there; she is with Maxime, who is pointing out
and telling her about his father's new mistress.

She is the celebrated Laure, to whose house Renée goes with Maxime,
because she is anxious to know what a _cocotte's_ ball is really like.
Afterwards they sup, in a _cabinet particulier_, at the Café Riche.
Renée is sipping a glass of chartreuse; the gas is hissing, the room
has grown hot. They throw open the window. Paris rolls beneath them.
The Boulevard is alive with the flashing lights of carriages, women go
by in hundreds; they pass into the darkness of a traversing street;
they reappear again like shadows thrown by a magic lantern. Groups of
men sit round the tables at the door of the café; some are talking to
women; some sit smoking vacantly, watching the interminable procession
that passes and repasses before them. One woman wears a green silk;
she sits with her legs crossed. Renée feels strangely interested.
By-and-by, wearied of the Boulevard, she examines the looking-glass,
scratched all over with diamond rings; and she asks Maxime questions
concerning the women whose names are scrawled thereon. Maxime pleads
ignorance: putting his cigar aside, he advances towards her; they look
into each other's eyes; she falls into his arms.

There is the ball-room scene. Saccard is on the brink of ruin, but he
gives a fête that costs him four thousand pounds. He is anxious that
his son should marry a little hunchback, who has an immense fortune.
The _tableaux vivants_ are over, and the dancers, in the costumes of
gods and goddesses, are dancing the cotillon. Renée, who is cognizant
of her husband's projects, is wandering about mad with nervous rage and
despair. She pursues Maxime, drags him with her into her bedroom, and
tells him that he must fly with her to America, that she will never
consent to give him up.

And I must not forget that requisite bit of description--ten lines, not
more--which, for rapidity of observation and precision and delicacy of
touch, seems to me unsurpassable; indeed, to find anything that might
be set against it, I should have to turn to that supreme success, that
final vindication of the divine power of words--Flaubert's "L'Éducation
Sentimentale." The passage I allude to is when Renée goes to the great
fête at the Tuileries. She wears a wonderful dress, composed entirely
of white muslin and black velvet. The bodice is in black velvet, the
skirt in white muslin, garnished with a million flounces, and all cut
up and adorned with bows made out of black velvet: no ornament but one
diamond in her fawn-coloured hair. Suddenly the people draw into lines,
and the corpulent Emperor walks down the room on the arm of one of his
generals. Renée shrinks back: but she cannot get away--she is in the
front rank; and, when Napoleon fixes his, all eyes are fixed upon her.
A heaven of lustres is above her head, a velvety carpet beneath her
feet, and she hears the general whisper to the Emperor: "There's a
carnation that would suit our button-holes uncommonly well." The rest
of the fête is lost in this _moment d'âme_;--is an acute note that
vibrates long in the monotonous melody of her life.

Whether "La Curée" is a faithful picture, true to the smallest detail,
of life under the Second Empire, I cannot say. Nor do I care. I am
content to take it for what it seems to me to be--a gorgeous, a golden
poem, born of the author's contemplation of the scenes he describes.
Although a tyrant, Napoleon the Third was a demagogue at heart. When
he came into office Paris was starving. To govern, he saw that he
would have to feed the people, and to do this the ingenious plan
of creating an immense debt, living upon it and giving the city as
security, was adopted. He appeased his enemies by calling new names to
the front, he unchained, and he gave them unlimited means of gratifying
their appetites. In a house of ill-fame politics do not occupy men's
minds--why not turn Paris into a house of ill-fame? But what is true
for individuals is true for nations: Sedan was the suicide of the
prostituted city. This is the view M. Zola takes of the Second Empire.
"La Curée" is but a corner of it, but I do not know any corner more
beautifully finished, more perfectly proportioned. Of course faults may
be urged: it may be said, and I admit with a certain show of reason,
that the characters are more representative of the classes to which
they belong than individual men and women. The same argument may be
used, and with equal effect, against Hamlet, against Orestes, against
every beautiful drawing of Hokousaï and Hokkeï: but when possible
and impossible faults have been found, and all visible and invisible
flaws taken note of, I believe it will be admitted by the blind, the
dumb, and the lame that, when the last page of "La Curée" is read, the
impression left upon the mind is one of intense artistic beauty.

GEORGE MOORE.




THE RUSH FOR THE SPOIL.

_(LA CURÉE.)_


CHAPTER I.


On the return home, the carriage could only move slowly along amidst
the mass of vehicles winding round the lake of the Bois de Boulogne. At
one moment, the block became such that the horses were even brought to
a standstill.

The sun was setting in the faint grey October sky, streaked with
slender clouds on the horizon. A last ray, which came from above the
distant shrubbery of the cascade, streamed across the roadway, bathing
the long line of now stationary carriages in a pale ruddy light. The
golden glimmers, the bright flashes from the wheels, seemed to have
become fixed to the straw-coloured fillets, whilst the dark blue panels
of the carriage reflected portions of the surrounding landscape. And,
higher up, full in the ruddy light which illumined them from behind,
and which gave a sparkle to the brass buttons of their overcoats folded
over the back of the box-seat, the coachman and the footman, dressed in
a livery consisting of dull blue coats, putty-coloured breeches, and
black and yellow-striped waistcoats, sat erect, grave and patient, like
well-trained lackeys, whose temper is above being ruffled by a block
of vehicles. Their hats, embellished with black cockades, gave them a
most dignified appearance. The superb bay horses were alone snorting
impatiently.

"Hallo!" said Maxime, "there's Laure d'Aurigny over there in that
brougham. Look, Renée."

Renée raised herself slightly, and, blinking her eyes with that
exquisite pout which was caused by the weakness of her sight, said:

"I thought she was travelling. She has changed the colour of her hair,
has she not?"

"Yes," replied Maxime, with a laugh, "her new lover detests everything
red."

Renée, bent forward, her hand resting on the low door of the carriage,
continued looking, awakened from the sad dream which, for an hour past,
had kept her silently reclining on the back seat, as though in an
invalid's easy-chair. Over a mauve dress with an upper skirt and tunic,
and trimmed with broad plaited flounces, she wore a little white cloth
jacket with mauve velvet facings, which gave her a very dashing air.
Her extraordinary pale fawn-coloured hair, the hue of which recalled
that of the finest butter, was scarcely concealed beneath a slender
bonnet adorned with a cluster of crimson roses. She continued to blink
her eyes, in the style of an impertinent boy, her pure brow crossed by
one long wrinkle, her upper lip protruding just like a sulky child's.
Then, as she was unable to distinguish very well, she raised her double
eye-glass, a regular man's eye-glass with a tortoise-shell frame, and
holding it up in her hand without placing it on her nose, she examined
stout Laure d'Aurigny at her ease, in a perfectly calm manner.

The block still continued. Amidst the uniform, dull-coloured patches
caused by the long line of broughams--extremely numerous in the Bois on
that autumn afternoon--the glass of a window, a horse's bit, a plated
lamp-holder, or the gold or silver lace on the livery of some lackey
seated up on high, sparkled in the sun. Here and there an open landau
displayed a glimpse of a dress, some woman's costume in silk or velvet.
Little by little a profound silence had succeeded the hubbub of the
now stationary mass. In the depths of the carriages one could overhear
the remarks of the pedestrians. There was an exchange of speechless
glances from vehicle to vehicle; and all conversation ceased during
this deadlock, the silence of which was only broken by the creaking of
harness and the impatient pawing of some horse. The confused murmurs of
the Bois were dying away in the distance.

In spite of the lateness of the season, all Paris was there: the
Duchess de Sternich, in a chariot; Madame de Lauwerens, in a victoria,
drawn by some very fine cattle; Baroness de Meinhold, in a delicious
dark brown private cab; Countess Vanska, with her piebald ponies;
Madame Daste and her famous black steppers; Madame de Guende and
Madame Teissière, in a brougham; little Sylvia, in a deep blue landau;
and Don Carlos, too, in mourning, with his ancient and solemn-looking
livery; Selim Pasha, with his fez and without his tutor; the Duchess de
Rozan, in her single-seated brougham, and with her powdered lackeys;
Count de Chibray, in a dog-cart; Mr. Simpson, on a well-appointed
mail-coach; the whole of the American colony. Finally, two members of
the Academy in a cab.

The leading carriages were at length released, and the whole line was
soon able to move slowly onwards. It was like an awakening. A thousand
scintillations danced around, rapid flashes played to and fro amidst
the wheels, whilst the harness shaken by the horses emitted a galaxy
of sparks. Along the ground and on the trees were broad reflexions of
fleeting glass. This glistening of harness and of wheels, this blaze of
varnished panels all aglow with the red fire of the setting sun, the
bright touches of the gorgeous liveries perched up on high, and of the
rich costumes bursting from the confined space of the equipages, passed
along in the midst of a hollow, continuous rumbling, timed by the pace
of the thoroughbreds. And the procession continued, accompanied by the
same sounds and the same scintillations, unceasingly and at one spurt,
as though the leading vehicles had been dragging all the others after
them.

Renée had yielded to the slight jolting of the carriage as it once
more started off, and, dropping her eye-glass, she had resumed her
half-reclining posture on the cushions. She shiveringly drew towards
her a corner of the bearskin which filled the interior of the vehicle
with a silky snow-white mass. Her gloved hands became lost amidst the
long soft curly hairs. The north wind was beginning to blow. The warm
October afternoon which, in giving to the Bois an appearance of spring,
had brought out the most fashionable ladies in their open carriages,
threatened to end in an evening of piercing chilliness.

For a while the young woman remained huddled up, enjoying the warmth
of her corner, and abandoning herself to the voluptuous lullaby of all
those wheels turning before her eyes. Then, raising her head towards
Maxime, whose glances were quietly unrobing the women displayed in the
adjoining broughams and landaus, she asked:

"Really now, do you think her pretty, that Laure d'Aurigny? You were
praising her up so much the other day when some one spoke of the sale
of her diamonds! By the way, you have not seen the necklace and the
aigrette that your father bought me at the sale."

"Ah! he does everything well," said Maxime with a spiteful laugh, and
without answering her question. "He manages to pay Laure's debts, and
to make his wife presents of diamonds."

The young woman slightly shrugged her shoulders.

"Rascal!" murmured she with a smile.

But the young man had leant forward, following with his eyes a lady
whose green dress interested him. Renée was resting her head, her eyes
half closed, idly glancing at both sides of the avenue, but without
seeing. On the right were copses and low bushes, with slender branches
and reddened leaves; now and again, on the track reserved for riders,
passed slim built gentlemen whose galloping steeds raised little
clouds of dust. On the left, at the foot of the narrow sloping lawns,
intersected by flower-beds and shrubberies, the lake, as clear as
crystal, reposed without a ripple, as though neatly trimmed all round
by the spades of the gardeners; and, on the opposite side of this
limpid mirror, the two islands, with the connecting bridge forming
a grey bar between them, displayed their pleasant shores, arraying
against the pale sky the theatrical lines of their firs and of their
evergreens, the dark foliage of which, similar to the fringe of
curtains skilfully hung on the very edge of the horizon, was reflected
in the still waters. This corner of nature, having the appearance of
a piece of scenery freshly painted, was bathed in a slight shadow,
in a bluey vapour which finished giving an exquisite charm to the
background, an air of adorable falsity. On the other bank, the Châlet
des Îles, looking freshly varnished, shone like a new toy; and those
gravel contours, those narrow garden walks, which wind in and out of
the lawns and border the lake, and are edged with cast-iron hoops
imitating rustic woodwork, stood out more curiously from the soft green
of the water and of the grass, at this last hour of daylight.

Used to the graces of these skilfully arranged points of view, Renée,
again yielding to her feeling of weariness, had completely lowered
her eyelids, no longer observing aught but her tapering fingers as
she twined around them the long hairs of the bearskin. But there
came a kind of jerk in the even trot of the line of carriages. And,
raising her head, she bowed to two young women reclining side by
side, with amorous languor, in a barouche which was noisily leaving
the road that skirts the lane to turn down one of the lateral
avenues. The Marchioness d'Espanet, whose husband, at that time one
of the emperor's aides-de-camp, had just rallied with a good deal
of fuss to the scandal of the sulking old nobility, was one of the
most illustrious society queens of the Second Empire; the other,
Madame Haffner, had married a famous manufacturer of Colmar, twenty
times millionaire, and whom the Empire was turning into a political
personage. Renée, who had known at school the two inseparables as they
were slyly termed, always called them by their Christian names, Adeline
and Suzanne. As, after greeting them with a smile, she was about to
once more huddle herself up in her wraps, a laugh from Maxime caused
her to turn round.

"No, really now, I feel sad, don't laugh, it's serious," said she
on seeing the young man looking at her mockingly, making fun of her
recumbent posture.

Maxime assumed a ludicrous tone of voice.

"We are very much to be pitied, we are jealous!"

She seemed quite astonished.

"I!" said she. "Jealous! whatever about?"

Then she added, with her disdainful pout, as though suddenly
recollecting:

"Ah! yes, big Laure! She doesn't trouble me much, I can assure you. If
Aristide, as you all wish to make me believe, has paid the creature's
debts and thus saved her the necessity of taking a trip to foreign
parts, it merely shows that he loves money less than I thought he did.
This will make him quite a favourite with the ladies again. The dear
fellow, I never interfere with him."

She smiled, she uttered "the dear fellow," in a tone of voice full of
friendly indifference. And all on a sudden, becoming quite sad again,
and casting around her that despairing glance of women who know not how
to amuse themselves, she murmured:

"Oh! I should be only too delighted--But no, I'm not jealous, not in
the least jealous."

She stopped, hesitating.

"You see, I feel bored," she at length said abruptly.

Then she relapsed into silence, her lips pressed firmly together. The
line of vehicles still wended its way round the lake, with an uniform
trot, and a noise greatly resembling that of some distant cataract.
Now, on the left, between the water and the roadway, rose little clumps
of evergreens with thin straight stems, forming curious clusters of
tiny columns. On the right, the copses and low bushes had come to
an end; the Bois had expanded into large lawns, immense carpets of
turf, with groups of tall trees planted here and there; the greensward
continued, with gentle undulations, as far as the Porte de la Muette,
the low iron gates of which, looking like a piece of black lace drawn
across the ground, could be seen far away in the distance; and, on the
slopes, at the parts where the earth sank in, the grass had quite a
bluey look. Renée gazed with fixed eyes, as though this enlargement
of the horizon, these soft meads, all reeking with the night dew, had
caused her to feel more keenly than ever the emptiness of her existence.

At the end of a pause she repeated, with the accents of subdued anger:

"Oh! I feel bored, I feel bored to death."

"You're not over lively, you know," said Maxime, quietly. "It's your
nerves, I'm sure."

The young woman threw herself back again on her cushions.

"Yes, it's my nerves," retorted she, sharply.

Then she became quite maternal.

"I am growing old, my dear child; I shall soon be thirty. It's
terrible. I take pleasure in nothing. At twenty, you cannot understand
this."

"Did you ask me to come with you to listen to your confession?"
interrupted the young man. "It will be terribly long."

She received this impertinent remark with a feeble smile, as though
dealing with a spoilt child to whom everything is permitted.

"You're a nice one to complain," continued Maxime; "you spend more than
a hundred thousand francs a year on your dress, you live in a splendid
mansion, you possess some superb horses, your caprices become law, and
the newspapers mention every new dress you wear as though they were
relating something of the highest importance; all the women are jealous
of you, every man would give ten years of his life just to kiss the
tips of your fingers. Is it not so?"

She nodded her head affirmatively, but did not otherwise answer. With
eyes cast down, she was again curling the hairs of the bearskin.

"Ah! do not be modest," resumed Maxime; "admit at once that you are one
of the pillars of the Second Empire. Between ourselves, we can speak of
these things. Everywhere, at the Tuileries, at the ministries, at
the mansions of the mere millionaires, over the highest and the lowest,
you reign with sovereign power. There is not a pleasure you have not
partaken of, and if I dared, if the respect I owe you did not restrain
me, I would say--"

He paused for a few seconds, laughing the while; then he cavalierly
finished his sentence.

"I would say that you have tasted of every apple."

She did not wince.

"And yet you feel bored!" continued the young man with ludicrous
vivacity. "But it's downright suicide! What is it you want? whatever is
it you are dreaming of?"

She shrugged her shoulders, by way of saying she did not know. Though
she held her head down, Maxime saw such a serious, such a gloomy look
on her face, that he left off speaking. He watched the line of vehicles
which, on reaching the end of the lake, spread out, and filled the vast
carrefour. The carriages, no longer being so closely packed together,
turned round with a superb grace; whilst the accelerated trot of the
horses resounded loudly on the hard ground.

On going the round to rejoin the line, the carriage oscillated in a way
which filled Maxime with a vague voluptuousness. Then, yielding to a
desire to overwhelm Renée, he resumed:

"Ah! you deserve to never ride in anything better than a cab! It would
serve you right! Why, just look at this crowd returning to Paris, this
crowd ready to fall down and worship you. You are hailed as a queen,
and your dear friend Monsieur de Mussy can scarcely restrain himself
from blowing kisses to you."

[Illustration: DE MUSSY MEETING RENÉE AND MAXIME DRIVING IN THE BOIS.]

And indeed, a rider was at that moment bowing to Renée. Maxime had been
speaking in a hypocritically mocking way. But Renée scarcely turned
round, and contented herself by shrugging her shoulders. This time, the
young man made a despairing gesture.

"Really," said he, "is it as bad as all that? But, good heavens! you
have everything, what more do you want?"

Renée raised her head. Her eyes had a warm bright look, the ardent
desire of unsatiated curiosity.

"I want something else," replied she in a low voice.

"But you have everything," resumed Maxime laughing, "something else is
no answer. What is the something else you want?"

"Ah! what!" repeated she.

And she said nothing further. She had turned completely round, and was
contemplating the strange picture which was disappearing behind her.
It was now almost dark; dusk was gradually enveloping all like a fine
dust. The lake, when looked at front ways, in the pale light which
still hovered over it, seemed to become rounder, and had the appearance
of an immense plate of brass; on either side, the plantations of
evergreens, the slim straight stems of which looked as though they
issued from the still water, assumed at this hour the aspect of violet
tinted colonnades, describing with their regular architecture the
elaborate curves of the shores; then, right at the back, rose groups
of shrubs and trees, confused masses of foliage, broad black patches
closing the horizon. Behind these patches there shone a bright glimmer,
an expiring sunset which merely lit up a very small portion of the
grey immensity. Above this motionless lake and these low copses, this
point of view so peculiarly flat, the vault of heaven opened infinite,
deeper and more expanded still. This great extent of sky over this tiny
corner of nature caused a shudder, an undefinable sadness; and there
descended from these pale altitudes such an autumnal melancholy, so
sweet and yet so heartbreaking a darkness, that the Bois, enveloped
little by little in a veil of obscurity, lost its worldly graces, and
breaking its bounds became filled with all the powerful charm of a
forest. The rumble of the vehicles, the bright colours of which became
lost in the dim light, sounded like the distant murmurs of leaves and
water-courses. Everything had an expiring air. In the centre of the
lake, amidst the universal evanescence, the Latin sail of the large
pleasure boat stood out, vigorously defined, against the last glow of
the sunset. And one could no longer distinguish anything but this sail,
this triangle of yellow canvas, inordinately enlarged.

In the midst of her satiety, Renée experienced a singular sensation
of unavowable desires at the sight of this landscape she no longer
recognised, of this bit of nature so artistically worldly, and which
by its great shivering darkness seemed changed into some sacred wood,
one of those ideal glades in whose recesses the gods of antiquity used
to hide their giant loves, their divine adulteries and incests. And as
the carriage drove away, it seemed to her that the twilight carried off
behind her, hidden in its trembling veil, the land of her dreams, the
shameful and unearthly alcove where she might at last have swaged her
suffering heart, her wearied flesh.

When the lake and the copses, rapidly vanishing in the shades of night,
merely appeared as a black bar against the sky, the young woman turned
abruptly round, and, in a voice full of tears of vexation, she resumed
her interrupted sentence:

"What? why something else, of course! I want something else. How can I
tell what? If I only knew--But, you see, I'm sick of balls, of supper
parties, of merry-makings. It's always the same thing over again. It's
mortal. Men are unbearable, oh! yes, unbearable."

Maxime burst out laughing. Ardent desires pierced through the
fashionable beauty's aristocratic bearing. She no longer blinked her
eyes; the wrinkle on her forehead became more harshly accentuated; her
lip, like a sulky child's, stood out, full of passion, in quest of
those enjoyments for which she longed though unable to name them. She
beheld her companion laughing, but she was too transported to stop;
half reclining and swayed by the motion of the carriage, she continued
in short jerky sentences:

"Yes, really, you are unbearable. I don't say that for you, Maxime; you
are too young. But if I only told you how Aristide wearied me in the
early days! And the others too! those who have loved me. You know, we
are two good friends, I don't stand on ceremony with you; well! really,
there are days when I am so tired of living my life of a rich, adored
and honoured woman, that I should like to be a Laure d'Aurigny, one of
those ladies who live like men."

And as Maxime laughed louder than ever, she laid more stress upon her
words:

"Yes, a Laure d'Aurigny. It would surely be less insipid, not so much
always the same thing."

She kept silent a few minutes, as though she were conjuring up the
life she would lead, were she Laure. Then, she resumed in a tone of
discouragement:

"After all, those ladies must have their troubles also. There is
decidedly nothing really amusing. It's enough to make one sick of life.
I was right when I said there was something else wanting; I can't guess
what, you know; but something else, something which does not happen to
every one, which one does not meet with every day, which would give a
rare, an unknown enjoyment."

Her voice had softened. She uttered these last words as though she
were seeking something, gradually falling into a deep reverie. The
carriage was then ascending the avenue which leads to the way out of
the Bois. The darkness increased; the undergrowth, on either side,
flew past them like two grey walls; the yellow painted iron chairs, on
which the holiday-making citizens lounge on fine evenings, sped along
the side-walks, unoccupied, and wrapt in that black melancholy peculiar
to garden furniture overtaken by winter; and the rumble, the dull and
cadenced sound of the returning vehicles, was wafted over the deserted
way like some sad wail.

No doubt Maxime felt all the bad form there was in finding life
amusing. If he was still young enough to yield to an outburst of
delighted admiration, he possessed an egotism too vast, an indifference
too scoffing, he already felt too much real weariness, to do other than
declare himself sick of everything, satiated, done for. He was usually
in the habit of glorifying in this avowal.

He stretched himself out like Renée, and assumed a doleful tone of
voice.

"Really now! you're right," said he; "it's enough to kill one. Ah! I
don't amuse myself any more than you, you may be sure; I too have often
dreamed of something else. Nothing is stupider than travelling. As for
making money, I prefer far more to spend it, though that is not always
as amusing as one would fancy at first. Then there's love-making, being
loved, one soon has more than enough of it, is it not so? ah yes, one
soon has more than enough of it!"

As the young woman did not answer, he continued, washing to astonish
her by something grossly impious:

"I should like to be loved by a nun. Eh! perhaps there would be some
amusement in that! Have you never dreamed of loving a man of whom you
could never think without committing a crime?"

But she remained gloomy, and Maxime, seeing that she still kept silent,
thought that she was not listening to him. With the nape of her neck
leaning against the padded edge of the carriage, she seemed sleeping
with her eyes open. She was wrapt in thought, inert, full of the dreams
which kept her thus depressed, and, at times, a nervous twinge passed
over her lips. She was softly overcome by the shadow of the twilight;
all that this shadow contained of undefined sadness, of discreet
voluptuousness, of unavowed hope, penetrated her, bathed her in a
sort of languid and morbid atmosphere. Whilst looking fixedly at the
round back of the footman on the box-seat, she was thinking no doubt
of those joys of former days, of those parties she now found so dull,
and for which she no longer cared; she looked back on her past life,
the immediate satisfaction of every whim, the fulsomeness of luxury,
the crushing monotony of similar affections and similar betrayals.
Then, like a hope, there arose in her, as she quivered with desire,
the thought of this "something else" which her overwrought mind was
unable to fix upon. There, her reverie wandered. She made effort upon
effort, but each time the sought-for word disappeared in the gathering
night, became lost in the continuous rumble of the vehicles. The gentle
motion of the carriage was a hesitation the more which prevented her
formulating her desire. And an immense temptation ascended from out
of this vagueness, from these copses slumbering in the shadows on
either side of the avenue, from this noise of wheels and from this soft
oscillation which filled her with a delicious torpor. A thousand little
thrills passed over her flesh: unfinished dreams, nameless ecstasies,
confused wishes, all the grace and monstrosity which a return from the
Bois, at the hour when the heavens assume a pallid hue, can introduce
into the wearied heart of a woman. She kept her hands buried in the
bearskin, she felt quite hot in her white cloth jacket with mauve
velvet facings. On thrusting out her foot as she stretched herself with
bodily enjoyment her ankle rubbed against Maxime's warm leg, but he did
not even notice the contact of her flesh. A jerk roused her from her
lethargy. She raised her head, and her grey eyes looked in a bewildered
sort of way at the young man who was seated in the most elegant
attitude.

At this moment, the carriage left the Bois. The Avenue de l'Impératrice
extended in a straight line in the twilight, with the two green borders
of wooden fence which seemed to meet at the horizon. In the distance,
a white horse, on the side-path reserved for riders, appeared like
a bright speck in the midst of the grey shadow. Here and there, on
the opposite side of the roadway, were groups of black dots, belated
pedestrians, slowly wending their steps towards Paris. And, right at
the top, at the end of the mixed and moving line of vehicles, the
Arc-de-Triomphe, placed sideways, stood out all white against a vast
stretch of sky the colour of soot.

Whilst the carriage ascended at a faster pace, Maxime, charmed with
the English appearance of the landscape, examined the whimsically
designed villas on either side of the avenue, with their lawns sloping
down to the footpaths; Renée, still wrapt in reverie, amused herself
by watching at the edge of the horizon the gas-lamps of the Place de
l'Étoile as they were lighted up one by one; and as fast as their
bright glimmers speckled the expiring light with little yellow flames,
she fancied she could hear secret calls, it seemed to her that the
flaring Paris of a winter's night was being illuminated on her account,
and was preparing for her the unknown enjoyment after which her
satiated body hankered.

The carriage turned down the Avenue de la Reine-Hortense, and drew
up at the end of the Rue Monceaux, a few steps from the Boulevard
Malesherbes, in front of a grand mansion situated between a courtyard
and a garden. The two iron gates loaded with gilt ornaments, which
gave admittance to the courtyard, were each flanked by a pair of
lamps, shaped like urns and also covered with gilding, in which flared
great flames of gas. Between the two gates, the doorkeeper occupied an
elegant lodge which vaguely resembled a little Greek temple.

At the moment the carriage was about to enter the courtyard, Maxime
jumped nimbly out.

"You know," said Renée, as she caught hold of his hand to detain him,
"we dine at half-past seven. You have more than an hour to dress in.
Don't keep us waiting."

And she added with a smile:

"We are expecting the Mareuils. Your father wishes you to be very
attentive to Louise."

Maxime shrugged his shoulders.

"What a bore!" murmured he in a sullen tone of voice. "I don't mind
marrying, but as for courting, it's too stupid. Ah! it would be so nice
of you, Renée, if you would deliver me from Louise this evening."

He put on his most comical look, mimicking the grimace and the accent
of the actor Lassouche, as he did every time he was about to make one
of his funny remarks.

"Will you, my pretty darling mamma?"

Renée shook hands with him as with a comrade. And rapidly, with an
audacity full of a nervous raillery, she answered:

"Ah! if I had not married your father, I really believe you would court
me."

This idea must have struck the young man as highly comical, for he
had turned the corner of the Boulevard Malesherbes before he had done
laughing.

The carriage entered and drew up at the foot of the steps.

These steps, which were broad and low, were sheltered by a vast glass
verandah edged with a scallop imitating golden fringe and tassels. The
two storeys of the mansion rose above the domestic offices, the square
windows of which, glazed with ground glass, appeared almost on a level
with the soil. At the top of the steps, the hall-door stood out flanked
by slender columns fixed in the wall, forming thus a kind of fore-part
pierced at each floor by a round bay, and ascending as high as the roof
where it terminated in a point. On either side, each storey had five
windows, placed at regular intervals along the façade, and surrounded
by a simple stone border. The roof, with its attic windows, was square
shaped, with broad sides almost perpendicular.

But the façade on the garden side was far more sumptuous. A regal
flight of steps led to a narrow terrace which extended the whole length
of the ground floor; the balustrade of this terrace, in the style of
the railings of the Parc Monceaux, was even more covered with gilt
than the verandah and the lamps of the courtyard. Above this rose the
mansion with a wing at either end, like two towers half inserted in the
body of the building, and which contained rooms of circular shape. In
the centre, another tower, even deeper inserted still, formed a slight
curve. The windows, tall and narrow in the wings, wider apart and
almost square on the flat portions of the façade, had stone balustrades
on the ground floor, and gilded wrought-iron handrails at the upper
storeys. It was a display, a profusion, a superabundance of riches.
The mansion disappeared beneath the carvings. Around the windows,
along the cornices, were scrolls of flowers and branches; there were
balconies resembling masses of verdure supported by great nude women
with strained hips and protruding breasts; then, here and there, were
fantastical escutcheons, bunches of fruit, roses, every blossom it
is possible to represent in stone or marble. As fast as one's glance
ascended, the building seemed to bloom the more. Around the roof was
a balustrade, bearing at equal distances urns on which burnt flames
of stone. And there, between the oval windows of the attics, which
opened amidst an incredible medley of fruits and foliage, expanded the
crowning portions of this amazing ornamentation, the pediments of the
two wings in the centre of which reappeared the great nude women,
playing with apples and standing in every conceivable posture amongst
sheaves of reeds. The roof, loaded with these ornaments, surmounted
besides with galleries of carved lead, with two lightning conductors
and with four enormous symmetrical chimney stacks sculptured like
all the rest, seemed to be the final flare up of this architectural
firework.

To the right was a vast conservatory, fixed to the side of the mansion,
and communicating with the ground floor by means of a French window
opening out of a little drawing-room. The garden, separated from the
Parc Monceaux by a low iron railing hidden by a hedge, sloped rather
sharply. Too small for the house, and so narrow that a lawn and a few
clumps of evergreens occupied the entire space, it simply formed a
kind of knoll, a verdant pedestal, on which the mansion was proudly
planted decked out in its gayest attire. Seen from the park, towering
above the bright grass and the shining foliage of the shrubs, this
great building, looking still new and quite sickly, had the sallow
complexion, the stupid and moneyed importance of some female upstart,
with its heavy head-dress of slates, its gilded balustrades, and
its flood of sculpture. It was a reproduction of the new Louvre on
a smaller scale, one of the most characteristic specimens of the
style of the Second Empire, that opulent bastard of every style. On
summer evenings, when the last rays of the sun lit up the gilt of
the balustrades against the white façade, the strollers in the park
would stop to look at the red silk curtains hanging at the ground
floor windows; and, through panes so large and clear that they seemed,
like those of the great modern emporiums, placed there to display the
interior wealth to the outer world, these families of modest citizens
would catch glimpses of articles of furniture, of portions of hangings,
and of corners of ceilings of dazzling splendour, the sight of which
would root them to the spot with admiration and envy right in the
centre of the pathways.

But, at this hour, the trees cast their shadows over the façade which
was wrapt in gloom. In the courtyard on the other side, the footman had
respectfully assisted Renée to alight from the carriage. The stables,
with red brick dressings, opened on the right their wide doors of
polished oak, at the end of a glass-roofed yard. On the left, as though
to counterbalance, was a richly ornamented recess in the wall of the
adjoining house, with a fountain of water perpetually flowing from a
shell which two cupids supported in their outstretched arms. The young
woman stood a moment at the foot of the steps, gently tapping her skirt
to get it to hang right. The courtyard, through which the noise of the
return had just passed, resumed its solitude, its aristocratic silence,
broken by the eternal sing-song of the dripping water. And as yet,
amidst the great black mass of the mansion--the chandeliers of which
were so soon to be illuminated on the occasion of the first of the
grand dinner parties of the autumn--only the lower windows were lighted
up, all aglow and casting the bright reflection of a conflagration on
the small paving-stones of the courtyard, as neat and regular as a
draught-board.

As Renée pushed open the hall door, she found herself face to face
with her husband's valet, who was on his way to the servants' quarters
and carrying a silver kettle. Dressed all in black, tall, strong,
pale-faced, this man looked superb, with the whiskers of an English
diplomatist, and the grave and dignified air of a magistrate.

"Baptiste," inquired the young woman, "has your master come in?"

"Yes, madame, he is dressing," replied the valet with a bow worthy of a
prince acknowledging the plaudits of the crowd.

Renée slowly ascended the staircase, withdrawing her gloves the while.

The hall was fitted up most luxuriously. On entering, one experienced
a slightly suffocating sensation. The thick carpets, which covered the
floor and the stairs, the broad red velvet hangings which hid the walls
and the doors, made the atmosphere heavy with the silence and the warm
fragrance of a chapel. The draperies hung from on high, and the lofty
ceiling was ornamented with salient arabesques on a golden trellis.
The staircase, with its double balustrade of white marble and handrail
covered with red velvet, opened out into two slightly winding branches
between which was placed the entrance to the grand drawing-room right
at the back. An immense mirror covered the whole of the wall on the
first landing. Down below, at the foot of the branching staircase,
two bronze gilt female figures, on marble pedestals and nude down to
the waist, supported gigantic lamp-posts carrying five burners, the
brilliant light from which was softened by ground glass globes. And
on either side was a row of splendid vases in majolica ware in which
blossomed the rarest plants.

Renée ascended, and at each step she took her reflection in the mirror
increased in size; she was asking herself, with that doubt entertained
by the most popular actresses, whether she were really delicious, as
every one told her.

Then, when she had reached her apartment, which was on the first floor,
and overlooked the Parc Monceaux, she rang for Céleste, her maid, and
had herself dressed for dinner. This operation lasted a good three
quarters of an hour. When the last pin had been fixed, she opened the
window as the room was very close, and leaning out remained there wrapt
in thought. Behind her, Céleste was moving discreetly about, tidying
the room.

Down below, the park was immersed in a sea of shadow. The inky coloured
masses of the tall trees, shaken by sudden gusts of wind, swayed to
and fro like the tide, with that rustling of dead leaves which recalls
the breaking of the waves on a shingly strand. Piercing now and again
this ebb and flow of darkness, the two yellow eyes of a carriage
would appear and vanish between the shrubberies bordering the road
which connects the Avenue de la Reine-Hortense with the Boulevard
Malesherbes. In the face of all this autumnal melancholy Renée's
sad thoughts returned. She fancied herself once more a child in her
father's house, in that silent mansion of the Île Saint-Louis, where
for two centuries past the Béraud Du Châtels had sheltered their gloomy
magisterial gravity. Then her thoughts turned to her sudden marriage,
to that widower who sold himself to become her husband, and who had
trucked his name of Rougon for that of Saccard, the two sharp syllables
of which had sounded in her ears, when first pronounced before her,
with all the brutality of two rakes gathering up gold; he took her, and
cast her into this life of turmoil amidst which her poor brain became a
little more cracked every day. Then she set to dreaming with a childish
joy of the happy games at battledore and shuttlecock she had played in
the old times with her young sister Christine. And, some morning, she
would awake from the dream of enjoyment she had been indulging for ten
years past, crazy, and befouled by one of her husband's speculations,
in which he himself would also sink. This passed before her like a
rapid presentiment. The trees were lamenting in a louder tone. Troubled
by these thoughts of shame and punishment, Renée yielded to the old and
worthy middle-class instincts slumbering within her; she promised the
black night she would reform, that she would no longer spend so much
on her dress, and that she would seek some innocent occupation to amuse
her, like in the happy school days, when she and her playmates sang
beneath the plane-trees and danced in a ring.

At this moment, Céleste, who had been downstairs, returned and murmured
in her mistress's ear:

"Master would be glad if madame would go down. There are already
several persons in the drawing-room."

Renée started. She had not felt the chilly air which was freezing her
shoulders. As she passed before her looking-glass, she stopped and
glanced at herself mechanically. With an involuntary smile she went
down.

And, indeed, most of the guests had arrived. There were her sister
Christine, a young lady of twenty, very simply dressed in white muslin;
her aunt Élisabeth, the widow of the notary Aubertot, in black satin, a
little old woman of sixty, of most exquisite amiability; her husband's
sister, Sidonie Rougon, a gentle, scraggy woman, of no particular
age, with a face like soft wax, and whose dull-coloured dress effaced
still further; then the Mareuils, the father, Monsieur de Mareuil,
who had just gone out of mourning for his wife, a tall handsome man,
empty-headed and serious, bearing a striking resemblance to the valet
Baptiste; and the daughter, that poor Louise as people called her, a
young girl of seventeen, puny and slightly hump-backed, who wore with a
sickly grace a soft white silk dress with red spots; then quite a group
of serious men, gentlemen wearing many decorations, official personages
with pale and solemn faces; and, farther off, another group, young
men with an air of vice about them, and wearing low cut waistcoats,
surrounding five or six ladies of the greatest elegance, amongst whom
throned the inseparables, the little Marchioness d'Espanet, in yellow,
and the fair Madame Haffner, in violet. Monsieur de Mussy, the cavalier
whose bow Renée had ignored, was also there, with the uneasy look of
a lover expecting to receive his dismissal. And, in the midst of the
long trains spread out over the carpet, two contractors, masons who had
made their fortunes, named Mignon and Charrier, with whom Saccard had
some business to settle on the morrow, were moving heavily about on
their big feet, holding their hands behind their backs and feeling most
uncomfortable in their dress suits.

Standing near the door, Aristide Saccard managed to greet each new
arrival, whilst holding forth to the group of serious men with all his
southern animation and snuffling. He shook the guest's hand and spoke
a few amiable words. Short, and pitiful-looking, he bobbed up and down
like a puppet; and of all his puny, dark and crafty person, the most
prominent object was the red bow of his ribbon of the Legion of Honour
which he wore very large.

When Renée entered, there rose a murmur of admiration. She was truly
divine. Over a lower skirt of tulle, trimmed behind with a mass of
flounces, she wore a tunic of pale green satin, edged with a broad
border of English lace, and gathered up and fastened by large bunches
of violets; a single flounce adorned the front of the skirt over which
was a light muslin drapery kept in its place by more bunches of violets
joined together by garlands of ivy. The gracefulness of the head and
bust were adorable, above this skirt of royal amplitude and slightly
overdone richness. Uncovered at the neck as low as the breast, her
arms bare with tufts of violets on her shoulders, the young woman
seemed to be emerging all naked from her sheath of tulle and satin,
similar to one of those nymphs whose busts issue from the sacred oaks;
and her white neck, her supple frame, appeared so delighted with this
semi-freedom, that one expected at every moment to see the bodice and
the skirts slip down like the costume of a bather in love with her
flesh. Her tall head-dress, her fine yellow hair gathered up in the
form of a helmet, and amidst which twined a sprig of ivy held in its
place by a bunch of violets, increased still more her air of nudity
by displaying the nape of her neck, slightly shaded by little downy
hairs resembling threads of gold. Round her neck she wore a diamond
necklace with pendants of the first water, and on her brow an aigrette
formed of stems of silver set with the same precious stones. And she
stood thus for a few seconds on the threshold of the room, erect in
this magnificent costume, her shoulders shining in the warm glow. As
she had come down quickly she was rather out of breath. Her eyes, which
the darkness of the Parc Monceaux had filled with shadow, blinked
in that sudden flood of light, and gave her that hesitating air of
short-sighted people, which with her was full of gracefulness.

On perceiving her, the little marchioness rose hastily from her seat,
and running up to her, seized hold of her hands; whilst examining her
from her head down to her feet she murmured in a fluty tone of voice:

"Ah! pretty darling, pretty darling."

Then there was considerable commotion, all the guests came to pay
their respects to the beautiful Madame Saccard, as Renée was called
in society. She shook hands with nearly all the men. After which she
embraced Christine, and inquired after her father who never visited the
mansion in the Parc Monceaux. And she remained standing, smiling and
still bowing, with her arms held indolently open, before the circle of
ladies who were examining with curious eyes the diamond necklace and
aigrette.

Fair Madame Haffner could not resist the temptation; she drew nearer,
and after looking a long while at the jewels, said in a jealous tone of
voice:

"They are the necklace and the aigrette, are they not?"

Renée nodded her head affirmatively. Then all the women gave vent to
their praise; the jewels were enchanting, divine; then they began to
speak, with an admiration full of envy, of Laure d'Aurigny's sale at
which Saccard had bought them for his wife; they complained that those
frail creatures always secured the best things, there would soon be no
diamonds at all for virtuous women. And out of their complaints pierced
the desire to feel on their bare skin one of those jewels which all
Paris had beheld on the shoulders of some illustrious courtesan, and
which would perhaps whisper in their ear the alcove scandals on which
the thoughts of these grand ladies loved to linger. They knew the high
prices realised, they quoted a superb cashmere, some magnificent lace.
The aigrette had cost fifteen thousand francs, the necklace fifty
thousand. Madame d'Espanet was quite enthusiastic about these figures.
She called Saccard, exclaiming:

"Come and be congratulated! You are a good husband!"

Aristide Saccard went up to the ladies, bowed and did the modest. But
his grimacing features betrayed a great delight. And out of the corner
of his eye he watched the two contractors, the two masons who had
made their fortunes, who were standing a few paces off listening with
visible respect to the mention of such sums as fifteen thousand and
fifty thousand francs.

At this moment, Maxime, who had just entered the room, looking adorable
in his well-cut dress-coat, leant familiarly on his father's shoulder,
and spoke to him in a low tone, as though to a comrade, calling his
attention to the masons with a glance. Saccard smiled discreetly like
an applauded actor.

A few more guests arrived. There were quite thirty persons in the
drawing-room. The conversations were resumed; during the pauses, one
could hear, on the other side of the wall, a jingling of crockery and
plate. At length Baptiste opened the folding doors, and majestically
uttered the sacramental phrase: "Madame is served."

Then, the procession slowly formed. Saccard gave his arm to the little
marchioness; Renée took an old gentleman's, a senator, Baron Gouraud,
before whom everyone bowed down with great humility; as for Maxime,
he was obliged to offer his arm to Louise de Mareuil; then followed
the rest of the guests, in couples, and right at the end the two
contractors swinging their arms.

The dining-room was a vast square apartment with a high dado all round
of stained and varnished pear-tree ornamented with thin fillets of
gold. The four large panels had probably been intended to be filled
with paintings of inanimate objects; but they had remained empty,
the owner of the mansion having no doubt hesitated before a purely
artistical outlay. They had simply been covered over with dark green
velvet. The furniture, the curtains and the door-hangings of the same
material, gave to the room a grave and sober appearance calculated to
concentrate on the table all the splendour of the illumination.

And indeed, at this hour, in the centre of the vast sombre Turkey
carpet which deadened the sound of the footsteps, beneath the glaring
light of the chandelier, the table, surrounded by chairs, the black
backs of which relieved by fillets of gold framed it with a dark line,
appeared like an altar, like some illuminated chapel, as the bright
scintillations of the crystal glass and the silver plate sparkled on
the dazzling whiteness of the cloth. In the floating shadow beyond the
carved chair backs, one could just catch a glimpse of the wainscotting,
of a large low sideboard, and of portions of velvet hangings trailing
about. One's eyes forcibly returned to the table, and became filled
with all this splendour. An admirable unpolished silver epergne
glittering with chased work occupied the centre; it represented a
troop of fauns bearing away some nymphs; and, issuing from an immense
cornucopia above the group, an enormous bouquet of natural flowers
hung down in clusters. At either end of the table were some vases also
containing bunches of flowers; two candelabra matching the centre
group, and each consisting of a satyr in full flight bearing on one
arm a swooning woman, whilst with the other he grasped a ten-branched
candelabrum, added the bright light of their candles to the radiance of
the central chandelier. Between these principal objects the hot dishes,
both large and small, bearing the first course, were symmetrically
arranged in lines, flanked by shells filled with the _hors-d'œuvre_,
and separated by china bowls, crystal vases, flat plates and tall
comports, containing all of the dessert placed upon the table. Along
the line of plates, the army of glasses, the water-bottles, the
decanters, the tiny salt-cellars, in fact the whole of the glass was as
thin and slender as muslin, uncut and so transparent that it did not
cast the least shadow. And the epergne, and the other large ornaments
looked like fountains of fire; the polished sides of the dishes
sparkled; the forks, the spoons, and the knives with mother-of-pearl
handles were so many bars of flame; rainbows illuminated the glasses;
and, in the midst of this shower of sparks, of this incandescent mass,
the decanters of wine cast a ruby glow over the cloth which seemed
heated to a white heat.

On entering, an expression of discreet beatitude overspread the
countenances of the gentlemen who were smiling to the ladies on their
arms. The flowers gave a freshness to the warm atmosphere. Slight
fumes from the dishes hung about and mingled with the perfume of the
roses. And the tart smell of crawfish with the sourish odour of lemons
dominated all.

Then, when everyone had found his name written on the backs of the
bills of fare, there was a noise of chairs, a great rustling of silk
dresses. The bare shoulders studded with diamonds, and flanked by black
dress coats which set off their paleness, added their milky whiteness
to the radiance of the table. The dinner commenced in the midst of
smiles exchanged between neighbours, in a semi-silence as yet only
broken by the gentle rattling of the spoons. Baptiste performed the
duties of butler with the grave manners of a diplomatist; he had under
his orders, besides the two footmen, four assistants whom he engaged
only for the grand dinner parties. At each dish which he took to cut up
on a side-table at the end of the room, three of the servants passed
noiselessly behind the guests, dish in hand, and offering in a low
voice the viands by name. The others poured out the wines, attended
to the bread and the decanters. The _relevés_ and the _entrées_ were
thus slowly discussed and removed, without the ladies' pearly laughter
becoming a whit more shrill.

The guests were too numerous for the conversation to easily become
general. Yet, at the second course, when the roasts and the side-dishes
had replaced the _relevés_ and the _entrées_, and the grand Burgundy
wines, Pomard and Chambertin, had succeeded to the Léoville and
Château-Lafitte, the sound of the voices swelled, and bursts of
laughter caused the slender glasses to tinkle. Renée, seated at the
middle of the table, had Baron Gouraud on her right, and on her left
Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, a retired candle manufacturer, at that time
a municipal councillor, a director of the Crédit Viticole and member
of the board of supervision of the Société Générale of the ports of
Morocco, a scraggy and important individual, whom Saccard, seated
opposite between Madame d'Espanet and Madame Haffner, addressed at one
moment in flattering tones as, "My dear colleague," and at another
as, "Our great administrator." Then came the politicians: Monsieur
Hupel de la Noue, a prefect who spent eight months of the year in
Paris; three deputies, amongst whom Monsieur Haffner displayed his
broad Alsatian countenance; then Monsieur de Saffré, a charming young
man, secretary to a cabinet minister; and Monsieur Michelin, the
head of the commission of public ways; and other heads of department
besides. Monsieur de Mareuil, a perpetual candidate for the Chamber of
Deputies, faced the prefect, at whom he kept casting sheep's-eyes. As
for Monsieur d'Espanet, he never accompanied his wife into society.
The ladies of the family were placed between the most distinguished
of these personages. Saccard had however reserved his sister Sidonie,
whom he had seated farther away, between the two contractors--Monsieur
Charrier being on the right and Monsieur Mignon on the left--as though
at a post of trust where it was a question of vanquishing. Madame
Michelin, the wife of the head of the commission of public ways, a
pretty plump brunette, found herself beside Monsieur de Saffré with
whom she was carrying on an animated conversation in a low voice. Then,
at either end of the table were the young people, auditors attached to
the Council of State, the sons of influential fathers, little sprouting
millionaires, Monsieur de Mussy who kept casting despairing glances
in the direction of Renée, and Maxime who seemed fast succumbing to
Louise de Mareuil seated on his right. Little by little, they had taken
to laughing very loudly. It was from their corner that the first gay
notes were heard.

Meanwhile Monsieur Hupel de la Noue was gallantly inquiring:

"Shall we have the pleasure of seeing his excellency this evening?"

"I'm afraid not," answered Saccard with an important air which hid a
secret annoyance. "My brother is so busy! He has sent us his secretary
to excuse him."

The young secretary, whom Madame Michelin was most decidedly
monopolizing, raised his head on hearing his name uttered, and thinking
some one had spoken to him, exclaimed:

"Yes, yes, there is to be a meeting of the cabinet this evening at nine
o'clock at the residence of the keeper of the seals."

During this time, Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who had been interrupted,
was continuing gravely, as though he were delivering a speech amidst
the attentive silence of the Municipal Council:

"The results are indeed superb. This city loan will remain as one of
the finest financial operations of the epoch. Ah! gentlemen--"

But here again his voice was smothered by the laughter which suddenly
broke out at one end of the table. In the midst of this outburst of
mirth one could hear Maxime's voice as he concluded some anecdote:

"Wait a bit. I haven't finished yet. The poor rider was picked up by a
road-labourer. It is said she is having him brilliantly educated as she
intends to marry him later on. She will not allow that any other man
than her husband can flatter himself that he has seen a certain brown
mole situated somewhere above her knee."

The laughter redoubled; Louise laughed heartily, louder even than the
men. And noiselessly in the midst of all this mirth, just as though
deaf, a lackey at this moment thrust his pale grave face between the
guests, offering some slices of wild duck in a low tone of voice.

Aristide Saccard was annoyed at the little attention paid to Monsieur
Toutin-Laroche. To show him that he had been listening, he resumed:

"The city loan--"

But Monsieur Toutin-Laroche was not the man to lose the thread of an
idea.

"Ah! gentlemen," continued he when the laughter had subsided,
"yesterday was a great consolation to us whose administration is
exposed to such vile attacks. The council is accused of bringing the
city to ruin, and yet you see, the moment the city opens a loan, every
one brings us their money, even those who cry out."

"You have performed miracles," said Saccard. "Paris has become the
capital of the world."

"Yes, it is really prodigious," interrupted Monsieur Hupel de la Noue.
"Just fancy that I, who am an old Parisian, can no longer find my way
about Paris. I lost myself yesterday when going from the Hôtel de Ville
to the Luxembourg. It is prodigious, prodigious!"

A short pause ensued. All the serious people were listening now.

"The transformation of Paris," continued Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, "will
be the glory of the reign. The lower classes are ungrateful: they
ought to kiss the emperor's feet. I was saying only this morning at
the council, where the great success of the loan was being discussed:
'Gentlemen, let those brawlers of the opposition say what they like, to
upset Paris is to fertilize it.'"

Saccard smiled and closed his eyes, as though the better to relish the
smartness of the dictum. He leant behind Madame d'Espanet's back, and
said to Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, loud enough to be heard:

"He is most adorably witty."

Now that the conversation had turned on the alterations being made in
Paris, Monsieur Charrier was stretching his neck as though to take part
in it. His partner Mignon was fully occupied with Madame Sidonie, who
was giving him plenty to do. Ever since the beginning of the dinner,
Saccard had been watching the two contractors from out of the corner of
his eye.

"The administration," said he, "has met with so much devotion! Every
one has wished to contribute to the great work. Without the rich
companies which came to its assistance, the city would never have done
so well nor so quickly."

He turned round, and added with a sort of brutal flattery:

"Messieurs Mignon and Charrier know something of this, they who have
had their share of labour, and who will have their share of glory."

The two masons who had made their fortune received this compliment
beatifically full in the chest. Mignon, to whom Madame Sidonie was
saying in a lackadaisical manner, "Ah! sir, you flatter me; no, I am
too old to wear pink--" interrupted her in the middle of her sentence,
to reply to Saccard:

"You are too kind; we merely did our business."

But Charrier was more polished. He finished his glass of Pomard and
found means to make an observation.

"The works about Paris," said he, "have enabled the workman to live."

"Say also," resumed Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, "that they have given a
magnificent spurt to all financial and industrial undertakings."

"And don't forget the artistic side of the question; the new
thoroughfares are majestic," added Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, who
flattered himself on his good taste.

"Yes, yes, it is a fine piece of work," murmured Monsieur de Mareuil,
for the sake of saying something.

"As for the cost," gravely declared the deputy Haffner, who only opened
his mouth on grand occasions, "our children will pay it, and that is
only justice."

And as, when saying that, he looked at Monsieur de Saffré, who had not
seemed to be getting on so well with the pretty Madame Michelin for the
last few minutes, the young secretary, wishing to appear thoroughly
acquainted with what was being said, repeated:

"That is indeed only justice."

Every one had had his say in the group formed by the serious men at the
middle of the table. Monsieur Michelin, the head of department, smiled
and wagged his head; it was his usual way of joining in a conversation;
he had smiles for greeting, for answering, for approving, for thanking,
for wishing good-bye, quite a pretty collection of smiles which
enabled him to dispense almost entirely with the use of his tongue, an
arrangement he no doubt considered far more polite and more favourable
to his own advancement.

Another personage also had remained silent--that was Baron Gouraud,
who was slowly chewing like a drowsy ox. Up till then he had appeared
absorbed in the contemplation of his plate. Renée, full of little
attentions towards him, only obtained faint grunts of satisfaction.
Therefore every one was surprised to see him raise his head and to
hear him observe, as he wiped his greasy lips:

"I am a landlord, and when I do up and re-decorate any apartments, I
raise the rent."

Monsieur Haffner's remark: "Our children will pay," had succeeded in
awakening the senator. They all discreetly applauded, and Monsieur de
Saffré exclaimed:

"Ah! charming, charming! I shall send that to-morrow to the newspapers."

"You are quite right, gentlemen, we live in good times," said the
worthy Mignon by way of conclusion amidst the smiles and the praise
which the baron's observation had called forth. "I know more than one
who have nicely built up their fortunes. Everything is lovely, you see,
when it enables one to make money."

These last words quite froze the grave men. The conversation stopped
short, and each one seemed to avoid looking at his neighbour. The
mason's remark unfortunately might have been applied to all these
gentlemen. Michelin, who was just then looking at Saccard in a most
agreeable manner, suddenly ceased smiling, greatly afraid of having
appeared for a moment to apply the contractor's words to the master
of the house. The latter glanced at Madame Sidonie, who once more
monopolised Mignon, saying: "So you are fond of pink, sir?"--Then
Saccard paid Madame d'Espanet a long compliment; his dark, mean-looking
face almost touched the milky shoulders of the young woman as she leant
back in her chair and laughed.

They had now arrived at the dessert. The lackeys turned more quickly
round the table. There was a slight pause whilst the cloth was being
covered with the rest of the fruit and the sweetmeats. At Maxime's end
the laughter was becoming more silvery; one could hear Louise's shrill
voice saying: "I assure you that Sylvia wore a blue satin dress in her
part of Dindonnette;" and another childish voice added: "Yes, but the
dress was trimmed with white lace." The air was laden with the warm
fumes from the dishes. The faces of the guests had assumed a rosier
hue, and seemed softened by an internal beatitude. Two lackeys made the
round of the table, filling the glasses with Alicant and Tokay.

Ever since the commencement of the dinner, Renée had seemed
absent-minded. She fulfilled her duties as mistress of the house with
a mechanical sort of smile. At each burst of mirth which came from
the end of the table where Maxime and Louise were sitting side-by-side
joking like two comrades, she cast a glistening glance in their
direction. She felt dreadfully bored. The serious men were too much for
her. Madame d'Espanet and Madame Haffner looked at her in despair.

"And the coming elections, how do they promise to turn out?" suddenly
inquired Saccard of Monsieur Hupel de la Noue.

"Very well indeed," replied the latter, smiling; "only as yet no
candidates have been decided upon for my department. The minister is
hesitating, it appears."

Monsieur de Mareuil, who had thanked Saccard with a glance for having
introduced this subject, looked as though he were sitting on red-hot
cinders. He blushed slightly and made a few awkward bows when the
prefect, addressing him, continued:

"I have heard a great deal about you in the country, sir. Your vast
estates have won you a great many friends there, and it is known how
devoted you are to the Emperor. You have every chance in your favour."

"Papa, is it not true that little Sylvia sold cigarettes at Marseilles
in 1849?" cried Maxime at this moment from his end of the table.

And as Aristide Saccard pretended not to hear, the young man continued
in a lower tone of voice:

"My father knew her very intimately."

A few smothered laughs greeted this statement. Whilst Monsieur de
Mareuil was still bowing, Monsieur Haffner had sententiously resumed:

"Devotion to the Emperor is the only virtue, the only patriotism, in
these days of interested democracy. Whosoever loves the Emperor loves
France. We would see Monsieur do Mareuil become our colleague with most
sincere joy."

"You will succeed, sir," said Monsieur Toutin-Laroche in his turn. "All
the great fortunes should gather round the throne."

Renée could stand it no longer. Opposite to her the marchioness was
stifling a yawn. And as Saccard was again about to join in, his wife
said to him with a delightful smile:

"For goodness sake, my dear, take compassion upon us. Do try and forget
your horrid politics."

Then Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, gallant as a prefect should be,
protested, saying that the ladies were right. And he forthwith
commenced the story of a rather smutty affair which had occurred in
the chief town of his department. The marchioness, Madame Haffner and
the other ladies laughed immensely at some of the details. The prefect
related in a very piquant style, interspersed with hints, reticences,
and inflections of the voice, which gave a very naughty meaning to the
most innocent expressions. Then they talked of the duchess's first
Tuesday at home, of a burlesque that had been produced the night
before, of the death of a poet, and of the last of the autumn races.
Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who at certain times could be very amiable,
compared women to roses, and Monsieur de Mareuil, amidst the confusion
in which his electoral hopes had plunged him, was able to make some
profound remarks respecting the new shape for bonnets. Renée continued
absent-minded.

The guests were no longer eating. A warm breath seemed to have passed
over the cloth, clouding the glasses, scattering the bread, blackening
the fruit parings in the plates, and upsetting all the beautiful
symmetry of the table. The flowers were fading in the great chased
silver cornucopia. And the guests lingered there a moment in presence
of the remnants of the dessert, full of contentment, and lacking the
courage to rise from their seats. One arm on the table, and bending
slightly forward, they had a vacant look in their eyes, and showed the
vague depression of that measured and decent inebriation of fashionable
people who become intoxicated by degrees. The laughter had subsided and
the conversation flagged. A great deal had been eaten and drank, and
that gave a still deeper gravity to the group formed by the decorated
men. In the close atmosphere of the apartment, the ladies felt a
moisture about their necks and temples. They were awaiting the moment
to adjourn to the drawing-room, looking serious and slightly pale, as
though they felt a swimming in their heads. Madame d'Espanet was quite
rosy, whilst Madame Haffner's shoulders had assumed a waxy whiteness.
Monsieur Hupel de la Noue was examining the handle of a knife; Monsieur
Toutin-Laroche was still addressing a few disconnected remarks to
Monsieur Haffner who nodded his head in reply; Monsieur de Mareuil
was musing as he looked at Monsieur Michelin, who was slyly smiling
upon him. As for the pretty Madame Michelin, she had not been talking
for a long while; she was very red in the face, whilst the cloth hung
over one of her hands which Monsieur de Saffré was no doubt holding in
his, for he was leaning awkwardly on the edge of the table, with his
brows knit, and grimacing like a man trying to solve some problem in
algebra. Madame Sidonie also had conquered; the Messieurs Mignon and
Charrier, both turned towards her and with their elbows on the table,
appeared delighted at being taken into her confidence; she was owning
that she had a great liking for milky things, and that she was afraid
of ghosts. And Aristide Saccard himself, with his eyes half closed, and
plunged in that beatitude of the master of a house conscious of having
honestly intoxicated his guests, had no thought of leaving the table;
he was contemplating with respectful affection Baron Gouraud painfully
digesting, with his right hand stretched over the white cloth, a
sensual old man's hand, short and thick, studded with purple blotches
and covered with reddish hairs.

Renée slowly drank up the few drops of Tokay which remained in her
glass. Her face tingled; the little light hairs on her temples and at
the nape of her neck were rebellious and would not remain in their
places, as though moistened by some damp breath. Her lips and her nose
were contracted nervously, her face bore the expression of a child
who has drank pure wine. If good middle-class thoughts had come to
her whilst in the presence of the shadows of the Parc Monceaux, these
thoughts had now succumbed to the excitation of the viands, of the
wines and of the lights, of these disturbing surroundings impregnated
with noisy mirth and warm breaths. She was no longer exchanging quiet
smiles with her sister Christine and her aunt Élisabeth, both of
them modest and retiring, and scarcely uttering a word. With a harsh
look she had forced poor Monsieur de Mussy to lower his eyes. In her
apparent absent-mindedness, though, she was careful to avoid turning
round and remained leaning against the back of her chair, whilst
the satin of her dress body gently crackled, she allowed an almost
imperceptible shudder of the shoulders to escape her each time a
burst of laughter reached her from the corner where Maxime and Louise
were joking, still as loudly as ever, in the expiring buzz of the
conversations.

And behind her, just on the edge of the shadow--his tall person
dominating the satiated guests and the disordered table--stood
Baptiste, looking pale and grave, in the disdainful attitude of a
lackey who has feasted his masters. He alone, in the atmosphere heavy
with drunkenness, beneath the vivid light, now turning to a yellowish
hue, of the chandelier, remained faultless, with his silver chain
around his neck, his cold eyes in which the sight of the women's bare
shoulders did not even kindle a spark, and his air of an eunuch
waiting on some Parisians in the time of their decline and maintaining
his dignity.

At length Renée rose with a nervous movement. Everyone followed her
example. They adjourned to the drawing-room where coffee awaited them.

The principal drawing-room of the mansion was a vast oblong apartment,
a sort of gallery going from one of the wings to the other, and
occupying the whole of the façade on the garden side. A large French
window opened on to the steps. This gallery was resplendent with
gilding. The ceiling which was slightly arched was covered with
fanciful scrolls winding about enormous gilded medallions, which
glittered like shields. Arabesques and dazzling garlands formed the
border; fillets of gold, like jets of molten metal, were scattered
about the walls, framing the panels hung with red silk; clusters of
roses crowned with tufts of full blown blossoms trailed down the sides
of the mirrors. An Aubusson carpet displayed its purple flowers over
the flooring. The furniture upholstered in red damask silk, the door
hangings and the curtains of the same material, the enormous rock-work
clock on the mantle, the China vases standing on the consoles, the
legs of the two long tables ornamented with Florentine mosaics, even
the flowerstands placed in the window recesses, were so to say reeking
and dripping with gold. At the four corners were four great lamps
standing on red marble pedestals to which they were attached by chains
of gilded bronze which hung with symmetrical grace. And from the
ceiling were suspended three crystal lustres streaming with pink and
blue scintillations, and the ardent glare from which was dazzlingly
reflected by all the gilding in the apartment.

The men soon withdrew to the smoking-room. Monsieur de Mussy, who,
though six years older, had known Maxime at college, took him
familiarly by the arm. He led him out on to the terrace, and, after
they had lighted their cigars, he complained bitterly of Renée.

"But, tell me, whatever is the matter with her? When I saw her
yesterday she was most charming. And now to-day she treats me as though
all were over between us. What crime can I have been guilty of? It
would be so kind of you, my dear Maxime, to ask her, and to tell her
how she makes me suffer."

"Not if I know it!" replied Maxime laughing. "Renée's nerves are upset,
I've no wish to receive the brunt of her ill-humour. Settle your
differences between yourselves."

And after slowly puffing out the smoke of his havanna, he added:

"It's a pretty part you want me to play!"

But Monsieur de Mussy talked of his great friendship, and assured the
young man he was only awaiting an opportunity to show him how devoted
he was to him. He was very miserable, he loved Renée so!

"Very well! it's agreed," said Maxime at length, "I will speak to her;
but, you know, I can promise nothing; she is pretty sure to send me
about my business."

They re-entered the smoking-room, and stretched themselves out in two
capacious easy-chairs. And during a good half hour Monsieur de Mussy
related all his tribulations to Maxime; he told him for the tenth time
how it was he had fallen in love with the young man's stepmother, and
how she had been gracious enough to notice him; and whilst finishing
his cigar Maxime gave him some advice, explaining Renée's nature to
him, and showing him how he should set to work to overcome her.

Saccard having taken a seat a few steps away from the young men,
Monsieur de Mussy lapsed into silence, and Maxime said in conclusion:

"Were I in your place, I would treat her very cavalierly. She likes it."

The smoking-room occupied, at one end of the principal drawing-room,
one of the round apartments formed by the towers. It was fitted up in a
style both very rich and very sober. Papered with a material imitating
Cordovan leather, it had Algerian curtains and door hangings, and a
Wilton carpet of Persian design. The furniture was upholstered with
shagreen leather the colour of wood, and comprised settees, easy-chairs
and a circular divan which went nearly all round the room. The little
chandelier, the ornaments of the table and of the fire-place, were of
pale green Florentine bronze.

There had only remained with the ladies a few young fellows, and some
pale and flabby-faced old men, who held tobacco in horror. In the
smoking-room, there was a great deal of laughing going on and some
very broad jokes were being bandied about. Monsieur Hupel de la Noue
diverted the gentlemen immensely by again relating the story he had
told during dinner, but completing it this time by some most indecent
details. He had a specialty for this sort of thing; he always had
two versions of an anecdote, one for ladies, the other for men. Then,
Aristide Saccard entered and was at once surrounded and complimented;
and as he pretended not to understand what it was all about, Monsieur
de Saffré told him, in a greatly applauded speech, that he had deserved
well of his country for having prevented the beautiful Laure d'Aurigny
from going over to the English.

"No, really, gentlemen, you are mistaken," stammered Saccard with false
modesty.

"Oh! don't try to excuse yourself!" cried Maxime chaffingly. "It's very
meritorious at your age."

The young man who had just thrown away the stump of his cigar returned
to the drawing-room. A great number of visitors had arrived. The
gallery was full of men in evening dress standing up and conversing in
low tones, and of ladies in ample skirts which they spread out on the
couches. Some lackeys were taking round some silver salvers bearing
ices and glasses of punch.

Maxime, who wished to speak to Renée, passed right through the
drawing-room, knowing very well where to find the ladies' favourite
spot. At the opposite end to the smoking-room was another round
apartment adorably fitted up as a boudoir. Its curtains and hangings of
satin, the colour of buttercups, gave it a voluptuous charm, of quite
an original and exquisite taste. The lights of the chandelier, which
was of very delicate workmanship, appeared quite pale amidst all this
sun-like splendour. The effect resembled a flood of the subdued rays
from a sunset on a field of ripe corn. The light expired at one's feet
on an Aubusson carpet strewn with dead leaves. An ebony piano inlaid
with ivory, two little cabinets the glass doors of which displayed a
host of nicknacks, a Louis XVI. table, and a flowerstand holding an
enormous sheaf of flowers, sufficed to furnish the room. The small
couches, the easy-chairs and the settees, were covered with padded
buttercup satin divided at intervals by broad black bands of the same
material embroidered with gay coloured tulips. And there were also
low seats, lounge-chairs, and every variety of stool, both elegant
and fantastical. Not a glimpse of the woodwork of these articles was
visible; the satin and the padding covered all. The backs were so
curved as to be as comfortable as bolsters. They were like so many
discreet beds on which one could sleep and love amidst the down, to
the accompaniment of the sensual symphony of the pale yellow light.

Renée had an especial liking for this little room, one of the French
windows of which opened into the magnificent conservatory fixed to the
side of the mansion. During the day-time she spent most of her leisure
hours there. Instead of softening her light hair, the yellow hangings
gave it a strangely golden hue; her head stood out all pink and
white in the midst of a dawn-like glimmer, like that of a fair Diana
awakening at the break of day; and this was no doubt why she loved this
little room which gave a heavenly setting to her beauty.

At this hour she was there with her intimate friends. Her sister
and her aunt had just departed. There were none but madcaps in the
sanctum. Leaning back in the depths of a sofa, Renée was listening to
the secrets of her friend Adeline, who was whispering in her ear with
feline playfulness and sudden bursts of laughter. Suzanne Haffner was
in great request; she was holding her own against a group of young
men who were pressing her closely, without losing any of her German
languor, her provoking effrontery, as bare and cold as her shoulders.
In a corner, Madame Sidonie was enlightening in a low voice a young
woman with the eyes of a virgin. Farther off, Louise was standing
talking with a big timid fellow who blushed violently; whilst Baron
Gouraud was dozing in an easy-chair full in the light, displaying his
flabby flesh, his pale elephantine form, in the midst of the frail
graces and the silky daintiness of the ladies. And all about the room,
on the stiff satin skirts shining like china, on the milky white
shoulders studded with diamonds, a light of fairy-land fell in a golden
dust. A soft voice, a laugh no louder than the cooing of a dove, had as
limpid a ring as crystal. It was very warm in there. Fans were moving
slowly to and fro like wings, disseminating at each breath in the
sultry atmosphere the musked perfumes of the bodices.

When Maxime appeared in the doorway, Renée, who was listening to the
marchioness in an absent-minded way, rose up hastily, pretending
to have to play her part as mistress of the house. She passed into
the principal drawing-room where the young man followed her. After
smilingly taking a few steps there and shaking hands with different
people, she drew Maxime aside.

"Well!" whispered she ironically, "the task seems an easy one; you
don't appear to find courting as stupid as you imagined."

"I don't understand you," replied the young man, who was about to plead
for Monsieur de Mussy.

"Why I think I did well not to deliver you from Louise. You don't waste
any time, you two."

And she added with a sort of vexation:

"At table, too, it was quite indecent."

Maxime burst out laughing.

"Ah! yes, we were telling each other stories. I did not know her, the
chit. She's very funny. She's just like a boy."

And as Renée's face still bore the irritated look of a prude, the young
man, who had never known her so indignant before, resumed with smiling
familiarity:

"Do you think, pretty mamma, that I pinched her legs under the table?
Hang it all, one knows how to behave towards one's betrothed! I
have something far more serious to tell you. Listen to me--you are
listening, are you not?"

He lowered his voice still more.

"This is what's the matter. Monsieur de Mussy is very miserable; he has
just told me so. You know it's not for me to bring you together again,
if you've had a row. But, you understand, I was at college with him,
and as he really seems to be in despair, I promised him I would speak
to you."

He stopped. Renée was looking at him in a very strange manner.

"You don't answer?" continued he. "Anyhow, I have done what I promised.
Settle the matter between you as you like. But, really now, I cannot
help thinking you cruel. I quite feel for the poor fellow. In your
place I would send him at least a kind message."

Then Renée, who had not taken the bright, fixed look of her eyes off
Maxime, replied:

"Go and tell Monsieur de Mussy that he bores me."

And she resumed her slow walk amidst the groups, smiling, bowing, and
shaking hands. Maxime stood for a moment lost in surprise; then he
quietly laughed to himself.

Not at all desirous of delivering the message to Monsieur de Mussy, he
took a turn round the principal drawing-room. The party was drawing to
a close, marvellous and commonplace like most parties. It was close
upon midnight; the guests were slowly departing. Not wishing to retire
with a feeling of unpleasantness, he decided to seek Louise. He was
passing before the hall door when he caught sight of the pretty Madame
Michelin being wrapt up by her husband in a little pink and blue cloak.

"He was most charming, most charming," the young woman was saying. "We
talked of you the whole of dinner. He will speak to the minister; only,
it is not in his province--"

And as, close to them, a footman was assisting Baron Gouraud on with a
big fur coat:

"That's the old fellow who could settle the matter!" added she in her
husband's ear, whilst he was tying the string of her hood under her
chin. "He does just as he likes at the ministry. At the Mareuils'
to-morrow we must try--"

Monsieur Michelin smiled. He took his wife off with the greatest care,
as though he had on his arm a most fragile and precious object. After
assuring himself by a glance that Louise was not in the hall, Maxime
went straight to the little drawing-room. She was still there, almost
alone, and awaiting her father, who had probably spent the evening
in the smoking-room with the politicians. The marchioness and Madame
Haffner had taken their departure. There only remained Madame Sidonie
telling the wives of some functionaries how much she loved animals.

"Ah! here's my little husband," exclaimed Louise. "Come and sit down
and tell me in what chair my father can have fallen asleep. He must
already be fancying himself in the Chamber."

Maxime answered her in a similar strain, and the two young people were
soon again laughing as loud as during dinner. Seated on a very low
chair at her feet, he ended by taking hold of her hands and by playing
with her, just the same as with a comrade. And in truth, with her
high-made dress of soft white silk studded with red spots, her flat
chest, and her ugly and cunning little urchin's head, she resembled a
boy disguised as a girl. But at times her puny arms, her crooked form,
assumed negligent postures, and gleams of passion would appear in the
depths of her eyes still full of childishness, without her blushing the
least in the world at Maxime's playfulness. And they both laughed away,
just as though they were by themselves, without even noticing Renée,
who was standing half hidden in the centre of the conservatory watching
them from a distance.

A moment ago, as she was crossing a path, the sight of Maxime and
Louise had suddenly brought the young woman to a standstill behind a
shrub. All about her, the warm conservatory, similar to the nave of a
church, and the glass arched roof of which was supported on slender
iron columns, displayed its fertile vegetation, its masses of gigantic
leaves, its clumps of luxuriant verdure.

In the centre, in an oval tank on a level with the ground, lived,
in the mysterious manner of water plants, all the aquatic flora of
the land of the sun. A border of Cyclantheæ raising their tall green
plumes, surrounded with a monumental belt the fountain which resembled
the truncated capital of some Cyclopean column. Then, at either end,
two enormous Tornelias reared their strange-looking bushes above the
water, their dry, bare stems twisted like agonizing serpents, and
emitting aerial roots which had an appearance of fishermen's nets hung
up to dry. Close to the edge, a Pandanus from Java expanded its sheaf
of greenish leaves streaked with white, as thin as swords, prickly and
serrated like Malay daggers. And floating amid the warmth of the gently
heated sheet of slumbering water, some Nymphæa opened their rosy stars,
whilst some Euryale trailed their round and leprous-looking leaves
over the surface, appearing like the backs of so many monstrous toads
covered with pustules.

By way of carpeting, a broad edging of Selaginella surrounded the tank.
This dwarf fern formed a thick moss-like sward of a tender green. And
beyond the wide circular path, four enormous groups of exotic plants
shot right up to the arched roof; the palms, slightly drooping in
their gracefulness, spread out their fan-like leaves, displayed their
rounded heads, hung down their branches like so many oars wearied by
their eternal voyage in the azure of the air; the great bamboos from
India ascended erect, slender and hard, with their fine shower of
leaves falling from on high; a Ravenala, the traveller's tree, held up
its bunch of immense Chinese screens; and, in a corner, a Banana tree
loaded with fruit stretched out in all directions its long, horizontal
leaves, on which two lovers might easily recline providing they kept
pretty close to each other. In the corners were some Euphorbia from
Abyssinia, those prickly, ill-shaped torch-thistles covered with
horrid excrescences and reeking with poison. And the ground beneath
the taller plants was carpeted by dwarf ferns, including the Adiantum
and the Pteris, with fronds as delicate as the finest lace-work. A
taller species, the Alsophilas, tapered upwards with their rows
of symmetrical and sexangular foliage so regular that it had the
appearance of enormous pieces of crockery intended to hold the fruits
of some gigantic dessert. Then an edging of Begonias and Caladiums
surrounded the beds; the Begonias with their twisted leaves superbly
streaked with green and red; the Caladiums, the leaves of which, shaped
like lance heads, white and veined with green, resemble the wings of
some monstrous butterfly; bizarre plants which vegetate strangely with
the sombre or palish glow of noisome flowers.

Behind the beds a second path, a narrower one, went right round the
conservatory. And there, on stages, half hiding the pipes of the
heating apparatus, bloomed Marantas, as soft to the touch as velvet,
Gloxinias, with their purple bell-shaped flowers, Dracænas, resembling
blades of old lacquer.

But one of the charms of this winter garden consisted in alcoves of
verdure in the four corners, roomy arbours shut in by thick curtains
of tropical creepers. Bits of virgin forests had weaved in these spots
their walls of leaves, their impenetrable medley of stems, of supple
shoots, clinging to the branches, traversing space by a bold leap, and
hanging from the arched roof like the tassels of some rich drapery. A
root of Vanilla, with its ripe pods exhaling a penetrating perfume,
trailed about the arch of a moss-covered porch, whilst the Indian
berry decked the little columns with its round leaves; Bauhinias, with
their red bunches, and the Quisqualis, the flowers of which hung like
necklets of glass beads, glided, twined and entangled themselves like
slender snakes endlessly playing and stretching amidst the depths of
the foliage.

And beneath the arches placed here and there between the beds, and
held by wire chains, hung baskets filled with Orchids, those bizarre
plants of the air, which spread in all directions their stunted and
knotted shoots bent and twisted like crippled limbs. There were
Lady's-slippers, the flowers of which resemble a marvellous shoe
adorned on the heel with the wings of a dragon-fly; Ærides with their
delicate perfume; and Stanhopeas, the pale streaked flowers of which,
like the bitter mouth of some convalescent, exhale to a distance a
strong and acrid breath.

But that which, from every point of view, was the most conspicuous
object, was a great Hibiscus from China, its immense expanse of
flowers and foliage covering the whole side of the mansion to which
the conservatory was fixed. The large purple flowers of this gigantic
mallow are ever being renewed, and live but a few hours. One could
almost fancy them a woman's sensual, opening mouths, the red soft moist
lips of some giant Messalina, bruised by kisses and yet ever reviving
with their eager and bleeding smile.

[Illustration: RENÉE WATCHING MAXIME AND LOUISE IN THE LITTLE DRAWING
ROOM.]

Renée stood near the tank, and shivered in the midst of all these
superb blossoms. Behind her, a great black marble sphinx, squatting
on a block of granite, its head turned towards the water, wore on its
features the wary and cruel smile of a cat; and it looked like the dark
Idol with shining thighs of that land of fire. At this hour ground
glass globes cast a milky light over the surrounding foliage. Statues,
women's heads with the necks thrown back, and swelling with mirth,
stood out white from the recesses of the groups of shrubs, with patches
of shadow which contorted their mad laughter. Strange rays played about
the deep still water of the tank, lighting up vague forms and glaucous
masses resembling rough designs of monsters. Over the smooth leaves of
the Ravenala, on the glossy fans of the Latanias, streamed a flood of
white light; whilst from the lace-work of the ferns fell a gentle rain
of sparks. Up above shone the reflections from the glass roof amongst
the sombre heads of the tall palms. Then, all around, everything was
wrapt in shadow; the arbours, with their drapery of tropical creepers,
became lost in the darkness, like the nests of slumbering reptiles.

And Renée stood musing in the bright light, as she watched Louise
and Maxime in the distance. It was no longer the floating fancies,
the vague temptation of twilight, in the chilly avenues of the Bois.
Her thoughts were no longer lulled and sent to sleep by the trot
of her horses along the fashionable walks, and the glades in which
middle-class families pic-nic on a Sunday. Now it was a definite, a
keen desire which filled her whole being.

An immense love, a need of voluptuousness, floated about this close
nave, full of the ardent sap of the tropics. The young woman was
enveloped in these mighty bridals of the earth, engendering around her
this dark verdure, these colossal stems; and the acrid confinement of
this candent mother, this forest-like growth, this mass of vegetation
all glowing with the entrails which nourished it, surrounded her with
perturbing effluvia of most intoxicating power. At her feet, the tank,
the mass of warm water, thickened by the juices of the floating
roots, steamed and wrapt her shoulders in a mantle of heavy vapour,
a mist which heated her skin like the contact of a hand moist with
voluptuousness. On her head she felt a breath from the palms as the
tall leaves sprinkled their aroma. And more than the close warmth
of the atmosphere, than the bright lights, than the large dazzling
flowers resembling faces laughing or grimacing amongst the foliage, the
odours especially overpowered her. An undefinable perfume, powerful
and exciting, hung about, composed of a thousand others: human
perspiration, women's breaths, the scent of hair; and zephyrs sweet and
insipid almost to faintness, were blended with coarse and pestilential
smells loaded with poison. But amidst this strange amalgamation of
odours, the one which dominated all, stifling the delicateness of
the vanilla and the sharpness of the orchids, was that penetrating,
sensual, human odour, that odour of love which escapes of a morning
from the closed chamber of a young married couple.

Renée had slowly leant against the granite pedestal. In her green
satin dress, with her face and shoulders of a rosy hue and sparkling
with the pure scintillations of her diamonds, she resembled some
great pink and green flower, one of the Nymphæa of the tank, swooning
from the heat. At this hour of clear vision, all her good resolutions
vanished for ever, the intoxication of the dinner regained possession
of her faculties, imperious, triumphant, and rendered mightier than
before by the flames of the conservatory. She no longer remembered
the chill night air which had calmed her, nor those murmuring shadows
of the park, the voices of which had counselled a happy peacefulness.
Her ardent woman's senses, her satiated woman's capriciousness, were
aroused. And, above her, the great black marble sphinx laughed a
mysterious laugh, as though it had read the at length expressed desired
which was galvanizing this dead heart, the desire which had remained so
long elusive, the "something else" so vainly sought by Renée amidst the
oscillating motion of her carriage, in the ashy gloom of the gathering
night, and which had been so abruptly revealed to her beneath the
glaring light of this garden of fire by the sight of Louise and Maxime,
laughing and playing together, hand in hand.

At this moment a sound of voices issued from a neighbouring arbour,
where Aristide Saccard had led the Messieurs Mignon and Charrier.

"No, really, Monsieur Saccard," the latter was saying in a thick voice,
"we cannot take it back from you at more than two hundred francs the
metre."

And Saccard retorted in his shrill tones:

"But in my share you valued it at two hundred and fifty francs."

"Well, listen! we will make it two hundred and twenty-five francs."

And the voices continued, harsh, and ringing strangely beneath the
drooping palms. But they merely traversed Renée's dream like some
vain noise, as there rose before her, conjured up by her delirium, an
unknown enjoyment, hot with crime, and more vehement than all those she
had already exhausted, the last that remained to her to partake of. She
no longer felt weary.

The shrub behind which she remained half hidden was an accursed plant,
a Tanghinia from Madagascar, with broad box-like leaves and whitish
stems, the smallest veins of which distil a poisonous juice. And, at
one moment, as Louise's and Maxime's mirth became louder, in the yellow
reflection, in the sunset of the little drawing-room, Renée, her mind
wandering, her mouth parched and irritated, took between her teeth a
sprig of the Tanghinia, which was on a level with her lips, and closed
them on one of the bitter leaves.




CHAPTER II.


Aristide Rougon swooped down upon Paris on the morrow of the Coup
d'État, with that scent of birds of prey which sniff the field of
carnage from afar. He came from Plassans, a sub-prefecture of the
South, where his father had at length netted in the troubled waters of
events an office of tax collector for which he had long been angling.
As for himself, still young, and having compromised his position like a
fool, with neither glory nor profit, he could only feel very fortunate
in issuing safe and sound from the squabble. He came, with a rush,
enraged at his mistake, cursing the country, speaking of Paris with a
wolf-like greed, and swearing "that he would never be caught napping
again;" and the keen smile with which he accompanied these words
assumed a terrible significance on his thin lips.

He arrived in the early days of 1852. He was accompanied by his wife
Angèle, a fair and insignificant creature, whom he placed in a small
lodging in the Rue Saint-Jacques, like some awkward piece of furniture
he was anxious to be rid of. The young woman had been unwilling to
be separated from her daughter, little Clotilde, a child four years
old, whom the father would willingly have left behind to be taken care
of by his relations. But he had only yielded to his wife's wish on
condition that the college at Plassans should retain their son Maxime,
a youngster of eleven, who would be looked after by the grandmother.
Aristide wished to have his hands free; a woman and a child already
seemed to him a crushing weight to encumber a man decided to overcome
all obstacles, though he grovelled in the mud or perished in the
attempt.

The very evening of his arrival, whilst Angèle was unpacking, he felt
an eager longing to explore Paris, to hear his heavy countryman's boots
striking that burning pavement from which he hoped to cause millions to
spring forth. It was a regular taking of possession. He walked for the
sake of walking, following the footpaths, just as though in a conquered
country. He had a very clear conception of the battle he was about
to offer, and it was not in the least repugnant to his feelings to
compare himself to a skilful picklock who, by artifice or violence, was
about to take his share of the common wealth which had been wickedly
refused him until then. Had he felt the need of an excuse, he would
have invoked his every desire denied him for ten years, his wretched
country existence, his faults especially, for which he held society at
large responsible. But at this moment, in that emotion of a gambler who
at last places his eager hands on the green baize of the gaming-table,
he was filled with joy, a joy of his own, in which blended the
gratification of covetousness and the expectation of an unpunished
rogue. The atmosphere of Paris intoxicated him, he fancied he could
hear, in the rumbling of the vehicles, the voices from "Macbeth"
calling to him: "You will be rich!" During close upon two hours he
wandered thus from street to street, enjoying the voluptuousness of a
man roaming amidst his own vice. He had not been back in Paris since
the happy year he had passed there as a student. Night was falling; his
dream grew in the bright lights which the shops and the cafés cast on
the pavement; he lost himself.

When he raised his eyes, he found himself towards the middle of the
Faubourg Saint-Honoré. One of his brothers, Eugène Rougon, lived in a
street close by, the Rue de Penthièvre. In coming to Paris, Aristide
had especially counted upon Eugène who, after having been one of the
most active agents of the Coup d'État, had now become an occult power,
a lawyer of no particular standing but who was shortly to blossom into
a great political personage. But, superstitious as a gambler, he was
unwilling to knock at his brother's door on that evening. He slowly
retraced his steps to the Rue Saint-Jacques, inwardly envying Eugène's
lot, glancing down at his own shabby clothes still covered with the
dust of the journey, and seeking to console himself by resuming his
dream of riches. Even this dream had become bitter to him. Having
started out through a necessity for expansion, joyfully enlivened by
the busy activity of Paris trade, he returned home irritated at the
happiness which seemed to him to be rampant in the streets, feeling
more ferocious than ever, imagining all kinds of desperate struggles in
which he would take pleasure in defeating and duping that crowd which
had jostled him on the pavement. Never before had he felt so keen and
vast an appetite, so immediate and ardent a necessity for enjoying.

On the morrow he was at his brother's, almost at daybreak. Eugène
occupied two large cold rooms, very barely furnished, and which quite
chilled Aristide. He had expected to find his brother sprawling in the
lap of luxury. The latter was seated working at a little black table.
He merely said in his slow voice, accompanying his words with a smile:

"Ah! it's you, I was expecting your visit."

Aristide was very bitter. He accused Eugène of having left him to
vegetate, of not even having bestowed upon him so much as a word
of advice during the time he had been dabbling about in his native
province. He would never be able to forgive himself for having remained
Republican up to the very day of the Coup d'État; it caused him the
most poignant regret, and filled him with eternal confusion. Eugène had
quietly taken up his pen again. When the other had finished speaking,
he observed:

"Bah! all mistakes can be rectified. You have a fine future before you."

He uttered these words in so clear a tone of voice, and with so
penetrating a glance, that Aristide bowed his head, feeling that his
brother was descending into the innermost depths of his being. The
latter continued with a sort of friendly bluntness:

"You've come to me to get you something to do, have you not? I've
already thought of you, but I've found nothing as yet. You see, I can't
put you into the first position that offers. You need an occupation
that will enable you to carry on your little game without danger either
to yourself or to me. Don't protest, we're alone here, and can say
anything to each other."

Aristide thought it best to laugh.

"Oh! I know that you're intelligent," continued Eugène, "and that
you're not likely to do anything foolish again without you reap some
benefit from it. So soon as a good opportunity offers, I will do
something for you. Meanwhile, if you should happen to be in want of a
twenty-franc piece, come to me for it."

They talked for a few minutes about the insurrection in the South,
through which their father had gained his appointment of tax collector.
Eugène dressed himself while talking. Just as he was parting from his
brother outside in the street, he detained him a moment longer to say
in a lower tone of voice:

"By-the-way, you'll oblige me by not loafing about, but by quietly
waiting at home for the berth I promise you. It would annoy me to see
my brother dancing attendance on any one."

Aristide had a high respect for Eugène, who seemed to him a wonderfully
smart fellow. He did not however forgive him his mistrust, nor his
rather rough frankness; nevertheless he obediently went and shut
himself up in the Rue Saint-Jacques. He had arrived with five hundred
francs which his wife's father had lent him. After paying the expenses
of the journey, he made the three hundred francs that remained to
him last a month. Angèle was a hearty eater; moreover she thought
it necessary to retrim her best dress with some mauve ribbons. This
month of waiting appeared interminable to Aristide. He was burning
with impatience. Each time he leaned out of his window and felt the
gigantic labour of Paris beneath him, he experienced a mad longing to
throw himself into the furnace with one bound, so as to mould the gold
with his quivering fingers, as though it had been wax. He inhaled those
still vague vapours which rose from the great city, that breath of the
nascent Empire, laden already with the odours of alcoves and financial
hells, with the warm effluvia of every kind of enjoyment. The faint
fumes that reached him seemed to tell him that he was on the right
scent, that the quarry was scudding along before him, that the grand
imperial hunt, the pursuit of adventures, of women, and of millions,
was about to begin. His nostrils quivered, his instinct of a famished
beast caught in a marvellous manner as they passed the slightest signs
of that fierce division of spoil of which the city was to be the scene.

Twice he called on his brother to urge him to be more expeditious.
Eugène received him rather ungraciously, repeating that he was not
forgetting him, but that it was necessary to wait patiently. At length
Aristide received a letter requesting him to call in the Rue de
Penthièvre. He hastened thither, his heart beating violently, as though
he were on his way to a lovers' meeting. He found Eugène seated before
the same little black table, in the large cold room which he used as a
study. On his appearance the lawyer held a document towards him, saying:

"There, I settled your matter yesterday. You are appointed deputy
trustee of roads at the Hôtel de Ville. You will be in receipt of a
salary of two thousand four hundred francs."

Aristide had remained standing. He turned ghastly pale, and did not
take the document, thinking that his brother was poking fun at him. He
had at least expected an appointment worth six thousand francs a year.
Eugène, guessing what was passing within him, wheeled his chair round
and folded his arms.

"Are you a fool after all?" he asked angrily. "You've been building
castles in the air like a girl, have you not? You would wish to have
a grand establishment with footmen, to live on the fat of the land,
sleep in silk, gratify your desires at once in no matter whose arms, in
a boudoir furnished in a couple of hours. You and those like you, if
we allowed you to have your way, would empty the coffers even before
they were full. Now, in the name of all that's good! do have a little
patience! See how I live, and do at least take the trouble to stoop to
pick up a fortune."

He spoke with profound contempt of his brother's schoolboy impatience.
One could feel, in his rough speech, a loftier ambition, a longing for
untarnished power; that naive appetite for money no doubt appeared to
him both paltry and puerile. He continued in a gentler voice and with a
crafty smile:

"No doubt your propensities are excellent, and I have not the least
desire to thwart them. Men like you are precious. We have every
intention of choosing our friends from among the most hungry. You may
be quite easy, we shall keep open house, and the greatest appetites
will be satisfied. And this is after all the easiest way of reigning.
But, for goodness sake, wait till the cloth is laid, and, if you'll
accept my advice, just go yourself and fetch your knife and fork from
the kitchen."

Aristide continued to look very glum. His brother's pleasant
comparisons were unable to bring a smile to his countenance. Then the
latter again gave way to anger.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "my first opinion was the right one: you're a fool!
What on earth did you expect, whatever did you imagine I was going to
do with your illustrious person? You didn't even have the courage to
finish your reading for the bar, you went and buried yourself for ten
years in the wretched berth of clerk at a sub-prefecture, and you come
to me with the detestable reputation of a Republican whom the Coup
d'État was alone able to convert. Do you think that with such a past
there is the making of a cabinet minister in you? Oh! I know that you
have in your favour a ferocious desire to reach the goal by any means
possible. That is a great virtue, I admit, and it was precisely on that
account that I obtained your admittance into the Hôtel de Ville."

And rising from his seat he placed the document containing the
appointment in Aristide's hands.

"Take it," continued he, "you'll thank me some day. It's I who chose
the berth, I know what you'll be able to get out of it. All you'll
have to do will be to look about you and keep your ears open. If you
are intelligent, you'll soon understand and know how to act. Now pay
particular attention to what I am about to say to you. Make piles
of money, I permit it; only do nothing foolish, no noisy scandal,
otherwise I shall suppress you instantly."

This threat produced the effect his promises had been unable to obtain.
All Aristide's ardour was rekindled at the thought of the fortune to
which his brother alluded. It seemed to him that he was at last let
loose in the thick of the fray, authorised to slaughter right and left,
but legally, and without causing too much commotion. Eugène gave him
two hundred francs to enable him to wait till the end of the month.
Then he remained wrapt in thought.

"I'm thinking of changing my name," said he at length; "you ought to do
the same. We should interfere with each other less."

"As you like," answered Aristide quietly.

"You need not trouble yourself about anything. I will attend to the
necessary formalities. How would you like to call yourself by your
wife's name Sicardot?"

Aristide glanced up at the ceiling, repeating the name, and listening
to the sound of the syllables.

"Sicardot--Aristide Sicardot--no, on my word, it's clownish and has a
suggestion of bankruptcy about it."

"Think of something better then," said Eugène.

"I would prefer Sicard without the ot," resumed the other after a
pause; "Aristide Sicard--that isn't bad, is it? perhaps a bit jaunty--"

He stood thinking a few moments longer, and then triumphantly exclaimed:

"I've got it, I've found it at last! Saccard, Aristide Saccard! with a
double c. Eh! there's money in such a name as that; it has a sound like
the counting out of five franc pieces."

Eugène was rather brutal in his jokes. He dismissed his brother, saying
to him with a smile:

"Yes, a name that will make you a convict or a millionaire."

A few days later Aristide Saccard found himself at the Hôtel de Ville.
He there learnt that his brother must have commanded considerable
influence to get him appointed without the customary examinations.

Then the couple began the monotonous life of the underpaid clerk.
Aristide and his wife resumed their old Plassans ways. Only they fell
from a dream of sudden fortune, and their poverty-stricken existence
weighed heavier upon them, now that they looked upon it as a time of
probation, the duration of which they were unable to fix. To be poor in
Paris, is to be doubly poor. Angèle accepted the wretchedness of their
position with all the listlessness of a chlorotic woman. She spent days
in her kitchen, or else lying on the floor, playing with her daughter,
and never lamenting except when she reached her last twenty-sou piece.
But Aristide quivered with rage in the midst of this poverty, of this
narrow existence, out of which he sought an issue like some caged
beast. To him it was a period of ineffable suffering; his pride was
wounded, his unsated cravings goaded him furiously. And he suffered all
the more on learning that his brother had been elected to represent
Plassans in Parliament. He felt too much Eugène's superiority to be
foolishly jealous; but he accused him of not doing all that he might
have done for him. On several occasions, absolute necessity forced him
to knock at his door for the purpose of borrowing a trifle. Eugène
lent the money, but at the same time roughly reproached him with being
destitute of both courage and will. Then Aristide took the bull indeed
by the horns. He swore to himself that he would never again borrow so
much as a sou from any one, and he kept his oath. The last eight days
of each month, Angèle would eat dry bread and sigh. This apprenticeship
completed Saccard's terrible education. His thin lips became narrower
still; he was no longer so stupid as to dream of millions out loud;
his scraggy person became dumb, and no longer expressed but one will,
one fixed idea nursed at every hour of the day. When he hurried along
from the Rue Saint-Jacques to the Hôtel de Ville, his boots worn down
at heel resounded harshly on the pavement, and he buttoned himself up
in his shabby old overcoat as though in an asylum of hatred, while his
weasel-like snout sniffed the air of the streets. He was an angular
figure of the jealous misery that one sees roaming along the Paris
side-walks, carrying with him his plan for conquering a fortune, and
the dream of the eventual gratification of his appetite.

Early in 1853, Aristide Saccard was appointed trustee of roads. He now
received a salary of four thousand five hundred francs. This rise came
at an opportune moment; Angèle was slowly wasting away; little Clotilde
was looking quite pale. He retained his small lodging of two rooms,
the dining-room furnished in walnut, and the bedroom in mahogany,
continuing to lead an austere life, carefully avoiding getting into
debt, unwilling to touch other people's money until he could bury his
arms into it to the elbows. He thus belied his instincts, disdaining
the few extra sous he received, preferring to remain on the watch.
Angèle felt completely happy. She bought herself some new clothes,
and had a joint to roast every day of the week. She could no longer
understand the reason of her husband's suppressed passion, his gloomy
ways of a man working out the solution of some formidable problem.

Acting on Eugène's advice, Aristide was keeping his eyes and ears
open. When he went to thank his brother for his promotion, the
latter understood the revolution that had taken place within him; he
complimented him on what he called his good appearance. The clerk, whom
envy was inwardly rendering inflexible, had outwardly become pliant
and insinuating. In a few months he was transformed into a marvellous
comedian. All his southern animation had awakened, and he carried the
art so far that his comrades at the Hôtel de Ville looked upon him
as a jolly good fellow, whose near relationship to a deputy designed
beforehand for some grand appointment. This relationship also secured
him the good will of his chiefs. He thus enjoyed a kind of authority
superior to his position, which enabled him to open certain doors, and
to poke his nose into certain portfolios, without his indiscretion
appearing in the least culpable. For two years he was seen roaming
about all the passages, lingering in all the rooms, getting up from his
seat twenty times a day to talk to a comrade, carry an order, or take
a stroll through the different departments, endless wanderings which
caused his colleagues to say:

"That devil of a Southerner! he can't keep still a minute; he must
indeed have quicksilver in his legs."

His own particular friends took him for a lazy fellow, and the worthy
man laughed when they accused him of seeking to rob the service of a
few minutes. He never committed the mistake of listening at key-holes;
but he had a bold way of opening doors, and crossing rooms, apparently
deeply intent upon some document or other in his hand, and with so
slow and regular a walk that he never lost a word of whatever was
being said. They were the tactics of a genius; people ended by no
longer interrupting their conversation when this energetic clerk passed
by, gliding so to say in the shadow of the offices, and seemingly so
wrapt in his own business. He had yet another method; he was extremely
obliging, and would offer to assist his comrades, whenever they were
behindhand with their work; and then he would study the registers and
the documents that passed through his hands with quite a meditative
tenderness. But one of his favourite peccadilloes was to form
acquaintance with the messengers. He would even shake hands with them.
For hours together he would keep them talking in doorways, stifling
little bursts of laughter, telling them stories, and drawing them out.
These worthy fellows quite worshipped him, and were in the habit of
saying:

"There's a gentleman who isn't a bit proud!"

The moment there was the least scandal, he knew of it before any one.
It was thus that at the end of two years the Hôtel de Ville held no
mysteries for him. He knew everybody employed there, even to the lamp
cleaners, and was acquainted with every paper the place contained, not
omitting the washing books.

At this time, Paris formed, for a man like Aristide Saccard, a most
interesting spectacle. The Empire had just been proclaimed, after
that famous journey during which the Prince President had succeeded
in arousing the enthusiasm of some Bonapartist departments. Silence
reigned both at the tribune and in the press. Society, saved once more,
was congratulating itself and indolently resting, now that a strong
government was protecting it and relieving it even of the trouble of
thinking and of attending to its own business. The great preoccupation
of society was to know in what way it should kill time. As Eugène
Rougon so happily expressed it, Paris was dining and anticipating no
end of pleasure at dessert. Politics produced an universal scare,
like some dangerous drug. The wearied minds turned to pleasure and
money-making. Those who had any of the latter brought it out, and those
who had none sought in all the out-of-the-way places for forgotten
treasures. A secret quiver seemed to run through the multitude,
accompanied by a nascent jingling of five-franc pieces, by the rippling
laughter of women, and the yet faint clatter of crockery and murmur of
kisses. Amidst the great silence of the reign of order, the profound
peacefulness brought by the change of government, there arose all
sorts of pleasant rumours, gilded and voluptuous promises. It was as
though one were passing in front of one of those little houses, the
carefully drawn curtains of which reveal no more than the shadows of
women, and where one can overhear the jingling of gold on the marble
mantelpieces. The Empire was about to turn Paris into the bagnio of
Europe. The handful of adventurers who had just stolen a throne needed
a reign of adventure, of shadowy business transactions, of consciences
sold, of women bought, of furious and universal intoxication. And, in
the city where the blood of December was scarcely wiped away, there
slowly uprose, timidly as yet, that mad desire for enjoyment which
was destined to bring the country to the lowest dregs of corrupt and
dishonoured nations.

From the very first days Aristide Saccard had felt the approach of this
rising tide of speculation, the foam of which was soon to envelop the
whole of Paris. He watched its progress with profound attention. He
found himself right in the very midst of the warm downpour of silver
crowns falling thick and fast on to the roofs of the city. In his
constant wanderings through the Hôtel de Ville, he had obtained an
inkling of the vast project for the transformation of Paris, of the
plan of the demolitions and of the new thoroughfares and the altered
districts, of the formidable jobbery with respect to the sale of the
land and the buildings, which was kindling all over the town the battle
of interests and the flare-up of unbridled luxury. From that moment
his activity had an object. It was at this epoch that he became quite
a jolly good fellow. He even grew a trifle stout, he no longer hurried
about the streets like a half starved cat in search of something
to devour. At his office he was more talkative, more obliging than
ever. His brother, to whom he paid occasional visits, in some measure
official, congratulated him on so happily putting his counsels into
practice. In the early days of 1854, Saccard confided to him that he
had several affairs in view, but that he would require some rather
large advances in the way of money.

"You should look about," said Eugène.

"You are right, I will look about," he replied without the least
trace of ill-humour, and without appearing to notice that his brother
declined to furnish him with the necessary funds.

How to procure this money had now become his constant thought. His plan
was formed; it grew maturer every day. But he was as far as ever from
obtaining the first few thousands of francs he required. His faculties
became keener; he began to look at people in a profound and nervous
manner, as though he were seeking a lender in every passer-by. Angèle
continued to lead at home her secluded and happy existence. He was for
ever watching for an opportunity, and his laugh of a jolly good fellow
became more bitter as this opportunity delayed in presenting itself.

Aristide had a sister living in Paris. Sidonie Rougon had married
a solicitor's clerk at Plassans, who had come with her to the Rue
Saint-Honoré to start business as a dealer in Southern commodities.
When her brother came across her, the husband had disappeared, and
the business had long ago gone to the dogs. She occupied in the Rue
du Faubourg-Poissonnière, a small mezzanine floor consisting of three
rooms. She also leased the shop beneath, a narrow and mysterious shop
in which she pretended to carry on the business of a dealer in lace.
True enough, there was a display of Valenciennes and Maltese lace
suspended from gilt rods in the window; but inside, the place had more
the look of an ante-room, with its polished wainscotting, and a total
absence of goods of any description. Light curtains hung before the
glazed door and the window, intercepting the glances of the passers-by,
and helping to give the shop the veiled and discreet appearance of
a waiting-room at the entrance to some strange temple. It was very
seldom that any customer was seen to call at Madame Sidonie's; the
handle was even generally removed from the door. She spread a report
in the neighbourhood that she went personally to offer her wares
to ladies of fortune. The convenient arrangement of the place, she
would say, had alone caused her to rent the shop and the floor above
which communicated by a staircase hidden in the wall. And indeed the
lace-dealer was constantly out of doors; she might be seen hurrying in
or out at least ten times a day.

The lace trade, however, was not her only business; she utilised her
upper floor--cramming it full of merchandise of one sort or another,
bought up no one knew where. At different times she had dealt there
in gutta-percha goods, such as waterproof coats, shoes, braces, &c;
then had followed a new oil to promote the growth of the hair, various
orthopedic instruments, and an automatic coffee-pot, a patented
invention, the working of which gave her a great deal of trouble. The
first time her brother came to see her, she had gone in for pianos,
to such an extent that her apartments were full of them; they were
even in her bedroom, a very daintily decorated room, which contrasted
violently with the commercial untidiness of the two others. She carried
on her two businesses with perfect method; the customers who came for
the goods on the mezzanine floor, entered and departed by means of
a carriage entrance which gave admittance to the house from the Rue
Papillon; only those acquainted with the mysterious little staircase
were able to form an idea of the lace-dealer's underhand trading. Up in
her apartments she was known as Madame Touche, which was the name of
her husband, whilst she had had only her Christian name painted on the
shop-door, which was the reason for her being generally addressed as
Madame Sidonie.

Madame Sidonie was thirty-five years of age, but she dressed so
carelessly, she had so little of the woman in her appearance, that
one would have taken her to be much older. In truth, she was a person
whose age it would have been difficult to tell. She was always seen in
the same black dress, frayed at the edges, rumpled and discoloured by
constant wear, reminding one of a lawyer's old gown become threadbare
through years of daily attendance in court. With a black bonnet which
came as low as her forehead and hid all her hair, and a pair of thick
heavy shoes, she scurried along the streets, carrying on her arm a
little basket the handles of which had been mended with pieces of
string. This basket, which never left her, was quite a little world in
itself. Whenever she raised the lid, samples of all sorts issued forth,
diaries, pocket books, and especially bundles of stamped documents, the
almost illegible writing of which she deciphered with extraordinary
dexterity. She comprised in her person something of the broker and
of the man of law. She lived amidst protests, writs, and orders of
the court; when she had secured an order for ten francs' worth of
pomatum or lace, she would insinuate herself into the good graces of
her customer, and become her man of business, calling in her stead on
solicitors, barristers and judges.

She would thus carry for weeks together at the bottom of her basket all
the documents relating to a case, taking no end of trouble about it,
going from one end of Paris to the other, with the same regular little
trot-trot, never for a moment thinking of riding to save her legs. It
would have been difficult to say what profit she obtained from such a
business; in the first place she engaged in it through an instinctive
taste for questionable matters, a love for cavilling; besides this,
however, it enabled her to secure a host of little profits; invitations
to dinner in every direction, innumerable franc pieces pocketed here
and there. But her clearest gain was undoubtedly the numerous secrets
confided to her wherever she went, which showed her where a good stroke
of business was to be done or a handsome windfall to be obtained.
Living in the homes of others and wrapt up in their affairs, she had
become a veritable repertory existing on offers and demands. She knew
where there was a daughter ready to be married at once, a family in
need of three thousand francs, an old gentleman willing to lend the
three thousand francs, but on substantial security and at a high rate
of interest. She knew of matters more delicate still: the sadness of
a fair lady whose husband did not understand her, and who longed to
be understood; the secret desires of a good mother who dreamed of
settling her daughter advantageously; the taste of a certain baron for
little supper-parties and very young girls. And smiling faintly, she
went about hawking these offers and these demands, she would walk a
couple of leagues to bring her clients together; she sent the baron to
the good mother, prevailed upon the old gentleman to lend the three
thousand francs to the needy family, obtained the necessary consolation
for the fair lady and a not over-scrupulous husband for the young girl
in a hurry to marry.

She was also engaged in some very important business, business that
there was no occasion to keep secret, and with which she pestered
whoever went near her: an interminable law-suit that a noble but ruined
family had intrusted her with, and a debt owing by the English to the
French nation since the time of the Stuarts, and which amounted with
the compound interest to nearly three milliards of francs. This debt of
three milliards was her hobby-horse; she would explain the case with no
end of particulars, launching out into quite a course of history, and a
flush of enthusiasm would rush to her cheeks, usually yellow and flabby
like wax. At times, between a call on a lawyer and a visit paid to a
lady friend, she would secure an order for a coffee-pot, a mackintosh,
a piece of lace, or a piano on hire. These were matters arranged in a
moment. Then she would hurry back to her shop, where a lady customer
had an appointment with her to see a piece of Chantilly. The customer
arrived and glided like a shadow into the discreet and veiled shop.
And it often happened that a gentleman, entering by way of the carriage
entrance in the Rue Papillon, called at the same time to see Madame
Touche's pianos on the floor above.

If Madame Sidonie had not made a fortune, it was because she often
worked for love of the thing. With a great hankering after legal
business, forgetting her own affairs for those of others, she allowed
herself to be fleeced by the lawyers, which procured her, however, an
enjoyment unknown to any but litigious persons. There was scarcely
anything womanly left about her; she had become nothing more nor less
than a man of business, an agent ever bustling about the four corners
of Paris, carrying in her legendary basket articles of the most
equivocal description, selling every thing, dreaming of milliards,
and even going to the court-house for a favourite client to plead in
a case of a disputed ten francs. Short, skinny and pale, dressed in
that thin black garment which looked as though it had been cut out of
a barrister's gown, she seemed to have shrivelled up, and to see her
scuttling along close to the houses, one would have taken her for an
errand-boy disguised as a girl. Her complexion had the mournful wanness
of stamped paper. Her lips parted in a dim smile, whilst her eyes
seemed to be wandering amidst the hubbub of business, matters of every
description with which she loaded her brain. Of discreet and timid
ways, moreover, combined with a vague odour of the confessional and a
midwife's sanctum, she always appeared as gentle and maternal as a nun
who, having renounced all the affections of this world, takes pity on
the sufferings of the heart. She never mentioned her husband, neither
did she allude to her childhood, her family, or her affairs. There was
only one thing she did not deal in, and that was herself; not that
she had any scruples about the matter, but because the idea of such a
bargain could never occur to her. She was as dry as an invoice, as cold
as a protest, and at heart as brutal and indifferent as a bumbailiff.

Saccard, all fresh from his province, could not at first fathom the
delicate depths of Madame Sidonie's numerous callings. As he had
during twelve months studied for the bar, she one day spoke to him of
the three milliards with a very grave air, which gave him but a poor
opinion of her intelligence. She came and rummaged in all the corners
of the lodging in the Rue Saint-Jacques, weighed Angèle at a glance,
and never again put in an appearance excepting when her own affairs
brought her into the neighbourhood, and when she felt a desire to again
discuss the question of the three milliards. Angèle had swallowed the
bait of the story of the English debt. The woman of business mounted
her hobby, and made it rain gold for an hour or more. It was the crack
in this shrewd intellect, the gentle myth with which she deluded her
life wasted in a wretched traffic, the magical lure that intoxicated
not only herself but the more credulous of her clients. Thoroughly
convinced, moreover, she ended by speaking of the three milliards as
of some private fortune, which the judges would have to restore to
her sooner or later, and this shed a marvellous aureola around her
shabby black bonnet on which hung a few faded violets attached to
brass-wire stems bare of all covering. Angèle would open her eyes
wide with amazement. On several occasions, she spoke to her husband
of her sister-in-law with great respect, saying that Madame Sidonie
would perhaps make them all rich one day. Saccard merely shrugged his
shoulders; he had gone and inspected the shop and floor above in the
Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, and the only impression he had taken
away with him was that of an approaching bankruptcy. He wished to
know Eugène's opinion of their sister; but his brother became grave
and merely replied that he never saw her, that he knew she was very
intelligent, though perhaps rather compromising.

However as Saccard was returning to the Rue de Penthièvre some little
while afterwards, he fancied he saw Madame Sidonie's black dress leave
his brother's abode and glide rapidly along the houses. He hastened
forward, but lost all trace of the black garment. The woman of business
had one of those spare figures which so easily lose themselves in a
crowd. This set him thinking, and it was from this moment that he
commenced to study his sister more attentively. It was not long before
he began to understand the immense task performed by that pale and
shadowy little body, whose entire face seemed to squint and melt away.
He came to look upon her with respect. She had the true Rougon blood
in her veins. He recognised that appetite for money, that longing for
every kind of intrigue which was characteristic of the family; only, in
her case, thanks to the surroundings amidst which she had grown old,
thanks to that Paris where every morning she had been obliged to set
forth to seek her evening meal, the common temperament had deviated
from its usual course to produce this extraordinary hermaphrodism of a
woman changed into a being without a gender, both man of business and
procuress at the same time.

When Saccard, after having fixed upon his plan, was seeking for the
means for putting it into execution, he naturally bethought him of
his sister. She shook her head, and with a sigh alluded to the three
milliards. But the civil servant would not humour her whim, he pulled
her up rather roughly each time she mentioned the debt connected with
the Stuarts; such a chimera seemed to him to dishonour so practical an
intelligence. Madame Sidonie, who quietly swallowed the most cutting
irony without in any way allowing her convictions to be shaken, next
explained to him in a very lucid manner that he would never raise a
sou, having no security to offer. This conversation took place opposite
the Bourse, where she no doubt dabbled with her savings. Towards three
o'clock one was sure to find her leaning against the railing to the
left, near the post-office; it was there that she gave audience to
individuals as fishy and shadowy as herself. Her brother was on the
point of leaving her, when she murmured regretfully: "Ah! if only you
were not married!" This reticence, the full and exact sense of which he
was unwilling to ask, made Saccard singularly thoughtful.

Months passed by, the Crimean war had just been declared. Paris,
quite unaffected by a war so far away, was launching with more ardour
than ever into speculation and women; whilst Saccard stood by gnawing
his fists as he assisted at this ever increasing mania which he had
long before foreseen. The hammers in the gigantic forge beating the
gold upon the anvil made him quiver with rage and impatience. His
intelligence and his will were worked up to such a pitch that he lived
as in a dream, like a somnambulist walking along the edge of a roof
a prey to some fixed idea. He was therefore surprised and annoyed
one evening to find Angèle ill and in bed. His home-life, regulated
like a clock, was getting out of order, and this exasperated him like
some intentional spitefulness of destiny. Poor Angèle complained in a
gentle voice; she had taken a severe chill. When the doctor arrived,
he appeared very anxious; he told the husband, outside on the landing,
that his wife was suffering from inflammation of the lungs and that
he could not answer for her life. From that moment the civil servant
tended the invalid without a vestige of anger; he no longer went to
his office, he remained beside her, watching her with an indefinable
expression as she lay sleeping, flushed and panting with fever.

Madame Sidonie, in spite of the overwhelming business which claimed
her attention, found time to call each evening to make diet drinks
which she pretended were sovereign remedies. To all her other trades
she could add that of a sick-nurse by vocation, taking an interest in
suffering, in medicaments, and in the heart-rending conversations which
go on at the bedsides of those about to depart this life. Besides this,
she seemed to be full of a tender friendship for Angèle; she loved
women of amorous natures, showing her affection by a thousand little
caressing ways, no doubt because of the pleasure they gave mankind; she
treated them with the delicate attentions which dealers show towards
the more precious of their wares, calling them "My beauty, my darling,"
cooing and almost swooning before them, like a lover in the presence
of his mistress. Though Angèle was one of those from whom she expected
nothing, she petted her up like the others, just by way of principle.
When the young woman took to her bed, Madame Sidonie's effusions became
quite pathetic, she filled the silent chamber with demonstrations of
her devotion. Her brother watched her moving about, his teeth tightly
set, and looking as though utterly wrapt up in a silent grief.

The disease took a turn for the worse. One evening the doctor informed
them that the patient would not live through the night. Madame Sidonie
had called early, with a preoccupied air, and she kept looking at
Aristide and Angèle out of her watery eyes, lighted up every now
and then by sudden flashes of fire. When the doctor had taken his
departure, she turned down the lamp, and a great silence enveloped all.
Death was slowly entering into this warm and dampish room, where the
irregular breathing of the dying woman resembled the spasmodic ticking
of a clock about to stop. Madame Sidonie had given up the diet drinks,
and now allowed the disease to go its course. She had seated herself
before the fire-place, at the side of her brother, who was stirring the
coals with a feverish hand, and casting now and again an involuntary
glance at the bed. Then, as though enervated by the close atmosphere,
and by the sad spectacle, he withdrew into the adjoining room. Little
Clotilde had been shut in there, and was playing very quietly with her
doll on the edge of the rug. His daughter was smiling up at him when
Madame Sidonie, creeping to where he stood, drew him into a corner, and
commenced to speak in a hushed voice. The door had remained ajar. One
could hear the faint rattle in Angèle's throat.

"Your poor wife," sobbed the business woman. "I fear the end is at
hand. You heard what the doctor said?"

For all answer Saccard mournfully bowed his head.

"She was a good creature," continued the other, speaking as though
Angèle were already dead and buried. "You may find many richer women,
and ones more used to the world, but you will never meet with another
heart like hers."

And as she stopped, and set to mopping her eyes, as though seeking a
means of bringing the conversation to the subject she was driving at.

"You have something to tell me?" asked Saccard, without any beating
about the bush.

"Yes, I have been busying myself about you, in reference to the matter
you spoke of, and I think I have found something--but at such a
moment--you see, my heart is bursting."

She mopped her eyes again. Saccard let her have her way, and did not
utter a word. Then she made up her mind to speak.

"It's a young girl, her relations wish to see her married at once,"
said she. "The dear child has met with a misfortune. There is an aunt
who will be willing to make any sacrifice--"

She interrupted herself, she was continuing to moan, drawling out her
words as though she were still pitying poor Angèle. She did this with
a view of making her brother lose patience and forcing him to question
her, so as not to have the whole responsibility of the offer she was
about to make him. And, indeed, an inward feeling of irritation began
to work upon the civil servant.

"Come, say what you have to say!" said he. "Why do they wish to see
this young girl married?"

"She had just left school," resumed the woman of business in a doleful
voice, "and a man seduced her, down in the country, at the home of
one of her schoolfellows where she was staying. The father has just
discovered her condition. He wished to kill her. The aunt, to save the
dear child, made herself her accomplice, and they have both of them
told the father a story, to the effect that the seducer was a worthy
fellow who was longing to redeem his momentary error."

"Therefore," said Saccard in a tone of surprise and as though annoyed,
"the man in the country is going to marry the young girl?"

"No, he cannot, he is already married."

A pause ensued. The rattle in Angèle's throat resounded more painfully
in the quivering atmosphere. Little Clotilde had ceased playing; she
was now looking at Madame Sidonie and her father, with her great eyes
of a thoughtful child, as though she had understood their words.
Saccard began to put a few brief questions.

"How old is the young girl?"

"Nineteen."

"How long has she been in her present condition?"

"Three months. There will no doubt be a miscarriage."

"And the family is a wealthy and honourable one?"

"An old middle-class family. The father was a judge. A very handsome
fortune."

"What is the aunt prepared to give?"

"A hundred thousand francs."

Another pause ensued. Madame Sidonie was no longer blubbering; she was
on business, her voice assumed the metallic jingle of a second-hand
dealer trying to drive a bargain. Her brother took a covert glance at
her, and added with some slight hesitation:

"And you, what will you want?"

"We'll talk of that later on," replied she. "You can do me a service in
your turn."

She waited a few seconds, and as he remained silent, she asked him
plainly:

"Well, what have you decided? These poor women are in despair; they
wish to prevent a scandal. They have promised the father to tell him
to-morrow the name of the seducer. If you accept, I will send them one
of your cards by a commissionaire."

Saccard seemed to awaken from a dream; he started, and turned with a
frightened air towards the adjoining room, where he fancied he had
heard a slight noise.

"But I cannot," said he with anguish; "you know very well that I
cannot."

Madame Sidonie looked at him fixedly, with a cold and disdainful gaze.
All the Rougon blood, all his ardent longings came rushing back to his
throat. He took a card from his pocket-book and gave it to his sister,
who, after carefully scratching out the address, placed it in an
envelope. She then went out. It was barely nine o'clock.

Left alone, Saccard went and pressed his forehead against the icy
cold window panes. He forgot himself so far as to beat the tattoo on
the glass with the tips of his fingers. But the night was so black,
the darkness outside hung about in such strange masses, that he could
not help experiencing a feeling of uneasiness, and he mechanically
returned to the room in which Angèle was dying. He had quite forgotten
her, and received a terrible shock on finding her half raised up in
bed on her pillows; her eyes were wide open, a flush of life seemed to
have returned to her lips and cheeks. Little Clotilde, still holding
her doll, was seated on the edge of the bed; the moment her father had
turned his back she had quickly glided into that chamber from which she
had so long been kept, and to which her gladsome childish curiosity
attracted her. His head full of what his sister had been saying to him,
Saccard suddenly beheld his dream dashed to pieces. A frightful thought
must have glared from out his eyes. Seized with terror, Angèle tried
to bury herself in the bedclothes right up against the wall; but death
was nigh, this awakening in the midst of the last agony was the supreme
flicker of the lamp going out. The dying woman was unable to move,
and as her last remnant of strength left her, she continued to keep
her wide open eyes fixed on her husband, as though to watch his every
movement.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF ANGÈLE.]

Saccard, who for a moment had believed in some diabolical resurrection,
invented by destiny to keep him in poverty, became reassured on seeing
that the wretched woman had scarcely another hour to live. His other
feelings gave way to one of intolerable uneasiness. Angèle's eyes said
plainly enough that she had overheard the conversation between her
husband and Madame Sidonie, and that she feared he would strangle her
if she did not die quick enough. And her eyes were also full of the
horrible amazement of a gentle and inoffensive nature which learns
at the last moment the infamies of this world, and shudders at the
thought of having passed years side by side with a bandit. By degrees
her look became more kind; she was no longer frightened, she no doubt
found excuses for the wretch as she recollected the desperate struggle
he had been maintaining so long against fate. Followed by the dying
woman's gaze, in which he read such bitter reproach, Saccard clung to
the furniture for support, and sought the darkest corner of the room.
Then, feeling on the point of fainting, he tried to drive away this
nightmare which was maddening him, and advanced into the light of
the lamp. But Angèle motioned him not to speak, and she continued
looking at him with that air of terror-stricken anguish, to which was
now joined a promise of pardon. Then he stooped to take up Clotilde in
his arms and carry her into the other room. She again forbade him with
a movement of her lips. She insisted upon his remaining where he was.
She slowly passed away, not once removing her gaze from him, and as he
paled beneath it, this gaze grew more and more benign. She forgave with
her last sigh. She died as she had lived, tamely; her diffidence in
life attending her till death. Saccard stood shivering before the dead
woman's eyes, which remained wide open, and transfixed him by their
very immobility. Little Clotilde nursed her doll on the edge of the
sheet, very gently though, so as not to wake her mother.

When Madame Sidonie got back it was all over. Like a woman in the habit
of performing such operations, she deftly closed Angèle's eyes with a
touch of her fingers, and this was an immense relief to Saccard. Then,
after putting the little girl to bed, she quickly arranged the room as
befits the chamber of death. When she had lighted two candles on the
chest of drawers, and carefully drawn the sheet up to the chin of the
corpse, she cast a satisfied glance around her, and ensconced herself
in an easy-chair, where she dozed till daybreak. Saccard passed the
night in the adjoining room, writing letters announcing his wife's
death. He interrupted himself now and again, musing and adding up
columns of figures on odd bits of paper.

On the evening of the day of the funeral, Madame Sidonie took Saccard
to her apartment on the mezzanine floor, and grand resolutions were
formed there. The civil servant decided that he would send little
Clotilde to one of his brothers, Pascal Rougon, a doctor at Plassans,
who led a bachelor life, wrapt up in the love of science, and who had
often offered to take his niece to live with him to enliven his silent
home. Madame Sidonie then made Saccard understand that he could no
longer sojourn in the Rue Saint-Jacques. She would take an elegantly
furnished apartment for him for a month, somewhere in the neighbourhood
of the Hôtel de Ville; she would try to find this apartment in a
private house, so that the furniture should appear to belong to him. As
to the chattels in the Rue Saint-Jacques, they should all be sold, so
as to efface every trace of the past. He could use the money in buying
himself a trousseau and some decent clothes.

Three days later, Clotilde was handed over to an old lady who it
so happened was just starting for the South. And Aristide Saccard,
triumphant and rosy-cheeked, looking fattened up in three days by the
first smiles of fortune, occupied in a quiet and respectable house in
the Rue Payenne, situated in the Marais quarter, a charming floor of
five rooms through which he wandered with embroidered slippers on his
feet. They were the apartments of a young abbé who had been suddenly
called to Italy, and who had instructed his servant to let the rooms
during his absence. This servant was a friend of Madame Sidonie's, who
rather fancied the cloth; she loved priests with the same love that she
showered on women, through instinct, no doubt establishing a certain
nervous relationship between cassocks and silk skirts. From that time
Saccard was ready; he arranged the part he was to play with exquisite
art; he awaited without betraying the least emotion the difficulties
and niceties of the situation which he had accepted.

On the dreadful evening when Angèle died, Madame Sidonie had faithfully
told in a few words the misfortune which had overtaken the Bérauds.
The father, Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel, a fine old man of sixty, was
the last representative of an ancient middle-class family, who could
trace their origin much farther back than many a noble house. One of
his ancestors was a companion of Étienne Marcel. In 1793 his father
perished on the scaffold, after saluting the Republic with all the
enthusiasm of a Paris citizen, in whose veins flowed the revolutionary
blood of the city. He himself was one of those Spartan republicans who
dream of a government of full justice and wise liberty. Grown old in
the magistracy, where he had contracted quite a professional stiffness
and severity, he resigned his post of presiding judge in 1851, at the
time of the Coup d'État, after refusing to be a member of one of those
mixed commissions which dishonoured French justice.

Since that time he had been living, solitary and retired, in his
mansion on the Île Saint-Louis, situated at the extremity of the
island, almost opposite the mansion of the Lamberts. His wife had
died young. Some secret drama, the wound from which still remained
unhealed, probably added to the gloom of the judge's grave countenance.
He was already the father of a girl of eight, Renée, when his wife
expired on giving birth to a second daughter. This latter, who was
named Christine, was taken care of by a sister of Monsieur Béraud
Du Châtel's, the wife of Aubertot the notary. Renée was sent to a
convent. Madame Aubertot, who had no child of her own, was filled
with quite a maternal affection for Christine, whom she brought up
herself. Her husband dying, she took the little one back to her father,
and remained between the silent old man and his smiling fair-haired
daughter. Renée was forgotten at her school. During the holidays she
filled the house with such an uproar that her aunt heaved a great
sigh of relief when she at length escorted her back to the ladies
of the Visitation, where the child had been a boarder since she was
eight years old. She did not leave the convent for good until she
was nineteen, and then she went to pass the summer at the home of
her friend Adeline, whose parents owned a beautiful estate in the
Nivernais. When she came back in October, her Aunt Élisabeth was
surprised to find her very grave and profoundly sad. One evening she
discovered her stifling her sobs in the pillow, writhing on her bed in
an attack of mad grief. In the misery of her despair the child told her
a most heart-rending story: a man of forty, rich, married, and whose
wife, a young and charming person, was also staying at the house, had
violated her during her visit in the country, without her daring or
knowing how to defend herself.

This confession terrified Aunt Élisabeth; she accused herself,
as though she had felt she were an accomplice; she regretted her
preference for Christine, and could not help thinking that, if she had
also kept Renée beside her, the poor child would not have succumbed.
Henceforward, to drive away that bitter remorse which her tender nature
still further exaggerated, she did her best to sustain the erring
one; she bore the brunt of the father's anger when they both apprised
him of the horrible truth by the very excess of their precautions; in
the bewilderment of her solicitude she invented that strange project
of marriage which to her idea was to arrange everything, appease
the father and rehabilitate Renée, and the shamefulness and fatal
consequences of which she was unwilling to see.

It was never known how Madame Sidonie had got wind of this magnificent
piece of business. The honour of the Bérauds had been dragged about
in her basket amongst the protested bills of every dollymop of Paris.
When she learned the story, she almost forced them to accept her
brother, whose wife lay at death's door. Aunt Élisabeth ended by
thinking that she was under an obligation to this lady, so gentle and
humble, and who was so devoted to poor Renée, that she even found her
a husband in her own family. The first interview between Saccard
and the aunt took place in the little apartment on the upper floor
of the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. The civil servant, who had
gained admittance through the carriage entrance in the Rue Papillon,
understood, on beholding Madame Aubertot arrive by way of the shop and
little staircase, all the ingenious mechanism of the two entrances.
He was full of tact and good manners. He treated the marriage as a
matter of business, but like a man of the world about to settle his
gambling debts. Aunt Élisabeth was by far the more trembling of the
two; she stammered, not daring to mention the hundred thousand francs
which she had promised. It was he who first brought forward the money
question, in the manner of a solicitor discussing a client's case.
According to him, a hundred thousand francs was a ridiculous fortune
for Mademoiselle Renée's husband to start housekeeping upon. And he
laid a gentle stress on the word "Mademoiselle." Monsieur Béraud Du
Châtel would despise still more a poor son-in-law; he would accuse him
of having seduced his daughter for the sake of her money; perhaps,
it might even occur to him to make some secret inquiries. Madame
Aubertot, greatly frightened, and scared by Saccard's calm and polite
way of talking, lost her head and consented to double the sum when he
declared that he would not dare to ask for Renée's hand for less than
two hundred thousand francs, not wishing to be considered an infamous
fortune-hunter. The worthy lady departed quite confused, scarcely
knowing what to think of a fellow who could be so indignant and yet
enter into such an arrangement.

This first interview was followed by an official visit which Aunt
Élisabeth paid Saccard at his apartments in the Rue Payenne. This time,
she came in the name of Monsieur Béraud. The retired judge had refused
to see "that man," as he called his daughter's seducer, so long as he
was not married to Renée, to whom he had also closed his door. Madame
Aubertot had full powers to arrange everything. She appeared delighted
with the civil servant's luxurious surroundings; she had feared that
the brother of that Madame Sidonie, with the draggled skirts, might be
a blackguard. He received her, arrayed in a delicious dressing-gown.
It was at the time, when the adventurers of the 2nd of December, after
having paid their debts, were pitching their worn-out boots and frayed
coats into the sewers, having their dirty chins shaved, and becoming
respectable members of society. Saccard was at length joining the
band; he took to cleaning his nails and using at his toilet the most
invaluable powder and perfume. He was quite gallant; he changed his
tactics and showed himself most prodigiously disinterested. When the
old lady broached the subject of the marriage contract, he made a
gesture as though to say that it was a matter of indifference to him.
For a week past he had been studying the Code, considering this grave
question upon which his future liberty of action in his underhand
dealings would depend.

"For goodness' sake," said he, "let's say no more about this
disagreeable money question. My opinion is that Mademoiselle Renée
should remain mistress of her fortune and I master of mine. The notary
will settle all that."

Aunt Élisabeth approved this arrangement; she trembled for fear this
fellow, whose iron grip she could vaguely feel, should wish to thrust
his fingers into her niece's dowry. She next gave the particulars of
this dowry.

"My brother," said she, "possesses a fortune consisting mainly of
landed property and houses. He is not the man to punish his daughter
by reducing the share he intended for her. He gives her an estate in
Sologne, valued at three hundred thousand francs, as well as a house in
Paris said to be worth about two hundred thousand francs."

Saccard was quite dazzled, he had not expected such an amount; he
slightly turned away his head so as to hide the rush of blood which
dyed his face.

"That makes five hundred thousand francs," continued the aunt; "but I
must not hide from you that the Sologne property only yields two per
cent."

He smiled and repeated his disinterested gesture, wishing to imply that
that could not affect him as he declined to meddle with his wife's
fortune. He was seated in his easy-chair in an attitude of adorable
indifference, with an absent-minded air, his foot playing with his
slipper, and he appeared to be listening purely out of politeness.
Madame Aubertot, with the good nature of a worthy old soul, spoke with
difficulty, choosing her words so as not to wound him.

"Besides that, however, I wish to make Renée a present," she resumed.
"I have no child of my own, my fortune will one day devolve to my
nieces, and it is not because one of them is in grief that I would now
close my hand. The wedding presents for both of them have been long
ready. Renée's consists in some vast plots of ground near Charonne,
which I have reason to believe are worth two hundred thousand francs.
Only--"

At the word ground, Saccard slightly started. In spite of his pretended
indifference he was listening with profound attention. Aunt Élisabeth
became confused, at a loss for words to express what she wished to say.
Turning very red, she at length continued:

"Only I wish that the ownership of this ground should be settled on
Renée's first child. You no doubt understand my reason: I do not desire
that this child should one day be an expense to you. Should it die, the
property will become solely Renée's."

He did not display the least sign of disappointment, but his knit brow
showed how deeply he was thinking. The plots of ground at Charonne had
awakened a host of ideas within him. Madame Aubertot feared she had
offended him by speaking of Renée's child, and she remained abashed and
quite unable to continue the conversation.

"You have not told me in what street the house property valued at two
hundred thousand francs is situated," said he, resuming his pleasant
air.

"In the Rue de la Pépinière," she replied, "almost at the corner of the
Rue d'Astorg."

This simple answer produced a decisive effect upon him. He could no
longer conceal his delight; he drew his easy-chair nearer the lady, and
with his southern volubility, and in coaxing tones said:

"Dear madame, have we not said enough, must we still continue to
discuss this horrid money question? Listen, I wish to speak to you
with all frankness, for I should be in despair did I not merit your
esteem. I lost my wife lately, I have two children to look after, I
am practical and sensible. By marrying your niece I shall be doing
every one a good turn. If you have still any prejudice against me you
will lose it later on, when I shall have dried all your tears and made
the fortunes of all my descendants. Success is a golden flame which
purifies everything. I will force Monsieur Béraud himself to hold out
his hand to me and thank me."

He went rattling on, speaking for a long while in the same strain with
mocking impudence which showed at times beneath his pleasant air. He
talked of his brother the deputy, and of his father the receiver of
taxes at Plassans. He ended by completely ingratiating himself with
Aunt Élisabeth, who beheld with involuntary joy the drama through which
she had been suffering for a month past terminate almost in a merry
comedy in the hands of this clever man. It was settled that they should
see the notary on the morrow.

As soon as Madame Aubertot took her departure he went to the Hôtel
de Ville, and spent the day there examining certain documents with
which he was acquainted. At the meeting at the notary's he raised a
difficulty, he said that as Renée's dowry consisted solely in landed
property he feared it would give her no end of trouble, and he thought
it would be wise to sell at least the house in the Rue de la Pépinière
and to invest the money for her in the funds. Madame Aubertot wished
to refer the matter to Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel, who continued to
shut himself up in his room. Saccard went out again until the evening.
He visited the Rue de la Pépinière, he hurried about Paris with the
thoughtful air of a general on the eve of a decisive battle. The next
morning Madame Aubertot stated that Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel left
everything to her. The marriage contract was drawn up on the basis
already discussed. Saccard brought two hundred thousand francs, Renée's
dowry consisted of the Sologne property and the house in the Rue de la
Pépinière, which latter she undertook to sell; besides this, she would,
in the event of her first child dying, be sole owner of the plots of
ground at Charonne given by her aunt. The contract was in accordance
with the system of separate estates which preserves to the husband
and wife the entire administration of their respective fortunes. Aunt
Élisabeth, who was listening attentively to the notary, appeared to
be satisfied with this arrangement which seemed to insure her niece's
independence by placing her fortune beyond the reach of any attempts
that might be made upon it. A vague smile played upon Saccard's
countenance as he saw the worthy lady approve each clause with a nod.
The marriage was fixed to take place at the shortest possible date.

When everything was settled, Saccard went and paid a ceremonious visit
to his brother Eugène to announce to him his union with Mademoiselle
Renée Béraud Du Châtel. This master stroke astonished the deputy. As he
did not attempt to conceal his surprise, the civil servant said:

"You told me to look about; I did so and I have found what I wanted."

Eugène, quite at sea at first, then began to see the truth. And in a
charming tone of voice he observed:

"Come now, you're a clever fellow. You've called to ask me to be your
best man, have you not? You may count upon me. If necessary I will
bring all the members of the right of the Corps Législatif to your
wedding; that would be a famous thing for you."

Then as he had opened the door, he lowered his voice to add:

"But tell me? I must not compromise myself too much just now, for we
have a very difficult law to pass--The lady's condition is not too
apparent, is it?"

Saccard gave him such a bitter look, that Eugène said to himself as he
closed the door:

"That is a joke that would cost me dear, were I not a Rougon."

The marriage was performed at the church of Saint-Louis-en-l'Île.
Saccard and Renée did not see each other until the eve of the great
day. The interview took place in the evening, just at nightfall,
in a low room of the Béraud mansion. They examined each other with
curiosity. Since arrangements had been entered into for her marriage,
Renée had regained her giddy ways, her light-heartedness. She was
a tall girl of an exquisite though turbulent beauty, who had grown
up at random amidst her school-girl caprices. She found Saccard
little and ugly, but of a restless and intelligent ugliness which
did not displease her; he was, moreover, perfect both in manners
and conversation. He made a slight grimace on first seeing her; she
no doubt appeared to him too tall, taller than he was himself. They
exchanged a few words without embarrassment. Had the father been
present, he might indeed have thought that they had known each other a
long while, that they had committed some grievous fault together. Aunt
Élisabeth assisted at the interview and blushed for them.

On the day after the wedding, which was quite an event in the Île
Saint-Louis thanks to the presence of Eugène Rougon, whom a recent
speech had brought to the fore, the newly married couple were at length
admitted to the presence of Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel. Renée wept on
finding her father looking older, graver and more mournful. Saccard,
whom nothing had put out of countenance till then, was frozen by the
chilliness and the dim light of the apartment, by the sad austerity of
the tall old man, whose piercing eye seemed to him to search into the
very depths of his conscience. The retired judge slowly kissed his
daughter on the forehead, as though to tell her that he forgave her,
and then turning to his son-in-law:

"Sir," said he simply, "we have suffered much. I count upon you to make
us forget the wrong you have done us."

He held out his hand to him. But Saccard stood shivering. He was
thinking that if Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel had not been bent low by the
tragic grief of Renée's shame, he would at a glance, and without an
effort, have seen through Madame Sidonie's machinations. The latter,
after having brought her brother and Aunt Élisabeth together, had
prudently made herself scarce. She had not even gone to the wedding.
He made a point of being very frank with the old man, having read in
his look his surprise at finding his daughter's seducer to be a little
ugly fellow forty years old. The newly married couple were obliged to
pass the first nights at the Béraud mansion. A month before, Christine
had been sent away, so that the child of fourteen should have no
suspicion of the drama that was being enacted in that house as serene
and undisturbed as a cloister. When she returned home, she gazed with
astonishment at her sister's husband, whom she also thought old and
ugly. Renée was the only one who did not seem to notice either her
husband's age or his sorry appearance. She treated him without contempt
as without affection, with an absolute tranquillity through which
occasionally gleamed a touch of ironical disdain. Saccard strutted
about and made himself at home, and really, thanks to his frankness and
good spirits, he little by little won the friendship of one and all.
When they took their departure to occupy a superb suite of apartments
in a new house in the Rue de Rivoli, Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel's look
no longer displayed any astonishment, and little Christine romped
with her brother-in-law as with an old friend. Renée was at that time
four months gone in the family way; her husband was on the point of
sending her into the country, when, in accordance with Madame Sidonie's
prophecy, she had a miscarriage. She had laced herself up so tightly to
hide her condition, which, moreover, disappeared beneath the fulness
of her skirts, that she was obliged to keep her bed for several weeks.
He was delighted with the adventure; fortune was at length smiling
upon him; he had made a golden bargain, a magnificent dowry, a wife
lovely enough to have him decorated in six months, and not the least
encumbrance. He had been paid two hundred thousand francs to give
his name to a fœtus which the mother would not even look at. From
that moment his thoughts lovingly lingered on the plots of ground at
Charonne. But for the time being he was giving all his attention to a
speculation which was to form the basis of his fortune.

Notwithstanding the high position of his wife's family, he did not at
once resign his post at the Hôtel de Ville. He talked of work on hand
to be finished, and of some other occupation to be sought for. The
truth was he wished to remain till the end on the battle-field where he
was playing his first cards. He was so to say at home, and could cheat
more at his ease.

His plan for making his fortune was simple and practical. Now that
he possessed more money than he had ever hoped for to commence his
operations, he intended to put his designs into execution on a grand
scale. He knew Paris by heart; he knew that the shower of gold which
was already beating against the walls would fall heavier every day.
Clever people had only to open their pockets. He had placed himself
among the clever ones by reading the future in the offices of the Hôtel
de Ville. His duties had taught him what can be stolen in the buying
and selling of houses and ground. He was fully acquainted with all the
classic swindles: he knew how to sell for a million that which only
cost five hundred thousand francs; how to pay the right to ransack
the cash boxes of the State, which smiles and shuts its eyes; how, by
making a Boulevard pass over the entrails of some old neighbourhood,
to juggle with six storeyed houses, amidst the applause of all the
dupes. And that which in those still clouded days, when the chancre
of speculation was not beyond the period of incubation, made him a
terrible gambler was that he foresaw more than his chiefs themselves
respecting the future of stone and plaster reserved to Paris. He had
ferreted about so much, collected together so many clues, that he might
have prophesied the spectacle the new districts would offer in 1870. At
times, as he walked along the streets, he would look at certain houses
in a singular manner, as though they were old friends whose destiny,
known to him alone, affected him deeply.

Two months previous to Angèle's death, he had taken her one Sunday
to the Buttes Montmartre. The poor woman delighted in eating at
restaurants; she was never more pleased than when, after a long walk,
he would take her to dine at some suburban eating-house. That day they
had their dinner right at the top of the hill, in a restaurant, with
windows overlooking Paris, that ocean of houses with bluey roofs,
looking like surging billows filling the immense horizon. Their table
was placed before one of the windows. The sight of the Paris roofs
enlivened Saccard. At dessert he called for a bottle of Burgundy. He
smiled at space, he was most unusually gallant. And his look kept
lovingly returning to that living, swarming sea, from which issued
the deep voice of the crowd. It was autumn; beneath the vast pale sky
the city lay languishing, a soft and tender grey in hue, studded here
and there with dark green foliage, which resembled great leaves of
nenuphars floating on a lake; the sun was setting behind a red cloud,
and, whilst the background was filled with a slight haze, a golden
dust, an auriferous dew was falling upon the city on the right bank of
the river, in the neighbourhood of the Madeleine and the Tuileries. It
was like the enchanted corner of some city of the "Arabian Nights,"
with trees formed of emeralds, roofs of sapphires, and weather-cocks of
rubies. There came a moment when a ray of sunshine, gliding between two
clouds, was so resplendent that the houses seemed to flare up and melt
away like an ingot of gold in a crucible.

"Oh! look," said Saccard, with a childish laugh, "a shower of
twenty-franc pieces has burst over Paris!"

Angèle began to laugh too, accusing these pieces of not being easy to
gather up. But her husband had risen from his seat, and leaning against
the handrail of the window, he continued:

"That's the Vendôme column shining over there, isn't it? There, more to
the right, is the Madeleine--a fine neighbourhood, where there's plenty
to be done. Ah! this time, it'll all be ablaze! Do you see? One could
almost fancy that the whole neighbourhood was boiling in some chemist's
still."

His voice was becoming grave and agitated. The comparison he had drawn
seemed to strike him immensely, he had drank a few glasses of Burgundy
and was musing; and he went on, stretching out his arm to show the
different sights of Paris to Angèle, who was also leaning over the
handrail on her side of the window.

"Yes, yes, what I said was right enough, more than one district will
be melted down, and gold will stick to the fingers of those who heat
and stir the copper. That great noodle Paris! see how immense he is and
how innocently he slumbers! Such great towns are always fools! He has
no idea of the army of picks that will attack him one of these fine
mornings, and some of the mansions in the Rue d'Anjou would not shine
so brightly beneath the setting sun if they knew they had no more than
three or four years to live."

Angèle fancied her husband was joking. He had at times a taste for
immense and disquieting jokes. She laughed, but with a vague fear, at
seeing the little man tower above the giant crouched at his feet, and
shake his fist at him while ironically pursing his lips.

"It's already begun," continued he; "but nothing to speak of as yet.
Look over there, beside the Halles, Paris has been cut into four."

And with his extended hand, open and sharp edged like a cutlass, he
made a motion as though separating the city into four portions.

"You're alluding to the Rue de Rivoli and the new Boulevard they are
making aren't you?" asked his wife.

"Yes, the great window of Paris as it's called. They're clearing away
the buildings that hide the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville. But that's
mere child's play! It's only good to rouse the public's appetite.
When the first improvements are completed the grand work will begin.
The city will be pierced in every direction to unite the suburbs to
the main artery. The houses will fall amidst clouds of plaster. Look,
follow the direction of my hand a minute. From the Boulevard du Temple
to the Barrière du Trône will be one gap; then, more this way, from the
Madeleine to the Plaine Monceaux will be another; and a third in this
direction, another along here, another over there, and still another
farther away, in fact gaps everywhere, Paris hacked about as with a
sabre, its veins opened, feeding a hundred thousand navvies and masons,
traversed right and left by splendid strategical ways which will bring
the very forts right into the heart of the old quarters of the city."

Night was coming on. His dry and nervous hand kept hacking about in
space. Angèle slightly shuddered before this living knife, these iron
fingers mercilessly chopping up the boundless mass of dusky roofs.
For some little while past the haze of the horizon had been slowly
descending from the heights, and she fancied she could hear, beneath
the gloom that was gathering in the hollows, a distant and prolonged
sound of cracking, as though her husband's hand had really made the
openings he had been speaking of, opening up Paris from one end to the
other, severing beams, crushing masonry, leaving in its wake long and
frightful wounds of demolished walls. The diminutiveness of this hand,
implacably hovering over a giant prey, ended by becoming alarming,
and whilst it tore open the entrails of the enormous city without an
effort, it seemed to assume a strange shimmer of steel in the bluey
twilight.

"There will be a third artery," continued Saccard, at the end of a
pause, as though speaking to himself; "but that one is too distant,
I see it less plainly. I have come across only a few signs of it.
But it will be pure madness, the infernal gallop of millions, Paris
intoxicated and overwhelmed!"

He again relapsed into silence, his eyes ardently fixed on the city,
where the shadows were gathering deeper and deeper. He was probably
interrogating that too distant future which escaped him. Then night
enveloped all, the city became lost in a confused mass, one could hear
it breathing plentifully, like some sea, the crest of the pale waves of
which is all the eye can distinguish. Here and there, a few walls still
preserved a whitish hue; and the yellow flames of the gas-jets pierced
the gloom one by one, similar to stars shining amidst the darkness of a
stormy sky.

Angèle shook off her feeling of uneasiness and continued the jest her
husband had commenced at dessert.

"Ah! well," said she with a smile, "there's been a good shower of those
twenty-franc pieces! The Parisians are counting them now. Look at the
fine piles they're making at our feet!"

She pointed to the streets which descend from the Buttes Montmartre,
with their double rows of lighted gas-lamps looking like piles of gold.

"And over there," cried she, indicating a galaxy of lights, "that is
surely the treasury!"

The remark made Saccard laugh. They remained a few minutes longer
at the window, delighted with this flood of "twenty-franc pieces,"
which was ending by covering the whole of Paris. On returning from
Montmartre, the civil servant no doubt regretted having gossiped so
much. He put it down to the Burgundy, and requested his wife not to
repeat the "nonsense" he had been saying; he wished, said he, to be
considered a serious person.

For a long time past, Saccard had been studying these three lines of
streets and Boulevards, the pretty correct plan of which he had so far
forgotten himself as to place before Angèle. When the latter died,
he in nowise regretted that she carried with her into the tomb the
recollection of all he had said up on the Buttes Montmartre. It was
there that his fortune lay, in those famous gaps which his hand had, so
to say, opened in the very heart of Paris, and he had made up his mind
to share his idea with no one, knowing well enough that on the day of
the sharing of the spoil there would be plenty of crows hovering over
the gutted city.

His original plan had been to purchase, on low terms, some building or
other which he knew beforehand was condemned to shortly come down, and
to realize an immense profit by obtaining a substantial indemnity. He
would, perhaps, have decided to make the attempt without a sou, to buy
the building on credit and merely to pocket the difference afterwards,
like people do on the Bourse, when his second marriage, bringing him in
a premium of two hundred thousand francs, fixed and developed his plan.
He had now made his calculations: under the name of an intermediary,
and without appearing personally in the matter, he would purchase
the house in the Rue de la Pépinière from his wife, and treble his
outlay, thanks to the knowledge he had acquired in his perambulations
through the Hôtel de Ville, and to his friendly relations with certain
influential personages.

The reason he started when Aunt Élisabeth told him where the house was
situated, was because it happened to be in the line of a contemplated
thoroughfare, the piercing of which was at that time kept secret
outside the sanctum of the prefect of the Seine. This thoroughfare,
the Boulevard Malesherbes, would necessitate the clearance of the
entire house. It was one of the first Napoleon's old projects which
it was proposed to put into execution, "to give a normal outlet," so
said serious people, "to districts lost behind a labyrinth of narrow
streets, on the slopes of the hills which hem in Paris." This official
phrase did not, of course, admit the interest the Empire had in the
turning over of money, in those vast alterations about the city which
left the working classes no time to think. One day at the prefect's,
Saccard had ventured to consult that famous plan of Paris on which "an
august hand" had marked, in red ink, the principal thoroughfares of the
second network of streets. These gory-looking strokes from a pen cut
deeper into Paris even than did the civil servant's hand.

The Boulevard Malesherbes, which razed to the ground some superb
mansions in the Rue d'Anjou and the Rue de la Ville-l'Évêque, and which
necessitated some very considerable levelling works, was to be laid out
one of the first. When Saccard went to inspect the building in the Rue
de la Pépinière, his thoughts reverted to that autumn evening, to that
dinner he had eaten with Angèle up on the Buttes Montmartre, and during
which, while the sun was setting, so thick a shower of gold had seemed
to fall about the neighbourhood of the Madeleine. He smiled; he fancied
that the dazzling cloud had burst right over his own courtyard, and
that all he had to do was to go and gather up the twenty-franc pieces.

Whilst Renée, luxuriously installed in the apartments in the Rue de
Rivoli, in the very midst of that new Paris of which she was about to
become one of the queens, was meditating on her future toilettes, and
trying her hand at leading the life of a great lady of fashion, her
husband was devoutly nursing his first great scheme. He first of all
purchased of his wife the house in the Rue de la Pépinière, thanks
to the intermediary of a certain Larsonneau, whom he had come across
prying like himself into the secrets of the Hôtel de Ville, but who had
been foolish enough to get caught one day that he was examining the
contents of the prefect's drawers. Larsonneau had set up in business
as an agent at the end of a dark and dank courtyard, at the foot of
the Rue Saint-Jacques. His pride and his covetousness suffered cruelly
there. He found himself in the same position as Saccard before his
marriage; he had, he would say, also invented "a machine for coining
five franc pieces;" only he was minus the funds necessary to take
advantage of his invention. It needed only a few words for him to come
to an understanding with his former colleague, and he set to work with
so good a will that he obtained the house for a hundred and fifty
thousand francs. Renée was already, at the end of a few months, in need
of considerable sums of money. The husband did not appear in the matter
except to authorise his wife to sell. When everything was settled she
asked him to invest a hundred thousand francs for her in the funds, and
confidently handed him the money, no doubt as an appeal to his feelings
and to shut his eyes regarding the fifty thousand francs she retained.
He smiled in a knowing manner; it formed part of his calculations that
she should squander her money; these fifty thousand francs which were
about to disappear in jewellery and lace were to bring him in cent per
cent. He carried his honesty so far, for he was so well satisfied with
his first affair, as to really invest Renée's hundred thousand francs
and to hand her the certificates. His wife could not realize upon them;
he was certain of finding them in the nest if ever he happened to want
them.

"My dear, this will do for your dress," said he gallantly.

When he was in possession of the house, he was skilful enough to
sell it twice in a month to fictitious persons, increasing each
time the amount paid. The last purchaser gave no less than three
hundred thousand francs. Meanwhile, Larsonneau, who alone appeared as
representative of the successive landlords, worked upon the tenants.
He pitilessly declined to renew the leases, unless they consented to
a formidable increase of rent. The tenants, who had an inkling of the
approaching dispossession, were in despair; they ended by agreeing to
the increase, especially when Larsonneau added in a conciliatory manner
that this increase should remain a fictitious one during the first
five years. As for the tenants who continued nasty, they were replaced
by persons to whom the apartments were let for nothing and who signed
everything they were asked to; there was thus a double profit: the rent
was raised, and the indemnity reserved to the tenant for his lease was
to go to Saccard. Madame Sidonie was willing to assist her brother
by starting a piano-dealer's in one of the shops. It was then that
Saccard and Larsonneau were carried away by their greed for gain and
rather overreached themselves: they concocted the books of a regular
business, they falsified accounts, so as to establish a sale of pianos
on an enormous footing. During several nights they sat scribbling away
together. Worked in this skilful manner the house increased in value
threefold. Thanks to the last sale, to the raising of the rent, to
the false tenants, and to Madame Sidonie's piano business, it might
be considered worth five hundred thousand francs when the indemnity
commission came to inquire into the matter.

The mechanism of the instrument of dispossession, of that powerful
machine which during fifteen years turned Paris topsy-turvy,
breathing fortune and ruin the while, is of the simplest. Directly
a new thoroughfare is decided upon, the road inspectors draw up the
plan in separate portions and appraise the various buildings to be
removed. They generally, after making inquiries, arrive at the total
amount of the rents and can thus fix upon the approximate value. The
indemnity commission, consisting of members of the municipal council,
always offers something beneath this sum, knowing that the interested
parties will be sure to demand more, and that there will be a mutual
concession. When they are unable to come to terms, the matter is
brought before a jury which decides without appeal between the offer of
the municipality and the claims of the dispossessed landlord or tenant.

Saccard, who had remained at the Hôtel de Ville for the decisive
moment, had at one time the impudence to wish to be appointed to
appraise his own house when the Boulevard Malesherbes was commenced.
But he feared by so doing to paralyse his influence with the members
of the indemnity commission. He caused one of his colleagues to be
chosen, a gentle and smiling young man named Michelin, whose wife,
an adorably beautiful creature, came at times to offer her husband's
excuses to his chiefs when he absented himself through indisposition.
Saccard had noticed that pretty Madame Michelin, who glided so humbly
through the half closed doorways, was all-powerful; Michelin gained
some advancement at each illness, he made his way by taking to his
bed. During one of his absences, when his wife was calling nearly
every morning at the office to say how he was getting on, Saccard came
across him twice on the outer Boulevards, smoking his cigar with the
tender and delighted air which never left him. This filled Saccard with
sympathy for the good young man, for the happy couple so ingenious and
so practical. He had a great admiration for all money-making machines
cleverly worked. When he had got Michelin appointed he called on his
charming wife, insisted on introducing her to Renée, and talked before
her of his brother the deputy, the illustrious orator. Madame Michelin
understood. From that day her husband kept his most select smiles for
his colleague. The latter, who had no intention of taking the worthy
fellow into his confidence, contented himself by being present as if by
chance on the day when the other proceeded to appraise the house in the
Rue de la Pépinière. He assisted him. Michelin, who had the stupidest
and emptiest head it is possible to imagine, followed his wife's
instructions, which were to satisfy Monsieur Saccard in all things.
Moreover, he had not the slightest suspicion of anything; he imagined
that his friend was in a hurry to see him finish his work so as to take
him off to a café. The leases, the receipts for rent, Madame Sidonie's
famous books passed through his colleague's hands beneath his eyes,
without his even having time to check the figures which the other read
out. Larsonneau was there also, treating his accomplice as a perfect
stranger.

"Come, put down five hundred thousand francs," Saccard ended by saying.
"The house is worth more. Hurry up, I think there is going to be a
change in the staff of the Hôtel de Ville, and I want to talk to you
about it so that you may let your wife know."

The business was thus carried through. But he still had other fears. He
was afraid that the sum of five hundred thousand francs would appear
rather excessive to the indemnity commission, for a house which was
notoriously only worth two hundred thousand. The formidable rise in
the value of buildings had not then taken place. An inquiry would have
caused him to run the risk of serious unpleasantness. He recalled his
brother's words: "No noisy scandal or I shall suppress you;" and he
knew that Eugène was the man to put his threat into execution. It was
necessary to blindfold the gentlemen forming the commission and to
ensure their good will. He cast his eyes on two influential men whom
he had made his friends by the way in which he saluted them in the
passages whenever he met them. The thirty-six members of the municipal
council were carefully selected by the Emperor himself from a list
drawn up by the prefect comprising the senators, deputies, lawyers,
doctors, and great manufacturers who prostrated themselves the most
devotedly before the power that was; but amongst them all Baron Gouraud
and Monsieur Toutin-Laroche especially deserved the good will of the
Tuileries by their fervour.

All Baron Gouraud's history is contained in this short biography: made
a baron by Napoleon I. for supplying bad biscuits to the grand army,
he had successively been a peer under Louis XVIII., Charles X., and
Louis-Philippe, and he was now a senator under Napoleon III. He was
a worshipper of the throne, of the four gilded boards covered with
velvet; it mattered little to him who the man was that sat upon it.
With his enormous stomach, his ox-like countenance, his elephantine
manner, he boasted a delightful rascality; he would sell himself
majestically and commit the greatest infamies in the name of duty and
conscience. But this man surprised one still more by his vices. Stories
were told of him which could only be whispered from ear to ear. His
seventy-eight years flourished amidst the most monstrous debauchery. On
two occasions it had been necessary to hush up some filthy adventures
so that his embroidered senator's coat should not be dragged through
the dock of the assize court.

Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who was tall and thin, and the inventor of
a mixture of suet and stearin for the manufacture of candles, had
a hankering to enter the senate. He stuck to Baron Gouraud like a
leech; he rubbed up against him with the vague idea that his doing
so would bring him luck. In reality he was thoroughly practical,
and had he come across a senator's chair to be sold he would have
fiercely higgled over the price. The Empire was about to bring out this
greedy nonentity, this narrow mind which had a genius for dabbling
in industrial affairs. He was the first to sell his name to a bogus
company, one of those associations which sprouted up like poisonous
toadstools on the dunghill of imperial speculations. At that time one
could have seen on all the walls a poster bearing the following words
in bold black letters:--"Société générale of the ports of Morocco," and
beneath which the name of Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, with his title of
municipal councillor, appeared at the head of the list of directors,
all more or less unknown personages. This proceeding, which has become
far more popular since, succeeded wonderfully; the shares were snapped
up, though the question of the ports of Morocco was not very clear,
and the worthy people who brought their money were themselves unable
to explain to what purpose it was to be put. The poster announced in
a superb manner the project of establishing commercial stations along
the Mediterranean coast. For two years past certain newspapers had
been celebrating this magnificent undertaking, which they declared
to be more and more prosperous every three months. Amongst the
municipal council Monsieur Toutin-Laroche had the reputation of being
a first-class administrator; he was one of the strong minds of the
neighbourhood, and his acrimonious tyranny over his colleagues was only
equalled by his devout platitude in the presence of the prefect. He
was already engaged in founding a great financial company, the Crédit
Viticole, a sort of loan office for vine growers, and to which he would
allude in a grave and reticent manner which aroused the covetousness of
the fools around him.

Saccard secured the protection of these two personages by rendering
them certain services, of the importance of which he cleverly pretended
to be ignorant. He brought his sister and the baron together, the
latter being then compromised in a very objectionable affair. He took
her to him, under the pretence of soliciting his support in the favour
of the dear woman who had been petitioning for a long time to obtain an
order for the supply of curtains to the Tuileries. But it so happened
that, when the road inspector left them together, it was Madame Sidonie
who promised the baron to enter into negotiations with certain people
who were stupid enough not to have felt honoured by the attention that
a senator had deigned to bestow on their daughter, a little girl ten
years old. Saccard took Monsieur Toutin-Laroche in hand himself; he
manœuvred so as to obtain an interview with him in a corridor, and then
brought the conversation round to the famous Crédit Viticole. At the
end of five minutes, the great administrator, dazed and astounded by
the amazing things told him, took the civil service clerk familiarly by
the arm and detained him a full hour in the passage. Saccard whispered
in his ear some financial deals which were prodigiously ingenious. When
Monsieur Toutin-Laroche took his departure, he shook his hand in an
expressive manner, and gave him the glance of a freemason.

"You shall belong to it," murmured he, "you must really belong to it."

Saccard surpassed himself throughout this affair. He carried
his prudence so far as not to make Baron Gouraud and Monsieur
Toutin-Laroche accomplices. He visited them separately, letting drop
a word or two in their ear in favour of one of his friends who was
about to be dispossessed of his house in the Rue de la Pépinière; he
was careful to tell each of his confederates that he would mention
the matter to no other member of the commission, that it was all very
uncertain, but that he counted on his friendliness.

The road inspector had done right to fear and to take his precautions.
When the documents relating to his house came before the indemnity
commission, it so happened that one of the members lived in the Rue
d'Astorg, and knew the house. This member protested against the sum
of five hundred thousand francs, which, according to him, should have
been reduced to less than half. Aristide had had the impudence to
have a claim sent in for seven hundred thousand francs. On that day
Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who was usually very disagreeable towards his
colleagues, was even of a more detestable temper still. He became quite
angry, and took the part of the landlords.

"We're all of us landlords, gentlemen," cried he. "The Emperor wishes
to do grand things, don't let us stick at trifles. This house is no
doubt worth the five hundred thousand francs; it's one of our own
people, a city inspector, who fixed this price. Really, one would
almost fancy we were living amongst thieves; you'll see, we shall end
by suspecting one another."

Baron Gouraud, sitting heavily on his chair, watched in a surprised
manner, from out of the corner of his eye, Monsieur Toutin-Laroche
storming away in favour of the owner of the house in the Rue de la
Pépinière. He had a suspicion. But, after all, as this violent outburst
saved him the trouble of speaking, he set to slowly nodding his head
as a sign of his complete approval. The member hailing from the Rue
d'Astorg indignantly resisted, determined not to yield to the two
tyrants of the commission in a matter in which he felt himself to be
more competent than they. It was then that Monsieur Toutin-Laroche,
noticing the baron's marks of approval, hastily pounced upon the
documents relating to the case, and said curtly:

"Very well. We'll dispel your doubts. If you will allow it, I'll take
the matter in hand, and Baron Gouraud shall join me in the inquiry."

"Yes, yes," said the baron gravely, "there must be no underhand
dealings to sully our decisions."

The documents had already disappeared inside Monsieur Toutin-Laroche's
capacious pockets. The commission had no choice but to accept the
arrangement. As they stood outside upon the quay on leaving the
meeting, the two cronies looked at each other without smiling. They
felt themselves to be confederates, and this added to their assurance.
Two vulgar minds would have sought an explanation; they continued
to plead the case of the landlords, as though they could still be
overheard, and to deplore the spirit of mistrust which was insinuating
itself everywhere. Just as they were about to separate, the baron
observed, with a smile:

"Ah! I was forgetting, my dear colleague, I am just about to leave for
the country. You would be very kind to make this little inquiry without
me. And, above all, don't peach; our colleagues are already complaining
that I take too many holidays."

"Be easy," replied Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, "I will go at once to the
Rue de la Pépinière."

He went quietly home, with a certain feeling of admiration for the
baron, who so cleverly got out of the most ticklish positions. He kept
the documents in his pocket, and at the next sitting of the commission
he declared, in a peremptory tone of voice, both in his own name and in
the baron's, that between the offer of five hundred thousand francs and
the claim of seven hundred thousand, they should take a medium course,
and award six hundred thousand francs. There was not the slightest
opposition. The member hailing from the Rue d'Astorg, having no doubt
reflected, said, with great simplicity, that he had been mistaken: he
had thought it was the next house.

It was thus that Aristide Saccard won his first victory. He quadrupled
his outlay, and secured two accomplices. One thing alone made him
uneasy; when he wished to destroy Madame Sidonie's famous books, he
was unable to find them. He hastened to Larsonneau, who boldly avowed
that he had them, and that he meant to stick to them. The other did
not lose his temper; he inferred that he had only been anxious on his
dear friend's account, who was far more compromised than he by these
entries, which were almost entirely in his handwriting, but that he
was quite easy now that he knew they were safe. In reality, he would
willingly have strangled "his dear friend;" he remembered a very
compromising document, a bogus inventory, which he had been foolish
enough to draw up, and which must have been left in one of the ledgers.
Handsomely remunerated, Larsonneau started a business agency in the
Rue de Rivoli, where he had offices furnished as luxuriously as any
courtesan's apartments. On leaving the Hôtel de Ville, Saccard, having
a considerable amount of funds at his disposal, launched madly into
speculation, whilst Renée, carried away by her intoxication, filled
Paris with the clatter of her equipages, the sparkle of her diamonds,
and the whirl of her noisy and adorable existence.

Now and again, the husband and wife, those two enthusiasts of money and
pleasure, penetrated into the chilly mists of the Île Saint-Louis. They
felt as though they were entering a dead city.

The Béraud mansion, built in the early part of the seventeenth century,
was one of those square buildings, gloomy and severe-looking, with
tall narrow windows, so numerous in the Marais district, and which are
let to schoolmasters, manufacturers of seltzer water, and bonders of
wines and spirits. The building, however, was in an admirable state
of preservation. On the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île side it consisted of
only three storeys, storeys fifteen and twenty feet high. The ground
floor, not near so lofty, had its windows protected by enormous iron
bars, windows which sunk dismally into the dreary thickness of the
walls, whilst the arched door, almost as broad as high, and bearing
a cast-iron knocker, was painted a deep green and strengthened with
enormous nails, forming stars and lozenges on either panel. This
door was typical, with blocks of granite on each flank, half buried
in the soil and protected by broad bands of iron. One could see that
formerly a gutter had run under the centre of this door, the pavement
of the porch sloping gently down on either side: but Monsieur Béraud
had decided to close up this gutter by having the entrance laid with
bitumen; this was, moreover, the only sacrifice he was ever willing
to make to modern architecture. The windows of the upper floors were
ornamented with slender handrails of wrought iron, which allowed a
full view of the colossal sashes of substantial brown wood frames
and little greenish panes of glass. Right at the top, opposite the
attics, the roof came to an end, and the gutter alone continued
on its way to discharge the rain water into the pipes placed for
the purpose. And what tended to increase still further the austere
bareness of the frontage was the total absence of any blind or shutter,
for at no season of the year did the sun ever shine on these pale
and melancholy stones. This frontage, with its venerable air, its
middle-class severity, slumbered solemnly amid the peacefulness of
the neighbourhood, the silence of the street, seldom disturbed by the
passage of vehicles.

In the interior of the mansion was a square courtyard surrounded by
arcades, a kind of Place Royale on a reduced scale, paved with enormous
flags, which finished giving to this lifeless abode the appearance
of a cloister. Facing the porch a fountain, a lion's head half worn
away, the gaping jaws of which were alone distinguishable, discharged
from an iron tube a thick and monotonous water into a trough all green
with moss, its edges polished by wear. This water was icy cold. Tufts
of grass sprouted up between the flagstones. In summer-time a narrow
ray of sunshine entered the courtyard, and this occasional visit had
whitened a corner of the frontage on the south side, whilst the three
other walls, morose and blackish, were streaked with mildew. There, in
the depths of this courtyard as chilly and silent as a well, lighted
with the white glimmer of a wintry day, one could have thought oneself
a thousand leagues away from that new Paris wherein was flaring
every passionate enjoyment, amidst the hubbub of the millions. The
apartments of the mansion possessed the sad calm, the cold solemnity
of the courtyard. Reached by a broad staircase with an iron handrail,
where the footsteps and the coughing of visitors resounded as in the
aisle of a church, they extended in long suites of vast and lofty
rooms, in which the ancient furniture of dark woodwork and squat
design seemed lost; and the pale light was only peopled by the figures
on the tapestries, whose great colourless bodies were just vaguely
distinguishable. All the luxury pertaining to the old Parisian middle
classes was there, a stiff and wear-resisting luxury, chairs the oak
seats of which are scarcely covered with a handful of tow, beds of
inflexible material, linen chests in which the roughness of the boards
would peculiarly compromise the slender existence of modern dresses.
Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel had selected his apartments in the darkest
portion of the mansion, on the first floor, between the street and the
courtyard. He was there in a marvellous surrounding of peacefulness,
silence and shade. When he pushed open the doors, traversing the
solemnity of the rooms with his slow and serious step, one could
have fancied him one of those members of the old parliaments, whose
portraits adorned the walls, returning home wrapt in reverie after
discussing and refusing to sign an edict of the king's.

But in this still house, in this cloister, there existed a warm nest
full of life, a corner of sunshine and gaiety, an abode of adorable
childhood, fresh air, and bright light. One had to ascend a host of
little staircases, pass along ten or twelve corridors, go down and
come up again; in fact, make quite a journey, and then one at last
reached a vast chamber, a kind of belvedere built up on the roof, at
the back of the mansion, right above the Quai de Béthune. It was in
a full southern aspect. The window opened so wide that the heavens,
with all their rays, fresh air, and azure blue, seemed to enter there.
Perched aloft like a pigeon-house, the apartment contained long boxes
full of flowers, an immense aviary, but not a single article of
furniture. There was simply some matting spread over the floor. It
was the "children's room." Throughout the mansion it was known and
called by this name. The house was so cold, the courtyard so damp,
that aunt Élisabeth had dreaded some harm might come to Christine and
Renée from this chill breath which hung about the walls; more than
once had she scolded the children for running about the arcades, and
taking a delight in dipping their little arms in the icy water of the
fountain. Then she had the idea to turn this out-of-the-way garret to
account for them, the only nook wherein the sunshine had been entering
and rejoicing, all by itself, for two centuries past, in the midst
of the cobwebs. She gave them some matting, some birds, and some
flowers. The little girls were delighted. During the holidays Renée
lived there, bathing in the yellow sunshine, which seemed pleased with
the embellishments made to its retreat, and with the two fair heads
sent to keep it company. The room became a paradise, ever resounding
with the chirping of the birds and the chatter of the children. It
had been given up to them entirely. They called it "our room;" it was
their domain; they even went so far as to lock themselves in to prove
to their satisfaction that they were the sole mistresses of it. What
an abode of happiness! A massacre of playthings lay expiring on the
matting in the midst of the bright sunshine.

And the great delight of the children's room was, after all, the vast
horizon. From the other windows of the mansion there was nothing to
gaze upon but black walls a few feet off. But from this one, one could
see all that portion of the Seine, all that district of Paris which
extends from the Cité to the Pont de Bercy, flat and immense, and which
resembles some primitive city in Holland. Down below, on the Quai de
Béthune, were some tumble-down wooden sheds, accumulations of beams
and fallen roofs, amidst which the children often amused themselves
by watching enormous rats scamper about, with a vague dread of seeing
them crawl up the high walls. But it was beyond this that the real
delight of the view began. The boom, with its tiers of timbers, its
buttresses resembling those of some Gothic cathedral, and the slender
Pont de Constantine swaying like a piece of lace beneath the footsteps
of passengers, crossed each other at right angles, and seemed to dam
up and keep in check the enormous mass of water. Right in front, the
trees of the Halle aux Vins, and further away, the shrubberies of the
Jardin des Plantes were a mass of green, and spread out as far as the
horizon; whilst, on the other side of the river, the Quai Henri IV. and
the Quai de la Rapée extended their low and irregular buildings, their
row of houses which, looked at from above, resembled the tiny wood and
cardboard houses the little girls kept in boxes. In the background,
to the right, the slate roof of the Salpêtrière rose with a bluish
tinge above the trees. Then, in the centre, descending right down to
the Seine, the broad paved banks formed two long grey tracks, streaked
here and there by a row of casks, a horse and cart, or an empty coal
or wood barge lying stranded high and dry. But the soul of all this,
the soul which filled the landscape, was the Seine, the living river;
it came from afar, from the vague and trembling border of the horizon,
it emerged from over there, as from a dream, to flow straight to the
children, in the midst of its tranquil majesty, its mighty expansion
which spread and became a flood of water at their feet, at the
extremity of the island. The two bridges which crossed it, the Pont de
Bercy and the Pont d'Austerlitz, seemed like necessary bonds placed
there to keep it in check, and prevent it rising to the room. The
little ones loved the giant, they filled their eyes with its colossal
flow, with that ever murmuring flood which rolled towards them, as
though to reach to where they were, and which they could feel rive and
disappear to the right and left into the unknown, with the docility of
a conquered Titan. On fine days, mornings with a blue sky overhead,
they were charmed with the beautiful dresses the Seine assumed; varying
dresses which changed from blue to green, with a thousand infinitely
delicate tints; one could have fancied them of silk, spotted with white
flames, and trimmed with frills of satin; whilst the boats drawn up at
either bank formed an edging of black velvet ribbon. In the distance,
especially, the material became quite admirable and precious, like some
fairy's tunic of enchanted gauze; beyond the strip of dark green satin,
with which the shadow of the bridges girdled the Seine, were plastrons
of gold and skirts of some plaited material the colour of the sun. The
immense sky formed a vaulted roof above this water, these low rows of
houses, this foliage of the two parks.

Weary at times of this boundless horizon, Renée, already a big girl,
and full of a carnal curiosity picked up at school, would take a peep
at Petit's floating swimming-baths moored to the extremity of the
island. She sought to catch a glimpse, between the waving linen clothes
hung up on lines in place of a roof, of the men in their bathing
drawers, and with their chests all bare.




CHAPTER III.


Maxime remained at the college of Plassans until the holidays of 1854.
He was thirteen years and a few months old and had just passed through
the fifth class. It was then that his father decided that he should
come to Paris, reflecting that a son of Maxime's age would consolidate
his position and establish him for good in the part he played as a
rich and serious re-married widower. When he mentioned his plan to
Renée, towards whom he prided himself upon being extremely gallant, she
negligently answered:

"Quite so, let the little fellow come. He will amuse us a bit. One is
bored to death of a morning."

The little fellow arrived a week afterwards. He was already a tall,
spare urchin with an effeminate face, a delicate, wide-awake look, and
pale flaxen hair. But how he was rigged out; good heavens! Cropped
to the ears, with his hair so short that the whiteness of his skull
was barely covered with a slight shadow, he moreover wore a pair of
trousers too short for his legs, carter's shoes, and a frightfully
threadbare tunic which was much too full and made him almost look
hunchbacked. Thus accoutred, surprised by the new things he saw, he
looked around him, not at all timidly but with the savage, cunning air
of a precocious child who hesitates about trusting himself to anyone at
once.

A servant had just brought him from the railway station, and he was in
the large drawing-room, delighted with the gilding of the furniture
and the ceiling, completely happy at sight of this luxury amid which
he was going to live, when Renée, returning from her tailor's, swept
in like a gust of wind. She threw off her hat and the white burnous
which she had placed upon her shoulders to shield her from the cold,
which was already keen; and she appeared before Maxime--stupefied with
admiration--in all the glow of her marvellous costume.

The child thought she was disguised. Over a delicious skirt of blue
faille with deep flounces, she wore a kind of _garde française_ habit
in pale grey silk. The lappets of the habit, lined with blue satin of
a deeper shade than the faille of the skirt, were coquettishly caught
up and secured with bows of ribbon; the cuffs of the tight sleeves,
the broad facings of the bodice expanded on either side trimmed with
the same satin. And, as a supreme seasoning, as a bold stroke of
eccentricity, large buttons imitating sapphires, and fastened on blue
rosettes, adorned the front of the habit in a double row. It was at
once ugly and adorable.

[Illustration: RENÉE AND MAXIME MEETING FOR THE FIRST TIME.]

As soon as Renée perceived Maxime, "It's the little fellow, isn't it?"
she asked of the servant; she was surprised to find him as tall as
herself.

The child was eating her with his eyes. This lady, with so white
a skin, whose bosom could be seen through a gap of her plaited
chemisette, this sudden and charming apparition with her hair raised
high on her head, her gloved slender hands and her little masculine
boots with pointed heels, delighted him; she seemed to be the good
fairy of this warm gilded room. He began to smile, and he was just
awkward enough in manner to retain his urchin-like gracefulness.

"Why, he is funny!" exclaimed Renée. "But how horrible! How they have
cut his hair! Listen, my little fellow, your father will probably only
come home for dinner and I shall be obliged to settle you here. I'm
your stepmamma, sir. Will you kiss me?"

"Willingly," answered Maxime without any fuss; and he kissed the young
wife on both cheeks, taking hold of her by the shoulders, whereby the
_garde française_ habit was a trifle crumpled.

She freed herself, laughing, and saying: "Dear me! how funny he is, the
little shearling!" Then again approaching him and more serious: "We
shall be friends sha'n't we? I want to be a mother to you. I reflected
about it while I was waiting for my tailor, who was engaged, and I said
to myself that I ought to be very kind and bring you up quite properly.
I will be very nice!"

Maxime continued looking at her, with his blue, minx-like eyes, and
suddenly: "How old are you?" he asked.

"But that is a question one never asks!" she exclaimed, clasping her
hands together. "He doesn't know it, poor little fellow! It will be
necessary to teach him everything. Fortunately I can still confess my
age. I am twenty-one."

"I shall soon be fourteen. You might be my sister--"

He did not finish his sentence, but his eyes added that he had expected
to find his father's second wife much older. He was very near her and
looked at her neck so attentively that she almost finished by blushing.
Besides, her giddy head was turning, it could never dwell for long on
the same subject; and she began to walk about and talk of her tailor,
forgetting that she was addressing a child.

"I ought to have been here to receive you. But, just fancy, Worms
brought me this costume this morning. I tried it on and found it rather
successful. It is very stylish, isn't it?"

She had placed herself before a mirror. Maxime was coming and going
behind her to examine her on all sides.

"However as I put on the coat," she added, "I noticed there was a large
fold there on the left shoulder, do you see? That fold is very ugly, it
makes me look as if I had one shoulder higher than the other."

He had approached and passed his finger over the fold as if to smooth
it down, and his vicious schoolboy hand seemed to tarry on the spot
with a certain amount of satisfaction.

"Well," she continued, "I couldn't wait. I had the horses harnessed and
I went to tell Worms what I thought of his inconceivable carelessness.
He promised me he would set it right."

Then she remained in front of the mirror still looking at herself, lost
as it were in a sudden reverie. She ended by placing a finger on her
lips with an air of thoughtful impatience. And in a low voice as if
talking to herself she said: "There is something wanting--yes, really,
there is something wanting--"

Then, with quick motion, she turned and stationed herself in front of
Maxime and asked him:

"Is it really the thing? Don't you think there is something wanting, a
trifle, a bow somewhere?" The schoolboy, reassured by the young woman's
familiarity, had regained all the assurance of his forward nature. He
drew back, drew near, blinked his eyes and muttered:

"No, no, nothing's wanting, it's very pretty, very pretty--I rather
think that there is something too much."

He slightly blushed despite his audacity, drew still nearer, and
tracing with his finger-tip an acute angle on Renée's breast: "In your
place," he continued, "I should round that lace like that and put on a
necklace with a large cross."

She clapped her hands and looked radiant. "That's it, that's it," she
cried, "I had the large cross on the tip of my tongue."

She folded back her chemisette, disappeared for a couple of minutes,
and then returned with the necklace and the cross, and placing herself
again in front of the mirror with an air of triumph:

"Oh! that's the ticket, quite the ticket," she muttered. "The little
shearling isn't at all a fool. Did you dress women in the country then?
I see that we shall really be good friends. But you must listen to me.
To begin with, you must let your hair grow and you mustn't wear that
frightful tunic any more. Besides, you must pay proper attention to my
lessons in good manners. I want you to be a nice young man."

"Why, of course," said the child naively, "as papa is rich at present
and as you are his wife."

She smiled and with her usual vivacity:

"Then let us begin by thee-and-thouing one another. I say thou and you
in the same breath. It's stupid. You will love me a great deal?"

"I will love thee with all my heart," he answered with the effusive
manner of an urchin towards his sweetheart.

Such was Maxime and Renée's first interview. The lad did not go to
school till a month later. During the earlier days his stepmother
played with him as with a doll. She polished off his countryfied air,
and it must be added that he seconded her with extreme willingness.
When he appeared, dressed from head to foot in new clothes supplied
by his father's tailor, she gave a cry of joyous surprise. He was
as pretty as a heart, such was her expression. The only thing was
that his hair grew with most annoying sluggishness. The young woman
frequently said that all one's face was in one's hair. She tended her
own devoutly. For a long while she had been greatly worried by its
colour, that particular pale yellow tint, which reminded one of the
best butter. But when the fashion of wearing yellow hair set in she
was delighted, and to make people believe that she did not follow the
fashion by compulsion she declared that she dyed her hair every month.

Maxime was already terribly knowing for his thirteen years. His was one
of those frail precocious natures in which the senses assert themselves
early. He practised vice even before he knew desire. On two occasions
he had all but been expelled from the college. Had Renée's eyes been
accustomed to provincial graces she would have noticed that, despite
his ill-fitting clothes, the little shearling, as she called him,
smiled, turned his neck and extended his arms in a pretty way, with
the feminine air of those who serve as schoolboys' girls. He was very
careful about his hands, which were slight and long; and although his
hair remained cropped short by order of the principal, an ex-colonel
of engineers, he possessed a little looking-glass which he pulled out
of his pocket during lesson time, which he placed between the pages
of his book, and into which he gazed for whole hours, examining his
eyes, his gums, making pretty faces at himself, and learning various
kinds of coquetry. His schoolfellows hung round his blouse as round a
skirt, and he buckled his belt so tightly that he had a grown woman's
slim waist and undulation of the hips. To tell the truth, he received
as many blows as caresses. The college of Plassans, a den of little
bandits, like most provincial colleges, thus proved to be a hotbed
of contamination in which Maxime's neutral temperament and childhood
fraught with evil owing to some mysterious hereditary cause, were
singularly developed. Fortunately age was about to alter him. But the
trace of his childish abandonments, the effemination of his whole
being, the time when he had thought himself a girl, were destined to
remain in him and strike him for ever in his virility.

Renée called him "Mademoiselle," without knowing that six months
earlier she would have spoken the truth. To her he seemed very
obedient, very loving, and indeed his caresses often made her
ill-at-ease. He had a manner of kissing that heated her skin. But what
delighted her was his artfulness; he was exceedingly funny and bold,
already speaking of women with a smile and holding his own against
Renée's friends, dear Adeline who had just married M. d'Espanet, and
fat Suzanne, married quite recently to the great manufacturer Haffner.
When he was fourteen he had a passion for the latter. He had taken his
stepmother into his confidence and she was greatly amused.

"For myself I should have preferred Adeline," she said, "she's
prettier."

"Perhaps so," replied the urchin, "but Suzanne is ever so much fatter.
I like fine women. It would be very kind of you to speak to her for me."

Renée laughed. Her doll--this tall urchin with a girl's manners--seemed
to her more amusing than ever since he was in love. The time came
when Madame Haffner seriously had to defend herself. Moreover the
ladies encouraged Maxime with their stifled laughter, their unfinished
sentences, and the coquettish attitudes which they assumed in his
presence. There was a touch of very aristocratic debauchery in all
this. The three of them, scorched by passion amid their tumultuous
life, lingered over the urchin's delightful depravity as over a novel
harmless spice which tickled their palates. They let him touch their
dresses, and pass his fingers over their shoulders when he followed
them into the ante-room to help them on with their wrappers; they
passed him along from hand to hand, laughing like lunatics when he
kissed their wrists near the veins, on the spot where the skin is so
soft; then they became maternal and learnedly taught him the art of
being a fine gentleman and pleasing women. He was their toy, a little
fellow of ingenious mechanism who kissed and courted, who had the most
delightful vices in the world, but who remained a plaything, a little
cardboard puppet whom they did not much fear, though just enough to
quiver very agreeably at the touch of his childish hand.

After the holidays, Maxime went to the Lycée Bonaparte. It was the
college of fashionable society, the one that Saccard was bound to
choose for his son. However soft and light headed the little fellow
might be, he still had a keen intelligence; but he applied it to
something very different to classical studies. However he was a
tolerably efficient pupil who never fell to the Bohemian level of
dunces, but remained among the well dressed and properly conducted
young gentlemen of whom nothing was ever said. All that remained to
him of his early youth was a perfect worship for dress. Paris opened
his eyes, made him a swell young man, tightly buttoned up in his
clothes and following the fashions. He was the Brummel of his class.
He presented himself there as he would have presented himself in a
drawing-room, daintily booted, tightly gloved, with prodigious neckties
and ineffable hats. There were some twenty pupils of the kind who
formed a sort of aristocracy, who in leaving school for the day offered
each other Havannah cigars contained in cases with gold mountings,
and who were followed by servants in livery carrying their packets
of books. Maxime had persuaded his father to buy him a tilbury and a
little black horse which were the admiration of his school fellows.
He himself drove, while on the seat behind sat a footman with folded
arms, who carried on his knees the collegian's copy book case, a
perfect ministerial portfolio in brown leather. And you should have
seen how lightly, scientifically and correctly Maxime came in ten
minutes from the Rue de Rivoli to the Rue du Havre, drew his horse up
sharp before the college door and said to the footman, "At half past
four, Jacques, eh?" The neighbouring shopkeepers were delighted with
the grace of this fair haired youngster whom twice a day at regular
hours they saw arrive and start off in his trap. On returning home he
sometimes gave a lift to a friend, whom he set down at his door. The
two children smoked, looked at the women and splashed the passers-by
as if they were returning from the races. 'Twas an astonishing little
world, a conceited foolish brood, that could be seen each day in the
Rue du Havre, correctly attired in masher's jackets, aping rich and
wearied men, whilst the Bohemian contingent of the college, the real
schoolboys, arrived shouting and shoving, stamping on the pavement with
their heavy shoes, and with their hooks hanging at the end of a strap
over their backs.

Renée, who wished to consider the part she played as a mother and a
schoolmistress a serious one, was delighted with her pupil. It is true
that she neglected nothing to perfect his education. She was then
passing through a period full of mortification and tears; a lover had
abandoned her, in scandalous style in sight of all Paris, to attach
himself to the Duchess de Sternich. She dreamt that Maxime would be her
consolation, she made herself older, she endeavoured to be maternal,
and became the most eccentric mentor that can be imagined. Maxime's
tilbury often remained at home; it was Renée who came to fetch the
collegian with her roomy carriage. They hid the brown portfolio under
the cushion, and went to the Bois de Boulogne then in its freshness.
She there gave him a course of lectures on high elegance. She pointed
out to him the upper ten of imperial Paris, fat and happy, still
ecstasied by the warm touch which changed the starvelings and pigs of
the day before into great lords and millionaires puffing and fainting
under the weight of their cash boxes. But the youngster particularly
questioned her about women, and as she was very familiar with him,
she gave him precise particulars: Madame de Guende was stupid but
admirably formed; the wealthy Countess Vanska had been a street
singer before she married a Pole who was said to beat her; as for the
Marchioness d'Espanet and Suzanne Haffner they were inseparable; and
although they were Renée's intimate friends, she added--compressing
her lips as if to prevent herself from saying any more--that some very
nasty stories were told about them; beautiful Madame de Lauwerens
was also a very compromising woman, but she had such pretty eyes, and
after all everyone knew that she herself was irreproachable, although
somewhat too much mixed up in the intrigues of the poor little women
who frequented her, Madame Daste, Madame Teissière and the Baroness de
Meinhold. Maxime wished to have the ladies' portraits; and with them he
adorned an album which remained on the drawing-room table. With that
vicious artfulness which was his predominant characteristic he tried
to embarrass his stepmother by asking her for particulars concerning
the fast women, at the same time pretending to take them for women
of society. Renée, becoming moral and serious, said that they were
frightful creatures and that he ought to carefully avoid them; then
forgetting herself she talked about them as if they were people whom
she had known intimately. One of the youngster's great delights was
to set her talking about the Duchess de Sternich. Each time that her
carriage passed theirs in the Bois, he never missed naming the duchess
with cruel artfulness and an under glance which proved that he was
acquainted with Renée's last adventure. Then she in a harsh voice tore
her rival to pieces; how old she was looking, poor woman, she painted
her face, she had lovers hidden in all her cupboards, she had given
herself to a chamberlain so as to be in the imperial bed. And Renée ran
on and on, while Maxime, to exasperate her, declared that he thought
Madame de Sternich charming. Such lessons singularly developed the
collegian's intelligence, and this, all the more, as his young teacher
repeated them every where, in the Bois, at the theatre, and in the
drawing-rooms. The pupil thus became very proficient.

Maxime adored living amid women's skirts, finery and rice powder. He
always remained somewhat girlish with his tapering hands, his beardless
face, and his white, fleshy neck. Renée gravely consulted him about her
dresses. He knew the good costumiers of Paris and pronounced judgment
upon each of them in a word, he talked about the "savour" of such a
one's bonnets and the "logic" of such a one's dresses. At seventeen
there was not a milliner whom he had not proved, not a bootmaker whose
heart he had not penetrated and studied. This strange abortion who
during the English lessons at college, read the prospectuses that
his perfumer sent him every Friday, would have delivered a complete
discourse on Parisian society, customers and tradespeople included,
at an age when country youngsters don't dare look a housemaid in the
face. On his way home he often brought a bonnet, a box of soap or an
article of jewellery that his stepmother had ordered the day before.
Some strip of musk-scented lace always lingered in his pockets.

However his great affair was to accompany Renée when she called on the
illustrious Worms, the tailor of genius, before whom the queens of the
Second Empire fell on their knees. The great man's waiting room was
vast, square and furnished with roomy divans. Maxime entered it with a
feeling of religious emotion. Dresses certainly have a special perfume;
silk, satin, velvet, lace had there mingled their light aroma with that
of women's hair and amber-shaded shoulders; and the atmosphere of the
room retained an oderiferous warmth, an incense of flesh and luxury
which transformed the apartment into a chapel consecrated to some
secret divinity. It was often necessary for Renée and Maxime to dance
attendance during hours; a series of feminine solicitors were there,
waiting their turn, dipping biscuits into glasses of Madeira, taking a
snack on the large central table covered with bottles and plates full
of little cakes. The ladies were at home, they talked freely, and when
they ensconced themselves around the room you would have thought that
a flight of Lesbian nymphs had alighted on the divans of a Parisian
drawing-room. Maxime, whom they put up with and even liked on account
of his girlish air, was the only man admitted into the circle. He
there tasted divine delight: he glided along the divans like a supple
snake; he was discovered under a skirt, behind a bodice, or between
two dresses, where he made himself as small as possible and kept very
quiet, inhaling the perfumed warmth of his feminine neighbours.

"That youngster pokes himself everywhere," said the Baroness de
Meinhold tapping him on the cheeks.

He was so slightly built that the ladies did not think him more
than fourteen. They amused themselves by intoxicating him with the
illustrious Worms's Madeira, whereupon he said some astounding things
which made them laugh till they cried. However it was the Marchioness
d'Espanet who hit upon the right remark for the circumstance. As Maxime
was discovered one day, in a corner of the divan, behind her back--

"That boy ought to have been a girl," she murmured, seeing him so rosy
and blushing, so penetrated with the delight he had experienced at
being close to her.

Then when the great Worms finally received Renée, Maxime followed her
into the study. He had ventured to speak two or three times whilst
the master became absorbed in contemplating his customer, just like
Leonardo da Vinci in presence of the Joconde, according to the pontiffs
of art. The master had deigned to smile at the appropriateness of
Maxime's remarks; he made Renée stand upright before a mirror, rising
from the parquetry to the ceiling, and he pondered with a contraction
of the eyebrows, whilst the young woman, affected, caught her breath so
as not to stir. And after a few minutes the master, as if seized and
shaken by inspiration, roughly and jerkily described the work of art he
had just conceived, exclaiming in curt phrases:

"Montespan dress in ash tinted silk--the train describing a rounded
skirt in front--large bow of grey satin catching it up on the
hips--finally an apron composed of puffs of pearl grey tulle, the puffs
separated by bands of grey satin."

He again reflected, seemed to dive to the very depths of his genius,
and with the triumphant grimace of a python seated upon the tripod he
concluded:

"In the hair, upon this smiling head, we will place the dreamy
butterfly of Psyche with wings of changeful blue."

But on other occasions, inspiration was sluggish. The illustrious Worms
summoned it in vain and concentrated his faculties to no purpose. He
tortured his eyebrows, turned livid, took his poor head, which he
wagged in despair, between his hands, and conquered, throwing himself
into an arm-chair:

"No," he would mutter in a sorrowful voice, "no, not to-day--it isn't
possible--These ladies presume too much. The source is dried up."

And he would turn Renée out of doors, repeating:

"Impossible, impossible, dear madame, you must call again another day.
I'm not in the vein to deal with your style this morning."

The fine education that Maxime received had a first result. At
seventeen the youngster seduced his stepmother's maid. The worst of
the affair was that the girl found herself in the family way. It was
necessary to send her into the country with the kid and make her a
small allowance. Renée was terribly vexed by this adventure. Saccard
occupied himself about it merely to settle the pecuniary side of the
question; but the young woman roundly scolded her pupil. To think he
should compromise himself with such a girl when she wanted to make
a gentleman of him! What a ridiculous, shameful beginning, what a
disgraceful prank! If he had at least only launched forth with one of
those ladies!

"Oh! quite so," he answered quietly, "if your dear friend Suzanne had
only chosen she could have gone into the country instead of the maid."

"Oh! you naughty fellow," muttered Renée, disarmed and enlivened by the
idea of seeing Suzanne retire into the country with an allowance of
twelve hundred francs a year.

Then a funnier thought occurred to her, and forgetting her part as an
irritated mother, bursting into pearly laughter which she restrained
with her fingers, she stammered, glancing at him out of the corner of
her eyes:

"I say, how angry Adeline would have been with you, and what a scene
she would have had with her--"

She did not finish. Maxime was laughing with her. Such was the fine
ending of Renée's lecture on this occasion.

Meanwhile Saccard troubled himself but little concerning the two
children, as he called his son and his second wife. He left them
complete liberty, feeling happy at seeing them such good friends,
whereby the flat was filled with noisy gaiety. It was a singular flat,
this first floor in the Rue de Rivoli. The doors were opening and
shutting all day long, the servants talked aloud; through the fresh
bright luxury of the place there constantly swept a flight of huge
skirts, and processions of tradespeople; and in addition there was
all the disorder occasioned by Renée's friends, Maxime's chums, and
Saccard's visitors. From nine till eleven a.m. the last named received
the strangest throng one could find, senators and lawyers' clerks,
duchesses and old clothes-dealers, all the scum that the tempests of
Paris landed of a morning at his door; silk dresses, dirty skirts,
blouses, dress coats, all of which he received with the same hasty
language and the same impatient nervous gestures. He settled a business
affair in a couple of minutes, dealt with twenty difficulties at once
and furnished solutions on the run. One would have thought that this
restless little man, whose voice was very loud, was fighting in his
study with his visitors, with the furniture, turning somersaults,
knocking his head against the ceiling to make ideas flash forth from
it, and always falling victorious on his feet again. Then at eleven
o'clock he went out and was not seen again for the day; he lunched,
and indeed, he often dined away from home. Then the house belonged to
Renée and Maxime. They took possession of the father's study, they
unpacked the tradespeoples' cardboard boxes there, and articles of
finery lay about among the business papers. At times serious people
waited for an hour at the door of the study whilst the collegian and
the young woman seated at either end of Saccard's writing table,
discussed a bow of ribbon. Renée had the horses put to ten times a day.
They seldom shared a meal together; two of the three were ever on the
wing, forgetting time, and only returning home at midnight. It was a
dwelling of noise, business and pleasure, into which modern life swept
like a gust of wind, with a sound of chinking gold and rustling dresses.

Aristide Saccard had found his vein at last. He had revealed himself
as a great speculator and juggled with millions. After the masterly
stroke of the Rue de la Pépinière he boldly threw himself into the
struggle, which was beginning to scatter flashing triumphs and shameful
wrecks through Paris. At first he executed safe strokes, repeating his
first success, buying up houses which he knew to be threatened with the
pickaxe, and utilising his friends so as to obtain heavy indemnities.
There came a moment when he had five or six houses, those houses that
he had looked at so strangely in former times, as acquaintances of his
when he was merely a poor road inspector. But all that was the mere
infancy of art, it did not require much cunning to run out leases, to
plot with tenants, and to rob the State and private people; and he
considered that the game was not sufficiently remunerative. For that
reason he soon placed his genius at the service of more complicated
affairs.

Saccard at first invented the dodge of buying houses secretly on behalf
of the city of Paris. The latter's situation had become a difficult
one owing to a decision of the Council of State. The city authorities
had purchased, by private contract, a large number of houses in the
hope of running out the leases and getting rid of the tenants without
the payment of an indemnity. But these purchases were considered by
the Council of State to be real expropriations and the city had to
pay. It was then that Saccard offered to lend his name to the city;
he bought houses, ran out the leases, and for a consideration handed
the property over to the authorities at the date agreed upon. Indeed
he finished by playing a double game; he bought property both for the
city and for the prefect. When the affair was too tempting he stuck
to the house himself. The State paid. In reward for his services he
obtained the right to cut bits of streets and open spaces which had
been planned, a right which he sold again to some one else before the
new thoroughfare was even commenced. It was a hot game; people gambled
with the new streets just as with stocks and shares. Certain ladies,
pretty prostitutes, intimate with high functionaries, were in the
swing; one of them, whose white teeth are famous, nibbled whole streets
on various occasions. Saccard grew more hungry than ever, feeling his
desires increase at the sight of the flood of gold which glided between
his fingers. It seemed to him as if a sea of twenty-franc pieces
expanded around him, swelling from a lake to an ocean, filling the vast
horizon with a strange wave-like noise, a metallic music which tickled
his heart; and he grew adventurous, becoming each day a bolder swimmer,
diving, rising again to the surface, now on his back, now on his belly,
crossing this immensity in fair and foul weather alike, and relying on
his strength and skill to prevent him from ever sinking to the bottom.

Paris was then disappearing in a cloud of plaster dust. The times that
Saccard had predicted on the heights of Montmartre had come. The city
was being slashed to pieces with sabre strokes and he had a finger
in every slash, in every wound. He had piles of building materials
derived from demolished houses in the four corners of the city. In the
Rue de Rome he was mixed up in that astonishing story of a pit which
a company dug to carry off five or six thousand cubic metres of soil
and create a belief in a gigantic enterprise, and which had to be
filled up again by bringing soil from Saint-Ouen when the company had
failed. Saccard got out of the affair with his conscience at ease and
his pockets full, thanks to his brother Eugène, who was kind enough
to intervene. At Chaillot he assisted in cutting through the heights
and throwing them into a hollow to make way for the boulevard running
from the Arc-de-Triomphe to the Alma bridge. In the direction of Passy
it was he who had the idea of scattering the refuse cleared away from
the Trocadéro, upon the plateau, so that the good soil is now-a-days
two yards below the surface, and even weeds refuse to grow amid the
broken plaster. He might have been found in twenty directions at once,
at every spot where there was some insurmountable obstacle, a mass of
clearings which no one knew what to do with, a hollow which it was
difficult to fill up, a pile of soil mingled with plaster over which
the engineers in their feverish haste grew impatient, but which he
sifted with his own hands and in which he always finished by finding
some sop or other, or a speculation in his own peculiar line. On the
same day he ran from the works round about the Arc-de-Triomphe to
those of the Boulevard St. Michel, from the clearings of the Boulevard
Malesherbes to the embankments of Chaillot, dragging with him an army
of workmen, lawyers, shareholders, dupes, and scamps.

But his purest glory was the Crédit Viticole, which he had established
in conjunction with Toutin-Laroche. The latter was the official
director, he himself only figured as a member of the board. In this
circumstance Eugène had again done his brother a good turn. Thanks
to him the government authorized the establishment of the company
and watched its operations with great indulgence. On one difficult
occasion, when an evil-minded newspaper ventured to criticise one of
the company's operations, the "Moniteur" went so far as to publish a
note forbidding any discussion concerning so honourable an undertaking,
which the State deigned to patronize. The Crédit Viticole was based
on an excellent financial system; it lent farmers half of the
estimated value of their property, obtained a mortgage as guarantee
for the loan, and received interest from the borrowers as well as
an annual instalment of the principal. No financial system was ever
more dignified or proper. Eugène had informed his brother with a sly
smile that the Tuileries wished people to be honest. M. Toutin-Laroche
interpreted this wish by letting the farmers' loan-machine work
quietly, and by annexing to it a banking-house which attracted capital
and gambled feverishly, launching forth into all sorts of adventurous
enterprises. The Crédit Viticole thanks to the formidable impulsion it
received from its director, soon enjoyed a well-established reputation
of solidity and prosperity. At the outset, in view of offering at
the Bourse, at one go, a mass of shares freshly detached from their
counterfoils, and to give them the aspect of having long been in
circulation, Saccard ingeniously had them trodden on and beaten, during
a whole night, by the bank collectors provided with birch brooms. The
headquarters of the Crédit Viticole might have been taken for a branch
of the Bank of France. The house where the offices were located seemed
to be the grave and dignified temple of Mammon, with its courtyard
full of equipages, its solemn iron railings, its broad flight of
steps and its monumental staircase, its suites of luxurious private
rooms, and its world of clerks and liveried lackeys; and nothing could
fill the public with more religious emotion than the sanctuary, the
cashier's office, reached by a passage of sacred bareness, and where
one perceived the safe, the god, crouching, embedded in the wall, squat
and somniferous with its three locks, its massive flanks, and its air
of divine brutishness.

Saccard jobbed a big affair with the city of Paris. The latter,
hard-up, crushed by its debt, dragged into this dance of millions which
it had started to please the Emperor and fill certain people's pockets,
was now reduced to borrowing covertly, not caring to own its violent
fever, its stone-and-pickaxe madness. It had just begun to issue what
it called delegation bonds, real bills of exchange at a distant date,
so as to pay the contractors on the very days that the agreements were
signed, and thus enable them to obtain money by having these bonds
discounted. The Crédit Viticole had graciously accepted this paper from
the contractors; and one day when the city was in need of money Saccard
went to tempt it. A considerable sum was lent it on the security of
delegation bonds which M. Toutin-Laroche swore he had obtained from
contracting companies, and which he had dragged through all the gutters
of speculation. After that the Crédit Viticole was above attack; it
held Paris by the throat. The director now only talked with a smile
about the famous Société Générale of the Ports of Morocco; and yet it
still existed, and the newspapers continued regularly extolling the
great commercial stations. One day when M. Toutin-Laroche tried to
persuade Saccard to take some shares in this enterprise, the latter
laughed in his face, asking him if he thought him fool enough to invest
his money in the "General Company of the Arabian Nights."

Saccard had so far speculated successfully, with safe profits,
cheating, selling himself, making money by contracts, deriving some
sort of gain from each of his operations. Soon, however, this jobbing
did not suffice him, he disdained gleaning, picking up the gold which
folks like Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud dropped behind them. He
plunged his arms into the bag, up to the shoulders. He went into
partnership with Mignon, Charrier & Co., the famous contractors,
who were then just starting, and who were destined to make colossal
fortunes. The city of Paris had already decided not to execute the
works itself, but to have the boulevards laid out by contract. The
contracting companies agreed to deliver a thoroughfare complete,
with its trees planted, its benches and lamp-posts duly placed, in
exchange for a specified indemnity; at times they even delivered the
thoroughfare for nothing, finding themselves amply remunerated by
retaining the bordering building ground, for which they asked a greatly
enhanced price. The fever of speculation in land, the furious rise in
the value of house property date from this period. Saccard, thanks to
his connections, obtained a grant to lay out three lots of boulevard.
He was the ardent and somewhat muddling soul of the partnership.
Messieurs Mignon & Charrier, his dependents at the outset, were fat,
artful fellows, master masons, who knew the value of money. They
laughed slyly at sight of Saccard's equipages; they generally retained
their blouses, never refused to shake hands with a workman, and
returned home covered with plaster dust. They came from Langres both of
them, and into this burning, never satisfied Paris they brought their
Champagnese prudence, their calm brains, somewhat obtuse and deficient
in intelligence, but very quick in profiting of opportunities for
filling their pockets, free to enjoy themselves later on. If Saccard
promoted the affair and infused life into it with his fire and rageous
appetite, Messieurs Mignon & Charrier by their plodding habits, their
narrow methodical management, prevented it a score of times from being
capsized by the astonishing imagination of their partner. They would
never consent to have superb offices in a mansion which he wanted to
build to astonish Paris. They also refused to entertain the secondary
speculations which sprouted in his brain every morning, such as the
erection of concert halls and vast bathing establishments on the
building ground bordering their thoroughfare; of covered galleries,
which would have doubled the rent of the shops and have allowed people
to circulate through Paris without getting wet. To put a stop to
these plans, which frightened them, the contractors decided that the
building ground should be divided between the three partners, and that
each should do what he pleased with his share. They themselves wisely
continued selling their lots while he built upon his. His brain boiled.
He would, in all seriousness, have proposed placing Paris under a huge
bell-glass to change it into a conservatory and grow pine apples and
sugar cane there.

Turning over money by the shovelful he soon had eight houses on the
new boulevards. He had four that were completely finished, two in the
Rue de Marignan, and two on the Boulevard Haussmann; the four others,
situated on the Boulevard Malesherbes, remained in progress, and indeed
one of them, a vast enclosure of planks where a magnificent mansion was
to rise, had only the flooring of the first floor laid. At this period
his affairs became so complicated, he had so many strings attached
to each of his fingers, so many interests to watch over and puppets
to set in motion, that he slept barely three hours a night and read
his correspondence in his carriage. The marvellous thing was that his
cash-box seemed inexhaustible. He was a shareholder in every company,
built houses with a kind of fury, turned himself to every trade and
threatened to inundate Paris like a rising tide, without once being
seen to realise a clear profit or pocket a large sum shining in the
sunlight. The river of gold, of unknown source, which seemed to flow
from his study in quickly recurring waves, astonished the Parisian
cockneys, and at one moment made him the prominent man to whom the
newspapers ascribed all the witticisms of the Bourse.

With such a husband Renée was about as little married as she could be.
She remained for whole weeks almost without seeing him. On the other
hand he was perfect; he threw his cash-box wide open for her. In point
of fact, she liked him as she would have liked an obliging banker.
When she went to the Béraud mansion she praised him highly before
her father, whose severity and coldness did not abate on account of
his son-in-law's fortune. Her contempt had fled; this man seemed so
convinced that life is a mere business affair, he was so plainly born
to coin money out of whatever fell into his hands, women, children,
paving-stones, sacks of mortar, and consciences, that she could not
reproach him for having made their marriage a bargain. Since that
bargain he in a measure looked upon her as upon one of those fine
houses which honoured him and from which he expected to derive large
profits. He liked to see her well dressed, noisy, making all Paris
turn the head. It consolidated his position, doubled the probable
figure of his fortune. By his wife he seemed handsome, young, amorous,
and giddy. She was a partner, an accomplice without knowing it. A new
pair of horses, a dress costing two thousand crowns, a weakness for a
lover, facilitated, often ensured the success of his most remunerative
transactions. Moreover, he frequently pretended to be worn-out,
and sent her to a minister's, or some functionary's, to solicit an
authorisation or receive a reply. "And be good!" he said to her in a
tone, at once jesting and coaxing, which only belonged to himself.
And when she returned, when she had succeeded, he rubbed his hands,
repeating his famous phrase, "And you were good?" Renée laughed. He was
too active to wish his wife to be a Madame Michelin. He simply liked
coarse witticisms and indecent suppositions. Besides, if Renée had "not
been good" he would only have experienced the mortification of having
really paid for the minister's or functionary's compliance. To dupe
people, to give them less than their money's worth, was a feast for
him. He often said: "If I were a woman I should perhaps sell myself,
but I should never deliver the merchandise; it's too stupid."

This madcap Renée, who had appeared one night in the Parisian firmament
like the eccentric fairy of fashionable sensuality, was the least
analyzable of women. No doubt if she had been brought up at home she
would by means of religion or some other satisfaction for the nerves
have attenuated the desires by which she was at times really maddened.
She belonged to the middle classes by her mind; she was perfectly
upright, with a love for logical things, a fear of heaven and hell
and a huge dose of prejudices; she belonged to her father's side,
to the calm and prudent race among which fireside virtues flourish.
And yet it was in this nature of hers that prodigious fancies, ever
reviving inquisitiveness and desires not to be confessed, sprouted
and grew. While she was with the ladies of the Visitation, free, her
mind wandering amid the mystical voluptuousness of the chapel and the
carnal attachment of her young friends, she had framed for herself a
fantastic education, learning vice, throwing all the frankness of her
nature into it, unsettling her young brain to such a point that she
singularly embarrassed her confessor by owning to him that she had
felt a most unreasonable longing to get up and kiss him one day during
mass. Then she struck her breast, she turned pale at the thought of the
devil and his cauldrons. The fault which, later on, had brought about
her marriage with Saccard, that brutal rape which she had experienced
with a kind of frightened expectation, made her despise herself and in
a great measure caused the abandonment of her whole life. She thought
that she no longer had to struggle against evil that it was in her,
that logic authorized her to follow the bad science to the end. With
her there was yet more curiosity than appetite. Thrown into the society
of the Second Empire, abandoned to her imagination, provided with
money, encouraged in her loudest eccentricities, she gave herself,
regretted it, and finally succeeded in killing her expiring principles,
always lashed, always urged onward by her insatiable longing to learn
and feel.

Besides she was as yet only at the earlier pages. She willingly talked
in a low tone, and laughing, about the extraordinary circumstances of
the tender attachment between Suzanne Haffner and Adeline d'Espanet,
of the questionable calling of Madame de Lauwerens, and of the kisses
which the Countess Vanska gave at a fixed price; but she still
contemplated these things from afar off, with a vague notion of perhaps
tasting them, and this indeterminate desire which at evil moments rose
within her, increased her turbulent anxiety still more and urged her
on in her mad search for an unique exquisite enjoyment of which she
alone would partake. Her first lovers had not spoiled her; she had on
three occasions fancied herself seized with a great passion; love burst
forth in her brain like a cracker, the sparks of which did not reach
her heart. She was mad for a month, showed herself throughout Paris
with her dear lord; and then one morning, amid all the racket of her
love, she became conscious of depressing silence and immense vacuity.
The first, the young Duke de Rozan, was barely more than a breakfast of
sunshine; Renée who had noticed him on account of his gentleness and
excellent manners, found him altogether superficial, washed out, and
plaguy when they were alone together. Mr. Simpson, an attaché of the
American embassy, who came next, almost beat her, and for that reason
remained with her for nearly a year. Then she smiled on an aide-de-camp
of the Emperor, the Count de Chibray, a vain handsome man who was
beginning to tire her when the Duchess de Sternich took it into her
head to fall in love with him and carry him off from her; thereupon
she wept for him and let her friends understand that her heart was
crushed, and that she should never love again. She thus progressed to
the most insignificant being in the world, Monsieur de Mussy, a young
man who was making his way in the diplomatic career by conducting
cotillons with especial gracefulness; she never exactly knew why she
had given herself to him but she retained him for a long time, feeling
lazy, disgusted with an unknown land which one discovers in half an
hour, and deferring the worry attendant upon a change until she had
met with some extraordinary adventure. At twenty-eight years of age
she already felt terribly wearied. Ennui appeared to her all the more
insupportable, as her middle-class virtues profited by the hours when
she was bored to complain and worry her. She closed her door, she had
frightful headaches. Then when the door opened again it was a flood of
silk and lace that swept forth with a great racket, a being of luxury
and joy without a care or a flush upon the brow.

Still she had had a romance in her commonplace fashionable life. One
day, at sunset, after going on foot to see her father, who did not
like to hear the noise of carriages at his door, she noticed, while
passing along the Quai Saint-Paul on her way home, that she was being
followed by a young man. It was warm and the daylight was waning with
amorous softness. She, who was usually only followed on horseback in
the pathways of the Bois de Boulogne, found the adventure spicy and was
flattered by it as by a new homage, somewhat brutal no doubt, but the
very coarseness of which titillated her. Instead of returning home she
took the Rue du Temple and promenaded her gallant along the Boulevards.
The man however grew bolder and became so pressing that Renée, somewhat
intimidated, lost her head, followed the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière,
and took refuge in the shop kept by her husband's sister. The man
came in behind her. Madame Sidonie smiled, seemed to understand, and
left them alone. And when Renée wished to follow her sister-in-law
the stranger retained her, spoke to her with feeling politeness and
won her forgiveness. He was a clerk called Georges whose surname she
never asked. She went to see him twice, going in by the shop while
he arrived by the Rue Papillon. This chance love affair, found and
accepted in the street, proved one of her keenest pleasures. She always
thought of it with a little shame, but with a singular smile of regret.
Madame Sidonie's profit in the affair was that she at last became the
accomplice of her brother's second wife, a part which she had been
anxious to play ever since the wedding-day.

Poor Madame Sidonie had experienced a deception. While she was
promoting the marriage she had hoped in a degree to espouse Renée
herself, make her a customer and derive a number of little profits
by her. She judged women at a glance like connoisseurs judge horses.
And so, after allowing the couple a month to settle themselves, her
consternation was great when, on perceiving Madame de Lauwerens
enthroned in the centre of the drawing-room, she realised that she came
too late. Madame de Lauwerens, a handsome woman of twenty-six, occupied
herself with launching newcomers into the swing. She belonged to a very
old family and was married to a man of the upper financial world, who
had the fault of refusing to settle tailors' and milliners' bills. His
wife, a very intelligent person, coined money and kept herself. She
held men in horror, she said; but she supplied all her female friends
with them; there was always a full stock to choose from in the flat
which she occupied in the Rue de Provence, over her husband's offices.
Little collations took place there; and one met one another in an
unforeseen charming manner. There was no harm in a girl going to see
her dear Madame de Lauwerens, and if chance brought men there who were
at all events very respectful and belonged to the best society--why so
much the worse. The lady of the house was charming in her long lace
wrappers. A visitor would very often have chosen her in preference to
her collection of blondes and brunettes. But report asserted that she
was altogether well conducted. The whole secret of the affair lay in
that. She still held her high situation in society, had all the men for
her friends, retained her pride as a virtuous woman, and experienced a
secret joy in lowering the others and deriving a profit by their fall.
When Madame Sidonie had enlightened herself as to the mechanism of the
new invention she was sorely distressed. It was the classical school,
the woman in an old black dress, carrying love letters at the bottom of
her basket, set in front of the modern school, the lady of high degree,
who sells her friends in her boudoir while sipping a cup of tea. The
modern school triumphed. Madame de Lauwerens glanced coldly at the
shabby dress of Madame Sidonie in whom she scented a rival; and it was
from her hand that Renée received her first worry, the young Duke de
Rozan, whom the beautiful financier found it difficult to dispose of.
It was only later on that the classical school won the day, when Madame
Sidonie lent her lodging to her sister-in-law so that she might gratify
her fancy for the stranger of the Quai Saint-Paul. She remained her
confidante.

Maxime however was one of Madame Sidonie's boon friends. When only
fifteen years old he went on the prowl to his aunt's, smelling the
forgotten gloves which he found lying on the furniture. She, who
hated clear situations and never owned her little services, ended by
lending him the keys of her rooms, on certain days, saying that she
would remain in the country until the morrow. Maxime talked about some
friends whom he wished to entertain and whom he did not like to take to
his father's. It was in the rooms of the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière
that he spent several nights with the poor girl whom one was afterwards
obliged to send into the country. Madame Sidonie borrowed money from
her nephew, and went into ecstacies before him, murmuring in a soft
voice that he was "without a hair, as rosy as a Cupid."

Maxime had grown however. He was now a pretty, slightly built young man
who had retained the rosy cheeks and blue eyes of childhood. His curly
hair completed that girlish appearance, which so delighted the ladies.
He resembled poor Angèle with his soft eyes and blonde pallor. But he
was not even the equal of that indolent shallow woman. In him the race
of the Rougons had a tendency to refinement and became delicate and
vicious. The offspring of too young a mother, constituting a strange,
jumbled, and so to say unmingled combination of his father's furious
appetites and his mother's self-abandonment and weakness, he was a
defective offspring in whom the parental failings were completed and
aggravated. This family of the Rougons lived too fast; it was dying
out already in the person of this frail creature whose sex must have
remained in suspense during formation, and who no longer represented
a will, eager for gain and enjoyment like Saccard, but a species of
cowardice, devouring fortunes already made; a strange hermaphrodite
ushered at the right time into a society that was rottening. When
Maxime went to the Bois de Boulogne, with his waist tightly compressed
like a woman's, lightly dancing in the saddle on which he was swayed by
the canter of his horse, he was the god of the age, with his strongly
developed hips, his long slender hands, his sickly lascivious air, his
correct elegance, and his slang learnt at petty theatres. At twenty
years of age he placed himself above all surprises and all disgusts.
He had certainly dreamt of the most unusual beastliness. But with him
vice was not an abyss, as it is with certain old men, but a natural
external bloom. It curled upon his fair hair, smiled upon his lips,
and dressed him like his clothes. However his great characteristic was
especially his eyes, two clear and smiling blue apertures, true mirrors
for a coquette, but behind which one perceived all the emptiness of his
brain. Those harlot eyes were never lowered; they courted pleasure, a
pleasure without fatigue which one summons and receives.

The everlasting gust of wind which swept into the rooms in the Rue de
Rivoli and banged their doors, blew stronger and stronger while Maxime
grew up, while Saccard enlarged the sphere of his transactions, and
Renée threw more fever into her search for unknown enjoyment. These
three beings ended by leading an astonishing life of liberty and folly.
It was the ripe and prodigious fruit of a period. The street invaded
the flat with its rumble of vehicles, its elbowing of strangers, and
its licence of language. The father, the stepmother, the stepson,
acted, talked, and set themselves at ease just as if they had each
been alone living a bachelor life. Three boon friends, three students
sharing the same furnished room, would not have disposed of that room
more unceremoniously to install therein their hobbledehoy vices, loves,
and noisy pleasures. The Saccards met with hand-shakes, did not seem to
suspect the reasons which united them under the same roof, and behaved
cavalierly and joyously towards each other, each thus assuming absolute
independence. They replaced family ties by a kind of partnership, the
profits of which are divided in equal shares; each one drew his share
of pleasure to himself, and it was tacitly understood that each should
dispose of that share as he thought fit. They went so far as to take
their enjoyment in presence of one another, to display it, and describe
it without awakening aught but a little envy and curiosity.

Maxime now instructed Renée. When he went to the Bois with her he told
her stories about prostitutes which greatly enlivened her. A new woman
could not appear near the lake without his setting forth on a campaign
to ascertain the name of her protector, the allowance he made her, and
the style in which she lived. He was acquainted with these ladies'
homes, and with the particulars of their private life; indeed he was a
perfect living catalogue in which all the harlots were numbered, with
a complete description of each of them. This gazette of scandal was
Renée's delight. On race-days at Longchamps, when she passed by in her
carriage, she listened eagerly, albeit retaining her haughtiness as
a woman of good society, to the story of how Blanche Müller deceived
her embassy attaché with a hair-dresser; or how the little baron had
found the count in his drawers in the alcove of a skinny, red-haired
notoriety who was called the Crawfish. Each day brought its tattle.
When the story was rather too stiff Maxime lowered his voice, but he
nevertheless went on to the end. Renée opened her eyes wide, like a
child to whom a good trick is related, restrained her laughter, and
then stifled it in her embroidered handkerchief, which she gently
pressed to her lips. Maxime also brought these women's photographs. He
had portraits of actresses in all his pockets and even in his cigar
case. At times he had a clearing out and placed these women in the
album which was always trailing over the furniture in the drawing-room,
and which already contained the portraits of Renée's female friends.
There was also some men's photographs in it, Messieurs de Rozan,
Simpson, De Chibray, and De Mussy, as well as actors, writers, and
deputies who had come to swell the collection no one knew how. It
was a strangely mixed society, the prototype of the jumble of ideas
and personages that crossed Renée's and Maxime's lives. Whenever it
rained, or whenever one was bored, this album proved a great subject of
conversation. It always ended by falling under one's hand. The young
woman opened it with a sigh for the hundredth time perhaps. By-and-by,
however, her curiosity was awakened and the young fellow came and
leant behind her. Then long discussions began about the Crawfish's
hair, Madame de Meinhold's double chin, Madame de Lauwerens's eyes,
and Blanche Müller's bosom; about the Marchioness's nose, which was
a trifle on one side, and about the mouth of little Sylvia, who was
notorious for her thick lips. They compared the women with each other.

"For myself, if I were a man," said Renée, "I should choose Adeline."

"That's because you don't know Sylvia," answered Maxime, "she has such
a funny style. For myself, I prefer Sylvia."

The pages were turned over; at times the Duke de Rozan or Mr. Simpson,
or the Count de Chibray appeared, and Maxime added, sneering:

"Besides, your taste is perverted, everyone knows it. Can you see
anything more stupid than these gentlemen's faces? Rozan and Chibray
look like Gustave, my barber."

Renée shrugged her shoulders as if to say that this irony did not
affect her. She still forgot herself in contemplating the wan, smiling,
or stern faces which the album contained; she tarried longer over
the portraits of the fast women, and inquisitively studied the exact
microscopical details of the photographs, the little wrinkles and the
little hairs. One day she even procured a strong magnifying glass,
fancying she had perceived a hair on the Crawfish's nose. And, indeed,
the glass revealed a slight golden thread which had strayed from the
eyebrows down to the middle of the nose. This hair amused them for
a long time. For a whole week the ladies who called had to assure
themselves in person of the presence of this hair. Thenceforth the
magnifying glass served to scrutinize the women's faces. Renée made
some astonishing discoveries; she found some unknown wrinkles, rough
skins, cavities imperfectly filled up with rice powder. And Maxime
ended by hiding the magnifying glass, declaring that one ought not
to disgust oneself with the human face like that. The truth was that
she scrutinized too closely the thick lips of Sylvia, for whom he had
a particular affection. They then invented a new game. They asked
this question: "With whom would I willingly spend a night?" and they
opened the album, which was entrusted with the duty of replying. This
gave rise to some strange couplings. Renée's female friends played at
the game during several evenings, and Renée herself was successively
married to the Archbishop of Paris, to Baron Gouraud, to M. de Chibray,
at which she greatly laughed, and to her husband in person, at which
she was greatly distressed. As for Maxime, either by chance, or by the
maliciousness of Renée, who opened the album, he always fell upon the
Marchioness. But there was never so much laughter as when luck coupled
two men or two women together.

The familiarity of Renée and Maxime went so far that she told him her
private sorrows. He consoled her and gave her advice. It seemed as if
his father did not exist. Then later on they began to tell each other
about their childhood. It was especially during their drives in the
Bois de Boulogne that they felt a vague languor, a longing to relate
things which are difficult to tell and are not told. The delight that
children take in whispering about forbidden things, the attraction that
exists for a young man and young woman to lower themselves to sin, be
it only in words, unceasingly brought them back to suggestive subjects.
They partook deeply of voluptuousness, for which they did not reproach
one another, but which they tasted together, lazily reclining in the
two corners of their carriage, like two comrades who recall their past
freaks. They ended by becoming perfect braggarts of immorality. Renée
owned that the little girls at her school were very immodest. Maxime
improved upon that and made so bold as to relate some of the shameful
doings of the college of Plassans.

"Ah! I can't tell--" murmured Renée.

Then she leant forward close to his ear, as if the sound of her voice
alone would have made her blush, and confided to him one of those
convent stories which appear in disgusting songs. He, on his side, had
too rich a collection of anecdotes of this kind to remain behindhand.
He hummed in her ear some very indecent verses. And by degrees they
found themselves in an especial state of beatitude, rocked by all the
carnal fancies that they stirred, titillated by little desires which
were not expressed. The carriage rolled gently on, and they returned
home deliciously fatigued, more tired indeed than after a night of
love. They had sinned, like two young fellows who, wandering along the
country lanes without any mistresses, might content themselves with
their mutual recollections.

Even greater familiarity and licence existed between the father and the
son. Saccard had realised that a great financier ought to love women
and do some foolish things for them. He was a rough lover and preferred
money; but it formed part of his programme to hang about alcoves,
scatter bank-notes on certain mantelshelves, and from time to time use
some notorious wench as a gilded signboard for his speculations. When
Maxime had left college he and his father met in the same women's rooms
and laughed over it. They were even rivals in a degree. At times when
the young fellow dined at the Maison-d'Or with some noisy party, he
would overhear Saccard's voice in a neighbouring private room.

[Illustration: MAXIME DISCOVERS HIS FATHER AT THE MAISON DORÉE.]

"Hallo, papa's next door," he would exclaim with a grimace which he
borrowed from the actors then in favour.

And he would go and knock at the door of the private room, anxious to
see his father's conquest.

"Ah! it's you?" Saccard would say in a gay tone, "come in. You make
enough noise to prevent one from hearing oneself eat. Who are you with
then?"

"Why, there's Laure d'Aurigny, Sylvia, the Crawfish, and two others, I
fancy. They are awfully funny. They poke their fingers in the dishes
and chuck handfuls of salad at our heads. My coat is all greasy with
oil."

The father would laugh, thinking this very funny.

"Ah! young folks, young folks," he would mutter. "That isn't like us,
is it, my little kitten? We have dined very quietly and now we are
going to by-by."

And he would chuck the chin of the woman whom he had beside him, and
coo with his Provençal snuffle, which produced strange music for a
lover.

"Oh! the old noodle!" the woman would cry. "Good-day, Maxime. Mustn't
I love you, eh! to consent to dine with your scamp of a father--One
never sees you now. Come early on the day after to-morrow morning. No,
really, I've something to tell you."

Saccard would finish eating an ice or some fruit, beatifically, taking
small mouthfuls. Then he would kiss the woman's shoulder, saying
humorously:

"You know, my ducks, if I'm in the way, I'll leave the room. You can
ring the bell when you are ready for me to come in again."

Then he would take the woman off, or, at times, go with her to join
in the racket in the neighbouring room. Maxime and he shared the
same shoulders; their hands met round the same waists. They called
to one another on the divans, and repeated to each other, aloud, the
confidential statements which the women had whispered in their ears.
And they carried their good fellowship so far as to conspire together
to carry off from the gathering the blonde or brunette which one or the
other of them had chosen.

They were well known at Mabille. They went there arm in arm, after some
dainty dinner, strolled round the garden, nodding to the women, and
tossing them a remark as they passed by. They laughed aloud, without
unlocking their arms, and came to each other's assistance whenever
business was discussed. The father, who was very expert on this point,
negotiated his son's love affairs advantageously. At times they sat
down and drank with a party of girls. Then they changed their table or
resumed their stroll. And they were seen till midnight with their arms
always linked like a couple of chums, following the skirts along the
yellow pathways under the glaring flame of the gas jets.

When they returned home they brought with them, from out-of-doors,
in their coats, a dash of the women they had just left. Their loose
attitudes, and the after-part of certain suggestive remarks and low
gestures, made the flat in the Rue de Rivoli seem like a fast woman's
lodging. The gentle wanton way in which the father gave his hand to his
son, of itself proclaimed whence they came. It was in this atmosphere
that Renée inhaled her sensual caprices and longings. She chaffed them
nervously:

"Where can you have come from?" she would say to them. "You smell of
tobacco and musk. It's certain that I shall have a headache."

And indeed, the strange smell profoundly disturbed her. It was the
regular perfume of this singular domestic hearth.

However, Maxime was smitten with a fine passion for little Sylvia. He
bored his stepmother with this girl during several months. Renée soon
knew her from one end to the other, from the soles of her feet to the
tip of her hair. She had a bluish mark on the hip; nothing could be
more adorable than her knees; and there was this peculiarity about her
shoulders, that only the left one was dimpled. Maxime evinced some
maliciousness in devoting his drives with Renée to the description of
his mistress's perfections. One evening, on returning from the Bois,
Renée's carriage and Sylvia's were caught in a block, and had to draw
up, side by side, in the Champs-Elysées. The two women eyed each other
with acute curiosity, while Maxime, whom this critical situation
delighted, tittered on the quiet. As his stepmother preserved gloomy
silence when the carriage began to roll on again he thought she was
in the sulks, and expected one of those maternal scenes, one of those
strange scoldings with which she still, at times, occupied her moments
of lassitude.

"Do you know that person's jeweller?" she abruptly asked him, at the
moment when they reached the Place de la Concorde.

"Alas, yes!" he answered with a smile; "I owe him ten thousand
francs--Why do you ask me that?"

"For nothing."

Then after a fresh silence:

"She had a very pretty bracelet, the one on the left wrist. I should
have liked to see it close to."

They reached home. She said no more on the matter then. Only on the
following day, just as Maxime and his father were going out together,
she took the young fellow aside, and spoke to him in an undertone,
with an embarrassed air, and a pretty smile which courted indulgence.
He seemed surprised and went off, laughing in his wicked way. In the
evening he brought Sylvia's bracelet which his stepmother had begged
him to show her.

"There's what you wanted," said he. "One would thieve for your sake,
pretty mamma."

"She didn't see you take it?" asked Renée who was eagerly examining the
bracelet.

"I don't think so--She wore it yesterday, so she certainly wouldn't put
it on to-day."

Meantime the young woman approached the window. She had put the
bracelet on and she held her wrist somewhat raised slowly turning it
round, delighted and repeating:

"Oh! very pretty, very pretty. There are only the emeralds that don't
quite please me."

At this moment Saccard came in, and as she still held her wrist up in
the white light from the window:

"Hallo!" he cried in astonishment, "Sylvia's bracelet!"

"You know this jewel?" said she, more embarrassed than he was and not
knowing what to do with her arm.

He had recovered himself, and he threatened his son with his finger,
muttering:

"That scamp always has some forbidden fruit in his pockets! One of
these days he will bring us the lady's arm as well as her bracelet."

"Why! it isn't my doing," replied Maxime with cunning cowardice. "It's
Renée who wanted to see it."

The husband contented himself with saying, "Ah!" And he looked at the
bracelet in his turn, repeating like his wife, "It is very pretty, very
pretty."

Then he quietly went off and Renée scolded Maxime for having betrayed
her like that. But he declared that his father did not care a fig about
the matter! Whereupon she returned him the bracelet, adding:

"You must call on the jeweller, and order one exactly like it for me;
only, you must have the emeralds replaced by sapphires."

Saccard could not keep any living or inanimate object near him for
any length of time without trying to sell it, or derive some profit
by it. His son was not twenty when he already thought of utilising
him. A handsome fellow, the nephew of a minister and the son of a
great financier, ought to be invested well. He was certainly rather
young, still one could always seek a wife and a dowry for him, and,
afterwards, one could have the wedding deferred or hastened according
to the financial position of the establishment. Saccard proved lucky.
On a board of directors, to which he belonged, he found a tall handsome
man, M. de Mareuil, who in a couple of days belonged to him. M. de
Mareuil, rightly named Bonnet, was an ex-sugar refiner of Le Havre.
After amassing a large fortune he had married a young girl of noble
birth and also very rich, who was looking out for a fool of stylish
appearance. Bonnet obtained permission to assume his wife's name, which
was a first satisfaction for his pride; but his marriage had made him
madly ambitious, and he dreamt of remunerating Hélène for this noble
name by acquiring a high political position. From that time forward
he invested money in new newspapers, bought a large estate in the
depths of the Nièvre, and by all known means prepared for himself a
candidature to the Corps Législatif. So far he had failed but without
losing aught of his solemnity. His was the most incredibly empty brain
that could be met with. He was of superb stature, with the white
pensive face of a great statesman; and as he listened marvellously
well, with a deep look, and majestic calmness of face, people could
readily imagine that a prodigious work of comprehension and deduction
was going on in his mind. In reality he was thinking about nothing. But
he succeeded in disturbing people, who no longer knew whether they had
to deal with a man of superior attainments or a fool. M. de Mareuil
attached himself to Saccard as to a raft that might save him. He was
aware that an official candidature would be vacant in the Nièvre, and
he ardently hoped that the minister would select him; it was his last
card. So he handed himself up, bound hand and foot, to the minister's
brother. Saccard, who scented a remunerative transaction, gradually
set him thinking of a marriage between his daughter Louise and
Maxime. De Mareuil then became most effusive, thought that he himself
had initiated this idea of a marriage, and considered himself very
fortunate to enter a minister's family and give Louise to a young man
who seemed to have such fine prospects.

Louise, said her father, would have a dowry of a million francs.
Deformed, ugly, and yet adorable, she was condemned to die young; a
chest complaint was stealthily undermining her, lending her nervous
gaiety and caressing grace. Young girls who are ailing quickly grow
old, and become women before their time. She was sensually ingenuous,
she seemed to have been born at fifteen years of age in full puberty.
When her father, a healthy brutified colossus, looked at her he
could not believe that she was his daughter. Her mother, during her
lifetime, had also been a strong well-built woman; but stories were
told about her which explained this child's stuntedness, her manners
of a millionaire Bohemian, and her vicious and charming ugliness.
People said that Hélène de Mareuil had died from the most shameful
profligacy. Pleasure had eaten into her like an ulcer, without her
husband realising her lucid madness, though he ought to have had her
shut up in a private asylum. Developed in this diseased form, Louise
had left it with impoverished blood and crooked limbs, with her brain
attacked and her memory already full of a dirty life. She thought at
times that she could confusedly remember another existence, she saw
strange scenes unfolded before her in a vague dimness, men and women
kissing one another, quite a carnal drama with which her childish
curiosity was amused. It was her mother that spoke within her. This
vice remained in her throughout her childhood. As she gradually grew
up, nothing astonished her, she recollected everything, or rather she
knew everything, and she went to forbidden things, with a sureness of
hand that made her, in life, seem like a person returning home after a
long absence, and only having to stretch out his hand to set himself
at ease and partake of the comforts of his abode. This singular girl,
whose evil instincts flattered Maxime, and who, moreover--in this
second life which she lived as a virgin with all the science and shame
of a grown woman--possessed an ingenuous effrontery, a spicy mixture
of childishness and boldness, was bound in the result to please the
young fellow, and seem to him very much funnier even than Sylvia, who,
the daughter of a worthy stationer, possessed a usurer's heart and was
horribly middle-class at bottom.

The marriage was arranged with a laugh, and it was decided that "the
youngsters" should be allowed to grow up. The two families lived on a
footing of close friendship. M. de Mareuil promoted his candidature.
Saccard watched his prey. It was understood that Maxime should place
his nomination as an auditor of the Council of State among the marriage
presents.

Meanwhile the Saccards' fortune seemed to have reached its culminating
point. It blazed in the midst of Paris like a colossal bonfire. It was
the moment when the ardent sharing of the hounds' fees fills a corner
of the forest with the barking of dogs, the clacking of whips and the
blazing of torches. The appetites let loose were at last satisfied
in the impudence of triumph, amid the racket of falling houses and
of fortunes built up in six months. The city was now but a great
saturnalia of millions and women. Vice, coming from above, flowed
along the gutters, spread itself out in the sheets of ornamental water,
reascended in the fountains of the public gardens to fall again on
to the roofs in a fine penetrating rain. And at night time, when one
passed over the bridges, it seemed as if the Seine drew along with
it, amid the sleeping metropolis, all the refuse of the city--crumbs
fallen from tables, bows of lace left on divans, false hair forgotten
in cabs, bank notes that had slipped out of bodices, everything that
the brutality of desire, and the immediate satisfaction of instinct
fling into the street broken and soiled. Then amid the feverish sleep
of Paris, and better still amid its breathless hankering in the broad
daylight, one realised the unsettling of the brain, the golden and
voluptuous nightmare of a city, madly enamoured of its gold and its
flesh. The violins sounded till midnight: then the windows became dark
and shadows descended over the city. It was like a colossal alcove in
which the last candle had been blown out, the last virtue extinguished.
In the depths of the shade there was nothing left save a great rattle
of furious, wearied love; while the Tuileries, on the river bank,
stretched their arms out into the night as if for a huge embrace.

Saccard had just had his mansion of the Parc Monceaux built on some
ground stolen from the city. He had reserved for himself on the first
floor, a superb private room, all violet ebony and gold, with lofty
glass doors to the book-cases, which were full of business papers but
where not a book was to be seen; the safe, embedded in the wall, had
the depths of an iron alcove large enough to accommodate the amours of
a milliard. It was here that his fortune bloomed, impudently displayed
itself. Everything seemed to succeed with him. When he left the Rue de
Rivoli, increasing his household, doubling his expenditure, he talked
to his friends about some considerable winnings. According to his
account his partnership with Mignon and Charrier brought him enormous
profits; his speculations on house property were more remunerative
still; and as for the Crédit Viticole, it was an inexhaustible
milch cow. He had a way of enumerating his riches that bewildered
his listeners and prevented them from clearly seeing the truth.
His Provençal snuffling increased, and, with his curt phrases and
nervous gestures, he let off fireworks, in which millions rose like
rockets, and which finished by dazzling even the most incredulous. The
reputation which he had acquired as a lucky gamester was mainly due to
this turbulent pantomimic action. To tell the truth, no one knew him
to be possessed of a clear solid capital. His different partners, who
perforce were acquainted with his situation as regarded themselves,
explained his colossal fortune by believing him to be invariably
fortunate in other speculations, those which they were not acquainted
with. He spent a deal of money: the effluence of his cash-box
continued, without the sources of this golden river having so far
been discovered. It was pure madness, a frenzy for scattering money,
handfuls of louis flung out of window, the safe emptied every evening
to its last copper, but filling itself again during the night, no one
knew how, and never supplying such large sums as when Saccard pretended
he had lost the keys.

Renée's dowry was shaken, carried off and drowned in this fortune which
clamoured and overflowed like a winter-torrent. The young wife, who had
been distrustful in earlier days and desirous of managing her fortune
herself, soon grew tired of business matters; besides, she felt herself
poor beside her husband, and crushed by her debts, she was obliged to
have recourse to him, to borrow money from him, and place herself at
his discretion. At each fresh bill, which he paid with the smile of a
man who is indulgent towards human weakness, she surrendered herself
a little more, confided State bonds to him, and authorized him to
sell this or that. When they went to live in the mansion in the Parc
Monceaux she already found herself almost completely stripped. He had
taken the place of the State and served her the interest of the hundred
thousand francs coming from the Rue de la Pépinière; on the other
hand, he had induced her to sell the estate in La Sologne to place the
proceeds in a great affair, a superb investment, he said. She therefore
had nothing left her excepting the property at Charonne, which she
obstinately refused to part with so as not to sadden that excellent
Aunt Élisabeth. And, in this respect again, he was preparing a stroke
of genius with the assistance of his former accomplice Larsonneau.
She certainly remained under obligations to him; if he had taken her
fortune, he paid her the income it would have furnished, five or six
times over. The interest on the hundred thousand francs, with the
revenue of the Sologne money, scarcely amounted to nine or ten thousand
francs, just enough to pay for her linen and boots. He gave her or paid
away for her fifteen and twenty times that paltry sum. He would have
worked for a week to rob her of a hundred francs, but he kept her in
regal style. And thus like everybody she held her husband's monumental
safe in respect without trying to penetrate the nihility of the river
of gold which passed under her eyes and into which she threw herself
every morning.

At the Parc Monceaux there was a mad crisis, a flashing triumph.
The Saccards doubled the number of their carriages and horses; they
had an army of servants, whom they dressed in a dark-blue livery
with putty-coloured breeches, and waistcoats striped black and
yellow--somewhat quiet colours that the financier had selected so as to
seem altogether serious-minded, which was one of the dreams he had most
caressed. They displayed their luxury on the house top, and drew back
the curtains when they gave grand dinners. The breeze of contemporary
life, which had banged the doors of the first floor in the Rue de
Rivoli, became in the mansion a perfect whirlwind that threatened to
carry off the very partitions. In the midst of these princely rooms,
along the gilded balustrades, over the fine woollen carpets, in this
fairy palace of the parvenu, there trailed the smell of Mabille; the
fashionable quadrilles were danced there with all their wriggling
jactitance, the whole period passed with its mad stupid laugh, its
eternal hunger and its eternal thirst. It was the suspicious abode of
fashionable pleasure, the pleasure which widens the windows so that
passers-by may see what is transpiring in the alcoves. The husband and
the wife lived there, freely, under the eyes of their servants. They
had divided the house between them, and they camped in it, scarcely
looking as though they were at home, but rather as if tossed, at the
end of a tumultuous bewildering journey, into some regal hotel, where
they had merely taken the time to open their trunks, so as to hasten
the more speedily to the delights of a fresh city. They lodged there
by the night, only remaining at home on the days when grand dinners
were given, ever carried away by a ceaseless peregrination through
Paris, but returning at times for an hour, as one returns into a room
at an inn between two excursions. Renée felt herself become more
anxious, more nervous there; her silken skirts glided with snake-like
hisses over the thick carpets, past the satin of the couches; she was
irritated by the stupid gilding which surrounded her, by the high empty
ceilings where after fête nights there only lingered the laughter of
young fools and the remarks of old scoundrels; and to fill this luxury,
to abide amidst this effulgence, she longed for a supreme amusement
which her curiosity vainly sought for in all the corners of the
mansion, in the little sun-tinted drawing-room, in the conservatory
full of luxuriant vegetation. As for Saccard he began to realise his
dream; he received great financiers, Monsieur Toutin-Laroche and
Monsieur de Lauwerens; and great politicians also, Baron Gouraud and
Deputy Haffner; his brother the minister had even condescended to come
two or three times to consolidate his position by his presence. And
yet like his wife he experienced nervous anxiety, a disquietude which
lent a strange sound of broken window panes to his laughter. He became
so ungovernable, so scared, that his acquaintances remarked, "That
devil of a Saccard! he makes too much money, it will end by driving him
mad!" In 1860 he had been decorated with the Legion of Honour, after
rendering a mysterious service to the prefect, by lending his name to a
lady for the sale of some land.

It was about the time when they went to live near the Parc Monceaux
that an apparition crossed Renée's life, leaving her an ineffaceable
impression. The minister had so far resisted the supplications of his
sister-in-law, who was dying with a longing to be invited to the court
balls. However, he gave way at last, believing that his brother's
position was definitely established on a sound basis. For a month Renée
did not sleep for thinking of it. But the great evening arrived at
last, and she sat trembling all over, in the carriage which was taking
her to the Tuileries.

She wore a costume of prodigious grace and originality, a real gem
which she had lighted upon during a night of sleeplessness, and which
three of Worms's workpeople had come to her house to make up under
her eyes. It was a simple dress of white gauze, trimmed however with
a multitude of little scalloped flounces edged with bands of black
velvet. The black velvet tunic was cut square, very low to show her
bosom, framed with some narrow lace, barely a finger broad. There was
not a flower, not a bit of ribbon; but round her wrists, some bracelets
without the least chasing, and on her head a narrow diadem of gold, a
plain circlet which seemed to be an aureola.

When she reached the reception rooms, and her husband had left her
for Baron Gouraud, she experienced a momentary embarrassment. But the
mirrors, in which she saw herself look adorable, soon reassured her,
and she was accustoming herself to the warm atmosphere, to the murmur
of voices, to the crush of dress coats and white shoulders, when the
Emperor appeared. He slowly crossed the room on the arm of a short,
fat general, who puffed as if he were troubled with a bad digestion.
The bare shoulders ranged themselves in two lines, whilst the dress
coats, with a discreet air, instinctively drew back a step. Renée
found herself pushed to the end of the line of shoulders near the
second door, the one that the Emperor was approaching with a faltering,
unsteady step. She thus saw him come towards her from one door to the
other.

He wore a dress coat, with the red ribbon of the Grand Cordon. Renée,
again seized with emotion, retained but imperfect vision, and to her
this bleeding stain seemed to cast splashes over the whole of the
sovereign's breast. As a rule, she thought him little, with swaying
loins, and legs too short for the trunk of his body; but now she was
delighted, and, as she saw him, he looked handsome, despite his pale
face and the heavy leaden lids which fell over his lifeless eyes. Under
his moustaches, his lips were languidly parted, and his nose alone
remained bony amid the whole of his puffy face.

With a worn-out air, and vaguely smiling, the Emperor and the old
general continued to advance with short steps, seemingly sustaining
each other. They looked at the ladies bending forward, and their
glances, cast to the right and to the left, glided into the bodices.
The general leant on one side, said a word to his master, and pressed
his arm in the manner of a gay companion. And the Emperor, supine and
nebulous, duller even than usual, still approached with his lagging
step.

[Illustration: THE EMPEROR AND THE OLD GENERAL OGLING RENÉE AT THE BALL
AT THE TUILERIES.]

They were in the middle of the room, when Renée felt their glances fall
upon her. The general gazed at her with a look of surprise, while the
Emperor, half raising his eyelids, let a sensual gleam shoot from his
grey, hesitating, bleared eyes. Renée, losing countenance, lowered her
head, bowed, and saw nothing more but the pattern of the carpet. Still,
she watched their shadows, and she understood that they were pausing
for a few seconds before her. And she fancied that she heard the
Emperor, that licentious dreamer, murmur, as he gazed at her, immersed
in her muslin skirt striped with velvet:

"Look there, general, a flower to be culled, a mysterious pink,
variegated white and black."

And the general answered in a more brutal voice:

"That pink would look awfully well in our button-holes, sire."

Renée raised her head. The apparition had disappeared, the crowd
was thronging round about the doorway. After that evening she
often returned to the Tuileries, she even had the honour of being
complimented by his majesty aloud, and of becoming a little bit
his friend; but she always remembered the sovereign's slow, heavy
walk along the centre of the reception-room between the two rows of
shoulders; and whenever she experienced any new joy amid her husband's
growing prosperity, she again saw the Emperor overtopping the bowing
bosoms, coming towards her, and comparing her to a pink which the
general advised him to place in his button-hole. For her this was the
high note of her life.




CHAPTER IV.


The well-defined, galling desire which had risen to Renée's heart amid
the troublous perfumes of the conservatory, while Maxime and Louise
laughed on a couch of the little buttercup room, seemed to die away
like a nightmare of which naught remains save a slight shudder. The
young woman had retained the bitterness of the Tanghinia on her lips
all night; and it had seemed to her, on feeling the burning of the
cursed leaf, that a mouth of flame was pressing itself to hers, blowing
her a devouring love. Then this mouth escaped her, and her dream was
immersed in vast waves of shade which rolled around her.

In the morning she slept a little, and when she awoke she thought she
was ill. She had the curtains drawn, spoke to her doctor of nausea and
headache, and for a couple of days actually refused to go out. And as
she pretended that she was being besieged, she forbade her door. Maxime
came and knocked at it fruitlessly. He did not sleep in the house, as
he preferred to be able to dispose freely of his rooms; indeed, he led
the most nomadic life in the world, lodging in his father's new houses,
selecting whatever floor suited him, and moving every month, often
out of sheer caprice, and at times to make room for serious tenants.
He dried the walls in the company of some mistress. Accustomed to his
stepmother's whims, he feigned great compassion for her, and went
upstairs four times a-day to inquire after her, with a most distressed
look, though, in point of fact, he merely wished to tease her. On the
third day he found her in the little drawing-room, rosy and smiling,
and with a calm and rested look.

"Well, did you amuse yourself very much with Céleste?" he asked her,
alluding to the long tête-à-tête she had had with her maid.

"Yes," she answered, "she is a very useful girl. She always has such
cold hands; she placed them on my forehead, and soothed my poor head a
little."

"But that girl's a remedy then!" cried the young fellow. "If I ever
have the misfortune to fall in love, you'll lend her to me, eh? so that
she may place her two hands on my heart."

They joked, and went for their usual drive to the Bois. A fortnight
passed by. Renée had thrown herself more madly than ever into her
life of visits and balls; her head seemed to have turned once more,
she no longer complained of lassitude and disgust. Still, one might
have thought that she had committed some secret sin, which she did not
speak of, but which she confessed by a more strongly marked contempt
for herself and by increased depravity in her whims as a fashionable
woman. One evening she confessed to Maxime that she longed to go to a
ball which Blanche Müller, an actress in vogue, meant to give to the
princesses of the footlights and the queens of the fast world. This
avowal surprised and embarrassed even the young man, and yet he was not
particularly scrupulous. He tried to catechise his stepmother: really,
that wasn't her place; besides, she would see nothing very funny
there; and then, if she were recognised, it would cause a scandal. She
answered all these good reasons with clasped hands, supplicating, and
smiling.

"Come, my little Maxime, be kind. I'm determined on it. I will put on a
very dark domino; we will only pass through the rooms."

Maxime always ended by giving way, and would have taken his stepmother
to all the disreputable places in Paris had she but begged him
ever so little to do so. So he consented to escort her to Blanche
Müller's ball, whereupon she clapped her hands like a child to whom an
unhoped-for holiday is granted.

"Ah! you are a dear fellow," said she. "It's for to-morrow, isn't it?
Come and fetch me very early. I want to see those women arrive. You
will name them to me, and we shall amuse ourselves awfully well."

She reflected, and then added:

"No, don't come. Wait for me in a cab on the Boulevard Malesherbes. I
will go out by the garden."

This mysterious way of proceeding was a spice which she added to her
escapade, a simple refinement of pleasure, for had she left the house
at midnight by the front door, her husband would not even have put his
head out of window.

On the morrow, after telling Céleste to sit up for her, she crossed
the dark shadows of the Parc Monceaux with shudders of exquisite fear.
Saccard had profited by his good understanding with the Hôtel de Ville
authorities to obtain a key to a little gate of the park, and Renée
had wished to have one for herself as well. She almost lost her way,
however, and only found the cab, thanks to the two yellow eyes of the
lamps. At that period the Boulevard Malesherbes, scarcely finished,
was still a perfect solitude at night-time. The young woman glided
into the vehicle in great emotion, her heart beating as delightfully
as if she were going to some love meeting. Maxime was philosophically
smoking, half asleep, in one corner of the cab. He wished to throw away
his cigar, but she prevented him from doing so, and, as she tried to
restrain his arm in the darkness, she placed her hand full on his face,
which greatly amused them both.

"I tell you that I like the smell of tobacco!" she exclaimed. "Keep
your cigar. Besides, we're going on the spree to-night. I'm a man, I
am!"

The Boulevard was not yet lighted up, and while the cab rolled down
it towards the Madeleine, it was so dark inside that they could not
see each other. Every now and then, when the young fellow carried his
cigar to his lips, a red point stood out amid the dense obscurity. This
red point interested Renée. Maxime, who was half covered by the folds
of her black satin domino, which filled the inside of the vehicle,
continued smoking in silence, with a bored air. The truth was, that
his stepmother's whim had prevented him from following to the Café
Anglais a party of women who had determined to begin and finish Blanche
Müller's ball there. He was crusty, and she discerned his sulkiness in
the darkness.

"Are you ill?" she asked him.

"No, I am cold," he answered.

"Dear me. Why, I'm burning. I feel quite stifled here. Take part of my
skirts on your knees."

"Oh! your skirts," he muttered, bad-humouredly. "I already have them up
to my eyes."

But this remark made him laugh himself, and by degrees he grew lively.
She told him of the fright she had had in the Parc Monceaux. And
then she confessed another of her longings: she would like one night
to go for a row in the boat which she could see from her windows,
moored at the edge of a pathway. On hearing this, he considered that
she was becoming sentimental. The cab still rolled on, the darkness
remained, profound, and they leaned towards one another to hear each
other amid the noise of the wheels, touching each other when they moved
their arms, and at times, when they approached too closely, inhaling
each other's warm breath. And at equal intervals Maxime's cigar was
revivified, setting a red blur on the darkness, and casting a pale
rosy flash on Renée's face. She looked adorable, seen by this fleeting
glimmer; so much so that the young man was struck by it.

"Oh! oh!" said he. "We seem to be very pretty this evening, stepmamma.
Let's see a bit."

He brought his cigar nearer, and precipitately drew a few puffs. Renée,
in her corner was illumined by a warm and seemingly panting light. She
had slightly raised her hood. Her bare head, covered with a mass of
little curls, with a simple blue ribbon, looked like that of a real
urchin peering above the large blouse of black satin which rose to her
neck. She thought it very funny to be thus looked at and admired by
the light of a cigar, and she threw herself back with little bursts of
laughter, while he added with an air of comic gravity:

"The deuce! I shall have to watch over you, if I am to take you back
safe and sound to my father."

Meanwhile the cab turned round the Madeleine and went up the
Boulevards. Here it became filled with a leaping light, with the
reflection of the shops, the fronts of which were flaming. Blanche
Müller resided two steps off, in one of the new houses which have been
built on the raised ground of the Rue-Basse-du-Rempart. As yet there
were only a few vehicles at the door, it was barely more than ten
o'clock. Maxime wanted to take a turn on the Boulevards and wait an
hour, but Renée, whose curiosity was becoming more acute, straightway
declared to him that she should go upstairs alone if he did not
accompany her. He followed her therefore, and felt glad on finding that
there was more company upstairs than he had expected. The young woman
had put on her mask, and leaning on the arm of Maxime, to whom she gave
peremptory orders in a low voice, and who submissively obeyed her, she
ferreted about the rooms, raised the corners of the door-hangings,
examined the furniture, and would perhaps have searched the drawers had
she not feared being seen. Although the rooms were richly upholstered,
there were corners suggestive of a Bohemian life, and in which one
scented the mummer. It was particularly in these spots that Renée's
nostrils dilated, and that she compelled her companion to walk slowly
so as to lose nothing of the sight or the smell. She especially forgot
herself in a dressing-room, the door of which had been left wide open
by Blanche Müller, who, when she entertained company, gave everything
up to her guests, even to her alcove in which the bed was pushed
back to make room for card tables. But the dressing-room did not
satisfy Renée: it seemed to her common, and even rather dirty, with
its carpet which incandescent cigar ash had pitted with little round
burns, and its blue silk hangings stained with pomatum and splashed
with soap-suds. When she had fully inspected the rooms, and set every
feature of the abode in her memory, so as to be able to describe it,
later on, to her intimate friends, she passed on to the people who
were present. As for the men she knew them; they were, for the most
part, the same financiers, the same politicians, the same young fellows
about town who came to her Thursday at-homes. She fancied herself in
her own drawing-room at certain moments, when she found herself in
front of a group of smiling dress coats, who, on the previous evening,
had worn the same smile in speaking to the Marchioness d'Espanet, or
to the fair Madame Haffner at her house. And even when she looked at
the women her illusion was not completely dispelled. Laure d'Aurigny
was in bright yellow like Suzanne Haffner, and Blanche Müller, like
Adeline d'Espanet, wore a white dress which left her bare down to the
middle of her back. At last Maxime implored mercy, and she consented to
sit down on a couch beside him. They remained there for a moment, the
young fellow yawning, the young woman asking him these ladies' names,
undressing them with a glance and counting the yards of lace that they
wore around their skirts. Seeing her absorbed in this serious study he
ended by slipping away in compliance with a sign which Laure d'Aurigny
made him with her hand. She joked him about the lady whom he had on his
arm, and then made him swear to come and join her party at the Café
Anglais, at one o'clock.

"Your father will be there," she shouted to him at the moment when he
joined Renée again.

The latter found herself surrounded by a group of women who were
laughing very loudly, while Monsieur de Saffré had profited by Maxime
leaving his seat vacant to glide beside her and make gallant proposals
in the style of a cab driver. Then Monsieur de Saffré and the women
all began to shout and smack their hips to such a degree that Renée,
fairly deafened, and yawning in her turn, rose up, saying to her
companion--

"Let us go, they are too stupid."

As they were leaving the room, Monsieur de Mussy came in. He seemed
delighted to meet Maxime, and without paying any attention to the
masked woman who was with him.

"Ah, my dear fellow," he murmured with a love-sick air, "she will cause
my death. I know that she is better, but she still forbids me her door.
Tell her you have seen me with tears in my eyes."

"Be easy, your message shall be delivered," said the young fellow, with
a strange laugh.

And on the way downstairs--

"Well, pretty mamma, didn't that poor fellow touch you?" She shrugged
her shoulders without replying. Outside, on the pavement, she
paused before getting into the cab which had brought them, looking
hesitatingly in the direction of the Madeleine, and in the direction of
the Boulevard des Italiens. It was scarcely half-past eleven, and the
Boulevard was still very animated.

"So we are going home," she murmured regretfully.

"Unless you would like to take a drive along the Boulevards," answered
Maxime.

She assented. She had been disappointed in her feast of feminine
curiosity, and she was distressed at having to go home like that, with
an illusion the less, and a headache setting in. She had long fancied
that an actresses' ball was the height of fun.

As often happens during the last days of October, it seemed as if
the spring had returned; the night air had a May-like warmth, and
the occasional cold gusts that passed by lent an additional zest to
the atmosphere. Renée, with her head at the window, remained silent,
looking at the crowd, the cafés and the restaurants, the interminable
line of which stretched away before her. She had become quite serious,
absorbed in the depth of the vague wishes which fill the reveries
of women. This broad side-walk, which was swept by the dresses of
harlots, and on which the men's boots rung with peculiar familiarity,
the grey asphalte over which, it seemed to her, the gallop of facile
love and pleasure was passing, awoke her slumbering desires, and made
her forget the idiotic ball that she had just left to allow her to
espy other delights of enhanced spiciness. At the windows of Brébant's
private rooms she perceived women's shadows against the whiteness of
the curtains. And Maxime thereupon told her a very indecent story of a
deceived husband who had thus detected, on a curtain, the shadow of his
wife embracing the shadow of a lover. She scarcely listened to him, but
he, growing lively, ended by taking hold of her hands and teasing her
by talking about that poor Monsieur de Mussy.

As they drove back and again passed in front of Brébant's--

"Do you know," she said abruptly, "that Monsieur de Saffré invited me
to supper this evening?"

"Oh! you would have fared badly," replied Maxime laughing. "Saffré
doesn't possess the least culinary imagination. He hasn't got beyond
lobster salad."

"No, no, he talked of oysters and cold partridge. But he
thee-and-thou'd me, and that disturbed me."

She stopped short, looked again at the Boulevard, and, after a moment's
silence, added with a distressed air--

"The worst of it is that I'm awfully hungry."

"What! you're hungry!" exclaimed the young man. "It's very simple,
we'll sup together--Shall we?"

He spoke quietly, but she refused at first, declaring that Céleste had
prepared her a collation at home. However, Maxime, who did not wish to
go to the Café Anglais, had stopped the cab at the corner of the Rue Le
Pelletier, in front of the restaurant of the Café Riche; he had even
alighted, and as his stepmother still hesitated.

"After all," said he, "if you're afraid that I shall compromise you,
say so. I'll get up beside the driver and take you back to your
husband."

She smiled and alighted from the cab with the manners of a bird which
is afraid of wetting its claws. She was radiant. The side-walk which
she felt under her feet warmed her heels, and imparted to the surface
of her skin a delightful quiver of fear and contented caprice. Ever
since the cab had been rolling along she had had a mad longing to
spring out upon this side-walk. She crossed it with short steps, and
furtively, as if she derived a greater pleasure from the fear that she
might be seen. Her escapade was decidedly turning into an adventure.
She certainly did not regret having declined Monsieur de Saffré's
coarse invitation. But she would have gone home terribly out of sorts
if Maxime had not had the idea of letting her taste forbidden fruit.
He went quickly up the stairs as if he had been at home. She followed
him, rather short of breath. A slight fume of game and fish was wafted
about, and the carpet, secured to the stairs with brass rods, had a
smell of dust which increased her emotion.

Just as they were reaching the first landing they met a dignified
looking waiter who drew back to the wall to let them pass him.

"Charles," said Maxime, "you'll serve us, eh? Give us the white room."

Charles bowed, reascended to the landing and opened the door of a
private room. The gas was lowered, and it seemed to Renée as if she
were penetrating into the twilight of a suspicious and charming spot.

A continuous rumble swept in through the window which was wide open,
and in the reflection cast on the ceiling by the café below, the
shadows of promenaders passed swiftly by. But with a touch of the thumb
the waiter turned on the gas. The shadows on the ceiling vanished, and
the room was filled with a glaring light which fell full upon the young
woman's head. She had already thrown her hood back. The little curls
had become slightly disordered in the cab, but the blue ribbon had
not stirred. She began to walk about, abashed by the manner in which
Charles looked at her; he blinked his eyes and screwed up their lids
the better to see her, in a way which plainly signified, "I don't know
this one yet."

"What shall I serve you, sir?" he asked aloud.

Maxime turned towards Renée.

"Monsieur de Saffré's supper, eh?" said he, "some oysters, a
partridge--"

And seeing the young man smile, Charles discreetly imitated him,
murmuring--

"Then the same supper as last Wednesday, if that will suit?"

"The supper of last Wednesday--" repeated Maxime. Then suddenly
remembering: "Yes, it's all the same to me, give us Wednesday's supper."

When the waiter had retired Renée took her eye-glasses and went
inquisitively round the little room. It was a square apartment all
white and gold and furnished with boudoir-like coquetry. In addition
to the table and the chairs, there was a low dinner waggon and a
large divan, a perfect bed, placed between the chimney-piece and the
window. A Louis XVI. clock and candlesticks adorned the white marble
mantelshelf. But the curiosity of the room was the looking-glass, a
handsome squat looking-glass which women's diamonds had covered with
names, dates, murdered verses, prodigious sentiments and astounding
avowals. Renée fancied she espied something beastly but she lacked the
courage to satisfy her curiosity. She looked at the divan, experienced
fresh embarrassment at the sight, and to give herself a countenance
began gazing at the ceiling and the chandelier of gilt copper with five
gas jets. However the uneasiness she felt was delightful. While she
raised her brow, as if to study the cornice, looking grave and holding
her eye-glasses in her hand, she derived profound enjoyment from the
presence of the equivocal furniture, which she knew to be around her;
that clear cynical looking glass, the purity of which, being wrinkled
by those dirty scrawls, had proved useful in adjusting so many false
chignons; that divan which shocked her by its breadth; the table and
the carpet itself in which she found the same smell she had detected
upon the stairs, a vague, penetrating and almost religious smell of
dust.

Then, when it was at last necessary for her to lower her eyes:

"What is this Wednesday supper?" she asked of Maxime.

"Nothing," he answered, "a bet that one of my friends lost."

In any other spot, he would without any hesitation have told her
that he had supped there on Wednesday with a lady whom he had met
on the Boulevard. But since he had entered the private room he had
instinctively treated her like a woman whom one has to please, and
whose jealousy ought to be spared. However she did not insist on the
point, but went and leaned on the rail of the window, where he soon
joined her. Charles came in and went out behind them amid a noise of
crockery and plate.

It was not yet midnight. On the Boulevard below, Paris was thundering
and prolonging the ardent day before making up its mind to go to bed.
The rows of trees separated in a confused line the whiteness of the
foot walk from the vague darkness of the roadway along which passed
the rumble and the fleet lamps of the vehicles. On either edge of
this dim strip of ground, the kiosks of the newspaper vendors shed
their light here and there, like great Venetian lanterns, tall and
strangely variegated, which had been set at regular intervals on the
ground for some colossal illumination. But at this time of night their
subdued brilliancy was lost in the glare of the neighbouring shop
fronts. Not a shutter was up, the foot walks stretched away without
a line of shadow under a stream of rays which lighted them with a
golden dust, with the warm brilliant glare of full daylight. Maxime
pointed out to Renée the Café Anglais, the windows of which were
shining in front of them. The lofty branches of the trees somewhat
prevented them, however, from seeing the houses and the footway across
the Boulevard. They leaned forward and looked below them. There was a
continual coming and going: promenaders passed by in groups, harlots
in couples trailed their skirts which they raised from time to time
with a languid gesture, casting wearied yet smiling glances around
them. Under the window itself the tables of the Café Riche were spread
out in the blaze of the gas-jets, the brilliancy of which penetrated
half across the thoroughfare; and it was especially in the centre
of this ardent focus that they saw the wan faces and pale smiles of
the passers by. Around the little tables men and women were mingled
together drinking. The girls were in showy dresses with their hair
down their necks; they lounged about on their chairs and made loud
remarks which the noise of the traffic prevented one from hearing.
Renée especially noticed one woman who was dressed in a blue costume
trimmed with white Maltese lace, and who sat alone at a table, leaning
back with her hands on her stomach; she was waiting with a gloomy
resigned look and leisurely sipping a glass of beer. Those who were
walking, slowly disappeared among the crowd, and the young woman, who
took an interest in their doings, let her eyes follow them, and gazed
from one end of the Boulevard to the other, into the noisy confused
depths of the thoroughfare full of the black swarm of promenaders
and where the lights became mere sparks. And the endless procession,
a strangely mingled crowd always the same, passed by with fatiguing
regularity amid the bright colours and the dark depths, in the
airy-like confusion of the thousand leaping flames which swept like
waves out of the shops, lending colour to the transparencies of the
windows and the kiosks, tracing fillets, letters and fiery designs
over the house fronts, studding the darkness with stars and gliding
along the roadway continually. Amid the deafening noise which rose on
high was a clamour, a prolonged monotonous rumble like an organ note
accompanying an eternal procession of little automatic dolls. At one
moment Renée thought that an accident had taken place. There was a
stream of people in motion on the left, a little beyond the Passage de
l'Opéra. But on taking her glasses she recognised the omnibus office;
there were a great many people on the side-walk standing waiting, and
rushing forwards as soon as a vehicle arrived. She could hear the rough
voice of the official calling out the numbers, and then the tinkle of
the registering bell was wafted to her like a crystalline ringing. Her
eyes next lighted upon an advertisement on a kiosk glaringly coloured
like an Épinal print. On the pane of glass, in a green and yellow
frame, there was a sneering devil's head, with hair on end, a hatter's
advertisement which she did not understand. Every five minutes the
Batignolles omnibus with its red lamps and yellow body passed by,
turning round the corner of the Rue Le Pelletier and shaking the house
with its din; and she saw the men riding on the knife-board, fellows
with weary faces who rose up to look at them, Maxime and herself, with
the inquisitive glances of hungry people peeping through a keyhole.

"Ah!" said she, "the Parc Monceaux is quietly asleep by this time."

It was the only remark she made. They remained there for nearly twenty
minutes, silent, and surrendering themselves to the intoxication of the
noise and illumination. Then, the table being laid, they went and sat
down, and as she seemed inconvenienced by the waiter's presence Maxime
dismissed him.

"Leave us--I will ring for dessert."

Renée had little flushes on her cheeks, and her eyes shone; one would
have thought she had just been running. She brought with her from the
window some of the din and animation of the Boulevard. She would not
let her companion close the sashes.

"Why! it's the orchestra," said she, when he complained of the noise.
"Don't you think it a funny music? It will be a fine accompaniment to
our oysters and partridge."

The escapade lent youth to her thirty years. She had quick movements
and a dash of fever, and this private room, this tête-à-tête with a
young man amid the din of the street, gave her the look of a fast girl.
She attacked the oysters with resolution. Maxime was not hungry and he
watched her with a smile while she devoured.

"The deuce!" he muttered, "you would have made a good supper companion."

She stopped short, annoyed that she had eaten so quickly. "You think
that I'm too hungry. What would you? It's the hour we spent at that
idiotic ball which emptied me. Ah! my poor fellow, I pity you for
living in such society as that!"

"But you know very well," said he, "that I have promised you to send
Sylvia and Laure d'Aurigny to the right about on the day that your
friends consent to come and sup with me."

With a superb gesture she answered, "Of course! I quite believe it. We
are a good deal more amusing than those women, confess it now--if one
of us bored her lover like your Sylvia and your Laure d'Aurigny must
bore you, why the poor little woman would not keep her lover a week!
You will never listen to me, but try it one of these days."

To avoid summoning the waiter Maxime rose, removed the oyster shells
and brought the partridge which had been placed on the dinner waggon.
The table had the luxurious aspect customary in the fashionable
restaurants. A breath of adorable debauchery sped over the damask
cloth, and it was with little quivers of contentment that Renée let her
slender hands stroll from her fork to her knife, from her plate to her
glass. She who usually drank water barely tinged with wine, now drank
white wine neat. As Maxime, standing with his napkin on his arm, waited
on her with comical complaisance, he resumed:

"What can Monsieur de Saffré have said to you to make you so furious?
Did he find you ugly?"

"Oh! he," she answered, "he is a nasty man. I should never have thought
that a gentleman of such distinguished bearing, and so polite when he
calls on me, could talk such language. But I forgive him. It was the
women who irritated me. One might have thought they were apple-stall
keepers. There was one who complained of a boil on her hip, and, a
little bit more, I believe she would have turned up her skirt to shew
her sore to everyone."

Maxime was splitting with laughter.

"No, really now," she continued, growing more animated, "I don't
understand you men, those women are dirty and stupid. And to think that
when I saw you go to Sylvia's I imagined prodigious things, banquets in
the ancient style, like one sees in paintings, with creatures crowned
with roses, gold cups and extraordinary voluptuousness. What a sell!
You showed me a dirty dressing-room and some women who swore like
carters. Under such conditions it really isn't worth while to do wrong."

He wanted to protest, but she silenced him, and holding between her
finger-tips a partridge bone which she was daintily nibbling, she added
in a lower tone:

"Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear fellow. I, who am a
respectable woman, when I feel bored and commit the sin of dreaming of
impossibilities, I am sure that I devise much nicer things than such as
Blanche Müller could think of."

And with a grave air she concluded by a profound remark of naive
cynicism:

"It is a question of how one is brought up, do you see?"

She gently laid the little bone on her plate. The rumble of the
vehicles continued without any louder sound rising above it. She was
obliged however to raise her voice so that he might hear her; and her
cheeks became still redder. On the dinner waggon there were still
some truffles, a sweet entremets; and some asparagus, a curiosity for
that time of the year. He set everything on the table, so as to avoid
having to disturb himself again; and as the table was rather narrow he
placed on the floor, between them, a silver pail containing a bottle
of champagne surrounded by ice. The young woman's appetite had ended
by overtaking him too. They tasted all the dishes, and emptied the
bottle of champagne with brusque gaiety, launching out into suggestive
theories, with their elbows on the table like two friends who ease
their hearts after a drinking bout. The noise on the Boulevard was
diminishing; but to Renée's ears it increased, and at times all those
wheels seemed to be revolving in her head.

When he spoke of ringing for dessert she rose up and shook her long
satin blouse to make the crumbs fall off, saying:

"That's it--You know you can light a cigar."

She felt somewhat giddy. Attracted by a peculiar noise which she could
not explain to herself, she went to the window. The shops were being
shut up.

"Dear me," said she, turning towards Maxime, "the orchestra is clearing
off."

Then she leant out again. In the centre of the thoroughfare the
coloured eyes of the cabs and omnibuses, fewer and moving faster,
were still passing one another. Large pits of darkness seemed to have
opened in front of the closed shops--along the footpaths on either
side. The cafés alone were still flaming, striping the asphalte with
sheets of light. From the Rue Drouot to the Rue du Helder she thus
perceived a long row of white and black squares, amid which the last
promenaders sprang up and vanished again strangely. The harlots, with
the trains of their dresses, by turns glaringly illuminated and
immersed in darkness, seemed like apparitions, like pale marionettes
crossing the limelight of some extravaganza. Renée amused herself for
a moment with the sight. There was no longer a full-shed light; the
gas was being turned off; the variegated kiosks stood out more defined
amid the darkness. From time to time a rush of people who had just
left some theatre, passed by. But soon there was vacancy again, and
then under the window there lingered two or three men together whom
a woman accosted. They stood in a group and discussed terms. Some of
their remarks rose audibly in the subsiding din, and then it generally
happened that the woman went off with one of the men. Other girls
wandered from café to café, strolled round the tables, pocketed the
forgotten lumps of sugar, laughed with the waiters, and gazed fixedly
at the belated customers, with a silent, questioning, proffering
look. And then, just after Renée had let her eyes follow the all but
unoccupied knife-board of a Batignolles omnibus, she recognised, at
the corner of the foot-pavement, the woman in the blue dress and white
lace, who stood glancing about her, still in search of a man.

When Maxime came to fetch Renée at the window, where she was forgetting
herself, he smiled as he looked at one of the partly opened casements
of the Café Anglais. The idea that his father was there supping on
his side seemed comical to him; but that evening a peculiar pudicity
restrained his customary banter. Renée only left the window-rail
regretfully. An intoxication and languor rose from the vague depths
of the Boulevard. There was a coaxing summons to self-indulgent sleep
in the attenuated rumble of the vehicles, and the obliteration of the
bright lights. The whispers that sped by, the groups assembled in
shadowy corners, transformed the side-walk into the passage of some
large inn, at the hour when travellers repair to their chance beds. The
gleam and the noise became fainter and fainter, the city was falling
asleep, and a breath of love swept over the housetops.

When the young woman turned her head the light of the little chandelier
made her blink her eyes. She was now somewhat pale and felt slight
quivers at the corners of her mouth. Charles was setting out the
dessert; he left the room, came in again, swinging the door, slowly and
phlegmatically like a well-bred man.

"But I'm no longer hungry!" exclaimed Renée, "take away all those
plates and bring us the coffee."

The waiter, accustomed to the whims of the women he served, cleared the
dessert away and poured out the coffee. He filled the whole room with
his importance.

"Pray do send him away," said the young woman--half sickened by the
sight of him--to Maxime.

Maxime dismissed him; but scarcely had he disappeared, than he returned
once more to draw the large curtains of the window closely together
with a discreet air. When he had at last retired, the young fellow,
who, on his side, was beginning to feel annoyed, rose from his seat and
going to the door:

"Wait a bit," he said, "I have the means of getting rid of him."

And he pushed the bolt.

"That's it," she rejoined, "we shall at least be by ourselves."

Their confidential, friendly chatting began again. Maxime had lighted
a cigar. Renée sipped her coffee and even allowed herself a glass of
chartreuse. The room grew warmer and became filled with bluish smoke.
She ended by setting her elbows on the table and by resting her chin
between her two half-closed fists. Under this slight pressure her
mouth grew smaller, her cheeks were slightly raised, and her narrow
eyes shone more brightly. Thus unsettled, her little face looked
adorable, under the stream of golden curls which now fell down upon
her eyebrows. Maxime gazed at her through the smoke of his cigar. He
found she had an original look. At certain moments he was no longer
quite sure as to her sex; the long wrinkle which crossed her forehead,
the pouting forwardness of her lips, the undecided air imparted by her
shortsightedness, made a tall young man of her; the more so, as her
long black satin blouse rose so high that one barely espied a white
fatty strip of neck under her chin. She let herself be looked at with a
smile, no longer moving her head, but with her eyes lost in vacancy and
her lips closed.

[Illustration: RENÉE AND MAXIME IN THE PRIVATE ROOM AT THE RESTAURANT.]

Then suddenly she woke up, and went to look at the mirror, towards
which her dreamy eyes had turned since a few moments. She raised
herself on tip-toe, and leant her hands on the edge of the mantelshelf
to read the signatures, the coarse remarks which had shocked her before
supper. She spelt the syllables with some little difficulty, laughed,
and then still read on like a schoolboy who is turning over some pages
of Piron in his desk.

"'Ernest and Clara'," said she, "and there is a heart underneath,
which looks like a funnel. Ah! this is better, 'I love men because
I like truffles.' Signed, 'Laure.' I say, Maxime, was it that woman
d'Aurigny who wrote that?----Then here are the arms of one of these
women, I fancy: a hen smoking a big pipe. And more names, a perfect
calendar of saints: 'Victor, Amélie, Alexandre, Édouard, Marguerite,
Paquita, Louise, Renée'--Ah, so there's one who is named like me--"

Maxime could see her ardent face in the looking-glass. She raised
herself up still more, and her domino, drawn more closely behind,
outlined the curve of her figure, the development of her hips. The
young fellow's eyes followed the line of the satin which moulded her
form like a chemise. He rose up in his turn and threw away his cigar.
He was ill at ease and nervous. Something usual and accustomed was
lacking about him.

"Ah, here's your name, Maxime," exclaimed Renée. "Listen--'I love--'"

But he had seated himself on a corner of the divan, almost at the young
woman's feet. And after succeeding in taking hold of her hands with a
prompt movement, and making her turn away from the looking-glass, he
said in a strange voice:

"Pray don't read that."

She struggled, laughing nervously.

"Why not? Am I not your confidante?"

But he insisted in a more husky tone.

"No, no, not this evening."

He was still holding her, and she tried to free herself with little
jerks of the wrists. Their eyes had an expression they were not
acquainted with; there was a touch of shame in their long, constrained
smile. She fell upon her knees at the edge of the divan. They continued
struggling although she no longer made an effort to return to the
mirror, and was already surrendering herself. And as the young fellow
caught her round the body, she said with an embarrassed dying laugh:

"Come, leave me. You are hurting me--"

It was the sole murmur that came from her lips. Amid the profound
silence of the room where the gas seemed to shoot up higher, she felt
the ground tremble and heard the crash of a Batignolles omnibus which
must have been turning the corner of the Boulevard. And it was all
over. When they again found themselves, seated side-by-side on the
divan, he stammered out, amid their mutual embarrassment:

"Bah! it was bound to happen one day or other."

She said nothing. With an overwhelmed air, she looked at the pattern of
the carpet.

"Were you thinking of it?" continued Maxime, stammering more and more.
"I wasn't, not at all. I ought to have mistrusted the private room."

But in a deep voice, as if all the middle-class uprightness of the
Bérauds Du Châtel had been awakened by this supreme sin:

"What we have just done is infamous," she murmured, sobered, her face
aged and very grave.

She was stifling. She went to the window, drew back the curtains,
and leant over the rail. The orchestra was hushed; the sin had been
committed amid the last quiver of the basses and the distant chant of
the violins, the vague soft music of the Boulevard now sleeping and
dreaming of love. The road and the side-walks stretched away below in
grey solitude. All the rumbling cab wheels seemed to have gone off,
taking the lights and the crowd away with them. Below the window, the
Café Riche was closed, not a ray of light glided from between the
shutters. Across the way, brazen-like gleams alone appeared upon the
façade of the Café Anglais, especially lighting up one window which
was partly open and whence a faint sound of laughter escaped. And all
along this ribbon of darkness, from the turn at the Rue Drouot to the
other end, as far as her eyes could reach, she no longer saw aught save
the symmetrical blurs of the kiosks tinging the night with red and
green, without illuminating it, and looking like night-lights spaced
along some giant dormitory. She raised her head. The high branches of
the trees stood out against a clear sky, while the irregular outline
of the house roofs died away till it seemed like a clustering heap of
rocks on the shore of a bluish sea. But this strip of sky saddened her
all the more, and it was in the darkness of the Boulevard alone that
she found some consolation. What lingered of the noise and vice of the
evening on the surface of the deserted thoroughfare excused her. She
thought she could feel the heat of all these men and women's footsteps
ascend from the cooling footway. The shames that had trailed there,
the desires of a minute, the whispered offers, the weddings of a night
paid for in advance, were evaporating, floating about in a heavy mist
rolled away by the breath of morning. Leaning out into the darkness
she inhaled this quivering silence, this alcove-like smell, as an
encouragement which came to her from below, as an assurance that her
shame was shared and accepted by a colluding city. And when her eyes
had grown accustomed to the obscurity she perceived the woman in the
blue dress trimmed with lace, standing in the same place, alone in the
grey solitude, waiting and offering herself to the deserted darkness.

On turning, the young woman beheld Charles who was looking around him,
scenting like a dog. He ended by perceiving Renée's blue ribbon, lying
rumpled and forgotten on a corner of the divan. And with his polite
air, he hastened to take it to her. Then she realised all her shame.
Standing in front of the looking-glass she tried with clumsy hands to
tie the ribbon again. But her chignon had fallen, the little curls were
flattened on her temples, and she was unable to tie the bow. Charles
came to her help, saying, as if he were offering some usual thing, a
finger glass or some toothpicks:

"If madame would like the comb?"

"Oh! no, there's no need," interrupted Maxime, giving the waiter an
impatient look. "Go and fetch us a cab."

Renée made up her mind to pull the hood of her domino over her head.
And as she was about to leave the looking-glass, she lightly raised
herself in search of the words which Maxime's grasp had prevented her
from reading. Slanting upwards towards the ceiling, and written in a
large, abominable hand there was this declaration signed Sylvia: "I
love Maxime." On reading it Renée bit her lip and drew her hood rather
lower.

They experienced a horrible constraint in the vehicle. They had seated
themselves one in front of the other as when they left the Parc
Monceaux. They could not think of a word to say to each other. The cab
was full of opaque darkness, and Maxime's cigar didn't even dot it with
a red speck, a pink charcoal-like glimmer. The young fellow, again
hidden among the skirts, "which he had up to his eyes," felt ill at
ease amid this darkness and silence, near this speechless woman, whom
he felt beside him, and whose eyes he imagined he could see gazing wide
open into the night. To seem less foolish he ended by seeking her hand,
and when he held it in his own he felt relieved and found the situation
tolerable. Renée abandoned this hand of hers, languidly and dreamily.

The cab crossed over the Place de la Madeleine. Renée was reflecting
that she was not guilty. She had not been bent on incest. And the more
she descended into herself, the more innocent she considered she had
been, at the outset of her escapade, at her furtive departure from the
Parc Monceaux, at Blanche Müller's, on the Boulevard, and even in the
private room at the restaurant. Why had she fallen on her knees at the
edge of that divan? She no longer knew. She had certainly not thought
of _that_ for a moment. She would have angrily refused. She had made
this excursion as a joke, she had been bent on amusing herself, nothing
more. Thus did she ponder, and in the rumbling of the cab she seemed
again to find the deafening orchestra of the Boulevard, that coming and
going of men and women, while bars of fire burned her tired eyes.

Maxime was also musing, with some sense of worry, in his corner. The
adventure annoyed him. He laid the blame on the black satin domino.
Had one ever seen a woman rig herself out in that style? You couldn't
even see her neck. He had taken her for a boy, he had played with her,
and it wasn't his fault if the game had become something serious. He
certainly wouldn't have touched her with the tips of his fingers, had
she only shown her shoulders a bit. He would then have remembered that
she was his father's wife. Then, as he did not care for disagreeable
reflections, he forgave himself. So much the worse, after all! he would
try not to begin again. It was folly.

The cab stopped, and Maxime alighted the first, to help Renée out. But
at the little gate of the park he did not dare to kiss her. They shook
hands according to their wont. She was already on the other side of
the railing, when, in view of saying something, and at the same time
unwittingly confessing a preoccupation which had vaguely crossed her
reveries since leaving the restaurant:

"What was that comb," she asked, "which the waiter spoke about?"

"That comb," repeated Maxime, embarrassed, "I'm sure I don't know."

But Renée abruptly realised the truth. The room, no doubt, had a comb
which formed part of its appurtenances like the curtains, the bolt, and
the divan. And without waiting an explanation, which did not come, she
plunged into the darkness of the Parc Monceaux, hastening her steps,
and thinking she could see behind her the tortoise-shell teeth in which
Laure d'Aurigny and Sylvia had left some of their fair and their dark
hairs. Renée was very feverish, and it became necessary for Céleste
to put her to bed and watch her till the morning. On the side-walk of
the Boulevard Malesherbes, Maxime consulted himself for a moment as to
whether he should go and join the joyous party at the Café Anglais;
then, with the idea that he was punishing himself, he decided that he
ought to go home to bed.

On the morrow, Renée awoke at a late hour from a heavy dreamless sleep.
She had a large fire lighted, and said that she should spend the day in
her room. This was her refuge in serious moments. Towards noon, as her
husband did not see her come down to lunch, he asked her permission to
speak with her a moment. She was already refusing the request, with a
tinge of nervousness, when she decided otherwise. On the day before she
had sent Saccard Worms's bill, amounting to a hundred and thirty-six
thousand francs, a rather high figure, and, no doubt, he wished to
indulge in the gallantry of giving her a receipt in person.

A thought came to her of the little curls of the day before; and
she mechanically looked in the glass at her hair, which Céleste had
knotted in large tresses. Then she ensconced herself in a corner by
the fire-place, burying herself in the lace of her dressing-gown.
Saccard, whose rooms also were on the first floor, corresponding with
his wife's, came to see her in his slippers, in the true style of a
husband. He barely set foot in Renée's room once a month, and then
only for some delicate pecuniary matter. That morning he had red eyes,
and the wan complexion of a man who has not slept. He kissed the young
woman's hand gallantly.

"You are not well, my dear?" he said, as he sat down on the other side
of the chimney-piece. "A little headache, isn't it? Excuse my coming
to worry you with my business rigmaroles, but the matter is somewhat
serious."

From one of the pockets of his dressing-gown he drew forth Worms's
bill, the glazed paper of which Renée recognised.

"I found this bill on my table, yesterday," he continued, "and I'm very
sorry, but I really can't pay it just now."

Out of the corner of his eye he watched the effect that his words
produced on his wife, who seemed to be deeply astonished. He resumed
with a smile:

"As you know, my dear, I'm not in the habit of looking into your
expenses. I don't say that certain items in this bill haven't
surprised me a little. For instance, on the second page, I find this:
'Ball dress: material, 70 francs; making up, 600 francs; money lent,
5000 francs; perfumery, 6 francs.' That seventy franc dress comes to
rather a stiff figure. But you know very well that I understand all
kinds of weaknesses. Your bill amounts to a hundred and thirty-six
thousand francs, and you have been almost moderate, relatively
speaking, I mean--Only, I must repeat it, I can't pay, I'm hard up."

She stretched out her hand with a gesture of restrained mortification.

"Very well," she said curtly, "hand me back the bill. I will attend to
it."

"I see that you don't believe me," muttered Saccard, enjoying his
wife's incredulity respecting his financial embarrassment, as much as
if it had been a triumph. "I don't say that my position is threatened,
but business is very queer for the moment. I worry you, no doubt, but
let me explain our position to you. You confided your dowry to me, and
I owe you complete frankness."

He laid the bill on the mantelshelf, took up the tongs, and began to
poke the fire. This mania for raking the cinders, while he was talking
about business matters, was a system which had become a habit with him.
Whenever he reached a figure or a remark, which it bothered him to
enunciate, he brought about some downfall of the logs, which he began
repairing laboriously, bringing the logs closer together, collecting
and piling the little splinters of wood, one above the other. On other
occasions he almost disappeared into the fire-place in search of some
straying embers. He spoke in a lower tone, you grew impatient, you
became interested in his skilful edification of incandescent firewood,
you no longer listened to him, and, as a rule, you left his presence
defeated but content. Even at other people's houses he despotically
took possession of the tongs. In the summer he toyed with a pen-holder,
a paper or a pen-knife.

"My dear," said he, giving a blow which sent the fire flying, "I must
once again ask your forgiveness for entering into all these details.
I have punctually paid you the interest of the funds which you placed
in my hands. I can even say, without wishing to hurt your feelings,
that I merely looked upon that interest as your pocket-money, paying
your expenses, and never asking you to contribute your share of the
household disbursements."

He paused. Renée suffered as she looked at him, while he made a large
hole in the cinders to bring the end of a log among them. He was
approaching a delicate matter.

"As you will understand, I was obliged to make your money yield a high
interest. The funds are in safe hands, be assured of that. As for the
amount coming from your property in Sologne, it partly served to pay
for the house we live in, the remainder is invested in an excellent
affair, the Société Générale of the Ports of Morocco. We are not
settling accounts, are we? but I want to prove to you that very often
we poor husbands are not judged at our worth."

A powerful motive must have impelled him to lie a little less than
usual. The truth was that Renée's dowry had for a long time ceased
to exist; it had simply become a fictitious asset in Saccard's safe.
Although he paid the interest at the rate of two or three hundred per
cent, he could not have produced a single security, or have found the
smallest solid particle of the original capital. As he half confessed,
the five hundred thousand francs derived from the Sologne property had
served to give something on account for the house and the furniture,
which between them had cost nearly two millions of francs. Saccard
still owed a million to the upholsterer and the builder.

"I don't claim anything from you," said Renée at last, "I know that I
owe you a deal of money."

"Oh! my dear," he exclaimed, taking hold of his wife's hand, but
without relinquishing the tongs, "what a bad idea you have of me! In
two words, now, I have been unlucky at the Bourse, Toutin-Laroche has
been playing some foolish pranks, and Mignon and Charrier are a couple
of brutes who have swindled me. And that is why I can't pay your bill.
You will forgive me, won't you?"

He seemed really moved. He thrust the tongs between the logs and made
the sparks dart forth like rockets. Renée remembered how nervous
he had seemed for some time past. But she was unable to penetrate
the astonishing truth. Saccard had reached the point that he had to
accomplish a miracle every day. He resided in a house which had cost
two millions of francs, he lived on the footing of a prince's civil
list, and yet on certain mornings he had not a thousand francs in his
safe. His expenditure did not seem to diminish, however. He lived
upon debt among a people of creditors who swallowed up, day by day,
the scandalous profits which he realised by certain transactions. In
the meantime, at the same moment indeed, companies crumbled around;
before him yawned fresh and deeper pits, over which he had to spring,
being unable to fill them up. He thus went on over mined ground, amid
a continuous crisis, settling bills of fifty thousand francs, and not
paying his coachman's wages, still marching on with an assurance which
became more and more regal, and emptying over Paris, more ragefully
than ever, his empty safe, whence the golden river of legendary source
still continued to flow.

The times were momentarily bad for speculation. Saccard was the
worthy offspring of the Hôtel de Ville. Like Paris, he had been eager
for transformation, feverishly bent upon enjoyment, and blindly
lavish in expenditure. And at this moment, like the city itself, he
found himself in the presence of a formidable deficit which it was
necessary he should make good secretly; for he would not hear speak
of sobriety, economy, calm, and simple life. He preferred to retain
the useless luxury and real misery of these new thoroughfares, whence
he had derived that colossal fortune ushered each morning into being,
but always swallowed up when evening came. Passing from adventure
to adventure, he now only possessed the gilded façade of an absent
capital. In that time of fierce madness, Paris herself did not engage
her future with less self-restraint, or march more straightly towards
every folly and every financial trickery. The liquidation threatened to
be a terrible one.

The finest speculations fell through in Saccard's hands. As he
confessed, he had just experienced considerable losses on the Bourse.
M. Toutin-Laroche had almost capsized the Crédit Viticole by a
"bulling" game which had suddenly turned against him; fortunately the
government, intervening secretly, had reset the famous farmers' loan
machine on its legs. Saccard--already badly shaken by this double
blow, warmly rated by his brother the minister on account of the
danger which had threatened the delegation bonds of the city of Paris,
compromised at the same time at the Crédit Viticole--was yet even
unluckier in his speculations in house property. Mignon and Charrier
had altogether ceased dealing with him. If he accused them it was
because he was secretly enraged to think that he had blundered by
building on his share of the land, whilst they prudently sold theirs.
While they were netting a fortune, he remained hampered by his houses
which he was often only able to dispose of at a loss. Among others he
sold a mansion in the Rue de Marignan, on which he still owed three
hundred and eighty thousand francs, for three hundred thousand. He had
certainly invented a dodge worthy of him, which consisted in demanding
ten thousand francs for a flat worth eight thousand at the most. The
frightened tenant only signed a lease when the landlord consented to
make him a present of the first two years' rent; the apartment was thus
brought down to its real value, but the lease enunciated the figure of
ten thousand francs, and when Saccard found a purchaser and capitalized
the income of the property the valuation proved most fantastic. He
could not apply this swindle on a large scale as his houses did not
let; indeed he had built them too soon; the clearings, amid which they
were so to say lost, in the mud and the winter cold, isolated them and
lowered their value considerably. The affair, which affected Saccard
the most, was the vulgar swindle of Messieurs Mignon and Charrier,
who bought back from him the mansion which he had been compelled to
give up building on the Boulevard Malesherbes. The contractors were at
last smitten with the desire of residing on "their Boulevard." As they
had sold their share of the building plots at a profit, and scented
the embarrassed circumstances of their ex-partner, they offered to
rid him of the enclosure in the centre of which the mansion rose to
the flooring of the first storey, where the iron girders were partly
placed. Only they talked of the solid foundations in cut stone as
"useless rubbish," saying that they would have preferred the soil to be
bare so as to build upon it according to their taste. Saccard had to
sell, without taking the hundred and odd thousand francs which he had
already expended into account. And what exasperated him the more was
that the contractors would never agree to take the ground back at the
rate of two hundred and fifty francs the metre, at which figure it had
been valued when the plots were shared. They knocked off twenty-five
francs per metre, like those second-hand dealers who will only give
four francs for an object which they sold for five the day before.
Forty-eight hours later, Saccard had the grief of seeing an army of
masons invade the enclosure and continue building upon the so called
"useless rubbish."

He thus played the impecunious all the better before his wife, as his
affairs were becoming more and more muddled. He was not the man to
confess himself for the simple love of truth.

"But if you find yourself embarrassed," said Renée with an air of
doubt, "why did you buy me that aigrette and necklace which cost you,
I believe, sixty-five thousand francs? I have no use for those jewels
and I shall be obliged to ask your permission to dispose of them so as
to give Worms something on account."

"Never do that!" he exclaimed nervously. "If you were not seen wearing
those jewels at the ball at the ministry to-morrow people would gossip
about my position."

He was good-natured that morning, so he ended by smiling and muttering
with a wink:

"We speculators, my dear, are like pretty women, we have our little
trickeries. Pray keep your aigrette and your necklace for love of me."

He could not tell the story, for although a very amusing one, it was in
somewhat questionable taste. Saccard and Laure d'Aurigny had entered
into an alliance one night after supper. Laure was head over heels
in debt, and was trying to find some nice young man who would kindly
elope with her and take her to London. Saccard on his side felt the
ground giving way beneath him; his failing imagination sought for an
expedient which would show him to the public wallowing on a bed of gold
and bank notes. The harlot and the speculator came to an understanding
amid the semi-intoxication of dessert. He hit upon the idea of that
sale of diamonds which attracted all Paris, and where amid a great fuss
he purchased some jewels for his wife. Then with the product of the
sale, some four hundred thousand francs, he succeeded in satisfying
Laure's creditors who were owed about twice that amount. It may even
be believed that he recouped a part of his sixty-five thousand francs.
When he was seen liquidating the d'Aurigny's affairs, he was supposed
to be her protector, people thought that he had paid her debts in full,
and that he was doing all sorts of foolish things for her. Every hand
was stretched out to him, and his credit returned, formidable. At the
Bourse he was joked about his passion with smiles and allusions which
delighted him. Meanwhile, Laure d'Aurigny, brought into notoriety by
all this fuss, and with whom he did not even spend a single night,
pretended she was deceiving him with eight or ten fools allured by the
idea of stealing her from a man of such colossal wealth. In one month
she obtained two sets of furniture and more diamonds than she had sold.
Saccard had fallen into the habit of going to smoke a cigar at her
place of an afternoon on leaving the Bourse; and he often perceived
coat tails flying off in terror through the doorways. When he and
Laure were alone they could not look at each other without laughing.
He kissed her on the forehead as if she were a perverse girl whose
knavery delighted him. He did not give her a copper; on the contrary,
she once lent him some money to pay a gambling debt.

Renée wished to insist, and spoke of at least pawning the jewels; but
her husband made her understand that it was not possible, that all
Paris expected to see her wearing them on the morrow. Thereupon the
young woman who was greatly worried about Worms's bill tried to devise
another expedient.

"But my Charonne affair," she suddenly exclaimed, "it is progressing
well, isn't it? You told me only the other day that the profits
would be superb. Perhaps Larsonneau would advance me the hundred and
thirty-six thousand francs?"

For a minute Saccard had forgotten the tongs between his legs. He now
hastily took hold of them again, leant forward and almost disappeared
into the fire-place, whence the young woman heard his voice huskily
muttering:

"Yes, yes, Larsonneau might perhaps--"

She was at last coming of her own accord to the point to which he had
gently tried to lead her since the outset of the conversation. For
two years already he had been preparing his masterly stroke in the
direction of Charonne. His wife had never consented to part with Aunt
Élisabeth's property; she had sworn to the latter that she would keep
it intact to bequeath it to her children, should she become a mother.
In presence of this obstinacy, the speculator's imagination had set
to work and had ended by constructing something poetical--a design of
exquisite knavery, a colossal piece of trickery by which the city of
Paris, the State, his wife, and even Larsonneau would be victimized. He
no longer talked about selling the ground; only he every day deplored
the folly of leaving it unproductive, of contenting oneself with an
income of two per cent. Renée, always pressed for money, had ended by
entertaining the idea of a speculation. Saccard based his operation
on the certainty of an approaching expropriation for the cutting
of the Boulevard du Prince Eugène, the line of which was not yet
clearly decided upon. And then it was that he brought forward his old
accomplice Larsonneau, as a partner who made an agreement with his wife
on the following basis. She on her side brought the ground representing
a value of five hundred thousand francs; and Larsonneau, on his
side, undertook to expend a similar sum in building upon this ground
a popular music-hall with a large garden where games of all kinds,
swings, skittles, and bowls should be installed. The profits were
naturally to be divided, just as the losses were to be equally shared.
In the event of one of the partners wishing to retire, he might do so
by claiming his share, according to the valuation which would be made.
Renée seemed surprised by this high figure of five hundred thousand
francs, when the ground was worth three hundred thousand at the most.
But Saccard made her understand that it was a skilful plan for tying
Larsonneau's hands later on, for his buildings would never represent
such an amount.

Larsonneau had become an elegant man about town, well gloved, with
dazzling linen and astounding neckties. To go about he had a tilbury
as light as a piece of clock-work, with a very high seat, and which he
drove himself. His offices in the Rue de Rivoli were a set of sumptuous
rooms in which one never saw the least portfolio or business paper
lying about. His clerks wrote on tables of blackened pear-wood adorned
with marquetry and ornaments of chased brass. He had assumed the style
and title of an expropriation agent, a new calling which the works of
Paris had brought into being. By his connection with the Hôtel de Ville
he was informed in advance of the cutting of any new thoroughfares.
When he had induced a road inspector to show him the proposed line
of route of a new Boulevard, he went to offer his services to the
threatened householders. And he brought forward his little plan for
increasing the indemnity by acting before the decree of public utility
was issued. As soon as a householder accepted his proposals, he took
all the expense on himself, drew a plan of the property, brought
the affair before the courts and paid an advocate, the whole for a
percentage on the difference between the offer made by the city and the
indemnity awarded by the jury. To this calling, which after all might
be avowed, he annexed several others. He especially practised usury.
He was not the usurer of the old school, ragged and dirty, with white
expressionless eyes like five franc pieces, and pale lips tightly drawn
together like the strings of a purse. He smiled, gave charming glances,
had himself dressed by Dusautoy, and went to lunch at Brébant's with
his victim, whom he called "My dear fellow" when he offered him an
havannah at dessert. At bottom, despite his waistcoats tightly buckled
round his waist, Larsonneau was a terrible fellow who, without losing
aught of his amiability, would have prosecuted a debtor for payment of
a bill until the unfortunate man was reduced to commit suicide.

Saccard would willingly have chosen another partner. But he still
entertained anxiety respecting the false inventory which Larsonneau
preciously preserved. So he preferred to interest him in the affair,
hoping that he would be able to profit by some circumstance to regain
possession of this compromising document. Larsonneau built the
music-hall, an edifice in planks and plaster, surmounted by little tin
belfries which he painted red and yellow. The garden and the games
proved successful in the populous district of Charonne. At the end of a
couple of years the speculation seemed a prosperous one, although the
profits were in reality very small. So far, Saccard had always spoken
enthusiastically to his wife concerning the prospects of such a fine
idea.

On seeing that her husband did not make up his mind to come out of the
fire-place, where his voice was becoming more and more indistinct,
Renée exclaimed:

"I shall go to see Larsonneau to-day. It is my only resource."

Thereupon he abandoned the log with which he was struggling.

"The errand's done, my dear," he said smiling. "Don't I forestall all
your desires? I saw Larsonneau last night."

"And he promised you the hundred and thirty-six thousand francs?" she
asked anxiously.

Between the two flaming logs he was building a mountain of live
cinders, delicately taking up the smallest fragments with the tongs,
and looking with a satisfied air at the elevation which he raised with
infinite art.

"Oh! how fast you go!" he muttered. "A hundred and thirty-six thousand
francs make a large sum. Larsonneau is a good fellow, but his means are
still limited. He is quite ready to oblige you--"

He paused, blinking his eyes and rebuilding a corner of the elevation
which had fallen through. The pastime began to confuse the young
woman's ideas. Despite herself she watched the work of her husband
whose clumsiness increased. She felt inclined to give him advice.
Forgetting Worms, the bill, and her need of money, she ended by
exclaiming:

"But place that large bit, there, underneath; the others will then keep
up."

Her husband submissively obeyed her, and added:

"He can only find fifty thousand francs. It will always make a nice
instalment. Only, he won't mix this affair up with the Charonne one.
He is but an intermediary, do you understand, my dear? The person who
really lends the money demands enormous interest. He wants a note of
hand for eighty thousand francs at six months' date."

And having crowned the height with a pointed cinder he crossed his
hands over the tongs and looked fixedly at his wife.

"Eighty thousand francs!" she cried. "But that's robbery! Do you advise
me to do anything so foolish?"

"No," he answered plainly. "But, if you are in absolute need of money,
I won't forbid it."

He rose up as if he meant to leave the room. Renée, in a state of cruel
indecision, looked at her husband, and at the bill which he laid upon
the mantelshelf. She ended by taking her poor head in her hands and
murmuring:

"Oh! these business matters! My head is splitting, this morning. Well,
I shall sign this bill for eighty thousand francs. If I didn't, I
should become altogether ill. I know myself, I should spend the day in
frightful tortures--I prefer to be foolish at once. It will relieve me."

And she spoke of ringing to have a bill stamp fetched. But he insisted
upon rendering her this service in person. No doubt he had the bill
stamp in his pocket, for his absence scarcely lasted a couple of
minutes. While she was writing at a little table which he had drawn
to the fireside, he examined her and an astonished feeling of desire
lighted up his eyes. It was very warm in the room, which was still full
of the young woman's rising and the scent of her first toilet. Whilst
speaking, she had let the folds of the dressing-gown in which she had
swathed herself, fall down, and the eyes of her husband, who stood
in front of her, glided over her bent head from amid the gold of her
hair far down to the whiteness of her neck and bosom. He smiled with a
singular air; this ardent fire which had burnt his face, this closed
room, the heavy atmosphere of which was impregnated with a scent of
love, this yellow hair and this white skin which tempted him with a
kind of conjugal disdain, made him dreamy, enlarged the scope of the
drama in which he had just played a scene, and prompted some secret
voluptuous design in his brutal jobber's flesh.

When his wife held him out the bill, begging him to finish the affair
for her, he took it, still looking at her.

"You are bewitchingly beautiful," he murmured.

And as she leant forward to push the table aside, he roughly kissed her
on the neck. She gave a little cry. Then she rose up, quivering, trying
to laugh, thinking despite of herself of the other's kisses the night
before. But he regretted having given her this cabman's kiss, and on
leaving he simply pressed her hand in a friendly manner and promised
her that she should have the fifty thousand francs that same evening.

Renée dozed all day in front of the fire. At hours of crisis she
experienced a creole-like languor; all her turbulent nature became
lazy, chilly, benumbed. She shivered, she needed blazing fires, a
suffocating heat, which brought little drops of perspiration to her
forehead, and tranquillized her. In this burning atmosphere, in this
bath of flames, she scarcely suffered; her pain became like a light
dream, a vague oppression, the very ambiguity of which ended by
becoming voluptuous. It was thus that, until the evening, she lulled
her remorse of the night before, in the red glow of the hearth,
opposite a terrible fire, which made the furniture around her crack,
and at moments deprived her of the consciousness of being. She was
able to dream of Maxime as of an inflamed enjoyment, the rays of which
burnt her. She had a nightmare of strange amours, amid flaring logs,
on beds heated white-hot. Céleste went to and fro about the room with
the calm face of a servant with icy blood. She had orders not to admit
anyone; and she even kept the door shut to those inseparables, Adeline
d'Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, when they called on returning from
lunching together at a villa which they had rented at Saint-Germain.
However, towards the evening, when Céleste came to inform her mistress
that her master's sister, Madame Sidonie, wished to see her, she
received orders to show her in.

As a rule Madame Sidonie only called at dusk. And yet her brother
had prevailed upon her to wear silk dresses. But no one knew how it
happened, although the silk she wore came fresh from the shop, it never
looked new; it was shabby, destitute of sheen, and seemed to be in
tatters. She had also consented not to bring her basket to Saccard's
house, but by way of compensation her pocket always overflowed with
papers. She was interested in Renée, whom she was unable to transform
into a reasonable customer resigned to the necessities of life. She
visited her regularly, wearing the discreet smile of a doctor who
does not like to frighten his patient by telling her the name of her
disease. She commiserated her little worries, as if they had been
petty ailments which she could cure immediately if the young woman
only chose. The latter, who was in one of those moments when one feels
the need of being pitied, simply received her to tell her that she had
intolerable pains in her head.

"Why, my beauty," muttered Madame Sidonie, as she glided through the
shade of the room, "why, you are stifling here! Still your neuralgic
pains, eh? It's worry. You take life too much to heart."

"Yes, I have a great deal of worry," replied Renée.

Night was coming on. She had not allowed Céleste to light the lamp. The
fire alone shed a grand red glow which fully illuminated her, as she
reclined in her white dressing-gown, the lace of which had a pinkish
tinge. At the edge of the shade one could just see an end of Madame
Sidonie's black dress, and her two crossed hands encased in grey cotton
gloves. Her soft voice emerged out of the darkness.

"Still worry about money?" she said, in a tone full of gentleness and
pity, just as if she had spoken of the worries of the heart.

Renée lowered her eyelids, and made a gesture of avowal.

"Ah! if my brothers listened to me!" said Madame Sidonie, "we should
all be rich. But they shrug their shoulders whenever I speak to them
about that debt of three milliards, you know. Still I have good hopes.
For the last ten years I have been wanting to make a journey to
England, but I have so little time for myself. Anyhow I recently made
up my mind to write to London, and I am waiting for the answer."

And as the young woman smiled:

"I know you are incredulous as well. Still you would be very pleased
if I made you a present of a pretty million one of these days. Oh! the
story is simple enough: it was a Paris banker who lent the money to the
son of the King of England, and as the banker died without leaving any
direct heirs, the State can now-a-days claim the reimbursement of the
debt with compound interest. I have calculated it--it amounts to two
milliards nine hundred and forty-three millions two hundred and ten
thousand francs. It will come, it will come; never fear!"

"In the meantime," said the young woman with a dash of irony, "you
ought to obtain me a hundred thousand francs. I could then pay my
tailor, who is greatly worrying me!"

"A hundred thousand francs can be found," replied Madame Sidonie,
quietly. "It is only a question of paying for them."

The fire was glowing. Renée, feeling more and more languid, stretched
out her legs, and showed the tips of her slippers at the edge of her
dressing-gown, while the woman of business resumed in her commiserating
voice:

"Poor dear, you are really not reasonable. I know a great many women,
but I have never seen a single one so careless about her health as you
are. For instance, that little Michelin, there's one who knows how to
manage. In spite of myself I think of you when I see her so happy and
well. Do you know that Monsieur de Saffré is madly in love with her,
and that he has already given her presents worth nearly ten thousand
francs? I believe that her dream is to have a country house."

Madame Sidonie was growing more animated, and fumbled in her pocket.

"I still have about me a letter from a poor young woman. If we had a
light I would let you read it. Just fancy, her husband doesn't provide
for her. She had accepted some bills, and she has been obliged to
borrow from a gentleman I know. It was I who rescued the promissory
notes from the lawyer's clutches, and it wasn't an easy matter. The
poor children, do you think they are wrong? I receive them at my place
as if they were my son and daughter."

"You know a money-lender?" asked Renée negligently.

"I know ten. Between women one can say a number of things, can't one?
and it isn't because your husband is my brother that I excuse his
conduct in running after strumpets and leaving a beautiful woman like
you to mope at the fireside. That Laure d'Aurigny costs him a fortune.
It wouldn't astonish me if he had refused you money. He _has_ refused
you, hasn't he? Oh, the wretch!"

Renée listened complacently to this voice which emerged out of the
shade like the vague echo of her own dreams. With her eyelids half
lowered, almost recumbent in her arm-chair, she no longer realised that
Madame Sidonie was there; she fancied she dreamt that evil thoughts had
come to her and tempted her with infinite gentleness; meanwhile the
other spoke on at length, and her voice was like a monotonous flow of
lukewarm water.

"It was Madame de Lauwerens who spoilt your life," she said. "You
wouldn't believe me. Oh! you wouldn't be reduced to cry by your
fireside if you hadn't mistrusted me; and I love you like my eyes, my
beauty. You have a bewitching foot. You will no doubt laugh at me, but
I must tell you my folly. When I haven't seen you for three days I am
absolutely impelled to come and admire you. Yes, I lack something; I
feel the need of feasting my eyes on your beautiful hair, your face
which is so white and delicate, and your slim waist. Really I have
never seen anyone else with such a figure."

Renée ended by smiling. Her lovers themselves had not shown such
warmth, such pious ecstasy in speaking to her of her beauty. Madame
Sidonie observed her smile.

"Come, it's agreed," she said, rising hastily. "I run on and on and
forget that I make your head split. You will come to-morrow, won't you?
We will talk over money matters; we will find a lender. You hear me?
I'm determined that you shall be happy."

The young woman, still motionless and enervated by the heat, answered
after a pause, as if she had had to make a laborious effort to
understand what was being said around her:--

"Yes, yes, it's agreed, and we will have a chat; but not to-morrow.
Worms will be satisfied with something on account. When he worries me
again, we will see. Don't talk to me about all that now. Business has
made my head split."

Madame Sidonie seemed greatly vexed. She was on the point of sitting
down again and resuming her coaxing monologue, but Renée's weary
attitude decided her to defer the attack till another occasion. She
drew a handful of papers out of her pocket, searched among them, and
ended by finding an object enclosed in a kind of pink box.

"I came to recommend you a new soap," she said, resuming her business
voice. "I take a great interest in the inventor, who is a charming
young man. It is a very soft soap, very good for the skin. You will try
it, won't you! And you will speak of it to your friends--I will leave
it there on your mantelshelf."

She had gone to the door when she returned again, and standing upright
amid the rosy glow of the fire which lighted up her waxen face, she
began to praise an elastic belt, an invention intended to take the
place of stays.

"It gives you a perfectly round waist, a true wasp's waist," she said.
"I saved it from bankruptcy. When you come, you will try the specimens,
won't you? I had to run about among solicitors during a whole week.
The documents are in my pocket and I am now going to my lawyer to
have the last attachment raised--Good-bye for the present, pretty
one. Remember that I am waiting for you and that I want to dry your
beautiful eyes."

She glided away and disappeared. Renée did not even hear her close the
door. She remained there, before the dying fire, continuing her dream
of the whole day, with her head full of dancing cyphers, while in the
distance she heard the voices of Saccard and Madame Sidonie who offered
her considerable sums in the tone with which an auctioneer invites bids
for a lot of furniture. She felt her husband's rough kiss on her neck,
and when she turned round she fancied the other was there at her feet,
with her black dress and her flabby face, making passionate speeches
to her, praising her perfections, and begging for an appointment with
the attitude of a lover past resignation. This made her smile. The
heat became more and more stifling in the room. And the young woman's
torpor, the strange dreams she made, were but a light, an artificial
sleep, amid which she always beheld the little private room on the
Boulevard, and the broad divan against which she had fallen on her
knees. She no longer suffered at all. When she raised her eyelids again
Maxime's image passed through the rosy mass of fire.

At the ministers' ball, on the morrow, beautiful Madame Saccard
looked marvellous. Worms had accepted the fifty thousand francs on
account, and she emerged from this pecuniary worry with the laughter
of convalescence. When she crossed the reception rooms in her robe of
pink faille with a long Louis XIV. train, edged with deep white lace,
there was a murmur, and the men shoved one another aside to see her.
Her intimate friends bent low with a discreet, knowing smile, rendering
homage to those beautiful shoulders with which all official Paris was
so well acquainted, and which were, indeed the firm columns of the
Empire. She had bared her bosom with such a contempt for other people's
looks, she walked by so tender and so gentle in her nudity, that it was
almost not indecent. Eugène Rougon, the great politician, who felt that
his sister-in-law's bare bosom was even more eloquent than his speeches
in the chamber, softer and more persuasive in making people appreciate
the charms of the reign and converting sceptics, went to compliment
her on her happy audacity in lowering her dress-body a couple of
finger-breadths. Almost all the Corps Législatif was there, and by the
way that the deputies looked at the young woman, the minister made
up his mind that he should have a fine success on the morrow in the
delicate question of the loans of the city of Paris. People could not
vote against a power which, on the hotbed of millions, reared such
a flower as this Renée, so strange a flower of voluptuousness, with
silken flesh and statuesque nudity, a living enjoyment that left a
scent of tepid pleasure behind. But what made the whole ball whisper
were the necklace and the aigrette. The men recognised the jewels and
the women furtively called each other's attention to them with their
eyes. These diamonds were the one subject of talk throughout the
evening. And in the white light of the chandeliers, the reception rooms
stretched away, filled with a resplendent throng which looked like a
jumble of stars huddled into too small a corner of space.

At about one o'clock Saccard disappeared. He had enjoyed his wife's
success like a man whose clap-trap succeeds. He had again consolidated
his credit. A business matter required his presence at Laure
d'Aurigny's so he went off, begging Maxime to take Renée home after the
ball.

Maxime spent the evening soberly beside Louise de Mareuil, both of
them very much occupied in saying frightful things about the women who
passed by. And when they had said something rather stronger than usual,
they stifled their laughter in their pocket handkerchiefs. Renée had
to come to ask the young fellow for his arm when she wished to leave.
She was nervously gay in the carriage; she still quivered with all the
intoxication of the light, the perfumes, and the noise that she had
just left. She moreover seemed to have forgotten their "nonsense" of
the Boulevard as Maxime called it. She only asked him in a strange tone
of voice:

"Is that little hunchback Louise so very funny then?"

"Oh! very funny," replied the young man, beginning to laugh again. "You
saw the Duchess de Sternich with a yellow bird in her hair, didn't you?
Well, Louise pretends that it is an automatic bird which flaps its
wings every hour and cries: 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo!' to the poor duke."

This jest coming from a girl who had just left school seemed very
comical to Renée. When they reached the house, as Maxime was about to
take his leave, she said to him:

"Aren't you coming up? Céleste has no doubt prepared me something to
eat."

He ascended in his usual easy manner. Upstairs however there was
nothing to eat and Céleste had gone to bed. Renée had to light the
tapers in a little candelabrum. Her hand slightly trembled.

"That foolish girl," she said, speaking of her maid. "She must have
misunderstood my orders--I shall never be able to undress myself
unhelped."

She passed into the dressing room. Maxime followed her to relate
another remark of Louise's which had just recurred to his mind. He was
as much at his ease as if he had stayed late at a friend's and was
looking for his cigar-case to light an havannah. But when Renée had
set the candelabrum down she turned round and fell, speechless and
portentous, into the young man's arms, pressing her mouth upon his own.

Renée's private suite of rooms was a nest of silk and lace, a marvel
of coquettish luxury. A tiny boudoir preceded the bedroom. The two
apartments formed but one, or rather the boudoir was scarcely more
than the threshold of the bedroom, a large alcove, furnished with
couches and having a pair of curtains instead of a door. The walls in
both apartments were hung with flax-tinted silken stuff, embroidered
with huge bouquets of roses, white lilac and buttercups. The curtains
and door-hangings were of Venetian lace over a silken lining formed
alternately of grey and pink bands. In the bedroom the white marble
chimney piece, a real jewel, displayed like a flower bed its
incrustations of lapis lazuli and precious mosaics repeating the roses,
white lilac and buttercups of the hangings. A large grey and pink bed,
the padded and upholstered woodwork of which was not seen, and the head
of which stood against the wall, filled quite one-half of the room with
its flow of drapery, lace and silk, brocaded with bouquets and falling
from the ceiling to the carpet. You would have taken it for a woman's
dress, rounded, scalloped, decked with puffs, bows, and flounces; and
the large curtain swelling out like a skirt made you dream of some
tall love-sick wench, leaning back, fainting away, and almost sinking
upon the pillows. Under the curtains it was quite a sanctuary--plaited
cambric, a snowy mass of lace, all sorts of delicate transparent
things, enveloped in a church-like dimness. Beside the bedstead, this
monument the devout amplitude of which suggested a chapel adorned for
some festival, the other articles of furniture, some low seats, a
cheval glass six feet high, and chiffoniers provided with a multitude
of drawers, subsided into nothingness. On the floor the bluish-grey
carpet was studded with pale full-blown roses. And on either side of
the bed lay two large black bearskins, edged with pink velvet, having
silver claws, and with their heads turned towards the window, gazing
fixedly at the empty sky through their glass eyes.

Soft harmony, muffled silence reigned in this room. No high note, no
metallic reflection or bright gilding broke into the dreamy scale of
pink and grey. Even the chimney ornaments, the frame of the mirror, the
clock, the little candelabra, were of old Sèvres, and their mountings
of gilt copper were barely visible. These ornaments were marvels, the
clock especially, with its circle of podgy cupids, who descended and
leaned around the dial like a band of naked urchins careless to the
rapid flight of time. This discreet luxury, these colours and objects
which Renée's taste had chosen soft and smiling, lent a crepuscular
appearance to the room, the dimness of an alcove with the curtains
drawn. It seemed as if the bed stretched afar, as if the whole room,
indeed, were one huge bed with its carpets, bearskins, stuffed seats
and padded hangings, prolonging the softness of the floor up the walls
to the ceiling. And, as in a bed, the young woman left the imprint, the
warmth and the perfume of her body upon all the things. When one drew
aside the double hangings screening the room from the boudoir it seemed
as if one raised some silken counterpane, and entered some vast couch
still warm and moist, where one found on the fine linen the adorable
figure, the slumber and dreams of a Parisian woman of thirty.

An adjoining spacious apartment, hung with old chintz, was simply
furnished all round with lofty wardrobes containing Renée's army of
dresses. Céleste, who was very methodical, classified the dresses
according to their age, ticketed them and introduced arithmetic amid
all her mistress's yellow or blue caprices, and kept the apartment in a
state of vestry-like impressiveness and stable-like cleanliness. Beyond
the wardrobes, there was not an article of furniture, and no finery
was left lying about. The wardrobe doors shone cold and clean like the
varnished panels of a brougham.

The marvel of the suite, however, the apartment that all Paris talked
about, was the dressing-room. Folks said: "Beautiful Madame Saccard's
dressing room," as one says; "The Gallery of Mirrors at Versailles."
This apartment was situated in one of the towers of the mansion, just
over the little buttercup drawing-room. On entering it one fancied
oneself in a large circular tent, a fairy-like tent, pitched in full
phantasy by some love-sick amazone. In the centre of the ceiling a
crown of chased silver held up the drapery of the tent, which extended
cupola-like to the walls, and then fell straight to the floor. This
drapery, these rich hangings, were formed of pink silk covered with a
muslin of a very open texture, which was caught in plaits at intervals.
A band of lace separated the plaits, and silver fillets descended from
the crown and glided along the hangings on either side of each of these
bands. Here the pinkish grey of the bedroom grew brighter, became a
pinkish white, like naked flesh. And in this bower of lace, beneath
these curtains which hid all the ceiling save a bluish cavity inside
the small circle described by the crown, where Chaplin had painted a
laughing cupid, looking down and preparing his dart, one could have
fancied oneself at the bottom of a sweetmeat box, or in some precious
jewel-case, enlarged and made to display the nudity of a woman instead
of the brilliancy of a diamond. The carpet of snowy whiteness stretched
around without the least flowery design. A wardrobe with plate glass
doors, and the two panels of which were mounted with silver; a couch,
two arm-chairs, some white satin stools; a large toilet table, with a
slab of pink marble, and the legs of which where screened by flounces
of muslin and lace, furnished the room. The glasses, the vases, and the
basin on the toilet table, were of old Bohemian crystal, streaked pink
and white. And there was yet another table, incrusted with silver like
the wardrobe, and on which all the implements, the toilet utensils,
were ranged; it was like a strange surgical case, displaying a large
number of little instruments, the purpose of which was not readily
guessed--back scrapers, shining brushes, files of every dimension and
every shape, straight and curved scissors, every variety of pincers and
pins. Each one of these objects in silver and ivory was marked with
Renée's monogram.

But the dressing-room had one delightful corner, and to that corner
especially did it owe its fame. In front of the window the folds of
the tent parted, and in a kind of alcove, of considerable length but
limited breadth, one espied a bath, a tank of pink marble, embedded
in the flooring and with its sides--chamfered like those of a large
shell--rising to a level with the carpet. One descended into the bath
by marble steps. Above the silver taps, shaped like swans' heads, a
Venetian mirror, frameless, but with curved edges and a design ground
in the crystal, filled the back of the alcove. Renée took a bath
of a few minutes' duration every morning, and this bath filled the
dressing-room with moisture, with a perfume of fresh, wet flesh for
the whole day. At times an open scent bottle, a piece of soap left out
of its dish, lent a dash of something stronger to this rather insipid
smell. The young woman liked to remain there, almost in a state of
nudity, until noon. The round tent itself was also naked. The pink
bath, the pink tables and basins, the muslin of the ceiling and the
walls, beneath which one seemed to see pink blood coursing, acquired
the roundness of flesh, the curves of bare shoulders and bosoms; and,
according to the hour of the day, one would liken the apartment to the
snowy skin of a child or to the warm skin of a woman. It was one vast
nudity. When Renée left her bath her fair form lent but a little more
pink to all the rosy flesh of the room.

It was Maxime who undressed her. He understood that kind of thing,
and his nimble hands divined pins, and glided round her waist with
innate science. He let down her locks, took off her diamonds, and then
dressed her hair for the night. And as he mingled jokes and caresses
with his duties of chambermaid and hair-dresser, Renée laughed with a
greasy stifled laugh, while the silk of her dress-body rustled and her
petticoats were loosened one by one. When she saw herself naked, she
blew out the tapers of the candelabrum, caught hold of Maxime round the
body and all but carried him into the bedroom. The ball had completed
her intoxication, and in her fever she was conscious of the previous
day which she had spent by the fireside, of that day of ardent torpor
and vague and smiling dreams. She still heard Saccard's and Madame
Sidonie's voices talking, calling out figures through their noses like
lawyers. It was these people who bored her, who drove her to crime.
And even now, when in the depths of the vast dark bed she sought for
Maxime's lips, she still saw him amid the fire of the day before
looking at her with scorching eyes.

The young fellow only went off at six o'clock in the morning. She gave
him the key of the little gate of the Parc Monceaux and made him swear
to come back every night. The dressing-room communicated with the
buttercup drawing-room by a little staircase hidden in the wall, and
connecting all the apartments of the tower. From the buttercup room it
was easy to pass into the conservatory and thence reach the park.

On going out at dawn, amid a thick fog, Maxime was somewhat stupefied
by his good fortune. He accepted it, however, with his usual
complaisance as a neutral being.

"So much the worse!" thought he, "it's she who wishes it, after all.
She's deucedly well formed; and she was quite right, she's twice as
funny in bed as Sylvia is."

They had glided to incest from the day when Maxime, in his threadbare
collegian's tunic, had hung on Renée's neck, creasing her _garde
française_ habit. From that time forward there had been a prolonged
perversion of every minute between them. The strange education which
the young woman gave the child; the familiarities which made them boon
comrades; later on the smiling audacity of their confidential chats;
all this perilous promiscuity had ended by linking them together
with a strange bond, the joys of friendship almost becoming carnal
satisfactions. They had surrendered themselves to each other for years;
the brutish act was but the acute crisis of this unconscionable malady
of passion. Amid the maddened society in which they lived, their crime
had sprouted as upon a rich dung-heap full of impure juices; it had
developed itself with a strange refinement amid a particular kind of
debauchery.

When the roomy carriage conveyed them to the Bois, and rolled them
gently along the pathways, whispering smutty things into each other's
ears, diving back into their childhood in search of the dirty practices
of instinct--it was but a deviation, but an unconfessed mode of
satisfying their desires. They felt themselves to be vaguely guilty,
as if they had just slightly touched one another; and this original
sin, this languor born of dirty conversation, though it wearied them
with voluptuous fatigue, titillated them even more softly than plain
positive kisses. Their familiarity was thus a slow lover's march which
was fatally destined to lead them some day or other to the private room
at the Café Riche and to Renée's large grey and pink bed. When they
found themselves in each other's arms they did not even feel the shock
of sin. One would have said that they were lovers of long standing
whose kisses were full of recollections. And they had spent so much
time in a contact of their whole beings, that despite themselves they
talked of the past which was so full of their ignorant tenderness.

"Do you recollect the day when I came to Paris?" said Maxime; "you wore
a funny costume; and I traced an angle on your bosom with my finger,
and I advised you to open your dress, in a point. I felt your skin
under your chemisette, and my finger embedded itself a little. It was
very nice."

Renée laughed, kissing him and murmuring:

"You were already awfully vicious. How you did amuse us at Worms's--do
you recollect? We used to call you 'our little man.' I always believed
that fat Suzanne would have readily yielded to you, if the marchioness
hadn't watched her with such furious eyes."

"Ah! yes, we had some good laughs," muttered the young fellow. "The
photographic album, eh? And all the rest, our rambles through Paris,
our snacks at the pastry cook's on the Boulevard; those little
strawberry tarts which you liked so much, you know? For myself I
shall always remember the afternoon when you related to me Adeline's
adventure at the convent when she wrote letters to Suzanne, signing
herself 'Arthur d'Espanet,' like a man, and proposing to carry her off."

The lovers again grew merry over this good story, and then Maxime
continued in his coaxing voice:

"When you came to fetch me at the college in your carriage, we must
have looked funny both of us. I was so small that I disappeared under
your skirts."

"Yes, yes," she stammered, quivering, and drawing the young fellow
towards her, "it was very nice, as you say. We loved each other without
knowing it, eh? I realised it before you did. The other day, on
returning from the Bois, my leg rubbed against yours, and I started.
But you didn't notice anything, eh? You didn't think of me?"

"Oh, yes, I did," he replied, a little embarrassed. "Only I didn't
know, you understand--I didn't dare--"

He lied. The idea of possessing Renée had never plainly occurred to
him. He had rubbed up against her with all his vice, without really
desiring her. He was too feeble for such an effort. He accepted Renée
because she imposed herself upon him, and he had glided to her couch
without willing or foreseeing it. When he had rolled there, however,
he remained there, because it was warm, and because he habitually
forgot himself at the bottom of all the holes into which he fell. At
the outset he even tasted some satisfactions of self-love. She was the
first married woman that he had possessed. He did not reflect that her
husband was his father.

But Renée brought with her, in sinning, all the ardour of a heart which
has lost caste. She also had slided down the slope. Only she had not
rolled as far as the bottom like a mass of inert flesh. Desire had
been kindled within her when it was too late to resist it and when the
fall had become inevitable. This fall abruptly appeared to her as one
of the necessities of her boredom, as a rare extreme enjoyment which
alone could rouse her tired senses, her wounded heart. It was during
that autumnal promenade, in the twilight, when the Bois was falling
asleep, that the vague idea of incest came to her, like a titillation
which lent an unknown quiver to her skin; and in the evening, in
the semi-intoxication of the dinner, this idea, lashed by jealousy,
became precise, rose up ardently before her, amid the flames of the
conservatory, as she watched Maxime and Louise. At that hour she
desired sin, the sin which no one commits, the sin which would fill
her empty life, and finally set her in that hell of which she was
still afraid, just as she had been when she was a little girl. Then on
the morrow, by a strange sentiment of remorse and lassitude, she no
longer wished it. It seemed to her as if she had already sinned, that
it was not so nice as she had fancied, and that it would really be too
dirty. The crisis was bound to be fatal, to come from herself, apart
from those two beings, those comrades who were destined to deceive
each other one fine evening, and to couple themselves, thinking they
were merely exchanging a hand-shake. However, after this stupid fall,
she returned to her dream of a nameless pleasure, and then she took
Maxime in her arms again, inquisitive about him, inquisitive as to the
cruel delights of a love which she regarded as a crime. Her volition
accepted incest, required it, decided upon tasting it to the end, even
to remorse should that ever come. She was active, and conscious of her
doings. She loved with the fury of a great fashionable lady, with the
nervous prejudices she possessed as an offspring of the middle classes,
with all the struggles, joys, and disgusts of a woman who drowns
herself in self-disdain.

Maxime returned every night. He came by way of the garden at about one
o'clock. Renée usually awaited him in the conservatory, which he had
to cross to reach the little drawing-room. They, moreover, displayed
perfect audacity, barely concealing themselves, and forgetting the most
classical precautions of adultery. It is true that this corner of the
house belonged to them. Baptiste, the husband's valet, alone had a
right to enter it; and Baptiste, like a serious man, took himself off
as soon as his duties were over. Maxime even pretended with a laugh
that he withdrew to go and write his memoirs. One night, however, when
the young fellow had just arrived, Renée shewed him Baptiste, who was
solemnly crossing the drawing-room with a candlestick in his hand. The
tall valet, with his minister-like figure, lighted by the yellow glow
of the wax, had a more dignified and severe physiognomy than usual.
As the lovers leaned forward, they saw him blow out his candle and go
towards the stables, where the horses and ostlers were asleep.

"He is going his round," said Maxime.

Renée remained quivering. Baptiste usually alarmed her. It often
happened to her to say that, with his coldness and his clear glances
which never fell upon women's shoulders, he was the only honest man in
the house.

They then evinced some prudence in seeing each other. They closed
the doors of the little drawing-room, and were able to dispose of
this room, with the conservatory and Renée's apartments, in all
tranquillity. It was a little world. And during the earlier months they
there tasted the most refined, the most delicately sought-for delights.
They promenaded their amours from the large grey and pink bed of the
sleeping-room, to the white and rosy nudity of the dressing-room, and
to the pale yellow symphony of the little drawing-room. Each chamber,
with its particular scent, its hangings, its special life, lent them
a different form of tenderness, and made Renée a different lover. She
was delicate and pretty on her padded great lady's couch, in the warm
aristocratic bedroom where love underwent a tasteful attenuation; she
showed herself a capricious, carnal female under the flesh-coloured
tent, amid the perfume and damp languor of the bath, on leaving which
she surrendered herself to Maxime, who preferred her thus; then
downstairs, in the bright sunrise of the little drawing-room, amid the
yellow aurora which gilded her hair, she became a goddess with her
fair Diana-like head, her bare arms which assumed chaste postures, her
beauteous form which reclined on the couches in attitudes revealing
noble outlines of antique gracefulness. But there was a spot which
Maxime was almost frightened of, and where Renée only led him on evil
days, the days when she felt the need of more bitter intoxication.
Then they loved in the conservatory. It was there that they tasted
incest.

One night, in an hour of anguish, the young woman had compelled her
lover to go and fetch one of the black bearskins. Then they had
stretched themselves on this inky fur, at the edge of an ornamental
basin in the large circular pathway. Out of doors it was freezing
terribly amid the limpid moonlight. Maxime had arrived shivering,
with frozen ears and fingers, and the conservatory was heated to such
a point that he fainted on the bearskin. Coming from the dry biting
cold, he entered into so heavy a flame that he felt a smarting as if he
had been whipped with a rod. When he recovered himself, he saw Renée
kneeling, leaning over him with fixed eyes and a brutish attitude
which frightened him. With her hair down and her shoulders bare, she
was resting herself on her fists, with her figure stretched out, and
looking like a huge cat with phosphorescent eyes. Above the shoulders
of this adorable, amorous animal gazing at him, the young fellow,
lying on his back, perceived the marble sphinx, with her glistening
hips lighted by the moon. Renée had the attitude and the smile of the
feminine-headed monster, and in her loosened skirts, she looked like
the white sister of this black deity.

Maxime remained supine. The heat was suffocating; it was a dull heat,
which did not fall from the sky in a rain of fire, but trailed on the
ground, like some unhealthy exhalation, and its steam ascended like a
storm-charged cloud. A warm humidity covered the lovers with a kind
of dew, an ardent sweat. For a long time they remained motionless
and speechless in this bath of flame, Maxime flat and inert, Renée
quivering on her wrists as on supple nervous hams. Outside, through
the little panes of the conservatory, one caught glimpses of the Parc
Monceaux, of the clumps of trees with fine black outlines, of the grass
lawns as white as frozen lakes--quite a dead landscape, the delicate
light tints of which reminded one of bits of Japanese engravings. And
this spot of burning soil, this inflamed couch on which the lovers were
stretched, boiled strangely amid the great mute cold.

They passed a night of mad love. Renée was the man, the passionate
acting will. Maxime submitted. What with his lank limbs, his graceful
slimness, like that of a Roman youth, this neutral, fair-haired pretty
being, stricken in his virility since childhood, became a big girl in
the young woman's inquisitive arms. He seemed to have been born and to
have grown up for a perversion of love. Renée enjoyed her domination,
and with her passion she bent this creature, whose sexuality always
seemed indeterminate. For her it was a constant astonishment of desire,
a surprise of the senses, a strange sensation of uncomfortableness
and acute pleasure. She no longer knew what he was; and she thought
doubtingly of his fine skin, his fleshy neck, his abandonment and
fainting fits. She then enjoyed an hour of repletion. By revealing
to her an unknown ecstasy, Maxime completed her foolish toilets, her
prodigious luxury, her mad life. He set in her flesh the high note
which she already heard singing around her. He was the lover who
matched the fashions and follies of the period. This pretty young
fellow whose puny figure was revealed by his attire, this man who ought
to have been a girl, who strolled on the Boulevards, his hair parted
in the middle, with little bursts of laughter and bored smiles, became
in Renée's hands the instrument of one of those debaucheries suited to
days of decline, and which among rotten nations, at certain periods,
use up flesh and unsettle intelligence.

And it was especially in the conservatory that Renée was the man. That
ardent night they spent there was followed by several others. The
conservatory loved and burnt with them. Amid the heavy atmosphere, in
the whitish moonlight, they saw the strange world of plants around
them, moving confusedly and exchanging embraces. The black bearskin
stretched right across the pathway. At their feet the basin steamed
full of a swarming, a thick entanglement, of roots, while the rosy
stars of the Nymphæa opened on the surface of the water like virgin
bodices, and the bushy Tornelias drooped like the hair of languishing
water nymphs. Then around them, the palms and the lofty Indian bamboos
rose up towards the arched roof, near which they leaned and mingled
their leaves together, assuming the unsteady attitudes of tired lovers.
Lower down the ferns, the Pteris, the Alsophilas looked like green
ladies with ample skirts trimmed with symmetrical flounces, and who,
mute and motionless at the edge, of the pathway, awaited love. Beside
them the twisted red-spotted foliage of the Begonias, and the white
leaves shaped like lance heads of the Caladiums, furnished a vague
suite of bruises and pallidities, which the lovers could not explain
to themselves, but amid which they at times discerned roundnesses like
those of hips and knees wallowing on the ground, beneath the brutality
of bleeding caresses. And the Bananas, bending with the weight of their
bunches of fruit, spoke to them of the rich fertility of the soil,
while the Abyssinian Euphorbia, the prickly, deformed, tapering stems
of which--covered with horrid excrescences--they could espy in the
darkness, seemed to perspire with sap, with the overflowing flux of
their fiery growth. But by degrees as the lovers' glances dived into
the corners of the conservatory, the darkness was filled with a more
furious debauchery of leaves and stems; they could not distinguish on
the stages the Marantas, soft like velvet, the Gloxinias with violet
bells, the Dracænas resembling blades of old varnished lacquer; it was
a round dance of living plants pursuing each other with unquenched
tenderness. At the four corners, at the point where the curtains of
tropical creepers formed arbours, their carnal fancy grew madder
again, and the supple shoots of the Vanillas, the Indian berries, the
Quisqualis and the Bauhinias seemed to be the interminable arms of
lovers who could not be seen, but who distractedly lengthened their
embrace to draw all scattered delights towards them. These endless arms
drooped with lassitude, locked together in a spasm of love, sought for
each other, entwined together like a crowd bent on copulation. It was,
indeed, the immense copulation of the conservatory, of this bit of
virgin forest ablaze with the foliage and the flowers of the tropics.

Maxime and Renée, with their senses perverted, felt themselves carried
away amid these mighty nuptials of nature. The soil burnt their backs
through the bearskin, and drops of heat fell upon them from the lofty
palms. The sap which arose in the tree trunks penetrated them as well,
and imparted to them mad desires of immediate growth, of gigantic
procreation. They took part in the copulation of the conservatory. It
was then, in the pale glimmer, that visions stupefied them, nightmares
amid which, during long intervals, they beheld the amours of the palms
and ferns; the foliage assumed a confused, equivocal aspect, which
their desires transformed into something sensual; murmurs, whispers
were wafted to them from the clumps of shrubs, faint voices, sighs of
ecstasy, stifled cries of pain, distant laughter, all that was noisy in
their own kisses and that echo sent them back. At times they thought
themselves shaken by an earthquake, as if the earth itself, in a crisis
of satisfied desire, had burst forth into voluptuous sobs.

If they had closed their eyes, if the suffocating heat and the pale
light had not imparted to them a depravation of every sense, the
aromas alone would have sufficed to throw them into an extraordinary
state of nervous erethism. The basin enveloped them in a deep pungent
aroma, amid which passed the thousand perfumes of the flowers and the
foliage. At times the Vanilla sang with dove-like cooings; then came
the rough notes of the Stanhopeas whose streaked mouths had the same
strong-smelling bitter breath as a convalescent. The orchids, in their
baskets secured by wire chains, also breathed like animated incense
burners. But the odour that predominated, the odour in which all these
vague breaths were mingled, was a human odour, an odour of love, which
Maxime recognised when he kissed Renée on the nape of her neck, when he
plunged his head into her flowing hair. And they remained intoxicated
by this scent, the scent of an amorous woman, which trailed through
the conservatory as in an alcove where earth might be engaged in
procreation.

As a rule, the lovers lay down under the Tanghinia from Madagascar,
under the poisoned shrub, a leaf of which the young woman once had
bitten. Around them the white statues laughed, gazing at the mighty
coupling of foliage. The moon, as it turned, displaced the groups,
and animated the drama with its changing light. They were a thousand
leagues from Paris, far from the easy life of the Bois de Boulogne and
official drawing-rooms, in a corner of some Indian forest, of some
monstrous temple, of which the black marble sphinx became the deity.
They felt themselves rolling to crime, to accursed love, to wild-beast
tenderness. All the pullulation which surrounded them, the swarming
of the basin, the naked immodesty of the foliage, threw them fully
into the Dantesque hell of passion. It was then, in the depths of this
glass cage, boiling over with the flames of summer, lost amid the clear
coldness of December, that they tasted incest, as though it had been
the criminal fruit of some over-heated soil, feeling the while a dim
fear of their terrifying couch.

And in the centre of the black bearskin Renée's body seemed whiter,
as she crouched like a huge cat with her back stretched out, and her
wrists extended like supple nervous shins. She was all swollen with
voluptuousness, and the light outlines of her shoulders and loins stood
out with feline angularity against the inky stain which blackened the
yellow sand of the pathway with its fur. She watched Maxime, this prey
extended beneath her, who abandoned himself, and whom she possessed
completely. And from time to time, she abruptly leant forward and
kissed him with her irritated mouth. Her lips then parted with the
greedy bleeding brilliancy of the Chinese Hibiscus, the expanse of
which covered the side of the mansion. She was then nothing but a
burning daughter of the conservatory. Her kisses bloomed and faded like
those red flowers of the gigantic mallow which last barely a few hours,
and which ever spring to life again, like the bruised insatiable lips
of a giant Messalina.




V.


The kiss which Saccard had imprinted on his wife's neck preoccupied
him. He had not availed himself of his marital rights for a long time.
The rupture had come quite naturally, neither the one nor the other
caring for a connection which interfered with their habits. For Saccard
to think of returning to Renée's room, some good stroke of business
must necessarily be the object of his conjugal tenderness.

The Charonne affair, from which he hoped to derive a fortune,
was progressing favourably, though he had some anxiety as to its
termination. Larsonneau, with his dazzling shirt-front, smiled in
a manner that displeased him. The expropriation agent was a simple
go-between--a man of straw, whom he intended to remunerate for his
obligingness with a commission of ten per cent on the ultimate
profits. However, although the agent had not invested a copper in the
enterprise, and although Saccard had taken every precaution--such as
a deed of retrocession, letters, the dates of which had been left in
blank, and receipts given in advance--he nevertheless experienced
an inward fear, a presentiment of some treachery. He scented that
his accomplice intended to blackmail him with the help of that false
inventory which he preciously preserved, and to which alone he was
indebted for his share in the enterprise.

However, the two accomplices shook hands vigorously. Larsonneau styled
Saccard his "dear master." He had, at the bottom of his heart, a real
admiration for this equilibrist, and watched his performances on the
tight rope of speculation like a connoisseur. The idea of duping him
titillated him like some rare and spicy voluptuousness. He caressed a
plan which was still vague, however, for he did not very well know how
to employ the weapon he possessed, and he feared wounding himself with
it. Besides, he felt that he was at the mercy of his ex-colleague. The
ground and the buildings, which carefully prepared inventories already
valued at nearly two millions of francs, though they were not worth a
quarter of that amount, must end by being swallowed up in a colossal
bankruptcy, if the fairy of expropriation did not touch them with her
golden wand. According to the original plans which the two confederates
had been able to consult, the new Boulevard, opened in view of
connecting the artillery depôt of Vincennes with the Prince Eugène
barracks, and of bringing the guns and ammunition into the heart of
Paris without passing through the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, would cross
a part of the ground; but it was still to be feared that only a corner
of the latter might be cut off, and that the ingenious speculation of
the music hall would fall through by reason of its very impudence. In
that case Larsonneau would remain with a delicate matter to deal with.
Still this peril did not prevent him, despite the secondary part which
he played perforce, from feeling soul-sick when he thought of the
paltry ten per cent which he would pocket in this colossal robbery of
millions. And at those moments he could not resist the furious longing
he felt to extend his hand and carve out a larger share for himself.

Saccard had not even allowed him to lend money to his wife, he had
preferred to amuse himself with this big piece of theatrical trickery,
which delighted his partiality for complicated transactions.

"No, no, my dear fellow," he said, with his Provençal accent, which he
exaggerated whenever he wished to impart additional salt to a joke,
"don't let us mix up our accounts. You are the only man in Paris to
whom I have sworn never to owe a copper."

Larsonneau contented himself with insinuating that his colleague's wife
was a gulf. He advised him not to give her another sou, so that she
would then be compelled to transfer her property to them immediately.
He would have preferred to have to deal with Saccard alone. He probed
him at times, and carried things so far as to say, with the weary
indifferent air of a man about town:

"All the same, I must put my papers in a little order. Your wife
frightens me, my good fellow. I don't want justice to place the seals
on certain documents at my office."

Saccard was not the man to submit to such allusions patiently,
especially as he was well acquainted with the frigid meticulous
order which prevailed in the agent's offices. The whole of his
cunning, active little person revolted against the terror with which
this coxcomb of a usurer in yellow kid gloves tried to inspire him.
The worst was that he felt himself seized with shudders when he
thought of a possible scandal; and he beheld himself brutally exiled
by his brother, and living in Belgium by some avocation not to be
acknowledged. One day he grew angry and said to Larsonneau:

"Listen, my boy, you are a nice fellow, but it would be as well for you
to return me the document you know of. You'll see, that scrap of paper
will end by making us quarrel."

The agent feigned astonishment, pressed his "dear master's" hand,
and assured him of his devotion. Saccard regretted his momentary
hastiness. It was at this period that he began to think seriously of
drawing nearer to his wife. He might yet have need of her against his
accomplice, and he moreover said to himself that business matters are
discussed marvellously well between man and wife in bed. That kiss on
his wife's neck gradually revealed to him quite a new system of tactics.

Besides, he was not in a hurry, he husbanded his resources. He devoted
the whole winter to ripening his plan, though worried by a hundred
different affairs, each of which was more muddled than the other. It
was a terrible winter for him, full of shocks, a prodigious campaign
during which he had to conquer bankruptcy daily. However, far from
cutting down his expenses at home, he gave fête after fête. But if
he succeeded in meeting every difficulty, he had to neglect Renée,
whom he reserved for a triumphal blow, when the Charonne transaction
became ripe. He contented himself with preparing the finish, by
continuing not to give her any money, save through the intermediary
of Larsonneau. When he was able to dispose of a few thousand francs,
and she complained of her poverty, he took them to her, saying that
Larsonneau's people required a note of hand for double the amount. This
comedy vastly amused him, the stories connected with these promissory
notes delighted him by the touch of romance which they imparted to the
affair. Even at the period of his clearest profits he had served his
wife her income in the most irregular manner, at one time making her
princely presents, abandoning handfuls of bank notes to her, and then
leaving her in the lurch for a paltry amount during weeks together.
Now that he found himself seriously embarrassed, he talked about the
expenses of the household, and treated her like a creditor to whom one
is unwilling to confess one's ruin, and whom one disposes to patience
by means of cock-and-bull stories. She scarcely listened to him,
however; she signed whatever he chose, and only pitied herself for not
being able to sign more.

Already, however, there were two hundred thousand francs' worth of
promissory notes signed by her which barely cost him one hundred and
ten thousand. After having these bills endorsed by Larsonneau to whose
order they were made payable, he placed them in circulation in a
prudent manner, intending to employ them as decisive weapons later on.
He would never have been able to hold out to the end of that terrible
winter, to lend his wife money usuriously and keep up his style of
living, but for the sale of his ground on the Boulevard Malesherbes,
which Messieurs Mignon and Charrier paid him for in hard cash,
retaining, however, a formidable discount.

For Renée this same winter was one long joy. Lack of money was her
only suffering. Maxime cost her very dear; he still treated her as a
stepmother, and allowed her to pay everywhere. But this hidden poverty
was an additional delight for her. She exercised her wits and racked
her brain, so that her dear child should want for nothing; and when she
had prevailed upon her husband to find her a few thousand francs, she
and her lover expended them in some costly folly, like two schoolboys
let loose on their first escapade. When they were hard up they remained
at home and derived their enjoyment from this large building of such
new and insolently stupid luxury. The father was never there. The
lovers sat by the fireside more frequently than formerly. The fact
was, that Renée had filled the icy emptiness of the gilded ceilings
with a warm enjoyment. The suspicious abode of worldly pleasure had
become a chapel in which she secretly practised a new religion. Maxime
did not merely lend to her nature that high note which harmonized
with her mad dresses. He was the very lover fitted to this mansion,
with broad windows like shop fronts, and which a flood of sculpture
inundated from garret to cellar. He animated all this plaster, from the
two podgy Cupids who let a stream of water flow from their shell in
the courtyard, to the tall, naked women supporting the balconies, and
playing with apples and ears of corn, amid the pediments. He explained
the unduly ornate hall, the tiny dimensions of the garden, the dazzling
rooms in which one saw too many arm-chairs, and not one work of art.
The young woman who had formerly felt bored to death in the house,
suddenly began to amuse herself there, and availed herself of it, just
as she might have done with something, the use of which she had not
understood at first. And it was not only through her own apartments,
through the buttercup drawing-room, and the conservatory that she
promenaded her love, but through the entire mansion. She even ended by
finding an enjoyment in lying on the divan of the smoking-room. She
forgot herself there, and declared that the vague smell of tobacco
pervading the apartment was very agreeable.

She appointed two reception days instead of one. On Thursdays all the
mere acquaintances called. But Mondays were reserved to intimate female
friends. Men were not admitted. Maxime alone was present at those
choice gatherings, which took place in the buttercup drawing-room. One
evening she had the astounding idea, of dressing him up as a woman, and
of presenting him as one of her cousins. Adeline, Suzanne, the Baroness
de Meinhold, and the other friends who were there, rose up and bowed,
astonished by the sight of this face which they vaguely recognised.
Then when they realized the truth, they laughed a great deal, and
absolutely refused to let the young man go and change his clothes. They
kept him with them in his skirts, teasing him, and lending themselves
to equivocal jokes. When he had seen these ladies off by the main
gate he went round the park and returned into the house by way of the
conservatory. Renée's dear friends never had the slightest suspicion of
the truth. Indeed the lovers could not behave together more familiarly
than they had previously done, when they declared themselves to be
boon comrades. And if it happened that a servant saw them rather close
together behind a door, he expressed no surprise at it, being used to
the pleasantries of his mistress, and his master's son.

This complete liberty, this impunity emboldened them still more. If
they slipped the bolts at night-time, in the daylight they kissed each
other in every room of the house. They invented a thousand little
games on rainy days. But Renée's great delight was still to pile
up a terrible fire, and doze in front of the grate. Her linen was
marvellously luxurious that winter. She wore the most costly chemises
and wrappers, the cambric and inserted embroidery of which barely
covered her with a white cloud. And in the red glow of the fire she
looked naked, with rosy lace and skin, the heat penetrating through
the thin stuff to her flesh. Maxime, squatting at her feet, kissed
her knees, without even feeling the garment which had the same warmth
and colour as her lovely form. In the dull cloudy weather a kind of
twilight penetrated the bedroom hung with grey silk, whilst Céleste
went backwards and forwards behind them, with a quiet step. She had
naturally become their accomplice. One morning when they had forgotten
themselves in the bed, she found them there, and retained all the
coolness of a servant with icy blood. They then ceased restraining
themselves, she came in at all hours without the sound of their kisses
making her turn her head. They relied upon her to warn them in the case
of alarm. They did not purchase her silence. She was a very economical,
very honest girl, and was not known to have a single lover.

Renée, however, was not cloistered. Taking Maxime in her train, like
a fair-haired page in a dress-coat, she frequented society, where she
tasted even more acute pleasures. The season was one long triumph
for her. Never had her imagination been bolder as regards toilets
and head-dresses. It was then that she risked wearing that famous
bush-tinted robe, on which a complete stag hunt was embroidered with
such attributes as powder flasks, hunting horns, and broad bladed
knives. It was then, also, that she set the fashion of wearing the hair
in the antique style; Maxime having to go and sketch patterns for her
at the Campana Museum which had recently been opened. She grew younger,
she was in all the plenitude of her turbulent beauty. Incest lent her
a fire which glowed in the depths of her eyes and heated her laughter.
Her eye-glasses looked superbly insolent on the tip of her nose, and
she gazed at the other women, at the dear friends who basked in the
enormity of some vice, with the air of a bragging hobbledehoy, and with
a fixed smile which signified "I also have my crime."

Maxime, on his side, declared that society was wearisome. It was not
merely for show that he pretended to be bored in it, for he really
did not amuse himself anywhere. At the Tuileries, at the ministers'
residences, he disappeared amid Renée's skirts. But he became the
master again as soon as some freak was in question. Renée wished to see
the private room on the Boulevard again, and the breadth of the divan
made her smile. Then he took her a little bit everywhere, to harlots'
houses, to the opera ball, to the stage boxes of petty theatres, to
all the equivocal places where they could elbow brutal vice and taste
the delights of remaining incognito. When they furtively returned to
the house, worn out with fatigue, they fell asleep in each other's
arms, sleeping off the drunkenness of obscene Paris, with snatches
of smutty verses still ringing in their ears. On the morrow Maxime
imitated the actors, and Renée, accompanying herself on the piano of
the little drawing-room, tried to recall the hoarse voice and the
wriggling of Blanche Müller in her part of the _Belle Hélène_. The
music lessons she had taken at the convent now only served her to
murder the verses of the new burlesques. She had a religious horror of
serious airs. Maxime poked fun at German music with her, and he thought
it his duty to go and hiss _Tannhauser_, both by conviction and to
defend his stepmother's sprightly refrains.

[Illustration: RENÉE AND MAXIME SKATING IN THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE.]

One of their great enjoyments was skating; it was fashionable that
winter, the Emperor having been one of the first to try the ice on the
lake in the Bois de Boulogne. Renée ordered a complete Polish costume,
velvet and fur, of Worms; and insisted upon Maxime wearing high boots
and a foxskin cap. They reached the Bois in the intense cold which made
their noses and lips tingle as if the wind had blown fine sand into
their faces. It amused them to feel cold. The Bois was quite grey, with
threads of snow, like narrow lace, along the branches of the trees.
And under the pale sky, above the congealed and bedimmed lake, only
the pines of the islands still displayed on the edge of the horizon
their theatrical drapery, on which the snow had also sewn broad bands
of lace. The lovers darted along together in the frozen air, with the
rapid flight of swallows skimming just above the ground. Setting one
hand behind their backs, and placing one upon each other's shoulder,
they went off, erect, smiling, side by side, and revolving round the
broad space, marked out by thick ropes. Loungers looked on at them
from the roadway. From time to time they came to warm themselves at
the braziers lighted at the edge of the lake, and then they started
off again. They enlarged the course of their flight, with their eyes
watering both with pleasure and with cold.

Then when the spring came Renée remembered her old elegiac fancy. She
insisted upon Maxime strolling with her in the Parc Monceaux at night
time by moonlight. They went into the grotto and sat down on the grass,
in front of the colonnade. But when she expressed a desire to row on
the little lake they found that there were no oars in the boat,
which could be seen from the house, moored at the edge of a pathway.
They were evidently removed every evening. This was a disappointment.
Besides the vast shadows of the park made the lovers nervous. They
would have liked to have had a Venetian fête given there, with red
lanterns and an orchestra. They preferred it during the day-time, of
an afternoon, and they then often stationed themselves at one of the
windows of the mansion to watch the equipages following the graceful
curve of the main avenue. They enjoyed themselves in gazing upon
this charming corner of new Paris, this clean smiling bit of nature,
these lawns looking like stripes of velvet, dotted with flower beds
and choice shrubs, and edged with magnificent white roses. Carriages
passed by each other, as numerous as on the Boulevard; lady promenaders
carelessly trailed their skirts as if they had not ceased treading
the carpets of their drawing-rooms. And athwart the foliage, Renée
and Maxime criticised the dresses and pointed out the equipages to
each other, deriving real enjoyment from the soft tints of this large
garden. A scrap of gilded railing shone between two trees, a party of
ducks passed over the lake, the little renaissance bridge looked white
and new amid the green stuff, whilst on either side of the main avenue,
mammas seated on yellow chairs forgot, in their chatter, the little
boys and girls who looked at one another with a pretty air, and pouted
like precocious children.

The lovers had a great liking for new Paris. They often rambled through
the city in their carriage, going out of their way so as to pass along
certain Boulevards for which they had a personal affection. The lofty
houses adorned with large carved doors, loaded with balconies, whereon
names and callings glittered in large gold letters, delighted them.
While the brougham darted along, they followed with a friendly glance
the grey bands of interminable footways, with their seats, their
variegated columns and their scrubby trees. This bright gap which
extended to the limits of the horizon, growing narrower, and opening
upon a bluey parallelogram of space, the uninterrupted double row of
large shops, where shopmen smiled at female customers, the currents
of the stamping swarming crowd, filled them little by little with a
feeling of absolute and complete satisfaction, they realised that they
beheld the perfection of street life. They were enamoured even of the
jets of the watering hose, which passed like white smoke before their
houses and then spread out and fell in a fine rain under the wheels of
the brougham, darkening the ground and raising a slight cloud of dust.
They still went on, and it seemed to them that the vehicle was rolling
over carpets along the straight endless highway, which had been pierced
solely so that they might not have to pass through dark alleys. Each
Boulevard became some passage of their mansion. The gay sunshine smiled
upon the house fronts, lit up the window panes, fell upon the verandahs
of the shops and cafés and heated the asphalt under the busy tread of
the crowd. And when they returned home, somewhat dazed by the bright
confusion of these long bazaars, they found enjoyment in the Parc
Monceaux, which was like the complementary plat-band of the new Paris
which displayed its luxury amid the first warmth of spring.

When the exigencies of fashionable life absolutely compelled them
to leave Paris, they went to the seaside, regretfully however, and
thinking of the Boulevardian side-walks while on the shores of the
ocean. Then love itself grew dull there. It was a hot-house flower
which needed the spacious grey and pink bed; the naked fleshy aspect
of the dressing-room and the gilded dawn of the little drawing-room.
Alone of an evening, in front of the sea, they no longer found anything
to say to each other. Renée tried to sing the airs she had heard at
the Variety Theatre, accompanying herself on an old piano which was
agonising in a corner of her room at the hotel, but the instrument,
damp with the breezes from the open, had the dreary voice of the great
waters. _La Belle Hélène_ seemed lugubrious and fantastic. To console
herself Renée astonished the people on the sands by her prodigious
costumes. The whole band of fashionable women there was yawning while
waiting for the advent of winter, and trying despairingly to invent
some bathing dress which would not make them look too ugly. Renée was
never able to prevail upon Maxime to bathe. He had an atrocious fear
of water, he turned quite pale when the tide reached his boots, and
for nothing in the world would he have approached the edge of a cliff;
he kept away from all pits, and made a long circuit to avoid any steep
part of the shore.

Saccard came to see "the children" on two or three occasions. He was
overwhelmed with worry, he said. It was only about October, when they
all three found themselves again in Paris, that he seriously thought of
drawing nearer his wife. The Charonne affair was ripening. His plan
was a simple and brutal one. He relied upon capturing Renée by the same
devices that he would have employed with a harlot. She lived on amid
an increasing need of money, and out of pride she only applied to her
husband at the last extremity. The latter resolved to profit by her
first request to shew his gallantry, and, in the delight occasioned by
the payment of some heavy debt, to resume relations which had so long
been severed.

Some terrible embarrassments awaited Renée and Maxime in Paris. Several
of the promissory notes drawn to Larsonneau's order had fallen due;
but as Saccard naturally left them slumbering at the lawyer's, they
did not cause the young wife much worry. She was far more alarmed by
her debts as regards Worms, whose bill now amounted to nearly two
hundred thousand francs. The tailor demanded something on account,
and threatened to suspend all credit. Renée felt sudden shudders
when she thought of the scandal of a law-suit, and especially of a
quarrel with the illustrious man milliner. Moreover, she needed pocket
money. She and Maxime would feel bored to death if they did not have
a few louis a-day to spend. The dear boy was quite stumped since he
had vainly rummaged through his father's drawers. His fidelity and
exemplary behaviour during the last seven or eight months were largely
due to the absolute emptiness of his purse. He did not always have
twenty francs in his pocket to invite some street-walker to supper,
and so he philosophically returned to the house. At each of their
freaks the young woman handed him her purse so that he might defray
the expenses in the restaurants, the balls and petty theatres. She
continued treating him maternally, and, indeed, it was she who, with
the tips of her gloved fingers, settled at the pastry-cook's, where
they stopped almost every afternoon to eat little oyster patties. Of
a morning he often found in his waistcoat some louis which he had not
known to be there, and which she had placed there like a mother filling
a schoolboy's pocket. And to think that this delightful life of snacks,
satisfied fancies and facile pleasure was about to end! But a yet more
grievous worry came to alarm them. Sylvia's jeweller, to whom Maxime
owed ten thousand francs, grew angry and talked about Clichy, the
debtors' prison. Such costs had accumulated on the notes of hand which
he held, and had long since protested, that the debt had increased by
some three or four thousand francs. Saccard plainly declared that he
could do nothing in the matter. The imprisonment of his son at Clichy
would increase his notoriety, and when he secured the young fellow's
release he would make a great noise over his paternal liberality.
Renée was in despair; she saw her dear child in prison--in a perfect
dungeon, sleeping on damp straw. One evening, she seriously proposed
to him not to leave her rooms, but to live there unknown to everyone,
and sheltered from the bailiffs. Then she swore that she would procure
the money. She never referred to the origin of the debt, of that woman
Sylvia, who confided the secret of her affections to the mirrors of
private rooms. Some fifty thousand francs--that was what she needed;
fifteen thousand for Maxime, thirty thousand for Worms, and five
thousand as pocket money. They would then have a fortnight's happiness
before them. She embarked on the campaign.

Her first idea was to ask her husband for these fifty thousand francs,
but it was only with a feeling of repugnance that she decided to do
so. On the last occasions that he had entered her room to bring her
some money he had printed fresh kisses on her neck, taking hold of
her hands and talking about his affection. Women have acute powers of
perception which enable them to guess men's feelings. So she expected
some demand on his side, some tacit bargain concluded with a smile.
And, indeed, when she asked him for the fifty thousand francs, he cried
out, declared that Larsonneau would never lend such a sum, and that
he himself was still too embarrassed. Then changing his tone, as if
conquered and seized with sudden emotion:

"One cannot refuse you anything," he murmured; "I will run about Paris
and accomplish the impossible. I want you to be pleased, my dear."

And setting his lips to her ear and kissing her hair, he added, in a
slightly trembling voice--

"I will bring you the money to-morrow evening, here in your
room--without any note to sign."

But she hastily said that she was not in a hurry, that she did not
wish to trouble him so much. He, who had just set all his heart in
that dangerous, "without any note," which had escaped him and which he
regretted, did not appear to have encountered a disagreeable refusal.
He rose up saying:

"Very well, I am at your disposal. I will find you the sum when the
moment arrives. Larsonneau will be for nothing in it, you understand.
It is a present which I mean to make you." He smiled with a good
natured air. She remained in a state of cruel anguish. She felt she
would lose the little equilibrium left her, if she surrendered herself
to her husband. It was her last pride to be married to the father and
to be only the son's wife. Often, when Maxime seemed to her to be cold,
she tried to make him understand the situation by very transparent
allusions; it is true that the young man, whom she expected to see fall
at her feet after this revelation, remained altogether indifferent,
imagining, no doubt, that she merely wished to reassure him as to the
possibility of a meeting between his father and himself in the grey
silk room.

When Saccard had left her, she hastily dressed herself and had the
horses put to. While her brougham was conveying her towards the Île
Saint-Louis, she prepared the manner in which she would ask her father
for the fifty thousand francs. She flung herself into this sudden idea,
without consenting to discuss it, feeling very cowardly at the bottom
of her heart and seized with invincible fright at the thought of such a
step. When she arrived, the courtyard of the Béraud mansion froze her
with its mournful, cloister-like dampness, and it was with a desire to
run away that she mounted the broad stone staircase on which her little
high-heeled boots resounded terribly. She had been foolish enough in
her haste to choose a costume of dead-leaf tinted silk, with long
flounces of white lace trimmed with bows of ribbon and cut athwart by
a plaited sash. This toilet, which was completed by a little hat with
a large white veil, set such a singular note in the dark gloom of the
staircase, that she herself became conscious of how strange she looked
there. She trembled as she crossed the austere suite of spacious rooms,
where the personages vaguely visible on the tapestry seemed surprised
to see this stream of skirts pass by in the semi-daylight of their
solitude.

She found her father in a drawing-room looking on to the courtyard,
where he habitually remained. He was reading a large book placed on a
desk adapted to the arms of his chair. In front of one of the windows
Aunt Élisabeth sat knitting with long wooden needles; and in the
silence of the room the tick-tack of these needles was the only sound
one heard.

Renée sat down, ill at ease, unable to make a movement without
disturbing the severity of the lofty ceiling by a noise of rustling
silk. Her laces looked crudely white against the dark background of
tapestry and old furniture. Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel gazed at her with
his hands resting on the edge of the desk. Aunt Élisabeth talked about
the approaching wedding of Christine who was to marry the son of a very
rich attorney; the young girl had gone to a tradesman's with an old
family servant; and the good aunt talked on alone, in her placid voice,
without ceasing to knit, gossiping about household affairs, and casting
smiling glances at Renée from above her spectacles.

But, the young woman became more and more disturbed. All the silence
of the house weighed upon her shoulders, and she would have given a
great deal for the lace of her dress to have been black. Her father's
gaze embarrassed her to such a point that she considered Worms really
ridiculous to have imagined such high flounces.

"How smart you are, my girl!" suddenly said Aunt Élisabeth, who had not
yet even noticed her niece's lace.

She stopped knitting and settled her spectacles to see the better.
Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel gave a faint smile.

"It is rather white," said he. "A woman must be greatly embarrassed
with that on the side-walks."

"But one doesn't go out on foot, father!" cried Renée, who immediately
afterwards regretted these words from her heart.

The old gentleman seemed about to reply. Then he rose up, straightened
his high stature and began walking slowly, without again looking at
his daughter. The latter remained quite pale with emotion. Each time
that she exhorted herself to take courage, and that she tried to find a
transition that would lead up to the request for money, she experienced
a shooting pain at the heart.

"We never see you now, father," she murmured.

"Oh!" replied her aunt, "your father hardly ever goes out except at
long intervals to stroll in the Jardin des Plantes. And I even have to
get angry to make him do that! He pretends that he loses himself in
Paris, that the city is no longer made for him. Ah! you do right to
scold him!"

"My husband would be so happy to see you at our Thursdays, from time to
time," continued the young woman.

Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel took a few steps in silence. Then in a quiet
voice: "You must thank your husband for me," he said. "He is an active
fellow, it appears, and I hope, for your sake, that he conducts his
enterprises honestly. But we haven't the same ideas, and I feel ill at
ease in your fine house in the Parc Monceaux."

Aunt Élisabeth seemed vexed by this reply.

"How wicked men are with their politics!" she said. "Would you like to
know the truth? Your father is furious with you because you go to the
Tuileries."

But the old gentleman shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that his
dissatisfaction had far more grievous causes. He began slowly walking
again, with a dreamy air. Renée remained for a moment silent, with the
request for the fifty thousand francs on the tip of her tongue. But
seized with even greater cowardice than before, she kissed her father
and went off.

Aunt Élisabeth insisted upon accompanying her to the staircase. As they
crossed the suite of rooms, she continued chattering in her old woman's
squeaky voice:

"You are happy, my dear child. It pleases me very much to see you
looking beautiful and well; for if your marriage had turned out badly I
should have thought myself guilty! Your husband loves you, you have all
you need, haven't you?"

"Of course," replied Renée compelling herself to smile though feeling
sick at heart.

Her aunt still detained her, with her hand on the balustrade of the
staircase.

"Do you see, I have only one fear, that you may become intoxicated with
all your happiness. Be prudent, and above all don't sell anything. If
you had a child some day, you would have a little fortune all ready for
him."

When Renée was in her brougham again she heaved a sigh of relief.
She had drops of cold perspiration on her forehead; she wiped them
off, thinking of the icy dampness of the Béraud mansion. Then as the
brougham rolled along amid the clear sunlight of the Quai Saint-Paul
she remembered the fifty thousand francs, and all her suffering was
revived again, acuter than before. She, whom people thought so bold,
how cowardly she had just been! And yet it was a question of Maxime, of
his liberty, of their joint delights. Amid the bitter reproaches which
she addressed to herself, an idea suddenly sprung up which brought her
despair to a climax; she ought to have spoken about the fifty thousand
francs to Aunt Élisabeth on the stairs. What had she been thinking
about? The worthy woman would perhaps have lent her the amount, or at
all events have helped her. She was already leaning forward to tell
her coachman to drive back to the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île, when she
thought she again beheld her father slowly crossing the solemn darkness
of the grand drawing-room. She would never have the courage to return
at once to that room. What could she say to explain this second visit?
And in the depth of her heart she no longer even found the courage to
speak of the affair to Aunt Élisabeth. So she told her coachman to
drive her to the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière.

Madame Sidonie uttered a cry of delight when she saw her opening the
discreetly curtained door of the shop. She was there by chance, she was
about to hasten to the magistrate's, where she had summoned a customer.
But she would not put in an appearance, she could do so some other
day; she was so happy that her sister-in-law had at length had the
amiability to pay her a little visit. Renée smiled with an embarrassed
air. Madame Sidonie would not by any means allow her to remain
downstairs; she made her go up into her room, by the little staircase,
after removing the brass knob from the shop door. She removed and
refixed this knob, which was secured by a simple nail, at least twenty
times a day.

"There, my beauty," she said, making Renée sit down on a couch, "we
shall be able to chat nicely. Do you know that you come in the very
nick of time--I meant to go and see you this evening."

Renée, who knew the room, experienced that vague feeling of uneasiness,
which a promenader feels on finding that a strip of forest has been cut
down in a favourite landscape.

"Ah!" she said at last, "you have changed the position of the bed,
haven't you?"

"Yes," quietly replied the lace-dealer, "one of my customers thought it
would be much better in front of the mantelpiece. She also advised me
to have red curtains."

"That's what I was thinking, the curtains used not to be of that
colour. Red is a very common colour."

She put on her eye-glasses, and looked at this room which displayed the
kind of luxury one finds in a large hotel. On the mantelshelf she saw
some long hair-pins which certainly did not come from Madame Sidonie's
meagre chignon. The paper of that part of the wall, against which the
bed had formerly stood, was all torn, discoloured and dirtied by the
mattresses. The agent had certainly tried to hide this sore with the
backs of two arm chairs, but these backs were rather low, and Renée's
glance remained fixed on this worn strip of paper.

"You have something to say to me?" she asked at last.

"Yes, it's quite a story," said Madame Sidonie, joining her hands and
assuming the expression of a glutton who is about to relate what she
has eaten at dinner. "Just fancy, Monsieur de Saffré is in love with
the beautiful Madame Saccard. Yes, with yourself, my pretty one."

Renée did not vouchsafe even a gesture of coquetry.

"Indeed!" she remarked, "but you said he was so smitten with Madame
Michelin."

"Oh! that's finished, quite finished--I can prove it to you if you
like. Don't you know then that little Michelin has pleased Baron
Gouraud? It's incredible. Every one who knows the baron is amazed. And
now she's on the way to obtaining the red ribbon for her husband! Ah,
she's a woman of spirit. She isn't faint-hearted, she doesn't need any
one to steer her boat."

Madame Sidonie said this with an air of some little regret mingled with
admiration.

"But to return to Monsieur de Saffré--It would seem that he met you at
an actresses' ball, muffled up in a domino, and he even accuses himself
of having somewhat cavalierly offered you a supper. Is it true?"

The young woman was quite surprised.

"Perfectly true," murmured she; "but who could have told him?"

"Wait a bit, he pretends that he recognised you later on, when you were
no longer in the room, and that he remembered having seen you leave on
Maxime's arm. Since then he has been madly in love. It has grown in his
heart, you understand, been a sudden fancy. He came to see me to beg me
to make you his apologies--"

"Well, tell him that I forgive him," interrupted Renée negligently.

And again assailed by all her worries, she continued:

"Ah! my good Sidonie, I am awfully bothered. It is absolutely necessary
that I should have fifty thousand francs to-morrow morning. I came to
speak to you about the matter. You know some money-lenders, you told
me."

The agent, vexed by the abrupt manner in which her sister-in-law had
interrupted her story, made her wait some time for an answer.

"Yes, certainly; only, I advise you, first of all to try and obtain the
money from a friend. If I were in your place I know very well what I
should do. I should simply apply to Monsieur de Saffré."

Renée smiled in a constrained manner.

"But it would hardly be proper," she answered, "since you pretend that
he is so much in love."

The old woman looked at her with a fixed stare; then her flabby face
gently softened into a smile of tender pity.

"Poor dear," she muttered, "you have been crying; don't deny it, I can
see it by your eyes. You must be strong and accept life. Come, let me
arrange the little matter in question."

Renée rose up, twisting her fingers, and making her gloves crack. And
she remained standing, quite shaken by a cruel internal struggle. She
was opening her mouth, to accept perhaps, when a gentle ring at the
bell resounded in the next room. Madame Sidonie hastily went out,
leaving the door ajar, so that a double row of pianos could be seen.
The young woman then heard a man's step, and the stifled sound of a
conversation carried on in an undertone. She mechanically went to
examine more closely the yellowish stain with which the mattresses had
streaked the wall. This stain disturbed her, made her ill at ease.
Forgetting everything, Maxime, the fifty thousand francs, and Monsieur
de Saffré, she stepped back to the front of the bed, reflecting; this
bed had been much better placed, as it had formerly stood; some women
were really wanting in taste; of a certainty when one lay down one
must have the light in one's eyes. And in the depths of her memory she
vaguely saw the figure of the stranger of the Quai Saint-Paul rise up,
her novel in two assignations, that chance amour which she had partaken
of, there, at that other place. The wearing away of the wall paper was
all that remained of it. Then the room filled her with uneasiness, and
the hum of voices which continued in the next apartment made her feel
impatient.

When Madame Sidonie returned, opening and closing the door with due
precaution, she made repeated signs with the tips of her fingers, to
recommend Renée to speak low. Then, she whispered in her ear:

"You don't know, the adventure's a good one: it's Monsieur de Saffré
who's there."

"You didn't tell him though that I was here?" asked the young woman
anxiously.

The agent seemed surprised, and with an air of great simplicity
answered:

"But I did--He is waiting for me to tell him to come in. Of course I
didn't speak about the fifty thousand francs--"

Renée, who was quite pale, had drawn herself up as if she had been
struck with a whip. A great pride again rose to her heart. That
creaking of boots, which she heard growing louder in the next room,
exasperated her:

"I am going," she said curtly. "Come and open the door for me."

Madame Sidonie tried to smile.

"Don't be childish," she said. "I can't be left with that fellow on my
hands, since I have told him you are here--You really compromise me--"

But the young woman had already descended the little staircase. She
repeated, in front of the closed shop door:

"Open it, open it."

When the lace-dealer withdrew the brass knob, she had the habit of
putting it in her pocket. She wished to continue parleying. Finally
seized with anger herself, and displaying in the depths of her grey
eyes the tart acridity of her nature, she cried: "But come, what shall
I say to the man?"

"That I'm not for sale," replied Renée, who already had one foot on the
side-walk.

And it seemed to her that she could hear Madame Sidonie muttering as
she banged the door: "Eh! get off, you jade! you shall pay me for this!"

"By heavens," thought Renée as she again entered her brougham, "I
prefer my husband to that."

She returned straight home. In the evening she told Maxime not to come;
she was poorly, she needed repose. And, on the morrow, when she handed
him the fifteen thousand francs for Sylvia's jeweller, she remained
embarrassed in presence of his surprise and his questions. Her husband,
she said, had done a good stroke of business. From that day forth,
however, she became more capricious, she often changed the hour of the
appointments which she gave the young fellow, and even she frequently
watched for him in the conservatory to send him away. He did not worry
himself much about these changes of humour; it pleased him to be an
obedient thing in women's hands. What bored him a great deal more was
the moral turn which their lovers' meetings took at times. She became
quite sad; and it even happened that she had big tears in her eyes.
She left off singing the refrain about the "handsome young man" in the
_Belle Hélène_, she played the hymns she had learnt at school and asked
her lover if he did not think that sin was always punished, sooner or
later.

"She's decidedly growing old," he thought. "It will be the utmost if
she's funny for another year or two."

The truth was that she suffered cruelly. She would now have preferred
to deceive Maxime with Monsieur de Saffré. She had revolted at Madame
Sidonie's, she had given way to instinctive pride, to disgust for such
a low bargain. But on the following days, when she endured the anguish
of adultery, everything in her foundered; and she felt herself so
despicable that she would have surrendered herself to the first man who
pushed open the door of the room containing the pianos. The thought of
her husband had, at times, formerly passed before her, amid her incest,
like a touch of voluptuous horror; but henceforth the husband, the man
himself, entered into it with a brutality that transformed her most
delicate sensations into intolerable sufferings. She, who had enjoyed
the refinement of her sin, and had willingly dreamt of a corner of a
superhuman paradise where the gods partook of their amours together,
was now descending to vulgar debauchery, to being shared by two men.
In vain did she try to derive enjoyment from her infamy. Her lips were
still warm with Saccard's kisses when she offered them to Maxime's. Her
inquisitiveness descended to the depths of these accursed pleasures.
She went as far as to mingle the two affections, and to seek for the
son amid the father's hugs. And she emerged yet more alarmed and more
bruised from this journey into unknown evil, from this ardent darkness
in which she confounded the person of her double lover, with a terror
which was like the death-rattle of her enjoyment.

She kept this drama to herself alone, and increased the suffering it
occasioned by the feverishness of her imagination. She would have
preferred to die rather than own the truth to Maxime. She had an
inward fear that the young man might revolt and leave her; she had
such an absolute belief in the monstrosity of her sin and in eternal
damnation, that she would have more willingly crossed the Parc Monceaux
naked than have confessed her shame aloud. On the other hand, she
still remained the madcap who astonished Paris by her extravagant
conduct. Nervous gaiety seized hold of her, prodigious caprices which
the newspapers talked about, designating her by her initials. It was
at this period that she seriously wished to fight a duel with pistols
with the Duchess de Sternich who had, intentionally, so she said, upset
a glass of punch over her dress. To calm her, it was necessary for
her brother-in-law, the minister, to get angry. On another occasion
she bet with Madame de Lauwerens that she would make the round of the
Longchamps racecourse in less than ten minutes, and it was only a
question of costume that deterred her from doing so. Maxime himself
began to feel afraid of this head, in which madness lurked; and on the
pillow at night-time he thought he could hear all the hubbub of a city
bent on enjoying itself.

One evening they went together to the Théâtre-Italien. They had
not even looked at the bill. They wished to see the great Italian
tragedian, Ristori, who then attracted all Paris, and in whom, by the
command of fashion, they were bound to interest themselves. The play
was _Phèdre_. Maxime remembered his classical repertory sufficiently,
and Renée knew enough Italian to follow the performance. And indeed
they derived an especial emotion from this drama, performed in a
foreign language, the sonority of which seemed to them at times to be a
simple orchestral accompaniment supporting the pantomime of the actors.
Hippolytos was a tall, pale fellow, a very poor actor, who whimpered
his part.

"What a ninny!" muttered Maxime.

However, Ristori, with her broad shoulders shaken by her sobs, with
her tragical face and fat arms, moved Renée deeply. Phædra was of
Pasiphae's blood, and she asked herself of what blood she was, the
incestuous stepmother of modern times. She saw nought of the piece save
this tall woman drawing the ancient crime over the stage. When Phædra
confides her criminal tenderness to Œnone in the first act; when, all
on fire, she declares herself to Hippolytos in the second; and later
on, in the fourth act, when the return of Theseus overwhelms her and
she curses herself, in a crisis of gloomy fury, she filled the house
with such a cry of savage passion, with such a yearning for superhuman
voluptuousness, that the young woman felt every shudder of her desire
and remorse pass through her own flesh.

"Wait," murmured Maxime in her ears, "you are going to hear Theramene's
narrative. The old fellow has a funny head!"

And he muttered in a hollow voice:

    "Scarce had we passed the gates of Trezene,
    He on his chariot mounted--"

But while the old fellow spoke, Renée neither looked nor listened any
more. The light blinded her, and stifling heat came to her from all the
pale faces stretched out towards the stage. The monologue continued,
interminable. She imagined herself in the conservatory under the
ardent foliage, and she dreamt that her husband came in and surprised
her in the arms of his son. She suffered horribly, she was losing
consciousness, when the death-rattle of Phædra, repentant and dying in
the convulsions caused by the poison, made her open her eyes again. The
curtain fell. Would she have the strength to poison herself some day?
How petty and shameful her drama was beside the ancient epopœia! And
while Maxime fastened her opera cloak under her chin, she still heard,
growling behind her, Ristori's rough voice to which Œnone's complacent
murmur replied.

In the brougham, the young fellow talked on alone. He considered
tragedies sickening as a rule, and preferred the pieces performed at
the Bouffes. However, _Phèdre_ was spicy. He had taken an interest in
it, because--And he pressed Renée's hand to complete his meaning. Then
a funny idea darted through his head, and he gave way to an impulse to
say something witty.

"It was I," he murmured, "who did right not to approach the sea at
Trouville."

Renée, lost in the depths of her painful dream, remained silent. It was
necessary for him to repeat his phrase.

"Why?" asked she, astonished and failing to understand.

"But the monster--"

And he gave vent to a little titter. This joke froze the young woman.
Everything was upset in her head. Ristori was no longer aught, but a
big puppet who tucked up her peplum and poked out her tongue to the
public like Blanche Müller in the third act of the _Belle Hélène_;
Theramene danced the cancan, and Hippolytos eat bread and jam while
stuffing his fingers into his nose.

When a more galling remorse made Renée shudder, she evinced superb
revolt. What was her crime after all, and why should she blush? Did she
not every day tread upon greater infamies? Did she not elbow at the
ministers', at the Tuileries, everywhere in fact, wretches like herself
who had millions on their flesh, and who were adored on both knees! And
she thought of the shameful friendship of Adeline d'Espanet and Suzanne
Haffner, at which one smiled, at times, at the Empress's Mondays.
And she recalled to herself the traffic of Madame de Lauwerens, whom
husbands celebrated for her good conduct, her order, and her exactitude
in settling her tradesmen's bills. She named Madame Daste, Madame
Teissière, the Baroness de Meinhold, those creatures whose luxury was
paid for by their lovers, and who were quoted in society like shares
are quoted upon change. Madame de Guende was so stupid and so well
formed, that she had three superior officers for her lovers at the same
time, and was unable to distinguish them from each other on account of
their uniforms. This made that demon of a Louise say that she first
of all made them strip to their shifts so as to know which of the
three she was talking to. As for the Countess Vanska, she remembered
the courtyards in which she had sung, the side-walks on which people
pretended they had again seen her, dressed in printed calico, and
prowling about like a she-wolf. Each of these women had her shame, her
triumphant, displayed sore. And, overtopping them all, the Duchess de
Sternich rose up, ugly, old, worn out, with the glory of having passed
a night in the Imperial bed; she typified official vice, from which she
derived the majesty of debauchery and a kind of sovereignty over this
band of illustrious hussies.

The incestuous stepmother accustomed herself to her sin, as to a gala
robe the stiffness of which might at first have inconvenienced her. She
followed the fashions of the period, she dressed and undressed herself
in the style of others. She ended by believing that she lived amid a
circle above common morality, in which the senses became more acute and
developed, and in which one was allowed to strip oneself naked for the
joy of all Olympus. Sin became a luxury, a flower set in the hair, a
diamond fastened on the brow. And she again saw, like a justification
and redemption, the Emperor passing on the general's arm, between two
rows of inclined shoulders.

Only one man, Baptiste, her husband's valet, continued to disturb her.
Since Saccard showed himself gallant, this tall, pale, dignified valet,
seemed to walk around her with the solemnity of mute censure. He did
not look at her, his cold glances passed higher, above her chignon,
with the modesty of a beadle who refuses to defile his eyes by letting
them rest on a hair of a sinner. She imagined that he knew everything,
and she would have purchased his silence had she dared. Then feelings
of uneasiness took possession of her, she experienced a kind of
confused respect when she met Baptiste, and said to herself that all
the honesty of her household had withdrawn and hidden itself under this
lackey's dress-coat.

One day she asked Céleste:

"Does Baptiste joke in the servants' hall? Do you know if he has had
any adventure, if he has any mistress?"

"What a question!" was all the maid replied.

"Come, he must have paid you some attentions?"

"Why! he never looks at women. We barely see him. He is always in
master's rooms or in the stables. He says that he is very fond of
horses."

Renée was irritated by this respectability, for she would have liked
to be able to despise her servants. Although she had taken a liking
to Céleste, she would have rejoiced to learn that she was someone's
mistress.

"But you, Céleste," she continued, "don't you think that Baptiste is a
good-looking fellow?"

"I, madame!" cried the chambermaid with the stupefied air of a person
who has just heard something prodigious. "Oh! I've very different ideas
in my head. I don't want a man. I've my plan. You will see later on.
I'm not a fool, no."

Renée could not draw anything more precise from her. Moreover, her
worries were growing. Her noisy life, her mad rambles, met with
numerous obstacles which she had to overcome, and against which she
at times bruised herself. It was thus that Louise de Mareuil rose
up one day between herself and Maxime. Renée was not jealous of the
"hunchback," as she disdainfully called her; she knew her to be
condemned by the doctors, and could not believe that Maxime would ever
marry such an ugly chit, even at the price of a dowry of a million.
In her fall she had retained a middle-class naivete respecting the
people around her; although she despised herself, she readily believed
that they were superior and very estimable. But whilst rejecting the
possibility of a marriage which would have seemed to her a piece of
sinister debauchery and a theft, she suffered from the young folks'
familiarities and friendliness. When she spoke of Louise to Maxime, he
laughed with satisfaction, he repeated the child's sayings to her, and
said:

"The urchin calls me her little man, you know."

And he displayed such freedom of mind that she did not dare to tell him
that this urchin was seventeen, and that their playfulness with their
hands, and their eagerness when they met in drawing-rooms to find out
some shady corner to poke fun at everybody, grieved her and spoilt her
most pleasant evenings.

An incident occurred which imparted a strange character to the
situation. Renée often felt the need of acting boastingly, and she had
whims of brutal boldness. She dragged Maxime behind a curtain, behind a
door, and kissed him at the risk of being seen. One Thursday evening,
when the buttercup drawing-room was full of people, she was seized
with the fine idea of calling the young fellow who was talking with
Louise, she advanced from the depths of the conservatory where she was
to meet him, and abruptly kissed him on the mouth between two clumps of
shrubbery, thinking that she was sufficiently concealed. But Louise had
followed Maxime, and when the lovers raised their heads, they saw her a
few paces off, looking at them with a strange smile, without the least
blush or astonishment, but with the quiet friendly air of a companion
in vice, who is learned enough to understand and appreciate such a kiss.

Maxime felt really frightened that day, and it was Renée who showed
herself indifferent and almost joyful. It was all over. It was now
impossible for the hunchback to take her lover from her. She thought:

"I ought to have done it on purpose. She now knows that her 'little
man' belongs to me."

Maxime felt reassured when he again found Louise as gay and as funny
as before. He considered her to be "very acute and a very good-natured
girl." And that was all.

There was good reason, however, for Renée to be disturbed. For some
little time past Saccard had been thinking of his son's marriage with
Mademoiselle de Mareuil. There was a dowry of a million francs to be
had, which he did not wish to let escape, meaning to get his hands into
this money later on. As Louise remained in bed during nearly three
weeks at the beginning of the winter, he was so afraid of seeing her
die before the projected union was accomplished, that he decided the
children should marry at once. He certainly thought them rather young;
but the doctors feared the month of March for the consumptive girl.
Monsieur de Mareuil on his side was in a delicate position. He had
eventually succeeded in getting himself returned as a deputy at the
last poll. Only the Corps Législatif had just quashed his election,
which had provoked a great scandal when the Chamber deliberated on the
validity of the returns. This election was quite a heroi-comical poem,
on which the newspapers lived for a whole month. Monsieur Hupel de la
Noue, the prefect of the department, had displayed such vigour that
the other candidates had not even been able either to placard their
addresses to the electors, or to distribute their voting papers. At his
advice, Monsieur de Mareuil covered the constituency with tables at
which the peasants ate and drank for a week. He, moreover, promised a
railway line, the erection of a bridge and three churches, and on the
eve of the poll he forwarded to the influential electors the portraits
of the Emperor and Empress, two large engravings covered with glass
and set in gold frames. This gift met with tremendous success, and the
majority in Monsieur de Mareuil's favour was overwhelming. But when
the Chamber, in presence of the bursts of laughter which came from
all France, found itself compelled to send Monsieur de Mareuil back
to his electors, the minister flew into a terrible passion with the
prefect and the unfortunate candidate who had really shown themselves
too "zealous." He even spoke of choosing someone else as the official
candidate. Monsieur de Mareuil was terrified, he had spent three
hundred thousand francs in the department, he owned there some large
estates where he felt bored, and which he would have to sell at a loss.
So he came to beg his dear colleague to appease his brother, and to
promise him in his name a most properly conducted election. It was on
this occasion that Saccard again spoke of the children's marriage and
that the two fathers finally decided upon it.

When Maxime was sounded on the subject he felt embarrassed. Louise
amused him, and the dowry tempted him still more. He said yes, he
accepted all the dates that Saccard named to avoid the worry of a
discussion. But, at heart, he owned to himself that matters would
unfortunately not be arranged with such charming facility. Renée would
never consent, she would cry, she would upbraid him, she was capable
of provoking some great scandal to astonish Paris. It was very
disagreeable. She now frightened him. She watched him with alarming
eyes, and she possessed him so despotically that he thought he could
feel claws digging into his shoulder whenever she laid her white hand
on it. Her turbulence became roughness, and there was a cracked sound
in the depths of her laughter. He really feared that she would go mad
one night in his arms. With her, remorse, fear of being surprised,
the cruel joys of adultery did not manifest themselves as with other
women, by tears and dejection, but by greater extravagance, and a more
irresistible longing for noise. And amid her growing affrightment one
began to hear a rattling, the derangement of this adorable, astonishing
machine which was breaking up.

Maxime passively awaited an occasion which would rid him of this
troublesome mistress. He again said that they had been very stupid. If
their comradeship had at first lent additional voluptuousness to their
love, it now prevented him from breaking off as he would certainly have
done from any other woman. He would not have returned; that was his
mode of bringing his amours to a finish so as to avoid any effort or
any quarrel. But he felt himself incapable of a row, and he still even
willingly forgot himself in Renée's embraces; she behaved maternally,
she paid his expenses, and she would pull him out of embarrassment if
any creditors became angry. Then the thought of Louise, the thought
of the dowry of a million of francs returned to him, and made him
reflect--even amid the young woman's kisses--"that it was all very
charming and nice, but that it wasn't serious and must come to an end."

One night Maxime was so rapidly stumped at the house of a woman where
one often gambled till daylight, that he experienced one of those mute
attacks of anger familiar to the gamester whose pockets are empty.
He would have given everything in the world to have been able to
fling a few more louis on the table. He took up his hat, and with the
mechanical step of a man who is impelled by a fixed idea, he repaired
to the Parc Monceaux, opened the little gate, and found himself in the
conservatory. It was past midnight. Renée had forbidden him to come
that night. When she now closed her door to him she did not even try
to invent an explanation, while he merely thought of profiting of his
holiday. He only clearly remembered the young woman's prohibition when
he was in front of the glass door of the little drawing-room which was
closed. As a rule when he was to come, Renée undid the fastening of
this door in advance.

"Bah!" said he on seeing that the window of the dressing-room was
lighted up, "I will whistle and she will come down. I sha'n't disturb
her; if she has a few louis, I will go off at once."

And he whistled gently. He indeed often employed this signal to
announce his arrival. But that evening he fruitlessly whistled several
times. He grew obstinate, raising the key, and unwilling to abandon
his idea of an immediate loan. At last he saw the glass door opened
with infinite precaution and without his having heard the least sound
of footsteps. In the dim light of the conservatory Renée appeared to
him, with her hair down, and scarcely dressed, as if she were going to
bed. She was barefooted. She pushed him towards one of the arbours,
descending the steps and walking over the gravel of the pathways,
without seeming to feel the cold or the roughness of the ground.

"It's stupid to whistle as loud as that," she muttered with restrained
anger. "I told you not to come. What do you want with me?"

"Eh? Let's go up," said Maxime, surprised by this reception. "I will
tell you upstairs. You will catch cold here."

But as he stepped forward she held him back and he then perceived that
she was horribly pale. Mute fright bent her form. Her clothes, the lace
of her linen, hung down like tragic shreds upon her shuddering skin.

He examined her with growing astonishment:

"What is the matter with you? You are ill?"

And instinctively he raised his eyes and looked through the glass panes
of the conservatory at the window of the dressing-room where he had
seen a light.

"But there's a man in your room," he said suddenly.

"No, no, it isn't true," she stammered, supplicating, distracted.

"Pooh, my dear, I see his shadow."

Then, for a minute they remained there face to face, not knowing what
to say to each other. Renée's teeth chattered with terror, and it
seemed to her as if some one were throwing bucketsful of iced water
over her bare feet. Maxime experienced more irritation than he would
have believed; but he still remained sufficiently possessed to reflect,
and say to himself that the occasion was a good one, and that he would
now break off the connection.

"You won't make me believe that Céleste wears a coat," he continued.
"If the glass panes of the conservatory were not so thick I should
perhaps recognize the gentleman."

She pushed him deeper into the shadow of the foliage, saying, with her
hands clasped, and seized with growing terror:

"I beg of you, Maxime--"

But all the young fellow's teasing faculties were aroused, a ferocious
malice which sought for vengeance. He was too weak to ease himself by
anger. Spite compressed his lips; and, instead of striking her, as
he had at first had the impulse of doing, he sharpened his voice and
rejoined:

"You ought to have told me of it, I shouldn't have come to disturb
you--It happens every day that one no longer cares for one another. I
myself was beginning to have enough of it--Come, don't be impatient.
I will let you go up again; but not before you have told me the
gentleman's name--"

"Never, never!" murmured the young woman, forcing back her tears.

"It isn't to call him out, it's to know--The name, tell me the name,
quick, and off I go."

He had caught hold of her wrists and he looked at her, laughing his
wicked laugh. She struggled, distracted, bent upon not opening her lips
again, so that the name he asked for might not escape from them.

"We shall make a noise, you will be nicely placed then. Why are you
frightened? Aren't we good friends? I want to know who replaces me,
it's legitimate--Come, I will help you--It's Monsieur de Mussy whose
grief has touched you."

She did not answer. She bowed her head beneath such an interrogatory.

"It isn't Monsieur de Mussy? The Duke de Rozan, then? Really, nor he
either? Perhaps the Count de Chibray? Not even he?"

He stopped short, he reflected.

"The devil, I can't think of any one else. It can't be my father after
what you told me--"

Renée quivered as if she had been burnt, and said huskily:

"No. You know very well that he no longer comes. I shouldn't accept, it
would be ignoble."

"Then who is it?"

And he pressed her wrists still more tightly. The poor woman struggled
for a few moments longer.

"Oh, Maxime, if you knew! I can't, however, tell you--"

Then conquered, crushed, looking with affright at the lighted window:
"It is Monsieur de Saffré," she stammered in a very low voice.

Maxime, whom the cruel game had amused, turned extremely pale on
hearing this confession which he had asked for so persistently. He was
irritated by the unexpected pain which this man's name caused him. He
violently threw back Renée's wrists, drawing near to her, and saying to
her full in the face, and with clinched teeth:

"Well, do you want to know you are a ----!"

He said the word. And he was going off, when she hastened to him,
sobbing, taking him in her arms, murmuring tender things, requests for
pardon, swearing that she still adored him, and that she would explain
everything to him on the morrow. But he disengaged himself, and banged
the door of the conservatory, replying:

"No! all's over, I've had quite enough of it."

She remained crushed. She watched him crossing the garden. It seemed
to her that the trees of the conservatory revolved round her. Then
she slowly dragged her bare feet over the gravel of the pathways,
she reascended the steps, her skin discoloured by the cold, and
more tragical than ever amid the disorder of her lace. Upstairs she
answered, in reply to the questions of her husband who was waiting for
her, that she had thought she could recollect where she had dropped a
little note-book she had lost since the morning. And when she was in
bed, she suddenly felt immense despair on reflecting that she ought to
have told Maxime that his father, after returning home with her, had
followed her into her room to talk to her about some money matter.

It was on the morrow that Saccard decided to hasten the finish of the
Charonne matter. His wife belonged to him; he had just felt her, soft
and inert in his hands, like something that surrenders itself. On the
other hand, the line which the Boulevard du Prince Eugène was to follow
was about to be decided upon, and it was necessary that Renée should
be despoiled before the approaching expropriation was noised about.
Saccard displayed an artist's love in all this affair; it was with
devotion that he watched his plan ripen, and he set his traps with the
refinement of a sportsman who prides himself on capturing his game
in skilful fashion. He felt the satisfaction of an expert gamester,
of a man who derives a special enjoyment from stolen gain; he wished
to obtain the ground for a crust of bread, and then to give his wife
a hundred thousand francs' worth of jewellery, amid the joy of the
triumph. The simplest operations grew complicated, became black dramas,
as soon as he dealt with them; he became impassioned, he would have
beaten his father for five francs. But afterwards he scattered gold
in regal fashion. However, before obtaining from Renée the cession of
her share in the property, he prudently went to probe Larsonneau as to
the black-mailing intentions which he had scented in him. His instinct
saved him on this occasion. The expropriation agent had imagined, on
his side, that the fruit was ripe and that he could pluck it. When
Saccard entered the office in the Rue de Rivoli he found his compeer
overcome, and showing signs of the most violent despair.

"Ah! my friend," murmured Larsonneau, taking hold of his hands, "we
are lost. I was about to hasten to your place so that we might consult
together and get out of this horrible scrape."

While he wrung his arms and tried to sob, Saccard noticed that he had
been engaged in signing letters prior to his arrival, and that the
signatures were penned with admirable precision. He accordingly looked
at him quietly, saying:

"Bah! what has befallen us then?"

But the agent did not reply at once; he had thrown himself into his
arm-chair in front of his writing table, and there, with his elbows on
the blotting pad and his brow between his hands, he furiously shook his
head. Finally in a husky voice:

"I have been robbed of the ledger containing the inventory, you know."

And he related that one of his clerks, a scamp worthy of the galleys,
had abstracted a large number of papers among which the famous
inventory figured. The worst was that the thief had realized to what
use he might turn the document in question, and he wished to sell it
back for a hundred thousand francs.

Saccard reflected. The story seemed to him altogether too clumsy.
Plainly enough Larsonneau did not much care at heart whether he was
believed or not. He sought for a simple pretext to make Saccard
understand that he wanted a hundred thousand francs in the Charonne
affair; and indeed, that he would, on this condition, return the
compromising papers which were in his possession. The bargain
seemed too onerous to Saccard. He would willingly have allowed his
ex-colleague a share, but he was irritated by the setting of this
snare, by this pretension to make a dupe of him. On the other hand he
was not without his apprehensions; he knew the personage he had to deal
with, he knew that he was quite capable of taking the documents to his
brother, the minister, who would certainly have paid a price for them
so as to stifle any scandal.

"The devil!" he muttered, sitting down in his turn, "this is a nasty
story. And can one see the scamp in question?"

"I will have him sent for," said Larsonneau. "He lives close by, in the
Rue Jean-Lantier."

Ten minutes had not elapsed when a little young fellow with a squint,
light hair, and a face covered with freckles, stepped softly into the
room, taking care that the door should not make a noise. He wore an
old black frock coat, too large for him and horribly threadbare. He
remained standing at a respectful distance, quietly looking at Saccard
out of the corner of his eye. Larsonneau, who called him Baptistin,
made him undergo an interrogatory, to which he replied in monosyllables
without humbling himself the least in the world; indeed he accepted
with the utmost indifference the epithets of thief, swindler and
scoundrel, which his master thought fit to adjoin to each of his
questions.

Saccard admired this wretched fellow's coolness. At one moment the
expropriation agent sprang from his arm-chair as if to strike him; and
he contented himself with retreating a step, squinting with still more
humility.

"That will do, leave him alone," said the financier. "And so, sir, you
demand a hundred thousand francs for the papers."

"Yes, a hundred thousand francs," replied the young man.

And he went off. Larsonneau seemed unable to calm himself.

"What a blackguard, eh?" he stammered. "Did you see his underhand
looks? Fellows of that stamp have a timid air, but they would murder a
man for twenty francs."

Saccard however interrupted him, saying:

"Pooh! he isn't terrible. I think one will be able to arrange matters
with him--I came to see you about a much more worrying affair--You were
right in mistrusting my wife, my dear friend. Just fancy, she's going
to sell her share of the property to Monsieur Haffner. She needs money,
she says. Her friend Suzanne must have influenced her."

The other abruptly ceased despairing; he listened, rather pale,
readjusting his stick-up collar, which had become bent during his fit
of anger.

"This sale," continued Saccard, "means the ruin of our hopes. If
Monsieur Haffner becomes your fellow-partner, not only will our profits
be compromised, but I am dreadfully afraid that we shall find ourselves
in a most disagreeable position towards that over-scrupulous fellow,
who will want to go over the accounts."

The expropriation agent began walking about with an agitated step, his
patent leather boots creaking on the carpet.

"You see," muttered he, "in what a position one puts oneself to
oblige people! But, my dear fellow, if I were in your place, I should
absolutely prevent my wife from doing anything so foolish. I would beat
her sooner."

"Ah! my friend!" said the financier with a wily smile, "I have no more
power over my wife than you seem to have over that blackguard of a
Baptistin."

Larsonneau stopped short in front of Saccard, who was still smiling,
and gazed at him with a profound air. Then he resumed walking up and
down, but with a slow measured step. He approached a looking glass,
pulled up the bow of his necktie, and then walked on again, regaining
his usual elegant manner. And suddenly:

"Baptistin!" he cried.

The little young fellow who squinted came in, but by another door. He
no longer carried his hat, but twisted a pen between his fingers.

"Go and fetch the ledger," said Larsonneau to him.

And when the clerk was no longer there, the agent discussed the sum
that was to be given him.

"Do it for me," he ended by plainly saying.

Thereupon Saccard consented to give thirty thousand francs out of the
future profits of the Charonne affair. He considered that he still
escaped cheaply from the usurer's gloved hand. The latter had the
promise made out in his name, prolonging the comedy to the end, and
stating that he would be accountable to the young man for the thirty
thousand francs. It was with a laugh of relief that Saccard burnt
the ledger page by page at the fire flaming in the grate. Then, this
operation over, he exchanged vigorous hand shakes with Larsonneau, and
left him saying:

"You are going to Laure's this evening, aren't you? Wait for me there.
I shall have arranged everything with my wife, I we will decide on our
final plans."

Laure d'Aurigny, who often moved, then resided in a large apartment
on the Boulevard Haussmann, in front of the Expiatory Chapel. She had
just fixed one day a week to be at home, like a lady of real society.
It was a manner of assembling on the same occasion, the men who saw
her, one by one, during the week. Aristide Saccard triumphed on Tuesday
evenings; he was the acknowledged protector; and he turned his head
with a vague laugh whenever the mistress of the house betrayed him
between two doors, by giving one of the gentlemen an appointment for
the same night. When he remained there, the last of the set, he lit
another cigar, talked business, and joked about the gentleman who was
dancing attendance in the street, waiting until he left; then after
calling Laure his "dear child," and giving her a little pat on the
cheek, he quietly went off by one door while the gentleman came in by
another. The secret treaty of alliance which had consolidated Saccard's
credit and procured the d'Aurigny two sets of furniture in a month,
still continued to amuse them. But Laure wanted a finish to the comedy.
This finish, a predetermined one, was to consist in a public rupture,
to the profit of some fool who would pay dearly for the right of being
the serious protector, known as such to all Paris. The fool was found.
The Duke de Rozan, tired of uselessly boring the women of the same
social standing as himself, dreamt of acquiring the reputation of a
debauchee, so as to lend some relief to his insipid personality. He was
very assiduous at the Tuesday at homes of Laure, whom he had conquered
by his absolute simplicity. Unfortunately, although thirty-five years
old, he was still dependent upon his mother, to such a point that
he could at the most dispose of merely ten louis at a time. On the
evenings when Laure deigned to take his ten louis, pitying herself,
and talking of the hundred thousand francs she needed, he sighed, and
promised her the amount on the day when he would be the master. It
was then that she had the idea of putting him on friendly terms with
Larsonneau, who was one of her good friends. The two men went to lunch
together at Tortoni's; and at dessert Larsonneau, while relating his
amours with a delicious Spanish beauty, pretended that he knew some
money-lenders; but he strongly advised Rozan never to let himself pass
into their hands. This confidential announcement inflamed the duke,
who ended by wringing from his dear friend a promise that he would
occupy himself about his "little affair." He occupied himself about it
so well that he was to bring the money on the very evening that Saccard
was to meet him at Laure's.

When Larsonneau arrived, the d'Aurigny's large white and gold
drawing-room only contained some five or six women, who took hold of
his hands, and clung to his neck with a furious outburst of affection.
They called him "that big Lar!" a caressing nickname which Laure had
invented. And he in a fluty voice exclaimed:

"There, that'll do, my little kittens; you will crush my hat."

They calmed down, and gathered close around him on a couch, while he
told them about an attack of indigestion which had befallen Sylvia,
with whom he had supped the night before. Then drawing a sweetmeat box
from the pocket of his dress-coat he offered them some burnt almonds.
Meanwhile, Laure came out of her bedroom, and as several gentlemen
arrived, she drew Larsonneau into a boudoir situated at one end of the
drawing-room, from which it was separated by double hangings.

"Have you got the money?" she asked him when they were alone.

Larsonneau, without replying, bowed in a jocular manner and tapped the
inner pocket of his coat.

"Oh! you big Lar!" murmured the delighted young woman.

She took him round the waist and kissed him.

"Wait a bit," she said, "I want the flimsies--Rozan is in my room, I
will go and fetch him."

But he detained her, and, in his turn, kissing her shoulders:

"You know what commission I asked of _you_."

"Why, yes, you big stupid, it's agreed."

She came back bringing Rozan. Larsonneau was dressed more correctly
than the duke, with better fitting gloves, and a more artistic bow
to his necktie. They negligently touched hands, and talked about the
races of two days before, at which one of their friends had had a horse
beaten. Laure stamped impatiently.

"Come, never mind all that, my darling," said she to Rozan. "Big Lar
has the money, you know. The affair had better be settled."

Larsonneau pretended to remember.

"Ah, yes, it's true," he said, "I have the amount--But how much better
you would have done had you listened to me, my dear fellow! To think
that these rogues demanded fifty per cent of me. However I agreed to it
all the same, as you told me that it didn't matter."

Laure d'Aurigny had procured some bill stamps during the day. But when
it was a question of a pen and an inkstand, she looked at the two men
with an air of consternation, doubting whether these objects would be
found in the place. She wanted to go and look in the kitchen, when
Larsonneau drew from his pocket, the pocket containing the sweetmeat
box, two marvels, a silver pen-holder which lengthened by means of
a screw, and a steel and ebony inkstand, of jewel-like finish and
delicacy. And as Rozan sat down:

"Draw the notes to my name," the agent said. "I didn't wish to
compromise you, you understand? We will arrange matters together. Six
notes of twenty-five thousand francs each, eh?"

Laure counted the flimsies on a corner of the table. Rozan did not even
see them. When he had signed and raised his head, they had already
disappeared in the young woman's pocket. However she came to him and
kissed him on both cheeks, which appeared to delight him. Larsonneau
looked at them philosophically while folding the promissory notes, and
replacing the inkstand and pen-holder in his pocket.

The young woman still had her arms round Rozan's neck, when Aristide
Saccard raised a corner of the door-hanging.

"Well, don't disturb yourselves," he said, laughing.

The duke blushed. But Laure went to shake the financier's hand,
exchanging a wink of intelligence with him. She was radiant.

"It's done, my dear," said she. "I warned you of it. You are not too
angry with me?"

Saccard shrugged his shoulders with a good-natured air. He pulled back
the hanging, and drawing aside to allow Laure and the duke to pass, he
cried out in an usher's yelping voice:

"The duke, the duchess!"

This witticism met with tremendous success. On the morrow the
newspapers repeated it, plainly naming Laure d'Aurigny, and designating
the two men, by extremely transparent initials. The rupture between
Aristide Saccard and fat Laure, caused even more of a stir than their
pretended amours had done.

Saccard had let the door curtain fall again amid the burst of gaiety
which his jocularity had occasioned in the drawing-room.

"Ah! what a good girl!" said he, turning towards Larsonneau. "She is
vicious! It's you, you scamp, who no doubt profits by all this. What
are you to have?"

But the agent protested, with smiles, and pulled down his shirt-cuffs,
which had caught up under the sleeves of his coat. At last he went and
sat down near the door, on a couch to which Saccard motioned him:

"Come here, I don't want to confess you, dash it all! Let us now deal
with serious matters, my dear fellow. I have had a long talk with my
wife this evening. Everything is decided."

"She consents to cede her share in the property?" asked Larsonneau.

"Yes, but it wasn't without trouble on my part--Women are so obstinate!
My wife, you know, had promised an old aunt not to sell the ground.
There was no end to her scruples. Luckily, however, I had prepared
quite a decisive story."

He rose up to light a cigar at the candelabrum which Laure had left on
the table, and returning and stretching himself languidly on the couch:

"I told my wife," he continued, "that you were completely ruined--You
had gambled at the Bourse, spent your money with harlots, dabbled in
bad speculations; in fact you are on the point of ending by a frightful
bankruptcy--I even let it be understood that I did not consider you
perfectly honest--Then I explained to her that the Charonne affair
would be wrecked in your fall, and that the best course would be for
her to accept the proposal you had made to me to disengage her, by
buying her share, for a crust of bread, it's true."

"It isn't an able story," muttered the expropriation agent. "Do you
fancy your wife will believe such trash?"

Saccard smiled. He was in a disposition to be communicative.

"You are simple, my dear fellow," he resumed. "The basis of the story
is of little consequence; the details, gestures and tone of voice
are everything. Call Rozan and I bet I will persuade him that it is
broad daylight. My wife has scarcely any more brains than Rozan--I
let her have a glimpse of a precipice. She hasn't the least idea of
the coming expropriation. As she was astonished, that in the midst
of a catastrophe, you could think of taking a still heavier burden
on your shoulders, I told her that no doubt she hampered you in
dealing some ugly blow intended for your creditors. Finally, I advised
the transaction as the only means of avoiding being mixed up in
interminable law suits, and of deriving some money from the ground."

Larsonneau still considered the story somewhat brutal. His method was
less dramatic; each of his operations was concocted and unravelled with
the elegance of a drawing-room comedy.

"I should have imagined something different," he said. "However,
everyone his own system. So all we have to do now is to pay--"

"It is on this point," replied Saccard, "that I want to make
arrangements with you. To-morrow I will take the deed of sale to my
wife, and she will simply have to send you this deed to receive the
stipulated amount. I prefer to avoid any interview."

He had indeed never allowed Larsonneau to visit them on a footing
of intimacy. He did not invite him to his entertainments, and he
accompanied him to Renée's on the days when it was absolutely necessary
that they should meet; this had happened on three occasions at the
utmost. He almost always transacted matters with a power of attorney
from his wife, not wishing to let her see too closely into his affairs.

He now opened his pocket-book, adding:

"Here are the two hundred thousand francs' worth of bills accepted by
my wife; you will give them her in payment, and you will add to them a
hundred thousand francs which I will bring you to-morrow morning. I am
bleeding myself, my dear friend. This business will cost me a fortune."

"But that will only make three hundred thousand francs," remarked the
expropriation agent. "Will the receipt be for that amount?"

"A receipt for three hundred thousand francs!" rejoined Saccard,
laughing. "Ah! in that case we should be nicely placed later on!
According to our inventories, the property must now be estimated at two
millions five hundred thousand francs. The receipt will naturally be
for half that amount."

"Your wife will never sign it."

"Yes, she will. I tell you that it is all agreed. Why, dash it all!
I told her that that was your first condition. You present a pistol
at our heads with your bankruptcy, do you understand? And it was for
that reason that I appeared to doubt your honesty, and accused you
of wanting to dupe your creditors. Do you think my wife understands
anything of all that?"

Larsonneau shook his head, muttering:

"No matter, you ought to have devised something simpler."

"But my story is simplicity itself!" said Saccard, very much
astonished. "How the devil do you find it complicated?"

He was not conscious of the incredible number of devices which he
tacked on to the most ordinary transaction. He derived real enjoyment
from the cock-and-bull story which he had just told Renée; and
what delighted him was the impudence of the lie, the piling up of
impossibilities, the astonishing complicacy of the plot. He would long
since have had the ground if he had not imagined all this drama; but
he would have experienced less enjoyment had he obtained it easily.
Besides, he displayed the utmost simplicity in making the Charonne
speculation quite a financial melodrama.

He rose up, and taking Larsonneau's arm, walked towards the
drawing-room:

"You have perfectly understood me, eh?" he said. "Content yourself with
following my instructions, and you will applaud me later on. Do you
know, my dear fellow, you do wrong to wear yellow gloves, they quite
spoil your hands."

The expropriation agent contented himself with smiling and murmuring:

"Oh! gloves have their value, dear master: one can touch anything
without dirtying oneself."

As they returned into the drawing-room, Saccard was surprised and
somewhat alarmed to find Maxime on the other side of the door curtains.
He was seated on a couch beside a fair-haired woman, who was telling
him, in a monotonous voice, a long story, no doubt her own. The young
fellow had, in point of fact, overheard the conversation between his
father and Larsonneau. The two accomplices seemed to him to be a pair
of sharp blades. Still vexed by Renée's betrayal, he tasted a cowardly
enjoyment in learning the theft of which she was about to be the
victim. It avenged him a little. His father came and shook his hand
with a suspicious air; but Maxime, showing him the fair-haired woman,
whispered in his ear:

"She isn't bad looking, is she? I mean to have her this evening."

Thereupon Saccard attitudinized, and showed himself gallant. Laure
d'Aurigny came and joined them for a moment. She complained that Maxime
scarcely paid her one visit a month. But he pretended that he had been
very much occupied, which statement made everybody laugh. He added that
in future he should be here, there and everywhere.

"I have written a tragedy," said he, "and I only hit on the fifth act
last night--I now mean to rest myself at the abodes of all the pretty
women in Paris."

He laughed and enjoyed his allusions which he alone could understand.
However, the only other persons now remaining in the drawing-room were
Rozan and Larsonneau, on either corner of the mantelpiece. The Saccards
rose up, as well as the fair-haired woman who lived in the house. The
d'Aurigny then went to speak in a low tone to the duke. He seemed
surprised and vexed. Seeing that he did not make up his mind to leave
his arm-chair:

"No, really, not this evening," she said in an undertone, "I've a
headache! To-morrow evening, I promise you."

Rozan had to obey. Laure waited till he was on the landing and then
said quickly in Larsonneau's ear:

"Eh! big Lar, I keep my word. Shove him into his carriage."

When the fair-haired woman took leave of the gentlemen to return to her
rooms on the floor above, Saccard was surprised that Maxime did not
follow her.

"Well?" he asked him.

"Well, no," replied the young fellow. "I've reflected--"

And he had an idea which he thought a very funny one:

"I abandon my rights to you, if you like. Make haste, she hasn't yet
shut her door."

But his father gently shrugged his shoulders, saying: "Thanks,
youngster, I've something better than that for the time being."

The four men went down. Outside, the duke absolutely wished to take
Larsonneau with him in his carriage. His mother lived in the Marais,
and he would have dropped the expropriation agent at his door in the
Rue de Rivoli. The latter refused, however, shut the carriage door
himself, and told the coachman to drive off. And he then lingered on
the side-walk of the Boulevard Haussmann, talking with the two others
instead of going away.

"Ah, poor Rozan!" said Saccard, who suddenly understood the truth.

Larsonneau swore that it was not so, that he didn't care a fig for
all that, that he was a practical man. And as the other two continued
joking, and the cold was very keen, he finished by exclaiming:

"'Pon my word, so much the worse; I'm going to ring! You are
indiscreet, gentlemen."

"Good night!" called Maxime, as the door closed again.

And taking his father's arm he went up the Boulevard with him. It
was one of those clear, frosty nights when it is so agreeable to
walk on the hard ground, in the icy atmosphere. Saccard remarked
that Larsonneau was wrong, that it was preferable to be simply the
d'Aurigny's comrade. He started from this point to declare that the
love of these women was really pernicious. He showed himself moral, and
hit upon sentences and advice of astonishing wisdom.

"You see," said he to his son, "all that only lasts for a time, my good
fellow. A man loses his health at it, and doesn't taste real happiness.
You know that I'm not a puritan. All the same, I've had quite enough of
it; I'm going to settle down."

Maxime chuckled; he stopped his father and gazed at him by the
moonlight, declaring that he had a fine head. But Saccard became still
more grave.

"Joke as much as you like. I repeat to you that there is nothing like
married life to preserve a man and make him happy."

Thereupon he spoke of Louise. And he began walking more slowly so
as to settle that matter, he said, since they were talking of it.
Everything was fully arranged. He even informed Maxime that he and
Monsieur de Mareuil had fixed the signing of the contract for the
Sunday following the Mid-Lent Thursday. On that Thursday there was to
be a grand party at the mansion in the Parc Monceaux, and he could
profit by the occasion to make a public announcement of the marriage.
Maxime considered all this to be very satisfactory. He had rid himself
of Renée, he saw no more obstacles, and he surrendered himself to his
father, as he had surrendered himself to his stepmother.

"Well, it's understood," said he. "Only don't talk about it to Renée.
Her friends would twit and tease me, and I prefer that they should
know the news at the same time as everyone else."

Saccard promised him to keep silent. Then, as they approached the top
of the Boulevard Malesherbes he again gave him a quantity of excellent
advice. He told him how he ought to act to make his home a paradise.

"Above everything never break off with your wife. It's folly. A wife
with whom you no longer have connection costs you a fortune. In
the first place a man has to pay some harlot, hasn't he? Then the
expenditure is much greater at home: there are dresses, madame's
private pleasures, her dear friends, the devil and all his train."

He was in a moment of extraordinary virtue. The success of his Charonne
affair had set idyllic tenderness in his heart.

"I," he continued, "was born to live happy and ignored in the depths
of some village with all my family around me. People don't know me,
my little fellow. I seem to be very flighty. But in reality not at
all, I should adore remaining near my wife, I would willingly abandon
my affairs for a modest income which would enable me to retire to
Plassans. You are about to become rich, make yourself a home with
Louise in which you will live like two turtle-doves. It's so nice! I
will go to see you. It will do me good."

He ended by having sobs in his voice. Meanwhile they had reached
the iron gate of the mansion, and stood talking on the curb of the
side-walk. A sharp north-east wind swept over these Parisian heights.
Not a sound arose in the pale night, white with frost. Maxime,
surprised by his father's sentimentality, had for a moment past had a
question on his lips.

"But you," he said at last, "it seems to me--"

"What?"

"As regards your wife!"

Saccard shrugged his shoulders.

"Eh! quite so! I was a fool. That's why I speak to you by
experience--However we have become husband and wife again, oh! quite
so. It happened nearly six weeks ago. I go and join her of an evening
when I don't return home too late. To-night however the poor ducky must
dispense with me; I have to work till daylight. She has such an awfully
fine figure!"

As Maxime held out his hand to his father the latter detained him, and
added in a lower key, in a confidential tone:

"You know Blanche Müller's figure, well, it's that, but ten times more
supple. And such hips! They have a curve, a delicacy--"

And then he concluded by saying to the young fellow who was going off:

"You are like me, you have a heart, your wife will be happy. Good-bye
youngster!"

When Maxime had at last rid himself of his father, he went rapidly
round the park. What he had just heard surprised him so much, that he
experienced an irresistible desire to see Renée. He wished to ask her
forgiveness for his brutality, to find out why she had lied to him in
naming Monsieur de Saffré, and to learn the story of her husband's
tenderness. He thought of all this confusedly, however, with but
the one distinct wish to smoke a cigar in her room and renew their
comradeship. Providing she were well disposed he would even announce
his marriage to her, so as to make her understand that their amours
must remain dead and buried. When he had opened the little door,
the key of which he had fortunately retained, he ended by saying to
himself that after his father's confidential revelations, his visit was
necessary and quite proper.

In the conservatory he whistled as he had done the night before; but he
did not have to wait. Renée came to open the glass door of the little
drawing-room, and went upstairs before him without speaking a word.
She still wore a dress of white tulle forming puffs and covered with
satin bows; the tails of the satin body were edged with a broad band
of white jet which the light of the candelabra tinged with blue and
pink. When Maxime looked at her upstairs he was touched by her pallor
and the deep emotion which deprived her of her voice. She could not
have been expecting him, she still quivered all over at seeing him
arrive as quietly as usual, with his coaxing air. Céleste returned
from the wardrobe, where she had gone to fetch a night-gown, and the
lovers remained silent, deferring their explanation until the girl
had withdrawn. As a rule they did not inconvenience themselves in her
presence; but the things which they felt upon their lips filled them
with a kind of shame. Renée would have Céleste undress her in the
bedroom, where there was a large fire. The chambermaid removed the
pins, took off each article of finery, one by one, without hurrying
herself. And Maxime, feeling bored, mechanically took up the chemise
which was lying on a chair beside him, and warmed it in front of the
flames, leaning forward with his arms apart. It was he who used to
render Renée this little service in happy times and she felt moved when
she saw him delicately holding the gown to the fire. Then as Céleste
showed no signs of finishing the young fellow asked:

"Did you enjoy yourself at the ball?"

"Oh! no, it's always the same thing you know," answered Renée. "A great
deal too many people, a perfect crush."

[Illustration: MAXIME ASSISTING AT RENÉE'S TOILET FOR THE NIGHT.]

Maxime turned the night-gown, which was now warm on one side.

"What did Adeline wear?" he asked.

"A mauve dress, rather awkwardly devised. Although she is short she is
mad on flounces."

They then talked about the other women. Maxime was now burning his
fingers with the gown.

"But you will scorch it," said Renée whose voice was maternally
caressing.

Céleste took the gown from the young fellow's hands. He rose up, and
went to look at the large pink and grey bed, fixing his eyes upon one
of the bouquets embroidered on the curtains, so as to be able to turn
his head, and not see Renée's bare bosom. It was instinctive. He no
longer considered himself her lover, so he no longer had the right
to look. Then he drew a cigar from his pocket and lighted it. Renée
had given him permission to smoke in her apartments. At last Céleste
retired, leaving the young woman by the fireside, quite white in her
night attire.

Maxime walked about for a few moments longer, silent, and looking out
of the corner of his eye at Renée who seemed to be again seized with a
shudder. Then stationing himself in front of the mantelpiece with his
cigar between his teeth, he asked in a curt voice:

"Why didn't you tell me that it was my father who was with you last
night?"

She raised her head, his eyes dilated with supreme anguish; then a rush
of blood crimsoned her face, and, overwhelmed with shame, she hid it
with her hands and stammered:

"You know that? you know that?"

Regaining her self-possession she tried to lie:

"It's not true--Who told it you?"

Maxime shrugged his shoulders.

"Why my father himself, who considers you nicely formed, and talked to
me about your hips."

He had allowed a little vexation to show itself while saying this; but
he now began walking about again, continuing in a chiding but friendly
voice, between two puffs of smoke:

"Really now I don't understand you. You are a singular woman. It was
your fault if I was rude yesterday. If you had told me that it was
my father, I should have gone off quietly, you understand? I have no
right--But you go and name Monsieur de Saffré to me!"

She was sobbing, with her hands over her face. He drew near, knelt down
before her, and forcibly drew her hands aside.

"Come, tell me why you named Monsieur de Saffré?" he said.

Then, still averting her head, she answered in a low tone, amid her
tears:

"I thought that you would leave me, if you knew that your father--"

He rose to his feet, took up his cigar which he had laid on a corner of
the mantelshelf, and contented himself with muttering: "You are very
funny, really!"

She no longer cried. The flames of the grate and the fire of her cheeks
were drying her tears. Her astonishment at seeing Maxime so calm in
presence of a revelation which, she had thought, was bound to crush
him, made her forget her shame. She looked at him as he walked about;
she listened to him speaking, as if she had been in a dream. Without
abandoning his cigar, he repeated to her that she was unreasonable,
that it was quite natural she should have connection with her husband,
and that he really could not think of resenting it. But to go and
confess that she had a lover when it was not true! And he constantly
returned to that point, which he could not understand, and which seemed
really monstrous to him. He talked about women's "mad imaginations."

"You are a little bit cracked, my dear," he said, "you must take care."

Then he ended by asking inquisitively:

"But why Monsieur de Saffré rather than anyone else?"

"He courts me," said Renée.

Maxime restrained an impertinent remark; he had been on the point
of saying that she had fancied herself a month older on owning that
Monsieur de Saffré was her lover. However, he merely gave expression
to the evil smile which this spiteful idea prompted, and throwing his
cigar into the fire, he went and sat down on the other side of the
mantelshelf. There he talked reason, and gave Renée to understand
that they ought to remain good friends. The young woman's fixed gaze
certainly embarrassed him somewhat; he did not dare to announce his
marriage to her. She contemplated him for a long time, her eyes still
swollen by her tears. She found him petty, narrow-minded, despicable,
but she still loved him with the same tenderness that she felt for her
lace. He looked pretty in the light of the candelabra placed on the
corner of the mantelshelf beside him. As he threw his head back, the
light of the candles gilded his hair and glided over his face, amid the
soft down of his cheeks, with a charming aurulent effect.

"All the same I must be off," said he several times.

He had quite decided not to stop. Besides, Renée would not have allowed
it. They both thought it, and said it: they were now nothing more than
two friends. When Maxime had at last pressed the young woman's hand,
and was on the point of leaving the room, she detained him for another
moment by speaking to him about his father, upon whom she bestowed
great praise.

"You see, I felt too much remorse," she said. "I prefer that this
should have happened. You don't know your father; I was astonished to
find him so kind, so disinterested. The poor fellow has such great
worries just now!"

Maxime looked at the tips of his boots without replying, and with an
embarrassed air. She dwelt on the subject.

"As long as he did not come into this room, it was all the same to
me. But afterwards--When I saw him here so affectionate, bringing me
money which he must have picked up in all the corners of Paris, ruining
himself for me without a murmur, I felt ill--If you knew how carefully
he has watched over my interests!"

The young fellow returned softly to the mantelpiece, and leant against
it. He remained embarrassed, with bowed head and a smile gradually
rising to his lips.

"Yes," muttered he, "my father is very skilful in watching over
people's interests."

His tone of voice astonished Renée. She looked at him, and he, as if to
defend himself, added:

"Oh! I know nothing. I only say that my father is a skilful man."

"You would do wrong to speak ill of him," she rejoined. "You must
judge him rather superficially. If I acquainted you with all his
worries, if I repeated to you what he confided to me again this
evening, you would see how mistaken people are, when they think he
cares for money."

Maxime could not restrain a shrug of the shoulders. He interrupted his
stepmother with an ironical laugh.

"Ah, I know him, I know him well," he said. "He must have told you some
very pretty things. Relate them to me."

This tone of raillery wounded her. She then enlarged upon her praises;
she considered her husband quite a great man; she talked about the
Charonne affair, that piece of jobbery of which she had understood
nothing, as about a catastrophe in which Saccard's intelligence and
kindness had been revealed to her. She added that she should sign the
deed of cession on the morrow, and that if this affair were really a
disaster, she accepted it in punishment for her sins. Maxime let her go
on, sneering and looking at her slyly; then he said, in an undertone:

"That's it; that's just it."

And raising his voice, and settling his hand on Renée's shoulder:

"Thanks, my dear, but I already know the story. You are of nice
composition!"

He again seemed to be on the point of leaving, but he felt a furious
itching to tell Renée everything. She had exasperated him with her
praises of her husband, and he forgot that he had promised himself not
to speak, so as to avoid anything disagreeable.

"What! what do you mean?" she asked.

"Why, that my father has 'done' you in the prettiest way in the world.
I really pity you--you are too much of a simpleton!"

And he then cowardly, craftily, related to her what he had heard at
Laure's--tasting a secret delight in descending into these infamies. It
seemed to him that he was taking his revenge for a vague insult which
some one had just addressed to him. With his harlot's temperament he
lingered beatifically over this denunciation, over this cruel chatter
of what he had overheard behind a door. He spared Renée nothing,
neither the money which her husband had lent her usuriously nor that
which he meant to steal from her, with the help of ridiculous stories
fit to send children to sleep. The young woman listened to him, very
pale and with clinched teeth. Standing in front of the chimney-piece,
she slightly lowered her head, and looked at the fire. Her night dress,
the gown which Maxime had warmed, spread out, revealing the motionless,
statue-like whiteness of her limbs.

"I tell all this," continued the young man, "so that you may not seem
to be a fool. But you would do wrong to get angry with my father. He
isn't wicked. He has his failings like every one. Till to-morrow, eh?"

He still advanced towards the door. But Renée stopped him with a sudden
gesture:

"Stay!" she cried, imperiously.

And taking hold of him, drawing him to her, almost seating him on her
knees in front of the fire, she kissed him on the lips, saying:

"Ah, well! it would be too stupid to put ourselves to inconvenience
now. Don't you know that my head has no longer seemed to belong to me
since yesterday, since you wanted to break off? I am like an idiot. At
the ball to-night I had a fog before my eyes. It is because I cannot
now live quite without you. When you leave me I shall be done for.
Don't laugh; I tell you what I feel."

She looked at him with infinite tenderness, as if she had not seen him
for a long time.

"You found the word," she continued. "I was a simpleton. Your father
would have made me see stars in broad daylight. Did I know anything
about it? While he was telling me his story, I only heard a loud
buzzing, and I was so crushed that, if he had chosen, he could have
made me go down on my knees to sign his papers. And I fancied to myself
that I felt remorseful--I was really as stupid as that!"

She burst out laughing, and gleams of folly shone in her eyes. Pressing
her lover still more tightly, she went on:

"Do we sin, we two? We love each other, we amuse ourselves as it
pleases us. Everyone has come to that, eh? You see your father doesn't
put himself out. He likes money, and he takes it wherever he finds it.
He's right, it sets me at my ease. In the first place, I sha'n't sign
anything, and then, you will come here every evening. I was afraid that
you wouldn't, you know, on account of what I told you. But as you don't
mind it--Besides, I shall close my door to him now, you understand?"

She rose up and lighted the night-light. Maxime hesitated in despair.
He realised what a piece of folly he had perpetrated, and he harshly
reproached himself for having said too much. How could he announce his
marriage now? It was his fault. The rupture had been accomplished,
there had been no need for him to go up into that room again, or
especially to prove to the young woman that her husband deceived
her. Maxime's anger with himself was increased, as he no longer knew
what feeling he had first obeyed. But if for a moment he thought of
being brutal a second time, of going away, the sight of Renée, who
was letting her slippers fall, lent him invincible cowardice. He felt
frightened. He remained.

On the morrow, when Saccard came to his wife's apartments to make her
sign the deed of cession, she quietly answered him that she should not
do so, that she had reflected. She did not, however, allow herself even
an allusion to the truth; she had sworn that she would be discreet,
for she did not want to create worries for herself, but rather wished
to taste the renewal of her amours in peace. The Charonne affair would
finish as it could; her refusal to sign was merely an act of vengeance;
she did not care a fig for the rest. Saccard was on the point of flying
into a passion. All his dream crumbled. His other affairs were going
from bad to worse. He found himself at the end of his resources, and
merely sustained himself by performing miraculous feats of equilibrity;
that very morning he had been unable to pay his baker's bill. This did
not prevent him, however, from preparing a splendid entertainment for
the Mid-Lent Thursday. In presence of Renée's refusal he experienced
the white rage of a vigorous man impeded in his work by a child's whim.
With the deed of cession once in his pocket, he had relied upon raising
funds pending the award of the indemnity. When he had slightly calmed
down, and his intelligence had become clear again, his wife's sudden
change astonished him; she must, undoubtedly, have been advised. He
scented a lover. This was so clear a presentiment, that he hastened to
his sister's to question her, to ask her if she did not know anything
about Renée's private life. Sidonie showed herself very bitter. She
had not forgiven her sister-in-law for the affront she had given her
by refusing to see Monsieur de Saffré. So when, by her brother's
questions, she understood that the latter accused his wife of having a
lover, she cried out that she was certain of it. And of her own accord
she offered to spy upon "the turtle doves." In that way, the haughty
thing would see who it was she had to deal with. Saccard did not
habitually seek after disagreeable truths; his interest alone compelled
him to open his eyes, which, as a rule, he wisely kept closed. He
accepted his sister's offer.

"Oh! be easy, I shall learn everything," said she to him in a voice
full of compassion. "Ah! my poor brother! Angèle would never have
betrayed you! So good, so generous a husband! These Parisian dolls have
no hearts. And to think that I never cease giving her good advice!"




CHAPTER VI.


There was a fancy dress ball at the Saccards' on the Mid-Lent Thursday.
The great curiosity, however, was the poem of the "Amours of handsome
Narcissus and the nymph Echo" in three _tableaux_, which the ladies
were to perform. For more than a month the author of this poem,
Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, had been travelling from his Prefecture to
the mansion of the Parc Monceaux, so as to superintend the rehearsals,
and give his opinion on the costumes. He had at first thought of
writing his work in verse, but later on he had decided in favour of
_tableaux vivants_; it was more noble, he said, nearer to antique
beauty.

The ladies no longer slept. Some of them changed their costumes no
fewer than three times. There were some interminable conferences,
over which the prefect presided. The personage of Narcissus was at
first discussed at length. Should a man or a woman personate him? At
last, at the instance of Renée, it was decided that the part should be
confided to Maxime, but he was to be the only man in the _tableaux_;
and, indeed, Madame de Lauwerens declared that she would never have
consented to it if "little Maxime had not been so like a real girl."
Renée was to be the nymph Echo. The question of the costumes was far
more complicated. Maxime gave a good lift up to the prefect, who was
quite tired out amid nine women, whose mad imaginations threatened
to grievously impair his conception's purity of lines. If he had
listened to them, his Olympus would have worn powder. Madame d'Espanet
absolutely wished a dress with a long skirt to hide her somewhat large
feet, while Madame Haffner dreamt of dressing herself in a wild beast's
skin. Monsieur Hupel de la Noue was energetic, and he even turned angry
on one occasion; he was convinced, and he said that if he had renounced
versification it was to write his poem "in cleverly combined stuffs and
attitudes selected among the best."

"The harmony, ladies," repeated he at each fresh exigency, "you
forget the harmony. I can't, however, sacrifice the entire work to the
flounces you ask me for."

The conferences took place in the buttercup drawing-room. Entire
afternoons were spent there, deciding on the cut of a skirt. Worms was
summoned several times. At last everything was settled, the costumes
decided on, the positions learnt, and Monsieur Hupel de la Noue
declared himself satisfied. The election of Monsieur de Mareuil had
given him less trouble.

The performance of the "Amours of handsome Narcissus and the nymph
Echo," was to begin at eleven o'clock. The large drawing-room
was already full at half-past ten, and as there was to be a ball
afterwards, the ladies were there in costumes, seated in arm-chairs
ranged in a semi-circle in front of the improvised stage--a platform,
hidden by two broad curtains of red velvet with golden fringe, running
on iron rods. The gentlemen stood behind, or moved to and fro. At ten
o'clock, the upholsterers had struck the last nails home. The platform
rose up at the end of the drawing-room, occupying a portion of this
long gallery. Access to the stage was obtained by the smoking-room,
converted into a green-room for the artistes. In addition, the ladies
had at their disposal several apartments on the first floor, where an
army of maids prepared the costumes of the different _tableaux_.

It was half-past eleven, and the curtains were not yet drawn aside. A
loud buzz filled the drawing-room. The rows of arm-chairs were occupied
by a most astonishing crowd of marchionesses, noble dames, milk-maids,
Spanish beauties, shepherdesses, and sultanas; while the compact
mass of dress-coats set a large dark stain beside the glistening of
light stuffs and bare shoulders, glowing with the bright sparkle of
jewellery. The women alone were in costume. It was already warm. The
three chandeliers lit up the golden sheen of the drawing-room.

At last Monsieur Hupel de la Noue was seen to emerge from an opening on
the left hand side of the platform. He had been assisting the ladies
since eight o'clock in the evening. His dress-coat bore on the left
sleeve the mark of three white fingers--a woman's little hand which had
rested there after dabbling in a box of rice powder. But the prefect
had something else than the mishaps of his attire to think about! He
had huge eyes, and a swollen and somewhat pale face. He did not seem to
see anyone. And advancing towards Saccard, whom he recognised among a
group of grave-looking men, he said to him in an undertone:

"Dash it all! Your wife has lost her girdle of foliage. We are in a
pretty pickle!"

He swore, and felt inclined to beat the people around him. Then,
without waiting for a reply, without looking at anything, he turned his
back, plunged under the draperies again and disappeared. The singular
apparition of this gentleman made the ladies smile.

The group amid which Saccard found himself had gathered behind the last
row of seats. One arm-chair had even been drawn out of the row for
Baron Gouraud whose legs had for some time begun to swell. Monsieur
Toutin-Laroche, whom the Emperor had just raised to the Senate, was
there with Monsieur de Mareuil, whose second election the Chamber had
deigned to accept, and Monsieur Michelin, decorated the day before;
and a little in the rear were Mignon and Charrier, one of whom had a
large diamond on his cravat, while the other displayed a still larger
one on his finger. The gentlemen chatted together. Saccard left them
for a moment to go and exchange a few words with his sister, who had
just come in and seated herself between Louise de Mareuil and Madame
Michelin. Madame Sidonie was dressed as a sorceress; Louise jauntily
wore a page's costume which gave her the air of an urchin; little
Michelin, made up as an alme, smiled in a love-sick manner amid her
veils embroidered with golden threads.

"Do you know anything?" Saccard softly asked his sister.

"No, nothing as yet," she replied. "But the swain must be here. I will
catch them to-night, you may be sure."

"Inform me at once, eh?"

And then Saccard, turning to the right and to the left, complimented
Louise and Madame Michelin. He compared the latter to one of Mahomet's
houris and the former to a mignon of Henri III. His Provençal accent
seemed to make the whole of his spare strident figure sing with
delight. When he returned to the group of grave-looking men, Monsieur
de Mareuil drew him on one side and spoke to him about the marriage
of their children. Nothing was altered, the contract was still to be
signed on the following Sunday.

"Quite so," said Saccard. "I even mean to announce the marriage to our
friends this evening, if you see no impediment--I am only waiting for
my brother, the minister, who has promised to come."

The new deputy was delighted. However, Monsieur Toutin-Laroche was
raising his voice as if he were a prey to lively indignation.

"Yes, gentlemen," he was saying to Monsieur Michelin and the two
contractors who drew nearer, "I was simple enough to let my name be
mixed up in such an affair."

And as Saccard and De Mareuil joined the group, he added:

"I was telling the gentlemen about the deplorable adventure of the
Société Générale of the ports of Morocco, you know, Saccard?"

The latter did not flinch. The company in question had just collapsed
amid a frightful scandal. Over-inquisitive shareholders had wished to
know what progress had been made with the establishment of the famous
commercial stations on the shores of the Mediterranean, and a judicial
inquiry had demonstrated that the ports of Morocco only existed on the
plans of the engineers, very handsome plans, hung on the walls of the
company's offices. Since then, Monsieur Toutin-Laroche cried out even
louder than the shareholders, growing indignant and demanding that his
name should be restored to him spotless. And he made so much noise,
that the government, to calm and rehabilitate this useful man in the
eye of public opinion, had decided to send him to the Senate. It was
thus that he fished up the much-coveted seat, in an affair which had
almost brought him to the police court.

"You are really too good to occupy yourself about that," said Saccard.
"You can show your great work, the Crédit Viticole, an establishment
which has come victorious out of every crisis."

"Yes," murmured De Mareuil, "that is an answer to everything."

Indeed the Crédit Viticole had just emerged from great and skilfully
concealed embarrassments. A minister who was very kindly disposed
towards this financial institution which held the city of Paris by
the throat, had brought about a rise on 'change, which Monsieur
Toutin-Laroche had turned to advantage marvellously well. Nothing
titillated him more than the praise bestowed on the prosperity of the
Crédit Viticole. He usually provoked it. He thanked Monsieur de Mareuil
with a glance, and leaning towards Baron Gouraud, on whose arm-chair he
was familiarly leaning, he asked him:

"You are all right? You are not too warm?"

The baron gave a slight grunt.

"He is breaking up, he breaks up more every day," added Monsieur
Toutin-Laroche turning towards the other gentlemen.

Monsieur Michelin smiled, and from time to time gently lowered his
eyelids to look at his red ribbon. Mignon and Charrier, firmly planted
on their large feet, seemed much more at ease in their dress-coats
since they wore diamonds. However, it was nearly midnight, and the
assemblage was growing impatient; it did not venture to murmur; but the
fans fluttered more nervously, and the noise of conversation increased.

At length, Monsieur Hupel de la Noue reappeared. He had just passed
one shoulder through the narrow opening when he perceived Madame
d'Espanet at length mounting on to the stage; the other ladies already
in position for the first _tableau_ had only been waiting for her. The
prefect turned round, showing the spectators his back, and he could
be seen talking with the marchioness whom the curtains concealed. He
lowered his voice, and making complimentary gestures with the tips of
his fingers, said:

"My congratulations, marchioness, your costume is delicious."

"I have a much prettier one underneath!" cavalierly rejoined the young
woman, who laughed in his face, so funny did she find him, buried in
this manner, among the draperies.

The audacity of this witticism momentarily astonished the gallant
Monsieur Hupel de la Noue; but he recovered himself, and enjoying the
repartee more and more as he gradually fathomed its depths:

"Ah! charming! charming!" he murmured with a delighted air.

He let the corner of the curtain fall, and went to join the group of
grave looking men, wishing to enjoy his work. He was no longer the
scared man running after the nymph Echo's girdle of foliage. He was
radiant and panting, wiping his forehead. He still had the little white
hand marked on the sleeve of his coat; and in addition the glove of
his right hand was stained with red at the tip of the thumb; he had
no doubt dipped his thumb into one of the ladies' pots of colour. He
smiled, fanned himself with his handkerchief and stammered:

"She is adorable, lavishing, stupefying--"

"Who?" asked Saccard.

"The marchioness. Fancy, she just said to me--"

And he repeated the witticism. It was considered extremely smart. The
gentlemen repeated it to one another. Even worthy Monsieur Haffner, who
had approached, could not prevent himself from applauding. However, a
piano which few people had seen, began to play a waltz. There was then
deep silence. The waltz had a capricious, interminable roll; and a very
soft phrase ever ascended the keyboard, finishing in a nightingale's
trill; then deeper notes resounded more slowly. It was very voluptuous.
The ladies smiled with their heads slightly inclined. The piano had,
however, suddenly put a stop to Monsieur Hupel de la Noue's gaiety.
He looked at the red velvet curtains with an anxious air, he said to
himself that he ought to have placed Madame d'Espanet in position as he
had placed the others.

The curtains slowly opened, the piano again began the sensual waltz in
a minor key. A murmur sped through the drawing-room, the ladies leaned
forward, the gentlemen stretched out their necks, whilst admiration
displayed itself here and there by a remark, made in too loud a voice,
by a spontaneous sigh, or a stifled laugh. This lasted for five long
minutes, beneath the blaze of the three chandeliers.

Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, now reassured, smiled beatifically at his
poem. He could not resist the temptation of repeating to the people
around him, what he had already been saying for a month past:

"I thought of doing it in verse. But the lines are more noble, eh?"

Then, while the waltz came and went in an endless lullaby, he gave some
explanations. Mignon and Charrier had drawn near and were listening
attentively.

"You know the subject of course? Handsome Narcissus, son of the river
Cephise and the nymph Liriope, scorns the love of the nymph Echo--Echo
belonging to the suite of Juno whom she amused with her speeches while
Jupiter visited the world--Echo, daughter of the Air and the Earth, as
you know--"

And he went into transports over the poetry of mythology. Then in a
more confidential tone:

"I thought I might give rein to my imagination. The nymph Echo leads
handsome Narcissus before Venus, in a marine grotto, so that the
goddess may inflame him with her fire. But the goddess remains
powerless. The young man indicates by his attitude that he is not
touched."

The explanation was not out of place, for few of the spectators in
the drawing-room understood the real meaning of the groups. When the
prefect had named the personages in an undertone, the admiration
increased. Mignon and Charrier continued staring with wide open eyes.
They had not understood.

[Illustration: THE TABLEAUX VIVANTS AT SACCARD'S MANSION IN THE PARC
MONCEAUX.]

A grotto was shown on the platform, between the red velvet curtains.
The scenery was formed of silk with large irregular plaits imitating
rocky anfractuosities on which shells, fish and large sea plants
were painted. The broken ground rose up like a hillock, covered
with the same silk, on which the scene painter had depicted fine
sand constellated with pearls and silver spangles. It was a fitting
retreat for a goddess. On the summit of the hillock stood Madame de
Lauwerens figuring Venus; somewhat stout, wearing her pink tights
with the dignity of a duchess of Olympus, she depicted the sovereign
of love with large severe, all devouring eyes. Behind her, showing
merely her malicious face, her wings and quiver, little Madame Daste
lent her smile to that amiable personage Cupid. Then, on one side of
the hillock, the three Graces, Mesdames de Guende, Teissière, and de
Meinhold, all in muslin, smiled and entwined each other as in Pradier's
group; whilst on the other side the Marchioness d'Espanet and Madame
Haffner, enveloped in the same flow of lace, their arms round each
other's waists and their hair mingled, lent something suggestive to
the _tableau_, a souvenir of Lesbos which Monsieur Hupel de la Noue
explained in a lower voice and for the gentlemen only, saying that
he had wished by this to show the full extent of the power of Venus.
Below the mound the Countess Vanska personated Voluptuousness; she
stretched herself out, twisted by a last spasm, with her eyes half
closed and languishing, as if weary; very dark, she had unloosened
her black hair, and her tunic, spotted with tawny flames, was cut so
as to allow glimpses of her glowing skin. The scale of colour which
the costumes furnished, from the snowy whiteness of Venus's veil to
the dark red of Voluptuousness's tunic, was soft, generally pink,
and of a fleshy tinge. And under the electric ray, ingeniously cast
upon the stage from one of the garden windows, the gauze, the lace,
all the light transparent stuffs mingled so well with the shoulders
and the lights, that these pinky whitenesses seemed alive, and one no
longer knew whether the ladies had not carried plastic accuracy to
the point of stripping themselves naked. This was but the apotheosis;
the drama was enacted in the foreground. On the left side, Renée, the
nymph Echo, stretched out her arms towards the great goddess, her head
half turned in supplicating fashion in the direction of Narcissus,
as if to invite him to look at Venus, the mere sight of whom kindles
terrible fires; but Narcissus, on the right, made a gesture of refusal,
hid his eyes with his hand and remained icily cold. The costumes of
these two personages, especially had cost Monsieur Hupel de la Noue's
imagination infinite trouble. Narcissus, as a wandering demi-god of
the forests, wore the attire of an ideal huntsman: greenish tights, a
short close-fitting jacket, and a branch of oak in his hair. The dress
of the nymph Echo was a complete allegory in itself alone; it partook
of the high trees and lofty mountains, of the resounding spots where
the voices of the Earth and Air reply to each other; it was a rock by
the white satin of the skirt, a thicket by the foliage of the girdle,
a pure sky by the cloud of blue gauze forming the body. And the groups
retained the stillness of statues, the carnal note of Olympus resounded
in the blaze of the broad ray, while the piano continued its complaint
of acute love.

It was generally considered that Maxime was admirably formed. In
making his gesture of refusal he developed his left hip, which was
much remarked. But all the praises were for Renée's expression of
face. As Monsieur Hupel de la Noue remarked, it typified "the pangs
of unsatisfied desire." Her face; wore an acute smile which tried to
become humble, she begged her prey with the supplication of a hungry
she-wolf who half hides her teeth. The first _tableau_ went off
very well, save that that madcap of an Adeline moved, and only with
difficulty restrained an intense desire to laugh. At last the curtains
closed again and the piano became silent.

Then the audience applauded discreetly and the conversation was
resumed. A great breath of love, of restrained desire, had come from
the nudities of the platform, and darted about the drawing-room where
the women leaned more languidly on their seats, while the men spoke in
low voices in each other's ears, and smiled. There was a whispering as
in an alcove, a semi-silence as suited to good society, a longing for
voluptuousness, barely expressed by a quiver of lips; and in the mute
looks exchanged amid this well-mannered delight, there was the brutal
boldness of love offered and accepted with a glance.

There was no end to the judgments passed on the perfections of the
ladies. Their costumes acquired almost as great importance as their
shoulders. When Mignon and Charrier wished to question Monsieur Hupel
de la Noue, they were greatly surprised to see him no longer beside
them; he had already plunged behind the platform again.

"I was telling you then, my beauty," said Madame Sidonie, resuming a
conversation which the first _tableau_ had interrupted, "that I had
received a letter from London, you know, about the affair of the three
milliards. The person whom I had charged to make inquiries writes to me
that she thinks she has discovered the banker's receipt. England must
have paid in that case. It has made me feel ill all day."

She was indeed more yellow than usual, in her sorceress's robe dotted
with stars. And as Madame Michelin did not listen to her, she continued
in a lower voice, muttering that it was impossible that England could
have paid, and that she should decidedly go to London herself.

"Narcissus's costume is very pretty, isn't it?" said Louise to Madame
Michelin.

The latter smiled. She looked at Baron Gouraud, who seemed quite
cheerful again in his arm-chair. Madame Sidonie, perceiving the
direction of her glance, leant forward and whispered in her ear, so
that the child might not hear:

"Has he kept his engagement?"

"Yes," replied the young woman, languishing, playing the part of an
alme delightfully. "I have chosen the house at Louveciennes, and I have
received the title deeds of it from his man of business. But we have
broken off, I no longer see him."

Louise had particularly sharp ears to catch what one wanted to hide
from her. She looked at Baron Gouraud with a page's boldness, and said
quietly to Madame Michelin:

"Don't you think that the baron is frightful?"

Then bursting out laughing she added:

"I say, he ought to have been entrusted with the part of Narcissus. He
would be delicious in apple-green tights!"

The sight of Venus, of this voluptuous corner of Olympus, had indeed
revived the old senator. He rolled his eyes with delight and turned
half round to compliment Saccard. Amid the buzz which filled the
drawing-room the group of grave-looking men continued talking business
and politics. Monsieur Haffner said that he had just been named
president of a jury charged with settling questions of indemnities.
Then the conversation turned upon the works of Paris, on the Boulevard
du Prince-Eugène, of which the public was beginning to talk seriously.
Saccard seized the opportunity and spoke of a person he knew, a
proprietor who would no doubt be expropriated. The baron softly wagged
his head. Monsieur Toutin-Laroche went so far as to declare that there
was nothing so disagreeable as to be expropriated; Monsieur Michelin
assented, and squinted still more in looking at his decoration.

"The indemnities can never be too high," sententiously concluded
Monsieur de Mareuil who wished to please Saccard.

They had understood each other. But Mignon and Charrier now brought
their private affairs forward. They meant to retire soon, no doubt
to Langres, they said, keeping an occasional lodging in Paris. They
made the gentlemen smile when they related that after completing the
building of their magnificent mansion on the Boulevard Malesherbes,
they had found it so handsome that they had not been able to resist
the desire to sell it. Their diamonds must have been a consolation
which they had offered themselves. Saccard laughed with a bad grace;
his old partners had just realized enormous profits from an affair in
which he had played the part of a dupe. And as the interval between
the _tableau_ grew longer, phrases of praise about Venus's bosom,
and the nymph Echo's dress, were heard amid the conversation of the
grave-looking men.

At the end of a long half hour Monsieur Hupel de la Noue reappeared.
He was on the high road of success and the disorder of his attire
increased. As he regained his seat he met Monsieur de Mussy. He shook
hands with him in passing; and then he retraced his steps to ask him:

"You don't know the marchioness's remark?"

And he related it to him, without waiting for his reply. It penetrated
him more and more; he criticised it, he ended by finding that it was of
exquisite naivete. "I have a much prettier one underneath." It was a
cry from the heart!

But Monsieur de Mussy was not of this opinion. He considered the remark
indecent. He had just been attached to the embassy in England, where,
so the minister had told him, the greatest propriety was necessary. He
refused to lead the cotillon any more, made himself old, and no longer
spoke of his love for Renée, to whom he bowed gravely when he met her.

Monsieur Hupel de la Noue was again joining the group, formed behind
the baron's arm-chair, when the piano struck up a triumphal march. A
loud burst of harmony, produced by bold strokes on the keys, preluded
a melody of great amplitude, amid which a metallic clang resounded at
intervals. Each phrase as soon as finished was repeated in a louder
strain, accentuating the rhythm. It was at once brutal and joyous.

"You will see," muttered Monsieur Hupel de la Noue. "I have, perhaps,
carried poetical licence rather far; but I think that my audacity has
answered. The nymph Echo, seeing that Venus is powerless over the
handsome Narcissus, conducts him to Plutus, the god of wealth and
precious metals. After the temptation of the flesh, the temptation of
gold."

"That's classical," replied the lean Monsieur Toutin-Laroche with an
amiable smile. "You are well acquainted with your period, my dear
prefect."

The curtains parted, the piano played louder. The effect was dazzling.
The electric ray fell upon a flaming splendour, which the spectators
at first thought was a brazier in which bars of gold and precious
stones seemingly melted. A new grotto was presented, but this one was
not the cool retreat of Venus, bathed by the waters which eddied on
fine pearl besprinkled sand; it must have been situated in the bowels
of the earth, in some deep fiery stratum, it seemed a fissure of the
ancient Hades, a crevice amid a mine of liquescent metals inhabited by
Plutus. The silk, simulating the rock, displayed broad metallic lodes,
layers which looked like the veins of the old world, teeming with
incalculable wealth and the eternal life of the soil. On the ground,
by a bold anachronism, which Monsieur Hupel de la Noue had decided
on, there was an avalanche of twenty-franc pieces, louis spread out,
louis piled up, a pullulation of ascending louis. On the summit of this
heap of gold sat Madame de Guende as Plutus, a female Plutus, a Plutus
showing her bosom, amid the broad streaks of her dress imitating all
the metals. Around the god, erect or reclining, united in bunches, or
blooming apart, were grouped the fairy-like efflorescences of this
grotto into which the caliphs of the "Arabian Nights" had seemingly
emptied their treasure. There was Madame Haffner as Gold, with a stiff
skirt as resplendent as the robes of a bishop; Madame d'Espanet as
Silver, shining like moonlight; Madame de Lauwerens in warm blue as a
Sapphire, having beside her little Madame Daste, a smiling Turquoise,
of a tender shade of blue; then were spread out the Emerald, Madame
de Meinhold, and the Topaz, Madame Teissière; and lower down, Countess
Vanska, lending her dark ardour to Coral, was stretched out with her
arms raised and loaded with red drops, similar to some monstrous and
adorable polype, which displayed a woman's flesh amid the pink and
pearly openings of her shell. These ladies wore necklaces, bracelets,
complete sets of jewels formed of the precious stone they represented.

The audience particularly noticed the original jewellery of Mesdames
Haffner and d'Espanet, exclusively composed of little gold and little
silver coins, fresh from the mint. In the foreground the drama remained
the same: the nymph Echo tempted handsome Narcissus who again refused
with a gesture. And the eyes of the spectators grew accustomed with
delight to this yawning cavity opening amid the inflamed entrails of
the earth, to this pile of gold on which the wealth of a world was
wallowing.

This second _tableau_ met with still more success than the first
one. The idea appeared particularly ingenious. The boldness of the
twenty-franc pieces, this stream from some modern safe, which had
fallen into a corner of Grecian mythology, delighted the minds of the
ladies and the financiers who were present. The words, "What a number
of coins! what a quantity of gold!" sped by, amid smiles and long
quivers of satisfaction; and assuredly, each of the ladies, each of
the gentlemen dreamt of having all this money to her or himself, in a
cellar.

"England has paid, those are your milliards," maliciously murmured
Louise in Madame Sidonie's ear.

And Madame Michelin, her mouth slightly parted by delighted desire,
threw back her alme's veil and fondled the gold with a sparkling
glance, while the group of grave-looking men went into transports.
Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, beaming, murmured a few words in the ear of
the baron whose face was becoming spotted with yellow stains. But
Mignon and Charrier, less discreet, said with brutal simplicity:

"Dash it all! there would be enough there to demolish all Paris and
rebuild it."

The remark seemed a profound one to Saccard, who was beginning to think
that Mignon and Charrier trifled with people in passing themselves off
as fools. When the curtains closed again and the piano finished the
triumphal march with a loud noise of notes thrown one upon the other,
like final shovelfuls of crowns, the applause burst forth, louder and
more prolonged.

However, in the middle of the _tableau_, the minister accompanied by
his secretary, Monsieur de Saffré, had appeared at the door of the
drawing-room. Saccard, who was impatiently watching for his brother,
wished to dart to meet him. But the latter requested him by a gesture
not to stir. And he softly approached the group of grave-looking men.
When the curtains had closed again, and people had perceived him, a
long whisper travelled through the drawing-room and all heads were
turned round. The minister counterbalanced the success of the "Amours
of handsome Narcissus and the nymph Echo."

"You are a poet, my dear prefect," he said, smiling to Monsieur Hupel
de la Noue. "You once published a volume of verse, 'The Convolvuli,'
I believe? I see that the cares of office have not exhausted your
imagination."

The prefect detected the point of an epigram in this compliment. The
sudden advent of his superior put him out of countenance, the more
as, on giving himself a glance to see if his attire were correct, he
perceived on his coat sleeve the little white hand which he did not
dare to rub off. He bowed and stammered.

"Really," continued the minister, addressing himself to Monsieur
Toutin-Laroche, Baron Gouraud, and the other personages who were there,
"all that gold was a marvellous spectacle. We should do great things if
Monsieur Hupel de la Noue coined money for us."

In ministerial language, this was the same remark as Mignon's and
Charrier's. Thereupon Monsieur Toutin-Laroche and the others paid their
court, and played on the minister's last phrase: the Empire had already
accomplished marvels; there was no lack of gold, thanks to the great
experience of those in power; France had never occupied such a splendid
position in the eyes of Europe; and the gentlemen ended by becoming
so servile, that the minister himself changed the conversation. He
listened to them with his head erect and the corners of his mouth
slightly raised, whereby an expression of doubt and smiling disdain was
imparted to his fat, carefully shaven, white face.

Saccard, who wished to bring about the announcement of the marriage of
Maxime and Louise, manœuvred so as to find a skilful transition. He
affected great familiarity, and his brother played the good-natured,
and consented to do him the service of seeming to be very fond of him.
He was really a superior man, with his clear look, his evident contempt
of petty rascalities, his broad shoulders which could have overturned
all these folks with a mere shrug. When the marriage at last came into
question he showed himself charming, he let it be understood that he
had his wedding gift ready; he spoke of Maxime's appointment as an
auditor of the Council of State. He went so far as to repeat twice to
his brother, in a tone of good fellowship:

"Tell your son that I wish to be his witness."

Monsieur de Mareuil blushed with delight. Saccard was congratulated.
Monsieur Toutin-Laroche offered himself as a second witness. Then the
group abruptly began talking about divorce. A member of the opposition
had just had "the sad courage," said Monsieur Haffner, to defend
this social shame. And every one protested. Their sense of propriety
furnished them with profound remarks. Monsieur Michelin smiled
delicately at the minister, while Mignon and Charrier observed with
astonishment that the collar of his dress-coat was worn.

In the meantime Monsieur Hupel de la Noue remained embarrassed, leaning
on the arm-chair of Baron Gouraud, who had contented himself with
exchanging a silent hand-shake with the minister. The poet did not
dare to leave the spot. An indefinable feeling, the fear of appearing
ridiculous, the fear of losing the good-will of his superior, detained
him despite his furious desire to go and set the ladies in position
on the stage for the last _tableau_. He waited for some happy remark
to occur to him and reinstate him in favour; but he could think of
nothing, and he was feeling more and more ill at ease when he perceived
Monsieur de Saffré; he took his arm and clung to him as to a saving
plank. The young man had just arrived, he was quite a fresh victim.

"You don't know the marchioness's remark?" the prefect asked him.

Monsieur Hupel de la Noue was so disturbed, however, that he no longer
knew how to present the anecdote in a spicy manner; he floundered:

"I said to her: 'You have a charming costume,' and she answered--"

"'I have a much prettier one underneath,'" quietly added Monsieur de
Saffré. "It's old, my dear fellow, very old."

Monsieur Hupel de la Noue looked at him in consternation. The remark
was old, and he had meant to sift his commentary on the naivete of this
cry from the heart!

"Old, as old as the world," repeated the secretary. "Madame d'Espanet
has said it twice already at the Tuileries."

This was the last blow. After that the prefect no longer cared a fig
for the minister or the whole drawing-room. He was proceeding towards
the platform when the piano began a prelude, in a saddened tone, with
trembling notes which seemed to weep; then the complaint expanded,
dragged on at length, and the curtains parted. Monsieur Hupel de la
Noue, who had already half disappeared, returned into the drawing-room
on hearing the slight grating of the rings. He was pale, exasperated;
he made a violent effort to restrain himself from apostrophizing the
ladies. What! they had taken up their positions unassisted! It must be
that little d'Espanet who had fomented a plot to hasten the change of
costume and dispense with him. That wasn't it, that was worth nothing
at all!

He returned, mumbling indistinct words. He looked on to the platform,
shrugging his shoulders, and murmuring:

"The nymph Echo is too near the edge--And that leg of handsome
Narcissus, nothing noble in its attitude, nothing noble at all."

Mignon and Charrier, who had approached him to hear "the explanation,"
ventured to ask "what the young man and the young woman were doing
there, lying on the ground." But he did not answer, he refused to
explain any more of his poem; and as the contractors insisted:

"Why," he said, "it no longer concerns me, since the ladies set
themselves in position without me!"

The piano softly sobbed. On the platform a clearing, on which the
electric ray set a stretch of sunlight, revealed a vista of leaves. It
was an ideal glade with blue trees, and large red and yellow flowers
which rose as high as the oaks. Venus and Plutus stood on a grassy
mound side by side, and surrounded by nymphs who had hastened from
the neighbouring thickets to serve as their escort. There were the
daughters of the trees, the daughters of the springs, the daughters of
the heights, all the laughing naked divinities of the forest. And the
god and the goddess triumphed, and punished the apathy of the proud
young fellow who had scorned them, while the group of nymphs looked
inquisitively and with religious fright at the vengeance of Olympus
displayed in the foreground. The drama was there being unravelled.
Handsome Narcissus, lying on the margin of a brook which came down from
the back of the stage, was looking at himself in the clear mirror;
and exactitude had been carried to the point of placing a strip of
looking-glass, at the bottom of the brook. But he was no longer the
free young fellow, the forest wanderer; death surprised him amid his
delighted admiration of his own figure, death enervated him, and Venus
with her outstretched finger, like a fairy in a transformation scene,
consigned him to his deadly fate. He was becoming a flower. His limbs
became verdant and longer, in his tight-fitting costume of green satin;
the flexible stalk, figured by his slightly bent legs, sank into the
ground to take root there, while his bust, decked with broad lappets
of white satin, expanded into a marvellous corolla. Maxime's fair hair
completed the illusion, and set, with its long curls, yellow pistils
amid the whiteness of the petals. And the large, nascent flower, still
human, inclined its head towards the spring, with its eyes bedimmed,
and smiling with voluptuous ecstasy, as if handsome Narcissus had at
length satisfied in death the passion which he had felt for himself.
A few paces off the nymph Echo was dying also, dying of unquenched
desires; she found herself gradually caught in the rigidity of the
soil, she felt her burning limbs congeal and harden. She was not a
vulgar rock, soiled by moss, but white marble, by her shoulders and
arms, by her long snowy robe from which the girdle of foliage and the
blue drapery had glided. Sunk down amid the satin of her skirt, which
formed large plaits, similar to a block of Paros, she threw herself
back, with nought alive, in her statue-like congealed body, save her
woman's eyes, eyes which glistened as they remained fixed on the flower
of the waters, languidly leaning above the mirror of the spring. And it
already seemed as if all the love sounds of the forest, the prolonged
noises of the thickets, the mysterious quivers of the leaves, the
deep sighs of the old oaks, came and beat upon the marble flesh of
the nymph Echo, whose heart, still bleeding amid the block, resounded
protractedly, repeating afar the slightest complaints of the Earth and
of the Air.

"Oh! how they have muffled up poor Maxime!" murmured Louise. "And
Madame Saccard, you would say a dead woman!"

"She is covered with rice powder," said Madame Michelin.

Other scarcely complimentary remarks circulated. This third _tableau_
did not meet with the same unqualified success as the two others.
And yet it was this tragical ending which made Monsieur Hupel de la
Noue enthusiastic about his own talent. He admired himself in it, as
his Narcissus did in his strip of looking-glass. He had set a number
of poetical and philosophical allusions in it. When the curtains had
closed again for the last time, and the spectators had applauded like
people of good breeding, he experienced mental regret at having given
way to anger and not having explained the last page of his poem. He
then wished to give the people around him the key to the charming,
grand, or simply suggestive things which handsome Narcissus and the
nymph Echo represented, and he even tried to say what Venus and
Plutus were doing in the depths of the clearing; but the gentlemen
and ladies, whose clear practical minds had understood the grotto of
flesh and the grotto of gold, had no inclination to descend into the
prefect's mythological complications. Only Mignon and Charrier, who
absolutely wished to inform themselves, were good-natured enough to
question him. He took possession of them, and kept them during nearly
two hours, standing in the embrasure of a window, relating to them the
"Metamorphoses" of Ovid.

The minister now withdrew. He apologised for not being able to wait
for the beautiful Madame Saccard to compliment her on the perfect
gracefulness of the nymph Echo. He had just been three or four times
round the drawing-room on the arm of his brother, giving a few shakes
of the hand and bowing to the ladies. He had never before compromised
himself so much for Saccard. He left him radiant, when, on the
threshold, he said to him in a loud voice:

"I shall expect you to-morrow morning. Come and breakfast with me."

The ball was about to begin. The servants had ranged the ladies'
arm-chairs along the walls. The large drawing-room now displayed from
the little yellow room to the platform, its bare carpet the large
purple flowers of which opened under the dripping light which fell from
the crystal of the chandeliers. The heat was increasing; the reflection
of the red hangings brightened the gilding of the furniture and the
ceiling. To open the ball one waited until the ladies, the nymph Echo,
Venus, Plutus, and the others, had changed their costumes.

Madame d'Espanet and Madame Haffner appeared the first. They had
reassumed their costumes of the second _tableau_; the first as gold,
the other as silver. They were surrounded and congratulated; and they
recounted their emotions.

"As for me I nearly burst out," said the marchioness, "when I saw
Monsieur Toutin-Laroche's big nose looking at me in the distance!"

"I think that I have a stiff neck," languidly remarked the fair-haired
Suzanne. "No, really, if it had lasted a minute longer I should have
replaced my head in a natural position, my neck hurt me so much."

From the embrasure into which Monsieur Hupel de la Noue had pushed
Mignon and Charrier, he cast nervous glances at the group formed around
the two young women; he was afraid that people were poking fun at him.
The other nymphs arrived one after the other; they had all resumed
their costumes as precious stones; the Countess Vanska, as coral,
met with prodigious success when one was able to closely examine the
ingenious details of her dress. Then Maxime entered, correct in his
dress coat and with a smiling air; and a flow of women enveloped him,
he was placed in the centre of the circle, he was joked about his
part as a flower, and his passion for looking-glasses. Without any
embarrassment, as if delighted with his part, he continued smiling,
answered the jokes, confessed that he adored himself, and that he was
sufficiently cured of women to prefer himself to them. People laughed
the louder at this, the group grew larger, and took possession of the
whole centre of the drawing-room, while the young man, drowned amid
this people of shoulders, this medley of bright costumes, retained his
perfume of monstrous love, his vicious fair flower's gentleness.

When Renée, however, at last came down, there was semi-silence. She
had attired herself in a new costume of such original grace and such
audacity that the gentlemen and the ladies, although accustomed to the
young woman's eccentricities, at first gave a movement of surprise.
She was dressed as an Otaheitian. This costume, it appears, is most
primitive: as she wore it, it comprised soft tinted tights which rose
from her feet to her bosom, leaving her shoulders and arms bare; and
over these tights a simple muslin blouse, short and trimmed with two
flounces so as to slightly hide the hips. In her hair a wreath of
wild flowers; and gold rings round her ankles and her wrists. Nothing
more. She was naked. The tights had the suppleness of flesh under the
paleness of the blouse; the pure line of her nudity could be detected
from her knees to her arm-pits, vaguely bedimmed by the flounces, but
reappearing at the slightest movement, and becoming more distinct
between the threads of the lace. She was an adorable savage, a
barbarous, voluptuous girl scarcely hidden by a white vapour, a patch
of sea fog, amid which her whole body could be divined.

With rosy cheeks Renée advanced at a rapid step. Céleste had made the
first tights burst; but the young woman had fortunately foreseen the
eventuality and taken her precautions. These torn tights had delayed
her. She seemed to care little about her triumph. She smiled, however,
and briefly answered the men who stopped and complimented her on the
purity of her attitudes in the _tableaux vivants_. Behind her she left
a trail of dress coats astonished and charmed by the transparency
of her muslin blouse. When she had reached the group of women who
surrounded Maxime, she gave rise to curt exclamations, and the
marchioness began to look at her from head to foot, with a tender air,
and murmuring:

"She is adorably formed."

Madame Michelin, whose alme's costume became horribly heavy beside this
simple veil, pursed her lips, while Madame Sidonie, shrivelled up in
her black sorceress's dress, murmured in her ear:

"It's the height of indecency, isn't it, my beauty?"

"Ah! yes indeed," said the pretty brunette at last, "Monsieur Michelin
_would_ be angry if I undressed myself like that."

"And he would be quite right," concluded the agent.

The band of serious men were not of this opinion. It went into
ecstacies at a distance. Monsieur Michelin, whom his wife so
inappropriately brought into question, showed himself transported so as
to please Monsieur Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud whom the sight of
Renée enraptured. Saccard was greatly complimented on the perfection
of his wife's figure. He bowed and professed to be very touched. The
evening was a good one for him, and but for a preoccupation which
darted from his eyes at moments when he cast a rapid glance at his
sister, he would have been supremely happy.

"I say, she has never shown us so much," jokingly said Louise in
Maxime's ear, and indicating Renée by a glance.

She paused, and then with an undefinable smile:

"At least, to me."

The young fellow looked at her with a nervous air; but she continued
smiling, strangely, like a schoolboy delighted with some bit of fun
rather too strong.

The ball began. The platform of the _tableaux vivants_ had been
utilized to accommodate a little orchestra in which brass instruments
predominated, and the bugles and the cornets-à-piston launched forth
their clear notes, amid the ideal forest with blue trees. First came
a quadrille, "Ah! he has boots, he has boots, Bastien!" which then
constituted the delight of public balls. The ladies danced. Polkas,
waltzes, mazurkas alternated with quadrilles. The swinging couples came
and went, filled the long gallery, leaping under the lash of the brass
instruments, swaying amid the lullaby of the violins. The costumes,
this flood of women of all countries and all periods, displayed a
swarming medley of bright stuffs. After mingling the colours and
carrying them off in cadenced confusion, the rhythm at certain touches
of the bows abruptly brought back the same tunic of pink satin, the
same dress body of blue velvet beside the same black coat. Then another
touch of the bows, a blast of the cornets, pushed the couples on, made
them travel in files around the drawing-room, with the swinging motion
of a bark floating away under a gust of wind which had severed the
fast that moored it. And so on, always, endlessly, for hours together.
At times, between two dances, a lady approached a window, stifling,
inhaling a little icy air; a couple rested on a couch in the little
buttercup drawing-room, or descended into the conservatory, going
slowly round the paths. Skirts, only the edges of which could be seen,
seemed to laugh languidly under the arbours of tropical creepers, in
the depths of the tepid shade, where the loud notes of the cornets were
wafted during the quadrilles of "Hallo! the little lambs," and "I've a
foot on the move."

When the servants opened the door of the dining-room, transformed
into a refectory with sideboards against the walls, and a long table
laden with cold meats in the centre, there was a shove, a crush. A
tall handsome man, who had timidly kept his hat in his hand, was so
violently flattened against the wall that the unfortunate hat burst
with a dull moan. This made people laugh. The guests rushed upon the
pastry and the truffled poultry, brutally digging their elbows into
one another's ribs. It was a pillage, hands met amid the viands, and
the lackeys did not know whom to answer, in the midst of this band of
well-bred men whose extended arms expressed the sole fear of arriving
too late and finding the dishes empty. An old gentleman became angry
because there was no Bordeaux wine, and champagne, so he affirmed,
prevented him from sleeping.

"Softly, gentlemen," said Baptiste in his grave voice. "There will be
enough for everyone."

But he was not listened to. The dining-room was already full, and
yet more anxious dress-coats rose up at the door. In front of the
sideboards, stood groups eating quickly and pressing closely together.
A good many swallowed without drinking, not having been able to
set their hands on a glass. Others, on the contrary, drank after
fruitlessly running about for a morsel of bread.

"Listen," said Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, whom Mignon and Charrier,
weary of mythology, had led to the buffet, "we sha'n't get anything if
we don't help each other. It's much worse at the Tuileries, and I have
acquired some experience there. You look after the wine, and I'll see
to the meat."

The prefect was watching a leg of mutton. He stretched out his hand,
at the right moment, through a break in the surrounding shoulders, and
quietly carried it off, after filling his pockets with little rolls.
The contractors returned from their side, Mignon with one bottle, and
Charrier with two bottles of champagne; but they had only been able to
secure two glasses; they said, however, that it did not matter, that
they would drink out of the same. And the party supped on the corner of
a flowerstand at the end of the room. They did not even take off their
gloves, but put the slices of mutton already cut between their bread,
and kept the bottles under their arms. And standing up, they talked
with their mouths full, stretching out their chins in advance of their
waistcoats so that the gravy might fall on to the carpet.

Charrier, having finished his wine before his bread, asked a servant if
he could not have a glass of champagne.

"You must wait, sir," angrily replied the scared servant, losing his
head and forgetting he was no longer in the kitchen. "Three hundred
bottles have already been drunk."

However, one could hear the notes of the orchestra swelling with sudden
gusts. Couples were footing the polka called "The Kisses," famous
at public balls, and the rhythm of which each dancer had to mark by
kissing his partner. Madame d'Espanet appeared at the door of the
dining-room, flushed, her hair slightly disordered, and trailing her
silver robe with charming lassitude. People barely drew aside, and she
had to shove with her elbows to obtain a passage. She made the round
of the table, hesitating, a pout on her lips. Then she went straight
to Monsieur Hupel de la Noue who had finished, and, who was wiping his
mouth with his pocket-handkerchief.

"You would be very amiable, sir," she said to him with an adorable
smile, "if you would find me a chair! I have been round the table
fruitlessly--"

The prefect had a spite against the marchioness but his gallantry did
not hesitate; he hastened, found a chair, installed Madame d'Espanet
and remained behind her, serving her. She would only take a few shrimps
with a little butter and two thimblefuls of champagne. She eat in a
delicate manner amid the gluttony of the men. The table and the chairs
were exclusively reserved for the ladies. However an exception was
always made in favour of Baron Gouraud. He was there seated at ease, in
front of a bit of pastry the crust of which he crunched with his jaws.
The marchioness re-conquered the prefect by telling him that she should
never forget her emotions as an artiste in the "Amours of handsome
Narcissus and the nymph Echo." She even explained to him why they had
not waited for him at the last _tableau_ in a manner which completely
consoled him: the ladies on learning that the minister was there had
thought that it would hardly be proper to prolong the interval. She
ended by begging him to go in search of Madame Haffner who was dancing
with Monsieur Simpson, a brute of a man who displeased her, she said.
And when Suzanne was there she no longer looked at Monsieur Hupel de la
Noue.

Saccard, followed by Messieurs Toutin-Laroche, De Mareuil and Haffner,
had taken possession of a sideboard. As there was no room at the table
and Monsieur de Saffré passed by with Madame Michelin on his arm he
detained them, and insisted that the pretty brunette should share with
his party. She nibbled some pastry, smiling, raising her clear eyes
on the five men who surrounded her. They leaned towards her, touched
her alme's veils embroidered with threads of gold, brought her to
bay between themselves and the sideboard, against which she ended by
leaning, taking cakes from every hand, very gentle and very caressing,
and showing the loving docility of a slave amid her masters. All by
himself, at the other end of the room, Monsieur Michelin was finishing
a terreen of goose's liver which he had succeeded in capturing.

Madame Sidonie, who had been prowling about the ball since the first
bow strokes, now entered the dining-room and summoned Saccard with a
glance.

"She isn't dancing," she said to him in a low voice. "She seems
anxious. I think she is meditating some bit of folly. But I have not
yet been able to discover the swain. I am going to eat something and
then return to the watch."

And standing like a man, she eat a chicken's wing, which she procured,
thanks to Monsieur Michelin who had finished his terreen. She poured
herself out some Malaga in a large champagne glass; then, after
wiping her mouth with the tips of her fingers, she returned to the
drawing-room. The train of her sorceress's robe already seemed to have
gathered up all the dust of the carpets.

The ball was languishing, and the orchestra gave signs of being blown,
when a murmur sped about: "The cotillon! the cotillon!" and revived
the dancers and the brass instruments alike. Couples came from all the
clumps of plants in the conservatory; the large drawing-room grew as
full as when the first quadrille was danced; and there was a discussion
among the awakened crowd. It was the last flash of the ball. The men
who did not dance looked with sluggish good nature out of the depths
of the embrasures at the talkative group swelling in the middle of the
room; while the supper-eaters at the sideboards stretched out their
necks to see, but without letting go of their bread.

"Monsieur de Mussy won't," said one lady. "He swears that he no longer
leads it. Come, once more, Monsieur de Mussy, only this once. Do it for
us."

But the young embassy attaché remained stiff in his high collar turned
down at the points. It was really impossible, he had sworn. There was a
disappointment. Maxime also refused, saying that he couldn't, that he
was tired out. Monsieur Hupel de la Noue did not dare to offer himself;
he only descended as far as poetry. On a lady speaking of Monsieur
Simpson she was silenced; Monsieur Simpson was the strangest cotillon
leader one over saw; he gave himself up to fantastic and malicious
devices; it was related that in one drawing-room where the guests had
been so imprudent as to choose him, he had compelled the ladies to jump
over the chairs, and one of his favourite figures was to make everyone
go round the room on all fours.

"Has Monsieur de Saffré left?" asked a childish voice.

He was leaving, he was saying good-bye to the beautiful Madame Saccard
with whom he was on the best possible terms, since she would not have
him. This amiable sceptic admired other people's caprices. He was
triumphantly brought back from the hall. He tried to escape, and said
with a smile that he was being compromised, that he was a serious
man. Then, in presence of all the white hands that were stretched out
towards him:

"Well," said he, "take your places. But I warn you that I'm classical.
I haven't a copper's worth of imagination."

The couples sat down round the drawing-room, on all the seats that
could be gathered together; some young fellows even went to fetch the
iron chairs of the conservatory. It was a monster cotillon, Monsieur de
Saffré, who had the solemn air of an officiating priest, chose, as his
partner, the Countess Vanska, whose costume as Coral preoccupied him.
When everyone was in position, he cast a long glance at this circular
row of skirts, each flanked by a dress-coat. And he made a sign to
the orchestra, the brass instruments of which resounded. Heads leaned
forward along the smiling band of faces.

Renée had refused to take part in the cotillon. She had been nervously
gay since the beginning of the ball, scarcely dancing, but mingling
with the groups, unable to remain still. Her friends found her strange.
During the evening she had talked of making a balloon journey with a
celebrated aeronaut with whom all Paris was occupied. When the cotillon
began she was vexed not to be able to walk about at her ease, so she
stationed herself at the hall-door, shaking hands with the gentlemen
who left and talking with her husband's intimate friends. Baron
Gouraud, whom a lackey carried off in his fur cloak, paid a final
eulogium to her Otaheitian's costume.

Meanwhile Monsieur Toutin-Laroche shook hands with Saccard.

"Maxime relies on you," said the latter.

"Quite so," replied the new senator.

And turning towards Renée:

"I haven't congratulated you, madame. So the dear boy is now settled!"

And as she gave an astonished smile:

"My wife doesn't yet know," observed Saccard, "We have decided this
evening on Mademoiselle de Mareuil's marriage with Maxime."

She continued smiling, bowing to Monsieur Toutin-Laroche who went off
saying:

"You sign the contract on Sunday, eh? I am going to Nevers about a
mining affair, but I shall be back in time."

Renée remained for a moment alone in the middle of the hall. She no
longer smiled, and as she gradually dived into what she had just
learnt, she was seized with a great shudder. She looked at the red
velvet hangings, the rare plants, the pots of majolica with a fixed
stare. Then she said aloud:

"I must speak to him."

And she returned to the drawing-room. But she had to remain near the
entry. A figure of the cotillon barred the way. The orchestra was
playing a waltz air in a low key. The ladies, holding each other hands,
formed a circle, one of those circles that are formed by little girls
singing, "Giroflé girofla," and they spun round as quickly as possible,
pulling one another's arms, laughing and sliding. In the centre, a
gentleman--it was the malicious Monsieur Simpson--held a long pink
scarf in his hand; he raised it with the gesture of a fisherman who is
about to cast a net; but he did not hurry, he no doubt thought it funny
to let these ladies turn round and tire themselves. They breathed hard
and asked for mercy. Then he threw the scarf, and he threw it with such
skill that it went and wound around the shoulders of Madame d'Espanet
and Madame Haffner who were turning side by side. It was one of the
Yankee's bits of fun. He then wished to waltz with both ladies at once,
and he had already taken them both by the waist, one with his left arm
and the other with his right, when Monsieur de Saffré, in the severe
tone of the king of the cotillon, said:

"You can't dance with two ladies."

But Monsieur Simpson would not let go of the two waists. Adeline and
Suzanne threw themselves back in his arms laughing. The point was
argued, the ladies grew angry, the hubbub was prolonged, and the
dress-coats in the embrasures of the windows asked themselves how
Saffré would extricate himself from this delicate dilemma to his
glory. He, indeed, seemed perplexed for a moment, seeking by what
refinement of gracefulness he might win the laughers over to his side.
Then he smiled, he took Madame d'Espanet and Madame Haffner by the
hand, whispered a question in their ears, received their replies, and
afterwards addressing himself to Monsieur Simpson:

"Do you pluck the verbena, or do you pluck the periwinkle?" he asked.

Monsieur Simpson, looking rather foolish, said that he plucked the
verbena, whereupon Monsieur de Saffré gave him the marchioness saying:

"Here is the verbena."

There was discreet applause. It was found very pretty. Monsieur de
Saffré was a cotillon leader "who never remained embarrassed," such
was the ladies' remark. In the meanwhile the orchestra had resumed the
waltz air with all its instruments, and Monsieur Simpson, after making
the round of the room, waltzing with Madame d'Espanet, reconducted her
to her seat.

Renée was able to pass. She had bit her lips till they bled at sight
of all this foolishness. She considered these women and men stupid to
throw scarfs and take the names of flowers. Her ears rung, a furious
impatience lent her a brusque desire to throw herself forward, head
first, and open a passage. She crossed the drawing-room with a rapid
step, jostling the belated couples who were regaining their seats. She
went straight to the conservatory. She had not seen either Louise or
Maxime among the dancers, and she said to herself that they must be
there, in some nook formed by the foliage, united by that partiality
for drollery and impropriety which made them seek out little corners as
soon as they found themselves anywhere together. But she fruitlessly
explored the dimness of the conservatory. She only perceived, in the
depths of an arbour, a tall young fellow who was devoutly kissing the
hands of little Madame Daste and murmuring:

"Madame de Lauwerens told me right: you are an angel."

This declaration in her house, in her conservatory, shocked Renée.
Madame de Lauwerens ought really to have taken her traffic elsewhere!
And Renée would have felt relieved could she have chased all these
people who bawled so loud out of her apartments. Standing in front of
the basin, she looked at the water and asked herself where Louise and
Maxime could well have hidden themselves. The orchestra still played
that waltz, the slow undulation of which made her feel sick. It was
insupportable, one could no longer reflect in one's own abode. She
became confused. She forgot that the young folks were not yet married,
and she said to herself that it was simple enough, that they had gone
to bed. Then she thought of the dining-room, and quickly reascended the
conservatory staircase. But at the door of the drawing-room she was
stopped for the second time by a figure of the cotillon.

"These are the 'black specks,' ladies," gallantly said Monsieur de
Saffré. "This is an invention of mine, and I inaugurate it for you."

There was a great deal of laughter. The gentlemen explained the
allusion to the young women. The Emperor had just delivered a speech,
which recorded the presence of certain "black specks" on the political
horizon. These black specks had met with great success, no one knew
why. Parisian wits had appropriated the expression, and to such a
point that for a week past the black specks had been introduced into
everything. Monsieur de Saffré placed the masculine dancers at one end
of the drawing-room, making them turn their backs to the ladies who
were left at the other end. Then he ordered the men to turn up their
coats in such a way as to hide the backs of their heads. This operation
was accomplished amid tremendous merriment. Hump-backed, with their
shoulders hidden by the tails of their coats which now only fell to
their waists the gentlemen looked really frightful.

"Don't laugh, ladies," cried Monsieur de Saffré with most comical
gravity, "or I shall make you put your lace flounces on your heads."

The merriment increased. And the leader energetically availed himself
of his sovereignty over some of the gentlemen who would not hide the
napes of their necks.

"You are the 'black specks,'" said he; "hide your heads, only show your
backs, it is necessary that the ladies should only see so much black.
Now, walk, mingle together, so that you may not be recognized."

The hilarity was at its height. The "black specks" went to and fro on
their skinny legs with the undulatory motion of headless ravens. One
gentleman's shirt was seen with a bit of braces. Then the ladies begged
for mercy, they were stifling, and Monsieur de Saffré was pleased to
order them to go and fetch the "black specks." They went off like a
covey of young partridges amid a loud rustle of skirts. Then, each of
them, at the end of her trip, seized hold of the gentleman who came
within her grasp. It was an undescribable medley. And the improvised
couples disengaged themselves in a file, and made the round of the
drawing-room, waltzing, amid the louder strains of the orchestra.

Renée had leant against the wall. Pale, and with compressed lips, she
looked on. An old gentleman came and asked her gallantly why she was
not dancing. She had to smile and give some kind of answer. Escaping
at last, she entered the dining-room. It looked empty, but amid the
pillaged sideboards and the trailing bottles and plates, Maxime and
Louise, seated side by side, were quietly supping at one end of the
table, on a napkin which they had spread out. They seemed to be at
their ease, they laughed amid the disorder, the dirty glasses, the
dishes soiled with grease, the remnants, which testified to the
gluttony of the supper-eaters with white gloves. They had contented
themselves with brushing off the crumbs around them. Baptiste gravely
walked round the table without a glance for the room, through which
a band of wolves seemed to have passed; he was waiting for the other
servants to come and set the sideboards in a little order.

Maxime had still been able to gather a very fair supper together.
Louise adored hardbake with pistachio nuts, a plateful of which had
remained on the top of a sideboard. They had three partially emptied
bottles of champagne before them.

"Papa has perhaps gone off," said the young girl.

"So much the better," replied Maxime, "I will see you home."

And as she laughed:

"You know that they really want me to marry you," he added. "It's no
longer a joke, it's serious. But what shall we do with ourselves when
we are married?"

"Why, we'll do what others do, of course."

This repartee escaped her rather quickly, and as if to withdraw it, she
hastily added:

"We will go to Italy. It will do my chest good. I am very ill. Ah! my
poor Maxime, what a sorry wife you will have! I am not bigger than two
sous of butter."

She smiled, with a shade of sadness, in her page's costume. A dry cough
brought red gleams to her cheeks.

"It's the hardbake," said she. "At home I'm forbidden to eat it. Pass
me the plate, I will put the rest in my pocket."

And she was emptying the plate when Renée entered the room. She went
straight to Maxime, making unheard-of efforts not to swear, not to beat
the hunchback whom she found there at table with her lover.

"I wish to speak to you," she stammered in a husky voice.

He hesitated, frightened, dreading to be with her.

"To you alone, at once," repeated Renée.

"Go then, Maxime," said Louise, with her undefinable look. "At the same
time you might try to find my father. I lose him at every party."

He rose up, he tried to stop the young woman in the middle of the
dining-room by asking her what she could have of so urgent a nature to
say to him. But she resumed between her teeth:

"Follow me, or I shall speak out before every one!"

He turned very pale and followed her with the docility of a beaten
animal. She thought that Baptiste was looking at her; but at this
moment she cared nought for the valet's clear gaze! At the door, the
cotillon detained her for the third time.

"Wait," she murmured. "These fools will never have done."

Monsieur de Saffré was placing the Duke de Rozan with his back against
the wall, in one corner of the drawing-room, beside he dining-room
door. He stationed a lady in front of him, then a gentleman back to
back with the lady, then another lady in front of the gentleman, and
this in a line, couple by couple, forming as it were a long serpent. As
the dancers talked together and tarried behind:

"Come, ladies," he cried, "to your places for the 'columns.'"

They came, and "the columns" were formed. The indecency of finding
oneself thus caught, pressed between two men, leaning against the back
of one of them, with the chest of the other in front of one, made the
ladies very gay. The tips of the women's bosoms touched the facings
of the men's dress-coats, the gentlemen's legs disappeared amid the
ladies' skirts; and whenever any sudden merriment made a woman's head
lean forward, the moustaches in front were obliged to draw back, so as
not to carry matters as far as kissing. At one moment a joker must have
given a slight push, for the line closed up, the dress-coats plunged
deeper into the skirts, there were little cries and laughs, coughs
which did not end. The Baroness de Meinhold was heard saying, "But you
are stifling me, sir; don't squeeze me so hard!" this seemed so funny,
and gave the whole line such an attack of hilarity, that the shaken
"columns" staggered, clashed together and leaned upon one another to
avoid falling. Monsieur de Saffré waited with his hands raised ready to
clap. Then he clapped. At this signal every one abruptly turned round.
The couples who were face to face took each other by the waist, and the
file dispersed waltzing round the room. The only one left was the poor
Duke de Rozan, who on turning round found his nose against the wall. He
was derided by everybody.

"Come," said Renée to Maxime.

The orchestra was still playing the waltz. This soft music, the
monotonous rhythm of which at last became insipid, increased the young
woman's exasperation. She gained the little drawing-room holding
Maxime by the hand; and pushing him to the staircase which led to the
dressing-room:

"Go up," she ordered.

She followed him. At this moment Madame Sidonie, who, throughout the
evening, had been prowling round about her sister-in-law, astonished
by her continual promenades through the rooms, just reached the
conservatory steps. She saw a man's leg disappear amid the darkness of
the little staircase. A pale smile lit up her waxen face, and catching
up her sorceress's skirt to walk the quicker, she sought her brother,
upsetting a figure of the cotillon and questioning all the servants she
met. She at last found Saccard with Monsieur de Mareuil in an apartment
which adjoined the dining-room, and which had been turned provisionally
into a smoking-room. The two fathers were talking about the dowry and
the contract. But when Saccard's sister had said a word in his ear, he
rose up, apologised, and disappeared.

Upstairs, the dressing-room was in complete disorder. Over the chairs
trailed the costume of the nymph Echo, the torn tights, bits of
crumpled lace, under-garments thrown aside in a bundle, everything that
a woman, expected elsewhere, leaves in her haste behind her. The little
ivory and silver tools lay about a little bit everywhere; there were
brushes and files fallen on the carpet; and the towels still damp, the
soap forgotten on the marble slab, the scent bottles left open, emitted
a strong penetrating perfume in the flesh-tinted tent. To take the
white off her arms and shoulders the young woman had dipped herself in
the pink marble bath after the _tableaux vivants_. Iridescent scales
expanded on the sheet of water now grown cold.

Maxime stepped on some stays, narrowly missed falling, and tried to
laugh. But he shivered at sight of Renée's stern face. She approached
him, pushing him, and saying in a low voice:

"So you are going to marry the hunchback?"

"Not a bit of it," he murmured. "Who told you so?"

"Oh! don't lie. It's useless."

He was prompted to rebel. She alarmed him, he wished to finish matters
with her.

"Well, yes, I am to marry her. What of it? Am I not the master?"

She came towards him, with her head somewhat lowered, and with an evil
laugh, and taking hold of his wrists:

"The master! you, the master! You know very well it isn't so. It is I
who am the master. I could break your arms if I were cruel; you have no
more strength than a girl."

And as he struggled, she twisted his arms, with all the nervous
violence that anger imparted to her. He uttered a slight cry, and she
then let go of him, resuming:

"Don't let us fight, I should prove the stronger."

He remained pale, with the shame of the pain which he felt at his
wrists. He watched her coming and going about the room. She pushed
back the furniture, reflecting, deciding on the plan which had been
revolving in her head since her husband had apprized her of the
marriage.

"I am going to shut you up here," she said at last; "and when it is
daylight we will start for Havre."

He grew still paler with alarm and stupor.

"But this is madness!" he cried. "We can't go off together. You are
going crazy--"

"Perhaps so. At all events it's you and your father who are making me
so. I need you and I take you. So much the worse for fools!"

Red gleams shone in her eyes. Again approaching Maxime and scorching
his face with her breath, she continued:

"What would become of me if you married the hunchback? You would deride
me, and I should perhaps be forced to take back that big simpleton De
Mussy, who would not even warm my feet--When people have done what we
have done they remain together. Besides, it's clear enough, I feel
bored when you are not there, and as I'm going off, I take you with me.
You can tell Céleste what you want her to go and fetch at your place."

The unfortunate fellow held out his hands and supplicated.

"Come, my little Renée, don't commit such folly. Become yourself again.
Think a little of the scandal."

"I don't care a fig for the scandal! If you refuse, I shall go down
into the drawing-room and cry out that I have slept with you, and that
you are now cowardly enough to want to marry the hunchback."

He bowed his head and listened to her, already giving way, and
accepting this will so roughly imposed upon him.

"We will go to Havre," she resumed in a lower tone, caressing her
dream, "and from there we can reach England. No one will bother us any
more. If we are not far enough off, we will start for America. I, who
always feel cold, I shall be comfortable there. I have often envied
creoles."

But while she enlarged the scope of her project, terror again seized
hold of Maxime. To leave Paris, to go so far away with this woman who
was certainly mad, to leave behind him a story the shameful character
of which would exile him for ever! it was like some atrocious nightmare
stifling him. He sought in despair for a means of escaping from this
dressing-room, this pink retreat where the bell of the lunatic asylum
of Charenton seemed to toll. At last he thought he had found an
expedient.

"But I have no money," he said gently, so as not to exasperate her. "If
you shut me up I cannot procure any."

"I have some money, though," she replied with an air of triumph. "I
have a hundred thousand francs. Everything tallies perfectly well--"

She took out of the wardrobe the deed of cession which her husband had
left with her in the vague hope that she might change her mind. She
laid it on the toilet table, compelled Maxime to give her a pen and
an inkstand which were in the bedroom, and pushing back the soap, and
signing the act:

"There," she said, "the folly's done. If I'm robbed it is because I
choose to be. We will call on Larsonneau before going to the station.
Now, my little Maxime, I am going to shut you up, and we will escape
by way of the garden, when I have turned all these people out of the
house. We don't even need to take any luggage."

She became gay again. This wild freak delighted her. It was a piece
of supreme eccentricity, a finish which, amid her fever, seemed to
her mind altogether original. It surpassed her desire to make a
balloon journey by a great deal. She went and took Maxime in her arms,
murmuring:

"I hurt you a little while ago, my poor darling! But then you refused.
You will see how nice it will be. Would your hunchback ever love you
as I do? That little blackamoor isn't a woman!"

She was laughing--she was drawing him to her and kissing him on the
lips, when a sound made them both turn their heads. Saccard was
standing on the threshold of the room.

[Illustration: SACCARD SURPRISES RENÉE AND MAXIME.]

Terrible silence followed. Renée slowly withdrew her arm from Maxime's
neck, but she did not lower her brow, she continued gazing at her
husband with her big eyes, which stared fixedly like those of a
corpse; while the young fellow, overwhelmed and terrified, staggered,
with bowed head, now that he was no longer sustained by her embrace.
Saccard, stunned by this supreme blow which, at last, made the husband
and the father cry out within him, did not advance, but, livid, he
scorched them from afar with the fire of his glances. In the moist,
odoriferous atmosphere of the room, the three tapers flared very high,
their flames erect, with the stillness of fiery tears. And, alone
breaking the silence, the terrible silence, a breath of music ascended
the narrow staircase; the waltz, with its snake-like undulations,
glided, coiled, and died away on the snowy carpet, amid the split
tights and the fallen skirts.

Then the husband advanced. The impulse which he felt to resort to
brutality brought blotches to his face; he clinched his fists to knock
down the guilty pair. Anger, in this restless little man, burst forth
like the report of fire-arms. He gave a strangled titter, and, still
advancing:

"You were announcing your marriage to her, eh?"

Maxime retreated and leant against the wall.

"Listen," he stammered, "it was she--"

He was about to accuse her like a coward, to cast the odium of the
crime upon her, to say that she wanted to carry him off, to defend
himself with the humility and the shudders of a child detected in
fault. But he did not have the strength, the words expired in his
throat. Renée retained her statue-like rigidity, her air of mute
defiance. Then Saccard, no doubt in view of finding a weapon, gave a
rapid glance around him. And, on the corner of the toilet table, among
the combs and nail-brushes, he perceived the deed of cession, the
stamped paper of which set a yellow stain on the marble. He looked at
the deed; he looked at the guilty pair. Then, on leaning forward, he
saw that the deed was signed. His eyes went from the open inkstand to
the pen still wet, which had been left on the foot of the candelabrum.
He remained erect in front of this signature, reflecting.

The silence seemed to increase, the flames of the candles shot up
higher, the waltz resounded in a softer lullaby along the hangings.
Saccard gave an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. He again looked
at his wife and his son with a profound air, as if to wring from their
faces an explanation which he could not divine. Then he slowly folded
up the deed and placed it in the pocket of his dress-coat. His cheeks
had become extremely pale.

"You have done well to sign, my dear," he said gently to his wife. "You
gain a hundred thousand francs by doing so. I will give you the money
this evening."

He almost smiled, and his hands alone, retained a trembling. He took a
few steps, adding--

"It's stifling in here! What an idea to come and plot one of your jokes
in this vapour bath!"

And then addressing himself to Maxime, who had raised his head,
surprised by his father's appeased voice:

"Here come with me," he resumed: "I saw you go up, and I came to fetch
you so that you might wish Monsieur de Mareuil and his daughter good
night."

The two men went down talking together. Renée remained alone, standing
in the middle of the dressing-room, looking at the yawning cavity of
the little staircase, in which she had just seen the shoulders of the
father and the son disappear. She could not take her eyes off this
cavity. What, they had gone off, quietly, amicably! These two men had
not murdered each other. She lent an ear; she listened to ascertain if
some atrocious struggle did not make their bodies roll down the stairs.
Nothing! In the tepid darkness, nothing but a noise of dancing--a long
lullaby. She thought she could hear in the distance the marchioness's
laughter and Monsieur de Saffré's clear voice. Then the drama was
ended? Her crime, the kisses in the large grey and pink bed, the wild
nights in the conservatory, all the accursed love that had consumed her
during months, had led to this mean, ignoble ending! Her husband knew
all and did not even beat her. And the silence around her--this silence
through which trailed the endless waltz--terrified her even more than
the sound of murder. She felt afraid of this peacefulness, afraid of
this soft-tinted, discreet dressing-room, full of the scent of love.

She perceived herself in the high glass-door of the wardrobe. She
approached, astonished to see herself, forgetting her husband,
forgetting Maxime, and altogether preoccupied by the strange woman
whom she beheld before her. Madness was rising to her brain. Her
yellow hair, caught up off the temples and the neck, seemed to her a
nudity--an obscenity. The wrinkle of her forehead, deepened to such
a degree that it set a dark bar above her eyes, the thin bluish scar
of a lash with a whip. Who had marked her like that? Her husband had
certainly not raised his hand. And her lips astonished her by their
pallor, her myops' eyes seemed dead to her. How old she looked! She
inclined her brow, and when she beheld herself in her tights, in her
slight gauze blouse, she gazed at herself with lowered eyelashes and
sudden blushes. Who had stripped her naked? What was she doing there,
bare-breasted, like a harlot who uncovers herself down to the belly?
She no longer knew. She looked at her thighs which the tights rounded,
at her hips, the supple lines of which she discerned under the gauze,
at her bust broadly displayed; and she was ashamed of herself, and
contempt for her flesh filled her with inflexible anger against those
who had left her thus, with simple circlets of gold round her ankles
and wrists to hide her skin.

Then trying, with the fixed idea of drowning intelligence, to remember
what she was doing there, quite naked in front of that glass, she
went back by a sudden leap to her childhood. She again saw herself,
as she had been when seven years old, in the solemn gloom of the
Béraud mansion. She remembered a day when Aunt Élisabeth had dressed
them--herself and Christine--in woollen dresses, with a little red
check pattern on a grey ground. It was Christmas-time. How pleased they
were with those two dresses exactly alike! Their aunt spoiled them,
and she carried matters so far as to give each of them a bracelet and
a necklace of coral. The sleeves were long, the dress-bodies rose up
to their chins, the jewellery displayed itself on the stuff, and this
seemed very pretty to them. Renée also remembered that her father
was there, and that he smiled with his sad air. That day, instead of
playing, her sister and herself had walked about the nursery like
grown-up persons for fear of soiling themselves. Then at the Convent
of the Visitation her schoolfellows had joked her about "her clown's
dress," which came down to her finger tips and rose up over her ears.
She had begun to cry during lessons; and when play-time came she
turned up her sleeves, and tucked in her neckband, so that she might
not be derided any longer. And the coral necklace and bracelet seemed
to her much prettier on the skin of her neck and arm. Was it on that
day that she had begun to strip herself?

Her life unrolled itself before her. She recalled her long
bewilderment, the hubbub of gold and flesh which had risen within her,
which had mounted first to her knees, then to her stomach, then to
her lips, and the flood of which she now felt sweeping over her head,
striking her skull, with swiftly repeated blows. It was like a bad sap;
it had wearied her limbs, set excrescences of shameful affection in her
heart, and made whims, fit for a sick person or an animal, sprout in
her brain. This sap had impregnated the soles of her feet while they
rested on her carriage rug and on other carpets too, on all the silk
and all the velvet over which she had walked since her marriage. The
footsteps of others must have left these seeds of poison, now yielding
fruit in her blood, and circulating in her veins. She well remembered
her childhood. She had merely been inquisitive when she was little.
Later on even, after that rape which had cast evil into her, she had
not wished for so much shame. She would certainly have become better
had she remained knitting beside Aunt Élisabeth. And while she gazed
fixedly into the looking-glass to read therein the peaceful future she
had missed, she could hear the regular tick tick of her aunt's needles.
But she only saw her own pink thighs, her pink hips, the strange woman
of pink silk whom she had before her, and whose skin of fine stuff, of
close texture, seemed made for the amours of puppets and dolls. She
had come to that--to be a big doll from whose torn bosom but a thread
of sound escaped. Then, at thought of the enormities of her life, the
blood of her father, that middle-class blood which tormented her during
hours of crisis, cried out within her and revolted. She who had always
trembled at the thought of hell, she ought to have lived in the depths
of the black severity of the Béraud mansion. Who was it then that had
stripped her naked?

And, in the bluish shade of the glass, she thought she could see the
figures of Saccard and Maxime rise up. Saccard, black and sneering,
with a hue of iron, and pincer-like laughter, standing on his skinny
legs. That man was a will. For ten years she had seen him at the
forge, amid the shivers of the reddened metal, with his flesh burnt,
breathless, but still striking, raising hammers twenty times too heavy
for his arms, at the risk of crushing himself. She understood him now;
he seemed to her to have been made taller by this superhuman effort,
this huge rascality, this fixed idea of an immense, immediate fortune.
She remembered him springing over obstacles, rolling in the mud, and
not taking the time to wipe himself, so bent was he upon arriving
early at the goal, not even tarrying to enjoy himself on the road,
but munching his gold pieces while he ran. Then Maxime's fair, pretty
head appeared behind his father's rough shoulders; he had his clear
harlot's smile, his empty strumpet's eyes which were never lowered,
his parting in the middle of his hair showing the whiteness of his
skull. He derided Saccard, he considered him vulgar to give himself
so much trouble to earn money, which he, Maxime, expended with such
adorable laziness. He was kept. His long soft hands testified to his
vices. His hairless body had the wearied attitude of a satisfied woman.
Not even a flash of curiosity as to sin shone in all his cowardly,
sluggish being, through which vice gently coursed like so much warm
water. He did not initiate, he underwent. And Renée, looking at the
two apparitions emerge from the slight shade of the mirror, retreated
a step, and saw that Saccard had thrown her like a stake, like an
investment, and that Maxime had chanced to be there to pick up this
louis fallen from the speculator's pocket. She had been an asset in her
husband's pocket-book; he had urged her on to the toilettes of a night,
to the lovers of a season; he had twisted her in the flames of his
forge, employing her, as though she had been a precious metal, to gild
the iron of his hands. Little by little the father had thus rendered
her mad enough, depraved enough for the kisses of the son. If Maxime
were Saccard's impoverished blood, she felt that she herself was the
product, the worm-eaten fruit of these two men, the pit of infamy which
they had dug together, and into which they both rolled.

She knew it now it was these men who had stripped her naked. Saccard
had unhooked her dress-body, and Maxime had loosened her skirt. Then,
between them, they had just torn off her chemise. At present she was
without a rag, merely with golden rings, like a slave. They had looked
at her a little while before, but they had not said to her, "You are
naked." The son had trembled like a coward, had shuddered at the
thought of carrying his crime to the end, had refused to follow her in
her passion. The father, instead of killing her, had robbed her; this
man punished people by emptying their pockets; a signature fell like a
sunray amid the brutality of his anger, and, by way of vengeance, he
carried the signature off. Then she had seen their shoulders retreat
into the darkness. No blood upon the carpet, not a cry, not a moan.
They were cowards. They had stripped her naked.

And she said to herself that on one sole occasion she had read the
future--on the day when, in sight of the murmuring shadows of the Parc
Monceaux, the thought that her husband would soil her, and bring her
one day to madness, had come and frightened her growing desires. Ah!
how her poor head suffered! how she realised now the fallacy of the
idea which had made her believe that she lived in a happy sphere of
divine enjoyment and impunity! She had lived in the land of shame, and
she was chastised by the abandonment of her whole body, by the death
of her agonizing being. She wept that she had not listened to the loud
voices of the trees.

Her nudity irritated her. She turned her head, she looked around
her. The dressing-room retained its musky heaviness, its warm
silence, whither still came the phrases of the waltz, like the last
expiring circles on a sheet of water. This low laughter of distant
voluptuousness passed over her with intolerable raillery. She stopped
up her ears, so as to hear it no longer. Then she beheld the luxury
in the room. She raised her eyes to the pink tent, even to the silver
crown, within which one perceived a Cupid preparing his arrows; she
dwelt on the furniture, on the marble slab of the toilet-table,
encumbered with pots and tools which she no longer recognised; she went
to the bath, still full of slumbering water; she pushed back with her
foot the stuffs trailing over the white satin of the arm-chairs, the
costume of the nymph Echo, the petticoats, the forgotten towels. And
from all these things voices of shame arose: the robe of the nymph Echo
spoke to her of the pastime she had shared because she had thought it
original to offer herself to Maxime in public; the bath exhaled the
scent of her body, the water in which she had dipped herself filled
the room with the feverishness of a sick woman; the table, with its
soaps and oils, the furniture, with its bed-like roundnesses, reminded
her brutally of her flesh, her amours, all the filth that she wished
to forget. She returned into the middle of the room, her face purple,
not knowing where to fly from this alcove perfume, this luxury which
bared itself with a harlot's immodesty, which displayed all this pink.
The room was naked like herself; the pink bath, the rosy skin of the
hangings, the pink marble of the two tables became animated, stretched
themselves, coiled themselves up, and surrounded her with such a
display of living voluptuousness that she closed her eyes, lowering her
forehead, overwhelmed amid the lace of the ceiling and the walls which
crushed her.

But in the blackness she again saw that flesh-tinted spot the
dressing-room, and she also beheld the grey softness of the bedroom,
the soft aurulent lustre of the little drawing-room, the crude
greenness of the conservatory, all the wealth that had been her
accomplice. It was there that her feet had become impregnated with the
evil sap. She would not have slept with Maxime on a pallet in the depth
of a garret. It would have been too ignoble! The silk around her had
made her crime coquettish. And she dreamt of tearing down this lace,
of spitting upon this silk, of breaking her large bed to pieces with
kicks, of dragging her luxury into some gutter, whence it would emerge
worn-out and dirtied like herself.

When she re-opened her eyes she approached the mirror, looked at
herself again, and examined herself closely. She was done for. She
saw herself dead. Her whole face told her that the cerebral cracking
was being completed. Maxime, that last perversion of her senses, had
finished his work, exhausted her flesh, and unhinged her intelligence.
She had no more joys to taste, no hope of an awakening. At this thought
a savage rage was rekindled within her, and in a last crisis of desire
she dreamt of retaking possession of her prey, of agonizing in Maxime's
arms, and carrying him off with her. Louise could not marry him; Louise
knew very well that he did not belong to her, since she had seen them
kissing each other on the lips. Then she threw a fur mantle over her
shoulders, so as not to pass naked through the ball, and she went
downstairs.

In the little drawing-room she came face to face with Madame Sidonie.
The latter, in view of enjoying the drama, had again stationed herself
on the steps of the conservatory. But she no longer knew what to think
when Saccard reappeared with Maxime, and brutally replied to her
whispered questions that she was dreaming, that there was "nothing
whatever." Then she scented the truth. Her yellow face grew pale, she
considered this really too strong. And she softly went and placed her
ear against the staircase door, hoping that she would be able to hear
Renée crying upstairs. When the young woman opened the door, it almost
smacked her sister-in-law in the face.

"You are playing the spy on me!" Renée angrily said.

But Madame Sidonie replied with fine disdain:

"Do I occupy myself with your filth?"

And catching up her sorceress's dress, and retiring with a majestic
look:

"It isn't my fault, little one, if accidents befall you. But I have
no spite, do you hear? And understand that you would have found, and
would still find, a second mother in me. I shall expect you at my place
whenever you please."

Renée did not listen to her. She entered the large drawing-room, and
passed through a very complicated figure of the cotillon without even
remarking the surprise which her fur mantle occasioned. In the middle
of the room there were groups of ladies and gentlemen who mingled
waving bandrols, and Monsieur de Saffré's fluty voice called out:

"Come, ladies, 'the Mexican War.' The ladies who figure the bushes must
spread their skirts out around them and remain on the ground--Now, the
gentlemen must turn round the bushes--Then when I clap my hands each of
them must waltz with his bush."

He clapped his hands. The brass instruments resounded, the waltz once
more sent the couples revolving round the room. The figure had not been
very successful. Two ladies had remained on the carpet entangled in
their dresses. Madame Daste declared that the only thing that amused
her in the "Mexican War," was making a "cheese" of her dress, as she
had done at school.

Renée on reaching the hall found Louise and her father, whom Saccard
and Maxime were accompanying. Baron Gouraud had left. Madame Sidonie
withdrew with Mignon and Charrier, while Monsieur Hupel de la Noue
escorted Madame Michelin, whom her husband followed discreetly. The
prefect had spent the rest of the evening courting the pretty brunette.
He had just persuaded her to spend a month of the fine weather in the
chief town of his department where "some really curious antiquities
were to be seen."

Louise, who was nibbling on the sly the hardbake which she had in her
pocket, was seized with a fit of coughing at the moment of leaving the
house.

"Cover yourself up well," said her father.

And Maxime hastened to tighten the strings of the hood of her
opera-cloak. She raised her chin and let herself be swaddled. But
when Madame Saccard appeared, Monsieur de Mareuil retraced his steps
and bid her good-bye. For a moment they all remained there together
talking. Renée, wishing to explain her pallor and her shudders, said
that she had felt cold, and had gone upstairs to throw the fur over her
shoulders. And she watched for the moment when she might speak in a low
voice to Louise, who was looking at her with inquisitive tranquillity.
While the gentlemen again shook hands she leant forward and murmured:

"You won't marry him, will you? It isn't possible. You know very well--"

But the child interrupted her, rising on tip-toe and speaking in her
ear:

"Oh! be easy, I shall take him off--It is of no consequence since we
are going to Italy."

And she smiled with the vague smile of a vicious sphinx. Renée remained
stammering. She did not understand, she fancied that the hunchback was
deriding her. Then when the Mareuils had gone off, repeating several
times: "Till Sunday!" she looked at her husband and at Maxime with her
frightened eyes, and on beholding them, with quiet flesh and satisfied
attitudes, she hid her face in her hands, fled, and sought a refuge in
the depths of the conservatory.

The pathways were deserted. The large leaves were asleep, and on the
heavy sheet of water of the basin two budding Nymphæa slowly unfolded.
Renée would have liked to cry; but the damp warmth, the strong perfume
which she recognised, caught her at the throat and strangled her
despair. She looked at her feet, at the edge of the basin, at the spot
of yellow sand where she had stretched the bearskin the winter before.
And when she raised her eyes she again saw between the two open doors a
figure of the cotillon being danced right away in the background.

There was a deafening noise, a confused mass in which she at first
only distinguished flying skirts and black legs, footing and turning.
Monsieur de Saffré's voice cried out: "Change your ladies! change your
ladies!" And the couples passed by amid a fine yellow dust; each
gentleman, after three or four turns in the waltz, threw his partner
into the arms of his neighbour, who, in turn, threw him his. Baroness
de Meinhold, in her costume as the Emerald, fell from the hands of
the Count de Chibray into the hands of Monsieur Simpson; he caught
her as he could by a shoulder, while the tip of his gloves glided
under her dress body. Countess Vanska, very red and making her coral
drops jingle, went with a bound from the chest of Monsieur de Saffré
on to the chest of the Duke de Rozan, whom she entwined and compelled
to pirouette for five turns, when she hung herself on the hips of
Monsieur Simpson who had just thrown the Emerald to the leader of the
cotillon. And Madame Teissière, Madame Daste, Madame de Lauwerens,
shining like large living jewels, with the fair pallor of the Topaz,
the soft blue of the Turquoise, the fiery blue of the Sapphire,
abandoned themselves for a minute, vaulted under the extended wrist of
a waltzer, then started off again, came frontwards or backwards into a
fresh embrace, visiting one after the other all the masculine embraces
of the drawing-room. However Madame d'Espanet had, in full view of the
orchestra, succeeded in catching hold of Madame Haffner as she passed
by, and now waltzed with her, refusing to let go her hold. Gold and
Silver danced lovingly together.

Renée then understood this whirling of skirts, this stamping of legs.
Standing on a lower surface she could see the fury of the feet, the
patent-leather boots and white ankles mingling pell-mell. At intervals
it seemed to her as if a gust of wind were about to blow off the
dresses. The bare shoulders, the bare arms, the bare heads which flew
past and revolved, now seized hold of, now thrown off, and again caught
at the end of the gallery where the waltz of the orchestra grew madder,
where the red hangings seemed thrown into a transport amid the final
fever of the ball, appeared to her like the tumultuous image of her
own life, of her nudities and abandonments. And she experienced such a
pang, at the thought that Maxime, to take the hunchback in his arms,
had just cast her there, on the spot where they had loved each other,
that she dreamt of plucking a stalk of the Tanghinia which grazed
her cheek, and of chewing it till the sap was exhausted. But she was
cowardly, and she remained in front of the plant shivering under the
fur which her hands drew over her with a tight clutch, and a great
gesture of terrified shame.




CHAPTER VII.


Three months later, on one of those gloomy spring mornings which bring
back into Paris the dimness and dirty dampness of winter, Aristide
Saccard alighted from his carriage at the Place du Château-d'Eau, and
turned with four other gentlemen into the gorge of demolitions opened
by the future Boulevard du Prince-Eugène. The party formed a committee
of inquiry which the expropriation jury had despatched to the spot to
estimate the value of certain property, the owners of which had not
come to an amicable arrangement with the city of Paris.

Saccard was renewing his Rue de la Pépinière stroke of fortune. So
that his wife's name might completely disappear from the affair, he
had at first devised a mock sale of the ground and the music-hall.
Larsonneau relinquished the whole to a supposed creditor. The deed of
sale enunciated the colossal figure of three millions of francs. The
sum was so exorbitant, that when the expropriation agent, in the name
of the imaginary owner, claimed the amount of the purchase money as
an indemnity, the commission of the Hôtel-de-Ville would not grant
more than two millions five hundred thousand francs, despite the
underhand endeavours of Monsieur Michelin, and the speeches of Monsieur
Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud. Saccard had expected this repulse; he
refused the offer, and let the case go before the expropriation jury,
of which he happened to be a member, together with Monsieur de Mareuil,
by a chance he had no doubt assisted. And it was thus that, with
four of his colleagues, he found himself deputed to make an inquiry
respecting his own ground.

Monsieur de Mareuil accompanied him. Of the three remaining jurors
one was a doctor, who smoked a cigar without caring the least in the
world for the stones and mortar he climbed over, and the others, two
commercial men, one of whom, a manufacturer of surgical instruments,
had once turned a grindstone in the streets.

The path which the gentlemen took was in a frightful state. It had
rained all night. The soaked ground was becoming a river of mud between
the fallen houses, beside this road, traced out over loose soil,
wherein the transport carts sank up to the naves of their wheels.
On either side fragments of the walls, shattered with pick-axes,
remained standing; lofty eviscerated buildings, displaying their
pallid entrails, opened in mid-air their empty staircase frames, their
suspended gaping rooms, which appeared like the broken drawers of some
great ugly piece of furniture. Nothing could look more lamentable
than the wall-papers of these rooms, blue or yellow squares, falling
in tatters, and indicating, at the height of a fifth or sixth floor,
just under the roofs, the place occupied by some poor little garrets,
narrow holes, in which perhaps a man's whole life had been confined.
The ribbons of the chimney flues rose side by side on the bare walls,
lugubriously black and with abrupt bends. A forgotten weathercock
grated at the edge of a roof, whilst some half-detached water-spouts
hung down like rags. And the gap still deepened amid these ruins,
like a breach opened by cannon; under the grey sky, amid the sinister
pallidity of the falling plaster dust, the roadway, barely marked out,
covered with refuse, with piles of earth and deep pools of water,
stretched away, edged with the black marks of chimney flues, as with a
mourning border.

[Illustration: THE COMMISSIONERS FOR THE PARIS IMPROVEMENTS INSPECTING
THE DEMOLITIONS.]

The gentlemen, with their well-blackened boots, their frock-coats, and
their tall silk hats, set a singular note in this muddy landscape,
of a dirty yellow tint, and across which there only passed some pale
workmen, some horses splashed to the chine, and some carts, the
woodwork of which disappeared beneath a coat of dust. The jurors
followed each other in Indian file, jumping from stone to stone,
avoiding the pools of flowing filth, at times sinking in up to their
heels, and then shaking their feet, and swearing. Saccard had talked
about taking the Rue de Charonne, by which they would have avoided
this promenade over broken ground, but they unfortunately had several
bits of property to visit on the long line of the Boulevard, and,
impelled by curiosity, they had decided to pass right through the
works. Besides, the sight greatly interested them. At times they
stopped, balancing themselves on some bit of plaster which had fallen
into a rut, raising their noses, and calling each other to point out
some perforated floor, some chimney-pot which had remained in the air,
some joist which had fallen on to a neighbouring roof. This bit of
a destroyed city, seen on leaving the Rue du Temple, seemed altogether
funny to them.

"It is really curious," said Monsieur de Mareuil. "Look there, Saccard,
look at that kitchen up there. An old frying-pan has remained hanging
over the stove. I can distinguish it perfectly."

However, the doctor, with his cigar between his teeth, had set himself
in front of a demolished house, of which there only remained the rooms
of the ground floor, filled with the remnants of the other storeys. A
single fragment of wall rose up above the pile of materials; and to
overthrow it at one effort, it had been girt round with a rope, at
which several workmen were tugging.

"They won't manage it," muttered the doctor. "They are pulling too much
to the left."

The four other jurors had retraced their steps to see the wall tumble.
And all five of them, with their eyes stretched out, and with bated
breath, waited for the fall with a quiver of delight. The workmen,
giving way, and then suddenly stiffening themselves, cried out, "Oh!
heave oh!"

"They won't manage it," repeated the doctor.

Then after a few seconds of anxiety:

"It is moving, it is moving," joyfully cried one of the commercial men.

And when the wall gave way at last, and fell with a frightful crash,
raising a cloud of plaster, the gentlemen looked at each other with
smiles. They were delighted. Their frock-coats became covered with a
fine dust, which whitened their arms and shoulders.

Resuming their prudent march amid the puddles, they now began to
talk about the workmen. There were not many good ones. They were all
idle fellows, prodigals, and withal most obstinate, only dreaming of
their masters' ruin. Monsieur de Mareuil, who for a moment had been
looking with a shudder at two poor devils perched on the corner of a
roof demolishing a wall with their pick-axes, expressed, however, the
opinion that, all the same, these men really possessed great courage.
The other jurors again paused and raised their eyes to the workmen who
balanced themselves, leaning and striking with all their strength;
they pushed the stones down with their feet, and quietly looked at
them shattering below. If the pick-axes had missed striking, the mere
impulsion of the men's arms would have precipitated them into space.

"Bah! it's habit," said the doctor, setting his cigar in his mouth
again. "They are brutes!"

The jurors had now reached one of the houses which they had to visit.
They finished their work in a quarter of an hour, and then resumed
their walk. By degrees they no longer felt so much disgust for the mud;
they walked in the middle of the pools, abandoning the hope of keeping
their boots clean. When they had passed the Rue Ménilmontant one of
the commercial men, the ex-knife-grinder, became nervous. He examined
the ruins about him, and no longer recognised the neighbourhood. He
said that he had lived in that part, on his arrival in Paris more than
thirty years previously, and that he should be very pleased to find the
house again. He continued searching with his eyes, when suddenly the
sight of a house which the workmen's picks had already cut in twain,
made him stop short in the middle of the road. He studied the door and
the windows. Then, pointing upward with his finger to a corner of the
partially demolished building:

"There it is," he cried; "I recognise it!"

"What, pray?" asked the doctor.

"My room, of course! That's it!"

It was a little room, situated on the fifth floor, and it must have
formerly overlooked a courtyard. A breach in the wall showed it, quite
bare, already demolished on one side, with a broad torn band of its
wall paper, of a large yellow flowery pattern, trembling in the wind.
On the left hand, one could still see the recess of a cupboard, lined
with blue paper, and beside it was an aperture for a stove-pipe, with a
bit of piping in it.

The ex-workman was seized with emotion:

"I spent five years in there," muttered he. "My means were small in
those times, but no matter, I was young. You see the cupboard; it was
there that I put by three hundred francs, copper by copper. And the
hole for the stove-pipe, I can still remember the day when I made it.
The room had no fire-place, and it was bitter cold, all the more so as
we were not often two together."

"Come, come," interrupted the doctor, joking, "we don't ask you for
your secrets. You played your games like every one else."

"That's true," naively resumed the worthy man. "I still remember an
ironing girl who lived over the way. You see the bed was over there,
on the right hand side near the window. Ah! my poor room, how they've
knocked it about."

He was really very sad.

"Come," said Saccard, "no harm's done by throwing those old cabins
down. Handsome houses in freestone will be built in place of them.
Would you still live in such a den while you might very well lodge
yourself on the new Boulevard?"

"That's true," again replied the manufacturer, who seemed quite
consoled.

The commission of inquiry halted again at the two other houses. The
doctor remained at the door smoking and looking at the sky. When
they reached the Rue des Amandiers the houses became fewer; they now
passed through large inclosures and over uncultivated land, where some
half fallen buildings straggled. Saccard seemed delighted with this
promenade through ruins. He had just remembered the dinner he had once
shared with his first wife on the heights of Montmartre, and he well
recollected having indicated with his hand the cut across Paris from
the Place du Château-d'Eau to the Barrière du Trône. The realisation
of this far distant prediction delighted him. He followed the cut,
with the secret joys of authorship, as if he himself had with his iron
fingers struck the first blows with a pickaxe. And he jumped over the
puddles, reflecting that three millions awaited him under building
materials, at the end of this river of greasy filth.

Meanwhile the gentlemen fancied themselves in the country. The road
passed through some gardens, the walls of which had been felled. There
were large clumps of budding lilac, with foliage of a very delicate
light green. Each of these gardens, looking like a retreat hung with
the leaves of the shrubs, displayed a narrow basin or a miniature
cascade, with bits of wall on which to deceive the eye, arbours, in
perspective and bluish landscape backgrounds had been painted. The
buildings, scattered and discreetly hidden, resembled Italian pavilions
and Grecian temples, and moss was wearing away the feet of the plaster
columns, whilst weeds had loosened the mortar of the pediments.

"Those are _petites maisons_," said the doctor, with a wink.

But as he saw that the gentlemen did not understand what he meant, he
explained that under Louis XV. the nobility had retreats of this kind
for their pleasure parties. It was then the fashion. And he added:

"They were called _petites maisons_ (little houses). This
neighbourhood was full of them. Some stiff things took place in them,
and no mistake!"

The commission of inquiry had become very attentive. The two commercial
men's eyes were shining, and they smiled and looked with great interest
at these gardens and pavilions, on which they had not bestowed a glance
prior to their colleague's explanations. A grotto detained them for
a long time. But when the doctor, seeing a house already attacked by
the pick, said that he recognised it as the Count de Savigny's _petite
maison_, well known on account of that nobleman's orgies, the whole
commission left the Boulevard to go and visit the ruins. They climbed
on to the fallen materials, entered the ground floor rooms by the
windows, and as the workmen were away at their mid-day meal, they were
able to linger there quite at their ease. They indeed remained there
for a good half hour, examining the rosettes of the ceilings, the
paintings above the doors, the strained mouldings of the plaster grown
yellow with age. The doctor reconstructed the building.

"Do you see," said he, "this room must be the banqueting hall. There
was certainly an immense divan in that recess of the wall. And, indeed,
I'm sure that a looking-glass surmounted the divan. See, there are the
holdfasts of the glass. Oh! those fellows were scamps who knew deucedly
well how to enjoy themselves!"

The jurors would never have left these old stones which tickled their
curiosity, if Aristide Saccard, growing impatient, had not said to
them, laughing:

"You may look as much as you like, the ladies are no longer here. Let's
get to our business."

Before leaving, however, the doctor climbed on to a mantelshelf, to
delicately detach, with one blow of a pick, a little painted head of
Cupid, which he slipped into the pocket of his frock-coat.

They at length reached the end of their journey. The land which had
formerly belonged to Madame Aubertot was very vast; the music-hall
and the garden occupied barely more than half of the surface; a few
unimportant houses were scattered about the rest of it. The new
Boulevard cut obliquely across this large parallelogram, and this
circumstance had quieted one of Saccard's fears; he had long imagined
that only a corner of the music-hall would be removed by the new
thoroughfare. Larsonneau therefore had received orders to open his
mouth, as the bordering plots ought to at least quintuple in value. He
was already threatening the city of Paris to avail himself of a recent
decree authorising landowners to deliver up only the ground necessary
for works of public utility.

It was the expropriation agent who received the jurors. He took them
over the garden, made them visit the music-hall and showed them a
huge pile of papers. But the two commercial men had gone down again
accompanied by the doctor, whom they were still questioning about Count
de Savigny's _petite maison_, of which their minds were full. They
listened to him with gaping mouths, standing all three beside a _jeu
de tonneau_. And he talked to them about La Pompadour, and related the
amours of Louis XV., while Monsieur de Mareuil and Saccard continued
the inquiry alone.

"It's all finished," said the latter on returning into the garden. "If
you will allow me, gentlemen, I will myself draw up the report."

The surgical-instrument maker did not even hear. He was deep in the
Regency.

"What funny times, all the same!" he muttered.

Then they found a cab in the Rue de Charonne and they went off, muddy
to the knees, but as satisfied with their promenade as with a pleasure
trip in the country. In the cab the conversation changed--they talked
politics, they said that the Emperor did great things. The like of
what they had just seen had never been witnessed before. This long,
perfectly straight street would be superb when the houses were erected.

It was Saccard who drew up the report and the jury granted the three
millions. The speculator was at the end of his tether, he could not
have waited a month longer. This money saved him from ruin, and even a
little from the assize court. He gave five hundred thousand francs on
the million which he owed to his upholsterer and his contractor for the
mansion in the Parc Monceaux. He stopped up other holes, rushed into
new companies, and deafened Paris with the noise of the real crowns
which he flung by the shovelful on to the shelves of his iron safe.
The golden river had a source at last. But this was not yet a solid,
entrenched fortune flowing with a regular, continuous gush. Saccard,
saved from a crisis, thought himself pitiful with the crumbs of his
three millions, and naively said that he was still too poor, and could
not stop there. And soon the ground again cracked beneath his feet.

Larsonneau had behaved so admirably in the Charonne affair that
Saccard, after a slight hesitation, carried honesty to the point of
giving him his ten per cent, and his bonus of thirty thousand francs.
The expropriation agent thereupon opened a banking-house. When his
accomplice accused him in a snappish tone of being richer than himself,
the coxcomb with yellow gloves replied, laughing:

"You see, dear master, you are very clever in making money rain down,
but you don't know how to pick it up."

Madame Sidonie profited by her brother's stroke of fortune to borrow
ten thousand francs from him, with which she went to spend a couple
of months in England. She returned without a copper, and it was never
known what had become of the ten thousand francs.

"Well, it costs," she replied when she was questioned. "I ransacked all
the libraries. I had three secretaries to assist me in my researches."

And when she was asked if she at length had any positive information
about her three milliards, she at first smiled with a mysterious air,
and then ended by muttering:

"You are all incredulous. I have found nothing, but no matter. You will
see, you will see some day."

She had not, however, lost all the time she spent in England. Her
brother the minister profited by her journey to entrust her with a
delicate commission. When she returned she obtained large orders from
the ministry. It was a fresh incarnation. She made contracts with the
government, and charged herself with supplying it every imaginable
thing. She sold it provisions and arms for the troops, furniture for
the prefectures and public departments, fire wood for the offices and
the museums. The money she made did not induce her to set aside her
eternal black dresses, and she retained her yellow, doleful face.
Saccard then reflected that it was really she whom he had seen once
long ago furtively leaving their brother Eugène's house. She must at
all times have kept up a secret connection with him, for matters with
which no one was acquainted.

Renée was agonizing amid these interests, these ardent thirsts which
could not satisfy themselves. Aunt Élisabeth was dead; Christine had
married and left the Béraud mansion, where her father alone remained
erect in the gloomy shade of the large rooms. Renée exhausted what
she inherited from her aunt in one season. She gambled now. She had
found a drawing-room where ladies sat at table till three o'clock
in the morning, losing hundreds of thousands of francs in a night.
She tried to drink, but she could not, she experienced invincible
qualms of disgust. Since she had found herself alone again, abandoned
to the worldly flood which carried her off, she surrendered herself
all the more, not knowing how to kill time. She ended by tasting of
everything. And nothing touched her amid the immense boredom which was
crushing her. She grew older, blue circles appeared round her eyes, her
nose became thinner, her pouting lips parted in sudden and causeless
laughter. It was the end of a woman.

When Maxime had married Louise, and the young folks had started for
Italy, she no longer troubled herself about her lover; she even seemed
to forget him completely. And when Maxime returned alone six months
later, having buried the "hunchback" in the cemetery of a little
town in Lombardy, it was hatred that she displayed towards him. She
remembered Phèdre, she no doubt recollected that poisoned love to which
she had heard Ristori lend her sobs. Then, so as never more to meet the
young fellow in her home, to dig an abyss of shame between the father
and the son for ever, she compelled her husband to take cognisance of
the incest, she told him that on the day when he had surprised her
with Maxime, the latter, who had long pursued her, was seeking to
assault her. Saccard was horribly worried by the insistence she evinced
in wishing to open his eyes. He was obliged to quarrel with his son
and cease to see him. The young widower, rich with his wife's dowry,
went to live a bachelor's life in a little house of the Avenue de
l'Impératrice. He had renounced the Council of State, and kept a racing
stable. Renée derived one of her last satisfactions from this rupture.
She revenged herself, she flung the infamy which these two men had set
on her back in their own faces, and she said to herself that now she
would never more see them making game of her, arm-in-arm, like a couple
of comrades.

Amid the crumbling of Renée's affections there came a moment when she
had no one left to love her but her maid. She had by degrees been
taken with a maternal affection for Céleste. Perhaps this girl, who
was all that remained near her of Maxime's love, reminded her of the
hours of enjoyment forever dead. Perhaps Renée was simply touched by
the fidelity of this servant, of this brave heart the quiet solicitude
of which nothing seemed to shake. From the depth of her remorse she
thanked Céleste for having witnessed her shame without leaving her in
disgust; and she pictured all kinds of abnegation, a whole life of
renunciation to arrive at understanding the calmness of the chambermaid
in the presence of incest, her icy hands, her respectful, quiet
attentions. And the girl's devotion made Renée all the happier as she
knew her to be honest and economical, without a lover, without a vice.

At times in her sad moments she would say to her:

"Ah! my girl, it is you who will close my eyes."

Céleste never answered, but she gave a singular smile. One morning she
quietly informed her mistress that she was going to leave, that she
meant to return into the country. Renée remained trembling all over on
hearing this, as if some great misfortune had befallen her. She cried
out, and plied Céleste with questions. Why would she leave her when
they got on so well together? And she offered to double her wages.

But the maid, in answer to all her kind words, made a gesture meaning
no, in a quiet, obstinate manner.

"You see, madame," she ended by replying, "you might offer me all the
gold of Peru, but I could not remain a week longer. Ah! you don't know
me--I've been with you for eight years, haven't I? Well, on the very
first day I said to myself: 'As soon as I have collected five thousand
francs together, I will return to my village; I will buy Lagache's
house, and I shall live very happily!' It's a promise I made to myself,
you understand. And the five thousand francs were completed yesterday,
when you paid me my wages."

Renée felt a chill at her heart. She saw Céleste passing behind her and
Maxime while they were kissing each other, and she saw her with her
indifference, in a perfect state of abstraction, dreaming of her five
thousand francs. However, she still tried to retain her, frightened by
the void in which she would have to live, longing, despite everything,
to keep near her this obstinate animal whom she had thought devoted,
and who was merely egotistical. The girl smiled, still shaking her head
and muttering:

"No, no, it isn't possible. Even if it were my mother I should refuse.
I shall buy two cows. I shall perhaps start a little haberdasher's
business. It is very pretty down our way. Oh! for the matter of that,
I am willing you should come and see me. It is near Caen. I will leave
you the address."

Renée then no longer insisted. She shed hot tears when she was alone.
On the morrow, with a sick person's whimsicality, she decided to
accompany Céleste to the Western Railway station, in her own brougham.
She gave her one of her travelling rugs and made her a present in
money, and showed her the attentions of a mother whose daughter is
about to start upon some long difficult journey. In the brougham she
looked at her with moist eyes. Céleste chatted and said how pleased she
was to go away. Then emboldened, she spoke out and gave some advice to
her mistress.

"I shouldn't have understood life like you, madame. I often said to
myself when I found you with Monsieur Maxime: 'Is it possible one can
be so foolish for men!' It always ends badly--Ah! for my part I always
mistrusted them!"

She laughed and threw herself back in the corner of the brougham:

"My money would have danced!" she continued, "and now-a-days I should
be destroying my eyes with crying. So whenever I saw a man I took up
a broomstick--I never dared to tell you all that. Besides, it didn't
concern me. You were free to do as you liked, and I only had to earn my
money honestly."

At the railway station Renée insisted upon paying her fare and took her
a first class ticket. As they had arrived before the time, she detained
her, pressing her hands and repeating:

"And take good care of yourself, don't neglect your health, my good
Céleste."

The latter allowed herself to be caressed. She stood looking happy,
with a fresh smiling face, before her mistress's tearful eyes. Renée
again spoke of the past, and the maid abruptly exclaimed:

"I was forgetting: I didn't tell you the story of Baptiste, master's
valet. Probably no one has liked to tell you."

The young woman owned that she indeed knew nothing.

"Well, you remember his grand dignified airs, his disdainful glances,
you yourself spoke to me about them. It was all so much acting. He
didn't care for women, he never came down to the servants' hall when
we were there; I can repeat it now, he even pretended that it was
disgusting in the drawing-room, on account of all the low-neck dresses.
I well believe that he didn't care for women!"

And she leant towards Renée's ear, and made her blush, though she
herself retained all her honest placidity.

"When the new stable boy," she continued, "told everything to master,
master preferred to dismiss Baptiste rather than send him to jail. It
seems that these disgusting things had been going on for years in the
stables. And to think that the big scamp pretended he was fond of
horses! It was the grooms that he liked!"

The bell interrupted her. She hastily took up the eight or ten packages
which she had not wished to part with. She let herself be kissed; and
then she went off, without looking round.

Renée remained in the station until the engine whistled. And when the
train had gone off, she was overcome with despair, she no longer knew
what to do; her days seemed to stretch before her as empty as the vast
waiting hall where she had been left alone. She again entered her
brougham and told the coachman to drive her home. But on the way she
changed her mind, she was afraid of her room, of the boredom awaiting
her there. She no longer felt the necessary courage to return home and
change her dress for her usual drive round the lake. She felt a longing
for sunlight, a longing to mingle with the crowd.

She ordered the coachman to drive to the Bois.

It was four o'clock. The Bois was awakening from the drowsiness of a
warm afternoon. Clouds of dust flew along the Avenue de l'Impératrice,
and one could see, spread out afar, the expanse of verdure which the
slopes of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes, crowned by the grey walls of Mont
Valérien, limited. High above the horizon the sun shed its rays,
filling the recesses of the foliage with golden dust, lighting up
the tall branches, and changing the ocean of leaves into an ocean of
light. Past the fortifications, in the avenue of the Bois leading to
the lake, the ground had just been watered; and the vehicles rolled
over the brown soil as over a carpet, amid a rising freshness and an
odour of damp earth. Mingled with the low bushes on either side, the
little trees of the copses reared their crowd of young trunks, growing
indistinct in the greenish dimness which flashes of light pierced
here and there with yellow glades; and, by degrees, as one approached
the lake, the chairs on the side-walks became more numerous, families
sat, gazing with quiet silent faces at the interminable procession of
wheels. Then, on reaching the open space in front of the lake, there
was a dazzlement, the oblique sun transformed the round expanse of
water into a huge mirror of polished silver reflecting the brilliant
disk of the planet. All eyes blinked, one could only distinguish the
dark form of the pleasure boat on the left hand side near the bank.
The parasols in the vehicles were inclined with a gentle and uniform
movement towards this splendour, and only rose erect again on reaching
the roadway skirting the sheet of water, which, from the summit of
the bank, now assumed a metallic blackness, streaked with golden
burnishings. On the right hand side the clumps of fir trees lined the
road with their colonnades of straight slender stems, the soft violet
tinge of which was reddened by the flames of the sky; on the left the
lawns, bathed in light and similar to fields of emeralds, stretched
away as far as the distant lace-like ironwork of the gate of La Muette.
And on approaching the cascade, while the dimness of the copses again
presented itself on one side, the islands at the end of the lake rose
up into the blue air, with the sunshine playing over their banks, and
bold shadows darting from their pines, at the feet of which the chalet
looked like some child's plaything lost in a corner of a virgin forest.
The whole wood laughed and quivered in the sunshine.

The weather was so magnificent that Renée felt ashamed of her closed
brougham and her costume of flea-tinted silk. She drew back a little,
and, with the windows open, looked at this flow of light stretching
over the water and the verdure. At the bends of the avenues she
perceived the line of wheels revolving like golden stars amid a long
train of blinding gleams. The varnished panels, the flashing steel
and brass mountings, the bright colours of the dresses passed on, at
the even trot of the horses, and set against the background of the
wood a long moving bar, a ray fallen from the sky, stretching out and
following the bends of the roadway. And in this ray, as the young woman
blinked her eyes, she saw every now and then the light chignon of a
woman, the black back of a footman, the white mane of a horse, stand
out. The arched parasols of watered silk shone like moons of metal.

Then, in presence of this broad daylight, this expanse of sunshine,
Renée thought of the fine dust of twilight which she had seen one
evening falling on the tawny foliage. Maxime had been with her. It was
at the period when her desires for that child were dawning in her.
And she again saw the lawns dampened by the evening air, the darkened
underwood, the deserted pathways. The line of vehicles had gone by
with a sad sound past the unoccupied chairs, whilst now the rumble of
the wheels, the trot of the horses, resounded with the joyfulness of a
flourish of trumpets. Then the recollection of all her drives in the
Bois returned to her. She had lived there. Maxime had grown up there,
at her side, on the cushion of her carriage. It had been their garden.
Rain had surprised them there, sunshine had brought them back, the
fall of night had not always driven them away. They had been there in
every kind of weather, they had there tasted the worries and the joy of
their life. Amid the emptiness of her being, the melancholy imparted by
Celeste's departure, these memories gave Renée bitter joy. Her heart
said: "Never again! never again!" and she was like frozen when she
evoked the image of the winter landscape, the congealed, dull-tinted
lake on which they had skated; the sky then was of a sooty colour, the
snow had set white lace on the trees, the wind had thrown fine sand in
their eyes and on their lips.

However, on the left hand side, on the side reserved to equestrians,
she had already recognised the Duke de Rozan, Monsieur de Mussy,
and Monsieur de Saffré. Larsonneau had killed the duke's mother by
presenting her the hundred and fifty thousand francs' worth of bills
accepted by her son, and the duke was devouring his second half million
with Blanche Müller, after leaving the first five hundred thousand
francs in the hands of Laure d'Aurigny. Monsieur de Mussy, who had left
the embassy in England for the embassy in Italy, had become gallant
again; and he led cotillons with newly acquired gracefulness. As for
Monsieur de Saffré, he remained the most amiable sceptic and fast-liver
in the world. Renée saw him urging his horse towards the carriage of
the Countess Vanska, with whom he was said to be madly in love since
the evening when he had seen her as Coral at the Saccards'.

All the ladies were there, moreover; the Duchess de Sternich, in her
sempiternal eight-springed carriage; Madame de Lauwerens in a landau,
with the Baroness de Meinhold and little Madame Daste seated in front
of her; Madame de Teissière and Madame de Guende in a victoria. Amid
these ladies, Sylvia and Laure d'Aurigny displayed themselves on the
cushions of a magnificent calash. Madame Michelin even passed by in
the depths of a brougham; the pretty brunette had been to visit the
chief town of Monsieur Hupel de la Noue's department; and on her return
she had made her appearance in the Bois in this brougham, to which
she hoped to soon add an open carriage. Renée also perceived the
Marchioness d'Espanet and Madame Haffner, the inseparables hidden under
their parasols, stretched out side by side, laughing tenderly, and
gazing into each other's eyes.

Then the gentlemen passed by: Monsieur de Chibray driving a mail-coach;
Monsieur Simpson in a dog-cart; Messieurs Mignon and Charrier,
more eager than ever for work, despite their dream of approaching
retirement, in a brougham which they left at the corner of an avenue,
to go a bit of the way on foot; Monsieur de Mareuil, still in mourning
for his daughter, seeking bows for his first interruption launched
forth the day before at the Corps Législatif, and airing his political
importance in the carriage of Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who had once
more saved the Crédit Viticole, after placing it within two fingers'
length of ruin, and whom the Senate made thinner and more influential
than ever.

And, to close the procession, like a final majesty, Baron Gouraud
showed his inert heaviness in the sunlight, on the pillows with which
his carriage was provided. Renée felt surprised and disgusted on
recognising Baptiste seated, with a white face and solemn air, beside
the coachman. The tall flunky had entered the baron's service.

The copses continued to stretch away, the water of the lake grew
iridescent under the sunrays now become more oblique, the line of
carriages spread out its dancing gleams. And the young woman, herself
seized and carried away by this enjoyment, vaguely divined all the
appetites rolling, along in the midst of the sunlight. She did not
feel indignant with these sharers of the spoil. But she hated them for
their joy, for this triumphal march, which showed them to her full in
the golden dust from the sky. They were superb and smiling; the women
displayed themselves white and plump, the men had the rapid glances,
the delighted deportment of favoured lovers. And she, in the depth of
her empty heart, found nothing more than lassitude and covert envy. Was
she better than the others, then, that she thus bent under the weight
of pleasure? or was it the others who were praiseworthy for having
stronger loins than her own. She did not know, she was just longing for
new desires with which to begin life anew, when, on turning her head,
she perceived beside her, on the footway bordering the underwood, a
sight which rent her heart like a supreme blow.

Saccard and Maxime were walking along slowly, arm-in-arm. The father
must have paid a visit to the son, and they had both come down from the
Avenue de l'Impératrice to the lake chatting.

"Listen to me," repeated Saccard, "you are a simpleton. When a man
has money like you have, he doesn't let it slumber at the bottom of
a drawer. There is a hundred per cent to be gained in the affair I
mention. It is a safe investment. You know very well that I wouldn't
let you in!"

However, the young fellow seemed bored by his father's insistence. He
smiled with his pretty air, and looked at the carriages.

"Do you see that little woman over there, the one in mauve," he
suddenly said. "She's a washerwoman, whom that beast De Mussy has
brought out."

They looked at the woman in mauve; after which Saccard drew a cigar
from his pocket, and addressing himself to Maxime who was smoking:

"Give me a light," he said.

Then they stopped for a moment in front of each other, drawing their
faces near together. When the cigar was lighted:

"You see," continued the father, again taking his son's arm, and
pressing it tightly under his own; "you would be a fool if you didn't
listen to me. Is it agreed, eh? Will you bring me the hundred thousand
francs to-morrow?"

"You know very well that I no longer go to your house," replied Maxime,
compressing his lips.

"Pooh! A lot of bosh! It's time there was an end to all that."

And while they took a few steps in silence, just at the moment when
Renée, feeling as though she would swoon, hid her head in the padding
of the brougham, so as not to be seen, a growing buzz swept along the
line of vehicles. The pedestrians on the footways halted, and turned
round with gaping mouths, watching something that approached. There
was a louder rumble of wheels, the equipages respectfully drew aside,
and two postilions appeared, clad in green, with round caps, on which
golden tassels jolted with their cords spread out. Leaning slightly
forward, they hastened on at the trot of their tall bay horses. Behind
them they left an empty space; and, then, in this empty space, the
Emperor appeared.

He occupied alone the back seat of a landau. Dressed in black, with
his frock-coat buttoned up to his chin, he wore, slightly on one side,
a very tall hat, the silk of which glistened. In front of him, on the
other seat, two gentlemen, dressed with that correct elegance which
was favourably looked upon at the Tuileries, remained grave, with
their hands on their knees, and the silent air of two wedding guests
promenaded amid the curiosity of a crowd.

Renée found the Emperor aged. His mouth was parted more languidly under
his thick waxed moustaches. His eyelids had grown heavy to the point
that they half covered his dim eyes, the yellow greyness of which had
become yet more cloudy. And his nose alone still looked like a dry bone
set in his vague face.

Meantime, while the ladies in the carriages smiled discreetly, the
people on foot pointed the sovereign out to one another. A fat man
declared that the Emperor was the gentleman who turned his back to
the coachman on the left side. Some hands were raised to salute. But
Saccard, who had taken off his hat, even before the postilions had
passed, waited till the imperial carriage was exactly in front of him,
and then he cried out in his thick Provençal voice:

"Long live the Emperor!"

The Emperor, surprised, turned, recognised the enthusiast, no doubt,
and returned the bow smiling. And everything then disappeared in the
sunlight, the equipages closed up, and Renée could only perceive, above
the manes of the horses, and between the backs of the footmen, the
postilions caps jolting with their golden tassels.

She remained for a moment with her eyes wide open, full of this
apparition, which reminded her of another hour of her life. It seemed
to her as if the Emperor, by mingling with the line of carriages,
had set the last necessary ray therein, and given a meaning to this
triumphal march. Now, it was a glory. All these wheels, all these
decorated men, all these women languidly stretched out, disappeared
amid the flash and the rumble of the imperial landau. This sensation
became so acute and so painful that the young woman experienced an
imperious need of escaping from this triumph, from Saccard's cry, which
was still ringing in her ears, from the sight of the father and the
son slowly walking along, and chatting with their arms linked. She
reflected, with her hands on her breast, as if burnt by an internal
fire: and it was with a sudden hope of relief and salutary coolness
that she leant forward, and said to the coachman:

"To the Béraud mansion."

The courtyard retained its cloister-like coldness. Renée went round
the arcades, made happy by the dampness which fell upon her shoulders.
She approached the fountain, green with moss, and polished by wear at
the edges; she looked at the lion's head, now half effaced, which,
with parted jaws emitted a gush of water by an iron pipe. How many
times had she and Christine taken this head between their girlish arms
to lean forward to reach the stream of water, the icy flow of which
they liked to feel upon their little hands. Then she mounted the great
silent staircase; she perceived her father at the end of the suite of
spacious rooms; he drew up his tall figure, and silently went deeper
into the shade of the old residence, of the haughty solitude in which
he had absolutely cloistered himself since his sister's death; and
Renée thought of the men of the Bois, of that other old man, Baron
Gouraud, who had his flesh rolled about on pillows in the sunlight. She
went up higher, she followed the passages, the servants' stairs, she
was bound for the nursery. When she reached the top landing she found
the key hanging on the usual nail; a large rusty key it was, on which
spiders had woven webs. The lock gave a plaintive cry. How sad the
nursery was! She felt a pang at her heart of finding it so empty, so
grey, so silent. She closed the open door of the abandoned aviary, with
the vague idea that it must have been by that door that the joys of her
childhood had flown away. In front of the flower-boxes, still full of
soil hardened and cracked all over like dry mud, she stopped and broke
off a rhododendron stem; this skeleton of a plant, shrivelled and white
with dust, was all that remained of their living clumps of verdure.
And the matting, the matting itself, faded, gnawed by rats, displayed
itself with the melancholy aspect of a shroud which has for years
awaited a promised corpse. In one corner amid this mute despair, this
silent weeping abandonment, Renée found one of her old dolls; all the
bran had flowed out of it by a hole, but its porcelain head continued
smiling with its enamelled lips, above the tabid body, which a doll's
follies seemed to have exhausted.

Renée felt stifled in the tainted atmosphere of the abode of her
childhood. She opened the window and gazed on the immense view.
Nothing there was soiled. She again found the eternal delights, the
eternal juvenescence of the open air. The sun must have been sinking
behind her; but she only saw the rays of the setting planet, as they
lent, with infinite softness, a yellowish tinge to this corner of the
city which she knew so well. It was like the last lay of daylight, a
gay refrain, which slowly subsided on all things. There were gleams
of tawny fire about the boom below, while the lace-work of the iron
cables of the Pont de Constantine stood out above the whiteness of the
pillars. Then, on the right hand, the umbrage of the Halle aux Vins and
the Jardin des Plantes seemed like a great mere with stagnant, mossy
water, the greenish surface of which blended in the distance with the
mist of the sky. On the left, the Quai Henri IV. and the Quai de la
Rapée were lined with the same rows of houses, those houses which, as
girls, twenty years before, they had seen there, with the same brown
patches of sheds, the same ruddy factory chimneys. And, above the
trees, the slate roof of the Salpêtrière hospital, made blue by the
sun's good-bye, suddenly appeared to her like an old friend.

But what calmed her, and imparted coolness to her bosom, were the long
grey banks, and especially the Seine, the giantess, which she saw
coming from the limits of the horizon straight towards her, just as in
those happy times when she had feared to see it well and rise up to the
very window. She remembered their affection for the river, their love
for its colossal flow, for this quivering of noisy water, spreading out
in a sheet at their feet, parting around and behind them in two arms,
the ends of which they could not see, though they still felt the great
pure caress. They were then already coquettish, and on the days when
the sky was clear they said that the Seine had put on her beautiful
dress of green silk, flecked with white flames; and the eddies where
the water curled set frills of satin on the dress, while afar off,
beyond the belt of bridges, a play of light spread strips of stuff the
colour of the sun.

And Renée, raising her eyes, looked at the vast expanse of soaring
sky of a pale blue, fading little by little in the obliteration of
twilight. She thought of the accomplice city, of the blazing nights of
the Boulevard, of the hot afternoons of the Bois, of the pallid, crude
day, of the grand new mansions. Then, when she lowered her head, when
she again saw at a glance the peaceful horizon of her childhood, this
corner of a city, inhabited by the middle and working classes, where
she had dreamt of a life of peace, a final bitterness mounted to her
lips. With her hands clasped, she sobbed in the gathering night.

The following winter, when Renée died of acute meningitis, it was her
father who paid her debts. Worms's bill amounted to two hundred and
fifty-seven thousand francs.


THE END.