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.