She was stifling. She went to the window, drew back the curtains,

and leant over the rail. The orchestra was hushed; the sin had been

committed amid the last quiver of the basses and the distant chant of

the violins, the vague soft music of the Boulevard now sleeping and

dreaming of love. The road and the side-walks stretched away below in

grey solitude. All the rumbling cab wheels seemed to have gone off,

taking the lights and the crowd away with them. Below the window, the

Café Riche was closed, not a ray of light glided from between the

shutters. Across the way, brazen-like gleams alone appeared upon the

façade of the Café Anglais, especially lighting up one window which

was partly open and whence a faint sound of laughter escaped. And all

along this ribbon of darkness, from the turn at the Rue Drouot to the

other end, as far as her eyes could reach, she no longer saw aught save

the symmetrical blurs of the kiosks tinging the night with red and

green, without illuminating it, and looking like night-lights spaced

along some giant dormitory. She raised her head. The high branches of

the trees stood out against a clear sky, while the irregular outline

of the house roofs died away till it seemed like a clustering heap of

rocks on the shore of a bluish sea. But this strip of sky saddened her

all the more, and it was in the darkness of the Boulevard alone that

she found some consolation. What lingered of the noise and vice of the

evening on the surface of the deserted thoroughfare excused her. She

thought she could feel the heat of all these men and women's footsteps

ascend from the cooling footway. The shames that had trailed there,

the desires of a minute, the whispered offers, the weddings of a night

paid for in advance, were evaporating, floating about in a heavy mist

rolled away by the breath of morning. Leaning out into the darkness

she inhaled this quivering silence, this alcove-like smell, as an

encouragement which came to her from below, as an assurance that her

shame was shared and accepted by a colluding city. And when her eyes

had grown accustomed to the obscurity she perceived the woman in the

blue dress trimmed with lace, standing in the same place, alone in the

grey solitude, waiting and offering herself to the deserted darkness.

On turning, the young woman beheld Charles who was looking around him,

scenting like a dog. He ended by perceiving Renée's blue ribbon, lying

rumpled and forgotten on a corner of the divan. And with his polite

air, he hastened to take it to her. Then she realised all her shame.

Standing in front of the looking-glass she tried with clumsy hands to

tie the ribbon again. But her chignon had fallen, the little curls were

flattened on her temples, and she was unable to tie the bow. Charles

came to her help, saying, as if he were offering some usual thing, a

finger glass or some toothpicks:

"If madame would like the comb?"

"Oh! no, there's no need," interrupted Maxime, giving the waiter an

impatient look. "Go and fetch us a cab."

Renée made up her mind to pull the hood of her domino over her head.

And as she was about to leave the looking-glass, she lightly raised

herself in search of the words which Maxime's grasp had prevented her

from reading. Slanting upwards towards the ceiling, and written in a

large, abominable hand there was this declaration signed Sylvia: "I

love Maxime." On reading it Renée bit her lip and drew her hood rather

lower.

They experienced a horrible constraint in the vehicle. They had seated

themselves one in front of the other as when they left the Parc

Monceaux. They could not think of a word to say to each other. The cab

was full of opaque darkness, and Maxime's cigar didn't even dot it with

a red speck, a pink charcoal-like glimmer. The young fellow, again

hidden among the skirts, "which he had up to his eyes," felt ill at

ease amid this darkness and silence, near this speechless woman, whom

he felt beside him, and whose eyes he imagined he could see gazing wide

open into the night. To seem less foolish he ended by seeking her hand,

and when he held it in his own he felt relieved and found the situation

tolerable. Renée abandoned this hand of hers, languidly and dreamily.

The cab crossed over the Place de la Madeleine. Renée was reflecting

that she was not guilty. She had not been bent on incest. And the more

she descended into herself, the more innocent she considered she had

been, at the outset of her escapade, at her furtive departure from the

Parc Monceaux, at Blanche Müller's, on the Boulevard, and even in the

private room at the restaurant. Why had she fallen on her knees at the

edge of that divan? She no longer knew. She had certainly not thought

of _that_ for a moment. She would have angrily refused. She had made

this excursion as a joke, she had been bent on amusing herself, nothing

more. Thus did she ponder, and in the rumbling of the cab she seemed

again to find the deafening orchestra of the Boulevard, that coming and

going of men and women, while bars of fire burned her tired eyes.

Maxime was also musing, with some sense of worry, in his corner. The

adventure annoyed him. He laid the blame on the black satin domino.

Had one ever seen a woman rig herself out in that style? You couldn't

even see her neck. He had taken her for a boy, he had played with her,

and it wasn't his fault if the game had become something serious. He

certainly wouldn't have touched her with the tips of his fingers, had

she only shown her shoulders a bit. He would then have remembered that

she was his father's wife. Then, as he did not care for disagreeable

reflections, he forgave himself. So much the worse, after all! he would

try not to begin again. It was folly.

The cab stopped, and Maxime alighted the first, to help Renée out. But

at the little gate of the park he did not dare to kiss her. They shook

hands according to their wont. She was already on the other side of

the railing, when, in view of saying something, and at the same time

unwittingly confessing a preoccupation which had vaguely crossed her

reveries since leaving the restaurant:

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

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

But Renée abruptly realised the truth. The room, no doubt, had a comb

which formed part of its appurtenances like the curtains, the bolt, and

the divan. And without waiting an explanation, which did not come, she

plunged into the darkness of the Parc Monceaux, hastening her steps,

and thinking she could see behind her the tortoise-shell teeth in which

Laure d'Aurigny and Sylvia had left some of their fair and their dark

hairs. Renée was very feverish, and it became necessary for Céleste

to put her to bed and watch her till the morning. On the side-walk of

the Boulevard Malesherbes, Maxime consulted himself for a moment as to

whether he should go and join the joyous party at the Café Anglais;

then, with the idea that he was punishing himself, he decided that he

ought to go home to bed.

On the morrow, Renée awoke at a late hour from a heavy dreamless sleep.

She had a large fire lighted, and said that she should spend the day in

her room. This was her refuge in serious moments. Towards noon, as her

husband did not see her come down to lunch, he asked her permission to

speak with her a moment. She was already refusing the request, with a

tinge of nervousness, when she decided otherwise. On the day before she

had sent Saccard Worms's bill, amounting to a hundred and thirty-six

thousand francs, a rather high figure, and, no doubt, he wished to

indulge in the gallantry of giving her a receipt in person.

A thought came to her of the little curls of the day before; and

she mechanically looked in the glass at her hair, which Céleste had

knotted in large tresses. Then she ensconced herself in a corner by

the fire-place, burying herself in the lace of her dressing-gown.

Saccard, whose rooms also were on the first floor, corresponding with

his wife's, came to see her in his slippers, in the true style of a

husband. He barely set foot in Renée's room once a month, and then

only for some delicate pecuniary matter. That morning he had red eyes,

and the wan complexion of a man who has not slept. He kissed the young

woman's hand gallantly.

"You are not well, my dear?" he said, as he sat down on the other side

of the chimney-piece. "A little headache, isn't it? Excuse my coming

to worry you with my business rigmaroles, but the matter is somewhat

serious."

From one of the pockets of his dressing-gown he drew forth Worms's

bill, the glazed paper of which Renée recognised.

"I found this bill on my table, yesterday," he continued, "and I'm very

sorry, but I really can't pay it just now."

Out of the corner of his eye he watched the effect that his words

produced on his wife, who seemed to be deeply astonished. He resumed

with a smile:

"As you know, my dear, I'm not in the habit of looking into your

expenses. I don't say that certain items in this bill haven't

surprised me a little. For instance, on the second page, I find this:

'Ball dress: material, 70 francs; making up, 600 francs; money lent,

5000 francs; perfumery, 6 francs.' That seventy franc dress comes to

rather a stiff figure. But you know very well that I understand all

kinds of weaknesses. Your bill amounts to a hundred and thirty-six

thousand francs, and you have been almost moderate, relatively

speaking, I mean--Only, I must repeat it, I can't pay, I'm hard up."

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

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

it."

"I see that you don't believe me," muttered Saccard, enjoying his

wife's incredulity respecting his financial embarrassment, as much as

if it had been a triumph. "I don't say that my position is threatened,

but business is very queer for the moment. I worry you, no doubt, but

let me explain our position to you. You confided your dowry to me, and

I owe you complete frankness."

He laid the bill on the mantelshelf, took up the tongs, and began to

poke the fire. This mania for raking the cinders, while he was talking

about business matters, was a system which had become a habit with him.

Whenever he reached a figure or a remark, which it bothered him to

enunciate, he brought about some downfall of the logs, which he began

repairing laboriously, bringing the logs closer together, collecting

and piling the little splinters of wood, one above the other. On other

occasions he almost disappeared into the fire-place in search of some

straying embers. He spoke in a lower tone, you grew impatient, you

became interested in his skilful edification of incandescent firewood,

you no longer listened to him, and, as a rule, you left his presence

defeated but content. Even at other people's houses he despotically

took possession of the tongs. In the summer he toyed with a pen-holder,

a paper or a pen-knife.

"My dear," said he, giving a blow which sent the fire flying, "I must

once again ask your forgiveness for entering into all these details.

I have punctually paid you the interest of the funds which you placed

in my hands. I can even say, without wishing to hurt your feelings,

that I merely looked upon that interest as your pocket-money, paying

your expenses, and never asking you to contribute your share of the

household disbursements."

He paused. Renée suffered as she looked at him, while he made a large

hole in the cinders to bring the end of a log among them. He was

approaching a delicate matter.

"As you will understand, I was obliged to make your money yield a high

interest. The funds are in safe hands, be assured of that. As for the

amount coming from your property in Sologne, it partly served to pay

for the house we live in, the remainder is invested in an excellent

affair, the Société Générale of the Ports of Morocco. We are not

settling accounts, are we? but I want to prove to you that very often

we poor husbands are not judged at our worth."

A powerful motive must have impelled him to lie a little less than

usual. The truth was that Renée's dowry had for a long time ceased

to exist; it had simply become a fictitious asset in Saccard's safe.

Although he paid the interest at the rate of two or three hundred per

cent, he could not have produced a single security, or have found the

smallest solid particle of the original capital. As he half confessed,

the five hundred thousand francs derived from the Sologne property had

served to give something on account for the house and the furniture,

which between them had cost nearly two millions of francs. Saccard

still owed a million to the upholsterer and the builder.

"I don't claim anything from you," said Renée at last, "I know that I

owe you a deal of money."

"Oh! my dear," he exclaimed, taking hold of his wife's hand, but

without relinquishing the tongs, "what a bad idea you have of me! In

two words, now, I have been unlucky at the Bourse, Toutin-Laroche has

been playing some foolish pranks, and Mignon and Charrier are a couple

of brutes who have swindled me. And that is why I can't pay your bill.

You will forgive me, won't you?"

He seemed really moved. He thrust the tongs between the logs and made

the sparks dart forth like rockets. Renée remembered how nervous

he had seemed for some time past. But she was unable to penetrate

the astonishing truth. Saccard had reached the point that he had to

accomplish a miracle every day. He resided in a house which had cost

two millions of francs, he lived on the footing of a prince's civil

list, and yet on certain mornings he had not a thousand francs in his

safe. His expenditure did not seem to diminish, however. He lived

upon debt among a people of creditors who swallowed up, day by day,

the scandalous profits which he realised by certain transactions. In

the meantime, at the same moment indeed, companies crumbled around;

before him yawned fresh and deeper pits, over which he had to spring,

being unable to fill them up. He thus went on over mined ground, amid

a continuous crisis, settling bills of fifty thousand francs, and not

paying his coachman's wages, still marching on with an assurance which

became more and more regal, and emptying over Paris, more ragefully

than ever, his empty safe, whence the golden river of legendary source

still continued to flow.

The times were momentarily bad for speculation. Saccard was the

worthy offspring of the Hôtel de Ville. Like Paris, he had been eager

for transformation, feverishly bent upon enjoyment, and blindly

lavish in expenditure. And at this moment, like the city itself, he

found himself in the presence of a formidable deficit which it was

necessary he should make good secretly; for he would not hear speak

of sobriety, economy, calm, and simple life. He preferred to retain

the useless luxury and real misery of these new thoroughfares, whence

he had derived that colossal fortune ushered each morning into being,

but always swallowed up when evening came. Passing from adventure

to adventure, he now only possessed the gilded façade of an absent

capital. In that time of fierce madness, Paris herself did not engage

her future with less self-restraint, or march more straightly towards

every folly and every financial trickery. The liquidation threatened to

be a terrible one.

The finest speculations fell through in Saccard's hands. As he

confessed, he had just experienced considerable losses on the Bourse.

M. Toutin-Laroche had almost capsized the Crédit Viticole by a

"bulling" game which had suddenly turned against him; fortunately the

government, intervening secretly, had reset the famous farmers' loan

machine on its legs. Saccard--already badly shaken by this double

blow, warmly rated by his brother the minister on account of the

danger which had threatened the delegation bonds of the city of Paris,

compromised at the same time at the Crédit Viticole--was yet even

unluckier in his speculations in house property. Mignon and Charrier

had altogether ceased dealing with him. If he accused them it was

because he was secretly enraged to think that he had blundered by

building on his share of the land, whilst they prudently sold theirs.

While they were netting a fortune, he remained hampered by his houses

which he was often only able to dispose of at a loss. Among others he

sold a mansion in the Rue de Marignan, on which he still owed three

hundred and eighty thousand francs, for three hundred thousand. He had

certainly invented a dodge worthy of him, which consisted in demanding

ten thousand francs for a flat worth eight thousand at the most. The

frightened tenant only signed a lease when the landlord consented to

make him a present of the first two years' rent; the apartment was thus

brought down to its real value, but the lease enunciated the figure of

ten thousand francs, and when Saccard found a purchaser and capitalized

the income of the property the valuation proved most fantastic. He

could not apply this swindle on a large scale as his houses did not

let; indeed he had built them too soon; the clearings, amid which they

were so to say lost, in the mud and the winter cold, isolated them and

lowered their value considerably. The affair, which affected Saccard

the most, was the vulgar swindle of Messieurs Mignon and Charrier,

who bought back from him the mansion which he had been compelled to

give up building on the Boulevard Malesherbes. The contractors were at

last smitten with the desire of residing on "their Boulevard." As they

had sold their share of the building plots at a profit, and scented

the embarrassed circumstances of their ex-partner, they offered to

rid him of the enclosure in the centre of which the mansion rose to

the flooring of the first storey, where the iron girders were partly

placed. Only they talked of the solid foundations in cut stone as

"useless rubbish," saying that they would have preferred the soil to be

bare so as to build upon it according to their taste. Saccard had to

sell, without taking the hundred and odd thousand francs which he had

already expended into account. And what exasperated him the more was

that the contractors would never agree to take the ground back at the

rate of two hundred and fifty francs the metre, at which figure it had

been valued when the plots were shared. They knocked off twenty-five

francs per metre, like those second-hand dealers who will only give

four francs for an object which they sold for five the day before.

Forty-eight hours later, Saccard had the grief of seeing an army of

masons invade the enclosure and continue building upon the so called

"useless rubbish."

He thus played the impecunious all the better before his wife, as his

affairs were becoming more and more muddled. He was not the man to

confess himself for the simple love of truth.

"But if you find yourself embarrassed," said Renée with an air of

doubt, "why did you buy me that aigrette and necklace which cost you,

I believe, sixty-five thousand francs? I have no use for those jewels

and I shall be obliged to ask your permission to dispose of them so as

to give Worms something on account."

"Never do that!" he exclaimed nervously. "If you were not seen wearing

those jewels at the ball at the ministry to-morrow people would gossip

about my position."

He was good-natured that morning, so he ended by smiling and muttering

with a wink:

"We speculators, my dear, are like pretty women, we have our little

trickeries. Pray keep your aigrette and your necklace for love of me."

He could not tell the story, for although a very amusing one, it was in

somewhat questionable taste. Saccard and Laure d'Aurigny had entered

into an alliance one night after supper. Laure was head over heels

in debt, and was trying to find some nice young man who would kindly

elope with her and take her to London. Saccard on his side felt the

ground giving way beneath him; his failing imagination sought for an

expedient which would show him to the public wallowing on a bed of gold

and bank notes. The harlot and the speculator came to an understanding

amid the semi-intoxication of dessert. He hit upon the idea of that

sale of diamonds which attracted all Paris, and where amid a great fuss

he purchased some jewels for his wife. Then with the product of the

sale, some four hundred thousand francs, he succeeded in satisfying

Laure's creditors who were owed about twice that amount. It may even

be believed that he recouped a part of his sixty-five thousand francs.

When he was seen liquidating the d'Aurigny's affairs, he was supposed

to be her protector, people thought that he had paid her debts in full,

and that he was doing all sorts of foolish things for her. Every hand

was stretched out to him, and his credit returned, formidable. At the

Bourse he was joked about his passion with smiles and allusions which

delighted him. Meanwhile, Laure d'Aurigny, brought into notoriety by

all this fuss, and with whom he did not even spend a single night,

pretended she was deceiving him with eight or ten fools allured by the

idea of stealing her from a man of such colossal wealth. In one month

she obtained two sets of furniture and more diamonds than she had sold.

Saccard had fallen into the habit of going to smoke a cigar at her

place of an afternoon on leaving the Bourse; and he often perceived

coat tails flying off in terror through the doorways. When he and

Laure were alone they could not look at each other without laughing.

He kissed her on the forehead as if she were a perverse girl whose

knavery delighted him. He did not give her a copper; on the contrary,

she once lent him some money to pay a gambling debt.

Renée wished to insist, and spoke of at least pawning the jewels; but

her husband made her understand that it was not possible, that all

Paris expected to see her wearing them on the morrow. Thereupon the

young woman who was greatly worried about Worms's bill tried to devise

another expedient.

"But my Charonne affair," she suddenly exclaimed, "it is progressing

well, isn't it? You told me only the other day that the profits

would be superb. Perhaps Larsonneau would advance me the hundred and

thirty-six thousand francs?"

For a minute Saccard had forgotten the tongs between his legs. He now

hastily took hold of them again, leant forward and almost disappeared

into the fire-place, whence the young woman heard his voice huskily

muttering:

"Yes, yes, Larsonneau might perhaps--"

She was at last coming of her own accord to the point to which he had

gently tried to lead her since the outset of the conversation. For

two years already he had been preparing his masterly stroke in the

direction of Charonne. His wife had never consented to part with Aunt

Élisabeth's property; she had sworn to the latter that she would keep

it intact to bequeath it to her children, should she become a mother.

In presence of this obstinacy, the speculator's imagination had set

to work and had ended by constructing something poetical--a design of

exquisite knavery, a colossal piece of trickery by which the city of

Paris, the State, his wife, and even Larsonneau would be victimized. He

no longer talked about selling the ground; only he every day deplored

the folly of leaving it unproductive, of contenting oneself with an

income of two per cent. Renée, always pressed for money, had ended by

entertaining the idea of a speculation. Saccard based his operation

on the certainty of an approaching expropriation for the cutting

of the Boulevard du Prince Eugène, the line of which was not yet

clearly decided upon. And then it was that he brought forward his old

accomplice Larsonneau, as a partner who made an agreement with his wife

on the following basis. She on her side brought the ground representing

a value of five hundred thousand francs; and Larsonneau, on his

side, undertook to expend a similar sum in building upon this ground

a popular music-hall with a large garden where games of all kinds,

swings, skittles, and bowls should be installed. The profits were

naturally to be divided, just as the losses were to be equally shared.

In the event of one of the partners wishing to retire, he might do so

by claiming his share, according to the valuation which would be made.

Renée seemed surprised by this high figure of five hundred thousand

francs, when the ground was worth three hundred thousand at the most.

But Saccard made her understand that it was a skilful plan for tying

Larsonneau's hands later on, for his buildings would never represent

such an amount.

Larsonneau had become an elegant man about town, well gloved, with

dazzling linen and astounding neckties. To go about he had a tilbury

as light as a piece of clock-work, with a very high seat, and which he

drove himself. His offices in the Rue de Rivoli were a set of sumptuous

rooms in which one never saw the least portfolio or business paper

lying about. His clerks wrote on tables of blackened pear-wood adorned

with marquetry and ornaments of chased brass. He had assumed the style

and title of an expropriation agent, a new calling which the works of

Paris had brought into being. By his connection with the Hôtel de Ville

he was informed in advance of the cutting of any new thoroughfares.

When he had induced a road inspector to show him the proposed line

of route of a new Boulevard, he went to offer his services to the

threatened householders. And he brought forward his little plan for

increasing the indemnity by acting before the decree of public utility

was issued. As soon as a householder accepted his proposals, he took

all the expense on himself, drew a plan of the property, brought

the affair before the courts and paid an advocate, the whole for a

percentage on the difference between the offer made by the city and the

indemnity awarded by the jury. To this calling, which after all might

be avowed, he annexed several others. He especially practised usury.

He was not the usurer of the old school, ragged and dirty, with white

expressionless eyes like five franc pieces, and pale lips tightly drawn

together like the strings of a purse. He smiled, gave charming glances,

had himself dressed by Dusautoy, and went to lunch at Brébant's with

his victim, whom he called "My dear fellow" when he offered him an

havannah at dessert. At bottom, despite his waistcoats tightly buckled

round his waist, Larsonneau was a terrible fellow who, without losing

aught of his amiability, would have prosecuted a debtor for payment of

a bill until the unfortunate man was reduced to commit suicide.

Saccard would willingly have chosen another partner. But he still

entertained anxiety respecting the false inventory which Larsonneau

preciously preserved. So he preferred to interest him in the affair,

hoping that he would be able to profit by some circumstance to regain

possession of this compromising document. Larsonneau built the

music-hall, an edifice in planks and plaster, surmounted by little tin

belfries which he painted red and yellow. The garden and the games

proved successful in the populous district of Charonne. At the end of a

couple of years the speculation seemed a prosperous one, although the

profits were in reality very small. So far, Saccard had always spoken

enthusiastically to his wife concerning the prospects of such a fine

idea.

On seeing that her husband did not make up his mind to come out of the

fire-place, where his voice was becoming more and more indistinct,

Renée exclaimed:

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

Thereupon he abandoned the log with which he was struggling.

"The errand's done, my dear," he said smiling. "Don't I forestall all

your desires? I saw Larsonneau last night."

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

asked anxiously.

Between the two flaming logs he was building a mountain of live

cinders, delicately taking up the smallest fragments with the tongs,

and looking with a satisfied air at the elevation which he raised with

infinite art.

"Oh! how fast you go!" he muttered. "A hundred and thirty-six thousand

francs make a large sum. Larsonneau is a good fellow, but his means are

still limited. He is quite ready to oblige you--"

He paused, blinking his eyes and rebuilding a corner of the elevation

which had fallen through. The pastime began to confuse the young

woman's ideas. Despite herself she watched the work of her husband

whose clumsiness increased. She felt inclined to give him advice.

Forgetting Worms, the bill, and her need of money, she ended by

exclaiming:

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

up."

Her husband submissively obeyed her, and added:

"He can only find fifty thousand francs. It will always make a nice

instalment. Only, he won't mix this affair up with the Charonne one.

He is but an intermediary, do you understand, my dear? The person who

really lends the money demands enormous interest. He wants a note of

hand for eighty thousand francs at six months' date."

And having crowned the height with a pointed cinder he crossed his

hands over the tongs and looked fixedly at his wife.

"Eighty thousand francs!" she cried. "But that's robbery! Do you advise

me to do anything so foolish?"

"No," he answered plainly. "But, if you are in absolute need of money,

I won't forbid it."

He rose up as if he meant to leave the room. Renée, in a state of cruel

indecision, looked at her husband, and at the bill which he laid upon

the mantelshelf. She ended by taking her poor head in her hands and

murmuring:

"Oh! these business matters! My head is splitting, this morning. Well,

I shall sign this bill for eighty thousand francs. If I didn't, I

should become altogether ill. I know myself, I should spend the day in

frightful tortures--I prefer to be foolish at once. It will relieve me."

And she spoke of ringing to have a bill stamp fetched. But he insisted

upon rendering her this service in person. No doubt he had the bill

stamp in his pocket, for his absence scarcely lasted a couple of

minutes. While she was writing at a little table which he had drawn

to the fireside, he examined her and an astonished feeling of desire

lighted up his eyes. It was very warm in the room, which was still full

of the young woman's rising and the scent of her first toilet. Whilst

speaking, she had let the folds of the dressing-gown in which she had

swathed herself, fall down, and the eyes of her husband, who stood

in front of her, glided over her bent head from amid the gold of her

hair far down to the whiteness of her neck and bosom. He smiled with a

singular air; this ardent fire which had burnt his face, this closed

room, the heavy atmosphere of which was impregnated with a scent of

love, this yellow hair and this white skin which tempted him with a

kind of conjugal disdain, made him dreamy, enlarged the scope of the

drama in which he had just played a scene, and prompted some secret

voluptuous design in his brutal jobber's flesh.

When his wife held him out the bill, begging him to finish the affair

for her, he took it, still looking at her.

"You are bewitchingly beautiful," he murmured.

And as she leant forward to push the table aside, he roughly kissed her

on the neck. She gave a little cry. Then she rose up, quivering, trying

to laugh, thinking despite of herself of the other's kisses the night

before. But he regretted having given her this cabman's kiss, and on

leaving he simply pressed her hand in a friendly manner and promised

her that she should have the fifty thousand francs that same evening.

Renée dozed all day in front of the fire. At hours of crisis she

experienced a creole-like languor; all her turbulent nature became

lazy, chilly, benumbed. She shivered, she needed blazing fires, a

suffocating heat, which brought little drops of perspiration to her

forehead, and tranquillized her. In this burning atmosphere, in this

bath of flames, she scarcely suffered; her pain became like a light

dream, a vague oppression, the very ambiguity of which ended by

becoming voluptuous. It was thus that, until the evening, she lulled

her remorse of the night before, in the red glow of the hearth,

opposite a terrible fire, which made the furniture around her crack,

and at moments deprived her of the consciousness of being. She was

able to dream of Maxime as of an inflamed enjoyment, the rays of which

burnt her. She had a nightmare of strange amours, amid flaring logs,

on beds heated white-hot. Céleste went to and fro about the room with

the calm face of a servant with icy blood. She had orders not to admit

anyone; and she even kept the door shut to those inseparables, Adeline

d'Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, when they called on returning from

lunching together at a villa which they had rented at Saint-Germain.

However, towards the evening, when Céleste came to inform her mistress

that her master's sister, Madame Sidonie, wished to see her, she

received orders to show her in.

As a rule Madame Sidonie only called at dusk. And yet her brother

had prevailed upon her to wear silk dresses. But no one knew how it

happened, although the silk she wore came fresh from the shop, it never

looked new; it was shabby, destitute of sheen, and seemed to be in

tatters. She had also consented not to bring her basket to Saccard's

house, but by way of compensation her pocket always overflowed with

papers. She was interested in Renée, whom she was unable to transform

into a reasonable customer resigned to the necessities of life. She

visited her regularly, wearing the discreet smile of a doctor who

does not like to frighten his patient by telling her the name of her

disease. She commiserated her little worries, as if they had been

petty ailments which she could cure immediately if the young woman

only chose. The latter, who was in one of those moments when one feels

the need of being pitied, simply received her to tell her that she had

intolerable pains in her head.

"Why, my beauty," muttered Madame Sidonie, as she glided through the

shade of the room, "why, you are stifling here! Still your neuralgic

pains, eh? It's worry. You take life too much to heart."

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

Night was coming on. She had not allowed Céleste to light the lamp. The

fire alone shed a grand red glow which fully illuminated her, as she

reclined in her white dressing-gown, the lace of which had a pinkish

tinge. At the edge of the shade one could just see an end of Madame

Sidonie's black dress, and her two crossed hands encased in grey cotton

gloves. Her soft voice emerged out of the darkness.

"Still worry about money?" she said, in a tone full of gentleness and

pity, just as if she had spoken of the worries of the heart.

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

"Ah! if my brothers listened to me!" said Madame Sidonie, "we should

all be rich. But they shrug their shoulders whenever I speak to them

about that debt of three milliards, you know. Still I have good hopes.

For the last ten years I have been wanting to make a journey to

England, but I have so little time for myself. Anyhow I recently made

up my mind to write to London, and I am waiting for the answer."

And as the young woman smiled:

"I know you are incredulous as well. Still you would be very pleased

if I made you a present of a pretty million one of these days. Oh! the

story is simple enough: it was a Paris banker who lent the money to the

son of the King of England, and as the banker died without leaving any

direct heirs, the State can now-a-days claim the reimbursement of the

debt with compound interest. I have calculated it--it amounts to two

milliards nine hundred and forty-three millions two hundred and ten

thousand francs. It will come, it will come; never fear!"

"In the meantime," said the young woman with a dash of irony, "you

ought to obtain me a hundred thousand francs. I could then pay my

tailor, who is greatly worrying me!"

"A hundred thousand francs can be found," replied Madame Sidonie,

quietly. "It is only a question of paying for them."

The fire was glowing. Renée, feeling more and more languid, stretched

out her legs, and showed the tips of her slippers at the edge of her

dressing-gown, while the woman of business resumed in her commiserating

voice:

"Poor dear, you are really not reasonable. I know a great many women,

but I have never seen a single one so careless about her health as you

are. For instance, that little Michelin, there's one who knows how to

manage. In spite of myself I think of you when I see her so happy and

well. Do you know that Monsieur de Saffré is madly in love with her,

and that he has already given her presents worth nearly ten thousand

francs? I believe that her dream is to have a country house."

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

"I still have about me a letter from a poor young woman. If we had a

light I would let you read it. Just fancy, her husband doesn't provide

for her. She had accepted some bills, and she has been obliged to

borrow from a gentleman I know. It was I who rescued the promissory

notes from the lawyer's clutches, and it wasn't an easy matter. The

poor children, do you think they are wrong? I receive them at my place

as if they were my son and daughter."

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

"I know ten. Between women one can say a number of things, can't one?

and it isn't because your husband is my brother that I excuse his

conduct in running after strumpets and leaving a beautiful woman like

you to mope at the fireside. That Laure d'Aurigny costs him a fortune.

It wouldn't astonish me if he had refused you money. He _has_ refused

you, hasn't he? Oh, the wretch!"

Renée listened complacently to this voice which emerged out of the

shade like the vague echo of her own dreams. With her eyelids half

lowered, almost recumbent in her arm-chair, she no longer realised that

Madame Sidonie was there; she fancied she dreamt that evil thoughts had

come to her and tempted her with infinite gentleness; meanwhile the

other spoke on at length, and her voice was like a monotonous flow of

lukewarm water.

"It was Madame de Lauwerens who spoilt your life," she said. "You

wouldn't believe me. Oh! you wouldn't be reduced to cry by your

fireside if you hadn't mistrusted me; and I love you like my eyes, my

beauty. You have a bewitching foot. You will no doubt laugh at me, but

I must tell you my folly. When I haven't seen you for three days I am

absolutely impelled to come and admire you. Yes, I lack something; I

feel the need of feasting my eyes on your beautiful hair, your face

which is so white and delicate, and your slim waist. Really I have

never seen anyone else with such a figure."

Renée ended by smiling. Her lovers themselves had not shown such

warmth, such pious ecstasy in speaking to her of her beauty. Madame

Sidonie observed her smile.

"Come, it's agreed," she said, rising hastily. "I run on and on and

forget that I make your head split. You will come to-morrow, won't you?

We will talk over money matters; we will find a lender. You hear me?

I'm determined that you shall be happy."

The young woman, still motionless and enervated by the heat, answered

after a pause, as if she had had to make a laborious effort to

understand what was being said around her:--

"Yes, yes, it's agreed, and we will have a chat; but not to-morrow.

Worms will be satisfied with something on account. When he worries me

again, we will see. Don't talk to me about all that now. Business has

made my head split."

Madame Sidonie seemed greatly vexed. She was on the point of sitting

down again and resuming her coaxing monologue, but Renée's weary

attitude decided her to defer the attack till another occasion. She

drew a handful of papers out of her pocket, searched among them, and

ended by finding an object enclosed in a kind of pink box.

"I came to recommend you a new soap," she said, resuming her business

voice. "I take a great interest in the inventor, who is a charming

young man. It is a very soft soap, very good for the skin. You will try

it, won't you! And you will speak of it to your friends--I will leave

it there on your mantelshelf."

She had gone to the door when she returned again, and standing upright

amid the rosy glow of the fire which lighted up her waxen face, she

began to praise an elastic belt, an invention intended to take the

place of stays.

"It gives you a perfectly round waist, a true wasp's waist," she said.

"I saved it from bankruptcy. When you come, you will try the specimens,

won't you? I had to run about among solicitors during a whole week.

The documents are in my pocket and I am now going to my lawyer to

have the last attachment raised--Good-bye for the present, pretty

one. Remember that I am waiting for you and that I want to dry your

beautiful eyes."

She glided away and disappeared. Renée did not even hear her close the

door. She remained there, before the dying fire, continuing her dream

of the whole day, with her head full of dancing cyphers, while in the

distance she heard the voices of Saccard and Madame Sidonie who offered

her considerable sums in the tone with which an auctioneer invites bids

for a lot of furniture. She felt her husband's rough kiss on her neck,

and when she turned round she fancied the other was there at her feet,

with her black dress and her flabby face, making passionate speeches

to her, praising her perfections, and begging for an appointment with

the attitude of a lover past resignation. This made her smile. The

heat became more and more stifling in the room. And the young woman's

torpor, the strange dreams she made, were but a light, an artificial

sleep, amid which she always beheld the little private room on the

Boulevard, and the broad divan against which she had fallen on her

knees. She no longer suffered at all. When she raised her eyelids again

Maxime's image passed through the rosy mass of fire.

At the ministers' ball, on the morrow, beautiful Madame Saccard

looked marvellous. Worms had accepted the fifty thousand francs on

account, and she emerged from this pecuniary worry with the laughter

of convalescence. When she crossed the reception rooms in her robe of

pink faille with a long Louis XIV. train, edged with deep white lace,

there was a murmur, and the men shoved one another aside to see her.

Her intimate friends bent low with a discreet, knowing smile, rendering

homage to those beautiful shoulders with which all official Paris was

so well acquainted, and which were, indeed the firm columns of the

Empire. She had bared her bosom with such a contempt for other people's

looks, she walked by so tender and so gentle in her nudity, that it was

almost not indecent. Eugène Rougon, the great politician, who felt that

his sister-in-law's bare bosom was even more eloquent than his speeches

in the chamber, softer and more persuasive in making people appreciate

the charms of the reign and converting sceptics, went to compliment

her on her happy audacity in lowering her dress-body a couple of

finger-breadths. Almost all the Corps Législatif was there, and by the

way that the deputies looked at the young woman, the minister made

up his mind that he should have a fine success on the morrow in the

delicate question of the loans of the city of Paris. People could not

vote against a power which, on the hotbed of millions, reared such

a flower as this Renée, so strange a flower of voluptuousness, with

silken flesh and statuesque nudity, a living enjoyment that left a

scent of tepid pleasure behind. But what made the whole ball whisper

were the necklace and the aigrette. The men recognised the jewels and

the women furtively called each other's attention to them with their

eyes. These diamonds were the one subject of talk throughout the

evening. And in the white light of the chandeliers, the reception rooms

stretched away, filled with a resplendent throng which looked like a

jumble of stars huddled into too small a corner of space.

At about one o'clock Saccard disappeared. He had enjoyed his wife's

success like a man whose clap-trap succeeds. He had again consolidated

his credit. A business matter required his presence at Laure

d'Aurigny's so he went off, begging Maxime to take Renée home after the

ball.

Maxime spent the evening soberly beside Louise de Mareuil, both of

them very much occupied in saying frightful things about the women who

passed by. And when they had said something rather stronger than usual,

they stifled their laughter in their pocket handkerchiefs. Renée had

to come to ask the young fellow for his arm when she wished to leave.

She was nervously gay in the carriage; she still quivered with all the

intoxication of the light, the perfumes, and the noise that she had

just left. She moreover seemed to have forgotten their "nonsense" of

the Boulevard as Maxime called it. She only asked him in a strange tone

of voice:

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

"Oh! very funny," replied the young man, beginning to laugh again. "You

saw the Duchess de Sternich with a yellow bird in her hair, didn't you?

Well, Louise pretends that it is an automatic bird which flaps its

wings every hour and cries: 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo!' to the poor duke."

This jest coming from a girl who had just left school seemed very

comical to Renée. When they reached the house, as Maxime was about to

take his leave, she said to him:

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

eat."

He ascended in his usual easy manner. Upstairs however there was

nothing to eat and Céleste had gone to bed. Renée had to light the

tapers in a little candelabrum. Her hand slightly trembled.

"That foolish girl," she said, speaking of her maid. "She must have

misunderstood my orders--I shall never be able to undress myself

unhelped."

She passed into the dressing room. Maxime followed her to relate

another remark of Louise's which had just recurred to his mind. He was

as much at his ease as if he had stayed late at a friend's and was

looking for his cigar-case to light an havannah. But when Renée had

set the candelabrum down she turned round and fell, speechless and

portentous, into the young man's arms, pressing her mouth upon his own.

Renée's private suite of rooms was a nest of silk and lace, a marvel

of coquettish luxury. A tiny boudoir preceded the bedroom. The two

apartments formed but one, or rather the boudoir was scarcely more

than the threshold of the bedroom, a large alcove, furnished with

couches and having a pair of curtains instead of a door. The walls in

both apartments were hung with flax-tinted silken stuff, embroidered

with huge bouquets of roses, white lilac and buttercups. The curtains

and door-hangings were of Venetian lace over a silken lining formed

alternately of grey and pink bands. In the bedroom the white marble

chimney piece, a real jewel, displayed like a flower bed its

incrustations of lapis lazuli and precious mosaics repeating the roses,

white lilac and buttercups of the hangings. A large grey and pink bed,

the padded and upholstered woodwork of which was not seen, and the head

of which stood against the wall, filled quite one-half of the room with

its flow of drapery, lace and silk, brocaded with bouquets and falling

from the ceiling to the carpet. You would have taken it for a woman's

dress, rounded, scalloped, decked with puffs, bows, and flounces; and

the large curtain swelling out like a skirt made you dream of some

tall love-sick wench, leaning back, fainting away, and almost sinking

upon the pillows. Under the curtains it was quite a sanctuary--plaited

cambric, a snowy mass of lace, all sorts of delicate transparent

things, enveloped in a church-like dimness. Beside the bedstead, this

monument the devout amplitude of which suggested a chapel adorned for

some festival, the other articles of furniture, some low seats, a

cheval glass six feet high, and chiffoniers provided with a multitude

of drawers, subsided into nothingness. On the floor the bluish-grey

carpet was studded with pale full-blown roses. And on either side of

the bed lay two large black bearskins, edged with pink velvet, having

silver claws, and with their heads turned towards the window, gazing

fixedly at the empty sky through their glass eyes.

Soft harmony, muffled silence reigned in this room. No high note, no

metallic reflection or bright gilding broke into the dreamy scale of

pink and grey. Even the chimney ornaments, the frame of the mirror, the

clock, the little candelabra, were of old Sèvres, and their mountings

of gilt copper were barely visible. These ornaments were marvels, the

clock especially, with its circle of podgy cupids, who descended and

leaned around the dial like a band of naked urchins careless to the

rapid flight of time. This discreet luxury, these colours and objects

which Renée's taste had chosen soft and smiling, lent a crepuscular

appearance to the room, the dimness of an alcove with the curtains

drawn. It seemed as if the bed stretched afar, as if the whole room,

indeed, were one huge bed with its carpets, bearskins, stuffed seats

and padded hangings, prolonging the softness of the floor up the walls

to the ceiling. And, as in a bed, the young woman left the imprint, the

warmth and the perfume of her body upon all the things. When one drew

aside the double hangings screening the room from the boudoir it seemed

as if one raised some silken counterpane, and entered some vast couch

still warm and moist, where one found on the fine linen the adorable

figure, the slumber and dreams of a Parisian woman of thirty.

An adjoining spacious apartment, hung with old chintz, was simply

furnished all round with lofty wardrobes containing Renée's army of

dresses. Céleste, who was very methodical, classified the dresses

according to their age, ticketed them and introduced arithmetic amid

all her mistress's yellow or blue caprices, and kept the apartment in a

state of vestry-like impressiveness and stable-like cleanliness. Beyond

the wardrobes, there was not an article of furniture, and no finery

was left lying about. The wardrobe doors shone cold and clean like the

varnished panels of a brougham.

The marvel of the suite, however, the apartment that all Paris talked

about, was the dressing-room. Folks said: "Beautiful Madame Saccard's

dressing room," as one says; "The Gallery of Mirrors at Versailles."

This apartment was situated in one of the towers of the mansion, just

over the little buttercup drawing-room. On entering it one fancied

oneself in a large circular tent, a fairy-like tent, pitched in full

phantasy by some love-sick amazone. In the centre of the ceiling a

crown of chased silver held up the drapery of the tent, which extended

cupola-like to the walls, and then fell straight to the floor. This

drapery, these rich hangings, were formed of pink silk covered with a

muslin of a very open texture, which was caught in plaits at intervals.

A band of lace separated the plaits, and silver fillets descended from

the crown and glided along the hangings on either side of each of these

bands. Here the pinkish grey of the bedroom grew brighter, became a

pinkish white, like naked flesh. And in this bower of lace, beneath

these curtains which hid all the ceiling save a bluish cavity inside

the small circle described by the crown, where Chaplin had painted a

laughing cupid, looking down and preparing his dart, one could have

fancied oneself at the bottom of a sweetmeat box, or in some precious

jewel-case, enlarged and made to display the nudity of a woman instead

of the brilliancy of a diamond. The carpet of snowy whiteness stretched

around without the least flowery design. A wardrobe with plate glass

doors, and the two panels of which were mounted with silver; a couch,

two arm-chairs, some white satin stools; a large toilet table, with a

slab of pink marble, and the legs of which where screened by flounces

of muslin and lace, furnished the room. The glasses, the vases, and the

basin on the toilet table, were of old Bohemian crystal, streaked pink

and white. And there was yet another table, incrusted with silver like

the wardrobe, and on which all the implements, the toilet utensils,

were ranged; it was like a strange surgical case, displaying a large

number of little instruments, the purpose of which was not readily

guessed--back scrapers, shining brushes, files of every dimension and

every shape, straight and curved scissors, every variety of pincers and

pins. Each one of these objects in silver and ivory was marked with

Renée's monogram.

But the dressing-room had one delightful corner, and to that corner

especially did it owe its fame. In front of the window the folds of

the tent parted, and in a kind of alcove, of considerable length but

limited breadth, one espied a bath, a tank of pink marble, embedded

in the flooring and with its sides--chamfered like those of a large

shell--rising to a level with the carpet. One descended into the bath

by marble steps. Above the silver taps, shaped like swans' heads, a

Venetian mirror, frameless, but with curved edges and a design ground

in the crystal, filled the back of the alcove. Renée took a bath

of a few minutes' duration every morning, and this bath filled the

dressing-room with moisture, with a perfume of fresh, wet flesh for

the whole day. At times an open scent bottle, a piece of soap left out

of its dish, lent a dash of something stronger to this rather insipid

smell. The young woman liked to remain there, almost in a state of

nudity, until noon. The round tent itself was also naked. The pink

bath, the pink tables and basins, the muslin of the ceiling and the

walls, beneath which one seemed to see pink blood coursing, acquired

the roundness of flesh, the curves of bare shoulders and bosoms; and,

according to the hour of the day, one would liken the apartment to the

snowy skin of a child or to the warm skin of a woman. It was one vast

nudity. When Renée left her bath her fair form lent but a little more

pink to all the rosy flesh of the room.

It was Maxime who undressed her. He understood that kind of thing,

and his nimble hands divined pins, and glided round her waist with

innate science. He let down her locks, took off her diamonds, and then

dressed her hair for the night. And as he mingled jokes and caresses

with his duties of chambermaid and hair-dresser, Renée laughed with a

greasy stifled laugh, while the silk of her dress-body rustled and her

petticoats were loosened one by one. When she saw herself naked, she

blew out the tapers of the candelabrum, caught hold of Maxime round the

body and all but carried him into the bedroom. The ball had completed

her intoxication, and in her fever she was conscious of the previous

day which she had spent by the fireside, of that day of ardent torpor

and vague and smiling dreams. She still heard Saccard's and Madame

Sidonie's voices talking, calling out figures through their noses like

lawyers. It was these people who bored her, who drove her to crime.

And even now, when in the depths of the vast dark bed she sought for

Maxime's lips, she still saw him amid the fire of the day before

looking at her with scorching eyes.

The young fellow only went off at six o'clock in the morning. She gave

him the key of the little gate of the Parc Monceaux and made him swear

to come back every night. The dressing-room communicated with the

buttercup drawing-room by a little staircase hidden in the wall, and

connecting all the apartments of the tower. From the buttercup room it

was easy to pass into the conservatory and thence reach the park.

On going out at dawn, amid a thick fog, Maxime was somewhat stupefied

by his good fortune. He accepted it, however, with his usual

complaisance as a neutral being.

"So much the worse!" thought he, "it's she who wishes it, after all.

She's deucedly well formed; and she was quite right, she's twice as

funny in bed as Sylvia is."

They had glided to incest from the day when Maxime, in his threadbare

collegian's tunic, had hung on Renée's neck, creasing her _garde

française_ habit. From that time forward there had been a prolonged

perversion of every minute between them. The strange education which

the young woman gave the child; the familiarities which made them boon

comrades; later on the smiling audacity of their confidential chats;

all this perilous promiscuity had ended by linking them together

with a strange bond, the joys of friendship almost becoming carnal

satisfactions. They had surrendered themselves to each other for years;

the brutish act was but the acute crisis of this unconscionable malady

of passion. Amid the maddened society in which they lived, their crime

had sprouted as upon a rich dung-heap full of impure juices; it had

developed itself with a strange refinement amid a particular kind of

debauchery.

When the roomy carriage conveyed them to the Bois, and rolled them

gently along the pathways, whispering smutty things into each other's

ears, diving back into their childhood in search of the dirty practices

of instinct--it was but a deviation, but an unconfessed mode of

satisfying their desires. They felt themselves to be vaguely guilty,

as if they had just slightly touched one another; and this original

sin, this languor born of dirty conversation, though it wearied them

with voluptuous fatigue, titillated them even more softly than plain

positive kisses. Their familiarity was thus a slow lover's march which

was fatally destined to lead them some day or other to the private room

at the Café Riche and to Renée's large grey and pink bed. When they

found themselves in each other's arms they did not even feel the shock

of sin. One would have said that they were lovers of long standing

whose kisses were full of recollections. And they had spent so much

time in a contact of their whole beings, that despite themselves they

talked of the past which was so full of their ignorant tenderness.

"Do you recollect the day when I came to Paris?" said Maxime; "you wore

a funny costume; and I traced an angle on your bosom with my finger,

and I advised you to open your dress, in a point. I felt your skin

under your chemisette, and my finger embedded itself a little. It was

very nice."

Renée laughed, kissing him and murmuring:

"You were already awfully vicious. How you did amuse us at Worms's--do

you recollect? We used to call you 'our little man.' I always believed

that fat Suzanne would have readily yielded to you, if the marchioness

hadn't watched her with such furious eyes."

"Ah! yes, we had some good laughs," muttered the young fellow. "The

photographic album, eh? And all the rest, our rambles through Paris,

our snacks at the pastry cook's on the Boulevard; those little

strawberry tarts which you liked so much, you know? For myself I

shall always remember the afternoon when you related to me Adeline's

adventure at the convent when she wrote letters to Suzanne, signing

herself 'Arthur d'Espanet,' like a man, and proposing to carry her off."

The lovers again grew merry over this good story, and then Maxime

continued in his coaxing voice:

"When you came to fetch me at the college in your carriage, we must

have looked funny both of us. I was so small that I disappeared under

your skirts."

"Yes, yes," she stammered, quivering, and drawing the young fellow

towards her, "it was very nice, as you say. We loved each other without

knowing it, eh? I realised it before you did. The other day, on

returning from the Bois, my leg rubbed against yours, and I started.

But you didn't notice anything, eh? You didn't think of me?"

"Oh, yes, I did," he replied, a little embarrassed. "Only I didn't

know, you understand--I didn't dare--"

He lied. The idea of possessing Renée had never plainly occurred to

him. He had rubbed up against her with all his vice, without really

desiring her. He was too feeble for such an effort. He accepted Renée

because she imposed herself upon him, and he had glided to her couch

without willing or foreseeing it. When he had rolled there, however,

he remained there, because it was warm, and because he habitually

forgot himself at the bottom of all the holes into which he fell. At

the outset he even tasted some satisfactions of self-love. She was the

first married woman that he had possessed. He did not reflect that her

husband was his father.

But Renée brought with her, in sinning, all the ardour of a heart which

has lost caste. She also had slided down the slope. Only she had not

rolled as far as the bottom like a mass of inert flesh. Desire had

been kindled within her when it was too late to resist it and when the

fall had become inevitable. This fall abruptly appeared to her as one

of the necessities of her boredom, as a rare extreme enjoyment which

alone could rouse her tired senses, her wounded heart. It was during

that autumnal promenade, in the twilight, when the Bois was falling

asleep, that the vague idea of incest came to her, like a titillation

which lent an unknown quiver to her skin; and in the evening, in

the semi-intoxication of the dinner, this idea, lashed by jealousy,

became precise, rose up ardently before her, amid the flames of the

conservatory, as she watched Maxime and Louise. At that hour she

desired sin, the sin which no one commits, the sin which would fill

her empty life, and finally set her in that hell of which she was

still afraid, just as she had been when she was a little girl. Then on

the morrow, by a strange sentiment of remorse and lassitude, she no

longer wished it. It seemed to her as if she had already sinned, that

it was not so nice as she had fancied, and that it would really be too

dirty. The crisis was bound to be fatal, to come from herself, apart

from those two beings, those comrades who were destined to deceive

each other one fine evening, and to couple themselves, thinking they

were merely exchanging a hand-shake. However, after this stupid fall,

she returned to her dream of a nameless pleasure, and then she took

Maxime in her arms again, inquisitive about him, inquisitive as to the

cruel delights of a love which she regarded as a crime. Her volition

accepted incest, required it, decided upon tasting it to the end, even

to remorse should that ever come. She was active, and conscious of her

doings. She loved with the fury of a great fashionable lady, with the

nervous prejudices she possessed as an offspring of the middle classes,

with all the struggles, joys, and disgusts of a woman who drowns

herself in self-disdain.

Maxime returned every night. He came by way of the garden at about one

o'clock. Renée usually awaited him in the conservatory, which he had

to cross to reach the little drawing-room. They, moreover, displayed

perfect audacity, barely concealing themselves, and forgetting the most

classical precautions of adultery. It is true that this corner of the

house belonged to them. Baptiste, the husband's valet, alone had a

right to enter it; and Baptiste, like a serious man, took himself off

as soon as his duties were over. Maxime even pretended with a laugh

that he withdrew to go and write his memoirs. One night, however, when

the young fellow had just arrived, Renée shewed him Baptiste, who was

solemnly crossing the drawing-room with a candlestick in his hand. The

tall valet, with his minister-like figure, lighted by the yellow glow

of the wax, had a more dignified and severe physiognomy than usual.

As the lovers leaned forward, they saw him blow out his candle and go

towards the stables, where the horses and ostlers were asleep.

"He is going his round," said Maxime.

Renée remained quivering. Baptiste usually alarmed her. It often

happened to her to say that, with his coldness and his clear glances

which never fell upon women's shoulders, he was the only honest man in

the house.

They then evinced some prudence in seeing each other. They closed

the doors of the little drawing-room, and were able to dispose of

this room, with the conservatory and Renée's apartments, in all

tranquillity. It was a little world. And during the earlier months they

there tasted the most refined, the most delicately sought-for delights.

They promenaded their amours from the large grey and pink bed of the

sleeping-room, to the white and rosy nudity of the dressing-room, and

to the pale yellow symphony of the little drawing-room. Each chamber,

with its particular scent, its hangings, its special life, lent them

a different form of tenderness, and made Renée a different lover. She

was delicate and pretty on her padded great lady's couch, in the warm

aristocratic bedroom where love underwent a tasteful attenuation; she

showed herself a capricious, carnal female under the flesh-coloured

tent, amid the perfume and damp languor of the bath, on leaving which

she surrendered herself to Maxime, who preferred her thus; then

downstairs, in the bright sunrise of the little drawing-room, amid the

yellow aurora which gilded her hair, she became a goddess with her

fair Diana-like head, her bare arms which assumed chaste postures, her

beauteous form which reclined on the couches in attitudes revealing

noble outlines of antique gracefulness. But there was a spot which

Maxime was almost frightened of, and where Renée only led him on evil

days, the days when she felt the need of more bitter intoxication.

Then they loved in the conservatory. It was there that they tasted

incest.

One night, in an hour of anguish, the young woman had compelled her

lover to go and fetch one of the black bearskins. Then they had

stretched themselves on this inky fur, at the edge of an ornamental

basin in the large circular pathway. Out of doors it was freezing

terribly amid the limpid moonlight. Maxime had arrived shivering,

with frozen ears and fingers, and the conservatory was heated to such

a point that he fainted on the bearskin. Coming from the dry biting

cold, he entered into so heavy a flame that he felt a smarting as if he

had been whipped with a rod. When he recovered himself, he saw Renée

kneeling, leaning over him with fixed eyes and a brutish attitude

which frightened him. With her hair down and her shoulders bare, she

was resting herself on her fists, with her figure stretched out, and

looking like a huge cat with phosphorescent eyes. Above the shoulders

of this adorable, amorous animal gazing at him, the young fellow,

lying on his back, perceived the marble sphinx, with her glistening

hips lighted by the moon. Renée had the attitude and the smile of the

feminine-headed monster, and in her loosened skirts, she looked like

the white sister of this black deity.

Maxime remained supine. The heat was suffocating; it was a dull heat,

which did not fall from the sky in a rain of fire, but trailed on the

ground, like some unhealthy exhalation, and its steam ascended like a

storm-charged cloud. A warm humidity covered the lovers with a kind

of dew, an ardent sweat. For a long time they remained motionless

and speechless in this bath of flame, Maxime flat and inert, Renée

quivering on her wrists as on supple nervous hams. Outside, through

the little panes of the conservatory, one caught glimpses of the Parc

Monceaux, of the clumps of trees with fine black outlines, of the grass

lawns as white as frozen lakes--quite a dead landscape, the delicate

light tints of which reminded one of bits of Japanese engravings. And

this spot of burning soil, this inflamed couch on which the lovers were

stretched, boiled strangely amid the great mute cold.

They passed a night of mad love. Renée was the man, the passionate

acting will. Maxime submitted. What with his lank limbs, his graceful

slimness, like that of a Roman youth, this neutral, fair-haired pretty

being, stricken in his virility since childhood, became a big girl in

the young woman's inquisitive arms. He seemed to have been born and to

have grown up for a perversion of love. Renée enjoyed her domination,

and with her passion she bent this creature, whose sexuality always

seemed indeterminate. For her it was a constant astonishment of desire,

a surprise of the senses, a strange sensation of uncomfortableness

and acute pleasure. She no longer knew what he was; and she thought

doubtingly of his fine skin, his fleshy neck, his abandonment and

fainting fits. She then enjoyed an hour of repletion. By revealing

to her an unknown ecstasy, Maxime completed her foolish toilets, her

prodigious luxury, her mad life. He set in her flesh the high note

which she already heard singing around her. He was the lover who

matched the fashions and follies of the period. This pretty young

fellow whose puny figure was revealed by his attire, this man who ought

to have been a girl, who strolled on the Boulevards, his hair parted

in the middle, with little bursts of laughter and bored smiles, became

in Renée's hands the instrument of one of those debaucheries suited to

days of decline, and which among rotten nations, at certain periods,

use up flesh and unsettle intelligence.

And it was especially in the conservatory that Renée was the man. That

ardent night they spent there was followed by several others. The

conservatory loved and burnt with them. Amid the heavy atmosphere, in

the whitish moonlight, they saw the strange world of plants around

them, moving confusedly and exchanging embraces. The black bearskin

stretched right across the pathway. At their feet the basin steamed

full of a swarming, a thick entanglement, of roots, while the rosy

stars of the Nymphæa opened on the surface of the water like virgin

bodices, and the bushy Tornelias drooped like the hair of languishing

water nymphs. Then around them, the palms and the lofty Indian bamboos

rose up towards the arched roof, near which they leaned and mingled

their leaves together, assuming the unsteady attitudes of tired lovers.

Lower down the ferns, the Pteris, the Alsophilas looked like green

ladies with ample skirts trimmed with symmetrical flounces, and who,

mute and motionless at the edge, of the pathway, awaited love. Beside

them the twisted red-spotted foliage of the Begonias, and the white

leaves shaped like lance heads of the Caladiums, furnished a vague

suite of bruises and pallidities, which the lovers could not explain

to themselves, but amid which they at times discerned roundnesses like

those of hips and knees wallowing on the ground, beneath the brutality

of bleeding caresses. And the Bananas, bending with the weight of their

bunches of fruit, spoke to them of the rich fertility of the soil,

while the Abyssinian Euphorbia, the prickly, deformed, tapering stems

of which--covered with horrid excrescences--they could espy in the

darkness, seemed to perspire with sap, with the overflowing flux of

their fiery growth. But by degrees as the lovers' glances dived into

the corners of the conservatory, the darkness was filled with a more

furious debauchery of leaves and stems; they could not distinguish on

the stages the Marantas, soft like velvet, the Gloxinias with violet

bells, the Dracænas resembling blades of old varnished lacquer; it was

a round dance of living plants pursuing each other with unquenched

tenderness. At the four corners, at the point where the curtains of

tropical creepers formed arbours, their carnal fancy grew madder

again, and the supple shoots of the Vanillas, the Indian berries, the

Quisqualis and the Bauhinias seemed to be the interminable arms of

lovers who could not be seen, but who distractedly lengthened their

embrace to draw all scattered delights towards them. These endless arms

drooped with lassitude, locked together in a spasm of love, sought for

each other, entwined together like a crowd bent on copulation. It was,

indeed, the immense copulation of the conservatory, of this bit of

virgin forest ablaze with the foliage and the flowers of the tropics.

Maxime and Renée, with their senses perverted, felt themselves carried

away amid these mighty nuptials of nature. The soil burnt their backs

through the bearskin, and drops of heat fell upon them from the lofty

palms. The sap which arose in the tree trunks penetrated them as well,

and imparted to them mad desires of immediate growth, of gigantic

procreation. They took part in the copulation of the conservatory. It

was then, in the pale glimmer, that visions stupefied them, nightmares

amid which, during long intervals, they beheld the amours of the palms

and ferns; the foliage assumed a confused, equivocal aspect, which

their desires transformed into something sensual; murmurs, whispers

were wafted to them from the clumps of shrubs, faint voices, sighs of

ecstasy, stifled cries of pain, distant laughter, all that was noisy in

their own kisses and that echo sent them back. At times they thought

themselves shaken by an earthquake, as if the earth itself, in a crisis

of satisfied desire, had burst forth into voluptuous sobs.

If they had closed their eyes, if the suffocating heat and the pale

light had not imparted to them a depravation of every sense, the

aromas alone would have sufficed to throw them into an extraordinary

state of nervous erethism. The basin enveloped them in a deep pungent

aroma, amid which passed the thousand perfumes of the flowers and the

foliage. At times the Vanilla sang with dove-like cooings; then came

the rough notes of the Stanhopeas whose streaked mouths had the same

strong-smelling bitter breath as a convalescent. The orchids, in their

baskets secured by wire chains, also breathed like animated incense

burners. But the odour that predominated, the odour in which all these

vague breaths were mingled, was a human odour, an odour of love, which

Maxime recognised when he kissed Renée on the nape of her neck, when he

plunged his head into her flowing hair. And they remained intoxicated

by this scent, the scent of an amorous woman, which trailed through

the conservatory as in an alcove where earth might be engaged in

procreation.

As a rule, the lovers lay down under the Tanghinia from Madagascar,

under the poisoned shrub, a leaf of which the young woman once had

bitten. Around them the white statues laughed, gazing at the mighty

coupling of foliage. The moon, as it turned, displaced the groups,

and animated the drama with its changing light. They were a thousand

leagues from Paris, far from the easy life of the Bois de Boulogne and

official drawing-rooms, in a corner of some Indian forest, of some

monstrous temple, of which the black marble sphinx became the deity.

They felt themselves rolling to crime, to accursed love, to wild-beast

tenderness. All the pullulation which surrounded them, the swarming

of the basin, the naked immodesty of the foliage, threw them fully

into the Dantesque hell of passion. It was then, in the depths of this

glass cage, boiling over with the flames of summer, lost amid the clear

coldness of December, that they tasted incest, as though it had been

the criminal fruit of some over-heated soil, feeling the while a dim

fear of their terrifying couch.

And in the centre of the black bearskin Renée's body seemed whiter,

as she crouched like a huge cat with her back stretched out, and her

wrists extended like supple nervous shins. She was all swollen with

voluptuousness, and the light outlines of her shoulders and loins stood

out with feline angularity against the inky stain which blackened the

yellow sand of the pathway with its fur. She watched Maxime, this prey

extended beneath her, who abandoned himself, and whom she possessed

completely. And from time to time, she abruptly leant forward and

kissed him with her irritated mouth. Her lips then parted with the

greedy bleeding brilliancy of the Chinese Hibiscus, the expanse of

which covered the side of the mansion. She was then nothing but a

burning daughter of the conservatory. Her kisses bloomed and faded like

those red flowers of the gigantic mallow which last barely a few hours,

and which ever spring to life again, like the bruised insatiable lips

of a giant Messalina.

V.

The kiss which Saccard had imprinted on his wife's neck preoccupied

him. He had not availed himself of his marital rights for a long time.

The rupture had come quite naturally, neither the one nor the other

caring for a connection which interfered with their habits. For Saccard

to think of returning to Renée's room, some good stroke of business

must necessarily be the object of his conjugal tenderness.

The Charonne affair, from which he hoped to derive a fortune,

was progressing favourably, though he had some anxiety as to its

termination. Larsonneau, with his dazzling shirt-front, smiled in

a manner that displeased him. The expropriation agent was a simple

go-between--a man of straw, whom he intended to remunerate for his

obligingness with a commission of ten per cent on the ultimate

profits. However, although the agent had not invested a copper in the

enterprise, and although Saccard had taken every precaution--such as

a deed of retrocession, letters, the dates of which had been left in

blank, and receipts given in advance--he nevertheless experienced

an inward fear, a presentiment of some treachery. He scented that

his accomplice intended to blackmail him with the help of that false

inventory which he preciously preserved, and to which alone he was

indebted for his share in the enterprise.

However, the two accomplices shook hands vigorously. Larsonneau styled

Saccard his "dear master." He had, at the bottom of his heart, a real

admiration for this equilibrist, and watched his performances on the

tight rope of speculation like a connoisseur. The idea of duping him

titillated him like some rare and spicy voluptuousness. He caressed a

plan which was still vague, however, for he did not very well know how

to employ the weapon he possessed, and he feared wounding himself with

it. Besides, he felt that he was at the mercy of his ex-colleague. The

ground and the buildings, which carefully prepared inventories already

valued at nearly two millions of francs, though they were not worth a

quarter of that amount, must end by being swallowed up in a colossal

bankruptcy, if the fairy of expropriation did not touch them with her

golden wand. According to the original plans which the two confederates

had been able to consult, the new Boulevard, opened in view of

connecting the artillery depôt of Vincennes with the Prince Eugène

barracks, and of bringing the guns and ammunition into the heart of

Paris without passing through the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, would cross

a part of the ground; but it was still to be feared that only a corner

of the latter might be cut off, and that the ingenious speculation of

the music hall would fall through by reason of its very impudence. In

that case Larsonneau would remain with a delicate matter to deal with.

Still this peril did not prevent him, despite the secondary part which

he played perforce, from feeling soul-sick when he thought of the

paltry ten per cent which he would pocket in this colossal robbery of

millions. And at those moments he could not resist the furious longing

he felt to extend his hand and carve out a larger share for himself.

Saccard had not even allowed him to lend money to his wife, he had

preferred to amuse himself with this big piece of theatrical trickery,

which delighted his partiality for complicated transactions.

"No, no, my dear fellow," he said, with his Provençal accent, which he

exaggerated whenever he wished to impart additional salt to a joke,

"don't let us mix up our accounts. You are the only man in Paris to

whom I have sworn never to owe a copper."

Larsonneau contented himself with insinuating that his colleague's wife

was a gulf. He advised him not to give her another sou, so that she

would then be compelled to transfer her property to them immediately.

He would have preferred to have to deal with Saccard alone. He probed

him at times, and carried things so far as to say, with the weary

indifferent air of a man about town:

"All the same, I must put my papers in a little order. Your wife

frightens me, my good fellow. I don't want justice to place the seals

on certain documents at my office."

Saccard was not the man to submit to such allusions patiently,

especially as he was well acquainted with the frigid meticulous

order which prevailed in the agent's offices. The whole of his

cunning, active little person revolted against the terror with which

this coxcomb of a usurer in yellow kid gloves tried to inspire him.

The worst was that he felt himself seized with shudders when he

thought of a possible scandal; and he beheld himself brutally exiled

by his brother, and living in Belgium by some avocation not to be

acknowledged. One day he grew angry and said to Larsonneau:

"Listen, my boy, you are a nice fellow, but it would be as well for you

to return me the document you know of. You'll see, that scrap of paper

will end by making us quarrel."

The agent feigned astonishment, pressed his "dear master's" hand,

and assured him of his devotion. Saccard regretted his momentary

hastiness. It was at this period that he began to think seriously of

drawing nearer to his wife. He might yet have need of her against his

accomplice, and he moreover said to himself that business matters are

discussed marvellously well between man and wife in bed. That kiss on

his wife's neck gradually revealed to him quite a new system of tactics.

Besides, he was not in a hurry, he husbanded his resources. He devoted

the whole winter to ripening his plan, though worried by a hundred

different affairs, each of which was more muddled than the other. It

was a terrible winter for him, full of shocks, a prodigious campaign

during which he had to conquer bankruptcy daily. However, far from

cutting down his expenses at home, he gave fête after fête. But if

he succeeded in meeting every difficulty, he had to neglect Renée,

whom he reserved for a triumphal blow, when the Charonne transaction

became ripe. He contented himself with preparing the finish, by

continuing not to give her any money, save through the intermediary

of Larsonneau. When he was able to dispose of a few thousand francs,

and she complained of her poverty, he took them to her, saying that

Larsonneau's people required a note of hand for double the amount. This

comedy vastly amused him, the stories connected with these promissory

notes delighted him by the touch of romance which they imparted to the

affair. Even at the period of his clearest profits he had served his

wife her income in the most irregular manner, at one time making her

princely presents, abandoning handfuls of bank notes to her, and then

leaving her in the lurch for a paltry amount during weeks together.

Now that he found himself seriously embarrassed, he talked about the

expenses of the household, and treated her like a creditor to whom one

is unwilling to confess one's ruin, and whom one disposes to patience

by means of cock-and-bull stories. She scarcely listened to him,

however; she signed whatever he chose, and only pitied herself for not

being able to sign more.

Already, however, there were two hundred thousand francs' worth of

promissory notes signed by her which barely cost him one hundred and

ten thousand. After having these bills endorsed by Larsonneau to whose

order they were made payable, he placed them in circulation in a

prudent manner, intending to employ them as decisive weapons later on.

He would never have been able to hold out to the end of that terrible

winter, to lend his wife money usuriously and keep up his style of

living, but for the sale of his ground on the Boulevard Malesherbes,

which Messieurs Mignon and Charrier paid him for in hard cash,

retaining, however, a formidable discount.

For Renée this same winter was one long joy. Lack of money was her

only suffering. Maxime cost her very dear; he still treated her as a

stepmother, and allowed her to pay everywhere. But this hidden poverty

was an additional delight for her. She exercised her wits and racked

her brain, so that her dear child should want for nothing; and when she

had prevailed upon her husband to find her a few thousand francs, she

and her lover expended them in some costly folly, like two schoolboys

let loose on their first escapade. When they were hard up they remained

at home and derived their enjoyment from this large building of such

new and insolently stupid luxury. The father was never there. The

lovers sat by the fireside more frequently than formerly. The fact

was, that Renée had filled the icy emptiness of the gilded ceilings

with a warm enjoyment. The suspicious abode of worldly pleasure had

become a chapel in which she secretly practised a new religion. Maxime

did not merely lend to her nature that high note which harmonized

with her mad dresses. He was the very lover fitted to this mansion,

with broad windows like shop fronts, and which a flood of sculpture

inundated from garret to cellar. He animated all this plaster, from the

two podgy Cupids who let a stream of water flow from their shell in

the courtyard, to the tall, naked women supporting the balconies, and

playing with apples and ears of corn, amid the pediments. He explained

the unduly ornate hall, the tiny dimensions of the garden, the dazzling

rooms in which one saw too many arm-chairs, and not one work of art.

The young woman who had formerly felt bored to death in the house,

suddenly began to amuse herself there, and availed herself of it, just

as she might have done with something, the use of which she had not

understood at first. And it was not only through her own apartments,

through the buttercup drawing-room, and the conservatory that she

promenaded her love, but through the entire mansion. She even ended by

finding an enjoyment in lying on the divan of the smoking-room. She

forgot herself there, and declared that the vague smell of tobacco

pervading the apartment was very agreeable.

She appointed two reception days instead of one. On Thursdays all the

mere acquaintances called. But Mondays were reserved to intimate female

friends. Men were not admitted. Maxime alone was present at those

choice gatherings, which took place in the buttercup drawing-room. One

evening she had the astounding idea, of dressing him up as a woman, and

of presenting him as one of her cousins. Adeline, Suzanne, the Baroness

de Meinhold, and the other friends who were there, rose up and bowed,

astonished by the sight of this face which they vaguely recognised.

Then when they realized the truth, they laughed a great deal, and

absolutely refused to let the young man go and change his clothes. They

kept him with them in his skirts, teasing him, and lending themselves

to equivocal jokes. When he had seen these ladies off by the main

gate he went round the park and returned into the house by way of the

conservatory. Renée's dear friends never had the slightest suspicion of

the truth. Indeed the lovers could not behave together more familiarly

than they had previously done, when they declared themselves to be

boon comrades. And if it happened that a servant saw them rather close

together behind a door, he expressed no surprise at it, being used to

the pleasantries of his mistress, and his master's son.

This complete liberty, this impunity emboldened them still more. If

they slipped the bolts at night-time, in the daylight they kissed each

other in every room of the house. They invented a thousand little

games on rainy days. But Renée's great delight was still to pile

up a terrible fire, and doze in front of the grate. Her linen was

marvellously luxurious that winter. She wore the most costly chemises

and wrappers, the cambric and inserted embroidery of which barely

covered her with a white cloud. And in the red glow of the fire she

looked naked, with rosy lace and skin, the heat penetrating through

the thin stuff to her flesh. Maxime, squatting at her feet, kissed

her knees, without even feeling the garment which had the same warmth

and colour as her lovely form. In the dull cloudy weather a kind of

twilight penetrated the bedroom hung with grey silk, whilst Céleste

went backwards and forwards behind them, with a quiet step. She had

naturally become their accomplice. One morning when they had forgotten

themselves in the bed, she found them there, and retained all the

coolness of a servant with icy blood. They then ceased restraining

themselves, she came in at all hours without the sound of their kisses

making her turn her head. They relied upon her to warn them in the case

of alarm. They did not purchase her silence. She was a very economical,

very honest girl, and was not known to have a single lover.

Renée, however, was not cloistered. Taking Maxime in her train, like

a fair-haired page in a dress-coat, she frequented society, where she

tasted even more acute pleasures. The season was one long triumph

for her. Never had her imagination been bolder as regards toilets

and head-dresses. It was then that she risked wearing that famous

bush-tinted robe, on which a complete stag hunt was embroidered with

such attributes as powder flasks, hunting horns, and broad bladed

knives. It was then, also, that she set the fashion of wearing the hair

in the antique style; Maxime having to go and sketch patterns for her

at the Campana Museum which had recently been opened. She grew younger,

she was in all the plenitude of her turbulent beauty. Incest lent her

a fire which glowed in the depths of her eyes and heated her laughter.

Her eye-glasses looked superbly insolent on the tip of her nose, and

she gazed at the other women, at the dear friends who basked in the

enormity of some vice, with the air of a bragging hobbledehoy, and with

a fixed smile which signified "I also have my crime."

Maxime, on his side, declared that society was wearisome. It was not

merely for show that he pretended to be bored in it, for he really

did not amuse himself anywhere. At the Tuileries, at the ministers'

residences, he disappeared amid Renée's skirts. But he became the

master again as soon as some freak was in question. Renée wished to see

the private room on the Boulevard again, and the breadth of the divan

made her smile. Then he took her a little bit everywhere, to harlots'

houses, to the opera ball, to the stage boxes of petty theatres, to

all the equivocal places where they could elbow brutal vice and taste

the delights of remaining incognito. When they furtively returned to

the house, worn out with fatigue, they fell asleep in each other's

arms, sleeping off the drunkenness of obscene Paris, with snatches

of smutty verses still ringing in their ears. On the morrow Maxime

imitated the actors, and Renée, accompanying herself on the piano of

the little drawing-room, tried to recall the hoarse voice and the

wriggling of Blanche Müller in her part of the _Belle Hélène_. The

music lessons she had taken at the convent now only served her to

murder the verses of the new burlesques. She had a religious horror of

serious airs. Maxime poked fun at German music with her, and he thought

it his duty to go and hiss _Tannhauser_, both by conviction and to

defend his stepmother's sprightly refrains.

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

One of their great enjoyments was skating; it was fashionable that

winter, the Emperor having been one of the first to try the ice on the

lake in the Bois de Boulogne. Renée ordered a complete Polish costume,

velvet and fur, of Worms; and insisted upon Maxime wearing high boots

and a foxskin cap. They reached the Bois in the intense cold which made

their noses and lips tingle as if the wind had blown fine sand into

their faces. It amused them to feel cold. The Bois was quite grey, with

threads of snow, like narrow lace, along the branches of the trees.

And under the pale sky, above the congealed and bedimmed lake, only

the pines of the islands still displayed on the edge of the horizon

their theatrical drapery, on which the snow had also sewn broad bands

of lace. The lovers darted along together in the frozen air, with the

rapid flight of swallows skimming just above the ground. Setting one

hand behind their backs, and placing one upon each other's shoulder,

they went off, erect, smiling, side by side, and revolving round the

broad space, marked out by thick ropes. Loungers looked on at them

from the roadway. From time to time they came to warm themselves at

the braziers lighted at the edge of the lake, and then they started

off again. They enlarged the course of their flight, with their eyes

watering both with pleasure and with cold.

Then when the spring came Renée remembered her old elegiac fancy. She

insisted upon Maxime strolling with her in the Parc Monceaux at night

time by moonlight. They went into the grotto and sat down on the grass,

in front of the colonnade. But when she expressed a desire to row on

the little lake they found that there were no oars in the boat,

which could be seen from the house, moored at the edge of a pathway.

They were evidently removed every evening. This was a disappointment.

Besides the vast shadows of the park made the lovers nervous. They

would have liked to have had a Venetian fête given there, with red

lanterns and an orchestra. They preferred it during the day-time, of

an afternoon, and they then often stationed themselves at one of the

windows of the mansion to watch the equipages following the graceful

curve of the main avenue. They enjoyed themselves in gazing upon

this charming corner of new Paris, this clean smiling bit of nature,

these lawns looking like stripes of velvet, dotted with flower beds

and choice shrubs, and edged with magnificent white roses. Carriages

passed by each other, as numerous as on the Boulevard; lady promenaders

carelessly trailed their skirts as if they had not ceased treading

the carpets of their drawing-rooms. And athwart the foliage, Renée

and Maxime criticised the dresses and pointed out the equipages to

each other, deriving real enjoyment from the soft tints of this large

garden. A scrap of gilded railing shone between two trees, a party of

ducks passed over the lake, the little renaissance bridge looked white

and new amid the green stuff, whilst on either side of the main avenue,

mammas seated on yellow chairs forgot, in their chatter, the little

boys and girls who looked at one another with a pretty air, and pouted

like precocious children.

The lovers had a great liking for new Paris. They often rambled through

the city in their carriage, going out of their way so as to pass along

certain Boulevards for which they had a personal affection. The lofty

houses adorned with large carved doors, loaded with balconies, whereon

names and callings glittered in large gold letters, delighted them.

While the brougham darted along, they followed with a friendly glance

the grey bands of interminable footways, with their seats, their

variegated columns and their scrubby trees. This bright gap which

extended to the limits of the horizon, growing narrower, and opening

upon a bluey parallelogram of space, the uninterrupted double row of

large shops, where shopmen smiled at female customers, the currents

of the stamping swarming crowd, filled them little by little with a

feeling of absolute and complete satisfaction, they realised that they

beheld the perfection of street life. They were enamoured even of the

jets of the watering hose, which passed like white smoke before their

houses and then spread out and fell in a fine rain under the wheels of

the brougham, darkening the ground and raising a slight cloud of dust.

They still went on, and it seemed to them that the vehicle was rolling

over carpets along the straight endless highway, which had been pierced

solely so that they might not have to pass through dark alleys. Each

Boulevard became some passage of their mansion. The gay sunshine smiled

upon the house fronts, lit up the window panes, fell upon the verandahs

of the shops and cafés and heated the asphalt under the busy tread of

the crowd. And when they returned home, somewhat dazed by the bright

confusion of these long bazaars, they found enjoyment in the Parc

Monceaux, which was like the complementary plat-band of the new Paris

which displayed its luxury amid the first warmth of spring.

When the exigencies of fashionable life absolutely compelled them

to leave Paris, they went to the seaside, regretfully however, and

thinking of the Boulevardian side-walks while on the shores of the

ocean. Then love itself grew dull there. It was a hot-house flower

which needed the spacious grey and pink bed; the naked fleshy aspect

of the dressing-room and the gilded dawn of the little drawing-room.

Alone of an evening, in front of the sea, they no longer found anything

to say to each other. Renée tried to sing the airs she had heard at

the Variety Theatre, accompanying herself on an old piano which was

agonising in a corner of her room at the hotel, but the instrument,

damp with the breezes from the open, had the dreary voice of the great

waters. _La Belle Hélène_ seemed lugubrious and fantastic. To console

herself Renée astonished the people on the sands by her prodigious

costumes. The whole band of fashionable women there was yawning while

waiting for the advent of winter, and trying despairingly to invent

some bathing dress which would not make them look too ugly. Renée was

never able to prevail upon Maxime to bathe. He had an atrocious fear

of water, he turned quite pale when the tide reached his boots, and

for nothing in the world would he have approached the edge of a cliff;

he kept away from all pits, and made a long circuit to avoid any steep

part of the shore.

Saccard came to see "the children" on two or three occasions. He was

overwhelmed with worry, he said. It was only about October, when they

all three found themselves again in Paris, that he seriously thought of

drawing nearer his wife. The Charonne affair was ripening. His plan

was a simple and brutal one. He relied upon capturing Renée by the same

devices that he would have employed with a harlot. She lived on amid

an increasing need of money, and out of pride she only applied to her

husband at the last extremity. The latter resolved to profit by her

first request to shew his gallantry, and, in the delight occasioned by

the payment of some heavy debt, to resume relations which had so long

been severed.

Some terrible embarrassments awaited Renée and Maxime in Paris. Several

of the promissory notes drawn to Larsonneau's order had fallen due;

but as Saccard naturally left them slumbering at the lawyer's, they

did not cause the young wife much worry. She was far more alarmed by

her debts as regards Worms, whose bill now amounted to nearly two

hundred thousand francs. The tailor demanded something on account,

and threatened to suspend all credit. Renée felt sudden shudders

when she thought of the scandal of a law-suit, and especially of a

quarrel with the illustrious man milliner. Moreover, she needed pocket

money. She and Maxime would feel bored to death if they did not have

a few louis a-day to spend. The dear boy was quite stumped since he

had vainly rummaged through his father's drawers. His fidelity and

exemplary behaviour during the last seven or eight months were largely

due to the absolute emptiness of his purse. He did not always have

twenty francs in his pocket to invite some street-walker to supper,

and so he philosophically returned to the house. At each of their

freaks the young woman handed him her purse so that he might defray

the expenses in the restaurants, the balls and petty theatres. She

continued treating him maternally, and, indeed, it was she who, with

the tips of her gloved fingers, settled at the pastry-cook's, where

they stopped almost every afternoon to eat little oyster patties. Of

a morning he often found in his waistcoat some louis which he had not

known to be there, and which she had placed there like a mother filling

a schoolboy's pocket. And to think that this delightful life of snacks,

satisfied fancies and facile pleasure was about to end! But a yet more

grievous worry came to alarm them. Sylvia's jeweller, to whom Maxime

owed ten thousand francs, grew angry and talked about Clichy, the

debtors' prison. Such costs had accumulated on the notes of hand which

he held, and had long since protested, that the debt had increased by

some three or four thousand francs. Saccard plainly declared that he

could do nothing in the matter. The imprisonment of his son at Clichy

would increase his notoriety, and when he secured the young fellow's

release he would make a great noise over his paternal liberality.

Renée was in despair; she saw her dear child in prison--in a perfect

dungeon, sleeping on damp straw. One evening, she seriously proposed

to him not to leave her rooms, but to live there unknown to everyone,

and sheltered from the bailiffs. Then she swore that she would procure

the money. She never referred to the origin of the debt, of that woman

Sylvia, who confided the secret of her affections to the mirrors of

private rooms. Some fifty thousand francs--that was what she needed;

fifteen thousand for Maxime, thirty thousand for Worms, and five

thousand as pocket money. They would then have a fortnight's happiness

before them. She embarked on the campaign.

Her first idea was to ask her husband for these fifty thousand francs,

but it was only with a feeling of repugnance that she decided to do

so. On the last occasions that he had entered her room to bring her

some money he had printed fresh kisses on her neck, taking hold of

her hands and talking about his affection. Women have acute powers of

perception which enable them to guess men's feelings. So she expected

some demand on his side, some tacit bargain concluded with a smile.

And, indeed, when she asked him for the fifty thousand francs, he cried

out, declared that Larsonneau would never lend such a sum, and that

he himself was still too embarrassed. Then changing his tone, as if

conquered and seized with sudden emotion:

"One cannot refuse you anything," he murmured; "I will run about Paris

and accomplish the impossible. I want you to be pleased, my dear."

And setting his lips to her ear and kissing her hair, he added, in a

slightly trembling voice--

"I will bring you the money to-morrow evening, here in your

room--without any note to sign."

But she hastily said that she was not in a hurry, that she did not

wish to trouble him so much. He, who had just set all his heart in

that dangerous, "without any note," which had escaped him and which he

regretted, did not appear to have encountered a disagreeable refusal.

He rose up saying:

"Very well, I am at your disposal. I will find you the sum when the

moment arrives. Larsonneau will be for nothing in it, you understand.

It is a present which I mean to make you." He smiled with a good

natured air. She remained in a state of cruel anguish. She felt she

would lose the little equilibrium left her, if she surrendered herself

to her husband. It was her last pride to be married to the father and

to be only the son's wife. Often, when Maxime seemed to her to be cold,

she tried to make him understand the situation by very transparent

allusions; it is true that the young man, whom she expected to see fall

at her feet after this revelation, remained altogether indifferent,

imagining, no doubt, that she merely wished to reassure him as to the

possibility of a meeting between his father and himself in the grey

silk room.

When Saccard had left her, she hastily dressed herself and had the

horses put to. While her brougham was conveying her towards the Île

Saint-Louis, she prepared the manner in which she would ask her father

for the fifty thousand francs. She flung herself into this sudden idea,

without consenting to discuss it, feeling very cowardly at the bottom

of her heart and seized with invincible fright at the thought of such a

step. When she arrived, the courtyard of the Béraud mansion froze her

with its mournful, cloister-like dampness, and it was with a desire to

run away that she mounted the broad stone staircase on which her little

high-heeled boots resounded terribly. She had been foolish enough in

her haste to choose a costume of dead-leaf tinted silk, with long

flounces of white lace trimmed with bows of ribbon and cut athwart by

a plaited sash. This toilet, which was completed by a little hat with

a large white veil, set such a singular note in the dark gloom of the

staircase, that she herself became conscious of how strange she looked

there. She trembled as she crossed the austere suite of spacious rooms,

where the personages vaguely visible on the tapestry seemed surprised

to see this stream of skirts pass by in the semi-daylight of their

solitude.

She found her father in a drawing-room looking on to the courtyard,

where he habitually remained. He was reading a large book placed on a

desk adapted to the arms of his chair. In front of one of the windows

Aunt Élisabeth sat knitting with long wooden needles; and in the

silence of the room the tick-tack of these needles was the only sound

one heard.

Renée sat down, ill at ease, unable to make a movement without

disturbing the severity of the lofty ceiling by a noise of rustling

silk. Her laces looked crudely white against the dark background of

tapestry and old furniture. Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel gazed at her with

his hands resting on the edge of the desk. Aunt Élisabeth talked about

the approaching wedding of Christine who was to marry the son of a very

rich attorney; the young girl had gone to a tradesman's with an old

family servant; and the good aunt talked on alone, in her placid voice,

without ceasing to knit, gossiping about household affairs, and casting

smiling glances at Renée from above her spectacles.

But, the young woman became more and more disturbed. All the silence

of the house weighed upon her shoulders, and she would have given a

great deal for the lace of her dress to have been black. Her father's

gaze embarrassed her to such a point that she considered Worms really

ridiculous to have imagined such high flounces.

"How smart you are, my girl!" suddenly said Aunt Élisabeth, who had not

yet even noticed her niece's lace.

She stopped knitting and settled her spectacles to see the better.

Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel gave a faint smile.

"It is rather white," said he. "A woman must be greatly embarrassed

with that on the side-walks."

"But one doesn't go out on foot, father!" cried Renée, who immediately

afterwards regretted these words from her heart.

The old gentleman seemed about to reply. Then he rose up, straightened

his high stature and began walking slowly, without again looking at

his daughter. The latter remained quite pale with emotion. Each time

that she exhorted herself to take courage, and that she tried to find a

transition that would lead up to the request for money, she experienced

a shooting pain at the heart.

"We never see you now, father," she murmured.

"Oh!" replied her aunt, "your father hardly ever goes out except at

long intervals to stroll in the Jardin des Plantes. And I even have to

get angry to make him do that! He pretends that he loses himself in

Paris, that the city is no longer made for him. Ah! you do right to

scold him!"

"My husband would be so happy to see you at our Thursdays, from time to

time," continued the young woman.

Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel took a few steps in silence. Then in a quiet

voice: "You must thank your husband for me," he said. "He is an active

fellow, it appears, and I hope, for your sake, that he conducts his

enterprises honestly. But we haven't the same ideas, and I feel ill at

ease in your fine house in the Parc Monceaux."

Aunt Élisabeth seemed vexed by this reply.

"How wicked men are with their politics!" she said. "Would you like to

know the truth? Your father is furious with you because you go to the

Tuileries."

But the old gentleman shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that his

dissatisfaction had far more grievous causes. He began slowly walking

again, with a dreamy air. Renée remained for a moment silent, with the

request for the fifty thousand francs on the tip of her tongue. But

seized with even greater cowardice than before, she kissed her father

and went off.

Aunt Élisabeth insisted upon accompanying her to the staircase. As they

crossed the suite of rooms, she continued chattering in her old woman's

squeaky voice:

"You are happy, my dear child. It pleases me very much to see you

looking beautiful and well; for if your marriage had turned out badly I

should have thought myself guilty! Your husband loves you, you have all

you need, haven't you?"

"Of course," replied Renée compelling herself to smile though feeling

sick at heart.

Her aunt still detained her, with her hand on the balustrade of the

staircase.

"Do you see, I have only one fear, that you may become intoxicated with

all your happiness. Be prudent, and above all don't sell anything. If

you had a child some day, you would have a little fortune all ready for

him."

When Renée was in her brougham again she heaved a sigh of relief.

She had drops of cold perspiration on her forehead; she wiped them

off, thinking of the icy dampness of the Béraud mansion. Then as the

brougham rolled along amid the clear sunlight of the Quai Saint-Paul

she remembered the fifty thousand francs, and all her suffering was

revived again, acuter than before. She, whom people thought so bold,

how cowardly she had just been! And yet it was a question of Maxime, of

his liberty, of their joint delights. Amid the bitter reproaches which

she addressed to herself, an idea suddenly sprung up which brought her

despair to a climax; she ought to have spoken about the fifty thousand

francs to Aunt Élisabeth on the stairs. What had she been thinking

about? The worthy woman would perhaps have lent her the amount, or at

all events have helped her. She was already leaning forward to tell

her coachman to drive back to the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île, when she

thought she again beheld her father slowly crossing the solemn darkness

of the grand drawing-room. She would never have the courage to return

at once to that room. What could she say to explain this second visit?

And in the depth of her heart she no longer even found the courage to

speak of the affair to Aunt Élisabeth. So she told her coachman to

drive her to the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière.

Madame Sidonie uttered a cry of delight when she saw her opening the

discreetly curtained door of the shop. She was there by chance, she was

about to hasten to the magistrate's, where she had summoned a customer.

But she would not put in an appearance, she could do so some other

day; she was so happy that her sister-in-law had at length had the

amiability to pay her a little visit. Renée smiled with an embarrassed

air. Madame Sidonie would not by any means allow her to remain

downstairs; she made her go up into her room, by the little staircase,

after removing the brass knob from the shop door. She removed and

refixed this knob, which was secured by a simple nail, at least twenty

times a day.

"There, my beauty," she said, making Renée sit down on a couch, "we

shall be able to chat nicely. Do you know that you come in the very

nick of time--I meant to go and see you this evening."

Renée, who knew the room, experienced that vague feeling of uneasiness,

which a promenader feels on finding that a strip of forest has been cut

down in a favourite landscape.

"Ah!" she said at last, "you have changed the position of the bed,

haven't you?"

"Yes," quietly replied the lace-dealer, "one of my customers thought it

would be much better in front of the mantelpiece. She also advised me

to have red curtains."

"That's what I was thinking, the curtains used not to be of that

colour. Red is a very common colour."

She put on her eye-glasses, and looked at this room which displayed the

kind of luxury one finds in a large hotel. On the mantelshelf she saw

some long hair-pins which certainly did not come from Madame Sidonie's

meagre chignon. The paper of that part of the wall, against which the

bed had formerly stood, was all torn, discoloured and dirtied by the

mattresses. The agent had certainly tried to hide this sore with the

backs of two arm chairs, but these backs were rather low, and Renée's

glance remained fixed on this worn strip of paper.

"You have something to say to me?" she asked at last.

"Yes, it's quite a story," said Madame Sidonie, joining her hands and

assuming the expression of a glutton who is about to relate what she

has eaten at dinner. "Just fancy, Monsieur de Saffré is in love with

the beautiful Madame Saccard. Yes, with yourself, my pretty one."

Renée did not vouchsafe even a gesture of coquetry.

"Indeed!" she remarked, "but you said he was so smitten with Madame

Michelin."

"Oh! that's finished, quite finished--I can prove it to you if you

like. Don't you know then that little Michelin has pleased Baron

Gouraud? It's incredible. Every one who knows the baron is amazed. And

now she's on the way to obtaining the red ribbon for her husband! Ah,

she's a woman of spirit. She isn't faint-hearted, she doesn't need any

one to steer her boat."

Madame Sidonie said this with an air of some little regret mingled with

admiration.

"But to return to Monsieur de Saffré--It would seem that he met you at

an actresses' ball, muffled up in a domino, and he even accuses himself

of having somewhat cavalierly offered you a supper. Is it true?"

The young woman was quite surprised.

"Perfectly true," murmured she; "but who could have told him?"

"Wait a bit, he pretends that he recognised you later on, when you were

no longer in the room, and that he remembered having seen you leave on

Maxime's arm. Since then he has been madly in love. It has grown in his

heart, you understand, been a sudden fancy. He came to see me to beg me

to make you his apologies--"

"Well, tell him that I forgive him," interrupted Renée negligently.

And again assailed by all her worries, she continued:

"Ah! my good Sidonie, I am awfully bothered. It is absolutely necessary

that I should have fifty thousand francs to-morrow morning. I came to

speak to you about the matter. You know some money-lenders, you told

me."

The agent, vexed by the abrupt manner in which her sister-in-law had

interrupted her story, made her wait some time for an answer.

"Yes, certainly; only, I advise you, first of all to try and obtain the

money from a friend. If I were in your place I know very well what I

should do. I should simply apply to Monsieur de Saffré."

Renée smiled in a constrained manner.

"But it would hardly be proper," she answered, "since you pretend that

he is so much in love."

The old woman looked at her with a fixed stare; then her flabby face

gently softened into a smile of tender pity.

"Poor dear," she muttered, "you have been crying; don't deny it, I can

see it by your eyes. You must be strong and accept life. Come, let me

arrange the little matter in question."

Renée rose up, twisting her fingers, and making her gloves crack. And

she remained standing, quite shaken by a cruel internal struggle. She

was opening her mouth, to accept perhaps, when a gentle ring at the

bell resounded in the next room. Madame Sidonie hastily went out,

leaving the door ajar, so that a double row of pianos could be seen.

The young woman then heard a man's step, and the stifled sound of a

conversation carried on in an undertone. She mechanically went to

examine more closely the yellowish stain with which the mattresses had

streaked the wall. This stain disturbed her, made her ill at ease.

Forgetting everything, Maxime, the fifty thousand francs, and Monsieur

de Saffré, she stepped back to the front of the bed, reflecting; this

bed had been much better placed, as it had formerly stood; some women

were really wanting in taste; of a certainty when one lay down one

must have the light in one's eyes. And in the depths of her memory she

vaguely saw the figure of the stranger of the Quai Saint-Paul rise up,

her novel in two assignations, that chance amour which she had partaken

of, there, at that other place. The wearing away of the wall paper was

all that remained of it. Then the room filled her with uneasiness, and

the hum of voices which continued in the next apartment made her feel

impatient.

When Madame Sidonie returned, opening and closing the door with due

precaution, she made repeated signs with the tips of her fingers, to

recommend Renée to speak low. Then, she whispered in her ear:

"You don't know, the adventure's a good one: it's Monsieur de Saffré

who's there."

"You didn't tell him though that I was here?" asked the young woman

anxiously.

The agent seemed surprised, and with an air of great simplicity

answered:

"But I did--He is waiting for me to tell him to come in. Of course I

didn't speak about the fifty thousand francs--"

Renée, who was quite pale, had drawn herself up as if she had been

struck with a whip. A great pride again rose to her heart. That

creaking of boots, which she heard growing louder in the next room,

exasperated her:

"I am going," she said curtly. "Come and open the door for me."

Madame Sidonie tried to smile.

"Don't be childish," she said. "I can't be left with that fellow on my

hands, since I have told him you are here--You really compromise me--"

But the young woman had already descended the little staircase. She

repeated, in front of the closed shop door:

"Open it, open it."

When the lace-dealer withdrew the brass knob, she had the habit of

putting it in her pocket. She wished to continue parleying. Finally

seized with anger herself, and displaying in the depths of her grey

eyes the tart acridity of her nature, she cried: "But come, what shall

I say to the man?"

"That I'm not for sale," replied Renée, who already had one foot on the

side-walk.

And it seemed to her that she could hear Madame Sidonie muttering as

she banged the door: "Eh! get off, you jade! you shall pay me for this!"