Mignon and Charrier, who had approached him to hear "the explanation,"

ventured to ask "what the young man and the young woman were doing

there, lying on the ground." But he did not answer, he refused to

explain any more of his poem; and as the contractors insisted:

"Why," he said, "it no longer concerns me, since the ladies set

themselves in position without me!"

The piano softly sobbed. On the platform a clearing, on which the

electric ray set a stretch of sunlight, revealed a vista of leaves. It

was an ideal glade with blue trees, and large red and yellow flowers

which rose as high as the oaks. Venus and Plutus stood on a grassy

mound side by side, and surrounded by nymphs who had hastened from

the neighbouring thickets to serve as their escort. There were the

daughters of the trees, the daughters of the springs, the daughters of

the heights, all the laughing naked divinities of the forest. And the

god and the goddess triumphed, and punished the apathy of the proud

young fellow who had scorned them, while the group of nymphs looked

inquisitively and with religious fright at the vengeance of Olympus

displayed in the foreground. The drama was there being unravelled.

Handsome Narcissus, lying on the margin of a brook which came down from

the back of the stage, was looking at himself in the clear mirror;

and exactitude had been carried to the point of placing a strip of

looking-glass, at the bottom of the brook. But he was no longer the

free young fellow, the forest wanderer; death surprised him amid his

delighted admiration of his own figure, death enervated him, and Venus

with her outstretched finger, like a fairy in a transformation scene,

consigned him to his deadly fate. He was becoming a flower. His limbs

became verdant and longer, in his tight-fitting costume of green satin;

the flexible stalk, figured by his slightly bent legs, sank into the

ground to take root there, while his bust, decked with broad lappets

of white satin, expanded into a marvellous corolla. Maxime's fair hair

completed the illusion, and set, with its long curls, yellow pistils

amid the whiteness of the petals. And the large, nascent flower, still

human, inclined its head towards the spring, with its eyes bedimmed,

and smiling with voluptuous ecstasy, as if handsome Narcissus had at

length satisfied in death the passion which he had felt for himself.

A few paces off the nymph Echo was dying also, dying of unquenched

desires; she found herself gradually caught in the rigidity of the

soil, she felt her burning limbs congeal and harden. She was not a

vulgar rock, soiled by moss, but white marble, by her shoulders and

arms, by her long snowy robe from which the girdle of foliage and the

blue drapery had glided. Sunk down amid the satin of her skirt, which

formed large plaits, similar to a block of Paros, she threw herself

back, with nought alive, in her statue-like congealed body, save her

woman's eyes, eyes which glistened as they remained fixed on the flower

of the waters, languidly leaning above the mirror of the spring. And it

already seemed as if all the love sounds of the forest, the prolonged

noises of the thickets, the mysterious quivers of the leaves, the

deep sighs of the old oaks, came and beat upon the marble flesh of

the nymph Echo, whose heart, still bleeding amid the block, resounded

protractedly, repeating afar the slightest complaints of the Earth and

of the Air.

"Oh! how they have muffled up poor Maxime!" murmured Louise. "And

Madame Saccard, you would say a dead woman!"

"She is covered with rice powder," said Madame Michelin.

Other scarcely complimentary remarks circulated. This third _tableau_

did not meet with the same unqualified success as the two others.

And yet it was this tragical ending which made Monsieur Hupel de la

Noue enthusiastic about his own talent. He admired himself in it, as

his Narcissus did in his strip of looking-glass. He had set a number

of poetical and philosophical allusions in it. When the curtains had

closed again for the last time, and the spectators had applauded like

people of good breeding, he experienced mental regret at having given

way to anger and not having explained the last page of his poem. He

then wished to give the people around him the key to the charming,

grand, or simply suggestive things which handsome Narcissus and the

nymph Echo represented, and he even tried to say what Venus and

Plutus were doing in the depths of the clearing; but the gentlemen

and ladies, whose clear practical minds had understood the grotto of

flesh and the grotto of gold, had no inclination to descend into the

prefect's mythological complications. Only Mignon and Charrier, who

absolutely wished to inform themselves, were good-natured enough to

question him. He took possession of them, and kept them during nearly

two hours, standing in the embrasure of a window, relating to them the

"Metamorphoses" of Ovid.

The minister now withdrew. He apologised for not being able to wait

for the beautiful Madame Saccard to compliment her on the perfect

gracefulness of the nymph Echo. He had just been three or four times

round the drawing-room on the arm of his brother, giving a few shakes

of the hand and bowing to the ladies. He had never before compromised

himself so much for Saccard. He left him radiant, when, on the

threshold, he said to him in a loud voice:

"I shall expect you to-morrow morning. Come and breakfast with me."

The ball was about to begin. The servants had ranged the ladies'

arm-chairs along the walls. The large drawing-room now displayed from

the little yellow room to the platform, its bare carpet the large

purple flowers of which opened under the dripping light which fell from

the crystal of the chandeliers. The heat was increasing; the reflection

of the red hangings brightened the gilding of the furniture and the

ceiling. To open the ball one waited until the ladies, the nymph Echo,

Venus, Plutus, and the others, had changed their costumes.

Madame d'Espanet and Madame Haffner appeared the first. They had

reassumed their costumes of the second _tableau_; the first as gold,

the other as silver. They were surrounded and congratulated; and they

recounted their emotions.

"As for me I nearly burst out," said the marchioness, "when I saw

Monsieur Toutin-Laroche's big nose looking at me in the distance!"

"I think that I have a stiff neck," languidly remarked the fair-haired

Suzanne. "No, really, if it had lasted a minute longer I should have

replaced my head in a natural position, my neck hurt me so much."

From the embrasure into which Monsieur Hupel de la Noue had pushed

Mignon and Charrier, he cast nervous glances at the group formed around

the two young women; he was afraid that people were poking fun at him.

The other nymphs arrived one after the other; they had all resumed

their costumes as precious stones; the Countess Vanska, as coral,

met with prodigious success when one was able to closely examine the

ingenious details of her dress. Then Maxime entered, correct in his

dress coat and with a smiling air; and a flow of women enveloped him,

he was placed in the centre of the circle, he was joked about his

part as a flower, and his passion for looking-glasses. Without any

embarrassment, as if delighted with his part, he continued smiling,

answered the jokes, confessed that he adored himself, and that he was

sufficiently cured of women to prefer himself to them. People laughed

the louder at this, the group grew larger, and took possession of the

whole centre of the drawing-room, while the young man, drowned amid

this people of shoulders, this medley of bright costumes, retained his

perfume of monstrous love, his vicious fair flower's gentleness.

When Renée, however, at last came down, there was semi-silence. She

had attired herself in a new costume of such original grace and such

audacity that the gentlemen and the ladies, although accustomed to the

young woman's eccentricities, at first gave a movement of surprise.

She was dressed as an Otaheitian. This costume, it appears, is most

primitive: as she wore it, it comprised soft tinted tights which rose

from her feet to her bosom, leaving her shoulders and arms bare; and

over these tights a simple muslin blouse, short and trimmed with two

flounces so as to slightly hide the hips. In her hair a wreath of

wild flowers; and gold rings round her ankles and her wrists. Nothing

more. She was naked. The tights had the suppleness of flesh under the

paleness of the blouse; the pure line of her nudity could be detected

from her knees to her arm-pits, vaguely bedimmed by the flounces, but

reappearing at the slightest movement, and becoming more distinct

between the threads of the lace. She was an adorable savage, a

barbarous, voluptuous girl scarcely hidden by a white vapour, a patch

of sea fog, amid which her whole body could be divined.

With rosy cheeks Renée advanced at a rapid step. Céleste had made the

first tights burst; but the young woman had fortunately foreseen the

eventuality and taken her precautions. These torn tights had delayed

her. She seemed to care little about her triumph. She smiled, however,

and briefly answered the men who stopped and complimented her on the

purity of her attitudes in the _tableaux vivants_. Behind her she left

a trail of dress coats astonished and charmed by the transparency

of her muslin blouse. When she had reached the group of women who

surrounded Maxime, she gave rise to curt exclamations, and the

marchioness began to look at her from head to foot, with a tender air,

and murmuring:

"She is adorably formed."

Madame Michelin, whose alme's costume became horribly heavy beside this

simple veil, pursed her lips, while Madame Sidonie, shrivelled up in

her black sorceress's dress, murmured in her ear:

"It's the height of indecency, isn't it, my beauty?"

"Ah! yes indeed," said the pretty brunette at last, "Monsieur Michelin

_would_ be angry if I undressed myself like that."

"And he would be quite right," concluded the agent.

The band of serious men were not of this opinion. It went into

ecstacies at a distance. Monsieur Michelin, whom his wife so

inappropriately brought into question, showed himself transported so as

to please Monsieur Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud whom the sight of

Renée enraptured. Saccard was greatly complimented on the perfection

of his wife's figure. He bowed and professed to be very touched. The

evening was a good one for him, and but for a preoccupation which

darted from his eyes at moments when he cast a rapid glance at his

sister, he would have been supremely happy.

"I say, she has never shown us so much," jokingly said Louise in

Maxime's ear, and indicating Renée by a glance.

She paused, and then with an undefinable smile:

"At least, to me."

The young fellow looked at her with a nervous air; but she continued

smiling, strangely, like a schoolboy delighted with some bit of fun

rather too strong.

The ball began. The platform of the _tableaux vivants_ had been

utilized to accommodate a little orchestra in which brass instruments

predominated, and the bugles and the cornets-à-piston launched forth

their clear notes, amid the ideal forest with blue trees. First came

a quadrille, "Ah! he has boots, he has boots, Bastien!" which then

constituted the delight of public balls. The ladies danced. Polkas,

waltzes, mazurkas alternated with quadrilles. The swinging couples came

and went, filled the long gallery, leaping under the lash of the brass

instruments, swaying amid the lullaby of the violins. The costumes,

this flood of women of all countries and all periods, displayed a

swarming medley of bright stuffs. After mingling the colours and

carrying them off in cadenced confusion, the rhythm at certain touches

of the bows abruptly brought back the same tunic of pink satin, the

same dress body of blue velvet beside the same black coat. Then another

touch of the bows, a blast of the cornets, pushed the couples on, made

them travel in files around the drawing-room, with the swinging motion

of a bark floating away under a gust of wind which had severed the

fast that moored it. And so on, always, endlessly, for hours together.

At times, between two dances, a lady approached a window, stifling,

inhaling a little icy air; a couple rested on a couch in the little

buttercup drawing-room, or descended into the conservatory, going

slowly round the paths. Skirts, only the edges of which could be seen,

seemed to laugh languidly under the arbours of tropical creepers, in

the depths of the tepid shade, where the loud notes of the cornets were

wafted during the quadrilles of "Hallo! the little lambs," and "I've a

foot on the move."

When the servants opened the door of the dining-room, transformed

into a refectory with sideboards against the walls, and a long table

laden with cold meats in the centre, there was a shove, a crush. A

tall handsome man, who had timidly kept his hat in his hand, was so

violently flattened against the wall that the unfortunate hat burst

with a dull moan. This made people laugh. The guests rushed upon the

pastry and the truffled poultry, brutally digging their elbows into

one another's ribs. It was a pillage, hands met amid the viands, and

the lackeys did not know whom to answer, in the midst of this band of

well-bred men whose extended arms expressed the sole fear of arriving

too late and finding the dishes empty. An old gentleman became angry

because there was no Bordeaux wine, and champagne, so he affirmed,

prevented him from sleeping.

"Softly, gentlemen," said Baptiste in his grave voice. "There will be

enough for everyone."

But he was not listened to. The dining-room was already full, and

yet more anxious dress-coats rose up at the door. In front of the

sideboards, stood groups eating quickly and pressing closely together.

A good many swallowed without drinking, not having been able to

set their hands on a glass. Others, on the contrary, drank after

fruitlessly running about for a morsel of bread.

"Listen," said Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, whom Mignon and Charrier,

weary of mythology, had led to the buffet, "we sha'n't get anything if

we don't help each other. It's much worse at the Tuileries, and I have

acquired some experience there. You look after the wine, and I'll see

to the meat."

The prefect was watching a leg of mutton. He stretched out his hand,

at the right moment, through a break in the surrounding shoulders, and

quietly carried it off, after filling his pockets with little rolls.

The contractors returned from their side, Mignon with one bottle, and

Charrier with two bottles of champagne; but they had only been able to

secure two glasses; they said, however, that it did not matter, that

they would drink out of the same. And the party supped on the corner of

a flowerstand at the end of the room. They did not even take off their

gloves, but put the slices of mutton already cut between their bread,

and kept the bottles under their arms. And standing up, they talked

with their mouths full, stretching out their chins in advance of their

waistcoats so that the gravy might fall on to the carpet.

Charrier, having finished his wine before his bread, asked a servant if

he could not have a glass of champagne.

"You must wait, sir," angrily replied the scared servant, losing his

head and forgetting he was no longer in the kitchen. "Three hundred

bottles have already been drunk."

However, one could hear the notes of the orchestra swelling with sudden

gusts. Couples were footing the polka called "The Kisses," famous

at public balls, and the rhythm of which each dancer had to mark by

kissing his partner. Madame d'Espanet appeared at the door of the

dining-room, flushed, her hair slightly disordered, and trailing her

silver robe with charming lassitude. People barely drew aside, and she

had to shove with her elbows to obtain a passage. She made the round

of the table, hesitating, a pout on her lips. Then she went straight

to Monsieur Hupel de la Noue who had finished, and, who was wiping his

mouth with his pocket-handkerchief.

"You would be very amiable, sir," she said to him with an adorable

smile, "if you would find me a chair! I have been round the table

fruitlessly--"

The prefect had a spite against the marchioness but his gallantry did

not hesitate; he hastened, found a chair, installed Madame d'Espanet

and remained behind her, serving her. She would only take a few shrimps

with a little butter and two thimblefuls of champagne. She eat in a

delicate manner amid the gluttony of the men. The table and the chairs

were exclusively reserved for the ladies. However an exception was

always made in favour of Baron Gouraud. He was there seated at ease, in

front of a bit of pastry the crust of which he crunched with his jaws.

The marchioness re-conquered the prefect by telling him that she should

never forget her emotions as an artiste in the "Amours of handsome

Narcissus and the nymph Echo." She even explained to him why they had

not waited for him at the last _tableau_ in a manner which completely

consoled him: the ladies on learning that the minister was there had

thought that it would hardly be proper to prolong the interval. She

ended by begging him to go in search of Madame Haffner who was dancing

with Monsieur Simpson, a brute of a man who displeased her, she said.

And when Suzanne was there she no longer looked at Monsieur Hupel de la

Noue.

Saccard, followed by Messieurs Toutin-Laroche, De Mareuil and Haffner,

had taken possession of a sideboard. As there was no room at the table

and Monsieur de Saffré passed by with Madame Michelin on his arm he

detained them, and insisted that the pretty brunette should share with

his party. She nibbled some pastry, smiling, raising her clear eyes

on the five men who surrounded her. They leaned towards her, touched

her alme's veils embroidered with threads of gold, brought her to

bay between themselves and the sideboard, against which she ended by

leaning, taking cakes from every hand, very gentle and very caressing,

and showing the loving docility of a slave amid her masters. All by

himself, at the other end of the room, Monsieur Michelin was finishing

a terreen of goose's liver which he had succeeded in capturing.

Madame Sidonie, who had been prowling about the ball since the first

bow strokes, now entered the dining-room and summoned Saccard with a

glance.

"She isn't dancing," she said to him in a low voice. "She seems

anxious. I think she is meditating some bit of folly. But I have not

yet been able to discover the swain. I am going to eat something and

then return to the watch."

And standing like a man, she eat a chicken's wing, which she procured,

thanks to Monsieur Michelin who had finished his terreen. She poured

herself out some Malaga in a large champagne glass; then, after

wiping her mouth with the tips of her fingers, she returned to the

drawing-room. The train of her sorceress's robe already seemed to have

gathered up all the dust of the carpets.

The ball was languishing, and the orchestra gave signs of being blown,

when a murmur sped about: "The cotillon! the cotillon!" and revived

the dancers and the brass instruments alike. Couples came from all the

clumps of plants in the conservatory; the large drawing-room grew as

full as when the first quadrille was danced; and there was a discussion

among the awakened crowd. It was the last flash of the ball. The men

who did not dance looked with sluggish good nature out of the depths

of the embrasures at the talkative group swelling in the middle of the

room; while the supper-eaters at the sideboards stretched out their

necks to see, but without letting go of their bread.

"Monsieur de Mussy won't," said one lady. "He swears that he no longer

leads it. Come, once more, Monsieur de Mussy, only this once. Do it for

us."

But the young embassy attaché remained stiff in his high collar turned

down at the points. It was really impossible, he had sworn. There was a

disappointment. Maxime also refused, saying that he couldn't, that he

was tired out. Monsieur Hupel de la Noue did not dare to offer himself;

he only descended as far as poetry. On a lady speaking of Monsieur

Simpson she was silenced; Monsieur Simpson was the strangest cotillon

leader one over saw; he gave himself up to fantastic and malicious

devices; it was related that in one drawing-room where the guests had

been so imprudent as to choose him, he had compelled the ladies to jump

over the chairs, and one of his favourite figures was to make everyone

go round the room on all fours.

"Has Monsieur de Saffré left?" asked a childish voice.

He was leaving, he was saying good-bye to the beautiful Madame Saccard

with whom he was on the best possible terms, since she would not have

him. This amiable sceptic admired other people's caprices. He was

triumphantly brought back from the hall. He tried to escape, and said

with a smile that he was being compromised, that he was a serious

man. Then, in presence of all the white hands that were stretched out

towards him:

"Well," said he, "take your places. But I warn you that I'm classical.

I haven't a copper's worth of imagination."

The couples sat down round the drawing-room, on all the seats that

could be gathered together; some young fellows even went to fetch the

iron chairs of the conservatory. It was a monster cotillon, Monsieur de

Saffré, who had the solemn air of an officiating priest, chose, as his

partner, the Countess Vanska, whose costume as Coral preoccupied him.

When everyone was in position, he cast a long glance at this circular

row of skirts, each flanked by a dress-coat. And he made a sign to

the orchestra, the brass instruments of which resounded. Heads leaned

forward along the smiling band of faces.

Renée had refused to take part in the cotillon. She had been nervously

gay since the beginning of the ball, scarcely dancing, but mingling

with the groups, unable to remain still. Her friends found her strange.

During the evening she had talked of making a balloon journey with a

celebrated aeronaut with whom all Paris was occupied. When the cotillon

began she was vexed not to be able to walk about at her ease, so she

stationed herself at the hall-door, shaking hands with the gentlemen

who left and talking with her husband's intimate friends. Baron

Gouraud, whom a lackey carried off in his fur cloak, paid a final

eulogium to her Otaheitian's costume.

Meanwhile Monsieur Toutin-Laroche shook hands with Saccard.

"Maxime relies on you," said the latter.

"Quite so," replied the new senator.

And turning towards Renée:

"I haven't congratulated you, madame. So the dear boy is now settled!"

And as she gave an astonished smile:

"My wife doesn't yet know," observed Saccard, "We have decided this

evening on Mademoiselle de Mareuil's marriage with Maxime."

She continued smiling, bowing to Monsieur Toutin-Laroche who went off

saying:

"You sign the contract on Sunday, eh? I am going to Nevers about a

mining affair, but I shall be back in time."

Renée remained for a moment alone in the middle of the hall. She no

longer smiled, and as she gradually dived into what she had just

learnt, she was seized with a great shudder. She looked at the red

velvet hangings, the rare plants, the pots of majolica with a fixed

stare. Then she said aloud:

"I must speak to him."

And she returned to the drawing-room. But she had to remain near the

entry. A figure of the cotillon barred the way. The orchestra was

playing a waltz air in a low key. The ladies, holding each other hands,

formed a circle, one of those circles that are formed by little girls

singing, "Giroflé girofla," and they spun round as quickly as possible,

pulling one another's arms, laughing and sliding. In the centre, a

gentleman--it was the malicious Monsieur Simpson--held a long pink

scarf in his hand; he raised it with the gesture of a fisherman who is

about to cast a net; but he did not hurry, he no doubt thought it funny

to let these ladies turn round and tire themselves. They breathed hard

and asked for mercy. Then he threw the scarf, and he threw it with such

skill that it went and wound around the shoulders of Madame d'Espanet

and Madame Haffner who were turning side by side. It was one of the

Yankee's bits of fun. He then wished to waltz with both ladies at once,

and he had already taken them both by the waist, one with his left arm

and the other with his right, when Monsieur de Saffré, in the severe

tone of the king of the cotillon, said:

"You can't dance with two ladies."

But Monsieur Simpson would not let go of the two waists. Adeline and

Suzanne threw themselves back in his arms laughing. The point was

argued, the ladies grew angry, the hubbub was prolonged, and the

dress-coats in the embrasures of the windows asked themselves how

Saffré would extricate himself from this delicate dilemma to his

glory. He, indeed, seemed perplexed for a moment, seeking by what

refinement of gracefulness he might win the laughers over to his side.

Then he smiled, he took Madame d'Espanet and Madame Haffner by the

hand, whispered a question in their ears, received their replies, and

afterwards addressing himself to Monsieur Simpson:

"Do you pluck the verbena, or do you pluck the periwinkle?" he asked.

Monsieur Simpson, looking rather foolish, said that he plucked the

verbena, whereupon Monsieur de Saffré gave him the marchioness saying:

"Here is the verbena."

There was discreet applause. It was found very pretty. Monsieur de

Saffré was a cotillon leader "who never remained embarrassed," such

was the ladies' remark. In the meanwhile the orchestra had resumed the

waltz air with all its instruments, and Monsieur Simpson, after making

the round of the room, waltzing with Madame d'Espanet, reconducted her

to her seat.

Renée was able to pass. She had bit her lips till they bled at sight

of all this foolishness. She considered these women and men stupid to

throw scarfs and take the names of flowers. Her ears rung, a furious

impatience lent her a brusque desire to throw herself forward, head

first, and open a passage. She crossed the drawing-room with a rapid

step, jostling the belated couples who were regaining their seats. She

went straight to the conservatory. She had not seen either Louise or

Maxime among the dancers, and she said to herself that they must be

there, in some nook formed by the foliage, united by that partiality

for drollery and impropriety which made them seek out little corners as

soon as they found themselves anywhere together. But she fruitlessly

explored the dimness of the conservatory. She only perceived, in the

depths of an arbour, a tall young fellow who was devoutly kissing the

hands of little Madame Daste and murmuring:

"Madame de Lauwerens told me right: you are an angel."

This declaration in her house, in her conservatory, shocked Renée.

Madame de Lauwerens ought really to have taken her traffic elsewhere!

And Renée would have felt relieved could she have chased all these

people who bawled so loud out of her apartments. Standing in front of

the basin, she looked at the water and asked herself where Louise and

Maxime could well have hidden themselves. The orchestra still played

that waltz, the slow undulation of which made her feel sick. It was

insupportable, one could no longer reflect in one's own abode. She

became confused. She forgot that the young folks were not yet married,

and she said to herself that it was simple enough, that they had gone

to bed. Then she thought of the dining-room, and quickly reascended the

conservatory staircase. But at the door of the drawing-room she was

stopped for the second time by a figure of the cotillon.

"These are the 'black specks,' ladies," gallantly said Monsieur de

Saffré. "This is an invention of mine, and I inaugurate it for you."

There was a great deal of laughter. The gentlemen explained the

allusion to the young women. The Emperor had just delivered a speech,

which recorded the presence of certain "black specks" on the political

horizon. These black specks had met with great success, no one knew

why. Parisian wits had appropriated the expression, and to such a

point that for a week past the black specks had been introduced into

everything. Monsieur de Saffré placed the masculine dancers at one end

of the drawing-room, making them turn their backs to the ladies who

were left at the other end. Then he ordered the men to turn up their

coats in such a way as to hide the backs of their heads. This operation

was accomplished amid tremendous merriment. Hump-backed, with their

shoulders hidden by the tails of their coats which now only fell to

their waists the gentlemen looked really frightful.

"Don't laugh, ladies," cried Monsieur de Saffré with most comical

gravity, "or I shall make you put your lace flounces on your heads."

The merriment increased. And the leader energetically availed himself

of his sovereignty over some of the gentlemen who would not hide the

napes of their necks.

"You are the 'black specks,'" said he; "hide your heads, only show your

backs, it is necessary that the ladies should only see so much black.

Now, walk, mingle together, so that you may not be recognized."

The hilarity was at its height. The "black specks" went to and fro on

their skinny legs with the undulatory motion of headless ravens. One

gentleman's shirt was seen with a bit of braces. Then the ladies begged

for mercy, they were stifling, and Monsieur de Saffré was pleased to

order them to go and fetch the "black specks." They went off like a

covey of young partridges amid a loud rustle of skirts. Then, each of

them, at the end of her trip, seized hold of the gentleman who came

within her grasp. It was an undescribable medley. And the improvised

couples disengaged themselves in a file, and made the round of the

drawing-room, waltzing, amid the louder strains of the orchestra.

Renée had leant against the wall. Pale, and with compressed lips, she

looked on. An old gentleman came and asked her gallantly why she was

not dancing. She had to smile and give some kind of answer. Escaping

at last, she entered the dining-room. It looked empty, but amid the

pillaged sideboards and the trailing bottles and plates, Maxime and

Louise, seated side by side, were quietly supping at one end of the

table, on a napkin which they had spread out. They seemed to be at

their ease, they laughed amid the disorder, the dirty glasses, the

dishes soiled with grease, the remnants, which testified to the

gluttony of the supper-eaters with white gloves. They had contented

themselves with brushing off the crumbs around them. Baptiste gravely

walked round the table without a glance for the room, through which

a band of wolves seemed to have passed; he was waiting for the other

servants to come and set the sideboards in a little order.

Maxime had still been able to gather a very fair supper together.

Louise adored hardbake with pistachio nuts, a plateful of which had

remained on the top of a sideboard. They had three partially emptied

bottles of champagne before them.

"Papa has perhaps gone off," said the young girl.

"So much the better," replied Maxime, "I will see you home."

And as she laughed:

"You know that they really want me to marry you," he added. "It's no

longer a joke, it's serious. But what shall we do with ourselves when

we are married?"

"Why, we'll do what others do, of course."

This repartee escaped her rather quickly, and as if to withdraw it, she

hastily added:

"We will go to Italy. It will do my chest good. I am very ill. Ah! my

poor Maxime, what a sorry wife you will have! I am not bigger than two

sous of butter."

She smiled, with a shade of sadness, in her page's costume. A dry cough

brought red gleams to her cheeks.

"It's the hardbake," said she. "At home I'm forbidden to eat it. Pass

me the plate, I will put the rest in my pocket."

And she was emptying the plate when Renée entered the room. She went

straight to Maxime, making unheard-of efforts not to swear, not to beat

the hunchback whom she found there at table with her lover.

"I wish to speak to you," she stammered in a husky voice.

He hesitated, frightened, dreading to be with her.

"To you alone, at once," repeated Renée.

"Go then, Maxime," said Louise, with her undefinable look. "At the same

time you might try to find my father. I lose him at every party."

He rose up, he tried to stop the young woman in the middle of the

dining-room by asking her what she could have of so urgent a nature to

say to him. But she resumed between her teeth:

"Follow me, or I shall speak out before every one!"

He turned very pale and followed her with the docility of a beaten

animal. She thought that Baptiste was looking at her; but at this

moment she cared nought for the valet's clear gaze! At the door, the

cotillon detained her for the third time.

"Wait," she murmured. "These fools will never have done."

Monsieur de Saffré was placing the Duke de Rozan with his back against

the wall, in one corner of the drawing-room, beside he dining-room

door. He stationed a lady in front of him, then a gentleman back to

back with the lady, then another lady in front of the gentleman, and

this in a line, couple by couple, forming as it were a long serpent. As

the dancers talked together and tarried behind:

"Come, ladies," he cried, "to your places for the 'columns.'"

They came, and "the columns" were formed. The indecency of finding

oneself thus caught, pressed between two men, leaning against the back

of one of them, with the chest of the other in front of one, made the

ladies very gay. The tips of the women's bosoms touched the facings

of the men's dress-coats, the gentlemen's legs disappeared amid the

ladies' skirts; and whenever any sudden merriment made a woman's head

lean forward, the moustaches in front were obliged to draw back, so as

not to carry matters as far as kissing. At one moment a joker must have

given a slight push, for the line closed up, the dress-coats plunged

deeper into the skirts, there were little cries and laughs, coughs

which did not end. The Baroness de Meinhold was heard saying, "But you

are stifling me, sir; don't squeeze me so hard!" this seemed so funny,

and gave the whole line such an attack of hilarity, that the shaken

"columns" staggered, clashed together and leaned upon one another to

avoid falling. Monsieur de Saffré waited with his hands raised ready to

clap. Then he clapped. At this signal every one abruptly turned round.

The couples who were face to face took each other by the waist, and the

file dispersed waltzing round the room. The only one left was the poor

Duke de Rozan, who on turning round found his nose against the wall. He

was derided by everybody.

"Come," said Renée to Maxime.

The orchestra was still playing the waltz. This soft music, the

monotonous rhythm of which at last became insipid, increased the young

woman's exasperation. She gained the little drawing-room holding

Maxime by the hand; and pushing him to the staircase which led to the

dressing-room:

"Go up," she ordered.

She followed him. At this moment Madame Sidonie, who, throughout the

evening, had been prowling round about her sister-in-law, astonished

by her continual promenades through the rooms, just reached the

conservatory steps. She saw a man's leg disappear amid the darkness of

the little staircase. A pale smile lit up her waxen face, and catching

up her sorceress's skirt to walk the quicker, she sought her brother,

upsetting a figure of the cotillon and questioning all the servants she

met. She at last found Saccard with Monsieur de Mareuil in an apartment

which adjoined the dining-room, and which had been turned provisionally

into a smoking-room. The two fathers were talking about the dowry and

the contract. But when Saccard's sister had said a word in his ear, he

rose up, apologised, and disappeared.

Upstairs, the dressing-room was in complete disorder. Over the chairs

trailed the costume of the nymph Echo, the torn tights, bits of

crumpled lace, under-garments thrown aside in a bundle, everything that

a woman, expected elsewhere, leaves in her haste behind her. The little

ivory and silver tools lay about a little bit everywhere; there were

brushes and files fallen on the carpet; and the towels still damp, the

soap forgotten on the marble slab, the scent bottles left open, emitted

a strong penetrating perfume in the flesh-tinted tent. To take the

white off her arms and shoulders the young woman had dipped herself in

the pink marble bath after the _tableaux vivants_. Iridescent scales

expanded on the sheet of water now grown cold.

Maxime stepped on some stays, narrowly missed falling, and tried to

laugh. But he shivered at sight of Renée's stern face. She approached

him, pushing him, and saying in a low voice:

"So you are going to marry the hunchback?"

"Not a bit of it," he murmured. "Who told you so?"

"Oh! don't lie. It's useless."

He was prompted to rebel. She alarmed him, he wished to finish matters

with her.

"Well, yes, I am to marry her. What of it? Am I not the master?"

She came towards him, with her head somewhat lowered, and with an evil

laugh, and taking hold of his wrists:

"The master! you, the master! You know very well it isn't so. It is I

who am the master. I could break your arms if I were cruel; you have no

more strength than a girl."

And as he struggled, she twisted his arms, with all the nervous

violence that anger imparted to her. He uttered a slight cry, and she

then let go of him, resuming:

"Don't let us fight, I should prove the stronger."

He remained pale, with the shame of the pain which he felt at his

wrists. He watched her coming and going about the room. She pushed

back the furniture, reflecting, deciding on the plan which had been

revolving in her head since her husband had apprized her of the

marriage.

"I am going to shut you up here," she said at last; "and when it is

daylight we will start for Havre."

He grew still paler with alarm and stupor.

"But this is madness!" he cried. "We can't go off together. You are

going crazy--"

"Perhaps so. At all events it's you and your father who are making me

so. I need you and I take you. So much the worse for fools!"

Red gleams shone in her eyes. Again approaching Maxime and scorching

his face with her breath, she continued:

"What would become of me if you married the hunchback? You would deride

me, and I should perhaps be forced to take back that big simpleton De

Mussy, who would not even warm my feet--When people have done what we

have done they remain together. Besides, it's clear enough, I feel

bored when you are not there, and as I'm going off, I take you with me.

You can tell Céleste what you want her to go and fetch at your place."

The unfortunate fellow held out his hands and supplicated.

"Come, my little Renée, don't commit such folly. Become yourself again.

Think a little of the scandal."

"I don't care a fig for the scandal! If you refuse, I shall go down

into the drawing-room and cry out that I have slept with you, and that

you are now cowardly enough to want to marry the hunchback."

He bowed his head and listened to her, already giving way, and

accepting this will so roughly imposed upon him.

"We will go to Havre," she resumed in a lower tone, caressing her

dream, "and from there we can reach England. No one will bother us any

more. If we are not far enough off, we will start for America. I, who

always feel cold, I shall be comfortable there. I have often envied

creoles."

But while she enlarged the scope of her project, terror again seized

hold of Maxime. To leave Paris, to go so far away with this woman who

was certainly mad, to leave behind him a story the shameful character

of which would exile him for ever! it was like some atrocious nightmare

stifling him. He sought in despair for a means of escaping from this

dressing-room, this pink retreat where the bell of the lunatic asylum

of Charenton seemed to toll. At last he thought he had found an

expedient.

"But I have no money," he said gently, so as not to exasperate her. "If

you shut me up I cannot procure any."

"I have some money, though," she replied with an air of triumph. "I

have a hundred thousand francs. Everything tallies perfectly well--"

She took out of the wardrobe the deed of cession which her husband had

left with her in the vague hope that she might change her mind. She

laid it on the toilet table, compelled Maxime to give her a pen and

an inkstand which were in the bedroom, and pushing back the soap, and

signing the act:

"There," she said, "the folly's done. If I'm robbed it is because I

choose to be. We will call on Larsonneau before going to the station.

Now, my little Maxime, I am going to shut you up, and we will escape

by way of the garden, when I have turned all these people out of the

house. We don't even need to take any luggage."

She became gay again. This wild freak delighted her. It was a piece

of supreme eccentricity, a finish which, amid her fever, seemed to

her mind altogether original. It surpassed her desire to make a

balloon journey by a great deal. She went and took Maxime in her arms,

murmuring:

"I hurt you a little while ago, my poor darling! But then you refused.

You will see how nice it will be. Would your hunchback ever love you

as I do? That little blackamoor isn't a woman!"

She was laughing--she was drawing him to her and kissing him on the

lips, when a sound made them both turn their heads. Saccard was

standing on the threshold of the room.

[Illustration: SACCARD SURPRISES RENÉE AND MAXIME.]

Terrible silence followed. Renée slowly withdrew her arm from Maxime's

neck, but she did not lower her brow, she continued gazing at her

husband with her big eyes, which stared fixedly like those of a

corpse; while the young fellow, overwhelmed and terrified, staggered,

with bowed head, now that he was no longer sustained by her embrace.

Saccard, stunned by this supreme blow which, at last, made the husband

and the father cry out within him, did not advance, but, livid, he

scorched them from afar with the fire of his glances. In the moist,

odoriferous atmosphere of the room, the three tapers flared very high,

their flames erect, with the stillness of fiery tears. And, alone

breaking the silence, the terrible silence, a breath of music ascended

the narrow staircase; the waltz, with its snake-like undulations,

glided, coiled, and died away on the snowy carpet, amid the split

tights and the fallen skirts.

Then the husband advanced. The impulse which he felt to resort to

brutality brought blotches to his face; he clinched his fists to knock

down the guilty pair. Anger, in this restless little man, burst forth

like the report of fire-arms. He gave a strangled titter, and, still

advancing:

"You were announcing your marriage to her, eh?"

Maxime retreated and leant against the wall.

"Listen," he stammered, "it was she--"

He was about to accuse her like a coward, to cast the odium of the

crime upon her, to say that she wanted to carry him off, to defend

himself with the humility and the shudders of a child detected in

fault. But he did not have the strength, the words expired in his

throat. Renée retained her statue-like rigidity, her air of mute

defiance. Then Saccard, no doubt in view of finding a weapon, gave a

rapid glance around him. And, on the corner of the toilet table, among

the combs and nail-brushes, he perceived the deed of cession, the

stamped paper of which set a yellow stain on the marble. He looked at

the deed; he looked at the guilty pair. Then, on leaning forward, he

saw that the deed was signed. His eyes went from the open inkstand to

the pen still wet, which had been left on the foot of the candelabrum.

He remained erect in front of this signature, reflecting.

The silence seemed to increase, the flames of the candles shot up

higher, the waltz resounded in a softer lullaby along the hangings.

Saccard gave an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. He again looked

at his wife and his son with a profound air, as if to wring from their

faces an explanation which he could not divine. Then he slowly folded

up the deed and placed it in the pocket of his dress-coat. His cheeks

had become extremely pale.

"You have done well to sign, my dear," he said gently to his wife. "You

gain a hundred thousand francs by doing so. I will give you the money

this evening."

He almost smiled, and his hands alone, retained a trembling. He took a

few steps, adding--

"It's stifling in here! What an idea to come and plot one of your jokes

in this vapour bath!"

And then addressing himself to Maxime, who had raised his head,

surprised by his father's appeased voice:

"Here come with me," he resumed: "I saw you go up, and I came to fetch

you so that you might wish Monsieur de Mareuil and his daughter good

night."

The two men went down talking together. Renée remained alone, standing

in the middle of the dressing-room, looking at the yawning cavity of

the little staircase, in which she had just seen the shoulders of the

father and the son disappear. She could not take her eyes off this

cavity. What, they had gone off, quietly, amicably! These two men had

not murdered each other. She lent an ear; she listened to ascertain if

some atrocious struggle did not make their bodies roll down the stairs.

Nothing! In the tepid darkness, nothing but a noise of dancing--a long

lullaby. She thought she could hear in the distance the marchioness's

laughter and Monsieur de Saffré's clear voice. Then the drama was

ended? Her crime, the kisses in the large grey and pink bed, the wild

nights in the conservatory, all the accursed love that had consumed her

during months, had led to this mean, ignoble ending! Her husband knew

all and did not even beat her. And the silence around her--this silence

through which trailed the endless waltz--terrified her even more than

the sound of murder. She felt afraid of this peacefulness, afraid of

this soft-tinted, discreet dressing-room, full of the scent of love.

She perceived herself in the high glass-door of the wardrobe. She

approached, astonished to see herself, forgetting her husband,

forgetting Maxime, and altogether preoccupied by the strange woman

whom she beheld before her. Madness was rising to her brain. Her

yellow hair, caught up off the temples and the neck, seemed to her a

nudity--an obscenity. The wrinkle of her forehead, deepened to such

a degree that it set a dark bar above her eyes, the thin bluish scar

of a lash with a whip. Who had marked her like that? Her husband had

certainly not raised his hand. And her lips astonished her by their

pallor, her myops' eyes seemed dead to her. How old she looked! She

inclined her brow, and when she beheld herself in her tights, in her

slight gauze blouse, she gazed at herself with lowered eyelashes and

sudden blushes. Who had stripped her naked? What was she doing there,

bare-breasted, like a harlot who uncovers herself down to the belly?

She no longer knew. She looked at her thighs which the tights rounded,

at her hips, the supple lines of which she discerned under the gauze,

at her bust broadly displayed; and she was ashamed of herself, and

contempt for her flesh filled her with inflexible anger against those

who had left her thus, with simple circlets of gold round her ankles

and wrists to hide her skin.

Then trying, with the fixed idea of drowning intelligence, to remember

what she was doing there, quite naked in front of that glass, she

went back by a sudden leap to her childhood. She again saw herself,

as she had been when seven years old, in the solemn gloom of the

Béraud mansion. She remembered a day when Aunt Élisabeth had dressed

them--herself and Christine--in woollen dresses, with a little red

check pattern on a grey ground. It was Christmas-time. How pleased they

were with those two dresses exactly alike! Their aunt spoiled them,

and she carried matters so far as to give each of them a bracelet and

a necklace of coral. The sleeves were long, the dress-bodies rose up

to their chins, the jewellery displayed itself on the stuff, and this

seemed very pretty to them. Renée also remembered that her father

was there, and that he smiled with his sad air. That day, instead of

playing, her sister and herself had walked about the nursery like

grown-up persons for fear of soiling themselves. Then at the Convent

of the Visitation her schoolfellows had joked her about "her clown's

dress," which came down to her finger tips and rose up over her ears.

She had begun to cry during lessons; and when play-time came she

turned up her sleeves, and tucked in her neckband, so that she might

not be derided any longer. And the coral necklace and bracelet seemed

to her much prettier on the skin of her neck and arm. Was it on that

day that she had begun to strip herself?

Her life unrolled itself before her. She recalled her long

bewilderment, the hubbub of gold and flesh which had risen within her,

which had mounted first to her knees, then to her stomach, then to

her lips, and the flood of which she now felt sweeping over her head,

striking her skull, with swiftly repeated blows. It was like a bad sap;

it had wearied her limbs, set excrescences of shameful affection in her

heart, and made whims, fit for a sick person or an animal, sprout in

her brain. This sap had impregnated the soles of her feet while they

rested on her carriage rug and on other carpets too, on all the silk

and all the velvet over which she had walked since her marriage. The

footsteps of others must have left these seeds of poison, now yielding

fruit in her blood, and circulating in her veins. She well remembered

her childhood. She had merely been inquisitive when she was little.

Later on even, after that rape which had cast evil into her, she had

not wished for so much shame. She would certainly have become better

had she remained knitting beside Aunt Élisabeth. And while she gazed

fixedly into the looking-glass to read therein the peaceful future she

had missed, she could hear the regular tick tick of her aunt's needles.

But she only saw her own pink thighs, her pink hips, the strange woman

of pink silk whom she had before her, and whose skin of fine stuff, of

close texture, seemed made for the amours of puppets and dolls. She

had come to that--to be a big doll from whose torn bosom but a thread

of sound escaped. Then, at thought of the enormities of her life, the

blood of her father, that middle-class blood which tormented her during

hours of crisis, cried out within her and revolted. She who had always

trembled at the thought of hell, she ought to have lived in the depths

of the black severity of the Béraud mansion. Who was it then that had

stripped her naked?

And, in the bluish shade of the glass, she thought she could see the

figures of Saccard and Maxime rise up. Saccard, black and sneering,

with a hue of iron, and pincer-like laughter, standing on his skinny

legs. That man was a will. For ten years she had seen him at the

forge, amid the shivers of the reddened metal, with his flesh burnt,

breathless, but still striking, raising hammers twenty times too heavy

for his arms, at the risk of crushing himself. She understood him now;

he seemed to her to have been made taller by this superhuman effort,

this huge rascality, this fixed idea of an immense, immediate fortune.

She remembered him springing over obstacles, rolling in the mud, and

not taking the time to wipe himself, so bent was he upon arriving

early at the goal, not even tarrying to enjoy himself on the road,

but munching his gold pieces while he ran. Then Maxime's fair, pretty

head appeared behind his father's rough shoulders; he had his clear

harlot's smile, his empty strumpet's eyes which were never lowered,

his parting in the middle of his hair showing the whiteness of his

skull. He derided Saccard, he considered him vulgar to give himself

so much trouble to earn money, which he, Maxime, expended with such

adorable laziness. He was kept. His long soft hands testified to his

vices. His hairless body had the wearied attitude of a satisfied woman.

Not even a flash of curiosity as to sin shone in all his cowardly,

sluggish being, through which vice gently coursed like so much warm

water. He did not initiate, he underwent. And Renée, looking at the

two apparitions emerge from the slight shade of the mirror, retreated

a step, and saw that Saccard had thrown her like a stake, like an

investment, and that Maxime had chanced to be there to pick up this

louis fallen from the speculator's pocket. She had been an asset in her

husband's pocket-book; he had urged her on to the toilettes of a night,

to the lovers of a season; he had twisted her in the flames of his

forge, employing her, as though she had been a precious metal, to gild

the iron of his hands. Little by little the father had thus rendered

her mad enough, depraved enough for the kisses of the son. If Maxime

were Saccard's impoverished blood, she felt that she herself was the

product, the worm-eaten fruit of these two men, the pit of infamy which

they had dug together, and into which they both rolled.

She knew it now it was these men who had stripped her naked. Saccard

had unhooked her dress-body, and Maxime had loosened her skirt. Then,

between them, they had just torn off her chemise. At present she was

without a rag, merely with golden rings, like a slave. They had looked

at her a little while before, but they had not said to her, "You are

naked." The son had trembled like a coward, had shuddered at the

thought of carrying his crime to the end, had refused to follow her in

her passion. The father, instead of killing her, had robbed her; this

man punished people by emptying their pockets; a signature fell like a

sunray amid the brutality of his anger, and, by way of vengeance, he

carried the signature off. Then she had seen their shoulders retreat

into the darkness. No blood upon the carpet, not a cry, not a moan.

They were cowards. They had stripped her naked.

And she said to herself that on one sole occasion she had read the

future--on the day when, in sight of the murmuring shadows of the Parc

Monceaux, the thought that her husband would soil her, and bring her

one day to madness, had come and frightened her growing desires. Ah!

how her poor head suffered! how she realised now the fallacy of the

idea which had made her believe that she lived in a happy sphere of

divine enjoyment and impunity! She had lived in the land of shame, and

she was chastised by the abandonment of her whole body, by the death

of her agonizing being. She wept that she had not listened to the loud

voices of the trees.

Her nudity irritated her. She turned her head, she looked around

her. The dressing-room retained its musky heaviness, its warm

silence, whither still came the phrases of the waltz, like the last

expiring circles on a sheet of water. This low laughter of distant

voluptuousness passed over her with intolerable raillery. She stopped

up her ears, so as to hear it no longer. Then she beheld the luxury

in the room. She raised her eyes to the pink tent, even to the silver

crown, within which one perceived a Cupid preparing his arrows; she

dwelt on the furniture, on the marble slab of the toilet-table,

encumbered with pots and tools which she no longer recognised; she went

to the bath, still full of slumbering water; she pushed back with her

foot the stuffs trailing over the white satin of the arm-chairs, the

costume of the nymph Echo, the petticoats, the forgotten towels. And

from all these things voices of shame arose: the robe of the nymph Echo

spoke to her of the pastime she had shared because she had thought it

original to offer herself to Maxime in public; the bath exhaled the

scent of her body, the water in which she had dipped herself filled

the room with the feverishness of a sick woman; the table, with its

soaps and oils, the furniture, with its bed-like roundnesses, reminded

her brutally of her flesh, her amours, all the filth that she wished

to forget. She returned into the middle of the room, her face purple,

not knowing where to fly from this alcove perfume, this luxury which

bared itself with a harlot's immodesty, which displayed all this pink.

The room was naked like herself; the pink bath, the rosy skin of the

hangings, the pink marble of the two tables became animated, stretched

themselves, coiled themselves up, and surrounded her with such a

display of living voluptuousness that she closed her eyes, lowering her

forehead, overwhelmed amid the lace of the ceiling and the walls which

crushed her.

But in the blackness she again saw that flesh-tinted spot the

dressing-room, and she also beheld the grey softness of the bedroom,

the soft aurulent lustre of the little drawing-room, the crude

greenness of the conservatory, all the wealth that had been her

accomplice. It was there that her feet had become impregnated with the

evil sap. She would not have slept with Maxime on a pallet in the depth

of a garret. It would have been too ignoble! The silk around her had

made her crime coquettish. And she dreamt of tearing down this lace,

of spitting upon this silk, of breaking her large bed to pieces with

kicks, of dragging her luxury into some gutter, whence it would emerge

worn-out and dirtied like herself.

When she re-opened her eyes she approached the mirror, looked at

herself again, and examined herself closely. She was done for. She

saw herself dead. Her whole face told her that the cerebral cracking

was being completed. Maxime, that last perversion of her senses, had

finished his work, exhausted her flesh, and unhinged her intelligence.

She had no more joys to taste, no hope of an awakening. At this thought

a savage rage was rekindled within her, and in a last crisis of desire

she dreamt of retaking possession of her prey, of agonizing in Maxime's

arms, and carrying him off with her. Louise could not marry him; Louise

knew very well that he did not belong to her, since she had seen them

kissing each other on the lips. Then she threw a fur mantle over her

shoulders, so as not to pass naked through the ball, and she went

downstairs.

In the little drawing-room she came face to face with Madame Sidonie.

The latter, in view of enjoying the drama, had again stationed herself

on the steps of the conservatory. But she no longer knew what to think

when Saccard reappeared with Maxime, and brutally replied to her

whispered questions that she was dreaming, that there was "nothing

whatever." Then she scented the truth. Her yellow face grew pale, she

considered this really too strong. And she softly went and placed her

ear against the staircase door, hoping that she would be able to hear

Renée crying upstairs. When the young woman opened the door, it almost

smacked her sister-in-law in the face.

"You are playing the spy on me!" Renée angrily said.

But Madame Sidonie replied with fine disdain:

"Do I occupy myself with your filth?"

And catching up her sorceress's dress, and retiring with a majestic

look:

"It isn't my fault, little one, if accidents befall you. But I have

no spite, do you hear? And understand that you would have found, and

would still find, a second mother in me. I shall expect you at my place

whenever you please."

Renée did not listen to her. She entered the large drawing-room, and

passed through a very complicated figure of the cotillon without even

remarking the surprise which her fur mantle occasioned. In the middle

of the room there were groups of ladies and gentlemen who mingled

waving bandrols, and Monsieur de Saffré's fluty voice called out:

"Come, ladies, 'the Mexican War.' The ladies who figure the bushes must

spread their skirts out around them and remain on the ground--Now, the

gentlemen must turn round the bushes--Then when I clap my hands each of

them must waltz with his bush."

He clapped his hands. The brass instruments resounded, the waltz once

more sent the couples revolving round the room. The figure had not been

very successful. Two ladies had remained on the carpet entangled in

their dresses. Madame Daste declared that the only thing that amused

her in the "Mexican War," was making a "cheese" of her dress, as she

had done at school.

Renée on reaching the hall found Louise and her father, whom Saccard

and Maxime were accompanying. Baron Gouraud had left. Madame Sidonie

withdrew with Mignon and Charrier, while Monsieur Hupel de la Noue

escorted Madame Michelin, whom her husband followed discreetly. The

prefect had spent the rest of the evening courting the pretty brunette.

He had just persuaded her to spend a month of the fine weather in the

chief town of his department where "some really curious antiquities

were to be seen."

Louise, who was nibbling on the sly the hardbake which she had in her

pocket, was seized with a fit of coughing at the moment of leaving the

house.

"Cover yourself up well," said her father.

And Maxime hastened to tighten the strings of the hood of her

opera-cloak. She raised her chin and let herself be swaddled. But

when Madame Saccard appeared, Monsieur de Mareuil retraced his steps

and bid her good-bye. For a moment they all remained there together

talking. Renée, wishing to explain her pallor and her shudders, said

that she had felt cold, and had gone upstairs to throw the fur over her

shoulders. And she watched for the moment when she might speak in a low

voice to Louise, who was looking at her with inquisitive tranquillity.

While the gentlemen again shook hands she leant forward and murmured:

"You won't marry him, will you? It isn't possible. You know very well--"

But the child interrupted her, rising on tip-toe and speaking in her

ear:

"Oh! be easy, I shall take him off--It is of no consequence since we

are going to Italy."

And she smiled with the vague smile of a vicious sphinx. Renée remained

stammering. She did not understand, she fancied that the hunchback was

deriding her. Then when the Mareuils had gone off, repeating several

times: "Till Sunday!" she looked at her husband and at Maxime with her

frightened eyes, and on beholding them, with quiet flesh and satisfied

attitudes, she hid her face in her hands, fled, and sought a refuge in

the depths of the conservatory.

The pathways were deserted. The large leaves were asleep, and on the

heavy sheet of water of the basin two budding Nymphæa slowly unfolded.

Renée would have liked to cry; but the damp warmth, the strong perfume

which she recognised, caught her at the throat and strangled her

despair. She looked at her feet, at the edge of the basin, at the spot

of yellow sand where she had stretched the bearskin the winter before.

And when she raised her eyes she again saw between the two open doors a

figure of the cotillon being danced right away in the background.

There was a deafening noise, a confused mass in which she at first

only distinguished flying skirts and black legs, footing and turning.

Monsieur de Saffré's voice cried out: "Change your ladies! change your

ladies!" And the couples passed by amid a fine yellow dust; each

gentleman, after three or four turns in the waltz, threw his partner

into the arms of his neighbour, who, in turn, threw him his. Baroness

de Meinhold, in her costume as the Emerald, fell from the hands of

the Count de Chibray into the hands of Monsieur Simpson; he caught

her as he could by a shoulder, while the tip of his gloves glided

under her dress body. Countess Vanska, very red and making her coral

drops jingle, went with a bound from the chest of Monsieur de Saffré

on to the chest of the Duke de Rozan, whom she entwined and compelled

to pirouette for five turns, when she hung herself on the hips of

Monsieur Simpson who had just thrown the Emerald to the leader of the

cotillon. And Madame Teissière, Madame Daste, Madame de Lauwerens,

shining like large living jewels, with the fair pallor of the Topaz,

the soft blue of the Turquoise, the fiery blue of the Sapphire,

abandoned themselves for a minute, vaulted under the extended wrist of

a waltzer, then started off again, came frontwards or backwards into a

fresh embrace, visiting one after the other all the masculine embraces

of the drawing-room. However Madame d'Espanet had, in full view of the

orchestra, succeeded in catching hold of Madame Haffner as she passed

by, and now waltzed with her, refusing to let go her hold. Gold and

Silver danced lovingly together.

Renée then understood this whirling of skirts, this stamping of legs.

Standing on a lower surface she could see the fury of the feet, the

patent-leather boots and white ankles mingling pell-mell. At intervals

it seemed to her as if a gust of wind were about to blow off the

dresses. The bare shoulders, the bare arms, the bare heads which flew

past and revolved, now seized hold of, now thrown off, and again caught

at the end of the gallery where the waltz of the orchestra grew madder,

where the red hangings seemed thrown into a transport amid the final

fever of the ball, appeared to her like the tumultuous image of her

own life, of her nudities and abandonments. And she experienced such a

pang, at the thought that Maxime, to take the hunchback in his arms,

had just cast her there, on the spot where they had loved each other,

that she dreamt of plucking a stalk of the Tanghinia which grazed

her cheek, and of chewing it till the sap was exhausted. But she was

cowardly, and she remained in front of the plant shivering under the

fur which her hands drew over her with a tight clutch, and a great

gesture of terrified shame.

CHAPTER VII.

Three months later, on one of those gloomy spring mornings which bring

back into Paris the dimness and dirty dampness of winter, Aristide

Saccard alighted from his carriage at the Place du Château-d'Eau, and

turned with four other gentlemen into the gorge of demolitions opened

by the future Boulevard du Prince-Eugène. The party formed a committee

of inquiry which the expropriation jury had despatched to the spot to

estimate the value of certain property, the owners of which had not

come to an amicable arrangement with the city of Paris.

Saccard was renewing his Rue de la Pépinière stroke of fortune. So

that his wife's name might completely disappear from the affair, he

had at first devised a mock sale of the ground and the music-hall.

Larsonneau relinquished the whole to a supposed creditor. The deed of

sale enunciated the colossal figure of three millions of francs. The

sum was so exorbitant, that when the expropriation agent, in the name

of the imaginary owner, claimed the amount of the purchase money as

an indemnity, the commission of the Hôtel-de-Ville would not grant

more than two millions five hundred thousand francs, despite the

underhand endeavours of Monsieur Michelin, and the speeches of Monsieur

Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud. Saccard had expected this repulse; he

refused the offer, and let the case go before the expropriation jury,

of which he happened to be a member, together with Monsieur de Mareuil,

by a chance he had no doubt assisted. And it was thus that, with

four of his colleagues, he found himself deputed to make an inquiry

respecting his own ground.

Monsieur de Mareuil accompanied him. Of the three remaining jurors

one was a doctor, who smoked a cigar without caring the least in the

world for the stones and mortar he climbed over, and the others, two

commercial men, one of whom, a manufacturer of surgical instruments,

had once turned a grindstone in the streets.

The path which the gentlemen took was in a frightful state. It had

rained all night. The soaked ground was becoming a river of mud between

the fallen houses, beside this road, traced out over loose soil,

wherein the transport carts sank up to the naves of their wheels.

On either side fragments of the walls, shattered with pick-axes,

remained standing; lofty eviscerated buildings, displaying their

pallid entrails, opened in mid-air their empty staircase frames, their

suspended gaping rooms, which appeared like the broken drawers of some

great ugly piece of furniture. Nothing could look more lamentable

than the wall-papers of these rooms, blue or yellow squares, falling

in tatters, and indicating, at the height of a fifth or sixth floor,

just under the roofs, the place occupied by some poor little garrets,

narrow holes, in which perhaps a man's whole life had been confined.

The ribbons of the chimney flues rose side by side on the bare walls,

lugubriously black and with abrupt bends. A forgotten weathercock

grated at the edge of a roof, whilst some half-detached water-spouts

hung down like rags. And the gap still deepened amid these ruins,

like a breach opened by cannon; under the grey sky, amid the sinister

pallidity of the falling plaster dust, the roadway, barely marked out,

covered with refuse, with piles of earth and deep pools of water,

stretched away, edged with the black marks of chimney flues, as with a

mourning border.

[Illustration: THE COMMISSIONERS FOR THE PARIS IMPROVEMENTS INSPECTING

THE DEMOLITIONS.]

The gentlemen, with their well-blackened boots, their frock-coats, and

their tall silk hats, set a singular note in this muddy landscape,

of a dirty yellow tint, and across which there only passed some pale

workmen, some horses splashed to the chine, and some carts, the

woodwork of which disappeared beneath a coat of dust. The jurors

followed each other in Indian file, jumping from stone to stone,

avoiding the pools of flowing filth, at times sinking in up to their

heels, and then shaking their feet, and swearing. Saccard had talked

about taking the Rue de Charonne, by which they would have avoided

this promenade over broken ground, but they unfortunately had several

bits of property to visit on the long line of the Boulevard, and,

impelled by curiosity, they had decided to pass right through the

works. Besides, the sight greatly interested them. At times they

stopped, balancing themselves on some bit of plaster which had fallen

into a rut, raising their noses, and calling each other to point out

some perforated floor, some chimney-pot which had remained in the air,

some joist which had fallen on to a neighbouring roof. This bit of

a destroyed city, seen on leaving the Rue du Temple, seemed altogether

funny to them.

"It is really curious," said Monsieur de Mareuil. "Look there, Saccard,

look at that kitchen up there. An old frying-pan has remained hanging

over the stove. I can distinguish it perfectly."

However, the doctor, with his cigar between his teeth, had set himself

in front of a demolished house, of which there only remained the rooms

of the ground floor, filled with the remnants of the other storeys. A

single fragment of wall rose up above the pile of materials; and to

overthrow it at one effort, it had been girt round with a rope, at

which several workmen were tugging.

"They won't manage it," muttered the doctor. "They are pulling too much

to the left."

The four other jurors had retraced their steps to see the wall tumble.

And all five of them, with their eyes stretched out, and with bated

breath, waited for the fall with a quiver of delight. The workmen,

giving way, and then suddenly stiffening themselves, cried out, "Oh!

heave oh!"

"They won't manage it," repeated the doctor.

Then after a few seconds of anxiety:

"It is moving, it is moving," joyfully cried one of the commercial men.

And when the wall gave way at last, and fell with a frightful crash,

raising a cloud of plaster, the gentlemen looked at each other with

smiles. They were delighted. Their frock-coats became covered with a

fine dust, which whitened their arms and shoulders.

Resuming their prudent march amid the puddles, they now began to

talk about the workmen. There were not many good ones. They were all

idle fellows, prodigals, and withal most obstinate, only dreaming of

their masters' ruin. Monsieur de Mareuil, who for a moment had been

looking with a shudder at two poor devils perched on the corner of a

roof demolishing a wall with their pick-axes, expressed, however, the

opinion that, all the same, these men really possessed great courage.

The other jurors again paused and raised their eyes to the workmen who

balanced themselves, leaning and striking with all their strength;

they pushed the stones down with their feet, and quietly looked at

them shattering below. If the pick-axes had missed striking, the mere

impulsion of the men's arms would have precipitated them into space.

"Bah! it's habit," said the doctor, setting his cigar in his mouth

again. "They are brutes!"

The jurors had now reached one of the houses which they had to visit.

They finished their work in a quarter of an hour, and then resumed

their walk. By degrees they no longer felt so much disgust for the mud;

they walked in the middle of the pools, abandoning the hope of keeping

their boots clean. When they had passed the Rue Ménilmontant one of

the commercial men, the ex-knife-grinder, became nervous. He examined

the ruins about him, and no longer recognised the neighbourhood. He

said that he had lived in that part, on his arrival in Paris more than

thirty years previously, and that he should be very pleased to find the

house again. He continued searching with his eyes, when suddenly the

sight of a house which the workmen's picks had already cut in twain,

made him stop short in the middle of the road. He studied the door and

the windows. Then, pointing upward with his finger to a corner of the

partially demolished building:

"There it is," he cried; "I recognise it!"

"What, pray?" asked the doctor.

"My room, of course! That's it!"

It was a little room, situated on the fifth floor, and it must have

formerly overlooked a courtyard. A breach in the wall showed it, quite

bare, already demolished on one side, with a broad torn band of its

wall paper, of a large yellow flowery pattern, trembling in the wind.

On the left hand, one could still see the recess of a cupboard, lined

with blue paper, and beside it was an aperture for a stove-pipe, with a

bit of piping in it.

The ex-workman was seized with emotion:

"I spent five years in there," muttered he. "My means were small in

those times, but no matter, I was young. You see the cupboard; it was

there that I put by three hundred francs, copper by copper. And the

hole for the stove-pipe, I can still remember the day when I made it.

The room had no fire-place, and it was bitter cold, all the more so as

we were not often two together."

"Come, come," interrupted the doctor, joking, "we don't ask you for

your secrets. You played your games like every one else."

"That's true," naively resumed the worthy man. "I still remember an

ironing girl who lived over the way. You see the bed was over there,

on the right hand side near the window. Ah! my poor room, how they've

knocked it about."

He was really very sad.

"Come," said Saccard, "no harm's done by throwing those old cabins

down. Handsome houses in freestone will be built in place of them.

Would you still live in such a den while you might very well lodge

yourself on the new Boulevard?"

"That's true," again replied the manufacturer, who seemed quite

consoled.

The commission of inquiry halted again at the two other houses. The

doctor remained at the door smoking and looking at the sky. When

they reached the Rue des Amandiers the houses became fewer; they now

passed through large inclosures and over uncultivated land, where some

half fallen buildings straggled. Saccard seemed delighted with this

promenade through ruins. He had just remembered the dinner he had once

shared with his first wife on the heights of Montmartre, and he well

recollected having indicated with his hand the cut across Paris from

the Place du Château-d'Eau to the Barrière du Trône. The realisation

of this far distant prediction delighted him. He followed the cut,

with the secret joys of authorship, as if he himself had with his iron

fingers struck the first blows with a pickaxe. And he jumped over the

puddles, reflecting that three millions awaited him under building

materials, at the end of this river of greasy filth.

Meanwhile the gentlemen fancied themselves in the country. The road

passed through some gardens, the walls of which had been felled. There

were large clumps of budding lilac, with foliage of a very delicate

light green. Each of these gardens, looking like a retreat hung with

the leaves of the shrubs, displayed a narrow basin or a miniature

cascade, with bits of wall on which to deceive the eye, arbours, in

perspective and bluish landscape backgrounds had been painted. The

buildings, scattered and discreetly hidden, resembled Italian pavilions

and Grecian temples, and moss was wearing away the feet of the plaster

columns, whilst weeds had loosened the mortar of the pediments.

"Those are _petites maisons_," said the doctor, with a wink.

But as he saw that the gentlemen did not understand what he meant, he

explained that under Louis XV. the nobility had retreats of this kind

for their pleasure parties. It was then the fashion. And he added:

"They were called _petites maisons_ (little houses). This

neighbourhood was full of them. Some stiff things took place in them,

and no mistake!"

The commission of inquiry had become very attentive. The two commercial

men's eyes were shining, and they smiled and looked with great interest

at these gardens and pavilions, on which they had not bestowed a glance

prior to their colleague's explanations. A grotto detained them for

a long time. But when the doctor, seeing a house already attacked by

the pick, said that he recognised it as the Count de Savigny's _petite

maison_, well known on account of that nobleman's orgies, the whole

commission left the Boulevard to go and visit the ruins. They climbed

on to the fallen materials, entered the ground floor rooms by the

windows, and as the workmen were away at their mid-day meal, they were

able to linger there quite at their ease. They indeed remained there

for a good half hour, examining the rosettes of the ceilings, the

paintings above the doors, the strained mouldings of the plaster grown

yellow with age. The doctor reconstructed the building.

"Do you see," said he, "this room must be the banqueting hall. There

was certainly an immense divan in that recess of the wall. And, indeed,

I'm sure that a looking-glass surmounted the divan. See, there are the

holdfasts of the glass. Oh! those fellows were scamps who knew deucedly

well how to enjoy themselves!"

The jurors would never have left these old stones which tickled their

curiosity, if Aristide Saccard, growing impatient, had not said to

them, laughing:

"You may look as much as you like, the ladies are no longer here. Let's

get to our business."

Before leaving, however, the doctor climbed on to a mantelshelf, to

delicately detach, with one blow of a pick, a little painted head of

Cupid, which he slipped into the pocket of his frock-coat.

They at length reached the end of their journey. The land which had

formerly belonged to Madame Aubertot was very vast; the music-hall

and the garden occupied barely more than half of the surface; a few

unimportant houses were scattered about the rest of it. The new

Boulevard cut obliquely across this large parallelogram, and this

circumstance had quieted one of Saccard's fears; he had long imagined

that only a corner of the music-hall would be removed by the new

thoroughfare. Larsonneau therefore had received orders to open his

mouth, as the bordering plots ought to at least quintuple in value. He

was already threatening the city of Paris to avail himself of a recent

decree authorising landowners to deliver up only the ground necessary

for works of public utility.

It was the expropriation agent who received the jurors. He took them

over the garden, made them visit the music-hall and showed them a

huge pile of papers. But the two commercial men had gone down again

accompanied by the doctor, whom they were still questioning about Count

de Savigny's _petite maison_, of which their minds were full. They

listened to him with gaping mouths, standing all three beside a _jeu

de tonneau_. And he talked to them about La Pompadour, and related the

amours of Louis XV., while Monsieur de Mareuil and Saccard continued

the inquiry alone.

"It's all finished," said the latter on returning into the garden. "If

you will allow me, gentlemen, I will myself draw up the report."

The surgical-instrument maker did not even hear. He was deep in the

Regency.

"What funny times, all the same!" he muttered.

Then they found a cab in the Rue de Charonne and they went off, muddy

to the knees, but as satisfied with their promenade as with a pleasure

trip in the country. In the cab the conversation changed--they talked

politics, they said that the Emperor did great things. The like of

what they had just seen had never been witnessed before. This long,

perfectly straight street would be superb when the houses were erected.

It was Saccard who drew up the report and the jury granted the three

millions. The speculator was at the end of his tether, he could not

have waited a month longer. This money saved him from ruin, and even a

little from the assize court. He gave five hundred thousand francs on

the million which he owed to his upholsterer and his contractor for the

mansion in the Parc Monceaux. He stopped up other holes, rushed into

new companies, and deafened Paris with the noise of the real crowns

which he flung by the shovelful on to the shelves of his iron safe.

The golden river had a source at last. But this was not yet a solid,

entrenched fortune flowing with a regular, continuous gush. Saccard,

saved from a crisis, thought himself pitiful with the crumbs of his

three millions, and naively said that he was still too poor, and could

not stop there. And soon the ground again cracked beneath his feet.

Larsonneau had behaved so admirably in the Charonne affair that

Saccard, after a slight hesitation, carried honesty to the point of

giving him his ten per cent, and his bonus of thirty thousand francs.

The expropriation agent thereupon opened a banking-house. When his

accomplice accused him in a snappish tone of being richer than himself,

the coxcomb with yellow gloves replied, laughing:

"You see, dear master, you are very clever in making money rain down,

but you don't know how to pick it up."

Madame Sidonie profited by her brother's stroke of fortune to borrow

ten thousand francs from him, with which she went to spend a couple

of months in England. She returned without a copper, and it was never

known what had become of the ten thousand francs.

"Well, it costs," she replied when she was questioned. "I ransacked all

the libraries. I had three secretaries to assist me in my researches."

And when she was asked if she at length had any positive information

about her three milliards, she at first smiled with a mysterious air,

and then ended by muttering:

"You are all incredulous. I have found nothing, but no matter. You will

see, you will see some day."

She had not, however, lost all the time she spent in England. Her

brother the minister profited by her journey to entrust her with a

delicate commission. When she returned she obtained large orders from

the ministry. It was a fresh incarnation. She made contracts with the

government, and charged herself with supplying it every imaginable

thing. She sold it provisions and arms for the troops, furniture for

the prefectures and public departments, fire wood for the offices and

the museums. The money she made did not induce her to set aside her

eternal black dresses, and she retained her yellow, doleful face.

Saccard then reflected that it was really she whom he had seen once

long ago furtively leaving their brother Eugène's house. She must at

all times have kept up a secret connection with him, for matters with

which no one was acquainted.

Renée was agonizing amid these interests, these ardent thirsts which

could not satisfy themselves. Aunt Élisabeth was dead; Christine had

married and left the Béraud mansion, where her father alone remained

erect in the gloomy shade of the large rooms. Renée exhausted what

she inherited from her aunt in one season. She gambled now. She had

found a drawing-room where ladies sat at table till three o'clock

in the morning, losing hundreds of thousands of francs in a night.

She tried to drink, but she could not, she experienced invincible

qualms of disgust. Since she had found herself alone again, abandoned

to the worldly flood which carried her off, she surrendered herself

all the more, not knowing how to kill time. She ended by tasting of

everything. And nothing touched her amid the immense boredom which was

crushing her. She grew older, blue circles appeared round her eyes, her

nose became thinner, her pouting lips parted in sudden and causeless

laughter. It was the end of a woman.

When Maxime had married Louise, and the young folks had started for

Italy, she no longer troubled herself about her lover; she even seemed

to forget him completely. And when Maxime returned alone six months

later, having buried the "hunchback" in the cemetery of a little

town in Lombardy, it was hatred that she displayed towards him. She

remembered Phèdre, she no doubt recollected that poisoned love to which

she had heard Ristori lend her sobs. Then, so as never more to meet the

young fellow in her home, to dig an abyss of shame between the father

and the son for ever, she compelled her husband to take cognisance of

the incest, she told him that on the day when he had surprised her

with Maxime, the latter, who had long pursued her, was seeking to

assault her. Saccard was horribly worried by the insistence she evinced

in wishing to open his eyes. He was obliged to quarrel with his son

and cease to see him. The young widower, rich with his wife's dowry,

went to live a bachelor's life in a little house of the Avenue de

l'Impératrice. He had renounced the Council of State, and kept a racing

stable. Renée derived one of her last satisfactions from this rupture.

She revenged herself, she flung the infamy which these two men had set

on her back in their own faces, and she said to herself that now she

would never more see them making game of her, arm-in-arm, like a couple

of comrades.

Amid the crumbling of Renée's affections there came a moment when she

had no one left to love her but her maid. She had by degrees been

taken with a maternal affection for Céleste. Perhaps this girl, who

was all that remained near her of Maxime's love, reminded her of the

hours of enjoyment forever dead. Perhaps Renée was simply touched by

the fidelity of this servant, of this brave heart the quiet solicitude

of which nothing seemed to shake. From the depth of her remorse she

thanked Céleste for having witnessed her shame without leaving her in

disgust; and she pictured all kinds of abnegation, a whole life of

renunciation to arrive at understanding the calmness of the chambermaid

in the presence of incest, her icy hands, her respectful, quiet

attentions. And the girl's devotion made Renée all the happier as she

knew her to be honest and economical, without a lover, without a vice.

At times in her sad moments she would say to her:

"Ah! my girl, it is you who will close my eyes."

Céleste never answered, but she gave a singular smile. One morning she

quietly informed her mistress that she was going to leave, that she

meant to return into the country. Renée remained trembling all over on

hearing this, as if some great misfortune had befallen her. She cried

out, and plied Céleste with questions. Why would she leave her when

they got on so well together? And she offered to double her wages.

But the maid, in answer to all her kind words, made a gesture meaning

no, in a quiet, obstinate manner.

"You see, madame," she ended by replying, "you might offer me all the

gold of Peru, but I could not remain a week longer. Ah! you don't know

me--I've been with you for eight years, haven't I? Well, on the very

first day I said to myself: 'As soon as I have collected five thousand

francs together, I will return to my village; I will buy Lagache's

house, and I shall live very happily!' It's a promise I made to myself,

you understand. And the five thousand francs were completed yesterday,

when you paid me my wages."

Renée felt a chill at her heart. She saw Céleste passing behind her and

Maxime while they were kissing each other, and she saw her with her

indifference, in a perfect state of abstraction, dreaming of her five

thousand francs. However, she still tried to retain her, frightened by

the void in which she would have to live, longing, despite everything,

to keep near her this obstinate animal whom she had thought devoted,

and who was merely egotistical. The girl smiled, still shaking her head

and muttering:

"No, no, it isn't possible. Even if it were my mother I should refuse.

I shall buy two cows. I shall perhaps start a little haberdasher's

business. It is very pretty down our way. Oh! for the matter of that,

I am willing you should come and see me. It is near Caen. I will leave

you the address."

Renée then no longer insisted. She shed hot tears when she was alone.

On the morrow, with a sick person's whimsicality, she decided to

accompany Céleste to the Western Railway station, in her own brougham.

She gave her one of her travelling rugs and made her a present in

money, and showed her the attentions of a mother whose daughter is

about to start upon some long difficult journey. In the brougham she

looked at her with moist eyes. Céleste chatted and said how pleased she

was to go away. Then emboldened, she spoke out and gave some advice to

her mistress.

"I shouldn't have understood life like you, madame. I often said to

myself when I found you with Monsieur Maxime: 'Is it possible one can

be so foolish for men!' It always ends badly--Ah! for my part I always

mistrusted them!"

She laughed and threw herself back in the corner of the brougham:

"My money would have danced!" she continued, "and now-a-days I should

be destroying my eyes with crying. So whenever I saw a man I took up

a broomstick--I never dared to tell you all that. Besides, it didn't

concern me. You were free to do as you liked, and I only had to earn my

money honestly."

At the railway station Renée insisted upon paying her fare and took her

a first class ticket. As they had arrived before the time, she detained

her, pressing her hands and repeating:

"And take good care of yourself, don't neglect your health, my good

Céleste."

The latter allowed herself to be caressed. She stood looking happy,

with a fresh smiling face, before her mistress's tearful eyes. Renée

again spoke of the past, and the maid abruptly exclaimed:

"I was forgetting: I didn't tell you the story of Baptiste, master's

valet. Probably no one has liked to tell you."

The young woman owned that she indeed knew nothing.

"Well, you remember his grand dignified airs, his disdainful glances,

you yourself spoke to me about them. It was all so much acting. He

didn't care for women, he never came down to the servants' hall when

we were there; I can repeat it now, he even pretended that it was

disgusting in the drawing-room, on account of all the low-neck dresses.

I well believe that he didn't care for women!"

And she leant towards Renée's ear, and made her blush, though she

herself retained all her honest placidity.

"When the new stable boy," she continued, "told everything to master,

master preferred to dismiss Baptiste rather than send him to jail. It

seems that these disgusting things had been going on for years in the

stables. And to think that the big scamp pretended he was fond of

horses! It was the grooms that he liked!"

The bell interrupted her. She hastily took up the eight or ten packages

which she had not wished to part with. She let herself be kissed; and

then she went off, without looking round.

Renée remained in the station until the engine whistled. And when the

train had gone off, she was overcome with despair, she no longer knew

what to do; her days seemed to stretch before her as empty as the vast

waiting hall where she had been left alone. She again entered her

brougham and told the coachman to drive her home. But on the way she

changed her mind, she was afraid of her room, of the boredom awaiting

her there. She no longer felt the necessary courage to return home and

change her dress for her usual drive round the lake. She felt a longing

for sunlight, a longing to mingle with the crowd.

She ordered the coachman to drive to the Bois.

It was four o'clock. The Bois was awakening from the drowsiness of a

warm afternoon. Clouds of dust flew along the Avenue de l'Impératrice,

and one could see, spread out afar, the expanse of verdure which the

slopes of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes, crowned by the grey walls of Mont

Valérien, limited. High above the horizon the sun shed its rays,

filling the recesses of the foliage with golden dust, lighting up

the tall branches, and changing the ocean of leaves into an ocean of

light. Past the fortifications, in the avenue of the Bois leading to

the lake, the ground had just been watered; and the vehicles rolled

over the brown soil as over a carpet, amid a rising freshness and an

odour of damp earth. Mingled with the low bushes on either side, the

little trees of the copses reared their crowd of young trunks, growing

indistinct in the greenish dimness which flashes of light pierced

here and there with yellow glades; and, by degrees, as one approached

the lake, the chairs on the side-walks became more numerous, families

sat, gazing with quiet silent faces at the interminable procession of

wheels. Then, on reaching the open space in front of the lake, there

was a dazzlement, the oblique sun transformed the round expanse of

water into a huge mirror of polished silver reflecting the brilliant

disk of the planet. All eyes blinked, one could only distinguish the

dark form of the pleasure boat on the left hand side near the bank.

The parasols in the vehicles were inclined with a gentle and uniform

movement towards this splendour, and only rose erect again on reaching

the roadway skirting the sheet of water, which, from the summit of

the bank, now assumed a metallic blackness, streaked with golden

burnishings. On the right hand side the clumps of fir trees lined the

road with their colonnades of straight slender stems, the soft violet

tinge of which was reddened by the flames of the sky; on the left the

lawns, bathed in light and similar to fields of emeralds, stretched

away as far as the distant lace-like ironwork of the gate of La Muette.

And on approaching the cascade, while the dimness of the copses again

presented itself on one side, the islands at the end of the lake rose

up into the blue air, with the sunshine playing over their banks, and

bold shadows darting from their pines, at the feet of which the chalet

looked like some child's plaything lost in a corner of a virgin forest.

The whole wood laughed and quivered in the sunshine.

The weather was so magnificent that Renée felt ashamed of her closed

brougham and her costume of flea-tinted silk. She drew back a little,

and, with the windows open, looked at this flow of light stretching

over the water and the verdure. At the bends of the avenues she

perceived the line of wheels revolving like golden stars amid a long

train of blinding gleams. The varnished panels, the flashing steel

and brass mountings, the bright colours of the dresses passed on, at

the even trot of the horses, and set against the background of the

wood a long moving bar, a ray fallen from the sky, stretching out and

following the bends of the roadway. And in this ray, as the young woman

blinked her eyes, she saw every now and then the light chignon of a

woman, the black back of a footman, the white mane of a horse, stand

out. The arched parasols of watered silk shone like moons of metal.

Then, in presence of this broad daylight, this expanse of sunshine,

Renée thought of the fine dust of twilight which she had seen one

evening falling on the tawny foliage. Maxime had been with her. It was

at the period when her desires for that child were dawning in her.

And she again saw the lawns dampened by the evening air, the darkened

underwood, the deserted pathways. The line of vehicles had gone by

with a sad sound past the unoccupied chairs, whilst now the rumble of

the wheels, the trot of the horses, resounded with the joyfulness of a

flourish of trumpets. Then the recollection of all her drives in the

Bois returned to her. She had lived there. Maxime had grown up there,

at her side, on the cushion of her carriage. It had been their garden.

Rain had surprised them there, sunshine had brought them back, the

fall of night had not always driven them away. They had been there in

every kind of weather, they had there tasted the worries and the joy of

their life. Amid the emptiness of her being, the melancholy imparted by

Celeste's departure, these memories gave Renée bitter joy. Her heart

said: "Never again! never again!" and she was like frozen when she

evoked the image of the winter landscape, the congealed, dull-tinted

lake on which they had skated; the sky then was of a sooty colour, the

snow had set white lace on the trees, the wind had thrown fine sand in

their eyes and on their lips.

However, on the left hand side, on the side reserved to equestrians,

she had already recognised the Duke de Rozan, Monsieur de Mussy,

and Monsieur de Saffré. Larsonneau had killed the duke's mother by

presenting her the hundred and fifty thousand francs' worth of bills

accepted by her son, and the duke was devouring his second half million

with Blanche Müller, after leaving the first five hundred thousand

francs in the hands of Laure d'Aurigny. Monsieur de Mussy, who had left

the embassy in England for the embassy in Italy, had become gallant

again; and he led cotillons with newly acquired gracefulness. As for

Monsieur de Saffré, he remained the most amiable sceptic and fast-liver

in the world. Renée saw him urging his horse towards the carriage of

the Countess Vanska, with whom he was said to be madly in love since

the evening when he had seen her as Coral at the Saccards'.

All the ladies were there, moreover; the Duchess de Sternich, in her

sempiternal eight-springed carriage; Madame de Lauwerens in a landau,

with the Baroness de Meinhold and little Madame Daste seated in front

of her; Madame de Teissière and Madame de Guende in a victoria. Amid

these ladies, Sylvia and Laure d'Aurigny displayed themselves on the

cushions of a magnificent calash. Madame Michelin even passed by in

the depths of a brougham; the pretty brunette had been to visit the

chief town of Monsieur Hupel de la Noue's department; and on her return

she had made her appearance in the Bois in this brougham, to which

she hoped to soon add an open carriage. Renée also perceived the

Marchioness d'Espanet and Madame Haffner, the inseparables hidden under

their parasols, stretched out side by side, laughing tenderly, and

gazing into each other's eyes.

Then the gentlemen passed by: Monsieur de Chibray driving a mail-coach;

Monsieur Simpson in a dog-cart; Messieurs Mignon and Charrier,

more eager than ever for work, despite their dream of approaching

retirement, in a brougham which they left at the corner of an avenue,

to go a bit of the way on foot; Monsieur de Mareuil, still in mourning

for his daughter, seeking bows for his first interruption launched

forth the day before at the Corps Législatif, and airing his political

importance in the carriage of Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who had once

more saved the Crédit Viticole, after placing it within two fingers'

length of ruin, and whom the Senate made thinner and more influential

than ever.

And, to close the procession, like a final majesty, Baron Gouraud

showed his inert heaviness in the sunlight, on the pillows with which

his carriage was provided. Renée felt surprised and disgusted on

recognising Baptiste seated, with a white face and solemn air, beside

the coachman. The tall flunky had entered the baron's service.

The copses continued to stretch away, the water of the lake grew

iridescent under the sunrays now become more oblique, the line of

carriages spread out its dancing gleams. And the young woman, herself

seized and carried away by this enjoyment, vaguely divined all the

appetites rolling, along in the midst of the sunlight. She did not

feel indignant with these sharers of the spoil. But she hated them for

their joy, for this triumphal march, which showed them to her full in

the golden dust from the sky. They were superb and smiling; the women

displayed themselves white and plump, the men had the rapid glances,

the delighted deportment of favoured lovers. And she, in the depth of

her empty heart, found nothing more than lassitude and covert envy. Was

she better than the others, then, that she thus bent under the weight

of pleasure? or was it the others who were praiseworthy for having

stronger loins than her own. She did not know, she was just longing for

new desires with which to begin life anew, when, on turning her head,

she perceived beside her, on the footway bordering the underwood, a

sight which rent her heart like a supreme blow.

Saccard and Maxime were walking along slowly, arm-in-arm. The father

must have paid a visit to the son, and they had both come down from the

Avenue de l'Impératrice to the lake chatting.

"Listen to me," repeated Saccard, "you are a simpleton. When a man

has money like you have, he doesn't let it slumber at the bottom of

a drawer. There is a hundred per cent to be gained in the affair I

mention. It is a safe investment. You know very well that I wouldn't

let you in!"

However, the young fellow seemed bored by his father's insistence. He

smiled with his pretty air, and looked at the carriages.

"Do you see that little woman over there, the one in mauve," he

suddenly said. "She's a washerwoman, whom that beast De Mussy has

brought out."

They looked at the woman in mauve; after which Saccard drew a cigar

from his pocket, and addressing himself to Maxime who was smoking:

"Give me a light," he said.

Then they stopped for a moment in front of each other, drawing their

faces near together. When the cigar was lighted:

"You see," continued the father, again taking his son's arm, and

pressing it tightly under his own; "you would be a fool if you didn't

listen to me. Is it agreed, eh? Will you bring me the hundred thousand

francs to-morrow?"

"You know very well that I no longer go to your house," replied Maxime,

compressing his lips.

"Pooh! A lot of bosh! It's time there was an end to all that."

And while they took a few steps in silence, just at the moment when

Renée, feeling as though she would swoon, hid her head in the padding

of the brougham, so as not to be seen, a growing buzz swept along the

line of vehicles. The pedestrians on the footways halted, and turned

round with gaping mouths, watching something that approached. There

was a louder rumble of wheels, the equipages respectfully drew aside,

and two postilions appeared, clad in green, with round caps, on which

golden tassels jolted with their cords spread out. Leaning slightly

forward, they hastened on at the trot of their tall bay horses. Behind

them they left an empty space; and, then, in this empty space, the

Emperor appeared.

He occupied alone the back seat of a landau. Dressed in black, with

his frock-coat buttoned up to his chin, he wore, slightly on one side,

a very tall hat, the silk of which glistened. In front of him, on the

other seat, two gentlemen, dressed with that correct elegance which

was favourably looked upon at the Tuileries, remained grave, with

their hands on their knees, and the silent air of two wedding guests

promenaded amid the curiosity of a crowd.

Renée found the Emperor aged. His mouth was parted more languidly under

his thick waxed moustaches. His eyelids had grown heavy to the point

that they half covered his dim eyes, the yellow greyness of which had

become yet more cloudy. And his nose alone still looked like a dry bone

set in his vague face.

Meantime, while the ladies in the carriages smiled discreetly, the

people on foot pointed the sovereign out to one another. A fat man

declared that the Emperor was the gentleman who turned his back to

the coachman on the left side. Some hands were raised to salute. But

Saccard, who had taken off his hat, even before the postilions had

passed, waited till the imperial carriage was exactly in front of him,

and then he cried out in his thick Provençal voice:

"Long live the Emperor!"

The Emperor, surprised, turned, recognised the enthusiast, no doubt,

and returned the bow smiling. And everything then disappeared in the

sunlight, the equipages closed up, and Renée could only perceive, above

the manes of the horses, and between the backs of the footmen, the

postilions caps jolting with their golden tassels.

She remained for a moment with her eyes wide open, full of this

apparition, which reminded her of another hour of her life. It seemed

to her as if the Emperor, by mingling with the line of carriages,

had set the last necessary ray therein, and given a meaning to this

triumphal march. Now, it was a glory. All these wheels, all these

decorated men, all these women languidly stretched out, disappeared

amid the flash and the rumble of the imperial landau. This sensation

became so acute and so painful that the young woman experienced an

imperious need of escaping from this triumph, from Saccard's cry, which

was still ringing in her ears, from the sight of the father and the

son slowly walking along, and chatting with their arms linked. She

reflected, with her hands on her breast, as if burnt by an internal

fire: and it was with a sudden hope of relief and salutary coolness

that she leant forward, and said to the coachman:

"To the Béraud mansion."

The courtyard retained its cloister-like coldness. Renée went round

the arcades, made happy by the dampness which fell upon her shoulders.

She approached the fountain, green with moss, and polished by wear at

the edges; she looked at the lion's head, now half effaced, which,

with parted jaws emitted a gush of water by an iron pipe. How many

times had she and Christine taken this head between their girlish arms

to lean forward to reach the stream of water, the icy flow of which

they liked to feel upon their little hands. Then she mounted the great

silent staircase; she perceived her father at the end of the suite of

spacious rooms; he drew up his tall figure, and silently went deeper

into the shade of the old residence, of the haughty solitude in which

he had absolutely cloistered himself since his sister's death; and

Renée thought of the men of the Bois, of that other old man, Baron

Gouraud, who had his flesh rolled about on pillows in the sunlight. She

went up higher, she followed the passages, the servants' stairs, she

was bound for the nursery. When she reached the top landing she found

the key hanging on the usual nail; a large rusty key it was, on which

spiders had woven webs. The lock gave a plaintive cry. How sad the

nursery was! She felt a pang at her heart of finding it so empty, so

grey, so silent. She closed the open door of the abandoned aviary, with

the vague idea that it must have been by that door that the joys of her

childhood had flown away. In front of the flower-boxes, still full of

soil hardened and cracked all over like dry mud, she stopped and broke

off a rhododendron stem; this skeleton of a plant, shrivelled and white

with dust, was all that remained of their living clumps of verdure.

And the matting, the matting itself, faded, gnawed by rats, displayed

itself with the melancholy aspect of a shroud which has for years

awaited a promised corpse. In one corner amid this mute despair, this

silent weeping abandonment, Renée found one of her old dolls; all the

bran had flowed out of it by a hole, but its porcelain head continued

smiling with its enamelled lips, above the tabid body, which a doll's

follies seemed to have exhausted.

Renée felt stifled in the tainted atmosphere of the abode of her

childhood. She opened the window and gazed on the immense view.

Nothing there was soiled. She again found the eternal delights, the

eternal juvenescence of the open air. The sun must have been sinking

behind her; but she only saw the rays of the setting planet, as they

lent, with infinite softness, a yellowish tinge to this corner of the

city which she knew so well. It was like the last lay of daylight, a

gay refrain, which slowly subsided on all things. There were gleams

of tawny fire about the boom below, while the lace-work of the iron

cables of the Pont de Constantine stood out above the whiteness of the

pillars. Then, on the right hand, the umbrage of the Halle aux Vins and

the Jardin des Plantes seemed like a great mere with stagnant, mossy

water, the greenish surface of which blended in the distance with the

mist of the sky. On the left, the Quai Henri IV. and the Quai de la

Rapée were lined with the same rows of houses, those houses which, as

girls, twenty years before, they had seen there, with the same brown

patches of sheds, the same ruddy factory chimneys. And, above the

trees, the slate roof of the Salpêtrière hospital, made blue by the

sun's good-bye, suddenly appeared to her like an old friend.

But what calmed her, and imparted coolness to her bosom, were the long

grey banks, and especially the Seine, the giantess, which she saw

coming from the limits of the horizon straight towards her, just as in

those happy times when she had feared to see it well and rise up to the

very window. She remembered their affection for the river, their love

for its colossal flow, for this quivering of noisy water, spreading out

in a sheet at their feet, parting around and behind them in two arms,

the ends of which they could not see, though they still felt the great

pure caress. They were then already coquettish, and on the days when

the sky was clear they said that the Seine had put on her beautiful

dress of green silk, flecked with white flames; and the eddies where

the water curled set frills of satin on the dress, while afar off,

beyond the belt of bridges, a play of light spread strips of stuff the

colour of the sun.

And Renée, raising her eyes, looked at the vast expanse of soaring

sky of a pale blue, fading little by little in the obliteration of

twilight. She thought of the accomplice city, of the blazing nights of

the Boulevard, of the hot afternoons of the Bois, of the pallid, crude

day, of the grand new mansions. Then, when she lowered her head, when

she again saw at a glance the peaceful horizon of her childhood, this

corner of a city, inhabited by the middle and working classes, where

she had dreamt of a life of peace, a final bitterness mounted to her

lips. With her hands clasped, she sobbed in the gathering night.

The following winter, when Renée died of acute meningitis, it was her

father who paid her debts. Worms's bill amounted to two hundred and

fifty-seven thousand francs.

THE END.