Chapter IV (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, yes, Larsonneau might perhaps--"

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

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

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

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

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

Thereupon he abandoned the log with which he was struggling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her husband submissively obeyed her, and added:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You are bewitchingly beautiful," he murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And as the young woman smiled:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Renée laughed, kissing him and murmuring:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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