Chapter VI (2)

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.

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.