Chapter IV (1)

The well-defined, galling desire which had risen to Renée's heart amid the troublous perfumes of the conservatory, while Maxime and Louise laughed on a couch of the little buttercup room, seemed to die away like a nightmare of which naught remains save a slight shudder. The young woman had retained the bitterness of the Tanghinia on her lips all night; and it had seemed to her, on feeling the burning of the cursed leaf, that a mouth of flame was pressing itself to hers, blowing her a devouring love. Then this mouth escaped her, and her dream was immersed in vast waves of shade which rolled around her.

In the morning she slept a little, and when she awoke she thought she was ill. She had the curtains drawn, spoke to her doctor of nausea and headache, and for a couple of days actually refused to go out. And as she pretended that she was being besieged, she forbade her door. Maxime came and knocked at it fruitlessly. He did not sleep in the house, as he preferred to be able to dispose freely of his rooms; indeed, he led the most nomadic life in the world, lodging in his father's new houses, selecting whatever floor suited him, and moving every month, often out of sheer caprice, and at times to make room for serious tenants. He dried the walls in the company of some mistress. Accustomed to his stepmother's whims, he feigned great compassion for her, and went upstairs four times a-day to inquire after her, with a most distressed look, though, in point of fact, he merely wished to tease her. On the third day he found her in the little drawing-room, rosy and smiling, and with a calm and rested look.

"Well, did you amuse yourself very much with Céleste?" he asked her, alluding to the long tête-à-tête she had had with her maid.

"Yes," she answered, "she is a very useful girl. She always has such cold hands; she placed them on my forehead, and soothed my poor head a little."

"But that girl's a remedy then!" cried the young fellow. "If I ever have the misfortune to fall in love, you'll lend her to me, eh? so that she may place her two hands on my heart."

They joked, and went for their usual drive to the Bois. A fortnight passed by. Renée had thrown herself more madly than ever into her life of visits and balls; her head seemed to have turned once more, she no longer complained of lassitude and disgust. Still, one might have thought that she had committed some secret sin, which she did not speak of, but which she confessed by a more strongly marked contempt for herself and by increased depravity in her whims as a fashionable woman. One evening she confessed to Maxime that she longed to go to a ball which Blanche Müller, an actress in vogue, meant to give to the princesses of the footlights and the queens of the fast world. This avowal surprised and embarrassed even the young man, and yet he was not particularly scrupulous. He tried to catechise his stepmother: really, that wasn't her place; besides, she would see nothing very funny there; and then, if she were recognised, it would cause a scandal. She answered all these good reasons with clasped hands, supplicating, and smiling.

"Come, my little Maxime, be kind. I'm determined on it. I will put on a very dark domino; we will only pass through the rooms."

Maxime always ended by giving way, and would have taken his stepmother to all the disreputable places in Paris had she but begged him ever so little to do so. So he consented to escort her to Blanche Müller's ball, whereupon she clapped her hands like a child to whom an unhoped-for holiday is granted.

"Ah! you are a dear fellow," said she. "It's for to-morrow, isn't it? Come and fetch me very early. I want to see those women arrive. You will name them to me, and we shall amuse ourselves awfully well."

She reflected, and then added:

"No, don't come. Wait for me in a cab on the Boulevard Malesherbes. I will go out by the garden."

This mysterious way of proceeding was a spice which she added to her escapade, a simple refinement of pleasure, for had she left the house at midnight by the front door, her husband would not even have put his head out of window.

On the morrow, after telling Céleste to sit up for her, she crossed the dark shadows of the Parc Monceaux with shudders of exquisite fear. Saccard had profited by his good understanding with the Hôtel de Ville authorities to obtain a key to a little gate of the park, and Renée had wished to have one for herself as well. She almost lost her way, however, and only found the cab, thanks to the two yellow eyes of the lamps. At that period the Boulevard Malesherbes, scarcely finished, was still a perfect solitude at night-time. The young woman glided into the vehicle in great emotion, her heart beating as delightfully as if she were going to some love meeting. Maxime was philosophically smoking, half asleep, in one corner of the cab. He wished to throw away his cigar, but she prevented him from doing so, and, as she tried to restrain his arm in the darkness, she placed her hand full on his face, which greatly amused them both.

"I tell you that I like the smell of tobacco!" she exclaimed. "Keep your cigar. Besides, we're going on the spree to-night. I'm a man, I am!"

The Boulevard was not yet lighted up, and while the cab rolled down it towards the Madeleine, it was so dark inside that they could not see each other. Every now and then, when the young fellow carried his cigar to his lips, a red point stood out amid the dense obscurity. This red point interested Renée. Maxime, who was half covered by the folds of her black satin domino, which filled the inside of the vehicle, continued smoking in silence, with a bored air. The truth was, that his stepmother's whim had prevented him from following to the Café Anglais a party of women who had determined to begin and finish Blanche Müller's ball there. He was crusty, and she discerned his sulkiness in the darkness.

"Are you ill?" she asked him.

"No, I am cold," he answered.

"Dear me. Why, I'm burning. I feel quite stifled here. Take part of my skirts on your knees."

"Oh! your skirts," he muttered, bad-humouredly. "I already have them up to my eyes."

But this remark made him laugh himself, and by degrees he grew lively. She told him of the fright she had had in the Parc Monceaux. And then she confessed another of her longings: she would like one night to go for a row in the boat which she could see from her windows, moored at the edge of a pathway. On hearing this, he considered that she was becoming sentimental. The cab still rolled on, the darkness remained, profound, and they leaned towards one another to hear each other amid the noise of the wheels, touching each other when they moved their arms, and at times, when they approached too closely, inhaling each other's warm breath. And at equal intervals Maxime's cigar was revivified, setting a red blur on the darkness, and casting a pale rosy flash on Renée's face. She looked adorable, seen by this fleeting glimmer; so much so that the young man was struck by it.

"Oh! oh!" said he. "We seem to be very pretty this evening, stepmamma. Let's see a bit."

He brought his cigar nearer, and precipitately drew a few puffs. Renée, in her corner was illumined by a warm and seemingly panting light. She had slightly raised her hood. Her bare head, covered with a mass of little curls, with a simple blue ribbon, looked like that of a real urchin peering above the large blouse of black satin which rose to her neck. She thought it very funny to be thus looked at and admired by the light of a cigar, and she threw herself back with little bursts of laughter, while he added with an air of comic gravity:

"The deuce! I shall have to watch over you, if I am to take you back safe and sound to my father."

Meanwhile the cab turned round the Madeleine and went up the Boulevards. Here it became filled with a leaping light, with the reflection of the shops, the fronts of which were flaming. Blanche Müller resided two steps off, in one of the new houses which have been built on the raised ground of the Rue-Basse-du-Rempart. As yet there were only a few vehicles at the door, it was barely more than ten o'clock. Maxime wanted to take a turn on the Boulevards and wait an hour, but Renée, whose curiosity was becoming more acute, straightway declared to him that she should go upstairs alone if he did not accompany her. He followed her therefore, and felt glad on finding that there was more company upstairs than he had expected. The young woman had put on her mask, and leaning on the arm of Maxime, to whom she gave peremptory orders in a low voice, and who submissively obeyed her, she ferreted about the rooms, raised the corners of the door-hangings, examined the furniture, and would perhaps have searched the drawers had she not feared being seen. Although the rooms were richly upholstered, there were corners suggestive of a Bohemian life, and in which one scented the mummer. It was particularly in these spots that Renée's nostrils dilated, and that she compelled her companion to walk slowly so as to lose nothing of the sight or the smell. She especially forgot herself in a dressing-room, the door of which had been left wide open by Blanche Müller, who, when she entertained company, gave everything up to her guests, even to her alcove in which the bed was pushed back to make room for card tables. But the dressing-room did not satisfy Renée: it seemed to her common, and even rather dirty, with its carpet which incandescent cigar ash had pitted with little round burns, and its blue silk hangings stained with pomatum and splashed with soap-suds. When she had fully inspected the rooms, and set every feature of the abode in her memory, so as to be able to describe it, later on, to her intimate friends, she passed on to the people who were present. As for the men she knew them; they were, for the most part, the same financiers, the same politicians, the same young fellows about town who came to her Thursday at-homes. She fancied herself in her own drawing-room at certain moments, when she found herself in front of a group of smiling dress coats, who, on the previous evening, had worn the same smile in speaking to the Marchioness d'Espanet, or to the fair Madame Haffner at her house. And even when she looked at the women her illusion was not completely dispelled. Laure d'Aurigny was in bright yellow like Suzanne Haffner, and Blanche Müller, like Adeline d'Espanet, wore a white dress which left her bare down to the middle of her back. At last Maxime implored mercy, and she consented to sit down on a couch beside him. They remained there for a moment, the young fellow yawning, the young woman asking him these ladies' names, undressing them with a glance and counting the yards of lace that they wore around their skirts. Seeing her absorbed in this serious study he ended by slipping away in compliance with a sign which Laure d'Aurigny made him with her hand. She joked him about the lady whom he had on his arm, and then made him swear to come and join her party at the Café Anglais, at one o'clock.

"Your father will be there," she shouted to him at the moment when he joined Renée again.

The latter found herself surrounded by a group of women who were laughing very loudly, while Monsieur de Saffré had profited by Maxime leaving his seat vacant to glide beside her and make gallant proposals in the style of a cab driver. Then Monsieur de Saffré and the women all began to shout and smack their hips to such a degree that Renée, fairly deafened, and yawning in her turn, rose up, saying to her companion--

"Let us go, they are too stupid."

As they were leaving the room, Monsieur de Mussy came in. He seemed delighted to meet Maxime, and without paying any attention to the masked woman who was with him.

"Ah, my dear fellow," he murmured with a love-sick air, "she will cause my death. I know that she is better, but she still forbids me her door. Tell her you have seen me with tears in my eyes."

"Be easy, your message shall be delivered," said the young fellow, with a strange laugh.

And on the way downstairs--

"Well, pretty mamma, didn't that poor fellow touch you?" She shrugged her shoulders without replying. Outside, on the pavement, she paused before getting into the cab which had brought them, looking hesitatingly in the direction of the Madeleine, and in the direction of the Boulevard des Italiens. It was scarcely half-past eleven, and the Boulevard was still very animated.

"So we are going home," she murmured regretfully.

"Unless you would like to take a drive along the Boulevards," answered Maxime.

She assented. She had been disappointed in her feast of feminine curiosity, and she was distressed at having to go home like that, with an illusion the less, and a headache setting in. She had long fancied that an actresses' ball was the height of fun.

As often happens during the last days of October, it seemed as if the spring had returned; the night air had a May-like warmth, and the occasional cold gusts that passed by lent an additional zest to the atmosphere. Renée, with her head at the window, remained silent, looking at the crowd, the cafés and the restaurants, the interminable line of which stretched away before her. She had become quite serious, absorbed in the depth of the vague wishes which fill the reveries of women. This broad side-walk, which was swept by the dresses of harlots, and on which the men's boots rung with peculiar familiarity, the grey asphalte over which, it seemed to her, the gallop of facile love and pleasure was passing, awoke her slumbering desires, and made her forget the idiotic ball that she had just left to allow her to espy other delights of enhanced spiciness. At the windows of Brébant's private rooms she perceived women's shadows against the whiteness of the curtains. And Maxime thereupon told her a very indecent story of a deceived husband who had thus detected, on a curtain, the shadow of his wife embracing the shadow of a lover. She scarcely listened to him, but he, growing lively, ended by taking hold of her hands and teasing her by talking about that poor Monsieur de Mussy.

As they drove back and again passed in front of Brébant's--

"Do you know," she said abruptly, "that Monsieur de Saffré invited me to supper this evening?"

"Oh! you would have fared badly," replied Maxime laughing. "Saffré doesn't possess the least culinary imagination. He hasn't got beyond lobster salad."

"No, no, he talked of oysters and cold partridge. But he thee-and-thou'd me, and that disturbed me."

She stopped short, looked again at the Boulevard, and, after a moment's silence, added with a distressed air--

"The worst of it is that I'm awfully hungry."

"What! you're hungry!" exclaimed the young man. "It's very simple, we'll sup together--Shall we?"

He spoke quietly, but she refused at first, declaring that Céleste had prepared her a collation at home. However, Maxime, who did not wish to go to the Café Anglais, had stopped the cab at the corner of the Rue Le Pelletier, in front of the restaurant of the Café Riche; he had even alighted, and as his stepmother still hesitated.

"After all," said he, "if you're afraid that I shall compromise you, say so. I'll get up beside the driver and take you back to your husband."

She smiled and alighted from the cab with the manners of a bird which is afraid of wetting its claws. She was radiant. The side-walk which she felt under her feet warmed her heels, and imparted to the surface of her skin a delightful quiver of fear and contented caprice. Ever since the cab had been rolling along she had had a mad longing to spring out upon this side-walk. She crossed it with short steps, and furtively, as if she derived a greater pleasure from the fear that she might be seen. Her escapade was decidedly turning into an adventure. She certainly did not regret having declined Monsieur de Saffré's coarse invitation. But she would have gone home terribly out of sorts if Maxime had not had the idea of letting her taste forbidden fruit. He went quickly up the stairs as if he had been at home. She followed him, rather short of breath. A slight fume of game and fish was wafted about, and the carpet, secured to the stairs with brass rods, had a smell of dust which increased her emotion.

Just as they were reaching the first landing they met a dignified looking waiter who drew back to the wall to let them pass him.

"Charles," said Maxime, "you'll serve us, eh? Give us the white room."

Charles bowed, reascended to the landing and opened the door of a private room. The gas was lowered, and it seemed to Renée as if she were penetrating into the twilight of a suspicious and charming spot.

A continuous rumble swept in through the window which was wide open, and in the reflection cast on the ceiling by the café below, the shadows of promenaders passed swiftly by. But with a touch of the thumb the waiter turned on the gas. The shadows on the ceiling vanished, and the room was filled with a glaring light which fell full upon the young woman's head. She had already thrown her hood back. The little curls had become slightly disordered in the cab, but the blue ribbon had not stirred. She began to walk about, abashed by the manner in which Charles looked at her; he blinked his eyes and screwed up their lids the better to see her, in a way which plainly signified, "I don't know this one yet."

"What shall I serve you, sir?" he asked aloud.

Maxime turned towards Renée.

"Monsieur de Saffré's supper, eh?" said he, "some oysters, a partridge--"

And seeing the young man smile, Charles discreetly imitated him, murmuring--

"Then the same supper as last Wednesday, if that will suit?"

"The supper of last Wednesday--" repeated Maxime. Then suddenly remembering: "Yes, it's all the same to me, give us Wednesday's supper."

When the waiter had retired Renée took her eye-glasses and went inquisitively round the little room. It was a square apartment all white and gold and furnished with boudoir-like coquetry. In addition to the table and the chairs, there was a low dinner waggon and a large divan, a perfect bed, placed between the chimney-piece and the window. A Louis XVI. clock and candlesticks adorned the white marble mantelshelf. But the curiosity of the room was the looking-glass, a handsome squat looking-glass which women's diamonds had covered with names, dates, murdered verses, prodigious sentiments and astounding avowals. Renée fancied she espied something beastly but she lacked the courage to satisfy her curiosity. She looked at the divan, experienced fresh embarrassment at the sight, and to give herself a countenance began gazing at the ceiling and the chandelier of gilt copper with five gas jets. However the uneasiness she felt was delightful. While she raised her brow, as if to study the cornice, looking grave and holding her eye-glasses in her hand, she derived profound enjoyment from the presence of the equivocal furniture, which she knew to be around her; that clear cynical looking glass, the purity of which, being wrinkled by those dirty scrawls, had proved useful in adjusting so many false chignons; that divan which shocked her by its breadth; the table and the carpet itself in which she found the same smell she had detected upon the stairs, a vague, penetrating and almost religious smell of dust.

Then, when it was at last necessary for her to lower her eyes:

"What is this Wednesday supper?" she asked of Maxime.

"Nothing," he answered, "a bet that one of my friends lost."

In any other spot, he would without any hesitation have told her that he had supped there on Wednesday with a lady whom he had met on the Boulevard. But since he had entered the private room he had instinctively treated her like a woman whom one has to please, and whose jealousy ought to be spared. However she did not insist on the point, but went and leaned on the rail of the window, where he soon joined her. Charles came in and went out behind them amid a noise of crockery and plate.

It was not yet midnight. On the Boulevard below, Paris was thundering and prolonging the ardent day before making up its mind to go to bed. The rows of trees separated in a confused line the whiteness of the foot walk from the vague darkness of the roadway along which passed the rumble and the fleet lamps of the vehicles. On either edge of this dim strip of ground, the kiosks of the newspaper vendors shed their light here and there, like great Venetian lanterns, tall and strangely variegated, which had been set at regular intervals on the ground for some colossal illumination. But at this time of night their subdued brilliancy was lost in the glare of the neighbouring shop fronts. Not a shutter was up, the foot walks stretched away without a line of shadow under a stream of rays which lighted them with a golden dust, with the warm brilliant glare of full daylight. Maxime pointed out to Renée the Café Anglais, the windows of which were shining in front of them. The lofty branches of the trees somewhat prevented them, however, from seeing the houses and the footway across the Boulevard. They leaned forward and looked below them. There was a continual coming and going: promenaders passed by in groups, harlots in couples trailed their skirts which they raised from time to time with a languid gesture, casting wearied yet smiling glances around them. Under the window itself the tables of the Café Riche were spread out in the blaze of the gas-jets, the brilliancy of which penetrated half across the thoroughfare; and it was especially in the centre of this ardent focus that they saw the wan faces and pale smiles of the passers by. Around the little tables men and women were mingled together drinking. The girls were in showy dresses with their hair down their necks; they lounged about on their chairs and made loud remarks which the noise of the traffic prevented one from hearing. Renée especially noticed one woman who was dressed in a blue costume trimmed with white Maltese lace, and who sat alone at a table, leaning back with her hands on her stomach; she was waiting with a gloomy resigned look and leisurely sipping a glass of beer. Those who were walking, slowly disappeared among the crowd, and the young woman, who took an interest in their doings, let her eyes follow them, and gazed from one end of the Boulevard to the other, into the noisy confused depths of the thoroughfare full of the black swarm of promenaders and where the lights became mere sparks. And the endless procession, a strangely mingled crowd always the same, passed by with fatiguing regularity amid the bright colours and the dark depths, in the airy-like confusion of the thousand leaping flames which swept like waves out of the shops, lending colour to the transparencies of the windows and the kiosks, tracing fillets, letters and fiery designs over the house fronts, studding the darkness with stars and gliding along the roadway continually. Amid the deafening noise which rose on high was a clamour, a prolonged monotonous rumble like an organ note accompanying an eternal procession of little automatic dolls. At one moment Renée thought that an accident had taken place. There was a stream of people in motion on the left, a little beyond the Passage de l'Opéra. But on taking her glasses she recognised the omnibus office; there were a great many people on the side-walk standing waiting, and rushing forwards as soon as a vehicle arrived. She could hear the rough voice of the official calling out the numbers, and then the tinkle of the registering bell was wafted to her like a crystalline ringing. Her eyes next lighted upon an advertisement on a kiosk glaringly coloured like an Épinal print. On the pane of glass, in a green and yellow frame, there was a sneering devil's head, with hair on end, a hatter's advertisement which she did not understand. Every five minutes the Batignolles omnibus with its red lamps and yellow body passed by, turning round the corner of the Rue Le Pelletier and shaking the house with its din; and she saw the men riding on the knife-board, fellows with weary faces who rose up to look at them, Maxime and herself, with the inquisitive glances of hungry people peeping through a keyhole.

"Ah!" said she, "the Parc Monceaux is quietly asleep by this time."

It was the only remark she made. They remained there for nearly twenty minutes, silent, and surrendering themselves to the intoxication of the noise and illumination. Then, the table being laid, they went and sat down, and as she seemed inconvenienced by the waiter's presence Maxime dismissed him.

"Leave us--I will ring for dessert."

Renée had little flushes on her cheeks, and her eyes shone; one would have thought she had just been running. She brought with her from the window some of the din and animation of the Boulevard. She would not let her companion close the sashes.

"Why! it's the orchestra," said she, when he complained of the noise. "Don't you think it a funny music? It will be a fine accompaniment to our oysters and partridge."

The escapade lent youth to her thirty years. She had quick movements and a dash of fever, and this private room, this tête-à-tête with a young man amid the din of the street, gave her the look of a fast girl. She attacked the oysters with resolution. Maxime was not hungry and he watched her with a smile while she devoured.

"The deuce!" he muttered, "you would have made a good supper companion."

She stopped short, annoyed that she had eaten so quickly. "You think that I'm too hungry. What would you? It's the hour we spent at that idiotic ball which emptied me. Ah! my poor fellow, I pity you for living in such society as that!"

"But you know very well," said he, "that I have promised you to send Sylvia and Laure d'Aurigny to the right about on the day that your friends consent to come and sup with me."

With a superb gesture she answered, "Of course! I quite believe it. We are a good deal more amusing than those women, confess it now--if one of us bored her lover like your Sylvia and your Laure d'Aurigny must bore you, why the poor little woman would not keep her lover a week! You will never listen to me, but try it one of these days."

To avoid summoning the waiter Maxime rose, removed the oyster shells and brought the partridge which had been placed on the dinner waggon. The table had the luxurious aspect customary in the fashionable restaurants. A breath of adorable debauchery sped over the damask cloth, and it was with little quivers of contentment that Renée let her slender hands stroll from her fork to her knife, from her plate to her glass. She who usually drank water barely tinged with wine, now drank white wine neat. As Maxime, standing with his napkin on his arm, waited on her with comical complaisance, he resumed:

"What can Monsieur de Saffré have said to you to make you so furious? Did he find you ugly?"

"Oh! he," she answered, "he is a nasty man. I should never have thought that a gentleman of such distinguished bearing, and so polite when he calls on me, could talk such language. But I forgive him. It was the women who irritated me. One might have thought they were apple-stall keepers. There was one who complained of a boil on her hip, and, a little bit more, I believe she would have turned up her skirt to shew her sore to everyone."

Maxime was splitting with laughter.

"No, really now," she continued, growing more animated, "I don't understand you men, those women are dirty and stupid. And to think that when I saw you go to Sylvia's I imagined prodigious things, banquets in the ancient style, like one sees in paintings, with creatures crowned with roses, gold cups and extraordinary voluptuousness. What a sell! You showed me a dirty dressing-room and some women who swore like carters. Under such conditions it really isn't worth while to do wrong."

He wanted to protest, but she silenced him, and holding between her finger-tips a partridge bone which she was daintily nibbling, she added in a lower tone:

"Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear fellow. I, who am a respectable woman, when I feel bored and commit the sin of dreaming of impossibilities, I am sure that I devise much nicer things than such as Blanche Müller could think of."

And with a grave air she concluded by a profound remark of naive cynicism:

"It is a question of how one is brought up, do you see?"

She gently laid the little bone on her plate. The rumble of the vehicles continued without any louder sound rising above it. She was obliged however to raise her voice so that he might hear her; and her cheeks became still redder. On the dinner waggon there were still some truffles, a sweet entremets; and some asparagus, a curiosity for that time of the year. He set everything on the table, so as to avoid having to disturb himself again; and as the table was rather narrow he placed on the floor, between them, a silver pail containing a bottle of champagne surrounded by ice. The young woman's appetite had ended by overtaking him too. They tasted all the dishes, and emptied the bottle of champagne with brusque gaiety, launching out into suggestive theories, with their elbows on the table like two friends who ease their hearts after a drinking bout. The noise on the Boulevard was diminishing; but to Renée's ears it increased, and at times all those wheels seemed to be revolving in her head.

When he spoke of ringing for dessert she rose up and shook her long satin blouse to make the crumbs fall off, saying:

"That's it--You know you can light a cigar."

She felt somewhat giddy. Attracted by a peculiar noise which she could not explain to herself, she went to the window. The shops were being shut up.

"Dear me," said she, turning towards Maxime, "the orchestra is clearing off."

Then she leant out again. In the centre of the thoroughfare the coloured eyes of the cabs and omnibuses, fewer and moving faster, were still passing one another. Large pits of darkness seemed to have opened in front of the closed shops--along the footpaths on either side. The cafés alone were still flaming, striping the asphalte with sheets of light. From the Rue Drouot to the Rue du Helder she thus perceived a long row of white and black squares, amid which the last promenaders sprang up and vanished again strangely. The harlots, with the trains of their dresses, by turns glaringly illuminated and immersed in darkness, seemed like apparitions, like pale marionettes crossing the limelight of some extravaganza. Renée amused herself for a moment with the sight. There was no longer a full-shed light; the gas was being turned off; the variegated kiosks stood out more defined amid the darkness. From time to time a rush of people who had just left some theatre, passed by. But soon there was vacancy again, and then under the window there lingered two or three men together whom a woman accosted. They stood in a group and discussed terms. Some of their remarks rose audibly in the subsiding din, and then it generally happened that the woman went off with one of the men. Other girls wandered from café to café, strolled round the tables, pocketed the forgotten lumps of sugar, laughed with the waiters, and gazed fixedly at the belated customers, with a silent, questioning, proffering look. And then, just after Renée had let her eyes follow the all but unoccupied knife-board of a Batignolles omnibus, she recognised, at the corner of the foot-pavement, the woman in the blue dress and white lace, who stood glancing about her, still in search of a man.

When Maxime came to fetch Renée at the window, where she was forgetting herself, he smiled as he looked at one of the partly opened casements of the Café Anglais. The idea that his father was there supping on his side seemed comical to him; but that evening a peculiar pudicity restrained his customary banter. Renée only left the window-rail regretfully. An intoxication and languor rose from the vague depths of the Boulevard. There was a coaxing summons to self-indulgent sleep in the attenuated rumble of the vehicles, and the obliteration of the bright lights. The whispers that sped by, the groups assembled in shadowy corners, transformed the side-walk into the passage of some large inn, at the hour when travellers repair to their chance beds. The gleam and the noise became fainter and fainter, the city was falling asleep, and a breath of love swept over the housetops.

When the young woman turned her head the light of the little chandelier made her blink her eyes. She was now somewhat pale and felt slight quivers at the corners of her mouth. Charles was setting out the dessert; he left the room, came in again, swinging the door, slowly and phlegmatically like a well-bred man.

"But I'm no longer hungry!" exclaimed Renée, "take away all those plates and bring us the coffee."

The waiter, accustomed to the whims of the women he served, cleared the dessert away and poured out the coffee. He filled the whole room with his importance.

"Pray do send him away," said the young woman--half sickened by the sight of him--to Maxime.

Maxime dismissed him; but scarcely had he disappeared, than he returned once more to draw the large curtains of the window closely together with a discreet air. When he had at last retired, the young fellow, who, on his side, was beginning to feel annoyed, rose from his seat and going to the door:

"Wait a bit," he said, "I have the means of getting rid of him."

And he pushed the bolt.

"That's it," she rejoined, "we shall at least be by ourselves."

Their confidential, friendly chatting began again. Maxime had lighted a cigar. Renée sipped her coffee and even allowed herself a glass of chartreuse. The room grew warmer and became filled with bluish smoke. She ended by setting her elbows on the table and by resting her chin between her two half-closed fists. Under this slight pressure her mouth grew smaller, her cheeks were slightly raised, and her narrow eyes shone more brightly. Thus unsettled, her little face looked adorable, under the stream of golden curls which now fell down upon her eyebrows. Maxime gazed at her through the smoke of his cigar. He found she had an original look. At certain moments he was no longer quite sure as to her sex; the long wrinkle which crossed her forehead, the pouting forwardness of her lips, the undecided air imparted by her shortsightedness, made a tall young man of her; the more so, as her long black satin blouse rose so high that one barely espied a white fatty strip of neck under her chin. She let herself be looked at with a smile, no longer moving her head, but with her eyes lost in vacancy and her lips closed.

Then suddenly she woke up, and went to look at the mirror, towards which her dreamy eyes had turned since a few moments. She raised herself on tip-toe, and leant her hands on the edge of the mantelshelf to read the signatures, the coarse remarks which had shocked her before supper. She spelt the syllables with some little difficulty, laughed, and then still read on like a schoolboy who is turning over some pages of Piron in his desk.

"'Ernest and Clara'," said she, "and there is a heart underneath, which looks like a funnel. Ah! this is better, 'I love men because I like truffles.' Signed, 'Laure.' I say, Maxime, was it that woman d'Aurigny who wrote that?----Then here are the arms of one of these women, I fancy: a hen smoking a big pipe. And more names, a perfect calendar of saints: 'Victor, Amélie, Alexandre, Édouard, Marguerite, Paquita, Louise, Renée'--Ah, so there's one who is named like me--"

Maxime could see her ardent face in the looking-glass. She raised herself up still more, and her domino, drawn more closely behind, outlined the curve of her figure, the development of her hips. The young fellow's eyes followed the line of the satin which moulded her form like a chemise. He rose up in his turn and threw away his cigar. He was ill at ease and nervous. Something usual and accustomed was lacking about him.

"Ah, here's your name, Maxime," exclaimed Renée. "Listen--'I love--'"

But he had seated himself on a corner of the divan, almost at the young woman's feet. And after succeeding in taking hold of her hands with a prompt movement, and making her turn away from the looking-glass, he said in a strange voice:

"Pray don't read that."

She struggled, laughing nervously.

"Why not? Am I not your confidante?"

But he insisted in a more husky tone.

"No, no, not this evening."

He was still holding her, and she tried to free herself with little jerks of the wrists. Their eyes had an expression they were not acquainted with; there was a touch of shame in their long, constrained smile. She fell upon her knees at the edge of the divan. They continued struggling although she no longer made an effort to return to the mirror, and was already surrendering herself. And as the young fellow caught her round the body, she said with an embarrassed dying laugh:

"Come, leave me. You are hurting me--"

It was the sole murmur that came from her lips. Amid the profound silence of the room where the gas seemed to shoot up higher, she felt the ground tremble and heard the crash of a Batignolles omnibus which must have been turning the corner of the Boulevard. And it was all over. When they again found themselves, seated side-by-side on the divan, he stammered out, amid their mutual embarrassment:

"Bah! it was bound to happen one day or other."

She said nothing. With an overwhelmed air, she looked at the pattern of the carpet.

"Were you thinking of it?" continued Maxime, stammering more and more. "I wasn't, not at all. I ought to have mistrusted the private room."

But in a deep voice, as if all the middle-class uprightness of the Bérauds Du Châtel had been awakened by this supreme sin:

"What we have just done is infamous," she murmured, sobered, her face aged and very grave.

She was stifling. She went to the window, drew back the curtains, and leant over the rail. The orchestra was hushed; the sin had been committed amid the last quiver of the basses and the distant chant of the violins, the vague soft music of the Boulevard now sleeping and dreaming of love. The road and the side-walks stretched away below in grey solitude. All the rumbling cab wheels seemed to have gone off, taking the lights and the crowd away with them. Below the window, the Café Riche was closed, not a ray of light glided from between the shutters. Across the way, brazen-like gleams alone appeared upon the façade of the Café Anglais, especially lighting up one window which was partly open and whence a faint sound of laughter escaped. And all along this ribbon of darkness, from the turn at the Rue Drouot to the other end, as far as her eyes could reach, she no longer saw aught save the symmetrical blurs of the kiosks tinging the night with red and green, without illuminating it, and looking like night-lights spaced along some giant dormitory. She raised her head. The high branches of the trees stood out against a clear sky, while the irregular outline of the house roofs died away till it seemed like a clustering heap of rocks on the shore of a bluish sea. But this strip of sky saddened her all the more, and it was in the darkness of the Boulevard alone that she found some consolation. What lingered of the noise and vice of the evening on the surface of the deserted thoroughfare excused her. She thought she could feel the heat of all these men and women's footsteps ascend from the cooling footway. The shames that had trailed there, the desires of a minute, the whispered offers, the weddings of a night paid for in advance, were evaporating, floating about in a heavy mist rolled away by the breath of morning. Leaning out into the darkness she inhaled this quivering silence, this alcove-like smell, as an encouragement which came to her from below, as an assurance that her shame was shared and accepted by a colluding city. And when her eyes had grown accustomed to the obscurity she perceived the woman in the blue dress trimmed with lace, standing in the same place, alone in the grey solitude, waiting and offering herself to the deserted darkness.

On turning, the young woman beheld Charles who was looking around him, scenting like a dog. He ended by perceiving Renée's blue ribbon, lying rumpled and forgotten on a corner of the divan. And with his polite air, he hastened to take it to her. Then she realised all her shame. Standing in front of the looking-glass she tried with clumsy hands to tie the ribbon again. But her chignon had fallen, the little curls were flattened on her temples, and she was unable to tie the bow. Charles came to her help, saying, as if he were offering some usual thing, a finger glass or some toothpicks:

"If madame would like the comb?"

"Oh! no, there's no need," interrupted Maxime, giving the waiter an impatient look. "Go and fetch us a cab."

Renée made up her mind to pull the hood of her domino over her head. And as she was about to leave the looking-glass, she lightly raised herself in search of the words which Maxime's grasp had prevented her from reading. Slanting upwards towards the ceiling, and written in a large, abominable hand there was this declaration signed Sylvia: "I love Maxime." On reading it Renée bit her lip and drew her hood rather lower.

They experienced a horrible constraint in the vehicle. They had seated themselves one in front of the other as when they left the Parc Monceaux. They could not think of a word to say to each other. The cab was full of opaque darkness, and Maxime's cigar didn't even dot it with a red speck, a pink charcoal-like glimmer. The young fellow, again hidden among the skirts, "which he had up to his eyes," felt ill at ease amid this darkness and silence, near this speechless woman, whom he felt beside him, and whose eyes he imagined he could see gazing wide open into the night. To seem less foolish he ended by seeking her hand, and when he held it in his own he felt relieved and found the situation tolerable. Renée abandoned this hand of hers, languidly and dreamily.

The cab crossed over the Place de la Madeleine. Renée was reflecting that she was not guilty. She had not been bent on incest. And the more she descended into herself, the more innocent she considered she had been, at the outset of her escapade, at her furtive departure from the Parc Monceaux, at Blanche Müller's, on the Boulevard, and even in the private room at the restaurant. Why had she fallen on her knees at the edge of that divan? She no longer knew. She had certainly not thought of _that_ for a moment. She would have angrily refused. She had made this excursion as a joke, she had been bent on amusing herself, nothing more. Thus did she ponder, and in the rumbling of the cab she seemed again to find the deafening orchestra of the Boulevard, that coming and going of men and women, while bars of fire burned her tired eyes.

Maxime was also musing, with some sense of worry, in his corner. The adventure annoyed him. He laid the blame on the black satin domino. Had one ever seen a woman rig herself out in that style? You couldn't even see her neck. He had taken her for a boy, he had played with her, and it wasn't his fault if the game had become something serious. He certainly wouldn't have touched her with the tips of his fingers, had she only shown her shoulders a bit. He would then have remembered that she was his father's wife. Then, as he did not care for disagreeable reflections, he forgave himself. So much the worse, after all! he would try not to begin again. It was folly.

The cab stopped, and Maxime alighted the first, to help Renée out. But at the little gate of the park he did not dare to kiss her. They shook hands according to their wont. She was already on the other side of the railing, when, in view of saying something, and at the same time unwittingly confessing a preoccupation which had vaguely crossed her reveries since leaving the restaurant:

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

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

But Renée abruptly realised the truth. The room, no doubt, had a comb which formed part of its appurtenances like the curtains, the bolt, and the divan. And without waiting an explanation, which did not come, she plunged into the darkness of the Parc Monceaux, hastening her steps, and thinking she could see behind her the tortoise-shell teeth in which Laure d'Aurigny and Sylvia had left some of their fair and their dark hairs. Renée was very feverish, and it became necessary for Céleste to put her to bed and watch her till the morning. On the side-walk of the Boulevard Malesherbes, Maxime consulted himself for a moment as to whether he should go and join the joyous party at the Café Anglais; then, with the idea that he was punishing himself, he decided that he ought to go home to bed.

On the morrow, Renée awoke at a late hour from a heavy dreamless sleep. She had a large fire lighted, and said that she should spend the day in her room. This was her refuge in serious moments. Towards noon, as her husband did not see her come down to lunch, he asked her permission to speak with her a moment. She was already refusing the request, with a tinge of nervousness, when she decided otherwise. On the day before she had sent Saccard Worms's bill, amounting to a hundred and thirty-six thousand francs, a rather high figure, and, no doubt, he wished to indulge in the gallantry of giving her a receipt in person.

A thought came to her of the little curls of the day before; and she mechanically looked in the glass at her hair, which Céleste had knotted in large tresses. Then she ensconced herself in a corner by the fire-place, burying herself in the lace of her dressing-gown. Saccard, whose rooms also were on the first floor, corresponding with his wife's, came to see her in his slippers, in the true style of a husband. He barely set foot in Renée's room once a month, and then only for some delicate pecuniary matter. That morning he had red eyes, and the wan complexion of a man who has not slept. He kissed the young woman's hand gallantly.

"You are not well, my dear?" he said, as he sat down on the other side of the chimney-piece. "A little headache, isn't it? Excuse my coming to worry you with my business rigmaroles, but the matter is somewhat serious."

From one of the pockets of his dressing-gown he drew forth Worms's bill, the glazed paper of which Renée recognised.

"I found this bill on my table, yesterday," he continued, "and I'm very sorry, but I really can't pay it just now."

Out of the corner of his eye he watched the effect that his words produced on his wife, who seemed to be deeply astonished. He resumed with a smile:

"As you know, my dear, I'm not in the habit of looking into your expenses. I don't say that certain items in this bill haven't surprised me a little. For instance, on the second page, I find this: 'Ball dress: material, 70 francs; making up, 600 francs; money lent, 5000 francs; perfumery, 6 francs.' That seventy franc dress comes to rather a stiff figure. But you know very well that I understand all kinds of weaknesses. Your bill amounts to a hundred and thirty-six thousand francs, and you have been almost moderate, relatively speaking, I mean--Only, I must repeat it, I can't pay, I'm hard up."

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

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

"I see that you don't believe me," muttered Saccard, enjoying his wife's incredulity respecting his financial embarrassment, as much as if it had been a triumph. "I don't say that my position is threatened, but business is very queer for the moment. I worry you, no doubt, but let me explain our position to you. You confided your dowry to me, and I owe you complete frankness."

He laid the bill on the mantelshelf, took up the tongs, and began to poke the fire. This mania for raking the cinders, while he was talking about business matters, was a system which had become a habit with him. Whenever he reached a figure or a remark, which it bothered him to enunciate, he brought about some downfall of the logs, which he began repairing laboriously, bringing the logs closer together, collecting and piling the little splinters of wood, one above the other. On other occasions he almost disappeared into the fire-place in search of some straying embers. He spoke in a lower tone, you grew impatient, you became interested in his skilful edification of incandescent firewood, you no longer listened to him, and, as a rule, you left his presence defeated but content. Even at other people's houses he despotically took possession of the tongs. In the summer he toyed with a pen-holder, a paper or a pen-knife.

"My dear," said he, giving a blow which sent the fire flying, "I must once again ask your forgiveness for entering into all these details. I have punctually paid you the interest of the funds which you placed in my hands. I can even say, without wishing to hurt your feelings, that I merely looked upon that interest as your pocket-money, paying your expenses, and never asking you to contribute your share of the household disbursements."

He paused. Renée suffered as she looked at him, while he made a large hole in the cinders to bring the end of a log among them. He was approaching a delicate matter.

"As you will understand, I was obliged to make your money yield a high interest. The funds are in safe hands, be assured of that. As for the amount coming from your property in Sologne, it partly served to pay for the house we live in, the remainder is invested in an excellent affair, the Société Générale of the Ports of Morocco. We are not settling accounts, are we? but I want to prove to you that very often we poor husbands are not judged at our worth."