INTRODUCTION

Arthur Goldhammer

Several years after Emile Zola’s novel The Kill ¹ had run afoul of the Republic’s censor for its outrage to public morals and “gross materialism,” a poet for whom the words of literary language were but the pulsating ghosts of a material world annihilated in the service of the sublime offered him consolation in the form of a letter. Stéphane Mallarmé, whom posterity would assign to an altogether different slope of the literary Olympus from Zola, had just finished reading the sixth novel in the twenty-volume series of which The Kill is the second: the “Rougon-Macquart” saga, in which Zola had set himself the goal of working out the combinatorics of heredity and history that in his mind made orderly taxonomic sense of the profusion of the human jungle. His Excellency Eugène Rougon was in fact devoted to the brother of the hero of The Kill, and while the temporal and geographical locus remained the Paris of the Second Empire (1852–70), the focus of the action had shifted from the world of finance and speculation to that of politics. Yet Mallarmé’s appreciative eye, penetrating beyond the superficialities of plots that can fairly be described in both cases as creaky, remarked the quality that would make the novelist’s work impossible to ignore, even for readers like Henry James, who thought, at this early stage of Zola’s career, prior to the master stroke of L’Assommoir, that it stood out chiefly for its “brutal indecency”²and who found themselves put off by its minute attention to “misery, vice, and uncleanness.”³( James would later revise his judgment substantially, as we shall see.) The quality that appealed to Mallarmé was a certain novelty in the experience of reading: “I read it straight through,” he wrote to Zola of His Excellency, “then read it again piece by piece over several days. [The novel] lends itself to both ways of savoring a work—the old way, which is how it was when novels unfolded like plays, and the new way, which reflects the intermittence of modern life.”⁴

“The intermittence of modern life”: the phrase is especially apposite of The Kill, whose style, in its best passages, is “swift and transparent, like the glance of a contemporary, of your reader,”⁵and whose subject, more than the incestuous relationship between Renée Saccard and her stepson Maxime or the frenetic speculations of Aristide Saccard—husband of the one and father of the other—is in fact “the capital of modern life,” the city of Paris itself. For neither the speculation nor the incest would be conceivable without the modernity that is Paris, and that, far more than the “brutal indecency” of illicit sex, is the true object of Zola’s meditation. And at the heart of that Parisian modernity is ambivalence, for the modern has no fixed identity. It is never anything but the antagonist in a perpetual “quarrel of ancient and modern,” a quarrel in which the ancient, the world we are perpetually losing, provides the only beacons in relation to which the identity of its ineluctably if ephemerally triumphant opponent can be located.

THE CAPITAL OF MODERN LIFE

In The Kill we gaze upon Paris as if attempting to get a fix on our precise location from a variety of angles: from the window of a restaurant high above the city on the Buttes Montmartre; from the children’s aerie atop the Hôtel Béraud on the Ile Saint-Louis; from a carriage ambling through the scenic trumpery and social snobbery of the Bois de Boulogne or racing along new boulevards that paved the gas-lit way to perdition; from a mansion built in obedience to the dictates of “the style Napoléon III, that opulent hybrid of every style that ever existed”;⁶from across the dinner table at a banquet of the rich and powerful; from the muddy ruts of a vast construction site; from inside the studio of an illustrious couturier; from a private room in the Café Riche offering a panorama of gaudily lit kiosks and gaudily dressed streetwalkers. Each of these set-piece descriptions—cinematically precise, with lighting and angles carefully calculated by the auteur⁷— not only establishes a physical ambience but advances a moral argument. Description in Zola is never neutral, innocent, or passive, as the label Naturalist might suggest; it is a rhetorical weapon, a bludgeon with which to induce in the reader Zola’s religious terror of modernity as an implacable, engulfing flood: images of torrents, inundations, swollen seas, and raging rivers abound, but their purpose is to effect a transfer from the register of natural disaster to that of capitalist calamity. Thus urban development is represented by mountainous seas of rooftops; financial legerdemain eventuates in torrential rivers of gold. Mallarmé correctly grasped the intent of Zola’s prose paintings when he remarked, “I admire very much your backgrounds, Paris and its sky. . . . Everything comes from you, horizons included, and when I the reader leave the page to muse, you, bold tyrant that you are, hang a drop curtain behind my reverie.”⁸Naturalism was not so much an unvarnished description of what is as a willful imposition of images of a violence akin to nature’s own on the unnatural order of the new.

A violence akin to nature’s own: it was a problem for a novelist of Zola’s epic ambition that the order of the new, being unnatural, lacked the palpable conflict inherent in the natural order in which the strong devour the weak. The transformation wreaked upon Paris in the years preceding the writing of The Kill—the years of the Second Empire— did not “unfold like a play.” It respected no unities of time or place; its action took place behind closed doors. Its battlefields were contracts and counting houses; its victories, expropriations, and quarter-point discounts on promissory notes. Though an epochal feat, which shaped history as surely as a decisive battle, it was not a feat of arms. It did, however, have a general: Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann, “the visionary prefect [of the Seine], who saw himself as an ‘artist of demolition,’ pragmatic, Protestant, modern, efficient.”⁹In the wake of the coup d’état of December 2, 1851, which ultimately elevated Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to the rank of Emperor Napoleon III, Haussmann was tapped to turn Paris into an “urban machine.”¹⁰The function of this machine was to accelerate the flow of goods and consumers and thus to quicken the lifeblood of the French capital. Broad boulevards were its arteries. Zola evokes the rapturous response to the enhanced perfusion of the urban tissue:

The lovers were in love with the new Paris. They often dashed about the city by carriage, detouring down certain boulevards for which they felt a special affection. They took delight in the imposing houses with big carved doors and innumerable balconies emblazoned with names, signs, and company insignia in big gold letters. As their coupé sped along, they fondly gazed out upon the gray strips of sidewalk, broad and interminable, with their benches, colorful columns, and skinny trees. The bright gap stretching all the way to the horizon, narrowing as it went and opening out onto a patch of empty blue sky; the uninterrupted double row of big stores with clerks smiling at their customers; the bustling streams of pedestrians—all this filled them little by little with a sense of absolute and total satisfaction, a feeling of perfection as they viewed the life of the street. . . . They were constantly on the move. . . . Each boulevard became but another corridor of their house.

This “absolute and total satisfaction” is altogether kinetic. Zola’s enumeration of visual stimuli—balconies, signs, sidewalks, benches, storefronts—moves as rapidly as the lovers’ coupé, as if to signal slyly that the blur of motion is essential, that none of these delights can bear much scrutiny or be lived with for very long without turning into ennui, the affliction that drives Renée to sin.¹¹The curious insubstantiality of modern pleasure is driven home by the stark contrast with the ponderous and “unusable” satisfactions of a relatively static past, conveniently enclosed within the walls of Renée’s ancestral home, the Hôtel Béraud:

Long suites of vast rooms with high ceilings dwarfed the old furniture, which was built low of dark wood. The dusky gloom was peopled solely by the figures in the tapestries, whose large, colorless bodies could barely be made out. All the luxury of the old Paris bourgeoisie was represented here, a luxury as unusable as it was unyielding: chairs whose oak seats were barely covered by a cushion of hemp, beds with stiff sheets, linen chests whose rough boards were singularly hard on frail modern finery.

Although Zola makes a half-hearted attempt at the end of his book to depict this sepulchral solitude as a moral order that would have yielded Renée, his latter-day Phèdre, a happy life had she only bent herself to it, one feels through his pen the libidinal pull of the modern spectacle. He was the son, after all, of a civil engineer, a builder of bridges and canals, a proto-Haussmann possessed of heroic, visionary energy yet caught in the toils of stealthy financiers, who join with death to frustrate him of his prize.¹²Hence the heroic myth of modernity—Enlightenment made flesh—is one that the son can wholeheartedly embrace. Light indeed becomes a physical and palpable presence in the novel of modern life. Everywhere in Zola’s capital light is the ethereal creator of the new:

All the crystal on the table was as thin and light as muslin, devoid of engraving, and so transparent that it cast no shadow. The centerpiece and other large items looked like fountains of fire. Lightning flashed from the burnished flanks of the warming ovens. The forks, spoons, and knives with their handles of pearl could have been mistaken for flaming ingots. Rainbows illuminated the glassware. And amid this shower of sparks, this incandescent mass, the decanters of wine added a ruby tinge to table linen as radiant as white-hot metal.

Or, again:

It was not yet midnight. Down below, on the boulevard, Paris went rumbling on, prolonging the blaze of daylight before making up its mind to turn in for the night. Wavering lines of trees separated the whiteness of the sidewalks from the murky blackness of the roadway with its thunder of speeding carriages and flash of headlights. At intervals on either side of this dark strip newsdealers’ kiosks blazed forth like huge Venetian lanterns, tall and strangely gaudy, as if they had been set down in these precise places for some colossal illumination. At this time of night, however, their muffled glow was lost in the glare of nearby storefronts.

Similar passages could be multiplied at will. If this light—this very physical light, this blazing gaslight, so different from the notional, metaphorical light of “enlightened” eighteenth-century thought— was to dispel the funereal gloom of the old order, mountains had to be moved: again, mountains real and not metaphorical, mountains of fill and debris, and to mobilize the army of laborers needed to accomplish this, mounds of cash had to be accumulated.¹³Therein, for Zola, lay the rub. Heroism, noble when visionary and selfless, was obliged to consort with vulgar money men of contemptible ethics, or so Zola imagined them when he placed Saccard’s vulturine sister Mme Sidonie outside the Bourse every afternoon at three o’clock, holding “court for characters as suspect and dubious as herself.” Zola, himself a clerk at Hachette earning 600 francs a month at a time when his heroine was racking up a clothing bill of 257,000 francs, could have known this milieu only at second hand, and he gave in to stereotypes that left no room for the Saint-Simonian social vision that put the brothers Jacob and Isaac Pereire at odds with their coreligionist Baron Rothschild as to the best means of stoking the engines of progress.¹⁴Zola’s grasping capitalists are not Jews—Jewish blood does not figure among the hereditary determinants of the Rougon line—yet they partake of the characteristics of the Jew as set forth in anti-Semitic journalism and literature. Indeed, Mme Sidonie in her inevitable black dress would have taken up her station outside the Bourse just a stone’s throw from “the apartment occupied by the anti-Semitic journalist Edouard Drumont of La Libre parole, who shook his fist at it every morning.”¹⁵Ironically for the man who was ultimately to be celebrated as the champion of Capt. Dreyfus, “certain Russian papers” would claim that he was not only an admirer of Drumont, like his friends Alphonse Daudet and Edmond de Goncourt, but that he had actually collaborated with Drumont on his notorious anti-Semitic screed La France juive. Zola vehemently denied the charge—“the statement is quite simply imbecilic”—yet his agents of Haussmannization are, like Drumont’s Jews, outsiders masked as insiders and manipulating the rules of the game from within.¹⁶

Still, if Saccard is the hidden face of empire, its cash nexus, he also stands for a boldness of vision, a will to conquer, that Zola, student of heredity that he was, would have seen as his own father’s legacy.¹⁷ Standing above the capital on the Buttes Montmartre like a general on the eve of battle, Saccard explains the broad outlines of his superior’s strategy to a woman who, to his subsequent relief, will carry the secret with her to an early grave, for this is a war that can be won at far less cost if its victims are unaware that it is being waged: “[E]xtending his open hand and wielding it like the sharp edge of a cutlass, he made as if to slice the city into four parts.” Then he speaks to his doomed first wife:

Look, follow my hand. From the boulevard du Temple to the Barrière du Trône, one cut; then, over this way, from the Madeleine to the Monceau plain, another cut; and a third cut in this direction, a fourth in that direction, a cut here, another farther out. Cuts everywhere. Paris slashed to pieces with a saber, its veins laid open to provide nourishment for a hundred thousand excavators and masons . . .

Saccard’s “cutlass” lifts the action from the Bourse, which for Zola belongs to the register of the base, the ignoble, to the battlefield, the arena of nobility par excellence. The character of Saccard thus succinctly embodies the ambivalence that always attends what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.” We warm ourselves at Prometheus’ fire and complain of liver troubles attendant on the sedentary ways we adopt in order to remain close to the hearth.

AMBIVALENCE AND ANDROGYNY

“Ennui is the enemy,” a guide to the French capital observed in 1867, “and I confess that I cannot understand how anyone can feel bored in Paris.” Yet Renée Saccard, riding in her carriage in the Bois de Boulogne circa 1861, is heard to exclaim, “Oh, I’m bored! I’m bored to death.” The contradiction is more apparent than real, however: variety of sensation not only cannot ward off ennui but is likely to induce it— such is the perversity of the laws of pleasure. Paris, for Henry James, was “the biggest temple ever built to material joys and the lust of the eyes . . . such a beauty of light.”¹⁸Yet lust, whether of the eyes or the flesh, leads to lassitude: “I would say you’ve tasted every conceivable apple,” Maxime tells his stepmother, but when he asks her what she dreams of, she has no answer other than to say, “I want something different.” Don Juan himself could not have expressed more succinctly the insatiability of mere appetite, as distinct from the more profound desire whose aim is not to fill a recurring void in the desiring subject but to effect an inner metamorphosis. Metamorphosis, however, calls for roundness of character, and Zola’s individuals are, as James accurately lamented, “simple and shallow,” so that “our author’s dealings with [them] . . . maintain their resemblance to those of the lusty bee who succeeds in plumping for an instant . . . into every flower-cup of the garden.” James concedes, however, that “we see enough of the superficial among novelists at large . . . without deriving from it, as we derive from Zola at his best, the concomitant impression of the solid.”¹⁹

Zola in The Kill does indeed flit among flowers. Renée in her flouncy finery resembles the flowers of the conservatory in which she makes love to her stepson. Her lips are said to beckon like the petals of the Chinese hibiscus covering the wall of the Saccard mansion. Maxime appears as a flower in the tableau vivant that casts him as Narcissus and Renée as Echo:

He was changing into a flower. His limbs seemed to turn green and grow longer inside his green satin tights. His supple trunk and slightly curved legs seemed to sink into the ground and take root, while the upper part of his body, festooned with wide strips of white satin, opened out into a marvelous corolla. Maxime’s blond hair completed the illusion, as his long curls could be taken for yellow pistils with white petals all around.

Yet if Zola permits himself to mock the bathos of the feckless prefect’s attempt to modernize the myth of Narcissus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he is quite content on his own account to derive whatever ironic profit he can from the conceit that what is tragic about Renée’s love for Maxime—if love is not too grand a word—is precisely that it lacks the tragic dimension of Phèdre’s for Hippolyte. Zola cannot sustain the note of ambivalence between ancient and modern that he strikes repeatedly throughout the novel: he must, time and again, resolve the issue in favor of a tradition, a status quo ante, in which he no longer believes, and in so doing he falls short of tragedy as surely as the prefect whose pretentiousness he ridicules falls short of sublimity. Instead of tragedy, Zola settles for moral satire.

Nevertheless, Renée is not an insignificant creation. Unconvincingly and rather matter-of-factly Zola does provide her with justification for her defiance of convention by portraying her as the victim of a rape. But this violation merely incites and exacerbates a preexisting will to acquire forbidden knowledge—a will whose origin the author, half a generation older than Freud, locates squarely in the prelapsarian paradise of the “children’s room,” from which lofty height Renée is free to indulge her curiosity about the male bodies on display at the swimming school below. Even her vanity is a response to the cruelty of other children, who mock her untutored adherence to outmoded preferences in schoolgirl attire. It is curiosity about the meretricious glamour of the demimonde that lures her out of the cosseted cocoon of her fabulous dressing room, at once womb and lair. If Renée’s author succumbs at times to the conventions of la belle dame sans merci, painting her as huntress, nymph, or sphinx, he inflects mercilessness by inflicting it primarily upon the merciless beauty herself. So great is her narcissism that she cannot imagine another victim worthy of her cruelty. If she is vapid, it is because she willfully starves her imagination.

For this starvation Henry James sees no excuse. Renée possesses by default the wherewithal that James’s huntresses spend so much of themselves in acquiring. Think of Charlotte Stant in The Golden Bowl, which, like The Kill, is set under the sign of “flesh and gold.” Indeed, James wrote The Golden Bowl in 1903, the same year in which he produced his retrospective essay on Zola, whom he congratulates on his “bold free linguistic reach—completely genial” yet castigates for “his unequipped and delusive pursuit of the life of the spirit and the tone of culture.”²⁰The “tone of culture” James certainly supplied in abundance, almost as if correcting the heavy touch of Zola’s earlier portrait of a lady as manfully unabashed in her pursuit of her prey as Charlotte. Yet in order to bring out the “tone of culture” James is obliged to banish from his text precisely what Zola wishes above all to bring in. “What we quarrel with,” James wrote, is Zola’s “decoction of ‘nature’ in a vessel unfit for the purpose, a receptacle—in need of scouring.” Zola might have replied that the golden bowl into which James poured his “decoction” of culture was altogether too dainty a vessel to contain the effluvia of the civilization it epitomized. For that a quite different receptacle—something like the basket in which the “business woman” Mme Sidonie lugs the paraphernalia of chicanery and pettifoggery with her around Paris—was required:

This basket, which never left her side, was a whole world unto itself. If she opened it even slightly, all sorts of things spilled out: date books, folders, and above all bundles of paper bearing official stamps whose illegible writing she deciphered with remarkable dexterity. She had in her the makings of a business broker and a clerk of court. She lived among defaulted bills, writs, and court orders.

For James, the Naturalists—Daudet, Goncourt, Zola—were “men of truly infernal intelligence” who did “the only kind of work, today, that I respect; and in spite of their ferocious pessimism and their handling of unclean things, they are at least serious and honest.”²¹It is all the more striking, therefore, that, twenty years after meeting Zola and writing this letter, James would “handle” precisely the same “unclean thing” that Zola had handled: an incestuous relationship between a father’s second wife and, in the one case, a child, an androgynous son; in the other, the spouse of a child, of a daughter similarly baffled in her sexual maturation by her closeness to her father. Characteristically, James would make his Charlotte as much a model of subtlety and intelligence as Renée is of coarseness and vapidity. He imparts the “tone of culture” to his heroine in precisely the same measure that he deprives her husband Adam Verver of whatever qualities of competitive fitness permitted him to emerge from the jungle of Gilded Age capitalism with his lion’s share. Verver, we may assume, had something in him of the “verve” that Zola ascribed to Saccard. We shall never know, however, because James banished that unclean American energy from his work. He would have recoiled instinctively from Zola’s comparison of the financier to a dramatic artist: Saccard, Zola wrote, “would have taken possession of the property long ago if he hadn’t imagined this whole drama in advance, but it would have given him less pleasure if it had come to him more easily.”

Stendhal famously compared the realistic novel to a mirror paraded alongside a road. In The Golden Bowl the mirror reflects a distorted image: we see fabulous wealth deformed by the curved and gilded surface of a flawed goblet. The Kill distorts as well, but not by the magnifying and diminishing effects of an artfully modulated style. Its method is rather to shine an arc light—the rayon électrique that makes a precocious appearance in two places in the text—into dark recesses. None is darker than the conservatory of the Saccard mansion, that domesticated jungle whose dominant fragrance is what Zola calls the odor of love: there the lovers “were a thousand leagues from Paris, far from the facile life of the Bois and official receptions, somewhere in the jungles of India or in some monstrous temple, where the black marble sphinx was god.” James of course understood the urge to introduce this note of wildness. If the American writer’s problem was to overlay the “barbaric yawp” of the New World with the “tone of culture,” James remarked, the French writer’s was to cope with “a language in which everything has been said and re-said. . . . Daudet spoke of his envy and admiration of the ‘serenity of production’ of Turgenev—working in a field and a language where the white snow has as yet so few footprints. In French, he said, it is all one trampled slosh—one has to look, forever, to see where one can put down his step.”²²In The Kill Zola was searching for fresh snow. Thirty years later, James would cross the same white waste and intersect Zola’s path only once, at the point of incest. The note of imaginative obsession is too powerful in the work of both men to suggest that either exhausted, or was limited by, the reality of the time. Yet in the convergence of their two phantasmagorical visions it is impossible not to feel that one has passed near the pole of a civilization’s discontents.

1

On the way back, in the crush of carriages returning via the lakeshore, the calèche was obliged to slow to a walk. At one point the congestion became so bad that it was even forced to a stop.

The sun was setting in a light gray October sky with streaks of thin cloud on the horizon. A last ray of sunlight descending from the distant heights of the falls threaded its way along the carriageway, bathing the long line of stalled carriages in a pale reddish light. Glimmers of gold and bright flashes from the wheels seemed to cling to the straw-yellow trim of the calèche, whose deep blue side panels reflected bits of the surrounding landscape. And higher up, fully immersed in the reddish light that illuminated them from the rear and caused the brass buttons of their cloaks, half-folded over the back of the seat, to glow, the coachman and footman in their dark blue livery, putty-colored breeches, and striped black-and-yellow waistcoats held themselves erect, grave and patient, as was only proper for the servants of a good house whom no crush of carriages would ever succeed in ruffling. Their hats, ornamented with black crests, possessed great dignity. Only the horses—a superb pair of bays—snorted with impatience.

“Look over there,” said Maxime. “Laure d’Aurigny, in that coupé.¹ . . . Do you see, Renée?”

Renée lifted herself up slightly and squinted with that exquisite pout she always made on account of her weak eyesight.

“I thought she’d run away,” she said. “She’s changed the color of her hair, hasn’t she?”

“Yes, she has,” Maxime laughed. “Her new lover can’t stand red.”

Renée, leaning forward with her hand resting on the low door of the calèche, stared, awakened at last from the melancholy dream that had kept her silent for the past hour as she lay stretched out in the back of the carriage like a convalescent resting on a chaise longue. Over a mauve silk dress fitted with pinafore and tunic and trimmed with wide pleated flounces, she wore a white cloth jacket with mauve velvet facings, which lent quite a swagger to her look. Her strange hair, of a pale tawny color reminiscent of the finest butter, was barely hidden by a thin hat embellished by a cluster of Bengal roses. Continuing to squint, she had the air of an impertinent youth, with a large furrow in her otherwise unblemished brow and an upper lip that protruded like a sulky child’s. Because it was hard for her to see, she took her eyeglasses—a man’s pince-nez with horn rims—and, holding them in her hand without setting them on her nose, examined the well-endowed Laure at her leisure and with an air of perfect calm.

The carriages remained motionless. Here and there amid the series of featureless dark patches formed by the long line of coupés—quite numerous in the Bois de Boulogne2 that autumn afternoon—shone the corner of a mirror or the bit of a horse or the silvered handle of a lantern or the gold braids of a footman sitting high up on his seat. Occasionally one caught a glimpse of female finery in an open landau, a flash of silk here or velvet there. Little by little a profound silence subdued all the bustle, as everything ground to a halt. Inside the carriages one heard the conversations of people passing by on foot. Mute glances were exchanged through carriage doors. All gossip had ceased, and the wait was interrupted only by the creak of a harness or the sound of a horse pawing the ground impatiently. The indistinct voices of the forest died away in the distance.

Despite the lateness of the season, all Paris was there: Duchess von Sternich in an “eight-spring”; Mme de Lauwerens in a quite handsomely rigged victoria; Baroness von Meinhold in a ravishing reddish-brown cab; Countess Wanska, with her piebald ponies; Mme Daste and her famous black “steppers”; Mme de Guende and Mme Teissière, in a coupé; and little Sylvia in a dark blue landau. And then there was Don Carlos, in mourning, with his antiquated formal livery; Selim Pasha, with his fez and without his guardian; the duchesse de Rozan in a single-seat coupé with white-speckled livery; the comte de Chibray, in a dogcart; Mr. Simpson in the most elegant of coaches; the whole American colony; and, bringing up the rear, two academicians in a fiacre.³

The first carriages finally succeeded in extricating themselves, and one by one the whole line slowly began to move. It was like an awakening. A thousand lights began to dance, flashes darted among the wheels, and harnesses glinted as teams strained against their traces. Ground and trees shimmered in what seemed like the glare of moving ice. The glitter of harnesses and wheels, the amber glow of polished panels set ablaze by the setting sun, the shrill accents added by splendid liveries set up high against the open sky and sumptuous finery spilling out over carriage doors—all of this was swept along in a dull rumble, punctuated only by the hoofbeats of trotting horses. The whole parade moved steadily along in a uniform motion, sights and sounds unvarying from first to last, as if the lead carriages were pulling the rest after them.

Renée yielded to the slight jolt of the calèche as it resumed its forward progress and, dropping her pince-nez, once again leaned back against the cushions. With a shiver she drew over herself a corner of the bearskin that filled the interior of the carriage with a layer of silky snow. Her gloved hands luxuriated in the deep, soft curls of fur. The wind had picked up. The warm October afternoon that had brought spring back to the Bois and drawn the leading lights of high society out in open carriages threatened to end in a biting evening chill.

For a short while the young woman lay huddled in her warm corner, giving herself up to the voluptuous, hypnotic motion of so many wheels turning round and round in front of her. Then she lifted up her head toward Maxime, who with his eyes was calmly undressing the women on display in the nearby coupés and landaus.

“Honestly,” she asked, “do you think Laure d’Aurigny is pretty? You had nice things to say about her the other day, when the sale of her diamonds was announced! And by the way, have you seen the rivière and the aigrette4 your father bought me at that sale?”

Avoiding the first question, Maxime met the second with a nasty snicker. “You have to admit that he carried it off nicely. He found a way to pay off Laure’s debts and give his wife diamonds at the same time.”

The young woman gave a slight shrug.

“Naughty boy!” she murmured with a smile.

But the young man had leaned forward to stare at a woman whose green dress caught his eye. Renée laid her head down, her eyes half-closed, staring idly at either side of the carriageway, seeing nothing. To her right, a slow procession of shrubs and small trees with reddish foliage and slender branches slipped past. On the bridle path reserved for riders, narrow-waisted gentlemen occasionally galloped by on horses whose hooves raised small clouds of fine sand. To the left, flower beds of various shapes dotted the lawn that sloped down to the quiet lake, which was crystal clear, free of algae, and neatly edged as if by a gardener’s spade. From the far side of its mirror surface rose two islands, joined by the gray hyphen of a bridge, above which loomed charming cliffs whose theatrical rows of fir and other evergreens stood out against the pale sky, while reflections of their dark foliage on the water’s surface resembled the fringes of curtains artfully draped over the horizon. This little patch of nature, with its air of a freshly painted backdrop, lay immersed in a pale shadow, a bluish haze that added a finishing touch of exquisite charm, of delightful falsity, to the distances. On the other shore, the Chalet des Iles, looking freshly polished, gleamed like a brand-new toy. Snaking through the lawns of the park and around the lake, ribbons of yellow sand, narrow paths lined with the cast-iron branches of lampposts in imitation of a rustic copse, stood out in this final hour in the strangest way against the softened green of water and grass.

Accustomed to the contrived graces of these vistas, Renée, sinking back into lassitude, had closed her eyes almost completely, until all she could see was the way the long hair of the bearskin wound around the spindles of her slender fingers. But when something disrupted the regular trot of the line of carriages, she raised her head and nodded to two young women lying side by side in amorous languor in an eight-spring that had noisily turned off onto a side path leading away from the lakeshore. Mme la marquise d’Espanet, whose husband, to the great scandal of the recalcitrant old nobility, had recently embraced the imperial cause and accepted a position as aide-de-camp to the Emperor, was one of the most illustrious socialites of the Second Empire.5 The other woman, Mme Haffner, had married a well-known industrialist from Colmar, a millionaire twenty times over, whom the Empire was turning into a politician. Renée had known both women since boarding school, where others had referred to them with a knowing air as “the two Inseparables.” She called them by their first names, Adeline and Suzanne. After smiling at them, she curled up once more, but a laugh from Maxime made her turn around.

“No, really, I’m sad. Don’t laugh, this is serious,” she said on seeing that the young man was contemplating her with a mocking eye, making fun of her reclining posture.

Maxime replied in a queer tone.

“So we’re really hurt, are we? Really jealous?”

She seemed taken aback.

“Me! Why would I be jealous?”

Then, as if remembering, she added with her disdainful pout, “Oh, yes, of course, that fat cow Laure! As if I cared. If what everybody wants me to believe is true, and Aristide really paid that whore’s debts and spared her a trip abroad, he must be less in love with his money than I thought. That will put him back in the good graces of the ladies. . . . The dear man: I leave him perfectly free to do exactly what he wants.”

She was smiling as she said this, and pronounced the words “the dear man” in a tone of amicable indifference. Then, suddenly plunged again into deep sadness and darting her eyes about with the desperate look of a woman who can’t decide how to amuse herself, she muttered, “Oh, what I’d really like to do—but no, I’m not jealous, not jealous at all.”

She stopped, unsure of herself.

“Don’t you see? I’m bored,” was what she finally came out with, in an offhand voice.

Then, lips pinched, she fell silent. The line of carriages continued to move along the lake at a steady pace, sounding remarkably like a distant waterfall. Looming up on the left, between the water and the path, were small clumps of green trees with straight, slender trunks that oddly resembled a series of colonnades. The bushes and trees on the right had vanished, and the Bois now opened out into vast expanses of green, immense carpets of lawn punctuated here and there by clusters of tall trees. Gently undulating sheets of green stretched all the way to the Porte de la Muette,6 whose low gate, visible from quite a distance, resembled a piece of taut black lace stretched along the ground, and on the slopes, in the places where the undulations dipped down low, the grass had taken on a bluish tint. Renée stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed, as though this magnification of the horizon, these soft meadows moistened by the night air, had made her more acutely aware of the emptiness of her existence.

At length she broke her silence with these words, repeated in a tone of muffled anger: “Oh, I’m bored! I’m bored to death.”

“You’re not in good spirits, to be sure,” Maxime said quietly. “You’re on edge. No doubt about it.”

The young woman pushed back deeper into her seat.

“Yes, I’m on edge,” she responded curtly.

Then she took a maternal tone. “I’m getting old, my dear child. I’ll be thirty soon. It’s horrible. Nothing gives me pleasure. At twenty you can’t possibly have any idea—”

“Was it to hear your confession that you brought me along?” the young man interrupted. “That could take a devil of a long time.”

She met this impertinence with a feeble smile, as the gibe of a spoiled child who is allowed to do as he pleases.

“I advise you to feel sorry for yourself,” Maxime continued. “You spend more than a hundred thousand francs a year on your wardrobe, you live in a splendid house, you have the finest horses, your every whim is received as holy writ, and the newspapers discuss each of your gowns as if dealing with an event of the utmost gravity. Women are jealous of you, and men would give ten years of their lives to kiss the tips of your fingers. . . . Am I right?”

She assented with a nod, without answering. With eyes cast down, she went back to curling the fur of the bearskin around her finger.

“Don’t be modest,” Maxime went on. “Come right out and admit that you’re one of the pillars of the Second Empire. You and I can say such things to each other. You’re the queen wherever you go: in the Tuileries,7 in the homes of ministers, or merely among millionaires, everywhere, from top to bottom, you’re in command. There is no pleasure you haven’t jumped into with both feet, and if I dared, if the respect I owe you did not hold me back, I would say—”

He paused for a few seconds, laughing, then finished his sentence in a cavalier manner: “I would say you’ve tasted every conceivable apple.”

She did not flinch.

“And you’re bored!” the young man resumed with comic passion. “You slay me! . . . But what do you want? What do you dream of ?”

She shrugged to indicate that she had no idea. Despite the tilt of her head, Maxime saw her at that moment as so serious, so somber, that he held his tongue. He gazed at the line of carriages, which, upon reaching the end of the lake, had spread out to fill the wide circle. Less bunched up now, the vehicles turned with magnificent grace. The volume of sound increased as the hooves of the horses struck the hard earth at a more rapid pace.

The calèche, making the wide turn to rejoin the queue, swung back and forth in a way that filled Maxime with a vaguely pleasurable sensation. With that he gave in to his desire to add insult to Renée’s injury. “You deserve to ride in a fiacre, you know. That would serve you right! . . . Just look at all these people heading back to Paris, people who are at your feet. They bow to you as though you were a queen, and your good friend M. de Mussy is all but blowing you kisses.”

Indeed, a man on horseback had been making signs in her direction. Maxime had spoken in a tone of hypocritical sarcasm. But Renée barely turned and shrugged her shoulders. This time the young man responded with a gesture of despair. “So, then, it’s as bad as that, is it? . . . But good God, you have everything, what more do you want?”

Renée raised her head. Her eyes were aglow with unslaked curiosity. “I want something different,” she muttered.

“But since you have everything,” Maxime laughed, “something different is nothing. . . . What do you mean, something different?”

“What do I mean?” she repeated.

But her voice trailed off. She had turned all the way round and was contemplating the strange tableau fading from view to her rear. Dusk came slowly, like a shower of fine ash. The lake, when viewed steadily in the pale light still lingering on the water, seemed to grow rounder, so that it resembled a huge slab of pewter. The trees lining both shores—evergreens whose straight, thin trunks seemed to surge up from the slumbering surface of the lake—at this hour took on the appearance of purplish colonnades whose regular architecture limned the studied curves of the water’s edge. Masses of foliage loomed in the distance, obscuring the horizon with broad dark patches. From behind those patches emanated a glow of embers, the light from a dying sun that set only a portion of the gray immensity aflame. Above the still lake and squat trees and singularly unrelieved vista stretched the hollow of the sky, the infinite emptiness, wider and deeper than what lay below. There was something thrilling, something vaguely sad, about such a huge expanse of sky hanging over such a tiny patch of nature. The fading heights, slumbering sadly in mellow darkness, gave off such an autumnal melancholy that the Bois, gradually enveloped in a shroud of shadow and magnified by the potent magic dwelling in the wood, shed its worldly graces. As the vivid colors of the equipages were swallowed up by darkness, the sound of hooves could be heard more distinctly, like the whisper of distant leaves or the hiss of a faraway stream. Everything was receding and dying away. Amid this universal obliteration, the lateen sail of the big excursion boat stood out clearly and vigorously against the sunset’s amber. This sail, this inordinately enlarged triangle of yellow canvas, was all that could still be seen.

Renée, for all her jadedness, experienced a singular sensation of unavowable desire at the sight of this landscape, which she no longer recognized, this tastefully fashionable piece of nature turned by the dark chill of night into a sacred wood, into one of those mythical glades in which the ancient gods hid their outsized loves, their divine adulteries and incests. As the calèche drove on, it struck her that the twilight behind her had wrapped the land of her dreams in its shimmering veils and was making off with it, snatching away the bower of illicit but superhuman love in which she might at last have assuaged her ailing heart, her weary flesh.

When the lake and the little woods, vanished into darkness, were reduced to no more than a black streak on the face of heaven, the young woman turned abruptly and in a voice marked by tears of spite took up where she had left off. “What do I mean? I mean something different, for heaven’s sake. I want something different. How would I know what? If only I did. But can’t you see, I’ve had enough of balls, of late suppers, of parties and all the rest. Always the same thing. It’s deadly. . . . Men are so tiresome! So unspeakably tiresome.”

Maxime began to laugh. Signs of passion were showing through the socialite’s aristocratic surface. She had stopped batting her eyelids. The furrow in her brow deepened. Her lower lip, which had protruded in a sulky child’s pout, pushed further forward in pursuit of pleasures she coveted but could not name. Although she noticed her companion’s laugh, she was trembling too much to stop. Half-reclining, yielding to the rocking of the carriage, she continued her thought with a series of short, sharp sentences: “Yes, no doubt about it, you’re all tiresome. . . . I don’t include you, Maxime. You’re too young. . . . But if I were to tell you how Aristide suffocated me at the beginning. And as for the rest of them—the men who have loved me. . . . You know, we’re good friends, I’m not inhibited with you. So listen to this: there are days when I’m so tired of living the life of the rich woman, worshiped and adored, that I’d rather be someone like Laure d’Aurigny, one of those women who live as men do.”

Because this only made Maxime laugh harder, she insisted. “Yes, someone like Laure d’Aurigny. It must be less insipid to live that way, less always the same thing.”

For a few instants she fell silent, as if to imagine the life she would lead if she were Laure. Then, in a discouraged tone, she resumed. “But you know, women like that must have their troubles too. Life is certainly no barrel of laughs. It’s deadly. . . . As I was saying, what I need is something different. I have no idea what that might be, you understand. But something different, something that’s never happened to anyone else, something out of the ordinary, a pleasure of some rare, unfamiliar kind.”

Her speech had slowed. As she uttered those last words, she seemed to be searching for something, yielding to some profound reverie. The calèche was just then climbing the avenue leading to the exit of the Bois. The shadows grew deeper. The woods sped past on either side, like two gray walls. Dashing down the sidewalks went the yellow-painted cast-iron chairs on which, in the evening when the weather was fine, the bourgeoisie sat and showed off its Sunday best. Empty, these benches had the dark, melancholy look of lawn furniture surprised by winter, and the dull, rhythmic sound of the returning carriages wafted over the deserted path like a sad lament.

Maxime was of course fully aware that it was quite bad form to think that life was a barrel of laughs. Though still young enough to succumb to bursts of enthusiasm, he had a selfish streak too deep, an indifference too scornful, and had already experienced too much genuine lassitude not to pronounce himself disgusted, blasé, and at the end of his tether. Ordinarily he would have taken a certain pride in such a confession.

He stretched out like Renée and affected a doleful tone. “Of course you’re right,” he said. “It is tedious. I’m not enjoying myself much more than you are. I’ve often dreamed of something different. . . . Nothing is as stupid as traveling. As for making money, I’d rather run through it, though that isn’t always as amusing as one first imagines. Loving, being loved—one soon gets sick of it, no? . . . Yes indeed. One gets sick of it.”

As the young woman did not answer, he continued, hoping to shock her with blatant sacrilege. “I’d like to be loved by a nun, you know. Now that might be amusing. . . . Have you ever dreamed of loving a man you couldn’t think about without committing a crime?”

She remained somber, however, and Maxime, seeing that she stayed silent, concluded that she wasn’t listening. With the back of her neck resting on the padded sill of the carriage, she seemed to be asleep with her eyes wide open. She lay inert, in the grip of her dreams, while now and then her lips twitched nervously. The shadow of twilight softly invaded her. All that that shadow contained of vague sadness, of discreet pleasure, of unavowed hope, penetrated her, bathing her in a sort of languid and morbid atmosphere. While staring at the round back of the footman perched on his bench, she was no doubt thinking about her pleasures of the past, of the parties she now found so dreary and no longer cared for. She looked back on her former life: the immediate gratification of her appetites, the loathsome luxury, and the oppressive monotony of the same caresses and the same betrayals repeated time and time again. Then there dawned in her something like a ray of hope, along with shudders of desire: the idea of that “something else” that her feverish mind had failed to discover. At this point her reverie went awry. Despite her efforts, the word she was looking for eluded her in the gathering darkness, was swallowed up by the steady rumble of the carriages. The soft swaying of the calèche was yet another obstacle that prevented her from formulating what it was she wanted. A tremendous temptation welled up from all that emptiness, from the shrubbery slumbering in the darkness on either side of the path, from the sound of the wheels and the gentle rocking of the carriage, which filled her with a delicious drowsiness. A thousand tiny breaths blew across her flesh: unfinished dreams, unnamed pleasures, vague wants—all the exquisite and monstrous things that a drive home from the Bois at the hour when the sky turns pale can put into a woman’s weary heart. She kept her two hands buried in the bearskin and felt very warm in her white cloth jacket with its mauve velvet lining. As she stretched her leg, relaxing in snug comfort, her ankle brushed the warmth of Maxime’s leg. He took no particular notice of this touch. A jolt wrenched her from her half-sleep. Lifting her head, she turned her gray eyes on the young man sprawled in all his elegance and stared at him oddly.

At that moment the calèche left the Bois. The avenue de l’Impératrice stretched straight ahead into the dusk, lined on both sides by green-painted wooden fences converging to a point on the horizon. On the side path reserved for riders, a white horse in the distance pierced a bright hole in the gray shadow. Scattered along the path on the other side of the avenue, tardy strollers formed groups of black dots slowly moving in the direction of Paris. At the very top of the scene, at the end of the chaotic, crawling train of carriages, the Arc de Triomphe, set at an angle, grew whiter against a vast expanse of soot-colored sky.

As the calèche proceeded on its way at a brisker pace than before, Maxime, charmed by the English allure of the landscape, took in the hôtels on both sides of the avenue, town houses of fanciful design whose lawns stretched all the way down to the bridle paths. Renée, still lost in her daydream, was delighted to see the gaslights on the place de l’Etoile illuminated on the horizon one by one, and as those dancing lights stained the dying daylight with small yellow flames, she thought she heard secret calls and was convinced that the flamboyant Paris of winter nights was being kindled for her benefit, lighting the way to that unknown ecstasy for which her jaded senses longed.

The calèche turned down the avenue de la Reine-Hortense and stopped at the end of the rue Monceau, a few steps from the boulevard Malesherbes, before a large mansion with a courtyard in front and a park to the rear. Two gates encrusted with gilt ornaments opened onto the courtyard, each gate flanked by a pair of lamps in the shape of urns similarly bristling with gold appurtenances and equipped with large gaslights. Between the two gates the concierge occupied an elegant gatehouse vaguely reminiscent of a small Greek temple.

Just as the carriage was about to enter the court, Maxime jumped nimbly to the ground.

Renée, grabbing hold of his hand, said, “You know, we sit down to dinner at seven-thirty. You have more than an hour to dress. Don’t keep us waiting.”

With a smile she added, “The Mareuils will be there. . . . Your father wants you to pay particular attention to Louise.”

Maxime shrugged. “That’s some job,” he mumbled grumpily. “I want to get married, but courting her is just too silly. . . . It would be awfully nice of you, Renée, if you saved me from Louise tonight.”

He put on a funny face, borrowing his expression and accent from the actor Lassouche,8 as he did when he was about to come out with one of his customary pleasantries: “Will you, step-mama dear?”

Renée shook hands with him as with a friend. Quickly, in a mocking tone, she tried a nervous sally: “You know, if I hadn’t married your father, I think you might make love to me.”

The young man must have found this idea quite funny, because he was still laughing as he rounded the corner of the boulevard Malesherbes.

The calèche entered the courtyard and stopped in front of the steps of the mansion.

The wide, low steps were sheltered by a huge glass canopy, which was edged with a lambrequin trimmed with gold fringe and tassels. The two stories of the house rose above a servants’ hall, whose small, square windows of frosted glass could be seen almost level with the ground. At the top of the stairs the entrance to the vestibule was set forward and flanked by thin columns recessed into the wall, forming a protruding portion of the façade that had a round bay window on each floor and stretched all the way up to the roof, where it ended in a delta. On either side of this projection each floor had five windows, regularly spaced along the façade and set in simple stone frames. The mansard roof was cut square, with large sections almost vertical.

The façade on the park side was quite a bit more sumptuous. A royal staircase led up to a narrow terrace dominating the entire length of the ground floor. The banister of this terrace, in the style of the gates of the Parc Monceau, was even more gold-encrusted than the canopy and lamps on the courtyard side. Behind it stood the hôtel, with a pavilion at each corner, consisting of a sort of tower half set into the body of the structure, which created space for round rooms inside. In the middle, another turret set still more deeply into the structure made a slight bulge. The windows, high and thin for the pavilions, more widely spaced and almost square on the flat parts of the façade, featured stone balustrades on the ground floor and gilded wrought-iron railings on the upper floors. It was a parade of wealth, a profusion, an embarrassment of riches. The mansion disappeared beneath its sculptures. Around the windows and along the ledges ran coils of branches and flowers. There were balconies that resembled planters held aloft by huge naked women, their hips twisted and nipples thrust forward. Attached to the walls here and there were fantastic escutcheons, grapes, roses, efflorescences in stone and marble of every imaginable variety. The higher the eye looked, the more the mansion bristled with flowers. Circling the roof was a balustrade on which were set at intervals urns ablaze with sprays of gems. And there, amid the oeils-de-boeuf of the mansards, which looked out on an incredible tangle of fruit and foliage, lay the culminating elements of this astonishing décor, the pediments of the pavilions, in the center of which stood additional huge female nudes—naked women playing with apples or striking poses in thickets of bulrushes. The roof, laden with these ornaments and capped by additional fretwork in lead, along with two lightning rods and four enormous, symmetrical chimneys sculpted like everything else, seemed to mark the climax of this display of architectural fireworks.

On the right stood a vast conservatory, attached to the side of the mansion and communicating with the ground floor by way of a glass door in one of the salons. The garden, separated from the Parc Monceau by a low fence hidden behind a hedge, was rather steeply sloped. Too small for the house, so narrow that a lawn and a few clumps of trees sufficed to fill it, it was simply a mound, a pedestal of greenery, on which the mansion stood proudly ensconced and decked out for a ball. Seen from the park, looming above its neat lawn and the polished leaves of its gleaming shrubbery, that huge edifice, still brand-new and quite pale, had the wan face and rich, idiotic self-importance of a par-venue, with its heavy slate chapeau, its gilt railings, and its façade dripping with sculptures. It was a scale model of the new Louvre,9 one of the most characteristic examples of the style Napoléon III, that opulent hybrid of every style that ever existed. On summer nights, when the sun’s slanting rays lit up the gold of the railings against the white façade, people strolling in the park stopped to stare at the red silk curtains hanging in the first-floor windows. Through windows so large and so clear that they seemed to have been placed there, like the windows of a great modern department store, to display the sumptuous interior to the outside world, these petit-bourgeois families caught glimpses of the furniture, of the fabrics, and of the dazzlingly rich ceilings, the sight of which riveted them to the spot with admiration and envy.

Just now, however, darkness was gathering under the trees, and the façade lay sleeping. In the courtyard, a footman had respectfully helped Renée down from the carriage. On the right were the stables, with walls of striped red brick and broad doors of brown oak that opened onto a large area lit by skylights. On the left, as if to balance the composition, a very ornate niche was embedded in the wall of the house next door, in which a stream of water flowed perpetually from a shell that two Cupids held in outstretched arms. The young woman stood for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, lightly tapping at her skirt, which refused to hang properly. The courtyard, into which the clatter of horses and carriage had erupted only a moment earlier, now sank back into solitude, its aristocratic silence broken only by the eternal refrain of running water. In all the dark mass of the mansion, whose chandeliers would soon be lit for the first great banquet of the fall season, only the lower windows were ablaze, coloring the neat, regular checkerboard of small paving stones with the intense glow of a roaring conflagration.

As Renée pushed open the door of the vestibule, she found herself face-to-face with her husband’s manservant on his way to the servants’ hall with a silver kettle. The man was magnificent, all dressed in black, tall, solid, with the white face and neatly trimmed side-whiskers of an English diplomat and the grave, dignified air of a judge.

The young woman detained him with a question. “Baptiste, has Monsieur returned?”

“Yes, Madame, he is dressing,” the servant replied, with a nod worthy of a prince saluting a crowd.

Renée climbed the stairs slowly, pulling off her gloves as she went.

The vestibule was most luxurious. On entering it, one experienced a slight feeling of suffocation. The thick carpets covering the floor and staircase and the broad expanses of red velvet that hid the walls and doors made the air heavy with the silence, the stale fragrance, of a chapel. Draperies hung down from above, and the very high ceiling was adorned with ornamental rosettes on a latticework of gilt molding. The staircase had a double balustrade of white marble equipped with a red velvet handrail, and it opened out into two gently curving branches, between which stood the door of the drawing room. An immense mirror covered the entire wall of the first landing. Below, at the foot of each branch of the staircase, standing on marble pedestals, two women of gilt bronze, naked to the waist, held up two large lamps with five burners each, whose intense light was softened by globes of frosted glass. On either side, rows of lovely majolica pots were filled with rare plants.

Renée climbed, and with each step her image in the mirror grew larger. With doubt akin to that felt by the most acclaimed of actresses, she wondered if she was really as delectable as people said she was.

When she reached her apartment on the second floor, with its windows overlooking the Parc Monceau, she rang for her chambermaid Céleste to dress her for dinner. That took a full hour and a quarter. After the last pin had been set in place, she opened the window because the room was very hot, leaned against the sill, and stood there lost in thought. Céleste worked discreetly behind her, putting away the various items of her toilette one by one.

The park below was a seething sea of shadows. Inky masses of lofty foliage, buffeted by sudden gusts of wind, ebbed and flowed over a broad expanse, and the dry leaves made a sound reminiscent of waves draining from a pebbly beach. In the swirl of shadows only the two yellow eyes of an occasional carriage stood out now and then, appearing and disappearing amid the stands of trees lining the road that runs from the avenue de la Reine-Hortense to the boulevard Malesherbes. Staring at this melancholy autumn scene, Renée felt her heart fill once again with sadness. She imagined herself a child back in her father’s house, a big silent town house on the Ile Saint-Louis, 10 which for two centuries had been home to the black-robed gravity of a family of magistrates, the Béraud Du Châtels. Then she recalled the magical stroke of her marriage, to a widower who had sold himself to marry her, who had bartered the name of Rougon for that of Saccard, whose two sharp syllables had, on first hearing, struck her ear with the brutality of two rakes scraping up gold. He had taken her and propelled her into this life of excess, which with each passing day left her poor mind a little more unhinged. Then, with childish pleasure, she dreamt of the wonderful games of badminton she used to play with her younger sister, Christine. And one morning she would wake from the voluptuous dream in which she’d been living for the past ten years, and she would be mad, and her reputation would have been destroyed by some speculation of her husband’s, which would have sucked him under with it. This came to her as a quick premonition. The wailing of the trees grew louder. Upset by these thoughts of shame and punishment, Renée gave in to instincts that lay dormant deep inside her, the instincts of an old and respectable bourgeois family. She promised the dark night that she would mend her ways, spend less on clothes, and find some innocent pastime with which to amuse herself, as in her happy days at boarding school, where the girls all sang “Nous n’irons plus au bois” while cavorting sweetly under the sycamores.

At that moment, Céleste, who had gone downstairs, returned and whispered in her mistress’s ear: “Monsieur would like Madame to come down. Several guests are already waiting in the salon.”

Renée gave a start. She had not felt the cold air nipping at her shoulders. As she passed the mirror, she stopped and looked at herself in a mechanical way. An involuntary smile crossed her lips, and she went down to her guests.

In fact, nearly all the guests had arrived. Waiting below were her sister Christine, a young woman of twenty, dressed very simply in white muslin; her Aunt Elisabeth, the widow of the notary Aubertot, in black satin—a little old lady of sixty with an exquisitely friendly manner; her husband’s sister Sidonie Rougon, a skinny, artificial woman of uncertain age with a soft, waxy face that her faded dress made even less memorable; and the Mareuils, father and daughter: a tall, handsome man who had only recently been in mourning for his wife and who, with his blank, serious visage, bore a striking resemblance to the servant Baptiste, and poor Louise, as the daughter was called, a child of seventeen, undersized and slightly hunchbacked, who with sickly grace wore a white twill gown with red polka dots. Then there was a substantial group of grave-looking men: highly decorated gentlemen, officials with pale, solemn faces. Some distance away, another group of young men with a dissolute air about them and coats wide open had gathered around five or six supremely elegant ladies, among whom the reigning queens were the Inseparables, little marquise d’Espanet, in yellow, and blonde Mme Haffner, in violet. M. de Mussy, the horseman whose greeting Renée had ignored that afternoon in the Bois, was also there, with the worried look of a lover who senses that he is about to be sent packing. And amid the long trains of the women’s gowns spread across the carpet, two building contractors, the newly wealthy bricklayers Mignon and Charrier, with whom Saccard was to conclude a piece of business the next day, clumped about in heavy boots, their hands behind their backs, looking ridiculous in their black frock coats.

Aristide Saccard, standing near the door and holding forth to the group of grave men with his nasal twang and southern verve, nevertheless managed to find a way to greet each arriving guest. He shook their hands and had a kind word for each and every one. A short man with a sly look on his face, he bowed like a marionette. What one noticed most about this skinny, crafty, darkish little figure was the red splash of the Légion d’honneur, 11 which he wore quite ostentatiously.

When Renée entered the room, a murmur of admiration greeted her. She was truly divine. Over a tulle skirt embellished in back with an abundance of flounces, she wore a tunic of delicate green satin trimmed with high English lace, which was accentuated and held fast by big bunches of violets. A single flounce adorned the front of the skirt, to which bouquets of violets joined by garlands of ivy attached a sheer chiffon. Above the regal fullness of this rather too elaborate skirt, her head and bodice were done up adorably. Her breasts exposed almost to the nipples, her arms bare but for bunches of violets on the shoulders, the young woman seemed to emerge stark naked from her sheath of tulle and satin, like one of those nymphs whose bosom protrudes from a sacred oak. Her white throat and supple body seemed to revel in their partial freedom with such delight that one expected bodice and skirt to slip away little by little, like the clothing of a bather aroused by the sight of her own flesh. Her tall headdress and fine blonde hair, gathered up in the shape of a helmet with a sprig of ivy woven through it and held by a knot of violets, enhanced her nudity still more by uncovering the back of her neck, tinted by a golden down. Around her neck she wore a rivière of dangling diamonds, admirable for their clarity, and on her forehead a diamond-studded aigrette of fine silver. For a few seconds she stood this way on the threshold, in her magnificent costume with her shoulders shimmering in the warm glow like watered silk. Having descended the stairs quickly, she was a little out of breath. Her eyes, filled with shadows by the darkness of the park, blinked at the sudden flood of light, giving her a hesitant, nearsighted look that only added to her grace.

On seeing her, the little marquise got up eagerly, ran over to her, and took both her hands. While examining her from head to toe, she murmured in a piping voice, “Ah! Chère belle, chère belle!”

A considerable bustle ensued as all the guests came over to greet beautiful Madame Saccard, to use the name by which Renée was known in society. She touched the hand of nearly every man in the room. Then she kissed Christine and asked for news of their father, who never visited the town house at Parc Monceau. She remained on her feet, smiling, still nodding at her guests, her shoulders slumping slightly as she stood before the circle of women, who were carefully scrutinizing the rivière and the aigrette.

Blonde Mme Haffner could not resist temptation. She moved toward Renée, stared at the jewelry for quite some time, and then said in a jealous voice, “You’re wearing the rivière and aigrette, aren’t you?”

Renée nodded. After that, compliments came gushing forth from all the women: the jewels were ravishing, divine. With admiration tinged with envy, they discussed the Aurigny sale, where Saccard had bought these pieces for his wife. They complained that tarts like Laure d’Aurigny took all the most beautiful things, that soon there would be no diamonds left for respectable women. Their complaints betrayed a desire to feel against their naked skin jewels like these, which all Paris had seen on the shoulders of an illustrious debauchee—jewels that might whisper in their ears of the bedroom scandals to which these grandes dames were so eagerly attuned. They knew the high prices that had been paid. They mentioned a superb cashmere and some splendid lace. The aigrette had sold for 15,000 francs, the rivière for 50,000. These figures roused Mme d’Espanet to enthusiasm. She called out to Saccard. “Come over here so that we can congratulate you. Now, there’s a good husband!”

Aristide Saccard came over, bowed, and feigned modesty, but the expression on his face betrayed keen satisfaction. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at the two contractors, the two masons who had struck it rich and who were standing just a few feet away, and saw that on hearing the figures 15,000 and 50,000 they reacted with obvious signs of respect.

At that moment, Maxime, who had just come in and who looked adorably stiff in his black frock coat, leaned familiarly on his father’s shoulder and spoke to him in a low voice, as to a friend, gesturing toward the bricklayers with a flick of his eyes. Saccard smiled discreetly, like an actor taking his bows.

Still more guests arrived. At least thirty people were now gathered in the salon. Conversation resumed. During the moments of silence, faint sounds of china and silver could be heard on the other side of the wall. At last Baptiste opened the double doors and majestically uttered the sacramental phrase, “Dinner is served, madame.”

Slowly the parade began. Saccard offered his arm to the little marquise. Renée took the arm of an elderly gentleman, a senator, Baron Gouraud, before whom everyone bowed and scraped. Maxime, for his part, was obliged to offer his arm to Louise de Mareuil, after which the remainder of the guests followed in procession, with the two contractors bringing up the rear, arms dangling.

The vast dining room was square in design, and the stained and varnished pear-wood wainscoting was as tall as a man and decorated with thin fillets of gold. The four large panels must have been intended to hold still lifes, but they remained empty, no doubt because the owner of the house had recoiled at the thought of spending so much for mere works of art. Swaths of bright green velvet filled the space instead. Upholstery, drapes, and door curtains of the same fabric gave the room a grave and sober character calculated to focus all the radiance of the lighting on the table.

At that moment, in fact, the table—set in the middle of a broad, dark-colored Persian rug that muffled the sound of footsteps, bathed in the garish light of the chandelier, and surrounded by chairs whose black backs bordered by ribbons of gold made a frame of somber outline—was like an altar, a candle-lit chapel in which pieces of crystal and silver glowed like bright flames against the white splendor of the table linen. Beyond the sculpted backs of the chairs, in the flickering shadows, one could barely make out the wainscoting, the large, low buffet, and the pads of velvet lying about here and there. Of necessity everyone’s eyes turned back to the table to feast on the dazzling scene. An admirable centerpiece of matte silver occupied the middle of the table, its chase work gleaming. This depicted a band of fauns making off with a number of nymphs. Above the centerpiece, spilling out of a large cornucopia, an enormous bouquet of wildflowers hung down in bunches. At either end of the table vases held additional sprays of flowers; and two candelabra, each matched to the centerpiece and figuring a satyr on the run carrying a swooning woman in one arm while supporting ten candles with the other, added their luster to the radiance of the central chandelier. Between these prominent items, warming ovens both large and small were arrayed symmetrically, keeping the first course warm, and these were flanked by shells containing hors d’oeuvres and interspersed with china bowls, crystal vases, flatware, and heaping fruit bowls holding the portion of the dessert that had already been brought to the table. Reinforcing the cordon of dishes stood an army of glasses, carafes of water and wine, and little salt cellars. All the crystal on the table was as thin and light as muslin, devoid of engraving, and so transparent that it cast no shadow. The centerpiece and other large items looked like fountains of fire. Lightning flashed from the burnished flanks of the warming ovens. The forks, spoons, and knives with their handles of pearl could have been mistaken for flaming ingots. Rainbows illuminated the glassware. And amid this shower of sparks, this incandescent mass, the decanters of wine added a ruby tinge to table linen as radiant as white-hot metal.

On entering the dining room, the male guests, smiling at the ladies on their arms, wore expressions of discreet beatitude. Flowers freshened the tepid air. Delicate aromas hovered in the room, mingled with the fragrance of roses. The sharp smell of crayfish and sour scent of lemon dominated all the rest.

After the guests located their names on the backs of the menus, one heard the sound of chairs being moved, accompanied by much rustling of silk dresses. Bare shoulders studded with diamonds and flanked by dark frock coats that accentuated their whiteness added their milky hue to the table’s radiance. As the first dishes were served, neighbors exchanged smiles in near silence broken only by the soft clink of spoons. Baptiste discharged his duties as butler with a grave diplomatic air. Under his command, in addition to the two footmen, were four assistants whom he recruited solely for important dinners. As he removed each dish for carving at a sideboard at one end of the room, three servants padded softly around the table, plates in hand, quietly naming each dish as they went. Others poured wine and kept an eye on the bread and carafes. Savories and appetizers slowly made their rounds, but the pearly laughter of the ladies had yet to take on a sharper edge.

The guests were too numerous to allow for easy general conversation. By the time the second course was served, however, and roasts and sweets had taken the place of savories and appetizers and great Burgundy wines—a Pommard and a Chambertin—had supplanted the Léoville and Château-Lafitte, 12 the sound of voices had grown louder, and bursts of laughter made the fine crystal ring. Renée, seated at the middle of the table, had Baron Gouraud on her right and, on her left, M. Toutin-Laroche, formerly a candle manufacturer but now a city councilor, director of the Crédit Viticole, and member of the board of overseers of the Société Générale des Ports du Maroc, a slender yet substantial individual, whom Saccard, seated opposite between Mme d’Espanet and Mme Haffner, referred to in a flattering voice now as “my dear colleague” and now as “our illustrious administrator.” Then came the politicians: M. Hupel de la Noue, a prefect who spent eight months a year in Paris; three deputies, among whom M. Haffner displayed his broad Alsatian face; M. de Saffré, a charming young man who served as secretary to a minister; M. Michelin, the head of the bureau of roads; and other high-level bureaucrats. M. de Mareuil, a perpetual candidate for a seat as deputy, settled in opposite the prefect, at whom he made eyes. As for M. d’Espanet, he never joined his wife for social occasions. The ladies of the family were seated among the most prominent of these personages. Saccard had nevertheless reserved a special role for his sister Sidonie, whom he had placed farther down the table, between the two contractors, with the estimable Charrier on her right and the honorable Mignon on her left—a position of trust in which victory was essential. Mme Michelin, the wife of the bureau chief, a pretty brunette, amply endowed, was seated next to M. de Saffré, with whom she chatted eagerly in a low voice. Finally, at either end of the table sat the young people: auditors from the Conseil d’Etat,13 sons of powerful fathers, budding young millionaires, M. de Mussy, who darted desperate looks in Renée’s direction, and Maxime, with Louise de Mareuil on his right seemingly holding him in her thrall. The gales of laughter coming from their direction slowly gained in volume. Gaiety gradually spread from their corner to the rest of the table.

“Will we have the pleasure of seeing His Excellency this evening?” M. Hupel de la Noue politely inquired in the meantime.

“I think not,” Saccard answered with an air of importance that hid a secret annoyance. “My brother is so busy! . . . He sent his secretary, M. de Saffré, to offer his regrets.”

The young secretary, whom Mme Michelin was unmistakably monopolizing, looked up at the sound of his name and, thinking that he was being addressed, blurted out the first thing that popped into his head: “Yes, yes, there is to be a meeting of ministers at nine o’clock in the offices of the minister of justice.”

Meanwhile, M. Toutin-Laroche, who had been interrupted, plodded gravely on as if holding forth to a silently attentive city council. “The results have been superb. This municipal bond issue will go down in history as one of the finest financial operations of the era. Gentlemen—”

At that moment, however, his voice was once again drowned out by the laughter that suddenly erupted at the far end of the table. In the midst of this burst of gaiety one could make out the voice of Maxime, who was coming to the end of an anecdote: “Wait, now, I haven’t finished. The poor amazon was picked up by a ditch digger. They say she’s arranged for him to receive an excellent education, so that she can marry him later on. No one but her husband should be able to boast of having seen a certain mole on her body somewhere above her knee.” The laughter resumed, louder than before. Louise joined in heartily, laughing even louder than the men. Softly, as if deaf to the laughter all around, the footmen at that moment stuck their grave pale faces between the shoulders of the guests and in low voices offered each of the diners a helping of aiguillettes de canard sauvage.¹⁴

Saccard was angry that no one was paying attention to Toutin-Laroche. To show that he had been listening, he said, “The municipal bond issue—”

But M. Toutin-Laroche was not a man to lose the thread of an idea. “Gentlemen,” he continued when the laughter subsided, “yesterday was a great consolation to those of us whose administration has been the butt of so many scurrilous attacks. They say that the city council has led Paris to ruin, but as you see, the moment the city floats a bond issue, everybody comes to us with money, even those who rail against us.”

“You’ve worked miracles,” Saccard said. “Paris has become the capital of the world.”

“Yes, it’s truly astounding,” Hupel de la Noue interrupted. “Just imagine, I’m a Parisian from way back, and I no longer know my way around my own city. Yesterday I got lost going from the Hôtel de Ville to Luxembourg.15 It’s astounding, astounding!”

Silence followed. All the serious men were listening now.

“The transformation of Paris,” Toutin-Laroche continued, “will be the glory of the Emperor’s reign. People are ungrateful: they ought to kiss his feet. I said as much to the council just this morning, when we were discussing the huge success of the bond issue. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘let those loudmouths in the opposition say what they will: to turn Paris over, as it were, is to make the city fertile.’ ”

Saccard shut his eyes and smiled, as if to savor the finesse of the phrase all the more. He leaned over behind Mme d’Espanet and made a comment to Hupel de la Noue in a voice loud enough to be heard: “What a delightful wit.”

Now that the talk had turned to construction projects in Paris, the worthy Charrier was craning his neck as if to take part in the conversation. His partner Mignon was fully taken up with Mme Sidonie, who was keeping him quite busy. Since the beginning of the dinner Saccard had been watching the contractors out of the corner of his eye.

“The government,” he said, “is fortunate to have found such dedicated partners. Everyone was eager to contribute to such a grand design. Without the aid of well-endowed companies, the city would never have been able to accomplish so much in so short a time.”

Then he turned and in a flatteringly direct way added, “Messieurs Mignon and Charrier know a thing or two about it, for they had their share in the toil and will have their share of the glory.”

The former bricklayers, now both men of means, naïvely swelled with pride at this blunt comment. Mignon had been listening to Sidonie’s simpering: “Oh, sir, you flatter me. No, pink would be too young for me—” But now he left her hanging in midsentence to respond to Saccard.

“You’re too kind. We were just going about our business, that’s all.”

Charrier was more polished. While finishing his glass of Pommard, he managed to come up with a phrase: “The renewal of Paris has been the lifeblood of the working man.”

“To which,” Toutin-Laroche replied, “one must add that it’s given a magnificent boost to banking and industry as well.”

“And don’t forget the artistic side: the new avenues are majestic,” added Hupel de la Noue, who prided himself on having taste.

“Yes, yes, it’s been a fine undertaking,” murmured M. de Mareuil, so as to say something.

“As for the expense,” gravely declared the deputy Haffner, who never opened his mouth except on great occasions, “our children will pay for it, as is only right.”

As he said this, he happened to be looking at M. de Saffré, from whom the pretty Mme Michelin seemed to have turned away a moment earlier, so that the young secretary, in order to appear to have been following what people were saying, repeated, “As is only right, indeed.”

All of the serious men in the group at the center of the table had now had their say. M. Michelin, the head of the road department, smiled and nodded. This was his usual way of taking part in a conversation. He had smiles to greet, to respond, to approve, to thank, and to bid farewell, a whole collection of lovely smiles that virtually dispensed him from ever having to utter a word, for he no doubt judged it both more polite and more beneficial to his career to hold his tongue.

Another personage had also remained silent: Baron Gouraud, who chewed his cud slowly, like a heavy-lidded ox. Until that moment he had seemed wholly absorbed in the spectacle of his plate. Renée, who had made a great fuss over him, had obtained nothing more than faint grunts of satisfaction for her pains. So it came as a surprise when he raised his head, wiped his fat lips, and said, “As a landlord, when I renovate and decorate an apartment, I raise the rent.”

It was Haffner’s remark—“Our children will pay”—that had roused the senator. As everyone clapped discreetly, M. de Saffré exclaimed, “Oh, charming, charming! I’ll send that one to the newspapers tomorrow.”

“You’re right, gentlemen,” Mignon interjected, as if to round out the conversation while everyone was still smiling and murmuring appreciatively over the baron’s remark. “These are good times. I know more than one fellow who’s added a tidy sum to his nest egg. When you’re making money, you know, everything looks good.”

These last words cast an icy chill over the grave men at the center of the table. The conversation came to an abrupt halt, and neighbor avoided looking at neighbor. It was as though the former bricklayer, in trying to pay these very serious gentlemen a compliment, had dropped a ton of bricks on them. Michelin, who had as a matter of fact been contemplating Saccard in a most pleasant manner, stopped smiling, terrified at the thought that he might have seemed for a moment to take the contractor’s words as applying to their host. Saccard himself glanced at Mme Sidonie, who again turned her full attention to Mignon: “So you like pink, do you?” He then complimented Mme d’Espanet at length. The young woman’s dark, sly face almost touched her milky white shoulders, which she threw back slightly as she laughed.

When the time for dessert arrived, the footmen picked up their pace. There was a pause while the table was heaped with fruits and sweets. At Maxime’s end, the laughter grew brighter. Louise’s rather shrill voice could be heard: “I assure you that Sylvia was wearing a blue satin dress when she played Dindonette.” To which another high-pitched voice added, “Yes, but the dress was trimmed with white lace.” Warmth suffused the room. The faces of the guests, now somewhat flushed, seemed softened by some inner bliss. Two footmen went around the table pouring Alicante and Tokay.¹⁶

From the moment dinner began Renée had seemed distracted. She had done her duty as mistress of the house with a mechanical smile. With each gale of merriment from the end of the table where Maxime and Louise were sitting side by side and bantering like old friends, she glared in their direction. She was bored. The serious men were deadly. Mme d’Espanet and Mme Haffner shot desperate glances in her direction.

“How do things look for the upcoming elections?” Saccard abruptly asked Hupel de la Noue.

“Very good,” came the answer from the prefect, who coupled it with a smile. “Only I still have no candidates designated for my département. The ministry apparently hasn’t made up its mind.”

M. de Mareuil, who had glanced at Saccard to thank him for broaching this subject, looked as though he was walking on hot coals. He blushed slightly and waved his hands with some embarrassment. The prefect, turning now to address him, continued: “Many people in the district have spoken to me about you, sir. Your large estates in the region have won you many friends, and your devotion to the Emperor is well-known. Your prospects are excellent.”

At that moment Maxime shouted to his father from his end of the table. “Papa, isn’t it true that little Sylvia used to sell cigarettes in Marseilles in 1849?”

But Saccard pretended not to hear him, so the young man continued in a lower tone of voice: “My father was a particular friend of hers.”

Muffled laughs were heard. Meanwhile, as M. de Mareuil continued to wave his hands, M. Haffner began to speak in a sententious tone. “Devotion to the Emperor is the only virtue, the only form of patriotism, in this age of self-interested democracy. Whoever loves the Emperor loves France. We would welcome you as a colleague, sir, with sincere pleasure.”

“You will win, sir,” Toutin-Laroche put in. “Men of substantial wealth have to rally round the throne.”

Renée could stand no more. Across from her, the marquise stifled a yawn. As Saccard was about to hold forth once again, she interrupted. “Please, dear, show us a little pity,” she said with a pretty smile. “Enough of your wretched politics.”

At that point, M. Hupel de la Noue, displaying a gallantry befitting a prefect, exclaimed that the ladies were absolutely right and launched into an indecent story about something that had happened in the capital of his district. The marquise, Mme Haffner, and the other ladies laughed uproariously at certain details. The prefect told the story in a most titillating way, with winks and nudges and inflections of his voice that imparted a very nasty connotation to the most innocuous of words. The talk then turned to the duchess’s first Tuesday, to a farce that had been performed the night before, to the death of a poet, and to the last races of the autumn season. M. Toutin-Laroche, who could be pleasant when he chose, compared the women to roses, and M. de Mareuil, still in a tizzy about his electoral prospects, came up with profound things to say about the new shape of hats. Renée’s mind continued to wander.

Meanwhile the guests had stopped eating. A hot wind seemed to have grazed the table, clouding the glasses, leaving the bread in crumbs, darkening the skins of the fruits on their plates, and disrupting the pleasing symmetry of the settings. The flowers spilling out of the great cornucopias of chased silver wilted. And for a moment, the guests, staring vacantly at what was left of dessert, forgot themselves and remained seated, lacking the heart to get up. Leaning on one elbow, they sat with the blank faces and vague lassitude of fashionable people whose drunkenness takes a measured and respectable form, who get sloshed one sip at a time. The laughs had subsided, and talk had become rare. Having drunk and eaten a good deal, the group of bemedaled gentlemen seemed graver than ever. In the heavy air of the dining room, the ladies felt their foreheads and the backs of their necks grow moist. Waiting to move into the drawing room, they seemed serious and a little pale, as though they felt a bit faint. Mme d’Espanet had turned quite pink, while Mme Haffner’s shoulders had taken on a waxy white sheen. Meanwhile, M. Hupel de la Noue examined the handle of a knife; M. Toutin-Laroche continued to spit fragmentary comments at M. Haffner, who received them with much nodding of his head; M. de Mareuil stared dreamily at M. Michelin, who returned the look with an arch smile. As for the delectable Mme Michelin, she had long since stopped talking. Looking quite flushed, she had allowed one of her hands to dangle beneath the tablecloth, where M. de Saffré was no doubt holding it in his as he leaned awkwardly against the table’s edge, his eyebrows knit with the grimace of a man solving a problem in algebra. Mme Sidonie had also made a conquest. Mignon and Charrier, both leaning on their elbows and facing her, seemed delighted to share her confidences. She confessed that she adored dairy products and was afraid of ghosts. And Aristide Saccard himself, eyes half-closed, reveled in the smug satisfaction of a host confident of having properly lubricated his guests and gave no thought to leaving the table. With a respectfully affectionate eye he contemplated Baron Gouraud, who was ponderously digesting his dinner while his right hand lay splayed across the white tablecloth— the hand of a sensual old man, small, thick-fingered, discolored by purple blotches, and covered with red hair.

Renée mechanically finished off the few drops of Tokay that remained in the bottom of her glass. Her face tingled. The short, pale hairs on her forehead and the back of her neck stood out in unruly display as if moistened by a humid breeze. Her lips and nose were pinched by nervous tension, and her face was as expressionless as that of a child who has drunk undiluted wine. If her mind had been filled with nice bourgeois thoughts while staring into the shadows of the Parc Monceau, those thoughts were now drowned out by the excitement induced by the food, wine, and light and the stimuli of unsettling surroundings rife with warm exhalations and raucous laughter. She was no longer exchanging quiet smiles with her sister Christine and Aunt Elisabeth—both modest, self-effacing women not much given to talk. With a sharp glance she had forced poor M. de Mussy to lower his eyes. Though still apparently lost in thought, she leaned against the back of her chair, causing the satin of her bodice to crinkle softly, and although she avoided turning toward the corner of the table where Maxime and Louise continued to banter as loudly as ever despite the waning buzz of conversation, her shoulders quivered imperceptibly with each fresh burst of laughter from their direction.

And behind her, at the edge of the darkness, his tall silhouette looming large over the chaotic table and drowsy guests, stood Baptiste, his flesh pallid and his face grave, with the disdainful attitude of a lackey who has just fed his masters their fill. In the drunken atmosphere suffused with garish light from the chandelier, which cast a yellow pall over everything, he alone maintained his aplomb, with his silver chain around his neck, his cold eyes in which the bare shoulders of the women kindled no flame, and his air of a eunuch serving Parisians of the decadent era without forfeiting his dignity.

At last Renée rose uneasily to her feet. Everyone else followed suit. The guests adjourned to the drawing room, where coffee was served.

The main salon was a long vast room, a sort of gallery extending from one pavilion to the other and occupying the entire façade on the garden side. A wide French door opened onto the terrace. The gallery was resplendent with gold. The ceiling, slightly arched, was decorated with whimsical scrolls wound around huge gilt medallions that gleamed like shields. Splendid rosettes and garlands lined the edge of the arch. Sprays of gold, like jets of molten metal, ran along the walls, framing the panels, which were covered with red silk. Plaited stems topped by bouquets of rose blossoms hung beside mirrors. An Aubusson carpet covering the parquet showed off its purple flowers. The damasked red silk upholstery, door curtains, and drapes; the enormous rockwork clock on the fireplace; the Chinese vases on their consoles; the feet of the two long tables embellished with Florentine mosaics; and even the jardinières in the embrasures next to the windows—all of these things sweated and dripped with gold. In the four corners of the room, four large lamps stood on pedestals of red marble from which chains of gilded bronze were draped with symmetrical grace. And from the ceiling hung three crystal chandeliers, shedding droplets of blue and pink light whose ardent glow set all the gold in the salon ablaze.

The men soon withdrew to the smoking room. M. de Mussy came over and in a familiar way took Maxime by the arm. He had known the boy at school, even though he was six years older. Mussy led his younger schoolmate out onto the terrace and after both had lit cigars began to complain bitterly about Renée.

“So tell me, what’s got into her? I saw her yesterday, and she was delightful. But today she’s treating me as though it were all over between us. What crime could I have committed? It would be awfully nice of you, my dear Maxime, if you’d ask her what’s the matter and tell her how much she’s making me suffer.”

“Oh, no, not that! Never!” Maxime replied with a laugh. “Renée has a case of nerves, and I’m not keen to bear the brunt of her wrath. Figure it out for yourself, and take care of your own business.”

After slowly exhaling the smoke from his Havana cigar, he finished his thought. “That’s a fine role you’d have me play!”

Mussy professed his warm friendship for Maxime, however, and told the younger man that he was only waiting for an opportunity to prove his devotion to him. He loved Renée so much, he said, that it was making him miserable.

“All right, then,” Maxime finally gave in. “Have it your way. I’ll speak to her. But I promise you nothing. She’s certain to turn me away.”

They returned to the smoking room and stretched out in big lounging chairs. For the next half hour, Mussy poured out his woes to Maxime. For the tenth time he told the young man how he had fallen in love with his stepmother and how she had been kind enough to single him out. And Maxime, while finishing off his cigar, offered him advice, explained Renée to him, and pointed out how he ought to behave if he wanted to dominate her.

Meanwhile, Saccard came in and sat down a short distance away from the two young men, so Mussy remained silent, and Maxime ended by saying, “If I were in your shoes, I’d treat her in a most cavalier manner. She likes that.”

The smoking room, located at one end of the drawing room, occupied the round space formed by one of the turrets. Its style was very rich and very sober. Hung with imitation cordovan leather, it had drapes and door curtains of Algerian inspiration, while the rug was a pile carpet with a Persian pattern. The furniture, with its tawny-colored shagreen upholstery, consisted of ottomans, armchairs, and a circular sofa that occupied a portion of the wall’s circumference. The small chandelier, the decorative items displayed on a pedestal table, and the fire irons were of light green Florentine bronze.

Only a few young people and pasty-faced old men who loathed tobacco remained with the ladies. In the smoking room the men laughed and joked quite freely. M. Hupel de la Noue greatly amused the company by repeating the same story he had told at dinner but with all the truly vulgar details restored. This was his specialty: he always had two versions of every anecdote, one for the ladies, the other for the men. When Aristide Saccard came in, he was immediately surrounded and heaped with compliments, and when he pretended not to understand, M. de Saffré explained, in words that garnered considerable applause, that he, Saccard, had done his country a great service by preventing the beautiful Laure d’Aurigny from going over to the English.

“No, really, gentlemen, you’re mistaken,” Saccard stammered with false modesty.

“No, father, don’t deny it!” Maxime exclaimed in a bantering tone of voice. “At your age, it’s quite an accomplishment.”

The young man disposed of his cigar and returned to the drawing room. Lots of people had gathered. The gallery was full of dark frock coats, standing and talking in low voices, and of skirts, spread out across love seats. Servants had begun to circulate with silver trays laden with ice cream and glasses of punch.

Maxime, wanting to speak to Renée, traversed the length of the drawing room, knowing full well where he would find the ladies gathered. At the opposite end of the gallery from the smoking room was another round room that had been turned into an adorable little salon. With its hangings, drapes, and door curtains of buttercup satin, this room had a voluptuous charm, a delicate, original flavor. The light from the chandelier—a piece of exquisite craftsmanship—played a symphony in yellow minor on the sun-colored silks. The effect was like a fountain of subdued sunlight, a sunset on a field of ripe wheat. Ultimately the light settled onto an Aubusson carpet strewn with autumn leaves. For furniture the room had only an ebony piano with ivory inlay, two small cabinets with glass doors displaying a collection of curios, a Louis XVI table, and a jardinière console holding an enormous bouquet of flowers. The love seats, armchairs, and poufs were upholstered with buttercup satin striped with bands of the same material in black and conspicuously embroidered with tulips. And then there were footstools and ottomans, a whole host of elegant and bizarre varieties of the tabouret. 17 The wood in these pieces could not be seen: satin and stuffing covered everything. The backs had the curvaceous fullness of bolsters, so that these sofas and armchairs were like discreet beds where a person could sleep and make love on a cushion of down while the sensual symphony in yellow minor played on in the background.

Renée loved this little salon, one of whose French doors opened onto the magnificent conservatory attached to the side of the mansion. During the day this was where she spent her idle hours. The yellow hangings did not outshine her pale blonde hair but rather lent it a strange golden glow. Her head stood out against an auroral gleam of pink and white, as if a blonde Diana were awakening in the morning light. No doubt that was why she loved this room, which highlighted her beauty.

Now she found herself there with her intimates. Her sister and aunt had just left. Only the inner circle remained, the fast crowd. Half-reclining on one of the love seats, Renée listened to the confidences of her friend Adeline, who whispered in her ear while making kittenish expressions punctuated by bursts of laughter. Suzanne Haffner had gathered quite a crowd. She was holding forth to a group of young men, who pressed in close without disturbing her German languor or subduing her provocative impudence, as naked and cold as her shoulders. In a corner Mme Sidonie, speaking in a low voice, was indoctrinating a young woman with the eyelashes of a Madonna. A little farther off, Louise stood chatting with a tall, shy youth, who blushed, while Baron Gouraud slumbered in his armchair in the bright light, his flabby flesh and elephantine frame making a stark contrast with the frail grace and silky delicacy of the women. In the room, meanwhile, a fantastic light rained like gold dust on satin skirts as hard-edged and polished as porcelain and on shoulders whose milky whiteness sparkled with diamonds. A fluting voice and laughter like a cooing of doves could be heard with crystal clarity. It was very hot. Fans fluttered slowly to and fro, like wings, each stroke sending a musky fragrance of bosom wafting into the languid air.

When Maxime appeared in the doorway, Renée, who had been listening to the marquise with half an ear, suddenly stood up as if to attend to her duties as hostess. She moved into the main drawing room, and the young man followed. After walking a short distance and shaking a few hands, she drew Maxime aside.

“So,” she whispered. “The chore turned out to be a rather pleasant one. Making love to her isn’t such a fool’s errand after all.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” replied the young man, who had come to plead the case of M. de Mussy.

“Why, it looks to me as though I did well not to rescue you from Louise. You two aren’t wasting any time.”

With some annoyance she added, “It was indecent, the way you were carrying on at the dinner table.”

Maxime burst out laughing.

“Yes, of course, we were telling each other stories. I had no idea what sort of girl she was. She’s funny. She looks like a boy.”

Since Renée continued to wear an expression of prudish annoyance, the young man, who had never known her to get angry about such things, continued in his joshingly familiar way. “Do you suppose, stepmother dear, that I squeezed her knee under the table? What the devil do you take me for? I know how to behave with a fiancée! . . . Listen, I have something more serious to talk to you about. . . . Are you listening?”

He lowered his voice even more.

“What I came to tell you is that Mussy is very unhappy. He told me so himself just a few minutes ago. Now, if you two have quarreled, I have no intention of patching it up. But I knew him at school, you know, and since he looked truly desperate, I promised him I’d speak to you.”

He stopped. Renée fixed him with a look that was impossible to define.

“You have nothing to say?” he continued. “It makes no difference to me. I’ve done my errand. Settle it as you like. But honestly, I think you’re cruel. It pained me to look at the poor fellow. If I were you, I’d at least send him a nice note.”

At that, Renée, who had not stopped staring at Maxime with fire in her eyes, said, “Tell M. de Mussy that he bores me.”

Then she returned to her guests, smiling, nodding, and shaking hands as she wandered among them. Maxime, looking stunned, stood where she had left him. Then he laughed to himself.

In no haste to deliver Renée’s message to M. de Mussy, Maxime took a turn about the drawing room. The evening, at once marvelous and banal like all such evenings, was drawing to a close. It was close to midnight, and people were slowly making their way out. Not wanting to turn in on an unpleasant note, he decided to look for Louise. While passing the door of the vestibule, he caught sight of Mme Michelin, whose husband was carefully draping a blue-and-pink evening wrap over her shoulders. “He was charming,” the young woman was saying, “simply charming. All through dinner we talked about you. He will speak to the minister. But it’s not his department—”

Near where they were standing, a servant was swaddling Baron Gouraud in a fur greatcoat, so Mme Michelin whispered in her husband’s ear. “The fellow who can seal the deal for you is that fat man over there,” she said, as he tied her hood under her chin. “He can get whatever he wants from the ministry. Tomorrow, at the Mareuils, we must try—”

M. Michelin smiled. He led his wife cautiously away, as if he were holding something precious and fragile. Maxime, after glancing around the vestibule and assuring himself that Louise was not there, headed straight for the small salon. And there he found her, almost alone, waiting for her father, who must have spent the evening in the smoking room with the political men. The marquise, Mme Haffner, and the other ladies had already left. Only Mme Sidonie remained, telling the wives of a couple of bureaucrats how much she loved animals.

“So there you are, my friend,” Louise exclaimed. “Sit down here and tell me what chair my father fell asleep in. He must be under the impression that he’s already made it to the Chamber.”

Maxime responded in kind, and the two young people were soon laughing again as loudly as they had done at dinner. Maxime sat on a very low stool at Louise’s feet, and by and by he took her hands and carried on with her as he would have done with a comrade. In her dress of white foulard with red polka dots and a high bodice, and with her flat chest, small ugly head, and cunning baby face, she looked like a boy disguised as a girl. Yet at times her slender arms and misshapen body assumed some rather provocative poses, ardor flickered in her still childlike eyes, and Maxime’s teasing failed to bring the slightest blush to her face. Both laughed in the belief that they were alone, unaware that Renée, standing half-hidden in the conservatory, was observing them from a distance.

A moment earlier, while crossing one of the conservatory walkways, Renée had caught sight of Maxime and Louise and stopped abruptly behind a bush. The hothouse in which she found herself was like the nave of a church, with thin iron columns soaring upward to support an arched glass roof that sheltered a profusion of lush vegetation, thick layers of leaves, and towering displays of greenery.

In the middle, in an oval pool at ground level, a multitude of aquatic flora from sunnier climes thrived in a watery world of slime and mystery. Green plumes of cyclanthus wound a monumental sash around the fountain, which resembled the truncated capital of some cyclopean column. At either end of the pool, huge tornelia lifted their strangely scruffy appendages above the water, their bare, dry branches twisting like ailing serpents as they dropped aerial roots into the pool like fishnets suspended in midair. Near the edge, a pandanus from Java spread its coif of green leaves with white stripes, as thin as fencing foils yet as prickly and serrated as Malayan daggers. And grazing the lukewarm surface of the gently heated stagnant pool, water lilies opened their rosy stars, while euryales let their round, leprous leaves droop into the water, on whose surface they floated like the pustulated backs of monstrous toads.

A wide band of selaginella circled the pool. This dwarf fern created a thick carpet of soft green moss, a lawn of sorts. On the far side of the main circular path, four massive thickets of vegetation sent shoots soaring upward to the arched roof: the palms, leaning slightly in their grace, spread their fans, displayed their rounded crowns, and let their leafy branches droop like oars wearied by their eternal voyage through the blue of the sky; the great bamboo of India stood erect, slender and hard, letting loose a light rain of leaves from on high; a ravenala, or traveler’s tree, put up its bouquet of immense Chinese screens; and in a corner a banana tree, heavy with fruit, reached out in all directions with long horizontal leaves large enough for two lovers to lie beneath if they held each other tight. In the corners the euphorbia from Abyssinia resembled prickly candles, misshapen things whose many ugly protuberances oozed poison. Underneath the trees, providing ground cover, low ferns, the maiden-hair and strap, spread their subtle patterns of delicate lace. Plants of a taller genus, the alsophila, arrayed their branches in symmetrical tiers, hexagons of such regularity that they resembled large pieces of china, fruit bowls intended for some gigantic dessert. The clumps of trees were edged with begonia and caladium, the begonia with their twisted leaves superbly spotted with green and red, and the caladium with leaves shaped like the head of a spear, white with green veins, resembling the wings of a big butterfly—strange plants whose foliage derived an odd vitality from the splendor of poisonous blossoms both light and dark.

Behind the clumps of trees a second, narrower path circled the outer circumference of the conservatory. There, arranged in tiers that partially hid the heating pipes, grew maranta, as soft to the touch as velvet; gloxinia, with its violet blossoms shaped like bells; and dracaena, like strips of old lacquer.

Among the charms of this winter garden were the verdant caverns in each of the four corners, ample arbors sealed off by thick curtains of vine. Here, bits of virgin forest had built leafy walls, impenetrable tangles of stems, of supple shoots clinging to branches, leaping the void with a bold thrust or dropping from the vault like the tassels on sumptuous tapestries. A stalk of vanilla, whose ripe beans exhaled penetrating fragrances, followed the curve of a moss-covered portico. Cocculus from the Levant carpeted the slender columns with their round leaves. Bauhinias with their red seedpods and quisqualis with flowers hanging like necklaces of glass beads crept and oozed and entwined themselves like slender snakes playing endlessly and slithering their way ever deeper into the darkness of the vegetation.

And here and there beneath the arches and between the clusters of trees hung baskets attached to thin metal chains and filled with orchids, bizarre plants that grow in midair and put out compact shoots in all directions—gnarled, crooked shoots that dangle like diseased members. There were Venus’ slippers, the flowers of which resemble a marvelous slipper with dragonfly wings adorning the heel; aerides, so sweetly fragrant; and stanhopea, with pale, striped flowers whose strong, acrid odor can be smelled from quite a distance, like foul exhalations from the infected throat of a convalescent.

Yet what most struck visitors from every vantage in the conservatory was the giant Chinese hibiscus, which covered the entire side of the house where the conservatory was attached with a vast expanse of leaf and blossom. The big purple flowers of this gigantic mallow lived only a few hours, but fresh blossoms were constantly appearing to replace the ones that died. They looked for all the world like sensual, gaping female mouths—like the red lips, soft and moist, of some enormous Messalina,18 bruised by kisses yet perpetually resurrecting their insatiable bloody smiles.

Renée, standing close to the pool and surrounded by all this floral splendor, was shivering. Behind her, a great sphinx of black marble crouching on a block of granite turned its head toward the aquarium with a stealthy, cruel, feline smile. This figure, with its gleaming thighs, seemed to be the somber idol of this land of fire. At this hour the globes of frosted glass lent a milky sheen to the greenery. Statues, busts of women with their heads thrown back, puffed up with laughter, blanched in the thickets of vegetation, their mad glee contorted by patches of shadow. A strange light played over the viscous, stagnant water of the pool, revealing vague shapes, glaucous masses with monstrous outlines. Waves of brightness washed over the glossy leaves of ravenala and the lacquered fronds of fan palms, while light fell from the lacy ferns in a fine drizzle. Reflections from the glass shimmered above, amid the somber crowns of the tall palms. Meanwhile, darkness loomed all around. The arbors with their vine draperies were submerged in gloom, like the nests of dormant reptiles.

Renée stood musing in the bright light, watching Louise and Maxime from afar. This was no longer the vague daydream, the nebulous twilight temptation she had experienced on the cool byways of the Bois. No longer were her thoughts lulled to sleep by the hoofbeats of her horses trotting past manicured lawns and woods where cosseted families went on Sunday outings. A sharp, piercing desire had taken possession of her.

An overwhelming love, a sensual need, suffused this sealed nave seething with the ardent sap of the tropics. The young woman was caught up in the potent nuptials of the earth itself—nuptials from which issued the dark vegetation and colossal shoots that surrounded her. From the acrid depths of this sea of fire, this sylvan luxuriance, this vegetal mass burning with the entrails on which it fed, troubling currents flowed into her, intoxicated her. At her feet, the pool of hot water thick with the juices of floating roots gave off steam, wreathing her shoulders in a mantle of heavy vapors, a mist that warmed her skin like the touch of a hand moist with desire. The smell of the palms, the aroma shed by the quivering foliage atop their tall trunks, swirled around her head. More than the stifling hot air, more than the bright lights, more than the huge, brilliant blossoms like faces laughing or grimacing among the leaves, it was above all the odors that overpowered her. An indefinable fragrance, powerful and exciting, lingered in the air, compounded of a thousand smells: of human sweat, the breath of women, the smell of hair. Sweet breezes, hints of fragrance faint to the point of vanishing, mixed with coarse, pestilential blasts, heavy with poison. In all this strange symphony of odors, however, the melodic phrase that came back again and again, dominating everything else, smothering the tenderness of the vanilla and the harshness of the orchids, was a sharp, sensual, human odor—the odor of love that filters out of the closed bedroom of a young married couple at daybreak.

Sinking back slowly, Renée leaned against the granite pedestal. In her green satin dress, her breast and face flushed and glistening with diamond raindrops, she resembled a magnificent flower of pink and green, a water lily from the pond wilting in the heat. Now that her vision had cleared, all her good resolutions evaporated forever, and the intoxication of the dinner table went once more to her head, imperious, victorious, reinforced by the flames of the hothouse. Her thoughts were no longer about the calming coolness of the night, the murmuring shades of the park that had counseled her to live a life of happy tranquillity. Ardent but blasé, she felt her senses now aroused, her impulsiveness now awakened. Above her, the great black marble sphinx laughed its mysterious laugh, as if it had read the desire, at last articulated, that had galvanized this dead heart—the long-elusive desire, the “something else” that Renée had vainly sought in the swaying of the calèche, in the fine ash of the falling night, and that had just been suddenly revealed to her in the harsh light of this garden of fire by the sight of Louise and Maxime laughing and joking while sitting hand in hand.

At that moment, the sound of voices issued from one of the nearby arbors, into which Aristide Saccard had led Mignon and Charrier.

“No, really, Monsieur Saccard,” said the latter in an unctuous tone, “we can’t buy that back from you at more than 250 francs a meter.”

To which came Saccard’s sharp retort: “But you valued every meter in my share at 250 francs.”

“All right. Listen, we’ll make it 225.”

The blunt exchanges continued, sounding strange in those groves of drooping palms. But they passed in and out of Renée’s dream like so much useless noise, for what loomed before her, with all the allure of a dizzying gaze into the void, was an unknown ecstasy, hot with crime, keener than any pleasure she had yet tasted, the last drop remaining in her cup. Her weariness had evaporated.

The shrub behind which she stood half-concealed was a deadly plant, a tanghin from Madagascar, with broad, boxy leaves and whitish stems whose smallest veins distilled a milky poison. When Louise and Maxime, bathed in the yellow glow, the sunset, of the small salon, chanced to laugh a little louder than before, Renée, her mind awry, her mouth parched and irritated, took a dangling sprig of tanghin between her lips and bit down on one of its bitter leaves.

2

Aristide Saccard swooped down on Paris immediately after the Second of December1 with the keen instincts of a bird of prey capable of smelling a battlefield from a long way off. He came from Plassans, a small subprefecture in the south, where his father, fishing in the troubled waters of the times, had at last succeeded in landing a long-coveted prize: a nomination as tax collector. The son, still a young man, had foolishly compromised himself without reaping either glory or profit and had to count himself lucky to have come through the ruckus safely. He rushed off to Paris in a rage at having mistaken his true course, cursing the provinces while talking of the capital in terms that called to mind a ravenous wolf, and swearing that “he would never again be so stupid.” The bitter smile that accompanied these words took on a horrible significance on his thin lips.

He arrived in the very first days of 1852. With him he brought his wife Angèle, a drab blonde, whom he set up in a cramped apartment on the rue Saint-Jacques, like a bothersome piece of furniture he was in a hurry to get rid of. The young woman had refused to be separated from her daughter, little Clotilde, a child of four, whom her father would have been happy to leave in the care of his family. He had given in to Angèle’s wishes, however, only on condition that she agree to allow their son Maxime to remain in school in Plassans, where the boy’s grandmother could keep an eye on the troublesome eleven-year-old. Aristide did not want to be tied down. A wife and a daughter were already burden enough for a man out either to take the capital by storm or ruin himself and his reputation trying.

On his very first night in Paris, while Angèle unpacked their trunks, he felt a keen need to explore the city, to be out in his backwoods boots pounding the burning pavement from which he hoped to extract millions of francs. He took possession of the town—nothing less. He walked for the sake of walking, patrolling the sidewalks as if in conquered territory. He had a very clear vision of the battle he had come to wage and did not shrink from comparing himself to a skilled lock picker who is about to help himself to a portion of the common wealth that has hitherto been denied him out of spite. Had he felt the need of an excuse, he would have invoked the desires he had stifled for the past ten years, his miserable provincial existence, and above all his blunders, which he blamed on society at large. At that moment, however, feeling the emotions of a gambler who has at last set ardent hands down on green felt, he was overcome with joy, with a joy all his own in which the satisfactions of envy mingled with the hopes of a rogue who has somehow eluded punishment. The air of Paris intoxicated him, and amid the din of carriage wheels he thought he heard the voices from Macbeth2 shouting to him, “Thou shalt be rich!” For nearly two hours he wandered the streets like this, savoring the pleasures of a man who has given in to his vice. He had not been back to Paris since spending a happy year in the capital as a student. Night was falling; his dream grew prodigiously in the bright light cast upon the sidewalks by cafés and shops. He had no idea where he was.

When he looked up, he found himself in the middle of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.3 One of his brothers, Eugène Rougon, lived nearby on the rue de Penthièvre. In coming to Paris, Aristide had counted above all on Eugène, who had been one of the most active agents of the coup d’état and had become an occult power, an insignificant attorney transformed into an important politician. With the superstition of a gambler, however, he hesitated to knock that night on his brother’s door. Slowly he made his way back to the rue Saint-Jacques, feeling silently envious of Eugène as he took note of his shabby clothes still covered with dust from his journey, yet consoling himself with renewed dreams of the riches that would one day be his. Then the dream itself turned bitter. Having left the house at the prompting of his expansive ambitions and found joy in the bustling shops of Paris, he returned home vexed by the good fortune that seemed to fill the streets and, enraged by what he had seen, pictured himself locked in pitched battles in which he would take pleasure in besting and cheating the hordes with whom he had rubbed elbows in the streets. Never before had he felt such enormous appetites, such an immediate and burning need of satisfaction.

The next day he turned up at his brother’s door. Eugène lived in two chilly rooms, barely furnished, which made Aristide’s blood run cold. He had expected to find his brother living in the lap of luxury. Eugène was at work behind a small black desk. He smiled and, speaking slowly as always, said only, “Oh, it’s you. I was expecting you.”

Aristide betrayed a deep bitterness. He accused Eugène of having allowed him to vegetate, of not having sent him so much as a word of advice back when he was still floundering about in the provinces. He would never forgive himself for having remained a republican right up to the day of the coup: this was his open wound, a source of eternal embarrassment. Eugène, meanwhile, had quietly returned to his writing. When Aristide finished speaking, he said, “Bah! Mistakes can always be fixed. You have a bright future ahead of you.”

He spoke these words in such a clear voice, accompanied by such a penetrating gaze, that Aristide bowed his head, sensing that his brother had plumbed the very depths of his being. Eugène continued in a friendly but blunt manner: “You’ve come to me because you expect me to find you a position, have you not? I’ve already given some thought to the matter but haven’t yet come up with anything. Not just any post will do, you see. You’ll need a job where you can do your business without danger to you or to me. . . . Save your protests. We’re alone. We can speak frankly.”

Aristide thought it best to laugh.

“I know you’re intelligent,” Eugène continued, “and that you wouldn’t do anything foolish without a good reason. The moment the right opportunity arises, I’ll get you your place. Between now and then, if you find yourself in need of twenty francs, come and see me.”

They conversed briefly about the insurrection in the south, which had enabled their father to land the tax collector’s job. While they talked, Eugène dressed. In the street below he detained his brother a moment before parting company and said, in a lowered voice, “I would be much obliged if you would refrain from idling about and wait quietly at home for the job I’ve promised you. . . . It would be disagreeable for me to see my brother spending his days in someone’s outer office.”

Aristide respected Eugène, who struck him as a man of unparalleled vigor. Yet he found his suspicious nature and rather brusque candor unforgivable. Nevertheless, he docilely returned home and shut himself up in the apartment on the rue Saint-Jacques. He had arrived in Paris with 500 francs borrowed from his father-in-law. After paying all his traveling expenses, he was left with 300 francs, which he managed to stretch for a month. Angèle was a big eater. And she just had to spruce up her party dress with mauve ribbons. To Aristide the month of waiting seemed interminable. He burned with impatience. When he stood at the window and sensed the gigantic labor of Paris below, he was seized by a mad impulse to leap into the forge, to knead the gold with his own feverish hands, like soft wax. He breathed in the still-indistinct air of the great city, the air of nascent empire, already redolent of the fragrances of the alcove, of financial chicanery, and of steamy pleasures. The faint aromas that wafted his way told him that he was on the right track, that his quarry was on the run ahead of him, that the great imperial hunt—for adventure, for women, for millions—was at last getting under way. His nostrils quivered. With the instincts of a hungry animal, he had a marvelous ability to detect the slightest sign of the voracious gorging on hot spoils that the city was about to witness.

Twice he called on his brother to urge him to press his inquiries a little harder. Eugène greeted him brusquely and repeated that he had not forgotten his promise but that it would be necessary to wait. At last Aristide received a letter inviting him to the apartment on the rue de Penthièvre. He went, his heart pounding as though he were on his way to a romantic assignation. He found Eugène seated at the same small black writing table in the large, chilly room that served as his office. No sooner did the attorney catch sight of his brother than he handed him a piece of paper. “Here, I received your assignment yesterday. You’ve been appointed assistant surveyor of roads at the Hôtel de Ville. Your compensation will be 2,400 francs.”

Aristide had remained standing. He blanched and did not take the document, thinking that his brother must be mocking him. He had hoped for a post that paid at least 6,000 francs. Eugène, divining his thoughts, wheeled his chair around and folded his arms. “Are you a fool after all?” he asked with considerable heat. “Your dreams are those of a whore, aren’t they? You’d like to live in a fine apartment, have servants, eat well, sleep in silk, and take your pleasure in the arms of the first person to happen by, in a boudoir furnished in a couple of hours. . . . If we let you and your kind have your way, you’d empty the coffers before there was anything in them. So be patient, for heaven’s sake! Look how I live, and take the trouble to lower yourself a little if you want to come away with a fortune.”

He spoke with deep contempt for his brother’s adolescent impatience. In his gruff speech one sensed higher ambitions, a desire for pure power. Aristide’s naïve appetite for money must have struck him as bourgeois and puerile. Speaking in a gentler voice and smiling a sly smile, he went on: “Of course your attitude is excellent, and I’ll be careful not to stand in your way. Men like you are precious. We intend to choose our good friends carefully from the ranks of the most famished. And rest assured, we shall keep an open table, and the biggest appetites will eat their fill. No one has yet found a better way to rule. . . . But please, do me a favor, wait until the table has been laid, and if you want my advice, take the trouble to fetch your own silver from the kitchen.”

Aristide remained somber. His brother’s amiable metaphors failed to elicit a smile. Eugène again gave vent to his wrath. “Damn!” he exclaimed. “I was right in the first place: you are a fool. . . . So what were you hoping for? What did you think I was going to come up with for an illustrious personage like yourself ? You lacked the stomach even to finish your law degree, you hid out for ten years in a wretched clerical post in a subprefecture, and you come to me with a detestable reputation as a republican who waited until the coup to convert. . . . Do you think you’ve got the makings of a minister, with a record like that? Don’t tell me, I already know: what you’ve got going for you is your fierce desire to succeed by any and all means. And that, I grant you, is a great virtue and is precisely what I had in mind when I got you the job at city hall.”

He then got up, walked over to Aristide, and placed the nomination in his hand. “Take it,” he went on. “Someday you’ll thank me. I chose the post personally, so I know what can be got out of it. . . . All you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re intelligent, you’ll understand, and you’ll act. . . . Now listen carefully to the rest of what I have to say. The time is coming when anyone will be able to make a fortune. Make piles of money: I give you my permission. But nothing stupid, and no unseemly scandals, or I’ll get rid of you.”

This threat had the effect that Eugène’s promises had failed to achieve. The thought of the fortune that Aristide heard his brother describe rekindled all his fever. At last, he felt, he had been sent into the fray with permission to slit people’s throats, but legally, without provoking too much of an outcry. Eugène gave him 200 francs to last until the end of the month and then lapsed into silent thought.

At length he said, “I’m thinking of changing my name. You ought to do the same. . . . We’d be less in each other’s way.”

“As you wish,” Aristide answered quietly.

“You won’t have to do anything. I’ll take care of all the formalities. . . . Do you want to be known as Sicardot, your wife’s family name?”

Aristide looked up at the ceiling, repeating the syllables, listening to their music: “Sicardot . . . Aristide Sicardot. . . . Heavens, no. It’s imbecilic and reeks of failure.”

“Think of something else,” said Eugène.

“I’d prefer just plain Sicard,” his brother replied after pondering the matter in silence. “Aristide Sicard. . . . Not bad, eh? . . . Perhaps a bit cheery.”

He mused a while longer, then crowed, “I’ve got it. . . . Saccard, Aristide Saccard. . . . With two c’s. . . . Eh? There’s money in a name like that. It sounds like the chink of coins being counted.”

Eugène had a savage sense of humor. As he dismissed his brother, he smiled and said, “Yes, a name like that can either land you in prison or make you millions.”

A few days later, Aristide Saccard went down to city hall. He learned that his brother had had to call in a good many chits to get him the job without the usual examinations.

Thus began, for Saccard and his wife, the monotonous life of the minor bureaucrat. The couple reverted to the routine they had adopted in Plassans, only now they were putting aside their dreams of sudden fortune, and their shabby life seemed more oppressive because they saw it as an ordeal whose duration could not be predicted. To be poor in Paris is to be poor twice over. Angèle accepted misery with the passivity of the anemic woman she was. She spent her days either in the kitchen or lying on the floor playing with her daughter, not feeling sorry for herself until the last franc was gone from the kitty. But Aristide quivered with rage over this poverty, this cramped existence, in which he prowled endlessly like a caged beast. For him it was a time of unspeakable suffering. His pride bled, his unassuaged ardor lashed him furiously. His brother managed to get himself elected to the Corps Législatif 4 as deputy for the Plassans district, and Aristide suffered even more. He was too keenly aware of Eugène’s superiority to feel anything as foolish as jealousy, but he accused his brother of not doing as much for him as he might have done. Need forced him more than once to knock on Eugène’s door in search of a loan. Eugène lent him the money but also berated him roundly for lacking courage and will. This immediately stiffened Aristide’s resolve. He swore that he would never again ask anyone for a cent, and he kept his word. The last week of every month, Angèle ate dry bread and sighed. This apprenticeship completed Saccard’s appalling education. His lips grew thinner. He was no longer so foolish as to dream of his millions out loud. His meager person stood mute, henceforth expressing but a single will, a single idée fixe—one cherished thought that filled every hour. When he hurried from the rue Saint-Jacques to the Hôtel de Ville, his worn heels struck the sidewalk with a sharp sound, and he buttoned himself into his frayed overcoat as into an asylum of hatred, while his weasel’s snout sniffed the air of the streets. The figure he cut was an angular one of envious misery prowling the Paris pavement with a plan for amassing a fortune and a dream of successfully carrying it off.

Early in 1853, Aristide Saccard was promoted to surveyor of roads. He now earned 4,500 francs a month. This raise came just in time. Angèle was wasting away; little Clotilde was deathly pale. He kept his cramped two-room apartment, with its dining room furnished in walnut and its bedroom in mahogany, and continued to lead a life of rigid discipline, avoiding debt and refusing to dip into other people’s money until he was able to plunge his arms in up to the elbows. In so doing he went against his instincts, turning up his nose at the few extra sous that came his way and maintaining his vigilance. Angèle was perfectly content. She bought herself some old clothes and put a roast on the spit daily. Her husband’s silent rages surpassed her understanding, as did the somber look he sometimes wore of a man searching for the solution to some intractable problem.

Aristide followed Eugène’s advice: he kept his eyes and ears open. When he went to thank his brother for the promotion, Eugène immediately grasped the change that had come over him and complimented him on what he called his “correct attire.” Though envy had stiffened his backbone, outwardly the clerk had become more pliable and ingratiating. Within the space of a few months he had become a prodigious actor. All his southern verve was now aroused, and he had developed his art to such a high pitch that his comrades at city hall looked upon him as a fine fellow destined for an important position on account of his close relationship to a deputy. That same relationship also put him in the good graces of his superiors. Hence he enjoyed greater authority than his position indicated, and this allowed him to open certain doors and poke his nose into certain boxes of files without his indiscretions seeming culpable. For two years he prowled all the corridors, lingered in all the chambers, and rose twenty times a day to chat with a coworker or deliver an order or make the rounds of the offices. Because he was perpetually in motion, his colleagues said, “That devil of a Provençal! He can’t sit still. He has quicksilver in his legs.” Those closest to him mistook him for lazy, and the worthy fellow laughed when they accused him of wanting nothing more than to steal a few minutes from his administrative chores. Never once did he commit the blunder of listening at keyholes, but he had a forthright way of opening doors and walking across rooms with a piece of paper in his hand and an abstracted look, yet at a pace so slow and deliberate that he never missed a word of what was being said. The tactic proved ingenious, because eventually people stopped interrupting themselves when this very busy clerk, apparently so preoccupied with his work, glided through the shadowy recesses of their offices. He had another method as well: he was extremely helpful, always offering to assist his fellow workers whenever they fell behind in their work and then studying with rapt attention whatever ledgers and documents were set before him. But one of his foibles was his penchant for befriending office boys. He went so far as to shake their hands and spent hour after hour with them in private conversation, stifling laughs, telling them stories, and encouraging them to open up to him. These fine lads adored him: “That fellow there isn’t stuck-up like the rest of them,” they said when he passed by. Whenever a scandal erupted, he was the first to learn about it. So after two years, the Hôtel de Ville no longer held any mysteries for him. He knew the personnel down to the lowliest factotum and the paperwork down to the laundry bills.

Paris in those days was a most interesting spectacle for a man like Aristide Saccard. The Empire had just been proclaimed following the famous trip during which the Prince-President5 had succeeded in kindling the enthusiasm of a few Bonapartist départements. Both the legislature and the press had been silenced. Saved yet again, society congratulated itself, relaxed, and slept in now that a strong government protected it and freed it from the cares of thinking and dealing with its own affairs. Its one abiding preoccupation was to decide which amusements it would choose to kill the time. In Eugène Rougon’s felicitous phrase, Paris sat down to dinner and dreamed bawdy dreams for dessert. Politics was terrifying, like a dangerous drug. Weary minds turned to business and pleasure. Those who had money dug it up, and those who had none searched high and low for forgotten treasures. The throngs quivered in rapt anticipation, straining to hear the first jingle of gold coins, the bright laughter of women, and the still-faint clatter of dishes and smack of kisses. In the deep ambient silence order reigned, and from the abject peace surrounding the new government arose a pleasant hum of gilded and voluptuous promises. It was as though one were passing by one of those little houses where carefully drawn curtains reveal only the silhouettes of women, and where the clink of gold coins can be heard as they drop onto marble mantelpieces. The Empire was soon to transform Paris into Europe’s den of iniquity. A handful of rogues had just stolen a throne, and what they needed now was a reign of adventures, of shady deals, of consciences sold and women bought, of mad and all-consuming revelry. In a city from which the blood of December had only just been washed away there grew—timidly at first—a rage for pleasure that would ultimately land the country in the padded cell reserved for debauched and dishonored nations.

From the very first days Aristide Saccard sensed the approach of this rising tide of speculation, whose spume would one day cover all of Paris. He followed its progress closely. He found himself smack in the middle of the torrential downpour of gold raining down on the city’s roofs. In his incessant turns around city hall, he had caught wind of the vast project to transform Paris, of the plans for demolition, of the new streets and hastily planned neighborhoods, and of the massive wheeling and dealing in land and buildings that had ignited a clash of interests across the capital and set off an unbridled pursuit of luxury. From then on his efforts had a goal. It was at this time that he developed his pleasant manner. He even put on a little weight and stopped prowling the streets like a scrawny cat in search of prey. At the office he was more talkative and obliging than ever. His brother, whom he visited for more or less official purposes, congratulated him on having put his advice to such good use. Early in 1854, the clerk confided to the deputy that he had several business ventures in mind but would require fairly substantial advances.

“You’ll need to look around,” Eugène said.

“You’re right, I’ll look around,” answered Aristide, without a trace of rancor, seeming not to notice that his brother was refusing to start him off with an initial contribution.

The thought of that initial investment now burned within him. His plan was set; with each passing day it grew more mature. But the first few thousand francs were still nowhere to be found. His tension increased. He looked at people now with a nervous and searching eye, as if scrutinizing every passerby for a potential lender. At home, Angèle continued to lead a happy if retiring life, but Aristide remained on the lookout for an opportunity, and his gregarious laughter grew increasingly shrill as time passed and no such opportunity presented itself.

Aristide had a sister in Paris. Sidonie Rougon had married a law clerk from Plassans, whom she had accompanied to the capital to set up a shop on the rue Saint-Honoré selling fruits from the south of France. By the time her brother caught up with her, the husband had vanished, and the shop had long since gone under. She was living in a small three-room apartment above another shop on the rue du Faubourg-Poissonière. She leased the shop as well, a cramped and mysterious boutique in which she pretended to sell lace. And the window did contain pieces of guipure and Valenciennes 6 suspended from gold-plated rods. The interior, however, resembled a waiting room, with gleaming woodwork and no sign of merchandise for sale. Light curtains on the door and window hid the inside of the shop from prying eyes, contributing to the impression that the boutique was actually the discreet and veiled antechamber to a strange temple of some sort. It was rare to see a customer enter Mme Sidonie’s shop. Usually, in fact, the knob was removed from the door. She always told people in the neighborhood that she went personally to the homes of wealthy clients to display her wares. Her only reason for renting the shop, she said, was the layout of the apartment, which communicated with the boutique below via a stairway hidden in the wall. Indeed, the lace merchant was seldom in. She came and went ten times a day, always with a hurried air. In any case, she did not limit herself to selling lace. She used her apartment to store goods picked up Lord knows where. There she sold rubber overshoes, raincoats, suspenders, and countless other items. Later she added to her inventory a new oil said to promote the growth of hair, various orthopedic devices, and an automatic coffeemaker, a patented invention, the commercialization of which gave her a great deal of trouble. When her brother came to see her, she was dealing in pianos, and her apartment was crammed with these instruments. There were pianos even in her bedroom, which was very smartly decorated in a manner that clashed with the commercial jumble of the other two rooms. She ran her two businesses in a perfectly methodical way. Customers who came for the merchandise upstairs entered and exited through the carriage entrance on the rue Papillon. You had to be in on the mystery of the hidden staircase to be aware of the lace merchant’s double life. Upstairs she went by the name of Mme Touche, using her husband’s surname, whereas the door that led to the shop directly from the street bore only her first name, so that most people knew her as Mme Sidonie.

Mme Sidonie was thirty-five years old, but she dressed so carelessly and had so little feminine appeal that one would have thought her much older. In truth she had no age. She always wore the same black dress, frayed at the pleats and rumpled and discolored from use, so that it resembled a lawyer’s robe threadbare from frequent rubbing against the courtroom rail. With a black hat pulled down to her forehead to hide her hair and a pair of heavy shoes, she walked the streets carrying a small basket whose handles were mended with string. This basket, which never left her side, was a whole world unto itself. If she opened it even slightly, all sorts of things spilled out: date books, folders, and above all bundles of paper bearing official stamps whose illegible writing she deciphered with remarkable dexterity. She had in her the makings of a business broker and a clerk of court. She lived among defaulted bills, writs, and court orders. Each time she sold ten francs’ worth of pomade or lace, she wormed her way into the good graces of her clients and became the business agent of her customers, running errands to lawyers and judges on their behalf. Week after week she hauled the dossiers in her basket around the city, putting herself to no end of trouble as she walked at a slow and steady pace from one end of Paris to the other, never taking a carriage. It would have been difficult to say what profit she derived from this work. She did it mainly because she had an instinctive taste for shady deals and a love of chicanery, but she also picked up a host of little benefits along the way: a dinner now and then or a franc added to her purse here and there. Her clearest gain, however, came in the form of the confidences she gleaned everywhere, which put her on the trail of likely scores and probable windfalls. Spending her life as she did, in other people’s homes and deeply involved in their affairs, she was a living catalog of supply and demand. She knew where there was a young girl in immediate need of a husband, a family in need of 3,000 francs, or an elderly gentleman willing to lend such a sum but only against solid collateral and at a high rate of interest. She was also informed of still more delicate matters: the sadness of a certain blonde woman whose husband failed to understand her, and who aspired to be understood; the secret desire of a conscientious mother who dreamed of an advantageous situation for her daughter; the tastes of a baron given to intimate late-night suppers and very young girls. With her wan smile she hawked these offers to buy and sell. She thought nothing of walking two leagues to make contact with the right people. She sent the baron to see the conscientious mother, persuaded the elderly gentleman to lend the 3,000 francs to the family strapped for cash, found consolation for the blonde and a less-than-scrupulous husband for the girl in need. She also had a hand in bigger deals, deals she could talk about out loud, with which she assailed the ears of anyone who came near: an interminable lawsuit that a ruined noble family had asked her to follow and a debt that England had incurred with France in the time of the Stuarts, and that now, with compound interest, amounted to nearly three billion francs. This three-billion-franc debt was her hobbyhorse. She explained the ins and outs of the case with a wealth of detail, a veritable course in history, and as she did so, her cheeks, ordinarily as soft and yellow as wax, turned red with enthusiasm. Occasionally, between an errand to the clerk of courts and a visit to a friend, she would unload a coffeemaker or a rain slicker or sell a remnant of lace or lease a piano. Business of this sort was quickly dispatched. Then she would hasten to her store, where she had an appointment with a client to view a piece of Chantilly. The client would arrive and slip as quietly as a shadow into the discreetly curtained shop. It was not rare on such occasions for a gentleman to enter by way of the carriage entrance on rue Papillon to visit Mme Touche’s pianos on the floor above.

If Mme Sidonie did not amass a fortune, it was because she often labored for sheer love of her art. With her fondness for legal formalities and willingness to neglect her own affairs for the sake of others, court clerks picked her pockets clean, but she allowed them to get away with this because she derived from her legal entanglements pleasures known only to the litigious. The woman in her died; she became nothing but a business agent, a deal-maker forever bustling about Paris with her legendary basket full of the most dubious merchandise, ready to sell anything and everything, dreaming of billions, yet willing to go to the justice of peace to plead for ten francs on behalf of a favorite client. Tiny, slight, pale, clad in the thin black dress that seemed to have been cut from a lawyer’s toga, she had shriveled, and to see her scuttle past a row of houses one might have thought she was an errand boy disguised as a girl. Her complexion had the awful pallor of an official document. The smile on her lips seemed to have been snuffed out, while her eyes seemed to swim in the swirl of business deals and other matters that preoccupied her mind. Timid and discreet in her manner, moreover, and with a vague odor of the confessional and the midwife’s consulting room, she had a gentle and maternal way about her, like a nun who has renounced the affections of this world and therefore takes pity on those whose hearts ache. She never spoke of her husband, any more than she spoke of her childhood, family, or interests. There was only one thing she did not sell: herself. Not because she had any scruples, but because the idea of such a bargain could never have occurred to her. She was as dry as an invoice, as cold as an unpaid bill, as indifferent and brutal inside as a sheriff ’s deputy.

Saccard, newly arrived from his province, could not at first fathom the intricate depths of Mme Sidonie’s numerous occupations. Since he had done a year of law, she spoke to him one day about the three billion francs with an air of seriousness that left him with a poor opinion of her intelligence. She gave the apartment on the rue Saint-Jacques the once over, took Angèle’s measure at a glance, and did not reappear until her errands brought her back to the neighborhood and she felt a need to allude once more to the matter of the three billion francs. Angèle had been hooked by the story of the English debt. The saleswoman mounted her hobbyhorse and for an hour made the heavens rain with gold. This was the crack in her nimble mind, the tempting folly with which she compensated for a life squandered in squalid deals, the magical bait with which she bewitched not only herself but the most credulous of her clients. She was so convinced of her case, moreover, that she ended up speaking of the three billion as her own personal fortune, which sooner or later the judges must restore to its rightful owner. Her miserable black hat, garnished with faded violets swaying on stems of bare brass wire, was thus wreathed in a miraculous aureole. Angèle’s enormous eyes opened wide. On several occasions she spoke of her sister-in-law to her husband with respect, saying that Mme Sidonie might one day make them rich. Saccard shrugged. He had visited the boutique and the apartment on the rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière and had sniffed nothing but impending bankruptcy. He asked his brother’s opinion of their sister, but Eugène turned grave and replied only that he never saw her and knew her to be highly intelligent but perhaps a little disreputable. Some time later, however, as Saccard was returning to the rue de Penthièvre, he thought he saw Mme Sidonie’s black dress slip out of his brother’s apartment and scurry down the street. He ran after the woman in black but lost sight of her. The businesswoman’s appearance was of the unremarkable sort that is easily lost in a crowd. But the incident made an impression on him, and from that moment on he began to study his sister more carefully. It did not take him long to grasp the immensity of the labor performed by this pale, shapeless little woman, whose whole face seemed to melt into a covetous gaze. He respected her. She had the Rougon blood in her veins. He recognized the family’s characteristic appetite for money and craving for intrigue. But thanks to the milieu in which she had grown old—Paris, the city she had been obliged to scour in the morning in order to have black bread to eat at night—the common temperament had been warped to produce this strange hermaphrodite, this neutered female, this woman of affairs and procuress rolled into one.

When Saccard, having settled on a plan, set out in search of seed money, he naturally thought of his sister. She shook her head and sighed with an allusion to the three billion francs. But the clerk had no patience with her folly and cut her short whenever she brought up the matter of the Stuart debt. Daydreams of that sort in so practical a mind struck him as disgraceful. Mme Sidonie, whose convictions were impervious to the harshest sarcasms, went on to explain in the clearest of terms that since he had no collateral to offer, he would find it impossible to borrow a cent. This conversation took place in front of the Bourse,7 where she no doubt gambled with her savings. At around three o’clock you could be sure of finding her leaning against the railing on the left, on the side facing the post office, where she held court for characters as suspect and dubious as herself. Her brother was about to take his leave when she murmured wistfully, “Ah, if only you weren’t married.” This reticence, the full and precise meaning of which he did not wish to inquire into, put Saccard in an unusually reflective frame of mind.

Months passed. War had just been declared in Crimea.8 Paris, unmoved by hostilities in a faraway land, displayed far more enthusiasm for speculation and prostitution. Saccard, who had foreseen the rampant mania, looked on and gnawed his knuckles. The city was a giant forge, and each time a hammer struck gold on one of its anvils he quivered with rage and impatience. His mind and will were so fraught with tension that he lived as in a dream, teetering along the edges of rooftops like a sleepwalker in the grip of an idea he could not shake. He was therefore surprised and irritated one evening to find Angèle sick in her bed. His home life, as regular as clockwork, had gone awry, and this exasperated him as if fate had deliberately played him a dirty trick. Poor Angèle complained mildly; she had caught a chill. When the doctor arrived, he seemed quite worried. On the landing he told the husband that his wife had pneumonia and he could not answer for her life. From that moment on the clerk nursed the patient without a trace of anger. He stopped going to the office, remained at her side, and stared at her with an inscrutable expression as she slept, flushed with fever and short of breath. Mme Sidonie, despite her crushing workload, found time every evening to stop in and prepare a tisane,⁹ which she claimed would cure anything. To all her other professions she added that of a born nurse, pleased to be in close proximity to suffering, medications, and the kinds of anguished conversations that take place around the beds of the dying. She seemed taken, moreover, by a tender friendship for Angèle. She truly loved women and lavished them with a thousand kindnesses, no doubt for the pleasure they gave men. She treated them with the same delicate attention that merchants reserve for the most precious items on their shelves, called them “my darling, my beauty,” cooed over them and swooned before them like a lover before his mistress. Although Angèle was not the sort from whom she hoped to gain anything, she flattered her as she did the others, obedient to a general rule of conduct. When the young woman took to her bed, Mme Sidonie’s effusions turned maudlin, and she filled the silent bedroom with signs of her devotion. Her brother watched her move about the room with her lips pressed together as though devastated by unspoken grief.

The illness worsened. One evening the doctor let it be known that the patient would not last the night. Mme Sidonie had come early, looking preoccupied, and stared at Aristide and Angèle with watery eyes illuminated by brief flashes of fire. After the doctor left, she turned down the lamp, and deep silence ensued. Death slowly made its way into the hot, humid room, which the dying woman’s irregular breathing filled with a syncopated ticking like that of a clock about to run down. Mme Sidonie had given up on her potions, allowing the disease to do its work. She sat down in front of the fireplace next to her brother, who poked feverishly at the fire while casting involuntary glances at the bed. Then, as if overwhelmed by the heavy atmosphere and the distressing spectacle, he withdrew into the adjacent room. Little Clotilde, who had been left there, was sitting on a rug and playing very quietly with her doll. Saccard’s daughter smiled at him, but just then Mme Sidonie slipped into the room behind him and drew him off to a corner, where she spoke to him in a low voice. The door remained open, and a faint rattle could be heard in Angèle’s throat.

“Your poor wife,” the businesswoman sobbed. “I think the end is near. You heard the doctor?”

Saccard made no reply other than to bow his head in a mournful manner.

“She was a good woman,” his sister continued, speaking as though Angèle were already dead. “You can find women who are wealthier and more familiar with the ways of the world, but you’ll never find a heart like hers.”

Then she stopped and, wiping her eyes, seemed to be casting about for a way to change the subject. “Do you have something to say to me?” Saccard asked bluntly.

“Yes, I’ve been looking after your interests in regard to the matter we were discussing, and I think I’ve found . . . But at a time like this . . . My heart is breaking, you know.”

She wiped her eyes once more. Saccard, maintaining his composure, let her run through her act without saying a word. Finally she made up her mind to come right out with it: “There’s a young woman whose family would like to find her a husband immediately. The dear child finds herself in trouble. There’s an aunt who would be willing to make a sacrifice. . . .”

She cut herself short, still whimpering, her voice still tearful as though out of pity for poor Angèle. This was a way of making her brother impatient and compelling him to question her, so that she would not bear sole responsibility for the offer she had come to make. The clerk was indeed smoldering with irritation.

“Come on, finish what you were saying! Why do they want to find a husband for this girl?”

“She’s just out of boarding school,” the businesswoman rejoined in a plaintive voice. “She was visiting the country house of the parents of one of her friends when a man led her astray. The girl’s father learned of her crime only recently. He wanted her dead. To save the dear child, her aunt persuaded her to tell her father a tall tale. They’ve convinced him that the guilty party is an honorable young fellow who asks only to be allowed to atone for his momentary lapse.”

“So?” asked Saccard in a tone of surprise and apparent annoyance. “This fellow from the country is going to marry the girl?”

“No, he can’t. He’s already married.”

For a while nothing was said. Angèle’s rattle made a more doleful sound in the shivering air. Little Clotilde had stopped playing with her doll. She looked at Mme Sidonie and her father with her big, dreamy child’s eyes, as if she had understood their conversation. Saccard put a series of short questions to his sister:

“How old is the girl?”

“Nineteen.”

“Pregnant for how long?”

“Three months. There will no doubt be a miscarriage.”

“And the family is rich and respectable?”

“Old bourgeoisie. The father was a magistrate. A very nice fortune.”

“How much is the aunt willing to sacrifice?”

“A hundred thousand francs.”

Another silence ensued. Mme Sidonie had stopped weeping. She was doing business now, and her voice took on the metallic sound of a secondhand dealer haggling over a sale. Her brother looked at her with a sidelong glance and, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “And you? What do you want out of it?”

“We’ll see about that later,” she replied. “Someday you’ll do me a favor.”

She waited a few seconds, and then, since he said nothing, put it to him directly. “So, what have you decided? These poor women are desperate. They’re trying to avoid a scene. They’ve promised to tell the girl’s father the guilty man’s name tomorrow. . . . If you agree, I’ll send a messenger to them with your card.”

Saccard seemed to awaken from a dream. Thinking he heard a faint noise from the bedroom next door, he winced and turned in fright toward the source of the sound. “But I can’t,” he said in great distress, “you know very well that I can’t.”

Mme Sidonie fixed him with a cold and disdainful stare. All the Rougon blood in his veins, all his ardent desires, rushed to his head. He took a card from his wallet and gave it to his sister, who thrust it into an envelope after carefully scratching out the address. Then she went out. It was just past nine o’clock.

Saccard, left alone, went to the window and leaned his forehead against the frosted pane. Unconsciously he drummed the glass with his fingertips. But the night was so dark, the shadows outside hulked in such peculiar shapes, that he felt ill at ease and unthinkingly returned to the room in which Angèle lay dying. He had forgotten her, and it came as a horrible shock to find her sitting propped up against the pillows. Her eyes were wide open, and life seemed to have flooded back into her cheeks and lips. Little Clotilde, still clutching her doll, had sat down on the edge of the bed. The moment her father’s back was turned, she had hastily slipped into the bedroom from which she had been banished earlier, drawn there by the childish curiosity that was the source of all her joy. Saccard, his head still filled with his sister’s story, saw his dream dashed. A dreadful thought must have glared in his eyes. Angèle, seized by terror, tried to shrink back into the bed, pressing herself against the wall; but death had arrived, and this awakening in the throes of agony was only the final flaring up of the lamp before it went out for good. The dying woman could not move. She collapsed, still staring at her husband with wide-open eyes, as if to follow his movements. Saccard, who for a moment thought that fate had contrived some diabolical resurrection in order to keep him mired in misery, felt reassured on seeing that the wretched woman would be dead within the hour. Now all he felt was an intolerable malaise. Angèle’s eyes told him that she had overheard his conversation with Mme Sidonie and was afraid he would strangle her if she did not die quickly enough. Her eyes also expressed the horrified amazement of a sweet and inoffensive nature in its final hour recognizing the world’s infamy and shuddering at the thought of having spent long years at the side of a bandit. Little by little her eyes softened. She was no longer afraid, and she must have taken her wretched husband’s long and unremitting struggle against fate as the basis of an excuse. Saccard, pursued by the dying woman’s stare, which he read as a reproach, leaned against the furniture and groped for the shadows. Then, feeling faint, he sought to banish the nightmare that was driving him mad and advanced into the light. But Angèle motioned to him not to speak. She continued to stare at him with a look of terrified anguish, now mixed with a promise of forgiveness. At that point he bent down to take Clotilde in his arms and carry her into the other room. With a movement of her lips Angèle stopped him from doing this as well. She insisted that he remain with her. She went gently, without taking her eyes off him, and the paler he grew, the gentler her gaze became. Forgiveness came with her final sigh. She died as she had lived, softly, diffident in death as she had been in life. Saccard stood trembling before those lifeless eyes, which remained open and, inert though they now were, continued to pursue him. Little Clotilde rocked her doll gently on the edge of the sheet so as not to wake her mother.

By the time Mme Sidonie returned, it was all over. With the deft touch of a woman accustomed to performing this final act, she closed Angèle’s eyes, much to Saccard’s relief. Then, after putting the child to bed, she rapidly tidied up the death chamber. After lighting two candles on the dresser and carefully drawing the coverlet up to the dead woman’s chin, she looked around with a satisfied glance and stretched out in an armchair, where she slept until daybreak. Saccard spent the night in the next room writing letters announcing his wife’s death. From time to time he stopped what he was doing, mused about something else, and jotted down columns of figures on scraps of paper.

On the night of the burial, Mme Sidonie brought Saccard to her apartment, where important decisions were taken. The clerk made up his mind to send little Clotilde to live with one of his brothers, Pascal Rougon, an unmarried doctor in love with science who made his home in Plassans and who had several times offered to take in his niece in the hope of bringing a little joy to the silence of his scholarly abode. Mme Sidonie impressed on him that he could no longer go on living on the rue Saint-Jacques. She would rent an elegantly furnished apartment for him somewhere near the Hôtel de Ville for a period of one month. She would try to find an apartment in a decent building, so that the furniture would appear to be his. Meanwhile, the furniture from the rue Saint-Jacques apartment would be sold, so as to eliminate the last vestiges of the past. He would use the money to buy a suitable trousseau and clothing. Three days later, Clotilde was entrusted to an elderly lady who happened to be traveling south. And a triumphant Aristide Saccard—with his cheeks now a healthy crimson color and, though fortune had been smiling on him for just three days, with more flesh already on his bones—moved into a charming five-room apartment in an austere and respectable house on rue Payenne in the Marais,10 where he padded about in embroidered slippers. The apartment belonged to a young abbé, who had departed suddenly for Italy with orders to his serving woman to find a tenant. This servant was a friend of Mme Sidonie’s, who had something of a weakness for men of the cloth. She loved priests in the same way she loved women, by instinct, perhaps drawing certain uneasy parallels between cassocks and silk skirts. By this point Saccard was prepared. He composed his role with exquisite art and unflinchingly anticipated the difficulties and delicacies of the situation to which he had committed himself.

On the terrible night of Angèle’s death, Mme Sidonie faithfully if briefly recounted the calamity that had befallen the Béraud family. Its patriarch, M. Béraud Du Châtel, a tall, elderly man of sixty, was the last in a long and respectable bourgeois line whose pedigree could be traced back farther than that of many a noble clan. One of his ancestors had been a companion of Etienne Marcel.11 In 1793, his father had died on the scaffold 12 after welcoming the Revolution with all the enthusiasm of a bourgeois de Paris in whose veins flowed the city’s revolutionary blood. He himself was one of those Spartan republicans who dreamed of a government of thoroughgoing justice and sage liberty. After a lifetime in the magistracy, where he acquired the rigidity and severity associated with his profession, he resigned as chief judge after the coup d’état of 1851 because he had been unwilling to take part in the kangaroo courts that had discredited French justice by punishing those who had resisted the takeover. Since that time he had lived a withdrawn and solitary existence in his home on the tip of the Ile Saint-Louis, almost opposite the Hôtel Lambert. His wife had died young. Some private tragedy, the wound from which was still raw, made his already-grave judicial countenance even gloomier. He had a daughter, Renée, who had been eight when his wife passed away while giving birth to a second girl. The younger child, baptized Christine, had been taken in by one of his sisters, the wife of the notary Aubertot. Renée had been sent off to a convent school. Mme Aubertot, who had no children of her own, loved Christine like a daughter and raised her under her own roof. When her husband died, she returned the girl to her father’s home and lived there as companion to the silent old man and his smiling blonde daughter. Renée was left at boarding school. During school vacations she raised such a ruckus in the house that her aunt heaved a great sigh of relief on returning her to the Dames de la Visitation, in whose custody she had been from the age of eight. She did not leave the convent until she was nineteen, at which time she went to spend the summer with the parents of her good friend Adeline, who owned a fine estate in the Nivernais.13 When she returned home in October, her aunt Elisabeth was surprised to find her in a very pensive mood and profoundly sad. One night she found the girl sobbing into her pillow and writhing on her bed in anguish. In the throes of despair, the child told a heartrending tale: a man of forty, wealthy and married, whose young and charming wife was also staying at the house, had raped her in a field, and she had not dared to defend herself, nor would she have known how. This confession filled Aunt Elisabeth with terror. She blamed herself, as if she felt somehow an accomplice. Her preference for Christine weighed on her mind, and she believed that if she had kept Renée at home, the poor child would not have succumbed. To cope with her remorse, which her tender nature only compounded, she supported the wayward child. She bore the brunt of the father’s anger when the very zealousness of their efforts to conceal the terrible truth from him gave it away. In her alarmed state of anxiety she came up with the strange plan of arranging a marriage, which she hoped would fix everything, calming the wrath of Renée’s father and restoring the child to the ranks of respectable womanhood. She refused to see what was shameful about the plan or to acknowledge its inevitable consequences.

No one ever found out how Mme Sidonie had got wind of this stroke of fortune. The honor of the Bérauds had moldered in the bottom of her basket along with the overdue bills of the capital’s prostitutes. When she learned of the story, she all but forced her brother on the unfortunate family even as his wife lay dying. Aunt Elisabeth ended up believing that she owed a debt of gratitude to this woman, so gentle, so humble, and so devoted to Renée as to find the unfortunate girl a husband from her own family. The aunt’s first interview with Saccard took place in the apartment on the rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. The city-hall employee, who had come in through the carriage entrance on the rue Papillon, saw Mme Aubertot enter by way of the shop and the hidden staircase and immediately grasped the ingenious contrivance of the two entrances. He was as tactful and polite as could be. He treated the marriage as a business deal, but with the attitude of a man of the world settling a gambling debt. Aunt Elisabeth trembled a good deal more than he. She stammered and did not dare mention the hundred thousand francs she had promised him. It was he who brought up the matter of money, and he did so with the detachment of an attorney discussing the case of a client. In his view, a hundred thousand francs was a ridiculously small sum for Mademoiselle Renée’s prospective husband to bring to the marriage. He laid slight stress on the word “mademoiselle.” M. Béraud Du Châtel, already ill disposed toward his future son-in-law, would be all the more contemptuous if the prospective bridegroom appeared to be impoverished. The judge would accuse him of seducing his daughter for her fortune, and it might even occur to him to make private inquiries. Mme Aubertot, unsettled, not to say alarmed, by Saccard’s calm and polite presentation, lost her head and agreed to double the sum when he let it be known that with anything less than 200,000 francs in his pocket he would never dare to ask for Renée’s hand lest he be mistaken for a contemptible fortune-hunter. The worthy lady departed in a state of considerable confusion, not knowing what to think of a young man capable of such indignation yet willing to enter into such a bargain.

This first interview was followed by an official visit: Aunt Elisabeth called on Aristide Saccard in his apartment on the rue Payenne, this time on behalf of M. Béraud. The former magistrate had refused to see “that man,” as he referred to his daughter’s seducer, so long as he was not married to Renée, whom he had also banished from his home. Mme Aubertot had full powers to make all the arrangements. She seemed pleased to find the clerk ensconced in such luxurious surroundings, having been afraid that the brother of the rather bedraggled-looking Mme Sidonie might turn out to be a man of no refinement. He greeted her in a sumptuous dressing gown. These were the days when the adventurers who had swept to power in the wake of the December coup, having paid off their debts, flung their worn boots and frayed waistcoats into the sewers, shaved the week’s growth from their faces, and became proper gentlemen. Saccard had at last joined the gang. He now cleaned his nails and daubed himself with priceless powders and perfumes after his bath. He was stylish, and he changed tactics, affecting a prodigious lack of interest in the entire affair. When the old woman brought up the contract, he made a gesture as if to say that the whole thing was of no importance to him. For the past week he had been studying the Code14 and pondering a grave question on which his future freedom to wheel and deal would depend.

“If you please, let’s dispose of this disagreeable matter of money. . . . My view is that Mademoiselle Renée ought to retain control of her fortune and I of mine. The notary will take care of all that.”

Aunt Elisabeth approved of this way of looking at the matter. She had a vague sense that this young man had a grip of iron and felt some trepidation that he might want to lay hands on her niece’s dowry, which was her next order of business.

“My brother,” she said, “has a fortune consisting mainly of land and houses. He is not inclined to punish his daughter by reducing her share of his estate. He is giving her a property in the Sologne 15 estimated to be worth 300,000 francs, as well as a house in Paris valued at 200,000 francs.”

Saccard was dazzled. He had not anticipated figures like these. He turned away slightly in order to conceal the rush of blood to his face.

“That comes to 500,000 francs,” the aunt continued, “but I would be remiss if I hid the fact that the Sologne property yields only two percent.”

He smiled and again made a gesture indicating lack of interest, signifying that such a consideration could not possibly matter to him since he was declining to dip into his wife’s fortune in any way. Sitting in his armchair, he affected an attitude of charming indifference, absentmindedly balancing his slipper on his toe and seeming to listen purely out of politeness. Mme Aubertot, good soul that she was, spoke with difficulty, choosing her words carefully so as not to give offense.

“Lastly,” she went on, “I wish to make a gift to Renée. I have no child, my fortune will one day pass to my nieces, and I am not about to cut one of them off because she happens at present to be reduced to tears. Marriage gifts had already been decided for both of them. Renée’s consists of extensive holdings in land in the area of Charonne, to which I would conservatively attach a value of 200,000 francs. However—”

At the mention of “holdings in land,” Saccard gave a slight start. Still feigning indifference, he was now all ears. Aunt Elisabeth became flustered and seemed to have difficulty finding the right words. Turning red, she went on: “However, my wish is that the title to this land should pass to Renée’s first child. You will surely understand my intention: I do not want this child to be a burden to you someday. If the child should die, Renée would remain sole owner of the property.”

He took this without flinching, but his taut eyebrows hinted at the depth of his preoccupation. The mention of the Charonne properties had set off a whole new train of thought. Mme Aubertot, thinking she had hurt him by alluding to Renée’s child, was too flustered to go on with the conversation.

He broke the silence by reverting to the smiling, genial tone he had affected earlier. “You didn’t say what street the building valued at 200,000 francs is located on.”

“Rue de la Pépinière,” she replied, “near the corner of the rue d’Astorg.”

This simple sentence had a pronounced effect on him. He could no longer conceal his pleasure. He pulled his chair closer to the lady and spoke warmly to her with the volubility of his native Provence: “Dear lady, haven’t we said enough? Must we go on talking about all these wretched matters of money? . . . Hear me out. I shall be perfectly frank, because I should feel desperate if I failed to merit your esteem. Recently I lost my wife. I have two children on my hands. I’m a practical and reasonable man. By marrying your niece I shall be doing us all a favor. If you have anything against me now, you’ll forgive me once I’ve wiped away everyone’s tears and amassed enough wealth to ensure that even my great-grandchildren will be comfortable. Success is a golden flame that burns away any taint of impurity. I hope that one day M. Béraud himself will shake my hand and thank me.”

Carried away, he went on talking in this vein for quite some time, occasionally allowing a mocking cynicism to show beneath his cheerful air. He boasted of his brother the deputy and his father the tax collector in Plassans. In the end he won over Aunt Elisabeth, who could not suppress a feeling of joy that the drama through which she had been suffering for the past month was about to come to an almost happy conclusion thanks to this clever man’s skillful intervention. It was agreed that they would see the notary the following day.

After Mme Aubertot departed, Saccard went immediately to the Hôtel de Ville and spent the day there examining certain documents that had come to his attention. At the notary’s office, he raised a difficulty. Since all of Renée’s dowry was in real estate, he was afraid that it would cause her no end of trouble and therefore proposed that it might be best to sell at least the building on the rue de la Pépinière and invest the proceeds in her name in a government bond. Mme Aubertot wanted to refer this proposal to M. Béraud Du Châtel, who remained in seclusion. In the meantime, Saccard resumed his rounds into the evening hours. He went to the rue de la Pépinière and scurried about Paris with the pensive air of a general on the eve of a decisive battle. The next day, Mme Aubertot announced that M. Béraud Du Châtel had authorized her to make all necessary decisions. The contract was drawn up along the lines already discussed. Saccard was to contribute 200,000 francs to the household; for dowry Renée would receive the Sologne property and the building on the rue de la Pépinière, which she agreed to sell; and, furthermore, if her first child died, she was to remain sole owner of the Charonne properties that her aunt was giving her. The estates of the spouses were to be kept separate, with husband and wife each retaining full rights to administer their respective fortunes. Aunt Elisabeth listened attentively to the notary’s explanations and seemed satisfied that these arrangements would protect her niece’s independence by placing her property beyond the reach of any attempt to get hold of it. Saccard smiled vaguely each time he saw the good lady nod approval of another clause. The marriage was to take place at the earliest possible date.

When everything was settled, Saccard paid a ceremonial visit to his brother Eugène to announce his engagement to Mlle Renée Béraud Du Châtel. This masterstroke took the deputy by surprise. Since he made no effort to conceal his astonishment, the clerk said, “You told me to look around. I did as I was told and found what I was looking for.”

Eugène, who at first didn’t know what to think, slowly began to grasp the truth. He managed to strike the right tone to express his pleasure. “Well, now, aren’t you a clever fellow? . . . You’ve come to ask me to be your best man, haven’t you? You may count on me. . . . If necessary, I shall bring the whole right wing of the legislature to your wedding. That should get you off to a nice start.”

Then, as he opened the door, he lowered his voice and added, “Tell me, I wouldn’t want to stick my neck out too far just now, we’ve got a very tough bill to get through. . . . The girl isn’t showing too much, I trust?”

Saccard shot him a look so cutting that Eugène, as he closed the door behind him, mused to himself that “that little pleasantry would no doubt cost me dearly if I weren’t a Rougon.”

The marriage was celebrated in the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile. Saccard and Renée did not meet until the eve of the great day. The scene unfolded at dusk in a downstairs parlor of the Béraud mansion. The two studied each other with curiosity. Once her marriage had been negotiated, Renée had gone back to her wild and heedless ways. She was a tall girl of exquisite and irrepressible beauty who had indulged her every whim at boarding school. She found Saccard short and ugly, but his ugliness was of a tormented and intelligent kind that did not displease her. In any case, his tone and manners were impeccable. He winced slightly at his first glimpse of her. She no doubt seemed too tall, taller at any rate than he. Without apparent embarrassment they exchanged a few words. Had the girl’s father been present, he might actually have come away thinking that they had known each other for some time and been partners in past sin. Aunt Elisabeth, who was present for the interview, blushed for both of them.

On the day after the wedding—which counted as a major event on the Ile Saint-Louis owing to the presence of Eugène Rougon, a deputy thrust into the limelight by a recent speech—the two newlyweds were at last granted an audience with M. Béraud Du Châtel. Renée cried at the sight of her father looking older, graver, and sadder than she remembered him. Saccard, who had thus far retained his composure through it all, was frozen by the chill and gloom of the apartment and the lugubrious severity of the old man, whose penetrating eye seemed to plumb the depths of his conscience. The former magistrate slowly kissed his daughter on the forehead, as if to say that he forgave her. Then he turned to his son-in-law and said simply, “Monsieur, we have suffered greatly. I am counting on you to make us forget your wrongs.”

He extended his hand, but Saccard stood on the spot trembling. He believed that if the judge had not buckled under the tragic burden of grief at Renée’s disgrace, he would have thwarted Mme Sidonie’s machinations with a glance or a gesture. After putting the clerk in touch with Aunt Elisabeth, his sister had prudently stepped aside. She had not even come to the wedding. He took a very straightforward line with the old man, having read in his eyes a look of surprise at discovering that his daughter had been seduced by a man who was short, ugly, and forty years old. The newlyweds were obliged to spend their first nights together in the Hôtel Béraud. Christine, a child of fourteen, had been sent away two months earlier in order to make sure that she would not get wind of the drama unfolding in the house, as calm and serene as a convent. When she returned, she was aghast at the sight of her sister’s husband, whom she also found old and ugly. Only Renée seemed to take relatively little notice of her husband’s age or the slyness of his countenance. She showed him neither contempt nor affection and dealt with him in absolute tranquillity, through which a hint of ironic disdain manifested itself from time to time. Saccard settled in, made himself at home, and with his verve and frankness gradually won the genuine friendship of everyone involved. By the time the couple left to take up residence in a superb apartment in a new house on the rue de Rivoli, there was no longer any amazement in M. Béraud Du Châtel’s gaze, and little Christine had made a playmate of her brother-in-law. Renée was then four months pregnant. Her husband was about to send her to the country in order to be able to lie about the child’s age later on when, as Mme Sidonie had predicted, she miscarried. She had laced herself up so tightly to hide her condition, which in any case was concealed by the fullness of her skirts, that she was obliged to take to her bed for several weeks. Saccard was delighted by the outcome. Fortune had kept faith with him. He had made a fabulous bargain: a superb dowry, a wife beautiful enough to earn him a decoration six months hence, and no obligations whatsoever. They had paid him 200,000 francs for his name on behalf of a fetus the mother did not even wish to see. Already the Charonne properties had become the object of his fondest dreams, but for the time being he devoted all his attention to a speculative venture that was to become the basis of his fortune.

Despite the high position of his wife’s family, he did not immediately resign his position as surveyor of roads. He spoke of work to be finished and jobs to be done. In reality, he wanted to remain until the end on the battlefield where he was about to strike his first blow. As in a game of cards, it would be easier to cheat if he played at home with his own deck.

The clerk’s plan was simple and pragmatic. Now that he had more money than he had ever dreamed of with which to launch his operations, he was ready to think big. He knew Paris like the back of his hand. He knew that the shower of gold already beating down on the city’s walls would only intensify with each passing day. Clever people had only to open their pockets. He had joined the ranks of the clever by reading the future in the offices of city hall. In the course of his duties he had learned how much could be stolen in the purchase and sale of buildings and land. He was well versed in the usual ways of fraud: he knew how to sell for a million francs what had been bought for 500,000; he knew how to pay for the right to pick the locks of the state treasury, while the state shut its eyes and smiled; he knew how to juggle six-story buildings when a boulevard was cut through the heart of an old neighborhood while the dupes looked on and applauded. And in a time still beset by turmoil, before the canker of speculation had progressed beyond the incubation stage, what made him a gambler to be feared was that he saw more deeply than his own superiors into the future of granite and plaster that lay in store for the capital. He had dug up so much, collected such quantities of intelligence, that he could have told you what the city’s new quarters would look like in 1870. In the street sometimes, he looked at certain houses in a peculiar way, as if they were acquaintances whose fate, known to him alone, touched him deeply.

Two months before Angèle’s death, he had taken her one Sunday to the Buttes Montmartre.16 The poor woman loved to eat out in restaurants. She was happy when, at the end of a long walk, he led her to a table in some suburban cabaret. On that day they dined at the top of the hill, in a restaurant with a view of Paris, with windows that looked out over an ocean of blue-tinted roofs that filled the vast horizon with its surging swell. Their table stood in front of one of those windows. The sight of the roofs of Paris put Saccard in a good mood. He ordered a bottle of Burgundy to go with dessert. He smiled absentmindedly and was more attentive to his wife than usual. But his eyes, like a lover’s, kept being drawn back to the living, seething sea of rooftops and the deep rumble of the crowd beneath. It was autumn. The city, languishing under pale skies, was a soft and tender gray, pierced here and there by somber patches of green reminiscent of the broad leaves of water lilies floating on the surface of a lake. The sun was setting in a cloud of red, and as a light haze filled the background, a golden dust or dew fell on the city’s right bank over toward the Madeleine 17 and the Tuileries. It was like an enchanted spot in one of the cities of A Thousand and One Nights,18 with emerald trees, sapphire roofs, and ruby weathervanes. At one point a ray of sunlight slipped its way between two clouds and cast such a glorious light on the houses below that they seemed to flare up and melt like a bar of gold in a crucible.

“Oh, look!” Saccard exclaimed with a child’s laugh. “Twenty-franc gold pieces are raining down on Paris!”

Angèle, too, began to laugh, remarking that those particular gold pieces were not easy to pick up. But her husband had stood up and gone over to the window, where he leaned against the sill. “That’s the Vendôme column, isn’t it, gleaming down there? . . . And over there, farther to the right, that’s the Madeleine. . . . A beautiful neighborhood, where there’s plenty of work to be done. . . . Yes, this time, it’s all going to burn! Do you see? . . . It’s as if the neighborhood were being boiled down in some chemist’s retort.”

His voice turned grave and tremulous. The comparison he had hit upon seemed to make a great impression on him. He had drunk the Burgundy, and he forgot himself. Stretching out his arms to show Paris to Angèle, who was now also leaning against the windowsill by his side, he went on. “Yes, yes, as I was saying, more than one neighborhood is about to be melted down, and gold will stick to the fingers of everybody who stokes the furnace and stirs the boiling pot. Paris is so big and simpleminded! Look how huge the city is and how calmly it lies sleeping! These big cities are so stupid! This one has no idea that one fine day it will be set upon by an army of pickaxes. Some of those mansions on the rue d’Anjou wouldn’t gleam quite so brightly in the sunset if they knew that they had only three or four more years to live.”

Angèle thought her husband was joking. He had a taste at times for elaborate, nettlesome tomfoolery. She laughed, but with a vague disquiet, at the sight of this little man standing over the giant asleep at his feet and shaking his fist at it while pressing his lips together with an ironic twist.

“They’ve already begun,” he went on. “But it’s nothing to speak of yet. Look over there, toward Les Halles.19 They’ve cut Paris into four.”

With that, extending his open hand and wielding it like the sharp edge of a cutlass, he made as if to slice the city into four parts.

“You mean the rue de Rivoli and the new boulevard they’re putting through?” his wife asked.

“Yes, the ‘Great Crossing’ of Paris, as they’re calling it. They’re clearing out the area around the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville. But that’s mere child’s play! Just enough to whet the public’s appetite. . . . When the first network of new streets is finished, the big dance will begin. The second network will cut through the city in all directions to link the suburbs to the first network. The buildings that need to be cleared away will collapse in clouds of plaster. . . . Look, follow my hand. From the boulevard du Temple to the Barrière du Trône, one cut; then, over this way, from the Madeleine to the Monceau plain, another cut; and a third cut in this direction, a fourth in that direction, a cut here, another farther out. Cuts everywhere. Paris slashed to pieces with a saber, its veins laid open to provide nourishment for a hundred thousand excavators and masons, and in the end you’ll have a city crisscrossed by fine strategic highways that will put fortresses right in the heart of the old neighborhoods.”

Night was coming on. Saccard’s wizened, muscular hand continued slashing away at the void. Angèle trembled slightly at the sight of this living blade, these iron fingers pitilessly hacking at the endless expanse of dark rooftops. The haze on the horizon had just begun to roll in from the heights, and in her imagination she heard distant cracking sounds from the darkening vales below, as if her husband’s hand really were making the cuts he was describing, slicing Paris up from one end to the other, smashing beams, crushing masonry, and leaving behind long and hideous wounds where walls had collapsed. The smallness of the hand so implacably attacking its giant prey was ultimately frightening to behold, and as it effortlessly ripped the entrails of the enormous city to shreds, it seemed to take on a peculiar glint of steel in the twilight tinged with blue.

“There will be a third network,” Saccard continued after an interval of silence, as if talking to himself. “That one is still too far in the future. I can’t envision it very clearly. I’ve picked up few clues to where it will go. But it will be sheer madness, millions changing hands at a breakneck pace, Paris drunk and reeling!”

He lapsed again into silence, his eyes fixed ardently on the city, which darkness gathered in its folds. He must have been pondering that future so remote that even he could not yet grasp it. Then night fell, and the city dissolved into a blur and seemed to breathe heavily, like the sea when nothing can be seen but the pale crests of the waves. Here and there, the whiteness of a wall still stood out, and one by one the yellow flames of the gaslights pierced the shadows, like stars making their appearance in the blackness of a stormy night.

Angèle put aside her discomfort and returned to the joke her husband had made at dessert. “Well, then,” she said with a smile, “there’s been quite a shower of those twenty-franc pieces! The people of Paris are counting them now. Look at those nice piles they’re lining up down there!”

She pointed to the streets descending the Buttes Montmartre, whose gaslights seemed to form two golden rows. “And over there,” she shouted, pointing at a cluster of stars, “that has to be the Caisse Générale.”

This allusion to the state treasury made Saccard laugh. He and Angèle remained at the window a few moments longer, delighted by the shower of gold that eventually engulfed the entire city. On the way down from the heights of Montmartre the clerk had second thoughts about having talked so much. He blamed the wine and begged his wife not to repeat the “foolish things” he had said. He wanted, he said, to be taken for a sober head.

Saccard had long studied these three networks of streets and boulevards, the plan for which he had been careless enough to describe in reasonably accurate terms to Angèle. When she died, he was by no means upset to know that she took with her to the grave all memory of his loose talk from that day on the Buttes Montmartre. There, in the slashes he had made with his hand in the heart of Paris, lay the seeds of his fortune, and he had no intention of sharing his idea with anyone, knowing full well that when the day came to divide the spoils, there would be plenty of crows circling the gutted city. His initial plan had been to acquire, at a good price, a building he knew to be slated for imminent demolition and then to make a killing on the indemnity. He might have gone ahead and taken his chances without a cent to his name, buying the building on credit and pocketing the difference when the price went up as in buying shares of stock on margin, but then the 200,000-franc bonus from his marriage encouraged him to think big. His calculations were now complete: he would use a front to purchase his wife’s house on the rue de la Pépinière, leaving his name out of the transaction entirely, and triple his investment thanks to the knowledge he had acquired in the corridors of the Hôtel de Ville and through his connections with certain influential individuals. The reason he had been startled when Aunt Elisabeth mentioned the location of the house was that it happened to be situated right in the middle of a proposed new thoroughfare, knowledge of which was still confined to the offices of the Prefect of the Seine.20 The boulevard Malesherbes was to sweep away everything in its path. This was an old project of Napoleon I, which there was now talk of reviving in order “to allow a normal traffic flow to and from neighborhoods cut off by the maze of narrow streets on the slopes of the Paris perimeter,” to use the earnest official phraseology. That phraseology of course avowed nothing of the interest the Empire had in opening the spigots of cash or in the vast projects of excavation and filling that would capture the imagination of the working class. Saccard had once taken the liberty of examining the famous map of Paris in the prefect’s office on which “an august hand” had traced in red ink the main roads of the second network. Those bloody strokes of the pen had cut into Paris even more deeply than the hand of our surveyor of roads. The boulevard Malesherbes, which would require the demolition of any number of superb mansions on the rue d’Anjou and the rue de la Ville-l’Evêque as well as the construction of substantial embankments, was one of the first slated to be put through. When Saccard went to inspect the building on the rue de la Pépinière, he thought back on that autumn night, on that dinner he had eaten with Angèle on the Buttes Montmartre, during which showers of gold louis had rained on the neighborhood around the Madeleine at sunset. He smiled. The shining cloud had just burst over his head, above his courtyard, and he was soon to start scooping up those golden coins.

While Renée, luxuriously installed in the apartment on the rue de Rivoli, right in the middle of the new Paris of which she was soon to become one of the queens, pondered her future wardrobe and tried her hand at the life of the socialite, her husband devoted himself to his first important business transaction. His first move was to buy from his wife the house on the rue de la Pépinière, using a certain Larsonneau as an intermediary. Larsonneau was someone he had come to know while prying into the secrets of city hall but who had been foolish enough to get caught going through the prefect’s files. He had then set himself up as a real estate agent in an office off a dank and dismal courtyard at the lower end of the rue Saint-Jacques. This was a cruel blow to Larsonneau’s pride, as well as to his greed. He found himself in the same position Saccard had been in prior to his marriage. He, too, claimed to have invented a “money machine,” only he lacked the initial funds needed to capitalize on his invention. Saccard quickly came to a tacit understanding with his former colleague, who did his job so well that he managed to purchase the house for 150,000 francs. After only a few months, Renée was already badly in need of cash. Her husband intervened solely to authorize his wife to sell. When the deal was done, she asked him to invest the proceeds on her behalf and entrusted 100,000 francs of the money to him, no doubt hoping to win him over with this show of confidence and encourage him to overlook the 50,000 francs she kept for pocket money. He smiled knowingly. In his calculations he had already taken into account the fact that she would be shoveling money out the window. The 50,000 francs that would soon vanish in lace and jewels would come back to him with a hundred percent profit. He was so pleased with this first transaction that he carried honesty to the point of actually investing the 100,000 francs that Renée had given him in bonds, which he then turned over to his wife. Since she could not sell them, he was certain of being able to recover his nest egg should the need arise.

“My dear,” he said gallantly, “these will do for your rags.”

Once he was in possession of the house, he was shrewd enough to resell it twice to fronts, raising the price each time. The final buyer paid no less than 300,000 francs for the property. Meanwhile, Larsonneau, who acted as sole representative of the successive owners, harassed the tenants. He was merciless, refusing to renew their leases unless they agreed to substantial rent increases. The tenants, having gotten wind of the impending confiscation of the property, were desperate. In the end they agreed to accept the rent hike, especially after Larsonneau made the conciliatory gesture of announcing that the increase would exist only on paper for the first five years and no additional sums would actually be collected. The few tenants who refused to back down were replaced by shills to whom free housing was offered in exchange for signing any document placed in front of them. This yielded two benefits: the nominal rents went up, and the indemnity to be paid to the tenant for his lease would go to Saccard. Mme Sidonie wanted to help her brother out by setting up a piano shop in one of the ground-floor boutiques. At this point Saccard and Larsonneau got a bit carried away: they concocted fake books for the business and forged signatures to make it appear as though the shop was doing a huge volume of sales. They spent several nights together scribbling away. As a result of all these efforts, the building tripled in value. Thanks to the final contract of sale, the rent increases, the sham tenants, and Mme Sidonie’s shop, it was possible to propose an estimated value of 500,000 francs to the commission on indemnities.

Confiscation by eminent domain—the powerful machine that bulldozed its way through Paris for fifteen years, leaving wealth and ruin in its wake—could not be simpler in its operation. As soon as the decision to build a new street is made, surveyors map out the affected parcels of land and estimate the value of the properties. In the case of rental properties, they make inquiries to determine the income stream from rentals in order to calculate an approximate value of the building as a capital investment. The indemnity commission, made up of members of the municipal council, then makes an offer that is always less than this calculated figure, knowing that the owners will ask for more and that the eventual price will be reached through compromise. If agreement cannot be reached, the case goes to a jury, which has the final say in arbitrating between the city’s offer and the price asked by the landlord or lessee facing expropriation.

Saccard, who had decided to remain in his job at city hall until after the crucial decisions were taken, had briefly entertained the impudent idea of having himself named as estimator on the boulevard Malesherbes project, which would have allowed him to set the value of his own house. But he was afraid that in doing so he would inhibit his ability to exert influence on the members of the indemnity commission. So he had one of his colleagues appointed instead, a pleasant, amiable young man named Michelin, whose strikingly beautiful wife often appeared in person to present her husband’s excuses to his superiors when he stayed away from work. He stayed away frequently. Saccard had observed that the lovely Mme Michelin, who had such a discreet way of slipping into offices when doors were left ajar, could work wonders. Michelin came away from each of his illnesses with a promotion; he made his way in life by taking to his bed. During one of his absences, when he was sending his wife to the office nearly every morning with news of his condition, Saccard twice ran into him on the outer boulevards smoking his cigar with his usual expression of bemused delight. These encounters left Saccard with sympathy for both this fine young man and this happy couple, which had demonstrated such ingenuity and pragmatism in its dealings with the bureaucracy. Indeed, he admired any skillfully operated money machine. After securing the appointment for Michelin, he went to see the young man’s charming wife, insisted on introducing her to Renée, and spoke in her presence of his brother the deputy and illustrious speechmaker. Mme Michelin got the point. From that day on, her husband reserved his most significant smiles for his colleague. Saccard, who did not want to take the worthy youth into his confidence, simply turned up as if by chance on the day the building on the rue de la Pépinière was to be inspected. He offered his assistance. Michelin, who was stupider and more empty-headed than one might imagine, followed the instructions given him by his wife, who had recommended that he do everything possible to please M. Saccard. In any case, he suspected nothing. He thought that the clerk wanted him to hurry through his work so that they could go off together to a café. The leases, the rental receipts, and Mme Sidonie’s amazing books passed through his colleague’s hands while Saccard looked on, and there was not even time to verify the figures, which Saccard himself read out loud. Larsonneau, who was also present, treated his accomplice as a stranger.

“Go ahead, put it down as 500,000 francs,” Saccard said in the end. “The house is worth more. . . . Hurry up, I think there’s going to be a change in personnel at city hall, and I want to discuss it with you so that you can pass it on to your wife.”

That sealed the deal. Saccard was still anxious, though. He was afraid that the 500,000-franc figure might strike the indemnity commission as somewhat inflated for a house well-known to be worth 200,000 at best. The remarkable rise in real estate values had yet to take place. An investigation would have subjected him to a risk of serious unpleasantness. He remembered what his brother had said to him: “No unseemly scandals, or I’ll get rid of you.” And he knew Eugène to be the kind of man to carry out such a threat. The honorable members of the commission would need to have the wool pulled over their eyes, and their goodwill would have to be secured. He looked to two influential men whose friendship he had won by the way he greeted them in hallways when they met. The thirty-six members of the municipal council were handpicked by the Emperor himself, on the prefect’s recommendation, from among the senators, deputies, lawyers, doctors, and leading industrialists who knelt most devoutly before the majesty of the government. Of all of them, however, two had earned the favor of the Tuileries by their zealousness: Baron Gouraud and M. Toutin-Laroche.

All of Baron Gouraud is summed up in this brief biography: made a baron by Napoleon I for supplying the Grand Army with spoiled rations, he was a peer under Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe21 in succession and became a senator under Napoleon III. He was a worshiper of the throne, of four gilt boards covered with velvet; the man who happened to sit on it mattered little to him. With his enormous belly, bovine face, and elephantine gait, he proved to be a charming rogue. He sold himself in the most majestic manner and committed the most dishonorable acts in the name of duty and conscience. His vices were even more astonishing. There were rumors about him that could only be whispered. Despite his seventy-eight years, monstrous debauchery was his element. On two occasions his filthy escapades had had to be hushed up in order to keep his sumptuous senatorial robes from being dragged through the criminal courts.

M. Toutin-Laroche, a tall, thin man known for having invented a mixture of suet and stearin used in the manufacture of candles, dreamed of becoming a senator. He stuck to Baron Gouraud like a leech, rubbing up against him with the idea that this would somehow bring him luck. At bottom he was a very pragmatic man, and had he found a senate seat for sale he would have haggled ferociously over the price. The Empire was about to make a celebrity of this greedy nonentity, this narrow-minded entrepreneur with a genius for shady industrial deals. He was the first to sell his name to a dubious company, one of those corporations that sprang up like poisonous mushrooms on the dung heap of imperial speculation. Some time ago a poster could be seen glued to the walls of Paris and bearing the following words in big black letters: SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉRALE DES PORTS DU MAROC. It featured the name of M. Toutin-Laroche together with his title as municipal councilor at the head of a list of members of the board of directors, each more obscure than the next so far as the general public was concerned. This technique, much abused since, worked wonders. People rushed to buy stock in the company, even though a great deal remained unclear about what was to be done with the “ports of Morocco,” and the good people who invested their money could not themselves explain what project it was to be used for. The poster offered a superb description of commercial stations to be established along the Mediterranean coast. For two years previously, certain newspapers had been singing the praises of this ambitious venture, which every three months they reported to be prospering as never before. At the municipal council, M. Toutin-Laroche enjoyed a reputation as a top-flight administrator. He was one of the big thinkers of the group, and the harsh tyranny he exercised over his colleagues was rivaled only by the abject devotion he showed to the prefect. He was already at work setting up a major financial venture to be called the Crédit Viticole, which proposed to lend money to wine growers, and he spoke of this in such a halting, grave manner that all the imbeciles around him burned to invest in it.

Saccard won the protection of these two personages by doing them favors, the importance of which he shrewdly pretended not to notice. He introduced his sister to the baron, who was mixed up at the time in a most unsavory affair. He took her to the baron’s house on the pretext of soliciting his support for Mme Sidonie’s long-standing effort to obtain a contract to supply the Tuileries with draperies. After they spent some time alone together, however, it turned out that it was she who promised the baron to negotiate with certain individuals ill-mannered enough not to be honored by the friendship that a senator had deigned to show their daughter, a little girl of ten. Saccard himself took the initiative with M. Toutin-Laroche. He contrived a meeting in a corridor and turned the conversation to the much-discussed Crédit Viticole. Before five minutes had passed, the great administrator, alarmed and dumbfounded by the astonishing things he was hearing, took the clerk familiarly by the arm and kept him standing in the hallway for the next hour. Saccard whispered in his ears details of the most wonderfully ingenious financial schemes. On taking his leave, M. Toutin-Laroche squeezed the clerk’s hand in a most meaningful way and gave him a conspiratorial wink.

“You’ll be in on it,” he mumbled. “You’ve got to be in on it.”

Saccard was at his best throughout these maneuvers. He was prudent enough not to make Baron Gouraud and M. Toutin-Laroche each other’s accomplices. He visited them separately and whispered in each man’s ear a word in favor of one of his friends whose property on the rue de la Pépinière was about to be taken by eminent domain. He was careful to tell each of his two cronies that he would not breathe a word about this business to any other member of the commission, that it was all still up in the air, and that he was counting most especially on the help of whichever one he was speaking to.

The clerk was right to be wary and take precautions. When the dossier on his building came before the indemnity commission, it turned out that one of the members lived on the rue d’Astorg and knew the house. This man objected to the figure of 500,000 francs, which he said ought to be reduced by more than half. Aristide had been impudent enough to ask for 700,000. That day, M. Toutin-Laroche, who was normally extremely unpleasant to his colleagues, was in an even fouler mood than usual. He became incensed and took up the defense of property owners.

“We all own property, gentlemen. The emperor is out to do great things. Let’s not haggle over trifles. . . . This house ought to be worth 500,000 francs. The figure was set by one of our own people, an employee of city hall. . . . You’d think we were living in a den of thieves. Keep this up and we’ll end up being suspicious of one another.”

Baron Gouraud, sunk deep in his chair, glanced with surprise out of the corner of his eye at M. Toutin-Laroche fulminating on behalf of the owner of the rue de la Pépinière property. A suspicion crossed his mind. But since Toutin-Laroche’s vehement diatribe made it unnecessary for him to speak out, he simply nodded vigorously to signal his approval. Disgusted, the member from the rue d’Astorg dug in his heels and refused to give in to the two tyrants of the commission on a matter about which he was more competent than they. At that point, M. Toutin-Laroche, having noted the baron’s gesture of approval, grabbed the dossier and curtly said, “Very well, then. We’ll dispel your doubts. . . . If you’ll allow me, I’ll look into the matter, and Baron Gouraud will join me.”

“Yes, of course,” the baron added gravely. “Our decisions must be beyond reproach.”

The file had already vanished into M. Toutin-Laroche’s ample pockets. The commission was obliged to go along. On the way out, the two accomplices met on the quay and looked at each other without cracking a smile. They sensed that they were in this together, which only added to their poise. Men of commoner stamp would have insisted on explaining themselves, but these two continued to argue the case for property owners, as if the others could still hear them, and to deplore the distrustful attitude that was becoming so ubiquitous.

As they were about to part, the baron paused for a moment and smiled. “Oh, I almost forgot, but I’ll be leaving shortly for the country. Would you be kind enough, my dear colleague, to conduct this little inquiry without me? . . . And whatever you do, please don’t give away my secret: those fellows are always complaining that I take too many vacations.”

“Don’t trouble yourself about it,” Toutin-Laroche replied. “I shall go at once to the rue de la Pépinière.”

He quietly returned home, feeling a twinge of admiration for the baron, who had such clever ways of extricating himself from ticklish situations. He kept the file in his pocket and at the next meeting of the commission announced peremptorily on behalf of the baron and himself that given the asking price of 700,000 francs and the proposed offer of 500,000, it would be necessary to compromise by granting an indemnity of 600,000. Not a murmur of opposition was heard. The member from the rue d’Astorg, having thought better of his objection, no doubt, allowed good-naturedly that he had been mistaken. He had thought that it was the building next door that was being discussed.

That was how Aristide Saccard won his first victory. He quadrupled his investment and gained two accomplices. Only one thing worried him. When he went to destroy Mme Sidonie’s fraudulent books, they were nowhere to be found. He rushed over to see Larsonneau, who told him bluntly that he had the books and planned to keep them. Saccard did not lose his temper. His only worry, he intimated, was for his dear friend, who was far more compromised than Saccard himself by these forgeries—almost all of which were in his friend’s hand—but he was reassured now that he knew the books to be in Larsonneau’s possession. Actually, he would gladly have strangled his “dear friend.” He remembered one highly compromising document, a bogus inventory that he had been stupid enough to draw up and that must still be in one of the ledgers. Larsonneau, richly rewarded for his services, opened a consulting office on the rue de Rivoli, which he furnished as luxuriously as any kept woman’s apartment. Saccard quit his job at city hall and, with a considerable quantity of capital now at his disposal, plunged into speculation with a vengeance, while Renée, excited and out of control, filled Paris with the clatter of her carriages, the sparkle of her diamonds, and the dizzying whirl of her swank and ostentatious existence.

Occasionally husband and wife, both feverish in their pursuit of money and pleasure, returned to the icy mists of the Ile Saint-Louis. When they did, they felt as though they were entering a ghost town.

The Béraud mansion, built around the beginning of the seventeenth century, was one of those dark, square, solemn buildings with high, narrow windows that are so common in the Marais and are often rented out to boarding schools, manufacturers of seltzer water, and distributors of wine and spirits. It was admirably preserved, however. Situated on the rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, it had only three upper stories, each fifteen to twenty feet high. The ground floor had lower ceilings, with windows protected by depressingly heavy iron bars set right into the somber thickness of the walls and an arched doorway almost as wide as it was tall, which was shut by double doors bearing a cast-iron knocker, painted dark green, and studded with huge nails that formed star and diamond patterns on both panels. It was the classic carriage entrance, flanked by off-kilter hitching posts circled by iron hoops. One could see that a gutter had once run through the center of the gate and that the ballast beneath the porch had been gently sloped to channel water into it from either side. M. Béraud had decided, however, to pave the entrance and block this gutter. This was the only sacrifice to modern architecture to which he ever agreed. The windows on the upper floors were enclosed by thin iron handrails through which the colossal casements, with their heavy brown sashes and small greenish panes, could be seen. Above, the line of the roof was broken by dormers, leaving the gutters to continue by themselves to funnel rainwater into the downspouts. The austere nakedness of the façade was further aggravated by the total absence of shutters and blinds, the pale and melancholy stones of this front wall being untouched by sunlight throughout the year. This façade, with its venerable air, its bourgeois severity, slumbered solemnly in this neighborhood of dignified repose and silent streets seldom disturbed by the clatter of carriages.

Inside the gate was a square courtyard surrounded by arcades, a scaled-down version of the place Royale,22 paved with enormous slabs of stone, which added the finishing touch needed to make this lifeless house look exactly like a cloister. Facing the porch, a fountain— a lion’s head half worn away so that only its gaping jaws remained— spouted a heavy, monotonous stream of water from an iron pipe into a trough green with moss and worn smooth along the edges. The water was icy cold. Grass pushed its way up between the stone slabs. During the summer a thin sliver of sunlight penetrated the courtyard, and this rare visitation of the sun’s rays had whitened one corner of the façade, on the south side, leaving the remaining three-quarters of the front wall gloomy and black and streaked with mold. Standing in the middle of this courtyard, as cool and quiet as the bottom of a well, in the glaring light of a winter day, one could easily believe that the new Paris, ablaze with fiery passions and reverberating with the din of millions, was a thousand miles away.

The apartments within the mansion exuded the same mournful calm and frigid formality as the courtyard. The stairwell leading up to them was broad and guarded with an iron rail, and within it every footstep, every cough, resounded as beneath the vault of a church. Long suites of vast rooms with high ceilings dwarfed the old furniture, which was built low of dark wood. The dusky gloom was peopled solely by the figures in the tapestries, whose large, colorless bodies could barely be made out. All the luxury of the old Paris bourgeoisie was represented here, a luxury as unusable as it was unyielding: chairs whose oak seats were barely covered by a cushion of hemp, beds with stiff sheets, linen chests whose rough boards were singularly hard on frail modern finery. M. Béraud Du Châtel had chosen for himself an apartment in the gloomiest part of the house, on the second floor between the street and the courtyard. There he found himself in surroundings remarkable for their shadowy silence and conducive to meditation. When he pushed open the doors and made his slow, lugubrious way through the solemn apartments, he resembled one of the members of the old parlements whose portraits were affixed to the walls, a man lost in thought on his way home after debating and refusing to sign a royal edict.

But within this lifeless house, this cloister, there was a warm and vibrant nest, a pocket of sunshine and gaiety, a lovely lair of childish high spirits, fresh air, and bright light. To reach it one had to climb a host of small staircases, proceed along a dozen or so corridors, climb back down and then up again to complete a veritable journey ending at last in a vast chamber, a sort of belvedere on the rooftop in the back of the house above the Quai de Béthune. It enjoyed full southern exposure. The window was so wide that the sky, with all its radiance, all its fresh air, all its blue color seemed to enter in. Perched aloft like a dovecote, it contained long flower boxes, an immense aviary, and not a single piece of furniture. A simple mat had been laid down over the tile floor. This was the “children’s room.” Throughout the house this was the name by which the room was known and referred to. The house was so cold and the courtyard so damp that Aunt Elisabeth had been afraid that Christine and Renée might catch a chill from the walls. She had often scolded the active little girls, who liked to race through the arcades and dip their tiny arms into the frigid water of the fountain. Then it occurred to her to have the forgotten loft fixed up for them, this being for centuries the only spot in the house where the sun was allowed in to disport itself in solitude among the spider-webs. She had given them a mat, some birds, and flowers. The girls were delighted. During vacations, Renée lived up there, bathing in the warm yellow rays of the sun, which seemed pleased with the way its hideout had been fixed up and with the two blondes it had been sent. The chamber became a paradise, resounding with the songs of the birds and the babble of the little girls. Ownership had been ceded entirely to them. They called it “our room.” They were at home in it. They went so far as to lock themselves in to prove to themselves beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were the sole mistresses of the premises. What a happy place! A hecatomb of playthings lay strewn about the mat in the bright sunshine.

The best thing about the children’s room was the vast horizon. Looking out the other windows of the house one saw nothing but black walls a few feet away. But the children’s room offered a view of one end of the Seine, one whole side of Paris stretching from the Ile de la Cité 23 to the Pont de Bercy, flat and vast and looking like some quaint Dutch town. Below, on the Quai de Béthune, stood a series of ramshackle wooden sheds, and the children often amused themselves by watching enormous rats scamper about the heaps of fallen beams and roofing, feeling a vague sense of dread whenever they saw one scale the high walls. Beyond these ruins, however, the magic began. The pier, with its rows of floating timbers and buttresses like those of some Gothic cathedral, and the delicate Pont de Constantine, swaying like lace beneath the feet of pedestrians, intersected at right angles and seemed to dam the enormous mass of the river and hold it in check. Opposite stood the trees of the Halle aux Vins,24 and, farther on, the greenery of the Jardin des Plantes25 stretching off toward the horizon. Meanwhile, on the other side of the river, the Quai Henri IV and Quai de la Rapée were lined with low, uneven structures, rows of houses that looked from above like the little wood and cardboard houses the girls kept in boxes. In the distance, to the right, loomed the slate roof of La Salpêtrière,26 a patch of blue above the trees. Then, in the middle, stretching all the way down to the Seine, the broad paved banks formed two long gray passageways smudged here and there by a row of barrels, a hitched-up wagon, or a boatload of wood or coal piled on the shore. But the soul of it all, the soul that filled the scene, was the Seine, the living river. It came from afar, from the vague and trembling edge of the horizon, from the land of dreams, and flowed in tranquil majesty straight to the children, swelling mightily on its way and finally spreading into a great sheet of water at their feet, at the extremity of the island. The two bridges that crossed it, the Pont de Bercy and the Pont d’Austerlitz, seemed like necessary barriers, responsible for holding the river back and preventing it from rising up to the children’s room. The girls loved the giant river. Their eyes could not get enough of its colossal flow, of the eternal rumbling flood that rolled forward as if pursuing them, and they could feel it divide below them and vanish to the right and to the left, into the unknown, with the docility of a tamed Titan. When the weather was fine, on mornings when the sky was blue, they took delight in the Seine’s beautiful finery. The river decked itself out in variegated gowns, taking on a thousand hues of infinite subtlety ranging from blue to green. It looked like silk patterned with tongues of white flame and trimmed with satin ruffles. And the boats that found shelter along its banks made a ribbon of black velvet along its edges. In the distance especially the fabric seemed lovely and precious, like the enchanted gauze of a fairy’s tunic. Beyond the hem of deep green satin formed by the shadows of the bridges were golden breastplates and rich folds that glowed like the sun. The immense sky looming over the water, the rows of low houses, and the greenery of the two parks seemed to grow deeper before one’s eyes.

At times, Renée, already nearly grown, weary of this limitless horizon, and bursting with curiosity acquired at school about matters of the flesh, would cast a glance in the direction of the swimming school at Petit’s floating bathhouse, moored to the tip of the island. Through the flapping linen hanging from lines that did duty for a roof, she hoped to catch a glimpse of men in bathing suits that revealed their naked torsos.

3

Maxime remained at school in Plassans until the holidays of 1854. He was then thirteen years and some months old and had just finished the seventh grade. It was at that point that his father decided to have him come to Paris. His idea was that a son of that age would set him up, would permanently establish him in the role he was playing of a wealthy widower now remarried, a man of serious disposition. When he announced his plan to Renée, whom he prided himself on treating in a most courtly manner, she replied casually: “Fine, send for the boy. . . . He’ll amuse us a little. Mornings are so deadly boring.”

The boy arrived a week later. He was already a tall, thin, mischievous youth with a girlish face, a delicate, insolent look, and soft blond hair. But good God, how oddly he was turned out! His hair cropped to the ears, so short that the whiteness of his scalp seemed barely covered by a faint shadow, he wore his pants too short and sported a teamster’s boots and a horribly threadbare tunic so big for his size that it made him look almost hunchbacked. In this getup, surprised by the new things that greeted his eyes, he looked around, not at all timidly but with the savage cunning of a precocious child, wary of revealing too much of himself right away.

A servant had fetched him from the station, and he was waiting in the main drawing room, delighted by the gold on the furniture and ceiling and deeply pleased with the luxurious surroundings in which he was now to live, when Renée, returning home from her tailor’s, swept in like a gust of wind. She tossed aside her hat and the white burnoose she had wrapped around her shoulders to protect her from the already-biting cold. To Maxime, struck dumb with admiration, she seemed splendid in her marvelous costume.

The child thought it must be a disguise. She had on a ravishing skirt of blue faille with big flounces, over which she had thrown a sort of French Guard’s jacket of soft gray silk. The flaps of the jacket, lined with blue satin darker than the blue of the skirt, were lifted up in a provocative manner and held in place by bows of ribbon. The cuffs of the flat sleeves and wide lapels stood out, lined with the same satin. And to add an ultimate zest to the ensemble, a daring dash of originality, two rows of large imitation sapphire buttons set in blue rosettes adorned the jacket front. It was ugly and adorable.

When Renée noticed Maxime, she was surprised to find him as tall as she. “That’s the little boy, I presume?” she inquired of the servant.

The child devoured her with his eyes. This lady, whose skin was so white, whose bosom could be glimpsed through the gap in her pleated blouse, this sudden and charming apparition with her high coiffure, her elegant gloved hands, and her small men’s boots with pointed heels that dug into the carpet, delighted him—she seemed the good fairy of this warm, gilded apartment. A smile began to form on his lips, and he was just gauche enough to retain a mischievous youthful grace.

“My, how funny he is!” Renée exclaimed. “But what a fright! Look at the way they’ve cut his hair! . . . Listen, my young friend, your father probably won’t be back before dinner, and I shall be obliged to move you in. . . . I’m your step-mama, monsieur. Would you like to kiss me?”

“I would,” came Maxime’s forthright answer. And with that he kissed the young woman on both cheeks, holding her by the shoulders in a way that rumpled her French Guard’s jacket a bit.

Laughing, she freed herself and said, “My God! That shaved head—what a riot!”

Then she turned back to him with a more serious expression. “We’ll be friends, won’t we? . . . I want to be a mother to you. I thought it all over while waiting for my tailor, who was otherwise occupied, and I said to myself that I ought to be very kind and bring you up quite properly. . . . It will be nice!”

Maxime went on staring at her as brazenly as a tart with his big blue eyes. Then, suddenly, he came out with a question: “How old are you?”

“Never ask such a thing!” she cried, putting her hands together. “The poor thing doesn’t know what he can and cannot say! I’ll have to teach him everything. . . . Fortunately, I’m still young enough to say how old I am. I’m twenty-one.”

“I’ll soon be fourteen. . . . You could be my sister.”

He did not finish his thought, but his eyes made it clear that he had expected his father’s second wife to be much older. He was standing quite close to her and staring at her neck so attentively that after a while she almost blushed. Yet she was too flighty to stick to one subject for long, and as she walked off she began talking about her tailor, forgetting that she was speaking to a child.

“I would have liked to be here to welcome you. But can you believe that Worms brought me this outfit this morning? . . . I tried it on and think it looks rather good. It’s quite chic, don’t you think?”

She had gone over to a mirror. Maxime walked around behind her so as to examine her from various angles.

“But when I put on the jacket, I noticed that there was a big crease right here on the left shoulder. Do you see it? . . . It’s very ugly. It makes me look as though one shoulder is higher than the other.”

He moved close to her, passed his finger over the crease as if to smooth it out, and then, naughty schoolboy that he was, allowed his hand to linger on the spot with a certain apparent comfort.

“Well,” she continued, “I simply couldn’t stand it. I ordered the carriage brought round and went to tell Worms what I thought of his inconceivable carelessness. . . . He promised me he’d fix it.”

She remained in front of the mirror, still contemplating her image and all of a sudden lost in reverie. After a while she placed a finger on her lips with an air of meditative impatience. Then, in a very low voice, as if talking to herself, she said, “Something is missing. . . . Something is definitely missing.”

Turning abruptly, she faced Maxime and asked, “Is it really all right? . . . Don’t you think something is missing, a trifle, a bow somewhere?”

The schoolboy, reassured by the young woman’s friendly manner, had regained all the poise of his impudent nature. He moved away, drew near, squinted, muttering all the while: “No, no, nothing is missing. It’s very pretty, very pretty. . . . If anything, there is a bit too much.”

He blushed a bit for all his audacity, drew still closer to Renée, and tracing an acute angle on her bosom with his fingertip said, “If it were up to me, I’d scoop out the lace like this and add a necklace with a big cross.”

She clapped her hands, beaming.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed. “That’s it! . . . A big cross was just what I had on the tip of my tongue.”

She opened up her blouse, vanished for two minutes, and returned with the necklace and cross. Then she stationed herself once more in front of the mirror, murmuring, “Oh, now it’s perfect, quite perfect! . . . So, my little boy with the shaved head is not stupid at all! Did you dress the women in your province? . . . Clearly we shall be good friends. But you must mind what I say. First of all, you must let your hair grow, and you must never wear that dreadful tunic again. And you will faithfully heed all my lessons in good manners. I want you to be a smart young man.”

“Of course,” the boy said naïvely, “since papa is rich now, and you’re his wife.”

She smiled, and with her usual audacity said, “Then let’s begin by addressing each other familiarly. I’ve been switching between tu and vous. It’s silly. . . . Do you promise to love me?”

“I shall love you with all my heart,” he answered with the effusive-ness of a lad addressing his sweetheart.

Such was the first conversation between Maxime and Renée. The boy did not return to school for a month. In their first days together, his stepmother played with him as she would have played with a doll. She knocked the rough edges of his provincial upbringing off him, and it must be said that he lent himself to her efforts with the utmost alacrity. When he appeared dressed from head to toe in spanking new clothes supplied by his father’s tailor, she gave a cry of joyful surprise. He was as “pretty as a picture,” as she put it. It took a desperately long time for his hair to grow out, however. Renée always said that the hair made the face. She took devoted care of her own. For quite some time the color of her hair drove her to despair—that soft yellow color reminiscent of the finest butter. But when blonde hair became fashionable, she was delighted, and in order to make people believe that she wasn’t just unconsciously following fashion, she swore that she dyed her hair every month.

For a boy of thirteen, Maxime was already terribly knowing. His was one of those frail and precocious natures in which the senses assert themselves early. He had vices before he had desires. On two occasions he nearly got himself expelled from school. Had Renée been attuned to provincial graces, she might have noticed that, as odd as his appearance was, the “little shaved skull,” as she called him, smiled, turned his head, and held out his arm in the dainty, effeminate manner of those schoolboys who beguile their classmates with their charms. He took great care with his hands, which were slender and long. Although his hair was cut short by order of the headmaster, a former colonel in the Engineers, he possessed a small mirror, which he used to take from his pocket during class and place between the pages of his book so that he could stare at himself for hours on end, examining his eyes and gums, making faces, and teaching himself to flirt. His classmates clutched at his school uniform as if it were a skirt, and he pulled his belt so tight that he had the thin waist and swaying hips of a grown woman. The truth was that he took beatings from his classmates as often as he received their caresses. The school in Plassans, like most provincial boarding schools a den of young bandits, thus proved a hotbed of corruption that developed Maxime’s neutered temperament in unusual ways, fostering the evil that had come down to him from some mysterious hereditary source. Fortunately, age was about to straighten him out. But the mark of his youthful surrenders, of the effeminization of his entire being during this period in which he had thought of himself as a girl, would remain with him and cripple his virility for good.

Renée called him “mademoiselle,” unaware that six months earlier her description would have been right on the mark. He struck her as very obedient and very loving, indeed so loving that she often felt embarrassed by his caresses. He had a way of kissing that made her skin feel warm. What delighted her, though, was his mischievous manner. He was as funny as could be, and bold, already grinning when he spoke of women and holding his own with Renée’s friends: dear Adeline, who had just married M. d’Espanet, and plump Suzanne, who had only recently married the big industrialist Haffner. At fourteen he formed a passionate attachment to the latter. He made a confidant of his stepmother, who was most amused.

“In your place I would have preferred Adeline,” she said. “She’s prettier.”

“Maybe,” the naughty boy replied, “but Suzanne is so much meatier. I love beautiful women. If you were nice, you’d speak to her for me.”

Renée laughed. Her doll—this tall boy with his girlish ways— seemed priceless now that he was in love. There came a point when Mme Haffner had to defend herself seriously. In any case, these three women encouraged the precocious child with their stifled laughs, their insinuations, and their flirtatious behavior. A very aristocratic touch of debauchery was part of it. All three led tumultuous lives and, having been burned by passion, they found the naughty child’s charming depravity diverting—a novel, unthreatening spice that reawakened their taste. They allowed him to touch their gowns and graze their shoulders with his fingers when he followed them into the vestibule to throw their evening wraps over them. They passed him from one to the other, laughing madly when he kissed their wrists on the veined side, where the skin is so soft. Then they turned maternal and instructed him at length in the art of being a fine gentleman and pleasing the ladies. He was their plaything, a little man of ingenious construction, who kissed, made love, and exhibited all the most charming vices of high society yet remained a toy, a little cardboard man of whom one did not have to be too afraid, just enough to tremble most pleasantly beneath his childish caresses.

When classes resumed, Maxime went to the Lycée Bonaparte. This was the school to which all the best families sent their children, the one that Saccard was bound to choose for his son. The boy, listless and frivolous though he was at that point, had a very lively intelligence, but the classics were the last thing to which he applied himself. He was nevertheless a decent student, who never joined the dunces in their low bohemian ways but remained among the proper, well-dressed young gentlemen who never drew adverse comment. All that remained of his younger years was a veritable fetish about good grooming. Paris opened his eyes and made a handsome young man of him; following the latest fashions, he wore his clothes tight. He was the Beau Brummel1 of his class. He came to school turned out as if for a drawing room, elegantly shod, properly gloved, wearing fabulous ties and indescribable hats. There were twenty or so similar boys in his class, and they constituted an aristocracy, passing out Havana cigars after school from cases with gold clasps and having their books carried by liveried servants. Maxime had persuaded his father to buy him a tilbury2 and a small black horse that made him the envy of his classmates. He drove this rig himself, while a footman sat in the rear with arms crossed and Maxime’s books on his lap in a briefcase of textured brown leather worthy of a government minister. You had to see him to appreciate how effortlessly, cleverly, and skillfully he managed the ten-minute drive from the rue de Rivoli to the rue du Havre, stopping his horse in front of the lycée and tossing the reins to the footman with the reminder, “Jacques, until four-thirty, all right?” The neighborhood shopkeepers took delight in the grace of this fair-haired boy whose comings and goings they witnessed daily. After school, he would sometimes drive a friend home and drop him at his door. The two youths would smoke, look at women, and spatter pedestrians with mud as if returning from the races. It was an astonishing little world, a breeding ground for the snobs and imbeciles who could be seen every day on the rue du Havre, nattily dressed in their dandyish jackets, playing at being blasé men of means, while the school’s bohemians, the real schoolboys, arrived shouting and pushing and pounding the pavement with their heavy boots while carrying their books slung over their backs at the end of a strap.

Renée, who took her role as mother and teacher seriously, was delighted with her pupil. Indeed, she left no stone unturned when it came to perfecting his education. She had been going through a period of bitterness and tears. A lover had left her in a scandalous way, obvious to all Paris, in order to be with Duchess von Sternich. She dreamt that Maxime would be her consolation; she made herself look older, contrived in all sorts of ways to be maternal, and became the most unusual mentor imaginable. On many days Maxime’s tilbury remained at the house, and Renée came to fetch the boy from school in her big calèche. They hid the brown briefcase under the seat and went to the Bois, then brand new. There she gave him a course in high elegance. She recited the most prominent names of imperial Paris— the names of fat, happy people still ecstatic about the stroke of the magic wand that had transformed them overnight from starving oafs into great lords breathing hard and fainting from the strain of lifting their cash boxes. But the child questioned her mainly about the women, and, being very free with him, she offered him precise details. Mme de Guende was stupid but admirably built; Countess Wanska, extremely wealthy, had been a street singer before marrying a Pole who was said to beat her; the marquise d’Espanet and Suzanne Haffner were of course inseparable, and even though they were her intimate friends, Renée pressed her lips together as if to indicate she would say no more after remarking that some quite unpleasant rumors had been circulating about them; beautiful Mme de Lauwerens was terribly compromising as well, but she had such pretty eyes, and, to make a long story short, everybody knew that, while she herself was beyond reproach, she was a little bit too mixed up in the intrigues of the poor little women who often called on her, Mme Daste, Mme Teissière, and Baroness von Meinhold. Maxime asked for portraits of these ladies, which he placed in an album that remained on the drawing room table. With the salacious cunning that was the dominant trait of his character, he tried to embarrass his stepmother by asking her for details about the prostitutes, whom he pretended to mistake for authentic socialites. With a moral and serious air Renée would then tell him that these were frightful creatures whom he must carefully avoid. Then she forgot herself and spoke about them as if they were people she had known intimately. One of the child’s great delights was to get her started about Duchess von Sternich. Whenever the duchess’s carriage passed theirs in the Bois, he never failed to mention her name in a sly, cruel way and with a downward flick of his eyes which proved that he knew all about Renée’s most recent adventure. In a cutting tone Renée then tore her rival to pieces. How old she was getting! The poor woman! She painted her face, had lovers hidden in all her closets, and had given herself to a chamberlain to gain access to the imperial bed. And she ran on in this vein while Maxime tried to provoke her by saying that he found Mme von Sternich ravishing. Lessons such as these developed the student’s intelligence to a remarkable degree, especially since his young teacher repeated them everywhere, in the Bois, at the theater, and in various drawing rooms. The pupil became very proficient.

What Maxime adored was living amid the women’s skirts, finery, and rice powder. He remained a girl in some ways, with his slender hands, beardless face, and fleshy white neck. Renée consulted him closely about her wardrobe. He knew all the good Paris designers and judged each of them with a word, speaking of the “flavor” of this one’s hats or the “logic” of that one’s gowns. At the age of seventeen, there was not a milliner he had not scrutinized in depth, not a bootmaker whose heart he had not studied and penetrated. This oddly stunted youth, who spent his time in English class reading the brochures his perfumer sent him every Friday, could have defended a brilliant thesis on Parisian high society, its purveyors and their clients, at an age when a provincial boy still wouldn’t dare look his maid in the face. On returning from the lycée he often brought with him a hat, a box of soap, or an item of jewelry ordered the day before by his stepmother. In one of his pockets he always carried a piece of perfumed lace.

What Maxime liked best, however, was to accompany Renée on her visits to the illustrious Worms, the genius tailor before whom the queens of the Second Empire fell to their knees. The great man’s showroom was a vast square filled with ample couches. Maxime entered it with religious emotion. Clothing of course has a fragrance all its own. Silk, satin, velvet, and lace married their faint aromas to those of perfumed hair and shoulders, and the air in the salon retained a fragrant warmth, an incense of flesh and luxury, that transformed the room into a chapel consecrated to some secret deity. Renée and Maxime were frequently obliged to wait for hours. Twenty or so other importunate ladies waited their turn along with them, dipping biscuits into glasses of Madeira and helping themselves from a large central table laden with bottles and plates of petits fours. These ladies were at home here and spoke freely, and when they huddled about the room in small groups it was as though a flight of white Lesbian doves had alighted on the sofas of a Parisian drawing room. Maxime, whom they tolerated and loved for his girlish looks, was the only man allowed in this clique. Here he savored divine delights. He slithered along the sofas like an agile serpent. He might hide beneath a skirt, behind a bodice, or between two gowns, making himself small and remaining very quiet while he breathed in the perfumed warmth of the ladies in his vicinity with the expression of a choirboy swallowing the host.

“That boy sticks his nose everywhere,” said Baroness von Meinhold as she patted his cheeks.

He was such a slight youth that none of the ladies thought of him as being older than fourteen. They amused themselves by getting him tipsy on the illustrious Worms’s Madeira. He said astounding things to them, which made them laugh until they cried. But it was the marquise d’Espanet who hit upon the best description of Maxime’s situation. One day he was spotted hiding behind her back at a place where two couches came together. “There’s a boy who ought to have been born a girl,” she murmured at the sight of him pink and flushed and thoroughly pleased at having been so close to her.

When at last the great Worms received Renée, Maxime accompanied her into his studio. He ventured two or three times to speak up while the master was absorbed in contemplation of his client, much as Leonardo da Vinci is said by the high priests of art to have been absorbed in the presence of Mona Lisa. The master deigned to smile at the accuracy of Maxime’s observations. He had Renée stand in front of a mirror that stretched from floor to ceiling and knitted his brows in meditation while the young woman, in the grip of emotion, held her breath and tried to remain motionless. After a few minutes, the master, as if seized and shaken by inspiration, painted in bold, rapid strokes the masterpiece he had just conceived, spitting out his description in sharp, brief sentences: “Montespan dress in pale gray faille. . . . The train describing a rounded basque in front. . . . Big bows of gray satin catching it up at the hips. . . . And to top it all off, a puffed pinafore of pearl gray tulle, with the puffs separated by strips of gray satin.”

He meditated a while longer, seemed to reach down into the depths of his genius, and at last with the triumphant expression of a Sibyl on her tripod3 concluded, “We shall adorn the hair on this happy head with Psyche’s dreamy butterfly4 and its iridescent wings of azure.”

On other occasions, however, inspiration dragged its feet. In vain did the illustrious Worms summon it forth, concentrating all his faculties to no avail. He knitted his brow, turned pale, took his poor head between his hands and shook it in despair until, defeated at last, he threw himself down in his chair. “No,” he murmured in a pained voice, “no, not today. . . . It’s impossible. . . . You ladies expect too much. The well is dry.”

And he showed Renée the door, repeating, “It’s impossible, impossible, dear lady. You must come back another day. . . . You elude me this morning.”

The fine education that Maxime was receiving yielded its first result. At seventeen the boy seduced his stepmother’s chambermaid. To make matters worse, the girl became pregnant and had to be sent away to the country with her infant and a small stipend. Renée was terribly put out by the whole episode and remained that way for some time. Saccard became involved just long enough to settle the pecuniary aspect of the matter, but the young woman scolded her pupil roundly. To think he’d gone and compromised himself with a girl of that sort when she wanted to make a distinguished gentleman of him! What a ridiculous and shameful debut! What a disgraceful escapade! He might at least have started out with one of the ladies!

“Absolutely!” he answered quietly. “If your good friend Suzanne had been willing, she’s the one who would be leaving for the country.”

“Oh, you filthy scoundrel!” she muttered, disarmed and amused by the idea of Suzanne hiding out in the country on a stipend of 1,200 francs.

Then an even more amusing thought occurred to her, and, forgetting her role as indignant mother, she began to titter, placed her fingers over her mouth to hold back the laughter, cast a sidelong glance at Maxime, and stammered, “You know, Adeline is the one who would have given you a hard time and made a scene—”

She did not finish her sentence. Maxime was laughing with her. Renée’s effort to turn this escapade into a lesson in morality ended then and there.

Meanwhile, Aristide Saccard spent little time worrying about the “two children,” as he called his son and his second wife. He granted them absolute freedom, glad to see that they were good friends who filled the apartment with boisterous gaiety. The second-floor flat on the rue de Rivoli was a place of unusual activity. Doors were swinging all day long. The servants spoke in loud voices. Billowing skirts swept constantly through the dazzling luxury of the brand-new rooms, along with processions of purveyors and gaggles of Renée’s friends, Maxime’s classmates, and Saccard’s visitors. From nine until eleven in the morning Saccard received the strangest assemblage of characters imaginable: senators and court clerks, duchesses and rag dealers— whatever flotsam the Parisian tempest dumped on his doorstep each morning, whether clad in silk gowns, filthy skirts, workmen’s smocks, or dark frock coats—and he received each one with the same clipped tones and impatient, nervous gestures. He dispatched business deals with a couple of words, dealt with twenty difficulties at once, and proposed solutions on the fly. It sometimes sounded as though this energetic little man with the very loud voice was fighting with people in his study, or with the furniture, turning somersaults and knocking his head against the ceiling to jar ideas loose before landing on his feet, ever victorious. Then, at eleven o’clock, he went out and was not seen again for the rest of the day. He took his lunch out and often his dinner as well. Then the house belonged to Renée and Maxime. They took over the old man’s study and unpacked the boxes from the stores, and articles of clothing were left lying on top of business files. There were times when grave men were obliged to wait for an hour outside the door of the study while the schoolboy and the young wife, seated at either end of Saccard’s desk, argued about a bow of ribbon. Renée ordered the horses hitched up ten times a day. The family seldom took meals together. Two of the three were always on the run somewhere, too absorbed in whatever they were doing to return before midnight. It was an apartment noisy with business and pleasure, where modern life rushed in like a gust of wind, accompanied by the clink of gold and the rustle of gowns.

Aristide Saccard had at last found his element. He had shown himself to be a great speculator, a man who juggled millions. Following up his masterstroke on the rue de la Pépinière, he threw himself boldly into the battle that was just beginning to leave shameful wrecks and brilliant triumphs scattered about Paris. At first he bet on sure things, repeating his initial success by buying buildings he knew to be slated for demolition and relying on his friends to obtain huge indemnities. At one point he owned five or six houses—the very houses he had once looked at so strangely, as if they were acquaintances, back when he was just a poor clerk in the road department. But his art was still in its infancy. It took no great cleverness to run out leases, conspire with tenants, and rob the state and private owners, and to him the game seemed not worth the candle. So he soon put his genius to work on more complicated tasks.

The first ploy he came up with was to buy buildings secretly on behalf of the city. A decision by the Conseil d’Etat had put the municipal government in a difficult position. It had purchased a large number of houses by private agreement with the owners in the hope of allowing the leases to expire and then evicting the tenants without any indemnity. But the council held that these purchases were in fact expropriations, and the city was obliged to pay. It was at that point that Saccard offered to act as a front. He bought the properties, ran out the leases, and in exchange for a bonus surrendered the buildings on a mutually agreed date. He even wound up playing a double game, buying for both the city and the prefect. When a deal proved too tempting, he slipped the deed for the property into his own pocket. The state paid. In compensation for his assistance he was granted building rights on sections of streets and planned intersections, which he sold to third parties even before work on the new street had begun. The game was fierce; people gambled on neighborhoods under construction as they might gamble on bonds. Certain ladies—pretty prostitutes, intimate friends of high officials—were in on the action. One of them, famous for the whiteness of her teeth, snapped up entire streets on several occasions. Saccard, famished, felt his desires grow as rivers of gold flowed through his hands. It seemed that a sea of twenty-franc coins was swelling before him, growing from a lake into an ocean whose waves stretched as far as the eye could see and made a strange sound, a metallic music that inflamed his heart. With each passing day he ventured more boldly out onto that sea, diving down and returning to the surface, now on his back, now on his belly, navigating the immensity in all weather, fair or foul, and counting on his strength and skill to avoid ever going to the bottom.

Paris was then disappearing in a cloud of plaster. The day that Saccard had predicted on the Buttes Montmartre had arrived. The city was being slashed with a saber, and he had a finger in every gash, in every wound. He owned piles of ruins in all quarters of the city. On the rue de Rome he was mixed up in the amazing story of the company that dug a hole and carted away five or six thousand cubic meters of soil so as to create the impression that it was involved in a gigantic project, and which then went bankrupt, so that the hole had to be filled in again with fill from Saint-Ouen. 5 Saccard escaped with a clear conscience and full pockets thanks to his brother Eugène, who was kind enough to intervene. At Chaillot 6 he helped to pare away the heights and cart them off as fill in order to make way for the boulevard that runs from the Arc de Triomphe to the Pont de l’Alma. Over toward Passy it was he who had the idea of covering the plateau with rubble from the Trocadéro,7 so that today the good soil lies two meters deep and nothing grows on the debris, not even weeds. He was in twenty places at once, wherever there was some insurmountable obstacle: dirt that nobody knew what to do with, an embankment that was impossible to build, a nice pile of soil and rubble that the engineers chafed to get out of the way—no matter what the mess, he would always dig his fingers into it and ultimately come away with a kickback or work out some kind of deal. In the course of a day he would race from construction sites around the Arc de Triomphe to others on the boulevard Saint-Michel, from the piles of rubble on the boulevard Malesherbes to the pits at Chaillot, dragging an army of workmen, law clerks, stockholders, dupes, and scoundrels in his wake.

His greatest claim to fame, however, was the Crédit Viticole, which he had founded with Toutin-Laroche. The latter was officially in charge; Saccard figured only as a member of the board of directors. In this instance Eugène had once again done his brother an important favor. Thanks to him, the government had granted the company authorization to do business and watched over its operations most indulgently. At a particularly ticklish moment, when a hostile newspaper took the liberty of criticizing something the company had done, the official government bulletin went so far as to publish a note banning all discussion of a firm so honorable that the state itself deigned to sponsor it. The Crédit Viticole relied on an excellent system of financing: it lent farmers up to half the estimated value of their property, guaranteed the loan with a mortgage, and collected interest plus amortization from the borrowers. No system was ever more prudent or proper. With a knowing smile Eugène had told his brother that the Tuileries wanted everything aboveboard. Interpreting this wish to suit himself, M. Toutin-Laroche allowed the lending machinery to operate without interference while he set up alongside it a bank that attracted capital, which he then used to gamble with abandon, plunging headlong into any number of ventures. Thanks to the energetic leadership of its managing director, the Crédit Viticole soon enjoyed an unshakable reputation as a solid and prosperous firm. At first, when Saccard wanted to put a large number of new shares on the market all at once, he was shrewd enough to make it look as though they had been in circulation for a long time by having bank tellers spend the night tromping on them and beating them with birch brooms. The bank’s premises were designed to make it look like a branch office of the Bank of France. The headquarters, with its many offices, courtyard full of carriages, austere iron railings, broad stoop and monumental staircase, suites of sumptuous private rooms, and uniformed personnel and factotums, stood forth as a grave and dignified temple of money, and nothing inspired a more religious emotion in the public than the sanctuary, the counting room, to which one gained access by way of a corridor notable for its sacred nudity, there to glimpse the safe, the god, crouched down, secured to the wall, squat and somnolent, with its triple locks, thick flanks, and air of brute divinity.

Saccard worked a huge swindle on city hall. Oppressed and overburdened by debt, the city, having been dragged into the dance of millions that it had set in motion to please the Emperor and line certain pockets, was reduced to borrowing money in secret so as not to be obliged to confess its own raging fever, its obsession with pickaxe and quarry stone. It had just invented something called delegation bonds, long-term letters of exchange, with which it could pay contractors on the day that papers were signed so that they could then sell the notes at a discount in exchange for needed funds. The Crédit Viticole had graciously accepted this paper from the contractors. The day the city ran short of money, Saccard tried putting temptation in its way. A considerable sum of money was advanced on the security of delegation bonds that M. Toutin-Laroche swore he had obtained from companies doing business with the city, and which he dragged through all the gutters of speculation. The Crédit Viticole was thereafter safe from attack; it held Paris by the throat. From then on the managing director never spoke about the famous Société Générale des Ports du Maroc without a smile. It still existed, however, and the newspapers continued to celebrate the great commercial stations at regular intervals. One day, when M. Toutin-Laroche urged Saccard to take some shares of the company, the latter laughed in his face and asked if he, Toutin-Laroche, thought him fool enough to invest his money in the “The Arabian Nights, Inc.”

Saccard had thus far speculated successfully on sure things, cheating, selling himself, making money on his deals, and extracting some sort of profit from each of his ventures. Before long, however, this wheeling and dealing ceased to satisfy him. He was too proud to scoop up the remains, to pick up the gold that men like Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud let fall in their wake. He plunged his arms into the sack up to his shoulders. He formed a partnership with Mignon, Charrier & Co., the well-known contractors, who were then just starting out on their way to amassing colossal fortunes. The city had already decided not to build the new boulevards itself but to hire contractors to do the work instead. These contractors agreed to deliver a finished street complete with trees, benches, and gaslights in exchange for a fixed fee. Sometimes they laid the roadway for nothing, feeling amply compensated by the adjacent land, from which they derived substantial profits. The speculative fever over land and the dizzying rise in the price of housing date from the same period. With his connections Saccard obtained the rights to develop three stretches of boulevard. What he brought to the partnership was his ardent if somewhat unmethodical spirit. Initially his underlings, MM Mignon and Charrier, proved to be well-heeled, cunning coconspirators, master masons who knew the value of a franc. The two contractors laughed up their sleeves at the sight of Saccard’s horses. They usually wore overalls, did not refuse to shake hands with their workmen, and went home at night covered with plaster. Both were from Langres. To ardent, insatiable Paris they brought their Champenois8 prudence and unflappable wits, which, though not very open to new ideas and not very intelligent, were nevertheless quite apt at profiting from opportunities to line their pockets right now while deferring enjoyment of their gains till later on. If Saccard set a deal in motion and invested his passion in it, his avid craving, Mignon and Charrier with their down-to-earth ways and strict, methodical management had what it took to prevent their partner’s extravagant imagination from derailing it at twenty different junctures. They never agreed to build the superb offices, the impressive headquarters with which he hoped to astonish Paris. Nor did they want any part of the lesser speculations that spewed from his brain every morning: plans to build concert halls and huge bathhouses adjacent to newly laid streets; railways to parallel new boulevards; and glass-roofed malls that would have raised commercial rents tenfold and allowed customers to shop without getting wet. Terrified of such proposals, the contractors nipped them in the bud by deciding that the land adjacent to the new streets would be divided among the three partners and each would be free to do as he pleased with his share. Mignon and Charrier wisely continued to sell their lots. Saccard built on his. His brain seethed with ideas. He was capable of proposing in all seriousness that Paris should be placed under an enormous bell jar, so as to turn the city into a hothouse where pineapples and sugarcane could be grown.

Moving capital by the shovelful, he soon owned eight houses on the new boulevards. Four were completely finished, two on the rue de Marignan and two on the boulevard Haussmann. The other four, located on the boulevard Malesherbes, were still under construction, and one of them, on a vast lot enclosed by a wooden fence within which a splendid mansion was to rise, had got no further than the installation of the second-story flooring. At this stage, his affairs had become so complicated, he had so many strings attached to each of his fingers, so many interests to oversee and so many marionettes to keep in motion, that he barely slept three hours a night and read his correspondence in his carriage. The wonder was that his cash box seemed bottomless. He owned stock in all sorts of companies, built with a kind of frenzy, was involved in traffic of many kinds, and threatened to inundate Paris like a rising tide, yet he never seemed to realize a clear profit or pocket a substantial sum of gleaming gold coins. This river of gold, flowing from unknown sources, which seemed to gush from his office in wave after wave, astonished observers and made him at one point the man of the hour to whom the Paris papers attributed every clever remark about the stock exchange.

With a husband like this, Renée was about as little married as she could be. She went for weeks on end almost without seeing him. In any event, he was perfect: he opened his coffers wide whenever she needed money. Deep down, she loved him as she would have loved any obliging banker. Whenever she visited the Béraud household, she praised him to her father, who remained severe and cold toward his son-in-law despite his good fortune. Her contempt for him had evaporated. This man seemed so convinced that life is nothing but business and was so clearly born to mint money out of whatever came his way—women, children, paving stones, sacks of plaster, consciences— that she could not blame him for the bargain he had struck in marrying her. Since striking that bargain, he looked at her in much the same way as he looked at those beautiful houses that earned him esteem and would hopefully bring him huge profits. He liked to see her well dressed, making a splash, turning heads all over Paris. This enhanced his stature and made people double their estimate of his probable net worth. Because of his wife, people thought him handsome, young, amorous, and giddy. She was a partner, an unwitting accomplice. A new team of horses, an outfit that cost 2,000 écus, an indulgence for one of her lovers facilitated some of his best deals and frequently turned out to be the decisive factor. Often, too, he pretended to be busy and sent her in his stead to seek a necessary authorization from some minister or official or to receive his reply. On such occasions he would tell her, “And be good, now!” in a tone of voice that was all his own, at once mocking and cajoling. And when she returned, having been successful in her mission, he would rub his hands together and say, “And I hope you were good!” Renée laughed. He was too busy to want someone like Mme Michelin. He merely liked to make crude jokes and nasty insinuations. In any case, had Renée not “been good,” his only irritation would have been at having had to pay in earnest for the minister’s or official’s favor. He delighted in duping people, in giving them less than their money’s worth. He often said, “If I were a woman, I might sell myself, but I would never deliver the goods. That would be idiotic.”

Irrepressible Renée, who had appeared one night in the Parisian firmament as a strangely enchanted creature from the world of fashionable sensuality, was the least analyzable of women. Had she been raised at home, she would no doubt have turned to religion or some other means of calming the nerves and drawing the sting of desires that now and again drove her wild. Her temperament was solidly bourgeois. She was absolutely honest, much given to logic, afraid of heaven and hell, and full of prejudices. She was her father’s daughter, one of that calm and prudent breed in whom the homely virtues flourish. And yet it was in this nature that prodigious fantasies, persistent curiosities, and unavowable desires germinated and grew. With the Sisters of the Visitation, among whom she was free to explore the mystical sensuality of the chapel and close attachments to her little friends, she had acquired a bizarre education, learning vice, investing it with all the sincerity of her nature, and unsettling her young mind to the point where she embarrassed her confessor no end by telling him that one day during mass she had experienced an impulsive desire to get up from her seat and kiss him. Then she beat her breast and turned pale at the thought of the devil and his cauldrons. The crime that led to her later marriage to Saccard, the brutal rape that she had endured with a sort of terrified anticipation, had made her despise herself and played a large part in the unrestrained way in which she lived her entire life. She believed she no longer had to struggle against evil, that it was inside her, that logic authorized her to pursue wicked knowledge to the end. For her that knowledge was still more a matter of curiosity than of appetite. Thrown into Second Empire society, abandoned to her fantasies, supplied with money, encouraged in her most ostentatious eccentricities, she surrendered, regretted it, and ultimately succeeded in killing off what remained of decency in her, lashed and driven as she was by her insatiable need to know and to feel.

In any case, she had as yet gone no further than anyone else. She liked to whisper laughingly about such extraordinary cases as the tender friendship between Suzanne Haffner and Adeline d’Espanet, Mme de Lauwerens’s questionable livelihood, and Countess Wanska’s prix-fixe kisses. But she still contemplated these things from afar, with the vague idea of tasting them perhaps, and this nebulous desire, which swelled in her when her mood turned foul, compounded her seething anxiety and spurred her on in her nervous quest for some unique, exquisite pleasure, some apple into which she alone would bite. Her first lovers had not spoiled her. Three times she had believed herself to be in the grip of a grand passion. Love burst in her head like a Roman candle, the sparks from which did not reach as far as her heart. One month she was madly in love and showed herself with her lord and master all over Paris. Then, one morning, in the midst of her ostentatious show of affection, she felt an oppressive silence, an immense void. Her first lover, the young duc de Rozan, was little more than a quick snack in the sun. Renée, who had picked him out for his gentle manner and excellent attire, found him, once they were alone together, absolutely empty, colorless, and tiresome. Next came Mr. Simpson, an attaché at the American embassy, who practically beat her and for that reason remained with her for more than a year. She then took on an aide-de-camp to the emperor, the comte de Chibray, a vain and handsome man whom she had begun to find oppressive when Duchess von Sternich took it into her head to fall for him and snatch him away. Renée of course then shed tears over him and led her friends to believe that her heart had been broken and that she was through with love. That was how she got to M. de Mussy, a person of no significance whatsoever, a young man who was making his way in the diplomatic corps by dint of his remarkable grace on the dance floor. Although she never knew exactly how she had given herself to him, she kept him for quite some time, gripped as she was by sloth, disgusted with this stranger about whom she had learned everything there was to know within an hour of their meeting, and unwilling to deal with the bother of making a change until some extraordinary adventure should present itself. At twenty-eight she was already horribly weary. Boredom seemed all the more unbearable because her bourgeois virtues availed themselves of the hours of tedium to vex and annoy her. She shut her door and suffered from dreadful migraines. Yet when that door reopened, waves of silk and lace poured out of it in a rush, and no sign of worry or embarrassment disfigured the brow of this creature of luxury and pleasure.

Despite this banal socialite’s existence, Renée had had one romance in her life. She had gone out one day at dusk to visit her father, walking to his house because he did not like the sound of carriages at his door, and on her way back via the Quai Saint-Paul she noticed that she was being followed by a young man. It was hot; the day was dying with amorous softness. Used to being followed only by men on horseback on the bridle paths of the Bois, she found the adventure stimulating and was flattered by this new and somewhat brutal form of homage, whose very crudeness she found appealing. Rather than return directly home, she took the rue du Temple, leading her admirer along the boulevards. Emboldened, the man became so importunate, however, that Renée, rather taken aback, lost her head, turned down the rue du Faubourg-Poissonière, and took refuge in her husband’s sister’s shop. The man followed her in. Mme Sidonie smiled, signaled her comprehension of the situation, and left the couple alone. When Renée made as if to follow her out of the room, the stranger called her back, spoke to her in a respectfully admiring way, and won her pardon. He was a clerk by the name of Georges, whose last name she never asked. She came to meet him twice, entering through the shop, while he used the entrance on rue Papillon. This chance love affair, which began with an encounter on the street, was one of her keenest pleasures. She always thought of it with a certain shame but also a singular smile of regret. Mme Sidonie’s profit from the adventure was to have become the accomplice of her brother’s second wife, a role she had aspired to play from the day of the wedding.

Poor Mme Sidonie had suffered a setback. In brokering the marriage, she had hoped in a sense to marry Renée herself, to turn her into a client and reap from her a variety of rewards. She judged women at a glance, as connoisseurs judge horses. So her consternation was great when, after allowing the couple a month to get settled, she found Mme de Lauwerens already ensconced in their salon and realized that she had waited too long. Mme de Lauwerens, a beautiful woman of twenty-six, made it her business to launch newcomers to high society. She belonged to a very old family and was married to a man from the world of high finance, who had made the mistake of refusing to pay the bills submitted by his wife’s milliner and tailor. Highly intelligent, the lady minted whatever cash she needed and became her own keeper. Men horrified her, she said, yet she supplied all her lady friends with them. The apartment she occupied on the rue de Provence, above her husband’s offices, was always crowded with clients. It was an ideal setting for intimate little meals. Men and women could meet there in charming impromptu encounters. Where was the harm if a young woman went to visit her dear friend Mme de Lauwerens, and so what if some very respectable men from the best society chanced to arrive at her apartment at the same time? The mistress of the house looked lovely in her long lacy peignoirs. Many a visitor would have chosen her over any of the women in her collection of blondes and brunettes, but word had it that she was beyond reproach. That was the secret of her success. She maintained her position in society, enjoyed friendships with all the men, preserved her proud reputation as a respectable lady, and secretly enjoyed ruining the reputations of other women and profiting from their downfall. When Mme Sidonie had worked out the mechanism of this new system, she was mortified. It was the old school—a woman in a black dress carrying love notes in the bottom of her basket—versus the modern school—a great lady who sips tea while selling her friends in her own boudoir. The modern school won out. Mme de Lauwerens cast a cold eye on the threadbare clothing of Mme Sidonie, in whom she suspected a rival. And it was Mme de Lauwerens who saddled Renée with her first problem, the young duc de Rozan, for whom the financier’s beautiful wife had had a very hard time finding a match. The old school did not score a victory until later, when Mme Sidonie lent her sister-in-law her apartment so that she might indulge her whim with the strange man from the Quai Saint-Paul. She remained Renée’s confidante.

Among Mme Sidonie’s faithful allies, moreover, was Maxime. By the age of fifteen he was prowling around his aunt’s house, sniffing at gloves he found lying forgotten on the furniture. Although she detested any situation that was unambiguous and never admitted doing favors, eventually she agreed to lend him the keys to her apartment on certain days, saying that she would be off to the country overnight. Maxime had mentioned to her that there were friends he wished to entertain but did not dare bring to his father’s house. It was in his aunt’s apartment above the shop on the rue du Faubourg-Poissonière that he had spent several nights with the poor girl who had had to be sent away to the country. Mme Sidonie borrowed money from her nephew and swooned at the sight of him, whispering sweetly in his ear that he was “as smooth and pink as a cherub.”

Meanwhile, Maxime had grown. He was now a slender, good-looking young man who still had the pink cheeks and blue eyes of a child. His curly locks completed the “girlish look” that the ladies found so enchanting. He took after poor Angèle, with her gentle gaze and blond pallor. Yet he was even more worthless than that lazy, empty-headed woman. The Rougon blood ran thin in his veins and became tenuous and susceptible to vice. Born to a woman too young to be a mother, he was a confused and somehow incoherent mixture of his father’s frenetic appetites and his mother’s capitulations and weaknesses, a defective product in whom the faults of the parents complemented and exacerbated one another. This family was all too quickly using up what life it had in it; in this frail creature, whose sex must have remained in doubt at birth and who was no longer, like Saccard, a will grasping profit and pleasure but a feebleness devouring fortunes already made, a strange hermaphrodite opportunely born into a society gone rotten, it was already dying out. When Maxime went riding in the Bois, pinched in at the waist like a woman and swaying slightly in the saddle to the rhythm of his horse’s canter, he was the god of the age, with his well-developed hips, his long, slender hands, his sickly, leering appearance, his punctilious elegance, and his music-hall slang. At twenty he considered himself beyond all possibility of surprise or disgust. He had certainly dreamt some unusually filthy dreams. Vice for him was not an abyss, as it is for some old men, but a natural and outward flowering. It lived in his wavy blond hair, smiled on his lips, cloaked him in its robes. What was most typical of him, however, were his eyes, two blue apertures, radiant and smiling, mirrors of vanity that could not hide the emptiness of the brain behind. Those harlot eyes were never lowered. They never tired in their search for pleasure, which they summoned forth and drank in.

The wind that constantly rattled the doors of the apartment on the rue de Rivoli grew stronger as Maxime grew older, Saccard expanded the scope of his operations, and Renée searched ever more feverishly for unfamiliar pleasures. The lives these three people led were in the end astonishingly wild and free. Such was the fruit that the epoch ultimately produced in abundance. The street invaded the apartment with its rumble of carriages, its jostling of strangers, its unbridled speech. The father, the stepmother, and the stepson acted and spoke and made themselves at home as if each were alone, living the bachelor life. Three friends, three classmates sharing the same furnished room, could not have been less inhibited about their vices, their loves, and their boisterous adolescent pleasures. They greeted one another with handshakes, gave no hint of any doubts about why they were living under the same roof, and treated one another in a cavalier, carefree manner, thereby asserting their absolute independence. They banished the idea of family in favor of a kind of partnership, with each claiming an equal share of the profits. To each partner went a quota of pleasure to be consumed, it was tacitly understood, as he or she saw fit. Ultimately they gratified themselves in one another’s presence, making a parade of their pleasures, recounting them to one another without provoking anything but a bit of envy or curiosity, nothing more.

Maxime now became Renée’s teacher. When he went to the Bois with her, he amused her greatly with his stories about the whores. Whenever a new one turned up at lakeside, he set out at once to find out who her lover was, how much he paid her per month, and how she lived. He knew the interiors of these ladies’ apartments as well as intimate details of their lives and was nothing less than a walking catalog listing all the prostitutes of Paris, with complete descriptions of each and every one. This scandal sheet delighted Renée. On race days at Longchamp, she would listen avidly to all his stories as they drove past the racetrack in her calèche, yet she always maintained the hauteur of the true socialite. She liked to hear, for instance, how Blanche Muller was deceiving her embassy attaché with her hairdresser; or how the little baron had found the count in his undershorts in the alcove of a skinny, redheaded celebrity who went by the name “Crayfish.” Each day yielded its quota of gossip. When the story was too coarse for a lady’s ears, Maxime lowered his voice but told all. Renée opened her eyes wide like a child listening to a good joke and restrained her laughter until she was obliged to stifle it with an embroidered handkerchief pressed delicately to her lips.

Maxime also brought her photographs of these ladies. His pockets and even his cigar case were always filled with portraits of actresses. Sometimes he emptied them out and put the ladies’ pictures in the album left lying about the drawing room, which already contained portraits of Renée’s friends. It also contained pictures of men such as MM. de Rozan, Simpson, de Chibray, and de Mussy, along with actors, writers, and deputies who had somehow or other found their way into Maxime’s collection. It was a singularly mixed society, a faithful reflection of the motley assortment of ideas and people that came Renée and Maxime’s way. Whenever it rained, or they felt bored, this album served as a great conversation piece. Somehow it always seemed close at hand. Stifling a yawn, Renée would open it for perhaps the hundredth time. Then her curiosity would reawaken, Maxime would come and lean behind her, and they would fall into lengthy discussions about Crayfish’s hair, Frau von Meinhold’s double chin, Mme de Lauwerens’s eyes, Blanche Muller’s bosom, the marquise’s slightly crooked nose, or little Sylvia’s mouth with its notoriously thick lips. They compared one woman with another.

“If I were a man,” Renée would say, “I’d choose Adeline.”

“That’s because you don’t know Sylvia,” Maxime would answer. “She’s so funny! . . . I prefer Sylvia.”

As the pages turned, an image of the duc de Rozan might pop up, or Mr. Simpson, or the comte de Chibray, and Maxime would add in a mocking tone, “In any case, your taste is perverted, as everyone knows. . . . Can you imagine anything stupider than the faces of these gentlemen? Rozan and Chibray look like Gustave, my barber.”

Renée shrugged as if to say that sarcasm like Maxime’s left her cold. She remained absorbed in the spectacle of faces, whether pallid, cheerful, or cross. She lingered longest over the portraits of the prostitutes, carefully scrutinizing the photographs for precise, microscopic details, for tiny wrinkles and hairs. One day she even called for a servant to bring her a magnifying glass after she thought she spotted a hair on Crayfish’s nose. And in fact the lens did reveal a thin golden filament, which had fallen from an eyebrow onto the middle of the nose. This hair amused the two of them for quite some time. For the next week, all the ladies who came to visit were obliged to verify its presence in the photograph for themselves. From then on the magnifying glass was put to regular use in scrutinizing the women’s faces. Renée made some astonishing discoveries. She found unsuspected wrinkles, rough skin, and pockmarks imperfectly concealed by rice powder. In the end Maxime hid the magnifying glass, on the grounds that it was not right to use such an instrument to make the human face look disgusting. The truth was that Renée had subjected Sylvia’s thick lips to excessively close scrutiny, Sylvia being a person for whom Maxime felt a special affection. He and Renée invented a new game. They asked the question, “With whom would I like to spend a night?” and then turned to the album for answers. This yielded some quite delightful couples. Renée spent any number of evenings playing this game with her friends and found herself married off in succession to the archbishop of Paris, Baron Gouraud, M. de Chibray, which made her laugh, and even her own husband, which depressed her. As for Maxime, whether by chance or as a result of Renée’s mischievous intervention, he always ended up with the marquise. But the laughs were never louder than when fate coupled two men or two women.

So close was the camaraderie between Renée and Maxime that she even told him about her heartaches. He consoled her and offered his advice. His father seemed not to exist. Eventually they even exchanged confidences about their younger years. During their drives in the Bois especially they felt a vague languor, a need to tell each other things that are difficult to say and usually left unspoken. The relish that children feel when speaking in low voices about forbidden subjects, the attraction that draws a young man and a young woman together into sin, albeit in word only, kept bringing them back to salacious subjects. This gave them deep pleasure, for which they did not reproach each other—a pleasure that each savored while reclining listlessly in a corner of their carriage, like old schoolfellows recalling their first escapades. Eventually they boasted to each other of their debaucheries, like braggarts. Renée confessed that the little girls in her school were very naughty. Maxime outdid her and dared to recount some of the shameful things that went on at his school in Plassans.

“Ah!” Renée whispered. “I can’t tell . . .”

Then she leaned close to his ear, as if the only thing that would have made her blush was the sound of her own voice, and confided to him one of those convent stories that are often heard in lewd songs. He himself had too rich a collection of anecdotes of this sort to hold anything back. He warbled any number of very coarse verses in her ear. Little by little they entered their own peculiar state of beatitude, gently stimulated by the many carnal thoughts they stirred up and titillated by unavowed desires. The carriage drove quietly on, and they returned home pleasantly fatigued, more tired than on the morning after a night of love. They had sinned, like two boys who, while strolling together in the country without their mistresses, make do with mutual recollections.

A still greater familiarity and lack of restraint existed between father and son. Saccard had grasped the fact that a great financier is bound to make love to women and on occasion lose his head over them. He was brusque in love and preferred money. It was a part of his plan, however, to frequent women’s bedrooms, to strew banknotes on certain mantelpieces, and from time to time to use a celebrated prostitute as a gold-plated advertisement for one of his speculations. When Maxime left school, he and his father would occasionally run into each other at the home of the same lady, and they would laugh about it. To some extent they were even rivals. Sometimes, when the young man dined at the Maison d’Or with a noisy group of friends, he could hear Saccard’s voice in a private room nearby.

“Well, I’ll be damned if it isn’t Daddy next door!” he would shout, with an expression on his face borrowed from one of the popular actors of the day.

“Oh, it’s you!” his father would rejoin in a jocular tone of voice. “Come in, why don’t you? You’re making so much noise I can’t hear myself eat. So who are you with tonight?”

“Laure d’Aurigny, Sylvia, Crayfish, and two others I think. They’re astonishing: they poke at the plates with their fingers and throw handfuls of salad at our heads. My clothes are covered with oil.”

His father laughed at this story, which he thought quite funny.

“Ah, young people, young people,” he murmured. “Not like us, are they, my kitten? We’ve had a very quiet meal and will soon hit the hay.”

And with that he grabbed the chin of the woman next to him and cooed at her in his nasal Provençal, which produced a strange amorous music.

“Oh, you old fool!” the woman shouted. “Hello, Maxime. If I’m willing to have supper with your nasty father, I must be in love with you, don’t you think? . . . Where have you been keeping yourself? Come see me the day after tomorrow, early in the morning. . . . No, I mean it, I have something to tell you.”

With a blissful look on his face, Saccard polished off a dish of ice cream or fruit, taking small mouthfuls. He kissed the woman’s shoulders and said teasingly, “You know, my loves, if I’m in your way, I’ll be off. . . . You can ring when it’s safe to return.”

Then he would take the lady off, or sometimes he would take her to join the boisterous crowd next door. He and Maxime shared the same shoulders; their hands encircled the same waists. They called out to each other from the divans and repeated out loud confidences that women had whispered in their ears. Indeed, they carried intimacy to the point of conspiring, when one or the other had chosen a blonde or brunette from the company, to lure her away from the group and make off with her.

They were well-known at Mabille.9 They used to go there arm in arm after an elegant dinner party and stroll about the garden, nodding at the women and shouting comments after them as they passed. They laughed loudly without letting go of each other’s arms and when conversations became heated helped each other out. The father, who knew how to drive a hard bargain, negotiated a very good price when it came to his son’s amours. Occasionally they would sit down and have a drink with a group of whores. Then they might move to another table or continue their stroll. Until midnight they could always be seen, arms linked like a couple of schoolfellows, chasing skirts down the yellow walkways under the harsh flame of the gaslights.

When they returned home, they brought with them, on their clothing, traces of the tarts they had been with outdoors. Their provocative poses, hints of risqué language, and vulgar gestures filled the apartment on the rue de Rivoli with the reek of dubious alcoves. The lackadaisical and wanton way in which the father offered his hand to his son was in itself enough to indicate where they had been. This was the air that Renée breathed, the source of her sensual caprices and longings. She used to tease the two men nervously.

“So where are you coming from?” she would say. “You reek of tobacco and perfume. . . . I’m sure I’m going to have a migraine.”

And something about the peculiar odor did indeed trouble her deeply. Such was the persistent fragrance of this unusual household.

Meanwhile, Maxime was smitten with a grand passion for little Sylvia. For months on end he bored his stepmother with talk of this prostitute. Renée soon knew all there was to know about her, from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair. She had a slight bruise on her hip; nothing was lovelier than her knees; her shoulders were peculiar in that only the left one was dimpled. Maxime took malicious pleasure in recounting the perfections of his mistress to Renée during their drives together. One evening, on the way home from the Bois, Renée’s carriage was caught with Sylvia’s in a traffic jam, and the two were obliged to sit for a time side by side on the Champs-Elysées.10 The two women stared at each other with keen curiosity, while Maxime, delighted by this critical encounter, snickered to himself. When the calèche resumed its forward motion, Renée’s somber silence made Maxime think she was sulking, and he expected one of those maternal scenes, one of those odd scoldings with which she still occasionally diverted herself in her lassitude.

“Do you know that woman’s jeweler?” she asked him abruptly, just as they reached the place de la Concorde.

“Unfortunately, yes,” he answered with a smile. “I owe him 10,000 francs. . . . Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

Then, after another interval of silence: “She was wearing a very pretty bracelet, the one on her left wrist. . . . I would have liked to have seen it close up.”

They returned home. She said no more about it. But the next day, as Maxime and his father were about to go out together, she took the young man aside and spoke to him in a low voice, with an embarrassed look and a pretty smile as if seeking a favor. He seemed surprised and went off laughing in his wicked way. That evening he brought Sylvia’s bracelet home with him, for his stepmother had begged him to show it to her.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “Who wouldn’t steal for you, step-mama?”

“She didn’t see you take it?” Renée asked, as she eagerly examined the bracelet.

“I don’t think so. . . . She wore it yesterday, so she certainly won’t want to wear it today.”

In the meantime the young woman had gone over to the window and put the bracelet on. She held her wrist slightly raised and turned it slowly, ecstatically repeating, “Oh! Very pretty, very pretty. . . . I quite like everything about it, except the emeralds.”

At that moment, with her wrist still held high in the white light of the window, Saccard walked in.

“What have we here?” he cried out in astonishment. “Sylvia’s bracelet!”

“You’re familiar with this item?” she said, more embarrassed than he and not knowing what to do with her arm.

He recovered. He pointed a menacing finger at his son and muttered, “This young scoundrel always has some kind of forbidden fruit in his pocket! . . . One of these days he’ll be bringing us the lady’s arm with the bracelet still on it.”

“Hold on a minute!” Maxime replied with cowardly cunning. “It wasn’t me. It was Renée who wanted to see it.”

“Oh!” was all the husband said.

And he in turn examined the jewelry, repeating the same words as his wife: “It’s very pretty, very pretty indeed.”

Then he quietly left the room, and Renée scolded Maxime for giving her away. He replied that his father couldn’t care less about such things. She returned the bracelet to him.

“You will go see the jeweler,” she said, “and order me one just like this, only you’ll ask him to use sapphires instead of emeralds.”

Saccard could not keep anything or anyone close to him for long without wanting to sell or derive a profit from it. Before his son was twenty it occurred to him that the boy could be useful. A good-looking young man who was the nephew of a minister and the son of an important financier was bound to be a good investment. He was of course a bit young, but one could always search out a wife and dowry for him, and then the wedding could be postponed or hurried along according to the financial needs of the firm. Saccard chose well. At a meeting of a board of directors of which he was a member, he chanced to meet a tall, handsome man by the name of Mareuil, and within two days Mareuil was his. M. de Mareuil had once been a sugar refiner in Le Havre, at which time his name had been Bonnet. After amassing a large fortune, he had married a young noblewoman, also quite wealthy, who had been looking for an imbecile with an impressive face. His first proud trophy was the right to use his wife’s name, but the marriage had made him insanely ambitious: he dreamed of paying Hélène back for her nobility by acquiring a high political position. He immediately invested money in the new newspapers, bought extensive properties in the remote Nièvre, and did all he could to prepare himself to run for a seat in the legislature. Thus far he had failed, though without shedding any of his solemnity. His was the most incredibly empty brain one could possibly encounter. He was a man of superb stature, with the white, pensive face of a great statesman, and since he was a marvelously good listener, with a deep gaze and a majestic calm in his expression, it was possible to believe that he was engaged in a prodigious inner labor of comprehension and deduction. Of course his mind was completely empty. Yet he had a disturbing effect on people, who had no idea whether they were dealing with a superior man or an imbecile. M. de Mareuil clung to Saccard as to a life raft. He knew that an official candidacy was about to open up in the Nièvre and ardently hoped that the minister would designate him. This was the last card he had to play. Hence he put himself completely in the hands of the minister’s brother. Saccard, who sensed a mutually advantageous alliance, encouraged him to think of marrying his daughter Louise off to Maxime. Mareuil was effusive in gratitude, believed that the idea of a wedding had been his own, and considered himself most fortunate to forge an alliance with the family of a minister and to give Louise to a young man whose prospects seemed bright indeed.

Louise, according to her father, was to have a dowry worth a million francs. Misshapen, ugly, and adorable, she was doomed to die young. A lung disease was secretly sapping her health, lending her a nervous gaiety, a soothing grace. Sick little girls age quickly, becoming women before their time. She was naïvely sensual and seemed to have been born at age fifteen, in full puberty. When her father, a healthy, stupid colossus of a man, looked at her, he could not believe that she was his daughter. Her mother, too, had been a big, strong woman in life, but after her death stories were told about her that explained why the child was stunted and had the manners of a bohemian millionaire and the charming ugliness of a debauchee. People said that Hélène de Mareuil had died in the most shockingly dissolute excess. Pleasures had eaten away at her like an ulcer, yet her husband, who ought to have had her locked up in an asylum, never noticed her lucid madness. Carried in this diseased womb, Louise emerged with anemic blood, misshapen limbs, and a diseased brain, her memory already steeped in filth. At times she was persuaded that she possessed vague memories of another existence and imagined bizarre, shadowy scenes of men and women embracing, a whole carnal drama that titillated her childish curiosity. It was her mother speaking in her. This vice continued throughout her childhood. As she grew older, nothing shocked her; she remembered everything, or, rather, knew everything already, and she sought out forbidden things with such a sure instinct that she was like a person returning home after a long absence and needing only to reach out in order to feel comfortable and take delight from the surroundings. This strikingly unusual girl, whose instinct for debauchery complemented Maxime’s, also had an innocence in her impudence, a piquant mixture of childishness and boldness, as she went about this second life as a virgin with the knowledge and shame of a grown woman, and in the end Maxime grew to like her and to find her far more amusing even than Sylvia, who, though the daughter of a respectable stationer, had the heart of a moneylender and was at bottom dreadfully middle-class.

The marriage was arranged with smiles all around, and it was decided that the “kids” would be allowed to grow up. The two families enjoyed a close friendship. M. de Mareuil pursued his candidacy. Saccard kept an eye on his prey. It was understood that Maxime’s basket of wedding gifts would include his nomination as an auditor to the Conseil d’Etat.

Meanwhile, the Saccards’ fortune seemed to have reached its apogee. It blazed like a gigantic bonfire in the middle of Paris. It was the hour when the hounds were ardently devouring their share of the spoils, and a corner of the forest was filled with the sounds of dogs barking and whips cracking and the flare of countless torches. The appetites that had been unleashed at last found contentment in the impudence of triumph, in the din of crumbling neighborhoods and fortunes built in six months. The city had become an orgy of millions and of women. Vice, come from on high, flowed through the gutters, spread across ornamental basins, and spurted skyward in public fountains only to fall again upon the roofs in a fine driving rain. And at night, when one crossed the bridges, the Seine seemed to carry off all the refuse of the sleeping city: crumbs fallen from tables, lace bows left lying on divans, hairpieces forgotten in cabs, banknotes slipped out of bodices—everything that brutal desire and immediate gratification of instinct shattered and soiled and then tossed into the street. Then, in the capital’s feverish sleep, better even than in its breathless daylight quest, one sensed the mental derangement, the gilded, voluptuous nightmare of a city driven mad by its gold and its flesh. Violins sang until midnight. Then windows went dark, and shadows fell upon the city. It was like a colossal alcove in which the last candle had been blown out, the last vestige of modesty extinguished. In the depths of the darkness there was now only a great gurgle of frenetic and weary love, while the Tuileries, at the water’s edge, reached out its arms as if to embrace the vast blackness.

Saccard had built his Parc Monceau mansion on land stolen from the city. On the second floor he had reserved for himself a superb study in rosewood and gold, its tall glassed bookcases filled with files and not a single book in sight. The safe, built into the wall, created an iron alcove big enough to hide the amours of a billion francs. There his fortune flourished and insolently displayed itself. Everything he tried seemed to succeed. When he left the rue de Rivoli and adopted a grander style of entertaining, doubling his expenditure, he alluded, in conversations with people he knew well, to substantial profits. To hear him tell it, his partnership with Mignon and Charrier had yielded enormous rewards; his speculations on real estate were doing even better; and the Crédit Viticole was an inexhaustible fountain of cash. He had a way of enumerating his riches that dazzled his listeners and prevented them from getting a clear view of his situation. His Provençal twang became thicker than ever. With his short sentences and nervous gestures he fired off rockets that exploded into millions, leaving even the most incredulous listeners dazzled in the end. His frantic mimicry of a man of means played a large part in the reputation he had acquired of being a lucky gambler. In truth, he was not known to possess any clear, solid capital. His various associates, who were of necessity well-informed as to his situation with respect to themselves, explained his colossal fortune by telling themselves that he must have enjoyed perfect luck in his other speculations—the ones they knew nothing about. He spent prodigiously. Cash flowed continually from his coffers, yet the sources of this river of gold had yet to be discovered. It was pure madness: the rage for money, the handfuls of louis thrown out the windows, the strongbox emptied of its last coin night after night only to be refilled before morning, no one knew how; and never did it disgorge such large sums as when Saccard pretended to have lost the keys.

This was a fortune that roared and overflowed like a winter torrent, which buffeted Renée’s dowry, swept it away, and inundated it. Wary at first, the young woman had wanted to manage her own property, but she quickly wearied of business matters. Then she felt poor compared to her husband and, being overwhelmed by debt, was obliged to turn to him for assistance, to borrow money from him, and to rely on his discretion. With each new bill, which he paid with the smile of a man tolerant of human weakness, she surrendered a bit more of herself, entrusting him with bonds or authorizing him to sell this or that property. By the time they moved to the Parc Monceau mansion, she was already nearly picked clean. Saccard, substituting himself for the state, paid her the interest on the hundred thousand francs from the rue de la Pépinière. In addition, he persuaded her to sell the Sologne property in order to invest the money in an important deal—a superb investment, he told her. All she had left, therefore, was the land in Charonne, which she stubbornly refused to sell in order to spare her excellent Aunt Elisabeth the sorrow. There again he plotted a masterstroke with the help of his former accomplice Larsonneau. In any case, she remained in his debt; if he took her fortune, he paid her back five or six times the income it would have earned. The interest on a hundred thousand francs, together with the yield on the money from Sologne, came to barely nine or ten thousand francs, just enough to keep her in underwear and shoes. He gave her, or paid out on her behalf, fifteen to twenty times that paltry sum. He would have put in a week’s work to rob her of a hundred francs, and he kept her royally. So she, along with everyone else, respected her husband’s monumental treasure without investigating the emptiness of the river of gold that flowed before her eyes and into which she dove every morning.

At Parc Monceau it was a time of delirium and spectacular triumph. The Saccards doubled the number of their carriages and horses. They had an army of servants, whom they dressed in dark blue livery with putty-colored breeches and black-and-yellow-striped waistcoats—rather severe colors that the financier chose in order to give himself a sober appearance, this being one of his fondest wishes. They displayed their luxury on the façade of their house and opened the curtains when they gave great dinners. The fresh breezes of contemporary life, which had rattled the doors of the second-floor flat on the rue de Rivoli, had by now reached the intensity of a genuine hurricane, which threatened to blow down the walls. Amid these princely apartments, along the gilded banisters, upon the thick wool carpets in this fantastic parvenu’s palace, the smell of Mabille lingered; hips were provocatively thrust about as in the fashionable quadrilles of the moment; and the whole era passed by with its mad and foolish laughter, its eternal hunger and eternal thirst. It was a dubious house of worldly pleasure, of impudent ecstasy that enlarged the windows the better to share the secrets of the alcoves with passersby. Here, husband and wife lived lives free of restraint before the eyes of their servants. They divided up the house and camped out in it, appearing to be not in their own home but as if cast ashore at the end of a tumultuous and dizzying voyage, living in a regal hotel, rushing out without even taking the time to unpack their bags so as to savor the pleasures of a new city as quickly as possible. They lodged there by the night, staying home in the evening only when there was a banquet and otherwise perpetually caught up in the whirlwind round of Parisian society, occasionally returning home for an hour as a traveler might return to a room in an inn between two excursions. Renée felt more anxious there, more nervous. Her silk skirts glided with a snakelike hiss over the thick carpets and along the satin upholstery of the love seats. She was irritated by the stupid gilding all around her, by the high, empty ceilings beneath which nothing remained after a festive evening except the laughter of the young fools and the sententious pronouncements of the old scoundrels. To fill this sumptuous space, to inhabit these radiant premises, she would have liked to find some supreme amusement, for which she avidly searched high and low throughout the mansion, from the small sun-colored salon to the conservatory with its thick vegetation, but to no avail. Saccard, meanwhile, realized his dream: he played host to the world of high finance, to MM Toutin-Laroche and de Lauwerens; he also received leading politicians such as Baron Gouraud and Haffner, the deputy; even his brother the minister had been kind enough to come two or three times to shore up Saccard’s situation with his presence. Like his wife, however, Saccard suffered from nervous anxieties, from a restlessness that made his laughter sound oddly like breaking glass. He became so frenetic and skittish that acquaintances said, “That devil Saccard is making too much money, it will drive him mad!” In 1860 he was decorated after doing the prefect a mysterious favor that involved acting as a front for a certain lady in a transaction related to land.

It was at about the time they moved to Parc Monceau that an apparition entered Renée’s life, leaving an indelible impression. The minister had previously resisted the pleas of his sister-in-law, who was enviously longing to be invited to the court balls. Believing that his brother’s fortune was at last assured, he finally gave in. Renée did not sleep for a month thinking about it. When the great night arrived, she sat trembling in the carriage that took her to the Tuileries.

She wore an outfit of prodigious grace and originality, a real find that had come to her in a bout of insomnia and had been put together by three of Worms’s employees, who came to her home to do their work under her supervision. It was a simple gown of white gauze, but trimmed with a multitude of little flounces scalloped out and edged with black velvet. The black velvet tunic featured a square neckline cut very low and framed by narrow lace, barely the width of a finger. Not one flower or piece of ribbon. On her wrists she wore bracelets without engraving, and on her head a thin diadem of gold, a plain circlet that fitted her like a halo.

When she reached the reception rooms and her husband deserted her for Baron Gouraud, she experienced a moment of embarrassment. But the mirrors, in which she could see that she looked lovely, quickly reassured her, and she was just getting used to the hot air, the murmur of voices, the crush of black evening dress and white shoulders, when the Emperor appeared. He slowly crossed the room on the arm of a short, fat general, who wheezed as if suffering from a problem of digestion. The shoulders aligned themselves in two rows, while the black tailcoats instinctively and discreetly fell back a step. Renée found herself shoved to the end of the line of shoulders, near the second door, toward which the Emperor was moving with a laborious, faltering step. She thus saw him come toward her from one door to the other.

He was wearing a tailcoat with the red sash of the Grand Cordon. 11 Renée, once more in the grip of emotion, had difficulty seeing clearly, and to her this bloody stain seemed to splatter the prince’s entire chest. She found him small, with legs that were too short and jiggling flesh around his waist. But she was charmed and thought him handsome, with his pale face, and heavy, leaden lids that drooped over lifeless eyes. Underneath his mustache his mouth opened languidly, while the boniness of his nose was the only feature that stood out from his puffy face.

Appearing to support each other, the Emperor and the elderly general continued to move forward in a lethargic manner, taking short steps and smiling vaguely. They looked to the right and to the left, and as they did their gazes slipped into the bodices of the bowing ladies. The general leaned over and said something to the sovereign, giving his arm a comradely squeeze. And the Emperor, listless and impenetrable, even more vapid than usual, drew nearer and nearer in his dawdling way.

They had reached the middle of the reception room when Renée felt their eyes upon her. The general stared at her in astonishment, while the Emperor, raising his lids slightly, revealed a predatory gleam in the otherwise hesitant gray of his bleary gaze. Renée, taken aback, looked down and bowed until she could see nothing but the rose pattern in the carpet. But she followed their shadows and realized that they had paused for several seconds in front of her. And she thought she heard the Emperor, that lascivious dreamer, murmur as he gazed at her tightly wrapped in her skirt of muslin striped with velvet, “Now there, general, is a flower worth picking, a mysterious pink carnation with white and black streaks.”

To which the general replied in a more brutal tone, “Sire, that carnation there would look damned good in our buttonholes!”

Renée raised her head. The apparition had disappeared, and a throng was clogging the doorway. Since that evening, she had been back to the Tuileries many times and had even had the honor of being complimented out loud by His Majesty and becoming something of a friend of his. But she always remembered the sovereign’s slow, ponderous march through the reception room, between the two rows of shoulders. And as her husband’s fortune grew, whenever she experienced some new joy, she recalled the image of the Emperor towering over the bowed bosoms, coming toward her, and comparing her to a carnation, which the old general advised him to put in his buttonhole. This was the high point of her life.

4

The clear, burning desire that had risen in Renée’s heart as she breathed in the unsettling fragrances of the conservatory while Maxime and Louise laughed on a love seat in the little buttercup salon seemed to vanish like a nightmare, leaving behind only a vague shudder. The bitter taste of tanghin had lingered on the young woman’s lips throughout the night. The infernal leaf caused a burning sensation that made her feel as though a mouth of flame had pressed itself to hers, breathing into her a devouring love. Then that mouth fled from her, and great waves of darkness rolled over her, drowning her dream.

In the morning she slept a little. When she woke up, she felt sick. She ordered the curtains drawn, spoke to her doctor of nausea and a headache, and for two days absolutely refused to go out. Since she was pretending to be under siege, moreover, she closed her door to all visitors. Maxime came and knocked, but to no avail. In order to be free to use his apartment as he pleased, he had stopped sleeping at home. Indeed, he led the most nomadic life imaginable, taking up residence in new houses his father had built, choosing whatever floor he liked, and moving monthly from one place to another, often on a whim but sometimes to make room for paying tenants. He would move in with a mistress before the paint had dried. Accustomed to his stepmother’s caprices, he feigned great compassion and went up to her room four times a day to put on a long face and ask how she was, just to tease her. On the third day he found her in the small salon, in the pink, smiling, looking calm and rested.

“So, did you have a good time with Céleste?” he asked, alluding to the long tête-à-tête that she’d just had with her chambermaid.

“Yes,” she replied, “the girl is precious. Her hands are always ice cold. She put them on my brow and calmed my poor head a bit.”

“So she’s medicine!” the young man exclaimed. “If ever I suffer the misfortune of falling in love, you’ll lend her to me, won’t you? So that she can lay both of her hands on my heart?”

They exchanged pleasantries and went for their usual drive in the Bois. Two weeks passed. Renée threw herself more madly than ever into the round of visits and balls that was her life. She had apparently changed her mind once again and no longer complained of weariness and disgust. Yet she seemed to have suffered some secret fall, and though she did not speak of it, she revealed what she was going through by exhibiting a more pronounced contempt for herself and a more reckless depravity in her lady-about-town whims. One night she confessed to Maxime that she was dying to go to a ball that Blanche Muller, a fashionable actress, was giving for the princesses of the foot-lights and the queens of the demimonde. This confession surprised and embarrassed the young man, though he had no great scruples about such things. He tried to catechize his stepmother: she really didn’t belong there, and in any case she wouldn’t see anything very amusing. Besides which, if she were recognized, it would cause a scandal. In reply to all these excellent arguments she clasped her hands and smilingly pleaded, “Please, Maxime, darling, be nice. I want to go. . . . I’ll wear a dark blue domino, and we’ll just walk through the rooms.”

When Maxime, who always gave in eventually and would gladly have taken his stepmother to every disreputable place in Paris had she asked, agreed to accompany her to Blanche Muller’s ball, she clapped her hands like a child who has been granted an unexpected break from school.

“You’re a dear!” she exclaimed. “It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? Come for me early. I want to see those women make their entrances. You’ll tell me who they are, and we’ll have a grand old time.”

She thought for a moment, then added, “No, don’t come for me. Wait for me in a cab on the boulevard Malesherbes. I’ll go out through the garden.”

This mysterious proposal was just a way of adding spice to the escapade, a simple refinement of her pleasure, since she could have walked out the front door at midnight and her husband wouldn’t even have poked his head out the window.

The next night, after telling Céleste to wait up for her, Renée, quivering with exquisite fear, made her way through the dark shadows of the Parc Monceau. Saccard had taken advantage of his connections at city hall to obtain a key to one of the park’s side gates, and Renée had asked to have one of them for herself. She nearly lost her way and only found the cab thanks to its two yellow eyes—the headlights. In those days the just-completed boulevard Malesherbes was still quite deserted at night. The young woman slipped into the carriage in a highly emotional state, her heart beating wildly as though she had just returned from a rendezvous with a lover. Maxime, half asleep in a corner of the cab, smoked philosophically. He tried to toss his cigar away, but she stopped him, and as she reached out to grab his arm in the darkness, her hand came right up against his face, to the great amusement of both.

“I tell you I like the smell of tobacco!” she exclaimed. “Keep your cigar. . . . Besides, we’re going to have a fling tonight. . . . I’m a man, see.”

The boulevard was not yet illuminated. As the cab proceeded toward the Madeleine, it was so dark in the carriage that they could not see. Each time the young man lifted the cigar to his lips, a spot of red pierced the thick darkness. That red spot drew Renée’s attention. Maxime, half covered by the flowing black satin domino1 that filled the cab’s interior, continued to smoke in bored silence. The truth was that his stepmother’s whim was preventing him from joining a group of women who planned to meet at the Café Anglais before Blanche Muller’s ball and return there afterward. He was grumpy, and Renée sensed his sulk through the gloom.

“Are you under the weather?” she asked.

“No, I’m cold,” he answered.

“Well, I’m on fire. It’s stifling in here. . . . Drape my skirt over your knees.”

“Oh, your skirts!” he muttered with annoyance. “I’m up to my eyes in your skirts.”

But this sally made him laugh, and little by little he grew more animated. She told him about the fear she had felt just now in crossing the Parc Monceau. Then she confessed another of her desires: some night she hoped to go rowing on the little lake in the park in the boat she could see from her window, which had been left lying next to one of the paths. He thought she was getting rather sentimental. The cab rolled on, the gloom remained thick, and the two passengers leaned toward each other in order to hear better over the sound of the wheels, so that occasionally, when they got too close, their hands touched and they could feel each other’s warm breath. At regular intervals, Maxime’s cigar would flare up again, tinting the shadows red and casting a pale pink light on Renée’s face. She looked lovely in that fleeting glimmer, so lovely that the young man was struck by it.

“Oh, my, we’re looking very pretty tonight, step-mama! . . . Let’s see a little.”

He brought his cigar close to her and quickly drew a few puffs. Renée, in her corner, was bathed in a warm and strangely pulsating light. She had raised her hood a little. Her bare head, covered by cascades of little curls and adorned with a simple blue ribbon, looked like the head of a true gamin, and below she wore a big black satin blouse buttoned up to her neck. She found it quite amusing to be examined and admired by the light of a cigar. She threw her head back and laughed quietly, while Maxime added with an air of comic gravity, “Damned if I won’t have to keep an eye on you if I want to bring you back to my father safe and sound.”

Meanwhile, the cab rounded the Madeleine and proceeded down one of the boulevards. Dancing light from blazing store windows now filled its interior. Blanche Muller lived nearby in one of the new houses built after the rue Basse-du-Rempart was filled in and brought up to grade. There were still only a few carriages at the door. It was just past ten. Maxime wanted to tour the boulevards for an hour before going in, but Renée, her curiosity aroused, told him flatly that she would go up herself if he didn’t go with her. He followed her and was pleased to find a bigger crowd than he had expected. The young woman had covered her face with a mask. She went about on Maxime’s arm, whispering peremptory orders that he docilely obeyed, and thereby managed to poke her nose into all the rooms, lift the edges of door-curtains, and examine the furniture, and she would have rummaged in the drawers as well had she not been afraid of being seen. The apartment, though quite sumptuous, had corners suggestive of a bohemian existence, reminders that the occupant had once acted in music halls. It was chiefly in these corners that Renée’s pink nostrils quivered, and she forced her companion to walk slowly so as to miss nothing and savor the smell. She was particularly fascinated by the dressing room, which the hostess had left wide open, for when Blanche Muller entertained, she allowed her guests access to everything, even her alcove, where the bed had been pushed aside to make room for gaming tables. The dressing room did not satisfy Renée, however. To her eye it seemed common and even a little dirty, with its carpet in which the butts of cigarettes had burned little round holes and its blue silk wall hangings stained with pomade and splattered with soap. Once she completed her careful inspection of the premises, every last detail of which she stored away in memory to describe later to her intimate friends, she turned her attention to the people. The men she already knew. They were mostly the same financiers, politicians, and young men about town who attended her “Thursdays.” At times, as she stood facing groups of smiling men in black suits, she could imagine that she was in her own drawing room, where only the night before the same men had stood with the same smiles talking to the marquise d’Espanet or blonde Mme Haffner. And when she looked at the women, the illusion was not completely dispelled. Laure d’Aurigny wore yellow, just as Suzanne Haffner had done, and Blanche Muller had on a white dress cut to the middle of her back like Adeline d’Espanet’s. After a while Maxime begged for mercy, and Renée was quite willing to sit with him on a love seat. They sat there for a while, the young man yawning, the young woman asking for the names of the ladies who passed before them, undressing them with her eyes, counting the yards of lace they had wrapped around their skirts. When he realized that she was deeply absorbed in these studies, he seized the opportunity to escape in obedience to a wave from Laure d’Aurigny, who teased him about the woman he had on his arm. Then she made him promise to join her party at around one o’clock at the Café Anglais.

“Your father will be with us,” she shouted after him just as he rejoined Renée.

His stepmother found herself surrounded by a group of women who were laughing quite loudly, while M. de Saffré had availed himself of the place left free by Maxime to slide in alongside her and lavish her with crude compliments. Then he and the women all began to shout and slap their thighs, to the point where Renée, deafened by the noise and by now yawning herself, got up and said to her companion, “Let’s go! They’re too idiotic.”

As they were leaving, M. de Mussy came in. He seemed delighted to run into Maxime, and, paying no attention to the masked woman with him, murmured with a lovesick air, “Ah, my friend, she’s killing me. I know she’s feeling better, but her door remains closed to me. Tell her that you’ve seen me with tears in my eyes.”

“Don’t worry, your message will be delivered,” the young man replied with a strange laugh.

On the stairs he asked, “So, step-mama, did the poor boy touch your heartstrings?”

She shrugged but gave no answer. Downstairs, on the sidewalk, she paused a moment before climbing into the cab, which had waited for them, looking hesitantly first toward the Madeleine and then toward the boulevard des Italiens. It was barely eleven-thirty, and the boulevard was still quite animated.

“So, we’re going home,” she murmured wistfully.

“Unless you’d like to drive along the boulevards for a while,” Maxime replied.

She agreed. The evening, intended to be a feast to feed a woman’s curiosity, was not going as planned, and she hated the idea of returning home shorn of one more illusion and with a migraine coming on. It had long been a fantasy of hers that an actress’s ball had to be the most amusing thing in the world. As sometimes happens in the final days of October, spring seemed to have returned. The night was as warm as an evening in May, and the occasional chill breeze only added to the gaiety in the air. Renée, lying with her head against the carriage door, remained silent, staring at the crowd, the cafés, and the restaurants, which stretched out before her in an endless line. She had become quite serious, absorbed in a typical woman’s daydream filled with vague longings. The dresses of the prostitutes swept over the wide sidewalk, and the men’s boots struck the pavement with distinct familiarity; easy pleasures and facile loves seemed to gallop along the gray asphalt. And that sidewalk, that asphalt, awakened dormant desires in her, made her forget the idiotic ball she had just left and allowed her to glimpse other, more savory enjoyments. In the windows of the private rooms at Brébant’s she saw women silhouetted against the whiteness of the curtains. Maxime told her a very naughty story about a deceived husband who had caught the silhouette of his wife on a curtain in the act of making love to the silhouette of a man. She was barely listening. He cheered up, however, and after a while took her hands and teased her by talking about poor M. de Mussy.

On the way back they again passed by Brébant’s. “Did you know,” she asked suddenly, “that M. de Saffré invited me to supper tonight?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t have eaten very well,” he replied, laughing. “Saffré hasn’t the slightest culinary imagination. He hasn’t gotten beyond lobster salad.”

“No, no, he was talking about oysters and cold partridge. . . . But he used tu with me, and that bothered me.”

She fell silent, stared once more at the boulevard, and then, after an interval, added with a distraught look, “The worst of it is that I’m terribly hungry.”

“You’re hungry, you say?” the young man exclaimed. “Why, the solution’s quite simple. We’ll have supper together. . . . Would you like to?”

He said this in an even tone, but at first she refused, claiming that Céleste had prepared a snack for her at home. Meanwhile, Maxime, not wanting to go to the Café Anglais, had ordered the carriage to stop at the corner of rue le Peletier, in front of the Café Riche. He had even climbed down from the cab, and as his stepmother still couldn’t make up her mind, he added, “Afterwards, if you’re afraid I’m compromising you, just tell me. I’ll climb up beside the coachman and take you back to your husband.”

She smiled and climbed down from the cab with the look of a bird afraid to wet its feet. She was radiant. The sidewalk she felt beneath her feet warmed her heels and sent a delicious shiver of fear through her skin, a sense that her wish had been fulfilled. As long as the cab had been moving, she had experienced a mad desire to jump out. She crossed the pavement furtively, with short steps, as though the fear of being seen heightened her pleasure. Her escapade was definitely turning into an adventure. Of course she had no regrets about having refused M. de Saffré’s uncouth invitation. But she would have returned home in a terrible mood if Maxime hadn’t had the idea of taking her to taste the forbidden fruit. The young man climbed the stairs eagerly, as if he felt at home. She followed him, somewhat out of breath. A faint aroma of the sea and of wild game hung in the air, and the carpet, held fast against the stairs by brass rods, smelled of dust, which only heightened her emotion.

As they reached the landing, they encountered a dignified-looking waiter who pressed himself against the wall to allow them to pass.

“Charles,” said Maxime, “you’ll serve us, won’t you? . . . Give us the white room.”

Charles bowed, climbed back up a few steps, and opened the door of a private room. The gas was turned low, and to Renée the dimly lit room she was about to enter seemed as louche as it was charming.

A constant rumble of traffic could be heard through the wide-open window, and the play of light from the café below projected onto the ceiling shadows of pedestrians hurrying past. With a quick twist of the wrist, however, the waiter turned up the light from the gas jet. The shadows on the ceiling disappeared, and a harsh light filled the room, illuminating the young woman’s face. She had already pulled back her hood. Her little curls had been mussed a bit in the cab, but the blue ribbon had not budged. She began to move about, embarrassed by the way that Charles was looking at her. He blinked and squinted to get a better look at her in a way that clearly said, “Now here’s one I’ve never seen before.”

“What shall I serve you, sir?” he asked in a loud voice.

Maxime turned toward Renée.

“How about M. de Saffré’s supper?” he said. “Oysters, a partridge—”

And, seeing the young man smile, Charles imitated him discreetly. “In that case,” he murmured, “would you like the Wednesday supper?”

“The Wednesday supper … ,” Maxime repeated.

Then, remembering, he said, “Yes, it’s all the same to me. Give us the Wednesday supper.”

When the waiter left, Renée took out her spectacles and carefully inspected the small room. It was a square room, done in white and gold, and furnished with the affectations of a boudoir. In addition to the table and chairs, there was a low serving table and a large divan, a veritable bed, set between the fireplace and the window. A Louis XVI clock and twin candelabra graced the white marble mantelpiece. But the centerpiece of the room was the mirror, a handsome elongated looking-glass on which the ladies who came to this place had scrawled with their diamonds, leaving it covered with names, dates, lines of doggerel, prodigious thoughts, and astounding confessions. Renée fancied she saw something obscene but lacked the courage to satisfy her curiosity. She looked at the divan, felt embarrassed again, and, working hard to maintain her composure, looked up at the ceiling and the gilded brass chandelier with its five gaslights. There was something very pleasurable about her discomfort, however. While tilting her head upward as if to study the cornice, looking grave and holding her spectacles in her hand, she took deep pleasure in the equivocal furniture she sensed around her: the clear, cynical mirror, whose purity, barely touched by all that obscene fly-spotting, had facilitated the adjustment of so many false chignons; the divan, whose width shocked her; the table and even the carpet, which gave off the same smell she had detected on the stairs, a vague, penetrating, and somehow religious smell of dust.

When at last she was forced to lower her eyes, she asked, “What is this Wednesday supper anyway?”

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

In any other place, he would have told her straightaway that he had had supper that Wednesday night with a lady he’d met on the boulevard, but since entering the private room with her, he had instinctively begun to treat her as a woman he was obliged to please and whose jealousy must not be aroused. In any case she did not insist. She went and leaned on the window railing, where he joined her. Behind them Charles bustled in and out of the room with a clatter of dishes and silver.

It was not yet midnight. Down below, on the boulevard, Paris went rumbling on, prolonging the blaze of daylight before making up its mind to turn in for the night. Wavering lines of trees separated the whiteness of the sidewalks from the murky blackness of the roadway with its thunder of speeding carriages and flash of headlights. At intervals on either side of this dark strip newsdealers’ kiosks blazed forth like huge Venetian lanterns, tall and strangely gaudy, as if they had been set down in these precise places for some colossal illumination. At this time of night, however, their muffled glow was lost in the glare of nearby storefronts. Not a single shutter was down, and the sidewalks ran on without a patch of shadow, under a shower of light that sprinkled them with golden dust, as warm and bright as the midday sun. Maxime pointed out to Renée the bright windows of the Café Anglais opposite them. The high branches of the trees interfered somewhat with their view of the buildings and sidewalk across the way. They leaned out to get a better view of what lay below. A steady stream of traffic flowed past. Groups of people walked by; prostitutes, strolling in pairs, dragged their skirts along the sidewalk, lifting them from time to time in a languid motion while casting weary, smiling glances from side to side. Directly below the window, the tables of the Café Riche basked in the glare of its lamps, whose light reached to the middle of the roadway. It was in the center of the restaurant’s glow that they could best see the pale faces and hear the wan laughter of the passersby. Around the small round tables, women mingled with the men and drank. They wore revealing dresses, and their hair cascaded down upon their necks. They shimmied in their chairs and spoke in loud voices that Renée could not make out above the noise. She took particular notice of one, sitting alone at a table in a loud blue outfit trimmed with white lace. With little sips this woman finished off a glass of beer, then leaned back a bit and placed her hands over her belly with an air of gloomy resignation. The streetwalkers slowly vanished into the crowd, and Renée, who found them fascinating, followed them with her eyes, scanning from one end of the boulevard to the other all the way to the tumultuous bustle of the avenue, filled with people strolling in darkness occasionally relieved by flashes of light. The parade was endless, moreover, renewing itself with tiresome regularity; it was a strangely mixed crowd, yet always the same, surrounded by bright colors and punctuated by dark voids in the fantastic chaos of a thousand dancing flames pouring from the shops, coloring the storefronts and kiosks, painting the façades with fiery ribbons, letters, and designs, studding the shadows with stars, and washing constantly over the roadway. The noise was deafening, a howl, a monotonous, steady hum that rose from the streets like the whine of an organ accompanying an endless procession of little mechanical dolls. At one point Renée thought there had been an accident. The crowd surged to the left just beyond the Passage de l’Opéra. When she took up her spectacles, however, she recognized the omnibus office. The crowd waiting on the sidewalk pressed forward whenever a bus arrived. She heard the gruff voice of the conductor calling out numbers, and then the crystalline tinkle of the bell. Her eyes lingered over the posters plastered to one of the kiosks, as gaudily colored as an Epinal print.² One green-and-yellow frame featured a poster under glass depicting a grinning devil’s head with bristling hair, an ad for a hat-maker, which she failed to comprehend. Every five minutes the Batignolles omnibus passed with its red lights and yellow sides, turning the corner from the rue le Peletier and shaking the building with its rumble, and she saw the men on the upper deck look up with their tired faces, staring at her and Maxime with the curious gaze of famished men peering through a keyhole.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “At this hour, the Parc Monceau is fast asleep.”

That was the only remark she made. They stood there in silence for close to twenty minutes, surrendering to the intoxication of the noise and light. When the table was finally set, they went and sat down, and since Renée seemed embarrassed by the presence of the waiter, Maxime sent him away.

“Leave us. I’ll ring for dessert.”

Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her eyes sparkled. She looked as though she had just been running. Some of the din and bustle of the boulevard came away from the window with her, and she refused to allow her companion to pull the casement shut.

When he complained about the noise, she said, “Of course! It’s the orchestra! Don’t you find the music odd? It will go very nicely with our oysters and partridge.”

The escapade made her look younger than her thirty years. Her movements were quick, she felt a touch of fever, and this tête-à-tête with a young man in a private room filled with sounds of the street spurred her on and coarsened her appearance. She went at the oysters with gusto. Maxime, who wasn’t hungry, smiled as he watched her devour them.

“Damn!” he muttered. “You’d have made a fine companion for suppers like this.”

She stopped, annoyed with herself for eating so fast.

“Do I seem hungry? What do you expect? It’s the hour we spent at that idiotic ball that left me feeling empty. . . . I feel sorry for you, my dear friend, to live in such society as that!”

“You know perfectly well,” he replied, “that I’ve promised to drop Sylvia and Laure d’Aurigny the day your friends are willing to join me for supper.”

She reacted with a gesture of disdain.

“Well, I should think so! We’re far more amusing than ladies of that sort: admit it! . . . If one of us were to bore her lover the way your Sylvia and your Laure d’Aurigny must bore you—why the poor little woman wouldn’t keep her lover for a week! . . . But you never listen to me. Try it for yourself one of these days.”

Maxime, to avoid calling the waiter, got up, removed the oyster shells, and served the partridge that had been on the serving table. The table had the luxurious look of a first-class restaurant. A delightful breath of lasciviousnesss swept the damask tablecloth, and Renée felt little shivers of contentment as she slid her slender hands from her fork to her knife and from her plate to her glass. She drank white wine without water—she who ordinarily drank water barely tinged with red. Maxime, standing with his napkin over his arm, served her with comical solicitude, resuming the conversation as he did so.

“What could M. de Saffré possibly have said to you to make you so angry? Did he find you ugly?”

“Oh, him!” she replied. “He’s a vile man. I never would have believed that a gentleman who is so distinguished and polite in my home could say such things. But I forgive him. It was the women who irritated me. They looked like the women you see selling apples. There was one who complained of a boil on her hip, and I think it wouldn’t have taken much for her to lift up her skirts and show us all her sore.”

Maxime burst out laughing.

“No, really,” she continued, warming to her task, “I don’t understand you. They’re filthy and stupid. . . . And to think that whenever I saw you going off to be with your Sylvia, I imagined wondrous things, ancient revels of the sort you see in paintings with creatures wearing crowns of roses and golden goblets and the most extraordinary voluptuousness. . . . Yes, indeed. But what you showed me was a filthy dressing room and women who swore like sailors. Sin like that isn’t worth the bother.”

He made as if to protest, but she silenced him, and, holding between her fingertips the bone of a partridge on which she nibbled daintily, she lowered her voice and added, “Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy. . . . Respectable woman that I am, when I’m bored and sin by dreaming impossible dreams, you can be sure that the things I come up with are a lot nicer than your Blanche Mullers.”

And with a grave air she concluded on a profound note of naïve cynicism: “It’s a matter of upbringing, don’t you see?”

She gently laid the small bone on her plate. The rumble of carriages continued, but no particular sound stood out from the dull roar. She was obliged to raise her voice so that he could hear her, and her cheeks grew redder. On the serving table there remained truffles, a sweet side-dish, and asparagus, unusual for that time of year. He brought everything to the table so as not to have to get up again, and since the surface was rather narrow, he set down on the floor between himself and Renée a silver bucket filled with ice and a bottle of champagne. In the end her appetite proved contagious. They sampled all the dishes and in high spirits emptied the bottle of champagne, proposing scandalous theories while leaning on their elbows like two friends letting themselves go after a bout of drinking. The noise from the boulevard died down, but to her it sounded louder, and at times all those wheels seemed to be turning round in her head.

When he asked about ringing for dessert, she got up, shook the crumbs from her long satin blouse, and said, “Go ahead. . . . You may light a cigar, if you like.”

She felt slightly dizzy. She went over to the window, drawn there by a peculiar sound she couldn’t account for. The shops were closing.

“Look,” she said, turning toward Maxime, “the orchestra is putting away its instruments.”

She leaned out again. Out in the middle of the street, cabs and omnibuses, rarer now and moving more rapidly than before, stared at each other with various-colored eyes as they passed. But along the sidewalks great pits of darkness had opened up in front of the closed shops. Only the cafés remained ablaze, striping the asphalt with streaks of light. From the rue Drouot to the rue du Helder Renée was thus able to observe a long series of white squares alternating with dark, from which the last stragglers emerged only to vanish again in the strangest way. The prostitutes above all, their long dresses alternately illuminated by a harsh light and then drowned in shadow, took on a ghostly air, like faded marionettes caught in the electric beam of some fantastic extravaganza. For a short while Renée found this game amusing. The puddles of light evaporated. The gaslights flickered out. The variegated kiosks stained the darkness more brightly than before. At intervals a crowd of people from some theater hurried past. Gaps began to open up in the flow, however, and groups of two or three men passed beneath the window and were approached by a woman. They stood and haggled. Some of what they said could be heard above the dying din. Usually the woman then went off on the arm of one of the men. Other streetwalkers moved from café to café, making the rounds of the tables, snatching forgotten cubes of sugar, laughing with the waiters, and staring steadily at the lingering customers with questioning looks and unspoken propositions. And Renée, who had been studying the nearly empty upper deck of a Batignolles omnibus, happened to recognize the woman in the blue dress and white lace, now standing at the street corner and turning her head from side to side, still on the prowl.

When Maxime came over to join her at the rail, where she stood lost in thought, he smiled at the sight of a half-open window in the Café Anglais. The idea that his father was having supper across the way struck him as comical, but this evening peculiar inhibitions subdued his usual banter. Renée was reluctant to leave the railing. An intoxication, a languor, rose from the more obscure depths of the boulevard. As the rumble of traffic faded and the bright lights dimmed, she felt a tender summons to sensuousness and sleep. The fleeting whispers she heard, the groups of men and women she saw loitering in dark corners, turned the sidewalk into a vast inn at the hour when travelers take to their beds for the night. The light and noise grew fainter and fainter, the city went to sleep, and soft breezes caressed the rooftops.

When the young woman turned around, light from the small chandelier made her blink. She was a little pale now, and a slight quivering was noticeable at the corners of her mouth. Charles laid out the dessert. He went out and came back in, leaving the door swinging slowly on its hinges as he went about his business in the phlegmatic manner of a proper gentleman.

“But I’m not hungry anymore,” Renée exclaimed. “Take all those dishes away and serve us coffee.”

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

“Please tell him to go,” Renée, feeling sick, said to Maxime.

The young man dismissed him, but no sooner had he vanished than he returned once more to hermetically seal the heavy window drapes in his discreet manner. When he finally withdrew, Maxime, also in the grip of impatience, got up and went to the door.

“Wait,” he said, “I’ll see to it that he leaves us alone.”

And he pushed the bolt shut.

“That’s that,” she replied. “Now at least we can make ourselves at home.”

They went back to sharing confidences and gossiping like old comrades. Maxime lit a cigar. Renée sipped her coffee and even allowed herself a glass of chartreuse. The room heated up and filled with bluish smoke. After a while she placed her elbows on the table and propped her chin on two half-clenched fists. Under this slight pressure her mouth grew smaller, her cheeks were lifted up a bit, and her eyes, narrowed somewhat, glowed more brightly. Distorted in this way, her small face looked lovely under the shower of golden curls that now dangled down to her eyebrows. Maxime stared at her through the smoke from his cigar. She was definitely an original. At times he was no longer quite sure of her sex. The large wrinkle across her forehead, the pouting protrusion of her lips, and the vagueness in her eyes because of her nearsightedness made her look like a nearly grown young man, particularly since her long black satin blouse went so high that a line of fleshy white neck was barely visible beneath her chin. She submitted to his stare with a smile, holding her head steady, staring vacantly, and keeping her lips sealed.

Then she woke abruptly. She went over and looked at herself in the mirror, which she had been eyeing vaguely for a short while. She raised herself on tiptoes and held on to the mantelpiece so as to read the signatures and risqué comments that had frightened her before the meal. With some difficulty she deciphered the syllables, laughed, and went on reading, like a schoolboy turning the pages of Piron’s obscene poetry3 inside his desk.

“Ernest and Clara,” she said, “and there is a heart underneath that looks like a funnel. . . . Ah! Here’s a better one: ‘I like men because I like truffles.’ Signed ‘Laure.’ Tell me, Maxime: was it the Aurigny woman who wrote that? . . . And over here we have the coat of arms of one of those ladies: a hen smoking a fat pipe. . . . And more names, a whole calendar of male and female saints: Victor, Amélie, Alexandre, Edouard, Marguerite, Paquita, Louise, Renée. . . . My, my! One of them even has my name.”

Maxime could see her ardent face in the mirror. She lifted herself up even more, and her domino, pulled taut in back, outlined the concavity of her waist and the curve of her hips. The young man followed the line of the satin, which stuck to her like a chemise. Now he too got up and threw away his cigar. He was uneasy and nervous. His customary nonchalance and naturalness were gone.

“Ah! There’s your name, Maxime!” Renée exclaimed. “Listen. . . . I love—”

But he had sat down at the corner of the divan, practically at the young woman’s feet. With a quick movement he managed to grasp her hands. He turned her away from the mirror and in a strange voice said, “Please don’t read that.”

With a nervous laugh she struggled to free herself.

“Why not? Am I not your confidante?”

But he insisted and with a choking voice said, “No, no, not tonight.”

He was still holding on to her, and she tried to free herself by jerking her wrists. They looked at each other with eyes that neither had ever seen before, with a touch of shame in their fixed, forced smiles. She fell to her knees at the end of the divan. They continued to struggle, but she had ceased to pull away toward the mirror and was already surrendering herself. When the young man seized her around the waist, her embarrassed laughter died in her mouth as she said, “Let me go . . . you’re hurting me.”

Not a whisper more escaped her lips. In the deep silence of that room, in which the gaslight seemed to flare up, she felt the earth tremble and heard the clatter of a Batignolles omnibus that must just then have been turning the corner of the boulevard. And then it was over. When they were once again seated side by side on the divan, he punctured their mutual embarrassment by stammering, “Bah! It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

She said nothing. Looking stunned, she stared at the roses in the carpet.

“Had you ever thought about it?” Maxime went on stammering. “I never did, not once. . . . I should have been careful about the private room.”

Yet she had turned sober, as if all the bourgeois rectitude of the Béraud Du Châtels had been aroused by this supreme sin, and with a face looking suddenly old and very grave murmured in a deep voice, “What we’ve just done is vile.”

Gasping for air, she went over to the window, drew the curtains, and leaned out. The orchestra was now a memory. The sin had been committed amid the last quiver of the basses and the distant wail of violins, the muffled sounds of a boulevard now asleep and dreaming of love. The pavement and sidewalks below stretched off into the distance and merged with the gray solitude. All the rumbling carriage wheels seemed to have gone, carrying the light and the crowd off with them. Beneath the window the Café Riche was closed, and not a sliver of light slipped through the shutters. On the other side of the avenue, a shimmering glow was all that still emanated from the façade of the Café Anglais, and in particular from one half-open window through which faint laughter could be heard. And all along this ribbon of darkness, from the bend in the rue Drouot to the other extremity, as far as her eye could see, she perceived only the symmetrical patches where kiosks stained the night red or green without illuminating it, like regularly spaced nightlights in some gigantic dormitory. She raised her head. The upper branches of the trees stood out against a clear sky, while the irregular line of the houses blurred to the point where it resembled masses of rock jutting up along the shore of a bluish sea. But this strip of sky made her sadder still, and it was in the darkness of the boulevard that she found a certain consolation. What remained clinging to the deserted avenue of the evening’s noise and vice was her excuse. She could almost feel the heat of all the footsteps of all those men and women rising from the cooling sidewalk. The shame that had loitered there—the momentary lusts, the whispered offers, the one-night nuptials paid for in advance—evaporated, hovering in the air like a heavy mist roiled by the morning breezes. Leaning out over the darkness, she breathed in this shivering silence, this bedroom scent, as an encouragement that came to her from below, an assurance that her shame was shared and accepted by a complicit city. And when her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, she caught sight of the woman in the lacy blue dress, alone in the gray solitude, standing in the same place, still waiting, still offering herself to the empty night.

On turning away from the window, Renée saw Charles snooping around and sniffing the air. He soon noticed the young woman’s blue ribbon, lying crumpled and forgotten on a corner of the divan. Affecting politeness, he hastened to hand it to her. His gesture brought home to her a full awareness of her shame. Standing in front of the mirror, she attempted to retie the ribbon, but her hands were clumsy. Her chignon had fallen, her little curls all lay flattened against her temples, and she could not manage to tie a bow. Charles came to her assistance, and sounding as though he were offering her some everyday item such as a finger bowl or toothpick, he asked, “Would madame like the comb?”

“No, don’t bother with that,” Maxime interrupted, fixing the waiter with an impatient stare. “Go fetch us a cab.”

Renée decided just to pull up the hood of her domino. As she was about to walk away from the mirror, she raised herself up slightly to look for the words that Maxime’s embrace had prevented her from reading. Slanting upward toward the ceiling and written in a large, abominable hand was this declaration, signed “Sylvia”: “I love Maxime.” She pressed her lips together and pulled her hood up a little bit more.

In the carriage they felt horribly awkward. As on the trip down from the Parc Monceau, they sat facing each other, but neither could think of anything to say. The darkness in the cab was opaque, and now there was not even a red dot of light from Maxime’s cigar, a glowing orange ember. The young man, once again “up to his eyes” in skirts, suffered from this darkness, this silence, and this mute young woman, whose presence he felt near him and whose eyes he imagined wide open to the night. So as to seem less stupid, he finally sought her hand, and when he held it in his own he felt relieved and found the situation tolerable. That hand surrendered itself to him, soft and as if in a dream.

The cab crossed the place Madeleine. Renée was thinking that she had done nothing wrong. She hadn’t wanted the incest. The more deeply she examined herself, the more innocent she found herself to be—during the first hours of her escapade, in her furtive exit through the Parc Monceau, at Blanche Muller’s, on the boulevard, and even in the restaurant’s private room. Why, then, had she fallen to her knees next to the divan? She was no longer sure. She certainly had not given a second’s thought to that. She would have angrily refused. It had all been for laughs, for fun, nothing more. As the cab drove on, she thought back on that deafening boulevard orchestra and the steady stream of men and women who came and went while tongues of fire burned her weary eyes.

Maxime, in his corner, was also dreaming, not without a certain irritation. The adventure had made him angry. He blamed the black satin domino. Had anyone ever seen a woman done up like that before? You couldn’t even see her neck. He had mistaken her for a boy, he’d been playing with her, and it wasn’t his fault if things had taken a serious turn. He certainly wouldn’t have touched her with his fingertips if she’d shown even a bit of shoulder. He would have remembered that she was his father’s wife. And then, because he disliked unpleasant thoughts, he forgave himself. What did it matter in the end? He’d try not to do it again. It was just foolishness.

The cab stopped, and Maxime got out first to help Renée down. But he did not dare kiss her there at the side gate of the park. They touched hands as usual. She was already past the fence when, feeling a need to say something, she revealed a worry that had been vaguely on her mind since leaving the restaurant: “By the way, what was that comb the waiter mentioned?”

“Comb?” the embarrassed Maxime repeated. “Why, I have no idea.”

It was suddenly clear to Renée. A comb was undoubtedly part of the room’s regular equipment, along with the curtains, the lock on the door, and the divan. Without waiting for an explanation that was not forthcoming, she plunged into the darkness of the park, walking rapidly as she imagined herself pursued by tortoiseshell teeth in which Laure d’Aurigny and Sylvia had probably left strands of blond and black hair. She felt quite feverish. Céleste had to put her to bed and watch over her until morning. Maxime, standing on the sidewalk on the boulevard Malesherbes, briefly pondered whether he ought to go join the revelers at the Café Anglais. But then, with the idea that he was punishing himself, he decided that he should go to bed instead.

The next day, Renée woke late from a deep and dreamless sleep. She had a big fire laid in the fireplace and announced that she would spend the day in her room. That was her refuge in times of distress. Around noon, her husband, on learning that she would not be coming down for lunch, asked permission to speak to her for a moment. She was on the point of refusing, with a twinge of anxiety, when she thought better of it. The evening before she had given Saccard a bill from Worms in the amount of 136,000 francs, a rather large sum, and no doubt he hoped to please her by handing her the receipt in person.

She thought of yesterday’s little curls. Mechanically, she looked at the mirror and saw her hair, which Céleste had done up in big braids. Then she curled up by the corner of the fire, wrapping herself in a lace dressing-gown. Saccard, whose apartment was also on the second floor, symmetrical with his wife’s, came into her room as a husband would, wearing slippers. He set foot there little more than once a month, always in connection with some delicate financial matter. This morning he had the red eyes and pallid complexion of a man who has not slept. He gallantly kissed his young wife’s hand.

“You’re feeling sick, my dear?” he said as he sat down next to the other corner of the fireplace. “A little migraine, I suppose? . . . Forgive me for adding to your headaches with a lot of financial gibberish, but the situation is rather serious.”

From the pocket of his dressing gown he withdrew Worms’s bill, which Renée recognized by the glossy paper.

“I found this bill on my desk yesterday,” he continued, “and I’m sorry, but I absolutely cannot pay it at the present time.”

Out of the corner of his eye he studied the effect that these words had on his wife. She seemed completely stunned. Smiling, he resumed his speech: “You know, my dear, I’m not in the habit of going over your expenses, but I must say I was rather taken aback by certain items in this bill. For instance, here on page two, I see: ‘Ball gown: fabric, 70 fr.; tailoring, 600 fr.; money lent, 5,000 fr.; eau du Dr. Pierre, 6 fr.’ That’s quite a lot for a seventy-franc dress. . . . But you know I understand all these foibles. Your bill comes to 136,000 francs, and you’ve restrained yourself, almost, relatively speaking, I mean. . . . But I repeat, I cannot pay, I’m strapped at the moment.”

She reached out in a gesture of restrained spite.

“So be it,” she said curtly. “Give me back the bill. I’ll take care of it.”

“I see that you don’t believe me,” Saccard muttered, savoring as a triumph his wife’s incredulousness in regard to his financial difficulties. “I’m not saying that my position is in jeopardy, but business is in something of a turmoil right now. . . . I know I’m disturbing you, but allow me, if you will, to explain our situation. You have entrusted your dowry to me, and I owe it to you to be completely frank.”

He laid the bill on the mantelpiece, took up the tongs, and began to poke the fire. This mania for raking ashes while talking business had begun with him as a calculated stratagem but had become a habit. Whenever he came to a figure or statement that would have been difficult to pronounce forthrightly, he would knock a few logs off the pile and then laboriously repair it by pushing the logs back together and collecting smaller pieces to add to the heap. Sometimes he would almost disappear into the fireplace to go after a stray ember. His voice would become muffled, and the person to whom he was talking would become impatient or fascinated by the clever constructions he made with the hot coals and stop listening; and as a general rule they left him defeated but happy. Even when he called on other people in their homes, he would tyrannically take up the tongs. During the summer he toyed with a quill, a letter opener, or a penknife.

“My dear,” he said, just as he gave the fire a hard poke that sent the logs flying, “I beg your pardon once again for going into these details. . . . I’ve been punctual in paying you the interest on the money you placed in my hands. Without wishing to hurt your feelings, I can even say that I simply regarded that interest as your pocket money, paying your expenses and never asking you to contribute your half of the common household expenditures.”

He paused. Renée was in agony as she watched him clear a space in the ashes for a log. He was about to broach a delicate matter.

“I’ve been obliged, you understand, to make your money yield a substantial rate of interest. Rest assured that the capital is in good hands. . . . As for the money received for your Sologne properties, part of it went to pay for the house we are living in. The rest is invested in an excellent company, the Société Générale des Ports du Maroc. . . . We’re not going to count every penny, are we? But I wanted to make it clear to you that we poor husbands are sometimes sadly misjudged.”

He must have had a powerful reason for lying less than usual. The truth was that Renée’s dowry had long since ceased to exist. It had become one of the phony assets in Saccard’s safe. Although he was paying out interest on his wife’s money at an annual rate of two or three hundred percent or more, he wouldn’t have been able to produce a single bond or the smallest shred of the original capital. As he had half confessed, moreover, the 500,000 francs from the Sologne properties had gone into the down payment on the house and furniture, the total cost of which was nearly two million. He still owed a million to the decorator and the contractor.

“I make no demands of you,” Renée said at last. “I know that I’m very much in your debt.”

“Oh, my dear!” he exclaimed, taking his wife’s hand without putting down the tongs. “What an unpleasant thought! . . . Look, this is the situation in a nutshell. I’ve been unlucky on the Bourse, Toutin-Laroche has done some foolish things, and Mignon and Charrier are louts who’ve pulled a fast one on me. And that’s why I can’t pay your bill. You forgive me, don’t you?”

He seemed genuinely wrought up. He poked the tongs into the pile of logs, sending sparks shooting out like fireworks. Renée remembered the worried look he had worn for some time, but she had no way of divining the astonishing truth. Saccard had reached the point where he had to pull off a miracle every day. He lived in a house worth two million francs, on a princely allowance, yet some mornings he didn’t have a thousand francs in his safe. His expenses did not appear to be diminishing. He survived on debt, surrounded by a horde of creditors who from one day to the next devoured the scandalous profits he realized on certain of his dealings. Meanwhile, companies were collapsing under him, and deeper holes were opening up beneath his feet—holes that he leapt over because he could not fill them. Thus he was threading his way through a minefield in a state of continual crisis, redeeming notes of 50,000 francs yet not paying his coachman’s wages, affecting an ever more regal self-assurance, and whipping himself into an ever more furious rage as he drew upon mythical sources to make his empty cash box pour forth unending rivers of cash, with which he inundated Paris.

Times were hard for speculators. Saccard had proved himself a worthy son of city hall. Like Paris itself, he had enjoyed a rapid transformation, a time of feverish pleasure and blind expenditure. And like the city he now found himself faced with a formidable deficit, which had to be paid off in secret, for he would not hear of sobriety, economy, and a calm, bourgeois existence. He preferred to hold on to the pointless luxury and actual misery of the new boulevards from which he drew each morning the colossal fortune that he consumed by night. As he moved from adventure to adventure, all that he had left was the gilded façade without the capital to back it up. In this time of acute madness, not even Paris itself was more rash in risking its future, or more prompt to plunge itself into financial foolishness and fraud of every kind. The liquidation threatened to be terrifying.

The most promising speculations turned sour in Saccard’s hands. He had recently suffered considerable losses on the Bourse, as he had just confessed. By gambling on rising share prices, M. Toutin-Laroche had nearly sunk the Crédit Viticole when the market suddenly turned against him. Fortunately, the government, intervening behind the scenes, had put the well-known farm loan institution back on its feet. Saccard, shaken by these two blows and raked over the coals by his brother the minister for having threatened the security of the city’s delegation bonds, which depended on the solidity of the Crédit Viticole, proved even less fortunate in his speculation on real estate. Mignon and Charrier had broken with him completely. If he lashed out at them, it was because of the dull rage he felt at having made the mistake of building on his share of the land he’d bought with them, while they had prudently sold their share. While they were making a fortune, he was stuck with a great many empty houses, many of which he was forced to sell at a loss. One of the properties he unloaded was a house on the rue de Marignan, which he sold for 300,000 francs even though he still owed 380,000. He had invented a stratagem of his own, which involved insisting on an annual lease of 10,000 francs for an apartment that was worth 8,000 at most. The frightened tenant would not sign the lease until the landlord agreed to make him a gift of the first two years’ rent. This reduced the cost of the apartment to its actual price, but the lease still bore the figure of 10,000 francs per year, and when Saccard found a buyer and capitalized the income on the property, the calculations were truly fantastic. He was unable to apply this swindle on a large scale, however. His houses went unrented. He had built them too soon. Surrounded by freshly cleared lots that became forlorn mud flats in winter, his buildings were isolated, which seriously diminished their value. The deal that bothered him most was the huge swindle pulled off by Mignon and Charrier, who had bought from him a building on the boulevard Malesherbes when he had been forced to suspend construction. The contractors had finally been bitten by the rage to reside on “their own boulevard.” Although they had sold their share of the land from an earlier deal, they had caught wind of their former partner’s difficulties and now offered to take off his hands a plot on which construction had already begun. Some of the iron beams needed to support the building’s second-story flooring had already been laid. Yet they dismissed the structure’s solid stone foundation as so much useless rubble on the grounds that what they really wanted was a vacant lot on which they would be free to build as they pleased. Saccard was forced to sell without compensation for the hundred and some thousand francs he had already paid out. What exasperated him even more was that the contractors absolutely refused to buy back the land at 250 francs a meter, the figure agreed upon at the time of the split. They knocked off twenty-five francs a meter, like those secondhand clothing dealers who will only pay four francs for an item they sold for five the day before. Two days later, Saccard suffered pangs at the sight of an army of masons invading the fenced-in construction site to resume work on the “useless pile of rubble.”

He was thus able to pretend to his wife that he was strapped for cash all the more convincingly as his business dealings became increasingly entangled. He was not a man to confess for love of truth.

“But monsieur,” Renée asked with an air of doubt, “if you are in difficulty, why did you buy me that aigrette and necklace, which I believe cost you 65,000 francs? . . . I have no use for those jewels, and I shall be obliged to ask your permission to dispose of them in order to raise money to pay Worms a first installment on what I owe.”

“You’ll do no such thing!” he exclaimed anxiously. “If you’re not seen wearing those jewels tomorrow night at the ministry ball, there will be talk about my position.”

He was in a good mood that morning. He ended with a smile and a wink, whispering, “My dear, we speculators are like pretty women. We have our sly ways. . . . Please, I beg you, for my sake, keep your aigrette and your necklace.”

He could not tell her the story, which was quite a good one but rather risqué. One night after supper, Saccard and Laure d’Aurigny had formed an alliance. Laure was up to her eyes in debt and had only one thought in mind: to find a nice young man willing to run off to London with her. Saccard, for his part, felt the ground giving way beneath him. With his back to the wall, his imagination cast about for an expedient that would display him to the public sprawled upon a bed of gold and banknotes. Lingering over dessert, both half-drunk, the whore and the speculator came to an understanding. He hatched the plan of selling Laure’s diamonds in a sale that would grip the imagination of all of Paris. He would then make a great splash by buying some of the jewels himself, for his wife. With the proceeds from this sale, around 400,000 francs, he managed to satisfy Laure’s creditors, to whom she owed almost twice that amount. It was quite likely that he pocketed part of his 65,000 francs himself. When people saw him putting the Aurigny woman’s affairs in order, they took him to be her lover and concluded that he must have paid off all her debts and made a fool of himself for her. Suddenly he was the man of the hour, and his credit was miraculously restored. At the Bourse everyone teased him about his passion with smiles and allusions that pleased him no end. Meanwhile, Laure d’Aurigny, notorious as a result of all this fuss even though he had never spent a single night with her, pretended to deceive him with eight or ten imbeciles spurred on by the idea of stealing her from a man of such colossal wealth. Within a month she had two sets of furniture and more diamonds than she had been forced to sell. Saccard had taken to going to her place to smoke a cigar every afternoon after leaving the Bourse. He often glimpsed coattails fleeing out the door in terror as he arrived. When they were alone, they couldn’t look at each other without laughing. He kissed her on the forehead, as if her perverse mischief excited him. He never gave her a cent, and once she even lent him money to pay off a gambling debt.

Renée felt compelled to press her point and brought up the idea of at least pawning the jewels, but her husband insisted that this was impossible because all Paris expected to see her wearing them the next night. The young woman, quite worried about Worms’s bill, then tried another tack.

“But my business in Charonne is going well, isn’t it?” she blurted out. “You were telling me the other day that the profits would be superb. . . . Maybe Larsonneau would advance me the 136,000 francs?”

Saccard had momentarily left the tongs lying between his legs. Now he grabbed them energetically, leaned forward, and practically disappeared into the fireplace, from which the young woman heard a muffled voice murmur, “Yes, yes, Larsonneau might perhaps—”

She thus arrived of her own accord at the point toward which he had been gently leading her since the beginning of the conversation. His masterstroke in Charonne had already been in preparation for two years. His wife had always been unwilling to sell Aunt Elisabeth’s land. She had sworn to her aunt that she would keep the property intact as a bequest for her child, should she become a mother. Faced with such stubbornness, the speculator’s imagination had gone to work and concocted a poem of epic proportions. It was a work of exquisite perfidy, a colossal fraud of which the city, the state, his wife, and even Larsonneau were to be the victims. He no longer spoke of selling the land, though he moaned every day about how foolish it was to leave it unproductive, to settle for a return of two percent. Renée, always hard up for cash, eventually agreed to some sort of speculative venture. He based his plan on the certainty of an imminent expropriation to make way for the boulevard du Prince-Eugène, whose route had not yet been finally decided. At this point he had brought in as a partner his old accomplice Larsonneau, who struck a bargain with his wife on the following terms. She was to contribute the land, representing a value of 500,000 francs. Larsonneau, for his part, promised to invest an equal amount to build on that land a music hall connected to a large park featuring amusements such as swings, skittles, bowling, and the like. Naturally the profits were to be shared, and by the same token any losses were to be borne fifty-fifty. If either partner wished to withdraw from the agreement, he could demand his share based on an estimate of the current value. Renée looked surprised at the figure of 500,000 francs, which seemed high since the land was worth 300,000 at most. But Saccard gave her to understand that this was a clever way of tying Larsonneau’s hands later on, since what he planned to build on the property would never be worth that much.

Larsonneau had become an elegant man about town, who wore fine gloves, dazzling linen, and astonishing ties. To run his errands he had a tilbury as finely tuned as a piece of clockwork, with a high seat on which he sat and drove himself around town. His offices on the rue de Rivoli comprised a suite of sumptuous rooms in which not a single file folder or scrap of paper was to be seen. His clerks wrote on tables of stained pear-wood, inlaid with marquetry and trimmed with chased brass. He had assumed the title of “expropriation agent,” a new profession that the public works of the city of Paris had called into being. His city hall connections yielded him advance information about the routing of new thoroughfares. When he learned the route of a proposed boulevard from one of the surveyors, he offered his services to the threatened landowners. Before the eminent domain decree was issued, he persuaded them to take certain steps to increase their indemnities. When a landowner accepted his proposal, he assumed all the costs himself, had a plan of the property drawn up, shepherded the case through the courts, and paid a lawyer in exchange for a percentage of the difference between the city’s initial offer and the indemnity finally awarded by the jury. In addition to this almost respectable activity, however, he was involved in several other lines of work. In particular, he lent money at usurious rates of interest. He was not a usurer of the old school—shabbily dressed, dirty, with blank eyes as expressionless as a five-franc piece and pale lips drawn as tightly as the strings of a purse. He smiled and darted charming glances here and there, had his suits made by Dusautoy, and lunched at Brébant’s with his victim, whom he called “my good fellow” and plied with Havana cigars over dessert. In fact, despite his penchant for wearing jackets cut narrowly at the waist, Larsonneau was a frightful fellow who, without perceptible change in his friendly demeanor, would hound a man for payment of a promissory note until he’d driven the hapless debtor to suicide.

Saccard would gladly have sought out a different partner, but he was still worried about the fake inventory that Larsonneau guarded like a precious possession. He preferred to involve him in the deal in the hope that circumstances might arise that would allow him to reclaim the compromising document. Larsonneau built the music hall out of wood and plaster topped by small tin turrets painted yellow and red. In the populous Charonne neighborhood, the park and amusements proved successful. After two years, the speculation seemed to have prospered, although the profits were really quite small. Thus far Saccard had spoken to his wife of the future of this fine idea only in the most glowing of terms.

Renée, seeing that her husband was making no move to come out of the fireplace and finding it harder and harder to make out his voice, finally said, “I’ll go see Larsonneau today. He’s my only resource.”

At that point he gave up struggling with the log.

“It’s been taken care of, my dear,” he replied with a smile. “Don’t I anticipate all your desires? . . . I saw Larsonneau last night.”

“And he promised to give you the 136,000 francs?” she asked anxiously.

Between the two burning logs he made a small pile of embers, delicately picking up the tiniest pieces of charcoal with the ends of the tongs and contemplating with an air of satisfaction the heap he was constructing with infinite skill.

“Now, hold on a moment!” he murmured. “A hundred and thirty-six thousand francs is quite a large sum. . . . Larsonneau is a fine fellow, but his means are still modest. He’s quite prepared to help you out. . . .

He paused, blinking his eyes and rebuilding a corner of the pile that had just crumbled. This game was beginning to confuse Renée’s thinking. In spite of herself she watched her husband’s increasingly clumsy efforts at the fireplace. She was tempted to offer him advice. Forgetting Worms, the bill, and her shortage of cash, she finally said, “Why don’t you put that big piece underneath? Then the others will stay in place.”

Her husband docilely obeyed. Then he said, “He can only come up with 50,000 francs. That’s still a nice advance. . . . But he doesn’t want to mix this business up with the Charonne arrangement. He’s only a go-between, you understand. Don’t you, my dear? The person who is lending the money is asking for enormous interest. He wants a promissory note for 80,000 francs due in six months.”

And having placed a sharp-pointed ember atop the pile, he folded his hands over the tongs and fixed his wife with a stare.

“Eighty thousand francs!” she exclaimed. “But that’s robbery! . . . Are you advising me to do something that foolish?”

“No,” he said curtly. “But if you’re in dire need of cash, I won’t forbid it.”

He got up as if to leave. Renée, torn by indecision, looked at her husband and at the bill he’d left on the fireplace. Then she took her poor head in her hands and murmured, “Oh, these business matters! . . . My head is splitting this morning. . . . Look, I’m going to sign this note for 80,000 francs. If I didn’t, I would become ill. I know myself. I’d spend the day in dreadful agony, worrying about what to do. . . . If I’m going to be foolish, I’d rather do it right away. It will ease the pain.”

She said she would ring for someone to bring the necessary forms, but he insisted on performing this service himself. He must have had the papers in his pocket, because he was gone for barely two minutes. While she was writing on a small table he had pushed close to the fireplace, he examined her with eyes bright with astonished desire. It was quite hot in the room, and the fragrance of the bedclothes and the young woman’s morning toilette still hung in the air. While talking she had allowed the dressing gown in which she had wrapped herself to fall open, and, as her husband stood in front of her, his eyes slipped from her bowed head and golden hair all the way down to the whiteness of her neck and bosom. He smiled strangely. The hot fire that had burned his face, the closed bedchamber whose heavy air retained a scent of love, the yellow hair and white skin that tempted him with a sort of conjugal disdain, filled his head with dreams, amplified the drama of which he had just played a scene, and stirred a secret and sensuous calculation in his brutal speculator’s flesh.

When his wife handed him the note and asked him to take care of everything, he took it but continued to stare at her.

“You are ravishingly beautiful,” he murmured.

And as she bent forward to push the table away, he kissed her roughly on the neck. She uttered a little cry. Then she got up, shaking, attempting to laugh, and thinking invincibly of the other man’s kisses of the night before. Saccard, meanwhile, regretted having kissed her like a coachman. In leaving he gave her hand a friendly squeeze and promised that he would have 50,000 francs for her that night.

Renée slept all day in front of the fire. In critical moments she could be as listless as a Creole. All her restless energy turned to laziness, nervous agitation, and numbness. She shivered, she needed a roaring fire, a suffocating heat that raised little drops of sweat on her forehead and made her drowsy. In this scorching climate, this bath of flames, her suffering almost ended. Her pain became a weightless dream, a vague sense of oppression, whose very ambiguity ultimately came to seem voluptuous. In this way, until evening arrived, she assuaged her remorse of the night before in the red glow of the fireplace, before a raging fire that caused the furniture around her to crack and at times left her unconscious of her existence. She was able to think of Maxime as of a searing ecstasy whose rays scorched her. She had a nightmare of strange loves atop flaming pyres, on white-hot beds. Céleste came and went, wearing the calm face of a servant with ice water in her veins. She had orders to admit no one. She even turned away “the Inseparables,” Adeline d’Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, who stopped by on their way back from lunch in a country house they had rented together in Saint-Germain. Toward evening, however, when Céleste came to inform her mistress that Monsieur’s sister Mme Sidonie wished to see her, she received orders to show the lady in.

Mme Sidonie generally came only at night. Her brother had nevertheless prevailed upon her to wear silk dresses. Yet even when the silk she wore came straight from the store, it somehow never appeared to be new. It seemed crumpled and without luster and looked like a rag. She had also agreed not to bring her basket to the Saccard household, but as a result her pockets were crammed with papers. She took an interest in Renée, whom she had never been able to turn into a client with a realistic appreciation of life’s exigencies. She visited her regularly and smiled at her with the discreet smile of a physician who does not wish to frighten his patient by revealing the name of her illness. She commiserated with the younger woman in her minor misfortunes, as if they were aches and pains that could be cured at once if only Renée would give her consent. Renée, who was in one of those states in which a person needs to be pitied, received her sister-in-law only to say that she was suffering from an unbearable headache.

“Why, it’s stifling in here, my beauty!” Mme Sidonie murmured as she slipped into the dark room. “Is it your neuralgia again? It comes from worry. You take things too much to heart.”

“Yes, I have lots of worries,” Renée answered listlessly.

It was getting dark. Renée had asked Céleste not to light a lamp. The only light was the bright red glow from the fireplace, which illuminated her entire body as she lay stretched out in her white dressing gown, its lace tinged pink by the fire. At the edge of the shadow one could make out just a bit of Mme Sidonie’s black dress and her two hands, folded and covered with gray cotton gloves. Her tender voice emerged from the darkness.

“Money troubles again!” she said, as if she were speaking of troubles of the heart, in a tone full of sweetness and pity.

Renée lowered her eyelids and nodded.

“Ah! If only my brothers listened to me, we’d all be rich. But they shrug their shoulders whenever I bring up that debt of three billion francs, you know. . . . My hopes are nevertheless still high. For the past ten years I’ve longed to go to England. I have so little time for myself ! . . . I finally made up my mind to write to London, and I’m waiting for a response.”

When Renée smiled, Mme Sidonie went on: “I know, you don’t believe me either. But you’ll be happy enough if I make you a gift one of these days of a nice round million. . . . You know, the story is quite simple: a banker from Paris lent the money to the son of the king of England, and since the banker died without a legitimate heir, the government is now entitled to demand repayment of the debt with compound interest. I’ve done the calculation, and it comes to 2,943,210,000 francs. . . . Rest assured, it will come, it will come.”

“In the meantime,” Renée put in with a touch of irony in her voice, “you might get someone to lend me 100,000 francs so that I could pay my tailor, who’s been giving me a hard time.”

“A hundred thousand francs can be found,” Mme Sidonie replied evenly. “It’s simply a matter of paying the price.”

The fireplace glowed. Renée, more languid than ever, stretched out her legs and revealed the tips of her slippers at the bottom of her dressing gown. The businesswoman’s tone reverted to pity.

“Poor dear, you’re really not reasonable. . . . I know many women, but I’ve never seen one who takes as little care of her health. You know, that Michelin girl is one who knows how to manage! I can’t help thinking of you when I see her happy and doing so well. . . . Do you know that M. de Saffré is madly in love with her and has already given her gifts worth almost 10,000 francs? . . . I believe her dream is to have a house in the country.”

Growing animated, she fumbled in her pocket.

“I have here a letter from an unfortunate young woman. . . . If we had a little light, I’d let you read it. . . . You see, her husband doesn’t take care of her. She was forced to borrow from a man I know and signed some IOUs. I was the one who had to pry the notes from the sheriff ’s clutches, and it took some doing. . . . Do you think those poor children were naughty? I welcome them in my home as if they were my son and daughter.”

“You know someone who lends money?” Renée asked casually.

“I know ten people who do. . . . You’re too good. Between women, we can speak frankly, no? Just because your husband is my brother is no reason to excuse him for running after tramps and leaving a lovely woman like you moldering by the fire. . . . This Laure d’Aurigny costs him a king’s ransom. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he refused you the money. He did refuse it to you, didn’t he? . . . The wretch!”

Renée listened complacently to this soft voice, which emerged from the shadows like a still-vague echo of her own dreams. Her eyes half-closed, she was practically lying down in her armchair and had forgotten that Mme Sidonie was there. She fancied she had dreamed of evil thoughts coming to her and tempting her with gentle blandishments. The businesswoman spoke at length, like a monotonous flow of lukewarm water.

“It’s Mme de Lauwerens who ruined your life. You’ve never wanted to believe me. You wouldn’t be there crying by your fireplace if you’d been willing to trust me. . . . And I love you as I love my own eyes, my pretty. Your foot is ravishing. You’re going to laugh at me, but I have to tell you how mad I am about you: if I go three days without seeing you, I absolutely must come to pay my respects. Yes, I feel I’m missing something. I need to feast my eyes on your beautiful hair, your face so white and delicate, your slender waist. . . . Really, I’ve never seen another woman with a figure like yours.”

In the end Renée smiled. Not even her lovers displayed such warmth, such rapt ecstasy, when they spoke to her of her beauty. Mme Sidonie saw that smile.

“All right, then, it’s agreed,” she said, rising abruptly from her seat. “I rattle on and on and forget that I’m giving you a headache. . . . You’ll come tomorrow, won’t you? We’ll talk money and find you a lender. . . . Hear me, now: I want you to be happy.”

Still motionless, fainting from the heat, the young woman was silent for a while before answering, as though it took laborious effort on her part to understand what was being said. “Yes, I’ll come, it’s agreed, and we’ll talk, but not tomorrow. . . . Worms will be content with an installment on what I owe. When he bothers me again, we’ll see. . . . Don’t say anything more about all this. My head is splitting from talking business.”

Mme Sidonie looked quite upset. She was on the point of sitting down again and resuming her soothing monologue, but Renée’s weary attitude persuaded her to postpone her attack. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of papers, among which she searched for and eventually found an object enclosed in a pink box. “I came to recommend this new soap to you,” she said, reverting to her businesswoman’s voice. “I’ve taken a great interest in the inventor, a charming young man. It’s a very gentle soap, very good for the skin. You’ll try it, won’t you? And mention it to your friends? . . . I’ll leave it here, on the mantel.”

She had reached the doorway when she turned again and, standing in the rosy glow from the fireplace, her face like wax, she began to sing the praises of an elastic belt, an invention she said was destined to replace the corset.

“It gives you a perfectly round waist, a real wasp waist,” she said. “I rescued it from a bankruptcy. When you come, you can try on some samples, if you like. . . . It took me a week of running to the lawyers. The papers are in my pocket, and I’m on my way right now to see an official about having the final lien removed. . . . See you soon, my darling. Remember that I’m waiting for you and that I want to dry your beautiful eyes.”

She slipped out and disappeared. Renée didn’t even hear her close the door. She remained in front of the dying fire, continuing her daydream, her head full of dancing numbers, while in the distance she heard the voices of Saccard and Mme Sidonie talking, offering her considerable sums in the tone in which an auctioneer invites bids on a piece of furniture. On her neck she could still feel her husband’s brutal kiss, and when she turned around there was the businesswoman at her feet, with her black dress and pasty face, making passionate speeches to her, extolling her perfections, begging her for a tryst in the posture of a lover on the brink of despair. This made her smile. The heat in the room was more and more stifling. And the young woman’s stupor and bizarre dreams were merely the products of a light and artificial sleep, and behind that thin veil she could still see the small private room on the boulevard and the wide divan next to which she had fallen to her knees. She had ceased to suffer altogether. When she opened her eyes, Maxime flitted through the rosy firelight.

The next day, at the ministry ball, beautiful Mme Saccard was marvelous to behold. Worms had accepted the payment of 50,000 francs. She emerged from financial embarrassment laughing like a woman who has recovered from a serious illness. When she crossed the salons in her splendid pink faille gown with its long Louis XIV train edged with white lace, there was a murmur, and the men shouldered one another aside to catch a glimpse of her. Those who knew her intimately bowed with discreet, knowing smiles, paying homage to those beautiful shoulders, so well-known to all of official Paris—indeed, they were the stalwart pillars on which the Empire rested. She had bared her bosom with such scorn for gawkers, and walked with such tranquillity and tenderness in her nudity, that it almost ceased to be indecent. Eugène Rougon, the illustrious politician, recognizing that those bare breasts were even more eloquent than his speeches in the Chamber and better at convincing skeptics and making people savor the charms of the reign, went over and complimented his sister-in-law on her bold stroke in dropping her neckline yet another inch— a happy inspiration, he called it. Nearly all the members of the Corps Législatif were there, and from the way the deputies were looking at the young woman, the minister expected to win a handsome victory when the delicate matter of the City of Paris loans came before that body one day hence. No one could vote against a government that could take a compost of millions of francs and out of such a dung heap produce a flower like Renée—such a strangely voluptuous flower, with her silky flesh, her statuesque nudity, her sensuous presence that left a warm fragrance of pleasure in its wake. What had everyone at the ball whispering, however, were the necklace and the aigrette. The men recognized these gems. The women pointed them out to one another with furtive glances. No one talked about anything else the whole evening. And the salons, illuminated by white light from chandeliers, stretched off into the distance, filled with a resplendent throng, like a constellation of stars fallen into a space too small to hold them.

At around one o’clock Saccard disappeared. He had savored his wife’s success as a man who has successfully pulled the wool over people’s eyes. He had once again shored up his credit. A business matter called him to Laure d’Aurigny’s. In leaving he asked Maxime to escort Renée home after the ball.

Maxime had spent the evening quietly at Louise de Mareuil’s side, both of them very much occupied with making disparaging comments about every woman who passed. Whenever they noticed some particularly egregious bit of fatuousness, they stifled their laughter with their handkerchiefs. Renée had to come over and ask the young man for his arm so that she could leave the salons. In the carriage she exhibited a nervous gaiety. She was still aflutter with the intoxicating mix of light, perfume, and noise she had just sampled. In any case she seemed to have forgotten their “foolishness” on the boulevard, as Maxime called it. Yet she queried him in a strange tone of voice: “So that little hunchback Louise is quite amusing, is she?”

“Oh, very amusing!” the young man responded, laughing some more. “You saw Duchess von Sternich with a yellow bird in her hair, didn’t you? . . . Well, would you believe that Louise says it’s a mechanical bird that flaps its wings and cries, ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ at the poor duke every hour?”

Renée found this emancipated schoolgirl’s joke quite amusing. When they arrived home, as Maxime was about to say good night, she said, “Won’t you come up? Céleste has probably made me something to eat.”

He went up with his usual carefree manner. But no snack was waiting upstairs, and Céleste had gone to bed. Renée had to light the three candles in a small candlestick. Her hand was shaking a little.

“That idiot,” she said, referring to her chambermaid. “She must have misunderstood my orders. . . . I’ll never be able to undress all by myself.”

She went into her dressing room. Maxime followed her, intending to repeat another of Louise’s jokes, which had just come to him. Feeling as much at home as he would have felt in a friend’s apartment, he was already looking for his cigar case so that he could light a Havana. But Renée put down the candlestick, turned, and fell, speechless and provocative, into the young man’s arms, pressing her mouth to his.

Renée’s private apartment was a nest of silk and lace, a marvel of stylish luxury. A small boudoir preceded the bedroom. The two rooms were really just one, or at any rate the boudoir was little more than the antechamber of the bedroom, a large alcove furnished with chaises longues and a pair of curtains in lieu of a door. The walls of both rooms were hung with a heavy gray silk brocade featuring enormous bouquets of roses, white lilacs, and buttercups. The window and door curtains were of Venetian lace lined with alternating strips of gray and pink silk. In the bedroom, the white marble fireplace, a veritable jewel, was encrusted with lapis lazuli and precious mosaics that repeated the roses, white lilacs, and buttercups of the tapestry, displayed as in a bed of flowers. A large gray-and-pink bed, its woodwork hidden beneath padding and upholstery and its headboard pressed against the wall, filled an entire half of the room with its flowing draperies, its curtains of lace and silk brocade covered with bouquets from ceiling to carpet. It resembled a woman’s gown, rounded, patterned, and trimmed with puffs, bows, and flounces. The ample curtain, swelling out like a skirt, suggested a great lady in love—leaning back, swooning, almost collapsing onto the pillows. Beneath the curtain was a sanctuary of pleated linen and snowy lace, all sorts of delicate and transparent things bathed in a religious twilight. Alongside the bed—a monument whose devout splendor called to mind a chapel decked out for some holy day or other—the rest of the furniture was of no account: some low chairs, a full-length cheval glass, and various dressers with an infinite number of drawers. The blue-gray carpet featured a pattern of pale roses in full bloom, and on either side of the bed lay great black bearskin rugs trimmed with pink velvet and silver claws, positioned so that the bears’ heads faced the window and stared through glass eyes at the empty sky.

This bedroom possessed a gentle harmony, a muffled silence. No shrill note, no glint of metal or bright flash of gold, intruded upon the dreamy melody of pink and gray. Even the fireplace ornaments—the mirror frame, the clock, the small candelabra—were of old Sèvres 4 whose gilt copper mountings were barely visible. These were marvelous pieces, especially the clock, with its round of chubby-cheeked Cupids swooping down upon the dial and peering over its edge like a gang of naked scamps mocking the rapid passage of the hours. This subdued luxury, these colors, these objects reflected Renée’s taste for the soothing and pleasant and created a twilit setting, as in an alcove with curtains drawn. The bed seemed to go on and on, as if the entire room were one immense bed, with its carpets, its bearskins, its upholstered seats and padded wall-hangings, which carried the softness of the floor up along the walls and all the way to the ceiling. As in a bed, moreover, the young woman left the imprint, the warmth, the fragrance of her body on everything in the room. When you pulled back the double curtain of the boudoir it was as if you were lifting a silk counterpane to enter a big bed still warm and moist, covered with fine linen, upon which lay in dreamy slumber the lovely shape of a thirty-year-old Parisienne.

The adjoining wardrobe, a spacious closet hung with old chintz, was simply furnished all around with tall rosewood armoires containing an army of dresses. The very methodical Céleste lined up these dresses in order of seniority, labeled them, and brought arithmetic precision to her mistress’s whims for yellow or blue, making sure that the wardrobe was always as solemn as a sacristy and as clean as a royal stable. There was no furniture in this closet except for the armoires, and no article of clothing was ever left lying about. The panels of the cabinetry gleamed as cold and clean as the varnished panels of a coupé.

But the marvel of the apartment, the room that had all Paris talking, was the dressing room. People spoke of “beautiful Mme Saccard’s dressing room” the way they spoke of “the Gallery of Mirrors at Versailles.” The room was located in one of the mansion’s towers, just above the buttercup salon. One’s first thought on entering was of a large round tent, an enchanted tent pitched in a dream by some amorous Amazon. In the center of the ceiling, a crown of chased silver held sections of tent that curved downward to the walls and then dropped straight to the floor. This sumptuous drapery consisted of a pink silk lining covered with very thin muslin gathered in broad pleats. A lace appliqué separated the pleats, and strands of silver chain ran down from the crown along the fabric on either side of each appliqué. The pinkish gray of the bedroom brightened here to a pinkish white, the color of naked flesh. And in this arbor of lace, beneath these curtains that hid the entire ceiling except for a small bluish aperture in the empty center of the crown, where Chaplin5 had painted a laughing cupid eyeing his arrow and preparing to shoot, it was easy to believe that you were at the bottom of a box of candy, or a precious jewel case enlarged to show off not the splendor of a diamond but the nakedness of a woman. The carpet, as white as snow, was unblemished by any sprinkling of flowers. The furniture included a mirrored armoire whose two panels were encrusted with silver; a chaise longue, two poufs, and some white satin stools; and a large dressing table with a pink marble top, its feet hidden by flounces of muslin and lace. The glassware on the dressing table—bottles, vases, and basin—was of old Bohemian crystal with streaks of pink and white. And on another table, encrusted with silver like the mirrored armoire, lay the paraphernalia and utensils of grooming, a bizarre collection including a number of small implements whose purpose was difficult to make out: backscratchers, nail buffers, files of all sizes and shapes, straight and curved scissors, and all manner of tweezers and pins. Each of these objects, in silver and ivory, bore Renée’s monogram.

The dressing room had one especially delightful corner, to which it owed its fame above all else. Opposite the window, the sections of drapery opened up to reveal, at the end of a long, shallow alcove, a bathtub, a sunken basin of pink marble set right into the floor so that its edges, fluted like those of a large shell, lay flush with the carpet. Marble steps led down into this tub. Above the swan-necked silver faucets, a scalloped Venetian mirror without a frame, with frosted patterns etched into the crystal, filled the end of the alcove. Every morning Renée took a short bath, which for the rest of the day left the dressing room suffused with moisture and a fragrance of moist young flesh. Occasionally a bottle of perfume left unstoppered or a cake of soap left out of its box injected a more violent note into this rather insipid languor, in which the young woman liked to lie almost naked until noon. The puffy draperies were also bare. The pink bathtub, tables, and basins, and the muslin covering the ceiling and walls beneath which one could imagine a reddish flow of blood, took on the roundness of flesh, of shoulders and breasts, and depending on the time of day it all resembled the snowy white skin of a child or the warm flesh of a woman. It was nakedness writ large. When Renée stepped out of her bath, her fair body added but a touch more pink to the abundant pink flesh of the room itself.

It was Maxime who undressed Renée. He was good at that sort of thing, and his agile hands divined pins and slipped around her waist with innate understanding. He undid her hair, removed her diamonds, and then redid her hair for the night. And since he combined his duties as lady’s maid and hairdresser with witty remarks and caresses, Renée had to choke back belly laughs as the silk of her bodice crinkled and her petticoats were unbuttoned one by one. When she saw that she was naked, she blew out the candles, took Maxime by the waist, and all but carried him into the bedroom. The ball had completed her intoxication, and in her fever she was aware of having spent the previous day by the corner of her fire in an ardent stupor of vague but pleasant dreams. She could still hear the dialogue between Saccard and Mme Sidonie as they called out numbers like bailiffs in their clipped voices and nasal twang. It was these people who bored her to death and drove her to crime. And now, as she searched the darkness of the huge bed for Maxime’s lips, she pictured him again as she had the night before, staring out at her from the middle of the fireplace with blazing eyes.

The young man stayed until six the next morning. She gave him the key to the side gate of the Parc Monceau and made him swear to return every night. The dressing room was connected to the buttercup salon by a service stairway hidden in the wall, which gave access to all the rooms in the tower. From the salon it was easy to slip into the conservatory and from there to reach the park.

In making his way out at dawn through a thick fog, Maxime was rather bewildered by his good fortune. He accepted it, moreover, with a smugness typical of his sexless nature.

“Too bad!” he thought. “She was the one who wanted it, after all. . . . She has an awfully fine body, and she’s right: she’s twice as much fun in bed as Sylvia.”

They had been drifting toward incest since the day when Maxime in his threadbare schoolboy’s tunic had flung himself at Renée’s neck and creased her French Guards jacket. Every minute that had passed between them since that moment had been a minute of perversion. The peculiar way in which the young woman had raised the child; the familiarities that had made comrades of them; and, later, the ribald audacity of their shared confidences—all that dangerous promiscuity had in the end formed a singular bond between them, turning the joys of friendship into almost carnal pleasures. They had been surrendering to each other for years. The brutal act was only the acute crisis of this unconscious malady of love. In the frenetic world in which they lived, their sin had grown as if fertilized by the impure secretions of a dung heap. It had developed with peculiar refinements, in conditions particularly conducive to debauchery.

When the big calèche carried them off to the Bois and gently along its carriageways as they whispered smutty stories in each other’s ears and searched their memories of childhood for dirty jokes, it was merely a diversion of their desires, an unavowed gratification of their wants. They felt vaguely guilty, as if they had grazed each other’s flesh. Indeed, that original sin, that languor born of filthy conversations that had left them weary with voluptuous fatigue, had stimulated them more gently than frank and unmistakable kisses would have done. Their camaraderie was thus the slow progress of two lovers fated to end one day in the private room at the Café Riche and finally in Renée’s large pink-and-gray bed. When they found themselves in each other’s arms, they did not feel the shock of sin. They were like old lovers, whose kisses were steeped in nostalgia. Their two beings had been in intimate contact for so long that despite themselves they spoke of a past that had been suffused with a tenderness of which they had been unaware.

“Do you remember the day I arrived in Paris?” Maxime asked. “You were wearing an odd outfit, and with my finger, I traced an angle on your breast and advised you to alter your neckline to a V.... I felt your skin under your blouse, and my finger went in a little. . . . It was very nice.”

Renée laughed and kissed him. “You were already an awfully naughty boy,” she murmured. “You had us in stitches at Worms’s, remember? We called you ‘our little man.’ I always thought Suzanne would have let you have your way with her if the marquise hadn’t kept shooting her such furious looks.”

“Yes, indeed, we laughed quite a lot,” the young man whispered. “The photo album, you know? And all the rest—our errands in Paris, our snacks at the pastry shop on the boulevard—you know, those little strawberry cakes you adore? . . . I’ll always remember that afternoon when you told me about Adeline’s little adventure in the convent, when she wrote letters to Suzanne and signed them with a man’s name, Arthur d’Espanet, and asked him to come carry her off.”

The lovers laughed at this story yet again, and then Maxime went on in his flirtatious voice. “When you came in your carriage to pick me up at school, we must have made quite an unusual pair. . . . I was so small I vanished under your skirts.”

“Yes, yes,” she stammered, shivering and drawing the young man toward her. “That was so nice, as you say. . . . We loved each other without knowing it, didn’t we? I knew before you did. The other day, on the way home from the Bois, my leg brushed against yours, and I jumped. . . . But you didn’t notice anything, did you? You weren’t thinking about me?”

“Oh, yes I was!” he replied, a bit embarrassed. “Only I didn’t know, you understand. . . . I didn’t dare.”

He was lying. The idea of possessing Renée had never occurred to him in any clear way. He had allowed his dissolute habits to rub off on her but had never really desired her. He was too lackadaisical for such effort. He had accepted Renée because she pressed herself on him, and he had slipped into her bed without wanting to or realizing in advance what he was doing. Having once rolled in her sheets, he stayed because it was warm and because it was typical of him to abandon himself whenever he fell into a hole. At first his ego was gratified. She was the first married woman he had had. He gave no thought to the fact that her husband was his father.

Renée, however, sinned with all the ardor of a heart that seeks love beneath its station. She, too, had slid down a slippery slope, yet she had not remained passive the whole way down. Desire had awakened in her too late to combat it, after the fall had become ineluctable. All at once she saw that fall as a necessary consequence of her boredom, a rare and extreme pleasure that alone could rouse her weary senses, her ravaged heart. It was during that autumn drive, as slumber descended on the Bois at dusk, that vague thoughts of incest had first come to her, like a tickling that sent a strange new shiver through her flesh. That same night those thoughts had taken on a more definite shape, had risen up ardently before her in the flames of the conservatory as she stood, half-intoxicated by the dinner and lashed by jealousy, spying on Maxime and Louise. At that moment she craved sin, the sin that no one commits, the sin that would fill her empty life and plunge her at last into the hell of which she had been frightened ever since she was a little girl. By the next day she craved it no more, overcome by a strange feeling of remorse and lassitude. It seemed to her that she had already sinned, that it wasn’t as good as she had expected, and that it really would be too sordid to go through with it in reality. The crisis had had to come as a caprice of fate, of its own accord, independent of the will of the two individuals involved—two comrades who were destined one fine night to make a mistake, to end up making love rather than shaking hands. After that mindless fall, however, her dreams of unknown pleasures had revived, and she had taken Maxime into her arms again because she was curious about him and about the cruel pleasures of a love she regarded as a crime. Her will accepted the incest, demanded it, and intended to savor it to the end, to the point of remorse—if remorse ever came. She was active and conscious of what she was doing. She loved with all the fervor of a celebrated socialite, with all the anxious prejudices of a lady of the bourgeoisie, and with all the conflicts, joys, and antipathies of a woman drowning in self-contempt.

Maxime returned night after night. He entered by way of the garden around one o’clock. Usually Renée was waiting for him in the conservatory, which he had to cross to reach the small salon. They were in any case supremely impudent, barely troubling to hide themselves and neglecting the commonest precautions of adulterers. Of course this corner of the mansion was theirs. Only Baptiste, the husband’s valet, was allowed to enter, and Baptiste, a serious sort of man, vanished the moment his duties were discharged. Maxime joked that he probably went off to write his memoirs. One night, however, shortly after Maxime arrived, Renée pointed out the valet solemnly making his way across the salon, candlestick in hand. With his ministerial bearing, and his face illuminated by the yellow light of burning wax, the tall servant looked even more proper and austere than usual. Leaning forward, the lovers watched him blow out his candle and head for the stables, where the horses and grooms lay sleeping.

“He’s making his rounds,” Maxime said.

Renée stood shivering. Baptiste generally made her anxious. She sometimes said that with his chilly demeanor and frank stare, which never came to rest on a woman’s shoulders, he was the only decent man in the house.

Thereafter they became more cautious in their meetings. They shut the doors to the small salon, which allowed them to enjoy that room, the conservatory, and Renée’s apartment in complete tranquillity. It was a whole world unto itself. There for the first few months they savored the most refined and exquisitely exotic pleasures. They moved the scene of their lovemaking from the big pink-and-gray bed in the bedroom to the pink-and-white nudity of the dressing room and the symphony in yellow minor of the small salon. Each room, with its own peculiar fragrance, its own hangings, its own special life, yielded a different sort of tenderness and made Renée a different kind of lover. In the plush bed of the grande dame in the warm aristocratic bedroom, where lovemaking took on the discreet accents required by good taste, she was delicate and pretty. Under the flesh-colored tent, amid the fragrances and humid languor of the bath, she displayed herself as a capricious and carnal whore, surrendering her body as it emerged from the bath, which was where Maxime preferred to take her. And finally, downstairs, in the morning sunlight of the small salon, bathed in an auroral yellow that gilded her hair, she became a goddess, with the head of a blonde Diana, her naked arms in chaste poses and her unblemished body positioned on the love seats in postures that revealed noble lines and an antique grace. Maxime was almost afraid of this place, however, and Renée enticed him there only on foul days, when her intoxication required a more pungent note. Then they made love in the conservatory. That was where they savored incest.

One night, in an hour of anguish, the young woman asked her lover to fetch one of the black bearskins. They lay down on that inky fur alongside a pool adjacent to the big circular walkway. Outside, in the limpid moonlight, the air was terribly cold. Maxime arrived shivering, his ears and fingers frozen. The conservatory was so overheated that he fainted on the bearskin. Coming in from the sharp, stinging cold, he entered an oven so oppressive that he felt a burning sensation, as if he were being beaten with birch rods. When he came to, he saw Renée kneeling over him with a fixed stare and in a brutal posture that frightened him. With her hair tumbling down and her shoulders bare, she supported herself on her fists, arching her back as if she were a great cat with phosphorescent eyes. Lying on his back, the young man, peering over the shoulders of the lovely, amorous beast that held him in her gaze, caught sight of the marble sphinx, its legs gleaming in the moonlight. Renée had assumed the posture and the smile of that monster with a woman’s head, and with her petticoats undone she looked like that black god’s white sister.

Maxime continued to lie on his back. The heat was suffocating. It was a somber heat, which did not fall from heaven as a rain of fire but hung about the earth like an unhealthy exhalation, giving off a mist that rose like a storm-laden cloud. The humid heat covered the lovers with a kind of dew, a hot sweat. For a long time they remained motionless and silent in this bath of flames, Maxime prostrate and inert, Renée quivering on her wrists like an animal on supple and sinewy hocks. From outside, through the small panes of the conservatory windows, came glimpses of the Parc Monceau, of clumps of trees with fine black outlines and lawns as white as frozen lakes, a whole lifeless landscape whose delicate touches and smooth, pale colors were reminiscent of Japanese engravings. And this scorching bit of earth, this blazing bed on which the lovers lay, seethed strangely amid the deep silent chill.

They had a night of wild love. Renée was the man, the passionate and active will. Maxime submitted. With the plucked limbs and slender grace of a Roman ephebe, this pretty, fair-haired, neutered boy, stricken in his virility since youth, became a strapping girl in this young woman’s inquisitive arms. He seemed to have been born and raised for perverse sensual pleasure. Renée relished her dominance, bending this creature of still-dubious sexuality to her passion. From this her desire derived constant astonishment, her senses unending surprise, a bizarre sensation of uneasiness and acute pleasure. He bewildered her. Her doubts revived each time she returned to his fine skin, his plump neck, his sighs and swoons. She experienced an hour of completeness. Maxime, by revealing a new thrill to her, completed her extravagant outfits, her prodigious luxury, her unbridled existence. He invested her flesh with the note of excess that sounded in everything else in her life. He was a lover suited to the fashions and follies of the age. This pretty youth, whose jackets showed off his slender shape; this boy who ought to have been a girl and who strolled the boulevards with his hair parted in the middle, with chuckling laughter and bored smiles, became in Renée’s hands one of those decadent deviants that can at times consume the flesh and derange the intelligence in nations gone rotten.

It was chiefly in the conservatory, moreover, that Renée played the man. The ardent night they spent there was followed by several others. The hothouse joined them in their lovemaking, burned with the heat of their passion. Through the oppressive air, by the white light of the moon, they took in the strangeness of the world around them, as the plants seemed vaguely to move about and embrace one another. The black bearskin filled the entire width of the path. At their feet mist rose from the root-choked pool as the pink stars of the water lilies opened on its surface as upon a virgin’s breast and the bushy tornelia drooped like the hair of swooning water nymphs. Around them, meanwhile, the palms and the giant bamboo of India rose toward the arched roof, where they bowed their heads and mingled their leaves like weary lovers unsteady on their feet. Lower down, the ferns, pterids, and alsophila were like sprightly ladies, their broad skirts trimmed with regular flounces, who stood silent and motionless along the path awaiting love. Beside them, the twisted, red-stained leaves of begonia and the spiky white leaves of caladium created a vague medley of hues ranging from the pallor of death to the color of a bruise, puzzling the lovers, who at times thought they could make out round shapes like hips and knees pressed hard against the earth by the brutality of sanguinary caresses. And the banana trees, bending under the weight of their fruit, spoke to them of the rich fertility of the soil, while the Abyssinian euphorbia, whose tapering stems—prickly, misshapen, and covered with horrid excrescences they glimpsed through the darkness—oozed sap, as if their procreative exuberance could not be contained. The deeper they peered into the recesses of the conservatory, the more the obscurity became charged with an ever more frenetic riot of stems and foliage. On the racks they could no longer distinguish the maranta, as soft as velvet, from the gloxinia, with its purple bells, or the dracaena, which resembled strips of polished old lacquer. The living plants danced in a circle, pursuing one another with unrequited tenderness. In the four corners, where curtains of vines created bowers, their carnal fantasies grew even wilder, and the supple shoots of vanilla, of Indian berries, of quisqualis and bauhinia turned into the interminable arms of lovers who remained out of sight while madly extending their embrace, drawing countless dispersed pleasures unto themselves. Those endless arms drooped wearily, knotted themselves in a spasm of love, sought one another out, and entwined each other like a pack of wild creatures in rut. The whole conservatory was in rut, the whole patch of virgin forest ablaze with the foliage and blossoms of the tropics.

Their senses warped, Maxime and Renée felt themselves caught up in the earth’s powerful nuptials. Through the bearskin the ground burned their backs, and hot droplets fell upon them from the tall palms. The sap rising in the trees’ flanks penetrated them as well, filling them with wild desire for immediate increase, for reproduction on a gigantic scale. They partook of the conservatory’s rut. There, in the pale glimmer, visions dazed them, long nightmares in which they witnessed the amours of the palms and the ferns. The foliage took on strange, weird shapes, which their desires transformed into sensual images. Murmurs and whispers came from the bushes, swooning voices, ecstatic sighs, muffled cries of pain, distant laughter— whatever was loquacious in their own kisses came echoing back at them. Sometimes they felt as if they’d been buffeted by an earthquake, as if the ground itself, in a climax of gratification, had erupted in sensuous sobs.

Had they closed their eyes, had the suffocating heat and pale light not been enough to plunge them into depravity of all the senses, the odors would have sufficed to rouse their nerves to an extraordinary degree of irritability. The pool enveloped them in a deep, pungent aroma compounded of the smells of a thousand blossoms and leaves. At times the vanilla cooed like wood pigeons. Then the stanhopea chimed in with harsh notes from their striped throats, whose exhalations were marked by a strong and bitter smell of convalescence. The orchids, in baskets suspended from small chains, were like living censers breathing out their distinctive scents. But the dominant odor, the odor responsible for all the muffled sighs, was a human odor, an odor of love, which Maxime recognized when he kissed the back of Renée’s neck and buried his head in her undone tresses. They were still intoxicated by that odor of amorous womanhood, which hung about the air of the conservatory as though this were the alcove where the earth gave birth.

Usually the lovers lay down beneath the tanghin from Madagascar, the poisonous shrub whose leaf Renée had bitten into. All around them, white statues laughed at the sight of such quantities of greenery engaged in the act of love. The moon, as it revolved, moved groups of plants about and animated the drama with its changing light. And they were a thousand leagues from Paris, far from the facile life of the Bois and official receptions, somewhere in the jungles of India or in some monstrous temple, where the black marble sphinx was god. They were aware of tumbling helplessly into crime, forbidden love, and bestial caresses. All the lushness that surrounded them, all the hidden tangle of the pool, all the naked shamelessness of the greenery plunged them into a Dantean inferno of passion. Then it was, in the depths of this glass cage seething with summer heat astray in that clear December chill, that they tasted incest, the criminal fruit of that overheated patch of earth, that terrifying bed that filled their hearts with unspoken fear.

Renée’s body seemed whiter as she crouched in the center of that black bearskin like a huge cat, its back arched and paws tense beneath supple, sinewy hocks. She was completely swollen with sensuality, and the clean outline of her shoulders and waist stood out with feline sharpness against the ink spot the black fur left on the yellow sand of the path. She eyed Maxime, her prey, lying on his back beneath her in a posture of utter surrender, completely in her possession. At intervals she would lean forward suddenly and kiss him with aching lips—lips that parted at those moments with the eager, sanguinary splendor of the Chinese hibiscus that covered the side of the house. In those instants she was nothing but a fiery child of the conservatory. Her kisses bloomed and faded like the red flowers of the great mallow, which last only a few hours and are continually reborn—the bruised, insatiable lips of a gigantic Messalina.

5

The kiss he had planted on his wife’s neck preoccupied Saccard. He had long since ceased to avail himself of his marital prerogatives. The rupture had come about naturally, as neither he nor his wife cared to maintain a relationship that both found inconvenient. He never thought of entering Renée’s bedroom unless there was a juicy piece of business to justify his conjugal attentions.

The Charonne deal was proving to be a stroke of fortune, though how it would turn out in the end still worried him. Larsonneau, for all his dazzling linen, smiled in a way he found unpleasant. The expropriation agent was only a go-between, a front whose complicity he bought with a commission of ten percent of all future profits. Yet even though his associate had not invested a penny in the deal, and Saccard, after providing him with the funds to build the music hall, had taken every possible precaution—options, undated letters, antedated receipts—he nevertheless felt an obscure foreboding, a presentiment of treachery. He suspected his accomplice of intending to blackmail him with the fake inventory that remained in his possession, which was the only reason Saccard had cut him in on the deal.

The two confederates therefore exchanged a hearty handshake. Larsonneau addressed Saccard as “chief.” Deep down, he admired his associate’s high-wire exploits as a speculator and followed his performances avidly. The idea of cheating such a partner appealed to him as a rare and piquant pleasure. He was toying with a plan that remained vague because he was still unsure of how to use the weapon he had in his possession without injuring himself. In any case, he sensed that he was at the mercy of his former colleague. Carefully prepared inventories listed land and buildings already estimated at nearly two million francs but in fact worth only a quarter that much, yet all these assets would be swallowed up in a colossal bankruptcy unless the expropriation fairy touched them with her magic wand. According to preliminary plans that the two confederates had been able to consult, the new boulevard—which was intended to link the artillery range at Vincennes 1 to the Prince Eugène Barracks and thus grant the gunners access to central Paris without obliging them to move through the Faubourg Saint-Antoine—would claim part of their land. Yet there was still a danger that the route would only skirt their property and that the ingenious music-hall speculation would fail on account of its very impudence. In that case Larsonneau would be left with a delicate situation on his hands. Despite his necessarily secondary role, the risk did nothing to alleviate his distress at the thought of collecting a paltry ten percent on such a colossal theft, which would run into millions. At such times he felt a desperate itch to reach out and lop off a slice for himself.

Saccard had not even wanted Larsonneau to lend money to his wife, preferring to amuse himself by staging an elaborate melodrama that appealed to his weakness for complicated chicanery.

“No, no, my friend,” he had said with his Provençal accent, which he exaggerated whenever he wanted to add zest to a joke, “let’s not mix up your accounts with mine. . . . You’re the only man in Paris to whom I’ve sworn never to owe anything.”

Larsonneau contented himself with hinting to Saccard that his wife was a bottomless pit. He advised him never to give her another cent so that she would be forced to sell them her share of the property at once. He would have preferred to deal with Saccard alone. From time to time he tested the waters, going so far as to say, with the weary, indifferent air of a man of the world, “You know, I really need to put my files in order. . . . Your wife scares me, old man. I wouldn’t want the authorities to get hold of certain documents I have in my office.”

Saccard was not a man to put up with such insinuations patiently, especially when he was well acquainted with the cold and meticulous order that Larsonneau maintained in his office. Cunning and energetic, the little man reacted with every fiber of his being against the fears that the smooth-talking usurer in the yellow gloves sought to arouse in him. The worst of it was that the thought of a scandal sent shivers up his spine. He imagined his brother angrily sending him into exile in Belgium and forcing him to earn his living in some shabby trade. One day he became so enraged that he forgot himself and addressed Larsonneau more familiarly than was his wont: “Listen, my boy, you’re a nice fellow, but you’d be doing yourself a favor if you gave me back that document—you know the one I mean. Otherwise we’ll end up fighting over it.”

Larsonneau feigned astonishment, grasped the hands of “the chief,” and assured him of his devotion. Saccard regretted his momentary impatience. It was at this point that he gave serious thought to a closer relationship with his wife. He might need her against his confederate, and not for the first time he mused to himself that the bed was a wonderful place in which to do business. Little by little the kiss on the neck grew into a revelation, opening up a whole new realm of tactics.

In any case he was in no hurry, for he was husbanding his resources. He allowed his plan to ripen throughout the winter, distracted as he was by a hundred other schemes, each murkier than the last. For him it was a dreadful winter, which saw him buffeted by one blow after another as each day he moved heaven and earth to avoid bankruptcy. Rather than curtail his lavish lifestyle, he threw gala after gala. Yet while he coped with every difficulty, he inevitably neglected Renée, whom he was holding in reserve for his triumphal stroke, when the time was ripe for a move in Charonne. He contented himself with preparing the dénouement by ceasing to provide her with any money except through Larsonneau. Whenever he found himself with a few thousand francs to spare and she pleaded poverty, he supplied the cash she needed but told her that Larsonneau’s creditors insisted on a note for double the amount. This farce amused him no end. The whole business of the notes delighted him by introducing an element of intrigue into the affair. Even in the days when his profits had been most unequivocal, he had paid out his wife’s allowance in a highly irregular way, at times giving her princely gifts and handing over fistfuls of banknotes only to leave her begging for weeks for a paltry sum. Now that he was seriously hard up for cash, he alluded to the expenses of the household and treated her as a creditor to whom it was impossible to confess his bankruptcy and who had to be put off with excuses. She barely listened, signing whatever he asked her to; her only complaint was that she wasn’t allowed to sign more.

In any event, he already held 200,000 francs of paper she had signed, which had cost him barely 110,000 francs. After having these notes endorsed by Larsonneau, in whose name they were drawn, he prudently placed them in circulation with the intention of using them as decisive weapons later on. He would never have gotten through that terrible winter, lending to his wife at usurious rates of interest and maintaining his lavish way of life, had he not sold his property on the boulevard Malesherbes, for which Mignon and Charrier paid cash, but at a significant discount.

For Renée that winter was one of endless joy. She suffered only from a shortage of cash. Maxime cost her an arm and a leg. He still treated her as his stepmother and allowed her to pay for everything. Yet her hidden poverty was for her merely one more source of pleasure. She schemed and racked her brain so that “her darling boy” would want for nothing, and when she persuaded her husband to come up with a few thousand francs for her, she and her lover devoured them in costly extravagances like two schoolmates let loose on their first escapade. When they hadn’t a cent to their name, they stayed home and enjoyed the huge, ugly mansion with its brand-new and impudently absurd luxury. Saccard was never there. The lovers sat by the hearth more often now than in the past, because Renée had at last succeeded in filling the glacial void under the mansion’s gilded ceilings with the heat of her ecstasy. This suspect house of worldly pleasure had become a chapel in which she practiced a new religion apart from the world. Maxime had done more for her than elicit a note of pleasure shrill enough to match her extravagant outfits; he was the lover this house required, with its storefront windows and its incrustation of sculpture from rooftop to cellar. He made all that plaster come alive, from the two chubby-cheeked cupids holding their dripping shell in the courtyard to the tall, naked women supporting the balconies and playing with apples and ears of corn in the pediments. He explained the all too sumptuous vestibule, the ridiculously constricted garden, and the splendid rooms crammed with armchairs but devoid of art. Renée, who had been bored to death there, suddenly brightened and began to use the house as if she had only just grasped its true purpose. And it was not only in her apartment that she paraded her love, not just in the buttercup salon or the conservatory, but throughout the house. Eventually she even found the divan in the smoking room to her liking. She enjoyed lying there, she said, because the room smelled vaguely of tobacco, which she found quite pleasant.

She took to receiving guests on two days instead of one. On Thursdays outsiders were welcome, but Mondays were reserved for close female friends. Men were not allowed. Only Maxime was admitted to these select gatherings, which were held in the small salon. One night Renée had the stupendous idea of dressing him as a woman and passing him off as one of her cousins. Adeline, Suzanne, Baroness von Meinhold, and other friends of hers rose to greet the newcomer, astonished by a face they vaguely recognized. When at last they realized what was going on, they laughed a lot and refused to let the young man change his clothes. They made him stay there in his skirt, teasing him and making off-color jokes. After seeing the ladies out through the main gate, he circled round the park and returned by way of the conservatory. Even Renée’s close friends never suspected a thing. The lovers could hardly have been more familiar than when they had been good comrades. And if a servant happened to catch them pressed rather too close together behind closed doors, there was no occasion for surprise, since the entire staff was used to these little jokes of Madame and the son of Monsieur.

Such utter freedom and impunity emboldened them still more. If they bolted their door at night, by day they kissed in every room in the house. They invented countless little games to while away the time on rainy days. But Renée’s greatest delight was still to make a roaring fire and nap in front of the fireplace. That winter she had a marvelous array of linen to choose from. Her chemises and peignoirs cost a king’s ransom, and their frilly lace and batiste barely covered her with a white cloud. She lay almost naked in the red glow of the fireplace, her lace and skin tinted pink, her flesh warmed through the thin fabric by the heat of the flames. Maxime, crouching at her feet, could kiss her knees without so much as feeling the garment, which shared the warmth and color of her beautiful body. When the sky was overcast, a dusky gloom enveloped the gray silk-lined bedroom, while Céleste quietly padded in and out behind the two lovers. She had of course become their accomplice. When they lingered in bed one morning, she found them there yet betrayed no emotion, as if her veins were filled with ice water. After that they cast all caution to the winds, and Céleste came in at all hours, never allowing the sound of their kisses to distract her from her work. They relied on her to warn them of any danger. They did not buy her silence. She was a very thrifty girl, very respectable, and if she had ever had a lover, no one knew about it.

In the meantime Renée did not cloister herself. She made the rounds of society with Maxime tagging along behind like a fair-haired page in a dark frock coat, and took greater pleasure in this ritual than ever before. Her season was one long triumph. Her outfits and hairdos had never been more boldly imagined. It was now that she dared to wear the famous tawny satin gown embroidered with images of a stag hunt, including such attributes as powder horn, bugles, and broad knives. And it was now that she set the fashion of wearing her hair in the style of the ancients, based on drawings that Maxime made for her at the recently opened Musée Campana. 2 She seemed rejuvenated in the fullness of her restless beauty. Incest burned within her, and its glow could be seen in her eyes, its heat felt in her laughter. She wore her glasses with supreme insolence on the end of her nose and stared at other women, at good friends of hers set apart from the rest by the enormity of their vice, with the air of a boastful adolescent and a fixed smile that said, “I have a crime of my own.”

Maxime found society tedious. In fact he thought it chic to be bored, because he did not really enjoy himself anywhere. At the Tuileries and the ministries he hid behind Renée’s petticoats. He took charge again, however, whenever an escapade was in the offing. Renée asked to return to the private room on the boulevard, where the width of the divan made her smile. After that he took her all over, to visit prostitutes, to the Bal de l’Opéra,3 to the front rows of burlesque houses, wherever raw vice could be savored incognito. Dead tired, they would then sneak back into the house and fall asleep in each other’s arms, sleeping off the intoxication of gutter Paris with snatches of ribald tunes still ringing in their ears. The next day, Maxime would mimic the actors, and Renée, playing the piano in the small salon, would attempt to emulate Blanche Muller’s hoarse voice and bumps and grinds in the role of La Belle Hélène. 4 Her music lessons at the convent were of no use to her now except to murder the latest burlesque numbers. Serious music filled her with horror. Maxime jeered at German music right along with her, and he felt it his duty to go hiss at Tannhäuser5 partly out of conviction and partly to defend his stepmother’s bawdy refrains.

One of their great entertainments was skating. Skating was “in” that winter, the emperor having been one of the first to try the ice on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne. Renée ordered a complete Polish skating outfit of velvet and fur from Worms and insisted that Maxime wear soft boots and a cap of fox fur. They went to the Bois in weather so bitingly cold that it stung their noses and lips, as if the wind were blowing fine sand against their faces. They enjoyed the cold. The Bois was completely gray, with stripes of snow clinging to the branches like thin strips of lace. And above the dull frozen lake the colorless skies were empty but for the islands whose fir trees still fringed the horizon, except that now those theatrical curtains were trimmed with billows of lace stitched by the snow. Together the two lovers glided through the frigid air like swallows swooping just above the ground. With one hand behind the back and the other on the partner’s shoulder they skated straight ahead, smiling, side by side, then turned and skated back to where they had begun, all within an ample section of the lake marked out by heavy ropes. Spectators watched from the main path above. Occasionally the skaters paused to warm themselves at stoves set up along the shore before resuming their activity, extending their flight as far as possible while tears of pleasure and cold welled up in their eyes.

When spring came, Renée remembered her elegy of old. She insisted that Maxime accompany her into the Parc Monceau at night and stroll with her by moonlight. They went to the grotto and sat on the grass in front of the colonnade. But when she reminded him of her desire to row out on the little lake, they noticed that the boat that could be seen from the house moored alongside one of the paths had no oars. Apparently they were put away at night. This was a disappointment. The darkness of the park made the lovers nervous in any case. They would have preferred a Venetian festival with red balloons and an orchestra. They were more comfortable in daylight, in the afternoon, and they often stood at one of the windows of the house to watch the carriages round the pleasant curve of the main carriageway. They liked this charming section of new Paris, this lovely and clean patch of nature with its velvety lawns punctuated by beds of flowers and carefully selected shrubs and lined with splendid white roses. Carriages here were as thick as on the boulevards, and strolling ladies dragged their skirts along the ground as softly as if they had never left their carpeted salons. Peering through the foliage, the lovers criticized the women’s outfits, pointed out their carriages, and with genuine delight savored the soft colors of this huge garden. A section of gilded fence shone between two trees, a line of ducks glided along the lake, and the little Renaissance bridge with its fresh coat of white paint stood out amid the greenery, while mothers seated in yellow chairs on either side of the main path became so absorbed in conversation that they forgot about the little boys and girls precociously making eyes at one another.

The lovers were in love with the new Paris. They often dashed about the city by carriage, detouring down certain boulevards for which they felt a special affection. They took delight in the imposing houses with big carved doors and innumerable balconies emblazoned with names, signs, and company insignia in big gold letters. As their coupé sped along, they fondly gazed out upon the gray strips of sidewalk, broad and interminable, with their benches, colorful columns, and skinny trees. The bright gap stretching all the way to the horizon, narrowing as it went and opening out onto a patch of empty blue sky; the uninterrupted double row of big stores with clerks smiling at their customers; the bustling streams of pedestrians—all this filled them little by little with a sense of absolute and total satisfaction, a feeling of perfection as they viewed the life of the street. They even loved the jets from the watering nozzles that spewed white mist ahead of their horses and then fell in a fine shower beneath the wheels of their coupé, darkening the ground and raising a thin cloud of dust. They were constantly on the move, and to them it seemed as though their carriage rolled on carpet along a straight and endless roadway that had been built expressly to allow them to avoid the dark side streets. Each boulevard became but another corridor of their house. The sun bathed the façades of the new buildings in joy, illuminating windows, warming the awnings of shops and cafés, and heating the asphalt beneath the feet of pedestrians rushing from one place to the next. And when they returned home, their heads spinning from the noisy spectacle of those interminable bazaars, they took delight in the Parc Monceau, which was like a floral strip essential for defining the edge of the new Paris and displaying its riches in those first warm days of spring.

When fashion absolutely forced them to leave Paris, they went to the seaside, but they went reluctantly, always longing for the sidewalks of the boulevards as they lay on the beaches of the Atlantic. At the shore, even love grew bored. For their love was a hothouse flower that needed the big gray-and-pink bed, the naked flesh of the dressing room, and the golden dawn of the small salon. When they sat alone in the evening facing the sea, they found that they had nothing to say to each other. Renée tried to sing songs she’d learned at the Théâtre des Variétés while accompanying herself on an old piano that stood on its last legs in a corner of her hotel room, but the instrument, damp from the sea breeze, had the melancholy voice of the tides. La Belle Hélène sounded lugubrious and fantastic when played on it. To console herself, the young woman stunned the beach with her prodigious costumes. Her whole gang was there, yawning, waiting for winter, and desperately searching for bathing suits that wouldn’t make them look too ugly. Renée had no luck at all persuading Maxime to go swimming. He was deathly afraid of the water, turned pale when the waves lapped at his boots, and wouldn’t go near the edge of a cliff for anything in the world. He kept well away from all tidal pools and made long detours to avoid any place where the coast was at all steep.

Saccard came out two or three times to see “the children.” He was overwhelmed by worry, he said. It was only in October, when all three were together again in Paris, that he gave serious consideration to the idea of a closer relationship with his wife. The Charonne affair was almost ripe. His plan was clear and ruthless. He intended to trap Renée in the sort of game he might play with a prostitute. She needed ever greater sums of cash, yet pride prevented her from asking her husband to supply the money unless she was at the end of her tether. Saccard vowed to take advantage of her next request by gallantly offering his assent and then using the joy occasioned by the repayment of some huge debt to resume relations long since severed.

Terrible financial difficulties awaited Renée and Maxime in Paris. Several of the notes payable to Larsonneau had come due, but since Saccard of course left them lying untouched at the bailiff ’s office, Renée didn’t worry much about them. She was a good deal more terrified of her debt to Worms, which had now risen to nearly 200,000 francs. The tailor was demanding partial payment, in lieu of which he threatened to cut off her credit. She shuddered at the thought of the scandal that a lawsuit would cause and above all at the idea of a to-do with the illustrious couturier. She also needed pocket money. She and Maxime would die of boredom if they didn’t have several louis to spend every day. The dear child was broke now that his forays into his father’s cabinets were coming up empty. His fidelity and exemplary behavior over the past seven or eight months had had a great deal to do with the emptiness of his wallet. He didn’t always have twenty francs to invite a trollop to supper, so he philosophically returned home. On each of their escapades Renée opened her purse so that he could pay in the restaurants, dance halls, and burlesque houses they visited. She still treated him maternally and even handled money herself, with the tips of her gloved fingers, at the pastry shop where they stopped nearly every afternoon to eat little oyster pâtés. Many mornings he found louis in his jacket that he didn’t know were there, money she had put there as a mother to make sure her boy didn’t go off to school with empty pockets. And now this delightful life of tasty treats, gratified whims, and facile pleasures was to end! But that was not their greatest worry. Sylvia’s jeweler, to whom Maxime owed 10,000 francs, was angry and made dark allusions to Clichy—the debtor’s prison. The notes he held, long since overdue, had accumulated so many penalties that the young man’s debt had increased by another three or four thousand francs. Saccard declared flatly that he could do nothing. His son in prison would garner him a certain notoriety, and when he bailed the boy out, the news of his paternal generosity would spread far and wide. Renée was in despair. When she envisioned her dear child in prison, she imagined him in a dungeon lying on a bed of damp straw. One night she seriously proposed that they stop going out, that they remain shut up at home out of everyone’s sight and beyond the reach of the law’s minions. And she swore that she would find the money. She never mentioned the reason for the debt or the name of Sylvia, who recorded her amours on the mirrors of private rooms in restaurants. She needed 50,000 francs: 15,000 for Maxime, 30,000 for Worms, and 5,000 for pocket money. That would buy them two solid weeks of happiness. She set to work.

Her first idea was to ask her husband for the 50,000 francs. She came to that decision only with reluctance. The last time he had entered her room to give her money, he had again planted kisses on her neck and held her hand and whispered sweet nothings in her ear. Women are acutely perceptive when it comes to divining the intentions of men. So she expected some demand from him, a tacit bargain sealed with a smile. And indeed, when she asked him for the 50,000 francs, he uttered a cry and said that Larsonneau would never lend that much and that he himself was still short of cash. But then his tone changed, as though he had been overcome by sudden emotion. “It’s impossible to refuse you anything,” he whispered. “I shall scour all of Paris for you and do the impossible. . . . I want you to be happy, my dear.”

Then he put his lips to her ear, kissed her hair, and said with a trembling voice, “I shall bring you the money tomorrow night, in your room. . . . Without a note to sign.”

But she quickly interjected that she was in no rush and did not want to put him to so much trouble. Although he had just put all his heart into that dangerous phrase, “without a note to sign,” which he had allowed to escape his lips and which he now regretted, he did not seem put out by her rejection. Straightening up, he said, “Well, then, as you wish. . . . I shall find you the money when the time comes. Larsonneau will not be involved, you understand. I mean to make you a gift.”

He smiled good-naturedly. She remained cruelly torn. She felt she would lose what little equilibrium she had left if she gave in to her husband. Her one remaining pride was that, while married to the father, she was the wife of none but the son. Frequently, when Maxime seemed cold to her, she tried to make him understand with the most transparent of allusions how things stood between her and her husband. Yet the young man, whom she expected to fall at her feet after these confessions, remained utterly unmoved, no doubt thinking that she merely wanted to reassure him that there was no possibility of his running into his father in the gray silk bedroom.

After Saccard left her, she dressed hastily and gave orders to hitch up her horses. In the carriage on the way to the Ile Saint-Louis, she went over in her mind how she was going to ask her father for the 50,000 francs. She had embraced this idea suddenly and refused to examine it closely, for in her heart she felt very cowardly and was seized with unspeakable fear regarding her chosen course of action. When she arrived, the courtyard of the Béraud mansion, as damp and dreary as a cloister, sent a chill through her, and as she climbed the wide stone staircase and listened to the echoes of her high-heeled boots, she felt like fleeing. In her haste, she had been foolish enough to wear a dress of feuillemorte silk with long flounces of white lace, trimmed with satin bows and tucked in at the waist by a belt pleated like a sash. This outfit, topped off by a small toque with a long white veil, injected such an unusual note into the somber tedium of the staircase that even she became aware of what an odd figure she cut there. She trembled as she made her way through the long series of huge austere rooms, in which the personages lurking in the tapestries seemed surprised by the billow of skirts that had invaded their gloomy solitude.

She found her father in a drawing room off the courtyard, where he often passed the time. He was reading a large book placed on a book-holder that had been fitted to the arm of his chair. Aunt Elisabeth sat in front of one of the windows knitting with long wooden needles, and in the silence of the room the click of those needles was the only sound to be heard.

Embarrassed, Renée sat down, unable to make a move without disturbing the severity of the high ceilings with the noise of rustling silk. The harsh white of her lace clashed with the dark background of tapestries and old furniture. M. Béraud Du Châtel placed his hands along the sides of the book-holder and stared at her. Aunt Elisabeth spoke of Christine’s impending marriage to the son of a very wealthy attorney. The young woman had gone shopping with one of the elderly servants, and the kindly aunt carried on all by herself in her placid voice without interrupting her knitting, chatting about household matters and darting smiling glances at Renée over her spectacles.

Renée, however, became increasingly anxious. All the silence of the house weighed on her shoulders, and she would have given a great deal to have the lace of her gown turn black. Her father’s stare embarrassed her to the point where she thought Worms must have been quite a fool to have designed a dress with such enormous flounces.

“How beautiful you look, my dear!” Aunt Elisabeth suddenly blurted out, as though she had not previously noticed her niece’s lace.

She stopped knitting and adjusted her glasses to get a better look. M. Béraud Du Châtel smiled wanly.

“It’s rather white,” he said. “A woman must feel quite embarrassed to be seen like that on the sidewalks.”

“But father, one doesn’t go out on foot!” Renée exclaimed, only to regret that ingenuous utterance the moment the words were out of her mouth.

The old man was on the point of responding, but he got up, stretched himself to his full height, and slowly walked away without looking at his daughter. Emotion had drained all the color from her face. Each time she exhorted herself to have courage and look for an opening to ask for money, she felt a twinge in her heart.

“We never see you anymore, father,” she murmured.

“Oh!” the aunt answered without giving her brother time to open his mouth, “Your father seldom goes out except on rare occasion to the Jardin des Plantes. And to make him do even that much I have to get angry! He pretends that he can’t find his way around Paris, which no longer suits him. . . . So go ahead and scold him if you like!”

“My husband would be so glad to see you at our Thursdays!” the young woman continued.

M. Béraud Du Châtel took a few steps in silence. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “Thank your husband for me. He’s an energetic fellow, it seems, and for your sake I hope that he does business honestly. But we don’t share the same ideas, he and I, and I’m not comfortable in your beautiful house at Parc Monceau.”

Aunt Elisabeth seemed saddened by this reply.

“Men are so disagreeable with their politics!” she said cheerfully. “Do you want to know the truth? Your father is furious with you because you go to the Tuileries.”

But the old man shrugged, as if to say that there were far graver reasons for his discontent. He resumed his slow pace, lost in thought. Renée remained silent for a moment, the request for 50,000 francs hanging on the tip of her tongue. But then she lost heart more than ever, went over and kissed her father, and walked out.

Aunt Elisabeth insisted on accompanying her as far as the staircase. In passing through the series of rooms, she continued the conversation in the soft voice of the elderly woman she was. “You’re happy, my dear. It gives me great pleasure to see you beautiful and healthy, because if your marriage hadn’t worked out, I would have blamed myself, you know. . . . Your husband loves you, and you have everything you need, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Renée answered, straining to smile though she felt sick at heart.

Her aunt continued to hold on to her with one hand, the other hand resting on the banister.

“I have just one fear, you see, which is that you don’t become intoxicated with all your happiness. Be careful, and above all, don’t sell anything. . . . If some day you have a child, you’ll have a tidy fortune ready and waiting for it.”

When Renée was safely back in her carriage, she gave a sigh of relief. She had drops of cold sweat on her temples. As she wiped them off, she thought of the damp chill of the Béraud house. When the carriage reached the bright sunshine of the Quai Saint-Paul, she remembered the 50,000 francs, and all her pain returned, sharper than ever. People thought of her as such a bold woman, but what a coward she’d just been! Yet it was all about Maxime, and his freedom, and their happiness together! As she reproached herself bitterly, a new idea suddenly came to her, compounding her despair: she should have mentioned the 50,000 francs to Aunt Elisabeth on the staircase. What had she been thinking? The good woman might have lent her the money or at the very least helped her out. She was already leaning out to tell the coachman to return to the rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile when she had a vision of her father slowly making his way through the solemn gloom of the large drawing room. She would never be able to summon up the courage to return to that room right away. What would she say to explain this second visit? And in her heart of hearts, she realized that she also lacked the courage to discuss the matter with Aunt Elisabeth. She told the coachman to drive her to the rue du Faubourg-Poissonière instead.

Mme Sidonie uttered a cry of delight when she saw Renée open the discreetly curtained door of her shop. She was there by chance, on the point of rushing out to court, where she had summoned one of her clients to appear before a justice of the peace. She would miss her day in court; that case could wait until another day, because she was too pleased that her sister-in-law had been so kind as to call on her at last. Renée smiled and looked embarrassed. Mme Sidonie insisted that she come upstairs and led her by way of the small staircase up to the bedroom after removing the brass knob from the shop door. She removed and replaced this knob, which was held in place by a single pin, twenty times a day.

“Now, my beauty,” she said after inviting Renée to sit on a chaise longue, “now we can have a nice chat. . . . You know, you’ve come at just the right moment. I intended to call on you this evening.”

Renée, who was familiar with this bedroom, felt a vague sense of unease, like a hiker who notices that a patch of forest has been cut from a familiar landscape.

“Oh!” she said after a while. “You moved the bed, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” came the milliner’s calm answer. “One of my customers thought it was much better facing the fireplace. She also advised me to get red curtains.”

“That’s just what I was thinking. The curtains weren’t that color before. . . . A very common color, red.”

She put on her glasses and examined the room, which had a sort of boardinghouse luxury. On the mantelpiece she saw long hairpins that surely didn’t come from Mme Sidonie’s small bun. In the place where the bed had been, the wallpaper was all scuffed, discolored, and dirty from the mattress. The businesswoman had tried to hide this eyesore behind two armchairs, but the backs of the chairs were rather low, and Renée’s eyes lingered on the worn strip of wallpaper.

“You have something to say to me?” she finally asked.

“Yes, it’s quite a long story,” Mme Sidonie replied, clasping her hands and making an expression like a gourmet about to recount what she had for dinner. “Guess what. M. de Saffré is in love with beautiful Mme Saccard. . . . Yes, my darling, with you.”

Renée avoided any affectation of modesty.

“What!” she exclaimed. “You told me he was so taken with Mme Michelin.”

“Oh, that’s over, completely over! . . . I can give you proof, if you like. . . . Perhaps you didn’t know that Baron Gouraud took a shine to the Michelin girl? It’s quite baffling. Everyone who knows the baron is flabbergasted by it. . . . And did you know that she’s working on getting her husband a red ribbon? . . . A spirited girl, that one. Nothing frightens her, and she doesn’t need anyone to draw her pictures.”

She pronounced the last sentence with a mixture of regret and admiration.

“But to get back to M. de Saffré. . . . He claims to have run into you at a theatrical party wrapped up in a domino, and he even accuses himself of having rather cavalierly invited you out to supper. . . . Is there any truth to that?”

Renée was floored by this news.

“Quite true,” she murmured. “But who could have told him?”

“He claims to have recognized you afterward, once you had left the room, and he remembered seeing you go out on Maxime’s arm. . . . And since then he’s been madly in love. A fantasy has taken root in his heart, you see. . . . He came and asked me to apologize to you on his behalf.”

“Well, then, tell him that I forgive him,” Renée interrupted without taking stock of what she was saying.

Then, remembering all her woes, she went on. “You’re a good woman, Sidonie, and I’m in agony. I absolutely must have 50,000 francs by tomorrow morning. I came here to discuss the matter with you. You know people who lend money, you said?”

Annoyed by the brusque way in which her sister-in-law had cut her story short, the businesswoman made her wait a bit for an answer.

“Yes, of course. Only I advise you first and foremost to look to your friends. . . . If I were in your position, I know what I’d do. . . . I’d quite simply go to M. de Saffré.”

Renée gave a forced smile. “But that would hardly be proper,” she replied, “if as you say he’s so much in love.”

The old woman stared at her hard. Then her pudgy face gently softened into a smile of tender pity.

“Poor dear,” she murmured. “You’ve been crying. Don’t deny it. I see it in your eyes. Be strong, accept life as it is. . . . Come, let me arrange the little matter we’ve been discussing.”

Renée got up, wringing her hands so that her gloves made a crinkling sound. And she remained standing, badly shaken by a cruel inner struggle. She was on the point of parting her lips, perhaps to indicate her acceptance, when a bell rang in the next room. Mme Sidonie rushed out, leaving the door open just enough to reveal two rows of pianos. The young woman then heard a man’s step and muffled echoes of a whispered conservation. Without thinking, she went over to examine the yellow stain the mattress had left on the wall. That stain annoyed her, irritated her. Forgetting everything— Maxime, the 50,000 francs, M. de Saffré—she walked back around the bed, thinking, “It went much better where it was before. Some women truly have no taste. Lying this way you’re bound to have the light in your eyes.” A vague image rose from the depths of her memory, an image of the stranger from the Quai Saint-Paul and of a romance that had consisted of just two encounters—a chance affair she had savored in this very room, with the bed in the other place. All that remained of that affair was that worn spot on the wallpaper. The room now made her very uneasy, and she grew impatient at the continuing buzz of voices from the adjoining room.

When Mme Sidonie returned, carefully opening the door and closing it again, she repeatedly signaled with her fingers that Renée should speak in a low voice. Then she whispered in her ear, “You’ll never guess, but you’re in luck. M. de Saffré is here.”

“You didn’t tell him that I was here, did you?” the young woman asked anxiously.

The businesswoman looked surprised and, feigning innocence, answered, “Why, yes, I did. . . . He’s waiting for me to invite him in. Of course I didn’t say anything about the 50,000 francs.”

Renée, who had turned quite pale, straightened as if lashed by a whip. Her pride returned with a vengeance. The sound of boots in the next room, now ominously brutal, exasperated her. “I’m leaving,” she announced curtly. “Come open the door for me.”

Mme Sidonie attempted to smile. “Don’t be childish. . . . I can’t stay here with this boy on my hands now that I’ve told him you were here. . . . You’re really putting me in an awkward position.”

But the young woman had already started down the stairs. Standing in front of the closed door of the shop, she repeatedly cried, “Open it for me! Open it!”

The milliner was in the habit of putting the knob in her pocket after removing it from the door. She wanted the discussion to continue. Finally giving way to anger herself and displaying in the depths of her gray eyes the bitter desiccation of her nature, she shouted, “But what do you want me to tell this man?”

“That I’m not for sale,” Renée answered, with one foot already on the sidewalk. And as the door shut violently behind her, she thought she heard Mme Sidonie mutter, “Get out then, whore. You’ll pay for this.”

“My God!” the young woman thought as she climbed back into her coupé. “Even my husband is preferable to that.”

She drove straight back to the house. That night she told Maxime not to come. She felt ill and needed rest, she said. And the next day, when she handed him the 15,000 francs for Sylvia’s jeweler, his astonishment and questions embarrassed her. She said that her husband had done a nice stroke of business. From that day forward, however, she behaved more oddly than before, often changing the times of her rendezvous with Maxime and even waiting in the conservatory to send him away. He, for his part, worried little about these mood changes. He delighted in obeying women’s whims. What annoyed him more was the moral tone that their amorous encounters sometimes took. She became quite sad, and on occasion tears welled up in her eyes. She gave up singing the number about “the handsome young man” from La Belle Hélène, played hymns she had learned at boarding school, and asked her lover if he didn’t believe that evil was punished sooner or later.

“No doubt about it, she’s getting old,” he thought. “She’s got a year or two more of fun in her at most.”

The truth was that she suffered cruelly. Now she wished she had betrayed Maxime with M. de Saffré. At Mme Sidonie’s she had recoiled in horror, she had given in to her instinctive pride, her disgust at the sordid bargain that had been proposed to her. In subsequent days, however, as she endured the anguish of adultery, she collapsed within and felt so contemptible that she would have given herself to the first man who had walked through the door from the room with the pianos. Previously, thoughts of her husband in the midst of incest had triggered shudders of voluptuous horror, but now her husband—the man himself—had thrust himself on her with a brutality that turned her most delicate feelings into intolerable tortures. She, who had taken delight in the refinements of sin and liked to dream of a heroic paradise in which the gods made love with their own kind, now found herself mired in vulgar debauchery, shared by two men. She tried to take pleasure in her infamy, but in vain. Her lips were still warm from Saccard’s kisses when she offered them to Maxime. The depths of forbidden love fascinated her. She even combined the two loves, seeking the son in the father’s embraces. Yet from this journey into the unknown realm of evil, from this ardent darkness in which her two lovers melded into one, she emerged more frightened and bruised than ever, plagued by terrors that were like the death rattle of her pleasures.

She kept this drama to herself, her suffering redoubled by the fevers of her imagination. She would rather have died than confess the truth to Maxime. Inwardly she feared that the young man might rebel and leave her. Above all, she had such an absolute belief in the monstrousness of her sin and the prospect of eternal damnation that she would have crossed the Parc Monceau naked sooner than confess her shame in a whisper. Yet all the while she remained the madcap whose extravagance astonished Paris. She fell into the grip of a nervous gaiety, and the newspapers, designating her by her initials, spoke of her astounding caprices. It was during this period that she seriously proposed a duel, with pistols, with Duchess von Sternich, who she claimed had deliberately spilled a glass of punch on her dress. It took the ire of her brother-in-law the minister to put an end to this idea. On another occasion she bet Mme de Lauwerens that she could run a lap around Longchamp in less than ten minutes, and she would have done so had her costume allowed. Even Maxime began to be frightened by Renée’s increasingly insane behavior, and when he stared at her head on the pillow at night, it seemed to him filled with the crazed fury of a city bent on pleasure.

One night they went together to the Théâtre-Italien. 6 They had not even looked at the poster and went only because they wanted to see the great Italian tragedienne Ristori,7 who was drawing large crowds, so that fashion dictated they must see her. The play was Phèdre.8 Maxime remembered the classical repertory fairly well, and Renée knew enough Italian to follow the performance. And indeed, they responded to the drama with particular emotion, even though it was performed in a foreign tongue whose sonorities struck them at times as a mere orchestral accompaniment to the actors’ pantomime. Hippolyte was played by a tall, pale youth, a mediocre actor who wept his part.

“What a simpleton!” Maxime murmured.

But Ristori, whose broad shoulders shook with sobs and who had a tragic face and plump arms, moved Renée profoundly. Phèdre was of the blood of Pasiphaé, and Renée asked herself whose blood might flow in her veins as an incestuous stepmother of modern times. She saw nothing of the play but this tall woman trailing the ancient crime with her across the stage. In the first act, when Phèdre confesses her guilty love to Œnone; in the second, when, burning with ardor, she declares her love to Hippolyte; and later, in the fourth act, when she is crushed by the return of Thésée and curses herself in an access of dark fury; the actress filled the hall with such cries of wild passion and superhuman sensual need that the young woman felt every shudder of her desire and remorse in her own flesh.

“Wait,” Maxime whispered in her ear. “Now you’ll hear Théramène tell his story. The old fool!” And in a hollow voice he whispered:

Scarcely had we issued from Troezen’s gates, He on his chariot mounted . . .

But Renée was no longer watching or listening when the old man spoke. She found the light blinding and the heat from all those faces staring at the stage stifling. The monologue went on interminably. She was in the conservatory, beneath its ardent foliage, and she dreamt that her husband came in and surprised her in the arms of his son. She was suffering dreadfully and had lost consciousness when a repentant Phèdre, in convulsions from the poison, made her open her eyes again with her final agony. The curtain fell. Would she have the strength to poison herself someday? How paltry and shameful her drama seemed alongside the ancient epic! And while Maxime fastened her evening wrap underneath her chin, she could still hear Ristori’s gruff voice growling behind her and Œnone’s indulgent murmur in reply.

In the coupé the young man prattled on all by himself, saying that on the whole he found tragedy “deadly” and preferred the plays at the Bouffes.9 Still, Phèdre was “pretty strong stuff.” It interested him because. . . . And to complete his thought he squeezed Renée’s hand. Then a strange idea occurred to him, and he yielded to the urge to say something witty. “I was right,” he whispered, “not to go too close to the ocean in Trouville.”

Renée, distracted by painful dreams, said nothing. He had to repeat what he had said.

“Why?” she asked with surprise, not understanding what he meant.

“Why, the monster . . .”

And then he snickered. At this Renée froze. Her mind went completely awry. Ristori was now just a big puppet who lifted her apron and stuck out her tongue at the audience like Blanche Muller in the third act of La Belle Hélène. Théramène danced the cancan, and Hippolyte ate toast with jelly and stuck his fingers up his nose.

When more searing pangs of remorse left her quivering, her pride sometimes rebelled. What crime had she committed, after all, and what reason did she have to blush? Did she not stumble upon greater infamies every day? Did she not rub elbows at the ministries and in the Tuileries—everywhere, in fact—with wretches like herself who draped their flesh with millions and whom men worshiped on their knees? And she thought of the shameful friendship of Adeline d’Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, about which people sometimes smiled at the Empress’s Mondays. She remembered the mercenary business of Mme de Lauwerens, whom husbands celebrated for her good conduct, her orderliness, and her punctiliousness in paying her suppliers. She pronounced the names of Mme Daste, Mme Teissière, and Baroness von Meinhold, ladies whose luxurious lifestyles were paid for by their lovers and whose prices were quoted in high society the way shares of stock are quoted on the Bourse. Mme de Guende had such an empty head and such a beautiful figure that she had three high-ranking officers as lovers at the same time and could not tell them apart because all of them wore the same uniform: that little devil Louise said she forced them all to strip down to their shirts so that she could tell which one she was talking to. Countess Wanska remembered the courtyards she had sung in and the sidewalks where people said they had seen her prowling like a wolf in calico. Those women wore their shame in triumph, displayed their wounds as trophies. And lording it over them all was the wasted, old, and ugly Duchess von Sternich, who gloried in having spent a night in the imperial bed. She was vice made official, and from this past she retained something of a majesty in debauchery, a sovereign power over this illustrious band of harlots.

Eventually Renée got used to her incest as one might get used to a ball gown which at first seemed unbearably stiff. In the end she came to believe that she was living in a world apart, superior to the common morality, a world in which the senses could be refined and developed and where it was permissible to bare one’s flesh for the delectation of all Olympus. 10 Sin became a luxury, a flower stuck in her hair, a diamond affixed to her forehead. And as justification and redemption she once again conjured up the image of the Emperor passing between the two rows of bowed shoulders on the general’s arm.

Only one man—Baptiste, her husband’s valet—continued to worry her. Ever since Saccard had renewed his amorous relations with her, this tall, pale, sober servingman seemed to hover about her with a solemnity that conveyed a silent censure. He did not look at her. His cold stare passed above her, over the bun atop her head, as chaste as a beadle unwilling to sully his eyes by gazing at a sinner’s hair. She imagined he knew everything and would have bought his silence if she had dared. Then she became uneasy, and whenever she ran into Baptiste she felt a strange sort of respect for him, saying to herself that all the decency of her household had fled and taken refuge beneath this servant’s dark frock.

One day she asked Céleste, “Does Baptiste tell jokes in the servants’ hall? Do you know whether he’s ever had an affair, a mistress of some sort?”

“I should say so!” was all the maid replied.

“Well, then, he must have made love to you, no?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. He never looks at women. We seldom see him. . . . He’s always either with Monsieur or in the stables. He says he’s quite fond of horses.”

Renée found this honesty irritating. She pressed harder; she would have liked to be able to feel contempt for her servants. Although she felt affection for Céleste, she would have been pleased to learn that the girl had lovers.

“But don’t you find Baptiste handsome, Céleste?”

“Me, madame!” the maid exclaimed, with the stunned look of a person who has just heard something incredible. “I have very different ideas in my head. I don’t want a man. I have my plan. You’ll see later on. I’m not stupid, believe me.”

Renée could get nothing clearer out of her. Her worries were growing in any case. Her ostentatious life and extravagant escapades ran up against numerous obstacles, which occasionally resulted in bruises. One day, for instance, the subject of Louise de Mareuil came up in a conversation between her and Maxime. She felt no jealousy toward the “hunchback,” as she disdainfully called her. She knew that the doctors had pronounced the girl’s doom and could not believe that Maxime would ever marry such an ugly duckling, not even for a dowry of a million francs. While mired in sin, she clung to a bourgeois naïveté about people she loved. Though she despised herself, she was quite ready to think of them as superior beings altogether worthy of respect. Yet even as she denied the possibility of marriage between Louise and Maxime, which in her eyes would have been a despicably immoral thing—a theft—she found the familiarity and camaraderie of these two young people painful to behold. Whenever she mentioned the girl to her lover, he laughed freely, repeated the child’s clever remarks, and told her that “the kid calls me her little man, you know.”

He was such a free spirit, moreover, that she didn’t dare point out to him that the “kid” was seventeen years old and that their habit of holding hands and eagerness to seek out dark corners of drawing rooms from which to make fun of everyone else hurt her and ruined even the gayest of evenings.

An incident occurred that significantly altered the situation. Renée frequently felt a need to show off, and there was at times a crude boldness to her capriciousness. She would entice Maxime behind a curtain or a door and kiss him, despite the risk of being seen. One Thursday night, when the buttercup salon was full of visitors, she had the bright idea of calling out to Maxime, who was chatting with Louise. She moved toward him from the far end of the conservatory, where she had been, and when they came together suddenly kissed him on the mouth, in the belief that two clumps of shrubbery provided sufficient cover. But Louise had followed the young man, and when the lovers looked up, they saw her a few steps away staring at them with a strange smile, betraying neither a blush nor a sign of astonishment but staring with the quiet, friendly air of a companion in vice clever enough to understand and appreciate such a kiss.

That day Maxime was genuinely alarmed, whereas Renée seemed indifferent and even pleased. It was over. Now it was impossible for the hunchback to take her lover from her. She thought, “I should have done it on purpose. Now she knows that her ‘little man’ is mine.”

Maxime felt reassured on finding Louise as cheerful and funny as before. He judged her to be a “very smart, very good girl.” And that was all.

Renée worried, with reason. Saccard had for some time been thinking about marrying his son off to Mlle de Mareuil. There was a dowry worth a million francs that he did not want to let slip through his fingers, for he meant to get his hands on the money eventually. When Louise remained bedridden for three weeks at the beginning of the winter, he became so frightened that she might die before the planned wedding took place that he made up his mind to do it immediately. They were indeed a little young, but the doctors warned that the month of March was particularly dangerous for a girl with tuberculosis. Meanwhile, M. de Mareuil found himself in a delicate situation. In the last election, he had finally managed to get himself elected as deputy, but the Corps Législatif had quashed the result, which had been the scandal of the governmental reorganization. The story of the vote had made for a comic epic, in fact, and the newspapers had made hay with it for a month. M. Hupel de la Noue, the prefect of the département, had acted with such vigor that the other candidates had not been able to post their platforms or distribute their brochures. Following his advice, M. de Mareuil had covered the district with tables that had distributed food and drink to the peasants for an entire week. He had promised, moreover, to build a railroad, a bridge, and three churches, and on the eve of the voting had sent influential voters portraits of the Emperor and Empress, two large engravings under glass in gold frames. This gift had proved fabulously successful; the majority was overwhelming. But when the Chamber, faced with laughter from all of France, found itself forced to send M. de Mareuil back to confront the voters a second time, the minister flew into a rage against the prefect and the hapless candidate, who had really been too “clumsy.” He even broached the idea of choosing another man as the official candidate. M. de Mareuil was terrified. He had spent 300,000 francs in the département, where he owned vast estates that bored him to tears and that he would be forced to sell at a loss. He therefore begged his dear colleague to calm his brother down and promise him, in the candidate’s name, an altogether proper election. It was in these circumstances that Saccard again brought up the matter of the marriage of their two children, on which the fathers finally agreed.

When Maxime was sounded out on this subject, he found himself in a quandary. Louise amused him, and the dowry tempted him even more. He said yes and agreed to all the dates Saccard proposed so as to avoid the vexation of further discussion. Inwardly, however, he acknowledged that unfortunately things were unlikely to work themselves out quite so easily. Renée would never go along. She would weep, she would make scenes, she was capable of causing a scandal big enough to set Paris on its ear. It was quite unpleasant. Lately she frightened him. She doted on him with such anxious eyes, she possessed him so despotically, that he could almost feel her claws digging into his skin each time she placed her white hand on his shoulder. Her restlessness became impetuousness, and there was a new staccato note in her laughter. He truly feared that some night she might go mad in his arms. In her, the remorse, the fear of being caught, and the cruel pleasures of adultery expressed themselves, not as with other women in the form of tears and misery, but as a more unfettered extravagance and a more irresistible need to kick up a fuss. As her terror increased, a rattle began to make itself heard, a sound that signaled a breakdown of this lovely and astonishing machine, which was falling to pieces.

Maxime passively waited for an occasion that would allow him to get rid of this troublesome mistress. He said again that they had done something foolish. Although their camaraderie had initially added a novel pleasure to their amours, it now prevented him from breaking off the relationship, as he certainly would have done with another woman. He simply wouldn’t have returned: that was his way of ending his affairs, so as to avoid all effort and any possibility of a quarrel. But he felt incapable of any grand gesture and was indeed still glad to abandon himself to Renée’s caresses. She was motherly, she paid his way, she rescued him from difficulty when a creditor lost patience with him. The idea of Louise came back to him, the idea of the million-franc dowry, and this made him think, even as Renée showered him with kisses, “that all this is fine and dandy, but it isn’t serious, and it’s high time to end it.”

One night, Maxime went to play cards at the home of a lady where the game often continued until dawn, and he was wiped out so quickly that he fell prey to the kind of silent rage that often afflicts gamblers whose pockets are empty. He would have given anything in the world for a few more louis to lay on the table. He took his hat, and with the mechanical step of a man driven by an unalterable idea, he went to the Parc Monceau, opened the side gate, and found himself in the conservatory. It was past midnight. Renée had forbidden him to come that night. Now, when she shut her door to him, she no longer even tried to fob him off with an explanation, and he could think of nothing but taking advantage of his day off. He didn’t clearly remember the young woman’s warning to stay away until he was standing in front of the glass door to the small salon, which he found locked. On nights when he was expected, Renée normally left the door unlatched.

“Bah!” he thought on seeing a light in her dressing room. “I’ll whistle, and she’ll come down. I won’t disturb her. If she has a few louis, I’ll be off immediately.”

And he whistled softly. He often signaled his arrival that way. On this night, however, he repeated his whistle several times to no avail. He persisted, whistling still more loudly, unwilling to give up his idea of an instant loan. At last he saw the door open with the utmost precaution; until then he hadn’t heard the slightest noise. Renée emerged into the obscurity of the conservatory, her hair undone, barely dressed, as if she had been on the point of going to bed. Her feet were bare. She pushed him toward one of the arbors, proceeding down the stairs and along one of the sandy walkways, apparently undeterred by the cold or the roughness underfoot.

“It’s stupid to whistle that loudly,” she whispered, holding back her anger. “I told you not to come. What do you want from me?”

“Let’s go upstairs,” said Maxime, taken aback by this welcome. “I’ll tell you there. You’ll catch cold.”

He went to take a step, but she held him back, and he saw then that she was dreadfully pale. An unspoken terror curved her spine. Her most intimate garments, her laciest underthings, were draped over her shivering flesh like a tragic heroine’s rags.

He examined her with growing astonishment.

“What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?”

Instinctively, he looked up and saw through the glass of the conservatory the window of the dressing room in which he had previously glimpsed a light.

“But there’s a man in your apartment,” he said suddenly.

“No, no, there isn’t,” she stammered in a pleading voice, ceding to panic.

“Now see here, my dear, I can see his shadow.”

They stood there for an instant face-to-face, not knowing what to say. Renée’s teeth were chattering in terror, and she felt as though buckets of ice water were being poured over her bare feet. Maxime felt more irritated than he would have expected, yet he remained detached enough to reflect on the situation, to tell himself that the moment was ripe to break off the relationship.

“You’re not going to make me believe that it’s Céleste wearing a topcoat,” he went on. “If the conservatory windows weren’t so thick, I might even recognize the gentleman.”

She pushed him farther into the darkness of the foliage, clasping her hands and pleading with growing terror, “I beg you, Maxime . . .”

But all the young man’s instincts for needling were aroused, ferocious instincts in search of vengeance. He was too fragile to find relief in anger. Spite pinched his lips, and rather than hit her, which had been his initial impulse, he took a sharper tone and went on. “You should have told me, I wouldn’t have disturbed you. . . . These things happen all the time. People stop loving each other. I had almost had my fill myself. . . . Don’t be impatient now. I’ll let you go back up, but not until you’ve told me the gentleman’s name.”

“Never! Never!” the young woman whispered, choking back tears.

“I have no intention of challenging him to a duel. I just want to know. . . . The name, quick, tell me the name, and I’ll go.”

He had seized her by the wrists and was staring at her, laughing wickedly. She struggled desperately, unwilling to open her mouth lest the name she was being asked to reveal somehow escape her lips.

“If we go on this way, we’re going to make noise, which won’t help matters. What are you afraid of? Aren’t we good friends? . . . I want to know who’s taking my place. I’m entitled to that. . . . Wait, I’ll help you. It’s M. de Mussy, whose suffering touched you.”

She did not answer but bowed her head at being questioned in such a manner.

“It’s not M. de Mussy? . . . The duc de Rozan, perhaps? No, not him either? . . . Perhaps the comte de Chibray? Wrong again?”

He stopped and searched his mind.

“Damned if I can think of anyone else. . . . It’s not my father, after what you told me.”

Renée jumped as if seared with a hot poker and in a muffled voice said, “No, you know quite well that he doesn’t come anymore. I wouldn’t allow it. It would be vile.”

“Who then?”

And he squeezed her wrists even tighter. The poor woman struggled a while longer.

“Oh, Maxime, if only you knew! . . . But I can’t tell you.”

Then, vanquished, overwhelmed, staring in terror at the illuminated window, in a voice barely above a whisper, she stammered, “It’s M. de Saffré.”

Maxime, until then amused by his cruel game, turned quite livid at this confession, which he had insisted on having. He was vexed that the man’s name should have caused him such unexpected pain. Violently he pushed Renée away, then moved close to her, right in her face, and through clenched teeth said, “You know what you are? You’re a—”

He pronounced the word. He turned to leave but she ran after him, sobbing, taking him in her arms, whispering tender words, begging forgiveness, swearing that she still adored him and would explain everything the next day. But he pulled away and slammed the door of the conservatory, saying, “No, it’s over. I’ve had it,” on his way out.

Crushed, she watched him cross the garden. The trees in the conservatory seemed to whirl around. Then, slowly, she dragged her bare feet down the sandy path and climbed back up the porch stairs. The cold made her skin look like marble, and her lacy negligee being in disarray only added to her tragic appearance. Upstairs, where her husband was waiting, she responded to his questions by saying that she thought she’d remembered where she’d dropped a small notebook that had been missing since morning. No sooner was she in bed than she felt a deep sense of despair at the thought that she should have told Maxime that his father, having accompanied her home, had followed her into her bedroom to discuss some question of money with her.

The next day, Saccard decided to force the Charonne business to a conclusion. His wife was now his. He had just held her in his hands and felt her softness, her inertness—an object that has ceased to resist. What is more, the route of the boulevard du Prince-Eugène was about to be announced, and it was essential that Renée be stripped of her title before word of the upcoming expropriation leaked out. Throughout this business, Saccard proceeded with an artist’s love of his work. He watched his plan ripen with rapt devotion and set traps with the cunning of a hunter who prides himself on his sporting approach to his prey. With him there was a simple satisfaction in playing the game well, a particular pleasure in ill-gotten gains. If he could have the land for a crust of bread, he would gladly give his wife jewels worth a hundred thousand francs in the joy of triumph. The simplest operations grew complex, turned into dark dramas, whenever he became involved. Passion took hold of him, and he would have beaten his own father to lay hands on a hundred sous. And afterwards he would have strewn the gold about with royal largesse.

Before getting Renée to relinquish her share of the property, however, he took the precaution of sounding out Larsonneau about the extortion he suspected him of plotting. Saccard’s instinct saved him in this instance, for the expropriation agent had meanwhile come to the conclusion that the fruit was ripe for the picking. When Saccard walked into Larsonneau’s office on the rue de Rivoli, he found his colleague in a bad way, showing signs of the most violent desperation.

“Oh, my friend!” Larsonneau murmured, taking Saccard by the hand. “We’re done for. . . . I was about to run over to your place to figure a way out of this awful mess.”

While Larsonneau wrung his hands and attempted to force out a sob, Saccard noticed that he had been signing letters a moment before and that the signatures looked remarkably precise. He stared at him calmly and said, “Bah! So what’s happened to us?”

The other man did not answer immediately, however. He had flung himself down in a chair behind his desk, and there, with his elbows resting on the blotter, his forehead in his hands, he furiously shook his head. Finally, in a choking voice, he said, “Someone stole the ledger, you see. . . .”

The story he told was this: one of his clerks, a scoundrel worthy of the penitentiary, had made off with a large number of files, including the notorious ledger. Worse, the thief had realized what the document was worth and was asking for 100,000 francs in exchange for its return.

Saccard pondered the matter. The story struck him as a crude fabrication. Obviously Larsonneau didn’t much care whether or not he was believed. He was simply looking for a pretext to let it be known that he wanted 100,000 francs out of the Charonne deal and, indeed, that for that amount of money he would hand over the compromising papers in his possession. To Saccard the price seemed too steep. He would willingly have given his former partner a share in the spoils, but this attempt to spring a trap and this presumptuousness in taking him for a fool he found irritating. Yet he was not without worries. He knew the man he was dealing with and knew that he was quite capable of taking the papers to his brother the minister, who would certainly pay to hush up any scandal.

“Damn!” Saccard muttered, now taking a seat himself. “That’s a nasty story. . . . Would it be possible to see the scoundrel in question?”

“I’ll send for him,” Larsonneau replied. “He lives close by, on rue Jean Lantier.”

Before ten minutes had passed, a short, shifty-eyed fellow with light-colored hair and red blotches all over his face quietly entered the room, carefully making sure that the door made no sound. He was wearing a shabby black frock coat that was too large for him and shockingly threadbare. Standing at a respectful distance from Saccard, he calmly examined the financier out of the corner of his eye. Larsonneau, who addressed this man as Baptistin, subjected him to an interrogation, to which he responded in monosyllables, showing no sign of becoming rattled. He withstood this grilling without flinching even though his employer felt compelled to accompany each of his questions with epithets such as thief, crook, and scoundrel.

Saccard admired the wretched fellow’s sangfroid. At one point, the expropriation agent leapt from his chair as if to strike him, and he merely retreated a step and narrowed his eyes a bit more in a gesture of humility.

“That’s enough, leave him alone,” the financier said. “So then, sir, you’re asking 100,000 francs to return the papers?”

“Yes, 100,000 francs,” the young man answered.

With that he left the room. Larsonneau seemed unable to get a grip on himself. “The gall! What a scoundrel!” he sputtered. “Did you see his shifty eyes? . . . Fellows like that look timid, but for twenty francs they’d kill a man for you.”

Saccard, however, interrupted him: “Bah! He’s nothing to be afraid of. I think we’ll be able to make a deal with him. . . . I came about something far more worrisome. . . . You were right to distrust my wife, my good friend. She’s selling her share of the property to M. Haffner. She says she needs money. Her friend Suzanne must have put her up to it.”

Larsonneau abruptly quit sighing. He listened, the color having drained from his face, and adjusted his starched collar, which had curled in his wrath.

“This sale,” Saccard went on, “will ruin our hopes. If M. Haffner becomes your partner, not only will our profits be compromised, but I’m awfully afraid we may find ourselves in a very unpleasant situation, as the gentleman is quite meticulous and may insist on going over the accounts.”

The expropriation agent began pacing the room in an agitated manner, his patent-leather boots creaking on the carpet. “You see what predicaments you get yourself into by doing favors for people,” he muttered. “But if I were you, my friend, I’d do everything in my power to prevent my wife from making such a foolish move. I’d beat her before I’d allow such a thing to happen.”

“Really?” the financier said with a sly smile. “I have no more influence over my wife than you seem to have over this scoundrel Baptistin.”

Larsonneau stopped short in front of Saccard, who had not stopped smiling, and appraised him carefully. Then he resumed his pacing, but with a slower, more measured step. He went over to a mirror, tightened the knot of his necktie, and continued walking, having regained his customary elegance. Suddenly he blurted out, “Baptistin!”

The short, shifty-eyed fellow reentered the room, but this time through a different door. He no longer had his hat and was rolling a quill pen between two fingers.

“Go get the ledger,” Larsonneau ordered.

When he had left, Larsonneau discussed the sum he was to be paid. In the end he said bluntly, “Do this for me.”

Saccard then agreed to pay 30,000 francs out of the future profits on the Charonne affair. He reckoned that even at that price he would still be escaping the usurer’s gloved clutches relatively cheaply. Larsonneau, continuing the charade to the end, insisted that the promissory note be made out in his name, saying that he would be accountable to the young man for the 30,000 francs. Saccard chuckled with relief as he burned the ledger in the fireplace, one page at a time. When he was done, he vigorously shook Larsonneau’s hand and left with these parting words: “You’ll be at Laure’s tonight, won’t you? . . . Wait for me. I’ll work things out with my wife, and we’ll make our final decisions.”

Laure d’Aurigny, who moved frequently, was at that time living in a large apartment on boulevard Haussmann opposite the Chapelle Expiatoire. 11 She had only recently decided to open her apartment to visitors one day a week, just like any other society hostess. These gatherings assembled in one place the men who saw her one at a time during the week. Aristide Saccard reigned in triumph on these Tuesday evenings. He was the incumbent lover, and he laughed vaguely and looked the other way whenever the mistress of the house betrayed him by dragging one of the other gentlemen off to a private place and granting him an assignation for later that same night. When he was left alone at the end of the evening, the last of the crowd of visitors, he would light yet another cigar, talk business for a while, and tease Laure about the fellow cooling his heels outside waiting for him to leave. Then, after calling Laure his “dear child” and giving her a little pat on the cheek, he would leave quietly through one door as the waiting gentleman entered through another. Both he and his “mistress” continued to take pleasure in the secret alliance that had consolidated Saccard’s credit and earned Mlle d’Aurigny two sets of furniture in one month. But Laure wanted this comedy to end. The finale, worked out ahead of time, was to take the form of a public breakup, the beneficiary of which was to be some poor imbecile who would pay dearly for the right of being Laure’s official, publicly acknowledged keeper. That imbecile had been found. The duc de Rozan, tired of importuning the women of his own set to no avail, dreamed of acquiring a reputation as a debauchee to lend a little relief to his colorless personality. He was an assiduous guest at Laure’s Tuesdays and had managed to conquer her with his absolute naïveté. Unfortunately, he was still, at the age of thirty-five, dependent on his mother to the point where he never had more than ten louis spending money in his pocket at any given time. On nights when Laure deigned to take those ten louis from him, feeling sorry for herself and letting it be known that 100,000 francs was what she needed, he promised her that as soon as he had the final say in the matter, that sum would be hers. It was then that it occurred to her to put him in touch with Larsonneau, a faithful friend of the establishment. The two men had lunch together at Tortoni’s, and over dessert Larsonneau, while recounting his amours with a delectable Spaniard, let it be known that he was in touch with some people who were in a position to lend money, though he sternly warned Rozan never to fall into their clutches. This revelation drove the duke wild, and in the end he succeeded in extracting from his good friend a promise to take care of “this little matter.” Larsonneau took such good care of it that he had come prepared to deliver the money on the very evening that Saccard proposed they meet at Laure’s.

When Larsonneau arrived, there were still only five or six women in Mlle d’Aurigny’s large white-and-gold drawing room—women who took him by the hands and threw their arms around his neck in a frenzy of affection. They called him “Big Lar,” using the affectionate nickname that Laure had coined for him. And he, in piping tones, replied, “Be careful now, my little kittens, or you’ll crush my hat.”

This calmed them down, and they then crowded around him while he sat on a love seat and regaled them with a tale of Sylvia’s indigestion after their supper together the previous evening. Afterwards he took a box of candy from the pocket of his coat and offered them pralines. At this point, however, Laure emerged from her bedroom and, seeing that a number of gentlemen guests were arriving, led him off to a boudoir at one end of the salon, from which they were separated by two sets of curtains.

“Do you have the money?” she asked when they were alone.

On important occasions she used the familiar tu with him. Larsonneau, without answering, bowed obligingly and tapped the inside pocket of his coat.

“Oh, Big Lar!” the delighted young woman murmured.

She took him by the waist and kissed him.

“Wait,” she said, “Let’s get the cash and the papers out of the way. . . . Rozan is in my room. I’ll go get him.”

But he held her back, and now it was his turn to kiss her shoulders. “You remember the favor I asked of you?”

“Why yes, of course, silly! It’s agreed.”

She returned with Rozan in tow. Larsonneau was dressed more punctiliously than the duke, with better gloves and a more artful bow to his cravat. They casually touched hands and talked about the races two days earlier, in which a friend of theirs had entered a losing horse. Laure waited impatiently.

“Come, my darling, never mind all that,” she said to Rozan. “Big Lar has the money, you know. It’s time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”

Larsonneau made a show of remembering. “Oh, yes, quite right, I’ve got the money. . . . But you should have listened to me, old man! Would you believe that those scoundrels insisted on fifty percent? . . . I finally gave in, you know, because you said it made no difference to you.”

Laure d’Aurigny had obtained some official stamped paper earlier in the day. But when the moment came to find pen and ink, she looked at the two men with a perplexed expression, uncertain whether she had any in the house. She was about to go to the kitchen to look when Larsonneau took from his pocket—the same pocket that contained the box of candy—two marvels: a silver penholder with a tip that could be screwed out and a steel-and-ebony inkwell as exquisite and elegant as a jewel.

Rozan sat down to write. “Make the notes out in my name,” Larsonneau said. “I don’t want to compromise you, you see. We’ll work something out together. . . . Six notes of 25,000 francs each, is it not?”

Laure counted out the bills on a corner of the table. Rozan never saw them. By the time he looked up after signing his name, they had vanished into the young woman’s pocket. But she went over to him and kissed him on both cheeks, which seemed to please him no end. Larsonneau looked at them philosophically as he folded the notes and put the inkstand and pen back into his pocket.

The young woman still had her arms around Rozan’s neck when Aristide Saccard lifted one corner of the door curtain. “Don’t mind me,” he said, laughing.

The duke blushed, but Laure went over to shake the financier’s hand, giving him a conspiratorial wink. She was radiant.

“It’s done, my dear,” she said. “I warned you. You won’t be too angry with me, will you?”

Saccard shrugged good-naturedly. He pulled back the door curtain and stood aside to let Laure and the duke pass. Then, like an usher announcing the arrival of guests, he barked out, “Monsieur le duc, Madame la duchesse!”

This pleasantry proved a tremendous success. The next day it was mentioned in the newspapers, blatantly naming Laure d’Aurigny while identifying the two gentlemen only by initials so transparent that they concealed the secret from no one. The breaking off of the relationship between Aristide Saccard and fat Laure caused even more of a stir than their alleged affair.

Meanwhile, Saccard had allowed the door curtain to fall back into place, shutting out the burst of laughter that his jest had unleashed in the drawing room.

“What a good girl she is!” he said, turning now to face Larsonneau. “And such a slut! . . . And you, you rascal! What are you getting out of all this? How much are they giving you?”

But Larsonneau defended himself with smiles and pulled down his cuffs, which had gotten pushed up. Eventually he went and sat down next to the door on a love seat that Saccard had indicated to him with a motion of his hand.

“Come here, damn it, I won’t insist on hearing your confession. . . . Let’s get down to brass tacks, my friend. I had a very long conversation with my wife earlier this evening. . . . Everything is taken care of.”

“She agreed to sell her share?” Larsonneau quizzed him.

“Yes, but it wasn’t easy. . . . Women can be so stubborn. You see, my wife had promised an elderly aunt of hers that she wouldn’t sell. She had no end of scruples about it. . . . Fortunately I was ready with a story that quite made up her mind.”

He got up to light a cigar on the candelabra that Laure had left on the table and then returned to stretch out casually at one end of the love seat.

“I told my wife that you were completely ruined,” he went on. “That you’d gambled on the Bourse, squandered your money on whores, and gotten mixed up in shady speculations. And finally, that you were about to go bust in the most awful fashion. . . . I even insinuated that I had doubts about your honesty. . . . I then explained to her that the Charonne business was going to be tangled up in your collapse and that the best thing to do would be to accept your proposition to buy her out—for a pittance, to be sure.”

“That wasn’t very intelligent,” the expropriation agent murmured. “You really think your wife is going to believe such a tall tale?”

Saccard smiled. He was in an expansive mood.

“How naïve you are, my dear fellow,” he continued. “The substance of the story is of no account. It’s all in the details, the gestures, and the accent. Call Rozan in here and I’ll bet I can convince him that it’s broad daylight outside. And my wife isn’t much smarter than Rozan. . . . I let her peer into the abyss. She has no inkling that expropriation is imminent. Since she was surprised that in the middle of such a catastrophe you would be willing to take on a still heavier burden, I told her that she was probably getting in the way of some trick you were about to play on your creditors. . . . In the end, I advised her to sell as the only way to avoid getting mixed up in interminable law-suits and to get some money out of her land.”

Larsonneau still thought the story somewhat crude. He preferred less dramatic methods. Each of his operations was plotted and brought to a resolution with the elegance of a drawing-room comedy.

“In your place I would have come up with something else,” he said. “But then each of us has his own system. . . . In any case, all that remains now is to pay the piper.”

“That’s precisely what I wanted to settle with you,” Saccard replied. “Tomorrow, I will give my wife the purchase-and-sale agreement, and in exchange for returning the signed papers to you, the amount agreed upon should be remitted to her. . . . I prefer to avoid any discussion between you.”

In fact, he had never cared to allow Larsonneau into his home on a footing of intimacy. He never invited him and had accompanied him to Renée’s apartment on days when it was essential that the two partners meet in person. There had been three such occasions. Most of the time he had made use of his wife’s power of attorney on the assumption that there was no point in letting her get too close a look at what he was up to.

He opened his briefcase and added, “Here are the 200,000 francs’ worth of notes signed by my wife. You will return these to her as payment, and to this amount you will add 100,000 francs that I shall deliver to you tomorrow morning. . . . I’m bleeding myself dry, my good friend. This business is costing me my own two eyes.”

“But that comes to only 300,000 francs,” the expropriation agent pointed out. “Will the receipt indicate that amount?”

“A receipt for 300,000 francs!” Saccard chortled. “Lord, we’d be in a hell of a fix later on! According to our inventories, the property must be worth two and a half million francs today. The receipt will naturally be for half that amount.”

“Your wife will never sign it.”

“Oh, yes she will. I’m telling you it’s all settled. . . . I told her it was your first condition, damn it! Your bankruptcy has forced you to put a pistol to our heads, don’t you see? That was when I let it be known that I had doubts about your honesty and accused you of intending to dupe your creditors. . . . Do you think my wife understands anything about all that?”

Larsonneau shook his head and murmured, “You still should have come up with something simpler.”

“But my story is simplicity itself,” Saccard replied in astonishment. “What the devil do you find complicated about it?”

He was quite unaware of the incredible number of strings he attached to the most ordinary transactions. He took great pleasure in the contrived story he had told Renée, and what delighted him was the impudence of the lie, the accumulation of impossibilities, the astonishing complexity of the intrigue. He would have taken possession of the property long ago if he hadn’t imagined this whole drama in advance, but it would have given him less pleasure if it had come to him more easily. For him it was the most natural thing in the world to turn the Charonne speculation into an elaborate financial melodrama.

He got up, took Larsonneau by the arm, and headed for the drawing room. “You understand what I said, don’t you? Just follow my instructions, and you’ll applaud when it’s over. You know, you really shouldn’t wear yellow gloves, my friend, they ruin your touch.”

The expropriation agent merely smiled. “Thanks for the instruction, but gloves have their uses: you can touch all sorts of things without getting your hands dirty.”

When they reentered the salon, Saccard was surprised and somewhat anxious to find Maxime on the other side of the curtain. The young man was sitting on a love seat next to a blonde, who was telling him a long story in a monotonous voice—her own story, no doubt. He had in fact overheard the conversation between his father and Larsonneau. The two accomplices were clearly sly dogs. Still angry about Renée’s betrayal, he took a coward’s pleasure in the news that she was soon to be robbed. There would be a modicum of vengeance for him in that. His father, looking suspicious, came over to shake his hand, but Maxime motioned toward the blonde and whispered in his ear, “She’s not bad, is she? I intend to have her tonight.”

Saccard then began to dance about and preen a bit. Laure d’Aurigny came and joined them for a moment. She complained that Maxime scarcely called on her more than once a month, but he claimed to have been very busy, which made everyone laugh. He added that from now on they’d be seeing him everywhere.

“I’ve written a tragedy,” he said, “and only yesterday did I come up with the fifth act. . . . I intend to rest from my labors in the company of all the beautiful women of Paris.”

He laughed and savored his allusions, which only he could understand. Meanwhile, the drawing room had emptied of all the other guests save Rozan and Larsonneau, on either side of the fireplace. The two Saccards rose to go, along with the blonde, who lived in the house. Laure then went over and whispered something to the duke. He seemed surprised and upset. Seeing that he made no move to get up from his chair, she said in a stage whisper, “No, really, not tonight. I have a headache. . . . Tomorrow, I promise you.”

Rozan had no choice but to obey. Laure waited until he was on the landing to whisper a quick word in Larsonneau’s ear: “So, Big Lar, you see I’m a woman of my word. . . . Stick him in his carriage.”

When the blonde took leave of the men and headed up to her apartment on the floor above, Saccard was surprised to see that Maxime did not follow her.

“Well,” he asked, “what are you waiting for?”

“I think not,” the young man replied. “I’ve thought better of it.”

Then he had an idea that struck him as very funny.

“I leave her to you if you like. Hurry, she hasn’t closed her door yet.”

But the father gave a quick shrug and said, “Thank you, my boy, but for the time being I’ve got something better.”

The four men went downstairs. When they reached the street, the duke absolutely insisted on giving Larsonneau a lift in his carriage. His mother lived in the Marais and he would drop the expropriation agent at his door on the rue de Rivoli. But Larsonneau refused, closed the door of the carriage himself, and ordered the coachman to drive off. He remained on the sidewalk of the boulevard Haussmann talking with the other two men and making no move to leave.

“Ah, poor Rozan!” exclaimed Saccard, who suddenly realized what was going on.

Larsonneau swore that it wasn’t true, that he didn’t give a damn about such things, that he was a practical man. But as the other two men continued to joke, and the air was very cold, he finally gave up and exclaimed, “For heaven’s sake, enough of this nonsense, I’m going to ring! . . . You gentlemen are very indiscreet.”

“Good night!” Maxime shouted as the door closed behind him.

Then, taking his father by the arm, he walked back up the boulevard alongside him. It was one of those clear, frosty nights when it is such a pleasure to walk on the hard ground in the frigid air. Saccard said that Larsonneau was making a mistake, that it was better to be the Aurigny woman’s friend than her lover. That led him to say that making love to whores of that sort was truly a bad idea. He presented himself as a moral authority, delivering himself of maxims and recommendations of astonishing propriety.

“You see,” he said to his son, “that sort of thing doesn’t last. . . . You lose your health that way without enjoying real happiness. You know I’m no prude. Well, I’ve had enough. I’m going to settle down.”

Maxime snickered. He stopped his father, contemplated him in the moonlight, and told him he was “a good-looking fellow.” But Saccard went on, graver than before. “Make fun of me as much as you like. I repeat: there’s nothing like marriage to preserve a man and make him happy.”

Then he brought up Louise. He slackened his pace and said that since they were already talking about marriage, now was the time to settle the matter. He informed Maxime that he and M. de Mareuil had set the Sunday after Mid-Lent Thursday12 as the date for signing the marriage contract. That night there was to be a big party at the Parc Monceau house, and he would take advantage of the occasion to announce the marriage publicly. Maxime was quite pleased with these arrangements. He was done with Renée and saw nothing else standing in the way, so he surrendered himself to his father as he had surrendered himself to his stepmother.

“Well, then, that’s settled,” he said. “Only don’t mention it to Renée. Her friends would kid me and tease me, and I’d rather they hear the news at the same time as everyone else.”

Saccard promised him that he would keep silent. Then, as they reached the top of the boulevard Malesherbes, he resumed dispensing excellent advice to his son. He explained to Maxime how to make his marriage a genuine paradise: “Above all, never break off relations with your wife. It’s a foolish thing to do. A wife with whom you no longer have relations costs you an arm and a leg. . . . To begin with, you’ve got to pay some whore, right? On top of that, the household expenses are much greater: there’s Madame’s clothing, her private pleasures, her bosom companions, and the devil knows what all else.”

He was for the time being in an extraordinarily virtuous mood. The success of the Charonne deal filled his heart with idyllic tenderness.

“I was born,” he continued, “to live in obscurity in some village, in the bosom of my family. . . . Nobody knows who I really am, my boy. . . . People take me for a fellow with his head in the clouds. Well, that’s nonsense. I’d love to stay at my wife’s side and would gladly give up business for a modest income that would allow me to retire to Plassans. . . . You’re going to be rich. Settle down with Louise and make yourself a nest you can live in like two turtledoves. What a fine thing! I’ll come visit you. It will do me good.”

He ended with tears in his voice. Meanwhile, they had reached the gate of the house and stood chatting on the curb outside. A north wind swept these Parisian heights. No sound rose in the frosty pallor of the night. Maxime, surprised by his father’s tender effusions, had remained a minute or two with a question on his lips.

“But you,” he came out with at last, “I had the impression—”

“What?”

“With your wife?”

Saccard shrugged. “Right, exactly! I was a fool. So I can speak to you from experience. . . . But we’ve patched it up, you know, absolutely. Almost six weeks ago. I go to her in the evening, when I don’t get home too late. Tonight, though, my poor darling will have to do without me. I have to work all night. She’s got an awfully nice figure, I must say.”

Maxime offered his hand, but his father held on to it long enough to add, in a confidential tone, “A shape like Blanche Muller’s, you know, but ten times more supple. And those hips! The curve, the elegance—”

Then, as Maxime started to walk off, he finished his thought: “You’re like me. You’ve got heart, your wife will be happy. . . . Good night, my boy!”

When Maxime was at last rid of his father, he quickly made his way around the park. What he had just heard surprised him so much that he felt an irresistible need to see Renée. He wanted to beg her pardon for his brutality, to find out why she had lied to him by naming M. de Saffré, and to learn the history of her husband’s amorous attentions. Yet all of these things he divined only vaguely, his one clear desire being to smoke a cigar in her room and renew their camaraderie. If she was in the right mood, he even intended to announce his marriage in order to make it clear to her that their affair was to remain dead and buried. As he opened the side gate, the key to which he had fortunately held on to, he convinced himself that after his father’s confidential revelations his visit was necessary and entirely proper.

In the conservatory, he whistled as he had the night before, but this time there was no waiting. Renée came and opened the glass doors of the small salon and went up ahead of him without speaking. She had just returned from a ball at the Hôtel de Ville. She was still wearing a white gown of puffed tulle covered with satin bows. The tails of the satin bodice were edged with a broad band of white lace, which the light from the candelabra tinged with blue and pink. Upstairs, when Maxime looked at her, he was touched by her pallor and by the deep emotion that choked her voice. She must not have been expecting him, for she was shivering all over at the sight of him arriving as he always did, with his calm, imploring air. Céleste returned from the closet, where she had gone in search of a nightgown, and the lovers remained silent while waiting for her to leave. They were not usually inhibited in her presence, but shame came over them because of what they sensed they were about to say. Renée wanted Céleste to undress her in the bedroom, where there was a big fire. The servant removed pins and articles of clothing one by one, without haste. Meanwhile, Maxime, feeling bored, mechanically took the nightgown that was lying on a chair next to him and warmed it by the fire, leaning forward with his arms stretched wide. In happier days this was a favor he had often done for Renée. She felt moved at the sight of him delicately holding her nightgown up to the fire. Then, as Céleste showed no sign of finishing her chores, he asked, “Did you enjoy yourself at the ball?”

“Oh, no,” she replied, “it’s always the same, you know. Far too many people, a real mob.”

He turned the nightgown, which was now warm on one side.

“What did Adeline wear?”

“A mauve gown, not very well thought out. . . . She’s short, and she’s wild about flounces.”

They talked about other women. By now Maxime was burning his fingers with the nightgown.

“Be careful, you’re going to scorch it,” Renée said in a voice full of maternal tenderness.

Céleste took the nightgown from the young man’s hands. He got up, went over to look at the big gray-and-pink bed, and let his eyes linger over one of the bouquets embroidered in the hanging so as to avoid looking at Renée’s naked breasts. This was instinctive. He no longer thought of himself as her lover, so he no longer had the right to see. Then he took a cigar from his pocket and lit it. Renée had always allowed him to smoke in her apartment. Céleste went out, leaving the young woman by the fire, all white in her bedtime attire.

Maxime continued his silent pacing a while longer, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Renée, who seemed to be shivering again. Then, stopping in front of the fireplace, with his cigar between his teeth, he asked abruptly, “Why didn’t you tell me that it was my father who was with you last night?”

She looked up, her eyes wide in an expression of supreme anguish. Then a rush of blood turned her complexion crimson, and, overcome by shame, she hid her face in her hands and stammered, “So you know? You know?”

Regaining her composure, she tried to lie. “It’s not true. . . . Who told you?”

Maxime shrugged. “Why, my father himself, who thinks you have an awfully nice figure and even discussed your hips with me.”

He had allowed himself to show a slight degree of annoyance. But he resumed his pacing, continuing between puffs on his cigar to speak to her in a chiding but friendly voice: “Really, I don’t understand you. You’re one of a kind. Yesterday it was your fault that I was so rude. You should have told me that it was my father, and I would have left quietly, you know. What right do I have? . . . But you went and told me it was M. de Saffré!”

She sobbed, her hands on her face. He approached, knelt in front of her, and forced her hands apart.

“So tell me why you said it was M. de Saffré.”

Then, averting her eyes once more, she answered, still crying, in a whisper: “I thought you would leave me if you knew that your father—”

He rose to his feet, took back the cigar that he had placed on the hearth, and contented himself with a murmured reply: “You’re really something, you know?”

She had stopped crying. The heat from the fireplace and in her cheeks dried her tears. Her astonishment at finding Maxime so calm in the face of a revelation that she had thought would crush him made her forget her shame. She watched him pace the room and listened to him speak as in a dream. Without taking his cigar out of his mouth he told her again that she was unreasonable, that it was perfectly natural for her to have relations with her husband, and that he couldn’t really think of getting angry about it. But to avow a lover when it wasn’t true! And he kept coming back to that, to the one thing he couldn’t understand, the one thing that seemed really monstrous to him. He spoke of the “wild imaginations” of women.

“You’re a bit cracked, my dear, you ought to have your head examined.”

In the end curiosity made him ask, “But why M. de Saffré rather than someone else?”

“He’s been after me,” Renée said.

Maxime checked himself as he was about to make an impertinent remark: he’d been on the point of saying that if she’d waited a month, she’d probably have been right in naming M. de Saffré as her lover. But he satisfied himself with a wicked smile at this nasty thought, tossed his cigar into the fire, and sat down at the other end of the hearth. He talked reason and hinted that they ought to remain good friends. The young woman’s fixed stare rather embarrassed him, though. He didn’t dare announce his marriage to her now. She contemplated him for a good long while through eyes still swollen from tears. Although she found him wretched, narrow, and contemptible, she loved him still, as tenderly as she loved her daintiest lace. He looked pretty in the light of the candelabra sitting on the edge of the hearth alongside him. When he threw back his head, the light from the candles gilded his hair and imparted to the soft down of his cheeks a charming auburn glow.

“I really must be going,” he said several times.

He had made up his mind not to stay. Renée wouldn’t have wanted him to in any case. Both were thinking, both had said that they were now nothing more than good friends. When Maxime finally shook the young woman’s hand and was about to leave the room, she stopped him for a moment and spoke to him about his father, whom she praised lavishly. “I feel too much remorse, you see. I’m glad this happened. . . . You don’t know your father. I’ve been surprised to discover how kind he is, how unselfish. The poor man has a lot to worry about right now.”

Maxime stared at the toes of his boots with an embarrassed look and said nothing. She persisted. “As long as he stayed out of my room, I didn’t care. But then. . . . When I saw him here, affectionate, bringing me money that he must have scraped together all over Paris, ruining himself for me without complaint, I felt ill. . . . If you only knew how carefully he has kept an eye on my interests.”

The young man walked softly back toward the fireplace and leaned against it. He was still embarrassed, his head bowed, yet a smile had begun to curl his lips.

“Yes,” he muttered, “my father is very clever when it comes to keeping an eye on people’s interests.”

The tone of his voice surprised Renée. She looked at him, and he, as if to defend himself, said, “Oh, what do I know? . . . I’m just saying that my father is a shrewd man.”

“You would be wrong to speak ill of him,” she continued. “Your judgment is obviously rather superficial. . . . If I told you his troubles, if I repeated to you what he confided to me just this evening, you’d see that people are wrong about him when they say that money is all he cares about.”

Maxime could not suppress a shrug. He interrupted his stepmother with an ironical laugh.

“Believe me, I know him, I know him quite well. . . . He must have told you some awfully good stories. Tell me what he said.”

His mocking tone wounded her. So she praised her husband all the more, said that he was a great man, and discussed the Charonne business—all those shady maneuvers of which she had understood nothing—as if Saccard had rescued her from some catastrophe, thereby revealing his intelligence and kindness. She added that she would be signing the purchase-and-sale agreement the next day and that if it really did end in disaster, she would accept that disaster as punishment for her sins. Maxime let her talk, snickering and stealing glances at her as she spoke. Then in a half-whisper he said, “Yes, indeed, that’s exactly right.”

Then he placed his hand on Renée’s shoulder and said in a somewhat louder voice, “Thank you, my dear, but I knew that story already. . . . You really are a soft touch.”

Once again he made a move as if to leave. He was itching to tell all. She had irritated him with her praise of her husband, and he forgot that he had promised himself that he would avoid unpleasantness by biting his tongue.

“What! What do you mean?” she asked.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, what I mean is that my father has been pulling the wool over your eyes as neatly as can be. . . . I feel sorry for you. You’re such a simpleton.”

Then he told her in his cowardly, cunning way what he had heard at Laure’s, taking secret pleasure at wallowing in such vileness. In his eyes he was inflicting revenge for whatever vague insult he had suffered. His crass character took rapturous delight in slander of this sort, in cruel gossip overheard from behind a curtain. He spared Renée nothing: neither the money her husband had lent her at usurious rates nor the sum he intended to steal from her with the help of ridiculous fairy tales fit only for putting children to sleep. Renée listened, looking quite livid, her lips pinched. Standing in front of the fireplace, she bowed her head slightly and gazed at the fire. Her night-dress, the chemise that Maxime had warmed at the hearth, fell open, revealing a whiteness as motionless as a statue.

“I’m telling you all this,” Maxime concluded, “so that you don’t look like a fool. . . . But you would be wrong to hold a grudge against my father. He’s not mean. He has his faults, just like everybody else. . . . Till tomorrow, eh?”

He made a move toward the door. With a brusque motion Renée stopped him.

“Stay!” she imperiously commanded.

Then she seized him, drew him toward her, and practically sat him on her lap in front of the fire, whereupon she kissed him on the lips, saying, “What would be the point of holding back now? . . . You have no idea, do you? that since yesterday when you tried to break off with me, I’ve been out of my mind. I’ve been like an imbecile. Tonight, at the ball, I was in a fog. Because I can’t live without you. When you leave, I’m done for. . . . Don’t laugh, I’m telling you how I feel.”

She looked at him with infinite longing, as if she hadn’t seen him for ages.

“You hit on the right word: I was a simpleton. Your father could have made me see stars in broad daylight today. What did I know? While he was telling me his fairy tale, all I heard was a loud hum, and I was so overwhelmed that if he’d wanted, he could have made me get down on my knees to sign his silly papers. And I thought I was feeling remorse! . . . Yes, I was that big a fool.”

She burst out laughing, and glimmers of madness shone in her eyes. Holding her lover even tighter than before, she continued. “Have we sinned, you and I? We love each other, and we’ve enjoyed each other just as we pleased. Everybody’s like that nowadays, aren’t they? . . . Your father seldom holds back. He loves money and takes it where he finds it. He’s right, it sets my mind at ease. . . . So I won’t sign anything, and you’ll come back night after night. I was afraid you wouldn’t want to anymore, you know, because of what I told you. . . . But since you don’t care. . . . In any case, I’ll close my door to him now. You see that, don’t you?”

She got up and lit the nightlight. Maxime hesitated, suddenly plunged into despair. He’d been a fool, he realized, and he came down hard on himself for having said too much. How could he announce his marriage now? It was his own fault. He had broken it off, there had been no need to return to the bedroom and above all no need to prove to Renée that her husband was swindling her. What made him even angrier with himself was that he was no longer sure what emotion he’d just given in to. But if he considered even for a moment being brutal a second time and walking out, the sight of Renée as she let her slippers fall filled him with invincible cowardice. He was afraid. He stayed.

The next day, when Saccard came for his wife’s signature on the purchase-and-sale agreement, she calmly told him that she had thought it over and changed her mind. Beyond that she gave no hint of her reasons. She had sworn to bite her tongue, since she had no wish to make trouble for herself and was eager to enjoy the resumption of her affair in peace. The Charonne business would have to play itself out. Her refusal to sign was a simple act of vengeance. About the rest she couldn’t have cared less. Saccard came close to losing his temper. His whole dream was collapsing around him. His other schemes were going from bad to worse. He was coming to the end of his tether, and only a miraculous balancing act kept him on his feet. That very morning he hadn’t been able to pay what he owed the baker, yet he was still planning a splendid party for Mid-Lent Thursday. Renée’s refusal made him feel the white rage of a man in his prime prevented from going about his business by the whim of a child. With the purchase-and-sale agreement in his pocket, he had planned to raise cash while awaiting payment of the indemnity. Later, when he had calmed down a little and his mind had cleared, he found his wife’s sudden change of mind puzzling. Surely she had taken advice from someone. He suspected a lover. His suspicions were so keen, in fact, that he hastened to his sister’s to question her, to find out if she knew anything about Renée’s secret life. Sidonie was full of spleen. She had not forgiven her sister-in-law for her refusal to see M. de Saffré. So when she grasped from her brother’s questions that he was accusing his wife of having a lover, she blurted out that she was certain of it and offered to spy on “the turtledoves” herself. She’d show that stuck-up sister-in-law of hers what kind of woman she was dealing with. As a rule Saccard did not seek to know disagreeable truths. But now his interests were at stake, and nothing else could have forced him to open eyes he otherwise kept discreetly shut. He accepted his sister’s offer.

“Go on now, rest easy, I’ll find out everything there is to know,” she told him in a voice full of compassion. “Oh, my poor brother, Angèle would never have betrayed you! A husband so good, so generous! These Parisian dolls have no heart. . . . And to think that I’ve always been there for her with good advice.”

6

On Mid-Lent Thursday the Saccards held a costume ball. The centerpiece of the evening was to be a tableau vivant entitled “The Amours of Handsome Narcissus and the Nymph Echo,” which the ladies planned to stage in three scenes. The author, M. Hupel de la Noue, had been traveling back and forth from his prefecture to the Parc Monceau mansion to oversee the rehearsals and give advice about the costumes. His first thought had been to compose his work in verse, but he subsequently decided in favor of a tableau vivant. It was a nobler genre, he said, and closer to the classical ideal of beauty.

The ladies had no rest. Some of them were required to make no fewer than three costume changes. There were endless conferences, over which the prefect presided. The character of Narcissus1 was discussed at length. Would he be represented by a man or a woman? Finally it was decided at Renée’s insistence that the role would be given to Maxime. But he would be the only man in the production, and Mme de Lauwerens said that even then she would never have agreed to it if “little Maxime didn’t look so much like a real girl.” Renée was to play the nymph Echo. The question of costumes was far more complicated. Maxime eagerly assisted the prefect, who found himself exhausted by nine women whose extravagant imaginations seriously threatened to compromise his work’s purity of outline. Had he listened to them, his Olympus would have worn powder. Mme d’Espanet absolutely insisted on wearing a floor-length gown to hide her feet, which were rather large, while Mme Haffner had visions of herself in an animal hide. M. Hupel de la Noue was full of energy. Once, anger even got the better of him. If he had given up verse, he said, he was convinced that it was only to write his poem “with deftly arranged fabrics and poses chosen for their exquisite beauty.”

“The overall effect, ladies, you’re forgetting the overall effect,” he repeated at each new demand. “I really can’t sacrifice the entire work to the flounces you’re asking for.”

The negotiations took place in the buttercup salon. Entire afternoons were devoted to deciding the contours of a skirt. Worms was summoned several times. At last all the questions were resolved, the costumes chosen, the poses learned, and M. Hupel de la Noue declared himself satisfied. The election of M. de Mareuil had given him less trouble.

“The Amours of Handsome Narcissus and the Nymph Echo” was to begin at eleven o’clock. By ten-thirty the large drawing room was full, and since the presentation was to be followed by a fancy-dress ball, the women had come in costume and were seated on armchairs arranged in a semicircle in front of the improvised stage: a platform hidden by two broad curtains of red velvet with gold fringe, running on rods. The men, standing behind them, came and went. The decorators had finished their hammering by ten. The platform filled one end of the long gallery. Access to the stage was through the smoking room, which had been converted to a greenroom for the artists. In addition, the ladies had several upstairs rooms at their disposal, and an army of chambermaids was busy preparing costumes for the various tableaux.

It was eleven-thirty, and the curtains still had not opened. A loud buzz filled the salon. The rows of armchairs displayed the most astonishing array of marquises and princesses, Spanish dancing girls and milkmaids, shepherdesses and sultanas, while the compact mass of black frock coats stood out like a dark spot alongside the shimmering display of bright fabrics and bare shoulders glittering with sparkling flashes of jewelry. Only the women were in disguise. It was already hot. Three chandeliers highlighted the gold dripping from the walls of the salon.

At last M. Hupel de la Noue was seen to emerge from an opening to the left of the platform. He had been assisting the ladies since eight o’clock. The left sleeve of his coat bore an imprint of three fingers in white: a woman’s small hand had been placed there inadvertently after dipping into a jar of rice powder. But the prefect had weightier matters to think about than the imperfections of his attire! His pupils were hugely dilated, his face puffy and rather pale. He did not seem to take anyone in. Advancing toward Saccard, whom he recognized in the midst of a group of serious men, he whispered, “I’ll be damned if your wife hasn’t gone and lost her girdle of leaves. . . . We’re in a fine mess.”

He swore and seemed ready to lash out at someone. Then, without waiting for an answer, without making eye contact, he turned on his heel and dove back behind the curtains. The ladies laughed at this singular apparition.

The group of men around Saccard had gathered behind the last row of chairs. One of the chairs had been pulled out of line for Baron Gouraud, whose legs had been swollen for some time. The group included M. Toutin-Laroche, whom the Emperor had just named to the Senate; M. de Mareuil, whose second election had been duly accredited by the Chamber; M. Michelin, recently decorated; and somewhat farther back, Mignon and Charrier, one of whom wore a large diamond in his tie while the other sported an even larger one on his finger. These gentlemen were engaged in conversation. Saccard left them for a moment to exchange a few words in hushed tones with his sister, who had just come and sat down between Louise de Mareuil and Mme Michelin. Mme Sidonie appeared as a magician. Louise had cheekily dressed as a page, which made her look like quite the naughty boy. And the Michelin girl, in the costume of an Egyptian dancer, smiled amorously through veils of gold lamé.

“Did you find out anything?” Saccard asked his sister quietly.

“No, nothing yet,” she replied. “But the lucky fellow must be here tonight. . . . I’ll catch them, you can count on it.”

“Let me know right away, will you?”

Turning first to his right and then to his left, Saccard complimented Louise and Mme Michelin. He compared the latter to one of Mohammed’s houris 2 and the former to one of Henri III’s mignons.³ His Provençal accent added a musical note to his shrill and strident nature, making him seem thrilled with delight. When he rejoined the group of serious men, M. de Mareuil took him aside to discuss the marriage of their children. Nothing had changed: the signing of the contract was still set for Sunday.

“Exactly right,” Saccard agreed. “I’m even planning to announce the wedding to our friends tonight, if you see no reason not to. . . . I’m only waiting for my brother the minister to arrive, as he promised me he’d be here.”

The new deputy was delighted. Meanwhile, M. Toutin-Laroche raised his voice as if in outrage. “Yes, gentlemen,” he was saying to M. Michelin and the two contractors, who had gathered round him, “I should never have been so obliging as to allow my name to get mixed up in an affair of that sort.” And on seeing that Saccard and Mareuil had rejoined the group, he added, “I was just telling these gentlemen about the deplorable fate of the Société Générale des Ports du Maroc. You know what I’m talking about, Saccard?”

Saccard did not flinch. The company in question had just collapsed in a terrible scandal. Certain overly inquisitive shareholders had wished to know how things stood with the construction of the much-discussed commercial facilities along the Mediterranean coast, and an official inquiry had revealed that the Moroccan ports existed only as engineer’s drawings—very fine drawings hanging on the walls of the company’s headquarters. At that point M. Toutin-Laroche began screaming even louder than the shareholders, and in his outrage he insisted that his good name be restored, cleansed of any taint. Indeed, he raised such a ruckus that the government, in order to calm this useful fellow down and rehabilitate him in the eyes of the public, decided to send him to the Senate. Thus, from a scandal that might well have landed him in criminal court, he emerged with the senate seat he had coveted for so long.

“It’s awfully good of you to concern yourself with that fiasco,” Saccard replied. “After all, you can always point to your great work, the Crédit Viticole, which has emerged triumphant from every crisis it has ever faced.”

“Yes,” Mareuil said quietly, “that’s the answer to all the critics.”

As a matter of fact the Crédit Viticole had just survived some serious difficulties, which had been carefully concealed. A minister with a pronounced weakness for that particular financial institution, which held the City of Paris by the throat, had contrived to drive up the price of its shares, and M. Toutin-Laroche had done a marvelous job of capitalizing on the opportunity. Nothing tickled him more than praise for the prosperity of the Crédit Viticole. As a rule he instigated such praise himself. He thanked M. de Mareuil with a glance and, leaning familiarly on Baron Gouraud’s chair, he bent down and asked, “Are you all right? You’re not too warm?”

The baron gave a slight grunt.

“He’s sinking, he’s sinking day by day,” M. Toutin-Laroche added in an undertone when he had turned back to face the others.

M. Michelin smiled and from time to time gently lowered his eyelids to steal a glance at his red ribbon. Mignon and Charrier, planted firmly on their oversized feet, seemed much more at ease in their dress clothes now that they had taken to wearing sparklers. But it was now almost midnight, and the company was growing impatient. No one went so far as to mutter, but fans had begun to flutter more nervously and conversations were growing louder.

At last M. Hupel de la Noue reappeared. He had one shoulder through the narrow opening when he finally saw Mme d’Espanet mounting the platform. The other ladies, already in place for the first tableau, had only been awaiting her arrival. The prefect turned his back to the audience, which could see him conversing with the marquise, hidden behind the curtains. Blowing kisses from his fingertips, he said in a hushed voice, “My compliments, marquise. Your costume is delightful.”

“I have a much prettier one underneath,” came the young woman’s cavalier reply, and she burst out laughing right in the prefect’s face, because the sight of him stuck in the curtains like that struck her as hilarious.

The gallant M. Hupel de la Noue was momentarily taken aback by the boldness of this reply, but he recovered, and savoring the sally all the more as he pondered all its dimensions, he pronounced it “Charming! Charming!” with an air of delight.

He let the corner of the curtain fall and rejoined the group of serious men, in whose company he planned to enjoy his work. No longer was he the nervous master of ceremonies searching high and low for Echo’s leafy girdle. He was beaming now, breathing hard as he wiped his brow. The sleeve of his coat still bore the small white handprint, and now, in addition, there was a red spot on the tip of the thumb of his right glove, which he had no doubt dipped into a jar of face paint. He smiled, he fanned himself, and then he stammered, “She’s lovely, ravishing, stupendous.”

“Who are you talking about?” Saccard wanted to know.

“The marquise. You’ll never believe what she just said to me.”

And he repeated her repartee. Everyone agreed that it was just right. The men repeated it to one another. M. Haffner had joined the group, and, dignified though he was, even he could not refrain from applauding. Meanwhile, someone seated at a piano that hardly anyone had noticed began to play a waltz. A hush came over the crowd. The waltz wound on through an endless series of variations, all involving a sweet ascending phrase ending in a trill and preceding a return to a slower melody in the bass. It was quite sensual. The ladies, tilting their heads slightly, smiled. In contrast, the piano had abruptly put an end to M. Hupel de la Noue’s gaiety. He gazed anxiously at the red velvet curtain and told himself that he ought to have posed Mme d’Espanet personally, as he had posed the others.

As the curtains slowly parted, the piano, soft-pedaled now, resumed the sensual waltz. A murmur raced through the salon, the ladies leaned forward, and the men craned their necks, while here and there admiration was expressed in the form of a remark uttered in too loud a voice, an unconscious sigh, or a stifled laugh. This went on for a full five minutes under the glare of the three chandeliers.

Reassured, M. Hupel de la Noue gaped in delight at his “poem.” He could not resist the temptation to repeat to everyone in his vicinity what he had been saying for a month: “I had thought of doing it in verse, but this way the lines are nobler, don’t you think?”

Then, as the waltz lulled the audience with its endless ebb and flow, he launched into explanations. Mignon and Charrier moved closer to him and listened attentively.

“You are of course familiar with the subject. Handsome Narcissus, son of the river Cephisus and the nymph Liriope, scorns the love of the nymph Echo. . . . Echo was part of the retinue of Juno,4 whom she amused with her speeches while Jupiter roamed the world. . . . Echo, as you know, was the daughter of Air and Earth. . . .”

He waxed rapturous about the poetry of the ancients. Then, in a more intimate tone, he said, “I felt I could give free rein to my imagination. . . . The nymph Echo takes handsome Narcissus to visit Venus in a seaside grotto, where the goddess is to kindle his love with her fire. But Venus proves powerless. From the youth’s pose one can see that he has not been touched.”

This explanation was by no means superfluous, for few of the spectators in the room grasped the precise significance of the various groups. By the time the prefect, speaking in a hushed voice, had finished identifying all the characters, the audience admired his work even more. Mignon and Charrier continued to gaze wide-eyed at the tableau, however. Its meaning still eluded them.

A grotto had been fashioned on the stage between the red velvet curtains. The silk backdrop had been arranged with large jagged folds imitating the contours of rocks, on which images of shells, fish, and aquatic vegetation had been painted. The platform itself was uneven, a small mound having been set in place and covered with the same silk fabric, upon which the decorator had painted a bed of fine sand strewn with pearls and flecks of silver. It was the lair of a goddess. There, atop the little hillock, stood Mme de Lauwerens, dressed as Venus. A little stout for the part, she wore her pink tights with the dignity of a duchess of Olympus. She interpreted her character as the Queen of Love, whom she played with severe, wide-open, all-devouring eyes. Behind her, revealing only her mischievous face, her wings, and her quiver, little Mme Daste lent her amiable smile to the character of Cupid. Arrayed alongside the mound were the Three Graces, Mmes de Guende, Teissière, and von Meinhold, all wrapped in muslin, smiling, and laced together as in the sculpture by Pradier.5 On the other side of the mound, the marquise d’Espanet and Mme Haffner stood wrapped in a single cascade of lace, their arms around each other’s waists, their hair entwined, lending a risqué note to the tableau, a hint of Lesbos,6 which M. Hupel de la Noue explained in an even lower voice meant to be heard only by the men: his intention, he said, had been to use this example to demonstrate the power of Venus. At the foot of the mound Countess Wanska portrayed Voluptuousness. She lay stretched out, her body contorted by an ultimate spasm of pleasure, her eyes lifeless and half-closed as though she were about to lose consciousness. Of dark complexion, she had let down her black hair, and her bodice, streaked with tawny flames, revealed patches of flushed skin. The colors of the costumes, ranging from the snowy white of the veil of Venus to the dark red of the tunic of Voluptuousness, defined a restrained palette in which flesh tones dominated. And beneath the electric light, ingeniously directed onto the scene through one of the garden windows, all that gauze and lace and other diaphanous fabric blended so well with the shoulders and tights that those flesh tones came alive, and it was hard to be sure that these ladies had not carried their pursuit of artistic truth to the point of appearing on stage completely naked. This was merely the apotheosis; the drama unfolded in the foreground. On the left Renée, portraying the nymph Echo, reached out her arms toward the great goddess, her head half-turned toward Narcissus as if begging him to gaze upon Venus, the mere sight of whom was supposed to be enough to kindle an irresistible flame in his breast. But Narcissus, on the right, made a gesture of refusal, hid his eyes with his hand, and remained as cold as ice. The costumes for these two characters had taxed M. Hupel de la Noue’s imagination to the utmost. Narcissus, a demigod who roamed the forests, was dressed as an idealized hunter, in green tights with a short, close-fitting jacket and a sprig of oak in his hair. Nymph Echo’s gown was a whole allegory unto itself. It hinted at tall trees and tall mountains, at reverberant places where Earth and Air echo each other’s cries. The white satin of the skirt symbolized rock, the green foliage of the girdle stood for forest, and the cloud of blue gauze in the bodice represented the purity of the sky. The groups stood as still as statues in the dazzling light from the broad beam of the arc light, which hummed with the carnal note of Olympus, while the piano continued with its piercing plaint of love, punctuated by deep sighs.

The audience on the whole thought Maxime looked remarkably good. In making his gesture of refusal, he thrust out his left hip, which drew considerable comment. But the lion’s share of the praise was reserved for the expression on Renée’s face. As M. Hupel de la Noue put it, she represented “the suffering of unsatisfied desire.” She wore an avid smile that she tried to disguise as humble and tracked her prey as hungrily as a she-wolf, her teeth only half-hidden. The first tableau went off well, except that foolish Adeline was fidgety and had a hard time suppressing an overwhelming urge to laugh. Then the curtains closed and the piano fell silent.

The audience applauded discreetly, and conversation resumed. An amorous breeze, a current of suppressed desire, had proceeded from the simulated nudity on the stage into the drawing room, where the women lay back a bit deeper in their chairs and the men exchanged smiles and whispered in one another’s ears. It was the sound of pillow talk, the tasteful hush of refined people whose lips quivered with scarcely formulated desires, and in the mute looks exchanged amidst all this decorous delectation one sensed the shameless frankness of love offered and accepted at a glance.

The ladies’ perfections were subjected to endless appraisals. Their costumes took on an importance almost as great as their shoulders. When Mignon and Charrier turned to ask M. Hupel de la Noue a question, they were surprised that he had already disappeared backstage.

Mme Sidonie had resumed a conversation interrupted by the first tableau. “As I was telling you, my lovely pet, I had received a letter from London concerning the matter of the three billion francs, remember? . . . The person I had asked to look into the matter wrote me that he thought he had located the banker’s receipt. Which would indicate that England must have paid. . . . This news has made me ill since this morning.”

Indeed, she did look more waxen than usual in her star-studded magician’s gown. Since Mme Michelin was paying no attention to her, she lowered her voice even more and muttered to herself that it was impossible that England had paid and therefore there was no choice but for her to go to London herself.

“Narcissus’ costume was awfully pretty, wasn’t it?” Louise asked Mme Michelin.

Mme Michelin smiled. She was looking at Baron Gouraud, who seemed quite recovered in his armchair. Mme Sidonie, noticing the direction of her gaze, leaned toward her and whispered in her ear so that the child would not hear.

“Has he done what he was supposed to do?”

“Yes,” the young woman answered, affecting a wistfully seductive look, playing the part of the Egyptian dancer to perfection. “I chose the house in Louveciennes, and his business agent sent me the deed. . . . But we’ve broken it off. I don’t see him anymore.”

Louise’s ears were particularly sharp when it came to catching things that other people wanted to keep secret. She looked at Baron Gouraud with the impudence of the page whose costume she wore and then casually dropped a remark directed at Mme Michelin: “Don’t you find the baron hideous?”

Then she burst out laughing and added, “You know what? They ought to have had him play the part of Narcissus. He’d be quite something in apple-green tights!”

The elderly senator had in fact been revived by the sight of Venus and of this voluptuous corner of Olympus. He rolled his delighted eyes and turned partway round to compliment Saccard. In the hubbub that filled the room, the group of serious men continued to discuss business and politics. M. Haffner announced that he had just been named chairman of a jury that was to settle questions of indemnities. The conversation then turned to public works in the capital and in particular on the boulevard du Prince-Eugène, which had begun to attract public notice. Saccard seized the opportunity to speak of someone he knew who owned land that would no doubt be expropriated. He looked the assembled gentlemen in the face. The baron gently shook his head. M. Toutin-Laroche went so far as to say that nothing was more unpleasant than to have one’s property confiscated. M. Michelin nodded approvingly while trying even harder to squint at his decoration.

“The indemnities can never be large enough,” M. de Mareuil sagely concluded in an effort to please Saccard.

The two men had reached an understanding. But now Mignon and Charrier turned the conversation to their own affairs. They intended to retire before too long, probably to Langres, they said, although they would continue to maintain a pied-à-terre in Paris. They made the other men smile by saying that after they had built their splendid mansion on the boulevard Malesherbes, they had found it so beautiful that they hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to sell. The diamonds they were wearing must have been consolation for their loss. Saccard laughed ungraciously. His former partners had just reaped enormous profits from a venture in which he had played the role of dupe. As the intermission wore on, speeches in praise of Venus’ bosom and Echo’s gown interrupted the conversation of the serious men.

More than half an hour later, M. Hupel de la Noue reappeared. He was basking in his success, as the growing disorder of his attire indicated. As he was returning to his place, he encountered M. de Mussy. After shaking his hand in passing, he turned around. “Have you heard the marquise’s witty repartee?” he asked.

And without waiting for Mussy’s answer, he repeated it. His appreciation of the lady’s wit had only increased in the interim. He offered his own commentary, ending with the compliment that the remark was exquisite in its simplicity. “I have a much prettier one underneath.” It was a cry from the heart.

M. de Mussy did not share that opinion, however. He deemed the lady’s remark indecent. He had just been assigned to the embassy in London, and the minister had warned him that sober attire was de rigueur. He now refused to lead the cotillion,7 tried to look older than he was, and no longer spoke of his love for Renée, to whom he bowed gravely whenever they chanced to meet.

As M. Hupel de la Noue rejoined the group that had gathered behind the baron’s chair, the piano struck up a triumphal march. The chords were laid on thick, struck with the fingers vertical on the keys, leading into an expansive melody punctuated at intervals by tinkling metallic sounds. After each phrase, a new voice took up the melody in a higher register, accentuating the beat. The composition was at once aggressive and joyful.

“As you are about to see,” M. Hupel de la Noue murmured. “I may have carried poetic license a bit far, but I believe that my audacity has been rewarded. . . . The nymph Echo, seeing that Venus can do nothing with handsome Narcissus, takes him to Plutus, the god of riches and precious metals. . . . After the temptation of the flesh, the temptation of gold.”

“A stroke worthy of the classics,” replied the wizened M. Toutin-Laroche, with an amiable smile. “You know your period, Monsieur le Préfet.”

The curtains opened; the piano played louder. The scene was dazzling. The electric light revealed a stage ablaze in splendor, which the audience at first took to be a brazier filled with gold bars and precious gems that seemed to melt into one another. Another grotto loomed before them, but this time not the cool lair in which Venus lived on sands strewn with pearls and lapped by the ebbing tide. This second grotto was supposed to be located at the center of the earth, in a fiery region of the underworld, a fissure of Hades, a crevice in a mine of molten metal inhabited by Plutus. The silk that stood for rock revealed broad seams of metal, great flows that were like the veins of the primeval world, bearing incalculable riches and the eternal essence of earth. In M. Hupel de la Noue’s boldly anachronistic vision, the ground was covered with an avalanche of twenty-franc coins, rivers and heaps and swelling mounds of gold louis. Atop this pile of gold sat Mme de Guende as Plutus—a female Plutus, a Plutus who showed her bosom through the strands of a gown woven of every metal imaginable. Arrayed around this god, either standing erect or slightly reclining, clustered together or set apart, were the fantastic effusions of a grotto into which the caliphs of A Thousand and One Nights had poured their treasure: Mme Haffner as Gold, wearing a gown as stiff and resplendent as a bishop’s robes; Mme d’Espanet as Silver, shimmering like a moonbeam; Mme de Lauwerens, all fiery blue, as Sapphire, with little Mme Daste at her side, a smiling Turquoise with a tender bluish tinge. Away from the center of the stage were Emerald, Mme von Meinhold, and Topaz, Mme Teissière, while downstage Countess Wanska lent her somber passion to Coral even as she lay with upraised arms weighed down by red pendants like some monstrous but fascinating polyp exhibiting a woman’s flesh in the gap between nacreous pink shells. Each of the ladies wore necklaces, bracelets, and complete sets of jewelry made of the precious stone her character represented. The novel ornaments worn by Mme d’Espanet and Mme Haffner attracted a great deal of comment, being composed solely of small gold and silver coins fresh from the mint. The foreground drama remained the same: the nymph Echo tempting handsome Narcissus, who again indicated his refusal with a wave. The delighted eyes of the spectators slowly adjusted to this dazzling glimpse of the earth’s blazing entrails, this heap of gold upon which the wealth of a certain society lay sprawled.

This second tableau proved even more successful than the first. The idea seemed particularly ingenious. The boldness of the twenty-franc coins, the dumping of the contents of a modern safe into a corner of Greek mythology, enchanted the imaginations of the ladies and financiers in attendance. “So much gold!” people exclaimed. “So much money!” There were smiles all around, and thrills of satisfaction, as each of the ladies and each of the gentlemen privately dreamt of having all that loot to himself or herself in an underground vault somewhere.

“England has paid its debt, those are your billions,” Louise maliciously whispered in Mme Sidonie’s ear.

Mme Michelin, her lips parted in an expression of rapturous desire, pushed aside her dancer’s veil and with gleaming eyes gazed fondly on the gold, while the group of serious men went into transports. A beaming M. Toutin-Laroche whispered a few words in the ear of the baron, on whose face yellow spots had begun to appear. Meanwhile, Mignon and Charrier, less discreet, expressed themselves in a direct and simple manner: “Good God! There’s enough there to demolish Paris and build it all up again.”

This remark struck Saccard as profound, and he began to think that Mignon and Charrier were thumbing their noses at society when they pretended to be imbeciles. When the curtains had closed, and the piano ended the triumphal march with a great clatter of notes heaped one upon the other like a last shovelful of gold coins, applause broke out even louder and longer than before.

Meanwhile, in the middle of the tableau, the minister, accompanied by his secretary M. de Saffré, had appeared in the door of the salon. Saccard, who had been awaiting his brother’s arrival impatiently, started to rush over to greet him. But his brother signaled him to stay where he was and walked slowly over to the group of serious men. When the curtains had closed and people noticed he was there, whispers coursed through the drawing room, and heads turned in the minister’s direction. The success of “The Amours of Handsome Narcissus and the Nymph Echo” depended on his judgment.

“You are a poet, Monsieur le Préfet,” the smiling official told M. Hupel de la Noue. “You previously published a volume of verse entitled Les Volubilis, if I’m not mistaken. . . . I see that the cares of government have not dampened your imagination.”

In this compliment the prefect detected the sting of an epigram. The sudden appearance of his superior disconcerted him all the more when he looked down to check his attire and noticed the small white handprint on his sleeve, which he did not dare to wipe clean. He bowed and stammered a reply.

“Really,” the minister continued, addressing himself to M. Toutin-Laroche, Baron Gouraud, and other personages nearby, “all that gold was a wonder to behold. We could do great things if M. Hupel de la Noue would coin money for us.”

This was the same remark that Mignon and Charrier had made, but in ministerial language. Then M. Toutin-Laroche and the others made flattering comments that played off the minister’s last sentence: the Empire had already worked miracles; there was no shortage of gold, owing to the vast experience of those in power; never had France enjoyed such a splendid position in the eyes of Europe. In the end, these gentlemen prostrated themselves to such a degree that the minister himself changed the subject. He listened to them with his head held high and the corners of his mouth slightly raised, which imparted to his plump, white, carefully shaved face an air of doubt and smiling disdain.

Saccard, who was looking for an opening to announce Maxime’s marriage to Louise, maneuvered in search of a clever transition. He affected a great familiarity, and his brother, with an air of friendly good nature, did him the favor of pretending to like him a great deal. He was truly superior, with his clear gaze, his visible contempt for petty mischief, and his broad shoulders, a shrug from which would have been enough to send everyone in the room reeling. When the subject of the marriage finally came up, he behaved charmingly and let it be known that his wedding gift was ready and waiting: he brought up the matter of Maxime’s appointment as an auditor with the Conseil d’Etat. In the heartiest of tones he twice went so far as to make his brother the promise he had been waiting to hear: “Tell your son that I want to be his witness.”

M. de Mareuil blushed with pleasure. Saccard accepted congratulations. M. Toutin-Laroche offered to serve as a second witness. Then the conversation abruptly turned to the subject of divorce. A member of the opposition had just found what M. Haffner called the “lamentable courage” to defend this social disgrace. This was greeted with cries of protest from all present. Their sense of propriety found profound words in which to express itself. M. Michelin smiled discreetly at the minister, while Mignon and Charrier noted with astonishment that his jacket collar was worn.

Meanwhile, M. Hupel de la Noue continued to lean uncomfortably on Baron Gouraud’s chair after the baron contented himself with a silent shake of the minister’s hand. The poet did not dare move from the spot, held there by an indefinable sentiment, a fear of looking ridiculous and of forfeiting the approval of his superior, despite his burning desire to go backstage to position the women for the final tableau. He was waiting for some clever remark to occur to him and restore him to favor. But none came. He was feeling more and more embarrassed when he spotted M. de Saffré, took him by the arm, and latched on to him as to a life raft. The young man had just arrived; here was a fresh victim.

“Have you heard the Marquise’s witty repartee?” the prefect asked.

But he was so flustered that he found it impossible to tell the story properly. He floundered. “I said to her, ‘You’re wearing a charming costume,’ and she answered—”

“ ‘I have a much prettier one underneath,’ ” M. de Saffré calmly finished his sentence. “That’s an old one, my dear fellow, very old.”

M. Hupel de la Noue looked at him in consternation. The witticism was an old one, yet he had been on the verge of embellishing yet again his commentary on the simplicity of the marquise’s cry from the heart.

“Old, as old as the hills,” the secretary repeated. “Mme d’Espanet has already used that remark twice at the Tuileries.”

That was the last straw. At that point the prefect ceased to care about the minister and the crowd in the drawing room. He was headed for the platform when the piano launched into the prelude, a series of notes played so tremulously that they seemed almost to weep. Then the plangent melody opened out into a more expansive section, which dragged on for quite some time, and the curtains were drawn aside. M. Hupel de la Noue, who had already half-vanished backstage, returned to the salon when he heard the gentle grating of the curtain rings on their rods. He looked pale and exasperated. By dint of immense effort he overcame a violent urge to berate the ladies. They had placed themselves on stage! It must have been the little Espanet woman who had organized the conspiracy to speed up the costume changes and make do without his advice. It was all wrong! What they had done was no good at all!

He returned to his place, muttering to himself. He looked at the stage, shrugged, and mumbled, “Echo is too close to the edge. . . . And there’s no nobility in Narcissus’ leg, none at all.”

Mignon and Charrier, who had come over to hear his “explanation,” ventured to ask “what the young man and young woman are doing lying on the ground.” But M. Hupel de la Noue did not answer. He refused to explain his poem any further, and when the contractors pressed their question, he said, “Why, I have nothing more to do with it, now that those women have gone and placed themselves without me.”

The piano sobbed softly. Onstage, a clearing, dappled with “sunlight ” from the electric arc, opened onto a horizon of foliage. It was a fanciful clearing, a sort of glade with blue trees and big yellow and red flowers that grew as tall as oaks. There, on a grassy knoll, Venus and Plutus stood side by side, surrounded by nymphs from the nearby woods, who had hastened to them to form an escort. Among them were daughters of the trees, daughters of the springs, daughters of the mountains—all the laughing, naked deities of the forest. And the god and goddess stood in triumph, punishing the indifference of the proud youth who had scorned them, while the group of nymphs gazed with sacred terror upon the vengeance of Olympus unfolding in the foreground. Handsome Narcissus, lying beside a stream that seemed to flow out of the backdrop, stared at his image in that limpid mirror. Verisimilitude had been carried to the point of placing an actual mirror at the bottom of the stream. But this was no longer the free-spirited youth who had roamed the forest. Death had caught him by surprise as he lay in rapt admiration of his own image; it had made him weak, and Venus, with her finger outstretched like a fairy in a transformation scene, was casting her fatal spell. He was changing into a flower. His limbs seemed to turn green and grow longer inside his green satin tights. His supple trunk and slightly curved legs seemed to sink into the ground and take root, while the upper part of his body, festooned with wide strips of white satin, opened out into a marvelous corolla. Maxime’s blond hair completed the illusion, as his long curls could be taken for yellow pistils with white petals all around. And this great nascent flower, still human, tilted its head toward the spring—its eyes dimmed, its face smiling in voluptuous ecstasy, as if handsome Narcissus had at last, in death, satisfied the desires he had awakened in himself. A short distance away, the nymph Echo also lay dying—dying of unsatisfied desires. Little by little she felt herself gripped by the rigidity of the earth, as her burning limbs froze and hardened. She was no ordinary rock, stained by moss, but white marble by dint of her shoulders and arms and her great snowy white gown, from which the leafy girdle and blue sash had slipped away. Collapsed at the center of her satin skirt, which had gathered around her in wide folds like a block of Paros marble, she thrust herself backward, her body as rigid as a statue with nothing left of life in her other than her gleaming female eyes, which were fixed on the aquatic flower swaying languorously over the mirror of the spring. And already it seemed as if all the love sounds of the forest, all the lingering voices of the glades, all the mysterious quivering of the leaves, all the deep sighs of the great oaks had sought out the nymph’s marble flesh to beat upon, while her heart, still bleeding deep within the block of stone that was her body, continued to echo the least moans of Earth and Air.

“Oh, look at the getup they’ve got poor Maxime in!” Louise whispered. “And Mme Saccard looks as if she’s dead.”

“She’s covered with rice powder,” said Mme Michelin.

Other equally uncomplimentary remarks circulated around the room. This third tableau did not enjoy the same unqualified success as the previous two. Yet it was this tragic ending that made M. Hupel de la Noue most enthusiastic about his own talent. He admired himself in it, as Narcissus admired himself in his mirror. He had conceived it with a host of poetic and philosophical intentions. When the curtains had closed a third time, and the audience had applauded as good manners required, he felt a pang of regret that he had given in to his anger instead of explaining the final page of his poem. He then wanted to let the people around him in on the key to all the charming, grandiose, or merely naughty things that handsome Narcissus and Echo the nymph represented, and he even tried to explain what Venus and Plutus were doing back in the clearing, but the ladies and gentlemen of the audience, whose clear, practical minds had understood the grotto of flesh and the grotto of gold, had no interest in delving into the prefect’s mythological complexities. Only Mignon and Charrier, who were absolutely insistent on knowing what it all meant, had the kindness to question him. He grabbed them and took them off to the embrasure of a window, where for nearly two hours he regaled them with Ovid’s Metamorphoses. 8

In the meantime, the minister took his leave. He apologized for not being able to stay long enough to compliment beautiful Mme Saccard on her exquisitely graceful portrayal of the nymph Echo. He had made three or four turns around the drawing room on his brother’s arm, shaking hands with some of the men and bowing to the ladies. Never before had he stuck his neck out quite so far for Saccard. He left his brother beaming on the doorstep after saying in a loud voice, “I’ll expect you tomorrow morning. Come have breakfast with me.”

The ball was about to begin. The servants had arranged chairs for the ladies along the walls. Now the entire length of the drawing-room carpet stood exposed from the small yellow salon all the way to the stage, and the big purple flowers in the carpet’s pattern seemed to open up as light dripped upon them from the crystal chandeliers above. The temperature rose, and reflections from the red draperies darkened the gold of the furniture and ceiling. Everyone was waiting for the ladies—the nymph Echo, Venus, Plutus, and the rest—to change their costumes so that the ball could get under way.

Mme d’Espanet and Mme Haffner were the first to appear. They had changed back into their costumes from the second tableau: one was dressed as Gold, the other as Silver. People gathered around and congratulated them, and they described their emotions.

“I nearly burst out laughing,” said the marquise, “when I saw M. Toutin-Laroche with his big nose out there gawking at me.”

“I think I’ve got a stiff neck,” drawled blonde Suzanne. “No, really, if it had lasted a minute longer, I would have shifted my head back to a more natural position, my neck was hurting so much.”

From the recess to which he had taken Mignon and Charrier, M. Hupel de la Noue cast worried glances at the group that had formed around the two young women. He was afraid they might be making fun of him. The other nymphs made their way down one by one. All had changed back into their costumes representing precious stones. Countess Wanska, dressed as Coral, was rated a stunning success when the guests were able to get a close look at the ingenious details of her gown. Then Maxime came in, impeccably attired in a dark frock coat and wearing a smile on his face. A torrent of women engulfed him, formed a circle around him, and teased him about his role as a flower and his passion for mirrors. And he, without a flicker of embarrassment, as if charmed by his character, continued to smile, responded to all the teasing comments, and admitted that he adored himself and had gotten over his weakness for women sufficiently that he now preferred himself to them. The laughter grew louder, and the group grew larger until it occupied the whole center of the drawing room, while the young man, lost amid this sea of shoulders, this chaos of dazzling costumes, retained a perfume of depraved love, the sweetness of a poisonous blossom.

When Renée finally came down, however, a partial hush fell over the room. She had put on a new costume of such novel grace and boldness that even though these ladies and gentlemen were accustomed to the young woman’s eccentricities, their first reaction was one of surprise. She was dressed as a Tahitian beauty. Tahitian attire is apparently quite primitive: skin-colored tights stretched from her feet to her breasts, leaving her arms and shoulders bare, and over the tights she wore a short, simple muslin blouse with two flounces that barely covered her hips. In her hair she wore a wreath of wildflowers, and gold ringlets around her ankles and wrists. And nothing else. She was naked. The tights had the suppleness of flesh beneath the translucent muslin. The pure outline of her nakedness, from her knees to her armpits, was only partially concealed by the flounces; with the slightest movement it once again became visible through the mesh of the lace. She made a lovely savage, a barbarous and voluptuous bawd barely hidden by a white haze, a wisp of ocean fog through which her entire body could be divined.

A rosy-cheeked Renée advanced at a rapid pace. Céleste had split the first pair of tights. Fortunately, the young woman had foreseen this eventuality and taken precautions. The torn tights had delayed her entrance. She seemed not to attach any importance to her triumph. Her hands were burning, and her eyes had a feverish gleam about them. She smiled, though, and responded briefly to the men who stopped her and complimented her on the purity of her poses in the tableaux vivants. In her wake she left a trail of dark frock coats stunned and charmed by the transparency of her muslin blouse. When she reached the group of women around Maxime, she provoked a series of sharp exclamations, and the marquise studied her from head to toe with a tender eye, whispering, “She has a lovely figure.”

Mme Michelin, whose belly dancer’s costume seemed terribly ponderous alongside this simple veil, pursed her lips, while Mme Sidonie, shriveled up inside her black magician’s robes, whispered in her ear, “If that isn’t the height of indecency, don’t you agree, my beauty?”

“I should say so!” the pretty brunette came out with at last. “M. Michelin would have a fit if I stripped down like that!”

“And he would be right,” the businesswoman concluded.

The serious men did not share this view, however. They were ecstatic despite their distance from the object of their admiration. M. Michelin, whose reaction had been seriously misjudged by his wife, went into raptures to gratify M. Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud, who were pleased no end by the sight of Renée. Saccard was roundly complimented on the perfection of his wife’s figure. He bowed and professed to be very deeply touched. The evening had turned out well for him, and but for the preoccupation that could be seen in his eyes whenever he happened to glance at his sister, he would have been perfectly happy.

“You know, she’s never shown us that much before,” Louise teasingly whispered in Maxime’s ear, indicating Renée with a quick glance.

And then, with an indecipherable smile, she added, “Not to me, at any rate.”

The young man looked at her with an anxious eye. But she continued to smile in an odd way, like a schoolboy pleased at having told a rather off-color joke.

The ball began. The stage used for the tableaux vivants had been pressed into service as a platform for a small orchestra in which brass dominated. Bugles and trumpets blasted their clear notes into the fantastic forest with the blue trees. The evening began with a quadrille, “Ah! il a des bottes, il a des bottes, Bastien!,” which was all the rage in dance halls at the time. The ladies danced. Polkas, waltzes, and mazurkas alternated with quadrilles. Whirling couples came and went all the way down the length of the gallery, leaping at the whip of the brass and swaying with the lullaby of the violins. This river of costumes—this torrent of women from every country and epoch— comprised a swirling tide of bright fabrics. The rhythm, after mixing these colors and sweeping them away in measured confusion, suddenly brought them back again, so that on certain strokes of the bow the same pink satin tunic or blue velvet bodice would reappear together with the same dark frock coat. Then another stroke of the bow or another blast of the trumpets would send the couples off again on yet another voyage around the drawing room, swaying like a boat adrift on the waves after the wind has broken it free from its mooring. And again, without stopping, for hours on end. Occasionally, between dances, one of the women would go over to a window, panting and gasping for a breath of cold air. Or a couple would relax on a love seat in the small buttercup salon or go out to the conservatory and stroll slowly along the paths. Beneath arbors of tropical vines, deep in the tepid shadows pierced by forte notes from the trumpets in quadrilles such as “Ohé! les p’tits agneaux” and “J’ai un pied qui r’mue,” women with listless smiles had vanished but for the hems of their skirts.

The dining room had been transformed into a buffet with sideboards along the walls and a long table laden with cold cuts in the middle, and when the doors were opened there was a push, a crush. A tall, handsome man who had timidly held on to his hat was thrown against the wall so violently that the unfortunate hat caved in with a dull crack. That made everyone laugh. The guests swooped down on the pastries and truffled fowl, and the servants did not know which of this gang of well-bred gentlemen to serve first, since all had their hands out, baring their fear of getting to the food too late and finding the platters empty. An elderly gentleman became angry because there was no Bordeaux, and champagne, he insisted, would keep him from sleeping.

“Easy, gentlemen, easy,” said Baptiste in a grave tone of voice. “There will be enough for everyone.”

But nobody was listening. The dining room was full, and worried black coats were standing on tiptoes at the door. Groups had gathered around the sideboards, where people were eating rapidly and squeezing close together. Many unable to lay hands on a glass of wine gulped down their food without drinking. By contrast, others drank while casting about without success for a crust of bread.

“Listen,” said M. Hupel de la Noue, whom Mignon and Charrier, tired of mythology, had dragged off to the buffet, “we won’t get anything unless we join forces. . . . It’s worse at the Tuileries, and I’ve had some experience there. . . . You see to the wine, I’ll take care of the meat.”

The prefect had his eye on a leg of lamb. At just the right moment he reached through an opening in the sea of shoulders and calmly claimed his prize, having already stuffed his pockets with rolls. The contractors also returned, Mignon with one bottle of champagne and Charrier with two, but they’d only been able to get hold of two glasses. This didn’t matter, however, because they would be glad, they said, to drink from the same glass. The three men dined together off the corner of a jardinière at the end of the room. They did not even take off their gloves but inserted slices of lamb into the rolls while keeping the champagne bottles tucked safely under their arms. And, standing up, they chatted with their mouths full, jutting out their jaws so that the juice would fall on the carpet rather than on their coats.

Charrier, having finished his wine before his bread, asked a servant if he could have a glass of champagne.

“You’ll have to wait, sir,” the alarmed servant angrily replied, losing his head and forgetting that he was not in the kitchen. “Three hundred bottles have been drunk already.”

Meanwhile, the voices of the orchestra grew louder, erupting in sudden squalls of sound. People were dancing the polka known as “Baisers,” or “Kisses,” a favorite of the dance halls, in which each male dancer was expected to mark the rhythm by kissing his partner on the beat. Mme d’Espanet appeared at the door of the dining room, flushed and rather disheveled, trailing her long silver gown behind her with charming weariness. Since people barely moved out of her way, she was obliged to use her elbow to clear a path for herself. She made her way around the table, uncertain which dishes to choose, her lips expressing her hesitation with a pout. Then she went straight to M. Hupel de la Noue, who had finished eating and was wiping his mouth with his handkerchief.

“Would you be kind enough to find me a chair, sir?” she asked with an adorable smile. “I’ve been all around the table in vain.”

Although the prefect was annoyed with the marquise, his gallantry did not hesitate. He had soon found a chair and placed Mme d’Espanet in it, whereupon he stood behind it and served her. All she wanted was a few shrimp with a little butter and a splash of champagne. She ate daintily compared to the gluttony of the men. The table and chairs were reserved exclusively for the ladies, but an exception was always made for Baron Gouraud. He sat squarely in front of a block of pâté, slowly munching its crust. The marquise reestablished her dominion over the prefect by telling him that she would never forget the artistic emotions she had experienced in performing “The Amours of Handsome Narcissus and the Nymph Echo.” She even explained why they hadn’t waited for him in a way that consoled him completely: when the ladies learned that the minister had arrived, they had decided that it would be inappropriate to prolong the intermission. Eventually she asked him to go and rescue Mme Haffner, who was dancing with Mr. Simpson, a brute of a man, she said, whom she disliked. Once Suzanne had rejoined her, however, she paid no further attention to M. Hupel de la Noue.

Saccard, followed by MM Toutin-Laroche, de Mareuil, and Haffner, had taken possession of one of the sideboards. The table was full, and as M. de Saffré happened to pass by with Mme Michelin on his arm, he detained them and insisted that the pretty brunette share their food. She nibbled some pastry, smiled, and raised her bright eyes to take in the five men gathered around her. They leaned toward her, fingered her belly dancer’s veils woven of golden thread, and backed her up against the sideboard, so that in the end she was supporting herself against it as she took petits fours from the very gentle and caressing hands of all the gentlemen with the amorous docility of a slave among lords. At the other end of the room, M. Michelin was single-handedly finishing off a terrine of foie gras that he had managed to get hold of.

Meanwhile, Mme Sidonie, who had been roaming among the dancers since the first strokes of the violinists’ bows, had entered the dining room and was beckoning to Saccard with her eyes.

“She’s not dancing,” she whispered to him. “She seems anxious. I think she may try something rash. . . . But I haven’t been able to find out who the lucky fellow is yet. . . . I’m going to have something to eat and then go back to nosing about.”

She ate standing up, like a man, devouring a chicken wing that she got M. Michelin to serve her after he finished his pâté. She poured some Malaga into a large champagne glass. Then, after wiping her lips with her fingertips, she returned to the drawing room. The train of her magician’s robe already seemed to have picked up all the dust from the carpets.

The ball was languishing and the orchestra showing signs of flagging when a murmur raced through the room: “The cotillion, the cotillion!” This revived the dancers and the brass. Couples emerged from behind the shrubbery in the conservatory. The large drawing room filled up, as it had before the first quadrille, and as the crowd revived, so did the conversation. It was the ball’s final flicker. The men who weren’t dancing stared indulgently from the embrasures at the chatty group growing steadily in size in the middle of the room, while those still eating in the dining room craned their necks to see without putting down their bread.

“M. de Mussy won’t do it,” said one of the ladies. “He swears he’s done with conducting. . . . Please, M. de Mussy, just one more time. Do it for us, won’t you?”

But the young embassy attaché stood stiff-necked in his high starched collar turned town at the corners. It was really quite impossible; he had given his word. Disappointment greeted this refusal. Maxime also refused, saying that he was all worn out and couldn’t do it. M. Hupel de la Noue didn’t dare volunteer; poetry was as low as he would go. When one of the ladies mentioned Mr. Simpson, the others told her to hold her tongue. Mr. Simpson was the oddest cotillion leader one could imagine. Fantastic and nasty ideas were his specialty. In one drawing room where the guests had been incautious enough to choose him, he had forced the ladies to jump over chairs, and one of his favorite maneuvers was to make everybody get down on all fours and crawl around the room.

“Has M. de Saffré left?” asked a childlike voice.

He was just leaving, in fact he was saying good-bye to beautiful Mme Saccard, with whom he was on the best of terms now that she wanted nothing more to do with him. An amiable skeptic, Saffré admired unpredictability in others. The guests brought him back from the vestibule in triumph. He resisted and, smiling, said that he was a serious man and that they were putting him in an awkward position. But then, with so many white hands reaching out to him, he gave in and said, “Go now, take your places. . . . But I’m warning you, I’m from the old school. I haven’t two cents’ worth of imagination.”

The couples, using all the chairs they could find, arrayed themselves around the drawing room. Some of the young men even went to the conservatory in search of metal garden chairs. It was a monster cotillion. M. de Saffré, who wore the rapt expression of an officiating priest, chose as his partner Countess Wanska, whose Coral costume fascinated him. When everybody was in place, he stared for quite some time at the circle of skirts, each flanked by a dark frock coat. Then he signaled the orchestra, and the brass rang out. Heads leaned forward along the smiling ribbon of faces.

Renée had refused to take part in the cotillion. She had seemed giddy from the moment the ball began, dancing hardly at all, mingling with various groups, and unable to remain in one place. Her friends found her mood odd. Earlier in the evening she had mentioned the possibility of going up in a balloon with a celebrated aeronaut who was the talk of Paris. When the cotillion began, she was irritated that she could no longer move freely about the room and stationed herself next to the door of the vestibule, where she shook hands with the men who were leaving and chatted with her husband’s close friends. Baron Gouraud, wrapped in a fur coat as he was carried out by a servant, managed to offer her one last compliment on her Tahitian costume.

Meanwhile, M. Toutin-Laroche shook Saccard’s hand.

“Maxime is counting on you,” said Saccard.

“Absolutely,” answered the new senator.

Then he turned toward Renée: “Madame, I haven’t congratulated you. . . . So the dear boy’s future is now assured.”

Since her smile expressed surprise, Saccard spoke up. “My wife doesn’t know yet. Tonight we settled the matter of Mlle de Mareuil’s wedding to Maxime.”

She kept on smiling and bowed to M. Toutin-Laroche, who left with these parting words: “You sign the contract on Sunday, do you not? I’m off to Nevers to see about some mines, but I’ll be back.”

For a moment she remained alone in the middle of the vestibule. She had stopped smiling, and the more she fathomed the enormity of what she had just heard, the more she shivered. She stared fixedly at the red velvet wall hangings, the rare plants, and the majolica pots, and then she said out loud, “I must speak to him.”

And she returned to the drawing room but was obliged to stand in the doorway, because a figure of the cotillion blocked the way. The orchestra was playing a quiet section of a waltz. The ladies, holding hands, formed a circle, like a circle of little girls playing Ring Around a Rosie, and whirled around as rapidly as possible, pulling on each other’s arms, laughing, and sliding. In the center, a gentleman—it was the naughty Mr. Simpson—held a long pink scarf in his hand. He raised it up with the gesture of a fisherman about to cast a net. But he was in no hurry, no doubt because he found it amusing to allow the women to dance around him and wear themselves out. They panted and begged for mercy. Then he threw the scarf, aiming it so skillfully that it wrapped itself around the shoulders of Mme d’Espanet and Mme Haffner, who were whirling around side by side. This was the American’s little joke. He then tried to dance with both women at once, and had seized the two of them around the waist, one with his left arm, the other with his right, when M. de Saffré, as king of the cotillion, scolded him in a severe voice: “Dancing with two ladies is not allowed.”

Mr. Simpson, however, was unwilling to let go of the two women’s waists. Adeline and Suzanne wriggled in his arms, threw their heads back, and laughed. The case was argued, the ladies grew angry, the uproar continued, and the dark coats in the embrasures wondered how Saffré was going to extricate himself from this ticklish predicament without losing face. Indeed, he seemed perplexed for a moment as he cast about for a graceful way to enlist humor on his side. Then he smiled, took first Mme d’Espanet and then Mme Haffner by the hand and whispered a question in each woman’s ear, heard their answers, and turned to Mr. Simpson: “Which would you pluck, verbena or periwinkle?”

Mr. Simpson, a little slow to take this in, replied that he would take verbena, whereupon M. de Saffré gave him the marquise: “Here is your verbena.”

The guests applauded discreetly. M. de Saffré had solved the problem quite nicely, they judged. As a cotillion leader he was “never at a loss,” as the ladies put it. Meanwhile, the orchestra had struck up the melody again with all instruments, and Mr. Simpson, after waltzing around the room with Mme d’Espanet, led her back to her place.

Renée was now able to pass. At the sight of “all this nonsense” she had bitten her lips until they bled. How stupid these men and women were with their tossing of scarves and naming themselves after flowers. There was a buzzing in her ears, and, furious with impatience, she felt like putting her head down and bulling her way through the crowd. She rapidly made her way across the drawing room, bumping into couples slow to regain their seats, and headed straight for the conservatory. Not having seen Louise or Maxime among the dancers, she told herself that they must be there, in some gap in the foliage, joined by that instinct for humor and ribaldry that led them to look for out-of-the-way places whenever they were together. But a visit to the gloomy conservatory turned up nothing. All she saw was a tall young man in the back of one of the arbors devoutly kissing the hands of little Mme Daste while whispering, “Mme de Lauwerens was right: you are an angel.”

This declaration, in her own house, her own conservatory, shocked her. Mme de Lauwerens really ought to transact her business elsewhere. Renée would have felt relieved if she could have driven all these loud people out of her house. Standing in front of the pool, she looked at the water and asked herself where Louise and Maxime might have gone to hide. The orchestra was still playing the same waltz, whose slow, swaying melody turned her stomach. It was unbearable not to be able to think in one’s own house. She couldn’t think. Forgetting that the young couple weren’t yet married, she decided that the answer really had to be quite simple: they had gone to bed. Then she thought of the dining room and ran hastily back up the stairs to the house. At the door of the large drawing room, however, her path was again blocked by yet another of the cotillion figures.

“This one is called ‘Dark Spots,’ ladies,” M. de Saffré announced in a flirtatious voice. “It’s my own invention, and you’re the first to hear of it.”

There was much laughter. The men explained the allusion to the ladies. The Emperor had just given a speech in which he had noted the presence of certain “dark spots” on the political horizon. For some reason, the phrase “dark spots” had caught on. All the wits of Paris had latched onto it, and for the past week “dark spots” had turned up everywhere. M. de Saffré placed the men at one end of the drawing room and had them turn their backs on the women at the other end. Then he ordered them to pull up their coats so as to hide the backs of their heads. Wild hilarity accompanied this maneuver. Hunchbacked, shoulders scrunched, their coattails up to their waists, the gentlemen looked truly hideous.

“Don’t laugh, ladies,” M. de Saffré shouted in a serious voice that could not have been more comical, “or I’ll make you lift your lace over your heads.”

The gaiety increased. The leader enthusiastically asserted his sovereign authority over several gentlemen who had declined to hide the backs of their necks.

“You are ‘dark spots,’ ” he said. “Cover your heads, show nothing but your backs. The ladies mustn’t see anything but black. . . . Now, move around, mix yourselves up so you can’t be recognized.”

The hilarity was at its height. The “dark spots” teetered to and fro on skinny legs like headless crows. One gentleman’s shirt showed, along with a bit of suspenders. Then the women begged for mercy: they were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe, so M. de Saffré took pity on them and ordered them each to go over and pick out a “dark spot.” They took off like a covey of young partridges, with much rustling of skirts. Then, at the end of their run, each woman grabbed the man closest to her. The chaos was indescribable. One by one, the impromptu couples split off from the group and danced around the salon as the orchestra played even louder than before.

Renée leaned against the wall. She watched, looking pale, her lips pursed. An elderly gentleman gallantly approached her and asked why she wasn’t dancing. She was obliged to smile and offer some sort of response. Then she fled into the dining room. The room looked empty, but there, among the pillaged sideboards and abandoned dishes and bottles, were Maxime and Louise, dining quietly at one end of the table, side by side, on a napkin they had spread out between them. They seemed relaxed, laughing amid the chaos of dirty glasses, greasy plates, and warm leftovers overlooked by the gluttonous guests in white gloves. The young couple had simply brushed aside the crumbs. Baptiste moved gravely down the length of the table, ignoring the room, which seemed to have been overrun by a pack of wolves. He was waiting for the servants to come tidy up the sideboards.

Maxime had nevertheless managed to put together a very adequate supper. Louise loved nougat with pistachios, a plateful of which had been left on a sideboard. In front of the pair were three partially drunk bottles of champagne.

“Papa may have left,” said the young woman.

“Let’s hope so,” answered Maxime. “I’ll see you home.”

And when she laughed, he continued: “You know, they’ve made up their minds that I am to marry you. It’s not a joke anymore, it’s serious. . . . So what will we do when we’re married?”

“We’ll do what everybody else does, of course!”

This jest had escaped her rather quickly. As if to withdraw it, she hastily added, “We’ll go to Italy. It will be good for my lungs. I’m very sick. . . . Oh, my poor Maxime, what a strange wife you’re going to have! I weigh about as much as two sous’ worth of butter.”

She smiled with a touch of sadness in her pageboy costume. A dry cough turned her cheeks a glowing red.

“It’s the nougat,” she said. “At home I’m not allowed to eat it. . . . Pass me the plate. I’m going to stick the rest of it in my pocket.”

And she was emptying the plate when Renée walked in. She went straight over to Maxime, making an extraordinary effort not to swear, not to thrash the little hunchback who was sitting there next to her lover.

“I want to speak to you,” she stammered in a hollow voice.

He hesitated, in the grip of fear, dreading being alone with her.

“To you alone, right away,” Renée repeated.

“Why don’t you go, Maxime?” said Louise with an inscrutable look. “And while you’re at it, try to find my father. I lose him at every party.”

He got up and tried to stop Renée in the middle of the dining room by asking her what she had to say to him that was so urgent. But she muttered between her teeth: “Follow me, or I’ll tell all in front of everyone.”

He turned white and followed along behind her as docilely as a beaten animal. She suspected that Baptiste was staring at them, but just then she couldn’t have cared less about the butler’s piercing eyes. At the door, the cotillion delayed her for the third time.

“Wait,” she muttered. “Will these imbeciles ever be done?”

And she took him by the hand so that he would not try to escape.

M. de Saffré placed the duc de Rozan with his back to the wall in a corner of the drawing room, next to the dining room door. Then he placed a lady in front of him and, after that, a gentleman back-to-back with the lady, followed by another lady in front of the gentleman and so on, couple by couple, in a long serpent. But the dancers went on talking, dawdling instead of taking their places, so he shouted, “Now, ladies, everyone in position for ‘The Columns.’ ”

They came and formed “columns.” The indecency of being caught between two men, leaning against the back of one while pressed up against the chest of the other, filled the ladies with merriment. The tips of the women’s breasts rubbed the lapels of the men’s jackets, the gentlemen’s legs disappeared into their partners’ skirts, and when a woman, laughing suddenly, leaned forward, the mustache opposite was obliged to tilt to one side to avoid stepping over the line and planting a kiss. At one point a prankster must have given a slight push. The line tightened up, and coats pressed a little more deeply into skirts. There were little shouts and laughs—endless laughs. Baroness von Meinhold was heard to say, “But sir, I can’t breathe. Don’t hold me so tight!” which was so funny and made the whole line laugh so madly that the “columns,” shaken by all the hilarity, staggered, crashed into each other, and had to hold each other up to keep from falling. M. de Saffré waited with raised hands, ready to clap. Then he did clap, and at this signal each dancer suddenly turned around. The new partners, finding themselves face-to-face, took each other by the waist, and the line of waltzers then spread out around the room. The only one left out was the poor duc de Rozan, who on turning around found himself with his nose up against the wall. Everyone laughed at him.

“Come,” said Renée to Maxime.

The orchestra was still playing the waltz. The soft music, whose monotonous rhythm became insipid in the end, heightened the young woman’s exasperation. She made her way to the small salon, still holding Maxime by the hand, and pushed him into the stairway leading up to the dressing room.

“Go on up,” she ordered.

She followed. At that moment, Mme Sidonie, who had been prowling around her sister-in-law all evening, astonished by her restless scouting of all the rooms, happened to be coming up the conservatory steps. She saw a man’s legs disappear into the darkness of the small staircase. A pale smile lit up her waxen face, and, hiking up her magician’s skirt in order to move more quickly, she went looking for her brother, disrupting a figure of the cotillion along the way and questioning any servants she ran into. She finally found Saccard with M. de Mareuil in a room off the dining room that had been converted into a temporary smoking room. The two fathers were discussing dowries and marriage contracts. But after Saccard’s sister whispered something in his ear, he got up, excused himself, and disappeared.

Upstairs, the dressing room was in total disarray. Tossed aside and left lying on the chairs were the nymph Echo’s costume, the torn tights, bits of crumpled lace, and balled-up underthings—the kinds of things a woman urgently expected elsewhere leaves behind in her haste. Little silver and ivory implements lay strewn about. Brushes and files had fallen onto the carpet; and the still-damp towels, the cakes of soap forgotten on the marble, the perfume bottles left unstoppered filled the flesh-colored tent with a strong, penetrating odor. In order to remove the white powder from her arms and shoulders, the young woman had soaked in the pink marble bathtub after the tableaux vivants. An iridescent film of soap spread in patches over the surface of the bathwater now grown cold.

Maxime tripped over a corset, nearly fell, and tried to laugh. But he was shivering at the sight of Renée’s severe countenance. She walked over to him, pushed him, and said in an undertone, “So, you’re going to marry the hunchback?”

“Why, not at all,” he murmured. “Who told you that?”

“Look, don’t lie. It’s pointless.”

A rebellious feeling rose within him. She made him anxious. He wanted to be rid of her.

“All right, yes, I’m marrying her. So what? . . . I’m in charge of my own life, am I not?”

She moved toward him, her head bowed slightly, and with a wicked laugh took him by the wrists: “In charge! You, in charge! . . . You know you’re not. I’m in charge. If I were a mean woman, I’d break your arm. You have no more strength than a girl.”

And since he struggled, she twisted his arms with a violent force that came from anger. He gave a feeble cry. Then she let him go and resumed her train of thought: “Let’s not fight. As you see, I’m stronger than you are.”

His pallor remained, and he felt ashamed of the pain in his wrists. He watched her move about the dressing room, pushing furniture around, meditating, pondering the plan that she had been turning over in her mind ever since her husband had told her of the marriage.

“I’m going to lock you up here,” she said at last, “and when day comes we’ll leave for Le Havre.”

He went white again with alarm and stupor.

“But that’s crazy!” he shouted. “We can’t run off together. You’re out of your mind.”

“That may be. In any case, it’s your fault and your father’s if I’ve lost my mind. . . . I need you, and I’m taking you. Too bad for the imbeciles.”

There was a red glow in her eyes. She approached Maxime again, scorching his face with her breath: “What would become of me if you married the hunchback? You’d all laugh at me, and I might be forced to take back that big lump Mussy, who can’t even keep my feet warm. . . . When you’ve done what we’ve done, you stay together. In any case, it’s perfectly clear, I’m bored when you’re not around, and since I’m leaving, I’m taking you with me. . . . You can tell Céleste what you need and she’ll go to your apartment and fetch it.”

The poor wretch held out his hands and begged: “Listen, my dear sweet Renée, don’t do anything foolish. Calm down. . . . Think a little about the scandal.”

“I don’t give a damn about the scandal! If you refuse, I’ll go down to the drawing room and shout out that I’ve slept with you and that you’re such a coward that now you want to marry the hunchback.”

He heard her and bowed his head, giving in already to this willful woman, who imposed herself on him so heedlessly.

“We’ll be going to Le Havre,” she resumed in a lower voice, savoring her dream, “and from there we’ll sail for England. Nobody will bother us anymore. If that isn’t far enough, we’ll go to America. Since I’m always cold, I’ll be better off there. I’ve often envied the Creoles.”

But as her plans for the future grew more grandiose by the minute, terror again took hold of Maxime. To leave Paris, to go so far with a woman who was assuredly mad, and to leave in his wake a scandal so shameful that he would be obliged to remain in exile forever—it was like a horrible nightmare snuffing the life out of him. He desperately sought a way out of that dressing room, that pink fortress in which he could hear the tolling of the madhouse bell at Charenton.⁹

Then he thought he saw a ray of hope. “The problem is that I have no money,” he said softly, so as not to set her off. “If you lock me up, I won’t be able to get any.”

“But I have money,” she replied triumphantly. “I have a hundred thousand francs. It’s all coming together quite nicely.”

She took from the mirror-front wardrobe the purchase-and-sale agreement that her husband had left her in the vague hope that she might change her mind. She brought it to the dressing table, ordered Maxime to fetch pen and ink from the bedroom, pushed the soap aside, and signed the document.

“There,” she said, “the foolish thing is done. If I’m being robbed, it’s because I want to be robbed. . . . We’ll stop by Larsonneau’s office on the way to the railway station. . . . Now, my darling Maxime, I’m going to lock you up, and we’ll make our getaway through the garden when I’ve sent everyone home. We don’t even need to take any luggage.”

She was gay again. This madcap adventure delighted her. It was the ultimate eccentricity, an altogether original ending to the story, or so it seemed to Renée in the throes of her fever. It far surpassed her wish to take a trip in a balloon. She went and took Maxime in her arms, whispering, “I hurt you before, my poor darling. So you refused. . . . You’ll see how nice it will be. Would your hunchback love you as I love you? . . . That little half-breed isn’t a woman.”

She laughed, drew him toward her, and was kissing him on the lips when a noise made both of them turn their heads. Saccard was standing in the doorway.

A terrible silence ensued. Slowly, Renée removed her arms from around Maxime’s neck. She did not lower her brow but continued to stare at her husband with big eyes as unblinking as the eyes of a corpse. Meanwhile, Maxime, his head bowed, looking stunned and terrified, wobbled unsteadily now that he was no longer supported by her embrace. Saccard, thunderstruck by this ultimate blow, which at last drew a cry of pain from the husband and father in him, turned white as a sheet and did not move, but the fire in his eyes singed them from afar. In the moist and pungent air of the dressing room, the three candles burned quite high, their flames steady and erect, like glowing tears. And the only thing that broke the silence—the terrible silence—was the faint music that floated up the narrow staircase. The waltz, with its serpentine undulations, slithered and coiled and came to rest on the snowy-white carpet, amid the torn tights and discarded petticoats.

Then the husband moved forward into the room. A need for brutality mottled his face, and he clenched his fists to strike the guilty pair. Rage in this little dervish of a man exploded with the force of a pistol shot. As he continued to move toward them, he snickered: “You told her about your marriage, didn’t you?”

Maxime retreated until his back was to the wall.

“Listen,” he stammered, “She was the one—”

He was about to accuse her in the most cowardly way, to blame the crime on her, to say that she wanted to carry him off, to defend himself in the abject and quivering manner of a child caught misbehaving. But he lacked the strength to go through with it; the words stuck in his throat. Renée remained as rigid as a statue in mute defiance. Then Saccard rapidly surveyed the room, no doubt in search of a weapon. On the corner of the dressing table, among the combs and nail brushes, he spotted the purchase-and-sale agreement, on official stamped paper whose yellow color tinged the marble with its reflection. He looked at the document, then at the guilty pair. And leaning forward a little, he saw that the document was signed. His eyes moved from the open inkwell to the still-damp pen, lying by the base of the candelabra. He stood in front of that signed document and pondered his position.

The silence seemed to deepen, the flames of the candles grew longer, the waltz grew softer as the folds of the draperies wrapped themselves soothingly around it. Saccard gave an imperceptible flick of his shoulders. With a serious look he once again scrutinized his wife and son, as if to wring from their faces an explanation that was nowhere to be found. Then he slowly folded the document and put it in the pocket of his coat. All the color had gone out of his cheeks.

“You did well to sign, my dear,” he said quietly to his wife. “You’ve gained 100,000 francs. I shall give you the money tonight.”

He was almost smiling; only his hands were still trembling. He took a few steps, then added, “It’s stifling in here. Whatever possessed you to come and hatch one of your pranks in this steam bath!”

Then he turned to Maxime, who, surprised by the calmness of his father’s voice, had raised his head again. “Come down with me,” he continued. “I saw you go up and came after you so that you could say good-bye to M. de Mareuil and his daughter.”

The two men went down together, chatting as they went. Renée was left standing alone in the middle of the dressing room, staring at the gaping void at the top of the small staircase into which she had just seen father and son vanish. She could not take her eyes off that void. To her astonishment, they had left quietly and amicably. They had not beaten each other to a pulp. She pricked up her ears and strained to hear whether some horrible struggle had broken out in the stairwell, sending bodies rolling down the stairs. In the tepid shadows nothing could be heard but the sound of dancing—a long lullaby. In the distance she thought she could make out the marquise’s laughter and the clear voice of M. de Saffré. So the drama was over? Her crime—the kisses in the big gray-and-pink bed, the wild nights in the conservatory, all the damnable love that had burned in her for months—had culminated in this insipid, ignoble end. Her husband now knew everything and had not even beaten her. And the silence that enveloped her—a silence in which the endless waltz dragged on—terrified her more than the sound of a murder. She was afraid of this peace, afraid of this soft, discreet dressing room redolent of the odor of love.

She caught sight of herself in the tall mirror of the armoire. She moved closer to it, surprised by her own image, forgetting her husband, forgetting Maxime, wholly preoccupied by the strange woman she beheld before her. Madness was taking hold. Her yellow hair, pinned up around her temples and on the back of her neck, looked to her like a kind of nakedness, an obscenity. The furrow in her brow had deepened to the point where it created a dark streak above her eyes, like the thin blue mark of a whiplash. Who had done this to her? Her husband hadn’t raised a hand. She was stunned by the pallor of her lips, and her myopic eyes looked lifeless. How old she seemed! When she tilted her head forward and saw herself in tights and a light, gauzy blouse, she contemplated her appearance with lowered eyelids and sudden flushes. Who had stripped her naked? What was she doing in such disarray, like a prostitute who bares her breasts and torso? She no longer knew. She looked at her thighs, made shapely by the tights; at her hips, whose supple lines she followed under the gauze; at her largely bare bosom; and she was ashamed of herself, and contempt for her own flesh filled her with dull rage against those who had left her that way, with nothing to hide her flesh but plain gold ringlets around her ankles and wrists.

Then, her drowning mind obsessed with but a single thought, she tried to understand what she was doing there stark naked in front of that mirror, and suddenly she leapt back in time to her childhood and saw herself at the age of seven in the somber shadows of the Hôtel Béraud. She remembered a day when Aunt Elisabeth had dressed her and Christine in gray wool dresses with red checks. It was Christmas. How happy they were with those two identical dresses! Their aunt spoiled them and went so far as to give each of them a bracelet and necklace of coral. Their sleeves were long, their bodices reached all the way up to their chins, and the jewelry stood out against the fabric, which seemed to them quite pretty. Renée still remembered that her father had been there and that he’d smiled with his melancholy smile. That day, she and her sister had moved about their room like grown-ups, not playing so as to avoid soiling their clothes. But when she went back to school with the Sisters of the Visitation, her classmates had teased her about her “clown’s dress,” with sleeves that went all the way down to her fingertips and a collar that reached up above her ears. She had cried in class. At recess, to stop the others’ making fun of her, she had pushed up those sleeves and turned down that collar. And the coral necklace and bracelet had looked prettier to her against the skin of her neck and arm. Was that the day she had begun to strip herself naked?

Her life unfolded before her. She experienced the slow onset of panic as swirling eddies of gold and flesh rose within her, first to her knees, then to her belly, and on to her lips, and now she could feel the current passing over her head, striking sharp, rapid blows against her skull. It was like rotten sap; it had drained the energy from her limbs, deformed her heart with the cancer of shameful loves, and planted sick and bestial whims in her brain. That sap had been absorbed through the soles of her feet from the carpet of her calèche and other carpets too and from all the miles of silk and velvet she had walked on since her marriage. Other people must have left poisonous seeds in their footsteps, and now those seeds were sprouting in her blood and circulating through her veins. She remembered her childhood very well. When she was little, she had merely been inquisitive. Even later, after the rape that had plunged her into evil, she had not coveted shame to that degree. Of course she would have been better off if she’d stayed home and knitted with Aunt Elisabeth. And she could hear the regular ticking of her aunt’s knitting needles as she stared into the mirror in search of the peaceful future that had eluded her. But all she saw was her pink thighs, her pink hips, this strange woman of pink silk she beheld before her, whose skin of fine, closely woven fabric seemed made for the amours of puppets and dolls. This was what she had come to: she was a big doll, from whose torn chest stuffing leaked in a thin stream. Then, confronted with the enormities of her life, her father’s blood—that bourgeois blood that tormented her in times of crisis—cried out in her and rebelled. She who had always trembled at the thought of hell—she should have lived her life within the dark austerity of the Hôtel Béraud. Who, then, had stripped her naked?

In the dim blue surface of the mirror she thought she saw the figures of Saccard and Maxime. Saccard, swarthy and sneering, had a color that resembled iron, a laugh that was torture to listen to, and skinny legs. What a will the man had! For ten years she had watched him at work in the forge, enveloped in sparks of red-hot metal, his flesh singed, breathing hard, tapping steadily, lifting hammers twenty times too heavy for him, heedless of the risk that he might be crushed. She understood him now. He seemed magnified by his superhuman effort, his scheming on a vast scale, his obsession with acquiring an immense fortune immediately. She remembered his jumping over obstacles, rolling in the mud, and not even taking the time to wipe himself off in order to arrive ahead of schedule, not even stopping to enjoy himself along the way, chewing on gold pieces as he ran. Then Maxime’s pretty blond head appeared behind his father’s stout shoulders. He wore the bright smile of a streetwalker and the blank stare of a whore who never lowered her eyes, and he parted his hair in the middle, revealing the whiteness of his cranium. He made fun of Saccard and deemed it “bourgeois” to go to so much trouble to earn the money that he consumed with such admirable indolence. He was kept. His long, soft hands told of his vices. His hairless body struck the weary pose of a satiated woman. Vice flowed as easily as lukewarm water through this soft, spineless creature, utterly devoid of curiosity about evil. He was passive. And Renée, as she watched these two apparitions emerge from the dim shadows of the mirror, took a step backward and saw that Saccard had tossed her out as a prize, an investment, and that Maxime had happened along to pick up the gold coin the speculator had let drop. She had always been an asset in her husband’s portfolio. He had encouraged her to wear gowns for a night and take lovers for a season. He had rotated her in the flames of his forge, used her as one might use a precious metal to gild the iron in his hands. Little by little, the father had thus made her mad enough and miserable enough to accept the son’s kisses. If Maxime was the impoverished blood of Saccard, she felt that she was the fruit these two worms had ruined, the vileness at which both had eaten away and in which both now lay coiled.

She knew now. These were the men who had stripped her naked. Saccard had unhooked her bodice, and Maxime had removed her skirt. Then, just now, both of them had ripped off her slip. Now she remained without a shred of clothing, with her gold ringlets, like a slave. When they had looked at her earlier, they hadn’t said, “You’re naked.” The son had quivered like a coward, trembling at the idea of seeing his crime through to the end, and had refused to follow her in her passion. The father, instead of killing her, had robbed her. He was a man who punished people by picking their pockets. A signature had appeared like a ray of sunlight in the midst of his wrath, and as vengeance he had carried that signature off with him. Then she had watched their shoulders disappear into the darkness. No blood on the carpet, not a single cry, not a whimper. These men were cowards. They had stripped her naked.

On one solitary occasion, she told herself, she had read the future: on that day when with burgeoning desires she had braved the murmuring shadows of the Parc Monceau and been terrified by the thought that her husband would someday defile her and plunge her into madness. Oh, but her poor head ached! How acutely she now felt the fallacy of the imagination that had led her to believe she was living in a blessed realm of divine ecstasy and impunity! She had lived in the land of shame, and she was punished by the surrender of her entire body and the annihilation of her being, now in its final agony. She wept that she had not listened to the resonant voices of the trees.

Her nakedness vexed her. She turned her head and looked around. The dressing room retained its heavy odor of musk, its overheated silence disturbed only by snatches of the never-ending waltz, like dying ripples on a sheet of water. Like attenuated laughter from some far-off sensual encounter, the music passed over her, and its mockery was more than she could bear. She stopped her ears so as to hear no more. Then her eyes took in the luxurious appointments of the dressing room. Her gaze followed the pink draperies all the way up to the silver crown, through which peered a cherub with plump cheeks readying his arrow. Her eyes lingered on the furniture, on the marble top of the dressing table crowded with jars and implements she no longer recognized. She went to the bathtub, still filled with stagnant water. With her foot she kicked away the fabrics left lying on the white satin armchairs: Echo’s costume, petticoats, towels she had tossed aside. And all these things spoke with the voices of shame: the nymph’s costume told of her having accepted the role of Echo for the novel thrill of offering herself to Maxime in public; the bathtub exhaled the fragrance of her body; the water in which she had soaked filled the room with a sick woman’s fever; the dressing table, with its soaps and oils, and the round curves of the furniture, so reminiscent of a bed, spoke brutally to her of her flesh, her loves, and all the filth she wanted to forget. She went back to the center of the room, her face crimson, because she had no idea how to escape from this bedroom scent, this luxury that revealed itself as brazenly as a prostitute, parading this abundance of pink. The room was as naked as she was. The pink tub, the pink skin of the tent, the pink marble of the two tables seemed to come alive, to stretch and curl and wrap themselves around her with such a living sensual embrace that she shut her eyes, bowed her head, and gave in to the crushing weight of the lace that adorned the ceilings and walls.

In the darkness, however, she again noticed the flesh-colored stain of the dressing room and imagined the gray softness of the bedroom, the tender gold of the small salon, the garish green of the conservatory—so many complicit riches. These were the places where her feet had soaked up the rotten sap. She would not have slept with Maxime on a pallet in some garret. That would have been too vile. Silk had made her crime stylish. And she dreamt of tearing down all this lace, of spitting on this silk, of kicking her big bed to pieces, and of trailing her luxury through some gutter from which it would emerge as worn and soiled as she was.

When she opened her eyes, she went over to the mirror and looked at herself again, examined herself closely. She was done for. She saw herself dead. Her whole face told her that her nervous breakdown was nearly complete. Maxime—the ultimate perversion of her senses— had finished his work, exhausted her flesh, unhinged her mind. She had no more joys to savor, no further hope of awakening. At this thought a savage rage was rekindled in her. And in one final paroxysm of desire, she dreamt of seizing her prey one more time, of dying in Maxime’s arms and taking him with her. Louise could not marry him. Louise knew full well that he did not belong to her, since she had seen them kissing each other on the lips. Then she threw a fur cloak over her shoulders so as not to cross the dance floor naked. She went downstairs.

In the small salon she found herself face-to-face with Mme Sidonie, who had again stationed herself on the conservatory steps to relish the drama. But she no longer knew what to think when Saccard reappeared with Maxime and to her whispered questions brusquely replied that she was dreaming, that there was “nothing at all.” Then the truth dawned on her. Her yellow face turned white: this really was too much. Quietly, she went over and glued her ear to the door of the staircase, hoping that she would hear Renée sobbing upstairs. When the young woman opened the door, it nearly struck her sister-in-law in the face.

“You’re spying on me!” Renée said angrily.

But Mme Sidonie replied with splendid disdain: “As if I’d bother with your filth!”

Then, hiking up her magician’s robes, she withdrew with a majestic glare: “It’s not my fault, darling, if you’ve had some mishaps. . . . But understand that I hold no grudge. And that you would have found a second mother in me and may find one still. I’ll be happy to see you at my place whenever it suits you.”

Renée wasn’t listening. She walked into the large drawing room and made her way through a very complex figure of the cotillion without so much as noticing the surprise occasioned by her fur cloak. In the middle of the room, groups of ladies and gentlemen were milling around and waving streamers, and M. de Saffré’s high-pitched voice was saying, “Let’s go, ladies, it’s time for the ‘Mexican War.’ The ladies must pretend to be cactus plants by sitting on the floor and spreading their skirts out around them. . . . Now, the gentlemen will dance around the cacti. . . . Then, when I clap my hands, each gentleman must waltz with his cactus.”

He clapped his hands. The brass rang out, and couples once again waltzed around the salon. The figure was not much of a success. Two of the ladies remained sitting on the carpet, tangled up in their petticoats. Mme Daste said that what amused her in the “Mexican War” was making a “cheese” out of her dress as the girls used to do at boarding school.

When Renée reached the vestibule, she found Louise and her father with Saccard and Maxime. Baron Gouraud had left. Mme Sidonie was on her way out with Mignon and Charrier, and M. Hupel de la Noue escorted Mme Michelin, while her husband followed at a discreet distance. The prefect had spent most of the evening courting the pretty brunette. He had just persuaded her to spend a month of the summer season in the capital of his district, “where there are some truly unusual ancient artifacts to be seen.”

Louise, who was surreptitiously nibbling on the nougat she had hidden in her pocket, succumbed to a fit of coughing just as she was about to leave.

“Button up tight,” her father said.

And Maxime hastened to tighten the string on the hood of her evening wrap. She lifted her chin and allowed herself to be swaddled. But when Mme Saccard appeared, M. de Mareuil returned to say his good-byes. Everyone stood chatting for a while. To explain her pallor and shivering, she said that she had felt cold and had gone upstairs to fetch the fur now draped over her shoulders. Meanwhile, she was waiting for an opportunity to whisper something to Louise, who was staring at her with curious tranquillity. Since the men were still shaking hands, Renée leaned over to her and whispered: “You won’t marry him, will you? It’s out of the question. You know full well—”

But the child interrupted, rising up on her toes to whisper in Renée’s ear. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll take him away. . . . It won’t matter, since we’ll be going off to Italy.”

And she smiled the inscrutable smile of a wicked sphinx. All Renée could do was stammer. Understanding eluded her; she thought the hunchback was making a joke at her expense. Then, after the Mareuils had left, having repeated “Until Sunday!” several times before doing so, she looked with terrified eyes first at her husband, then at Maxime, and seeing them there, looking cool and smug, she hid her face in her hands and fled, taking refuge at the far end of the conservatory.

The paths were deserted. The great masses of foliage slept, while two budding water lilies slowly unfolded on the stagnant surface of the pool. Renée felt like crying, but the humid heat and strong odor that she knew so well took her by the throat and strangled her despair. She looked at her feet on the edge of the pool, on the patch of yellow sand where she had laid out the bearskin the previous winter. And when she looked up, she could still see a figure of the cotillion unfolding in the distance through the double doors, which had been left open.

There was a deafening noise, a chaotic free-for-all in which all she could make out at first were flying skirts and black legs stamping and whirling. M. de Saffré’s voice cried out: “Change your ladies! Change your ladies!” And couples passed by in a cloud of fine yellow dust. Each gentleman danced three or four turns of the waltz and then flung his lady into the arms of his neighbor, who did the same. Baroness von Meinhold, wearing her Emerald costume, passed from the hands of the comte de Chibray to those of Mr. Simpson. He caught her as best he could by one shoulder, while the fingers of his gloves slipped beneath her bodice. A flushed Countess Wanska, her coral pendants jangling, leapt in a single bound from the chest of M. de Saffré to that of the duc de Rozan, whom she wrapped herself around and forced to pirouette for five measures so that she might attach herself next to the hip of Mr. Simpson, who had just hurled the Emerald at the cotillion’s leader. And Mme Teissière, Mme Daste, and Mme de Lauwerens, gleaming like great living jewels with the pale yellow of Topaz, the soft blue of Turquoise, and the fiery blue of Sapphire, briefly let themselves go and arched their backs under the outstretched wrists of their waltzing partners, then started up anew, moving backward or forward into yet another embrace, and in this fashion sampled one after another the arms of every man in the room. Meanwhile, Mme d’Espanet, standing in front of the orchestra, managed to grab Mme Haffner as she passed and waltzed off with her, unwilling to let her go. Gold and Silver danced together, like lovers.

Renée now understood this whirl of skirts, this stamping of feet. Situated as she was below the level of the dance floor, she saw the frenzy of legs, the chaos of patent-leather boots and white ankles. At times it seemed as though a gust of wind might carry off the women’s gowns. The bare shoulders, arms, and heads that flew past, that whirled by only to be caught, flung off, and caught again at the far end of the gallery where the orchestra played ever more furiously and the red hangings seemed to droop as the ball succumbed to its final fever, struck her as a tumultuous reflection of her own life, with its moments of nakedness and surrender. And she experienced such pain at the thought that Maxime, in order to take the hunchback in his arms, had cast her aside into the very spot where they had loved each other, that she dreamed of plucking a branch of the tanghin that grazed her cheek and chewing it down to the heartwood. But she was a coward, so she stood in front of the shrub shivering under the fur, which she pulled over her arms and clutched tightly in a gesture of terrified shame.

7

Three months later, on one of those dismal spring mornings that bring the low clouds and gloomy dampness of winter back to Paris, Aristide Saccard stepped down from his carriage on the place du Châteaud’Eau and with four other gentlemen entered the gaping hole opened up by demolitions making way for the future boulevard du Prince-Eugène. The men were from the investigative commission that the jury on indemnities sent out to construction sites to estimate the value of certain properties, whose owners had not been able to reach agreement with the city.

Saccard was going for a repeat of the stroke of fortune he had pulled off on the rue de la Pépinière. In order to expunge his wife’s name from the record entirely, his first move had been to arrange a mock sale of the land and the music hall. Larsonneau transferred the entire property to a fictitious creditor. The deed bore the colossal figure of three million francs. This amount was so exorbitant that when the expropriation agent, acting on behalf of the imaginary creditor, asked for an indemnity equal to the selling price, the city hall commission refused to award more than two million five hundred thousand francs despite the surreptitious efforts of M. Michelin and the pleas of M. Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud. Saccard had expected this setback. He rejected the offer and allowed the case to go to the jury, of which he happened to be a member, along with M. de Mareuil— a lucky break that he had no doubt had a hand in arranging. That was how he came to be conducting an inquiry into his own property along with four of his colleagues.

M. de Mareuil was at his side. Of the three other members of the committee, one was a doctor, who smoked a cigar and paid absolutely no attention to the rubble he was walking on, and two were businessmen, one of whom, a manufacturer of surgical instruments, had formerly been a knife sharpener who operated a grindstone on the street.

The path these gentlemen set out to follow was in terrible condition. It had rained all night. The soggy ground had turned into a river of mud between crumbling buildings, following a line marked out on earth so soft that carts hauling rubble sank in up to their axles. On either side stood sections of wall shattered by pickaxes. Tall buildings had been gutted so that their blanched entrails showed: empty stair-wells and gaping rooms hung in the air like the smashed drawers of some huge, ugly bureau. No sight could be sadder than the wallpaper in the bedrooms five or six stories up, yellow or blue squares now in tatters marking the places under the roofs where poor, wretched garrets had been—tiny holes that had once housed someone’s entire existence. Ribbons of flue pipe, depressingly black in color and with sharp elbows, climbed bare walls side by side. A forgotten weathervane made a grating sound as it rotated close to the edge of one roof, while half-detached gutters hung down like rags. And the chasm continued on into the ruins like a breach opened by cannon fire. The path of the roadway, still hard to make out, was filled with debris and marked by mounds of earth and deep puddles; on it went beneath gray skies, enveloped in a sinister cloud of falling plaster dust and lined by black ribbons of flue pipe, which were like the badges worn by mourners.

The visiting gentlemen, with their carefully polished boots, frock coats, and top hats, injected a singular note into this muddy landscape of brown filth in which the only things that moved were sallow workmen, horses spattered with mud all the way up their flanks, and wagons whose sides were completely coated with dust. They walked single file, jumping from stone to stone while mostly avoiding pools of liquid filth, but occasionally sinking in up to their ankles, which made them swear out loud and shake their feet. Saccard had suggested taking the rue de Charonne, which would have made it unnecessary to traverse this area of excavation, but unfortunately the committee had a number of buildings to visit up and down the lengthy boulevard. Driven by curiosity, they had decided to set a course right through the heart of the construction. In any case, it interested them greatly. At times one of them would stop and balance himself on a chunk of plaster lying in a rut, look up, and call the attention of the others to a gaping floor, a piece of flue pipe hanging in the air, or a beam that had fallen onto a neighboring roof. This razed section of city at the end of the rue du Temple actually struck them as quite funny.

“Now there’s something really unusual,” said M. de Mareuil. “Look up there, Saccard, at that kitchen. There’s still an old frying pan hanging over the stove. . . . I can make it out quite clearly.”

But the physician, his cigar clamped between his teeth, had planted himself in front of a demolished house, of which nothing remained but the rooms on the ground floor, now filled with rubble from the floors above. Only one section of wall rose above the heap of debris. To knock this wall down at one go, a rope had been wound around it, and thirty workmen were now pulling on that line.

“They won’t get it that way,” the doctor mumbled. “They’re pulling too much to the left.”

The other four men had retraced their steps in order to watch the wall come down. All five stared intently with bated breath as they waited, thrilled at the prospect of witnessing the collapse. The workers let the rope go slack and then suddenly gave another tug, shouting, “Heave, ho!”

“They won’t get it,” the doctor repeated.

Then, after a few seconds of anxious waiting, one of the businessmen gleefully shouted, “It’s moving, it’s moving!”

When the wall finally gave way, collapsing with a terrifying rumble that raised a cloud of plaster dust, the five gentlemen of the committee smiled at one another. They were enchanted. A fine powder settled onto their coats, turning their arms and shoulders white.

Now, as the men went back to picking their way among the puddles, the conversation turned to workers. There weren’t many good ones. They were all lazy, wasteful, and pigheaded and dreamed of nothing but their employers’ ruin. M. de Mareuil, who for the past minute had been nervously watching two poor devils perched on the corner of a roof as they attacked a wall with pickaxes, nevertheless voiced the thought that fellows like those displayed splendid courage. The others stopped once more and looked up at the demolition workers balanced on the edge of the roof as they bent their backs and swung their axes with all their might. The workmen kicked stones from the wall with their feet and watched calmly as they crashed to the ground. If their picks had missed their marks, the sheer momentum of their swings would have sent them plunging off the roof.

“Bah, they’re used to it!” said the doctor, putting his cigar back in his mouth. “They’re brutes.”

Meanwhile the members of the committee had reached one of the buildings they were supposed to inspect. They polished off their work in fifteen minutes and resumed their walk. Little by little they lost their fear of the mud. They walked right through puddles, abandoning all hope of keeping their boots dry. As they passed rue Ménilmontant, one of the businessmen, the former knife grinder, grew anxious. He scrutinized the ruins around him, and the neighborhood no longer seemed familiar. He had lived there more than thirty years before, he said, just after arriving in Paris, and it would please him greatly to locate the spot. He continued to cast his eyes about until the sight of a house cut in two by the demolition workers’ axes brought him up short in the middle of the path. He studied the building’s door and windows. Then, pointing at a corner of the ruin, he cried out, “There it is! I recognize it!”

“What are you talking about?” asked the doctor.

“My room, for heaven’s sake! That’s it!”

It was a small bedroom on the sixth floor that must once have overlooked a courtyard. A breach in one wall exposed the room, already demolished on one side, and a large section of wallpaper bearing a yellow floral pattern had been torn away from the wall and could be seen flapping in the wind. On the left you could still see the recess of a cupboard, lined with blue paper. And next to it was the hole for a stove, with a piece of pipe sticking out.

The erstwhile worker was gripped by emotion.

“I spent five years there,” he murmured. “Life was hard in those days, but it made no difference, I was young. . . . See that cupboard? That’s where I kept the 300 francs I saved sou by sou. And the hole for the stove—I can still remember the day I made it. The room had no fireplace, and it was bitter cold, all the more so because it wasn’t often that I was with somebody.”

“Hold on there,” the doctor interrupted in a jocular tone. “Nobody wants to know your secrets. You had your fun like everybody else.”

“That’s true,” the dignitary naïvely admitted. “I can still remember a laundress from the house across the street. . . . See up there, the bed was on the right, near the window. . . . What they’ve done to my poor bedroom!”

He was really quite sad about it.

“Now listen here,” said Saccard. “There’s nothing wrong with knocking down old dumps like these. They’re going to build fine new freestone houses in their place. . . . Would you still live in a hovel like that? Whereas on the new boulevard you’ll be able to find quite suitable housing.”

“That’s true,” repeated the manufacturer, who seemed quite consoled by the thought.

The investigative commission stopped at two more buildings. The doctor remained outside, smoking and staring at the sky. When the men came to the rue des Amandiers, the houses thinned out, and now they made their way through fenced lots and land undeveloped but for a few tumbledown cottages. Saccard seemed delighted by this stroll through the ruins. He was reminded of the dinner he had had long ago with his first wife on the Buttes Montmartre and vividly recalled having gestured with the edge of his hand to indicate where Paris would be sliced open from the place du Château-d’Eau to the Barrière du Trône. It enchanted him to know that this prediction from the distant past had come true. He followed the line of that slice with the secret pleasure of an author, as if he himself had struck the first blows of the pickaxe with his iron fingers. And as he jumped the puddles, he relished the thought that three million francs awaited him beneath these ruins, at the end of this greasy river of muck.

Meanwhile, the members of the committee began to fancy that they had reached the countryside. The path of the roadway ran through gardens, whose walls had been knocked down to make way for it. Huge lilac bushes were in bud. The foliage was a very delicate light green in color. Each of these gardens opened out like a castle keep walled off by shrubbery, inside which lay a narrow pool, a miniature waterfall, and a section of wall featuring trompe-l’oeil representations of foreshortened bowers set against distant blue landscapes. The houses, spread out and discreetly hidden, resembled Italian pavilions or Greek temples. Moss ate away at the bottoms of the plaster columns, while weeds loosened the mortar of the pediments.

“These are petites maisons,” said the physician with a wink.

But when he saw that the other gentlemen didn’t understand what he meant by this, he explained that in the time of Louis XIV nobles had kept retreats for assignations in the country. It was the fashion. “They called them petites maisons. This neighborhood was full of them. . . . You can bet that there were some wild goings-on in those places!”

The investigative committee had become quite attentive. Eyes glistening, the two businessmen smiled and examined these gardens and pavilions with great interest, even though they had not so much as glanced at them before hearing their colleague’s explanations. One grotto held their attention for quite some time. But when the doctor noticed one house that had already fallen victim to the pickaxes and mentioned that he recognized it as having been the petite maison of the comte de Savigny—and well-known for that gentleman’s orgies—the entire committee left the boulevard to visit the ruin. They climbed up over the rubble and entered through the first-floor windows. Since the workers were on their lunch break, they were able to enjoy themselves to their heart’s content. They stayed for more than half an hour, examining the rosettes in the ceilings, the paintings above the doors, and the overelaborate plaster moldings that had turned yellow with age. The doctor reconstructed the house.

“This room, you see, must have been the formal dining room. Over there, in that recess in the wall, there was surely a huge sofa. And wait a minute, I’m even certain there must have been a mirror above that sofa. There are the retainers for the glass. . . . Those bastards really knew how to enjoy life!”

They would never have left those old stones, which piqued their curiosity, if Saccard, impatient to get going, had not laughingly reminded them that “it’s no use looking for the ladies, they’re not here anymore. . . . It’s time to get back to business.”

Before leaving, however, the doctor climbed up on a mantel and with a deft blow from an axe detached the small painted head of a cupid, which he slipped into the pocket of his coat.

At last they came to the end of their route. The property that had previously belonged to Mme Aubertot was quite extensive. The music hall and garden occupied barely half of it. A few nondescript houses were scattered around the remaining land. The fact that the new boulevard cut diagonally across this large parallelogram had allayed one of Saccard’s fears. For a long time he had worried that only the music hall would be affected by the planned route. He had accordingly instructed Larsonneau to talk things up, since the value of the adjacent land should have increased at least fivefold. He was already threatening the city by saying that he might invoke a recent ordinance authorizing landowners to surrender only that portion of a property absolutely essential for public works.

It was the expropriation agent who received the gentlemen of the committee. He showed them around the garden and the music hall and gave them a huge file to examine. But the two businessmen had gone back downstairs with the doctor, whom they continued to question about the petite maison of the comte de Savigny, which had fired their imaginations. With jaws hanging, both men listened to the doctor’s stories, as all three stood alongside a “barrel ride” in the amusement park. And the doctor regaled them with tales of Mme de Pompadour and recounted the loves of Louis XV 1 while M. de Mareuil and Saccard carried on with the investigation by themselves.

“This job is done,” said the latter upon returning to the garden. “If you’ll allow me, gentlemen, I’ll accept responsibility for writing up the report.”

The man who manufactured surgical instruments didn’t even hear what Saccard had said. He was lost in the Régence.²

“What a strange time, for sure!” he murmured.

Then they found a cab on the rue de Charonne and drove off, spattered with filth up to the knees and as pleased with their outing as if they’d been to a picnic in the country. In the cab the conversation turned to politics; they agreed that the Emperor was doing great things. No one had ever seen anything like what they had just seen. This big straight boulevard would be superb once houses were built along it.

Saccard drew up the report, and the jury awarded an indemnity of three million francs. The speculator had his back to the wall; he couldn’t have held out another month. This money saved him from ruin and perhaps even from the criminal courts. He paid 500,000 francs of the million he owed his upholsterer and contractor on the Parc Monceau house. He attended to other trouble spots, plunged into new ventures, and deafened Paris with the sound of the very real gold coins that he loaded into his safe by the shovelful. The river of gold at last had a source. But it was not yet a solid, entrenched fortune flowing at an even and steady rate. Saved from bankruptcy, Saccard considered himself a beggar reduced to living on the crumbs from his three million francs; naïvely he told himself that he was still too poor, that he could not stop. And soon the ground had opened up yet again beneath his feet.

Larsonneau had behaved so admirably in the Charonne business that Saccard, after only a moment’s hesitation, had pushed honesty to the point of paying him his ten percent plus a bonus of 30,000 francs. With that the expropriation agent opened a bank. When his accomplice grumpily accused him of having outstripped him in wealth, the yellow-gloved dandy replied with a laugh: “You see, my beloved teacher, you’re very clever at making money rain down, but you’ve no idea how to pick it up.”

Mme Sidonie took advantage of her brother’s stroke of fortune to borrow 10,000 francs from him, with which she spent two months in London. She returned without a penny. No one ever found out what had become of the 10,000 francs.

“Oh, my, you know everything costs money,” she replied when questioned. “I scoured all the libraries. I had three secretaries to help with my research.”

And when people asked if she had at last found out anything certain about her three billion, she smiled mysteriously at first and then murmured, “You’re all skeptics. . . . I didn’t find anything, but it makes no difference. You’ll see, one of these days you’ll see.”

She had not wasted all her time in England, however. Her brother the minister had availed himself of the opportunity to charge her with a delicate commission. When she returned, she received a number of large orders from the ministry. This was a new incarnation for her. She signed contracts with the government and undertook to supply goods of every conceivable kind. She sold rations and weapons to the army for its troops, furniture to prefectures and government bureaus, and firewood to public offices and museums. The money she earned was not enough to persuade her to put aside the black dresses she invariably wore, and her waxy, doleful countenance remained as it had always been. Saccard now reflected that it must indeed have been his sister he had seen furtively exiting their brother Eugène’s house that day long ago. She had probably been in secret contact with him all along, running errands that nobody in the world was aware of.

While all these pecuniary interests and ardent, unquenchable thirsts swirled around her, Renée was in agony. Aunt Elisabeth had died. Her sister, now married, had left the family home, in the gloom of whose cavernous rooms her father now lived alone. In one season she ran through her aunt’s bequest. Lately she had taken to gambling. She had found a salon in which ladies sat at tables until three in the morning, losing hundreds of thousands of francs a night. Inevitably she tried to drink, but she could not: uncontrollable waves of nausea overwhelmed her. On finding herself alone again, helpless against the social tide that was sweeping her away, she had surrendered to it more than ever, not knowing any other way to kill the time. She sampled everything until nothing was left, yet none of it diminished the crushing weight of her boredom. She aged; blue circles formed around her eyes; her nose grew thinner, and her pouting lips erupted in sudden laughter for no reason. For this woman it was the end of the line.

When Maxime married Louise and the young couple left for Italy, Renée stopped worrying about her lover and seemed to forget all about him. And when he returned alone six months later, having buried “the hunchback” in the cemetery of a small town in Lombardy, she greeted him with hatred. She remembered Phèdre and no doubt recalled having heard Ristori invest that envenomed love with her sobs. Then, so that she would not have to run into the boy in her own home, and in order to set an abyss of shame between father and son forever, she forced her husband to acknowledge the incest, telling him that his son had been after her for some time and that on the day Saccard had surprised her with him, Maxime had been attempting to assault her. Saccard was terribly vexed by her insistence on opening his eyes. He was obliged to quarrel with his son and refuse to see him. The young widower, wealthy by dint of his wife’s dowry, established bachelor quarters in a small house on the avenue de l’Impératrice. He turned down the Conseil d’Etat and took to racing horses instead. The rupture Renée had caused between father and son was one of her last satisfactions. Her vengeance was to throw the degradation these two men had imposed on her back in their faces. Now, she told herself, she wouldn’t have to watch anymore as they walked arm in arm like two comrades, mocking her.

With the collapse of her affections, there came a time when she had no one left to love but her maid. Little by little she conceived a maternal affection for Céleste. It may have been that this girl, the only residue of her love for Maxime, reminded her of hours of pleasure now gone forever. Or maybe she was just touched by this servant’s loyalty, by the fidelity of this stouthearted woman whose tranquil solicitude seemed unshakable. In the depth of her remorse she thanked Céleste for having witnessed her shame without abandoning her in disgust. She imagined all sorts of self-denial, a whole life of renunciation, in her effort to comprehend the maid’s calm acceptance of incest, her icy hands, her respectful, unflappable attentiveness. And Céleste’s devotion pleased Renée all the more because she knew her to be honest and thrifty, a woman without a lover and untouched by vice.

In sad moments she sometimes said to her, “Listen, my child, when the time comes to close my eyes, I want it to be you.”

Céleste never gave any answer to this other than a peculiar smile. One morning, she quietly informed her mistress that she was leaving, returning home to her native village. Renée’s body shook all over, as if some great misfortune had arrived. She uttered a cry and pummeled Céleste with questions. Why was she abandoning her when they got along so well together? And she offered to double the girl’s wages.

But the chambermaid dismissed all these fine words with a calm but insistent wave.

Finally she broke her silence. “Madame, if you offered me all the gold in Peru, I wouldn’t stay one week longer. You don’t know me at all! . . . I’ve been with you for eight years, haven’t I? Well, on my first day I said to myself, ‘As soon as I’ve saved up 5,000 francs, I’ll go back home. I’ll buy the house in Lagache and live quite happily.’ That’s the promise I made myself, you see. And yesterday, when you paid me my wages, I had those 5,000 francs.”

Renée’s blood ran cold. She had a vision of Céleste passing behind her and Maxime while they were kissing, and she recognized the maid’s indifference, her complete detachment, as she dreamt of her 5,000 francs. She nevertheless tried to dissuade her, terrified as she was of the void in which she would soon find herself living, dreaming in spite of everything of keeping with her this stubborn mule whom she had thought devoted but who had turned out to be merely selfish. The maid smiled, shook her head, and muttered, “No, it’s not possible. Even if you were my mother, I would refuse. . . . I’m going to buy two cows. I may open a small hat shop. . . . It’s a very nice town I come from. I’d be happy if you came to see me. It’s near Caen. I’ll leave you the address.”

Renée dropped her opposition. When she was alone, she cried hot tears. The next day, acting on a sick woman’s caprice, she insisted on driving Céleste to the Gare de l’Ouest in her coupé. She gave her one of her travel blankets as well as a sum of money and made a fuss over her as a mother might over a daughter about to embark on a long and difficult journey. In the coupé she gazed at her former maid with moist eyes. Céleste chatted about this and that and said how glad she was to be leaving. Then, feeling bold, she opened up and offered advice to her mistress.

“Personally, madame, I could never look at life the way you do. Plenty of times when I found you with M. Maxime, I used to say to myself, ‘How can any woman make such a fool of herself for a man!’ It always ends badly. . . . I’ve always been suspicious of them, but that’s me.”

She laughed and pressed herself back into a corner of the carriage.

“My money would have danced right out the door!” she went on. “And today I’d be crying my eyes out. So whenever I saw a man, I’d pick up a broomstick. . . . I never dared tell you any of that. Anyway, it was none of my business. You were free to do as you pleased, and for me it was an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.”

At the station, Renée insisted on paying for her ticket and bought her a seat in first class. Since they had arrived early, she wouldn’t let the servant go but held her by the hand and kept repeating, “Look after yourself, my good Céleste, take good care of yourself.”

Céleste allowed herself to be caressed. She remained happy though her mistress’s eyes filled with tears, and her face looked cool and radiant. Renée spoke again about the past. Then, suddenly, Céleste burst out, “I almost forgot. I haven’t told you the story of Baptiste, Monsieur’s manservant. . . . Nobody wanted to tell you.”

The young woman admitted that she knew nothing.

“Well, you remember his stuck-up airs and snotty looks? You’ve mentioned them to me. . . . Well, that was all a charade. . . . He didn’t like women. He never went down to the kitchen when we were there. And I can tell you this now, he even said that the drawing room was disgusting because of the low-cut gowns. I’m sure he didn’t care for women!”

And she leaned over to whisper in Renée’s ear. She made her mistress blush, yet her own placid sense of propriety remained unperturbed.

“When the new stable boy told Monsieur everything, Monsieur chose to dismiss Baptiste rather than press charges against him. It seems that disgusting things of that sort had been going on in the stables for years. . . . And to think that the big fellow pretended he liked horses! It was the grooms he was after.”

The bell interrupted her. She hastily gathered up the eight or ten packages she had not been willing to part with. She allowed herself to be kissed. Then she walked off without looking back.

Renée remained in the station until the locomotive blew its whistle. When the train pulled out, she felt desperate and didn’t know what to do. Her days seemed to stretch out before her as empty as the vast waiting room in which she was now left standing all alone. She climbed back in her coupé and told the coachman to drive home. On the way, however, she changed her mind. She was afraid of her room and of the boredom that awaited her there. She didn’t even have the heart to change clothes for her usual drive around the lake. She needed sun, and to be with people.

She ordered the coachman to go to the Bois.

It was four o’clock. The Bois was just awakening from the oppressive afternoon heat. Clouds of dust rose all along the avenue de l’Impératrice, and in the distance one could see expanses of greenery bordered by the slopes of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes and crowned by the gray mass of Mont-Valérien. 3 The sun, high on the horizon, flowed as if molten and filled the gaps in the foliage with a golden dust, setting the high branches ablaze and turning the ocean of leaves into an ocean of light. But beyond the fortifications, the carriageway that led to the lake had just been watered. The carriages rolled over the brown dirt as over a woolen carpet, enveloped in a cool fragrance of moist earth. On either side small trees drove their numerous young trunks into the low scrub and vanished into a sea of obscure greenery punctuated here and there by clearings aglow with yellow light. The nearer one got to the lake, the more numerous the chairs along the sidewalks became, and families sat on them and watched the endless parade of wheels with silent, tranquil faces. At the circle just before the lake a dazzling spectacle awaited. The sun’s oblique rays turned the round basin into a huge mirror of polished silver reflecting the star’s splendid face. Through squinting eyes it was hard to make out, on the left, near the bank, the dark outline of the excursion boat. The umbrellas of the carriages bowed in a gentle, uniform motion toward the source of the splendor and did not straighten up again until the carriages reached the carriageway that ran along the edge of the water, which from the height of the embankment took on a dark metallic hue with stripes of burnished gold. On the right, clumps of conifers lined up in regular colonnades, the soft violet tint of their straight, slender needles tinged red by the flames from the sky. On the left, expanses of lawn lay bathed in light like fields of emeralds all the way to the distant lace of the Porte de la Muette. Nearer the falls, the gloomy forest resumed on one side, while across the lake islands loomed against the blue sky with sunlit shores and shadowy slopes of vigorous fir, at the base of which the Chalet looked like a child’s toy lost in a corner of some virgin forest. The entire Bois shook with laughter in the sun.

On this splendid day Renée felt ashamed of her coupé and of her puce outfit, made of silk. She settled back a bit in the carriage and looked out through the open windows at the ripples of light on the water and greenery. At bends in the carriageway she caught glimpses of the line of wheels, revolving like golden stars in an endless stream of blinding flashes. The polished side panels, the glittering appurtenances of copper and steel, and the vividly colored outfits moved along at the regular pace of the trotting horses, so that it seemed that a large bar, a fallen ray of sunlight, was moving against the background of the Bois, stretching to wed the curves of the carriageway. By squinting from time to time, the young woman could make out within that ray the blonde bun of a woman’s hair, the dark back of a footman’s coat, or the white mane of a horse. The rounded contours of the watered-silk parasols shimmered like metal moons.

As Renée contemplated this bright day, these expanses of sunlight, she remembered the fine ash of dusk that had settled over the yellowing leaves one evening as she watched. Maxime was with her then. This was back when her desire for the boy had first been aroused. And she could still see the lawns drenched by the evening air, the darkening woods, and the deserted paths. The line of carriages had then made a mournful sound as it moved past the row of empty chairs, whereas today the rolling wheels and trotting horses sounded as joyful as a brass band. All her outings to the Bois now came back to her. She had lived in these woods, and Maxime had grown up here, sitting next to her on these cushions. The Bois had been their garden. The rain had surprised them here, the sun had brought them back, the night had not always driven them out. They had come here in all kinds of weather, and here they had experienced life’s tedium as well as its joys. In the emptiness of her existence and the melancholy caused by Céleste’s departure, these memories aroused a bitter joy in Renée. Her heart said: Never again! Never again! And as she conjured up that wintry landscape, that dull, frozen lake on which they had skated, she sat transfixed. The sky was the color of soot, the snow stitched veils of white lace onto the trees, and the north wind hurled a fine powder at their eyes and lips.

In the meantime she had recognized the duc de Rozan, M. de Mussy, and M. de Saffré on the path reserved for riders on the left. Larsonneau had killed the duke’s mother by presenting her with 150,000 francs’ worth of overdue notes signed by her son, and the duke was now squandering his second half-million with Blanche Muller after leaving the first 500,000 francs in the hands of Laure d’Aurigny. M. de Mussy, who had left the embassy in England for the embassy in Italy, had resumed his flirtatious ways. He led the cotillion with new-found grace. M. de Saffré for his part was still a skeptic as well as the most amiable bon vivant imaginable. Renée watched him urge his horse toward the door of Countess Wanska’s carriage. People said that he had fallen madly in love with her the day he saw her dressed up as Coral at the Saccards’.

All the ladies were in the Bois as well: Duchess von Sternich in her inevitable eight-spring; Mme de Lauwerens in a landau, with Baroness von Meinhold and little Mme Daste seated opposite her in front; and Mme Teissière and Mme de Guende in a victoria. In amongst these ladies, Sylvia and Laure d’Aurigny sat on the cushions of a magnificent calèche, showing themselves off. Even Mme Michelin drove by, sitting well back in a coupé. The pretty brunette had paid a visit to M. Hupel de la Noue’s district capital and upon her return had been seen in the Bois in this same coupé, to which she hoped soon to add an open carriage. Renée also spotted the marquise d’Espanet and Mme Haffner, the Inseparables, hiding under parasols and laughing affectionately, gazing into each other’s eyes as they stretched out side by side.

Then the gentlemen passed by: M. de Chibray in a drag; Mr. Simpson in a dog cart; Mignon and Charrier, keener than ever about their work despite their dream of impending retirement, in a coupé that they left by the side of one of the paths while they stretched their legs a bit; M. de Mareuil, still in mourning for his daughter, seeking plaudits for his first intervention in the legislature the night before, showing off his political importance in the carriage of M. Toutin-Laroche, who had just saved the Crédit Viticole once again after having brought it to the brink of ruin and whose waistline had contracted even while his influence had expanded as never before following his nomination to the Senate.

And bringing up the rear as the ultimate majesty in this procession, Baron Gouraud, taking the sun in his open carriage, weighed heavily on the two extra pillows that had been placed on the seat. Renée felt surprise and disgust at the sight of Baptiste sitting next to the coachman, his face white and solemn. The tall butler had entered the baron’s service.

The woods were still racing by, the water of the lake had turned iridescent as the slant of the sun’s rays increased, and the dancing glimmers of the line of carriages now stretched over an even greater distance than before. And in the grip of a kind of ecstasy and carried away by it, the young woman was only vaguely aware of the many appetites out that day for a drive in the sun. To these people had gone the spoils. If she felt no indignation toward them on that account, she nevertheless hated them for their happiness, for the triumph that revealed them to her as if powdered by gold dust fallen from on high. They were splendid and radiant. The women displayed themselves, white and plump. The men had the glint in the eye and bemused demeanor of satisfied lovers. And she found nothing in her empty heart but weariness, but aching want. Was she therefore better than the others for having given way under the burden of pleasure? Or was it the others who deserved praise for being made of sterner stuff? She had no idea. She wanted new desires with which to start life over. But just then she turned her head and saw alongside her, on the sidewalk that ran along the edge of the wood, a sight that tore through her with one final blow.

Saccard and Maxime were strolling slowly arm in arm. The father must have called on the son, and together they must have walked down the avenue de l’Impératrice to the lake, chatting as they went.

“You heard me,” Saccard was repeating. “You’re a fool. . . . When a fellow has the kind of money you have, he doesn’t stick it away in the bottom of a drawer. There’s a hundred percent profit to be made in the deal I’ve been telling you about. It’s a sure thing. You know very well I wouldn’t pull a fast one on you.”

But the young man seemed bored by his father’s insistence. He smiled prettily and looked at the carriages.

“See that little woman over there, the woman in violet?” he asked abruptly. “She’s a laundress that ass Mussy has set up.”

They looked at the woman in violet. Then Saccard pulled a cigar out of his pocket and turned to Maxime, who was smoking. “Give me a light.”

They stopped for a moment, face-to-face, and brought their heads together. When the cigar was lit, Saccard took his son’s arm, squeezed it tightly under his own, and continued with what he had been saying: “You know, you’re an imbecile if you don’t listen to me. So, do we have a deal? Will you bring me the 100,000 francs tomorrow?”

“You know I don’t go to your house anymore,” Maxime replied with a pout.

“Bah! Nonsense! It’s time to put an end to all that!”

As they walked on a few more steps in silence, and Renée, feeling faint, buried her head in the coupé’s upholstery so as not to be seen, a growing buzz raced along the line of carriages. On the sidewalks, pedestrians stopped and turned, mouths agape, eyes fixed on something coming toward them. The wheels made a scraping sound as carriages drew aside respectfully, and two outriders appeared, dressed in green and wearing round caps trimmed with golden tassels that formed a dancing curtain around their heads. Leaning slightly forward, they trotted past on big bay horses. Behind them, they left a void, and in that void the Emperor appeared.

He was riding in the back of a landau, alone on the rear seat. Dressed in black, with his frock coat buttoned up to his chin, he wore a very high top hat, slightly tilted to one side and made of shiny silk. Opposite him, on the front seat, dressed with the punctilious elegance that was then in favor at the Tuileries, two gentlemen sat gravely with their hands in their laps—two taciturn wedding guests exposed to a gawking crowd.

Renée found that the Emperor had aged. Under his thick waxed mustache, his jaw hung more listlessly than before. His eyelids drooped to the point where they half covered his lifeless eyes, whose hazel irises now seemed clouded. Only his nose remained unchanged, still looking like a dry fish bone sticking out of a rather nondescript face.

In the meantime, while the ladies in the carriages smiled discreetly, the people on foot pointed out the sovereign to one another. One fat man maintained that the Emperor was the gentleman with his back to the coachman on the left. A few hands were raised in salute. But Saccard, who had doffed his hat even before the outriders had passed, waited until the imperial carriage had reached a point just opposite him before shouting in his gruff Provençal voice, “Vive l’empereur!”

The Emperor, surprised, turned, no doubt recognized his enthusiastic subject, and returned the salute with a smile. Then everything vanished into the sunset, the carriages pulled back into line, and all Renée could see above the manes of the horses and between the backs of the footmen were the green caps of the outriders with their dancing tassels.

She sat a moment with her eyes wide open, full of what she had just seen, which reminded her of another time in her life. To her it seemed that the Emperor, by inserting himself into the line of carriages, had just added the last essential radiance to this triumphal procession and given it meaning. Now it was a glory to behold. All those wheels, all those decorated men, all those women lounging listlessly in their carriages vanished with the flash and rumble of the imperial landau. This sensation became so acute and painful that the young woman felt an imperious need to escape from this triumph, from Saccard’s shout, still ringing in her ears, and from the sight of the father and the son, arms linked, chatting as they ambled along. Looking for a way out, she brought her hands up to her chest, as if seared by a flame within. And it was with a sudden hope of relief, of a salutary cooling of a raging fever, that she leaned forward and told the coachman, “To the Hôtel Béraud.”

The courtyard, as always, had the chill of a cloister. Renée made her way around the arcade, reveling in the drops of moisture that fell on her shoulders. She walked over to the trough, covered with green moss, its edges worn smooth. She examined the half-vanished lion’s head, from whose gaping jaws a stream of water spurted through an iron tube. How many times had she and Christine as little girls taken that head in their arms, leaning forward to reach the stream of water, whose icy pressure they liked to feel against their little hands? Then she climbed the big silent staircase and spotted her father at the far end of the series of vast rooms. He pulled himself up to his full height and slowly moved deeper into the gloom of the old house and of that proud solitude in which he had completely cloistered himself since the death of his sister, while Renée thought of the men in the Bois and of that other elderly man, Baron Gouraud, who had had his carcass set upon pillows and driven around in the sun. She climbed still higher, explored the corridors and the service stairway, and made the trip up to the children’s bedroom. When she reached the very top of the house, she found the key hanging on the usual nail—a big, rusty key encased in a spider’s web. The lock gave a plaintive cry. How sad the children’s room looked! She felt a pang in her heart on finding it so empty, so gray, and so silent. She closed the door of the aviary, which had been left open, thinking that somehow this must be the door through which the joys of her childhood had flown away. In front of the planters, which were still filled with soil hardened and cracked like dried mud, she stopped and snapped the stem of a rhododendron with her fingers. This skeleton of a plant, withered and white with dust, was all that remained of their once-vibrant tubs of greenery. And the matting—the very matting—faded and gnawed by rats, beckoned with the melancholy of a winding sheet that had lain for years awaiting its intended corpse. Over in a corner, in the midst of this scene of silent desperation, this mournful abandonment that made silence itself seem to sob, she found one of her old dolls. All the stuffing had leaked out through a hole, and the porcelain head continued to smile with enameled lips above the wasted body, seemingly exhausted by the doll’s follies.

To Renée the stale air of her childhood was stifling. She opened the window and looked out at the vast landscape. Out there nothing was soiled. She rediscovered the eternal joys, the eternal youth, of open air. Behind her, the sun must have been going down. She saw only the rays of the setting orb as with infinite tenderness they gilded this section of the city that she knew so well. It was like daylight’s swan song, a joyful refrain that slowly laid everything to rest. Tawny flames lit up the floating pier below, while the iron cables of the Pont de Constantine stood out like black lace against the whiteness of the bridge’s pillars. Then, on the right, the shady groves of the Halle aux Vins and the Jardin des Plantes looked like large pools of stagnant green water whose surface almost blended with the hazy sky. On the left, the Quai Henri IV and Quai de la Rapée were lined with the same rows of houses the girls had looked out on twenty years earlier, with the same brown patches where warehouses stood and the same red smokestacks where there were factories. And above the trees the slate roof of the Salpêtrière, turned blue by the sun’s adieu, suddenly looked to her like an old friend. But what calmed her, what cooled her breast, were the long gray banks and above all the Seine, the giant, which she used to watch as it flowed all the way from the horizon straight to where she stood, in those happy days when it frightened her to think that the river might swell and climb all the way up to her window. She remembered the affection she and her sister felt for the river, their love for its colossal flow, for the thrill of roaring water spreading itself out in sheets at their feet, opening out around and behind them in two arms they could no longer see but whose vast and pure caress they felt. They were smart dressers already, and on fair days they used to say that the Seine had put on her beautiful gown of green silk streaked with white. And the currents where the water curled in eddies trimmed that gown with satin ruffles, while in the distance, beyond the belt of bridges, splashes of light greeted the eye like flaps of fabric the color of the sun.

And Renée, lifting up her eyes, stared at the vast expanse of pale blue sky slowly dissolving into the oblivion of dusk. She thought of the complicitous city, of blazing nights on the boulevards, of ardent afternoons in the Bois, of pale harsh days in big new town houses. Then, when she looked down again and gazed once more on the tranquil horizon of her childhood, on this neighborhood of bourgeois and workers in which she had once dreamt of a life of peace, a final bitterness came to her lips. Her hands clasped, she sobbed into the falling night.

The following winter, when Renée died of acute meningitis, it was her father who paid off her debts. The bill from Worms came to 257,000 francs.

NOTES

CHAPTER 1

coupé: a closed carriage seating two passengers, with an outside seat for the driver.

Bois de Boulogne: an English-style park on the western edge of Paris, newly created from a royal military preserve under Napoleon III.

fiacre: a small hackney coach.

the rivière and the aigrette: A rivière is a necklace of diamonds or other precious stones; an aigrette is a spray of gems often worn in the hair.

Second Empire: the era of French history (1852–1870) that began when the Second Republic was replaced by the imperial rule of Napoleon III.

Porte de la Muette: a gate in the west of Paris offering access to the Bois de Boulogne.

Tuileries: royal residence adjacent to the Louvre that was the site of the imperial court in Paris.

Lassouche: J.-P. Lassouche, a popular actor during the Second Empire.

Louvre: The additions to the Louvre museum, completed in 1857, set the style for massive public buildings with high mansard roofs and a profusion of classical detail.

Ile Saint-Louis: a tranquil, respectable neighborhood of Paris, which occupies an island in the Seine.

Légion d’honneur: order of merit conferred as a high honor by the French government and indicated by a red ribbon.

Léoville and Château-Lafitte: celebrated Bordeaux wines.

Conseil d’Etat: the Council of State, which is the highest court in France for state issues and cases concerning public administration.

aiguillettes de canard sauvage: filets of wild duck breast.

Hôtel de Ville to Luxembourg: The Hôtel de Ville was the city hall of Paris, which dated from the Renaissance; the Luxembourg Gardens were once the park of the seventeenth-century Luxembourg Palace.

Alicante and Tokay: sweet after-dinner wines.

tabouret: a circular seat or stool without arms or back.

Messalina: third wife of the Roman emperor Claudius, known for her licentiousness and her instigation of fatal court intrigues.

CHAPTER 2

Second of December: date of the coup d’etat that transformed Louis Napoleon Bonaparte into Emperor Napoleon III in 1851.

voices from Macbeth: in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the three witches who prophesy that Macbeth will be king, thus setting in motion his murderous theft of the throne.

Faubourg Saint-Honoré: a wealthy and aristocratic quarter of Paris.

Corps Législatif: the national legislature of France.

Prince-President: Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, returned from exile in 1848 to garner support for the Bonapartist cause and was elected president of the Second Republic; this event was the prelude to the proclamation of the Second Empire.

guipure and Valenciennes: Guipure is a heavy decorative lace with a large pattern; Valenciennes is a fine lace spun from a bobbin.

Bourse: the French stock exchange.

Crimea: The Crimean War began in 1853, when Turkey declared war on Russia over disputed lands on the Russo-Turkish border; Britain and France were later drawn into the war as allies of Turkey.

tisane: infusion of dried herbs drunk as a beverage or for its medicinal effects.

the Marais: residential area west of the Bastille that was the site of many grand seventeenth-century houses.

Etienne Marcel: As “provost of merchants” in Paris, Etienne Marcel (c. 1315–1358) was one of the leaders of the bourgeoisie in the Estates General of 1355 and 1356.

sca fold: in the Reign of Terror (1793–94), when many were guillotined as enemies of the Revolution.

the Nivernais: region of central France southwest of Burgundy.

the Code: the civil laws known as the Napoleonic Code, which were enacted in 1814 and which governed marriage and property rights.

the Sologne: region of north-central France between the Loire and Cher rivers.

Buttes Montmartre: hill on the northern edge of Paris, known for its cafés and cabarets.

the Madeleine: the Church of St. Madeleine, built in 1806 in the style of a Roman temple.

A Thousand and One Nights: the far-fetched and exotic Arabic tales collected in 1450, also called The Arabian Nights.

Les Halles: the central marketplace of Paris.

Prefect of the Seine: the senior administrator of the département de la Seine, which includes the city of Paris.

Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe: successive kings of France from 1814 to 1848.

place Royale: A monument of early modern urbanism, the place Royale, constructed during the reign of Henri IV, is today the place des Vosges.

Ile de la Cité: island in the Seine linked to the rest of the city by bridges.

Halle aux Vins: the wine market of Paris.

Jardin des Plantes: vast botanical garden in Paris.

La Salpêtrière: a Paris hospital.

CHAPTER 3

Beau Brummel: English dandy (1778–1840) who was a leader of fashion in the early nineteenth century.

tilbury: a light two-wheeled carriage.

Sibyl on her tripod: prophetess of Greek mythology, who made cryptic pronouncements as the voice of an oracle.

Psyche’s dreamy butterfly: In Greek mythology, Psyche (or the Soul), the lover of Cupid, was sometimes represented as a butterfly.

Saint-Ouen: a northern suburb of Paris, bounded on the northwest by the Seine, where a quarry was located.

Chaillot: an area of high ground on the Right Bank of the Seine.

Trocadéro: the neighborhood of the Trocadéro Palace.

Champenois: characteristic of the Champagne region of France.

Mabille: a park in Paris where prostitutes met clients after dark.

Champs-Elysées: a broad avenue in Paris that stretches from the Arc de Triomphe to the place de la Concorde.

Grand Cordon: decoration associated with the Legion of Honor.

CHAPTER 4

black satin domino: Earlier Renée had said she was going to wear a blue domino; a domino is a long hooded cloak, usually worn with a half-mask as a masquerade costume.

Epinal print: illustrated broadsheets printed in Epinal, France, during the nineteenth century; they told religious stories, patriotic histories, and fairy tales using a cartoonlike narrative form.

Piron’s obscene poetry: Alexis Piron (1689–1783) was a French playwright and writer of obscene verse whose “Ode to Priapus” was considered “a masterpiece of licentious verse.”

Sèvres: fine porcelain, often elaborately decorated, made at the royal factory at Sèvres, France.

Chaplin: Charles Chaplin (1825–1891), a fashionable painter of the period.

CHAPTER 5

Vincennes: former royal hunting preserve east of Paris, which was converted into a fortress in 1840.

Musée Campana: museum housing the collection of the marquis de Campana.

Bal de l’Opéra: the opera house ball.

La Belle Hélène: heroine of the 1864 operetta of the same name by French composer Jacques Offenbach (1819–1880), who used the story of Helen of Troy to comment satirically on Parisian society.

Tannhäuser: grand opera by German composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883), written in 1845 and revised in 1860 for performance in Paris, where it was badly received.

Théâtre-Italien: theater in Paris offering Italian-language performances of a range of classic plays.

Ristori: Italian actress Adelaide Ristori (1822–1906) won international renown for her performances in tragic roles.

Phèdre: Tragedy by French dramatist Jean Racine (1639–1699), based on the Greek myth of Phaedra, the wife of Theseus, who conceived an incestuous love for Hippolytus, her stepson. Hippolytus rejected her overtures but was falsely accused of assaulting her; to punish his son, Theseus invoked the aid of the god Neptune, who sent a sea monster to devour Hippolytus. Phaedra then poisoned herself out of remorse.

Bou fes: The Bouffes-Parisiens was a theater for light and comic opera established by Jacques Offenbach in 1855.

Olympus: abode of the gods in Greek mythology.

Chapelle Expiatoire: somber neoclassical church designed by Pierre Fontaine in 1815.

Mid-Lent Thursday: the Thursday before the fourth Sunday in Lent, sometimes celebrated as a holiday in order to encourage the faithful to continue through the penitential season of Lent.

CHAPTER 6

Narcissus: in Greek mythology, a beautiful youth who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool; he was loved by the nymph Echo, but after he failed to return her affection, she retreated to a cave and died of longing, and only her voice was left.

Mohammed’s houris: the beautiful maidens that the prophet Mohammed said would await the devout Muslim in Paradise.

Henry III’s mignons: Henry III, king of France from 1574 until his death in 1589, bestowed many favors on a select group of handsome young men known as his mignons.

Juno: the wife of Jupiter, who punished Echo for her idle chatter by condemning her to do nothing but repeat the words of others.

Pradier: the sculptor James Pradier.

Lesbos: island in the Aegean Sea; as the home of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, it was associated with female homosexuality.

cotillion: an elaborate ballroom dance with frequent changing of couples carried out under the leadership of a single person or couple.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses: poetic work that retells classical myths concerning love and transformation, by the Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C.–A.D. 17).

Charenton: site of the insane asylum where the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), famous for his erotic writings and elaborate sexual perversions, was finally committed.

CHAPTER 7

loves of Louis XV: The favorite mistress of French king Louis XV (1710 –1774) was Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), who wielded great power over the French court; in later years she allowed the king to take other mistresses.

Régence: the period 1715–1723, during which France was ruled by Philippe d’Orléans, while Louis XV was still a minor.

Mont-Valérien: fort built on a hill west of Paris, near the suburb of Suresnes.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

ARTHUR GOLDHAMMER, an affilitate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, has translated some ninety works from French. His translations have earned him numerous awards, including two French-American Foundation Translation Prizes and the Médaille de Vermeil of the Académie Francaise. He is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD

Maya Angelou
A. S. Byatt
Caleb Carr
Christopher Cerf
Ron Chernow
Shelby Foote
Charles Frazier
Vartan Gregorian
Richard Howard
Charles Johnson
Jon Krakauer
Edmund Morris
Azar Nafisi
Joyce Carol Oates
Elaine Pagels
John Richardson
Salman Rushdie
Oliver Sacks
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Carolyn See
William Styron
Gore Vidal

1. The present work is a translation of La Curée, which Zola wrote in 1870–71 and which first appeared serially in the newspaper La Cloche in September 1871. Publication was halted in November when the publisher received a warning from the censor, but the entire text appeared in book form a few months later. A word about the title: la curée refers to the portion of the kill fed to the hounds after a hunt. The English word quarry has this French word as its root and according to the Oxford English Dictionary possesses this archaic meaning: “Certain parts of a deer placed on the hide and given to the hounds as a reward; also, the reward given to a hawk which has killed a bird.” The novel has been translated twice before: once under the title The Rush for the Spoils: A Realistic Novel, with an introduction by George Moore (the translator is not named), in an undated edition published by C. Marpon and E. Flammarion in Paris (and identified in the Widener Library catalog as “the suppressed English edition”); and once under the title The Kill, in a translation done in 1895 by A. Teixeira de Mattos and published by the Lutetian Society in 1895 but reprinted by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1954 with an introduction by Angus Wilson.

2. Henry James, “Letter from Paris: Son Excellence Eugène Rougon, ” in Henry James, Literary Criticism (New York: Library of America, 1984), p. 861.

3. Henry James, “Une Page d’Amour,” ibid.

4. Frederick Brown, Zola: A Life (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 343– 4.

5. Ibid., p. 344.

6. All quotes not otherwise identified are from this translation of The Kill.

7. Zola was already an indefatigable researcher. His description in the novel’s opening scene of the procession of carriages in the Bois de Boulogne was lifted almost verbatim from a newspaper account; only the names were changed. And the contrast between ancient and modern in the realm of architecture was worked up from notes of the author’s explorations around the Parc Monceau and on the Ile Saint-Louis. See Emile Zola, Carnets d’enquêtes: une ethnographie inédite de la France, ed. Henri Mitterand (Paris: Plon, 1986), and D. Baguley et al., La Curée de Zola: ou “La vie à outrance”: actes du colloque du 10 Janvier 1987 (Paris: SEDES, 1987).

8. Here Mallarmé was writing about Une page d’amour, but the comments apply equally well to The Kill. Quoted in Brown, Zola, p. 396.

9. Patrice Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 179.

10. Higonnet, Paris, p. 193.

11. “Sin” here is intended in a nostalgic sense, an “ancient” category with no counterpart in modern life. For Zola, there can be no sin in the modern capital because there is no Judge. It is this absence of judgment that deprives Renée of the singular damnation she expects as a reward for the audacity of her transgression. But no one will condemn her action as she desires: not her upright magistrate father, who in old age is so bewildered by the vertiginous changes in society that he has lost his bearings; not her husband, for whom profit trumps punishment; and not God, who has vacated the heavens above the Bois de Boulogne: “Above the still lake and squat trees and singularly unrelieved vista stretched the hollow of the sky, the infinite emptiness, wider and deeper than what lay below. There was something thrilling, something vaguely sad, about such a huge expanse of sky hanging over such a tiny patch of nature.” These lines were published a decade and a half before Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.

12. See Brown, Zola, p. 40, on Zola’s mother’s efforts to reclaim part of that prize by way of litigation, reminiscent of Mme Sidonie’s litigiousness in The Kill.

13. See Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

14. See Pierre Birnbaum, Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000).

15. Higonnet, Paris, p. 194.

16. Brown, Zola, p. 579: “All my works bear witness against the possibility of my having contributed to a book whose form and philosophy, whose means and end are equally obnoxious to me.”

17. Although the character of Eugène Rougon was widely believed to have been modeled after the imperial politician Eugène Rouher, Zola’s friend Paul Alexis said that it was in fact the character Zola would have been had he chosen to invest his intelligence in politics rather than literature.

18. Higonnet, Paris, p. 289.

19. Henry James, “Emile Zola,” in James, Literary Criticism, p. 894.

20. Ibid., p. 892.

21. Letter to W. D. Howells, quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), p. 300.

22. Letter to T. B. Aldrich, quoted in Edel, Henry James, p. 300.

EMILE ZOLA

Emile Zola was born in Paris in 1840, the son of François Zola, a civil engineer of Italian extraction, and his wife Emilie. In 1843 the family moved to Aix-en-Provence, where Emile lost his father at the age of six. In youth he became friendly with the future painter Paul Cézanne, after whom Zola would model a character in L’Oeuvre, a novel about bohemian Paris that put a severe strain on their friendship.

The widow Zola moved with her son to Paris in 1857 to pursue legal matters stemming from the tangled business affairs her husband had left behind after his death. An indifferent student, Emile twice failed the examination for the baccalauréat and eventually took employment as publicity director for the publisher Hachette. His first book, a collection of stories entitled Les Contes à Ninon, appeared in 1864. A novel, Thérèse Raquin, published in 1867, established his reputation. By 1869 he had conceived the ambitious plan of writing a series of twenty novels that would trace the fortunes of a family, the Rougon-Macquart. With these books Zola intended to give a vivid illustration of contemporary theories about the influence of heredity and milieu on human development while at the same time bestowing dramatic form on the history of the French nation. The Kill (La Curée in French) was the second title to appear in that series, in 1871. His reputation grew with the publication of L’Assommoir in 1877, and the sensation caused by Nana in 1880 made him wealthy as well as notorious and catapulted him to the head of the literary movement known as Naturalism.

By the 1890s he had become France’s most famous writer, extolled by some, reviled by others. At his country seat in Médan he received the nation’s literary elite and with assiduous effort rounded out the Rougon-Macquart saga he had first conceived a quarter of a century earlier. He might have ended his life as an eminent man of letters had it not been for the Dreyfus Affair. It took some time for Zola to be drawn into the movement that had grown up in protest against the conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a captain in the French artillery and a Jew, on charges that he had betrayed France. At last convinced that the evidence against Dreyfus had been fabricated, Zola mustered up the considerable courage needed to brave the howls of anti-Semites and nationalists that greeted the publication of his famous open letter, “J’accuse,” in L’Aurore in 1898. Charged with slander, he fled to England, where he remained until 1899. In 1902 he died of asphyxiation in his Paris apartment.

2005 Modern Library Paperback Edition

Translation and introduction copyright © 2004 by Arthur Goldhammer

Biographical note copyright © 2004 by Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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The map is used by permission of the Map Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Zola, Emile.
 [Curée. English]
The kill / Emile Zola; translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
p. cm.
1. Goldhammer, Arthur. II. Title.
PQ2499.C9E

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