Chapter III (2)

Maxime however was one of Madame Sidonie's boon friends. When only fifteen years old he went on the prowl to his aunt's, smelling the forgotten gloves which he found lying on the furniture. She, who hated clear situations and never owned her little services, ended by lending him the keys of her rooms, on certain days, saying that she would remain in the country until the morrow. Maxime talked about some friends whom he wished to entertain and whom he did not like to take to his father's. It was in the rooms of the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière that he spent several nights with the poor girl whom one was afterwards obliged to send into the country. Madame Sidonie borrowed money from her nephew, and went into ecstacies before him, murmuring in a soft voice that he was "without a hair, as rosy as a Cupid."

Maxime had grown however. He was now a pretty, slightly built young man who had retained the rosy cheeks and blue eyes of childhood. His curly hair completed that girlish appearance, which so delighted the ladies. He resembled poor Angèle with his soft eyes and blonde pallor. But he was not even the equal of that indolent shallow woman. In him the race of the Rougons had a tendency to refinement and became delicate and vicious. The offspring of too young a mother, constituting a strange, jumbled, and so to say unmingled combination of his father's furious appetites and his mother's self-abandonment and weakness, he was a defective offspring in whom the parental failings were completed and aggravated. This family of the Rougons lived too fast; it was dying out already in the person of this frail creature whose sex must have remained in suspense during formation, and who no longer represented a will, eager for gain and enjoyment like Saccard, but a species of cowardice, devouring fortunes already made; a strange hermaphrodite ushered at the right time into a society that was rottening. When Maxime went to the Bois de Boulogne, with his waist tightly compressed like a woman's, lightly dancing in the saddle on which he was swayed by the canter of his horse, he was the god of the age, with his strongly developed hips, his long slender hands, his sickly lascivious air, his correct elegance, and his slang learnt at petty theatres. At twenty years of age he placed himself above all surprises and all disgusts. He had certainly dreamt of the most unusual beastliness. But with him vice was not an abyss, as it is with certain old men, but a natural external bloom. It curled upon his fair hair, smiled upon his lips, and dressed him like his clothes. However his great characteristic was especially his eyes, two clear and smiling blue apertures, true mirrors for a coquette, but behind which one perceived all the emptiness of his brain. Those harlot eyes were never lowered; they courted pleasure, a pleasure without fatigue which one summons and receives.

The everlasting gust of wind which swept into the rooms in the Rue de Rivoli and banged their doors, blew stronger and stronger while Maxime grew up, while Saccard enlarged the sphere of his transactions, and Renée threw more fever into her search for unknown enjoyment. These three beings ended by leading an astonishing life of liberty and folly. It was the ripe and prodigious fruit of a period. The street invaded the flat with its rumble of vehicles, its elbowing of strangers, and its licence of language. The father, the stepmother, the stepson, acted, talked, and set themselves at ease just as if they had each been alone living a bachelor life. Three boon friends, three students sharing the same furnished room, would not have disposed of that room more unceremoniously to install therein their hobbledehoy vices, loves, and noisy pleasures. The Saccards met with hand-shakes, did not seem to suspect the reasons which united them under the same roof, and behaved cavalierly and joyously towards each other, each thus assuming absolute independence. They replaced family ties by a kind of partnership, the profits of which are divided in equal shares; each one drew his share of pleasure to himself, and it was tacitly understood that each should dispose of that share as he thought fit. They went so far as to take their enjoyment in presence of one another, to display it, and describe it without awakening aught but a little envy and curiosity.

Maxime now instructed Renée. When he went to the Bois with her he told her stories about prostitutes which greatly enlivened her. A new woman could not appear near the lake without his setting forth on a campaign to ascertain the name of her protector, the allowance he made her, and the style in which she lived. He was acquainted with these ladies' homes, and with the particulars of their private life; indeed he was a perfect living catalogue in which all the harlots were numbered, with a complete description of each of them. This gazette of scandal was Renée's delight. On race-days at Longchamps, when she passed by in her carriage, she listened eagerly, albeit retaining her haughtiness as a woman of good society, to the story of how Blanche Müller deceived her embassy attaché with a hair-dresser; or how the little baron had found the count in his drawers in the alcove of a skinny, red-haired notoriety who was called the Crawfish. Each day brought its tattle. When the story was rather too stiff Maxime lowered his voice, but he nevertheless went on to the end. Renée opened her eyes wide, like a child to whom a good trick is related, restrained her laughter, and then stifled it in her embroidered handkerchief, which she gently pressed to her lips. Maxime also brought these women's photographs. He had portraits of actresses in all his pockets and even in his cigar case. At times he had a clearing out and placed these women in the album which was always trailing over the furniture in the drawing-room, and which already contained the portraits of Renée's female friends. There was also some men's photographs in it, Messieurs de Rozan, Simpson, De Chibray, and De Mussy, as well as actors, writers, and deputies who had come to swell the collection no one knew how. It was a strangely mixed society, the prototype of the jumble of ideas and personages that crossed Renée's and Maxime's lives. Whenever it rained, or whenever one was bored, this album proved a great subject of conversation. It always ended by falling under one's hand. The young woman opened it with a sigh for the hundredth time perhaps. By-and-by, however, her curiosity was awakened and the young fellow came and leant behind her. Then long discussions began about the Crawfish's hair, Madame de Meinhold's double chin, Madame de Lauwerens's eyes, and Blanche Müller's bosom; about the Marchioness's nose, which was a trifle on one side, and about the mouth of little Sylvia, who was notorious for her thick lips. They compared the women with each other.

"For myself, if I were a man," said Renée, "I should choose Adeline."

"That's because you don't know Sylvia," answered Maxime, "she has such a funny style. For myself, I prefer Sylvia."

The pages were turned over; at times the Duke de Rozan or Mr. Simpson, or the Count de Chibray appeared, and Maxime added, sneering:

"Besides, your taste is perverted, everyone knows it. Can you see anything more stupid than these gentlemen's faces? Rozan and Chibray look like Gustave, my barber."

Renée shrugged her shoulders as if to say that this irony did not affect her. She still forgot herself in contemplating the wan, smiling, or stern faces which the album contained; she tarried longer over the portraits of the fast women, and inquisitively studied the exact microscopical details of the photographs, the little wrinkles and the little hairs. One day she even procured a strong magnifying glass, fancying she had perceived a hair on the Crawfish's nose. And, indeed, the glass revealed a slight golden thread which had strayed from the eyebrows down to the middle of the nose. This hair amused them for a long time. For a whole week the ladies who called had to assure themselves in person of the presence of this hair. Thenceforth the magnifying glass served to scrutinize the women's faces. Renée made some astonishing discoveries; she found some unknown wrinkles, rough skins, cavities imperfectly filled up with rice powder. And Maxime ended by hiding the magnifying glass, declaring that one ought not to disgust oneself with the human face like that. The truth was that she scrutinized too closely the thick lips of Sylvia, for whom he had a particular affection. They then invented a new game. They asked this question: "With whom would I willingly spend a night?" and they opened the album, which was entrusted with the duty of replying. This gave rise to some strange couplings. Renée's female friends played at the game during several evenings, and Renée herself was successively married to the Archbishop of Paris, to Baron Gouraud, to M. de Chibray, at which she greatly laughed, and to her husband in person, at which she was greatly distressed. As for Maxime, either by chance, or by the maliciousness of Renée, who opened the album, he always fell upon the Marchioness. But there was never so much laughter as when luck coupled two men or two women together.

The familiarity of Renée and Maxime went so far that she told him her private sorrows. He consoled her and gave her advice. It seemed as if his father did not exist. Then later on they began to tell each other about their childhood. It was especially during their drives in the Bois de Boulogne that they felt a vague languor, a longing to relate things which are difficult to tell and are not told. The delight that children take in whispering about forbidden things, the attraction that exists for a young man and young woman to lower themselves to sin, be it only in words, unceasingly brought them back to suggestive subjects. They partook deeply of voluptuousness, for which they did not reproach one another, but which they tasted together, lazily reclining in the two corners of their carriage, like two comrades who recall their past freaks. They ended by becoming perfect braggarts of immorality. Renée owned that the little girls at her school were very immodest. Maxime improved upon that and made so bold as to relate some of the shameful doings of the college of Plassans.

"Ah! I can't tell--" murmured Renée.

Then she leant forward close to his ear, as if the sound of her voice alone would have made her blush, and confided to him one of those convent stories which appear in disgusting songs. He, on his side, had too rich a collection of anecdotes of this kind to remain behindhand. He hummed in her ear some very indecent verses. And by degrees they found themselves in an especial state of beatitude, rocked by all the carnal fancies that they stirred, titillated by little desires which were not expressed. The carriage rolled gently on, and they returned home deliciously fatigued, more tired indeed than after a night of love. They had sinned, like two young fellows who, wandering along the country lanes without any mistresses, might content themselves with their mutual recollections.

Even greater familiarity and licence existed between the father and the son. Saccard had realised that a great financier ought to love women and do some foolish things for them. He was a rough lover and preferred money; but it formed part of his programme to hang about alcoves, scatter bank-notes on certain mantelshelves, and from time to time use some notorious wench as a gilded signboard for his speculations. When Maxime had left college he and his father met in the same women's rooms and laughed over it. They were even rivals in a degree. At times when the young fellow dined at the Maison-d'Or with some noisy party, he would overhear Saccard's voice in a neighbouring private room.

"Hallo, papa's next door," he would exclaim with a grimace which he borrowed from the actors then in favour.

And he would go and knock at the door of the private room, anxious to see his father's conquest.

"Ah! it's you?" Saccard would say in a gay tone, "come in. You make enough noise to prevent one from hearing oneself eat. Who are you with then?"

"Why, there's Laure d'Aurigny, Sylvia, the Crawfish, and two others, I fancy. They are awfully funny. They poke their fingers in the dishes and chuck handfuls of salad at our heads. My coat is all greasy with oil."

The father would laugh, thinking this very funny.

"Ah! young folks, young folks," he would mutter. "That isn't like us, is it, my little kitten? We have dined very quietly and now we are going to by-by."

And he would chuck the chin of the woman whom he had beside him, and coo with his Provençal snuffle, which produced strange music for a lover.

"Oh! the old noodle!" the woman would cry. "Good-day, Maxime. Mustn't I love you, eh! to consent to dine with your scamp of a father--One never sees you now. Come early on the day after to-morrow morning. No, really, I've something to tell you."

Saccard would finish eating an ice or some fruit, beatifically, taking small mouthfuls. Then he would kiss the woman's shoulder, saying humorously:

"You know, my ducks, if I'm in the way, I'll leave the room. You can ring the bell when you are ready for me to come in again."

Then he would take the woman off, or, at times, go with her to join in the racket in the neighbouring room. Maxime and he shared the same shoulders; their hands met round the same waists. They called to one another on the divans, and repeated to each other, aloud, the confidential statements which the women had whispered in their ears. And they carried their good fellowship so far as to conspire together to carry off from the gathering the blonde or brunette which one or the other of them had chosen.

They were well known at Mabille. They went there arm in arm, after some dainty dinner, strolled round the garden, nodding to the women, and tossing them a remark as they passed by. They laughed aloud, without unlocking their arms, and came to each other's assistance whenever business was discussed. The father, who was very expert on this point, negotiated his son's love affairs advantageously. At times they sat down and drank with a party of girls. Then they changed their table or resumed their stroll. And they were seen till midnight with their arms always linked like a couple of chums, following the skirts along the yellow pathways under the glaring flame of the gas jets.

When they returned home they brought with them, from out-of-doors, in their coats, a dash of the women they had just left. Their loose attitudes, and the after-part of certain suggestive remarks and low gestures, made the flat in the Rue de Rivoli seem like a fast woman's lodging. The gentle wanton way in which the father gave his hand to his son, of itself proclaimed whence they came. It was in this atmosphere that Renée inhaled her sensual caprices and longings. She chaffed them nervously:

"Where can you have come from?" she would say to them. "You smell of tobacco and musk. It's certain that I shall have a headache."

And indeed, the strange smell profoundly disturbed her. It was the regular perfume of this singular domestic hearth.

However, Maxime was smitten with a fine passion for little Sylvia. He bored his stepmother with this girl during several months. Renée soon knew her from one end to the other, from the soles of her feet to the tip of her hair. She had a bluish mark on the hip; nothing could be more adorable than her knees; and there was this peculiarity about her shoulders, that only the left one was dimpled. Maxime evinced some maliciousness in devoting his drives with Renée to the description of his mistress's perfections. One evening, on returning from the Bois, Renée's carriage and Sylvia's were caught in a block, and had to draw up, side by side, in the Champs-Elysées. The two women eyed each other with acute curiosity, while Maxime, whom this critical situation delighted, tittered on the quiet. As his stepmother preserved gloomy silence when the carriage began to roll on again he thought she was in the sulks, and expected one of those maternal scenes, one of those strange scoldings with which she still, at times, occupied her moments of lassitude.

"Do you know that person's jeweller?" she abruptly asked him, at the moment when they reached the Place de la Concorde.

"Alas, yes!" he answered with a smile; "I owe him ten thousand francs--Why do you ask me that?"

"For nothing."

Then after a fresh silence:

"She had a very pretty bracelet, the one on the left wrist. I should have liked to see it close to."

They reached home. She said no more on the matter then. Only on the following day, just as Maxime and his father were going out together, she took the young fellow aside, and spoke to him in an undertone, with an embarrassed air, and a pretty smile which courted indulgence. He seemed surprised and went off, laughing in his wicked way. In the evening he brought Sylvia's bracelet which his stepmother had begged him to show her.

"There's what you wanted," said he. "One would thieve for your sake, pretty mamma."

"She didn't see you take it?" asked Renée who was eagerly examining the bracelet.

"I don't think so--She wore it yesterday, so she certainly wouldn't put it on to-day."

Meantime the young woman approached the window. She had put the bracelet on and she held her wrist somewhat raised slowly turning it round, delighted and repeating:

"Oh! very pretty, very pretty. There are only the emeralds that don't quite please me."

At this moment Saccard came in, and as she still held her wrist up in the white light from the window:

"Hallo!" he cried in astonishment, "Sylvia's bracelet!"

"You know this jewel?" said she, more embarrassed than he was and not knowing what to do with her arm.

He had recovered himself, and he threatened his son with his finger, muttering:

"That scamp always has some forbidden fruit in his pockets! One of these days he will bring us the lady's arm as well as her bracelet."

"Why! it isn't my doing," replied Maxime with cunning cowardice. "It's Renée who wanted to see it."

The husband contented himself with saying, "Ah!" And he looked at the bracelet in his turn, repeating like his wife, "It is very pretty, very pretty."

Then he quietly went off and Renée scolded Maxime for having betrayed her like that. But he declared that his father did not care a fig about the matter! Whereupon she returned him the bracelet, adding:

"You must call on the jeweller, and order one exactly like it for me; only, you must have the emeralds replaced by sapphires."

Saccard could not keep any living or inanimate object near him for any length of time without trying to sell it, or derive some profit by it. His son was not twenty when he already thought of utilising him. A handsome fellow, the nephew of a minister and the son of a great financier, ought to be invested well. He was certainly rather young, still one could always seek a wife and a dowry for him, and, afterwards, one could have the wedding deferred or hastened according to the financial position of the establishment. Saccard proved lucky. On a board of directors, to which he belonged, he found a tall handsome man, M. de Mareuil, who in a couple of days belonged to him. M. de Mareuil, rightly named Bonnet, was an ex-sugar refiner of Le Havre. After amassing a large fortune he had married a young girl of noble birth and also very rich, who was looking out for a fool of stylish appearance. Bonnet obtained permission to assume his wife's name, which was a first satisfaction for his pride; but his marriage had made him madly ambitious, and he dreamt of remunerating Hélène for this noble name by acquiring a high political position. From that time forward he invested money in new newspapers, bought a large estate in the depths of the Nièvre, and by all known means prepared for himself a candidature to the Corps Législatif. So far he had failed but without losing aught of his solemnity. His was the most incredibly empty brain that could be met with. He was of superb stature, with the white pensive face of a great statesman; and as he listened marvellously well, with a deep look, and majestic calmness of face, people could readily imagine that a prodigious work of comprehension and deduction was going on in his mind. In reality he was thinking about nothing. But he succeeded in disturbing people, who no longer knew whether they had to deal with a man of superior attainments or a fool. M. de Mareuil attached himself to Saccard as to a raft that might save him. He was aware that an official candidature would be vacant in the Nièvre, and he ardently hoped that the minister would select him; it was his last card. So he handed himself up, bound hand and foot, to the minister's brother. Saccard, who scented a remunerative transaction, gradually set him thinking of a marriage between his daughter Louise and Maxime. De Mareuil then became most effusive, thought that he himself had initiated this idea of a marriage, and considered himself very fortunate to enter a minister's family and give Louise to a young man who seemed to have such fine prospects.

Louise, said her father, would have a dowry of a million francs. Deformed, ugly, and yet adorable, she was condemned to die young; a chest complaint was stealthily undermining her, lending her nervous gaiety and caressing grace. Young girls who are ailing quickly grow old, and become women before their time. She was sensually ingenuous, she seemed to have been born at fifteen years of age in full puberty. When her father, a healthy brutified colossus, looked at her he could not believe that she was his daughter. Her mother, during her lifetime, had also been a strong well-built woman; but stories were told about her which explained this child's stuntedness, her manners of a millionaire Bohemian, and her vicious and charming ugliness. People said that Hélène de Mareuil had died from the most shameful profligacy. Pleasure had eaten into her like an ulcer, without her husband realising her lucid madness, though he ought to have had her shut up in a private asylum. Developed in this diseased form, Louise had left it with impoverished blood and crooked limbs, with her brain attacked and her memory already full of a dirty life. She thought at times that she could confusedly remember another existence, she saw strange scenes unfolded before her in a vague dimness, men and women kissing one another, quite a carnal drama with which her childish curiosity was amused. It was her mother that spoke within her. This vice remained in her throughout her childhood. As she gradually grew up, nothing astonished her, she recollected everything, or rather she knew everything, and she went to forbidden things, with a sureness of hand that made her, in life, seem like a person returning home after a long absence, and only having to stretch out his hand to set himself at ease and partake of the comforts of his abode. This singular girl, whose evil instincts flattered Maxime, and who, moreover--in this second life which she lived as a virgin with all the science and shame of a grown woman--possessed an ingenuous effrontery, a spicy mixture of childishness and boldness, was bound in the result to please the young fellow, and seem to him very much funnier even than Sylvia, who, the daughter of a worthy stationer, possessed a usurer's heart and was horribly middle-class at bottom.

The marriage was arranged with a laugh, and it was decided that "the youngsters" should be allowed to grow up. The two families lived on a footing of close friendship. M. de Mareuil promoted his candidature. Saccard watched his prey. It was understood that Maxime should place his nomination as an auditor of the Council of State among the marriage presents.

Meanwhile the Saccards' fortune seemed to have reached its culminating point. It blazed in the midst of Paris like a colossal bonfire. It was the moment when the ardent sharing of the hounds' fees fills a corner of the forest with the barking of dogs, the clacking of whips and the blazing of torches. The appetites let loose were at last satisfied in the impudence of triumph, amid the racket of falling houses and of fortunes built up in six months. The city was now but a great saturnalia of millions and women. Vice, coming from above, flowed along the gutters, spread itself out in the sheets of ornamental water, reascended in the fountains of the public gardens to fall again on to the roofs in a fine penetrating rain. And at night time, when one passed over the bridges, it seemed as if the Seine drew along with it, amid the sleeping metropolis, all the refuse of the city--crumbs fallen from tables, bows of lace left on divans, false hair forgotten in cabs, bank notes that had slipped out of bodices, everything that the brutality of desire, and the immediate satisfaction of instinct fling into the street broken and soiled. Then amid the feverish sleep of Paris, and better still amid its breathless hankering in the broad daylight, one realised the unsettling of the brain, the golden and voluptuous nightmare of a city, madly enamoured of its gold and its flesh. The violins sounded till midnight: then the windows became dark and shadows descended over the city. It was like a colossal alcove in which the last candle had been blown out, the last virtue extinguished. In the depths of the shade there was nothing left save a great rattle of furious, wearied love; while the Tuileries, on the river bank, stretched their arms out into the night as if for a huge embrace.

Saccard had just had his mansion of the Parc Monceaux built on some ground stolen from the city. He had reserved for himself on the first floor, a superb private room, all violet ebony and gold, with lofty glass doors to the book-cases, which were full of business papers but where not a book was to be seen; the safe, embedded in the wall, had the depths of an iron alcove large enough to accommodate the amours of a milliard. It was here that his fortune bloomed, impudently displayed itself. Everything seemed to succeed with him. When he left the Rue de Rivoli, increasing his household, doubling his expenditure, he talked to his friends about some considerable winnings. According to his account his partnership with Mignon and Charrier brought him enormous profits; his speculations on house property were more remunerative still; and as for the Crédit Viticole, it was an inexhaustible milch cow. He had a way of enumerating his riches that bewildered his listeners and prevented them from clearly seeing the truth. His Provençal snuffling increased, and, with his curt phrases and nervous gestures, he let off fireworks, in which millions rose like rockets, and which finished by dazzling even the most incredulous. The reputation which he had acquired as a lucky gamester was mainly due to this turbulent pantomimic action. To tell the truth, no one knew him to be possessed of a clear solid capital. His different partners, who perforce were acquainted with his situation as regarded themselves, explained his colossal fortune by believing him to be invariably fortunate in other speculations, those which they were not acquainted with. He spent a deal of money: the effluence of his cash-box continued, without the sources of this golden river having so far been discovered. It was pure madness, a frenzy for scattering money, handfuls of louis flung out of window, the safe emptied every evening to its last copper, but filling itself again during the night, no one knew how, and never supplying such large sums as when Saccard pretended he had lost the keys.

Renée's dowry was shaken, carried off and drowned in this fortune which clamoured and overflowed like a winter-torrent. The young wife, who had been distrustful in earlier days and desirous of managing her fortune herself, soon grew tired of business matters; besides, she felt herself poor beside her husband, and crushed by her debts, she was obliged to have recourse to him, to borrow money from him, and place herself at his discretion. At each fresh bill, which he paid with the smile of a man who is indulgent towards human weakness, she surrendered herself a little more, confided State bonds to him, and authorized him to sell this or that. When they went to live in the mansion in the Parc Monceaux she already found herself almost completely stripped. He had taken the place of the State and served her the interest of the hundred thousand francs coming from the Rue de la Pépinière; on the other hand, he had induced her to sell the estate in La Sologne to place the proceeds in a great affair, a superb investment, he said. She therefore had nothing left her excepting the property at Charonne, which she obstinately refused to part with so as not to sadden that excellent Aunt Élisabeth. And, in this respect again, he was preparing a stroke of genius with the assistance of his former accomplice Larsonneau. She certainly remained under obligations to him; if he had taken her fortune, he paid her the income it would have furnished, five or six times over. The interest on the hundred thousand francs, with the revenue of the Sologne money, scarcely amounted to nine or ten thousand francs, just enough to pay for her linen and boots. He gave her or paid away for her fifteen and twenty times that paltry sum. He would have worked for a week to rob her of a hundred francs, but he kept her in regal style. And thus like everybody she held her husband's monumental safe in respect without trying to penetrate the nihility of the river of gold which passed under her eyes and into which she threw herself every morning.

At the Parc Monceaux there was a mad crisis, a flashing triumph. The Saccards doubled the number of their carriages and horses; they had an army of servants, whom they dressed in a dark-blue livery with putty-coloured breeches, and waistcoats striped black and yellow--somewhat quiet colours that the financier had selected so as to seem altogether serious-minded, which was one of the dreams he had most caressed. They displayed their luxury on the house top, and drew back the curtains when they gave grand dinners. The breeze of contemporary life, which had banged the doors of the first floor in the Rue de Rivoli, became in the mansion a perfect whirlwind that threatened to carry off the very partitions. In the midst of these princely rooms, along the gilded balustrades, over the fine woollen carpets, in this fairy palace of the parvenu, there trailed the smell of Mabille; the fashionable quadrilles were danced there with all their wriggling jactitance, the whole period passed with its mad stupid laugh, its eternal hunger and its eternal thirst. It was the suspicious abode of fashionable pleasure, the pleasure which widens the windows so that passers-by may see what is transpiring in the alcoves. The husband and the wife lived there, freely, under the eyes of their servants. They had divided the house between them, and they camped in it, scarcely looking as though they were at home, but rather as if tossed, at the end of a tumultuous bewildering journey, into some regal hotel, where they had merely taken the time to open their trunks, so as to hasten the more speedily to the delights of a fresh city. They lodged there by the night, only remaining at home on the days when grand dinners were given, ever carried away by a ceaseless peregrination through Paris, but returning at times for an hour, as one returns into a room at an inn between two excursions. Renée felt herself become more anxious, more nervous there; her silken skirts glided with snake-like hisses over the thick carpets, past the satin of the couches; she was irritated by the stupid gilding which surrounded her, by the high empty ceilings where after fête nights there only lingered the laughter of young fools and the remarks of old scoundrels; and to fill this luxury, to abide amidst this effulgence, she longed for a supreme amusement which her curiosity vainly sought for in all the corners of the mansion, in the little sun-tinted drawing-room, in the conservatory full of luxuriant vegetation. As for Saccard he began to realise his dream; he received great financiers, Monsieur Toutin-Laroche and Monsieur de Lauwerens; and great politicians also, Baron Gouraud and Deputy Haffner; his brother the minister had even condescended to come two or three times to consolidate his position by his presence. And yet like his wife he experienced nervous anxiety, a disquietude which lent a strange sound of broken window panes to his laughter. He became so ungovernable, so scared, that his acquaintances remarked, "That devil of a Saccard! he makes too much money, it will end by driving him mad!" In 1860 he had been decorated with the Legion of Honour, after rendering a mysterious service to the prefect, by lending his name to a lady for the sale of some land.

It was about the time when they went to live near the Parc Monceaux that an apparition crossed Renée's life, leaving her an ineffaceable impression. The minister had so far resisted the supplications of his sister-in-law, who was dying with a longing to be invited to the court balls. However, he gave way at last, believing that his brother's position was definitely established on a sound basis. For a month Renée did not sleep for thinking of it. But the great evening arrived at last, and she sat trembling all over, in the carriage which was taking her to the Tuileries.

She wore a costume of prodigious grace and originality, a real gem which she had lighted upon during a night of sleeplessness, and which three of Worms's workpeople had come to her house to make up under her eyes. It was a simple dress of white gauze, trimmed however with a multitude of little scalloped flounces edged with bands of black velvet. The black velvet tunic was cut square, very low to show her bosom, framed with some narrow lace, barely a finger broad. There was not a flower, not a bit of ribbon; but round her wrists, some bracelets without the least chasing, and on her head a narrow diadem of gold, a plain circlet which seemed to be an aureola.

When she reached the reception rooms, and her husband had left her for Baron Gouraud, she experienced a momentary embarrassment. But the mirrors, in which she saw herself look adorable, soon reassured her, and she was accustoming herself to the warm atmosphere, to the murmur of voices, to the crush of dress coats and white shoulders, when the Emperor appeared. He slowly crossed the room on the arm of a short, fat general, who puffed as if he were troubled with a bad digestion. The bare shoulders ranged themselves in two lines, whilst the dress coats, with a discreet air, instinctively drew back a step. Renée found herself pushed to the end of the line of shoulders near the second door, the one that the Emperor was approaching with a faltering, unsteady step. She thus saw him come towards her from one door to the other.

He wore a dress coat, with the red ribbon of the Grand Cordon. Renée, again seized with emotion, retained but imperfect vision, and to her this bleeding stain seemed to cast splashes over the whole of the sovereign's breast. As a rule, she thought him little, with swaying loins, and legs too short for the trunk of his body; but now she was delighted, and, as she saw him, he looked handsome, despite his pale face and the heavy leaden lids which fell over his lifeless eyes. Under his moustaches, his lips were languidly parted, and his nose alone remained bony amid the whole of his puffy face.

With a worn-out air, and vaguely smiling, the Emperor and the old general continued to advance with short steps, seemingly sustaining each other. They looked at the ladies bending forward, and their glances, cast to the right and to the left, glided into the bodices. The general leant on one side, said a word to his master, and pressed his arm in the manner of a gay companion. And the Emperor, supine and nebulous, duller even than usual, still approached with his lagging step.

They were in the middle of the room, when Renée felt their glances fall upon her. The general gazed at her with a look of surprise, while the Emperor, half raising his eyelids, let a sensual gleam shoot from his grey, hesitating, bleared eyes. Renée, losing countenance, lowered her head, bowed, and saw nothing more but the pattern of the carpet. Still, she watched their shadows, and she understood that they were pausing for a few seconds before her. And she fancied that she heard the Emperor, that licentious dreamer, murmur, as he gazed at her, immersed in her muslin skirt striped with velvet:

"Look there, general, a flower to be culled, a mysterious pink, variegated white and black."

And the general answered in a more brutal voice:

"That pink would look awfully well in our button-holes, sire."

Renée raised her head. The apparition had disappeared, the crowd was thronging round about the doorway. After that evening she often returned to the Tuileries, she even had the honour of being complimented by his majesty aloud, and of becoming a little bit his friend; but she always remembered the sovereign's slow, heavy walk along the centre of the reception-room between the two rows of shoulders; and whenever she experienced any new joy amid her husband's growing prosperity, she again saw the Emperor overtopping the bowing bosoms, coming towards her, and comparing her to a pink which the general advised him to place in his button-hole. For her this was the high note of her life.