Complete Works of Emile Zola (229 page)

She wore a costume of prodigious grace and originality, a real gem, which she had hit upon one sleepless night, and which three of Worms’s workmen had come to her house to carry out under her eyes. It was a simple dress of white gauze, but trimmed with a multitude of little flounces, scalloped out and edged with black velvet. The black velvet tunic was cut out square, very low over her bosom, which was framed with narrow lace, barely a finger deep. Not a flower, not a bit of ribbon; at her wrists, bracelets without any chasing, and on her head a narrow diadem of gold, a plain circlet which clothed her as with a halo.

When she had reached the reception-rooms, and her husband had left her for the Baron Gouraud, she experienced a momentary embarrassment. But the mirrors, in which she saw that she was adorable, quickly reassured her, and she was accustoming herself to the hot air and the murmur of voices, to the crowd 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 though he suffered from a troublesome digestion. The shoulders drew up in two lines, while the dress-coats fell back a step with instinctive discretion. Renée found herself pushed to the end of the line of shoulders, near the second door, the one which the Emperor was approaching with a painful and faltering step. She thus saw him come towards her, from one door to the other.

He was in plain dress, with the red riband of the Grand Cordon. Renée, again seized with emotion, saw badly, and to her this bleeding stain seemed to splash the whole of the sovereign’s breast. She considered him little, with legs too short, and swaying loins; but now she was charmed, and he looked handsome to her, with his wan face and the heavy, leaden lids that fell over his lifeless eyes. Under his moustache his mouth feebly opened, and his nose alone stood out cartilaginous amid the puffiness of his face.

Worn out, vaguely smiling, the Emperor and the old general kept advancing with short steps, apparently supporting one another. They looked at the bowing ladies, and their glances, cast to right and left, glided into the bodices. The general leant on one side, spoke a word to his master, and pressed his arm with the air of a jolly companion. And the Emperor, nerveless and nebulous, duller even than usual, came nearer and nearer with his dragging step.

They were in the middle of the room when Renée felt their glances fixed upon her. The general examined her with a look of surprise, while the Emperor, half-raising his eyelids, had a red light in the gray hesitation of his bleared eyes. Renée, losing countenance, lowered her head, bowed, saw nothing more save the pattern of the carpet. But she followed their shadows, and understood that they were pausing for a few seconds before her. And she thought she heard the Emperor, that ambiguous dreamer, murmur as he gazed at her, immersed in her muslin skirt striped with velvet:

“Look, general, there’s a flower worth picking, a mystic carnation, variegated white and black.”

And the general replied, in a more brutal voice: “Sire, that carnation would look devilish well in our buttonholes.”

Renée raised her head. The vision had disappeared, the crowd was thronging round the doorway. After that evening, she frequently returned to the Tuileries: she even had the honour of being complimented aloud by His Majesty, and of becoming a little his friend; but she always remembered the sovereign’s slow heavy walk across the 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 over-topping the bowing bosoms, coming towards her, comparing her to a carnation which the old general advised him to put in his buttonhole. To her this was the shrill note of her life.

CHAPTER IV

The distinct and exquisite longing that had risen to Renée’s heart, amid the perturbing perfumes of the conservatory, while Maxime and Louise sat laughing on a sofa in the little buttercup drawing-room, seemed to vanish like a nightmare that leaves behind it nothing but a vague shudder. All through the night, Renée had the bitter taste of the tanghin-plant on her lips; it seemed to her, when she felt the burning of the malignant leaf, as if a mouth of flame were pressing itself to hers, breathing into her a devouring love. Then this mouth escaped her, and her dream was drowned in the vast waves of shadow that rolled over her.

In the morning she slept a little. When she awoke, she fancied herself ill. She had the curtains drawn, spoke to her doctor of sickness and headache, and for two days positively refused to go out. And as she pretended that she was being besieged, she forbade her door. Maxime came and knocked at it in vain. He did not sleep in the house, preferring to be free to do as he pleased in his rooms; and in fact he led the most nomadic life in the world, living in his father’s new houses, selecting the floor that pleased him, moving every month, often from caprice, sometimes to make room for serious tenants. He dried the walls in the company of some mistress. Accustomed to his stepmother’s caprices, he feigned great sympathy, and went upstairs to enquire after her with a distressed look, four times a day, solely to tease her. On the third day he found her in the little drawing-room, pink and smiling, looking calm and reposed.

“Well! have you had a good time with Céleste?” he asked, alluding to her long tête-à-tête with her maid.

“Yes,” she replied, “she is a priceless girl. Her hands are always cold; she used to lay them on my forehead and soothe my poor head a little.”

“But that girl’s a nostrum!” cried Maxime. “If ever I have the misfortune to fall in love, you’ll lend her to me, won’t you? to lay her two hands on my heart.”

They jested, they went for their usual drive in the Bois. A fortnight passed. Renée had thrown herself more madly into her life of visits and balls; her head seemed to have turned once more, she complained no longer of lassitude and disgust. One might only have suspected that she had committed some secret fault which she kept to herself, but which she betrayed by a more strongly marked contempt for herself and by a more reckless depravity in her fashionable caprices. One night she confessed to Maxime that she was dying to go to a ball which Blanche Muller, a popular actress, was giving to the princesses of the foot-lights and the queens of the fast world. This avowal surprised and embarrassed even Maxime, who, after all, had no great scruples. He tried to catechize his step-mother: really, that was no place for her; besides, she would see nothing very amusing there; and then, if she were recognized, what a scandal there would be. To all these good arguments she answered with clasped hands, smiling and entreating:

“Come, my little Maxime, be nice, I want to go…. I’ll put on a very dark domino, and we’ll only just walk through the rooms.”

Maxime always ended by giving way, and would have taken his step-mother to every brothel in Paris for the asking. When he consented to escort her to Blanche Muller’s ball, she clapped her hands like a child that is given an unexpected holiday.

“Ah! you’re a dear,” she said. “It’s to-morrow, is it not? Come and fetch me very early. I want to see the women arrive. You must tell me their names, and we’ll have great fun.”

She reflected, and then added:

“No, don’t come here. Wait for me in a cab on the Boulevard Malesherbes. I shall go out through the garden.”

This mysteriousness was an added spice to her escapade, a simple refinement of pleasure, for she might have gone out at midnight by the front-door without her husband’s so much as putting his head out of window.

The next day, after telling Céleste to sit up for her, she crossed the dark shadows of the Parc Monceau with exquisite timorous shivers. Saccard had taken advantage of his good understanding with the Hotel de Ville to have a key given him of a little gate in the gardens, and Renée had asked for one for herself as well. She almost lost her way, and only found the cab thanks to the two yellow eyes of the lamps. At this period the Boulevard Malesherbes, barely finished, was still perfectly lonely at night-time. Renée glided into the vehicle in great emotion, her heart beating rapturously, as though she were going to an assignation. Maxime smoked philosophically, half asleep in a corner of the cab. He wanted to throw away his cigar, but she prevented him, and in trying to hold back his arm in the darkness she put her hand full in his face, which amused them both greatly.

“I tell you I like the smell of tobacco,” she cried. “Go on smoking…. Besides, we are having a debauch to-night…. I’m a man, see?”

The boulevard was not yet lighted up. While the cab drove down to the Madeleine it was so dark inside that they could not see one another. Now and again, when the young man lifted his cigar to his lips, a red spot pierced the thick darkness. This red spot interested Renée. Maxime, who was half-covered by the folds of the black satin domino that filled the inside of the cab, continued smoking in silence, with an expression of weariness. The truth was that his stepmother’s caprice had prevented him from following a party of women who had made up their minds to begin and end Blanche Muller’s ball at the Café Anglais. He was in a huff, and she felt conscious of his sulkiness in the darkness.

“Are you ill?” she asked.

“No, I’m cold,” he replied.

“Dear me! I’m burning. I think it’s stifling in here…. Take the end of my skirts over your knees.”

“Oh! your skirts,” he muttered, ill-humouredly. “I’m up to my eyes in your skirts.”

But this remark made him laugh himself, and little by little he grew livelier. She told him how frightened she had felt in the Parc Monceau. After that she confessed to him another of her longings: she should like one night to go for a row on the little lake of the gardens in the skiff that she could see from her windows, moored at the edge of a pathway. He thought she was growing sentimental. The cab rolled on, the darkness remained impenetrable, they leant towards one another so as to hear one another amid the noise of the wheels, touching each other when they moved their hands, and at times, when they approached too closely, inhaling one another’s warm breath. And at regular intervals, Maxime’s cigar glowed afresh, throwing a red blur in the darkness, and casting a pale pink flash over Renée’s face. She was adorable, seen by this fleeting light; so much so that the young man was struck by it.

“Oh oh!” he said. “We seem to be very pretty this evening, stepmamma…. Let’s have a look.”

He brought his cigar nearer, and drew a few rapid puffs. Renée in her corner was lit up with a warm, palpitating light. She had slightly raised her hood. Her bare head, covered with a mass of little curls, adorned with a simple blue ribbon, looked like a real boy’s head over the great black satin blouse which came up to her neck. She thought it very amusing to be thus examined and admired by the light of a cigar. She threw herself back tittering, while he added with an air of comical gravity:

“The deuce! I shall have to look after you, if I am to bring you back safe and sound to my father.”

Meantime the cab turned round the Madeleine and joined the current of the boulevards. Here it became filled with a leaping light, with the reflections from the shops with their flaring windows. Blanche Muller lived close by in one of the new houses that have been built on the raised ground of the Rue Basse-du-Rempart. There were but few carriages as yet at the door. It was only ten o’clock. Maxime wanted to drive down the boulevards and wait an hour; but Renée, whose curiosity was becoming keener, told him decidedly that she would go up all alone if he did not accompany her. He followed her, and was glad to find more people upstairs than he expected. Renée had put on her mask. Leaning on Maxime’s arm, and whispering to him peremptory commands which he submissively obeyed, she ferreted about in all the rooms, lifted the corners of the door-hangings, examined the furniture, and would have gone so far as to search the drawers had she not feared being seen.

The apartment, though richly decorated, had Bohemian corners that at once suggested the chorus-girl. It was here especially that Renée’s pink nostrils quivered, and that she constrained her companion to walk slowly, so as to lose no particle of things or of their smell. She lingered particularly in a dressing-room left wide open by Blanche Muller, who, when she received her friends, gave up everything to them, even to her alcove, where the bed was pushed aside to make room for the card-tables. But the dressing-room did not please her: it seemed to her common, and even a little dirty, with its carpet covered with little round burns from cigarette-ends, and its blue silk hangings stained with pomade and splashed with soap-suds. Then, when she had fully inspected the rooms, and fixed the smallest details of the place in her memory, so as to describe them later to her friends, she passed on to the guests. The men she knew; for the most part they were the same financiers, the same politicians, the same young men-about-town who came to her Thursdays. She fancied herself in her own drawing-room at times, when she came face to face with a group of smiling dress-coats, who, the previous evening, had worn the same smile in her house when talking to the Marquise d’Espanet or the fair-haired Mme. Haffner. Nor was the illusion completely dispelled when she looked at the women. Laure d’Aurigny was in yellow like Suzanne Haffner, and Blanche Muller, like Adeline d’Espanet, wore a white dress which left her bare down to the middle of her back. At last Maxime besought her to take pity on him, and she consented to sit down with him on a sofa. They stayed there a moment, the young man yawning, Renée asking him the ladies’ names, undressing them with her look, adding up the number of yards of lace they wore round their skirts. Seeing her absorbed in this serious study, he ended by slipping away in obedience to a sign which Laure d’Aurigny made him with her hand. She chaffed him about the lady he was escorting. Then she made him swear to come and join them at the Café Anglais at one o’clock.

“Your father will be there,” she called to him, as he rejoined Renée.

The latter found herself surrounded by a group of women laughing very loud, while M. de Saffré had availed himself of the seat left vacant by Maxime to slip down beside her and pay her unmannerly compliments. Next, M. de Saffré and the women had all begun to shout, to smack their thighs, so much so that Renée, fairly deafened, and yawning in her turn, rose and said to her companion: