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 t
aken 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.”