“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 Ci
ty 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.