Renée’s body seemed whiter as she crouched in the center of that black bearskin like a huge cat, its back arched and paws tense beneath supple, sinewy hocks. She was completely swollen with sensuality, and the clean outline of her shoulders and waist stood out with feline sharpness against the ink spot the black fur left on the yellow sand of the path. She eyed Maxime, her prey, lying on his back beneath her in a posture of utter surrender, completely in her possession. At intervals she would lean forward suddenly and kiss him with aching lips—lips that parted at those moments with the eager, sanguinary splendor of the Chinese hibiscus that covered the side of the house. In those instants she was nothing but a fiery child of the conservatory. Her kisses bloomed and faded like the red flowers of the great mallow, which last only a few hours and are continually reborn—the bruised, insatiable lips of a gigantic Messalina.
5
The kiss he had planted on his wife’s neck preoccupied Saccard. He had long since ceased to avail himself of his marital prerogatives. The rupture had come about naturally, as neither he nor his wife cared to maintain a relationship that both found inconvenient. He never thought of entering Renée’s bedroom unless there was a juicy piece of business to justify his conjugal attentions.
The Charonne deal was proving to be a stroke of fortune, though how it would turn out in the end still worried him. Larsonneau, for all his dazzling linen, smiled in a way he found unpleasant. The expropriation agent was only a go-between, a front whose complicity he bought with a commission of ten percent of all future profits. Yet even though his associate had not invested a penny in the deal, and Saccard, after providing him with the funds to build the music hall, had taken every possible precaution—options, undated letters, antedated receipts—he nevertheless felt an obscure foreboding, a presentiment of treachery. He suspected his accomplice of intending to blackmail him with the fake inventory that remained in his possession, which was the only reason Saccard had cut him in on the deal.
The two confederates therefore exchanged a hearty handshake. Larsonneau addressed Saccard as “chief.” Deep down, he admired his associate’s high-wire exploits as a speculator and followed his performances avidly. The idea of cheating such a partner appealed to him as a rare and piquant pleasure. He was toying with a plan that remained vague because he was still unsure of how to use the weapon he had in his possession without injuring himself. In any case, he sensed that he was at the mercy of his former colleague. Carefully prepared inventories listed land and buildings already estimated at nearly two million francs but in fact worth only a quarter that much, yet all these assets would be swallowed up in a colossal bankruptcy unless the expropriation fairy touched them with her magic wand. According to preliminary plans that the two confederates had been able to consult, the new boulevard—which was intended to link the artillery range at Vincennes 1 to the Prince Eugène Barracks and thus grant the gunners access to central Paris without obliging them to move through the Faubourg Saint-Antoine—would claim part of their land. Yet there was still a danger that the route would only skirt their property and that the ingenious music-hall speculation would fail on account of its very impudence. In that case Larsonneau would be left with a delicate situation on his hands. Despite his necessarily secondary role, the risk did nothing to alleviate his distress at the thought of collecting a paltry ten percent on such a colossal theft, which would run into millions. At such times he felt a desperate itch to reach out and lop off a slice for himself.
Saccard had not even wanted Larsonneau to lend money to his wife, preferring to amuse himself by staging an elaborate melodrama that appealed to his weakness for complicated chicanery.
“No, no, my friend,” he had said with his Provençal accent, which he exaggerated whenever he wanted to add zest to a joke, “let’s not mix up your accounts with mine. . . . You’re the only man in Paris to whom I’ve sworn never to owe anything.”
Larsonneau contented himself with hinting to Saccard that his wife was a bottomless pit. He advised him never to give her another cent so that she would be forced to sell them her share of the property at once. He would have preferred to deal with Saccard alone. From time to time he tested the waters, going so far as to say, with the weary, indifferent air of a man of the world, “You know, I really need to put my files in order. . . . Your wife scares me, old man. I wouldn’t want the authorities to get hold of certain documents I have in my office.”
Saccard was not a man to put up with such insinuations patiently, especially when he was well acquainted with the cold and meticulous order that Larsonneau maintained in his office. Cunning and energetic, the little man reacted with every fiber of his being against the fears that the smooth-talking usurer in the yellow gloves sought to arouse in him. The worst of it was that the thought of a scandal sent shivers up his spine. He imagined his brother angrily sending him into exile in Belgium and forcing him to earn his living in some shabby trade. One day he became so enraged that he forgot himself and addressed Larsonneau more familiarly than was his wont: “Listen, my boy, you’re a nice fellow, but you’d be doing yourself a favor if you gave me back that document—you know the one I mean. Otherwise we’ll end up fighting over it.”
Larsonneau feigned astonishment, grasped the hands of “the chief,” and assured him of his devotion. Saccard regretted his momentary impatience. It was at this point that he gave serious thought to a closer relationship with his wife. He might need her against his confederate, and not for the first time he mused to himself that the bed was a wonderful place in which to do business. Little by little the kiss on the neck grew into a revelation, opening up a whole new realm of tactics.
In any case he was in no hurry, for he was husbanding his resources. He allowed his plan to ripen throughout the winter, distracted as he was by a hundred other schemes, each murkier than the last. For him it was a dreadful winter, which saw him buffeted by one blow after another as each day he moved heaven and earth to avoid bankruptcy. Rather than curtail his lavish lifestyle, he threw gala after gala. Yet while he coped with every difficulty, he inevitably neglected Renée, whom he was holding in reserve for his triumphal stroke, when the time was ripe for a move in Charonne. He contented himself with preparing the dénouement by ceasing to provide her with any money except through Larsonneau. Whenever he found himself with a few thousand francs to spare and she pleaded poverty, he supplied the cash she needed but told her that Larsonneau’s creditors insisted on a note for double the amount. This farce amused him no end. The whole business of the notes delighted him by introducing an element of intrigue into the affair. Even in the days when his profits had been most unequivocal, he had paid out his wife’s allowance in a highly irregular way, at times giving her princely gifts and handing over fistfuls of banknotes only to leave her begging for weeks for a paltry sum. Now that he was seriously hard up for cash, he alluded to the expenses of the household and treated her as a creditor to whom it was impossible to confess his bankruptcy and who had to be put off with excuses. She barely listened, signing whatever he asked her to; her only complaint was that she wasn’t allowed to sign more.
In any event, he already held 200,000 francs of paper she had signed, which had cost him barely 110,000 francs. After having these notes endorsed by Larsonneau, in whose name they were drawn, he prudently placed them in circulation with the intention of using them as decisive weapons later on. He would never have gotten through that terrible winter, lending to his wife at usurious rates of interest and maintaining his lavish way of life, had he not sold his property on the boulevard Malesherbes, for which Mignon and Charrier paid cash, but at a significant discount.
For Renée that winter was one of endless joy. She suffered only from a shortage of cash. Maxime cost her an arm and a leg. He still treated her as his stepmother and allowed her to pay for everything. Yet her hidden poverty was for her merely one more source of pleasure. She schemed and racked her brain so that “her darling boy” would want for nothing, and when she persuaded her
husband to come up with a few thousand francs for her, she and her lover devoured them in costly extravagances like two schoolmates let loose on their first escapade. When they hadn’t a cent to their name, they stayed home and enjoyed the huge, ugly mansion with its brand-new and impudently absurd luxury. Saccard was never there. The lovers sat by the hearth more often now than in the past, because Renée had at last succeeded in filling the glacial void under the mansion’s gilded ceilings with the heat of her ecstasy. This suspect house of worldly pleasure had become a chapel in which she practiced a new religion apart from the world. Maxime had done more for her than elicit a note of pleasure shrill enough to match her extravagant outfits; he was the lover this house required, with its storefront windows and its incrustation of sculpture from rooftop to cellar. He made all that plaster come alive, from the two chubby-cheeked cupids holding their dripping shell in the courtyard to the tall, naked women supporting the balconies and playing with apples and ears of corn in the pediments. He explained the all too sumptuous vestibule, the ridiculously constricted garden, and the splendid rooms crammed with armchairs but devoid of art. Renée, who had been bored to death there, suddenly brightened and began to use the house as if she had only just grasped its true purpose. And it was not only in her apartment that she paraded her love, not just in the buttercup salon or the conservatory, but throughout the house. Eventually she even found the divan in the smoking room to her liking. She enjoyed lying there, she said, because the room smelled vaguely of tobacco, which she found quite pleasant.
She took to receiving guests on two days instead of one. On Thursdays outsiders were welcome, but Mondays were reserved for close female friends. Men were not allowed. Only Maxime was admitted to these select gatherings, which were held in the small salon. One night Renée had the stupendous idea of dressing him as a woman and passing him off as one of her cousins. Adeline, Suzanne, Baroness von Meinhold, and other friends of hers rose to greet the newcomer, astonished by a face they vaguely recognized. When at last they realized what was going on, they laughed a lot and refused to let the young man change his clothes. They made him stay there in his skirt, teasing him and making off-color jokes. After seeing the ladies out through the main gate, he circled round the park and returned by way of the conservatory. Even Renée’s close friends never suspected a thing. The lovers could hardly have been more familiar than when they had been good comrades. And if a servant happened to catch them pressed rather too close together behind closed doors, there was no occasion for surprise, since the entire staff was used to these little jokes of Madame and the son of Monsieur.
Such utter freedom and impunity emboldened them still more. If they bolted their door at night, by day they kissed in every room in the house. They invented countless little games to while away the time on rainy days. But Renée’s greatest delight was still to make a roaring fire and nap in front of the fireplace. That winter she had a marvelous array of linen to choose from. Her chemises and peignoirs cost a king’s ransom, and their frilly lace and batiste barely covered her with a white cloud. She lay almost naked in the red glow of the fireplace, her lace and skin tinted pink, her flesh warmed through the thin fabric by the heat of the flames. Maxime, crouching at her feet, could kiss her knees without so much as feeling the garment, which shared the warmth and color of her beautiful body. When the sky was overcast, a dusky gloom enveloped the gray silk-lined bedroom, while Céleste quietly padded in and out behind the two lovers. She had of course become their accomplice. When they lingered in bed one morning, she found them there yet betrayed no emotion, as if her veins were filled with ice water. After that they cast all caution to the winds, and Céleste came in at all hours, never allowing the sound of their kisses to distract her from her work. They relied on her to warn them of any danger. They did not buy her silence. She was a very thrifty girl, very respectable, and if she had ever had a lover, no one knew about it.
In the meantime Renée did not cloister herself. She made the rounds of society with Maxime tagging along behind like a fair-haired page in a dark frock coat, and took greater pleasure in this ritual than ever before. Her season was one long triumph. Her outfits and hairdos had never been more boldly imagined. It was now that she dared to wear the famous tawny satin gown embroidered with images of a stag hunt, including such attributes as powder horn, bugles, and broad knives. And it was now that she set the fashion of wearing her hair in the style of the ancients, based on drawings that Maxime made for her at the recently opened Musée Campana. 2 She seemed rejuvenated in the fullness of her restless beauty. Incest burned within her, and its glow could be seen in her eyes, its heat felt in her laughter. She wore her glasses with supreme insolence on the end of her nose and stared at other women, at good friends of hers set apart from the rest by the enormity of their vice, with the air of a boastful adolescent and a fixed smile that said, “I have a crime of my own.”
Maxime found society tedious. In fact he thought it chic to be bored, because he did not really enjoy himself anywhere. At the Tuileries and the ministries he hid behind Renée’s petticoats. He took charge again, however, whenever an escapade was in the offing. Renée asked to return to the private room on the boulevard, where the width of the divan made her smile. After that he took her all over, to visit prostitutes, to the Bal de l’Opéra,3 to the front rows of burlesque houses, wherever raw vice could be savored incognito. Dead tired, they would then sneak back into the house and fall asleep in each other’s arms, sleeping off the intoxication of gutter Paris with snatches of ribald tunes still ringing in their ears. The next day, Maxime would mimic the actors, and Renée, playing the piano in the small salon, would attempt to emulate Blanche Muller’s hoarse voice and bumps and grinds in the role of La Belle Hélène. 4 Her music lessons at the convent were of no use to her now except to murder the latest burlesque numbers. Serious music filled her with horror. Maxime jeered at German music right along with her, and he felt it his duty to go hiss at Tannhäuser5 partly out of conviction and partly to defend his stepmother’s bawdy refrains.
One of their great entertainments was skating. Skating was “in” that winter, the emperor having been one of the first to try the ice on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne. Renée ordered a complete Polish skating outfit of velvet and fur from Worms and insisted that Maxime wear soft boots and a cap of fox fur. They went to the Bois in weather so bitingly cold that it stung their noses and lips, as if the wind were blowing fine sand against their faces. They enjoyed the cold. The Bois was completely gray, with stripes of snow clinging to the branches like thin strips of lace. And above the dull frozen lake the colorless skies were empty but for the islands whose fir trees still fringed the horizon, except that now those theatrical curtains were trimmed with billows of lace stitched by the snow. Together the two lovers glided through the frigid air like swallows swooping just above the ground. With one hand behind the back and the other on the partner’s shoulder they skated straight ahead, smiling, side by side, then turned and skated back to where they had begun, all within an ample section of the lake marked out by heavy ropes. Spectators watched from the main path above. Occasionally the skaters paused to warm themselves at stoves set up along the shore before resuming their activity, extending their flight as far as possible while tears of pleasure and cold welled up in their eyes.
When spring came, Renée remembered her elegy of old. She insisted that Maxime accompany her into the Parc Monceau at night and stroll with her by moonlight. They went to the grotto and sat on the grass in front of the colonnade. But when she reminded him of her desire to row out on the little lake, they noticed that the boat that could be seen from the house moored alongside one of the paths had no oars. Apparently they were put away at night. This was a disappointment. The darkness of the park made the lovers nervous in any case. They would have preferred a Venetian festival with red balloons and an orchestra. They were more comfortable in daylight, in the afternoon, and they often stood at one of the windows of the house to watch the car
riages round the pleasant curve of the main carriageway. They liked this charming section of new Paris, this lovely and clean patch of nature with its velvety lawns punctuated by beds of flowers and carefully selected shrubs and lined with splendid white roses. Carriages here were as thick as on the boulevards, and strolling ladies dragged their skirts along the ground as softly as if they had never left their carpeted salons. Peering through the foliage, the lovers criticized the women’s outfits, pointed out their carriages, and with genuine delight savored the soft colors of this huge garden. A section of gilded fence shone between two trees, a line of ducks glided along the lake, and the little Renaissance bridge with its fresh coat of white paint stood out amid the greenery, while mothers seated in yellow chairs on either side of the main path became so absorbed in conversation that they forgot about the little boys and girls precociously making eyes at one another.
The lovers were in love with the new Paris. They often dashed about the city by carriage, detouring down certain boulevards for which they felt a special affection. They took delight in the imposing houses with big carved doors and innumerable balconies emblazoned with names, signs, and company insignia in big gold letters. As their coupé sped along, they fondly gazed out upon the gray strips of sidewalk, broad and interminable, with their benches, colorful columns, and skinny trees. The bright gap stretching all the way to the horizon, narrowing as it went and opening out onto a patch of empty blue sky; the uninterrupted double row of big stores with clerks smiling at their customers; the bustling streams of pedestrians—all this filled them little by little with a sense of absolute and total satisfaction, a feeling of perfection as they viewed the life of the street. They even loved the jets from the watering nozzles that spewed white mist ahead of their horses and then fell in a fine shower beneath the wheels of their coupé, darkening the ground and raising a thin cloud of dust. They were constantly on the move, and to them it seemed as though their carriage rolled on carpet along a straight and endless roadway that had been built expressly to allow them to avoid the dark side streets. Each boulevard became but another corridor of their house. The sun bathed the façades of the new buildings in joy, illuminating windows, warming the awnings of shops and cafés, and heating the asphalt beneath the feet of pedestrians rushing from one place to the next. And when they returned home, their heads spinning from the noisy spectacle of those interminable bazaars, they took delight in the Parc Monceau, which was like a floral strip essential for defining the edge of the new Paris and displaying its riches in those first warm days of spring.