When fashion absolutely forced them to leave Paris, they went to the seaside, but they went reluctantly, always longing for the sidewalks of the boulevards as they lay on the beaches of the Atlantic. At the shore, even love grew bored. For their love was a hothouse flower that needed the big gray-and-pink bed, the naked flesh of the dressing room, and the golden dawn of the small salon. When they sat alone in the evening facing the sea, they found that they had nothing to say to each other. Renée tried to sing songs she’d learned at the Théâtre des Variétés while accompanying herself on an old piano that stood on its last legs in a corner of her hotel room, but the instrument, damp from the sea breeze, had the melancholy voice of the tides. La Belle Hélène sounded lugubrious and fantastic when played on it. To console herself, the young woman stunned the beach with her prodigious costumes. Her whole gang was there, yawning, waiting for winter, and desperately searching for bathing suits that wouldn’t make them look too ugly. Renée had no luck at all persuading Maxime to go swimming. He was deathly afraid of the water, turned pale when the waves lapped at his boots, and wouldn’t go near the edge of a cliff for anything in the world. He kept well away from all tidal pools and made long detours to avoid any place where the coast was at all steep.
Saccard came out two or three times to see “the children.” He was overwhelmed by worry, he said. It was only in October, when all three were together again in Paris, that he gave serious consideration to the idea of a closer relationship with his wife. The Charonne affair was almost ripe. His plan was clear and ruthless. He intended to trap Renée in the sort of game he might play with a prostitute. She needed ever greater sums of cash, yet pride prevented her from asking her husband to supply the money unless she was at the end of her tether. Saccard vowed to take advantage of her next request by gallantly offering his assent and then using the joy occasioned by the repayment of some huge debt to resume relations long since severed.
Terrible financial difficulties awaited Renée and Maxime in Paris. Several of the notes payable to Larsonneau had come due, but since Saccard of course left them lying untouched at the bailiff ’s office, Renée didn’t worry much about them. She was a good deal more terrified of her debt to Worms, which had now risen to nearly 200,000 francs. The tailor was demanding partial payment, in lieu of which he threatened to cut off her credit. She shuddered at the thought of the scandal that a lawsuit would cause and above all at the idea of a to-do with the illustrious couturier. She also needed pocket money. She and Maxime would die of boredom if they didn’t have several louis to spend every day. The dear child was broke now that his forays into his father’s cabinets were coming up empty. His fidelity and exemplary behavior over the past seven or eight months had had a great deal to do with the emptiness of his wallet. He didn’t always have twenty francs to invite a trollop to supper, so he philosophically returned home. On each of their escapades Renée opened her purse so that he could pay in the restaurants, dance halls, and burlesque houses they visited. She still treated him maternally and even handled money herself, with the tips of her gloved fingers, at the pastry shop where they stopped nearly every afternoon to eat little oyster pâtés. Many mornings he found louis in his jacket that he didn’t know were there, money she had put there as a mother to make sure her boy didn’t go off to school with empty pockets. And now this delightful life of tasty treats, gratified whims, and facile pleasures was to end! But that was not their greatest worry. Sylvia’s jeweler, to whom Maxime owed 10,000 francs, was angry and made dark allusions to Clichy—the debtor’s prison. The notes he held, long since overdue, had accumulated so many penalties that the young man’s debt had increased by another three or four thousand francs. Saccard declared flatly that he could do nothing. His son in prison would garner him a certain notoriety, and when he bailed the boy out, the news of his paternal generosity would spread far and wide. Renée was in despair. When she envisioned her dear child in prison, she imagined him in a dungeon lying on a bed of damp straw. One night she seriously proposed that they stop going out, that they remain shut up at home out of everyone’s sight and beyond the reach of the law’s minions. And she swore that she would find the money. She never mentioned the reason for the debt or the name of Sylvia, who recorded her amours on the mirrors of private rooms in restaurants. She needed 50,000 francs: 15,000 for Maxime, 30,000 for Worms, and 5,000 for pocket money. That would buy them two solid weeks of happiness. She set to work.
Her first idea was to ask her husband for the 50,000 francs. She came to that decision only with reluctance. The last time he had entered her room to give her money, he had again planted kisses on her neck and held her hand and whispered sweet nothings in her ear. Women are acutely perceptive when it comes to divining the intentions of men. So she expected some demand from him, a tacit bargain sealed with a smile. And indeed, when she asked him for the 50,000 francs, he uttered a cry and said that Larsonneau would never lend that much and that he himself was still short of cash. But then his tone changed, as though he had been overcome by sudden emotion. “It’s impossible to refuse you anything,” he whispered. “I shall scour all of Paris for you and do the impossible. . . . I want you to be happy, my dear.”
Then he put his lips to her ear, kissed her hair, and said with a trembling voice, “I shall bring you the money tomorrow night, in your room. . . . Without a note to sign.”
But she quickly interjected that she was in no rush and did not want to put him to so much trouble. Although he had just put all his heart into that dangerous phrase, “without a note to sign,” which he had allowed to escape his lips and which he now regretted, he did not seem put out by her rejection. Straightening up, he said, “Well, then, as you wish. . . . I shall find you the money when the time comes. Larsonneau will not be involved, you understand. I mean to make you a gift.”
He smiled good-naturedly. She remained cruelly torn. She felt she would lose what little equilibrium she had left if she gave in to her husband. Her one remaining pride was that, while married to the father, she was the wife of none but the son. Frequently, when Maxime seemed cold to her, she tried to make him understand with the most transparent of allusions how things stood between her and her husband. Yet the young man, whom she expected to fall at her feet after these confessions, remained utterly unmoved, no doubt thinking that she merely wanted to reassure him that there was no possibility of his running into his father in the gray silk bedroom.
After Saccard left her, she dressed hastily and gave orders to hitch up her horses. In the carriage on the way to the Ile Saint-Louis, she went over in her mind how she was going to ask her father for the 50,000 francs. She had embraced this idea suddenly and refused to examine it closely, for in her heart she felt very cowardly and was seized with unspeakable fear regarding her chosen course of action. When she arrived, the courtyard of the Béraud mansion, as damp and dreary as a cloister, sent a chill through her, and as she climbed the wide stone staircase and listened to the echoes of her high-heeled boots, she felt like fleeing. In her haste, she had been foolish enough to wear a dress of feuillemorte silk with long flounces of white lace, trimmed with satin bows and tucked in at the waist by a belt pleated like a sash. This outfit, topped off by a small toque with a long white veil, injected such an unusual note into the somber tedium of the staircase that even she became aware of what an odd figure she cut there. She trembled as she made her way through the long series of huge austere rooms, in which the personages lurking in the tapestries seemed surprised by the billow of skirts that had invaded their gloomy solitude.
She found her father in a drawing room off the courtyard, where he often passed the time. He was reading a large book placed on a book-holder that had been fitted to the arm of his chair. Aunt Elisabeth sat in front of one of the windows knitting with long wooden needles, and in the silence of the room the click of those needles was the only sound to be heard.
Embarrassed, Renée sat down, unable to make a move without disturbing the severity of the high ceilings
with the noise of rustling silk. The harsh white of her lace clashed with the dark background of tapestries and old furniture. M. Béraud Du Châtel placed his hands along the sides of the book-holder and stared at her. Aunt Elisabeth spoke of Christine’s impending marriage to the son of a very wealthy attorney. The young woman had gone shopping with one of the elderly servants, and the kindly aunt carried on all by herself in her placid voice without interrupting her knitting, chatting about household matters and darting smiling glances at Renée over her spectacles.
Renée, however, became increasingly anxious. All the silence of the house weighed on her shoulders, and she would have given a great deal to have the lace of her gown turn black. Her father’s stare embarrassed her to the point where she thought Worms must have been quite a fool to have designed a dress with such enormous flounces.
“How beautiful you look, my dear!” Aunt Elisabeth suddenly blurted out, as though she had not previously noticed her niece’s lace.
She stopped knitting and adjusted her glasses to get a better look. M. Béraud Du Châtel smiled wanly.
“It’s rather white,” he said. “A woman must feel quite embarrassed to be seen like that on the sidewalks.”
“But father, one doesn’t go out on foot!” Renée exclaimed, only to regret that ingenuous utterance the moment the words were out of her mouth.
The old man was on the point of responding, but he got up, stretched himself to his full height, and slowly walked away without looking at his daughter. Emotion had drained all the color from her face. Each time she exhorted herself to have courage and look for an opening to ask for money, she felt a twinge in her heart.
“We never see you anymore, father,” she murmured.
“Oh!” the aunt answered without giving her brother time to open his mouth, “Your father seldom goes out except on rare occasion to the Jardin des Plantes. And to make him do even that much I have to get angry! He pretends that he can’t find his way around Paris, which no longer suits him. . . . So go ahead and scold him if you like!”
“My husband would be so glad to see you at our Thursdays!” the young woman continued.
M. Béraud Du Châtel took a few steps in silence. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “Thank your husband for me. He’s an energetic fellow, it seems, and for your sake I hope that he does business honestly. But we don’t share the same ideas, he and I, and I’m not comfortable in your beautiful house at Parc Monceau.”
Aunt Elisabeth seemed saddened by this reply.
“Men are so disagreeable with their politics!” she said cheerfully. “Do you want to know the truth? Your father is furious with you because you go to the Tuileries.”
But the old man shrugged, as if to say that there were far graver reasons for his discontent. He resumed his slow pace, lost in thought. Renée remained silent for a moment, the request for 50,000 francs hanging on the tip of her tongue. But then she lost heart more than ever, went over and kissed her father, and walked out.
Aunt Elisabeth insisted on accompanying her as far as the staircase. In passing through the series of rooms, she continued the conversation in the soft voice of the elderly woman she was. “You’re happy, my dear. It gives me great pleasure to see you beautiful and healthy, because if your marriage hadn’t worked out, I would have blamed myself, you know. . . . Your husband loves you, and you have everything you need, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Renée answered, straining to smile though she felt sick at heart.
Her aunt continued to hold on to her with one hand, the other hand resting on the banister.
“I have just one fear, you see, which is that you don’t become intoxicated with all your happiness. Be careful, and above all, don’t sell anything. . . . If some day you have a child, you’ll have a tidy fortune ready and waiting for it.”
When Renée was safely back in her carriage, she gave a sigh of relief. She had drops of cold sweat on her temples. As she wiped them off, she thought of the damp chill of the Béraud house. When the carriage reached the bright sunshine of the Quai Saint-Paul, she remembered the 50,000 francs, and all her pain returned, sharper than ever. People thought of her as such a bold woman, but what a coward she’d just been! Yet it was all about Maxime, and his freedom, and their happiness together! As she reproached herself bitterly, a new idea suddenly came to her, compounding her despair: she should have mentioned the 50,000 francs to Aunt Elisabeth on the staircase. What had she been thinking? The good woman might have lent her the money or at the very least helped her out. She was already leaning out to tell the coachman to return to the rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile when she had a vision of her father slowly making his way through the solemn gloom of the large drawing room. She would never be able to summon up the courage to return to that room right away. What would she say to explain this second visit? And in her heart of hearts, she realized that she also lacked the courage to discuss the matter with Aunt Elisabeth. She told the coachman to drive her to the rue du Faubourg-Poissonière instead.
Mme Sidonie uttered a cry of delight when she saw Renée open the discreetly curtained door of her shop. She was there by chance, on the point of rushing out to court, where she had summoned one of her clients to appear before a justice of the peace. She would miss her day in court; that case could wait until another day, because she was too pleased that her sister-in-law had been so kind as to call on her at last. Renée smiled and looked embarrassed. Mme Sidonie insisted that she come upstairs and led her by way of the small staircase up to the bedroom after removing the brass knob from the shop door. She removed and replaced this knob, which was held in place by a single pin, twenty times a day.
“Now, my beauty,” she said after inviting Renée to sit on a chaise longue, “now we can have a nice chat. . . . You know, you’ve come at just the right moment. I intended to call on you this evening.”
Renée, who was familiar with this bedroom, felt a vague sense of unease, like a hiker who notices that a patch of forest has been cut from a familiar landscape.
“Oh!” she said after a while. “You moved the bed, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” came the milliner’s calm answer. “One of my customers thought it was much better facing the fireplace. She also advised me to get red curtains.”
“That’s just what I was thinking. The curtains weren’t that color before. . . . A very common color, red.”
She put on her glasses and examined the room, which had a sort of boardinghouse luxury. On the mantelpiece she saw long hairpins that surely didn’t come from Mme Sidonie’s small bun. In the place where the bed had been, the wallpaper was all scuffed, discolored, and dirty from the mattress. The businesswoman had tried to hide this eyesore behind two armchairs, but the backs of the chairs were rather low, and Renée’s eyes lingered on the worn strip of wallpaper.
“You have something to say to me?” she finally asked.
“Yes, it’s quite a long story,” Mme Sidonie replied, clasping her hands and making an expression like a gourmet about to recount what she had for dinner. “Guess what. M. de Saffré is in love with beautiful Mme Saccard. . . . Yes, my darling, with you.”
Renée avoided any affectation of modesty.
“What!” she exclaimed. “You told me he was so taken with Mme Michelin.”
“Oh, that’s over, completely over! . . . I can give you proof, if you like. . . . Perhaps you didn’t know that Baron Gouraud took a shine to the Michelin girl? It’s quite baffling. Everyone who knows the baron is flabbergasted by it. . . . And did you know that she’s working on getting her husband a red ribbon? . . . A spirited girl, that one. Nothing frightens her, and she doesn’t need anyone to draw her pictures.”
She pronounced the last sentence with a mixture of regret and admiration.
“But to get back to M. de Saffré. . . . He claims to have run into you at a theatrical party wrapped up in a domino, and he even accuses himself of having rather cavalierly invited you out to supper. . . . Is there any truth to that?”
r /> Renée was floored by this news.
“Quite true,” she murmured. “But who could have told him?”
“He claims to have recognized you afterward, once you had left the room, and he remembered seeing you go out on Maxime’s arm. . . . And since then he’s been madly in love. A fantasy has taken root in his heart, you see. . . . He came and asked me to apologize to you on his behalf.”