When Larsonneau arrived, there were still only five or six women in Mlle d’Aurigny’s large white-and-gold drawing room—women who took him by the hands and threw their arms around his neck in a frenzy of affection. They called him “Big Lar,” using the affectionate nickname that Laure had coined for him. And he, in piping tones, replied, “Be careful now, my little kittens, or you’ll crush my hat.”
This calmed them down, and they then crowded around him while he sat on a love seat and regaled them with a tale of Sylvia’s indigestion after their supper together the previous evening. Afterwards he took a box of candy from the pocket of his coat and offered them pralines. At this point, however, Laure emerged from her bedroom and, seeing that a number of gentlemen guests were arriving, led him off to a boudoir at one end of the salon, from which they were separated by two sets of curtains.
“Do you have the money?” she asked when they were alone.
On important occasions she used the familiar tu with him. Larsonneau, without answering, bowed obligingly and tapped the inside pocket of his coat.
“Oh, Big Lar!” the delighted young woman murmured.
She took him by the waist and kissed him.
“Wait,” she said, “Let’s get the cash and the papers out of the way. . . . Rozan is in my room. I’ll go get him.”
But he held her back, and now it was his turn to kiss her shoulders. “You remember the favor I asked of you?”
“Why yes, of course, silly! It’s agreed.”
She returned with Rozan in tow. Larsonneau was dressed more punctiliously than the duke, with better gloves and a more artful bow to his cravat. They casually touched hands and talked about the races two days earlier, in which a friend of theirs had entered a losing horse. Laure waited impatiently.
“Come, my darling, never mind all that,” she said to Rozan. “Big Lar has the money, you know. It’s time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”
Larsonneau made a show of remembering. “Oh, yes, quite right, I’ve got the money. . . . But you should have listened to me, old man! Would you believe that those scoundrels insisted on fifty percent? . . . I finally gave in, you know, because you said it made no difference to you.”
Laure d’Aurigny had obtained some official stamped paper earlier in the day. But when the moment came to find pen and ink, she looked at the two men with a perplexed expression, uncertain whether she had any in the house. She was about to go to the kitchen to look when Larsonneau took from his pocket—the same pocket that contained the box of candy—two marvels: a silver penholder with a tip that could be screwed out and a steel-and-ebony inkwell as exquisite and elegant as a jewel.
Rozan sat down to write. “Make the notes out in my name,” Larsonneau said. “I don’t want to compromise you, you see. We’ll work something out together. . . . Six notes of 25,000 francs each, is it not?”
Laure counted out the bills on a corner of the table. Rozan never saw them. By the time he looked up after signing his name, they had vanished into the young woman’s pocket. But she went over to him and kissed him on both cheeks, which seemed to please him no end. Larsonneau looked at them philosophically as he folded the notes and put the inkstand and pen back into his pocket.
The young woman still had her arms around Rozan’s neck when Aristide Saccard lifted one corner of the door curtain. “Don’t mind me,” he said, laughing.
The duke blushed, but Laure went over to shake the financier’s hand, giving him a conspiratorial wink. She was radiant.
“It’s done, my dear,” she said. “I warned you. You won’t be too angry with me, will you?”
Saccard shrugged good-naturedly. He pulled back the door curtain and stood aside to let Laure and the duke pass. Then, like an usher announcing the arrival of guests, he barked out, “Monsieur le duc, Madame la duchesse!”
This pleasantry proved a tremendous success. The next day it was mentioned in the newspapers, blatantly naming Laure d’Aurigny while identifying the two gentlemen only by initials so transparent that they concealed the secret from no one. The breaking off of the relationship between Aristide Saccard and fat Laure caused even more of a stir than their alleged affair.
Meanwhile, Saccard had allowed the door curtain to fall back into place, shutting out the burst of laughter that his jest had unleashed in the drawing room.
“What a good girl she is!” he said, turning now to face Larsonneau. “And such a slut! . . . And you, you rascal! What are you getting out of all this? How much are they giving you?”
But Larsonneau defended himself with smiles and pulled down his cuffs, which had gotten pushed up. Eventually he went and sat down next to the door on a love seat that Saccard had indicated to him with a motion of his hand.
“Come here, damn it, I won’t insist on hearing your confession. . . . Let’s get down to brass tacks, my friend. I had a very long conversation with my wife earlier this evening. . . . Everything is taken care of.”
“She agreed to sell her share?” Larsonneau quizzed him.
“Yes, but it wasn’t easy. . . . Women can be so stubborn. You see, my wife had promised an elderly aunt of hers that she wouldn’t sell. She had no end of scruples about it. . . . Fortunately I was ready with a story that quite made up her mind.”
He got up to light a cigar on the candelabra that Laure had left on the table and then returned to stretch out casually at one end of the love seat.
“I told my wife that you were completely ruined,” he went on. “That you’d gambled on the Bourse, squandered your money on whores, and gotten mixed up in shady speculations. And finally, that you were about to go bust in the most awful fashion. . . . I even insinuated that I had doubts about your honesty. . . . I then explained to her that the Charonne business was going to be tangled up in your collapse and that the best thing to do would be to accept your proposition to buy her out—for a pittance, to be sure.”
“That wasn’t very intelligent,” the expropriation agent murmured. “You really think your wife is going to believe such a tall tale?”
Saccard smiled. He was in an expansive mood.
“How naïve you are, my dear fellow,” he continued. “The substance of the story is of no account. It’s all in the details, the gestures, and the accent. Call Rozan in here and I’ll bet I can convince him that it’s broad daylight outside. And my wife isn’t much smarter than Rozan. . . . I let her peer into the abyss. She has no inkling that expropriation is imminent. Since she was surprised that in the middle of such a catastrophe you would be willing to take on a still heavier burden, I told her that she was probably getting in the way of some trick you were about to play on your creditors. . . . In the end, I advised her to sell as the only way to avoid getting mixed up in interminable law-suits and to get some money out of her land.”
Larsonneau still thought the story somewhat crude. He preferred less dramatic methods. Each of his operations was plotted and brought to a resolution with the elegance of a drawing-room comedy.
“In your place I would have come up with something else,” he said. “But then each of us has his own system. . . . In any case, all that remains now is to pay the piper.”
“That’s precisely what I wanted to settle with you,” Saccard replied. “Tomorrow, I will give my wife the purchase-and-sale agreement, and in exchange for returning the signed papers to you, the amount agreed upon should be remitted to her. . . . I prefer to avoid any discussion between you.”
In fact, he had never cared to allow Larsonneau into his home on a footing of intimacy. He never invited him and had accompanied him to Renée’s apartment on days when it was essential that the two partners meet in person. There had been three such occasions. Most of the time he had made use of his wife’s power of attorney on the assumption that there was no point in letting her get too close a look at what he was up to.
He opened his briefcase and added, “Here are the 200,000 francs’ worth of notes signed by my wife. You will return these to her as payment, and to this
amount you will add 100,000 francs that I shall deliver to you tomorrow morning. . . . I’m bleeding myself dry, my good friend. This business is costing me my own two eyes.”
“But that comes to only 300,000 francs,” the expropriation agent pointed out. “Will the receipt indicate that amount?”
“A receipt for 300,000 francs!” Saccard chortled. “Lord, we’d be in a hell of a fix later on! According to our inventories, the property must be worth two and a half million francs today. The receipt will naturally be for half that amount.”
“Your wife will never sign it.”
“Oh, yes she will. I’m telling you it’s all settled. . . . I told her it was your first condition, damn it! Your bankruptcy has forced you to put a pistol to our heads, don’t you see? That was when I let it be known that I had doubts about your honesty and accused you of intending to dupe your creditors. . . . Do you think my wife understands anything about all that?”
Larsonneau shook his head and murmured, “You still should have come up with something simpler.”
“But my story is simplicity itself,” Saccard replied in astonishment. “What the devil do you find complicated about it?”
He was quite unaware of the incredible number of strings he attached to the most ordinary transactions. He took great pleasure in the contrived story he had told Renée, and what delighted him was the impudence of the lie, the accumulation of impossibilities, the astonishing complexity of the intrigue. He would have taken possession of the property long ago if he hadn’t imagined this whole drama in advance, but it would have given him less pleasure if it had come to him more easily. For him it was the most natural thing in the world to turn the Charonne speculation into an elaborate financial melodrama.
He got up, took Larsonneau by the arm, and headed for the drawing room. “You understand what I said, don’t you? Just follow my instructions, and you’ll applaud when it’s over. You know, you really shouldn’t wear yellow gloves, my friend, they ruin your touch.”
The expropriation agent merely smiled. “Thanks for the instruction, but gloves have their uses: you can touch all sorts of things without getting your hands dirty.”
When they reentered the salon, Saccard was surprised and somewhat anxious to find Maxime on the other side of the curtain. The young man was sitting on a love seat next to a blonde, who was telling him a long story in a monotonous voice—her own story, no doubt. He had in fact overheard the conversation between his father and Larsonneau. The two accomplices were clearly sly dogs. Still angry about Renée’s betrayal, he took a coward’s pleasure in the news that she was soon to be robbed. There would be a modicum of vengeance for him in that. His father, looking suspicious, came over to shake his hand, but Maxime motioned toward the blonde and whispered in his ear, “She’s not bad, is she? I intend to have her tonight.”
Saccard then began to dance about and preen a bit. Laure d’Aurigny came and joined them for a moment. She complained that Maxime scarcely called on her more than once a month, but he claimed to have been very busy, which made everyone laugh. He added that from now on they’d be seeing him everywhere.
“I’ve written a tragedy,” he said, “and only yesterday did I come up with the fifth act. . . . I intend to rest from my labors in the company of all the beautiful women of Paris.”
He laughed and savored his allusions, which only he could understand. Meanwhile, the drawing room had emptied of all the other guests save Rozan and Larsonneau, on either side of the fireplace. The two Saccards rose to go, along with the blonde, who lived in the house. Laure then went over and whispered something to the duke. He seemed surprised and upset. Seeing that he made no move to get up from his chair, she said in a stage whisper, “No, really, not tonight. I have a headache. . . . Tomorrow, I promise you.”
Rozan had no choice but to obey. Laure waited until he was on the landing to whisper a quick word in Larsonneau’s ear: “So, Big Lar, you see I’m a woman of my word. . . . Stick him in his carriage.”
When the blonde took leave of the men and headed up to her apartment on the floor above, Saccard was surprised to see that Maxime did not follow her.
“Well,” he asked, “what are you waiting for?”
“I think not,” the young man replied. “I’ve thought better of it.”
Then he had an idea that struck him as very funny.
“I leave her to you if you like. Hurry, she hasn’t closed her door yet.”
But the father gave a quick shrug and said, “Thank you, my boy, but for the time being I’ve got something better.”
The four men went downstairs. When they reached the street, the duke absolutely insisted on giving Larsonneau a lift in his carriage. His mother lived in the Marais and he would drop the expropriation agent at his door on the rue de Rivoli. But Larsonneau refused, closed the door of the carriage himself, and ordered the coachman to drive off. He remained on the sidewalk of the boulevard Haussmann talking with the other two men and making no move to leave.
“Ah, poor Rozan!” exclaimed Saccard, who suddenly realized what was going on.
Larsonneau swore that it wasn’t true, that he didn’t give a damn about such things, that he was a practical man. But as the other two men continued to joke, and the air was very cold, he finally gave up and exclaimed, “For heaven’s sake, enough of this nonsense, I’m going to ring! . . . You gentlemen are very indiscreet.”
“Good night!” Maxime shouted as the door closed behind him.
Then, taking his father by the arm, he walked back up the boulevard alongside him. It was one of those clear, frosty nights when it is such a pleasure to walk on the hard ground in the frigid air. Saccard said that Larsonneau was making a mistake, that it was better to be the Aurigny woman’s friend than her lover. That led him to say that making love to whores of that sort was truly a bad idea. He presented himself as a moral authority, delivering himself of maxims and recommendations of astonishing propriety.
“You see,” he said to his son, “that sort of thing doesn’t last. . . . You lose your health that way without enjoying real happiness. You know I’m no prude. Well, I’ve had enough. I’m going to settle down.”
Maxime snickered. He stopped his father, contemplated him in the moonlight, and told him he was “a good-looking fellow.” But Saccard went on, graver than before. “Make fun of me as much as you like. I repeat: there’s nothing like marriage to preserve a man and make him happy.”
Then he brought up Louise. He slackened his pace and said that since they were already talking about marriage, now was the time to settle the matter. He informed Maxime that he and M. de Mareuil had set the Sunday after Mid-Lent Thursday12 as the date for signing the marriage contract. That night there was to be a big party at the Parc Monceau house, and he would take advantage of the occasion to announce the marriage publicly. Maxime was quite pleased with these arrangements. He was done with Renée and saw nothing else standing in the way, so he surrendered himself to his father as he had surrendered himself to his stepmother.
“Well, then, that’s settled,” he said. “Only don’t mention it to Renée. Her friends would kid me and tease me, and I’d rather they hear the news at the same time as everyone else.”
Saccard promised him that he would keep silent. Then, as they reached the top of the boulevard Malesherbes, he resumed dispensing excellent advice to his son. He explained to Maxime how to make his marriage a genuine paradise: “Above all, never break off relations with your wife. It’s a foolish thing to do. A wife with whom you no longer have relations costs you an arm and a leg. . . . To begin with, you’ve got to pay some whore, right? On top of that, the household expenses are much greater: there’s Madame’s clothing, her private pleasures, her bosom companions, and the devil knows what all else.”