He was for the time being in an extraordinarily virtuous mood. The success of the Charonne deal filled his heart with idyllic tenderness.
“I was born,” he continued, “to live in obscurity in some village, in the bosom of my family. . . . Nobody knows who I really am, my boy. . . . People take me for a fellow with his head in the clouds. Well, that’s nonsense. I’d love to stay at my wife’s side and would gladly give up business for a modest income that would allow me to retire to Plassans. . . . You’re going to be rich. Settle down with Louise and make yourself a nest you can live in like two turtledoves. What a fine thing! I’ll come visit you. It will do me good.”
He ended with tears in his voice. Meanwhile, they had reached the gate of the house and stood chatting on the curb outside. A north wind swept these Parisian heights. No sound rose in the frosty pallor of the night. Maxime, surprised by his father’s tender effusions, had remained a minute or two with a question on his lips.
“But you,” he came out with at last, “I had the impression—”
“What?”
“With your wife?”
Saccard shrugged. “Right, exactly! I was a fool. So I can speak to you from experience. . . . But we’ve patched it up, you know, absolutely. Almost six weeks ago. I go to her in the evening, when I don’t get home too late. Tonight, though, my poor darling will have to do without me. I have to work all night. She’s got an awfully nice figure, I must say.”
Maxime offered his hand, but his father held on to it long enough to add, in a confidential tone, “A shape like Blanche Muller’s, you know, but ten times more supple. And those hips! The curve, the elegance—”
Then, as Maxime started to walk off, he finished his thought: “You’re like me. You’ve got heart, your wife will be happy. . . . Good night, my boy!”
When Maxime was at last rid of his father, he quickly made his way around the park. What he had just heard surprised him so much that he felt an irresistible need to see Renée. He wanted to beg her pardon for his brutality, to find out why she had lied to him by naming M. de Saffré, and to learn the history of her husband’s amorous attentions. Yet all of these things he divined only vaguely, his one clear desire being to smoke a cigar in her room and renew their camaraderie. If she was in the right mood, he even intended to announce his marriage in order to make it clear to her that their affair was to remain dead and buried. As he opened the side gate, the key to which he had fortunately held on to, he convinced himself that after his father’s confidential revelations his visit was necessary and entirely proper.
In the conservatory, he whistled as he had the night before, but this time there was no waiting. Renée came and opened the glass doors of the small salon and went up ahead of him without speaking. She had just returned from a ball at the Hôtel de Ville. She was still wearing a white gown of puffed tulle covered with satin bows. The tails of the satin bodice were edged with a broad band of white lace, which the light from the candelabra tinged with blue and pink. Upstairs, when Maxime looked at her, he was touched by her pallor and by the deep emotion that choked her voice. She must not have been expecting him, for she was shivering all over at the sight of him arriving as he always did, with his calm, imploring air. Céleste returned from the closet, where she had gone in search of a nightgown, and the lovers remained silent while waiting for her to leave. They were not usually inhibited in her presence, but shame came over them because of what they sensed they were about to say. Renée wanted Céleste to undress her in the bedroom, where there was a big fire. The servant removed pins and articles of clothing one by one, without haste. Meanwhile, Maxime, feeling bored, mechanically took the nightgown that was lying on a chair next to him and warmed it by the fire, leaning forward with his arms stretched wide. In happier days this was a favor he had often done for Renée. She felt moved at the sight of him delicately holding her nightgown up to the fire. Then, as Céleste showed no sign of finishing her chores, he asked, “Did you enjoy yourself at the ball?”
“Oh, no,” she replied, “it’s always the same, you know. Far too many people, a real mob.”
He turned the nightgown, which was now warm on one side.
“What did Adeline wear?”
“A mauve gown, not very well thought out. . . . She’s short, and she’s wild about flounces.”
They talked about other women. By now Maxime was burning his fingers with the nightgown.
“Be careful, you’re going to scorch it,” Renée said in a voice full of maternal tenderness.
Céleste took the nightgown from the young man’s hands. He got up, went over to look at the big gray-and-pink bed, and let his eyes linger over one of the bouquets embroidered in the hanging so as to avoid looking at Renée’s naked breasts. This was instinctive. He no longer thought of himself as her lover, so he no longer had the right to see. Then he took a cigar from his pocket and lit it. Renée had always allowed him to smoke in her apartment. Céleste went out, leaving the young woman by the fire, all white in her bedtime attire.
Maxime continued his silent pacing a while longer, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Renée, who seemed to be shivering again. Then, stopping in front of the fireplace, with his cigar between his teeth, he asked abruptly, “Why didn’t you tell me that it was my father who was with you last night?”
She looked up, her eyes wide in an expression of supreme anguish. Then a rush of blood turned her complexion crimson, and, overcome by shame, she hid her face in her hands and stammered, “So you know? You know?”
Regaining her composure, she tried to lie. “It’s not true. . . . Who told you?”
Maxime shrugged. “Why, my father himself, who thinks you have an awfully nice figure and even discussed your hips with me.”
He had allowed himself to show a slight degree of annoyance. But he resumed his pacing, continuing between puffs on his cigar to speak to her in a chiding but friendly voice: “Really, I don’t understand you. You’re one of a kind. Yesterday it was your fault that I was so rude. You should have told me that it was my father, and I would have left quietly, you know. What right do I have? . . . But you went and told me it was M. de Saffré!”
She sobbed, her hands on her face. He approached, knelt in front of her, and forced her hands apart.
“So tell me why you said it was M. de Saffré.”
Then, averting her eyes once more, she answered, still crying, in a whisper: “I thought you would leave me if you knew that your father—”
He rose to his feet, took back the cigar that he had placed on the hearth, and contented himself with a murmured reply: “You’re really something, you know?”
She had stopped crying. The heat from the fireplace and in her cheeks dried her tears. Her astonishment at finding Maxime so calm in the face of a revelation that she had thought would crush him made her forget her shame. She watched him pace the room and listened to him speak as in a dream. Without taking his cigar out of his mouth he told her again that she was unreasonable, that it was perfectly natural for her to have relations with her husband, and that he couldn’t really think of getting angry about it. But to avow a lover when it wasn’t true! And he kept coming back to that, to the one thing he couldn’t understand, the one thing that seemed really monstrous to him. He spoke of the “wild imaginations” of women.
“You’re a bit cracked, my dear, you ought to have your head examined.”
In the end curiosity made him ask, “But why M. de Saffré rather than someone else?”
“He’s been after me,” Renée said.
Maxime checked himself as he was about to make an impertinent remark: he’d been on the point of saying that if she’d waited a month, she’d probably have been right in naming M. de Saffré as her lover. But he satisfied himself with a wicked smile at this nasty thought, tossed his cigar into the fire, and sat down at the other end of the hearth. He talked reason and hinted that they ought to remain good friends. The young woman’s fixed stare rather embarrassed him, though. He d
idn’t dare announce his marriage to her now. She contemplated him for a good long while through eyes still swollen from tears. Although she found him wretched, narrow, and contemptible, she loved him still, as tenderly as she loved her daintiest lace. He looked pretty in the light of the candelabra sitting on the edge of the hearth alongside him. When he threw back his head, the light from the candles gilded his hair and imparted to the soft down of his cheeks a charming auburn glow.
“I really must be going,” he said several times.
He had made up his mind not to stay. Renée wouldn’t have wanted him to in any case. Both were thinking, both had said that they were now nothing more than good friends. When Maxime finally shook the young woman’s hand and was about to leave the room, she stopped him for a moment and spoke to him about his father, whom she praised lavishly. “I feel too much remorse, you see. I’m glad this happened. . . . You don’t know your father. I’ve been surprised to discover how kind he is, how unselfish. The poor man has a lot to worry about right now.”
Maxime stared at the toes of his boots with an embarrassed look and said nothing. She persisted. “As long as he stayed out of my room, I didn’t care. But then. . . . When I saw him here, affectionate, bringing me money that he must have scraped together all over Paris, ruining himself for me without complaint, I felt ill. . . . If you only knew how carefully he has kept an eye on my interests.”
The young man walked softly back toward the fireplace and leaned against it. He was still embarrassed, his head bowed, yet a smile had begun to curl his lips.
“Yes,” he muttered, “my father is very clever when it comes to keeping an eye on people’s interests.”
The tone of his voice surprised Renée. She looked at him, and he, as if to defend himself, said, “Oh, what do I know? . . . I’m just saying that my father is a shrewd man.”
“You would be wrong to speak ill of him,” she continued. “Your judgment is obviously rather superficial. . . . If I told you his troubles, if I repeated to you what he confided to me just this evening, you’d see that people are wrong about him when they say that money is all he cares about.”
Maxime could not suppress a shrug. He interrupted his stepmother with an ironical laugh.
“Believe me, I know him, I know him quite well. . . . He must have told you some awfully good stories. Tell me what he said.”
His mocking tone wounded her. So she praised her husband all the more, said that he was a great man, and discussed the Charonne business—all those shady maneuvers of which she had understood nothing—as if Saccard had rescued her from some catastrophe, thereby revealing his intelligence and kindness. She added that she would be signing the purchase-and-sale agreement the next day and that if it really did end in disaster, she would accept that disaster as punishment for her sins. Maxime let her talk, snickering and stealing glances at her as she spoke. Then in a half-whisper he said, “Yes, indeed, that’s exactly right.”
Then he placed his hand on Renée’s shoulder and said in a somewhat louder voice, “Thank you, my dear, but I knew that story already. . . . You really are a soft touch.”
Once again he made a move as if to leave. He was itching to tell all. She had irritated him with her praise of her husband, and he forgot that he had promised himself that he would avoid unpleasantness by biting his tongue.
“What! What do you mean?” she asked.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, what I mean is that my father has been pulling the wool over your eyes as neatly as can be. . . . I feel sorry for you. You’re such a simpleton.”
Then he told her in his cowardly, cunning way what he had heard at Laure’s, taking secret pleasure at wallowing in such vileness. In his eyes he was inflicting revenge for whatever vague insult he had suffered. His crass character took rapturous delight in slander of this sort, in cruel gossip overheard from behind a curtain. He spared Renée nothing: neither the money her husband had lent her at usurious rates nor the sum he intended to steal from her with the help of ridiculous fairy tales fit only for putting children to sleep. Renée listened, looking quite livid, her lips pinched. Standing in front of the fireplace, she bowed her head slightly and gazed at the fire. Her night-dress, the chemise that Maxime had warmed at the hearth, fell open, revealing a whiteness as motionless as a statue.
“I’m telling you all this,” Maxime concluded, “so that you don’t look like a fool. . . . But you would be wrong to hold a grudge against my father. He’s not mean. He has his faults, just like everybody else. . . . Till tomorrow, eh?”
He made a move toward the door. With a brusque motion Renée stopped him.
“Stay!” she imperiously commanded.
Then she seized him, drew him toward her, and practically sat him on her lap in front of the fire, whereupon she kissed him on the lips, saying, “What would be the point of holding back now? . . . You have no idea, do you? that since yesterday when you tried to break off with me, I’ve been out of my mind. I’ve been like an imbecile. Tonight, at the ball, I was in a fog. Because I can’t live without you. When you leave, I’m done for. . . . Don’t laugh, I’m telling you how I feel.”
She looked at him with infinite longing, as if she hadn’t seen him for ages.
“You hit on the right word: I was a simpleton. Your father could have made me see stars in broad daylight today. What did I know? While he was telling me his fairy tale, all I heard was a loud hum, and I was so overwhelmed that if he’d wanted, he could have made me get down on my knees to sign his silly papers. And I thought I was feeling remorse! . . . Yes, I was that big a fool.”
She burst out laughing, and glimmers of madness shone in her eyes. Holding her lover even tighter than before, she continued. “Have we sinned, you and I? We love each other, and we’ve enjoyed each other just as we pleased. Everybody’s like that nowadays, aren’t they? . . . Your father seldom holds back. He loves money and takes it where he finds it. He’s right, it sets my mind at ease. . . . So I won’t sign anything, and you’ll come back night after night. I was afraid you wouldn’t want to anymore, you know, because of what I told you. . . . But since you don’t care. . . . In any case, I’ll close my door to him now. You see that, don’t you?”
She got up and lit the nightlight. Maxime hesitated, suddenly plunged into despair. He’d been a fool, he realized, and he came down hard on himself for having said too much. How could he announce his marriage now? It was his own fault. He had broken it off, there had been no need to return to the bedroom and above all no need to prove to Renée that her husband was swindling her. What made him even angrier with himself was that he was no longer sure what emotion he’d just given in to. But if he considered even for a moment being brutal a second time and walking out, the sight of Renée as she let her slippers fall filled him with invincible cowardice. He was afraid. He stayed.
The next day, when Saccard came for his wife’s signature on the purchase-and-sale agreement, she calmly told him that she had thought it over and changed her mind. Beyond that she gave no hint of her reasons. She had sworn to bite her tongue, since she had no wish to make trouble for herself and was eager to enjoy the resumption of her affair in peace. The Charonne business would have to play itself out. Her refusal to sign was a simple act of vengeance. About the rest she couldn’t have cared less. Saccard came close to losing his temper. His whole dream was collapsing around him. His other schemes were going from bad to worse. He was coming to the end of his tether, and only a miraculous balancing act kept him on his feet. That very morning he hadn’t been able to pay what he owed the baker, yet he was still planning a splendid party for Mid-Lent Thursday. Renée’s refusal made him feel the white rage of a man in his prime prevented from going about his business by the whim of a child. With the purchase-and-sale agreement in his pocket, he had planned to raise cash while awaiting payment of the indemnity. Later, when he had calmed down a little and his mind had cleared, he found his wife’s sudden change of mind puzzling. Surely she had taken advice from someone. He sus
pected a lover. His suspicions were so keen, in fact, that he hastened to his sister’s to question her, to find out if she knew anything about Renée’s secret life. Sidonie was full of spleen. She had not forgiven her sister-in-law for her refusal to see M. de Saffré. So when she grasped from her brother’s questions that he was accusing his wife of having a lover, she blurted out that she was certain of it and offered to spy on “the turtledoves” herself. She’d show that stuck-up sister-in-law of hers what kind of woman she was dealing with. As a rule Saccard did not seek to know disagreeable truths. But now his interests were at stake, and nothing else could have forced him to open eyes he otherwise kept discreetly shut. He accepted his sister’s offer.
“Go on now, rest easy, I’ll find out everything there is to know,” she told him in a voice full of compassion. “Oh, my poor brother, Angèle would never have betrayed you! A husband so good, so generous! These Parisian dolls have no heart. . . . And to think that I’ve always been there for her with good advice.”
6
On Mid-Lent Thursday the Saccards held a costume ball. The centerpiece of the evening was to be a tableau vivant entitled “The Amours of Handsome Narcissus and the Nymph Echo,” which the ladies planned to stage in three scenes. The author, M. Hupel de la Noue, had been traveling back and forth from his prefecture to the Parc Monceau mansion to oversee the rehearsals and give advice about the costumes. His first thought had been to compose his work in verse, but he subsequently decided in favor of a tableau vivant. It was a nobler genre, he said, and closer to the classical ideal of beauty.
The ladies had no rest. Some of them were required to make no fewer than three costume changes. There were endless conferences, over which the prefect presided. The character of Narcissus1 was discussed at length. Would he be represented by a man or a woman? Finally it was decided at Renée’s insistence that the role would be given to Maxime. But he would be the only man in the production, and Mme de Lauwerens said that even then she would never have agreed to it if “little Maxime didn’t look so much like a real girl.” Renée was to play the nymph Echo. The question of costumes was far more complicated. Maxime eagerly assisted the prefect, who found himself exhausted by nine women whose extravagant imaginations seriously threatened to compromise his work’s purity of outline. Had he listened to them, his Olympus would have worn powder. Mme d’Espanet absolutely insisted on wearing a floor-length gown to hide her feet, which were rather large, while Mme Haffner had visions of herself in an animal hide. M. Hupel de la Noue was full of energy. Once, anger even got the better of him. If he had given up verse, he said, he was convinced that it was only to write his poem “with deftly arranged fabrics and poses chosen for their exquisite beauty.”