In the meantime, the minister took his leave. He apologized for not being able to stay long enough to compliment beautiful Mme Saccard on her exquisitely graceful portrayal of the nymph Echo. He had made three or four turns around the drawing room on his brother’s arm, shaking hands with some of the men and bowing to the ladies. Never before had he stuck his neck out quite so far for Saccard. He left his brother beaming on the doorstep after saying in a loud voice, “I’ll expect you tomorrow morning. Come have breakfast with me.”
The ball was about to begin. The servants had arranged chairs for the ladies along the walls. Now the entire length of the drawing-room carpet stood exposed from the small yellow salon all the way to the stage, and the big purple flowers in the carpet’s pattern seemed to open up as light dripped upon them from the crystal chandeliers above. The temperature rose, and reflections from the red draperies darkened the gold of the furniture and ceiling. Everyone was waiting for the ladies—the nymph Echo, Venus, Plutus, and the rest—to change their costumes so that the ball could get under way.
Mme d’Espanet and Mme Haffner were the first to appear. They had changed back into their costumes from the second tableau: one was dressed as Gold, the other as Silver. People gathered around and congratulated them, and they described their emotions.
“I nearly burst out laughing,” said the marquise, “when I saw M. Toutin-Laroche with his big nose out there gawking at me.”
“I think I’ve got a stiff neck,” drawled blonde Suzanne. “No, really, if it had lasted a minute longer, I would have shifted my head back to a more natural position, my neck was hurting so much.”
From the recess to which he had taken Mignon and Charrier, M. Hupel de la Noue cast worried glances at the group that had formed around the two young women. He was afraid they might be making fun of him. The other nymphs made their way down one by one. All had changed back into their costumes representing precious stones. Countess Wanska, dressed as Coral, was rated a stunning success when the guests were able to get a close look at the ingenious details of her gown. Then Maxime came in, impeccably attired in a dark frock coat and wearing a smile on his face. A torrent of women engulfed him, formed a circle around him, and teased him about his role as a flower and his passion for mirrors. And he, without a flicker of embarrassment, as if charmed by his character, continued to smile, responded to all the teasing comments, and admitted that he adored himself and had gotten over his weakness for women sufficiently that he now preferred himself to them. The laughter grew louder, and the group grew larger until it occupied the whole center of the drawing room, while the young man, lost amid this sea of shoulders, this chaos of dazzling costumes, retained a perfume of depraved love, the sweetness of a poisonous blossom.
When Renée finally came down, however, a partial hush fell over the room. She had put on a new costume of such novel grace and boldness that even though these ladies and gentlemen were accustomed to the young woman’s eccentricities, their first reaction was one of surprise. She was dressed as a Tahitian beauty. Tahitian attire is apparently quite primitive: skin-colored tights stretched from her feet to her breasts, leaving her arms and shoulders bare, and over the tights she wore a short, simple muslin blouse with two flounces that barely covered her hips. In her hair she wore a wreath of wildflowers, and gold ringlets around her ankles and wrists. And nothing else. She was naked. The tights had the suppleness of flesh beneath the translucent muslin. The pure outline of her nakedness, from her knees to her armpits, was only partially concealed by the flounces; with the slightest movement it once again became visible through the mesh of the lace. She made a lovely savage, a barbarous and voluptuous bawd barely hidden by a white haze, a wisp of ocean fog through which her entire body could be divined.
A rosy-cheeked Renée advanced at a rapid pace. Céleste had split the first pair of tights. Fortunately, the young woman had foreseen this eventuality and taken precautions. The torn tights had delayed her entrance. She seemed not to attach any importance to her triumph. Her hands were burning, and her eyes had a feverish gleam about them. She smiled, though, and responded briefly to the men who stopped her and complimented her on the purity of her poses in the tableaux vivants. In her wake she left a trail of dark frock coats stunned and charmed by the transparency of her muslin blouse. When she reached the group of women around Maxime, she provoked a series of sharp exclamations, and the marquise studied her from head to toe with a tender eye, whispering, “She has a lovely figure.”
Mme Michelin, whose belly dancer’s costume seemed terribly ponderous alongside this simple veil, pursed her lips, while Mme Sidonie, shriveled up inside her black magician’s robes, whispered in her ear, “If that isn’t the height of indecency, don’t you agree, my beauty?”
“I should say so!” the pretty brunette came out with at last. “M. Michelin would have a fit if I stripped down like that!”
“And he would be right,” the businesswoman concluded.
The serious men did not share this view, however. They were ecstatic despite their distance from the object of their admiration. M. Michelin, whose reaction had been seriously misjudged by his wife, went into raptures to gratify M. Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud, who were pleased no end by the sight of Renée. Saccard was roundly complimented on the perfection of his wife’s figure. He bowed and professed to be very deeply touched. The evening had turned out well for him, and but for the preoccupation that could be seen in his eyes whenever he happened to glance at his sister, he would have been perfectly happy.
“You know, she’s never shown us that much before,” Louise teasingly whispered in Maxime’s ear, indicating Renée with a quick glance.
And then, with an indecipherable smile, she added, “Not to me, at any rate.”
The young man looked at her with an anxious eye. But she continued to smile in an odd way, like a schoolboy pleased at having told a rather off-color joke.
The ball began. The stage used for the tableaux vivants had been pressed into service as a platform for a small orchestra in which brass dominated. Bugles and trumpets blasted their clear notes into the fantastic forest with the blue trees. The evening began with a quadrille, “Ah! il a des bottes, il a des bottes, Bastien!,” which was all the rage in dance halls at the time. The ladies danced. Polkas, waltzes, and mazurkas alternated with quadrilles. Whirling couples came and went all the way down the length of the gallery, leaping at the whip of the brass and swaying with the lullaby of the violins. This river of costumes—this torrent of women from every country and epoch— comprised a swirling tide of bright fabrics. The rhythm, after mixing these colors and sweeping them away in measured confusion, suddenly brought them back again, so that on certain strokes of the bow the same pink satin tunic or blue velvet bodice would reappear together with the same dark frock coat. Then another stroke of the bow or another blast of the trumpets would send the couples off again on yet another voyage around the drawing room, swaying like a boat adrift on the waves after the wind has broken it free from its mooring. And again, without stopping, for hours on end. Occasionally, between dances, one of the women would go over to a window, panting and gasping for a breath of cold air. Or a couple would relax on a love seat in the small buttercup salon or go out to the conservatory and stroll slowly along the paths. Beneath arbors of tropical vines, deep in the tepid shadows pierced by forte notes from the trumpets in quadrilles such as “Ohé! les p’tits agneaux” and “J’ai un pied qui r’mue,” women with listless smiles had vanished but for the hems of their skirts.
The dining room had been transformed into a buffet with sideboards along the walls and a long table laden with cold cuts in the middle, and when the doors were opened there was a push, a crush. A tall, handsome man who had timidly held on to his hat was thrown against the wall so violently that the unfortunate hat caved in with a dull crack. That made everyone laugh. The guests swooped down on the pastries and truffled fowl, and the servants did not know which of this gang of well-bred gentlemen to serve fi
rst, since all had their hands out, baring their fear of getting to the food too late and finding the platters empty. An elderly gentleman became angry because there was no Bordeaux, and champagne, he insisted, would keep him from sleeping.
“Easy, gentlemen, easy,” said Baptiste in a grave tone of voice. “There will be enough for everyone.”
But nobody was listening. The dining room was full, and worried black coats were standing on tiptoes at the door. Groups had gathered around the sideboards, where people were eating rapidly and squeezing close together. Many unable to lay hands on a glass of wine gulped down their food without drinking. By contrast, others drank while casting about without success for a crust of bread.
“Listen,” said M. Hupel de la Noue, whom Mignon and Charrier, tired of mythology, had dragged off to the buffet, “we won’t get anything unless we join forces. . . . It’s worse at the Tuileries, and I’ve had some experience there. . . . You see to the wine, I’ll take care of the meat.”
The prefect had his eye on a leg of lamb. At just the right moment he reached through an opening in the sea of shoulders and calmly claimed his prize, having already stuffed his pockets with rolls. The contractors also returned, Mignon with one bottle of champagne and Charrier with two, but they’d only been able to get hold of two glasses. This didn’t matter, however, because they would be glad, they said, to drink from the same glass. The three men dined together off the corner of a jardinière at the end of the room. They did not even take off their gloves but inserted slices of lamb into the rolls while keeping the champagne bottles tucked safely under their arms. And, standing up, they chatted with their mouths full, jutting out their jaws so that the juice would fall on the carpet rather than on their coats.
Charrier, having finished his wine before his bread, asked a servant if he could have a glass of champagne.
“You’ll have to wait, sir,” the alarmed servant angrily replied, losing his head and forgetting that he was not in the kitchen. “Three hundred bottles have been drunk already.”
Meanwhile, the voices of the orchestra grew louder, erupting in sudden squalls of sound. People were dancing the polka known as “Baisers,” or “Kisses,” a favorite of the dance halls, in which each male dancer was expected to mark the rhythm by kissing his partner on the beat. Mme d’Espanet appeared at the door of the dining room, flushed and rather disheveled, trailing her long silver gown behind her with charming weariness. Since people barely moved out of her way, she was obliged to use her elbow to clear a path for herself. She made her way around the table, uncertain which dishes to choose, her lips expressing her hesitation with a pout. Then she went straight to M. Hupel de la Noue, who had finished eating and was wiping his mouth with his handkerchief.
“Would you be kind enough to find me a chair, sir?” she asked with an adorable smile. “I’ve been all around the table in vain.”
Although the prefect was annoyed with the marquise, his gallantry did not hesitate. He had soon found a chair and placed Mme d’Espanet in it, whereupon he stood behind it and served her. All she wanted was a few shrimp with a little butter and a splash of champagne. She ate daintily compared to the gluttony of the men. The table and chairs were reserved exclusively for the ladies, but an exception was always made for Baron Gouraud. He sat squarely in front of a block of pâté, slowly munching its crust. The marquise reestablished her dominion over the prefect by telling him that she would never forget the artistic emotions she had experienced in performing “The Amours of Handsome Narcissus and the Nymph Echo.” She even explained why they hadn’t waited for him in a way that consoled him completely: when the ladies learned that the minister had arrived, they had decided that it would be inappropriate to prolong the intermission. Eventually she asked him to go and rescue Mme Haffner, who was dancing with Mr. Simpson, a brute of a man, she said, whom she disliked. Once Suzanne had rejoined her, however, she paid no further attention to M. Hupel de la Noue.
Saccard, followed by MM Toutin-Laroche, de Mareuil, and Haffner, had taken possession of one of the sideboards. The table was full, and as M. de Saffré happened to pass by with Mme Michelin on his arm, he detained them and insisted that the pretty brunette share their food. She nibbled some pastry, smiled, and raised her bright eyes to take in the five men gathered around her. They leaned toward her, fingered her belly dancer’s veils woven of golden thread, and backed her up against the sideboard, so that in the end she was supporting herself against it as she took petits fours from the very gentle and caressing hands of all the gentlemen with the amorous docility of a slave among lords. At the other end of the room, M. Michelin was single-handedly finishing off a terrine of foie gras that he had managed to get hold of.
Meanwhile, Mme Sidonie, who had been roaming among the dancers since the first strokes of the violinists’ bows, had entered the dining room and was beckoning to Saccard with her eyes.
“She’s not dancing,” she whispered to him. “She seems anxious. I think she may try something rash. . . . But I haven’t been able to find out who the lucky fellow is yet. . . . I’m going to have something to eat and then go back to nosing about.”
She ate standing up, like a man, devouring a chicken wing that she got M. Michelin to serve her after he finished his pâté. She poured some Malaga into a large champagne glass. Then, after wiping her lips with her fingertips, she returned to the drawing room. The train of her magician’s robe already seemed to have picked up all the dust from the carpets.
The ball was languishing and the orchestra showing signs of flagging when a murmur raced through the room: “The cotillion, the cotillion!” This revived the dancers and the brass. Couples emerged from behind the shrubbery in the conservatory. The large drawing room filled up, as it had before the first quadrille, and as the crowd revived, so did the conversation. It was the ball’s final flicker. The men who weren’t dancing stared indulgently from the embrasures at the chatty group growing steadily in size in the middle of the room, while those still eating in the dining room craned their necks to see without putting down their bread.
“M. de Mussy won’t do it,” said one of the ladies. “He swears he’s done with conducting. . . . Please, M. de Mussy, just one more time. Do it for us, won’t you?”
But the young embassy attaché stood stiff-necked in his high starched collar turned town at the corners. It was really quite impossible; he had given his word. Disappointment greeted this refusal. Maxime also refused, saying that he was all worn out and couldn’t do it. M. Hupel de la Noue didn’t dare volunteer; poetry was as low as he would go. When one of the ladies mentioned Mr. Simpson, the others told her to hold her tongue. Mr. Simpson was the oddest cotillion leader one could imagine. Fantastic and nasty ideas were his specialty. In one drawing room where the guests had been incautious enough to choose him, he had forced the ladies to jump over chairs, and one of his favorite maneuvers was to make everybody get down on all fours and crawl around the room.
“Has M. de Saffré left?” asked a childlike voice.
He was just leaving, in fact he was saying good-bye to beautiful Mme Saccard, with whom he was on the best of terms now that she wanted nothing more to do with him. An amiable skeptic, Saffré admired unpredictability in others. The guests brought him back from the vestibule in triumph. He resisted and, smiling, said that he was a serious man and that they were putting him in an awkward position. But then, with so many white hands reaching out to him, he gave in and said, “Go now, take your places. . . . But I’m warning you, I’m from the old school. I haven’t two cents’ worth of imagination.”
The couples, using all the chairs they could find, arrayed themselves around the drawing room. Some of the young men even went to the conservatory in search of metal garden chairs. It was a monster cotillion. M. de Saffré, who wore the rapt expression of an officiating priest, chose as his partner Countess Wanska, whose Coral costume fascinated him. When everybody was in place, he stared for quite some time at the circle of skirts, each flanked by a dark frock
coat. Then he signaled the orchestra, and the brass rang out. Heads leaned forward along the smiling ribbon of faces.
Renée had refused to take part in the cotillion. She had seemed giddy from the moment the ball began, dancing hardly at all, mingling with various groups, and unable to remain in one place. Her friends found her mood odd. Earlier in the evening she had mentioned the possibility of going up in a balloon with a celebrated aeronaut who was the talk of Paris. When the cotillion began, she was irritated that she could no longer move freely about the room and stationed herself next to the door of the vestibule, where she shook hands with the men who were leaving and chatted with her husband’s close friends. Baron Gouraud, wrapped in a fur coat as he was carried out by a servant, managed to offer her one last compliment on her Tahitian costume.
Meanwhile, M. Toutin-Laroche shook Saccard’s hand.
“Maxime is counting on you,” said Saccard.
“Absolutely,” answered the new senator.
Then he turned toward Renée: “Madame, I haven’t congratulated you. . . . So the dear boy’s future is now assured.”
Since her smile expressed surprise, Saccard spoke up. “My wife doesn’t know yet. Tonight we settled the matter of Mlle de Mareuil’s wedding to Maxime.”
She kept on smiling and bowed to M. Toutin-Laroche, who left with these parting words: “You sign the contract on Sunday, do you not? I’m off to Nevers to see about some mines, but I’ll be back.”
For a moment she remained alone in the middle of the vestibule. She had stopped smiling, and the more she fathomed the enormity of what she had just heard, the more she shivered. She stared fixedly at the red velvet wall hangings, the rare plants, and the majolica pots, and then she said out loud, “I must speak to him.”