Saccard was angry that no one was paying attention to Toutin-Laroche. To show that he had been listening, he said, “The municipal bond issue—”
But M. Toutin-Laroche was not a man to lose the thread of an idea. “Gentlemen,” he continued when the laughter subsided, “yesterday was a great consolation to those of us whose administration has been the butt of so many scurrilous attacks. They say that the city council has led Paris to ruin, but as you see, the moment the city floats a bond issue, everybody comes to us with money, even those who rail against us.”
“You’ve worked miracles,” Saccard said. “Paris has become the capital of the world.”
“Yes, it’s truly astounding,” Hupel de la Noue interrupted. “Just imagine, I’m a Parisian from way back, and I no longer know my way around my own city. Yesterday I got lost going from the Hôtel de Ville to Luxembourg.15 It’s astounding, astounding!”
Silence followed. All the serious men were listening now.
“The transformation of Paris,” Toutin-Laroche continued, “will be the glory of the Emperor’s reign. People are ungrateful: they ought to kiss his feet. I said as much to the council just this morning, when we were discussing the huge success of the bond issue. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘let those loudmouths in the opposition say what they will: to turn Paris over, as it were, is to make the city fertile.’ ”
Saccard shut his eyes and smiled, as if to savor the finesse of the phrase all the more. He leaned over behind Mme d’Espanet and made a comment to Hupel de la Noue in a voice loud enough to be heard: “What a delightful wit.”
Now that the talk had turned to construction projects in Paris, the worthy Charrier was craning his neck as if to take part in the conversation. His partner Mignon was fully taken up with Mme Sidonie, who was keeping him quite busy. Since the beginning of the dinner Saccard had been watching the contractors out of the corner of his eye.
“The government,” he said, “is fortunate to have found such dedicated partners. Everyone was eager to contribute to such a grand design. Without the aid of well-endowed companies, the city would never have been able to accomplish so much in so short a time.”
Then he turned and in a flatteringly direct way added, “Messieurs Mignon and Charrier know a thing or two about it, for they had their share in the toil and will have their share of the glory.”
The former bricklayers, now both men of means, naïvely swelled with pride at this blunt comment. Mignon had been listening to Sidonie’s simpering: “Oh, sir, you flatter me. No, pink would be too young for me—” But now he left her hanging in midsentence to respond to Saccard.
“You’re too kind. We were just going about our business, that’s all.”
Charrier was more polished. While finishing his glass of Pommard, he managed to come up with a phrase: “The renewal of Paris has been the lifeblood of the working man.”
“To which,” Toutin-Laroche replied, “one must add that it’s given a magnificent boost to banking and industry as well.”
“And don’t forget the artistic side: the new avenues are majestic,” added Hupel de la Noue, who prided himself on having taste.
“Yes, yes, it’s been a fine undertaking,” murmured M. de Mareuil, so as to say something.
“As for the expense,” gravely declared the deputy Haffner, who never opened his mouth except on great occasions, “our children will pay for it, as is only right.”
As he said this, he happened to be looking at M. de Saffré, from whom the pretty Mme Michelin seemed to have turned away a moment earlier, so that the young secretary, in order to appear to have been following what people were saying, repeated, “As is only right, indeed.”
All of the serious men in the group at the center of the table had now had their say. M. Michelin, the head of the road department, smiled and nodded. This was his usual way of taking part in a conversation. He had smiles to greet, to respond, to approve, to thank, and to bid farewell, a whole collection of lovely smiles that virtually dispensed him from ever having to utter a word, for he no doubt judged it both more polite and more beneficial to his career to hold his tongue.
Another personage had also remained silent: Baron Gouraud, who chewed his cud slowly, like a heavy-lidded ox. Until that moment he had seemed wholly absorbed in the spectacle of his plate. Renée, who had made a great fuss over him, had obtained nothing more than faint grunts of satisfaction for her pains. So it came as a surprise when he raised his head, wiped his fat lips, and said, “As a landlord, when I renovate and decorate an apartment, I raise the rent.”
It was Haffner’s remark—“Our children will pay”—that had roused the senator. As everyone clapped discreetly, M. de Saffré exclaimed, “Oh, charming, charming! I’ll send that one to the newspapers tomorrow.”
“You’re right, gentlemen,” Mignon interjected, as if to round out the conversation while everyone was still smiling and murmuring appreciatively over the baron’s remark. “These are good times. I know more than one fellow who’s added a tidy sum to his nest egg. When you’re making money, you know, everything looks good.”
These last words cast an icy chill over the grave men at the center of the table. The conversation came to an abrupt halt, and neighbor avoided looking at neighbor. It was as though the former bricklayer, in trying to pay these very serious gentlemen a compliment, had dropped a ton of bricks on them. Michelin, who had as a matter of fact been contemplating Saccard in a most pleasant manner, stopped smiling, terrified at the thought that he might have seemed for a moment to take the contractor’s words as applying to their host. Saccard himself glanced at Mme Sidonie, who again turned her full attention to Mignon: “So you like pink, do you?” He then complimented Mme d’Espanet at length. The young woman’s dark, sly face almost touched her milky white shoulders, which she threw back slightly as she laughed.
When the time for dessert arrived, the footmen picked up their pace. There was a pause while the table was heaped with fruits and sweets. At Maxime’s end, the laughter grew brighter. Louise’s rather shrill voice could be heard: “I assure you that Sylvia was wearing a blue satin dress when she played Dindonette.” To which another high-pitched voice added, “Yes, but the dress was trimmed with white lace.” Warmth suffused the room. The faces of the guests, now somewhat flushed, seemed softened by some inner bliss. Two footmen went around the table pouring Alicante and Tokay.16
From the moment dinner began Renée had seemed distracted. She had done her duty as mistress of the house with a mechanical smile. With each gale of merriment from the end of the table where Maxime and Louise were sitting side by side and bantering like old friends, she glared in their direction. She was bored. The serious men were deadly. Mme d’Espanet and Mme Haffner shot desperate glances in her direction.
“How do things look for the upcoming elections?” Saccard abruptly asked Hupel de la Noue.
“Very good,” came the answer from the prefect, who coupled it with a smile. “Only I still have no candidates designated for my département. The ministry apparently hasn’t made up its mind.”
M. de Mareuil, who had glanced at Saccard to thank him for broaching this subject, looked as though he was walking on hot coals. He blushed slightly and waved his hands with some embarrassment. The prefect, turning now to address him, continued: “Many people in the district have spoken to me about you, sir. Your large estates in the region have won you many friends, and your devotion to the Emperor is well-known. Your prospects are excellent.”
At that moment Maxime shouted to his father from his end of the table. “Papa, isn’t it true that little Sylvia used to sell cigarettes in Marseilles in 1849?”
But Saccard pretended not to hear him, so the young man continued in a lower tone of voice: “My father was a particular friend of hers.”
Muffled laughs were heard. Meanwhile, as M. de Mareuil continued to wave his hands, M. Haffner began to speak in a sententious tone. “Devotion to the Emperor is the only virtue, the only form of patriotism, in
this age of self-interested democracy. Whoever loves the Emperor loves France. We would welcome you as a colleague, sir, with sincere pleasure.”
“You will win, sir,” Toutin-Laroche put in. “Men of substantial wealth have to rally round the throne.”
Renée could stand no more. Across from her, the marquise stifled a yawn. As Saccard was about to hold forth once again, she interrupted. “Please, dear, show us a little pity,” she said with a pretty smile. “Enough of your wretched politics.”
At that point, M. Hupel de la Noue, displaying a gallantry befitting a prefect, exclaimed that the ladies were absolutely right and launched into an indecent story about something that had happened in the capital of his district. The marquise, Mme Haffner, and the other ladies laughed uproariously at certain details. The prefect told the story in a most titillating way, with winks and nudges and inflections of his voice that imparted a very nasty connotation to the most innocuous of words. The talk then turned to the duchess’s first Tuesday, to a farce that had been performed the night before, to the death of a poet, and to the last races of the autumn season. M. Toutin-Laroche, who could be pleasant when he chose, compared the women to roses, and M. de Mareuil, still in a tizzy about his electoral prospects, came up with profound things to say about the new shape of hats. Renée’s mind continued to wander.
Meanwhile the guests had stopped eating. A hot wind seemed to have grazed the table, clouding the glasses, leaving the bread in crumbs, darkening the skins of the fruits on their plates, and disrupting the pleasing symmetry of the settings. The flowers spilling out of the great cornucopias of chased silver wilted. And for a moment, the guests, staring vacantly at what was left of dessert, forgot themselves and remained seated, lacking the heart to get up. Leaning on one elbow, they sat with the blank faces and vague lassitude of fashionable people whose drunkenness takes a measured and respectable form, who get sloshed one sip at a time. The laughs had subsided, and talk had become rare. Having drunk and eaten a good deal, the group of bemedaled gentlemen seemed graver than ever. In the heavy air of the dining room, the ladies felt their foreheads and the backs of their necks grow moist. Waiting to move into the drawing room, they seemed serious and a little pale, as though they felt a bit faint. Mme d’Espanet had turned quite pink, while Mme Haffner’s shoulders had taken on a waxy white sheen. Meanwhile, M. Hupel de la Noue examined the handle of a knife; M. Toutin-Laroche continued to spit fragmentary comments at M. Haffner, who received them with much nodding of his head; M. de Mareuil stared dreamily at M. Michelin, who returned the look with an arch smile. As for the delectable Mme Michelin, she had long since stopped talking. Looking quite flushed, she had allowed one of her hands to dangle beneath the tablecloth, where M. de Saffré was no doubt holding it in his as he leaned awkwardly against the table’s edge, his eyebrows knit with the grimace of a man solving a problem in algebra. Mme Sidonie had also made a conquest. Mignon and Charrier, both leaning on their elbows and facing her, seemed delighted to share her confidences. She confessed that she adored dairy products and was afraid of ghosts. And Aristide Saccard himself, eyes half-closed, reveled in the smug satisfaction of a host confident of having properly lubricated his guests and gave no thought to leaving the table. With a respectfully affectionate eye he contemplated Baron Gouraud, who was ponderously digesting his dinner while his right hand lay splayed across the white tablecloth— the hand of a sensual old man, small, thick-fingered, discolored by purple blotches, and covered with red hair.
Renée mechanically finished off the few drops of Tokay that remained in the bottom of her glass. Her face tingled. The short, pale hairs on her forehead and the back of her neck stood out in unruly display as if moistened by a humid breeze. Her lips and nose were pinched by nervous tension, and her face was as expressionless as that of a child who has drunk undiluted wine. If her mind had been filled with nice bourgeois thoughts while staring into the shadows of the Parc Monceau, those thoughts were now drowned out by the excitement induced by the food, wine, and light and the stimuli of unsettling surroundings rife with warm exhalations and raucous laughter. She was no longer exchanging quiet smiles with her sister Christine and Aunt Elisabeth—both modest, self-effacing women not much given to talk. With a sharp glance she had forced poor M. de Mussy to lower his eyes. Though still apparently lost in thought, she leaned against the back of her chair, causing the satin of her bodice to crinkle softly, and although she avoided turning toward the corner of the table where Maxime and Louise continued to banter as loudly as ever despite the waning buzz of conversation, her shoulders quivered imperceptibly with each fresh burst of laughter from their direction.
And behind her, at the edge of the darkness, his tall silhouette looming large over the chaotic table and drowsy guests, stood Baptiste, his flesh pallid and his face grave, with the disdainful attitude of a lackey who has just fed his masters their fill. In the drunken atmosphere suffused with garish light from the chandelier, which cast a yellow pall over everything, he alone maintained his aplomb, with his silver chain around his neck, his cold eyes in which the bare shoulders of the women kindled no flame, and his air of a eunuch serving Parisians of the decadent era without forfeiting his dignity.
At last Renée rose uneasily to her feet. Everyone else followed suit. The guests adjourned to the drawing room, where coffee was served.
The main salon was a long vast room, a sort of gallery extending from one pavilion to the other and occupying the entire façade on the garden side. A wide French door opened onto the terrace. The gallery was resplendent with gold. The ceiling, slightly arched, was decorated with whimsical scrolls wound around huge gilt medallions that gleamed like shields. Splendid rosettes and garlands lined the edge of the arch. Sprays of gold, like jets of molten metal, ran along the walls, framing the panels, which were covered with red silk. Plaited stems topped by bouquets of rose blossoms hung beside mirrors. An Aubusson carpet covering the parquet showed off its purple flowers. The damasked red silk upholstery, door curtains, and drapes; the enormous rockwork clock on the fireplace; the Chinese vases on their consoles; the feet of the two long tables embellished with Florentine mosaics; and even the jardinières in the embrasures next to the windows—all of these things sweated and dripped with gold. In the four corners of the room, four large lamps stood on pedestals of red marble from which chains of gilded bronze were draped with symmetrical grace. And from the ceiling hung three crystal chandeliers, shedding droplets of blue and pink light whose ardent glow set all the gold in the salon ablaze.
The men soon withdrew to the smoking room. M. de Mussy came over and in a familiar way took Maxime by the arm. He had known the boy at school, even though he was six years older. Mussy led his younger schoolmate out onto the terrace and after both had lit cigars began to complain bitterly about Renée.
“So tell me, what’s got into her? I saw her yesterday, and she was delightful. But today she’s treating me as though it were all over between us. What crime could I have committed? It would be awfully nice of you, my dear Maxime, if you’d ask her what’s the matter and tell her how much she’s making me suffer.”
“Oh, no, not that! Never!” Maxime replied with a laugh. “Renée has a case of nerves, and I’m not keen to bear the brunt of her wrath. Figure it out for yourself, and take care of your own business.”
After slowly exhaling the smoke from his Havana cigar, he finished his thought. “That’s a fine role you’d have me play!”
Mussy professed his warm friendship for Maxime, however, and told the younger man that he was only waiting for an opportunity to prove his devotion to him. He loved Renée so much, he said, that it was making him miserable.
“All right, then,” Maxime finally gave in. “Have it your way. I’ll speak to her. But I promise you nothing. She’s certain to turn me away.”
They returned to the smoking room and stretched out in big lounging chairs. For the next half hour, Mussy poured out his woes to Maxime. For the tenth time he told the young man how
he had fallen in love with his stepmother and how she had been kind enough to single him out. And Maxime, while finishing off his cigar, offered him advice, explained Renée to him, and pointed out how he ought to behave if he wanted to dominate her.
Meanwhile, Saccard came in and sat down a short distance away from the two young men, so Mussy remained silent, and Maxime ended by saying, “If I were in your shoes, I’d treat her in a most cavalier manner. She likes that.”
The smoking room, located at one end of the drawing room, occupied the round space formed by one of the turrets. Its style was very rich and very sober. Hung with imitation cordovan leather, it had drapes and door curtains of Algerian inspiration, while the rug was a pile carpet with a Persian pattern. The furniture, with its tawny-colored shagreen upholstery, consisted of ottomans, armchairs, and a circular sofa that occupied a portion of the wall’s circumference. The small chandelier, the decorative items displayed on a pedestal table, and the fire irons were of light green Florentine bronze.
Only a few young people and pasty-faced old men who loathed tobacco remained with the ladies. In the smoking room the men laughed and joked quite freely. M. Hupel de la Noue greatly amused the company by repeating the same story he had told at dinner but with all the truly vulgar details restored. This was his specialty: he always had two versions of every anecdote, one for the ladies, the other for the men. When Aristide Saccard came in, he was immediately surrounded and heaped with compliments, and when he pretended not to understand, M. de Saffré explained, in words that garnered considerable applause, that he, Saccard, had done his country a great service by preventing the beautiful Laure d’Aurigny from going over to the English.