Complete Works of Emile Zola (234 page)

Night was falling. She had not allowed Céleste to light the lamp. The fire alone shed a great red glow that lighted her up fully, outstretched in her white peignoir, whose lace was assuming rose tints. At the edge of the shadow one could just see a corner of Mme. Sidonie’s black dress, and her two crossed hands, covered with gray cotton gloves. Her soft voice emerged from the darkness.

“Money-troubles again?” she asked, as though she had said troubles of the heart, in a voice full of gentleness and compassion.

Renée lowered her eyelids and nodded assent.

“Ah! if my brothers would listen to me, we should all be rich. But they shrug their shoulders when I speak to them of that debt of three milliards, you know…. Still I have good hopes. For the last ten years I have been wanting to go across to England. I have so little time to spare!… At last I resolved to write to London, and I am waiting the reply.”

And as the younger woman smiled:

“I know you are an unbeliever yourself. Still you would be very pleased if I made you a present one of these days of a nice little million…. Look here, the story is quite simple: there was a Paris banker who lent the money to the son of the King of England, and as the banker died without direct heirs, the State is to-day entitled to claim payment of the debt with compound interest. I have worked it out, it comes to two milliards, nine hundred and forty-three millions, two hundred and ten thousand francs…. Never fear, it will come, it will come.”

“In the meantime,” said Renée, with a dash of irony, “I wish you would get some one to lend me a hundred thousand francs…. I could then pay my tailor, who is making himself a great nuisance.”

“A hundred thousand francs can be found,” replied Mme. Sidonie, tranquilly. “It is only a question of what you will give in exchange.”

The fire was glowing; Renée, still more languid, stretched out her legs, showed the tips of her slippers at the edge of her dressing-gown. The agent resumed her sympathetic voice:

“My poor dear, you are really not reasonable. I know many women, but I have never seen one so little careful of her health as you. That little Michelin, for instance, see how well she manages! I cannot help thinking of you whenever I see her in good health and spirits…. Do you know that M. de Saffré is madly in love with her, and that he has already given her close upon ten thousand francs’ worth of presents? I believe her dream is to have a house in the country.”

She grew excited, she fumbled in her pocket. “I have here again a letter from a poor young married woman…. If it was light enough, I would let you read it…. Just think, her husband takes no notice of her. She had accepted some bills, and was obliged to borrow the money from a gentleman I know. I went myself and rescued the bills from the bailiff’s clutches, and it was no easy matter…. Those poor children, do you think they do wrong? I receive them at my place as though they were my son and daughter.”

“Do you know anyone who would lend me the money?” asked Renée, casually.

“I know a dozen…. You are too kind-hearted. One can say anything between women, can’t one? and it’s not because your husband is my brother that I would excuse him for running after the hussies and leaving a love of a woman like you to mope at the fireside…. That Laure d’Aurigny costs him heaps and heaps. I should not be surprised to hear that he had refused you money. He has refused you, has he not?… Oh, the wretch!”

Renée listened complacently to this mellifluous voice, that issued from the shadow like the echo, vague as yet, of her own dreams. With eyelids half-closed, lying almost at length in her easy-chair, she was no longer conscious of Mme. Sidonie’s presence, she thought she was dreaming of evil thoughts that came to her and tempted her very gently. The business-woman kept up a long prattle like the monotonous flow of tepid water.

“It is Mme. de Lauwerens who has marred your life. You never would believe me. Ah! you wouldn’t be reduced to crying in your chimney-corner, if you hadn’t mistrusted me…. And I love you like my eyes, you beautiful thing. What a bewitching foot you have. You will laugh at me, but I must tell you how silly I am: when I have gone three days without seeing you, I feel absolutely obliged to come and admire you; yes, I feel I want something; I feel the need of feasting my eyes on your lovely hair, your face, so white, so delicate, your slender figure…. Really I have never seen such a figure.”

Renée ended by smiling. Her lovers themselves did not display such warmth, such rapt ecstasy, in speaking to her of her beauty. Mme. Sidonie observed the smile.

“Well then, it’s agreed,” she said, rising briskly…. “I run on and on, and forget that I am making your head split…. You will come to-morrow, will you not? We will talk of money, we will look about for a lender…. Understand, I want you to be happy.”

Still motionless, enervated by the heat, Renée replied, after a pause, as though it had cost her a laborious effort to understand what was being said to her:

“Yes, I will come, that’s agreed, and we will talk; but not to-morrow…. Worms will be satisfied with an installment. When he worries me again, we will see…. Don’t talk to me of all that any more. My head is shattered with business.”

Mme. Sidonie seemed very much vexed. She was on the point of sitting down again, of resuming her caressing monologue; but Renée’s weary attitude decided her to postpone her attack until later. She drew a handful of papers from her pocket, and searched among them until she found an article enclosed in a sort of pink box.

“I came to recommend to you a new soap,” she said, resuming her business voice. “I take a great interest in the inventor, who is a charming young man. It is a very soft soap, very good for the skin. You will try it, won’t you? and talk of it to your friends… I will leave it here, on the mantel-piece.”

She had reached the door, when she returned once more, and standing erect in the crimson glow of the fire, with her waxen face, she began to sing the praises of an elastic belt, an invention intended to take the place of corsets.

“It gives you a waist absolutely round, a genuine wasp’s waist,” she said….”I saved it from bankruptcy. When you come you can try on the samples if you like…. I had to run after the lawyers for a week. The documents are in my pocket, and I am going straight to my bailiff now to put a stop to a final opposition…. Good-bye for the present, darling. You know, I shall expect you: I want to dry those pretty eyes of yours.”

She glided out of sight. Renée did not even hear her close the door. She stayed there before the expiring fire, continuing her dream of the whole day, her head full of dancing numerals, hearing the voices of Saccard and of Madame Sidonie talking in the distance, offering her large sums of money, in the voice in which an auctioneer puts up a lot of furniture. She felt her husband’s coarse kiss on her neck, and when she turned round, she fancied the woman of business was at her feet, making passionate speeches to her, praising her perfections, and begging for an assignation with the attitude of a lover on the verge of despair. This made her smile. The heat of the room became more and more stifling. And Renée’s stupor, the fantastic dreams she had, were no more than a light slumber. An artificial slumber, in the depths of which constantly recurred to her the little private room on the boulevard, the large sofa upon which she had fallen on her knees. She no longer suffered in the least. When she opened her eyes, Maxime’s image passed through the crimson firelight.

The next day, at the ministry ball, the beautiful Madame Saccard was wondrous. Worms had accepted the fifty thousand francs on account, and she emerged from her financial straits with the laughter of convalescence. When she traversed the reception rooms in her great dress of rose faille with its long Louis XIV train, edged with deep white lace, there was a murmur, men jostled each other to see her. And those who were her friends bowed low, with a discreet smile of appreciation, doing homage to those beautiful shoulders, so well known to all official Paris and looked upon as the firm pillars of the Empire. She had bared her bosom with so great a contempt for the looks of others, she walked so serene and gentle in her nakedness, that it almost ceased to be indecent. Eugène Rougon, the great politician, felt that this nude bosom was even more eloquent than his speeches in the Chamber, softer and more persuasive in making people relish the charms of the reign and in convincing the doubtful. He went up to his sister-in-law to compliment her on her happy stroke of audacity in lowering her bodice yet another inch. Almost all the Corps Législatif was there, and from the air with which the deputies looked at the young married woman, the minister foresaw a fine success on the morrow in the delicate matter of the loans of the City of Paris. It was impossible to vote against a power that raised on the compost of millions a flower like this Renée, a so strange flower of voluptuousness, with silken flesh and statuesque nudity, a living joy that left behind it a fragrance of tepid pleasure. But what set the whole ball-room whispering was the necklace and aigrette. The men recognized the jewels. The women furtively called each other’s attention to them with a glance. Nothing else was talked of the whole evening. And the suite of reception rooms stretched away in the white light of the chandeliers, filled with a glittering throng like a medley of stars fallen into too confined a corner.

At about one o’clock Saccard disappeared. He relished his wife’s triumph as a successful piece of clap-trap. He had once more consolidated his credit. A matter of business required his presence at Laure d’Aurigny’s; he went off, and begged Maxime to take Renée home after the ball.

Maxime spent the evening staidly by the side of Louise de Mareuil, both very much taken up in saying shocking things about the women who passed to and fro. And when they had uttered some coarser piece of nonsense than usual, they stifled their laughter in their pocket-handkerchiefs. When Renée wished to leave, she had to come and ask the young man for his arm. In the carriage she showed a nervous gaiety; she still quivered with the intoxication of light, perfumes and sounds that she had just passed through. She seemed besides to have forgotten their “folly” of the boulevard, as Maxime called it. She only asked him, in a singular tone of voice:

“Is that little hunchback of a Louise so very amusing, then?”

“Oh, very amusing…” replied the young man, still laughing. “You saw the Duchess de Sternich with a yellow bird in her hair, didn’t you?… Well, Louise pretends that it’s a clock-work bird that flaps its wings every hour and cries, ‘Cuckoo! cuckoo!’ to the poor duke.”

Renée thought this pleasantry of the emancipated school-girl very entertaining. When they had reached home, as Maxime was about to take leave of her, she said to him:

“Are you not coming up? Céleste has no doubt got me something to eat.”

He came up in his usual compliant fashion. There was nothing to eat upstairs, and Céleste had gone to bed. Renée had to light the tapers in a little three-branched candlestick. Her hand trembled a little.

“That foolish creature,” she said, speaking of her maid, “must have misunderstood what I told her…. I shall never be able to undress myself all alone.”

She passed into her dressing-room. Maxime followed her, to tell her a fresh jest of Louise’s that recurred to his mind. He was as much at ease as though he had been loitering at a friend’s and was feeling for his cigar-case to light a Havannah. But when Renée had set down the candlestick, she turned round and fell into the young man’s arms, speechless and disquieting, gluing her mouth to his mouth.

Renée’s private apartment was a nest of silk and lace, a marvel of luxurious coquetry. A tiny boudoir led into the bedroom. The two rooms formed but one, or at least the boudoir was nothing more than the threshold of the bedroom, a large recess, furnished with long-chairs, and with a pair of hangings instead of a door. The walls of both rooms were hung with the same material, a heavy pale-gray silk, figured with huge bouquets of roses, white lilac, and buttercups. The curtains and door-hangings were of Venetian lace over a silk lining of alternate gray and pink bands. In the bedroom the white marble chimney-piece, of real jewel, displayed like a basket of flowers its incrustations of lapis lazuli and precious mosaic, repeating the roses, white lilac, and buttercups of the tapestry. A large gray-and-pink bed, whose woodwork was hidden beneath padding and upholstery, and whose head stood against the wall, filled quite one-half of the room with its flow of drapery, its lace and its silk figured with bouquets, falling from ceiling to carpet. As one should say a woman’s dress, rounded and slashed and decked with puffs and bows and flounces; and the large curtain, swelling out like a skirt, raised thoughts of some tall, amorous girl, leaning over, swooning, almost falling back upon the pillows. Beneath the curtains it was a sanctuary: cambric finely plaited, a snowy mass of lace, all sorts of delicate diaphanous things immersed in religious dimness. By the side of the bedstead, of this monument whose devout ampleness recalled a chapel decorated for some festival, the rest of the furniture subsiding into nothingness: low chairs, a cheval-glass six feet high, presses provided with innumerable drawers. Under foot, the carpet, blue-gray, was covered with pale full-blown roses. And on either side of the bed lay two great black bearskin rugs, edged with crimson velvet, with silver claws, and with their heads turned towards the window, gazing fixedly through their glass eyes at the empty sky.

Soft harmony, muffled silence reigned in this chamber. No shrill note, no metallic reflection, no bright gilding broke through the dreamy chant of pink and gray. Even the chimney ornaments, the frame of the mirror, the clock, the little candlesticks, were of old Sevres, and the mountings of copper-gilt were scarcely visible. Marvellous ornaments, the clock especially, with its ring of chubby Cupids, who climbed and leaned over the dial-plate like a troop of naked urchins mocking at the quick flight of time. This subdued luxury, these colours and ornaments which Renée’s taste had chosen soft and smiling, lent to the room a crepuscular light like that of an alcove with curtains drawn. The bed seemed to prolong itself till the room became one immense bed, with its carpets, its bearskin rugs, its padded seats, its stuffed hangings which continued the softness of the floor along the walls and up to the ceiling. And as in a bed, Renée left upon all these things the imprint, the warmth, the perfume of her body. When one drew aside the double hangings of the boudoir, it seemed as if one were raising a silken counterpane and entering some great couch, still warm and moist, where one found on the fine linen the adorable shape, the slumber and the dreams of a Parisian woman of thirty.