Complete Works of Emile Zola (238 page)

Saccard came down once or twice to see “the children.” He was overwhelmed with worry, he said. It was not until October, when they were all three back in Paris, that he thought seriously of effecting a reconciliation with his wife. The Charonne affair was ripening. His plan was a simple and a brutal one. He proposed to capture Renée by the same trick that he would have practised upon a strumpet. She was living amid an increasing need of money, and was too proud to apply to her husband save as a last resource. The latter resolved to take advantage of her first request for money to play the gallant, and to resume the long-severed relations in the delight brought about by the payment of some big debt.

Terrible embarrassments awaited Renée and Maxime in Paris. Several of the promissory notes made out to Larsonneau were overdue; but as Saccard naturally left them slumbering at the lawyer’s, they did not cause the young wife much uneasiness. She was far more alarmed by her debt to Worms, which now amounted to nearly two hundred thousand francs. The tailor insisted on a payment on account, and threatened to stop her credit. She shuddered keenly when she thought of the scandal of a law-suit, and above all of a quarrel with the illustrious dressmaker. Moreover, she was in need of pocket-money. They would be bored to death, Maxime and she, without a few louis a day to spend. The dear child was quite without resources since he had begun to rummage his father’s drawers in vain. His fidelity, his exemplary behaviour during the last seven or eight months, were largely due to the absolute emptiness of his purse. He rarely had twenty francs with which to take a poll out to supper. And so he philosophically returned to the house. Renée, on each of their escapades, handed him her purse so that he might pay at the restaurants, at the balls, and at the boulevard theatres. She continued to treat him as a mother; and she even paid, with the tips of her gloved fingers, at the pastry-cook’s, where they got out almost every afternoon to eat little oyster patties. In the morning he often found in his waistcoat a few louis which he did not know he had, and which she had put there, like a mother filling a schoolboy’s pockets. And to think that this charming life of odd snacks, of contented caprices and of facile pleasures was to cease! But a still greater dread came to terrify them. Sylvia’s jeweller, to whom Maxime owed ten thousand francs, grew angry and talked of Clichy. The costs had so accumulated on the acceptances which he held in hand and had long protested, that the debt had increased by some three or four thousand francs. Saccard plainly declared that he could do nothing. To have his son sent to Clichy would look well, and when he took him out he would make a great fuss about his paternal liberality. Renée was in despair; she beheld her dear child in prison, in a veritable dungeon, lying on damp straw. One night she seriously proposed to him not to leave her again, to live there unknown to everyone, and sheltered from the bailiff’s men. Then she swore she would find the money. She never spoke of the origin of the debt, of that Sylvia who confided her amours to the mirrors of private rooms. She wanted about fifty thousand francs, fifteen thousand for Maxime, thirty thousand for Worms, and five thousand for pocket-money. Then they would have a long fortnight’s happiness before them. She embarked on her campaign.

Her first idea was to ask her husband for the fifty thousand francs. She did not decide to do so without some repugnance. The last time he came to her room to bring her money, he had pressed fresh kisses on her neck, and had taken her hands and talked of his affection. Women have a very subtle sense that enables them to guess men’s feelings. And so she was prepared for a demand, for a tacit bargain clinched with a smile. And indeed, when she asked him for the fifty thousand francs, he protested, exclaimed that Larsonneau would never lend such an amount as that, that he himself was still too much embarrassed. Then, changing his voice, as though conquered and seized with sudden emotion:

“One can refuse you nothing,” he murmured. “I will trot about Paris and accomplish the impossible…. I want you to be happy, my dear.”

And putting his lips to her ear, kissing her hair, his voice trembling a little:

“I will bring it to you to-morrow evening, in your room… without any promissory note…”

But she interrupted hastily that she was in no hurry, that she did not want to trouble him to do that. Saccard, who had just thrown all his heart into that dangerous “without any promissory note,” which he had allowed to slip out and which he regretted, pretended not to have received a disagreeable rebuff. He rose, and said:

“Well, I am at your disposal… I will get the money for you when you want it. Larsonneau will have nothing to do with it, you know. It’s a present I want to make you.”

He smiled good-naturedly. Renée remained in a state of cruel anguish. She felt that she would lose the little equilibrium left her, if she gave herself to her husband. Her last pride was that she was married to the father but was the wife of the son alone. Often, when Maxime seemed cold to her, she endeavoured by very plain allusions to make him grasp this situation; it must be confessed that the young man, whom she expected to see fall at her feet after this revelation, remained perfectly indifferent, thinking doubtless that she was trying to reassure him as to the possibility of a meeting between his father and himself in the gray silk room.

When Saccard had left her, she impetuously dressed herself, and had the horses put to. While her brougham was conveying her to the Île Saint-Louis, she rehearsed the manner in which she would ask her father for the fifty thousand francs. She flung herself into this sudden idea without consenting to discuss it, feeling a great coward at heart, and seized with invincible fright at the thought of the step she was taking. When she arrived, the courtyard of the Hotel Béraud froze her with its dreary, cloistral dampness, and she felt a longing to run away as she climbed the broad stone staircase, on which her little high-heeled boots rang out ominously. She had been foolish enough in her hurry to choose a costume of feuillemort silk, with long flounces of white lace, trimmed with bows of satin, and cut crosswise by a plaited sash. This dress, which was finished off with a little flat toque with a large white veil, struck so singular a note in the dark gloom of the staircase that she herself became conscious of the strange figure she cut there. She trembled as she traversed the austere array of huge rooms, in which the vague figures of the tapestry seemed surprised at the sight of this flow of skirts passing through the twilight of their solitude.

She found her father in a drawing-room looking out upon the court-yard, where he habitually sat. He was reading a large book placed on a desk fastened to the arms of his chair. Before one of the windows sat Aunt Elisabeth knitting with long wooden needles; and in the silence of the room the tick-tack of those needles was the only sound heard.

Renée sat down, ill at ease, unable to move without disturbing the severity of the lofty ceiling with a noise of rustling silk. Her lace looked a crude white against the dark background of tapestry and old-fashioned furniture. M. Béraud du Châtel gazed at her with his hands resting on the edge of his reading-desk. Aunt Elisabeth spoke of the approaching wedding of Christine, who was about to marry the son of a very well-to-do attorney; she had gone shopping with an old family-servant; and the good aunt talked on all by herself, in her placid voice, knitting unceasingly, gossiping about her household affairs, and casting smiling glances at Renée over her spectacles.

But Renée became more and more uneasy. The silence of the whole house weighed upon her shoulders, and she would have given much for the lace of her dress to have been black. Her father’s look made her so uncomfortable that she considered Worms really ridiculous to have thought of such wide flounces.

“How smart you look, my girl!” said Aunt Elisabeth, suddenly. She had not even noticed her niece’s lace before.

She stopped her needles, and adjusted her spectacles, in order to see better. M. Béraud du Châtel gave a faint smile.

“It is rather white,” he said. “A woman must feel very uncomfortable in that on the pavements.”

“But, father, we don’t go out on foot!” cried Renée, who immediately regretted this ingenuous utterance.

The old man made as though to reply. Then he rose, drew up his tall stature, and walked slowly up and down, without giving his daughter another look. The latter remained quite pale with trepidation. Every time she exhorted herself to take courage, and sought a transition in order to lead up to her request for money, she felt a twitching at her heart.

“We never see you now, father,” she complained.

“Oh!” replied the aunt, without giving her brother time to open his lips, “your father never goes out, except very rarely to go to the Jardin des Plantes. And I have to grow angry with him before he will do that! He maintains that he loses himself in Paris, that the town is no longer fit for him…. Ah, you would do well to scold him!”

“My husband would be so pleased to see you at our Thursdays from time to time,” continued Renée.

M. Béraud du Châtel took a few steps in silence. Then in a quiet voice:

“Thank your husband for me,” he said. “He seems to be an energetic fellow, and I hope for your sake that he conducts his business honestly. But our ideas are not the same, and I do not feel comfortable in your fine house in the Parc Monceau.”

Aunt Elisabeth seemed vexed by this reply:

“How perverse you men are with your politics!” she said merrily. “Shall I tell you the truth? Your father is furious with both of you because you go to the Tuileries.”

But the old man shrugged his shoulders, as though to imply that his dissatisfaction had much more serious causes. He thoughtfully resumed his slow walk. Renée was silent for a moment, with the request for the fifty thousand francs on the tip of her tongue. Then she was seized with a greater fit of cowardice, kissed her father, and went away.

Aunt Elisabeth accompanied her to the staircase. As they crossed the suite of rooms, she continued to chatter in her thin, old voice:

“You are happy, dear child. I am so pleased to see you looking well and handsome; for if your marriage had turned out badly, you know, I should have thought myself to blame…. Your husband loves you, you have all you want, have you not?”

“Of course,” replied Renée, forcing herself to smile, though feeling sick at heart.

The aunt still detained her, her hand on the balustrade of the staircase.

“You see, I have only one fear, lest you should lose your head with all this happiness. Be prudent, and above all sell none of your property…. If one day you had a baby, you would have a little fortune all ready for it.”

When Renée was back in her brougham, she heaved a sigh of relief. Drops of cold sweat stood on her temples; she wiped them off, thinking of the icy dampness of the Hotel Béraud. Then, when the brougham rolled into the bright sunshine of the Quai Saint-Paul, she remembered the fifty thousand francs, and all her suffering was revived, more poignant than before. She who was considered so audacious, what a coward she had just been! And yet it was a question of Maxime, of his liberty, of their mutual joys! Amid the bitter reproaches which she heaped upon herself, an idea suddenly occurred to her that put the finishing touch to her despair: she ought to have spoken of the fifty thousand francs to her Aunt Elisabeth on the stairs. What had she been thinking of? The kind woman would perhaps have lent her the money, or at least have helped her. She was leaning forward to tell her coachman to drive back to the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, when she thought she again saw the image of her father slowly crossing the solemn darkness of the big drawing-room. She would never have the courage to return immediately to that room. What should she say to explain this second visit? And, at the bottom of her heart, she felt she had no longer even the courage to mention the matter to Aunt Elisabeth. She told her coachman to drive her to the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière.

Mme. Sidonie uttered a cry of delight when she saw her opening the discreetly-curtained door of the shop. She was there by accident, she was just going out to run to the court where she was suing a customer. But she would let judgment go by default, she would try again another day; she was so happy that her sister-in-law had had the kindness to pay her a little visit at last. Renée smiled with an air of embarrassment. Mme. Sidonie positively refused to allow her to stay downstairs; she took her up to her room, by way of the little staircase, after removing the brass knob from the shop-door. She removed and replaced this knob, which was held by a single nail, twenty times a day.

“There, my beauty,” she said, making her sit down on a long-chair, “now we can have a nice chat…. Just fancy, you came in the nick of time. I was coming to see you this evening.”

Renée, who knew the room, experienced that indefinite feeling of uneasiness which a traveller feels on finding that a strip of timber has been felled in a favourite landscape.

“Ah,” she said at last, “you’ve moved the bed, have you not?”

“Yes,” the lace-dealer replied, quietly, “one of my customers prefers it facing the mantelpiece. It was she too who advised me to have red curtains.”

“That’s what I was thinking, the curtains used not to be red…. A very common colour, red.”

And she put up her eye-glass, and looked round this room that displayed the luxury of a big furnished hotel. On the mantelshelf she saw some long hair-pins which had certainly not come from Mme. Sidonie’s meagre chignon. In the place where the bed used to stand, the wall-paper was all torn, discoloured, and soiled by the mattresses. The business-woman had indeed endeavoured to hide this eyesore behind the back of two armchairs: but these backs were rather low, and Renée’s eyes became fixed on this worn strip of paper.

“Have you something to tell me?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s a whole story,” said Mme. Sidonie, folding her hands, with the mien of a gastronome who is about to describe what she has had for dinner. “Just think, M. de Saffré has fallen in love with the beautiful Madame Saccard…. Yes, with your pretty self.”