Chapter 5

The kiss which Saccard had imprinted on his wife's neck preoccupied him. He had not availed himself of his marital rights for a long time. The rupture had come quite naturally, neither the one nor the other caring for a connection which interfered with their habits. For Saccard to think of returning to Ren�e's room, some good stroke of business must necessarily be the object of his conjugal tenderness.

The Charonne affair, from which he hoped to derive a fortune, was progressing favourably, though he had some anxiety as to its termination. Larsonneau, with his dazzling shirt-front, smiled in a manner that displeased him. The expropriation agent was a simple go-between—a man of straw, whom he intended to remunerate for his obligingness with a commission of ten per cent on the ultimate profits. However, although the agent had not invested a copper in the enterprise, and although Saccard had taken every precaution—such as a deed of retrocession, letters, the dates of which had been left in blank, and receipts given in advance—he nevertheless experienced an inward fear, a presentiment of some treachery. He scented that his accomplice intended to blackmail him with the help of that false inventory which he preciously preserved, and to which alone he was indebted for his share in the enterprise.

However, the two accomplices shook hands vigorously. Larsonneau styled Saccard his "dear master." He had, at the bottom of his heart, a real admiration for this equilibrist, and watched his performances on the tight rope of speculation like a connoisseur. The idea of duping him titillated him like some rare and spicy voluptuousness. He caressed a plan which was still vague, however, for he did not very well know how to employ the weapon he possessed, and he feared wounding himself with it. Besides, he felt that he was at the mercy of his ex-colleague. The ground and the buildings, which carefully prepared inventories already valued at nearly two millions of francs, though they were not worth a quarter of that amount, must end by being swallowed up in a colossal bankruptcy, if the fairy of expropriation did not touch them with her golden wand. According to the original plans which the two confederates had been able to consult, the new Boulevard, opened in view of connecting the artillery dep�t of Vincennes with the Prince Eug�ne barracks, and of bringing the guns and ammunition into the heart of Paris without passing through the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, would cross a part of the ground; but it was still to be feared that only a corner of the latter might be cut off, and that the ingenious speculation of the music hall would fall through by reason of its very impudence. In that case Larsonneau would remain with a delicate matter to deal with. Still this peril did not prevent him, despite the secondary part which he played perforce, from feeling soul-sick when he thought of the paltry ten per cent which he would pocket in this colossal robbery of millions. And at those moments he could not resist the furious longing he felt to extend his hand and carve out a larger share for himself.

Saccard had not even allowed him to lend money to his wife, he had preferred to amuse himself with this big piece of theatrical trickery, which delighted his partiality for complicated transactions.

"No, no, my dear fellow," he said, with his Proven�al accent, which he exaggerated whenever he wished to impart additional salt to a joke, "don't let us mix up our accounts. You are the only man in Paris to whom I have sworn never to owe a copper."

Larsonneau contented himself with insinuating that his colleague's wife was a gulf. He advised him not to give her another sou, so that she would then be compelled to transfer her property to them immediately. He would have preferred to have to deal with Saccard alone. He probed him at times, and carried things so far as to say, with the weary indifferent air of a man about town:

"All the same, I must put my papers in a little order. Your wife frightens me, my good fellow. I don't want justice to place the seals on certain documents at my office."

Saccard was not the man to submit to such allusions patiently, especially as he was well acquainted with the frigid meticulous order which prevailed in the agent's offices. The whole of his cunning, active little person revolted against the terror with which this coxcomb of a usurer in yellow kid gloves tried to inspire him. The worst was that he felt himself seized with shudders when he thought of a possible scandal; and he beheld himself brutally exiled by his brother, and living in Belgium by some avocation not to be acknowledged. One day he grew angry and said to Larsonneau:

"Listen, my boy, you are a nice fellow, but it would be as well for you to return me the document you know of. You'll see, that scrap of paper will end by making us quarrel."

The agent feigned astonishment, pressed his "dear master's" hand, and assured him of his devotion. Saccard regretted his momentary hastiness. It was at this period that he began to think seriously of drawing nearer to his wife. He might yet have need of her against his accomplice, and he moreover said to himself that business matters are discussed marvellously well between man and wife in bed. That kiss on his wife's neck gradually revealed to him quite a new system of tactics.

Besides, he was not in a hurry, he husbanded his resources. He devoted the whole winter to ripening his plan, though worried by a hundred different affairs, each of which was more muddled than the other. It was a terrible winter for him, full of shocks, a prodigious campaign during which he had to conquer bankruptcy daily. However, far from cutting down his expenses at home, he gave f�te after f�te. But if he succeeded in meeting every difficulty, he had to neglect Ren�e, whom he reserved for a triumphal blow, when the Charonne transaction became ripe. He contented himself with preparing the finish, by continuing not to give her any money, save through the intermediary of Larsonneau. When he was able to dispose of a few thousand francs, and she complained of her poverty, he took them to her, saying that Larsonneau's people required a note of hand for double the amount. This comedy vastly amused him, the stories connected with these promissory notes delighted him by the touch of romance which they imparted to the affair. Even at the period of his clearest profits he had served his wife her income in the most irregular manner, at one time making her princely presents, abandoning handfuls of bank notes to her, and then leaving her in the lurch for a paltry amount during weeks together. Now that he found himself seriously embarrassed, he talked about the expenses of the household, and treated her like a creditor to whom one is unwilling to confess one's ruin, and whom one disposes to patience by means of cock-and-bull stories. She scarcely listened to him, however; she signed whatever he chose, and only pitied herself for not being able to sign more.

Already, however, there were two hundred thousand francs' worth of promissory notes signed by her which barely cost him one hundred and ten thousand. After having these bills endorsed by Larsonneau to whose order they were made payable, he placed them in circulation in a prudent manner, intending to employ them as decisive weapons later on. He would never have been able to hold out to the end of that terrible winter, to lend his wife money usuriously and keep up his style of living, but for the sale of his ground on the Boulevard Malesherbes, which Messieurs Mignon and Charrier paid him for in hard cash, retaining, however, a formidable discount.

For Ren�e this same winter was one long joy. Lack of money was her only suffering. Maxime cost her very dear; he still treated her as a stepmother, and allowed her to pay everywhere. But this hidden poverty was an additional delight for her. She exercised her wits and racked her brain, so that her dear child should want for nothing; and when she had prevailed upon her husband to find her a few thousand francs, she and her lover expended them in some costly folly, like two schoolboys let loose on their first escapade. When they were hard up they remained at home and derived their enjoyment from this large building of such new and insolently stupid luxury. The father was never there. The lovers sat by the fireside more frequently than formerly. The fact was, that Ren�e had filled the icy emptiness of the gilded ceilings with a warm enjoyment. The suspicious abode of worldly pleasure had become a chapel in which she secretly practised a new religion. Maxime did not merely lend to her nature that high note which harmonized with her mad dresses. He was the very lover fitted to this mansion, with broad windows like shop fronts, and which a flood of sculpture inundated from garret to cellar. He animated all this plaster, from the two podgy Cupids who let a stream of water flow from their shell in the courtyard, to the tall, naked women supporting the balconies, and playing with apples and ears of corn, amid the pediments. He explained the unduly ornate hall, the tiny dimensions of the garden, the dazzling rooms in which one saw too many arm-chairs, and not one work of art. The young woman who had formerly felt bored to death in the house, suddenly began to amuse herself there, and availed herself of it, just as she might have done with something, the use of which she had not understood at first. And it was not only through her own apartments, through the buttercup drawing-room, and the conservatory that she promenaded her love, but through the entire mansion. She even ended by finding an enjoyment in lying on the divan of the smoking-room. She forgot herself there, and declared that the vague smell of tobacco pervading the apartment was very agreeable.

She appointed two reception days instead of one. On Thursdays all the mere acquaintances called. But Mondays were reserved to intimate female friends. Men were not admitted. Maxime alone was present at those choice gatherings, which took place in the buttercup drawing-room. One evening she had the astounding idea, of dressing him up as a woman, and of presenting him as one of her cousins. Adeline, Suzanne, the Baroness de Meinhold, and the other friends who were there, rose up and bowed, astonished by the sight of this face which they vaguely recognised. Then when they realized the truth, they laughed a great deal, and absolutely refused to let the young man go and change his clothes. They kept him with them in his skirts, teasing him, and lending themselves to equivocal jokes. When he had seen these ladies off by the main gate he went round the park and returned into the house by way of the conservatory. Ren�e's dear friends never had the slightest suspicion of the truth. Indeed the lovers could not behave together more familiarly than they had previously done, when they declared themselves to be boon comrades. And if it happened that a servant saw them rather close together behind a door, he expressed no surprise at it, being used to the pleasantries of his mistress, and his master's son.

This complete liberty, this impunity emboldened them still more. If they slipped the bolts at night-time, in the daylight they kissed each other in every room of the house. They invented a thousand little games on rainy days. But Ren�e's great delight was still to pile up a terrible fire, and doze in front of the grate. Her linen was marvellously luxurious that winter. She wore the most costly chemises and wrappers, the cambric and inserted embroidery of which barely covered her with a white cloud. And in the red glow of the fire she looked naked, with rosy lace and skin, the heat penetrating through the thin stuff to her flesh. Maxime, squatting at her feet, kissed her knees, without even feeling the garment which had the same warmth and colour as her lovely form. In the dull cloudy weather a kind of twilight penetrated the bedroom hung with grey silk, whilst C�leste went backwards and forwards behind them, with a quiet step. She had naturally become their accomplice. One morning when they had forgotten themselves in the bed, she found them there, and retained all the coolness of a servant with icy blood. They then ceased restraining themselves, she came in at all hours without the sound of their kisses making her turn her head. They relied upon her to warn them in the case of alarm. They did not purchase her silence. She was a very economical, very honest girl, and was not known to have a single lover.

Ren�e, however, was not cloistered. Taking Maxime in her train, like a fair-haired page in a dress-coat, she frequented society, where she tasted even more acute pleasures. The season was one long triumph for her. Never had her imagination been bolder as regards toilets and head-dresses. It was then that she risked wearing that famous bush-tinted robe, on which a complete stag hunt was embroidered with such attributes as powder flasks, hunting horns, and broad bladed knives. It was then, also, that she set the fashion of wearing the hair in the antique style; Maxime having to go and sketch patterns for her at the Campana Museum which had recently been opened. She grew younger, she was in all the plenitude of her turbulent beauty. Incest lent her a fire which glowed in the depths of her eyes and heated her laughter. Her eye-glasses looked superbly insolent on the tip of her nose, and she gazed at the other women, at the dear friends who basked in the enormity of some vice, with the air of a bragging hobbledehoy, and with a fixed smile which signified "I also have my crime."

Maxime, on his side, declared that society was wearisome. It was not merely for show that he pretended to be bored in it, for he really did not amuse himself anywhere. At the Tuileries, at the ministers' residences, he disappeared amid Ren�e's skirts. But he became the master again as soon as some freak was in question. Ren�e wished to see the private room on the Boulevard again, and the breadth of the divan made her smile. Then he took her a little bit everywhere, to harlots' houses, to the opera ball, to the stage boxes of petty theatres, to all the equivocal places where they could elbow brutal vice and taste the delights of remaining incognito. When they furtively returned to the house, worn out with fatigue, they fell asleep in each other's arms, sleeping off the drunkenness of obscene Paris, with snatches of smutty verses still ringing in their ears. On the morrow Maxime imitated the actors, and Ren�e, accompanying herself on the piano of the little drawing-room, tried to recall the hoarse voice and the wriggling of Blanche M�ller in her part of the Belle H�l�ne. The music lessons she had taken at the convent now only served her to murder the verses of the new burlesques. She had a religious horror of serious airs. Maxime poked fun at German music with her, and he thought it his duty to go and hiss Tannhauser, both by conviction and to defend his stepmother's sprightly refrains.

One of their great enjoyments was skating; it was fashionable that winter, the Emperor having been one of the first to try the ice on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne. Ren�e ordered a complete Polish costume, velvet and fur, of Worms; and insisted upon Maxime wearing high boots and a foxskin cap. They reached the Bois in the intense cold which made their noses and lips tingle as if the wind had blown fine sand into their faces. It amused them to feel cold. The Bois was quite grey, with threads of snow, like narrow lace, along the branches of the trees. And under the pale sky, above the congealed and bedimmed lake, only the pines of the islands still displayed on the edge of the horizon their theatrical drapery, on which the snow had also sewn broad bands of lace. The lovers darted along together in the frozen air, with the rapid flight of swallows skimming just above the ground. Setting one hand behind their backs, and placing one upon each other's shoulder, they went off, erect, smiling, side by side, and revolving round the broad space, marked out by thick ropes. Loungers looked on at them from the roadway. From time to time they came to warm themselves at the braziers lighted at the edge of the lake, and then they started off again. They enlarged the course of their flight, with their eyes watering both with pleasure and with cold.

Then when the spring came Ren�e remembered her old elegiac fancy. She insisted upon Maxime strolling with her in the Parc Monceaux at night time by moonlight. They went into the grotto and sat down on the grass, in front of the colonnade. But when she expressed a desire to row on the little lake they found that there were no oars in the boat, which could be seen from the house, moored at the edge of a pathway. They were evidently removed every evening. This was a disappointment. Besides the vast shadows of the park made the lovers nervous. They would have liked to have had a Venetian f�te given there, with red lanterns and an orchestra. They preferred it during the day-time, of an afternoon, and they then often stationed themselves at one of the windows of the mansion to watch the equipages following the graceful curve of the main avenue. They enjoyed themselves in gazing upon this charming corner of new Paris, this clean smiling bit of nature, these lawns looking like stripes of velvet, dotted with flower beds and choice shrubs, and edged with magnificent white roses. Carriages passed by each other, as numerous as on the Boulevard; lady promenaders carelessly trailed their skirts as if they had not ceased treading the carpets of their drawing-rooms. And athwart the foliage, Ren�e and Maxime criticised the dresses and pointed out the equipages to each other, deriving real enjoyment from the soft tints of this large garden. A scrap of gilded railing shone between two trees, a party of ducks passed over the lake, the little renaissance bridge looked white and new amid the green stuff, whilst on either side of the main avenue, mammas seated on yellow chairs forgot, in their chatter, the little boys and girls who looked at one another with a pretty air, and pouted like precocious children.

The lovers had a great liking for new Paris. They often rambled through the city in their carriage, going out of their way so as to pass along certain Boulevards for which they had a personal affection. The lofty houses adorned with large carved doors, loaded with balconies, whereon names and callings glittered in large gold letters, delighted them. While the brougham darted along, they followed with a friendly glance the grey bands of interminable footways, with their seats, their variegated columns and their scrubby trees. This bright gap which extended to the limits of the horizon, growing narrower, and opening upon a bluey parallelogram of space, the uninterrupted double row of large shops, where shopmen smiled at female customers, the currents of the stamping swarming crowd, filled them little by little with a feeling of absolute and complete satisfaction, they realised that they beheld the perfection of street life. They were enamoured even of the jets of the watering hose, which passed like white smoke before their houses and then spread out and fell in a fine rain under the wheels of the brougham, darkening the ground and raising a slight cloud of dust. They still went on, and it seemed to them that the vehicle was rolling over carpets along the straight endless highway, which had been pierced solely so that they might not have to pass through dark alleys. Each Boulevard became some passage of their mansion. The gay sunshine smiled upon the house fronts, lit up the window panes, fell upon the verandahs of the shops and caf�s and heated the asphalt under the busy tread of the crowd. And when they returned home, somewhat dazed by the bright confusion of these long bazaars, they found enjoyment in the Parc Monceaux, which was like the complementary plat-band of the new Paris which displayed its luxury amid the first warmth of spring.

When the exigencies of fashionable life absolutely compelled them to leave Paris, they went to the seaside, regretfully however, and thinking of the Boulevardian side-walks while on the shores of the ocean. Then love itself grew dull there. It was a hot-house flower which needed the spacious grey and pink bed; the naked fleshy aspect of the dressing-room and the gilded dawn of the little drawing-room. Alone of an evening, in front of the sea, they no longer found anything to say to each other. Ren�e tried to sing the airs she had heard at the Variety Theatre, accompanying herself on an old piano which was agonising in a corner of her room at the hotel, but the instrument, damp with the breezes from the open, had the dreary voice of the great waters. La Belle H�l�ne seemed lugubrious and fantastic. To console herself Ren�e astonished the people on the sands by her prodigious costumes. The whole band of fashionable women there was yawning while waiting for the advent of winter, and trying despairingly to invent some bathing dress which would not make them look too ugly. Ren�e was never able to prevail upon Maxime to bathe. He had an atrocious fear of water, he turned quite pale when the tide reached his boots, and for nothing in the world would he have approached the edge of a cliff; he kept away from all pits, and made a long circuit to avoid any steep part of the shore.

Saccard came to see "the children" on two or three occasions. He was overwhelmed with worry, he said. It was only about October, when they all three found themselves again in Paris, that he seriously thought of drawing nearer his wife. The Charonne affair was ripening. His plan was a simple and brutal one. He relied upon capturing Ren�e by the same devices that he would have employed with a harlot. She lived on amid an increasing need of money, and out of pride she only applied to her husband at the last extremity. The latter resolved to profit by her first request to shew his gallantry, and, in the delight occasioned by the payment of some heavy debt, to resume relations which had so long been severed.

Some terrible embarrassments awaited Ren�e and Maxime in Paris. Several of the promissory notes drawn to Larsonneau's order had fallen due; but as Saccard naturally left them slumbering at the lawyer's, they did not cause the young wife much worry. She was far more alarmed by her debts as regards Worms, whose bill now amounted to nearly two hundred thousand francs. The tailor demanded something on account, and threatened to suspend all credit. Ren�e felt sudden shudders when she thought of the scandal of a law-suit, and especially of a quarrel with the illustrious man milliner. Moreover, she needed pocket money. She and Maxime would feel bored to death if they did not have a few louis a-day to spend. The dear boy was quite stumped since he had vainly rummaged through his father's drawers. His fidelity and exemplary behaviour during the last seven or eight months were largely due to the absolute emptiness of his purse. He did not always have twenty francs in his pocket to invite some street-walker to supper, and so he philosophically returned to the house. At each of their freaks the young woman handed him her purse so that he might defray the expenses in the restaurants, the balls and petty theatres. She continued treating him maternally, and, indeed, it was she who, with the tips of her gloved fingers, settled at the pastry-cook's, where they stopped almost every afternoon to eat little oyster patties. Of a morning he often found in his waistcoat some louis which he had not known to be there, and which she had placed there like a mother filling a schoolboy's pocket. And to think that this delightful life of snacks, satisfied fancies and facile pleasure was about to end! But a yet more grievous worry came to alarm them. Sylvia's jeweller, to whom Maxime owed ten thousand francs, grew angry and talked about Clichy, the debtors' prison. Such costs had accumulated on the notes of hand which he held, and had long since protested, that the debt had increased by some three or four thousand francs. Saccard plainly declared that he could do nothing in the matter. The imprisonment of his son at Clichy would increase his notoriety, and when he secured the young fellow's release he would make a great noise over his paternal liberality. Ren�e was in despair; she saw her dear child in prison—in a perfect dungeon, sleeping on damp straw. One evening, she seriously proposed to him not to leave her rooms, but to live there unknown to everyone, and sheltered from the bailiffs. Then she swore that she would procure the money. She never referred to the origin of the debt, of that woman Sylvia, who confided the secret of her affections to the mirrors of private rooms. Some fifty thousand francs—that was what she needed; fifteen thousand for Maxime, thirty thousand for Worms, and five thousand as pocket money. They would then have a fortnight's happiness before them. She embarked on the campaign.

Her first idea was to ask her husband for these fifty thousand francs, but it was only with a feeling of repugnance that she decided to do so. On the last occasions that he had entered her room to bring her some money he had printed fresh kisses on her neck, taking hold of her hands and talking about his affection. Women have acute powers of perception which enable them to guess men's feelings. So she expected some demand on his side, some tacit bargain concluded with a smile. And, indeed, when she asked him for the fifty thousand francs, he cried out, declared that Larsonneau would never lend such a sum, and that he himself was still too embarrassed. Then changing his tone, as if conquered and seized with sudden emotion:

"One cannot refuse you anything," he murmured; "I will run about Paris and accomplish the impossible. I want you to be pleased, my dear."

And setting his lips to her ear and kissing her hair, he added, in a slightly trembling voice—

"I will bring you the money to-morrow evening, here in your room—without any note to sign."

But she hastily said that she was not in a hurry, that she did not wish to trouble him so much. He, who had just set all his heart in that dangerous, "without any note," which had escaped him and which he regretted, did not appear to have encountered a disagreeable refusal. He rose up saying:

"Very well, I am at your disposal. I will find you the sum when the moment arrives. Larsonneau will be for nothing in it, you understand. It is a present which I mean to make you." He smiled with a good natured air. She remained in a state of cruel anguish. She felt she would lose the little equilibrium left her, if she surrendered herself to her husband. It was her last pride to be married to the father and to be only the son's wife. Often, when Maxime seemed to her to be cold, she tried to make him understand the situation by very transparent allusions; it is true that the young man, whom she expected to see fall at her feet after this revelation, remained altogether indifferent, imagining, no doubt, that she merely wished to reassure him as to the possibility of a meeting between his father and himself in the grey silk room.

When Saccard had left her, she hastily dressed herself and had the horses put to. While her brougham was conveying her towards the �le Saint-Louis, she prepared 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 very cowardly at the bottom of her heart and seized with invincible fright at the thought of such a step. When she arrived, the courtyard of the B�raud mansion froze her with its mournful, cloister-like dampness, and it was with a desire to run away that she mounted the broad stone staircase on which her little high-heeled boots resounded terribly. She had been foolish enough in her haste to choose a costume of dead-leaf tinted silk, with long flounces of white lace trimmed with bows of ribbon and cut athwart by a plaited sash. This toilet, which was completed by a little hat with a large white veil, set such a singular note in the dark gloom of the staircase, that she herself became conscious of how strange she looked there. She trembled as she crossed the austere suite of spacious rooms, where the personages vaguely visible on the tapestry seemed surprised to see this stream of skirts pass by in the semi-daylight of their solitude.

She found her father in a drawing-room looking on to the courtyard, where he habitually remained. He was reading a large book placed on a desk adapted to the arms of his chair. In front of one of the windows Aunt �lisabeth sat knitting with long wooden needles; and in the silence of the room the tick-tack of these needles was the only sound one heard.

Ren�e sat down, ill at ease, unable to make a movement without disturbing the severity of the lofty ceiling by a noise of rustling silk. Her laces looked crudely white against the dark background of tapestry and old furniture. Monsieur B�raud Du Ch�tel gazed at her with his hands resting on the edge of the desk. Aunt �lisabeth talked about the approaching wedding of Christine who was to marry the son of a very rich attorney; the young girl had gone to a tradesman's with an old family servant; and the good aunt talked on alone, in her placid voice, without ceasing to knit, gossiping about household affairs, and casting smiling glances at Ren�e from above her spectacles.

But, the young woman became more and more disturbed. All the silence of the house weighed upon her shoulders, and she would have given a great deal for the lace of her dress to have been black. Her father's gaze embarrassed her to such a point that she considered Worms really ridiculous to have imagined such high flounces.

"How smart you are, my girl!" suddenly said Aunt �lisabeth, who had not yet even noticed her niece's lace.

She stopped knitting and settled her spectacles to see the better. Monsieur B�raud Du Ch�tel gave a faint smile.

"It is rather white," said he. "A woman must be greatly embarrassed with that on the side-walks."

"But one doesn't go out on foot, father!" cried Ren�e, who immediately afterwards regretted these words from her heart.

The old gentleman seemed about to reply. Then he rose up, straightened his high stature and began walking slowly, without again looking at his daughter. The latter remained quite pale with emotion. Each time that she exhorted herself to take courage, and that she tried to find a transition that would lead up to the request for money, she experienced a shooting pain at the heart.

"We never see you now, father," she murmured.

"Oh!" replied her aunt, "your father hardly ever goes out except at long intervals to stroll in the Jardin des Plantes. And I even have to get angry to make him do that! He pretends that he loses himself in Paris, that the city is no longer made for him. Ah! you do right to scold him!"

"My husband would be so happy to see you at our Thursdays, from time to time," continued the young woman.

Monsieur B�raud Du Ch�tel took a few steps in silence. Then in a quiet voice: "You must thank your husband for me," he said. "He is an active fellow, it appears, and I hope, for your sake, that he conducts his enterprises honestly. But we haven't the same ideas, and I feel ill at ease in your fine house in the Parc Monceaux."

Aunt �lisabeth seemed vexed by this reply.

"How wicked men are with their politics!" she said. "Would you like to know the truth? Your father is furious with you because you go to the Tuileries."

But the old gentleman shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that his dissatisfaction had far more grievous causes. He began slowly walking again, with a dreamy air. Ren�e remained for a moment silent, with the request for the fifty thousand francs on the tip of her tongue. But seized with even greater cowardice than before, she kissed her father and went off.

Aunt �lisabeth insisted upon accompanying her to the staircase. As they crossed the suite of rooms, she continued chattering in her old woman's squeaky voice:

"You are happy, my dear child. It pleases me very much to see you looking beautiful and well; for if your marriage had turned out badly I should have thought myself guilty! Your husband loves you, you have all you need, haven't you?"

"Of course," replied Ren�e compelling herself to smile though feeling sick at heart.

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

"Do you see, I have only one fear, that you may become intoxicated with all your happiness. Be prudent, and above all don't sell anything. If you had a child some day, you would have a little fortune all ready for him."

When Ren�e was in her brougham again she heaved a sigh of relief. She had drops of cold perspiration on her forehead; she wiped them off, thinking of the icy dampness of the B�raud mansion. Then as the brougham rolled along amid the clear sunlight of the Quai Saint-Paul she remembered the fifty thousand francs, and all her suffering was revived again, acuter than before. She, whom people thought so bold, how cowardly she had just been! And yet it was a question of Maxime, of his liberty, of their joint delights. Amid the bitter reproaches which she addressed to herself, an idea suddenly sprung up which brought her despair to a climax; she ought to have spoken about the fifty thousand francs to Aunt �lisabeth on the stairs. What had she been thinking about? The worthy woman would perhaps have lent her the amount, or at all events have helped her. She was already leaning forward to tell her coachman to drive back to the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'�le, when she thought she again beheld her father slowly crossing the solemn darkness of the grand drawing-room. She would never have the courage to return at once to that room. What could she say to explain this second visit? And in the depth of her heart she no longer even found the courage to speak of the affair to Aunt �lisabeth. So she told her coachman to drive her to the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonni�re.

Madame Sidonie uttered a cry of delight when she saw her opening the discreetly curtained door of the shop. She was there by chance, she was about to hasten to the magistrate's, where she had summoned a customer. But she would not put in an appearance, she could do so some other day; she was so happy that her sister-in-law had at length had the amiability to pay her a little visit. Ren�e smiled with an embarrassed air. Madame Sidonie would not by any means allow her to remain downstairs; she made her go up into her room, by the little staircase, after removing the brass knob from the shop door. She removed and refixed this knob, which was secured by a simple nail, at least twenty times a day.

"There, my beauty," she said, making Ren�e sit down on a couch, "we shall be able to chat nicely. Do you know that you come in the very nick of time—I meant to go and see you this evening."

Ren�e, who knew the room, experienced that vague feeling of uneasiness, which a promenader feels on finding that a strip of forest has been cut down in a favourite landscape.

"Ah!" she said at last, "you have changed the position of the bed, haven't you?"

"Yes," quietly replied the lace-dealer, "one of my customers thought it would be much better in front of the mantelpiece. She also advised me to have red curtains."

"That's what I was thinking, the curtains used not to be of that colour. Red is a very common colour."

She put on her eye-glasses, and looked at this room which displayed the kind of luxury one finds in a large hotel. On the mantelshelf she saw some long hair-pins which certainly did not come from Madame Sidonie's meagre chignon. The paper of that part of the wall, against which the bed had formerly stood, was all torn, discoloured and dirtied by the mattresses. The agent had certainly tried to hide this sore with the backs of two arm chairs, but these backs were rather low, and Ren�e's glance remained fixed on this worn strip of paper.

"You have something to say to me?" she asked at last.

"Yes, it's quite a story," said Madame Sidonie, joining her hands and assuming the expression of a glutton who is about to relate what she has eaten at dinner. "Just fancy, Monsieur de Saffr� is in love with the beautiful Madame Saccard. Yes, with yourself, my pretty one."

Ren�e did not vouchsafe even a gesture of coquetry.

"Indeed!" she remarked, "but you said he was so smitten with Madame Michelin."

"Oh! that's finished, quite finished—I can prove it to you if you like. Don't you know then that little Michelin has pleased Baron Gouraud? It's incredible. Every one who knows the baron is amazed. And now she's on the way to obtaining the red ribbon for her husband! Ah, she's a woman of spirit. She isn't faint-hearted, she doesn't need any one to steer her boat."

Madame Sidonie said this with an air of some little regret mingled with admiration.

"But to return to Monsieur de Saffr�—It would seem that he met you at an actresses' ball, muffled up in a domino, and he even accuses himself of having somewhat cavalierly offered you a supper. Is it true?"

The young woman was quite surprised.

"Perfectly true," murmured she; "but who could have told him?"

"Wait a bit, he pretends that he recognised you later on, when you were no longer in the room, and that he remembered having seen you leave on Maxime's arm. Since then he has been madly in love. It has grown in his heart, you understand, been a sudden fancy. He came to see me to beg me to make you his apologies—"

"Well, tell him that I forgive him," interrupted Ren�e negligently.

And again assailed by all her worries, she continued:

"Ah! my good Sidonie, I am awfully bothered. It is absolutely necessary that I should have fifty thousand francs to-morrow morning. I came to speak to you about the matter. You know some money-lenders, you told me."

The agent, vexed by the abrupt manner in which her sister-in-law had interrupted her story, made her wait some time for an answer.

"Yes, certainly; only, I advise you, first of all to try and obtain the money from a friend. If I were in your place I know very well what I should do. I should simply apply to Monsieur de Saffr�."

Ren�e smiled in a constrained manner.

"But it would hardly be proper," she answered, "since you pretend that he is so much in love."

The old woman looked at her with a fixed stare; then her flabby face gently softened into a smile of tender pity.

"Poor dear," she muttered, "you have been crying; don't deny it, I can see it by your eyes. You must be strong and accept life. Come, let me arrange the little matter in question."

Ren�e rose up, twisting her fingers, and making her gloves crack. And she remained standing, quite shaken by a cruel internal struggle. She was opening her mouth, to accept perhaps, when a gentle ring at the bell resounded in the next room. Madame Sidonie hastily went out, leaving the door ajar, so that a double row of pianos could be seen. The young woman then heard a man's step, and the stifled sound of a conversation carried on in an undertone. She mechanically went to examine more closely the yellowish stain with which the mattresses had streaked the wall. This stain disturbed her, made her ill at ease. Forgetting everything, Maxime, the fifty thousand francs, and Monsieur de Saffr�, she stepped back to the front of the bed, reflecting; this bed had been much better placed, as it had formerly stood; some women were really wanting in taste; of a certainty when one lay down one must have the light in one's eyes. And in the depths of her memory she vaguely saw the figure of the stranger of the Quai Saint-Paul rise up, her novel in two assignations, that chance amour which she had partaken of, there, at that other place. The wearing away of the wall paper was all that remained of it. Then the room filled her with uneasiness, and the hum of voices which continued in the next apartment made her feel impatient.

When Madame Sidonie returned, opening and closing the door with due precaution, she made repeated signs with the tips of her fingers, to recommend Ren�e to speak low. Then, she whispered in her ear:

"You don't know, the adventure's a good one: it's Monsieur de Saffr� who's there."

"You didn't tell him though that I was here?" asked the young woman anxiously.

The agent seemed surprised, and with an air of great simplicity answered:

"But I did—He is waiting for me to tell him to come in. Of course I didn't speak about the fifty thousand francs—"

Ren�e, who was quite pale, had drawn herself up as if she had been struck with a whip. A great pride again rose to her heart. That creaking of boots, which she heard growing louder in the next room, exasperated her:

"I am going," she said curtly. "Come and open the door for me."

Madame Sidonie tried to smile.

"Don't be childish," she said. "I can't be left with that fellow on my hands, since I have told him you are here—You really compromise me—"

But the young woman had already descended the little staircase. She repeated, in front of the closed shop door:

"Open it, open it."

When the lace-dealer withdrew the brass knob, she had the habit of putting it in her pocket. She wished to continue parleying. Finally seized with anger herself, and displaying in the depths of her grey eyes the tart acridity of her nature, she cried: "But come, what shall I say to the man?"

"That I'm not for sale," replied Ren�e, who already had one foot on the side-walk.

And it seemed to her that she could hear Madame Sidonie muttering as she banged the door: "Eh! get off, you jade! you shall pay me for this!"

"By heavens," thought Ren�e as she again entered her brougham, "I prefer my husband to that."

She returned straight home. In the evening she told Maxime not to come; she was poorly, she needed repose. And, on the morrow, when she handed him the fifteen thousand francs for Sylvia's jeweller, she remained embarrassed in presence of his surprise and his questions. Her husband, she said, had done a good stroke of business. From that day forth, however, she became more capricious, she often changed the hour of the appointments which she gave the young fellow, and even she frequently watched for him in the conservatory to send him away. He did not worry himself much about these changes of humour; it pleased him to be an obedient thing in women's hands. What bored him a great deal more was the moral turn which their lovers' meetings took at times. She became quite sad; and it even happened that she had big tears in her eyes. She left off singing the refrain about the "handsome young man" in the Belle H�l�ne, she played the hymns she had learnt at school and asked her lover if he did not think that sin was always punished, sooner or later.

"She's decidedly growing old," he thought. "It will be the utmost if she's funny for another year or two."

The truth was that she suffered cruelly. She would now have preferred to deceive Maxime with Monsieur de Saffr�. She had revolted at Madame Sidonie's, she had given way to instinctive pride, to disgust for such a low bargain. But on the following days, when she endured the anguish of adultery, everything in her foundered; and she felt herself so despicable that she would have surrendered herself to the first man who pushed open the door of the room containing the pianos. The thought of her husband had, at times, formerly passed before her, amid her incest, like a touch of voluptuous horror; but henceforth the husband, the man himself, entered into it with a brutality that transformed her most delicate sensations into intolerable sufferings. She, who had enjoyed the refinement of her sin, and had willingly dreamt of a corner of a superhuman paradise where the gods partook of their amours together, was now descending to vulgar debauchery, to being shared by two men. In vain did she try to derive enjoyment from her infamy. Her lips were still warm with Saccard's kisses when she offered them to Maxime's. Her inquisitiveness descended to the depths of these accursed pleasures. She went as far as to mingle the two affections, and to seek for the son amid the father's hugs. And she emerged yet more alarmed and more bruised from this journey into unknown evil, from this ardent darkness in which she confounded the person of her double lover, with a terror which was like the death-rattle of her enjoyment.

She kept this drama to herself alone, and increased the suffering it occasioned by the feverishness of her imagination. She would have preferred to die rather than own the truth to Maxime. She had an inward fear that the young man might revolt and leave her; she had such an absolute belief in the monstrosity of her sin and in eternal damnation, that she would have more willingly crossed the Parc Monceaux naked than have confessed her shame aloud. On the other hand, she still remained the madcap who astonished Paris by her extravagant conduct. Nervous gaiety seized hold of her, prodigious caprices which the newspapers talked about, designating her by her initials. It was at this period that she seriously wished to fight a duel with pistols with the Duchess de Sternich who had, intentionally, so she said, upset a glass of punch over her dress. To calm her, it was necessary for her brother-in-law, the minister, to get angry. On another occasion she bet with Madame de Lauwerens that she would make the round of the Longchamps racecourse in less than ten minutes, and it was only a question of costume that deterred her from doing so. Maxime himself began to feel afraid of this head, in which madness lurked; and on the pillow at night-time he thought he could hear all the hubbub of a city bent on enjoying itself.

One evening they went together to the Th��tre-Italien. They had not even looked at the bill. They wished to see the great Italian tragedian, Ristori, who then attracted all Paris, and in whom, by the command of fashion, they were bound to interest themselves. The play was Ph�dre. Maxime remembered his classical repertory sufficiently, and Ren�e knew enough Italian to follow the performance. And indeed they derived an especial emotion from this drama, performed in a foreign language, the sonority of which seemed to them at times to be a simple orchestral accompaniment supporting the pantomime of the actors. Hippolytos was a tall, pale fellow, a very poor actor, who whimpered his part.

"What a ninny!" muttered Maxime.

However, Ristori, with her broad shoulders shaken by her sobs, with her tragical face and fat arms, moved Ren�e deeply. Ph�dra was of Pasiphae's blood, and she asked herself of what blood she was, the incestuous stepmother of modern times. She saw nought of the piece save this tall woman drawing the ancient crime over the stage. When Ph�dra confides her criminal tenderness to Œnone in the first act; when, all on fire, she declares herself to Hippolytos in the second; and later on, in the fourth act, when the return of Theseus overwhelms her and she curses herself, in a crisis of gloomy fury, she filled the house with such a cry of savage passion, with such a yearning for superhuman voluptuousness, that the young woman felt every shudder of her desire and remorse pass through her own flesh.

"Wait," murmured Maxime in her ears, "you are going to hear Theramene's narrative. The old fellow has a funny head!"

And he muttered in a hollow voice:

"Scarce had we passed the gates of Trezene,
He on his chariot mounted—"

But while the old fellow spoke, Ren�e neither looked nor listened any more. The light blinded her, and stifling heat came to her from all the pale faces stretched out towards the stage. The monologue continued, interminable. She imagined herself in the conservatory under the ardent foliage, and she dreamt that her husband came in and surprised her in the arms of his son. She suffered horribly, she was losing consciousness, when the death-rattle of Ph�dra, repentant and dying in the convulsions caused by the poison, made her open her eyes again. The curtain fell. Would she have the strength to poison herself some day? How petty and shameful her drama was beside the ancient epopœia! And while Maxime fastened her opera cloak under her chin, she still heard, growling behind her, Ristori's rough voice to which Œnone's complacent murmur replied.

In the brougham, the young fellow talked on alone. He considered tragedies sickening as a rule, and preferred the pieces performed at the Bouffes. However, Ph�dre was spicy. He had taken an interest in it, because—And he pressed Ren�e's hand to complete his meaning. Then a funny idea darted through his head, and he gave way to an impulse to say something witty.

"It was I," he murmured, "who did right not to approach the sea at Trouville."

Ren�e, lost in the depths of her painful dream, remained silent. It was necessary for him to repeat his phrase.

"Why?" asked she, astonished and failing to understand.

"But the monster—"

And he gave vent to a little titter. This joke froze the young woman. Everything was upset in her head. Ristori was no longer aught, but a big puppet who tucked up her peplum and poked out her tongue to the public like Blanche M�ller in the third act of the Belle H�l�ne; Theramene danced the cancan, and Hippolytos eat bread and jam while stuffing his fingers into his nose.

When a more galling remorse made Ren�e shudder, she evinced superb revolt. What was her crime after all, and why should she blush? Did she not every day tread upon greater infamies? Did she not elbow at the ministers', at the Tuileries, everywhere in fact, wretches like herself who had millions on their flesh, and who were adored on both knees! And she thought of the shameful friendship of Adeline d'Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, at which one smiled, at times, at the Empress's Mondays. And she recalled to herself the traffic of Madame de Lauwerens, whom husbands celebrated for her good conduct, her order, and her exactitude in settling her tradesmen's bills. She named Madame Daste, Madame Teissi�re, the Baroness de Meinhold, those creatures whose luxury was paid for by their lovers, and who were quoted in society like shares are quoted upon change. Madame de Guende was so stupid and so well formed, that she had three superior officers for her lovers at the same time, and was unable to distinguish them from each other on account of their uniforms. This made that demon of a Louise say that she first of all made them strip to their shifts so as to know which of the three she was talking to. As for the Countess Vanska, she remembered the courtyards in which she had sung, the side-walks on which people pretended they had again seen her, dressed in printed calico, and prowling about like a she-wolf. Each of these women had her shame, her triumphant, displayed sore. And, overtopping them all, the Duchess de Sternich rose up, ugly, old, worn out, with the glory of having passed a night in the Imperial bed; she typified official vice, from which she derived the majesty of debauchery and a kind of sovereignty over this band of illustrious hussies.

The incestuous stepmother accustomed herself to her sin, as to a gala robe the stiffness of which might at first have inconvenienced her. She followed the fashions of the period, she dressed and undressed herself in the style of others. She ended by believing that she lived amid a circle above common morality, in which the senses became more acute and developed, and in which one was allowed to strip oneself naked for the joy of all Olympus. Sin became a luxury, a flower set in the hair, a diamond fastened on the brow. And she again saw, like a justification and redemption, the Emperor passing on the general's arm, between two rows of inclined shoulders.

Only one man, Baptiste, her husband's valet, continued to disturb her. Since Saccard showed himself gallant, this tall, pale, dignified valet, seemed to walk around her with the solemnity of mute censure. He did not look at her, his cold glances passed higher, above her chignon, with the modesty of a beadle who refuses to defile his eyes by letting them rest on a hair of a sinner. She imagined that he knew everything, and she would have purchased his silence had she dared. Then feelings of uneasiness took possession of her, she experienced a kind of confused respect when she met Baptiste, and said to herself that all the honesty of her household had withdrawn and hidden itself under this lackey's dress-coat.

One day she asked C�leste:

"Does Baptiste joke in the servants' hall? Do you know if he has had any adventure, if he has any mistress?"

"What a question!" was all the maid replied.

"Come, he must have paid you some attentions?"

"Why! he never looks at women. We barely see him. He is always in master's rooms or in the stables. He says that he is very fond of horses."

Ren�e was irritated by this respectability, for she would have liked to be able to despise her servants. Although she had taken a liking to C�leste, she would have rejoiced to learn that she was someone's mistress.

"But you, C�leste," she continued, "don't you think that Baptiste is a good-looking fellow?"

"I, madame!" cried the chambermaid with the stupefied air of a person who has just heard something prodigious. "Oh! I've very different ideas in my head. I don't want a man. I've my plan. You will see later on. I'm not a fool, no."

Ren�e could not draw anything more precise from her. Moreover, her worries were growing. Her noisy life, her mad rambles, met with numerous obstacles which she had to overcome, and against which she at times bruised herself. It was thus that Louise de Mareuil rose up one day between herself and Maxime. Ren�e was not jealous of the "hunchback," as she disdainfully called her; she knew her to be condemned by the doctors, and could not believe that Maxime would ever marry such an ugly chit, even at the price of a dowry of a million. In her fall she had retained a middle-class naivete respecting the people around her; although she despised herself, she readily believed that they were superior and very estimable. But whilst rejecting the possibility of a marriage which would have seemed to her a piece of sinister debauchery and a theft, she suffered from the young folks' familiarities and friendliness. When she spoke of Louise to Maxime, he laughed with satisfaction, he repeated the child's sayings to her, and said:

"The urchin calls me her little man, you know."

And he displayed such freedom of mind that she did not dare to tell him that this urchin was seventeen, and that their playfulness with their hands, and their eagerness when they met in drawing-rooms to find out some shady corner to poke fun at everybody, grieved her and spoilt her most pleasant evenings.

An incident occurred which imparted a strange character to the situation. Ren�e often felt the need of acting boastingly, and she had whims of brutal boldness. She dragged Maxime behind a curtain, behind a door, and kissed him at the risk of being seen. One Thursday evening, when the buttercup drawing-room was full of people, she was seized with the fine idea of calling the young fellow who was talking with Louise, she advanced from the depths of the conservatory where she was to meet him, and abruptly kissed him on the mouth between two clumps of shrubbery, thinking that she was sufficiently concealed. But Louise had followed Maxime, and when the lovers raised their heads, they saw her a few paces off, looking at them with a strange smile, without the least blush or astonishment, but with the quiet friendly air of a companion in vice, who is learned enough to understand and appreciate such a kiss.

Maxime felt really frightened that day, and it was Ren�e who showed herself indifferent and almost joyful. It was all over. It was now impossible for the hunchback to take her lover from her. She thought:

"I ought to have done it on purpose. She now knows that her 'little man' belongs to me."

Maxime felt reassured when he again found Louise as gay and as funny as before. He considered her to be "very acute and a very good-natured girl." And that was all.

There was good reason, however, for Ren�e to be disturbed. For some little time past Saccard had been thinking of his son's marriage with Mademoiselle de Mareuil. There was a dowry of a million francs to be had, which he did not wish to let escape, meaning to get his hands into this money later on. As Louise remained in bed during nearly three weeks at the beginning of the winter, he was so afraid of seeing her die before the projected union was accomplished, that he decided the children should marry at once. He certainly thought them rather young; but the doctors feared the month of March for the consumptive girl. Monsieur de Mareuil on his side was in a delicate position. He had eventually succeeded in getting himself returned as a deputy at the last poll. Only the Corps L�gislatif had just quashed his election, which had provoked a great scandal when the Chamber deliberated on the validity of the returns. This election was quite a heroi-comical poem, on which the newspapers lived for a whole month. Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, the prefect of the department, had displayed such vigour that the other candidates had not even been able either to placard their addresses to the electors, or to distribute their voting papers. At his advice, Monsieur de Mareuil covered the constituency with tables at which the peasants ate and drank for a week. He, moreover, promised a railway line, the erection of a bridge and three churches, and on the eve of the poll he forwarded to the influential electors the portraits of the Emperor and Empress, two large engravings covered with glass and set in gold frames. This gift met with tremendous success, and the majority in Monsieur de Mareuil's favour was overwhelming. But when the Chamber, in presence of the bursts of laughter which came from all France, found itself compelled to send Monsieur de Mareuil back to his electors, the minister flew into a terrible passion with the prefect and the unfortunate candidate who had really shown themselves too "zealous." He even spoke of choosing someone else as the official candidate. Monsieur de Mareuil was terrified, he had spent three hundred thousand francs in the department, he owned there some large estates where he felt bored, and which he would have to sell at a loss. So he came to beg his dear colleague to appease his brother, and to promise him in his name a most properly conducted election. It was on this occasion that Saccard again spoke of the children's marriage and that the two fathers finally decided upon it.

When Maxime was sounded on the subject he felt embarrassed. Louise amused him, and the dowry tempted him still more. He said yes, he accepted all the dates that Saccard named to avoid the worry of a discussion. But, at heart, he owned to himself that matters would unfortunately not be arranged with such charming facility. Ren�e would never consent, she would cry, she would upbraid him, she was capable of provoking some great scandal to astonish Paris. It was very disagreeable. She now frightened him. She watched him with alarming eyes, and she possessed him so despotically that he thought he could feel claws digging into his shoulder whenever she laid her white hand on it. Her turbulence became roughness, and there was a cracked sound in the depths of her laughter. He really feared that she would go mad one night in his arms. With her, remorse, fear of being surprised, the cruel joys of adultery did not manifest themselves as with other women, by tears and dejection, but by greater extravagance, and a more irresistible longing for noise. And amid her growing affrightment one began to hear a rattling, the derangement of this adorable, astonishing machine which was breaking up.

Maxime passively awaited an occasion which would rid him of this troublesome mistress. He again said that they had been very stupid. If their comradeship had at first lent additional voluptuousness to their love, it now prevented him from breaking off as he would certainly have done from any other woman. He would not have returned; that was his mode of bringing his amours to a finish so as to avoid any effort or any quarrel. But he felt himself incapable of a row, and he still even willingly forgot himself in Ren�e's embraces; she behaved maternally, she paid his expenses, and she would pull him out of embarrassment if any creditors became angry. Then the thought of Louise, the thought of the dowry of a million of francs returned to him, and made him reflect—even amid the young woman's kisses—"that it was all very charming and nice, but that it wasn't serious and must come to an end."

One night Maxime was so rapidly stumped at the house of a woman where one often gambled till daylight, that he experienced one of those mute attacks of anger familiar to the gamester whose pockets are empty. He would have given everything in the world to have been able to fling a few more louis on the table. He took up his hat, and with the mechanical step of a man who is impelled by a fixed idea, he repaired to the Parc Monceaux, opened the little gate, and found himself in the conservatory. It was past midnight. Ren�e had forbidden him to come that night. When she now closed her door to him she did not even try to invent an explanation, while he merely thought of profiting of his holiday. He only clearly remembered the young woman's prohibition when he was in front of the glass door of the little drawing-room which was closed. As a rule when he was to come, Ren�e undid the fastening of this door in advance.

"Bah!" said he on seeing that the window of the dressing-room was lighted up, "I will whistle and she will come down. I sha'n't disturb her; if she has a few louis, I will go off at once."

And he whistled gently. He indeed often employed this signal to announce his arrival. But that evening he fruitlessly whistled several times. He grew obstinate, raising the key, and unwilling to abandon his idea of an immediate loan. At last he saw the glass door opened with infinite precaution and without his having heard the least sound of footsteps. In the dim light of the conservatory Ren�e appeared to him, with her hair down, and scarcely dressed, as if she were going to bed. She was barefooted. She pushed him towards one of the arbours, descending the steps and walking over the gravel of the pathways, without seeming to feel the cold or the roughness of the ground.

"It's stupid to whistle as loud as that," she muttered with restrained anger. "I told you not to come. What do you want with me?"

"Eh? Let's go up," said Maxime, surprised by this reception. "I will tell you upstairs. You will catch cold here."

But as he stepped forward she held him back and he then perceived that she was horribly pale. Mute fright bent her form. Her clothes, the lace of her linen, hung down like tragic shreds upon her shuddering skin.

He examined her with growing astonishment:

"What is the matter with you? You are ill?"

And instinctively he raised his eyes and looked through the glass panes of the conservatory at the window of the dressing-room where he had seen a light.

"But there's a man in your room," he said suddenly.

"No, no, it isn't true," she stammered, supplicating, distracted.

"Pooh, my dear, I see his shadow."

Then, for a minute they remained there face to face, not knowing what to say to each other. Ren�e's teeth chattered with terror, and it seemed to her as if some one were throwing bucketsful of iced water over her bare feet. Maxime experienced more irritation than he would have believed; but he still remained sufficiently possessed to reflect, and say to himself that the occasion was a good one, and that he would now break off the connection.

"You won't make me believe that C�leste wears a coat," he continued. "If the glass panes of the conservatory were not so thick I should perhaps recognize the gentleman."

She pushed him deeper into the shadow of the foliage, saying, with her hands clasped, and seized with growing terror:

"I beg of you, Maxime—"

But all the young fellow's teasing faculties were aroused, a ferocious malice which sought for vengeance. He was too weak to ease himself by anger. Spite compressed his lips; and, instead of striking her, as he had at first had the impulse of doing, he sharpened his voice and rejoined:

"You ought to have told me of it, I shouldn't have come to disturb you—It happens every day that one no longer cares for one another. I myself was beginning to have enough of it—Come, don't be impatient. I will let you go up again; but not before you have told me the gentleman's name—"

"Never, never!" murmured the young woman, forcing back her tears.

"It isn't to call him out, it's to know—The name, tell me the name, quick, and off I go."

He had caught hold of her wrists and he looked at her, laughing his wicked laugh. She struggled, distracted, bent upon not opening her lips again, so that the name he asked for might not escape from them.

"We shall make a noise, you will be nicely placed then. Why are you frightened? Aren't we good friends? I want to know who replaces me, it's legitimate—Come, I will help you—It's Monsieur de Mussy whose grief has touched you."

She did not answer. She bowed her head beneath such an interrogatory.

"It isn't Monsieur de Mussy? The Duke de Rozan, then? Really, nor he either? Perhaps the Count de Chibray? Not even he?"

He stopped short, he reflected.

"The devil, I can't think of any one else. It can't be my father after what you told me—"

Ren�e quivered as if she had been burnt, and said huskily:

"No. You know very well that he no longer comes. I shouldn't accept, it would be ignoble."

"Then who is it?"

And he pressed her wrists still more tightly. The poor woman struggled for a few moments longer.

"Oh, Maxime, if you knew! I can't, however, tell you—"

Then conquered, crushed, looking with affright at the lighted window: "It is Monsieur de Saffr�," she stammered in a very low voice.

Maxime, whom the cruel game had amused, turned extremely pale on hearing this confession which he had asked for so persistently. He was irritated by the unexpected pain which this man's name caused him. He violently threw back Ren�e's wrists, drawing near to her, and saying to her full in the face, and with clinched teeth:

"Well, do you want to know you are a ——!"

He said the word. And he was going off, when she hastened to him, sobbing, taking him in her arms, murmuring tender things, requests for pardon, swearing that she still adored him, and that she would explain everything to him on the morrow. But he disengaged himself, and banged the door of the conservatory, replying:

"No! all's over, I've had quite enough of it."

She remained crushed. She watched him crossing the garden. It seemed to her that the trees of the conservatory revolved round her. Then she slowly dragged her bare feet over the gravel of the pathways, she reascended the steps, her skin discoloured by the cold, and more tragical than ever amid the disorder of her lace. Upstairs she answered, in reply to the questions of her husband who was waiting for her, that she had thought she could recollect where she had dropped a little note-book she had lost since the morning. And when she was in bed, she suddenly felt immense despair on reflecting that she ought to have told Maxime that his father, after returning home with her, had followed her into her room to talk to her about some money matter.

It was on the morrow that Saccard decided to hasten the finish of the Charonne matter. His wife belonged to him; he had just felt her, soft and inert in his hands, like something that surrenders itself. On the other hand, the line which the Boulevard du Prince Eug�ne was to follow was about to be decided upon, and it was necessary that Ren�e should be despoiled before the approaching expropriation was noised about. Saccard displayed an artist's love in all this affair; it was with devotion that he watched his plan ripen, and he set his traps with the refinement of a sportsman who prides himself on capturing his game in skilful fashion. He felt the satisfaction of an expert gamester, of a man who derives a special enjoyment from stolen gain; he wished to obtain the ground for a crust of bread, and then to give his wife a hundred thousand francs' worth of jewellery, amid the joy of the triumph. The simplest operations grew complicated, became black dramas, as soon as he dealt with them; he became impassioned, he would have beaten his father for five francs. But afterwards he scattered gold in regal fashion. However, before obtaining from Ren�e the cession of her share in the property, he prudently went to probe Larsonneau as to the black-mailing intentions which he had scented in him. His instinct saved him on this occasion. The expropriation agent had imagined, on his side, that the fruit was ripe and that he could pluck it. When Saccard entered the office in the Rue de Rivoli he found his compeer overcome, and showing signs of the most violent despair.

"Ah! my friend," murmured Larsonneau, taking hold of his hands, "we are lost. I was about to hasten to your place so that we might consult together and get out of this horrible scrape."

While he wrung his arms and tried to sob, Saccard noticed that he had been engaged in signing letters prior to his arrival, and that the signatures were penned with admirable precision. He accordingly looked at him quietly, saying:

"Bah! what has befallen us then?"

But the agent did not reply at once; he had thrown himself into his arm-chair in front of his writing table, and there, with his elbows on the blotting pad and his brow between his hands, he furiously shook his head. Finally in a husky voice:

"I have been robbed of the ledger containing the inventory, you know."

And he related that one of his clerks, a scamp worthy of the galleys, had abstracted a large number of papers among which the famous inventory figured. The worst was that the thief had realized to what use he might turn the document in question, and he wished to sell it back for a hundred thousand francs.

Saccard reflected. The story seemed to him altogether too clumsy. Plainly enough Larsonneau did not much care at heart whether he was believed or not. He sought for a simple pretext to make Saccard understand that he wanted a hundred thousand francs in the Charonne affair; and indeed, that he would, on this condition, return the compromising papers which were in his possession. The bargain seemed too onerous to Saccard. He would willingly have allowed his ex-colleague a share, but he was irritated by the setting of this snare, by this pretension to make a dupe of him. On the other hand he was not without his apprehensions; he knew the personage he had to deal with, he knew that he was quite capable of taking the documents to his brother, the minister, who would certainly have paid a price for them so as to stifle any scandal.

"The devil!" he muttered, sitting down in his turn, "this is a nasty story. And can one see the scamp in question?"

"I will have him sent for," said Larsonneau. "He lives close by, in the Rue Jean-Lantier."

Ten minutes had not elapsed when a little young fellow with a squint, light hair, and a face covered with freckles, stepped softly into the room, taking care that the door should not make a noise. He wore an old black frock coat, too large for him and horribly threadbare. He remained standing at a respectful distance, quietly looking at Saccard out of the corner of his eye. Larsonneau, who called him Baptistin, made him undergo an interrogatory, to which he replied in monosyllables without humbling himself the least in the world; indeed he accepted with the utmost indifference the epithets of thief, swindler and scoundrel, which his master thought fit to adjoin to each of his questions.

Saccard admired this wretched fellow's coolness. At one moment the expropriation agent sprang from his arm-chair as if to strike him; and he contented himself with retreating a step, squinting with still more humility.

"That will do, leave him alone," said the financier. "And so, sir, you demand a hundred thousand francs for the papers."

"Yes, a hundred thousand francs," replied the young man.

And he went off. Larsonneau seemed unable to calm himself.

"What a blackguard, eh?" he stammered. "Did you see his underhand looks? Fellows of that stamp have a timid air, but they would murder a man for twenty francs."

Saccard however interrupted him, saying:

"Pooh! he isn't terrible. I think one will be able to arrange matters with him—I came to see you about a much more worrying affair—You were right in mistrusting my wife, my dear friend. Just fancy, she's going to sell her share of the property to Monsieur Haffner. She needs money, she says. Her friend Suzanne must have influenced her."

The other abruptly ceased despairing; he listened, rather pale, readjusting his stick-up collar, which had become bent during his fit of anger.

"This sale," continued Saccard, "means the ruin of our hopes. If Monsieur Haffner becomes your fellow-partner, not only will our profits be compromised, but I am dreadfully afraid that we shall find ourselves in a most disagreeable position towards that over-scrupulous fellow, who will want to go over the accounts."

The expropriation agent began walking about with an agitated step, his patent leather boots creaking on the carpet.

"You see," muttered he, "in what a position one puts oneself to oblige people! But, my dear fellow, if I were in your place, I should absolutely prevent my wife from doing anything so foolish. I would beat her sooner."

"Ah! my friend!" said the financier with a wily smile, "I have no more power over my wife than you seem to have over that blackguard of a Baptistin."

Larsonneau stopped short in front of Saccard, who was still smiling, and gazed at him with a profound air. Then he resumed walking up and down, but with a slow measured step. He approached a looking glass, pulled up the bow of his necktie, and then walked on again, regaining his usual elegant manner. And suddenly:

"Baptistin!" he cried.

The little young fellow who squinted came in, but by another door. He no longer carried his hat, but twisted a pen between his fingers.

"Go and fetch the ledger," said Larsonneau to him.

And when the clerk was no longer there, the agent discussed the sum that was to be given him.

"Do it for me," he ended by plainly saying.

Thereupon Saccard consented to give thirty thousand francs out of the future profits of the Charonne affair. He considered that he still escaped cheaply from the usurer's gloved hand. The latter had the promise made out in his name, prolonging the comedy to the end, and stating that he would be accountable to the young man for the thirty thousand francs. It was with a laugh of relief that Saccard burnt the ledger page by page at the fire flaming in the grate. Then, this operation over, he exchanged vigorous hand shakes with Larsonneau, and left him saying:

"You are going to Laure's this evening, aren't you? Wait for me there. I shall have arranged everything with my wife, I we will decide on our final plans."

Laure d'Aurigny, who often moved, then resided in a large apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann, in front of the Expiatory Chapel. She had just fixed one day a week to be at home, like a lady of real society. It was a manner of assembling on the same occasion, the men who saw her, one by one, during the week. Aristide Saccard triumphed on Tuesday evenings; he was the acknowledged protector; and he turned his head with a vague laugh whenever the mistress of the house betrayed him between two doors, by giving one of the gentlemen an appointment for the same night. When he remained there, the last of the set, he lit another cigar, talked business, and joked about the gentleman who was dancing attendance in the street, waiting until he left; then after calling Laure his "dear child," and giving her a little pat on the cheek, he quietly went off by one door while the gentleman came in by another. The secret treaty of alliance which had consolidated Saccard's credit and procured the d'Aurigny two sets of furniture in a month, still continued to amuse them. But Laure wanted a finish to the comedy. This finish, a predetermined one, was to consist in a public rupture, to the profit of some fool who would pay dearly for the right of being the serious protector, known as such to all Paris. The fool was found. The Duke de Rozan, tired of uselessly boring the women of the same social standing as himself, dreamt of acquiring the reputation of a debauchee, so as to lend some relief to his insipid personality. He was very assiduous at the Tuesday at homes of Laure, whom he had conquered by his absolute simplicity. Unfortunately, although thirty-five years old, he was still dependent upon his mother, to such a point that he could at the most dispose of merely ten louis at a time. On the evenings when Laure deigned to take his ten louis, pitying herself, and talking of the hundred thousand francs she needed, he sighed, and promised her the amount on the day when he would be the master. It was then that she had the idea of putting him on friendly terms with Larsonneau, who was one of her good friends. The two men went to lunch together at Tortoni's; and at dessert Larsonneau, while relating his amours with a delicious Spanish beauty, pretended that he knew some money-lenders; but he strongly advised Rozan never to let himself pass into their hands. This confidential announcement inflamed the duke, who ended by wringing from his dear friend a promise that he would occupy himself about his "little affair." He occupied himself about it so well that he was to bring the money on the very evening that Saccard was to meet him at Laure's.

When Larsonneau arrived, the d'Aurigny's large white and gold drawing-room only contained some five or six women, who took hold of his hands, and clung to his neck with a furious outburst of affection. They called him "that big Lar!" a caressing nickname which Laure had invented. And he in a fluty voice exclaimed:

"There, that'll do, my little kittens; you will crush my hat."

They calmed down, and gathered close around him on a couch, while he told them about an attack of indigestion which had befallen Sylvia, with whom he had supped the night before. Then drawing a sweetmeat box from the pocket of his dress-coat he offered them some burnt almonds. Meanwhile, Laure came out of her bedroom, and as several gentlemen arrived, she drew Larsonneau into a boudoir situated at one end of the drawing-room, from which it was separated by double hangings.

"Have you got the money?" she asked him when they were alone.

Larsonneau, without replying, bowed in a jocular manner and tapped the inner pocket of his coat.

"Oh! you big Lar!" murmured the delighted young woman.

She took him round the waist and kissed him.

"Wait a bit," she said, "I want the flimsies—Rozan is in my room, I will go and fetch him."

But he detained her, and, in his turn, kissing her shoulders:

"You know what commission I asked of you."

"Why, yes, you big stupid, it's agreed."

She came back bringing Rozan. Larsonneau was dressed more correctly than the duke, with better fitting gloves, and a more artistic bow to his necktie. They negligently touched hands, and talked about the races of two days before, at which one of their friends had had a horse beaten. Laure stamped impatiently.

"Come, never mind all that, my darling," said she to Rozan. "Big Lar has the money, you know. The affair had better be settled."

Larsonneau pretended to remember.

"Ah, yes, it's true," he said, "I have the amount—But how much better you would have done had you listened to me, my dear fellow! To think that these rogues demanded fifty per cent of me. However I agreed to it all the same, as you told me that it didn't matter."

Laure d'Aurigny had procured some bill stamps during the day. But when it was a question of a pen and an inkstand, she looked at the two men with an air of consternation, doubting whether these objects would be found in the place. She wanted to go and look in the kitchen, when Larsonneau drew from his pocket, the pocket containing the sweetmeat box, two marvels, a silver pen-holder which lengthened by means of a screw, and a steel and ebony inkstand, of jewel-like finish and delicacy. And as Rozan sat down:

"Draw the notes to my name," the agent said. "I didn't wish to compromise you, you understand? We will arrange matters together. Six notes of twenty-five thousand francs each, eh?"

Laure counted the flimsies on a corner of the table. Rozan did not even see them. When he had signed and raised his head, they had already disappeared in the young woman's pocket. However she came to him and kissed him on both cheeks, which appeared to delight him. Larsonneau looked at them philosophically while folding the promissory notes, and replacing the inkstand and pen-holder in his pocket.

The young woman still had her arms round Rozan's neck, when Aristide Saccard raised a corner of the door-hanging.

"Well, don't disturb yourselves," he said, laughing.

The duke blushed. But Laure went to shake the financier's hand, exchanging a wink of intelligence with him. She was radiant.

"It's done, my dear," said she. "I warned you of it. You are not too angry with me?"

Saccard shrugged his shoulders with a good-natured air. He pulled back the hanging, and drawing aside to allow Laure and the duke to pass, he cried out in an usher's yelping voice:

"The duke, the duchess!"

This witticism met with tremendous success. On the morrow the newspapers repeated it, plainly naming Laure d'Aurigny, and designating the two men, by extremely transparent initials. The rupture between Aristide Saccard and fat Laure, caused even more of a stir than their pretended amours had done.

Saccard had let the door curtain fall again amid the burst of gaiety which his jocularity had occasioned in the drawing-room.

"Ah! what a good girl!" said he, turning towards Larsonneau. "She is vicious! It's you, you scamp, who no doubt profits by all this. What are you to have?"

But the agent protested, with smiles, and pulled down his shirt-cuffs, which had caught up under the sleeves of his coat. At last he went and sat down near the door, on a couch to which Saccard motioned him:

"Come here, I don't want to confess you, dash it all! Let us now deal with serious matters, my dear fellow. I have had a long talk with my wife this evening. Everything is decided."

"She consents to cede her share in the property?" asked Larsonneau.

"Yes, but it wasn't without trouble on my part—Women are so obstinate! My wife, you know, had promised an old aunt not to sell the ground. There was no end to her scruples. Luckily, however, I had prepared quite a decisive story."

He rose up to light a cigar at the candelabrum which Laure had left on the table, and returning and stretching himself languidly on the couch:

"I told my wife," he continued, "that you were completely ruined—You had gambled at the Bourse, spent your money with harlots, dabbled in bad speculations; in fact you are on the point of ending by a frightful bankruptcy—I even let it be understood that I did not consider you perfectly honest—Then I explained to her that the Charonne affair would be wrecked in your fall, and that the best course would be for her to accept the proposal you had made to me to disengage her, by buying her share, for a crust of bread, it's true."

"It isn't an able story," muttered the expropriation agent. "Do you fancy your wife will believe such trash?"

Saccard smiled. He was in a disposition to be communicative.

"You are simple, my dear fellow," he resumed. "The basis of the story is of little consequence; the details, gestures and tone of voice are everything. Call Rozan and I bet I will persuade him that it is broad daylight. My wife has scarcely any more brains than Rozan—I let her have a glimpse of a precipice. She hasn't the least idea of the coming expropriation. As she was astonished, that in the midst of a catastrophe, you could think of taking a still heavier burden on your shoulders, I told her that no doubt she hampered you in dealing some ugly blow intended for your creditors. Finally, I advised the transaction as the only means of avoiding being mixed up in interminable law suits, and of deriving some money from the ground."

Larsonneau still considered the story somewhat brutal. His method was less dramatic; each of his operations was concocted and unravelled with the elegance of a drawing-room comedy.

"I should have imagined something different," he said. "However, everyone his own system. So all we have to do now is to pay—"

"It is on this point," replied Saccard, "that I want to make arrangements with you. To-morrow I will take the deed of sale to my wife, and she will simply have to send you this deed to receive the stipulated amount. I prefer to avoid any interview."

He had indeed never allowed Larsonneau to visit them on a footing of intimacy. He did not invite him to his entertainments, and he accompanied him to Ren�e's on the days when it was absolutely necessary that they should meet; this had happened on three occasions at the utmost. He almost always transacted matters with a power of attorney from his wife, not wishing to let her see too closely into his affairs.

He now opened his pocket-book, adding:

"Here are the two hundred thousand francs' worth of bills accepted by my wife; you will give them her in payment, and you will add to them a hundred thousand francs which I will bring you to-morrow morning. I am bleeding myself, my dear friend. This business will cost me a fortune."

"But that will only make three hundred thousand francs," remarked the expropriation agent. "Will the receipt be for that amount?"

"A receipt for three hundred thousand francs!" rejoined Saccard, laughing. "Ah! in that case we should be nicely placed later on! According to our inventories, the property must now be estimated at two millions five hundred thousand francs. The receipt will naturally be for half that amount."

"Your wife will never sign it."

"Yes, she will. I tell you that it is all agreed. Why, dash it all! I told her that that was your first condition. You present a pistol at our heads with your bankruptcy, do you understand? And it was for that reason that I appeared to doubt your honesty, and accused you of wanting to dupe your creditors. Do you think my wife understands anything of all that?"

Larsonneau shook his head, muttering:

"No matter, you ought to have devised something simpler."

"But my story is simplicity itself!" said Saccard, very much astonished. "How the devil do you find it complicated?"

He was not conscious of the incredible number of devices which he tacked on to the most ordinary transaction. He derived real enjoyment from the cock-and-bull story which he had just told Ren�e; and what delighted him was the impudence of the lie, the piling up of impossibilities, the astonishing complicacy of the plot. He would long since have had the ground if he had not imagined all this drama; but he would have experienced less enjoyment had he obtained it easily. Besides, he displayed the utmost simplicity in making the Charonne speculation quite a financial melodrama.

He rose up, and taking Larsonneau's arm, walked towards the drawing-room:

"You have perfectly understood me, eh?" he said. "Content yourself with following my instructions, and you will applaud me later on. Do you know, my dear fellow, you do wrong to wear yellow gloves, they quite spoil your hands."

The expropriation agent contented himself with smiling and murmuring:

"Oh! gloves have their value, dear master: one can touch anything without dirtying oneself."

As they returned into the drawing-room, Saccard was surprised and somewhat alarmed to find Maxime on the other side of the door curtains. He was seated on a couch beside a fair-haired woman, who was telling him, in a monotonous voice, a long story, no doubt her own. The young fellow had, in point of fact, overheard the conversation between his father and Larsonneau. The two accomplices seemed to him to be a pair of sharp blades. Still vexed by Ren�e's betrayal, he tasted a cowardly enjoyment in learning the theft of which she was about to be the victim. It avenged him a little. His father came and shook his hand with a suspicious air; but Maxime, showing him the fair-haired woman, whispered in his ear:

"She isn't bad looking, is she? I mean to have her this evening."

Thereupon Saccard attitudinized, and showed himself gallant. Laure d'Aurigny came and joined them for a moment. She complained that Maxime scarcely paid her one visit a month. But he pretended that he had been very much occupied, which statement made everybody laugh. He added that in future he should be here, there and everywhere.

"I have written a tragedy," said he, "and I only hit on the fifth act last night—I now mean to rest myself at the abodes of all the pretty women in Paris."

He laughed and enjoyed his allusions which he alone could understand. However, the only other persons now remaining in the drawing-room were Rozan and Larsonneau, on either corner of the mantelpiece. The Saccards rose up, as well as the fair-haired woman who lived in the house. The d'Aurigny then went to speak in a low tone to the duke. He seemed surprised and vexed. Seeing that he did not make up his mind to leave his arm-chair:

"No, really, not this evening," she said in an undertone, "I've a headache! To-morrow evening, I promise you."

Rozan had to obey. Laure waited till he was on the landing and then said quickly in Larsonneau's ear:

"Eh! big Lar, I keep my word. Shove him into his carriage."

When the fair-haired woman took leave of the gentlemen to return to her rooms on the floor above, Saccard was surprised that Maxime did not follow her.

"Well?" he asked him.

"Well, no," replied the young fellow. "I've reflected—"

And he had an idea which he thought a very funny one:

"I abandon my rights to you, if you like. Make haste, she hasn't yet shut her door."

But his father gently shrugged his shoulders, saying: "Thanks, youngster, I've something better than that for the time being."

The four men went down. Outside, the duke absolutely wished to take Larsonneau with him in his carriage. His mother lived in the Marais, and he would have dropped the expropriation agent at his door in the Rue de Rivoli. The latter refused, however, shut the carriage door himself, and told the coachman to drive off. And he then lingered on the side-walk of the Boulevard Haussmann, talking with the two others instead of going away.

"Ah, poor Rozan!" said Saccard, who suddenly understood the truth.

Larsonneau swore that it was not so, that he didn't care a fig for all that, that he was a practical man. And as the other two continued joking, and the cold was very keen, he finished by exclaiming:

"'Pon my word, so much the worse; I'm going to ring! You are indiscreet, gentlemen."

"Good night!" called Maxime, as the door closed again.

And taking his father's arm he went up the Boulevard with him. It was one of those clear, frosty nights when it is so agreeable to walk on the hard ground, in the icy atmosphere. Saccard remarked that Larsonneau was wrong, that it was preferable to be simply the d'Aurigny's comrade. He started from this point to declare that the love of these women was really pernicious. He showed himself moral, and hit upon sentences and advice of astonishing wisdom.

"You see," said he to his son, "all that only lasts for a time, my good fellow. A man loses his health at it, and doesn't taste real happiness. You know that I'm not a puritan. All the same, I've had quite enough of it; I'm going to settle down."

Maxime chuckled; he stopped his father and gazed at him by the moonlight, declaring that he had a fine head. But Saccard became still more grave.

"Joke as much as you like. I repeat to you that there is nothing like married life to preserve a man and make him happy."

Thereupon he spoke of Louise. And he began walking more slowly so as to settle that matter, he said, since they were talking of it. Everything was fully arranged. He even informed Maxime that he and Monsieur de Mareuil had fixed the signing of the contract for the Sunday following the Mid-Lent Thursday. On that Thursday there was to be a grand party at the mansion in the Parc Monceaux, and he could profit by the occasion to make a public announcement of the marriage. Maxime considered all this to be very satisfactory. He had rid himself of Ren�e, he saw no more obstacles, and he surrendered himself to his father, as he had surrendered himself to his stepmother.

"Well, it's understood," said he. "Only don't talk about it to Ren�e. Her friends would twit and tease me, and I prefer that they should know the news at the same time as everyone else."

Saccard promised him to keep silent. Then, as they approached the top of the Boulevard Malesherbes he again gave him a quantity of excellent advice. He told him how he ought to act to make his home a paradise.

"Above everything never break off with your wife. It's folly. A wife with whom you no longer have connection costs you a fortune. In the first place a man has to pay some harlot, hasn't he? Then the expenditure is much greater at home: there are dresses, madame's private pleasures, her dear friends, the devil and all his train."

He was in a moment of extraordinary virtue. The success of his Charonne affair had set idyllic tenderness in his heart.

"I," he continued, "was born to live happy and ignored in the depths of some village with all my family around me. People don't know me, my little fellow. I seem to be very flighty. But in reality not at all, I should adore remaining near my wife, I would willingly abandon my affairs for a modest income which would enable me to retire to Plassans. You are about to become rich, make yourself a home with Louise in which you will live like two turtle-doves. It's so nice! I will go to see you. It will do me good."

He ended by having sobs in his voice. Meanwhile they had reached the iron gate of the mansion, and stood talking on the curb of the side-walk. A sharp north-east wind swept over these Parisian heights. Not a sound arose in the pale night, white with frost. Maxime, surprised by his father's sentimentality, had for a moment past had a question on his lips.

"But you," he said at last, "it seems to me—"

"What?"

"As regards your wife!"

Saccard shrugged his shoulders.

"Eh! quite so! I was a fool. That's why I speak to you by experience—However we have become husband and wife again, oh! quite so. It happened nearly six weeks ago. I go and join her of an evening when I don't return home too late. To-night however the poor ducky must dispense with me; I have to work till daylight. She has such an awfully fine figure!"

As Maxime held out his hand to his father the latter detained him, and added in a lower key, in a confidential tone:

"You know Blanche M�ller's figure, well, it's that, but ten times more supple. And such hips! They have a curve, a delicacy—"

And then he concluded by saying to the young fellow who was going off:

"You are like me, you have a heart, your wife will be happy. Good-bye youngster!"

When Maxime had at last rid himself of his father, he went rapidly round the park. What he had just heard surprised him so much, that he experienced an irresistible desire to see Ren�e. He wished to ask her forgiveness for his brutality, to find out why she had lied to him in naming Monsieur de Saffr�, and to learn the story of her husband's tenderness. He thought of all this confusedly, however, with but the one distinct wish to smoke a cigar in her room and renew their comradeship. Providing she were well disposed he would even announce his marriage to her, so as to make her understand that their amours must remain dead and buried. When he had opened the little door, the key of which he had fortunately retained, he ended by saying to himself that after his father's confidential revelations, his visit was necessary and quite proper.

In the conservatory he whistled as he had done the night before; but he did not have to wait. Ren�e came to open the glass door of the little drawing-room, and went upstairs before him without speaking a word. She still wore a dress of white tulle forming puffs and covered with satin bows; the tails of the satin body were edged with a broad band of white jet which the light of the candelabra tinged with blue and pink. When Maxime looked at her upstairs he was touched by her pallor and the deep emotion which deprived her of her voice. She could not have been expecting him, she still quivered all over at seeing him arrive as quietly as usual, with his coaxing air. C�leste returned from the wardrobe, where she had gone to fetch a night-gown, and the lovers remained silent, deferring their explanation until the girl had withdrawn. As a rule they did not inconvenience themselves in her presence; but the things which they felt upon their lips filled them with a kind of shame. Ren�e would have C�leste undress her in the bedroom, where there was a large fire. The chambermaid removed the pins, took off each article of finery, one by one, without hurrying herself. And Maxime, feeling bored, mechanically took up the chemise which was lying on a chair beside him, and warmed it in front of the flames, leaning forward with his arms apart. It was he who used to render Ren�e this little service in happy times and she felt moved when she saw him delicately holding the gown to the fire. Then as C�leste showed no signs of finishing the young fellow asked:

"Did you enjoy yourself at the ball?"

"Oh! no, it's always the same thing you know," answered Ren�e. "A great deal too many people, a perfect crush."

Maxime turned the night-gown, which was now warm on one side.

"What did Adeline wear?" he asked.

"A mauve dress, rather awkwardly devised. Although she is short she is mad on flounces."

They then talked about the other women. Maxime was now burning his fingers with the gown.

"But you will scorch it," said Ren�e whose voice was maternally caressing.

C�leste took the gown from the young fellow's hands. He rose up, and went to look at the large pink and grey bed, fixing his eyes upon one of the bouquets embroidered on the curtains, so as to be able to turn his head, and not see Ren�e's bare bosom. It was instinctive. He no longer considered himself her lover, so he no longer had the right to look. Then he drew a cigar from his pocket and lighted it. Ren�e had given him permission to smoke in her apartments. At last C�leste retired, leaving the young woman by the fireside, quite white in her night attire.

Maxime walked about for a few moments longer, silent, and looking out of the corner of his eye at Ren�e who seemed to be again seized with a shudder. Then stationing himself in front of the mantelpiece with his cigar between his teeth, he asked in a curt voice:

"Why didn't you tell me that it was my father who was with you last night?"

She raised her head, his eyes dilated with supreme anguish; then a rush of blood crimsoned her face, and, overwhelmed with shame, she hid it with her hands and stammered:

"You know that? you know that?"

Regaining her self-possession she tried to lie:

"It's not true—Who told it you?"

Maxime shrugged his shoulders.

"Why my father himself, who considers you nicely formed, and talked to me about your hips."

He had allowed a little vexation to show itself while saying this; but he now began walking about again, continuing in a chiding but friendly voice, between two puffs of smoke:

"Really now I don't understand you. You are a singular woman. It was your fault if I was rude yesterday. If you had told me that it was my father, I should have gone off quietly, you understand? I have no right—But you go and name Monsieur de Saffr� to me!"

She was sobbing, with her hands over her face. He drew near, knelt down before her, and forcibly drew her hands aside.

"Come, tell me why you named Monsieur de Saffr�?" he said.

Then, still averting her head, she answered in a low tone, amid her tears:

"I thought that you would leave me, if you knew that your father—"

He rose to his feet, took up his cigar which he had laid on a corner of the mantelshelf, and contented himself with muttering: "You are very funny, really!"

She no longer cried. The flames of the grate and the fire of her cheeks were drying her tears. Her astonishment at seeing Maxime so calm in presence of a revelation which, she had thought, was bound to crush him, made her forget her shame. She looked at him as he walked about; she listened to him speaking, as if she had been in a dream. Without abandoning his cigar, he repeated to her that she was unreasonable, that it was quite natural she should have connection with her husband, and that he really could not think of resenting it. But to go and confess that she had a lover when it was not true! And he constantly returned to that point, which he could not understand, and which seemed really monstrous to him. He talked about women's "mad imaginations."

"You are a little bit cracked, my dear," he said, "you must take care."

Then he ended by asking inquisitively:

"But why Monsieur de Saffr� rather than anyone else?"

"He courts me," said Ren�e.

Maxime restrained an impertinent remark; he had been on the point of saying that she had fancied herself a month older on owning that Monsieur de Saffr� was her lover. However, he merely gave expression to the evil smile which this spiteful idea prompted, and throwing his cigar into the fire, he went and sat down on the other side of the mantelshelf. There he talked reason, and gave Ren�e to understand that they ought to remain good friends. The young woman's fixed gaze certainly embarrassed him somewhat; he did not dare to announce his marriage to her. She contemplated him for a long time, her eyes still swollen by her tears. She found him petty, narrow-minded, despicable, but she still loved him with the same tenderness that she felt for her lace. He looked pretty in the light of the candelabra placed on the corner of the mantelshelf beside him. As he threw his head back, the light of the candles gilded his hair and glided over his face, amid the soft down of his cheeks, with a charming aurulent effect.

"All the same I must be off," said he several times.

He had quite decided not to stop. Besides, Ren�e would not have allowed it. They both thought it, and said it: they were now nothing more than two friends. When Maxime had at last pressed the young woman's hand, and was on the point of leaving the room, she detained him for another moment by speaking to him about his father, upon whom she bestowed great praise.

"You see, I felt too much remorse," she said. "I prefer that this should have happened. You don't know your father; I was astonished to find him so kind, so disinterested. The poor fellow has such great worries just now!"

Maxime looked at the tips of his boots without replying, and with an embarrassed air. She dwelt on the subject.

"As long as he did not come into this room, it was all the same to me. But afterwards—When I saw him here so affectionate, bringing me money which he must have picked up in all the corners of Paris, ruining himself for me without a murmur, I felt ill—If you knew how carefully he has watched over my interests!"

The young fellow returned softly to the mantelpiece, and leant against it. He remained embarrassed, with bowed head and a smile gradually rising to his lips.

"Yes," muttered he, "my father is very skilful in watching over people's interests."

His tone of voice astonished Ren�e. She looked at him, and he, as if to defend himself, added:

"Oh! I know nothing. I only say that my father is a skilful man."

"You would do wrong to speak ill of him," she rejoined. "You must judge him rather superficially. If I acquainted you with all his worries, if I repeated to you what he confided to me again this evening, you would see how mistaken people are, when they think he cares for money."

Maxime could not restrain a shrug of the shoulders. He interrupted his stepmother with an ironical laugh.

"Ah, I know him, I know him well," he said. "He must have told you some very pretty things. Relate them to me."

This tone of raillery wounded her. She then enlarged upon her praises; she considered her husband quite a great man; she talked about the Charonne affair, that piece of jobbery of which she had understood nothing, as about a catastrophe in which Saccard's intelligence and kindness had been revealed to her. She added that she should sign the deed of cession on the morrow, and that if this affair were really a disaster, she accepted it in punishment for her sins. Maxime let her go on, sneering and looking at her slyly; then he said, in an undertone:

"That's it; that's just it."

And raising his voice, and settling his hand on Ren�e's shoulder:

"Thanks, my dear, but I already know the story. You are of nice composition!"

He again seemed to be on the point of leaving, but he felt a furious itching to tell Ren�e everything. She had exasperated him with her praises of her husband, and he forgot that he had promised himself not to speak, so as to avoid anything disagreeable.

"What! what do you mean?" she asked.

"Why, that my father has 'done' you in the prettiest way in the world. I really pity you—you are too much of a simpleton!"

And he then cowardly, craftily, related to her what he had heard at Laure's—tasting a secret delight in descending into these infamies. It seemed to him that he was taking his revenge for a vague insult which some one had just addressed to him. With his harlot's temperament he lingered beatifically over this denunciation, over this cruel chatter of what he had overheard behind a door. He spared Ren�e nothing, neither the money which her husband had lent her usuriously nor that which he meant to steal from her, with the help of ridiculous stories fit to send children to sleep. The young woman listened to him, very pale and with clinched teeth. Standing in front of the chimney-piece, she slightly lowered her head, and looked at the fire. Her night dress, the gown which Maxime had warmed, spread out, revealing the motionless, statue-like whiteness of her limbs.

"I tell all this," continued the young man, "so that you may not seem to be a fool. But you would do wrong to get angry with my father. He isn't wicked. He has his failings like every one. Till to-morrow, eh?"

He still advanced towards the door. But Ren�e stopped him with a sudden gesture:

"Stay!" she cried, imperiously.

And taking hold of him, drawing him to her, almost seating him on her knees in front of the fire, she kissed him on the lips, saying:

"Ah, well! it would be too stupid to put ourselves to inconvenience now. Don't you know that my head has no longer seemed to belong to me since yesterday, since you wanted to break off? I am like an idiot. At the ball to-night I had a fog before my eyes. It is because I cannot now live quite without you. When you leave me I shall be done for. Don't laugh; I tell you what I feel."

She looked at him with infinite tenderness, as if she had not seen him for a long time.

"You found the word," she continued. "I was a simpleton. Your father would have made me see stars in broad daylight. Did I know anything about it? While he was telling me his story, I only heard a loud buzzing, and I was so crushed that, if he had chosen, he could have made me go down on my knees to sign his papers. And I fancied to myself that I felt remorseful—I was really as stupid as that!"

She burst out laughing, and gleams of folly shone in her eyes. Pressing her lover still more tightly, she went on:

"Do we sin, we two? We love each other, we amuse ourselves as it pleases us. Everyone has come to that, eh? You see your father doesn't put himself out. He likes money, and he takes it wherever he finds it. He's right, it sets me at my ease. In the first place, I sha'n't sign anything, and then, you will come here every evening. I was afraid that you wouldn't, you know, on account of what I told you. But as you don't mind it—Besides, I shall close my door to him now, you understand?"

She rose up and lighted the night-light. Maxime hesitated in despair. He realised what a piece of folly he had perpetrated, and he harshly reproached himself for having said too much. How could he announce his marriage now? It was his fault. The rupture had been accomplished, there had been no need for him to go up into that room again, or especially to prove to the young woman that her husband deceived her. Maxime's anger with himself was increased, as he no longer knew what feeling he had first obeyed. But if for a moment he thought of being brutal a second time, of going away, the sight of Ren�e, who was letting her slippers fall, lent him invincible cowardice. He felt frightened. He remained.

On the morrow, when Saccard came to his wife's apartments to make her sign the deed of cession, she quietly answered him that she should not do so, that she had reflected. She did not, however, allow herself even an allusion to the truth; she had sworn that she would be discreet, for she did not want to create worries for herself, but rather wished to taste the renewal of her amours in peace. The Charonne affair would finish as it could; her refusal to sign was merely an act of vengeance; she did not care a fig for the rest. Saccard was on the point of flying into a passion. All his dream crumbled. His other affairs were going from bad to worse. He found himself at the end of his resources, and merely sustained himself by performing miraculous feats of equilibrity; that very morning he had been unable to pay his baker's bill. This did not prevent him, however, from preparing a splendid entertainment for the Mid-Lent Thursday. In presence of Ren�e's refusal he experienced the white rage of a vigorous man impeded in his work by a child's whim. With the deed of cession once in his pocket, he had relied upon raising funds pending the award of the indemnity. When he had slightly calmed down, and his intelligence had become clear again, his wife's sudden change astonished him; she must, undoubtedly, have been advised. He scented a lover. This was so clear a presentiment, that he hastened to his sister's to question her, to ask her if she did not know anything about Ren�e's private life. Sidonie showed herself very bitter. She had not forgiven her sister-in-law for the affront she had given her by refusing to see Monsieur de Saffr�. So when, by her brother's questions, she understood that the latter accused his wife of having a lover, she cried out that she was certain of it. And of her own accord she offered to spy upon "the turtle doves." In that way, the haughty thing would see who it was she had to deal with. Saccard did not habitually seek after disagreeable truths; his interest alone compelled him to open his eyes, which, as a rule, he wisely kept closed. He accepted his sister's offer.

"Oh! be easy, I shall learn everything," said she to him in a voice full of compassion. "Ah! my poor brother! Ang�le would never have betrayed you! So good, so generous a husband! These Parisian dolls have no hearts. And to think that I never cease giving her good advice!"