Complete Works of Emile Zola (240 page)

Then the incestuous woman grew accustomed to her sin as to a gala-dress whose stiffness had at first inconvenienced her. She followed the fashions of the period, she dressed and undressed as others did. She ended by believing herself to live in a world above common morality, in which the senses became refined and developed, and in which one was allowed to strip one’s self naked for the benefit of all Olympus. Sin became a luxury, a flower set in the hair, a diamond fastened on the brow. And she again saw, as a justification and a redemption, the Emperor passing on the general’s arm through the two rows of bowing shoulders.

One man alone, Baptiste, her husband’s valet, continued to disquiet her. Since Saccard had been showing himself gallant, this tall, pale, dignified valet seemed to walk around her with the solemnity of mute disapprobation. He never looked at her, his cold glances passed higher, above her chignon, with the modesty of a church-beadle refusing to defile his eyes by allowing them to rest on the hair of a sinner. She imagined that he knew everything, she would have purchased his silence had she dared. Then she became filled with uneasiness, she felt a sort of confused respect whenever she met Baptiste, and she said to herself that all the respectability of her household had withdrawn and concealed itself under this lackey’s dress-coat.

One day she asked Céleste:

“Does Baptiste make jokes in the kitchen? Have you ever heard any stories about him, has he a mistress?”

“What a question!” was all the maid replied.

“Come, has he made love to you?”

“Eh! but he never looks at women. We hardly ever see him…. He is always either with monsieur or in the stables…. He says he’s very fond of horses.”

Renée was irritated at this respectability. She insisted, she would have liked to be able to despise her servants. Although she had taken a liking to Céleste, she would have rejoiced to hear of her having lovers.

“But you yourself, Céleste, don’t you think Baptiste is a good-looking fellow?”

“I, madame!” cried the maid, with the stupefied air of a person who has just been told of something prodigious, “oh! I have very different ideas in my head. I don’t want a man. I have my own plan, you will see later. I’m not a blockhead, believe me.”

Renée could not draw anything more definite from her. Her cares, besides, increased. Her rackety life, her mad escapades, met with numerous obstacles which it became necessary for her to surmount, however much she might sometimes be bruised by them. It was thus that Louise de Mareuil one day rose up between her and Maxime. She was not jealous of “the hunchback,” as she scornfully called her; she knew that she was condemned by the doctors, and could never believe that Maxime would marry an ugly creature like that, even at the price of a dowry of a million. In her fall she had retained a middle-class simplicity with regard to people she loved; though she despised herself, she readily believed them to possess superior and very estimable natures. But whilst rejecting the possibility of a marriage which would have seemed to her a sinister piece of debauchery and a theft, she felt pained at the familiarity and intimacy of the young people. When she spoke of Louise to Maxime, he laughed with sheer satisfaction, he repeated the child’s sayings to her, he told her:

“She calls me her little man, you know, the chit.”

And he took things so easily that she did not venture to explain to him that this chit was seventeen, and that their way of pulling each other about, their eagerness, when they met in a drawing-room, to seek a shady corner from which to make fun of everybody, grieved her and spoilt her most enjoyable evenings.

An incident occurred which imparted a singular character to the situation. Renée often felt a need of bravado, she had whims of unreasoning audacity. 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 brilliant idea of calling the young man to her, as he sat talking with Louise; she came towards him, from the heart of the conservatory where she was standing, and suddenly kissed him on the mouth, between two clumps of shrubbery, thinking herself sufficiently concealed. But Louise had followed Maxime. When the lovers raised their heads, they saw her, a few steps away, looking at them with a strange smile, with no blush nor sign of astonishment, but with the quiet appreciative air of a companion in vice, knowing enough to understand and appreciate a kiss of that sort.

Maxime felt really alarmed that day, and it was Renée who showed herself indifferent and almost light-hearted. That put an end to it. It was impossible now for the hunchback to take her lover from her. She thought to herself:

“I should have done it on purpose. She knows now that ‘her little man’ belongs to me.”

Maxime felt reassured when he again found Louise as frolicsome and entertaining as before. He pronounced her to be “very smart, a very good sort.” And that was all.

Renée had reason to be disturbed. Saccard had for some time been thinking of his son’s marriage with Mademoiselle de Mareuil. There was a dowry of a million there which he did not mean to let out of his reach, intending later on to lay hands on the money himself. Louise, in the beginning of the winter, had stayed in bed for nearly three weeks, and Saccard was so afraid of seeing her die before the contemplated wedding that he resolved to have the children married forthwith. He did indeed think them a trifle young, but then the doctors feared the month of March for the consumptive girl. On his side M. de Mareuil was in a delicate position. At the last poll he had at length succeeded in being returned as deputy. Only the Corps Législatif had just quashed his election, which was the great scandal of the revisions. This election was quite a mock-heroic poem, on which the newspapers lived for a month. M. Hupel de la Noue, the préfet of the department, had displayed such vigour that the other candidates had been prevented even from placarding their election addresses or distributing their voting-papers. Acting on his advice, M. de Mareuil had covered the constituency with tables at which the peasants ate and drank for a week. He promised, moreover, a railway line, a new bridge, and three churches, and on the eve of the poll he forwarded to the influential electors portraits of the Emperor and Empress, two large engravings covered with glass and set in gilt frames. This gift was an enormous success, and the majority was overwhelming. But when the Chamber, in presence of the outburst of laughter of the whole of France, found itself compelled to send M. de Mareuil back to his electors, the minister flew into a terrible passion with the préfet and the unfortunate candidate, who had really shown themselves to be too “hot.” He even spoke of selecting another name as the official candidate. M. de Mareuil was thunderstruck; he had spent three hundred thousand francs on the department, he owned large estates in it in which he was bored, and he would lose money if he sold them. And so he came to beseech his dear colleague to pacify his brother, and to promise him in his name an absolutely decorous election. It was on this occasion that Saccard again spoke of the children’s marriage, and that the two parents definitely decided upon it.

When Maxime was sounded on this subject, he felt embarrassed. Louise amused him, the dowry tempted him still more. He said yes, he agreed to all the dates that Saccard proposed, so as to avoid the tedium of an argument. But to himself he confessed that, unfortunately, things would not be arranged so prettily nor so easily. Renée would never consent; she would cry, she would make scenes; she was capable of creating some great scandal that would astound Paris. It was very unpleasant. She frightened him now. She watched him with perturbing eyes, she possessed him so despotically that he thought he could feel claws digging into his shoulder when she laid her white hand upon it. Her turbulence turned to roughness, and there was a cracked sound beneath her laughter. He really feared that she would one night go mad in his arms. In her remorse, the fear of being surprised, the cruel joys of adultery, did not manifest themselves as in other women in tears and dejection, but in more pronounced eccentricity, in a still more irresistible longing for racket. And amid her growing distraction, one began to hear a rattling, the breaking-up of this adorable and bewildering machine, which was going to pieces.

Maxime patiently awaited an occasion which would rid him of this irksome mistress. He repeated once more that they had been foolish. Though their intimacy had at first lent an additional voluptuousness to their amorous relationship, it now prevented him from breaking off, as he certainly would have done with any other woman. He would have stayed away; that was his method of ending his amours, so as to avoid all effort or dispute. But he felt himself unequal to an explosion, and he still even willingly forgot himself in Renée’s embraces: she was motherly, she paid for him, she was ready to help him out of a difficulty whenever a creditor lost patience. Then the thought of Louise returned to him, the thought of the dowry of a million, and made him reflect, even amid Renée’s kisses, that “this was all very fine, but it was not serious and must come to an end some time or other.”

One night Maxime was so rapidly cleaned out at the house of a lady where cards were often played till daylight, that he experienced one of those fits of dumb anger common to the gambler whose pockets have been emptied. He would have given anything in the world to be able to fling a few more louis on the table. He took up his hat, and, with the mechanical step of a man impelled by a fixed idea, went to the Parc Monceau, opened the little gate, and found himself in the conservatory. It was past midnight. Renée had told him not to come that night. When she now closed her door to him, she no longer even sought to invent an explanation, and he thought only of making the most of his holiday. He did not clearly remember Renée’s injunction until he had reached the glass door of the small drawing-room, which was closed. As a rule, when he was expected, Renée undid the fastening of this door beforehand.

“Bah!” he thought, seeing a light in the dressing-room window, “I will whistle and she will come down. I sha’n’t disturb her, and if she has a few louis I’ll go away at once.”

And he whistled softly. He often, for that matter, used this signal to announce his arrival. But this evening he whistled several times in vain. He grew obstinate, whistled more loudly, not wishing to abandon his idea of an immediate loan. At last he saw the glass door opened with infinite precaution, though he had heard no sound of footsteps. Renée appeared in the twilight of the hot-house, her hair undone, almost without clothes, as though she were just going to bed. Her feet were bare. She pushed him towards one of the arbours, descending the steps and treading on the gravel of the pathways without seeming to feel the cold or the roughness of the ground.

“How stupid of you to whistle so loudly,” she murmured with restrained anger….”I told you not to come. What do you want?”

“Oh, let’s go up,” said Maxime, surprised at this reception. “I will tell you upstairs. You will catch cold.”

But as he made a step forward she held him back, and he then noticed that she was horribly pale. She was bowed with a silent terror. Her petticoats, the lace of her underclothing, hung down like tragic shreds upon her trembling skin.

He examined her with growing astonishment.

“What is the matter? Are you ill?”

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

“But there’s a man in your room!” he said suddenly.

“No, no, it’s not true,” she stammered, beseeching, distraught.

“Nonsense, my dear, I can see his shadow.”

Then for a minute they remained there, face to face, not knowing what to say to one another. Renée’s teeth chattered with terror, and it seemed to her as if buckets of ice-cold water were being emptied over her feet. Maxime felt more annoyance than he would have believed; but he still remained sufficiently self-possessed to reflect, and to say to himself that the opportunity was a good one for breaking off the connection.

“You won’t make me believe that Céleste wears a top-coat,” he continued. “If the panes of the conservatory were not so thick, I might perhaps recognize the gentleman.”

She pushed him deeper into the gloom of the foliage, and seized with a growing terror, said, with clasped hands:

“I beg of you, Maxime…”

But all the young man’s mischievousness was aroused, a fierce sense of mischief that sought for vengeance. He was too puny to find relief in anger. Spite compressed his lips; and instead of striking her, as he had at first felt inclined to do, he rejoined in a strident voice:

“You should have told me, I should not have come to disturb you…. That happens every day, that people cease to care for one another. I was beginning to have enough of it myself…. Come, don’t grow impatient. I’ll let you go up again; but not till you have told me the gentleman’s name….”

“Never, never!” murmured Renée, forcing back her tears.

“It’s not to challenge him, I only want to know…. His name, tell me his name quick, and I’ll go.”

He was holding her by the wrists, and he looked at her with his bad laugh. And she struggled, distraught, refusing to open her lips, lest the name he asked for should escape her.

“We shall make a noise soon, then you’ll be much better off. What are you afraid of? we’re good friends, are we not?… I want to know who replaces me, that’s fair enough…. Wait, let me assist you. It’s M. de Mussy, whose grief has touched you?”

She made no reply. She bowed her head beneath this interrogatory.

“Not M. de Mussy?… The Duc de Rozan, then? Really, not he either?… The Comte de Chibray, perhaps? Not even he?…”

He stopped, he reflected.

“The deuce, I can’t think of anybody…. It’s not my father, after what you told me?…”

Renée started as though she had been scalded, and in a hollow voice:

“No, you know he no longer comes to me. I wouldn’t allow it, it would be too degrading.”