Still motionless, fainting from the heat, the young woman was silent for a while before answering, as though it took laborious effort on her part to understand what was being said. “Yes, I’ll come, it’s agreed, and we’ll talk, but not tomorrow. . . . Worms will be content with an installment on what I owe. When he bothers me again, we’ll see. . . . Don’t say anything more about all this. My head is splitting from talking business.”
Mme Sidonie looked quite upset. She was on the point of sitting down again and resuming her soothing monologue, but Renée’s weary attitude persuaded her to postpone her attack. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of papers, among which she searched for and eventually found an object enclosed in a pink box. “I came to recommend this new soap to you,” she said, reverting to her businesswoman’s voice. “I’ve taken a great interest in the inventor, a charming young man. It’s a very gentle soap, very good for the skin. You’ll try it, won’t you? And mention it to your friends? . . . I’ll leave it here, on the mantel.”
She had reached the doorway when she turned again and, standing in the rosy glow from the fireplace, her face like wax, she began to sing the praises of an elastic belt, an invention she said was destined to replace the corset.
“It gives you a perfectly round waist, a real wasp waist,” she said. “I rescued it from a bankruptcy. When you come, you can try on some samples, if you like. . . . It took me a week of running to the lawyers. The papers are in my pocket, and I’m on my way right now to see an official about having the final lien removed. . . . See you soon, my darling. Remember that I’m waiting for you and that I want to dry your beautiful eyes.”
She slipped out and disappeared. Renée didn’t even hear her close the door. She remained in front of the dying fire, continuing her daydream, her head full of dancing numbers, while in the distance she heard the voices of Saccard and Mme Sidonie talking, offering her considerable sums in the tone in which an auctioneer invites bids on a piece of furniture. On her neck she could still feel her husband’s brutal kiss, and when she turned around there was the businesswoman at her feet, with her black dress and pasty face, making passionate speeches to her, extolling her perfections, begging her for a tryst in the posture of a lover on the brink of despair. This made her smile. The heat in the room was more and more stifling. And the young woman’s stupor and bizarre dreams were merely the products of a light and artificial sleep, and behind that thin veil she could still see the small private room on the boulevard and the wide divan next to which she had fallen to her knees. She had ceased to suffer altogether. When she opened her eyes, Maxime flitted through the rosy firelight.
The next day, at the ministry ball, beautiful Mme Saccard was marvelous to behold. Worms had accepted the payment of 50,000 francs. She emerged from financial embarrassment laughing like a woman who has recovered from a serious illness. When she crossed the salons in her splendid pink faille gown with its long Louis XIV train edged with white lace, there was a murmur, and the men shouldered one another aside to catch a glimpse of her. Those who knew her intimately bowed with discreet, knowing smiles, paying homage to those beautiful shoulders, so well-known to all of official Paris—indeed, they were the stalwart pillars on which the Empire rested. She had bared her bosom with such scorn for gawkers, and walked with such tranquillity and tenderness in her nudity, that it almost ceased to be indecent. Eugène Rougon, the illustrious politician, recognizing that those bare breasts were even more eloquent than his speeches in the Chamber and better at convincing skeptics and making people savor the charms of the reign, went over and complimented his sister-in-law on her bold stroke in dropping her neckline yet another inch— a happy inspiration, he called it. Nearly all the members of the Corps Législatif were there, and from the way the deputies were looking at the young woman, the minister expected to win a handsome victory when the delicate matter of the City of Paris loans came before that body one day hence. No one could vote against a government that could take a compost of millions of francs and out of such a dung heap produce a flower like Renée—such a strangely voluptuous flower, with her silky flesh, her statuesque nudity, her sensuous presence that left a warm fragrance of pleasure in its wake. What had everyone at the ball whispering, however, were the necklace and the aigrette. The men recognized these gems. The women pointed them out to one another with furtive glances. No one talked about anything else the whole evening. And the salons, illuminated by white light from chandeliers, stretched off into the distance, filled with a resplendent throng, like a constellation of stars fallen into a space too small to hold them.
At around one o’clock Saccard disappeared. He had savored his wife’s success as a man who has successfully pulled the wool over people’s eyes. He had once again shored up his credit. A business matter called him to Laure d’Aurigny’s. In leaving he asked Maxime to escort Renée home after the ball.
Maxime had spent the evening quietly at Louise de Mareuil’s side, both of them very much occupied with making disparaging comments about every woman who passed. Whenever they noticed some particularly egregious bit of fatuousness, they stifled their laughter with their handkerchiefs. Renée had to come over and ask the young man for his arm so that she could leave the salons. In the carriage she exhibited a nervous gaiety. She was still aflutter with the intoxicating mix of light, perfume, and noise she had just sampled. In any case she seemed to have forgotten their “foolishness” on the boulevard, as Maxime called it. Yet she queried him in a strange tone of voice: “So that little hunchback Louise is quite amusing, is she?”
“Oh, very amusing!” the young man responded, laughing some more. “You saw Duchess von Sternich with a yellow bird in her hair, didn’t you? . . . Well, would you believe that Louise says it’s a mechanical bird that flaps its wings and cries, ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ at the poor duke every hour?”
Renée found this emancipated schoolgirl’s joke quite amusing. When they arrived home, as Maxime was about to say good night, she said, “Won’t you come up? Céleste has probably made me something to eat.”
He went up with his usual carefree manner. But no snack was waiting upstairs, and Céleste had gone to bed. Renée had to light the three candles in a small candlestick. Her hand was shaking a little.
“That idiot,” she said, referring to her chambermaid. “She must have misunderstood my orders. . . . I’ll never be able to undress all by myself.”
She went into her dressing room. Maxime followed her, intending to repeat another of Louise’s jokes, which had just come to him. Feeling as much at home as he would have felt in a friend’s apartment, he was already looking for his cigar case so that he could light a Havana. But Renée put down the candlestick, turned, and fell, speechless and provocative, into the young man’s arms, pressing her mouth to his.
Renée’s private apartment was a nest of silk and lace, a marvel of stylish luxury. A small boudoir preceded the bedroom. The two rooms were really just one, or at any rate the boudoir was little more than the antechamber of the bedroom, a large alcove furnished with chaises longues and a pair of curtains in lieu of a door. The walls of both rooms were hung with a heavy gray silk brocade featuring enormous bouquets of roses, white lilacs, and buttercups. The window and door curtains were of Venetian lace lined with alternating strips of gray and pink silk. In the bedroom, the white marble fireplace, a veritable jewel, was encrusted with lapis lazuli and precious mosaics that repeated the roses, white lilacs, and buttercups of the tapestry, displayed as in a bed of flowers. A large gray-and-pink bed, its woodwork hidden beneath padding and upholstery and its headboard pressed against the wall, filled an entire half of the room with its flowing draperies, its curtains of lace and silk brocade covered with bouquets from ceiling to carpet. It resembled a woman’s gown, rounded, patterned, and trimmed with puffs, bows, and flounces. The ample curtain, swelling out like a skirt, suggested a great lady in love—leaning back, swooning, almost collapsing onto the pillows. Beneath the curtain was a sanctuary of pleated linen and snowy lace, all sorts of delicate and transparent things bathed in a religious twilight. Alongside the bed—a monument whose devout splendor called to mind a chapel decked out for some holy day or other—the rest of the furniture was of no account: some low chairs, a full-length cheval glass, and various dressers with an infinite number of drawers. The blue-gray carpet featured a pattern of pale roses in full bloom, and on either side of the bed lay great black bearskin rugs trimmed with pink velvet and silver claws, positioned so that the bears’ heads faced the window and stared through glass eyes at the empty sky.