Eventually Renée got used to her incest as one might get used to a ball gown which at first seemed unbearably stiff. In the end she came to believe that she was living in a world apart, superior to the common morality, a world in which the senses could be refined and developed and where it was permissible to bare one’s flesh for the delectation of all Olympus. ¹⁰ Sin became a luxury, a flower stuck in her hair, a diamond affixed to her forehead. And as justification and redemption she once again conjured up the image of the Emperor passing between the two rows of bowed shoulders on the general’s arm.

Only one man—Baptiste, her husband’s valet—continued to worry her. Ever since Saccard had renewed his amorous relations with her, this tall, pale, sober servingman seemed to hover about her with a solemnity that conveyed a silent censure. He did not look at her. His cold stare passed above her, over the bun atop her head, as chaste as a beadle unwilling to sully his eyes by gazing at a sinner’s hair. She imagined he knew everything and would have bought his silence if she had dared. Then she became uneasy, and whenever she ran into Baptiste she felt a strange sort of respect for him, saying to herself that all the decency of her household had fled and taken refuge beneath this servant’s dark frock.

One day she asked Céleste, “Does Baptiste tell jokes in the servants’ hall? Do you know whether he’s ever had an affair, a mistress of some sort?”

“I should say so!” was all the maid replied.

“Well, then, he must have made love to you, no?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. He never looks at women. We seldom see him. . . . He’s always either with Monsieur or in the stables. He says he’s quite fond of horses.”

Renée found this honesty irritating. She pressed harder; she would have liked to be able to feel contempt for her servants. Although she felt affection for Céleste, she would have been pleased to learn that the girl had lovers.

“But don’t you find Baptiste handsome, Céleste?”

“Me, madame!” the maid exclaimed, with the stunned look of a person who has just heard something incredible. “I have very different ideas in my head. I don’t want a man. I have my plan. You’ll see later on. I’m not stupid, believe me.”

Renée could get nothing clearer out of her. Her worries were growing in any case. Her ostentatious life and extravagant escapades ran up against numerous obstacles, which occasionally resulted in bruises. One day, for instance, the subject of Louise de Mareuil came up in a conversation between her and Maxime. She felt no jealousy toward the “hunchback,” as she disdainfully called her. She knew that the doctors had pronounced the girl’s doom and could not believe that Maxime would ever marry such an ugly duckling, not even for a dowry of a million francs. While mired in sin, she clung to a bourgeois naïveté about people she loved. Though she despised herself, she was quite ready to think of them as superior beings altogether worthy of respect. Yet even as she denied the possibility of marriage between Louise and Maxime, which in her eyes would have been a despicably immoral thing—a theft—she found the familiarity and camaraderie of these two young people painful to behold. Whenever she mentioned the girl to her lover, he laughed freely, repeated the child’s clever remarks, and told her that “the kid calls me her little man, you know.”

He was such a free spirit, moreover, that she didn’t dare point out to him that the “kid” was seventeen years old and that their habit of holding hands and eagerness to seek out dark corners of drawing rooms from which to make fun of everyone else hurt her and ruined even the gayest of evenings.

An incident occurred that significantly altered the situation. Renée frequently felt a need to show off, and there was at times a crude boldness to her capriciousness. She would entice Maxime behind a curtain or a door and kiss him, despite the risk of being seen. One Thursday night, when the buttercup salon was full of visitors, she had the bright idea of calling out to Maxime, who was chatting with Louise. She moved toward him from the far end of the conservatory, where she had been, and when they came together suddenly kissed him on the mouth, in the belief that two clumps of shrubbery provided sufficient cover. But Louise had followed the young man, and when the lovers looked up, they saw her a few steps away staring at them with a strange smile, betraying neither a blush nor a sign of astonishment but staring with the quiet, friendly air of a companion in vice clever enough to understand and appreciate such a kiss.

That day Maxime was genuinely alarmed, whereas Renée seemed indifferent and even pleased. It was over. Now it was impossible for the hunchback to take her lover from her. She thought, “I should have done it on purpose. Now she knows that her ‘little man’ is mine.”

Maxime felt reassured on finding Louise as cheerful and funny as before. He judged her to be a “very smart, very good girl.” And that was all.

Renée worried, with reason. Saccard had for some time been thinking about marrying his son off to Mlle de Mareuil. There was a dowry worth a million francs that he did not want to let slip through his fingers, for he meant to get his hands on the money eventually. When Louise remained bedridden for three weeks at the beginning of the winter, he became so frightened that she might die before the planned wedding took place that he made up his mind to do it immediately. They were indeed a little young, but the doctors warned that the month of March was particularly dangerous for a girl with tuberculosis. Meanwhile, M. de Mareuil found himself in a delicate situation. In the last election, he had finally managed to get himself elected as deputy, but the Corps Législatif had quashed the result, which had been the scandal of the governmental reorganization. The story of the vote had made for a comic epic, in fact, and the newspapers had made hay with it for a month. M. Hupel de la Noue, the prefect of the département, had acted with such vigor that the other candidates had not been able to post their platforms or distribute their brochures. Following his advice, M. de Mareuil had covered the district with tables that had distributed food and drink to the peasants for an entire week. He had promised, moreover, to build a railroad, a bridge, and three churches, and on the eve of the voting had sent influential voters portraits of the Emperor and Empress, two large engravings under glass in gold frames. This gift had proved fabulously successful; the majority was overwhelming. But when the Chamber, faced with laughter from all of France, found itself forced to send M. de Mareuil back to confront the voters a second time, the minister flew into a rage against the prefect and the hapless candidate, who had really been too “clumsy.” He even broached the idea of choosing another man as the official candidate. M. de Mareuil was terrified. He had spent 300,000 francs in the département, where he owned vast estates that bored him to tears and that he would be forced to sell at a loss. He therefore begged his dear colleague to calm his brother down and promise him, in the candidate’s name, an altogether proper election. It was in these circumstances that Saccard again brought up the matter of the marriage of their two children, on which the fathers finally agreed.

When Maxime was sounded out on this subject, he found himself in a quandary. Louise amused him, and the dowry tempted him even more. He said yes and agreed to all the dates Saccard proposed so as to avoid the vexation of further discussion. Inwardly, however, he acknowledged that unfortunately things were unlikely to work themselves out quite so easily. Renée would never go along. She would weep, she would make scenes, she was capable of causing a scandal big enough to set Paris on its ear. It was quite unpleasant. Lately she frightened him. She doted on him with such anxious eyes, she possessed him so despotically, that he could almost feel her claws digging into his skin each time she placed her white hand on his shoulder. Her restlessness became impetuousness, and there was a new staccato note in her laughter. He truly feared that some night she might go mad in his arms. In her, the remorse, the fear of being caught, and the cruel pleasures of adultery expressed themselves, not as with other women in the form of tears and misery, but as a more unfettered extravagance and a more irresistible need to kick up a fuss. As her terror increased, a rattle began to make itself heard, a sound that signaled a breakdown of this lovely and astonishing machine, which was falling to pieces.