He opened his briefcase and added, “Here are the 200,000 francs’ worth of notes signed by my wife. You will return these to her as payment, and to this amount you will add 100,000 francs that I shall deliver to you tomorrow morning. . . . I’m bleeding myself dry, my good friend. This business is costing me my own two eyes.”
“But that comes to only 300,000 francs,” the expropriation agent pointed out. “Will the receipt indicate that amount?”
“A receipt for 300,000 francs!” Saccard chortled. “Lord, we’d be in a hell of a fix later on! According to our inventories, the property must be worth two and a half million francs today. The receipt will naturally be for half that amount.”
“Your wife will never sign it.”
“Oh, yes she will. I’m telling you it’s all settled. . . . I told her it was your first condition, damn it! Your bankruptcy has forced you to put a pistol to our heads, don’t you see? That was when I let it be known that I had doubts about your honesty and accused you of intending to dupe your creditors. . . . Do you think my wife understands anything about all that?”
Larsonneau shook his head and murmured, “You still should have come up with something simpler.”
“But my story is simplicity itself,” Saccard replied in astonishment. “What the devil do you find complicated about it?”
He was quite unaware of the incredible number of strings he attached to the most ordinary transactions. He took great pleasure in the contrived story he had told Renée, and what delighted him was the impudence of the lie, the accumulation of impossibilities, the astonishing complexity of the intrigue. He would have taken possession of the property long ago if he hadn’t imagined this whole drama in advance, but it would have given him less pleasure if it had come to him more easily. For him it was the most natural thing in the world to turn the Charonne speculation into an elaborate financial melodrama.
He got up, took Larsonneau by the arm, and headed for the drawing room. “You understand what I said, don’t you? Just follow my instructions, and you’ll applaud when it’s over. You know, you really shouldn’t wear yellow gloves, my friend, they ruin your touch.”
The expropriation agent merely smiled. “Thanks for the instruction, but gloves have their uses: you can touch all sorts of things without getting your hands dirty.”
When they reentered the salon, Saccard was surprised and somewhat anxious to find Maxime on the other side of the curtain. The young man was sitting on a love seat next to a blonde, who was telling him a long story in a monotonous voice—her own story, no doubt. He had in fact overheard the conversation between his father and Larsonneau. The two accomplices were clearly sly dogs. Still angry about Renée’s betrayal, he took a coward’s pleasure in the news that she was soon to be robbed. There would be a modicum of vengeance for him in that. His father, looking suspicious, came over to shake his hand, but Maxime motioned toward the blonde and whispered in his ear, “She’s not bad, is she? I intend to have her tonight.”
Saccard then began to dance about and preen a bit. Laure d’Aurigny came and joined them for a moment. She complained that Maxime scarcely called on her more than once a month, but he claimed to have been very busy, which made everyone laugh. He added that from now on they’d be seeing him everywhere.
“I’ve written a tragedy,” he said, “and only yesterday did I come up with the fifth act. . . . I intend to rest from my labors in the company of all the beautiful women of Paris.”
He laughed and savored his allusions, which only he could understand. Meanwhile, the drawing room had emptied of all the other guests save Rozan and Larsonneau, on either side of the fireplace. The two Saccards rose to go, along with the blonde, who lived in the house. Laure then went over and whispered something to the duke. He seemed surprised and upset. Seeing that he made no move to get up from his chair, she said in a stage whisper, “No, really, not tonight. I have a headache. . . . Tomorrow, I promise you.”
Rozan had no choice but to obey. Laure waited until he was on the landing to whisper a quick word in Larsonneau’s ear: “So, Big Lar, you see I’m a woman of my word. . . . Stick him in his carriage.”
When the blonde took leave of the men and headed up to her apartment on the floor above, Saccard was surprised to see that Maxime did not follow her.
“Well,” he asked, “what are you waiting for?”
“I think not,” the young man replied. “I’ve thought better of it.”
Then he had an idea that struck him as very funny.
“I leave her to you if you like. Hurry, she hasn’t closed her door yet.”
But the father gave a quick shrug and said, “Thank you, my boy, but for the time being I’ve got something better.”
The four men went downstairs. When they reached the street, the duke absolutely insisted on giving Larsonneau a lift in his carriage. His mother lived in the Marais and he would drop the expropriation agent at his door on the rue de Rivoli. But Larsonneau refused, closed the door of the carriage himself, and ordered the coachman to drive off. He remained on the sidewalk of the boulevard Haussmann talking with the other two men and making no move to leave.
“Ah, poor Rozan!” exclaimed Saccard, who suddenly realized what was going on.
Larsonneau swore that it wasn’t true, that he didn’t give a damn about such things, that he was a practical man. But as the other two men continued to joke, and the air was very cold, he finally gave up and exclaimed, “For heaven’s sake, enough of this nonsense, I’m going to ring! . . . You gentlemen are very indiscreet.”
“Good night!” Maxime shouted as the door closed behind him.
Then, taking his father by the arm, he walked back up the boulevard alongside him. It was one of those clear, frosty nights when it is such a pleasure to walk on the hard ground in the frigid air. Saccard said that Larsonneau was making a mistake, that it was better to be the Aurigny woman’s friend than her lover. That led him to say that making love to whores of that sort was truly a bad idea. He presented himself as a moral authority, delivering himself of maxims and recommendations of astonishing propriety.
“You see,” he said to his son, “that sort of thing doesn’t last. . . . You lose your health that way without enjoying real happiness. You know I’m no prude. Well, I’ve had enough. I’m going to settle down.”
Maxime snickered. He stopped his father, contemplated him in the moonlight, and told him he was “a good-looking fellow.” But Saccard went on, graver than before. “Make fun of me as much as you like. I repeat: there’s nothing like marriage to preserve a man and make him happy.”
Then he brought up Louise. He slackened his pace and said that since they were already talking about marriage, now was the time to settle the matter. He informed Maxime that he and M. de Mareuil had set the Sunday after Mid-Lent Thursday12 as the date for signing the marriage contract. That night there was to be a big party at the Parc Monceau house, and he would take advantage of the occasion to announce the marriage publicly. Maxime was quite pleased with these arrangements. He was done with Renée and saw nothing else standing in the way, so he surrendered himself to his father as he had surrendered himself to his stepmother.
“Well, then, that’s settled,” he said. “Only don’t mention it to Renée. Her friends would kid me and tease me, and I’d rather they hear the news at the same time as everyone else.”
Saccard promised him that he would keep silent. Then, as they reached the top of the boulevard Malesherbes, he resumed dispensing excellent advice to his son. He explained to Maxime how to make his marriage a genuine paradise: “Above all, never break off relations with your wife. It’s a foolish thing to do. A wife with whom you no longer have relations costs you an arm and a leg. . . . To begin with, you’ve got to pay some whore, right? On top of that, the household expenses are much greater: there’s Madame’s clothing, her private pleasures, her bosom companions, and the devil knows what all else.”