“Go on now, rest easy, I’ll find out everything there is to know,” she told him in a voice full of compassion. “Oh, my poor brother, Angèle would never have betrayed you! A husband so good, so generous! These Parisian dolls have no heart. . . . And to think that I’ve always been there for her with good advice.”
6
On Mid-Lent Thursday the Saccards held a costume ball. The centerpiece of the evening was to be a tableau vivant entitled “The Amours of Handsome Narcissus and the Nymph Echo,” which the ladies planned to stage in three scenes. The author, M. Hupel de la Noue, had been traveling back and forth from his prefecture to the Parc Monceau mansion to oversee the rehearsals and give advice about the costumes. His first thought had been to compose his work in verse, but he subsequently decided in favor of a tableau vivant. It was a nobler genre, he said, and closer to the classical ideal of beauty.
The ladies had no rest. Some of them were required to make no fewer than three costume changes. There were endless conferences, over which the prefect presided. The character of Narcissus1 was discussed at length. Would he be represented by a man or a woman? Finally it was decided at Renée’s insistence that the role would be given to Maxime. But he would be the only man in the production, and Mme de Lauwerens said that even then she would never have agreed to it if “little Maxime didn’t look so much like a real girl.” Renée was to play the nymph Echo. The question of costumes was far more complicated. Maxime eagerly assisted the prefect, who found himself exhausted by nine women whose extravagant imaginations seriously threatened to compromise his work’s purity of outline. Had he listened to them, his Olympus would have worn powder. Mme d’Espanet absolutely insisted on wearing a floor-length gown to hide her feet, which were rather large, while Mme Haffner had visions of herself in an animal hide. M. Hupel de la Noue was full of energy. Once, anger even got the better of him. If he had given up verse, he said, he was convinced that it was only to write his poem “with deftly arranged fabrics and poses chosen for their exquisite beauty.”
“The overall effect, ladies, you’re forgetting the overall effect,” he repeated at each new demand. “I really can’t sacrifice the entire work to the flounces you’re asking for.”
The negotiations took place in the buttercup salon. Entire afternoons were devoted to deciding the contours of a skirt. Worms was summoned several times. At last all the questions were resolved, the costumes chosen, the poses learned, and M. Hupel de la Noue declared himself satisfied. The election of M. de Mareuil had given him less trouble.
“The Amours of Handsome Narcissus and the Nymph Echo” was to begin at eleven o’clock. By ten-thirty the large drawing room was full, and since the presentation was to be followed by a fancy-dress ball, the women had come in costume and were seated on armchairs arranged in a semicircle in front of the improvised stage: a platform hidden by two broad curtains of red velvet with gold fringe, running on rods. The men, standing behind them, came and went. The decorators had finished their hammering by ten. The platform filled one end of the long gallery. Access to the stage was through the smoking room, which had been converted to a greenroom for the artists. In addition, the ladies had several upstairs rooms at their disposal, and an army of chambermaids was busy preparing costumes for the various tableaux.
It was eleven-thirty, and the curtains still had not opened. A loud buzz filled the salon. The rows of armchairs displayed the most astonishing array of marquises and princesses, Spanish dancing girls and milkmaids, shepherdesses and sultanas, while the compact mass of black frock coats stood out like a dark spot alongside the shimmering display of bright fabrics and bare shoulders glittering with sparkling flashes of jewelry. Only the women were in disguise. It was already hot. Three chandeliers highlighted the gold dripping from the walls of the salon.
At last M. Hupel de la Noue was seen to emerge from an opening to the left of the platform. He had been assisting the ladies since eight o’clock. The left sleeve of his coat bore an imprint of three fingers in white: a woman’s small hand had been placed there inadvertently after dipping into a jar of rice powder. But the prefect had weightier matters to think about than the imperfections of his attire! His pupils were hugely dilated, his face puffy and rather pale. He did not seem to take anyone in. Advancing toward Saccard, whom he recognized in the midst of a group of serious men, he whispered, “I’ll be damned if your wife hasn’t gone and lost her girdle of leaves. . . . We’re in a fine mess.”
He swore and seemed ready to lash out at someone. Then, without waiting for an answer, without making eye contact, he turned on his heel and dove back behind the curtains. The ladies laughed at this singular apparition.
The group of men around Saccard had gathered behind the last row of chairs. One of the chairs had been pulled out of line for Baron Gouraud, whose legs had been swollen for some time. The group included M. Toutin-Laroche, whom the Emperor had just named to the Senate; M. de Mareuil, whose second election had been duly accredited by the Chamber; M. Michelin, recently decorated; and somewhat farther back, Mignon and Charrier, one of whom wore a large diamond in his tie while the other sported an even larger one on his finger. These gentlemen were engaged in conversation. Saccard left them for a moment to exchange a few words in hushed tones with his sister, who had just come and sat down between Louise de Mareuil and Mme Michelin. Mme Sidonie appeared as a magician. Louise had cheekily dressed as a page, which made her look like quite the naughty boy. And the Michelin girl, in the costume of an Egyptian dancer, smiled amorously through veils of gold lamé.
“Did you find out anything?” Saccard asked his sister quietly.
“No, nothing yet,” she replied. “But the lucky fellow must be here tonight. . . . I’ll catch them, you can count on it.”
“Let me know right away, will you?”
Turning first to his right and then to his left, Saccard complimented Louise and Mme Michelin. He compared the latter to one of Mohammed’s houris 2 and the former to one of Henri III’s mignons.3 His Provençal accent added a musical note to his shrill and strident nature, making him seem thrilled with delight. When he rejoined the group of serious men, M. de Mareuil took him aside to discuss the marriage of their children. Nothing had changed: the signing of the contract was still set for Sunday.
“Exactly right,” Saccard agreed. “I’m even planning to announce the wedding to our friends tonight, if you see no reason not to. . . . I’m only waiting for my brother the minister to arrive, as he promised me he’d be here.”
The new deputy was delighted. Meanwhile, M. Toutin-Laroche raised his voice as if in outrage. “Yes, gentlemen,” he was saying to M. Michelin and the two contractors, who had gathered round him, “I should never have been so obliging as to allow my name to get mixed up in an affair of that sort.” And on seeing that Saccard and Mareuil had rejoined the group, he added, “I was just telling these gentlemen about the deplorable fate of the Société Générale des Ports du Maroc. You know what I’m talking about, Saccard?”
Saccard did not flinch. The company in question had just collapsed in a terrible scandal. Certain overly inquisitive shareholders had wished to know how things stood with the construction of the much-discussed commercial facilities along the Mediterranean coast, and an official inquiry had revealed that the Moroccan ports existed only as engineer’s drawings—very fine drawings hanging on the walls of the company’s headquarters. At that point M. Toutin-Laroche began screaming even louder than the shareholders, and in his outrage he insisted that his good name be restored, cleansed of any taint. Indeed, he raised such a ruckus that the government, in order to calm this useful fellow down and rehabilitate him in the eyes of the public, decided to send him to the Senate. Thus, from a scandal that might well have landed him in criminal court, he emerged with the senate seat he had coveted for so long.