The piano sobbed softly. Onstage, a clearing, dappled with “sunlight ” from the electric arc, opened onto a horizon of foliage. It was a fanciful clearing, a sort of glade with blue trees and big yellow and red flowers that grew as tall as oaks. There, on a grassy knoll, Venus and Plutus stood side by side, surrounded by nymphs from the nearby woods, who had hastened to them to form an escort. Among them were daughters of the trees, daughters of the springs, daughters of the mountains—all the laughing, naked deities of the forest. And the god and goddess stood in triumph, punishing the indifference of the proud youth who had scorned them, while the group of nymphs gazed with sacred terror upon the vengeance of Olympus unfolding in the foreground. Handsome Narcissus, lying beside a stream that seemed to flow out of the backdrop, stared at his image in that limpid mirror. Verisimilitude had been carried to the point of placing an actual mirror at the bottom of the stream. But this was no longer the free-spirited youth who had roamed the forest. Death had caught him by surprise as he lay in rapt admiration of his own image; it had made him weak, and Venus, with her finger outstretched like a fairy in a transformation scene, was casting her fatal spell. He was changing into a flower. His limbs seemed to turn green and grow longer inside his green satin tights. His supple trunk and slightly curved legs seemed to sink into the ground and take root, while the upper part of his body, festooned with wide strips of white satin, opened out into a marvelous corolla. Maxime’s blond hair completed the illusion, as his long curls could be taken for yellow pistils with white petals all around. And this great nascent flower, still human, tilted its head toward the spring—its eyes dimmed, its face smiling in voluptuous ecstasy, as if handsome Narcissus had at last, in death, satisfied the desires he had awakened in himself. A short distance away, the nymph Echo also lay dying—dying of unsatisfied desires. Little by little she felt herself gripped by the rigidity of the earth, as her burning limbs froze and hardened. She was no ordinary rock, stained by moss, but white marble by dint of her shoulders and arms and her great snowy white gown, from which the leafy girdle and blue sash had slipped away. Collapsed at the center of her satin skirt, which had gathered around her in wide folds like a block of Paros marble, she thrust herself backward, her body as rigid as a statue with nothing left of life in her other than her gleaming female eyes, which were fixed on the aquatic flower swaying languorously over the mirror of the spring. And already it seemed as if all the love sounds of the forest, all the lingering voices of the glades, all the mysterious quivering of the leaves, all the deep sighs of the great oaks had sought out the nymph’s marble flesh to beat upon, while her heart, still bleeding deep within the block of stone that was her body, continued to echo the least moans of Earth and Air.

“Oh, look at the getup they’ve got poor Maxime in!” Louise whispered. “And Mme Saccard looks as if she’s dead.”

“She’s covered with rice powder,” said Mme Michelin.

Other equally uncomplimentary remarks circulated around the room. This third tableau did not enjoy the same unqualified success as the previous two. Yet it was this tragic ending that made M. Hupel de la Noue most enthusiastic about his own talent. He admired himself in it, as Narcissus admired himself in his mirror. He had conceived it with a host of poetic and philosophical intentions. When the curtains had closed a third time, and the audience had applauded as good manners required, he felt a pang of regret that he had given in to his anger instead of explaining the final page of his poem. He then wanted to let the people around him in on the key to all the charming, grandiose, or merely naughty things that handsome Narcissus and Echo the nymph represented, and he even tried to explain what Venus and Plutus were doing back in the clearing, but the ladies and gentlemen of the audience, whose clear, practical minds had understood the grotto of flesh and the grotto of gold, had no interest in delving into the prefect’s mythological complexities. Only Mignon and Charrier, who were absolutely insistent on knowing what it all meant, had the kindness to question him. He grabbed them and took them off to the embrasure of a window, where for nearly two hours he regaled them with Ovid’s Metamorphoses. ⁸

In the meantime, the minister took his leave. He apologized for not being able to stay long enough to compliment beautiful Mme Saccard on her exquisitely graceful portrayal of the nymph Echo. He had made three or four turns around the drawing room on his brother’s arm, shaking hands with some of the men and bowing to the ladies. Never before had he stuck his neck out quite so far for Saccard. He left his brother beaming on the doorstep after saying in a loud voice, “I’ll expect you tomorrow morning. Come have breakfast with me.”

The ball was about to begin. The servants had arranged chairs for the ladies along the walls. Now the entire length of the drawing-room carpet stood exposed from the small yellow salon all the way to the stage, and the big purple flowers in the carpet’s pattern seemed to open up as light dripped upon them from the crystal chandeliers above. The temperature rose, and reflections from the red draperies darkened the gold of the furniture and ceiling. Everyone was waiting for the ladies—the nymph Echo, Venus, Plutus, and the rest—to change their costumes so that the ball could get under way.

Mme d’Espanet and Mme Haffner were the first to appear. They had changed back into their costumes from the second tableau: one was dressed as Gold, the other as Silver. People gathered around and congratulated them, and they described their emotions.

“I nearly burst out laughing,” said the marquise, “when I saw M. Toutin-Laroche with his big nose out there gawking at me.”

“I think I’ve got a stiff neck,” drawled blonde Suzanne. “No, really, if it had lasted a minute longer, I would have shifted my head back to a more natural position, my neck was hurting so much.”

From the recess to which he had taken Mignon and Charrier, M. Hupel de la Noue cast worried glances at the group that had formed around the two young women. He was afraid they might be making fun of him. The other nymphs made their way down one by one. All had changed back into their costumes representing precious stones. Countess Wanska, dressed as Coral, was rated a stunning success when the guests were able to get a close look at the ingenious details of her gown. Then Maxime came in, impeccably attired in a dark frock coat and wearing a smile on his face. A torrent of women engulfed him, formed a circle around him, and teased him about his role as a flower and his passion for mirrors. And he, without a flicker of embarrassment, as if charmed by his character, continued to smile, responded to all the teasing comments, and admitted that he adored himself and had gotten over his weakness for women sufficiently that he now preferred himself to them. The laughter grew louder, and the group grew larger until it occupied the whole center of the drawing room, while the young man, lost amid this sea of shoulders, this chaos of dazzling costumes, retained a perfume of depraved love, the sweetness of a poisonous blossom.

When Renée finally came down, however, a partial hush fell over the room. She had put on a new costume of such novel grace and boldness that even though these ladies and gentlemen were accustomed to the young woman’s eccentricities, their first reaction was one of surprise. She was dressed as a Tahitian beauty. Tahitian attire is apparently quite primitive: skin-colored tights stretched from her feet to her breasts, leaving her arms and shoulders bare, and over the tights she wore a short, simple muslin blouse with two flounces that barely covered her hips. In her hair she wore a wreath of wildflowers, and gold ringlets around her ankles and wrists. And nothing else. She was naked. The tights had the suppleness of flesh beneath the translucent muslin. The pure outline of her nakedness, from her knees to her armpits, was only partially concealed by the flounces; with the slightest movement it once again became visible through the mesh of the lace. She made a lovely savage, a barbarous and voluptuous bawd barely hidden by a white haze, a wisp of ocean fog through which her entire body could be divined.