A rosy-cheeked Renée advanced at a rapid pace. Céleste had split the first pair of tights. Fortunately, the young woman had foreseen this eventuality and taken precautions. The torn tights had delayed her entrance. She seemed not to attach any importance to her triumph. Her hands were burning, and her eyes had a feverish gleam about them. She smiled, though, and responded briefly to the men who stopped her and complimented her on the purity of her poses in the tableaux vivants. In her wake she left a trail of dark frock coats stunned and charmed by the transparency of her muslin blouse. When she reached the group of women around Maxime, she provoked a series of sharp exclamations, and the marquise studied her from head to toe with a tender eye, whispering, “She has a lovely figure.”
Mme Michelin, whose belly dancer’s costume seemed terribly ponderous alongside this simple veil, pursed her lips, while Mme Sidonie, shriveled up inside her black magician’s robes, whispered in her ear, “If that isn’t the height of indecency, don’t you agree, my beauty?”
“I should say so!” the pretty brunette came out with at last. “M. Michelin would have a fit if I stripped down like that!”
“And he would be right,” the businesswoman concluded.
The serious men did not share this view, however. They were ecstatic despite their distance from the object of their admiration. M. Michelin, whose reaction had been seriously misjudged by his wife, went into raptures to gratify M. Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud, who were pleased no end by the sight of Renée. Saccard was roundly complimented on the perfection of his wife’s figure. He bowed and professed to be very deeply touched. The evening had turned out well for him, and but for the preoccupation that could be seen in his eyes whenever he happened to glance at his sister, he would have been perfectly happy.
“You know, she’s never shown us that much before,” Louise teasingly whispered in Maxime’s ear, indicating Renée with a quick glance.
And then, with an indecipherable smile, she added, “Not to me, at any rate.”
The young man looked at her with an anxious eye. But she continued to smile in an odd way, like a schoolboy pleased at having told a rather off-color joke.
The ball began. The stage used for the tableaux vivants had been pressed into service as a platform for a small orchestra in which brass dominated. Bugles and trumpets blasted their clear notes into the fantastic forest with the blue trees. The evening began with a quadrille, “Ah! il a des bottes, il a des bottes, Bastien!,” which was all the rage in dance halls at the time. The ladies danced. Polkas, waltzes, and mazurkas alternated with quadrilles. Whirling couples came and went all the way down the length of the gallery, leaping at the whip of the brass and swaying with the lullaby of the violins. This river of costumes—this torrent of women from every country and epoch— comprised a swirling tide of bright fabrics. The rhythm, after mixing these colors and sweeping them away in measured confusion, suddenly brought them back again, so that on certain strokes of the bow the same pink satin tunic or blue velvet bodice would reappear together with the same dark frock coat. Then another stroke of the bow or another blast of the trumpets would send the couples off again on yet another voyage around the drawing room, swaying like a boat adrift on the waves after the wind has broken it free from its mooring. And again, without stopping, for hours on end. Occasionally, between dances, one of the women would go over to a window, panting and gasping for a breath of cold air. Or a couple would relax on a love seat in the small buttercup salon or go out to the conservatory and stroll slowly along the paths. Beneath arbors of tropical vines, deep in the tepid shadows pierced by forte notes from the trumpets in quadrilles such as “Ohé! les p’tits agneaux” and “J’ai un pied qui r’mue,” women with listless smiles had vanished but for the hems of their skirts.
The dining room had been transformed into a buffet with sideboards along the walls and a long table laden with cold cuts in the middle, and when the doors were opened there was a push, a crush. A tall, handsome man who had timidly held on to his hat was thrown against the wall so violently that the unfortunate hat caved in with a dull crack. That made everyone laugh. The guests swooped down on the pastries and truffled fowl, and the servants did not know which of this gang of well-bred gentlemen to serve first, since all had their hands out, baring their fear of getting to the food too late and finding the platters empty. An elderly gentleman became angry because there was no Bordeaux, and champagne, he insisted, would keep him from sleeping.
“Easy, gentlemen, easy,” said Baptiste in a grave tone of voice. “There will be enough for everyone.”
But nobody was listening. The dining room was full, and worried black coats were standing on tiptoes at the door. Groups had gathered around the sideboards, where people were eating rapidly and squeezing close together. Many unable to lay hands on a glass of wine gulped down their food without drinking. By contrast, others drank while casting about without success for a crust of bread.
“Listen,” said M. Hupel de la Noue, whom Mignon and Charrier, tired of mythology, had dragged off to the buffet, “we won’t get anything unless we join forces. . . . It’s worse at the Tuileries, and I’ve had some experience there. . . . You see to the wine, I’ll take care of the meat.”
The prefect had his eye on a leg of lamb. At just the right moment he reached through an opening in the sea of shoulders and calmly claimed his prize, having already stuffed his pockets with rolls. The contractors also returned, Mignon with one bottle of champagne and Charrier with two, but they’d only been able to get hold of two glasses. This didn’t matter, however, because they would be glad, they said, to drink from the same glass. The three men dined together off the corner of a jardinière at the end of the room. They did not even take off their gloves but inserted slices of lamb into the rolls while keeping the champagne bottles tucked safely under their arms. And, standing up, they chatted with their mouths full, jutting out their jaws so that the juice would fall on the carpet rather than on their coats.
Charrier, having finished his wine before his bread, asked a servant if he could have a glass of champagne.
“You’ll have to wait, sir,” the alarmed servant angrily replied, losing his head and forgetting that he was not in the kitchen. “Three hundred bottles have been drunk already.”
Meanwhile, the voices of the orchestra grew louder, erupting in sudden squalls of sound. People were dancing the polka known as “Baisers,” or “Kisses,” a favorite of the dance halls, in which each male dancer was expected to mark the rhythm by kissing his partner on the beat. Mme d’Espanet appeared at the door of the dining room, flushed and rather disheveled, trailing her long silver gown behind her with charming weariness. Since people barely moved out of her way, she was obliged to use her elbow to clear a path for herself. She made her way around the table, uncertain which dishes to choose, her lips expressing her hesitation with a pout. Then she went straight to M. Hupel de la Noue, who had finished eating and was wiping his mouth with his handkerchief.
“Would you be kind enough to find me a chair, sir?” she asked with an adorable smile. “I’ve been all around the table in vain.”
Although the prefect was annoyed with the marquise, his gallantry did not hesitate. He had soon found a chair and placed Mme d’Espanet in it, whereupon he stood behind it and served her. All she wanted was a few shrimp with a little butter and a splash of champagne. She ate daintily compared to the gluttony of the men. The table and chairs were reserved exclusively for the ladies, but an exception was always made for Baron Gouraud. He sat squarely in front of a block of pâté, slowly munching its crust. The marquise reestablished her dominion over the prefect by telling him that she would never forget the artistic emotions she had experienced in performing “The Amours of Handsome Narcissus and the Nymph Echo.” She even explained why they hadn’t waited for him in a way that consoled him completely: when the ladies learned that the minister had arrived, they had decided that it would be inappropriate to prolong the intermission. Eventually she asked him to go and rescue Mme Haffner, who was dancing with Mr. Simpson, a brute of a man, she said, whom she disliked. Once Suzanne had rejoined her, however, she paid no further attention to M. Hupel de la Noue.