They came and formed “columns.” The indecency of being caught between two men, leaning against the back of one while pressed up against the chest of the other, filled the ladies with merriment. The tips of the women’s breasts rubbed the lapels of the men’s jackets, the gentlemen’s legs disappeared into their partners’ skirts, and when a woman, laughing suddenly, leaned forward, the mustache opposite was obliged to tilt to one side to avoid stepping over the line and planting a kiss. At one point a prankster must have given a slight push. The line tightened up, and coats pressed a little more deeply into skirts. There were little shouts and laughs—endless laughs. Baroness von Meinhold was heard to say, “But sir, I can’t breathe. Don’t hold me so tight!” which was so funny and made the whole line laugh so madly that the “columns,” shaken by all the hilarity, staggered, crashed into each other, and had to hold each other up to keep from falling. M. de Saffré waited with raised hands, ready to clap. Then he did clap, and at this signal each dancer suddenly turned around. The new partners, finding themselves face-to-face, took each other by the waist, and the line of waltzers then spread out around the room. The only one left out was the poor duc de Rozan, who on turning around found himself with his nose up against the wall. Everyone laughed at him.

“Come,” said Renée to Maxime.

The orchestra was still playing the waltz. The soft music, whose monotonous rhythm became insipid in the end, heightened the young woman’s exasperation. She made her way to the small salon, still holding Maxime by the hand, and pushed him into the stairway leading up to the dressing room.

“Go on up,” she ordered.

She followed. At that moment, Mme Sidonie, who had been prowling around her sister-in-law all evening, astonished by her restless scouting of all the rooms, happened to be coming up the conservatory steps. She saw a man’s legs disappear into the darkness of the small staircase. A pale smile lit up her waxen face, and, hiking up her magician’s skirt in order to move more quickly, she went looking for her brother, disrupting a figure of the cotillion along the way and questioning any servants she ran into. She finally found Saccard with M. de Mareuil in a room off the dining room that had been converted into a temporary smoking room. The two fathers were discussing dowries and marriage contracts. But after Saccard’s sister whispered something in his ear, he got up, excused himself, and disappeared.

Upstairs, the dressing room was in total disarray. Tossed aside and left lying on the chairs were the nymph Echo’s costume, the torn tights, bits of crumpled lace, and balled-up underthings—the kinds of things a woman urgently expected elsewhere leaves behind in her haste. Little silver and ivory implements lay strewn about. Brushes and files had fallen onto the carpet; and the still-damp towels, the cakes of soap forgotten on the marble, the perfume bottles left unstoppered filled the flesh-colored tent with a strong, penetrating odor. In order to remove the white powder from her arms and shoulders, the young woman had soaked in the pink marble bathtub after the tableaux vivants. An iridescent film of soap spread in patches over the surface of the bathwater now grown cold.

Maxime tripped over a corset, nearly fell, and tried to laugh. But he was shivering at the sight of Renée’s severe countenance. She walked over to him, pushed him, and said in an undertone, “So, you’re going to marry the hunchback?”

“Why, not at all,” he murmured. “Who told you that?”

“Look, don’t lie. It’s pointless.”

A rebellious feeling rose within him. She made him anxious. He wanted to be rid of her.

“All right, yes, I’m marrying her. So what? . . . I’m in charge of my own life, am I not?”

She moved toward him, her head bowed slightly, and with a wicked laugh took him by the wrists: “In charge! You, in charge! . . . You know you’re not. I’m in charge. If I were a mean woman, I’d break your arm. You have no more strength than a girl.”

And since he struggled, she twisted his arms with a violent force that came from anger. He gave a feeble cry. Then she let him go and resumed her train of thought: “Let’s not fight. As you see, I’m stronger than you are.”

His pallor remained, and he felt ashamed of the pain in his wrists. He watched her move about the dressing room, pushing furniture around, meditating, pondering the plan that she had been turning over in her mind ever since her husband had told her of the marriage.

“I’m going to lock you up here,” she said at last, “and when day comes we’ll leave for Le Havre.”

He went white again with alarm and stupor.

“But that’s crazy!” he shouted. “We can’t run off together. You’re out of your mind.”

“That may be. In any case, it’s your fault and your father’s if I’ve lost my mind. . . . I need you, and I’m taking you. Too bad for the imbeciles.”

There was a red glow in her eyes. She approached Maxime again, scorching his face with her breath: “What would become of me if you married the hunchback? You’d all laugh at me, and I might be forced to take back that big lump Mussy, who can’t even keep my feet warm. . . . When you’ve done what we’ve done, you stay together. In any case, it’s perfectly clear, I’m bored when you’re not around, and since I’m leaving, I’m taking you with me. . . . You can tell Céleste what you need and she’ll go to your apartment and fetch it.”

The poor wretch held out his hands and begged: “Listen, my dear sweet Renée, don’t do anything foolish. Calm down. . . . Think a little about the scandal.”

“I don’t give a damn about the scandal! If you refuse, I’ll go down to the drawing room and shout out that I’ve slept with you and that you’re such a coward that now you want to marry the hunchback.”

He heard her and bowed his head, giving in already to this willful woman, who imposed herself on him so heedlessly.

“We’ll be going to Le Havre,” she resumed in a lower voice, savoring her dream, “and from there we’ll sail for England. Nobody will bother us anymore. If that isn’t far enough, we’ll go to America. Since I’m always cold, I’ll be better off there. I’ve often envied the Creoles.”

But as her plans for the future grew more grandiose by the minute, terror again took hold of Maxime. To leave Paris, to go so far with a woman who was assuredly mad, and to leave in his wake a scandal so shameful that he would be obliged to remain in exile forever—it was like a horrible nightmare snuffing the life out of him. He desperately sought a way out of that dressing room, that pink fortress in which he could hear the tolling of the madhouse bell at Charenton.⁹

Then he thought he saw a ray of hope. “The problem is that I have no money,” he said softly, so as not to set her off. “If you lock me up, I won’t be able to get any.”

“But I have money,” she replied triumphantly. “I have a hundred thousand francs. It’s all coming together quite nicely.”

She took from the mirror-front wardrobe the purchase-and-sale agreement that her husband had left her in the vague hope that she might change her mind. She brought it to the dressing table, ordered Maxime to fetch pen and ink from the bedroom, pushed the soap aside, and signed the document.

“There,” she said, “the foolish thing is done. If I’m being robbed, it’s because I want to be robbed. . . . We’ll stop by Larsonneau’s office on the way to the railway station. . . . Now, my darling Maxime, I’m going to lock you up, and we’ll make our getaway through the garden when I’ve sent everyone home. We don’t even need to take any luggage.”

She was gay again. This madcap adventure delighted her. It was the ultimate eccentricity, an altogether original ending to the story, or so it seemed to Renée in the throes of her fever. It far surpassed her wish to take a trip in a balloon. She went and took Maxime in her arms, whispering, “I hurt you before, my poor darling. So you refused. . . . You’ll see how nice it will be. Would your hunchback love you as I love you? . . . That little half-breed isn’t a woman.”