She had not wasted all her time in England, however. Her brother the minister had availed himself of the opportunity to charge her with a delicate commission. When she returned, she received a number of large orders from the ministry. This was a new incarnation for her. She signed contracts with the government and undertook to supply goods of every conceivable kind. She sold rations and weapons to the army for its troops, furniture to prefectures and government bureaus, and firewood to public offices and museums. The money she earned was not enough to persuade her to put aside the black dresses she invariably wore, and her waxy, doleful countenance remained as it had always been. Saccard now reflected that it must indeed have been his sister he had seen furtively exiting their brother Eugène’s house that day long ago. She had probably been in secret contact with him all along, running errands that nobody in the world was aware of.
While all these pecuniary interests and ardent, unquenchable thirsts swirled around her, Renée was in agony. Aunt Elisabeth had died. Her sister, now married, had left the family home, in the gloom of whose cavernous rooms her father now lived alone. In one season she ran through her aunt’s bequest. Lately she had taken to gambling. She had found a salon in which ladies sat at tables until three in the morning, losing hundreds of thousands of francs a night. Inevitably she tried to drink, but she could not: uncontrollable waves of nausea overwhelmed her. On finding herself alone again, helpless against the social tide that was sweeping her away, she had surrendered to it more than ever, not knowing any other way to kill the time. She sampled everything until nothing was left, yet none of it diminished the crushing weight of her boredom. She aged; blue circles formed around her eyes; her nose grew thinner, and her pouting lips erupted in sudden laughter for no reason. For this woman it was the end of the line.
When Maxime married Louise and the young couple left for Italy, Renée stopped worrying about her lover and seemed to forget all about him. And when he returned alone six months later, having buried “the hunchback” in the cemetery of a small town in Lombardy, she greeted him with hatred. She remembered Phèdre and no doubt recalled having heard Ristori invest that envenomed love with her sobs. Then, so that she would not have to run into the boy in her own home, and in order to set an abyss of shame between father and son forever, she forced her husband to acknowledge the incest, telling him that his son had been after her for some time and that on the day Saccard had surprised her with him, Maxime had been attempting to assault her. Saccard was terribly vexed by her insistence on opening his eyes. He was obliged to quarrel with his son and refuse to see him. The young widower, wealthy by dint of his wife’s dowry, established bachelor quarters in a small house on the avenue de l’Impératrice. He turned down the Conseil d’Etat and took to racing horses instead. The rupture Renée had caused between father and son was one of her last satisfactions. Her vengeance was to throw the degradation these two men had imposed on her back in their faces. Now, she told herself, she wouldn’t have to watch anymore as they walked arm in arm like two comrades, mocking her.
With the collapse of her affections, there came a time when she had no one left to love but her maid. Little by little she conceived a maternal affection for Céleste. It may have been that this girl, the only residue of her love for Maxime, reminded her of hours of pleasure now gone forever. Or maybe she was just touched by this servant’s loyalty, by the fidelity of this stouthearted woman whose tranquil solicitude seemed unshakable. In the depth of her remorse she thanked Céleste for having witnessed her shame without abandoning her in disgust. She imagined all sorts of self-denial, a whole life of renunciation, in her effort to comprehend the maid’s calm acceptance of incest, her icy hands, her respectful, unflappable attentiveness. And Céleste’s devotion pleased Renée all the more because she knew her to be honest and thrifty, a woman without a lover and untouched by vice.
In sad moments she sometimes said to her, “Listen, my child, when the time comes to close my eyes, I want it to be you.”
Céleste never gave any answer to this other than a peculiar smile. One morning, she quietly informed her mistress that she was leaving, returning home to her native village. Renée’s body shook all over, as if some great misfortune had arrived. She uttered a cry and pummeled Céleste with questions. Why was she abandoning her when they got along so well together? And she offered to double the girl’s wages.
But the chambermaid dismissed all these fine words with a calm but insistent wave.
Finally she broke her silence. “Madame, if you offered me all the gold in Peru, I wouldn’t stay one week longer. You don’t know me at all! . . . I’ve been with you for eight years, haven’t I? Well, on my first day I said to myself, ‘As soon as I’ve saved up 5,000 francs, I’ll go back home. I’ll buy the house in Lagache and live quite happily.’ That’s the promise I made myself, you see. And yesterday, when you paid me my wages, I had those 5,000 francs.”
Renée’s blood ran cold. She had a vision of Céleste passing behind her and Maxime while they were kissing, and she recognized the maid’s indifference, her complete detachment, as she dreamt of her 5,000 francs. She nevertheless tried to dissuade her, terrified as she was of the void in which she would soon find herself living, dreaming in spite of everything of keeping with her this stubborn mule whom she had thought devoted but who had turned out to be merely selfish. The maid smiled, shook her head, and muttered, “No, it’s not possible. Even if you were my mother, I would refuse. . . . I’m going to buy two cows. I may open a small hat shop. . . . It’s a very nice town I come from. I’d be happy if you came to see me. It’s near Caen. I’ll leave you the address.”
Renée dropped her opposition. When she was alone, she cried hot tears. The next day, acting on a sick woman’s caprice, she insisted on driving Céleste to the Gare de l’Ouest in her coupé. She gave her one of her travel blankets as well as a sum of money and made a fuss over her as a mother might over a daughter about to embark on a long and difficult journey. In the coupé she gazed at her former maid with moist eyes. Céleste chatted about this and that and said how glad she was to be leaving. Then, feeling bold, she opened up and offered advice to her mistress.
“Personally, madame, I could never look at life the way you do. Plenty of times when I found you with M. Maxime, I used to say to myself, ‘How can any woman make such a fool of herself for a man!’ It always ends badly. . . . I’ve always been suspicious of them, but that’s me.”
She laughed and pressed herself back into a corner of the carriage.
“My money would have danced right out the door!” she went on. “And today I’d be crying my eyes out. So whenever I saw a man, I’d pick up a broomstick. . . . I never dared tell you any of that. Anyway, it was none of my business. You were free to do as you pleased, and for me it was an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.”
At the station, Renée insisted on paying for her ticket and bought her a seat in first class. Since they had arrived early, she wouldn’t let the servant go but held her by the hand and kept repeating, “Look after yourself, my good Céleste, take good care of yourself.”
Céleste allowed herself to be caressed. She remained happy though her mistress’s eyes filled with tears, and her face looked cool and radiant. Renée spoke again about the past. Then, suddenly, Céleste burst out, “I almost forgot. I haven’t told you the story of Baptiste, Monsieur’s manservant. . . . Nobody wanted to tell you.”