The young woman admitted that she knew nothing.

“Well, you remember his stuck-up airs and snotty looks? You’ve mentioned them to me. . . . Well, that was all a charade. . . . He didn’t like women. He never went down to the kitchen when we were there. And I can tell you this now, he even said that the drawing room was disgusting because of the low-cut gowns. I’m sure he didn’t care for women!”

And she leaned over to whisper in Renée’s ear. She made her mistress blush, yet her own placid sense of propriety remained unperturbed.

“When the new stable boy told Monsieur everything, Monsieur chose to dismiss Baptiste rather than press charges against him. It seems that disgusting things of that sort had been going on in the stables for years. . . . And to think that the big fellow pretended he liked horses! It was the grooms he was after.”

The bell interrupted her. She hastily gathered up the eight or ten packages she had not been willing to part with. She allowed herself to be kissed. Then she walked off without looking back.

Renée remained in the station until the locomotive blew its whistle. When the train pulled out, she felt desperate and didn’t know what to do. Her days seemed to stretch out before her as empty as the vast waiting room in which she was now left standing all alone. She climbed back in her coupé and told the coachman to drive home. On the way, however, she changed her mind. She was afraid of her room and of the boredom that awaited her there. She didn’t even have the heart to change clothes for her usual drive around the lake. She needed sun, and to be with people.

She ordered the coachman to go to the Bois.

It was four o’clock. The Bois was just awakening from the oppressive afternoon heat. Clouds of dust rose all along the avenue de l’Impératrice, and in the distance one could see expanses of greenery bordered by the slopes of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes and crowned by the gray mass of Mont-Valérien. ³ The sun, high on the horizon, flowed as if molten and filled the gaps in the foliage with a golden dust, setting the high branches ablaze and turning the ocean of leaves into an ocean of light. But beyond the fortifications, the carriageway that led to the lake had just been watered. The carriages rolled over the brown dirt as over a woolen carpet, enveloped in a cool fragrance of moist earth. On either side small trees drove their numerous young trunks into the low scrub and vanished into a sea of obscure greenery punctuated here and there by clearings aglow with yellow light. The nearer one got to the lake, the more numerous the chairs along the sidewalks became, and families sat on them and watched the endless parade of wheels with silent, tranquil faces. At the circle just before the lake a dazzling spectacle awaited. The sun’s oblique rays turned the round basin into a huge mirror of polished silver reflecting the star’s splendid face. Through squinting eyes it was hard to make out, on the left, near the bank, the dark outline of the excursion boat. The umbrellas of the carriages bowed in a gentle, uniform motion toward the source of the splendor and did not straighten up again until the carriages reached the carriageway that ran along the edge of the water, which from the height of the embankment took on a dark metallic hue with stripes of burnished gold. On the right, clumps of conifers lined up in regular colonnades, the soft violet tint of their straight, slender needles tinged red by the flames from the sky. On the left, expanses of lawn lay bathed in light like fields of emeralds all the way to the distant lace of the Porte de la Muette. Nearer the falls, the gloomy forest resumed on one side, while across the lake islands loomed against the blue sky with sunlit shores and shadowy slopes of vigorous fir, at the base of which the Chalet looked like a child’s toy lost in a corner of some virgin forest. The entire Bois shook with laughter in the sun.

On this splendid day Renée felt ashamed of her coupé and of her puce outfit, made of silk. She settled back a bit in the carriage and looked out through the open windows at the ripples of light on the water and greenery. At bends in the carriageway she caught glimpses of the line of wheels, revolving like golden stars in an endless stream of blinding flashes. The polished side panels, the glittering appurtenances of copper and steel, and the vividly colored outfits moved along at the regular pace of the trotting horses, so that it seemed that a large bar, a fallen ray of sunlight, was moving against the background of the Bois, stretching to wed the curves of the carriageway. By squinting from time to time, the young woman could make out within that ray the blonde bun of a woman’s hair, the dark back of a footman’s coat, or the white mane of a horse. The rounded contours of the watered-silk parasols shimmered like metal moons.

As Renée contemplated this bright day, these expanses of sunlight, she remembered the fine ash of dusk that had settled over the yellowing leaves one evening as she watched. Maxime was with her then. This was back when her desire for the boy had first been aroused. And she could still see the lawns drenched by the evening air, the darkening woods, and the deserted paths. The line of carriages had then made a mournful sound as it moved past the row of empty chairs, whereas today the rolling wheels and trotting horses sounded as joyful as a brass band. All her outings to the Bois now came back to her. She had lived in these woods, and Maxime had grown up here, sitting next to her on these cushions. The Bois had been their garden. The rain had surprised them here, the sun had brought them back, the night had not always driven them out. They had come here in all kinds of weather, and here they had experienced life’s tedium as well as its joys. In the emptiness of her existence and the melancholy caused by Céleste’s departure, these memories aroused a bitter joy in Renée. Her heart said: Never again! Never again! And as she conjured up that wintry landscape, that dull, frozen lake on which they had skated, she sat transfixed. The sky was the color of soot, the snow stitched veils of white lace onto the trees, and the north wind hurled a fine powder at their eyes and lips.

In the meantime she had recognized the duc de Rozan, M. de Mussy, and M. de Saffré on the path reserved for riders on the left. Larsonneau had killed the duke’s mother by presenting her with 150,000 francs’ worth of overdue notes signed by her son, and the duke was now squandering his second half-million with Blanche Muller after leaving the first 500,000 francs in the hands of Laure d’Aurigny. M. de Mussy, who had left the embassy in England for the embassy in Italy, had resumed his flirtatious ways. He led the cotillion with new-found grace. M. de Saffré for his part was still a skeptic as well as the most amiable bon vivant imaginable. Renée watched him urge his horse toward the door of Countess Wanska’s carriage. People said that he had fallen madly in love with her the day he saw her dressed up as Coral at the Saccards’.

All the ladies were in the Bois as well: Duchess von Sternich in her inevitable eight-spring; Mme de Lauwerens in a landau, with Baroness von Meinhold and little Mme Daste seated opposite her in front; and Mme Teissière and Mme de Guende in a victoria. In amongst these ladies, Sylvia and Laure d’Aurigny sat on the cushions of a magnificent calèche, showing themselves off. Even Mme Michelin drove by, sitting well back in a coupé. The pretty brunette had paid a visit to M. Hupel de la Noue’s district capital and upon her return had been seen in the Bois in this same coupé, to which she hoped soon to add an open carriage. Renée also spotted the marquise d’Espanet and Mme Haffner, the Inseparables, hiding under parasols and laughing affectionately, gazing into each other’s eyes as they stretched out side by side.