THE COMPLETE ROUGON-MACQUART SERIES (All 20 Books in One Edition). Ðмиль ЗолÑ
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Laure d’Aurigny, and Sylvia, and the Crayfish, and two more besides, I believe. They are wonderful: they dig their fingers into the dishes, and chuck handfuls of salad at our heads. My coat is covered with oil.”
The father laughed, thinking this very amusing.
“Ah! young folk, young folk,” he murmured. “That’s not like us, is it, pet? We’ve had a nice quiet dinner, and now we’re going to by-by.”
And he took the woman by his side by the chin, and cooed with his Provençal snuffle, producing a queer sort of love music.
“Oh! the old cully!”… cried the woman. “How are you, Maxime? Musn’t I be fond of you, eh! to consent to sup with your scapegrace of a father…. I never see you now. Come the day after tomorrow, in the morning, early…. No, really, I have something to tell you.”
Saccard finished an ice or a fruit, taking small mouthfuls, blissfully. He kissed the woman on the shoulder, saying jestingly:
“You know, my loves, if I’m in the way I’ll go out…. You can ring when I may come in again.”
Then he carried the lady off, or sometimes went with her and joined in the noise of the next room. Maxime and he shared the same shoulders; their hands met around the same waists. They called to one another on the sofas, and repeated to one another aloud the confidences the women had whispered in their ears. And they carried their intimacy to the pitch of plotting together to carry off from the company the blonde or the brunette whom one of them had selected.
They were well known at Mabille. They went there arm in arm, after a good dinner, strolling round the garden, nodding to the women, tossing them a remark as they went by. They laughed out loud, without unlocking their arms, and came to one another’s aid if necessary whenever the conversation became too lively. The father, who was very strong on this point, negotiated his son’s love-affairs advantageously. At times they sat down and drank with a party of girls. Then they changed their table, or resumed their stroll. And till midnight they were seen, their arms always linked in their intimacy, following the petticoats along the yellow pathways, under the glaring flame of the gasjets.
When they returned home they brought with them from outside, in their coats, a something of the women they had been with. Their jaunty attitudes, the tags of certain suggestive phrases and certain vulgar gestures filled the flat in the Rue de Rivoli with the fragrance of an equivocal alcove. The easy, wanton way in which the father shook hands with his son was enough to proclaim whence they came. It was in this atmosphere that Renée inhaled her sensual caprices and longings. She chaffed them nervously.
“Where on earth do you come from?” she asked them. “You smell of musk and tobacco…. I know I shall have a headache.”
And the strange aroma did in fact perturb her profoundly. It was the persistent perfume of that singular household.
Meantime Maxime was smitten with a violent passion for little Sylvia. He bored his stepmother with this girl for several months. Renée soon knew her from one end to the other, from the sole of her feet to the crown of her head. She had a blue mark on her hip; nothing was sweeter than her knees; her shoulders had this peculiarity that the left alone was dimpled. Maxime took a malicious pleasure in filling their drives with his mistress’s perfections. One evening, on returning from the Bois, Renée’s carriage and Sylvia’s, caught in a block, had to draw up side by side in the Champs-Élysées. The two women eyed one another with keen curiosity, while Maxime, enchanted with this critical situation, tittered under his breath. When the calash began to roll on again, his stepmother preserved a gloomy silence; he thought she was sulking, and expected one of those maternal scenes, one of those strange lectures, with which she still occasionally filled up her moments of lassitude.
“Do you know that person’s jewellers?” she asked him suddenly, at the moment they reached the Place de la Concorde.
“Yes, alas!” he replied with a smile; “I owe him ten thousand francs…. Why do you ask me?”
“For nothing.”
Then, after a fresh pause:
“She had a very pretty bracelet, the one on the left wrist…. I should have liked to see it closer.”
They reached home. She said no more on the matter. Only, the next day, just as Maxime and his father were going out together, she took the young man aside and spoke to him in an undertone, with an air of embarrassment, and a pretty smile which pleaded for pardon. He seemed surprised and went off, laughing his wicked laugh. In the evening he brought Sylvia’s bracelet, which his stepmother had begged him to show her.
“There’s what you want,” he said. “One would turn thief for your sake, stepmother.”
“She didn’t see you take it?” asked Renée, who was greedily examining the bracelet.
“I don’t think so…. She wore it yesterday, she certainly would not want to wear it to-day.”
Meantime Renée approached the window. She put on the bracelet. She raised her wrist a little and turned it round, enraptured, repeating:
“Oh! very pretty, very pretty…. I like everything immensely, except the emeralds.”
At that moment Saccard entered, and as she was still holding up her wrist in the white light of the window:
“Hullo!” he cried in astonishment. “Sylvia’s bracelet!”
“Do you know this piece of jewellery?” she said, more embarrassed than he, not knowing what to do with her arm.
He had recovered himself, and threatened his son with his finger, murmuring:
“That rascal has always some forbidden fruit in his pockets…. One of these days he will bring us the lady’s arm with the bracelet on.”
“Ah! but it’s not I,” replied Maxime with mischievous cowardice. “It’s Renée who wanted to see it.”
“Ah!” was all the husband said.
And he examined the gaud in his turn, repeating like his wife:
“It is very pretty, very pretty.”
Then he went quietly away, and Renée scolded Maxime for giving her away like that. But he declared that his father didn’t care a pin! Then she returned him the bracelet, adding:
“You must go to the jeweller and order one exactly like it for me; only you must have sapphires put in instead of emeralds.”
Saccard was unable to keep a thing or a person near him for long without wanting to sell it or derive some sort of profit from it. His son was not twenty when he thought of turning him to account. A good-looking boy, nephew to a minister and son of a big financier, ought to be a good investment. He was a trifle young still, but one could always look out for a wife and a dowry for him, and then decide to postpone the wedding for a long time, or to hurry it on, according to the exigencies of domestic economy. Saccard was fortunate. He discovered on a board of directors of which he was a member a fine, tall man, M. de Mareuil, who in two days belonged to him. M. de Mareuil was a retired sugar-refiner of Havre, and his real name was Bonnet. After amassing a large fortune, he had married a young girl of noble birth, also very rich, who was looking out for a fool of imposing appearance. Bonnet obtained permission to assume his wife’s name, which was a first satisfaction for his bride; but his marriage had made him madly ambitious, and his dream was to repay Hélène for the noble name she had given him by achieving a high political position. From that time forward he had put money into new papers, bought large estates in the heart of the Nièvre, and by all the well-known means prepared for himself a candidature for the Corps Législatif. So far he had failed without losing an iota of his solemnity. His was the most incredibly empty brain one could come across. He was of splendid stature, with the white, pensive face of a great statesman; and as he had a marvellous way of listening, he gave the impression of a prodigious inner labour of comprehension and deduction. In reality he was thinking of nothing. But he succeeded in perplexing people, who no longer knew whether they had to do with