THE COMPLETE ROUGON-MACQUART SERIES (All 20 Books in One Edition). Ðмиль ЗолÑ
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over the fine velvet carpets, in this fairy parvenu palace, there trailed the aroma of Mabille, there danced the jauntiness of the popular quadrilles, the whole period passed with its mad, stupid laugh, its eternal hunger and its eternal thirst. It was the disorderly house of fashionable pleasure, of the unblushing pleasure that widens the windows so that the passersby may enjoy the confidence of the alcoves. Husband and wife lived there freely, under their servants’ eyes. They divided the house into two, encamped there, not appearing as though at home, but rather as if they had been dropped, at the end of a tumultuous and bewildering journey, into some palatial hotel where they had merely taken the time to undo their trunks in order to hasten more speedily towards the delights of a fresh city. They slept there at night, only staying at home on the days of the great dinner-parties, carried away by a ceaseless rush across Paris, returning sometimes for an hour as one returns to a room at an inn between two excursions. Renée felt more restless, more nervous there; her silken skirts glided with adder-like hisses over the thick carpets, along the satin of the couches; she was irritated by the idiotic gilding that surrounded her, by the high, empty ceilings, where after fête-nights there lingered nothing but the laughter of young fools and the sententious maxims of old ruffians; and to fill this luxury, to dwell amid this radiancy, she longed for a supreme amusement which her curiosity in vain sought in all the corners of the house, in the little sun-coloured drawingroom, in the conservatory with its fat vegetation. As to Saccard, he was approaching the realization of his dream; he received the high financiers, M. Toutin-Laroche, M. de Lauwerens; he received also great politicians, the Baron Gouraud, Haffner the deputy; his brother the minister had even consented to come two or three times and consolidate his position by his presence. And yet, like his wife, he experienced nervous anxieties, a restlessness that lent to his laugh a strange sound of broken windowpanes. He became so giddy, so bewildered, that his acquaintances said of him: “That devil of a Saccard! he makes too much money, it will drive him mad!” In 1860 he had been decorated, in consequence of a mysterious service he had done the préfet, by lending his name to a lady for the sale of some land.
It was about the time of their installation in the Parc Monceau that an apparition crossed Renée’s life, leaving an ineffaceable impression. Up to then the minister had resisted the entreaties of his sister-in-law, who was dying of a longing to be invited to the court balls. He gave way at last, thinking his brother’s fortune to be definitely established. Renée did not sleep for a month. The great evening came, and she sat all trembling in the carriage that drove her to the Tuileries.
She wore a costume of prodigious grace and originality, a real gem, which she had hit upon one sleepless night, and which three of Worms’s workmen had come to her house to carry out under her eyes. It was a simple dress of white gauze, but trimmed with a multitude of little flounces, scalloped out and edged with black velvet. The black velvet tunic was cut out square, very low over her bosom, which was framed with narrow lace, barely a finger deep. Not a flower, not a bit of ribbon; at her wrists, bracelets without any chasing, and on her head a narrow diadem of gold, a plain circlet which clothed her as with a halo.
When she had reached the reception-rooms, and her husband had left her for the Baron Gouraud, she experienced a momentary embarrassment. But the mirrors, in which she saw that she was adorable, quickly reassured her, and she was accustoming herself to the hot air and the murmur of voices, to the crowd of dress-coats and white shoulders, when the Emperor appeared. He slowly crossed the room on the arm of a short, fat general, who puffed as though he suffered from a troublesome digestion. The shoulders drew up in two lines, while the dress-coats fell back a step with instinctive discretion. Renée found herself pushed to the end of the line of shoulders, near the second door, the one which the Emperor was approaching with a painful and faltering step. She thus saw him come towards her, from one door to the other.
He was in plain dress, with the red riband of the Grand Cordon. Renée, again seized with emotion, saw badly, and to her this bleeding stain seemed to splash the whole of the sovereign’s breast. She considered him little, with legs too short, and swaying loins; but now she was charmed, and he looked handsome to her, with his wan face and the heavy, leaden lids that fell over his lifeless eyes. Under his moustache his mouth feebly opened, and his nose alone stood out cartilaginous amid the puffiness of his face.
Worn out, vaguely smiling, the Emperor and the old general kept advancing with short steps, apparently supporting one another. They looked at the bowing ladies, and their glances, cast to right and left, glided into the bodices. The general leant on one side, spoke a word to his master, and pressed his arm with the air of a jolly companion. And the Emperor, nerveless and nebulous, duller even than usual, came nearer and nearer with his dragging step.
They were in the middle of the room when Renée felt their glances fixed upon her. The general examined her with a look of surprise, while the Emperor, half-raising his eyelids, had a red light in the gray hesitation of his bleared eyes. Renée, losing countenance, lowered her head, bowed, saw nothing more save the pattern of the carpet. But she followed their shadows, and understood that they were pausing for a few seconds before her. And she thought she heard the Emperor, that ambiguous dreamer, murmur as he gazed at her, immersed in her muslin skirt striped with velvet:
“Look, general, there’s a flower worth picking, a mystic carnation, variegated white and black.”
And the general replied, in a more brutal voice: “Sire, that carnation would look devilish well in our buttonholes.”
Renée raised her head. The vision had disappeared, the crowd was thronging round the doorway. After that evening, she frequently returned to the Tuileries: she even had the honour of being complimented aloud by His Majesty, and of becoming a little his friend; but she always remembered the sovereign’s slow heavy walk across the room between the two rows of shoulders; and whenever she experienced any new joy amid her husband’s growing prosperity, she again saw the Emperor overtopping the bowing bosoms, coming towards her, comparing her to a carnation which the old general advised him to put in his buttonhole. To her this was the shrill note of her life.
CHAPTER IV
The distinct and exquisite longing that had risen to Renée’s heart, amid the perturbing perfumes of the conservatory, while Maxime and Louise sat laughing on a sofa in the little buttercup drawingroom, seemed to vanish like a nightmare that leaves behind it nothing but a vague shudder. All through the night, Renée had the bitter taste of the tanghin-plant on her lips; it seemed to her, when she felt the burning of the malignant leaf, as if a mouth of flame were pressing itself to hers, breathing into her a devouring love. Then this mouth escaped her, and her dream was drowned in the vast waves of shadow that rolled over her.
In the morning she slept a little. When she awoke, she fancied herself ill. She had the curtains drawn, spoke to her doctor of sickness and headache, and for two days positively refused to go out. And as she pretended that she was being besieged, she forbade her door. Maxime came and knocked at it in vain. He did not sleep in the house, preferring to be free to do as he pleased in his rooms; and in fact he led the most nomadic life in the world, living in his father’s new houses, selecting the floor that pleased him, moving every month, often from caprice, sometimes to make room for serious tenants. He dried the walls in the company of some mistress. Accustomed to his stepmother’s caprices, he feigned great sympathy, and went upstairs to enquire after her with a distressed look, four times a day, solely to tease her. On the third day he found her in the little drawingroom, pink and smiling, looking calm and reposed.
“Well! have you had a good time with Céleste?” he asked, alluding to her long tête-à-tête with her maid.
“Yes,” she replied, “she is a priceless girl. Her hands are always cold; she used to lay them on my forehead and soothe my poor head a little.”
“But that girl’s a nostrum!” cried Maxime. “If ever I have the misfortune to fall in love, you’ll lend her to me, won’t you? to lay her two hands on my heart.”
They jested, they went for their usual drive in the Bois. A fortnight passed. Renée had thrown herself