THE COMPLETE ROUGON-MACQUART SERIES (All 20 Books in One Edition). Ðмиль ЗолÑ
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of trees separated with a confused line the whiteness of the pavement from the uncertain darkness of the roadway, on which passed the rumble and the fleeting lamps of the carriages. On either edge of this dark belt, the newsvendors’ kiosks shed their light from spot to spot, like great Venetian lanterns, tall and fantastically variegated, set on the ground at regular intervals for some colossal illumination. But at this time their subdued brilliancy was lost in the flare of the neighbouring shop-fronts. Not a shutter was up, the pavement stretched out without a line of shadow, under a shower of rays that lighted it with a golden dust, with the warm and resplendent glare of daylight. Maxime showed Renée the Café Anglais, whose windows shone out in front of them. The lofty branches of the trees interfered with them a little, however, when they tried to see the houses and pavement opposite. They leant over, and looked below them. There was a continual coming and going; men walked past in groups, prostitutes in couples dragged their skirts, which they raised from time to time with a languid movement, casting weary, smiling glances around them. Right under the window, the tables of the Café Riche were spread out in the blaze of the gaslamps, whose brilliancy extended half across the roadway; and it was especially in the centre of this burning focus that they saw the pallid faces and pale smiles of the passersby. Around the little tables were men and women mingled together, drinking. The girls were in showy dresses, their hair dressed low down in their necks; they lounged about on chairs and made loud remarks, which the clatter prevented one from hearing. Renée noticed one in particular, sitting alone at a table, dressed in a bright-blue costume, garnished with white guipure; thrown back in her chair, she finished, sip by sip, a glass of beer, her hands on her stomach, a heavy and resigned expectant look on her face. The women on foot disappeared slowly among the crowd, and Renée, who was interested in them, followed them, gazing from one end of the boulevard to the other, into the noisy, confused depths of the avenue, full of the black swarm of pedestrians, where the lights became mere sparks. And the endless procession, a crowd strangely mixed and always alike, passed by with tiring regularity in the midst of the bright colours and patches of darkness, in the fairylike confusion of the thousand leaping flames that swept like waves from the shops, lending colour to the transparencies of the windows and the kiosks, running along the pavements in fillets, letters and designs of fire, piercing the darkness with stars, gliding unceasingly along the roadway. The deafening noise that rose on high had a clamour, a prolonged monotonous rumbling, like an organ-note accompanying an endless procession of little mechanical dolls. Renée at one moment thought an accident had taken place. A stream of people moved on the left, a little beyond the Passage de l’Opéra. But, taking her eyeglass, she recognized the omnibus-office. There was a crowd of people on the pavement, standing waiting, and rushing forward as soon as an omnibus arrived. She heard the rough voice of the ticket-examiner calling out the numbers, and then the tinkle of the registering bell reached her with a crystal ringing. Her eyes lighted upon the advertisements on a kiosk, glaringly coloured like Épinal prints; on a pane of glass, in a green-and-yellow frame, there was the head of a grinning devil with hair on end, a hatter’s advertisement, which she failed to understand. Every five minutes the Batignolles omnibus passed, with its red lamps and yellow sides, turning the corner of the Rue le Peletier, shaking the house with its din, and she saw the men on the knifeboard raise tired faces and look at them, Maxime and her, with the curious glance of famished people peering through a keyhole.
“Ah!” she said. “The Parc Monceau is fast asleep by this time.”
It was the only remark she made. They stayed there for nearly twenty minutes in silence, surrendering themselves to the intoxication of the noise and light. Then, the table being laid, they went and sat down, and as she seemed embarrassed by the presence of the waiter, Maxime dismissed him.
“Leave us…. I will ring for dessert.”
Renée’s cheeks were slightly flushed, and her eyes sparkled; one would think she had just been running. She brought from the window a little of the din and animation of the boulevard. She would not let her companion close the window.
“Why, it’s the orchestra!” she said, when he complained of the noise. “Don’t you think it a funny sort of music? It will make a fine accompaniment to our oysters and partridge.”
The escapade gave youth to her thirty years. She had quick movements and a touch of fever, and this private room, this supping alone with a young man amid the uproar of the street excited her, gave her the look of a fast woman. She attacked the oysters resolutely. Maxime was not hungry; he watched her bolt her food with a smile.
“The devil!” he murmured. “You would have made a good supper-girl.”
She stopped, annoyed with herself for eating so fast.
“Do I look hungry? What can you expect? It’s the hour we spent at that idiotic ball that exhausted me…. Ah, my poor friend, I pity you for living in a world like that!”
“You know very well,” he said, “that I have promised to give up Sylvia and Laure d’Aurigny on the day your friends consent to come to supper with me.”
She made a haughty gesture.
“I should rather think so! We are rather more amusing than those women, you must confess…. If one of us were to bore her lover as your Sylvia and your Laure d’Aurigny must bore all of you, why the poor little woman would not keep her lover a week!… You never will listen to me. Just try it, one of these days.”
Maxime, to avoid summoning the waiter, rose, removed the oysters, and brought the partridge which was on the slab. The table had the luxurious look of the first-class restaurants. A breath of adorable debauchery passed over the damask cloth, and Renée experienced little thrills of contentment as she let her slender hands stroll from her fork to her knife, from her plate to her glass. She, who usually drank water barely tinged with claret, now drank white wine neat. Maxime, standing with his napkin over his arm, and waiting on her with comical obsequiousness, resumed:
“What can M. de Saffré have said to make you so furious? Did he tell you you were ugly?”
“Oh, he!” she replied. “He’s a nasty man. I could never have believed that a gentleman who is so distinguished, so polite when at my house, could have used such language. But I forgive him. It was the women that irritated me. One would have thought they were apple-women. There was one who complained of a boil on her hip, and a little more and I believe she would have pulled up her petticoat to show all of us her sore.”
Maxime was splitting with laughter.
“No, really,” she continued, working herself up, “I can’t understand you men; those women are dirty and dull…. And to think that when I saw you going off with your Sylvia I imagined wonderful scenes, ancient banquets that you see in pictures, with creatures crowned with roses, goblets of gold, extraordinary voluptuousness… Ah! no doubt. You showed me a dirty dressing-room, and women swearing like troopers. That’s not worth being immoral for.”
He wanted to protest, but she silenced him, and holding between her fingertips a partridge-bone which she was daintily nibbling, she added, in a lower voice:
“Immorality ought to be an exquisite thing, my dear… When I, a straight woman, feel bored and commit the sin of dreaming of impossibilities, I am sure I think of much jollier things than all your Blanche Mullers.”
And with a serious air, she concluded with this profound and frankly cynical remark:
“It is a question of education, don’t you see?”
She laid the little bone gently on her plate. The rumbling of the carriages continued, with no clearer sound rising above it. She had been obliged to raise her voice for him to hear her, and the flush on her cheeks grew redder. There were still on the slab some truffles, a sweet, and some asparagus, which was out of season. He brought the lot over, so as not to have to disturb himself again; and as the table was rather narrow, he placed on the floor between them a silver pail, full of ice, containing a bottle of champagne. Renée’s appetite had ended by communicating itself to him. They tasted all the dishes, they emptied the bottle of champagne with brusque liveliness, launching out into ticklish theories, leaning their elbows on the table like two friends who relieve their hearts after drinking. The