THE COMPLETE ROUGON-MACQUART SERIES (All 20 Books in One Edition). Ðмиль ЗолÑ
white lace.” Tepid fumes pervaded the air. The flushed faces seemed to be softened by a sense of inward felicity. Two lackeys went round the table serving Alicante and Tokay.
Renée had worn a look of vacancy ever since the beginning of dinner. She fulfilled her duties as hostess with a mechanical smile. At every outburst of merriment that came from the end of the table where Maxime and Louise sat side by side, jesting like boon companions, she threw a lurid glance in their direction. She felt bored. The serious men were too much for her. Mme. d’Espanet and Mme. Haffner looked towards her in despair.
“And what are the prospects of the forthcoming elections?” asked Saccard, suddenly, of M. Hupel de la Noue.
“Very promising,” answered the latter, smiling: “only I have had no candidates appointed as yet for my department. The minister has not made up his mind, it would seem.”
M. de Mareuil, who had thanked Saccard with a glance for broaching this subject, appeared to be on hot coals. He blushed, and bowed disconcertedly when the préfet turned to him and continued:
“I have heard much of you in the country, monsieur. Your extensive property there has won you many friends, and your devotion to the Emperor is well known. Your chances are excellent.”
“Papa, isn’t it true that little Sylvia used to sell cigarettes at Marseilles in 1849?” cried Maxime at this moment from the end of the table.
Aristide Saccard pretended not to hear, and his son continued in a lower tone:
“My father has known her intimately.”
This aroused some smothered laughter. Meantime, while M. de Mareuil kept up his bowing, M. Haffner had resumed in sententious tones:
“Devotion to the Emperor is the only virtue, the only patriotism, in these days of self-interested democracy. Who loves the Emperor loves France. It would give us unfeigned pleasure if monsieur were to become our colleague.”
“Monsieur will succeed,” said M. Toutin-Laroche in his turn. “All large fortunes should gather round the throne.”
Renée could bear it no longer. The marquise was stifling a yawn in front of her. And as Saccard was about to resume, she said to him, with her pretty smile:
“Take pity on us, dear, and spare us any more of your horrid politics.”
Then M. Hupel de la Noue, with a préfet’s gallantry, exclaimed that the ladies were right. And he began to tell an indecent story of something that had happened in his district. The marquise, Mme. Haffner, and the other ladies, laughed heartily at certain of the details. The préfet told his story in a very pungent style, with suggestions, reservations and inflections of voice that gave a very improper meaning to the most inoffensive expressions. Then they talked of the first of the duchesse’s Tuesdays, of a burlesque that had been produced the night before, of the death of a poet, and of the end of the autumn racing-season. M. Toutin-Laroche, who had his amiable moments, drew a comparison between women and roses, and M. de Mareuil, in the confusion in which he had been plunged by his electoral expectations, gave vent to profound observations on the new fashion in bonnets. Renée retained her vacant look.
Meanwhile the guests had ceased eating. A hot breath seemed to have passed over the table, clouding the glasses, crumbling the bread, blackening the fruit-peel on the plates, and destroying the fine symmetry of the cloth. The flowers drooped in the great cornucopia of chased silver. And the guests had a moment of self-oblivion, in the presence of the remains of the dessert, lacking the energy to rise from their seats. Leaning half forward, with one arm resting on the table, they had the listless aspect, the indefinite dejection, that accompanies the cautious, circumspect inebriation of men and women of fashion fuddling themselves by degrees. All laughter had subsided, and but few words were spoken. Much had been drunk and eaten, and the group of men with decorations were more solemn than ever. In the heavy atmosphere of the room, the ladies felt a dampness rising to their necks and temples. They awaited the signal to adjourn to the drawingroom, serious, a little pale, as though their heads were gently swimming. Mme. Espanet was pink all over, while Mme. Haffner’s shoulders had assumed a waxen whiteness. And M. Hupel de la Noue examined the handle of his knife; M. Toutin-Laroche continued to fling disconnected sentences towards M. Haffner, who wagged his head in reply; M. de Mareuil mused, with his eyes fixed on M. de Michelin, who smiled upon him archly. As for the pretty Mme. Michelin, she had long ceased talking; very red in the face, she let one of her hands hang under the table, where it was doubtless held by M. de Saffré, who leant awkwardly against the edge of the table, with knit eyebrows and the grimace of a man solving an algebraical problem. Madame Sidonie, too, had made her conquests; the Sieurs Mignon and Charrier, both leaning on their elbows with their faces turned towards her, seemed enraptured at receiving her confidences; she confessed that she loved everything that was made with milk, and that she was frightened of ghosts. And Aristide Saccard himself, his eyes half-closed, plunged in the beatitude of an amphitryon who realizes that he has conscientiously fuddled his guests, had no thought of leaving the table; with respectful tenderness he surveyed the Baron Gouraud laboriously digesting his dinner, his right hand spread over the white cloth, the hand of a sensual old man, short, thick, blotched with purple patches and covered with short red hairs.
Renée drank up automatically the few drops of Tokay that remained at the bottom of her glass. Her face tingled; the little yellow hairs on her neck and temples escaped rebelliously as though moistened by a humid breath. Her lips and nose were nervously contracted, she had the silent expression of a child that has drunk neat wine. The good middle-class thoughts that had come to her as she sat looking at the shadows of the Parc Monceau were now drowned in the stimulation of food and wine and light, and of the disturbing surroundings, impregnated with hot breath and merriment. She no longer exchanged quiet smiles with her sister Christine and her aunt Elisabeth, both of them modest and retiring, barely uttering a word. With a stony glance she had compelled the poor M. de Mussy to lower his eyes. Though her thoughts were apparently wandering, and she carefully refrained from turning round, and remained leaning back in her chair, against which the satin of her bodice rustled gently, she allowed an imperceptible shudder of the shoulders to escape her at each renewed burst of laughter that came to her from the corner where Maxime and Louise were still making merry, as loudly as ever, amid the dying hum of conversation.
And behind her, on the edge of the shadow, his tall figure beetling over the disordered table and the torpid guests, stood Baptiste, pale and solemn, in the scornful attitude of a flunky that has gorged his masters. He alone, in the air laden with drunkenness, beneath the vivid light that was turning to yellow, continued correct, with his silver chain round his neck, his cold eyes, in which the sight of the women’s shoulders kindled no spark, his air of a eunuch waiting on Parisians of the decadence and retaining his dignity.
At last Renée rose, with a nervous movement. All followed her example. They adjourned to the drawingroom, where coffee was served.
The large drawingroom was an immense, long room, with a sort of gallery that ran from one pavilion to the other, taking up the whole of the façade on the garden side. A large French window opened on to the steps. This gallery glittered with gold. The ceiling, gently arched, had fanciful scrolls winding round great gilt medallions, that shone like bucklers. Bosses and dazzling garlands encircled the arch; fillets of gold, resembling threads of molten metal, ran round the walls, framing the panels, which were hung with red silk; festoons of roses, topped with tufts of full-blown blossoms, hung down along the sides of the mirrors. An Aubusson carpet spread its purple flowers over the polished flooring. The furniture of red silk damask, the door-hangings and window-curtains of the same material, the huge ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, the porcelain vases standing on the consoles, the legs of the two long tables inlaid in Florentine mosaic, the very flower-stands placed in the recesses of the windows, oozed and sweated with gold. At the four corners of the room were four great lamps placed on pedestals of red marble, to which they were fastened by chains of bronze gilt, that fell with symmetrical grace. And from the ceiling hung three lustres with crystal pendants, streaming with drops of blue and pink light, whose hot glare drew a responding gleam from all the gold in the room.
The men soon withdrew to the smoking-room.