The Rougon-Macquart: Complete 20 Book Collection. Эмиль Золя
was much too wide and made him look almost hunchbacked. In this garb, surprised at the new things he saw, he looked about him, not at all timidly, but with the savage, cunning air of a precocious child, that is loth to come out of its shell at first sight.
A servant had just fetched him from the station, and he was waiting in the big drawingroom, charmed with the gilding on the ceiling and furniture, thoroughly delighted with this luxury in which he was about to spend his life, when Renée, returning from her tailor, swept in like a gust of wind. She threw off her hat and the white burnoose which she had placed over her shoulders to protect her from the cold, which was already keen. She appeared before Maxime, who was stupefied with admiration, in all the brilliancy of her marvellous attire.
The child thought she was dressed up. She wore a delicious skirt of blue faille, with deep flounces, and over that a sort of French-guard’s coat in pale-gray silk. The flaps of the coat, lined with blue satin of a deeper shade than the faille of the skirt, were bravely caught up and secured with knots of ribbon; the cuffs of the flat sleeves, the broad lapels of the bodice stood out wide, trimmed with the same satin. And as a supreme effort of trimming, as a bold stroke of eccentricity, two rows of large buttons imitating sapphires and fastening into blue rosettes, adorned the front of the coat. It was ugly and entrancing.
When Renée perceived Maxime:
“It’s the boy, is it not?” asked she of the servant, surprised to find him as tall as herself.
The child was devouring her with his eyes. This lady with a skin so white, whose bosom showed through a gap of her plaited shirtfront, this sudden and charming apparition, with her hair dressed high, her elegant, gloved hands, her little Wellington boots with pointed heels that dug into the carpet, delighted him, seemed to him to be the good fairy of this warm, gilded room. He began to smile, and he was just sufficiently awkward to retain his urchin gracefulness.
“Why, he is quite amusing!” cried Renée….”But what a shame! how they have cut his hair!… Listen, my little friend, your father will probably not come in till dinnertime, and I shall have to make you at home…. I am your stepmother, monsieur. Will you give me a kiss?”
“Yes, if you like,” answered Maxime, boldly.
And he kissed Renée on both cheeks, taking her by the shoulders, whereby the French-guard’s coat was a little rumpled. She freed herself, laughing, saying:
“Oh dear, how amusing he is, the little shaveling!…”
She came back to him, more serious.
“We shall be friends, sha’n’t we?… I want to be a mother to you. I was thinking about it while I was waiting for my tailor, who was engaged, and I said to myself that I must be very kind and bring you up quite properly…. That will be nice!”
Maxime continued to stare at her with his blue forward girl’s eyes, and suddenly:
“How old are you?” he asked.
“But you should never ask that!” she cried, clasping her hands together….”He knows nothing, poor little wretch! He will have to be taught everything…. Luckily I can still tell my age. I am twenty-one.”
“I shall soon be fourteen…. You might be my sister.”
He did not go on, but his look added that he had expected to find his father’s second wife much older. He was standing quite close to her, and examining her neck so attentively that she almost ended by blushing. Her giddy head, moreover, was turning: it was never able to fix itself long on the same subject; and she began to walk about, to speak of her tailor, forgetting she was talking to a child.
“I wanted to be here to receive you. But think, Worms brought me this dress this morning…. I tried it on and I thought it rather successful. It is very smart, is it not?”
She had moved before a mirror. Maxime walked to and fro behind her so as to examine her on every side.
“Only,” she continued, “when I put on the coat, I noticed there was a large fold, there, on the left shoulder, d’you see?… That fold is very ugly, it makes me look as if I had one shoulder higher than the other.”
He came up to her and pressed his finger over the fold as though to smooth it down, and his vicious schoolboy hand seemed to linger on that spot with a certain satisfaction.
“Well,” she continued, “I couldn’t wait. I had the horses put to, and I went to tell Worms what I thought of his outrageous carelessness…. He promised me to put it right.”
Thereupon she remained before the mirror, still looking at herself, lost in a sudden reverie. She ended by laying one finger on her lips, with an air of contemplative impatience. And quite low, as if talking to herself:
“It wants something…. Yes, really, it wants something….”
Then, with a quick movement, she turned round, placed herself in front of Maxime, and asked him:
“Is it really right?… Don’t you think it wants something, a trifle, a bow somewhere or other?”
The schoolboy was reassured by Renée’s familiarity, and resumed all the assurance of his forward nature. He drew back, came nearer, screwed up his eyes, and murmured:
“No, no, it wants nothing, it’s very pretty, very pretty indeed…. If anything, I think there is something too much.”
He blushed a little, despite his audacity, came nearer still, and with his fingertip tracing an acute angle on Renée’s breast:
“If I were you,” he continued, “I would hollow out that lace so, and wear a necklace with a great big cross.”
She clapped her hands, radiant with delight.
“That’s it, that’s it,” she exclaimed…. “I had the great big cross on the tip of my tongue.”
She folded back the chemisette, left the room for two minutes, and returned with the necklace and cross. And resuming her place in front of the mirror she murmured triumphantly:
“Oh, perfect, quite perfect…. But he’s no fool, that little shaveling! Used you to dress the girls in the country, then? You and I are sure to get on well together. But you will have to do as I tell you. In the first place, you must let your hair grow and never wear that horrid tunic again. Then you must faithfully follow my lessons in good manners. I want you to become a smart young man.”
“But, of course,” said the child naïvely; “since papa is rich now and you are his wife.”
She smiled, and with her customary vivacity:
“Then let us begin by dropping the plural. I have been saying thou and you anyhow. It’s too silly…. Will you love me very much?”
“I will love you with all my heart,” he replied, with the effusiveness of a boy towards his sweetheart.
Such was the first interview between Maxime and Renée. The child did not go to school till a month later. During the first few days his stepmother played with him as with a doll; she brushed off his country manners, and it must be added that he seconded her with extreme willingness. When he appeared, newly arrayed from head to foot by his father’s tailor, she uttered a cry of joyous surprise: he looked as pretty as a daisy, she said. Only his hair took an unconscionable time in growing. Renée used always to say that all one’s face lay in one’s hair. She tended her own devoutly. For a long time she had been maddened by the colour of it, that peculiar pale yellow colour which reminded one of good butter. But when yellow hair came into fashion she was delighted, and to make believe that she did not follow the fashion because she could not help herself, she swore she dyed it every month.
Maxime was already terribly knowing for his thirteen years. He was one of those frail, precocious natures in which the senses assert themselves early. He had vices before he knew the meaning of desire. He had twice narrowly escaped being expelled from school. Had Renée’s eyes been accustomed to provincial graces, she would have perceived that, strangely got-up though he was, the little