The Rougon-Macquart: Complete 20 Book Collection. Эмиль Золя
him with a sort of conjugal scornfulness, set him dreaming, widened the scope of the drama in which he had just played a scene, and prompted some secret voluptuous calculation in his brutal jobber’s flesh.
When his wife handed him the acceptance, begging him to finish the matter for her, he took it without removing his eyes from her.
“You are bewitchingly beautiful….” he murmured.
And as she bent forward to push away the table, he kissed her rudely on the neck. She gave a little cry. Then she rose, quivering, trying to laugh, thinking, in spite of herself, of the other’s kisses of the night before. But he seemed to regret this unmannerly kiss. He left her, with a friendly pressure of the hand, and promised her that she should have the fifty thousand francs that same evening.
Renée dozed all day before the fire. At critical periods she had the languor of a Creole. All her turbulent nature would then become indolent, numbed, chill. She shivered with cold, she needed blazing fires, a stifling heat that brought little drops of perspiration to her forehead and lulled her. In this burning atmosphere, in this bath of flames, she almost ceased to suffer; her pain became as a light dream, a vague oppression, whose very uncertainty ended by becoming voluptuous. Thus she lulled till the evening the remorse of yesterday, in the red glow of the firelight, in front of a terrible fire, that made the furniture crack around her, and that at moments deprived her of the consciousness of her existence. She was able to think of Maxime as of a flaming enjoyment whose rays burnt her; she had a nightmare of strange passions amid flaring logs on white-hot beds. Céleste moved to and fro through the room, with her calm face, the face of a cold-blooded waiting-maid. She had orders to admit no one, she even sent away the inseparables, Adeline d’Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, who called after breakfasting together in a summer-house they rented at Saint-Germain. However, when, towards the evening, Céleste came to tell her mistress that Madame Sidonie, monsieur’s sister, asked to see her, she received orders to show her up.
Madame Sidonie as a rule did not call till dusk. Her brother had nevertheless prevailed upon her to wear silk gowns. But, no one knew why, for all that the silk she wore came fresh from the shop, it never looked new; it was shabby, lost its sheen, looked a rag. She had also consented to leave off bringing her basket to the Saccards. By way of retaliation, her pockets bulged over with papers. She took an interest in Renée, of whom she was unable to make a reasonable client, resigned to the necessities of life. She called on her regularly, with the discreet smiles of a physician who does not care to frighten his patient by telling her the name of her complaint. She commiserated with her in her little worries, treating them as little aches and pains which she could cure in a minute if Renée wished it. The latter, who was in one of those moments when one feels the need of pity, received her only to tell her that she had intolerable pains in her head.
“Why, my beautiful pet,” murmured Mme. Sidonie as she glided through the shade of the room, “but you’re stifling here!… Still your neuralgic pains, is it? It comes from worry. You take life too much to heart.”
“Yes, I have a heap of anxiety,” replied Renée, languishingly.
Night was falling. She had not allowed Céleste to light the lamp. The fire alone shed a great red glow that lighted her up fully, outstretched in her white peignoir, whose lace was assuming rose tints. At the edge of the shadow one could just see a corner of Mme. Sidonie’s black dress, and her two crossed hands, covered with gray cotton gloves. Her soft voice emerged from the darkness.
“Money-troubles again?” she asked, as though she had said troubles of the heart, in a voice full of gentleness and compassion.
Renée lowered her eyelids and nodded assent.
“Ah! if my brothers would listen to me, we should all be rich. But they shrug their shoulders when I speak to them of that debt of three milliards, you know…. Still I have good hopes. For the last ten years I have been wanting to go across to England. I have so little time to spare!… At last I resolved to write to London, and I am waiting the reply.”
And as the younger woman smiled:
“I know you are an unbeliever yourself. Still you would be very pleased if I made you a present one of these days of a nice little million…. Look here, the story is quite simple: there was a Paris banker who lent the money to the son of the King of England, and as the banker died without direct heirs, the State is to-day entitled to claim payment of the debt with compound interest. I have worked it out, it comes to two milliards, nine hundred and forty-three millions, two hundred and ten thousand francs…. Never fear, it will come, it will come.”
“In the meantime,” said Renée, with a dash of irony, “I wish you would get some one to lend me a hundred thousand francs…. I could then pay my tailor, who is making himself a great nuisance.”
“A hundred thousand francs can be found,” replied Mme. Sidonie, tranquilly. “It is only a question of what you will give in exchange.”
The fire was glowing; Renée, still more languid, stretched out her legs, showed the tips of her slippers at the edge of her dressing-gown. The agent resumed her sympathetic voice:
“My poor dear, you are really not reasonable. I know many women, but I have never seen one so little careful of her health as you. That little Michelin, for instance, see how well she manages! I cannot help thinking of you whenever I see her in good health and spirits…. Do you know that M. de Saffré is madly in love with her, and that he has already given her close upon ten thousand francs’ worth of presents? I believe her dream is to have a house in the country.”
She grew excited, she fumbled in her pocket. “I have here again a letter from a poor young married woman…. If it was light enough, I would let you read it…. Just think, her husband takes no notice of her. She had accepted some bills, and was obliged to borrow the money from a gentleman I know. I went myself and rescued the bills from the bailiff’s clutches, and it was no easy matter…. Those poor children, do you think they do wrong? I receive them at my place as though they were my son and daughter.”
“Do you know anyone who would lend me the money?” asked Renée, casually.
“I know a dozen…. You are too kindhearted. One can say anything between women, can’t one? and it’s not because your husband is my brother that I would excuse him for running after the hussies and leaving a love of a woman like you to mope at the fireside…. That Laure d’Aurigny costs him heaps and heaps. I should not be surprised to hear that he had refused you money. He has refused you, has he not?… Oh, the wretch!”
Renée listened complacently to this mellifluous voice, that issued from the shadow like the echo, vague as yet, of her own dreams. With eyelids half-closed, lying almost at length in her easy-chair, she was no longer conscious of Mme. Sidonie’s presence, she thought she was dreaming of evil thoughts that came to her and tempted her very gently. The business-woman kept up a long prattle like the monotonous flow of tepid water.
“It is Mme. de Lauwerens who has marred your life. You never would believe me. Ah! you wouldn’t be reduced to crying in your chimney-corner, if you hadn’t mistrusted me…. And I love you like my eyes, you beautiful thing. What a bewitching foot you have. You will laugh at me, but I must tell you how silly I am: when I have gone three days without seeing you, I feel absolutely obliged to come and admire you; yes, I feel I want something; I feel the need of feasting my eyes on your lovely hair, your face, so white, so delicate, your slender figure…. Really I have never seen such a figure.”
Renée ended by smiling. Her lovers themselves did not display such warmth, such rapt ecstasy, in speaking to her of her beauty. Mme. Sidonie observed the smile.
“Well then, it’s agreed,” she said, rising briskly…. “I run on and on, and forget that I am making your head split…. You will come tomorrow, will you not? We will talk of money, we will look about for a lender…. Understand, I want you to be happy.”
Still motionless, enervated by the heat, Renée replied, after a pause, as though it had cost her a laborious effort to understand what was being said to her:
“Yes,