The Rougon-Macquart: Complete 20 Book Collection. Эмиль Золя
When he worries me again, we will see…. Don’t talk to me of all that any more. My head is shattered with business.”
Mme. Sidonie seemed very much vexed. She was on the point of sitting down again, of resuming her caressing monologue; but Renée’s weary attitude decided her to postpone her attack until later. She drew a handful of papers from her pocket, and searched among them until she found an article enclosed in a sort of pink box.
“I came to recommend to you a new soap,” she said, resuming her business voice. “I take a great interest in the inventor, who is a charming young man. It is a very soft soap, very good for the skin. You will try it, won’t you? and talk of it to your friends… I will leave it here, on the mantelpiece.”
She had reached the door, when she returned once more, and standing erect in the crimson glow of the fire, with her waxen face, she began to sing the praises of an elastic belt, an invention intended to take the place of corsets.
“It gives you a waist absolutely round, a genuine wasp’s waist,” she said….”I saved it from bankruptcy. When you come you can try on the samples if you like…. I had to run after the lawyers for a week. The documents are in my pocket, and I am going straight to my bailiff now to put a stop to a final opposition…. Goodbye for the present, darling. You know, I shall expect you: I want to dry those pretty eyes of yours.”
She glided out of sight. Renée did not even hear her close the door. She stayed there before the expiring fire, continuing her dream of the whole day, her head full of dancing numerals, hearing the voices of Saccard and of Madame Sidonie talking in the distance, offering her large sums of money, in the voice in which an auctioneer puts up a lot of furniture. She felt her husband’s coarse kiss on her neck, and when she turned round, she fancied the woman of business was at her feet, making passionate speeches to her, praising her perfections, and begging for an assignation with the attitude of a lover on the verge of despair. This made her smile. The heat of the room became more and more stifling. And Renée’s stupor, the fantastic dreams she had, were no more than a light slumber. An artificial slumber, in the depths of which constantly recurred to her the little private room on the boulevard, the large sofa upon which she had fallen on her knees. She no longer suffered in the least. When she opened her eyes, Maxime’s image passed through the crimson firelight.
The next day, at the ministry ball, the beautiful Madame Saccard was wondrous. Worms had accepted the fifty thousand francs on account, and she emerged from her financial straits with the laughter of convalescence. When she traversed the reception rooms in her great dress of rose faille with its long Louis XIV train, edged with deep white lace, there was a murmur, men jostled each other to see her. And those who were her friends bowed low, with a discreet smile of appreciation, doing homage to those beautiful shoulders, so well known to all official Paris and looked upon as the firm pillars of the Empire. She had bared her bosom with so great a contempt for the looks of others, she walked so serene and gentle in her nakedness, that it almost ceased to be indecent. Eugène Rougon, the great politician, felt that this nude bosom was even more eloquent than his speeches in the Chamber, softer and more persuasive in making people relish the charms of the reign and in convincing the doubtful. He went up to his sister-in-law to compliment her on her happy stroke of audacity in lowering her bodice yet another inch. Almost all the Corps Législatif was there, and from the air with which the deputies looked at the young married woman, the minister foresaw a fine success on the morrow in the delicate matter of the loans of the City of Paris. It was impossible to vote against a power that raised on the compost of millions a flower like this Renée, a so strange flower of voluptuousness, with silken flesh and statuesque nudity, a living joy that left behind it a fragrance of tepid pleasure. But what set the whole ballroom whispering was the necklace and aigrette. The men recognized the jewels. The women furtively called each other’s attention to them with a glance. Nothing else was talked of the whole evening. And the suite of reception rooms stretched away in the white light of the chandeliers, filled with a glittering throng like a medley of stars fallen into too confined a corner.
At about one o’clock Saccard disappeared. He relished his wife’s triumph as a successful piece of clap-trap. He had once more consolidated his credit. A matter of business required his presence at Laure d’Aurigny’s; he went off, and begged Maxime to take Renée home after the ball.
Maxime spent the evening staidly by the side of Louise de Mareuil, both very much taken up in saying shocking things about the women who passed to and fro. And when they had uttered some coarser piece of nonsense than usual, they stifled their laughter in their pocket-handkerchiefs. When Renée wished to leave, she had to come and ask the young man for his arm. In the carriage she showed a nervous gaiety; she still quivered with the intoxication of light, perfumes and sounds that she had just passed through. She seemed besides to have forgotten their “folly” of the boulevard, as Maxime called it. She only asked him, in a singular tone of voice:
“Is that little hunchback of a Louise so very amusing, then?”
“Oh, very amusing…” replied the young man, still laughing. “You saw the Duchess de Sternich with a yellow bird in her hair, didn’t you?… Well, Louise pretends that it’s a clockwork bird that flaps its wings every hour and cries, ‘Cuckoo! cuckoo!’ to the poor duke.”
Renée thought this pleasantry of the emancipated schoolgirl very entertaining. When they had reached home, as Maxime was about to take leave of her, she said to him:
“Are you not coming up? Céleste has no doubt got me something to eat.”
He came up in his usual compliant fashion. There was nothing to eat upstairs, and Céleste had gone to bed. Renée had to light the tapers in a little three-branched candlestick. Her hand trembled a little.
“That foolish creature,” she said, speaking of her maid, “must have misunderstood what I told her…. I shall never be able to undress myself all alone.”
She passed into her dressing-room. Maxime followed her, to tell her a fresh jest of Louise’s that recurred to his mind. He was as much at ease as though he had been loitering at a friend’s and was feeling for his cigar-case to light a Havannah. But when Renée had set down the candlestick, she turned round and fell into the young man’s arms, speechless and disquieting, gluing her mouth to his mouth.
Renée’s private apartment was a nest of silk and lace, a marvel of luxurious coquetry. A tiny boudoir led into the bedroom. The two rooms formed but one, or at least the boudoir was nothing more than the threshold of the bedroom, a large recess, furnished with long-chairs, and with a pair of hangings instead of a door. The walls of both rooms were hung with the same material, a heavy pale-gray silk, figured with huge bouquets of roses, white lilac, and buttercups. The curtains and door-hangings were of Venetian lace over a silk lining of alternate gray and pink bands. In the bedroom the white marble chimney-piece, of real jewel, displayed like a basket of flowers its incrustations of lapis lazuli and precious mosaic, repeating the roses, white lilac, and buttercups of the tapestry. A large gray-and-pink bed, whose woodwork was hidden beneath padding and upholstery, and whose head stood against the wall, filled quite one-half of the room with its flow of drapery, its lace and its silk figured with bouquets, falling from ceiling to carpet. As one should say a woman’s dress, rounded and slashed and decked with puffs and bows and flounces; and the large curtain, swelling out like a skirt, raised thoughts of some tall, amorous girl, leaning over, swooning, almost falling back upon the pillows. Beneath the curtains it was a sanctuary: cambric finely plaited, a snowy mass of lace, all sorts of delicate diaphanous things immersed in religious dimness. By the side of the bedstead, of this monument whose devout ampleness recalled a chapel decorated for some festival, the rest of the furniture subsiding into nothingness: low chairs, a cheval-glass six feet high, presses provided with innumerable drawers. Under foot, the carpet, blue-gray, was covered with pale full-blown roses. And on either side of the bed lay two great black bearskin rugs, edged with crimson velvet, with silver claws, and with their heads turned towards the window, gazing fixedly through their glass eyes at the empty sky.
Soft harmony, muffled silence reigned in this chamber. No shrill note, no metallic reflection, no bright gilding broke through the dreamy chant of pink and gray. Even the chimney ornaments, the