The Rougon-Macquart: Complete 20 Book Collection. Эмиль Золя
thing, you know,” she replied. “Far too many people, a regular crush.”
He turned the nightgown, which was hot on one side.
“What did Adeline wear?”
“Mauve, a badly thought-out dress…. She is short, and yet she dotes on flounces.”
They talked of the other women. Maxime was now burning his fingers with the chemise.
“But you’ll scorch it,” said Renée, whose voice sounded maternally caressing.
Céleste took the chemise from the young man’s hands. He rose and went over to the great pink-and-gray bed, fixing his eyes on one of the embroidered bouquets on the curtains, so as to turn away his head and not see Renée’s naked breasts. He did this by intuition. He no longer considered himself her lover, he had no longer the right to look. Then he took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it. Renée had given him permission to smoke in her room. At last Céleste withdrew, leaving the young woman by the fireside, all white in her nightdress.
Maxime walked about a few seconds longer, without speaking, glancing at Renée, who seemed to be seized with a fresh shudder. And stationing himself before the fire, with his cigar between his teeth, he asked abruptly:
“Why didn’t you tell me that it was my father who was with you last night?”
She raised her head, her eyes wide open, with a look of supreme anguish; then a rush of blood crimsoned her features, and, overwhelmed with shame, she hid her face in her hands, stammering:
“You know that? you know that?…”
She recovered herself, she tried to lie.
“It’s not true…. Who told you?”
Maxime shrugged his shoulders.
“Why, my father himself, who thinks you jolly well made and talked to me about your hips.”
He had allowed a little vexation to show itself. But he began walking about again, and continued in a scolding but friendly voice between two puffs at his cigar:
“Really, I can’t understand you. You’re a strange woman. It was your own fault if I behaved like a brute yesterday. You ought to have told me it was my father, and I should have gone away quietly, don’t you see? What right have I?… But you go and tell me it’s M. de Saffré!”
She sobbed, her hands over her face. He came up to her, knelt down before her, and forced her hands apart.
“Come, tell me why you said it was M. de Saffré!”
Then, still averting her head, she replied through her tears, in a low voice:
“I thought you would leave me if you knew that your father…”
He rose to his feet, took up his cigar, which he had laid on a corner of the mantelshelf, and contented himself with muttering:
“You’re a very funny woman, on my word!”
She no longer cried. The flames in the grate and the fire in her cheeks had dried her tears. The surprise of seeing Maxime so self-possessed in presence of a revelation which she thought would crush him made her forget her shame. She watched him walking up and down, she listened to his voice as though she were dreaming. Without abandoning his cigar he repeated to her that she was absurd, that it was quite natural that she should have connection with her husband, that he really could not think of resenting it. But to go and confess that she had a lover when it wasn’t true! And he kept on returning to this, to this point which he could not understand and which he looked upon as positively monstrous, talked of women’s “foolish fancies.”
“You’re not quite right in your mind, dear; you must be careful.”
He wound up by asking inquisitively:
“But why M. de Saffré more than another?”
“He makes love to me,” said Renée.
Maxime checked an impertinence; he was on the point of saying that she was doubtless only anticipating by a month when she owned to M. de Saffré as her lover. He only smiled wickedly at his spiteful idea, and throwing his cigar into the fire, sat down at the opposite side of the mantelpiece. There, he talked commonsense, he gave Renée to understand that they must remain good friends. Her fixed look embarrassed him, however, he had not the courage to tell her of his approaching marriage. She gazed at him, her eyes still swollen with tears. She thought him a poor creature, narrowminded and contemptible, and yet she loved him, as she might love her lace. He looked handsome in the light of the candelabra standing at the corner of the mantel by his side. As he threw back his head, the light of the candles tinged his hair with gold and glided over the soft down on his cheeks with a charmingly blonde effect.
“I must really be off,” he said several times.
He had quite decided not to stay. Besides, Renée would not have let him. They both thought so, said so: they were now merely friends. And when Maxime at last pressed Renée’s hand and was on the point of leaving the room, she detained him for a moment longer and spoke to him of his father. She sang his praises loudly.
“You see, I felt too great a remorse. I prefer that this should have happened…. You don’t know your father; I was astonished to find him so kind, so disinterested. The poor man is so much worried at present.”
Maxime examined the tips of his boots without replying, with an air of uneasiness. She persisted:
“So long as he used not to come to this room, I did not care. But afterwards…. When I saw him here, so affectionate, bringing me money that he must have scraped together in every corner of Paris, ruining himself for me without a murmur, I became ill to think of it…. If you knew how carefully he has watched over my interests!”
The young man returned quietly to the mantelpiece, and leant against it. He stood there embarrassed, with bowed head, and a smile that slowly rose to his lips.
“Yes,” he muttered, “that’s my father’s strong point, to look after people’s interests.”
Renée was astonished at the tone of his voice. She looked at him, and he, as if to defend himself, added:
“Oh, I don’t know anything…. I only say my father is a clever man.”
“You would do wrong to talk ill of him,” she replied. “You evidently judge him a little superficially…. If I were to tell you all his troubles, if I repeated to you what he told me this very evening, you would see how mistaken people are when they think he cares for money….”
Maxime could not help shrugging his shoulders. He interrupted his stepmother with an ironical laugh.
“Believe me, I know him, I know him well…. He must have told you some fine tales. Let me hear what he said.”
This bantering tone offended her. Whereupon she increased her praises, she considered her husband quite great, she talked of the Charonne affair, of that swindle, of which she had understood nothing, as though it had been a catastrophe in which Saccard’s intelligence and kindheartedness had been revealed to her. She added that she should sign the deed of transfer the next day, and that if it was really a disaster, she accepted the disaster as a punishment for her sins. Maxime let her go on, chuckling, looking at her from under his eyelids; then he said in an undertone:
“That’s it; that’s quite right….”
And louder, laying his hand on Renée’s shoulder:
“Thanks, dear, but I knew the story…. What soft stuff you must be made of!”
He moved away again as if to go. He felt a furious itching to tell everything. She had exasperated him with her eulogy of her husband, and he forgot that he had resolved not to speak, so as to avoid all unpleasantness.
“Why? what do you mean?” she asked.
“Well then, that my father has been having you as nicely as could be….