The Rougon-Macquart: Complete 20 Book Collection. Эмиль Золя
M. de Saffré told him, in a heartily-applauded speech, that he had deserved well of his country for preventing the fair Laure d’Aurigny from falling into the hands of the English.
“No, really, messieurs, you are mistaken,” stammered Saccard, with false modesty.
“Go on, why try to excuse yourself?” cried Maxime humorously. “It was a very fine thing to do, at your time of life.”
The young man, who had thrown away his cigar, went back to the drawingroom. A great many people had arrived. The gallery was full of men in evening clothes, standing up and talking in low tones, and of petticoats spread out wide along the settees. Flunkeys had begun to move about with silver salvers loaded with ices and glasses of punch.
Maxime, who wished to speak to Renée, passed through the full length of the drawingroom, knowing from experience the ladies’ favourite sanctum. There was, at the opposite end to the smoking-room, to which it formed a pendant, another circular room which had been made into an adorable little drawingroom. This boudoir, with its hangings, curtains and portieres of buttercup satin, had a voluptuous charm of an original and exquisite flavour. The lights of the chandelier, a piece of very delicate workmanship, sang a symphony in pale-yellow, amid all these sun-coloured silks. The effect resembled a flood of softened rays, as of the sun setting over a field of ripe wheat. The light expired upon the floor on an Aubusson carpet strewn with dead leaves. An ebony piano inlaid with ivory, two cabinets whose glass doors displayed a host of knickknacks, a Louis XVI table, a flower-bracket heaped high with blossoms furnished the room. The settees, the easy-chairs, the ottomans, were covered in quilted buttercup satin, divided at intervals by wide black satin bands embroidered with gaudy tulips. And then there were low seats, and occasional chairs, and every variety of stool, elegant and bizarre. The woodwork of these articles of furniture could not be perceived; the satin and the quilting covered all. The backs were curved with the soft fulness of bolsters. They were like so many discreet couches in whose down one could sleep and love amid the sensual symphony in pale-yellow.
Renée loved this little room, one of whose glass doors opened into the magnificent hothouse built onto the side of the house. In the daytime it was here that she spent her hours of idleness. The yellow hangings, so far from extinguishing her pale hair, gave it a strange golden radiancy; her head stood out pink and white amid a glamour of dawn like that of a fair Diana awakening in the morning light; and this was doubtless the reason why she loved this room that threw her beauty into relief.
At present she was there with her intimate friends. Her sister and aunt had just taken their leave. None but the harebrained remained in the sanctum. Half thrown back on a settee, Renée was listening to the confidences of her friend Adeline, who was whispering in her ear with kittenish airs and sudden bursts of laughter. Suzanne Haffner was in great demand; she was holding her own against a group of young men who pressed her closely, without losing her German listlessness, her provoking effrontery, cold and bare as her shoulders. In a corner Madame Sidonie in a low voice instilled her precepts into the mind of a young married woman with Madonna-like lashes. Further off stood Louise, talking to a tall, shy young man, who blushed; while the Baron Gouraud dozed in his easy chair in the full light, spreading out his flabby flesh, his wan, elephantine form in the midst of the ladies’ frail grace and silken daintiness. And a fairylike light fell in a golden shower all over the room, on the satin skirts with folds hard and gleaming as porcelain, on the shoulders whose milky whiteness was studded with diamonds. A fluted voice, a laugh like a pigeon’s cooing, rang with crystal clearness. It was very warm. Fans beat slowly to and fro like wings disseminating at each stroke into the languid air the musked perfume of the bodices.
When Maxime appeared in the doorway, Renée, who was listening absently to the marquise’s stories, rose hastily as if to attend to her duties as hostess. She went into the large drawingroom, where the young man followed her. She took a few steps, smiling, shaking hands with people, and then, drawing Maxime aside:
“Well!” she whispered, ironically, “the burden seems a pleasant one; you no longer find it so stupid to do your own wooing.”
“I don’t understand,” replied Maxime, who had come to plead for M. de Mussy.
“Yet it seems to me that I did well not to deliver you from Louise. You are getting on rapidly, you two.”
And she added, with a sort of vexation:
“It was indecent to go on like that at dinner.”
Maxime began to laugh.
“Ah, yes, we told one another stories. I did not know the little minx. She is quite amusing. She is like a boy.”
And as Renée continued her grimace of prudish annoyance, the young man, who had never known her to shew such indignation, resumed with his urbane familiarity:
“Do you imagine, stepmamma, that I pinched her knees under the table? Hang it all, I know how to behave to my future wife!…. I have something more serious to say to you. Listen…. You are listening, are you not?”
He lowered his voice still more.
“Look here, M. de Mussy is very unhappy, he has just told me so. You know, it is not for me to reconcile you, if you have had a difference. But, you see, I knew him at school, and as he really seemed in despair, I promised to put in a word for him….”
He stopped. Renée was looking at him in an indescribable manner.
“You won’t answer?…. he continued. “No matter, I have delivered my message, and you can settle things as you please…. But, honestly, I think you are unkind. I felt sorry for the poor fellow. If I were you, I would at least send him a kind word.”
Then Renée, who had not ceased to keep her eyes, filled with a glittering light, fixed upon Maxime, said:
“Go and tell M. de Mussy that he’s a nuisance.”
And she resumed her slow walk amidst the groups of guests, smiling, bowing, shaking hands with people. Maxime stood where he was, lost in surprise; then he laughed silently to himself.
In no way eager to deliver his message to M. de Mussy, he strolled round the large drawingroom. The reception was dragging itself to its end, marvellous and commonplace, like all receptions. It was close upon midnight; the guests were dropping off one by one. Not caring to go to sleep upon an unpleasant impression, he decided to look for Louise. He was passing before the hall-door, when he saw standing in the vestibule the pretty Madame Michelin, whom her husband was wrapping up daintily in a blue-and-pink opera-cloak.
“He was charming, quite charming,” she was saying. “We talked of you all through dinner. He will speak to the minister; only it is not in his province ….”
And as a footman, close by them, was helping the Baron Gouraud on with a great fur coat:
“That’s the old boy who could carry the thing through!” she added in her husband’s ear, while he was tying the ribbon of her hood under her chin. “He can do anything he likes with the minister. Tomorrow, at the Mareuil’s, I must see what ….”
M. Michelin smiled. He carried his wife off gingerly, as though he had something valuable and fragile under his arm. Maxime, after glancing round to assure himself that Louise was not in the hall, went straight to the small drawingroom. And he found her still there, almost alone, waiting for her father who had spent the evening in the smoking-room with the politicians. Most of the ladies, the marquise, Madame Haffner, had left. Only Madame Sidonie remained behind, explaining to some wives of officials how fond she was of animals.
“Ah! here is my little husband,” cried Louise. “Sit down here and tell me where my father has fallen asleep. He must have fancied that he was already in the Chamber.”
Maxime replied in a similar strain, and the two young people began laughing again as loudly as at dinner. Sitting on a very low stool at her feet, he ended by taking her hands, by playing with her as with a schoolfellow. And, in fact, in her frock of white foulard with red spots, with her high-cut bodice, her flat breast, and her ugly, cunning little street-boy’s head, she might have passed for a boy dressed up as a girl. Yet at