of pain, distant laughter, all that was audible in their own embraces, and that was wafted back by the echo. At times they thought themselves shaken by an earthquake, as though the very ground had burst forth into voluptuous sobs in a fit of satisfied desire.
If they had closed their eyes, if the stifling heat and the pale light had not imparted to them a vitiation of every sense, the aromas would have been sufficient to throw them into an extraordinary state of nervous irritation. The tank saturated them with a deep, pungent odour, through which passed the thousand perfumes of the flowers and plants. At times the vanilla-plant sang with dove-like cooings; then came the rough notes of the stanhopeas, whose tigered throats have the strong and putrid breath of the convalescent sick. The orchids, in their baskets suspended by wire chains, emitted their exhalations like living censers. But the dominant scent, the scent in which all these vague breaths were intermingled, was a human scent, a scent of love which Maxime recognized when he kissed Renée in the neck, when he plunged his head into her flowing hair. And they lay intoxicated with this scent of an amorous woman which trailed through the hothouse, as through an alcove in which the earth was reproducing its kind.
As a rule the lovers lay down under the Madagascar tanghin-tree, under that poisoned shrub into one of whose leaves Renée had once bitten. Around them the white statues laughed as they gazed at the mighty copulation of foliage. The moon, as it turned, displaced the groups and gave life to the drama with its changing light. They were a thousand leagues from Paris, far from the easy life of the Bois and official receptions, in a corner of an Indian forest, of some monstrous temple of which the black marble sphinx became the deity. They felt themselves rolling towards crime, towards accursed love, towards the caresses of wild beasts. All the germination that surrounded them, the swarming of the tank, the naked immodesty of the foliage, threw them into the innermost, dantesque inferno of passion. It was then, in the depths of this glass cage, all boiling in the summer heat, lost in the keen December cold, that they relished the flavour of incest, as though it were the criminal fruit of an overheated soil, feeling the while a secret dread of their terrifying couch.
And in the center of the black bearskin, Renée’s body seemed whiter, as she crouched like a great cat, her spine stretched out, her wrists tense like supple, nervous hams. She was all swollen with voluptuousness, and the clear outline of her shoulders and loins stood out with feline distinctness against the splash of ink with which the rug blackened the yellow sand of the pathway. She gloated over Maxime, this prey extended beneath her, abandoning itself, which she possessed entirely. And from time to time she leant forward abruptly and kissed him with her chafed mouth. Her mouth opened then with the hungry, bleeding brilliancy of the Chinese hibiscus, whose expanse covered the wall of the house. She became a sheer burning daughter of the hothouse. Her kisses bloomed and faded like the red flowers of the great mallow, which last scarcely a few hours and are unceasingly renewed, like the bruised, insatiable lips of a colossal Messalina.
CHAPTER V
Saccard was haunted by the thought of the kiss he had pressed upon his wife’s neck. He had long ceased to avail himself of his marital rights; the rupture had come naturally, neither one nor the other caring about a connection which inconvenienced them. Saccard would never think of returning to Renée’s chamber, if some good piece of business were not the ultimate aim of his conjugal devotion.
The lucky speculation at Charonne progressed favourably, although he was still anxious as to its termination. Larsonneau, with his dazzling shirtfront, had a way of smiling which he did not like. He was no more than an intermediary, a man of straw, whose assistance he paid for by allowing him a commission of ten per cent, on the ultimate profits. But although the expropriation-agent had not paid a sou into the enterprise, and Saccard had not only found the money for the music-hall but taken every precaution, a deed of retrocession, undated letters, antedated receipts, the latter none the less felt an inward fear, a presentiment of some treachery. He suspected his accomplice of an intention to blackmail him by means of the false inventory which he had preciously preserved and which alone he had to thank for his share in the business.
So the two fellows shook one another vigorously by the hand. Larsonneau addressed Saccard as “dear master.” At bottom he had a real admiration for this acrobat, and watched his performances on the tight-rope of speculation with the eye of a connoisseur. The idea of taking him in tickled him as a rare and pungent voluptuousness. He nursed a plan, as yet vague, not knowing how to make use of the weapon he possessed, lest he should do himself a damage with it. He felt beside that he was at his former colleague’s mercy. The ground and the buildings, which the cunningly-prepared inventories already estimated at closely two millions although not worth a quarter of that amount, must end by being swallowed up in a colossal smash, if the fairy of expropriation failed to touch them with her golden wand. According to the original plans which they had been able to consult, the new boulevard, opened to connect the artillery-park of Vincennes with the Prince-Eugène Barracks, and to bring the guns into the heart of Paris, while avoiding the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, cut off a part of the ground; but there still remained the danger that this would be only just grazed, and that the ingenious speculation might fall through by reason of its very shamelessness. In that case Larsonneau would be left stranded with a delicate adventure on his hands. Still, despite the inferior part he was compelled to play, this danger did not prevent him from feeling disgusted when he thought of the paltry ten per cent, which he was to pocket in this colossal robbery of millions. And at these moments he could not resist a furious longing to stretch out his hand and carve out a slice for himself.
Saccard had not even permitted him to lend money to his wife; he took pleasure himself in this crass piece of theatrical trickery, which delighted his weakness for complicated transactions.
“No, no, my dear fellow,” he said, with his Provençal accent, which he exaggerated whenever he wished to add zest to a joke, “don’t let us mix up our accounts…. You are the only man in Paris whom I have sworn never to owe any money to.”
Larsonneau contented himself with telling him that his wife was a sink. He advised him not to give her another sou, so that she might be compelled to make over the property to them at once. He would have preferred to have had business with Saccard alone. He tried him occasionally, and carried things so far as to say to him, with his languid and indifferent man-about-town manner:
“All the same, I shall have to put my papers in order a bit…. Your wife frightens me, old man. I don’t want to have certain documents at my office attached.”
Saccard was not the man to submit patiently to hints of this kind, especially as he was well acquainted with the cold and fastidious orderliness that prevailed in this individual’s office. All his active, cunning little being revolted against the terror with which this great coxcomb of a yellow-gloved usurer sought to inspire him. The worst was that he felt seized with shudders when he thought of the possibility of a scandal; and he saw himself remorselessly exiled by his brother and living in Belgium by some shabby little trade. One day he grew angry and went so far as to address Larsonneau in the second person singular.
“Look here, my boy,” he said, “you’re a decent chap, but it would be just as well if you gave up the document you know of. You’ll see that bit of paper will end by making us quarrel.”
The other feigned astonishment, pressed his “dear master’s” hands, and assured him of his devotion. Saccard regretted his momentary impatience. It was at this period that he began to think seriously of resuming relations with his wife; he might have need of her against his accomplice, and he, moreover, said to himself that business matters are wonderfully easy to talk over with one’s head on the pillow. That kiss on the neck tended little by little to reveal an entirely new policy.
However, he was
