first to try the ice on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne. Renée ordered a complete Polish suit of Worms, in velvet and fur; she made Maxime wear doeskin boots and a foxskin cap. They reached the Bois in an intense cold which stung their lips and noses as though the wind had blown fine sand into their faces. It amused them to feel cold. The Bois was quite gray, with snow threading the branches with narrow strips of lace. And under the pale sky, above the congealed and dimmed lake, only the fir-trees on the islands still displayed, on the edge of the horizon, their theatrical drapery, on which also the snow had stitched broad bands of lace. They darted along together through the icy air, with the rapid flight of swallows skimming the ground. With one hand carried behind their backs and one upon each other’s shoulders, they went off erect, smiling, side by side, turning on themselves, in the wide space marked out by thick ropes. The sightseers stared at them from the roadway. From time to time they came and warmed themselves at the braziers lighted at the edge of the lake. They shot off again. They enlarged the circle of their flight, their eyes watering with pleasure and with cold.
Then, when springtime came, Renée recalled her old sentimental ideas. She made Maxime stroll with her at night in the Parc Monceau in the moonlight. They went into the grotto, and sat down on the grass in front of the colonnade. But when she evinced a desire for a row on the little lake, they found that the boat they saw from the house, moored at the edge of a pathway, was without oars. These were evidently removed at night. This was a disappointment. Moreover, the great shadows of the gardens disquieted the lovers. They would have liked a Venetian fête to be given there, with red lanterns and a band. They preferred it in the daytime, in the afternoon, and often they stationed themselves at one of the windows of the house to watch the carriages following the graceful curve of the main avenue. They enjoyed looking at this charming corner of new Paris, this clean, smiling bit of nature, these lawns like skirts of velvet, figured with flowerbeds and choice shrubs, and bordered with magnificent white roses. Carriages passed by one another, as numerous as on the boulevards; the ladies on foot trailed their skirts languorously, as though they had not lifted a foot from the carpets of their drawingrooms. And they criticized the dresses across the foliage, pointed to the horses, taking a genuine pleasure in the soft colours of this great garden. A scrap of gilded railing flashed between two trees, a flock of ducks swam across the lake, the little Renaissance bridge stood out white and new amid the foliage, while on either side of the big avenue, mothers, seated on yellow chairs, chatted and forgot the little boys and girls who looked at each other prettily, with the graces of precocious children.
The lovers doted on new Paris. They often drove through the town, going out of their way so as to pass along certain boulevards which they loved with a personal affection. The tall houses, with their great carved doors, their heavy balconies, with, in great gold letters, names, signs, names of firms, delighted them. As the brougham rolled on, they followed with a friendly glance the gray bands of wide, interminable pavement, with its seats, its variegated columns, its exiguous trees. This bright gap, which ran to the limit of the horizon, growing narrower, and opening upon a pale-blue square of space, this uninterrupted twofold row of great shops, where the shopmen smiled upon their fair customers, these currents of stamping, swarming crowds filled them little by little with an absolute and entire contentment, with a feeling of perfection in the life of the streets. They loved even the jets of the watering-hose, which passed like white vapour before their horses, spreading out and falling like fine rain under the wheels of the brougham, darkening the ground, and raising a light cloud of dust. They rolled on, and it seemed to them that the carriage was rolling over carpets along that straight, endless roadway, which had been made solely to save them from the dark back-streets. Every boulevard became a lobby of their house. The gay sunshine smiled upon the new façades, lit up the windowpanes, fell upon the awnings of the shops and cafés, and heated the asphalt beneath the busy footsteps of the crowd. And when they returned home, a little confused by the dazzling hubbub of these long bazaars, they found relief in the contemplation of the Parc Monceau, which was the natural border of this new Paris which displayed its luxury in the first warmth of spring.
When fashion absolutely forced them to leave Paris, they went to the seaside, but regretfully, dreaming of the boulevard pavements while on the shores of the ocean. Their love itself faded there. It was a flower of the hothouse that needed the great gray-and-pink bed, the naked flesh of the dressing-room, the gilded dawn of the small drawingroom. Alone in the evenings, in front of the sea, they no longer found anything to say to each other. Renée tried to sing her collection of songs from the Théâtre des Variétés at an old piano that was at its last gasp in a corner of her room at the hotel; but the instrument, damp with the breezes from the open, had the melancholy voice of the great waters, La Belle Hélène sounded fantastic and lugubrious, Renée consoled herself by astonishing the people on the beach with her wonderful costumes. All her crowd of ladies was there, yawning, waiting for winter, casting about in despair for a bathing-dress that would not make them look too ugly. Renée could never prevail on Maxime to bathe. He was horribly frightened of the water, turned quite pale when the tide rose up to his boots, and for nothing in the world would have approached the edge of a cliff; he kept away from the sand-holes, and made long circuits to avoid the least bit of steep beach.
Saccard came down once or twice to see “the children.” He was overwhelmed with worry, he said. It was not until October, when they were all three back in Paris, that he thought seriously of effecting a reconciliation with his wife. The Charonne affair was ripening. His plan was a simple and a brutal one. He proposed to capture Renée by the same trick that he would have practised upon a strumpet. She was living amid an increasing need of money, and was too proud to apply to her husband save as a last resource. The latter resolved to take advantage of her first request for money to play the gallant, and to resume the long-severed relations in the delight brought about by the payment of some big debt.
Terrible embarrassments awaited Renée and Maxime in Paris. Several of the promissory notes made out to Larsonneau were overdue; but as Saccard naturally left them slumbering at the lawyer’s, they did not cause the young wife much uneasiness. She was far more alarmed by her debt to Worms, which now amounted to nearly two hundred thousand francs. The tailor insisted on a payment on account, and threatened to stop her credit. She shuddered keenly when she thought of the scandal of a lawsuit, and above all of a quarrel with the illustrious dressmaker. Moreover, she was in need of pocket-money. They would be bored to death, Maxime and she, without a few louis a day to spend. The dear child was quite without resources since he had begun to rummage his father’s drawers in vain. His fidelity, his exemplary behaviour during the last seven or eight months, were largely due to the absolute emptiness of his purse. He rarely had twenty francs with which to take a poll out to supper. And so he philosophically returned to the house. Renée, on each of their escapades, handed him her purse so that he might pay at the restaurants, at the balls, and at the boulevard theatres. She continued to treat him as a mother; and she even paid, with the tips of her gloved fingers, at the pastrycook’s, where they got out almost every afternoon to eat little oyster patties. In the morning he often found in his waistcoat a few louis which he did not know he had, and which she had put there, like a mother filling a schoolboy’s pockets. And to think that this charming life of odd snacks, of contented caprices and of facile pleasures was to cease! But a still greater dread came to terrify them. Sylvia’s jeweller, to whom Maxime owed ten thousand francs, grew angry and talked of Clichy. The costs had so accumulated on the acceptances which he held in hand and had long protested, that the debt had increased by some three or four thousand francs. Saccard plainly declared that he could do nothing. To have his son sent to Clichy would look well, and when he took him out he would make a great fuss about his paternal liberality. Renée was in despair; she beheld her dear child in prison, in a veritable dungeon, lying on damp straw. One night she seriously proposed to him not to leave her again, to live there unknown to everyone, and sheltered from the bailiff’s men. Then she swore she would find the money. She never spoke of the origin of the debt, of that Sylvia who confided her amours to the mirrors of private rooms. She wanted about fifty thousand francs, fifteen thousand for Maxime, thirty thousand for Worms, and five thousand for pocket-money. Then they would have a long fortnight’s happiness before them. She embarked on her campaign.
Her first idea was to ask her husband for
