she asked, astonished, unable to understand.
“Why, the monster…”
And he tittered. The jest froze Renée. Everything was becoming unhinged in her head. Ristori was no longer anything but a great buffoon who pulled up her peplon and stuck out her tongue at the audience like Blanche Muller in the third act of La Belle Hélène, Théramène danced a can-can, and Hippolyte ate bread and jam, and stuffed his fingers up his nose.
When a more piercing remorse than usual made Renée shudder, she felt an insolent reaction. What was her crime after all, and why should she blush? Did she not tread on greater infamies every day? Did she not rub shoulders at the ministries, at the Tuileries, everywhere, with wretches like herself, who wore millions on their bodies and were adored on both knees? And she thought of the shameful intimacy of Adeline d’Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, at which one smiled now and again at the Empress’s Mondays. And she recalled the traffic driven by Madame de Lauwerens, whose praises were sung by husbands for her propriety, her orderly conduct, her promptness in paying her bills. She called up the names of Madame Daste, Madame Teissière, the Baronne de Meinhold, those creatures who let their lovers pay for their luxuries, and who were quoted in fashionable society as shares are quoted on the Bourse. Madame de Guende was so stupid and so beautifully made, that she had three superior officers for her lovers at the same time, and was unable to tell one from the other, because of their uniform; wherefore that demon of a Louise said that she first made them strip to their shirts so as to know which of the three she was talking to. The Comtesse Vanska for her part could remember courtyards in which she had sung, pavements on which she had been seen, dressed in calico, prowling along like a she-wolf. Each of these women had her shame, her open, triumphant sore. And lastly, overtopping them all, uprose the Duchesse de Sternich, old, ugly, wornout, with the halo of a night passed in the Imperial bed; she typified official vice, from which she derived as it were a majesty of debauch and a sovereignty over this band of illustrious strumpets.
Then the incestuous woman grew accustomed to her sin as to a gala-dress whose stiffness had at first inconvenienced her. She followed the fashions of the period, she dressed and undressed as others did. She ended by believing herself to live in a world above common morality, in which the senses became refined and developed, and in which one was allowed to strip one’s self naked for the benefit of all Olympus. Sin became a luxury, a flower set in the hair, a diamond fastened on the brow. And she again saw, as a justification and a redemption, the Emperor passing on the general’s arm through the two rows of bowing shoulders.
One man alone, Baptiste, her husband’s valet, continued to disquiet her. Since Saccard had been showing himself gallant, this tall, pale, dignified valet seemed to walk around her with the solemnity of mute disapprobation. He never looked at her, his cold glances passed higher, above her chignon, with the modesty of a church-beadle refusing to defile his eyes by allowing them to rest on the hair of a sinner. She imagined that he knew everything, she would have purchased his silence had she dared. Then she became filled with uneasiness, she felt a sort of confused respect whenever she met Baptiste, and she said to herself that all the respectability of her household had withdrawn and concealed itself under this lackey’s dress-coat.
One day she asked Céleste:
“Does Baptiste make jokes in the kitchen? Have you ever heard any stories about him, has he a mistress?”
“What a question!” was all the maid replied.
“Come, has he made love to you?”
“Eh! but he never looks at women. We hardly ever see him…. He is always either with monsieur or in the stables…. He says he’s very fond of horses.”
Renée was irritated at this respectability. She insisted, she would have liked to be able to despise her servants. Although she had taken a liking to Céleste, she would have rejoiced to hear of her having lovers.
“But you yourself, Céleste, don’t you think Baptiste is a good-looking fellow?”
“I, madame!” cried the maid, with the stupefied air of a person who has just been told of something prodigious, “oh! I have very different ideas in my head. I don’t want a man. I have my own plan, you will see later. I’m not a blockhead, believe me.”
Renée could not draw anything more definite from her. Her cares, besides, increased. Her rackety life, her mad escapades, met with numerous obstacles which it became necessary for her to surmount, however much she might sometimes be bruised by them. It was thus that Louise de Mareuil one day rose up between her and Maxime. She was not jealous of “the hunchback,” as she scornfully called her; she knew that she was condemned by the doctors, and could never believe that Maxime would marry an ugly creature like that, even at the price of a dowry of a million. In her fall she had retained a middle-class simplicity with regard to people she loved; though she despised herself, she readily believed them to possess superior and very estimable natures. But whilst rejecting the possibility of a marriage which would have seemed to her a sinister piece of debauchery and a theft, she felt pained at the familiarity and intimacy of the young people. When she spoke of Louise to Maxime, he laughed with sheer satisfaction, he repeated the child’s sayings to her, he told her:
“She calls me her little man, you know, the chit.”
And he took things so easily that she did not venture to explain to him that this chit was seventeen, and that their way of pulling each other about, their eagerness, when they met in a drawingroom, to seek a shady corner from which to make fun of everybody, grieved her and spoilt her most enjoyable evenings.
An incident occurred which imparted a singular character to the situation. Renée often felt a need of bravado, she had whims of unreasoning audacity. She dragged Maxime behind a curtain, behind a door, and kissed him at the risk of being seen. One Thursday evening, when the buttercup drawingroom was full of people, she was seized with the brilliant idea of calling the young man to her, as he sat talking with Louise; she came towards him, from the heart of the conservatory where she was standing, and suddenly kissed him on the mouth, between two clumps of shrubbery, thinking herself sufficiently concealed. But Louise had followed Maxime. When the lovers raised their heads, they saw her, a few steps away, looking at them with a strange smile, with no blush nor sign of astonishment, but with the quiet appreciative air of a companion in vice, knowing enough to understand and appreciate a kiss of that sort.
Maxime felt really alarmed that day, and it was Renée who showed herself indifferent and almost lighthearted. That put an end to it. It was impossible now for the hunchback to take her lover from her. She thought to herself:
“I should have done it on purpose. She knows now that ‘her little man’ belongs to me.”
Maxime felt reassured when he again found Louise as frolicsome and entertaining as before. He pronounced her to be “very smart, a very good sort.” And that was all.
Renée had reason to be disturbed. Saccard had for some time been thinking of his son’s marriage with Mademoiselle de Mareuil. There was a dowry of a million there which he did not mean to let out of his reach, intending later on to lay hands on the money himself. Louise, in the beginning of the winter, had stayed in bed for nearly three weeks, and Saccard was so afraid of seeing her die before the contemplated wedding that he resolved to have the children married forthwith. He did indeed think them a trifle young, but then the doctors feared the month of March for the consumptive girl. On his side M. de Mareuil was in a delicate position. At the last poll he had at length succeeded in being returned as deputy. Only the Corps Législatif had just quashed his election, which was the great scandal of the revisions. This election was quite a mock-heroic poem, on which the newspapers lived for a month. M. Hupel de la Noue, the préfet of the department, had displayed such vigour that the other candidates had been
