with tables at which the peasants ate and drank for a week. He promised, moreover, a railway line, a new bridge, and three churches, and on the eve of the poll he forwarded to the influential electors portraits of the Emperor and Empress, two large engravings covered with glass and set in gilt frames. This gift was an enormous success, and the majority was overwhelming. But when the Chamber, in presence of the outburst of laughter of the whole of France, found itself compelled to send M. de Mareuil back to his electors, the minister flew into a terrible passion with the préfet and the unfortunate candidate, who had really shown themselves to be too “hot.” He even spoke of selecting another name as the official candidate. M. de Mareuil was thunderstruck; he had spent three hundred thousand francs on the department, he owned large estates in it in which he was bored, and he would lose money if he sold them. And so he came to beseech his dear colleague to pacify his brother, and to promise him in his name an absolutely decorous election. It was on this occasion that Saccard again spoke of the children’s marriage, and that the two parents definitely decided upon it.
When Maxime was sounded on this subject, he felt embarrassed. Louise amused him, the dowry tempted him still more. He said yes, he agreed to all the dates that Saccard proposed, so as to avoid the tedium of an argument. But to himself he confessed that, unfortunately, things would not be arranged so prettily nor so easily. Renée would never consent; she would cry, she would make scenes; she was capable of creating some great scandal that would astound Paris. It was very unpleasant. She frightened him now. She watched him with perturbing eyes, she possessed him so despotically that he thought he could feel claws digging into his shoulder when she laid her white hand upon it. Her turbulence turned to roughness, and there was a cracked sound beneath her laughter. He really feared that she would one night go mad in his arms. In her remorse, the fear of being surprised, the cruel joys of adultery, did not manifest themselves as in other women in tears and dejection, but in more pronounced eccentricity, in a still more irresistible longing for racket. And amid her growing distraction, one began to hear a rattling, the breaking-up of this adorable and bewildering machine, which was going to pieces.
Maxime patiently awaited an occasion which would rid him of this irksome mistress. He repeated once more that they had been foolish. Though their intimacy had at first lent an additional voluptuousness to their amorous relationship, it now prevented him from breaking off, as he certainly would have done with any other woman. He would have stayed away; that was his method of ending his amours, so as to avoid all effort or dispute. But he felt himself unequal to an explosion, and he still even willingly forgot himself in Renée’s embraces: she was motherly, she paid for him, she was ready to help him out of a difficulty whenever a creditor lost patience. Then the thought of Louise returned to him, the thought of the dowry of a million, and made him reflect, even amid Renée’s kisses, that “this was all very fine, but it was not serious and must come to an end some time or other.”
One night Maxime was so rapidly cleaned out at the house of a lady where cards were often played till daylight, that he experienced one of those fits of dumb anger common to the gambler whose pockets have been emptied. He would have given anything in the world to be able to fling a few more louis on the table. He took up his hat, and, with the mechanical step of a man impelled by a fixed idea, went to the Parc Monceau, opened the little gate, and found himself in the conservatory. It was past midnight. Renée had told him not to come that night. When she now closed her door to him, she no longer even sought to invent an explanation, and he thought only of making the most of his holiday. He did not clearly remember Renée’s injunction until he had reached the glass door of the small drawingroom, which was closed. As a rule, when he was expected, Renée undid the fastening of this door beforehand.
“Bah!” he thought, seeing a light in the dressing-room window, “I will whistle and she will come down. I sha’n’t disturb her, and if she has a few louis I’ll go away at once.”
And he whistled softly. He often, for that matter, used this signal to announce his arrival. But this evening he whistled several times in vain. He grew obstinate, whistled more loudly, not wishing to abandon his idea of an immediate loan. At last he saw the glass door opened with infinite precaution, though he had heard no sound of footsteps. Renée appeared in the twilight of the hothouse, her hair undone, almost without clothes, as though she were just going to bed. Her feet were bare. She pushed him towards one of the arbours, descending the steps and treading on the gravel of the pathways without seeming to feel the cold or the roughness of the ground.
“How stupid of you to whistle so loudly,” she murmured with restrained anger….”I told you not to come. What do you want?”
“Oh, let’s go up,” said Maxime, surprised at this reception. “I will tell you upstairs. You will catch cold.”
But as he made a step forward she held him back, and he then noticed that she was horribly pale. She was bowed with a silent terror. Her petticoats, the lace of her underclothing, hung down like tragic shreds upon her trembling skin.
He examined her with growing astonishment.
“What is the matter? Are you ill?”
And he instinctively raised his eyes and glanced through the glass panes of the conservatory at the dressing-room window where he had seen a light.
“But there’s a man in your room!” he said suddenly.
“No, no, it’s not true,” she stammered, beseeching, distraught.
“Nonsense, my dear, I can see his shadow.”
Then for a minute they remained there, face to face, not knowing what to say to one another. Renée’s teeth chattered with terror, and it seemed to her as if buckets of ice-cold water were being emptied over her feet. Maxime felt more annoyance than he would have believed; but he still remained sufficiently self-possessed to reflect, and to say to himself that the opportunity was a good one for breaking off the connection.
“You won’t make me believe that Céleste wears a top-coat,” he continued. “If the panes of the conservatory were not so thick, I might perhaps recognize the gentleman.”
She pushed him deeper into the gloom of the foliage, and seized with a growing terror, said, with clasped hands:
“I beg of you, Maxime…”
But all the young man’s mischievousness was aroused, a fierce sense of mischief that sought for vengeance. He was too puny to find relief in anger. Spite compressed his lips; and instead of striking her, as he had at first felt inclined to do, he rejoined in a strident voice:
“You should have told me, I should not have come to disturb you…. That happens every day, that people cease to care for one another. I was beginning to have enough of it myself…. Come, don’t grow impatient. I’ll let you go up again; but not till you have told me the gentleman’s name….”
“Never, never!” murmured Renée, forcing back her tears.
“It’s not to challenge him, I only want to know…. His name, tell me his name quick, and I’ll go.”
He was holding her by the wrists, and he looked at her with his bad laugh. And she struggled, distraught, refusing to open her lips, lest the name he asked for should escape her.
“We shall make a noise soon, then you’ll be much better off. What are you afraid of? we’re good friends, are we not?… I want to know who replaces me, that’s fair enough…. Wait, let me assist you. It’s M. de Mussy, whose grief has touched you?”
She made no reply. She bowed her head beneath this interrogatory.
“Not M. de Mussy?… The Duc
