must have their own annoyances too. There is nothing amusing in life. It is killing work…. As I said, one ought to have something different; you understand, I can’t guess what; but something else, something that would happen to nobody but one’s self, that would not be met with every day, that would give a rare, unknown enjoyment….
She spoke more slowly. She uttered these last words as though seeking something, giving way to absent reverie. The calash went up the avenue that leads to the entrance of the Bois. The darkness increased; the copses ran along on either side like gray walls; the yellow iron chairs upon which, on fine evenings, the middle-class loves to attitudinize in its Sunday best, filed away along the footways, all unoccupied, with the gloomy melancholy air common to garden furniture overtaken by the winter; and the rumbling, the dull rhythmical noise of the returning carriages passed down the deserted avenues like a sad refrain.
Maxime doubtless appreciated the bad form of thinking life amusing. Though young enough to give himself over to an outburst of contented admiration, his egoism was too great, his indifference too cynical, he already experienced too much real weariness, not to proclaim himself disgusted, sick, and played-out. And, as a rule, he took a certain pride in making the confession.
He threw himself back like Renée, and assumed a plaintive voice.
“Yes, you are right,” he said; “it is killing work. As for that, I amuse myself no more than you do; I, too, have often dreamt of something different…. There is nothing so stupid as travelling. Making money: I prefer to run through it, though even that is not always so amusing as one at first imagines. Loving and being loved: we soon get sick of that, don’t we?… Yes, we get sick of it!”
Renée made no reply, and he went on, desiring to astound her with a piece of gross blasphemy:
I should like to have a nun in love with me. Eh? that might be amusing…. Have you never dreamt of loving a man of whom you would not be able even to think without committing a crime?”
But her gloom continued, and Maxime, seeing that she remained silent, concluded that she was not listening. She seemed to be sleeping with her eyes open, the nape of her neck resting against the padded edge of the calash. She lay listlessly thinking, a prey to the dreams that kept her depressed, and at times a slight nervous movement passed over her lips. She was softly overcome by the shadow of the twilight; all that this shadow contained of sadness, of discreet pleasures, of hopes unacknowledged, penetrated her, covered her with an air of morbid languor. Doubtless, while staring at the round back of the footman on his box, she was thinking of those delights of yesterday, of those entertainments that had so palled upon her, that she was weary of; she contemplated her past life, the instantaneous satisfaction of her appetites, the fulsomeness of luxury, the appalling monotony of the same loves and the same betrayals. Then, with a ray of hope, there came to her, with shivers of longing, the idea of that “something different” which her mind could not strain itself to fix upon. There, her dream wandered. Constantly the word that she strove to find escaped into the falling night, became lost in the continuous rolling of the carriages. The soft vibration of the calash was an impediment the more that prevented her from formulating her desire. And an immense temptation rose from the empty space, from the copses asleep in the shadow on either side of the avenue, from the noise of wheels and from the gentle oscillation that filled her with a delicious torpor. A thousand tremulous emotions passed over her flesh: dreams unrealized, nameless delights, confused longings, all the monstrous voluptuousness that a drive home from the Bois under a paling sky can infuse into a woman’s worn heart. She kept both her hands buried in the bearskin, she was quite warm in her white cloth coat with the mauve velvet facings. She put out her foot, as she stretched herself in her feeling of well-being, and with her ankle lightly touched Maxime’s warm leg; he took no notice of this contact. A jolt aroused her from her lethargy. She raised her head and with her gray eyes looked strangely at the young man, who sat lounging in an attitude of sheer elegance.
At this moment the calash left the Bois. The Avenue de l’Impératrice stretched out straight into the darkness, with the two green lines of its fences of painted wood, which met at the horizon. In the side-path reserved for riders, a white horse in the distance cut out a bright patch in the gray horizon. Here and there, on the other side, along the roadway, were belated pedestrians, groups of black spots, making slowly for Paris. And right up above, at the end of the rumbling, confused procession of carriages, the Arc de Triomphe, seen from one side, displayed its whiteness against a vast expanse of sooty sky.
While the calash ascended at an increased pace, Maxime, charmed with the English appearance of the scene, looked out at the irregular architecture of the private houses on both sides of the avenue, with their lawns running down to the sidewalks. Renée, still dreaming, amused herself by watching the gaslights of the Place de l’Étoile being lit, one by one, on the edge of the horizon, and as each of these bright jets splashed the dying day with its little yellow flame, she seemed to hear a mysterious appeal; it seemed to her that Paris flaring in its winter’s night was being lighted up for her, and making ready for her the unknown gratification that her glutted senses yearned for.
The calash turned down the Avenue de la Reine-Hortense, and pulled up at the end of the Rue Monceau, a few steps from the Boulevard Malesherbes, in front of a large private house standing between a courtyard and a garden. The two gates, heavily ornamented with gilt enrichments, which opened into the courtyard were flanked by a pair of lamps, shaped like urns, and similarly covered with gilding, in which flared broad gasjets. Between the two gates, the concierge lived in a pretty lodge vaguely suggestive of a little Greek temple.
Maxime sprang lightly to the ground as the carriage was about to enter the courtyard.
“You know,” said Renée, detaining him by the hand, “we dine at half-past seven. You have more than an hour to dress in. Don’t keep us waiting.”
And she added, with a smile:
“The Mareuils are coming…. Your father wishes you to pay Louise every attention.” Maxime shrugged his shoulders.
“What a bore!” he murmured, peevishly. “I don’t mind marrying, but wooing is too silly…. Ah! how nice it would be of you, Renée, if you would rescue me from Louise this evening.”
He put on his comedy look, the accent and grimace which he borrowed from Lassouche whenever he was about to launch one of his constant conceits:
“Will you, stepmother dear?”
Renée shook hands with him in masculine fashion. And quickly, with nervous, jesting boldness:
“If I had not married your father, I believe you would have made love to me.”
The young man appeared to think the idea very funny, for he was still laughing when he turned the corner of the Boulevard Malesherbes.
The calash entered and drew up before the steps.
These steps, which were broad and shallow, were sheltered by a great glass awning, with a scalloped bordering of golden fringe and tassels. The two stories of the house rose up above the servants’ offices, whose square windows, glazed with frosted glass, appeared just above the level of the ground. At the top of the steps the hall-door projected, flanked by slender columns recessed into the wall, thus forming a slight break, marked at each story by a bay-window, and ascending to the roof, where it finished in a pediment. The stories had five windows on each side, placed at regular intervals along the façade, and simply framed in stone. The roof was cut off square above the attic windows, with broad and almost perpendicular sides.
But on the garden side the façade was far more sumptuous. A regal flight of steps led to a narrow terrace which skirted the whole length of the ground-floor; the balustrade of this terrace,
