Complete Works of Emile Zola (248 page)

There was much laughter. The men explained the allusion to the ladies. The Emperor had just made a speech in which he had referred to the presence of “certain dark spots” on the horizon. These dark spots, for no appreciable reason, had had a great success. The Parisian wits had appropriated the expression so much so that for the past week the dark spots had been applied to everything. M. de Saffré placed the gentlemen at one end of the room, making them turn their backs on the ladies, who were left at the other end. Then he ordered them to pull up their coats so as to hide the backs of their heads. This performance was gone through amid the maddest merriment. Hunchbacked, their shoulders screwed up, their coat tails falling no lower than their waists, the cavaliers looked really hideous.

“Don’t laugh, mesdames,” cried M. de Saffré with most humorous seriousness, “or I shall make you put your skirts over your heads.”

The gaiety redoubled. And he energetically availed himself of his sovereignty in respect of some of the gentlemen who refused to conceal the back of their necks.

“You are ‘dark spots,’“ he said, “hide your heads, show nothing but your backs, the ladies must see nothing but black…. Now walk about, mix yourselves, so that you may not be recognized.”

Gaiety was at its highest. The “dark spots” went to and fro, on their thin legs, with the swaying of headless crows. One gentleman’s shirt showed, with a bit of brace. Then the ladies begged for mercy, they were dying with laughter, and M. de Saffré graciously ordered them to go and fetch the “dark spots.” They flew off, like a covey of partridges, with a loud rustle of skirts. Then at the end of her run each seized hold of the cavalier nearest at hand. It was an indescribable hurly-burly. And one after the other the improvised couples disengaged themselves, waltzed round the room to the louder strains of the band.

Renée leant against the wall. She looked on, pale, with pursed lips. An old gentleman came gallantly to ask her why she did not dance. She had to smile, to answer something. She made her escape, she entered the supper-room. The room was empty. Amid the pillaged sideboards, the bottles and plates left lying about, Maxime and Louise sat quietly supping at one end of the table, side by side, on a napkin they had spread out between them. They looked quite at home, they laughed amid this disorder, amid the dirty plates, the greasy dishes, the still tepid remnants of the gluttony of the white-gloved supper-eaters. They had contented themselves with brushing away the crumbs around them. Baptiste stalked solemnly round the table, without a glance for the room, which looked as though it had been traversed by a pack of wolves; he waited for the servants to come and restore a semblance of order to the sideboards.

Maxime had succeeded in getting a very comfortable supper together. Louise adored nougat aux pistaches, a plateful of which had remained intact on the top of a sideboard. They had three partially-emptied bottles of champagne before them. “Perhaps papa has gone,” said the girl.

“So much the better!” replied Maxime. “I will see you home.”

And as she laughed:

“You know, they have made up their minds that I am to marry you. It’s no longer a joke, it’s serious…. What are we going to do when we get married?”

“We’ll do what the others do, of course!”

This joke escaped her rather quickly; she hastily added, as though to withdraw it:

“We will go to Italy. That will be good for my chest, I am very ill…. Ah, my poor Maxime, what a funny wife you’ll have! I’m no fatter than two sous’ worth of butter.”

She smiled, with a touch of melancholy, in her page’s dress. A dry cough sent a hectic flush to her cheeks.

“It’s the nougat,” she said. “I’m not allowed to eat it at home…. Pass me the plate, I will put the rest in my pocket.”

And she was emptying out the plate, when Renée entered. She went straight to Maxime, making an unconscionable effort to keep herself from cursing, from striking that hunchback whom she found there sitting at table with her lover.

“I want to speak to you,” she stammered, in a husky voice.

He wavered, alarmed, fearing to be alone with her.

“Alone, and at once,” repeated Renée.

“Why don’t you go, Maxime?” said Louise, with her unfathomable look. “You might at the same time see if you can discover what’s become of my father. I lose him at every party we go to.”

He rose, he endeavoured to stop Renée in the middle of the supper-room, asking her what she could have of so urgent a nature to communicate to him. But she rejoined between her teeth:

“Follow me, or I’ll speak out before everybody!”

He turned very pale, he followed her with the docility of a beaten animal. She thought Baptiste looked at her; but at this moment what did she care for the valet’s steady gaze? At the door the cotillon detained her a third time.

“Wait,” she muttered. “These idiots will never finish.”

And she took his hand, lest he should try to get away.

M. de Saffré was placing the Duc de Rozan with his back to the wall, in a corner of the room beside the door of the dining-room. He put a lady in front of him, then a gentleman back to back with the lady, then another lady facing the gentleman, and so on in a line, couple by couple, like a long snake. As the ladies lingered and talked:

“Come along, mesdames!” he cried. “Take your places for the ‘Columns.’“

They came, “the columns” were formed. The indecency of finding themselves thus caught, squeezed in between two men, leaning against the back of one, and feeling the chest of the other in front, made these ladies very gay. The tips of the breasts touched the facings of the dress-coats, the legs of the gentlemen disappeared in the ladies’ skirts, and when any sudden outburst of merriment made a head lean forward, the moustachios in front were obliged to draw back so as not to carry matters so far as kissing. At one moment a wag must have given a slight push, for the line closed up, the men plunged deeper into the skirts; there were little cries, laughs, endless laughs. The Baronne de Meinhold was heard to say: “But, monsieur, you are smothering me; don’t squeeze me so hard!” and this seemed so amusing, and occasioned so mad a fit of hilarity in the whole row that “the columns” tottered, staggered, clashed together, leant one against the other to avoid falling. M. de Saffré waited with raised hands, ready to clap. Then he clapped. At this signal, suddenly, all turned round. The couples who found themselves face to face clasped waists, and the row dispersed its chaplet of dancers into the room. None remained but the poor Duc de Rozan, who, on turning round, found himself stuck with his nose against the wall. He was ridiculed.

“Come,” said Renée to Maxime.

The band still played the waltz. This soft music, whose monotonous rhythm tended to become insipid, redoubled Renée’s exasperation. She gained the small drawing-room, holding Maxime by the hand; and pushing him up the staircase that led to the dressing-room:

“Go up,” she ordered.

She followed him. At this moment Madame Sidonie, who had been prowling after her sister-in-law the whole evening, astonished at her continual wanderings through the rooms, just reached the conservatory steps. She saw a man’s legs plunging into the darkness of the little staircase. A pale smile lit up her waxen face, and catching up her sorceress’s dress so as to go quicker, she hunted for her brother, upsetting a figure of the cotillon, questioning the servants she met on her way. She at last found Saccard with M. de Mareuil in a room adjacent to the dining-room, that had been fitted up as a temporary smoking-room. The two fathers were discussing the settlements, the contract. But when his sister came up and whispered a word in his ear, Saccard rose, apologized, disappeared.

Upstairs, the dressing-room was in complete disorder. On the chairs trailed Echo’s costume, the torn tights, odds and ends of crumpled lace, under-clothing thrown aside in a heap, all that a woman in the hurry of being waited for leaves behind her. The little ivory and silver utensils lay here, there, and everywhere; there were brushes and nail-files that had fallen on to the carpet; and the towels, still damp, the cakes of soap forgotten on the marble slab, the scent bottles left unstoppered lent a strong, pungent odour to the flesh-coloured tent. Renée, to remove the white from her arms and shoulders, had dipped herself in the pink marble bath, after the tableaux-vivants. Iridescent soap-stains floated on the surface of the water now grown cold.

Maxime stepped on a corset, almost stumbled, tried to laugh. But he shuddered before Renée’s stern face. She came up to him, pushed him, said in a low voice:

“So you are going to marry the hunchback?”

“Not a bit of it,” he murmured. “Who told you so?”

“Oh, don’t tell any lies, it’s no use….”

He had a moment of resistance. She alarmed him, he wanted to have done with her.

“Well then, yes, I am going to marry her. And what then?… Am I not my own master?”

She came up to him, with her head a little lowered, and with a wicked laugh, and seizing his wrists:

“The master! you the master!… You know better than that. It is I who am your master. I could break your arms if I were spiteful; you are no stronger than a girl.”

And as he struggled, she twisted his arms with all the nervous violence of her anger. He uttered a faint cry. Then she let go, resuming:

“See? we’d better not fight; I should only beat you.”

He remained pallid, with the shame of the pain he felt at his wrists. He watched her coming and going in the dressing-room. She pushed back the furniture, reflecting, fixing on the plan that had been revolving in her head since her husband had told her of the marriage.

“I shall lock you up here,” she said at last; “and as soon as it’s daylight we’ll start for Havre.”

He grew still paler with alarm and stupor.

“But this is madness!” he cried. “We can’t run away together. You are going off your head.”

“Very likely. In any case it is you and your father who have driven me so…. I want you, and I mean to have you. So much the worse for the fools!”

A red light gleamed from her eyes. She continued, approaching Maxime once more, scorching his face with her breath:

“What do you think would become of me if you married the hunchback? You would laugh at me between you, I should perhaps be obliged to take back that great noodle of a Mussy, who would leave my very feet indifferent…. When people have done what you and I have done, they stick to one another. Besides, it’s quite plain. I am bored when you’re not there, and as I’m going away, I shall take you with me…. You can tell Céleste what you want her to fetch from your place.”

The unfortunate Maxime held out his hands, beseeching her:

“Look here, Renée dear, don’t be silly. Be yourself…. Just think of the scandal.”

“What do I care for the scandal! If you refuse, I shall go down to the drawing-room and cry out that I have slept with you, and that you’re base enough now to want to marry the hunchback.”

He bent his head, listened to her, already yielding, accepting this will that thrust itself so rudely upon him.

“We will go to Havre,” she resumed in a lower voice, caressing her dream, “and from there we shall cross to England. Nobody shall ever interfere with us again. If that is not far enough away, we shall go to America. I who am always so cold shall be better there. I have often envied the Creoles….”

But in the measure that she enlarged upon her proposal, Maxime’s terror was renewed. To leave Paris, to go so far away with a woman who was undoubtedly mad, to leave behind him a tale whose scandalous side would exile him for ever! it was as though he were being stifled by a hideous nightmare. He sought desperately for a means of escape from this dressing-room, from this rose-coloured retreat where tolled the passing-bell of Charenton. He thought he had hit upon something.

“You see, I have no money,” he said, gently, so as not to exasperate her. “If you lock me in, I can’t procure any.”

“But I have,” she replied, triumphantly. “I have a hundred thousand francs. It all fits in capitally….”

She took from the looking-glass wardrobe the deed of transfer which her husband had left with her, in the vague hope that she might lose her senses. She laid it on the toilet-table, ordered Maxime to give her a pen and ink from the bedroom, and pushing back the soap-dishes, said, as she signed the deed:

“There, the folly’s done. If I am robbed, it is because I choose to be…. we will call at Larsonneau’s on the way to the station…. Now, my little Maxime, I am going to lock you in, and we will escape through the garden when I’ve turned all these people out of the house. We don’t even need to take any luggage.”

She resumed her gaiety. This mad freak delighted her. It was a piece of supreme eccentricity, a finish which, in her crisis of raging fever, seemed to her entirely original. It far surpassed her desire for the balloon voyage. She came and took Maxime in her arms, murmuring:

“My poor darling, did I hurt you just now? You see, you refused…. But you shall see how nice it will be. Would your hunchback ever love you as I love you? She’s not a woman, that little darkie….”

She laughed, she drew him to her, kissed him on the lips, when a sound made them both turn round. Saccard stood on the threshold.

A terrible silence ensued. Slowly, Renée took her arms from around Maxime’s neck; and she did not lower her brow, she continued staring at her husband with wide eyes, fixed like those of one dead; while the young man, dumbfoundered and terrified, staggered with bowed head, now that he was no longer sustained by her embrace. Stunned by this culminating blow which at last made the husband and the father cry out within him, Saccard stood where he was, livid, burning them from afar with the fire of his glances. In the moist, fragrant atmosphere of the room, the three candles flared very high, their flames erect, with the immobility of fiery tears. And alone to break the silence, the terrible silence, a breath of music floated up through the narrow staircase: the waltz, with its serpentine modulations, glided, coiled, died away on the snow-white carpet, among the split tights and the skirts fallen on the floor.