CHAPTER VII.

Three months later, on one of those gloomy spring mornings which bring back into Paris the dimness and dirty dampness of winter, Aristide Saccard alighted from his carriage at the Place du Château-d'Eau, and turned with four other gentlemen into the gorge of demolitions opened by the future Boulevard du Prince-Eugène. The party formed a committee of inquiry which the expropriation jury had despatched to the spot to estimate the value of certain property, the owners of which had not come to an amicable arrangement with the city of Paris.

Saccard was renewing his Rue de la Pépinière stroke of fortune. So that his wife's name might completely disappear from the affair, he had at first devised a mock sale of the ground and the music-hall. Larsonneau relinquished the whole to a supposed creditor. The deed of sale enunciated the colossal figure of three millions of francs. The sum was so exorbitant, that when the expropriation agent, in the name of the imaginary owner, claimed the amount of the purchase money as an indemnity, the commission of the Hôtel-de-Ville would not grant more than two millions five hundred thousand francs, despite the underhand endeavours of Monsieur Michelin, and the speeches of Monsieur Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud. Saccard had expected this repulse; he refused the offer, and let the case go before the expropriation jury, of which he happened to be a member, together with Monsieur de Mareuil, by a chance he had no doubt assisted. And it was thus that, with four of his colleagues, he found himself deputed to make an inquiry respecting his own ground.

Monsieur de Mareuil accompanied him. Of the three remaining jurors one was a doctor, who smoked a cigar without caring the least in the world for the stones and mortar he climbed over, and the others, two commercial men, one of whom, a manufacturer of surgical instruments, had once turned a grindstone in the streets.

The path which the gentlemen took was in a frightful state. It had rained all night. The soaked ground was becoming a river of mud between the fallen houses, beside this road, traced out over loose soil, wherein the transport carts sank up to the naves of their wheels. On either side fragments of the walls, shattered with pick-axes, remained standing; lofty eviscerated buildings, displaying their pallid entrails, opened in mid-air their empty staircase frames, their suspended gaping rooms, which appeared like the broken drawers of some great ugly piece of furniture. Nothing could look more lamentable than the wall-papers of these rooms, blue or yellow squares, falling in tatters, and indicating, at the height of a fifth or sixth floor, just under the roofs, the place occupied by some poor little garrets, narrow holes, in which perhaps a man's whole life had been confined. The ribbons of the chimney flues rose side by side on the bare walls, lugubriously black and with abrupt bends. A forgotten weathercock grated at the edge of a roof, whilst some half-detached water-spouts hung down like rags. And the gap still deepened amid these ruins, like a breach opened by cannon; under the grey sky, amid the sinister pallidity of the falling plaster dust, the roadway, barely marked out, covered with refuse, with piles of earth and deep pools of water, stretched away, edged with the black marks of chimney flues, as with a mourning border.

The gentlemen, with their well-blackened boots, their frock-coats, and their tall silk hats, set a singular note in this muddy landscape, of a dirty yellow tint, and across which there only passed some pale workmen, some horses splashed to the chine, and some carts, the woodwork of which disappeared beneath a coat of dust. The jurors followed each other in Indian file, jumping from stone to stone, avoiding the pools of flowing filth, at times sinking in up to their heels, and then shaking their feet, and swearing. Saccard had talked about taking the Rue de Charonne, by which they would have avoided this promenade over broken ground, but they unfortunately had several bits of property to visit on the long line of the Boulevard, and, impelled by curiosity, they had decided to pass right through the works. Besides, the sight greatly interested them. At times they stopped, balancing themselves on some bit of plaster which had fallen into a rut, raising their noses, and calling each other to point out some perforated floor, some chimney-pot which had remained in the air, some joist which had fallen on to a neighbouring roof. This bit of a destroyed city, seen on leaving the Rue du Temple, seemed altogether funny to them.

"It is really curious," said Monsieur de Mareuil. "Look there, Saccard, look at that kitchen up there. An old frying-pan has remained hanging over the stove. I can distinguish it perfectly."

However, the doctor, with his cigar between his teeth, had set himself in front of a demolished house, of which there only remained the rooms of the ground floor, filled with the remnants of the other storeys. A single fragment of wall rose up above the pile of materials; and to overthrow it at one effort, it had been girt round with a rope, at which several workmen were tugging.

"They won't manage it," muttered the doctor. "They are pulling too much to the left."

The four other jurors had retraced their steps to see the wall tumble. And all five of them, with their eyes stretched out, and with bated breath, waited for the fall with a quiver of delight. The workmen, giving way, and then suddenly stiffening themselves, cried out, "Oh! heave oh!"

"They won't manage it," repeated the doctor.

Then after a few seconds of anxiety:

"It is moving, it is moving," joyfully cried one of the commercial men.

And when the wall gave way at last, and fell with a frightful crash, raising a cloud of plaster, the gentlemen looked at each other with smiles. They were delighted. Their frock-coats became covered with a fine dust, which whitened their arms and shoulders.

Resuming their prudent march amid the puddles, they now began to talk about the workmen. There were not many good ones. They were all idle fellows, prodigals, and withal most obstinate, only dreaming of their masters' ruin. Monsieur de Mareuil, who for a moment had been looking with a shudder at two poor devils perched on the corner of a roof demolishing a wall with their pick-axes, expressed, however, the opinion that, all the same, these men really possessed great courage. The other jurors again paused and raised their eyes to the workmen who balanced themselves, leaning and striking with all their strength; they pushed the stones down with their feet, and quietly looked at them shattering below. If the pick-axes had missed striking, the mere impulsion of the men's arms would have precipitated them into space.

"Bah! it's habit," said the doctor, setting his cigar in his mouth again. "They are brutes!"

The jurors had now reached one of the houses which they had to visit. They finished their work in a quarter of an hour, and then resumed their walk. By degrees they no longer felt so much disgust for the mud; they walked in the middle of the pools, abandoning the hope of keeping their boots clean. When they had passed the Rue Ménilmontant one of the commercial men, the ex-knife-grinder, became nervous. He examined the ruins about him, and no longer recognised the neighbourhood. He said that he had lived in that part, on his arrival in Paris more than thirty years previously, and that he should be very pleased to find the house again. He continued searching with his eyes, when suddenly the sight of a house which the workmen's picks had already cut in twain, made him stop short in the middle of the road. He studied the door and the windows. Then, pointing upward with his finger to a corner of the partially demolished building:

"There it is," he cried; "I recognise it!"

"What, pray?" asked the doctor.

"My room, of course! That's it!"

It was a little room, situated on the fifth floor, and it must have formerly overlooked a courtyard. A breach in the wall showed it, quite bare, already demolished on one side, with a broad torn band of its wall paper, of a large yellow flowery pattern, trembling in the wind. On the left hand, one could still see the recess of a cupboard, lined with blue paper, and beside it was an aperture for a stove-pipe, with a bit of piping in it.

The ex-workman was seized with emotion:

"I spent five years in there," muttered he. "My means were small in those times, but no matter, I was young. You see the cupboard; it was there that I put by three hundred francs, copper by copper. And the hole for the stove-pipe, I can still remember the day when I made it. The room had no fire-place, and it was bitter cold, all the more so as we were not often two together."

"Come, come," interrupted the doctor, joking, "we don't ask you for your secrets. You played your games like every one else."

"That's true," naively resumed the worthy man. "I still remember an ironing girl who lived over the way. You see the bed was over there, on the right hand side near the window. Ah! my poor room, how they've knocked it about."

He was really very sad.

"Come," said Saccard, "no harm's done by throwing those old cabins down. Handsome houses in freestone will be built in place of them. Would you still live in such a den while you might very well lodge yourself on the new Boulevard?"

"That's true," again replied the manufacturer, who seemed quite consoled.

The commission of inquiry halted again at the two other houses. The doctor remained at the door smoking and looking at the sky. When they reached the Rue des Amandiers the houses became fewer; they now passed through large inclosures and over uncultivated land, where some half fallen buildings straggled. Saccard seemed delighted with this promenade through ruins. He had just remembered the dinner he had once shared with his first wife on the heights of Montmartre, and he well recollected having indicated with his hand the cut across Paris from the Place du Château-d'Eau to the Barrière du Trône. The realisation of this far distant prediction delighted him. He followed the cut, with the secret joys of authorship, as if he himself had with his iron fingers struck the first blows with a pickaxe. And he jumped over the puddles, reflecting that three millions awaited him under building materials, at the end of this river of greasy filth.

Meanwhile the gentlemen fancied themselves in the country. The road passed through some gardens, the walls of which had been felled. There were large clumps of budding lilac, with foliage of a very delicate light green. Each of these gardens, looking like a retreat hung with the leaves of the shrubs, displayed a narrow basin or a miniature cascade, with bits of wall on which to deceive the eye, arbours, in perspective and bluish landscape backgrounds had been painted. The buildings, scattered and discreetly hidden, resembled Italian pavilions and Grecian temples, and moss was wearing away the feet of the plaster columns, whilst weeds had loosened the mortar of the pediments.

"Those are _petites maisons_," said the doctor, with a wink.

But as he saw that the gentlemen did not understand what he meant, he explained that under Louis XV. the nobility had retreats of this kind for their pleasure parties. It was then the fashion. And he added:

"They were called _petites maisons_ (little houses). This neighbourhood was full of them. Some stiff things took place in them, and no mistake!"

The commission of inquiry had become very attentive. The two commercial men's eyes were shining, and they smiled and looked with great interest at these gardens and pavilions, on which they had not bestowed a glance prior to their colleague's explanations. A grotto detained them for a long time. But when the doctor, seeing a house already attacked by the pick, said that he recognised it as the Count de Savigny's _petite maison_, well known on account of that nobleman's orgies, the whole commission left the Boulevard to go and visit the ruins. They climbed on to the fallen materials, entered the ground floor rooms by the windows, and as the workmen were away at their mid-day meal, they were able to linger there quite at their ease. They indeed remained there for a good half hour, examining the rosettes of the ceilings, the paintings above the doors, the strained mouldings of the plaster grown yellow with age. The doctor reconstructed the building.

"Do you see," said he, "this room must be the banqueting hall. There was certainly an immense divan in that recess of the wall. And, indeed, I'm sure that a looking-glass surmounted the divan. See, there are the holdfasts of the glass. Oh! those fellows were scamps who knew deucedly well how to enjoy themselves!"

The jurors would never have left these old stones which tickled their curiosity, if Aristide Saccard, growing impatient, had not said to them, laughing:

"You may look as much as you like, the ladies are no longer here. Let's get to our business."

Before leaving, however, the doctor climbed on to a mantelshelf, to delicately detach, with one blow of a pick, a little painted head of Cupid, which he slipped into the pocket of his frock-coat.

They at length reached the end of their journey. The land which had formerly belonged to Madame Aubertot was very vast; the music-hall and the garden occupied barely more than half of the surface; a few unimportant houses were scattered about the rest of it. The new Boulevard cut obliquely across this large parallelogram, and this circumstance had quieted one of Saccard's fears; he had long imagined that only a corner of the music-hall would be removed by the new thoroughfare. Larsonneau therefore had received orders to open his mouth, as the bordering plots ought to at least quintuple in value. He was already threatening the city of Paris to avail himself of a recent decree authorising landowners to deliver up only the ground necessary for works of public utility.

It was the expropriation agent who received the jurors. He took them over the garden, made them visit the music-hall and showed them a huge pile of papers. But the two commercial men had gone down again accompanied by the doctor, whom they were still questioning about Count de Savigny's _petite maison_, of which their minds were full. They listened to him with gaping mouths, standing all three beside a _jeu de tonneau_. And he talked to them about La Pompadour, and related the amours of Louis XV., while Monsieur de Mareuil and Saccard continued the inquiry alone.

"It's all finished," said the latter on returning into the garden. "If you will allow me, gentlemen, I will myself draw up the report."

The surgical-instrument maker did not even hear. He was deep in the Regency.

"What funny times, all the same!" he muttered.

Then they found a cab in the Rue de Charonne and they went off, muddy to the knees, but as satisfied with their promenade as with a pleasure trip in the country. In the cab the conversation changed--they talked politics, they said that the Emperor did great things. The like of what they had just seen had never been witnessed before. This long, perfectly straight street would be superb when the houses were erected.

It was Saccard who drew up the report and the jury granted the three millions. The speculator was at the end of his tether, he could not have waited a month longer. This money saved him from ruin, and even a little from the assize court. He gave five hundred thousand francs on the million which he owed to his upholsterer and his contractor for the mansion in the Parc Monceaux. He stopped up other holes, rushed into new companies, and deafened Paris with the noise of the real crowns which he flung by the shovelful on to the shelves of his iron safe. The golden river had a source at last. But this was not yet a solid, entrenched fortune flowing with a regular, continuous gush. Saccard, saved from a crisis, thought himself pitiful with the crumbs of his three millions, and naively said that he was still too poor, and could not stop there. And soon the ground again cracked beneath his feet.

Larsonneau had behaved so admirably in the Charonne affair that Saccard, after a slight hesitation, carried honesty to the point of giving him his ten per cent, and his bonus of thirty thousand francs. The expropriation agent thereupon opened a banking-house. When his accomplice accused him in a snappish tone of being richer than himself, the coxcomb with yellow gloves replied, laughing:

"You see, dear master, you are very clever in making money rain down, but you don't know how to pick it up."

Madame Sidonie profited by her brother's stroke of fortune to borrow ten thousand francs from him, with which she went to spend a couple of months in England. She returned without a copper, and it was never known what had become of the ten thousand francs.

"Well, it costs," she replied when she was questioned. "I ransacked all the libraries. I had three secretaries to assist me in my researches."

And when she was asked if she at length had any positive information about her three milliards, she at first smiled with a mysterious air, and then ended by muttering:

"You are all incredulous. I have found nothing, but no matter. You will see, you will see some day."

She had not, however, lost all the time she spent in England. Her brother the minister profited by her journey to entrust her with a delicate commission. When she returned she obtained large orders from the ministry. It was a fresh incarnation. She made contracts with the government, and charged herself with supplying it every imaginable thing. She sold it provisions and arms for the troops, furniture for the prefectures and public departments, fire wood for the offices and the museums. The money she made did not induce her to set aside her eternal black dresses, and she retained her yellow, doleful face. Saccard then reflected that it was really she whom he had seen once long ago furtively leaving their brother Eugène's house. She must at all times have kept up a secret connection with him, for matters with which no one was acquainted.

Renée was agonizing amid these interests, these ardent thirsts which could not satisfy themselves. Aunt Élisabeth was dead; Christine had married and left the Béraud mansion, where her father alone remained erect in the gloomy shade of the large rooms. Renée exhausted what she inherited from her aunt in one season. She gambled now. She had found a drawing-room where ladies sat at table till three o'clock in the morning, losing hundreds of thousands of francs in a night. She tried to drink, but she could not, she experienced invincible qualms of disgust. Since she had found herself alone again, abandoned to the worldly flood which carried her off, she surrendered herself all the more, not knowing how to kill time. She ended by tasting of everything. And nothing touched her amid the immense boredom which was crushing her. She grew older, blue circles appeared round her eyes, her nose became thinner, her pouting lips parted in sudden and causeless laughter. It was the end of a woman.

When Maxime had married Louise, and the young folks had started for Italy, she no longer troubled herself about her lover; she even seemed to forget him completely. And when Maxime returned alone six months later, having buried the "hunchback" in the cemetery of a little town in Lombardy, it was hatred that she displayed towards him. She remembered Phèdre, she no doubt recollected that poisoned love to which she had heard Ristori lend her sobs. Then, so as never more to meet the young fellow in her home, to dig an abyss of shame between the father and the son for ever, she compelled her husband to take cognisance of the incest, she told him that on the day when he had surprised her with Maxime, the latter, who had long pursued her, was seeking to assault her. Saccard was horribly worried by the insistence she evinced in wishing to open his eyes. He was obliged to quarrel with his son and cease to see him. The young widower, rich with his wife's dowry, went to live a bachelor's life in a little house of the Avenue de l'Impératrice. He had renounced the Council of State, and kept a racing stable. Renée derived one of her last satisfactions from this rupture. She revenged herself, she flung the infamy which these two men had set on her back in their own faces, and she said to herself that now she would never more see them making game of her, arm-in-arm, like a couple of comrades.

Amid the crumbling of Renée's affections there came a moment when she had no one left to love her but her maid. She had by degrees been taken with a maternal affection for Céleste. Perhaps this girl, who was all that remained near her of Maxime's love, reminded her of the hours of enjoyment forever dead. Perhaps Renée was simply touched by the fidelity of this servant, of this brave heart the quiet solicitude of which nothing seemed to shake. From the depth of her remorse she thanked Céleste for having witnessed her shame without leaving her in disgust; and she pictured all kinds of abnegation, a whole life of renunciation to arrive at understanding the calmness of the chambermaid in the presence of incest, her icy hands, her respectful, quiet attentions. And the girl's devotion made Renée all the happier as she knew her to be honest and economical, without a lover, without a vice.

At times in her sad moments she would say to her:

"Ah! my girl, it is you who will close my eyes."

Céleste never answered, but she gave a singular smile. One morning she quietly informed her mistress that she was going to leave, that she meant to return into the country. Renée remained trembling all over on hearing this, as if some great misfortune had befallen her. She cried out, and plied Céleste with questions. Why would she leave her when they got on so well together? And she offered to double her wages.

But the maid, in answer to all her kind words, made a gesture meaning no, in a quiet, obstinate manner.

"You see, madame," she ended by replying, "you might offer me all the gold of Peru, but I could not remain a week longer. Ah! you don't know me--I've been with you for eight years, haven't I? Well, on the very first day I said to myself: 'As soon as I have collected five thousand francs together, I will return to my village; I will buy Lagache's house, and I shall live very happily!' It's a promise I made to myself, you understand. And the five thousand francs were completed yesterday, when you paid me my wages."

Renée felt a chill at her heart. She saw Céleste passing behind her and Maxime while they were kissing each other, and she saw her with her indifference, in a perfect state of abstraction, dreaming of her five thousand francs. However, she still tried to retain her, frightened by the void in which she would have to live, longing, despite everything, to keep near her this obstinate animal whom she had thought devoted, and who was merely egotistical. The girl smiled, still shaking her head and muttering:

"No, no, it isn't possible. Even if it were my mother I should refuse. I shall buy two cows. I shall perhaps start a little haberdasher's business. It is very pretty down our way. Oh! for the matter of that, I am willing you should come and see me. It is near Caen. I will leave you the address."

Renée then no longer insisted. She shed hot tears when she was alone. On the morrow, with a sick person's whimsicality, she decided to accompany Céleste to the Western Railway station, in her own brougham. She gave her one of her travelling rugs and made her a present in money, and showed her the attentions of a mother whose daughter is about to start upon some long difficult journey. In the brougham she looked at her with moist eyes. Céleste chatted and said how pleased she was to go away. Then emboldened, she spoke out and gave some advice to her mistress.

"I shouldn't have understood life like you, madame. I often said to myself when I found you with Monsieur Maxime: 'Is it possible one can be so foolish for men!' It always ends badly--Ah! for my part I always mistrusted them!"

She laughed and threw herself back in the corner of the brougham:

"My money would have danced!" she continued, "and now-a-days I should be destroying my eyes with crying. So whenever I saw a man I took up a broomstick--I never dared to tell you all that. Besides, it didn't concern me. You were free to do as you liked, and I only had to earn my money honestly."

At the railway station Renée insisted upon paying her fare and took her a first class ticket. As they had arrived before the time, she detained her, pressing her hands and repeating:

"And take good care of yourself, don't neglect your health, my good Céleste."

The latter allowed herself to be caressed. She stood looking happy, with a fresh smiling face, before her mistress's tearful eyes. Renée again spoke of the past, and the maid abruptly exclaimed:

"I was forgetting: I didn't tell you the story of Baptiste, master's valet. Probably no one has liked to tell you."

The young woman owned that she indeed knew nothing.

"Well, you remember his grand dignified airs, his disdainful glances, you yourself spoke to me about them. It was all so much acting. He didn't care for women, he never came down to the servants' hall when we were there; I can repeat it now, he even pretended that it was disgusting in the drawing-room, on account of all the low-neck dresses. I well believe that he didn't care for women!"

And she leant towards Renée's ear, and made her blush, though she herself retained all her honest placidity.

"When the new stable boy," she continued, "told everything to master, master preferred to dismiss Baptiste rather than send him to jail. It seems that these disgusting things had been going on for years in the stables. And to think that the big scamp pretended he was fond of horses! It was the grooms that he liked!"

The bell interrupted her. She hastily took up the eight or ten packages which she had not wished to part with. She let herself be kissed; and then she went off, without looking round.

Renée remained in the station until the engine whistled. And when the train had gone off, she was overcome with despair, she no longer knew what to do; her days seemed to stretch before her as empty as the vast waiting hall where she had been left alone. She again entered her brougham and told the coachman to drive her home. But on the way she changed her mind, she was afraid of her room, of the boredom awaiting her there. She no longer felt the necessary courage to return home and change her dress for her usual drive round the lake. She felt a longing for sunlight, a longing to mingle with the crowd.

She ordered the coachman to drive to the Bois.

It was four o'clock. The Bois was awakening from the drowsiness of a warm afternoon. Clouds of dust flew along the Avenue de l'Impératrice, and one could see, spread out afar, the expanse of verdure which the slopes of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes, crowned by the grey walls of Mont Valérien, limited. High above the horizon the sun shed its rays, filling the recesses of the foliage with golden dust, lighting up the tall branches, and changing the ocean of leaves into an ocean of light. Past the fortifications, in the avenue of the Bois leading to the lake, the ground had just been watered; and the vehicles rolled over the brown soil as over a carpet, amid a rising freshness and an odour of damp earth. Mingled with the low bushes on either side, the little trees of the copses reared their crowd of young trunks, growing indistinct in the greenish dimness which flashes of light pierced here and there with yellow glades; and, by degrees, as one approached the lake, the chairs on the side-walks became more numerous, families sat, gazing with quiet silent faces at the interminable procession of wheels. Then, on reaching the open space in front of the lake, there was a dazzlement, the oblique sun transformed the round expanse of water into a huge mirror of polished silver reflecting the brilliant disk of the planet. All eyes blinked, one could only distinguish the dark form of the pleasure boat on the left hand side near the bank. The parasols in the vehicles were inclined with a gentle and uniform movement towards this splendour, and only rose erect again on reaching the roadway skirting the sheet of water, which, from the summit of the bank, now assumed a metallic blackness, streaked with golden burnishings. On the right hand side the clumps of fir trees lined the road with their colonnades of straight slender stems, the soft violet tinge of which was reddened by the flames of the sky; on the left the lawns, bathed in light and similar to fields of emeralds, stretched away as far as the distant lace-like ironwork of the gate of La Muette. And on approaching the cascade, while the dimness of the copses again presented itself on one side, the islands at the end of the lake rose up into the blue air, with the sunshine playing over their banks, and bold shadows darting from their pines, at the feet of which the chalet looked like some child's plaything lost in a corner of a virgin forest. The whole wood laughed and quivered in the sunshine.

The weather was so magnificent that Renée felt ashamed of her closed brougham and her costume of flea-tinted silk. She drew back a little, and, with the windows open, looked at this flow of light stretching over the water and the verdure. At the bends of the avenues she perceived the line of wheels revolving like golden stars amid a long train of blinding gleams. The varnished panels, the flashing steel and brass mountings, the bright colours of the dresses passed on, at the even trot of the horses, and set against the background of the wood a long moving bar, a ray fallen from the sky, stretching out and following the bends of the roadway. And in this ray, as the young woman blinked her eyes, she saw every now and then the light chignon of a woman, the black back of a footman, the white mane of a horse, stand out. The arched parasols of watered silk shone like moons of metal.

Then, in presence of this broad daylight, this expanse of sunshine, Renée thought of the fine dust of twilight which she had seen one evening falling on the tawny foliage. Maxime had been with her. It was at the period when her desires for that child were dawning in her. And she again saw the lawns dampened by the evening air, the darkened underwood, the deserted pathways. The line of vehicles had gone by with a sad sound past the unoccupied chairs, whilst now the rumble of the wheels, the trot of the horses, resounded with the joyfulness of a flourish of trumpets. Then the recollection of all her drives in the Bois returned to her. She had lived there. Maxime had grown up there, at her side, on the cushion of her carriage. It had been their garden. Rain had surprised them there, sunshine had brought them back, the fall of night had not always driven them away. They had been there in every kind of weather, they had there tasted the worries and the joy of their life. Amid the emptiness of her being, the melancholy imparted by Celeste's departure, these memories gave Renée bitter joy. Her heart said: "Never again! never again!" and she was like frozen when she evoked the image of the winter landscape, the congealed, dull-tinted lake on which they had skated; the sky then was of a sooty colour, the snow had set white lace on the trees, the wind had thrown fine sand in their eyes and on their lips.

However, on the left hand side, on the side reserved to equestrians, she had already recognised the Duke de Rozan, Monsieur de Mussy, and Monsieur de Saffré. Larsonneau had killed the duke's mother by presenting her the hundred and fifty thousand francs' worth of bills accepted by her son, and the duke was devouring his second half million with Blanche Müller, after leaving the first five hundred thousand francs in the hands of Laure d'Aurigny. Monsieur de Mussy, who had left the embassy in England for the embassy in Italy, had become gallant again; and he led cotillons with newly acquired gracefulness. As for Monsieur de Saffré, he remained the most amiable sceptic and fast-liver in the world. Renée saw him urging his horse towards the carriage of the Countess Vanska, with whom he was said to be madly in love since the evening when he had seen her as Coral at the Saccards'.

All the ladies were there, moreover; the Duchess de Sternich, in her sempiternal eight-springed carriage; Madame de Lauwerens in a landau, with the Baroness de Meinhold and little Madame Daste seated in front of her; Madame de Teissière and Madame de Guende in a victoria. Amid these ladies, Sylvia and Laure d'Aurigny displayed themselves on the cushions of a magnificent calash. Madame Michelin even passed by in the depths of a brougham; the pretty brunette had been to visit the chief town of Monsieur Hupel de la Noue's department; and on her return she had made her appearance in the Bois in this brougham, to which she hoped to soon add an open carriage. Renée also perceived the Marchioness d'Espanet and Madame Haffner, the inseparables hidden under their parasols, stretched out side by side, laughing tenderly, and gazing into each other's eyes.

Then the gentlemen passed by: Monsieur de Chibray driving a mail-coach; Monsieur Simpson in a dog-cart; Messieurs Mignon and Charrier, more eager than ever for work, despite their dream of approaching retirement, in a brougham which they left at the corner of an avenue, to go a bit of the way on foot; Monsieur de Mareuil, still in mourning for his daughter, seeking bows for his first interruption launched forth the day before at the Corps Législatif, and airing his political importance in the carriage of Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who had once more saved the Crédit Viticole, after placing it within two fingers' length of ruin, and whom the Senate made thinner and more influential than ever.

And, to close the procession, like a final majesty, Baron Gouraud showed his inert heaviness in the sunlight, on the pillows with which his carriage was provided. Renée felt surprised and disgusted on recognising Baptiste seated, with a white face and solemn air, beside the coachman. The tall flunky had entered the baron's service.

The copses continued to stretch away, the water of the lake grew iridescent under the sunrays now become more oblique, the line of carriages spread out its dancing gleams. And the young woman, herself seized and carried away by this enjoyment, vaguely divined all the appetites rolling, along in the midst of the sunlight. She did not feel indignant with these sharers of the spoil. But she hated them for their joy, for this triumphal march, which showed them to her full in the golden dust from the sky. They were superb and smiling; the women displayed themselves white and plump, the men had the rapid glances, the delighted deportment of favoured lovers. And she, in the depth of her empty heart, found nothing more than lassitude and covert envy. Was she better than the others, then, that she thus bent under the weight of pleasure? or was it the others who were praiseworthy for having stronger loins than her own. She did not know, she was just longing for new desires with which to begin life anew, when, on turning her head, she perceived beside her, on the footway bordering the underwood, a sight which rent her heart like a supreme blow.

Saccard and Maxime were walking along slowly, arm-in-arm. The father must have paid a visit to the son, and they had both come down from the Avenue de l'Impératrice to the lake chatting.

"Listen to me," repeated Saccard, "you are a simpleton. When a man has money like you have, he doesn't let it slumber at the bottom of a drawer. There is a hundred per cent to be gained in the affair I mention. It is a safe investment. You know very well that I wouldn't let you in!"

However, the young fellow seemed bored by his father's insistence. He smiled with his pretty air, and looked at the carriages.

"Do you see that little woman over there, the one in mauve," he suddenly said. "She's a washerwoman, whom that beast De Mussy has brought out."

They looked at the woman in mauve; after which Saccard drew a cigar from his pocket, and addressing himself to Maxime who was smoking:

"Give me a light," he said.

Then they stopped for a moment in front of each other, drawing their faces near together. When the cigar was lighted:

"You see," continued the father, again taking his son's arm, and pressing it tightly under his own; "you would be a fool if you didn't listen to me. Is it agreed, eh? Will you bring me the hundred thousand francs to-morrow?"

"You know very well that I no longer go to your house," replied Maxime, compressing his lips.

"Pooh! A lot of bosh! It's time there was an end to all that."

And while they took a few steps in silence, just at the moment when Renée, feeling as though she would swoon, hid her head in the padding of the brougham, so as not to be seen, a growing buzz swept along the line of vehicles. The pedestrians on the footways halted, and turned round with gaping mouths, watching something that approached. There was a louder rumble of wheels, the equipages respectfully drew aside, and two postilions appeared, clad in green, with round caps, on which golden tassels jolted with their cords spread out. Leaning slightly forward, they hastened on at the trot of their tall bay horses. Behind them they left an empty space; and, then, in this empty space, the Emperor appeared.

He occupied alone the back seat of a landau. Dressed in black, with his frock-coat buttoned up to his chin, he wore, slightly on one side, a very tall hat, the silk of which glistened. In front of him, on the other seat, two gentlemen, dressed with that correct elegance which was favourably looked upon at the Tuileries, remained grave, with their hands on their knees, and the silent air of two wedding guests promenaded amid the curiosity of a crowd.

Renée found the Emperor aged. His mouth was parted more languidly under his thick waxed moustaches. His eyelids had grown heavy to the point that they half covered his dim eyes, the yellow greyness of which had become yet more cloudy. And his nose alone still looked like a dry bone set in his vague face.

Meantime, while the ladies in the carriages smiled discreetly, the people on foot pointed the sovereign out to one another. A fat man declared that the Emperor was the gentleman who turned his back to the coachman on the left side. Some hands were raised to salute. But Saccard, who had taken off his hat, even before the postilions had passed, waited till the imperial carriage was exactly in front of him, and then he cried out in his thick Provençal voice:

"Long live the Emperor!"

The Emperor, surprised, turned, recognised the enthusiast, no doubt, and returned the bow smiling. And everything then disappeared in the sunlight, the equipages closed up, and Renée could only perceive, above the manes of the horses, and between the backs of the footmen, the postilions caps jolting with their golden tassels.

She remained for a moment with her eyes wide open, full of this apparition, which reminded her of another hour of her life. It seemed to her as if the Emperor, by mingling with the line of carriages, had set the last necessary ray therein, and given a meaning to this triumphal march. Now, it was a glory. All these wheels, all these decorated men, all these women languidly stretched out, disappeared amid the flash and the rumble of the imperial landau. This sensation became so acute and so painful that the young woman experienced an imperious need of escaping from this triumph, from Saccard's cry, which was still ringing in her ears, from the sight of the father and the son slowly walking along, and chatting with their arms linked. She reflected, with her hands on her breast, as if burnt by an internal fire: and it was with a sudden hope of relief and salutary coolness that she leant forward, and said to the coachman:

"To the Béraud mansion."

The courtyard retained its cloister-like coldness. Renée went round the arcades, made happy by the dampness which fell upon her shoulders. She approached the fountain, green with moss, and polished by wear at the edges; she looked at the lion's head, now half effaced, which, with parted jaws emitted a gush of water by an iron pipe. How many times had she and Christine taken this head between their girlish arms to lean forward to reach the stream of water, the icy flow of which they liked to feel upon their little hands. Then she mounted the great silent staircase; she perceived her father at the end of the suite of spacious rooms; he drew up his tall figure, and silently went deeper into the shade of the old residence, of the haughty solitude in which he had absolutely cloistered himself since his sister's death; and Renée thought of the men of the Bois, of that other old man, Baron Gouraud, who had his flesh rolled about on pillows in the sunlight. She went up higher, she followed the passages, the servants' stairs, she was bound for the nursery. When she reached the top landing she found the key hanging on the usual nail; a large rusty key it was, on which spiders had woven webs. The lock gave a plaintive cry. How sad the nursery was! She felt a pang at her heart of finding it so empty, so grey, so silent. She closed the open door of the abandoned aviary, with the vague idea that it must have been by that door that the joys of her childhood had flown away. In front of the flower-boxes, still full of soil hardened and cracked all over like dry mud, she stopped and broke off a rhododendron stem; this skeleton of a plant, shrivelled and white with dust, was all that remained of their living clumps of verdure. And the matting, the matting itself, faded, gnawed by rats, displayed itself with the melancholy aspect of a shroud which has for years awaited a promised corpse. In one corner amid this mute despair, this silent weeping abandonment, Renée found one of her old dolls; all the bran had flowed out of it by a hole, but its porcelain head continued smiling with its enamelled lips, above the tabid body, which a doll's follies seemed to have exhausted.

Renée felt stifled in the tainted atmosphere of the abode of her childhood. She opened the window and gazed on the immense view. Nothing there was soiled. She again found the eternal delights, the eternal juvenescence of the open air. The sun must have been sinking behind her; but she only saw the rays of the setting planet, as they lent, with infinite softness, a yellowish tinge to this corner of the city which she knew so well. It was like the last lay of daylight, a gay refrain, which slowly subsided on all things. There were gleams of tawny fire about the boom below, while the lace-work of the iron cables of the Pont de Constantine stood out above the whiteness of the pillars. Then, on the right hand, the umbrage of the Halle aux Vins and the Jardin des Plantes seemed like a great mere with stagnant, mossy water, the greenish surface of which blended in the distance with the mist of the sky. On the left, the Quai Henri IV. and the Quai de la Rapée were lined with the same rows of houses, those houses which, as girls, twenty years before, they had seen there, with the same brown patches of sheds, the same ruddy factory chimneys. And, above the trees, the slate roof of the Salpêtrière hospital, made blue by the sun's good-bye, suddenly appeared to her like an old friend.

But what calmed her, and imparted coolness to her bosom, were the long grey banks, and especially the Seine, the giantess, which she saw coming from the limits of the horizon straight towards her, just as in those happy times when she had feared to see it well and rise up to the very window. She remembered their affection for the river, their love for its colossal flow, for this quivering of noisy water, spreading out in a sheet at their feet, parting around and behind them in two arms, the ends of which they could not see, though they still felt the great pure caress. They were then already coquettish, and on the days when the sky was clear they said that the Seine had put on her beautiful dress of green silk, flecked with white flames; and the eddies where the water curled set frills of satin on the dress, while afar off, beyond the belt of bridges, a play of light spread strips of stuff the colour of the sun.

And Renée, raising her eyes, looked at the vast expanse of soaring sky of a pale blue, fading little by little in the obliteration of twilight. She thought of the accomplice city, of the blazing nights of the Boulevard, of the hot afternoons of the Bois, of the pallid, crude day, of the grand new mansions. Then, when she lowered her head, when she again saw at a glance the peaceful horizon of her childhood, this corner of a city, inhabited by the middle and working classes, where she had dreamt of a life of peace, a final bitterness mounted to her lips. With her hands clasped, she sobbed in the gathering night.

The following winter, when Renée died of acute meningitis, it was her father who paid her debts. Worms's bill amounted to two hundred and fifty-seven thousand francs.

THE END.