air at the progress of the eminence which he was constructing with infinite art.
“Oh! how you rattle on!…” he murmured. “A hundred and thirty-six thousand francs is a large sum…. Larsonneau is a good fellow, but his means are still limited. He is quite ready to oblige you….”
He paused, blinking his eyes and rebuilding a corner of the eminence which had fallen through. This pastime began to confuse Renée’s ideas. In spite of herself she followed the work of her husband, whose awkwardness increased. She felt tempted to advise him. Forgetting Worms, the bill, her need of money, she ended by saying:
“Put that big piece at the bottom; then the others will keep up.”
Her husband obeyed her submissively, and added:
“All he can find is fifty thousand francs. That will at least be a nice bit on account…. Only he does not want to mix this up with the Charonne affair. He is only a go-between, do you understand, my dear? The person who lends the money asks an enormous interest. He wants a note of hand for eighty thousand francs at six months’ date.”
And having crowned the edifice with a pointed cinder, he crossed his hands over the tongs and looked fixedly at his wife.
“Eighty thousand francs!” she cried. “But that’s sheer robbery!… Do you advise me to commit this folly?”
“No,” he replied shortly. “But if you absolutely want the money, I won’t forbid it.”
He rose as though to go. Renée, in a state of cruel indecision, looked at her husband and at the bill which he left on the mantel. At last she took her poor head between her hands, murmuring:
“Oh, these business matters!… My head is splitting this morning…. Well, I must sign this note for eighty thousand francs. If I didn’t I should become altogether ill. I know myself, I should spend the day in a frightful struggle…. I prefer to do something stupid at once. That relieves me.”
And she spoke of ringing to send for a bill-stamp. But he insisted on rendering her this service in person. No doubt he had the bill stamp in his pocket, for he was absent for hardly two minutes. While she was writing at a little table he had pushed towards the fire, he examined her with eyes in which arose an astonished light of desire. The room was still full of the warmth of the bed she had quitted and of the fragrance of her first toilet. While talking she had allowed the folds of the peignoir in which she was wrapped to slip down, and the eyes of her husband, as he stood before her, glided over her bent head, through the gold of her hair, and very low down, into the whiteness of her neck and bosom. He wore a curious smile; the glowing fire, which had burnt his face, the close room, whose heavy atmosphere retained an odour of love, the yellow hair and white skin, which tempted him with a sort of conjugal scornfulness, set him dreaming, widened the scope of the drama in which he had just played a scene, and prompted some secret voluptuous calculation in his brutal jobber’s flesh.
When his wife handed him the acceptance, begging him to finish the matter for her, he took it without removing his eyes from her.
“You are bewitchingly beautiful….” he murmured.
And as she bent forward to push away the table, he kissed her rudely on the neck. She gave a little cry. Then she rose, quivering, trying to laugh, thinking, in spite of herself, of the other’s kisses of the night before. But he seemed to regret this unmannerly kiss. He left her, with a friendly pressure of the hand, and promised her that she should have the fifty thousand francs that same evening.
Renée dozed all day before the fire. At critical periods she had the languor of a Creole. All her turbulent nature would then become indolent, numbed, chill. She shivered with cold, she needed blazing fires, a stifling heat that brought little drops of perspiration to her forehead and lulled her. In this burning atmosphere, in this bath of flames, she almost ceased to suffer; her pain became as a light dream, a vague oppression, whose very uncertainty ended by becoming voluptuous. Thus she lulled till the evening the remorse of yesterday, in the red glow of the firelight, in front of a terrible fire, that made the furniture crack around her, and that at moments deprived her of the consciousness of her existence. She was able to think of Maxime as of a flaming enjoyment whose rays burnt her; she had a nightmare of strange passions amid flaring logs on white-hot beds. Céleste moved to and fro through the room, with her calm face, the face of a cold-blooded waiting-maid. She had orders to admit no one, she even sent away the inseparables, Adeline d’Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, who called after breakfasting together in a summer-house they rented at Saint-Germain. However, when, towards the evening, Céleste came to tell her mistress that Madame Sidonie, monsieur’s sister, asked to see her, she received orders to show her up.
Madame Sidonie as a rule did not call till dusk. Her brother had nevertheless prevailed upon her to wear silk gowns. But, no one knew why, for all that the silk she wore came fresh from the shop, it never looked new; it was shabby, lost its sheen, looked a rag. She had also consented to leave off bringing her basket to the Saccards. By way of retaliation, her pockets bulged over with papers. She took an interest in Renée, of whom she was unable to make a reasonable client, resigned to the necessities of life. She called on her regularly, with the discreet smiles of a physician who does not care to frighten his patient by telling her the name of her complaint. She commiserated with her in her little worries, treating them as little aches and pains which she could cure in a minute if Renée wished it. The latter, who was in one of those moments when one feels the need of pity, received her only to tell her that she had intolerable pains in her head.
“Why, my beautiful pet,” murmured Mme. Sidonie as she glided through the shade of the room, “but you’re stifling here!… Still your neuralgic pains, is it? It comes from worry. You take life too much to heart.”
“Yes, I have a heap of anxiety,” replied Renée, languishingly.
Night was falling. She had not allowed Céleste to light the lamp. The fire alone shed a great red glow that lighted her up fully, outstretched in her white peignoir, whose lace was assuming rose tints. At the edge of the shadow one could just see a corner of Mme. Sidonie’s black dress, and her two crossed hands, covered with gray cotton gloves. Her soft voice emerged from the darkness.
“Money-troubles again?” she asked, as though she had said troubles of the heart, in a voice full of gentleness and compassion.
Renée lowered her eyelids and nodded assent.
“Ah! if my brothers would listen to me, we should all be rich. But they shrug their shoulders when I speak to them of that debt of three milliards, you know…. Still I have good hopes. For the last ten years I have been wanting to go across to England. I have so little time to spare!… At last I resolved to write to London, and I am waiting the reply.”
And as the younger woman smiled:
“I know you are an unbeliever yourself. Still you would be very pleased if I made you a present one of these days of a nice little million…. Look here, the story is quite simple: there was a Paris banker who lent the money to the son of the King of England, and as the banker died without direct heirs, the State is to-day entitled to claim payment of the debt with compound interest. I have worked it out, it comes to two milliards, nine hundred and forty-three millions, two hundred and ten thousand francs…. Never fear, it will come, it will come.”
“In the meantime,” said Renée, with a dash of irony, “I wish you would get some one to lend me a hundred thousand francs…. I could then pay my tailor, who is making himself a great nuisance.”
“A hundred thousand francs can be found,” replied Mme. Sidonie, tranquilly. “It is only a question of what you will give in exchange.”
The fire was glowing; Renée, still more languid, stretched out her legs, showed the tips of her slippers at the edge of her dressing-gown. The agent resumed her sympathetic voice:
“My poor dear, you are really not reasonable. I know many women, but I have never seen one so little careful of her health as you. That little Michelin, for instance, see how well she manages! I cannot help thinking of you whenever I see her in good health