.

      He was quite unconscious of the incredible number of threads with which he interwove the most ordinary piece of business. He derived a real joy from the cock-and-bull story he had just told Renée; and what enraptured him was the impudence of the lie, the heaping up of impossibilities, the astonishing complication of the plot. He could have had the building-land long ago had he not worked out all this drama; but he would have found less enjoyment in obtaining it easily. He set to work, on the contrary, with the utmost naïveté to make a whole financial melodrama out of the Charonne speculation.

      He rose, and taking Larsonneau’s arm, walked towards the drawingroom.

      “You have quite understood me, have you not? Be content to follow my instructions, and later on you’ll applaud me…. I say, my dear fellow, you ought not to wear yellow gloves, they spoil the look of your hands.”

      The expropriation-agent only smiled and murmured:

      “Oh, gloves have their advantages, my dear master: you can touch anything without being defiled.”

      As they entered the drawingroom, Saccard was surprised and somewhat alarmed to find Maxime on the other side of the hangings. The young man was seated on a couch beside a blonde lady who was telling him, in a monotonous voice, a long story, her own no doubt. He had, in point of fact, overheard his father’s conversation with Larsonneau. The two accomplices seemed to him a pair of cunning dogs. Still annoyed by Renée’s betrayal, he felt a cowardly pleasure in learning of the theft of which she was to be the victim. It avenged him a little. His father came and shook hands with him with a suspicious look, but Maxime whispered to him, motioning to the blonde lady:

      “She’s not bad, is she? I’m going to ‘bag’ her for tonight.”

      Then Saccard began to pose and play the gallant. Laure d’Aurigny joined them for a moment; she complained that Maxime barely called on her once a month. But he professed to have been very busy, whereat everyone laughed. He added that in future they would see him wherever they went.

      “I have been writing a tragedy,” he said, “and I only hit upon the fifth act yesterday…. I now mean to seek repose in the bosoms of all the pretty women in Paris.”

      He laughed. He relished his allusions, which only he could understand. Meantime there was no one left in the drawingroom except Rozan and Larsonneau, at either side of the chimney. The Saccards rose to go, as did the blonde lady, who lived in the same house. Then the d’Aurigny went and spoke to the duc in a low voice. He seemed surprised and annoyed. Seeing that he could not make up his mind to leave his chair:

      “No, really, not tonight,” she said in an undertone. “I have a headache!… Tomorrow, I promise you.”

      Rozan could not but obey. Laure waited till he was on the landing, and then said quickly in Larsonneau’s ear:

      “See, big Lar? I keep my word…. Stuff him into his carriage.”

      When the blonde lady took leave of the gentlemen to go up to her apartment, which was on the floor above, Saccard was astonished not to see Maxime follow her.

      “Well?” he asked.

      “Well, no,” replied the young man. “I’ve thought better of it….”

      Then he had an idea that struck him as very funny:

      “I’ll resign in your favour if you like. Hurry up, she hasn’t shut her door yet.”

      But the father shrugged his shoulders, and said:

      “Thanks, I have something better than that at present.”

      The four men went downstairs. Outside the duc insisted on taking Larsonneau in his carriage; his mother lived in the Marais, he could drop the expropriation-agent at his door in the Rue de Rivoli. The latter refused, closed the door himself, and told the coachman to drive on. And he remained on the pavement of the Boulevard Haussmann with the two others, talking, staying where he was.

      “Ah! poor Rozan!” said Saccard, who suddenly understood.

      Larsonneau swore that it was not so, that he didn’t care a rush for that, that he was a practical man. And as the two others continued to joke, and as the cold was very sharp, he ended by exclaiming:

      “Upon my word, I don’t care, I’m going to ring…. You are two busybodies, messieurs.”

      “Good night!” cried Maxime, as the door closed to.

      And taking his father’s arm, he walked up the boulevard with him. It was one of those clear, frosty nights when it is so pleasant to walk on the hard ground through the icy atmosphere. Saccard said that Larsonneau made a mistake, that he ought merely to be the d’Aurigny’s friend. From there he went on to declare that the love of those women was really a bad thing. He assumed an air of morality, gave utterance to maxims and precepts of astonishing propriety.

      “You see,” he said to his son, “that only lasts for a time, my boy…. You lose your health at it, and you don’t taste real happiness. You know I’m not a Puritan. Well, I tell you, I’ve had enough of it; I’m going to settle down.”

      Maxime chuckled; he stopped his father, looked at him in the moonlight, and told him he was “an old fat-head.” But Saccard became still more serious:

      “Joke as much as you like. I tell you again, there is nothing like marriage to keep a man in good condition and make him happy.”

      Then he spoke to him of Louise. And he walked more slowly, to finish the business, he said, as they were once on the subject. The thing was completely arranged. He even informed him that he and M. de Mareuil had fixed the date for signing the contract for the Sunday following the Thursday in midLent. On that Thursday there was to be a great entertainment at the house in the Parc Monceau, and he would then take the opportunity publicly to announce the marriage. Maxime thought all this very satisfactory. He was rid of Renée, he saw no further obstacle, he surrendered himself to his father as he had surrendered himself to his stepmother.

      “Well then, that’s settled,” he said. “Only don’t talk about it to Renée. Her friends would chaff me and tease me, and I prefer that she should know of it at the same time as everybody else.”

      Saccard promised to be silent. Then, as they approached the top of the Boulevard Malesherbes, he again gave him a heap of excellent advice. He told him how he ought to set about in order to make his home a paradise.

      “Above all, never break off with your wife. It’s folly. A wife with whom you cease having connection costs you a fortune…. In the first place, you have to keep a woman, don’t you? And then the house expenses are much greater: there are dresses, madame’s private amusements, her dearest friends, the devil and all his retinue.”

      He was in a mood of extraordinary virtue. The success of his Charonne business had filled his heart with idyllic affection.

      “As for me,” he continued, “I was born to live in happy obscurity down in some village, with all my family around me…. People don’t know me, my boy…. I give the impression of being very frivolous. Well, that’s quite a mistake. I should love to be always near my wife, I would willingly exchange my business for a modest income that would enable me to retire to Plassans…. You are going to be a rich man; make yourself a home with Louise in which you will live like two turtle-doves. It’s so pleasant! I will come and see you. That will do me good.”

      He ended with tears in his voice. Meanwhile they had reached the gate of the house, and they stood talking on the kerbstone. A North wind was sweeping over the heights of Paris. No sound arose in the pale night, white with frost; Maxime, surprised at his father’s emotion, had had a question on his lips for the past minute.

      “But you,” he said at last, “it seems to me….”

      “What?”

      “Well, with your wife!”

      Saccard shrugged his shoulders.

      “Yes, just so! I was a