Born Of Ice

Featured on alibris.com
( 4.5/5.0 ★ | 114 downloads )
-- Click the link to download --

https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=*C/UgjGtUZ8&offerid=1494105.26
539780312942328&type=15&murl=https%3A%2F%2Fsiteproxy.ruqli.workers.dev%3A443%2Fhttp%2Fwww.alibris.com%2Fsearch%2
Fbooks%2Fisbn%2F9780312942328
Born Of Ice

ISBN: 9780312942328
Category: Media > Books
File Fomat: PDF, EPUB, DOC...
File Details: 15.6 MB
Language: English
Website: alibris.com
Short description: Fast &-Good condition with a solid cover and clean
pages. Shows normal signs of use such as light wear or a few marks
highlighting but overall a well-maintained copy ready to enjoy.
Supplemental items like CDs or access codes may not be included.

DOWNLOAD: https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=*C/UgjGtUZ8&
offerid=1494105.26539780312942328&type=15&murl=http%3A%2F%2F
www.alibris.com%2Fsearch%2Fbooks%2Fisbn%2F9780312942328
 Born Of Ice

• Click the link: https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=*C/UgjGtUZ8&offerid=1494105.2653978031294232

• Don’t miss the chance to explore our extensive collection of high-quality resources, books, and guides on
our website. Visit us regularly to stay updated with new titles and gain access to even more valuable
materials.
.
contained long boxes full of flowers, an immense aviary, but not a
single article of furniture. There was simply some matting spread
over the floor. It was the "children's room." Throughout the mansion
it was known and called by this name. The house was so cold, the
courtyard so damp, that aunt Élisabeth had dreaded some harm
might come to Christine and Renée from this chill breath which hung
about the walls; more than once had she scolded the children for
running about the arcades, and taking a delight in dipping their little
arms in the icy water of the fountain. Then she had the idea to turn
this out-of-the-way garret to account for them, the only nook
wherein the sunshine had been entering and rejoicing, all by itself,
for two centuries past, in the midst of the cobwebs. She gave them
some matting, some birds, and some flowers. The little girls were
delighted. During the holidays Renée lived there, bathing in the
yellow sunshine, which seemed pleased with the embellishments
made to its retreat, and with the two fair heads sent to keep it
company. The room became a paradise, ever resounding with the
chirping of the birds and the chatter of the children. It had been
given up to them entirely. They called it "our room;" it was their
domain; they even went so far as to lock themselves in to prove to
their satisfaction that they were the sole mistresses of it. What an
abode of happiness! A massacre of playthings lay expiring on the
matting in the midst of the bright sunshine.
And the great delight of the children's room was, after all, the vast
horizon. From the other windows of the mansion there was nothing
to gaze upon but black walls a few feet off. But from this one, one
could see all that portion of the Seine, all that district of Paris which
extends from the Cité to the Pont de Bercy, flat and immense, and
which resembles some primitive city in Holland. Down below, on the
Quai de Béthune, were some tumble-down wooden sheds,
accumulations of beams and fallen roofs, amidst which the children
often amused themselves by watching enormous rats scamper
about, with a vague dread of seeing them crawl up the high walls.
But it was beyond this that the real delight of the view began. The
boom, with its tiers of timbers, its buttresses resembling those of
some Gothic cathedral, and the slender Pont de Constantine swaying
like a piece of lace beneath the footsteps of passengers, crossed
each other at right angles, and seemed to dam up and keep in check
the enormous mass of water. Right in front, the trees of the Halle
aux Vins, and further away, the shrubberies of the Jardin des Plantes
were a mass of green, and spread out as far as the horizon; whilst,
on the other side of the river, the Quai Henri IV. and the Quai de la
Rapée extended their low and irregular buildings, their row of
houses which, looked at from above, resembled the tiny wood and
cardboard houses the little girls kept in boxes. In the background, to
the right, the slate roof of the Salpêtrière rose with a bluish tinge
above the trees. Then, in the centre, descending right down to the
Seine, the broad paved banks formed two long grey tracks, streaked
here and there by a row of casks, a horse and cart, or an empty coal
or wood barge lying stranded high and dry. But the soul of all this,
the soul which filled the landscape, was the Seine, the living river; it
came from afar, from the vague and trembling border of the horizon,
it emerged from over there, as from a dream, to flow straight to the
children, in the midst of its tranquil majesty, its mighty expansion
which spread and became a flood of water at their feet, at the
extremity of the island. The two bridges which crossed it, the Pont
de Bercy and the Pont d'Austerlitz, seemed like necessary bonds
placed there to keep it in check, and prevent it rising to the room.
The little ones loved the giant, they filled their eyes with its colossal
flow, with that ever murmuring flood which rolled towards them, as
though to reach to where they were, and which they could feel rive
and disappear to the right and left into the unknown, with the
docility of a conquered Titan. On fine days, mornings with a blue sky
overhead, they were charmed with the beautiful dresses the Seine
assumed; varying dresses which changed from blue to green, with a
thousand infinitely delicate tints; one could have fancied them of
silk, spotted with white flames, and trimmed with frills of satin;
whilst the boats drawn up at either bank formed an edging of black
velvet ribbon. In the distance, especially, the material became quite
admirable and precious, like some fairy's tunic of enchanted gauze;
beyond the strip of dark green satin, with which the shadow of the
bridges girdled the Seine, were plastrons of gold and skirts of some
plaited material the colour of the sun. The immense sky formed a
vaulted roof above this water, these low rows of houses, this foliage
of the two parks.
Weary at times of this boundless horizon, Renée, already a big
girl, and full of a carnal curiosity picked up at school, would take a
peep at Petit's floating swimming-baths moored to the extremity of
the island. She sought to catch a glimpse, between the waving linen
clothes hung up on lines in place of a roof, of the men in their
bathing drawers, and with their chests all bare.
 CHAPTER III.
Maxime remained at the college of Plassans until the holidays of
1854. He was thirteen years and a few months old and had just
passed through the fifth class. It was then that his father decided
that he should come to Paris, reflecting that a son of Maxime's age
would consolidate his position and establish him for good in the part
he played as a rich and serious re-married widower. When he
mentioned his plan to Renée, towards whom he prided himself upon
being extremely gallant, she negligently answered:
"Quite so, let the little fellow come. He will amuse us a bit. One is
bored to death of a morning."
The little fellow arrived a week afterwards. He was already a tall,
spare urchin with an effeminate face, a delicate, wide-awake look,
and pale flaxen hair. But how he was rigged out; good heavens!
Cropped to the ears, with his hair so short that the whiteness of his
skull was barely covered with a slight shadow, he moreover wore a
pair of trousers too short for his legs, carter's shoes, and a frightfully
threadbare tunic which was much too full and made him almost look
hunchbacked. Thus accoutred, surprised by the new things he saw,
he looked around him, not at all timidly but with the savage, cunning
air of a precocious child who hesitates about trusting himself to
anyone at once.
A servant had just brought him from the railway station, and he
was in the large drawing-room, delighted with the gilding of the
furniture and the ceiling, completely happy at sight of this luxury
amid which he was going to live, when Renée, returning from her
tailor's, swept in like a gust of wind. She threw off her hat and the
white burnous which she had placed upon her shoulders to shield
her from the cold, which was already keen; and she appeared before
Maxime—stupefied with admiration—in all the glow of her
marvellous costume.
The child thought she was disguised. Over a delicious skirt of blue
faille with deep flounces, she wore a kind of garde française habit in
pale grey silk. The lappets of the habit, lined with blue satin of a
deeper shade than the faille of the skirt, were coquettishly caught up
and secured with bows of ribbon; the cuffs of the tight sleeves, the
broad facings of the bodice expanded on either side trimmed with
the same satin. And, as a supreme seasoning, as a bold stroke of
eccentricity, large buttons imitating sapphires, and fastened on blue
rosettes, adorned the front of the habit in a double row. It was at
once ugly and adorable.
 RENÉE AND MAXIME MEETING FOR THE FIRST
TIME.
As soon as Renée perceived Maxime, "It's the little fellow, isn't it?"
she asked of the servant; she was surprised to find him as tall as
herself.
The child was eating her with his eyes. This lady, with so white a
skin, whose bosom could be seen through a gap of her plaited
chemisette, this sudden and charming apparition with her hair raised
high on her head, her gloved slender hands and her little masculine
boots with pointed heels, delighted him; she seemed to be the good
fairy of this warm gilded room. He began to smile, and he was just
awkward enough in manner to retain his urchin-like gracefulness.
"Why, he is funny!" exclaimed Renée. "But how horrible! How they
have cut his hair! Listen, my little fellow, your father will probably
only come home for dinner and I shall be obliged to settle you here.
I'm your stepmamma, sir. Will you kiss me?"
"Willingly," answered Maxime without any fuss; and he kissed the
young wife on both cheeks, taking hold of her by the shoulders,
whereby the garde française habit was a trifle crumpled.
She freed herself, laughing, and saying: "Dear me! how funny he
is, the little shearling!" Then again approaching him and more
serious: "We shall be friends sha'n't we? I want to be a mother to
you. I reflected about it while I was waiting for my tailor, who was
engaged, and I said to myself that I ought to be very kind and bring
you up quite properly. I will be very nice!"
Maxime continued looking at her, with his blue, minx-like eyes,
and suddenly: "How old are you?" he asked.
"But that is a question one never asks!" she exclaimed, clasping
her hands together. "He doesn't know it, poor little fellow! It will be
necessary to teach him everything. Fortunately I can still confess my
age. I am twenty-one."
"I shall soon be fourteen. You might be my sister—"
He did not finish his sentence, but his eyes added that he had
expected to find his father's second wife much older. He was very
near her and looked at her neck so attentively that she almost
finished by blushing. Besides, her giddy head was turning, it could
never dwell for long on the same subject; and she began to walk
about and talk of her tailor, forgetting that she was addressing a
child.
"I ought to have been here to receive you. But, just fancy, Worms
brought me this costume this morning. I tried it on and found it
rather successful. It is very stylish, isn't it?"
She had placed herself before a mirror. Maxime was coming and
going behind her to examine her on all sides.
"However as I put on the coat," she added, "I noticed there was a
large fold there on the left shoulder, do you see? That fold is very
ugly, it makes me look as if I had one shoulder higher than the
other."
He had approached and passed his finger over the fold as if to
smooth it down, and his vicious schoolboy hand seemed to tarry on
the spot with a certain amount of satisfaction.
"Well," she continued, "I couldn't wait. I had the horses harnessed
and I went to tell Worms what I thought of his inconceivable
carelessness. He promised me he would set it right."
Then she remained in front of the mirror still looking at herself,
lost as it were in a sudden reverie. She ended by placing a finger on
her lips with an air of thoughtful impatience. And in a low voice as if
talking to herself she said: "There is something wanting—yes, really,
there is something wanting—"
Then, with quick motion, she turned and stationed herself in front
of Maxime and asked him:
"Is it really the thing? Don't you think there is something wanting,
a trifle, a bow somewhere?" The schoolboy, reassured by the young
woman's familiarity, had regained all the assurance of his forward
nature. He drew back, drew near, blinked his eyes and muttered:
"No, no, nothing's wanting, it's very pretty, very pretty—I rather
think that there is something too much."
 He slightly blushed despite his audacity, drew still nearer, and
tracing with his finger-tip an acute angle on Renée's breast: "In your
place," he continued, "I should round that lace like that and put on a
necklace with a large cross."
She clapped her hands and looked radiant. "That's it, that's it,"
she cried, "I had the large cross on the tip of my tongue."
She folded back her chemisette, disappeared for a couple of
minutes, and then returned with the necklace and the cross, and
placing herself again in front of the mirror with an air of triumph:
"Oh! that's the ticket, quite the ticket," she muttered. "The little
shearling isn't at all a fool. Did you dress women in the country
then? I see that we shall really be good friends. But you must listen
to me. To begin with, you must let your hair grow and you mustn't
wear that frightful tunic any more. Besides, you must pay proper
attention to my lessons in good manners. I want you to be a nice
young man."
"Why, of course," said the child naively, "as papa is rich at present
and as you are his wife."
She smiled and with her usual vivacity:
"Then let us begin by thee-and-thouing one another. I say thou
and you in the same breath. It's stupid. You will love me a great
deal?"
"I will love thee with all my heart," he answered with the effusive
manner of an urchin towards his sweetheart.
Such was Maxime and Renée's first interview. The lad did not go
to school till a month later. During the earlier days his stepmother
played with him as with a doll. She polished off his countryfied air,
and it must be added that he seconded her with extreme
willingness. When he appeared, dressed from head to foot in new
clothes supplied by his father's tailor, she gave a cry of joyous
surprise. He was as pretty as a heart, such was her expression. The
only thing was that his hair grew with most annoying sluggishness.
The young woman frequently said that all one's face was in one's
hair. She tended her own devoutly. For a long while she had been
greatly worried by its colour, that particular pale yellow tint, which
reminded one of the best butter. But when the fashion of wearing
yellow hair set in she was delighted, and to make people believe that
she did not follow the fashion by compulsion she declared that she
dyed her hair every month.
Maxime was already terribly knowing for his thirteen years. His
was one of those frail precocious natures in which the senses assert
themselves early. He practised vice even before he knew desire. On
two occasions he had all but been expelled from the college. Had
Renée's eyes been accustomed to provincial graces she would have
noticed that, despite his ill-fitting clothes, the little shearling, as she
called him, smiled, turned his neck and extended his arms in a pretty
way, with the feminine air of those who serve as schoolboys' girls.
He was very careful about his hands, which were slight and long;
and although his hair remained cropped short by order of the
principal, an ex-colonel of engineers, he possessed a little looking-
glass which he pulled out of his pocket during lesson time, which he
placed between the pages of his book, and into which he gazed for
whole hours, examining his eyes, his gums, making pretty faces at
himself, and learning various kinds of coquetry. His schoolfellows
hung round his blouse as round a skirt, and he buckled his belt so
tightly that he had a grown woman's slim waist and undulation of
the hips. To tell the truth, he received as many blows as caresses.
The college of Plassans, a den of little bandits, like most provincial
colleges, thus proved to be a hotbed of contamination in which
Maxime's neutral temperament and childhood fraught with evil
owing to some mysterious hereditary cause, were singularly
developed. Fortunately age was about to alter him. But the trace of
his childish abandonments, the effemination of his whole being, the
time when he had thought himself a girl, were destined to remain in
him and strike him for ever in his virility.
Renée called him "Mademoiselle," without knowing that six
months earlier she would have spoken the truth. To her he seemed
very obedient, very loving, and indeed his caresses often made her
ill-at-ease. He had a manner of kissing that heated her skin. But
what delighted her was his artfulness; he was exceedingly funny and
bold, already speaking of women with a smile and holding his own
against Renée's friends, dear Adeline who had just married M.
d'Espanet, and fat Suzanne, married quite recently to the great
manufacturer Haffner. When he was fourteen he had a passion for
the latter. He had taken his stepmother into his confidence and she
was greatly amused.
"For myself I should have preferred Adeline," she said, "she's
prettier."
"Perhaps so," replied the urchin, "but Suzanne is ever so much
fatter. I like fine women. It would be very kind of you to speak to
her for me."
Renée laughed. Her doll—this tall urchin with a girl's manners—
seemed to her more amusing than ever since he was in love. The
time came when Madame Haffner seriously had to defend herself.
Moreover the ladies encouraged Maxime with their stifled laughter,
their unfinished sentences, and the coquettish attitudes which they
assumed in his presence. There was a touch of very aristocratic
debauchery in all this. The three of them, scorched by passion amid
their tumultuous life, lingered over the urchin's delightful depravity
as over a novel harmless spice which tickled their palates. They let
him touch their dresses, and pass his fingers over their shoulders
when he followed them into the ante-room to help them on with
their wrappers; they passed him along from hand to hand, laughing
like lunatics when he kissed their wrists near the veins, on the spot
where the skin is so soft; then they became maternal and learnedly
taught him the art of being a fine gentleman and pleasing women.
He was their toy, a little fellow of ingenious mechanism who kissed
and courted, who had the most delightful vices in the world, but
who remained a plaything, a little cardboard puppet whom they did
not much fear, though just enough to quiver very agreeably at the
touch of his childish hand.
After the holidays, Maxime went to the Lycée Bonaparte. It was
the college of fashionable society, the one that Saccard was bound
to choose for his son. However soft and light headed the little fellow
might be, he still had a keen intelligence; but he applied it to
something very different to classical studies. However he was a
tolerably efficient pupil who never fell to the Bohemian level of
dunces, but remained among the well dressed and properly
conducted young gentlemen of whom nothing was ever said. All that
remained to him of his early youth was a perfect worship for dress.
Paris opened his eyes, made him a swell young man, tightly
buttoned up in his clothes and following the fashions. He was the
Brummel of his class. He presented himself there as he would have
presented himself in a drawing-room, daintily booted, tightly gloved,
with prodigious neckties and ineffable hats. There were some twenty
pupils of the kind who formed a sort of aristocracy, who in leaving
school for the day offered each other Havannah cigars contained in
cases with gold mountings, and who were followed by servants in
livery carrying their packets of books. Maxime had persuaded his
father to buy him a tilbury and a little black horse which were the
admiration of his school fellows. He himself drove, while on the seat
behind sat a footman with folded arms, who carried on his knees the
collegian's copy book case, a perfect ministerial portfolio in brown
leather. And you should have seen how lightly, scientifically and
correctly Maxime came in ten minutes from the Rue de Rivoli to the
Rue du Havre, drew his horse up sharp before the college door and
said to the footman, "At half past four, Jacques, eh?" The
neighbouring shopkeepers were delighted with the grace of this fair
haired youngster whom twice a day at regular hours they saw arrive
and start off in his trap. On returning home he sometimes gave a lift
to a friend, whom he set down at his door. The two children smoked,
looked at the women and splashed the passers-by as if they were
returning from the races. 'Twas an astonishing little world, a
conceited foolish brood, that could be seen each day in the Rue du
Havre, correctly attired in masher's jackets, aping rich and wearied
men, whilst the Bohemian contingent of the college, the real
schoolboys, arrived shouting and shoving, stamping on the
pavement with their heavy shoes, and with their hooks hanging at
the end of a strap over their backs.
 Renée, who wished to consider the part she played as a mother
and a schoolmistress a serious one, was delighted with her pupil. It
is true that she neglected nothing to perfect his education. She was
then passing through a period full of mortification and tears; a lover
had abandoned her, in scandalous style in sight of all Paris, to attach
himself to the Duchess de Sternich. She dreamt that Maxime would
be her consolation, she made herself older, she endeavoured to be
maternal, and became the most eccentric mentor that can be
imagined. Maxime's tilbury often remained at home; it was Renée
who came to fetch the collegian with her roomy carriage. They hid
the brown portfolio under the cushion, and went to the Bois de
Boulogne then in its freshness. She there gave him a course of
lectures on high elegance. She pointed out to him the upper ten of
imperial Paris, fat and happy, still ecstasied by the warm touch which
changed the starvelings and pigs of the day before into great lords
and millionaires puffing and fainting under the weight of their cash
boxes. But the youngster particularly questioned her about women,
and as she was very familiar with him, she gave him precise
particulars: Madame de Guende was stupid but admirably formed;
the wealthy Countess Vanska had been a street singer before she
married a Pole who was said to beat her; as for the Marchioness
d'Espanet and Suzanne Haffner they were inseparable; and although
they were Renée's intimate friends, she added—compressing her lips
as if to prevent herself from saying any more—that some very nasty
stories were told about them; beautiful Madame de Lauwerens was
also a very compromising woman, but she had such pretty eyes, and
after all everyone knew that she herself was irreproachable,
although somewhat too much mixed up in the intrigues of the poor
little women who frequented her, Madame Daste, Madame Teissière
and the Baroness de Meinhold. Maxime wished to have the ladies'
portraits; and with them he adorned an album which remained on
the drawing-room table. With that vicious artfulness which was his
predominant characteristic he tried to embarrass his stepmother by
asking her for particulars concerning the fast women, at the same
time pretending to take them for women of society. Renée,
becoming moral and serious, said that they were frightful creatures
and that he ought to carefully avoid them; then forgetting herself
she talked about them as if they were people whom she had known
intimately. One of the youngster's great delights was to set her
talking about the Duchess de Sternich. Each time that her carriage
passed theirs in the Bois, he never missed naming the duchess with
cruel artfulness and an under glance which proved that he was
acquainted with Renée's last adventure. Then she in a harsh voice
tore her rival to pieces; how old she was looking, poor woman, she
painted her face, she had lovers hidden in all her cupboards, she
had given herself to a chamberlain so as to be in the imperial bed.
And Renée ran on and on, while Maxime, to exasperate her, declared
that he thought Madame de Sternich charming. Such lessons
singularly developed the collegian's intelligence, and this, all the
more, as his young teacher repeated them every where, in the Bois,
at the theatre, and in the drawing-rooms. The pupil thus became
very proficient.
Maxime adored living amid women's skirts, finery and rice powder.
He always remained somewhat girlish with his tapering hands, his
beardless face, and his white, fleshy neck. Renée gravely consulted
him about her dresses. He knew the good costumiers of Paris and
pronounced judgment upon each of them in a word, he talked about
the "savour" of such a one's bonnets and the "logic" of such a one's
dresses. At seventeen there was not a milliner whom he had not
proved, not a bootmaker whose heart he had not penetrated and
studied. This strange abortion who during the English lessons at
college, read the prospectuses that his perfumer sent him every
Friday, would have delivered a complete discourse on Parisian
society, customers and tradespeople included, at an age when
country youngsters don't dare look a housemaid in the face. On his
way home he often brought a bonnet, a box of soap or an article of
jewellery that his stepmother had ordered the day before. Some
strip of musk-scented lace always lingered in his pockets.
However his great affair was to accompany Renée when she called
on the illustrious Worms, the tailor of genius, before whom the
queens of the Second Empire fell on their knees. The great man's
waiting room was vast, square and furnished with roomy divans.
Maxime entered it with a feeling of religious emotion. Dresses
certainly have a special perfume; silk, satin, velvet, lace had there
mingled their light aroma with that of women's hair and amber-
shaded shoulders; and the atmosphere of the room retained an
oderiferous warmth, an incense of flesh and luxury which
transformed the apartment into a chapel consecrated to some secret
divinity. It was often necessary for Renée and Maxime to dance
attendance during hours; a series of feminine solicitors were there,
waiting their turn, dipping biscuits into glasses of Madeira, taking a
snack on the large central table covered with bottles and plates full
of little cakes. The ladies were at home, they talked freely, and when
they ensconced themselves around the room you would have
thought that a flight of Lesbian nymphs had alighted on the divans
of a Parisian drawing-room. Maxime, whom they put up with and
even liked on account of his girlish air, was the only man admitted
into the circle. He there tasted divine delight: he glided along the
divans like a supple snake; he was discovered under a skirt, behind a
bodice, or between two dresses, where he made himself as small as
possible and kept very quiet, inhaling the perfumed warmth of his
feminine neighbours.
"That youngster pokes himself everywhere," said the Baroness de
Meinhold tapping him on the cheeks.
He was so slightly built that the ladies did not think him more than
fourteen. They amused themselves by intoxicating him with the
illustrious Worms's Madeira, whereupon he said some astounding
things which made them laugh till they cried. However it was the
Marchioness d'Espanet who hit upon the right remark for the
circumstance. As Maxime was discovered one day, in a corner of the
divan, behind her back—
"That boy ought to have been a girl," she murmured, seeing him
so rosy and blushing, so penetrated with the delight he had
experienced at being close to her.
Then when the great Worms finally received Renée, Maxime
followed her into the study. He had ventured to speak two or three
times whilst the master became absorbed in contemplating his
customer, just like Leonardo da Vinci in presence of the Joconde,
according to the pontiffs of art. The master had deigned to smile at
the appropriateness of Maxime's remarks; he made Renée stand
upright before a mirror, rising from the parquetry to the ceiling, and
he pondered with a contraction of the eyebrows, whilst the young
woman, affected, caught her breath so as not to stir. And after a few
minutes the master, as if seized and shaken by inspiration, roughly
and jerkily described the work of art he had just conceived,
exclaiming in curt phrases:
"Montespan dress in ash tinted silk—the train describing a rounded
skirt in front—large bow of grey satin catching it up on the hips—
finally an apron composed of puffs of pearl grey tulle, the puffs
separated by bands of grey satin."
He again reflected, seemed to dive to the very depths of his
genius, and with the triumphant grimace of a python seated upon
the tripod he concluded:
"In the hair, upon this smiling head, we will place the dreamy
butterfly of Psyche with wings of changeful blue."
But on other occasions, inspiration was sluggish. The illustrious
Worms summoned it in vain and concentrated his faculties to no
purpose. He tortured his eyebrows, turned livid, took his poor head,
which he wagged in despair, between his hands, and conquered,
throwing himself into an arm-chair:
"No," he would mutter in a sorrowful voice, "no, not to-day—it
isn't possible—These ladies presume too much. The source is dried
up."
And he would turn Renée out of doors, repeating:
"Impossible, impossible, dear madame, you must call again
another day. I'm not in the vein to deal with your style this
morning."
The fine education that Maxime received had a first result. At
seventeen the youngster seduced his stepmother's maid. The worst
of the affair was that the girl found herself in the family way. It was
necessary to send her into the country with the kid and make her a
small allowance. Renée was terribly vexed by this adventure.
Saccard occupied himself about it merely to settle the pecuniary side
of the question; but the young woman roundly scolded her pupil. To
think he should compromise himself with such a girl when she
wanted to make a gentleman of him! What a ridiculous, shameful
beginning, what a disgraceful prank! If he had at least only launched
forth with one of those ladies!
"Oh! quite so," he answered quietly, "if your dear friend Suzanne
had only chosen she could have gone into the country instead of the
maid."
"Oh! you naughty fellow," muttered Renée, disarmed and
enlivened by the idea of seeing Suzanne retire into the country with
an allowance of twelve hundred francs a year.
Then a funnier thought occurred to her, and forgetting her part as
an irritated mother, bursting into pearly laughter which she
restrained with her fingers, she stammered, glancing at him out of
the corner of her eyes:
"I say, how angry Adeline would have been with you, and what a
scene she would have had with her—"
She did not finish. Maxime was laughing with her. Such was the
fine ending of Renée's lecture on this occasion.
Meanwhile Saccard troubled himself but little concerning the two
children, as he called his son and his second wife. He left them
complete liberty, feeling happy at seeing them such good friends,
whereby the flat was filled with noisy gaiety. It was a singular flat,
this first floor in the Rue de Rivoli. The doors were opening and
shutting all day long, the servants talked aloud; through the fresh
bright luxury of the place there constantly swept a flight of huge
skirts, and processions of tradespeople; and in addition there was all
the disorder occasioned by Renée's friends, Maxime's chums, and
Saccard's visitors. From nine till eleven a.m. the last named received
the strangest throng one could find, senators and lawyers' clerks,
duchesses and old clothes-dealers, all the scum that the tempests of
Paris landed of a morning at his door; silk dresses, dirty skirts,
blouses, dress coats, all of which he received with the same hasty
language and the same impatient nervous gestures. He settled a
business affair in a couple of minutes, dealt with twenty difficulties
at once and furnished solutions on the run. One would have thought
that this restless little man, whose voice was very loud, was fighting
in his study with his visitors, with the furniture, turning somersaults,
knocking his head against the ceiling to make ideas flash forth from
it, and always falling victorious on his feet again. Then at eleven
o'clock he went out and was not seen again for the day; he lunched,
and indeed, he often dined away from home. Then the house
belonged to Renée and Maxime. They took possession of the father's
study, they unpacked the tradespeoples' cardboard boxes there, and
articles of finery lay about among the business papers. At times
serious people waited for an hour at the door of the study whilst the
collegian and the young woman seated at either end of Saccard's
writing table, discussed a bow of ribbon. Renée had the horses put
to ten times a day. They seldom shared a meal together; two of the
three were ever on the wing, forgetting time, and only returning
home at midnight. It was a dwelling of noise, business and pleasure,
into which modern life swept like a gust of wind, with a sound of
chinking gold and rustling dresses.
Aristide Saccard had found his vein at last. He had revealed
himself as a great speculator and juggled with millions. After the
masterly stroke of the Rue de la Pépinière he boldly threw himself
into the struggle, which was beginning to scatter flashing triumphs
and shameful wrecks through Paris. At first he executed safe
strokes, repeating his first success, buying up houses which he knew
to be threatened with the pickaxe, and utilising his friends so as to
obtain heavy indemnities. There came a moment when he had five
or six houses, those houses that he had looked at so strangely in
former times, as acquaintances of his when he was merely a poor
road inspector. But all that was the mere infancy of art, it did not
require much cunning to run out leases, to plot with tenants, and to
rob the State and private people; and he considered that the game
was not sufficiently remunerative. For that reason he soon placed his
genius at the service of more complicated affairs.
Saccard at first invented the dodge of buying houses secretly on
behalf of the city of Paris. The latter's situation had become a
difficult one owing to a decision of the Council of State. The city
authorities had purchased, by private contract, a large number of
houses in the hope of running out the leases and getting rid of the
tenants without the payment of an indemnity. But these purchases
were considered by the Council of State to be real expropriations
and the city had to pay. It was then that Saccard offered to lend his
name to the city; he bought houses, ran out the leases, and for a
consideration handed the property over to the authorities at the date
agreed upon. Indeed he finished by playing a double game; he
bought property both for the city and for the prefect. When the
affair was too tempting he stuck to the house himself. The State
paid. In reward for his services he obtained the right to cut bits of
streets and open spaces which had been planned, a right which he
sold again to some one else before the new thoroughfare was even
commenced. It was a hot game; people gambled with the new
streets just as with stocks and shares. Certain ladies, pretty
prostitutes, intimate with high functionaries, were in the swing; one
of them, whose white teeth are famous, nibbled whole streets on
various occasions. Saccard grew more hungry than ever, feeling his
desires increase at the sight of the flood of gold which glided
between his fingers. It seemed to him as if a sea of twenty-franc
pieces expanded around him, swelling from a lake to an ocean,
filling the vast horizon with a strange wave-like noise, a metallic
music which tickled his heart; and he grew adventurous, becoming
each day a bolder swimmer, diving, rising again to the surface, now
on his back, now on his belly, crossing this immensity in fair and foul
weather alike, and relying on his strength and skill to prevent him
from ever sinking to the bottom.
Paris was then disappearing in a cloud of plaster dust. The times
that Saccard had predicted on the heights of Montmartre had come.
The city was being slashed to pieces with sabre strokes and he had
a finger in every slash, in every wound. He had piles of building
materials derived from demolished houses in the four corners of the
city. In the Rue de Rome he was mixed up in that astonishing story
of a pit which a company dug to carry off five or six thousand cubic
metres of soil and create a belief in a gigantic enterprise, and which
had to be filled up again by bringing soil from Saint-Ouen when the
company had failed. Saccard got out of the affair with his conscience
at ease and his pockets full, thanks to his brother Eugène, who was
kind enough to intervene. At Chaillot he assisted in cutting through
the heights and throwing them into a hollow to make way for the
boulevard running from the Arc-de-Triomphe to the Alma bridge. In
the direction of Passy it was he who had the idea of scattering the
refuse cleared away from the Trocadéro, upon the plateau, so that
the good soil is now-a-days two yards below the surface, and even
weeds refuse to grow amid the broken plaster. He might have been
found in twenty directions at once, at every spot where there was
some insurmountable obstacle, a mass of clearings which no one
knew what to do with, a hollow which it was difficult to fill up, a pile
of soil mingled with plaster over which the engineers in their feverish
haste grew impatient, but which he sifted with his own hands and in
which he always finished by finding some sop or other, or a
speculation in his own peculiar line. On the same day he ran from
the works round about the Arc-de-Triomphe to those of the
Boulevard St. Michel, from the clearings of the Boulevard
Malesherbes to the embankments of Chaillot, dragging with him an
army of workmen, lawyers, shareholders, dupes, and scamps.
But his purest glory was the Crédit Viticole, which he had
established in conjunction with Toutin-Laroche. The latter was the
official director, he himself only figured as a member of the board. In
this circumstance Eugène had again done his brother a good turn.
Thanks to him the government authorized the establishment of the
company and watched its operations with great indulgence. On one
difficult occasion, when an evil-minded newspaper ventured to
criticise one of the company's operations, the "Moniteur" went so far
as to publish a note forbidding any discussion concerning so
honourable an undertaking, which the State deigned to patronize.
The Crédit Viticole was based on an excellent financial system; it lent
farmers half of the estimated value of their property, obtained a
mortgage as guarantee for the loan, and received interest from the
borrowers as well as an annual instalment of the principal. No
financial system was ever more dignified or proper. Eugène had
informed his brother with a sly smile that the Tuileries wished people
to be honest. M. Toutin-Laroche interpreted this wish by letting the
farmers' loan-machine work quietly, and by annexing to it a banking-
house which attracted capital and gambled feverishly, launching
forth into all sorts of adventurous enterprises. The Crédit Viticole
thanks to the formidable impulsion it received from its director, soon
enjoyed a well-established reputation of solidity and prosperity. At
the outset, in view of offering at the Bourse, at one go, a mass of
shares freshly detached from their counterfoils, and to give them the
aspect of having long been in circulation, Saccard ingeniously had
them trodden on and beaten, during a whole night, by the bank
collectors provided with birch brooms. The headquarters of the
Crédit Viticole might have been taken for a branch of the Bank of
France. The house where the offices were located seemed to be the
grave and dignified temple of Mammon, with its courtyard full of
equipages, its solemn iron railings, its broad flight of steps and its
monumental staircase, its suites of luxurious private rooms, and its
world of clerks and liveried lackeys; and nothing could fill the public
with more religious emotion than the sanctuary, the cashier's office,
reached by a passage of sacred bareness, and where one perceived
the safe, the god, crouching, embedded in the wall, squat and
somniferous with its three locks, its massive flanks, and its air of
divine brutishness.
Saccard jobbed a big affair with the city of Paris. The latter, hard-
up, crushed by its debt, dragged into this dance of millions which it
had started to please the Emperor and fill certain people's pockets,
was now reduced to borrowing covertly, not caring to own its violent
fever, its stone-and-pickaxe madness. It had just begun to issue
what it called delegation bonds, real bills of exchange at a distant
date, so as to pay the contractors on the very days that the
agreements were signed, and thus enable them to obtain money by
having these bonds discounted. The Crédit Viticole had graciously
accepted this paper from the contractors; and one day when the city
was in need of money Saccard went to tempt it. A considerable sum
was lent it on the security of delegation bonds which M. Toutin-
Laroche swore he had obtained from contracting companies, and
which he had dragged through all the gutters of speculation. After
that the Crédit Viticole was above attack; it held Paris by the throat.
The director now only talked with a smile about the famous Société
Générale of the Ports of Morocco; and yet it still existed, and the
newspapers continued regularly extolling the great commercial
stations. One day when M. Toutin-Laroche tried to persuade Saccard
to take some shares in this enterprise, the latter laughed in his face,
asking him if he thought him fool enough to invest his money in the
"General Company of the Arabian Nights."
Saccard had so far speculated successfully, with safe profits,
cheating, selling himself, making money by contracts, deriving some
sort of gain from each of his operations. Soon, however, this jobbing
did not suffice him, he disdained gleaning, picking up the gold which
folks like Toutin-Laroche and Baron Gouraud dropped behind them.
He plunged his arms into the bag, up to the shoulders. He went into
partnership with Mignon, Charrier & Co., the famous contractors,
who were then just starting, and who were destined to make
colossal fortunes. The city of Paris had already decided not to
execute the works itself, but to have the boulevards laid out by
contract. The contracting companies agreed to deliver a
thoroughfare complete, with its trees planted, its benches and lamp-
posts duly placed, in exchange for a specified indemnity; at times
they even delivered the thoroughfare for nothing, finding themselves
amply remunerated by retaining the bordering building ground, for
which they asked a greatly enhanced price. The fever of speculation
in land, the furious rise in the value of house property date from this
period. Saccard, thanks to his connections, obtained a grant to lay
out three lots of boulevard. He was the ardent and somewhat
muddling soul of the partnership. Messieurs Mignon & Charrier, his
dependents at the outset, were fat, artful fellows, master masons,
who knew the value of money. They laughed slyly at sight of
Saccard's equipages; they generally retained their blouses, never
refused to shake hands with a workman, and returned home
covered with plaster dust. They came from Langres both of them,
and into this burning, never satisfied Paris they brought their
Champagnese prudence, their calm brains, somewhat obtuse and
deficient in intelligence, but very quick in profiting of opportunities
for filling their pockets, free to enjoy themselves later on. If Saccard
promoted the affair and infused life into it with his fire and rageous
appetite, Messieurs Mignon & Charrier by their plodding habits, their
narrow methodical management, prevented it a score of times from
being capsized by the astonishing imagination of their partner. They
would never consent to have superb offices in a mansion which he
wanted to build to astonish Paris. They also refused to entertain the
secondary speculations which sprouted in his brain every morning,
such as the erection of concert halls and vast bathing establishments
on the building ground bordering their thoroughfare; of covered
galleries, which would have doubled the rent of the shops and have
allowed people to circulate through Paris without getting wet. To put
a stop to these plans, which frightened them, the contractors
decided that the building ground should be divided between the
three partners, and that each should do what he pleased with his
share. They themselves wisely continued selling their lots while he
built upon his. His brain boiled. He would, in all seriousness, have
proposed placing Paris under a huge bell-glass to change it into a
conservatory and grow pine apples and sugar cane there.
Turning over money by the shovelful he soon had eight houses on
the new boulevards. He had four that were completely finished, two
in the Rue de Marignan, and two on the Boulevard Haussmann; the
four others, situated on the Boulevard Malesherbes, remained in
progress, and indeed one of them, a vast enclosure of planks where
a magnificent mansion was to rise, had only the flooring of the first
floor laid. At this period his affairs became so complicated, he had so
many strings attached to each of his fingers, so many interests to
watch over and puppets to set in motion, that he slept barely three
hours a night and read his correspondence in his carriage. The
marvellous thing was that his cash-box seemed inexhaustible. He
was a shareholder in every company, built houses with a kind of
fury, turned himself to every trade and threatened to inundate Paris
like a rising tide, without once being seen to realise a clear profit or
pocket a large sum shining in the sunlight. The river of gold, of
unknown source, which seemed to flow from his study in quickly
recurring waves, astonished the Parisian cockneys, and at one
moment made him the prominent man to whom the newspapers
ascribed all the witticisms of the Bourse.
With such a husband Renée was about as little married as she
could be. She remained for whole weeks almost without seeing him.
On the other hand he was perfect; he threw his cash-box wide open
for her. In point of fact, she liked him as she would have liked an
obliging banker. When she went to the Béraud mansion she praised
him highly before her father, whose severity and coldness did not
abate on account of his son-in-law's fortune. Her contempt had fled;
this man seemed so convinced that life is a mere business affair, he
was so plainly born to coin money out of whatever fell into his
hands, women, children, paving-stones, sacks of mortar, and
consciences, that she could not reproach him for having made their
marriage a bargain. Since that bargain he in a measure looked upon
her as upon one of those fine houses which honoured him and from
which he expected to derive large profits. He liked to see her well
dressed, noisy, making all Paris turn the head. It consolidated his
position, doubled the probable figure of his fortune. By his wife he
seemed handsome, young, amorous, and giddy. She was a partner,
an accomplice without knowing it. A new pair of horses, a dress
costing two thousand crowns, a weakness for a lover, facilitated,
often ensured the success of his most remunerative transactions.
Moreover, he frequently pretended to be worn-out, and sent her to a
minister's, or some functionary's, to solicit an authorisation or
receive a reply. "And be good!" he said to her in a tone, at once
jesting and coaxing, which only belonged to himself. And when she
returned, when she had succeeded, he rubbed his hands, repeating
his famous phrase, "And you were good?" Renée laughed. He was
too active to wish his wife to be a Madame Michelin. He simply liked
coarse witticisms and indecent suppositions. Besides, if Renée had
"not been good" he would only have experienced the mortification of
having really paid for the minister's or functionary's compliance. To
dupe people, to give them less than their money's worth, was a
feast for him. He often said: "If I were a woman I should perhaps
sell myself, but I should never deliver the merchandise; it's too
stupid."
This madcap Renée, who had appeared one night in the Parisian
firmament like the eccentric fairy of fashionable sensuality, was the
least analyzable of women. No doubt if she had been brought up at
home she would by means of religion or some other satisfaction for
the nerves have attenuated the desires by which she was at times
really maddened. She belonged to the middle classes by her mind;
she was perfectly upright, with a love for logical things, a fear of
heaven and hell and a huge dose of prejudices; she belonged to her
father's side, to the calm and prudent race among which fireside
virtues flourish. And yet it was in this nature of hers that prodigious
fancies, ever reviving inquisitiveness and desires not to be
confessed, sprouted and grew. While she was with the ladies of the
Visitation, free, her mind wandering amid the mystical
voluptuousness of the chapel and the carnal attachment of her
young friends, she had framed for herself a fantastic education,
learning vice, throwing all the frankness of her nature into it,
unsettling her young brain to such a point that she singularly
embarrassed her confessor by owning to him that she had felt a
most unreasonable longing to get up and kiss him one day during
mass. Then she struck her breast, she turned pale at the thought of
the devil and his cauldrons. The fault which, later on, had brought
about her marriage with Saccard, that brutal rape which she had
experienced with a kind of frightened expectation, made her despise
herself and in a great measure caused the abandonment of her
whole life. She thought that she no longer had to struggle against
evil that it was in her, that logic authorized her to follow the bad
science to the end. With her there was yet more curiosity than
appetite. Thrown into the society of the Second Empire, abandoned
to her imagination, provided with money, encouraged in her loudest
eccentricities, she gave herself, regretted it, and finally succeeded in
killing her expiring principles, always lashed, always urged onward
by her insatiable longing to learn and feel.
Besides she was as yet only at the earlier pages. She willingly
talked in a low tone, and laughing, about the extraordinary
circumstances of the tender attachment between Suzanne Haffner
and Adeline d'Espanet, of the questionable calling of Madame de
Lauwerens, and of the kisses which the Countess Vanska gave at a
fixed price; but she still contemplated these things from afar off,
with a vague notion of perhaps tasting them, and this indeterminate
desire which at evil moments rose within her, increased her turbulent
anxiety still more and urged her on in her mad search for an unique
exquisite enjoyment of which she alone would partake. Her first
lovers had not spoiled her; she had on three occasions fancied
herself seized with a great passion; love burst forth in her brain like
a cracker, the sparks of which did not reach her heart. She was mad
for a month, showed herself throughout Paris with her dear lord;
and then one morning, amid all the racket of her love, she became
conscious of depressing silence and immense vacuity. The first, the
young Duke de Rozan, was barely more than a breakfast of
sunshine; Renée who had noticed him on account of his gentleness
and excellent manners, found him altogether superficial, washed
out, and plaguy when they were alone together. Mr. Simpson, an
attaché of the American embassy, who came next, almost beat her,
and for that reason remained with her for nearly a year. Then she
smiled on an aide-de-camp of the Emperor, the Count de Chibray, a
vain handsome man who was beginning to tire her when the
Duchess de Sternich took it into her head to fall in love with him and
carry him off from her; thereupon she wept for him and let her
friends understand that her heart was crushed, and that she should
never love again. She thus progressed to the most insignificant
being in the world, Monsieur de Mussy, a young man who was
making his way in the diplomatic career by conducting cotillons with
especial gracefulness; she never exactly knew why she had given
herself to him but she retained him for a long time, feeling lazy,
disgusted with an unknown land which one discovers in half an hour,
and deferring the worry attendant upon a change until she had met
with some extraordinary adventure. At twenty-eight years of age she
already felt terribly wearied. Ennui appeared to her all the more
insupportable, as her middle-class virtues profited by the hours
when she was bored to complain and worry her. She closed her door,
she had frightful headaches. Then when the door opened again it
was a flood of silk and lace that swept forth with a great racket, a
being of luxury and joy without a care or a flush upon the brow.
Still she had had a romance in her commonplace fashionable life.
One day, at sunset, after going on foot to see her father, who did not
like to hear the noise of carriages at his door, she noticed, while
passing along the Quai Saint-Paul on her way home, that she was
being followed by a young man. It was warm and the daylight was
waning with amorous softness. She, who was usually only followed
on horseback in the pathways of the Bois de Boulogne, found the
adventure spicy and was flattered by it as by a new homage,
somewhat brutal no doubt, but the very coarseness of which
titillated her. Instead of returning home she took the Rue du Temple
and promenaded her gallant along the Boulevards. The man
however grew bolder and became so pressing that Renée, somewhat
intimidated, lost her head, followed the Rue du Faubourg-
Poissonnière, and took refuge in the shop kept by her husband's
sister. The man came in behind her. Madame Sidonie smiled, seemed
to understand, and left them alone. And when Renée wished to
follow her sister-in-law the stranger retained her, spoke to her with
feeling politeness and won her forgiveness. He was a clerk called
Georges whose surname she never asked. She went to see him
twice, going in by the shop while he arrived by the Rue Papillon.
This chance love affair, found and accepted in the street, proved one
of her keenest pleasures. She always thought of it with a little
shame, but with a singular smile of regret. Madame Sidonie's profit
in the affair was that she at last became the accomplice of her
brother's second wife, a part which she had been anxious to play
ever since the wedding-day.
Poor Madame Sidonie had experienced a deception. While she was
promoting the marriage she had hoped in a degree to espouse
Renée herself, make her a customer and derive a number of little
profits by her. She judged women at a glance like connoisseurs
judge horses. And so, after allowing the couple a month to settle
themselves, her consternation was great when, on perceiving
Madame de Lauwerens enthroned in the centre of the drawing-
room, she realised that she came too late. Madame de Lauwerens, a
handsome woman of twenty-six, occupied herself with launching
newcomers into the swing. She belonged to a very old family and
was married to a man of the upper financial world, who had the fault
of refusing to settle tailors' and milliners' bills. His wife, a very
intelligent person, coined money and kept herself. She held men in
horror, she said; but she supplied all her female friends with them;
there was always a full stock to choose from in the flat which she
occupied in the Rue de Provence, over her husband's offices. Little
collations took place there; and one met one another in an
unforeseen charming manner. There was no harm in a girl going to
see her dear Madame de Lauwerens, and if chance brought men
there who were at all events very respectful and belonged to the
best society—why so much the worse. The lady of the house was
charming in her long lace wrappers. A visitor would very often have
chosen her in preference to her collection of blondes and brunettes.
But report asserted that she was altogether well conducted. The
whole secret of the affair lay in that. She still held her high situation
in society, had all the men for her friends, retained her pride as a
virtuous woman, and experienced a secret joy in lowering the others
and deriving a profit by their fall. When Madame Sidonie had
enlightened herself as to the mechanism of the new invention she
was sorely distressed. It was the classical school, the woman in an