Sometimes Renée, wearied of this unbounded horizon, a big girl already, and full of a fleshly curiosity brought back from her boarding-school, would throw a glance into the swimming school attached to Petit’s floating baths, which were moored to the end of the island. She sought to catch a glimpse, through the flapping linen cloths hung up on lines to serve as a roof, of the men in bathing-drawers showing their naked bellies.
CHAPTER III
Maxime remained at school at Plassans until the holidays of 1854. He was a few months over thirteen, and had just passed the fifth class. It was then that his father decided to let him come to Paris. He reflected that a son of that age would give him a certain position, would fix him definitively in the part he played of a wealthy widower, twice married, and serious in his views. When he informed Renée, towards whom he prided himself upon his extreme gallantry, of his intention, she answered, negligently:
“That’s right, have the boy up…. He will amuse us a little. One is bored to death in the mornings.”
The boy arrived a week later. He was already a tall, spare stripling, with a girl’s face, a delicate, forward look, and very light flaxen hair. But great God! how oddly he was got up! He was cropped to the ears, his hair was cut so short that the whiteness of his cranium was barely covered with a shadow of pale down, he wore trousers too short for him, hobnailed shoes, a hideously threadbare tunic that was much too wide and made him look almost hunchbacked. In this garb, surprised at the new things he saw, he looked about him, not at all timidly, but with the savage, cunning air of a precocious child, that is loth to come out of its shell at first sight.
A servant had just fetched him from the station, and he was waiting in the big drawingroom, charmed with the gilding on the ceiling and furniture, thoroughly delighted with this luxury in which he was about to spend his life, when Renée, returning from her tailor, swept in like a gust of wind. She threw off her hat and the white burnoose which she had placed over her shoulders to protect her from the cold, which was already keen. She appeared before Maxime, who was stupefied with admiration, in all the brilliancy of her marvellous attire.
The child thought she was dressed up. She wore a delicious skirt of blue faille, with deep flounces, and over that a sort of French-guard’s coat in pale-gray silk. The flaps of the coat, lined with blue satin of a deeper shade than the faille of the skirt, were bravely caught up and secured with knots of ribbon; the cuffs of the flat sleeves, the broad lapels of the bodice stood out wide, trimmed with the same satin. And as a supreme effort of trimming, as a bold stroke of eccentricity, two rows of large buttons imitating sapphires and fastening into blue rosettes, adorned the front of the coat. It was ugly and entrancing.
When Renée perceived Maxime:
“It’s the boy, is it not?” asked she of the servant, surprised to find him as tall as herself.
The child was devouring her with his eyes. This lady with a skin so white, whose bosom showed through a gap of her plaited shirtfront, this sudden and charming apparition, with her hair dressed high, her elegant, gloved hands, her little Wellington boots with pointed heels that dug into the carpet, delighted him, seemed to him to be the good fairy of this warm, gilded room. He began to smile, and he was just sufficiently awkward to retain his urchin gracefulness.
“Why, he is quite amusing!” cried Renée….”But what a shame! how they have cut his hair!… Listen, my little friend, your father will probably not come in till dinnertime, and I shall have to make you at home…. I am your stepmother, monsieur. Will you give me a kiss?”
“Yes, if you like,” answered Maxime, boldly.
And he kissed Renée on both cheeks, taking her by the shoulders, whereby the French-guard’s coat was a little rumpled. She freed herself, laughing, saying:
“Oh dear, how amusing he is, the little shaveling!…”
She came back to him, more serious.
“We shall be friends, sha’n’t we?… I want to be a mother to you. I was thinking about it while I was waiting for my tailor, who was engaged, and I said to myself that I must be very kind and bring you up quite properly…. That will be nice!”
Maxime continued to stare at her with his blue forward girl’s eyes, and suddenly:
“How old are you?” he asked.
“But you should never ask that!” she cried, clasping her hands together….”He knows nothing, poor little wretch! He will have to be taught everything…. Luckily I can still tell my age. I am twenty-one.”
“I shall soon be fourteen…. You might be my sister.”
He did not go on, but his look added that he had expected to find his father’s second wife much older. He was standing quite close to her, and examining her neck so attentively that she almost ended by blushing. Her giddy head, moreover, was turning: it was never able to fix itself long on the same subject; and she began to walk about, to speak of her tailor, forgetting she was talking to a child.
“I wanted to be here to receive you. But think, Worms brought me this dress this morning…. I tried it on and I thought it rather successful. It is very smart, is it not?”
She had moved before a mirror. Maxime walked to and fro behind her so as to examine her on every side.
“Only,” she continued, “when I put on the coat, I noticed there was a large fold, there, on the left shoulder, d’you see?… That fold is very ugly, it makes me look as if I had one shoulder higher than the other.”
He came up to her and pressed his finger over the fold as though to smooth it down, and his vicious schoolboy hand seemed to linger on that spot with a certain satisfaction.
“Well,” she continued, “I couldn’t wait. I had the horses put to, and I went to tell Worms what I thought of his outrageous carelessness…. He promised me to put it right.”
Thereupon she remained before the mirror, still looking at herself, lost in a sudden reverie. She ended by laying one finger on her lips, with an air of contemplative impatience. And quite low, as if talking to herself:
“It wants something…. Yes, really, it wants something….”
Then, with a quick movement, she turned round, placed herself in front of Maxime, and asked him:
“Is it really right?… Don’t you think it wants something, a trifle, a bow somewhere or other?”
The schoolboy was reassured by Renée’s familiarity, and resumed all the assurance of his forward nature. He drew back, came nearer, screwed up his eyes, and murmured:
“No, no, it wants nothing,