He came up in his usual compliant fashion. There was nothing to eat upstairs, and Céleste had gone to bed. Renée had to light the tapers in a little three-branched candlestick. Her hand trembled a little.
“That foolish creature,” she said, speaking of her maid, “must have misunderstood what I told her…. I shall never be able to undress myself all alone.”
She passed into her dressing-room. Maxime followed her, to tell her a fresh jest of Louise’s that recurred to his mind. He was as much at ease as though he had been loitering at a friend’s and was feeling for his cigar-case to light a Havannah. But when Renée had set down the candlestick, she turned round and fell into the young man’s arms, speechless and disquieting, gluing her mouth to his mouth.
Renée’s private apartment was a nest of silk and lace, a marvel of luxurious coquetry. A tiny boudoir led into the bedroom. The two rooms formed but one, or at least the boudoir was nothing more than the threshold of the bedroom, a large recess, furnished with long-chairs, and with a pair of hangings instead of a door. The walls of both rooms were hung with the same material, a heavy pale-gray silk, figured with huge bouquets of roses, white lilac, and buttercups. The curtains and door-hangings were of Venetian lace over a silk lining of alternate gray and pink bands. In the bedroom the white marble chimney-piece, of real jewel, displayed like a basket of flowers its incrustations of lapis lazuli and precious mosaic, repeating the roses, white lilac, and buttercups of the tapestry. A large gray-and-pink bed, whose woodwork was hidden beneath padding and upholstery, and whose head stood against the wall, filled quite one-half of the room with its flow of drapery, its lace and its silk figured with bouquets, falling from ceiling to carpet. As one should say a woman’s dress, rounded and slashed and decked with puffs and bows and flounces; and the large curtain, swelling out like a skirt, raised thoughts of some tall, amorous girl, leaning over, swooning, almost falling back upon the pillows. Beneath the curtains it was a sanctuary: cambric finely plaited, a snowy mass of lace, all sorts of delicate diaphanous things immersed in religious dimness. By the side of the bedstead, of this monument whose devout ampleness recalled a chapel decorated for some festival, the rest of the furniture subsiding into nothingness: low chairs, a cheval-glass six feet high, presses provided with innumerable drawers. Under foot, the carpet, blue-gray, was covered with pale full-blown roses. And on either side of the bed lay two great black bearskin rugs, edged with crimson velvet, with silver claws, and with their heads turned towards the window, gazing fixedly through their glass eyes at the empty sky.
Soft harmony, muffled silence reigned in this chamber. No shrill note, no metallic reflection, no bright gilding broke through the dreamy chant of pink and gray. Even the chimney ornaments, the frame of the mirror, the clock, the little candlesticks, were of old Sevres, and the mountings of copper-gilt were scarcely visible. Marvellous ornaments, the clock especially, with its ring of chubby Cupids, who climbed and leaned over the dial-plate like a troop of naked urchins mocking at the quick flight of time. This subdued luxury, these colours and ornaments which Renée’s taste had chosen soft and smiling, lent to the room a crepuscular light like that of an alcove with curtains drawn. The bed seemed to prolong itself till the room became one immense bed, with its carpets, its bearskin rugs, its padded seats, its stuffed hangings which continued the softness of the floor along the walls and up to the ceiling. And as in a bed, Renée left upon all these things the imprint, the warmth, the perfume of her body. When one drew aside the double hangings of the boudoir, it seemed as if one were raising a silken counterpane and entering some great couch, still warm and moist, where one found on the fine linen the adorable shape, the slumber and the dreams of a Parisian woman of thirty.
An adjoining closet, a spacious chamber hung with antique chintz, was simply furnished on every side with tall rosewood wardrobes, containing an army of dresses. Céleste, always methodical, arranged the dresses according to their dates, labelled them, introduced arithmetic amid her mistress’s blue and yellow caprices, and kept this closet as reposeful as a sacristy and as clean as a stable. There was no furniture in the room; not a rag lay about. The wardrobe-doors shone cold and clean like the varnished panels of a brougham.
But the wonder of the apartment, the room that was the talk of Paris, was the dressing-room. One said: “The beautiful Madame Saccard’s dressing-room,” as one says: “The Gallery of Mirrors at Versailles.” This room was situated in one of the towers, just above the little buttercup drawingroom. On entering, one was reminded of a large circular tent, an enchanted tent, pitched in a dream by some love-lorn Amazon. In the centre of the ceiling a crown of chased silver upheld the drapery of the tent, which ran, with a curve, to the walls, whence it fell straight down to the floor. This drapery, these rich hangings, consisted of pink silk covered with very thin muslin, plaited in wide folds at regular intervals. A band of lace separated the folds, and fillets of wrought silver ran down from the crown and glided down the hangings along either edge of each of the bands. The pink and gray of the bedroom grew brighter here, became a pink and white, like naked flesh. And under this bower of lace, under these curtains that hid all the ceiling save a pale blue cavity inside the narrow circlet of the crown, where Chaplin had painted a wanton Cupid looking down and preparing his dart, one would have thought one’s self at the bottom of a comfit-box, or in some precious jewel-case enlarged as though to display a woman’s nudity instead of the brilliancy of a diamond. The carpet, white as snow, stretched out without the least pattern or flower. The furniture consisted of a cupboard with plate-glass doors, whose two panels were inlaid with silver; a long-chair, two ottomans, some white satin stools; and a great toilet-table with a pink marble slab and legs hidden under flounces of muslin and lace. The glasses on the toilet-table, the bottles, the basin were of antique Bohemian crystal, streaked pink and white. And there was yet another table, inlaid with silver like the looking-glass cupboard, on which all the paraphernalia and toilet utensils were laid out, like the contents of a fantastic surgeon’s case, displaying a large number of little instruments of puzzling purpose, back-scratchers, nail-polishers, files of every shape and dimension, straight scissors and curved, every species of tweezer and pin. Each one of these articles of silver and ivory was marked with Renée’s monogram.
But the dressing-room had a delightful corner, which corner in particular made it famous. In front of the window the folds of the tent parted and disclosed, in a kind of long, shallow alcove, a bath, a tank of pink marble sunk into the floor, with sides fluted like those of a large shell and rising to a level with the carpet. Marble steps led down into the bath. Above the silver taps, shaped like swans’ necks, the back of the alcove was filled with a Venetian mirror, frameless, with curved edges, and a ground design on the crystal. Every morning Renée took a bath that lasted some minutes. This bath filled the dressing-room for the whole day with moisture, with a fragrance of fresh, wet flesh. Sometimes an unstoppered scent-bottle, a cake of soap left out of its dish, struck a more violent note in this somewhat insipid languor. Renée was fond of staying there till mid-day, almost naked. The round tent for its part was naked also. The pink bath, the pink slabs and basins, the muslin of the walls and ceiling, under which a pink blood seemed to course, acquired the curves of flesh, the curves of shoulders and breasts; and, according to the time of day, one would have thought of the snowy skin of a child or the hot skin of a woman. It was a vast nudity. When Renée left her bath, her fair-complexioned body added but a little more pink to all the pink flesh of the room.
It was Maxime who undressed Renée. He understood that sort of thing, and his quick hands divined pins and glided round her waist with innate science. He undid her hair, took off her diamonds, dressed her hair for the night. He added jests and caresses to the performance of his duties as lady’s-maid and hairdresser, and Renée laughed, with a broad stifled laugh, while the silk of her bodice cracked and her petticoats were loosened one by one. When she saw herself naked, she blew out the tapers of the candlestick, caught Maxime round the body, and all but carried him into the bedroom. The ball had completed her intoxication. In her fever she was conscious of the previous day spent by the fireside, of that day of ardent stupor, of vague and smiling dreams. She still heard the harsh voice of Saccard and Madame Sidonie talking, calling out figures through their noses like lawyers. Those were the people who overwhelmed her, who drove her to crime. And even now, when she sought his lips in the depths of the vast, dark bed, she still saw Maxime’s image in the firelight of yesterday, looking at her with eyes that scorched her.
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