She kept this tragedy for herself alone, and redoubled its anguish by the fever of her imagination. She would have died rather than confess the truth to Maxime. She had an inward fear lest the young man might revolt and leave her; above all she had so absolute a belief in the monstrousness of her sin and the eternity of her damnation, that she would rather have crossed the Parc Monceau naked than have confessed her shame in a whisper. On the other hand, she still remained the scatter-brain who astonished Paris with her eccentricities. Nervous gaiety seized hold of her, prodigious caprices, which were discussed in the newspapers with her name disguised under initials. It was at this period that she seriously wanted to fight a duel, with pistols, with the Duchesse de Sternich, who had purposely, she said, upset a glass of punch over her gown; her brother-in-law, the minister, had to speak angrily to her before she would relinquish her idea. On another occasion she bet Madame de Lauwerens that she could run round the track at Longchamps in less than ten minutes, and it was only a question of costume that deterred her. Maxime himself began to be frightened of this head in which madness was shooting up, and in which he thought he could hear, at night, on the pillow, all the hubbub of a city on heat for enjoyment.
One night they went together to the Théâtre-Italien. They had not even looked at the bill. They wanted to see a great Italian actress, Ristori, who was at that time being run after by all Paris, and who was so much in fashion that they were forced to take an interest in her. The play was Phèdre. He remembered his classical repertory sufficiently well, and she knew enough Italian, to follow the performance. And this tragedy even gave them a special emotion, played in this foreign language whose sonorousness seemed to them at times to be a simple orchestral accompaniment to the pantomime of the actors. The Hippolyte was a tall, pale fellow, a very poor actor, who wept through his part.
“What an ass!” muttered Maxime.
But Ristori, with her broad shoulders shaken by sobs, with her tragic features and large arms, moved Renée profoundly. Phèdre was of Pasiphaé’s blood, and she asked herself of whose blood she could be, she, the incestuous one of modern time. And she saw nothing of the piece save this tall woman dragging across the stage the crime of antiquity. In the first act, when Phèdre confides her criminal affection to Œnone; in the second when, all burning, she declares herself to Hippolyte; and later, in the fourth act, when the return of Thésée overwhelms her, and she curses herself, in a crisis of sombre fury, she filled the house with such a cry of savage passion, with so great a yearning for superhuman voluptuousness, that Renée felt every shudder of her desire and of her remorse pass through her own flesh.
“Wait,” whispered Maxime in her ear, “you will hear Théramène tell his story. What an old fat-head!”
And he muttered in a hollow voice:
“Scarce had we issued forth from Trœzen’s gates,
“He on his chariot…”
But while the old man spoke, Renée had neither eyes nor ears. The light from the roof blinded her, a stifling heat came to her from all those pale faces stretched out towards the stage. The monologue continued, interminable. She was back in the hothouse, under the ardent foliage, and she dreamt that her husband came in and surprised her in the arms of his son. She suffered hideously, she was losing consciousness, when the last death-rattle of Phèdre, repenting and dying in the convulsions of poison, made her re-open her eyes. The curtain fell. Would she have the strength to poison herself some day? How mean and shameful was her tragedy by the side of the idyl of antiquity! And while Maxime fastened her opera-cloak under her chin, she still heard Ristori’s rough voice growling behind her, and Œnone’s complacent murmur replying.
In the brougham Maxime did all the talking. He thought tragedy “disgusting” as a rule, and preferred the plays at the Bouffes. Nevertheless Phèdre was pretty “thick.” He felt interested because…. And he squeezed Renée’s hand to complete his thought. Then a funny notion came into his head, and he yielded to the impulse to make a joke.
“I was wise,” he murmured, “not to go too near the sea at Trouville.”
Renée, lost in the depths of her melancholy dream, was silent. He had to repeat his sentence.
“Why?” she asked, astonished, unable to understand.
“Why, the monster…”
And he tittered. The jest froze Renée. Everything was becoming unhinged in her head. Ristori was no longer anything but a great buffoon who pulled up her peplon and stuck out her tongue at the audience like Blanche Muller in the third act of La Belle Hélène, Théramène danced a can-can, and Hippolyte ate bread and jam, and stuffed his fingers up his nose.
When a more piercing remorse than usual made Renée shudder, she felt an insolent reaction. What was her crime after all, and why should she blush? Did she not tread on greater infamies every day? Did she not rub shoulders at the ministries, at the Tuileries, everywhere, with wretches like herself, who wore millions on their bodies and were adored on both knees? And she thought of the shameful intimacy of Adeline d’Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, at which one smiled now and again at the Empress’s Mondays. And she recalled the traffic driven by Madame de Lauwerens, whose praises were sung by husbands for her propriety, her orderly conduct, her promptness in paying her bills. She called up the names of Madame Daste, Madame Teissière, the Baronne de Meinhold, those creatures who let their lovers pay for their luxuries, and who were quoted in fashionable society as shares are quoted on the Bourse. Madame de Guende was so stupid and so beautifully made, that she had three superior officers for her lovers at the same time, and was unable to tell one from the other, because of their uniform; wherefore that demon of a Louise said that she first made them strip to their shirts so as to know which of the three she was talking to. The Comtesse Vanska for her part could remember courtyards in which she had sung, pavements on which she had been seen, dressed in calico, prowling along like a she-wolf. Each of these women had her shame, her open, triumphant sore. And lastly, overtopping them all, uprose the Duchesse de Sternich, old, ugly, wornout, with the halo of a night passed in the Imperial bed; she typified official vice, from which she derived as it were a majesty of debauch and a sovereignty over this band of illustrious strumpets.
Then the incestuous woman grew accustomed to her sin as to a gala-dress whose stiffness had at first inconvenienced her. She followed the fashions of the period, she dressed and undressed as others did. She ended by believing herself to live in a world above common morality, in which the senses became refined and developed, and in which one was allowed to strip one’s self naked for the benefit of all Olympus. Sin became a luxury, a flower set in the hair, a diamond fastened on the brow. And she again saw, as a justification and a redemption, the Emperor passing on the general’s arm through the two rows of bowing shoulders.
One man alone, Baptiste, her husband’s valet, continued to disquiet her. Since Saccard had been showing himself gallant, this tall, pale, dignified valet seemed to walk around her with the solemnity of mute disapprobation. He never looked at her, his cold glances passed higher, above her chignon, with the modesty of a church-beadle refusing to defile his eyes by allowing them to rest on the hair of a sinner. She imagined that he knew everything, she would have purchased his silence had she dared. Then she became filled with uneasiness, she felt a sort of confused respect whenever she met Baptiste, and she said to herself that all the respectability of her household had withdrawn and concealed itself under this lackey’s dress-coat.
One day she asked Céleste:
“Does Baptiste make jokes in the kitchen? Have you ever heard any stories about him, has he a mistress?”
“What a question!” was all the maid replied.
“Come, has he made love to you?”
“Eh! but he never looks at women. We hardly ever see him…. He is always either with monsieur or in the stables…. He says he’s very fond of horses.”
Renée was irritated at this respectability. She insisted, she would have liked to be able to despise her servants. Although she had taken a liking to Céleste,