The ladies had no more rest. Some of them had no less than three changes of dress. There were endless conferences, over which the préfet presided. To begin with, the character of Narcissus was discussed at length. Was it to be enacted by a woman or by a man? At last, at Renée’s entreaties, it was decided that the part should be entrusted to Maxime; but he was to be the only man, and even then Madame de Lauwerens declared she would never have consented to this if “little Maxime had not been so like a real girl.” Renée was to be Echo. The question of the dresses was far more complicated. Maxime was of great assistance to the préfet, who was distracted in the midst of the nine women whose mad imaginations threatened seriously to compromise the purity of outline of his work. Had he listened to them, Olympus would have worn powdered hair. Madame d’Espanet wanted positively to have a train to her dress so as to hide her feet, which were a trifle large, while Madame Haffner had visions of herself clad in the skin of a wild beast. M. Hupel de la Noue was vehement; once he even grew angry; he had made up his mind; he said that the only reason why he had renounced verse was that he might write his poem “in cunningly-contrived fabrics and the most beautiful eclectic poses.”
“The general effect, mesdames,” he repeated at each fresh instance of unreasonableness, “you forget the general effect…. I can’t possibly spoil my whole work for the sake of the furbelows you ask me for.”
The conferences took place in the buttercup drawingroom. Whole afternoons were spent in settling the cut of a skirt. Worms was called in several times. At last all was arranged, the costumes decided on, the positions learnt, and M. Hupel de la Noue declared he was satisfied. Not even the election of M. de Mareuil had given him so much trouble.
Les Amours du Beau Narcisse et de la Nymphe Écho was to begin at eleven o’clock. At half-past ten the large drawingroom was full, and as there was to be a fancy-dress ball afterwards, the women had come in costume, and were seated on chairs ranged in a semicircle before the improvised stage, a platform hidden by two broad curtains of red velvet with a gold fringe, running on rods. The men stood at the back, or moved to and fro. At ten o’clock the upholsterers had driven the last nail. The platform was erected at the end of the long gallery of a drawingroom, and occupied a whole section of it. The stage was approached from the smoking-room, which had been converted into a greenroom for the actors. In addition, the ladies had a number of rooms at their disposal on the first floor, where an army of ladies’ maids laid out the costumes for the different tableaux.
It was half-past eleven, and the curtains were not yet drawn apart. A loud buzzing filled the drawingroom. The rows of chairs offered a bewildering display of marquises, noble dames, milkmaids, Spanish ladies, shepherdesses, sultanas; while the compact mass of dress-coats set a great black blotch beside that shimmering of bright stuffs and bare shoulders, all flashing with the bright scintillations of jewellery. The women alone were in fancy-dress. It was already getting warm. The three chandeliers lit up the golden flood of the drawingroom.
At last M. Hupel de la Noue was seen to emerge from an opening arranged on the left of the platform. He had been helping the ladies since eight o’clock in the evening. His dress-coat had on the left sleeve the mark of three white fingers, a small woman’s hand which had been laid there after dabbling in a box of rice-powder. But the préfet had other things to think of besides his dress! His eyes were dilated, his face swollen and rather pale. He seemed to see nobody. And advancing towards Saccard, whom he recognized among a group of serious men, he said to him in an undertone:
“Damn it all! Your wife has lost her girdle of leaves…. We’re in a pretty mess!”
He swore, he could have thumped people. Then, without waiting for a reply, without looking at anything, he turned his back, dived under the draperies, and disappeared. The ladies smiled at this queer apparition.
The group amid which Saccard was standing was clustered behind the last row of chairs. An armchair had even been drawn out of the row for the Baron Gouraud, whose legs had been swelling for some time past. There were there M. Toutin-Laroche, whom the Emperor had just created a senator; M. de Mareuil, whose second election the Chamber had deigned to confirm; M. Michelin, newly decorated; and, a little further back, the Mignon and Charrier couple, of whom one wore a big diamond in his necktie, while the other displayed a still bigger one on his finger. The gentlemen chatted together. Saccard left them for a moment to go and exchange a whispered word with his sister, who had just come in and was sitting between Louise de Mareuil and Madame Michelin. Madame Sidonie was disguised as a sorceress; Louise was jauntily attired in a page’s dress that made her look quite an urchin; the little Michelin, dressed as an alme, smiled amorously through her veils embroidered with threads of gold.
“Have you learnt anything?” Saccard softly asked his sister.
“No, not yet,” she replied. “But the spark must be here…. I’ll catch them tonight, make yourself easy.”
“Let me know at once, won’t you?”
And Saccard, turning to right and left, complimented Louise and Madame Michelin. He compared the latter to one of Mahomet’s houris, the former to a favourite of Henry III. His Provençal accent seemed to make the whole of his spare, strident figure sing with delight. When he returned to the group of serious men, M. de Mareuil took him aside and spoke to him of their children’s marriage. Nothing was altered, the contract was still to be signed on the following Sunday.
“Quite so,” said Saccard. “I intend even to announce the match to our friends this evening, if you see no objection…. I am only waiting for my brother the minister, who has promised to come.”
The new deputy was delighted. Meantime, M. Toutin-Laroche was raising his voice as though seized with lively indignation.
“Yes, messieurs,” he said to M. Michelin and the two contractors, who drew near, “I was goodnatured enough to allow my name to be mixed up in an affair like that.”
And as Saccard and Mareuil came up to them:
“I was telling these gentlemen the regrettable catastrophe of the Société Générale of the Ports of Morocco; you know, Saccard?”
The latter did not flinch. The company in question had just collapsed amid a terrible scandal. Over-inquisitive shareholders had insisted on learning what progress had been made with the establishment of the famous commercial stations on the Mediterranean sea-board, and a judicial enquiry had shown that the Ports of Morocco existed only on the plans of the engineers: very handsome plans hung on the walls of the Company’s offices. Since then M. Toutin-Laroche had been clamouring more loudly than the shareholders, waxing indignant, demanding that his name should be restored to him without a stain. And he made so much noise that the Government, in order to calm this useful man and restore him in the eyes of public opinion, decided to send him to the Senate. It was thus that he fished up the so greatly coveted seat, in an affair that had very nearly involved him in a criminal trial.
“It is very kind of you to be interested in that,” said Saccard, “when you can point to your great work, the Crédit Viticole, a concern that has emerged triumphantly from every crisis.”
“Yes,” murmured Mareuil, “that is an answer to everything.”
As a matter of fact the Crédit Viticole had just issued from a serious but carefully concealed embarrassment. A minister who was very tenderly disposed towards this financial institution, which held the Municipality of Paris by the throat, had forced on a bulling operation which M. Toutin-Laroche had turned to wonderfully good account. Nothing flattered him more sweetly than the praise bestowed upon the prosperity of the Crédit Viticole. As a rule he provoked it.