Gaiety was at its highest. The “dark spots” went to and fro, on their thin legs, with the swaying of headless crows. One gentleman’s shirt showed, with a bit of brace. Then the ladies begged for mercy, they were dying with laughter, and M. de Saffré graciously ordered them to go and fetch the “dark spots.” They flew off, like a covey of partridges, with a loud rustle of skirts. Then at the end of her run each seized hold of the cavalier nearest at hand. It was an indescribable hurly-burly. And one after the other the improvised couples disengaged themselves, waltzed round the room to the louder strains of the band.
Renée leant against the wall. She looked on, pale, with pursed lips. An old gentleman came gallantly to ask her why she did not dance. She had to smile, to answer something. She made her escape, she entered the supper-room. The room was empty. Amid the pillaged sideboards, the bottles and plates left lying about, Maxime and Louise sat quietly supping at one end of the table, side by side, on a napkin they had spread out between them. They looked quite at home, they laughed amid this disorder, amid the dirty plates, the greasy dishes, the still tepid remnants of the gluttony of the white-gloved supper-eaters. They had contented themselves with brushing away the crumbs around them. Baptiste stalked solemnly round the table, without a glance for the room, which looked as though it had been traversed by a pack of wolves; he waited for the servants to come and restore a semblance of order to the sideboards.
Maxime had succeeded in getting a very comfortable supper together. Louise adored nougat aux pistaches, a plateful of which had remained intact on the top of a sideboard. They had three partially-emptied bottles of champagne before them. “Perhaps papa has gone,” said the girl.
“So much the better!” replied Maxime. “I will see you home.”
And as she laughed:
“You know, they have made up their minds that I am to marry you. It’s no longer a joke, it’s serious…. What are we going to do when we get married?”
“We’ll do what the others do, of course!”
This joke escaped her rather quickly; she hastily added, as though to withdraw it:
“We will go to Italy. That will be good for my chest, I am very ill…. Ah, my poor Maxime, what a funny wife you’ll have! I’m no fatter than two sous’ worth of butter.”
She smiled, with a touch of melancholy, in her page’s dress. A dry cough sent a hectic flush to her cheeks.
“It’s the nougat,” she said. “I’m not allowed to eat it at home…. Pass me the plate, I will put the rest in my pocket.”
And she was emptying out the plate, when Renée entered. She went straight to Maxime, making an unconscionable effort to keep herself from cursing, from striking that hunchback whom she found there sitting at table with her lover.
“I want to speak to you,” she stammered, in a husky voice.
He wavered, alarmed, fearing to be alone with her.
“Alone, and at once,” repeated Renée.
“Why don’t you go, Maxime?” said Louise, with her unfathomable look. “You might at the same time see if you can discover what’s become of my father. I lose him at every party we go to.”
He rose, he endeavoured to stop Renée in the middle of the supper-room, asking her what she could have of so urgent a nature to communicate to him. But she rejoined between her teeth:
“Follow me, or I’ll speak out before everybody!”
He turned very pale, he followed her with the docility of a beaten animal. She thought Baptiste looked at her; but at this moment what did she care for the valet’s steady gaze? At the door the cotillon detained her a third time.
“Wait,” she muttered. “These idiots will never finish.”
And she took his hand, lest he should try to get away.
M. de Saffré was placing the Duc de Rozan with his back to the wall, in a corner of the room beside the door of the dining-room. He put a lady in front of him, then a gentleman back to back with the lady, then another lady facing the gentleman, and so on in a line, couple by couple, like a long snake. As the ladies lingered and talked:
“Come along, mesdames!” he cried. “Take your places for the ‘Columns.’“
They came, “the columns” were formed. The indecency of finding themselves thus caught, squeezed in between two men, leaning against the back of one, and feeling the chest of the other in front, made these ladies very gay. The tips of the breasts touched the facings of the dress-coats, the legs of the gentlemen disappeared in the ladies’ skirts, and when any sudden outburst of merriment made a head lean forward, the moustachios in front were obliged to draw back so as not to carry matters so far as kissing. At one moment a wag must have given a slight push, for the line closed up, the men plunged deeper into the skirts; there were little cries, laughs, endless laughs. The Baronne de Meinhold was heard to say: “But, monsieur, you are smothering me; don’t squeeze me so hard!” and this seemed so amusing, and occasioned so mad a fit of hilarity in the whole row that “the columns” tottered, staggered, clashed together, leant one against the other to avoid falling. M. de Saffré waited with raised hands, ready to clap. Then he clapped. At this signal, suddenly, all turned round. The couples who found themselves face to face clasped waists, and the row dispersed its chaplet of dancers into the room. None remained but the poor Duc de Rozan, who, on turning round, found himself stuck with his nose against the wall. He was ridiculed.
“Come,” said Renée to Maxime.
The band still played the waltz. This soft music, whose monotonous rhythm tended to become insipid, redoubled Renée’s exasperation. She gained the small drawingroom, holding Maxime by the hand; and pushing him up the staircase that led to the dressing-room:
“Go up,” she ordered.
She followed him. At this moment Madame Sidonie, who had been prowling after her sister-in-law the whole evening, astonished at her continual wanderings through the rooms, just reached the conservatory steps. She saw a man’s legs plunging into the darkness of the little staircase. A pale smile lit up her waxen face, and catching up her sorceress’s dress so as to go quicker, she hunted for her brother, upsetting a figure of the cotillon, questioning the servants she met on her way. She at last found Saccard with M. de Mareuil in a room adjacent to the dining-room, that had been fitted up as a temporary smoking-room. The two fathers were discussing the settlements, the contract. But when his sister came up and whispered a word in his ear, Saccard rose, apologized, disappeared.
Upstairs, the dressing-room was in complete disorder. On the chairs trailed Echo’s costume, the torn tights, odds and ends of crumpled lace, underclothing thrown aside in a heap, all that a woman in the hurry of being waited for leaves behind her. The little ivory and silver utensils lay here, there, and everywhere; there were brushes and nail-files that had fallen on to the carpet; and the towels, still damp, the cakes of soap forgotten on the marble slab, the scent bottles left unstoppered lent a strong, pungent odour to the flesh-coloured tent. Renée, to remove the white from her arms and shoulders, had dipped herself in the pink marble bath, after the tableaux-vivants. Iridescent soap-stains floated on the surface of the water now grown cold.
Maxime stepped on a corset, almost stumbled, tried to laugh. But he shuddered before Renée’s stern face. She came up to him, pushed him, said in a low voice:
“So you are going to marry the hunchback?”
“Not a bit of it,” he murmured. “Who told you so?”
“Oh, don’t tell any lies, it’s no use….”
He had a moment of resistance. She alarmed him, he wanted to have done with her.
“Well then, yes, I am going to marry her. And what then?… Am I not my own master?”
She