Her voice had softened. She uttered these last words as though she were seeking something, gradually falling into a deep reverie. The carriage was then ascending the avenue which leads to the way out of the Bois. The darkness increased; the undergrowth, on either side, flew past them like two grey walls; the yellow painted iron chairs, on which the holiday-making citizens lounge on fine evenings, sped along the side-walks, unoccupied, and wrapt in that black melancholy peculiar to garden furniture overtaken by winter; and the rumble, the dull and cadenced sound of the returning vehicles, was wafted over the deserted way like some sad wail.
No doubt Maxime felt all the bad form there was in finding life amusing. If he was still young enough to yield to an outburst of delighted admiration, he possessed an egotism too vast, an indifference too scoffing, he already felt too much real weariness, to do other than declare himself sick of everything, satiated, done for. He was usually in the habit of glorifying in this avowal.
He stretched himself out like Renée, and assumed a doleful tone of voice.
"Really now! you're right," said he; "it's enough to kill one. Ah! I don't amuse myself any more than you, you may be sure; I too have often dreamed of something else. Nothing is stupider than travelling. As for making money, I prefer far more to spend it, though that is not always as amusing as one would fancy at first. Then there's love-making, being loved, one soon has more than enough of it, is it not so? ah yes, one soon has more than enough of it!"
As the young woman did not answer, he continued, washing to astonish her by something grossly impious:
"I should like to be loved by a nun. Eh! perhaps there would be some amusement in that! Have you never dreamed of loving a man of whom you could never think without committing a crime?"
But she remained gloomy, and Maxime, seeing that she still kept silent, thought that she was not listening to him. With the nape of her neck leaning against the padded edge of the carriage, she seemed sleeping with her eyes open. She was wrapt in thought, inert, full of the dreams which kept her thus depressed, and, at times, a nervous twinge passed over her lips. She was softly overcome by the shadow of the twilight; all that this shadow contained of undefined sadness, of discreet voluptuousness, of unavowed hope, penetrated her, bathed her in a sort of languid and morbid atmosphere. Whilst looking fixedly at the round back of the footman on the box-seat, she was thinking no doubt of those joys of former days, of those parties she now found so dull, and for which she no longer cared; she looked back on her past life, the immediate satisfaction of every whim, the fulsomeness of luxury, the crushing monotony of similar affections and similar betrayals. Then, like a hope, there arose in her, as she quivered with desire, the thought of this "something else" which her overwrought mind was unable to fix upon. There, her reverie wandered. She made effort upon effort, but each time the sought-for word disappeared in the gathering night, became lost in the continuous rumble of the vehicles. The gentle motion of the carriage was a hesitation the more which prevented her formulating her desire. And an immense temptation ascended from out of this vagueness, from these copses slumbering in the shadows on either side of the avenue, from this noise of wheels and from this soft oscillation which filled her with a delicious torpor. A thousand little thrills passed over her flesh: unfinished dreams, nameless ecstasies, confused wishes, all the grace and monstrosity which a return from the Bois, at the hour when the heavens assume a pallid hue, can introduce into the wearied heart of a woman. She kept her hands buried in the bearskin, she felt quite hot in her white cloth jacket with mauve velvet facings. On thrusting out her foot as she stretched herself with bodily enjoyment her ankle rubbed against Maxime's warm leg, but he did not even notice the contact of her flesh. A jerk roused her from her lethargy. She raised her head, and her grey eyes looked in a bewildered sort of way at the young man who was seated in the most elegant attitude.
At this moment, the carriage left the Bois. The Avenue de l'Impératrice extended in a straight line in the twilight, with the two green borders of wooden fence which seemed to meet at the horizon. In the distance, a white horse, on the side-path reserved for riders, appeared like a bright speck in the midst of the grey shadow. Here and there, on the opposite side of the roadway, were groups of black dots, belated pedestrians, slowly wending their steps towards Paris. And, right at the top, at the end of the mixed and moving line of vehicles, the Arc-de-Triomphe, placed sideways, stood out all white against a vast stretch of sky the colour of soot.
Whilst the carriage ascended at a faster pace, Maxime, charmed with the English appearance of the landscape, examined the whimsically designed villas on either side of the avenue, with their lawns sloping down to the footpaths; Renée, still wrapt in reverie, amused herself by watching at the edge of the horizon the gas-lamps of the Place de l'Étoile as they were lighted up one by one; and as fast as their bright glimmers speckled the expiring light with little yellow flames, she fancied she could hear secret calls, it seemed to her that the flaring Paris of a winter's night was being illuminated on her account, and was preparing for her the unknown enjoyment after which her satiated body hankered.
The carriage turned down the Avenue de la Reine-Hortense, and drew up at the end of the Rue Monceaux, a few steps from the Boulevard Malesherbes, in front of a grand mansion situated between a courtyard and a garden. The two iron gates loaded with gilt ornaments, which gave admittance to the courtyard, were each flanked by a pair of lamps, shaped like urns and also covered with gilding, in which flared great flames of gas. Between the two gates, the doorkeeper occupied an elegant lodge which vaguely resembled a little Greek temple.