This idea must have struck the young man as highly comical, for he had turned the corner of the Boulevard Malesherbes before he had done laughing.
The carriage entered and drew up at the foot of the steps.
These steps, which were broad and low, were sheltered by a vast glass verandah edged with a scallop imitating golden fringe and tassels. The two storeys of the mansion rose above the domestic offices, the square windows of which, glazed with ground glass, appeared almost on a level with the soil. At the top of the steps, the hall-door stood out flanked by slender columns fixed in the wall, forming thus a kind of fore-part pierced at each floor by a round bay, and ascending as high as the roof where it terminated in a point. On either side, each storey had five windows, placed at regular intervals along the façade, and surrounded by a simple stone border. The roof, with its attic windows, was square shaped, with broad sides almost perpendicular.
But the façade on the garden side was far more sumptuous. A regal flight of steps led to a narrow terrace which extended the whole length of the ground floor; the balustrade of this terrace, in the style of the railings of the Parc Monceaux, was even more covered with gilt than the verandah and the lamps of the courtyard. Above this rose the mansion with a wing at either end, like two towers half inserted in the body of the building, and which contained rooms of circular shape. In the centre, another tower, even deeper inserted still, formed a slight curve. The windows, tall and narrow in the wings, wider apart and almost square on the flat portions of the façade, had stone balustrades on the ground floor, and gilded wrought-iron handrails at the upper storeys. It was a display, a profusion, a superabundance of riches. The mansion disappeared beneath the carvings. Around the windows, along the cornices, were scrolls of flowers and branches; there were balconies resembling masses of verdure supported by great nude women with strained hips and protruding breasts; then, here and there, were fantastical escutcheons, bunches of fruit, roses, every blossom it is possible to represent in stone or marble. As fast as one's glance ascended, the building seemed to bloom the more. Around the roof was a balustrade, bearing at equal distances urns on which burnt flames of stone. And there, between the oval windows of the attics, which opened amidst an incredible medley of fruits and foliage, expanded the crowning portions of this amazing ornamentation, the pediments of the two wings in the centre of which reappeared the great nude women, playing with apples and standing in every conceivable posture amongst sheaves of reeds. The roof, loaded with these ornaments, surmounted besides with galleries of carved lead, with two lightning conductors and with four enormous symmetrical chimney stacks sculptured like all the rest, seemed to be the final flare up of this architectural firework.
To the right was a vast conservatory, fixed to the side of the mansion, and communicating with the ground floor by means of a French window opening out of a little drawing-room. The garden, separated from the Parc Monceaux by a low iron railing hidden by a hedge, sloped rather sharply. Too small for the house, and so narrow that a lawn and a few clumps of evergreens occupied the entire space, it simply formed a kind of knoll, a verdant pedestal, on which the mansion was proudly planted decked out in its gayest attire. Seen from the park, towering above the bright grass and the shining foliage of the shrubs, this great building, looking still new and quite sickly, had the sallow complexion, the stupid and moneyed importance of some female upstart, with its heavy head-dress of slates, its gilded balustrades, and its flood of sculpture. It was a reproduction of the new Louvre on a smaller scale, one of the most characteristic specimens of the style of the Second Empire, that opulent bastard of every style. On summer evenings, when the last rays of the sun lit up the gilt of the balustrades against the white façade, the strollers in the park would stop to look at the red silk curtains hanging at the ground floor windows; and, through panes so large and clear that they seemed, like those of the great modern emporiums, placed there to display the interior wealth to the outer world, these families of modest citizens would catch glimpses of articles of furniture, of portions of hangings, and of corners of ceilings of dazzling splendour, the sight of which would root them to the spot with admiration and envy right in the centre of the pathways.
But, at this hour, the trees cast their shadows over the façade which was wrapt in gloom. In the courtyard on the other side, the footman had respectfully assisted Renée to alight from the carriage. The stables, with red brick dressings, opened on the right their wide doors of polished oak, at the end of a glass-roofed yard. On the left, as though to counterbalance, was a richly ornamented recess in the wall of the adjoining house, with a fountain of water perpetually flowing from a shell which two cupids supported in their outstretched arms. The young woman stood a moment at the foot of the steps, gently tapping her skirt to get it to hang right. The courtyard, through which the noise of the return had just passed, resumed its solitude, its aristocratic silence, broken by the eternal sing-song of the dripping water. And as yet, amidst the great black mass of the mansion—the chandeliers of which were so soon to be illuminated on the occasion of the first of the grand dinner parties of the autumn—only the lower windows were lighted up, all aglow and casting the bright reflection of a conflagration on the small paving-stones of the courtyard, as neat and regular as a draught-board.
As Renée pushed open the hall door, she found herself face to face with her husband's valet, who was on his way to the servants' quarters and carrying a silver kettle. Dressed all in black, tall, strong, pale-faced, this man looked superb, with the whiskers of an English diplomatist, and the grave and dignified air of a magistrate.
"Baptiste," inquired the young woman, "has your master come in?"
"Yes, madame, he is dressing," replied the valet with a bow worthy of a prince acknowledging the plaudits of the crowd.
Renée slowly ascended the staircase, withdrawing her gloves the while.