Renée is a Venus, but not the Greek Venus—the white-breasted woman born of the sea foam and heralded by cupids and tritons; she is not even "the obscure Venus of the hollow Hill" that Baudelaire describes as having grown diabolic among ages that would not accept her as divine. Renée is the Venus of the counting house. Her hair is yellow as pale gold, her drawing-room is hung with yellow draperies, and her golden head, seen thereon as she leans back in her richly upholstered chairs, seems like a setting sun that sinks little by little, drowned in a bath of gold. But, unlike her earlier prototypes, she does not find the flesh sufficient; her sensualities are not the dark desire of the animal, but the nervous erethism of a human mind that, satiated with pleasure, longs and hungers for some strange and acute note to break the cloying sweetness—the monotonous melody of her life. Here there is no touch of pagan or mediæval thought. Maxime fears no god, he knows not remorse nor even desire; he is the son of the capitalist; he is the weed sprung from, but not the intelligence that has built up, the gold-heap, and he festers and rots like a weed in an overpoweringly rich soil. Saccard is Mammon. Nothing exists for him but gold. Thoughts, dreams, love, have long since disappeared; he is not even vicious: in the lust of speculation all other passions have been submerged, have sunk out of sight for ever. Men and things only suggest to him ideas for the accumulation of wealth; and from the heights of Montmartre he looks down upon Paris like a wolf upon its prey. His eyes flash with fierce light, his lips twitch with a wild mental hunger that manifests itself in physical actions: with his hand he divides Paris into sections, he sees how he will distribute it into boulevards, squares, and streets; and he hears in vision the cries of the huntsmen, and he longs to put himself at the head of the hounds, and to descend with open jaws upon the splendid quarry that even now run to death lies panting and bleeding before him.
The book is Paris—Paris as she feasted and flattered under the Second Empire—a Paris of adventurers, of courtezans—a Paris of debts—a Paris of women's shoulders, cotillons, champagne, of violins and pianos—a Paris of opera hats—a Paris of gold pieces, of fraud, of liars, of speculation, of supper tables—a Paris sonorous and empty as a wheel of fortune—a Paris of sweetmeats, rendezvous, bank-notes—a Paris of tresses of false hair forgotten in hackney carriages.
Yes, a Paris of this and of little else. There is the famous scene of the return from the Bois. Under the pale October sky, in which towards the Porte de la Muette, there still floats the dim light of an autumn sunset, the carriages are blocked; and the uncertain rays dance through the brightly painted wheels, touching with intense splendour the buckles of the harness, the large buttons on the liveries, and the burnished cockades. The artificial lake lies still, reflecting in its crystal clarity the innumerable graces of the poplars and pine trees that grow down to the very banks of the trim island. The walks are as bits of grey ribbon lost in the dark foliage. The scene looks like a newly varnished toy. All Paris is there—courtezans, diplomatists, and speculators. Renée is there; she is with Maxime, who is pointing out and telling her about his father's new mistress.
She is the celebrated Laure, to whose house Renée goes with Maxime, because she is anxious to know what a cocotte's ball is really like. Afterwards they sup, in a cabinet particulier, at the Café Riche. Renée is sipping a glass of chartreuse; the gas is hissing, the room has grown hot. They throw open the window. Paris rolls beneath them. The Boulevard is alive with the flashing lights of carriages, women go by in hundreds; they pass into the darkness of a traversing street; they reappear again like shadows thrown by a magic lantern. Groups of men sit round the tables at the door of the café; some are talking to women; some sit smoking vacantly, watching the interminable procession that passes and repasses before them. One woman wears a green silk; she sits with her legs crossed. Renée feels strangely interested. By-and-by, wearied of the Boulevard, she examines the looking-glass, scratched all over with diamond rings; and she asks Maxime questions concerning the women whose names are scrawled thereon. Maxime pleads ignorance: putting his cigar aside, he advances towards her; they look into each other's eyes; she falls into his arms.
There is the ball-room scene. Saccard is on the brink of ruin, but he gives a fête that costs him four thousand pounds. He is anxious that his son should marry a little hunchback, who has an immense fortune. The tableaux vivants are over, and the dancers, in the costumes of gods and goddesses, are dancing the cotillon. Renée, who is cognizant of her husband's projects, is wandering about mad with nervous rage and despair. She pursues Maxime, drags him with her into her bedroom, and tells him that he must fly with her to America, that she will never consent to give him up.
And I must not forget that requisite bit of description—ten lines, not more—which, for rapidity of observation and precision and delicacy of touch, seems to me unsurpassable; indeed, to find anything that might be set against it, I should have to turn to that supreme success, that final vindication of the divine power of words—Flaubert's "L'Éducation Sentimentale." The passage I allude to is when Renée goes to the great fête at the Tuileries. She wears a wonderful dress, composed entirely of white muslin and black velvet. The bodice is in black velvet, the skirt in white muslin, garnished with a million flounces, and all cut up and adorned with bows made out of black velvet: no ornament but one diamond in her fawn-coloured hair. Suddenly the people draw into lines, and the corpulent Emperor walks down the room on the arm of one of his generals. Renée shrinks back: but she cannot get away—she is in the front rank; and, when Napoleon fixes his, all eyes are fixed upon her. A heaven of lustres is above her head, a velvety carpet beneath her feet, and she hears the general whisper to the Emperor: "There's a carnation that would suit our button-holes uncommonly well." The rest of the fête is lost in this moment d'âme;—is an acute note that vibrates long in the monotonous melody of her life.
Whether "La Curée" is a faithful picture, true to the smallest detail, of life under the Second Empire, I cannot say. Nor do I care. I am content to take it for what it seems to me to be—a gorgeous, a golden poem, born of the author's contemplation of the scenes he describes. Although a tyrant, Napoleon the Third was a demagogue at heart. When he came into office Paris was starving. To govern, he saw that he would have to feed the people, and to do this the ingenious plan of creating an immense debt, living upon it and giving the city as security, was adopted. He appeased his enemies by calling new names to the front, he unchained, and he gave them unlimited means of gratifying their appetites. In a house of ill-fame politics do not occupy men's minds—why not turn Paris into a house of ill-fame? But what is true for individuals is true for nations: Sedan was the suicide of the prostituted city. This is the view M. Zola takes of the Second Empire. "La Curée" is but a corner of it, but I do not know any corner more beautifully finished, more perfectly proportioned. Of course faults may be urged: it may be said, and I admit with a certain show of reason, that the characters are more representative of the classes to which they belong than individual men and women. The same argument may be used, and with equal effect, against Hamlet, against Orestes, against every beautiful drawing of Hokousaï and Hokkeï: but when possible and impossible faults have been found, and all visible and invisible flaws taken note of, I believe it will be admitted by the blind, the dumb, and the lame that, when the last page of "La Curée" is read, the impression left upon the mind is one of intense artistic beauty.
GEORGE MOORE.