"That is a joke that would cost me dear, were I not a Rougon."
The marriage was performed at the church of Saint-Louis-en-l'Île. Saccard and Renée did not see each other until the eve of the great day. The interview took place in the evening, just at nightfall, in a low room of the Béraud mansion. They examined each other with curiosity. Since arrangements had been entered into for her marriage, Renée had regained her giddy ways, her light-heartedness. She was a tall girl of an exquisite though turbulent beauty, who had grown up at random amidst her school-girl caprices. She found Saccard little and ugly, but of a restless and intelligent ugliness which did not displease her; he was, moreover, perfect both in manners and conversation. He made a slight grimace on first seeing her; she no doubt appeared to him too tall, taller than he was himself. They exchanged a few words without embarrassment. Had the father been present, he might indeed have thought that they had known each other a long while, that they had committed some grievous fault together. Aunt Élisabeth assisted at the interview and blushed for them.
On the day after the wedding, which was quite an event in the Île Saint-Louis thanks to the presence of Eugène Rougon, whom a recent speech had brought to the fore, the newly married couple were at length admitted to the presence of Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel. Renée wept on finding her father looking older, graver and more mournful. Saccard, whom nothing had put out of countenance till then, was frozen by the chilliness and the dim light of the apartment, by the sad austerity of the tall old man, whose piercing eye seemed to him to search into the very depths of his conscience. The retired judge slowly kissed his daughter on the forehead, as though to tell her that he forgave her, and then turning to his son-in-law:
"Sir," said he simply, "we have suffered much. I count upon you to make us forget the wrong you have done us."
He held out his hand to him. But Saccard stood shivering. He was thinking that if Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel had not been bent low by the tragic grief of Renée's shame, he would at a glance, and without an effort, have seen through Madame Sidonie's machinations. The latter, after having brought her brother and Aunt Élisabeth together, had prudently made herself scarce. She had not even gone to the wedding. He made a point of being very frank with the old man, having read in his look his surprise at finding his daughter's seducer to be a little ugly fellow forty years old. The newly married couple were obliged to pass the first nights at the Béraud mansion. A month before, Christine had been sent away, so that the child of fourteen should have no suspicion of the drama that was being enacted in that house as serene and undisturbed as a cloister. When she returned home, she gazed with astonishment at her sister's husband, whom she also thought old and ugly. Renée was the only one who did not seem to notice either her husband's age or his sorry appearance. She treated him without contempt as without affection, with an absolute tranquillity through which occasionally gleamed a touch of ironical disdain. Saccard strutted about and made himself at home, and really, thanks to his frankness and good spirits, he little by little won the friendship of one and all. When they took their departure to occupy a superb suite of apartments in a new house in the Rue de Rivoli, Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel's look no longer displayed any astonishment, and little Christine romped with her brother-in-law as with an old friend. Renée was at that time four months gone in the family way; her husband was on the point of sending her into the country, when, in accordance with Madame Sidonie's prophecy, she had a miscarriage. She had laced herself up so tightly to hide her condition, which, moreover, disappeared beneath the fulness of her skirts, that she was obliged to keep her bed for several weeks. He was delighted with the adventure; fortune was at length smiling upon him; he had made a golden bargain, a magnificent dowry, a wife lovely enough to have him decorated in six months, and not the least encumbrance. He had been paid two hundred thousand francs to give his name to a fœtus which the mother would not even look at. From that moment his thoughts lovingly lingered on the plots of ground at Charonne. But for the time being he was giving all his attention to a speculation which was to form the basis of his fortune.
Notwithstanding the high position of his wife's family, he did not at once resign his post at the Hôtel de Ville. He talked of work on hand to be finished, and of some other occupation to be sought for. The truth was he wished to remain till the end on the battle-field where he was playing his first cards. He was so to say at home, and could cheat more at his ease.
His plan for making his fortune was simple and practical. Now that he possessed more money than he had ever hoped for to commence his operations, he intended to put his designs into execution on a grand scale. He knew Paris by heart; he knew that the shower of gold which was already beating against the walls would fall heavier every day. Clever people had only to open their pockets. He had placed himself among the clever ones by reading the future in the offices of the Hôtel de Ville. His duties had taught him what can be stolen in the buying and selling of houses and ground. He was fully acquainted with all the classic swindles: he knew how to sell for a million that which only cost five hundred thousand francs; how to pay the right to ransack the cash boxes of the State, which smiles and shuts its eyes; how, by making a Boulevard pass over the entrails of some old neighbourhood, to juggle with six storeyed houses, amidst the applause of all the dupes. And that which in those still clouded days, when the chancre of speculation was not beyond the period of incubation, made him a terrible gambler was that he foresaw more than his chiefs themselves respecting the future of stone and plaster reserved to Paris. He had ferreted about so much, collected together so many clues, that he might have prophesied the spectacle the new districts would offer in 1870. At times, as he walked along the streets, he would look at certain houses in a singular manner, as though they were old friends whose destiny, known to him alone, affected him deeply.
Two months previous to Angèle's death, he had taken her one Sunday to the Buttes Montmartre. The poor woman delighted in eating at restaurants; she was never more pleased than when, after a long walk, he would take her to dine at some suburban eating-house. That day they had their dinner right at the top of the hill, in a restaurant, with windows overlooking Paris, that ocean of houses with bluey roofs, looking like surging billows filling the immense horizon. Their table was placed before one of the windows. The sight of the Paris roofs enlivened Saccard. At dessert he called for a bottle of Burgundy. He smiled at space, he was most unusually gallant. And his look kept lovingly returning to that living, swarming sea, from which issued the deep voice of the crowd. It was autumn; beneath the vast pale sky the city lay languishing, a soft and tender grey in hue, studded here and there with dark green foliage, which resembled great leaves of nenuphars floating on a lake; the sun was setting behind a red cloud, and, whilst the background was filled with a slight haze, a golden dust, an auriferous dew was falling upon the city on the right bank of the river, in the neighbourhood of the Madeleine and the Tuileries. It was like the enchanted corner of some city of the "Arabian Nights," with trees formed of emeralds, roofs of sapphires, and weather-cocks of rubies. There came a moment when a ray of sunshine, gliding between two clouds, was so resplendent that the houses seemed to flare up and melt away like an ingot of gold in a crucible.
"Oh! look," said Saccard, with a childish laugh, "a shower of twenty-franc pieces has burst over Paris!"
Angèle began to laugh too, accusing these pieces of not being easy to gather up. But her husband had risen from his seat, and leaning against the handrail of the window, he continued: