He went quietly home, with a certain feeling of admiration for the baron, who so cleverly got out of the most ticklish positions. He kept the documents in his pocket, and at the next sitting of the commission he declared, in a peremptory tone of voice, both in his own name and in the baron's, that between the offer of five hundred thousand francs and the claim of seven hundred thousand, they should take a medium course, and award six hundred thousand francs. There was not the slightest opposition. The member hailing from the Rue d'Astorg, having no doubt reflected, said, with great simplicity, that he had been mistaken: he had thought it was the next house.
It was thus that Aristide Saccard won his first victory. He quadrupled his outlay, and secured two accomplices. One thing alone made him uneasy; when he wished to destroy Madame Sidonie's famous books, he was unable to find them. He hastened to Larsonneau, who boldly avowed that he had them, and that he meant to stick to them. The other did not lose his temper; he inferred that he had only been anxious on his dear friend's account, who was far more compromised than he by these entries, which were almost entirely in his handwriting, but that he was quite easy now that he knew they were safe. In reality, he would willingly have strangled "his dear friend;" he remembered a very compromising document, a bogus inventory, which he had been foolish enough to draw up, and which must have been left in one of the ledgers. Handsomely remunerated, Larsonneau started a business agency in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had offices furnished as luxuriously as any courtesan's apartments. On leaving the Hôtel de Ville, Saccard, having a considerable amount of funds at his disposal, launched madly into speculation, whilst Renée, carried away by her intoxication, filled Paris with the clatter of her equipages, the sparkle of her diamonds, and the whirl of her noisy and adorable existence.
Now and again, the husband and wife, those two enthusiasts of money and pleasure, penetrated into the chilly mists of the Île Saint-Louis. They felt as though they were entering a dead city.
The Béraud mansion, built in the early part of the seventeenth century, was one of those square buildings, gloomy and severe-looking, with tall narrow windows, so numerous in the Marais district, and which are let to schoolmasters, manufacturers of seltzer water, and bonders of wines and spirits. The building, however, was in an admirable state of preservation. On the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île side it consisted of only three storeys, storeys fifteen and twenty feet high. The ground floor, not near so lofty, had its windows protected by enormous iron bars, windows which sunk dismally into the dreary thickness of the walls, whilst the arched door, almost as broad as high, and bearing a cast-iron knocker, was painted a deep green and strengthened with enormous nails, forming stars and lozenges on either panel. This door was typical, with blocks of granite on each flank, half buried in the soil and protected by broad bands of iron. One could see that formerly a gutter had run under the centre of this door, the pavement of the porch sloping gently down on either side: but Monsieur Béraud had decided to close up this gutter by having the entrance laid with bitumen; this was, moreover, the only sacrifice he was ever willing to make to modern architecture. The windows of the upper floors were ornamented with slender handrails of wrought iron, which allowed a full view of the colossal sashes of substantial brown wood frames and little greenish panes of glass. Right at the top, opposite the attics, the roof came to an end, and the gutter alone continued on its way to discharge the rain water into the pipes placed for the purpose. And what tended to increase still further the austere bareness of the frontage was the total absence of any blind or shutter, for at no season of the year did the sun ever shine on these pale and melancholy stones. This frontage, with its venerable air, its middle-class severity, slumbered solemnly amid the peacefulness of the neighbourhood, the silence of the street, seldom disturbed by the passage of vehicles.
In the interior of the mansion was a square courtyard surrounded by arcades, a kind of Place Royale on a reduced scale, paved with enormous flags, which finished giving to this lifeless abode the appearance of a cloister. Facing the porch a fountain, a lion's head half worn away, the gaping jaws of which were alone distinguishable, discharged from an iron tube a thick and monotonous water into a trough all green with moss, its edges polished by wear. This water was icy cold. Tufts of grass sprouted up between the flagstones. In summer-time a narrow ray of sunshine entered the courtyard, and this occasional visit had whitened a corner of the frontage on the south side, whilst the three other walls, morose and blackish, were streaked with mildew. There, in the depths of this courtyard as chilly and silent as a well, lighted with the white glimmer of a wintry day, one could have thought oneself a thousand leagues away from that new Paris wherein was flaring every passionate enjoyment, amidst the hubbub of the millions. The apartments of the mansion possessed the sad calm, the cold solemnity of the courtyard. Reached by a broad staircase with an iron handrail, where the footsteps and the coughing of visitors resounded as in the aisle of a church, they extended in long suites of vast and lofty rooms, in which the ancient furniture of dark woodwork and squat design seemed lost; and the pale light was only peopled by the figures on the tapestries, whose great colourless bodies were just vaguely distinguishable. All the luxury pertaining to the old Parisian middle classes was there, a stiff and wear-resisting luxury, chairs the oak seats of which are scarcely covered with a handful of tow, beds of inflexible material, linen chests in which the roughness of the boards would peculiarly compromise the slender existence of modern dresses. Monsieur Béraud Du Châtel had selected his apartments in the darkest portion of the mansion, on the first floor, between the street and the courtyard. He was there in a marvellous surrounding of peacefulness, silence and shade. When he pushed open the doors, traversing the solemnity of the rooms with his slow and serious step, one could have fancied him one of those members of the old parliaments, whose portraits adorned the walls, returning home wrapt in reverie after discussing and refusing to sign an edict of the king's.
But in this still house, in this cloister, there existed a warm nest full of life, a corner of sunshine and gaiety, an abode of adorable childhood, fresh air, and bright light. One had to ascend a host of little staircases, pass along ten or twelve corridors, go down and come up again; in fact, make quite a journey, and then one at last reached a vast chamber, a kind of belvedere built up on the roof, at the back of the mansion, right above the Quai de Béthune. It was in a full southern aspect. The window opened so wide that the heavens, with all their rays, fresh air, and azure blue, seemed to enter there. Perched aloft like a pigeon-house, the apartment contained long boxes full of flowers, an immense aviary, but not a single article of furniture. There was simply some matting spread over the floor. It was the "children's room." Throughout the mansion it was known and called by this name. The house was so cold, the courtyard so damp, that aunt Élisabeth had dreaded some harm might come to Christine and Renée from this chill breath which hung about the walls; more than once had she scolded the children for running about the arcades, and taking a delight in dipping their little arms in the icy water of the fountain. Then she had the idea to turn this out-of-the-way garret to account for them, the only nook wherein the sunshine had been entering and rejoicing, all by itself, for two centuries past, in the midst of the cobwebs. She gave them some matting, some birds, and some flowers. The little girls were delighted. During the holidays Renée lived there, bathing in the yellow sunshine, which seemed pleased with the embellishments made to its retreat, and with the two fair heads sent to keep it company. The room became a paradise, ever resounding with the chirping of the birds and the chatter of the children. It had been given up to them entirely. They called it "our room;" it was their domain; they even went so far as to lock themselves in to prove to their satisfaction that they were the sole mistresses of it. What an abode of happiness! A massacre of playthings lay expiring on the matting in the midst of the bright sunshine.
And the great delight of the children's room was, after all, the vast horizon. From the other windows of the mansion there was nothing to gaze upon but black walls a few feet off. But from this one, one could see all that portion of the Seine, all that district of Paris which extends from the Cité to the Pont de Bercy, flat and immense, and which resembles some primitive city in Holland. Down below, on the Quai de Béthune, were some tumble-down wooden sheds, accumulations of beams and fallen roofs, amidst which the children often amused themselves by watching enormous rats scamper about, with a vague dread of seeing them crawl up the high walls. But it was beyond this that the real delight of the view began. The boom, with its tiers of timbers, its buttresses resembling those of some Gothic cathedral, and the slender Pont de Constantine swaying like a piece of lace beneath the footsteps of passengers, crossed each other at right angles, and seemed to dam up and keep in check the enormous mass of water. Right in front, the trees of the Halle aux Vins, and further away, the shrubberies of the Jardin des Plantes were a mass of green, and spread out as far as the horizon; whilst, on the other side of the river, the Quai Henri IV. and the Quai de la Rapée extended their low and irregular buildings, their row of houses which, looked at from above, resembled the tiny wood and cardboard houses the little girls kept in boxes. In the background, to the right, the slate roof of the Salpêtrière rose with a bluish tinge above the trees. Then, in the centre, descending right down to the Seine, the broad paved banks formed two long grey tracks, streaked here and there by a row of casks, a horse and cart, or an empty coal or wood barge lying stranded high and dry. But the soul of all this, the soul which filled the landscape, was the Seine, the living river; it came from afar, from the vague and trembling border of the horizon, it emerged from over there, as from a dream, to flow straight to the children, in the midst of its tranquil majesty, its mighty expansion which spread and became a flood of water at their feet, at the extremity of the island. The two bridges which crossed it, the Pont de Bercy and the Pont d'Austerlitz, seemed like necessary bonds placed there to keep it in check, and prevent it rising to the room. The little ones loved the giant, they filled their eyes with its colossal flow, with that ever murmuring flood which rolled towards them, as though to reach to where they were, and which they could feel rive and disappear to the right and left into the unknown, with the docility of a conquered Titan. On fine days, mornings with a blue sky overhead, they were charmed with the beautiful dresses the Seine assumed; varying dresses which changed from blue to green, with a thousand infinitely delicate tints; one could have fancied them of silk, spotted with white flames, and trimmed with frills of satin; whilst the boats drawn up at either bank formed an edging of black velvet ribbon. In the distance, especially, the material became quite admirable and precious, like some fairy's tunic of enchanted gauze; beyond the strip of dark green satin, with which the shadow of the bridges girdled the Seine, were plastrons of gold and skirts of some plaited material the colour of the sun. The immense sky formed a vaulted roof above this water, these low rows of houses, this foliage of the two parks.
Weary at times of this boundless horizon, Renée, already a big girl, and full of a carnal curiosity picked up at school, would take a peep at Petit's floating swimming-baths moored to the extremity of the island. She sought to catch a glimpse, between the waving linen clothes hung up on lines in place of a roof, of the men in their bathing drawers, and with their chests all bare.