This madcap Renée, who had appeared one night in the Parisian firmament like the eccentric fairy of fashionable sensuality, was the least analyzable of women. No doubt if she had been brought up at home she would by means of religion or some other satisfaction for the nerves have attenuated the desires by which she was at times really maddened. She belonged to the middle classes by her mind; she was perfectly upright, with a love for logical things, a fear of heaven and hell and a huge dose of prejudices; she belonged to her father's side, to the calm and prudent race among which fireside virtues flourish. And yet it was in this nature of hers that prodigious fancies, ever reviving inquisitiveness and desires not to be confessed, sprouted and grew. While she was with the ladies of the Visitation, free, her mind wandering amid the mystical voluptuousness of the chapel and the carnal attachment of her young friends, she had framed for herself a fantastic education, learning vice, throwing all the frankness of her nature into it, unsettling her young brain to such a point that she singularly embarrassed her confessor by owning to him that she had felt a most unreasonable longing to get up and kiss him one day during mass. Then she struck her breast, she turned pale at the thought of the devil and his cauldrons. The fault which, later on, had brought about her marriage with Saccard, that brutal rape which she had experienced with a kind of frightened expectation, made her despise herself and in a great measure caused the abandonment of her whole life. She thought that she no longer had to struggle against evil that it was in her, that logic authorized her to follow the bad science to the end. With her there was yet more curiosity than appetite. Thrown into the society of the Second Empire, abandoned to her imagination, provided with money, encouraged in her loudest eccentricities, she gave herself, regretted it, and finally succeeded in killing her expiring principles, always lashed, always urged onward by her insatiable longing to learn and feel.
Besides she was as yet only at the earlier pages. She willingly talked in a low tone, and laughing, about the extraordinary circumstances of the tender attachment between Suzanne Haffner and Adeline d'Espanet, of the questionable calling of Madame de Lauwerens, and of the kisses which the Countess Vanska gave at a fixed price; but she still contemplated these things from afar off, with a vague notion of perhaps tasting them, and this indeterminate desire which at evil moments rose within her, increased her turbulent anxiety still more and urged her on in her mad search for an unique exquisite enjoyment of which she alone would partake. Her first lovers had not spoiled her; she had on three occasions fancied herself seized with a great passion; love burst forth in her brain like a cracker, the sparks of which did not reach her heart. She was mad for a month, showed herself throughout Paris with her dear lord; and then one morning, amid all the racket of her love, she became conscious of depressing silence and immense vacuity. The first, the young Duke de Rozan, was barely more than a breakfast of sunshine; Renée who had noticed him on account of his gentleness and excellent manners, found him altogether superficial, washed out, and plaguy when they were alone together. Mr. Simpson, an attaché of the American embassy, who came next, almost beat her, and for that reason remained with her for nearly a year. Then she smiled on an aide-de-camp of the Emperor, the Count de Chibray, a vain handsome man who was beginning to tire her when the Duchess de Sternich took it into her head to fall in love with him and carry him off from her; thereupon she wept for him and let her friends understand that her heart was crushed, and that she should never love again. She thus progressed to the most insignificant being in the world, Monsieur de Mussy, a young man who was making his way in the diplomatic career by conducting cotillons with especial gracefulness; she never exactly knew why she had given herself to him but she retained him for a long time, feeling lazy, disgusted with an unknown land which one discovers in half an hour, and deferring the worry attendant upon a change until she had met with some extraordinary adventure. At twenty-eight years of age she already felt terribly wearied. Ennui appeared to her all the more insupportable, as her middle-class virtues profited by the hours when she was bored to complain and worry her. She closed her door, she had frightful headaches. Then when the door opened again it was a flood of silk and lace that swept forth with a great racket, a being of luxury and joy without a care or a flush upon the brow.
Still she had had a romance in her commonplace fashionable life. One day, at sunset, after going on foot to see her father, who did not like to hear the noise of carriages at his door, she noticed, while passing along the Quai Saint-Paul on her way home, that she was being followed by a young man. It was warm and the daylight was waning with amorous softness. She, who was usually only followed on horseback in the pathways of the Bois de Boulogne, found the adventure spicy and was flattered by it as by a new homage, somewhat brutal no doubt, but the very coarseness of which titillated her. Instead of returning home she took the Rue du Temple and promenaded her gallant along the Boulevards. The man however grew bolder and became so pressing that Renée, somewhat intimidated, lost her head, followed the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, and took refuge in the shop kept by her husband's sister. The man came in behind her. Madame Sidonie smiled, seemed to understand, and left them alone. And when Renée wished to follow her sister-in-law the stranger retained her, spoke to her with feeling politeness and won her forgiveness. He was a clerk called Georges whose surname she never asked. She went to see him twice, going in by the shop while he arrived by the Rue Papillon. This chance love affair, found and accepted in the street, proved one of her keenest pleasures. She always thought of it with a little shame, but with a singular smile of regret. Madame Sidonie's profit in the affair was that she at last became the accomplice of her brother's second wife, a part which she had been anxious to play ever since the wedding-day.
Poor Madame Sidonie had experienced a deception. While she was promoting the marriage she had hoped in a degree to espouse Renée herself, make her a customer and derive a number of little profits by her. She judged women at a glance like connoisseurs judge horses. And so, after allowing the couple a month to settle themselves, her consternation was great when, on perceiving Madame de Lauwerens enthroned in the centre of the drawing-room, she realised that she came too late. Madame de Lauwerens, a handsome woman of twenty-six, occupied herself with launching newcomers into the swing. She belonged to a very old family and was married to a man of the upper financial world, who had the fault of refusing to settle tailors' and milliners' bills. His wife, a very intelligent person, coined money and kept herself. She held men in horror, she said; but she supplied all her female friends with them; there was always a full stock to choose from in the flat which she occupied in the Rue de Provence, over her husband's offices. Little collations took place there; and one met one another in an unforeseen charming manner. There was no harm in a girl going to see her dear Madame de Lauwerens, and if chance brought men there who were at all events very respectful and belonged to the best society—why so much the worse. The lady of the house was charming in her long lace wrappers. A visitor would very often have chosen her in preference to her collection of blondes and brunettes. But report asserted that she was altogether well conducted. The whole secret of the affair lay in that. She still held her high situation in society, had all the men for her friends, retained her pride as a virtuous woman, and experienced a secret joy in lowering the others and deriving a profit by their fall. When Madame Sidonie had enlightened herself as to the mechanism of the new invention she was sorely distressed. It was the classical school, the woman in an old black dress, carrying love letters at the bottom of her basket, set in front of the modern school, the lady of high degree, who sells her friends in her boudoir while sipping a cup of tea. The modern school triumphed. Madame de Lauwerens glanced coldly at the shabby dress of Madame Sidonie in whom she scented a rival; and it was from her hand that Renée received her first worry, the young Duke de Rozan, whom the beautiful financier found it difficult to dispose of. It was only later on that the classical school won the day, when Madame Sidonie lent her lodging to her sister-in-law so that she might gratify her fancy for the stranger of the Quai Saint-Paul. She remained her confidante.
Maxime however was one of Madame Sidonie's boon friends. When only fifteen years old he went on the prowl to his aunt's, smelling the forgotten gloves which he found lying on the furniture. She, who hated clear situations and never owned her little services, ended by lending him the keys of her rooms, on certain days, saying that she would remain in the country until the morrow. Maxime talked about some friends whom he wished to entertain and whom he did not like to take to his father's. It was in the rooms of the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière that he spent several nights with the poor girl whom one was afterwards obliged to send into the country. Madame Sidonie borrowed money from her nephew, and went into ecstacies before him, murmuring in a soft voice that he was "without a hair, as rosy as a Cupid."
Maxime had grown however. He was now a pretty, slightly built young man who had retained the rosy cheeks and blue eyes of childhood. His curly hair completed that girlish appearance, which so delighted the ladies. He resembled poor Angèle with his soft eyes and blonde pallor. But he was not even the equal of that indolent shallow woman. In him the race of the Rougons had a tendency to refinement and became delicate and vicious. The offspring of too young a mother, constituting a strange, jumbled, and so to say unmingled combination of his father's furious appetites and his mother's self-abandonment and weakness, he was a defective offspring in whom the parental failings were completed and aggravated. This family of the Rougons lived too fast; it was dying out already in the person of this frail creature whose sex must have remained in suspense during formation, and who no longer represented a will, eager for gain and enjoyment like Saccard, but a species of cowardice, devouring fortunes already made; a strange hermaphrodite ushered at the right time into a society that was rottening. When Maxime went to the Bois de Boulogne, with his waist tightly compressed like a woman's, lightly dancing in the saddle on which he was swayed by the canter of his horse, he was the god of the age, with his strongly developed hips, his long slender hands, his sickly lascivious air, his correct elegance, and his slang learnt at petty theatres. At twenty years of age he placed himself above all surprises and all disgusts. He had certainly dreamt of the most unusual beastliness. But with him vice was not an abyss, as it is with certain old men, but a natural external bloom. It curled upon his fair hair, smiled upon his lips, and dressed him like his clothes. However his great characteristic was especially his eyes, two clear and smiling blue apertures, true mirrors for a coquette, but behind which one perceived all the emptiness of his brain. Those harlot eyes were never lowered; they courted pleasure, a pleasure without fatigue which one summons and receives.
The everlasting gust of wind which swept into the rooms in the Rue de Rivoli and banged their doors, blew stronger and stronger while Maxime grew up, while Saccard enlarged the sphere of his transactions, and Renée threw more fever into her search for unknown enjoyment. These three beings ended by leading an astonishing life of liberty and folly. It was the ripe and prodigious fruit of a period. The street invaded the flat with its rumble of vehicles, its elbowing of strangers, and its licence of language. The father, the stepmother, the stepson, acted, talked, and set themselves at ease just as if they had each been alone living a bachelor life. Three boon friends, three students sharing the same furnished room, would not have disposed of that room more unceremoniously to install therein their hobbledehoy vices, loves, and noisy pleasures. The Saccards met with hand-shakes, did not seem to suspect the reasons which united them under the same roof, and behaved cavalierly and joyously towards each other, each thus assuming absolute independence. They replaced family ties by a kind of partnership, the profits of which are divided in equal shares; each one drew his share of pleasure to himself, and it was tacitly understood that each should dispose of that share as he thought fit. They went so far as to take their enjoyment in presence of one another, to display it, and describe it without awakening aught but a little envy and curiosity.
Maxime now instructed Renée. When he went to the Bois with her he told her stories about prostitutes which greatly enlivened her. A new woman could not appear near the lake without his setting forth on a campaign to ascertain the name of her protector, the allowance he made her, and the style in which she lived. He was acquainted with these ladies' homes, and with the particulars of their private life; indeed he was a perfect living catalogue in which all the harlots were numbered, with a complete description of each of them. This gazette of scandal was Renée's delight. On race-days at Longchamps, when she passed by in her carriage, she listened eagerly, albeit retaining her haughtiness as a woman of good society, to the story of how Blanche Müller deceived her embassy attaché with a hair-dresser; or how the little baron had found the count in his drawers in the alcove of a skinny, red-haired notoriety who was called the Crawfish. Each day brought its tattle. When the story was rather too stiff Maxime lowered his voice, but he nevertheless went on to the end. Renée opened her eyes wide, like a child to whom a good trick is related, restrained her laughter, and then stifled it in her embroidered handkerchief, which she gently pressed to her lips. Maxime also brought these women's photographs. He had portraits of actresses in all his pockets and even in his cigar case. At times he had a clearing out and placed these women in the album which was always trailing over the furniture in the drawing-room, and which already contained the portraits of Renée's female friends. There was also some men's photographs in it, Messieurs de Rozan, Simpson, De Chibray, and De Mussy, as well as actors, writers, and deputies who had come to swell the collection no one knew how. It was a strangely mixed society, the prototype of the jumble of ideas and personages that crossed Renée's and Maxime's lives. Whenever it rained, or whenever one was bored, this album proved a great subject of conversation. It always ended by falling under one's hand. The young woman opened it with a sigh for the hundredth time perhaps. By-and-by, however, her curiosity was awakened and the young fellow came and leant behind her. Then long discussions began about the Crawfish's hair, Madame de Meinhold's double chin, Madame de Lauwerens's eyes, and Blanche Müller's bosom; about the Marchioness's nose, which was a trifle on one side, and about the mouth of little Sylvia, who was notorious for her thick lips. They compared the women with each other.
"For myself, if I were a man," said Renée, "I should choose Adeline."
"That's because you don't know Sylvia," answered Maxime, "she has such a funny style. For myself, I prefer Sylvia."