The pages were turned over; at times the Duke de Rozan or Mr. Simpson, or the Count de Chibray appeared, and Maxime added, sneering:
"Besides, your taste is perverted, everyone knows it. Can you see anything more stupid than these gentlemen's faces? Rozan and Chibray look like Gustave, my barber."
Renée shrugged her shoulders as if to say that this irony did not affect her. She still forgot herself in contemplating the wan, smiling, or stern faces which the album contained; she tarried longer over the portraits of the fast women, and inquisitively studied the exact microscopical details of the photographs, the little wrinkles and the little hairs. One day she even procured a strong magnifying glass, fancying she had perceived a hair on the Crawfish's nose. And, indeed, the glass revealed a slight golden thread which had strayed from the eyebrows down to the middle of the nose. This hair amused them for a long time. For a whole week the ladies who called had to assure themselves in person of the presence of this hair. Thenceforth the magnifying glass served to scrutinize the women's faces. Renée made some astonishing discoveries; she found some unknown wrinkles, rough skins, cavities imperfectly filled up with rice powder. And Maxime ended by hiding the magnifying glass, declaring that one ought not to disgust oneself with the human face like that. The truth was that she scrutinized too closely the thick lips of Sylvia, for whom he had a particular affection. They then invented a new game. They asked this question: "With whom would I willingly spend a night?" and they opened the album, which was entrusted with the duty of replying. This gave rise to some strange couplings. Renée's female friends played at the game during several evenings, and Renée herself was successively married to the Archbishop of Paris, to Baron Gouraud, to M. de Chibray, at which she greatly laughed, and to her husband in person, at which she was greatly distressed. As for Maxime, either by chance, or by the maliciousness of Renée, who opened the album, he always fell upon the Marchioness. But there was never so much laughter as when luck coupled two men or two women together.
The familiarity of Renée and Maxime went so far that she told him her private sorrows. He consoled her and gave her advice. It seemed as if his father did not exist. Then later on they began to tell each other about their childhood. It was especially during their drives in the Bois de Boulogne that they felt a vague languor, a longing to relate things which are difficult to tell and are not told. The delight that children take in whispering about forbidden things, the attraction that exists for a young man and young woman to lower themselves to sin, be it only in words, unceasingly brought them back to suggestive subjects. They partook deeply of voluptuousness, for which they did not reproach one another, but which they tasted together, lazily reclining in the two corners of their carriage, like two comrades who recall their past freaks. They ended by becoming perfect braggarts of immorality. Renée owned that the little girls at her school were very immodest. Maxime improved upon that and made so bold as to relate some of the shameful doings of the college of Plassans.
"Ah! I can't tell—" murmured Renée.
Then she leant forward close to his ear, as if the sound of her voice alone would have made her blush, and confided to him one of those convent stories which appear in disgusting songs. He, on his side, had too rich a collection of anecdotes of this kind to remain behindhand. He hummed in her ear some very indecent verses. And by degrees they found themselves in an especial state of beatitude, rocked by all the carnal fancies that they stirred, titillated by little desires which were not expressed. The carriage rolled gently on, and they returned home deliciously fatigued, more tired indeed than after a night of love. They had sinned, like two young fellows who, wandering along the country lanes without any mistresses, might content themselves with their mutual recollections.
Even greater familiarity and licence existed between the father and the son. Saccard had realised that a great financier ought to love women and do some foolish things for them. He was a rough lover and preferred money; but it formed part of his programme to hang about alcoves, scatter bank-notes on certain mantelshelves, and from time to time use some notorious wench as a gilded signboard for his speculations. When Maxime had left college he and his father met in the same women's rooms and laughed over it. They were even rivals in a degree. At times when the young fellow dined at the Maison-d'Or with some noisy party, he would overhear Saccard's voice in a neighbouring private room.
MAXIME DISCOVERS HIS FATHER AT THE MAISON DORÉE.