"Well, did you amuse yourself very much with Céleste?" he asked her, alluding to the long tête-à-tête she had had with her maid.
"Yes," she answered, "she is a very useful girl. She always has such cold hands; she placed them on my forehead, and soothed my poor head a little."
"But that girl's a remedy then!" cried the young fellow. "If I ever have the misfortune to fall in love, you'll lend her to me, eh? so that she may place her two hands on my heart."
They joked, and went for their usual drive to the Bois. A fortnight passed by. Renée had thrown herself more madly than ever into her life of visits and balls; her head seemed to have turned once more, she no longer complained of lassitude and disgust. Still, one might have thought that she had committed some secret sin, which she did not speak of, but which she confessed by a more strongly marked contempt for herself and by increased depravity in her whims as a fashionable woman. One evening she confessed to Maxime that she longed to go to a ball which Blanche Müller, an actress in vogue, meant to give to the princesses of the footlights and the queens of the fast world. This avowal surprised and embarrassed even the young man, and yet he was not particularly scrupulous. He tried to catechise his stepmother: really, that wasn't her place; besides, she would see nothing very funny there; and then, if she were recognised, it would cause a scandal. She answered all these good reasons with clasped hands, supplicating, and smiling.
"Come, my little Maxime, be kind. I'm determined on it. I will put on a very dark domino; we will only pass through the rooms."
Maxime always ended by giving way, and would have taken his stepmother to all the disreputable places in Paris had she but begged him ever so little to do so. So he consented to escort her to Blanche Müller's ball, whereupon she clapped her hands like a child to whom an unhoped-for holiday is granted.
"Ah! you are a dear fellow," said she. "It's for to-morrow, isn't it? Come and fetch me very early. I want to see those women arrive. You will name them to me, and we shall amuse ourselves awfully well."
She reflected, and then added:
"No, don't come. Wait for me in a cab on the Boulevard Malesherbes. I will go out by the garden."
This mysterious way of proceeding was a spice which she added to her escapade, a simple refinement of pleasure, for had she left the house at midnight by the front door, her husband would not even have put his head out of window.