"Monsieur de Saffré's supper, eh?" said he, "some oysters, a partridge—"
And seeing the young man smile, Charles discreetly imitated him, murmuring—
"Then the same supper as last Wednesday, if that will suit?"
"The supper of last Wednesday—" repeated Maxime. Then suddenly remembering: "Yes, it's all the same to me, give us Wednesday's supper."
When the waiter had retired Renée took her eye-glasses and went inquisitively round the little room. It was a square apartment all white and gold and furnished with boudoir-like coquetry. In addition to the table and the chairs, there was a low dinner waggon and a large divan, a perfect bed, placed between the chimney-piece and the window. A Louis XVI. clock and candlesticks adorned the white marble mantelshelf. But the curiosity of the room was the looking-glass, a handsome squat looking-glass which women's diamonds had covered with names, dates, murdered verses, prodigious sentiments and astounding avowals. Renée fancied she espied something beastly but she lacked the courage to satisfy her curiosity. She looked at the divan, experienced fresh embarrassment at the sight, and to give herself a countenance began gazing at the ceiling and the chandelier of gilt copper with five gas jets. However the uneasiness she felt was delightful. While she raised her brow, as if to study the cornice, looking grave and holding her eye-glasses in her hand, she derived profound enjoyment from the presence of the equivocal furniture, which she knew to be around her; that clear cynical looking glass, the purity of which, being wrinkled by those dirty scrawls, had proved useful in adjusting so many false chignons; that divan which shocked her by its breadth; the table and the carpet itself in which she found the same smell she had detected upon the stairs, a vague, penetrating and almost religious smell of dust.
Then, when it was at last necessary for her to lower her eyes:
"What is this Wednesday supper?" she asked of Maxime.
"Nothing," he answered, "a bet that one of my friends lost."
In any other spot, he would without any hesitation have told her that he had supped there on Wednesday with a lady whom he had met on the Boulevard. But since he had entered the private room he had instinctively treated her like a woman whom one has to please, and whose jealousy ought to be spared. However she did not insist on the point, but went and leaned on the rail of the window, where he soon joined her. Charles came in and went out behind them amid a noise of crockery and plate.
It was not yet midnight. On the Boulevard below, Paris was thundering and prolonging the ardent day before making up its mind to go to bed. The rows of trees separated in a confused line the whiteness of the foot walk from the vague darkness of the roadway along which passed the rumble and the fleet lamps of the vehicles. On either edge of this dim strip of ground, the kiosks of the newspaper vendors shed their light here and there, like great Venetian lanterns, tall and strangely variegated, which had been set at regular intervals on the ground for some colossal illumination. But at this time of night their subdued brilliancy was lost in the glare of the neighbouring shop fronts. Not a shutter was up, the foot walks stretched away without a line of shadow under a stream of rays which lighted them with a golden dust, with the warm brilliant glare of full daylight. Maxime pointed out to Renée the Café Anglais, the windows of which were shining in front of them. The lofty branches of the trees somewhat prevented them, however, from seeing the houses and the footway across the Boulevard. They leaned forward and looked below them. There was a continual coming and going: promenaders passed by in groups, harlots in couples trailed their skirts which they raised from time to time with a languid gesture, casting wearied yet smiling glances around them. Under the window itself the tables of the Café Riche were spread out in the blaze of the gas-jets, the brilliancy of which penetrated half across the thoroughfare; and it was especially in the centre of this ardent focus that they saw the wan faces and pale smiles of the passers by. Around the little tables men and women were mingled together drinking. The girls were in showy dresses with their hair down their necks; they lounged about on their chairs and made loud remarks which the noise of the traffic prevented one from hearing. Renée especially noticed one woman who was dressed in a blue costume trimmed with white Maltese lace, and who sat alone at a table, leaning back with her hands on her stomach; she was waiting with a gloomy resigned look and leisurely sipping a glass of beer. Those who were walking, slowly disappeared among the crowd, and the young woman, who took an interest in their doings, let her eyes follow them, and gazed from one end of the Boulevard to the other, into the noisy confused depths of the thoroughfare full of the black swarm of promenaders and where the lights became mere sparks. And the endless procession, a strangely mingled crowd always the same, passed by with fatiguing regularity amid the bright colours and the dark depths, in the airy-like confusion of the thousand leaping flames which swept like waves out of the shops, lending colour to the transparencies of the windows and the kiosks, tracing fillets, letters and fiery designs over the house fronts, studding the darkness with stars and gliding along the roadway continually. Amid the deafening noise which rose on high was a clamour, a prolonged monotonous rumble like an organ note accompanying an eternal procession of little automatic dolls. At one moment Renée thought that an accident had taken place. There was a stream of people in motion on the left, a little beyond the Passage de l'Opéra. But on taking her glasses she recognised the omnibus office; there were a great many people on the side-walk standing waiting, and rushing forwards as soon as a vehicle arrived. She could hear the rough voice of the official calling out the numbers, and then the tinkle of the registering bell was wafted to her like a crystalline ringing. Her eyes next lighted upon an advertisement on a kiosk glaringly coloured like an Épinal print. On the pane of glass, in a green and yellow frame, there was a sneering devil's head, with hair on end, a hatter's advertisement which she did not understand. Every five minutes the Batignolles omnibus with its red lamps and yellow body passed by, turning round the corner of the Rue Le Pelletier and shaking the house with its din; and she saw the men riding on the knife-board, fellows with weary faces who rose up to look at them, Maxime and herself, with the inquisitive glances of hungry people peeping through a keyhole.