Terrible silence followed. Renée slowly withdrew her arm from Maxime's neck, but she did not lower her brow, she continued gazing at her husband with her big eyes, which stared fixedly like those of a corpse; while the young fellow, overwhelmed and terrified, staggered, with bowed head, now that he was no longer sustained by her embrace. Saccard, stunned by this supreme blow which, at last, made the husband and the father cry out within him, did not advance, but, livid, he scorched them from afar with the fire of his glances. In the moist, odoriferous atmosphere of the room, the three tapers flared very high, their flames erect, with the stillness of fiery tears. And, alone breaking the silence, the terrible silence, a breath of music ascended the narrow staircase; the waltz, with its snake-like undulations, glided, coiled, and died away on the snowy carpet, amid the split tights and the fallen skirts.

Then the husband advanced. The impulse which he felt to resort to brutality brought blotches to his face; he clinched his fists to knock down the guilty pair. Anger, in this restless little man, burst forth like the report of fire-arms. He gave a strangled titter, and, still advancing:

"You were announcing your marriage to her, eh?"

Maxime retreated and leant against the wall.

"Listen," he stammered, "it was she—"

He was about to accuse her like a coward, to cast the odium of the crime upon her, to say that she wanted to carry him off, to defend himself with the humility and the shudders of a child detected in fault. But he did not have the strength, the words expired in his throat. Renée retained her statue-like rigidity, her air of mute defiance. Then Saccard, no doubt in view of finding a weapon, gave a rapid glance around him. And, on the corner of the toilet table, among the combs and nail-brushes, he perceived the deed of cession, the stamped paper of which set a yellow stain on the marble. He looked at the deed; he looked at the guilty pair. Then, on leaning forward, he saw that the deed was signed. His eyes went from the open inkstand to the pen still wet, which had been left on the foot of the candelabrum. He remained erect in front of this signature, reflecting.

The silence seemed to increase, the flames of the candles shot up higher, the waltz resounded in a softer lullaby along the hangings. Saccard gave an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. He again looked at his wife and his son with a profound air, as if to wring from their faces an explanation which he could not divine. Then he slowly folded up the deed and placed it in the pocket of his dress-coat. His cheeks had become extremely pale.

"You have done well to sign, my dear," he said gently to his wife. "You gain a hundred thousand francs by doing so. I will give you the money this evening."

He almost smiled, and his hands alone, retained a trembling. He took a few steps, adding—

"It's stifling in here! What an idea to come and plot one of your jokes in this vapour bath!"

And then addressing himself to Maxime, who had raised his head, surprised by his father's appeased voice:

"Here come with me," he resumed: "I saw you go up, and I came to fetch you so that you might wish Monsieur de Mareuil and his daughter good night."

The two men went down talking together. Renée remained alone, standing in the middle of the dressing-room, looking at the yawning cavity of the little staircase, in which she had just seen the shoulders of the father and the son disappear. She could not take her eyes off this cavity. What, they had gone off, quietly, amicably! These two men had not murdered each other. She lent an ear; she listened to ascertain if some atrocious struggle did not make their bodies roll down the stairs. Nothing! In the tepid darkness, nothing but a noise of dancing—a long lullaby. She thought she could hear in the distance the marchioness's laughter and Monsieur de Saffré's clear voice. Then the drama was ended? Her crime, the kisses in the large grey and pink bed, the wild nights in the conservatory, all the accursed love that had consumed her during months, had led to this mean, ignoble ending! Her husband knew all and did not even beat her. And the silence around her—this silence through which trailed the endless waltz—terrified her even more than the sound of murder. She felt afraid of this peacefulness, afraid of this soft-tinted, discreet dressing-room, full of the scent of love.

She perceived herself in the high glass-door of the wardrobe. She approached, astonished to see herself, forgetting her husband, forgetting Maxime, and altogether preoccupied by the strange woman whom she beheld before her. Madness was rising to her brain. Her yellow hair, caught up off the temples and the neck, seemed to her a nudity—an obscenity. The wrinkle of her forehead, deepened to such a degree that it set a dark bar above her eyes, the thin bluish scar of a lash with a whip. Who had marked her like that? Her husband had certainly not raised his hand. And her lips astonished her by their pallor, her myops' eyes seemed dead to her. How old she looked! She inclined her brow, and when she beheld herself in her tights, in her slight gauze blouse, she gazed at herself with lowered eyelashes and sudden blushes. Who had stripped her naked? What was she doing there, bare-breasted, like a harlot who uncovers herself down to the belly? She no longer knew. She looked at her thighs which the tights rounded, at her hips, the supple lines of which she discerned under the gauze, at her bust broadly displayed; and she was ashamed of herself, and contempt for her flesh filled her with inflexible anger against those who had left her thus, with simple circlets of gold round her ankles and wrists to hide her skin.

Then trying, with the fixed idea of drowning intelligence, to remember what she was doing there, quite naked in front of that glass, she went back by a sudden leap to her childhood. She again saw herself, as she had been when seven years old, in the solemn gloom of the Béraud mansion. She remembered a day when Aunt Élisabeth had dressed them—herself and Christine—in woollen dresses, with a little red check pattern on a grey ground. It was Christmas-time. How pleased they were with those two dresses exactly alike! Their aunt spoiled them, and she carried matters so far as to give each of them a bracelet and a necklace of coral. The sleeves were long, the dress-bodies rose up to their chins, the jewellery displayed itself on the stuff, and this seemed very pretty to them. Renée also remembered that her father was there, and that he smiled with his sad air. That day, instead of playing, her sister and herself had walked about the nursery like grown-up persons for fear of soiling themselves. Then at the Convent of the Visitation her schoolfellows had joked her about "her clown's dress," which came down to her finger tips and rose up over her ears. She had begun to cry during lessons; and when play-time came she turned up her sleeves, and tucked in her neckband, so that she might not be derided any longer. And the coral necklace and bracelet seemed to her much prettier on the skin of her neck and arm. Was it on that day that she had begun to strip herself?

Her life unrolled itself before her. She recalled her long bewilderment, the hubbub of gold and flesh which had risen within her, which had mounted first to her knees, then to her stomach, then to her lips, and the flood of which she now felt sweeping over her head, striking her skull, with swiftly repeated blows. It was like a bad sap; it had wearied her limbs, set excrescences of shameful affection in her heart, and made whims, fit for a sick person or an animal, sprout in her brain. This sap had impregnated the soles of her feet while they rested on her carriage rug and on other carpets too, on all the silk and all the velvet over which she had walked since her marriage. The footsteps of others must have left these seeds of poison, now yielding fruit in her blood, and circulating in her veins. She well remembered her childhood. She had merely been inquisitive when she was little. Later on even, after that rape which had cast evil into her, she had not wished for so much shame. She would certainly have become better had she remained knitting beside Aunt Élisabeth. And while she gazed fixedly into the looking-glass to read therein the peaceful future she had missed, she could hear the regular tick tick of her aunt's needles. But she only saw her own pink thighs, her pink hips, the strange woman of pink silk whom she had before her, and whose skin of fine stuff, of close texture, seemed made for the amours of puppets and dolls. She had come to that—to be a big doll from whose torn bosom but a thread of sound escaped. Then, at thought of the enormities of her life, the blood of her father, that middle-class blood which tormented her during hours of crisis, cried out within her and revolted. She who had always trembled at the thought of hell, she ought to have lived in the depths of the black severity of the Béraud mansion. Who was it then that had stripped her naked?

And, in the bluish shade of the glass, she thought she could see the figures of Saccard and Maxime rise up. Saccard, black and sneering, with a hue of iron, and pincer-like laughter, standing on his skinny legs. That man was a will. For ten years she had seen him at the forge, amid the shivers of the reddened metal, with his flesh burnt, breathless, but still striking, raising hammers twenty times too heavy for his arms, at the risk of crushing himself. She understood him now; he seemed to her to have been made taller by this superhuman effort, this huge rascality, this fixed idea of an immense, immediate fortune. She remembered him springing over obstacles, rolling in the mud, and not taking the time to wipe himself, so bent was he upon arriving early at the goal, not even tarrying to enjoy himself on the road, but munching his gold pieces while he ran. Then Maxime's fair, pretty head appeared behind his father's rough shoulders; he had his clear harlot's smile, his empty strumpet's eyes which were never lowered, his parting in the middle of his hair showing the whiteness of his skull. He derided Saccard, he considered him vulgar to give himself so much trouble to earn money, which he, Maxime, expended with such adorable laziness. He was kept. His long soft hands testified to his vices. His hairless body had the wearied attitude of a satisfied woman. Not even a flash of curiosity as to sin shone in all his cowardly, sluggish being, through which vice gently coursed like so much warm water. He did not initiate, he underwent. And Renée, looking at the two apparitions emerge from the slight shade of the mirror, retreated a step, and saw that Saccard had thrown her like a stake, like an investment, and that Maxime had chanced to be there to pick up this louis fallen from the speculator's pocket. She had been an asset in her husband's pocket-book; he had urged her on to the toilettes of a night, to the lovers of a season; he had twisted her in the flames of his forge, employing her, as though she had been a precious metal, to gild the iron of his hands. Little by little the father had thus rendered her mad enough, depraved enough for the kisses of the son. If Maxime were Saccard's impoverished blood, she felt that she herself was the product, the worm-eaten fruit of these two men, the pit of infamy which they had dug together, and into which they both rolled.

She knew it now it was these men who had stripped her naked. Saccard had unhooked her dress-body, and Maxime had loosened her skirt. Then, between them, they had just torn off her chemise. At present she was without a rag, merely with golden rings, like a slave. They had looked at her a little while before, but they had not said to her, "You are naked." The son had trembled like a coward, had shuddered at the thought of carrying his crime to the end, had refused to follow her in her passion. The father, instead of killing her, had robbed her; this man punished people by emptying their pockets; a signature fell like a sunray amid the brutality of his anger, and, by way of vengeance, he carried the signature off. Then she had seen their shoulders retreat into the darkness. No blood upon the carpet, not a cry, not a moan. They were cowards. They had stripped her naked.

And she said to herself that on one sole occasion she had read the future—on the day when, in sight of the murmuring shadows of the Parc Monceaux, the thought that her husband would soil her, and bring her one day to madness, had come and frightened her growing desires. Ah! how her poor head suffered! how she realised now the fallacy of the idea which had made her believe that she lived in a happy sphere of divine enjoyment and impunity! She had lived in the land of shame, and she was chastised by the abandonment of her whole body, by the death of her agonizing being. She wept that she had not listened to the loud voices of the trees.

Her nudity irritated her. She turned her head, she looked around her. The dressing-room retained its musky heaviness, its warm silence, whither still came the phrases of the waltz, like the last expiring circles on a sheet of water. This low laughter of distant voluptuousness passed over her with intolerable raillery. She stopped up her ears, so as to hear it no longer. Then she beheld the luxury in the room. She raised her eyes to the pink tent, even to the silver crown, within which one perceived a Cupid preparing his arrows; she dwelt on the furniture, on the marble slab of the toilet-table, encumbered with pots and tools which she no longer recognised; she went to the bath, still full of slumbering water; she pushed back with her foot the stuffs trailing over the white satin of the arm-chairs, the costume of the nymph Echo, the petticoats, the forgotten towels. And from all these things voices of shame arose: the robe of the nymph Echo spoke to her of the pastime she had shared because she had thought it original to offer herself to Maxime in public; the bath exhaled the scent of her body, the water in which she had dipped herself filled the room with the feverishness of a sick woman; the table, with its soaps and oils, the furniture, with its bed-like roundnesses, reminded her brutally of her flesh, her amours, all the filth that she wished to forget. She returned into the middle of the room, her face purple, not knowing where to fly from this alcove perfume, this luxury which bared itself with a harlot's immodesty, which displayed all this pink. The room was naked like herself; the pink bath, the rosy skin of the hangings, the pink marble of the two tables became animated, stretched themselves, coiled themselves up, and surrounded her with such a display of living voluptuousness that she closed her eyes, lowering her forehead, overwhelmed amid the lace of the ceiling and the walls which crushed her.

But in the blackness she again saw that flesh-tinted spot the dressing-room, and she also beheld the grey softness of the bedroom, the soft aurulent lustre of the little drawing-room, the crude greenness of the conservatory, all the wealth that had been her accomplice. It was there that her feet had become impregnated with the evil sap. She would not have slept with Maxime on a pallet in the depth of a garret. It would have been too ignoble! The silk around her had made her crime coquettish. And she dreamt of tearing down this lace, of spitting upon this silk, of breaking her large bed to pieces with kicks, of dragging her luxury into some gutter, whence it would emerge worn-out and dirtied like herself.

When she re-opened her eyes she approached the mirror, looked at herself again, and examined herself closely. She was done for. She saw herself dead. Her whole face told her that the cerebral cracking was being completed. Maxime, that last perversion of her senses, had finished his work, exhausted her flesh, and unhinged her intelligence. She had no more joys to taste, no hope of an awakening. At this thought a savage rage was rekindled within her, and in a last crisis of desire she dreamt of retaking possession of her prey, of agonizing in Maxime's arms, and carrying him off with her. Louise could not marry him; Louise knew very well that he did not belong to her, since she had seen them kissing each other on the lips. Then she threw a fur mantle over her shoulders, so as not to pass naked through the ball, and she went downstairs.

In the little drawing-room she came face to face with Madame Sidonie. The latter, in view of enjoying the drama, had again stationed herself on the steps of the conservatory. But she no longer knew what to think when Saccard reappeared with Maxime, and brutally replied to her whispered questions that she was dreaming, that there was "nothing whatever." Then she scented the truth. Her yellow face grew pale, she considered this really too strong. And she softly went and placed her ear against the staircase door, hoping that she would be able to hear Renée crying upstairs. When the young woman opened the door, it almost smacked her sister-in-law in the face.

"You are playing the spy on me!" Renée angrily said.

But Madame Sidonie replied with fine disdain:

"Do I occupy myself with your filth?"

And catching up her sorceress's dress, and retiring with a majestic look:

"It isn't my fault, little one, if accidents befall you. But I have no spite, do you hear? And understand that you would have found, and would still find, a second mother in me. I shall expect you at my place whenever you please."

Renée did not listen to her. She entered the large drawing-room, and passed through a very complicated figure of the cotillon without even remarking the surprise which her fur mantle occasioned. In the middle of the room there were groups of ladies and gentlemen who mingled waving bandrols, and Monsieur de Saffré's fluty voice called out:

"Come, ladies, 'the Mexican War.' The ladies who figure the bushes must spread their skirts out around them and remain on the ground—Now, the gentlemen must turn round the bushes—Then when I clap my hands each of them must waltz with his bush."

He clapped his hands. The brass instruments resounded, the waltz once more sent the couples revolving round the room. The figure had not been very successful. Two ladies had remained on the carpet entangled in their dresses. Madame Daste declared that the only thing that amused her in the "Mexican War," was making a "cheese" of her dress, as she had done at school.

Renée on reaching the hall found Louise and her father, whom Saccard and Maxime were accompanying. Baron Gouraud had left. Madame Sidonie withdrew with Mignon and Charrier, while Monsieur Hupel de la Noue escorted Madame Michelin, whom her husband followed discreetly. The prefect had spent the rest of the evening courting the pretty brunette. He had just persuaded her to spend a month of the fine weather in the chief town of his department where "some really curious antiquities were to be seen."

Louise, who was nibbling on the sly the hardbake which she had in her pocket, was seized with a fit of coughing at the moment of leaving the house.

"Cover yourself up well," said her father.

And Maxime hastened to tighten the strings of the hood of her opera-cloak. She raised her chin and let herself be swaddled. But when Madame Saccard appeared, Monsieur de Mareuil retraced his steps and bid her good-bye. For a moment they all remained there together talking. Renée, wishing to explain her pallor and her shudders, said that she had felt cold, and had gone upstairs to throw the fur over her shoulders. And she watched for the moment when she might speak in a low voice to Louise, who was looking at her with inquisitive tranquillity. While the gentlemen again shook hands she leant forward and murmured:

"You won't marry him, will you? It isn't possible. You know very well—"

But the child interrupted her, rising on tip-toe and speaking in her ear:

"Oh! be easy, I shall take him off—It is of no consequence since we are going to Italy."

And she smiled with the vague smile of a vicious sphinx. Renée remained stammering. She did not understand, she fancied that the hunchback was deriding her. Then when the Mareuils had gone off, repeating several times: "Till Sunday!" she looked at her husband and at Maxime with her frightened eyes, and on beholding them, with quiet flesh and satisfied attitudes, she hid her face in her hands, fled, and sought a refuge in the depths of the conservatory.

The pathways were deserted. The large leaves were asleep, and on the heavy sheet of water of the basin two budding Nymphæa slowly unfolded. Renée would have liked to cry; but the damp warmth, the strong perfume which she recognised, caught her at the throat and strangled her despair. She looked at her feet, at the edge of the basin, at the spot of yellow sand where she had stretched the bearskin the winter before. And when she raised her eyes she again saw between the two open doors a figure of the cotillon being danced right away in the background.

There was a deafening noise, a confused mass in which she at first only distinguished flying skirts and black legs, footing and turning. Monsieur de Saffré's voice cried out: "Change your ladies! change your ladies!" And the couples passed by amid a fine yellow dust; each gentleman, after three or four turns in the waltz, threw his partner into the arms of his neighbour, who, in turn, threw him his. Baroness de Meinhold, in her costume as the Emerald, fell from the hands of the Count de Chibray into the hands of Monsieur Simpson; he caught her as he could by a shoulder, while the tip of his gloves glided under her dress body. Countess Vanska, very red and making her coral drops jingle, went with a bound from the chest of Monsieur de Saffré on to the chest of the Duke de Rozan, whom she entwined and compelled to pirouette for five turns, when she hung herself on the hips of Monsieur Simpson who had just thrown the Emerald to the leader of the cotillon. And Madame Teissière, Madame Daste, Madame de Lauwerens, shining like large living jewels, with the fair pallor of the Topaz, the soft blue of the Turquoise, the fiery blue of the Sapphire, abandoned themselves for a minute, vaulted under the extended wrist of a waltzer, then started off again, came frontwards or backwards into a fresh embrace, visiting one after the other all the masculine embraces of the drawing-room. However Madame d'Espanet had, in full view of the orchestra, succeeded in catching hold of Madame Haffner as she passed by, and now waltzed with her, refusing to let go her hold. Gold and Silver danced lovingly together.

Renée then understood this whirling of skirts, this stamping of legs. Standing on a lower surface she could see the fury of the feet, the patent-leather boots and white ankles mingling pell-mell. At intervals it seemed to her as if a gust of wind were about to blow off the dresses. The bare shoulders, the bare arms, the bare heads which flew past and revolved, now seized hold of, now thrown off, and again caught at the end of the gallery where the waltz of the orchestra grew madder, where the red hangings seemed thrown into a transport amid the final fever of the ball, appeared to her like the tumultuous image of her own life, of her nudities and abandonments. And she experienced such a pang, at the thought that Maxime, to take the hunchback in his arms, had just cast her there, on the spot where they had loved each other, that she dreamt of plucking a stalk of the Tanghinia which grazed her cheek, and of chewing it till the sap was exhausted. But she was cowardly, and she remained in front of the plant shivering under the fur which her hands drew over her with a tight clutch, and a great gesture of terrified shame.

The gentlemen, with their well-blackened boots, their frock-coats, and their tall silk hats, set a singular note in this muddy landscape, of a dirty yellow tint, and across which there only passed some pale workmen, some horses splashed to the chine, and some carts, the woodwork of which disappeared beneath a coat of dust. The jurors followed each other in Indian file, jumping from stone to stone, avoiding the pools of flowing filth, at times sinking in up to their heels, and then shaking their feet, and swearing. Saccard had talked about taking the Rue de Charonne, by which they would have avoided this promenade over broken ground, but they unfortunately had several bits of property to visit on the long line of the Boulevard, and, impelled by curiosity, they had decided to pass right through the works. Besides, the sight greatly interested them. At times they stopped, balancing themselves on some bit of plaster which had fallen into a rut, raising their noses, and calling each other to point out some perforated floor, some chimney-pot which had remained in the air, some joist which had fallen on to a neighbouring roof. This bit of a destroyed city, seen on leaving the Rue du Temple, seemed altogether funny to them.

"It is really curious," said Monsieur de Mareuil. "Look there, Saccard, look at that kitchen up there. An old frying-pan has remained hanging over the stove. I can distinguish it perfectly."

However, the doctor, with his cigar between his teeth, had set himself in front of a demolished house, of which there only remained the rooms of the ground floor, filled with the remnants of the other storeys. A single fragment of wall rose up above the pile of materials; and to overthrow it at one effort, it had been girt round with a rope, at which several workmen were tugging.

"They won't manage it," muttered the doctor. "They are pulling too much to the left."

The four other jurors had retraced their steps to see the wall tumble. And all five of them, with their eyes stretched out, and with bated breath, waited for the fall with a quiver of delight. The workmen, giving way, and then suddenly stiffening themselves, cried out, "Oh! heave oh!"

"They won't manage it," repeated the doctor.

Then after a few seconds of anxiety:

"It is moving, it is moving," joyfully cried one of the commercial men.

And when the wall gave way at last, and fell with a frightful crash, raising a cloud of plaster, the gentlemen looked at each other with smiles. They were delighted. Their frock-coats became covered with a fine dust, which whitened their arms and shoulders.

Resuming their prudent march amid the puddles, they now began to talk about the workmen. There were not many good ones. They were all idle fellows, prodigals, and withal most obstinate, only dreaming of their masters' ruin. Monsieur de Mareuil, who for a moment had been looking with a shudder at two poor devils perched on the corner of a roof demolishing a wall with their pick-axes, expressed, however, the opinion that, all the same, these men really possessed great courage. The other jurors again paused and raised their eyes to the workmen who balanced themselves, leaning and striking with all their strength; they pushed the stones down with their feet, and quietly looked at them shattering below. If the pick-axes had missed striking, the mere impulsion of the men's arms would have precipitated them into space.

"Bah! it's habit," said the doctor, setting his cigar in his mouth again. "They are brutes!"

The jurors had now reached one of the houses which they had to visit. They finished their work in a quarter of an hour, and then resumed their walk. By degrees they no longer felt so much disgust for the mud; they walked in the middle of the pools, abandoning the hope of keeping their boots clean. When they had passed the Rue Ménilmontant one of the commercial men, the ex-knife-grinder, became nervous. He examined the ruins about him, and no longer recognised the neighbourhood. He said that he had lived in that part, on his arrival in Paris more than thirty years previously, and that he should be very pleased to find the house again. He continued searching with his eyes, when suddenly the sight of a house which the workmen's picks had already cut in twain, made him stop short in the middle of the road. He studied the door and the windows. Then, pointing upward with his finger to a corner of the partially demolished building:

"There it is," he cried; "I recognise it!"

"What, pray?" asked the doctor.

"My room, of course! That's it!"

It was a little room, situated on the fifth floor, and it must have formerly overlooked a courtyard. A breach in the wall showed it, quite bare, already demolished on one side, with a broad torn band of its wall paper, of a large yellow flowery pattern, trembling in the wind. On the left hand, one could still see the recess of a cupboard, lined with blue paper, and beside it was an aperture for a stove-pipe, with a bit of piping in it.

The ex-workman was seized with emotion:

"I spent five years in there," muttered he. "My means were small in those times, but no matter, I was young. You see the cupboard; it was there that I put by three hundred francs, copper by copper. And the hole for the stove-pipe, I can still remember the day when I made it. The room had no fire-place, and it was bitter cold, all the more so as we were not often two together."

"Come, come," interrupted the doctor, joking, "we don't ask you for your secrets. You played your games like every one else."

"That's true," naively resumed the worthy man. "I still remember an ironing girl who lived over the way. You see the bed was over there, on the right hand side near the window. Ah! my poor room, how they've knocked it about."

He was really very sad.

"Come," said Saccard, "no harm's done by throwing those old cabins down. Handsome houses in freestone will be built in place of them. Would you still live in such a den while you might very well lodge yourself on the new Boulevard?"

"That's true," again replied the manufacturer, who seemed quite consoled.

The commission of inquiry halted again at the two other houses. The doctor remained at the door smoking and looking at the sky. When they reached the Rue des Amandiers the houses became fewer; they now passed through large inclosures and over uncultivated land, where some half fallen buildings straggled. Saccard seemed delighted with this promenade through ruins. He had just remembered the dinner he had once shared with his first wife on the heights of Montmartre, and he well recollected having indicated with his hand the cut across Paris from the Place du Château-d'Eau to the Barrière du Trône. The realisation of this far distant prediction delighted him. He followed the cut, with the secret joys of authorship, as if he himself had with his iron fingers struck the first blows with a pickaxe. And he jumped over the puddles, reflecting that three millions awaited him under building materials, at the end of this river of greasy filth.

Meanwhile the gentlemen fancied themselves in the country. The road passed through some gardens, the walls of which had been felled. There were large clumps of budding lilac, with foliage of a very delicate light green. Each of these gardens, looking like a retreat hung with the leaves of the shrubs, displayed a narrow basin or a miniature cascade, with bits of wall on which to deceive the eye, arbours, in perspective and bluish landscape backgrounds had been painted. The buildings, scattered and discreetly hidden, resembled Italian pavilions and Grecian temples, and moss was wearing away the feet of the plaster columns, whilst weeds had loosened the mortar of the pediments.

"Those are petites maisons," said the doctor, with a wink.

But as he saw that the gentlemen did not understand what he meant, he explained that under Louis XV. the nobility had retreats of this kind for their pleasure parties. It was then the fashion. And he added:

"They were called petites maisons (little houses). This neighbourhood was full of them. Some stiff things took place in them, and no mistake!"

The commission of inquiry had become very attentive. The two commercial men's eyes were shining, and they smiled and looked with great interest at these gardens and pavilions, on which they had not bestowed a glance prior to their colleague's explanations. A grotto detained them for a long time. But when the doctor, seeing a house already attacked by the pick, said that he recognised it as the Count de Savigny's petite maison, well known on account of that nobleman's orgies, the whole commission left the Boulevard to go and visit the ruins. They climbed on to the fallen materials, entered the ground floor rooms by the windows, and as the workmen were away at their mid-day meal, they were able to linger there quite at their ease. They indeed remained there for a good half hour, examining the rosettes of the ceilings, the paintings above the doors, the strained mouldings of the plaster grown yellow with age. The doctor reconstructed the building.

"Do you see," said he, "this room must be the banqueting hall. There was certainly an immense divan in that recess of the wall. And, indeed, I'm sure that a looking-glass surmounted the divan. See, there are the holdfasts of the glass. Oh! those fellows were scamps who knew deucedly well how to enjoy themselves!"

The jurors would never have left these old stones which tickled their curiosity, if Aristide Saccard, growing impatient, had not said to them, laughing:

"You may look as much as you like, the ladies are no longer here. Let's get to our business."

Before leaving, however, the doctor climbed on to a mantelshelf, to delicately detach, with one blow of a pick, a little painted head of Cupid, which he slipped into the pocket of his frock-coat.

They at length reached the end of their journey. The land which had formerly belonged to Madame Aubertot was very vast; the music-hall and the garden occupied barely more than half of the surface; a few unimportant houses were scattered about the rest of it. The new Boulevard cut obliquely across this large parallelogram, and this circumstance had quieted one of Saccard's fears; he had long imagined that only a corner of the music-hall would be removed by the new thoroughfare. Larsonneau therefore had received orders to open his mouth, as the bordering plots ought to at least quintuple in value. He was already threatening the city of Paris to avail himself of a recent decree authorising landowners to deliver up only the ground necessary for works of public utility.

It was the expropriation agent who received the jurors. He took them over the garden, made them visit the music-hall and showed them a huge pile of papers. But the two commercial men had gone down again accompanied by the doctor, whom they were still questioning about Count de Savigny's petite maison, of which their minds were full. They listened to him with gaping mouths, standing all three beside a jeu de tonneau. And he talked to them about La Pompadour, and related the amours of Louis XV., while Monsieur de Mareuil and Saccard continued the inquiry alone.

"It's all finished," said the latter on returning into the garden. "If you will allow me, gentlemen, I will myself draw up the report."

The surgical-instrument maker did not even hear. He was deep in the Regency.

"What funny times, all the same!" he muttered.

Then they found a cab in the Rue de Charonne and they went off, muddy to the knees, but as satisfied with their promenade as with a pleasure trip in the country. In the cab the conversation changed—they talked politics, they said that the Emperor did great things. The like of what they had just seen had never been witnessed before. This long, perfectly straight street would be superb when the houses were erected.

It was Saccard who drew up the report and the jury granted the three millions. The speculator was at the end of his tether, he could not have waited a month longer. This money saved him from ruin, and even a little from the assize court. He gave five hundred thousand francs on the million which he owed to his upholsterer and his contractor for the mansion in the Parc Monceaux. He stopped up other holes, rushed into new companies, and deafened Paris with the noise of the real crowns which he flung by the shovelful on to the shelves of his iron safe. The golden river had a source at last. But this was not yet a solid, entrenched fortune flowing with a regular, continuous gush. Saccard, saved from a crisis, thought himself pitiful with the crumbs of his three millions, and naively said that he was still too poor, and could not stop there. And soon the ground again cracked beneath his feet.

Larsonneau had behaved so admirably in the Charonne affair that Saccard, after a slight hesitation, carried honesty to the point of giving him his ten per cent, and his bonus of thirty thousand francs. The expropriation agent thereupon opened a banking-house. When his accomplice accused him in a snappish tone of being richer than himself, the coxcomb with yellow gloves replied, laughing:

"You see, dear master, you are very clever in making money rain down, but you don't know how to pick it up."

Madame Sidonie profited by her brother's stroke of fortune to borrow ten thousand francs from him, with which she went to spend a couple of months in England. She returned without a copper, and it was never known what had become of the ten thousand francs.

"Well, it costs," she replied when she was questioned. "I ransacked all the libraries. I had three secretaries to assist me in my researches."

And when she was asked if she at length had any positive information about her three milliards, she at first smiled with a mysterious air, and then ended by muttering:

"You are all incredulous. I have found nothing, but no matter. You will see, you will see some day."

She had not, however, lost all the time she spent in England. Her brother the minister profited by her journey to entrust her with a delicate commission. When she returned she obtained large orders from the ministry. It was a fresh incarnation. She made contracts with the government, and charged herself with supplying it every imaginable thing. She sold it provisions and arms for the troops, furniture for the prefectures and public departments, fire wood for the offices and the museums. The money she made did not induce her to set aside her eternal black dresses, and she retained her yellow, doleful face. Saccard then reflected that it was really she whom he had seen once long ago furtively leaving their brother Eugène's house. She must at all times have kept up a secret connection with him, for matters with which no one was acquainted.

Renée was agonizing amid these interests, these ardent thirsts which could not satisfy themselves. Aunt Élisabeth was dead; Christine had married and left the Béraud mansion, where her father alone remained erect in the gloomy shade of the large rooms. Renée exhausted what she inherited from her aunt in one season. She gambled now. She had found a drawing-room where ladies sat at table till three o'clock in the morning, losing hundreds of thousands of francs in a night. She tried to drink, but she could not, she experienced invincible qualms of disgust. Since she had found herself alone again, abandoned to the worldly flood which carried her off, she surrendered herself all the more, not knowing how to kill time. She ended by tasting of everything. And nothing touched her amid the immense boredom which was crushing her. She grew older, blue circles appeared round her eyes, her nose became thinner, her pouting lips parted in sudden and causeless laughter. It was the end of a woman.

When Maxime had married Louise, and the young folks had started for Italy, she no longer troubled herself about her lover; she even seemed to forget him completely. And when Maxime returned alone six months later, having buried the "hunchback" in the cemetery of a little town in Lombardy, it was hatred that she displayed towards him. She remembered Phèdre, she no doubt recollected that poisoned love to which she had heard Ristori lend her sobs. Then, so as never more to meet the young fellow in her home, to dig an abyss of shame between the father and the son for ever, she compelled her husband to take cognisance of the incest, she told him that on the day when he had surprised her with Maxime, the latter, who had long pursued her, was seeking to assault her. Saccard was horribly worried by the insistence she evinced in wishing to open his eyes. He was obliged to quarrel with his son and cease to see him. The young widower, rich with his wife's dowry, went to live a bachelor's life in a little house of the Avenue de l'Impératrice. He had renounced the Council of State, and kept a racing stable. Renée derived one of her last satisfactions from this rupture. She revenged herself, she flung the infamy which these two men had set on her back in their own faces, and she said to herself that now she would never more see them making game of her, arm-in-arm, like a couple of comrades.

Amid the crumbling of Renée's affections there came a moment when she had no one left to love her but her maid. She had by degrees been taken with a maternal affection for Céleste. Perhaps this girl, who was all that remained near her of Maxime's love, reminded her of the hours of enjoyment forever dead. Perhaps Renée was simply touched by the fidelity of this servant, of this brave heart the quiet solicitude of which nothing seemed to shake. From the depth of her remorse she thanked Céleste for having witnessed her shame without leaving her in disgust; and she pictured all kinds of abnegation, a whole life of renunciation to arrive at understanding the calmness of the chambermaid in the presence of incest, her icy hands, her respectful, quiet attentions. And the girl's devotion made Renée all the happier as she knew her to be honest and economical, without a lover, without a vice.

At times in her sad moments she would say to her:

"Ah! my girl, it is you who will close my eyes."

Céleste never answered, but she gave a singular smile. One morning she quietly informed her mistress that she was going to leave, that she meant to return into the country. Renée remained trembling all over on hearing this, as if some great misfortune had befallen her. She cried out, and plied Céleste with questions. Why would she leave her when they got on so well together? And she offered to double her wages.

But the maid, in answer to all her kind words, made a gesture meaning no, in a quiet, obstinate manner.

"You see, madame," she ended by replying, "you might offer me all the gold of Peru, but I could not remain a week longer. Ah! you don't know me—I've been with you for eight years, haven't I? Well, on the very first day I said to myself: 'As soon as I have collected five thousand francs together, I will return to my village; I will buy Lagache's house, and I shall live very happily!' It's a promise I made to myself, you understand. And the five thousand francs were completed yesterday, when you paid me my wages."

Renée felt a chill at her heart. She saw Céleste passing behind her and Maxime while they were kissing each other, and she saw her with her indifference, in a perfect state of abstraction, dreaming of her five thousand francs. However, she still tried to retain her, frightened by the void in which she would have to live, longing, despite everything, to keep near her this obstinate animal whom she had thought devoted, and who was merely egotistical. The girl smiled, still shaking her head and muttering:

"No, no, it isn't possible. Even if it were my mother I should refuse. I shall buy two cows. I shall perhaps start a little haberdasher's business. It is very pretty down our way. Oh! for the matter of that, I am willing you should come and see me. It is near Caen. I will leave you the address."

Renée then no longer insisted. She shed hot tears when she was alone. On the morrow, with a sick person's whimsicality, she decided to accompany Céleste to the Western Railway station, in her own brougham. She gave her one of her travelling rugs and made her a present in money, and showed her the attentions of a mother whose daughter is about to start upon some long difficult journey. In the brougham she looked at her with moist eyes. Céleste chatted and said how pleased she was to go away. Then emboldened, she spoke out and gave some advice to her mistress.

"I shouldn't have understood life like you, madame. I often said to myself when I found you with Monsieur Maxime: 'Is it possible one can be so foolish for men!' It always ends badly—Ah! for my part I always mistrusted them!"

She laughed and threw herself back in the corner of the brougham:

"My money would have danced!" she continued, "and now-a-days I should be destroying my eyes with crying. So whenever I saw a man I took up a broomstick—I never dared to tell you all that. Besides, it didn't concern me. You were free to do as you liked, and I only had to earn my money honestly."

At the railway station Renée insisted upon paying her fare and took her a first class ticket. As they had arrived before the time, she detained her, pressing her hands and repeating:

"And take good care of yourself, don't neglect your health, my good Céleste."

The latter allowed herself to be caressed. She stood looking happy, with a fresh smiling face, before her mistress's tearful eyes. Renée again spoke of the past, and the maid abruptly exclaimed:

"I was forgetting: I didn't tell you the story of Baptiste, master's valet. Probably no one has liked to tell you."

The young woman owned that she indeed knew nothing.

"Well, you remember his grand dignified airs, his disdainful glances, you yourself spoke to me about them. It was all so much acting. He didn't care for women, he never came down to the servants' hall when we were there; I can repeat it now, he even pretended that it was disgusting in the drawing-room, on account of all the low-neck dresses. I well believe that he didn't care for women!"

And she leant towards Renée's ear, and made her blush, though she herself retained all her honest placidity.

"When the new stable boy," she continued, "told everything to master, master preferred to dismiss Baptiste rather than send him to jail. It seems that these disgusting things had been going on for years in the stables. And to think that the big scamp pretended he was fond of horses! It was the grooms that he liked!"

The bell interrupted her. She hastily took up the eight or ten packages which she had not wished to part with. She let herself be kissed; and then she went off, without looking round.

Renée remained in the station until the engine whistled. And when the train had gone off, she was overcome with despair, she no longer knew what to do; her days seemed to stretch before her as empty as the vast waiting hall where she had been left alone. She again entered her brougham and told the coachman to drive her home. But on the way she changed her mind, she was afraid of her room, of the boredom awaiting her there. She no longer felt the necessary courage to return home and change her dress for her usual drive round the lake. She felt a longing for sunlight, a longing to mingle with the crowd.

She ordered the coachman to drive to the Bois.

It was four o'clock. The Bois was awakening from the drowsiness of a warm afternoon. Clouds of dust flew along the Avenue de l'Impératrice, and one could see, spread out afar, the expanse of verdure which the slopes of Saint-Cloud and Suresnes, crowned by the grey walls of Mont Valérien, limited. High above the horizon the sun shed its rays, filling the recesses of the foliage with golden dust, lighting up the tall branches, and changing the ocean of leaves into an ocean of light. Past the fortifications, in the avenue of the Bois leading to the lake, the ground had just been watered; and the vehicles rolled over the brown soil as over a carpet, amid a rising freshness and an odour of damp earth. Mingled with the low bushes on either side, the little trees of the copses reared their crowd of young trunks, growing indistinct in the greenish dimness which flashes of light pierced here and there with yellow glades; and, by degrees, as one approached the lake, the chairs on the side-walks became more numerous, families sat, gazing with quiet silent faces at the interminable procession of wheels. Then, on reaching the open space in front of the lake, there was a dazzlement, the oblique sun transformed the round expanse of water into a huge mirror of polished silver reflecting the brilliant disk of the planet. All eyes blinked, one could only distinguish the dark form of the pleasure boat on the left hand side near the bank. The parasols in the vehicles were inclined with a gentle and uniform movement towards this splendour, and only rose erect again on reaching the roadway skirting the sheet of water, which, from the summit of the bank, now assumed a metallic blackness, streaked with golden burnishings. On the right hand side the clumps of fir trees lined the road with their colonnades of straight slender stems, the soft violet tinge of which was reddened by the flames of the sky; on the left the lawns, bathed in light and similar to fields of emeralds, stretched away as far as the distant lace-like ironwork of the gate of La Muette. And on approaching the cascade, while the dimness of the copses again presented itself on one side, the islands at the end of the lake rose up into the blue air, with the sunshine playing over their banks, and bold shadows darting from their pines, at the feet of which the chalet looked like some child's plaything lost in a corner of a virgin forest. The whole wood laughed and quivered in the sunshine.

The weather was so magnificent that Renée felt ashamed of her closed brougham and her costume of flea-tinted silk. She drew back a little, and, with the windows open, looked at this flow of light stretching over the water and the verdure. At the bends of the avenues she perceived the line of wheels revolving like golden stars amid a long train of blinding gleams. The varnished panels, the flashing steel and brass mountings, the bright colours of the dresses passed on, at the even trot of the horses, and set against the background of the wood a long moving bar, a ray fallen from the sky, stretching out and following the bends of the roadway. And in this ray, as the young woman blinked her eyes, she saw every now and then the light chignon of a woman, the black back of a footman, the white mane of a horse, stand out. The arched parasols of watered silk shone like moons of metal.

Then, in presence of this broad daylight, this expanse of sunshine, Renée thought of the fine dust of twilight which she had seen one evening falling on the tawny foliage. Maxime had been with her. It was at the period when her desires for that child were dawning in her. And she again saw the lawns dampened by the evening air, the darkened underwood, the deserted pathways. The line of vehicles had gone by with a sad sound past the unoccupied chairs, whilst now the rumble of the wheels, the trot of the horses, resounded with the joyfulness of a flourish of trumpets. Then the recollection of all her drives in the Bois returned to her. She had lived there. Maxime had grown up there, at her side, on the cushion of her carriage. It had been their garden. Rain had surprised them there, sunshine had brought them back, the fall of night had not always driven them away. They had been there in every kind of weather, they had there tasted the worries and the joy of their life. Amid the emptiness of her being, the melancholy imparted by Celeste's departure, these memories gave Renée bitter joy. Her heart said: "Never again! never again!" and she was like frozen when she evoked the image of the winter landscape, the congealed, dull-tinted lake on which they had skated; the sky then was of a sooty colour, the snow had set white lace on the trees, the wind had thrown fine sand in their eyes and on their lips.

However, on the left hand side, on the side reserved to equestrians, she had already recognised the Duke de Rozan, Monsieur de Mussy, and Monsieur de Saffré. Larsonneau had killed the duke's mother by presenting her the hundred and fifty thousand francs' worth of bills accepted by her son, and the duke was devouring his second half million with Blanche Müller, after leaving the first five hundred thousand francs in the hands of Laure d'Aurigny. Monsieur de Mussy, who had left the embassy in England for the embassy in Italy, had become gallant again; and he led cotillons with newly acquired gracefulness. As for Monsieur de Saffré, he remained the most amiable sceptic and fast-liver in the world. Renée saw him urging his horse towards the carriage of the Countess Vanska, with whom he was said to be madly in love since the evening when he had seen her as Coral at the Saccards'.

All the ladies were there, moreover; the Duchess de Sternich, in her sempiternal eight-springed carriage; Madame de Lauwerens in a landau, with the Baroness de Meinhold and little Madame Daste seated in front of her; Madame de Teissière and Madame de Guende in a victoria. Amid these ladies, Sylvia and Laure d'Aurigny displayed themselves on the cushions of a magnificent calash. Madame Michelin even passed by in the depths of a brougham; the pretty brunette had been to visit the chief town of Monsieur Hupel de la Noue's department; and on her return she had made her appearance in the Bois in this brougham, to which she hoped to soon add an open carriage. Renée also perceived the Marchioness d'Espanet and Madame Haffner, the inseparables hidden under their parasols, stretched out side by side, laughing tenderly, and gazing into each other's eyes.

Then the gentlemen passed by: Monsieur de Chibray driving a mail-coach; Monsieur Simpson in a dog-cart; Messieurs Mignon and Charrier, more eager than ever for work, despite their dream of approaching retirement, in a brougham which they left at the corner of an avenue, to go a bit of the way on foot; Monsieur de Mareuil, still in mourning for his daughter, seeking bows for his first interruption launched forth the day before at the Corps Législatif, and airing his political importance in the carriage of Monsieur Toutin-Laroche, who had once more saved the Crédit Viticole, after placing it within two fingers' length of ruin, and whom the Senate made thinner and more influential than ever.

And, to close the procession, like a final majesty, Baron Gouraud showed his inert heaviness in the sunlight, on the pillows with which his carriage was provided. Renée felt surprised and disgusted on recognising Baptiste seated, with a white face and solemn air, beside the coachman. The tall flunky had entered the baron's service.

The copses continued to stretch away, the water of the lake grew iridescent under the sunrays now become more oblique, the line of carriages spread out its dancing gleams. And the young woman, herself seized and carried away by this enjoyment, vaguely divined all the appetites rolling, along in the midst of the sunlight. She did not feel indignant with these sharers of the spoil. But she hated them for their joy, for this triumphal march, which showed them to her full in the golden dust from the sky. They were superb and smiling; the women displayed themselves white and plump, the men had the rapid glances, the delighted deportment of favoured lovers. And she, in the depth of her empty heart, found nothing more than lassitude and covert envy. Was she better than the others, then, that she thus bent under the weight of pleasure? or was it the others who were praiseworthy for having stronger loins than her own. She did not know, she was just longing for new desires with which to begin life anew, when, on turning her head, she perceived beside her, on the footway bordering the underwood, a sight which rent her heart like a supreme blow.

Saccard and Maxime were walking along slowly, arm-in-arm. The father must have paid a visit to the son, and they had both come down from the Avenue de l'Impératrice to the lake chatting.

"Listen to me," repeated Saccard, "you are a simpleton. When a man has money like you have, he doesn't let it slumber at the bottom of a drawer. There is a hundred per cent to be gained in the affair I mention. It is a safe investment. You know very well that I wouldn't let you in!"

However, the young fellow seemed bored by his father's insistence. He smiled with his pretty air, and looked at the carriages.

"Do you see that little woman over there, the one in mauve," he suddenly said. "She's a washerwoman, whom that beast De Mussy has brought out."

They looked at the woman in mauve; after which Saccard drew a cigar from his pocket, and addressing himself to Maxime who was smoking:

"Give me a light," he said.

Then they stopped for a moment in front of each other, drawing their faces near together. When the cigar was lighted:

"You see," continued the father, again taking his son's arm, and pressing it tightly under his own; "you would be a fool if you didn't listen to me. Is it agreed, eh? Will you bring me the hundred thousand francs to-morrow?"

"You know very well that I no longer go to your house," replied Maxime, compressing his lips.

"Pooh! A lot of bosh! It's time there was an end to all that."

And while they took a few steps in silence, just at the moment when Renée, feeling as though she would swoon, hid her head in the padding of the brougham, so as not to be seen, a growing buzz swept along the line of vehicles. The pedestrians on the footways halted, and turned round with gaping mouths, watching something that approached. There was a louder rumble of wheels, the equipages respectfully drew aside, and two postilions appeared, clad in green, with round caps, on which golden tassels jolted with their cords spread out. Leaning slightly forward, they hastened on at the trot of their tall bay horses. Behind them they left an empty space; and, then, in this empty space, the Emperor appeared.

He occupied alone the back seat of a landau. Dressed in black, with his frock-coat buttoned up to his chin, he wore, slightly on one side, a very tall hat, the silk of which glistened. In front of him, on the other seat, two gentlemen, dressed with that correct elegance which was favourably looked upon at the Tuileries, remained grave, with their hands on their knees, and the silent air of two wedding guests promenaded amid the curiosity of a crowd.

Renée found the Emperor aged. His mouth was parted more languidly under his thick waxed moustaches. His eyelids had grown heavy to the point that they half covered his dim eyes, the yellow greyness of which had become yet more cloudy. And his nose alone still looked like a dry bone set in his vague face.

Meantime, while the ladies in the carriages smiled discreetly, the people on foot pointed the sovereign out to one another. A fat man declared that the Emperor was the gentleman who turned his back to the coachman on the left side. Some hands were raised to salute. But Saccard, who had taken off his hat, even before the postilions had passed, waited till the imperial carriage was exactly in front of him, and then he cried out in his thick Provençal voice:

"Long live the Emperor!"

The Emperor, surprised, turned, recognised the enthusiast, no doubt, and returned the bow smiling. And everything then disappeared in the sunlight, the equipages closed up, and Renée could only perceive, above the manes of the horses, and between the backs of the footmen, the postilions caps jolting with their golden tassels.

She remained for a moment with her eyes wide open, full of this apparition, which reminded her of another hour of her life. It seemed to her as if the Emperor, by mingling with the line of carriages, had set the last necessary ray therein, and given a meaning to this triumphal march. Now, it was a glory. All these wheels, all these decorated men, all these women languidly stretched out, disappeared amid the flash and the rumble of the imperial landau. This sensation became so acute and so painful that the young woman experienced an imperious need of escaping from this triumph, from Saccard's cry, which was still ringing in her ears, from the sight of the father and the son slowly walking along, and chatting with their arms linked. She reflected, with her hands on her breast, as if burnt by an internal fire: and it was with a sudden hope of relief and salutary coolness that she leant forward, and said to the coachman:

"To the Béraud mansion."

The courtyard retained its cloister-like coldness. Renée went round the arcades, made happy by the dampness which fell upon her shoulders. She approached the fountain, green with moss, and polished by wear at the edges; she looked at the lion's head, now half effaced, which, with parted jaws emitted a gush of water by an iron pipe. How many times had she and Christine taken this head between their girlish arms to lean forward to reach the stream of water, the icy flow of which they liked to feel upon their little hands. Then she mounted the great silent staircase; she perceived her father at the end of the suite of spacious rooms; he drew up his tall figure, and silently went deeper into the shade of the old residence, of the haughty solitude in which he had absolutely cloistered himself since his sister's death; and Renée thought of the men of the Bois, of that other old man, Baron Gouraud, who had his flesh rolled about on pillows in the sunlight. She went up higher, she followed the passages, the servants' stairs, she was bound for the nursery. When she reached the top landing she found the key hanging on the usual nail; a large rusty key it was, on which spiders had woven webs. The lock gave a plaintive cry. How sad the nursery was! She felt a pang at her heart of finding it so empty, so grey, so silent. She closed the open door of the abandoned aviary, with the vague idea that it must have been by that door that the joys of her childhood had flown away. In front of the flower-boxes, still full of soil hardened and cracked all over like dry mud, she stopped and broke off a rhododendron stem; this skeleton of a plant, shrivelled and white with dust, was all that remained of their living clumps of verdure. And the matting, the matting itself, faded, gnawed by rats, displayed itself with the melancholy aspect of a shroud which has for years awaited a promised corpse. In one corner amid this mute despair, this silent weeping abandonment, Renée found one of her old dolls; all the bran had flowed out of it by a hole, but its porcelain head continued smiling with its enamelled lips, above the tabid body, which a doll's follies seemed to have exhausted.

Renée felt stifled in the tainted atmosphere of the abode of her childhood. She opened the window and gazed on the immense view. Nothing there was soiled. She again found the eternal delights, the eternal juvenescence of the open air. The sun must have been sinking behind her; but she only saw the rays of the setting planet, as they lent, with infinite softness, a yellowish tinge to this corner of the city which she knew so well. It was like the last lay of daylight, a gay refrain, which slowly subsided on all things. There were gleams of tawny fire about the boom below, while the lace-work of the iron cables of the Pont de Constantine stood out above the whiteness of the pillars. Then, on the right hand, the umbrage of the Halle aux Vins and the Jardin des Plantes seemed like a great mere with stagnant, mossy water, the greenish surface of which blended in the distance with the mist of the sky. On the left, the Quai Henri IV. and the Quai de la Rapée were lined with the same rows of houses, those houses which, as girls, twenty years before, they had seen there, with the same brown patches of sheds, the same ruddy factory chimneys. And, above the trees, the slate roof of the Salpêtrière hospital, made blue by the sun's good-bye, suddenly appeared to her like an old friend.

But what calmed her, and imparted coolness to her bosom, were the long grey banks, and especially the Seine, the giantess, which she saw coming from the limits of the horizon straight towards her, just as in those happy times when she had feared to see it well and rise up to the very window. She remembered their affection for the river, their love for its colossal flow, for this quivering of noisy water, spreading out in a sheet at their feet, parting around and behind them in two arms, the ends of which they could not see, though they still felt the great pure caress. They were then already coquettish, and on the days when the sky was clear they said that the Seine had put on her beautiful dress of green silk, flecked with white flames; and the eddies where the water curled set frills of satin on the dress, while afar off, beyond the belt of bridges, a play of light spread strips of stuff the colour of the sun.

And Renée, raising her eyes, looked at the vast expanse of soaring sky of a pale blue, fading little by little in the obliteration of twilight. She thought of the accomplice city, of the blazing nights of the Boulevard, of the hot afternoons of the Bois, of the pallid, crude day, of the grand new mansions. Then, when she lowered her head, when she again saw at a glance the peaceful horizon of her childhood, this corner of a city, inhabited by the middle and working classes, where she had dreamt of a life of peace, a final bitterness mounted to her lips. With her hands clasped, she sobbed in the gathering night.

The following winter, when Renée died of acute meningitis, it was her father who paid her debts. Worms's bill amounted to two hundred and fifty-seven thousand francs.

THE END.