Émile Zola

“ 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. ”

“ They enjoyed themselves in gazing upon this charming corner of new Paris, this clean smiling bit of nature, these lawns looking like stripes of velvet, dotted with flower beds and choice shrubs, and edged with magnificent white roses. Carriages passed by each other, as numerous as on the Boulevard; lady promenaders carelessly trailed their skirts as if they had not ceased treading the carpets of their drawing-rooms. And athwart the foliage, Renée and Maxime criticised the dresses and pointed out the equipages to each other, deriving real enjoyment from the soft tints of this large garden. ”

“ This fall abruptly appeared to her as one of the necessities of her boredom, as a rare extreme enjoyment which alone could rouse her tired senses, her wounded heart. It was during that autumnal promenade, in the twilight, when the Bois was falling asleep, that the vague idea of incest came to her, like a titillation which lent an unknown quiver to her skin; and in the evening, in the semi-intoxication of the dinner, this idea, lashed by jealousy, became precise, rose up ardently before her, amid the flames of the conservatory, as she watched Maxime and Louise. ”

“ Then love itself grew dull there. It was a hot-house flower which needed the spacious grey and pink bed; the naked fleshy aspect of the dressing-room and the gilded dawn of the little drawing-room. Alone of an evening, in front of the sea, they no longer found anything to say to each other. Renée tried to sing the airs she had heard at the Variety Theatre, accompanying herself on an old piano which was agonising in a corner of her room at the hotel, but the instrument, damp with the breezes from the open, had the dreary voice of the great waters. ”

“ And, as in a bed, the young woman left the imprint, the warmth and the perfume of her body upon all the things. When one drew aside the double hangings screening the room from the boudoir it seemed as if one raised some silken counterpane, and entered some vast couch still warm and moist, where one found on the fine linen the adorable figure, the slumber and dreams of a Parisian woman of thirty.
An adjoining spacious apartment, hung with old chintz, was simply furnished all round with lofty wardrobes containing Renée's army of dresses. ”

“ The lovers sat by the fireside more frequently than formerly. The fact was, that Renée had filled the icy emptiness of the gilded ceilings with a warm enjoyment. The suspicious abode of worldly pleasure had become a chapel in which she secretly practised a new religion. Maxime did not merely lend to her nature that high note which harmonized with her mad dresses. He was the very lover fitted to this mansion, with broad windows like shop fronts, and which a flood of sculpture inundated from garret to cellar. ”

“ Saccard had just had his mansion of the Parc Monceaux built on some ground stolen from the city. He had reserved for himself on the first floor, a superb private room, all violet ebony and gold, with lofty glass doors to the book-cases, which were full of business papers but where not a book was to be seen; the safe, embedded in the wall, had the depths of an iron alcove large enough to accommodate the amours of a milliard. It was here that his fortune bloomed, impudently displayed itself. Everything seemed to succeed with him. ”

“ The piano had, however, suddenly put a stop to Monsieur Hupel de la Noue's gaiety. He looked at the red velvet curtains with an anxious air, he said to himself that he ought to have placed Madame d'Espanet in position as he had placed the others.
The curtains slowly opened, the piano again began the sensual waltz in a minor key. A murmur sped through the drawing-room, the ladies leaned forward, the gentlemen stretched out their necks, whilst admiration displayed itself here and there by a remark, made in too loud a voice, by a spontaneous sigh, or a stifled laugh. ”

“ Ever since the commencement of the dinner, Renée had seemed absent-minded. She fulfilled her duties as mistress of the house with a mechanical sort of smile. At each burst of mirth which came from the end of the table where Maxime and Louise were sitting side-by-side joking like two comrades, she cast a glistening glance in their direction. She felt dreadfully bored. The serious men were too much for her. Madame d'Espanet and Madame Haffner looked at her in despair.
"And the coming elections, how do they promise to turn out?" suddenly inquired Saccard of Monsieur Hupel de la Noue. ”

“ A warm humidity covered the lovers with a kind of dew, an ardent sweat. For a long time they remained motionless and speechless in this bath of flame, Maxime flat and inert, Renée quivering on her wrists as on supple nervous hams. Outside, through the little panes of the conservatory, one caught glimpses of the Parc Monceaux, of the clumps of trees with fine black outlines, of the grass lawns as white as frozen lakes—quite a dead landscape, the delicate light tints of which reminded one of bits of Japanese engravings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As Eugène Rougon so happily expressed it, Paris was dining and anticipating no end of pleasure at dessert. Politics produced an universal scare, like some dangerous drug. The wearied minds turned to pleasure and money-making. Those who had any of the latter brought it out, and those who had none sought in all the out-of-the-way places for forgotten treasures. A secret quiver seemed to run through the multitude, accompanied by a nascent jingling of five-franc pieces, by the rippling laughter of women, and the yet faint clatter of crockery and murmur of kisses. ”

“ One descended into the bath by marble steps. Above the silver taps, shaped like swans' heads, a Venetian mirror, frameless, but with curved edges and a design ground in the crystal, filled the back of the alcove. Renée took a bath of a few minutes' duration every morning, and this bath filled the dressing-room with moisture, with a perfume of fresh, wet flesh for the whole day. At times an open scent bottle, a piece of soap left out of its dish, lent a dash of something stronger to this rather insipid smell. The young woman liked to remain there, almost in a state of nudity, until noon. ”

“ Her soft voice emerged out of the darkness.
"Still worry about money?" she said, in a tone full of gentleness and pity, just as if she had spoken of the worries of the heart.
Renée lowered her eyelids, and made a gesture of avowal.
"Ah! if my brothers listened to me!" said Madame Sidonie, "we should all be rich. But they shrug their shoulders whenever I speak to them about that debt of three milliards, you know. Still I have good hopes. For the last ten years I have been wanting to make a journey to England, but I have so little time for myself. ”