LITMIR.BIZ

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of illicit desire at the sight of this landscape that had become unrecognizable, of this bit of nature, so worldly and artificial, which the great vibrating darkness transformed into a sacred grove, one of the ideal glades in whose recesses the gods of old concealed their Titanic loves, their adulteries, and their divine incests. And, as the calash drove away, it seemed to her that the twilight was carrying off behind her, in its tremulous veil, the land of her dream, the flagitious, celestial alcove in which her sick heart and weary flesh might at last have been assuaged.

      When, fading into the shadow, the lake and the bushes showed only as a black bar against the sky, Renée turned round abruptly, and, in a voice that contained tears of vexation, resumed her interrupted phrase:

      “What?… something different, of course; I want something different. How do I know what! If I did know…. But, look here, I am sick of balls, sick of suppers, sick of that sort of entertainment. It is so monotonous. It is deadly…. And the men are insufferable, ah! yes, insufferable.”

      Maxime began to laugh. A certain eagerness became apparent under the aristocratic aspect of the woman of fashion. She no longer blinked her eyelids, the wrinkle on her forehead became more harshly accentuated; her lip, that was so like a sulky child’s, protruded in hot quest of the nameless enjoyments she pined for. She observed her companion’s laughter, but was too excited to stop; lying back, swayed by the rocking of the carriage, she continued in short, sharp sentences:

      “Yes, certainly, you are insufferable…. I don’t include you, Maxime, you are too young…. But if I were to tell you how ponderous Aristide used to be in the early days! And the others! the men who have been my lovers…. You know, we are good friends, you and I: I don’t mind what I say to you; well then, there are really days when I am so tired of living this life of a rich woman, adored and worshipped, that I feel I should like to become a Laure d’Aurigny, one of those ladies who live like bachelors.”

      And on Maxime laughing still lower, she insisted:

      “Yes, a Laure d’Aurigny. It would surely be less insipid, less monotonous.”

      She sat silent for a few minutes, as though picturing to herself the life she would lead if she were Laure. Then, with a note of discouragement in her voice:

      “After all,” she resumed, “those women must have their own annoyances too. There is nothing amusing in life. It is killing work…. As I said, one ought to have something different; you understand, I can’t guess what; but something else, something that would happen to nobody but one’s self, that would not be met with every day, that would give a rare, unknown enjoyment….

      She spoke more slowly. She uttered these last words as though seeking something, giving way to absent reverie. The calash went up the avenue that leads to the entrance of the Bois. The darkness increased; the copses ran along on either side like gray walls; the yellow iron chairs upon which, on fine evenings, the middle-class loves to attitudinize in its Sunday best, filed away along the footways, all unoccupied, with the gloomy melancholy air common to garden furniture overtaken by the winter; and the rumbling, the dull rhythmical noise of the returning carriages passed down the deserted avenues like a sad refrain.

      Maxime doubtless appreciated the bad form of thinking life amusing. Though young enough to give himself over to an outburst of contented admiration, his egoism was too great, his indifference too cynical, he already experienced too much real weariness, not to proclaim himself disgusted, sick, and played-out. And, as a rule, he took a certain pride in making the confession.

      He threw himself back like Renée, and assumed a plaintive voice.

      “Yes, you are right,” he said; “it is killing work. As for that, I amuse myself no more than you do; I, too, have often dreamt of something different…. There is nothing so stupid as travelling. Making money: I prefer to run through it, though even that is not always so amusing as one at first imagines. Loving and being loved: we soon get sick of that, don’t we?… Yes, we get sick of it!”

      Renée made no reply, and he went on, desiring to astound her with a piece of gross blasphemy:

      I should like to have a nun in love with me. Eh? that might be amusing…. Have you never dreamt of loving a man of whom you would not be able even to think without committing a crime?”

      But her gloom continued, and Maxime, seeing that she remained silent, concluded that she was not listening. She seemed to be sleeping with her eyes open, the nape of her neck resting against the padded edge of the calash. She lay listlessly thinking, a prey to the dreams that kept her depressed, and at times a slight nervous movement passed over her lips. She was softly overcome by the shadow of the twilight; all that this shadow contained of sadness, of discreet pleasures, of hopes unacknowledged, penetrated her, covered her with an air of morbid languor. Doubtless, while staring at the round back of the footman on his box, she was thinking of those delights of yesterday, of those entertainments that had so palled upon her, that she was weary of; she contemplated her past life, the instantaneous satisfaction of her appetites, the fulsomeness of luxury, the appalling monotony of the same loves and the same betrayals. Then, with a ray of hope, there came to her, with shivers of longing, the idea of that “something different” which her mind could not strain itself to fix upon. There, her dream wandered. Constantly the word that she strove to find escaped into the falling night, became lost in the continuous rolling of the carriages. The soft vibration of the calash was an impediment the more that prevented her from formulating her desire. And an immense temptation rose from the empty space, from the copses asleep in the shadow on either side of the avenue, from the noise of wheels and from the gentle oscillation that filled her with a delicious torpor. A thousand tremulous emotions passed over her flesh: dreams unrealized, nameless delights, confused longings, all the monstrous voluptuousness that a drive home from the Bois under a paling sky can infuse into a woman’s worn heart. She kept both her hands buried in the bearskin, she was quite warm in her white cloth coat with the mauve velvet facings. She put out her foot, as she stretched herself in her feeling of well-being, and with her ankle lightly touched Maxime’s warm leg; he took no notice of this contact. A jolt aroused her from her lethargy. She raised her head and with her gray eyes looked strangely at the young man, who sat lounging in an attitude of sheer elegance.

      At this moment the calash left the Bois. The Avenue de l’Impératrice stretched out straight into the darkness, with the two green lines of its fences of painted wood, which met at the horizon. In the side-path reserved for riders, a white horse in the distance cut out a bright patch in the gray horizon. Here and there, on the other side, along the roadway, were belated pedestrians, groups of black spots, making slowly for Paris. And right up above, at the end of the rumbling, confused procession of carriages, the Arc de Triomphe, seen from one side, displayed its whiteness against a vast expanse of sooty sky.

      While the calash ascended at an increased pace, Maxime, charmed with the English appearance of the scene, looked out at the irregular architecture of the private houses on both sides of the avenue, with their lawns running down to the sidewalks. Renée, still dreaming, amused herself by watching the gaslights of the Place de l’Étoile being lit, one by one, on the edge of the horizon, and as each of these bright jets splashed the dying day with its little yellow flame, she seemed to hear a mysterious appeal; it seemed to her that Paris flaring in its winter’s night was being lighted up for her, and making ready for her the unknown gratification that her glutted senses yearned for.

      The calash turned down the Avenue de la Reine-Hortense, and pulled up at the end of the Rue Monceau, a few steps from the Boulevard Malesherbes, in front of a large private house standing between a courtyard and a garden. The two gates, heavily ornamented with gilt enrichments, which opened into the courtyard were flanked by a pair of lamps, shaped like urns, and similarly covered with gilding, in which flared broad gasjets. Between the two gates, the concierge lived in a pretty lodge vaguely suggestive of a little Greek temple.

      Maxime sprang lightly to the ground as the carriage was about to enter the courtyard.

      “You know,” said Renée, detaining him by the hand, “we dine at half-past seven. You have more than an hour to dress in. Don’t keep us waiting.”

      And she added, with a smile:

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