The Kill - Emile Zola [122]
Laure d’Aurigny, who moved frequently, was at that time living in a large apartment on boulevard Haussmann opposite the Chapelle Expiatoire. 11 She had only recently decided to open her apartment to visitors one day a week, just like any other society hostess. These gatherings assembled in one place the men who saw her one at a time during the week. Aristide Saccard reigned in triumph on these Tuesday evenings. He was the incumbent lover, and he laughed vaguely and looked the other way whenever the mistress of the house betrayed him by dragging one of the other gentlemen off to a private place and granting him an assignation for later that same night. When he was left alone at the end of the evening, the last of the crowd of visitors, he would light yet another cigar, talk business for a while, and tease Laure about the fellow cooling his heels outside waiting for him to leave. Then, after calling Laure his “dear child” and giving her a little pat on the cheek, he would leave quietly through one door as the waiting gentleman entered through another. Both he and his “mistress” continued to take pleasure in the secret alliance that had consolidated Saccard’s credit and earned Mlle d’Aurigny two sets of furniture in one month. But Laure wanted this comedy to end. The finale, worked out ahead of time, was to take the form of a public breakup, the beneficiary of which was to be some poor imbecile who would pay dearly for the right of being Laure’s official, publicly acknowledged keeper. That imbecile had been found. The duc de Rozan, tired of importuning the women of his own set to no avail, dreamed of acquiring a reputation as a debauchee to lend a little relief to his colorless personality. He was an assiduous guest at Laure’s Tuesdays and had managed to conquer her with his absolute naïveté. Unfortunately, he was still, at the age of thirty-five, dependent on his mother to the point where he never had more than ten louis spending money in his pocket at any given time. On nights when Laure deigned to take those ten louis from him, feeling sorry for herself and letting it be known that 100,000 francs was what she needed, he promised her that as soon as he had the final say in the matter, that sum would be hers. It was then that it occurred to her to put him in touch with Larsonneau, a faithful friend of the establishment. The two men had lunch together at Tortoni’s, and over dessert Larsonneau, while recounting his amours with a delectable Spaniard, let it be known that he was in touch with some people who were in a position to lend money, though he sternly warned Rozan never to fall into their clutches. This revelation drove the duke wild, and in the end he succeeded in extracting from his good friend a promise to take care of “this little matter.” Larsonneau took such good care of it that he had come prepared to deliver the money on the very evening that Saccard proposed they meet at Laure’s.
When Larsonneau arrived, there were still only five or six women in Mlle d’Aurigny’s large white-and-gold drawing room—women who took him by the hands and threw their arms around his neck in a frenzy of affection. They called him “Big Lar,” using the affectionate nickname that Laure had coined for him. And he, in piping tones, replied, “Be careful now, my little kittens, or you’ll crush my hat.”
This calmed them down, and they then crowded around him while he sat on a love seat and regaled them with a tale of Sylvia’s indigestion after their supper together the previous evening. Afterwards he took a box of candy from the pocket of his coat and offered them pralines. At this point, however, Laure emerged from her bedroom and, seeing that a number of gentlemen guests were arriving, led him off to a boudoir at one end of the salon, from which they were separated by two sets of curtains.
“Do you have the money?” she asked when they were alone.
On important occasions she used the familiar tu with him. Larsonneau, without answering, bowed obligingly