The Kill - Emile Zola [123]
“Oh, Big Lar!” the delighted young woman murmured.
She took him by the waist and kissed him.
“Wait,” she said, “Let’s get the cash and the papers out of the way. . . . Rozan is in my room. I’ll go get him.”
But he held her back, and now it was his turn to kiss her shoulders. “You remember the favor I asked of you?”
“Why yes, of course, silly! It’s agreed.”
She returned with Rozan in tow. Larsonneau was dressed more punctiliously than the duke, with better gloves and a more artful bow to his cravat. They casually touched hands and talked about the races two days earlier, in which a friend of theirs had entered a losing horse. Laure waited impatiently.
“Come, my darling, never mind all that,” she said to Rozan. “Big Lar has the money, you know. It’s time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”
Larsonneau made a show of remembering. “Oh, yes, quite right, I’ve got the money. . . . But you should have listened to me, old man! Would you believe that those scoundrels insisted on fifty percent? . . . I finally gave in, you know, because you said it made no difference to you.”
Laure d’Aurigny had obtained some official stamped paper earlier in the day. But when the moment came to find pen and ink, she looked at the two men with a perplexed expression, uncertain whether she had any in the house. She was about to go to the kitchen to look when Larsonneau took from his pocket—the same pocket that contained the box of candy—two marvels: a silver penholder with a tip that could be screwed out and a steel-and-ebony inkwell as exquisite and elegant as a jewel.
Rozan sat down to write. “Make the notes out in my name,” Larsonneau said. “I don’t want to compromise you, you see. We’ll work something out together. . . . Six notes of 25,000 francs each, is it not?”
Laure counted out the bills on a corner of the table. Rozan never saw them. By the time he looked up after signing his name, they had vanished into the young woman’s pocket. But she went over to him and kissed him on both cheeks, which seemed to please him no end. Larsonneau looked at them philosophically as he folded the notes and put the inkstand and pen back into his pocket.
The young woman still had her arms around Rozan’s neck when Aristide Saccard lifted one corner of the door curtain. “Don’t mind me,” he said, laughing.
The duke blushed, but Laure went over to shake the financier’s hand, giving him a conspiratorial wink. She was radiant.
“It’s done, my dear,” she said. “I warned you. You won’t be too angry with me, will you?”
Saccard shrugged good-naturedly. He pulled back the door curtain and stood aside to let Laure and the duke pass. Then, like an usher announcing the arrival of guests, he barked out, “Monsieur le duc, Madame la duchesse!”
This pleasantry proved a tremendous success. The next day it was mentioned in the newspapers, blatantly naming Laure d’Aurigny while identifying the two gentlemen only by initials so transparent that they concealed the secret from no one. The breaking off of the relationship between Aristide Saccard and fat Laure caused even more of a stir than their alleged affair.
Meanwhile, Saccard had allowed the door curtain to fall back into place, shutting out the burst of laughter that his jest had unleashed in the drawing room.
“What a good girl she is!” he said, turning now to face Larsonneau. “And such a slut! . . . And you, you rascal! What are you getting out of all this? How much are they giving you?”
But Larsonneau defended himself with smiles and pulled down his cuffs, which had gotten pushed up. Eventually he went and sat down next to the door on a love seat that Saccard had indicated to him with a motion of his hand.
“Come here, damn it, I won’t insist on hearing your confession. . . . Let’s get down to brass tacks, my friend. I had a very long conversation with my wife earlier this evening. . . . Everything is taken care of.”
“She agreed to sell her share?” Larsonneau quizzed him.
“Yes, but it wasn’t easy. . . . Women can be so stubborn. You see, my wife had promised an elderly