The Kill - Emile Zola [142]
“You know, she’s never shown us that much before,” Louise teasingly whispered in Maxime’s ear, indicating Renée with a quick glance.
And then, with an indecipherable smile, she added, “Not to me, at any rate.”
The young man looked at her with an anxious eye. But she continued to smile in an odd way, like a schoolboy pleased at having told a rather off-color joke.
The ball began. The stage used for the tableaux vivants had been pressed into service as a platform for a small orchestra in which brass dominated. Bugles and trumpets blasted their clear notes into the fantastic forest with the blue trees. The evening began with a quadrille, “Ah! il a des bottes, il a des bottes, Bastien!,” which was all the rage in dance halls at the time. The ladies danced. Polkas, waltzes, and mazurkas alternated with quadrilles. Whirling couples came and went all the way down the length of the gallery, leaping at the whip of the brass and swaying with the lullaby of the violins. This river of costumes—this torrent of women from every country and epoch— comprised a swirling tide of bright fabrics. The rhythm, after mixing these colors and sweeping them away in measured confusion, suddenly brought them back again, so that on certain strokes of the bow the same pink satin tunic or blue velvet bodice would reappear together with the same dark frock coat. Then another stroke of the bow or another blast of the trumpets would send the couples off again on yet another voyage around the drawing room, swaying like a boat adrift on the waves after the wind has broken it free from its mooring. And again, without stopping, for hours on end. Occasionally, between dances, one of the women would go over to a window, panting and gasping for a breath of cold air. Or a couple would relax on a love seat in the small buttercup salon or go out to the conservatory and stroll slowly along the paths. Beneath arbors of tropical vines, deep in the tepid shadows pierced by forte notes from the trumpets in quadrilles such as “Ohé! les p’tits agneaux” and “J’ai un pied qui r’mue,” women with listless smiles had vanished but for the hems of their skirts.
The dining room had been transformed into a buffet with sideboards along the walls and a long table laden with cold cuts in the middle, and when the doors were opened there was a push, a crush. A tall, handsome man who had timidly held on to his hat was thrown against the wall so violently that the unfortunate hat caved in with a dull crack. That made everyone laugh. The guests swooped down on the pastries and truffled fowl, and the servants did not know which of this gang of well-bred gentlemen to serve first, since all had their hands out, baring their fear of getting to the food too late and finding the platters empty. An elderly gentleman became angry because there was no Bordeaux, and champagne, he insisted, would keep him from sleeping.
“Easy, gentlemen, easy,” said Baptiste in a grave tone of voice. “There will be enough for everyone.”
But nobody was listening. The dining room was full, and worried black coats were standing on tiptoes at the door. Groups had gathered around the sideboards, where people were eating rapidly and squeezing close together. Many unable to lay hands on a glass of wine gulped down their food without drinking. By contrast, others drank while casting about without success for a crust of bread.
“Listen,” said M. Hupel de la Noue, whom Mignon and Charrier, tired of mythology, had dragged off to the buffet, “we won’t get anything unless we join forces. . . . It’s worse