The Kill - Emile Zola [15]
Renée gave a start. She had not felt the cold air nipping at her shoulders. As she passed the mirror, she stopped and looked at herself in a mechanical way. An involuntary smile crossed her lips, and she went down to her guests.
In fact, nearly all the guests had arrived. Waiting below were her sister Christine, a young woman of twenty, dressed very simply in white muslin; her Aunt Elisabeth, the widow of the notary Aubertot, in black satin—a little old lady of sixty with an exquisitely friendly manner; her husband’s sister Sidonie Rougon, a skinny, artificial woman of uncertain age with a soft, waxy face that her faded dress made even less memorable; and the Mareuils, father and daughter: a tall, handsome man who had only recently been in mourning for his wife and who, with his blank, serious visage, bore a striking resemblance to the servant Baptiste, and poor Louise, as the daughter was called, a child of seventeen, undersized and slightly hunchbacked, who with sickly grace wore a white twill gown with red polka dots. Then there was a substantial group of grave-looking men: highly decorated gentlemen, officials with pale, solemn faces. Some distance away, another group of young men with a dissolute air about them and coats wide open had gathered around five or six supremely elegant ladies, among whom the reigning queens were the Inseparables, little marquise d’Espanet, in yellow, and blonde Mme Haffner, in violet. M. de Mussy, the horseman whose greeting Renée had ignored that afternoon in the Bois, was also there, with the worried look of a lover who senses that he is about to be sent packing. And amid the long trains of the women’s gowns spread across the carpet, two building contractors, the newly wealthy bricklayers Mignon and Charrier, with whom Saccard was to conclude a piece of business the next day, clumped about in heavy boots, their hands behind their backs, looking ridiculous in their black frock coats.
Aristide Saccard, standing near the door and holding forth to the group of grave men with his nasal twang and southern verve, nevertheless managed to find a way to greet each arriving guest. He shook their hands and had a kind word for each and every one. A short man with a sly look on his face, he bowed like a marionette. What one noticed most about this skinny, crafty, darkish little figure was the red splash of the Légion d’honneur, 11 which he wore quite ostentatiously.
When Renée entered the room, a murmur of admiration greeted her. She was truly divine. Over a tulle skirt embellished in back with an abundance of flounces, she wore a tunic of delicate green satin trimmed with high English lace, which was accentuated and held fast by big bunches of violets. A single flounce adorned the front of the skirt, to which bouquets of violets joined by garlands of ivy attached a sheer chiffon. Above the regal fullness of this rather too elaborate skirt, her head and bodice were done up adorably. Her breasts exposed almost to the nipples, her arms bare but for bunches of violets on the shoulders, the young woman seemed to emerge stark naked from her sheath of tulle and satin, like one of those nymphs whose bosom protrudes from a sacred oak. Her white throat and supple body seemed to revel in their partial freedom with such delight that one expected bodice and skirt to slip away little by little, like the clothing of a bather aroused by the sight of her own flesh. Her tall headdress and fine blonde hair, gathered up in the shape of a helmet with a sprig of ivy woven through it and held by a knot of violets, enhanced her nudity still more by uncovering the back of her neck, tinted by a golden down. Around her neck she wore a rivière of dangling diamonds, admirable for their clarity, and on her forehead a diamond-studded aigrette of fine silver. For a few seconds she stood this way on the threshold, in her magnificent costume with her shoulders shimmering in the warm glow like watered silk. Having descended the stairs quickly,