The Kill - Emile Zola [160]
While all these pecuniary interests and ardent, unquenchable thirsts swirled around her, Renée was in agony. Aunt Elisabeth had died. Her sister, now married, had left the family home, in the gloom of whose cavernous rooms her father now lived alone. In one season she ran through her aunt’s bequest. Lately she had taken to gambling. She had found a salon in which ladies sat at tables until three in the morning, losing hundreds of thousands of francs a night. Inevitably she tried to drink, but she could not: uncontrollable waves of nausea overwhelmed her. On finding herself alone again, helpless against the social tide that was sweeping her away, she had surrendered to it more than ever, not knowing any other way to kill the time. She sampled everything until nothing was left, yet none of it diminished the crushing weight of her boredom. She aged; blue circles formed around her eyes; her nose grew thinner, and her pouting lips erupted in sudden laughter for no reason. For this woman it was the end of the line.
When Maxime married Louise and the young couple left for Italy, Renée stopped worrying about her lover and seemed to forget all about him. And when he returned alone six months later, having buried “the hunchback” in the cemetery of a small town in Lombardy, she greeted him with hatred. She remembered Phèdre and no doubt recalled having heard Ristori invest that envenomed love with her sobs. Then, so that she would not have to run into the boy in her own home, and in order to set an abyss of shame between father and son forever, she forced her husband to acknowledge the incest, telling him that his son had been after her for some time and that on the day Saccard had surprised her with him, Maxime had been attempting to assault her. Saccard was terribly vexed by her insistence on opening his eyes. He was obliged to quarrel with his son and refuse to see him. The young widower, wealthy by dint of his wife’s dowry, established bachelor quarters in a small house on the avenue de l’Impératrice. He turned down the Conseil d’Etat and took to racing horses instead. The rupture Renée had caused between father and son was one of her last satisfactions. Her vengeance was to throw the degradation these two men had imposed on her back in their faces. Now, she told herself, she wouldn’t have to watch anymore as they walked arm in arm like two comrades, mocking her.
With the collapse of her affections, there came a time when she had no one left to love but her maid. Little by little she conceived a maternal affection for Céleste. It may have been that this girl, the only residue of her love for Maxime, reminded her of hours of pleasure now gone forever. Or maybe she was just touched by this servant’s loyalty, by the fidelity of this stouthearted woman whose tranquil solicitude seemed unshakable. In the depth of her remorse she thanked Céleste for having witnessed her shame without abandoning her in disgust. She imagined all sorts of self-denial, a whole life of renunciation, in her effort to comprehend the maid’s calm acceptance of incest, her icy hands, her respectful, unflappable attentiveness. And Céleste’s devotion pleased Renée all the more because she knew her to be honest and thrifty, a woman without a lover and untouched by vice.
In sad moments she sometimes said to her, “Listen, my child, when the time comes to close my eyes, I want it to be you.”
Céleste never gave any answer to this other than a peculiar smile. One morning, she quietly informed her mistress that she was leaving, returning home to her native village. Renée’s body shook all over, as if some great misfortune had arrived. She uttered a cry and pummeled Céleste with questions. Why was she abandoning her when they got along so well together? And she offered to