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By Root 1368 0

as odd as his appearance was, the “little shaved skull,” as she called him, smiled, turned his head, and held out his arm in the dainty, effeminate manner of those schoolboys who beguile their classmates with their charms. He took great care with his hands, which were slender and long. Although his hair was cut short by order of the headmaster, a former colonel in the Engineers, he possessed a small mirror, which he used to take from his pocket during class and place between the pages of his book so that he could stare at himself for hours on end, examining his eyes and gums, making faces, and teaching himself to flirt. His classmates clutched at his school uniform as if it were a skirt, and he pulled his belt so tight that he had the thin waist and swaying hips of a grown woman. The truth was that he took beatings from his classmates as often as he received their caresses. The school in Plassans, like most provincial boarding schools a den of young bandits, thus proved a hotbed of corruption that developed Maxime’s neutered temperament in unusual ways, fostering the evil that had come down to him from some mysterious hereditary source. Fortunately, age was about to straighten him out. But the mark of his youthful surrenders, of the effeminization of his entire being during this period in which he had thought of himself as a girl, would remain with him and cripple his virility for good.

Renée called him “mademoiselle,” unaware that six months earlier her description would have been right on the mark. He struck her as very obedient and very loving, indeed so loving that she often felt embarrassed by his caresses. He had a way of kissing that made her skin feel warm. What delighted her, though, was his mischievous manner. He was as funny as could be, and bold, already grinning when he spoke of women and holding his own with Renée’s friends: dear Adeline, who had just married M. d’Espanet, and plump Suzanne, who had only recently married the big industrialist Haffner. At fourteen he formed a passionate attachment to the latter. He made a confidant of his stepmother, who was most amused.

“In your place I would have preferred Adeline,” she said. “She’s prettier.”

“Maybe,” the naughty boy replied, “but Suzanne is so much meatier. I love beautiful women. If you were nice, you’d speak to her for me.”

Renée laughed. Her doll—this tall boy with his girlish ways— seemed priceless now that he was in love. There came a point when Mme Haffner had to defend herself seriously. In any case, these three women encouraged the precocious child with their stifled laughs, their insinuations, and their flirtatious behavior. A very aristocratic touch of debauchery was part of it. All three led tumultuous lives and, having been burned by passion, they found the naughty child’s charming depravity diverting—a novel, unthreatening spice that reawakened their taste. They allowed him to touch their gowns and graze their shoulders with his fingers when he followed them into the vestibule to throw their evening wraps over them. They passed him from one to the other, laughing madly when he kissed their wrists on the veined side, where the skin is so soft. Then they turned maternal and instructed him at length in the art of being a fine gentleman and pleasing the ladies. He was their plaything, a little man of ingenious construction, who kissed, made love, and exhibited all the most charming vices of high society yet remained a toy, a little cardboard man of whom one did not have to be too afraid, just enough to tremble most pleasantly beneath his childish caresses.

When classes resumed, Maxime went to the Lycée Bonaparte. This was the school to which all the best families sent their children, the one that Saccard was bound to choose for his son. The boy, listless and frivolous though he was at that point, had a very lively intelligence, but the classics were the last thing to which he applied himself. He was nevertheless a decent student, who never joined the dunces in their low bohemian ways but remained among the proper, well-dressed young gentlemen