I
As they left the Café Riche, Jean de Servigny said to Léon Saval:
“We’ll walk, if you don’t mind walking. It’s too fine to take a cab.”
“It will suit me perfectly,” answered his friend.
“It’s barely eleven,” continued Jean. “We shall be there long before midnight, so let us go slowly.”
A restless crowd swarmed on the boulevard, the crowd which on summer nights is always to be seen there, contented and merry, walking, drinking, and talking, streaming past like a river. Here and there a café flung a brilliant splash of light on to the group which sat outside, drinking at round little tables loaded with bottles and glasses, and obstructing the hurrying crowd of passersby. And in the road the cabs, with their red, blue, and green eyes, passed swiftly across the harsh glare of the lighted front, and for an instant revealed the silhouette of the thin, trotting horse, the profile of the driver on the box, and the dark, square body of the vehicle. The Urbaine cabs gleamed as the light caught their yellow panels.
The two friends walked slowly along, smoking their cigars. They were in evening dress, their overcoats on their arms, flowers in their button holes and their hats a little on one side, with the careless tilt affected by men who have dined well and find the breeze warm.
Ever since their schooldays the two had been close friends, profoundly and loyally devoted to each other.
Jean de Servigny, small, slim, slightly bald, and frail, very elegant, with a curled moustache, bright eyes, and thin lips, was one of those night-birds who seem to have been born and bred on the boulevards; inexhaustible, though he wore a perpetual air of fatigue, vigorous despite his pallor—one of those slender Parisians to whom gymnastics, fencing, the cold plunge, and the Turkish bath have given an artificial nervous strength. He was as well known for his conviviality as for his wit, his wealth, and his love affairs, and for that geniality, popularity, and fashionable gallantry which are the hallmark of a certain type of man.
In other ways too he was a true Parisian, quick-witted, sceptical, changeable, impulsive, energetic yet irresolute, capable of anything and of nothing, an egoist on principle and a philanthropist on impulse. He kept his expenditure within his income, and amused himself without ruining his health. Cold and passionate by turns, he was continually letting himself go and pulling himself up, a prey to conflicting impulses, and yielding to all of them, following his instinct like any hardened pleasure-seeker whose weathercock logic bids him follow every wind and profit from any train of events, without taking the trouble to set a single one of them in motion.
His companion, Léon Saval, rich also, was one of those superb giants who compel women to turn round and stare after them in the street. He had the air of a statue come to life, of a racial type: he was like one of those models which are sent to exhibitions. Too handsome, too tall, too broad, too strong, all his faults were those of excess. He had broken innumerable hearts.
As they reached the Vaudeville, he inquired:
“Have you let this lady know that you’re bringing me?”
Servigny laughed.
“Let the Marquise Obardi know! Do you let a bus-driver know in advance that you’re going to get on to his bus at the corner of the boulevard?”
“Well, then, exactly who is she?” asked Saval, slightly perplexed.
“A parvenue,” replied his friend, “a colossal fraud, a charming jade, sprung from Lord knows where, who appeared one day, Lord knows how, in the world of adventurers, in which she is well able to make herself prominent. Anyhow, what does it matter? They say her real name, her maiden-name—for she has remained a maiden in every sense but the true one—is Octavie Bardin, whence Obardi, retaining the first letter of the Christian name and dropping the last letter of the surname. She’s an attractive woman, too, and with your physique you’re certain to become her lover. You can’t introduce Hercules to Messalina without something coming of it. I ought to add, by the way, that though admission to the place is as free as to a shop, you are not obliged to buy what is on sale. Love and cards are the stock-in-trade, but no one will force you to purchase either. The way out is as accessible as the way in.
“It is three years now since she took a house in the Quartier de l’Étoile, a rather shady district, and opened it to all the scum of the Continent, which comes to Paris to display its most diverse, dangerous, and vicious accomplishments.
“I went to the house. How? I don’t remember. I went, as we all go, because there’s gambling, because the women are approachable and the men scoundrels. I like this crowd of decorated buccaneers, all foreign, all noble, all titled, all, except the spies, unknown to their ambassadors. They all talk of their honour on the slightest provocation, trot out their ancestors on no provocation at all, and present you with their life-histories on any provocation. They are braggarts, liars, thieves, as dangerous as their cards, as false as their names, brave because they must be, like footpads who cannot rob their victims without risking their necks. In a word, the aristocracy of the galleys.
“I adore them. They’re interesting to study, interesting to meet, amusing to listen to, often witty, never commonplace like the dregs of French officialdom. Their wives too are always pretty, with a little flavour of foreign rascality, and the mystery of their past lives, half of which were probably spent in a penitentiary. Most often they have glorious eyes and wonderful hair, the real professional physique, a grace which intoxicates, a seductive charm that drives men mad, a vicious but wholly irresistible fascination! They’re the real old highway robbers, female birds of prey. And I adore them too.
“The Marquise Obardi is a perfect type of these elegant jades. A little overripe, but still beautiful, seductive, and feline, she’s vicious to the marrow. There’s plenty of fun in her house—gambling, dancing, supper … all the distractions of the world, the flesh, and the devil, in fact.”
“Have you been, or are you, her lover?” asked Léon Saval.
Servigny answered:
“I haven’t been, am not, and never shall be. It’s the daughter I go there for.”
“Oh, there’s a daughter, then, is there?”
“There is indeed! She’s a marvel. At present she’s the principal attraction. A tall, glorious creature, just the right age, eighteen, as fair as her mother is dark, always merry, always ready for fun, always laughing at the top of her voice, and dancing like a thing possessed. Who’s to have her? Who has had her? No one knows. There are ten of us waiting and hoping.
“A girl like that in the hands of a woman like the Marquise is a fortune. And they don’t show their hands, the rogues. No one can make it out. Perhaps they’re waiting for a catch, a better one than I am. Well, I can assure you that if the chance comes my way I’ll take it.
“This girl, Yvette, absolutely nonplusses me. She’s a mystery. If she isn’t the most finished monster of perverse ingenuity that I’ve ever seen, she’s certainly the most extraordinary scrap of innocent girlhood to be found anywhere. She lives there among that disgraceful crew with easy and triumphant serenity, exquisitely wicked or exquisitely simple.
“She’s an extraordinary girl to be the daughter of an adventuress, sprung up in that hotbed, like a beautiful plant nourished on manure, or she may be the daughter of some man of high rank, a great artist or a great nobleman, a prince or a king who found himself one night in her mother’s bed. No one can understand just what she is, or what she thinks about. But you will see her.”
Saval shouted with laughter.
“You’re in love with her,” he said.
“No, I am one of the competitors, which is not the same thing. By the way, I’ll introduce you to my most serious rivals. But I have a real chance. I have a good start, and she regards me with favour.”
“You’re in love,” repeated Saval.
“No, I’m not. She disturbs me, allures me and makes me uneasy, at once attracts me and frightens me. I distrust her as I would a trap, yet I long for her with the longing of a thirsty man for a cool drink. I feel her charm, and draw near it as nervously as if I were in the same room with a man suspected of being a clever thief. In her presence I feel an almost absurd inclination to believe in the possibility of her innocence, and a very reasonable distrust of her equally possible cunning. I feel that I am in contact with an abnormal being, a creature outside the laws of nature, delicious or detestable, I don’t know.”
For the third time Saval declared:
“You’re in love, I tell you. You speak of her with the fervour of a poet and the lyricism of a troubadour. Come now, have it out with yourself, search your heart and admit it.”
“Well, it may be so, after all. At least she’s always in my mind. Yes, perhaps I am in love. I think of her too much. I think of her when I’m falling asleep and when I wake up; that’s fairly serious. Her image haunts me, pursues me, is with me the whole time, in front of me, round me, in me. Is it love, this physical obsession? Her face is so sharply graven in my mind that I see it the moment I shut my eyes. I don’t deny that my pulses race whenever I see her. I love her, then, but in an odd fashion. I long for her passionately, yet the idea of making her my wife would seem to me a monstrous absurd folly. I am also a little afraid of her, like a bird swooped upon by a hawk. And I’m jealous of her too, jealous of all that is hidden from me in her incomprehensible heart. I’m always asking myself: ‘Is she a delightful little guttersnipe or a thoroughly bad lot?’ She says things that would make a trooper blush, but so do parrots. Sometimes she’s so brazenly indecent that I’m inclined to believe in her absolute purity, and sometimes her artlessness is so much too good to be true that I wonder if she ever was chaste. She provokes me and excites me like a harlot, and guards herself at the same time as though she were a virgin. She appears to love me, and laughs at me; in public she almost proclaims herself my mistress, and when we’re alone together she treats me as though I were her brother or her footman.
“Sometimes I imagine that she has as many lovers as her mother. Sometimes I think that she knows nothing about life, absolutely nothing.
“And she has a passion for reading novels. At present, while waiting for a more amusing position, I am her bookseller. She calls me her librarian.
“Every week the Librairie Nouvelle sends her, from me, everything that has appeared; I believe she reads through the whole lot.
“It must make a strange salad in her head.
“This literary taste may account for some of her queer ways. When you see life through a maze of fifteen thousand novels, you must get a queer impression of things and see them from an odd angle.
“As for me, I wait. It is certainly true that I have never felt towards any woman as I feel towards her.
“It’s equally certain that I shall never marry her.
“If she has had lovers, I shall make one more. If she has not, I shall be the first to take my seat in the train.
“It’s all very simple. She can’t possibly marry, ever. Who would marry the daughter of the Marquise Obardi, Octavie Bardin? Clearly no one, for any number of reasons.
“Where could she find a husband? In society? Never; the mother’s house is a public resort, and the daughter attracts the clients. One can’t marry into a family like that. In the middle classes, then? Even less. Besides, the Marquise has a good head on her shoulders; she’d never give Yvette to anyone but a man of rank, and she’ll never find him.
“In the lower classes, perhaps? Still less possible. There’s no way out of it, then. The girl belongs neither to society nor to the middle class, nor to the lower classes, nor would marriage jockey her into any one of them. She belongs, by her parentage, her birth, her upbringing, heredity, manners, habits, to the world of gilded prostitution.
“She can’t escape unless she becomes a nun, which is very unlikely, seeing that her manners and tastes are already what they are. So she has only one possible profession—love. That’s where she’ll go, if she has not already gone. She can’t escape her destiny. From being a young girl, she’ll become just a—‘woman.’ And I should very much like to be the man who brings about the transformation.
“I am waiting. There are any number of lovers. You’ll come across a Frenchman, Monsieur de Beloigne, a Russian who calls himself Prince Kravalow, and an Italian, Chevalier Valréali. These have all definitely entered themselves for the race, and are already training. There are also a number of camp-followers of less account.
“The Marquise is on the lookout. But I fancy she has her eye on me. She knows I’m very rich and she knows less about the others.
“Her house is the most extraordinary place of the kind that I have ever seen. You meet some very decent fellows there; we’re going ourselves and we shall not be the only ones. As for the women, she has come across, or rather picked out, the choicest fruit on the professional stall. Lord knows where she found them. And she was magnificently inspired to make a point of taking those who had children of their own, daughters for choice. The result is that a greenhorn might think the house was full of honest women!”
They had reached the Avenue of the Champs Élysées. A faint breeze whispered among the leaves, and was now and again wafted against their faces, like the soft breath of a giant fan swinging somewhere in the sky. Mute shadows drifted under the trees, others were visible as dark blots on the benches. And all these shadows spoke in very low tones, as though confiding important or shameful secrets.
“You cannot imagine,” went on Servigny, “what a collection of fancy titles you come across in this rabbit-warren. By the way, I hope you know I’m going to introduce you as Count Saval. Saval by itself would not be at all popular, I assure you.”
“No, damn it, certainly not!” cried his friend. “I’m hanged if anyone is going to think me fool enough to scrape up a comic-opera title even for ‘one night only,’ and for that crowd. With your leave, we’ll cut that out.”
Servigny laughed.
“You old idiot! Why, I’ve been christened the Duc de Servigny. I don’t know how or why it was done. I have just always been the Duc de Servigny; I never made trouble about it. It’s no discomfort. Why, without it I should be utterly looked down on!”
But Saval was not to be persuaded.
“You’re a nobleman, you can carry it off. As for me, I shall remain, for better or worse, the only commoner in the place. That will be my mark of distinctive superiority.”
But Servigny was obstinate.
“I tell you it can’t be done, absolutely cannot be done. It would be positively indecent. You would be like a rag-and-bone man at an assemblage of emperors. Leave it to me; I’ll introduce you as the Viceroy of Upper Mississippi, and no one will be surprised. If you’re going to go in for titles, you might as well do it with an air.”
“No; once more, I tell you I won’t have it.”
“Very well, then. I was a fool really to try persuading you, for I defy you to get in without someone decorating you with a title; it’s like those shops a lady can’t pass without being given a bunch of violets at the doorstep.”
They turned to the right down the Rue de Berri, climbed to the first floor of a fine modern mansion, and left their coats and sticks in the hands of four flunkeys in knee-breeches. The air was heavy with the warm festive odour of flowers, scent, and women; and a ceaseless murmur of voices, loud and confused, came from the crowded rooms beyond.
A tall, upright, solemn, potbellied man, in some sort master of the ceremonies, his face framed in white whiskers, approached the newcomers and, making a short, stiff bow, asked:
“What name, please?”
“Monsieur Saval,” replied Servigny.
Whereupon the man flung open the door and in a loud voice announced to the crowd of guests:
“Monsieur le Duc de Servigny. Monsieur le Baron Saval.”
The first room was full of women. The eye was filled at once by a vast vision of bare bosoms lifting from billows of white lace.
The lady of the house stood talking to three friends; she turned and came forward with stately steps, grace in her bearing and a smile upon her lips.
Her low, narrow forehead was entirely hidden by masses of black, gleaming hair, thick and fleecy, encroaching even on her temples. She was tall, a little too massive, a little too fat, a little overripe, but very handsome, with a warm, heady, and powerful beauty. Her crown of hair, with the large black eyes beneath it, provoked entrancing dreams and made her subtly desirable. Her nose was rather thin, her mouth large and infinitely alluring, made for speech and conquest.
But her liveliest charm lay in her voice. It sprang from her mouth like water from a spring, so easily, so lightly, so well pitched, so clear, that listening to it was sheer physical joy. It thrilled the ear to hear the smooth words pour forth with the sparkling grace of a brook bubbling from the ground, and fascinated the eye to watch the lovely, too-red lips part to give them passage.
She held out her hand to Servigny, who kissed it, and, dropping the fan that hung from a thin chain of wrought gold, she gave her other hand to Saval, saying:
“You are welcome, Baron. My house is always open to any friend of the Duc’s.”
Then she fixed her brilliant eyes on the giant to whom she was being introduced. On her upper lip was a faint smudge of black down, the merest shadow of a moustache, more plainly visible when she spoke. Her scent was delicious, strong and intoxicating, some American or Indian perfume.
But other guests were arriving, marquises, counts, or princes. She turned to Servigny and said, with the graciousness of a mother:
“You will find my daughter in the other room. Enjoy yourselves, gentlemen. The house is yours.”
She left them in order to greet the new arrivals, giving Saval that fugitive smiling glance with which women let men know that they have found favour.
Servigny took his friend’s arm.
“I’ll be your pilot,” he said. “Here, where we are at present, are the women; this is the temple of the Flesh, fresh or otherwise. Bargains as good as new, or better; very superior articles at greatly reduced rates. On the left is the gambling. That is the temple of Money. You know all about that.
“At the far end, dancing; that is the temple of Innocence. There are displayed the offspring, if we may believe it, of the ladies in here. Even lawful unions would be smiled on! There is the future, the hope … of our nights. And there, too, are the strangest exhibits in this museum of diseased morals, the young girls whose souls are double-jointed, like the limbs of little clowns who had acrobats for parents. Let us go and see them.”
He bowed to right and left, a debonair figure, scattering pretty speeches and running his rapid, expert glance over every pair of bare shoulders whose possessor he recognised.
At the far end of the second room an orchestra was playing a waltz; they stopped at the door and watched. Some fifteen couples were dancing, the men gravely, their partners with fixed smiles on their lips. Like their mothers, they showed a great deal of bare skin; since the bodices of some were supported only by a narrow ribbon round the upper part of the arm, there were occasional glimpses of a dark shadow under the armpits.
Suddenly a tall girl started up and crossed the room, pushing the dancers aside, her absurdly long train gathered in her left hand. She ran with the short quick steps affected by women in a crowd, and cried out:
“Ah, there’s Muscade. How are you, Muscade!”
Her face was glowing with life, and radiant with happiness. She had the white, golden-gleaming skin which goes with auburn hair. Her forehead was loaded with the sheaf of flaming, gleaming tresses that burdened her still slender neck.
She seemed made for motion as her mother was for speech, so natural, gracious, and simple were her movements. A sense of spiritual delight and physical contentment sprang from the mere sight of her as she walked, moved, bent her head or raised her arm.
“Ah, Muscade,” she repeated. “How are you, Muscade?”
Servigny shook her hand vigorously, as though she were a man, and said:
“This is my friend, Baron Saval, Mam’zelle Yvette.”
She greeted the newcomer, then stared at him.
“How do you do? Are you always as tall as this?”
“Oh, no, Mam’zelle,” answered Servigny, in the mocking tone he used to conceal his uneasiness in her presence. “He has put on his largest size today to please your mother, who likes quantity.”
“Oh, very well, then,” replied the girl in a seriocomic voice. “But when you come for my sake, please be a little smaller; I like the happy medium. Muscade here is about my size,” and she offered him her little hand.
“Are you going to dance, Muscade?” she asked. “Let’s dance this waltz.”
Servigny made no answer, but with a sudden swift movement put his arm round her waist, and away they went like a whirlwind.
They danced faster than any, turning and twirling with wild abandon, so tightly clasped that they looked like one. Their bodies held upright and their legs almost motionless, it was as though they were spun round by an invisible machine hidden under their feet. They seemed unwearying. One by one the other couples dropped out till they were left alone, waltzing on and on. They looked as though they no longer knew where they were or what they were doing, as though they were far away from the ballroom, in ecstasy. The band played steadily on, their eyes fixed on this bewitched pair; everyone was watching, and there was a burst of applause when at last they stopped.
She was rather flushed; her eyes were no longer frank, but strangely troubled, burning yet timid, unnaturally blue, with pupils unnaturally black.
Servigny was drunk with giddiness, and leaned against a door to recover his balance.
“You have a poor head, Muscade,” she said. “You don’t stand it as well as I do.”
He smiled his nervous smile and looked at her with hungry eyes, a savage lust in his eyes and the curve of his lips.
She continued to stand in front of the young man, her throat heaving as she regained her breath.
“Sometimes,” she continued, “you look just like a cat about to make a spring. Give me your arm, and let us go and find your friend.”
Without speaking he offered her his arm, and they crossed the large room.
Saval was alone no longer; the Marquise Obardi had joined him, and was talking of trivial things, bewitching him with her maddening voice. Gazing intently at him, she seemed to utter words very different from those on her lips, words that came from the secret places of her heart. At the sight of Servigny she smiled and, turning to him, said:
“Have you heard, my dear Duc, that I’ve just taken a villa at Bougival for a couple of months? Of course you’ll come and see me; you’ll bring your friend, won’t you? I’m going down there on Monday, so will you both come and dine there next Saturday, and stay over the weekend?”
Servigny turned sharply to Yvette. She was smiling a serene, tranquil smile, and with an air of bland assurance said:
“Of course Muscade will come to dinner on Saturday; there’s no need to ask him. We shall have all kinds of fun in the country.”
He fancied that he saw a vague promise in her smile, and an unwonted decision in her voice.
The Marquise thereupon raised her great black eyes to Saval’s face, and said:
“And you also, Baron?”
There was nothing equivocal about her smile.
He bowed.
“I shall be only too pleased.”
“We’ll scandalise the neighbourhood—won’t we, Muscade?—and drive my admirers wild with rage,” murmured Yvette, glancing, with a malice that was either candid or assured, towards the group of men who watched them from the other side of the room.
“To your heart’s content, Mam’zelle,” replied Servigny; by way of emphasising the intimate nature of his friendship with her, he never called her “mademoiselle.”
“Why does Mademoiselle Yvette always call my friend Servigny ‘Muscade’?” asked Saval.
The girl assumed an air of innocence.
“He’s like the little pea that the conjurers call ‘Muscade.’ You think you have your finger on it, but you never have.”
“Quaint children, aren’t they?” the Marquise said carelessly, obviously thinking of far other things, and not for an instant lowering her eyes from Saval’s face.
“I’m not quaint, I’m frank,” said Yvette angrily. “I like Muscade, and he’s always leaving me; it’s so annoying.”
Servigny made her a low bow.
“I’ll never leave you again, Mam’zelle, day or night.”
She made a gesture of alarm.
“Oh, no, that would never do! In the daytime, by all means, but at night you’d be in the way.”
“Why?” he asked imprudently.
With calm audacity she replied:
“Because you couldn’t possibly look so nice with your clothes off.”
“What a dreadful thing to say!” exclaimed the Marquise, without appearing in the least excited. “You can’t possibly be so innocent as all that.”
“I entirely agree with you,” added Servigny in a jesting tone.
Yvette looked rather hurt, and said haughtily:
“You have just been guilty of blatant vulgarity; you have permitted yourself far too much of that sort of thing lately.”
She turned her back on him, and shouted:
“Chevalier, come and defend me; I have just been insulted.”
A thin, dark man came slowly towards them.
“Which is the culprit?” he asked, forcing a smile.
She nodded towards Servigny.
“That’s the man; but all the same I like him better than all of you put together; he’s not so boring.”
The Chevalier Valréali bowed.
“We do what we can. Perhaps we are not so brilliant, but we are at least as devoted.”
A tall, stout man with grey whiskers and a deep voice was just leaving.
“Your servant, Mademoiselle Yvette,” he said as he passed.
“Ah, it’s Monsieur de Belvigne,” she exclaimed, and turning to Saval, she introduced him.
“Another candidate for my favour, tall, fat, rich, and stupid. That’s how I like them. He’s a real Field-marshal—one of those who hold the door open at restaurants. But you’re taller than he is. Now what am I going to christen you? I know! I shall call you Rhodes Junior, after the colossus who must have been your father. But you two must have really interesting things to discuss, far above our heads, so good night to you.”
She ran across to the orchestra, and asked them to play a quadrille.
Madame Obardi’s attention seemed to be wandering.
“You’re always teasing her,” she said softly. “You’re spoiling the child’s disposition and teaching her a number of bad habits.”
“Then you haven’t finished her education?” he replied.
She seemed not to understand, and continued to smile benevolently.
But observing the approach of a solemn gentleman whose breast was covered with orders, she ran up to him:
“Ah, Prince, how delightful!”
Servigny took Saval’s arm once more and led him away, saying:
“There’s my last serious rival, Prince Kravalow. Isn’t she a glorious creature?”
“They’re both glorious,” replied Saval. “The mother’s quite good enough for me.”
Servigny bowed.
“She’s yours for the asking, my dear.”
The dancers elbowed them as they took their places for the quadrille, couple by couple, in two lines facing one another.
“Now let’s go and watch the Greeks for a bit,” said Servigny.
They entered the gambling-room.
Round each table a circle of men stood watching. There was very little conversation; sometimes a little chink of gold, thrown down on the cloth or hastily mixed up, mingled its faint metallic murmur with the murmur of the players, as though the voice of gold were making itself heard amid the human voices.
The men were decorated with various orders and strange ribbons; and their diverse features all wore the same severe expression. They were more easily distinguished by their beards.
The stiff American with his horseshoe beard, the haughty Englishman with a hairy fan spread over his chest, the Spaniard with a black fleece reaching right up to his eyes, the Roman with the immense moustache bequeathed to Italy by Victor Emmanuel, the Austrian with his whiskers and clean-shaven chin, a Russian general whose lip was armed with two spears of twisted hair, Frenchmen with gay moustaches—they displayed the imaginative genius of every barber in the world.
“Aren’t you going to play?” asked Servigny.
“No; what about you?”
“I never play here. Would you like to go now? We’ll come back one day when it’s quieter. There are too many people here today; there’s nothing to be done.”
“Yes, let us go.”
They disappeared through a doorway which led into the hall.
As soon as they were out in the street, Servigny asked:
“Well, what do you think of it all?”
“It’s certainly interesting. But I like the women better than the men.”
“Good Lord, yes! Those women are the best hunting in the country. Don’t you agree with me that love exhales from them like the perfumes from a barber’s shop? These are positively the only houses where one can really get one’s money’s worth. And what expert lovers they are! What artists! Have you ever eaten cakes made by a baker? They look so good, and they have no flavour at all. Well, the love of an ordinary woman always reminds me of baker’s pastry, whereas the love you get from women like the Marquise Obardi—that really is love! Oh, they can make cakes all right, can these confectioners. You have to pay them twopence halfpenny for what you would get anywhere else for a penny, that’s the only thing.”
“Who is the man running the place at present?” asked Saval.
Servigny shrugged his shoulders to express utter ignorance.
“I have no idea,” he said. “The last I knew certainly was an English peer, but he left three months ago. At the moment she must be living on the community, on the gambling and the gamblers, very likely, for she has her whims. But it’s an understood thing, isn’t it, that we are dining with her at Bougival on Saturday? There’s more freedom in the country, and I shall end by finding out what notions Yvette has in her head!”
“I ask for nothing better,” replied Saval. “I’m not doing anything that day.”
As they returned down the Champs Élysées, under the embattled stars, they passed a couple lying on a bench, and Servigny murmured:
“How ridiculous, yet how utterly indispensable, is this business of love! A commonplace, and an ecstasy, always the same and always different! And the clown who is paying that girl a franc is only seeking the very thing I buy for ten thousand from some Obardi who is perhaps no younger or more fascinating than that drab! What folly!” He was silent for some minutes, then said:
“All the same, it wouldn’t be a poor thing to be Yvette’s first lover. For that I’d give … I’d give …”
He did not make up his mind what he would give. And Saval bade him good night at the corner of the Rue Royale.