First of all it was essential that all those titled down-and-outs whose names appear in the newspapers should come to his house; and come they would, to see the face of a man who had made fifty million in six weeks; they would also come to observe and take note of who else might be there; and they would come, furthermore, because he had had the good taste and good judgement to summon them to admire a Christian painting in his, an Israelite’s, home.
He seemed to be telling them: ‘Look, I’ve paid five hundred thousand francs for Marcowitch’s religious masterpiece, Jesus Walking on the Water. And this masterpiece will remain in my house, where I can see it, for ever; in the house of Walter the Jew.’
In high society, in the world of duchesses and members of the Jockey Club,* this invitation, which after all did not commit one to anything, was much discussed. One would go there just as one went to look at watercolours, at M. Petit’s. The Walters owned a masterpiece; they were opening their doors one evening so that everyone might admire it. Nothing could be nicer.
Every day for the past fortnight La Vie française had included a titbit about this reception on the 30th of December in an effort to whet the public’s curiosity.
Du Roy was enraged by the Director’s triumph. He had thought himself wealthy with the five hundred thousand francs extorted from his wife, and now he believed himself poor, dreadfully poor, when he compared his paltry fortune to the deluge of millions pouring down around him, without his having been able to pick up any part of it.
Every day his jealous rage grew greater. He felt angry with everyone, with the Walters whom he no longer visited at home, with his wife who, deceived by Laroche, had advised him against buying into the Moroccan debt, and, above all, he was angry with the minister who had tricked him, who had used him, and who dined at his table twice a week. Georges served as his secretary, his agent, his factotum, and when he wrote under his dictation, he felt a mad urge to strangle that triumphant fop. As minister, Laroche was only moderately successful, and to protect his position he never let it be suspected that he was overflowing with gold. But Du Roy was conscious of it, conscious of that gold, in the parvenu lawyer’s haughtier tones, more arrogant gestures, bolder statements, and absolute self-confidence.
Laroche ruled the roost, now, in Du Roy’s home; he had taken over both the Comte de Vaudrec’s role and his ‘days’, and he spoke to the servants like a second master.
Trembling, Georges endured his presence, like a dog longing to bite without daring to. But he was often hard and rough with Madeleine, who would shrug, and treat him as a clumsy child. But she was amazed by his perpetual ill humour, and kept saying: ‘I don’t understand you. You’re forever complaining. Yet you’re in a splendid position.’
He would turn his back on her, without replying.
At first, he had declared that he would not go to his Director’s party, and that he wished never again to set foot in the home of that dirty Jew.
For the past two months Mme Walter had written to him every day, begging him to come, or to meet her anywhere he chose, so that she could give him, she said, the seventy thousand francs she had made on his behalf. He did not reply, and threw these desperate letters into the fire. Not that he had forsworn taking his share of their winnings, but he wanted to drive her mad, to treat her with contempt, to trample her underfoot. She was too rich! He wanted to show he had pride.
The very day when the painting was to be displayed, as Madeleine was pointing out to him that he was making a big mistake in deciding not to go, he replied: ‘Shut up. I’m staying at home.’
Then, after dinner, he suddenly announced: ‘Still, we’d better do our duty. Hurry up, get dressed.’
She had expected as much. ‘I’ll be ready in a quarter of an hour,’ she said.
He grumbled while dressing, and was still railing bitterly in the cab.
The main courtyard of the Hôtel de Carlsbourg was lit up by four electric lights, like little bluish moons, in the four corners. A magnificent carpet covered the tall flight of steps, and on each step stood a man in livery, as rigid as a statue.
Du Roy muttered: ‘Talk about showing off!’ He shrugged, jealousy clutching at his heart.
His wife said to him: ‘So keep quiet and do what he’s done.’
They went in, and handed their heavy outdoor garments to the footmen who advanced to take them.
A number of women, accompanied by their husbands, were similarly removing their furs. There were murmurs of ‘How very beautiful! How beautiful!’
The enormous entrance hall was hung with tapestries depicting the story of Mars and Venus. To the right and left the two branches of a monumental staircase wound up, meeting again on the first floor. The banisters were a miracle of wrought iron, whose old, faded gilding gleamed softly all the way up the pink marble steps.
At the entrance to the drawing-rooms, two little girls dressed as jesters, one in pink, the other in blue, handed bouquets to the ladies. People thought this a charming idea.
The drawing-rooms were already crowded. Most of the ladies were wearing town clothes, to indicate clearly that they had come there in the same way that they went to any private exhibition. Those that expected to stay on for the ball had bare arms and necks.
Mme Walter, surrounded by friends, stood in the second drawing-room, acknowledging the greetings of the guests. Many did not know her, and walked about as if in a museum, paying no attention to the masters of the house.
On catching sight of Du Roy, she turned a ghastly white, and moved as if to go up to him. But instead she stood still, and waited for him. He made her a formal bow, while Madeleine showered her with affectionate compliments. So then Georges left his wife with the Director’s wife and disappeared into the crowd, to listen to the nasty remarks that people would undoubtedly be passing.
There were five successive reception rooms, decorated with precious fabrics, Italian tapestries, or Oriental carpets in different shades and styles, and bearing on their walls paintings by old masters. In particular, people stopped to admire a small Louis XVI room, a kind of boudoir whose walls were entirely hung in silk printed with pink bouquets on a pale blue background. The low pieces of furniture, of gilded wood, upholstered in a fabric matching that of the walls, were exquisitely delicate.
Georges recognized some famous people,* the Duchesse de Ferracine, the Comte and Comtesse de Ravenel, General the Prince d’Andremont, the very beautiful Marquise des Dunes, as well as all the men and women who frequent opening nights.
His arm was seized and a young voice, a happy voice whispered in his ear: ‘Ah, here you are at last, you naughty Bel-Ami. Why do we never see you these days?’ It was Suzanne Walter, looking at him with her eyes of delicate enamel, from under her cloud of unruly blond curls.
He was delighted to see her again and heartily shook her hand. Then, apologetically: ‘I haven’t been able to. I’ve had so much to do, the last two months, that I haven’t been out.’
She went on, her manner serious: ‘It’s bad, very bad, very bad. You’ve really upset us, Mama and me, because we both adore you. For my part, I can’t do without you. If you’re not there I’m bored to death. As you see, I’m telling you this frankly, so that you’ll no longer be able to disappear like that. Give me your arm, I myself am going to show you Jesus Walking on the Water, it’s at the back, behind the conservatory. Papa put it over there so that people would have to walk all the way through. It’s amazing, the way Papa’s showing off, with this house.’
They made their way slowly through the crowd. People turned round to look at this handsome man and this ravishingly pretty doll of a girl. A well-known painter remarked: ‘My word! What a handsome couple. Quite delightful!’
Georges was thinking: ‘If I’d really been clever, this is the one I’d have married. And yet it was a possibility. Why didn’t I think of it? However did I let myself take the other one? What stupidity! One always acts too hastily, one never reflects enough.’ Envy, bitter envy, was permeating hi
s soul drop by drop, like a poison that tainted all his pleasures and made his life hateful.
Suzanne was saying: ‘Oh, do come often, Bel-Ami, we’ll have such fun now that Papa’s so rich. We’ll do the craziest things.’
He replied, still pursuing his idea: ‘Oh, you’ll be getting married now. You’ll marry some handsome prince, a bit strapped for money, and we’ll hardly ever see you again.’
She exclaimed quite candidly: ‘Oh no, not yet, I want someone that I like, that I like very much, that I really, really like. I’m rich enough for two.’
He smiled an ironic, proud smile and began naming the people who were passing by, people of noble birth who had sold their rusty titles to financier’s daughters like herself, and now lived either with their wives, or apart from them, but were free, shameless, well known, and respected.
He concluded: ‘I don’t give you six months before you let yourself fall into that trap. You’ll be Madame la Marquise, or Madame la Duchesse, or Madame la Princesse, and you’ll look down on me from very high up, mademoiselle.’
Growing indignant, she tapped him on the arm with her fan, swearing she’d marry only to suit her heart.
His tone was mocking: ‘Well, we’ll see, you’re too wealthy.’
She said to him: ‘But what about you, you’ve had a legacy.’
‘Oh yes indeed, a real fortune,’ he replied in a pathetic voice. ‘Barely twenty thousand in income. That’s not much, these days.’
‘But your wife has inherited as well.’
‘Yes, a million between us. An income of forty thousand. We can’t even keep our own carriage, with that.’
They were approaching the final drawing-room; ahead lay the entrance to the conservatory. This was a big winter garden filled with large tropical trees, that sheltered beds of rare flowers. As they entered this shadowy greenery where the light glided like ripples of silver, they breathed in the warm fresh smell of the damp earth, and the heavily perfumed air. It was a strange sensation of sweet and delightful corruption, at once artificial, enervating, and yielding. They walked on carpets that were just like moss, between two dense plantings of shrubs. Suddenly, Du Roy noticed on his left, beneath a broad dome of palm trees, an enormous white marble pool, big enough to bathe in, on whose rim four large delftware swans gushed water from their half-open beaks.
The bottom of the pool was sprinkled with gold dust, and in it some enormous red fish were swimming, weird Chinese monsters with bulging eyes and scales edged in blue, kinds of mandarins of the waves, recalling, as they floated haphazardly about over the golden bottom, the strange tapestries of that far-off land.
The journalist, his heart beating fast, came to a halt. He was thinking: ‘This is luxury, real luxury. These are the houses one should live in. Others have managed it. Why shouldn’t I?’ He considered possible means but could not immediately think of any, and grew angry at his own impotence.
His companion, rapt in thought, was no longer talking. He gave her a sidelong glance and once more reflected: ‘Yet all I had to do was marry this little puppet of flesh-and-blood.’ But all of a sudden, Suzanne appeared to wake up. ‘Come on,’ she said. She pushed Georges through a group that blocked their way, and made him turn sharply to the right.
In the centre of a group of strange plants that thrust into the air their trembling leaves, which opened like hands with slender fingers, you could see a man standing, motionless, on the sea.
The effect was astonishing. The painting, its sides hidden by the moving greenery, looked like a black hole surrounded by a fantastic, stunning background.
You had to look closely, in order to understand. The frame cut across the middle of the boat where the apostles sat, faintly lit by the slanting rays of a lantern held by one of them who, seated on the boat’s edge, was directing all the light onto Jesus as he approached.
Christ was setting his foot on a wave that you could see rising, obedient, smooth, and caressing, beneath the divine step pressing upon it. Everything surrounding the Son of God was in darkness. Only the stars shone in the sky.
The faces of the apostles, by the uncertain light of the lantern the man was holding so that it shone on the Lord, seemed overcome with astonishment.
Powerful and unexpected, indisputably the achievement of a master, it was one of those works that turn your ideas upside down, and linger in the mind for years.
At first those who looked at it said nothing, but went away deep in thought, and then had nothing to say except to comment on the value of the painting.
Du Roy, after gazing at it for some time, declared: ‘Nice to be able to treat yourself to baubles like that.’
But, as people were jostling and pushing in order to see, he moved off, still keeping on his arm Suzanne’s tiny hand, which he pressed slightly.
She asked him: ‘Would you like a glass of champagne? Let’s go to the buffet. We’ll find Papa there.’
And once again they passed slowly through all the reception rooms, where the crowd, larger now, lively, elegant, and quite at ease, was behaving as if it were at some public festivity.
Suddenly, Georges thought he heard a voice say: ‘There’s Laroche and Mme Du Roy.’ These words brushed past his ear like distant sounds carried on the wind. Where had they come from?
He looked all round, and did indeed see his wife walk past on the arm of the minister. They were chatting softly in an intimate manner, gazing into each other’s eyes and smiling.
He imagined that he noticed people whispering as they looked at them, and he felt in himself a brutal, stupid urge to leap on the two of them and beat them with his fists.
She was making him look ridiculous. He thought of Forestier. Perhaps people were saying: ‘That cuckold Du Roy’ Who was she? Just a little upstart, fairly shrewd, but in actual fact without any remarkable gifts. People came to his home because they feared him and realized that he was a force to be reckoned with, but no doubt they showed scant respect when discussing this insignificant journalist couple. Never would he go far with this woman who would always make his home appear suspect, who was always compromising herself, whose manner proclaimed her a schemer. She would be a millstone round his neck, now. Ah! Had he only guessed, had he only known! How much greater would have been the stakes he played for! What a lovely hand he would have won with that little Suzanne as the prize. How could he have been so blind as not to understand that?
They were approaching the dining-room, an immense room with marble columns, its walls hung with Gobelin tapestries.
Walter noticed his reporter and rushed forward to shake his hand. He was drunk with happiness. ‘Have you seen everything? Tell me, Suzanne, have you shown him everything? What a crowd, eh, Bel-Ami? Did you see the Prince de Guerche? He was here a moment ago, having a glass of punch.’
Then he hurried over to Senator Rissolin, who was hauling along his bewildered lady, all hung about with finery.
A gentleman was bowing to Suzanne, a tall, thin young man with blond sidewhiskers, a trifle bald, and with that unmistakable air of someone who moves in the best circles. Georges heard his name: the Marquis de Cazolles, and suddenly felt jealous of this man. How long had he known her? No doubt since she had become an heiress? He sensed this was a suitor.
His arm was taken. It was Norbert de Varenne. The old poet wore his lank hair and tired-looking suit with an indifferent, exhausted air.
‘This is what’s called enjoying yourself,’ he said. ‘Soon there’ll be dancing, and then everyone will go to bed, and all the little girls will be happy. Have some champagne, it’s excellent.’ He had a glass filled and, with a bow to Du Roy who had taken another: ‘I drink to the revenge of wit over wealth.’ Then he added, in a gentle voice: ‘Not that it bothers me in others or that I wish them ill on that account. But I’m protesting on principle.’
Georges was no longer listening to him. He was looking for Suzanne, who had disappeared with the Marquis de Cazolles, and, hastily abandoning Norbert de Varenne, he set off in
pursuit of the young girl. A dense throng in search of something to drink stopped him. When, eventually, he pushed his way through, he found himself face to face with the Marelles. He was still seeing the wife, but it was a long time since he had met the husband, who seized both his hands: ‘I do so thank you, my friend, for the advice you sent me via Clotilde. I made almost a hundred thousand francs over the Moroccan loan. It’s all due to you. You are indeed a wonderful friend.’
Men were turning round to look at this elegant, pretty brunette.
Du Roy replied: ‘In exchange for that service, my dear fellow, I’ll take your wife, or rather I’ll offer her my arm. One should always separate husband and wife.’
M. de Marelle bowed. ‘Fair enough. If I lose you, we’ll meet again here in an hour.’
‘Certainly.’
And the two young people disappeared into the crowd, followed by the husband. Clotilde was saying: ‘Those Walters are lucky devils. What a difference it makes to have a good head for business.’
Georges answered: ‘Nonsense! Strong men always succeed, if not by one means, then by another.’
She went on: ‘Those two girls will have between twenty and thirty million each. Added to which, Suzanne’s pretty.’
He said nothing. His own thoughts in someone else’s mouth annoyed him.
She had not yet seen Jesus Walking on the Water. He suggested taking her there. They entertained themselves passing malicious remarks about people and poking fun at those they did not recognize. Saint-Potin walked past close by them, wearing numerous decorations on the lapels of his coat, which they thought highly amusing. A former ambassador, behind him, displayed a more modest collection.
Du Roy exclaimed: ‘What a bunch!’
Boisrenard, who shook him by the hand, had also decorated his buttonhole with the green and yellow ribbon he had produced the day of the duel.
The Vicomtesse de Percemur, huge and over-dressed, was chatting to a duke in the small Louis XVI boudoir.