“Then … then … it means that I have improved. You too … you find me … ripe.”
“I find you ravishing, my dear; you have arms, a skin, shoulders …”
“Which will please Monsieur Burel.”
“You are cruel. But there … frankly … I don’t know another woman so uncommonly attractive as you are.”
“You have been fasting.”
“What?”
“I say, you have been fasting.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When a man fasts, he is hungry, and when he is hungry, he is prepared to eat things that at any other time he could not stomach. I am the dish, previously rejected, that you would not be sorry to feel between your teeth … this evening.”
“Oh, Marguerite! Who has taught you to speak like this?”
“You. Think: since your break with Madame de Servy, you have had, to my knowledge, four mistresses, cocottes all of them, and perfect of their kind. So how do I suppose I can explain your … airy nonsense of this evening, except as the consequence of a temporary abstinence?”
“I will be brutally frank, without mincing words. I have fallen in love with you again. Really and madly. That’s all.”
“Oh, indeed! Then you would like to … begin again?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“This evening!”
“Marguerite!”
“Good. You shall be still further scandalised. My dear, let us understand each other. We are no longer anything to each other, are we? I am your wife, it is true, but your wife … set free. I am about to take up an engagement elsewhere; you demand to be given preference. I will give it you … at the same price.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me make myself clear. Am I as good as your cocottes? Be honest about it.”
“A thousand times better.”
“Better than the best of them?”
“A thousand times.”
“Well, how much did the best of the lot cost you in three months?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I say, how much did three months of your most charming mistress cost you, in money, jewellery, suppers, dinners, theatres, etc.—the whole business, in short?”
“How on earth do I know?”
“You must know. Let’s see now, the average cost, a moderate estimate. Five thousand francs a month: is that about right?”
“Yes … just about.”
“Well, my friend, give me five thousand francs now, and I am yours for a month, including this evening.”
“You are mad.”
“So you look at it that way: good night.”
The comtesse goes out of the room into her bedroom. The curtains of the bed are half drawn. A dim fragrance fills the air, it clings to the coverings of the bed itself.
The Comte appears in the doorway.
“That’s a delightful scent.”
“Really? … It’s no different, you know. I always use peau d’Espagne.”
“Amazing! … It smells delightful.”
“Possibly. But do me the kindness of leaving me now, because I am going to bed.”
“Marguerite.”
“Go at once.”
He comes right into the room, and sits down in the armchair.
The Comtesse:
“So that’s it. … Well, so much the worse for you.”
She slowly puts off her dance-frock, slipping out her bare white arms. She lifts them above her head to take down her hair before the glass; and something rosy gleams under a froth of lace at the edge of her black corset.
The Comte springs to his feet and comes towards her.
The Comtesse:
“Don’t come near me, or I shall be angry.”
He takes her bodily into his arms and feels for her lips.
Then, with an agile twist of her body, she snatches from her dressing-table a glass of the perfumed water she uses for her mouth and flings it over her shoulder full in her husband’s face.
He leaps back, dripping with water, furious, murmuring:
“That’s a silly trick.”
“That may be. But you know my conditions, five thousand francs.”
“But that’s absolutely insane.”
“Why insane?”
“What, why? A husband to pay for sleeping with his wife!”
“Oh … what unpleasant words you use!”
“Possibly. I repeat that a man would be insane to pay his wife, his legal wife.”
“It is much stupider, when one has a legal wife, to pay cocottes.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t care to be ridiculous.”
The Comtesse is sitting on a couch. She draws her stockings slowly down, turning them inside out like the skin of a snake. Her rosy leg emerges from its sheath of mauve silk, and her adorable little foot rests on the carpet.
The Comte draws a little nearer, and in a soft voice:
“What has put this mad idea into your head?”
“What idea?”
“To ask me for five thousand francs.”
“Nothing could be more natural. We are strangers to each other, aren’t we? And now you want me. You can’t marry me, since we are married. So you buy me, a little more cheaply than anyone else perhaps.
“Think now. This money, instead of passing into the hands of a hussy to be used for goodness knows what, will remain in your own house, in your household. Moreover, an intelligent man should find it rather original to pay for his own wife. In an illicit love-affair, the sweetest pleasures are those that cost dearly, very dearly. You give your love … your quite legitimate love, a new value, a savour of vice, a spice of … dissipation, when you … put a price on it as if it were bought love. Isn’t that so?”
She rises to her feet, almost naked, and turns towards a bathroom.
“Now, sir, please go at once, or I shall ring for my maid.”
The Comte stands still, puzzled, ill at ease, and looks at her, and abruptly, throwing his pocketbook at her:
“There you are, you baggage, there’s six thousand in it. … But you understand?”
The Comtesse picks up the money, counts it, and drawls:
“What?”
“Don’t make a habit of this.”
She breaks into laughter, and going towards him:
“Every month, sir, five thousand, or back I send you to your cocottes. And … if you are satisfied … I shall even demand a rise.”
Monsieur Saval, who was called in Mantes “Father Saval,” had just got out of bed. He was weeping. It was a dull autumn day; the leaves were falling. They fell slowly in the rain, like a heavier and slower rain. M. Saval was not in good spirits. He walked from the fireplace to the
