Renée climbed, and with each step her image in the mirror grew larger. With doubt akin to that felt by the most acclaimed of actresses, she wondered if she was really as delectable as people said she was.

When she reached her apartment on the second floor, with its windows overlooking the Parc Monceau, she rang for her chambermaid Céleste to dress her for dinner. That took a full hour and a quarter. After the last pin had been set in place, she opened the window because the room was very hot, leaned against the sill, and stood there lost in thought. Céleste worked discreetly behind her, putting away the various items of her toilette one by one.

The park below was a seething sea of shadows. Inky masses of lofty foliage, buffeted by sudden gusts of wind, ebbed and flowed over a broad expanse, and the dry leaves made a sound reminiscent of waves draining from a pebbly beach. In the swirl of shadows only the two yellow eyes of an occasional carriage stood out now and then, appearing and disappearing amid the stands of trees lining the road that runs from the avenue de la Reine-Hortense to the boulevard Malesherbes. Staring at this melancholy autumn scene, Renée felt her heart fill once again with sadness. She imagined herself a child back in her father’s house, a big silent town house on the Ile Saint-Louis, ¹⁰ which for two centuries had been home to the black-robed gravity of a family of magistrates, the Béraud Du Châtels. Then she recalled the magical stroke of her marriage, to a widower who had sold himself to marry her, who had bartered the name of Rougon for that of Saccard, whose two sharp syllables had, on first hearing, struck her ear with the brutality of two rakes scraping up gold. He had taken her and propelled her into this life of excess, which with each passing day left her poor mind a little more unhinged. Then, with childish pleasure, she dreamt of the wonderful games of badminton she used to play with her younger sister, Christine. And one morning she would wake from the voluptuous dream in which she’d been living for the past ten years, and she would be mad, and her reputation would have been destroyed by some speculation of her husband’s, which would have sucked him under with it. This came to her as a quick premonition. The wailing of the trees grew louder. Upset by these thoughts of shame and punishment, Renée gave in to instincts that lay dormant deep inside her, the instincts of an old and respectable bourgeois family. She promised the dark night that she would mend her ways, spend less on clothes, and find some innocent pastime with which to amuse herself, as in her happy days at boarding school, where the girls all sang “Nous n’irons plus au bois” while cavorting sweetly under the sycamores.

At that moment, Céleste, who had gone downstairs, returned and whispered in her mistress’s ear: “Monsieur would like Madame to come down. Several guests are already waiting in the salon.”

Renée gave a start. She had not felt the cold air nipping at her shoulders. As she passed the mirror, she stopped and looked at herself in a mechanical way. An involuntary smile crossed her lips, and she went down to her guests.

In fact, nearly all the guests had arrived. Waiting below were her sister Christine, a young woman of twenty, dressed very simply in white muslin; her Aunt Elisabeth, the widow of the notary Aubertot, in black satin—a little old lady of sixty with an exquisitely friendly manner; her husband’s sister Sidonie Rougon, a skinny, artificial woman of uncertain age with a soft, waxy face that her faded dress made even less memorable; and the Mareuils, father and daughter: a tall, handsome man who had only recently been in mourning for his wife and who, with his blank, serious visage, bore a striking resemblance to the servant Baptiste, and poor Louise, as the daughter was called, a child of seventeen, undersized and slightly hunchbacked, who with sickly grace wore a white twill gown with red polka dots. Then there was a substantial group of grave-looking men: highly decorated gentlemen, officials with pale, solemn faces. Some distance away, another group of young men with a dissolute air about them and coats wide open had gathered around five or six supremely elegant ladies, among whom the reigning queens were the Inseparables, little marquise d’Espanet, in yellow, and blonde Mme Haffner, in violet. M. de Mussy, the horseman whose greeting Renée had ignored that afternoon in the Bois, was also there, with the worried look of a lover who senses that he is about to be sent packing. And amid the long trains of the women’s gowns spread across the carpet, two building contractors, the newly wealthy bricklayers Mignon and Charrier, with whom Saccard was to conclude a piece of business the next day, clumped about in heavy boots, their hands behind their backs, looking ridiculous in their black frock coats.

Aristide Saccard, standing near the door and holding forth to the group of grave men with his nasal twang and southern verve, nevertheless managed to find a way to greet each arriving guest. He shook their hands and had a kind word for each and every one. A short man with a sly look on his face, he bowed like a marionette. What one noticed most about this skinny, crafty, darkish little figure was the red splash of the Légion d’honneur, ¹¹ which he wore quite ostentatiously.

When Renée entered the room, a murmur of admiration greeted her. She was truly divine. Over a tulle skirt embellished in back with an abundance of flounces, she wore a tunic of delicate green satin trimmed with high English lace, which was accentuated and held fast by big bunches of violets. A single flounce adorned the front of the skirt, to which bouquets of violets joined by garlands of ivy attached a sheer chiffon. Above the regal fullness of this rather too elaborate skirt, her head and bodice were done up adorably. Her breasts exposed almost to the nipples, her arms bare but for bunches of violets on the shoulders, the young woman seemed to emerge stark naked from her sheath of tulle and satin, like one of those nymphs whose bosom protrudes from a sacred oak. Her white throat and supple body seemed to revel in their partial freedom with such delight that one expected bodice and skirt to slip away little by little, like the clothing of a bather aroused by the sight of her own flesh. Her tall headdress and fine blonde hair, gathered up in the shape of a helmet with a sprig of ivy woven through it and held by a knot of violets, enhanced her nudity still more by uncovering the back of her neck, tinted by a golden down. Around her neck she wore a rivière of dangling diamonds, admirable for their clarity, and on her forehead a diamond-studded aigrette of fine silver. For a few seconds she stood this way on the threshold, in her magnificent costume with her shoulders shimmering in the warm glow like watered silk. Having descended the stairs quickly, she was a little out of breath. Her eyes, filled with shadows by the darkness of the park, blinked at the sudden flood of light, giving her a hesitant, nearsighted look that only added to her grace.

On seeing her, the little marquise got up eagerly, ran over to her, and took both her hands. While examining her from head to toe, she murmured in a piping voice, “Ah! Chère belle, chère belle!”

A considerable bustle ensued as all the guests came over to greet beautiful Madame Saccard, to use the name by which Renée was known in society. She touched the hand of nearly every man in the room. Then she kissed Christine and asked for news of their father, who never visited the town house at Parc Monceau. She remained on her feet, smiling, still nodding at her guests, her shoulders slumping slightly as she stood before the circle of women, who were carefully scrutinizing the rivière and the aigrette.

Blonde Mme Haffner could not resist temptation. She moved toward Renée, stared at the jewelry for quite some time, and then said in a jealous voice, “You’re wearing the rivière and aigrette, aren’t you?”