Текст книги "The Kill"

Автор книги: Émile Zola

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“Bah!” he thought on seeing a light in her dressing room. “I’ll whistle, and she’ll come down. I won’t disturb her. If she has a few louis, I’ll be off immediately.”

And he whistled softly. He often signaled his arrival that way. On this night, however, he repeated his whistle several times to no avail. He persisted, whistling still more loudly, unwilling to give up his idea of an instant loan. At last he saw the door open with the utmost precaution; until then he hadn’t heard the slightest noise. Renée emerged into the obscurity of the conservatory, her hair undone, barely dressed, as if she had been on the point of going to bed. Her feet were bare. She pushed him toward one of the arbors, proceeding down the stairs and along one of the sandy walkways, apparently undeterred by the cold or the roughness underfoot.

“It’s stupid to whistle that loudly,” she whispered, holding back her anger. “I told you not to come. What do you want from me?”

“Let’s go upstairs,” said Maxime, taken aback by this welcome. “I’ll tell you there. You’ll catch cold.”

He went to take a step, but she held him back, and he saw then that she was dreadfully pale. An unspoken terror curved her spine. Her most intimate garments, her laciest underthings, were draped over her shivering flesh like a tragic heroine’s rags.

He examined her with growing astonishment.

“What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?”

Instinctively, he looked up and saw through the glass of the conservatory the window of the dressing room in which he had previously glimpsed a light.

“But there’s a man in your apartment,” he said suddenly.

“No, no, there isn’t,” she stammered in a pleading voice, ceding to panic.

“Now see here, my dear, I can see his shadow.”

They stood there for an instant face-to-face, not knowing what to say. Renée’s teeth were chattering in terror, and she felt as though buckets of ice water were being poured over her bare feet. Maxime felt more irritated than he would have expected, yet he remained detached enough to reflect on the situation, to tell himself that the moment was ripe to break off the relationship.

“You’re not going to make me believe that it’s Céleste wearing a topcoat,” he went on. “If the conservatory windows weren’t so thick, I might even recognize the gentleman.”

She pushed him farther into the darkness of the foliage, clasping her hands and pleading with growing terror, “I beg you, Maxime . . .”

But all the young man’s instincts for needling were aroused, ferocious instincts in search of vengeance. He was too fragile to find relief in anger. Spite pinched his lips, and rather than hit her, which had been his initial impulse, he took a sharper tone and went on. “You should have told me, I wouldn’t have disturbed you. . . . These things happen all the time. People stop loving each other. I had almost had my fill myself. . . . Don’t be impatient now. I’ll let you go back up, but not until you’ve told me the gentleman’s name.”

“Never! Never!” the young woman whispered, choking back tears.

“I have no intention of challenging him to a duel. I just want to know. . . . The name, quick, tell me the name, and I’ll go.”

He had seized her by the wrists and was staring at her, laughing wickedly. She struggled desperately, unwilling to open her mouth lest the name she was being asked to reveal somehow escape her lips.

“If we go on this way, we’re going to make noise, which won’t help matters. What are you afraid of? Aren’t we good friends? . . . I want to know who’s taking my place. I’m entitled to that. . . . Wait, I’ll help you. It’s M. de Mussy, whose suffering touched you.”

She did not answer but bowed her head at being questioned in such a manner.

“It’s not M. de Mussy? . . . The duc de Rozan, perhaps? No, not him either? . . . Perhaps the comte de Chibray? Wrong again?”

He stopped and searched his mind.

“Damned if I can think of anyone else. . . . It’s not my father, after what you told me.”

Renée jumped as if seared with a hot poker and in a muffled voice said, “No, you know quite well that he doesn’t come anymore. I wouldn’t allow it. It would be vile.”

“Who then?”

And he squeezed her wrists even tighter. The poor woman struggled a while longer.

“Oh, Maxime, if only you knew! . . . But I can’t tell you.”

Then, vanquished, overwhelmed, staring in terror at the illuminated window, in a voice barely above a whisper, she stammered, “It’s M. de Saffré.”

Maxime, until then amused by his cruel game, turned quite livid at this confession, which he had insisted on having. He was vexed that the man’s name should have caused him such unexpected pain. Violently he pushed Renée away, then moved close to her, right in her face, and through clenched teeth said, “You know what you are? You’re a—”

He pronounced the word. He turned to leave but she ran after him, sobbing, taking him in her arms, whispering tender words, begging forgiveness, swearing that she still adored him and would explain everything the next day. But he pulled away and slammed the door of the conservatory, saying, “No, it’s over. I’ve had it,” on his way out.

Crushed, she watched him cross the garden. The trees in the conservatory seemed to whirl around. Then, slowly, she dragged her bare feet down the sandy path and climbed back up the porch stairs. The cold made her skin look like marble, and her lacy negligee being in disarray only added to her tragic appearance. Upstairs, where her husband was waiting, she responded to his questions by saying that she thought she’d remembered where she’d dropped a small notebook that had been missing since morning. No sooner was she in bed than she felt a deep sense of despair at the thought that she should have told Maxime that his father, having accompanied her home, had followed her into her bedroom to discuss some question of money with her.

The next day, Saccard decided to force the Charonne business to a conclusion. His wife was now his. He had just held her in his hands and felt her softness, her inertness—an object that has ceased to resist. What is more, the route of the boulevard du Prince-Eugène was about to be announced, and it was essential that Renée be stripped of her title before word of the upcoming expropriation leaked out. Throughout this business, Saccard proceeded with an artist’s love of his work. He watched his plan ripen with rapt devotion and set traps with the cunning of a hunter who prides himself on his sporting approach to his prey. With him there was a simple satisfaction in playing the game well, a particular pleasure in ill-gotten gains. If he could have the land for a crust of bread, he would gladly give his wife jewels worth a hundred thousand francs in the joy of triumph. The simplest operations grew complex, turned into dark dramas, whenever he became involved. Passion took hold of him, and he would have beaten his own father to lay hands on a hundred sous. And afterwards he would have strewn the gold about with royal largesse.

Before getting Renée to relinquish her share of the property, however, he took the precaution of sounding out Larsonneau about the extortion he suspected him of plotting. Saccard’s instinct saved him in this instance, for the expropriation agent had meanwhile come to the conclusion that the fruit was ripe for the picking. When Saccard walked into Larsonneau’s office on the rue de Rivoli, he found his colleague in a bad way, showing signs of the most violent desperation.

“Oh, my friend!” Larsonneau murmured, taking Saccard by the hand. “We’re done for. . . . I was about to run over to your place to figure a way out of this awful mess.”

While Larsonneau wrung his hands and attempted to force out a sob, Saccard noticed that he had been signing letters a moment before and that the signatures looked remarkably precise. He stared at him calmly and said, “Bah! So what’s happened to us?”

The other man did not answer immediately, however. He had flung himself down in a chair behind his desk, and there, with his elbows resting on the blotter, his forehead in his hands, he furiously shook his head. Finally, in a choking voice, he said, “Someone stole the ledger, you see. . . .”

The story he told was this: one of his clerks, a scoundrel worthy of the penitentiary, had made off with a large number of files, including the notorious ledger. Worse, the thief had realized what the document was worth and was asking for 100,000 francs in exchange for its return.

Saccard pondered the matter. The story struck him as a crude fabrication. Obviously Larsonneau didn’t much care whether or not he was believed. He was simply looking for a pretext to let it be known that he wanted 100,000 francs out of the Charonne deal and, indeed, that for that amount of money he would hand over the compromising papers in his possession. To Saccard the price seemed too steep. He would willingly have given his former partner a share in the spoils, but this attempt to spring a trap and this presumptuousness in taking him for a fool he found irritating. Yet he was not without worries. He knew the man he was dealing with and knew that he was quite capable of taking the papers to his brother the minister, who would certainly pay to hush up any scandal.

“Damn!” Saccard muttered, now taking a seat himself. “That’s a nasty story. . . . Would it be possible to see the scoundrel in question?”

“I’ll send for him,” Larsonneau replied. “He lives close by, on rue Jean Lantier.”

Before ten minutes had passed, a short, shifty-eyed fellow with light-colored hair and red blotches all over his face quietly entered the room, carefully making sure that the door made no sound. He was wearing a shabby black frock coat that was too large for him and shockingly threadbare. Standing at a respectful distance from Saccard, he calmly examined the financier out of the corner of his eye. Larsonneau, who addressed this man as Baptistin, subjected him to an interrogation, to which he responded in monosyllables, showing no sign of becoming rattled. He withstood this grilling without flinching even though his employer felt compelled to accompany each of his questions with epithets such as thief, crook, and scoundrel.

Saccard admired the wretched fellow’s sangfroid. At one point, the expropriation agent leapt from his chair as if to strike him, and he merely retreated a step and narrowed his eyes a bit more in a gesture of humility.

“That’s enough, leave him alone,” the financier said. “So then, sir, you’re asking 100,000 francs to return the papers?”

“Yes, 100,000 francs,” the young man answered.

With that he left the room. Larsonneau seemed unable to get a grip on himself. “The gall! What a scoundrel!” he sputtered. “Did you see his shifty eyes? . . . Fellows like that look timid, but for twenty francs they’d kill a man for you.”

Saccard, however, interrupted him: “Bah! He’s nothing to be afraid of. I think we’ll be able to make a deal with him. . . . I came about something far more worrisome. . . . You were right to distrust my wife, my good friend. She’s selling her share of the property to M. Haffner. She says she needs money. Her friend Suzanne must have put her up to it.”

Larsonneau abruptly quit sighing. He listened, the color having drained from his face, and adjusted his starched collar, which had curled in his wrath.

“This sale,” Saccard went on, “will ruin our hopes. If M. Haffner becomes your partner, not only will our profits be compromised, but I’m awfully afraid we may find ourselves in a very unpleasant situation, as the gentleman is quite meticulous and may insist on going over the accounts.”

The expropriation agent began pacing the room in an agitated manner, his patent-leather boots creaking on the carpet. “You see what predicaments you get yourself into by doing favors for people,” he muttered. “But if I were you, my friend, I’d do everything in my power to prevent my wife from making such a foolish move. I’d beat her before I’d allow such a thing to happen.”

“Really?” the financier said with a sly smile. “I have no more influence over my wife than you seem to have over this scoundrel Baptistin.”

Larsonneau stopped short in front of Saccard, who had not stopped smiling, and appraised him carefully. Then he resumed his pacing, but with a slower, more measured step. He went over to a mirror, tightened the knot of his necktie, and continued walking, having regained his customary elegance. Suddenly he blurted out, “Baptistin!”

The short, shifty-eyed fellow reentered the room, but this time through a different door. He no longer had his hat and was rolling a quill pen between two fingers.

“Go get the ledger,” Larsonneau ordered.

When he had left, Larsonneau discussed the sum he was to be paid. In the end he said bluntly, “Do this for me.”

Saccard then agreed to pay 30,000 francs out of the future profits on the Charonne affair. He reckoned that even at that price he would still be escaping the usurer’s gloved clutches relatively cheaply. Larsonneau, continuing the charade to the end, insisted that the promissory note be made out in his name, saying that he would be accountable to the young man for the 30,000 francs. Saccard chuckled with relief as he burned the ledger in the fireplace, one page at a time. When he was done, he vigorously shook Larsonneau’s hand and left with these parting words: “You’ll be at Laure’s tonight, won’t you? . . . Wait for me. I’ll work things out with my wife, and we’ll make our final decisions.”

Laure d’Aurigny, who moved frequently, was at that time living in a large apartment on boulevard Haussmann opposite the Chapelle Expiatoire. ¹¹ She had only recently decided to open her apartment to visitors one day a week, just like any other society hostess. These gatherings assembled in one place the men who saw her one at a time during the week. Aristide Saccard reigned in triumph on these Tuesday evenings. He was the incumbent lover, and he laughed vaguely and looked the other way whenever the mistress of the house betrayed him by dragging one of the other gentlemen off to a private place and granting him an assignation for later that same night. When he was left alone at the end of the evening, the last of the crowd of visitors, he would light yet another cigar, talk business for a while, and tease Laure about the fellow cooling his heels outside waiting for him to leave. Then, after calling Laure his “dear child” and giving her a little pat on the cheek, he would leave quietly through one door as the waiting gentleman entered through another. Both he and his “mistress” continued to take pleasure in the secret alliance that had consolidated Saccard’s credit and earned Mlle d’Aurigny two sets of furniture in one month. But Laure wanted this comedy to end. The finale, worked out ahead of time, was to take the form of a public breakup, the beneficiary of which was to be some poor imbecile who would pay dearly for the right of being Laure’s official, publicly acknowledged keeper. That imbecile had been found. The duc de Rozan, tired of importuning the women of his own set to no avail, dreamed of acquiring a reputation as a debauchee to lend a little relief to his colorless personality. He was an assiduous guest at Laure’s Tuesdays and had managed to conquer her with his absolute naïveté. Unfortunately, he was still, at the age of thirty-five, dependent on his mother to the point where he never had more than ten louis spending money in his pocket at any given time. On nights when Laure deigned to take those ten louis from him, feeling sorry for herself and letting it be known that 100,000 francs was what she needed, he promised her that as soon as he had the final say in the matter, that sum would be hers. It was then that it occurred to her to put him in touch with Larsonneau, a faithful friend of the establishment. The two men had lunch together at Tortoni’s, and over dessert Larsonneau, while recounting his amours with a delectable Spaniard, let it be known that he was in touch with some people who were in a position to lend money, though he sternly warned Rozan never to fall into their clutches. This revelation drove the duke wild, and in the end he succeeded in extracting from his good friend a promise to take care of “this little matter.” Larsonneau took such good care of it that he had come prepared to deliver the money on the very evening that Saccard proposed they meet at Laure’s.

When Larsonneau arrived, there were still only five or six women in Mlle d’Aurigny’s large white-and-gold drawing room—women who took him by the hands and threw their arms around his neck in a frenzy of affection. They called him “Big Lar,” using the affectionate nickname that Laure had coined for him. And he, in piping tones, replied, “Be careful now, my little kittens, or you’ll crush my hat.”

This calmed them down, and they then crowded around him while he sat on a love seat and regaled them with a tale of Sylvia’s indigestion after their supper together the previous evening. Afterwards he took a box of candy from the pocket of his coat and offered them pralines. At this point, however, Laure emerged from her bedroom and, seeing that a number of gentlemen guests were arriving, led him off to a boudoir at one end of the salon, from which they were separated by two sets of curtains.

“Do you have the money?” she asked when they were alone.

On important occasions she used the familiar tu with him. Larsonneau, without answering, bowed obligingly and tapped the inside pocket of his coat.

“Oh, Big Lar!” the delighted young woman murmured.

She took him by the waist and kissed him.

“Wait,” she said, “Let’s get the cash and the papers out of the way. . . . Rozan is in my room. I’ll go get him.”

But he held her back, and now it was his turn to kiss her shoulders. “You remember the favor I asked of you?”

“Why yes, of course, silly! It’s agreed.”

She returned with Rozan in tow. Larsonneau was dressed more punctiliously than the duke, with better gloves and a more artful bow to his cravat. They casually touched hands and talked about the races two days earlier, in which a friend of theirs had entered a losing horse. Laure waited impatiently.

“Come, my darling, never mind all that,” she said to Rozan. “Big Lar has the money, you know. It’s time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”

Larsonneau made a show of remembering. “Oh, yes, quite right, I’ve got the money. . . . But you should have listened to me, old man! Would you believe that those scoundrels insisted on fifty percent? . . . I finally gave in, you know, because you said it made no difference to you.”

Laure d’Aurigny had obtained some official stamped paper earlier in the day. But when the moment came to find pen and ink, she looked at the two men with a perplexed expression, uncertain whether she had any in the house. She was about to go to the kitchen to look when Larsonneau took from his pocket—the same pocket that contained the box of candy—two marvels: a silver penholder with a tip that could be screwed out and a steel-and-ebony inkwell as exquisite and elegant as a jewel.

Rozan sat down to write. “Make the notes out in my name,” Larsonneau said. “I don’t want to compromise you, you see. We’ll work something out together. . . . Six notes of 25,000 francs each, is it not?”

Laure counted out the bills on a corner of the table. Rozan never saw them. By the time he looked up after signing his name, they had vanished into the young woman’s pocket. But she went over to him and kissed him on both cheeks, which seemed to please him no end. Larsonneau looked at them philosophically as he folded the notes and put the inkstand and pen back into his pocket.

The young woman still had her arms around Rozan’s neck when Aristide Saccard lifted one corner of the door curtain. “Don’t mind me,” he said, laughing.

The duke blushed, but Laure went over to shake the financier’s hand, giving him a conspiratorial wink. She was radiant.

“It’s done, my dear,” she said. “I warned you. You won’t be too angry with me, will you?”

Saccard shrugged good-naturedly. He pulled back the door curtain and stood aside to let Laure and the duke pass. Then, like an usher announcing the arrival of guests, he barked out, “Monsieur le duc, Madame la duchesse!”

This pleasantry proved a tremendous success. The next day it was mentioned in the newspapers, blatantly naming Laure d’Aurigny while identifying the two gentlemen only by initials so transparent that they concealed the secret from no one. The breaking off of the relationship between Aristide Saccard and fat Laure caused even more of a stir than their alleged affair.

Meanwhile, Saccard had allowed the door curtain to fall back into place, shutting out the burst of laughter that his jest had unleashed in the drawing room.

“What a good girl she is!” he said, turning now to face Larsonneau. “And such a slut! . . . And you, you rascal! What are you getting out of all this? How much are they giving you?”

But Larsonneau defended himself with smiles and pulled down his cuffs, which had gotten pushed up. Eventually he went and sat down next to the door on a love seat that Saccard had indicated to him with a motion of his hand.

“Come here, damn it, I won’t insist on hearing your confession. . . . Let’s get down to brass tacks, my friend. I had a very long conversation with my wife earlier this evening. . . . Everything is taken care of.”

“She agreed to sell her share?” Larsonneau quizzed him.

“Yes, but it wasn’t easy. . . . Women can be so stubborn. You see, my wife had promised an elderly aunt of hers that she wouldn’t sell. She had no end of scruples about it. . . . Fortunately I was ready with a story that quite made up her mind.”

He got up to light a cigar on the candelabra that Laure had left on the table and then returned to stretch out casually at one end of the love seat.

“I told my wife that you were completely ruined,” he went on. “That you’d gambled on the Bourse, squandered your money on whores, and gotten mixed up in shady speculations. And finally, that you were about to go bust in the most awful fashion. . . . I even insinuated that I had doubts about your honesty. . . . I then explained to her that the Charonne business was going to be tangled up in your collapse and that the best thing to do would be to accept your proposition to buy her out—for a pittance, to be sure.”

“That wasn’t very intelligent,” the expropriation agent murmured. “You really think your wife is going to believe such a tall tale?”

Saccard smiled. He was in an expansive mood.

“How naïve you are, my dear fellow,” he continued. “The substance of the story is of no account. It’s all in the details, the gestures, and the accent. Call Rozan in here and I’ll bet I can convince him that it’s broad daylight outside. And my wife isn’t much smarter than Rozan. . . . I let her peer into the abyss. She has no inkling that expropriation is imminent. Since she was surprised that in the middle of such a catastrophe you would be willing to take on a still heavier burden, I told her that she was probably getting in the way of some trick you were about to play on your creditors. . . . In the end, I advised her to sell as the only way to avoid getting mixed up in interminable law-suits and to get some money out of her land.”

Larsonneau still thought the story somewhat crude. He preferred less dramatic methods. Each of his operations was plotted and brought to a resolution with the elegance of a drawing-room comedy.

“In your place I would have come up with something else,” he said. “But then each of us has his own system. . . . In any case, all that remains now is to pay the piper.”

“That’s precisely what I wanted to settle with you,” Saccard replied. “Tomorrow, I will give my wife the purchase-and-sale agreement, and in exchange for returning the signed papers to you, the amount agreed upon should be remitted to her. . . . I prefer to avoid any discussion between you.”

In fact, he had never cared to allow Larsonneau into his home on a footing of intimacy. He never invited him and had accompanied him to Renée’s apartment on days when it was essential that the two partners meet in person. There had been three such occasions. Most of the time he had made use of his wife’s power of attorney on the assumption that there was no point in letting her get too close a look at what he was up to.

He opened his briefcase and added, “Here are the 200,000 francs’ worth of notes signed by my wife. You will return these to her as payment, and to this amount you will add 100,000 francs that I shall deliver to you tomorrow morning. . . . I’m bleeding myself dry, my good friend. This business is costing me my own two eyes.”

“But that comes to only 300,000 francs,” the expropriation agent pointed out. “Will the receipt indicate that amount?”

“A receipt for 300,000 francs!” Saccard chortled. “Lord, we’d be in a hell of a fix later on! According to our inventories, the property must be worth two and a half million francs today. The receipt will naturally be for half that amount.”

“Your wife will never sign it.”

“Oh, yes she will. I’m telling you it’s all settled. . . . I told her it was your first condition, damn it! Your bankruptcy has forced you to put a pistol to our heads, don’t you see? That was when I let it be known that I had doubts about your honesty and accused you of intending to dupe your creditors. . . . Do you think my wife understands anything about all that?”

Larsonneau shook his head and murmured, “You still should have come up with something simpler.”

“But my story is simplicity itself,” Saccard replied in astonishment. “What the devil do you find complicated about it?”

He was quite unaware of the incredible number of strings he attached to the most ordinary transactions. He took great pleasure in the contrived story he had told Renée, and what delighted him was the impudence of the lie, the accumulation of impossibilities, the astonishing complexity of the intrigue. He would have taken possession of the property long ago if he hadn’t imagined this whole drama in advance, but it would have given him less pleasure if it had come to him more easily. For him it was the most natural thing in the world to turn the Charonne speculation into an elaborate financial melodrama.

He got up, took Larsonneau by the arm, and headed for the drawing room. “You understand what I said, don’t you? Just follow my instructions, and you’ll applaud when it’s over. You know, you really shouldn’t wear yellow gloves, my friend, they ruin your touch.”

The expropriation agent merely smiled. “Thanks for the instruction, but gloves have their uses: you can touch all sorts of things without getting your hands dirty.”

When they reentered the salon, Saccard was surprised and somewhat anxious to find Maxime on the other side of the curtain. The young man was sitting on a love seat next to a blonde, who was telling him a long story in a monotonous voice—her own story, no doubt. He had in fact overheard the conversation between his father and Larsonneau. The two accomplices were clearly sly dogs. Still angry about Renée’s betrayal, he took a coward’s pleasure in the news that she was soon to be robbed. There would be a modicum of vengeance for him in that. His father, looking suspicious, came over to shake his hand, but Maxime motioned toward the blonde and whispered in his ear, “She’s not bad, is she? I intend to have her tonight.”

Saccard then began to dance about and preen a bit. Laure d’Aurigny came and joined them for a moment. She complained that Maxime scarcely called on her more than once a month, but he claimed to have been very busy, which made everyone laugh. He added that from now on they’d be seeing him everywhere.

“I’ve written a tragedy,” he said, “and only yesterday did I come up with the fifth act. . . . I intend to rest from my labors in the company of all the beautiful women of Paris.”

He laughed and savored his allusions, which only he could understand. Meanwhile, the drawing room had emptied of all the other guests save Rozan and Larsonneau, on either side of the fireplace. The two Saccards rose to go, along with the blonde, who lived in the house. Laure then went over and whispered something to the duke. He seemed surprised and upset. Seeing that he made no move to get up from his chair, she said in a stage whisper, “No, really, not tonight. I have a headache. . . . Tomorrow, I promise you.”

Rozan had no choice but to obey. Laure waited until he was on the landing to whisper a quick word in Larsonneau’s ear: “So, Big Lar, you see I’m a woman of my word. . . . Stick him in his carriage.”

When the blonde took leave of the men and headed up to her apartment on the floor above, Saccard was surprised to see that Maxime did not follow her.

“Well,” he asked, “what are you waiting for?”

“I think not,” the young man replied. “I’ve thought better of it.”

Then he had an idea that struck him as very funny.

“I leave her to you if you like. Hurry, she hasn’t closed her door yet.”

But the father gave a quick shrug and said, “Thank you, my boy, but for the time being I’ve got something better.”

The four men went downstairs. When they reached the street, the duke absolutely insisted on giving Larsonneau a lift in his carriage. His mother lived in the Marais and he would drop the expropriation agent at his door on the rue de Rivoli. But Larsonneau refused, closed the door of the carriage himself, and ordered the coachman to drive off. He remained on the sidewalk of the boulevard Haussmann talking with the other two men and making no move to leave.

“Ah, poor Rozan!” exclaimed Saccard, who suddenly realized what was going on.

Larsonneau swore that it wasn’t true, that he didn’t give a damn about such things, that he was a practical man. But as the other two men continued to joke, and the air was very cold, he finally gave up and exclaimed, “For heaven’s sake, enough of this nonsense, I’m going to ring! . . . You gentlemen are very indiscreet.”

“Good night!” Maxime shouted as the door closed behind him.