‘What is he saying?’ young Ortiz asked, radiant with anticipation. He was shiny and new, as if just out of a box, and he brought his chair up to Farges. Claudine uttered a hysterical cry. ‘It’s wonderful! He says that the Grandsailles ball has to simmer on a low fire in the back of the kitchens of all the Parisian salons. It will only be good once it’s warmed over!’

  ‘I adore warmed-over dishes!’ Ortiz exclaimed.

  ‘What snobbery! You couldn’t tell by looking at her dress,’ muttered Farges, frowning in his annoyance. ‘Warmed-over or not,’ Cécile Goudreau broke in, shouting from a distance, ‘the worst of all will be to stay home on the night of the ball, trying to convince yourself that your own warmed-over dish is the best of all!’

  ‘And the Banco?’ exclaimed young Ortiz, laughing till the tears rolled, and trying in this way to wipe out the bitterness of Cécile Goudreau’s last words. ‘Each one of us should begin right now to prepare his Banco for the night of the ball. Mine will be the costume!’

  Others had just arrived to swell the group, in which the debate over Grandsailles was but in its preliminary phase. Then Solange, gliding like an oxidized-silver eel, went over to talk with Dick d’Angerville, who was observing everything with his sceptical air, seeming to see nothing. Solitary, standing, continually manipulating something near the bar-table, Solange de Cléda was a little frightened as she observed the animation of her drawing-room, which today seemed to her just a little too boldly picturesque. There were indeed some quite extraordinary people there: Soler, the Catalonian, was in a state of constant agitation, spilling his martini, burning himself on his cigarette, dragging the armchairs about and being of service to everyone; what a ‘specimen’ he was – he did ultra-sophisticated fashion photographs, claimed to have invented a new religion and made leather helmets for automobile drivers by hand!

  Now he was shaking little Mademoiselle de Henry, who as usual was covered – one might say devoured – by clips, brooches, pins, necklaces, bracelets, amulets, bells; it looked as if he wanted to dust her, deliver her of all that. Soler hesitated, but he was certainly going to end up by doing something with her. There he goes! It was inevitable, he had just sat her on top of the piano! Her ruby brooch had become unpinned and fallen on the floor. The better to see, Solange kneeled on the third step of the little library ladder and looked up. She thus resembled a silver hawk. Judging the total effect of her guests from the ‘Grandsailles point of view’, her drawing-room struck her as incoherent; all her friends who saw one another constantly, accustomed to being together almost every day, gave, on the contrary, the agitated impression of people who have just met by chance, and their familiarity seemed out of place.

  At Grandsailles’ it was the reverse; everything held together so well that since there was nothing that could change places, nothing was ‘out of place’. And even the people who met at his house for the first time seemed to have just left one another two or three hundred years before.

  ‘What are you thinking of, tristesse?’ d’Angerville asked her, taking Solange by the arm and helping her down from her stool. Solange remained for a moment with her arms crossed over her bosom in her characteristic gesture of fearful melancholy; she now resembled a Solange de Cléda of oxidized anguish.

  ‘I find all this frightfully patchy,’ she exclaimed, shaken by a smothered laugh as she pressed a cigarette between her lips. ‘It lacks distinction.’

  ‘The thing that gives distinction – class in the true sense –’ said d’Angerville, offering her the flame of his lighter, ‘is oneness with destiny. The same is true of the famous equestrian statues of the Renaissance – that had class only if they were cast, horse and horseman, in a single mould. “The man mounted on the horse of his destiny” – all of a piece! Just look around: no one seems to be completely finished! And most of the time it’s even worse. They all seem to be made up of parts, rented, subrented, from other persons and put together with a thousand pieces not one of which goes with the rest.’ Then with a sigh, ‘It’s even more pitiful when they try to create an ensemble.’ And as Solange repressed a sudden laugh, pretending to cough into her hand, ‘Yes, tristesse, don’t laugh, I beg you; I was looking at the same person.’ Then, taking inventory, as though he were telling something very serious, he enumerated, ‘The hat with the bag, the clip with the buttons, the buttons with the tics, and the shoes with….’

  ‘The nose!’ Solange exploded.

  Indeed the lady in question had pointed shoes exactly the shape of her excessively powdered nose.

  One could say whatever one liked about Grandsailles, thought Solange, but he at least was moulded all of a piece.

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ Solange exclaimed, becoming despondent again, ‘What’s to be done? Only you, dear d’Angerville, could help me do my salon over properly.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ answered d’Angerville. ‘Some beautiful old furniture – and limit the pederasts to a strict minimum.’ As he spoke he turned his eyes to a large divan near the entrance in the centre of which Cécile Goudreau reigned in a well-fed group of cynical women among whom several notorious pederasts were indulging in all sorts of pantomimes for their own amusement.

  ‘But Cécile Goudreau is received at Grandsailles’.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s too highly flavoured for you,’ d’Angerville advised.

  Cécile Goudreau was in fact a kind of Balzacian character, intelligent, déclassée, having become a real Parisian institution by dint of intrigues, whose strong personality Grandsailles had admitted and recognized just at the opportune moment, as an established government does with a revolutionary power when the latter threatens to become too important.

  ‘And Barbara?’

  Barbara had just entered the drawing-room, and her decorative effect was undeniable.

  ‘She,’ said d’Angerville, ‘can do you no harm; on the contrary, she belongs to the species of Grandsailles’ forbidden fruit, and to the “dissidents that have their place in the centre”.’

  Solange went to meet Barbara, who kissed her on the cheeks, on the ears and excused herself for arriving so late. But anyway she brought the photograph she had promised for Solange’s scrapbook of society notes – ‘a picture of Princess Agmatoff as a contortionist!’

  ‘But where did I put my bag?’

  Solange ordered a servant to fetch the bag. Almost at the same time as Barbara, Betka appeared. For two hours she had waited in vain for Veronica, so that they might go in together, for she was intimidated by the constant arrival of all those luxurious cars. Then, finally, she had recognized Veronica’s mother and had followed her closely. Dazed, she immediately found herself with a Bacardi cocktail in her hands which an attentive servant came and offered her. There was a stir of curiosity in the group that surrounded Cécile Goudreau, and all the admiring eyes wondered. ‘Who is that big, beautiful redhead?’

  Immediately Cécile Goudreau came to her rescue. ‘Put that nasty stuff down for a moment, you can pick it up later,’ she said, taking her glass from her and putting it cautiously down on the table next to the divan. ‘Come with me, I’ll introduce you to your hostess, and when you’ve got rid of your things you can come back here to our group. Don’t pay any attention to anybody else, we’re the only intelligent ones you’ll meet in this gathering.’

  Betka gratefully took Cécile by the arm and let herself be led. Several people were already beginning to leave, and Solange standing near the hall, escorted by d’Angerville, exchanged with them the usual amenities, while in each interval, pretending to carry on a conversation with d’Angerville, they simply passed the guests through the sorter, saying. ‘This one, yes – that one, no….’ When Betka had withdrawn, Solange said to d’Angerville, ‘Beautiful teeth!’

  ‘Yes, but they won’t do her much good.’

  ‘Weak?’ asked Solange.

  ‘A premature death, a violent death surely,’ concluded d’Angerville in the swift and convinced manner he had of expressing his premonitions of the destinies of most of the beings he encountered.

  Betka came back to Cécile Goudreau and drank her Bacardi in two swallows. Never had she felt so intimidated; never in a social group had she heard such cruel, acid and cynical talk. They were in the midst of debating the following question. ‘What do women prefer, men “to go out with” or men “to go home with”?’ One woman said, ‘Why to go out with, of course!’ Another broke in, amid acclamations from the pederasts, ‘I like a man to go out with and a woman to go home with.’ Still another one said, ‘With me it’s just the opposite, I like a woman to go out with and two men to go home with.’

  ‘Why not all six, like the Greek courtesans?’

  ‘Ah, that’s the temperamental kind,’ sighed Cécile Goudreau, ‘Isadora’s kind. But you know, chérie, we in Auvergne in the country achieve the same result with two hardboiled eggs and a guitar string!’

  Betka, fearing she would be asked the same question, which would have paralysed her with shame, broke away from the group and made for a solitary corner near a great balcony that overlooked the garden. But feeling even more lost here, she immediately decided to go and introduce herself to Barbara to ask her news of Veronica.

  ‘My daughter has gone off to Fontainebleau for the weekend, but she left me something for you. Oh, there is my bag!’ she exclaimed, taking it from the hands of the servant who was just bringing it to her. ‘Here is the picture of the princess!’ Barbara announced, signalling to Solange, who came over, accompanied by d’Angerville, and Barbara went and sat down in the midst of Cécile Goudreau’s group, where they made room for her, avid with curiosity.

  Barbara began to rummage in the bottom of her bag with both hands, making all her bracelets tinkle, displaying the inattentive eagerness of a little lap-dog that has just buried its toy, through no other need than that of the play of its instinct.

  ‘I hide everything in my bag, and then I can never find anything! Too many secrets… too many scandals rolled up in newspaper clippings… too many vitamins. There! This is from Veronica for you,’ said Barbara to Betka, handing her with a postman’s bureaucratic gesture the little folded envelope held by a celery-green rubber band. Betka blushingly took the envelope. ‘At last!’ Barbara exclaimed triumphantly, ‘this is for Solange!’ From among the jumble of objects in her bag she had managed to extract a slender postcard, turned very yellow, which from having remained folded in two for a long time had an irresistible tendency to close again on its worn hinges. With her outstretched arm Barbara made this fragile souvenir flutter coyly before all eyes, and at each jerk of her department-store saleswoman’s superficial exaltation it seemed as if it must inevitably break in two.

  ‘Isn’t it amusing? Isn’t it darling? Isn’t it a unique, sensational document?’

  It was simply the printed photograph of a beautiful ‘talking head’ – that of Princess Agmatoff, at the time when she had to find refuge, on the morrow of the Russian revolution, among the vermin-infested stalls of the Prater amusement park in Vienna. At the sight of this picture the pederasts burst into loud exclamations and sobbing laughs that modulated all the shades of hypocrisy included between sarcasm and pathos. The cynical women uttered contradictory yelps. Cécile Goudreau was silent, and the Viscount of Angerville darkened disapprovingly. Then Solange de Cléda kissed Barbara in the neck, pressing the postcard to her bosom, and holding it thus as if to protect it from further curiosity, pleaded.

  ‘May I really keep it?’

  Betka was so overcome by the emotion of finding herself in possession of a message coming from Veronica that she choked for a moment and had to lean on Cécile Goudreau’s arm. The latter made her sit down beside her on the large couch and kept an eye on her.

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ said Betka to Cécile, getting up, her legs weak from emotion and her heart pounding. She went back to the window which was still deserted, bathed now in a soft bluish light, which was nevertheless sufficient to reveal in all its crudity the frightful disappointment that the contents of this envelope contained for Betka. Before opening it Betka’s fingers had several times snapped the celery-green elastic. Overcome with hesitancy she seemed thus to wish to put off the moment of knowing everything. Already fear had begun to mingle with her hope, and poisoned it. But no suspicion could have equalled the cruelty, the bitter and wounding reality that awaited her, for within the envelope there was neither a message nor the money promised with such insistence over her own protests. Instead of the gift she had not asked for, or the friendly word she had tried to deserve, there was only the blue receipt of the telegram to Poland which Veronica had sent for her, carefully folded in four, and in the centre of which was conspicuously and carelessly scribbled in red pencil, probably in Veronica’s own mocking and pitiless handwriting, the defaming mark of the trivial figure of her debt – forty-eight francs and fifty centimes! At this moment, in the new light of her disenchantment, Betka saw the unfolding of all the reverses and mishaps of her last days, which she had managed to banish, forgetting everything, and wanting to live in the sole illusion and the single hope of seeing her friend again. Now she felt assailed by the remorse of all those meetings neglected, missed and abandoned without excuses, her lost opportunities either of being hired as a mannequin or on the radio or on the newspaper; then that refusal of her parents to help her, the almost absolute certainty that her sister had married her fiancé….

  But none of these reverses, even the dreadful stigma of her own mother’s insult, could wound her more poignantly than Veronica’s contempt, and she seemed to glimpse, in the inhuman hardness of her act, something strange and monstrous that she could not understand by any rational process. Why had Veronica feasted her so sumptuously at the Tour d’Argent? Why had she expended so much charm, lavishing upon her for several hours all the resources of her seductive fancy? Was it only to fill the emptiness of an evening of boredom? Or to satisfy the caprice of her exhibitionistic desire, if not merely for the amusement of a few hours of feeling herself looked at and of dazzling, with the flash of her diamond personality, a being like herself, so feeble, without any other resources than her hunger for affection, her readiness and eagerness to give her heart?

  Betka felt Veronica’s gaze harden in the depths of her own until it hurt, wrenching tears from her. It was as though her friend’s impassive eyes, so gentle a while ago, were even more materially present and enigmatic as they grew inflexible. And now, was she going to love Veronica less because of all this? Assuredly not! On the contrary she loved her all the more as Veronica’s reality became chimerical and her own reasons for despair augmented; her passion grew apace with her misfortune. She had never been able to hate her cruel mother; how she could worship Veronica, if the latter would deign to accept her martyrdom! But would Betka ever see her again? Just now, looking out into this same garden in the anguished uncertainty of expectation – fool that she was – she had felt the spring rites of their imminent reunion beating in each of the flowers of the chestnut trees; now at the approach of night these same flowers had become snowflakes in the winter of her disillusion, and a cold hand, clutched like a bird’s claw, had alighted on her still burning flesh.

  Cécile Goudreau, whom Betka had felt breathing beside her for a moment, seized her by the arm. ‘You’re upset, eh? Come on, let’s leave! It’s deadly here, everybody is busy. We’ll just slip away…. Tonight Cécile Goudreau is taking you out, and not a word – we’ll go home together!… And how!’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Betka asked Cécile after they had walked in silence halfway down the Rue de Babylone.

  ‘Not to a restaurant, in any case, after all that swill we’ve been putting away!’ Then, after a long pause, ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll seduce you?’

  ‘Pleasant things never happen,’ answered Betka, laughing.

  ‘They do happen, just the same, but by halves!’ sighed Cécile.

  ‘Do we walk? It’ll do us good to go up the Champs Elysées. It’s soothing sometimes. What about your anguish?’

  ‘What anguish?’

  ‘Come, chérie, don’t put on any chichi with me. I’m anguished, too, and anyway, why are we walking together? Because we’re anguished!… It’s the malady of our time. Why are we preparing for war? Because we’re bored and we’re anguished. Boredom and anguish combined have become a terrible power. It is they that rule our world! Taxi!’ shouted Cécile Goudreau. The car stopped short, and drew up to them with the faithful obedience still commanded by those who by the ‘irrevocable’ tone of their voice knew how to convey the inflexible authority of the master.

  As soon as they were in the taxi Cécile, slumping in the seat, exclaimed. ‘It’s good for the legs to say to yourself from time to time, “we’ll walk up the Champs Elysées,” provided you immediately find a taxi. I’m tired, chérie. I’m very, very fond of Solange; besides which she’s eating her heart out over that Grandsailles of hers. But I can’t stand Barbara’s kind. I’m supposed to be a cynic – well, Barbara is beyond me!’

  ‘She’s so kind to everyone,’ Betka feebly protested.

  ‘I’ll grant you that, chérie. Unconsciousness is what it really is, but it amounts to the same thing. Imagine daring to show the picture of the “talking head” of poor Agmatoff? Barely two years after she was guillotined, so to speak, by the windshield of her car. And you think the way she handed you Veronica’s little envelope was tactful? You know Veronica well?’

  ‘Very slightly,’ Betka answered, blushing.

  ‘There’s a girl who’s tempered in steel! Her mother, at least, is kind. She paid Princess Agmatoff’s rent for five years. An immense apartment on the Rue de Rivoli… the dressmakers’ bills… and everything. It’s true that she can afford it.’

  ‘She’s been perfect to me,’ said Betka, bluffing about her almost non-existent relations with Barbara.

  Then, after a long silence, and as if continuing her reflections, Cécile concluded, ‘Why, yes. I’ll grant you Barbara is a real angel. Which doesn’t prevent her always putting her wings in it.’