‘Messieurs, Mesdames, faites vos jeux,’ said Dick d’Angerville in a polite, insistent voice. ‘Green wins!’ exclaimed Béatrice de Brantès, who had placed a small turtle of emeralds on a darker gardenia leaf; the effect was so homogeneous that it looked as if the two had been made for each other. Thereupon they began to vie with one another in making the most unexpected and ingenious juxtapositions spring from the chaos. There was a lively flutter of hands avidly trying out combinations, their frenzy and emulation growing so violent that presently it looked like a mock-battle, with each one attempting to seize the same flower, the same jewel, the same leaf, the same idea. But all at once the game ended, as abruptly as it had begun, everyone having grown bored with it. By way of conclusion Solange placed between her breasts a yellow rose in which she had pinned a big Fabergé beetle of rubies and diamonds a little off centre. The unexpected effect of this combination was that the rose immediately looked artificial, while the beetle appeared so living and real in spite of the stones that Solange was again acclaimed.

  But the centre of gravity of the salon had shifted elsewhere. Somewhat shamefacedly they abandoned this childish play (which nevertheless on the morrow was to become incorporated in the most mannered chichis of Parisian fashion) and the interest now reverted to the incidents of the Place de la Concorde and the ball.

  ‘The list,’ exclaimed Bérard, the painter, ‘let’s have the list!’ and he waved a sheet of white paper which he had gone to fetch from Grandsailles’ desk. Solange, seating herself humbly at the Count’s feet, said candidly, ‘What an exciting moment it is – to begin the first list of the Grandsailles ball!’ By this ingratiating remark she hoped to gain his forgiveness for her triumph of a while ago.

  ‘But my dear,’ he said, stroking her hair paternally, ‘you know perfectly well that it isn’t the guests who count on such occasions.’ And he added, with the air of someone who repeats a thing that has been said again and again a thousand times, ‘One gives balls for those one doesn’t invite.’

  ‘What fun it’s going to be to plan a ball in that spirit!’ Solange exclaimed with annoyance.

  ‘Of course it won’t be fun,’ Grandsailles replied acidly, and then with indulgence, ‘You know, darling, at our age we don’t go to balls for fun any more!’

  Oh yes, she knew – Grandsailles never did anything for fun!

  Solange spent a sleepless night, did not go down to eat, and Prince brought her breakfast in bed, announcing at the same time that tea would be served the guests in the Count’s room before they left. Dick d’Angerville was to bring her back to Paris in his car in the late afternoon.

  Madame de Cléda, who was a prey to a kind of childish fear which made her believe that her rather frequent insomnias were undermining her health to the point of endangering her life, forced herself by an almost superhuman exertion of will to swallow a little food, after which she let herself sink into an anguished semi-slumber, the slightest sound inducing in her spasmodic shiverings which, according to the changing course of her reveries, she was often able to transform into voluptuous sensations.

  Toward four o’clock Solange began to get herself ready for tea. She felt weak, with a heaviness about her chest. A vague desire to vomit obliged her to dress slowly and now and again remain motionless to listen to the beating of her heart. The lack of sleep tugged all around the orbits of her irritated eyes: she felt discouraged, afraid of the moment when she would have to appear in this new disadvantageous light before Grandsailles, knowing moreover that it would be difficult henceforth to equal the image of herself she had succeeded in creating on the previous evening, which was the result of three weeks of studied preparation, of special, daily, minute, uninterrupted, exclusive and desperately heroic care. At last, facing the dreaded moment, she approached the mirror, looked at herself and was delighted with her appearance. Never, she thought, had she looked so seductive. The look of weariness in her eyes had only accentuated the consuming and burning expression of her gaze. Her mouth was so white and its outer edge was set off so faintly from the olive pallor of her face that her smile appeared only as the single warmly shadowed and sinuous line that marked the joining of her almost translucent lips, looking now like those of a spectral and immaterial alabaster sculpture, now like the carnal and equivocal ones drawn with a single mysterious line by Leonardo’s ambiguous charcoal pencil.

  Madame de Cléda bowed her melancholy head till her brow touched the mirror. Smiling at herself at such close range that her breath obliterated her own image it was then as if, during the interval when she remained thus motionless, the immateriality of her reflection was transferred to her body to bring her back to life, awaking all her movements with a new burst of anxious and determined energy.

  If it was impossible for her to resemble the woman she had been the previous evening, she could perhaps do just the opposite and speculate on the infinite treasures of tenderness of her lividity, draw the maximum effect from her pallor.

  Solange did her hair with maniacal care and perfection, but she put on no make-up, and immediately decided on a costume that would be at once tantalizing and severe, that would sharply set off the spiritual tension of her face. Over her bare torso she slipped a black silk blouse, very heavy and shiny, opening down the front to the middle of her stomach.

  Solange’s breasts were small, almost like an adolescent’s, and so hard that the vertical folds of the silk slid over them with the lively movement of eels caught between two polished stones in a salt marsh from which the water devoured by the sun has evaporated. Each of her movements, characteristically abrupt and unpredictable, had a tendency to expose the compact and dazzling roundnesses of her bosom, producing an effect of innocent impudicity befitting the Spartan pride of an ancient Amazon.

  To this somewhat informal and scanty upper attire Solange added the sparkle of several strings of uncut emeralds and rubies whose smooth, cold and mobile hardnesses gave a slightly more dressed appearance to the turgescent and feverish hardness of her flesh. Then she squeezed her waist violently, till it hurt, into a wide, brand-new gum-coloured belt of dull leather, and this barbarous compression gave a cynical emphasis to the two very prominent bones of her pelvis which, pointing toward heaven, fine as two knife-blades, seemed as though they might cut right through the wool of her skirt that fitted smoothly over her thighs.

  There was a knock at the door. ‘Are you ready?’ Dick d’Angerville asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Solange, and asked him to come in. She stood in the middle of the room, her arms folded across her chest as though she felt cold. D’Angerville took hold of her arms, opened them and held them outspread.

  ‘It looks ravishing, and above all, it’s so intelligent.’

  ‘What is?’ said Solange, pretending not to understand.

  ‘Everything,’ he said, ‘your dress, the deliberate absence of make-up, the whole effect makes one think insistently of….’

  ‘Of what?’ Solange asked eagerly.

  ‘Of love,’ said d’Angerville.

  ‘Idiot!’ said Solange indulgently. ‘You were going to say something much better.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ d’Angerville responded with passion. ‘I was going to say that you make one think of a bed – of a terribly luxurious and half-unmade bed.’ Then he added, changing his tone, ‘Your eyes are red.’

  ‘Run along now,’ said Solange with hurried insistence. ‘I’ll meet you right away in the Count’s room, it’ll just take me a moment,’ and she offered him the palms of both hands to kiss.

  She shut the door and ran into the bathroom, made the water run very hot, soaked a folded wash-rag with it and pressed it for several minutes against her eyelids. Her eyes were red – well, they were going to be even redder!

  Red eyes, too, could be seductive, for ‘he who beguiles his sorrows enchants them’.

  Solange de Cléda made her entrance into the Count’s room brusquely, as he was sitting talking with Dick d’Angerville and Maître Girardin around the table that had been set out for tea in the centre of the room. They immediately ceased their conversation and Grandsailles, who always required a little time to get to his feet, had not yet risen from his seat when Solange was already beside him, quickly offering him her cheek to kiss and seating herself at the same time on the edge of his armchair. Grandsailles then sat back to leave her room, and while adjusting himself to his new position familiarly passed his hand behind the back of Solange, who felt the Count’s hand descend the whole length of her spine and attach itself to the leather belt, linger to appraise the slenderness of her waist, then pause motionless for a moment on the very prominent pelvic bone, which he seized with the hollow of his hand, with a movement as natural as if it had been an object. Now the Count’s fingers were softly caressing it and, encountering a seam of the skirt passing just over the middle of this ridge, he seized it with the tips of his nails, and using it as a rail to guide the movements of his hand suspended over the hip, followed it down its length, barely grazing it.

  In spite of the feigned assurance verging on indifference of all his movements, Solange immediately guessed by imponderable shades of trembling awkwardness that Grandsailles’ hand was excited. She had thus successfully achieved her first effect: intimidation. And she was determined to keep this advantage, knowing that it was one of the surest ways in which she could wield her influence over the proud Count, for Grandsailles was undoubtedly immediately overwhelmed by Solange’s disconcerting appearance, though he had no time to analyse exactly wherein the change in her looks consisted.

  Solange was too close to him to allow him to examine her at leisure, which only added to Grandsailles’ somewhat confused feelings. He had the impression of finding himself suddenly holding in his arms the body of a new being who, to the seductions of a very relative, unsatisfied intimacy constantly tantalized by the play of studied reticences, now had unexpectedly added those of another, totally unknown and desirable being, glimpsed for just a second as in a flash of lightning.

  Solange, guided by the feminine instinct of her passion, had indeed an almost miraculous gift of metamorphosis. For who could have believed, not only that she was the same woman as the one she had been the evening before, but that this same Madame de Cléda who had burst into the Count’s room with such haughty, wilful and intrepid ease of manner was the same Solange who a little while before had crouched in the depth of the solitude of her room, full of anguish, assailed by childish fears and annihilated by the dizzying agonies of doubt.

  ‘You seem to enjoy testing the solidity of my skeleton, my dear Hervé,’ said Madame de Cléda, stopping his hand. ‘But of all my bones I prefer those of my knees.’ And as she spoke she lifted Grandsailles’ hand over and let him touch her knees, that were fresh, smooth and blue-tinged like riverstones shadowed by the pallor of twilight.

  Then, addressing Dick d’Angerville with a somewhat theatrical impatience, she said, ‘I have to be in Paris not later than six o’clock tomorrow. You promised me, so we mustn’t leave too late. I have a terribly important dinner.’

  ‘A boring one?’ Grandsailles asked.

  ‘No, a charming one!’ Solange replied, cutting him short with a laconic inflection that conveyed her firm intention to give no further details on this subject.

  A silence fell, then Madame de Cléda, changing her tone and helping herself to tea, continued, ‘And what is the bad news that Maître Girardin brings today? Is Rochefort still asking one and a half million for the repurchase of the Moulin des Sources?’

  ‘Far worse than that, my dear Madame!’ answered the notary, after having assured himself by a glance that Grandsailles would approve bringing up this subject of discussion.

  ‘Just think,’ Girardin went on, ‘this feeble creature, Rochefort, yielding to the pressure of an indescribable intrigue on the part of our political enemies, has just signed a will whose terms are intended solely to prevent the lands attached to the Moulin des Sources from ever again becoming incorporated in the former Grandsailles domains.’

  ‘It is really incredible,’ Dick d’Angerville added, barely controlling his indignation. ‘And do you know what the political reason for all this is? Simply that the Count of Grandsailles, because of his eminently anti-national spirit, is unworthy of ever buying back his former domains!’

  ‘Is there anyone in the world who is more authentically French than the Count!’ asked Solange, nervously shrugging her shoulders, pretending not to understand what was at issue.

  ‘Why yes, of course,’ Girardin replied.

  ‘Who?’ asked Solange.

  ‘The Russians,’ said the notary, looking crestfallen. D’Angerville greeted this with a faint smile.

  ‘You must understand, my dear Madame de Cléda,’ Girardin began again, ‘that the Count has dedicated his life to the realization of a single plan: to preserve the plain of Creux de Libreux, to prevent at all costs the demoniacal nightmare that would follow in the wake of the industrialization of this eminently agricultural countryside, favoured since antiquity by the fertility of the gods. But our parties of the left, inspired by Moscow, have different ideas. They prefer the well-paid ignominy of the bourgeoisification of a miner to the noble and well-to-do austerity of our peasants. As a matter of fact these progressives, who clamour for mines, don’t even have the pretext of war in their favour, for they are the very ones who systematically vote against all armament plans!’

  A new silence fell, and this time no one thought of interrupting him, plunged as they all were in the problems raised by the notary’s words.

  Grandsailles was in fact haunted by the fear that some day his Virgilian plains of Libreux might be invaded by the fatal advance-guards of industrial progress. This could never have happened at the time when he owned almost all the lands, but at present he was powerless to prevent anyone’s coming to exploit the mineral wealth of the territory that no longer belonged to him.

  ‘We shall no doubt have to resign ourselves in the end,’ sighed Grandsailles, ‘and admit our historic rôle as enemies of progress, for it is certainly going against the progress of our epoch to try at all costs to prevent this countryside which inspired Poussin’s finest landscapes from being transformed before our very eyes into the ignominious and degrading soot-covered ugliness of a panorama made vile by the mechanical junk of industrial buildings. The day this happens I shall consider my country dishonoured,’ Grandsailles raged, struggling to his feet, no longer able to stay put.

  Dick d’Angerville took him by the arm and led him toward the desk, reassuring him in a semi-confidential tone.

  ‘My dear Count,’ he said, ‘take my word for it, I shall be able to use my influence with the British – nothing will be done without British capital, and besides, the proverbial apathy and lack of initiative of the government will be extremely valuable to us in this matter.’

  Maître Girardin, who in his pessimism considered the industrialization of the plain as an inevitable misfortune, which at best could be delayed, brought his chair close to Madame de Cléda who had remained alone, leaning back in her armchair, sipping her tea in little gulps.

  ‘My dear Madame,’ said the notary, ‘we’re powerless, and I keenly regret that this unpleasant subject should have been brought up solely through my fault and that it should so unhappily have disturbed the charming intimacy of this gathering. We notaries should really keep away during these pleasurable moments and appear only at the historic hour, at ten o’clock in the morning, to announce either ruin or fortune.’

  And as Madame de Cléda did not respond, he felt it his duty to justify the Count’s neglect. The latter was deeply involved in a conversation with d’Angerville, both speaking in low and excited voices.

  ‘I have known,’ the notary tried to explain, ‘the Count’s attachment for the plain of Libreux since his childhood. But believe me, Madame, I would never have suspected that the news I was obliged to bring him today – Rochefort’s categorical refusal – could have affected him so deeply. Few people can flatter themselves that they know the Count’s heart so well as your humble servant. There are people who imagine him to be so ambitious as to wish ardently for the outbreak of war, which might return him to political power, but really the Count’s only ambition is to preserve the heritage of Libreux and be able some day to replant the three hundred square metres of cork-oaks that Rochefort cut down at the time of the division.’

  ‘Then according to you,’ said Solange, in a tone of slightly sarcastic reproach, ‘a few hundred cork-oaks would suffice to gratify the ambition of the most handsome and brilliant of the Grandsailles?’

  Maître Girardin bowed his head with respectful dignity and said laconically, ‘Yes, Madame, a single one would suffice!’ Taking the sugar-bowl from the table he showed her the escutcheon prominently engraved on its convexity. ‘You see, three roots suffice!’ and he pointed to the three roots of the solitary cork-oak, like those of a molar – the sole symbol, against a field of fleurs-de-lis.

  ‘I can’t help it, I still think it’s a little arid,’ Solange observed. ‘I like escutcheons sprinkled with claws, rivers, flames, stars and even dragons, and observe, dear Maître Girardin, what self-restraint and good taste I am showing in not asking for angels and hearts to boot!’

  Maître Girardin, touched by Madame de Cléda’s affectionate tone, eagerly pulled out his glasses which he lent her, so that by holding them against the sugar-bowl they would serve as magnifying glasses. Now Solange was able to read distinctly the heraldic device inscribed on a band disposed across the upper branches of the cork-oak:

  je suis la dame

  Solange at once looked more attentively at the image as a whole, instantly grasping its anthropomorphic significance. She had discovered a small woman’s face emerging from the centre of the foliage, and a bare torso belonging to the face, forming the whole part of the trunk which had been stripped of its bark, while the dress of cork modestly covered the rest of the body from the navel down, with its three roots planted in the ground.