The Kill

Usually the lovers lay down beneath the tanghin from Madagascar, the poisonous shrub whose leaf Renée had bitten into. All around them, white statues laughed at the sight of such quantities of greenery engaged in the act of love. The moon, as it revolved, moved groups of plants about and animated the drama with its changing light. And they were a thousand leagues from Paris, far from the facile life of the Bois and official receptions, somewhere in the jungles of India or in some monstrous temple, where the black marble sphinx was god. They were aware of tumbling helplessly into crime, forbidden love, and bestial caresses. All the lushness that surrounded them, all the hidden tangle of the pool, all the naked shamelessness of the greenery plunged them into a Dantean inferno of passion. Then it was, in the depths of this glass cage seething with summer heat astray in that clear December chill, that they tasted incest, the criminal fruit of that overheated patch of earth, that terrifying bed that filled their hearts with unspoken fear.

Renée’s body seemed whiter as she crouched in the center of that black bearskin like a huge cat, its back arched and paws tense beneath supple, sinewy hocks. She was completely swollen with sensuality, and the clean outline of her shoulders and waist stood out with feline sharpness against the ink spot the black fur left on the yellow sand of the path. She eyed Maxime, her prey, lying on his back beneath her in a posture of utter surrender, completely in her possession. At intervals she would lean forward suddenly and kiss him with aching lips—lips that parted at those moments with the eager, sanguinary splendor of the Chinese hibiscus that covered the side of the house. In those instants she was nothing but a fiery child of the conservatory. Her kisses bloomed and faded like the red flowers of the great mallow, which last only a few hours and are continually reborn—the bruised, insatiable lips of a gigantic Messalina.

5

The kiss he had planted on his wife’s neck preoccupied Saccard. He had long since ceased to avail himself of his marital prerogatives. The rupture had come about naturally, as neither he nor his wife cared to maintain a relationship that both found inconvenient. He never thought of entering Renée’s bedroom unless there was a juicy piece of business to justify his conjugal attentions.

The Charo

The two confederates therefore exchanged a hearty handshake. Larso

Saccard had not even wanted Larso

“No, no, my friend,” he had said with his Provençal accent, which he exaggerated whenever he wanted to add zest to a joke, “let’s not mix up your accounts with mine. . . . You’re the only man in Paris to whom I’ve sworn never to owe anything.”

Larso

Saccard was not a man to put up with such insinuations patiently, especially when he was well acquainted with the cold and meticulous order that Larso

Larso

In any case he was in no hurry, for he was husbanding his resources. He allowed his plan to ripen throughout the winter, distracted as he was by a hundred other schemes, each murkier than the last. For him it was a dreadful winter, which saw him buffeted by one blow after another as each day he moved heaven and earth to avoid bankruptcy. Rather than curtail his lavish lifestyle, he threw gala after gala. Yet while he coped with every difficulty, he inevitably neglected Renée, whom he was holding in reserve for his triumphal stroke, when the time was ripe for a move in Charo