ed flowers, of
rice-powder--all these details attracted Risler's notice as he entered.

In the disordered salon the piano was open, the bacchanal from 'Orphee
aux Enfers' on the music-shelf, and the gaudy hangings surrounding that
scene of desolation, the chairs overturned, as if in fear, reminded one
of the saloon of a wrecked packet-boat, of one of those ghostly nights
of watching when one is suddenly informed, in the midst of a fete at
sea, that the ship has sprung a leak, that she is taking in water in
every part.

The men began to remove the furniture. Risler watched them at work
with an indifferent air, as if he were in a stranger's house. That
magnificence which had once made him so happy and proud inspired in him
now an insurmountable disgust. But, when he entered his wife's bedroom,
he was conscious of a vague emotion.

It was a large room, hung with blue satin under white lace. A veritable
cocotte's nest. There were torn and rumpled tulle ruffles lying about,
bows, and artificial flowers. The wax candles around the mirror had
burned down to the end and cracked the candlesticks; and the bed, with
its lace flounces and valances, its great curtains raised and drawn
back, untouched in the general confusion, seemed like the bed of a
corpse, a state bed on which no one would ever sleep again.

Risler's first feeling upon entering the room was one of mad
indignation, a longing to fall upon the things before him, to tear and
rend and shatter everything. Nothing, you see, resembles a woman so much
as her bedroom. Even when she is absent, her image still smiles in
the mirrors that have reflected it. A little something of her, of her
favorite perfume, remains in everything she has touched. Her attitudes
are reproduced in the cushions of her couch, and one can follow her
goings and comings between the mirror and the toilette table in the
pattern of the carpet. The one thing above all others in that room that
recalled Sidonie was an 'etagere' covered with childish toys, petty,
trivial knickknacks, microscopic fans, dolls' tea-sets, gilded shoes,
little shepherds and shepherdesses facing one another, exchanging cold,
gleaming, porcelain glances. That 'etagere' was Sidonie's very soul,
and her thoughts, always commonplace, petty, vain, and empty, resembled
those gewgaws. Yes, in very truth, if Risler, while he held her in his
grasp last night, had in his frenzy broken that fragile little head, a
whole world of 'etagere'