Renée could not draw anything more precise from her. Moreover, her worries were growing. Her noisy life, her mad rambles, met with numerous obstacles which she had to overcome, and against which she at times bruised herself. It was thus that Louise de Mareuil rose up one day between herself and Maxime. Renée was not jealous of the "hunchback," as she disdainfully called her; she knew her to be condemned by the doctors, and could not believe that Maxime would ever marry such an ugly chit, even at the price of a dowry of a million. In her fall she had retained a middle-class naivete respecting the people around her; although she despised herself, she readily believed that they were superior and very estimable. But whilst rejecting the possibility of a marriage which would have seemed to her a piece of sinister debauchery and a theft, she suffered from the young folks' familiarities and friendliness. When she spoke of Louise to Maxime, he laughed with satisfaction, he repeated the child's sayings to her, and said: "The urchin calls me her little man, you know." And he displayed such freedom of mind that she did not dare to tell him that this urchin was seventeen, and that their playfulness with their hands, and their eagerness when they met in drawing-rooms to find out some shady corner to poke fun at everybody, grieved her and spoilt her most pleasant evenings. An incident occurred which imparted a strange character to the situation. Renée often felt the need of acting boastingly, and she had whims of brutal boldness. She dragged Maxime behind a curtain, behind a door, and kissed him at the risk of being seen. One Thursday evening, when the buttercup drawing-room was full of people, she was seized with the fine idea of calling the young fellow who was talking with Louise, she advanced from the depths of the conservatory where she was to meet him, and abruptly kissed him on the mouth between two clumps of shrubbery, thinking that she was sufficiently concealed. But Louise had followed Maxime, and when the lovers raised their heads, they saw her a few paces off, looking at them with a strange smile, without the least blush or astonishment, but with the quiet friendly air of a companion in vice, who is learned enough to understand and appreciate such a kiss. Maxime felt really frightened that day, and it was Renée who showed herself indifferent and almost joyful. It was all over. It was now impossible for the hunchback to take her lover from her. She thought: "I ought to have done it on purpose. She now knows that her 'little man' belongs to me." Maxime felt reassured when he again found Louise as gay and as funny as before. He considered her to be "very acute and a very good-natured girl." And that was all.