NANA(娜娜)

NANA
by Emile Zola
CHAPTER I
At nine o'clock in the evening the body of the house at the Theatres
des Varietes was still all but empty. A few individuals, it is
true, were sitting quietly waiting in the balcony and stalls, but
these were lost, as it were, among the ranges of seats whose
coverings of cardinal velvet loomed in the subdued light of the
dimly burning luster. A shadow enveloped the great red splash of
the curtain, and not a sound came from the stage, the unlit
footlights, the scattered desks of the orchestra. It was only high
overhead in the third gallery, round the domed ceiling where nude
females and children flew in heavens which had turned green in the
gaslight, that calls and laughter were audible above a continuous
hubbub of voices, and heads in women's and workmen's caps were
ranged, row above row, under the wide-vaulted bays with their gilt-
surrounding adornments. Every few seconds an attendant would make
her appearance, bustling along with tickets in her hand and piloting
in front of her a gentleman and a lady, who took their seats, he in
his evening dress, she sitting slim and undulant beside him while
her eyes wandered slowly round the house.
Two young men appeared in the stalls; they kept standing and looked
about them.
"Didn't I say so, Hector?" cried the elder of the two, a tall fellow
with little black mustaches. "We're too early! You might quite
well have allowed me to finish my cigar."
An attendant was passing.
"Oh, Monsieur Fauchery," she said familiarly, "it won't begin for
half an hour yet!"
"Then why do they advertise for nine o'clock?" muttered Hector,
whose long thin face assumed an expression of vexation. "Only this
morning Clarisse, who's in the piece, swore that they'd begin at
nine o'clock punctually."
For a moment they remained silent and, looking upward, scanned the
shadowy boxes. But the green paper with which these were hung
rendered them more shadowy still. Down below, under the dress
circle, the lower boxes were buried in utter night. In those on the
second tier there was only one stout lady, who was stranded, as it
were, on the velvet-covered balustrade in front of her. On the
right hand and on the left, between lofty pilasters, the stage
boxes, bedraped with long-fringed scalloped hangings, remained
untenanted. The house with its white and gold, relieved by soft
green tones, lay only half disclosed to view, as though full of a
fine dust shed from the little jets of flame in the great glass
luster.
"Did you get your stage box for Lucy?" asked Hector.
"Yes," replied his companion, "but I had some trouble to get it.
Oh, there's no danger of Lucy coming too early!"
He stifled a slight yawn; then after a pause:
"You're in luck's way, you are, since you haven't been at a first
night before. The Blonde Venus will be the event of the year.
People have been talking about it for six months. Oh, such music,
my dear boy! Such a sly dog, Bordenave! He knows his business and
has kept this for the exhibition season." Hector was religiously
attentive. He asked a question.
"And Nana, the new star who's going to play Venus, d'you know her?"
"There you are; you're beginning again!" cried Fauchery, casting up
his arms. "Ever since this morning people have been dreeing me with
Nana. I've met more than twenty people, and it's Nana here and Nana
there! What do I know? Am I acquainted with all the light ladies
in Paris? Nana is an invention of Bordenave's! It must be a fine
one!"
He calmed himself, but the emptiness of the house, the dim light of
the luster, the churchlike sense of self-absorption which the place
inspired, full as it was of whispering voices and the sound of doors
banging--all these got on his nerves.
"No, by Jove," he said all of a sudden, "one's hair turns gray here.
I--I'm going out. Perhaps we shall find Bordenave downstairs.
He'll give us information about things."
Downstairs in the great marble-paved entrance hall, where the box
office was, the public were beginning to show themselves. Through
the three open gates might have been observed, passing in, the
ardent life of the boulevards, which were all astir and aflare under
the fine April night. The sound of carriage wheels kept stopping
suddenly; carriage doors were noisily shut again, and people began
entering in small groups, taking their stand before the ticket
bureau and climbing the double flight of stairs at the end of the
hall, up which the women loitered with swaying hips. Under the
crude gaslight, round the pale, naked walls of the entrance hall,
which with its scanty First Empire decorations suggested the
peristyle of a toy temple, there was a flaring display of lofty
yellow posters bearing the name of "Nana" in great black letters.
Gentlemen, who seemed to be glued to the entry, were reading them;
others, standing about, were engaged in talk, barring the doors of
the house in so doing, while hard by the box office a thickset man
with an extensive, close-shaven visage was giving rough answers to
such as pressed to engage seats.
"There's Bordenave," said Fauchery as he came down the stairs. But
the manager had already seen him.
"Ah, ah! You're a nice fellow!" he shouted at him from a distance.
"That's the way you give me a notice, is it? Why, I opened my
Figaro this morning--never a word!"
"Wait a bit," replied Fauchery. "I certainly must make the
acquaintance of your Nana before talking about her. Besides, I've
made no promises."
Then to put an end to the discussion, he introduced his cousin, M.
Hector de la Faloise, a young man who had come to finish his
education in Paris. The manager took the young man's measure at a
glance. But Hector returned his scrutiny with deep interest. This,
then, was that Bordenave, that showman of the sex who treated women
like a convict overseer, that clever fellow who was always at full
steam over some advertising dodge, that shouting, spitting, thigh-
slapping fellow, that cynic with the soul of a policeman! Hector
was under the impression that he ought to discover some amiable
observation for the occasion.
"Your theater--" he began in dulcet tones.
Bordenave interrupted him with a savage phrase, as becomes a man who
dotes on frank situations.
"Call it my brothel!"
At this Fauchery laughed approvingly, while La Faloise stopped with
his pretty speech strangled in his throat, feeling very much shocked
and striving to appear as though he enjoyed the phrase. The manager
had dashed off to shake hands with a dramatic critic whose column
had considerable influence. When he returned La Faloise was
recovering. He was afraid of being treated as a provincial if he
showed himself too much nonplused.
"I have been told," he began again, longing positively to find
something to say, "that Nana has a delicious voice."
"Nana?" cried the manager, shrugging his shoulders. "The voice of a
squirt!"
The young man made haste to add:
"Besides being a first-rate comedian!"
"She? Why she's a lump! She has no notion what to do with her
hands and feet."
La Faloise blushed a little. He had lost his bearings. He
stammered:
"I wouldn't have missed this first representation tonight for the
world. I was aware that your theater--"
"Call it my brothel," Bordenave again interpolated with the frigid
obstinacy of a man convinced.
Meanwhile Fauchery, with extreme calmness, was looking at the women
as they came in. He went to his cousin's rescue when he saw him all
at sea and doubtful whether to laugh or to be angry.
"Do be pleasant to Bordenave--call his theater what he wishes you
to, since it amuses him. And you, my dear fellow, don't keep us
waiting about for nothing. If your Nana neither sings nor acts
you'll find you've made a blunder, that's all. It's what I'm afraid
of, if the truth be told."
"A blunder! A blunder!" shouted the manager, and his face grew
purple. "Must a woman know how to act and sing? Oh, my chicken,
you're too STOOPID. Nana has other good points, by heaven!--
something which is as good as all the other things put together.
I've smelled it out; it's deuced pronounced with her, or I've got
the scent of an idiot. You'll see, you'll see! She's only got to
come on, and all the house will be gaping at her."
He had held up his big hands which were trembling under the
influence of his eager enthusiasm, and now, having relieved his
feelings, he lowered his voice and grumbled to himself:
"Yes, she'll go far! Oh yes, s'elp me, she'll go far! A skin--oh,
what a skin she's got!"
Then as Fauchery began questioning him he consented to enter into a
detailed explanation, couched in phraseology so crude that Hector de
la Faloise felt slightly disgusted. He had been thick with Nana,
and he was anxious to start her on the stage. Well, just about that
time he was in search of a Venus. He--he never let a woman encumber
him for any length of time; he preferred to let the public enjoy the
benefit of her forthwith. But there was a deuce of a row going on
in his shop, which had been turned topsy-turvy by that big damsel's
advent. Rose Mignon, his star, a comic actress of much subtlety and
an adorable singer, was daily threatening to leave him in the lurch,
for she was furious and guessed the presence of a rival. And as for
the bill, good God! What a noise there had been about it all! It
had ended by his deciding to print the names of the two actresses in
the same-sized type. But it wouldn't do to bother him. Whenever
any of his little women, as he called them--Simonne or Clarisse, for
instance--wouldn't go the way he wanted her to he just up with his
foot and caught her one in the rear. Otherwise life was impossible.
Oh yes, he sold 'em; HE knew what they fetched, the wenches!
"Tut!" he cried, breaking off short. "Mignon and Steiner. Always
together. You know, Steiner's getting sick of Rose; that's why the
husband dogs his steps now for fear of his slipping away."
On the pavement outside, the row of gas jets flaring on the cornice
of the theater cast a patch of brilliant light. Two small trees,
violently green, stood sharply out against it, and a column gleamed
in such vivid illumination that one could read the notices thereon
at a distance, as though in broad daylight, while the dense night of
the boulevard beyond was dotted with lights above the vague outline
of an ever-moving crowd. Many men did not enter the theater at once
but stayed outside to talk while finishing their cigars under the
rays of the line of gas jets, which shed a sallow pallor on their
faces and silhouetted their short black shadows on the asphalt.
Mignon, a very tall, very broad fellow, with the square-shaped head
of a strong man at a fair, was forcing a passage through the midst
of the groups and dragging on his arm the banker Steiner, an
exceedingly small man with a corporation already in evidence and a
round face framed in a setting of beard which was already growing
gray.
"Well," said Bordenave to the banker, "you met her yesterday in my
office."
"Ah! It was she, was it?" ejaculated Steiner. "I suspected as
much. Only I was coming out as she was going in, and I scarcely
caught a glimpse of her."
Mignon was listening with half-closed eyelids and nervously twisting
a great diamond ring round his finger. He had quite understood that
Nana was in question. Then as Bordenave was drawing a portrait of
his new star, which lit a flame in the eyes of the banker, he ended
by joining in the conversation.
"Oh, let her alone, my dear fellow; she's a low lot! The public
will show her the door in quick time. Steiner, my laddie, you know
that my wife is waiting for you in her box."
He wanted to take possession of him again. But Steiner would not
quit Bordenave. In front of them a stream of people was crowding
and crushing against the ticket office, and there was a din of
voices, in the midst of which the name of Nana sounded with all the
melodious vivacity of its two syllables. The men who stood planted
in front of the notices kept spelling it out loudly; others, in an
interrogative tone, uttered it as they passed; while the women, at
once restless and smiling, repeated it softly with an air of
surprise. Nobody knew Nana. Whence had Nana fallen? And stories
and jokes, whispered from ear to ear, went the round of the crowd.
The name was a caress in itself; it was a pet name, the very
familiarity of which suited every lip. Merely through enunciating
it thus, the throng worked itself into a state of gaiety and became
highly good natured. A fever of curiosity urged it forward, that
kind of Parisian curiosity which is as violent as an access of
positive unreason. Everybody wanted to see Nana. A lady had the
flounce of her dress torn off; a man lost his hat.
"Oh, you're asking me too many questions about it!" cried Bordenave,
whom a score of men were besieging with their queries. "You're
going to see her, and I'm off; they want me."
He disappeared, enchanted at having fired his public. Mignon
shrugged his shoulders, reminding Steiner that Rose was awaiting him
in order to show him the costume she was about to wear in the first
act.
"By Jove! There's Lucy out there, getting down from her carriage,"
said La Faloise to Fauchery.
It was, in fact, Lucy Stewart, a plain little woman, some forty
years old, with a disproportionately long neck, a thin, drawn face,
a heavy mouth, but withal of such brightness, such graciousness of
manner, that she was really very charming. She was bringing with
her Caroline Hequet and her mother--Caroline a woman of a cold type
of beauty, the mother a person of a most worthy demeanor, who looked
as if she were stuffed with straw.
"You're coming with us? I've kept a place for you," she said to
Fauchery. "Oh, decidedly not! To see nothing!" he made answer.
"I've a stall; I prefer being in the stalls."
Lucy grew nettled. Did he not dare show himself in her company?
Then, suddenly restraining herself and skipping to another topic:
"Why haven't you told me that you knew Nana?"
"Nana! I've never set eyes on her."
"Honor bright? I've been told that you've been to bed with her."
But Mignon, coming in front of them, his finger to his lips, made
them a sign to be silent. And when Lucy questioned him he pointed
out a young man who was passing and murmured:
"Nana's fancy man."
Everybody looked at him. He was a pretty fellow. Fauchery
recognized him; it was Daguenet, a young man who had run through
three hundred thousand francs in the pursuit of women and who now
was dabbling in stocks, in order from time to time to treat them to
bouquets and dinners. Lucy made the discovery that he had fine
eyes.
"Ah, there's Blanche!" she cried. "It's she who told me that you
had been to bed with Nana."
Blanche de Sivry, a great fair girl, whose good-looking face showed
signs of growing fat, made her appearance in the company of a spare,
sedulously well-groomed and extremely distinguished man.
"The Count Xavier de Vandeuvres," Fauchery whispered in his
companion's ear.
The count and the journalist shook hands, while Blanche and Lucy
entered into a brisk, mutual explanation. One of them in blue, the
other in rose-pink, they stood blocking the way with their deeply
flounced skirts, and Nana's name kept repeating itself so shrilly in
their conversation that people began to listen to them. The Count
de Vandeuvres carried Blanche off. But by this time Nana's name was
echoing more loudly than ever round the four walls of the entrance
hall amid yearnings sharpened by delay. Why didn't the play begin?
The men pulled out their watches; late-comers sprang from their
conveyances before these had fairly drawn up; the groups left the
sidewalk, where the passers-by were crossing the now-vacant space of
gaslit pavement, craning their necks, as they did so, in order to
get a peep into the theater. A street boy came up whistling and
planted himself before a notice at the door, then cried out, "Woa,
Nana!" in the voice of a tipsy man and hied on his way with a
rolling gait and a shuffling of his old boots. A laugh had arisen
at this. Gentlemen of unimpeachable appearance repeated: "Nana,
woa, Nana!" People were crushing; a dispute arose at the ticket
office, and there was a growing clamor caused by the hum of voices
calling on Nana, demanding Nana in one of those accesses of silly
facetiousness and sheer animalism which pass over mobs.
But above all the din the bell that precedes the rise of the curtain
became audible. "They've rung; they've rung!" The rumor reached
the boulevard, and thereupon followed a stampede, everyone wanting
to pass in, while the servants of the theater increased their
forces. Mignon, with an anxious air, at last got hold of Steiner
again, the latter not having been to see Rose's costume. At the
very first tinkle of the bell La Faloise had cloven a way through
the crowd, pulling Fauchery with him, so as not to miss the opening
scene. But all this eagerness on the part of the public irritated
Lucy Stewart. What brutes were these people to be pushing women
like that! She stayed in the rear of them all with Caroline Hequet
and her mother. The entrance hall was now empty, while beyond it
was still heard the long-drawn rumble of the boulevard.
"As though they were always funny, those pieces of theirs!" Lucy
kept repeating as she climbed the stair.
In the house Fauchery and La Faloise, in front of their stalls, were
gazing about them anew. By this time the house was resplendent.
High jets of gas illumined the great glass chandelier with a
rustling of yellow and rosy flames, which rained down a stream of
brilliant light from dome to floor. The cardinal velvets of the
seats were shot with hues of lake, while all the gilding shonc
again, the soft green decorations chastening its effect beneath the
too-decided paintings of the ceiling. The footlights were turned up
and with a vivid flood of brilliance lit up the curtain, the heavy
purple drapery of which had all the richness befitting a palace in a
fairy tale and contrasted with the meanness of the proscenium, where
cracks showed the plaster under the gilding. The place was already
warm. At their music stands the orchestra were tuning their
instruments amid a delicate trilling of flutes, a stifled tooting of
horns, a singing of violin notes, which floated forth amid the
increasing uproar of voices. All the spectators were talking,
jostling, settling themselves in a general assault upon seats; and
the hustling rush in the side passages was now so violent that every
door into the house was laboriously admitting the inexhaustible
flood of people. There were signals, rustlings of fabrics, a
continual march past of skirts and head dresses, accentuated by the
black hue of a dress coat or a surtout. Notwithstanding this, the
rows of seats were little by little getting filled up, while here
and there a light toilet stood out from its surroundings, a head
with a delicate profile bent forward under its chignon, where
flashed the lightning of a jewel. In one of the boxes the tip of a
bare shoulder glimmered like snowy silk. Other ladies, sitting at
ease, languidly fanned themselves, following with their gaze the
pushing movements of the crowd, while young gentlemen, standing up
in the stalls, their waistcoats cut very low, gardenias in their
buttonholes, pointed their opera glasses with gloved finger tips.
It was now that the two cousins began searching for the faces of
those they knew. Mignon and Steiner were together in a lower box,
sitting side by side with their arms leaning for support on the
velvet balustrade. Blanche de Sivry seemed to be in sole possession
of a stage box on the level of the stalls. But La Faloise examined
Daguenet before anyone else, he being in occupation of a stall two
rows in front of his own. Close to him, a very young man, seventeen
years old at the outside, some truant from college, it may be, was
straining wide a pair of fine eyes such as a cherub might have
owned. Fauchery smiled when he looked at him.
"Who is that lady in the balcony?" La Faloise asked suddenly. "The
lady with a young girl in blue beside her."
He pointed out a large woman who was excessively tight-laced, a
woman who had been a blonde and had now become white and yellow of
tint, her broad face, reddened with paint, looking puffy under a
rain of little childish curls.
"It's Gaga," was Fauchery's simple reply, and as this name seemed to
astound his cousin, he added:
"You don't know Gaga? She was the delight of the early years of
Louis Philippe. Nowadays she drags her daughter about with her
wherever she goes."
La Faloise never once glanced at the young girl. The sight of Gaga
moved him; his eyes did not leave her again. He still found her
very good looking but he dared not say so.
Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra
attacked the overture. People still kept coming in; the stir and
noise were on the increase. Among that public, peculiar to first
nights and never subject to change, there were little subsections
composed of intimate friends, who smilingly forgathered again. Old
first-nighters, hat on head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and
kept exchanging salutations. All Paris was there, the Paris of
literature, of finance and of pleasure. There were many
journalists, several authors, a number of stock-exchange people and
more courtesans than honest women. It was a singularly mixed world,
composed, as it was, of all the talents and tarnished by all the
vices, a world where the same fatigue and the same fever played over
every face. Fauchery, whom his cousin was questioning, showed him
the boxes devoted to the newspapers and to the clubs and then named
the dramatic critics--a lean, dried-up individual with thin,
spiteful lips and, chief of all, a big fellow with a good-natured
expression, lolling on the shoulder of his neighbor, a young miss
over whom he brooded with tender and paternal eyes.
But he interrupted himself on seeing La Faloise in the act of bowing
to some persons who occupied the box opposite. He appeared
surprised.
"What?" he queried. "You know the Count Muffat de Beuville?"
"Oh, for a long time back," replied Hector. "The Muffats had a
property near us. I often go to their house. The count's with his
wife and his father-in-law, the Marquis de Chouard."
And with some vanity--for he was happy in his cousin's astonishment--
he entered into particulars. The marquis was a councilor of state;
the count had recently been appointed chamberlain to the empress.
Fauchery, who had caught up his opera glass, looked at the countess,
a plump brunette with a white skin and fine dark eyes.
"You shall present me to them between the acts," he ended by saying.
"I have already met the count, but I should like to go to them on
their Tuesdays."
Energetic cries of "Hush" came from the upper galleries. The
overture had begun, but people were still coming in. Late arrivals
were obliging whole rows of spectators to rise; the doors of boxes
were banging; loud voices were heard disputing in the passages. And
there was no cessation of the sound of many conversations, a sound
similar to the loud twittering of talkative sparrows at close of
day. All was in confusion; the house was a medley of heads and arms
which moved to and fro, their owners seating themselves or trying to
make themselves comfortable or, on the other hand, excitedly
endeavoring to remain standing so as to take a final look round.
The cry of "Sit down, sit down!" came fiercely from the obscure
depths of the pit. A shiver of expectation traversed the house: at
last people were going to make the acquaintance of this famous Nana
with whom Paris had been occupying itself for a whole week!
Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down
among occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech. And amid this
swooning murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra
struck up the small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm
bubbling with roguish laughter. The public were titillated; they
were already on the grin. But the gang of clappers in the foremost
rows of the pit applauded furiously. The curtain rose.
"By George!" exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away. "There's a
man with Lucy."
He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the
front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying. At the back of
this box were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline's mother
and the side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light
hair and an irreproachable getup.
"Do look!" La Faloise again insisted. "There's a man there."
Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he
turned round again directly.
"Oh, it's Labordette," he muttered in a careless voice, as though
that gentle man's presence ought to strike all the world as though
both natural and immaterial.
Behind the cousins people shouted "Silence!" They had to cease
talking. A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches
of heads, all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to
topmost gallery. The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in
Olympus, a pasteboard Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the
throne of Jupiter on the right of the stage. First of all Iris and
Ganymede, aided by a troupe of celestial attendants, sang a chorus
while they arranged the seats of the gods for the council. Once
again the prearranged applause of the clappers alone burst forth;
the public, a little out of their depth, sat waiting. Nevertheless,
La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one of Bordenave's little
women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with a great scarf of
the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her waist.
"You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on," he said to
Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him. "We tried
the trick this morning. It was all up under her arms and round the
small of her back."
But a slight rustling movement ran through the house; Rose Mignon
had just come on the stage as Diana. Now though she had neither the
face nor the figure for the part, being thin and dark and of the
adorable type of ugliness peculiar to a Parisian street child, she
nonetheless appeared charming and as though she were a satire on the
personage she represented. Her song at her entrance on the stage
was full of lines quaint enough to make you cry with laughter and of
complaints about Mars, who was getting ready to desert her for the
companionship of Venus. She sang it with a chaste reserve so full
of sprightly suggestiveness that the public warmed amain. The
husband and Steiner, sitting side by side, were laughing
complaisantly, and the whole house broke out in a roar when
Prulliere, that great favorite, appeared as a general, a masquerade
Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging along a sword, the
hilt of which reached to his shoulder. As for him, he had had
enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him, he
averred. Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to
be revenged. The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prulliere
delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat. He had
about him all the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman
whose love affairs prosper, and he rolled around the most swaggering
glances, which excited shrill feminine laughter in the boxes.
Then the public cooled again, for the ensuing scenes were found
tiresome. Old Bosc, an imbecile Jupiter with head crushed beneath
the weight of an immense crown, only just succeeded in raising a
smile among his audience when he had a domestic altercation with
Juno on the subject of the cook's accounts. The march past of the
gods, Neptune, Pluto, Minerva and the rest, was well-nigh spoiling
everything. People grew impatient; there was a restless, slowly
growing murmur; the audience ceased to take an interest in the
performance and looked round at the house. Lucy began laughing with
Labordette; the Count de Vandeuvres was craning his neck in
conversation behind Blanche's sturdy shoulders, while Fauchery, out
of the corners of his eyes, took stock of the Muffats, of whom the
count appeared very serious, as though he had not understood the
allusions, and the countess smiled vaguely, her eyes lost in
reverie. But on a sudden, in this uncomfortable state of things,
the applause of the clapping contingent rattled out with the
regularity of platoon firing. People turned toward the stage. Was
it Nana at last? This Nana made one wait with a vengeance.
It was a deputation of mortals whom Ganymede and Iris had
introduced, respectable middle-class persons, deceived husbands, all
of them, and they came before the master of the gods to proffer a
complaint against Venus, who was assuredly inflaming their good
ladies with an excess of ardor. The chorus, in quaint, dolorous
tones, broken by silences full of pantomimic admissions, caused
great amusement. A neat phrase went the round of the house: "The
cuckolds' chorus, the cuckolds' chorus," and it "caught on," for
there was an encore. The singers' heads were droll; their faces were
discovered to be in keeping with the phrase, especially that of a
fat man which was as round as the moon. Meanwhile Vulcan arrived in
a towering rage, demanding back his wife who had slipped away three
days ago. The chorus resumed their plaint, calling on Vulcan, the
god of the cuckolds. Vulcan's part was played by Fontan, a comic
actor of talent, at once vulgar and original, and he had a role of
the wildest whimsicality and was got up as a village blacksmith,
fiery red wig, bare arms tattooed with arrow-pierced hearts and all
the rest of it. A woman's voice cried in a very high key, "Oh,
isn't he ugly?" and all the ladies laughed and applauded.
Then followed a scene which seemed interminable. Jupiter in the
course of it seemed never to be going to finish assembling the
Council of Gods in order to submit thereto the deceived husband's
requests. And still no Nana! Was the management keeping Nana for
the fall of the curtain then? So long a period of expectancy had
ended by annoying the public. Their murmurings began again.
"It's going badly," said Mignon radiantly to Steiner. "She'll get a
pretty reception; you'll see!"
At that very moment the clouds at the back of the stage were cloven
apart and Venus appeared. Exceedingly tall, exceedingly strong, for
her eighteen years, Nana, in her goddess's white tunic and with her
light hair simply flowing unfastened over her shoulders, came down
to the footlights with a quiet certainty of movement and a laugh of
greeting for the public and struck up her grand ditty:
"When Venus roams at eventide."
From the second verse onward people looked at each other all over
the house. Was this some jest, some wager on Bordenave's part?
Never had a more tuneless voice been heard or one managed with less
art. Her manager judged of her excellently; she certainly sang like
a squirt. Nay, more, she didn't even know how to deport herself on
the stage: she thrust her arms in front of her while she swayed her
whole body to and fro in a manner which struck the audience as
unbecoming and disagreeable. Cries of "Oh, oh!" were already rising
in the pit and the cheap places. There was a sound of whistling,
too, when a voice in the stalls, suggestive of a molting cockerel,
cried out with great conviction:
"That's very smart!"
All the house looked round. It was the cherub, the truant from the
boardingschool, who sat with his fine eyes very wide open and his
fair face glowing very hotly at sight of Nana. When he saw
everybody turning toward him be grew extremely red at the thought of
having thus unconsciously spoken aloud. Daguenet, his neighbor,
smilingly examined him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and
no longer anxious to hiss; while the young gentlemen in white
gloves, fascinated in their turn by Nana's gracious contours, lolled
back in their seats and applauded.
"That's it! Well done! Bravo!"
Nana, in the meantime, seeing the house laughing, began to laugh
herself. The gaiety of all redoubled itself. She was an amusing
creature, all the same, was that fine girl! Her laughter made a
love of a little dimple appear in her chin. She stood there
waiting, not bored in the least, familiar with her audience, falling
into step with them at once, as though she herself were admitting
with a wink that she had not two farthings' worth of talent but that
it did not matter at all, that, in fact, she had other good points.
And then after having made a sign to the conductor which plainly
signified, "Go ahead, old boy!" she began her second verse:
"'Tis Venus who at midnight passes--"
Still the same acidulated voice, only that now it tickled the public
in the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to
give a little shiver of pleasure. Nana still smiled her smile: it
lit up her little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were
of the clearest blue. When she came to certain rather lively verses
a delicate sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, the rosy
nostrils of which lifted and fell, while a bright flush suffused her
cheeks. She still swung herself up and down, for she only knew how
to do that. And the trick was no longer voted ugly; on the
contrary, the men raised their opera glasses. When she came to the
end of a verse her voice completely failed her, and she was well
aware that she never would get through with it. Thereupon, rather
than fret herself, she kicked up her leg, which forthwith was
roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent sharply backward,
so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and stretched her
arms out. Applause burst forth on all sides. In the twinkling of
an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the stage,
presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators' gaze, a neck
where the red-gold hair showed like some animal's fell. Then the
plaudits became frantic.
The close of the act was not so exciting. Vulcan wanted to slap
Venus. The gods held a consultation and decided to go and hold an
inquiry on earth before granting the deceived husband satisfaction.
It was then that Diana surprised a tender conversation between Venus
and Mars and vowed that she would not take her eyes off them during
the whole of the voyage. There was also a scene where Love, played
by a little twelve-year-old chit, answered every question put to her
with "Yes, Mamma! No, Mamma!" in a winy-piny tone, her fingers in
her nose. At last Jupiter, with the severity of a master who is
growing cross, shut Love up in a dark closet, bidding her conjugate
the verb "I love" twenty times. The finale was more appreciated: it
was a chorus which both troupe and orchestra performed with great
brilliancy. But the curtain once down, the clappers tried in vain
to obtain a call, while the whole house was already up and making
for the doors.
The crowd trampled and jostled, jammed, as it were, between the rows
of seats, and in so doing exchanged expressions. One phrase only
went round:
"It's idiotic." A critic was saying that it would be one's duty to
do a pretty bit of slashing. The piece, however, mattered very
little, for people were talking about Nana before everything else.
Fauchery and La Faloise, being among the earliest to emerge, met
Steiner and Mignon in the passage outside the stalls. In this
gaslit gut of a place, which was as narrow and circumscribed as a
gallery in a mine, one was well-nigh suffocated. They stopped a
moment at the foot of the stairs on the right of the house,
protected by the final curve of the balusters. The audience from
the cheap places were coming down the steps with a continuous tramp
of heavy boots; a stream of black dress coats was passing, while an
attendant was making every possible effort to protect a chair, on
which she had piled up coats and cloaks, from the onward pushing of
the crowd.
"Surely I know her," cried Steiner, the moment he perceived
Fauchery. "I'm certain I've seen her somewhere--at the casino, I
imagine, and she got herself taken up there--she was so drunk."
"As for me," said the journalist, "I don't quite know where it was.
I am like you; I certainly have come across her."
He lowered his voice and asked, laughing:
"At the Tricons', perhaps."
"Egad, it was in a dirty place," Mignon declared. He seemed
exasperated. "It's disgusting that the public give such a reception
to the first trollop that comes by. There'll soon be no more decent
women on the stage. Yes, I shall end by forbidding Rose to play."
Fauchery could not restrain a smile. Meanwhile the downward shuffle
of the heavy shoes on the steps did not cease, and a little man in a
workman's cap was heard crying in a drawling voice:
"Oh my, she ain't no wopper! There's some pickings there!"
In the passage two young men, delicately curled and formally
resplendent in turndown collars and the rest, were disputing
together. One of them was repeating the words, "Beastly, beastly!"
without stating any reasons; the other was replying with the words,
"Stunning, stunning!" as though he, too, disdained all argument.
La Faloise declared her to be quite the thing; only he ventured to
opine that she would be better still if she were to cultivate her
voice. Steiner, who was no longer listening, seemed to awake with a
start. Whatever happens, one must wait, he thought. Perhaps
everything will be spoiled in the following acts. The public had
shown complaisance, but it was certainly not yet taken by storm.
Mignon swore that the piece would never finish, and when Fauchery
and La Faloise left them in order to go up to the foyer he took
Steiner's arm and, leaning hard against his shoulder, whispered in
his ear:
"You're going to see my wife's costume for the second act, old
fellow. It IS just blackguardly."
Upstairs in the foyer three glass chandeliers burned with a
brilliant light. The two cousins hesitated an instant before
entering, for the widely opened glazed doors afforded a view right
through the gallery--a view of a surging sea of heads, which two
currents, as it were, kept in a continuous eddying movement. But
they entered after all. Five or six groups of men, talking very
loudly and gesticulating, were obstinately discussing the play amid
these violent interruptions; others were filing round, their heels,
as they turned, sounding sharply on the waxed floor. To right and
left, between columns of variegated imitation marble, women were
sitting on benches covered with red velvet and viewing the passing
movement of the crowd with an air of fatigue as though the heat had
rendered them languid. In the lofty mirrors behind them one saw the
reflection of their chignons. At the end of the room, in front of
the bar, a man with a huge corporation was drinking a glass of fruit
syrup.
But Fauchery, in order to breathe more freely, had gone to the
balcony. La Faloise, who was studying the photographs of actresses
hung in frames alternating with the mirrors between the columns,
ended by following him. They had extinguished the line of gas jets
on the facade of the theater, and it was dark and very cool on the
balcony, which seemed to them unoccupied. Solitary and enveloped in
shadow, a young man was standing, leaning his arms on the stone
balustrade, in the recess to the right. He was smoking a cigarette,
of which the burning end shone redly. Fauchery recognized Daguenet.
They shook hands warmly.
"What are you after there, my dear fellow?" asked the journalist.
"You're hiding yourself in holes and crannies--you, a man who never
leaves the stalls on a first night!"
"But I'm smoking, you see," replied Daguenet.
Then Fauchery, to put him out of countenance:
"Well, well! What's your opinion of the new actress? She's being
roughly handled enough in the passages."
"Bah!" muttered Daguenet. "They're people whom she'll have had
nothing to do with!"
That was the sum of his criticism of Nana's talent. La Faloise
leaned forward and looked down at the boulevard. Over against them
the windows of a hotel and of a club were brightly lit up, while on
the pavement below a dark mass of customers occupied the tables of
the Cafe de Madrid. Despite the lateness of the hour the crowd were
still crushing and being crushed; people were advancing with
shortened step; a throng was constantly emerging from the Passage
Jouffroy; individuals stood waiting five or six minutes before they
could cross the roadway, to such a distance did the string of
carriages extend.
"What a moving mass! And what a noise!" La Faloise kept
reiterating, for Paris still astonished him.
The bell rang for some time; the foyer emptied. There was a
hurrying of people in the passages. The curtain was already up when
whole bands of spectators re-entered the house amid the irritated
expressions of those who were once more in their places. Everyone
took his seat again with an animated look and renewed attention. La
Faloise directed his first glance in Gaga's direction, but he was
dumfounded at seeing by her side the tall fair man who but recently
had been in Lucy's stage box.
"What IS that man's name?" he asked.
Fauchery failed to observe him.
"Ah yes, it's Labordette," he said at last with the same careless
movement. The scenery of the second act came as a surprise. It
represented a suburban Shrove Tuesday dance at the Boule Noire.
Masqueraders were trolling a catch, the chorus of which was
accompanied with a tapping of their heels. This 'Arryish departure,
which nobody had in the least expected, caused so much amusement
that the house encored the catch. And it was to this entertainment
that the divine band, let astray by Iris, who falsely bragged that
he knew the Earth well, were now come in order to proceed with their
inquiry. They had put on disguises so as to preserve their
incognito. Jupiter came on the stage as King Dagobert, with his
breeches inside out and a huge tin crown on his head. Phoebus
appeared as the Postillion of Lonjumeau and Minerva as a Norman
nursemaid. Loud bursts of merriment greeted Mars, who wore an
outrageous uniform, suggestive of an Alpine admiral. But the shouts
of laughter became uproarious when Neptune came in view, clad in a
blouse, a high, bulging workman's cap on his head, lovelocks glued
to his temples. Shuffling along in slippers, he cried in a thick
brogue.
"Well, I'm blessed! When ye're a masher it'll never do not to let
'em love yer!"
There were some shouts of "Oh! Oh!" while the ladies held their fans
one degree higher. Lucy in her stage box laughed so obstreperously
that Caroline Hequet silenced her with a tap of her fan.
From that moment forth the piece was saved--nay, more, promised a
great success. This carnival of the gods, this dragging in the mud
of their Olympus, this mock at a whole religion, a whole world of
poetry, appeared in the light of a royal entertainment. The fever
of irreverence gained the literary first-night world: legend was
trampled underfoot; ancient images were shattered. Jupiter's make-
up was capital. Mars was a success. Royalty became a farce and the
army a thing of folly. When Jupiter, grown suddenly amorous of a
little laundress, began to knock off a mad cancan, Simonne, who was
playing the part of the laundress, launched a kick at the master of
the immortals' nose and addressed him so drolly as "My big daddy!"
that an immoderate fit of laughter shook the whole house. While
they were dancing Phoebus treated Minerva to salad bowls of negus,
and Neptune sat in state among seven or eight women who regaled him
with cakes. Allusions were eagerly caught; indecent meanings were
attached to them; harmless phrases were diverted from their proper
significations in the light of exclamations issuing from the stalls.
For a long time past the theatrical public had not wallowed in folly
more irreverent. It rested them.
Nevertheless, the action of the piece advanced amid these fooleries.
Vulcan, as an elegant young man clad, down to his gloves, entirely
in yellow and with an eyeglass stuck in his eye, was forever running
after Venus, who at last made her appearance as a fishwife, a
kerchief on her head and her bosom, covered with big gold trinkets,
in great evidence. Nana was so white and plump and looked so
natural in a part demanding wide hips and a voluptuous mouth that
she straightway won the whole house. On her account Rose Mignon was
forgotten, though she was made up as a delicious baby, with a
wicker-work burlet on her head and a short muslin frock and had just
sighed forth Diana's plaints in a sweetly pretty voice. The other
one, the big wench who slapped her thighs and clucked like a hen,
shed round her an odor of life, a sovereign feminine charm, with
which the public grew intoxicated. From the second act onward
everything was permitted her. She might hold herself awkwardly; she
might fail to sing some note in tune; she might forget her words--it
mattered not: she had only to turn and laugh to raise shouts of
applause. When she gave her famous kick from the hip the stalls
were fired, and a glow of passion rose upward, upward, from gallery
to gallery, till it reached the gods. It was a triumph, too, when
she led the dance. She was at home in that: hand on hip, she
enthroned Venus in the gutter by the pavement side. And the music
seemed made for her plebeian voice--shrill, piping music, with
reminiscences of Saint-Cloud Fair, wheezings of clarinets and
playful trills on the part of the little flutes.
Two numbers were again encored. The opening waltz, that waltz with
the naughty rhythmic beat, had returned and swept the gods with it.
Juno, as a peasant woman, caught Jupiter and his little laundress
cleverly and boxed his ears. Diana, surprising Venus in the act of
making an assignation with Mars, made haste to indicate hour and
place to Vulcan, who cried, "I've hit on a plan!" The rest of the
act did not seem very clear. The inquiry ended in a final galop
after which Jupiter, breathless, streaming with perspiration and
minus his crown, declared that the little women of Earth were
delicious and that the men were all to blame.
The curtain was falling, when certain voices, rising above the storm
of bravos, cried uproariously:
"All! All!"
Thereupon the curtain rose again; the artistes reappeared hand in
hand. In the middle of the line Nana and Rose Mignon stood side by
side, bowing and curtsying. The audience applauded; the clappers
shouted acclamations. Then little by little the house emptied.
"I must go and pay my respects to the Countess Muffat," said La
Faloise. "Exactly so; you'll present me," replied Fauchery; "we'll
go down afterward."
But it was not easy to get to the first-tier boxes. In the passage
at the top of the stairs there was a crush. In order to get forward
at all among the various groups you had to make yourself small and
to slide along, using your elbows in so doing. Leaning under a
copper lamp, where a jet of gas was burning, the bulky critic was
sitting in judgment on the piece in presence of an attentive circle.
People in passing mentioned his name to each other in muttered
tones. He had laughed the whole act through--that was the rumor
going the round of the passages--nevertheless, he was now very
severe and spoke of taste and morals. Farther off the thin-lipped
critic was brimming over with a benevolence which had an unpleasant
aftertaste, as of milk turned sour.
Fauchery glanced along, scrutinizing the boxes through the round
openings in each door. But the Count de Vandeuvres stopped him with
a question, and when he was informed that the two cousins were going
to pay their respects to the Muffats, he pointed out to them box
seven, from which he had just emerged. Then bending down and
whispering in the journalist's ear:
"Tell me, my dear fellow," he said, "this Nana--surely she's the
girl we saw one evening at the corner of the Rue de Provence?"
"By Jove, you're right!" cried Fauchery. "I was saying that I had
come across her!"
La Faloise presented his cousin to Count Muffat de Beuville, who
appeared very frigid. But on hearing the name Fauchery the countess
raised her head and with a certain reserve complimented the
paragraphist on his articles in the Figaro. Leaning on the velvet-
covered support in front of her, she turned half round with a pretty
movement of the shoulders. They talked for a short time, and the
Universal Exhibition was mentioned.
"It will be very fine," said the count, whose square-cut, regular-
featured face retained a certain gravity.
"I visited the Champ de Mars today and returned thence truly
astonished."
"They say that things won't be ready in time," La Faloise ventured
to remark. "There's infinite confusion there--"
But the count interrupted him in his severe voice:
"Things will be ready. The emperor desires it."
Fauchery gaily recounted how one day, when he had gone down thither
in search of a subject for an article, he had come near spending all
his time in the aquarium, which was then in course of construction.
The countess smiled. Now and again she glanced down at the body of
the house, raising an arm which a white glove covered to the elbow
and fanning herself with languid hand. The house dozed, almost
deserted. Some gentlemen in the stalls had opened out newspapers,
and ladies received visits quite comfortably, as though they were at
their own homes. Only a well-bred whispering was audible under the
great chandelier, the light of which was softened in the fine cloud
of dust raised by the confused movements of the interval. At the
different entrances men were crowding in order to talk to ladies who
remained seated. They stood there motionless for a few seconds,
craning forward somewhat and displaying the great white bosoms of
their shirt fronts.
"We count on you next Tuesday," said the countess to La Faloise, and
she invited Fauchery, who bowed.
Not a word was said of the play; Nana's name was not once mentioned.
The count was so glacially dignified that he might have been
supposed to be taking part at a sitting of the legislature. In
order to explain their presence that evening he remarked simply that
his father-in-law was fond of the theater. The door of the box must
have remained open, for the Marquis de Chouard, who had gone out in
order to leave his seat to the visitors, was back again. He was
straightening up his tall, old figure. His face looked soft and
white under a broad-brimmed hat, and with his restless eyes he
followed the movements of the women who passed.
The moment the countess had given her invitation Fauchery took his
leave, feeling that to talk about the play would not be quite the
thing. La Faloise was the last to quit the box. He had just
noticed the fair-haired Labordette, comfortably installed in the
Count de Vandeuvres's stage box and chatting at very close quarters
with Blanche de Sivry.
"Gad," he said after rejoining his cousin, "that Labordette knows
all the girls then! He's with Blanche now."
"Doubtless he knows them all," replied Fauchery quietly. "What
d'you want to be taken for, my friend?"
The passage was somewhat cleared of people, and Fauchery was just
about to go downstairs when Lucy Stewart called him. She was quite
at the other end of the corridor, at the door of her stage box.
They were getting cooked in there, she said, and she took up the
whole corridor in company with Caroline Hequet and her mother, all
three nibbling burnt almonds. A box opener was chatting maternally
with them. Lucy fell out with the journalist. He was a pretty
fellow; to be sure! He went up to see other women and didn't even
come and ask if they were thirsty! Then, changing the subject:
"You know, dear boy, I think Nana very nice."
She wanted him to stay in the stage box for the last act, but he
made his escape, promising to catch them at the door afterward.
Downstairs in front of the theater Fauchery and La Faloise lit
cigarettes. A great gathering blocked the sidewalk, a stream of men
who had come down from the theater steps and were inhaling the fresh
night air in the boulevards, where the roar and battle had
diminished.
Meanwhile Mignon had drawn Steiner away to the Cafe des Varietes.
Seeing Nana's success, he had set to work to talk enthusiastically
about her, all the while observing the banker out of the corners of
his eyes. He knew him well; twice he had helped him to deceive Rose
and then, the caprice being over, had brought him back to her,
faithful and repentant. In the cafe the too numerous crowd of
customers were squeezing themselves round the marble-topped tables.
Several were standing up, drinking in a great hurry. The tall
mirrors reflected this thronging world of heads to infinity and
magnified the narrow room beyond measure with its three chandeliers,
its moleskin-covered seats and its winding staircase draped with
red. Steiner went and seated himself at a table in the first
saloon, which opened full on the boulevard, its doors having been
removed rather early for the time of year. As Fauchery and La
Faloise were passing the banker stopped them.
"Come and take a bock with us, eh?" they said.
But he was too preoccupied by an idea; he wanted to have a bouquet
thrown to Nana. At last he called a waiter belonging to the cafe,
whom he familiarly addressed as Auguste. Mignon, who was listening,
looked at him so sharply that he lost countenance and stammered out:
"Two bouquets, Auguste, and deliver them to the attendant. A
bouquet for each of these ladies! Happy thought, eh?"
At the other end of the saloon, her shoulders resting against the
frame of a mirror, a girl, some eighteen years of age at the
outside, was leaning motionless in front of her empty glass as
though she had been benumbed by long and fruitless waiting. Under
the natural curls of her beautiful gray-gold hair a virginal face
looked out at you with velvety eyes, which were at once soft and
candid.
She wore a dress of faded green silk and a round hat which blows had
dinted. The cool air of the night made her look very pale.
"Egad, there's Satin," murmured Fauchery when his eye lit upon her.
La Faloise questioned him. Oh dear, yes, she was a streetwalker--
she didn't count. But she was such a scandalous sort that people
amused themselves by making her talk. And the journalist, raising
his voice:
"What are you doing there, Satin?"
"I'm bogging," replied Satin quietly without changing position.
The four men were charmed and fell a-laughing. Mignon assured them
that there was no need to hurry; it would take twenty minutes to set
up the scenery for the third act. But the two cousins, having drunk
their beer, wanted to go up into the theater again; the cold was
making itself felt. Then Mignon remained alone with Steiner, put
his elbows on the table and spoke to him at close quarters.
"It's an understood thing, eh? We are to go to her house, and I'm
to introduce you. You know the thing's quite between ourselves--my
wife needn't know."
Once more in their places, Fauchery and La Faloise noticed a pretty,
quietly dressed woman in the second tier of boxes. She was with a
serious-looking gentleman, a chief clerk at the office of the
Ministry of the Interior, whom La Faloise knew, having met him at
the Muffats'. As to Fauchery, he was under the impression that her
name was Madame Robert, a lady of honorable repute who had a lover,
only one, and that always a person of respectability.
But they had to turn round, for Daguenet was smiling at them. Now
that Nana had had a success he no longer hid himself: indeed, he had
just been scoring triumphs in the passages. By his side was the
young truant schoolboy, who had not quitted his seat, so stupefying
was the state of admiration into which Nana had plunged him. That
was it, he thought; that was the woman! And he blushed as he
thought so and dragged his gloves on and off mechanically. Then
since his neighbor had spoken of Nana, he ventured to question him.
"Will you pardon me for asking you, sir, but that lady who is
acting--do you know her?"
"Yes, I do a little," murmured Daguenet with some surprise and
hesitation.
"Then you know her address?"
The question, addressed as it was to him, came so abruptly that he
felt inclined to respond with a box on the ear.
"No," he said in a dry tone of voice.
And with that he turned his back. The fair lad knew that he had
just been guilty of some breach of good manners. He blushed more
hotly than ever and looked scared.
The traditional three knocks were given, and among the returning
throng, attendants, laden with pelisses and overcoats, bustled about
at a great rate in order to put away people's things. The clappers
applauded the scenery, which represented a grotto on Mount Etna,
hollowed out in a silver mine and with sides glittering like new
money. In the background Vulcan's forge glowed like a setting star.
Diana, since the second act, had come to a good understanding with
the god, who was to pretend that he was on a journey, so as to leave
the way clear for Venus and Mars. Then scarcely was Diana alone
than Venus made her appearance. A shiver of delight ran round the
house. Nana was nude. With quiet audacity she appeared in her
nakedness, certain of the sovereign power of her flesh. Some gauze
enveloped her, but her rounded shoulders, her Amazonian bosom, her
wide hips, which swayed to and fro voluptuously, her whole body, in
fact, could be divined, nay discerned, in all its foamlike whiteness
of tint beneath the slight fabric she wore. It was Venus rising
from the waves with no veil save her tresses. And when Nana lifted
her arms the golden hairs in her armpits were observable in the
glare of the footlights. There was no applause. Nobody laughed any
more. The men strained forward with serious faces, sharp features,
mouths irritated and parched. A wind seemed to have passed, a soft,
soft wind, laden with a secret menace. Suddenly in the bouncing
child the woman stood discovered, a woman full of restless
suggestion, who brought with her the delirium of sex and opened the
gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was smiling still, but
her smile was now bitter, as of a devourer of men.
"By God," said Fauchery quite simply to La Faloise.
Mars in the meantime, with his plume of feathers, came hurrying to
the trysting place and found himself between the two goddesses.
Then ensued a passage which Prulliere played with great delicacy.
Petted by Diana, who wanted to make a final attack upon his feelings
before delivering him up to Vulcan, wheedled by Venus, whom the
presence of her rival excited, he gave himself up to these tender
delights with the beatified expression of a man in clover. Finally
a grand trio brought the scene to a close, and it was then that an
attendant appeared in Lucy Stewart's box and threw on the stage two
immense bouquets of white lilacs. There was applause; Nana and Rose
Mignon bowed, while Prulliere picked up the bouquets. Many of the
occupants of the stalls turned smilingly toward the ground-floor
occupied by Steiner and Mignon. The banker, his face blood-red, was
suffering from little convulsive twitchings of the chin, as though
he had a stoppage in his throat.
What followed took the house by storm completely. Diana had gone
off in a rage, and directly afterward, Venus, sitting on a moss-clad
seat, called Mars to her. Never yet had a more glowing scene of
seduction been ventured on. Nana, her arms round Prulliere's neck,
was drawing him toward her when Fontan, with comically furious
mimicry and an exaggerated imitation of the face of an outraged
husband who surprises his wife in FLAGRANTE DELICTO, appeared at the
back of the grotto. He was holding the famous net with iron meshes.
For an instant he poised and swung it, as a fisherman does when he
is going to make a cast, and by an ingenious twist Venus and Mars
were caught in the snare; the net wrapped itself round them and held
them motionless in the attitude of happy lovers.
A murmur of applause swelled and swelled like a growing sigh. There
was some hand clapping, and every opera glass was fixed on Venus.
Little by little Nana had taken possession of the public, and now
every man was her slave.
A wave of lust had flowed from her as from an excited animal, and
its influence had spread and spread and spread till the whole house
was possessed by it. At that moment her slightest movement blew the
flame of desire: with her little finger she ruled men's flesh.
Backs were arched and quivered as though unseen violin bows had been
drawn across their muscles; upon men's shoulders appeared fugitive
hairs, which flew in air, blown by warm and wandering breaths,
breathed one knew not from what feminine mouth. In front of him
Fauchery saw the truant schoolboy half lifted from his seat by
passion. Curiosity led him to look at the Count de Vandeuvres--he
was extremely pale, and his lips looked pinched--at fat Steiner,
whose face was purple to the verge of apoplexy; at Labordette,
ogling away with the highly astonished air of a horse dealer
admiring a perfectly shaped mare; at Daguenet, whose ears were
blood-red and twitching with enjoyment. Then a sudden idea made him
glance behind, and he marveled at what he saw in the Muffats' box.
Behind the countess, who was white and serious as usual, the count
was sitting straight upright, with mouth agape and face mottled with
red, while close by him, in the shadow, the restless eyes of the
Marquis de Chouard had become catlike phosphorescent, full of golden
sparkles. The house was suffocating; people's very hair grew heavy
on their perspiring heads. For three hours back the breath of the
multitude had filled and heated the atmosphere with a scent of
crowded humanity. Under the swaying glare of the gas the dust
clouds in mid-air had grown constantly denser as they hung
motionless beneath the chandelier. The whole house seemed to be
oscillating, to be lapsing toward dizziness in its fatigue and
excitement, full, as it was, of those drowsy midnight desires which
flutter in the recesses of the bed of passion. And Nana, in front
of this languorous public, these fifteen hundred human beings
thronged and smothered in the exhaustion and nervous exasperation
which belong to the close of a spectacle, Nana still triumphed by
right of her marble flesh and that sexual nature of hers, which was
strong enough to destroy the whole crowd of her adorers and yet
sustain no injury.
The piece drew to a close. In answer to Vulcan's triumphant summons
all the Olympians defiled before the lovers with ohs and ahs of
stupefaction and gaiety. Jupiter said, "I think it is light conduct
on your part, my son, to summon us to see such a sight as this."
Then a reaction took place in favor of Venus. The chorus of
cuckolds was again ushered in by Iris and besought the master of the
gods not to give effect to its petition, for since women had lived
at home, domestic life was becoming impossible for the men: the
latter preferred being deceived and happy. That was the moral of
the play. Then Venus was set at liberty, and Vulcan obtained a
partial divorce from her. Mars was reconciled with Diana, and Jove,
for the sake of domestic peace, packed his little laundress off into
a constellation. And finally they extricated Love from his black
hole, where instead of conjugating the verb AMO he had been busy in
the manufacture of "dollies." The curtain fell on an apotheosis,
wherein the cuckolds' chorus knelt and sang a hymn of gratitude to
Venus, who stood there with smiling lips, her stature enhanced by
her sovereign nudity.
The audience, already on their feet, were making for the exits. The
authors were mentioned, and amid a thunder of applause there were
two calls before the curtain. The shout of "Nana! Nana!" rang
wildly forth. Then no sooner was the house empty than it grew dark:
the footlights went out; the chandelier was turned down; long strips
of gray canvas slipped from the stage boxes and swathed the gilt
ornamentation of the galleries, and the house, lately so full of
heat and noise, lapsed suddenly into a heavy sleep, while a musty,
dusty odor began to pervade it. In the front of her box stood the
Countess Muffat. Very erect and closely wrapped up in her furs, she
stared at the gathering shadows and waited for the crowd to pass
away.
In the passages the people were jostling the attendants, who hardly
knew what to do among the tumbled heaps of outdoor raiment.
Fauchery and La Faloise had hurried in order to see the crowd pass
out. All along the entrance hall men formed a living hedge, while
down the double staircase came slowly and in regular, complete
formation two interminable throngs of human beings. Steiner, in tow
of Mignon, had left the house among the foremost. The Count de
Vandeuvres took his departure with Blanche de Sivry on his arm. For
a moment or two Gaga and her daughter seemed doubtful how to
proceed, but Labordette made haste to go and fetch them a
conveyance, the door whereof he gallantly shut after them. Nobody
saw Daguenet go by. As the truant schoolboy, registering a mental
vow to wait at the stage door, was running with burning cheeks
toward the Passage des Panoramas, of which he found the gate closed,
Satin, standing on the edge of the pavement, moved forward and
brushed him with her skirts, but he in his despair gave her a savage
refusal and vanished amid the crowd, tears of impotent desire in his
eyes. Members of the audience were lighting their cigars and
walking off, humming:
When Venus roams at eventide.
Satin had gone back in front of the Cafe des Varietes, where Auguste
let her eat the sugar that remained over from the customers' orders.
A stout man, who came out in a very heated condition, finally
carried her off in the shadow of the boulevard, which was now
gradually going to sleep.
Still people kept coming downstairs. La Faloise was waiting for
Clarisse; Fauchery had promised to catch up Lucy Stewart with
Caroline Hequet and her mother. They came; they took up a whole
corner of the entrance hall and were laughing very loudly when the
Muffats passed by them with an icy expression. Bordenave had just
then opened a little door and, peeping out, had obtained from
Fauchery the formal promise of an article. He was dripping with
perspiration, his face blazed, as though he were drunk with success.
"You're good for two hundred nights," La Faloise said to him with
civility. "The whole of Paris will visit your theater."
But Bordenave grew annoyed and, indicating with a jerk of his chin
the public who filled the entrance hall--a herd of men with parched
lips and ardent eyes, still burning with the enjoyment of Nana--he
cried out violently:
"Say 'my brothel,' you obstinate devil!"
CHAPTER II
At ten o'clock the next morning Nana was still asleep. She occupied
the second floor of a large new house in the Boulevard Haussmann,
the landlord of which let flats to single ladies in order by their
means to dry the paint. A rich merchant from Moscow, who had come
to pass a winter in Paris, had installed her there after paying six
months' rent in advance. The rooms were too big for her and had
never been completely furnished. The vulgar sumptuosity of gilded
consoles and gilded chairs formed a crude contrast therein to the
bric-a-brac of a secondhand furniture shop--to mahogany round
tables, that is to say, and zinc candelabras, which sought to
imitate Florentine bronze. All of which smacked of the courtesan
too early deserted by her first serious protector and fallen back on
shabby lovers, of a precarious first appearance of a bad start,
handicapped by refusals of credit and threats of eviction.
Nana was sleeping on her face, hugging in her bare arms a pillow in
which she was burying cheeks grown pale in sleep. The bedroom and
the dressing room were the only two apartments which had been
properly furnished by a neighboring upholsterer. A ray of light,
gliding in under a curtain, rendered visible rosewood furniture and
hangings and chairbacks of figured damask with a pattern of big blue
flowers on a gray ground. But in the soft atmosphere of that
slumbering chamber Nana suddenly awoke with a start, as though
surprised to find an empty place at her side. She looked at the
other pillow lying next to hers; there was the dint of a human head
among its flounces: it was still warm. And groping with one hand,
she pressed the knob of an electric bell by her bed's head.
"He's gone then?" she asked the maid who presented herself.
"Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul went away not ten minutes back. As
Madame was tired, he did not wish to wake her. But he ordered me to
tell Madame that he would come tomorrow."
As she spoke Zoe, the lady's maid, opened the outer shutter. A
flood of daylight entered. Zoe, a dark brunette with hair in little
plaits, had a long canine face, at once livid and full of seams, a
snub nose, thick lips and two black eyes in continual movement.
"Tomorrow, tomorrow," repeated Nana, who was not yet wide awake, "is
tomorrow the day?"
"Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul has always come on the Wednesday."
"No, now I remember," said the young woman, sitting up. "It's all
changed. I wanted to tell him so this morning. He would run
against the nigger! We should have a nice to-do!"
"Madame did not warn me; I couldn't be aware of it," murmured Zoe.
"When Madame changes her days she will do well to tell me so that I
may know. Then the old miser is no longer due on the Tuesday?"
Between themselves they were wont thus gravely to nickname as "old
miser" and "nigger" their two paying visitors, one of whom was a
tradesman of economical tendencies from the Faubourg Saint-Denis,
while the other was a Walachian, a mock count, whose money, paid
always at the most irregular intervals, never looked as though it
had been honestly come by. Daguenet had made Nana give him the days
subsequent to the old miser's visits, and as the trader had to be at
home by eight o'clock in the morning, the young man would watch for
his departure from Zoes kitchen and would take his place, which was
still quite warm, till ten o'clock. Then he, too, would go about
his business. Nana and he were wont to think it a very comfortable
arrangement.
"So much the worse," said Nana; "I'll write to him this afternoon.
And if he doesn't receive my letter, then tomorrow you will stop him
coming in."
In the meantime Zoe was walking softly about the room. She spoke of
yesterday's great hit. Madame had shown such talent; she sang so
well! Ah! Madame need not fret at all now!
Nana, her elbow dug into her pillow, only tossed her head in reply.
Her nightdress had slipped down on her shoulders, and her hair,
unfastened and entangled, flowed over them in masses.
"Without doubt," she murmured, becoming thoughtful; "but what's to
be done to gain time? I'm going to have all sorts of bothers today.
Now let's see, has the porter come upstairs yet this morning?"
Then both the women talked together seriously. Nana owed three
quarters' rent; the landlord was talking of seizing the furniture.
Then, too, there was a perfect downpour of creditors; there was a
livery-stable man, a needlewoman, a ladies' tailor, a charcoal
dealer and others besides, who came every day and settled themselves
on a bench in the little hall. The charcoal dealer especially was a
dreadful fellow--he shouted on the staircase. But Nana's greatest
cause of distress was her little Louis, a child she had given birth
to when she was sixteen and now left in charge of a nurse in a
village in the neighborhood of Rambouillet. This woman was
clamoring for the sum of three hundred francs before she would
consent to give the little Louis back to her. Nana, since her last
visit to the child, had been seized with a fit of maternal love and
was desperate at the thought that she could not realize a project,
which had now become a hobby with her. This was to pay off the
nurse and to place the little man with his aunt, Mme Lerat, at the
Batignolles, whither she could go and see him as often as she liked.
Meanwhile the lady's maid kept hinting that her mistress ought to
have confided her necessities to the old miser.
"To be sure, I told him everything," cried Nana, "and he told me in
answer that he had too many big liabilities. He won't go beyond his
thousand francs a month. The nigger's beggared just at present; I
expect he's lost at play. As to that poor Mimi, he stands in great
need of a loan himself; a fall in stocks has cleaned him out--he
can't even bring me flowers now."
She was speaking of Daguenet. In the self-abandonment of her
awakening she had no secrets from Zoe, and the latter, inured to
such confidences, received them with respeciful sympathy. Since
Madame condescended to speak to her of her affairs she would permit
herself to say what she thought. Besides, she was very fond of
Madame; she had left Mme Blanche for the express purpose of taking
service with her, and heaven knew Mme Blanche was straining every
nerve to have her again! Situations weren't lacking; she was pretty
well known, but she would have stayed with Madame even in narrow
circumstances, because she believed in Madame's future. And she
concluded by stating her advice with precision. When one was young
one often did silly things. But this time it was one's duty to look
alive, for the men only thought of having their fun. Oh dear, yes!
Things would right themselves. Madame had only to say one word in
order to quiet her creditors and find the money she stood in need
of.
"All that doesn't help me to three hundred francs," Nana kept
repeating as she plunged her fingers into the vagrant convolutions
of her back hair. "I must have three hundred francs today, at once!
It's stupid not to know anyone who'll give you three hundred
francs."
She racked her brains. She would have sent Mme Lerat, whom she was
expecting that very morning, to Rambouillet. The counteraction of
her sudden fancy spoiled for her the triumph of last night. Among
all those men who had cheered her, to think that there wasn't one to
bring her fifteen louis! And then one couldn't accept money in that
way! Dear heaven, how unfortunate she was! And she kept harking
back again to the subject of her baby--he had blue eyes like a
cherub's; he could lisp "Mamma" in such a funny voice that you were
ready to die of laughing!
But at this moment the electric bell at the outer door was heard to
ring with its quick and tremulous vibration. Zoe returned,
murmuring with a confidential air:
"It's a woman."
She had seen this woman a score of times, only she made believe
never to recognize her and to be quite ignorant of the nature of her
relations with ladies in difficulties.
"She has told me her name--Madame Tricon."
"The Tricon," cried Nana. "Dear me! That's true. I'd forgotten
her. Show her in."
Zoe ushered in a tall old lady who wore ringlets and looked like a
countess who haunts lawyers' offices. Then she effaced herself,
disappearing noiselessly with the lithe, serpentine movement
wherewith she was wont to withdraw from a room on the arrival of a
gentleman. However, she might have stayed. The Tricon did not even
sit down. Only a brief exchange of words took place.
"I have someone for you today. Do you care about it?"
"Yes. How much?"
"Twenty louis."
"At what o'clock?"
"At three. It's settled then?"
"It's settled."
Straightway the Tricon talked of the state of the weather. It was
dry weather, pleasant for walking. She had still four or five
persons to see. And she took her departure after consulting a small
memorandum book. When she was once more alone Nana appeared
comforted. A slight shiver agitated her shoulders, and she wrapped
herself softly up again in her warm bedclothes with the lazy
movements of a cat who is susceptible to cold. Little by little her
eyes closed, and she lay smiling at the thought of dressing Louiset
prettily on the following day, while in the slumber into which she
once more sank last night's long, feverish dream of endlessly
rolling applause returned like a sustained accompaniment to music
and gently soothed her lassitude.
At eleven o'clock, when Zoe showed Mme Lerat into the room, Nana was
still asleep. But she woke at the noise and cried out at once:
"It's you. You'll go to Rambouillet today?"
"That's what I've come for," said the aunt. "There's a train at
twenty past twelve. I've got time to catch it."
"No, I shall only have the money by and by," replied the young
woman, stretching herself and throwing out her bosom. "You'll have
lunch, and then we'll see."
Zoe brought a dressing jacket.
"The hairdresser's here, madame," she murmured.
But Nana did not wish to go into the dressing room. And she herself
cried out:
"Come in, Francis."
A well-dressed man pushed open the door and bowed. Just at that
moment Nana was getting out of bed, her bare legs in full view. But
she did not hurry and stretched her hands out so as to let Zoe draw
on the sleeves of the dressing jacket. Francis, on his part, was
quite at his ease and without turning away waited with a sober
expression on his face.
"Perhaps Madame has not seen the papers. There's a very nice
article in the Figaro."
He had brought the journal. Mme Lerat put on her spectacles and
read the article aloud, standing in front of the window as she did
so. She had the build of a policeman, and she drew herself up to
her full height, while her nostrils seemed to compress themselves
whenever she uttered a gallant epithet. It was a notice by
Fauchery, written just after the performance, and it consisted of a
couple of very glowing columns, full of witty sarcasm about the
artist and of broad admiration for the woman.
"Excellent!" Francis kept repeating.
Nana laughed good-humoredly at his chaffing her about her voice! He
was a nice fellow, was that Fauchery, and she would repay him for
his charming style of writing. Mme Lerat, after having reread the
notice, roundly declared that the men all had the devil in their
shanks, and she refused to explain her self further, being fully
satisfied with a brisk allusion of which she alone knew the meaning her in an income of six hundred
francs a year. Nana
promised to rent some pretty little lodgings for her and to give her
a hundred francs a month besides. At the mention of this sum the
aunt forgot herself and shrieked to her niece, bidding her squeeze
their throats, since she had them in her grasp. She was meaning the
men, of course. Then they both embraced again, but i.
Francis finished turning up and fastening Nana's hair. He bowed and
said:
"I'll keep my eye on the evening papers. At half-past five as
usual, eh?"
"Bring me a pot of pomade and a pound of burnt almonds from
Boissier's," Nana cried to him across the drawing room just as he
was shutting the door after him.
Then the two women, once more alone, recollected that they had not
embraced, and they planted big kisses on each other's cheeks. The
notice warmed their hearts. Nana, who up till now had been half
asleep, was again seized with the fever of her triumph. Dear, dear,
'twas Rose Mignon that would be spending a pleasant morning! Her
aunt having been unwilling to go to the theater because, as she
averred, sudden emotions ruined her stomach, Nana set herself to
describe the events of the evening and grew intoxicated at her own
recital, as though all Paris had been shaken to the ground by the
applause. Then suddenly interrupting herself, she asked with a
laugh if one would ever have imagined it all when she used to go
traipsing about the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. Mme Lerat shook her
head. No, no, one never could have foreseen it! And she began
talking in her turn, assuming a serious air as she did so and
calling Nana "daughter." Wasn't she a second mother to her since
the first had gone to rejoin Papa and Grandmamma? Nana was greatly
softened and on the verge of tears. But Mme Lerat declared that the
past was the past--oh yes, to be sure, a dirty past with things in
it which it was as well not to stir up every day. She had left off
seeing her niece for a long time because among the family she was
accused of ruining herself along with the little thing. Good God,
as though that were possible! She didn't ask for confidences; she
believed that Nana had always lived decently, and now it was enough
for her to have found her again in a fine position and to observe
her kind feelings toward her son. Virtue and hard work were still
the only things worth anything in this world.
"Who is the baby's father?" she said, interrupting herself, her eyes
lit up with an exhad crossed two knives on the
table in front of her. Notwithstanding this, the young woman
defended herself from the charge of superstition. Thus, if the salt
were upset, it meant nothing, even on a Friday; but when it came to
knives, that was too much of a good thing; that had never proved
fallacious. There could be no doubt that something unpleasant was
going to happen to her. She yawned, and then with an air, of
profound boredom:
"Two o'clock already. I must go out. What a nuisance!"
The two old ladies looked at one another. The three women shook
their heads without speaking. To be sure, life was not always
amusing. Nana had tilted her chair back anew and lit a cigarette,
while the others sat pursing up their lips discreetly, thinking
deeply philosophic thoughts.
"While waiting for you to return we'll play a game of bezique," said
Mme Maloir after a short silence. "Does Madame play bezique?"
Certainly Mme Lerat played it, and that to perfection. It was no
good troubling Zoe, who had vanished--a corner of the table would do
quite well. And they pushepression of acute curiosity.
Nana was taken by surprise and hesitated a moment.
"A gentleman," she replied.
"There now!" rejoined the aunt. "They declared that you had him by
a stonemason who was in the habit of beating you. Indeed, you shall
tell me all about it someday; you know I'm discreet! Tut, tut, I'll
look after him as though he were a prince's son."
She had retired from business as a florist and was living on her
savings, which she had got together sou by sou, till now they
broughtn the midst of
her rejoicing Nana's face, as she led the talk back to the subject
of Louiset, seemed to be overshadowed by a sudden recollection.
"Isn't it a bore I've got to go out at three o'clock?" she muttered.
"It IS a nuisance!"
Just then Zoe came in to say that lunch was on the table. They went
into the dining room, where an old lady was already seated at table.
She had not taken her hat off, and she wore a dark dress of an
indecisive color midway between puce and goose dripping. Nana did
not seem surprised at sight of her. She simply asked her why she
hadn't come into the bedroom.
"I heard voices," replied the old lady. "I thought you had
company."
Mme Maloir, a respectable-looking and mannerly woman, was Nana's old
friend, chaperon and companion. Mme Lerat's presence seemed to
fidget her at first. Afterward, when she became aware that it was
Nana's aunt, she looked at her with a sweet expression and a die-
away smile. In the meantime Nana, who averred that she was as
hungry as a wolf, threw herself on the radishes and gobbled them up
without bread. Mme Lerat had become ceremonious; she refused the
radishes as provocative of phlegm. By and by when Zoe had brought
in the cutlets Nana just chipped the meat and contented herself with
sucking the bones. Now and again she scrutinized her old friend's
hat out of the corners of her eyes.
"It's the new hat I gave you?" she ended by saying.
"Yes, I made it up," murmured Mme Maloir, her mouth full of meat.
The hat was smart to distraction. In front it was greatly
exaggerated, and it was adorned with a lofty feather. Mme Maloir
had a mania for doing up all her hats afresh; she alone knew what
really became her, and with a few stitches she could manufacture a
toque out of the most elegant headgear. Nana, who had bought her
this very hat in order not to be ashamed of her when in her company
out of doors, was very near being vexed.
"Push it up, at any rate," she cried.
"No, thank you," replied the old lady with dignity. "It doesn't get
in my way; I can eat very comfortably as it is."
After the cutlets came cauliflowers and the remains of a cold
chicken. But at the arrival of each successive dish Nana made a
little face, hesitated, sniffed and left her plateful untouched.
She finished her lunch with the help of preserve.
Dessert took a long time. Zoe did not remove the cloth before
serving the coffee. Indeed, the ladies simply pushed back their
plates before taking it. They talked continually of yesterday's
charming evening. Nana kept rolling cigarettes, which she smoked,
swinging up and down on her backward-tilted chair. And as Zoe had
remained behind and was lounging idly against the sideboard, it came
about that the company were favored with her history. She said she
was the daughter of a midwife at Bercy who had failed in business.
First of all she had taken service with a dentist and after that
with an insurance agent, but neither place suited her, and she
thereupon enumerated, not without a certain amount of pride, the
names of the ladies with whom she had served as lady's maid. Zoe
spoke of these ladies as one who had had the making of their
fortunes. It was very certain that without her more than one would
have had some queer tales to tell. Thus one day, when Mme Blanche
was with M. Octave, in came the old gentleman. What did Zoe do?
She made believe to tumble as she crossed the drawing room; the old
boy rushed up to her assistance, flew to the kitchen to fetch her a
glass of water, and M. Octave slipped away.
"Oh, she's a good girl, you bet!" said Nana, who was listening to
her with tender interest and a sort of submissive admiration.
"Now I've had my troubles," began Mme Lerat. And edging up to Mme
Maloir, she imparted to her certain confidential confessions. Both
ladies took lumps of sugar dipped in cognac and sucked them. But
Mme Maloir was wont to listen to other people's secrets without even
confessing anything concerning herself. People said that she lived
on a mysterious allowance in a room whither no one ever penetrated.
All of a sudden Nana grew excited.
"Don't play with the knives, Aunt. You know it gives me a turn!"
Without thinking about it Mme Lerat d back the tablecloth over the dirty
plates. But as Mme Maloir was herself going to take the cards out
of a drawer in the sideboard, Nana remarked that before she sat down
to her game it would be very nice of her if she would write her a
letter. It bored Nana to write letters; besides, she was not sure
of her spelling, while her old friend could turn out the most
feeling epistles. She ran to fetch some good note paper in her
bedroom. An inkstand consisting of a bottle of ink worth about
three sous stood untidily on one of the pieces of furniture, with a
pen deep in rust beside it. The letter was for Daguenet. Mme
Maloir herself wrote in her bold English hand, "My darling little
man," and then she told him not to come tomorrow because "that could
not be" but hastened to add that "she was with him in thought at
every moment of the day, whether she were near or far away."
"And I end with 'a thousand kisses,'" she murmured.
Mme Lerat had shown her approval of each phrase with an emphatic
nod. Her eyes were sparkling; she loved to find herself in the
midst of love affairs. Nay, she was seized with a desire to add
some words of her own and, assuming a tender look and cooing like a
dove, she suggested:
"A thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes."
"That's the thing: 'a thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes'!" Nana
repeated, while the two old ladies assumed a beatified expression.
Zoe was rung for and told to take the letter down to a
commissionaire. She had just been talking with the theater
messenger, who had brought her mistress the day's playbill and
rehearsal arrangements, which he had forgotten in the morning. Nana
had this individual ushered in and got him to take the latter to
Daguenet on his return. Then she put questions to him. Oh yes! M.
Bordenave was very pleased; people had already taken seats for a
week to come; Madame had no idea of the number of people who had
been asking her address since morning. When the man had taken his
departure Nana announced that at most she would only be out half an
hour. If there were any visitors Zoe would make them wait. As she
spoke the electric bell sounded. It was a creditor in the shape of
the man of whom she jobbed her carriages. He had settled himself on
the bench in the anteroom, and the fellow was free to twiddle his
thumbs till night--there wasn't the least hurry now.
"Come, buck up!" said Nana, still torpid with laziness and yawning
and stretching afresh. "I ought to be there now!"
Yet she did not budge but kept watching the play of her aunt, who
had just announced four aces. Chin on hand, she grew quite
engrossed in it but gave a violent start on hearing three o'clock
strike.
"Good God!" she cried roughly.
Then Mme Maloir, who was counting the tricks she had won with her
tens and aces, said cheeringly to her in her soft voice:
"It would be better, dearie, to give up your expedition at once."
"No, be quick about it," said Mme Lerat, shuffling the cards. "I
shall take the half-past four o'clock train if you're back here with
the money before four o'clock."
"Oh, there'll be no time lost," she murmured.
Ten minutes after Zoe helped her on with a dress and a hat. It
didn't matter much if she were badly turned out. Just as she was
about to go downstairs there was a new ring at the bell. This time
it was the charcoal dealer. Very well, he might keep the livery-
stable keeper company--it would amuse the fellows. Only, as she
dreaded a scene, she crossed the kitchen and made her escape by the
back stairs. She often went that way and in return had only to lift
up her flounces.
"When one is a good mother anything's excusable," said Mme Maloir
sententiously when left alone with Mme Lerat.
"Four kings," replied this lady, whom the play greatly excited.
And they both plunged into an interminable game.
The table had not been cleared. The smell of lunch and the
cigarette smoke filled the room with an ambient, steamy vapor. The
two ladies had again set to work dipping lumps of sugar in brandy
and sucking the same. For twenty minutes at least they played and
sucked simultaneously when, the electric bell having rung a third
time, Zoe bustled into the room and roughly disturbed them, just as
if they had been her own friends.
"Look here, that's another ring. You can't stay where you are. If
many foiks call I must have the whole flat. Now off you go, off you
go!"
Mme Maloir was for finishing the game, but Zoe looked as if she was
going to pounce down on the cards, and so she decided to carry them
off without in any way altering their positions, while Mme Lerat
undertook the removal of the brandy bottle, the glasses and the
sugar. Then they both scudded to the kitchen, where they installed
themselves at the table in an empty space between the dishcloths,
which were spread out to dry, and the bowl still full of dishwater.
"We said it was three hundred and forty. It's your turn."
"I play hearts."
When Zoe returned she found them once again absorbed. After a
silence, as Mme Lerat was shuffling, Mme Maloir asked who it was.
"Oh, nobody to speak of," replied the servant carelessly; "a slip of
a lad! I wanted to send him away again, but he's such a pretty boy
with never a hair on his chin and blue eyes and a girl's face! So I
told him to wait after all. He's got an enormous bouquet in his
hand, which he never once consented to put down. One would like to
catch him one--a brat like that who ought to be at school still!"
Mme Lerat went to fetch a water bottle to mix herself some brandy
and water, the lumps of sugar having rendered her thirsty. Zoe
muttered something to the effect that she really didn't mind if she
drank something too. Her mouth, she averred, was as bitter as gall.
"So you put him--?" continued Mme Maloir.
"Oh yes, I put him in the closet at the end of the room, the little
unfurnished one. There's only one of my lady's trunks there and a
table. It's there I stow the lubbers."
And she was putting plenty of sugar in her grog when the electric
bell made her jump. Oh, drat it all! Wouldn't they let her have a
drink in peace? If they were to have a peal of bells things
promised well. Nevertheless, she ran off to open the door.
Returning presently, she saw Mme Maloir questioning her with a
glance.
"It's nothing," she said, "only a bouquet."
All three refreshed themselves, nodding to each other in token of
salutation. Then while Zoe was at length busy clearing the table,
bringing the plates out one by one and putting them in the sink, two
other rings followed close upon one another. But they weren't
serious, for while keeping the kitchen informed of what was going on
she twice repeated her disdainful expression:
"Nothing, only a bouquet."
Notwithstanding which, the old ladies laughed between two of their
tricks when they heard her describe the looks of the creditors in
the anteroom after the flowers had arrived. Madame would find her
bouquets on her toilet table. What a pity it was they cost such a
lot and that you could only get ten sous for them! Oh dear, yes,
plenty of money was wasted!
"For my part," said Mme Maloir, "I should be quite content if every
day of my life I got what the men in Paris had spent on flowers for
the women."
"Now, you know, you're not hard to please," murmured Mme Lerat.
"Why, one would have only just enough to buy thread with. Four
queens, my dear."
It was ten minutes to four. Zoe was astonished, could not
understand why her mistress was out so long. Ordinarily when Madame
found herself obliged to go out in the afternoons she got it over in
double-quick time. But Mme Maloir declared that one didn't always
manage things as one wished. Truly, life was beset with obstacles,
averred Mme Lerat. The best course was to wait. If her niece was
long in coming it was because her occupations detained her; wasn't
it so? Besides, they weren't overworked--it was comfortable in the
kitchen. And as hearts were out, Mme Lerat threw down diamonds.
The bell began aga in
her small gloved hands.
It was too late now--Mme Lerat would not go to Rambouillet till
tomorrow, and Nana entered into long explanations.
"There's company waiting for you," the lady's maid repeated.
But Nana grew excited again. The company might wait: she'd go to
them all in good time when she'd finished. And as her aunt began
putting her hand out for the money:
"Ah no! Not all of it," she said. "Three hundred francs for the
nurse, fifty for your journey and expenses, that's three hundred and
fifty. Fifty francs I keep."
The big difficulty was how to find change. There were not ten
francs in the house. But they did not even address themselves to
Mme Maloir who, never having more than a six-sou omnibus fair upon
her, was listening in quite a disinterested manner. At length Zoe
went out of the room, remarking that she would go and looin, and when Zoe reappeared she was burning
with
excitement.
"My children, it's fat Steiner!" she said in the doorway, lowering
her voice as she spoke. "I've put HIM in the little sitting room."
Thereupon Mme Maloir spoke about the banker to Mme Lerat, who knew
no such gentleman. Was he getting ready to give Rose Mignon the go-
by? Zoe shook her head; she knew a thing or two. But once more she
had to go and open the door.
"Here's bothers!" she murmured when she came back. "It's the
nigger! 'Twasn't any good telling him that my lady's gone out, and
so he's settled himself in the bedroom. We only expected him this
evening."
At a quarter past four Nana was not in yet. What could she be
after? It was silly of her! Two other bouquets were brought round,
and Zoe, growing bored looked to see if there were any coffee left.
Yes, the ladies would willingly finish off the coffee; it would
waken them up. Sitting hunched up on their chairs, they were
beginning to fall asleep through dint of constantly taking their
cards between their fingers with the accustomed movement. The half-
hour sounded. Something must decidedly have happened to Madame.
And they began whispering to each other.
Suddenly Mme Maloir forgot herself and in a ringing voice announced:
"I've the five hundred! Trumps, Major Quint!"
"Oh, do be quiet!" said Zoe angrily. "What will all those gentlemen
think?" And in the silence which ensued and amid the whispered
muttering of the two old women at strife over their game, the sound
of rapid footsteps ascended from the back stairs. It was Nana at
last. Before she had opened the door her breathlessness became
audible. She bounced abruptly in, looking very red in the face.
Her skirt, the string of which must have been broken, was trailing
over the stairs, and her flounces had just been dipped in a puddle
of something unpleasant which had oozed out on the landing of the
first floor, where the servant girl was a regular slut.
"Here you are! It's lucky!" said Mme Lerat, pursing up her lips,
for she was still vexed at Mme Maloir's "five hundred." "You may
flatter yourself at the way you keep folks waiting."
"Madame isn't reasonable; indeed, she isn't!" added Zoe.
Nana was already harassed, and these reproaches exasperated her.
Was that the way people received her after the worry she had gone
through?
"Will you blooming well leave me alone, eh?" she cried.
"Hush, ma'am, there are people in there," said the maid.
Then in lower tones the young Woman stuttered breathlessly:
"D'you suppose I've been having a good time? Why, there was no end
to it. I should have liked to see you there! I was boiling with
rage! I felt inclined to smack somebody. And never a cab to come
home in! Luckily it's only a step from here, but never mind that; I
did just run home."
"You have the money?" asked the aunt.
"Dear, dear! That question!" rejoined Nana.
She had sat herself down on a chair close up against the stove, for
her legs had failed her after so much running, and without stopping
to take breath she drew from behind her stays an envelope in which
there were four hundred-franc notes. They were visible through a
large rent she had torn with savage fingers in order to be sure of
the contents. The three women round about her stared fixedly at the
envelope, a big, crumpled, dirty receptacle, as it lay claspedk in her
box, and she brought back a hundred francs in hundred-sou pieces.
They were counted out on a corner of the table, and Mme Lerat took
her departure at once after having promised to bring Louiset back
with her the following day.
"You say there's company there?" continued Nana, still sitting on
the chair and resting herself.
"Yes, madame, three people."
And Zoe mentioned the banker first. Nana made a face. Did that man
Steiner think she was going to let herself be bored because he had
thrown her a bouquet yesterday evening?
"Besides, I've had enough of it," she declared. "I shan't receive
today. Go and say you don't expect me now."
"Madame will think the matter over; Madame will receive Monsieur
Steiner," murmured Zoe gravely, without budging from her place. She
was annoyed to see her mistress on the verge of committing another
foolish mistake.
Then she mentioned the Walachian, who ought by now to find time
hanging heavy on his hands in the bedroom. Whereupon Nana grew
furious and more obstinate than ever. No, she would see nobody,
nobody! Who'd sent her such a blooming leech of a man?
"Chuck 'em all out! I--I'm going to play a game of bezique with
Madame Maloir. I prefer doing that."
The bell interrupted her remarks. That was the last straw. Another
of the beggars yet! She forbade Zoe to go and open the door, but
the latter had left the kitchen without listening to her, and when
she reappeared she brought back a couple of cards and said
authoritatively:
"I told them that Madame was receiving visitors. The gentlemen are
in the drawing room."
Nana had sprung up, raging, but the names of the Marquis de Chouard
and of Count Muffat de Beuville, which were inscribed on the cards,
calmed her down. For a moment or two she remained silent.
"Who are they?" she asked at last. "You know them?"
"I know the old fellow," replied Zoe, discreetly pursing up her
lips.
And her mistress continuing to question her with her eyes, she added
simply:
"I've seen him somewhere."
This remark seemed to decide the young woman. Regretfully she left
the kitchen, that asylum of steaming warmth, where you could talk
and take your ease amid the pleasant fumes of the coffeepot which
was being kept warm over a handful of glowing embers. She left Mme
Maloir behind her. That lady was now busy reading her fortune by
the cards; she had never yet taken her hat off, but now in order to
be more at her ease she undid the strings and threw them back over
her shoulders.
In the dressing room, where Zoe rapidly helped her on with a tea
gown, Nana revenged herself for the way in which they were all
boring her by muttering quiet curses upon the male sex. These big
words caused the lady's maid not a little distress, for she saw with
pain that her mistress was not rising superior to her origin as
quickly as she could have desired. She even made bold to beg Madame
to calm herself.
"You bet," was Nana's crude answer; "they're swine; they glory in
that sort of thing."
Nevertheless, she assumed her princesslike manner, as she was wont
to call it. But just when she was turning to go into the drawing
room Zoe held her back and herself introduced the Marquis de Chouard
and the Count Muffat into the dressing room. It was much better so.
"I regret having kept you waiting, gentlemen," said the young woman
with studied politeness.
The two men bowed and seated themselves. A blind of embroidered
tulle kept the little room in twilight. It was the most elegant
chamber in the flat, for it was hung with some light-colored fabric
and contained a cheval glass framed in inlaid wood, a lounge chair
and some others with arms and blue satin upholsteries. On the
toilet table the bouquets--roses, lilacs and hyacinths--appeared
like a very ruin of flowers. Their perfume was strong and
penetrating, while through the dampish air of the place, which was
full of the spoiled exhalations of the washstand, came occasional
whiffs of a more pungent scent, the scent of some grains or dry
patchouli ground to fine powder at the bottom of a cup. And as she
gathered herself together and drew up her dressing jacket, which had
been ill fastened, Nana had all the appearance of having been
surprised at her toilet: her skin was still damp; she smiled and
looked quite startled amid her frills and laces.
"Madame, you will pardon our insistence," said the Count Muffat
gravely. "We come on a quest. Monsieur and I are members of the
Benevolent Organization of the district."
The Marquis de Chouard hastened gallantly to add:
"When we learned that a great artiste lived in this house we
promised ourselves that we would put the claims of our poor people
before her in a very special manner. Talent is never without a
heart."
Nana pretended to be modest. She answered them with little
assenting movements of her head, making rapid reflections at the
same time. It must be the old man that had brought the other one:
he had such wicked eyes. And yet the other was not to be trusted
either: the veins near his temples were so queerly puffed up. He
might quite well have come by himself. Ah, now that she thought of
it, it was this way: the porter had given them her name, and they
had egged one another on, each with his own ends in view.
"Most certainly, gentlemen, you were quite right to come up," she
said with a very good grace.
But the electric bell made her tremble again. Another call, and
that Zoe always opening the door! She went on:
"One is only too happy to be able to give."
At bottom she was flattered.
"Ah, madame," rejoined the marquis, "if only you knew about it!
there's such misery! Our district has more than three thousand poor
people in it, and yet it's one of the richest. You cannot picture
to yourself anything like the present distress--children with no
bread, women ill, utterly without assistance, perishing of the
cold!"
"The poor souls!" cried Nana, very much moved.
Such was her feeling of compassion that tears flooded her fine eyes.
No longer studying deportment, she leaned forward with a quick
movement, and under her open dressing jacket her neck became
visible, while the bent position of her knees served to outline the
rounded contour of the thigh under the thin fabric of her skirt. A
little flush of blood appeared in the marquis's cadaverous cheeks.
Count Muffat, who was on the point of speaking, lowered his eyes.
The air of that little room was too hot: it had the close, heavy
warmth of a greenhouse. The roses were withering, and intoxicating
odors floated up from the patchouli in the cup.
"One would like to be very rich on occasions like this," added Nana.
"Well, well, we each do what we can. Believe me, gentlemen, if I
had known--"
She was on the point of being guilty of a silly speech, so melted
was she at heart. But she did not end her sentence and for a moment
was worried at not being able to remember where she had put her
fifty francs on changing her dress. But she recollected at last:
they must be on the corner of her toilet table under an inverted
pomatum pot. As she was in the act of rising the bell sounded for
quite a long time. Capital! Another of them still! It would never
end. The count and the marquis had both risen, too, and the ears of
the latter seemed to be pricked up and, as it were, pointing toward
the door; doubtless he knew that kind of ring. Muffat looked at
him; then they averted their gaze mutually. They felt awkward and
once more assumed their frigid bearing, the one looking square-set
and solid with his thick head of hair, the other drawing back his
lean shoulders, over which fell his fringe of thin white locks.
"My faith," said Nana, bringing the ten big silver pieces and quite
determined to laugh about it, "I am going to entrust you with this,
gentlemen. It is for the poor."
And the adorable little dimple in her chin became apparent. She
assumed her favorite pose, her amiable baby expression, as she held
the pile of five-franc pieces on her open palm and offered it to the
men, as though she were saying to them, "Now then, who wants some?"
The count was the sharper of the two. He took fifty francs but left
one piece behind and, in order to gain possession of it, had to pick
it off the young woman's very skin, a moist, supple skin, the touch
of which sent a thrill through him. She was thoroughly merry and
did not cease laughing.
"Come, gentlemen," she continued. "Another time I hope to give
more."
The gentlemen no longer had any pretext for staying, and they bowed
and went toward the door. But just as they were about to go out the
bell rang anew. The marquis could not conceal a faint smile, while
a frown made the count look more grave than before. Nana detained
them some seconds so as to give Zoe time to find yet another corner
for the newcomers. She did not relish meetings at her house. Only
this time the whole place must be packed! She was therefore much
relieved when she saw the drawing room empty and asked herself
whether Zoe had really stuffed them into the cupboards.
"Au revoir, gentlemen," she said, pausing on the threshold of the
drawing room.
It was as though she lapped them in her laughing smile and clear,
unclouded glance. The Count Muffat bowed slightly. Despite his
great social experience he felt that he had lost his equilibrium.
He needed air; he was overcome with the dizzy feeling engendered in
that dressing room with a scent of flowers, with a feminine essence
which choked him. And behind his back, the Marquis de Chouard, who
was sure that he could not be seen, made so bold as to wink at Nana,
his whole face suddenly altering its expression as he did so, and
his tongue nigh lolling from his mouth.
When the young woman re-entered the little room, where Zoe was
awaiting her with letters and visiting cards, she cried out,
laughing more heartily than ever:
"There are a pair of beggars for you! Why, they've got away with my
fifty francs!"
She wasn't vexed. It struck her as a joke that MEN should have got
money out of her. All the same, they were swine, for she hadn't a
sou left. But at sight of the cards and the letters her bad temper
returned. As to the letters, why, she said "pass" to them. They
were from fellows who, after applauding her last night, were now
making their declarations. And as to the callers, they might go
about their business!
Zoe had stowed them all over the place, and she called attention to
the great capabilities of the flat, every room in which opened on
the corridor. That wasn't the case at Mme Blanche's, where people
had all to go through the drawing room. Oh yes, Mme Blanche had had
plenty of bothers over it!
"You will send them all away," continued Nana in pursuance of her
idea. "Begin with the nigger."
"Oh, as to him, madame, I gave him his marching orders a while ago,"
said Zoe with a grin. "He only wanted to tell Madame that he
couldn't come to-night."
There was vast joy at this announcement, and Nana clapped her hands.
He wasn't coming, what good luck! She would be free then! And she
emitted sighs of relief, as though she had been let off the most
abominable of tortures. Her first thought was for Daguenet. Poor
duck, why, she had just written to tell him to wait till Thursday!
Quick, quick, Mme Maloir should write a second letter! But Zoe
announced that Mme Maloir had slipped away unnoticed, according to
her wont. Whereupon Nana, after talking of sending someone to him,
began to hesitate. She was very tired. A long night's sleep--oh,
it would be so jolly! The thought of such a treat overcame her at
last. For once in a way she could allow herself that!
"I shall go to bed when I come back from the theater," she murmured
greedily, "and you won't wake me before noon."
Then raising her voice:
"Now then, gee up! Shove the others downstairs!"
Zoe did not move. She would never have dreamed of giving her
mistress overt advice, only now she made shift to give Madame the
benefit of her experience when Madame seemed to be running her hot
head against a wall.
"Monsieur Steiner as well?" she queried curtly.
"Why, certainly!" replied Nana. "Before all the rest."
The maid still waited, in order to give her mistress time for
reflection. Would not Madame be proud to get such a rich gentleman
away from her rival Rose Mignon--a man, moreover, who was known in
all the theaters?
"Now make haste, my dear," rejoined Nana, who perfectly understood
the situation, "and tell him he pesters me."
But suddenly there was a reversion of feeling. Tomorrow she might
want him. Whereupon she laughed, winked once or twice and with a
naughty little gesture cried out:
"After all's said and done, if I want him the best way even now is
to kick him out of doors."
Zoe seemed much impressed. Struck with a sudden admiration, she
gazed at her mistress and then went and chucked Steiner out of doors
without further deliberation.
Meanwhile Nana waited patiently for a second or two in order to give
her time to sweep the place out, as she phrased it. No one would
ever have expected such a siege! She craned her head into the
drawing room and found it empty. The dining room was empty too.
But as she continued her visitation in a calmer frame of mind,
feeling certain that nobody remained behind, she opened the door of
a closet and came suddenly upon a very young man. He was sitting on
the top of a trunk, holding a huge bouquet on his knees and looking
exceedingly quiet and extremely well behaved.
"Goodness gracious me!" she cried. "There's one of 'em in there
even now!" The very young man had jumped down at sight of her and
was blushing as red as a poppy. He did not know what to do with his
bouquet, which he kept shifting from one hand to the other, while
his looks betrayed the extreme of emotion. His youth, his
embarrassment and the funny figure he cut in his struggles with his
flowers melted Nana's heart, and she burst into a pretty peal of
laughter. Well, now, the very children were coming, were they? Men
were arriving in long clothes. So she gave up all airs and graces,
became familiar and maternal, tapped her leg and asked for fun:
"You want me to wipe your nose; do you, baby?"
"Yes," replied the lad in a low, supplicating tone.
This answer made her merrier than ever. He was seventeen years old,
he said. His name was Georges Hugon. He was at the Varietes last
night and now he had come to see her.
"These flowers are for me?"
"Yes."
"Then give 'em to me, booby!"
But as she took the bouquet from him he sprang upon her hands and
kissed them with all the gluttonous eagerness peculiar to his
charming time of life. She had to beat him to make him let go.
There was a dreadful little dribbling customer for you! But as she
scolded him she flushed rosy-red and began smiling. And with that
she sent him about his business, telling him that he might call
again. He staggered away; he could not find the doors.
Nana went back into her dressing room, where Francis made his
appearance almost simultaneously in order to dress her hair for the
evening. Seated in front of her mirror and bending her head beneath
the hairdresser's nimble hands, she stayed silently meditative.
Presently, however, Zoe entered, remarking:
"There's one of them, madame, who refuses to go."
"Very well, he must be left alone," she answered quietly.
"If that comes to that they still keep arriving."
"Bah! Tell 'em to wait. When they begin to feel too hungry they'll
be off." Her humor had changed, and she was now delighted to make
people wait about for nothing. A happy thought struck her as very
amusing; she escaped from beneath Francis' hands and ran and bolted
the doors. They might now crowd in there as much as they liked;
they would probably refrain from making a hole through the wall.
Zoe could come in and out through the little doorway leading to the
kitchen. However, the electric bell rang more lustily than ever.
Every five minutes a clear, lively little ting-ting recurred as
regularly as if it had been produced by some well-adjusted piece of
mechanism. And Nana counted these rings to while the time away
withal. But suddenly she remembered something.
"I say, where are my burnt almonds?"
Francis, too, was forgetting about the burnt almonds. But now he
drew a paper bag from one of the pockets of his frock coat and
presented it to her with the discreet gesture of a man who is
offering a lady a present. Nevertheless, whenever his accounts came
to be settled, he always put the burnt almonds down on his bill.
Nana put the bag between her knees and set to work munching her
sweetmeats, turning her head from time to time under the
hairdresser's gently compelling touch.
"The deuce," she murmured after a silence, "there's a troop for
you!"
Thrice, in quick succession, the bell had sounded. Its summonses
became fast and furious. There were modest tintinnabulations which
seemed to stutter and tremble like a first avowal; there were bold
rings which vibrated under some rough touch and hasty rings which
sounded through the house with shivering rapidity. It was a regular
peal, as Zoe said, a peal loud enough to upset the neighborhood,
seeing that a whole mob of men were jabbing at the ivory button, one
after the other. That old joker Bordenave had really been far too
lavish with her address. Why, the whole of yesterday's house was
coming!
"By the by, Francis, have you five louis?" said Nana.
He drew back, looked carefully at her headdress and then quietly
remarked:
"Five louis, that's according!"
"Ah, you know if you want securities. . ." she continued.
And without finishing her sentence, she indicated the adjoining
rooms with a sweeping gesture. Francis lent the five louis. Zoe,
during each momentary respite, kept coming in to get Madame's things
ready. Soon she came to dress her while the hairdresser lingered
with the intention of giving some finishing touches to the
headdress. But the bell kept continually disturbing the lady's
maid, who left Madame with her stays half laced and only one shoe
on. Despite her long experience, the maid was losing her head.
After bringing every nook and corner into requisition and putting
men pretty well everywhere, she had been driven to stow them away in
threes and fours, which was a course of procedure entirely opposed
to her principles. So much the worse for them if they ate each
other up! It would afford more room! And Nana, sheltering behind
her carefully bolted door, began laughing at them, declaring that
she could hear them pant. They ought to be looking lovely in there
with their tongues hanging out like a lot of bowwows sitting round
on their behinds. Yesterday's success was not yet over, and this
pack of men had followed up her scent.
"Provided they don't break anything," she murmured.
She began to feel some anxiety, for she fancied she felt their hot
breath coming through chinks in the door. But Zoe ushered
Labordette in, and the young woman gave a little shout of relief.
He was anxious to tell her about an account he had settled for her
at the justice of peace's court. But she did not attend and said:
"I'll take you along with me. We'll have dinner together, and
afterward you shall escort me to the Varietes. I don't go on before
half-past nine."
Good old Labordette, how lucky it was he had come! He was a fellow
who never asked for any favors. He was only the friend of the
women, whose little bits of business he arranged for them. Thus on
his way in he had dismissed the creditors in the anteroom. Indeed,
those good folks really didn't want to be paid. On the contrary, if
they HAD been pressing for payment it was only for the sake of
complimenting Madame and of personally renewing their offers of
service after her grand success of yesterday.
"Let's be off, let's be off," said Nana, who was dressed by now.
But at that moment Zoe came in again, shouting:
"I refuse to open the door any more. They're waiting in a crowd all
down the stairs."
A crowd all down the stairs! Francis himself, despite the English
stolidity of manner which he was wont to affect, began laughing as
he put up his combs. Nana, who had already taken Labordette's arm,
pushed him into the kitchen and effected her escape. At last she
was delivered from the men and felt happily conscious that she might
now enjoy his society anywhere without fear of stupid interruptions.
"You shall see me back to my door," she said as they went down the
kitchen stairs. "I shall feel safe, in that case. Just fancy, I
want to sleep a whole night quite by myself--yes, a whole night!
It's sort of infatuation, dear boy!"
CHAPTER III
The countess Sabine, as it had become customary to call Mme Muffat
de Beuville in order to distinguish her from the count's mother, who
had died the year before, was wont to receive every Tuesday in her
house in the Rue Miromesnil at the corner of the Rue de Pentievre.
It was a great square building, and the Muffats had lived in it for
a hundred years or more. On the side of the street its frontage
seemed to slumber, so lofty was it and dark, so sad and conventlike,
with its great outer shutters, which were nearly always closed. And
at the back in a little dark garden some trees had grown up and were
straining toward the sunlight with such long slender branches that
their tips were visible above the roof.
This particular Tuesday, toward ten o'clock in the evening, there
were scarcely a dozen people in the drawing room. When she was only
expecting intimate friends the countess opened neither the little
drawing room nor the dining room. One felt more at home on such
occasions and chatted round the fire. The drawing room was very
large and very lofty; its four windows looked out upon the garden,
from which, on this rainy evening of the close of April, issued a
sensation of damp despite the great logs burning on the hearth. The
sun never shone down into the room; in the daytime it was dimly lit
up by a faint greenish light, but at night, when the lamps and the
chandelier were burning, it looked merely a serious old chamber with
its massive mahogany First Empire furniture, its hangings and chair
coverings of yellow velvet, stamped with a large design. Entering
it, one was in an atmosphere of cold dignity, of ancient manners, of
a vanished age, the air of which seemed devotional.
Opposite the armchair, however, in which the count's mother had
died--a square armchair of formal design and inhospitable padding,
which stood by the hearthside--the Countess Sabine was seated in a
deep and cozy lounge, the red silk upholsteries of which were soft
as eider down. It was the only piece of modern furniture there, a
fanciful item introduced amid the prevailing severity and clashing
with it.
"So we shall have the shah of Persia," the young woman was saying.
They were talking of the crowned heads who were coming to Paris for
the exhibition. Several ladies had formed a circle round the
hearth, and Mme du Joncquoy, whose brother, a diplomat, had just
fulfilled a mission in the East, was giving some details about the
court of Nazr-ed-Din.
"Are you out of sorts, my dear?" asked Mme Chantereau, the wife of
an ironmaster, seeing the countess shivering slightly and growing
pale as she did so.
"Oh no, not at all," replied the latter, smiling. "I felt a little
cold. This drawing room takes so long to warm."
And with that she raised her melancholy eyes and scanned the walls
from floor to ceiling. Her daughter Estelle, a slight, insignificant-
looking girl of sixteen, the thankless period of life, quitted
the large footstool on which she was sitting and silently came
and propped up one of the logs which had rolled from its place.
But Mme de Chezelles, a convent friend of Sabine's and her junior by
five years, exclaimed:
"Dear me, I would gladly be possessed of a drawing room such as
yours! At any rate, you are able to receive visitors. They only
build boxes nowadays. Oh, if I were in your place!"
She ran giddily on and with lively gestures explained how she would
alter the hangings, the seats--everything, in fact. Then she would
give balls to which all Paris should run. Behind her seat her
husband, a magistrate, stood listening with serious air. It was
rumored that she deceived him quite openly, but people pardoned her
offense and received her just the same, because, they said, "she's
not answerable for her actions."
"Oh that Leonide!" the Countess Sabine contented herself by
murmuring, smiling her faint smile the while.
With a languid movement she eked out the thought that was in her.
After having lived there seventeen years she certainly would not
alter her drawing room now. It would henceforth remain just such as
her mother-in-law had wished to preserve it during her lifetime.
Then returning to the subject of conversation:
"I have been assured," she said, "that we shall also have the king
of Prussia and the emperor of Russia."
'Yes, some very fine fetes are promised," said Mme du Joncquoy.
The banker Steiner, not long since introduced into this circle by
Leonide de Chezelles, who was acquainted with the whole of Parisian
society, was sitting chatting on a sofa between two of the windows.
He was questioning a deputy, from whom he was endeavoring with much
adroitness to elicit news about a movement on the stock exchange of
which he had his suspicions, while the Count Muffat, standing in
front of them, was silently listening to their talk, looking, as he
did so, even grayer than was his wont.
Four or five young men formed another group near the door round the
Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who in a low tone was telling them an
anecdote. It was doubtless a very risky one, for they were choking
with laughter. Companionless in the center of the room, a stout
man, a chief clerk at the Ministry of the Interior, sat heavily in
an armchair, dozing with his eyes open. But when one of the young
men appeared to doubt the truth of the anecdote Vandeuvres raised
his voice.
"You are too much of a skeptic, Foucarmont; you'll spoil all your
pleasures that way."
And he returned to the ladies with a laugh. Last scion of a great
family, of feminine manners and witty tongue, he was at that time
running through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite which
nothing could appease. His racing stable, which was one of the best
known in Paris, cost him a fabulous amount of money; his betting
losses at the Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number
of pounds, while taking one year with another, his mistresses would
be always devouring now a farm, now some acres of arable land or
forest, which amounted, in fact, to quite a respectable slice of his
vast estates in Picardy.
"I advise you to call other people skeptics! Why, you don't believe
a thing yourself," said Leonide, making shift to find him a little
space in which to sit down at her side.
"It's you who spoil your own pleasures."
"Exactly," he replied. "I wish to make others benefit by my
experience."
But the company imposed silence on him: he was scandalizing M.
Venot. And, the ladies having changed their positions, a little old
man of sixty, with bad teeth and a subtle smile, became visible in
the depths of an easy chair. There he sat as comfortably as in his
own house, listening to everybody's remarks and making none himself.
With a slight gesture he announced himself by no means scandalized.
Vandeuvres once more assumed his dignified bearing and added
gravely:
"Monsieur Venot is fully aware that I believe what it is one's duty
to believe."
It was an act of faith, and even Leonide appeared satisfied. The
young men at the end of the room no longer laughed; the company were
old fogies, and amusement was not to be found there. A cold breath
of wind had passed over them, and amid the ensuing silence Steiner's
nasal voice became audible. The deputy's discreet answers were at
last driving him to desperation. For a second or two the Countess
Sabine looked at the fire; then she resumed the conversation.
"I saw the king of Prussia at Baden-Baden last year. He's still
full of vigor for his age."
"Count Bismarck is to accompany him," said Mme du Joncquoy. "Do you
know the count? I lunched with him at my brother's ages ago, when
he was representative of Prussia in Paris. There's a man now whose
latest successes I cannot in the least understand."
"But why?" asked Mme Chantereau.
"Good gracious, how am I to explain? He doesn't please me. His
appearance is boorish and underbred. Besides, so far as I am
concerned, I find him stupid."
With that the whole room spoke of Count Bismarck, and opinions
differed considerably. Vandeuvres knew him and assured the company
that he was great in his cups and at play. But when the discussion
was at its height the door was opened, and Hector de la Falois made
his appearance. Fauchery, who followed in his wake, approached the
countess and, bowing:
"Madame," he said, "I have not forgotten your extremely kind
invitation."
She smiled and made a pretty little speech. The journalist, after
bowing to the count, stood for some moments in the middle of the
drawing room. He only recognized Steiner and accordingly looked
rather out of his element. But Vandeuvres turned and came and shook
hands with him. And forthwith, in his delight at the meeting and
with a sudden desire to be confidential, Fauchery buttonholed him
and said in a low voice:
"It's tomorrow. Are you going?"
"Egad, yes."
"At midnight, at her house.
"I know, I know. I'm going with Blanche."
He wanted to escape and return to the ladies in order to urge yet
another reason in M. de Bismarck's favor. But Fauchery detained
him.
"You never will guess whom she has charged me to invite."
And with a slight nod he indicated Count Muffat, who was just then
discussing a knotty point in the budget with Steiner and the deputy.
"It's impossible," said Vandeuvres, stupefaction and merriment in
his tones. "My word on it! I had to swear that I would bring him
to her. Indeed, that's one of my reasons for coming here."
Both laughed silently, and Vandeuvres, hurriedly rejoining the
circle of ladies, cried out:
"I declare that on the contrary Monsieur de Bismarck is exceedingly
witty. For instance, one evening he said a charmingly epigrammatic
thing in my presence."
La Faloise meanwhile had heard the few rapid sentences thus
whisperingly interchanged, and he gazed at Fauchery in hopes of an
explanation which was not vouchsafed him. Of whom were they
talking, and what were they going to do at midnight tomorrow? He
did not leave his cousin's side again. The latter had gone and
seated himself. He was especially interested by the Countess
Sabine. Her name had often been mentioned in his presence, and he
knew that, having been married at the age of seventeen, she must now
be thirty-four and that since her marriage she had passed a
cloistered existence with her husband and her mother-in-law. In
society some spoke of her as a woman of religious chastity, while
others pitied her and recalled to memory her charming bursts of
laughter and the burning glances of her great eyes in the days prior
to her imprisonment in this old town house. Fauchery scrutinized
her and yet hesitated. One of his friends, a captain who had
recently died in Mexico, had, on the very eve of his departure, made
him one of those gross postprandial confessions, of which even the
most prudent among men are occasionally guilty. But of this he only
retained a vague recollection; they had dined not wisely but too
well that evening, and when he saw the countess, in her black dress
and with her quiet smile, seated in that Old World drawing room, he
certainly had his doubts. A lamp which had been placed behind her
threw into clear relief her dark, delicate, plump side face, wherein
a certain heaviness in the contours of the mouth alone indicated a
species of imperious sensuality.
"What do they want with their Bismarck?" muttered La Faloise, whose
constant pretense it was to be bored in good society. "One's ready
to kick the bucket here. A pretty idea of yours it was to want to
come!"
Fauchery questioned him abruptly.
"Now tell me, does the countess admit someone to her embraces?"
"Oh dear, no, no! My dear fellow!" he stammered, manifestly taken
aback and quite forgetting his pose. "Where d'you think we are?"
After which he was conscious of a want of up-to-dateness in this
outburst of indignation and, throwing himself back on a great sofa,
he added:
"Gad! I say no! But I don't know much about it. There's a little
chap out there, Foucarmont they call him, who's to be met with
everywhere and at every turn. One's seen faster men than that,
though, you bet. However, it doesn't concern me, and indeed, all I
know is that if the countess indulges in high jinks she's still
pretty sly about it, for the thing never gets about--nobody talks."
Then although Fauchery did not take the trouble to question him, he
told him all he knew about the Muffats. Amid the conversation of
the ladies, which still continued in front of the hearth, they both
spoke in subdued tones, and, seeing them there with their white
cravats and gloves, one might have supposed them to be discussing in
chosen phraseology some really serious topic. Old Mme Muffat then,
whom La Faloise had been well acquainted with, was an insufferable
old lady, always hand in glove with the priests. She had the grand
manner, besides, and an authoritative way of comporting herself,
which bent everybody to her will. As to Muffat, he was an old man's
child; his father, a general, had been created count by Napoleon I,
and naturally he had found himself in favor after the second of
December. He hadn't much gaiety of manner either, but he passed for
a very honest man of straightforward intentions and understanding.
Add to these a code of old aristocratic ideas and such a lofty
conception of his duties at court, of his dignities and of his
virtues, that he behaved like a god on wheels. It was the Mamma
Muffat who had given him this precious education with its daily
visits to the confessional, its complete absence of escapades and of
all that is meant by youth. He was a practicing Christian and had
attacks of faith of such fiery violence that they might be likened
to accesses of burning fever. Finally, in order to add a last touch
to the picture, La Faloise whispered something in his cousin's ear.
"You don't say so!" said the latter.
"On my word of honor, they swore it was true! He was still like
that when he married."
Fauchery chuckled as he looked at the count, whose face, with its
fringe of whiskers and absence of mustaches, seemed to have grown
squarer and harder now that he was busy quoting figures to the
writhing, struggling Steiner.
"My word, he's got a phiz for it!" murmured Fauchery. "A pretty
present he made his wife! Poor little thing, how he must have bored
her! She knows nothing about anything, I'll wager!"
Just then the Countess Sabine was saying something to him. But he
did not hear her, so amusing and extraordinary did he esteem the
Muffats' case. She repeated the question.
"Monsieur Fauchery, have you not published a sketch of Monsieur de
Bismarck? You spoke with him once?"
He got up briskly and approached the circle of ladies, endeavoring
to collect himself and soon with perfect ease of manner finding an
answer:
"Dear me, madame, I assure you I wrote that 'portrait' with the help
of biographies which had been published in Germany. I have never
seen Monsieur de Bismarck."
He remained beside the countess and, while talking with her,
continued his meditations. She did not look her age; one would have
set her down as being twenty-eight at most, for her eyes, above all,
which were filled with the dark blue shadow of her long eyelashes,
retained the glowing light of youth. Bred in a divided family, so
that she used to spend one month with the Marquis de Chouard,
another with the marquise, she had been married very young, urged
on, doubtless, by her father, whom she embarrassed after her
mother's death. A terrible man was the marquis, a man about whom
strange tales were beginning to be told, and that despite his lofty
piety! Fauchery asked if he should have the honor of meeting him.
Certainly her father was coming, but only very late; he had so much
work on hand! The journalist thought he knew where the old
gentleman passed his evenings and looked grave. But a mole, which
he noticed close to her mouth on the countess's left cheek,
surprised him. Nana had precisely the same mole. It was curious.
Tiny hairs curled up on it, only they were golden in Nana's case,
black as jet in this. Ah well, never mind! This woman enjoyed
nobody's embraces.
"I have always felt a wish to know Queen Augusta," she said. "They
say she is so good, so devout. Do you think she will accompany the
king?"
"It is not thought that she will, madame," he replied.
She had no lovers: the thing was only too apparent. One had only to
look at her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting so
insignificant and constrained on her footstool. That sepulchral
drawing room of hers, which exhaled odors suggestive of being in a
church, spoke as plainly as words could of the iron hand, the
austere mode of existence, that weighed her down. There was nothing
suggestive of her own personality in that ancient abode, black with
the damps of years. It was Muffat who made himself felt there, who
dominated his surroundings with his devotional training, his
penances and his fasts. But the sight of the little old gentleman
with the black teeth and subtle smile whom he suddenly discovered in
his armchair behind the group of ladies afforded him a yet more
decisive argument. He knew the personage. It was Theophile Venot,
a retired lawyer who had made a specialty of church cases. He had
left off practice with a handsome fortune and was now leading a
sufficiently mysterious existence, for he was received everywhere,
treated with great deference and even somewhat feared, as though he
had been the representative of a mighty force, an occult power,
which was felt to be at his back. Nevertheless, his behavior was
very humble. He was churchwarden at the Madeleine Church and had
simply accepted the post of deputy mayor at the town house of the
Ninth Arrondissement in order, as he said, to have something to do
in his leisure time. Deuce take it, the countess was well guarded;
there was nothing to be done in that quarter.
"You're right, it's enough to make one kick the bucket here," said
Fauchery to his cousin when he had made good his escape from the
circle of ladies. "We'll hook it!"
But Steiner, deserted at last by the Count Muffat and the deputy,
came up in a fury. Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and
he grumbled huskily:
"Gad! Let 'em tell me nothing, if nothing they want to tell me. I
shall find people who will talk."
Then he pushed the journalist into a corner and, altering his tone,
said in accents of victory:
"It's tomorrow, eh? I'm of the party, my bully!"
"Indeed!" muttered Fauchery with some astonishment.
"You didn't know about it. Oh, I had lots of bother to find her at
home. Besides, Mignon never would leave me alone."
"But they're to be there, are the Mignons."
"Yes, she told me so. In fact, she did receive my visit, and she
invited me. Midnight punctually, after the play."
The banker was beaming. He winked and added with a peculiar
emphasis on the words:
"You've worked it, eh?"
"Eh, what?" said Fauchery, pretending not to understand him. "She
wanted to thank me for my article, so she came and called on me."
"Yes, yes. You fellows are fortunate. You get rewarded. By the
by, who pays the piper tomorrow?"
The journalist made a slight outward movement with his arms, as
though he would intimate that no one had ever been able to find out.
But Vandeuvres called to Steiner, who knew M. de Bismarck. Mme du
Joncquoy had almost convinced herself of the truth of her
suppositions; she concluded with these words:
"He gave me an unpleasant impression. I think his face is evil.
But I am quite willing to believe that he has a deal of wit. It
would account for his successes."
"Without doubt," said the banker with a faint smile. He was a Jew
from Frankfort.
Meanwhile La Faloise at last made bold to question his cousin. He
followed him up and got inside his guard:
"There's supper at a woman's tomorrow evening? With which of them,
eh? With which of them?"
Fauchery motioned to him that they were overheard and must respect
the conventions here. The door had just been opened anew, and an
old lady had come in, followed by a young man in whom the journalist
recognized the truant schoolboy, perpetrator of the famous and as
yet unforgotten "tres chic" of the Blonde Venus first night. This
lady's arrival caused a stir among the company. The Countess Sabine
had risen briskly from her seat in order to go and greet her, and
she had taken both her hands in hers and addressed her as her "dear
Madame Hugon." Seeing that his cousin viewed this little episode
with some curiosity, La Faloise sought to arouse his interest and in
a few brief phrases explained the position. Mme Hugon, widow of a
notary, lived in retirement at Les Fondettes, an old estate of her
family's in the neighborhood of Orleans, but she also kept up a
small establishment in Paris in a house belonging to her in the Rue
de Richelieu and was now passing some weeks there in order to settle
her youngest son, who was reading the law and in his "first year."
In old times she had been a dear friend of the Marquise de Chouard
and had assisted at the birth of the countess, who, prior to her
marriage, used to stay at her house for months at a time and even
now was quite familiarly treated by her.
"I have brought Georges to see you," said Mme Hugon to Sabine.
"He's grown, I trust."
The young man with his clear eyes and the fair curls which suggested
a girl dressed up as a boy bowed easily to the countess and reminded
her of a bout of battledore and shuttlecock they had had together
two years ago at Les Fondettes.
"Philippe is not in Paris?" asked Count Muffat.
"Dear me, no!" replied the old lady. "He is always in garrison at
Bourges." She had seated herself and began talking with
considerable pride of her eldest son, a great big fellow who, after
enlisting in a fit of waywardness, had of late very rapidly attained
the rank of lieutenant. All the ladies behaved to her with
respectful sympathy, and conversation was resumed in a tone at once
more amiable and more refined. Fauchery, at sight of that
respectable Mme Hugon, that motherly face lit up with such a kindly
smile beneath its broad tresses of white hair, thought how foolish
he had been to suspect the Countess Sabine even for an instant.
Nevertheless, the big chair with the red silk upholsteries in which
the countess sat had attracted his attention. Its style struck him
as crude, not to say fantastically suggestive, in that dim old
drawing room. Certainly it was not the count who had inveigled
thither that nest of voluptuous idleness. One might have described
it as an experiment, marking the birth of an appetite and of an
enjoyment. Then he forgot where he was, fell into brown study and
in thought even harked back to that vague confidential announcement
imparted to him one evening in the dining room of a restaurant.
Impelled by a sort of sensuous curiosity, he had always wanted an
introduction into the Muffats' circle, and now that his friend was
in Mexico through all eternity, who could tell what might happen?
"We shall see," he thought. It was a folly, doubtless, but the idea
kept tormenting him; he felt himself drawn on and his animal nature
aroused. The big chair had a rumpled look--its nether cushions had
been tumbled, a fact which now amused him.
"Well, shall we be off?" asked La Faloise, mentally vowing that once
outside he would find out the name of the woman with whom people
were going to sup.
"All in good time," replied Fauchery.
But he was no longer in any hurry and excused himself on the score
of the invitation he had been commissioned to give and had as yet
not found a convenient opportunity to mention. The ladies were
chatting about an assumption of the veil, a very touching ceremony
by which the whole of Parisian society had for the last three days
been greatly moved. It was the eldest daughter of the Baronne de
Fougeray, who, under stress of an irresistible vocation, had just
entered the Carmelite Convent. Mme Chantereau, a distant cousin of
the Fougerays, told how the baroness had been obliged to take to her
bed the day after the ceremony, so overdone was she with weeping.
"I had a very good place," declared Leonide. "I found it
interesting."
Nevertheless, Mme Hugon pitied the poor mother. How sad to lose a
daughter in such a way!
"I am accused of being overreligious," she said in her quiet, frank
manner, "but that does not prevent me thinking the children very
cruel who obstinately commit such suicide."
"Yes, it's a terrible thing," murmured the countess, shivering a
little, as became a chilly person, and huddling herself anew in the
depths of her big chair in front of the fire.
Then the ladies fell into a discussion. But their voices were
discreetly attuned, while light trills of laughter now and again
interrupted the gravity of their talk. The two lamps on the chimney
piece, which had shades of rose-colored lace, cast a feeble light
over them while on scattered pieces of furniture there burned but
three other lamps, so that the great drawing room remained in soft
shadow.
Steiner was getting bored. He was describing to Fauchery an
escapade of that little Mme de Chezelles, whom he simply referred to
as Leonide. "A blackguard woman," he said, lowering his voice
behind the ladies' armchairs. Fauchery looked at her as she sat
quaintly perched, in her voluminous ball dress of pale blue satin,
on the corner of her armchair. She looked as slight and impudent as
a boy, and he ended by feeling astonished at seeing her there.
People comported themselves better at Caroline Hequet's, whose
mother had arranged her house on serious principles. Here was a
perfect subject for an article. Whuat a strange world was this world
of Paris! The most rigid circles found themselves invaded.
Evidently that silent Theophile Venot, who contented himself by
smiling and showing his ugly teeth, must have been a legacy from the
late countess. So, too, must have been such ladies of mature age as
Mme Chantereau and Mme du Joncquoy, besides four or five old
gentlemen who sat motionless in corners. The Count Muffat attracted
to the house a series of functionaries, distinguished by the
immaculate personal appearance which was at that time required of
the men at the Tuileries. Among others there was the chief clerk,
who still sat solitary in the middle of the room with his closely
shorn cheeks, his vacant glance and his coat so tight of fit that he
could scarce venture to move. Almost all the young men and certain
individuals with distinguished, aristocratic manners were the
Marquis de Chouard's contribution to the circle, he having kept
touch with the Legitimist party after making his peace with the
empire on his entrance into the Council of State. There remained
Leonide de Chezelles and Steiner, an ugly little knot against which
Mme Hugon's elderly and amiable serenity stood out in strange
contrast. And Fauchery, having sketched out his article, named this
last group "Countess Sabine's little clique."
"On another occasion," continued Steiner in still lower tones,
"Leonide got her tenor down to Montauban. She was living in the
Chateau de Beaurecueil, two leagues farther off, and she used to
come in daily in a carriage and pair in order to visit him at the
Lion d'Or, where he had put up. The carriage used to wait at the
door, and Leonide would stay for hours in the house, while a crowd
gathered round and looked at the horses."
There was a pause in the talk, and some solemn moments passed
silently by in the lofty room. Two young men were whispering, but
they ceased in their turn, and the hushed step of Count Muffat was
alone audible as he crossed the floor. The lamps seemed to have
paled; the fire was going out; a stern shadow fell athwart the old
friends of the house where they sat in the chairs they had occupied
there for forty years back. It was as though in a momentary pause
of conversation the invited guests had become suddenly aware that
the count's mother, in all her glacial stateliness, had returned
among them.
But the Countess Sabine had once more resumed:
"Well, at last the news of it got about. The young man was likely
to die, and that would explain the poor child's adoption of the
religious life. Besides, they say that Monsieur de Fougeray wold
never have given his consent to the marriage."
"They say heaps of other things too," cried Leonide giddily.
She fell a-laughing; she refused to talk. Sabine was won over by
this gaiety and put her handkerchief up to her lips. And in the
vast and solemn room their laughter sounded a note which struck
Fauchery strangely, the note of delicate glass breaking. Assuredly
here was the first beginning of the "little rift." Everyone began
talking again. Mme du Joncquoy demurred; Mme Chantereau knew for
certain that a marriage had been projected but that matters had gone
no further; the men even ventured to give their opinions. For some
minutes the conversation was a babel of opinions, in which the
divers elements of the circle, whether Bonapartist or Legitimist or
merely worldly and skeptical, appeared to jostle one another
simultaneously. Estelle had rung to order wood to be put on the
fire; the footman turned up the lamps; the room seemed to wake from
sleep. Fauchery began smiling, as though once more at his ease.
"Egad, they become the brides of God when they couldn't be their
cousin's," said Vandeuvres between his teeth.
The subject bored him, and he had rejoined Fauchery.
"My dear fellow, have you ever seen a woman who was really loved
become a nun?"
He did not wait for an answer, for he had had enough of the topic,
and in a hushed voice:
"Tell me," he said, "how many of us will there be tomorrow?
There'll be the Mignons, Steiner, yourself, Blanche and I; who
else?"
"Caroline, I believe, and Simonne and Gaga without doubt. One never
knows exactly, does one? On such occasions one expects the party
will number twenty, and you're really thirty."
Vandeuvres, who was looking at the ladies, passed abruptly to
another subject:
"She must have been very nice-looking, that Du Joncquoy woman, some
fifteen years ago. Poor Estelle has grown lankier than ever. What
a nice lath to put into a bed!"
But interrupting himself, he returned to the subject of tomorrow's
supper.
"What's so tiresome of those shows is that it's always the same set
of women. One wants a novelty. Do try and invent a new girl. By
Jove, happy thought! I'll go and beseech that stout man to bring
the woman he was trotting about the other evening at the Varietes."
He referred to the chief clerk, sound asleep in the middle of the
drawing room. Fauchery, afar off, amused himself by following this
delicate negotiation. Vandeuvres had sat himself down by the stout
man, who still looked very sedate. For some moments they both
appeared to be discussing with much propriety the question before
the house, which was, "How can one discover the exact state of
feeling that urges a young girl to enter into the religious life?"
Then the count returned with the remark:
"It's impossible. He swears she's straight. She'd refuse, and yet
I would have wagered that I once saw her at Laure's."
"Eh, what? You go to Laure's?" murmured Fauchery with a chuckle.
"You venture your reputation in places like that? I was under the
impression that it was only we poor devils of outsiders who--"
"Ah, dear boy, one ought to see every side of life."
Then they sneered and with sparkling eyes they compared notes about
the table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs, where big Laure Piedefer
ran a dinner at three francs a head for little women in
difficulties. A nice hole, where all the little women used to kiss
Laure on the lips! And as the Countess Sabine, who had overheard a
stray word or two, turned toward them, they started back, rubbing
shoulders in excited merriment. They had not noticed that Georges
Hugon was close by and that he was listening to them, blushing so
hotly the while that a rosy flush had spread from his ears to his
girlish throat. The infant was full of shame and of ecstasy. From
the moment his mother had turned him loose in the room he had been
hovering in the wake of Mme de Chezelles, the only woman present who
struck him as being the thing. But after all is said and done, Nana
licked her to fits!
"Yesterday evening," Mme Hugon was saying, "Georges took me to the
play. Yes, we went to the Varietes, where I certainly had not set
foot for the last ten years. That child adores music. As to me, I
wasn't in the least amused, but he was so happy! They put
extraordinary pieces on the stage nowadays. Besides, music delights
me very little, I confess."
"What! You don't love music, madame?" cried Mme du Joncquoy,
lifting her eyes to heaven. "Is it possible there should be people
who don't love music?"
The exclamation of surprise was general. No one had dropped a
single word concerning the performance at the Varietes, at which the
good Mme Hugon had not understood any of the allusions. The ladies
knew the piece but said nothing about it, and with that they plunged
into the realm of sentiment and began discussing the masters in a
tone of refined and ecstatical admiration. Mme du Joncquoy was not
fond of any of them save Weber, while Mme Chantereau stood up for
the Italians. The ladies' voices had turned soft and languishing,
and in front of the hearth one might have fancied one's self
listening in meditative, religious retirement to the faint, discreet
music of a little chapel.
"Now let's see," murmured Vandeuvres, bringing Fauchery back into
the middle of the drawing room, "notwithstanding it all, we must
invent a woman for tomorrow. Shall we ask Steiner about it?"
"Oh, when Steiner's got hold of a woman," said the journalist, "it's
because Paris has done with her."
Vandeuvres, however, was searching about on every side.
"Wait a bit," he continued, "the other day I met Foucarmont with a
charming blonde. I'll go and tell him to bring her."
And he called to Foucarmont. They exchanged a few words rapidly.
There must have been some sort of complication, for both of them,
moving carefully forward and stepping over the dresses of the
ladies, went off in quest of another young man with whom they
continued the discussion in the embrasure of a window. Fauchery was
left to himself and had just decided to proceed to the hearth, where
Mme du Joncquoy was announcing that she never heard Weber played
without at the same time seeing lakes, forests and sunrises over
landscapes steeped in dew, when a hand touched his shoulder and a
voice behind him remarked:
"It's not civil of you."
"What d'you mean?" he asked, turning round and recognizing La
Faloise.
"Why, about that supper tomorrow. You might easily have got me
invited."
Fauchery was at length about to state his reasons when Vandeuvres
came back to tell him:
"It appears it isn't a girl of Foucarmont's. It's that man's flame
out there. She won't be able to come. What a piece of bad luck!
But all the same I've pressed Foucarmont into the service, and he's
going to try to get Louise from the Palais-Royal."
"Is it not true, Monsieur de Vandeuvres," asked Mme Chantereau,
raising her voice, "that Wagner's music was hissed last Sunday?"
"Oh, frightfully, madame," he made answer, coming forward with his
usual exquisite politeness.
Then, as they did not detain him, he moved off and continued
whispering in the journalist's ear:
"I'm going to press some more of them. These young fellows must
know some little ladies."
With that he was observed to accost men and to engage them in
conversation in his usual amiable and smiling way in every corner of
the drawing room. He mixed with the various groups, said something
confidently to everyone and walked away again with a sly wink and a
secret signal or two. It looked as though he were giving out a
watchword in that easy way of his. The news went round; the place
of meeting was announced, while the ladies' sentimental
dissertations on music served to conceal the small, feverish rumor
of these recruiting operations.
"No, do not speak of your Germans," Mme Chantereau was saying.
"Song is gaiety; song is light. Have you heard Patti in the Barber
of Seville?"
"She was delicious!" murmured Leonide, who strummed none but
operatic airs on her piano.
Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had rung. When on Tuesdays the number
of visitors was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself.
While directing a footman to clear a round table the countess
followed the Count de Vandeuvres with her eyes. She still smiled
that vague smile which slightly disclosed her white teeth, and as
the count passed she questioned him.
"What ARE you plotting, Monsieur de Vandeuvres?"
"What am I plotting, madame?" he answered quietly. "Nothing at
all."
"Really! I saw you so busy. Pray, wait, you shall make yourself
useful!"
She placed an album in his hands and asked him to put it on the
piano. But he found means to inform Fauchery in a low whisper that
they would have Tatan Nene, the most finely developed girl that
winter, and Maria Blond, the same who had just made her first
appearance at the Folies-Dramatiques. Meanwhile La Faloise stopped
him at every step in hopes of receiving an invitation. He ended by
offering himself, and Vandeuvres engaged him in the plot at once;
only he made him promise to bring Clarisse with him, and when La
Faloise pretended to scruple about certain points he quieted him by
the remark:
"Since I invite you that's enough!"
Nevertheless, La Faloise would have much liked to know the name of
the hostess. But the countess had recalled Vandeuvres and was
questioning him as to the manner in which the English made tea. He
often betook himself to England, where his horses ran. Then as
though he had been inwardly following up quite a laborious train of
thought during his remarks, he broke in with the question:
"And the marquis, by the by? Are we not to see him?"
"Oh, certainly you will! My father made me a formal promise that he
would come," replied the countess. "But I'm beginning to be
anxious. His duties will have kept him."
Vandeuvres smiled a discreet smile. He, too, seemed to have his
doubts as to the exact nature of the Marquis de Chouard's duties.
Indeed, he had been thinking of a pretty woman whom the marquis
occasionally took into the country with him. Perhaps they could get
her too.
In the meantime Fauchery decided that the moment had come in which
to risk giving Count Muff his invitation. The evening, in fact,
was drawing to a close.
"Are you serious?" asked Vandeuvres, who thought a joke was
intended.
"Extremely serious. If I don't execute my commission she'll tear my
eyes out. It's a case of landing her fish, you know."
"Well then, I'll help you, dear boy."
Eleven o'clock struck. Assisted by her daughter, the countess was
pouring out the tea, and as hardly any guests save intimate friends
had come, the cups and the platefuls of little cakes were being
circulated without ceremony. Even the ladies did not leave their
armchairs in front of the fire and sat sipping their tea and
nibbling cakes which they held between their finger tips. From
music the talk had declined to purveyors. Boissier was the only
person for sweetmeats and Catherine for ices. Mme Chantereau,
however, was all for Latinville. Speech grew more and more
indolent, and a sense of lassitude was lulling the room to sleep.
Steiner had once more set himself secretly to undermine the deputy,
whom he held in a state of blockade in the corner of a settee. M.
Venot, whose teeth must have been ruined by sweet things, was eating
little dry cakes, one after the other, with a small nibbling sound
suggestive of a mouse, while the chief clerk, his nose in a teacup,
seemed never to be going to finish its contents. As to the
countess, she went in a leisurely way from one guest to another,
never pressing them, indeed, only pausing a second or two before the
gentlemen whom she viewed with an air of dumb interrogation before
she smiled and passed on. The great fire had flushed all her face,
and she looked as if she were the sister of her daughter, who
appeared so withered and ungainly at her side. When she drew near
Fauchery, who was chatting with her husband and Vandeuvres, she
noticed that they grew suddenly silent; accordingly she did not stop
but handed the cup of tea she was offering to Georges Hugon beyond
them.
"It's a lady who desires your company at supper," the journalist
gaily continued, addressing Count Muffat.
The last-named, whose face had worn its gray look all the evening,
seemed very much surprised. What lady was it?
"Oh, Nana!" said Vandeuvres, by way of forcing the invitation.
The count became more grave than before. His eyelids trembled just
perceptibly, while a look of discomfort, such as headache produces,
hovered for a moment athwart his forehead.
"But I'm not acquainted with that lady," he murmured.
"Come, come, you went to her house," remarked Vandeuvres.
"What d'you say? I went to her house? Oh yes, the other day, in
behalf of the Benevolent Organization. I had forgotten about it.
But, no matter, I am not acquainted with her, and I cannot accept."
He had adopted an icy expression in order to make them understand
that this jest did not appear to him to be in good taste. A man of
his position did not sit down at tables of such women as that.
Vandeuvres protested: it was to be a supper party of dramatic and
artistic people, and talent excused everything. But without
listening further to the arguments urged by Fauchery, who spoke of a
dinner where the Prince of Scots, the son of a queen, had sat down
beside an ex-music-hall singer, the count only emphasized his
refusal. In so doing, he allowed himself, despite his great
politeness, to be guilty of an irritated gesture.
Georges and La Faloise, standing in front of each other drinking
their tea, had overheard the two or three phrases exchanged in their
immediate neighborhood.
"Jove, it's at Nana's then," murmured La Faloise. "I might have
expected as much!"
Georges said nothing, but he was all aflame. His fair hair was in
disorder; his blue eyes shone like tapers, so fiercely had the vice,
which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed and stirred
his blood. At last he was going to plunge into all that he had
dreamed of!
"I don't know the address," La Faloise resumed.
"She lives on a third floor in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the
Rue de l'Arcade and the Rue Pesquier," said Georges all in a breath.
And when the other looked at him in much astonishment, he added,
turning very red and fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment
and conceit:
"I'm of the party. She invited me this morning."
But there was a great stir in the drawing room, and Vandeuvres and
Fauchery could not continue pressing the count. The Marquis de
Chouard had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet him. He
had moved painfully forward, his legs failing under him, and he now
stood in the middle of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking,
as though he had just come out of some dark alley and were blinded
by the brightness of the lamps.
"I scarcely hoped to see you tonight, Father," said the countess.
"I should have been anxious till the morning."
He looked at her without answering, as a man might who fails to
understand. His nose, which loomed immense on his shorn face,
looked like a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down. Seeing
him such a wreck, Mme Hugon, full of kind compassion, said pitying
things to him.
"You work too hard. You ought to rest yourself. At our age we
ought to leave work to the young people."
"Work! Ah yes, to be sure, work!" he stammered at last. "Always
plenty of work."
He began to pull himself together, straightening up his bent figure
and passing his hand, as was his wont, over his scant gray hair, of
which a few locks strayed behind his ears.
"At what are you working as late as this?" asked Mme du Joncquoy.
"I thought you were at the financial minister's reception?"
But the countess intervened with:
"My father had to study the question of a projected law."
"Yes, a projected law," he said; "exactly so, a projected law. I
shut myself up for that reason. It refers to work in factories, and
I was anxious for a proper observance of the Lord's day of rest. It
is really shameful that the government is unwilling to act with
vigor in the matter. Churches are growing empty; we are running
headlong to ruin."
Vandeuvres had exchanged glances with Fauchery. They both happened
to be behind the marquis, and they were scanning him suspiciously.
When Vandeuvres found an opportunity to take him aside and to speak
to him about the good-looking creature he was in the habit of taking
down into the country, the old man affected extreme surprise.
Perhaps someone had seen him with the Baroness Decker, at whose
house at Viroflay he sometimes spent a day or so. Vandeuvres's sole
vengeance was an abrupt question:
"Tell me, where have you been straying to? Your elbow is covered
with cobwebs and plaster."
"My elbow," he muttered, slightly disturbed. "Yes indeed, it's
true. A speck or two, I must have come in for them on my way down
from my office."
Several people were taking their departure. It was close on
midnight. Two footmen were noiselessly removing the empty cups and
the plates with cakes. In front of the hearth the ladies had re-
formed and, at the same time, narrowed their circle and were
chatting more carelessly than before in the languid atmosphere
peculiar to the close of a party. The very room was going to sleep,
and slowly creeping shadows were cast by its walls. It was then
Fauchery spoke of departure. Yet he once more forgot his intention
at sight of the Countess Sabine. She was resting from her cares as
hostess, and as she sat in her wonted seat, silent, her eyes fixed
on a log which was turning into embers, her face appeared so white
and so impassable that doubt again possessed him. In the glow of
the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner of her lip
became white. It was Nana's very mole, down to the color of the
hair. He could not refrain from whispering something about it in
Vandeuvres's ear. Gad, it was true; the other had never noticed it
before. And both men continued this comparison of Nana and the
countess. They discovered a vague resemblance about the chin and
the mouth, but the eyes were not at all alike. Then, too, Nana had
a good-natured expression, while with the countess it was hard to
decide--she might have been a cat, sleeping with claws withdrawn and
paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous quiver.
"All the same, one could have her," declared Fauchery.
Vandeuvres stripped her at a glance.
"Yes, one could, all the same," he said. "But I think nothing of
the thighs, you know. Will you bet she has no thighs?"
He stopped, for Fauchery touched him briskly on the arm and showed
him Estelle, sitting close to them on her footstool. They had
raised their voices without noticing her, and she must have
overheard them. Nevertheless, she continued sitting there stiff and
motionless, not a hair having lifted on her thin neck, which was
that of a girl who has shot up all too quickly. Thereupon they
retired three or four paces, and Vandeuvres vowed that the countess
was a very honest woman. Just then voices were raised in front of
the hearth. Mme du Joncquoy was saying:
"I was willing to grant you that Monsieur de Bismarck was perhaps a
witty man. Only, if you go as far as to talk of genius--"
The ladies had come round again to their earliest topic of
conversation.
"What the deuce! Still Monsieur de Bismarck!" muttered Fauchery.
"This time I make my escape for good and all."
"Wait a bit," said Vandeuvres, "we must have a definite no from the
count."
The Count Muffat was talking to his father-in-law and a certain
serious-looking gentleman. Vandeuvres drew him away and renewed the
invitation, backing it up with the information that he was to be at
the supper himself. A man might go anywhere; no one could think of
suspecting evil where at most there could only be curiosity. The
count listened to these arguments with downcast eyes and
expressionless face. Vandeuvres felt him to be hesitating when the
Marquis de Chouard approached with a look of interrogation. And
when the latter was informed of the question in hand and Fauchery
had invited him in his turn, he looked at his son-in-law furtively.
There ensued an embarrassed silence, but both men encouraged one
another and would doubtless have ended by accepting had not Count
Muffat perceived M. Venot's gaze fixed upon him. The little old man
was no longer smiling; his face was cadaverous, his eyes bright and
keen as steel.
'No," replied the count directly, in so decisive a tone that further
insistence became impossible.
Then the marquis refused with even greater severity of expression.
He talked morality. The aristocratic classes ought to set a good
example. Fauchery smiled and shook hands with Vandeuvres. He did
not wait for him and took his departure immediately, for he was due
at his newspaper office.
"At Nana's at midnight, eh?"
La Faloise retired too. Steiner had made his bow to the countess.
Other men followed them, and the same phrase went round--"At
midnight, at Nana's"--as they went to get their overcoats in the
anteroom. Georges, who could not leave without his mother, had
stationed himself at the door, where he gave the exact address.
"Third floor, door on your left." Yet before going out Fauchery
gave a final glance. Vandeuvres had again resumed his position
among the ladies and was laughing with Leonide de Chezelles. Count
Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard were joining in the conversation,
while the good Mme Hugon was falling asleep open-eyed. Lost among
the petticoats, M. Venot was his own small self again and smiled as
of old. Twelve struck slowly in the great solemn room.
"What--what do you mean?" Mme du Joncquoy resumed. "You imagine
that Monsieur de Bismarck will make war on us and beat us! Oh,
that's unbearable!"
Indeed, they were laughing round Mme Chantereau, who had just
repeated an assertion she had heard made in Alsace, where her
husband owned a foundry.
"We have the emperor, fortunately," said Count Muffat in his grave,
official way.
It was the last phrase Fauchery was able to catch. He closed the
door after casting one more glance in the direction of the Countess
Sabine. She was talking sedately with the chief clerk and seemed to
be interested in that stout individual's conversation. Assuredly he
must have been deceiving himself. There was no "little rift" there
at all. It was a pity.
"You're not coming down then?" La Faloise shouted up to him from the
entrance hall.
And out on the pavement, as they separated, they once more repeated:
"Tomorrow, at Nana's."
CHAPTER IV
Since morning Zoe had delivered up the flat to a managing man who
had come from Brebant's with a staff of helpers and waiters.
Brebant was to supply everything, from the supper, the plates and
dishes, the glass, the linen, the flowers, down to the seats and
footstools. Nana could not have mustered a dozen napkins out of all
her cupboards, and not having had time to get a proper outfit after
her new start in life and scorning to go to the restaurant, she had
decided to make the restaurant come to her. It struck her as being
more the thing. She wanted to celebrate her great success as an
actress with a supper which should set people talking. As her
dining room was too small, the manager had arranged the table in the
drawing room, a table with twenty-five covers, placed somewhat close
together.
"Is everything ready?" asked Nana when she returned at midnight.
"Oh! I don't know," replied Zoe roughly, looking beside herself with
worry. "The Lord be thanked, I don't bother about anything.
They're making a fearful mess in the kitchen and all over the flat!
I've had to fight my battles too. The other two came again. My
eye! I did just chuck 'em out!"
She referred, of course, to her employer's old admirers, the
tradesman and the Walachian, to whom Nana, sure of her future and
longing to shed her skin, as she phrased it, had decided to give the
go-by.
"There are a couple of leeches for you!" she muttered.
"If they come back threaten to go to the police."
Then she called Daguenet and Georges, who had remained behind in the
anteroom, where they were hanging up their overcoats. They had both
met at the stage door in the Passage des Panoramas, and she had
brought them home with her in a cab. As there was nobody there yet,
she shouted to them to come into the dressing room while Zoe was
touching up her toilet. Hurriedly and without changing her dress
she had her hair done up and stuck white roses in her chignon and at
her bosom. The little room was littered with the drawing-room
furniture, which the workmen had been compelled to roll in there,
and it was full of a motley assemblage of round tables, sofas and
armchairs, with their legs in air for the most part. Nana was quite
ready when her dress caught on a castor and tore upward. At this
she swore furiously; such things only happened to her! Ragingly she
took off her dress, a very simple affair of white foulard, of so
thin and supple a texture that it clung about her like a long shift.
But she put it on again directly, for she could not find another to
her taste, and with tears in her eyes declared that she was dressed
like a ragpicker. Daguenet and Georges had to patch up the rent
with pins, while Zoe once more arranged her hair. All three hurried
round her, especially the boy, who knelt on the floor with his hands
among her skirts. And at last she calmed down again when Daguenet
assured her it could not be later than a quarter past twelve, seeing
that by dint of scamping her words and skipping her lines she had
effectually shortened the third act of the Blonde Venus.
"The play's still far too good for that crowd of idiots," she said.
"Did you see? There were thousands there tonight. Zoe, my girl,
you will wait in here. Don't go to bed, I shall want you. By gum,
it is time they came. Here's company!"
She ran off while Georges stayed where he was with the skirts of his
coat brushing the floor. He blushed, seeing Daguenet looking at
him. Notwithstanding which, they had conceived a tender regard the
one for the other. They rearranged the bows of their cravats in
front of the big dressing glass and gave each other a mutual dose of
the clothesbrush, for they were all white from their close contact
with Nana.
"One would think it was sugar," murmured Georges, giggling like a
greedy little child.
A footman hired for the evening was ushering the guests into the
small drawing room, a narrow slip of a place in which only four
armchairs had been left in order the better to pack in the company.
From the large drawing room beyond came a sound as of the moving of
plates and silver, while a clear and brilliant ray of light shone
from under the door. At her entrance Nana found Clarisse Besnus,
whom La Faloise had brought, already installed in one of the
armchairs.
"Dear me, you're the first of 'em!" said Nana, who, now that she was
successful, treated her familiarly.
"Oh, it's his doing," replied Clarisse. "He's always afraid of not
getting anywhere in time. If I'd taken him at his word I shouldn't
have waited to take off my paint and my wig."
The young man, who now saw Nana for the first time, bowed, paid her
a compliment and spoke of his cousin, hiding his agitation behind an
exaggeration of politeness. But Nana, neither listening to him nor
recognizing his face, shook hands with him and then went briskly
toward Rose Mignon, with whom she at once assumed a most
distinguished manner.
"Ah, how nice of you, my dear madame! I was so anxious to have you
here!"
"It's I who am charmed, I assure you," said Rose with equal
amiability.
"Pray, sit down. Do you require anything?"
"Thank you, no! Ah yes, I've left my fan in my pelisse, Steiner;
just look in the right-hand pocket."
Steiner and Mignon had come in behind Rose. The banker turned back
and reappeared with the fan while Mignon embraced Nana fraternally
and forced Rose to do so also. Did they not all belong to the same
family in the theatrical world? Then he winked as though to
encourage Steiner, but the latter was disconcerted by Rose's clear
gaze and contented himself by kissing Nana's hand.
Just then the Count de Vandeuvres made his appearance with Blanche
de Sivry. There was an interchange of profound bows, and Nana with
the utmost ceremony conducted Blanche to an armchair. Meanwhile
Vandeuvres told them laughingly that Fauchery was engaged in a
dispute at the foot of the stairs because the porter had refused to
allow Lucy Stewart's carriage to come in at the gate. They could
hear Lucy telling the porter he was a dirty blackguard in the
anteroom. But when the footman had opened the door she came forward
with her laughing grace of manner, announced her name herself, took
both Nana's hands in hers and told her that she had liked her from
the very first and considered her talent splendid. Nana, puffed up
by her novel role of hostess, thanked her and was veritably
confused. Nevertheless, from the moment of Fauchery's arrival she
appeared preoccupied, and directly she could get near him she asked
him in a low voice:
"Will he come?"
"No, he did not want to," was the journalist's abrupt reply, for he
was taken by surprise, though he had got ready some sort of tale to
explain Count Muffat's refusal.
Seeing the young woman's sudden pallor, he became conscious of his
folly and tried to retract his words.
"He was unable to; he is taking the countess to the ball at the
Ministry of the Interior tonight."
"All right," murmured Nana, who suspected him of ill will, "you'll
pay me out for that, my pippin."
She turned on her heel, and so did he; they were angry. Just then
Mignon was pushing Steiner up against Nana, and when Fauchery had
left her he said to her in a low voice and with the good-natured
cynicism of a comrade in arms who wishes his friends to be happy:
"He's dying of it, you know, only he's afraid of my wife. Won't you
protect him?"
Nana did not appear to understand. She smiled and looked at Rose,
the husband and the banker and finally said to the latter:
"Monsieur Steiner, you will sit next to me."
With that there came from the anteroom a sound of laughter and
whispering and a burst of merry, chattering voices, which sounded as
if a runaway convent were on the premises. And Labordette appeared,
towing five women in his rear, his boarding school, as Lucy Stewart
cruelly phrased it. There was Gaga, majestic in a blue velvet dress
which was too tight for her, and Caroline Hequet, clad as usual in
ribbed black silk, trimmed with Chantilly lace. Lea de Horn came
next, terribly dressed up, as her wont was, and after her the big
Tatan Nene, a good-humored fair girl with the bosom of a wet nurse,
at which people laughed, and finally little Maria Blond, a young
damsel of fifteen, as thin and vicious as a street child, yet on the
high road to success, owing to her recent first appearance at the
Folies. Labordette had brought the whole collection in a single
fly, and they were stlll laughing at the way they had been squeezed
with Maria Blond on her knees. But on entering the room they pursed
up their lips, and all grew very conventional as they shook hands
and exchanged salutations. Gaga even affected the infantile and
lisped through excess of genteel deportment. Tatan Nene alone
transgressed. They had been telling her as they came along that six
absolutely naked Negroes would serve up Nana's supper, and she now
grew anxious about them and asked to see them. Labordette called
her a goose and besought her to be silent.
"And Bordenave?" asked Fauchery.
"Oh, you may imagine how miserable I am," cried Nana; "he won't be
able to join us."
"Yes," said Rose Mignon, "his foot caught in a trap door, and he's
got a fearful sprain. If only you could hear him swearing, with his
leg tied up and laid out on a chair!"
Thereupon everybody mourned over Bordenave's absence. No one ever
gave a good supper without Bordenave. Ah well, they would try and
do without him, and they were already talking about other matters
when a burly voice was heard:
"What, eh, what? Is that the way they're going to write my obituary
notice?"
There was a shout, and all heads were turned round, for it was
indeed Bordenave. Huge and fiery-faced, he was standing with his
stiff leg in the doorway, leaning for support on Simonne Cabiroche's
shoulder. Simonne was for the time being his mistress. This little
creature had had a certain amount of education and could play the
piano and talk English. She was a blonde on a tiny, pretty scale
and so delicately formed that she seemed to bend under Bordenave's
rude weight. Yet she was smilingly submissive withal. He postured
there for some moments, for he felt that together they formed a
tableau.
"One can't help liking ye, eh?" he continued. "Zounds, I was afraid
I should get bored, and I said to myself, 'Here goes.'"
But he interrupted himself with an oath.
"Oh, damn!"
Simonne had taken a step too quickly forward, and his foot had just
felt his full weight. He gave her a rough push, but she, still
smiling away and ducking her pretty head as some animal might that
is afraid of a beating, held him up with all the strength a little
plump blonde can command. Amid all these exclamations there was a
rush to his assistance. Nana and Rose Mignon rolled up an armchair,
into which Bordenave let himself sink, while the other women slid a
second one under his leg. And with that all the actresses present
kissed him as a matter of course. He kept grumbling and gasping.
"Oh, damn! Oh, damn! Ah well, the stomach's unhurt, you'll see."
Other guests had arrived by this time, and motion became impossible
in the room. The noise of clinking plates and silver had ceased,
and now a dispute was heard going on in the big drawing room, where
the voice of the manager grumbled angrily. Nana was growing
impatient, for she expected no more invited guests and wondered why
they did not bring in supper. She had just sent Georges to find out
what was going on when, to her great surprise, she noticed the
arrival of more guests, both male and female. She did not know them
in the least. Whereupon with some embarrassment she questioned
Bordenave, Mignon and Labordette about them. They did not know them
any more than she did, but when she turned to the Count de
Vandeuvres he seemed suddenly to recollect himself. They were the
young men he had pressed into her service at Count Muffat's. Nana
thanked him. That was capital, capital! Only they would all be
terribly crowded, and she begged Labordette to go and have seven
more covers set. Scarcely had he left the room than the footman
ushered in three newcomers. Nay, this time the thing was becoming
ridiculous; one certainly could never take them all in. Nana was
beginning to grow angry and in her haughtiest manner announced that
such conduct was scarcely in good taste. But seeing two more
arrive, she began laughing; it was really too funny. So much the
worse. People would have to fit in anyhow! The company were all on
their feet save Gaga and Rose and Bordenave, who alone took up two
armchairs. There was a buzz of voices, people talking in low tones
and stifling slight yawns the while.
"Now what d'you say, my lass," asked Bordenave, "to our sitting down
at table as if nothing had happened? We are all here, don't you
think?"
"Oh yes, we're all here, I promise you!" she answered laughingly.
She looked round her but grew suddenly serious, as though she were
surprised at not finding someone. Doubtless there was a guest
missing whom she did not mention. It was a case of waiting. But a
minute or two later the company noticed in their midst a tall
gentleman with a fine face and a beautiful white beard. The most
astonishing thing about it was that nobody had seen him come in;
indeed, he must have slipped into the little drawing room through
the bedroom door, which had remained ajar. Silence reigned, broken
only by a sound of whispering. The Count de Vandeuvres certainly
knew who the gentleman was, for they both exchanged a discreet
handgrip, but to the questions which the women asked him he replied
by a smile only. Thereupon Caroline Hequet wagered in a low voice
that it was an English lord who was on the eve of returning to
London to be married. She knew him quite well--she had had him.
And this account of the matter went the round of the ladies present,
Maria Blond alone asserting that, for her part, she recognized a
German ambassador. She could prove it, because he often passed the
night with one of her friends. Among the men his measure was taken
in a few rapid phrases. A real swell, to judge by his looks!
Perhaps he would pay for the supper! Most likely. It looked like
it. Bah! Provided only the supper was a good one! In the end the
company remained undecided. Nay, they were already beginning to
forget the old white-bearded gentleman when the manager opened the
door of the large drawing room.
"Supper is on the table, madame."
Nana had already accepted Steiner's proffered arm without noticing a
movement on the part of the old gentleman, who started to walk
behind her in solitary state. Thus the march past could not be
organized, and men and women entered anyhow, joking with homely good
humor over this absence of ceremony. A long table stretched from
one end to the other of the great room, which had been entirely
cleared of furniture, and this same table was not long enough, for
the plates thereon were touching one another. Four candelabra, with
ten candles apiece, lit up the supper, and of these one was gorgeous
in silver plate with sheaves of flowers to right and left of it.
Everything was luxurious after the restaurant fashion; the china was
ornamented with a gold line and lacked the customary monogram; the
silver had become worn and tarnished through dint of continual
washings; the glass was of the kind that you can complete an odd set
of in any cheap emporium.
The scene suggested a premature housewarming in an establishment
newly smiled on by fortune and as yet lacking the necessary
conveniences. There was no central luster, and the candelabra,
whose tall tapers had scarcely burned up properly, cast a pale
yellow light among the dishes and stands on which fruit, cakes and
preserves alternated symmetrically.
"You sit where you like, you know," said Nana. "It's more amusing
that way."
She remained standing midway down the side of the table. The old
gentleman whom nobody knew had placed himself on her right, while
she kept Steiner on her left hand. Some guests were already sitting
down when the sound of oaths came from the little drawing room. It
was Bordenave. The company had forgotten him, and he was having all
the trouble in the world to raise himself out of his two armchairs,
for he was howling amain and calling for that cat of a Simonne, who
had slipped off with the rest. The women ran in to him, full of
pity for his woes, and Bordenave appeared, supported, nay, almost
carried, by Caroline, Clarisse, Tatan Nene and Maria Blond. And
there was much to-do over his installation at the table.
"In the middle, facing Nana!" was the cry. "Bordenave in the
middle! He'll be our president!"
Thereupon the ladies seated him in the middle. But he needed a
second chair for his leg, and two girls lifted it up and stretched
it carefully out. It wouldn't matter; he would eat sideways.
"God blast it all!" he grumbled. "We're squashed all the same! Ah,
my kittens, Papa recommends himself to your tender care!"
He had Rose Mignon on his right and Lucy Stewart on his left hand,
and they promised to take good care of him. Everybody was now
getting settled. Count de Vandeuvres placed himself between Lucy
and Clarisse; Fauchery between Rose Mignon and Caroline Hequet. On
the other side of the table Hector de la Faloise had rushed to get
next Gaga, and that despite the calls of Clarisse opposite, while
Mignon, who never deserted Steiner, was only separated from him by
Blanche and had Tatan Nene on his left. Then came Labordette and,
finally, at the two ends of the table were irregular crowding groups
of young men and of women, such as Simonne, Lea de Horn and Maria
Blond. It was in this region that Daguenet and Georges forgathered
more warmly than ever while smilingly gazing at Nana.
Nevertheless, two people remained standing, and there was much
joking about it. The men offered seats on their knees. Clarisse,
who could not move her elbows, told Vandeuvres that she counted on
him to feed her. And then that Bordenave did just take up space
with his chairs! There was a final effort, and at last everybody
was seated, but, as Mignon loudly remarked, they were confoundedly
like herrings in a barrel.
"Thick asparagus soup a la comtesse, clear soup a la Deslignac,"
murmured the waiters, carrying about platefuls in rear of the
guests.
Bordenave was loudly recommending the thick soup when a shout arose,
followed by protests and indignant exclamations. The door had just
opened, and three late arrivals, a woman and two men, had just come
in. Oh dear, no! There was no space for them! Nana, however,
without leaving her chair, began screwing up her eyes in the effort
to find out whether she knew them. The woman was Louise Violaine,
but she had never seen the men before.
"This gentleman, my dear," said Vandeuvres, "is a friend of mine, a
naval officer, Monsieur de Foucarmont by name. I invited him."
Foucarmont bowed and seemed very much at ease, for he added:
"And I took leave to bring one of my friends with me."
"Oh, it's quite right, quite right!" said Nana. "Sit down, pray.
Let's see, you--Clarisse--push up a little. You're a good deal
spread out down there. That's it--where there's a will--"
They crowded more tightly than ever, and Foucarmont and Louise were
given a little stretch of table, but the friend had to sit at some
distance from his plate and ate his supper through dint of making a
long arm between his neighbors' shoulders. The waiters took away
the soup plates and circulated rissoles of young rabbit with
truffles and "niokys" and powdered cheese. Bordenave agitated the
whole table with the announcement that at one moment he had had the
idea of bringing with him Prulliere, Fontan and old Bosc. At this
Nana looked sedate and remarked dryly that she would have given them
a pretty reception. Had she wanted colleagues, she would certainly
have undertaken to ask them herself. No, no, she wouldn't have
third-rate play actors. Old Bosc was always drunk; Prulliere was
fond of spitting too much, and as to Fontan, he made himself
unbearable in society with his loud voice and his stupid doings.
Then, you know, third-rate play actors were always out of place when
they found themselves in the society of gentlemen such as those
around her.
"Yes, yes, it's true," Mignon declared.
All round the table the gentlemen in question looked unimpeachable
in the extreme, what with their evening dress and their pale
features, the natural distinction of which was still further refined
by fatigue. The old gentleman was as deliberate in his movements
and wore as subtle a smile as though he were presiding over a
diplomatic congress, and Vandeuvres, with his exquisite politeness
toward the ladies next to him, seemed to be at one of the Countess
Muffat's receptions. That very morning Nana had been remarking to
her aunt that in the matter of men one could not have done better--
they were all either wellborn or wealthy, in fact, quite the thing.
And as to the ladies, they were behaving admirably. Some of them,
such as Blanche, Lea and Louise, had come in low dresses, but Gaga's
only was perhaps a little too low, the more so because at her age
she would have done well not to show her neck at all. Now that the
company were finally settled the laughter and the light jests began
to fail. Georges was under the impression that he had assisted at
merrier dinner parties among the good folks of Orleans. There was
scarcely any conversation. The men, not being mutually acquainted,
stared at one another, while the women sat quite quiet, and it was
this which especially surprised Georges. He thought them all smugs--
he had been under the impression that everybody would begin kissing
at once.
The third course, consisting of a Rhine carp a la Chambord and a
saddle of venison a l'anglaise, was being served when Blanche
remarked aloud:
"Lucy, my dear, I met your Ollivier on Sunday. How he's grown!"
"Dear me, yes! He's eighteen," replied Lucy. "It doesn't make me
feel any younger. He went back to his school yesterday."
Her son Ollivier, whom she was wont to speak of with pride, was a
pupil at the Ecole de Marine. Then ensued a conversation about the
young people, during which all the ladies waxed very tender. Nana
described her own great happiness. Her baby, the little Louis, she
said, was now at the house of her aunt, who brought him round to her
every morning at eleven o'clock, when she would take him into her
bed, where he played with her griffon dog Lulu. It was enough to
make one die of laughing to see them both burying themselves under
the clothes at the bottom of the bed. The company had no idea how
cunning Louiset had already become.
"Oh, yesterday I did just pass a day!" said Rose Mignon in her turn.
"Just imagine, I went to fetch Charles and Henry at their boarding
school, and I had positively to take them to the theater at night.
They jumped; they clapped their little hands: 'We shall see Mamma
act! We shall see Mamma act!' Oh, it was a to-do!"
Mignon smiled complaisantly, his eyes moist with paternal
tenderness.
"And at the play itself," he continued, "they were so funny! They
behaved as seriously as grown men, devoured Rose with their eyes and
asked me why Mamma had her legs bare like that."
The whole table began laughing, and Mignon looked radiant, for his
pride as a father was flattered. He adored his children and had but
one object in life, which was to increase their fortunes by
administering the money gained by Rose at the theater and elsewhere
with the businesslike severity of a faithful steward. When as first
fiddle in the music hall where she used to sing he had married her,
they had been passionately fond of one another. Now they were good
friends. There was an understanding between them: she labored hard
to the full extent of her talent and of her beauty; he had given up
his violin in order the better to watch over her successes as an
actress and as a woman. One could not have found a more homely and
united household anywhere!
"What age is your eldest?" asked Vandeuvres.
"Henry's nine," replied Mignon, "but such a big chap for his years!"
Then he chaffed Steiner, who was not fond of children, and with
quiet audacity informed him that were he a father, he would make a
less stupid hash of his fortune. While talking he watched the
banker over Blanche's shoulders to see if it was coming off with
Nana. But for some minutes Rose and Fauchery, who were talking very
near him, had been getting on his nerves. Was Rose going to waste
time over such a folly as that? In that sort of case, by Jove, he
blocked the way. And diamond on finger and with his fine hands in
great evidence, he finished discussing a fillet of venison.
Elsewhere the conversation about children continued. La Faloise,
rendered very restless by the immediate proximity of Gaga, asked
news of her daughter, whom he had had the pleasure of noticing in
her company at the Varietes. Lili was quite well, but she was still
such a tomboy! He was astonished to learn that Lili was entering on
her nineteenth year. Gaga became even more imposing in his eyes,
and when he endeavored to find out why she had not brought Lili with
her:
"Oh no, no, never!" she said stiffly. "Not three months ago she
positively insisted on leaving her boarding school. I was thinking
of marrying her off at once, but she loves me so that I had to take
her home--oh, so much against my will!"
Her blue eyelids with their blackened lashes blinked and wavered
while she spoke of the business of settling her young lady. If at
her time of life she hadn't laid by a sou but was still always
working to minister to men's pleasures, especially those very young
men, whose grandmother she might well be, it was truly because she
considered a good match of far greater importance than mere savings.
And with that she leaned over La Faloise, who reddened under the
huge, naked, plastered shoulder with which she well-nigh crushed
him.
"You know," she murmured, "if she fails it won't be my fault. But
they're so strange when they're young!"
There was a considerable bustle round the table, and the waiters
became very active. After the third course the entrees had made
their appearance; they consisted of pullets a la marechale, fillets
of sole with shallot sauce and escalopes of Strasbourg pate. The
manager, who till then had been having Meursault served, now offered
Chambertin and Leoville. Amid the slight hubbub which the change of
plates involved Georges, who was growing momentarily more
astonished, asked Daguenet if all the ladies present were similarly
provided with children, and the other, who was amused by this
question, gave him some further details. Lucy Stewart was the
daughter of a man of English origin who greased the wheels of the
trains at the Gare du Nord; she was thirty-nine years old and had
the face of a horse but was adorable withal and, though consumptive,
never died. In fact, she was the smartest woman there and
represented three princes and a duke. Caroline Hequet, born at
Bordeaux, daughter of a little clerk long since dead of shame, was
lucky enough to be possessed of a mother with a head on her
shoulders, who, after having cursed her, had made it up again at the
end of a year of reflection, being minded, at any rate, to save a
fortune for her daughter. The latter was twenty-five years old and
very passionless and was held to be one of the finest women it is
possible to enjoy. Her price never varied. The mother, a model of
orderliness, kept the accounts and noted down receipts and
expenditures with severe precision. She managed the whole household
from some small lodging two stories above her daughter's, where,
moreover, she had established a workroom for dressmaking and plain
sewing. As to Blanche de Sivry, whose real name was Jacqueline
Bandu, she hailed from a village near Amiens. Magnificent in
person, stupid and untruthful in character, she gave herself out as
the granddaughter of a general and never owned to her thirty-two
summers. The Russians had a great taste for her, owing to her
embonpoint. Then Daguenet added a rapid word or two about the rest.
There was Clarisse Besnus, whom a lady had brought up from Saint-
Aubin-sur-Mer in the capacity of maid while the lady's husband had
started her in quite another line. There was Simonne Cabiroche, the
daughter of a furniture dealer in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, who
had been educated in a large boarding school with a view to becoming
a governess. Finally there were Maria Blond and Louise Violaine and
Lea de Horn, who had all shot up to woman's estate on the pavements
of Paris, not to mention Tatan Nene, who had herded cows in
Champagne till she was twenty.
Georges listened and looked at these ladies, feeling dizzy and
excited by the coarse recital thus crudely whispered in his ear,
while behind his chair the waiters kept repeating in respectful
tones:
"Pullets a la marechale; fillets of sole with ravigote sauce."
"My dear fellow," said Daguenet, giving him the benefit of his
experience, "don't take any fish; it'll do you no good at this time
of night. And be content with Leoville: it's less treacherous."
A heavy warmth floated upward from the candelabras, from the dishes
which were being handed round, from the whole table where thirty-
eight human beings were suffocating. And the waiters forgot
themselves and ran when crossing the carpet, so that it was spotted
with grease. Nevertheless, the supper grew scarce any merrier. The
ladies trifled with their meat, left half of it uneaten. Tatan Nene
alone partook gluttonously of every dish. At that advanced hour of
the night hunger was of the nervous order only, a mere whimsical
craving born of an exasperated stomach.
At Nana's side the old gentleman refused every dish offered him; he
had only taken a spoonful of soup, and he now sat in front of his
empty plate, gazing silently about. There was some subdued yawning,
and occasionally eyelids closed and faces became haggard and white.
It was unutterably slow, as it always was, according to Vandeuvres's
dictum. This sort of supper should be served anyhow if it was to be
funny, he opined. Otherwise when elegantly and conventionally done
you might as well feed in good society, where you were not more
bored than here. Had it not been for Bordenave, who was still
bawling away, everybody would have fallen asleep. That rum old
buffer Bordenave, with his leg duly stretched on its chair, was
letting his neighbors, Lucy and Rose, wait on him as though he were
a sultan. They were entirely taken up with him, and they helped him
and pampered him and watched over his glass and his plate, and yet
that did not prevent his complaining.
"Who's going to cut up my meat for me? I can't; the table's a
league away."
Every few seconds Simonne rose and took up a position behind his
back in order to cut his meat and his bread. All the women took a
great interest in the things he ate. The waiters were recalled, and
he was stuffed to suffocation. Simonne having wiped his mouth for
him while Rose and Lucy were changing his plate, her act struck him
as very pretty and, deigning at length to show contentment:
"There, there, my daughter," he said, "that's as it should be.
Women are made for that!"
There was a slight reawakening, and conversation became general as
they finished discussing some orange sherbet. The hot roast was a
fillet with truffles, and the cold roast a galantine of guinea fowl
in jelly. Nana, annoyed by the want of go displayed by her guests,
had begun talking with the greatest distinctness.
"You know the Prince of Scots has already had a stage box reserved
so as to see the Blonde Venus when he comes to visit the
exhibition."
"I very much hope that all the princes will come and see it,"
declared Bordenave with his mouth full.
"They are expecting the shah of Persia next Sunday," said Lucy
Stewart. Whereupon Rose Mignon spoke of the shah's diamonds. He
wore a tunic entirely covered with gems; it was a marvel, a flaming
star; it represented millions. And the ladies, with pale faces and
eyes glittering with covetousness, craned forward and ran over the
names of the other kings, the other emperors, who were shortly
expected. All of them were dreaming of some royal caprice, some
night to be paid for by a fortune.
"Now tell me, dear boy," Caroline Hequet asked Vandeuvres, leaning
forward as she did so, "how old's the emperor of Russia?"
"Oh, he's 'present time,'" replied the count, laughing. "Nothing to
be done in that quarter, I warn you."
Nana made pretense of being hurt. The witticism appeared somewhat
too stinging, and there was a murmur of protest. But Blanche gave a
description of the king of Italy, whom she had once seen at Milan.
He was scarcely good looking, and yet that did not prevent him
enjoying all the women. She was put out somewhat when Fauchery
assured her that Victor Emmanuel could not come to the exhibition.
Louise Violaine and Lea favored the emperor of Austria, and all of a
sudden little Maria Blond was heard saying:
"What an old stick the king of Prussia is! I was at Baden last
year, and one was always meeting him about with Count Bismarck."
"Dear me, Bismarck!" Simonne interrupted. "I knew him once, I did.
A charming man."
"That's what I was saying yesterday," cried Vandeuvres, "but nobody
would believe me."
And just as at Countess Sabine's, there ensued a long discussion
about Bismarck. Vandeuvres repeated the same phrases, and for a
moment or two one was again in the Muffats' drawing room, the only
difference being that the ladies were changed. Then, just as last
night, they passed on to a discussion on music, after which,
Foucarmont having let slip some mention of the assumption of the
veil of which Paris was still talking, Nana grew quite interested
and insisted on details about Mlle de Fougeray. Oh, the poor child,
fancy her burying herself alive like that! Ah well, when it was a
question of vocation! All round the table the women expressed
themselves much touched, and Georges, wearied at hearing these
things a second time discussed, was beginning to ask Daguenet about
Nana's ways in private life, when the conversation veered fatefully
back to Count Bismarck. Tatan Nene bent toward Labordette to ask
him privily who this Bismarck might be, for she did not know him.
Whereupon Labordette, in cold blood, told her some portentous
anecdotes. This Bismarck, he said, was in the habit of eating raw
meat and when he met a woman near his den would carry her off
thither on his back; at forty years of age he had already had as
many as thirty-two children that way.
"Thirty-two children at forty!" cried Tatan Nene, stupefied and yet
convinced. "He must be jolly well worn out for his age."
There was a burst of merriment, and it dawned on her that she was
being made game of.
"You sillies! How am I to know if you're joking?"
Gaga, meanwhile, had stopped at the exhibition. Like all these
ladies, she was delightedly preparing for the fray. A good season,
provincials and foreigners rushing into Paris! In the long run,
perhaps, after the close of the exhibition she would, if her
business had flourished, be able to retire to a little house at
Jouvisy, which she had long had her eye on.
"What's to be done?" she said to La Faloise. "One never gets what
one wants! Oh, if only one were still really loved!"
Gaga behaved meltingly because she had felt the young man's knee
gently placed against her own. He was blushing hotly and lisping as
elegantly as ever. She weighed him at a glance. Not a very heavy
little gentleman, to be sure, but then she wasn't hard to please.
La Faloise obtained her address.
"Just look there," murmured Vandeuvres to Clarisse. "I think Gaga's
doing you out of your Hector."
"A good riddance, so far as I'm concerned," replied the actress.
"That fellow's an idiot. I've already chucked him downstairs three
times. You know, I'm disgusted when dirty little boys run after old
women."
She broke off and with a little gesture indicated Blanche, who from
the commencement of dinner had remained in a most uncomfortable
attitude, sitting up very markedly, with the intention of displaying
her shoulders to the old distinguished-looking gentleman three seats
beyond her.
"You're being left too," she resumed.
Vandeuvres smiled his thin smile and made a little movement to
signify he did not care. Assuredly 'twas not he who would ever have
prevented poor, dear Blanche scoring a success. He was more
interested by the spectacle which Steiner was presenting to the
table at large. The banker was noted for his sudden flames. That
terrible German Jew who brewed money, whose hands forged millions,
was wont to turn imbecile whenever he became enamored of a woman.
He wanted them all too! Not one could make her appearance on the
stage but he bought her, however expensive she might be. Vast sums
were quoted. Twice had his furious appetite for courtesans ruined
him. The courtesans, as Vandeuvres used to say, avenged public
morality by emptying his moneybags. A big operation in the
saltworks of the Landes had rendered him powerful on 'change, and so
for six weeks past the Mignons had been getting a pretty slice out
of those same saltworks. But people were beginning to lay wagers
that the Mignons would not finish their slice, for Nana was showing
her white teeth. Once again Steiner was in the toils, and so deeply
this time that as he sat by Nana's side he seemed stunned; he ate
without appetite; his lip hung down; his face was mottled. She had
only to name a figure. Nevertheless, she did not hurry but
continued playing with him, breathing her merry laughter into his
hairy ear and enjoying the little convulsive movements which kept
traversing his heavy face. There would always be time enough to
patch all that up if that ninny of a Count Muffat were really to
treat her as Joseph did Potiphar's wife.
"Leoville or Chambertin?" murmured a waiter, who came craning
forward between Nana and Steiner just as the latter was addressing
her in a low voice.
"Eh, what?" he stammered, losing his head. "Whatever you like--I
don't care."
Vandeuvres gently nudged Lucy Stewart, who had a very spiteful
tongue and a very fierce invention when once she was set going.
That evening Mignon was driving her to exasperation.
"He would gladly be bottleholder, you know," she remarked to the
count. "He's in hopes of repeating what he did with little
Jonquier. You remember: Jonquier was Rose's man, but he was sweet
on big Laure. Now Mignon procured Laure for Jonquier and then came
back arm in arm with him to Rose, as if he were a husband who had
been allowed a little peccadillo. But this time the thing's going
to fail. Nana doesn't give up the men who are lent her."
"What ails Mignon that he should be looking at his wife in that
severe way?" asked Vandeuvres.
He leaned forward and saw Rose growing exceedingly amorous toward
Fauchery. This was the explanation of his neighbor's wrath. He
resumed laughingly:
"The devil, are you jealous?"
"Jealous!" said Lucy in a fury. "Good gracious, if Rose is wanting
Leon I give him up willingly--for what he's worth! That's to say,
for a bouquet a week and the rest to match! Look here, my dear boy,
these theatrical trollops are all made the same way. Why, Rose
cried with rage when she read Leon's article on Nana; I know she
did. So now, you understand, she must have an article, too, and
she's gaining it. As for me, I'm going to chuck Leon downstairs--
you'll see!"
She paused to say "Leoville" to the waiter standing behind her with
his two bottles and then resumed in lowered tones:
"I don't want to shout; it isn't my style. But she's a cocky slut
all the same. If I were in her husband's place I should lead her a
lovely dance. Oh, she won't be very happy over it. She doesn't
know my Fauchery: a dirty gent he is, too, palling up with women
like that so as to get on in the world. Oh, a nice lot they are!"
Vandeuvres did his best to calm her down, but Bordenave, deserted by
Rose and by Lucy, grew angry and cried out that they were letting
Papa perish of hunger and thirst. This produced a fortunate
diversion. Yet the supper was flagging; no one was eating now,
though platefuls of cepes a' l'italienne and pineapple fritters a la
Pompadour were being mangled. The champagne, however, which had
been drunk ever since the soup course, was beginning little by
little to warm the guests into a state of nervous exaltation. They
ended by paying less attention to decorum than before. The women
began leaning on their elbows amid the disordered table
arrangements, while the men, in order to breathe more easily, pushed
their chairs back, and soon the black coats appeared buried between
the light-colored bodices, and bare shoulders, half turned toward
the table, began to gleam as soft as silk. It was too hot, and the
glare of the candles above the table grew ever yellower and duller.
Now and again, when a women bent forward, the back of her neck
glowed golden under a rain of curls, and the glitter of a diamond
clasp lit up a lofty chignon. There was a touch of fire in the
passing jests, in the laughing eyes, in the sudden gleam of white
teeth, in the reflection of the candelabra on the surface of a glass
of champagne. The company joked at the tops of their voices,
gesticulated, asked questions which no one answered and called to
one another across the whole length of the room. But the loudest
din was made by the waiters; they fancied themselves at home in the
corridors of their parent restaurant; they jostled one another and
served the ices and the dessert to an accompaniment of guttural
exclamations.
"My children," shouted Bordenave, "you know we're playing tomorrow.
Be careful! Not too much champagne!"
"As far as I'm concerned," said Foucarmont, "I've drunk every
imaginable kind of wine in all the four quarters of the globe.
Extraordinary liquors some of 'em, containing alcohol enough to kill
a corpse! Well, and what d'you think? Why, it never hurt me a bit.
I can't make myself drunk. I've tried and I can't."
He was very pale, very calm and collected, and he lolled back in his
chair, drinking without cessation.
"Never mind that," murmured Louise Violaine. "Leave off; you've had
enough. It would be a funny business if I had to look after you the
rest of the night."
Such was her state of exaltation that Lucy Stewart's cheeks were
assuming a red, consumptive flush, while Rose Mignon with moist
eyelids was growing excessively melting. Tatan Nene, greatly
astonished at the thought that she had overeaten herself, was
laughing vaguely over her own stupidity. The others, such as
Blanche, Caroline, Simonne and Maria, were all talking at once and
telling each other about their private affairs--about a dispute with
a coachman, a projected picnic and innumerable complex stories of
lovers stolen or restored. Meanwhile a young man near Georges,
having evinced a desire to kiss Lea de Horn, received a sharp rap,
accompanied by a "Look here, you, let me go!" which was spoken in a
tone of fine indignation; and Georges, who was now very tipsy and
greatly excited by the sight of Nana, hesitated about carrying out a
project which he had been gravely maturing. He had been planning,
indeed, to get under the table on all fours and to go and crouch at
Nana's feet like a little dog. Nobody would have seen him, and he
would have stayed there in the quietest way. But when at Lea's
urgent request Daguenet had told the young man to sit still, Georges
all at once felt grievously chagrined, as though the reproof had
just been leveled at him. Oh, it was all silly and slow, and there
was nothing worth living for! Daguenet, nevertheless, began
chaffing and obliged him to swallow a big glassful of water, asking
him at the same time what he would do if he were to find himself
alone with a woman, seeing that three glasses of champagne were able
to bowl him over.
"Why, in Havana," resumed Foucarmont, "they make a spirit with a
certain wild berry; you think you're swallowing fire! Well now, one
evening I drank more than a liter of it, and it didn't hurt me one
bit. Better than that, another time when we were on the coast of
Coromandel some savages gave us I don't know what sort of a mixture
of pepper and vitriol, and that didn't hurt me one bit. I can't
make myself drunk."
For some moments past La Faloise's face opposite had excited his
displeasure. He began sneering and giving vent to disagreeable
witticisms. La Faloise, whose brain was in a whirl, was behaving
very restlessly and squeezing up against Gaga. But at length he
became the victim of anxiety; somebody had just taken his
handkerchief, and with drunken obstinacy he demanded it back again,
asked his neighbors about it, stooped down in order to look under
the chairs and the guests' feet. And when Gaga did her best to
quiet him:
"It's a nuisance," he murmured, "my initials and my coronet are
worked in the corner. They may compromise me."
"I say, Monsieur Falamoise, Lamafoise, Mafaloise!" shouted
Foucarmont, who thought it exceedingly witty thus to disfigure the
young man's name ad infinitum.
But La Faloise grew wroth and talked with a stutter about his
ancestry. He threatened to send a water bottle at Foucarmont's
head, and Count de Vandeuvres had to interfere in order to assure
him that Foucarmont was a great joker. Indeed, everybody was
laughing. This did for the already flurried young man, who was very
glad to resume his seat and to begin eating with childlike
submissiveness when in a loud voice his cousin ordered him to feed.
Gaga had taken him back to her ample side; only from time to time he
cast sly and anxious glances at the guests, for he ceased not to
search for his handkerchief.
Then Foucarmont, being now in his witty vein, attacked Labordette
right at the other end of the table. Louise Violaine strove to make
him hold his tongue, for, she said, "when he goes nagging at other
people like that it always ends in mischief for me." He had
discovered a witticism which consisted in addressing Labordette as
"Madame," and it must have amused him greatly, for he kept on
repeating it while Labordette tranquilly shrugged his shoulders and
as constantly replied:
"Pray hold your tongue, my dear fellow; it's stupid."
But as Foucarmont failed to desist and even became insulting without
his neighbors knowing why, he left off answering him and appealed to
Count Vandeuvres.
"Make your friend hold his tongue, monsieur. I don't wish to become
angry."
Foucarmont had twice fought duels, and he was in consequence most
politely treated and admitted into every circle. But there was now
a general uprising against him. The table grew merry at his
sallies, for they thought him very witty, but that was no reason why
the evening should be spoiled. Vandeuvres, whose subtle countenance
was darkening visibly, insisted on his restoring Labordette his sex.
The other men--Mignon, Steiner and Bordenave--who were by this time
much exalted, also intervened with shouts which drowned his voice.
Only the old gentleman sitting forgotten next to Nana retained his
stately demeanor and, still smiling in his tired, silent way,
watched with lackluster eyes the untoward finish of the dessert.
"What do you say to our taking coffee in here, duckie?" said
Bordenave. "We're very comfortable."
Nana did not give an immediate reply. Since the beginning of supper
she had seemed no longer in her own house. All this company had
overwhelmed and bewildered her with their shouts to the waiters, the
loudness of their voices and the way in which they put themselves at
their ease, just as though they were in a restaurant. Forgetting
her role of hostess, she busied herself exclusively with bulky
Steiner, who was verging on apoplexy beside her. She was listening
to his proposals and continually refusing them with shakes of the
head and that temptress's laughter which is peculiar to a voluptuous
blonde. The champagne she had been drinking had flushed her a rosy-
red; her lips were moist; her eyes sparkled, and the banker's offers
rose with every kittenish movement of her shoulders, with every
little voluptuous lift and fall of her throat, which occurred when
she turned her head. Close by her ear he kept espying a sweet
little satiny corner which drove him crazy. Occasionally Nana was
interrupted, and then, remembering her guests, she would try and be
as pleased as possible in order to show that she knew how to
receive. Toward the end of the supper she was very tipsy. It made
her miserable to think of it, but champagne had a way of
intoxicating her almost directly! Then an exasperating notion
struck her. In behaving thus improperly at her table, these ladies
were showing themselves anxious to do her an ugly turn. Oh yes, she
could see it all distinctly. Lucy had given Foucarmont a wink in
order to egg him on against Labordette, while Rose, Caroline and the
others were doing all they could to stir up the men. Now there was
such a din you couldn't hear your neighbor speak, and so the story
would get about that you might allow yourself every kind of liberty
when you supped at Nana's. Very well then! They should see! She
might be tipsy, if you like, but she was still the smartest and most
ladylike woman there.
"Do tell them to serve the coffee here, duckie," resumed Bordenave.
"I prefer it here because of my leg."
But Nana had sprung savagely to her feet after whispering into the
astonished ears of Steiner and the old gentleman:
"It's quite right; it'll teach me to go and invite a dirty lot like
that."
Then she pointed to the door of the dining room and added at the top
of her voice:
"If you want coffee it's there, you know."
The company left the table and crowded toward the dining room
without noticing Nana's indignant outburst. And soon no one was
left in the drawing room save Bordenave, who advanced cautiously,
supporting himself against the wall and cursing away at the
confounded women who chucked Papa the moment they were chock-full.
The waiters behind him were already busy removing the plates and
dishes in obedience to the loudly voiced orders of the manager.
They rushed to and fro, jostled one another, caused the whole table
to vanish, as a pantomime property might at the sound of the chief
scene-shifter's whistle. The ladies and gentlemen were to return to
the drawing room after drinking their coffee.
"By gum, it's less hot here," said Gaga with a slight shiver as she
entered the dining room.
The window here had remained open. Two lamps illuminated the table,
where coffee and liqueurs were set out. There were no chairs, and
the guests drank their coffee standing, while the hubbub the waiters
were making in the next room grew louder and louder. Nana had
disappeared, but nobody fretted about her absence. They did without
her excellently well, and everybody helped himself and rummaged in
the drawers of the sideboard in search of teaspoons, which were
lacking. Several groups were formed; people separated during supper
rejoined each other, and there was an interchange of glances, of
meaning laughter and of phrases which summed up recent situations.
"Ought not Monsieur Fauchery to come and lunch with us one of these
days, Auguste?" said Rose Mignon.
Mignon, who was toying with his watch chain, eyed the journalist for
a second or two with his severe glance. Rose was out of her senses.
As became a good manager, he would put a stop to such spendthrift
courses. In return for a notice, well and good, but afterward,
decidedly not. Nevertheless, as he was fully aware of his wife's
wrongheadedness and as he made it a rule to wink paternally at a
folly now and again, when such was necessary, he answered amiably
enough:
"Certainly, I shall be most happy. Pray come tomorrow, Monsieur
Fauchery."
Lucy Stewart heard this invitation given while she was talking with
Steiner and Blanche and, raising her voice, she remarked to the
banker:
"It's a mania they've all of them got. One of them even went so far
as to steal my dog. Now, dear boy, am I to blame if you chuck her?"
Rose turned round. She was very pale and gazed fixedly at Steiner
as she sipped her coffee. And then all the concentrated anger she
felt at his abandonment of her flamed out in her eyes. She saw more
clearly than Mignon; it was stupid in him to have wished to begin
the Jonquier ruse a second time--those dodgers never succeeded twice
running. Well, so much the worse for him! She would have Fauchery!
She had been getting enamored of him since the beginning of supper,
and if Mignon was not pleased it would teach him greater wisdom!
"You are not going to fight?" said Vandeuvres, coming over to Lucy
Stewart.
"No, don't be afraid of that! Only she must mind and keep quiet, or
I let the cat out of the bag!"
Then signing imperiously to Fauchery:
"I've got your slippers at home, my little man. I'll get them taken
to your porter's lodge for you tomorrow."
He wanted to joke about it, but she swept off, looking like a queen.
Clarisse, who had propped herself against a wall in order to drink a
quiet glass of kirsch, was seen to shrug her shoulders. A pleasant
business for a man! Wasn't it true that the moment two women were
together in the presence of their lovers their first idea was to do
one another out of them? It was a law of nature! As to herself,
why, in heaven's name, if she had wanted to she would have torn out
Gaga's eyes on Hector's account! But la, she despised him! Then as
La Faloise passed by, she contented herself by remarking to him:
"Listen, my friend, you like 'em well advanced, you do! You don't
want 'em ripe; you want 'em mildewed!"
La Faloise seemed much annoyed and not a little anxious. Seeing
Clarisse making game of him, he grew suspicious of her.
"No humbug, I say," he muttered. "You've taken my handkerchief.
Well then, give it back!"
"He's dreeing us with that handkerchief of his!" she cried. "Why,
you ass, why should I have taken it from you?"
"Why should you?" he said suspiciously. "Why, that you may send it
to my people and compromise me."
In the meantime Foucarmont was diligently attacking the liqueurs.
He continued to gaze sneeringly at Labordette, who was drinking his
coffee in the midst of the ladies. And occasionally he gave vent to
fragmentary assertions, as thus: "He's the son of a horse dealer;
some say the illegitimate child of a countess. Never a penny of
income, yet always got twenty-five louis in his pocket! Footboy to
the ladies of the town! A big lubber, who never goes with any of
'em! Never, never, never!" he repeated, growing furious. "No, by
Jove! I must box his ears."
He drained a glass of chartreuse. The chartreuse had not the
slightest effect upon him; it didn't affect him "even to that
extent," and he clicked his thumbnail against the edge of his teeth.
But suddenly, just as he was advancing upon Labordette, he grew ashy
white and fell down in a heap in front of the sideboard. He was
dead drunk. Louise Violaine was beside herself. She had been quite
right to prophesy that matters would end badly, and now she would
have her work cut out for the remainder of the night. Gaga
reassured her. She examined the officer with the eye of a woman of
experience and declared that there was nothing much the matter and
that the gentleman would sleep like that for at least a dozen or
fifteen hours without any serious consequences. Foucarmont was
carried off.
"Well, where's Nana gone to?" asked Vandeuvres.
Yes, she had certainly flown away somewhere on leaving the table.
The company suddenly recollected her, and everybody asked for her.
Steiner, who for some seconds had been uneasy on her account, asked
Vandeuvres about the old gentleman, for he, too, had disappeared.
But the count reassured him--he had just brought the old gentleman
back. He was a stranger, whose name it was useless to mention.
Suffice it to say that he was a very rich man who was quite pleased
to pay for suppers! Then as Nana was once more being forgotten,
Vandeuvres saw Daguenet looking out of an open door and beckoning to
him. And in the bedroom he found the mistress of the house sitting
up, white-lipped and rigid, while Daguenet and Georges stood gazing
at her with an alarmed expression.
"What IS the matter with you?" he asked in some surprise.
She neither answered nor turned her head, and he repeated his
question.
"Why, this is what's the matter with me," she cried out at length;
"I won't let them make bloody sport of me!"
Thereupon she gave vent to any expression that occurred to her.
Yes, oh yes, SHE wasn't a ninny--she could see clearly enough. They
had been making devilish light of her during supper and saying all
sorts of frightful things to show that they thought nothing of her!
A pack of sluts who weren't fit to black her boots! Catch her
bothering herself again just to be badgered for it after! She
really didn't know what kept her from chucking all that dirty lot
out of the house! And with this, rage choked her and her voice
broke down in sobs.
"Come, come, my lass, you're drunk," said Vandeuvres, growing
familiar. "You must be reasonable."
No, she would give her refusal now; she would stay where she was.
"I am drunk--it's quite likely! But I want people to respect me!"
For a quarter of an hour past Daguenet and Georges had been vainly
beseeching her to return to the drawing room. She was obstinate,
however; her guests might do what they liked; she despised them too
much to come back among them.
No, she never would, never. They might tear her in pieces before
she would leave her room!
"I ought to have had my suspicions," she resumed.
"It's that cat of a Rose who's got the plot up! I'm certain Rose'll
have stopped that respectable woman coming whom I was expecting
tonight."
She referred to Mme Robert. Vandeuvres gave her his word of honor
that Mme Robert had given a spontaneous refusal. He listened and he
argued with much gravity, for he was well accustomed to similar
scenes and knew how women in such a state ought to be treated. But
the moment he tried to take hold of her hands in order to lift her
up from her chair and draw her away with him she struggled free of
his clasp, and her wrath redoubled. Now, just look at that! They
would never get her to believe that Fauchery had not put the Count
Muffat off coming! A regular snake was that Fauchery, an envious
sort, a fellow capable of growing mad against a woman and of
destroying her whole happiness. For she knew this--the count had
become madly devoted to her! She could have had him!
"Him, my dear, never!" cried Vandeuvres, forgetting himself and
laughing loud.
"Why not?" she asked, looking serious and slightly sobered.
"Because he's thoroughly in the hands of the priests, and if he were
only to touch you with the tips of his fingers he would go and
confess it the day after. Now listen to a bit of good advice.
Don't let the other man escape you!"
She was silent and thoughtful for a moment or two. Then she got up
and went and bathed her eyes. Yet when they wanted to take her into
the dining room she still shouted "No!" furiously. Vandeuvres left
the bedroom, smiling and without further pressing her, and the
moment he was gone she had an access of melting tenderness, threw
herself into Daguenet's arms and cried out:
"Ah, my sweetie, there's only you in the world. I love you! YES, I
love you from the bottom of my heart! Oh, it would be too nice if
we could always live together. My God! How unfortunate women are!"
Then her eye fell upon Georges, who, seeing them kiss, was growing
very red, and she kissed him too. Sweetie could not be jealous of a
baby! She wanted Paul and Georges always to agree, because it would
be so nice for them all three to stay like that, knowing all the
time that they loved one another very much. But an extraordinary
noise disturbed them: someone was snoring in the room. Whereupon
after some searching they perceived Bordenave, who, since taking his
coffee, must have comfortably installed himself there. He was
sleeping on two chairs, his head propped on the edge of the bed and
his leg stretched out in front. Nana thought him so funny with his
open mouth and his nose moving with each successive snore that she
was shaken with a mad fit of laughter. She left the room, followed
by Daguenet and Georges, crossed the dining room, entered the
drawing room, her merriment increasing at every step.
"Oh, my dear, you've no idea!" she cried, almost throwing herself
into Rose's arms. "Come and see it."
All the women had to follow her. She took their hands coaxingly and
drew them along with her willy-nilly, accompanying her action with
so frank an outburst of mirth that they all of them began laughing
on trust. The band vanished and returned after standing
breathlessly for a second or two round Bordenave's lordly,
outstretched form. And then there was a burst of laughter, and when
one of them told the rest to be quiet Bordenave's distant snorings
became audible.
It was close on four o'clock. In the dining room a card table had
just been set out, at which Vandeuvres, Steiner, Mignon and
Labordette had taken their seats. Behind them Lucy and Caroline
stood making bets, while Blanche, nodding with sleep and
dissatisfied about her night, kept asking Vandeuvres at intervals of
five minutes if they weren't going soon. In the drawing room there
was an attempt at dancing. Daguenet was at the piano or "chest of
drawers," as Nana called it. She did not want a "thumper," for Mimi
would play as many waltzes and polkas as the company desired. But
the dance was languishing, and the ladies were chatting drowsily
together in the corners of sofas. Suddenly, however, there was an
outburst of noise. A band of eleven young men had arrived and were
laughing loudly in the anteroom and crowding to the drawing room.
They had just come from the ball at the Ministry of the Interior and
were in evening dress and wore various unknown orders. Nana was
annoyed at this riotous entry, called to the waiters who still
remained in the kitchen and ordered them to throw these individuals
out of doors. She vowed that she had never seen any of them before.
Fauchery, Labordette, Daguenet and the rest of the men had all come
forward in order to enforce respectful behavior toward their
hostess. Big words flew about; arms were outstretched, and for some
seconds a general exchange of fisticuffs was imminent.
Notwithstanding this, however, a little sickly looking light-haired
man kept insistently repeating:
"Come, come, Nana, you saw us the other evening at Peters' in the
great red saloon! Pray remember, you invited us."
The other evening at Peters'? She did not remember it all. To
begin with, what evening?
And when the little light-haired man had mentioned the day, which
was Wednesday, she distinctly remembered having supped at Peters' on
the Wednesday, but she had given no invitation to anyone; she was
almost sure of that.
"However, suppose you HAVE invited them, my good girl," murmured
Labordette, who was beginning to have his doubts. "Perhaps you were
a little elevated."
Then Nana fell a-laughing. It was quite possible; she really didn't
know. So then, since these gentlemen were on the spot, they had her
leave to come in. Everything was quietly arranged; several of the
newcomers found friends in the drawing room, and the scene ended in
handshakings. The little sickly looking light-haired man bore one
of the greatest names in France. Furthermore, the eleven announced
that others were to follow them, and, in fact, the door opened every
few moments, and men in white gloves and official garb presented
themselves. They were still coming from the ball at the Ministry.
Fauchery jestingly inquired whether the minister was not coming,
too, but Nana answered in a huff that the minister went to the
houses of people she didn't care a pin for. What she did not say
was that she was possessed with a hope of seeing Count Muffat enter
her room among all that stream of people. He might quite have
reconsidered his decision, and so while talking to Rose she kept a
sharp eye on the door.
Five o'clock struck. The dancing had ceased, and the cardplayers
alone persisted in their game. Labordette had vacated his seat, and
the women had returned into the drawing room. The air there was
heavy with the somnolence which accompanies a long vigil, and the
lamps cast a wavering light while their burned-out wicks glowed red
within their globes. The ladies had reached that vaguely melancholy
hour when they felt it necessary to tell each other their histories.
Blanche de Sivry spoke of her grandfather, the general, while
Clarisse invented a romantic story about a duke seducing her at her
uncle's house, whither he used to come for the boar hunting. Both
women, looking different ways, kept shrugging their shoulders and
asking themselves how the deuce the other could tell such whoppers!
As to Lucy Stewart, she quietly confessed to her origin and of her
own accord spoke of her childhood and of the days when her father,
the wheel greaser at the Northern Railway Terminus, used to treat
her to an apple puff on Sundays.
"Oh, I must tell you about it!" cried the little Maria Blond
abruptly. "Opposite to me there lives a gentleman, a Russian, an
awfully rich man! Well, just fancy, yesterday I received a basket
of fruit--oh, it just was a basket! Enormous peaches, grapes as big
as that, simply wonderful for the time of year! And in the middle
of them six thousand-franc notes! It was the Russian's doing. Of
course I sent the whole thing back again, but I must say my heart
ached a little--when I thought of the fruit!"
The ladies looked at one another and pursed up their lips. At her
age little Maria Blond had a pretty cheek! Besides, to think that
such things should happen to trollops like her! Infinite was their
contempt for her among themselves. It was Lucy of whom they were
particularly jealous, for they were beside themselves at the thought
of her three princes. Since Lucy had begnn taking a daily morning
ride in the Bois they all had become Amazons, as though a mania
possessed them.
Day was about to dawn, and Nana turned her eyes away from the door,
for she was relinquishing all hope. The company were bored to
distraction. Rose Mignon had refused to sing the "Slipper" and sat
huddled up on a sofa, chatting in a low voice with Fauchery and
waiting for Mignon, who had by now won some fifty louis from
Vandeuvres. A fat gentleman with a decoration and a serious cast of
countenance had certainly given a recitation in Alsatian accents of
"Abraham's Sacrifice," a piece in which the Almighty says, "By My
blasted Name" when He swears, and Isaac always answers with a "Yes,
Papa!" Nobody, however, understood what it was all about, and the
piece had been voted stupid. People were at their wits' end how to
make merry and to finish the night with fitting hilarity. For a
moment or two Labordette conceived the idea of denouncing different
women in a whisper to La Faloise, who still went prowling round each
individual lady, looking to see if she were hiding his handkerchief
in her bosom. Soon, as there were still some bottles of champagne
on the sideboard, the young men again fell to drinking. They
shouted to one another; they stirred each other up, but a dreary
species of intoxication, which was stupid enough to drive one to
despair, began to overcome the company beyond hope of recovery.
Then the little fair-haired fellow, the man who bore one of the
greatest names in France and had reached his wit's end and was
desperate at the thought that he could not hit upon something really
funny, conceived a brilliant notion: he snatched up his bottle of
champagne and poured its contents into the piano. His allies were
convulsed with laughter.
"La now! Why's he putting champagne into the piano?" asked Tatan
Nene in great astonishment as she caught sight of him.
"What, my lass, you don't know why he's doing that?" replied
Labordette solemnly. "There's nothing so good as champagne for
pianos. It gives 'em tone."
"Ah," murmured Tatan Nene with conviction.
And when the rest began laughing at her she grew angry. How should
she know? They were always confusing her.
Decidedly the evening was becoming a big failure. The night
threatened to end in the unloveliest way. In a corner by themselves
Maria Blond and Lea de Horn had begun squabbling at close quarters,
the former accusing the latter of consorting with people of
insufficient wealth. They were getting vastly abusive over it,
their chief stumbling block being the good looks of the men in
question. Lucy, who was plain, got them to hold their tongues.
Good looks were nothing, according to her; good figures were what
was wanted. Farther off, on a sofa, an attache had slipped his arm
round Simonne's waist and was trying to kiss her neck, but Simonne,
sullen and thoroughly out of sorts, pushed him away at every fresh
attempt with cries of "You're pestering me!" and sound slaps of the
fan across his face. For the matter of that, not one of the ladies
allowed herself to be touched. Did people take them for light
women? Gaga, in the meantime, had once more caught La Faloise and
had almost hoisted him upon her knees while Clarisse was
disappearing from view between two gentlemen, shaking with nervous
laughter as women will when they are tickled. Round about the piano
they were still busy with their little game, for they were suffering
from a fit of stupid imbecillty, which caused each man to jostle his
fellow in his frantic desire to empty his bottle into the
instrument. It was a simple process and a charming one.
"Now then, old boy, drink a glass! Devil take it, he's a thirsty
piano! Hi! 'Tenshun! Here's another bottle! You mustn't lose a
drop!"
Nana's back was turned, and she did not see them. Emphatically she
was now falling back on the bulky Steiner, who was seated next to
her. So much the worse! It was all on account of that Muffat, who
had refused what was offered him. Sitting there in her white
foulard dress, which was as light and full of folds as a shift,
sitting there with drooped eyelids and cheeks pale with the touch of
intoxication from which she was suffering, she offered herself to
him with that quiet expression which is peculiar to a good-natured
courtesan. The roses in her hair and at her throat had lost their
leaves, and their stalks alone remained. Presently Steiner withdrew
his hand quickly from the folds of her skirt, where he had come in
contact with the pins that Georges had stuck there. Some drops of
blood appeared on his fingers, and one fell on Nana's dress and
stained it.
"Now the bargain's struck," said Nana gravely.
The day was breaking apace. An uncertain glimmer of light, fraught
with a poignant melancholy, came stealing through the windows. And
with that the guests began to take their departure. It was a most
sour and uncomfortable retreat. Caroline Hequet, annoyed at the
loss of her night, announced that it was high time to be off unless
you were anxious to assist at some pretty scenes. Rose pouted as if
her womanly character had been compromised. It was always so with
these girls; they didn't know how to behave and were guilty of
disgusting conduct when they made their first appearance in society!
And Mignon having cleaned Vandeuvres out completely, the family took
their departure. They did not trouble about Steiner but renewed
their invitation for tomorrow to Fauchery. Lucy thereupon refused
the journalist's escort home and sent him back shrilly to his
"strolling actress." At this Rose turned round immediately and
hissed out a "Dirty sow" by way of answer. But Mignon, who in
feminine quarrels was always paternal, for his experience was a long
one and rendered him superior to them, had already pushed her out of
the house, telling her at the same time to have done. Lucy came
downstairs in solitary state behind them. After which Gaga had to
carry off La Faloise, ill, sobbing like a child, calling after
Clarisse, who had long since gone off with her two gentlemen.
Simonne, too, had vanished. Indeed, none remained save Tatan, Lea
and Maria, whom Labordette complaisantly took under his charge.
"Oh, but I don't the least bit want to go to bed!" said Nana. "One
ought to find something to do."
She looked at the sky through the windowpanes. It was a livid sky,
and sooty clouds were scudding across it. It was six o'clock in the
morning. Over the way, on the opposite side of the Boulevard
Haussmann, the glistening roofs of the still-slumbering houses were
sharply outlined against the twilight sky while along the deserted
roadway a gang of street sweepers passed with a clatter of wooden
shoes. As she viewed Paris thus grimly awakening, she was overcome
by tender, girlish feelings, by a yearning for the country, for
idyllic scenes, for things soft and white.
"Now guess what you're to do," she said, coming back to Steiner.
"You're going to take me to the Bois de Boulogne, and we'll drink
milk there."
She clapped her hands in childish glee. Without waiting for the
banker's reply--he naturally consented, though he was really rather
bored and inclined to think of other things--she ran off to throw a
pelisse over her shoulders. In the drawing room there was now no
one with Steiner save the band of young men. These had by this time
dropped the very dregs of their glasses into the piano and were
talking of going, when one of their number ran in triumphantly. He
held in his hands a last remaining bottle, which he had brought back
with him from the pantry.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" he shouted. "Here's a bottle of
chartreuse; that'll pick him up! And now, my young friends, let's
hook it. We're blooming idiots."
In the dressing room Nana was compelled to wake up Zoe, who had
dozed off on a chair. The gas was still alight, and Zoe shivered as
she helped her mistress on with her hat and pelisse.
"Well, it's over; I've done what you wanted me to," said Nana,
speaking familiarly to the maid in a sudden burst of expansive
confidence and much relieved at the thought that she had at last
made her election. "You were quite right; the banker's as good as
another."
The maid was cross, for she was still heavy with sleep. She
grumbled something to the effect that Madame ought to have come to a
decision the first evening. Then following her into the bedroom,
she asked what she was going to do with "those two," meaning
Bordenave, who was snoring away as usual, and Georges, who had
slipped in slyly, buried his head in a pillow and, finally falling
asleep there, was now breathing as lightly and regularly as a
cherub. Nana in reply told her that she was to let them sleep on.
But seeing Daguenet come into the room, she again grew tender. He
had been watching her from the kitchen and was looking very
wretched.
"Come, my sweetie, be reasonable," she said, taking him in her arms
and kissing him with all sorts of little wheedling caresses.
"Nothing's changed; you know that it's sweetie whom I always adore!
Eh, dear? I had to do it. Why, I swear to you we shall have even
nicer times now. Come tomorrow, and we'll arrange about hours. Now
be quick, kiss and hug me as you love me. Oh, tighter, tighter than
that!"
And she escaped and rejoined Steiner, feeling happy and once more
possessed with the idea of drinking milk. In the empty room the
Count de Vandeuvres was left alone with the "decorated" man who had
recited "Abraham's Sacrifice." Both seemed glued to the card table;
they had lost count of their whereabouts and never once noticed the
broad light of day without, while Blanche had made bold to put her
feet up on a sofa in order to try and get a little sleep.
"Oh, Blanche is with them!" cried Nana. "We are going to drink
milk, dear. Do come; you'll find Vandeuvres here when we return."
Blanche got up lazily. This time the banker's fiery face grew white
with annoyance at the idea of having to take that big wench with him
too. She was certain to bore him. But the two women had already
got him by the arms and were reiterating:
"We want them to milk the cow before our eyes, you know."
CHAPTER V
At the Varietes they were giving the thirty-fourth performance of
the Blonde Venus. The first act had just finished, and in the
greenroom Simonne, dressed as the little laundress, was standing in
front of a console table, surmounted by a looking glass and situated
between the two corner doors which opened obliquely on the end of
the dressing-room passage. No one was with her, and she was
scrutinizing her face and rubbing her finger up and down below her
eyes with a view to putting the finishing touches to her make-up.
The gas jets on either side of the mirror flooded her with warm,
crude light.
"Has he arrived?" asked Prulliere, entering the room in his Alpine
admiral's costume, which was set off by a big sword, enormous top
boots and a vast tuft of plumes.
"Who d'you mean?" said Simonne, taking no notice of him and laughing
into the mirror in order to see how her lips looked.
"The prince."
"I don't know; I've just come down. Oh, he's certainly due here
tonight; he comes every time!"
Prulliere had drawn near the hearth opposite the console table,
where a coke fire was blazing and two more gas jets were flaring
brightly. He lifted his eyes and looked at the clock and the
barometer on his right hand and on his left. They had gilded
sphinxes by way of adornment in the style of the First Empire. Then
he stretched himself out in a huge armchair with ears, the green
velvet of which had been so worn by four generations of comedians
that it looked yellow in places, and there he stayed, with moveless
limbs and vacant eyes, in that weary and resigned attitude peculiar
to actors who are used to long waits before their turn for going on
the stage.
Old Bosc, too, had just made his appearance. He came in dragging
one foot behind the other and coughing. He was wrapped in an old
box coat, part of which had slipped from his shoulder in such a way
as to uncover the gold-laced cloak of King Dagobert. He put his
crown on the piano and for a moment or two stood moodily stamping
his feet. His hands were trembling slightly with the first
beginnings of alcoholism, but he looked a sterling old fellow for
all that, and a long white beard lent that fiery tippler's face of
his a truly venerable appearance. Then in the silence of the room,
while the shower of hail was whipping the panes of the great window
that looked out on the courtyard, he shook himself disgustedly.
"What filthy weather!" he growled.
Simonne and Prulliere did not move. Four or five pictures--a
landscape, a portrait of the actor Vernet--hung yellowing in the hot
glare of the gas, and a bust of Potier, one of the bygone glories of
the Varietes, stood gazing vacant-eyed from its pedestal. But just
then there was a burst of voices outside. It was Fontan, dressed
for the second act. He was a young dandy, and his habiliments, even
to his gloves, were entirely yellow.
"Now say you don't know!" he shouted, gesticulating. "Today's my
patron saint's day!"
"What?" asked Simonne, coming up smilingly, as though attracted by
the huge nose and the vast, comic mouth of the man. "D'you answer
to the name of Achille?"
"Exactly so! And I'm going to get 'em to tell Madame Bron to send
up champagne after the second act."
For some seconds a bell had been ringing in the distance. The long-
drawn sound grew fainter, then louder, and when the bell ceased a
shout ran up the stair and down it till it was lost along the
passages. "All on the stage for the second act! All on the stage
for the second act!" The sound drew near, and a little pale-faced
man passed by the greenroom doors, outside each of which he yelled
at the top of his shrill voice, "On the stage for the second act!"
"The deuce, it's champagne!" said Prulliere without appearing to
hear the din. "You're prospering!"
"If I were you I should have it in from the cafe," old Bosc slowly
announced. He was sitting on a bench covered with green velvet,
with his head against the wall.
But Simonne said that it was one's duty to consider Mme Bron's small
perquisites. She clapped her hands excitedly and devoured Fontan
with her gaze while his long goatlike visage kept up a continuous
twitching of eyes and nose and mouth.
"Oh, that Fontan!" she murmured. "There's no one like him, no one
like him!"
The two greenroom doors stood wide open to the corridor leading to
the wings. And along the yellow wall, which was brightly lit up by
a gas lamp out of view, passed a string of rapidly moving shadows--
men in costume, women with shawls over their scant attire, in a
word, the whole of the characters in the second act, who would
shortly make their appearance as masqeuraders in the ball at the
Boule Noire. And at the end of the corridor became audible a
shuffling of feet as these people clattered down the five wooden
steps which led to the stage. As the big Clarisse went running by
Simonne called to her, but she said she would be back directly.
And, indeed, she reappeared almost at once, shivering in the thin
tunic and scarf which she wore as Iris.
"God bless me!" she said. "It isn't warm, and I've left my furs in
my dressing room!"
Then as she stood toasting her legs in their warm rose-colored
tights in front of the fireplace she resumed:
"The prince has arrived."
"Oh!" cried the rest with the utmost curiosity.
"Yes, that's why I ran down: I wanted to see. He's in the first
stage box to the right, the same he was in on Thursday. It's the
third time he's been this week, eh? That's Nana; well, she's in
luck's way! I was willing to wager he wouldn't come again."
Simonne opened her lips to speak, but her remarks were drowned by a
fresh shout which arose close to the greenroom. In the passage the
callboy was yelling at the top of his shrill voice, "They've
knocked!"
"Three times!" said Simonne when she was again able to speak. "It's
getting exciting. You know, he won't go to her place; he takes her
to his. And it seems that he has to pay for it too!"
"Egad! It's a case of when one 'has to go out,'" muttered Prulliere
wickedly, and he got up to have a last look at the mirror as became
a handsome fellow whom the boxes adored.
"They've knocked! They've knocked!" the callboy kept repeating in
tones that died gradually away in the distance as he passed through
the various stories and corridors.
Fontan thereupon, knowing how it had all gone off on the first
occasion the prince and Nana met, told the two women the whole story
while they in their turn crowded against him and laughed at the tops
of their voices whenever he stooped to whisper certain details in
their ears. Old Bosc had never budged an inch--he was totally
indifferent. That sort of thing no longer interested him now. He
was stroking a great tortoise-shell cat which was lying curled up on
the bench. He did so quite beautifully and ended by taking her in
his arms with the tender good nature becoming a worn-out monarch.
The cat arched its back and then, after a prolonged sniff at the big
white beard, the gluey odor of which doubtless disgusted her, she
turned and, curling herself up, went to sleep again on the bench
beside him. Bosc remained grave and absorbed.
"That's all right, but if I were you I should drink the champagne at
the restaurant--its better there," he said, suddenly addressing
Fontan when he had finished his recital.
"The curtain's up!" cried the callboy in cracked and long-drawn
accents "The curtain's up! The curtain's up!"
The shout sounded for some moments, during which there had been a
noise of rapid footsteps. Through the suddenly opened door of the
passage came a burst of music and a far-off murmur of voices, and
then the door shut to again and you could hear its dull thud as it
wedged itself into position once more.
A heavy, peaceful, atmosphere again pervaded the greenroom, as
though the place were situated a hundred leagues from the house
where crowds were applauding. Simonne and Clarisse were still on
the topic of Nana. There was a girl who never hurried herself!
Why, yesterday she had again come on too late! But there was a
silence, for a tall damsel had just craned her head in at the door
and, seeing that she had made a mistake, had departed to the other
end of the passage. It was Satin. Wearing a hat and a small veil
for the nonce she was affecting the manner of a lady about to pay a
call.
"A pretty trollop!" muttered Prulliere, who had been coming across
her for a year past at the Cafe des Varietes. And at this Simonne
told them how Nana had recognized in Satin an old schoolmate, had
taken a vast fancy to her and was now plaguing Bordenave to let her
make a first appearance on the stage.
"How d'ye do?" said Fontan, shaking hands with Mignon and Fauchery,
who now came into the room.
Old Bosc himself gave them the tips of his fingers while the two
women kissed Mignon.
"A good house this evening?" queried Fauchery.
"Oh, a splendid one!" replied Prulliere. "You should see 'em
gaping."
"I say, my little dears," remarked Mignon, "it must be your turn!"
Oh, all in good time! They were only at the fourth scene as yet,
but Bosc got up in obedience to instinct, as became a rattling old
actor who felt that his cue was coming. At that very moment the
callboy was opening the door.
"Monsieur Bosc!" he called. "Mademoiselle Simonne!"
Simonne flung a fur-lined pelisse briskly over her shoulders and
went out. Bosc, without hurrying at all, went and got his crown,
which he settled on his brow with a rap. Then dragging himself
unsteadily along in his greatcoat, he took his departure, grumbling
and looking as annoyed as a man who has been rudely disturbed.
"You were very amiable in your last notice," continued Fontan,
addressing Fauchery. "Only why do you say that comedians are vain?"
"Yes, my little man, why d'you say that?" shouted Mignon, bringing
down his huge hands on the journalist's slender shoulders with such
force as almost to double him up.
Prulliere and Clarisse refrained from laughing aloud. For some time
past the whole company had been deriving amusement from a comedy
which was going on in the wings. Mignon, rendered frantic by his
wife's caprice and annoyed at the thought that this man Fauchery
brought nothing but a certain doubiful notoriety to his household,
had conceived the idea of revenging himself on the journalist by
overwhelming him with tokens of friendship. Every evening,
therefore, when he met him behind scenes he would shower friendly
slaps on his back and shoulders, as though fairly carried away by an
outburst of tenderness, and Fauchery, who was a frail, small man in
comparison with such a giant, was fain to take the raps with a
strained smile in order not to quarrel with Rose's husband.
"Aha, my buck, you've insulted Fontan," resumed Mignon, who was
doing his best to force the joke. "Stand on guard! One--two--got
him right in the middle of his chest!"
He lunged and struck the young man with such force that the latter
grew very pale and could not speak for some seconds. With a wink
Clarisse showed the others where Rose Mignon was standing on the
threshold of the greenroom. Rose had witnessed the scene, and she
marched straight up to the journalist, as though she had failed to
notice her husband and, standing on tiptoe, bare-armed and in baby
costume, she held her face up to him with a caressing, infantine
pout.
"Good evening, baby," said Fauchery, kissing her familiarly.
Thus he indemnified himself. Mignon, however, did not seem to have
observed this kiss, for everybody kissed his wife at the theater.
But he laughed and gave the journalist a keen little look. The
latter would assurely have to pay for Rose's bravado.
In the passage the tightly shutting door opened and closed again,
and a tempest of applause was blown as far as the greenroom.
Simonne came in after her scene.
"Oh, Father Bosc HAS just scored!" she cried. "The prince was
writhing with laughter and applauded with the rest as though he had
been paid to. I say, do you know the big man sitting beside the
prince in the stage box? A handsome man, with a very sedate
expression and splendid whiskers!"
"It's Count Muffat," replied Fauchery. "I know that the prince,
when he was at the empress's the day before yesterday, invited him
to dinner for tonight. He'll have corrupted him afterward!"
"So that's Count Muffat! We know his father-in-law, eh, Auguste?"
said Rose, addressing her remark to Mignon. "You know the Marquis
de Chouard, at whose place I went to sing? Well, he's in the house
too. I noticed him at the back of a box. There's an old boy for
you!"
Prulliere, who had just put on his huge plume of feathers, turned
round and called her.
"Hi, Rose! Let's go now!"
She ran after him, leaving her sentence unfinished. At that moment
Mme Bron, the portress of the theater, passed by the door with an
immense bouquet in her arms. Simonne asked cheerfully if it was for
her, but the porter woman did not vouchsafe an answer and only
pointed her chin toward Nana's dressing room at the end of the
passage. Oh, that Nana! They were loading her with flowers! Then
when Mme Bron returned she handed a letter to Clarisse, who allowed
a smothered oath to escape her. That beggar La Faloise again!
There was a fellow who wouldn't let her alone! And when she learned
the gentleman in question was waiting for her at the porter's lodge
she shrieked:
"Tell him I'm coming down after this act. I'm going to catch him
one on the face."
Fontan had rushed forward, shouting:
"Madame Bron, just listen. Please listen, Madame Bron. I want you
to send up six bottles of champagne between the acts."
But the callboy had again made his appearance. He was out of
breath, and in a singsong voice he called out:
"All to go on the stage! It's your turn, Monsieur Fontan. Make
haste, make haste!"
"Yes, yes, I'm going, Father Barillot," replied Fontan in a flurry.
And he ran after Mme Bron and continued:
"You understand, eh? Six bottles of champagne in the greenroom
between the acts. It's my patron saint's day, and I'm standing the
racket."
Simonne and Clarisse had gone off with a great rustling of skirts.
Everybody was swallowed up in the distance, and when the passage
door had banged with its usual hollow sound a fresh hail shower was
heard beating against the windows in the now-silent greenroom.
Barillot, a small, pale-faced ancient, who for thirty years had been
a servant in the theater, had advanced familiarly toward Mignon and
had presented his open snuffbox to him. This proffer of a pinch and
its acceptance allowed him a minute's rest in his interminable
career up and down stairs and along the dressing-room passage. He
certainly had still to look up Mme Nana, as he called her, but she
was one of those who followed her own sweet will and didn't care a
pin for penalties. Why, if she chose to be too late she was too
late! But he stopped short and murmured in great surprise:
"Well, I never! She's ready; here she is! She must know that the
prince is here."
Indeed, Nana appeared in the corridor. She was dressed as a fish
hag: her arms and face were plastered with white paint, and she had
a couple of red dabs under her eyes. Without entering the greenroom
she contented herself by nodding to Mignon and Fauchery.
"How do? You're all right?"
Only Mignon shook her outstretched hand, and she hied royally on her
way, followed by her dresser, who almost trod on her heels while
stooping to adjust the folds of her skirt. In the rear of the
dresser came Satin, closing the procession and trying to look quite
the lady, though she was already bored to death.
"And Steiner?" asked Mignon sharply.
"Monsieur Steiner has gone away to the Loiret," said Barillot,
preparing to return to the neighborhood of the stage. "I expect
he's gone to buy a country place in those parts."
"Ah yes, I know, Nana's country place."
Mignon had grown suddenly serious. Oh, that Steiner! He had
promised Rose a fine house in the old days! Well, well, it wouldn't
do to grow angry with anybody. Here was a position that would have
to be won again. From fireplace to console table Mignon paced, sunk
in thought yet still unconquered by circumstances. There was no one
in the greenroom now save Fauchery and himself. The journalist was
tired and had flung himself back into the recesses of the big
armchair. There he stayed with half-closed eyes and as quiet as
quiet could be, while the other glanced down at him as he passed.
When they were alone Mignon scorned to slap him at every turn. What
good would it have done, since nobody would have enjoyed the
spectacle? He was far too disinterested to be personally
entertained by the farcical scenes in which he figured as a
bantering husband. Glad of this short-lived respite, Fauchery
stretched his feet out languidly toward the fire and let his
upturned eyes wander from the barometer to the clock. In the course
of his march Mignon planted himself in front of Potier's bust,
looked at it without seeming to see it and then turned back to the
window, outside which yawned the darkling gulf of the courtyard.
The rain had ceased, and there was now a deep silence in the room,
which the fierce heat of the coke fire and the flare of the gas jets
rendered still more oppressive. Not a sound came from the wings:
the staircase and the passages were deadly still.
That choking sensation of quiet, which behind the scenes immediately
precedes the end of an act, had begun to pervade the empty
greenroom. Indeed, the place seemed to be drowsing off through very
breathlessness amid that faint murmur which the stage gives forth
when the whole troupe are raising the deafening uproar of some grand
finale.
"Oh, the cows!" Bordenave suddeniy shouted in his hoarse voice.
He had only just come up, and he was already howling complaints
about two chorus girls who had nearly fallen flat on the stage
because they were playing the fool together. When his eye lit on
Mignon and Fauchery he called them; he wanted to show them
something. The prince had just notified a desire to compliment Nana
in her dressing room during the next interval. But as he was
leading them into the wings the stage manager passed.
"Just you find those hags Fernande and Maria!" cried Bordenave
savagely.
Then calming down and endeavoring to assume the dignified expression
worn by "heavy fathers," he wiped his face with his pocket
handkerchief and added:
"I am now going to receive His Highness."
The curtain fell amid a long-drawn salvo of applause. Then across
the twilight stage, which was no longer lit up by the footlights,
there followed a disorderly retreat. Actors and supers and chorus
made haste to get back to their dressing rooms while the
sceneshifters rapidly changed the scenery. Simonne and Clarisse,
however, had remained "at the top," talking together in whispers.
On the stage, in an interval between their lines, they had just
settled a little matter. Clarisse, after viewing the thing in every
light, found she preferred not to see La Faloise, who could never
decide to leave her for Gaga, and so Simonne was simply to go and
explain that a woman ought not to be palled up to in that fashion!
At last she agreed to undertake the mission.
Then Simonne, in her theatrical laundress's attire but with furs
over her shoulders, ran down the greasy steps of the narrow, winding
stairs which led between damp walls to the porter's lodge. This
lodge, situated between the actors' staircase and that of the
management, was shut in to right and left by large glass partitions
and resembled a huge transparent lantern in which two gas jets were
flaring.
There was a set of pigeonholes in the place in which were piled
letters and newspapers, while on the table various bouquets lay
awaiting their recipients in close proximity to neglected heaps of
dirty plates and to an old pair of stays, the eyelets of which the
portress was busy mending. And in the middle of this untidy, ill-
kept storeroom sat four fashionable, white-gloved society men. They
occupied as many ancient straw-bottomed chairs and, with an
expression at once patient and submissive, kept sharply turning
their heads in Mme Bron's direction every time she came down from
the theater overhead, for on such occasions she was the bearer of
replies. Indeed, she had but now handed a note to a young man who
had hurried out to open it beneath the gaslight in the vestibule,
where he had grown slightly pale on reading the classic phrase--how
often had others read it in that very place!--"Impossible tonight,
my dearie! I'm booked!" La Faloise sat on one of these chairs at
the back of the room, between the table and the stove. He seemed
bent on passing the evening there, and yet he was not quite happy.
Indeed, he kept tucking up his long legs in his endeavors to escape
from a whole litter of black kittens who were gamboling wildly round
them while the mother cat sat bolt upright, staring at him with
yellow eyes.
"Ah, it's you, Mademoiselle Simonne! What can I do for you?" asked
the portress.
Simonne begged her to send La Faloise out to her. But Mme Bron was
unable to comply with her wishes all at once. Under the stairs in a
sort of deep cupboard she kept a little bar, whither the supers were
wont to descend for drinks between the acts, and seeing that just at
that moment there were five or six tall lubbers there who, still
dressed as Boule Noire masqueraders, were dying of thirst and in a
great hurry, she lost her head a bit. A gas jet was flaring in the
cupboard, within which it was possible to descry a tin-covered table
and some shelves garnished with half-emptied bottles. Whenever the
door of this coalhole was opened a violent whiff of alcohol mingled
with the scent of stale cooking in the lodge, as well as with the
penetrating scent of the flowers upon the table.
"Well now," continued the portress when she had served the supers,
"is it the little dark chap out there you want?"
"No, no; don't be silly!" said Simonne. "It's the lanky one by the
side of the stove. Your cat's sniffing at his trouser legs!"
And with that she carried La Faloise off into the lobby, while the
other gentlemen once more resigned themselves to their fate and to
semisuffocation and the masqueraders drank on the stairs and
indulged in rough horseplay and guttural drunken jests.
On the stage above Bordenave was wild with the sceneshifters, who
seemed never to have done changing scenes. They appeared to be
acting of set purpose--the prince would certainly have some set
piece or other tumbling on his head.
"Up with it! Up with it!" shouted the foreman.
At length the canvas at the back of the stage was raised into
position, and the stage was clear. Mignon, who had kept his eye on
Fauchery, seized this opportunity in order to start his pummeling
matches again. He hugged him in his long arms and cried:
"Oh, take care! That mast just missed crushing you!"
And he carried him off and shook him before setting him down again.
In view of the sceneshifters' exaggerated mirth, Fauchery grew
white. His lips trembled, and he was ready to flare up in anger
while Mignon, shamming good nature, was clapping him on the shoulder
with such affectionate violence as nearly to pulverize him.
"I value your health, I do!" he kept repeating. "Egad! I should be
in a pretty pickle if anything serious happened to you!"
But just then a whisper ran through their midst: "The prince! The
prince! And everybody turned and looked at the little door which
opened out of the main body of the house. At first nothing was
visible save Bordenave's round back and beefy neck, which bobbed
down and arched up in a series of obsequious obeisances. Then the
prince made his appearance. Largely and strongly built, light of
beard and rosy of hue, he was not lacking in the kind of distinction
peculiar to a sturdy man of pleasure, the square contours of whose
limbs are clearly defined by the irreproachable cut of a frock coat.
Behind him walked Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard, but this
particular corner of the theater being dark, the group were lost to
view amid huge moving shadows.
In order fittingly to address the son of a queen, who would someday
occupy a throne, Bordenave had assumed the tone of a man exhibiting
a bear in the street. In a voice tremulous with false emotion he
kept repeating:
"If His Highness will have the goodness to follow me--would His
Highness deign to come this way? His Highness will take care!"
The prince did not hurry in the least. On the contrary, he was
greatly interested and kept pausing in order to look at the
sceneshifters' maneuvers. A batten had just been lowered, and the
group of gaslights high up among its iron crossbars illuminated the
stage with a wide beam of light. Muffat, who had never yet been
behind scenes at a theater, was even more astonished than the rest.
An uneasy feeling of mingled fear and vague repugnance took
possession of him. He looked up into the heights above him, where
more battens, the gas jets on which were burning low, gleamed like
galaxies of little bluish stars amid a chaos of iron rods,
connecting lines of all sizes, hanging stages and canvases spread
out in space, like huge cloths hung out to dry.
"Lower away!" shouted the foreman unexpectedly.
And the prince himself had to warn the count, for a canvas was
descending. They were setting the scenery for the third act, which
was the grotto on Mount Etna. Men were busy planting masts in the
sockets, while others went and took frames which were leaning
against the walls of the stage and proceeded to lash them with
strong cords to the poles already in position. At the back of the
stage, with a view to producing the bright rays thrown by Vulcan's
glowing forge, a stand had been fixed by a limelight man, who was
now lighting various burners under red glasses. The scene was one
of confusion, verging to all appearances on absolute chaos, but
every little move had been prearranged. Nay, amid all the scurry
the whistle blower even took a few turns, stepping short as he did
so, in order to rest his legs.
"His Highness overwhelms me," said Bordenave, still bowing low.
"The theater is not large, but we do what we can. Now if His
Highness deigns to follow me--"
Count Muffat was already making for the dressing-room passage. The
really sharp downward slope of the stage had surprised him
disagreeably, and he owed no small part of his present anxiety to a
feeling that its boards were moving under his feet. Through the
open sockets gas was descried burning in the "dock." Human voices
and blasts of air, as from a vault, came up thence, and, looking
down into the depths of gloom, one became aware of a whole
subterranean existence. But just as the count was going up the
stage a small incident occurred to stop him. Two little women,
dressed for the third act, were chatting by the peephole in the
curtain. One of them, straining forward and widening the hole with
her fingers in order the better to observe things, was scanning the
house beyond.
"I see him," said she sharply. "Oh, what a mug!"
Horrified, Bordenave had much ado not to give her a kick. But the
prince smiled and looked pleased and excited by the remark. He
gazed warmly at the little woman who did not care a button for His
Highness, and she, on her part, laughed unblushingly. Bordenave,
however, persuaded the prince to follow him. Muffat was beginning
to perspire; he had taken his hat off. What inconvenienced him most
was the stuffy, dense, overheated air of the place with its strong,
haunting smell, a smell peculiar to this part of a theater, and, as
such, compact of the reek of gas, of the glue used in the
manufacture of the scenery, of dirty dark nooks and corners and of
questionably clean chorus girls. In the passage the air was still
more suffocating, and one seemed to breathe a poisoned atmosphere,
which was occasionally relieved by the acid scents of toilet waters
and the perfumes of various soaps emanating from the dressing rooms.
The count lifted his eyes as he passed and glanced up the staircase,
for he was well-nigh startled by the keen flood of light and warmth
which flowed down upon his back and shoulders. High up above him
there was a clicking of ewers and basins, a sound of laughter and of
people calling to one another, a banging of doors, which in their
continual opening and shutting allowed an odor of womankind to
escape--a musky scent of oils and essences mingling with the natural
pungency exhaled from human tresses. He did not stop. Nay, he
hastened his walk: he almost ran, his skin tingling with the breath
of that fiery approach to a world he knew nothing of.
"A theater's a curious sight, eh?" said the Marquis de Chouard with
the enchanted expression of a man who once more finds himself amid
familiar surroundings.
But Bordenave had at length reached Nana's dressing room at the end
of the passage. He quietly turned the door handle; then, cringing
again:
"If His Highness will have the goodness to enter--"
They heard the cry of a startled woman and caught sight of Nana as,
stripped to the waist, she slipped behind a curtain while her
dresser, who had been in the act of drying her, stood, towel in air,
before them.
"Oh, it IS silly to come in that way!" cried Nana from her hiding
place. "Don't come in; you see you mustn't come in!"
Bordenave did not seem to relish this sudden flight.
"Do stay where you were, my dear. Why, it doesn't matter," he said.
"It's His Highness. Come, come, don't be childish."
And when she still refused to make her appearance--for she was
startled as yet, though she had begun to laugh--he added in peevish,
paternal tones:
"Good heavens, these gentlemen know perfectly well what a woman
looks like. They won't eat you."
"I'm not so sure of that," said the prince wittily.
With that the whole company began laughing in an exaggerated manner
in order to pay him proper court.
"An exquisitely witty speech--an altogether Parisian speech," as
Bordenave remarked.
Nana vouchsafed no further reply, but the curtain began moving.
Doubtless she was making up her mind. Then Count Muffat, with
glowing cheeks, began to take stock of the dressing room. It was a
square room with a very low ceiling, and it was entirely hung with a
light-colored Havana stuff. A curtain of the same material depended
from a copper rod and formed a sort of recess at the end of the
room, while two large windows opened on the courtyard of the theater
and were faced, at a distance of three yards at most, by a leprous-
looking wall against which the panes cast squares of yellow light
amid the surrounding darkness. A large dressing glass faced a white
marble toilet table, which was garnished with a disorderly array of
flasks and glass boxes containing oils, essences and powders. The
count went up to the dressing glass and discovered that he was
looking very flushed and had small drops of perspiration on his
forehead. He dropped his eyes and came and took up a position in
front of the toilet table, where the basin, full of soapy water, the
small, scattered, ivory toilet utensils and the damp sponges,
appeared for some moments to absorb his attention. The feeling of
dizziness which he had experienced when he first visited Nana in the
Boulevard Haussmann once more overcame him. He felt the thick
carpet soften under foot, and the gasjets burning by the dressing
table and by the glass seemed to shoot whistling flames about his
temples. For one moment, being afraid of fainting away under the
influence of those feminine odors which he now re-encountered,
intensified by the heat under the low-pitched ceiling, he sat down
on the edge of a softly padded divan between the two windows. But
he got up again almost directly and, returning to the dressing
table, seemed to gaze with vacant eyes into space, for he was
thinking of a bouquet of tuberoses which had once faded in his
bedroom and had nearly killed him in their death. When tuberoses
are turning brown they have a human smell.
"Make haste!" Bordenave whispered, putting his head in behind the
curtain.
The prince, however, was listening complaisantly to the Marquis de
Chouard, who had taken up a hare's-foot on the dressing table and
had begun explaining the way grease paint is put on. In a corner of
the room Satin, with her pure, virginal face, was scanning the
gentlemen keenly, while the dresser, Mme Jules by name, was getting
ready Venus' tights and tunic. Mme Jules was a woman of no age.
She had the parchment skin and changeless features peculiar to old
maids whom no one ever knew in their younger years. She had indeed
shriveled up in the burning atmosphere of the dressing rooms and
amid the most famous thighs and bosoms in all Paris. She wore
everlastingly a faded black dress, and on her flat and sexless chest
a perfect forest of pins clustered above the spot where her heart
should have been.
"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said Nana, drawing aside the
curtain, "but you took me by surprise."
They all turned round. She had not clothed herself at all, had, in
fact, only buttoned on a little pair of linen stays which half
revealed her bosom. When the gentlemen had put her to flight she
had scarcely begun undressing and was rapidly taking off her
fishwife's costume. Through the opening in her drawers behind a
corner of her shift was even now visible. There she stood, bare-
armed, bare-shouldered, bare-breasted, in all the adorable glory of
her youth and plump, fair beauty, but she still held the curtain
with one hand, as though ready to draw it to again upon the
slightest provocation.
"Yes, you took me by surprise! I never shall dare--" she stammered
in pretty, mock confusion, while rosy blushes crossed her neck and
shoulders and smiles of embarrassment played about her lips.
"Oh, don't apologize," cried Bordenave, "since these gentlemen
approve of your good looks!"
But she still tried the hesitating, innocent, girlish game, and,
shivering as though someone were tickling her, she continued:
"His Highness does me too great an honor. I beg His Highness will
excuse my receiving him thus--"
"It is I who am importunate," said the prince, "but, madame, I could
not resist the desire of complimenting you."
Thereupon, in order to reach her dressing table, she walked very
quietly and just as she was through the midst of the gentlemen, who
made way for her to pass.
She had strongly marked hips, which filled her drawers out roundly,
while with swelling bosom she still continued bowing and smiling her
delicate little smile. Suddenly she seemed to recognize Count
Muffat, and she extended her hand to him as an old friend. Then she
scolded him for not having come to her supper party. His Highness
deigned to chaff Muffat about this, and the latter stammered and
thrilled again at the thought that for one second he had held in his
own feverish clasp a little fresh and perfumed hand. The count had
dined excellently at the prince's, who, indeed, was a heroic eater
and drinker. Both of them were even a little intoxicated, but they
behaved very creditably. To hide the commotion within him Muffat
could only remark about the heat.
"Good heavens, how hot it is here!" he said. "How do you manage to
live in such a temperature, madame?"
And conversation was about to ensue on this topic when noisy voices
were heard at the dressing-room door. Bordenave drew back the slide
over a grated peephole of the kind used in convents. Fontan was
outside with Prulliere and Bosc, and all three had bottles under
their arms and their hands full of glasses. He began knocking and
shouting out that it was his patron saint's day and that he was
standing champagne round. Nana consulted the prince with a glance.
Eh! Oh dear, yes! His Highness did not want to be in anyone's way;
he would be only too happy! But without waiting for permission
Fontan came in, repeating in baby accents:
"Me not a cad, me pay for champagne!"
Then all of a sudden he became aware of the prince's presence of
which he had been totally ignorant. He stopped short and, assuming
an air of farcical solemnity, announced:
"King Dagobert is in the corridor and is desirous of drinking the
health of His Royal Highness."
The prince having made answer with a smile, Fontan's sally was voted
charming. But the dressing room was too small to accommodate
everybody, and it became necessary to crowd up anyhow, Satin and Mme
Jules standing back against the curtain at the end and the men
clustering closely round the half-naked Nana. The three actors
still had on the costumes they had been wearing in the second act,
and while Prulliere took off his Alpine admiral's cocked hat, the
huge plume of which would have knocked the ceiling, Bosc, in his
purple cloak and tinware crown, steadied himself on his tipsy old
legs and greeted the prince as became a monarch receiving the son of
a powerful neighbor. The glasses were filled, and the company began
clinking them together.
"I drink to Your Highness!" said ancient Bosc royally.
"To the army!" added Prulliere.
"To Venus!" cried Fontan.
The prince complaisantly poised his glass, waited quietly, bowed
thrice and murmured:
"Madame! Admiral! Your Majesty!"
Then he drank it off. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had
followed his example. There was no more jesting now--the company
were at court. Actual life was prolonged in the life of the
theater, and a sort of solemn farce was enacted under the hot flare
of the gas. Nana, quite forgetting that she was in her drawers and
that a corner of her shift stuck out behind, became the great lady,
the queen of love, in act to open her most private palace chambers
to state dignitaries. In every sentence she used the words "Royal
Highness" and, bowing with the utmost conviction, treated the
masqueraders, Bosc and Prulliere, as if the one were a sovereign and
the other his attendant minister. And no one dreamed of smiling at
this strange contrast, this real prince, this heir to a throne,
drinking a petty actor's champagne and taking his ease amid a
carnival of gods, a masquerade of royalty, in the society of
dressers and courtesans, shabby players and showmen of venal beauty.
Bordenave was simply ravished by the dramatic aspects of the scene
and began dreaming of the receipts which would have accrued had His
Highness only consented thus to appear in the second act of the
Blonde Venus.
"I say, shall we have our little women down?" he cried, becoming
familiar.
Nana would not hear of it. But notwithstanding this, she was giving
way herself. Fontan attracted her with his comic make-up. She
brushed against him and, eying him as a woman in the family way
might do when she fancies some unpleasant kind of food, she suddenly
became extremely familiar:
"Now then, fill up again, ye great brute!"
Fontan charged the glasses afresh, and the company drank, repeating
the same toasts.
"To His Highness!"
"To the army!"
"To Venus!"
But with that Nana made a sign and obtained silence. She raised her
glass and cried:
"No, no! To Fontan! It's Fontan's day; to Fontan! To Fontan!"
Then they clinked glasses a third time and drank Fontan with all the
honors. The prince, who had noticed the young woman devouring the
actor with her eyes, saluted him with a "Monsieur Fontan, I drink to
your success!" This he said with his customary courtesy.
But meanwhile the tail of his highness's frock coat was sweeping the
marble of the dressing table. The place, indeed, was like an alcove
or narrow bathroom, full as it was of the steam of hot water and
sponges and of the strong scent of essences which mingled with the
tartish, intoxicating fumes of the champagne. The prince and Count
Muffat, between whom Nana was wedged, had to lift up their hands so
as not to brush against her hips or her breast with every little
movement. And there stood Mme Jules, waiting, cool and rigid as
ever, while Satin, marveling in the depths of her vicious soul to
see a prince and two gentlemen in black coats going after a naked
woman in the society of dressed-up actors, secretly concluded that
fashionable people were not so very particular after all.
But Father Barillot's tinkling bell approached along the passage.
At the door of the dressing room he stood amazed when he caught
sight of the three actors still clad in the costumes which they had
worn in the second act.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he stammered, "do please make haste.
They've just rung the bell in the public foyer."
"Bah, the public will have to wait!" said Bordenave placidly.
However, as the bottles were now empty, the comedians went upstairs
to dress after yet another interchange of civilities. Bosc, having
dipped his beard in the champagne, had taken it off, and under his
venerable disguise the drunkard had suddenly reappeared. His was
the haggard, empurpled face of the old actor who has taken to drink.
At the foot of the stairs he was heard remarking to Fontan in his
boozy voice:
"I pulverized him, eh?"
He was alluding to the prince.
In Nana's dressing room none now remained save His Highness, the
count and the marquis. Bordenave had withdrawn with Barillot, whom
he advised not to knock without first letting Madame know.
"You will excuse me, gentlemen?" asked Nana, again setting to work
to make up her arms and face, of which she was now particularly
careful, owing to her nude appearance in the third act.
The prince seated himself by the Marquis de Chouard on the divan,
and Count Muffat alone remained standing. In that suffocating heat
the two glasses of champagne they had drunk had increased their
intoxication. Satin, when she saw the gentlemen thus closeting
themselves with her friend, had deemed it discreet to vanish behind
the curtain, where she sat waiting on a trunk, much annoyed at being
compelled to remain motionless, while Mme Jules came and went
quietly without word or look.
"You sang your numbers marvelously," said the prince.
And with that they began a conversation, but their sentences were
short and their pauses frequent. Nana, indeed, was not always able
to reply. After rubbing cold cream over her arms and face with the
palm of her hand she laid on the grease paint with the corner of a
towel. For one second only she ceased looking in the glass and
smilingly stole a glance at the prince.
"His Highness is spoiling me," she murmured without putting down the
grease paint.
Her task was a complicated one, and the Marquis de Chouard followed
it with an expression of devout enjoyment. He spoke in his turn.
"Could not the band accompany you more softly?" he said. "It drowns
your voice, and that's an unpardonable crime."
This time Nana did not turn round. She had taken up the hare's-foot
and was lightly manipulating it. All her attention was concentrated
on this action, and she bent forward over her toilet table so very
far that the white round contour of her drawers and the little patch
of chemise stood out with the unwonted tension. But she was anxious
to prove that she appreciated the old man's compliment and therefore
made a little swinging movement with her hips.
Silence reigned. Mme Jules had noticed a tear in the right leg of
her drawers. She took a pin from over her heart and for a second or
so knelt on the ground, busily at work about Nana's leg, while the
young woman, without seeming to notice her presence, applied the
rice powder, taking extreme pains as she did so, to avoid putting
any on the upper part of her cheeks. But when the prince remarked
that if she were to come and sing in London all England would want
to applaud her, she laughed amiably and turned round for a moment
with her left cheek looking very white amid a perfect cloud of
powder. Then she became suddenly serious, for she had come to the
operation of rouging. And with her face once more close to the
mirror, she dipped her finger in a jar and began applying the rouge
below her eyes and gently spreading it back toward her temples. The
gentlemen maintained a respectful silence.
Count Muffat, indeed, had not yet opened his lips. He was thinking
perforce of his own youth. The bedroom of his childish days had
been quite cold, and later, when he had reached the age of sixteen
and would give his mother a good-night kiss every evening, he used
to carry the icy feeling of the embrace into the world of dreams.
One day in passing a half-open door he had caught sight of a
maidservant washing herself, and that was the solitary recollection
which had in any way troubled his peace of mind from the days of
puberty till the time of marriage. Afterward he had found his wife
strictly obedient to her conjugal duties but had himself felt a
species of religious dislike to them. He had grown to man's estate
and was now aging, in ignorance of the flesh, in the humble
observance of rigid devotional practices and in obedience to a rule
of life full of precepts and moral laws. And now suddenly he was
dropped down in this actress's dressing room in the presence of this
undraped courtesan.
He, who had never seen the Countess Muffat putting on her garters,
was witnessing, amid that wild disarray of jars and basins and that
strong, sweet perfume, the intimate details of a woman's toilet.
His whole being was in turmoil; he was terrified by the stealthy,
all-pervading influence which for some time past Nana's presence had
been exercising over him, and he recalled to mind the pious accounts
of diabolic possession which had amused his early years. He was a
believer in the devil, and, in a confused kind of way, Nana was he,
with her laughter and her bosom and her hips, which seemed swollen
with many vices. But he promised himself that he would be strong--
nay, he would know how to defend himself.
"Well then, it's agreed," said the prince, lounging quite
comfortably on the divan. "You will come to London next year, and
we shall receive you so cordially that you will never return to
France again. Ah, my dear Count, you don't value your pretty women
enough. We shall take them all from you!"
"That won't make much odds to him," murmured the Marquis de Chouard
wickedly, for he occasionally said a risky thing among friends.
"The count is virtue itself."
Hearing his virtue mentioned, Nana looked at him so comically that
Muffat felt a keen twinge of annoyance. But directly afterward he
was surprised and angry with himself. Why, in the presence of this
courtesan, should the idea of being virtuous embarrass him? He
could have struck her. But in attempting to take up a brush Nana
had just let it drop on the ground, and as she stooped to pick it up
he rushed forward. Their breath mingled for one moment, and the
loosened tresses of Venus flowed over his hands. But remorse
mingled with his enjoyment, a kind of enjoyment, moreover, peculiar
to good Catholics, whom the fear of hell torments in the midst of
their sin.
At this moment Father Barillot's voice was heard outside the door.
"May I give the knocks, madame? The house is growing impatient."
"All in good time," answered Nana quietly.
She had dipped her paint brush in a pot of kohl, and with the point
of her nose close to the glass and her left eye closed she passed it
delicately along between her eyelashes. Muffat stood behind her,
looking on. He saw her reflection in the mirror, with her rounded
shoulders and her bosom half hidden by a rosy shadow. And despite
all his endeavors he could not turn away his gaze from that face so
merry with dimples and so worn with desire, which the closed eye
rendered more seductive. When she shut her right eye and passed the
brush along it he understood that he belonged to her.
"They are stamping their feet, madame," the callboy once more cried.
"They'll end by smashing the seats. May I give the knocks?"
"Oh, bother!" said Nana impatiently. "Knock away; I don't care! If
I'm not ready, well, they'll have to wait for me!"
She grew calm again and, turning to the gentlemen, added with a
smile:
"It's true: we've only got a minute left for our talk."
Her face and arms were now finished, and with her fingers she put
two large dabs of carmine on her lips. Count Muffat felt more
excited than ever. He was ravished by the perverse transformation
wrought by powders and paints and filled by a lawless yearning for
those young painted charms, for the too-red mouth and the too-white
face and the exaggerated eyes, ringed round with black and burning
and dying for very love. Meanwhile Nana went behind the curtain for
a second or two in order to take off her drawers and slip on Venus'
tights. After which, with tranquil immodesty, she came out and
undid her little linen stays and held out her arms to Mme Jules, who
drew the short-sleeved tunic over them.
"Make haste; they're growing angry!" she muttered.
The prince with half-closed eyes marked the swelling lines of her
bosom with an air of connoisseurship, while the Marquis de Chouard
wagged his head involuntarily. Muffat gazed at the carpet in order
not to see any more. At length Venus, with only her gauze veil over
her shoulders, was ready to go on the stage. Mme Jules, with
vacant, unconcerned eyes and an expression suggestive of a little
elderly wooden doll, still kept circling round her. With brisk
movements she took pins out of the inexhaustible pincushion over her
heart and pinned up Venus' tunic, but as she ran over all those
plump nude charms with her shriveled hands, nothing was suggested to
her. She was as one whom her sex does not concern.
"There!" said the young woman, taking a final look at herself in the
mirror.
Bordenave was back again. He was anxious and said the third act had
begun.
"Very well! I'm coming," replied Nana. "Here's a pretty fuss!
Why, it's usually I that waits for the others."
The gentlemen left the dressing room, but they did not say good-by,
for the prince had expressed a desire to assist behind the scenes at
the performance of the third act. Left alone, Nana seemed greatly
surprised and looked round her in all directions.
"Where can she be?" she queried.
She was searching for Satin. When she had found her again, waiting
on her trunk behind the curtain, Satin quietly replied:
"Certainly I didn't want to be in your way with all those men
there!"
And she added further that she was going now. But Nana held her
back. What a silly girl she was! Now that Bordenave had agreed to
take her on! Why, the bargain was to be struck after the play was
over! Satin hesitated. There were too many bothers; she was out of
her element! Nevertheless, she stayed.
As the prince was coming down the little wooden staircase a strange
sound of smothered oaths and stamping, scuffling feet became audible
on the other side of the theater. The actors waiting for their cues
were being scared by quite a serious episode. For some seconds past
Mignon had been renewing his jokes and smothering Fauchery with
caresses. He had at last invented a little game of a novel kind and
had begun flicking the other's nose in order, as he phrased it, to
keep the flies off him. This kind of game naturally diverted the
actors to any extent.
But success had suddenly thrown Mignon off his balance. He had
launched forth into extravagant courses and had given the journalist
a box on the ear, an actual, a vigorous, box on the ear. This time
he had gone too far: in the presence of so many spectators it was
impossible for Fauchery to pocket such a blow with laughing
equanimity. Whereupon the two men had desisted from their farce,
had sprung at one another's throats, their faces livid with hate,
and were now rolling over and over behind a set of side lights,
pounding away at each other as though they weren't breakable.
"Monsieur Bordenave, Monsieur Bordenave!" said the stage manager,
coming up in a terrible flutter.
Bordenave made his excuses to the prince and followed him. When he
recognized Fauchery and Mignon in the men on the floor he gave vent
to an expression of annoyance. They had chosen a nice time,
certainly, with His Highness on the other side of the scenery and
all that houseful of people who might have overheard the row! To
make matters worse, Rose Mignon arrived out of breath at the very
moment she was due on the stage. Vulcan, indeed, was giving her the
cue, but Rose stood rooted to the ground, marveling at sight of her
husband and her lover as they lay wallowing at her feet, strangling
one another, kicking, tearing their hair out and whitening their
coats with dust. They barred the way. A sceneshifter had even
stopped Fauchery's hat just when the devilish thing was going to
bound onto the stage in the middle of the struggle. Meanwhile
Vulcan, who had been gagging away to amuse the audience, gave Rose
her cue a second time. But she stood motionless, still gazing at
the two men.
"Oh, don't look at THEM!" Bordenave furiously whispered to her. "Go
on the stage; go on, do! It's no business of yours! Why, you're
missing your cue!"
And with a push from the manager, Rose stepped over the prostrate
bodies and found herself in the flare of the footlights and in the
presence of the audience. She had quite failed to understand why
they were fighting on the floor behind her. Trembling from head to
foot and with a humming in her ears, she came down to the
footlights, Diana's sweet, amorous smile on her lips, and attacked
the opening lines of her duet with so feeling a voice that the
public gave her a veritable ovation.
Behind the scenery she could hear the dull thuds caused by the two
men. They had rolled down to the wings, but fortunately the music
covered the noise made by their feet as they kicked against them.
"By God!" yelled Bordenave in exasperation when at last he had
succeeded in separating them. "Why couldn't you fight at home? You
know as well as I do that I don't like this sort of thing. You,
Mignon, you'll do me the pleasure of staying over here on the prompt
side, and you, Fauchery, if you leave the O.P. side I'll chuck you
out of the theater. You understand, eh? Prompt side and O.P. side
or I forbid Rose to bring you here at all."
When he returned to the prince's presence the latter asked what was
the matter.
"Oh, nothing at all," he murmured quietly.
Nana was standing wrapped in furs, talking to these gentlemen while
awaiting her cue. As Count Muffat was coming up in order to peep
between two of the wings at the stage, he understood from a sign
made him by the stage manager that he was to step softly. Drowsy
warmth was streaming down from the flies, and in the wings, which
were lit by vivid patches of light, only a few people remained,
talking in low voices or making off on tiptoe. The gasman was at
his post amid an intricate arrangement of cocks; a fireman, leaning
against the side lights, was craning forward, trying to catch a
glimpse of things, while on his seat, high up, the curtain man was
watching with resigned expression, careless of the play, constantly
on the alert for the bell to ring him to his duty among the ropes.
And amid the close air and the shuffling of feet and the sound of
whispering, the voices of the actors on the stage sounded strange,
deadened, surprisingly discordant. Farther off again, above the
confused noises of the band, a vast breathing sound was audible. It
was the breath of the house, which sometimes swelled up till it
burst in vague rumors, in laughter, in applause. Though invisible,
the presence of the public could be felt, even in the silences.
"There's something open," said Nana sharply, and with that she
tightened the folds of her fur cloak. "Do look, Barillot. I bet
they've just opened a window. Why, one might catch one's death of
cold here!"
Barillot swore that he had closed every window himself but suggested
that possibly there were broken panes about. The actors were always
complaining of drafts. Through the heavy warmth of that gaslit
region blasts of cold air were constantly passing--it was a regular
influenza trap, as Fontan phrased it.
"I should like to see YOU in a low-cut dress," continued Nana,
growing annoyed.
"Hush!" murmured Bordenave.
On the stage Rose rendered a phrase in her duet so cleverly that the
stalls burst into universal applause. Nana was silent at this, and
her face grew grave. Meanwhile the count was venturing down a
passage when Barillot stopped him and said he would make a discovery
there. Indeed, he obtained an oblique back view of the scenery and
of the wings which had been strengthened, as it were, by a thick
layer of old posters. Then he caught sight of a corner of the
stage, of the Etna cave hollowed out in a silver mine and of
Vulcan's forge in the background. Battens, lowered from above, lit
up a sparkling substance which had been laid on with large dabs of
the brush. Side lights with red glasses and blue were so placed as
to produce the appearance of a fiery brazier, while on the floor of
the stage, in the far background, long lines of gaslight had been
laid down in order to throw a wall of dark rocks into sharp relief.
Hard by on a gentle, "practicable" incline, amid little points of
light resembling the illumination lamps scattered about in the grass
on the night of a public holiday, old Mme Drouard, who played Juno,
was sitting dazed and sleepy, waiting for her cue.
Presently there was a commotion, for Simonne, while listening to a
story Clarisse was telling her, cried out:
"My! It's the Tricon!"
It was indeed the Tricon, wearing the same old curls and looking as
like a litigious great lady as ever.
When she saw Nana she went straight up to her.
"No," said the latter after some rapid phrases had been exchanged,
"not now." The old lady looked grave. Just then Prulliere passed
by and shook hands with her, while two little chorus girls stood
gazing at her with looks of deep emotion. For a moment she seemed
to hesitate. Then she beckoned to Simonne, and the rapid exchange
of sentences began again.
"Yes," said Simonne at last. "In half an hour."
But as she was going upstairs again to her dressing room, Mme Bron,
who was once more going the rounds with letters, presented one to
her. Bordenave lowered his voice and furiously reproached the
portress for having allowed the Tricon to come in. That woman! And
on such an evening of all others! It made him so angry because His
Highness was there! Mme Bron, who had been thirty years in the
theater, replied quite sourly. How was she to know? she asked. The
Tricon did business with all the ladies--M. le Directeur had met her
a score of times without making remarks. And while Bordenave was
muttering oaths the Tricon stood quietly by, scrutinizing the prince
as became a woman who weighs a man at a glance. A smile lit up her
yellow face. Presently she paced slowly off through the crowd of
deeply deferential little women.
"Immediately, eh?" she queried, turning round again to Simonne.
Simonne seemed much worried. The letter was from a young man to
whom she had engaged herself for that evening. She gave Mme Bron a
scribbled note in which were the words, "Impossible tonight,
darling--I'm booked." But she was still apprehensive; the young man
might possibly wait for her in spite of everything. As she was not
playing in the third act, she had a mind to be off at once and
accordingly begged Clarisse to go and see if the man were there.
Clarisse was only due on the stage toward the end of the act, and so
she went downstairs while Simonne ran up for a minute to their
common dressing room.
In Mme Bron's drinking bar downstairs a super, who was charged with
the part of Pluto, was drinking in solitude amid the folds of a
great red robe diapered with golden flames. The little business
plied by the good portress must have been progressing finely, for
the cellarlike hole under the stairs was wet with emptied heeltaps
and water. Clarisse picked up the tunic of Iris, which was dragging
over the greasy steps behind her, but she halted prudently at the
turn in the stairs and was content simply to crane forward and peer
into the lodge. She certainly had been quick to scent things out!
Just fancy! That idiot La Faloise was still there, sitting on the
same old chair between the table and the stove! He had made
pretense of sneaking off in front of Simonne and had returned after
her departure. For the matter of that, the lodge was still full of
gentlemen who sat there gloved, elegant, submissive and patient as
ever. They were all waiting and viewing each other gravely as they
waited. On the table there were now only some dirty plates, Mme
Bron having recently distributed the last of the bouquets. A single
fallen rose was withering on the floor in the neighborhood of the
black cat, who had lain down and curled herself up while the kittens
ran wild races and danced fierce gallops among the gentlemen's legs.
Clarisse was momentarily inclined to turn La Faloise out. The idiot
wasn't fond of animals, and that put the finishing touch to him! He
was busy drawing in his legs because the cat was there, and he
didn't want to touch her.
"He'll nip you; take care!" said Pluto, who was a joker, as he went
upstairs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
After that Clarisse gave up the idea of hauling La Faloise over the
coals. She had seen Mme Bron giving the letter to Simonne's young
man, and he had gone out to read it under the gas light in the
lobby. "Impossible tonight, darling--I'm booked." And with that he
had peaceably departed, as one who was doubtless used to the
formula. He, at any rate, knew how to conduct himself! Not so the
others, the fellows who sat there doggedly on Mme Bron's battered
straw-bottomed chairs under the great glazed lantern, where the heat
was enough to roast you and there was an unpleasant odor. What a
lot of men it must have held! Clarisse went upstairs again in
disgust, crossed over behind scenes and nimbly mounted three flights
of steps which led to the dressing rooms, in order to bring Simonne
her reply.
Downstairs the prince had withdrawn from the rest and stood talking
to Nana. He never left her; he stood brooding over her through
half-shut eyelids. Nana did not look at him but, smiling, nodded
yes. Suddenly, however, Count Muffat obeyed an overmastering
impulse, and leaving Bordenave, who was explaining to him the
working of the rollers and windlasses, he came up in order to
interrupt their confabulations. Nana lifted her eyes and smiled at
him as she smiled at His Highness. But she kept her ears open
notwithstanding, for she was waiting for her cue.
"The third act is the shortest, I believe," the prince began saying,
for the count's presence embarrassed him.
She did not answer; her whole expression altered; she was suddenly
intent on her business. With a rapid movement of the shoulders she
had let her furs slip from her, and Mme Jules, standing behind, had
caught them in her arms. And then after passing her two hands to
her hair as though to make it fast, she went on the stage in all her
nudity.
"Hush, hush!" whispered Bordenave.
The count and the prince had been taken by surprise. There was
profound silence, and then a deep sigh and the far-off murmur of a
multitude became audible. Every evening when Venus entered in her
godlike nakedness the same effect was produced. Then Muffat was
seized with a desire to see; he put his eye to the peephole. Above
and beyond the glowing arc formed by the footlights the dark body of
the house seemed full of ruddy vapor, and against this neutral-
tinted background, where row upon row of faces struck a pale,
uncertain note, Nana stood forth white and vast, so that the boxes
from the balcony to the flies were blotted from view. He saw her
from behind, noted her swelling hips, her outstretched arms, while
down on the floor, on the same level as her feet, the prompter's
head--an old man's head with a humble, honest face--stood on the
edge of the stage, looking as though it had been severed from the
body. At certain points in her opening number an undulating
movement seemed to run from her neck to her waist and to die out in
the trailing border of her tunic. When amid a tempest of applause
she had sung her last note she bowed, and the gauze floated forth
round about her limbs, and her hair swept over her waist as she bent
sharply backward. And seeing her thus, as with bending form and
with exaggerated hips she came backing toward the count's peephole,
he stood upright again, and his face was very white. The stage had
disappeared, and he now saw only the reverse side of the scenery
with its display of old posters pasted up in every direction. On
the practicable slope, among the lines of gas jets, the whole of
Olympus had rejoined the dozing Mme Drouard. They were waiting for
the close of the act. Bosc and Fontan sat on the floor with their
knees drawn up to their chins, and Prulliere stretched himself and
yawned before going on. Everybody was worn out; their eyes were
red, and they were longing to go home to sleep.
Just then Fauchery, who had been prowling about on the O.P. side
ever since Bordenave had forbidden him the other, came and
buttonholed the count in order to keep himself in countenance and
offered at the same time to show him the dressing rooms. An
increasing sense of languor had left Muffat without any power of
resistance, and after looking round for the Marquis de Chouard, who
had disappeared, he ended by following the journalist. He
experienced a mingled feeling of relief and anxiety as he left the
wings whence he had been listening to Nana's songs.
Fauchery had already preceded him up the staircase, which was closed
on the first and second floors by low-paneled doors. It was one of
those stairways which you find in miserable tenements. Count Muffat
had seen many such during his rounds as member of the Benevolent
Organization. It was bare and dilapidated: there was a wash of
yellow paint on its walls; its steps had been worn by the incessant
passage of feet, and its iron balustrade had grown smooth under the
friction of many hands. On a level with the floor on every
stairhead there was a low window which resembled a deep, square
venthole, while in lanterns fastened to the walls flaring gas jets
crudely illuminatcd the surrounding squalor and gave out a glowing
heat which, as it mounted up the narrow stairwell, grew ever more
intense.
When he reached the foot of the stairs the count once more felt the
hot breath upon his neck and shoulders. As of old it was laden with
the odor of women, wafted amid floods of light and sound from the
dressing rooms above, and now with every upward step he took the
musky scent of powders and the tart perfume of toilet vinegars
heated and bewildered him more and more. On the first floor two
corridors ran backward, branching sharply off and presenting a set
of doors to view which were painted yellow and numbered with great
white numerals in such a way as to suggest a hotel with a bad
reputation. The tiles on the floor had been many of them unbedded,
and the old house being in a state of subsidence, they stuck up like
hummocks. The count dashed recklessly forward, glanced through a
half-open door and saw a very dirty room which resembled a barber's
shop in a poor part of the town. In was furnished with two chairs,
a mirror and a small table containing a drawer which had been
blackened by the grease from brushes and combs. A great perspiring
fellow with smoking shoulders was changing his linen there, while in
a similar room next door a woman was drawing on her gloves
preparatory to departure. Her hair was damp and out of curl, as
though she had just had a bath. But Fauchery began calling the
count, and the latter was rushing up without delay when a furious
"damn!" burst from the corridor on the right. Mathilde, a little
drab of a miss, had just broken her washhand basin, the soapy water
from which was flowing out to the stairhead. A dressing room door
banged noisily. Two women in their stays skipped across the
passage, and another, with the hem of her shift in her mouth,
appeared and immediately vanished from view. Then followed a sound
of laughter, a dispute, the snatch of a song which was suddenly
broken off short. All along the passage naked gleams, sudden
visions of white skin and wan underlinen were observable through
chinks in doorways. Two girls were making very merry, showing each
other their birthmarks. One of them, a very young girl, almost a
child, had drawn her skirts up over her knees in order to sew up a
rent in her drawers, and the dressers, catching sight of the two
men, drew some curtains half to for decency's sake. The wild
stampede which follows the end of a play had already begun, the
grand removal of white paint and rouge, the reassumption amid clouds
of rice powder of ordinary attire. The strange animal scent came in
whiffs of redoubled intensity through the lines of banging doors.
On the third story Muffat abandoned himself to the feeling of
intoxication which was overpowering him. For the chorus girls'
dressing room was there, and you saw a crowd of twenty women and a
wild display of soaps and flasks of lavender water. The place
resembled the common room in a slum lodging house. As he passed by
he heard fierce sounds of washing behind a closed door and a perfect
storm raging in a washhand basin. And as he was mounting up to the
topmost story of all, curiosity led him to risk one more little peep
through an open loophole. The room was empty, and under the flare
of the gas a solitary chamber pot stood forgotten among a heap of
petticoats trailing on the floor. This room afforded him his
ultimate impression. Upstairs on the fourth floor he was well-nigh
suffocated. All the scents, all the blasts of heat, had found their
goal there. The yellow ceiling looked as if it had been baked, and
a lamp burned amid fumes of russet-colored fog. For some seconds he
leaned upon the iron balustrade which felt warm and damp and well-
nigh human to the touch. And he shut his eyes and drew a long
breath and drank in the sexual atmosphere of the place. Hitherto he
had been utterly ignorant of it, but now it beat full in his face.
"Do come here," shouted Fauchery, who had vanished some moments ago.
"You're being asked for."
At the end of the corridor was the dressing room belonging to
Clarisse and Simonne. It was a long, ill-built room under the roof
with a garret ceiling and sloping walls. The light penetrated to it
from two deep-set openings high up in the wall, but at that hour of
the night the dressing room was lit by flaring gas. It was papered
with a paper at seven sous a roll with a pattern of roses twining
over green trelliswork. Two boards, placed near one another and
covered with oilcloth, did duty for dressing tables. They were
black with spilled water, and underneath them was a fine medley of
dinted zinc jugs, slop pails and coarse yellow earthenware crocks.
There was an array of fancy articles in the room--a battered, soiled
and well-worn array of chipped basins, of toothless combs, of all
those manifold untidy trifles which, in their hurry and
carelessness, two women will leave scattered about when they undress
and wash together amid purely temporary surroundings, the dirty
aspect of which has ceased to concern them.
"Do come here," Fauchery repeated with the good-humored familiarity
which men adopt among their fallen sisters. "Clarisse is wanting to
kiss you."
Muffat entered the room at last. But what was his surprise when he
found the Marquis de Chouard snugly enscounced on a chair between
the two dressing tables! The marquis had withdrawn thither some
time ago. He was spreading his feet apart because a pail was
leaking and letting a whitish flood spread over the floor. He was
visibly much at his ease, as became a man who knew all the snug
corners, and had grown quite merry in the close dressing room, where
people might have been bathing, and amid those quietly immodest
feminine surroundings which the uncleanness of the little place
rendered at once natural and poignant.
"D'you go with the old boy?" Simonne asked Clarisse in a whisper.
"Rather!" replied the latter aloud.
The dresser, a very ugly and extremely familiar young girl, who was
helping Simonne into her coat, positively writhed with laughter.
The three pushed each other and babbled little phrases which
redoubled their merriment.
"Come, Clarisse, kiss the gentleman," said Fauchery. "You know,
he's got the rhino."
And turning to the count:
"You'll see, she's very nice! She's going to kiss you!"
But Clarisse was disgusted by the men. She spoke in violent terms
of the dirty lot waiting at the porter's lodge down below. Besides,
she was in a hurry to go downstairs again; they were making her miss
her last scene. Then as Fauchery blocked up the doorway, she gave
Muffat a couple of kisses on the whiskers, remarking as she did so:
"It's not for you, at any rate! It's for that nuisance Fauchery!"
And with that she darted off, and the count remained much
embarrassed in his father-in-law's presence. The blood had rushed
to his face. In Nana's dressing room, amid all the luxury of
hangings and mirrors, he had not experienced the sharp physical
sensation which the shameful wretchedness of that sorry garret
excited within him, redolent as it was of these two girls' self-
abandonment. Meanwhile the marquis had hurried in the rear of
Simonne, who was making off at the top of her pace, and he kept
whispering in her ear while she shook her head in token of refusal.
Fauchery followed them, laughing. And with that the count found
himself alone with the dresser, who was washing out the basins.
Accordingly he took his departure, too, his legs almost failing
under him. Once more he put up flights of half-dressed women and
caused doors to bang as he advanced. But amid the disorderly,
disbanded troops of girls to be found on each of the four stories,
he was only distinctly aware of a cat, a great tortoise-shell cat,
which went gliding upstairs through the ovenlike place where the air
was poisoned with musk, rubbing its back against the banisters and
keeping its tail exceedingly erect.
"Yes, to be sure!" said a woman hoarsely. "I thought they'd keep us
back tonight! What a nuisance they are with their calls!"
The end had come; the curtain had just fallen. There was a
veritable stampede on the staircase--its walls rang with
exclamations, and everyone was in a savage hurry to dress and be
off. As Count Muffat came down the last step or two he saw Nana and
the prince passing slowly along the passage. The young woman halted
and lowered her voice as she said with a smile:
"All right then--by and by!"
The prince returned to the stage, where Bordenave was awaiting him.
And left alone with Nana, Muffat gave way to an impulse of anger and
desire. He ran up behind her and, as she was on the point of
entering her dressing room, imprinted a rough kiss on her neck among
little golden hairs curling low down between her shoulders. It was
as though he had returned the kiss that had been given him upstairs.
Nana was in a fury; she lifted her hand, but when she recognized the
count she smiled.
"Oh, you frightened me," she said simply.
And her smile was adorable in its embarrassment and submissiveness,
as though she had despaired of this kiss and were happy to have
received it. But she could do nothing for him either that evening
or the day after. It was a case of waiting. Nay, even if it had
been in her power she would still have let herself be desired. Her
glance said as much. At length she continued:
"I'm a landowner, you know. Yes, I'm buying a country house near
Orleans, in a part of the world to which you sometimes betake
yourself. Baby told me you did--little Georges Hugon, I mean. You
know him? So come and see me down there."
The count was a shy man, and the thought of his roughness had
frightened him; he was ashamed of what he had done and he bowed
ceremoniously, promising at the same time to take advantage of her
invitation. Then he walked off as one who dreams.
He was rejoining the prince when, passing in front of the foyer, he
heard Satin screaming out:
"Oh, the dirty old thing! Just you bloody well leave me alone!"
It was the Marquis de Chouard who was tumbling down over Satin. The
girl had decidedly had enough of the fashionable world! Nana had
certainly introduced her to Bordenave, but the necessity of standing
with sealed lips for fear of allowing some awkward phrase to escape
her had been too much for her feelings, and now she was anxious to
regain her freedom, the more so as she had run against an old flame
of hers in the wings. This was the super, to whom the task of
impersonating Pluto had been entrusted, a pastry cook, who had
already treated her to a whole week of love and flagellation. She
was waiting for him, much irritated at the things the marquis was
saying to her, as though she were one of those theatrical ladies!
And so at last she assumed a highly respectable expression and
jerked out this phrase:
"My husband's coming! You'll see."
Meanwhile the worn-looking artistes were dropping off one after the
other in their outdoor coats. Groups of men and women were coming
down the little winding staircase, and the outlines of battered hats
and worn-out shawls were visible in the shadows. They looked
colorless and unlovely, as became poor play actors who have got rid
of their paint. On the stage, where the side lights and battens
were being extinguished, the prince was listening to an anecdote
Bordenave was telling him. He was waiting for Nana, and when at
length she made her appearance the stage was dark, and the fireman
on duty was finishing his round, lantern in hand. Bordenave, in
order to save His Highness going about by the Passage des Panoramas,
had made them open the corridor which led from the porter's lodge to
the entrance hall of the theater. Along this narrow alley little
women were racing pell-mell, for they were delighted to escape from
the men who were waiting for them in the other passage. They went
jostling and elbowing along, casting apprehensive glances behind
them and only breathing freely when they got outside. Fontan, Bosc
and Prulliere, on the other hand, retired at a leisurely pace,
joking at the figure cut by the serious, paying admirers who were
striding up and down the Galerie des Varietes at a time when the
little dears were escaping along the boulevard with the men of their
hearts. But Clarisse was especially sly. She had her suspicions
about La Faloise, and, as a matter of fact, he was still in his
place in the lodge among the gentlemen obstinately waiting on Mme
Bron's chairs. They all stretched forward, and with that she passed
brazenly by in the wake of a friend. The gentlemen were blinking in
bewilderment over the wild whirl of petticoats eddying at the foot
of the narrow stairs. It made them desperate to think they had
waited so long, only to see them all flying away like this without
being able to recognize a single one. The litter of little black
cats were sleeping on the oilcloth, nestled against their mother's
belly, and the latter was stretching her paws out in a state of
beatitude while the big tortoise-shell cat sat at the other end of
the table, her tail stretched out behind her and her yellow eyes
solemnly following the flight of the women.
"If His Highness will be good enough to come this way," said
Bordenave at the bottom of the stairs, and he pointed to the
passage.
Some chorus girls were still crowding along it. The prince began
following Nana while Muffat and the marquis walked behind.
It was a long, narrow passage lying between the theater and the
house next door, a kind of contracted by-lane which had been covered
with a sloping glass roof. Damp oozed from the walls, and the
footfall sounded as hollow on the tiled floor as in an underground
vault. It was crowded with the kind of rubbish usually found in a
garret. There was a workbench on which the porter was wont to plane
such parts of the scenery as required it, besides a pile of wooden
barriers which at night were placed at the doors of the theater for
the purpose of regulating the incoming stream of people. Nana had
to pick up her dress as she passed a hydrant which, through having
been carelessly turned off, was flooding the tiles underfoot. In
the entrance hall the company bowed and said good-by. And when
Bordenave was alone he summed up his opinion of the prince in a
shrug of eminently philosophic disdain.
"He's a bit of a duffer all the same," he said to Fauchery without
entering on further explanations, and with that Rose Mignon carried
the journalist off with her husband in order to effect a
reconciliation between them at home.
Muffat was left alone on the sidewalk. His Highness had handed Nana
quietly into his carriage, and the marquis had slipped off after
Satin and her super. In his excitement he was content to follow
this vicious pair in vague hopes of some stray favor being granted
him. Then with brain on fire Muffat decided to walk home. The
struggle within him had wholly ceased. The ideas and beliefs of the
last forty years were being drowned in a flood of new life. While
he was passing along the boulevards the roll of the last carriages
deafened him with the name of Nana; the gaslights set nude limbs
dancing before his eyes--the nude limbs, the lithe arms, the white
shoulders, of Nana. And he felt that he was hers utterly: he would
have abjured everything, sold everything, to possess her for a
single hour that very night. Youth, a lustful puberty of early
manhood, was stirring within him at last, flaming up suddenly in the
chaste heart of the Catholic and amid the dignified traditions of
middle age.
CHAPTER VI
Count Muffat, accompanied by his wife and daughter, had arrived
overnight at Les Fondettes, where Mme Hugon, who was staying there
with only her son Georges, had invited them to come and spend a
week. The house, which had been built at the end of the eighteenth
century, stood in the middle of a huge square enclosure. It was
perfectly unadorned, but the garden possessed magnificent shady
trees and a chain of tanks fed by running spring water. It stood at
the side of the road which leads from Orleans to Paris and with its
rich verdure and high-embowered trees broke the monotony of that
flat countryside, where fields stretched to the horizon's verge.
At eleven o'clock, when the second lunch bell had called the whole
household together, Mme Hugon, smiling in her kindly maternal way,
gave Sabine two great kisses, one on each cheek, and said as she did
so:
"You know it's my custom in the country. Oh, seeing you here makes
me feel twenty years younger. Did you sleep well in your old room?"
Then without waiting for her reply she turned to Estelle:
"And this little one, has she had a nap too? Give me a kiss, my
child."
They had taken their seats in the vast dining room, the windows of
which looked out on the park. But they only occupied one end of the
long table, where they sat somewhat crowded together for company's
sake. Sabine, in high good spirits, dwelt on various childish
memories which had been stirred up within her--memories of months
passed at Les Fondettes, of long walks, of a tumble into one of the
tanks on a summer evening, of an old romance of chivalry discovered
by her on the top of a cupboard and read during the winter before
fires made of vine branches. And Georges, who had not seen the
countess for some months, thought there was something curious about
her. Her face seemed changed, somehow, while, on the other hand,
that stick of an Estelle seemed more insignificant and dumb and
awkward than ever.
While such simple fare as cutlets and boiled eggs was being
discussed by the company, Mme Hugon, as became a good housekeeper,
launched out into complaints. The butchers, she said, were becoming
impossible. She bought everything at Orleans, and yet they never
brought her the pieces she asked for. Yet, alas, if her guests had
nothing worth eating it was their own fault: they had come too late
in the season.
"There's no sense in it," she said. "I've been expecting you since
June, and now we're half through September. You see, it doesn't
look pretty."
And with a movement she pointed to the trees on the grass outside,
the leaves of which were beginning to turn yellow. The day was
covered, and the distance was hidden by a bluish haze which was
fraught with a sweet and melancholy peacefulness.
"Oh, I'm expecting company," she continued. "We shall be gayer
then! The first to come will be two gentlemen whom Georges has
invited--Monsieur Fauchery and Monsieur Daguenet; you know them, do
you not? Then we shall have Monsieur de Vandeuvres, who has
promised me a visit these five years past. This time, perhaps,
he'll make up his mind!"
"Oh, well and good!" said the countess, laughing. "If we only can
get Monsieur de Vandeuvres! But he's too much engaged."
"And Philippe?" queried Muffat.
"Philippe has asked for a furlough," replied the old lady, "but
without doubt you won't be at Les Fondettes any longer when he
arrives."
The coffee was served. Paris was now the subject of conversation,
and Steiner's name was mentioned, at which Mme Hugon gave a little
cry.
"Let me see," she said; "Monsieur Steiner is that stout man I met at
your house one evening. He's a banker, is he not? Now there's a
detestable man for you! Why, he's gone and bought an actress an
estate about a league from here, over Gumieres way, beyond the
Choue. The whole countryside's scandalized. Did you know about
that, my friend?"
"I knew nothing about it," replied Muffat. "Ah, then, Steiner's
bought a country place in the neighborhood!"
Hearing his mother broach the subject, Georges looked into his
coffee cup, but in his astonishment at the count's answer he glanced
up at him and stared. Why was he lying so glibly? The count, on
his side, noticed the young fellow's movement and gave him a
suspicious glance. Mme Hugon continued to go into details: the
country place was called La Mignotte. In order to get there one had
to go up the bank of the Choue as far as Gumieres in order to cross
the bridge; otherwise one got one's feet wet and ran the risk of a
ducking.
"And what is the actress's name?" asked the countess.
"Oh, I wasn't told," murmured the old lady. "Georges, you were
there the morning the gardener spoke to us about it."
Georges appeared to rack his brains. Muffat waited, twirling a
teaspoon between his fingers. Then the countess addressed her
husband:
"Isn't Monsieur Steiner with that singer at the Varietes, that
Nana?"
"Nana, that's the name! A horrible woman!" cried Mme Hugon with
growing annoyance. "And they are expecting her at La Mignotte.
I've heard all about it from the gardener. Didn't the gardener say
they were expecting her this evening, Georges?"
The count gave a little start of astonishment, but Georges replied
with much vivacity:
"Oh, Mother, the gardener spoke without knowing anything about it.
Directly afterward the coachman said just the opposite. Nobody's
expected at La Mignotte before the day after tomorrow."
He tried hard to assume a natural expression while he slyly watched
the effect of his remarks on the count. The latter was twirling his
spoon again as though reassured. The countess, her eyes fixed
dreamily on the blue distances of the park, seemed to have lost all
interest in the conversation. The shadow of a smile on her lips,
she seemed to be following up a secret thought which had been
suddenly awakened within her. Estelle, on the other hand, sitting
stiffly on her chair, had heard all that had been said about Nana,
but her white, virginal face had not betrayed a trace of emotion.
"Dear me, dear me! I've got no right to grow angry," murmured Mme
Hugon after a pause, and with a return to her old good humor she
added:
"Everybody's got a right to live. If we meet this said lady on the
road we shall not bow to her--that's all!"
And as they got up from table she once more gently upbraided the
Countess Sabine for having been so long in coming to her that year.
But the countess defended herself and threw the blame of the delays
upon her husband's shoulders. Twice on the eve of departure, when
all the trunks were locked, he counterordered their journey on the
plea of urgent business. Then he had suddenly decided to start just
when the trip seemed shelved. Thereupon the old lady told them how
Georges in the same way had twice announced his arrival without
arriving and had finally cropped up at Les Fondettes the day before
yesterday, when she was no longer expecting him. They had come down
into the garden, and the two men, walking beside the ladies, were
listening to them in consequential silence.
"Never mind," said Mme Hugon, kissing her son's sunny locks, "Zizi
is a very good boy to come and bury himself in the country with his
mother. He's a dear Zizi not to forget me!"
In the afternoon she expressed some anxiety, for Georges, directly
after leaving the table, had complained of a heavy feeling in his
head and now seemed in for an atrocious sick headache. Toward four
o'clock he said he would go upstairs to bed: it was the only remedy.
After sleeping till tomorrow morning he would be perfectly himself
again. His mother was bent on putting him to bed herself, but as
she left the room he ran and locked the door, explaining that he was
shutting himself in so that no one should come and disturb him.
Then caressingly he shouted, "Good night till tomorrow, little
Mother!" and promised to take a nap. But he did not go to bed again
and with flushed cheeks and bright eyes noiselessly put on his
clothes. Then he sat on a chair and waited. When the dinner bell
rang he listened for Count Muffat, who was on his way to the dining
room, and ten minutes later, when he was certain that no one would
see him, he slipped from the window to the ground with the
assistance of a rain pipe. His bedroom was situated on the first
floor and looked out upon the rear of the house. He threw himself
among some bushes and got out of the park and then galloped across
the fields with empty stomach and heart beating with excitement.
Night was closing in, and a small fine rain was beginning to fall.
It was the very evening that Nana was due at La Mignotte. Ever
since in the preceding May Steiner had bought her this country place
she had from time to time been so filled with the desire of taking
possession that she had wept hot tears about, but on each of these
occasions Bordenave had refused to give her even the shortest leave
and had deferred her holiday till September on the plea that he did
not intend putting an understudy in her place, even for one evening,
now that the exhibition was on. Toward the close of August he spoke
of October. Nana was furious and declared that she would be at La
Mignotte in the middle of September. Nay, in order to dare
Bordenave, she even invited a crowd of guests in his very presence.
One afternoon in her rooms, as Muffat, whose advances she still
adroitly resisted, was beseeching her with tremulous emotion to
yield to his entreaties, she at length promised to be kind, but not
in Paris, and to him, too, she named the middle of September. Then
on the twelfth she was seized by a desire to be off forthwith with
Zoe as her sole companion. It might be that Bordenave had got wind
of her intentions and was about to discover some means of detaining
her. She was delighted at the notion of putting him in a fix, and
she sent him a doctor's certificate. When once the idea had entered
her head of being the first to get to La Mignotte and of living
there two days without anybody knowing anything about it, she rushed
Zoe through the operation of packing and finally pushed her into a
cab, where in a sudden burst of extreme contrition she kissed her
and begged her pardon. It was only when they got to the station
refreshment room that she thought of writing Steiner of her
movements. She begged him to wait till the day after tomorrow
before rejoining her if he wanted to find her quite bright and
fresh. And then, suddenly conceiving another project, she wrote a
second letter, in which she besought her aunt to bring little Louis
to her at once. It would do Baby so much good! And how happy they
would be together in the shade of the trees! In the railway
carriage between Paris and Orleans she spoke of nothing else; her
eyes were full of tears; she had an unexpected attack of maternal
tenderness and mingled together flowers, birds and child in her
every sentence.
La Mignotte was more than three leagues away from the station, and
Nana lost a good hour over the hire of a carriage, a huge,
dilapidated calash, which rumbled slowly along to an accompaniment
of rattling old iron. She had at once taken possession of the
coachman, a little taciturn old man whom she overwhelmed with
questions. Had he often passed by La Mignotte? It was behind this
hill then? There ought to be lots of trees there, eh? And the
house could one see it at a distance? The little old man answered
with a succession of grunts. Down in the calash Nana was almost
dancing with impatience, while Zoe, in her annoyance at having left
Paris in such a hurry, sat stiffly sulking beside her. The horse
suddenly stopped short, and the young woman thought they had reached
their destination. She put her head out of the carriage door and
asked:
"Are we there, eh?"
By way of answer the driver whipped up his horse, which was in the
act of painfully climbing a hill. Nana gazed ecstatically at the
vast plain beneath the gray sky where great clouds were banked up.
"Oh, do look, Zoe! There's greenery! Now, is that all wheat? Good
lord, how pretty it is!"
"One can quite see that Madame doesn't come from the country," was
the servant's prim and tardy rejoinder. "As for me, I knew the
country only too well when I was with my dentist. He had a house at
Bougival. No, it's cold, too, this evening. It's damp in these
parts."
They were driving under the shadow of a wood, and Nana sniffed up
the scent of the leaves as a young dog might. All of a sudden at a
turn of the road she caught sight of the corner of a house among the
trees. Perhaps it was there! And with that she began a
conversation with the driver, who continued shaking his head by way
of saying no. Then as they drove down the other side of the hill he
contented himself by holding out his whip and muttering, "'Tis down
there."
She got up and stretched herself almost bodily out of the carriage
door.
"Where is it? Where is it?" she cried with pale cheeks, but as yet
she saw nothing.
At last she caught sight of a bit of wall. And then followed a
succession of little cries and jumps, the ecstatic behavior of a
woman overcome by a new and vivid sensation.
"I see it! I see it, Zoe! Look out at the other side. Oh, there's
a terrace with brick ornaments on the roof! And there's a hothouse
down there! But the place is immense. Oh, how happy I am! Do
look, Zoe! Now, do look!"
The carriage had bthin a wall. Then the view
of the kitchen garden entirely engrossed her attention. She darted
back, jostling the lady's maid at the top of the stairs and bursting
out:
"It's full of cabbages! Oh, such woppers! And lettuces and sorrel
and onions and everything! Come along, make haste!"
The rain was falling more heavily now, and she opened her white silk
sunshade and ran down the garden walks.
"Madame will catch cold," cried Zoe, who had stayed quietly behind
under the awning over the garden door.
But Madame wanted to see things, and at each new discovery there was
a burst of wonderment.
"Zoe, here's spinach! Do come. Oh, look at the artichokes! They
are funny. So they grow in the ground, do they? Now, what can that
be? I don't know it. Do come, Zoe, perhaps you know."
The lady's maid never budged an inch. Madame must really be raving
mad. For now the rain was coming down in torrents, and the little
white silk sunshade was aly this time pulled up before the park gates. A
side door was opened, and the gardener, a tall, dry fellow, made his
appearance, cap in hand. Nana made an effort to regain her dignity,
for the driver seemed now to be suppressing a laugh behind his dry,
speechless lips. She refrained from setting off at a run and
listened to the gardener, who was a very talkative fellow. He
begged Madame to excuse the disorder in which she found everything,
seeing that he had only received Madame's letter that very morning.
But despite all his efforts, she flew off at a tangent and walked so
quickly that Zoe could scarcely follow her. At the end of the
avenue she paused for a moment in order to take the house in at a
glance. It was a great pavilionlike building in the Italian manner,
and it was flanked by a smaller construction, which a rich
Englishman, after two years' residence in Naples, had caused to be
erected and had forthwith become disgusted with.
"I'll take Madame over the house," said the gardener.
But she had outrun him entirely, and she shouted back that he was
not to put himself out and that she would go over the house by
herself. She preferred doing that, she said. And without removing
her hat she dashed into the different rooms, calling to Zoe as she
did so, shouting her impressions from one end of each corridor to
the other and filling the empty house, which for long months had
been uninhabited, with exclamations and bursts of laughter. In the
first place, there was the hall. It was a little damp, but that
didn't matter; one wasn't going to sleep in it. Then came the
drawing room, quite the thing, the drawing room, with its windows
opening on the lawn. Only the red upholsteries there were hideous;
she would alter all that. As to the dining room-well, it was a
lovely dining room, eh? What big blowouts you might give in Paris
if you had a dining room as large as that! As she was going
upstairs to the first floor it occurred to her that she had not seen
the kitchen, and she went down again and indulged in ecstatic
exclamations. Zoe ought to admire the beautiful dimensions of the
sink and the width of the hearth, where you might have roasted a
sheep! When she had gone upstairs again her bedroom especially
enchanted her. It had been hung with delicate rose-colored Louis
XVI cretonne by an Orleans upholsterer. Dear me, yes! One ought to
sleep jolly sound in such a room as that; why, it was a real best
bedroom! Then came four or five guest chambers and then some
splendid garrets, which would be extremely convenient for trunks and
boxes. Zoe looked very gruff and cast a frigid glance into each of
the rooms as she lingered in Madame's wake. She saw Nana
disappearing up the steep garret ladder and said, "Thanks, I haven't
the least wish to break my legs." But the sound of a voice reached
her from far away; indeed, it seemed to come whistling down a
chimney.
"Zoe, Zoe, where are you? Come up, do! You've no idea! It's like
fairyland!"
Zoe went up, grumbling. On the roof she found her mistress leaning
against the brickwork balustrade and gazing at the valley which
spread out into the silence. The horizon was immeasurably wide, but
it was now covered by masses of gray vapor, and a fierce wind was
driving fine rain before it. Nana had to hold her hat on with both
hands to keep it from being blown away while her petticoats streamed
out behind her, flapping like a flag.
"Not if I know it!" said Zoe, drawing her head in at once. "Madame
will be blown away. What beastly weather!"
Madame did not hear what she said. With her head over the
balustrade she was gazing at the grounds beneath. They consisted of
seven or eight acres of land enclosed wiready dark with it. Nor did it shelter
Madame, whose skirts were wringing wet. But that didn't put her out
in the smallest degree, and in the pouring rain she visited the
kitchen garden and the orchard, stopping in front of every fruit
tree and bending over every bed of vegetables. Then she ran and
looked down the well and lifted up a frame to see what was
underneath it and was lost in the contemplation of a huge pumpkin.
She wanted to go along every single garden walk and to take
immediate possession of all the things she had been wont to dream of
in the old days, when she was a slipshod work-girl on the Paris
pavements. The rain redoubled, but she never heeded it and was only
miserable at the thought that the daylight was fading. She could
not see clearly now and touched things with her fingers to find out
what they were. Suddenly in the twilight she caught sight of a bed
of strawberries, and all that was childish in her awoke.
"Strawberries! Strawberries! There are some here; I can feel them.
A plate, Zoe! Come and pick strawberries."
And dropping her sunshade, Nana crouched down in the mire under the
full force of the downpour. With drenched hands she began gathering
the fruit among the leaves. But Zoe in the meantime brought no
plate, and when the young woman rose to her feet again she was
frightened. She thought she had seen a shadow close to her.
"It's some beast!" she screamed.
But she stood rooted to the path in utter amazement. It was a man,
and she recognized him.
"Gracious me, it's Baby! What ARE you doing there, baby?"
"'Gad, I've come--that's all!" replied Georges.
Her head swam.
"You knew I'd come through the gardener telling you? Oh, that poor
child! Why, he's soaking!"
"Oh, I'll explain that to you! The rain caught me on my way here,
and then, as I didn't wish to go upstream as far as Gumieres, I
crossed the Choue and fell into a blessed hole."
Nana forgot the strawberries forthwith. She was trembling and full
of pity. That poor dear Zizi in a hole full of water! And she drew
him with her in the direction of the house and spoke of making up a
roaring fire.
"You know," he murmured, stopping her among the shadows, "I was in
hiding because I was afraid of being scolded, like in Paris, when I
come and see you and you're not expecting me."
She made no reply but burst out laughing and gave him a kiss on the
forehead. Up till today she had always treated him like a naughty
urchin, never taking his declarations seriously and amusing herself
at his expense as though he were a little man of no consequence
whatever. There was much ado to install him in the house. She
absolutely insisted on the fire being lit in her bedroom, as being
the most comfortable place for his reception. Georges had not
surprised Zoe, who was used to all kinds of encounters, but the
gardener, who brought the wood upstairs, was greatly nonplused at
sight of this dripping gentleman to whom he was certain he had not
opened the front door. He was, however, dismissed, as he was no
longer wanted.
A lamp lit up the room, and the fire burned with a great bright
flame.
"He'll never get dry, and he'll catch cold," said Nana, seeing
Georges beginning to shiver.
And there and with his
delicate young arms showing and his bright damp hair falling almost
to his shoulders, he looked just like a girl.
"Why, he's as slim as I am!" said Nana, putting her arm round his
waist. "Zoe, just come here and see how it suits him. It's were no men's trousers in her house!
She was on the point
of calling the gardener back when an idea struck her. Zoe, who was
unpacking the trunks in the dressing room, brought her mistress a
change of underwear, consisting of a shift and some petticoats with
a dressing jacket.
"Oh, that's first rate!" cried the young woman. "Zizi can put 'em
all on. You're not angry with me, eh? When your clothes are dry
you can put them on again, and then off with you, as fast as fast
can be, so as not to have a scolding from your mamma. Make haste!
I'm going to change my things, too, in the dressing room."
Ten minutes afterward, when she reappeared in a tea gown, she
clasped her hands in a perfect ecstasy.
"Oh, the darling! How sweet he looks dressed like a little woman!"
He had simply slipped on a long nightgown with an insertion front, a
pair of worked drawers and the dressing jacket, which was a long
cambric garment trimmed with lace. Thus attiredmade
for him, eh? All except the bodice part, which is too large. He
hasn't got as much as I have, poor, dear Zizi!"
"Oh, to be sure, I'm a bit wanting there," murmured Georges with a
smile.
All three grew very merry about it. Nana had set to work buttoning
the dressing jacket from top to bottom so as to make him quite
decent. Then she turned him round as though he were a doll, gave
him little thumps, made the skirt stand well out behind. After
which she asked him questions. Was he comfortable? Did he feel
warm? Zounds, yes, he was comfortable! Nothing fitted more closely
and warmly than a woman's shift; had he been able, he would always
have worn one. He moved round and about therein, delighted with the
fine linen and the soft touch of that unmanly garment, in the folds
of which he thought he discovered some of Nana's own warm life.
Meanwhile Zoe had taken the soaked clothes down to the kitchen in
order to dry them as quickly as possible in front of a vine-branch
fire. Then Georges, as he lounged in an easy chair, ventured to
make a confession.
"I say, are you going to feed this evening? I'm dying of hunger. I
haven't dined."
Nana was vexed. The great silly thing to go sloping off from
Mamma's with an empty stomach, just to chuck himself into a hole
full of water! But she was as hungry as a hunter too. They
certainly must feed! Only they would have to eat what they could
get. Whereupon a round table was rolled up in front of the fire,
and the queerest of dinners was improvised thereon. Zoe ran down to
the gardener's, he having cooked a mess of cabbage soup in case
Madame should not dine at Orleans before her arrival. Madame,
indeed, had forgotten to tell him what he was to get ready in the
letter she had sent him. Fortunately the cellar was well furnished.
Accordingly they had cabbage soup, followed by a piece of bacon.
Then Nana rummaged in her handbag and found quite a heap of
provisions which she had taken the precaution of stuffing into it.
There was a Strasbourg pate, for instance, and a bag of sweet-meats
and some oranges. So they both ate away like ogres and, while they
satisfied their healthy young appetites, treated one another with
easy good fellowship. Nana kept calling Georges "dear old girl," a
form of address which struck her as at once tender and familiar. At
dessert, in order not to give Zoe any more trouble, they used the
same spoon turn and turn about while demolishing a pot of preserves
they had discovered at the top of a cupboard.
"Oh, you dear old girl!" said Nana, pushing back the round table.
"I haven't made such a good dinner these ten years past!"
Yet it was growing late, and she wanted to send her boy off for fear
he should be suspected of all sorts of things. But he kept
declaring that he had plenty of time to spare. For the matter of
that, his clothes were not drying well, and Zoe averred that it
would take an hour longer at least, and as she was dropping with
sleep after the fatigues of the journey, they sent her off to bed.
After which they were alone in the silent house.
It was a very charming evening. The fire was dying out amid glowing
embers, and in the great blue room, where Zoe had made up the bed
before going upstairs, the air felt a little oppressive. Nana,
overcome by the heavy warmth, got up to open the window for a few
minutes, and as she did so she uttered a little cry.
"Great heavens, how beautiful it is! Look, dear old girl!"
Georges had come up, and as though the window bar had not been
sufficiently wide, he put his arm round Nana's waist and rested his
head against her shoulder. The weather had undergone a brisk
change: the skies were clearing, and a full moon lit up the country
with its golden disk of light. A sovereign quiet reigned over the
valley. It seemed wider and larger as it opened on the immense
distances of the plain, where the trees loomed like little shadowy
islands amid a shining and waveless lake. And Nana grew
tenderhearted, felt herself a child again. Most surely she had
dreamed of nights like this at an epoch which she could not recall.
Since leaving the train every object of sensation--the wide
countryside, the green things with their pungent scents, the house,
the vegetables--had stirred her to such a degree that now it seemed
to her as if she had left Paris twenty years ago. Yesterday's
existence was far, far away, and she was full of sensations of which
she had no previous experience. Georges, meanwhile, was giving her
neck little coaxing kisses, and this again added to her sweet
unrest. With hesitating hand she pushed him from her, as though he
were a child whose affectionate advances were fatiguing, and once
more she told him that he ought to take his departure. He did not
gainsay her. All in good time--he would go all in good time!
But a bird raised its song and again was silent. It was a robin in
an elder tree below the window.
"Wait one moment," whispered Georges; "the lamp's frightening him.
I'll put it out."
And when he came back and took her waist again he added:
"We'll relight it in a minute."
Then as she listened to the robin and the boy pressed against her
side, Nana remembered. Ah yes, it was in novels that she had got to
know all this! In other days she would have given her heart to have
a full moon and robins and a lad dying of love for her. Great God,
she could have cried, so good and charming did it all seem to her!
Beyond a doubt she had been born to live honestly! So she pushed
Georges away again, and he grew yet bolder.
"No, let me be. I don't care about it. It would be very wicked at
your age. Now listen--I'll always be your mamma."
A sudden feeling of shame overcame her. She was blushing
exceedingly, and yet not a soul could see her. The room behind them
was full of black night while the country stretched before them in
silence and lifeless solitude. Never had she known such a sense of
shame before. Little by little she felt her power of resistance
ebbing away, and that despite her embarrassed efforts to the
contrary. That disguise of his, that woman's shift and that
dressing jacket set her laughing again. It was as though a girl
friend were teasing her.
"Oh, it's not right; it's not right!" she stammered after a last
effort.
And with that, in face of the lovely night, she sank like a young
virgin into the arms of this mere child. The house slept.
Next morning at Les Fondettes, when the bell rang for lunch, the
dining-room table was no longer too big for the company. Fauchery
and Daguenet had been driven up together in one carriage, and after
them another had arrived with the Count de Vandeuvres, who had
followed by the next train. Georges was the last to come
downstairs. He was looking a little pale, and his eyes were sunken,
but in answer to questions he said that he was much better, though
he was still somewhat shaken by the violence of the attack. Mme
Hugon looked into his eyes with an anxious smile and adjusted his
hair which had been carelessly combed that morning, but he drew back
as though embarrassed by this tender little action. During the meal
she chaffed Vandeuvres very pleasantly and declared that she had
expected him for five years past.
"Well, here you are at last! How have you managed it?"
Vandeuvres took her remarks with equal pleasantry. He told her that
he had lost a fabulous sum of money at the club yesterday and
thereupon had come away with the intention of ending up in the
country.
"'Pon my word, yes, if only you can find me an heiress in these
rustic parts! There must be delightful women hereabouts."
The old lady rendered equal thanks to Daguenet and Fauchery for
having been so good as to accept her son's invitation, and then to
her great and joyful surprise she saw the Marquis de Chouard enter
the room. A third carriage had brought him.
"Dear me, you've made this your trysting place today!" she cried.
"You've passed word round! But what's happening? For years I've
never succeeded in bringing you all together, and now you all drop
in at once. Oh, I certainly don't complain."
Another place was laid. Fauchery found himself next the Countess
Sabine, whose liveliness and gaiety surprised him when he remembered
her drooping, languid state in the austere Rue Miromesnil drawing
room. Daguenet, on the other hand, who was seated on Estelle's
left, seemed slightly put out by his propinquity to that tall,
silent girl. The angularity of her elbows was disagreeable to him.
Muffat and Chouard had exchanged a sly glance while Vandeuvres
continued joking about his coming marriage.
"Talking of ladies," Mme Hugon ended by saying, "I have a new
neighbor whom you probably know."
And she mentioned Nana. Vandeuvres affected the liveliest
astonishment.
"Well, that is strange! Nana's property near here!"
Fauchery and Daguenet indulged in a similar demonstration while the
Marquis de Chouard discussed the breast of a chicken without
appearing to comprehend their meaning. Not one of the men had
smiled.
"Certainly," continued the old lady, "and the person in question
arrived at La Mignotte yesterday evening, as I was saying she would.
I got my information from the gardener this morning."
At these words the gentlemen could not conceal their very real
surprise. They all looked up. Eh? What? Nana had come down! But
they were only expecting her next day; they were privately under the
impression that they would arrive before her! Georges alone sat
looking at his glass with drooped eyelids and a tired expression.
Ever since the beginning of lunch he had seemed to be sleeping with
open eyes and a vague smile on his lips.
"Are you still in pain, my Zizi?" asked his mother, who had been
gazing at him throughout the meal.
He started and blushed as he said that he was very well now, but the
worn-out insatiate expression of a girl who has danced too much did
not fade from his face.
"What's the matter with your neck?" resumed Mme Hugon in an alarmed
tone. "It's all red."
He was embarrassed and stammered. He did not know--he had nothing
the matter with his neck. Then drawing his shirt collar up:
"Ah yes, some insect stung me there!"
The Marquis de Chouard had cast a sidelong glance at the little red
place. Muffat, too, looked at Georges. The company was finishing
lunch and planning various excursions. Fauchery was growing
increasingly excited with the Countess Sabine's laughter. As he was
passing her a dish of fruit their hands touched, and for one second
she looked at him with eyes so full of dark meaning that he once
more thought of the secret which had been communicated to him one
evening after an uproarious dinner. Then, too, she was no longer
the same woman. Something was more pronounced than of old, and her
gray foulard gown which fitted loosely over her shoulders added a
touch of license to her delicate, high-strung elegance.
When they rose from the table Daguenet remained behind with Fauchery
in order to impart to him the following crude witticism about
Estelle: "A nice broomstick that to shove into a man's hands!"
Nevertheless, he grew serious when the journalist told him the
amount she was worth in the way of dowry.
"Four hundred thousand francs."
"And the mother?" queried Fauchery. "She's all right, eh?"
"Oh, SHE'LL work the oracle! But it's no go, my dear man!"
"Bah! How are we to know? We must wait and see."
It was impossible to go out that day, for the rain was still falling
in heavy showers. Georges had made haste to disappear from the
scene and had double-locked his door. These gentlemen avoided
mutual explanations, though they were none of them deceived as to
the reasons which had brought them together. Vandeuvres, who had
had a very bad time at play, had really conceived the notion of
lying fallow for a season, and he was counting on Nana's presence in
the neighborhood as a safeguard against excessive boredom. Fauchery
had taken advantage of the holidays granted him by Rose, who just
then was extremely busy. He was thinking of discussing a second
notice with Nana, in case country air should render them
reciprocally affectionate. Daguenet, who had been just a little
sulky with her since Steiner had come upon the scene, was dreaming
of resuming the old connection or at least of snatching some
delightful opportunities if occasion offered. As to the Marquis de
Chouard, he was watching for times and seasons. But among all those
men who were busy following in the tracks of Venus--a Venus with the
rouge scarce washed from her cheeks--Muffat was at once the most
ardent and the most tortured by the novel sensations of desire and
fear and anger warring in his anguished members. A formal promise
had been made him; Nana was awaiting him. Why then had she taken
her departure two days sooner than was expected?
He resolved to betake himself to La Mignotte after dinner that same
evening. At night as the count was leaving the park Georges fled
forth after him. He left him to follow the road to Gumieres,
crossed the Choue, rushed into Nana's presence, breathless, furious
and with tears in his eyes. Ah yes, he understood everything! That
old fellow now on his way to her was coming to keep an appointment!
Nana was dumfounded by this ebullition of jealousy, and, greatly
moved by the way things were turning out, she took him in her arms
and comforted him to the best of her ability. Oh no, he was quite
beside the mark; she was expecting no one. If the gentleman came it
would not be her fault. What a great ninny that Zizi was to be
taking on so about nothing at all! By her child's soul she swore
she loved nobody except her own Georges. And with that she kissed
him and wiped away his tears.
"Now just listen! You'll see that it's all for your sake," she went
on when he had grown somewhat calmer. "Steiner has arrived--he's up
above there now. You know, duckie, I can't turn HIM out of doors."
"Yes, I know; I'm not talking of HIM," whispered the boy.
"Very well then, I've stuck him into the room at the end. I said I
was out of sorts. He's unpacking his trunk. Since nobody's seen
you, be quick and run up and hide in my room and wait for me.
Georges sprang at her and threw his arms round her neck. It was
true after all! She loved him a little! So they would put the lamp
out as they did yesterday and be in the dark till daytime! Then as
the front-door bell sounded he quietly slipped away. Upstairs in
the bedroom he at once took off his shoes so as not to make any
noise and straightway crouched down behind a curtain and waited
soberly.
Nana welcomed Count Muffat, who, though still shaken with passion,
was now somewhat embarrassed. She had pledged her word to him and
would even have liked to keep it since he struck her as a serious,
practicable lover. But truly, who could have foreseen all that
happened yesterday? There was the voyage and the house she had
never set eyes on before and the arrival of the drenched little
lover! How sweet it had all seemed to her, and how delightful it
would be to continue in it! So much the worse for the gentleman!
For three months past she had been keeping him dangling after her
while she affected conventionality in order the further to inflame
him. Well, well! He would have to continue dangling, and if he
didn't like that he could go! She would sooner have thrown up
everything than have played false to Georges.
The count had seated himself with all the ceremonious politeness
becoming a country caller. Only his hands were trembling slightly.
Lust, which Nana's skillful tactics daily exasperated, had at last
wrought terrible havoc in that sanguine, uncontaminated nature. The
grave man, the chamberlain who was wont to tread the state
apartments at the Tuileries with slow and dignified step, was now
nightly driven to plunge his teeth into his bolster, while with sobs
of exasperation he pictured to himself a sensual shape which never
changed. But this time he was determined to make an end of the
torture. Coming along the highroad in the deep quiet of the
gloaming, he had meditated a fierce course of action. And the
moment he had finished his opening remarks he tried to take hold of
Nana with both hands.
"No, no! Take care!" she said simply. She was not vexed; nay, she
even smiled.
He caught her again, clenching his teeth as he did so. Then as she
struggled to get free he coarsely and crudely reminded her that he
had come to stay the night. Though much embarrassed at this, Nana
did not cease to smile. She took his hands and spoke very
familiarly in order to soften her refusal.
"Come now, darling, do be quiet! Honor bright, I can't: Steiner's
upstairs."
But he was beside himself. Never yet had she seen a man in such a
state. She grew frightened and put her hand over his mouth in order
to stifle his cries. Then in lowered tones she besought him to be
quiet and to let her alone. Steiner was coming downstairs. Things
were getting stupid, to be sure! When Steiner entered the room he
heard Nana remarking:
"I adore the country."
She was lounging comfortably back in her deep easy chair, and she
turned round and interrupted herself.
"It's Monsieur le Comte Muffat, darling. He saw a light here while
he was strolling past, and he came in to bid us welcome."
The two men clasped hands. Muffat, with his face in shadow, stood
silent for a moment or two. Steiner seemed sulky. Then they
chatted about Paris: business there was at a standstill; abominable
things had been happening on 'change. When a quarter of an hour had
elapsed Muffat took his departure, and, as the young woman was
seeing him to the door, he tried without success to make an
assignation for the following night. Steiner went up to bed almost
directly afterward, grumbling, as he did so, at the everlasting
little ailments that seemed to afflict the genus courtesan. The two
old boys had been packed off at last! When she was able to rejoin
him Nana found Georges still hiding exemplarily behind the curtain.
The room was dark. He pulled her down onto the floor as she sat
near him, and together they began playfully rolling on the ground,
stopping now and again and smothering their laughter with kisses
whenever they struck their bare feet against some piece of
furniture. Far away, on the road to Gumieres, Count Muffat walked
slowly home and, hat in hand, bathed his burning forehead in the
freshness and silence of the night.
During the days that followed Nana found life adorable. In the
lad's arms she was once more a girl of fifteen, and under the
caressing influence of this renewed childhood love's white flower
once more blossomed forth in a nature which had grown hackneyed and
disgusted in the service of the other sex. She would experience
sudden fits of shame, sudden vivid emotions, which left her
trembling. She wanted to laugh and to cry, and she was beset by
nervous, maidenly feelings, mingled with warm desires that made her
blush again. Never yet had she felt anything comparable to this.
The country filled her with tender thoughts. As a little girl she
had long wished to dwell in a meadow, tending a goat, because one
day on the talus of the fortifications she had seen a goat bleating
at the end of its tether. Now this estate, this stretch of land
belonging to her, simply swelled her heart to bursting, so utterly
had her old ambition been surpassed. Once again she tasted the
novel sensations experienced by chits of girls, and at night when
she went upstairs, dizzy with her day in the open air and
intoxicated by the scent of green leaves, and rejoined her Zizi
behind the curtain, she fancied herself a schoolgirl enjoying a
holiday escapade. It was an amour, she thought, with a young cousin
to whom she was going to be married. And so she trembled at the
slightest noise and dread lest parents should hear her, while making
the delicious experiments and suffering the voluptuous terrors
attendant on a girl's first slip from the path of virtue.
Nana in those days was subject to the fancies a sentimental girl
will indulge in. She would gaze at the moon for hours. One night
she had a mind to go down into the garden with Georges when all the
household was asleep. When there they strolled under the trees,
their arms round each other's waists, and finally went and laid down
in the grass, where the dew soaked them through and through. On
another occasion, after a long silence up in the bedroom, she fell
sobbing on the lad's neck, declaring in broken accents that she was
afraid of dying. She would often croon a favorite ballad of Mme
Lerat's, which was full of flowers and birds. The song would melt
her to tears, and she would break off in order to clasp Georges in a
passionate embrace and to extract from him vows of undying
affection. In short she was extremely silly, as she herself would
admit when they both became jolly good fellows again and sat up
smoking cigarettes on the edge of the bed, dangling their bare legs
over it the while and tapping their heels against its wooden side.
But what utterly melted the young woman's heart was Louiset's
arrival. She had an access of maternal affection which was as
violent as a mad fit. She would carry off her boy into the sunshine
outside to watch him kicking about; she would dress him like a
little prince and roll with him in the grass. The moment he arrived
she decided that he was to sleep near her, in the room next hers,
where Mme Lerat, whom the country greatly affected, used to begin
snoring the moment her head touched the pillow. Louiset did not
hurt Zizi's position in the least. On the contrary, Nana said that
she had now two children, and she treated them with the same wayward
tenderness. At night, more than ten times running, she would leave
Zizi to go and see if Louiset were breathing properly, but on her
return she would re-embrace her Zizi and lavish on him the caresses
that had been destined for the child. She played at being Mamma
while he wickedly enjoyed being dandled in the arms of the great
wench and allowed himself to be rocked to and fro like a baby that
is being sent to sleep. It was all so delightful, and Nana was so
charmed with her present existence, that she seriously proposed to
him never to leave the country. They would send all the other
people away, and he, she and the child would live alone. And with
that they would make a thousand plans till daybreak and never once
hear Mme Lerat as she snored vigorously after the fatigues of a day
spent in picking country flowers.
This charming existence lasted nearly a week. Count Muffat used to
come every evening and go away again with disordered face and
burning hands. One evening he was not even received, as Steiner had
been obliged to run up to Paris. He was told that Madame was not
well. Nana grew daily more disgusted at the notion of deceiving
Georges. He was such an innocent lad, and he had such faith in her!
She would have looked on herself as the lowest of the low had she
played him false. Besides, it would have sickened her to do so!
Zoe, who took her part in this affair in mute disdain, believed that
Madame was growing senseless.
On the sixth day a band of visitors suddenly blundered into Nana's
idyl. She had, indeed, invited a whole swarm of people under the
belief that none of them would come. And so one fine afternoon she
was vastly astonished and annoyed to see an omnibus full of people
pulling up outside the gate of La Mignotte.
"It's us!" cried Mignon, getting down first from the conveyance and
extracting then his sons Henri and Charles.
Labordette thereupon appeared and began handing out an interminable
file of ladies--Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet, Tatan Nene, Maria
Blond. Nana was in hopes that they would end there, when La Faloise
sprang from the step in order to receive Gaga and her daughter
Amelie in his trembling arms. That brought the number up to eleven
people. Their installation proved a laborious undertaking. There
were five spare rooms at La Mignotte, one of which was already
occupied by Mme Lerat and Louiset. The largest was devoted to the
Gaga and La Faloise establishment, and it was decided that Amelie
should sleep on a truckle bed in the dressing room at the side.
Mignon and his two sons had the third room. Labordette the fourth.
There thus remained one room which was transformed into a dormitory
with four beds in it for Lucy, Caroline, Tatan and Maria. As to
Steiner, he would sleep on the divan in the drawing room. At the
end of an hour, when everyone was duly settled, Nana, who had begun
by being furious, grew enchanted at the thought of playing hostess
on a grand scale. The ladies complimented her on La Mignotte.
"It's a stunning property, my dear!" And then, too, they brought
her quite a whiff of Parisian air, and talking all together with
bursts of laughter and exclamation and emphatic little gestures,
they gave her all the petty gossip of the week just past. By the
by, and how about Bordenave? What had he said about her prank? Oh,
nothing much! After bawling about having her brought back by the
police, he had simply put somebody else in her place at night.
Little Violaine was the understudy, and she had even obtained a very
pretty success as the Blonde Venus. Which piece of news made Nana
rather serious.
It was only four o'clock in the afternoon, and there was some talk
of taking a stroll around.
"Oh, I haven't told you," said Nana, "I was just off to get up
potatoes when you arrived."
Thereupon they all wanted to go and dig potatoes without even
changing their dresses first. It was quite a party. The gardener
and two helpers were already in the potato field at the end of the
grounds. The ladies knelt down and began fumbling in the mold with
their beringed fingers, shouting gaily whenever they discovered a
potato of exceptional size. It struck them as so amusing! But
Tatan Nene was in a state of triumph! So many were the potatoes she
had gathered in her youth that she forgot herself entirely and gave
the others much good advice, treating them like geese the while.
The gentlemen toiled less strenuously. Mignon looked every inch the
good citizen and father and made his stay in the country an occasion
for completing his boys' education. Indeed, he spoke to them of
Parmentier!
Dinner that evening was wildly hilarious. The company ate
ravenously. Nana, in a state of great elevation, had a warm
disagreement with her butler, an individual who had been in service
at the bishop's palace in Orleans. The ladies smoked over their
coffee. An earsplitting noise of merrymaking issued from the open
windows and died out far away under the serene evening sky while
peasants, belated in the lanes, turned and looked at the flaring
rooms.
"It's most tiresome that you're going back the day after tomorrow,"
said Nana. "But never mind, we'll get up an excursion all the
same!"
They decided to go on the morrow, Sunday, and visit the ruins of the
old Abbey of Chamont, which were some seven kilometers distant.
Five carriages would come out from Orleans, take up the company
after lunch and bring them back to dinner at La Mignotte at about
seven. It would be delightful.
That evening, as his wont was, Count Muffat mounted the hill to ring
at the outer gate. But the brightly lit windows and the shouts of
laughter astonished him. When, however, he recognized Mignon's
voice, he understood it all and went off, raging at this new
obstacle, driven to extremities, bent on some violent act. Georges
passed through a little door of which he had the key, slipped along
the staircase walls and went quietly up into Nana's room. Only he
had to wait for her till past midnight. She appeared at last in a
high state of intoxication and more maternal even than on the
previous nights. Whenever she had drunk anything she became so
amorous as to be absurd. Accordingly she now insisted on his
accompanying her to the Abbey of Chamont. But he stood out against
this; he was afraid of being seen. If he were to be seen driving
with her there would be an atrocious scandal. But she burst into
tears and evinced the noisy despair of a slighted woman. And he
thereupon consoled her and formally promised to be one of the party.
"So you do love me very much," she blurted out. "Say you love me
very much. Oh, my darling old bear, if I were to die would you feel
it very much? Confess!"
At Les Fondettes the near neighborhood of Nana had utterly
disorganized the party. Every morning during lunch good Mme Hugon
returned to the subject despite herself, told her guests the news
the gardener had brought her and gave evidence of the absorbing
curiosity with which notorious courtesans are able to inspire even
the worthiest old ladies. Tolerant though she was, she was revolted
and maddened by a vague presentiment of coming ill, which frightened
her in the evenings as thoroughly as if a wild beast had escaped
from a menagerie and were known to be lurking in the countryside.
She began trying to pick a little quarrel with her guests, whom she
each and all accused of prowling round La Mignotte. Count
Vandeuvres had been seen laughing on the highroad with a golden-
haired lady, but he defended himself against the accusation; he
denied that it was Nana, the fact being that Lucy had been with him
and had told him how she had just turned her third prince out of
doors. The Marquis de Chouard used also to go out every day, but
his excuse was doctor's orders. Toward Daguenet and Fauchery Mme
Hugon behaved unjustly too. The former especially never left Les
Fondettes, for he had given up the idea of renewing the old
connection and was busy paying the most respectful attentions to
Estelle. Fauchery also stayed with the Muffat ladies. On one
occasion only he had met Mignon with an armful of flowers, putting
his sons through a course of botanical instruction in a by-path.
The two men had shaken hands and given each other the news about
Rose. She was perfectly well and happy; they had both received a
letter from her that morning in which she besought them to profit by
the fresh country air for some days longer. Among all her guests
the old lady spared only Count Muffat and Georges. The count, who
said he had serious business in Orleans, could certainly not be
running after the bad woman, and as to Georges, the poor child was
at last causing her grave anxiety, seeing that every evening he was
seized with atrocious sick headaches which kept him to his bed in
broad daylight.
Meanwhile Fauchery had become the Countess Sabine's faithful
attendant in the absence during each afternoon of Count Muffat.
Whenever they went to the end of the park he carried her campstool
and her sunshade. Besides, he amused her with the original
witticisms peculiar to a second-rate journalist, and in so doing he
prompted her to one of those sudden intimacies which are allowable
in the country. She had apparently consented to it from the first,
for she had grown quite a girl again in the society of a young man
whose noisy humor seemed unlikely to compromize her. But now and
again, when for a second or two they found themselves alone behind
the shrubs, their eyes would meet; they would pause amid their
laughter, grow suddenly serious and view one another darkly, as
though they had fathomed and divined their inmost hearts.
On Friday a fresh place had to be laid at lunch time. M. Theophile
Venot, whom Mme Hugon remembered to have invited at the Muffats'
last winter, had just arrived. He sat stooping humbly forward and
behaved with much good nature, as became a man of no account, nor
did he seem to notice the anxious deference with which he was
treated. When he had succeeded in getting the company to forget his
presence he sat nibbling small lumps of sugar during dessert,
looking sharply up at Daguenet as the latter handed Estelle
strawberries and listening to Fauchery, who was making the countess
very merry over one of his anecdotes. Whenever anyone looked at HIM
he smiled in his quiet way. When the guests rose from table he took
the count's arm and drew him into the park. He was known to have
exercised great influence over the latter ever since the death of
his mother. Indeed, singular stories were told about the kind of
dominion which the ex-lawyer enjoyed in that household. Fauchery,
whom his arrival doubtless embarrassed, began explaining to Georges
and Daguenet the origin of the man's wealth. It was a big lawsuit
with the management of which the Jesuits had entrusted him in days
gone by. In his opinion the worthy man was a terrible fellow
despite his gentle, plump face and at this time of day had his
finger in all the intrigues of the priesthood. The two young men
had begun joking at this, for they thought the little old gentleman
had an idiotic expression. The idea of an unknown Venot, a gigantic
Venot, acting for the whole body of the clergy, struck them in the
light of a comical invention. But they were silenced when, still
leaning on the old man's arm, Count Muffat reappeared with blanched
cheeks and eyes reddened as if by recent weeping.
I bet they've been chatting about hell," muttered Fauchery in a
bantering tone.
The Countess Sabine overheard the remark. She turned her head
slowly, and their eyes met in that long gaze with which they were
accustomed to sound one another prudently before venturing once for
all.
After the breakfast it was the guests' custom to betake themselves
to a little flower garden on a terrace overlooking the plain. This
Sunday afternoon was exquisitely mild. There had been signs of rain
toward ten in the morning, but the sky, without ceasing to be
covered, had, as it were, melted into milky fog, which now hung like
a cloud of luminous dust in the golden sunlight. Soon Mme Hugon
proposed that they should step down through a little doorway below
the terrace and take a walk on foot in the direction of Gumieres and
as far as the Choue. She was fond of walking and, considering her
threescore years, was very active. Besides, all her guests declared
that there was no need to drive. So in a somewhat straggling order
they reached the wooden bridge over the river. Fauchery and
Daguenet headed the column with the Muffat ladies and were followed
by the count and the marquis, walking on either side of Mme Hugon,
while Vandeuvres, looking fashionable and out of his element on the
highroad, marched in the rear, smoking a cigar. M. Venot, now
slackening, now hastening his pace, passed smilingly from group to
group, as though bent on losing no scrap of conversation.
"To think of poor dear Georges at Orleans!" said Mme Hugon. "He was
anxious to consult old Doctor Tavernier, who never goes out now, on
the subject of his sick headaches. Yes, you were not up, as he went
off before seven o'clock. But it'll be a change for him all the
same."
She broke off, exclaiming:
"Why, what's making them stop on the bridge?"
The fact was the ladies and Fauchery and Daguenet were standing
stock-still on the crown of the bridge. They seemed to be
hesitating as though some obstacle or other rendered them uneasy and
yet the way lay clear before them.
"Go on!" cried the count.
They never moved and seemed to be watching the approach of something
which the rest had not yet observed. Indeed the road wound
considerably and was bordered by a thick screen of poplar trees.
Nevertheless, a dull sound began to grow momentarily louder, and
soon there was a noise of wheels, mingled with shouts of laughter
and the cracking of whips. Then suddenly five carriages came into
view, driving one behind the other. They were crowded to bursting,
and bright with a galaxy of white, blue and pink costumes.
"What is it?" said Mme Hugon in some surprise.
Then her instinct told her, and she felt indignant at such an
untoward invasion of her road.
"Oh, that woman!" she murmured. "Walk on, pray walk on. Don't
appear to notice."
But it was too late. The five carriages which were taking Nana and
her circle to the ruins of Chamont rolled on to the narrow wooden
bridge. Fauchery, Daguenet and the Muffat ladies were forced to
step backward, while Mme Hugon and the others had also to stop in
Indian file along the roadside. It was a superb ride past! The
laughter in the carriages had ceased, and faces were turned with an
expression of curiosity. The rival parties took stock of each other
amid a silence broken only by the measured trot of the horses. In
the first carriage Maria Blond and Tatan Nene were lolling backward
like a pair of duchesses, their skirts swelling forth over the
wheels, and as they passed they cast disdainful glances at the
honest women who were walking afoot. Then came Gaga, filling up a
whole seat and half smothering La Faloise beside her so that little
but his small anxious face was visible. Next followed Caroline
Hequet with Labordette, Lucy Stewart with Mignon and his boys and at
the close of all Nana in a victoria with Steiner and on a bracket
seat in front of her that poor, darling Zizi, with his knees jammed
against her own.
"It's the last of them, isn't it?" the countess placidly asked
Fauchery, pretending at the same time not to recognize Nana.
The wheel of the victoria came near grazing her, but she did not
step back. The two women had exchanged a deeply significant glance.
It was, in fact, one of those momentary scrutinies which are at once
complete and definite. As to the men, they behaved unexceptionably.
Fauchery and Daguenet looked icy and recognized no one. The
marquis, more nervous than they and afraid of some farcical
ebullition on the part of the ladies, had plucked a blade of grass
and was rolling it between his fingers. Only Vandeuvres, who had
stayed somewhat apart from the rest of the company, winked
imperceptibly at Lucy, who smiled at him as she passed.
"Be careful!" M. Venot had whispered as he stood behind Count
Muffat.
The latter in extreme agitation gazed after this illusive vision of
Nana while his wife turned slowly round and scrutinized him. Then
he cast his eyes on the ground as though to escape the sound of
galloping hoofs which were sweeping away both his senses and his
heart. He could have cried aloud in his agony, for, seeing Georges
among Nana's skirts, he understood it all now. A mere child! He
was brokenhearted at the thought that she should have preferred a
mere child to him! Steiner was his equal, but that child!
Mme Hugon, in the meantime, had not at once recognized Georges.
Crossing the bridge, he was fain to jump into the river, but Nana's
knees restrained him. Then white as a sheet and icy cold, he sat
rigidly up in his place and looked at no one. It was just possible
no one would notice him.
"Oh, my God!" said the old lady suddenly. "Georges is with her!"
The carriages had passed quite through the uncomfortable crowd of
people who recognized and yet gave no sign of recognition. The
short critical encounter seemed to have been going on for ages. And
now the wheels whirled away the carriageloads of girls more gaily
than ever. Toward the fair open country they went, amid the
buffetings of the fresh air of heaven. Bright-colored fabrics
fluttered in the wind, and the merry laughter burst forth anew as
the voyagers began jesting and glancing back at the respectable
folks halting with looks of annoyance at the roadside. Turning
round, Nana could see the walking party hesitating and then
returning the way they had come without crossing the bridge. Mme
Hugon was leaning silently on Count Muffat's arm, and so sad was her
look that no one dared comfort her.
"I say, did you see Fauchery, dear?" Nana shouted to Lucy, who was
leaning out of the carriage in front. "What a brute he was! He
shall pay out for that. And Paul, too, a fellow I've been so kind
to! Not a sign! They're polite, I'm sure."
And with that she gave Steiner a terrible dressing, he having
ventured to suggest that the gentlemen's attitude had been quite as
it should be. So then they weren't even worth a bow? The first
blackguard that came by might insult them? Thanks! He was the
right sort, too, he was! It couldn't be better! One ought always
to bow to a woman.
"Who's the tall one?" asked Lucy at random, shouting through the
noise of the wheels.
"It's the Countess Muffat," answered Steiner.
"There now! I suspected as much," said Nana. "Now, my dear fellow,
it's all very well her being a countess, for she's no better than
she should be. Yes, yes, she's no better that she should be. You
know, I've got an eye for such things, I have! And now I know your
countess as well as if I had been at the making of her! I'll bet
you that she's the mistress of that viper Fauchery! I tell you,
she's his mistress! Between women you guess that sort of thing at
once!"
Steiner shrugged his shoulders. Since the previous day his
irritation had been hourly increasing. He had received letters
which necessitated his leaving the following morning, added to which
he did not much appreciate coming down to the country in order to
sleep on the drawing-room divan.
"And this poor baby boy!" Nana continued, melting suddenly at sight
of Georges's pale face as he still sat rigid and breathless in front
of her.
"D'you think Mamma recognized me?" he stammered at last.
"Oh, most surely she did! Why, she cried out! But it's my fault.
He didn't want to come with us; I forced him to. Now listen, Zizi,
would you like me to write to your mamma? She looks such a kind,
decent sort of lady! I'll tell her that I never saw you before and
that it was Steiner who brought you with him for the first time
today."
"No, no, don't write," said Georges in great anxiety. "I'll explain
it all myself. Besides, if they bother me about it I shan't go home
again."
But he continued plunged in thought, racking his brains for excuses
against his return home in the evening. The five carriages were
rolling through a flat country along an interminable straight road
bordered by fine trees. The country was bathed in a silvery-gray
atmosphere. The ladies still continued shouting remarks from
carriage to carriage behind the backs of the drivers, who chuckled
over their extraordinary fares. Occasionally one of them would rise
to her feet to look at the landscape and, supporting herself on her
neighbor's shoulder, would grow extremely excited till a sudden jolt
brought her down to the seat again. Caroline Hequet in the meantime
was having a warm discussion with Labordette. Both of them were
agreed that Nana would be selling her country house before three
months were out, and Caroline was urging Labordette to buy it back
for her for as little as it was likely to fetch. In front of them
La Faloise, who was very amorous and could not get at Gaga's
apoplectic neck, was imprinting kisses on her spine through her
dress, the strained fabric of which was nigh splitting, while
Amelie, perching stiffly on the bracket seat, was bidding them be
quiet, for she was horrified to be sitting idly by, watching her
mother being kissed. In the next carriage Mignon, in order to
astonish Lucy, was making his sons recite a fable by La Fontaine.
Henri was prodigious at this exercise; he could spout you one
without pause or hesitation. But Maria Blond, at the head of the
procession, was beginning to feel extremely bored. She was tired of
hoaxing that blockhead of a Tatan Nene with a story to the effect
that the Parisian dairywomen were wont to fabricate eggs with a
mixture of paste and saffron. The distance was too great: were they
never going to get to their destination? And the question was
transmitted from carriage to carriage and finally reached Nana, who,
after questioning her driver, got up and shouted:
"We've not got a quarter of an hour more to go. You see that church
behind the trees down there?"
Then she continued:
"Do you know, it appears the owner of the Chateau de Chamont is an
old lady of Napoleon's time? Oh, SHE was a merry one! At least, so
Joseph told me, and he heard it from the servants at the bishop's
palace. There's no one like it nowadays, and for the matter of
that, she's become goody-goody."
"What's her name?" asked Lucy.
"Madame d'Anglars."
"Irma d'Anglars--I knew her!" cried Gaga.
Admiring exclamations burst from the line of carriages and were
borne down the wind as the horses quickened their trot. Heads were
stretched out in Gaga's direction; Maria Blond and Tatan Nene turned
round and knelt on the seat while they leaned over the carriage
hood, and the air was full of questions and cutting remarks,
tempered by a certain obscure admiration. Gaga had known her! The
idea filled them all with respect for that far-off past.
"Dear me, I was young then," continued Gaga. "But never mind, I
remember it all. I saw her pass. They said she was disgusting in
her own house, but, driving in her carriage, she WAS just smart!
And the stunning tales about her! Dirty doings and money flung
about like one o'clock! I don't wonder at all that she's got a fine
place. Why, she used to clean out a man's pockets as soon as look
at him. Irma d'Anglars still in the land of the living! Why, my
little pets, she must be near ninety."
At this the ladies became suddenly serious. Ninety years old! The
deuce, there wasn't one of them, as Lucy loudly declared, who would
live to that age. They were all done for. Besides, Nana said she
didn't want to make old bones; it wouldn't be amusing. They were
drawing near their destination, and the conversation was interrupted
by the cracking of whips as the drivers put their horses to their
best paces. Yet amid all the noise Lucy continued talking and,
suddenly changing the subject, urged Nana to come to town with them
all to-morrow. The exhibition was soon to close, and the ladies
must really return to Paris, where the season was surpassing their
expectations. But Nana was obstinate. She loathed Paris; she
wouldn't set foot there yet!
"Eh, darling, we'll stay?" she said, giving Georges's knees a
squeeze, as though Steiner were of no account.
The carriages had pulled up abruptly, and in some surprise the
company got out on some waste ground at the bottom of a small hill.
With his whip one of the drivers had to point them out the ruins of
the old Abbey of Chamont where they lay hidden among trees. It was
a great sell! The ladies voted them silly. Why, they were only a
heap of old stones with briers growing over them and part of a
tumble-down tower. It really wasn't worth coming a couple of
leagues to see that! Then the driver pointed out to them the
countryseat, the park of which stretched away from the abbey, and he
advised them to take a little path and follow the walls surrounding
it. They would thus make the tour of the place while the carriages
would go and await them in the village square. It was a delightful
walk, and the company agreed to the proposition.
"Lord love me, Irma knows how to take care of herself!" said Gaga,
halting before a gate at the corner of the park wall abutting on the
highroad.
All of them stood silently gazing at the enormous bush which stopped
up the gateway. Then following the little path, they skirted the
park wall, looking up from time to time to admire the trees, whose
lofty branches stretched out over them and formed a dense vault of
greenery. After three minutes or so they found themselves in front
of a second gate. Through this a wide lawn was visible, over which
two venerable oaks cast dark masses of shadow. Three minutes
farther on yet another gate afforded them an extensive view of a
great avenue, a perfect corridor of shadow, at the end of which a
bright spot of sunlight gleamed like a star. They stood in silent,
wondering admiration, and then little by little exclamations burst
from their lips. They had been trying hard to joke about it all
with a touch of envy at heart, but this decidedly and immeasurably
impressed them. What a genius that Irma was! A sight like this
gave you a rattling notion of the woman! The trees stretched away
and away, and there were endlessly recurrent patches of ivy along
the wall with glimpses of lofty roofs and screens of poplars
interspersed with dense masses of elms and aspens. Was there no end
to it then? The ladies would have liked to catch sight of the
mansion house, for they were weary of circling on and on, weary of
seeing nothing but leafy recesses through every opening they came
to. They took the rails of the gate in their hands and pressed
their faces against the ironwork. And thus excluded and isolated, a
feeling of respect began to overcome them as they thought of the
castle lost to view in surrounding immensity. Soon, being quite
unused to walking, they grew tired. And the wall did not leave off;
at every turn of the small deserted path the same range of gray
stones stretched ahead of them. Some of them began to despair of
ever getting to the end of it and began talking of returning. But
the more their long walk fatigued them, the more respectful they
became, for at each successive step they were increasingly impressed
by the tranquil, lordly dignity of the domain.
"It's getting silly, this is!" said Caroline Hequet, grinding her
teeth.
Nana silenced her with a shrug. For some moments past she had been
rather pale and extremely serious and had not spoken a single word.
Suddenly the path gave a final turn; the wall ended, and as they
came out on the village square the mansion house stood before them
on the farther side of its grand outer court. All stopped to admire
the proud sweep of the wide steps, the twenty frontage windows, the
arrangement of the three wings, which were built of brick framed by
courses of stone. Henri IV had erewhile inhabited this historic
mansion, and his room, with its great bed hung with Genoa velvet,
was still preserved there. Breathless with admiration, Nana gave a
little childish sigh.
"Great God!" she whispered very quietly to herself.
But the party were deeply moved when Gaga suddenly announced that
Irma herself was standing yonder in front of the church. She
recognized her perfectly. She was as upright as of old, the hoary
campaigner, and that despite her age, and she still had those eyes
which flashed when she moved in that proud way of hers! Vespers
were just over, and for a second or two Madame stood in the church
porch. She was dressed in a dark brown silk and looked very simple
and very tall, her venerable face reminding one of some old marquise
who had survived the horrors of the Great Revolution. In her right
hand a huge Book of Hours shone in the sunlight, and very slowly she
crossed the square, followed some fifteen paces off by a footman in
livery. The church was emptying, and all the inhabitants of Chamont
bowed before her with extreme respect. An old man even kissed her
hand, and a woman wanted to fall on her knees. Truly this was a
potent queen, full of years and honors. She mounted her flight of
steps and vanished from view.
"That's what one attains to when one has methodical habits!" said
Mignon with an air of conviction, looking at his sons and improving
the occasion.
Then everybody said his say. Labordette thought her extraordinarily
well preserved. Maria Blond let slip a foul expression and vexed
Lucy, who declared that one ought to honor gray hairs. All the
women, to sum up, agreed that she was a perfect marvel. Then the
company got into their conveyances again. From Chamont all the way
to La Mignotte Nana remained silent. She had twice turned round to
look back at the house, and now, lulled by the sound of the wheels,
she forgot that Steiner was at her side and that Georges was in
front of her. A vision had come up out of the twilight, and the
great lady seemed still to be sweeping by with all the majesty of a
potent queen, full of years and of honors.
That evening Georges re-entered Les Fondettes in time for dinner.
Nana, who had grown increasingly absent-minded and singular in point
of manner, had sent him to ask his mamma's forgiveness. It was his
plain duty, she remarked severely, growing suddenly solicitous for
the decencies of family life. She even made him swear not to return
for the night; she was tired, and in showing proper obedience he was
doing no more than his duty. Much bored by this moral discourse,
Georges appeared in his mother's presence with heavy heart and
downcast head.
Fortunately for him his brother Philippe, a great merry devil of a
military man, had arrived during the day, a fact which greatly
curtailed the scene he was dreading. Mme Hugon was content to look
at him with eyes full of tears while Philippe, who had been put in
possession of the facts, threatened to go and drag him home by the
scruff of the neck if ever he went back into that woman's society.
Somewhat comforted, Georges began slyly planning how to make his
escape toward two o'clock next day in order to arrange about future
meetings with Nana.
Nevertheless, at dinnertime the house party at Les Fondettes seemed
not a little embarrassed. Vandeuvres had given notice of departure,
for he was anxious to take Lucy back to Paris with him. He was
amused at the idea of carrying off this girl whom he had known for
ten years yet never desired. The Marquis de Chouard bent over his
plate and meditated on Gaga's young lady. He could well remember
dandling Lili on his knee. What a way children had of shooting up!
This little thing was becoming extremely plump! But Count Muffat
especially was silent and absorbed. His cheeks glowed, and he had
given Georges one long look. Dinner over, he went upstairs,
intending to shut himself in his bedroom, his pretext being a slight
feverish attack. M. Venot had rushed after him, and upstairs in the
bedroom a scene ensued. The count threw himself upon the bed and
strove to stifle a fit of nervous sobbing in the folds of the pillow
while M. Venot, in a soft voice, called him brother and advised him
to implore heaven for mercy. But he heard nothing: there was a
rattle in his throat. Suddenly he sprang off the bed and stammered:
"I am going there. I can't resist any longer."
"Very well," said the old man, "I go with you."
As they left the house two shadows were vanishing into the dark
depths of a garden walk, for every evening now Fauchery and the
Countess Sabine left Daguenet to help Estelle make tea. Once on the
highroad the count walked so rapidly that his companion had to run
in order to follow him. Though utterly out of breath, the latter
never ceased showering on him the most conclusive arguments against
the temptations of the flesh. But the other never opened his mouth
as he hurried away into the night. Arrived in front of La Mignotte,
he said simply:
"I can't resist any longer. Go!"
"God's will be done then!" muttered M. Venot. "He uses every method
to assure His final triumph. Your sin will become His weapon."
At La Mignotte there was much wrangling during the evening meal.
Nana had found a letter from Bordenave awaiting her, in which he
advised rest, just as though he were anxious to be rid of her.
Little Violaine, he said, was being encored twice nightly. But when
Mignon continued urging her to come away with them on the morrow
Nana grew exasperated and declared that she did not intend taking
advice from anybody. In other ways, too, her behavior at table was
ridiculously stuck up. Mme Lerat having made some sharp little
speech or other, she loudly announced that, God willing, she wasn't
going to let anyone--no, not even her own aunt--make improper
remarks in her presence. After which she dreed her guests with
honorable sentiments. She seemed to be suffering from a fit of
stupid right-mindedness, and she treated them all to projects of
religious education for Louiset and to a complete scheme of
regeneration for herself. When the company began laughing she gave
vent to profound opinions, nodding her head like a grocer's wife who
knows what she is saying. Nothing but order could lead to fortune!
And so far as she was concerned, she had no wish to die like a
beggar! She set the ladies' teeth on edge. They burst out in
protest. Could anyone have been converting Nana? No, it was
impossible! But she sat quite still and with absent looks once more
plunged into dreamland, where the vision of an extremely wealthy and
greatly courted Nana rose up before her.
The household were going upstairs to bed when Muffat put in an
appearance. It was Labordette who caught sight of him in the
garden. He understood it all at once and did him a service, for he
got Steiner out of the way and, taking his hand, led him along the
dark corridor as far as Nana's bedroom. In affairs of this kind
Labordette was wont to display the most perfect tact and cleverness.
Indeed, he seemed delighted to be making other people happy. Nana
showed no surprise; she was only somewhat annoyed by the excessive
heat of Muffat's pursuit. Life was a serious affair, was it not?
Love was too silly: it led to nothing. Besides, she had her
scruples in view of Zizi's tender age. Indeed, she had scarcely
behaved quite fairly toward him. Dear me, yes, she was choosing the
proper course again in taking up with an old fellow.
"Zoe," she said to the lady's maid, who was enchanted at the thought
of leaving the country, "pack the trunks when you get up tomorrow.
We are going back to Paris."
And she went to bed with Muffat but experienced no pleasure.
CHAPTER VII
One December evening three months afterward Count Muffat was
strolling in the Passage des Panoramas. The evening was very mild,
and owing to a passing shower, the passage had just become crowded
with people. There was a perfect mob of them, and they thronged
slowly and laboriously along between the shops on either side.
Under the windows, white with reflected light, the pavement was
violently illuminated. A perfect stream of brilliancy emanated from
white globes, red lanterns, blue transparencies, lines of gas jets,
gigantic watches and fans, outlined in flame and burning in the
open. And the motley displays in the shops, the gold ornaments of
the jeweler's, the glass ornaments of the confectioner's, the light-
colored silks of the modiste's, seemed to shine again in the crude
light of the reflectors behind the clear plate-glass windows, while
among the bright-colored, disorderly array of shop signs a huge
purple glove loomed in the distance like a bleeding hand which had
been severed from an arm and fastened to a yellow cuff.
Count Muffat had slowly returned as far as the boulevard. He
glanced out at the roadway and then came sauntering back along the
shopwindows. The damp and heated atmosphere filled the narrow
passage with a slight luminous mist. Along the flagstones, which
had been wet by the drip-drop of umbrellas, the footsteps of the
crowd rang continually, but there was no sound of voices. Passers-
by elbowed him at every turn and cast inquiring looks at his silent
face, which the gaslight rendered pale. And to escape these curious
manifestations the count posted himself in front of a stationer's,
where with profound attention contemplated an array of paperweights
in the form of glass bowls containing floating landscapes and
flowers.
He was conscious of nothing: he was thinking of Nana. Why had she
lied to him again? That morning she had written and told him not to
trouble about her in the evening, her excuse being that Louiset was
ill and that she was going to pass the night at her aunt's in order
to nurse him. But he had felt suspicious and had called at her
house, where he learned from the porter that Madame had just gone
off to her theater. He was astonished at this, for she was not
playing in the new piece. Why then should she have told him this
falsehood, and what could she be doing at the Varietes that evening?
Hustled by a passer-by, the count unconsciously left the
paperweights and found himself in front of a glass case full of
toys, where he grew absorbed over an array of pocketbooks and cigar
cases, all of which had the same blue swallow stamped on one corner.
Nana was most certainly not the same woman! In the early days after
his return from the country she used to drive him wild with delight,
as with pussycat caresses she kissed him all round his face and
whiskers and vowed that he was her own dear pet and the only little
man she adored. He was no longer afraid of Georges, whom his mother
kept down at Les Fondettes. There was only fat Steiner to reckon
with, and he believed he was really ousting him, but he did not dare
provoke an explanation on his score. He knew he was once more in an
extraordinary financial scrape and on the verge of being declared
bankrupt on 'change, so much so that he was clinging fiercely to the
shareholders in the Landes Salt Pits and striving to sweat a final
subscription out of them. Whenever he met him at Nana's she would
explain reasonably enough that she did not wish to turn him out of
doors like a dog after all he had spent on her. Besides, for the
last three months he had been living in such a whirl of sensual
excitement that, beyond the need of possessing her, he had felt no
very distinct impressions. His was a tardy awakening of the fleshly
instinct, a childish greed of enjoyment, which left no room for
either vanity or jealousy. Only one definite feeling could affect
him now, and that was Nana's decreasing kindness. She no longer
kissed him on the beard! It made him anxious, and as became a man
quite ignorant of womankind, he began asking himself what possible
cause of offense he could have given her. Besides, he was under the
impression that he was satisfying all her desires. And so he harked
back again and again to the letter he had received that morning with
its tissue of falsehoods, invented for the extremely simple purpose
of passing an evening at her own theater. The crowd had pushed him
forward again, and he had crossed the passage and was puzzling his
brain in front of the entrance to a restaurant, his eyes fixed on
some plucked larks and on a huge salmon laid out inside the window.
At length he seemed to tear himself away from this spectacle. He
shook himself, looked up and noticed that it was close on nine
o'clock. Nana would soon be coming out, and he would make her tell
the truth. And with that he walked on and recalled to memory the
evenings he once passed in that region in the days when he used to
meet her at the door of the theater.
He knew all the shops, and in the gas-laden air he recognized their
different scents, such, for instance, as the strong savor of Russia
leather, the perfume of vanilla emanating from a chocolate dealer's
basement, the savor of musk blown in whiffs from the open doors of
the perfumers. But he did not dare linger under the gaze of the
pale shopwomen, who looked placidly at him as though they knew him
by sight. For one instant he seemed to be studying the line of
little round windows above the shops, as though he had never noticed
them before among the medley of signs. Then once again he went up
to the boulevard and stood still a minute or two. A fine rain was
now falling, and the cold feel of it on his hands calmed him. He
thought of his wife who was staying in a country house near Macon,
where her friend Mme de Chezelles had been ailing a good deal since
the autumn. The carriages in the roadway were rolling through a
stream of mud. The country, he thought, must be detestable in such
vile weather. But suddenly he became anxious and re-entered the
hot, close passage down which he strode among the strolling people.
A thought struck him: if Nana were suspicious of his presence there
she would be off along the Galerie Montmartre.
After that the count kept a sharp lookout at the very door of the
theater, though he did not like this passage end, where he was
afraid of being recognized. It was at the corner between the
Galerie des Varietes and the Galerie Saint-Marc, an equivocal corner
full of obscure little shops. Of these last one was a shoemaker's,
where customers never seemed to enter. Then there were two or three
upholsterers', deep in dust, and a smoky, sleepy reading room and
library, the shaded lamps in which cast a green and slumberous light
all the evening through. There was never anyone in this corner save
well-dressed, patient gentlemen, who prowled about the wreckage
peculiar to a stage door, where drunken sceneshifters and ragged
chorus girls congregate. In front of the theater a single gas jet
in a ground-glass globe lit up the doorway. For a moment or two
Muffat thought of questioning Mme Bron; then he grew afraid lest
Nana should get wind of his presence and escape by way of the
boulevard. So he went on the march again and determined to wait
till he was turned out at the closing of the gates, an event which
had happened on two previous occasions. The thought of returning
home to his solitary bed simply wrung his heart with anguish. Every
time that golden-haired girls and men in dirty linen came out and
stared at him he returned to his post in front of the reading room,
where, looking in between two advertisements posted on a windowpane,
he was always greeted by the same sight. It was a little old man,
sitting stiff and solitary at the vast table and holding a green
newspaper in his green hands under the green light of one of the
lamps. But shortly before ten o'clock another gentleman, a tall,
good-looking, fair man with well-fitting gloves, was also walking up
and down in front of the stage door. Thereupon at each successive
turn the pair treated each other to a suspicious sidelong glance.
The count walked to the corner of the two galleries, which was
adorned with a high mirror, and when he saw himself therein, looking
grave and elegant, he was both ashamed and nervous.
Ten o'clock struck, and suddenly it occurred to Muffat that it would
be very easy to find out whether Nana were in her dressing room or
not. He went up the three steps, crossed the little yellow-painted
lobby and slipped into the court by a door which simply shut with a
latch. At that hour of the night the narrow, damp well of a court,
with its pestiferous water closets, its fountain, its back view ot
the kitchen stove and the collection of plants with which the
portress used to litter the place, was drenched in dark mist; but
the two walls, rising pierced with windows on either hand, were
flaming with light, since the property room and the firemen's office
were situated on the ground floor, with the managerial bureau on the
left, and on the right and upstairs the dressing rooms of the
company. The mouths of furnaces seemed to be opening on the outer
darkness from top to bottom of this well. The count had at once
marked the light in the windows of the dressing room on the first
floor, and as a man who is comforted and happy, he forgot where he
was and stood gazing upward amid the foul mud and faint decaying
smell peculiar to the premises of this antiquated Parisian building.
Big drops were dripping from a broken waterspout, and a ray of
gaslight slipped from Mme Bron's window and cast a yellow glare over
a patch of moss-clad pavement, over the base of a wall which had
been rotted by water from a sink, over a whole cornerful of nameless
filth amid which old pails and broken crocks lay in fine confusion
round a spindling tree growing mildewed in its pot. A window
fastening creaked, and the count fled.
Nana was certainly going to come down. He returned to his post in
front of the reading room; among its slumbering shadows, which
seemed only broken by the glimmer of a night light, the little old
man still sat motionless, his side face sharply outlined against his
newspaper. Then Muffat walked again and this time took a more
prolonged turn and, crossing the large gallery, followed the Galerie
des Varietes as far as that of Feydeau. The last mentioned was cold
and deserted and buried in melancholy shadow. He returned from it,
passed by the theater, turned the corner of the Galerie Saint-Marc
and ventured as far as the Galerie Montmartre, where a sugar-
chopping machine in front of a grocer's interested him awhile. But
when he was taking his third turn he was seized with such dread lest
Nana should escape behind his back that he lost all self-respect.
Thereupon he stationed himself beside the fair gentleman in front of
the very theater. Both exchanged a glance of fraternal humility
with which was mingled a touch of distrust, for it was possible they
might yet turn out to be rivals. Some sceneshifters who came out
smoking their pipes between the acts brushed rudely against them,
but neither one nor the other ventured to complain. Three big
wenches with untidy hair and dirty gowns appeared on the doorstep.
They were munching apples and spitting out the cores, but the two
men bowed their heads and patiently braved their impudent looks and
rough speeches, though they were hustled and, as it were, soiled by
these trollops, who amused themselves by pushing each other down
upon them.
At that very moment Nana descended the three steps. She grew very
pale when she noticed Muffat.
"Oh, it's you!" she stammered.
The sniggering extra ladies were quite frightened when they
recognized her, and they formed in line and stood up, looking as
stiff and serious as servants whom their mistress has caught
behaving badly. The tall fair gentleman had moved away; he was at
once reassured and sad at heart.
"Well, give me your arm," Nana continued impatiently.
They walked quietly off. The count had been getting ready to
question her and now found nothing to say.
It was she who in rapid tones told a story to the effect that she
had been at her aunt's as late as eight o'clock, when, seeing
Louiset very much better, she had conceived the idea of going down
to the theater for a few minutes.
"On some important business?" he queried.
'Yes, a new piece," she replied after some slight hesitation. "They
wanted my advice."
He knew that she was not speaking the truth, but the warm touch of
her arm as it leaned firmly on his own, left him powerless. He felt
neither anger nor rancor after his long, long wait; his one thought
was to keep her where she was now that he had got hold of her.
Tomorrow, and not before, he would try and find out what she had
come to her dressing room after. But Nana still appeared to
hesitate; she was manifestly a prey to the sort of secret anguish
that besets people when they are trying to regain lost ground and to
initiate a plan of action. Accordingly, as they turned the corner
of the Galerie des Varietes, she stopped in front of the show in a
fan seller's window.
"I say, that's pretty," she whispered; "I mean that mother-of-pearl
mount with the feathers."
Then, indifferently:
"So you're seeing me home?"
"Of course," he said, with some surprise, "since your child's
better."
She was sorry she had told him that story. Perhaps Louiset was
passing through another crisis! She talked of returning to the
Batignolles. But when he offered to accompany her she did not
insist on going. For a second or two she was possessed with the
kind of white-hot fury which a woman experiences when she feels
herself entrapped and must, nevertheless, behave prettily. But in
the end she grew resigned and determined to gain time. If only she
could get rid of the count toward midnight everything would happen
as she wished.
"Yes, it's true; you're a bachelor tonight," she murmured. "Your
wife doesn't return till tomorrow, eh?"
"Yes," replied Muffat. It embarrassed him somewhat to hear her
talking familiarly about the countess.
But she pressed him further, asking at what time the train was due
and wanting to know whether he were going to the station to meet
her. She had begun to walk more slowly than ever, as though the
shops interested her very much.
"Now do look!" she said, pausing anew before a jeweler's window,
"what a funny bracelet!"
She adored the Passage des Panoramas. The tinsel of the ARTICLE DE
PARIS, the false jewelry, the gilded zinc, the cardboard made to
look like leather, had been the passion of her early youth. It
remained, and when she passed the shop-windows she could not tear
herself away from them. It was the same with her today as when she
was a ragged, slouching child who fell into reveries in front of the
chocolate maker's sweet-stuff shows or stood listening to a musical
box in a neighboring shop or fell into supreme ecstasies over cheap,
vulgarly designed knickknacks, such as nutshell workboxes,
ragpickers' baskets for holding toothpicks, Vendome columns and
Luxor obelisks on which thermometers were mounted. But that evening
she was too much agitated and looked at things without seeing them.
When all was said and done, it bored her to think she was not free.
An obscure revolt raged within her, and amid it all she felt a wild
desire to do something foolish. It was a great thing gained,
forsooth, to be mistress of men of position! She had been devouring
the prince's substance and Steiner's, too, with her childish
caprices, and yet she had no notion where her money went. Even at
this time of day her flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was not
entirely furnished. The drawing room alone was finished, and with
its red satin upholsteries and excess of ornamentation and furnirure
it struck a decidedly false note. Her creditors, moreover, would
now take to tormenting her more than ever before whenever she had no
money on hand, a fact which caused her constant surprise, seeing
that she was wont to quote her self as a model of economy. For a
month past that thief Steiner had been scarcely able to pay up his
thousand francs on the occasions when she threatened to kick him out
of doors in case he failed to bring them. As to Muffat, he was an
idiot: he had no notion as to what it was usual to give, and she
could not, therefore, grow angry with him on the score of
miserliness. Oh, how gladly she would have turned all these folks
off had she not repeated to herself a score of times daily a whole
string of economical maxims!
One ought to be sensible, Zoe kept saying every morning, and Nana
herself was constantly haunted by the queenly vision seen at
Chamont. It had now become an almost religious memory with her, and
through dint of being ceaselessly recalled it grew even more
grandiose. And for these reasons, though trembling with repressed
indignation, she now hung submissively on the count's arm as they
went from window to window among the fast-diminishing crowd. The
pavement was drying outside, and a cool wind blew along the gallery,
swept the close hot air up beneath the glass that imprisoned it and
shook the colored lanterns and the lines of gas jets and the giant
fan which was flaring away like a set piece in an illumination. At
the door of the restaurant a waiter was putting out the gas, while
the motionless attendants in the empty, glaring shops looked as
though they had dropped off to sleep with their eyes open.
"Oh, what a duck!" continued Nana, retracing her steps as far as the
last of the shops in order to go into ecstasies over a porcelain
greyhound standing with raised forepaw in front of a nest hidden
among roses.
At length they quitted the passage, but she refused the offer of a
cab. It was very pleasant out she said; besides, they were in no
hurry, and it would be charming to return home on foot. When they
were in front of the Cafe Anglais she had a sudden longing to eat
oysters. Indeed, she said that owing to Louiset's illness she had
tasted nothing since morning. Muffat dared not oppose her. Yet as
he did not in those days wish to be seen about with her he asked for
a private supper room and hurried to it along the corridors. She
followed him with the air of a woman familiar with the house, and
they were on the point of entering a private room, the door of which
a waiter held open, when from a neighboring saloon, whence issued a
perfect tempest of shouts and laughter, a man rapidiy emerged. It
was Daguenet.
"By Jove, it's Nana!" he cried.
The count had briskly disappeared into the private room, leaving the
door ajar behind him. But Daguenet winked behind his round
shoulders and added in chaffing tones:
"The deuce, but you're doing nicely! You catch 'em in the Tuileries
nowadays!"
Nana smiled and laid a finger on her lips to beg him to be silent.
She could see he was very much exalted, and yet she was glad to have
met him, for she still felt tenderly toward him, and that despite
the nasty way he had cut her when in the company of fashionable
ladies.
"What are you doing now?" she asked amicably.
"Becoming respectable. Yes indeed, I'm thinking of getting
married."
She shrugged her shoulders with a pitying air. But he jokingly
continued to the effect that to be only just gaining enough on
'change to buy ladies bouquets could scarcely be called an income,
provided you wanted to look respectable too! His three hundred
thousand francs had only lasted him eighteen months! He wanted to
be practical, and he was going to marry a girl with a huge dowry and
end off as a PREFET, like his father before him! Nana still smiled
incredulously. She nodded in the direction of the saloon: "Who are
you with in there?"
"Oh, a whole gang," he said, forgetting all about his projects under
the influence of returning intoxication. "Just think! Lea is
telling us about her trip in Egypt. Oh, it's screaming! There's a
bathing story--"
And he told the story while Nana lingered complaisantly. They had
ended by leaning up against the wall in the corridor, facing one
another. Gas jets were flaring under the low ceiling, and a vague
smell of cookery hung about the folds of the hangings. Now and
again, in order to hear each other's voices when the din in the
saloon became louder than ever, they had to lean well forward.
Every few seconds, however, a waiter with an armful of dishes found
his passage barred and disturbed them. But they did not cease their
talk for that; on the contrary, they stood close up to the walls
and, amid the uproar of the supper party and the jostlings of the
waiters, chatted as quietly as if they were by their own firesides.
"Just look at that," whispered the young man, pointing to the door
of the private room through which Muffat had vanished.
Both looked. The door was quivering slightly; a breath of air
seemed to be disturbing it, and at last, very, very slowly and
without the least sound, it was shut to. They exchanged a silent
chuckle. The count must be looking charmingly happy all alone in
there!
"By the by," she asked, "have you read Fauchery's article about me?"
"Yes, 'The Golden Fly,'" replied Daguenet; "I didn't mention it to
you as I was afraid of paining you."
"Paining me--why? His article's a very long one."
She was flattered to think that the Figaro should concern itself
about her person. But failing the explanations of her hairdresser
Francis, who had brought her the paper, she would not have
understood that it was she who was in question. Daguenet
scrutinized her slyly, sneering in his chaffing way. Well, well,
since she was pleased, everybody else ought to be.
"By your leave!" shouted a waiter, holding a dish of iced cheese in
both hands as he separated them.
Nana had stepped toward the little saloon where Muffat was waiting.
"Well, good-by!" continued Daguenet. "Go and find your cuckold
again."
But she halted afresh.
"Why d'you call him cuckold?"
"Because he is a cuckold, by Jove!"
She came and leaned against the wall again; she was profoundly
interested.
"Ah!" she said simply.
"What, d'you mean to say you didn't know that? Why, my dear girl,
his wife's Fauchery's mistress. It probably began in the country.
Some time ago, when I was coming here, Fauchery left me, and I
suspect he's got an assignation with her at his place tonight.
They've made up a story about a journey, I fancy."
Overcome with surprise, Nana remained voiceless.
"I suspected it," she said at last, slapping her leg. "I guessed it
by merely looking at her on the highroad that day. To think of its
being possible for an honest woman to deceive her husband, and with
that blackguard Fauchery too! He'll teach her some pretty things!"
"Oh, it isn't her trial trip," muttered Daguenet wickedly. "Perhaps
she knows as much about it as he does."
At this Nana gave vent to an indignant exclamation.
"Indeed she does! What a nice world! It's too foul!"
"By your leave!" shouted a waiter, laden with bottles, as he
separated them.
Daguenet drew her forward again and held her hand for a second or
two. He adopted his crystalline tone of voice, the voice with notes
as sweet as those of a harmonica, which had gained him his success
among the ladies of Nana's type.
"Good-by, darling! You know I love you always."
She disengaged her hand from his, and while a thunder of shouts and
bravos, which made the door in the saloon tremble again, almost
drowned her words she smilingly remarked:
"It's over between us, stupid! But that doesn't matter. Do come up
one of these days, and we'll have a chat."
Then she became serious again and in the outraged tones of a
respectable woman:
"So he's a cuckold, is he?" she cried. "Well, that IS a nuisance,
dear boy. They've always sickened me, cuckolds have."
When at length she went into the private room she noticed that
Muffat was sitting resignedly on a narrow divan with pale face and
twitching hands. He did not reproach her at all, and she, greatly
moved, was divided between feelings of pity and of contempt. The
poor man! To think of his being so unworthily cheated by a vile
wife! She had a good mind to throw her arms round his neck and
comfort him. But it was only fair all the same! He was a fool with
women, and this would teach him a lesson! Nevertheless, pity
overcame her. She did not get rid of him as she had determined to
do after the oysters had been discussed. They scarcely stayed a
quarter of an hour in the Cafe Anglais, and together they went into
the house in the Boulevard Haussmann. It was then eleven. Before
midnight she would have easily have discovered some means of getting
rid of him kindly.
In the anteroom, however, she took the precaution of giving Zoe an
order. "You'll look out for him, and you'll tell him not to make a
noise if the other man's still with me."
"But where shall I put him, madame?"
"Keep him in the kitchen. It's more safe."
In the room inside Muffat was already taking off his overcoat. A
big fire was burning on the hearth. It was the same room as of old,
with its rosewood furniture and its hangings and chair coverings of
figured damask with the large blue flowers on a gray background. On
two occasions Nana had thought of having it redone, the first in
black velvet, the second in white satin with bows, but directly
Steiner consented she demanded the money that these changes would
cost simply with a view to pillaging him. She had, indeed, only
indulged in a tiger skin rug for the hearth and a cut-glass hanging
lamp.
"I'm not sleepy; I'm not going to bed," she said the moment they
were shut in together.
The count obeyed her submissively, as became a man no longer afraid
of being seen. His one care now was to avoid vexing her.
"As you will," he murmured.
Nevertheless, he took his boots off, too, before seating himself in
front of the fire. One of Nana's pleasures consisted in undressing
herself in front of the mirror on her wardrobe door, which reflected
her whole height. She would let everything slip off her in turn and
then would stand perfectly naked and gaze and gaze in complete
oblivion of all around her. Passion for her own body, ecstasy over
her satin skin and the supple contours of her shape, would keep her
serious, attentive and absorbed in the love of herself. The
hairdresser frequently found her standing thus and would enter
without her once turning to look at him. Muffat used to grow angry
then, but he only succeeded in astonishing her. What was coming
over the man? She was doing it to please herself, not other people.
That particular evening she wanted to have a better view of herself,
and she lit the six candles attached to the frame of the mirror.
But while letting her shift slip down she paused. She had been
preoccupied for some moments past, and a question was on her lips.
"You haven't read the Figaro article, have you? The paper's on the
table." Daguenet's laugh had recurred to her recollections, and she
was harassed by a doubt. If that Fauchery had slandered her she
would be revenged.
"They say that it's about me," she continued, affecting
indifference. "What's your notion, eh, darling?"
And letting go her shift and waiting till Muffat should have done
reading, she stood naked. Muffat was reading slowly Fauchery's
article entitled "The Golden Fly," describing the life of a harlot
descended from four or five generations of drunkards and tainted in
her blood by a cumulative inheritance of misery and drink, which in
her case has taken the form of a nervous exaggeration of the sexual
instinct. She has shot up to womanhood in the slums and on the
pavements of Paris, and tall, handsome and as superbly grown as a
dunghill plant, she avenges the beggars and outcasts of whom she is
the ultimate product. With her the rottenness that is allowed to
ferment among the populace is carried upward and rots the
aristocracy. She becomes a blind power of nature, a leaven of
destruction, and unwittingly she corrupts and disorganizes all
Paris, churning it between her snow-white thighs as milk is monthly
churned by housewives. And it was at the end of this article that
the comparison with a fly occurred, a fly of sunny hue which has
flown up out of the dung, a fly which sucks in death on the carrion
tolerated by the roadside and then buzzing, dancing and glittering
like a precious stone enters the windows of palaces and poisons the
men within by merely settling on them in her flight.
Muffat lifted his head; his eyes stared fixedly; he gazed at the
fire.
"Well?" asked Nana.
But he did not answer. It seemed as though he wanted to read the
article again. A cold, shivering feeling was creeping from his
scalp to his shoulders. This article had been written anyhow. The
phrases were wildly extravagant; the unexpected epigrams and quaint
collocations of words went beyond all bounds. Yet notwithstanding
this, he was struck by what he had read, for it had rudely awakened
within him much that for months past he had not cared to think
about.
He looked up. Nana had grown absorbed in her ecstatic self-
contemplation. She was bending her neck and was looking attentively
in the mirror at a little brown mark above her right haunch. She
was touching it with the tip of her finger and by dint of bending
backward was making it stand out more clearly than ever. Situated
where it was, it doubtless struck her as both quaint and pretty.
After that she studied other parts of her body with an amused
expression and much of the vicious curiosity of a child. The sight
of herself always astonished her, and she would look as surprised
and ecstatic as a young girl who has discovered her puberty.
Slowly, slowly, she spread out her arms in order to give full value
to her figure, which suggested the torso of a plump Venus. She bent
herself this way and that and examined herself before and behind,
stooping to look at the side view of her bosom and at the sweeping
contours of her thighs. And she ended with a strange amusement
which consisted of swinging to right and left, her knees apart and
her body swaying from the waist with the perpetual jogging,
twitching movements peculiar to an oriental dancer in the danse du
ventre.
Muffat sat looking at her. She frightened him. The newspaper had
dropped from his hand. For a moment he saw her as she was, and he
despised himself. Yes, it was just that; she had corrupted his
life; he already felt himself tainted to his very marrow by
impurities hitherto undreamed of. Everything was now destined to
rot within him, and in the twinkling of an eye he understood what
this evil entailed. He saw the ruin brought about by this kind of
"leaven"--himself poisoned, his family destroyed, a bit of the
social fabric cracking and crumbling. And unable to take his eyes
from the sight, he sat looking fixedly at her, striving to inspire
himself with loathing for her nakedness.
Nana no longer moved. With an arm behind her neck, one hand clasped
in the other, and her elbows far apart, she was throwing back her
head so that he could see a foreshortened reflection of her half-
closed eyes, her parted lips, her face clothed with amorous
laughter. Her masses of yellow hair were unknotted behind, and they
covered her back with the fell of a lioness.
Bending back thus, she displayed her solid Amazonian waist and firm
bosom, where strong muscles moved under the satin texture of the
skin. A delicate line, to which the shoulder and the thigh added
their slight undulations, ran from one of her elbows to her foot,
and Muffat's eyes followed this tender profile and marked how the
outlines of the fair flesh vanished in golden gleams and how its
rounded contours shone like silk in the candlelight. He thought of
his old dread of Woman, of the Beast of the Scriptures, at once lewd
and wild. Nana was all covered with fine hair; a russet made her
body velvety, while the Beast was apparent in the almost equine
development of her flanks, in the fleshy exuberances and deep
hollows of her body, which lent her sex the mystery and
suggestiveness lurking in their shadows. She was, indeed, that
Golden Creature, blind as brute force, whose very odor ruined the
world. Muffat gazed and gazed as a man possessed, till at last,
when he had shut his eyes in order to escape it, the Brute
reappeared in the darkness of the brain, larger, more terrible, more
suggestive in its attitude. Now, he understood, it would remain
before his eyes, in his very flesh, forever.
But Nana was gathering herself together. A little thrill of
tenderness seemed to have traversed her members. Her eyes were
moist; she tried, as it were, to make herself small, as though she
could feel herself better thus. Then she threw her head and bosom
back and, melting, as it were, in one great bodily caress, she
rubbed her cheeks coaxingly, first against one shoulder, then
against the other. Her lustful mouth breathed desire over her
limbs. She put out her lips, kissed herself long in the
neighborhood of her armpit and laughed at the other Nana who also
was kissing herself in the mirror.
Then Muffat gave a long sigh. This solitary pleasure exasperated
him. Suddenly all his resolutions were swept away as though by a
mighty wind. In a fit of brutal passion he caught Nana to his
breast and threw her down on the carpet.
"Leave me alone!" she cried. "You're hurting me!"
He was conscious of his undoing; he recognized in her stupidity,
vileness and falsehood, and he longed to possess her, poisoned
though she was.
"Oh, you're a fool!" she said savagely when he let her get up.
Nevertheless, she grew calm. He would go now. She slipped on a
nightgown trimmed with lace and came and sat down on the floor in
front of the fire. It was her favorite position. When she again
questioned him about Fauchery's article Muffat replied vaguely, for
he wanted to avoid a scene. Besides, she declared that she had
found a weak spot in Fauchery. And with that she relapsed into a
long silence and reflected on how to dismiss the count. She would
have liked to do it in an agreeable way, for she was still a good-
natured wench, and it bored her to cause others pain, especially in
the present instance where the man was a cuckold. The mere thought
of his being that had ended by rousing her sympathies!
"So you expect your wife tomorrow morning?" she said at last.
Muffat had stretched himself in an armchair. He looked drowsy, and
his limbs were tired. He gave a sign of assent. Nana sat gazing
seriously at him with a dull tumult in her brain. Propped on one
leg, among her slightly rumpled laces she was holding one of her
bare feet between her hands and was turning it mechanically about
and about.
"Have you been married long?" she asked.
"Nineteen years," replied the count
"Ah! And is your wife amiable? Do you get on comfortably
together?"
He was silent. Then with some embarrassment:
"You know I've begged you never to talk of those matters."
"Dear me, why's that?" she cried, beginning to grow vexed directly.
"I'm sure I won't eat your wife if I DO talk about her. Dear boy,
why, every woman's worth--"
But she stopped for fear of saying too much. She contented herself
by assuming a superior expression, since she considered herself
extremely kind. The poor fellow, he needed delicate handling!
Besides, she had been struck by a laughable notion, and she smiled
as she looked him carefully over.
"I say," she continued, "I haven't told you the story about you that
Fauchery's circulating. There's a viper, if you like! I don't bear
him any ill will, because his article may be all right, but he's a
regular viper all the same."
And laughing more gaily than ever, she let go her foot and, crawling
along the floor, came and propped herself against the count's knees.
"Now just fancy, he swears you were still like a babe when you
married your wife. You were still like that, eh? Is it true, eh?"
Her eyes pressed for an answer, and she raised her hands to his
shoulders and began shaking him in order to extract the desired
confession.
"Without doubt," he at last made answer gravely.
Thereupon she again sank down at his feet. She was shaking with
uproarious laughter, and she stuttered and dealt him little slaps.
"No, it's too funny! There's no one like you; you're a marvel.
But, my poor pet, you must just have been stupid! When a man
doesn't know--oh, it is so comical! Good heavens, I should have
liked to have seen you! And it came off well, did it? Now tell me
something about it! Oh, do, do tell me!"
She overwhelmed him with questions, forgetting nothing and requiring
the veriest details. And she laughed such sudden merry peals which
doubled her up with mirth, and her chemise slipped and got turned
down to such an extent, and her skin looked so golden in the light
of the big fire, that little by little the count described to her
his bridal night. He no longer felt at all awkward. He himself
began to be amused at last as he spoke. Only he kept choosing his
phrases, for he still had a certain sense of modesty. The young
woman, now thoroughly interested, asked him about the countess.
According to his account, she had a marvelous figure but was a
regular iceberg for all that.
"Oh, get along with you!" he muttered indolently. "You have no
cause to be jealous."
Nana had ceased laughing, and she now resumed her former position
and, with her back to the fire, brought her knees up under her chin
with her clasped hands. Then in a serious tone she declared:
"It doesn't pay, dear boy, to look like a ninny with one's wife the
first night."
"Why?" queried the astonished count.
"Because," she replied slowly, assuming a doctorial expression.
And with that she looked as if she were delivering a lecture and
shook her head at him. In the end, however, she condescended to
explain herself more lucidly.
"Well, look here! I know how it all happens. Yes, dearie, women
don't like a man to be foolish. They don't say anything because
there's such a thing as modesty, you know, but you may be sure they
think about it for a jolly long time to come. And sooner or later,
when a man's been an ignoramus, they go and make other arrangements.
That's it, my pet."
He did not seem to understand. Whereupon she grew more definite
still. She became maternal and taught him his lesson out of sheer
goodness of heart, as a friend might do. Since she had discovered
him to be a cuckold the information had weighed on her spirits; she
was madly anxious to discuss his position with him.
"Good heavens! I'm talking of things that don't concern me. I've
said what I have because everybody ought to be happy. We're having
a chat, eh? Well then, you're to answer me as straight as you can."
But she stopped to change her position, for she was burning herself.
"It's jolly hot, eh? My back's roasted. Wait a second. I'll cook
my tummy a bit. That's what's good for the aches!"
And when she had turned round with her breast to the fire and her
feet tucked under her:
"Let me see," she said; "you don't sleep with your wife any longer?"
"No, I swear to you I don't," said Muffat, dreading a scene.
"And you believe she's really a stick?"
He bowed his head in the affirmative.
"And that's why you love me? Answer me! I shan't be angry."
He repeated the same movement.
"Very well then," she concluded. "I suspected as much! Oh, the
poor pet. Do you know my aunt Lerat? When she comes get her to
tell you the story about the fruiterer who lives opposite her. Just
fancy that man--Damn it, how hot this fire is! I must turn round.
I'm going to roast my left side now." And as she presented her side
to the blaze a droll idea struck her, and like a good-tempered
thing, she made fun of herself for she was dellghted to see that she
was looking so plump and pink in the light of the coal fire.
"I look like a goose, eh? Yes, that's it! I'm a goose on the spit,
and I'm turning, turning and cooking in my own juice, eh?"
And she was once more indulging in a merry fit of laughter when a
sound of voices and slamming doors became audible. Muffat was
surprised, and he questioned her with a look. She grew serious, and
an anxious expression came over her face. It must be Zoe's cat, a
cursed beast that broke everything. It was half-past twelve
o'clock. How long was she going to bother herself in her cuckold's
behalf? Now that the other man had come she ought to get him out of
the way, and that quickly.
"What were you saying?" asked the count complaisantly, for he was
charmed to see her so kind to him.
But in her desire to be rid of him she suddenly changed her mood,
became brutal and did not take care what she was saying.
"Oh yes! The fruiterer and his wife. Well, my dear fellow, they
never once touched one another! Not the least bit! She was very
keen on it, you understand, but he, the ninny, didn't know it. He
was so green that he thought her a stick, and so he went elsewhere
and took up with streetwalkers, who treated him to all sorts of
nastiness, while she, on her part, made up for it beautifully with
fellows who were a lot slyer than her greenhorn of a husband. And
things always turn out that way through people not understanding one
another. I know it, I do!"
Muffat was growing pale. At last he was beginning to understand her
allusions, and he wanted to make her keep silence. But she was in
full swing.
"No, hold your tongue, will you? If you weren't brutes you would be
as nice with your wives as you are with us, and if your wives
weren't geese they would take as much pains to keep you as we do to
get you. That's the way to behave. Yes, my duck, you can put that
in your pipe and smoke it."
"Do not talk of honest women," he said in a hard voice. "You do not
know them."
At that Nana rose to her knees.
"I don't know them! Why, they aren't even clean, your honest women
aren't! They aren't even clean! I defy you to find me one who
would dare show herself as I am doing. Oh, you make me laugh with
your honest women. Don't drive me to it; don't oblige me to tell
you things I may regret afterward."
The count, by way of answer, mumbled something insulting. Nana
became quite pale in her turn. For some seconds she looked at him
without speaking. Then in her decisive way:
"What would you do if your wife were deceiving you?"
He made a threatening gesture.
"Well, and if I were to?"
"Oh, you," he muttered with a shrug of his shoulders.
Nana was certainly not spiteful. Since the beginning of the
conversation she had been strongly tempted to throw his cuckold's
reputation in his teeth, but she had resisted. She would have liked
to confess him quietly on the subject, but he had begun to
exasperate her at last. The matter ought to stop now.
"Well, then, my dearie," she continued, "I don't know what you're
getting at with me. For two hours past you've been worrying my life
out. Now do just go and find your wife, for she's at it with
Fauchery. Yes, it's quite correct; they're in the Rue Taitbout, at
the corner of the Rue de Provence. You see, I'm giving you the
address."
Then triumphantly, as she saw Muffat stagger to his feet like an ox
under the hammer:
"If honest women must meddle in our affairs and take our sweethearts
from us--Oh, you bet they're a nice lot, those honest women!"
But she was unable to proceed. With a terrible push he had cast her
full length on the floor and, lifting his heel, he seemed on the
point of crushing in her head in order to silence her. For the
twinkling of an eye she felt sickening dread. Blinded with rage, he
had begun beating about the room like a maniac. Then his choking
silence and the struggle with which he was shaken melted her to
tears. She felt a mortal regret and, rolling herself up in front of
the fire so as to roast her right side, she undertook the task of
comforting him.
"I take my oath, darling, I thought you knew it all. Otherwise I
shouldn't have spoken; you may be sure. But perhaps it isn't true.
I don't say anything for certain. I've been told it, and people are
talking about it, but what does that prove? Oh, get along! You're
very silly to grow riled about it. If I were a man I shouldn't care
a rush for the women! All the women are alike, you see, high or
low; they're all rowdy and the rest of it."
In a fit of self-abnegation she was severe on womankind, for she
wished thus to lessen the cruelty of her blow. But he did not
listen to her or hear what she said. With fumbling movements he had
put on his boots and his overcoat. For a moment longer he raved
round, and then in a final outburst, finding himself near the door,
he rushed from the room. Nana was very much annoyed.
"Well, well! A prosperous trip to you!" she continued aloud, though
she was now alone. "He's polite, too, that fellow is, when he's
spoken to! And I had to defend myself at that! Well, I was the
first to get back my temper and I made plenty of excuses, I'm
thinking! Besides, he had been getting on my nerves!"
Nevertheless, she was not happy and sat scratching her legs with
both hands. Then she took high ground:
"Tut, tut, it isn't my fault if he is a cuckold!"
And toasted on every side and as hot as a roast bird, she went and
buried herself under the bedclothes after ringing for Zoe to usher
in the other man, who was waiting in the kitchen.
Once outside, Muffat began walking at a furious pace. A fresh
shower had just fallen, and he kept slipping on the greasy pavement.
When he looked mechanically up into the sky he saw ragged, soot-
colored clouds scudding in front of the moon. At this hour of the
night passers-by were becoming few and far between in the Boulevard
Haussmann. He skirted the enclosures round the opera house in his
search for darkness, and as he went along he kept mumbling
inconsequent phrases. That girl had been lying. She had invented
her story out of sheer stupidity and cruelty. He ought to have
crushed her head when he had it under his heel. After all was said
and done, the business was too shameful. Never would he see her;
never would he touch her again, or if he did he would be miserably
weak. And with that he breathed hard, as though he were free once
more. Oh, that naked, cruel monster, roasting away like any goose
and slavering over everything that he had respected for forty years
back. The moon had come out, and the empty street was bathed in
white light. He felt afraid, and he burst into a great fit of
sobbing, for he had grown suddenly hopeless and maddened as though
he had sunk into a fathomless void.
"My God!" he stuttered out. "It's finished! There's nothing left
now!"
Along the boulevards belated people were hurrying. He tried hard to
be calm, and as the story told him by that courtesan kept recurring
to his burning consciousness, he wanted to reason the matter out.
The countess was coming up from Mme de Chezelles's country house
tomorrow morning. Yet nothing, in fact, could have prevented her
from returning to Paris the night before and passing it with that
man. He now began recalling to mind certain details of their stay
at Les Fondettes. One evening, for instance, he had surprised
Sabine in the shade of some trees, when she was so much agitated as
to be unable to answer his questions. The man had been present; why
should she not be with him now? The more he thought about it the
more possible the whole story became, and he ended by thinking it
natural and even inevitable. While he was in his shirt sleeves in
the house of a harlot his wife was undressing in her lover's room.
Nothing could be simpler or more logical! Reasoning in this way, he
forced himself to keep cool. He felt as if there were a great
downward movement in the direction of fleshly madness, a movement
which, as it grew, was overcoming the whole world round about him.
Warm images pursued him in imagination. A naked Nana suddenly
evoked a naked Sabine. At this vision, which seemed to bring them
together in shameless relationship and under the influence of the
same lusts, he literally stumbled, and in the road a cab nearly ran
over him. Some women who had come out of a cafe jostled him amid
loud laughter. Then a fit of weeping once more overcame him,
despite all his efforts to the contrary, and, not wishing to shed
tears in the presence of others, he plunged into a dark and empty
street. It was the Rue Rossini, and along its silent length he wept
like a child.
"It's over with us," he said in hollow tones. "There's nothing left
us now, nothing left us now!"
He wept so violently that he had to lean up against a door as he
buried his face in his wet hands. A noise of footsteps drove him
away. He felt a shame and a fear which made him fly before people's
faces with the restless step of a bird of darkness. When passers-by
met him on the pavement he did his best to look and walk in a
leisurely way, for he fancied they were reading his secret in the
very swing of his shoulders. He had followed the Rue de la Grange
Bateliere as far as the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, where the
brilliant lamplight surprised him, and he retraced his steps. For
nearly an hour he traversed the district thus, choosing always the
darkest corners. Doubtless there was some goal whither his steps
were patiently, instinctively, leading him through a labyrinth of
endless turnings. At length he lifted his eyes up it a street
corner. He had reached his destination, the point where the Rue
Taitbout and the Rue de la Provence met. He had taken an hour amid
his painful mental sufferings to arrive at a place he could have
reached in five minutes. One morning a month ago he remembered
going up to Fauchery's rooms to thank him for a notice of a ball at
the Tuileries, in which the journalist had mentioned him. The flat
was between the ground floor and the first story and had a row of
small square windows which were half hidden by the colossal
signboard belonging to a shop. The last window on the left was
bisected by a brilliant band of lamplight coming from between the
half-closed curtains. And he remained absorbed and expectant, with
his gaze fixed on this shining streak.
The moon had disappeared in an inky sky, whence an icy drizzle was
falling. Two o'clock struck at the Trinite. The Rue de Provence
and the Rue Taitbout lay in shadow, bestarred at intervals by bright
splashes of light from the gas lamps, which in the distance were
merged in yellow mist. Muffat did not move from where he was
standing. That was the room. He remembered it now: it had hangings
of red "andrinople," and a Louis XIII bed stood at one end of it.
The lamp must be standing on the chimney piece to the right.
Without doubt they had gone to bed, for no shadows passed across the
window, and the bright streak gleamed as motionless as the light of
a night lamp. With his eyes still uplifted he began forming a plan;
he would ring the bell, go upstairs despite the porter's
remonstrances, break the doors in with a push of his shoulder and
fall upon them in the very bed without giving them time to unlace
their arms. For one moment the thought that he had no weapon upon
him gave him pause, but directly afterward he decided to throttle
them. He returned to the consideration of his project, and he
perfected it while waiting for some sign, some indication, which
should bring certainty with it.
Had a woman's shadow only shown itself at that moment he would have
rung. But the thought that perhaps he was deceiving himself froze
him. How could he be certain? Doubts began to return. His wife
could not be with that man. It was monstrous and impossible.
Nevertheless, he stayed where he was and was gradually overcome by a
species of torpor which merged into sheer feebleness while he waited
long, and the fixity of his gaze induced hallucinations.
A shower was falling. Two policemen were approaching, and he was
forced to leave the doorway where he had taken shelter. When these
were lost to view in the Rue de Provence he returned to his post,
wet and shivering. The luminous streak still traversed the window,
and this time he was going away for good when a shadow crossed it.
It moved so quickly that he thought he had deceived himself. But
first one and then another black thing followed quickly after it,
and there was a regular commotion in the room. Riveted anew to the
pavement, he experienced an intolerable burning sensation in his
inside as he waited to find out the meaning of it all. Outlines of
arms and legs flitted after one another, and an enormous hand
traveled about with the silhouette of a water jug. He distinguished
nothing clearly, but he thought he recognized a woman's headdress.
And he disputed the point with himself; it might well have been
Sabine's hair, only the neck did not seem sufficiently slim. At
that hour of the night he had lost the power of recognition and of
action. In this terrible agony of uncertainty his inside caused him
such acute suffering that he pressed against the door in order to
calm himself, shivering like a man in rags, as he did so. Then
seeing that despite everything he could not turn his eyes away from
the window, his anger changed into a fit of moralizing. He fancied
himself a deputy; he was haranguing an assembly, loudly denouncing
debauchery, prophesying national ruin. And he reconstructed
Fauchery's article on the poisoned fly, and he came before the house
and declared that morals such as these, which could only be
paralleled in the days of the later Roman Empire, rendered society
an impossibility; that did him good. But the shadows had meanwhile
disappeared. Doubtless they had gone to bed again, and, still
watching, he continued waiting where he was.
Three o'clock struck, then four, but he could not take his
departure. When showers fell he buried himself in a corner of the
doorway, his legs splashed with wet. Nobody passed by now, and
occasionally his eyes would close, as though scorched by the streak
of light, which he kept watching obstinately, fixedly, with idiotic
persistence. On two subsequent occasions the shadows flitted about,
repeating the same gestures and agitating the silhouette of the same
gigantic jug, and twice quiet was re-established, and the night lamp
again glowed discreetly out. These shadows only increased his
uncertainty. Then, too, a sudden idea soothed his brain while it
postponed the decisive moment. After all, he had only to wait for
the woman when she left the house. He could quite easily recognize
Sabine. Nothing could be simpler, and there would be no scandal,
and he would be sure of things one way or the other. It was only
necessary to stay where he was. Among all the confused feelings
which had been agitating him he now merely felt a dull need of
certain knowledge. But sheer weariness and vacancy began lulling
him to sleep under his doorway, and by way of distraction he tried
to reckon up how long he would have to wait. Sabine was to be at
the station toward nine o'clock; that meant about four hours and a
half more. He was very patient; he would even have been content not
to move again, and he found a certain charm in fancying that his
night vigil would last through eternity.
Suddenly the streak of light was gone. This extremely simple event
was to him an unforeseen catastrophe, at once troublesome and
disagreeable. Evidently they had just put the lamp out and were
going to sleep. lt was reasonable enough at that hour, but he was
irritated thereat, for now the darkened window ceased to interest
him. He watched it for a quarter of an hour longer and then grew
tired and, leaving the doorway, took a turn upon the pavement.
Until five o'clock he walked to and fro, looking upward from time to
time. The window seemed a dead thing, and now and then he asked
himself if he had not dreamed that shadows had been dancing up there
behind the panes. An intolerable sense of fatigue weighed him down,
a dull, heavy feeling, under the influence of which he forgot what
he was waiting for at that particular street corner. He kept
stumbling on the pavement and starting into wakefulness with the icy
shudder of a man who does not know where he is. Nothing seemed to
justify the painful anxiety he was inflicting on himself. Since
those people were asleep--well then, let them sleep! What good
could it do mixing in their affairs? It was very dark; no one would
ever know anything about this night's doings. And with that every
sentiment within him, down to curiosity itself, took flight before
the longing to have done with it all and to find relief somewhere.
The cold was increasing, and the street was becoming insufferable.
Twice he walked away and slowly returned, dragging one foot behind
the other, only to walk farther away next time. It was all over;
nothing was left him now, and so he went down the whole length of
the boulevard and did not return.
His was a melancholy progress through the streets. He walked
slowly, never changing his pace and simply keeping along the walls
of the houses.
His boot heels re-echoed, and he saw nothing but his shadow moving
at his side. As he neared each successive gaslight it grew taller
and immediately afterward diminished. But this lulled him and
occupied him mechanically. He never knew afterward where he had
been; it seemed as if he had dragged himself round and round in a
circle for hours. One reminiscence only was very distinctly
retained by him. Without his being able to explain how it came
about he found himself with his face pressed close against the gate
at the end of the Passage des Panoramas and his two hands grasping
the bars. He did not shake them but, his whole heart swelling with
emotion, he simply tried to look into the passage. But he could
make nothing out clearly, for shadows flooded the whole length of
the deserted gallery, and the wind, blowing hard down the Rue Saint-
Marc, puffed in his face with the damp breath of a cellar. For a
time he tried doggedly to see into the place, and then, awakening
from his dream, he was filled with astonishment and asked himself
what he could possibly be seeking for at that hour and in that
position, for he had pressed against the railings so fiercely that
they had left their mark on his face. Then he went on tramp once
more. He was hopeless, and his heart was full of infinite sorrow,
for he felt, amid all those shadows, that he was evermore betrayed
and alone.
Day broke at last. It was the murky dawn that follows winter nights
and looks so melancholy from muddy Paris pavements. Muffat had
returned into the wide streets, which were then in course of
construction on either side of the new opera house. Soaked by the
rain and cut up by cart wheels, the chalky soil had become a lake of
liquid mire. But he never looked to see where he was stepping and
walked on and on, slipping and regaining his footing as he went.
The awakening of Paris, with its gangs of sweepers and early workmen
trooping to their destinations, added to his troubles as day
brightened. People stared at him in surprise as he went by with
scared look and soaked hat and muddy clothes. For a long while he
sought refuge against palings and among scaffoldings, his desolate
brain haunted by the single remaining thought that he was very
miserable.
Then he thought of God. The sudden idea of divine help, of
superhuman consolation, surprised him, as though it were something
unforeseen and extraordinary. The image of M. Venot was evoked
thereby, and he saw his little plump face and ruined teeth.
Assuredly M. Venot, whom for months he had been avoiding and thereby
rendering miserable, would be delighted were he to go and knock at
his door and fall weeping into his arms. In the old days God had
been always so merciful toward him. At the least sorrow, the
slightest obstacle on the path of life, he had been wont to enter a
church, where, kneeling down, he would humble his littleness in the
presence of Omnipotence. And he had been used to go forth thence,
fortified by prayer, fully prepared to give up the good things of
this world, possessed by the single yearning for eternal salvation.
But at present he only practiced by fits and starts, when the terror
of hell came upon him. All kinds of weak inclinations had overcome
him, and the thought of Nana disturbed his devotions. And now the
thought of God astonished him. Why had he not thought of God
before, in the hour of that terrible agony when his feeble humanity
was breaking up in ruin?
Meanwhile with slow and painful steps he sought for a church. But
he had lost his bearings; the early hour had changed the face of the
streets. Soon, however, as he turned the corner of the Rue de la
Chaussee-d'Antin, he noticed a tower looming vaguely in the fog at
the end of the Trinite Church. The white statues overlooking the
bare garden seemed like so many chilly Venuses among the yellow
foliage of a park. Under the porch he stood and panted a little,
for the ascent of the wide steps had tired him. Then he went in.
The church was very cold, for its heating apparatus had been
fireless since the previous evening, and its lofty, vaulted aisles
were full of a fine damp vapor which had come filtering through the
windows. The aisles were deep in shadow; not a soul was in the
church, and the only sound audible amid the unlovely darkness was
that made by the old shoes of some verger or other who was dragging
himself about in sulky semiwakefulness. Muffat, however, after
knocking forlornly against an untidy collection of chairs, sank on
his knees with bursting heart and propped himself against the rails
in front of a little chapel close by a font. He clasped his hands
and began searching within himself for suitable prayers, while his
whole being yearned toward a transport. But only his lips kept
stammering empty words; his heart and brain were far away, and with
them he returned to the outer world and began his long, unresting
march through the streets, as though lashed forward by implacable
necessity. And he kept repeating, "O my God, come to my assistance!
O my God, abandon not Thy creature, who delivers himself up to Thy
justice! O my God, I adore Thee: Thou wilt not leave me to perish
under the buffetings of mine enemies!" Nothing answered: the
shadows and the cold weighed upon him, and the noise of the old
shoes continued in the distance and prevented him praying. Nothing,
indeed, save that tiresome noise was audible in the deserted church,
where the matutinal sweeping was unknown before the early masses had
somewhat warmed the air of the place. After that he rose to his
feet with the help of a chair, his knees cracking under him as he
did so. God was not yet there. And why should he weep in M.
Venot's arms? The man could do nothing.
And then mechanically he returned to Nana's house. Outside he
slipped, and he felt the tears welling to his eyes again, but he was
not angry with his lot--he was only feeble and ill. Yes, he was too
tired; the rain had wet him too much; he was nipped with cold, but
the idea of going back to his great dark house in the Rue Miromesnil
froze his heart. The house door at Nana's was not open as yet, and
he had to wait till the porter made his appearance. He smiled as he
went upstairs, for he already felt penetrated by the soft warmth of
that cozy retreat, where he would be able to stretch his limbs and
go to sleep.
When Zoe opened the door to him she gave a start of most uneasy
astonishment. Madame had been taken ill with an atrocious sick
headache, and she hadn't closed her eyes all night. Still, she
could quite go and see whether Madame had gone to sleep for good.
And with that she slipped into the bedroom while he sank back into
one of the armchairs in the drawing room. But almost at that very
moment Nana appeared. She had jumped out of bed and had scarce had
time to slip on a petticoat. Her feet were bare, her hair in wild
disorder, her nightgown all crumpled.
"What! You here again?" she cried with a red flush on her cheeks.
Up she rushed, stung by sudden indignation, in order herself to
thrust him out of doors. But when she saw him in such sorry plight--
nay, so utterly done for--she felt infinite pity.
"Well, you are a pretty sight, my dear fellow!" she continued more
gently. "But what's the matter? You've spotted them, eh? And it's
given you the hump?"
He did not answer; he looked like a broken-down animal.
Nevertheless, she came to the conclusion that he still lacked
proofs, and to hearten him up the said:
"You see now? I was on the wrong tack. Your wife's an honest
woman, on my word of honor! And now, my little friend, you must go
home to bed. You want it badly."
He did not stir.
"Now then, be off! I can't keep you here. But perhaps you won't
presume to stay at such a time as this?"
"Yes, let's go to bed," he stammered.
She repressed a violent gesture, for her patience was deserting her.
Was the man going crazy?
"Come, be off!" she repeated.
"No."
But she flared up in exasperation, in utter rebellion.
"It's sickening! Don't you understand I'm jolly tired of your
company? Go and find your wife, who's making a cuckold of you.
Yes, she's making a cuckold of you. I say so--yes, I do now.
There, you've got the sack! Will you leave me or will you not?"
Muffat's eyes filled with tears. He clasped his hands together.
"Oh, let's go to bed!"
At this Nana suddenly lost all control over herself and was choked
by nervous sobs. She was being taken advaatage of when all was said
and done! What had these stories to do with her? She certainly had
used all manner of delicate methods in order to teach him his lesson
gently. And now he was for making her pay the damages! No, thank
you! She was kindhearted, but not to that extent.
"The devil, but I've had enough of this!" she swore, bringing her
fist down on the furniture. "Yes, yes, I wanted to be faithful--it
was all I could do to be that! Yet if I spoke the word I could be
rich tomorrow, my dear fellow!"
He looked up in surprise. Never once had he thought of the monetary
question. If she only expressed a desire he would realize it at
once; his whole fortune was at her service.
"No, it's too late now," she replied furiously. "I like men who
give without being asked. No, if you were to offer me a million for
a single interview I should say no! It's over between us; I've got
other fish to fry there! So be off or I shan't answer for the
consequences. I shall do something dreadful!"
She advanced threateningly toward him, and while she was raving, as
became a good courtesan who, though driven to desperation, was yet
firmly convinced of her rights and her superiority over tiresome,
honest folks, the door opened suddenly and Steiner presented
himself. That proved the finishing touch. She shrieked aloud:
"Well, I never. Here's the other one!"
Bewildered by her piercing outcry, Steiner stopped short. Muffat's
unexpected presence annoyed him, for he feared an explanation and
had been doing his best to avoid it these three months past. With
blinking eyes he stood first on one leg, then on the other, looking
embarrassed the while and avoiding the count's gaze. He was out of
breath, and as became a man who had rushed across Paris with good
news, only to find himself involved in unforeseen trouble, his face
was flushed and distorted.
"Que veux-tu, toi?" asked Nana roughly, using the second person
singular in open mockery of the count.
"What--what do I--" he stammered. "I've got it for you--you know
what."
"Eh?"
He hesitated. The day before yesterday she had given him to
understand that if he could not find her a thousand francs to pay a
bill with she would not receive him any more. For two days he had
been loafing about the town in quest of the money and had at last
made the sum up that very morning.
"The thousand francs!" he ended by declaring as he drew an envelope
from his pocket.
Nana had not remembered.
"The thousand francs!" she cried. "D'you think I'm begging alms?
Now look here, that's what I value your thousand francs at!"
And snatching the envelope, she threw it full in his face. As
became a prudent Hebrew, he picked it up slowly and painfully and
then looked at the young woman with a dull expression of face.
Muffat and he exchanged a despairing glance, while she put her arms
akimbo in order to shout more loudly than before.
"Come now, will you soon have done insulting me? I'm glad you've
come, too, dear boy, because now you see the clearance'll be quite
complete. Now then, gee up! Out you go!"
Then as they did not hurry in the least, for they were paralyzed:
"D'you mean to say I'm acting like a fool, eh? It's likely enough!
But you've bored me too much! And, hang it all, I've had enough of
swelldom! If I die of what I'm doing--well, it's my fancy!"
They sought to calm her; they begged her to listen to reason.
"Now then, once, twice, thrice! Won't you go? Very well! Look
there! I've got company."
And with a brisk movement she flung wide the bedroom door.
Whereupon in the middle of the tumbled bed the two men caught sight
of Fontan. He had not expected to be shown off in this situation;
nevertheless, he took things very easily, for he was used to sudden
surprises on the stage. Indeed, after the first shock he even hit
upon a grimace calculated to tide him honorably over his difficulty;
he "turned rabbit," as he phrased it, and stuck out his lips and
wrinkled up his nose, so as completely to transform the lower half
of his face. His base, satyrlike head seemed to exude incontinence.
It was this man Fontan then whom Nana had been to fetch at the
Varieties every day for a week past, for she was smitten with that
fierce sort of passion which the grimacing ugliness of a low
comedian is wont to inspire in the genus courtesan.
"There!" she said, pointing him out with tragic gesture.
Muffat, who hitherto had pocketed everything, rebelled at this
affront.
"Bitch!" he stammered.
But Nana, who was once more in the bedroom, came back in order to
have the last word.
"How am I a bitch? What about your wife?"
And she was off and, slamming the door with a bang, she noisily
pushed to the bolt. Left alone, the two men gazed at one another in
silence. Zoe had just come into the room, but she did not drive
them out. Nay, she spoke to them in the most sensible manner. As
became a woman with a head on her shoulders, she decided that
Madame's conduct was rather too much of a good thing. But she
defended her, nonetheless: this union with the play actor couldn't
last; the madness must be allowed to pass off! The two men retired
without uttering a sound. On the pavement outside they shook hands
silently, as though swayed by a mutual sense of fraternity. Then
they turned their backs on one another and went crawling off in
opposite directions.
When at last Muffat entered his town house in the Rue Miromesnil his
wife was just arriving. The two met on the great staircase, whose
walls exhaled an icy chill. They lifted up their eyes and beheld
one another. The count still wore his muddy clothes, and his pale,
bewildered face betrayed the prodigal returning from his debauch.
The countess looked as though she were utterly fagged out by a night
in the train. She was dropping with sleep, but her hair had been
brushed anyhow, and her eyes were deeply sunken.
CHAPTER VIII
We are in a little set of lodgings on the fourth floor in the Rue
Veron at Montmartre. Nana and Fontan have invited a few friends to
cut their Twelfth-Night cake with them. They are giving their
housewarming, though they have been only three days settled.
They had no fixed intention of keeping house together, but the whole
thing had come about suddenly in the first glow of the honeymoon.
After her grand blowup, when she had turned the count and the banker
so vigorously out of doors, Nana felt the world crumbling about her
feet. She estimated the situation at a glance; the creditors would
swoop down on her anteroom, would mix themselves up with her love
affairs and threaten to sell her little all unless she continued to
act sensibly. Then, too, there would be no end of disputes and
carking anxieties if she attempted to save her furniture from their
clutches. And so she preferred giving up everything. Besides, the
flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was plaguing her to death. It was
so stupid with its great gilded rooms! In her access of tenderness
for Fontan she began dreaming of a pretty little bright chamber.
Indeed, she returned to the old ideals of the florist days, when her
highest ambition was to have a rosewood cupboard with a plate-glass
door and a bed hung with blue "reps." In the course of two days she
sold what she could smuggle out of the house in the way of
knickknacks and jewelry and then disappeared, taking with her ten
thousand francs and never even warning the porter's wife. It was a
plunge into the dark, a merry spree; never a trace was left behind.
In this way she would prevent the men from coming dangling after
her. Fontain was very nice. He did not say no to anything but just
let her do as she liked. Nay, he even displayed an admirable spirit
of comradeship. He had, on his part, nearly seven thousand francs,
and despite the fact that people accused him of stinginess, he
consented to add them to the young woman's ten thousand. The sum
struck them as a solid foundation on which to begin housekeeping.
And so they started away, drawing from their common hoard, in order
to hire and furnish the two rooms in the Rue Veron, and sharing
everything together like old friends. In the early days it was
really delicious.
On Twelfth Night Mme Lerat and Louiset were the first to arrive. As
Fontan had not yet come home, the old lady ventured to give
expression to her fears, for she trembled to see her niece
renouncing the chance of wealth.
"Oh, Aunt, I love him so dearly!" cried Nana, pressing her hands to
her heart with the prettiest of gestures.
This phrase produced an extraordinary effect on Mme Lerat, and tears
came into her eyes.
"That's true," she said with an air of conviction. "Love before all
things!"
And with that she went into raptures over the prettiness of the
rooms. Nana took her to see the bedroom, the parlor and the very
kitchen. Gracious goodness, it wasn't a vast place, but then, they
had painted it afresh and put up new wallpapers. Besides, the sun
shone merrily into it during the daytime.
Thereupon Mme Lerat detained the young woman in the bedroom, while
Louiset installed himself behind the charwoman in the kitchen in
order to watch a chicken being roasted. If, said Mme Lerat, she
permitted herself to say what was in her mind, it was because Zoe
had just been at her house. Zoe had stayed courageously in the
breach because she was devoted to her mistress. Madame would pay
her later on; she was in no anxiety about that! And amid the
breakup of the Boulevard Haussmann establishment it was she who
showed the creditors a bold front; it was she who conducted a
dignified retreat, saving what she could from the wreck and telling
everyone that her mistress was traveling. She never once gave them
her address. Nay, through fear of being followed, she even deprived
herself of the pleasure of calling on Madame. Nevertheless, that
same morning she had run round to Mme Lerat's because matters were
taking a new turn. The evening before creditors in the persons of
the upholsterer, the charcoal merchant and the laundress had put in
an appearance and had offered to give Madame an extension of time.
Nay, they had even proposed to advance Madame a very considerable
amount if only Madame would return to her flat and conduct herself
like a sensible person. The aunt repeated Zoe's words. Without
doubt there was a gentleman behind it all.
"I'll never consent!" declared Nana in great disgust. "Ah, they're
a pretty lot those tradesmen! Do they think I'm to be sold so that
they can get their bills paid? Why, look here, I'd rather die of
hunger than deceive Fontan."
"That's what I said," averred Mme Lerat. "'My niece,' I said, 'is
too noble-hearted!'"
Nana, however, was much vexed to learn that La Mignotte was being
sold and that Labordette was buying it for Caroline Hequet at an
absurdly low price. It made her angry with that clique. Oh, they
were a regular cheap lot, in spite of their airs and graces! Yes,
by Jove, she was worth more than the whole lot of them!
"They can have their little joke out," she concluded, "but money
will never give them true happiness! Besides, you know, Aunt, I
don't even know now whether all that set are alive or not. I'm much
too happy."
At that very moment Mme Maloir entered, wearing one of those hats of
which she alone understood the shape. It was delightful meeting
again. Mme Maloir explained that magnificence frightened her and
that NOW, from time to time, she would come back for her game of
bezique. A second visit was paid to the different rooms in the
lodgings, and in the kitchen Nana talked of economy in the presence
of the charwoman, who was basting the fowl, and said that a servant
would have cost too much and that she was herself desirous of
looking after things. Louiset was gazing beatifically at the
roasting process.
But presently there was a loud outburst of voices. Fontan had come
in with Bosc and Prulliere, and the company could now sit down to
table. The soup had been already served when Nana for the third
time showed off the lodgings.
"Ah, dear children, how comfortable you are here!" Bosc kept
repeating, simply for the sake of pleasing the chums who were
standing the dinner. At bottom the subject of the "nook," as he
called it, nowise touched him.
In the bedroom he harped still more vigorously on the amiable note.
Ordinarily he was wont to treat women like cattle, and the idea of a
man bothering himself about one of the dirty brutes excited within
him the only angry feelings of which, in his comprehensive, drunken
disdain of the universe, he was still capable.
"Ah, ah, the villains," he continued with a wink, "they've done this
on the sly. Well, you were certainly right. It will be charming,
and, by heaven, we'll come and see you!"
But when Louiset arrived on the scene astride upon a broomstick,
Prulliere chuckled spitefully and remarked:
"Well, I never! You've got a baby already?"
This struck everybody as very droll, and Mme Lerat and Mme Maloir
shook with laughter. Nana, far from being vexed, laughed tenderly
and said that unfortunately this was not the case. She would very
much have liked it, both for the little one's sake and for her own,
but perhaps one would arrive all the same. Fontan, in his role of
honest citizen, took Louiset in his arms and began playing with him
and lisping.
"Never mind! It loves its daddy! Call me 'Papa,' you little
blackguard!"
"Papa, Papa!" stammered the child.
The company overwhelmed him with caresses, but Bosc was bored and
talked of sitting down to table. That was the only serious business
in life. Nana asked her guests' permission to put Louiset's chair
next her own. The dinner was very merry, but Bosc suffered from the
near neighborhood of the child, from whom he had to defend his
plate. Mme Lerat bored him too. She was in a melting mood and kept
whispering to him all sorts of mysterious things about gentlemen of
the first fashion who were still running after Nana. Twice he had
to push away her knee, for she was positively invading him in her
gushing, tearful mood. Prulliere behaved with great incivility
toward Mme Maloir and did not once help her to anything. He was
entirely taken up with Nana and looked annoyed at seeing her with
Fontan. Besides, the turtle doves were kissing so excessively as to
be becoming positive bores. Contrary to all known rules, they had
elected to sit side by side.
"Devil take it! Why don't you eat? You've got plenty of time ahead
of you!" Bosc kept repeating with his mouth full. "Wait till we
are gone!"
But Nana could not restrain herself. She was in a perfect ecstasy
of love. Her face was as full of blushes as an innocent young
girl's, and her looks and her laughter seemed to overflow with
tenderness. Gazing on Fontan, she overwhelmed him with pet names--
"my doggie, my old bear, my kitten"--and whenever he passed her the
water or the salt she bent forward and kissed him at random on lips,
eyes, nose or ear. Then if she met with reproof she would return to
the attack with the cleverest maneuvers and with infinite
submissiveness and the supple cunning of a beaten cat would catch
hold of his hand when no one was looking, in order to kiss it again.
It seemed she must be touching something belonging to him. As to
Fontan, he gave himself airs and let himself be adored with the
utmost condescension. His great nose sniffed with entirely sensual
content; his goat face, with its quaint, monstrous ugliness,
positively glowed in the sunlight of devoted adoration lavished upon
him by that superb woman who was so fair and so plump of limb.
Occasionally he gave a kiss in return, as became a man who is having
all the enjoyment and is yet willing to behave prettily.
"Well, you're growing maddening!" cried Prulliere. "Get away from
her, you fellow there!"
And he dismissed Fontan and changed covers, in order to take his
place at Nana's side. The company shouted and applauded at this and
gave vent to some stiffish epigrammatic witticisms. Fontan
counterfeited despair and assumed the quaint expression of Vulcan
crying for Venus. Straightway Prulliere became very gallant, but
Nana, whose foot he was groping for under the table, caught him a
slap to make him keep quiet. No, no, she was certainly not going to
become his mistress. A month ago she had begun to take a fancy to
him because of his good looks, but now she detested him. If he
pinched her again under pretense of picking up her napkin, she would
throw her glass in his face!
Nevertheless, the evening passed off well. The company had
naturally begun talking about the Varietes. Wasn't that cad of a
Bordenave going to go off the hooks after all? His nasty diseases
kept reappearing and causing him such suffering that you couldn't
come within six yards of him nowadays. The day before during
rehearsal he had been incessantly yelling at Simonne. There was a
fellow whom the theatrical people wouldn't shed many tears over.
Nana announced that if he were to ask her to take another part she
would jolly well send him to the rightabout. Moreover, she began
talking of leaving the stage; the theater was not to compare with
her home. Fontan, who was not in the present piece or in that which
was then being rehearsed, also talked big about the joy of being
entirely at liberty and of passing his evenings with his feet on the
fender in the society of his little pet. And at this the rest
exclaimed delightedly, treating their entertainers as lucky people
and pretending to envy their felicity.
The Twelfth-Night cake had been cut and handed round. The bean had
fallen to the lot of Mme Lerat, who popped it into Bosc's glass.
Whereupon there were shouts of "The king drinks! The king drinks!"
Nana took advantage of this outburst of merriment and went and put
her arms round Fontan's neck again, kissing him and whispering in
his ear. But Prulliere, laughing angrily, as became a pretty man,
declared that they were not playing the game. Louiset, meanwhile,
slept soundly on two chairs. It was nearing one o'clock when the
company separated, shouting au revoir as they went downstairs.
For three weeks the existence of the pair of lovers was really
charming. Nana fancied she was returning to those early days when
her first silk dress had caused her infinite delight. She went out
little and affected a life of solitude and simplicity. One morning
early, when she had gone down to buy fish IN PROPRIA PERSONA in La
Rouchefoucauld Market, she was vastly surprised to meet her old hair
dresser Francis face to face. His getup was as scrupulously careful
as ever: he wore the finest linen, and his frock coat was beyond
reproach; in fact, Nana felt ashamed that he should see her in the
street with a dressing jacket and disordered hair and down-at-heel
shoes. But he had the tact, if possible, to intensify his
politeness toward her. He did not permit himself a single inquiry
and affected to believe that Madame was at present on her travels.
Ah, but Madame had rendered many persons unhappy when she decided to
travel! All the world had suffered loss. The young woman, however,
ended by asking him questions, for a sudden fit of curiosity had
made her forget her previous embarrassment. Seeing that the crowd
was jostling them, she pushed him into a doorway and, still holding
her little basket in one hand, stood chatting in front of him. What
were people saying about her high jinks? Good heavens! The ladies
to whom he went said this and that and all sorts of things. In
fact, she had made a great noise and was enjoying a real boom: And
Steiner? M. Steiner was in a very bad way, would make an ugly
finish if he couldn't hit on some new commercial operation. And
Daguenet? Oh, HE was getting on swimmingly. M. Daguenet was
settling down. Nana, under the exciting influence of various
recollections, was just opening her mouth with a view to a further
examination when she felt it would be awkward to utter Muffat's
name. Thereupon Francis smiled and spoke instead of her. As to
Monsieur le Comte, it was all a great pity, so sad had been his
sufferings since Madame's departure.
He had been like a soul in pain--you might have met him wherever
Madame was likely to be found. At last M. Mignon had come across
him and had taken him home to his own place. This piece of news
caused Nana to laugh a good deal. But her laughter was not of the
easiest kind.
"Ah, he's with Rose now," she said. "Well then, you must know,
Francis, I've done with him! Oh, the canting thing! It's learned
some pretty habits--can't even go fasting for a week now! And to
think that he used to swear he wouldn't have any woman after me!"
She was raging inwardly.
"My leavings, if you please!" she continued. "A pretty Johnnie for
Rose to go and treat herself to! Oh, I understand it all now: she
wanted to have her revenge because I got that brute of a Steiner
away from her. Ain't it sly to get a man to come to her when I've
chucked him out of doors?"
"M. Mignon doesn't tell that tale," said the hairdresser.
"According to his account, it was Monsieur le Comte who chucked you
out. Yes, and in a pretty disgusting way too--with a kick on the
bottom!"
Nana became suddenly very pale.
"Eh, what?" she cried. "With a kick on my bottom? He's going too
far, he is! Look here, my little friend, it was I who threw him
downstairs, the cuckold, for he is a cuckold, I must inform you.
His countess is making him one with every man she meets--yes, even
with that good-for-nothing of a Fauchery. And that Mignon, who goes
loafing about the pavement in behalf of his harridan of a wife, whom
nobody wants because she's so lean! What a foul lot! What a foul
lot!"
She was choking, and she paused for breath
"Oh, that's what they say, is it? Very well, my little Francis,
I'll go and look 'em up, I will. Shall you and I go to them at
once? Yes, I'll go, and we'll see whether they will have the cheek
to go telling about kicks on the bottom. Kick's! I never took one
from anybody! And nobody's ever going to strike me--d'ye see?--for
I'd smash the man who laid a finger on me!"
Nevertheless, the storm subsided at last. After all, they might
jolly well what they liked! She looked upon them as so much filth
underfoot! It would have soiled her to bother about people like
that. She had a conscience of her own, she had! And Francis,
seeing her thus giving herself away, what with her housewife's
costume and all, became familiar and, at parting, made so bold as to
give her some good advice. It was wrong of her to be sacrificing
everything for the sake of an infatuation; such infatuations ruined
existence. She listened to him with bowed head while he spoke to
her with a pained expression, as became a connoisseur who could not
bear to see so fine a girl making such a hash of things.
"Well, that's my affair," she said at last "Thanks all the same,
dear boy." She shook his hand, which despite his perfect dress was
always a little greasy, and then went off to buy her fish. During
the day that story about the kick on the bottom occupied her
thoughts. She even spoke about it to Fontan and again posed as a
sturdy woman who was not going to stand the slightest flick from
anybody. Fontan, as became a philosophic spirit, declared that all
men of fashion were beasts whom it was one's duty to despise. And
from that moment forth Nana was full of very real disdain.
That same evening they went to the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre to see
a little woman of Fontan's acquaintance make her debut in a part of
some ten lines. It was close on one o'clock when they once more
trudged up the heights of Montmartre. They had purchased a cake, a
"mocha," in the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin, and they ate it in bed,
seeing that the night was not warm and it was not worth while
lighting a fire. Sitting up side by side, with the bedclothes
pulled up in front and the pillows piled up behind, they supped and
talked about the little woman. Nana thought her plain and lacking
in style. Fontan, lying on his stomach, passed up the pieces of
cake which had been put between the candle and the matches on the
edge of the night table. But they ended by quarreling.
"Oh, just to think of it!" cried Nana. "She's got eyes like gimlet
holes, and her hair's the color of tow."
"Hold your tongue, do!" said Fontan. "She has a superb head of hair
and such fire in her looks! It's lovely the way you women always
tear each other to pieces!"
He looked annoyed.
"Come now, we've had enough of it!" he said at last in savage tones.
"You know I don't like being bored. Let's go to sleep, or things'll
take a nasty turn."
And he blew out the candle, but Nana was furious and went on
talking. She was not going to be spoken to in that voice; she was
accustomed to being treated with respect! As he did not vouchsafe
any further answer, she was silenced, but she could not go to sleep
and lay tossing to and fro.
"Great God, have you done moving about?" cried he suddenly, giving a
brisk jump upward.
"It isn't my fault if there are crumbs in the bed," she said curtly.
In fact, there were crumbs in the bed. She felt them down to her
middle; she was everywhere devoured by them. One single crumb was
scorching her and making her scratch herself till she bled.
Besides, when one eats a cake isn't it usual to shake out the
bedclothes afterward? Fontan, white with rage, had relit the
candle, and they both got up and, barefooted and in their night
dresses, they turned down the clothes and swept up the crumbs on the
sheet with their hands. Fontan went to bed again, shivering, and
told her to go to the devil when she advised him to wipe the soles
of his feet carefully. And in the end she came back to her old
position, but scarce had she stretched herself out than she danced
again. There were fresh crumbs in the bed!
"By Jove, it was sure to happen!" she cried. "You've brought them
back again under your feet. I can't go on like this! No, I tell
you, I can't go on like this!"
And with that she was on the point of stepping over him in order to
jump out of bed again, when Fontan in his longing for sleep grew
desperate and dealt her a ringing box on the ear. The blow was so
smart that Nana suddenly found herself lying down again with her
head on the pillow.
She lay half stunned.
"Oh!" she ejaculated simply, sighing a child's big sigh.
For a second or two he threatened her with a second slap, asking her
at the same time if she meant to move again. Then he put out the
light, settled himself squarely on his back and in a trice was
snoring. But she buried her face in the pillow and began sobbing
quietly to herself. It was cowardly of him to take advantage of his
superior strength! She had experienced very real terror all the
same, so terrible had that quaint mask of Fontan's become. And her
anger began dwindling down as though the blow had calmed her. She
began to feel respect toward him and accordingly squeezed herself
against the wall in order to leave him as much room as possible.
She even ended by going to sleep, her cheek tingling, her eyes full
of tears and feeling so deliciously depressed and wearied and
submissive that she no longer noticed the crumbs. When she woke up
in the morning she was holding Fontain in her naked arms and
pressing him tightly against her breast. He would never begin it
again, eh? Never again? She loved him too dearly. Why, it was
even nice to be beaten if he struck the blow!
After that night a new life began. For a mere trifle--a yes, a no--
Fontan would deal her a blow. She grew accustomed to it and
pocketed everything. Sometimes she shed tears and threatened him,
but he would pin her up against the wall and talk of strangling her,
which had the effect of rendering her extremely obedient. As often
as not, she sank down on a chair and sobbed for five minutes on end.
But afterward she would forget all about it, grow very merry, fill
the little lodgings with the sound of song and laughter and the
rapid rustle of skirts. The worst of it was that Fontan was now in
the habit of disappearing for the whole day and never returning home
before midnight, for he was going to cafes and meeting his old
friends again. Nana bore with everything. She was tremulous and
caressing, her only fear being that she might never see him again if
she reproached him. But on certain days, when she had neither Mme
Maloir nor her aunt and Louiset with her, she grew mortally dull.
Thus one Sunday, when she was bargaining for some pigeons at La
Rochefoucauld Market, she was delighted to meet Satin, who, in her
turn, was busy purchasing a bunch of radishes. Since the evening
when the prince had drunk Fontan's champagne they had lost sight of
one another.
"What? It's you! D'you live in our parts?" said Satin, astounded
at seeing her in the street at that hour of the morning and in
slippers too. "Oh, my poor, dear girl, you're really ruined then!"
Nana knitted her brows as a sign that she was to hold her tongue,
for they were surrounded by other women who wore dressing gowns and
were without linen, while their disheveled tresses were white with
fluff. In the morning, when the man picked up overnight had been
newly dismissed, all the courtesans of the quarter were wont to come
marketing here, their eyes heavy with sleep, their feet in old down-
at-heel shoes and themselves full of the weariness and ill humor
entailed by a night of boredom. From the four converging streets
they came down into the market, looking still rather young in some
cases and very pale and charming in their utter unconstraint; in
others, hideous and old with bloated faces and peeling skin. The
latter did not the least mind being seen thus outside working hours,
and not one of them deigned to smile when the passers-by on the
sidewalk turned round to look at them. Indeed, they were all very
full of business and wore a disdainful expression, as became good
housewives for whom men had ceased to exist. Just as Satin, for
instance, was paying for her bunch of radishes a young man, who
might have been a shop-boy going late to his work, threw her a
passing greeting:
"Good morning, duckie."
She straightened herself up at once and with the dignified manner
becoming an offended queen remarked:
"What's up with that swine there?"
Then she fancied she recognized him. Three days ago toward
midnight, as the was coming back alone from the boulevards, she had
talked to him at the corner of the Rue Labruyere for nearly half an
hour, with a view to persuading him to come home with her. But this
recollection only angered her the more.
"Fancy they're brutes enough to shout things to you in broad
daylight!" she continued. "When one's out on business one ought to
be respecifully treated, eh?"
Nana had ended by buying her pigeons, although she certainly had her
doubts of their freshness. After which Satin wanted to show her
where she lived in the Rue Rochefoucauld close by. And the moment
they were alone Nana told her of her passion for Fontan. Arrived in
front of the house, the girl stopped with her bundle of radishes
under her arm and listened eagerly to a final detail which the other
imparted to her. Nana fibbed away and vowed that it was she who had
turned Count Muffat out of doors with a perfect hail of kickastliness of
the men. Nana was overpowering on the subject of Fontan. She could
not say a dozen words without lapsing into endless repetitions of
his sayings and his doings. But Satin, like a good-natured girl,
would listen unwearyingly to everlasting accounts of how Nana had
watched for him at the window, how they had fallen out over a burnt
dish of hash and how they had made it up in bed after hours of
silent sulking. In her desire to be always talking about these
things Nana had gs on the
posterior.
"Oh how smart!" Satin repeated. "How very smart! Kicks, eh? And
he never said a word, did he? What a blooming coward! I wish I'd
been there to see his ugly mug! My dear girl, you were quite right.
A pin for the coin! When I'M on with a mash I starve for it!
You'll come and see me, eh? You promise? It's the left-hand door.
Knock three knocks, for there's a whole heap of damned squints
about."
After that whenever Nana grew too weary of life she went down and
saw Satin. She was always sure of finding her, for the girl never
went out before six in the evening. Satin occupied a couple of
rooms which a chemist had furnished for her in order to save her
from the clutches of the police, but in little more than a
twelvemonth she had broken the furniture, knocked in the chairs,
dirtied the curtains, and that in a manner so furiously filthy and
untidy that the lodgings seemed as though inhabited by a pack of mad
cats. On the mornings when she grew disgusted with herself and
thought about cleaning up a bit, chair rails and strips of curtain
would come off in her hands during her struggle with superincumbent
dirt. On such days the place was fouler than ever, and it was
impossible to enter it, owing to the things which had fallen down
across the doorway. At length she ended by leaving her house
severely alone. When the lamp was lit the cupboard with plate-glass
doors, the clock and what remained of the curtains still served to
impose on the men. Besides, for six months past her landlord had
been threatening to evict her. Well then, for whom should she be
keeping the furniture nice? For him more than anyone else, perhaps!
And so whenever she got up in a merry mood she would shout "Gee up!"
and give the sides of the cupboard and the chest of drawers such a
tremendous kick that they cracked again.
Nana nearly always found her in bed. Even on the days when Satin
went out to do her marketing she felt so tired on her return
upstairs that she flung herself down on the bed and went to sleep
again. During the day she dragged herself about and dozed off on
chairs. Indeed, she did not emerge from this languid condition till
the evening drew on and the gas was lit outside. Nana felt very
comfortable at Satin's, sitting doing nothing on the untidy bed,
while basins stood about on the floor at her feet and petticoats
which had been bemired last night hung over the backs of armchairs
and stained them with mud. They had long gossips together and were
endlessly confidential, while Satin lay on her stomach in her
nightgown, waving her legs above her head and smoking cigarettes as
she listened. Sometimes on such afternoons as they had troubles to
retail they treated themselves to absinthe in order, as they termed
it, "to forget." Satin did not go downstairs or put on a petticoat
but simply went and leaned over the banisters and shouted her order
to the portress's little girl, a chit of ten, who when she brought
up the absinthe in a glass would look furtively at the lady's bare
legs. Every conversation led up to one subject--the beot to tell of every slap that he dealt her.
Last
week he had given her a swollen eye; nay, the night before he had
given her such a box on the ear as to throw her across the night
table, and all because he could not find his slippers. And the
other woman did not evince any astonishment but blew out cigarette
smoke and only paused a moment to remark that, for her part, she
always ducked under, which sent the gentleman pretty nearly
sprawling. Both of them settled down with a will to these anecdotes
about blows; they grew supremely happy and excited over these same
idiotic doings about which they told one another a hundred times or
more, while they gave themselves up to the soft and pleasing sense
of weariness which was sure to follow the drubbings they talked of.
It was the delight of rediscussing Fontan's blows and of explaining
his works and his ways, down to the very manner in which he took off
his boots, which brought Nana back daily to Satin's place. The
latter, moreover, used to end by growing sympathetic in her turn and
would cite even more violent cases, as, for instance, that of a
pastry cook who had left her for dead on the floor. Yet she loved
him, in spite of it all! Then came the days on which Nana cried and
declared that things could not go on as they were doing. Satin
would escort her back to her own door and would linger an hour out
in the street to see that he did not murder her. And the next day
the two women would rejoice over the reconciliation the whole
afternoon through. Yet though they did not say so, they preferred
the days when threshings were, so to speak, in the air, for then
their comfortable indignation was all the stronger.
They became inseparable. Yet Satin never went to Nana's, Fontan
having announced that he would have no trollops in his house. They
used to go out together, and thus it was that Satin one day took her
friend to see another woman. This woman turned out to be that very
Mme Robert who had interested Nana and inspired her with a certain
respect ever since she had refused to come to her supper. Mme
Robert lived in the Rue Mosnier, a silent, new street in the
Quartier de l'Europe, where there were no shops, and the handsome
houses with their small, limited flats were peopled by ladies. It
was five o'clock, and along the silent pavements in the quiet,
aristocratic shelter of the tall white houses were drawn up the
broughams of stock-exchange people and merchants, while men walked
hastily about, looking up at the windows, where women in dressing
jackets seemed to be awaiting them. At first Nana refused to go up,
remarking with some constraint that she had not the pleasure of the
lady's acquaintance. But Satin would take no refusal. She was only
desirous of paying a civil call, for Mme Robert, whom she had met in
a restaurant the day before, had made herself extremely agreeable
and had got her to promise to come and see her. And at last Nana
consented. At the top of the stairs a little drowsy maid informed
them that Madame had not come home yet, but she ushered them into
the drawing room notwithstanding and left them there.
"The deuce, it's a smart show!" whispered Satin. It was a stiff,
middle-class room, hung with dark-colored fabrics, and suggested the
conventional taste of a Parisian shopkeeper who has retired on his
fortune. Nana was struck and did her best to make merry about it.
But Satin showed annoyance and spoke up for Mme Robert's strict
adherence to the proprieties. She was always to be met in the
society of elderly, grave-looking men, on whose arms she leaned. At
present she had a retired chocolate seller in tow, a serious soul.
Whenever he came to see her he was so charmed by the solid, handsome
way in which the house was arranged that he had himself announced
and addressed its mistress as "dear child."
"Look, here she is!" continued Satin, pointing to a photograph which
stood in front of the clock. Nana scrutinized the portrait for a
second or so. It represented a very dark brunette with a longish
face and lips pursed up in a discreet smile. "A thoroughly
fashionable lady," one might have said of the likeness, "but one who
is rather more reserved than the rest."
"It's strange," murmured Nana at length, "but I've certainly seen
that face somewhere. Where, I don't remember. But it can't have
been in a pretty place--oh no, I'm sure it wasn't in a pretty
place."
And turning toward her friend, she added, "So she's made you promise
to come and see her? What does she want with you?"
"What does she want with me? 'Gad! To talk, I expect--to be with
me a bit. It's her politeness."
Nana looked steadily at Satin. "Tut, tut," she said softly. After
all, it didn't matter to her! Yet seeing that the lady was keeping
them waiting, she declared that she would not stay longer, and
accordingly they both took their departure.
The next day Fontan informed Nana that he was not coming home to
dinner, and she went down early to find Satin with a view to
treating her at a restaurant. The choice of the restaurant involved
infinite debate. Satin proposed various brewery bars, which Nana
thought detestable, and at last persuaded her to dine at Laure's.
This was a table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs, where the dinner
cost three francs.
Tired of waiting for the dinner hour and not knowing what to do out
in the street, the pair went up to Laure's twenty minutes too early.
The three dining rooms there were still empty, and they sat down at
a table in the very saloon where Laure Piedefer was enthroned on a
high bench behind a bar. This Laure was a lady of some fifty
summers, whose swelling contours were tightly laced by belts and
corsets. Women kept entering in quick procession, and each, in
passing, craned upward so as to overtop the saucers raised on the
counter and kissed Laure on the mouth with tender familiarity, while
the monstrous creature tried, with tears in her eyes, to divide her
attentions among them in such a way as to make no one jealous. On
the other hand, the servant who waited on the ladies was a tall,
lean woman. She seemed wasted with disease, and her eyes were
ringed with dark lines and glowed with somber fire. Very rapidly
the three saloons filled up. There were some hundred customers, and
they had seated themselves wherever they could find vacant places.
The majority were nearing the age of forty: their flesh was puffy
and so bloated by vice as almost to hide the outlines of their
flaccid mouths. But amid all these gross bosoms and figures some
slim, pretty girls were observable. These still wore a modest
expression despite their impudent gestures, for they were only
beginners in their art, who had started life in the ballrooms of the
slums and had been brought to Laure's by some customer or other.
Here the tribe of bloated women, excited by the sweet scent of their
youth, jostled one another and, while treating them to dainties,
formed a perfect court round them, much as old amorous bachelors
might have done. As to the men, they were not numerous. There were
ten or fifteen of them at the outside, and if we except four tall
fellows who had come to see the sight and were cracking jokes and
taking things easy, they behaved humbly enough amid this whelming
flood of petticoats.
"I say, their stew's very good, ain't it?" said Satin.
Nana nodded with much satisfaction. It was the old substantial
dinner you get in a country hotel and consisted of vol-au-vent a la
financiere, fowl boiled in rice, beans with a sauce and vanilla
creams, iced and flavored with burnt sugar. The ladies made an
especial onslaught on the boiled fowl and rice: their stays seemed
about to burst; they wiped their lips with slow, luxurious
movements. At first Nana had been afraid of meeting old friends who
might have asked her silly questions, but she grew calm at last, for
she recognized no one she knew among that extremely motley throng,
where faded dresses and lamentable hats contrasted strangely with
handsome costumes, the wearers of which fraternized in vice with
their shabbier neighbors. She was momentarily interested, however,
at the sight of a young man with short curly hair and insolent face
who kept a whole tableful of vastly fat women breathlessly attentive
to his slightest caprice. But when the young man began to laugh his
bosom swelled.
"Good lack, it's a woman!"
She let a little cry escape as she spoke, and Satin, who was
stuffing herself with boiled fowl, lifted up her head and whispered:
"Oh yes! I know her. A smart lot, eh? They do just fight for
her."
Nana pouted disgustingly. She could not understand the thing as
yet. Nevertheless, she remarked in her sensible tone that there was
no disputing about tastes or colors, for you never could tell what
you yourself might one day have a liking for. So she ate her cream
with an air of philosophy, though she was perfectly well aware that
Satin with her great blue virginal eyes was throwing the neighboring
tables into a state of great excitement. There was one woman in
particular, a powerful, fair-haired person who sat close to her and
made herself extremely agreeable. She seemed all aglow with
affection and pushed toward the girl so eagerly that Nana was on the
point of interfering.
But at that very moment a woman who was entering the room gave her a
shock of surprise. Indeed, she had recognized Mme Robert. The
latter, looking, as was her wont, like a pretty brown mouse, nodded
familiarly to the tall, lean serving maid and came and leaned upon
Laure's counter. Then both women exchanged a long kiss. Nana
thought such an attention on the part of a woman so distinguished
looking very amusing, the more so because Mme Robert had quite
altered her usual modest expression. On the contrary, her eye roved
about the saloon as she kept up a whispered conversation. Laure had
resumed her seat and once more settled herself down with all the
majesty of an old image of Vice, whose face has been worn and
polished by the kisses of the faithful. Above the range of loaded
plates she sat enthroned in all the opulence which a hotelkeeper
enjoys after forty years of activity, and as she sat there she
swayed her bloated following of large women, in comparison with the
biggest of whom she seemed monstrous.
But Mme Robert had caught sight of Satin, and leaving Laure, she ran
up and behaved charmingly, telling her how much she regretted not
having been at home the day before. When Satin, however, who was
ravished at this treatment, insisted on finding room for her at the
table, she vowed she had already dined. She had simply come up to
look about her. As she stood talking behind her new friend's chair
she leaned lightly on her shoulders and in a smiling, coaxing manner
remarked:
"Now when shall I see you? If you were free--"
Nana unluckily failed to hear more. The conversation vexed her, and
she was dying to tell this honest lady a few home truths. But the
sight of a troop of new arrivals paralyzed her. It was composed of
smart, fashionably dressed women who were wearing their diamonds.
Under the influence of perverse impulse they had made up a party to
come to Laure's--whom, by the by, they all treated with great
familiarity--to eat the three-franc dinner while flashing their
jewels of great price in the jealous and astonished eyes of poor,
bedraggled prostitutes. The moment they entered, talking and
laughing in their shrill, clear tones and seeming to bring sunshine
with them from the outside world, Nana turned her head rapidly away.
Much to her annoyance she had recognized Lucy Stewart and Maria
Blond among them, and for nearly five minutes, during which the
ladies chatted with Laure before passing into the saloon beyond, she
kept her head down and seemed deeply occupied in rolling bread pills
on the cloth in front of her. But when at length she was able to
look round, what was her astonishment to observe the chair next to
hers vacant! Satin had vanished.
"Gracious, where can she be?" she loudly ejaculated.
The sturdy, fair woman who had been overwhelming Satin with civil
attentions laughed ill-temperedly, and when Nana, whom the laugh
irritated, looked threatening she remarked in a soft, drawling way:
"It's certainly not me that's done you this turn; it's the other
one!"
Thereupon Nana understood that they would most likely make game of
her and so said nothing more. She even kept her seat for some
moments, as she did not wish to show how angry she felt. She could
hear Lucy Stewart laughing at the end of the next saloon, where she
was treating a whole table of little women who had come from the
public balls at Montmartre and La Chapelle. It was very hot; the
servant was carrying away piles of dirty plates with a strong scent
of boiled fowl and rice, while the four gentlemen had ended by
regaling quite half a dozen couples with capital wine in the hope of
making them tipsy and hearing some pretty stiffish things. What at
present most exasperated Nana was the thought of paying for Satin's
dinner. There was a wench for you, who allowed herself to be amused
and then made off with never a thank-you in company with the first
petticoat that came by! Without doubt it was only a matter of three
francs, but she felt it was hard lines all the same--her way of
doing it was too disgusting. Nevertheless, she paid up, throwing
the six francs at Laure, whom at the moment she despised more than
the mud in the street. In the Rue des Martyrs Nana felt her
bitterness increasing. She was certainly not going to run after
Satin! It was a nice filthy business for one to be poking one's
nose into! But her evening was spoiled, and she walked slowly up
again toward Montmartre, raging against Mme Robert in particular.
Gracious goodness, that woman had a fine cheek to go playing the
lady--yes, the lady in the dustbin! She now felt sure she had met
her at the Papillon, a wretched public-house ball in the Rue des
Poissonniers, where men conquered her scruples for thirty sous. And
to think a thing like that got hold of important functionaries with
her modest looks! And to think she refused suppers to which one did
her the honor of inviting her because, forsooth, she was playing the
virtuous game! Oh yes, she'd get virtued! It was always those
conceited prudes who went the most fearful lengths in low corners
nobody knew anything about.
Revolving these matters, Nana at length reached her home in the Rue
Veron and was taken aback on observing a light in the window.
Fontan had come home in a sulk, for he, too, had been deserted by
the friend who had been dining with him. He listened coldly to her
explanations while she trembled lest he should strike her. It
scared her to find him at home, seeing that she had not expected him
before one in the morning, and she told him a fib and confessed that
she had certainly spent six francs, but in Mme Maloir's society. He
was not ruffled, however, and he handed her a letter which, though
addressed to her, he had quietly opened. It was a letter from
Georges, who was still a prisoner at Les Fondettes and comforted
himself weekly with the composition of glowing pages. Nana loved to
be written to, especially when the letters were full of grand,
loverlike expressions with a sprinkling of vows. She used to read
them to everybody. Fontan was familiar with the style employed by
Georges and appreciated it. But that evening she was so afraid of a
scene that she affected complete indifference, skimming through the
letter with a sulky expression and flinging it aside as soon as
read. Fontan had begun beating a tattoo on a windowpane; the
thought of going to bed so early bored him, and yet he did not know
how to employ his evening. He turned briskly round:
"Suppose we answer that young vagabond at once," he said.
It was the custom for him to write the letters in reply. He was
wont to vie with the other in point of style. Then, too, he used to
be delighted when Nana, grown enthusiastic after the letter had been
read over aloud, would kiss him with the announcement that nobody
but he could "say things like that." Thus their latent affections
would be stirred, and they would end with mutual adoration.
"As you will," she replied. "I'll make tea, and we'll go to bed
after."
Thereupon Fontan installed himself at the table on which pen, ink
and paper were at the same time grandly displayed. He curved his
arm; he drew a long face.
"My heart's own," he began aloud.
And for more than an hour he applied himself to his task, polishing
here, weighing a phrase there, while he sat with his head between
his hands and laughed inwardly whenever he hit upon a peculiarly
tender expression. Nana had already consumed two cups of tea in
silence, when at last he read out the letter in the level voice and
with the two or three emphatic gestures peculiar to such
performances on the stage. It was five pages long, and he spoke
therein of "the delicious hours passed at La Mignotte, those hours
of which the memory lingered like subtle perfume." He vowed
"eternal fidelity to that springtide of love" and ended by declaring
that his sole wish was to "recommence that happy time if, indeed,
happiness can recommence."
"I say that out of politeness, y'know," he explained. "The moment
it becomes laughable--eh, what! I think she's felt it, she has!"
He glowed with triumph. But Nana was unskillful; she still
suspected an outbreak and now was mistaken enough not to fling her
arms round his neck in a burst of admiration. She thought the
letter a respectable performance, nothing more. Thereupon he was
much annoyed. If his letter did not please her she might write
another! And so instead of bursting out in loverlike speeches and
exchanging kisses, as their wont was, they sat coldly facing one
another at the table. Nevertheless, she poured him out a cup of
tea.
"Here's a filthy mess," he cried after dipping his lips in the
mixture. "You've put salt in it, you have!"
Nana was unlucky enough to shrug her shoulders, and at that he grew
furious.
"Aha! Things are taking a wrong turn tonight!"
And with that the quarrel began. It was only ten by the clock, and
this was a way of killing time. So he lashed himself into a rage
and threw in Nana's teeth a whole string of insults and all kinds of
accusations which followed one another so closely that she had no
time to defend herself. She was dirty; she was stupid; she had
knocked about in all sorts of low places! After that he waxed
frantic over the money question. Did he spend six francs when he
dined out? No, somebody was treating him to a dinner; otherwise he
would have eaten his ordinary meal at home. And to think of
spending them on that old procuress of a Maloir, a jade he would
chuck out of the house tomorrow! Yes, by jingo, they would get into
a nice mess if he and she were to go throwing six francs out of the
window every day!
"Now to begin with, I want your accounts," he shouted. "Let's see;
hand over the money! Now where do we stand?"
All his sordid avaricious instincts came to the surface. Nana was
cowed and scared, and she made haste to fetch their remaining cash
out of the desk and to bring it him. Up to that time the key had
lain on this common treasury, from which they had drawn as freely as
they wished.
"How's this?" he said when he had counted up the money. "There are
scarcely seven thousand francs remaining out of seventeen thousand,
and we've only been together three months. The thing's impossible."
He rushed forward, gave the desk a savage shake and brought the
drawer forward in order to ransack it in the light of the lamp. But
it actually contained only six thousand eight hundred and odd
francs. Thereupon the tempest burst forth.
"Ten thousand francs in three months!" he yelled. "By God! What
have you done with it all? Eh? Answer! It all goes to your jade
of an aunt, eh? Or you're keeping men; that's plain! Will you
answer?"
"Oh well, if you must get in a rage!" said Nana. "Why, the
calculation's easily made! You haven't allowed for the furniture;
besides, I've had to buy linen. Money goes quickly when one's
settling in a new place."
But while requiring explanations he refused to listen to them.
"Yes, it goes a deal too quickly!" he rejoined more calmly. "And
look here, little girl, I've had enough of this mutual housekeeping.
You know those seven thousand francs are mine. Yes, and as I've got
'em, I shall keep 'em! Hang it, the moment you become wasteful I
get anxious not to be ruined. To each man his own."
And he pocketed the money in a lordly way while Nana gazed at him,
dumfounded. He continued speaking complaisantly:
"You must understand I'm not such a fool as to keep aunts and
likewise children who don't belong to me. You were pleased to spend
your own money--well, that's your affair! But my money--no, that's
sacred! When in the future you cook a leg of mutton I'll pay for
half of it. We'll settle up tonight--there!"
Straightway Nana rebelled. She could not help shouting:
"Come, I say, it's you who've run through my ten thousand francs.
It's a dirty trick, I tell you!"
But he did not stop to discuss matters further, for he dealt her a
random box on the ear across the table, remarking as he did so:
"Let's have that again!"
She let him have it again despite his blow. Whereupon he fell upon
her and kicked and cuffed her heartily. Soon he had reduced her to
such a state that she ended, as her wont was, by undressing and
going to bed in a flood of tears.
He was out of breath and was going to bed, in his turn, when he
noticed the letter he had written to Georges lying on the table.
Whereupon he folded it up carefully and, turning toward the bed,
remarked in threatening accents:
"It's very well written, and I'm going to post it myself because I
don't like women's fancies. Now don't go moaning any more; it puts
my teeth on edge."
Nana, who was crying and gasping, thereupon held her breath. When
he was in bed she choked with emotion and threw herself upon his
breast with a wild burst of sobs. Their scuffles always ended thus,
for she trembled at the thought of losing him and, like a coward,
wanted always to feel that he belonged entirely to her, despite
everything. Twice he pushed her magnificently away, but the warm
embrace of this woman who was begging for mercy with great, tearful
eyes, as some faithful brute might do, finally aroused desire. And
he became royally condescending without, however, lowering his
dignity before any of her advances. In fact, he let himself be
caressed and taken by force, as became a man whose forgiveness is
worth the trouble of winning. Then he was seized with anxiety,
fearing that Nana was playing a part with a view to regaining
possession of the treasury key. The light had been extinguished
when he felt it necessary to reaffirm his will and pleasure.
"You must know, my girl, that this is really very serious and that I
keep the money."
Nana, who was falling asleep with her arms round his neck, uttered a
sublime sentiment.
"Yes, you need fear nothing! I'll work for both of us!"
But from that evening onward their life in common became more and
more difficult. From one week's end to the other the noise of slaps
filled the air and resembled the ticking of a clock by which they
regulated their existence. Through dint of being much beaten Nana
became as pliable as fine linen; her skin grew delicate and pink and
white and so soft to the touch and clear to the view that she may be
said to have grown more good looking than ever. Prulliere,
moreover, began running after her like a madman, coming in when
Fontan was away and pushing her into corners in order to snatch an
embrace. But she used to struggle out of his grasp, full of
indignation and blushing with shame. It disgusted her to think of
him wanting to deceive a friend. Prulliere would thereupon begin
sneering with a wrathful expression. Why, she was growing jolly
stupid nowadays! How could she take up with such an ape? For,
indeed, Fontan was a regular ape with that great swingeing nose of
his. Oh, he had an ugly mug! Besides, the man knocked her about
too!
"It's possible I like him as he is," she one day made answer in the
quiet voice peculiar to a woman who confesses to an abominable
taste.
Bosc contented himself by dining with them as often as possible. He
shrugged his shoulders behind Prulliere's back--a pretty fellow, to
be sure, but a frivolous! Bosc had on more than one occasion
assisted at domestic scenes, and at dessert, when Fontan slapped
Nana, he went on chewing solemnly, for the thing struck him as being
quite in the course of nature. In order to give some return for his
dinner he used always to go into ecstasies over their happiness. He
declared himself a philosopher who had given up everything, glory
included. At times Prulliere and Fontan lolled back in their
chairs, losing count of time in front of the empty table, while with
theatrical gestures and intonation they discussed their former
successes till two in the morning. But he would sit by, lost in
thought, finishing the brandy bottle in silence and only
occasionally emitting a little contemptuous sniff. Where was
Talma's tradition? Nowhere. Very well, let them leave him jolly
well alone! It was too stupid to go on as they were doing!
One evening he found Nana in tears. She took off her dressing
jacket in order to show him her back and her arms, which were black
and blue. He looked at her skin without being tempted to abuse the
opportunity, as that ass of a Prulliere would have been. Then,
sententiously:
"My dear girl, where there are women there are sure to be ructions.
It was Napoleon who said that, I think. Wash yourself with salt
water. Salt water's the very thing for those little knocks. Tut,
tut, you'll get others as bad, but don't complain so long as no
bones are broken. I'm inviting myself to dinner, you know; I've
spotted a leg of mutton."
But Mme Lerat had less philosophy. Every time Nana showed her a
fresh bruise on the white skin she screamed aloud. They were
killing her niece; things couldn't go on as they were doing. As a
matter of fact, Fontan had turned Mme Lerat out of doors and had
declared that he would not have her at his house in the future, and
ever since that day, when he returned home and she happened to be
there, she had to make off through the kitchen, which was a horrible
humiliation to her. Accordingly she never ceased inveighing against
that brutal individual. She especially blamed his ill breeding,
pursing up her lips, as she did so, like a highly respectable lady
whom nobody could possibly remonstrate with on the subject of good
manners.
"Oh, you notice it at once," she used to tell Nana; "he hasn't the
barest notion of the very smallest proprieties. His mother must
have been common! Don't deny it--the thing's obvious! I don't
speak on my own account, though a person of my years has a right to
respectful treatment, but YOU--how do YOU manage to put up with his
bad manners? For though I don't want to flatter myself, I've always
taught you how to behave, and among our own people you always
enjoyed the best possible advice. We were all very well bred in our
family, weren't we now?"
Nana used never to protest but would listen with bowed head.
"Then, too," continued the aunt, "you've only known perfect
gentlemen hitherto. We were talking of that very topic with Zoe at
my place yesterday evening. She can't understand it any more than I
can. 'How is it,' she said, 'that Madame, who used to have that
perfect gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, at her beck and call'--for
between you and me, it seems you drove him silly--'how is it that
Madame lets herself be made into mincemeat by that clown of a
fellow?' I remarked at the time that you might put up with the
beatings but that I would never have allowed him to be lacking in
proper respect. In fact, there isn't a word to be said for him. I
wouldn't have his portrait in my room even! And you ruin yourself
for such a bird as that; yes, you ruin yourself, my darling; you
toil and you moil, when there are so many others and such rich men,
too, some of them even connected with the government! Ah well, it's
not I who ought to be telling you this, of course! But all the
same, when next he tries any of his dirty tricks on I should cut him
short with a 'Monsieur, what d'you take me for?' You know how to
say it in that grand way of yours! It would downright cripple him."
Thereupon Nana burst into sobs and stammered out:
"Oh, Aunt, I love him!"
The fact of the matter was that Mme Lerat was beginning to feel
anxious at the painful way her niece doled out the sparse,
occasional francs destined to pay for little Louis's board and
lodging. Doubtless she was willing to make sacrifices and to keep
the child by her whatever might happen while waiting for more
prosperous times, but the thought that Fontan was preventing her and
the brat and its mother from swimming in a sea of gold made her so
savage that she was ready to deny the very existence of true love.
Accordingly she ended up with the following severe remarks:
"Now listen, some fine day when he's taken the skin off your back,
you'll come and knock at my door, and I'll open it to you."
Soon money began to engross Nana's whole attention. Fontan had
caused the seven thousand francs to vanish away. Without doubt they
were quite safe; indeed, she would never have dared ask him
questions about them, for she was wont to be blushingly diffident
with that bird, as Mme Lerat called him. She trembled lest he
should think her capable of quarreling with him about halfpence. He
had certainly promised to subscribe toward their common household
expenses, and in the early days he had given out three francs every
morning. But he was as exacting as a boarder; he wanted everything
for his three francs--butter, meat, early fruit and early
vegetables--and if she ventured to make an observation, if she
hinted that you could not have everything in the market for three
francs, he flew into a temper and treated her as a useless, wasteful
woman, a confounded donkey whom the tradespeople were robbing.
Moreover, he was always ready to threaten that he would take
lodgings somewhere else. At the end of a month on certain mornings
he had forgotten to deposit the three francs on the chest of
drawers, and she had ventured to ask for them in a timid, roundabout
way. Whereupon there had been such bitter disputes and he had
seized every pretext to render her life so miserable that she had
found it best no longer to count upon him. Whenever, however, he
had omitted to leave behind the three one-franc pieces and found a
dinner awaiting him all the same, he grew as merry as a sandboy,
kissed Nana gallantly and waltzed with the chairs. And she was so
charmed by this conduct that she at length got to hope that nothing
would be found on the chest of drawers, despite the difficulty she
experienced in making both ends meet. One day she even returned him
his three francs, telling him a tale to the effect that she still
had yesterday's money. As he had given her nothing then, he
hesitated for some moments, as though he dreaded a lecture. But she
gazed at him with her loving eyes and hugged him in such utter self-
surrender that he pocketed the money again with that little
convulsive twitch or the fingers peculiar to a miser when he regains
possession of that which has been well-nigh lost. From that day
forth he never troubled himself about money again or inquired whence
it came. But when there were potatoes on the table he looked
intoxicated with delight and would laugh and smack his lips before
her turkeys and legs of mutton, though of course this did not
prevent his dealing Nana sundry sharp smacks, as though to keep his
hand in amid all his happiness.
Nana had indeed found means to provide for all needs, and the place
on certain days overflowed with good things. Twice a week,
regularly, Bosc had indigestion. One evening as Mme Lerat was
withdrawing from the scene in high dudgeon because she had noticed a
copious dinner she was not destined to eat in process of
preparation, she could not prevent herself asking brutally who paid
for it all. Nana was taken by surprise; she grew foolish and began
crying.
"Ah, that's a pretty business," said the aunt, who had divined her
meaning.
Nana had resigned herself to it for the sake of enjoying peace in
her own home. Then, too, the Tricon was to blame. She had come
across her in the Rue de Laval one fine day when Fontan had gone out
raging about a dish of cod. She had accordingly consented to the
proposals made her by the Tricon, who happened just then to be in
difficulty. As Fontan never came in before six o'clock, she made
arrangements for her afternoons and used to bring back forty francs,
sixty francs, sometimes more. She might have made it a matter of
ten and fifteen louis had she been able to maintain her former
position, but as matters stood she was very glad thus to earn enough
to keep the pot boiling. At night she used to forget all her
sorrows when Bosc sat there bursting with dinner and Fontan leaned
on his elbows and with an expression of lofty superiority becoming a
man who is loved for his own sake allowed her to kiss him on the
eyelids.
In due course Nana's very adoration of her darling, her dear old
duck, which was all the more passionately blind, seeing that now she
paid for everything, plunged her back into the muddiest depths of
her calling. She roamed the streets and loitered on the pavement in
quest of a five-franc piece, just as when she was a slipshod baggage
years ago. One Sunday at La Rochefoucauld Market she had made her
peace with Satin after having flown at her with furious reproaches
about Mme Robert. But Satin had been content to answer that when
one didn't like a thing there was no reason why one should want to
disgust others with it. And Nana, who was by way of being wide-
minded, had accepted the philosophic view that you never can tell
where your tastes will lead you and had forgiven her. Her curiosity
was even excited, and she began questioning her about obscure vices
and was astounded to be adding to her information at her time of
life and with her knowledge. She burst out laughing and gave vent
to various expressions of surprise. It struck her as so queer, and
yet she was a little shocked by it, for she was really quite the
philistine outside the pale of her own habits. So she went back to
Laure's and fed there when Fontan was dining out. She derived much
amusement from the stories and the amours and the jealousies which
inflamed the female customers without hindering their appetites in
the slightest degree. Nevertheless, she still was not quite in it,
as she herself phrased it. The vast Laure, meltingly maternal as
ever, used often to invite her to pass a day or two at her Asnieries
Villa, a country house containing seven spare bedrooms. But she
used to refuse; she was afraid. Satin, however, swore she was
mistaken about it, that gentlemen from Paris swung you in swings and
played tonneau with you, and so she promised to come at some future
time when it would be possible for her to leave town.
At that time Nana was much tormented by circumstances and not at all
festively inclined. She needed money, and when the Tricon did not
want her, which too often happened, she had no notion where to
bestow her charms. Then began a series of wild descents upon the
Parisian pavement, plunges into the baser sort of vice, whose
votaries prowl in muddy bystreets under the restless flicker of gas
lamps. Nana went back to the public-house balls in the suburbs,
where she had kicked up her heels in the early ill-shod days. She
revisited the dark corners on the outer boulevards, where when she
was fifteen years old men used to hug her while her father was
looking for her in order to give her a hiding. Both the women would
speed along, visiting all the ballrooms and restaurants in a quarter
and climbing innumerable staircases which were wet with spittle and
spilled beer, or they would stroll quietly about, going up streets
and planting themselves in front of carriage gates. Satin, who had
served her apprenticeship in the Quartier Latin, used to take Nana
to Bullier's and the public houses in the Boulevard Saint-Michel.
But the vacations were drawing on, and the Quarter looked too
starved. Eventually they always returned to the principal
boulevards, for it was there they ran the best chance of getting
what they wanted. From the heights of Montmartre to the observatory
plateau they scoured the whole town in the way we have been
describing. They were out on rainy evenings, when their boots got
worn down, and on hot evenings, when their linen clung to their
skins. There were long periods of waiting and endless periods of
walking; there were jostlings and disputes and the nameless, brutal
caresses of the stray passer-by who was taken by them to some
miserable furnished room and came swearing down the greasy stairs
afterward.
The summer was drawing to a close, a stormy summer of burning
nights. The pair used to start out together after dinner, toward
nine o'clock. On the pavements of the Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette
two long files of women scudded along with tucked-up skirts and bent
heads, keeping close to the shops but never once glancing at the
displays in the shopwindows as they hurried busily down toward the
boulevards. This was the hungry exodus from the Quartier Breda
which took place nightly when the street lamps had just been lit.
Nana and Satin used to skirt the church and then march off along the
Rue le Peletier. When they were some hundred yards from the Cafe
Riche and had fairly reached their scene of operations they would
shake out the skirts of their dresses, which up till that moment
they had been holding carefully up, and begin sweeping the
pavements, regardless of dust. With much swaying of the hips they
strolled delicately along, slackening their pace when they crossed
the bright light thrown from one of the great cafes. With shoulders
thrown back, shrill and noisy laughter and many backward glances at
the men who turned to look at them, they marched about and were
completely in their element. In the shadow of night their
artificially whitened faces, their rouged lips and their darkened
eyelids became as charming and suggestive as if the inmates of a
make-believe trumpery oriental bazaar had been sent forth into the
open street. Till eleven at night they sauntered gaily along among
the rudely jostling crowds, contenting themselves with an occasional
"dirty ass!" hurled after the clumsy people whose boot heels had
torn a flounce or two from their dresses. Little familiar
salutations would pass between them and the cafe waiters, and at
times they would stop and chat in front of a small table and accept
of drinks, which they consumed with much deliberation, as became
people not sorry to sit down for a bit while waiting for the
theaters to empty. But as night advanced, if they had not made one
or two trips in the direction of the Rue la Rochefoucauld, they
became abject strumpets, and their hunt for men grew more ferocious
than ever. Beneath the trees in the darkening and fast-emptying
boulevards fierce bargainings took place, accompanied by oaths and
blows. Respectable family parties--fathers, mothers and daughters--
who were used to such scenes, would pass quietly by the while
without quickening their pace. Afterward, when they had walked from
the opera to the GYMNASE some half-score times and in the deepening
night men were rapidly dropping off homeward for good and all, Nana
and Satin kept to the sidewalk in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre.
There up till two o'clock in the morning restaurants, bars and ham-
and-beef shops were brightly lit up, while a noisy mob of women hung
obstinately round the doors of the cafes. This suburb was the only
corner of night Paris which was still alight and still alive, the
only market still open to nocturnal bargains. These last were
openly struck between group and group and from one end of the street
to the other, just as in the wide and open corridor of a disorderly
house. On such evenings as the pair came home without having had
any success they used to wrangle together. The Rue Notre Dame de la
Lorette stretched dark and deserted in front of them. Here and
there the crawling shadow of a woman was discernible, for the
Quarter was going home and going home late, and poor creatures,
exasperated at a night of fruitless loitering, were unwilling to
give up the chase and would still stand, disputing in hoarse voices
with any strayed reveler they could catch at the corner of the Rue
Breda or the Rue Fontaine.
Nevertheless, some windfalls came in their way now and then in the
shape of louis picked up in the society of elegant gentlemen, who
slipped their decorations into their pockets as they went upstairs
with them. Satin had an especially keen scent for these. On rainy
evenings, when the dripping city exhaled an unpleasant odor
suggestive of a great untidy bed, she knew that the soft weather and
the fetid reek of the town's holes and corners were sure to send the
men mad. And so she watched the best dressed among them, for she
knew by their pale eyes what their state was. On such nights it was
as though a fit of fleshly madness were passing over Paris. The
girl was rather nervous certainly, for the most modish gentlemen
were always the most obscene. All the varnish would crack off a
man, and the brute beast would show itself, exacting, monstrous in
lust, a past master in corruption. But besides being nervous, that
trollop of a Satin was lacking in respect. She would blurt out
awful things in front of dignified gentlemen in carriages and assure
them that their coachmen were better bred than they because they
behaved respectfully toward the women and did not half kill them
with their diabolical tricks and suggestions. The way in which
smart people sprawled head over heels into all the cesspools of vice
still caused Nana some surprise, for she had a few prejudices
remaining, though Satin was rapidly destroying them.
"Well then," she used to say when talking seriously about the
matter, "there's no such thing as virtue left, is there?"
From one end of the social ladder to the other everybody was on the
loose! Good gracious! Some nice things ought to be going on in
Paris between nine o'clock in the evening and three in the morning!
And with that she began making very merry and declaring that if one
could only have looked into every room one would have seen some
funny sights--the little people going it head over ears and a good
lot of swells, too, playing the swine rather harder than the rest.
Oh, she was finishing her education!
One evenlng when she came to call for Satin she recognized the
Marquis de Chouard. He was coming downstairs with quaking legs; his
face was ashen white, and he leaned heavily on the banisters. She
pretended to be blowing her nose. Upstairs she found Satin amid
indescribable filth. No household work had been done for a week;
her bed was disgusting, and ewers and basins were standing about in
all directions. Nana expressed surprise at her knowing the marquis.
Oh yes, she knew him! He had jolly well bored her confectioner and
her when they were together. At present he used to come back now
and then, but he nearly bothered her life out, going sniffing into
all the dirty corners--yes, even into her slippers!
"Yes, dear girl, my slippers! Oh, he's the dirtiest old beast,
always wanting one to do things!"
The sincerity of these low debauches rendered Nana especially
uneasy. Seeing the courtesans around her slowly dying of it every
day, she recalled to mind the comedy of pleasure she had taken part
in when she was in the heyday of success. Moreover, Satin inspired
her with an awful fear of the police. She was full of anecdotes
about them. Formerly she had been the mistress of a plain-clothes
man, had consented to this in order to be left in peace, and on two
occasions he had prevented her from being put "on the lists." But
at present she was in a great fright, for if she were to be nabbed
again there was a clear case against her. You had only to listen to
her! For the sake of perquisites the police used to take up as many
women as possible. They laid hold of everybody and quieted you with
a slap if you shouted, for they were sure of being defended in their
actions and rewarded, even when they had taken a virtuous girl among
the rest. In the summer they would swoop upon the boulevard in
parties of twelve or fifteen, surround a whole long reach of
sidewalk and fish up as many as thirty women in an evening. Satin,
however, knew the likely places, and the moment she saw a plain-
clothes man heaving in sight she took to her heels, while the long
lines of women on the pavements scattered in consternation and fled
through the surrounding crowd. The dread of the law and of the
magistracy was such that certain women would stand as though
paralyzed in the doorways of the cafes while the raid was sweeping
the avenue without. But Satin was even more afraid of being
denounced, for her pastry cook had proved blackguard enough to
threaten to sell her when she had left him. Yes, that was a fake by
which men lived on their mistresses! Then, too, there were the
dirty women who delivered you up out of sheer treachery if you were
prettier than they! Nana listened to these recitals and felt her
terrors growing upon her. She had always trembled before the law,
that unknown power, that form of revenge practiced by men able and
willing to crush her in the certain absence of all defenders.
Saint-Lazare she pictured as a grave, a dark hole, in which they
buried live women after they had cut off their hair. She admitted
that it was only necessary to leave Fontan and seek powerful
protectors. But as matters stood it was in vain that Satin talked
to her of certain lists of women's names, which it was the duty of
the plainclothes men to consult, and of certain photographs
accompanying the lists, the originals of which were on no account to
be touched. The reassurance did not make her tremble the less, and
she still saw herself hustled and dragged along and finally
subjected to the official medical inspection. The thought of the
official armchair filled her with shame and anguish, for had she not
bade it defiance a score of times?
Now it so happened that one evening toward the close of September,
as she was walking with Satin in the Boulevard Poissonniere, the
latter suddenly began tearing along at a terrible pace. And when
Nana asked her what she meant thereby:
"It's the plain-clothes men!" whispered Satin. "Off with you! Off
with you!" A wild stampede took place amid the surging crowd.
Skirts streamed out behind and were torn. There were blows and
shrieks. A woman fell down. The crowd of bystanders stood
hilariously watching this rough police raid while the plain-clothes
men rapidly narrowed their circle. Meanwhile Nana had lost Satin.
Her legs were failing her, and she would have been taken up for a
certainty had not a man caught her by the arm and led her away in
front of the angry police. It was Prulliere, and he had just
recognized her. Without saying a word he turned down the Rue
Rougemont with her. It was just then quite deserted, and she was
able to regain breath there, but at first her faintness and
exhaustion were such that he had to support her. She did not even
thank him.
"Look here," he said, "you must recover a bit. Come up to my
rooms."
He lodged in the Rue Bergere close by. But she straightened herself
up at once.
"No, I don't want to."
Thereupon he waxed coarse and rejoined:
"Why don't you want to, eh? Why, everybody visits my rooms."
"Because I don't."
In her opinion that explained everything. She was too fond of
Fontan to betray him with one of his friends. The other people
ceased to count the moment there was no pleasure in the business,
and necessity compelled her to it. In view of her idiotic obstinacy
Prulliere, as became a pretty fellow whose vanity had been wounded,
did a cowardly thing.
"Very well, do as you like!" he cried. "Only I don't side with you,
my dear. You must get out of the scrape by yourself."
And with that he left her. Terrors got hold of her again, and
scurrying past shops and turning white whenever a man drew nigh, she
fetched an immense compass before reaching Montmartre.
On the morrow, while still suffering from the shock of last night's
terrors, Nana went to her aunt's and at the foot of a small empty
street in the Batignolles found herself face to face with
Labordette. At first they both appeared embarrassed, for with his
usual complaisance he was busy on a secret errand. Nevertheless, he
was the first to regain his self-possession and to announce himself
fortunate in meeting her. Yes, certainly, everybody was still
wondering at Nana's total eclipse. People were asking for her, and
old friends were pining. And with that he grew quite paternal and
ended by sermonizing.
"Frankly speaking, between you and me, my dear, the thing's getting
stupid. One can understand a mash, but to go to that extent, to be
trampled on like that and to get nothing but knocks! Are you
playing up for the 'Virtue Prizes' then?"
She listened to him with an embarrassed expression. But when he
told her about Rose, who was triumphantly enjoying her conquest of
Count Muffat, a flame came into her eyes.
"Oh, if I wanted to--" she muttered.
As became an obliging friend, he at once offered to act as
intercessor. But she refused his help, and he thereupon attacked
her in an opposite quarter.
He informed her that Bordenave was busy mounting a play of
Fauchery's containing a splendid part for her.
"What, a play with a part!" she cried in amazement. "But he's in it
and he's told me nothing about it!"
She did not mention Fontan by name. However, she grew calm again
directly and declared that she would never go on the stage again.
Labordette doubtless remained unconvinced, for he continued with
smiling insistence.
"You know, you need fear nothing with me. I get your Muffat ready
for you, and you go on the stage again, and I bring him to you like
a little dog!"
"No!" she cried decisively.
And she left him. Her heroic conduct made her tenderly pitiful
toward herself. No blackguard of a man would ever have sacrificed
himself like that without trumpeting the fact abroad. Nevertheless,
she was struck by one thing: Labordette had given her exactly the
same advice as Francis had given her. That evening when Fontan came
home she questioned him about Fauchery's piece. The former had been
back at the Varietes for two months past. Why then had he not told
her about the part?
"What part?" he said in his ill-humored tone. "The grand lady's
part, maybe? The deuce, you believe you've got talent then! Why,
such a part would utterly do for you, my girl! You're meant for
comic business--there's no denying it!"
She was dreadfully wounded. All that evening he kept chaffing her,
calling her Mlle Mars. But the harder he hit the more bravely she
suffered, for she derived a certain bitter satisfaction from this
heroic devotion of hers, which rendered her very great and very
loving in her own eyes. Ever since she had gone with other men in
order to supply his wants her love for him had increased, and the
fatigues and disgusts encountered outside only added to the flame.
He was fast becoming a sort of pet vice for which she paid, a
necessity of existence it was impossible to do without, seeing that
blows only stimulated her desires. He, on his part, seeing what a
good tame thing she had become, ended by abusing his privileges.
She was getting on his nerves, and he began to conceive so fierce a
loathing for her that he forgot to keep count of his real interests.
When Bosc made his customary remarks to him he cried out in
exasperation, for which there was no apparent cause, that he had had
enough of her and of her good dinners and that he would shortly
chuck her out of doors if only for the sake of making another woman
a present of his seven thousand francs. Indeed, that was how their
liaison ended.
One evening Nana came in toward eleven o'clock and found the door
bolted. She tapped once--there was no answer; twice--still no
answer. Meanwhile she saw light under the door, and Fontan inside
did not trouble to move. She rapped again unwearyingly; she called
him and began to get annoyed. At length Fontan's voice became
audible; he spoke slowly and rather unctuously and uttered but this
one word.
"MERDE!"
She beat on the door with her fists.
"MERDE!"
She banged hard enough to smash in the woodwork.
"MERDE!"
And for upward of a quarter of an hour the same foul expression
buffeted her, answering like a jeering echo to every blow wherewith
she shook the door. At length, seeing that she was not growing
tired, he opened sharply, planted himself on the threshold, folded
his arms and said in the same cold, brutal voice:
"By God, have you done yet? What d'you want? Are you going to let
us sleep in peace, eh? You can quite see I've got company tonight."
He was certainly not alone, for Nana perceived the little woman from
the Bouffes with the untidy tow hair and the gimlet-hole eyes,
standing enjoying herself in her shift among the furniture she had
paid for. But Fontan stepped out on the landing. He looked
terrible, and he spread out and crooked his great fingers as if they
were pincers.
"Hook it or I'll strangle you!"
rhereupon Nana burst into a nervous fit of sobbing. She was
frightened and she made off. This time it was she that was being
kicked out of doors. And in her fury the thought of Muffat suddenly
occurred to her. Ah, to be sure, Fontan, of all men, ought never to
have done her such a turn!
When she was out in the street her first thought was to go and sleep
with Satin, provided the girl had no one with her. She met her in
front of her house, for she, too, had been turned out of doors by
her landlord. He had just had a padlock affixed to her door--quite
illegally, of course, seeing that she had her own furniture. She
swore and talked of having him up before the commissary of police.
In the meantime, as midnight was striking, they had to begin
thinking of finding a bed. And Satin, deeming it unwise to let the
plain-clothes men into her secrets, ended by taking Nana to a woman
who kept a little hotel in the Rue de Laval. Here they were
assigned a narrow room on the first floor, the window of which
opened on the courtyard. Satin remarked:
"I should gladly have gone to Mme Robert's. There's always a corner
there for me. But with you it's out of the question. She's getting
absurdly jealous; she beat me the other night."
When they had shut themselves in, Nana, who had not yet relieved her
feelings, burst into tears and again and again recounted Fontan's
dirty behavior. Satin listened complaisantly, comforted her, grew
even more angry than she in denunciation of the male sex.
"Oh, the pigs, the pigs! Look here, we'll have nothing more to do
with them!"
Then she helped Nana to undress with all the small, busy attentions,
becoming a humble little friend. She kept saying coaxingly:
"Let's go to bed as fast as we can, pet. We shall be better off
there! Oh, how silly you are to get crusty about things! I tell
you, they're dirty brutes. Don't think any more about 'em. I--I
love you very much. Don't cry, and oblige your own little darling
girl."
And once in bed, she forthwith took Nana in her arms and soothed and
comforted her. She refused to hear Fontan's name mentioned again,
and each time it recurred to her friend's lips she stopped it with a
kiss. Her lips pouted in pretty indignation; her hair lay loose
about her, and her face glowed with tenderness and childlike beauty.
Little by little her soft embrace compelled Nana to dry her tears.
She was touched and replied to Satin's caresses. When two o'clock
struck the candle was still burning, and a sound of soft, smothered
laughter and lovers' talk was audible in the room.
But suddenly a loud noise came up from the lower floors of the
hotel, and Satin, with next to nothing on, got up and listened
intently.
"The police!" she said, growing very pale.
"Oh, blast our bad luck! We're bloody well done for!"
Often had she told stories about the raids on hotel made by the
plainclothes men. But that particular night neither of them had
suspected anything when they took shelter in the Rue de Laval. At
the sound of the word "police" Nana lost her head. She jumped out
of bed and ran across the room with the scared look of a madwoman
about to jump out of the window. Luckily, however, the little
courtyard was roofed with glass, which was covered with an iron-wire
grating at the level of the girls' bedroom. At sight of this she
ceased to hesitate; she stepped over the window prop, and with her
chemise flying and her legs bared to the night air she vanished in
the gloom.
"Stop! Stop!" said Satin in a great fright. "You'll kill
yourself."
Then as they began hammering at the door, she shut the window like a
good-natured girl and threw her friend's clothes down into a
cupboard. She was already resigned to her fate and comforted
herself with the thought that, after all, if she were to be put on
the official list she would no longer be so "beastly frightened" as
of yore. So she pretended to be heavy with sleep. She yawned; she
palavered and ended by opening the door to a tall, burly fellow with
an unkempt beard, who said to her:
"Show your hands! You've got no needle pricks on them: you don't
work. Now then, dress!"
"But I'm not a dressmaker; I'm a burnisher," Satin brazenly
declared.
Nevertheless, she dressed with much docility, knowing that argument
was out of the question. Cries were ringing through the hotel; a
girl was clinging to doorposts and refusing to budge an inch.
Another girl, in bed with a lover, who was answering for her
legality, was acting the honest woman who had been grossly insulted
and spoke of bringing an action against the prefect of police. For
close on an hour there was a noise of heavy shoes on the stairs, of
fists hammering on doors, of shrill disputes terminating in sobs, of
petticoats rustling along the walls, of all the sounds, in fact,
attendant on the sudden awakening and scared departure of a flock of
women as they were roughly packed off by three plain-clothes men,
headed by a little oily-mannered, fair-haired commissary of police.
After they had gone the hotel relapsed into deep silence.
Nobody had betrayed her; Nana was saved. Shivering and half dead
with fear, she came groping back into the room. Her bare feet were
cut and bleeding, for they had been torn by the grating. For a long
while she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, listening and
listening. Toward morning, however, she went to sleep again, and at
eight o'clock, when she woke up, she escaped from the hotel and ran
to her aunt's. When Mme Lerat, who happened just then to be
drinking her morning coffee with Zoe, beheld her bedraggled plight
and haggard face, she took note of the hour and at once understood
the state of the case.
"It's come to it, eh?" she cried. "I certainly told you that he
would take the skin off your back one of these days. Well, well,
come in; you'll always find a kind welcome here."
Zoe had risen from her chair and was muttering with respectful
familiarity:
"Madame is restored to us at last. I was waiting for Madame."
But Mme Lerat insisted on Nana's going and kissing Louiset at once,
because, she said, the child took delight in his mother's nice ways.
Louiset, a sickly child with poor blood, was still asleep, and when
Nana bent over his white, scrofulous face, the memory of all she had
undergone during the last few months brought a choking lump into her
throat.
"Oh, my poor little one, my poor little one!" she gasped, bursting
into a final fit of sobbing.
CHAPTER IX
The Petite Duchesse was being rehearsed at the Varietes. The first
act had just been carefully gone through, and the second was about
to begin. Seated in old armchairs in front of the stage, Fauchery
and Bordenave were discussing various points while the prompter,
Father Cossard, a little humpbacked man perched on a straw-bottomed
chair, was turning over the pages of the manuscript, a pencil
between his lips.
"Well, what are they waiting for?" cried Bordenave on a sudden,
tapping the floor savagely with his heavy cane. "Barillot, why
don't they begin?"
"It's Monsieur Bosc that has disappeared," replied Barillot, who was
acting as second stage manager.'
Then there arose a tempest, and everybody shouted for Bosc while
Bordenave swore.
"Always the same thing, by God! It's all very well ringing for 'em:
they're always where they've no business to be. And then they
grumble when they're kept till after four o'clock."
But Bosc just then came in with supreme tranquillity.
"Eh? What? What do they want me for? Oh, it's my turn! You ought
to have said so. All right! Simonne gives the cue: 'Here are the
guests,' and I come in. Which way must I come in?"
"Through the door, of course," cried Fauchery in great exasperation.
"Yes, but where is the door?"
At this Bordenave fell upon Barillot and once more set to work
swearing and hammering the boards with his cane.
"By God! I said a chair was to be put there to stand for the door,
and every day we have to get it done again. Barillot! Where's
Barillot? Another of 'em! Why, they're all going!"
Nevertheless, Barillot came and planted the chair down in person,
mutely weathering the storm as he did so. And the rehearsal began
again. Simonne, in her hat and furs, began moving about like a
maidservant busy arranging furniture. She paused to say:
"I'm not warm, you know, so I keep my hands in my muff."
Then changing her voice, she greeted Bosc with a little cry:
"La, it's Monsieur le Comte. You're the first to come, Monsieur le
Comte, and Madame will be delighted."
Bosc had muddy trousers and a huge yellow overcoat, round the collar
of which a tremendous comforter was wound. On his head he wore an
old hat, and he kept his hands in his pockets. He did not act but
dragged himself along, remarking in a hollow voice:
"Don't disturb your mistress, Isabelle; I want to take her by
surprise."
The rehearsal took its course. Bordenave knitted his brows. He had
slipped down low in his armchair and was listening with an air of
fatigue. Fauchery was nervous and kept shifting about in his seat.
Every few minutes he itched with the desire to interrupt, but he
restrained himself. He heard a whispering in the dark and empty
house behind him.
"Is she there?" he asked, leaning over toward Bordenave.
The latter nodded affirmatively. Before accepting the part of
Geraldine, which he was offering her, Nana had been anxious to see
the piece, for she hesitated to play a courtesan's part a second
time. She, in fact, aspired to an honest woman's part. Accordingly
she was hiding in the shadows of a corner box in company with
Labordette, who was managing matters for her with Bordenave.
Fauchery glanced in her direction and then once more set himself to
follow the rehearsal.
Only the front of the stage was lit up. A flaring gas burner on a
support, which was fed by a pipe from the footlights, burned in
front of a reflector and cast its full brightness over the immediate
foreground. It looked like a big yellow eye glaring through the
surrounding semiobscurity, where it flamed in a doubtful, melancholy
way. Cossard was holding up his manuscript against the slender stem
of this arrangement. He wanted to see more clearly, and in the
flood of light his hump was sharply outlined. As to Bordenave and
Fauchery, they were already drowned in shadow. It was only in the
heart of this enormous structure, on a few square yards of stage,
that a faint glow suggested the light cast by some lantern nailed up
in a railway station. It made the actors look like eccentric
phantoms and set their shadows dancing after them. The remainder of
the stage was full of mist and suggested a house in process of being
pulled down, a church nave in utter ruin. It was littered with
ladders, with set pieces and with scenery, of which the faded
painting suggested heaped-up rubbish. Hanging high in air, the
scenes had the appearance of great ragged clouts suspended from the
rafters of some vast old-clothes shop, while above these again a ray
of bright sunlight fell from a window and clove the shadow round the
flies with a bar of gold.
Meanwhile actors were chatting at the back of the stage while
awaiting their cues. Little by little they had raised their voices.
"Confound it, will you be silent?" howled Bordenave, raging up and
down in his chair. "I can't hear a word. Go outside if you want to
talk; WE are at work. Barillot, if there's any more talking I clap
on fines all round!"
They were silent for a second or two. They were sitting in a little
group on a bench and some rustic chairs in the corner of a scenic
garden, which was standing ready to be put in position as it would
be used in the opening act the same evening. In the middle of this
group Fontan and Prulliere were listening to Rose Mignon, to whom
the manager of the Folies-Dramatique Theatre had been making
magnificent offers. But a voice was heard shouting:
"The duchess! Saint-Firmin! The duchess and Saint-Firmin are
wanted!"
Only when the call was repeated did Prulliere remember that he was
Saint-Firmin! Rose, who was playing the Duchess Helene, was already
waiting to go on with him while old Bosc slowly returned to his
seat, dragging one foot after the other over the sonorous and
deserted boards. Clarisse offered him a place on the bench beside
her.
"What's he bawling like that for?" she said in allusion to
Bordenave. "Things will be getting rosy soon! A piece can't be put
on nowadays without its getting on his nerves."
Bosc shrugged his shoulders; he was above such storms. Fontan
whispered:
"He's afraid of a fiasco. The piece strikes me as idiotic."
Then he turned to Clarisse and again referred to what Rose had been
telling them:
"D'you believe in the offers of the Folies people, eh? Three
hundred francs an evening for a hundred nights! Why not a country
house into the bargain? If his wife were to be given three hundred
francs Mignon would chuck my friend Bordenave and do it jolly sharp
too!"
Clarisse was a believer in the three hundred francs. That man
Fontan was always picking holes in his friends' successes! Just
then Simonne interrupted her. She was shivering with cold. Indeed,
they were all buttoned up to the ears and had comforters on, and
they looked up at the ray of sunlight which shone brightly above
them but did not penetrate the cold gloom of the theater. In the
streets outside there was a frost under a November sky.
"And there's no fire in the greenroom!" said Simonne. "It's
disgusting; he IS just becoming a skinflint! I want to be off; I
don't want to get seedy."
"Silence, I say!" Bordenave once more thundered.
Then for a minute or so a confused murmur alone was audible as the
actors went on repeating their parts. There was scarcely any
appropriate action, and they spoke in even tones so as not to tire
themselves. Nevertheless, when they did emphasize a particular
shade of meaning they cast a glance at the house, which lay before
them like a yawning gulf. It was suffused with vague, ambient
shadow, which resembled the fine dust floating pent in some high,
windowless loft. The deserted house, whose sole illumination was
the twilight radiance of the stage, seemed to slumber in melancholy
and mysterious effacement. Near the ceiling dense night smothered
the frescoes, while from the several tiers of stage boxes on either
hand huge widths of gray canvas stretched down to protect the
neighboring hangings. In fact, there was no end to these coverings;
bands of canvas had been thrown over the velvet-covered ledges in
front of the various galleries which they shrouded thickly. Their
pale hue stained the surrounding shadows, and of the general
decorations of the house only the dark recesses of the boxes were
distinguishable. These served to outline the framework of the
several stories, where the seats were so many stains of red velvet
turned black. The chandelier had been let down as far as it would
go, and it so filled the region of the stalls with its pendants as
to suggest a flitting and to set one thinking that the public had
started on a journey from which they would never return.
Just about then Rose, as the little duchess who has been misled into
the society of a courtesan, came to the footlights, lifted up her
hands and pouted adorably at the dark and empty theater, which was
as sad as a house of mourning.
"Good heavens, what queer people!" she said, emphasizing the phrase
and confident that it would have its effect.
Far back in the corner box in which she was hiding Nana sat
enveloped in a great shawl. She was listening to the play and
devouring Rose with her eyes. Turning toward Labordette, she asked
him in a low tone:
"You are sure he'll come?"
"Quite sure. Without doubt he'll come with Mignon, so as to have an
excuse for coming. As soon as he makes his appearance you'll go up
into Mathilde's dressing room, and I'll bring him to you there."
They were talking of Count Muffat. Labordette had arranged this
interview with him on neutral ground. He had had a serious talk
with Bordenave, whose affairs had been gravely damaged by two
successive failures. Accordingly Bordenave had hastened to lend him
his theater and to offer Nana a part, for he was anxious to win the
count's favor and hoped to be able to borrow from him.
"And this part of Geraldine, what d'you thing of it?" continued
Labordette.
But Nana sat motionless and vouchsafed no reply. After the first
act, in which the author showed how the Duc de Beaurivage played his
wife false with the blonde Geraldine, a comic-opera celebrity, the
second act witnessed the Duchess Helene's arrival at the house of
the actress on the occasion of a masked ball being given by the
latter. The duchess has come to find out by what magical process
ladies of that sort conquer and retain their husbands' affections.
A cousin, the handsome Oscar de Saint-Firmin, introduces her and
hopes to be able to debauch her. And her first lesson causes her
great surprise, for she hears Geraldine swearing like a hodman at
the duke, who suffers with most ecstatic submissiveness. The
episode causes her to cry out, "Dear me, if that's the way one ought
to talk to the men!" Geraldine had scarce any other scene in the
act save this one. As to the duchess, she is very soon punished for
her curiosity, for an old buck, the Baron de Tardiveau, takes her
for a courtesan and becomes very gallant, while on her other side
Beaurivage sits on a lounging chair and makes his peace with
Geraldine by dint of kisses and caresses. As this last lady's part
had not yet been assigned to anyone, Father Cossard had got up to
read it, and he was now figuring away in Bosc's arms and emphasizing
it despite himself. At this point, while the rehearsal was dragging
monotonously on, Fauchery suddenly jumped from his chair. He had
restrained himself up to that moment, but now his nerves got the
better of him.
"That's not it!" he cried.
The actors paused awkwardly enough while Fontan sneered and asked in
his most contemptuous voice:
"Eh? What's not it? Who's not doing it right?"
"Nobody is! You're quite wrong, quite wrong!" continued Fauchery,
and, gesticulating wildly, he came striding over the stage and began
himself to act the scene.
"Now look here, you Fontan, do please comprehend the way Tardiveau
gets packed off. You must lean forward like this in order to catch
hold of the duchess. And then you, Rose, must change your position
like that but not too soon--only when you hear the kiss."
He broke off and in the heat of explanation shouted to Cossard:
"Geraldine, give the kiss! Loudly, so that it may be heard!"
Father Cossard turned toward Bosc and smacked his lips vigorously.
"Good! That's the kiss," said Fauchery triumphantly. "Once more;
let's have it once more. Now you see, Rose, I've had time to move,
and then I give a little cry--so: 'Oh, she's given him a kiss.' But
before I do that, Tardiveau must go up the stage. D'you hear,
Fontan? You go up. Come, let's try it again, all together."
The actors continued the scene again, but Fontan played his part
with such an ill grace that they made no sort of progress. Twice
Fauchery had to repeat his explanation, each time acting it out with
more warmth than before. The actors listened to him with melancholy
faces, gazed momentarily at one another, as though he had asked them
to walk on their heads, and then awkwardly essayed the passage, only
to pull up short directly afterward, looking as stiff as puppets
whose strings have just been snapped.
"No, it beats me; I can't understand it," said Fontan at length,
speaking in the insolent manner peculiar to him.
Bordenave had never once opened his lips. He had slipped quite down
in his armchair, so that only the top of his hat was now visible in
the doubtful flicker of the gaslight on the stand. His cane had
fallen from his grasp and lay slantwise across his waistcoat.
Indeed, he seemed to be asleep. But suddenly he sat bolt upright.
"It's idiotic, my boy," he announced quietly to Fauchery.
"What d'you mean, idiotic?" cried the author, growing very pale.
"It's you that are the idiot, my dear boy!"
Bordenave began to get angry at once. He repeated the word
"idiotic" and, seeking a more forcible expression, hit upon
"imbecile" and "damned foolish." The public would hiss, and the act
would never be finished! And when Fauchery, without, indeed, being
very deeply wounded by these big phrases, which always recurred when
a new piece was being put on, grew savage and called the other a
brute, Bordenave went beyond all bounds, brandished his cane in the
air, snorted like a bull and shouted:
"Good God! Why the hell can't you shut up? We've lost a quarter of
an hour over this folly. Yes, folly! There's no sense in it. And
it's so simple, after all's said and done! You, Fontan, mustn't
move. You, Rose, must make your little movement, just that, no
more; d'ye see? And then you come down. Now then, let's get it
done this journey. Give the kiss, Cossard."
Then ensued confusion. The scene went no better than before.
Bordenave, in his turn, showed them how to act it about as
gracefully as an elephant might have done, while Fauchery sneered
and shrugged pityingly. After that Fontan put his word in, and even
Bosc made so bold as to give advice. Rose, thoroughly tired out,
had ended by sitting down on the chair which indicated the door. No
one knew where they had got to, and by way of finish to it all
Simonne made a premature entry, under the impression that her cue
had been given her, and arrived amid the confusion. This so enraged
Bordenave that he whirled his stick round in a terrific manner and
caught her a sounding thwack to the rearward. At rehearsal he used
frequently to drub his former mistress. Simonne ran away, and this
furious outcry followed her:
"Take that, and, by God, if I'm annoyed again I shut the whole shop
up at once!"
Fauchery pushed his hat down over his forehead and pretended to be
going to leave the theater. But he stopped at the top of the stage
and came down again when he saw Bordenave perspiringly resuming his
seat. Then he, too, took up his old position in the other armchair.
For some seconds they sat motionless side by side while oppressive
silence reigned in the shadowy house. The actors waited for nearly
two minutes. They were all heavy with exhaustion and felt as though
they had performed an overwhelming task.
"Well, let's go on," said Bordenave at last. He spoke in his usual
voice and was perfectly calm.
"Yes, let's go on," Fauchery repeated. "We'll arrange the scene
tomorrow."
And with that they dragged on again and rehearsed their parts with
as much listlessness and as fine an indifference as ever. During
the dispute between manager and author Fontan and the rest had been
taking things very comfortably on the rustic bench and seats at the
back of the stage, where they had been chuckling, grumbling and
saying fiercely cutting things. But when Simonne came back, still
smarting from her blow and choking with sobs, they grew melodramatic
and declared that had they been in her place they would have
strangled the swine. She began wiping her eyes and nodding
approval. It was all over between them, she said. She was leaving
him, especially as Steiner had offered to give her a grand start in
life only the day before. Clarisse was much astonished at this, for
the banker was quite ruined, but Prulliere began laughing and
reminded them of the neat manner in which that confounded Israelite
had puffed himself alongside of Rose in order to get his Landes
saltworks afloat on 'change. Just at that time he was airing a new
project, namely, a tunnel under the Bosporus. Simonne listened with
the greatest interest to this fresh piece of information.
As to Clarisse, she had been raging for a week past. Just fancy,
that beast La Faloise, whom she had succeeded in chucking into
Gaga's venerable embrace, was coming into the fortune of a very rich
uncle! It was just her luck; she had always been destined to make
things cozy for other people. Then, too, that pig Bordenave had
once more given her a mere scrap of a part, a paltry fifty lines,
just as if she could not have played Geraldine! She was yearning
for that role and hoping that Nana would refuse it.
"Well, and what about me?" said Prulliere with much bitterness. "I
haven't got more than two hundred lines. I wanted to give the part
up. It's too bad to make me play that fellow Saint-Firmin; why,
it's a regular failure! And then what a style it's written in, my
dears! It'll fall dead flat, you may be sure."
But just then Simonne, who had been chatting with Father Barillot,
came back breathless and announced:
"By the by, talking of Nana, she's in the house."
"Where, where?" asked Clarisse briskly, getting up to look for her.
The news spread at once, and everyone craned forward. The rehearsal
was, as it were, momentarily interrupted. But Bordenave emerged
from his quiescent condition, shouting:
"What's up, eh? Finish the act, I say. And be quiet out there;
it's unbearable!"
Nana was still following the piece from the corner box. Twice
Labordette showed an inclination to chat, but she grew impatient and
nudged him to make him keep silent. The second act was drawing to a
close, when two shadows loomed at the back of the theater. They
were creeping softly down, avoiding all noise, and Nana recognized
Mignon and Count Muffat. They came forward and silently shook hands
with Bordenave.
"Ah, there they are," she murmured with a sigh of relief.
Rose Mignon delivered the last sentences of the act. Thereupon
Bordenave said that it was necessary to go through the second again
before beginning the third. With that he left off attending to the
rehearsal and greeted the count with looks of exaggerated
politeness, while Fauchery pretended to be entirely engrossed with
his actors, who now grouped themselves round him. Mignon stood
whistling carelessly, with his hands behind his back and his eyes
fixed complacently on his wife, who seemed rather nervous.
"Well, shall we go upstairs?" Labordette asked Nana. "I'll install
you in the dressing room and come down again and fetch him."
Nana forthwith left the corner box. She had to grope her way along
the passage outside the stalls, but Bordenave guessed where she was
as she passed along in the dark and caught her up at the end of the
corridor passing behind the scenes, a narrow tunnel where the gas
burned day and night. Here, in order to bluff her into a bargain,
he plunged into a discussion of the courtesan's part.
"What a part it is, eh? What a wicked little part! It's made for
you. Come and rehearse tomorrow."
Nana was frigid. She wanted to know what the third act was like.
"Oh, it's superb, the third act is! The duchess plays the courtesan
in her own house and this disgusts Beaurivage and makes him amend
his way. Then there's an awfully funny QUID PRO QUO, when Tardiveau
arrives and is under the impression that he's at an opera dancer's
house."
"And what does Geraldine do in it all?" interrupted Nana.
"Geraldine?" repeated Bordenave in some embarrassment. "She has a
scene--not a very long one, but a great success. It's made for you,
I assure you! Will you sign?"
She looked steadily at him and at length made answer:
"We'll see about that all in good time."
And she rejoined Labordette, who was waiting for her on the stairs.
Everybody in the theater had recognized her, and there was now much
whispering, especially between Prulliere, who was scandalized at her
return, and Clarisse who was very desirous of the part. As to
Fontan, he looked coldly on, pretending unconcern, for he did not
think it becoming to round on a woman he had loved. Deep down in
his heart, though, his old love had turned to hate, and he nursed
the fiercest rancor against her in return for the constant devotion,
the personal beauty, the life in common, of which his perverse and
monstrous tastes had made him tire.
In the meantime, when Labordette reappeared and went up to the
count, Rose Mignon, whose suspicions Nana's presence had excited,
understood it all forthwith. Muffat was bothering her to death, but
she was beside herself at the thought of being left like this. She
broke the silence which she usually maintained on such subjects in
her husband's society and said bluntly:
"You see what's going on? My word, if she tries the Steiner trick
on again I'll tear her eyes out!"
Tranquilly and haughtily Mignon shrugged his shoulders, as became a
man from whom nothing could be hidden.
"Do be quiet," he muttered. "Do me the favor of being quiet, won't
you?"
He knew what to rely on now. He had drained his Muffat dry, and he
knew that at a sign from Nana he was ready to lie down and be a
carpet under her feet. There is no fighting against passions such
as that. Accordingly, as he knew what men were, he thought of
nothing but how to turn the situation to the best possible account.
It would be necessary to wait on the course of events. And he
waited on them.
"Rose, it's your turn!" shouted Bordenave. "The second act's being
begun again."
"Off with you then," continued Mignon, "and let me arrange matters."
Then he began bantering, despite all his troubles, and was pleased
to congratulate Fauchery on his piece. A very strong piece! Only
why was his great lady so chaste? It wasn't natural! With that he
sneered and asked who had sat for the portrait of the Duke of
Beaurivage, Geraldine's wornout roue. Fauchery smiled; he was far
from annoyed. But Bordenave glanced in Muffat's direction and
looked vexed, and Mignon was struck at this and became serious
again.
"Let's begin, for God's sake!" yelled the manager. "Now then,
Barillot! Eh? What? Isn't Bosc there? Is he bloody well making
game of me now?"
Bosc, however, made his appearance quietly enough, and the rehearsal
began again just as Labordette was taking the count away with him.
The latter was tremulous at the thought of seeing Nana once more.
After the rupture had taken place between them there had been a
great void in his life. He was idle and fancied himself about to
suffer through the sudden change his habits had undergone, and
accordingly he had let them take him to see Rose. Besides, his
brain had been in such a whirl that he had striven to forget
everything and had strenuously kept from seeking out Nana while
avoiding an explanation with the countess. He thought, indeed, that
he owed his dignity such a measure of forgetfulness. But mysterious
forces were at work within, and Nana began slowly to reconquer him.
First came thoughts of her, then fleshly cravings and finally a new
set of exclusive, tender, well-nigh paternal feelings.
The abominable events attendant on their last interview were
gradually effacing themselves. He no longer saw Fontan; he no
longer heard the stinging taunt about his wife's adultery with which
Nana cast him out of doors. These things were as words whose memory
vanished. Yet deep down in his heart there was a poignant smart
which wrung him with such increasing pain that it nigh choked him.
Childish ideas would occur to him; he imagined that she would never
have betrayed him if he had really loved her, and he blamed himself
for this. His anguish was becoming unbearable; he was really very
wretched. His was the pain of an old wound rather than the blind,
present desire which puts up with everything for the sake of
immediate possession. He felt a jealous passion for the woman and
was haunted by longings for her and her alone, her hair, her mouth,
her body. When he remembered the sound of her voice a shiver ran
through him; he longed for her as a miser might have done, with
refinements of desire beggaring description. He was, in fact, so
dolorously possessed by his passion that when Labordette had begun
to broach the subject of an assignation he had thrown himself into
his arms in obedience to irresistible impulse. Directly afterward
he had, of course, been ashamed of an act of self-abandonment which
could not but seem very ridicubus in a man of his position; but
Labordette was one who knew when to see and when not to see things,
and he gave a further proof of his tact when he left the count at
the foot of the stairs and without effort let slip only these simple
words:
"The right-hand passage on the second floor. The door's not shut."
Muffat was alone in that silent corner of the house. As he passed
before the players' waiting room, he had peeped through the open
doors and noticed the utter dilapidation of the vast chamber, which
looked shamefully stained and worn in broad daylight. But what
surprised him most as he emerged from the darkness and confusion of
the stage was the pure, clear light and deep quiet at present
pervading the lofty staircase, which one evening when he had seen it
before had been bathed in gas fumes and loud with the footsteps of
women scampering over the different floors. He felt that the
dressing rooms were empty, the corridors deserted; not a soul was
there; not a sound broke the stillness, while through the square
windows on the level of the stairs the pale November sunlight
filtered and cast yellow patches of light, full of dancing dust,
amid the dead, peaceful air which seemed to descend from the regions
above.
He was glad of this calm and the silence, and he went slowly up,
trying to regain breath as he went, for his heart was thumping, and
he was afraid lest he might behave childishly and give way to sighs
and tears. Accordingly on the first-floor landing he leaned up
against a wall--for he was sure of not being observed--and pressed
his handkerchief to his mouth and gazed at the warped steps, the
iron balustrade bright with the friction of many hands, the scraped
paint on the walls--all the squalor, in fact, which that house of
tolerance so crudely displayed at the pale afternoon hour when
courtesans are asleep. When he reached the second floor he had to
step over a big yellow cat which was lying curled up on a step.
With half-closed eyes this cat was keeping solitary watch over the
house, where the close and now frozen odors which the women nightly
left behind them had rendered him somnolent.
In the right-hand corridor the door of the dressing room had,
indeed, not been closed entirely. Nana was waiting. That little
Mathilde, a drab of a young girl, kept her dressing room in a filthy
state. Chipped jugs stood about anyhow; the dressing table was
greasy, and there was a chair covered with red stains, which looked
as if someone had bled over the straw. The paper pasted on walls
and ceiling was splashed from top to bottom with spots of soapy
water and this smelled so disagreeably of lavender scent turned sour
that Nana opened the window and for some moments stayed leaning on
the sill, breathing the fresh air and craning forward to catch sight
of Mme Bron underneath. She could hear her broom wildly at work on
the mildewed pantiles of the narrow court which was buried in
shadow. A canary, whose cage hung on a shutter, was trilling away
piercingly. The sound of carriages in the boulevard and neighboring
streets was no longer audible, and the quiet and the wide expanse of
sleeping sunlight suggested the country. Looking farther afield,
her eye fell on the small buildings and glass roofs of the galleries
in the passage and, beyond these, on the tall houses in the Rue
Vivienne, the backs of which rose silent and apparently deserted
over against her. There was a succession of terrace roofs close by,
and on one of these a photographer had perched a big cagelike
construction of blue glass. It was all very gay, and Nana was
becoming absorbed in contemplation, when it struck her someone had
knocked at the door.
She turned round and shouted:
"Come in!"
At sight of the count she shut the window, for it was not warm, and
there was no need for the eavesdropping Mme Bron to listen. The
pair gazed at one another gravely. Then as the count still kept
standing stiffly in front of her, looking ready to choke with
emotion, she burst out laughing and said:
"Well! So you're here again, you silly big beast!"
The tumult going on within him was so great that he seemed a man
frozen to ice. He addressed Nana as "madame" and esteemed himself
happy to see her again. Thereupon she became more familiar than
ever in order to bounce matters through.
"Don't do it in the dignified way! You wanted to see me, didn't
you? But you didn't intend us to stand looking at one another like
a couple of chinaware dogs. We've both been in the wrong--Oh, I
certainly forgive you!"
And herewith they agreed not to talk of that affair again, Muffat
nodding his assent as Nana spoke. He was calmer now but as yet
could find nothing to say, though a thousand things rose
tumultuously to his lips. Surprised at his apparent coldness, she
began acting a part with much vigor.
"Come," she continued with a faint smile, "you're a sensible man!
Now that we've made our peace let's shake hands and be good friends
in future."
"What? Good friends?" he murmured in sudden anxiety.
"Yes; it's idiotic, perhaps, but I should like you to think well of
me. We've had our little explanation out, and if we meet again we
shan't, at any rate look like a pair of boobies."
He tried to interrupt her with a movement of the hand.
"Let me finish! There's not a man, you understand, able to accuse
me of doing him a blackguardly turn; well, and it struck me as
horrid to begin in your case. We all have our sense of honor, dear
boy."
"But that's not my meaning!" he shouted violently. "Sit down--
listen to me!" And as though he were afraid of seeing her take her
departure, he pushed her down on the solitary chair in the room.
Then he paced about in growing agitation. The little dressing room
was airless and full of sunlight, and no sound from the outside
world disturbed its pleasant, peaceful, dampish atmosphere. In the
pauses of conversation the shrillings of the canary were alone
audible and suggested the distant piping of a flute.
"Listen," he said, planting himself in front of her, "I've come to
possess myself of you again. Yes, I want to begin again. You know
that well; then why do you talk to me as you do? Answer me; tell me
you consent."
Her head was bent, and she was scratching the blood-red straw of the
seat underneath her. Seeing him so anxious, she did not hurry to
answer. But at last she lifted up her face. It had assumed a grave
expression, and into the beautiful eyes she had succeeded in
infusing a look of sadness.
"Oh, it's impossible, little man. Never, never, will I live with
you again."
"Why?" he stuttered, and his face seemed contracted in unspeakable
suffering.
"Why? Hang it all, because--It's impossible; that's about it. I
don't want to."
He looked ardently at her for some seconds longer. Then his legs
curved under him and he fell on the floor. In a bored voice she
added this simple advice:
"Ah, don't be a baby!"
But he was one already. Dropping at her feet, he had put his arms
round her waist and was hugging her closely, pressing his face hard
against her knees. When he felt her thus--when he once more divined
the presence of her velvety limbs beneath the thin fabric of her
dress--he was suddenly convulsed and trembled, as it were, with
fever, while madly, savagely, he pressed his face against her knees
as though he had been anxious to force through her flesh. The old
chair creaked, and beneath the low ceiling, where the air was
pungent with stale perfumes, smothered sobs of desire were audible.
"Well, and after?" Nana began saying, letting him do as he would.
"All this doesn't help you a bit, seeing that the thing's
impossible. Good God, what a child you are!"
His energy subsided, but he still stayed on the floor, nor did he
relax his hold of her as he said in a broken voice:
"Do at least listen to what I came to offer you. I've already seen
a town house close to the Parc Monceau--I would gladly realize your
smallest wish. In order to have you all to myself, I would give my
whole fortune. Yes, that would be my only condition, that I should
have you all to myself! Do you understand? And if you were to
consent to be mine only, oh, then I should want you to be the
loveliest, the richest, woman on earth. I should give you carriages
and diamonds and dresses!"
At each successive offer Nana shook her head proudly. Then seeing
that he still continued them, that he even spoke of settling money
on her--for he was at loss what to lay at her feet--she apparently
lost patience.
"Come, come, have you done bargaining with me? I'm a good sort, and
I don't mind giving in to you for a minute or two, as your feelings
are making you so ill, but I've had enough of it now, haven't I? So
let me get up. You're tiring me."
She extricated herself from his clasp, and once on her feet:
"No, no, no!" she said. "I don't want to!"
With that he gathered himself up painfully and feebly dropped into a
chair, in which he leaned back with his face in his hands. Nana
began pacing up and down in her turn. For a second or two she
looked at the stained wallpaper, the greasy toilet table, the whole
dirty little room as it basked in the pale sunlight. Then she
paused in front of the count and spoke with quiet directness.
"It's strange how rich men fancy they can have everything for their
money. Well, and if I don't want to consent--what then? I don't
care a pin for your presents! You might give me Paris, and yet I
should say no! Always no! Look here, it's scarcely clean in this
room, yet I should think it very nice if I wanted to live in it with
you. But one's fit to kick the bucket in your palaces if one isn't
in love. Ah, as to money, my poor pet, I can lay my hands on that
if I want to, but I tell you, I trample on it; I spit on it!"
And with that she assumed a disgusted expression. Then she became
sentimental and added in a melancholy tone:
"I know of something worth more than money. Oh, if only someone
were to give me what I long for!"
He slowly lifted his head, and there was a gleam of hope in his eyes.
"Oh, you can't give it me," she continued; "it doesn't depend on
you, and that's the reason I'm talking to you about it. Yes, we're
having a chat, so I may as well mention to you that I should like to
play the part of the respectable woman in that show of theirs."
"What respectable woman?" he muttered in astonishment.
"Why, their Duchess Helene! If they think I'm going to play
Geraldine, a part with nothing in it, a scene and nothing besides--
if they think that! Besides, that isn't the reason. The fact is
I've had enough of courtesans. Why, there's no end to 'em! They'll
be fancying I've got 'em on the brain; to be sure they will!
Besides, when all's said and done, it's annoying, for I can quite
see they seem to think me uneducated. Well, my boy, they're jolly
well in the dark about it, I can tell you! When I want to be a
perfect lady, why then I am a swell, and no mistake! Just look at
this."
And she withdrew as far as the window and then came swelling back
with the mincing gait and circumspect air of a portly hen that fears
to dirty her claws. As to Muffat, he followed her movements with
eyes still wet with tears. He was stupefied by this sudden
transition from anguish to comedy. She walked about for a moment or
two in order the more thoroughly to show off her paces, and as she
walked she smiled subtlely, closed her eyes demurely and managed her
skirts with great dexterity. Then she posted herself in front of
him again.
"I guess I've hit it, eh?"
"Oh, thoroughly," he stammered with a broken voice and a troubled
expression.
"I tell you I've got hold of the honest woman! I've tried at my own
place. Nobody's got my little knack of looking like a duchess who
don't care a damn for the men. Did you notice it when I passed in
front of you? Why, the thing's in my blood! Besides, I want to
play the part of an honest woman. I dream about it day and night--
I'm miserable about it. I must have the part, d'you hear?"
And with that she grew serious, speaking in a hard voice and looking
deeply moved, for she was really tortured by her stupid, tiresome
wish. Muffat, still smarting from her late refusals, sat on without
appearing to grasp her meaning. There was a silence during which
the very flies abstained from buzzing through the quiet, empty place.
"Now, look here," she resumed bluntly, "you're to get them to give
me the part."
He was dumfounded, and with a despairing gesture:
"Oh, it's impossible! You yourself were saying just now that it
didn't depend on me."
She interrupted him with a shrug of the shoulders.
"You'll just go down, and you'll tell Bordenave you want the part.
Now don't be such a silly! Bordenave wants money--well, you'll lend
him some, since you can afford to make ducks and drakes of it."
And as he still struggled to refuse her, she grew angry.
"Very well, I understand; you're afraid of making Rose angry. I
didn't mention the woman when you were crying down on the floor--I
should have had too much to say about it all. Yes, to be sure, when
one has sworn to love a woman forever one doesn't usually take up
with the first creature that comes by directly after. Oh, that's
where the shoe pinches, I remember! Well, dear boy, there's nothing
very savory in the Mignon's leavings! Oughtn't you to have broken
it off with that dirty lot before coming and squirming on my knees?"
He protested vaguely and at last was able to get out a phrase.
"Oh, I don't care a jot for Rose; I'll give her up at once."
Nana seemed satisfied on this point. She continued:
"Well then, what's bothering you? Bordenave's master here. You'll
tell me there's Fauchery after Bordenave--"
She had sunk her voice, for she was coming to the delicate part of
the matter. Muffat sat silent, his eyes fixed on the ground. He
had remained voluntarily ignorant of Fauchery's assiduous attentions
to the countess, and time had lulled his suspicions and set him
hoping that he had been deceiving himself during that fearful night
passed in a doorway of the Rue Taitbout. But he still felt a dull,
angry repugnance to the man.
"Well, what then? Fauchery isn't the devil!" Nana repeated, feeling
her way cautiously and trying to find out how matters stood between
husband and lover. "One can get over his soft side. I promise you,
he's a good sort at bottom! So it's a bargain, eh? You'll tell him
that it's for my sake?"
The idea of taking such a step disgusted the count.
"No, no! Never!" he cried.
She paused, and this sentence was on the verge of utterance:
"Fauchery can refuse you nothing."
But she felt that by way of argument it was rather too much of a
good thing. So she only smiled a queer smile which spoke as plainly
as words. Muffat had raised his eyes to her and now once more
lowered them, looking pale and full of embarrassment.
"Ah, you're not good natured," she muttered at last.
"I cannot," he said with a voice and a look of the utmost anguish.
"I'll do whatever you like, but not that, dear love! Oh, I beg you
not to insist on that!"
Thereupon she wasted no more time in discussion but took his head
between her small hands, pushed it back a little, bent down and
glued her mouth to his in a long, long kiss. He shivered violently;
he trembled beneath her touch; his eyes were closed, and he was
beside himself. She lifted him to his feet.
"Go," said she simply.
He walked off, making toward the door. But as he passed out she
took him in her arms again, became meek and coaxing, lifted her face
to his and rubbed her cheek against his waistcoat, much as a cat
might have done.
"Where's the fine house?" she whispered in laughing embarrassment,
like a little girl who returns to the pleasant things she has
previously refused.
"In the Avenue de Villiers."
"And there are carriages there?"
"Yes."
"Lace? Diamonds?"
"Yes."
"Oh, how good you are, my old pet! You know it was all jealousy
just now! And this time I solemnly promise you it won't be like the
first, for now you understand what's due to a woman. You give all,
don't you? Well then, I don't want anybody but you! Why, look
here, there's some more for you! There and there AND there!"
When she had pushed him from the room after firing his blood with a
rain of kisses on hands and on face, she panted awhile. Good
heavens, what an unpleasant smell there was in that slut Mathilde's
dressing room! It was warm, if you will, with the tranquil warmth
peculiar to rooms in the south when the winter sun shines into them,
but really, it smelled far too strong of stale lavender water, not
to mention other less cleanly things! She opened the window and,
again leaning on the window sill, began watching the glass roof of
the passage below in order to kill time.
Muffat went staggering downstairs. His head was swimming. What
should he say? How should he broach the matter which, moreover, did
not concern him? He heard sounds of quarreling as he reached the
stage. The second act was being finished, and Prulliere was beside
himself with wrath, owing to an attempt on Fauchery's part to cut
short one of his speeches.
"Cut it all out then," he was shouting. "I should prefer that!
Just fancy, I haven't two hundred lines, and they're still cutting
me down. No, by Jove, I've had enough of it; I give the part up."
He took a little crumpled manuscript book out of his pocket and
fingered its leaves feverishly, as though he were just about to
throw it on Cossard's lap. His pale face was convulsed by outraged
vanity; his lips were drawn and thin, his eyes flamed; he was quite
unable to conceal the struggle that was going on inside him. To
think that he, Prulliere, the idol of the public, should play a part
of only two hundred lines!
"Why not make me bring in letters on a tray?" he continued bitterly.
"Come, come, Prulliere, behave decently," said Bordenave, who was
anxious to treat him tenderly because of his influence over the
boxes. "Don't begin making a fuss. We'll find some points. Eh,
Fauchery, you'll add some points? In the third act it would even be
possible to lengthen a scene out."
"Well then, I want the last speech of all," the comedian declared.
"I certainly deserve to have it."
Fauchery's silence seemed to give consent, and Prulliere, still
greatly agitated and discontented despite everything, put his part
back into his pocket. Bosc and Fontan had appeared profoundly
indifferent during the course of this explanation. Let each man
fight for his own hand, they reflected; the present dispute had
nothing to do with them; they had no interest therein! All the
actors clustered round Fauchery and began questioning him and
fishing for praise, while Mignon listened to the last of Prulliere's
complaints without, however, losing sight of Count Muffat, whose
return he had been on the watch for.
Entering in the half-light, the count had paused at the back of the
stage, for he hesitated to interrupt the quarrel. But Bordenave
caught sight of him and ran forward.
"Aren't they a pretty lot?" he muttered. "You can have no idea what
I've got to undergo with that lot, Monsieur le Comte. Each man's
vainer than his neighbor, and they're wretched players all the same,
a scabby lot, always mixed up in some dirty business or other! Oh,
they'd be delighted if I were to come to smash. But I beg pardon--
I'm getting beside myself."
He ceased speaking, and silence reigned while Muffat sought how to
broach his announcement gently. But he failed and, in order to get
out of his difficulty the more quickly, ended by an abrupt
announcement:
"Nana wants the duchess's part."
Bordenave gave a start and shouted:
"Come now, it's sheer madness!"
Then looking at the count and finding him so pale and so shaken, he
was calm at once.
"Devil take it!" he said simply.
And with that there ensued a fresh silence. At bottom he didn't
care a pin about it. That great thing Nana playing the duchess
might possibly prove amusing! Besides, now that this had happened
he had Muffat well in his grasp. Accordingly he was not long in
coming to a decision, and so he turned round and called out:
"Fauchery!"
The count had been on the point of stopping him. But Fauchery did
not hear him, for he had been pinned against the curtain by Fontan
and was being compelled to listen patiently to the comedian's
reading of the part of Tardiveau. Fontan imagined Tardiveau to be a
native of Marseilles with a dialect, and he imitated the dialect.
He was repeating whole speeches. Was that right? Was this the
thing? Apparently he was only submitting ideas to Fauchery of which
he was himself uncertain, but as the author seemed cold and raised
various objections, he grew angry at once.
Oh, very well, the moment the spirit of the part escaped him it
would be better for all concerned that he shouldn't act it at all!
"Fauchery!" shouted Bordenave once more.
Thereupon the young man ran off, delighted to escape from the actor,
who was wounded not a little by his prompt retreat.
"Don't let's stay here," continued Bordenave. "Come this way,
gentlemen."
In order to escape from curious listeners he led them into the
property room behind the scenes, while Mignon watched their
disappearance in some surprise. They went down a few steps and
entered a square room, whose two windows opened upon the courtyard.
A faint light stole through the dirty panes and hung wanly under the
low ceiling. In pigeonholes and shelves, which filled the whole
place up, lay a collection of the most varied kind of bric-a-brac.
Indeed, it suggested an old-clothes shop in the Rue de Lappe in
process of selling off, so indescribable was the hotchpotch of
plates, gilt pasteboard cups, old red umbrellas, Italian jars,
clocks in all styles, platters and inkpots, firearms and squirts,
which lay chipped and broken and in unrecognizable heaps under a
layer of dust an inch deep. An unendurable odor of old iron, rags
and damp cardboard emanated from the various piles, where the debris
of forgotten dramas had been collecting for half a century.
"Come in," Bordenave repeated. "We shall be alone, at any rate."
The count was extremely embarrassed, and he contrived to let the
manager risk his proposal for him. Fauchery was astonished.
"Eh? What?" he asked.
"Just this," said Bordenave finally. "An idea has occurred to us.
Now whatever you do, don't jump! It's most serious. What do you
think of Nana for the duchess's part?"
The author was bewildered; then he burst out with:
"Ah no, no! You're joking, aren't you? People would laugh far too
much."
"Well, and it's a point gained already if they do laugh! Just
reflect, my dear boy. The idea pleases Monsieur le Comte very
much."
In order to keep himself in countenance Muffat had just picked out
of the dust on a neighboring shelf an object which he did not seem
to recognize. It was an eggcup, and its stem had been mended with
plaster. He kept hold of it unconsciously and came forward,
muttering:
"Yes, yes, it would be capital."
Fauchery turned toward him with a brisk, impatient gesture. The
count had nothing to do with his piece, and he said decisively:
"Never! Let Nana play the courtesan as much as she likes, but a
lady--No, by Jove!"
"You are mistaken, I assure you," rejoined the count, growing
bolder. "This very minute she has been playing the part of a pure
woman for my benefit."
"Where?" queried Fauchery with growing surprise.
"Upstairs in a dressing room. Yes, she has, indeed, and with such
distinction! She's got a way of glancing at you as she goes by you--
something like this, you know!"
And eggcup in hand, he endeavored to imitate Nana, quite forgetting
his dignity in his frantic desire to convince the others. Fauchery
gazed at him in a state of stupefaction. He understood it all now,
and his anger had ceased. The count felt that he was looking at him
mockingly and pityingly, and he paused with a slight blush on his
face.
"Egad, it's quite possible!" muttered the author complaisantly.
"Perhaps she would do very well, only the part's been assigned. We
can't take it away from Rose."
"Oh, if that's all the trouble," said Bordenave, "I'll undertake to
arrange matters."
But presently, seeing them both against him and guessing that
Bordenave had some secret interest at stake, the young man thought
to avoid aquiescence by redoubling the violence of his refusal. The
consultation was on the verge of being broken up.
"Oh, dear! No, no! Even if the part were unassigned I should never
give it her! There, is that plain? Do let me alone; I have no wish
to ruin my play!"
He lapsed into silent embarrassment. Bordenave, deeming himself DE
TROP, went away, but the count remained with bowed head. He raised
it with an effort and said in a breaking voice:
"Supposing, my dear fellow, I were to ask this of you as a favor?"
"I cannot, I cannot," Fauchery kept repeating as he writhed to get
free.
Muffat's voice became harder.
"I pray and beseech you for it! I want it!"
And with that he fixed his eyes on him. The young man read menaces
in that darkling gaze and suddenly gave way with a splutter of
confused phrases:
"Do what you like--I don't care a pin about it. Yes, yes, you're
abusing your power, but you'll see, you'll see!"
At this the embarrassment of both increased. Fauchery was leaning
up against a set of shelves and was tapping nervously on the ground
with his foot. Muffat seemed busy examining the eggcup, which he
was still turning round and about.
"It's an eggcup," Bordenave obligingly came and remarked.
"Yes, to be sure! It's an eggeup," the count repeated.
"Excuse me, you're covered with dust," continued the manager,
putting the thing back on a shelf. "If one had to dust every day
there'd be no end to it, you understand. But it's hardly clean
here--a filthy mess, eh? Yet you may believe me or not when I tell
you there's money in it. Now look, just look at all that!"
He walked Muffat round in front of the pigeonholes and shelves and
in the greenish light which filtered through the courtyard, told him
the names of different properties, for he was anxious to interest
him in his marine-stores inventory, as he jocosely termed it.
Presently, when they had returned into Fauchery's neighborhood, he
said carelessly enough:
"Listen, since we're all of one mind, we'll finish the matter at
once. Here's Mignon, just when he's wanted."
For some little time past Mignon had been prowling in the adjoining
passage, and the very moment Bordenave began talking of a
modification of their agreement he burst into wrathful protest. It
was infamous--they wanted to spoil his wife's career--he'd go to law
about it! Bordenave, meanwhile, was extremely calm and full of
reasons. He did not think the part worthy of Rose, and he preferred
to reserve her for an operetta, which was to be put on after the
Petite Duchesse. But when her husband still continued shouting he
suddenly offered to cancel their arrangement in view of the offers
which the Folies-Dramatiques had been making the singer. At this
Mignon was momenrarily put out, so without denying the truth of
these offers he loudly professed a vast disdain for money. His
wife, he said, had been engaged to play the Duchess Helene, and she
would play the part even if he, Mignon, were to be ruined over it.
His dignity, his honor, were at stake! Starting from this basis,
the discussion grew interminable. The manager, however, always
returned to the following argument: since the Folies had offered
Rose three hundred francs a night during a hundred performances, and
since she only made a hundred and fifty with him, she would be the
gainer by fifteen thousand francs the moment he let her depart. The
husband, on his part, did not desert the artist's position. What
would people say if they saw his wife deprived of her part? Why,
that she was not equal to it; that it had been deemed necessary to
find a substitute for her! And this would do great harm to Rose's
reputation as an artist; nay, it would diminish it. Oh no, no!
Glory before gain! Then without a word of warning he pointed out a
possible arrangement: Rose, according to the terms of her agreement,
was pledged to pay a forfeit of ten thousand francs in case she gave
up the part. Very well then, let them give her ten thousand francs,
and she would go to the Folies-Dramatiques. Bordenave was utterly
dumfounded while Mignon, who had never once taken his eyes off the
count, tranquilly awaited results.
"Then everything can be settled," murmured Muffat in tones of
relief; "we can come to an understanding."
"The deuce, no! That would be too stupid!" cried Bordenave,
mastered by his commercial instincts. "Ten thousand francs to let
Rose go! Why, people would make game of me!"
But the count, with a multiplicity of nods, bade him accept. He
hesitated, and at last with much grumbling and infinite regret over
the ten thousand francs which, by the by, were not destined to come
out of his own pocket he bluntly continued:
"After all, I consent. At any rate, I shall have you off my hands."
For a quarter of an hour past Fontan had been listening in the
courtyard. Such had been his curiosity that he had come down and
posted himself there, but the moment he understood the state of the
case he went upstairs again and enjoyed the treat of telling Rose.
Dear me! They were just haggling in her behalf! He dinned his
words into her ears; she ran off to the property room. They were
silent as she entered. She looked at the four men. Muffat hung his
head; Fauchery answered her questioning glance with a despairing
shrug of the shoulders; as to Mignon, he was busy discussing the
terms of the agreement with Bordenave.
"What's up?" she demanded curtly.
"Nothing," said her husband. "Bordenave here is giving ten thousand
francs in order to get you to give up your part."
She grew tremulous with anger and very pale, and she clenched her
little fists. For some moments she stared at him, her whole nature
in revolt. Ordinarily in matters of business she was wont to trust
everything obediently to her husband, leaving him to sign agreements
with managers and lovers. Now she could but cry:
"Oh, come, you're too base for anything!"
The words fell like a lash. Then she sped away, and Mignon, in
utter astonishment, ran after her. What next? Was she going mad?
He began explaining to her in low tones that ten thousand francs
from one party and fifteen thousand from the other came to twenty-
five thousand. A splendid deal! Muffat was getting rid of her in
every sense of the word; it was a pretty trick to have plucked him
of this last feather! But Rose in her anger vouchsafed no answer.
Whereupon Mignon in disdain left her to her feminine spite and,
turning to Bordenave, who was once more on the stage with Fauchery
and Muffat, said:
"We'll sign tomorrow morning. Have the money in readiness."
At this moment Nana, to whom Labordette had brought the news, came
down to the stage in triumph. She was quite the honest woman now
and wore a most distinguished expression in order to overwhelm her
friends and prove to the idiots that when she chose she could give
them all points in the matter of smartness. But she nearly got into
trouble, for at the sight of her Rose darted forward, choking with
rage and stuttering:
"Yes, you, I'll pay you out! Things can't go on like this; d'you
understand?" Nana forgot herself in face of this brisk attack and
was going to put her arms akimbo and give her what for. But she
controlled herself and, looking like a marquise who is afraid of
treading on an orange peel, fluted in still more silvery tones.
"Eh, what?" said she. "You're mad, my dear!"
And with that she continued in her graceful affectation while Rose
took her departure, followed by Mignon, who now refused to recognize
her. Clarisse was enraptured, having just obtained the part of
Geraldine from Bordenave. Fauchery, on the other hand, was gloomy;
he shifted from one foot to the other; he could not decide whether
to leave the theater or no. His piece was bedeviled, and he was
seeking how best to save it. But Nana came up, took him by both
hands and, drawing him toward her, asked whether he thought her so
very atrocious after all. She wasn't going to eat his play--not
she! Then she made him laugh and gave him to understand that he
would be foolish to be angry with her, in view of his relationship
to the Muffats. If, she said, her memory failed her she would take
her lines from the prompter. The house, too, would be packed in
such a way as to ensure applause. Besides, he was mistaken about
her, and he would soon see how she would rattle through her part.
By and by it was arranged that the author should make a few changes
in the role of the duchess so as to extend that of Prulliere. The
last-named personage was enraptured. Indeed, amid all the joy which
Nana now quite naturally diffused, Fontan alone remained unmoved.
In the middle of the yellow lamplight, against which the sharp
outline offa, there were twenty thousand francs' worth of POINT
DE VENISE lace. The furniture was lacquered blue and white under
designs in silver filigree, and everywhere lay such numbers of white
bearskins that they hid the carpet. This was a luxurious caprice on
Nana's part, she having never been able to break herself of the
habit of sitting on the floor to take her stockings off. Next door
to the bedroom the little saloon was full of an amusing medley of
exquisitely artistic objects. Against the hangings of pale rose-
colored silk--a faded Turkish rose color, embroidered with gold
thread--a whole world of them stood sharply outlined. They were
from every land and in every possible style. There were Italian
cabinets, Spanish and Portuguese coffers, models of Chinese pagodas,
a Japanese screen of precious workmanship, besides china, bronzes,
embroidered silks, his goatlike profile shone out with great distinctness,
he stood showing off his figure and affecting the pose of one who
has been cruelly abandoned. Nana went quietly up and shook hands
with him.
"How are you getting on?"
"Oh, pretty fairly. And how are you?"
"Very well, thank you."
That was all. They seemed to have only parted at the doors of the
theater the day before. Meanwhile the players were waiting about,
but Bordenave said that the third act would not be rehearsed. And
so it chanced that old Bosc went grumbling away at the proper time,
whereas usually the company were needlessly detained and lost whole
afternoons in consequence. Everyone went off. Down on the pavement
they were blinded by the broad daylight and stood blinking their
eyes in a dazed sort of way, as became people who had passed three
hours squabbling with tight-strung nerves in the depths of a cellar.
The count, with racked limbs and vacant brain, got into a conveyance
with Nana, while Labordette took Fauchery off and comforted him.
A month later the first night of the Petite Duchesse proved
supremely disastrous to Nana. She was atrociously bad and displayed
such pretentions toward high comedy that the public grew mirthful.
They did not hiss--they were too amused. From a stage box Rose
Mignon kept greeting her rival's successive entrances with a shrill
laugh, which set the whole house off. It was the beginning of her
revenge. Accordingly, when at night Nana, greatly chagrined, found
herself alone with Muffat, she said furiously:
"What a conspiracy, eh? It's all owing to jealousy. Oh, if they
only knew how I despise 'em! What do I want them for nowadays?
Look here! I'll bet a hundred louis that I'll bring all those who
made fun today and make 'em lick the ground at my feet! Yes, I'll
fine-lady your Paris for you, I will!"
CHAPTER X
Thereupon Nana became a smart woman, mistress of all that is foolish
and filthy in man, marquise in the ranks of her calling. It was a
sudden but decisive start, a plunge into the garish day of gallant
notoriety and mad expenditure and that daredevil wastefulness
peculiar to beauty. She at once became queen among the most
expensive of her kind. Her photographs were displayed in
shopwindows, and she was mentioned in the papers. When she drove in
her carriage along the boulevards the people would turn and tell one
another who that was with all the unction of a nation saluting its
sovereign, while the object of their adoration lolled easily back in
her diaphanous dresses and smiled gaily under the rain of little
golden curls which ran riot above the blue of her made-up eyes and
the red of her painted lips. And the wonder of wonders was that the
great creature, who was so awkward on the stage, so very absurd the
moment she sought to act the chaste woman, was able without effort
to assume the role of an enchantress in the outer world. Her
movements were lithe as a serpent's, and the studied and yet
seemingly involuntary carelessness with which she dressed was really
exquisite in its elegance. There was a nervous distinction in all
she did which suggested a wellborn Persian cat; she was an
aristocrat in vice and proudly and rebelliously trampled upon a
prostrate Paris like a sovereign whom none dare disobey. She set
the fashion, and great ladies imitated her.
Nana's fine house was situated at the hangingscorner of the Rue Cardinet, in
the Avenue de Villiers. The avenue was part of the luxurious
quarter at that time springing up in the vague district which had
once been the Plaine Monceau. The house had been built by a young
painter, who was intoxicated by a first success, and had been
perforce resold almost as soon as it was habitable. It was in the
palatial Renaissance manner and had fantastic interior arrangements
which consisted of modern conveniences framed in a setting of
somewhat artificial originality. Count Muffat had bought the house
ready furnished and full of hosts of beautiful objects--lovely
Eastern hangings, old credences, huge chairs of the Louis XIII
epoch. And thus Nana had come into artistic surroundings of the
choicest kind and of the most extravagantly various dates. But
since the studio, which occupied the central portion of the house,
could not be of any use to her, she had upset existing arrangements,
establishing a small drawing room on the first floor, next to her
bedroom and dressing room, and leaving a conservatory, a large
drawing room and a dining room to look after themselves underneath.
She astonished the architect with her ideas, for, as became a
Parisian workgirl who understands the elegancies of life by
instinct, she had suddenly developed a very pretty taste for every
species of luxurious refinement. Indeed, she did not spoil her
house overmuch; nay, she even added to the richness of the
furniture, save here and there, where certain traces of tender
foolishness and vulgar magnificence betrayed the ex-flower seller
who had been wont to dream in front of shopwindows in the arcades.
A carpet was spread on the steps beneath the great awning over the
front door in the court, and the moment you entered the hall you
were greeted by a perfume as of violets and a soft, warm atmosphere
which thick hangings helped to produce. A window, whose yellow- and
rose-colored panes suggested the warm pallor of human flesh, gave
light to the wide staircase, at the foot of which a Negro in carved
wood held out a silver tray full of visiting cards and four white
marble women, with bosoms displayed, raised lamps in their uplifted
hands. Bronzes and Chinese vases full of flowers, divans covered
with old Persian rugs, armchairs upholstered in old tapestry,
furnished the entrance hall, adorned the stairheads and gave the
first-floor landing the appearance of an anteroom. Here men's
overcoats and hats were always in evidence, and there were thick
hangings which deadened every sound. It seemed a place apart: on
entering it you might have fancied yourself in a chapel, whose very
air was thrilling with devotion, whose very silence and seclusion
were fraught with mystery.
Nana only opened the large and somewhat too-sumptuous Louis XVI
drawing room on those gala nights when she received society from the
Tuileries or strangers of distinction. Ordinarily she only came
downstairs at mealtimes, and she woul of the finest needlework. Armchairs
wide as beds and sofas deep as alcoves suggested voluptuous idleness
and the somnolent life of the seraglio. The prevailing tone of the
room was old gold blended with green and red, and nothing it
contained too forcibly indicated the presence of the courtesan save
the luxuriousness of the seats. Only two "biscuit" statuettes, a
woman in her shift, hunting for fleas, and another with nothing at
all on, walking on her hands and waving her feet in the air,
sufficed to sully the room with a note of stupid originality.
Through a door, which was nearly always ajar, the dressing room was
visible. It was all in marble and glass with a white bath, silver
jugs and basins and crystal and ivory appointments. A drawn curtain
filled the place with a clear twilight which seemed to slumber in
the warm scent of violets, that suggestive perfume peculiar to Nana
wherewith the whole house, from the roof to the very courtyard, was
penetrated.
The furnishing of the house was a most important undertaking. Nana
certainly had Zoe with her, that girl so devoted to her fortunes.
For months she had been tranquilly awaiting this abrupt, new
departure, as became a woman who was certain of her powers of
prescience, and now she was triumphant; she was mistress of the
house and was putting by a round sum while serving Madame as
honestly as possible. But a solitary lady's maid wasd feel rather lost on such days
as she lunched by herself in the lofty dining room with its Gobelin
tapestry and its monumental sideboard, adorned with old porcelain
and marvelous pieces of ancient plate. She used to go upstairs
again as quickly as possible, for her home was on the first floor,
in the three rooms, the bed, dressing and small drawing room above
described. Twice already she had done the bedchamber up anew: on
the first occasion in mauve satin, on the second in blue silk under
lace. But she had not been satisfied with this; it had struck her
as "nohowish," and she was still unsuccessfully seeking for new
colors and designs. On the elaborately upholstered bed, which was
as low as a so no longer
sufficient. A butler, a coachman, a porter and a cook were wanted.
Besides, it was necessary to fill the stables. It was then that
Labordette made himself most useful. He undertook to perform all
sorts of errands which bored the count; he made a comfortable job of
the purchase of horses; he visited the coachbuilders; he guided the
young woman in her choice of things. She was to be met with at the
shops, leaning on his arm. Labordette even got in the servants--
Charles, a great, tall coachman, who had been in service with the
Duc de Corbreuse; Julien, a little, smiling, much-becurled butler,
and a married couple, of whom the wife Victorine became cook while
the husband Francois was taken on as porter and footman. The last
mentioned in powder and breeches wore Nana's livery, which was a
sky-blue one adorned with silver lace, and he received visitors in
the hall. The whole thing was princely in the correctness of its
style.
At the end of two months the house was set going. The cost had been
more than three hundred thousand francs. There were eight horses in
the stables, and five carriages in the coach houses, and of these
five one was a landau with silver embellishments, which for the
moment occupied the attention of all Paris. And amid this great
wealth Nana began settling down and making her nest. After the
third representation of the Petite Duchesse she had quitted the
theater, leaving Bordenave to struggle on against a bankruptcy
which, despite the count's money, was imminent. Nevertheless, she
was still bitter about her failure. It added to that other
bitterness, the lesson Fontan had given her, a shameful lesson for
which she held all men responsible. Accordingly she now declared
herself very firm and quite proof against sudden infatuations, but
thoughts of vengeance took no hold of her volatile brain. What did
maintain a hold on it in the hours when she was not indignant was an
ever-wakeful lust of expenditure, added to a natural contempt for
the man who paid and to a perpetual passion for consumption and
waste, which took pride in the ruin of her lovers.
At starting Nana put the count on a proper footing and clearly
mapped out the conditions of their relationship. The count gave
twelve thousand francs monthly, presents excepted, and demanded
nothing in return save absolute fidelity. She swore fidelity but
insisted also on being treated with the utmost consideration, on
enjoying complete liberty as mistress of the house and on having her
every wish respected. For instance, she was to receive her friends
every day, and he was to come only at stated times. In a word, he
was to repose a blind confidence in her in everything. And when he
was seized with jealous anxiety and hesitated to grant what she
wanted, she stood on her dignity and threatened to give him back all
he had given or even swore by little Louiset to perform what she
promised. This was to suffice him. There was no love where mutual
esteem was wanting. At the end of the first month Muffat respected
her.
But she desired and obtained still more. Soon she began to
influence him, as became a good-natured courtesan. When he came to
her in a moody condition she cheered him up, confessed him and then
gave him good advice. Little by little she interested herself in
the annoyanceut of
the troubled waters.
One morning when Muffat had not yet left the bedroom Zoe ushered a
gentleman into the dressing room, where Nana was changing her
underwear. He was trembling violently.
"Good gracious! It's Zizi!" said the young woman in great
astonishment.
It was, indeed, Georges. But when he saw her in her shift, with her
golden hair over her bare shoulders, he threw his arms round her
neck and round her waist and kissed her in all directions. She
began struggling to get free, for she was frightened, and in
smothered tones she stammered:
"Do leave off! He's there! Oh, it's silly of you! And you, Zoe,
are you out of your senses? Take him away and keep him downstairs;
I'll try and come down."
Zoe had to push him in front of her. When Nana was able to rejoin
them in the drawing room downstairs she scolded them both, and Zoe
pursed up her lips and took her departure with a vexed expression,
remarking that she had only been anxious to give Madame a pleasure.
Georges was so glad to see Nana again and gazed at her with such
delight that his fine eyes began filling with tears. The miserable
days were over now; his mother believed him to have grown reasonable
and had allowed him to leave Les Fondettes. Accordingly, the moment
he had reached the terminus, he had got a conveyance in order the
more quickly to come and kiss his sweet darling. He spoke of living
at her sids of his home life, in his wife, in his daughter, in
his love affairs and financial difficulties; she was very sensible,
very fair and right-minded. On one occasion only did she let anger
get the better of her, and that was when he confided to her that
doubtless Daguenet was going to ask for his daughter Estelle in
marriage. When the count began making himself notorious Daguenet
had thought it a wise move to break off with Nana. He had treated
her like a base hussy and had sworn to snatch his future father-in-
law out of the creature's clutches. In return Nana abused her old
Mimi in a charming fashion. He was a renegade who had devoured his
fortune in the company of vile women; he had no moral sense. True,
he did not let them pay him money, but he profited by that of others
and only repaid them at rare intervals with a bouquet or a dinner.
And when the count seemed inclined to find excuses for these
failings she bluntly informed him that Daguenet had enjoyed her
favors, and she added disgusting particulars. Muffat had grown
ashen-pale. There was no question of the young man now. This would
teach him to be lacking in gratitude!
Meanwhile the house had not been entirely furnished, when one
evening after she had lavished the most energetic promises of
fidelity on Muffat Nana kept the Count Xavier de Vandeuvres for the
night. For the last fortnight he had been paying her assiduous
court, visiting her and sending presents of flowers, and now she
gave way not so much out of sudden infatuation as to prove that she
was a free woman. The idea of gain followed later when, the day
after, Vandeuvres helped her to pay a bill which she did not wish to
mention to the other man. From Vandeuvres she would certainly
derive from eight to ten thousand francs a month, and this would
prove very useful as pocket money. In those days he was finishing
the last of his fortune in an access of burning, feverish folly.
His horses and Lucy had devoured three of his farms, and at one gulp
Nana was going to swallow his last chateau, near Amiens. He seemed
in a hurry to sweep everything away, down to the ruins of the old
tower built by a Vandeuvres under Philip Augustus. He was mad for
ruin and thought it a great thing to leave the last golden bezants
of his coat of arms in the grasp of this courtesan, whom the world
of Paris desired. He, too, accepted Nana's conditions, leaving her
entire freedom of action and claiming her caresses only on certain
days. He was not even naively impassioned enough to require her to
make vows. Muffat suspected nothing. As to Vandeuvres, he knew
things would take place for a certainty, but he never made the least
allusion to them and pretended total ignorance, while his lips wore
the subtle smile of the skeptical man of pleasure who does not seek
the impossible, provided he can have his day and that Paris is aware
of it.
From that time forth Nana's house was really properly appointed.
The staff of servants was complete in the stable, in the kitchen and
in my lady's chamber. Zoe organized everything and passed
successfully through the most unforeseen difficulties. The
household moved as easily as the scenery in a theater and was
regulated like a grand administrative concern. Indeed, it worked
with such precision that during the early months there were no jars
and no derangements. Madame, however, pained Zoe extremely with her
imprudent acts, her sudden fits of unwisdom, her mad bravado. Still
the lady's maid grew gradually lenient, for she had noticed that she
made increased profits in seasons of wanton waste when Madame had
committed a folly which must be made up for. It was then that the
presents began raining on her, and she fished up many a louis oe in future, as he used to do down in
the country when he
waited for her, barefooted, in the bedroom at La Mignotte. And as
he told her about himself, he let his fingers creep forward, for he
longed to touch her after that cruel year of separation. Then he
got possession of her hands, felt about the wide sleeves of her
dressing jacket, traveled up as far as her shoulders.
"You still love your baby?" he asked in his child voice.
"Oh, I certainly love him!" answered Nana, briskly getting out of
his clutches. "But you come popping in without warning. You know,
my little man, I'm not my own mistress; you must be good!"
Georges, when he got out of his cab, had been so dizzy with the
feeling that his long desire was at last about to be satisfied that
he had not even noticed what sort of house he was entering. But now
he became conscious of a change in the things around him. He
examined the sumptuous dining room with its lofty decorated ceiling,
its Gobelin hangings, its buffet blazing with plate.
"Yes, yes!" he remarked sadly.
And with that she made him understand that he was never to come in
the mornings but between four and six in the afternoon, if he cared
to. That was her reception time. Then as he looked at her with
suppliant, questioning eyes and craved no boon at all, she, in her
turn, kissed him on the forehead in the most amiable way.
"Be very good," she whispered. "I'll do all I can."
But the truth was that this remark now meant nothing. She thought
Georges very nice and would have liked him as a companion, but as
nothing else. Nevertheless, when he arrived daily at four o'clock
he seemed so wretched that she was often fain to be as compliant as
of old and would hide him in cupboards and constantly allow him to
pick up the crumbs from Beauty's table. He hardly ever left the
house now and became as much one of its inmates as the little dog
Bijou. Together they nestled among Mistress's skirts and enjoyed a
little of her at a time, even when she was with another man, while
doles of sugar and stray caresses not seldom fell to their share in
her hours of loneliness and boredom.
Doubtless Mme Hugon found out that the lad had again returned to
that wicked woman's arms, for she hurried up to Paris and came and
sought aid from her other son, the Lieutenant Philippe, who was then
in garrison at Vincennes. Georges, who was hiding from his elder
brother, was seized with despairing apprehension, for he feared the
latter might adopt violent tactics, and as his tenderness for Nana
was so nervously expansive that he could not keep anything from her,
he soon began talking of nothing but his big brother, a great,
strong fellow, who was capable of all kinds of things.
"You know," he explained, "Mamma won't come to you while she can
send my brother. Oh, she'll certainly send Philippe to fetch me."
The first time he said this Nana was deeply wounded. She said
frigidly:
"Gracious me, I should like to see him come! For all that he's a
lieutenant in the army, Francois will chuck him out in double-quick
time!"
Soon, as the lad kept returning to the subject of his brother, she
ended by taking a certain interest in Philippe, and in a week's time
she knew him from head to foot--knew him as very tall and very
strong and merry and somewhat rough. She learned intimate details,
too, and found out that he had hair on his arms and a birthmark on
his shoulder. So thoroughly did she learn her lesson that one day,
when she was full of the image of the man who was to be turned out
of doors by her orders, she cried out:
"I say, Zizi, your brother's not coming. He's a base deserter!"
The next day, when Georges and Nana were alone together, Francois
came upstairs to ask whether Madame would receive Lieutenant
Philippe Hugon. Georges grew extremely white and murmured:
"I suspected it; Mamma was talking about it this morning."
And he besought the young woman to send down word that she could not
see visitors. But she was already on her feet and seemed all aflame
as she said:
"Why should I not see him? He would think me afraid. Dear me,
we'll have a good laugh! Just leave the gentleman in the drawing
room for a quarter of an hour, Francois; afterward bring him up to
me."
She did not sit down again but began pacing feverishly to and fro
between the fireplace and a Venetian mirror hanging above an Italian
chest. And each time she reached the latter she glanced at the
glass and tried the effect of a smile, while Georges sat nervously
on a sofa, trembling at the thought of the coming scene. As she
walked up and down she kept jerking out such little phrases as:
"It will calm the fellow down if he has to wait a quarter of an
hour. Besides, if he thinks he's calling on a tottie the drawing
room will stun him! Yes, yes, have a good look at everything, my
fine fellow! It isn't imitation, and it'll teach you to respect the
lady who owns it. Respect's what men need to feel! The quarter of
an hour's gone by, eh? No? Only ten minutes? Oh, we've got plenty
of time."
She did not stay where she was, however. At the end of the quarter
of an hour she sent Georges away after making him solemnly promise
not to listen at the door, as such conduct would scarcely look
proper in case the servants saw him. As he went into her bedroom
Zizi ventured in a choking sort of way to remark:
"It's my brother, you know--"
"Don't you fear," she said with much dignity; "if he's polite I'll
be polite."
Francois ushered in Philippe Hugon, who wore morning dress. Georges
began crossing on tiptoe on the other side of the room, for he was
anxious to obey the young woman. But the sound of voices retained
him, and he hesitated in such anguish of mind that his knees gave
way under him. He began imagining that a dread catastrophe would
befall, that blows would be struck, that something abominable would
happen, which would make Nana everlastingly odious to him. And so
he could not withstand the temptation to come back and put his ear
against the door. He heard very ill, for the thick portieres
deadened every sound, but he managed to catch certain words spoken
by Philippe, stern phrases in which such terms as "mere child,"
"family," "honor," were distinctly audible. He was so anxious about
his darling's possible answers that his heart beat violently and
filled his head with a confused, buzzing noise. She was sure to
give vent to a "Dirty blackguard!" or to a "Leave me bloody well
alone! I'm in my own house!" But nothing happened--not a breath
came from her direction. Nana seemed dead in there! Soon even his
brother's voice grew gentler, and he could not make it out at all,
when a strange murmuring sound finally stupefied him. Nana was
sobbing! For a moment or two he was the prey of contending feelings
and knew not whether to run away or to fall upon Philippe. But just
then Zoe came into the room, and he withdrew from the door, ashamed
at being thus surprised.
She began quietly to put some linen away in a cupboard while he
stood mute and motionless, pressing his forehead against a
windowpane. He was tortured by uncertainty. After a short silence
the woman asked:
"It's your brother that's with Madame?"
"Yes," replied the lad in a choking voice.
There was a fresh silence.
"And it makes you anxious, doesn't it, Monsieur Georges?"
"Yes," he rejoined in the same painful, suffering tone.
Zoe was in no hurry. She folded up some lace and said slowly:
"You're wrong; Madame will manage it all."
And then the conversation ended; they said not another word. Still
she did not leave the room. A long quarter of an hour passed, and
she turned round again without seeming to notice the look of
exasperation overspreading the lad's face, which was already white
with the effects of uncertainty and constraint. He was casting
sidelong glances in the direction of the drawing room.
Maybe Nana was still crying. The other must have grown savage and
have dealt her blows. Thus when Zoe finally took her departure he
ran to the door and once more pressed his ear against it. He was
thunderstruck; his head swam, for he heard a brisk outburst of
gaiety, tender, whispering voices and the smothered giggles of a
woman who is being tickled. Besides, almost directly afterward,
Nana conducted Philippe to the head of the stairs, and there was an
exchange of cordial and familiar phrases.
When Georges again ventured into the drawing room the young woman
was standing before the mirror, looking at herself.
"Well?" he asked in utter bewilderment.
"Well, what?" she said without turning round. Then negligently:
"What did you mean? He's very nice, is your brother!"
"So it's all right, is it?"
"Oh, certainly it's all right! Goodness me, what's come over you?
One would have thought we were going to fight!"
Georges still failed to understand.
"I thought I heard--that is, you didn't cry?" he stammered out.
"Me cry!" she exclaimed, looking fixedly at him. "Why, you're
dreaming! What makes you think I cried?"
Thereupon the lad was treated to a distressing scene for having
disobeyed and played Paul Pry behind the door. She sulked, and he
returned with coaxing submissiveness to the old subject, for he
wished to know all about it.
"And my brother then?"
"Your brother saw where he was at once. You know, I might have been
a tottie, in which case his interference would have been accounted
for by your age and the family honor! Oh yes, I understand those
kinds of feelings! But a single glance was enough for him, and he
behaved like a well-bred man at once. So don't be anxious any
longer. It's all over--he's gone to quiet your mamma!"
And she went on laughingly:
"For that matter, you'll see your brother here. I've invited him,
and he's going to return."
"Oh, he's going to return," said the lad, growing white. He added
nothing, and they ceased talking of Philippe. She began dressing to
go out, and he watched her with his great, sad eyes. Doubtless he
was very glad that matters had got settled, for he would have
preferred death to a rupture of their connection, but deep down in
his heart there was a silent anguish, a profound sense of pain,
which he had no experience of and dared not talk about. How
Philippe quieted their mother's fears he never knew, but three days
later she returned to Les Fondettes, apparently satisfied. On the
evening of her return, at Nana's house, he trembled when Francois
announced the lieutenant, but the latter jested gaily and treated
him like a young rascal, whose escapade he had favored as something
not likely to have any consequences. The lad's heart was sore
within him; he scarcely dared move and blushed girlishly at the
least word that was spoken to him. He had not lived much in
Philippe's society; he was ten years his junior, and he feared him
as he would a father, from whom stories about women are concealed.
Accordingly he experienced an uneasy sense of shame when he saw him
so free in Nana's company and heard him laugh uproariously, as
became a man who was plunging into a life of pleasure with the gusto
born of magnificent health. Nevertheless, when his brother shortly
began to present himself every day, Georges ended by getting
somewhat used to it all. Nana was radiant.
This, her latest installation, had been involving all the riotous
waste attendant on the life of gallantry, and now her housewarming
was being defiantly celebrated in a grand mansion positively
overflowing with males and with furniture.
One afternoon when the Hugons were there Count Muffat arrived out of
hours. But when Zoe told him that Madame was with friends he
refused to come in and took his departure discreetly, as became a
gallant gentleman. When he made his appearance again in the evening
Nana received him with the frigid indignation of a grossly affronted
woman.
"Sir," she said, "I have given you no cause why you should insult
me. You must understand this: when I am at home to visitors, I beg
you to make your appearance just like other people."
The count simply gaped in astonishment. "But, my dear--" he
endeavored to explain.
"Perhaps it was because I had visitors! Yes, there were men here,
but what d'you suppose I was doing with those men? You only
advertise a woman's affairs when you act the discreet lover, and I
don't want to be advertised; I don't!"
He obtained his pardon with difficulty, but at bottom he was
enchanted. It was with scenes such as these that she kept him in
unquestioning and docile submission. She had long since succeeded
in imposing Georges on him as a young vagabond who, she declared,
amused her. She made him dine with Philippe, and the count behaved
with great amiability. When they rose from table he took the young
man on one side and asked news of his mother. From that time forth
the young Hugons, Vandeuvres and Muffat were openly about the house
and shook hands as guests and intimates might have done. It was a
more convenient arrangement than the previous one. Muffat alone
still abstained discreetly from too-frequent visits, thus adhering
to the ceremonious policy of an ordinary strange caller. At night
when Nana was sitting on her bearskins drawing off her stockings, he
would talk amicably about the other three gentlemen and lay especial
stress on Philippe, who was loyalty itself.
"It's very true; they're nice," Nana would say as she lingered on
the floor to change her shift. "Only, you know, they see what I am.
One word about it and I should chuck 'em all out of doors for you!"
Nevertheless, despite her luxurious life and her group of courtiers,
Nana was nearly bored to death. She had men for every minute of the
night, and money overflowed even among the brushes and combs in the
drawers of her dressing table. But all this had ceased to satisfy
her; she felt that there was a void somewhere or other, an empty
place provocative of yawns. Her life dragged on, devoid of
occupation, and successive days only brought back the same
monotonous hours. Tomorrow had ceased to be; she lived like a bird:
sure of her food and ready to perch and roost on any branch which
she came to. This certainty of food and drink left her lolling
effortless for whole days, lulled her to sleep in conventual
idleness and submission as though she were the prisoner of her
trade. Never going out except to drive, she was losing her walking
powers. She reverted to low childish tastes, would kiss Bijou from
morning to night and kill time with stupid pleasures while waiting
for the man whose caresses she tolerated with an appearance of
complaisant lassitude. Amid this species of self-abandonment she
now took no thought about anything save her personal beauty; her
sole care was to look after herself, to wash and to perfume her
limbs, as became one who was proud of being able to undress at any
moment and in face of anybody without having to blush for her
imperfections.
At ten in the morning Nana would get up. Bijou, the Scotch griffon
dog, used to lick her face and wake her, and then would ensue a game
of play lasting some five minutes, during which the dog would race
about over her arms and legs and cause Count Muffat much distress.
Bijou was the first little male he had ever been jealous of. It was
not at all proper, he thought, that an animal should go poking its
nose under the bedclothes like that! After this Nana would proceed
to her dressing room, where she took a bath. Toward eleven o'clock
Francois would come and do up her hair before beginning the
elaborate manipulations of the afternoon.
At breakfast, as she hated feeding alone, she nearly always had Mme
Maloir at table with her. This lady would arrive from unknown
regions in the morning, wearing her extravagantly quaint hats, and
would return at night to that mysterious existence of hers, about
which no one ever troubled. But the hardest to bear were the two or
three hours between lunch and the toilet. On ordinary occasions she
proposed a game of bezique to her old friend; on others she would
read the Figaro, in which the theatrical echoes and the fashionable
news interested her. Sometimes she even opened a book, for she
fancied herself in literary matters. Her toilet kept her till close
on five o'clock, and then only she would wake from her daylong
drowse and drive out or receive a whole mob of men at her own house.
She would often dine abroad and always go to bed very late, only to
rise again on the morrow with the same languor as before and to
begin another day, differing in nothing from its predecessor.
The great distraction was to go to the Batignolles and see her
little Louis at her aunt's. For a fortnight at a time she forgot
all about him, and then would follow an access of maternal love, and
she would hurry off on foot with all the modesty and tenderness
becoming a good mother. On such occasions she would be the bearer
of snuff for her aunt and of oranges and biscuits for the child, the
kind of presents one takes to a hospital. Or again she would drive
up in her landau on her return from the Bois, decked in costumes,
the resplendence of which greatly excited the dwellers in the
solitary street. Since her niece's magnificent elevation Mme Lerat
had been puffed up with vanity. She rarely presented herself in the
Avenue de Villiers, for she was pleased to remark that it wasn't her
place to do so, but she enjoyed triumphs in her own street. She was
delighted when the young woman arrived in dresses that had cost four
or five thousand francs and would be occupied during the whole of
the next day in showing off her presents and in citing prices which
quite stupefied the neighbors. As often as not, Nana kept Sunday
free for the sake of "her family," and on such occasions, if Muffat
invited her, she would refuse with the smile of a good little
shopwoman. It was impossible, she would answer; she was dining at
her aunt's; she was going to see Baby. Moreover, that poor little
man Louiset was always ill. He was almost three years old, growing
quite a great boy! But he had had an eczema on the back of his
neck, and now concretions were forming in his ears, which pointed,
it was feared, to decay of the bones of the skull. When she saw how
pale he looked, with his spoiled blood and his flabby flesh all out
in yellow patches, she would become serious, but her principal
feeling would be one of astonishment. What could be the matter with
the little love that he should grow so weakly? She, his mother, was
so strong and well!
On the days when her child did not engross attention Nana would
again sink back into the noisy monotony of her existence, with its
drives in the Bois, first nights at the theater, dinners and suppers
at the Maison-d'Or or the Cafe Anglais, not to mention all the
places of public resort, all the spectacles to which crowds rushed--
Mabille, the reviews, the races. But whatever happened she still
felt that stupid, idle void, which caused her, as it were, to suffer
internal cramps. Despite the incessant infatuations that possessed
her heart, she would stretch out her arms with a gesture of immense
weariness the moment she was left alone. Solitude rendered her low
spirited at once, for it brought her face to face with the emptiness
and boredom within her. Extremely gay by nature and profession, she
became dismal in solitude and would sum up her life in the following
ejaculation, which recurred incessantly between her yawns:
"Oh, how the men bother me!"
One afternoon as she was returning home from a concert, Nana, on the
sidewalk in the Rue Montmartre, noticed a woman trotting along in
down-at-the-heel boots, dirty petticoats and a hat utterly ruined by
the rain. She recognized her suddenly.
"Stop, Charles!" she shouted to the coachman and began calling:
"Satin, Satin!"
Passers-by turned their heads; the whole street stared. Satin had
drawn near and was still further soiling herself against the
carriage wheels.
"Do get in, my dear girl," said Nana tranquilly, disdaining the
onlookers.
And with that she picked her up and carried her off, though she was
in disgusting contrast to her light blue landau and her dress of
pearl-gray silk trimmed with Chantilly, while the street smiled at
the coachman's loftily dignified demeanor.
From that day forth Nana had a passion to occupy her thoughts.
Satin became her vicious foible. Washed and dressed and duly
installed in the house in the Avenue de Villiers, during three days
the girl talked of Saint-Lazare and the annoyances the sisters had
caused her and how those dirty police people had put her down on the
official list. Nana grew indignant and comforted her and vowed she
would get her name taken off, even though she herself should have to
go and find out the minister of the interior. Meanwhile there was
no sort of hurry: nobody would come and search for her at Nana's--
that was certain. And thereupon the two women began to pass tender
afternoons together, making numberless endearing little speeches and
mingling their kisses with laughter. The same little sport, which
the arrival of the plainclothes men had interrupted in the Rue de
Laval, was beginning again in a jocular sort of spirit. One fine
evening, however, it became serious, and Nana, who had been so
disgusted at Laure's, now understood what it meant. She was upset
and enraged by it, the more so because Satin disappeared on the
morning of the fourth day. No one had seen her go our. She had,
indeed, slipped away in her new dress, seized by a longing for air,
full of sentimental regret for her old street existence.
That day there was such a terrible storm in the house that all the
servants hung their heads in sheepish silence. Nana had come near
beating Francois for not throwing himself across the door through
which Satin escaped. She did her best, however, to control herself,
and talked of Satin as a dirty swine. Oh, it would teach her to
pick filthy things like that out of the gutter!
When Madame shut herself up in her room in the afternoon Zoe heard
her sobbing. In the evening she suddenly asked for her carriage and
had herself driven to Laure's. It had occurred to her that she
would find Satin at the table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs. She
was not going there for the sake of seeing her again but in order to
catch her one in the face! As a matter of fact Satin was dining at
a little table with Mme Robert. Seeing Nana, she began to laugh,
but the former, though wounded to the quick, did not make a scene.
On the contrary, she was very sweet and very compliant. She paid
for champagne made five or six tablefuls tipsy and then carried off
Satin when Mme Robert was in the closets. Not till they were in the
carriage did she make a mordant attack on her, threatening to kill
her if she did it again.
After that day the same little business began again continually. On
twenty different occasions Nana, tragically furious, as only a
jilted woman can be ran off in pursuit of this sluttish creature,
whose flights were prompted by the boredom she suffered amid the
comforts of her new home. Nana began to talk of boxing Mme Robert's
ears; one day she even meditated a duel; there was one woman too
many, she said.
In these latter times, whenever she dined at Laure's, she donned her
diamonds and occasionally brought with her Louise Violaine, Maria
Blond and Tatan Nene, all of them ablaze with finery; and while the
sordid feast was progressing in the three saloons and the yellow
gaslight flared overhead, these four resplendent ladies would demean
themselves with a vengeance, for it was their delight to dazzle the
little local courtesans and to carry them off when dinner was over.
On days such as these Laure, sleek and tight-laced as ever would
kiss everyone with an air of expanded maternity. Yet
notwithstanding all these circumstances Satin's blue eyes and pure
virginal face remained as calm as heretofore; torn, beaten and
pestered by the two women, she would simply remark that it was a
funny business, and they would have done far better to make it up at
once. It did no good to slap her; she couldn't cut herself in two,
however much she wanted to be nice to everybody. It was Nana who
finally carried her off in triumph, so assiduously had she loaded
Satin with kindnesses and presents. In order to be revenged,
however, Mme Robert wrote abominable, anonymous letters to her
rival's lovers.
For some time past Count Muffat had appeared suspicious, and one
morning, with considerable show of feeling, he laid before Nana an
anonymous letter, where in the very first sentences she read that
she was accused of deceiving the count with Vandeuvres and the young
Hugons.
"It's false! It's false!" she loudly exclaimed in accents of
extraordinary candor.
"You swear?" asked Muffat, already willing to be comforted.
"I'll swear by whatever you like--yes, by the head of my child!"
But the letter was long. Soon her connection with Satin was
described in the broadest and most ignoble terms. When she had done
reading she smiled.
"Now I know who it comes from," she remarked simply.
And as Muffat wanted her denial to the charges therein contained,
she resumed quietly enough:
"That's a matter which doesn't concern you, dear old pet. How can
it hurt you?"
She did not deny anything. He used some horrified expressions.
Thereupon she shrugged her shoulders. Where had he been all this
time? Why, it was done everywhere! And she mentioned her friends
and swore that fashionable ladies went in for it. In fact, to hear
her speak, nothing could be commoner or more natural. But a lie was
a lie, and so a moment ago he had seen how angry she grew in the
matter of Vandeuvres and the young Hugons! Oh, if that had been
true he would have been justified in throttling her! But what was
the good of lying to him about a matter of no consequence? And with
that she repeated her previous expression:
"Come now, how can it hurt you?"
Then as the scene still continued, she closed it with a rough
speech:
"Besides, dear boy, if the thing doesn't suit you it's very simple:
the house door's open! There now, you must take me as you find me!"
He hung his head, for the young woman's vows of fidelity made him
happy at bottom. She, however, now knew her power over him and
ceased to consider his feelings. And from that time forth Satin was
openly installed in the house on the same footing as the gentlemen.
Vandeuvres had not needed anonymous letters in order to understand
how matters stood, and accordingly he joked and tried to pick
jealous quarrels with Satin. Philippe and Georges, on their parts,
treated her like a jolly good fellow, shaking hands with her and
cracking the riskiest jokes imaginable.
Nana had an adventure one evening when this slut of a girl had given
her the go-by and she had gone to dine in the Rue des Martyrs
without being able to catch her. While she was dining by herself
Daguenet had appeared on the scene, for although he had reformed, he
still occasionally dropped in under the influence of his old vicious
inclinations. He hoped of course that no one would meet him in
these black recesses, dedicated to the town's lowest depravity.
Accordingly even Nana's presence seemed to embarrass him at the
outset. But he was not the man to run away and, coming forward with
a smile, he asked if Madame would be so kind as to allow him to dine
at her table. Noticing his jocular tone, Nana assumed her
magnificently frigid demeanor and icily replied:
"Sit down where you please, sir. We are in a public place."
Thus begun, the conversation proved amusing. But at dessert Nana,
bored and burning for a triumph, put her elbows on the table and
began in the old familiar way:
"Well, what about your marriage, my lad? Is it getting on all
right?"
"Not much," Daguenet averred.
As a matter of fact, just when he was about to venture on his
request at the Muffats', he had met with such a cold reception from
the count that he had prudently refrained. The business struck him
as a failure. Nana fixed her clear eyes on him; she was sitting,
leaning her chin on her hand, and there was an ironical curve about
her lips.
"Oh yes! I'm a baggage," she resumed slowly. "Oh yes, the future
father-in-law will have to be dragged from between my claws! Dear
me, dear me, for a fellow with NOUS, you're jolly stupid! What!
D'you mean to say you're going to tell your tales to a man who
adores me and tells me everything? Now just listen: you shall marry
if I wish it, my little man!"
For a minute or two he had felt the truth of this, and now he began
scheming out a method of submission. Nevertheless, he still talked
jokingly, not wishing the matter to grow serious, and after he had
put on his gloves he demanded the hand of Mlle Estelle de Beuville
in the strict regulation manner. Nana ended by laughing, as though
she had been tickled. Oh, that Mimi! It was impossible to bear him
a grudge! Daguenet's great successes with ladies of her class were
due to the sweetness of his voice, a voice of such musical purity
and pliancy as to have won him among courtesans the sobriquet of
"Velvet-Mouth." Every woman would give way to him when he lulled
her with his sonorous caresses. He knew this power and rocked Nana
to sleep with endless words, telling her all kinds of idiotic
anecdotes. When they left the table d'hote she was blushing rosy-
red; she trembled as she hung on his arm; he had reconquered her.
As it was very fine, she sent her carriage away and walked with him
as far as his own place, where she went upstairs with him naturally
enough. Two hours later, as she was dressing again, she said:
"So you hold to this marriage of yours, Mimi?"
"Egad," he muttered, "it's the best thing I could possibly do after
all! You know I'm stony broke."
She summoned him to button her boots, and after a pause:
"Good heavens! I've no objection. I'll shove you on! She's as dry
as a lath, is that little thing, but since it suits your game--oh,
I'm agreeable: I'll run the thing through for you."
Then with bosom still uncovered, she began laughing:
"Only what will you give me?"
He had caught her in his arms and was kissing her on the shoulders
in a perfect access of gratitude while she quivered with excitement
and struggled merrily and threw herself backward in her efforts to
be free.
"Oh, I know," she cried, excited by the contest. "Listen to what I
want in the way of commission. On your wedding day you shall make
me a present of your innocence. Before your wife, d'you
understand?"
"That's it! That's it!" he said, laughing even louder than Nana.
The bargain amused them--they thought the whole business very good,
indeed.
Now as it happened, there was a dinner at Nana's next day. For the
matter of that, it was the customary Thursday dinner, and Muffat,
Vandeuvres, the young Hugons and Satin were present. The count
arrived early. He stood in need of eighty thousand francs wherewith
to free the young woman from two or three debts and to give her a
set of sapphires she was dying to possess. As he had already
seriously lessened his capital, he was in search of a lender, for he
did not dare to sell another property. With the advice of Nana
herself he had addressed himself to Labordette, but the latter,
deeming it too heavy an undertaking, had mentioned it to the
hairdresser Francis, who willingly busied himself in such affairs in
order to oblige his lady clients. The count put himself into the
hands of these gentlemen but expressed a formal desire not to appear
in the matter, and they both undertook to keep in hand the bill for
a hundred thousand francs which he was to sign, excusing themselves
at the same time for charging a matter of twenty thousand francs
interest and loudly denouncing the blackguard usurers to whom, they
declared, it had been necessary to have recourse. When Muffat had
himself announced, Francis was putting the last touches to Nana's
coiffure. Labordette also was sitting familiarly in the dressing
room, as became a friend of no consequence. Seeing the count, he
discreetly placed a thick bundle of bank notes among the powders and
pomades, and the bill was signed on the marble-topped dressing
table. Nana was anxious to keep Labordette to dinner, but he
declined--he was taking a rich foreigner about Paris. Muffat,
however, led him aside and begged him to go to Becker, the jeweler,
and bring him back thence the set of sapphires, which he wanted to
present the young woman by way of surprise that very evening.
Labordette willingly undertook the commission, and half an hour
later Julien handed the jewel case mysteriously to the count.
During dinnertime Nana was nervous. The sight of the eighty
thousand francs had excited her. To think all that money was to go
to tradespeople! It was a disgusting thought. After soup had been
served she grew sentimental, and in the splendid dining room,
glittering with plate and glass, she talked of the bliss of poverty.
The men were in evening dress, Nana in a gown of white embroidered
satin, while Satin made a more modest appearance in black silk with
a simple gold heart at her throat, which was a present from her kind
friend. Julien and Francois waited behind the guests and were
assisted in this by Zoe. All three looked most dignified.
"It's certain I had far greater fun when I hadn't a cent!" Nana
repeated.
She had placed Muffat on her right hand and Vandeuvres on her left,
but she scarcely looked at them, so taken up was she with Satin, who
sat in state between Philippe and Georges on the opposite side of
the table.
"Eh, duckie?" she kept saying at every turn. "How we did use to
laugh in those days when we went to Mother Josse's school in the Rue
Polonceau!"
When the roast was being served the two women plunged into a world
of reminiscences. They used to have regular chattering fits of this
kind when a sudden desire to stir the muddy depths of their
childhood would possess them. These fits always occurred when men
were present: it was as though they had given way to a burning
desire to treat them to the dunghill on which they had grown to
woman's estate. The gentlemen paled visibly and looked embarrassed.
The young Hugons did their best to laugh, while Vandeuvres nervously
toyed with his beard and Muffat redoubled his gravity.
"You remember Victor?" said Nana. "There was a wicked little fellow
for you! Why, he used to take the little girls into cellars!"
"I remember him perfectly," replied Satin. "I recollect the big
courtyard at your place very well. There was a portress there with
a broom!"
"Mother Boche--she's dead."
"And I can still picture your shop. Your mother was a great fatty.
One evening when we were playing your father came in drunk. Oh, so
drunk!"
At this point Vandeuvres tried to intercept the ladies'
reminiscences and to effect a diversion,
"I say, my dear, I should be very glad to have some more truffles.
They're simply perfect. Yesterday I had some at the house of the
Duc de Corbreuse, which did not come up to them at all."
"The truffles, Julien!" said Nana roughly.
Then returning to the subject:
"By Jove, yes, Dad hadn't any sense! And then what a smash there
was! You should have seen it--down, down, down we went, starving
away all the time. I can tell you I've had to bear pretty well
everything and it's a miracle I didn't kick the bucket over it, like
Daddy and Mamma."
This time Muffat, who was playing with his knife in a state of
infinite exasperation, made so bold as to intervene.
"What you're telling us isn't very cheerful."
"Eh, what? Not cheerful!" she cried with a withering glance. "I
believe you; it isn't cheerful! Somebody had to earn a living for
us dear boy. Oh yes, you know, I'm the right sort; I don't mince
matters. Mamma was a laundress; Daddy used to get drunk, and he
died of it! There! If it doesn't suit you--if you're ashamed of my
family--"
They all protested. What was she after now? They had every sort of
respect for her family! But she went on:
"If you're ashamed of my family you'll please leave me, because I'm
not one of those women who deny their father and mother. You must
take me and them together, d'you understand?"
They took her as required; they accepted the dad, the mamma, the
past; in fact, whatever she chose. With their eyes fixed on the
tablecloth, the four now sat shrinking and insignificant while Nana,
in a transport of omnipotence, trampled on them in the old muddy
boots worn long since in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. She was
determined not to lay down the cudgels just yet. It was all very
fine to bring her fortunes, to build her palaces; she would never
leave off regretting the time when she munched apples! Oh, what
bosh that stupid thing money was! It was made for the tradespeople!
Finally her outburst ended in a sentimentally expressed desire for a
simple, openhearted existence, to be passed in an atmosphere of
universal benevolence.
When she got to this point she noticed Julien waiting idly by.
"Well, what's the matter? Hand the champagne then!" she said. "Why
d'you stand staring at me like a goose?"
During this scene the servants had never once smiled. They
apparently heard nothing, and the more their mistress let herself
down, the more majestic they became. Julien set to work to pour out
the champagne and did so without mishap, but Francois, who was
handing round the fruit, was so unfortunate as to tilt the fruit
dish too low, and the apples, the pears and the grapes rolled on the
table.
"You bloody clumsy lot!" cried Nana.
The footman was mistaken enough to try and explain that the fruit
had not been firmly piled up. Zoe had disarranged it by taking out
some oranges.
"Then it's Zoe that's the goose!" said Nana.
"Madame--" murmured the lady's maid in an injured tone.
Straightway Madame rose to her feet, and in a sharp voice and with
royally authoritative gesture:
"We've had enough of this, haven't we? Leave the room, all of you!
We don't want you any longer!"
This summary procedure calmed her down, and she was forthwith all
sweetness and amiability. The dessert proved charming, and the
gentlemen grew quite merry waiting on themselves. But Satin, having
peeled a pear, came and ate it behind her darling, leaning on her
shoulder the while and whispering sundry little remarks in her ear,
at which they both laughed very loudly. By and by she wanted to
share her last piece of pear with Nana and presented it to her
between her teeth. Whereupon there was a great nibbling of lips,
and the pear was finished amid kisses. At this there was a burst of
comic protest from the gentlemen, Philippe shouting to them to take
it easy and Vandeuvres asking if one ought to leave the room.
Georges, meanwhile, had come and put his arm round Satin's waist and
had brought her back to her seat.
"How silly of you!" said Nana. "You're making her blush, the poor,
darling duck. Never mind, dear girl, let them chaff. It's our own
little private affair."
And turning to Muffat, who was watching them with his serious
expression:
"Isn't it, my friend?"
"Yes, certainly," he murmured with a slow nod of approval.
He no longer protested now. And so amid that company of gentlemen
with the great names and the old, upright traditions, the two women
sat face to face, exchanging tender glances, conquering, reigning,
in tranquil defiance of the laws of sex, in open contempt for the
male portion of the community. The gentlemen burst into applause.
The company went upstairs to take coffee in the little drawing room,
where a couple of lamps cast a soft glow over the rosy hangings and
the lacquer and old gold of the knickknacks. At that hour of the
evening the light played discreetly over coffers, bronzes and china,
lighting up silver or ivory inlaid work, bringing into view the
polished contours of a carved stick and gleaming over a panel with
glossy silky reflections. The fire, which had been burning since
the afternoon, was dying out in glowing embers. It was very warm--
the air behind the curtains and hangings was languid with warmth.
The room was full of Nana's intimate existence: a pair of gloves, a
fallen handkerchief, an open book, lay scattered about, and their
owner seemed present in careless attire with that well-known odor of
violets and that species of untidiness which became her in her
character of good-natured courtesan and had such a charming effect
among all those rich surroundings. The very armchairs, which were
as wide as beds, and the sofas, which were as deep as alcoves,
invited to slumber oblivious of the flight of time and to tender
whispers in shadowy corners.
Satin went and lolled back in the depths of a sofa near the
fireplace. She had lit a cigarette, but Vandeuvres began amusing
himself by pretending to be ferociously jealous. Nay, he even
threatened to send her his seconds if she still persisted in keeping
Nana from her duty. Philippe and Georges joined him and teased her
and badgered her so mercilessly that at last she shouted out:
"Darling! Darling! Do make 'em keep quiet! They're still after
me!"
"Now then, let her be," said Nana seriously. "I won't have her
tormented; you know that quite well. And you, my pet, why d'you
always go mixing yourself up with them when they've got so little
sense?"
Satin, blushing all over and putting out her tongue, went into the
dressing room, through the widely open door of which you caught a
glimpse of pale marbles gleaming in the milky light of a gas flame
in a globe of rough glass. After that Nana talked to the four men
as charmingly as hostess could. During the day she had read a novel
which was at that time making a good deal of noise. It was the
history of a courtesan, and Nana was very indignant, declaring the
whole thing to be untrue and expressing angry dislike to that kind
of monstrous literature which pretends to paint from nature. "Just
as though one could describe everything," she said. Just as though
a novel ought not to be written so that the reader may while away an
hour pleasantly! In the matter of books and of plays Nana had very
decided opinions: she wanted tender and noble productions, things
that would set her dreaming and would elevate her soul. Then
allusion being made in the course of conversation to the troubles
agitating Paris, the incendiary articles in the papers, the
incipient popular disturbances which followed the calls to arms
nightly raised at public meetings, she waxed wroth with the
Republicans. What on earth did those dirty people who never washed
really want? Were folks not happy? Had not the emperor done
everything for the people? A nice filthy lot of people! She knew
'em; she could talk about 'em, and, quite forgetting the respect
which at dinner she had just been insisting should be paid to her
humble circle in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or, she began blackguarding
her own class with all the terror and disgust peculiar to a woman
who had risen successfully above it. That very afternoon she had
read in the Figaro an account of the proceedings at a public meeting
which had verged on the comic. Owing to the slang words that had
been used and to the piggish behavior of a drunken man who had got
himself chucked, she was laughing at those proceedings still.
"Oh, those drunkards!" she said with a disgusted air. "No, look you
here, their republic would be a great misfortune for everybody! Oh,
may God preserve us the emperor as long as possible!"
"God will hear your prayer, my dear," Muffat replied gravely. "To
be sure, the emperor stands firm."
He liked her to express such excellent views. Both, indeed,
understood one another in political matters. Vandeuvres and
Philippe Hugon likewise indulged in endless jokes against the
"cads," the quarrelsome set who scuttled off the moment they clapped
eyes on a bayonet. But Georges that evening remained pale and
somber.
"What can be the matter with that baby?" asked Nana, noticing his
troubled appearance.
"With me? Nothing--I am listening," he muttered.
But he was really suffering. On rising from table he had heard
Philippe joking with the young woman, and now it was Philippe, and
not himself, who sat beside her. His heart, he knew not why,
swelled to bursting. He could not bear to see them so close
together; such vile thoughts oppressed him that shame mingled with
his anguish. He who laughed at Satin, who had accepted Steiner and
Muffat and all the rest, felt outraged and murderous at the thought
that Philippe might someday touch that woman.
"Here, take Bijou," she said to comfort him, and she passed him the
little dog which had gone to sleep on her dress.
And with that Georges grew happy again, for with the beast still
warm from her lap in his arms, he held, as it were, part of her.
Allusion had been made to a considerable loss which Vandeuvres had
last night sustained at the Imperial Club. Muffat, who did not
play, expressed great astonishment, but Vandeuvres smilingly alluded
to his imminent ruin, about which Paris was already talking. The
kind of death you chose did not much matter, he averred; the great
thing was to die handsomely. For some time past Nana had noticed
that he was nervous and had a sharp downward droop of the mouth and
a fitful gleam in the depths of his clear eyes. But he retained his
haughty aristocratic manner and the delicate elegance of his
impoverished race, and as yet these strange manifestations were
only, so to speak, momentary fits of vertigo overcoming a brain
already sapped by play and by debauchery. One night as he lay
beside her he had frightened her with a dreadful story. He had told
her he contemplated shutting himself up in his stable and setting
fire to himself and his horses at such time as he should have
devoured all his substance. His only hope at that period was a
horse, Lusignan by name, which he was training for the Prix de
Paris. He was living on this horse, which was the sole stay of his
shaken credit, and whenever Nana grew exacting he would put her off
till June and to the probability of Lusignan's winning.
"Bah! He may very likely lose," she said merrily, "since he's going
to clear them all out at the races."
By way of reply he contented himself by smiling a thin, mysterious
smile. Then carelessly:
"By the by, I've taken the liberty of giving your name to my
outsider, the filly. Nana, Nana--that sounds well. You're not
vexed?"
"Vexed, why?" she said in a state of inward ecstasy.
The conversation continued, and same mention was made of an
execution shortly to take place. The young woman said she was
burning to go to it when Satin appeared at the dressing-room door
and called her in tones of entreaty. She got up at once and left
the gentlemen lolling lazily about, while they finished their cigars
and discussed the grave question as to how far a murderer subject to
chronic alcoholism is responsible for his act. In the dressing room
Zoe sat helpless on a chair, crying her heart out, while Satin
vainly endeavored to console her.
"What's the matter?" said Nana in surprise.
"Oh, darling, do speak to her!" said Satin. "I've been trying to
make her listen to reason for the last twenty minutes. She's crying
because you called her a goose."
"Yes, madame, it's very hard--very hard," stuttered Zoe, choked by a
fresh fit of sobbing.
This sad sight melted the young woman's heart at once. She spoke
kindly, and when the other woman still refused to grow calm she sank
down in front of her and took her round the waist with truly cordial
familiarity:
"But, you silly, I said 'goose' just as I might have said anything
else. How shall I explain? I was in a passion--it was wrong of me;
now calm down."
"I who love Madame so," stuttered Zoe; "after all I've done for
Madame."
Thereupon Nana kissed the lady's maid and, wishing to show her she
wasn't vexed, gave her a dress she had worn three times. Their
quarrels always ended up in the giving of presents! Zoe plugged her
handkerchief into her eyes. She carried the dress off over her arm
and added before leaving that they were very sad in the kitchen and
that Julien and Francois had been unable to eat, so entirely had
Madame's anger taken away their appetites. Thereupon Madame sent
them a louis as a pledge of reconciliation. She suffered too much
if people around her were sorrowful.
Nana was returning to the drawing room, happy in the thought that
she had patched up a disagreement which was rendering her quietly
apprehensive of the morrow, when Satin came and whispered vehemently
in her ear. She was full of complaint, threatened to be off if
those men still went on teasing her and kept insisting that her
darling should turn them all out of doors for that night, at any
rate. It would be a lesson to them. And then it would be so nice
to be alone, both of them! Nana, with a return of anxiety, declared
it to be impossible. Thereupon the other shouted at her like a
violent child and tried hard to overrule her.
"I wish it, d'you see? Send 'em away or I'm off!"
And she went back into the drawing room, stretched herself out in
the recesses of a divan, which stood in the background near the
window, and lay waiting, silent and deathlike, with her great eyes
fixed upon Nana.
The gentlemen were deciding against the new criminological theories.
Granted that lovely invention of irresponsibility in certain
pathological cases, and criminals ceased to exist and sick people
alone remained. The young woman, expressing approval with an
occasional nod, was busy considering how best to dismiss the count.
The others would soon be going, but he would assuredly prove
obstinate. In fact, when Philippe got up to withdraw, Georges
followed him at once--he seemed only anxious not to leave his
brother behind. Vandeuvres lingered some minutes longer, feeling
his way, as it were, and waiting to find out if, by any chance, some
important business would oblige Muffat to cede him his place. Soon,
however, when he saw the count deliberately taking up his quarters
for the night, he desisted from his purpose and said good-by, as
became a man of tact. But on his way to the door, he noticed Satin
staring fixedly at Nana, as usual. Doubtless he understood what
this meant, for he seemed amused and came and shook hands with her.
"We're not angry, eh?" he whispered. "Pray pardon me. You're the
nicer attraction of the two, on my honor!"
Satin deigned no reply. Nor did she take her eyes off Nana and the
count, who were now alone. Muffat, ceasing to be ceremonious, had
come to sit beside the young woman. He took her fingers and began
kissing them. Whereupon Nana, seeking to change the current of his
thoughts, asked him if his daughter Estelle were better. The
previous night he had been complaining of the child's melancholy
behavior--he could not even spend a day happily at his own house,
with his wife always out and his daughter icily silent.
In family matters of this kind Nana was always full of good advice,
and when Muffat abandoned all his usual self-control under the
influence of mental and physical relaxation and once more launched
out into his former plaints, she remembered the promise she had
made.
"Suppose you were to marry her?" she said. And with that she
ventured to talk of Daguenet. At the mere mention of the name the
count was filled with disgust. "Never," he said after what she had
told him!
She pretended great surprise and then burst out laughing and put her
arm round his neck.
"Oh, the jealous man! To think of it! Just argue it out a little.
Why, they slandered me to you--I was furious. At present I should
be ever so sorry if--"
But over Muffat's shoulder she met Satin's gaze. And she left him
anxiously and in a grave voice continued:
"This marriage must come off, my friend; I don't want to prevent
your daughter's happiness. The young man's most charming; you could
not possibly find a better sort."
And she launched into extraordinary praise of Daguenet. The count
had again taken her hands; he no longer refused now; he would see
about it, he said, they would talk the matter over. By and by, when
he spoke of going to bed, she sank her voice and excused herself.
It was impossible; she was not well. If he loved her at all he
would not insist! Nevertheless, he was obstinate; he refused to go
away, and she was beginning to give in when she met Satin's eyes
once more. Then she grew inflexible. No, the thing was out of the
question! The count, deeply moved and with a look of suffering, had
risen and was going in quest of his hat. But in the doorway he
remembered the set of sapphires; he could feel the case in his
pocket. He had been wanting to hide it at the bottom of the bed so
that when she entered it before him she should feel it against her
legs. Since dinnertime he had been meditating this little surprise
like a schoolboy, and now, in trouble and anguish of heart at being
thus dismissed, he gave her the case without further ceremony.
"What is it?" she queried. "Sapphires? Dear me! Oh yes, it's that
set. How sweet you are! But I say, my darling, d'you believe it's
the same one? In the shopwindow it made a much greater show."
That was all the thanks he got, and she let him go away. He noticed
Satin stretched out silent and expectant, and with that he gazed at
both women and without further insistence submitted to his fate and
went downstairs. The hall door had not yet closed when Satin caught
Nana round the waist and danced and sang. Then she ran to the
window.
"Oh, just look at the figure he cuts down in the street!" The two
women leaned upon the wrought-iron window rail in the shadow of the
curtains. One o'clock struck. The Avenue de Villiers was deserted,
and its double file of gas lamps stretched away into the darkness of
the damp March night through which great gusts of wind kept
sweeping, laden with rain. There were vague stretches of land on
either side of the road which looked like gulfs of shadow, while
scaffoldings round mansions in process of construction loomed upward
under the dark sky. They laughed uncontrollably as they watched
Muffat's rounded back and glistening shadow disappearing along the
wet sidewalk into the glacial, desolate plains of new Paris. But
Nana silenced Satin.
"Take care; there are the police!"
Thereupon they smothered their laughter and gazed in secret fear at
two dark figures walking with measured tread on the opposite side of
the avenue. Amid all her luxurious surroundings, amid all the royal
splendors of the woman whom all must obey, Nana still stood in
horror of the police and did not like to hear them mentioned any
oftener than death. She felt distinctly unwell when a policeman
looked up at her house. One never knew what such people might do!
They might easily take them for loose women if they heard them
laughing at that hour of the night. Satin, with a little shudder,
had squeezed herself up against Nana. Nevertheless, the pair stayed
where they were and were soon interested in the approach of a
lantern, the light of which danced over the puddles in the road. It
was an old ragpicker woman who was busy raking in the gutters.
Satin recognized her.
"Dear me," she exclaimed, "it's Queen Pomare with her wickerwork
shawl!"
And while a gust of wind lashed the fine rain in their faces she
told her beloved the story of Queen Pomare. Oh, she had been a
splendid girl once upon a time: all Paris had talked of her beauty.
And such devilish go and such cheek! Why, she led the men about
like dogs, and great people stood blubbering on her stairs! Now she
was in the habit of getting tipsy, and the women round about would
make her drink absinthe for the sake of a laugh, after which the
street boys would throw stones at her and chase her. In fact, it
was a regular smashup; the queen had tumbled into the mud! Nana
listened, feeling cold all over.
"You shall see," added Satin.
She whistled a man's whistle, and the ragpicker, who was then below
the window, lifted her head and showed herself by the yellow flare
of her lantern. Framed among rags, a perfect bundle of them, a face
looked out from under a tattered kerchief--a blue, seamed face with
a toothless, cavernous mouth and fiery bruises where the eyes should
be. And Nana, seeing the frightful old woman, the wanton drowned in
drink, had a sudden fit of recollection and saw far back amid the
shadows of consciousness the vision of Chamont--Irma d'Anglars, the
old harlot crowned with years and honors, ascending the steps in
front of her chateau amid abjectly reverential villagers. Then as
Satin whistled again, making game of the old hag, who could not see
her:
"Do leave off; there are the police!" she murmured in changed tones.
"In with us, quick, my pet!"
The measured steps were returning, and they shut the window.
Turning round again, shivering, and with the damp of night on her
hair, Nana was momentarily astounded at sight of her drawing room.
It seemed as though she had forgotten it and were entering an
unknown chamber. So warm, so full of perfume, was the air she
encountered that she experienced a sense of delighted surprise. The
heaped-up wealth of the place, the Old World furniture, the fabrics
of silk and gold, the ivory, the bronzes, were slumbering in the
rosy light of the lamps, while from the whole of the silent house a
rich feeling of great luxury ascended, the luxury of the solemn
reception rooms, of the comfortable, ample dining room, of the vast
retired staircase, with their soft carpets and seats. Her
individuality, with its longing for domination and enjoyment and its
desire to possess everything that she might destroy everything, was
suddenly increased. Never before had she felt so profoundly the
puissance of her sex. She gazed slowly round and remarked with an
expression of grave philosophy:
"Ah well, all the same, one's jolly well right to profit by things
when one's young!"
But now Satin was rolling on the bearskins in the bedroom and
calling her.
"Oh, do come! Do come!"
Nana undressed in the dressing room, and in order to be quicker
about it she took her thick fell of blonde hair in both hands and
began shaking it above the silver wash hand basin, while a downward
hail of long hairpins rang a little chime on the shining metal.
CHAPTER XI
One Sunday the race for the Grand Prix de Paris was being run in the
Bois de Boulogne beneath skies rendered sultry by the first heats of
June. The sun that morning had risen amid a mist of dun-colored
dust, but toward eleven o'clock, just when the carriages were
reaching the Longchamps course, a southerly wind had swept away the
clouds; long streamers of gray vapor were disappearing across the
sky, and gaps showing an intense blue beyond were spreading from one
end of the horizon to the other. In the bright bursts of sunlight
which alternated with the clouds the whole scene shone again, from
the field which was gradually filling with a crowd of carriages,
horsemen and pedestrians, to the still-vacant course, where the
judge's box stood, together with the posts and the masts for
signaling numbers, and thence on to the five symmetrical stands of
brickwork and timber, rising gallery upon gallery in the middle of
the weighing enclosure opposite. Beyond these, bathed in the light
of noon, lay the vast level plain, bordered with little trees and
shut in to the westward by the wooded heights of Saint-Cloud and the
Suresnes, which, in their turn, were dominated by the severe
outlines of Mont-Valerien.
Nana, as excited as if the Grand Prix were going to make her
fortune, wanted to take up a position by the railing next the
winning post. She had arrived very early--she was, in fact, one of
the first to come--in a landau adorned with silver and drawn, a la
Daumont, by four splendid white horses. This landau was a present
from Count Muffat. When she had made her appearance at the entrance
to the field with two postilions jogging blithely on the near horses
and two footmen perching motionless behind the carriage, the people
had rushed to look as though a queen were passing. She sported the
blue and white colors of the Vandeuvres stable, and her dress was
remarkable. It consisted of a little blue silk bodice and tunic,
which fitted closely to the body and bulged out enormously behind
her waist, thereby bringing her lower limbs into bold relief in such
a manner as to be extremely noticeable in that epoch of voluminous
skirts. Then there was a white satin dress with white satin sleeves
and a sash worn crosswise over the shoulders, the whole ornamented
with silver guipure which shone in the sun. In addition to this, in
order to be still more like a jockey, she had stuck a blue toque
with a white feather jauntily upon her chignon, the fair tresses
from which flowed down beyond her shoulders and resembled an
enormous russet pigtail.
Twelve struck. The public would have to wait more than three hours
for the Grand Prix to be run. When the landau had drawn up beside
the barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she
were in her own house. A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and
Louiset with her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering
with cold despite the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of
ribbons and laces the child's poor little face looked waxen and dumb
and white in the open air. Meanwhile the young woman, without
troubling about the people near her, talked at the top of her voice
with Georges and Philippe Hugon, who were seated opposite on the
front seat among such a mountain of bouquets of white roses and blue
myosotis that they were buried up to their shoulders.
"Well then," she was saying, "as he bored me to death, I showed him
the door. And now it's two days that he's been sulking."
She was talking of Muffat, but she took care not to confess to the
young men the real reason for this first quarrel, which was that one
evening he had found a man's hat in her bedroom. She had indeed
brought home a passer-by out of sheer ennui--a silly infatuation.
"You have no idea how funny he is," she continued, growing merry
over the particulars she was giving. "He's a regular bigot at
bottom, so he says his prayers every evening. Yes, he does. He's
under the impression I notice nothing because I go to bed first so
as not to be in his way, but I watch him out of the corner of my
eye. Oh, he jaws away, and then he crosses himself when he turns
round to step over me and get to the inside of the bed."
"Jove, it's sly," muttered Philippe. "That's what happens before,
but afterward, what then?"
She laughed merrily.
"Yes, just so, before and after! When I'm going to sleep I hear him
jawing away again. But the biggest bore of all is that we can't
argue about anything now without his growing 'pi.' I've always been
religious. Yes, chaff as much as you like; that won't prevent me
believing what I do believe! Only he's too much of a nuisance: he
blubbers; he talks about remorse. The day before yesterday, for
instance, he had a regular fit of it after our usual row, and I
wasn't the least bit reassured when all was over."
But she broke off, crying out:
"Just look at the Mignons arriving. Dear me, they've brought the
children! Oh, how those little chaps are dressed up!"
The Mignons were in a landau of severe hue; there was something
substantially luxurious about their turnout, suggesting rich retired
tradespeople. Rose was in a gray silk gown trimmed with red knots
and with puffs; she was smiling happily at the joyous behavior of
Henri and Charles, who sat on the front seat, looking awkward in
their ill-fitting collegians' tunics. But when the landau had drawn
up by the rails and she perceived Nana sitting in triumph among her
bouquets, with her four horses and her liveries, she pursed up her
lips, sat bolt upright and turned her head away. Mignon, on the
other hand, looking the picture of freshness and gaiety, waved her a
salutation. He made it a matter of principle to keep out of
feminine disagreements.
"By the by," Nana resumed, "d'you know a little old man who's very
clean and neat and has bad teeth--a Monsieur Venot? He came to see
me this morning."
"Monsieur Venot?" said Georges in great astonishment. "It's
impossible! Why, the man's a Jesuit!"
"Precisely; I spotted that. Oh, you have no idea what our
conversation was like! It was just funny! He spoke to me about the
count, about his divided house, and begged me to restore a family
its happiness. He was very polite and very smiling for the matter
of that. Then I answered to the effect that I wanted nothing
better, and I undertook to reconcile the count and his wife. You
know it's not humbug. I should be delighted to see them all happy
again, the poor things! Besides, it would be a relief to me for
there are days--yes, there are days--when he bores me to death."
The weariness of the last months escaped her in this heartfelt
outburst. Moreover, the count appeared to be in big money
difficulties; he was anxious and it seemed likely that the bill
which Labordette had put his name to would not be met.
"Dear me, the countess is down yonder," said Georges, letting his
gaze wander over the stands.
"Where, where?" cried Nana. "What eyes that baby's got! Hold my
sunshade, Philippe."
But with a quick forward dart Georges had outstripped his brother.
It enchanted him to be holding the blue silk sunshade with its
silver fringe. Nana was scanning the scene through a huge pair of
field glasses.
"Ah yes! I see her," she said at length. "In the right-hand stand,
near a pillar, eh? She's in mauve, and her daughter in white by her
side. Dear me, there's Daguenet going to bow to them."
Thereupon Philippe talked of Daguenet's approaching marriage with
that lath of an Estelle. It was a settled matter--the banns were
being published. At first the countess had opposed it, but the
count, they said, had insisted. Nana smiled.
"I know, I know," she murmured. "So much the better for Paul. He's
a nice boy--he deserves it"
And leaning toward Louiset:
"You're enjoying yourself, eh? What a grave face!"
The child never smiled. With a very old expression he was gazing at
all those crowds, as though the sight of them filled him with
melancholy reflections. Bijou, chased from the skirts of the young
woman who was moving about a great deal, had come to nestle,
shivering, against the little fellow.
Meanwhile the field was filling up. Carriages, a compact,
interminable file of them, were continually arriving through the
Porte de la Cascade. There were big omnibuses such as the Pauline,
which had started from the Boulevard des Italiens, freighted with
its fifty passengers, and was now going to draw up to the right of
the stands. Then there were dogcarts, victorias, landaus, all
superbly well turned out, mingled with lamentable cabs which jolted
along behind sorry old hacks, and four-in-hands, sending along their
four horses, and mail coaches, where the masters sat on the seats
above and left the servants to take care of the hampers of champagne
inside, and "spiders," the immense wheels of which were a flash of
glittering steel, and light tandems, which looked as delicately
formed as the works of a clock and slipped along amid a peal of
little bells. Every few seconds an equestrian rode by, and a swarm
of people on foot rushed in a scared way among the carriages. On
the green the far-off rolling sound which issued from the avenues in
the Bois died out suddenly in dull rustlings, and now nothing was
audible save the hubbub of the ever-increasing crowds and cries and
calls and the crackings of whips in the open. When the sun, amid
bursts of wind, reappeared at the edge of a cloud, a long ray of
golden light ran across the field, lit up the harness and the
varnished coach panels and touched the ladies' dresses with fire,
while amid the dusty radiance the coachmen, high up on their boxes,
flamed beside their great whips.
Labordette was getting out of an open carriage where Gaga, Clarisse
and Blanche de Sivry had kept a place for him. As he was hurrying
to cross the course and enter the weighing enclosure Nana got
Georges to call him. Then when he came up:
"What's the betting on me?" she asked laughingly.
She referred to the filly Nana, the Nana who had let herself be
shamefully beaten in the race for the Prix de Diane and had not even
been placed in April and May last when she ran for the Prix des Cars
and the Grande Poule des Produits, both of which had been gained by
Lusignan, the other horse in the Vandeuvres stable. Lusignan had
all at once become prime favorite, and since yesterday he had been
currently taken at two to one.
"Always fifty to one against," replied Labordette.
"The deuce! I'm not worth much," rejoined Nana, amused by the jest.
"I don't back myself then; no, by jingo! I don't put a single louis
on myself."
Labordette went off again in a great hurry, but she recalled him.
She wanted some advice. Since he kept in touch with the world of
trainers and jockeys he had special information about various
stables. His prognostications had come true a score of times
already, and people called him the "King of Tipsters."
"Let's see, what horses ought I to choose?" said the young woman.
"What's the betting on the Englishman?"
"Spirit? Three to one against. Valerio II, the same. As to the
others, they're laying twenty-five to one against Cosinus, forty to
one against Hazard, thirty to one against Bourn, thirty-five to one
against Pichenette, ten to one against Frangipane."
"No, I don't bet on the Englishman, I don't. I'm a patriot.
Perhaps Valerio II would do, eh? The Duc de Corbreuse was beaming a
little while ago. Well, no, after all! Fifty louis on Lusignan;
what do you say to that?"
Labordette looked at her with a singular expression. She leaned
forward and asked him questions in a low voice, for she was aware
that Vandeuvres commissioned him to arrange matters with the
bookmakers so as to be able to bet the more easily. Supposing him
to have got to know something, he might quite well tell it her. But
without entering into explanations Labordette persuaded her to trust
to his sagacity. He would put on her fifty louis for her as he
might think best, and she would not repent of his arrangement.
"All the horses you like!" she cried gaily, letting him take his
departure, "but no Nana; she's a jade!"
There was a burst of uproarious laughter in the carriage. The young
men thought her sally very amusing, while Louiset in his ignorance
lifted his pale eyes to his mother's face, for her loud exclamations
surprised him. However, there was no escape for Labordette as yet.
Rose Mignon had made a sign to him and was now giving him her
commands while he wrote figures in a notebook. Then Clarisse and
Gaga called him back in order to change their bets, for they had
heard things said in the crowd, and now they didn't want to have
anything more to do with Valerio II and were choosing Lusignan. He
wrote down their wishes with an impassible expression and at length
managed to escape. He could be seen disappearing between two of the
stands on the other side of the course.
Carriages were still arriving. They were by this time drawn up five
rows deep, and a dense mass of them spread along the barriers,
checkered by the light coats of white horses. Beyond them other
carriages stood about in comparative isolation, looking as though
they had stuck fast in the grass. Wheels and harness were here,
there and everywhere, according as the conveyances to which they
belonged were side by side, at an angle, across and across or head
to head. Over such spaces of turf as still remained unoccupied
cavaliers kept trotting, and black groups of pedestrians moved
continually. The scene resembled the field where a fair is being
held, and above it all, amid the confused motley of the crowd, the
drinking booths raised their gray canvas roofs which gleamed white
in the sunshine. But a veritable tumult, a mob, an eddy of hats,
surged round the several bookmakers, who stood in open carriages
gesticulating like itinerant dentists while their odds were pasted
up on tall boards beside them.
"All the same, it's stupid not to know on what horse one's betting,"
Nana was remarking. "I really must risk some louis in person."
She had stood up to select a bookmaker with a decent expression of
face but forgot what she wanted on perceiving a perfect crowd of her
acquaintance. Besides the Mignons, besides Gaga, Clarisse and
Blanche, there were present, to the right and left, behind and in
the middle of the mass of carriages now hemming in her landau, the
following ladies: Tatan Nene and Maria Blond in a victoria, Caroline
Hequet with her mother and two gentlemen in an open carriage, Louise
Violaine quite alone, driving a little basket chaise decked with
orange and green ribbons, the colors of the Mechain stables, and
finally, Lea de Horn on the lofty seat of a mail coach, where a band
of young men were making a great din. Farther off, in a HUIT
RESSORTS of aristocratic appearance, Lucy Stewart, in a very simple
black silk dress, sat, looking distinguished beside a tall young man
in the uniform of a naval cadet. But what most astounded Nana was
the arrival of Simonne in a tandem which Steiner was driving, while
a footman sat motionless, with folded arms, behind them. She looked
dazzling in white satin striped with yellow and was covered with
diamonds from waist to hat. The banker, on his part, was handling a
tremendous whip and sending along his two horses, which were
harnessed tandemwise, the leader being a little warm-colored
chestnut with a mouselike trot, the shaft horse a big brown bay, a
stepper, with a fine action.
"Deuce take it!" said Nana. "So that thief Steiner has cleared the
Bourse again, has he? I say, isn't Simonne a swell! It's too much
of a good thing; he'll get into the clutches of the law!"
Nevertheless, she exchanged greetings at a distance. Indeed, she
kept waving her hand and smiling, turning round and forgetting no
one in her desire to be seen by everybody. At the same time she
continued chatting.
"It's her son Lucy's got in tow! He's charming in his uniform.
That's why she's looking so grand, of course! You know she's afraid
of him and that she passes herself off as an actress. Poor young
man, I pity him all the same! He seems quite unsuspicious."
"Bah," muttered Philippe, laughing, "she'll be able to find him an
heiress in the country when she likes."
Nana was silent, for she had just noticed the Tricon amid the thick
of the carriages. Having arrived in a cab, whence she could not see
anything, the Tricon had quietly mounted the coach box. And there,
straightening up her tall figure, with her noble face enshrined in
its long curls, she dominated the crowd as though enthroned amid her
feminine subjects. All the latter smiled discreetly at her while
she, in her superiority, pretended not to know them. She wasn't
there for business purposes: she was watching the races for the love
of the thing, as became a frantic gambler with a passion for
horseflesh.
"Dear me, there's that idiot La Faloise!" said Georges suddenly.
It was a surprise to them all. Nana did not recognize her La
Faloise, for since he had come into his inheritance he had grown
extraordinarily up to date. He wore a low collar and was clad in a
cloth of delicate hue which fitted close to his meager shoulders.
His hair was in little bandeaux, and he affected a weary kind of
swagger, a soft tone of voice and slang words and phrases which he
did not take the trouble to finish.
"But he's quite the thing!" declared Nana in perfect enchantment.
Gaga and Clarisse had called La Faloise and were throwing themselves
at him in their efforts to regain his allegiance, but he left them
immediately, rolling off in a chaffing, disdainful manner. Nana
dazzled him. He rushed up to her and stood on the carriage step,
and when she twitted him about Gaga he murmured:
"Oh dear, no! We've seen the last of the old lot! Mustn't play her
off on me any more. And then, you know, it's you now, Juliet mine!"
He had put his hand to his heart. Nana laughed a good deal at this
exceedingly sudden out-of-door declaration. She continued:
"I say, that's not what I'm after. You're making me forget that I
want to lay wagers. Georges, you see that bookmaker down there, a
great red-faced man with curly hair? He's got a dirty blackguard
expression which I like. You're to go and choose--Oh, I say, what
can one choose?"
"I'm not a patriotic soul--oh dear, no!" La Faloise blurted out.
"I'm all for the Englishman. It will be ripping if the Englishman
gains! The French may go to Jericho!"
Nana was scandalized. Presently the merits of the several horses
began to be discussed, and La Faloise, wishing to be thought very
much in the swim, spoke of them all as sorry jades. Frangipane,
Baron Verdier's horse, was by The Truth out of Lenore. A big bay
horse he was, who would certainly have stood a chance if they hadn't
let him get foundered during training. As to Valerio II from the
Corbreuse stable, he wasn't ready yet; he'd had the colic in April.
Oh yes, they were keeping that dark, but he was sure of it, on his
honor! In the end he advised Nana to choose Hazard, the most
defective of the lot, a horse nobody would have anything to do with.
Hazard, by jingo--such superb lines and such an action! That horse
was going to astonish the people.
"No," said Nana, "I'm going to put ten louis on Lusignan and five on
Boum."
La Faloise burst forth at once:
"But, my dear girl, Boum's all rot! Don't choose him! Gasc himself
is chucking up backing his own horse. And your Lusignan--never!
Why, it's all humbug! By Lamb and Princess--just think! By Lamb
and Princess--no, by Jove! All too short in the legs!"
He was choking. Philippe pointed out that, notwithstanding this,
Lusignan had won the Prix des Cars and the Grande Poule des
Produits. But the other ran on again. What did that prove?
Nothing at all. On the contrary, one ought to distrust him. And
besides, Gresham rode Lusignan; well then, let them jolly well dry
up! Gresham had bad luck; he would never get to the post.
And from one end of the field to the other the discussion raging in
Nana's landau seemed to spread and increase. Voices were raised in
a scream; the passion for gambling filled the air, set faces glowing
and arms waving excitedly, while the bookmakers, perched on their
conveyances, shouted odds and jotted down amounts right furiously.
Yet these were only the small fry of the betting world; the big bets
were made in the weighing enclosure. Here, then, raged the keen
contest of people with light purses who risked their five-franc
pieces and displayed infinite covetousness for the sake of a
possible gain of a few louis. In a word, the battle would be
between Spirit and Lusignan. Englishmen, plainly recognizable as
such, were strolling about among the various groups. They were
quite at home; their faces were fiery with excitement; they were
afready triumphant. Bramah, a horse belonging to Lord Reading, had
gained the Grand Prix the previous year, and this had been a defeat
over which hearts were still bleeding. This year it would be
terrible if France were beaten anew. Accordingly all the ladies
were wild with national pride. The Vandeuvres stable became the
rampart of their honor, and Lusignan was pushed and defended and
applauded exceedingly. Gaga, Blanche, Caroline and the rest betted
on Lusignan. Lucy Stewart abstained from this on account of her
son, but it was bruited abroad that Rose Mignon had commissioned
Labordette to risk two hundred louis for her. The Tricon, as she
sat alone next her driver, waited till the last moment. Very cool,
indeed, amid all these disputes, very far above the ever-increasing
uproar in which horses' names kept recurring and lively Parisian
phrases mingled with guttural English exclamations, she sat
listening and taking notes majestically.
"And Nana?" said Georges. "Does no one want her?"
Indeed, nobody was asking for the filly; she was not even being
mentioned. The outsider of the Vandeuvres's stud was swamped by
Lusignan's popularity. But La Faloise flung his arms up, crying:
"I've an inspiration. I'll bet a louis on Nana."
"Bravo! I bet a couple," said Georges.
"And I three," added Philippe.
And they mounted up and up, bidding against one another good-
humoredly and naming prices as though they had been haggling over
Nana at an auction. La Faloise said he would cover her with gold.
Besides, everybody was to be made to back her; they would go and
pick up backers. But as the three young men were darting off to
propagandize, Nana shouted after them:
"You know I don't want to have anything to do with her; I don't for
the world! Georges, ten louis on Lusignan and five on Valerio II."
Meanwhile they had started fairly off, and she watched them gaily as
they slipped between wheels, ducked under horses' heads and scoured
the whole field. The moment they recognized anyone in a carriage
they rushed up and urged Nana's claims. And there were great bursts
of laughter among the crowd when sometimes they turned back,
triumphantly signaling amounts with their fingers, while the young
woman stood and waved her sunshade. Nevertheless, they made poor
enough work of it. Some men let themselves be persuaded; Steiner,
for instance, ventured three louis, for the sight of Nana stirred
him. But the women refused point-blank. "Thanks," they said; "to
lose for a certainty!" Besides, they were in no hurry to work for
the benefit of a dirty wench who was overwhelming them all with her
four white horses, her postilions and her outrageous assumption of
side. Gaga and Clarisse looked exceedingly prim and asked La
Faloise whether he was jolly well making fun of them. When Georges
boldly presented himself before the Mignons' carriage Rose turned
her head away in the most marked manner and did not answer him. One
must be a pretty foul sort to let one's name be given to a horse!
Mignon, on the contrary, followed the young man's movements with a
look of amusement and declared that the women always brought luck.
"Well?" queried Nana when the young men returned after a prolonged
visit to the bookmakers.
"The odds are forty to one against you," said La Faloise.
"What's that? Forty to one!" she cried, astounded. "They were
fifty to one against me. What's happened?"
Labordette had just then reappeared. The course was being cleared,
and the pealing of a bell announced the first race. Amid the
expectant murmur of the bystanders she questioned him about this
sudden rise in her value. But he replied evasively; doubtless a
demand for her had arisen. She had to content herself with this
explanation. Moreover, Labordette announced with a preoccupied
expression that Vandeuvres was coming if he could get away.
The race was ending unnoticed; people were all waiting for the Grand
Prix to be run--when a storm burst over the Hippodrome. For some
minutes past the sun had disappeared, and a wan twilight had
darkened over the multitude. Then the wind rose, and there ensued a
sudden deluge. Huge drops, perfect sheets of water, fell. There
was a momentary confusion, and people shouted and joked and swore,
while those on foot scampered madly off to find refuge under the
canvas of the drinking booths. In the carriages the women did their
best to shelter themselves, grasping their sunshades with both
hands, while the bewildered footmen ran to the hoods. But the
shower was already nearly over, and the sun began shining
brilliantly through escaping clouds of fine rain. A blue cleft
opened in the stormy mass, which was blown off over the Bois, and
the skies seemed to smile again and to set the women laughing in a
reassured manner, while amid the snorting of horses and the disarray
and agitation of the drenched multitude that was shaking itself dry
a broad flush of golden light lit up the field, still dripping and
glittering with crystal drops.
"Oh, that poor, dear Louiset!" said Nana. "Are you very drenched,
my darling?"
The little thing silently allowed his hands to be wiped. The young
woman had taken out her handkerchief. Then she dabbed it over
Bijou, who was trembling more violently than ever. It would not
matter in the least; there were a few drops on the white satin of
her dress, but she didn't care a pin for them. The bouquets,
refreshed by the rain, glowed like snow, and she smelled one
ecstatically, drenching her lips in it as though it were wet with
dew.
Meanwhile the burst of rain had suddenly filled the stands. Nana
looked at them through her field glasses. At that distance you
could only distinguish a compact, confused mass of people, heaped
up, as it were, on the ascending ranges of steps, a dark background
relieved by light dots which were human faces. The sunlight
filtered in through openings near the roof at each end of the stand
and detached and illumined portions of the seated multitude, where
the ladies' dresses seemed to lose their distinguishing colors. But
Nana was especially amused by the ladies whom the shower had driven
from the rows of chairs ranged on the sand at the base of the
stands. As courtesans were absolutely forbidden to enter the
enclosure, she began making exceedingly bitter remarks about all the
fashionable women therein assembled. She thought them fearfully
dressed up, and such guys!
There was a rumor that the empress was entering the little central
stand, a pavilion built like a chalet, with a wide balcony furnished
with red armchairs.
"Why, there he is!" said Georges. "I didn't think he was on duty
this week."
The stiff and solemn form of the Count Muffat had appeared behind
the empress. Thereupon the young men jested and were sorry that
Satin wasn't there to go and dig him in the ribs. But Nana's field
glass focused the head of the Prince of Scots in the imperial stand.
"Gracious, it's Charles!" she cried.
She thought him stouter than formerly. In eighteen months he had
broadened, and with that she entered into particulars. Oh yes, he
was a big, solidly built fellow!
All round her in the ladies' carriages they were whispering that the
count had given her up. It was quite a long story. Since he had
been making himself noticeable, the Tuileries had grown scandalized
at the chamberlain's conduct. Whereupon, in order ro retain his
position, he had recently broken it off with Nana. La Faloise
bluntly reported this account of matters to the young woman and,
addressing her as his Juliet, again offered himself. But she
laughed merrily and remarked:
"It's idiotic! You won't know him; I've only to say, 'Come here,'
for him to chuck up everything."
For some seconds past she had been examining the Countess Sabine and
Estelle. Daguenet was still at their side. Fauchery had just
arrived and was disturbing the people round him in his desire to
make his bow to them. He, too, stayed smilingly beside them. After
that Nana pointed with disdainful action at the stands and
continued:
"Then, you know, those people don't fetch me any longer now! I know
'em too well. You should see 'em behind scenes. No more honor!
It's all up with honor! Filth belowstairs, filth abovestairs, filth
everywhere. That's why I won't be bothered about 'em!"
And with a comprehensive gesture she took in everybody, from the
grooms leading the horses on to the course to the sovereign lady
busy chatting with with Charles, a prince and a dirty fellow to
boot.
"Bravo, Nana! Awfully smart, Nana!" cried La Faloise
enthusiastically.
The tolling of a bell was lost in the wind; the races continued.
The Prix d'Ispahan had just been run for and Berlingot, a horse
belonging to the Mechain stable, had won. Nana recalled Labordette
in order to obtain news of the hundred louis, but he burst out
laughing and refused to let her know the horses he had chosen for
her, so as not to disturb the luck, as he phrased it. Her money was
well placed; she would see that all in good time. And when she
confessed her bets to him and told him how she had put ten louis on
Lusignan and five on Valerio II, he shrugged his shoulders, as who
should say that women did stupid things whatever happened. His
action surprised her; she was quite at sea.
Just then the field grew more animated than before. Open-air
lunches were arranged in the interval before the Grand Prix. There
was much eating and more drinking in all directions, on the grass,
on the high seats of the four-in-hands and mail coaches, in the
victorias, the broughams, the landaus. There was a universal spread
of cold viands and a fine disorderly display of champagne baskets
which footmen kept handing down out of the coach boots. Corks came
out with feeble pops, which the wind drowned. There was an
interchange of jests, and the sound of breaking glasses imparted a
note of discord to the high-strung gaiety of the scene. Gaga and
Clarisse, together with Blanche, were making a serious repast, for
they were eating sandwiches on the carriage rug with which they had
been covering their knees. Louise Violaine had got down from her
basket carriage and had joined Caroline Hequet. On the turf at
their feet some gentlemen had instituted a drinking bar, whither
Tatan, Maria, Simonne and the rest came to refresh themselves, while
high in air and close at hand bottles were being emptied on Lea de
Horn's mail coach, and, with infinite bravado and gesticulation, a
whole band were making themselves tipsy in the sunshine, above the
heads of the crowd. Soon, however, there was an especially large
crowd by Nana's landau. She had risen to her feet and had set
herself to pour out glasses of champagne for the men who came to pay
her their respects. Francois, one of the footmen, was passing up
the bottles while La Faloise, trying hard to imitate a coster's
accents, kept pattering away:
"'Ere y're, given away, given away! There's some for everybody!"
"Do be still, dear boy," Nana ended by saying. "We look like a set
of tumblers."
She thought him very droll and was greatly entertained. At one
moment she conceived the idea of sending Georges with a glass of
champagne to Rose Mignon, who was affecting temperance. Henri and
Charles were bored to distraction; they would have been glad of some
champagne, the poor little fellows. But Georges drank the glassful,
for he feared an argument. Then Nana remembered Louiset, who was
sitting forgotten behind her. Maybe he was thirsty, and she forced
him to take a drop or two of wine, which made him cough dreadfully.
"'Ere y'are, 'ere y'are, gemmen!" La Faloise reiterated. "It don't
cost two sous; it don't cost one. We give it away."
But Nana broke in with an exclamation:
"Gracious, there's Bordenave down there! Call him. Oh, run,
please, please do!"
It was indeed Bordenave. He was strolling about with his hands
behind his back, wearing a hat that looked rusty in the sunlight and
a greasy frock coat that was glossy at the seams. It was Bordenave
shattered by bankruptcy, yet furious despite all reverses, a
Bordenave who flaunted his misery among all the fine folks with the
hardihood becoming a man ever ready to take Dame Fortune by storm.
"The deuce, how smart we are!" he said when Nana extended her hand
to him like the good-natured wench she was.
Presently, after emptying a glass of champagne, he gave vent to the
followmg profoundly regretful phrase:
"Ah, if only I were a woman! But, by God, that's nothing! Would
you like to go on the stage again? I've a notion: I'll hire the
Gaite, and we'll gobble up Paris between us. You certainly owe it
me, eh?"
And he lingered, grumbling, beside her, though glad to see her
again; for, he said, that confounded Nana was balm to his feelings.
Yes, it was balm to them merely to exist in her presence! She was
his daughter; she was blood of his blood!
The circle increased, for now La Faloise was filling glasses, and
Georges and Philippe were picking up friends. A stealthy impulse
was gradually bringing in the whole field. Nana would fling
everyone a laughing smile or an amusing phrase. The groups of
tipplers were drawing near, and all the champagne scattered over the
place was moving in her direction. Soon there was only one noisy
crowd, and that was round her landau, where she queened it among
outstretched glasses, her yellow hair floating on the breeze and her
snowy face bathed in the sunshine. Then by way of a finishing touch
and to make the other women, who were mad at her triumph, simply
perish of envy, she lifted a brimming glass on high and assumed her
old pose as Venus Victrix.
But somebody touched her shoulder, and she was surprised, on turning
round, to see Mignon on the seat. She vanished from view an instant
and sat herself down beside him, for he had come to communicate a
matter of importance. Mignon had everywhere declared that it was
ridiculous of his wife to bear Nana a grudge; he thought her
attitude stupid and useless.
"Look here, my dear," he whispered. "Be careful: don't madden Rose
too much. You understand, I think it best to warn you. Yes, she's
got a weapon in store, and as she's never forgiven you the Petite
Duchesse business--"
"A weapon," said Nana; "what's that blooming well got to do with
me?"
"Just listen: it's a letter she must have found in Fauchery's
pocket, a letter written to that screw Fauchery by the Countess
Muffat. And, by Jove, it's clear the whole story's in it. Well
then, Rose wants to send the letter to the count so as to be
revenged on him and on you."
"What the deuce has that got to do with me?" Nana repeated. "It's a
funny business. So the whole story about Fauchery's in it! Very
well, so much the better; the woman has been exasperating me! We
shall have a good laugh!"
"No, I don't wish it," Mignon briskly rejoined. "There'll be a
pretty scandal! Besides, we've got nothing to gain."
He paused, fearing lest he should say too much, while she loudly
averred that she was most certainly not going to get a chaste woman
into trouble.
But when he still insisted on his refusal she looked steadily at
him. Doubtless he was afraid of seeing Fauchery again introduced
into his family in case he broke with the countess. While avenging
her own wrongs, Rose was anxious for that to happen, since she still
felt a kindness toward the journalist. And Nana waxed meditative
and thought of M. Venot's call, and a plan began to take shape in
her brain, while Mignon was doing his best to talk her over.
"Let's suppose that Rose sends the letter, eh? There's food for
scandal: you're mixed up in the business, and people say you're the
cause of it all. Then to begin with, the count separates from his
wife."
"Why should he?" she said. "On the contrary--"
She broke off, in her turn. There was no need for her to think
aloud. So in order to be rid of Mignon she looked as though she
entered into his view of the case, and when he advised her to give
Rose some proof of her submission--to pay her a short visit on the
racecourse, for instance, where everybody would see her--she replied
that she would see about it, that she would think the matter over.
A commotion caused her to stand up again. On the course the horses
were coming in amid a sudden blast of wind. The prize given by the
city of Paris had just been run for, and Cornemuse had gained it.
Now the Grand Prix was about to be run, and the fever of the crowd
increased, and they were tortured by anxiety and stamped and swayed
as though they wanted to make the minutes fly faster. At this
ultimate moment the betting world was surprised and startled by the
continued shortening of the odds against Nana, the outsider of the
Vandeuvres stables. Gentlemen kept returning every few moments with
a new quotation: the betting was thirty to one against Nana; it was
twenty-five to one against Nana, then twenty to one, then fifteen to
one. No one could understand it. A filly beaten on all the
racecourses! A filly which that same morning no single sportsman
would take at fifty to one against! What did this sudden madness
betoken? Some laughed at it and spoke of the pretty doing awaiting
the duffers who were being taken in by the joke. Others looked
serious and uneasy and sniffed out something ugly under it all.
Perhaps there was a "deal" in the offing. Allusion was made to
well-known stories about the robberies which are winked at on
racecourses, but on this occasion the great name of Vandeuvres put a
stop to all such accusations, and the skeptics in the end prevailed
when they prophesied that Nana would come in last of all.
"Who's riding Nana?" queried La Faloise.
Just then the real Nana reappeared, whereat the gentlemen lent his
question an indecent meaning and burst into an uproarious fit of
laughter. Nana bowed.
"Price is up," she replied.
And with that the discussion began again. Price was an English
celebrity. Why had Vandeuvres got this jockey to come over, seeing
that Gresham ordinarily rode Nana? Besides, they were astonished to
see him confiding Lusignan to this man Gresham, who, according to La
Faloise, never got a place. But all these remarks were swallowed up
in jokes, contradictions and an extraordinarily noisy confusion of
opinions. In order to kill time the company once more set
themselves to drain bottles of champagne. Presently a whisper ran
round, and the different groups opened outward. It was Vandeuvres.
Nana affected vexation.
"Dear me, you're a nice fellow to come at this time of day! Why,
I'm burning to see the enclosure."
"Well, come along then," he said; "there's still time. You'll take
a stroll round with me. I just happen to have a permit for a lady
about me."
And he led her off on his arm while she enjoyed the jealous glances
with which Lucy, Caroline and the others followed her. The young
Hugons and La Faloise remained in the landau behind her retreating
figure and continued to do the honors of her champagne. She shouted
to them that she would return immediately.
But Vandeuvres caught sight of Labordette and called him, and there
was an interchange of brief sentences.
"You've scraped everything up?"
"Yes."
"To what amount?"
"Fifteen hundred louis--pretty well all over the place."
As Nana was visibly listening, and that with much curiosity, they
held their tongues. Vandeuvres was very nervous, and he had those
same clear eyes, shot with little flames, which so frightened her
the night he spoke of burning himself and his horses together. As
they crossed over the course she spoke low and familiarly.
"I say, do explain this to me. Why are the odds on your filly
changing?"
He trembled, and this sentence escaped him:
"Ah, they're talking, are they? What a set those betting men are!
When I've got the favorite they all throw themselves upon him, and
there's no chance for me. After that, when an outsider's asked for,
they give tongue and yell as though they were being skinned."
"You ought to tell me what's going to happen--I've made my bets,"
she reioined. "Has Nana a chance?"
A sudden, unreasonable burst of anger overpowered him.
"Won't you deuced well let me be, eh? Every horse has a chance.
The odds are shortening because, by Jove, people have taken the
horse. Who, I don't know. I should prefer leaving you if you must
needs badger me with your idiotic questions."
Such a tone was not germane either to his temperament or his habits,
and Nana was rather surprised than wounded. Besides, he was ashamed
of himself directly afterward, and when she begged him in a dry
voice to behave politely he apologized. For some time past he had
suffered from such sudden changes of temper. No one in the Paris of
pleasure or of society was ignorant of the fact that he was playing
his last trump card today. If his horses did not win, if, moreover,
they lost him the considerable sums wagered upon them, it would mean
utter disaster and collapse for him, and the bulwark of his credit
and the lofty appearance which, though undermined, he still kept up,
would come ruining noisily down. Moreover, no one was ignorant of
the fact that Nana was the devouring siren who had finished him off,
who had been the last to attack his crumbling fortunes and to sweep
up what remained of them. Stories were told of wild whims and
fancies, of gold scattered to the four winds, of a visit to Baden-
Baden, where she had not left him enough to pay the hotel bill, of a
handful of diamonds cast on the fire during an evening of
drunkenness in order to see whether they would burn like coal.
Little by little her great limbs and her coarse, plebeian way of
laughing had gained complete mastery over this elegant, degenerate
son of an ancient race. At that time he was risking his all, for he
had been so utterly overpowered by his taste for ordure and
stupidity as to have even lost the vigor of his skepticism. A week
before Nana had made him promise her a chateau on the Norman coast
between Havre and Trouville, and now he was staking the very
foundations of his honor on the fulfillment of his word. Only she
was getting on his nerves, and he could have beaten her, so stupid
did he feel her to be.
The man at the gate, not daring to stop the woman hanging on the
count's arm, had allowed them to enter the enclosure. Nana, greatly
puffed up at the thought that at last she was setting foot on the
forbidden ground, put on her best behavior and walked slowly by the
ladies seated at the foot of the stands. On ten rows of chairs the
toilets were densely massed, and in the blithe open air their bright
colors mingled harmoniously. Chairs were scattered about, and as
people met one another friendly circles were formed, just as though
the company had been sitting under the trees in a public garden.
Children had been allowed to go free and were running from group to
group, while over head the stands rose tier above crowded tier and
the light-colored dresses therein faded into the delicate shadows of
the timberwork. Nana stared at all these ladies. She stared
steadily and markedly at the Countess Sabine. After which, as she
was passing in front of the imperial stand, the sight of Muffat,
looming in all his official stiffness by the side of the empress,
made her very merry.
"Oh, how silly he looks!" she said at the top of her voice to
Vandeuvres. She was anxious to pay everything a visit. This small
parklike region, with its green lawns and groups of trees, rather
charmed her than otherwise. A vendor of ices had set up a large
buffet near the entrance gates, and beneath a rustic thatched roof a
dense throng of people were shouting and gesticulating. This was
the ring. Close by were some empty stalls, and Nana was
disappointed at discovering only a gendarme's horse there. Then
there was the paddock, a small course some hundred meters in
circumference, where a stable help was walking about Valerio II in
his horsecloths. And, oh, what a lot of men on the graveled
sidewalks, all of them with their tickets forming an orange-colored
patch in their bottonholes! And what a continual parade of people
in the open galleries of the grandstands! The scene interested her
for a moment or two, but truly, it was not worth while getting the
spleen because they didn't admit you inside here.
Daguenet and Fauchery passed by and bowed to her. She made them a
sign, and they had to come up. Thereupon she made hay of the
weighing-in enclosure. But she broke off abruptly:
"Dear me, there's the Marquis de Chouard! How old he's growing!
That old man's killing himself! Is he still as mad about it as
ever?"
Thereupon Daguenet described the old man's last brilliant stroke.
The story dated from the day before yesterday, and no one knew it as
yet. After dangling about for months he had bought her daughter
Amelie from Gaga for thirty thousand francs, they said.
"Good gracious! That's a nice business!" cried Nana in disgust. "Go
in for the regular thing, please! But now that I come to think of
it, that must be Lili down there on the grass with a lady in a
brougham. I recognized the face. The old boy will have brought her
out."
Vandeuvres was not listening; he was impatient and longed to get rid
of her. But Fauchery having remarked at parting that if she had not
seen the bookmakers she had seen nothing, the count was obliged to
take her to them in spite of his obvious repugnance. And she was
perfectly happy at once; that truly was a curious sight, she said!
Amid lawns bordered by young horse-chestnut trees there was a round
open enclosure, where, forming a vast circle under the shadow of the
tender green leaves, a dense line of bookmakers was waiting for
betting men, as though they had been hucksters at a fair. In order
to overtop and command the surrounding crowd they had taken up
positions on wooden benches, and they were advertising their prices
on the trees beside them. They had an ever-vigilant glance, and
they booked wagers in answer to a single sign, a mere wink, so
rapidly that certain curious onlookers watched them openmouthed,
without being able to understand it all. Confusion reigned; prices
were shouted, and any unexpected change in a quotation was received
with something like tumult. Occasionally scouts entered the place
at a run and redoubled the uproar as they stopped at the entrance to
the rotunda and, at the tops of their voices, announced departures
and arrivals. In this place, where the gambling fever was pulsing
in the sunshine, such announcements were sure to raise a prolonged
muttering sound.
"They ARE funny!" murmured Nana, greatly entertained.
"Their features look as if they had been put on the wrong way. Just
you see that big fellow there; I shouldn't care to meet him all
alone in the middle of a wood."
But Vandeuvres pointed her out a bookmaker, once a shopman in a
fancy repository, who had made three million francs in two years.
He was slight of build, delicate and fair, and people all round him
treated him with great respect. They smiled when they addressed
him, while others took up positions close by in order to catch a
glimpse of him.
They were at length leaving the ring when Vandeuvres nodded slightly
to another bookmaker, who thereupon ventured to call him. It was
one of his former coachmen, an enormous fellow with the shoulders of
an ox and a high color. Now that he was trying his fortunes at race
meetings on the strength of some mysteriously obtained capital, the
count was doing his utmost to push him, confiding to him his secret
bets and treating him on all occasions as a servant to whom one
shows one's true character. Yet despite this protection, the man
had in rapid succession lost very heavy sums, and today he, too, was
playing his last card. There was blood in his eyes; he looked fit
to drop with apoplexy.
"Well, Marechal," queried the count in the lowest of voices, "to
what amount have you laid odds?"
"To five thousand louis, Monsieur le Comte," replied the bookmaker,
likewise lowering his voice. "A pretty job, eh? I'll confess to
you that I've increased the odds; I've made it three to one."
Vandeuvres looked very much put out.
"No, no, I don't want you to do that. Put it at two to one again
directly. I shan't tell you any more, Marechal."
"Oh, how can it hurt, Monsieur le Comte, at this time o' day?"
rejoined the other with the humble smile befitting an accomplice.
"I had to attract the people so as to lay your two thousand louis."
At this Vandeuvres silenced him. But as he was going off Marechal
remembered something and was sorry he had not questioned him about
the shortening of the odds on the filly. It would be a nice
business for him if the filly stood a chance, seeing that he had
just laid fifty to one about her in two hundreds.
Nana, though she did not understand a word of what the count was
whispering, dared not, however, ask for new explanations. He seemed
more nervous than before and abruptly handed her over to Labordette,
whom they came upon in front of the weighing-in room.
"You'll take her back," he said. "I've got something on hand. Au
revoir!"
And he entered the room, which was narrow and low-pitched and half
filled with a great pair of scales. It was like a waiting room in a
suburban station, and Nana was again hugely disillusioned, for she
had been picturing to herself something on a very vast scale, a
monumental machine, in fact, for weighing horses. Dear me, they
only weighed the jockeys! Then it wasn't worth while making such a
fuss with their weighing! In the scale a jockey with an idiotic
expression was waiting, harness on knee, till a stout man in a frock
coat should have done verifying his weight. At the door a stable
help was holding a horse, Cosinus, round which a silent and deeply
interested throng was clustering.
The course was about to be cleared. Labordette hurried Nana but
retraced his steps in order to show her a little man talking with
Vandeuvres at some distance from the rest.
"Dear me, there's Price!" he said.
"Ah yes, the man who's mounting me," she murmured laughingly.
And she declared him to be exquisitely ugly. All jockeys struck her
as looking idiotic, doubtless, she said, because they were prevented
from growing bigger. This particular jockey was a man of forty, and
with his long, thin, deeply furrowed, hard, dead countenance, he
looked like an old shriveled-up child. His body was knotty and so
reduced in size that his blue jacket with its white sleeves looked
as if it had been thrown over a lay figure.
"No," she resumed as she walked away, "he would never make me very
happy, you know."
A mob of people were still crowding the course, the turf of which
had been wet and trampled on till it had grown black. In front of
the two telegraphs, which hung very high up on their cast-iron
pillars, the crowd were jostling together with upturned faces,
uproariously greeting the numbers of the different horses as an
electric wire in connection with the weighing room made them appear.
Gentlemen were pointing at programs: Pichenette had been scratched
by his owner, and this caused some noise. However, Nana did not do
more than cross over the course on Labordette's arm. The bell
hanging on the flagstaff was ringing persistently to warn people to
leave the course.
"Ah, my little dears," she said as she got up into her landau again,
"their enclosure's all humbug!"
She was welcomed with acclamation; people around her clapped their
hands.
"Bravo, Nana! Nana's ours again!"
What idiots they were, to be sure! Did they think she was the sort
to cut old friends? She had come back just at the auspicious
moment. Now then, 'tenshun! The race was beginning! And the
champagne was accordingly forgotten, and everyone left off drinking.
But Nana was astonished to find Gaga in her carriage, sitting with
Bijou and Louiset on her knees. Gaga had indeed decided on this
course of action in order to be near La Faloise, but she told Nana
that she had been anxious to kiss Baby. She adored children.
"By the by, what about Lili?" asked Nana. "That's certainly she
over there in that old fellow's brougham. They've just told me
something very nice!"
Gaga had adopted a lachrymose expression.
"My dear, it's made me ill," she said dolorously. "Yesterday I had
to keep my bed, I cried so, and today I didn't think I should be
able to come. You know what my opinions were, don't you? I didn't
desire that kind of thing at all. I had her educated in a convent
with a view to a good marriage. And then to think of the strict
advice she had and the constant watching! Well, my dear, it was she
who wished it. We had such a scene--tears--disagreeable speeches!
It even got to such a point that I caught her a box on the ear. She
was too much bored by existence, she said; she wanted to get out of
it. By and by, when she began to say, ''Tisn't you, after all,
who've got the right to prevent me,' I said to her: 'you're a
miserable wretch; you're bringing dishonor upon us. Begone!' And
it was done. I consented to arrange about it. But my last hope's
blooming well blasted, and, oh, I used to dream about such nice
things!"
The noise of a quarrel caused them to rise. It was Georges in the
act of defending Vandeuvres against certain vague rumors which were
circulating among the various groups.
"Why should you say that he's laying off his own horse?" the young
man was exclaiming. "Yesterday in the Salon des Courses he took the
odds on Lusignan for a thousand louis."
"Yes, I was there," said Philippe in affirmation of this. "And he
didn't put a single louis on Nana. If the betting's ten to one
against Nana he's got nothing to win there. It's absurd to imagine
people are so calculating. Where would his interest come in?"
Labordette was listening with a quiet expression. Shrugging his
shoulders, he said:
"Oh, leave them alone; they must have their say. The count has
again laid at least as much as five hundred louis on Lusignan, and
if he's wanted Nana to run to a hundred louis it's because an owner
ought always to look as if he believes in his horses."
"Oh, bosh! What the deuce does that matter to us?" shouted La
Faloise with a wave of his arms. "Spirit's going to win! Down with
France--bravo, England!"
A long shiver ran through the crowd, while a fresh peal from the
bell announced the arrival of the horses upon the racecourse. At
this Nana got up and stood on one of the seats of her carriage so as
to obtain a better view, and in so doing she trampled the bouquets
of roses and myosotis underfoot. With a sweeping glance she took in
the wide, vast horizon. At this last feverish moment the course was
empty and closed by gray barriers, between the posts of which stood
a line of policemen. The strip of grass which lay muddy in front of
her grew brighter as it stretched away and turned into a tender
green carpet in the distance. In the middle landscape, as she
lowered her eyes, she saw the field swarming with vast numbers of
people, some on tiptoe, others perched on carriages, and all heaving
and jostling in sudden passionate excitement.
Horses were neighing; tent canvases flapped, while equestrians urged
their hacks forward amid a crowd of pedestrians rushing to get
places along the barriers. When Nana turned in the direction of the
stands on the other side the faces seemed diminished, and the dense
masses of heads were only a confused and motley array, filling
gangways, steps and terraces and looming in deep, dark, serried
lines against the sky. And beyond these again she over looked the
plain surrounding the course. Behind the ivy-clad mill to the
right, meadows, dotted over with great patches of umbrageous wood,
stretched away into the distance, while opposite to her, as far as
the Seine flowing at the foot of a hill, the avenues of the park
intersected one another, filled at that moment with long, motionless
files of waiting carriages; and in the direction of Boulogne, on the
left, the landscape widened anew and opened out toward the blue
distances of Meudon through an avenue of paulownias, whose rosy,
leafless tops were one stain of brilliant lake color. People were
still arriving, and a long procession of human ants kept coming
along the narrow ribbon of road which crossed the distance, while
very far away, on the Paris side, the nonpaying public, herding like
sheep among the wood, loomed in a moving line of little dark spots
under the trees on the skirts of the Bois.
Suddenly a cheering influence warmed the hundred thousand souls who
covered this part of the plain like insects swarming madly under the
vast expanse of heaven. The sun, which had been hidden for about a
quarter of an hour, made his appearance again and shone out amid a
perfect sea of light. And everything flamed afresh: the women's
sunshades turned into countless golden targets above the heads of
the crowd. The sun was applauded, saluted with bursts of laughter.
And people stretched their arms out as though to brush apart the
clouds.
Meanwhile a solitary police officer advanced down the middle of the
deserted racecourse, while higher up, on the left, a man appeared
with a red flag in his hand.
"It's the starter, the Baron de Mauriac," said Labordette in reply
to a question from Nana. All round the young woman exclamations
were bursting from the men who were pressing to her very carriage
step. They kept up a disconnected conversation, jerking out phrases
under the immediate influence of passing impressions. Indeed,
Philippe and Georges, Bordenave and La Faloise, could not be quiet.
"Don't shove! Let me see! Ah, the judge is getting into his box.
D'you say it's Monsieur de Souvigny? You must have good eyesight--
eh?--to be able to tell what half a head is out of a fakement like
that! Do hold your tongue--the banner's going up. Here they are--
'tenshun! Cosinus is the first!"
A red and yellow banner was flapping in mid-air at the top of a
mast. The horses came on the course one by one; they were led by
stableboys, and the jockeys were sitting idle-handed in the saddles,
the sunlight making them look like bright dabs of color. After
Cosinus appeared Hazard and Boum. Presently a murmur of approval
greeted Spirit, a magnificent big brown bay, the harsh citron color
and black of whose jockey were cheerlessly Britannic. Valerio II
scored a success as he came in; he was small and very lively, and
his colors were soft green bordered with pink. The two Vandeuvres
horses were slow to make their appearance, but at last, in
Frangipane's rear, the blue and white showed themselves. But
Lusignan, a very dark bay of irreproachable shape, was almost
forgotten amid the astonishment caused by Nana. People had not seen
her looking like this before, for now the sudden sunlight was dyeing
the chestnut filly the brilliant color of a girl's red-gold hair.
She was shining in the light like a new gold coin; her chest was
deep; her head and neck tapered lightly from the delicate, high-
strung line of her long back.
"Gracious, she's got my hair!" cried Nana in an ecstasy. "You bet
you know I'm proud of it!"
The men clambered up on the landau, and Bordenave narrowly escaped
putting his foot on Louiset, whom his mother had forgotten. He took
him up with an outburst of paternal grumbling and hoisted him on his
shoulder, muttering at the same time:
"The poor little brat, he must be in it too! Wait a bit, I'll show
you Mamma. Eh? Look at Mummy out there."
And as Bijou was scratching his legs, he took charge of him, too,
while Nana, rejoicing in the brute that bore her name, glanced round
at the other women to see how they took it. They were all raging
madly. Just then on the summit of her cab the Tricon, who had not
moved till that moment, began waving her hand and giving her
bookmaker her orders above the heads of the crowd. Her instinct had
at last prompted her; she was backing Nana.
La Faloise meanwhile was making an insufferable noise. He was
getting wild over Frangipane.
"I've an inspiration," he kept shouting. "Just look at Frangipane.
What an action, eh? I back Frangipane at eight to one. Who'll take
me?"
"Do keep quiet now," said Labordette at last. "You'll be sorry for
it if you do."
"Frangipane's a screw," Philippe declared. "He's been utterly blown
upon already. You'll see the canter."
The horses had gone up to the right, and they now started for the
preliminary canter, passing in loose order before the stands.
Thereupon there was a passionate fresh burst of talk, and people all
spoke at once.
"Lusignan's too long in the back, but he's very fit. Not a cent, I
tell you, on Valerio II; he's nervous--gallops with his head up--
it's a bad sign. Jove! Burne's riding Spirit. I tell you, he's
got no shoulders. A well-made shoulder--that's the whole secret.
No, decidedly, Spirit's too quiet. Now listen, Nana, I saw her
after the Grande Poule des Produits, and she was dripping and
draggled, and her sides were trembling like one o'clock. I lay
twenty louis she isn't placed! Oh, shut up! He's boring us with
his Frangipane. There's no time to make a bet now; there, they're
off!"
Almost in tears, La Faloise was struggling to find a bookmaker. He
had to be reasoned with. Everyone craned forward, but the first go-
off was bad, the starter, who looked in the distance like a slim
dash of blackness, not having lowered his flag. The horses came
back to their places after galloping a moment or two. There were
two more false starts. At length the starter got the horses
together and sent them away with such address as to elicit shouts of
applause.
"Splendid! No, it was mere chance! Never mind--it's done it!"
The outcries were smothered by the anxiety which tortured every
breast. The betting stopped now, and the game was being played on
the vast course itself. Silence reigned at the outset, as though
everyone were holding his breath. White faces and trembling forms
were stretched forward in all directions. At first Hazard and
Cosinus made the running at the head of the rest; Valerio II
followed close by, and the field came on in a confused mass behind.
When they passed in front of the stands, thundering over the ground
in their course like a sudden stormwind, the mass was already some
fourteen lengths in extent. Frangipane was last, and Nana was
slightly behind Lusignan and Spirit.
"Egad!" muttered Labordette, "how the Englishman is pulling it off
out there!"
The whole carriageload again burst out with phrases and
exclamations. Everyone rose on tiptoe and followed the bright
splashes of color which were the jockeys as they rushed through the
sunlight.
At the rise Valerio II took the lead, while Cosinus and Hazard lost
ground, and Lusignan and Spirit were running neck and neck with Nana
still behind them.
"By jingo, the Englishman's gained! It's palpable!" said Bordenave.
"Lusignan's in difficulties, and Valerio II can't stay."
"Well, it will be a pretty biz if the Englishman wins!" cried
Philippe in an access of patriotic grief.
A feeling of anguish was beginning to choke all that crowded
multitude. Another defeat! And with that a strange ardent prayer,
which was almost religious, went up for Lusignan, while people
heaped abuse on Spirit and his dismal mute of a jockey. Among the
crowd scattered over the grass the wind of excitement put up whole
groups of people and set their boot soles flashing in air as they
ran. Horsemen crossed the green at a furious gallop. And Nana, who
was slowly revolving on her own axis, saw beneath her a surging
waste of beasts and men, a sea of heads swayed and stirred all round
the course by the whirlwind of the race, which clove the horizon
with the bright lightning flash of the jockeys. She had been
following their movement from behind while the cruppers sped away
and the legs seemed to grow longer as they raced and then diminished
till they looked slender as strands of hair. Now the horses were
running at the end of the course, and she caught a side view of them
looking minute and delicate of outline against the green distances
of the Bois. Then suddenly they vanished behind a great clump of
trees growing in the middle of the Hippodrome.
"Don't talk about it!" cried Georges, who was still full of hope.
"It isn't over yet. The Englishman's touched."
But La Faloise was again seized with contempt for his country and
grew positively outrageous in his applause of Spirit. Bravo! That
was right! France needed it! Spirit first and Frangipane second--
that would be a nasty one for his native land! He exasperated
Labordette, who threatened seriously to throw him off the carriage.
"Let's see how many minutes they'll be about it," said Bordenave
peaceably, for though holding up Louiset, he had taken out his
watch.
One after the other the horses reappeared from behind the clump of
trees. There was stupefaction; a long murmur arose among the crowd.
Valerio II was still leading, but Spirit was gaining on him, and
behind him Lusignan had slackened while another horse was taking his
place. People could not make this out all at once; they were
confused about the colors. Then there was a burst of exclamations.
"But it's Nana! Nana? Get along! I tell you Lusignan hasn't
budged. Dear me, yes, it's Nana. You can certainly recognize her
by her golden color. D'you see her now? She's blazing away.
Bravo, Nana! What a ripper she is! Bah, it doesn't matter a bit:
she's making the running for Lusignan!"
For some seconds this was everybody's opinion. But little by little
the filly kept gaining and gaining, spurting hard all the while.
Thereupon a vast wave of feeling passed over the crowd, and the tail
of horses in the rear ceased to interest. A supreme struggle was
beginning between Spirit, Nana, Lusignan and Valerio II. They were
pointed out; people estimated what ground they had gained or lost in
disconnected, gasping phrases. And Nana, who had mounted up on the
coach box, as though some power had lifted her thither, stood white
and trembling and so deeply moved as not to be able to speak. At
her side Labordette smiled as of old.
"The Englishman's in trouble, eh?" said Philippe joyously. "He's
going badly."
"In any case, it's all up with Lusignan," shouted La Faloise.
"Valerio II is coming forward. Look, there they are all four
together."
The same phrase was in every mouth.
"What a rush, my dears! By God, what a rush!"
The squad of horses was now passing in front of them like a flash of
lightning. Their approach was perceptible--the breath of it was as
a distant muttering which increased at every second. The whole
crowd had thrown themselves impetuously against the barriers, and a
deep clamor issued from innumerable chests before the advance of the
horses and drew nearer and nearer like the sound of a foaming tide.
It was the last fierce outburst of colossal partisanship; a hundred
thousand spectators were possessed by a single passion, burning with
the same gambler's lust, as they gazed after the beasts, whose
galloping feet were sweeping millions with them. The crowd pushed
and crushed--fists were clenched; people gaped, openmouthed; every
man was fighting for himself; every man with voice and gesture was
madly speeding the horse of his choice. And the cry of all this
multitude, a wild beast's cry despite the garb of civilization, grew
ever more distinct:
"Here they come! Here they come! Here they come!"
But Nana was still gaining ground, and now Valerio II was distanced,
and she was heading the race, with Spirit two or three necks behind.
The rolling thunder of voices had increased. They were coming in; a
storm of oaths greeted them from the landau.
"Gee up, Lusignan, you great coward! The Englishman's stunning! Do
it again, old boy; do it again! Oh, that Valerio! It's sickening!
Oh, the carcass! My ten louis damned well lost! Nana's the only
one! Bravo, Nana! Bravo!"
And without being aware of it Nana, upon her seat, had begun jerking
her hips and waist as though she were racing herself. She kept
striking her side--she fancied it was a help to the filly. With
each stroke she sighed with fatigue and said in low, anguished
tones:
"Go it, go it!"
Then a splendid sight was witnessed. Price, rising in his stirrups
and brandishing his whip, flogged Nana with an arm of iron. The old
shriveled-up child with his long, hard, dead face seemed to breath
flame. And in a fit of furious audacity and triumphant will he put
his heart into the filly, held her up, lifted her forward, drenched
in foam, with eyes of blood. The whole rush of horses passed with a
roar of thunder: it took away people's breaths; it swept the air
with it while the judge sat frigidly waiting, his eye adjusted to
its task. Then there was an immense re-echoing burst of
acclamation. With a supreme effort Price had just flung Nana past
the post, thus beating Spirit by a head.
There was an uproar as of a rising tide. "Nana! Nana! Nana!" The
cry rolled up and swelled with the violence of a tempest, till
little by little it filled the distance, the depths of the Bois as
far as Mont Valerien, the meadows of Longchamps and the Plaine de
Boulogne. In all parts of the field the wildest enthusiasm declared
itself. "Vive Nana! Vive la France! Down with England!" The
women waved their sunshades; men leaped and spun round, vociferating
as they did so, while others with shouts of nervous laughter threw
their hats in the air. And from the other side of the course the
enclosure made answer; the people on the stands were stirred, though
nothing was distinctly visible save a tremulous motion of the air,
as though an invisible flame were burning in a brazier above the
living mass of gesticulating arms and little wildly moving faces,
where the eyes and gaping mouths looked like black dots. The noise
did not cease but swelled up and recommenced in the recesses of
faraway avenues and among the people encamped under the trees, till
it spread on and on and attained its climax in the imperial stand,
where the empress herself had applauded. "Nana! Nana! Nana!" The
cry rose heavenward in the glorious sunlight, whose golden rain beat
fiercely on the dizzy heads of the multitude.
Then Nana, looming large on the seat of her landau, fancied that it
was she whom they were applauding. For a moment or two she had
stood devoid of motion, stupefied by her triumph, gazing at the
course as it was invaded by so dense a flood of people that the turf
became invisible beneath the sea of black hats. By and by, when
this crowd had become somewhat less disorderly and a lane had been
formed as far as the exit and Nana was again applauded as she went
off with Price hanging lifelessly and vacantly over her neck, she
smacked her thigh energetically, lost all self-possession, triumphed
in crude phrases:
"Oh, by God, it's me; it's me. Oh, by God, what luck!"
And, scarce knowing how to give expression to her overwhelming joy,
she hugged and kissed Louiset, whom she now discovered high in the
air on Bordenave's shoulder.
"Three minutes and fourteen seconds," said the latter as he put his
watch back in his pocket.
Nana kept hearing her name; the whole plain was echoing it back to
her. Her people were applauding her while she towered above them in
the sunlight, in the splendor of her starry hair and white-and-sky-
blue dress. Labordette, as he made off, had just announced to her a
gain of two thousand louis, for he had put her fifty on Nana at
forty to one. But the money stirred her less than this unforeseen
victory, the fame of which made her queen of Paris. All the other
ladies were losers. With a raging movement Rose Mignon had snapped
her sunshade, and Caroline Hequet and Clarisse and Simonne--nay,
Lucy Stewart herself, despite the presence of her son--were swearing
low in their exasperation at that great wench's luck, while the
Tricon, who had made the sign of the cross at both start and finish,
straightened up her tall form above them, went into an ecstasy over
her intuition and damned Nana admiringly as became an experienced
matron.
Meanwhile round the landau the crush of men increased. The band of
Nana's immediate followers had made a fierce uproar, and now
Georges, choking with emotion, continued shouting all by himself in
breaking tones. As the champagne had given out, Philippe, taking
the footmen with him, had run to the wine bars. Nana's court was
growing and growing, and her present triumph caused many loiterers
to join her. Indeed, that movement which had made her carriage a
center of attraction to the whole field was now ending in an
apotheosis, and Queen Venus was enthroned amid suddenly maddened
subjects. Bordenave, behind her, was muttering oaths, for he
yearned to her as a father. Steiner himself had been reconquered--
he had deserted Simonne and had hoisted himself upon one of Nana's
carriage steps. When the champagne had arrived, when she lifted her
brimming glass, such applause burst forth, and "Nana! Nana! Nana!"
was so loudly repeated that the crowd looked round in astonishment
for the filly, nor could any tell whether it was the horse or the
woman that filled all hearts.
While this was going on Mignon came hastening up in defiance of
Rose's terrible frown. That confounded girl simply maddened him,
and he wanted to kiss her. Then after imprinting a paternal salute
on both her cheeks:
"What bothers me," he said, "is that now Rose is certainly going to
send the letter. She's raging, too, fearfully."
"So much the better! It'll do my business for me!" Nana let slip.
But noting his utter astonishment, she hastily continued:
"No, no, what am I saying? Indeed, I don't rightly know what I'm
saying now! I'm drunk."
And drunk, indeed, drunk with joy, drunk with sunshine, she still
raised her glass on high and applauded herself.
"To Nana! To Nana!" she cried amid a redoubled uproar of laughter
and bravoes, which little by little overspread the whole Hippodrome.
The races were ending, and the Prix Vaublanc was run for. Carriages
began driving off one by one. Meanwhile, amid much disputing, the
name of Vandeuvres was again mentioned. It was quite evident now:
for two years past Vandeuvres had been preparing his final stroke
and had accordingly told Gresham to hold Nana in, while he had only
brought Lusignan forward in order to make play for the filly. The
losers were vexed; the winners shrugged their shoulders. After all,
wasn't the thing permissible? An owner was free to run his stud in
his own way. Many others had done as he had! In fact, the majority
thought Vandeuvres had displayed great skill in raking in all he
could get about Nana through the agency of friends, a course of
action which explained the sudden shortening of the odds. People
spoke of his having laid two thousand louis on the horse, which,
supposing the odds to be thirty to one against, gave him twelve
hundred thousand francs, an amount so vast as to inspire respect and
to excuse everything.
But other rumors of a very serious nature were being whispered
about: they issued in the first instance from the enclosure, and the
men who returned thence were full of exact particulars. Voices were
raised; an atrocious scandal began to be openly canvassed. That
poor fellow Vandeuvres was done for; he had spoiled his splendid hit
with a piece of flat stupidity, an idiotic robbery, for he had
commissioned Marechal, a shady bookmaker, to lay two thousand louis
on his account against Lusignan, in order thereby to get back his
thousand and odd openly wagered louis. It was a miserable business,
and it proved to be the last rift necessary to the utter breakup of
his fortune. The bookmaker being thus warned that the favorite
would not win, had realized some sixty thousand francs over the
horse. Only Labordette, for lack of exact and detailed
instructions, had just then gone to him to put two hundred louis on
Nana, which the bookmaker, in his ignorance of the stroke actually
intended, was still quoting at fifty to one against. Cleared of one
hundred thousand francs over the filly and a loser to the tune of
forty thousand, Marechal, who felt the world crumbling under his
feet, had suddenly divined the situation when he saw the count and
Labordette talking together in front of the enclosure just after the
race was over. Furious, as became an ex-coachman of the count's,
and brutally frank as only a cheated man can be, he had just made a
frightful scene in public, had told the whole story in atrocious
terms and had thrown everyone into angry excitement. It was further
stated that the stewards were about to meet.
Nana, whom Philippe and Georges were whisperingly putting in
possession of the facts, gave vent to a series of reflections and
yet ceased not to laugh and drink. After all, it was quite likely;
she remembered such things, and then that Marechal had a dirty,
hangdog look. Nevertheless, she was still rather doubtful when
Labordette appeared. He was very white.
"Well?" she asked in a low voice.
"Bloody well smashed up!" he replied simply.
And he shrugged his shoulders. That Vandeuvres was a mere child!
She made a bored little gesture.
That evening at the Bal Mabille Nana obtained a colossal success.
When toward ten o'clock she made her appearance, the uproar was
afready formidable. That classic night of madness had brought
together all that was young and pleasure loving, and now this smart
world was wallowing in the coarseness and imbecility of the
servants' hall. There was a fierce crush under the festoons of gas
lamps, and men in evening coats and women in outrageous low-necked
old toilets, which they did not mind soiling, were howling and
surging to and fro under the maddening influence of a vast drunken
fit. At a distance of thirty paces the brass instruments of the
orchestra were inaudible. Nobody was dancing. Stupid witticisms,
repeated no one knew why, were going the round of the various
groups. People were straining after wit without succeeding in being
funny. Seven women, imprisoned in the cloakroom, were crying to be
set free. A shallot had been found, put up to auction and knocked
down at two louis. Just then Nana arrived, still wearing her blue-
and-white racecourse costume, and amid a thunder of applause the
shallot was presented to her. People caught hold of her in her own
despite, and three gentlemen bore her triumphantly into the garden,
across ruined grassplots and ravaged masses of greenery. As the
bandstand presented an obstacle to her advance, it was taken by
storm, and chairs and music stands were smashed. A paternal police
organized the disorder.
It was only on Tuesday that Nana recovered from the excitements of
victory. That morning she was chatting with Mme Lerat, the old lady
having come in to bring her news of Louiset, whom the open air had
upset. A long story, which was occupying the attention of all
Paris, interested her beyond measure. Vandeuvres, after being
warned off all racecourses and posted at the Cercle Imperial on the
very evening after the disaster, had set fire to his stable on the
morrow and had burned himself and his horses to death.
"He certainly told me he was going to," the young woman kept saying.
"That man was a regular maniac! Oh, how they did frighten me when
they told me about it yesterday evening! You see, he might easily
have murdered me some fine night. And besides, oughtn't he to have
given me a hint about his horse? I should at any rate have made my
fortune! He said to Labordette that if I knew about the matter I
would immediately inform my hairdresser and a whole lot of other
men. How polite, eh? Oh dear, no, I certainly can't grieve much
for him."
After some reflection she had grown very angry. Just then
Labordette came in; he had seen about her bets and was now the
bearer of some forty thousand francs. This only added to her bad
temper, for she ought to have gained a million. Labordette, who
during the whole of this episode had been pretending entire
innocence, abandoned Vandeuvres in decisive terms. Those old
families, he opined, were worn out and apt to make a stupid ending.
"Oh dear no!" said Nana. "It isn't stupid to burn oneself in one's
stable as he did. For my part, I think he made a dashing finish;
but, oh, you know, I'm not defending that story about him and
Marechal. It's too silly. Just to think that Blanche has had the
cheek to want to lay the blame of it on me! I said to her: 'Did I
tell him to steal?' Don't you think one can ask a man for money
without urging him to commit crime? If he had said to me, 'I've got
nothing left,' I should have said to him, 'All right, let's part.'
And the matter wouldn't have gone further."
"Just so," said the aunt gravely "When men are obstinate about a
thing, so much the worse for them!"
"But as to the merry little finish up, oh, that was awfully smart!"
continued Nana. "It appears to have been terrible enough to give
you the shudders! He sent everybody away and boxed himself up in
the place with a lot of petroleum. And it blazed! You should have
seen it! Just think, a great big affair, almost all made of wood
and stuffed with hay and straw! The flames simply towered up, and
the finest part of the business was that the horses didn't want to
be roasted. They could be heard plunging, throwing themselves
against the doors, crying aloud just like human beings. Yes, people
haven't got rid of the horror of it yet."
Labordette let a low, incredulous whistle escape him. For his part,
he did not believe in the death of Vandeuvres. Somebody had sworn
he had seen him escaping through a window. He had set fire to his
stable in a fit of aberration, but when it had begun to grow too
warm it must have sobered him. A man so besotted about the women
and so utterly worn out could not possibly die so pluckily.
Nana listened in her disillusionment and could only remark:
"Oh, the poor wretch, it was so beautiful!"
CHAPTER XII
Toward one in the morning, in the great bed of the Venice point
draperies, Nana and the count lay still awake. He had returned to
her that evening after a three days sulking fit. The room, which
was dimly illumined by a lamp, seemed to slumber amid a warm, damp
odor of love, while the furniture, with its white lacquer and silver
incrustations, loomed vague and wan through the gloom. A curtain
had been drawn to, so that the bed lay flooded with shadow. A sigh
became audible; then a kiss broke the silence, and Nana, slipping
off the coverlet, sat for a moment or two, barelegged, on the edge
of the bed. The count let his head fall back on the pillow and
remained in darkness.
"Dearest, you believe in the good God, don't you?" she queried after
some moments' reflection. Her face was serious; she had been
overcome by pious terrors on quitting her lover's arms.
Since morning, indeed, she had been complaining of feeling
uncomfortable, and all her stupid notions, as she phrased it,
notions about death and hell, were secretly torturing her. From
time to time she had nights such as these, during which childish
fears and atrocious fancies would thrill her with waking nightmares.
She continued:
"I say, d'you think I shall go to heaven?"
And with that she shivered, while the count, in his surprise at her
putting such singular questions at such a moment, felt his old
religious remorse returning upon him. Then with her chemise
slipping from her shoulders and her hair unpinned, she again threw
herself upon his breast, sobbing and clinging to him as she did so.
"I'm afraid of dying! I'm afraid of dying!" He had all the trouble
in the world to disengage himself. Indeed, he was himself afraid of
giving in to the sudden madness of this woman clinging to his body
in her dread of the Invisible. Such dread is contagious, and he
reasoned with her. Her conduct was perfect--she had only to conduct
herself well in order one day to merit pardon. But she shook her
head. Doubtless she was doing no one any harm; nay, she was even in
the constant habit of wearing a medal of the Virgin, which she
showed to him as it hung by a red thread between her breasts. Only
it had been foreordained that all unmarried women who held
conversation with men would go to hell. Scraps of her catechism
recurred to her remembrance. Ah, if one only knew for certain, but,
alas, one was sure of nothing; nobody ever brought back any
information, and then, truly, it would be stupid to bother oneself
about things if the priests were talking foolishness all the time.
Nevertheless, she religiously kissed her medal, which was still warm
from contact with her skin, as though by way of charm against death,
the idea of which filled her with icy horror. Muffat was obliged to
accompany her into the dressing room, for she shook at the idea of
being alone there for one moment, even though she had left the door
open. When he had lain down again she still roamed about the room,
visiting its several corners and starting and shivering at the
slightest noise. A mirror stopped her, and as of old she lapsed
into obvious contemplation of her nakedness. But the sight of her
breast, her waist and her thighs only doubled her terror, and she
ended by feeling with both hands very slowly over the bones of her
face.
"You're ugly when you're dead," she said in deliberate tones.
And she pressed her cheeks, enlarging her eyes and pushing down her
jaw, in order to see how she would look. Thus disfigured, she
turned toward the count.
"Do look! My head'll be quite small, it will!"
At this he grew vexed.
"You're mad; come to bed!"
He fancied he saw her in a grave, emaciated by a century of sleep,
and he joined his hands and stammered a prayer. It was some time
ago that the religious sense had reconquered him, and now his daily
access of faith had again assumed the apoplectic intensity which was
wont to leave him well-nigh stunned. The joints of his fingers used
to crack, and he would repeat without cease these words only: "My
God, my God, my God!" It was the cry of his impotence, the cry of
that sin against which, though his damnation was certain, he felt
powerless to strive. When Nana returned she found him hidden
beneath the bedclothes; he was haggard; he had dug his nails into
his bosom, and his eyes stared upward as though in search of heaven.
And with that she started to weep again. Then they both embraced,
and their teeth chattered they knew not why, as the same imbecile
obsession over-mastered them. They had already passed a similar
night, but on this occasion the thing was utterly idiotic, as Nana
declared when she ceased to be frightened. She suspected something,
and this caused her to question the count in a prudent sort of way.
It might be that Rose Mignon had sent the famous letter! But that
was not the case; it was sheer fright, nothing more, for he was
still ignorant whether he was a cuckold or no.
Two days later, after a fresh disappearance, Muffat presented
himself in the morning, a time of day at which he never came. He
was livid; his eyes were red and his whole man still shaken by a
great internal struggle. But Zoe, being scared herself, did not
notice his troubled state. She had run to meet him and now began
crying:
"Oh, monsieur, do come in! Madame nearly died yesterday evening!"
And when he asked for particulars:
"Something it's impossible to believe has happened--a miscarriage,
monsieur."
Nana had been in the family way for the past three months. For long
she had simply thought herself out of sorts, and Dr Boutarel had
himself been in doubt. But when afterward he made her a decisive
announcement, she felt so bored thereby that she did all she
possibly could to disguise her condition. Her nervous terrors, her
dark humors, sprang to some extent from this unfortunate state of
things, the secret of which she kept very shamefacedly, as became a
courtesan mother who is obliged to conceal her plight. The thing
struck her as a ridiculous accident, which made her appear small in
her own eyes and would, had it been known, have led people to chaff
her.
"A poor joke, eh?" she said. "Bad luck, too, certainly."
She was necessarily very sharp set when she thought her last hour
had come. There was no end to her surprise, too; her sexual economy
seemed to her to have got out of order; it produced children then
even when one did not want them and when one employed it for quite
other purposes! Nature drove her to exasperation; this appearance
of serious motherhood in a career of pleasure, this gift of life
amid all the deaths she was spreading around, exasperated her. Why
could one not dispose of oneself as fancy dictated, without all this
fuss? And whence had this brat come? She could not even suggest a
father. Ah, dear heaven, the man who made him would have a splendid
notion had he kept him in his own hands, for nobody asked for him;
he was in everybody's way, and he would certainly not have much
happiness in life!
Meanwhile Zoe described the catastrophe.
"Madame was seized with colic toward four o'clock. When she didn't
come back out of the dressing room I went in and found her lying
stretched on the floor in a faint. Yes, monsieur, on the floor in a
pool of blood, as though she had been murdered. Then I understood,
you see. I was furious; Madame might quite well have confided her
trouble to me. As it happened, Monsieur Georges was there, and he
helped me to lift her up, and directly a miscarriage was mentioned
he felt ill in his turn! Oh, it's true I've had the hump since
yesterday!"
In fact, the house seemed utterly upset. All the servants were
galloping upstairs, downstairs and through the rooms. Georges had
passed the night on an armchair in the drawing room. It was he who
had announced the news to Madame's friends at that hour of the
evening when Madame was in the habit of receiving. He had still
been very pale, and he had told his story very feelingly, and as
though stupefied. Steiner, La Faloise, Philippe and others,
besides, had presented themselves, and at the end of the lad's first
phrase they burst into exclamations. The thing was impossible! It
must be a farce! After which they grew serious and gazed with an
embarrassed expression at her bedroom door. They shook their heads;
it was no laughing matter.
Till midnight a dozen gentlemen had stood talking in low voices in
front of the fireplace. All were friends; all were deeply exercised
by the same idea of paternity. They seemed to be mutually excusing
themselves, and they looked as confused as if they had done
something clumsy. Eventually, however, they put a bold face on the
matter. It had nothing to do with them: the fault was hers! What a
stunner that Nana was, eh? One would never have believed her
capable of such a fake! And with that they departed one by one,
walking on tiptoe, as though in a chamber of death where you cannot
laugh.
"Come up all the same, monsieur," said Zoe to Muffat. "Madame is
much better and will see you. We are expecting the doctor, who
promised to come back this morning."
The lady's maid had persuaded Georges to go back home to sleep, and
upstairs in the drawing room only Satin remained. She lay stretched
on a divan, smoking a cigarette and scanning the ceiling. Amid the
household scare which had followed the accident she had been white
with rage, had shrugged her shoulders violently and had made
ferocious remarks. Accordingly, when Zoe was passing in front of
her and telling Monsieur that poor, dear Madame had suffered a great
deal:
"That's right; it'll teach him!" said Satin curtly.
They turned round in surprise, but she had not moved a muscle; her
eyes were still turned toward the ceiling, and her cigarette was
still wedged tightly between her lips.
"Dear me, you're charming, you are!" said Zoe.
But Satin sat up, looked savagely at the count and once more hurled
her remark at him.
"That's right; it'll teach him!"
And she lay down again and blew forth a thin jet of smoke, as though
she had no interest in present events and were resolved not to
meddle in any of them. No, it was all too silly!
Zoe, however, introduced Muffat into the bedroom, where a scent of
ether lingered amid warm, heavy silence, scarce broken by the dull
roll of occasional carriages in the Avenue de Villiers. Nana,
looking very white on her pillow, was lying awake with wide-open,
meditative eyes. She smiled when she saw the count but did not
move.
"Ah, dear pet!" she slowly murmured. "I really thought I should
never see you again."
Then as he leaned forward to kiss her on the hair, she grew tender
toward him and spoke frankly about the child, as though he were its
father.
"I never dared tell you; I felt so happy about it! Oh, I used to
dream about it; I should have liked to be worthy of you! And now
there's nothing left. Ah well, perhaps that's best. I don't want
to bring a stumbling block into your life."
Astounded by this story of paternity, he began stammering vague
phrases. He had taken a chair and had sat down by the bed, leaning
one arm on the coverlet. Then the young woman noticed his wild
expression, the blood reddening his eyes, the fever that set his
lips aquiver.
"What's the matter then?" she asked. "You're ill too."
"No," he answered with extreme difficulty.
She gazed at him with a profound expression. Then she signed to Zoe
to retire, for the latter was lingering round arranging the medicine
bottles. And when they were alone she drew him down to her and
again asked:
"What's the matter with you, darling? The tears are ready to burst
from your eyes--I can see that quite well. Well now, speak out;
you've come to tell me something."
"No, no, I swear I haven't," he blurted out. But he was choking
with suffering, and this sickroom, into which he had suddenly
entered unawares, so worked on his feelings that he burst out
sobbing and buried his face in the bedclothes to smother the
violence of his grief. Nana understood. Rose Mignon had most
assuredly decided to send the letter. She let him weep for some
moments, and he was shaken by convulsions so fierce that the bed
trembled under her. At length in accents of motherly compassion she
queried:
"You've had bothers at your home?"
He nodded affirmatively. She paused anew, and then very low:
"Then you know all?"
He nodded assent. And a heavy silence fell over the chamber of
suffering. The night before, on his return from a party given by
the empress, he had received the letter Sabine had written her
lover. After an atrocious night passed in the meditation of
vengeance he had gone out in the morning in order to resist a
longing which prompted him to kill his wife. Outside, under a
sudden, sweet influence of a fine June morning, he had lost the
thread of his thoughts and had come to Nana's, as he always came at
terrible moments in his life. There only he gave way to his misery,
for he felt a cowardly joy at the thought that she would console
him.
"Now look here, be calm!" the young woman continued, becoming at the
same time extremely kind. "I've known it a long time, but it was
certainly not I that would have opened your eyes. You remember you
had your doubts last year, but then things arranged themselves,
owing to my prudence. In fact, you wanted proofs. The deuce,
you've got one today, and I know it's hard lines. Nevertheless, you
must look at the matter quietly: you're not dishonored because it's
happened."
He had left off weeping. A sense of shame restrained him from
saying what he wanted to, although he had long ago slipped into the
most intimate confessions about his household. She had to encourage
him. Dear me, she was a woman; she could understand everything.
When in a dull voice he exclaimed:
"You're ill. What's the good of tiring you? It was stupid of me to
have come. I'm going--"
"No," she answered briskly enough. "Stay! Perhaps I shall be able
to give you some good advice. Only don't make me talk too much; the
medical man's forbidden it."
He had ended by rising, and he was now walking up and down the room.
Then she questioned him:
"Now what are you going to do?
"I'm going to box the man's ears--by heavens, yes!"
She pursed up her lips disapprovingly.
"That's not very wise. And about your wife?"
"I shall go to law; I've proofs."
"Not at all wise, my dear boy. It's stupid even. You know I shall
never let you do that!"
And in her feeble voice she showed him decisively how useless and
scandalous a duel and a trial would be. He would be a nine days'
newspaper sensation; his whole existence would be at stake, his
peace of mind, his high situation at court, the honor of his name,
and all for what? That he might have the laughers against him.
"What will it matter?" he cried. "I shall have had my revenge."
"My pet," she said, "in a business of that kind one never has one's
revenge if one doesn't take it directly."
He paused and stammered. He was certainly no poltroon, but he felt
that she was right. An uneasy feeling was growing momentarily
stronger within him, a poor, shameful feeling which softened his
anger now that it was at its hottest. Moreover, in her frank desire
to tell him everything, she dealt him a fresh blow.
"And d'you want to know what's annoying you, dearest? Why, that you
are deceiving your wife yourself. You don't sleep away from home
for nothing, eh? Your wife must have her suspicions. Well then,
how can you blame her? She'll tell you that you've set her the
example, and that'll shut you up. There, now, that's why you're
stamping about here instead of being at home murdering both of 'em."
Muffat had again sunk down on the chair; he was overwhelmed by these
home thrusts. She broke off and took breath, and then in a low
voice:
"Oh, I'm a wreck! Do help me sit up a bit. I keep slipping down,
and my head's too low."
When he had helped her she sighed and felt more comfortable. And
with that she harked back to the subject. What a pretty sight a
divorce suit would be! Couldn't he imagine the advocate of the
countess amusing Paris with his remarks about Nana? Everything
would have come out--her fiasco at the Varietes, her house, her
manner of life. Oh dear, no! She had no wish for all that amount
of advertising. Some dirty women might, perhaps, have driven him to
it for the sake of getting a thundering big advertisement, but she--
she desired his happiness before all else. She had drawn him down
toward her and, after passing her arm around his neck, was nursing
his head close to hers on the edge of the pillow. And with that she
whispered softly:
"Listen, my pet, you shall make it up with your wife."
But he rebelled at this. It could never be! His heart was nigh
breaking at the thought; it was too shameful. Nevertheless, she
kept tenderly insisting.
"You shall make it up with your wife. Come, come, you don't want to
hear all the world saying that I've tempted you away from your home?
I should have too vile a reputation! What would people think of me?
Only swear that you'll always love me, because the moment you go
with another woman--"
Tears choked her utterance, and he intervened with kisses and said:
"You're beside yourself; it's impossible!"
"Yes, yes," she rejoined, "you must. But I'll be reasonable. After
all, she's your wife, and it isn't as if you were to play me false
with the firstcomer."
And she continued in this strain, giving him the most excellent
advice. She even spoke of God, and the count thought he was
listening to M. Venot, when that old gentleman endeavored to
sermonize him out of the grasp of sin. Nana, however, did not speak
of breaking it off entirely: she preached indulgent good nature and
suggested that, as became a dear, nice old fellow, he should divide
his attentions between his wife and his mistress, so that they would
all enjoy a quiet life, devoid of any kind of annoyance, something,
in fact, in the nature of a happy slumber amid the inevitable
miseries of existence. Their life would be nowise changed: he would
still be the little man of her heart. Only he would come to her a
bit less often and would give the countess the nights not passed
with her. She had got to the end of her strength and left off,
speaking under her breath:
"After that I shall feel I've done a good action, and you'll love me
all the more."
Silence reigned. She had closed her eyes and lay wan upon her
pillow. The count was patiently listening to her, not wishing her
to tire herself. A whole minute went by before she reopened her
eyes and murmured:
"Besides, how about the money? Where would you get the money from
if you must grow angry and go to law? Labordette came for the bill
yesterday. As for me, I'm out of everything; I have nothing to put
on now."
Then she shut her eyes again and looked like one dead. A shadow of
deep anguish had passed over Muffat's brow. Under the present
stroke he had since yesterday forgotten the money troubles from
which he knew not how to escape. Despite formal promises to the
contrary, the bill for a hundred thousand francs had been put in
circulation after being once renewed, and Labordette, pretending to
be very miserable about it, threw all the blame on Francis,
declaring that he would never again mix himself up in such a matter
with an uneducated man. It was necessary to pay, for the count
would never have allowed his signature to be protested. Then in
addition to Nana's novel demands, his home expenses were
extraordinarily confused. On their return from Les Fondettes the
countess had suddenly manifested a taste for luxury, a longing for
worldly pleasures, which was devouring their fortune. Her ruinous
caprices began to be talked about. Their whole household management
was altered, and five hundred thousand francs were squandered in
utterly transforming the old house in the Rue Miromesnil. Then
there were extravagantly magnificent gowns and large sums
disappeared, squandered or perhaps given away, without her ever
dreaming of accounting for them. Twice Muffat ventured to mention
this, for he was anxious to know how the money went, but on these
occasions she had smiled and gazed at him with so singular an
expression that he dared not interrogate her further for fear of a
too-unmistakable answer. If he were taking Daguenet as son-in-law
as a gift from Nana it was chiefly with the hope of being able to
reduce Estelle's dower to two hundred thousand francs and of then
being free to make any arrangements he chose about the remainder
with a young man who was still rejoicing in this unexpected match.
Nevertheless, for the last week, under the immediate necessity of
finding Labordette's hundred thousand francs, Muffat had been able
to hit on but one expedient, from which he recoiled. This was that
he should sell the Bordes, a magnificent property valued at half a
million, which an uncle had recently left the countess. However,
her signature was necessary, and she herself, according to the terms
of the deed, could not alienate the property without the count's
authorization. The day before he had indeed resolved to talk to his
wife about this signature. And now everything was ruined; at such a
moment he would never accept of such a compromise. This reflection
added bitterness to the frightful disgrace of the adultery. He
fully understood what Nana was asking for, since in that ever-
growing self-abandonment which prompted him to put her in
possession of all his secrets, he had complained to her of his
position and had confided to her the tiresome difficulty he was in
with regard to the signature of the countess.
Nana, however, did not seem to insist. She did not open her eyes
again, and, seeing her so pale, he grew frightened and made her
inhale a little ether. She gave a sigh and without mentioning
Daguenet asked him some questions.
"When is the marriage?"
"We sign the contract on Tuesday, in five days' time," he replied.
Then still keeping her eyelids closed, as though she were speaking
from the darkness and silence of her brain:
"Well then, pet, see to what you've got to do. As far as I'm
concerned, I want everybody to be happy and comfortable."
He took her hand and soothed her. Yes, he would see about it; the
important thing now was for her to rest. And the revolt within him
ceased, for this warm and slumberous sickroom, with its all-
pervading scent of ether, had ended by lulling him into a mere
longing for happiness and peace. All his manhood, erewhile maddened
by wrong, had departed out of him in the neighborhood of that warm
bed and that suffering woman, whom he was nursing under the
influence of her feverish heat and of remembered delights. He
leaned over her and pressed her in a close embrace, while despite
her unmoved features her lips wore a delicate, victorious smile.
But Dr Boutarel made his appearance.
"Well, and how's this dear child?" he said familiarly to Muffat,
whom he treated as her husband. "The deuce, but we've made her
talk!"
The doctor was a good-looking man and still young. He had a superb
practice among the gay world, and being very merry by nature and
ready to laugh and joke in the friendliest way with the demimonde
ladies with whom, however, he never went farther, he charged very
high fees and got them paid with the greatest punctuality.
Moreover, he would put himself out to visit them on the most trivial
occasions, and Nana, who was always trembling at the fear of death,
would send and fetch him two or three times a week and would
anxiously confide to him little infantile ills which he would cure
to an accompaniment of amusing gossip and harebrained anecdotes.
The ladies all adored him. But this time the little ill was
serious.
Muffat withdrew, deeply moved. Seeing his poor Nana so very weak,
his sole feeling was now one of tenderness. As he was leaving the
room she motioned him back and gave him her forehead to kiss. In a
low voice and with a playfully threatening look she said:
"You know what I've allowed you to do. Go back to your wife, or
it's all over and I shall grow angry!"
The Countess Sabine had been anxious that her daughter's wedding
contract should be signed on a Tuesday in order that the renovated
house, where the paint was still scarcely dry, might be reopened
with a grand entertainment. Five hundred invitations had been
issued to people in all kinds of sets. On the morning of the great
day the upholsterers were still nailing up hangings, and toward nine
at night, just when the lusters were going to be lit, the architect,
accompanied by the eager and interested countess, was given his
final orders.
It was one of those spring festivities which have a delicate charm
of their own. Owing to the warmth of the June nights, it had become
possible to open the two doors of the great drawing room and to
extend the dancing floor to the sanded paths of the garden. When
the first guests arrived and were welcomed at the door by the count
and the countess they were positively dazzled. One had only to
recall to mind the drawing room of the past, through which flitted
the icy, ghostly presence of the Countess Muffat, that antique room
full of an atmosphere of religious austerity with its massive First
Empire mahogany furniture, its yellow velvet hangings, its moldy
ceiling through which the damp had soaked. Now from the very
threshold of the entrance hall mosaics set off with gold were
glittering under the lights of lofty candelabras, while the marble
staircase unfurled, as it were, a delicately chiseled balustrade.
Then, too, the drawing room looked splendid; it was hung with Genoa
velvet, and a huge decorative design by Boucher covered the ceiling,
a design for which the architect had paid a hundred thousand francs
at the sale of the Chateau de Dampierre. The lusters and the
crystal ornaments lit up a luxurious display of mirrors and precious
furniture. It seemed as though Sabine's long chair, that solitary
red silk chair, whose soft contours were so marked in the old days,
had grown and spread till it filled the whole great house with
voluptuous idleness and a sense of tense enjoyment not less fierce
and hot than a fire which has been long in burning up.
People were already dancing. The band, which had been located in
the garden, in front of one of the open windows, was playing a
waltz, the supple rhythm of which came softly into the house through
the intervening night air. And the garden seemed to spread away and
away, bathed in transparent shadow and lit by Venetian lamps, while
in a purple tent pitched on the edge of a lawn a table for
refreshments had been established. The waltz, which was none other
than the quaint, vulgar one in the Blonde Venus, with its laughing,
blackguard lilt, penetrated the old hotel with sonorous waves of
sound and sent a feverish thrill along its walls. It was as though
some fleshly wind had come up out of the common street and were
sweeping the relics of a vanished epoch out of the proud old
dwelling, bearing away the Muffats' past, the age of honor and
religious faith which had long slumbered beneath the lofty ceilings.
Meanwhile near the hearth, in their accustomed places, the old
friends of the count's mother were taking refuge. They felt out of
their element--they were dazzled and they formed a little group amid
the slowly invading mob. Mme du Joncquoy, unable to recognize the
various rooms, had come in through the dining saloon. Mme
Chantereau was gazing with a stupefied expression at the garden,
which struck her as immense. Presently there was a sound of low
voices, and the corner gave vent to all sorts of bitter reflections.
"I declare," murmured Mme Chantereau, "just fancy if the countess
were to return to life. Why, can you not imagine her coming in
among all these crowds of people! And then there's all this gilding
and this uproar! It's scandalous!"
"Sabine's out of her senses," replied Mme du Joncquoy. "Did you see
her at the door? Look, you can catch sight of her here; she's
wearing all her diamonds."
For a moment or two they stood up in order to take a distant view of
the count and countess. Sabine was in a white dress trimmed with
marvelous English point lace. She was triumphant in beauty; she
looked young and gay, and there was a touch of intoxication in her
continual smile. Beside her stood Muffat, looking aged and a little
pale, but he, too, was smiling in his calm and worthy fashion.
"And just to think that he was once master," continued Mme
Chantereau, "and that not a single rout seat would have come in
without his permission! Ah well, she's changed all that; it's her
house now. D'you remember when she did not want to do her drawing
room up again? She's done up the entire house."
But the ladies grew silent, for Mme de Chezelles was entering the
room, followed by a band of young men. She was going into ecstasies
and marking her approval with a succession of little exclamations.
"Oh, it's delicious, exquisite! What taste!" And she shouted back
to her followers:
"Didn't I say so? There's nothing equal to these old places when
one takes them in hand. They become dazzling! It's quite in the
grand seventeenth-century style. Well, NOW she can receive."
The two old ladies had again sat down and with lowered tones began
talking about the marriage, which was causing astonishment to a good
many people. Estelle had just passed by them. She was in a pink
silk gown and was as pale, flat, silent and virginal as ever. She
had accepted Daguenet very quietly and now evinced neither joy nor
sadness, for she was still as cold and white as on those winter
evenings when she used to put logs on the fire. This whole fete
given in her honor, these lights and flowers and tunes, left her
quite unmoved.
"An adventurer," Mme du Joncquoy was saying. "For my part, I've
never seen him."
"Take care, here he is," whispered Mme Chantereau.
Daguenet, who had caught sight of Mme Hugon and her sons, had
eagerly offered her his arm. He laughed and was effusively
affectionate toward her, as though she had had a hand in his sudden
good fortune.
"Thank you," she said, sitting down near the fireplace. "You see,
it's my old corner."
"You know him?" queried Mme du Joncquoy, when Daguenet had gone.
"Certainly I do--a charming young man. Georges is very fond of him.
Oh, they're a most respected family."
And the good lady defended him against the mute hostility which was
apparent to her. His father, held in high esteem by Louis Philippe,
had been a PREFET up to the time of his death. The son had been a
little dissipated, perhaps; they said he was ruined, but in any
case, one of his uncles, who was a great landowner, was bound to
leave him his fortune. The ladies, however, shook their heads,
while Mme Hugon, herself somewhat embarrassed, kept harking back to
the extreme respectability of his family. She was very much
fatigued and complained of her feet. For some months she had been
occupying her house in the Rue Richelieu, having, as she said, a
whole lot of things on hand. A look of sorrow overshadowed her
smiling, motherly face.
"Never mind," Mme Chantereau concluded. "Estelle could have aimed
at something much better."
There was a flourish. A quadrille was about to begin, and the crowd
flowed back to the sides of the drawing room in order to leave the
floor clear. Bright dresses flitted by and mingled together amid
the dark evening coats, while the intense light set jewels flashing
and white plumes quivering and lilacs and roses gleaming and
flowering amid the sea of many heads. It was already very warm, and
a penetrating perfume was exhaled from light tulles and crumpled
silks and satins, from which bare shoulders glimmered white, while
the orchestra played its lively airs. Through open doors ranges of
seated ladies were visible in the background of adjoining rooms;
they flashed a discreet smile; their eyes glowed, and they made
pretty mouths as the breath of their fans caressed their faces. And
guests still kept arriving, and a footman announced their names
while gentlemen advanced slowly amid the surrounding groups,
striving to find places for ladies, who hung with difficulty on
their arms, and stretching forward in quest of some far-off vacant
armchair. The house kept filling, and crinolined skirts got jammed
together with a little rustling sound. There were corners where an
amalgam of laces, bunches and puffs would completely bar the way,
while all the other ladies stood waiting, politely resigned and
imperturbably graceful, as became people who were made to take part
in these dazzling crushes. Meanwhile across the garden couples, who
had been glad to escape from the close air of the great drawing
room, were wandering away under the roseate gleam of the Venetian
lamps, and shadowy dresses kept flitting along the edge of the lawn,
as though in rhythmic time to the music of the quadrille, which
sounded sweet and distant behind the trees.
Steiner had just met with Foucarmont and La Faloise, who were
drinking a glass of champagne in front of the buffet.
"It's beastly smart," said La Faloise as he took a survey of the
purple tent, which was supported by gilded lances. "You might fancy
yourself at the Gingerbread Fair. That's it--the Gingerbread Fair!"
In these days he continually affected a bantering tone, posing as
the young man who has abused every mortal thing and now finds
nothing worth taking seriously.
"How surprised poor Vandeuvres would be if he were to come back,"
murmured Foucarmont. "You remember how he simply nearly died of
boredom in front of the fire in there. Egad, it was no laughing
matter."
"Vandeuvres--oh, let him be. He's a gone coon!" La Faloise
disdainfully rejoined. "He jolly well choused himself, he did, if
he thought he could make us sit up with his roast-meat story! Not a
soul mentions it now. Blotted out, done for, buried--that's what's
the matter with Vandeuvres! Here's to the next man!"
Then as Steiner shook hands with him:
"You know Nana's just arrived. Oh, my boys, it was a state entry.
It was too brilliant for anything! First of all she kissed the
countess. Then when the children came up she gave them her blessing
and said to Daguenet, 'Listen, Paul, if you go running after the
girls you'll have to answer for it to me.' What, d'you mean to say
you didn't see that? Oh, it WAS smart. A success, if you like!"
The other two listened to him, openmouthed, and at last burst out
laughing. He was enchanted and thought himself in his best vein.
"You thought it had really happened, eh? Confound it, since Nana's
made the match! Anyway, she's one of the family."
The young Hugons were passing, and Philippe silenced him. And with
that they chatted about the marriage from the male point of view.
Georges was vexed with La Faloise for telling an anecdote.
Certainly Nana had fubbed off on Muffat one of her old flames as
son-in-law; only it was not true that she had been to bed with
Daguenet as lately as yesterday. Foucarmont made bold to shrug his
shoulders. Could anyone ever tell when Nana was in bed with anyone?
But Georges grew excited and answered with an "I can tell, sir!"
which set them all laughing. In a word, as Steiner put it, it was
all a very funny kettle of fish!
The buffet was gradually invaded by the crowd, and, still keeping
together, they vacated their positions there. La Faloise stared
brazenly at the women as though he believed himself to be Mabille.
At the end of a garden walk the little band was surprised to find M.
Venot busily conferring with Daguenet, and with that they indulged
in some facile pleasantries which made them very merry. He was
confessing him, giving him advice about the bridal night! Presently
they returned in front of one of the drawing-room doors, within
which a polka was sending the couples whirling to and fro till they
seemed to leave a wake behind them among the crowd of men who
remained standing about. In the slight puffs of air which came from
outside the tapers flared up brilliantly, and when a dress floated
by in time to the rat-tat of the measure, a little gust of wind
cooled the sparkling heat which streamed down from the lusters.
"Egad, they're not cold in there!" muttered La Faloise.
They blinked after emerging from the mysterious shadows of the
garden. Then they pointed out to one another the Marquis de Chouard
where he stood apart, his tall figure towering over the bare
shoulders which surrounded him. His face was pale and very stern,
and beneath its crown of scant white hair it wore an expression of
lofty dignity. Scandalized by Count Muffat's conduct, he had
publicly broken off all intercourse with him and was by way of never
again setting foot in the house. If he had consented to put in an
appearance that evening it was because his granddaughter had begged
him to. But he disapproved of her marriage and had inveighed
indignantly against the way in which the government classes were
being disorganized by the shameful compromises engendered by modern
debauchery.
"Ah, it's the end of all things," Mme du Joncquoy whispered in Mme
Chantereau's ear as she sat near the fireplace. "That bad woman has
bewitched the unfortunate man. And to think we once knew him such a
true believer, such a noblehearted gentleman!"
"It appears he is ruining himself," continued Mme Chantereau. "My
husband has had a bill of his in his hands. At present he's living
in that house in the Avenue de Villiers; all Paris is talking about
it. Good heavens! I don't make excuses for Sabine, but you must
admit that he gives her infinite cause of complaint, and, dear me,
if she throws money out of the window, too--"
"She does not only throw money," interrupted the other. "In fact,
between them, there's no knowing where they'll stop; they'll end in
the mire, my dear."
But just then a soft voice interrupted them. It was M. Venot, and
he had come and seated himself behind them, as though anxious to
disappear from view. Bending forward, he murmured:
"Why despair? God manifests Himself when all seems lost."
He was assisting peacefully at the downfall of the house which he
erewhile governed. Since his stay at Les Fondettes he had been
allowing the madness to increase, for he was very clearly aware of
his own powerlessness. He had, indeed, accepted the whole position--
the count's wild passion for Nana, Fauchery's presence, even
Estelle's marriage with Daguenet. What did these things matter? He
even became more supple and mysterious, for he nursed a hope of
being able to gain the same mastery over the young as over the
disunited couple, and he knew that great disorders lead to great
conversions. Providence would have its opportunity.
"Our friend," he continued in a low voice, "is always animated by
the best religious sentiments. He has given me the sweetest proofs
of this."
"Well," said Mme du Joncquoy, "he ought first to have made it up
with his wife."
"Doubtless. At this moment I have hopes that the reconciliation
will be shortly effected."
Whereupon the two old ladies questioned him.
But he grew very humble again. "Heaven," he said, "must be left to
act." His whole desire in bringing the count and the countess
together again was to avoid a public scandal, for religion tolerated
many faults when the proprieties were respected.
"In fact," resumed Mme du Joncquoy, "you ought to have prevented
this union with an adventurer."
The little old gentleman assumed an expression of profound
astonishment. "You deceive yourself. Monsieur Daguenet is a young
man of the greatest merit. I am acquainted with his thoughts; he is
anxious to live down the errors of his youth. Estelle will bring
him back to the path of virtue, be sure of that."
"Oh, Estelle!" Mme Chantereau murmured disdainfully. "I believe the
dear young thing to be incapable of willing anything; she is so
insignificant!"
This opinion caused M. Venot to smile. However, he went into no
explanations about the young bride and, shutting his eyes, as though
to avoid seeming to take any further interest in the matter, he once
more lost himself in his corner behind the petticoats. Mme Hugon,
though weary and absent-minded, had caught some phrases of the
conversation, and she now intervened and summed up in her tolerant
way by remarking to the Marquis de Chouard, who just then bowed to
her:
"These ladies are too severe. Existence is so bitter for every one
of us! Ought we not to forgive others much, my friend, if we wish
to merit forgiveness ourselves?"
For some seconds the marquis appeared embarrassed, for he was afraid
of allusions. But the good lady wore so sad a smile that he
recovered almost at once and remarked:
"No, there is no forgiveness for certain faults. It is by reason of
this kind of accommodating spirit that a society sinks into the
abyss of ruin."
The ball had grown still more animated. A fresh quadrille was
imparting a slight swaying motion to the drawing-room floor, as
though the old dwelling had been shaken by the impulse of the dance.
Now and again amid the wan confusion of heads a woman's face with
shining eyes and parted lips stood sharply out as it was whirled
away by the dance, the light of the lusters gleaming on the white
skin. Mme du Joncquoy declared that the present proceedings were
senseless. It was madness to crowd five hundred people into a room
which would scarcely contain two hundred. In fact, why not sign the
wedding contract on the Place du Carrousel? This was the outcome of
the new code of manners, said Mme Chantereau. In old times these
solemnities took place in the bosom of the family, but today one
must have a mob of people; the whole street must be allowed to enter
quite freely, and there must be a great crush, or else the evening
seems a chilly affair. People now advertised their luxury and
introduced the mere foam on the wave of Parisian society into their
houses, and accordingly it was only too natural if illicit
proceedings such as they had been discussing afterward polluted the
hearth. The ladies complained that they could not recognize more
than fifty people. Where did all this crowd spring from? Young
girls with low necks were making a great display of their shoulders.
A woman had a golden dagger stuck in her chignon, while a bodice
thickly embroidered with jet beads clothed her in what looked like a
coat of mail. People's eyes kept following another lady smilingly,
so singularly marked were her clinging skirts. All the luxuriant
splendor of the departing winter was there--the overtolerant world
of pleasure, the scratch gathering a hostess can get together after
a first introduction, the sort of society, in fact, in which great
names and great shames jostle together in the same fierce quest of
enjoyment. The heat was increasing, and amid the overcrowded rooms
the quadrille unrolled the cadenced symmetry of its figures.
"Very smart--the countess!" La Faloise continued at the garden door.
"She's ten years younger than her daughter. By the by, Foucarmont,
you must decide on a point. Vandeuvres once bet that she had no
thighs."
This affectation of cynicism bored the other gentlemen, and
Foucarmont contented himself by saying:
"Ask your cousin, dear boy. Here he is."
"Jove, it's a happy thought!" cried La Faloise. "I bet ten louis
she has thighs."
Fauchery did indeed come up. As became a constant inmate of the
house, he had gone round by the dining room in order to avoid the
crowded doors. Rose had taken him up again at the beginning of the
winter, and he was now dividing himself between the singer and the
countess, but he was extremely fatigued and did not know how to get
rid of one of them. Sabine flattered his vanity, but Rose amused
him more than she. Besides, the passion Rose felt was a real one:
her tenderness for him was marked by a conjugal fidelity which drove
Mignon to despair.
"Listen, we want some information," said La Faloise as he squeezed
his cousin's arm. "You see that lady in white silk?"
Ever since his inheritance had given him a kind of insolent dash of
manner he had affected to chaff Fauchery, for he had an old grudge
to satisfy and wanted to be revenged for much bygone raillery,
dating from the days when he was just fresh from his native
province.
"Yes, that lady with the lace."
The journalist stood on tiptoe, for as yet he did not understand.
"The countess?" he said at last.
"Exactly, my good friend. I've bet ten louis--now, has she thighs?"
And he fell a-laughing, for he was delighted to have succeeded in
snubbing a fellow who had once come heavily down on him for asking
whether the countess slept with anyone. But Fauchery, without
showing the very slightest astonishment, looked fixedly at him.
"Get along, you idiot!" he said finally as he shrugged his
shoulders.
Then he shook hands with the other gentlemen, while La Faloise, in
his discomfiture, felt rather uncertain whether he had said
something funny. The men chatted. Since the races the banker and
Foucarmont had formed part of the set in the Avenue de Villiers.
Nana was going on much better, and every evening the count came and
asked how she did. Meanwhile Fauchery, though he listened, seemed
preoccupied, for during a quarrel that morning Rose had roundly
confessed to the sending of the letter. Oh yes, he might present
himself at his great lady's house; he would be well received! After
long hesitation he had come despite everything--out of sheer
courage. But La Faloise's imbecile pleasantry had upset him in
spite of his apparent tranquillity.
"What's the matter?" asked Philippe. "You seem in trouble."
"I do? Not at all. I've been working: that's why I came so late."
Then coldly, in one of those heroic moods which, although unnoticed,
are wont to solve the vulgar tragedies of existence:
"All the same, I haven't made my bow to our hosts. One must be
civil."
He even ventured on a joke, for he turned to La Faloise and said:
"Eh, you idiot?"
And with that he pushed his way through the crowd. The valet's full
voice was no longer shouting out names, but close to the door the
count and countess were still talking, for they were detained by
ladies coming in. At length he joined them, while the gentlemen who
were still on the garden steps stood on tiptoe so as to watch the
scene. Nana, they thought, must have been chattering.
"The count hasn't noticed him," muttered Georges. "Look out! He's
turning round; there, it's done!"
The band had again taken up the waltz in the Blonde Venus. Fauchery
had begun by bowing to the countess, who was still smiling in
ecstatic serenity. After which he had stood motionless a moment,
waiting very calmly behind the count's back. That evening the
count's deportment was one of lofty gravity: he held his head high,
as became the official and the great dignitary. And when at last he
lowered his gaze in the direction of the journalist he seemed still
further to emphasize the majesty of his attitude. For some seconds
the two men looked at one another. It was Fauchery who first
stretched out his hand. Muffat gave him his. Their hands remained
clasped, and the Countess Sabine with downcast eyes stood smiling
before them, while the waltz continually beat out its mocking,
vagabond rhythm.
"But the thing's going on wheels!" said Steiner.
"Are their hands glued together?" asked Foucarmont, surprised at
this prolonged clasp. A memory he could not forget brought a faint
glow to Fanchery's pale cheeks, and in his mind's eye he saw the
property room bathed in greenish twilight and filled with dusty
bric-a-brac. And Muffat was there, eggcup in hand, making a clever
use of his suspicions. At this moment Muffat was no longer
suspicious, and the last vestige of his dignity was crumbling in
ruin. Fauchery's fears were assuaged, and when he saw the frank
gaiety of the countess he was seized with a desire to laugh. The
thing struck him as comic.
"Aha, here she is at last!" cried La Faloise, who did not abandon a
jest when he thought it a good one. "D'you see Nana coming in over
there?"
"Hold your tongue, do, you idiot!" muttered Philippe.
"But I tell you, it is Nana! They're playing her waltz for her, by
Jove! She's making her entry. And she takes part in the
reconciliation, the devil she does! What? You don't see her?
She's squeezing all three of 'em to her heart--my cousin Fauchery,
my lady cousin and her husband, and she's calling 'em her dear
kitties. Oh, those family scenes give me a turn!"
Estelle had come up, and Fauchery complimented her while she stood
stiffly up in her rose-colored dress, gazing at him with the
astonished look of a silent child and constantly glancing aside at
her father and mother. Daguenet, too, exchanged a hearty shake of
the hand with the journalist. Together they made up a smiling
group, while M. Venot came gliding in behind them. He gloated over
them with a beatified expression and seemed to envelop them in his
pious sweetness, for he rejoiced in these last instances of self-
abandonment which were preparing the means of grace.
But the waltz still beat out its swinging, laughing, voluptuous
measure; it was like a shrill continuation of the life of pleasure
which was beating against the old house like a rising tide. The
band blew louder trills from their little flutes; their violins sent
forth more swooning notes. Beneath the Genoa velvet hangings, the
gilding and the paintings, the lusters exhaled a living heat and a
great glow of sunlight, while the crowd of guests, multiplied in the
surrounding mirrors, seemed to grow and increase as the murmur of
many voices rose ever louder. The couples who whirled round the
drawing room, arm about waist, amid the smiles of the seated ladies,
still further accentuated the quaking of the floors. In the garden
a dull, fiery glow fell from the Venetian lanterns and threw a
distant reflection of flame over the dark shadows moving in search
of a breath of air about the walks at its farther end. And this
trembling of walls and this red glow of light seemed to betoken a
great ultimate conflagration in which the fabric of an ancient honor
was cracking and burning on every side. The shy early beginnings of
gaiety, of which Fauchery one April evening had heard the vocal
expression in the sound of breaking glass, had little by little
grown bolder, wilder, till they had burst forth in this festival.
Now the rift was growing; it was crannying the house and announcing
approaching downfall. Among drunkards in the slums it is black
misery, an empty cupboard, which put an end to ruined families; it
is the madness of drink which empties the wretched beds. Here the
waltz tune was sounding the knell of an old race amid the suddenly
ignited ruins of accumulated wealth, while Nana, although unseen,
stretched her lithe limbs above the dancers' heads and sent
corruption through their caste, drenching the hot air with the
ferment of her exhalations and the vagabond lilt of the music.
On the evening after the celebration of the church marriage Count
Muffat made his appearance in his wife's bedroom, where he had not
entered for the last two years. At first, in her great surprise,
the countess drew back from him. But she was still smiling the
intoxicated smile which she now always wore. He began stammering in
extreme embarrassment; whereupon she gave him a short moral lecture.
However, neither of them risked a decisive explanation. It was
religion, they pretended, which required this process of mutual
forgiveness, and they agreed by a tacit understanding to retain
their freedom. Before going to bed, seeing that the countess still
appeared to hesitate, they had a business conversation, and the
count was the first to speak of selling the Bordes. She consented
at once. They both stood in great want of money, and they would
share and share alike. This completed the reconciliation, and
Muffat, remorseful though he was, felt veritably relieved.
That very day, as Nana was dozing toward two in the afternoon, Zoe
made so bold as to knock at her bedroom door. The curtains were
drawn to, and a hot breath of wind kept blowing through a window
into the fresh twilight stillness within. During these last days
the young woman had been getting up and about again, but she was
still somewhat weak. She opened her eyes and asked:
"Who is it?"
Zoe was about to reply, but Daguenet pushed by her and announced
himself in person. Nana forthwith propped herself up on her pillow
and, dismissing the lady's maid:
"What! Is that you?" she cried. "On the day of your marriage?
What can be the matter?"
Taken aback by the darkness, he stood still in the middle of the
room. However, he grew used to it and came forward at last. He was
in evening dress and wore a white cravat and gloves.
"Yes, to be sure, it's me!" he said. "You don't remember?"
No, she remembered nothing, and in his chaffing way he had to offer
himself frankly to her.
"Come now, here's your commission. I've brought you the handsel of
my innocence!"
And with that, as he was now by the bedside, she caught him in her
bare arms and shook with merry laughter and almost cried, she
thought it so pretty of him.
"Oh, that Mimi, how funny he is! He's thought of it after all! And
to think I didn't remember it any longer! So you've slipped off;
you're just out of church. Yes, certainly, you've got a scent of
incense about you. But kiss me, kiss me! Oh, harder than that,
Mimi dear! Bah! Perhaps it's for the last time."
In the dim room, where a vague odor of ether still lingered, their
tender laughter died away suddenly. The heavy, warm breeze swelled
the window curtains, and children's voices were audible in the
avenue without. Then the lateness of the hour tore them asunder and
set them joking again. Daguenet took his departure with his wife
directly after the breakfast.
CHAPTER XIII
Toward the end of September Count Muffat, who was to dine at Nana's
that evening, came at nightfall to inform her of a summons to the
Tuileries. The lamps in the house had not been lit yet, and the
servants were laughing uproariously in the kitchen regions as he
softly mounted the stairs, where the tall windows gleamed in warm
shadow. The door of the drawing room up-stairs opened noiselessly.
A faint pink glow was dying out on the ceiling of the room, and the
red hangings, the deep divans, the lacquered furniture, with their
medley of embroidered fabrics and bronzes and china, were already
sleeping under a slowly creeping flood of shadows, which drowned
nooks and corners and blotted out the gleam of ivory and the glint
of gold. And there in the darkness, on the white surface of a wide,
outspread petticoat, which alone remained clearly visible, he saw
Nana lying stretched in the arms of Georges. Denial in any shape or
form was impossible. He gave a choking cry and stood gaping at
them.
Nana had bounded up, and now she pushed him into the bedroom in
order to give the lad time to escape.
"Come in," she murmured with reeling senses, "I'll explain."
She was exasperated at being thus surprised. Never before had she
given way like this in her own house, in her own drawing room, when
the doors were open. It was a long story: Georges and she had had a
disagreement; he had been mad with jealousy of Philippe, and he had
sobbed so bitterly on her bosom that she had yielded to him, not
knowing how else to calm him and really very full of pity for him at
heart. And on this solitary occasion, when she had been stupid
enough to forget herself thus with a little rascal who could not
even now bring her bouquets of violets, so short did his mother keep
him--on this solitary occasion the count turned up and came straight
down on them. 'Gad, she had very bad luck! That was what one got
if one was a good-natured wench!
Meanwhile in the bedroom, into which she had pushed Muffat, the
darkness was complete. Whereupon after some groping she rang
furiously and asked for a lamp. It was Julien's fault too! If
there had been a lamp in the drawing room the whole affair would not
have happened. It was the stupid nightfall which had got the better
of her heart.
"I beseech you to be reasonable, my pet," she said when Zoe had
brought in the lights.
The count, with his hands on his knees, was sitting gazing at the
floor. He was stupefied by what he had just seen. He did not cry
out in anger. He only trembled, as though overtaken by some horror
which was freezing him. This dumb misery touched the young woman,
and she tried to comfort him.
"Well, yes, I've done wrong. It's very bad what I did. You see I'm
sorry for my fault. It makes me grieve very much because it annoys
you. Come now, be nice, too, and forgive me."
She had crouched down at his feet and was striving to catch his eye
with a look of tender submission. She was fain to know whether he
was very vexed with her. Presently, as he gave a long sigh and
seemed to recover himself, she grew more coaxing and with grave
kindness of manner added a final reason:
"You see, dearie, you must try and understand how it is: I can't
refuse it to my poor friends."
The count consented to give way and only insisted that Georges
should be dismissed once for all. But all his illusions had
vanished, and he no longer believed in her sworn fidelity. Next day
Nana would deceive him anew, and he only remained her miserable
possessor in obedience to a cowardly necessity and to terror at the
thought of living without her.
This was the epoch in her existence when Nana flared upon Paris with
redoubled splendor. She loomed larger than heretofore on the
horizon of vice and swayed the town with her impudently flaunted
splendor and that contempt of money which made her openly squander
fortunes. Her house had become a sort of glowing smithy, where her
continual desires were the flames and the slightest breath from her
lips changed gold into fine ashes, which the wind hourly swept away.
Never had eye beheld such a rage of expenditure. The great house
seemed to have been built over a gulf in which men--their worldly
possessions, their fortunes, their very names--were swallowed up
without leaving even a handful of dust behind them. This courtesan,
who had the tastes of a parrot and gobbled up radishes and burnt
almonds and pecked at the meat upon her plate, had monthly table
bills amounting to five thousand francs. The wildest waste went on
in the kitchen: the place, metaphorically speaking was one great
river which stove in cask upon cask of wine and swept great bills
with it, swollen by three or four successive manipulators.
Victorine and Francois reigned supreme in the kitchen, whither they
invited friends. In addition to these there was quite a little
tribe of cousins, who were cockered up in their homes with cold
meats and strong soup. Julien made the trades-people give him
commissions, and the glaziers never put up a pane of glass at a cost
of a franc and a half but he had a franc put down to himself.
Charles devoured the horses' oats and doubled the amount of their
provender, reselling at the back door what came in at the carriage
gate, while amid the general pillage, the sack of the town after the
storm, Zoe, by dint of cleverness, succeeded in saving appearances
and covering the thefts of all in order the better to slur over and
make good her own. But the household waste was worse than the
household dishonesty. Yesterday's food was thrown into the gutter,
and the collection of provisions in the house was such that the
servants grew disgusted with it. The glass was all sticky with
sugar, and the gas burners flared and flared till the rooms seemed
ready to explode. Then, too, there were instances of negligence and
mischief and sheer accident--of everything, in fact, which can
hasten the ruin of a house devoured by so many mouths. Upstairs in
Madame's quarters destruction raged more fiercely still. Dresses,
which cost ten thousand francs and had been twice worn, were sold by
Zoe; jewels vanished as though they had crumbled deep down in their
drawers; stupid purchases were made; every novelty of the day was
brought and left to lie forgotten in some corner the morning after
or swept up by ragpickers in the street. She could not see any very
expensive object without wanting to possess it, and so she
constantly surrounded herself with the wrecks of bouquets and costly
knickknacks and was the happier the more her passing fancy cost.
Nothing remained intact in her hands; she broke everything, and this
object withered, and that grew dirty in the clasp of her lithe white
fingers. A perfect heap of nameless debris, of twisted shreds and
muddy rags, followed her and marked her passage. Then amid this
utter squandering of pocket money cropped up a question about the
big bills and their settlement. Twenty thousand francs were due to
the modiste, thirty thousand to the linen draper, twelve thousand to
the bootmaker. Her stable devoured fifty thousand for her, and in
six months she ran up a bill of a hundred and twenty thousand francs
at her ladies' tailor. Though she had not enlarged her scheme of
expenditure, which Labordette reckoned at four hundred thousand
francs on an average, she ran up that same year to a million. She
was herself stupefied by the amount and was unable to tell whither
such a sum could have gone. Heaps upon heaps of men, barrowfuls of
gold, failed to stop up the hole, which, amid this ruinous luxury,
continually gaped under the floor of her house.
Meanwhile Nana had cherished her latest caprice. Once more
exercised by the notion that her room needed redoing, she fancied
she had hit on something at last. The room should be done in velvet
of the color of tea roses, with silver buttons and golden cords,
tassels and fringes, and the hangings should be caught up to the
ceiling after the manner of a tent. This arrangement ought to be
both rich and tender, she thought, and would form a splendid
background to her blonde vermeil-tinted skin. However, the bedroom
was only designed to serve as a setting to the bed, which was to be
a dazzling affair, a prodigy. Nana meditated a bed such as had
never before existed; it was to be a throne, an altar, whither Paris
was to come in order to adore her sovereign nudity. It was to be
all in gold and silver beaten work--it should suggest a great piece
of jewelry with its golden roses climbing on a trelliswork of
silver. On the headboard a band of Loves should peep forth laughing
from amid the flowers, as though they were watching the voluptuous
dalliance within the shadow of the bed curtains. Nana had applied
to Labordette who had brought two goldsmiths to see her. They were
already busy with the designs. The bed would cost fifty thousand
francs, and Muffat was to give it her as a New Year's present.
What most astonished the young woman was that she was endlessly
short of money amid a river of gold, the tide of which almost
enveloped her. On certain days she was at her wit's end for want of
ridiculously small sums--sums of only a few louis. She was driven
to borrow from Zoe, or she scraped up cash as well as she could on
her own account. But before resignedly adopting extreme measures
she tried her friends and in a joking sort of way got the men to
give her all they had about them, even down to their coppers. For
the last three months she had been emptying Philippe's pockets
especially, and now on days of passionate enjoyment he never came
away but he left his purse behind him. Soon she grew bolder and
asked him for loans of two hundred francs, three hundred francs--
never more than that--wherewith to pay the interest of bills or to
stave off outrageous debts. And Philippe, who in July had been
appointed paymaster to his regiment, would bring the money the day
after, apologizing at the same time for not being rich, seeing that
good Mamma Hugon now treated her sons with singular financial
severity. At the close of three months these little oft-renewed
loans mounted up to a sum of ten thousand francs. The captain still
laughed his hearty-sounding laugh, but he was growing visibly
thinner, and sometimes he seemed absent-minded, and a shade of
suffering would pass over his face. But one look from Nana's eyes
would transfigure him in a sort of sensual ecstasy. She had a very
coaxing way with him and would intoxicate him with furtive kisses
and yield herself to him in sudden fits of self-abandonment, which
tied him to her apron strings the moment he was able to escape from
his military duties.
One evening, Nana having announced that her name, too, was Therese
and that her fete day was the fifteenth of October, the gentlemen
all sent her presents. Captain Philippe brought his himself; it was
an old comfit dish in Dresden china, and it had a gold mount. He
found her alone in her dressing room. She had just emerged from the
bath, had nothing on save a great red-and-white flannel bathing wrap
and was very busy examining her presents, which were ranged on a
table. She had already broken a rock-crystal flask in her attempts
to unstopper it.
"Oh, you're too nice!" she said. "What is it? Let's have a peep!
What a baby you are to spend your pennies in little fakements like
that!"
She scolded him, seeing that he was not rich, but at heart she was
delighted to see him spending his whole substance for her. Indeed,
this was the only proof of love which had power to touch her.
Meanwhile she was fiddling away at the comfit dish, opening it and
shutting it in her desire to see how it was made.
"Take care," he murmured, "it's brittle."
But she shrugged her shoulders. Did he think her as clumsy as a
street porter? And all of a sudden the hinge came off between her
fingers and the lid fell and was broken. She was stupefied and
remained gazing at the fragments as she cried:
"Oh, it's smashed!"
Then she burst out laughing. The fragments lying on the floor
tickled her fancy. Her merriment was of the nervous kind, the
stupid, spiteful laughter of a child who delights in destruction.
Philippe had a little fit of disgust, for the wretched girl did not
know what anguish this curio had cost him. Seeing him thoroughly
upset, she tried to contain herself.
"Gracious me, it isn't my fault! It was cracked; those old things
barely hold together. Besides, it was the cover! Didn't you see
the bound it gave?
And she once more burst into uproarious mirth.
But though he made an effort to the contrary, tears appeared in the
young man's eyes, and with that she flung her arms tenderly round
his neck.
"How silly you are! You know I love you all the same. If one never
broke anything the tradesmen would never sell anything. All that
sort of thing's made to be broken. Now look at this fan; it's only
held together with glue!"
She had snatched up a fan and was dragging at the blades so that the
silk was torn in two. This seemed to excite her, and in order to
show that she scorned the other presents, the moment she had ruined
his she treated herself to a general massacre, rapping each
successive object and proving clearly that not one was solid in that
she had broken them all. There was a lurid glow in her vacant eyes,
and her lips, slightly drawn back, displayed her white teeth. Soon,
when everything was in fragments, she laughed cheerily again and
with flushed cheeks beat on the table with the flat of her hands,
lisping like a naughty little girl:
"All over! Got no more! Got no more!"
Then Philippe was overcome by the same mad excitement, and, pushing
her down, he merrily kissed her bosom. She abandoned herself to him
and clung to his shoulders with such gleeful energy that she could
not remember having enjoyed herself so much for an age past.
Without letting go of him she said caressingly:
"I say, dearie, you ought certainly to bring me ten louis tomorrow.
It's a bore, but there's the baker's bill worrying me awfully."
He had grown pale. Then imprinting a final kiss on her forehead, he
said simply:
"I'll try."
Silence reigned. She was dressing, and he stood pressing his
forehead against the windowpanes. A minute passed, and he returned
to her and deliberately continued:
"Nana, you ought to marry me."
This notion straightway so tickled the young woman that she was
unable to finish tying on her petticoats.
"My poor pet, you're ill! D'you offer me your hand because I ask
you for ten louis? No, never! I'm too fond of you. Good gracious,
what a silly question!"
And as Zoe entered in order to put her boots on, they ceased talking
of the matter. The lady's maid at once espied the presents lying
broken in pieces on the table. She asked if she should put these
things away, and, Madame having bidden her get rid of them, she
carried the whole collection off in the folds of her dress. In the
kitchen a sorting-out process began, and Madame's debris were shared
among the servants.
That day Georges had slipped into the house despite Nana's orders to
the contrary. Francois had certainly seen him pass, but the
servants had now got to laugh among themselves at their good lady's
embarrassing situations. He had just slipped as far as the little
drawing room when his brother's voice stopped him, and, as one
powerless to tear himself from the door, he overheard everything
that went on within, the kisses, the offer of marriage. A feeling
of horror froze him, and he went away in a state bordering on
imbecility, feeling as though there were a great void in his brain.
It was only in his own room above his mother's flat in the Rue
Richelieu that his heart broke in a storm of furious sobs. This
time there could be no doubt about the state of things; a horrible
picture of Nana in Philippe's arms kept rising before his mind's
eye. It struck him in the light of an incest. When he fancied
himself calm again the remembrance of it all would return, and in
fresh access of raging jealousy he would throw himself on the bed,
biting the coverlet, shouting infamous accusations which maddened
him the more. Thus the day passed. In order to stay shut up in his
room he spoke of having a sick headache. But the night proved more
terrible still; a murder fever shook him amid continual nightmares.
Had his brother lived in the house, he would have gone and killed
him with the stab of a knife. When day returned he tried to reason
things out. It was he who ought to die, and he determined to throw
himself out of the window when an omnibus was passing.
Nevertheless, he went out toward ten o'clock and traversed Paris,
wandered up and down on the bridges and at the last moment felt an
unconquerable desire to see Nana once more. With one word, perhaps,
she would save him. And three o'clock was striking when he entered
the house in the Avenue de Villiers.
Toward noon a frightful piece of news had simply crushed Mme Hugon.
Philippe had been in prison since the evening of the previous day,
accused of having stolen twelve thousand francs from the chest of
his regiment. For the last three months he had been withdrawing
small sums therefrom in the hope of being able to repay them, while
he had covered the deficit with false money. Thanks to the
negligence of the administrative committee, this fraud had been
constantly successful. The old lady, humbled utterly by her child's
crime, had at once cried out in anger against Nana. She knew
Philippe's connection with her, and her melancholy had been the
result of this miserable state of things which kept her in Paris in
constant dread of some final catastrophe. But she had never looked
forward to such shame as this, and now she blamed herself for
refusing him money, as though such refusal had made her accessory to
his act. She sank down on an armchair; her legs were seized with
paralysis, and she felt herself to be useless, incapable of action
and destined to stay where she was till she died. But the sudden
thought of Georges comforted her. Georges was still left her; he
would be able to act, perhaps to save them. Thereupon, without
seeking aid of anyone else--for she wished to keep these matters
shrouded in the bosom of her family--she dragged herself up to the
next story, her mind possessed by the idea that she still had
someone to love about her. But upstairs she found an empty room.
The porter told her that M. Georges had gone out at an early hour.
The room was haunted by the ghost of yet another calamity; the bed
with its gnawed bedclothes bore witness to someone's anguish, and a
chair which lay amid a heap of clothes on the ground looked like
something dead. Georges must be at that woman's house, and so with
dry eyes and feet that had regained their strength Mme Hugon went
downstairs. She wanted her sons; she was starting to reclaim them.
Since morning Nana had been much worried. First of all it was the
baker, who at nine o'clock had turned up, bill in hand. It was a
wretched story. He had supplied her with bread to the amount of a
hundred and thirty-three francs, and despite her royal housekeeping
she could not pay it. In his irritation at being put off he had
presented himself a score of times since the day he had refused
further credit, and the servants were now espousing his cause.
Francois kept saying that Madame would never pay him unless he made
a fine scene; Charles talked of going upstairs, too, in order to get
an old unpaid straw bill settled, while Victorine advised them to
wait till some gentleman was with her, when they would get the money
out of her by suddenly asking for it in the middle of conversation.
The kitchen was in a savage mood: the tradesmen were all kept posted
in the course events were taking, and there were gossiping
consultations, lasting three or four hours on a stretch, during
which Madame was stripped, plucked and talked over with the wrathful
eagerness peculiar to an idle, overprosperous servants' hall.
Julien, the house steward, alone pretended to defend his mistress.
She was quite the thing, whatever they might say! And when the
others accused him of sleeping with her he laughed fatuously,
thereby driving the cook to distraction, for she would have liked to
be a man in order to "spit on such women's backsides," so utterly
would they have disgusted her. Francois, without informing Madame
of it, had wickedly posted the baker in the hall, and when she came
downstairs at lunch time she found herself face to face with him.
Taking the bill, she told him to return toward three o'clock,
whereupon, with many foul expressions, he departed, vowing that he
would have things properly settled and get his money by hook or by
crook.
Nana made a very bad lunch, for the scene had annoyed her. Next
time the man would have to be definitely got rid of. A dozen times
she had put his money aside for him, but it had as constantly melted
away, sometimes in the purchase of flowers, at others in the shape
of a subscription got up for the benefit of an old gendarme.
Besides, she was counting on Philippe and was astonished not to see
him make his appearance with his two hundred francs. It was regular
bad luck, seeing that the day before yesterday she had again given
Satin an outfit, a perfect trousseau this time, some twelve hundred
francs' worth of dresses and linen, and now she had not a louis
remaining.
Toward two o'clock, when Nana was beginning to be anxious,
Labordette presented himself. He brought with him the designs for
the bed, and this caused a diversion, a joyful interlude which made
the young woman forget all her troubles. She clapped her hands and
danced about. After which, her heart bursting wish curiosity, she
leaned over a table in the drawing room and examined the designs,
which Labordette proceeded to explain to her.
"You see," he said, "this is the body of the bed. In the middle
here there's a bunch of roses in full bloom, and then comes a
garland of buds and flowers. The leaves are to be in yellow and the
roses in red-gold. And here's the grand design for the bed's head;
Cupids dancing in a ring on a silver trelliswork."
But Nana interrupted him, for she was beside herself with ecstasy.
"Oh, how funny that little one is, that one in the corner, with his
behind in the air! Isn't he now? And what a sly laugh! They've
all got such dirty, wicked eyes! You know, dear boy, I shall never
dare play any silly tricks before THEM!"
Her pride was flattered beyond measure. The goldsmiths had declared
that no queen anywhere slept in such a bed. However, a difficulty
presented itself. Labordette showed her two designs for the
footboard, one of which reproduced the pattern on the sides, while
the other, a subject by itself, represented Night wrapped in her
veil and discovered by a faun in all her splendid nudity. He added
that if she chose this last subject the goldsmiths intended making
Night in her own likeness. This idea, the taste of which was rather
risky, made her grow white with pleasure, and she pictured herself
as a silver statuette, symbolic of the warm, voluptuous delights of
darkness.
"Of course you will only sit for the head and shoulders," said
Labordette.
She looked quietly at him.
"Why? The moment a work of art's in question I don't mind the
sculptor that takes my likeness a blooming bit!"
Of course it must be understood that she was choosing the subject.
But at this he interposed.
"Wait a moment; it's six thousand francs extra."
"It's all the same to me, by Jove!" she cried, bursting into a
laugh. "Hasn't my little rough got the rhino?"
Nowadays among her intimates she always spoke thus of Count Muffat,
and the gentlemen had ceased to inquire after him otherwise.
"Did you see your little rough last night?" they used to say.
"Dear me, I expected to find the little rough here!"
It was a simple familiarity enough, which, nevertheless, she did not
as yet venture on in his presence.
Labordette began rolling up the designs as he gave the final
explanations. The goldsmiths, he said, were undertaking to deliver
the bed in two months' time, toward the twenty-fifth of December,
and next week a sculptor would come to make a model for the Night.
As she accompanied him to the door Nana remembered the baker and
briskly inquired:
"By the by, you wouldn't be having ten louis about you?"
Labordette made it a solemn rule, which stood him in good stead,
never to lend women money. He used always to make the same reply.
"No, my girl, I'm short. But would you like me to go to your little
rough?"
She refused; it was useless. Two days before she had succeeded in
getting five thousand francs out of the count. However, she soon
regretted her discreet conduct, for the moment Labordette had gone
the baker reappeared, though it was barely half-past two, and with
many loud oaths roughly settled himself on a bench in the hall. The
young woman listened to him from the first floor. She was pale, and
it caused her especial pain to hear the servants' secret rejoicings
swelling up louder and louder till they even reached her ears. Down
in the kitchen they were dying of laughter. The coachman was
staring across from the other side of the court; Francois was
crossing the hall without any apparent reason. Then he hurried off
to report progress, after sneering knowingly at the baker. They
didn't care a damn for Madame; the walls were echoing to their
laughter, and she felt that she was deserted on all hands and
despised by the servants' hall, the inmates of which were watching
her every movement and liberally bespattering her with the filthiest
of chaff. Thereupon she abandoned the intention of borrowing the
hundred and thirty-three francs from Zoe; she already owed the maid
money, and she was too proud to risk a refusal now. Such a burst of
feeling stirred her that she went back into her room, loudly
remarking:
"Come, come, my girl, don't count on anyone but yourself. Your
body's your own property, and it's better to make use of it than to
let yourself be insulted."
And without even summoning Zoe she dressed herself with feverish
haste in order to run round to the Tricon's. In hours of great
embarrassment this was her last resource. Much sought after and
constantly solicited by the old lady, she would refuse or resign
herself according to her needs, and on these increasingly frequent
occasions when both ends would not meet in her royally conducted
establishment, she was sure to find twenty-five louis awaiting her
at the other's house. She used to betake herself to the Tricon's
with the ease born of use, just as the poor go to the pawnshop.
But as she left her own chamber Nana came suddenly upon Georges
standing in the middle of the drawing room. Not noticing his waxen
pallor and the somber fire in his wide eyes, she gave a sigh of
relief.
"Ah, you've come from your brother."
"No," said the lad, growing yet paler.
At this she gave a despairing shrug. What did he want? Why was he
barring her way? She was in a hurry--yes, she was. Then returning
to where he stood:
"You've no money, have you?"
"No."
"That's true. How silly of me! Never a stiver; not even their
omnibus fares Mamma doesn't wish it! Oh, what a set of men!"
And she escaped. But he held her back; he wanted to speak to her.
She was fairly under way and again declared she had no time, but he
stopped her with a word.
"Listen, I know you're going to marry my brother."
Gracious! The thing was too funny! And she let herself down into a
chair in order to laugh at her ease.
"Yes," continued the lad, "and I don't wish it. It's I you're going
to marry. That's why I've come."
"Eh, what? You too?" she cried. "Why, it's a family disease, is
it? No, never! What a fancy, to be sure! Have I ever asked you to
do anything so nasty? Neither one nor t'other of you! No, never!"
The lad's face brightened. Perhaps he had been deceiving himself!
He continued:
"Then swear to me that you don't go to bed with my brother."
"Oh, you're beginning to bore me now!" said Nana, who had risen with
renewed impatience. "It's amusing for a little while, but when I
tell you I'm in a hurry--I go to bed with your brother if it pleases
me. Are you keeping me--are you paymaster here that you insist on
my making a report? Yes, I go to bed with your brother."
He had caught hold of her arm and squeezed it hard enough to break
it as he stuttered:
"Don't say that! Don't say that!"
With a slight blow she disengaged herself from his grasp.
"He's maltreating me now! Here's a young ruffian for you! My
chicken, you'll leave this jolly sharp. I used to keep you about
out of niceness. Yes, I did! You may stare! Did you think I was
going to be your mamma till I died? I've got better things to do
than to bring up brats."
He listened to her stark with anguish, yet in utter submission. Her
every word cut him to the heart so sharply that he felt he should
die. She did not so much as notice his suffering and continued
delightedly to revenge herself on him for the annoyance of the
morning.
"It's like your brother; he's another pretty Johnny, he is! He
promised me two hundred francs. Oh, dear me; yes, I can wait for
'em. It isn't his money I care for! I've not got enough to pay for
hair oil. Yes, he's leaving me in a jolly fix! Look here, d'you
want to know how matters stand? Here goes then: it's all owing to
your brother that I'm going out to earn twenty-five louis with
another man."
At these words his head spun, and he barred her egress. He cried;
he besought her not to go, clasping his hands together and blurting
out:
"Oh no! Oh no!"
"I want to, I do," she said. "Have you the money?"
No, he had not got the money. He would have given his life to have
the money! Never before had he felt so miserable, so useless, so
very childish. All his wretched being was shaken with weeping and
gave proof of such heavy suffering that at last she noticed it and
grew kind. She pushed him away softly.
"Come, my pet, let me pass; I must. Be reasonable. You're a baby
boy, and it was very nice for a week, but nowadays I must look after
my own affairs. Just think it over a bit. Now your brother's a
man; what I'm saying doesn't apply to him. Oh, please do me a
favor; it's no good telling him all this. He needn't know where I'm
going. I always let out too much when I'm in a rage."
She began laughing. Then taking him in her arms and kissing him on
the forehead:
"Good-by, baby," she said; "it's over, quite over between us; d'you
understand? And now I'm off!"
And she left him, and he stood in the middle of the drawing room.
Her last words rang like the knell of a tocsin in his ears: "It's
over, quite over!" And he thought the ground was opening beneath
his feet. There was a void in his brain from which the man awaiting
Nana had disappeared. Philippe alone remained there in the young
woman's bare embrace forever and ever. She did not deny it: she
loved him, since she wanted to spare him the pain of her infidelity.
It was over, quite over. He breathed heavily and gazed round the
room, suffocating beneath a crushing weight. Memories kept
recurring to him one after the other--memories of merry nights at La
Mignotte, of amorous hours during which he had fancied himself her
child, of pleasures stolen in this very room. And now these things
would never, never recur! He was too small; he had not grown up
quickly enough; Philippe was supplanting him because he was a
bearded man. So then this was the end; he could not go on living.
His vicious passion had become transformed into an infinite
tenderness, a sensual adoration, in which his whole being was
merged. Then, too, how was he to forget it all if his brother
remained--his brother, blood of his blood, a second self, whose
enjoyment drove him mad with jealousy? It was the end of all
things; he wanted to die.
All the doors remained open, as the servants noisily scattered over
the house after seeing Madame make her exit on foot. Downstairs on
the bench in the hall the baker was laughing with Charles and
Francois. Zoe came running across the drawing room and seemed
surprised at sight of Georges. She asked him if he were waiting for
Madame. Yes, he was waiting for her; he had for-gotten to give her
an answer to a question. And when he was alone he set to work and
searched. Finding nothing else to suit his purpose, he took up in
the dressing room a pair of very sharply pointed scissors with which
Nana had a mania for ceaselessly trimming herself, either by
polishing her skin or cutting off little hairs. Then for a whole
hour he waited patiently, his hand in his pocket and his fingers
tightly clasped round the scissors.
"Here's Madame," said Zoe, returning. She must have espied her
through the bedroom window.
There was a sound of people racing through the house, and laughter
died away and doors were shut. Georges heard Nana paying the baker
and speaking in the curtest way. Then she came upstairs.
"What, you're here still!" she said as she noticed him. "Aha!
We're going to grow angry, my good man!"
He followed her as she walked toward her bedroom.
"Nana, will you marry me?"
She shrugged her shoulders. It was too stupid; she refused to
answer any more and conceived the idea of slamming the door in his
face.
"Nana, will you marry me?"
She slammed the door. He opened it with one hand while he brought
the other and the scissors out of his pocket. And with one great
stab he simply buried them in his breast.
Nana, meanwhile, had felt conscious that something dreadful would
happen, and she had turned round. When she saw him stab himself she
was seized with indignation.
"Oh, what a fool he is! What a fool! And with my scissors! Will
you leave off, you naughty little rogue? Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
She was scared. Sinking on his knees, the boy had just given
himself a second stab, which sent him down at full length on the
carpet. He blocked the threshold of the bedroom. With that Nana
lost her head utterly and screamed with all her might, for she dared
not step over his body, which shut her in and prevented her from
running to seek assistance.
"Zoe! Zoe! Come at once. Make him leave off. It's getting
stupid--a child like that! He's killing himself now! And in my
place too! Did you ever see the like of it?"
He was frightening her. He was all white, and his eyes were shut.
There was scarcely any bleeding--only a little blood, a tiny stain
which was oozing down into his waistcoat. She was making up her
mind to step over the body when an apparition sent her starting
back. An old lady was advancing through the drawing-room door,
which remained wide open opposite. And in her terror she recognized
Mme Hugon but could not explain her presence. Still wearing her
gloves and hat, Nana kept edging backward, and her terror grew so
great that she sought to defend herself, and in a shaky voice:
"Madame," she cried, "it isn't I; I swear to you it isn't. He
wanted to marry me, and I said no, and he's killed himself!"
Slowly Mme Hugon drew near--she was in black, and her face showed
pale under her white hair. In the carriage, as she drove thither,
the thought of Georges had vanished and that of Philippe's misdoing
had again taken complete possession of her. It might be that this
woman could afford explanations to the judges which would touch
them, and so she conceived the project of begging her to bear
witness in her son's favor. Downstairs the doors of the house stood
open, but as she mounted to the first floor her sick feet failed
her, and she was hesitating as to which way to go when suddenly
horror-stricken cries directed her. Then upstairs she found a man
lying on the floor with bloodstained shirt. It was Georges--it was
her other child.
Nana, in idiotic tones, kept saying:
"He wanted to marry me, and I said no, and he's killed himself."
Uttering no cry, Mme Hugon stooped down. Yes, it was the other one;
it was Georges. The one was brought to dishonor, the other
murdered! It caused her no surprise, for her whole life was ruined.
Kneeling on the carpet, utterly forgetting where she was, noticing
no one else, she gazed fixedly at her boy's face and listened with
her hand on his heart. Then she gave a feeble sigh--she had felt
the heart beating. And with that she lifted her head and
scrutinized the room and the woman and seemed to remember. A fire
glowed forth in her vacant eyes, and she looked so great and
terrible in her silence that Nana trembled as she continued to
defend herself above the body that divided them.
"I swear it, madame! If his brother were here he could explain it
to you."
"His brother has robbed--he is in prison," said the mother in a hard
voice.
Nana felt a choking sensation. Why, what was the reason of it all?
The other had turned thief now! They were mad in that family! She
ceased struggling in self-defense; she seemed no longer mistress in
her own house and allowed Mme Hugon to give what orders she liked.
The servants had at last hurried up, and the old lady insisted on
their carrying the fainting Georges down to her carriage. She
preferred killing him rather than letting him remain in that house.
With an air of stupefaction Nana watched the retreating servants as
they supported poor, dear Zizi by his legs and shoulders. The
mother walked behind them in a state of collapse; she supported
herself against the furniture; she felt as if all she held dear had
vanished in the void. On the landing a sob escaped her; she turned
and twice ejaculated:
"Oh, but you've done us infinite harm! You've done us infinite
harm!"
That was all. In her stupefaction Nana had sat down; she still wore
her gloves and her hat. The house once more lapsed into heavy
silence; the carriage had driven away, and she sat motionless, not
knowing what to do next. her head swimming after all she had gone
through. A quarter of an hour later Count Muffat found her thus,
but at sight of him she relieved her feelings in an overflowing
current of talk. She told him all about the sad incident, repeated
the same details twenty times over, picked up the bloodstained
scissors in order to imitate Zizi's gesture when he stabbed himself.
And above all she nursed the idea of proving her own innocence.
"Look you here, dearie, is it my fault? If you were the judge would
you condemn me? I certainly didn't tell Philippe to meddle with the
till any more than I urged that wretched boy to kill himself. I've
been most unfortunate throughout it all. They come and do stupid
things in my place; they make me miserable; they treat me like a
hussy."
And she burst into tears. A fit of nervous expansiveness rendered
her soft and doleful, and her immense distress melted her utterly.
"And you, too, look as if you weren't satisfied. Now do just ask
Zoe if I'm at all mixed up in it. Zoe, do speak: explain to
Monsieur--"
The lady's maid, having brought a towel and a basin of water out of
the dressing room, had for some moments past been rubbing the carpet
in order to remove the bloodstains before they dried.
"Oh, monsieur, " she declared, "Madame is utterly miserable!"
Muffat was still stupefied; the tragedy had frozen him, and his
imagination was full of the mother weeping for her sons. He knew
her greatness of heart and pictured her in her widow's weeds,
withering solitarily away at Les Fondettes. But Nana grew ever more
despondent, for now the memory of Zizi lying stretched on the floor,
with a red hole in his shirt, almost drove her senseless.
"He used to be such a darling, so sweet and caressing. Oh, you
know, my pet--I'm sorry if it vexes you--I loved that baby! I can't
help saying so; the words must out. Besides, now it ought not to
hurt you at all. He's gone. You've got what you wanted; you're
quite certain never to surprise us again."
And this last reflection tortured her with such regret that he ended
by turning comforter. Well, well, he said, she ought to be brave;
she was quite right; it wasn't her fault! But she checked her
lamentations of her own accord in order to say:
"Listen, you must run round and bring me news of him. At once! I
wish it!"
He took his hat and went to get news of Georges. When he returned
after some three quarters of an hour he saw Nana leaning anxiously
out of a window, and he shouted up to her from the pavement that the
lad was not dead and that they even hoped to bring him through. At
this she immediately exchanged grief for excess of joy and began to
sing and dance and vote existence delightful. Zoe, meanwhile, was
still dissatisfied with her washing. She kept looking at the stain,
and every time she passed it she repeated:
"You know it's not gone yet, madame."
As a matter of fact, the pale red stain kept reappearing on one of
the white roses in the carpet pattern. It was as though, on the
very threshold of the room, a splash of blood were barring the
doorway.
"Bah!" said the joyous Nana. "That'l be rubbed out under people's
feet."
After the following day Count Muffat had likewise forgotten the
incident. For a moment or two, when in the cab which drove him to
the Rue Richelieu, he had busily sworn never to return to that
woman's house. Heaven was warning him; the misfortunes of Philippe
and Georges were, he opined, prophetic of his proper ruin. But
neither the sight of Mme Hugon in tears nor that of the boy burning
with fever had been strong enough to make him keep his vow, and the
short-lived horror of the situation had only left behind it a sense
of secret delight at the thought that he was now well quit of a
rival, the charm of whose youth had always exasperated him. His
passion had by this time grown exclusive; it was, indeed, the
passion of a man who has had no youth. He loved Nana as one who
yearned to be her sole possessor, to listen to her, to touch her, to
be breathed on by her. His was now a supersensual tenderness,
verging on pure sentiment; it was an anxious affection and as such
was jealous of the past and apt at times to dream of a day of
redemption and pardon received, when both should kneel before God
the Father. Every day religion kept regaining its influence over
him. He again became a practicing Christian; he confessed himself
and communicated, while a ceaseless struggle raged within him, and
remorse redoubled the joys of sin and of repentance. Afterward,
when his director gave him leave to spend his passion, he had made a
habit of this daily perdition and would redeem the same by ecstasies
of faith, which were full of pious humility. Very naively he
offered heaven, by way of expiatory anguish, the abominable torment
from which he was suffering. This torment grew and increased, and
he would climb his Calvary with the deep and solemn feelings of a
believer, though steeped in a harlot's fierce sensuality. That
which made his agony most poignant was this woman's continued
faithlessness. He could not share her with others, nor did he
understand her imbecile caprices. Undying, unchanging love was what
he wished for. However, she had sworn, and he paid her as having
done so. But he felt that she was untruthful, incapable of common
fidelity, apt to yield to friends, to stray passers-by, like a good-
natured animal, born to live minus a shift.
One morning when he saw Foucarmont emerging from her bedroom at an
unusual hour, he made a scene about it. But in her weariness of his
jealousy she grew angry directly. On several occasions ere that she
had behaved rather prettily. Thus the evening when he surprised her
with Georges she was the first to regain her temper and to confess
herself in the wrong. She had loaded him with caresses and dosed
him with soft speeches in order to make him swallow the business.
But he had ended by boring her to death with his obstinate refusals
to understand the feminine nature, and now she was brutal.
"Very well, yes! I've slept with Foucarmont. What then? That's
flattened you out a bit, my little rough, hasn't it?"
It was the first time she had thrown "my little rough" in his teeth.
The frank directness of her avowal took his breath away, and when he
began clenching his fists she marched up to him and looked him full
in the face.
"We've had enough of this, eh? If it doesn't suit you you'll do me
the pleasure of leaving the house. I don't want you to go yelling
in my place. Just you get it into your noodle that I mean to be
quite free. When a man pleases me I go to bed with him. Yes, I do--
that's my way! And you must make up your mind directly. Yes or
no! If it's no, out you may walk!"
She had gone and opened the door, but he did not leave. That was
her way now of binding him more closely to her. For no reason
whatever, at the slightest approach to a quarrel she would tell him
he might stop or go as he liked, and she would accompany her
permission with a flood of odious reflections. She said she could
always find better than he; she had only too many from whom to
choose; men in any quantity could be picked up in the street, and
men a good deal smarter, too, whose blood boiled in their veins. At
this he would hang his head and wait for those gentler moods when
she wanted money. She would then become affectionate, and he would
forget it all, one night of tender dalliance making up for the
tortures of a whole week. His reconciliation with his wife had
rendered his home unbearable. Fauchery, having again fallen under
Rose's dominion, the countess was running madly after other loves.
She was entering on the forties, that restless, feverish time in the
life of women, and ever hysterically nervous, she now filled her
mansion with the maddening whirl of her fashionable life. Estelle,
since her marriage, had seen nothing of her father; the undeveloped,
insignificant girl had suddenly become a woman of iron will, so
imperious withal that Daguenet trembled in her presence. In these
days he accompanied her to mass: he was converted, and he raged
against his father-in-law for ruining them with a courtesan. M.
Venot alone still remained kindly inclined toward the count, for he
was biding his time. He had even succeeded in getting into Nana's
immediate circle. In fact, he frequented both houses, where you
encountered his continual smile behind doors. So Muffat, wretched
at home, driven out by ennui and shame, still preferred to live in
the Avenue de Villiers, even though he was abused there.
Soon there was but one question between Nana and the count, and that
was "money." One day after having formally promised her ten
thousand francs he had dared keep his appointment empty handed. For
two days past she had been surfeiting him with love, and such a
breach of faith, such a waste of caresses, made her ragingly
abusive. She was white with fury.
"So you've not got the money, eh? Then go back where you came from,
my little rough, and look sharp about it! There's a bloody fool for
you! He wanted to kiss me again! Mark my words--no money, no
nothing!"
He explained matters; he would be sure to have the money the day
after tomorrow. But she interrupted him violently:
"And my bills! They'll sell me up while Monsieur's playing the
fool. Now then, look at yourself. D'ye think I love you for your
figure? A man with a mug like yours has to pay the women who are
kind enough to put up with him. By God, if you don't bring me that
ten thousand francs tonight you shan't even have the tip of my
little finger to suck. I mean it! I shall send you back to your
wife!"
At night he brought the ten thousand francs. Nana put up her lips,
and he took a long kiss which consoled him for the whole day of
anguish. What annoyed the young woman was to have him continually
tied to her apron strings. She complained to M. Venot, begging him
to take her little rough off to the countess. Was their
reconciliation good for nothing then? She was sorry she had mixed
herself up in it, since despite everything he was always at her
heels. On the days when, out of anger, she forgot her own interest,
she swore to play him such a dirty trick that he would never again
be able to set foot in her place. But when she slapped her leg and
yelled at him she might quite as well have spat in his face too: he
would still have stayed and even thanked her. Then the rows about
money matters kept continually recurring. She demanded money
savagely; she rowed him over wretched little amounts; she was
odiously stingy with every minute of her time; she kept fiercely
informing him that she slept with him for his money, not for any
other reasons, and that she did not enjoy it a bit, that, in fact,
she loved another and was awfully unfortunate in needing an idiot of
his sort! They did not even want him at court now, and there was
some talk of requiring him to send in his resignation. The empress
had said, "He is too disgusting." It was true enough. So Nana
repeated the phrase by way of closure to all their quarrels.
"Look here! You disgust me!"
Nowadays she no longer minded her ps and qs; she had regained the
most perfect freedom.
Every day she did her round of the lake, beginning acquaintanceships
which ended elsewhere. Here was the happy hunting ground par
excellence, where courtesans of the first water spread their nets in
open daylight and flaunted themselves amid the tolerating smiles and
brilliant luxury of Paris. Duchesses pointed her out to one another
with a passing look--rich shopkeepers' wives copied the fashion of
her hats. Sometimes her landau, in its haste to get by, stopped a
file of puissant turnouts, wherein sat plutocrats able to buy up all
Europe or Cabinet ministers with plump fingers tight-pressed to the
throat of France. She belonged to this Bois society, occupied a
prominent place in it, was known in every capital and asked about by
every foreigner. The splendors of this crowd were enhanced by the
madness of her profligacy as though it were the very crown, the
darling passion, of the nation. Then there were unions of a night,
continual passages of desire, which she lost count of the morning
after, and these sent her touring through the grand restaurants and
on fine days, as often as not, to "Madrid." The staffs of all the
embassies visited her, and she, Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet and
Maria Blond would dine in the society of gentlemen who murdered the
French language and paid to be amused, engaging them by the evening
with orders to be funny and yet proving so blase and so worn out
that they never even touched them. This the ladies called "going on
a spree," and they would return home happy at having been despised
and would finish the night in the arms of the lovers of their
choice.
When she did not actually throw the men at his head Count Muffat
pretended not to know about all this. However, he suffered not a
little from the lesser indignities of their daily life. The mansion
in the Avenue de Villiers was becoming a hell, a house full of mad
people, in which every hour of the day wild disorders led to hateful
complications. Nana even fought with her servants. One moment she
would be very nice with Charles, the coachman. When she stopped at
a restaurant she would send him out beer by the waiter and would
talk with him from the inside of her carriage when he slanged the
cabbies at a block in the traffic, for then he struck her as funny
and cheered her up. Then the next moment she called him a fool for
no earthly reason. She was always squabbling over the straw, the
bran or the oats; in spite of her love for animals she thought her
horses ate too much. Accordingly one day when she was settling up
she accused the man of robbing her. At this Charles got in a rage
and called her a whore right out; his horses, he said, were
distinctly better than she was, for they did not sleep with
everybody. She answered him in the same strain, and the count had
to separate them and give the coachman the sack. This was the
beginning of a rebellion among the servants. When her diamonds had
been stolen Victorine and Francois left. Julien himself
disappeared, and the tale ran that the master had given him a big
bribe and had begged him to go, because he slept with the mistress.
Every week there were new faces in the servants' hall. Never was
there such a mess; the house was like a passage down which the scum
of the registry offices galloped, destroying everything in their
path. Zoe alone kept her place; she always looked clean, and her
only anxiety was how to organize this riot until she had got enough
together to set up on her own account in fulfillment of a plan she
had been hatching for some time past.
These, again, were only the anxieties he could own to. The count
put up with the stupidity of Mme Maloir, playing bezique with her in
spite of her musty smell. He put up with Mme Lerat and her
encumbrances, with Louiset and the mournful complaints peculiar to a
child who is being eaten up with the rottenness inherited from some
unknown father. But he spent hours worse than these. One evening
he had heard Nana angrily telling her maid that a man pretending to
be rich had just swindled her--a handsome man calling himself an
American and owning gold mines in his own country, a beast who had
gone off while she was asleep without giving her a copper and had
even taken a packet of cigarette papers with him. The count had
turned very pale and had gone downstairs again on tiptoe so as not
to hear more. But later he had to hear all. Nana, having been
smitten with a baritone in a music hall and having been thrown over
by him, wanted to commit suicide during a fit of sentimental
melancholia. She swallowed a glass of water in which she had soaked
a box of matches. This made her terribly sick but did not kill her.
The count had to nurse her and to listen to the whole story of her
passion, her tearful protests and her oaths never to take to any man
again. In her contempt for those swine, as she called them, she
could not, however, keep her heart free, for she always had some
sweetheart round her, and her exhausted body inclined to
incomprehensible fancies and perverse tastes. As Zoe designedly
relaxed her efforts the service of the house had got to such a pitch
that Muffat did not dare to push open a door, to pull a curtain or
to unclose a cupboard. The bells did not ring; men lounged about
everywhere and at every moment knocked up against one another. He
had now to cough before entering a room, having almost caught the
girl hanging round Francis' neck one evening that he had just gone
out of the dressing room for two minutes to tell the coachman to put
the horses to, while her hairdresser was finishing her hair. She
gave herself up suddenly behind his back; she took her pleasure in
every corner, quickly, with the first man she met. Whether she was
in her chemise or in full dress did not matter. She would come back
to the count red all over, happy at having cheated him. As for him,
he was plagued to death; it was an abominable infliction!
In his jealous anguish the unhappy man was comparatively at peace
when he left Nana and Satin alone together. He would have willingly
urged her on to this vice, to keep the men off her. But all was
spoiled in this direction too. Nana deceived Satin as she deceived
the count, going mad over some monstrous fancy or other and picking
up girls at the street corners. Coming back in her carriage, she
would suddenly be taken with a little slut that she saw on the
pavement; her senses would be captivated, her imagination excited.
She would take the little slut in with her, pay her and send her
away again. Then, disguised as a man, she would go to infamous
houses and look on at scenes of debauch to while away hours of
boredom. And Satin, angry at being thrown over every moment, would
turn the house topsy-turvy with the most awful scenes. She had at
last acquired a complete ascendancy over Nana, who now respected
her. Muffat even thought of an alliance between them. When he
dared not say anything he let Satin loose. Twice she had compelled
her darling to take up with him again, while he showed himself
obliging and effaced himself in her favor at the least sign. But
this good understanding lasted no time, for Satin, too, was a little
cracked. On certain days she would very nearly go mad and would
smash everything, wearing herself out in tempest of love and anger,
but pretty all the time. Zoe must have excited her, for the maid
took her into corners as if she wanted to tell her about her great
design of which she as yet spoke to no one.
At times, however, Count Muffat was still singularly revolted. He
who had tolerated Satin for months, who had at last shut his eyes to
the unknown herd of men that scampered so quickly through Nana's
bedroom, became terribly enraged at being deceived by one of his own
set or even by an acquaintance. When she confessed her relations
with Foucarmont he suffered so acutely, he thought the treachery of
the young man so base, that he wished to insult him and fight a
duel. As he did not know where to find seconds for such an affair,
he went to Labordette. The latter, astonished, could not help
laughing.
"A duel about Nana? But, my dear sir, all Paris would be laughing
at you. Men do not fight for Nana; it would be ridiculous."
The count grew very pale and made a violent gesture.
"Then I shall slap his face in the open street."
For an hour Labordette had to argue with him. A blow would make the
affair odious; that evening everyone would know the real reason of
the meeting; it would be in all the papers. And Labordette always
finished with the same expression:
"It is impossible; it would be ridiculous."
Each time Muffat heard these words they seemed sharp and keen as a
stab. He could not even fight for the woman he loved; people would
have burst out laughing. Never before had he felt more bitterly the
misery of his love, the contrast between his heavy heart and the
absurdity of this life of pleasure in which it was now lost. This
was his last rebellion; he allowed Labordette to convince him, and
he was present afterward at the procession of his friends, who lived
there as if at home.
Nana in a few months finished them up greedily, one after the other.
The growing needs entailed by her luxurious way of life only added
fuel to her desires, and she finished a man up at one mouthful.
First she had Foucarmont, who did not last a fortnight. He was
thinking of leaving the navy, having saved about thirty thousand
francs in his ten years of service, which he wished to invest in the
United States. His instincts, which were prudential, even miserly,
were conquered; he gave her everything, even his signature to notes
of hand, which pledged his future. When Nana had done with him he
was penniless. But then she proved very kind; she advised him to
return to his ship. What was the good of getting angry? Since he
had no money their relations were no longer possible. He ought to
understand that and to be reasonable. A ruined man fell from her
hands like a ripe fruit, to rot on the ground by himself.
Then Nana took up with Steiner without disgust but without love.
She called him a dirty Jew; she seemed to be paying back an old
grudge, of which she had no distinct recollection. He was fat; he
was stupid, and she got him down and took two bites at a time in
order the quicker to do for this Prussian. As for him, he had
thrown Simonne over. His Bosphorous scheme was getting shaky, and
Nana hastened the downfall by wild expenses. For a month he
struggled on, doing miracles of finance. He filled Europe with
posters, advertisements and prospectuses of a colossal scheme and
obtained money from the most distant climes. All these savings, the
pounds of speculators and the pence of the poor, were swallowed up
in the Avenue de Villiers. Again he was partner in an ironworks in
Alsace, where in a small provincial town workmen, blackened with
coal dust and soaked with sweat, day and night strained their sinews
and heard their bones crack to satisfy Nana's pleasures. Like a
huge fire she devoured all the fruits of stock-exchange swindling
and the profits of labor. This time she did for Steiner; she
brought him to the ground, sucked him dry to the core, left him so
cleaned out that he was unable to invent a new roguery. When his
bank failed he stammered and trembled at the idea of prosecution.
His bankruptcy had just been published, and the simple mention of
money flurried him and threw him into a childish embarrassment. And
this was he who had played with millions. One evening at Nana's he
began to cry and asked her for a loan of a hundred francs wherewith
to pay his maidservant. And Nana, much affected and amused at the
end of this terrible old man who had squeezed Paris for twenty
years, brought it to him and said:
"I say, I'm giving it you because it seems so funny! But listen to
me, my boy, you are too old for me to keep. You must find something
else to do."
Then Nana started on La Faloise at once. He had for some time been
longing for the honor of being ruined by her in order to put the
finishing stroke on his smartness. He needed a woman to launch him
properly; it was the one thing still lacking. In two months all
Paris would be talking of him, and he would see his name in the
papers. Six weeks were enough. His inheritance was in landed
estate, houses, fields, woods and farms. He had to sell all, one
after the other, as quickly as he could. At every mouthful Nana
swallowed an acre. The foliage trembling in the sunshine, the wide
fields of ripe grain, the vineyards so golden in September, the tall
grass in which the cows stood knee-deep, all passed through her
hands as if engulfed by an abyss. Even fishing rights, a stone
quarry and three mills disappeared. Nana passed over them like an
invading army or one of those swarms of locusts whose flight scours
a whole province. The ground was burned up where her little foot
had rested. Farm by farm, field by field, she ate up the man's
patrimony very prettily and quite inattentively, just as she would
have eaten a box of sweet-meats flung into her lap between
mealtimes. There was no harm in it all; they were only sweets! But
at last one evening there only remained a single little wood. She
swallowed it up disdainfully, as it was hardly worth the trouble
opening one's mouth for. La Faloise laughed idiotically and sucked
the top of his stick. His debts were crushing him; he was not worth
a hundred francs a year, and he saw that he would be compelled to go
back into the country and live with his maniacal uncle. But that
did not matter; he had achieved smartness; the Figaro had printed
his name twice. And with his meager neck sticking up between the
turndown points of his collar and his figure squeezed into all too
short a coat, he would swagger about, uttering his parrotlike
exclamations and affecting a solemn listlessness suggestive of an
emotionless marionette. He so annoyed Nana that she ended by
beating him.
Meanwhile Fauchery had returned, his cousin having brought him.
Poor Fauchery had now set up housekeeping. After having thrown over
the countess he had fallen into Rose's hands, and she treated him as
a lawful wife would have done. Mignon was simply Madame's major-
domo. Installed as master of the house, the journalist lied to Rose
and took all sorts of precautions when he deceived her. He was as
scrupulous as a good husband, for he really wanted to settle down at
last. Nana's triumph consisted in possessing and in ruining a
newspaper that he had started with a friend's capital. She did not
proclaim her triumph; on the contrary, she delighted in treating him
as a man who had to be circumspect, and when she spoke of Rose it
was as "poor Rose." The newspaper kept her in flowers for two
months. She took all the provincial subscriptions; in fact, she
took everything, from the column of news and gossip down to the
dramatic notes. Then the editorial staff having been turned topsy-
turvy and the management completely disorganized, she satisfied a
fanciful caprice and had a winter garden constructed in a corner of
her house: that carried off all the type. But then it was no joke
after all! When in his delight at the whole business Mignon came to
see if he could not saddle Fauchery on her altogether, she asked him
if he took her for a fool. A penniless fellow living by his
articles and his plays--not if she knew it! That sort of
foolishness might be all very well for a clever woman like her poor,
dear Rose! She grew distrustful: she feared some treachery on
Mignon's part, for he was quite capable of preaching to his wife,
and so she gave Fauchery his CONGE as he now only paid her in fame.
But she always recollected him kindly. They had both enjoyed
themselves so much at the expense of that fool of a La Faloise!
They would never have thought of seeing each other again if the
delight of fooling such a perfect idiot had not egged them on! It
seemed an awfully good joke to kiss each other under his very nose.
They cut a regular dash with his coin; they would send him off full
speed to the other end of Paris in order to be alone and then when
he came back, they would crack jokes and make allusions he could not
understand. One day, urged by the journalist, she bet that she
would smack his face, and that she did the very same evening and
went on to harder blows, for she thought it a good joke and was glad
of the opportunity of showing how cowardly men were. She called him
her "slapjack" and would tell him to come and have his smack! The
smacks made her hands red, for as yet she was not up to the trick.
La Faloise laughed in his idiotic, languid way, though his eyes were
full of tears. He was delighted at such familiarity; he thought it
simply stunning.
One night when he had received sundry cuffs and was greatly excited:
"Now, d'you know," he said, "you ought to marry me. We should be as
jolly as grigs together, eh?"
This was no empty suggestion. Seized with a desire to astonish
Paris, he had been slyly projecting this marriage. "Nana's husband!
Wouldn't that sound smart, eh?" Rather a stunning apotheosis that!
But Nana gave him a fine snubbing.
"Me marry you! Lovely! If such an idea had been tormenting me I
should have found a husband a long time ago! And he'd have been a
man worth twenty of you, my pippin! I've had a heap of proposals.
Why, look here, just reckon 'em up with me: Philippe, Georges,
Foucarmont, Steiner--that makes four, without counting the others
you don't know. It's a chorus they all sing. I can't be nice, but
they forthwith begin yelling, 'Will you marry me? Will you marry
me?'"
She lashed herself up and then burst out in fine indignation:
"Oh dear, no! I don't want to! D'you think I'm built that way?
Just look at me a bit! Why, I shouldn't be Nana any longer if I
fastened a man on behind! And, besides, it's too foul!"
And she spat and hiccuped with disgust, as though she had seen all
the dirt in the world spread out beneath her.
One evening La Faloise vanished, and a week later it became known
that he was in the country with an uncle whose mania was botany. He
was pasting his specimens for him and stood a chance of marrying a
very plain, pious cousin. Nana shed no tears for him. She simply
said to the count:
"Eh, little rough, another rival less! You're chortling today. But
he was becoming serious! He wanted to marry me."
He waxed pale, and she flung her arms round his neck and hung there,
laughing, while she emphasized every little cruel speech with a
caress.
"You can't marry Nana! Isn't that what's fetching you, eh? When
they're all bothering me with their marriages you're raging in your
corner. It isn't possible; you must wait till your wife kicks the
bucket. Oh, if she were only to do that, how you'd come rushing
round! How you'd fling yourself on the ground and make your offer
with all the grand accompaniments--sighs and tears and vows!
Wouldn't it be nice, darling, eh?"
Her voice had become soft, and she was chaffing him in a ferociously
wheedling manner. He was deeply moved and began blushing as he paid
her back her kisses. Then she cried:
"By God, to think I should have guessed! He's thought about it;
he's waiting for his wife to go off the hooks! Well, well, that's
the finishing touch! Why, he's even a bigger rascal than the
others!"
Muffat had resigned himself to "the others." Nowadays he was
trusting to the last relics of his personal dignity in order to
remain "Monsieur" among the servants and intimates of the house, the
man, in fact, who because he gave most was the official lover. And
his passion grew fiercer. He kept his position because he paid for
it, buying even smiles at a high price. He was even robbed and he
never got his money's worth, but a disease seemed to be gnawing his
vitals from which he could not prevent himself suffering. Whenever
he entered Nana's bedroom he was simply content to open the windows
for a second or two in order to get rid of the odors the others left
behind them, the essential smells of fair-haired men and dark, the
smoke of cigars, of which the pungency choked him. This bedroom was
becoming a veritable thoroughfare, so continually were boots wiped
on its threshold. Yet never a man among them was stopped by the
bloodstain barring the door. Zoe was still preoccupied by this
stain; it was a simple mania with her, for she was a clean girl, and
it horrified her to see it always there. Despite everything her
eyes would wander in its direction, and she now never entered
Madame's room without remarking:
"It's strange that don't go. All the same, plenty of folk come in
this way."
Nana kept receiving the best news from Georges, who was by that time
already convalescent in his mother's keeping at Les Fondettes, and
she used always to make the same reply.
"Oh, hang it, time's all that's wanted. It's apt to grow paler as
feet cross it."
As a matter of fact, each of the gentlemen, whether Foucarmont,
Steiner, La Faloise or Fauchery, had borne away some of it on their
bootsoles. And Muffat, whom the bloodstain preoccupied as much as
it did Zoe, kept studying it in his own despite, as though in its
gradual rosy disappearance he would read the number of men that
passed. He secretly dreaded it and always stepped over it out of a
vivid fear of crushing some live thing, some naked limb lying on the
floor.
But in the bedroom within he would grow dizzy and intoxicated and
would forget everything--the mob of men which constantly crossed it,
the sign of mourning which barred its door. Outside, in the open
air of the street, he would weep occasionally out of sheer shame and
disgust and would vow never to enter the room again. And the moment
the portiere had closed behind him he was under the old influence
once more and felt his whole being melting in the damp warm air of
the place, felt his flesh penetrated by a perfume, felt himself
overborne by a voluptuous yearning for self-annihilation. Pious and
habituated to ecstatic experiences in sumptuous chapels, he there
re-encountered precisely the same mystical sensations as when he
knelt under some painted window and gave way to the intoxication of
organ music and incense. Woman swayed him as jealously and
despotically as the God of wrath, terrifying him, granting him
moments of delight, which were like spasms in their keenness, in
return for hours filled with frightful, tormenting visions of hell
and eternal tortures. In Nana's presence, as in church, the same
stammering accents were his, the same prayers and the same fits of
despair--nay, the same paroxysms of humility peculiar to an accursed
creature who is crushed down in the mire from whence he has sprung.
His fleshly desires, his spiritual needs, were confounded together
and seemed to spring from the obscure depths of his being and to
bear but one blossom on the tree of his existence. He abandoned
himself to the power of love and of faith, those twin levers which
move the world. And despite all the struggles of his reason this
bedroom of Nana's always filled him with madness, and he would sink
shuddering under the almighty dominion of sex, just as he would
swoon before the vast unknown of heaven.
Then when she felt how humble he was Nana grew tyrannously
triumphant. The rage for debasing things was inborn in her. It did
not suffice her to destroy them; she must soil them too. Her
delicate hands left abominable traces and themselves decomposed
whatever they had broken. And he in his imbecile condition lent
himself to this sort of sport, for he was possessed by vaguely
remembered stories of saints who were devoured by vermin and in turn
devoured their own excrements. When once she had him fast in her
room and the doors were shut, she treated herself to a man's infamy.
At first they joked together, and she would deal him light blows and
impose quaint tasks on him, making him lisp like a child and repeat
tags of sentences.
"Say as I do: 'tonfound it! Ickle man damn vell don't tare about
it!"
He would prove so docile as to reproduce her very accent.
"'Tonfound it! Ickle man damn vell don't tare about it!"
Or again she would play bear, walking on all fours on her rugs when
she had only her chemise on and turning round with a growl as though
she wanted to eat him. She would even nibble his calves for the fun
of the thing. Then, getting up again:
"It's your turn now; try it a bit. I bet you don't play bear like
me."
It was still charming enough. As bear she amused him with her white
skin and her fell of ruddy hair. He used to laugh and go down on
all fours, too, and growl and bite her calves, while she ran from
him with an affectation of terror.
"Are we beasts, eh?" she would end by saying. "You've no notion how
ugly you are, my pet! Just think if they were to see you like that
at the Tuileries!"
But ere long these little games were spoiled. It was not cruelty in
her case, for she was still a good-natured girl; it was as though a
passing wind of madness were blowing ever more strongly in the shut-
up bedroom. A storm of lust disordered their brains, plunged them
into the delirious imaginations of the flesh. The old pious terrors
of their sleepless nights were now transforming themselves into a
thirst for bestiality, a furious longing to walk on all fours, to
growl and to bite. One day when he was playing bear she pushed him
so roughly that he fell against a piece of furniture, and when she
saw the lump on his forehead she burst into involuntary laughter.
After that her experiments on La Faloise having whetted her
appetite, she treated him like an animal, threshing him and chasing
him to an accompaniment of kicks.
"Gee up! Gee up! You're a horse. Hoi! Gee up! Won't you hurry
up, you dirty screw?"
At other times he was a dog. She would throw her scented
handkerchief to the far end of the room, and he had to run and pick
it up with his teeth, dragging himself along on hands and knees.
"Fetch it, Caesar! Look here, I'll give you what for if you don't
look sharp! Well done, Caesar! Good dog! Nice old fellow! Now
behave pretty!"
And he loved his abasement and delighted in being a brute beast. He
longed to sink still further and would cry:
"Hit harder. On, on! I'm wild! Hit away!"
She was seized with a whim and insisted on his coming to her one
night clad in his magnificent chamberlain's costume. Then how she
did laugh and make fun of him when she had him there in all his
glory, with the sword and the cocked hat and the white breeches and
the full-bottomed coat of red cloth laced with gold and the symbolic
key hanging on its left-hand skirt. This key made her especially
merry and urged her to a wildly fanciful and extremely filthy
discussion of it. Laughing without cease and carried away by her
irreverence for pomp and by the joy of debasing him in the official
dignity of his costume, she shook him, pinched him, shouted, "Oh,
get along with ye, Chamberlain!" and ended by an accompaniment of
swinging kicks behind. Oh, those kicks! How heartily she rained
them on the Tuileries and the majesty of the imperial court,
throning on high above an abject and trembling people. That's what
she thought of society! That was her revenge! It was an affair of
unconscious hereditary spite; it had come to her in her blood. Then
when once the chamberlain was undressed and his coat lay spread on
the ground she shrieked, "Jump!" And he jumped. She shrieked,
"Spit!" And he spat. With a shriek she bade him walk on the gold,
on the eagles, on the decorations, and he walked on them. Hi tiddly
hi ti! Nothing was left; everything was going to pieces. She
smashed a chamberlain just as she smashed a flask or a comfit box,
and she made filth of him, reduced him to a heap of mud at a street
corner.
Meanwhile the goldsmiths had failed to keep their promise, and the
bed was not delivered till one day about the middle of January.
Muffat was just then in Normandy, whither he had gone to sell a last
stray shred of property, but Nana demanded four thousand francs
forthwith. He was not due in Paris till the day after tomorrow, but
when his business was once finished he hastened his return and
without even paying a flying visit in the Rue Miromesnil came direct
to the Avenue de Villiers. Ten o'clock was striking. As he had a
key of a little door opening on the Rue Cardinet, he went up
unhindered. In the drawing room upstairs Zoe, who was polishing the
bronzes, stood dumfounded at sight of him, and not knowing how to
stop him, she began with much circumlocution, informing him that M.
Venot, looking utterly beside himself, had been searching for him
since yesterday and that he had already come twice to beg her to
send Monsieur to his house if Monsieur arrived at Madame's before
going home. Muffat listened to her without in the least
understanding the meaning of her recital; then he noticed her
agitation and was seized by a sudden fit of jealousy of which he no
longer believed himself capable. He threw himself against the
bedroom door, for he heard the sound of laughter within. The door
gave; its two flaps flew asunder, while Zoe withdrew, shrugging her
shoulders. So much the worse for Madame! As Madame was bidding
good-by to her wits, she might arrange matters for herself.
And on the threshold Muffat uttered a cry at the sight that was
presented to his view.
"My God! My God!"
The renovated bedroom was resplendent in all its royal luxury.
Silver buttons gleamed like bright stars on the tea-rose velvet of
the hangings. These last were of that pink flesh tint which the
skies assume on fine evenings, when Venus lights her fires on the
horizon against the clear background of fading daylight. The golden
cords and tassels hanging in corners and the gold lace-work
surrounding the panels were like little flames of ruddy strands of
loosened hair, and they half covered the wide nakedness of the room
while they emphasized its pale, voluptuous tone. Then over against
him there was the gold and silver bed, which shone in all the fresh
splendor of its chiseled workmanship, a throne this of sufficient
extent for Nana to display the outstretched glory of her naked
limbs, an altar of Byzantine sumptuousness, worthy of the almighty
puissance of Nana's sex, which at this very hour lay nudely
displayed there in the religious immodesty befitting an idol of all
men's worship. And close by, beneath the snowy reflections of her
bosom and amid the triumph of the goddess, lay wallowing a shameful,
decrepit thing, a comic and lamentable ruin, the Marquis de Chouard
in his nightshirt.
The count had clasped his hands together and, shaken by a paroxysmal
shuddering, he kept crying:
"My God! My God!"
It was for the Marquis de Chouard, then, that the golden roses
flourished on the side panels, those bunches of golden roses
blooming among the golden leaves; it was for him that the Cupids
leaned forth with amorous, roguish laughter from their tumbling ring
on the silver trelliswork. And it was for him that the faun at his
feet discovered the nymph sleeping, tired with dalliance, the figure
of Night copied down to the exaggerated thighs--which caused her to
be recognizable of all--from Nana's renowned nudity. Cast there
like the rag of something human which has been spoiled and dissolved
by sixty years of debauchery, he suggested the charnelhouse amid the
glory of the woman's dazzling contours. Seeing the door open, he
had risen up, smitten with sudden terror as became an infirm old
man. This last night of passion had rendered him imbecile; he was
entering on his second childhood; and, his speech failing him, he
remained in an attitude of flight, half-paralyzed, stammering,
shivering, his nightshirt half up his skeleton shape, and one leg
outside the clothes, a livid leg, covered with gray hair. Despite
her vexation Nana could not keep from laughing.
"Do lie down! Stuff yourself into the bed," she said, pulling him
back and burying him under the coverlet, as though he were some
filthy thing she could not show anyone.
Then she sprang up to shut the door again. She was decidedly never
lucky with her little rough. He was always coming when least
wanted. And why had he gone to fetch money in Normandy? The old
man had brought her the four thousand francs, and she had let him
have his will of her. She pushed back the two flaps of the door and
shouted:
"So much the worse for you! It's your fault. Is that the way to
come into a room? I've had enough of this sort of thing. Ta ta!"
Muffat remained standing before the closed door, thunderstruck by
what he had just seen. His shuddering fit increased. It mounted
from his feet to his heart and brain. Then like a tree shaken by a
mighty wind, he swayed to and fro and dropped on his knees, all his
muscles giving way under him. And with hands despairingly
outstretched he stammered:
"This is more than I can bear, my God! More than I can bear!"
He had accepted every situation but he could do so no longer. He
had come to the end of his strength and was plunged in the dark void
where man and his reason are together overthrown. In an extravagant
access of faith he raised his hands ever higher and higher,
searching for heaven, calling on God.
"Oh no, I do not desire it! Oh, come to me, my God! Succor me;
nay, let me die sooner! Oh no, not that man, my God! It is over;
take me, carry me away, that I may not see, that I may not feel any
longer! Oh, I belong to you, my God! Our Father which art in
heaven--"
And burning with faith, he continued his supplication, and an ardent
prayer escaped from his lips. But someone touched him on the
shoulder. He lifted his eyes; it was M. Venot. He was surprised to
find him praying before that closed door. Then as though God
Himself had responded to his appeal, the count flung his arms round
the little old gentleman's neck. At last he could weep, and he
burst out sobbing and repeated:
"My brother, my brother."
All his suffering humanity found comfort in that cry. He drenched
M. Venot's face with tears; he kissed him, uttering fragmentary
ejaculations.
"Oh, my brother, how I am suffering! You only are left me, my
brother. Take me away forever--oh, for mercy's sake, take me away!"
Then M. Venot pressed him to his bosom and called him "brother"
also. But he had a fresh blow in store for him. Since yesterday he
had been searching for him in order to inform him that the Countess
Sabine, in a supreme fit of moral aberration, had but now taken
flight with the manager of one of the departments in a large, fancy
emporium. It was a fearful scandal, and all Paris was already
talking about it. Seeing him under the influence of such religious
exaltation, Venot felt the opportunity to be favorable and at once
told him of the meanly tragic shipwreck of his house. The count was
not touched thereby. His wife had gone? That meant nothing to him;
they would see what would happen later on. And again he was seized
with anguish, and gazing with a look of terror at the door, the
walls, the ceiling, he continued pouring forth his single
supplication:
"Take me away! I cannot bear it any longer! Take me away!"
M. Venot took him away as though he had been a child. From that day
forth Muffat belonged to him entirely; he again became strictly
attentive to the duties of religion; his life was utterly blasted.
He had resigned his position as chamberlain out of respect for the
outraged modesty of the Tuileries, and soon Estelle, his daughter,
brought an action against him for the recovery of a sum of sixty
thousand francs, a legacy left her by an aunt to which she ought to
have succeeded at the time of her marriage. Ruined and living
narrowly on the remains of his great fortune, he let himself be
gradually devoured by the countess, who ate up the husks Nana had
rejected. Sabine was indeed ruined by the example of promiscuity
set her by her husband's intercourse with the wanton. She was prone
to every excess and proved the ultimate ruin and destruction of his
very hearth. After sundry adventures she had returned home, and he
had taken her back in a spirit of Christian resignation and
forgiveness. She haunted him as his living disgrace, but he grew
more and more indifferent and at last ceased suffering from these
distresses. Heaven took him out of his wife's hands in order to
restore him to the arms of God, and so the voluptuous pleasures he
had enjoyed with Nana were prolonged in religious ecstasies,
accompanied by the old stammering utterances, the old prayers and
despairs, the old fits of humility which befit an accursed creature
who is crushed beneath the mire whence he sprang. In the recesses
of churches, his knees chilled by the pavement, he would once more
experience the delights of the past, and his muscles would twitch,
and his brain would whirl deliciously, and the satisfaction of the
obscure necessities of his existence would be the same as of old.
On the evening of the final rupture Mignon presented himself at the
house in the Avenue de Villiers. He was growing accustomed to
Fauchery and was beginning at last to find the presence of his
wife's husband infinitely advantageous to him. He would leave all
the little household cares to the journalist and would trust him in
the active superintendence of all their affairs. Nay, he devoted
the money gained by his dramatic successes to the daily expenditure
of the family, and as, on his part, Fauchery behaved sensibly,
avoiding ridiculous jealousy and proving not less pliant than Mignon
himself whenever Rose found her opportunity, the mutual
understanding between the two men constantly improved. In fact,
they were happy in a partnership which was so fertile in all kinds
of amenities, and they settled down side by side and adopted a
family arrangement which no longer proved a stumbling block. The
whole thing was conducted according to rule; it suited admirably,
and each man vied with the other in his efforts for the common
happiness. That very evening Mignon had come by Fauchery's advice
to see if he could not steal Nana's lady's maid from her, the
journalist having formed a high opinion of the woman's extraordinary
intelligence. Rose was in despair; for a month past she had been
falling into the hands of inexperienced girls who were causing her
continual embarrassment. When Zoe received him at the door he
forthwith pushed her into the dining room. But at his opening
sentence she smiled. The thing was impossible, she said, for she
was leaving Madame and establishing herself on her own account. And
she added with an expression of discreet vanity that she was daily
receiving offers, that the ladies were fighting for her and that Mme
Blanche would give a pile of gold to have her back.
Zoe was taking the Tricon's establishment. It was an old project
and had been long brooded over. It was her ambition to make her
fortune thereby, and she was investing all her savings in it. She
was full of great ideas and meditated increasing the business and
hiring a house and combining all the delights within its walls. It
was with this in view that she had tried to entice Satin, a little
pig at that moment dying in hospital, so terribly had she done for
herself.
Mignon still insisted with his offer and spoke of the risks run in
the commercial life, but Zoe, without entering into explanations
about the exact nature of her establishment, smiled a pinched smile,
as though she had just put a sweetmeat in her mouth, and was content
to remark:
"Oh, luxuries always pay. You see, I've been with others quite long
enough, and now I want others to be with me."
And a fierce look set her lip curling. At last she would be
"Madame," and for the sake of earning a few louis all those women
whose slops she had emptied during the last fifteen years would
prostrate themselves before her.
Mignon wished to be announced, and Zoe left him for a moment after
remarking that Madame had passed a miserable day. He had only been
at the house once before, and he did not know it at all. The dining
room with its Gobelin tapestry, its sideboard and its plate filled
him with astonishment. He opened the doors familiarly and visited
the drawing room and the winter garden, returning thence into the
hall. This overwhelming luxury, this gilded furniture, these silks
and velvets, gradually filled him with such a feeling of admiration
that it set his heart beating. When Zoe came down to fetch him she
offered to show him the other rooms, the dressing room, that is to
say, and the bedroom. In the latter Mignon's feelings overcame him;
he was carried away by them; they filled him with tender enthusiasm.
That damned Nana was simply stupefying him, and yet he thought he
knew a thing or two. Amid the downfall of the house and the
servants' wild, wasteful race to destruction, massed-up riches still
filled every gaping hole and overtopped every ruined wall. And
Mignon, as he viewed this lordly monument of wealth, began recalling
to mind the various great works he had seen. Near Marseilles they
had shown him an aqueduct, the stone arches of which bestrode an
abyss, a Cyclopean work which cost millions of money and ten years
of intense labor. At Cherbourg he had seen the new harbor with its
enormous works, where hundreds of men sweated in the sun while
cranes filled the sea with huge squares of rock and built up a wall
where a workman now and again remained crushed into bloody pulp.
But all that now struck him as insignificant. Nana excited him far
more. Viewing the fruit of her labors, he once more experienced the
feelings of respect that had overcome him one festal evening in a
sugar refiner's chateau. This chateau had been erected for the
refiner, and its palatial proportions and royal splendor had been
paid for by a single material--sugar. It was with something quite
different, with a little laughable folly, a little delicate nudity--
it was with this shameful trifle, which is so powerful as to move
the universe, that she alone, without workmen, without the
inventions of engineers, had shaken Paris to its foundations and had
built up a fortune on the bodies of dead men.
"Oh, by God, what an implement!"
Mignon let the words escape him in his ecstasy, for he felt a return
of personal gratitude.
Nana had gradually lapsed into a most mournful condition. To begin
with, the meeting of the marquis and the count had given her a
severe fit of feverish nervousness, which verged at times on
laughter. Then the thought of this old man going away half dead in
a cab and of her poor rough, whom she would never set eyes on again
now that she had driven him so wild, brought on what looked like the
beginnings of melancholia. After that she grew vexed to hear about
Satin's illness. The girl had disappeared about a fortnight ago and
was now ready to die at Lariboisiere, to such a damnable state had
Mme Robert reduced her. When she ordered the horses to be put to in
order that she might have a last sight of this vile little wretch
Zoe had just quietly given her a week's notice. The announcement
drove her to desperation at once! It seemed to her she was losing a
member of her own family. Great heavens! What was to become of her
when left alone? And she besought Zoe to stay, and the latter, much
flattered by Madame's despair, ended by kissing her to show that she
was not going away in anger. No, she had positively to go: the
heart could have no voice in matters of business.
But that day was one of annoyances. Nana was thoroughly disgusted
and gave up the idea of going out. She was dragging herself wearily
about the little drawing room when Labordette came up to tell her of
a splendid chance of buying magnificent lace and in the course of
his remarks casually let slip the information that Georges was dead.
The announcement froze her.
"Zizi dead!" she cried.
And involuntarily her eyes sought the pink stain on the carpet, but
it had vanished at last; passing footsteps had worn it away.
Meanwhile Labordette entered into particulars. It was not exactly
known how he died. Some spoke of a wound reopening, others of
suicide. The lad had plunged, they said, into a tank at Les
Fondettes. Nana kept repeating:
"Dead! Dead!"
She had been choking with grief since morning, and now she burst out
sobbing and thus sought relief. Hers was an infinite sorrow: it
overwhelmed her with its depth and immensity. Labordette wanted to
comfort her as touching Georges, but she silenced him with a gesture
and blurted out:
"It isn't only he; it's everything, everything. I'm very wretched.
Oh yes, I know! They'll again be saying I'm a hussy. To think of
the mother mourning down there and of the poor man who was groaning
in front of my door this morning and of all the other people that
are now ruined after running through all they had with me! That's
it; punish Nana; punish the beastly thing! Oh, I've got a broad
back! I can hear them as if I were actually there! 'That dirty
wench who lies with everybody and cleans out some and drives others
to death and causes a whole heap of people pain!'"
She was obliged to pause, for tears choked her utterance, and in her
anguish she flung herself athwart a divan and buried her face in a
cushion. The miseries she felt to be around her, miseries of which
she was the cause, overwhelmed her with a warm, continuous stream of
self-pitying tears, and her voice failed as she uttered a little
girl's broken plaint:
"Oh, I'm wretched! Oh, I'm wretched! I can't go on like this: it's
choking me. It's too hard to be misunderstood and to see them all
siding against you because they're stronger. However, when you've
got nothing to reproach yourself with and your conscious is clear,
why, then I say, 'I won't have it! I won't have it!'"
In her anger she began rebeling against circumstances, and getting
up, she dried her eyes, and walked about in much agitation.
"I won't have it! They can say what they like, but it's not my
fault! Am I a bad lot, eh? I give away all I've got; I wouldn't
crush a fly! It's they who are bad! Yes, it's they! I never
wanted to be horrid to them. And they came dangling after me, and
today they're kicking the bucket and begging and going to ruin on
purpose."
Then she paused in front of Labordette and tapped his shoulders.
"Look here," she said, "you were there all along; now speak the
truth: did I urge them on? Weren't there always a dozen of 'em
squabbling who could invent the dirtiest trick? They used to
disgust me, they did! I did all I knew not to copy them: I was
afraid to. Look here, I'll give you a single instance: they all
wanted to marry me! A pretty notion, eh? Yes, dear boy, I could
have been countess or baroness a dozen times over and more, if I'd
consented. Well now, I refused because I was reasonable. Oh yes, I
saved 'em some crimes and other foul acts! They'd have stolen,
murdered, killed father and mother. I had only to say one word, and
I didn't say it. You see what I've got for it today. There's
Daguenet, for instance; I married that chap off! I made a position
for the beggarly fellow after keeping him gratis for weeks! And I
met him yesterday, and he looks the other way! Oh, get along, you
swine! I'm less dirty than you!"
She had begun pacing about again, and now she brought her fist
violently down on a round table.
"By God it isn't fair! Society's all wrong. They come down on the
women when it's the men who want you to do things. Yes, I can tell
you this now: when I used to go with them--see? I didn't enjoy it;
no, I didn't enjoy it one bit. It bored me, on my honor. Well
then, I ask you whether I've got anything to do with it! Yes, they
bored me to death! If it hadn't been for them and what they made of
me, dear boy, I should be in a convent saying my prayers to the good
God, for I've always had my share of religion. Dash it, after all,
if they have dropped their money and their lives over it, what do I
care? It's their fault. I've had nothing to do with it!"
"Certainly not," said Labordette with conviction.
Zoe ushered in Mignon, and Nana received him smilingly. She had
cried a good deal, but it was all over now. Still glowing with
enthusiasm, he complimented her on her installation, but she let him
see that she had had enough of her mansion and that now she had
other projects and would sell everything up one of these days. Then
as he excused himself for calling on the ground that he had come
about a benefit performance in aid of old Bose, who was tied to his
armchair by paralysis, she expressed extreme pity and took two
boxes. Meanwhile Zoe announced that the carriage was waiting for
Madame, and she asked for her hat and as she tied the strings told
them about poor, dear Satin's mishap, adding:
"I'm going to the hospital. Nobody ever loved me as she did. Oh,
they're quite right when they accuse the men of heartlessness! Who
knows? Perhaps I shan't see her alive. Never mind, I shall ask to
see her: I want to give her a kiss."
Labordette and Mignon smiled, and as Nana was no longer melancholy
she smiled too. Those two fellows didn't count; they could enter
into her feelings. And they both stood and admired her in silent
abstraction while she finished buttoning her gloves. She alone kept
her feet amid the heaped-up riches of her mansion, while a whole
generation of men lay stricken down before her. Like those antique
monsters whose redoubtable domains were covered with skeletons, she
rested her feet on human skulls. She was ringed round with
catastrophes. There was the furious immolation of Vandeuvres; the
melancholy state of Foucarmont, who was lost in the China seas; the
smashup of Steiner, who now had to live like an honest man; the
satisfied idiocy of La Faloise, and the tragic shipwreck of the
Muffats. Finally there was the white corpse of Georges, over which
Philippe was now watching, for he had come out of prison but
yesterday. She had finished her labor of ruin and death. The fly
that had flown up from the ordure of the slums, bringing with it the
leaven of social rottenness, had poisoned all these men by merely
alighting on them. It was well done--it was just. She had avenged
the beggars and the wastrels from whose caste she issued. And
while, metaphorically speaking, her sex rose in a halo of glory and
beamed over prostrate victims like a mounting sun shining brightly
over a field of carnage, the actual woman remained as unconscious as
a splendid animal, and in her ignorance of her mission was the good-
natured courtesan to the last. She was still big; she was still
plump; her health was excellent, her spirits capital. But this went
for nothing now, for her house struck her as ridiculous. It was too
small; it was full of furniture which got in her way. It was a
wretched business, and the long and the short of the matter was she
would have to make a fresh start. In fact, she was meditating
something much better, and so she went off to kiss Satin for the
last time. She was in all her finery and looked clean and solid and
as brand new as if she had never seen service before.
CHAPTER XIV
Nana suddenly disappeared. It was a fresh plunge, an escapade, a
flight into barbarous regions. Before her departure she had treated
herself to a new sensation: she had held a sale and had made a clean
sweep of everything--house, furniture, jewelry, nay, even dresses
and linen. Prices were cited--the five days' sale produced more
than six hundred thousand francs. For the last time Paris had seen
her in a fairy piece. It was called Melusine, and it played at the
Theatre de la Gaite, which the penniless Bordenave had taken out of
sheer audacity. Here she again found herself in company with
Prulliere and Fontan. Her part was simply spectacular, but it was
the great attraction of the piece, consisting, as it did, of three
POSES PLASTIQUES, each of which represented the same dumb and
puissant fairy. Then one fine morning amid his grand success, when
Bordenave, who was mad after advertisement, kept firing the Parisian
imagination with colossal posters, it became known that she must
have started for Cairo the previous day. She had simply had a few
words with her manager. Something had been said which did not
please her; the whole thing was the caprice of a woman who is too
rich to let herself be annoyed. Besides, she had indulged an old
infatuation, for she had long meditated visiting the Turks.
Months passed--she began to be forgotten. When her name was
mentioned among the ladies and gentlemen, the strangest stories were
told, and everybody gave the most contradictory and at the same time
prodigious information. She had made a conquest of the viceroy; she
was reigning, in the recesses of a palace, over two hundred slaves
whose heads she now and then cut off for the sake of a little
amusement. No, not at all! She had ruined herself with a great big
nigger! A filthy passion this, which had left her wallowing without
a chemise to her back in the crapulous debauchery of Cairo. A
fortnight later much astonishment was produced when someone swore to
having met her in Russia. A legend began to be formed: she was the
mistress of a prince, and her diamonds were mentioned. All the
women were soon acquainted with them from the current descriptions,
but nobody could cite the precise source of all this information.
There were finger rings, earrings, bracelets, a REVIERE of
phenomenal width, a queenly diadem surmounted by a central brilliant
the size of one's thumb. In the retirement of those faraway
countries she began to gleam forth as mysteriously as a gem-laden
idol. People now mentioned her without laughing, for they were full
of meditative respect for this fortune acquired among the
barbarians.
One evening in July toward eight o'clock, Lucy, while getting out of
her carriage in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, noticed Caroline
Hequet, who had come out on foot to order something at a neighboring
tradesman's. Lucy called her and at once burst out with:
"Have you dined? Are you disengaged? Oh, then come with me, my
dear. Nana's back."
The other got in at once, and Lucy continued:
"And you know, my dear, she may be dead while we're gossiping."
"Dead! What an idea!" cried Caroline in stupefaction. "And where
is she? And what's it of?"
"At the Grand Hotel, of smallpox. Oh, it's a long story!"
Lucy had bidden her coachman drive fast, and while the horses
trotted rapidly along the Rue Royale and the boulevards, she told
what had happened to Nana in jerky, breathless sentences.
"You can't imagine it. Nana plumps down out of Russia. I don't
know why--some dispute with her prince. She leaves her traps at the
station; she lands at her aunt's--you remember the old thing. Well,
and then she finds her baby dying of smallpox. The baby dies next
day, and she has a row with the aunt about some money she ought to
have sent, of which the other one has never seen a sou. Seems the
child died of that: in fact, it was neglected and badly cared for.
Very well; Nana slopes, goes to a hotel, then meets Mignon just as
she was thinking of her traps. She has all sorts of queer feelings,
shivers, wants to be sick, and Mignon takes her back to her place
and promises to look after her affairs. Isn't it odd, eh? Doesn't
it all happen pat? But this is the best part of the story: Rose
finds out about Nana's illness and gets indignant at the idea of her
being alone in furnished apartments. So she rushes off, crying, to
look after her. You remember how they used to detest one another--
like regular furies! Well then, my dear, Rose has had Nana
transported to the Grand Hotel, so that she should, at any rate, die
in a smart place, and now she's already passed three nights there
and is free to die of it after. It's Labordette who told me all
about it. Accordingly I wanted to see for myself--"
"Yes, yes," interrupted Caroline in great excitement "We'll go up to
her."
They had arrived at their destination. On the boulevard the
coachman had had to rein in his horses amid a block of carriages and
people on foot. During the day the Corps Legislatif had voted for
war, and now a crowd was streaming down all the streets, flowing
along all the pavements, invading the middle of the roadway. Beyond
the Madeleine the sun had set behind a blood-red cloud, which cast a
reflection as of a great fire and set the lofty windows flaming.
Twilight was falling, and the hour was oppressively melancholy, for
now the avenues were darkening away into the distance but were not
as yet dotted over by the bright sparks of the gas lamps. And among
the marching crowds distant voices swelled and grew ever louder, and
eyes gleamed from pale faces, while a great spreading wind of
anguish and stupor set every head whirling.
"Here's Mignon," said Lucy. "He'll give us news."
Mignon was standing under the vast porch of the Grand Hotel. He
looked nervous and was gazing at the crowd. After Lucy's first few
questions he grew impatient and cried out:
"How should I know? These last two days I haven't been able to tear
Rose away from up there. It's getting stupid, when all's said, for
her to be risking her life like that! She'll be charming if she
gets over it, with holes in her face! It'll suit us to a tee!"
The idea that Rose might lose her beauty was exasperating him. He
was giving up Nana in the most downright fashion, and he could not
in the least understand these stupid feminine devotions. But
Fauchery was crossing the boulevard, and he, too, came up anxiously
and asked for news. The two men egged each other on. They
addressed one another familiarly in these days.
"Always the same business, my sonny," declared Mignon. "You ought
to go upstairs; you would force her to follow you."
"Come now, you're kind, you are!" said the journalist. "Why don't
you go upstairs yourself?"
Then as Lucy began asking for Nana's number, they besought her to
make Rose come down; otherwise they would end by getting angry.
Nevertheless, Lucy and Caroline did not go up at once. They had
caught sight of Fontan strolling about with his hands in his pockets
and greatly amused by the quaint expressions of the mob. When he
became aware that Nana was lying ill upstairs he affected sentiment
and remarked:
"The poor girl! I'll go and shake her by the hand. What's the
matter with her, eh?"
"Smallpox," replied Mignon.
The actor had already taken a step or two in the direction of the
court, but he came back and simply murmured with a shiver:
"Oh, damn it!"
The smallpox was no joke. Fontan had been near having it when he
was five years old, while Mignon gave them an account of one of his
nieces who had died of it. As to Fauchery, he could speak of it
from personal experience, for he still bore marks of it in the shape
of three little lumps at the base of his nose, which he showed them.
And when Mignon again egged him on to the ascent, on the pretext
that you never had it twice, he violently combated this theory and
with infinite abuse of the doctors instanced various cases. But
Lucy and Caroline interrupted them, for the growing multitude filled
them with astonishment.
"Just look! Just look what a lot of people!" The night was
deepening, and in the distance the gas lamps were being lit one by
one. Meanwhile interested spectators became visible at windows,
while under the trees the human flood grew every minute more dense,
till it ran in one enormous stream from the Madeleine to the
Bastille. Carriages rolled slowly along. A roaring sound went up
from this compact and as yet inarticulate mass. Each member of it
had come out, impelled by the desire to form a crowd, and was now
trampling along, steeping himself in the pervading fever. But a
great movement caused the mob to flow asunder. Among the jostling,
scattering groups a band of men in workmen's caps and white blouses
had come in sight, uttering a rhythmical cry which suggested the
beat of hammers upon an anvil.
"To Ber-lin! To Ber-lin! To Ber-lin!" And the crowd stared in
gloomy distrust yet felt themselves already possessed and inspired
by heroic imaginings, as though a military band were passing.
"Oh yes, go and get your throats cut!" muttered Mignon, overcome by
an access of philosophy.
But Fontan thought it very fine, indeed, and spoke of enlisting.
When the enemy was on the frontier all citizens ought to rise up in
defense of the fatherland! And with that he assumed an attitude
suggestive of Bonaparte at Austerlitz.
"Look here, are you coining up with us?" Lucy asked him.
"Oh dear, no! To catch something horrid?" he said.
On a bench in front of the Grand Hotel a man sat hiding his face in
a handkerchief. On arriving Fauchery had indicated him to Mignon
with a wink of the eye. Well, he was still there; yes, he was
always there. And the journalist detained the two women also in
order to point him out to them. When the man lifted his head they
recognized him; an exclamation escaped them. It was the Count
Muffat, and he was giving an upward glance at one of the windows.
"You know, he's bemight be the face. Lucy
added:
"I never saw her since that time at the Gaite, when she was at the
end of the grotto."
At this Rose awoke from her stupor and smiled as she said:
"Ah, she's changed; she's changed."
Then she once more lapsed into contemplation and neither moved nor
spoke. Perhaps they would be able to look at her presently! And
with that the three women joined the others in front of the
fireplace. Simonne and Clarisse were discussing the dead woman's
diamonds in low tones. Well, did they really exist--those diamonds?
Nobody had seen them; it must be a bit of humbug. But Lea de Horn
knew someone who knew all about them. Oh, they were monster stones!
Besides, they weren't all; she had brought back lots of other
precious property from Russia--embroidered stuffs, for instance,
valuable knickknacks, a gold dinner service, nay, even en waiting there since this morning," Mignon
informed them. "I saw him at six o'clock, and he hasn't moved
since. Directly Labordette spoke about it he came there with his
handkerchief up to his face. Every half-hour he comes dragging
himself to where we're standing to ask if the person upstairs is
doing better, and then he goes back and sits down. Hang it, that
room isn't healthy! It's all very well being fond of people, but
one doesn't want to kick the bucket."
The count sat with uplifted eyes and did not seem conscious of what
was going on around him. Doubtless he was ignorant of the
declaration of war, and he neither felt nor saw the crowd.
"Look, here he comes!" said Fauchery. "Now you'll see."
The count had, in fact, quitted his bench and was entering the lofty
porch. But the porter, who was getting to know his face at last,
did not give him time to put his question. He said sharply:
"She's dead, monsieur, this very minute."
Nana dead! It was a blow to them all. Without a word Muffat had
gone back to the bench, his face still buried in his handkerchief.
The others burst into exclamations, but they were cut short, for a
fresh band passed by, howling, "A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"
Nana dead! Hang it, and such a fine girl too! Mignon sighed and
looked relieved, for at last Rose would come down. A chill fell on
the company. Fontan, meditating a tragic role, had assumed a look
of woe and was drawing down the corners of his mouth and rolling his
eyes askance, while Fauchery chewed his cigar nervously, for despite
his cheap journalistic chaff he was really touched. Nevertheless,
the two women continued to give vent to their feelings of surprise.
The last time Lucy had seen her was at the Gaite; Blanche, too, had
seen her in Melusine. Oh, how stunning it was, my dear, when she
appeared in the depths of the crystal grot! The gentlemen
remembered the occasion perfectly. Fontan had played the Prince
Cocorico. And their memories once stirred up, they launched into
interminable particulars. How ripping she looked with that rich
coloring of hers in the crystal grot! Didn't she, now? She didn't
say a word: the authors had even deprived her of a line or two,
because it was superfluous. No, never a word! It was grander that
way, and she drove her public wild by simply showing herself. You
wouldn't find another body like hers! Such shoulders as she had,
and such legs and such a figure! Strange that she should be dead!
You know, above her tights she had nothing on but a golden girdle
which hardly concealed her behind and in front. All round her the
grotto, which was entirely of glass, shone like day. Cascades of
diamonds were flowing down; strings of brilliant pearls glistened
among the stalactites in the vault overhead, and amid the
transparent atmosphere and flowing fountain water, which was crossed
by a wide ray of electric light, she gleamed like the sun with that
flamelike skin and hair of hers. f Paris would always picture her
thus--would see her shining high up among crystal glass like the
good God Himself. No, it was too stupid to let herself die under
such conditions! She must be looking pretty by this time in that
room up there!
"And what a lot of pleasures bloody well wasted!" said Mignon in
melancholy tones, as became a man who did not like to see good and
useful things lost.
He sounded Lucy and Caroline in order to find out if they were going
up after all. Of course they were going up; their curiosity had
increased. Just then Blanche arrived, out of breath and much
exasperated at the way the crowds were blocking the pavement, and
when she heard the news there was a fresh outburst of exclamations,
and with a great rustling of skirts the ladies moved toward the
staircase. Mignon followed them, crying out:
"Tell Rose that I'm waiting for her. She'll come at once, eh?"
"They do not exactly know whether the contagion is to be feared at
the beginning or near the end," Fontan was explaining to Fauchery.
"A medical I know was assuring me that the hours immediately
following death are particularly dangerous. There are miasmatic
exhalations then. Ah, but I do regret this sudden ending; I should
have been so glad to shake hands with her for the last time.
"What good would it do you now?" said the journalist.
"Yes, what good?" the two others repeated.
The crowd was still on the increase. In the bright light thrown
from shop-windows and beneath the wavering glare of the gas two
living streams were distinguishable as they flowed along the
pavement, innumerable hats apparently drifting on their surface. At
that hour the popular fever was gaining ground rapidly, and people
were flinging themselves in the wake of the bands of men in blouses.
A constant forward movement seemed to sweep the roadway, and the cry
kept recurring; obstinately, abruptly, there rang from thousands of
throats:
"A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"
The room on the fourth floor upstairs cost twelve francs a day,
since Rose had wanted something decent and yet not luxurious, for
sumptuousness is not necessary when one is suffering. Hung with
Louis XIII cretonne, which was adorned with a pattern of large
flowers, the room was furnished with the mahogany commonly found in
hotels. On the floor there was a red carpet variegated with black
foliage. Heavy silence reigned save for an occasional whispering
sound caused by voices in the corridor.
"I assure you we're lost. The waiter told us to turn to the right.
What a barrack of a house!"
"Wait a bit; we must have a look. Room number 401; room number
401!"
"Oh, it's this way: 405, 403. We ought to be there. Ah, at last,
401! This way! Hush now, hush!"
The voices were silent. Then there was a slight coughing and a
moment or so of mental preparation. Then the door opened slowly,
and Lucy entered, followed by Caroline and Blanche. But they
stopped directly; there were already five women in the room; Gaga
was lying back in the solitary armchair, which was a red velvet
Voltaire. In front of the fireplace Simonne and Clarisse were now
standing talking to Lea de Horn, who was seated, while by the bed,
to the left of the door, Rose Mignon, perched on the edge of a
chest, sat gazing fixedly at the body where it lay hidden in the
shadow of the curtains. All the others had their hats and gloves on
and looked as if they were paying a call: she alone sat there with
bare hands and untidy hair and cheeks rendered pale by three nights
of watching. She felt stupid in the face of this sudden death, and
her eyes were swollen with weeping. A shaded lamp standing on the
corner of the chest of drawers threw a bright flood of light over
Gaga.
"What a sad misfortune, is it not?" whispered Lucy as she shook
hands with Rose. "We wanted to bid her good-by."
And she turned round and tried to catch sight of her, but the lamp
was too far off, and she did not dare bring it nearer. On the bed
lay stretched a gray mass, but only the ruddy chignon was
distinguishable and a pale blotch which urniture.
"Yes, my dear, fifty-two boxes, enormous cases some of them, three
truckloads of them!" They were all lying at the station. "Wasn't
it hard lines, eh?--to die without even having time to unpack one's
traps?" Then she had a lot of tin, besides--something like a
million! Lucy asked who was going to inherit it all. Oh, distant
relations--the aunt, without doubt! It would be a pretty surprise
for that old body. She knew nothing about it yet, for the sick
woman had obstinately refused to let them warn her, for she still
owed her a grudge over her little boy's death. Thereupon they were
all moved to pity about the little boy, and they remembered seeing
him at the races. Oh, it was a wretchedly sickly baby; it looked so
old and so sad. In fact, it was one of those poor brats who never
asked to be born!
"He's happier under the ground," said Blanche.
"Bah, and so's she!" added Caroline. "Life isn't so funny!"
In that gloomy room melancholy ideas began to take possession of
their imaginations. They felt frightened. It was silly to stand
talking so long, but a longing to see her kept them rooted to the
spot. It was very hot--the lamp glass threw a round, moonlike patch
of light upon the ceiling, but the rest of the room was drowned in
steamy darkness. Under the bed a deep plate full of phenol exhaled
an insipid smell. And every few moments tiny gusts of wind swelled
the window curtains. The window opened on the boulevard, whence
rose a dull roaring sound.
"Did she suffer much?" asked Lucy, who was absorbed in contemplation
of the clock, the design of which represented the three Graces as
nude young women, smiling like opera dancers.
Gaga seemed to wake up.
"My word, yes! I was present when she died. I promise you it was
not at all pleasant to see. Why, she was taken with a shuddering
fit--"
But she was unable to proceed with her explanation, for a cry arose
outside:
"A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"
And Lucy, who felt suffocated, flung wide the window and leaned upon
the sill. It was pleasant there; the air came fresh from the starry
sky. Opposite her the windows were all aglow with light, and the
gas sent dancing reflections over the gilt lettering of the shop
signs.
Beneath these, again, a most amusing scene presented itself. The
streams of people were discernible rolling torrentwise along the
sidewalks and in the roadway, where there was a confused procession
of carriages. Everywhere there were vast moving shadows in which
lanterns and lampposts gleamed like sparks. But the band which now
came roaring by carried torches, and a red glow streamed down from
the direction of the Madeleine, crossed the mob like a trail of fire
and spread out over the heads in the distance like a vivid
reflection of a burning house. Lucy called Blanche and Caroline,
forgetting where she was and shouting:
"Do come! You get a capital view from this window!"
They all three leaned out, greatly interested. The trees got in
their way, and occasionally the torches disappeared under the
foliage. They tried to catch a glimpse of the men of their own
party below, but a protruding balcony hid the door, and they could
only make out Count Muffat, who looked like a dark parcel thrown
down on the bench where he sat. He was still burying his face in
his handkerchief. A carriage had stopped in front, and yet another
woman hurried up, in whom Lucy recognized Maria Blond. She was not
alone; a stout man got down after her.
"It's that thief of a Steiner," said Caroline. "How is it they
haven't sent him back to Cologne yet? I want to see how he looks
when he comes in."
They turned round, but when after the lapse of ten minutes Maria
Blond appeared, she was alone. She had twice mistaken the
staircase. And when Lucy, in some astonishment, questioned her:
"What, he?" she said. "My dear, don't you go fancying that he'll
come upstairs! It's a great wonder he's escorted me as far as the
door. There are nearly a dozen of them smoking cigars."
As a matter of fact, all the gentlemen were meeting downstairs.
They had come strolling thither in order to have a look at the
boulevards, and they hailed one another and commented loudly on that
poor girl's death. Then they began discussing politics and
strategy. Bordenave, Daguenet, Labordette, Prulliere and others,
besides, had swollen the group, and now they were all listening to
Fontan, who was explaining his plan for taking Berlin within a week.
Meanwhile Maria Blond was touched as she stood by the bedside and
murmured, as the others had done before her:
"Poor pet! The last time I saw her was in the grotto at the Gaite."
"Ah, she's changed; she's changed!" Rose Mignon repeated with a
smile of gloomiest dejection.
Two more women arrived. These were Tatan Nene and Louise Violaine.
They had been wandering about the Grand Hotel for twenty minutes
past, bandied from waiter to waiter, and had ascended and descended
more than thirty flights of stairs amid a perfect stampede of
travelers who were hurrying to leave Paris amid the panic caused by
the war and the excitement on the boulevards. Accordingly they just
dropped down on chairs when they came in, for they were too tired to
think about the dead. At that moment a loud noise came from the
room next door, where people were pushing trunks about and striking
against furniture to an accompaniment of strident, outlandish
syllables. It was a young Austrian couple, and Gaga told how during
her agony the neighbors had played a game of catch as catch can and
how, as only an unused door divided the two rooms, they had heard
them laughing and kissing when one or the other was caught.
"Come, it's time we were off," said Clarisse. "We shan't bring her
to life again. Are you coming, Simonne?"
They all looked at the bed out of the corners of their eyes, but
they did not budge an inch. Nevertheless, they began getting ready
and gave their skirts various little pats. Lucy was again leaning
out of window. She was alone now, and a sorrowful feeling began
little by little to overpower her, as though an intense wave of
melancholy had mounted up from the howling mob. Torches still kept
passing, shaking out clouds of sparks, and far away in the distance
the various bands stretched into the shadows, surging unquietly to
and fro like flocks being driven to the slaughterhouse at night. A
dizzy feeling emanated from these confused masses as the human flood
rolled them along--a dizzy feeling, a sense of terror and all the
pity of the massacres to come. The people were going wild; their
voices broke; they were drunk with a fever of excitement which sent
them rushing toward the unknown "out there" beyond the dark wall of
the horizon.
"A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"
Lucy turned round. She leaned her back against the window, and her
face was very pale.
"Good God! What's to become of us?"
The ladies shook their heads. They were serious and very anxious
about the turn events were taking.
"For my part," said Caroline Hequet in her decisive way, "I start
for London the day after tomorrow. Mamma's already over there
getting a house ready for me. I'm certainly not going to let myself
be massacred in Paris."
Her mother, as became a prudent woman, had invested all her
daughters' money in foreign lands. One never knows how a war may
end! But Maria Blond grew vexed at this. She was a patriot and
spoke of following the army.
"There's a coward for you! Yes, if they wanted me I should put on
man's clothes just to have a good shot at those pigs of Prussians!
And if we all die after? What of that? Our wretched skins aren't
so valuable!"
Blanche de Sivry was exasperated.
"Please don't speak ill of the Prussians! They are just like other
men, and they're not always running after the women, like your
Frenchmen. They've just expelled the little Prussian who was with
me. He was an awfully rich fellow and so gentle: he couldn't have
hurt a soul. It's disgraceful; I'm ruined by it. And, you know,
you mustn't say a word or I go and find him out in Germany!"
After that, while the two were at loggerheads, Gaga began murmuring
in dolorous tones:
"It's all over with me; my luck's always bad. It's only a week ago
that I finished paying for my little house at Juvisy. Ah, God knows
what trouble it cost me! I had to go to Lili for help! And now
here's the war declared, and the Prussians'll come and they'll burn
everything. How am I to begin again at my time of life, I should
like to know?"
"Bah!" said Clarisse. "I don't care a damn about it. I shall
always find what I want."
"Certainly you will," added Simonne. "It'll be a joke. Perhaps,
after all, it'll be good biz."
And her smile hinted what she thought. Tatan Nene and Louise
Violaine were of her opinion. The former told them that she had
enjoyed the most roaring jolly good times with soldiers. Oh, they
were good fellows and would have done any mortal thing for the
girls. But as the ladies had raised their voices unduly Rose
Mignon, still sitting on the chest by the bed, silenced them with a
softly whispered "Hush!" They stood quite still at this and glanced
obliquely toward the dead woman, as though this request for silence
had emanated from the very shadows of the curtains. In the heavy,
peaceful stillness which ensued, a void, deathly stillness which
made them conscious of the stiff dead body lying stretched close by
them, the cries of the mob burst forth:
"A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"
But soon they forgot. Lea de Horn, who had a political salon where
former ministers of Louis Philippe were wont to indulge in delicate
epigrams, shrugged her shoulders and continued the conversation in a
low tone:
"What a mistake this war is! What a bloodthirsty piece of
stupidity!"
At this Lucy forthwith took up the cudgels for the empire. She had
been the mistress of a prince of the imperial house, and its defense
became a point of family honor with her.
"Do leave them alone, my dear. We couldn't let ourselves be further
insulted! Why, this war concerns the honor of France. Oh, you know
I don't say that because of the prince. He WAS just mean! Just
imagine, at night when he was going to bed he hid his gold in his
boots, and when we played at bezique he used beans, because one day
I pounced down on the stakes for fun. But that doesn't prevent my
being fair. The emperor was right."
Lea shook her head with an air of superiority, as became a woman who
was repeating the opinions of important personages. Then raising
her voice:
"This is the end of all things. They're out of their minds at the
Tuileries. France ought to have driven them out yesterday. Don't
you see?"
They all violently interrupted her. What was up with her? Was she
mad about the emperor? Were people not happy? Was business doing
badly? Paris would never enjoy itself so thoroughly again.
Gaga was beside herself; she woke up and was very indignant.
"Be quiet! It's idiotic! You don't know what you're saying. I--
I've seen Louis Philippe's reign: it was full of beggars and misers,
my dear. And then came '48! Oh, it was a pretty disgusting
business was their republic! After February I was simply dying of
starvation--yes, I, Gaga. Oh, if only you'd been through it all you
would go down on your knees before the emperor, for he's been a
father to us; yes, a father to us."
She had to be soothed but continued with pious fervor:
"O my God, do Thy best to give the emperor the victory. Preserve
the empire to us!"
They all repeated this aspiration, and Blanche confessed that she
burned candles for the emperor. Caroline had been smitten by him
and for two whole months had walked where he was likely to pass but
had failed to attract his attention. And with that the others burst
forth into furious denunciations of the Republicans and talked of
exterminating them on the frontiers so that Napoleon III, after
having beaten the enemy, might reign peacefully amid universal
enjoyment.
"That dirty Bismarck--there's another cad for you!" Maria Blond
remarked.
"To think that I should have known him!" cried Simonne. "If only I
could have foreseen, I'm the one that would have put some poison in
his glass."
But Blanche, on whose heart the expulsion of her Prussian still
weighed, ventured to defend Bismarck. Perhaps he wasn't such a bad
sort. To every man his trade!
"You know," she added, "he adores women."
"What the hell has that got to do with us?" said Clarisse. "We
don't want to cuddle him, eh?"
"There's always too many men of that sort!" declared Louise Violaine
gravely. "It's better to do without 'em than to mix oneself up with
such monsters!"
And the discussion continued, and they stripped Bismarck, and, in
her Bonapartist zeal, each of them gave him a sounding kick, while
Tatan Nene kept saying:
"Bismarck! Why, they've simply driven me crazy with the chap! Oh,
I hate him! I didn't know that there Bismarck! One can't know
everybody."
"Never mind," said Lea de Horn by way of conclusion, "that Bismarck
will give us a jolly good threshing."
But she could not continue. The ladies were all down on her at
once. Eh, what? A threshing? It was Bismarck they were going to
escort home with blows from the butt ends of their muskets. What
was this bad Frenchwoman going to say next?
"Hush," whispered Rose, for so much noise hurt her.
The cold influence of the corpse once more overcame them, and they
all paused together. They were embarrassed; the dead woman was
before them again; a dull thread of coming ill possessed them. On
the boulevard the cry was passing, hoarse and wild:
"A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"
Presently, when they were making up their minds to go, a voice was
heard calling from the passage:
"Rose! Rose!"
Gaga opened the door in astonishment and disappeared for a moment.
When she returned:
"My dear," she said, "it's Fauchery. He's out there at the end of
the corridor. He won't come any further, and he's beside himself
because you still stay near that body."
Mignon had at last succeeded in urging the journalist upstairs.
Lucy, who was still at the window, leaned out and caught sight of
the gentlemen out on the pavement. They were looking up, making
energetic signals to her. Mignon was shaking his fists in
exasperation, and Steiner, Fontan, Bordenave and the rest were
stretching out their arms with looks of anxious reproach, while
Daguenet simply stood smoking a cigar with his hands behind his
back, so as not to compromise himself.
"It's true, dear," said Lucy, leaving the window open; "I promised
to make you come down. They're all calling us now."
Rose slowly and painfully left the chest.
"I'm coming down; I'm coming down," she whispered. "It's very
certain she no longer needs me. They're going to send in a Sister
of Mercy."
And she turned round, searching for her hat and shawl. Mechanically
she filled a basin of water on the toilet table and while washing
her hands and face continued:
"I don't know! It's been a great blow to me. We used scarcely to
be nice to one another. Ah well! You see I'm quite silly over it
now. Oh! I've got all sorts of strange ideas--I want to die myself--
I feel the end of the world's coming. Yes, I need air."
The corpse was beginning to poison the atmosphere of the room. And
after long heedlessness there ensued a panic.
"Let's be off; let's be off, my little pets!" Gaga kept saying. "It
isn't wholesome here."
They went briskly out, casting a last glance at the bed as they
passed it. But while Lucy, Blanche and Caroline still remained
behind, Rose gave a final look round, for she wanted to leave the
room in order. She drew a curtain across the window, and then it
occurred to her that the lamp was not the proper thing and that a
taper should take its place. So she lit one of the copper
candelabra on the chimney piece and placed it on the night table
beside the corpse. A brilliant light suddenly illumined the dead
woman's face. The women were horror-struck. They shuddered and
escaped.
"Ah, she's changed; she's changed!" murmured Rose Mignon, who was
the last to remain.
She went away; she shut the door. Nana was left alone with upturned
face in the light cast by the candle. She was fruit of the charnel
house, a heap of matter and blood, a shovelful of corrupted flesh
thrown down on the pillow. The pustules had invaded the whole of
the face, so that each touched its neighbor. Fading and sunken,
they had assumed the grayish hue of mud; and on that formless pulp,
where the features had ceased to be traceable, they already
resembled some decaying damp from the grave. One eye, the left eye,
had completely foundered among bubbling purulence, and the other,
which remained half open, looked like a deep, black, ruinous hole.
The nose was still suppurating. Quite a reddish crush was peeling
from one of the cheeks and invading the mouth, which it distorted
into a horrible grin. And over this loathsome and grotesque mask of
death the hair, the beautiful hair, still blazed like sunlight and
flowed downward in rippling gold. Venus was rotting. It seemed as
though the poison she had assimilated in the gutters and on the
carrion tolerated by the roadside, the leaven with which she had
poisoned a whole people, had but now remounted to her face and
turned it to corruption.
The room was empty. A great despairing breath came up from the
boulevard and swelled the curtain.
"A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"
The End
XFIR驗MZ