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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1069 ***
+
+Four Short Stories
+
+By Émile Zola
+
+
+Contents
+
+ NANA
+ CHAPTER I
+ CHAPTER II
+ CHAPTER III
+ CHAPTER IV
+ CHAPTER V
+ CHAPTER VI
+ CHAPTER VII
+ CHAPTER VIII
+ CHAPTER IX
+ CHAPTER X
+ CHAPTER XI
+ CHAPTER XII
+ CHAPTER XIII
+ CHAPTER XIV
+
+ THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER
+ CHAPTER I
+ CHAPTER II
+ CHAPTER III
+ CHAPTER IV
+ CHAPTER V
+
+ CAPTAIN BURLE
+ CHAPTER I
+ CHAPTER II
+ CHAPTER III
+ CHAPTER IV
+
+ THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BECAILLE
+ CHAPTER I
+ CHAPTER II
+ CHAPTER III
+ CHAPTER IV
+ CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+
+ NANA
+
+ by Émile Zola
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I
+
+
+At nine o’clock in the evening the body of the house at the Theatres
+des Variétés 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 shone 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 Prullière, 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 Prullière
+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
+boarding-school, 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 he 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 Café 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 Café des Variétés.
+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 Prullière 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 Prullière
+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 Prullière’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 Café des Variétés, 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 Zoé, the lady’s maid, opened the outer shutter. A flood of
+daylight entered. Zoé, 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 Zoé.
+“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 Zoés 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 Zoé 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 Zoé, and the latter, inured to such
+confidences, received them with respectful 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. Zoé 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.”
+
+Zoé 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 Zoé 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.”
+
+Zoé 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 Zoé 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. 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 expression 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 brought
+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 in 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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. Zoé 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 Zoé 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. Zoé 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 Zoé
+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 had 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 Zoé, who had vanished—a corner of the table would do quite
+well. And they pushed 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.
+
+Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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, Zoé 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
+folks call I must have the whole flat. Now off you go, off you go!”
+
+Mme Maloir was for finishing the game, but Zoé 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 Zoé 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. Zoé 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 Zoé 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. Zoé 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 again, and when Zoé 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? Zoé
+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 Zoé,
+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 Zoé 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 Zoé.
+
+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 clasped 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 Zoé went out of the room,
+remarking that she would go and look 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé, 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 Zoé 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 Zoé
+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
+Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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!
+
+Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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!”
+
+Zoé 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.”
+
+Zoé 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 Variétés 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, Zoé 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. Zoé 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 Zoé 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. Zoé, 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 Zoé 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 Variétés. 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 Zoé 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 Pentièvre. 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 convent-like, 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 fêtes 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
+“trés 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. What 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 Château 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 would 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 Variétés.”
+
+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’hôte 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 Variétés, 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 Variétés, 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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. Zoé, 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. Léa 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 still
+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, Léa 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 à la comtesse, clear soup à 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 Prullière, 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; Prullière 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, Léa 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 à la Chambord and a saddle
+of venison à 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 École 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 Variétés. 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 à la marechale, fillets of sole
+with shallot sauce and escalopes of Strasbourg paté. 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 Léa
+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 à 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
+Léa 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 Léon
+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 Léon’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 Léon 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 à 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 Léa 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
+Léa’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 begun 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 Léa 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
+imbecility, 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, Léa 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 Zoé, who had dozed
+off on a chair. The gas was still alight, and Zoé 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 Variétés 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 Prullière, 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!”
+
+Prullière 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 Prullière 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 Variétés,
+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 Prullière 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 Prullière
+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 Prullière, who had been coming across her
+for a year past at the Café des Variétés. 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 Prullière. “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.
+
+Prullière 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 doubtful 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!”
+
+Prullière, 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 suddenly 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 Prullière 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 Prullière
+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 Prullière.
+
+“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 Prullière, 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 Prullière 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 Prullière 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 illuminated 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 Prullière, 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 Variétés
+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 Gumières 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
+Gumières 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 Variétés, 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 Zoé 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 Zoé
+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 Zoé, 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, Zoé! 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, Zoé! 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, Zoé! Now,
+do look!”
+
+The carriage had by 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 Zoé 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 pavilion-like
+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 Zoé 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. Zoé 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. Zoé 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.
+
+“Zoé, Zoé, where are you? Come up, do! You’ve no idea! It’s like
+fairyland!”
+
+Zoé 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 Zoé, 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 within 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 Zoé, 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.
+
+“Zoé, 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, Zoé, 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 already 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, Zoé! 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 Zoé 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 Gumières, 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 Zoé, 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 were no men’s trousers in her house! She was on the point of
+calling the gardener back when an idea struck her. Zoé, 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 attired 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. “Zoé, just come here and see how it suits him. It’s made 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 Zoé 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. Zoé 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 paté, 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Gumières, 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 Gumières, 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! Zoé, 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 compromise 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 Gumières 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 Château 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.
+
+“Zoé,” 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 Variétés 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
+Variétés 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 of 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 Variétés 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 Variétés, 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 furniture 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, Zoé 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 Café 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 rapidly 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! Léa 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 Café 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 Zoé 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 delighted 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 Zoé’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 Zoé 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. It
+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
+Chaussée-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 Zoé 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 advantage 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.
+Zoé 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 Zoé had just been
+at her house. Zoé 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 Zoé’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 Prullière, 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,
+Prullière 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.
+Prullière 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 Prullière. “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 Prullière 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 Variétés. 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
+Prullière, 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 Chaussée-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 Labruyère 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 respectfully
+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 kicks 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 beastliness 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 got 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’hôte 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 à la
+financière, 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. Prullière, 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. Prullière
+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 Prullière’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
+Prullière 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 Prullière 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 Zoé 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
+Asnièries 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 Café 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 evening 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 Poissonnière, 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
+Prullière, 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 Bergère 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 Prullière, 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
+Variétés 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!”
+
+Whereupon 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 Zoé, 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.”
+
+Zoé 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 Variétés. 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 Prullière 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 Prullière 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 Prullière
+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 Prullière 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 Prullière, 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 ridiculous 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 Prullière 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,
+Prullière, 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, Prullière, 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 Prullière, 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 Prullière’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 débris 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 eggcup,” 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 momentarily 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 Prullière.
+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 of
+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 corner 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 would 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 sofa, 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, hangings 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 Zoé 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 was 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 annoyances 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 château, 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. Zoé 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 Zoé 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 out of the troubled waters.
+
+One morning when Muffat had not yet left the bedroom Zoé 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, Zoé, are you
+out of your senses? Take him away and keep him downstairs; I’ll try and
+come down.”
+
+Zoé 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 Zoé 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 side 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 portières 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 Zoé 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.
+
+Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Café 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
+out. 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 Zoé 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’hôte 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’hôte 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 Zoé. 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. Zoé had disarranged it by taking out some
+oranges.
+
+“Then it’s Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé, 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 Zoé; “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! Zoé 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
+château 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, à 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, Léa 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 to 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 Léa 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
+following 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 Gaîté, 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
+rejoined. “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 château 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 Zoé, 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Zoé.
+
+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!
+
+Zoé, 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 Zoé 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 Variétés, 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 Château 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 fête 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, Zoé 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?”
+
+Zoé 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 Zoé 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, Zoé, 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 Zoé; 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
+débris, 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 Zoé, 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 Thérèse and
+that her fête 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 Zoé 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 débris 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 Zoé; 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 Zoé 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. Zoé
+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 Zoé, 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.
+
+“Zoé! Zoé! 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 Zoé if
+I’m at all mixed up in it. Zoé, 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. Zoé, 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’ll 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 p’s and q’s; 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. Zoé 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 Zoé 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. Zoé 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 CONGÉ 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 à 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.
+Zoé 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 Zoé, 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 portière
+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 Zoé,
+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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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.
+
+Zoé 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 Zoé, 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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 château. This
+château 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 Lariboisière, 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 Zoé 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 Zoé 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.
+
+Zoé 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 Zoé 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 Gaîté, which
+the penniless Bordenave had taken out of sheer audacity. Here she again
+found herself in company with Prullière 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 coming 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 been 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, “À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À 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 Gaîté; 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. 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:
+
+“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À 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 Léa 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 might be the face. Lucy added:
+
+“I never saw her since that time at the Gaîté, 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 Léa 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 furniture. “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:
+
+“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À 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, Prullière 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 Gaîté.”
+
+“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.
+
+“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À 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:
+
+“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À BERLIN!”
+
+But soon they forgot. Léa 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.”
+
+Léa 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 Léa 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:
+
+“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À 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.
+
+“À BERLIN! À BERLIN! À BERLIN!”
+
+
+
+
+ THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I
+ THE BETROTHAL
+
+
+Père Merlier’s mill, one beautiful summer evening, was arranged for a
+grand fête. In the courtyard were three tables, placed end to end,
+which awaited the guests. Everyone knew that Francoise, Merlier’s
+daughter, was that night to be betrothed to Dominique, a young man who
+was accused of idleness but whom the fair sex for three leagues around
+gazed at with sparkling eyes, such a fine appearance had he.
+
+Père Merlier’s mill was pleasing to look upon. It stood exactly in the
+center of Rocreuse, where the highway made an elbow. The village had
+but one street, with two rows of huts, a row on each side of the road;
+but at the elbow meadows spread out, and huge trees which lined the
+banks of the Morelle covered the extremity of the valley with lordly
+shade. There was not, in all Lorraine, a corner of nature more
+adorable. To the right and to the left thick woods, centenarian
+forests, towered up from gentle slopes, filling the horizon with a sea
+of verdure, while toward the south the plain stretched away, of
+marvelous fertility, displaying as far as the eye could reach patches
+of ground divided by green hedges. But what constituted the special
+charm of Rocreuse was the coolness of that cut of verdure in the most
+sultry days of July and August. The Morelle descended from the forests
+of Gagny and seemed to have gathered the cold from the foliage beneath
+which it flowed for leagues; it brought with it the murmuring sounds,
+the icy and concentrated shade of the woods. And it was not the sole
+source of coolness: all sorts of flowing streams gurgled through the
+forest; at each step springs bubbled up; one felt, on following the
+narrow pathways, that there must exist subterranean lakes which pierced
+through beneath the moss and availed themselves of the smallest
+crevices at the feet of trees or between the rocks to burst forth in
+crystalline fountains. The whispering voices of these brooks were so
+numerous and so loud that they drowned the song of the bullfinches. It
+was like some enchanted park with cascades falling from every portion.
+
+Below the meadows were damp. Gigantic chestnut trees cast dark shadows.
+On the borders of the meadows long hedges of poplars exhibited in lines
+their rustling branches. Two avenues of enormous plane trees stretched
+across the fields toward the ancient Château de Gagny, then a mass of
+ruins. In this constantly watered district the grass grew to an
+extraordinary height. It resembled a garden between two wooded hills, a
+natural garden, of which the meadows were the lawns, the giant trees
+marking the colossal flower beds. When the sun’s rays at noon poured
+straight downward the shadows assumed a bluish tint; scorched grass
+slept in the heat, while an icy shiver passed beneath the foliage.
+
+And there it was that Père Merlier’s mill enlivened with its ticktack a
+corner of wild verdure. The structure, built of plaster and planks,
+seemed as old as the world. It dipped partially in the Morelle, which
+rounded at that point into a transparent basin. A sluice had been made,
+and the water fell from a height of several meters upon the mill wheel,
+which cracked as it turned, with the asthmatic cough of a faithful
+servant grown old in the house. When Père Merlier was advised to change
+it he shook his head, saying that a new wheel would be lazier and would
+not so well understand the work, and he mended the old one with
+whatever he could put his hands on: cask staves, rusty iron, zinc and
+lead. The wheel appeared gayer than ever for it, with its profile grown
+odd, all plumed with grass and moss. When the water beat upon it with
+its silvery flood it was covered with pearls; its strange carcass wore
+a sparkling attire of necklaces of mother-of-pearl.
+
+The part of the mill which dipped in the Morelle had the air of a
+barbaric arch stranded there. A full half of the structure was built on
+piles. The water flowed beneath the floor, and deep places were there,
+renowned throughout the district for the enormous eels and crayfish
+caught in them. Below the fall the basin was as clear as a mirror, and
+when the wheel did not cover it with foam schools of huge fish could be
+seen swimming with the slowness of a squadron. Broken steps led down to
+the river near a stake to which a boat was moored. A wooden gallery
+passed above the wheel. Windows opened, pierced irregularly. It was a
+pell-mell of corners, of little walls, of constructions added too late,
+of beams and of roofs, which gave the mill the aspect of an old,
+dismantled citadel. But ivy had grown; all sorts of clinging plants
+stopped the too-wide chinks and threw a green cloak over the ancient
+building. The young ladies who passed by sketched Père Merlier’s mill
+in their albums.
+
+On the side facing the highway the structure was more solid. A stone
+gateway opened upon the wide courtyard, which was bordered to the right
+and to the left by sheds and stables. Beside a well an immense elm
+covered half the courtyard with its shadow. In the background the
+building displayed the four windows of its second story, surmounted by
+a pigeon house. Père Merlier’s sole vanity was to have this front
+plastered every ten years. It had just received a new coating and
+dazzled the village when the sun shone on it at noon.
+
+For twenty years Père Merlier had been mayor of Rocreuse. He was
+esteemed for the fortune he had acquired. His wealth was estimated at
+something like eighty thousand francs, amassed sou by sou. When he
+married Madeleine Guillard, who brought him the mill as her dowry, he
+possessed only his two arms. But Madeleine never repented of her
+choice, so briskly did he manage the business. Now his wife was dead,
+and he remained a widower with his daughter Francoise. Certainly he
+might have rested, allowed the mill wheel to slumber in the moss, but
+that would have been too dull for him, and in his eyes the building
+would have seemed dead. He toiled on for pleasure.
+
+Père Merlier was a tall old man with a long, still face, who never
+laughed but who possessed, notwithstanding, a very gay heart. He had
+been chosen mayor because of his money and also on account of the
+imposing air he could assume during a marriage ceremony.
+
+Francoise Merlier was just eighteen. She did not pass for one of the
+handsome girls of the district, as she was not robust. Up to her
+fifteenth year she had been even ugly.
+
+The Rocreuse people had not been able to understand why the daughter of
+Père and Mere Merlier, both of whom had always enjoyed excellent
+health, grew ill and with an air of regret. But at fifteen, though yet
+delicate, her little face became one of the prettiest in the world. She
+had black hair, black eyes, and was as rosy as a peach; her lips
+constantly wore a smile; there were dimples in her cheeks, and her fair
+forehead seemed crowned with sunlight. Although not considered robust
+in the district, she was far from thin; the idea was simply that she
+could not lift a sack of grain, but she would become plump as she grew
+older—she would eventually be as round and dainty as a quail. Her
+father’s long periods of silence had made her thoughtful very young. If
+she smiled constantly it was to please others. By nature she was
+serious.
+
+Of course all the young men of the district paid court to her, more on
+account of her ecus than her pretty ways. At last she made a choice
+which scandalized the community.
+
+On the opposite bank of the Morelle lived a tall youth named Dominique
+Penquer. He did not belong to Rocreuse. Ten years before he had arrived
+from Belgium as the heir of his uncle, who had left him a small
+property upon the very border of the forest of Gagny, just opposite the
+mill, a few gunshots distant. He had come to sell this property, he
+said, and return home. But the district charmed him, it appeared, for
+he did not quit it. He was seen cultivating his little field, gathering
+a few vegetables upon which he subsisted. He fished and hunted; many
+times the forest guards nearly caught him and were on the point of
+drawing up procès-verbaux against him. This free existence, the
+resources of which the peasants could not clearly discover, at length
+gave him a bad reputation. He was vaguely styled a poacher. At any
+rate, he was lazy, for he was often found asleep on the grass when he
+should have been at work. The hut he inhabited beneath the last trees
+on the edge of the forest did not seem at all like the dwelling of an
+honest young fellow. If he had had dealings with the wolves of the
+ruins of Gagny the old women would not have been the least bit
+surprised. Nevertheless, the young girls sometimes risked defending
+him, for this doubtful man was superb; supple and tall as a poplar, he
+had a very white skin, with flaxen hair and beard which gleamed like
+gold in the sun.
+
+One fine morning Francoise declared to Père Merlier that she loved
+Dominique and would never wed any other man.
+
+It may well be imagined what a blow this was to Père Merlier. He said
+nothing, according to his custom, but his face grew thoughtful and his
+internal gaiety no longer sparkled in his eyes. He looked gruff for a
+week. Francoise also was exceedingly grave. What tormented Père Merlier
+was to find out how this rogue of a poacher had managed to fascinate
+his daughter. Dominique had never visited the mill. The miller watched
+and saw the gallant on the other side of the Morelle, stretched out
+upon the grass and feigning to be asleep. Francoise could see him from
+her chamber window. Everything was plain: they had fallen in love by
+casting sheep’s eyes at each other over the mill wheel.
+
+Another week went by. Francoise became more and more grave. Père
+Merlier still said nothing. Then one evening he himself silently
+brought in Dominique. Francoise at that moment was setting the table.
+She did not seem astonished; she contented herself with putting on an
+additional plate, knife and fork, but the little dimples were again
+seen in her cheeks, and her smile reappeared. That morning Père Merlier
+had sought out Dominique in his hut on the border of the wood.
+
+There the two men had talked for three hours with doors and windows
+closed. What was the purport of their conversation no one ever knew.
+Certain it was, however, that Père Merlier, on taking his departure,
+already called Dominique his son-in-law. Without doubt the old man had
+found the youth he had gone to seek a worthy youth in the lazy fellow
+who stretched himself out upon the grass to make the girls fall in love
+with him.
+
+All Rocreuse clamored. The women at the doors had plenty to say on the
+subject of the folly of Père Merlier, who had thus introduced a
+reprobate into his house. The miller let people talk on. Perhaps he
+remembered his own marriage. He was without a sou when he wedded
+Madeleine and her mill; this, however, had not prevented him from
+making a good husband. Besides, Dominique cut short the gossip by going
+so vigorously to work that all the district was amazed. The miller’s
+assistant had just been drawn to serve as a soldier, and Dominique
+would not suffer another to be engaged. He carried the sacks, drove the
+cart, fought with the old mill wheel when it refused to turn, and all
+this with such good will that people came to see him out of curiosity.
+Père Merlier had his silent laugh. He was excessively proud of having
+formed a correct estimate of this youth. There is nothing like love to
+give courage to young folks. Amid all these heavy labors Francoise and
+Dominique adored each other. They did not indulge in lovers’ talks, but
+there was a smiling gentleness in their glances.
+
+Up to that time Père Merlier had not spoken a single word on the
+subject of marriage, and they respected this silence, awaiting the old
+man’s will. Finally one day toward the middle of July he caused three
+tables to be placed in the courtyard, beneath the great elm, and
+invited his friends of Rocreuse to come in the evening and drink a
+glass of wine with him.
+
+When the courtyard was full and all had their glasses in their hands,
+Père Merlier raised his very high and said:
+
+“I have the pleasure to announce to you that Francoise will wed this
+young fellow here in a month, on Saint Louis’s Day.”
+
+Then they drank noisily. Everybody smiled. But Père Merlier, again
+lifting his voice, exclaimed:
+
+“Dominique, embrace your fiancee. It is your right.”
+
+They embraced, blushing to the tips of their ears, while all the guests
+laughed joyously. It was a genuine fête. They emptied a small cask of
+wine. Then when all were gone but intimate friends the conversation was
+carried on without noise. The night had fallen, a starry and cloudless
+night. Dominique and Francoise, seated side by side on a bench, said
+nothing.
+
+An old peasant spoke of the war the emperor had declared against
+Prussia. All the village lads had already departed. On the preceding
+day troops had again passed through the place. There was going to be
+hard fighting.
+
+“Bah!” said Père Merlier with the selfishness of a happy man.
+“Dominique is a foreigner; he will not go to the war. And if the
+Prussians come here he will be on hand to defend his wife!”
+
+The idea that the Prussians might come there seemed a good joke. They
+were going to receive a sound whipping, and the affair would soon be
+over.
+
+“I have afready seen them; I have already seen them,” repeated the old
+peasant in a hollow voice.
+
+There was silence. Then they drank again. Francoise and Dominique had
+heard nothing; they had gently taken each other by the hand behind the
+bench, so that nobody could see them, and it seemed so delightful that
+they remained where they were, their eyes plunged into the depths of
+the shadows.
+
+What a warm and superb night it was! The village slumbered on both
+edges of the white highway in infantile quietude. From time to time was
+heard the crowing of some chanticleer aroused too soon. From the huge
+wood near by came long breaths, which passed over the roofs like
+caresses. The meadows, with their dark shadows, assumed a mysterious
+and dreamy majesty, while all the springs, all the flowing waters which
+gurgled in the darkness, seemed to be the cool and rhythmical
+respiration of the sleeping country. Occasionally the ancient mill
+wheel, lost in a doze, appeared to dream like those old watchdogs that
+bark while snoring; it cracked; it talked to itself, rocked by the fall
+of the Morelle, the surface of which gave forth the musical and
+continuous sound of an organ pipe. Never had more profound peace
+descended upon a happier corner of nature.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II
+ THE ATTACK ON THE MILL
+
+
+A month later, on the day preceding that of Saint Louis, Rocreuse was
+in a state of terror. The Prussians had beaten the emperor and were
+advancing by forced marches toward the village. For a week past people
+who hurried along the highway had been announcing them thus: “They are
+at Lormiere—they are at Novelles!” And on hearing that they were
+drawing near so rapidly, Rocreuse every morning expected to see them
+descend from the wood of Gagny. They did not come, however, and that
+increased the fright. They would surely fall upon the village during
+the night and slaughter everybody.
+
+That morning, a little before sunrise, there was an alarm. The
+inhabitants were awakened by the loud tramp of men on the highway. The
+women were already on their knees, making the sign of the cross, when
+some of the people, peering cautiously through the partially opened
+windows, recognized the red pantaloons. It was a French detachment. The
+captain immediately asked for the mayor of the district and remained at
+the mill after having talked with Père Merlier.
+
+The sun rose gaily that morning. It would be hot at noon. Over the wood
+floated a golden brightness, while in the distance white vapors arose
+from the meadows. The neat and pretty village awoke amid the fresh air,
+and the country, with its river and its springs, had the moist
+sweetness of a bouquet. But that beautiful day caused nobody to smile.
+The captain was seen to take a turn around the mill, examine the
+neighboring houses, pass to the other side of the Morelle and from
+there study the district with a field glass; Père Merlier, who
+accompanied him, seemed to be giving him explanations. Then the captain
+posted soldiers behind the walls, behind the trees and in the ditches.
+The main body of the detachment encamped in the courtyard of the mill.
+Was there going to be a battle? When Père Merlier returned he was
+questioned. He nodded his head without speaking. Yes, there was going
+to be a battle!
+
+Francoise and Dominique were in the courtyard; they looked at him. At
+last he took his pipe from his mouth and said:
+
+“Ah, my poor young ones, you cannot get married tomorrow!”
+
+Dominique, his lips pressed together, with an angry frown on his
+forehead, at times raised himself on tiptoe and fixed his eyes upon the
+wood of Gagny, as if he wished to see the Prussians arrive. Francoise,
+very pale and serious, came and went, furnishing the soldiers with what
+they needed. The troops were making soup in a corner of the courtyard;
+they joked while waiting for it to get ready.
+
+The captain was delighted. He had visited the chambers and the huge
+hall of the mill which looked out upon the river. Now, seated beside
+the well, he was conversing with Père Merlier.
+
+“Your mill is a real fortress,” he said. “We can hold it without
+difficulty until evening. The bandits are late. They ought to be here.”
+
+The miller was grave. He saw his mill burning like a torch, but he
+uttered no complaint, thinking such a course useless. He merely said:
+
+“You had better hide the boat behind the wheel; there is a place there
+just fit for that purpose. Perhaps it will be useful to have the boat.”
+
+The captain gave the requisite order. This officer was a handsome man
+of forty; he was tall and had an amiable countenance. The sight of
+Francoise and Dominique seemed to please him. He contemplated them as
+if he had forgotten the coming struggle. He followed Francoise with his
+eyes, and his look told plainly that he thought her charming. Then
+turning toward Dominique, he asked suddenly:
+
+“Why are you not in the army, my good fellow?”
+
+“I am a foreigner,” answered the young man.
+
+The captain evidently did not attach much weight to this reason. He
+winked his eye and smiled. Francoise was more agreeable company than a
+cannon. On seeing him smile, Dominique added:
+
+“I am a foreigner, but I can put a ball in an apple at five hundred
+meters. There is my hunting gun behind you.”
+
+“You may have use for it,” responded the captain dryly.
+
+Francoise had approached, somewhat agitated. Without heeding the
+strangers present Dominique took and grasped in his the two hands she
+extended to him, as if to put herself under his protection. The captain
+smiled again but said not a word. He remained seated, his sword across
+his knees and his eyes plunged into space, lost in a reverie.
+
+It was already ten o’clock. The heat had become very great. A heavy
+silence prevailed. In the courtyard, in the shadows of the sheds, the
+soldiers had begun to eat their soup. Not a sound came from the
+village; all its inhabitants had barricaded the doors and windows of
+their houses. A dog, alone upon the highway, howled. From the
+neighboring forests and meadows, swooning in the heat, came a prolonged
+and distant voice made up of all the scattered breaths. A cuckoo sang.
+Then the silence grew more intense.
+
+Suddenly in that slumbering air a shot was heard. The captain leaped
+briskly to his feet; the soldiers left their plates of soup, yet half
+full. In a few seconds everybody was at the post of duty; from bottom
+to top the mill was occupied. Meanwhile the captain, who had gone out
+upon the road, had discovered nothing; to the right and to the left the
+highway stretched out, empty and white. A second shot was heard, and
+still nothing visible, not even a shadow. But as he was returning the
+captain perceived in the direction of Gagny, between two trees, a light
+puff of smoke whirling away like thistledown. The wood was calm and
+peaceful.
+
+“The bandits have thrown themselves into the forest,” he muttered.
+“They know we are here.”
+
+Then the firing continued, growing more and more vigorous, between the
+French soldiers posted around the mill and the Prussians hidden behind
+the trees. The balls whistled above the Morelle without damaging either
+side. The fusillade was irregular, the shots coming from every bush,
+and still only the little puffs of smoke, tossed gently by the breeze,
+were seen. This lasted nearly two hours. The officer hummed a tune with
+an air of indifference. Francoise and Dominique, who had remained in
+the courtyard, raised themselves on tiptoe and looked over a low wall.
+They were particularly interested in a little soldier posted on the
+shore of the Morelle, behind the remains of an old bateau; he stretched
+himself out flat on the ground, watched, fired and then glided into a
+ditch a trifle farther back to reload his gun; and his movements were
+so droll, so tricky and so supple, that they smiled as they looked at
+him. He must have perceived the head of a Prussian, for he arose
+quickly and brought his weapon to his shoulder, but before he could
+fire he uttered a cry, fell and rolled into the ditch, where for an
+instant his legs twitched convulsively like the claws of a chicken just
+killed. The little soldier had received a ball full in the breast. He
+was the first man slain. Instinctively Francoise seized Dominique’s
+hand and clasped it with a nervous contraction.
+
+“Move away,” said the captain. “You are within range of the balls.”
+
+At that moment a sharp little thud was heard in the old elm, and a
+fragment of a branch came whirling down. But the two young folks did
+not stir; they were nailed to the spot by anxiety to see what was going
+on. On the edge of the wood a Prussian had suddenly come out from
+behind a tree as from a theater stage entrance, beating the air with
+his hands and falling backward. Nothing further moved; the two corpses
+seemed asleep in the broad sunlight; not a living soul was seen in the
+scorching country. Even the crack of the fusillade had ceased. The
+Morelle alone whispered in its clear tones.
+
+Père Merlier looked at the captain with an air of surprise, as if to
+ask him if the struggle was over.
+
+“They are getting ready for something worse,” muttered the officer.
+“Don’t trust appearances. Move away from there.”
+
+He had not finished speaking when there was a terrible discharge of
+musketry. The great elm was riddled, and a host of leaves shot into the
+air. The Prussians had happily fired too high. Dominique dragged,
+almost carried, Francoise away, while Père Merlier followed them,
+shouting:
+
+“Go down into the cellar; the walls are solid!”
+
+But they did not heed him; they entered the huge hall where ten
+soldiers were waiting in silence, watching through the chinks in the
+closed window shutters. The captain was alone in the courtyard,
+crouching behind the little wall, while the furious discharges
+continued. Without, the soldiers he had posted gave ground only foot by
+foot. However, they re-entered one by one, crawling, when the enemy had
+dislodged them from their hiding places. Their orders were to gain time
+and not show themselves, that the Prussians might remain in ignorance
+as to what force was before them. Another hour went by. As a sergeant
+arrived, saying that but two or three more men remained without, the
+captain glanced at his watch, muttering:
+
+“Half-past two o’clock. We must hold the position four hours longer.”
+
+He caused the great gate of the courtyard to be closed, and every
+preparation was made for an energetic resistance. As the Prussians were
+on the opposite side of the Morelle, an immediate assault was not to be
+feared. There was a bridge two kilometers away, but they evidently were
+not aware of its existence, and it was hardly likely that they would
+attempt to ford the river. The officer, therefore, simply ordered the
+highway to be watched. Every effort would be made in the direction of
+the country.
+
+Again the fusillade had ceased. The mill seemed dead beneath the
+glowing sun. Not a shutter was open; no sound came from the interior.
+At length, little by little, the Prussians showed themselves at the
+edge of the forest of Gagny. They stretched their necks and grew bold.
+In the mill several soldiers had already raised their guns to their
+shoulders, but the captain cried:
+
+“No, no; wait. Let them come nearer.”
+
+They were exceedingly prudent, gazing at the mill with a suspicious
+air. The silent and somber old structure with its curtains of ivy
+filled them with uneasiness. Nevertheless, they advanced. When fifty of
+them were in the opposite meadow the officer uttered the single word:
+
+“Fire!”
+
+A crash was heard; isolated shots followed. Francoise, all of a
+tremble, had mechanically put her hands to her ears. Dominique, behind
+the soldiers, looked on; when the smoke had somewhat lifted he saw
+three Prussians stretched upon their backs in the center of the meadow.
+The others had thrown themselves behind the willows and poplars. Then
+the siege began.
+
+For more than an hour the mill was riddled with balls. They dashed
+against the old walls like hail. When they struck the stones they were
+heard to flatten and fall into the water. They buried themselves in the
+wood with a hollow sound. Occasionally a sharp crack announced that the
+mill wheel had been hit. The soldiers in the interior were careful of
+their shots; they fired only when they could take aim. From time to
+time the captain consulted his watch. As a ball broke a shutter and
+plowed into the ceiling he said to himself:
+
+“Four o’clock. We shall never be able to hold out!”
+
+Little by little the terrible fusillade weakened the old mill. A
+shutter fell into the water, pierced like a bit of lace, and it was
+necessary to replace it with a mattress. Père Merlier constantly
+exposed himself to ascertain the extent of the damage done to his poor
+wheel, the cracking of which made his heart ache. All would be over
+with it this time; never could he repair it. Dominique had implored
+Francoise to withdraw, but she refused to leave him; she was seated
+behind a huge oaken clothespress, which protected her. A ball, however,
+struck the clothespress, the sides of which gave forth a hollow sound.
+Then Dominique placed himself in front of Francoise. He had not yet
+fired a shot; he held his gun in his hand but was unable to approach
+the windows, which were altogether occupied by the soldiers. At each
+discharge the floor shook.
+
+“Attention! Attention!” suddenly cried the captain.
+
+He had just seen a great dark mass emerge from the wood. Immediately a
+formidable platoon fire opened. It was like a waterspout passing over
+the mill. Another shutter was shattered, and through the gaping opening
+of the window the balls entered. Two soldiers rolled upon the floor.
+One of them lay like a stone; they pushed the body against the wall
+because it was in the way. The other twisted in agony, begging his
+comrades to finish him, but they paid no attention to him. The balls
+entered in a constant stream; each man took care of himself and strove
+to find a loophole through which to return the fire. A third soldier
+was hit; he uttered not a word; he fell on the edge of a table, with
+eyes fixed and haggard. Opposite these dead men Francoise, stricken
+with horror, had mechanically pushed away her chair to sit on the floor
+against the wall; she thought she would take up less room there and not
+be in so much danger. Meanwhile the soldiers had collected all the
+mattresses of the household and partially stopped up the windows with
+them. The hall was filled with wrecks, with broken weapons and
+demolished furniture.
+
+“Five o’clock,” said the captain. “Keep up your courage! They are about
+to try to cross the river!”
+
+At that moment Francoise uttered a cry. A ball which had ricocheted had
+grazed her forehead. Several drops of blood appeared. Dominique stared
+at her; then, approaching the window, he fired his first shot. Once
+started, he did not stop. He loaded and fired without heeding what was
+passing around him, but from time to time he glanced at Francoise. He
+was very deliberate and aimed with care. The Prussians, keeping beside
+the poplars, attempted the passage of the Morelle, as the captain had
+predicted, but as soon as a man strove to cross he fell, shot in the
+head by Dominique. The captain, who had his eyes on the young man, was
+amazed. He complimented him, saying that he should be glad to have many
+such skillful marksmen. Dominique did not hear him. A ball cut his
+shoulder; another wounded his arm, but he continued to fire.
+
+There were two more dead men. The mangled mattresses no longer stopped
+the windows. The last discharge seemed as if it would have carried away
+the mill. The position had ceased to be tenable. Nevertheless, the
+captain said firmly:
+
+“Hold your ground for half an hour more!”
+
+Now he counted the minutes. He had promised his chiefs to hold the
+enemy in check there until evening, and he would not give an inch
+before the hour he had fixed on for the retreat. He preserved his
+amiable air and smiled upon Francoise to reassure her. He had picked up
+the gun of a dead soldier and himself was firing.
+
+Only four soldiers remained in the hall. The Prussians appeared in a
+body on the other side of the Morelle, and it was clear that they
+intended speedily to cross the river. A few minutes more elapsed. The
+stubborn captain would not order the retreat. Just then a sergeant
+hastened to him and said:
+
+“They are upon the highway; they will take us in the rear!”
+
+The Prussians must have found the bridge. The captain pulled out his
+watch and looked at it.
+
+“Five minutes longer,” he said. “They cannot get here before that
+time!”
+
+Then at six o’clock exactly he at last consented to lead his men out
+through a little door which opened into a lane. From there they threw
+themselves into a ditch; they gained the forest of Sauval. Before
+taking his departure the captain bowed very politely to Père Merlier
+and made his excuses, adding:
+
+“Amuse them! We will return!”
+
+Dominique was now alone in the hall. He was still firing, hearing
+nothing, understanding nothing. He felt only the need of defending
+Francoise. He had not the least suspicion in the world that the
+soldiers had retreated. He aimed and killed his man at every shot.
+Suddenly there was a loud noise. The Prussians had entered the
+courtyard from behind. Dominique fired a last; shot, and they fell upon
+him while his gun was yet smoking.
+
+Four men held him. Others vociferated around him in a frightful
+language. They were ready to slaughter him on the spot. Francoise, with
+a supplicating look, had cast herself before him. But an officer
+entered and ordered the prisoner to be delivered up to him. After
+exchanging a few words in German with the soldiers he turned toward
+Dominique and said to him roughly in very good French:
+
+“You will be shot in two hours!”
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III
+ THE FLIGHT
+
+
+It was a settled rule of the German staff that every Frenchman, not
+belonging to the regular army, taken with arms in his hands should be
+shot. The militia companies themselves were not recognized as
+belligerents. By thus making terrible examples of the peasants who
+defended their homes, the Germans hoped to prevent the levy en masse,
+which they feared.
+
+The officer, a tall, lean man of fifty, briefly questioned Dominique.
+Although he spoke remarkably pure French he had a stiffness altogether
+Prussian.
+
+“Do you belong to this district?” he asked.
+
+“No; I am a Belgian,” answered the young man.
+
+“Why then did you take up arms? The fighting did not concern you!”
+
+Dominique made no reply. At that moment the officer saw Francoise who
+was standing by, very pale, listening; upon her white forehead her
+slight wound had put a red bar. He looked at the young folks, one after
+the other, seemed to understand matters and contented himself with
+adding:
+
+“You do not deny having fired, do you?”
+
+“I fired as often as I could!” responded Dominique tranquilly.
+
+This confession was useless, for he was black with powder, covered with
+sweat and stained with a few drops of blood which had flowed from the
+scratch on his shoulder.
+
+“Very well,” said the officer. “You will be shot in two hours!”
+
+Francoise did not cry out. She clasped her hands and raised them with a
+gesture of mute despair. The officer noticed this gesture. Two soldiers
+had taken Dominique to a neighboring apartment, where they were to keep
+watch over him. The young girl had fallen upon a chair, totally
+overcome; she could not weep; she was suffocating. The officer had
+continued to examine her. At last he spoke to her.
+
+“Is that young man your brother?” he demanded.
+
+She shook her head negatively. The German stood stiffly on his feet
+with out a smile. Then after a short silence he again asked:
+
+“Has he lived long in the district?”
+
+She nodded affirmatively.
+
+“In that case, he ought to be thoroughly acquainted with the
+neighboring forests.”
+
+This time she spoke.
+
+“He is thoroughly acquainted with them, monsieur,” she said, looking at
+him with considerable surprise.
+
+He said nothing further to her but turned upon his heel, demanding that
+the mayor of the village should be brought to him. But Francoise had
+arisen with a slight blush on her countenance; thinking that she had
+seized the aim of the officer’s questions, she had recovered hope. She
+herself ran to find her father.
+
+Père Merlier, as soon as the firing had ceased, had quickly descended
+to the wooden gallery to examine his wheel. He adored his daughter; he
+had a solid friendship for Dominique, his future son-in-law, but his
+wheel also held a large place in his heart. Since the two young ones,
+as he called them, had come safe and sound out of the fight, he thought
+of his other tenderness, which had suffered greatly. Bent over the huge
+wooden carcass, he was studying its wounds with a sad air. Five buckets
+were shattered to pieces; the central framework was riddled. He thrust
+his fingers in the bullet holes to measure their depth; he thought how
+he could repair all these injuries. Francoise found him already
+stopping up the clefts with rubbish and moss.
+
+“Father,” she said, “you are wanted.”
+
+And she wept at last as she told him what she had just heard. Père
+Merlier tossed his head. People were not shot in such a summary
+fashion. The matter must be looked after. He re-entered the mill with
+his silent and tranquil air. When the officer demanded of him
+provisions for his men he replied that the inhabitants of Rocreuse were
+not accustomed to be treated roughly and that nothing would be obtained
+from them if violence were employed. He would see to everything but on
+condition that he was not interfered with. The officer at first seemed
+irritated by his calm tone; then he gave way before the old man’s short
+and clear words. He even called him back and asked him:
+
+“What is the name of that wood opposite?”
+
+“The forest of Sauval.”
+
+“What is its extent?”
+
+The miller looked at him fixedly.
+
+“I do not know,” he answered.
+
+And he went away. An hour later the contribution of war in provisions
+and money, demanded by the officer, was in the courtyard of the mill.
+Night came on. Francoise watched with anxiety the movements of the
+soldiers. She hung about the room in which Dominique was imprisoned.
+Toward seven o’clock she experienced a poignant emotion. She saw the
+officer enter the prisoner’s apartment and for a quarter of an hour
+heard their voices in loud conversation. For an instant the officer
+reappeared upon the threshold to give an order in German, which she did
+not understand, but when twelve men ranged themselves in the courtyard,
+their guns on their shoulders, she trembled and felt as if about to
+faint. All then was over: the execution was going to take place. The
+twelve men stood there ten minutes, Dominique’s voice continuing to be
+raised in a tone of violent refusal. Finally the officer came out,
+saying, as he roughly shut the door:
+
+“Very well; reflect. I give you until tomorrow morning.”
+
+And with a gesture he ordered the twelve men to break ranks. Francoise
+was stupefied. Père Merlier, who had been smoking his pipe and looking
+at the platoon simply with an air of curiosity, took her by the arm
+with paternal gentleness. He led her to her chamber.
+
+“Be calm,” he said, “and try to sleep. Tomorrow, when it is light, we
+will see what can be done.”
+
+As he withdrew he prudently locked her in. It was his opinion that
+women were good for nothing and that they spoiled everything when they
+took a hand in a serious affair. But Francoise did not retire. She sat
+for a long while upon the side of her bed, listening to the noises of
+the house. The German soldiers encamped in the courtyard sang and
+laughed; they must have been eating and drinking until eleven o’clock,
+for the racket did not cease an instant. In the mill itself heavy
+footsteps resounded from time to time, without doubt those of the
+sentinels who were being relieved. But she was interested most by the
+sounds she could distinguish in the apartment beneath her chamber. Many
+times she stretched herself out at full length and put her ear to the
+floor. That apartment was the one in which Dominique was confined. He
+must have been walking back and forth from the window to the wall, for
+she long heard the regular cadence of his steps. Then deep silence
+ensued; he had doubtless seated himself. Finally every noise ceased and
+all was as if asleep. When slumber appeared to her to have settled on
+the house she opened her window as gently as possible and leaned her
+elbows on the sill.
+
+Without, the night had a warm serenity. The slender crescent of the
+moon, which was sinking behind the forest of Sauval, lit up the country
+with the glimmer of a night lamp. The lengthened shadows of the tall
+trees barred the meadows with black, while the grass in uncovered spots
+assumed the softness of greenish velvet. But Francoise did not pause to
+admire the mysterious charms of the night. She examined the country,
+searching for the sentinels whom the Germans had posted obliquely. She
+clearly saw their shadows extending like the rounds of a ladder along
+the Morelle. Only one was before the mill, on the other shore of the
+river, beside a willow, the branches of which dipped in the water.
+Francoise saw him plainly. He was a tall man and was standing
+motionless, his face turned toward the sky with the dreamy air of a
+shepherd.
+
+When she had carefully inspected the locality she again seated herself
+on her bed. She remained there an hour, deeply absorbed. Then she
+listened once more: there was not a sound in the mill. She returned to
+the window and glanced out, but doubtless one of the horns of the moon,
+which was still visible behind the trees, made her uneasy, for she
+resumed her waiting attitude. At last she thought the proper time had
+come. The night was as black as jet; she could no longer see the
+sentinel opposite; the country spread out like a pool of ink. She
+strained her ear for an instant and made her decision. Passing near the
+window was an iron ladder, the bars fastened to the wall, which mounted
+from the wheel to the garret and formerly enabled the millers to reach
+certain machinery; afterward the mechanism had been altered, and for a
+long while the ladder had been hidden under the thick ivy which covered
+that side of the mill.
+
+Francoise bravely climbed out of her window and grasped one of the bars
+of the ladder. She began to descend. Her skirts embarrassed her
+greatly. Suddenly a stone was detached from the wall and fell into the
+Morelle with a loud splash. She stopped with an icy shiver of fear.
+Then she realized that the waterfall with its continuous roar would
+drown every noise she might make, and she descended more courageously,
+feeling the ivy with her foot, assuring herself that the rounds were
+firm. When she was at the height of the chamber which served as
+Dominique’s prison she paused. An unforeseen difficulty nearly caused
+her to lose all her courage: the window of the chamber was not directly
+below that of her apartment. She hung off from the ladder, but when she
+stretched out her arm her hand encountered only the wall. Must she,
+then, ascend without pushing her plan to completion? Her arms were
+fatigued; the murmur of the Morelle beneath her commenced to make her
+dizzy. Then she tore from the wall little fragments of plaster and
+threw them against Dominique’s window. He did not hear; he was
+doubtless asleep. She crumbled more plaster from the wall, scraping the
+skin off her fingers. She was utterly exhausted; she felt herself
+falling backward, when Dominique at last softly opened the window.
+
+“It is I!” she murmured. “Catch me quickly; I’m falling!”
+
+It was the first time that she had addressed him familiarly. Leaning
+out, he seized her and drew her into the chamber. There she gave vent
+to a flood of tears, stifling her sobs that she might not be heard.
+Then by a supreme effort she calmed herself.
+
+“Are you guarded?” she asked in a low voice.
+
+Dominique, still stupefied at seeing her thus, nodded his head
+affirmatively, pointing to the door. On the other side they heard
+someone snoring; the sentinel, yielding to sleep, had thrown himself on
+the floor against the door, arguing that by disposing himself thus the
+prisoner could not escape.
+
+“You must fly,” resumed Francoise excitedly. “I have come to beg you to
+do so and to bid you farewell.”
+
+But he did not seem to hear her. He repeated:
+
+“What? Is it you; is it you? Oh, what fear you caused me! You might
+have killed yourself!”
+
+He seized her hands; he kissed them.
+
+“How I love you, Francoise!” he murmured. “You are as courageous as
+good. I had only one dread: that I should die without seeing you again.
+But you are here, and now they can shoot me. When I have passed a
+quarter of an hour with you I shall be ready.”
+
+Little by little he had drawn her to him, and she leaned her head upon
+his shoulder. The danger made them dearer to each other. They forgot
+everything in that warm clasp.
+
+“Ah, Francoise,” resumed Dominique in a caressing voice, “this is Saint
+Louis’s Day, the day, so long awaited, of our marriage. Nothing has
+been able to separate us, since we are both here alone, faithful to the
+appointment. Is not this our wedding morning?”
+
+“Yes, yes,” she repeated, “it is our wedding morning.”
+
+They tremblingly exchanged a kiss. But all at once she disengaged
+herself from Dominique’s arms; she remembered the terrible reality.
+
+“You must fly; you must fly,” she whispered. “There is not a minute to
+be lost!”
+
+And as he stretched out his arms in the darkness to clasp her again,
+she said tenderly:
+
+“Oh, I implore you to listen to me! If you die I shall die also! In an
+hour it will be light. I want you to go at once.”
+
+Then rapidly she explained her plan. The iron ladder descended to the
+mill wheel; there he could climb down the buckets and get into the boat
+which was hidden away in a nook. Afterward it would be easy for him to
+reach the other bank of the river and escape.
+
+“But what of the sentinels?” he asked.
+
+“There is only one, opposite, at the foot of the first willow.”
+
+“What if he should see me and attempt to give an alarm?”
+
+Francoise shivered. She placed in his hand a knife she had brought with
+her. There was a brief silence.
+
+“What is to become of your father and yourself?” resumed Dominique.
+“No, I cannot fly! When I am gone those soldiers will, perhaps,
+massacre you both! You do not know them. They offered me my life if I
+would consent to guide them through the forest of Sauval. When they
+discover my escape they will be capable of anything!”
+
+The young girl did not stop to argue. She said simply in reply to all
+the reasons he advanced:
+
+“Out of love for me, fly! If you love me, Dominique, do not remain here
+another moment!”
+
+Then she promised to climb back to her chamber. No one would know that
+she had helped him. She finally threw her arms around him to convince
+him with an embrace, with a burst of extraordinary love. He was
+vanquished. He asked but one more question:
+
+“Can you swear to me that your father knows what you have done and that
+he advises me to fly?”
+
+“My father sent me!” answered Francoise boldly.
+
+She told a falsehood. At that moment she had only one immense need: to
+know that he was safe, to escape from the abominable thought that the
+sun would be the signal for his death. When he was far away every
+misfortune might fall upon her; that would seem delightful to her from
+the moment he was secure. The selfishness of her tenderness desired
+that he should live before everything.
+
+“Very well,” said Dominique; “I will do what you wish.”
+
+They said nothing more. Dominique reopened the window. But suddenly a
+sound froze them. The door was shaken, and they thought that it was
+about to be opened. Evidently a patrol had heard their voices. Standing
+locked in each other’s arms, they waited in unspeakable anguish. The
+door was shaken a second time, but it did not open. They uttered low
+sighs of relief; they comprehended that the soldier who was asleep
+against the door must have turned over. In fact, silence succeeded; the
+snoring was resumed.
+
+Dominique exacted that Francoise should ascend to her chamber before he
+departed. He clasped her in his arms and bade her a mute adieu. Then he
+aided her to seize the ladder and clung to it in his turn. But he
+refused to descend a single round until convinced that she was in her
+apartment. When Francoise had entered her window she let fall in a
+voice as light as a breath:
+
+“Au revoir, my love!”
+
+She leaned her elbows on the sill and strove to follow Dominique with
+her eyes. The night was yet very dark. She searched for the sentinel
+but could not see him; the willow alone made a pale stain in the midst
+of the gloom. For an instant she heard the sound produced by
+Dominique’s body in passing along the ivy. Then the wheel cracked, and
+there was a slight agitation in the water which told her that the young
+man had found the boat. A moment afterward she distinguished the somber
+silhouette of the bateau on the gray surface of the Morelle. Terrible
+anguish seized upon her. Each instant she thought she heard the
+sentinel’s cry of alarm; the smallest sounds scattered through the
+gloom seemed to her the hurried tread of soldiers, the clatter of
+weapons, the charging of guns. Nevertheless, the seconds elapsed and
+the country maintained its profound peace. Dominique must have reached
+the other side of the river. Francoise saw nothing more. The silence
+was majestic. She heard a shuffling of feet, a hoarse cry and the
+hollow fall of a body. Afterward the silence grew deeper. Then as if
+she had felt Death pass by, she stood, chilled through and through,
+staring into the thick night.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV
+ A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE
+
+
+At dawn a clamor of voices shook the mill. Père Merlier opened the door
+of Francoise’s chamber. She went down into the courtyard, pale and very
+calm. But there she could not repress a shiver as she saw the corpse of
+a Prussian soldier stretched out on a cloak beside the well.
+
+Around the body troops gesticulated, uttering cries of fury. Many of
+them shook their fists at the village. Meanwhile the officer had
+summoned Père Merlier as the mayor of the commune.
+
+“Look!” he said to him in a voice almost choking with anger. “There
+lies one of our men who was found assassinated upon the bank of the
+river. We must make a terrible example, and I count on you to aid us in
+discovering the murderer.”
+
+“As you choose,” answered the miller with his usual stoicism, “but you
+will find it no easy task.”
+
+The officer stooped and drew aside a part of the cloak which hid the
+face of the dead man. Then appeared a horrible wound. The sentinel had
+been struck in the throat, and the weapon had remained in the cut. It
+was a kitchen knife with a black handle.
+
+“Examine that knife,” said the officer to Père Merlier; “perhaps it
+will help us in our search.”
+
+The old man gave a start but recovered control of himself immediately.
+He replied without moving a muscle of his face:
+
+“Everybody in the district has similar knives. Doubtless your man was
+weary of fighting and put an end to his own life. It looks like it!”
+
+“Mind what you say!” cried the officer furiously. “I do not know what
+prevents me from setting fire to the four corners of the village!”
+
+Happily in his rage he did not notice the deep trouble pictured on
+Francoise’s countenance. She had been forced to sit down on a stone
+bench near the well. Despite herself her eyes were fixed upon the
+corpse stretched our on the ground almost at her feet. It was that of a
+tall and handsome man who resembled Dominique, with flaxen hair and
+blue eyes. This resemblance made her heart ache. She thought that
+perhaps the dead soldier had left behind him in Germany a sweetheart
+who would weep her eyes out for him. She recognized her knife in the
+throat of the murdered man. She had killed him.
+
+The officer was talking of striking Rocreuse with terrible measures,
+when soldiers came running to him. Dominique’s escape had just been
+discovered. It caused an extreme agitation. The officer went to the
+apartment in which the prisoner had been confined, looked out of the
+window which had remained open, understood everything and returned,
+exasperated.
+
+Père Merlier seemed greatly vexed by Dominique’s flight.
+
+“The imbecile!” he muttered. “He has ruined all!”
+
+Francoise heard him and was overcome with anguish. But the miller did
+not suspect her of complicity in the affair. He tossed his head, saying
+to her in an undertone:
+
+“We are in a nice scrape!”
+
+“It was that wretch who assassinated the soldier! I am sure of it!”
+cried the officer. “He has undoubtedly reached the forest. But he must
+be found for us or the village shall pay for him!”
+
+Turning to the miller, he said:
+
+“See here, you ought to know where he is hidden!”
+
+Père Merlier laughed silently, pointing to the wide stretch of wooden
+hills.
+
+“Do you expect to find a man in there?” he said.
+
+“Oh, there must be nooks there with which you are acquainted. I will
+give you ten men. You must guide them.”
+
+“As you please. But it will take a week to search all the wood in the
+vicinity.”
+
+The old man’s tranquillity enraged the officer. In fact, the latter
+comprehended the asburdity of this search. At that moment he saw
+Francoise, pale and trembling, on the bench. The anxious attitude of
+the young girl struck him. He was silent for an instant, during which
+he in turn examined the miller and his daughter.
+
+At length he demanded roughly of the old man:
+
+“Is not that fellow your child’s lover?”
+
+Père Merlier grew livid and seemed about to hurl himself upon the
+officer to strangle him. He stiffened himself but made no answer.
+Francoise buried her face in her hands.
+
+“Yes, that’s it!” continued the Prussian. “And you or your daughter
+helped him to escape! One of you is his accomplice! For the last time,
+will you give him up to us?”
+
+The miller uttered not a word. He turned away and looked into space
+with an air of indifference, as if the officer had not addressed him.
+This brought the latter’s rage to a head.
+
+“Very well!” he shouted. “You shall be shot in his place!”
+
+And he again ordered out the platoon of execution. Père Merlier
+remained as stoical as ever. He hardly even shrugged his shoulders; all
+this drama appeared to him in bad taste. Without doubt he did not
+believe that they would shoot a man so lightly. But when the platoon
+drew up before him he said gravely:
+
+“So it is serious, is it? Go on with your bloody work then! If you must
+have a victim I will do as well as another!”
+
+But Francoise started up, terrified, stammering:
+
+“In pity, monsieur, do no harm to my father! Kill me in his stead! I
+aided Dominique to fly! I alone am guilty!”
+
+“Hush, my child!” cried Père Merlier. “Why do you tell an untruth? She
+passed the night locked in her chamber, monsieur. She tells a
+falsehood, I assure you!”
+
+“No, I do not tell a falsehood!” resumed the young girl ardently. “I
+climbed out of my window and went down the iron ladder; I urged
+Dominique to fly. This is the truth, the whole truth!”
+
+The old man became very pale. He saw clearly in her eyes that she did
+not lie, and her story terrified him. Ah, these children with their
+hearts, how they spoil everything! Then he grew angry and exclaimed:
+
+“She is mad; do not heed her. She tells you stupid tales. Come, finish
+your work!”
+
+She still protested. She knelt, clasping her hands. The officer
+tranquilly watched this dolorous struggle.
+
+“MON DIEU!” he said at last. “I take your father because I have not the
+other. Find the fugitive and the old man shall be set at liberty!”
+
+She gazed at him with staring eyes, astonished at the atrocity of the
+proposition.
+
+“How horrible!” she murmured. “Where do you think I can find Dominique
+at this hour? He has departed; I know no more about him.”
+
+“Come, make your choice—him or your father.”
+
+“Oh, MON DIEU! How can I choose? If I knew where Dominique was I could
+not choose! You are cutting my heart. I would rather die at once. Yes,
+it would be the sooner over. Kill me, I implore you, kill me!”
+
+This scene of despair and tears finally made the officer impatient. He
+cried out:
+
+“Enough! I will be merciful. I consent to give you two hours. If in
+that time your lover is not here your father will be shot in his
+place!”
+
+He caused Père Merlier to be taken to the chamber which had served as
+Dominique’s prison. The old man demanded tobacco and began to smoke.
+Upon his impassible face not the slightest emotion was visible. But
+when alone, as he smoked, he shed two big tears which ran slowly down
+his cheeks. His poor, dear child, how she was suffering!
+
+Francoise remained in the middle of the courtyard. Prussian soldiers
+passed, laughing. Some of them spoke to her, uttered jokes she could
+not understand. She stared at the door through which her father had
+disappeared. With a slow movement she put her hand to her forehead, as
+if to prevent it from bursting.
+
+The officer turned upon his heel, saying:
+
+“You have two hours. Try to utilize them.”
+
+She had two hours. This phrase buzzed in her ears. Then mechanically
+she quitted the courtyard; she walked straight ahead. Where should she
+go?—what should she do? She did not even try to make a decision because
+she well understood the inutility of her efforts. However, she wished
+to see Dominique. They could have an understanding together; they
+might, perhaps, find an expedient. And amid the confusion of her
+thoughts she went down to the shore of the Morelle, which she crossed
+below the sluice at a spot where there were huge stones. Her feet led
+her beneath the first willow, in the corner of the meadow. As she
+stooped she saw a pool of blood which made her turn pale. It was there
+the murder had been committed. She followed the track of Dominique in
+the trodden grass; he must have run, for she perceived a line of long
+footprints stretching across the meadow. Then farther on she lost these
+traces. But in a neighboring field she thought she found them again.
+The new trail conducted her to the edge of the forest, where every
+indication was effaced.
+
+Francoise, nevertheless, plunged beneath the trees. It solaced her to
+be alone. She sat down for an instant, but at the thought that time was
+passing she leaped to her feet. How long had it been since she left the
+mill? Five minutes?—half an hour? She had lost all conception of time.
+Perhaps Dominique had concealed himself in a copse she knew of, where
+they had one afternoon eaten filberts together. She hastened to the
+copse, searched it. Only a blackbird flew away, uttering its soft, sad
+note. Then she thought he might have taken refuge in a hollow of the
+rocks, where it had sometimes been his custom to lie in wait for game,
+but the hollow of the rocks was empty. What good was it to hunt for
+him? She would never find him, but little by little the desire to
+discover him took entire possession of her, and she hastened her steps.
+The idea that he might have climbed a tree suddenly occurred to her.
+She advanced with uplifted eyes, and that he might be made aware of her
+presence she called him every fifteen or twenty steps. Cuckoos
+answered; a breath of wind which passed through the branches made her
+believe that he was there and was descending. Once she even imagined
+she saw him; she stopped, almost choked, and wished to fly. What was
+she to say to him? Had she come to take him back to be shot? Oh no, she
+would not tell him what had happened. She would cry out to him to
+escape, not to remain in the neighborhood. Then the thought that her
+father was waiting for her gave her a sharp pain. She fell upon the
+turf, weeping, crying aloud:
+
+“MON DIEU! MON DIEU! Why am I here?”
+
+She was mad to have come. And as if seized with fear, she ran; she
+sought to leave the forest. Three times she deceived herself; she
+thought she never again would find the mill, when she entered a meadow
+just opposite Rocreuse. As soon as she saw the village she paused. Was
+she going to return alone? She was still hesitating when a voice softly
+called:
+
+“Francoise! Francoise!”
+
+And she saw Dominique, who had raised his head above the edge of a
+ditch. Just God! She had found him! Did heaven wish his death? She
+restrained a cry; she let herself glide into the ditch.
+
+“Are you searching for me?” asked the young man.
+
+“Yes,” she answered, her brain in a whirl, not knowing what she said.
+
+“What has happened?”
+
+She lowered her eyes, stammered:
+
+“Nothing. I was uneasy; I wanted to see you.”
+
+Then, reassured, he explained to her that he had resolved not to go
+away. He was doubtful about the safety of herself and her father. Those
+Prussian wretches were fully capable of taking vengeance upon women and
+old men. But everything was getting on well. He added with a laugh:
+
+“Our wedding will take place in a week—I am sure of it.”
+
+Then as she remained overwhelmed, he grew grave again and said:
+
+“But what ails you? You are concealing something from me!”
+
+“No; I swear it to you. I am out of breath from running.”
+
+He embraced her, saying that it was imprudent for them to be talking,
+and he wished to climb out of the ditch to return to the forest. She
+restrained him. She trembled.
+
+“Listen,” she said: “it would, perhaps, be wise for you to remain where
+you are. No one is searching for you; you have nothing to fear.”
+
+“Francoise, you are concealing something from me,” he repeated.
+
+Again she swore that she was hiding nothing. She had simply wished to
+know that he was near her. And she stammered forth still further
+reasons. She seemed so strange to him that he now could not be induced
+to flee. Besides, he had faith in the return of the French. Troops had
+been seen in the direction of Sauval.
+
+“Ah, let them hurry; let them get here as soon as possible,” she
+murmured fervently.
+
+At that moment eleven o’clock sounded from the belfry of Rocreuse. The
+strokes were clear and distinct. She arose with a terrified look; two
+hours had passed since she quitted the mill.
+
+“Hear me,” she said rapidly: “if we have need of you I will wave my
+handkerchief from my chamber window.”
+
+And she departed on a run, while Dominique, very uneasy, stretched
+himself out upon the edge of the ditch to watch the mill. As she was
+about to enter Rocreuse, Francoise met an old beggar, Père Bontemps,
+who knew everybody in the district. He bowed to her; he had just seen
+the miller in the midst of the Prussians; then, making the sign of the
+cross and muttering broken words, he went on his way.
+
+“The two hours have passed,” said the officer when Francoise appeared.
+
+Père Merlier was there, seated upon the bench beside the well. He was
+smoking. The young girl again begged, wept, sank on her knees. She
+wished to gain time. The hope of seeing the French return had increased
+in her, and while lamenting she thought she heard in the distance, the
+measured tramp of an army. Oh, if they would come, if they would
+deliver them all?
+
+“Listen, monsieur,” she said: “an hour, another hour; you can grant us
+another hour!”
+
+But the officer remained inflexible. He even ordered two men to seize
+her and take her away, that they might quietly proceed with the
+execution of the old man. Then a frightful struggle took place in
+Francoise’s heart. She could not allow her father to be thus
+assassinated. No, no; she would die rather with Dominique. She was
+running toward her chamber when Dominique himself entered the
+courtyard.
+
+The officer and the soldiers uttered a shout of triumph. But the young
+man, calmly, with a somewhat severe look, went up to Francoise, as if
+she had been the only person present.
+
+“You did wrong,” he said. “Why did you not bring me back? It remained
+for Père Bontemps to tell me everything. But I am here!”
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER V
+ THE RETURN OF THE FRENCH
+
+
+It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Great black clouds, the trail of
+some neighboring storm, had slowly filled the sky. The yellow heavens,
+the brass covered uniforms, had changed the valley of Rocreuse, so gay
+in the sunlight, into a den of cutthroats full of sinister gloom. The
+Prussian officer had contented himself with causing Dominique to be
+imprisoned without announcing what fate he reserved for him. Since noon
+Francoise had been torn by terrible anguish. Despite her father’s
+entreaties she would not quit the courtyard. She was awaiting the
+French. But the hours sped on; night was approaching, and she suffered
+the more as all the time gained did not seem to be likely to change the
+frightful denouement.
+
+About three o’clock the Prussians made their preparations for
+departure. For an instant past the officer had, as on the previous day,
+shut himself up with Dominique. Francoise realized that the young man’s
+life was in balance. She clasped her hands; she prayed. Père Merlier,
+beside her, maintained silence and the rigid attitude of an old peasant
+who does not struggle against fate.
+
+“Oh, MON DIEU! Oh, MON DIEU!” murmured Francoise. “They are going to
+kill him!”
+
+The miller drew her to him and took her on his knees as if she had been
+a child.
+
+At that moment the officer came out, while behind him two men brought
+Dominique.
+
+“Never! Never!” cried the latter. “I am ready to die!”
+
+“Think well,” resumed the officer. “The service you refuse me another
+will render us. I am generous: I offer you your life. I want you simply
+to guide us through the forest to Montredon. There must be pathways
+leading there.”
+
+Dominique was silent.
+
+“So you persist in your infatuation, do you?”
+
+“Kill me and end all this!” replied the young man.
+
+Francoise, her hands clasped, supplicated him from afar. She had
+forgotten everything; she would have advised him to commit an act of
+cowardice. But Père Merlier seized her hands that the Prussians might
+not see her wild gestures.
+
+“He is right,” he whispered: “it is better to die!”
+
+The platoon of execution was there. The officer awaited a sign of
+weakness on Dominique’s part. He still expected to conquer him. No one
+spoke. In the distance violent crashes of thunder were heard.
+Oppressive heat weighed upon the country. But suddenly, amid the
+silence, a cry broke forth:
+
+“The French! The French!”
+
+Yes, the French were at hand. Upon the Sauval highway, at the edge of
+the wood, the line of red pantaloons could be distinguished. In the
+mill there was an extraordinary agitation. The Prussian soldiers ran
+hither and thither with guttural exclamations. Not a shot had yet been
+fired.
+
+“The French! The French!” cried Francoise, clapping her hands.
+
+She was wild with joy. She escaped from her father’s grasp; she laughed
+and tossed her arms in the air. At last they had come and come in time,
+since Dominique was still alive!
+
+A terrible platoon fire, which burst upon her ears like a clap of
+thunder, caused her to turn. The officer muttered between his teeth:
+
+“Before everything, let us settle this affair!”
+
+And with his own hand pushing Dominique against the wall of a shed he
+ordered his men to fire. When Francoise looked Dominique lay upon the
+ground with blood streaming from his neck and shoulders.
+
+She did not weep; she stood stupefied. Her eyes grew fixed, and she sat
+down under the shed, a few paces from the body. She stared at it,
+wringing her hands. The Prussians had seized Père Merlier as a hostage.
+
+It was a stirring combat. The officer had rapidly posted his men,
+comprehending that he could not beat a retreat without being cut to
+pieces. Hence he would fight to the last. Now the Prussians defended
+the mill, and the French attacked it. The fusillade began with unusual
+violence. For half an hour it did not cease. Then a hollow sound was
+heard, and a ball broke a main branch of the old elm. The French had
+cannon. A battery, stationed just above the ditch in which Dominique
+had hidden himself, swept the wide street of Rocreuse. The struggle
+could not last long.
+
+Ah, the poor mill! Balls pierced it in every part. Half of the roof was
+carried away. Two walls were battered down. But it was on the side of
+the Morelle that the destruction was most lamentable. The ivy, torn
+from the tottering edifice, hung like rags; the river was encumbered
+with wrecks of all kinds, and through a breach was visible Francoise’s
+chamber with its bed, the white curtains of which were carefully
+closed. Shot followed shot; the old wheel received two balls and gave
+vent to an agonizing groan; the buckets were borne off by the current;
+the framework was crushed. The soul of the gay mill had left it!
+
+Then the French began the assault. There was a furious fight with
+swords and bayonets. Beneath the rust-colored sky the valley was choked
+with the dead. The broad meadows had a wild look with their tall,
+isolated trees and their hedges of poplars which stained them with
+shade. To the right and to the left the forests were like the walls of
+an ancient ampitheater which enclosed the fighting gladiators, while
+the springs, the fountains and the flowing brooks seemed to sob amid
+the panic of the country.
+
+Beneath the shed Francoise still sat near Dominique’s body; she had not
+moved. Père Merlier had received a slight wound. The Prussians were
+exterminated, but the ruined mill was on fire in a dozen places. The
+French rushed into the courtyard, headed by their captain. It was his
+first success of the war. His face beamed with triumph. He waved his
+sword, shouting:
+
+“Victory! Victory!”
+
+On seeing the wounded miller, who was endeavoring to comfort Francoise,
+and noticing the body of Dominique, his joyous look changed to one of
+sadness. Then he knelt beside the young man and, tearing open his
+blouse, put his hand to his heart.
+
+“Thank God!” he cried. “It is yet beating! Send for the surgeon!”
+
+At the captain’s words Francoise leaped to her feet.
+
+“There is hope!” she cried. “Oh, tell me there is hope!”
+
+At that moment the surgeon appeared. He made a hasty examination and
+said:
+
+“The young man is severely hurt, but life is not extinct; he can be
+saved!” By the surgeon’s orders Dominique was transported to a
+neighboring cottage, where he was placed in bed. His wounds were
+dressed; restoratives were administered, and he soon recovered
+consciousness. When he opened his eyes he saw Francoise sitting beside
+him and through the open window caught sight of Père Merlier talking
+with the French captain. He passed his hand over his forehead with a
+bewildered air and said:
+
+“They did not kill me after all!”
+
+“No,” replied Francoise. “The French came, and their surgeon saved
+you.”
+
+Père Merlier turned and said through the window:
+
+“No talking yet, my young ones!”
+
+In due time Dominique was entirely restored, and when peace again
+blessed the land he wedded his beloved Francoise.
+
+The mill was rebuilt, and Père Merlier had a new wheel upon which to
+bestow whatever tenderness was not engrossed by his daughter and her
+husband.
+
+
+
+
+ CAPTAIN BURLE
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I
+ THE SWINDLE
+
+
+It was nine o’clock. The little town of Vauchamp, dark and silent, had
+just retired to bed amid a chilly November rain. In the Rue des
+Recollets, one of the narrowest and most deserted streets of the
+district of Saint-Jean, a single window was still alight on the third
+floor of an old house, from whose damaged gutters torrents of water
+were falling into the street. Mme Burle was sitting up before a meager
+fire of vine stocks, while her little grandson Charles pored over his
+lessons by the pale light of a lamp.
+
+The apartment, rented at one hundred and sixty francs per annum,
+consisted of four large rooms which it was absolutely impossible to
+keep warm during the winter. Mme Burle slept in the largest chamber,
+her son Captain and Quartermaster Burle occupying a somewhat smaller
+one overlooking the street, while little Charles had his iron cot at
+the farther end of a spacious drawing room with mildewed hangings,
+which was never used. The few pieces of furniture belonging to the
+captain and his mother, furniture of the massive style of the First
+Empire, dented and worn by continuous transit from one garrison town to
+another, almost disappeared from view beneath the lofty ceilings whence
+darkness fell. The flooring of red-colored tiles was cold and hard to
+the feet; before the chairs there were merely a few threadbare little
+rugs of poverty-stricken aspect, and athwart this desert all the winds
+of heaven blew through the disjointed doors and windows.
+
+Near the fireplace sat Mme Burle, leaning back in her old yellow velvet
+armchair and watching the last vine branch smoke, with that stolid,
+blank stare of the aged who live within themselves. She would sit thus
+for whole days together, with her tall figure, her long stern face and
+her thin lips that never smiled. The widow of a colonel who had died
+just as he was on the point of becoming a general, the mother of a
+captain whom she had followed even in his campaigns, she had acquired a
+military stiffness of bearing and formed for herself a code of honor,
+duty and patriotism which kept her rigid, desiccated, as it were, by
+the stern application of discipline. She seldom, if ever, complained.
+When her son had become a widower after five years of married life she
+had undertaken the education of little Charles as a matter of course,
+performing her duties with the severity of a sergeant drilling
+recruits. She watched over the child, never tolerating the slightest
+waywardness or irregularity, but compelling him to sit up till midnight
+when his exercises were not finished, and sitting up herself until he
+had completed them. Under such implacable despotism Charles, whose
+constitution was delicate, grew up pale and thin, with beautiful eyes,
+inordinately large and clear, shining in his white, pinched face.
+
+During the long hours of silence Mme Burle dwelt continuously upon one
+and the same idea: she had been disappointed in her son. This thought
+sufficed to occupy her mind, and under its influence she would live her
+whole life over again, from the birth of her son, whom she had pictured
+rising amid glory to the highest rank, till she came down to mean and
+narrow garrison life, the dull, monotonous existence of nowadays, that
+stranding in the post of a quartermaster, from which Burle would never
+rise and in which he seemed to sink more and more heavily. And yet his
+first efforts had filled her with pride, and she had hoped to see her
+dreams realized. Burle had only just left Saint-Cyr when he
+distinguished himself at the battle of Solferino, where he had captured
+a whole battery of the enemy’s artillery with merely a handful of men.
+For this feat he had won the cross; the papers had recorded his
+heroism, and he had become known as one of the bravest soldiers in the
+army. But gradually the hero had grown stout, embedded in flesh,
+timorous, lazy and satisfied. In 1870, still a captain, he had been
+made a prisoner in the first encounter, and he returned from Germany
+quite furious, swearing that he would never be caught fighting again,
+for it was too absurd. Being prevented from leaving the army, as he was
+incapable of embracing any other profession, he applied for and
+obtained the position of captain quartermaster, “a kennel,” as he
+called it, “in which he would be left to kick the bucket in peace.”
+That day Mme Burle experienced a great internal disruption. She felt
+that it was all over, and she ever afterward preserved a rigid attitude
+with tightened lips.
+
+A blast of wind shook the Rue des Recollets and drove the rain angrily
+against the windowpanes. The old lady lifted her eyes from the smoking
+vine roots now dying out, to make sure that Charles was not falling
+asleep over his Latin exercise. This lad, twelve years of age, had
+become the old lady’s supreme hope, the one human being in whom she
+centered her obstinate yearning for glory. At first she had hated him
+with all the loathing she had felt for his mother, a weak and pretty
+young lacemaker whom the captain had been foolish enough to marry when
+he found out that she would not listen to his passionate addresses on
+any other condition. Later on, when the mother had died and the father
+had begun to wallow in vice, Mme Burle dreamed again in presence of
+that little ailing child whom she found it so hard to rear. She wanted
+to see him robust, so that he might grow into the hero that Burle had
+declined to be, and for all her cold ruggedness she watched him
+anxiously, feeling his limbs and instilling courage into his soul. By
+degrees, blinded by her passionate desires, she imagined that she had
+at last found the man of the family. The boy, whose temperament was of
+a gentle, dreamy character, had a physical horror of soldiering, but as
+he lived in mortal dread of his grandmother and was extremely shy and
+submissive, he would echo all she said and resignedly express his
+intention of entering the army when he grew up.
+
+Mme Burle observed that the exercise was not progressing. In fact,
+little Charles, overcome by the deafening noise of the storm, was
+dozing, albeit his pen was between his fingers and his eyes were
+staring at the paper. The old lady at once struck the edge of the table
+with her bony hand; whereupon the lad started, opened his dictionary
+and hurriedly began to turn over the leaves. Then, still preserving
+silence, his grandmother drew the vine roots together on the hearth and
+unsuccessfully attempted to rekindle the fire.
+
+At the time when she had still believed in her son she had sacrificed
+her small income, which he had squandered in pursuits she dared not
+investigate. Even now he drained the household; all its resources went
+to the streets, and it was through him that she lived in penury, with
+empty rooms and cold kitchen. She never spoke to him of all those
+things, for with her sense of discipline he remained the master. Only
+at times she shuddered at the sudden fear that Burle might someday
+commit some foolish misdeed which would prevent Charles from entering
+the army.
+
+She was rising up to fetch a fresh piece of wood in the kitchen when a
+fearful hurricane fell upon the house, making the doors rattle, tearing
+off a shutter and whirling the water in the broken gutters like a spout
+against the window. In the midst of the uproar a ring at the bell
+startled the old lady. Who could it be at such an hour and in such
+weather? Burle never returned till after midnight, if he came home at
+all. However, she went to the door. An officer stood before her,
+dripping with rain and swearing savagely.
+
+“Hell and thunder!” he growled. “What cursed weather!”
+
+It was Major Laguitte, a brave old soldier who had served under Colonel
+Burle during Mme Burle’s palmy days. He had started in life as a
+drummer boy and, thanks to his courage rather than his intellect, had
+attained to the command of a battalion, when a painful infirmity—the
+contraction of the muscles of one of his thighs, due to a wound—obliged
+him to accept the post of major. He was slightly lame, but it would
+have been imprudent to tell him so, as he refused to own it.
+
+“What, you, Major?” said Mme Burle with growing astonishment.
+
+“Yes, thunder,” grumbled Laguitte, “and I must be confoundedly fond of
+you to roam the streets on such a night as this. One would think twice
+before sending even a parson out.”
+
+He shook himself, and little rivulets fell from his huge boots onto the
+floor. Then he looked round him.
+
+“I particularly want to see Burle. Is the lazy beggar already in bed?”
+
+“No, he is not in yet,” said the old woman in her harsh voice.
+
+The major looked furious, and, raising his voice, he shouted: “What,
+not at home? But in that case they hoaxed me at the cafe, Melanie’s
+establishment, you know. I went there, and a maid grinned at me, saying
+that the captain had gone home to bed. Curse the girl! I suspected as
+much and felt like pulling her ears!”
+
+After this outburst he became somewhat calmer, stamping about the room
+in an undecided way, withal seeming greatly disturbed. Mme Burle looked
+at him attentively.
+
+“Is it the captain personally whom you want to see?” she said at last.
+
+“Yes,” he answered.
+
+“Can I not tell him what you have to say?”
+
+“No.”
+
+She did not insist but remained standing without taking her eyes off
+the major, who did not seem able to make up his mind to leave. Finally
+in a fresh burst of rage he exclaimed with an oath: “It can’t be
+helped. As I am here you may as well know—after all, it is, perhaps,
+best.”
+
+He sat down before the chimney piece, stretching out his muddy boots as
+if a bright fire had been burning. Mme Burle was about to resume her
+own seat when she remarked that Charles, overcome by fatigue, had
+dropped his head between the open pages of his dictionary. The arrival
+of the major had at first interested him, but, seeing that he remained
+unnoticed, he had been unable to struggle against his sleepiness. His
+grandmother turned toward the table to slap his frail little hands,
+whitening in the lamplight, when Laguitte stopped her.
+
+“No—no!” he said. “Let the poor little man sleep. I haven’t got
+anything funny to say. There’s no need for him to hear me.”
+
+The old lady sat down in her armchair; deep silence reigned, and they
+looked at one another.
+
+“Well, yes,” said the major at last, punctuating his words with an
+angry motion of his chin, “he has been and done it; that hound Burle
+has been and done it!”
+
+Not a muscle of Mme Burle’s face moved, but she became livid, and her
+figure stiffened. Then the major continued: “I had my doubts. I had
+intended mentioning the subject to you. Burle was spending too much
+money, and he had an idiotic look which I did not fancy. Thunder and
+lightning! What a fool a man must be to behave so filthily!”
+
+Then he thumped his knee furiously with his clenched fist and seemed to
+choke with indignation. The old woman put the straightforward question:
+
+“He has stolen?”
+
+“You can’t have an idea of it. You see, I never examined his accounts;
+I approved and signed them. You know how those things are managed.
+However, just before the inspection—as the colonel is a crotchety old
+maniac—I said to Burle: ‘I say, old man, look to your accounts; I am
+answerable, you know,’ and then I felt perfectly secure. Well, about a
+month ago, as he seemed queer and some nasty stories were circulating,
+I peered a little closer into the books and pottered over the entries.
+I thought everything looked straight and very well kept—”
+
+At this point he stopped, convulsed by such a fit of rage that he had
+to relieve himself by a volley of appalling oaths. Finally he resumed:
+“It isn’t the swindle that angers me; it is his disgusting behavior to
+me. He has gammoned me, Madame Burle. By God! Does he take me for an
+old fool?”
+
+“So he stole?” the mother again questioned.
+
+“This evening,” continued the major more quietly, “I had just finished
+my dinner when Gagneux came in—you know Gagneux, the butcher at the
+corner of the Place aux Herbes? Another dirty beast who got the meat
+contract and makes our men eat all the diseased cow flesh in the
+neighborhood! Well, I received him like a dog, and then he let it all
+out—blurted out the whole thing, and a pretty mess it is! It appears
+that Burle only paid him in driblets and had got himself into a
+muddle—a confusion of figures which the devil himself couldn’t
+disentangle. In short, Burle owes the butcher two thousand francs, and
+Gagneux threatens that he’ll inform the colonel if he is not paid. To
+make matters worse, Burle, just to blind me, handed me every week a
+forged receipt which he had squarely signed with Gagneux’s name. To
+think he did that to me, his old friend! Ah, curse him!”
+
+With increasing profanity the major rose to his feet, shook his fist at
+the ceiling and then fell back in his chair. Mme Burle again repeated:
+“He has stolen. It was inevitable.”
+
+Then without a word of judgment or condemnation she added simply: “Two
+thousand francs—we have not got them. There are barely thirty francs in
+the house.”
+
+“I expected as much,” said Laguitte. “And do you know where all the
+money goes? Why, Melanie gets it—yes, Melanie, a creature who has
+turned Burle into a perfect fool. Ah, those women! Those fiendish
+women! I always said they would do for him! I cannot conceive what he
+is made of! He is only five years younger than I am, and yet he is as
+mad as ever. What a woman hunter he is!”
+
+Another long silence followed. Outside the rain was increasing in
+violence, and throughout the sleepy little town one could hear the
+crashing of slates and chimney pots as they were dashed by the blast
+onto the pavements of the streets.
+
+“Come,” suddenly said the major, rising, “my stopping here won’t mend
+matters. I have warned you—and now I’m off.”
+
+“What is to be done? To whom can we apply?” muttered the old woman
+drearily.
+
+“Don’t give way—we must consider. If I only had the two thousand
+francs—but you know that I am not rich.”
+
+The major stopped short in confusion. This old bachelor, wifeless and
+childless, spent his pay in drink and gambled away at ecarte whatever
+money his cognac and absinthe left in his pocket. Despite that,
+however, he was scrupulously honest from a sense of discipline.
+
+“Never mind,” he added as he reached the threshold. “I’ll begin by
+stirring him up. I shall move heaven and earth! What! Burle, Colonel
+Burle’s son, condemned for theft! That cannot be! I would sooner burn
+down the town. Now, thunder and lightning, don’t worry; it is far more
+annoying for me than for you.”
+
+He shook the old lady’s hand roughly and vanished into the shadows of
+the staircase, while she held the lamp aloft to light the way. When she
+returned and replaced the lamp on the table she stood for a moment
+motionless in front of Charles, who was still asleep with his face
+lying on the dictionary. His pale cheeks and long fair hair made him
+look like a girl, and she gazed at him dreamily, a shade of tenderness
+passing over her harsh countenance. But it was only a passing emotion;
+her features regained their look of cold, obstinate determination, and,
+giving the youngster a sharp rap on his little hand, she said:
+
+“Charles—your lessons.”
+
+The boy awoke, dazed and shivering, and again rapidly turned over the
+leaves. At the same moment Major Laguitte, slamming the house door
+behind him, received on his head a quantity of water falling from the
+gutters above, whereupon he began to swear in so loud a voice that he
+could be heard above the storm. And after that no sound broke upon the
+pelting downpour save the slight rustle of the boy’s pen traveling over
+the paper. Mme Burle had resumed her seat near the chimney piece, still
+rigid, with her eyes fixed on the dead embers, preserving, indeed, her
+habitual attitude and absorbed in her one idea.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II
+ THE CAFE
+
+
+The Café de Paris, kept by Melanie Cartier, a widow, was situated on
+the Place du Palais, a large irregular square planted with meager,
+dusty elm trees. The place was so well known in Vauchamp that it was
+customary to say, “Are you coming to Melanie’s?” At the farther end of
+the first room, which was a spacious one, there was another called “the
+divan,” a narrow apartment having sham leather benches placed against
+the walls, while at each corner there stood a marble-topped table. The
+widow, deserting her seat in the front room, where she left her little
+servant Phrosine, spent her evenings in the inner apartment,
+ministering to a few customers, the usual frequenters of the place,
+those who were currently styled “the gentlemen of the divan.” When a
+man belonged to that set it was as if he had a label on his back; he
+was spoken of with smiles of mingled contempt and envy.
+
+Mme Cartier had become a widow when she was five and twenty. Her
+husband, a wheelwright, who on the death of an uncle had amazed
+Vauchamp by taking the Café de Paris, had one fine day brought her back
+with him from Montpellier, where he was wont to repair twice a year to
+purchase liqueurs. As he was stocking his establishment he selected,
+together with divers beverages, a woman of the sort he wanted—of an
+engaging aspect and apt to stimulate the trade of the house. It was
+never known where he had picked her up, but he married her after trying
+her in the cafe during six months or so. Opinions were divided in
+Vauchamp as to her merits, some folks declaring that she was superb,
+while others asserted that she looked like a drum-major. She was a tall
+woman with large features and coarse hair falling low over her
+forehead. However, everyone agreed that she knew very well how to fool
+the sterner sex. She had fine eyes and was wont to fix them with a bold
+stare on the gentlemen of the divan, who colored and became like wax in
+her hands. She also had the reputation of possessing a wonderfully fine
+figure, and southerners appreciate a statuesque style of beauty.
+
+Cartier had died in a singular way. Rumor hinted at a conjugal quarrel,
+a kick, producing some internal tumor. Whatever may have been the
+truth, Melanie found herself encumbered with the cafe, which was far
+from doing a prosperous business. Her husband had wasted his uncle’s
+inheritance in drinking his own absinthe and wearing out the cloth of
+his own billiard table. For a while it was believed that the widow
+would have to sell out, but she liked the life and the establishment
+just as it was. If she could secure a few customers the bigger room
+might remain deserted. So she limited herself to repapering the divan
+in white and gold and recovering the benches. She began by entertaining
+a chemist. Then a vermicelli maker, a lawyer and a retired magistrate
+put in an appearance; and thus it was that the cafe remained open,
+although the waiter did not receive twenty orders a day. No objections
+were raised by the authorities, as appearances were kept up; and,
+indeed, it was not deemed advisable to interfere, for some respectable
+folks might have been worried.
+
+Of an evening five or six well-to-do citizens would enter the front
+room and play at dominoes there. Although Cartier was dead and the Café
+de Paris had got a queer name, they saw nothing and kept up their old
+habits. In course of time, the waiter having nothing to do, Melanie
+dismissed him and made Phrosine light the solitary gas burner in the
+corner where the domino players congregated. Occasionally a party of
+young men, attracted by the gossip that circulated through the town,
+would come in, wildly excited and laughing loudly and awkwardly. But
+they were received there with icy dignity. As a rule they did not even
+see the widow, and even if she happened to be present she treated them
+with withering disdain, so that they withdrew, stammering and confused.
+Melanie was too astute to indulge in any compromising whims. While the
+front room remained obscure, save in the corner where the few townsfolk
+rattled their dominoes, she personally waited on the gentlemen of the
+divan, showing herself amiable without being free, merely venturing in
+moments of familiarity to lean on the shoulder of one or another of
+them, the better to watch a skillfully played game of ecarte.
+
+One evening the gentlemen of the divan, who had ended by tolerating
+each other’s presence, experienced a disagreeable surprise on finding
+Captain Burle at home there. He had casually entered the cafe that same
+morning to get a glass of vermouth, so it seemed, and he had found
+Melanie there. They had conversed, and in the evening when he returned
+Phrosine immediately showed him to the inner room.
+
+Two days later Burle reigned there supreme; still he had not frightened
+the chemist, the vermicelli maker, the lawyer or the retired magistrate
+away. The captain, who was short and dumpy, worshiped tall, plump
+women. In his regiment he had been nicknamed “Petticoat Burle” on
+account of his constant philandering. Whenever the officers, and even
+the privates, met some monstrous-looking creature, some giantess puffed
+out with fat, whether she were in velvet or in rags, they would
+invariably exclaim, “There goes one to Petticoat Burle’s taste!” Thus
+Melanie, with her opulent presence, quite conquered him. He was
+lost—quite wrecked. In less than a fortnight he had fallen to vacuous
+imbecility. With much the expression of a whipped hound in the tiny
+sunken eyes which lighted up his bloated face, he was incessantly
+watching the widow in mute adoration before her masculine features and
+stubby hair. For fear that he might be dismissed, he put up with the
+presence of the other gentlemen of the divan and spent his pay in the
+place down to the last copper. A sergeant reviewed the situation in one
+sentence: “Petticoat Burle is done for; he’s a buried man!”
+
+It was nearly ten o’clock when Major Laguitte furiously flung the door
+of the cafe open. For a moment those inside could see the deluged
+square transformed into a dark sea of liquid mud, bubbling under the
+terrible downpour. The major, now soaked to the skin and leaving a
+stream behind him, strode up to the small counter where Phrosine was
+reading a novel.
+
+“You little wretch,” he yelled, “you have dared to gammon an officer;
+you deserve—”
+
+And then he lifted his hand as if to deal a blow such as would have
+felled an ox. The little maid shrank back, terrified, while the amazed
+domino players looked, openmouthed. However, the major did not linger
+there—he pushed the divan door open and appeared before Melanie and
+Burle just as the widow was playfully making the captain sip his grog
+in small spoonfuls, as if she were feeding a pet canary. Only the
+ex-magistrate and the chemist had come that evening, and they had
+retired early in a melancholy frame of mind. Then Melanie, being in
+want of three hundred francs for the morrow, had taken advantage of the
+opportunity to cajole the captain.
+
+“Come.” she said, “open your mouth; ain’t it nice, you greedy
+piggy-wiggy?”
+
+Burle, flushing scarlet, with glazed eyes and sunken figure, was
+sucking the spoon with an air of intense enjoyment.
+
+“Good heavens!” roared the major from the threshold. “You now play
+tricks on me, do you? I’m sent to the roundabout and told that you
+never came here, and yet all the while here you are, addling your silly
+brains.”
+
+Burle shuddered, pushing the grog away, while Melanie stepped angrily
+in front of him as if to shield him with her portly figure, but
+Laguitte looked at her with that quiet, resolute expression well known
+to women who are familiar with bodily chastisement.
+
+“Leave us,” he said curtly.
+
+She hesitated for the space of a second. She almost felt the gust of
+the expected blow, and then, white with rage, she joined Phrosine in
+the outer room.
+
+When the two men were alone Major Laguitte walked up to Burle, looked
+at him and, slightly stooping, yelled into his face these two words:
+“You pig!”
+
+The captain, quite dazed, endeavored to retort, but he had not time to
+do so.
+
+“Silence!” resumed the major. “You have bamboozled a friend. You palmed
+off on me a lot of forged receipts which might have sent both of us to
+the gallows. Do you call that proper behavior? Is that the sort of
+trick to play a friend of thirty years’ standing?”
+
+Burle, who had fallen back in his chair, was livid; his limbs shook as
+if with ague. Meanwhile the major, striding up and down and striking
+the tables wildly with his fists, continued: “So you have become a
+thief like the veriest scribbling cur of a clerk, and all for the sake
+of that creature here! If at least you had stolen for your mother’s
+sake it would have been honorable! But, curse it, to play tricks and
+bring the money into this shanty is what I cannot understand! Tell
+me—what are you made of at your age to go to the dogs as you are going
+all for the sake of a creature like a grenadier!”
+
+“YOU gamble—” stammered the captain.
+
+“Yes, I do—curse it!” thundered the major, lashed into still greater
+fury by this remark. “And I am a pitiful rogue to do so, because it
+swallows up all my pay and doesn’t redound to the honor of the French
+army. However, I don’t steal. Kill yourself, if it pleases you; starve
+your mother and the boy, but respect the regimental cashbox and don’t
+drag your friends down with you.”
+
+He stopped. Burle was sitting there with fixed eyes and a stupid air.
+Nothing was heard for a moment save the clatter of the major’s heels.
+
+“And not a single copper,” he continued aggressively. “Can you picture
+yourself between two gendarmes, eh?”
+
+He then grew a little calmer, caught hold of Burle’s wrists and forced
+him to rise.
+
+“Come!” he said gruffly. “Something must be done at once, for I cannot
+go to bed with this affair on my mind—I have an idea.”
+
+In the front room Melanie and Phrosine were talking eagerly in low
+voices. When the widow saw the two men leaving the divan she moved
+toward Burle and said coaxingly: “What, are you going already,
+Captain?”
+
+“Yes, he’s going,” brutally answered Laguitte, “and I don’t intend to
+let him set foot here again.”
+
+The little maid felt frightened and pulled her mistress back by the
+skirt of her dress; in doing so she imprudently murmured the word
+“drunkard” and thereby brought down the slap which the major’s hand had
+been itching to deal for some time past. Both women having stooped,
+however, the blow only fell on Phrosine’s back hair, flattening her cap
+and breaking her comb. The domino players were indignant.
+
+“Let’s cut it,” shouted Laguitte, and he pushed Burle on the pavement.
+“If I remained I should smash everyone in the place.”
+
+To cross the square they had to wade up to their ankles in mud. The
+rain, driven by the wind, poured off their faces. The captain walked on
+in silence, while the major kept on reproaching him with his cowardice
+and its disastrous consequences. Wasn’t it sweet weather for tramping
+the streets? If he hadn’t been such an idiot they would both be warmly
+tucked in bed instead of paddling about in the mud. Then he spoke of
+Gagneux—a scoundrel whose diseased meat had on three separate occasions
+made the whole regiment ill. In a week, however, the contract would
+come to an end, and the fiend himself would not get it renewed.
+
+“It rests with me,” the major grumbled. “I can select whomsoever I
+choose, and I’d rather cut off my right arm than put that poisoner in
+the way of earning another copper.”
+
+Just then he slipped into a gutter and, half choked by a string of
+oaths, he gasped:
+
+“You understand—I am going to rout up Gagneux. You must stop outside
+while I go in. I must know what the rascal is up to and if he’ll dare
+to carry out his threat of informing the colonel tomorrow. A
+butcher—curse him! The idea of compromising oneself with a butcher! Ah,
+you aren’t over-proud, and I shall never forgive you for all this.”
+
+They had now reached the Place aux Herbes. Gagneux’s house was quite
+dark, but Laguitte knocked so loudly that he was eventually admitted.
+Burle remained alone in the dense obscurity and did not even attempt to
+seek any shelter. He stood at a corner of the market under the pelting
+rain, his head filled with a loud buzzing noise which prevented him
+from thinking. He did not feel impatient, for he was unconscious of the
+flight of time. He stood there looking at the house, which, with its
+closed door and windows, seemed quite lifeless. When at the end of an
+hour the major came out again it appeared to the captain as if he had
+only just gone in.
+
+Laguitte was so grimly mute that Burle did not venture to question him.
+For a moment they sought each other, groping about in the dark; then
+they resumed their walk through the somber streets, where the water
+rolled as in the bed of a torrent. They moved on in silence side by
+side, the major being so abstracted that he even forgot to swear.
+However, as they again crossed the Place du Palais, at the sight of the
+Café de Paris, which was still lit up, he dropped his hand on Burle’s
+shoulder and said, “If you ever re-enter that hole I—”
+
+“No fear!” answered the captain without letting his friend finish his
+sentence.
+
+Then he stretched out his hand.
+
+“No, no,” said Laguitte, “I’ll see you home; I’ll at least make sure
+that you’ll sleep in your bed tonight.”
+
+They went on, and as they ascended the Rue des Recollets they slackened
+their pace. When the captain’s door was reached and Burle had taken out
+his latchkey he ventured to ask:
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well,” answered the major gruffly, “I am as dirty a rogue as you are.
+Yes! I have done a scurrilous thing. The fiend take you! Our soldiers
+will eat carrion for three months longer.”
+
+Then he explained that Gagneux, the disgusting Gagneux, had a horribly
+level head and that he had persuaded him—the major—to strike a bargain.
+He would refrain from informing the colonel, and he would even make a
+present of the two thousand francs and replace the forged receipts by
+genuine ones, on condition that the major bound himself to renew the
+meat contract. It was a settled thing.
+
+“Ah,” continued Laguitte, “calculate what profits the brute must make
+out of the meat to part with such a sum as two thousand francs.”
+
+Burle, choking with emotion, grasped his old friend’s hands, stammering
+confused words of thanks. The vileness of the action committed for his
+sake brought tears into his eyes.
+
+“I never did such a thing before,” growled Laguitte, “but I was driven
+to it. Curse it, to think that I haven’t those two thousand francs in
+my drawer! It is enough to make one hate cards. It is my own fault. I
+am not worth much; only, mark my words, don’t begin again, for, curse
+it—I shan’t.”
+
+The captain embraced him, and when he had entered the house the major
+stood a moment before the closed door to make certain that he had gone
+upstairs to bed. Then as midnight was striking and the rain was still
+belaboring the dark town, he slowly turned homeward. The thought of his
+men almost broke his heart, and, stopping short, he said aloud in a
+voice full of compassion:
+
+“Poor devils! what a lot of cow beef they’ll have to swallow for those
+two thousand francs!”
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III
+ AGAIN?
+
+
+The regiment was altogether nonplused: Petticoat Burle had quarreled
+with Melanie. When a week had elapsed it became a proved and undeniable
+fact; the captain no longer set foot inside the Café de Paris, where
+the chemist, it was averred, once more reigned in his stead, to the
+profound sorrow of the retired magistrate. An even more incredible
+statement was that Captain Burle led the life of a recluse in the Rue
+des Recollets. He was becoming a reformed character; he spent his
+evenings at his own fireside, hearing little Charles repeat his
+lessons. His mother, who had never breathed a word to him of his
+manipulations with Gagneux, maintained her old severity of demeanor as
+she sat opposite to him in her armchair, but her looks seemed to imply
+that she believed him reclaimed.
+
+A fortnight later Major Laguitte came one evening to invite himself to
+dinner. He felt some awkwardness at the prospect of meeting Burle
+again, not on his own account but because he dreaded awakening painful
+memories. However, as the captain was mending his ways he wished to
+shake hands and break a crust with him. He thought this would please
+his old friend.
+
+When Laguitte arrived Burle was in his room, so it was the old lady who
+received the major. The latter, after announcing that he had come to
+have a plate of soup with them, added, lowering his voice:
+
+“Well, how goes it?”
+
+“It is all right,” answered the old lady.
+
+“Nothing queer?”
+
+“Absolutely nothing. Never away—in bed at nine—and looking quite
+happy.”
+
+“Ah, confound it,” replied the major, “I knew very well he only wanted
+a shaking. He has some heart left, the dog!”
+
+When Burle appeared he almost crushed the major’s hands in his grasp,
+and standing before the fire, waiting for the dinner, they conversed
+peacefully, honestly, together, extolling the charms of home life. The
+captain vowed he wouldn’t exchange his home for a kingdom and declared
+that when he had removed his braces, put on his slippers and settled
+himself in his armchair, no king was fit to hold a candle to him. The
+major assented and examined him. At all events his virtuous conduct had
+not made him any thinner; he still looked bloated; his eyes were
+bleared, and his mouth was heavy. He seemed to be half asleep as he
+repeated mechanically: “Home life! There’s nothing like home life,
+nothing in the world!”
+
+“No doubt,” said the major; “still, one mustn’t exaggerate—take a
+little exercise and come to the cafe now and then.”
+
+“To the cafe, why?” asked Burle. “Do I lack anything here? No, no, I
+remain at home.”
+
+When Charles had laid his books aside Laguitte was surprised to see a
+maid come in to lay the cloth.
+
+“So you keep a servant now,” he remarked to Mme Burle.
+
+“I had to get one,” she answered with a sigh. “My legs are not what
+they used to be, and the household was going to rack and ruin.
+Fortunately Cabrol let me have his daughter. You know old Cabrol, who
+sweeps the market? He did not know what to do with Rose—I am teaching
+her how to work.”
+
+Just then the girl left the room.
+
+“How old is she?” asked the major.
+
+“Barely seventeen. She is stupid and dirty, but I only give her ten
+francs a month, and she eats nothing but soup.”
+
+When Rose returned with an armful of plates Laguitte, though he did not
+care about women, began to scrutinize her and was amazed at seeing so
+ugly a creature. She was very short, very dark and slightly deformed,
+with a face like an ape’s: a flat nose, a huge mouth and narrow
+greenish eyes. Her broad back and long arms gave her an appearance of
+great strength.
+
+“What a snout!” said Laguitte, laughing, when the maid had again left
+the room to fetch the cruets.
+
+“Never mind,” said Burle carelessly, “she is very obliging and does all
+one asks her. She suits us well enough as a scullion.”
+
+The dinner was very pleasant. It consisted of boiled beef and mutton
+hash. Charles was encouraged to relate some stories of his school, and
+Mme Burle repeatedly asked him the same question: “Don’t you want to be
+a soldier?” A faint smile hovered over the child’s wan lips as he
+answered with the frightened obedience of a trained dog, “Oh yes,
+Grandmother.” Captain Burle, with his elbows on the table, was
+masticating slowly with an absent-minded expression. The big room was
+getting warmer; the single lamp placed on the table left the corners in
+vague gloom. There was a certain amount of heavy comfort, the familiar
+intimacy of penurious people who do not change their plates at every
+course but become joyously excited at the unexpected appearance of a
+bowl of whipped egg cream at the close of the meal.
+
+Rose, whose heavy tread shook the floor as she paced round the table,
+had not yet opened her mouth. At last she stopped behind the captain’s
+chair and asked in a gruff voice: “Cheese, sir?”
+
+Burle started. “What, eh? Oh yes—cheese. Hold the plate tight.”
+
+He cut a piece of Gruyere, the girl watching him the while with her
+narrow eyes. Laguitte laughed; Rose’s unparalleled ugliness amused him
+immensely. He whispered in the captain’s ear, “She is ripping! There
+never was such a nose and such a mouth! You ought to send her to the
+colonel’s someday as a curiosity. It would amuse him to see her.”
+
+More and more struck by this phenomenal ugliness, the major felt a
+paternal desire to examine the girl more closely.
+
+“Come here,” he said, “I want some cheese too.”
+
+She brought the plate, and Laguitte, sticking the knife in the Gruyere,
+stared at her, grinning the while because he discovered that she had
+one nostril broader than the other. Rose gravely allowed herself to be
+looked at, waiting till the gentleman had done laughing.
+
+She removed the cloth and disappeared. Burle immediately went to sleep
+in the chimney corner while the major and Mme Burle began to chat.
+Charles had returned to his exercises. Quietude fell from the loft
+ceiling; the quietude of a middle-class household gathered in concord
+around their fireside. At nine o’clock Burle woke up, yawned and
+announced that he was going off to bed; he apologized but declared that
+he could not keep his eyes open. Half an hour later, when the major
+took his leave, Mme Burle vainly called for Rose to light him
+downstairs; the girl must have gone up to her room; she was, indeed, a
+regular hen, snoring the round of the clock without waking.
+
+“No need to disturb anybody,” said Laguitte on the landing; “my legs
+are not much better than yours, but if I get hold of the banisters I
+shan’t break any bones. Now, my dear lady, I leave you happy; your
+troubles are ended at last. I watched Burle closely, and I’ll take my
+oath that he’s guileless as a child. Dash it—after all, it was high
+time for Petticoat Burle to reform; he was going downhill fast.”
+
+The major went away fully satisfied with the house and its inmates; the
+walls were of glass and could harbor no equivocal conduct. What
+particularly delighted him in his friend’s return to virtue was that it
+absolved him from the obligation of verifying the accounts. Nothing was
+more distasteful to him than the inspection of a number of ledgers, and
+as long as Burle kept steady, he—Laguitte—could smoke his pipe in peace
+and sign the books in all confidence. However, he continued to keep one
+eye open for a little while longer and found the receipts genuine, the
+entries correct, the columns admirably balanced. A month later he
+contented himself with glancing at the receipts and running his eye
+over the totals. Then one morning, without the slightest suspicion of
+there being anything wrong, simply because he had lit a second pipe and
+had nothing to do, he carelessly added up a row of figures and fancied
+that he detected an error of thirteen francs. The balance seemed
+perfectly correct, and yet he was not mistaken; the total outlay was
+thirteen francs more than the various sums for which receipts were
+furnished. It looked queer, but he said nothing to Burle, just making
+up his mind to examine the next accounts closely. On the following week
+he detected a fresh error of nineteen francs, and then, suddenly
+becoming alarmed, he shut himself up with the books and spent a
+wretched morning poring over them, perspiring, swearing and feeling as
+if his very skull were bursting with the figures. At every page he
+discovered thefts of a few francs—the most miserable petty thefts—ten,
+eight, eleven francs, latterly, three and four; and, indeed, there was
+one column showing that Burle had pilfered just one franc and a half.
+For two months, however, he had been steadily robbing the cashbox, and
+by comparing dates the major found to his disgust that the famous
+lesson respecting Gagneux had only kept him straight for one week! This
+last discovery infuriated Laguitte, who struck the books with his
+clenched fists, yelling through a shower of oaths:
+
+“This is more abominable still! At least there was some pluck about
+those forged receipts of Gagneux. But this time he is as contemptible
+as a cook charging twopence extra for her cabbages. Powers of hell! To
+pilfer a franc and a half and clap it in his pocket! Hasn’t the brute
+got any pride then? Couldn’t he run away with the safe or play the fool
+with actresses?”
+
+The pitiful meanness of these pilferings revolted the major, and,
+moreover, he was enraged at having been duped a second time, deceived
+by the simple, stupid dodge of falsified additions. He rose at last and
+paced his office for a whole hour, growling aloud.
+
+“This gives me his measure. Even if I were to thresh him to a jelly
+every morning he would still drop a couple of coins into his pocket
+every afternoon. But where can he spend it all? He is never seen
+abroad; he goes to bed at nine, and everything looks so clean and
+proper over there. Can the brute have vices that nobody knows of?”
+
+He returned to the desk, added up the subtracted money and found a
+total of five hundred and forty-five francs. Where was this deficiency
+to come from? The inspection was close at hand, and if the crotchety
+colonel should take it into his head to examine a single page, the
+murder would be out and Burle would be done for.
+
+This idea froze the major, who left off cursing, picturing Mme Burle
+erect and despairing, and at the same time he felt his heart swell with
+personal grief and shame.
+
+“Well,” he muttered, “I must first of all look into the rogue’s
+business; I will act afterward.”
+
+As he walked over to Burle’s office he caught sight of a skirt
+vanishing through the doorway. Fancying that he had a clue to the
+mystery, he slipped up quietly and listened and speedily recognized
+Melanie’s shrill voice. She was complaining of the gentlemen of the
+divan. She had signed a promissory note which she was unable to meet;
+the bailiffs were in the house, and all her goods would be sold. The
+captain, however, barely replied to her. He alleged that he had no
+money, whereupon she burst into tears and began to coax him. But her
+blandishments were apparently ineffectual, for Burle’s husky voice
+could be heard repeating, “Impossible! Impossible!” And finally the
+widow withdrew in a towering passion. The major, amazed at the turn
+affairs were taking, waited a few moments longer before entering the
+office, where Burle had remained alone. He found him very calm, and
+despite his furious inclination to call him names he also remained
+calm, determined to begin by finding out the exact truth.
+
+The office certainly did not look like a swindler’s den. A cane-seated
+chair, covered with an honest leather cushion, stood before the
+captain’s desk, and in a corner there was the locked safe. Summer was
+coming on, and the song of a canary sounded through the open window.
+The apartment was very neat and tidy, redolent of old papers, and
+altogether its appearance inspired one with confidence.
+
+“Wasn’t it Melanie who was leaving here as I came along?” asked
+Laguitte.
+
+Burle shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Yes,” he mumbled. “She has been dunning me for two hundred francs, but
+she can’t screw ten out of me—not even tenpence.”
+
+“Indeed!” said the major, just to try him. “I heard that you had made
+up with her.”
+
+“I? Certainly not. I have done with the likes of her for good.”
+
+Laguitte went away, feeling greatly perplexed. Where had the five
+hundred and forty-five francs gone? Had the idiot taken to drinking or
+gambling? He decided to pay Burle a surprise visit that very evening at
+his own house, and maybe by questioning his mother he might learn
+something. However, during the afternoon his leg became very painful;
+latterly he had been feeling in ill-health, and he had to use a stick
+so as not to limp too outrageously. This stick grieved him sorely, and
+he declared with angry despair that he was now no better than a
+pensioner. However, toward the evening, making a strong effort, he
+pulled himself out of his armchair and, leaning heavily on his stick,
+dragged himself through the darkness to the Rue des Recollets, which he
+reached about nine o’clock. The street door was still unlocked, and on
+going up he stood panting on the third landing, when he heard voices on
+the upper floor. One of these voices was Burle’s, so he fancied, and
+out of curiosity he ascended another flight of stairs. Then at the end
+of a passage on the left he saw a ray of light coming from a door which
+stood ajar. As the creaking of his boots resounded, this door was
+sharply closed, and he found himself in the dark.
+
+“Some cook going to bed!” he muttered angrily. “I’m a fool.”
+
+All the same he groped his way as gently as possible to the door and
+listened. Two people were talking in the room, and he stood aghast, for
+it was Burle and that fright Rose! Then he listened, and the
+conversation he heard left him no doubt of the awful truth. For a
+moment he lifted his stick as if to beat down the door. Then he
+shuddered and, staggering back, leaned against the wall. His legs were
+trembling under him, while in the darkness of the staircase he
+brandished his stick as if it had been a saber.
+
+What was to be done? After his first moment of passion there had come
+thoughts of the poor old lady below. And these made him hesitate. It
+was all over with the captain now; when a man sank as low as that he
+was hardly worth the few shovelfuls of earth that are thrown over
+carrion to prevent them from polluting the atmosphere. Whatever might
+be said of Burle, however much one might try to shame him, he would
+assuredly begin the next day. Ah, heavens, to think of it! The money!
+The honor of the army! The name of Burle, that respected name, dragged
+through the mire! By all that was holy this could and should not be!
+
+Presently the major softened. If he had only possessed five hundred and
+forty-five francs! But he had not got such an amount. On the previous
+day he had drunk too much cognac, just like a mere sub, and had lost
+shockingly at cards. It served him right—he ought to have known better!
+And if he was so lame he richly deserved it too; by rights, in fact,
+his leg ought to be much worse.
+
+At last he crept downstairs and rang at the bell of Mme Burle’s flat.
+Five minutes elapsed, and then the old lady appeared.
+
+“I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting,” she said; “I thought that
+dormouse Rose was still about. I must go and shake her.”
+
+But the major detained her.
+
+“Where is Burle?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, he has been snoring since nine o’clock. Would you like to knock at
+his door?”
+
+“No, no, I only wanted to have a chat with you.”
+
+In the parlor Charles sat at his usual place, having just finished his
+exercises. He looked terrified, and his poor little white hands were
+tremulous. In point of fact, his grandmother, before sending him to
+bed, was wont to read some martial stories aloud so as to develop the
+latent family heroism in his bosom. That night she had selected the
+episode of the Vengeur, the man-of-war freighted with dying heroes and
+sinking into the sea. The child, while listening, had become almost
+hysterical, and his head was racked as with some ghastly nightmare.
+
+Mme Burle asked the major to let her finish the perusal. “Long live the
+republic!” She solemnly closed the volume. Charles was as white as a
+sheet.
+
+“You see,” said the old lady, “the duty of every French soldier is to
+die for his country.”
+
+“Yes, Grandmother.”
+
+Then the lad kissed her on the forehead and, shivering with fear, went
+to bed in his big room, where the faintest creak of the paneling threw
+him into a cold sweat.
+
+The major had listened with a grave face. Yes, by heavens! Honor was
+honor, and he would never permit that wretched Burle to disgrace the
+old woman and the boy! As the lad was so devoted to the military
+profession, it was necessary that he should be able to enter Saint-Cyr
+with his head erect.
+
+When Mme Burle took up the lamp to show the major out, she passed the
+door of the captain’s room, and stopped short, surprised to see the key
+outside, which was a most unusual occurrence.
+
+“Do go in,” she said to Laguitte; “it is bad for him to sleep so much.”
+
+And before he could interpose she had opened the door and stood
+transfixed on finding the room empty. Laguitte turned crimson and
+looked so foolish that she suddenly understood everything, enlightened
+by the sudden recollection of several little incidents to which she had
+previously attached no importance.
+
+“You knew it—you knew it!” she stammered. “Why was I not told? Oh, my
+God, to think of it! Ah, he has been stealing again—I feel it!”
+
+She remained erect, white and rigid. Then she added in a harsh voice:
+
+“Look you—I wish he were dead!”
+
+Laguitte caught hold of both her hands, which for a moment he kept
+tightly clasped in his own. Then he left her hurriedly, for he felt a
+lump rising in his throat and tears coming to his eyes. Ah, by all the
+powers, this time his mind was quite made up.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV
+ INSPECTION
+
+
+The regimental inspection was to take place at the end of the month.
+The major had ten days before him. On the very next morning, however,
+he crawled, limping, as far as the Café de Paris, where he ordered some
+beer. Melanie grew pale when she saw him enter, and it was with a
+lively recollection of a certain slap that Phrosine hastened to serve
+him. The major seemed very calm, however; he called for a second chair
+to rest his bad leg upon and drank his beer quietly like any other
+thirsty man. He had sat there for about an hour when he saw two
+officers crossing the Place du Palais—Morandot, who commanded one of
+the battalions of the regiment, and Captain Doucet. Thereupon he
+excitedly waved his cane and shouted: “Come in and have a glass of beer
+with me!”
+
+The officers dared not refuse, but when the maid had brought the beer
+Morandot said to the major: “So you patronize this place now?”
+
+“Yes—the beer is good.”
+
+Captain Doucet winked and asked archly: “Do you belong to the divan,
+Major?”
+
+Laguitte chuckled but did not answer. Then the others began to chaff
+him about Melanie, and he took their remarks good-naturedly, simply
+shrugging his shoulders. The widow was undoubtedly a fine woman,
+however much people might talk. Some of those who disparaged her would,
+in reality, be only too pleased to win her good graces. Then turning to
+the little counter and assuming an engaging air, he shouted:
+
+“Three more glasses, madame.”
+
+Melanie was so taken aback that she rose and brought the beer herself.
+The major detained her at the table and forgot himself so far as to
+softly pat the hand which she had carelessly placed on the back of a
+chair. Used as she was to alternate brutality and flattery, she
+immediately became confident, believing in a sudden whim of gallantry
+on the part of the “old wreck,” as she was wont to style the major when
+talking with Phrosine. Doucet and Morandot looked at each other in
+surprise. Was the major actually stepping into Petticoat Burle’s shoes?
+The regiment would be convulsed if that were the case.
+
+Suddenly, however, Laguitte, who kept his eye on the square, gave a
+start.
+
+“Hallo, there’s Burle!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Yes, it is his time,” explained Phrosine. “The captain passes every
+afternoon on his way from the office.”
+
+In spite of his lameness the major had risen to his feet, pushing aside
+the chairs as he called out: “Burle! I say—come along and have a
+glass.”
+
+The captain, quite aghast and unable to understand why Laguitte was at
+the widow’s, advanced mechanically. He was so perplexed that he again
+hesitated at the door.
+
+“Another glass of beer,” ordered the major, and then turning to Burle,
+he added, “What’s the matter with you? Come in. Are you afraid of being
+eaten alive?”
+
+The captain took a seat, and an awkward pause followed. Melanie, who
+brought the beer with trembling hands, dreaded some scene which might
+result in the closing of her establishment. The major’s gallantry made
+her uneasy, and she endeavored to slip away, but he invited her to
+drink with them, and before she could refuse he had ordered Phrosine to
+bring a liqueur glass of anisette, doing so with as much coolness as if
+he had been master of the house. Melanie was thus compelled to sit down
+between the captain and Laguitte, who exclaimed aggressively: “I WILL
+have ladies respected. We are French officers! Let us drink Madame’s
+health!”
+
+Burle, with his eyes fixed on his glass, smiled in an embarrassed way.
+The two officers, shocked at the proceedings, had already tried to get
+off. Fortunately the cafe was deserted, save that the domino players
+were having their afternoon game. At every fresh oath which came from
+the major they glanced around, scandalized by such an unusual accession
+of customers and ready to threaten Melanie that they would leave her
+for the Café de la Gare if the soldiery was going to invade her place
+like flies that buzzed about, attracted by the stickiness of the tables
+which Phrosine scoured only on Saturdays. She was now reclining behind
+the counter, already reading a novel again.
+
+“How’s this—you are not drinking with Madame?” roughly said the major
+to Burle. “Be civil at least!”
+
+Then as Doucet and Morandot were again preparing to leave, he stopped
+them.
+
+“Why can’t you wait? We’ll go together. It is only this brute who never
+knows how to behave himself.”
+
+The two officers looked surprised at the major’s sudden bad temper.
+Melanie attempted to restore peace and with a light laugh placed her
+hands on the arms of both men. However, Laguitte disengaged himself.
+
+“No,” he roared, “leave me alone. Why does he refuse to chink glasses
+with you? I shall not allow you to be insulted—do you hear? I am quite
+sick of him.”
+
+Burle, paling under the insult, turned slightly and said to Morandot,
+“What does this mean? He calls me in here to insult me. Is he drunk?”
+
+With a wild oath the major rose on his trembling legs and struck the
+captain’s cheek with his open hand. Melanie dived and thus escaped one
+half of the smack. An appalling uproar ensued. Phrosine screamed behind
+the counter as if she herself had received the blow; the domino players
+also entrenched themselves behind their table in fear lest the soldiers
+should draw their swords and massacre them. However, Doucet and
+Morandot pinioned the captain to prevent him from springing at the
+major’s throat and forcibly let him to the door. When they got him
+outside they succeeded in quieting him a little by repeating that
+Laguitte was quite in the wrong. They would lay the affair before the
+colonel, having witnessed it, and the colonel would give his decision.
+As soon as they had got Burle away they returned to the cafe where they
+found Laguitte in reality greatly disturbed, with tears in his eyes but
+affecting stolid indifference and slowly finishing his beer.
+
+“Listen, Major,” began Morandot, “that was very wrong on your part. The
+captain is your inferior in rank, and you know that he won’t be allowed
+to fight you.”
+
+“That remains to be seen,” answered the major.
+
+“But how has he offended you? He never uttered a word. Two old comrades
+too; it is absurd.”
+
+The major made a vague gesture. “No matter. He annoyed me.”
+
+He could never be made to say anything else. Nothing more as to his
+motive was ever known. All the same, the scandal was a terrible one.
+The regiment was inclined to believe that Melanie, incensed by the
+captain’s defection, had contrived to entrap the major, telling him
+some abominable stories and prevailing upon him to insult and strike
+Burle publicly. Who would have thought it of that old fogy Laguitte,
+who professed to be a woman hater? they said. So he, too, had been
+caught at last. Despite the general indignation against Melanie, this
+adventure made her very conspicuous, and her establishment soon drove a
+flourishing business.
+
+On the following day the colonel summoned the major and the captain
+into his presence. He censured them sternly, accusing them of
+disgracing their uniform by frequenting unseemly haunts. What
+resolution had they come to, he asked, as he could not authorize them
+to fight? This same question had occupied the whole regiment for the
+last twenty-four hours. Apologies were unacceptable on account of the
+blow, but as Laguitte was almost unable to stand, it was hoped that,
+should the colonel insist upon it, some reconciliation might be patched
+up.
+
+“Come,” said the colonel, “will you accept me as arbitrator?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Colonel,” interrupted the major; “I have brought
+you my resignation. Here it is. That settles everything. Please name
+the day for the duel.”
+
+Burle looked at Laguitte in amazement, and the colonel thought it his
+duty to protest.
+
+“This is a most serious step, Major,” he began. “Two years more and you
+would be entitled to your full pension.”
+
+But again did Laguitte cut him short, saying gruffly, “That is my own
+affair.”
+
+“Oh, certainly! Well, I will send in your resignation, and as soon as
+it is accepted I will fix a day for the duel.”
+
+The unexpected turn that events had taken startled the regiment. What
+possessed that lunatic major to persist in cutting the throat of his
+old comrade Burle? The officers again discussed Melanie; they even
+began to dream of her. There must surely be something wonderful about
+her since she had completely fascinated two such tough old veterans and
+brought them to a deadly feud. Morandot, having met Laguitte, did not
+disguise his concern. If he—the major—was not killed, what would he
+live upon? He had no fortune, and the pension to which his cross of the
+Legion of Honor entitled him, with the half of a full regimental
+pension which he would obtain on resigning, would barely find him in
+bread. While Morandot was thus speaking Laguitte simply stared before
+him with his round eyes, persevering in the dumb obstinacy born of his
+narrow mind; and when his companion tried to question him regarding his
+hatred for Burle, he simply made the same vague gesture as before and
+once again repeated:
+
+“He annoyed me; so much the worse.”
+
+Every morning at mess and at the canteen the first words were: “Has the
+acceptance of the major’s resignation arrived?” The duel was
+impatiently expected and ardently discussed. The majority believed that
+Laguitte would be run through the body in three seconds, for it was
+madness for a man to fight with a paralyzed leg which did not even
+allow him to stand upright. A few, however, shook their heads. Laguitte
+had never been a marvel of intellect, that was true; for the last
+twenty years, indeed, he had been held up as an example of stupidity,
+but there had been a time when he was known as the best fencer of the
+regiment, and although he had begun as a drummer he had won his
+epaulets as the commander of a battalion by the sanguine bravery of a
+man who is quite unconscious of danger. On the other hand, Burle fenced
+indifferently and passed for a poltroon. However, they would soon know
+what to think.
+
+Meanwhile the excitement became more and more intense as the acceptance
+of Laguitte’s resignation was so long in coming. The major was
+unmistakably the most anxious and upset of everybody. A week had passed
+by, and the general inspection would commence two days later. Nothing,
+however, had come as yet. He shuddered at the thought that he had,
+perhaps, struck his old friend and sent in his resignation all in vain,
+without delaying the exposure for a single minute. He had in reality
+reasoned thus: If he himself were killed he would not have the worry of
+witnessing the scandal, and if he killed Burle, as he expected to do,
+the affair would undoubtedly be hushed up. Thus he would save the honor
+of the army, and the little chap would be able to get in at Saint-Cyr.
+Ah, why wouldn’t those wretched scribblers at the War Office hurry up a
+bit? The major could not keep still but was forever wandering about
+before the post office, stopping the estafettes and questioning the
+colonel’s orderly to find out if the acceptance had arrived. He lost
+his sleep and, careless as to people’s remarks, he leaned more and more
+heavily on his stick, hobbling about with no attempt to steady his
+gait.
+
+On the day before that fixed for the inspection he was, as usual, on
+his way to the colonel’s quarters when he paused, startled, to see Mme
+Burle (who was taking Charles to school) a few paces ahead of him. He
+had not met her since the scene at the Café de Paris, for she had
+remained in seclusion at home. Unmanned at thus meeting her, he stepped
+down to leave the whole sidewalk free. Neither he nor the old lady
+bowed, and the little boy lifted his large inquisitive eyes in mute
+surprise. Mme Burle, cold and erect, brushed past the major without the
+least sign of emotion or recognition. When she had passed he looked
+after her with an expression of stupefied compassion.
+
+“Confound it, I am no longer a man,” he growled, dashing away a tear.
+
+When he arrived at the colonel’s quarters a captain in attendance
+greeted him with the words: “It’s all right at last. The papers have
+come.”
+
+“Ah!” murmured Laguitte, growing very pale.
+
+And again he beheld the old lady walking on, relentlessly rigid and
+holding the little boy’s hand. What! He had longed so eagerly for those
+papers for eight days past, and now when the scraps had come he felt
+his brain on fire and his heart lacerated.
+
+The duel took place on the morrow, in the barrack yard behind a low
+wall. The air was keen, the sun shining brightly. Laguitte had almost
+to be carried to the ground; one of his seconds supported him on one
+side, while on the other he leaned heavily, on his stick. Burle looked
+half asleep; his face was puffy with unhealthy fat, as if he had spent
+a night of debauchery. Not a word was spoken. They were all anxious to
+have it over.
+
+Captain Doucet crossed the swords of the two adversaries and then drew
+back, saying: “Set to, gentlemen.”
+
+Burle was the first to attack; he wanted to test Laguitte’s strength
+and ascertain what he had to expect. For the last ten days the
+encounter had seemed to him a ghastly nightmare which he could not
+fathom. At times a hideous suspicion assailed him, but he put it aside
+with terror, for it meant death, and he refused to believe that a
+friend could play him such a trick, even to set things right. Besides,
+Laguitte’s leg reasssured him; he would prick the major on the
+shoulder, and then all would be over.
+
+During well-nigh a couple of minutes the swords clashed, and then the
+captain lunged, but the major, recovering his old suppleness of wrist,
+parried in a masterly style, and if he had returned the attack Burle
+would have been pierced through. The captain now fell back; he was
+livid, for he felt that he was at the mercy of the man who had just
+spared him. At last he understood that this was an execution.
+
+Laguitte, squarely poised on his infirm legs and seemingly turned to
+stone, stood waiting. The two men looked at each other fixedly. In
+Burle’s blurred eyes there arose a supplication—a prayer for pardon. He
+knew why he was going to die, and like a child he promised not to
+transgress again. But the major’s eyes remained implacable; honor had
+spoken, and he silenced his emotion and his pity.
+
+“Let it end,” he muttered between his teeth.
+
+Then it was he who attacked. Like a flash of lightning his sword
+flamed, flying from right to left, and then with a resistless thrust it
+pierced the breast of the captain, who fell like a log without even a
+groan.
+
+Laguitte had released his hold upon his sword and stood gazing at that
+poor old rascal Burle, who was stretched upon his back with his fat
+stomach bulging out.
+
+“Oh, my God! My God!” repeated the major furiously and despairingly,
+and then he began to swear.
+
+They led him away, and, both his legs failing him, he had to be
+supported on either side, for he could not even use his stick.
+
+Two months later the ex-major was crawling slowly along in the sunlight
+down a lonely street of Vauchamp, when he again found himself face to
+face with Mme Burle and little Charles. They were both in deep
+mourning. He tried to avoid them, but he now only walked with
+difficulty, and they advanced straight upon him without hurrying or
+slackening their steps. Charles still had the same gentle, girlish,
+frightened face, and Mme Burle retained her stern, rigid demeanor,
+looking even harsher than ever.
+
+As Laguitte shrank into the corner of a doorway to leave the whole
+street to them, she abruptly stopped in front of him and stretched out
+her hand. He hesitated and then took it and pressed it, but he trembled
+so violently that he made the old lady’s arm shake. They exchanged
+glances in silence.
+
+“Charles,” said the boy’s grandmother at last, “shake hands with the
+major.” The boy obeyed without understanding. The major, who was very
+pale, barely ventured to touch the child’s frail fingers; then, feeling
+that he ought to speak, he stammered out: “You still intend to send him
+to Saint-Cyr?”
+
+“Of course, when he is old enough,” answered Mme Burle.
+
+But during the following week Charles was carried off by typhoid fever.
+One evening his grandmother had again read him the story of the Vengeur
+to make him bold, and in the night he had become delirious. The poor
+little fellow died of fright.
+
+
+
+
+ THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BECAILLE
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I
+ MY PASSING
+
+
+It was on a Saturday, at six in the morning, that I died after a three
+days’ illness. My wife was searching a trunk for some linen, and when
+she rose and turned she saw me rigid, with open eyes and silent pulses.
+She ran to me, fancying that I had fainted, touched my hands and bent
+over me. Then she suddenly grew alarmed, burst into tears and
+stammered:
+
+“My God, my God! He is dead!”
+
+I heard everything, but the sounds seemed to come from a great
+distance. My left eye still detected a faint glimmer, a whitish light
+in which all objects melted, but my right eye was quite bereft of
+sight. It was the coma of my whole being, as if a thunderbolt had
+struck me. My will was annihilated; not a fiber of flesh obeyed my
+bidding. And yet amid the impotency of my inert limbs my thoughts
+subsisted, sluggish and lazy, still perfectly clear.
+
+My poor Marguerite was crying; she had dropped on her knees beside the
+bed, repeating in heart-rending tones:
+
+“He is dead! My God, he is dead!”
+
+Was this strange state of torpor, this immobility of the flesh, really
+death, although the functions of the intellect were not arrested? Was
+my soul only lingering for a brief space before it soared away forever?
+From my childhood upward I had been subject to hysterical attacks, and
+twice in early youth I had nearly succumbed to nervous fevers. By
+degrees all those who surrounded me had got accustomed to consider me
+an invalid and to see me sickly. So much so that I myself had forbidden
+my wife to call in a doctor when I had taken to my bed on the day of
+our arrival at the cheap lodginghouse of the Rue Dauphine in Paris. A
+little rest would soon set me right again; it was only the fatigue of
+the journey which had caused my intolerable weariness. And yet I was
+conscious of having felt singularly uneasy. We had left our province
+somewhat abruptly; we were very poor and had barely enough money to
+support ourselves till I drew my first month’s salary in the office
+where I had obtained a situation. And now a sudden seizure was carrying
+me off!
+
+Was it really death? I had pictured to myself a darker night, a deeper
+silence. As a little child I had already felt afraid to die. Being weak
+and compassionately petted by everyone, I had concluded that I had not
+long to live, that I should soon be buried, and the thought of the cold
+earth filled me with a dread I could not master—a dread which haunted
+me day and night. As I grew older the same terror pursued me.
+Sometimes, after long hours spent in reasoning with myself, I thought
+that I had conquered my fear. I reflected, “After all, what does it
+matter? One dies and all is over. It is the common fate; nothing could
+be better or easier.”
+
+I then prided myself on being able to look death boldly in the face,
+but suddenly a shiver froze my blood, and my dizzy anguish returned, as
+if a giant hand had swung me over a dark abyss. It was some vision of
+the earth returning and setting reason at naught. How often at night
+did I start up in bed, not knowing what cold breath had swept over my
+slumbers but clasping my despairing hands and moaning, “Must I die?” In
+those moments an icy horror would stop my pulses while an appalling
+vision of dissolution rose before me. It was with difficulty that I
+could get to sleep again. Indeed, sleep alarmed me; it so closely
+resembled death. If I closed my eyes they might never open again—I
+might slumber on forever.
+
+I cannot tell if others have endured the same torture; I only know that
+my own life was made a torment by it. Death ever rose between me and
+all I loved; I can remember how the thought of it poisoned the happiest
+moments I spent with Marguerite. During the first months of our married
+life, when she lay sleeping by my side and I dreamed of a fair future
+for her and with her, the foreboding of some fatal separation dashed my
+hopes aside and embittered my delights. Perhaps we should be parted on
+the morrow—nay, perhaps in an hour’s time. Then utter discouragement
+assailed me; I wondered what the bliss of being united availed me if it
+were to end in so cruel a disruption.
+
+My morbid imagination reveled in scenes of mourning. I speculated as to
+who would be the first to depart, Marguerite or I. Either alternative
+caused me harrowing grief, and tears rose to my eyes at the thought of
+our shattered lives. At the happiest periods of my existence I often
+became a prey to grim dejection such as nobody could understand but
+which was caused by the thought of impending nihility. When I was most
+successful I was to general wonder most depressed. The fatal question,
+“What avails it?” rang like a knell in my ears. But the sharpest sting
+of this torment was that it came with a secret sense of shame, which
+rendered me unable to confide my thoughts to another. Husband and wife
+lying side by side in the darkened room may quiver with the same
+shudder and yet remain mute, for people do not mention death any more
+than they pronounce certain obscene words. Fear makes it nameless.
+
+I was musing thus while my dear Marguerite knelt sobbing at my feet. It
+grieved me sorely to be unable to comfort her by telling her that I
+suffered no pain. If death were merely the annihilation of the flesh it
+had been foolish of me to harbor so much dread. I experienced a selfish
+kind of restfulness in which all my cares were forgotten. My memory had
+become extraordinarily vivid. My whole life passed before me rapidly
+like a play in which I no longer acted a part; it was a curious and
+enjoyable sensation—I seemed to hear a far-off voice relating my own
+history.
+
+I saw in particular a certain spot in the country near Guerande, on the
+way to Piriac. The road turns sharply, and some scattered pine trees
+carelessly dot a rocky slope. When I was seven years old I used to pass
+through those pines with my father as far as a crumbling old house,
+where Marguerite’s parents gave me pancakes. They were salt gatherers
+and earned a scanty livelihood by working the adjacent salt marshes.
+Then I remembered the school at Nantes, where I had grown up, leading a
+monotonous life within its ancient walls and yearning for the broad
+horizon of Guerande and the salt marshes stretching to the limitless
+sea widening under the sky.
+
+Next came a blank—my father was dead. I entered the hospital as clerk
+to the managing board and led a dreary life with one solitary
+diversion: my Sunday visits to the old house on Piriac road. The
+saltworks were doing badly; poverty reigned in the land, and
+Marguerite’s parents were nearly penniless. Marguerite, when merely a
+child, had been fond of me because I trundled her about in a
+wheelbarrow, but on the morning when I asked her in marriage she shrank
+from me with a frightened gesture, and I realized that she thought me
+hideous. Her parents, however, consented at once; they looked upon my
+offer as a godsend, and the daughter submissively acquiesced. When she
+became accustomed to the idea of marrying me she did not seem to
+dislike it so much. On our wedding day at Guerande the rain fell in
+torrents, and when we got home my bride had to take off her dress,
+which was soaked through, and sit in her petticoats.
+
+That was all the youth I ever had. We did not remain long in our
+province. One day I found my wife in tears. She was miserable; life was
+so dull; she wanted to get away. Six months later I had saved a little
+money by taking in extra work after office hours, and through the
+influence of a friend of my father’s I obtained a petty appointment in
+Paris. I started off to settle there with the dear little woman so that
+she might cry no more. During the night, which we spent in the
+third-class railway carriage, the seats being very hard, I took her in
+my arms in order that she might sleep.
+
+That was the past, and now I had just died on the narrow couch of a
+Paris lodginghouse, and my wife was crouching on the floor, crying
+bitterly. The white light before my left eye was growing dim, but I
+remembered the room perfectly. On the left there was a chest of
+drawers, on the right a mantelpiece surmounted by a damaged clock
+without a pendulum, the hands of which marked ten minutes past ten. The
+window overlooked the Rue Dauphine, a long, dark street. All Paris
+seemed to pass below, and the noise was so great that the window shook.
+
+We knew nobody in the city; we had hurried our departure, but I was not
+expected at the office till the following Monday. Since I had taken to
+my bed I had wondered at my imprisonment in this narrow room into which
+we had tumbled after a railway journey of fifteen hours, followed by a
+hurried, confusing transit through the noisy streets. My wife had
+nursed me with smiling tenderness, but I knew that she was anxious. She
+would walk to the window, glance out and return to the bedside, looking
+very pale and startled by the sight of the busy thoroughfare, the
+aspect of the vast city of which she did not know a single stone and
+which deafened her with its continuous roar. What would happen to her
+if I never woke up again—alone, friendless and unknowing as she was?
+
+Marguerite had caught hold of one of my hands which lay passive on the
+coverlet, and, covering it with kisses, she repeated wildly: “Olivier,
+answer me. Oh, my God, he is dead, dead!”
+
+So death was not complete annihilation. I could hear and think. I had
+been uselessly alarmed all those years. I had not dropped into utter
+vacancy as I had anticipated. I could not picture the disappearance of
+my being, the suppression of all that I had been, without the
+possibility of renewed existence. I had been wont to shudder whenever
+in any book or newspaper I came across a date of a hundred years hence.
+A date at which I should no longer be alive, a future which I should
+never see, filled me with unspeakable uneasiness. Was I not the whole
+world, and would not the universe crumble away when I was no more?
+
+To dream of life had been a cherished vision, but this could not
+possibly be death. I should assuredly awake presently. Yes, in a few
+moments I would lean over, take Marguerite in my arms and dry her
+tears. I would rest a little while longer before going to my office,
+and then a new life would begin, brighter than the last. However, I did
+not feel impatient; the commotion had been too strong. It was wrong of
+Marguerite to give way like that when I had not even the strength to
+turn my head on the pillow and smile at her. The next time that she
+moaned out, “He is dead! Dead!” I would embrace her and murmur softly
+so as not to startle her: “No, my darling, I was only asleep. You see,
+I am alive, and I love you.”
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II
+ FUNERAL PREPARATIONS
+
+
+Marguerite’s cries had attracted attention, for all at once the door
+was opened and a voice exclaimed: “What is the matter, neighbor? Is he
+worse?”
+
+I recognized the voice; it was that of an elderly woman, Mme Gabin, who
+occupied a room on the same floor. She had been most obliging since our
+arrival and had evidently become interested in our concerns. On her own
+side she had lost no time in telling us her history. A stern landlord
+had sold her furniture during the previous winter to pay himself his
+rent, and since then she had resided at the lodginghouse in the Rue
+Dauphine with her daughter Dede, a child of ten. They both cut and
+pinked lamp shades, and between them they earned at the utmost only two
+francs a day.
+
+“Heavens! Is it all over?” cried Mme Gabin, looking at me.
+
+I realized that she was drawing nearer. She examined me, touched me
+and, turning to Marguerite, murmured compassionately: “Poor girl! Poor
+girl!”
+
+My wife, wearied out, was sobbing like a child. Mme Gabin lifted her,
+placed her in a dilapidated armchair near the fireplace and proceeded
+to comfort her.
+
+“Indeed, you’ll do yourself harm if you go on like this, my dear. It’s
+no reason because your husband is gone that you should kill yourself
+with weeping. Sure enough, when I lost Gabin I was just like you. I
+remained three days without swallowing a morsel of food. But that
+didn’t help me—on the contrary, it pulled me down. Come, for the Lord’s
+sake, be sensible!”
+
+By degrees Marguerite grew calmer; she was exhausted, and it was only
+at intervals that she gave way to a fresh flow of tears. Meanwhile the
+old woman had taken possession of the room with a sort of rough
+authority.
+
+“Don’t worry yourself,” she said as she bustled about. “Neighbors must
+help each other. Luckily Dede has just gone to take the work home. Ah,
+I see your trunks are not yet all unpacked, but I suppose there is some
+linen in the chest of drawers, isn’t there?”
+
+I heard her pull a drawer open; she must have taken out a napkin which
+she spread on the little table at the bedside. She then struck a match,
+which made me think that she was lighting one of the candles on the
+mantelpiece and placing it near me as a religious rite. I could follow
+her movements in the room and divine all her actions.
+
+“Poor gentleman,” she muttered. “Luckily I heard you sobbing, poor
+dear!” Suddenly the vague light which my left eye had detected
+vanished. Mme Gabin had just closed my eyelids, but I had not felt her
+finger on my face. When I understood this I felt chilled.
+
+The door had opened again, and Dede, the child of ten, now rushed in,
+calling out in her shrill voice: “Mother, Mother! Ah, I knew you would
+be here! Look here, there’s the money—three francs and four sous. I
+took back three dozen lamp shades.”
+
+“Hush, hush! Hold your tongue,” vainly repeated the mother, who, as the
+little girl chattered on, must have pointed to the bed, for I guessed
+that the child felt perplexed and was backing toward the door.
+
+“Is the gentleman asleep?” she whispered.
+
+“Yes, yes—go and play,” said Mme Gabin.
+
+But the child did not go. She was, no doubt, staring at me with widely
+opened eyes, startled and vaguely comprehending. Suddenly she seemed
+convulsed with terror and ran out, upsetting a chair.
+
+“He is dead, Mother; he is dead!” she gasped.
+
+Profound silence followed. Marguerite, lying back in the armchair, had
+left off crying. Mme Gabin was still rummaging about the room and
+talking under her breath.
+
+“Children know everything nowadays. Look at that girl. Heaven knows how
+carefully she’s brought up! When I send her on an errand or take the
+shades back I calculate the time to a minute so that she can’t loiter
+about, but for all that she learns everything. She saw at a glance what
+had happened here—and yet I never showed her but one corpse, that of
+her uncle Francois, and she was then only four years old. Ah well,
+there are no children left—it can’t be helped.”
+
+She paused and without any transition passed to another subject.
+
+“I say, dearie, we must think of the formalities—there’s the
+declaration at the municipal offices to be made and the seeing about
+the funeral. You are not in a fit state to attend to business. What do
+you say if I look in at Monsieur Simoneau’s to find out if he’s at
+home?”
+
+Marguerite did not reply. It seemed to me that I watched her from afar
+and at times changed into a subtle flame hovering above the room, while
+a stranger lay heavy and unconscious on my bed. I wished that
+Marguerite had declined the assistance of Simoneau. I had seen him
+three or four times during my brief illness, for he occupied a room
+close to ours and had been civil and neighborly. Mme Gabin had told us
+that he was merely making a short stay in Paris, having come to collect
+some old debts due to his father, who had settled in the country and
+recently died. He was a tall, strong, handsome young man, and I hated
+him, perhaps on account of his healthy appearance. On the previous
+evening he had come in to make inquiries, and I had much disliked
+seeing him at Marguerite’s side; she had looked so fair and pretty, and
+he had gazed so intently into her face when she smilingly thanked him
+for his kindness.
+
+“Ah, here is Monsieur Simoneau,” said Mme Gabin, introducing him.
+
+He gently pushed the door ajar, and as soon as Marguerite saw him enter
+she burst into a flood of tears. The presence of a friend, of the only
+person she knew in Paris besides the old woman, recalled her
+bereavement. I could not see the young man, but in the darkness that
+encompassed me I conjured up his appearance. I pictured him distinctly,
+grave and sad at finding poor Marguerite in such distress. How lovely
+she must have looked with her golden hair unbound, her pale face and
+her dear little baby hands burning with fever!
+
+“I am at your disposal, madame,” he said softly. “Pray allow me to
+manage everything.”
+
+She only answered him with broken words, but as the young man was
+leaving, accompanied by Mme Gabin, I heard the latter mention money.
+These things were always expensive, she said, and she feared that the
+poor little body hadn’t a farthing—anyhow, he might ask her. But
+Simoneau silenced the old woman; he did not want to have the widow
+worried; he was going to the municipal office and to the undertaker’s.
+
+When silence reigned once more I wondered if my nightmare would last
+much longer. I was certainly alive, for I was conscious of passing
+incidents, and I began to realize my condition. I must have fallen into
+one of those cataleptic states that I had read of. As a child I had
+suffered from syncopes which had lasted several hours, but surely my
+heart would beat anew, my blood circulate and my muscles relax. Yes, I
+should wake up and comfort Marguerite, and, reasoning thus, I tried to
+be patient.
+
+Time passed. Mme Gabin had brought in some breakfast, but Marguerite
+refused to taste any food. Later on the afternoon waned. Through the
+open window I heard the rising clamor of the Rue Dauphine. By and by a
+slight ringing of the brass candlestick on the marble-topped table made
+me think that a fresh candle had been lighted. At last Simoneau
+returned.
+
+“Well?” whispered the old woman.
+
+“It is all settled,” he answered; “the funeral is ordered for tomorrow
+at eleven. There is nothing for you to do, and you needn’t talk of
+these things before the poor lady.”
+
+Nevertheless, Mme Gabin remarked: “The doctor of the dead hasn’t come
+yet.”
+
+Simoneau took a seat beside Marguerite and after a few words of
+encouragement remained silent. The funeral was to take place at eleven!
+Those words rang in my brain like a passing bell. And the doctor
+coming—the doctor of the dead, as Mme Gabin had called him. HE could
+not possibly fail to find out that I was only in a state of lethargy;
+he would do whatever might be necessary to rouse me, so I longed for
+his arrival with feverish anxiety.
+
+The day was drawing to a close. Mme Gabin, anxious to waste no time,
+had brought in her lamp shades and summoned Dede without asking
+Marguerite’s permission. “To tell the truth,” she observed, “I do not
+like to leave children too long alone.”
+
+“Come in, I say,” she whispered to the little girl; “come in, and don’t
+be frightened. Only don’t look toward the bed or you’ll catch it.”
+
+She thought it decorous to forbid Dede to look at me, but I was
+convinced that the child was furtively glancing at the corner where I
+lay, for every now and then I heard her mother rap her knuckles and
+repeat angrily: “Get on with your work or you shall leave the room, and
+the gentleman will come during the night and pull you by the feet.”
+
+The mother and daughter had sat down at our table. I could plainly hear
+the click of their scissors as they clipped the lamp shades, which no
+doubt required very delicate manipulation, for they did not work
+rapidly. I counted the shades one by one as they were laid aside, while
+my anxiety grew more and more intense.
+
+The clicking of the scissors was the only noise in the room, so I
+concluded that Marguerite had been overcome by fatigue and was dozing.
+Twice Simoneau rose, and the torturing thought flashed through me that
+he might be taking advantage of her slumbers to touch her hair with his
+lips. I hardly knew the man and yet felt sure that he loved my wife. At
+last little Dede began to giggle, and her laugh exasperated me.
+
+“Why are you sniggering, you idiot?” asked her mother. “Do you want to
+be turned out on the landing? Come, out with it; what makes you laugh
+so?”
+
+The child stammered: she had not laughed; she had only coughed, but I
+felt certain she had seen Simoneau bending over Marguerite and had felt
+amused.
+
+The lamp had been lit when a knock was heard at the door.
+
+“It must be the doctor at last,” said the old woman.
+
+It was the doctor; he did not apologize for coming so late, for he had
+no doubt ascended many flights of stairs during the day. The room being
+but imperfectly lighted by the lamp, he inquired: “Is the body here?”
+
+“Yes, it is,” answered Simoneau.
+
+Marguerite had risen, trembling violently. Mme Gabin dismissed Dede,
+saying it was useless that a child should be present, and then she
+tried to lead my wife to the window, to spare her the sight of what was
+about to take place.
+
+The doctor quickly approached the bed. I guessed that he was bored,
+tired and impatient. Had he touched my wrist? Had he placed his hand on
+my heart? I could not tell, but I fancied that he had only carelessly
+bent over me.
+
+“Shall I bring the lamp so that you may see better?” asked Simoneau
+obligingly.
+
+“No it is not necessary,” quietly answered the doctor.
+
+Not necessary! That man held my life in his hands, and he did not think
+it worth while to proceed to a careful examination! I was not dead! I
+wanted to cry out that I was not dead!
+
+“At what o’clock did he die?” asked the doctor.
+
+“At six this morning,” volunteered Simoneau.
+
+A feeling of frenzy and rebellion rose within me, bound as I was in
+seemingly iron chains. Oh, for the power of uttering one word, of
+moving a single limb!
+
+“This close weather is unhealthy,” resumed the doctor; “nothing is more
+trying than these early spring days.”
+
+And then he moved away. It was like my life departing. Screams, sobs
+and insults were choking me, struggling in my convulsed throat, in
+which even my breath was arrested. The wretch! Turned into a mere
+machine by professional habits, he only came to a deathbed to
+accomplish a perfunctory formality; he knew nothing; his science was a
+lie, since he could not at a glance distinguish life from death—and now
+he was going—going!
+
+“Good night, sir,” said Simoneau.
+
+There came a moment’s silence; the doctor was probably bowing to
+Marguerite, who had turned while Mme Gabin was fastening the window. He
+left the room, and I heard his footsteps descending the stairs.
+
+It was all over; I was condemned. My last hope had vanished with that
+man. If I did not wake before eleven on the morrow I should be buried
+alive. The horror of that thought was so great that I lost all
+consciousness of my surroundings—’twas something like a fainting fit in
+death. The last sound I heard was the clicking of the scissors handled
+by Mme Gabin and Dede. The funeral vigil had begun; nobody spoke.
+
+Marguerite had refused to retire to rest in the neighbor’s room. She
+remained reclining in her armchair, with her beautiful face pale, her
+eyes closed and her long lashes wet with tears, while before her in the
+gloom Simoneau sat silently watching her.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III
+ THE PROCESSION
+
+
+I cannot describe my agony during the morning of the following day. I
+remember it as a hideous dream in which my impressions were so ghastly
+and so confused that I could not formulate them. The persistent
+yearning for a sudden awakening increased my torture, and as the hour
+for the funeral drew nearer my anguish became more poignant still.
+
+It was only at daybreak that I had recovered a fuller consciousness of
+what was going on around me. The creaking of hinges startled me out of
+my stupor. Mme Gabin had just opened the window. It must have been
+about seven o’clock, for I heard the cries of hawkers in the street,
+the shrill voice of a girl offering groundsel and the hoarse voice of a
+man shouting “Carrots!” The clamorous awakening of Paris pacified me at
+first. I could not believe that I should be laid under the sod in the
+midst of so much life; and, besides, a sudden thought helped to calm
+me. It had just occurred to me that I had witnessed a case similar to
+my own when I was employed at the hospital of Guerande. A man had been
+sleeping twenty-eight hours, the doctors hesitating in presence of his
+apparent lifelessness, when suddenly he had sat up in bed and was
+almost at once able to rise. I myself had already been asleep for some
+twenty-five hours; if I awoke at ten I should still be in time.
+
+I endeavored to ascertain who was in the room and what was going on
+there. Dede must have been playing on the landing, for once when the
+door opened I heard her shrill childish laughter outside. Simoneau must
+have retired, for nothing indicated his presence. Mme Gabin’s slipshod
+tread was still audible over the floor. At last she spoke.
+
+“Come, my dear,” she said. “It is wrong of you not to take it while it
+is hot. It would cheer you up.”
+
+She was addressing Marguerite, and a slow trickling sound as of
+something filtering indicated that she had been making some coffee.
+
+“I don’t mind owning,” she continued, “that I needed it. At my age
+sitting up IS trying. The night seems so dreary when there is a
+misfortune in the house. DO have a cup of coffee, my dear—just a drop.”
+
+She persuaded Marguerite to taste it.
+
+“Isn’t it nice and hot?” she continued, “and doesn’t it set one up? Ah,
+you’ll be wanting all your strength presently for what you’ve got to go
+through today. Now if you were sensible you’d step into my room and
+just wait there.”
+
+“No, I want to stay here,” said Marguerite resolutely.
+
+Her voice, which I had not heard since the previous evening, touched me
+strangely. It was changed, broken as by tears. To feel my dear wife
+near me was a last consolation. I knew that her eyes were fastened on
+me and that she was weeping with all the anguish of her heart.
+
+The minutes flew by. An inexplicable noise sounded from beyond the
+door. It seemed as if some people were bringing a bulky piece of
+furniture upstairs and knocking against the walls as they did so.
+Suddenly I understood, as I heard Marguerite begin to sob; it was the
+coffin.
+
+“You are too early,” said Mme Gabin crossly. “Put it behind the bed.”
+
+What o’clock was it? Nine, perhaps. So the coffin had come. Amid the
+opaque night around me I could see it plainly, quite new, with roughly
+planed boards. Heavens! Was this the end then? Was I to be borne off in
+that box which I realized was lying at my feet?
+
+However, I had one supreme joy. Marguerite, in spite of her weakness,
+insisted upon discharging all the last offices. Assisted by the old
+woman, she dressed me with all the tenderness of a wife and a sister.
+Once more I felt myself in her arms as she clothed me in various
+garments. She paused at times, overcome by grief; she clasped me
+convulsively, and her tears rained on my face. Oh, how I longed to
+return her embrace and cry, “I live!” And yet I was lying there
+powerless, motionless, inert!
+
+“You are foolish,” suddenly said Mme Gabin; “it is all wasted.”
+
+“Never mind,” answered Marguerite, sobbing. “I want him to wear his
+very best things.”
+
+I understood that she was dressing me in the clothes I had worn on my
+wedding day. I had kept them carefully for great occasions. When she
+had finished she fell back exhausted in the armchair.
+
+Simoneau now spoke; he had probably just entered the room.
+
+“They are below,” he whispered.
+
+“Well, it ain’t any too soon,” answered Mme Gabin, also lowering her
+voice. “Tell them to come up and get it over.”
+
+“But I dread the despair of the poor little wife.”
+
+The old woman seemed to reflect and presently resumed: “Listen to me,
+Monsieur Simoneau. You must take her off to my room. I wouldn’t have
+her stop here. It is for her own good. When she is out of the way we’ll
+get it done in a jiffy.”
+
+These words pierced my heart, and my anguish was intense when I
+realized that a struggle was actually taking place. Simoneau had walked
+up to Marguerite, imploring her to leave the room.
+
+“Do, for pity’s sake, come with me!” he pleaded. “Spare yourself
+useless pain.”
+
+“No, no!” she cried. “I will remain till the last minute. Remember that
+I have only him in the world, and when he is gone I shall be all
+alone!”
+
+From the bedside Mme Gabin was prompting the young man.
+
+“Don’t parley—take hold of her, carry her off in your arms.”
+
+Was Simoneau about to lay his hands on Marguerite and bear her away?
+She screamed. I wildly endeavored to rise, but the springs of my limbs
+were broken. I remained rigid, unable to lift my eyelids to see what
+was going on. The struggle continued, and my wife clung to the
+furniture, repeating, “Oh, don’t, don’t! Have mercy! Let me go! I will
+not—”
+
+He must have lifted her in his stalwart arms, for I heard her moaning
+like a child. He bore her away; her sobs were lost in the distance, and
+I fancied I saw them both—he, tall and strong, pressing her to his
+breast; she, fainting, powerless and conquered, following him wherever
+he listed.
+
+“Drat it all! What a to-do!” muttered Mme Gabin. “Now for the tug of
+war, as the coast is clear at last.”
+
+In my jealous madness I looked upon this incident as a monstrous
+outrage. I had not been able to see Marguerite for twenty-four hours,
+but at least I had still heard her voice. Now even this was denied me;
+she had been torn away; a man had eloped with her even before I was
+laid under the sod. He was alone with her on the other side of the
+wall, comforting her—embracing her, perhaps!
+
+But the door opened once more, and heavy footsteps shook the floor.
+
+“Quick, make haste,” repeated Mme Gabin. “Get it done before the lady
+comes back.”
+
+She was speaking to some strangers, who merely answered her with
+uncouth grunts.
+
+“You understand,” she went on, “I am not a relation; I’m only a
+neighbor. I have no interest in the matter. It is out of pure good
+nature that I have mixed myself up in their affairs. And I ain’t
+overcheerful, I can tell you. Yes, yes, I sat up the whole blessed
+night—it was pretty cold, too, about four o’clock. That’s a fact. Well,
+I have always been a fool—I’m too soft-hearted.”
+
+The coffin had been dragged into the center of the room. As I had not
+awakened I was condemned. All clearness departed from my ideas;
+everything seemed to revolve in a black haze, and I experienced such
+utter lassitude that it seemed almost a relief to leave off hoping.
+
+“They haven’t spared the material,” said one of the undertaker’s men in
+a gruff voice. “The box is too long.”
+
+“He’ll have all the more room,” said the other, laughing.
+
+I was not heavy, and they chuckled over it since they had three flights
+of stairs to descend. As they were seizing me by the shoulders and feet
+I heard Mme Gabin fly into a violent passion.
+
+“You cursed little brat,” she screamed, “what do you mean by poking
+your nose where you’re not wanted? Look here, I’ll teach you to spy and
+pry.”
+
+Dede had slipped her tousled head through the doorway to see how the
+gentleman was being put into the box. Two ringing slaps resounded,
+however, by an explosion of sobs. And as soon as the mother returned
+she began to gossip about her daughter for the benefit of the two men
+who were settling me in the coffin.
+
+“She is only ten, you know. She is not a bad girl, but she is
+frightfully inquisitive. I do not beat her often; only I WILL be
+obeyed.”
+
+“Oh,” said one of the men, “all kids are alike. Whenever there is a
+corpse lying about they always want to see it.”
+
+I was commodiously stretched out, and I might have thought myself still
+in bed, had it not been that my left arm felt a trifle cramped from
+being squeezed against a board. The men had been right. I was pretty
+comfortable inside on account of my diminutive stature.
+
+“Stop!” suddenly exclaimed Mme Gabin. “I promised his wife to put a
+pillow under his head.”
+
+The men, who were in a hurry, stuffed in the pillow roughly. One of
+them, who had mislaid his hammer, began to swear. He had left the tool
+below and went to fetch it, dropping the lid, and when two sharp blows
+of the hammer drove in the first nail, a shock ran through my being—I
+had ceased to live. The nails then entered in rapid succession with a
+rhythmical cadence. It was as if some packers had been closing a case
+of dried fruit with easy dexterity. After that such sounds as reached
+me were deadened and strangely prolonged, as if the deal coffin had
+been changed into a huge musical box. The last words spoken in the room
+of the Rue Dauphine—at least the last ones that I heard distinctly—were
+uttered by Mme Gabin.
+
+“Mind the staircase,” she said; “the banister of the second flight
+isn’t safe, so be careful.”
+
+While I was being carried down I experienced a sensation similar to
+that of pitching as when one is on board a ship in a rough sea.
+However, from that moment my impressions became more and more vague. I
+remember that the only distinct thought that still possessed me was an
+imbecile, impulsive curiosity as to the road by which I should be taken
+to the cemetery. I was not acquainted with a single street of Paris,
+and I was ignorant of the position of the large burial grounds (though
+of course I had occasionally heard their names), and yet every effort
+of my mind was directed toward ascertaining whether we were turning to
+the right or to the left. Meanwhile the jolting of the hearse over the
+paving stones, the rumbling of passing vehicles, the steps of the foot
+passengers, all created a confused clamor, intensified by the
+acoustical properties of the coffin.
+
+At first I followed our course pretty closely; then came a halt. I was
+again lifted and carried about, and I concluded that we were in church,
+but when the funeral procession once more moved onward I lost all
+consciousness of the road we took. A ringing of bells informed me that
+we were passing another church, and then the softer and easier progress
+of the wheels indicated that we were skirting a garden or park. I was
+like a victim being taken to the gallows, awaiting in stupor a
+deathblow that never came.
+
+At last they stopped and pulled me out of the hearse. The business
+proceeded rapidly. The noises had ceased; I knew that I was in a
+deserted space amid avenues of trees and with the broad sky over my
+head. No doubt a few persons followed the bier, some of the inhabitants
+of the lodginghouse, perhaps—Simoneau and others, for instance—for
+faint whisperings reached my ear. Then I heard a psalm chanted and some
+Latin words mumbled by a priest, and afterward I suddenly felt myself
+sinking, while the ropes rubbing against the edges of the coffin
+elicited lugubrious sounds, as if a bow were being drawn across the
+strings of a cracked violoncello. It was the end. On the left side of
+my head I felt a violent shock like that produced by the bursting of a
+bomb, with another under my feet and a third more violent still on my
+chest. So forcible, indeed, was this last one that I thought the lid
+was cleft atwain. I fainted from it.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV
+ THE NAIL
+
+
+It is impossible for me to say how long my swoon lasted. Eternity is
+not of longer duration than one second spent in nihility. I was no
+more. It was slowly and confusedly that I regained some degree of
+consciousness. I was still asleep, but I began to dream; a nightmare
+started into shape amid the blackness of my horizon, a nightmare
+compounded of a strange fancy which in other days had haunted my morbid
+imagination whenever with my propensity for dwelling upon hideous
+thoughts I had conjured up catastrophes.
+
+Thus I dreamed that my wife was expecting me somewhere—at Guerande, I
+believe—and that I was going to join her by rail. As we passed through
+a tunnel a deafening roll thundered over our head, and a sudden
+subsidence blocked up both issues of the tunnel, leaving our train
+intact in the center. We were walled up by blocks of rock in the heart
+of a mountain. Then a long and fearful agony commenced. No assistance
+could possibly reach us; even with powerful engines and incessant labor
+it would take a month to clear the tunnel. We were prisoners there with
+no outlet, and so our death was only a question of time.
+
+My fancy had often dwelt on that hideous drama and had constantly
+varied the details and touches. My actors were men, women and children;
+their number increased to hundreds, and they were ever furnishing me
+with new incidents. There were some provisions in the train, but these
+were soon exhausted, and the hungry passengers, if they did not
+actually devour human flesh, at least fought furiously over the last
+piece of bread. Sometimes an aged man was driven back with blows and
+slowly perished; a mother struggled like a she-wolf to keep three or
+four mouthfuls for her child. In my own compartment a bride and
+bridegroom were dying, clasped in each other’s arms in mute despair.
+
+The line was free along the whole length of the train, and people came
+and went, prowling round the carriages like beasts of prey in search of
+carrion. All classes were mingled together. A millionaire, a high
+functionary, it was said, wept on a workman’s shoulder. The lamps had
+been extinguished from the first, and the engine fire was nearly out.
+To pass from one carriage to another it was necessary to grope about,
+and thus, too, one slowly reached the engine, recognizable by its
+enormous barrel, its cold, motionless flanks, its useless strength, its
+grim silence, in the overwhelming night. Nothing could be more
+appalling than this train entombed alive with its passengers perishing
+one by one.
+
+I gloated over the ghastliness of each detail; howls resounded through
+the vault; somebody whom one could not see, whose vicinity was not even
+suspected, would suddenly drop upon another’s shoulder. But what
+affected me most of all was the cold and the want of air. I have never
+felt so chilled; a mantle of snow seemed to enwrap me; heavy moisture
+rained upon my skull; I was gasping; the rocky vault seemed to crush my
+chest; the whole mountain was seemingly weighing upon me.
+
+Suddenly a cry of deliverance sounded. For some time past we fancied
+that we could hear a dull sound, and we tried to hope that men were at
+work and that help was coming, but it came not thus. One of the
+passengers, however, had discovered an air shaft in the tunnel, and,
+crowding round, we all saw this shaft, above which we could discern a
+blue patch about the size of a wafer. That blue patch filled us with
+rapture, for it was the sky. We stretched ourselves and stood on
+tiptoes to breathe more freely. Then we distinguished some black specks
+moving about, specks that must surely be workmen about to deliver us. A
+furious clamor arose. The cry “Saved! Saved!” burst from every mouth,
+while trembling arms were uplifted toward the tiny azure patch above.
+
+That roar of voices aroused me. Where was I? In the tunnel, of course.
+I was lying at full length; hard walls were pressing against my ribs.
+Then I attempted to rise and struck my head roughly. Was it the rock
+closing in on all sides? The blue speck had vanished—aye, the sky had
+disappeared and I was still suffocating, shivering, with chattering
+teeth.
+
+All at once I remembered. Intense horror raised my hair on end. I felt
+the hideous truth freeze me from head to foot like ice. I had shaken
+off the long coma which for many hours had stricken me with corpselike
+rigidity. Yes, I could move; my hands could feel the boards of my
+coffin; my lips parted; words came to me, and instinctively I called
+out Marguerite’s name. It was a scream I raised. In that deal box my
+voice took so hoarse and weird a sound that it terrified me. Oh, my
+God, was this thing true? I was able to walk, speak, cry out that I was
+living, and yet my voice could not be heard; I was entombed under the
+earth.
+
+I made a desperate effort to remain calm and reflect. Was there no
+means of getting out? Then my dream began afresh in my troubled brain.
+The fanciful air shaft with the blue bit of sky overhead was mingled
+with the real grave in which I was lying. I stared at the darkness with
+widely opened eyes; perhaps I might discover a hole, a slit, a glimmer
+of light, but only sparks of fire flitted through that night, with rays
+that broadened and then faded away. I was in a somber abyss again. With
+returning lucidity I struggled against these fatal visions. Indeed, I
+should need all my reason if I meant to try to save myself.
+
+The most immediate peril lay in an increasing sense of suffocation. If
+I had been able to live so long without air it was owing to suspended
+animation, which had changed all the normal conditions of my existence,
+but now that my heart beat and my lungs breathed I should die,
+asphyxiated, if I did not promptly liberate myself. I also suffered
+from cold and dreaded lest I should succumb to the mortal numbness of
+those who fall asleep in the snow, never to wake again. Still, while
+unceasingly realizing the necessity of remaining calm, I felt maddening
+blasts sweep through my brain, and to quiet my senses I exhorted myself
+to patience, trying to remember the circumstances of my burial.
+Probably the ground had been bought for five years, and this would be
+against my chances of self-deliverance, for I remembered having noticed
+at Nantes that in the trenches of the common graves one end of the last
+lowered coffins protruded into the next open cavity, in which case I
+should only have had to break through one plank. But if I were in a
+separate hole, filled up above me with earth, the obstacles would prove
+too great. Had I not been told that the dead were buried six feet deep
+in Paris? How was I to get through the enormous mass of soil above me?
+Even if I succeeded in slitting the lid of my bier open the mold would
+drift in like fine sand and fill my mouth and eyes. That would be death
+again, a ghastly death, like drowning in mud.
+
+However, I began to feel the planks carefully. The coffin was roomy,
+and I found that I was able to move my arms with tolerable ease. On
+both sides the roughly planed boards were stout and resistive. I
+slipped my arm onto my chest to raise it over my head. There I
+discovered in the top plank a knot in the wood which yielded slightly
+at my pressure. Working laboriously, I finally succeeded in driving out
+this knot, and on passing my finger through the hole I found that the
+earth was wet and clayey. But that availed me little. I even regretted
+having removed the knot, vaguely dreading the irruption of the mold. A
+second experiment occupied me for a while. I tapped all over the coffin
+to ascertain if perhaps there were any vacuum outside. But the sound
+was everywhere the same. At last, as I was slightly kicking the foot of
+the coffin, I fancied that it gave out a clearer echoing noise, but
+that might merely be produced by the sonority of the wood.
+
+At any rate, I began to press against the boards with my arms and my
+closed fists. In the same way, too, I used my knees, my back and my
+feet without eliciting even a creak from the wood. I strained with all
+my strength, indeed, with so desperate an effort of my whole frame,
+that my bruised bones seemed breaking. But nothing moved, and I became
+insane.
+
+Until that moment I had held delirium at bay. I had mastered the
+intoxicating rage which was mounting to my head like the fumes of
+alcohol; I had silenced my screams, for I feared that if I again cried
+out aloud I should be undone. But now I yelled; I shouted; unearthly
+howls which I could not repress came from my relaxed throat. I called
+for help in a voice that I did not recognize, growing wilder with each
+fresh appeal and crying out that I would not die. I also tore at the
+wood with my nails; I writhed with the contortions of a caged wolf. I
+do not know how long this fit of madness lasted, but I can still feel
+the relentless hardness of the box that imprisoned me; I can still hear
+the storm of shrieks and sobs with which I filled it; a remaining
+glimmer of reason made me try to stop, but I could not do so.
+
+Great exhaustion followed. I lay waiting for death in a state of
+somnolent pain. The coffin was like stone, which no effort could break,
+and the conviction that I was powerless left me unnerved, without
+courage to make any fresh attempts. Another suffering—hunger—was
+presently added to cold and want of air. The torture soon became
+intolerable. With my finger I tried to pull small pinches of earth
+through the hole of the dislodged knot, and I swallowed them eagerly,
+only increasing my torment. Tempted by my flesh, I bit my arms and
+sucked my skin with a fiendish desire to drive my teeth in, but I was
+afraid of drawing blood.
+
+Then I ardently longed for death. All my life long I had trembled at
+the thought of dissolution, but I had come to yearn for it, to crave
+for an everlasting night that could never be dark enough. How childish
+it had been of me to dread the long, dreamless sleep, the eternity of
+silence and gloom! Death was kind, for in suppressing life it put an
+end to suffering. Oh, to sleep like the stones, to be no more!
+
+With groping hands I still continued feeling the wood, and suddenly I
+pricked my left thumb. That slight pain roused me from my growing
+numbness. I felt again and found a nail—a nail which the undertaker’s
+men had driven in crookedly and which had not caught in the lower wood.
+It was long and very sharp; the head was secured to the lid, but it
+moved. Henceforth I had but one idea—to possess myself of that nail—and
+I slipped my right hand across my body and began to shake it. I made
+but little progress, however; it was a difficult job, for my hands soon
+tired, and I had to use them alternately. The left one, too, was of
+little use on account of the nail’s awkward position.
+
+While I was obstinately persevering a plan dawned on my mind. That nail
+meant salvation, and I must have it. But should I get it in time?
+Hunger was torturing me; my brain was swimming; my limbs were losing
+their strength; my mind was becoming confused. I had sucked the drops
+that trickled from my punctured finger, and suddenly I bit my arm and
+drank my own blood! Thereupon, spurred on by pain, revived by the
+tepid, acrid liquor that moistened my lips, I tore desperately at the
+nail and at last I wrenched it off!
+
+I then believed in success. My plan was a simple one; I pushed the
+point of the nail into the lid, dragging it along as far as I could in
+a straight line and working it so as to make a slit in the wood. My
+fingers stiffened, but I doggedly persevered, and when I fancied that I
+had sufficiently cut into the board I turned on my stomach and, lifting
+myself on my knees and elbows thrust the whole strength of my back
+against the lid. But although it creaked it did not yield; the notched
+line was not deep enough. I had to resume my old position—which I only
+managed to do with infinite trouble—and work afresh. At last after
+another supreme effort the lid was cleft from end to end.
+
+I was not saved as yet, but my heart beat with renewed hope. I had
+ceased pushing and remained motionless, lest a sudden fall of earth
+should bury me. I intended to use the lid as a screen and, thus
+protected, to open a sort of shaft in the clayey soil. Unfortunately I
+was assailed by unexpected difficulties. Some heavy clods of earth
+weighed upon the boards and made them unmanageable; I foresaw that I
+should never reach the surface in that way, for the mass of soil was
+already bending my spine and crushing my face.
+
+Once more I stopped, affrighted; then suddenly, while I was stretching
+my legs, trying to find something firm against which I might rest my
+feet, I felt the end board of the coffin yielding. I at once gave a
+desperate kick with my heels in the faint hope that there might be a
+freshly dug grave in that direction.
+
+It was so. My feet abruptly forced their way into space. An open grave
+was there; I had only a slight partition of earth to displace, and soon
+I rolled into the cavity. I was saved!
+
+I remained for a time lying on my back in the open grave, with my eyes
+raised to heaven. It was dark; the stars were shining in a sky of
+velvety blueness. Now and then the rising breeze wafted a springlike
+freshness, a perfume of foliage, upon me. I was saved! I could breathe;
+I felt warm, and I wept and I stammered, with my arms prayerfully
+extended toward the starry sky. O God, how sweet seemed life!
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER V
+ MY RESURRECTION
+
+
+My first impulse was to find the custodian of the cemetery and ask him
+to have me conducted home, but various thoughts that came to me
+restrained me from following that course. My return would create
+general alarm; why should I hurry now that I was master of the
+situation? I felt my limbs; I had only an insignificant wound on my
+left arm, where I had bitten myself, and a slight feverishness lent me
+unhoped-for strength. I should no doubt be able to walk unaided.
+
+Still I lingered; all sorts of dim visions confused my mind. I had felt
+beside me in the open grave some sextons’ tools which had been left
+there, and I conceived a sudden desire to repair the damage I had done,
+to close up the hole through which I had crept, so as to conceal all
+traces of my resurrection. I do not believe that I had any positive
+motive in doing so. I only deemed it useless to proclaim my adventure
+aloud, feeling ashamed to find myself alive when the whole world
+thought me dead. In half an hour every trace of my escape was
+obliterated, and then I climbed out of the hole.
+
+The night was splendid, and deep silence reigned in the cemetery; the
+black trees threw motionless shadows over the white tombs. When I
+endeavored to ascertain my bearings I noticed that one half of the sky
+was ruddy, as if lit by a huge conflagration; Paris lay in that
+direction, and I moved toward it, following a long avenue amid the
+darkness of the branches.
+
+However, after I had gone some fifty yards I was compelled to stop,
+feeling faint and weary. I then sat down on a stone bench and for the
+first time looked at myself. I was fully attired with the exception
+that I had no hat. I blessed my beloved Marguerite for the pious
+thought which had prompted her to dress me in my best clothes—those
+which I had worn at our wedding. That remembrance of my wife brought me
+to my feet again. I longed to see her without delay.
+
+At the farther end of the avenue I had taken a wall arrested my
+progress. However, I climbed to the top of a monument, reached the
+summit of the wall and then dropped over the other side. Although
+roughly shaken by the fall, I managed to walk for a few minutes along a
+broad deserted street skirting the cemetery. I had no notion as to
+where I might be, but with the reiteration of monomania I kept saying
+to myself that I was going toward Paris and that I should find the Rue
+Dauphine somehow or other. Several people passed me but, seized with
+sudden distrust, I would not stop them and ask my way. I have since
+realized that I was then in a burning fever and already nearly
+delirious. Finally, just as I reached a large thoroughfare, I became
+giddy and fell heavily upon the pavement.
+
+Here there is a blank in my life. For three whole weeks I remained
+unconscious. When I awoke at last I found myself in a strange room. A
+man who was nursing me told me quietly that he had picked me up one
+morning on the Boulevard Montparnasse and had brought me to his house.
+He was an old doctor who had given up practicing.
+
+When I attempted to thank him he sharply answered that my case had
+seemed a curious one and that he had wished to study it. Moreover,
+during the first days of my convalescence he would not allow me to ask
+a single question, and later on he never put one to me. For eight days
+longer I remained in bed, feeling very weak and not even trying to
+remember, for memory was a weariness and a pain. I felt half ashamed
+and half afraid. As soon as I could leave the house I would go and find
+out whatever I wanted to know. Possibly in the delirium of fever a name
+had escaped me; however, the doctor never alluded to anything I may
+have said. His charity was not only generous; it was discreet.
+
+The summer had come at last, and one warm June morning I was permitted
+to take a short walk. The sun was shining with that joyous brightness
+which imparts renewed youth to the streets of old Paris. I went along
+slowly, questioning the passers-by at every crossing I came to and
+asking the way to Rue Dauphine. When I reached the street I had some
+difficulty in recognizing the lodginghouse where we had alighted on our
+arrival in the capital. A childish terror made me hesitate. If I
+appeared suddenly before Marguerite the shock might kill her. It might
+be wiser to begin by revealing myself to our neighbor Mme Gabin; still
+I shrank from taking a third party into confidence. I seemed unable to
+arrive at a resolution, and yet in my innermost heart I felt a great
+void, like that left by some sacrifice long since consummated.
+
+The building looked quite yellow in the sunshine. I had just recognized
+it by a shabby eating house on the ground floor, where we had ordered
+our meals, having them sent up to us. Then I raised my eyes to the last
+window of the third floor on the left-hand side, and as I looked at it
+a young woman with tumbled hair, wearing a loose dressing gown,
+appeared and leaned her elbows on the sill. A young man followed and
+printed a kiss upon her neck. It was not Marguerite. Still I felt no
+surprise. It seemed to me that I had dreamed all this with other
+things, too, which I was to learn presently.
+
+For a moment I remained in the street, uncertain whether I had better
+go upstairs and question the lovers, who were still laughing in the
+sunshine. However, I decided to enter the little restaurant below. When
+I started on my walk the old doctor had placed a five-franc piece in my
+hand. No doubt I was changed beyond recognition, for my beard had grown
+during the brain fever, and my face was wrinkled and haggard. As I took
+a seat at a small table I saw Mme Gabin come in carrying a cup; she
+wished to buy a penny-worth of coffee. Standing in front of the
+counter, she began to gossip with the landlady of the establishment.
+
+“Well,” asked the latter, “so the poor little woman of the third floor
+has made up her mind at last, eh?”
+
+“How could she help herself?” answered Mme Gabin. “It was the very best
+thing for her to do. Monsieur Simoneau showed her so much kindness. You
+see, he had finished his business in Paris to his satisfaction, for he
+has inherited a pot of money. Well, he offered to take her away with
+him to his own part of the country and place her with an aunt of his,
+who wants a housekeeper and companion.”
+
+The landlady laughed archly. I buried my face in a newspaper which I
+picked off the table. My lips were white and my hands shook.
+
+“It will end in a marriage, of course,” resumed Mme Gabin. “The little
+widow mourned for her husband very properly, and the young man was
+extremely well behaved. Well, they left last night—and, after all, they
+were free to please themselves.”
+
+Just then the side door of the restaurant, communicating with the
+passage of the house, opened, and Dede appeared.
+
+“Mother, ain’t you coming?” she cried. “I’m waiting, you know; do be
+quick.”
+
+“Presently,” said the mother testily. “Don’t bother.”
+
+The girl stood listening to the two women with the precocious
+shrewdness of a child born and reared amid the streets of Paris.
+
+“When all is said and done,” explained Mme Gabin, “the dear departed
+did not come up to Monsieur Simoneau. I didn’t fancy him overmuch; he
+was a puny sort of a man, a poor, fretful fellow, and he hadn’t a penny
+to bless himself with. No, candidly, he wasn’t the kind of husband for
+a young and healthy wife, whereas Monsieur Simoneau is rich, you know,
+and as strong as a Turk.”
+
+“Oh yes!” interrupted Dede. “I saw him once when he was washing—his
+door was open. His arms are so hairy!”
+
+“Get along with you,” screamed the old woman, shoving the girl out of
+the restaurant. “You are always poking your nose where it has no
+business to be.”
+
+Then she concluded with these words: “Look here, to my mind the other
+one did quite right to take himself off. It was fine luck for the
+little woman!”
+
+When I found myself in the street again I walked along slowly with
+trembling limbs. And yet I was not suffering much; I think I smiled
+once at my shadow in the sun. It was quite true. I WAS very puny. It
+had been a queer notion of mine to marry Marguerite. I recalled her
+weariness at Guerande, her impatience, her dull, monotonous life. The
+dear creature had been very good to me, but I had never been a real
+lover; she had mourned for me as a sister for her brother, not
+otherwise. Why should I again disturb her life? A dead man is not
+jealous.
+
+When I lifted my eyelids I saw the garden of the Luxembourg before me.
+I entered it and took a seat in the sun, dreaming with a sense of
+infinite restfulness. The thought of Marguerite stirred me softly. I
+pictured her in the provinces, beloved, petted and very happy. She had
+grown handsomer, and she was the mother of three boys and two girls. It
+was all right. I had behaved like an honest man in dying, and I would
+not commit the cruel folly of coming to life again.
+
+Since then I have traveled a good deal. I have been a little
+everywhere. I am an ordinary man who has toiled and eaten like anybody
+else. Death no longer frightens me, but it does not seem to care for me
+now that I have no motive in living, and I sometimes fear that I have
+been forgotten upon earth.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1069 ***