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Four Short Stories By Emile Zola

by Émile Zola · English · Gutenberg #1069 · 1,182,692 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Four Short Stories By Emile Zola

Author: Émile Zola


        
Release date: May 3, 2006 [eBook #1069]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1069

Credits: Donald Lainson and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR SHORT STORIES BY EMILE ZOLA ***

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

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