Four Short Stories By Emile Zola

NANA

by Émile Zola

CHAPTER I

At nine o’clock in the evening the body of the house at the Theatres

des Variétés was still all but empty. A few individuals, it is true,

were sitting quietly waiting in the balcony and stalls, but these were

lost, as it were, among the ranges of seats whose coverings of cardinal

velvet loomed in the subdued light of the dimly burning luster. A

shadow enveloped the great red splash of the curtain, and not a sound

came from the stage, the unlit footlights, the scattered desks of the

orchestra. It was only high overhead in the third gallery, round the

domed ceiling where nude females and children flew in heavens which had

turned green in the gaslight, that calls and laughter were audible

above a continuous hubbub of voices, and heads in women’s and workmen’s

caps were ranged, row above row, under the wide-vaulted bays with their

gilt-surrounding adornments. Every few seconds an attendant would make

her appearance, bustling along with tickets in her hand and piloting in

front of her a gentleman and a lady, who took their seats, he in his

evening dress, she sitting slim and undulant beside him while her eyes

wandered slowly round the house.

Two young men appeared in the stalls; they kept standing and looked

about them.

“Didn’t I say so, Hector?” cried the elder of the two, a tall fellow

with little black mustaches. “We’re too early! You might quite well

have allowed me to finish my cigar.”

An attendant was passing.

“Oh, Monsieur Fauchery,” she said familiarly, “it won’t begin for half

an hour yet!”

“Then why do they advertise for nine o’clock?” muttered Hector, whose

long thin face assumed an expression of vexation. “Only this morning

Clarisse, who’s in the piece, swore that they’d begin at nine o’clock

punctually.”

For a moment they remained silent and, looking upward, scanned the

shadowy boxes. But the green paper with which these were hung rendered

them more shadowy still. Down below, under the dress circle, the lower

boxes were buried in utter night. In those on the second tier there was

only one stout lady, who was stranded, as it were, on the

velvet-covered balustrade in front of her. On the right hand and on the

left, between lofty pilasters, the stage boxes, bedraped with

long-fringed scalloped hangings, remained untenanted. The house with

its white and gold, relieved by soft green tones, lay only half

disclosed to view, as though full of a fine dust shed from the little

jets of flame in the great glass luster.

“Did you get your stage box for Lucy?” asked Hector.

“Yes,” replied his companion, “but I had some trouble to get it. Oh,

there’s no danger of Lucy coming too early!”

He stifled a slight yawn; then after a pause:

“You’re in luck’s way, you are, since you haven’t been at a first night

before. The Blonde Venus will be the event of the year. People have

been talking about it for six months. Oh, such music, my dear boy! Such

a sly dog, Bordenave! He knows his business and has kept this for the

exhibition season.” Hector was religiously attentive. He asked a

question.

“And Nana, the new star who’s going to play Venus, d’you know her?”

“There you are; you’re beginning again!” cried Fauchery, casting up his

arms. “Ever since this morning people have been dreeing me with Nana.

I’ve met more than twenty people, and it’s Nana here and Nana there!

What do I know? Am I acquainted with all the light ladies in Paris?

Nana is an invention of Bordenave’s! It must be a fine one!”

He calmed himself, but the emptiness of the house, the dim light of the

luster, the churchlike sense of self-absorption which the place

inspired, full as it was of whispering voices and the sound of doors

banging—all these got on his nerves.

“No, by Jove,” he said all of a sudden, “one’s hair turns gray here.

I—I’m going out. Perhaps we shall find Bordenave downstairs. He’ll give

us information about things.”

Downstairs in the great marble-paved entrance hall, where the box

office was, the public were beginning to show themselves. Through the

three open gates might have been observed, passing in, the ardent life

of the boulevards, which were all astir and aflare under the fine April

night. The sound of carriage wheels kept stopping suddenly; carriage

doors were noisily shut again, and people began entering in small

groups, taking their stand before the ticket bureau and climbing the

double flight of stairs at the end of the hall, up which the women

loitered with swaying hips. Under the crude gaslight, round the pale,

naked walls of the entrance hall, which with its scanty First Empire

decorations suggested the peristyle of a toy temple, there was a

flaring display of lofty yellow posters bearing the name of “Nana” in

great black letters. Gentlemen, who seemed to be glued to the entry,

were reading them; others, standing about, were engaged in talk,

barring the doors of the house in so doing, while hard by the box

office a thickset man with an extensive, close-shaven visage was giving

rough answers to such as pressed to engage seats.

“There’s Bordenave,” said Fauchery as he came down the stairs. But the

manager had already seen him.

“Ah, ah! You’re a nice fellow!” he shouted at him from a distance.

“That’s the way you give me a notice, is it? Why, I opened my Figaro

this morning—never a word!”

“Wait a bit,” replied Fauchery. “I certainly must make the acquaintance

of your Nana before talking about her. Besides, I’ve made no promises.”

Then to put an end to the discussion, he introduced his cousin, M.

Hector de la Faloise, a young man who had come to finish his education

in Paris. The manager took the young man’s measure at a glance. But

Hector returned his scrutiny with deep interest. This, then, was that

Bordenave, that showman of the sex who treated women like a convict

overseer, that clever fellow who was always at full steam over some

advertising dodge, that shouting, spitting, thigh-slapping fellow, that

cynic with the soul of a policeman! Hector was under the impression

that he ought to discover some amiable observation for the occasion.

“Your theater—” he began in dulcet tones.

Bordenave interrupted him with a savage phrase, as becomes a man who

dotes on frank situations.

“Call it my brothel!”

At this Fauchery laughed approvingly, while La Faloise stopped with his

pretty speech strangled in his throat, feeling very much shocked and

striving to appear as though he enjoyed the phrase. The manager had

dashed off to shake hands with a dramatic critic whose column had

considerable influence. When he returned La Faloise was recovering. He

was afraid of being treated as a provincial if he showed himself too

much nonplused.

“I have been told,” he began again, longing positively to find

something to say, “that Nana has a delicious voice.”

“Nana?” cried the manager, shrugging his shoulders. “The voice of a

squirt!”

The young man made haste to add:

“Besides being a first-rate comedian!”

“She? Why she’s a lump! She has no notion what to do with her hands and

feet.”

La Faloise blushed a little. He had lost his bearings. He stammered:

“I wouldn’t have missed this first representation tonight for the

world. I was aware that your theater—”

“Call it my brothel,” Bordenave again interpolated with the frigid

obstinacy of a man convinced.

Meanwhile Fauchery, with extreme calmness, was looking at the women as

they came in. He went to his cousin’s rescue when he saw him all at sea

and doubtful whether to laugh or to be angry.

“Do be pleasant to Bordenave—call his theater what he wishes you to,

since it amuses him. And you, my dear fellow, don’t keep us waiting

about for nothing. If your Nana neither sings nor acts you’ll find

you’ve made a blunder, that’s all. It’s what I’m afraid of, if the

truth be told.”

“A blunder! A blunder!” shouted the manager, and his face grew purple.

“Must a woman know how to act and sing? Oh, my chicken, you’re too

STOOPID. Nana has other good points, by heaven!—something which is as

good as all the other things put together. I’ve smelled it out; it’s

deuced pronounced with her, or I’ve got the scent of an idiot. You’ll

see, you’ll see! She’s only got to come on, and all the house will be

gaping at her.”

He had held up his big hands which were trembling under the influence

of his eager enthusiasm, and now, having relieved his feelings, he

lowered his voice and grumbled to himself:

“Yes, she’ll go far! Oh yes, s’elp me, she’ll go far! A skin—oh, what a

skin she’s got!”

Then as Fauchery began questioning him he consented to enter into a

detailed explanation, couched in phraseology so crude that Hector de la

Faloise felt slightly disgusted. He had been thick with Nana, and he

was anxious to start her on the stage. Well, just about that time he

was in search of a Venus. He—he never let a woman encumber him for any

length of time; he preferred to let the public enjoy the benefit of her

forthwith. But there was a deuce of a row going on in his shop, which

had been turned topsy-turvy by that big damsel’s advent. Rose Mignon,

his star, a comic actress of much subtlety and an adorable singer, was

daily threatening to leave him in the lurch, for she was furious and

guessed the presence of a rival. And as for the bill, good God! What a

noise there had been about it all! It had ended by his deciding to

print the names of the two actresses in the same-sized type. But it

wouldn’t do to bother him. Whenever any of his little women, as he

called them—Simonne or Clarisse, for instance—wouldn’t go the way he

wanted her to he just up with his foot and caught her one in the rear.

Otherwise life was impossible. Oh yes, he sold ’em; HE knew what they

fetched, the wenches!

“Tut!” he cried, breaking off short. “Mignon and Steiner. Always

together. You know, Steiner’s getting sick of Rose; that’s why the

husband dogs his steps now for fear of his slipping away.”

On the pavement outside, the row of gas jets flaring on the cornice of

the theater cast a patch of brilliant light. Two small trees, violently

green, stood sharply out against it, and a column gleamed in such vivid

illumination that one could read the notices thereon at a distance, as

though in broad daylight, while the dense night of the boulevard beyond

was dotted with lights above the vague outline of an ever-moving crowd.

Many men did not enter the theater at once but stayed outside to talk

while finishing their cigars under the rays of the line of gas jets,

which shed a sallow pallor on their faces and silhouetted their short

black shadows on the asphalt. Mignon, a very tall, very broad fellow,

with the square-shaped head of a strong man at a fair, was forcing a

passage through the midst of the groups and dragging on his arm the

banker Steiner, an exceedingly small man with a corporation already in

evidence and a round face framed in a setting of beard which was

already growing gray.

“Well,” said Bordenave to the banker, “you met her yesterday in my

office.”

“Ah! It was she, was it?” ejaculated Steiner. “I suspected as much.

Only I was coming out as she was going in, and I scarcely caught a

glimpse of her.”

Mignon was listening with half-closed eyelids and nervously twisting a

great diamond ring round his finger. He had quite understood that Nana

was in question. Then as Bordenave was drawing a portrait of his new

star, which lit a flame in the eyes of the banker, he ended by joining

in the conversation.

“Oh, let her alone, my dear fellow; she’s a low lot! The public will

show her the door in quick time. Steiner, my laddie, you know that my

wife is waiting for you in her box.”

He wanted to take possession of him again. But Steiner would not quit

Bordenave. In front of them a stream of people was crowding and

crushing against the ticket office, and there was a din of voices, in

the midst of which the name of Nana sounded with all the melodious

vivacity of its two syllables. The men who stood planted in front of

the notices kept spelling it out loudly; others, in an interrogative

tone, uttered it as they passed; while the women, at once restless and

smiling, repeated it softly with an air of surprise. Nobody knew Nana.

Whence had Nana fallen? And stories and jokes, whispered from ear to

ear, went the round of the crowd. The name was a caress in itself; it

was a pet name, the very familiarity of which suited every lip. Merely

through enunciating it thus, the throng worked itself into a state of

gaiety and became highly good natured. A fever of curiosity urged it

forward, that kind of Parisian curiosity which is as violent as an

access of positive unreason. Everybody wanted to see Nana. A lady had

the flounce of her dress torn off; a man lost his hat.

“Oh, you’re asking me too many questions about it!” cried Bordenave,

whom a score of men were besieging with their queries. “You’re going to

see her, and I’m off; they want me.”

He disappeared, enchanted at having fired his public. Mignon shrugged

his shoulders, reminding Steiner that Rose was awaiting him in order to

show him the costume she was about to wear in the first act.

“By Jove! There’s Lucy out there, getting down from her carriage,” said

La Faloise to Fauchery.

It was, in fact, Lucy Stewart, a plain little woman, some forty years

old, with a disproportionately long neck, a thin, drawn face, a heavy

mouth, but withal of such brightness, such graciousness of manner, that

she was really very charming. She was bringing with her Caroline Hequet

and her mother—Caroline a woman of a cold type of beauty, the mother a

person of a most worthy demeanor, who looked as if she were stuffed

with straw.

“You’re coming with us? I’ve kept a place for you,” she said to

Fauchery. “Oh, decidedly not! To see nothing!” he made answer. “I’ve a

stall; I prefer being in the stalls.”

Lucy grew nettled. Did he not dare show himself in her company? Then,

suddenly restraining herself and skipping to another topic:

“Why haven’t you told me that you knew Nana?”

“Nana! I’ve never set eyes on her.”

“Honor bright? I’ve been told that you’ve been to bed with her.”

But Mignon, coming in front of them, his finger to his lips, made them

a sign to be silent. And when Lucy questioned him he pointed out a

young man who was passing and murmured:

“Nana’s fancy man.”

Everybody looked at him. He was a pretty fellow. Fauchery recognized

him; it was Daguenet, a young man who had run through three hundred

thousand francs in the pursuit of women and who now was dabbling in

stocks, in order from time to time to treat them to bouquets and

dinners. Lucy made the discovery that he had fine eyes.

“Ah, there’s Blanche!” she cried. “It’s she who told me that you had

been to bed with Nana.”

Blanche de Sivry, a great fair girl, whose good-looking face showed

signs of growing fat, made her appearance in the company of a spare,

sedulously well-groomed and extremely distinguished man.

“The Count Xavier de Vandeuvres,” Fauchery whispered in his companion’s

ear.

The count and the journalist shook hands, while Blanche and Lucy

entered into a brisk, mutual explanation. One of them in blue, the

other in rose-pink, they stood blocking the way with their deeply

flounced skirts, and Nana’s name kept repeating itself so shrilly in

their conversation that people began to listen to them. The Count de

Vandeuvres carried Blanche off. But by this time Nana’s name was

echoing more loudly than ever round the four walls of the entrance hall

amid yearnings sharpened by delay. Why didn’t the play begin? The men

pulled out their watches; late-comers sprang from their conveyances

before these had fairly drawn up; the groups left the sidewalk, where

the passers-by were crossing the now-vacant space of gaslit pavement,

craning their necks, as they did so, in order to get a peep into the

theater. A street boy came up whistling and planted himself before a

notice at the door, then cried out, “Woa, Nana!” in the voice of a

tipsy man and hied on his way with a rolling gait and a shuffling of

his old boots. A laugh had arisen at this. Gentlemen of unimpeachable

appearance repeated: “Nana, woa, Nana!” People were crushing; a dispute

arose at the ticket office, and there was a growing clamor caused by

the hum of voices calling on Nana, demanding Nana in one of those

accesses of silly facetiousness and sheer animalism which pass over

mobs.

But above all the din the bell that precedes the rise of the curtain

became audible. “They’ve rung; they’ve rung!” The rumor reached the

boulevard, and thereupon followed a stampede, everyone wanting to pass

in, while the servants of the theater increased their forces. Mignon,

with an anxious air, at last got hold of Steiner again, the latter not

having been to see Rose’s costume. At the very first tinkle of the bell

La Faloise had cloven a way through the crowd, pulling Fauchery with

him, so as not to miss the opening scene. But all this eagerness on the

part of the public irritated Lucy Stewart. What brutes were these

people to be pushing women like that! She stayed in the rear of them

all with Caroline Hequet and her mother. The entrance hall was now

empty, while beyond it was still heard the long-drawn rumble of the

boulevard.

“As though they were always funny, those pieces of theirs!” Lucy kept

repeating as she climbed the stair.

In the house Fauchery and La Faloise, in front of their stalls, were

gazing about them anew. By this time the house was resplendent. High

jets of gas illumined the great glass chandelier with a rustling of

yellow and rosy flames, which rained down a stream of brilliant light

from dome to floor. The cardinal velvets of the seats were shot with

hues of lake, while all the gilding shone again, the soft green

decorations chastening its effect beneath the too-decided paintings of

the ceiling. The footlights were turned up and with a vivid flood of

brilliance lit up the curtain, the heavy purple drapery of which had

all the richness befitting a palace in a fairy tale and contrasted with

the meanness of the proscenium, where cracks showed the plaster under

the gilding. The place was already warm. At their music stands the

orchestra were tuning their instruments amid a delicate trilling of

flutes, a stifled tooting of horns, a singing of violin notes, which

floated forth amid the increasing uproar of voices. All the spectators

were talking, jostling, settling themselves in a general assault upon

seats; and the hustling rush in the side passages was now so violent

that every door into the house was laboriously admitting the

inexhaustible flood of people. There were signals, rustlings of

fabrics, a continual march past of skirts and head dresses, accentuated

by the black hue of a dress coat or a surtout. Notwithstanding this,

the rows of seats were little by little getting filled up, while here

and there a light toilet stood out from its surroundings, a head with a

delicate profile bent forward under its chignon, where flashed the

lightning of a jewel. In one of the boxes the tip of a bare shoulder

glimmered like snowy silk. Other ladies, sitting at ease, languidly

fanned themselves, following with their gaze the pushing movements of

the crowd, while young gentlemen, standing up in the stalls, their

waistcoats cut very low, gardenias in their buttonholes, pointed their

opera glasses with gloved finger tips.

It was now that the two cousins began searching for the faces of those

they knew. Mignon and Steiner were together in a lower box, sitting

side by side with their arms leaning for support on the velvet

balustrade. Blanche de Sivry seemed to be in sole possession of a stage

box on the level of the stalls. But La Faloise examined Daguenet before

anyone else, he being in occupation of a stall two rows in front of his

own. Close to him, a very young man, seventeen years old at the

outside, some truant from college, it may be, was straining wide a pair

of fine eyes such as a cherub might have owned. Fauchery smiled when he

looked at him.

“Who is that lady in the balcony?” La Faloise asked suddenly. “The lady

with a young girl in blue beside her.”

He pointed out a large woman who was excessively tight-laced, a woman

who had been a blonde and had now become white and yellow of tint, her

broad face, reddened with paint, looking puffy under a rain of little

childish curls.

“It’s Gaga,” was Fauchery’s simple reply, and as this name seemed to

astound his cousin, he added:

“You don’t know Gaga? She was the delight of the early years of Louis

Philippe. Nowadays she drags her daughter about with her wherever she

goes.”

La Faloise never once glanced at the young girl. The sight of Gaga

moved him; his eyes did not leave her again. He still found her very

good looking but he dared not say so.

Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra

attacked the overture. People still kept coming in; the stir and noise

were on the increase. Among that public, peculiar to first nights and

never subject to change, there were little subsections composed of

intimate friends, who smilingly forgathered again. Old first-nighters,

hat on head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and kept exchanging

salutations. All Paris was there, the Paris of literature, of finance

and of pleasure. There were many journalists, several authors, a number

of stock-exchange people and more courtesans than honest women. It was

a singularly mixed world, composed, as it was, of all the talents and

tarnished by all the vices, a world where the same fatigue and the same

fever played over every face. Fauchery, whom his cousin was

questioning, showed him the boxes devoted to the newspapers and to the

clubs and then named the dramatic critics—a lean, dried-up individual

with thin, spiteful lips and, chief of all, a big fellow with a

good-natured expression, lolling on the shoulder of his neighbor, a

young miss over whom he brooded with tender and paternal eyes.

But he interrupted himself on seeing La Faloise in the act of bowing to

some persons who occupied the box opposite. He appeared surprised.

“What?” he queried. “You know the Count Muffat de Beuville?”

“Oh, for a long time back,” replied Hector. “The Muffats had a property

near us. I often go to their house. The count’s with his wife and his

father-in-law, the Marquis de Chouard.”

And with some vanity—for he was happy in his cousin’s astonishment—he

entered into particulars. The marquis was a councilor of state; the

count had recently been appointed chamberlain to the empress. Fauchery,

who had caught up his opera glass, looked at the countess, a plump

brunette with a white skin and fine dark eyes.

“You shall present me to them between the acts,” he ended by saying. “I

have already met the count, but I should like to go to them on their

Tuesdays.”

Energetic cries of “Hush” came from the upper galleries. The overture

had begun, but people were still coming in. Late arrivals were obliging

whole rows of spectators to rise; the doors of boxes were banging; loud

voices were heard disputing in the passages. And there was no cessation

of the sound of many conversations, a sound similar to the loud

twittering of talkative sparrows at close of day. All was in confusion;

the house was a medley of heads and arms which moved to and fro, their

owners seating themselves or trying to make themselves comfortable or,

on the other hand, excitedly endeavoring to remain standing so as to

take a final look round. The cry of “Sit down, sit down!” came fiercely

from the obscure depths of the pit. A shiver of expectation traversed

the house: at last people were going to make the acquaintance of this

famous Nana with whom Paris had been occupying itself for a whole week!

Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down among

occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech. And amid this swooning

murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra struck up the

small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm bubbling with

roguish laughter. The public were titillated; they were already on the

grin. But the gang of clappers in the foremost rows of the pit

applauded furiously. The curtain rose.

“By George!” exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away. “There’s a man

with Lucy.”

He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the

front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying. At the back of this

box were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline’s mother and the

side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light hair and an

irreproachable getup.

“Do look!” La Faloise again insisted. “There’s a man there.”

Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he

turned round again directly.

“Oh, it’s Labordette,” he muttered in a careless voice, as though that

gentle man’s presence ought to strike all the world as though both

natural and immaterial.

Behind the cousins people shouted “Silence!” They had to cease talking.

A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches of heads,

all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to topmost gallery.

The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in Olympus, a pasteboard

Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the throne of Jupiter on the

right of the stage. First of all Iris and Ganymede, aided by a troupe

of celestial attendants, sang a chorus while they arranged the seats of

the gods for the council. Once again the prearranged applause of the

clappers alone burst forth; the public, a little out of their depth,

sat waiting. Nevertheless, La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one

of Bordenave’s little women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with

a great scarf of the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her

waist.

“You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on,” he said to

Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him. “We tried the

trick this morning. It was all up under her arms and round the small of

her back.”

But a slight rustling movement ran through the house; Rose Mignon had

just come on the stage as Diana. Now though she had neither the face

nor the figure for the part, being thin and dark and of the adorable

type of ugliness peculiar to a Parisian street child, she nonetheless

appeared charming and as though she were a satire on the personage she

represented. Her song at her entrance on the stage was full of lines

quaint enough to make you cry with laughter and of complaints about

Mars, who was getting ready to desert her for the companionship of

Venus. She sang it with a chaste reserve so full of sprightly

suggestiveness that the public warmed amain. The husband and Steiner,

sitting side by side, were laughing complaisantly, and the whole house

broke out in a roar when Prullière, that great favorite, appeared as a

general, a masquerade Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging

along a sword, the hilt of which reached to his shoulder. As for him,

he had had enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him,

he averred. Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to

be revenged. The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prullière

delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat. He had about

him all the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman whose

love affairs prosper, and he rolled around the most swaggering glances,

which excited shrill feminine laughter in the boxes.

Then the public cooled again, for the ensuing scenes were found

tiresome. Old Bosc, an imbecile Jupiter with head crushed beneath the

weight of an immense crown, only just succeeded in raising a smile

among his audience when he had a domestic altercation with Juno on the

subject of the cook’s accounts. The march past of the gods, Neptune,

Pluto, Minerva and the rest, was well-nigh spoiling everything. People

grew impatient; there was a restless, slowly growing murmur; the

audience ceased to take an interest in the performance and looked round

at the house. Lucy began laughing with Labordette; the Count de

Vandeuvres was craning his neck in conversation behind Blanche’s sturdy

shoulders, while Fauchery, out of the corners of his eyes, took stock

of the Muffats, of whom the count appeared very serious, as though he

had not understood the allusions, and the countess smiled vaguely, her

eyes lost in reverie. But on a sudden, in this uncomfortable state of

things, the applause of the clapping contingent rattled out with the

regularity of platoon firing. People turned toward the stage. Was it

Nana at last? This Nana made one wait with a vengeance.

It was a deputation of mortals whom Ganymede and Iris had introduced,

respectable middle-class persons, deceived husbands, all of them, and

they came before the master of the gods to proffer a complaint against

Venus, who was assuredly inflaming their good ladies with an excess of

ardor. The chorus, in quaint, dolorous tones, broken by silences full

of pantomimic admissions, caused great amusement. A neat phrase went

the round of the house: “The cuckolds’ chorus, the cuckolds’ chorus,”

and it “caught on,” for there was an encore. The singers’ heads were

droll; their faces were discovered to be in keeping with the phrase,

especially that of a fat man which was as round as the moon. Meanwhile

Vulcan arrived in a towering rage, demanding back his wife who had

slipped away three days ago. The chorus resumed their plaint, calling

on Vulcan, the god of the cuckolds. Vulcan’s part was played by Fontan,

a comic actor of talent, at once vulgar and original, and he had a role

of the wildest whimsicality and was got up as a village blacksmith,

fiery red wig, bare arms tattooed with arrow-pierced hearts and all the

rest of it. A woman’s voice cried in a very high key, “Oh, isn’t he

ugly?” and all the ladies laughed and applauded.

Then followed a scene which seemed interminable. Jupiter in the course

of it seemed never to be going to finish assembling the Council of Gods

in order to submit thereto the deceived husband’s requests. And still

no Nana! Was the management keeping Nana for the fall of the curtain

then? So long a period of expectancy had ended by annoying the public.

Their murmurings began again.

“It’s going badly,” said Mignon radiantly to Steiner. “She’ll get a

pretty reception; you’ll see!”

At that very moment the clouds at the back of the stage were cloven

apart and Venus appeared. Exceedingly tall, exceedingly strong, for her

eighteen years, Nana, in her goddess’s white tunic and with her light

hair simply flowing unfastened over her shoulders, came down to the

footlights with a quiet certainty of movement and a laugh of greeting

for the public and struck up her grand ditty:

“When Venus roams at eventide.”

From the second verse onward people looked at each other all over the

house. Was this some jest, some wager on Bordenave’s part? Never had a

more tuneless voice been heard or one managed with less art. Her

manager judged of her excellently; she certainly sang like a squirt.

Nay, more, she didn’t even know how to deport herself on the stage: she

thrust her arms in front of her while she swayed her whole body to and

fro in a manner which struck the audience as unbecoming and

disagreeable. Cries of “Oh, oh!” were already rising in the pit and the

cheap places. There was a sound of whistling, too, when a voice in the

stalls, suggestive of a molting cockerel, cried out with great

conviction:

“That’s very smart!”

All the house looked round. It was the cherub, the truant from the

boarding-school, who sat with his fine eyes very wide open and his fair

face glowing very hotly at sight of Nana. When he saw everybody turning

toward him he grew extremely red at the thought of having thus

unconsciously spoken aloud. Daguenet, his neighbor, smilingly examined

him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and no longer anxious to

hiss; while the young gentlemen in white gloves, fascinated in their

turn by Nana’s gracious contours, lolled back in their seats and

applauded.

“That’s it! Well done! Bravo!”

Nana, in the meantime, seeing the house laughing, began to laugh

herself. The gaiety of all redoubled itself. She was an amusing

creature, all the same, was that fine girl! Her laughter made a love of

a little dimple appear in her chin. She stood there waiting, not bored

in the least, familiar with her audience, falling into step with them

at once, as though she herself were admitting with a wink that she had

not two farthings’ worth of talent but that it did not matter at all,

that, in fact, she had other good points. And then after having made a

sign to the conductor which plainly signified, “Go ahead, old boy!” she

began her second verse:

“’Tis Venus who at midnight passes—”

Still the same acidulated voice, only that now it tickled the public in

the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to give a

little shiver of pleasure. Nana still smiled her smile: it lit up her

little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were of the

clearest blue. When she came to certain rather lively verses a delicate

sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, the rosy nostrils of which

lifted and fell, while a bright flush suffused her cheeks. She still

swung herself up and down, for she only knew how to do that. And the

trick was no longer voted ugly; on the contrary, the men raised their

opera glasses. When she came to the end of a verse her voice completely

failed her, and she was well aware that she never would get through

with it. Thereupon, rather than fret herself, she kicked up her leg,

which forthwith was roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent

sharply backward, so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and

stretched her arms out. Applause burst forth on all sides. In the

twinkling of an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the

stage, presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators’ gaze, a neck

where the red-gold hair showed like some animal’s fell. Then the

plaudits became frantic.

The close of the act was not so exciting. Vulcan wanted to slap Venus.

The gods held a consultation and decided to go and hold an inquiry on

earth before granting the deceived husband satisfaction. It was then

that Diana surprised a tender conversation between Venus and Mars and

vowed that she would not take her eyes off them during the whole of the

voyage. There was also a scene where Love, played by a little

twelve-year-old chit, answered every question put to her with “Yes,

Mamma! No, Mamma!” in a winy-piny tone, her fingers in her nose. At

last Jupiter, with the severity of a master who is growing cross, shut

Love up in a dark closet, bidding her conjugate the verb “I love”

twenty times. The finale was more appreciated: it was a chorus which

both troupe and orchestra performed with great brilliancy. But the

curtain once down, the clappers tried in vain to obtain a call, while

the whole house was already up and making for the doors.

The crowd trampled and jostled, jammed, as it were, between the rows of

seats, and in so doing exchanged expressions. One phrase only went

round:

“It’s idiotic.” A critic was saying that it would be one’s duty to do a

pretty bit of slashing. The piece, however, mattered very little, for

people were talking about Nana before everything else. Fauchery and La

Faloise, being among the earliest to emerge, met Steiner and Mignon in

the passage outside the stalls. In this gaslit gut of a place, which

was as narrow and circumscribed as a gallery in a mine, one was

well-nigh suffocated. They stopped a moment at the foot of the stairs

on the right of the house, protected by the final curve of the

balusters. The audience from the cheap places were coming down the

steps with a continuous tramp of heavy boots; a stream of black dress

coats was passing, while an attendant was making every possible effort

to protect a chair, on which she had piled up coats and cloaks, from

the onward pushing of the crowd.

“Surely I know her,” cried Steiner, the moment he perceived Fauchery.

“I’m certain I’ve seen her somewhere—at the casino, I imagine, and she

got herself taken up there—she was so drunk.”

“As for me,” said the journalist, “I don’t quite know where it was. I

am like you; I certainly have come across her.”

He lowered his voice and asked, laughing:

“At the Tricons’, perhaps.”

“Egad, it was in a dirty place,” Mignon declared. He seemed

exasperated. “It’s disgusting that the public give such a reception to

the first trollop that comes by. There’ll soon be no more decent women

on the stage. Yes, I shall end by forbidding Rose to play.”

Fauchery could not restrain a smile. Meanwhile the downward shuffle of

the heavy shoes on the steps did not cease, and a little man in a

workman’s cap was heard crying in a drawling voice:

“Oh my, she ain’t no wopper! There’s some pickings there!”

In the passage two young men, delicately curled and formally

resplendent in turndown collars and the rest, were disputing together.

One of them was repeating the words, “Beastly, beastly!” without

stating any reasons; the other was replying with the words, “Stunning,

stunning!” as though he, too, disdained all argument.

La Faloise declared her to be quite the thing; only he ventured to

opine that she would be better still if she were to cultivate her

voice. Steiner, who was no longer listening, seemed to awake with a

start. Whatever happens, one must wait, he thought. Perhaps everything

will be spoiled in the following acts. The public had shown

complaisance, but it was certainly not yet taken by storm. Mignon swore

that the piece would never finish, and when Fauchery and La Faloise

left them in order to go up to the foyer he took Steiner’s arm and,

leaning hard against his shoulder, whispered in his ear:

“You’re going to see my wife’s costume for the second act, old fellow.

It IS just blackguardly.”

Upstairs in the foyer three glass chandeliers burned with a brilliant

light. The two cousins hesitated an instant before entering, for the

widely opened glazed doors afforded a view right through the gallery—a

view of a surging sea of heads, which two currents, as it were, kept in

a continuous eddying movement. But they entered after all. Five or six

groups of men, talking very loudly and gesticulating, were obstinately

discussing the play amid these violent interruptions; others were

filing round, their heels, as they turned, sounding sharply on the

waxed floor. To right and left, between columns of variegated imitation

marble, women were sitting on benches covered with red velvet and

viewing the passing movement of the crowd with an air of fatigue as

though the heat had rendered them languid. In the lofty mirrors behind

them one saw the reflection of their chignons. At the end of the room,

in front of the bar, a man with a huge corporation was drinking a glass

of fruit syrup.

But Fauchery, in order to breathe more freely, had gone to the balcony.

La Faloise, who was studying the photographs of actresses hung in

frames alternating with the mirrors between the columns, ended by

following him. They had extinguished the line of gas jets on the facade

of the theater, and it was dark and very cool on the balcony, which

seemed to them unoccupied. Solitary and enveloped in shadow, a young

man was standing, leaning his arms on the stone balustrade, in the

recess to the right. He was smoking a cigarette, of which the burning

end shone redly. Fauchery recognized Daguenet. They shook hands warmly.

“What are you after there, my dear fellow?” asked the journalist.

“You’re hiding yourself in holes and crannies—you, a man who never

leaves the stalls on a first night!”

“But I’m smoking, you see,” replied Daguenet.

Then Fauchery, to put him out of countenance:

“Well, well! What’s your opinion of the new actress? She’s being

roughly handled enough in the passages.”

“Bah!” muttered Daguenet. “They’re people whom she’ll have had nothing

to do with!”

That was the sum of his criticism of Nana’s talent. La Faloise leaned

forward and looked down at the boulevard. Over against them the windows

of a hotel and of a club were brightly lit up, while on the pavement

below a dark mass of customers occupied the tables of the Café de

Madrid. Despite the lateness of the hour the crowd were still crushing

and being crushed; people were advancing with shortened step; a throng

was constantly emerging from the Passage Jouffroy; individuals stood

waiting five or six minutes before they could cross the roadway, to

such a distance did the string of carriages extend.

“What a moving mass! And what a noise!” La Faloise kept reiterating,

for Paris still astonished him.

The bell rang for some time; the foyer emptied. There was a hurrying of

people in the passages. The curtain was already up when whole bands of

spectators re-entered the house amid the irritated expressions of those

who were once more in their places. Everyone took his seat again with

an animated look and renewed attention. La Faloise directed his first

glance in Gaga’s direction, but he was dumfounded at seeing by her side

the tall fair man who but recently had been in Lucy’s stage box.

“What IS that man’s name?” he asked.

Fauchery failed to observe him.

“Ah yes, it’s Labordette,” he said at last with the same careless

movement. The scenery of the second act came as a surprise. It

represented a suburban Shrove Tuesday dance at the Boule Noire.

Masqueraders were trolling a catch, the chorus of which was accompanied

with a tapping of their heels. This ’Arryish departure, which nobody

had in the least expected, caused so much amusement that the house

encored the catch. And it was to this entertainment that the divine

band, let astray by Iris, who falsely bragged that he knew the Earth

well, were now come in order to proceed with their inquiry. They had

put on disguises so as to preserve their incognito. Jupiter came on the

stage as King Dagobert, with his breeches inside out and a huge tin

crown on his head. Phoebus appeared as the Postillion of Lonjumeau and

Minerva as a Norman nursemaid. Loud bursts of merriment greeted Mars,

who wore an outrageous uniform, suggestive of an Alpine admiral. But

the shouts of laughter became uproarious when Neptune came in view,

clad in a blouse, a high, bulging workman’s cap on his head, lovelocks

glued to his temples. Shuffling along in slippers, he cried in a thick

brogue.

“Well, I’m blessed! When ye’re a masher it’ll never do not to let ’em

love yer!”

There were some shouts of “Oh! Oh!” while the ladies held their fans

one degree higher. Lucy in her stage box laughed so obstreperously that

Caroline Hequet silenced her with a tap of her fan.

From that moment forth the piece was saved—nay, more, promised a great

success. This carnival of the gods, this dragging in the mud of their

Olympus, this mock at a whole religion, a whole world of poetry,

appeared in the light of a royal entertainment. The fever of

irreverence gained the literary first-night world: legend was trampled

underfoot; ancient images were shattered. Jupiter’s make-up was

capital. Mars was a success. Royalty became a farce and the army a

thing of folly. When Jupiter, grown suddenly amorous of a little

laundress, began to knock off a mad cancan, Simonne, who was playing

the part of the laundress, launched a kick at the master of the

immortals’ nose and addressed him so drolly as “My big daddy!” that an

immoderate fit of laughter shook the whole house. While they were

dancing Phoebus treated Minerva to salad bowls of negus, and Neptune

sat in state among seven or eight women who regaled him with cakes.

Allusions were eagerly caught; indecent meanings were attached to them;

harmless phrases were diverted from their proper significations in the

light of exclamations issuing from the stalls. For a long time past the

theatrical public had not wallowed in folly more irreverent. It rested

them.

Nevertheless, the action of the piece advanced amid these fooleries.

Vulcan, as an elegant young man clad, down to his gloves, entirely in

yellow and with an eyeglass stuck in his eye, was forever running after

Venus, who at last made her appearance as a fishwife, a kerchief on her

head and her bosom, covered with big gold trinkets, in great evidence.

Nana was so white and plump and looked so natural in a part demanding

wide hips and a voluptuous mouth that she straightway won the whole

house. On her account Rose Mignon was forgotten, though she was made up

as a delicious baby, with a wicker-work burlet on her head and a short

muslin frock and had just sighed forth Diana’s plaints in a sweetly

pretty voice. The other one, the big wench who slapped her thighs and

clucked like a hen, shed round her an odor of life, a sovereign

feminine charm, with which the public grew intoxicated. From the second

act onward everything was permitted her. She might hold herself

awkwardly; she might fail to sing some note in tune; she might forget

her words—it mattered not: she had only to turn and laugh to raise

shouts of applause. When she gave her famous kick from the hip the

stalls were fired, and a glow of passion rose upward, upward, from

gallery to gallery, till it reached the gods. It was a triumph, too,

when she led the dance. She was at home in that: hand on hip, she

enthroned Venus in the gutter by the pavement side. And the music

seemed made for her plebeian voice—shrill, piping music, with

reminiscences of Saint-Cloud Fair, wheezings of clarinets and playful

trills on the part of the little flutes.

Two numbers were again encored. The opening waltz, that waltz with the

naughty rhythmic beat, had returned and swept the gods with it. Juno,

as a peasant woman, caught Jupiter and his little laundress cleverly

and boxed his ears. Diana, surprising Venus in the act of making an

assignation with Mars, made haste to indicate hour and place to Vulcan,

who cried, “I’ve hit on a plan!” The rest of the act did not seem very

clear. The inquiry ended in a final galop after which Jupiter,

breathless, streaming with perspiration and minus his crown, declared

that the little women of Earth were delicious and that the men were all

to blame.

The curtain was falling, when certain voices, rising above the storm of

bravos, cried uproariously:

“All! All!”

Thereupon the curtain rose again; the artistes reappeared hand in hand.

In the middle of the line Nana and Rose Mignon stood side by side,

bowing and curtsying. The audience applauded; the clappers shouted

acclamations. Then little by little the house emptied.

“I must go and pay my respects to the Countess Muffat,” said La

Faloise. “Exactly so; you’ll present me,” replied Fauchery; “we’ll go

down afterward.”

But it was not easy to get to the first-tier boxes. In the passage at

the top of the stairs there was a crush. In order to get forward at all

among the various groups you had to make yourself small and to slide

along, using your elbows in so doing. Leaning under a copper lamp,

where a jet of gas was burning, the bulky critic was sitting in

judgment on the piece in presence of an attentive circle. People in

passing mentioned his name to each other in muttered tones. He had

laughed the whole act through—that was the rumor going the round of the

passages—nevertheless, he was now very severe and spoke of taste and

morals. Farther off the thin-lipped critic was brimming over with a

benevolence which had an unpleasant aftertaste, as of milk turned sour.

Fauchery glanced along, scrutinizing the boxes through the round

openings in each door. But the Count de Vandeuvres stopped him with a

question, and when he was informed that the two cousins were going to

pay their respects to the Muffats, he pointed out to them box seven,

from which he had just emerged. Then bending down and whispering in the

journalist’s ear:

“Tell me, my dear fellow,” he said, “this Nana—surely she’s the girl we

saw one evening at the corner of the Rue de Provence?”

“By Jove, you’re right!” cried Fauchery. “I was saying that I had come

across her!”

La Faloise presented his cousin to Count Muffat de Beuville, who

appeared very frigid. But on hearing the name Fauchery the countess

raised her head and with a certain reserve complimented the

paragraphist on his articles in the Figaro. Leaning on the

velvet-covered support in front of her, she turned half round with a

pretty movement of the shoulders. They talked for a short time, and the

Universal Exhibition was mentioned.

“It will be very fine,” said the count, whose square-cut,

regular-featured face retained a certain gravity.

“I visited the Champ de Mars today and returned thence truly

astonished.”

“They say that things won’t be ready in time,” La Faloise ventured to

remark. “There’s infinite confusion there—”

But the count interrupted him in his severe voice:

“Things will be ready. The emperor desires it.”

Fauchery gaily recounted how one day, when he had gone down thither in

search of a subject for an article, he had come near spending all his

time in the aquarium, which was then in course of construction. The

countess smiled. Now and again she glanced down at the body of the

house, raising an arm which a white glove covered to the elbow and

fanning herself with languid hand. The house dozed, almost deserted.

Some gentlemen in the stalls had opened out newspapers, and ladies

received visits quite comfortably, as though they were at their own

homes. Only a well-bred whispering was audible under the great

chandelier, the light of which was softened in the fine cloud of dust

raised by the confused movements of the interval. At the different

entrances men were crowding in order to talk to ladies who remained

seated. They stood there motionless for a few seconds, craning forward

somewhat and displaying the great white bosoms of their shirt fronts.

“We count on you next Tuesday,” said the countess to La Faloise, and

she invited Fauchery, who bowed.

Not a word was said of the play; Nana’s name was not once mentioned.

The count was so glacially dignified that he might have been supposed

to be taking part at a sitting of the legislature. In order to explain

their presence that evening he remarked simply that his father-in-law

was fond of the theater. The door of the box must have remained open,

for the Marquis de Chouard, who had gone out in order to leave his seat

to the visitors, was back again. He was straightening up his tall, old

figure. His face looked soft and white under a broad-brimmed hat, and

with his restless eyes he followed the movements of the women who

passed.

The moment the countess had given her invitation Fauchery took his

leave, feeling that to talk about the play would not be quite the

thing. La Faloise was the last to quit the box. He had just noticed the

fair-haired Labordette, comfortably installed in the Count de

Vandeuvres’s stage box and chatting at very close quarters with Blanche

de Sivry.

“Gad,” he said after rejoining his cousin, “that Labordette knows all

the girls then! He’s with Blanche now.”

“Doubtless he knows them all,” replied Fauchery quietly. “What d’you

want to be taken for, my friend?”

The passage was somewhat cleared of people, and Fauchery was just about

to go downstairs when Lucy Stewart called him. She was quite at the

other end of the corridor, at the door of her stage box. They were

getting cooked in there, she said, and she took up the whole corridor

in company with Caroline Hequet and her mother, all three nibbling

burnt almonds. A box opener was chatting maternally with them. Lucy

fell out with the journalist. He was a pretty fellow; to be sure! He

went up to see other women and didn’t even come and ask if they were

thirsty! Then, changing the subject:

“You know, dear boy, I think Nana very nice.”

She wanted him to stay in the stage box for the last act, but he made

his escape, promising to catch them at the door afterward. Downstairs

in front of the theater Fauchery and La Faloise lit cigarettes. A great

gathering blocked the sidewalk, a stream of men who had come down from

the theater steps and were inhaling the fresh night air in the

boulevards, where the roar and battle had diminished.

Meanwhile Mignon had drawn Steiner away to the Café des Variétés.

Seeing Nana’s success, he had set to work to talk enthusiastically

about her, all the while observing the banker out of the corners of his

eyes. He knew him well; twice he had helped him to deceive Rose and

then, the caprice being over, had brought him back to her, faithful and

repentant. In the cafe the too numerous crowd of customers were

squeezing themselves round the marble-topped tables. Several were

standing up, drinking in a great hurry. The tall mirrors reflected this

thronging world of heads to infinity and magnified the narrow room

beyond measure with its three chandeliers, its moleskin-covered seats

and its winding staircase draped with red. Steiner went and seated

himself at a table in the first saloon, which opened full on the

boulevard, its doors having been removed rather early for the time of

year. As Fauchery and La Faloise were passing the banker stopped them.

“Come and take a bock with us, eh?” they said.

But he was too preoccupied by an idea; he wanted to have a bouquet

thrown to Nana. At last he called a waiter belonging to the cafe, whom

he familiarly addressed as Auguste. Mignon, who was listening, looked

at him so sharply that he lost countenance and stammered out:

“Two bouquets, Auguste, and deliver them to the attendant. A bouquet

for each of these ladies! Happy thought, eh?”

At the other end of the saloon, her shoulders resting against the frame

of a mirror, a girl, some eighteen years of age at the outside, was

leaning motionless in front of her empty glass as though she had been

benumbed by long and fruitless waiting. Under the natural curls of her

beautiful gray-gold hair a virginal face looked out at you with velvety

eyes, which were at once soft and candid.

She wore a dress of faded green silk and a round hat which blows had

dinted. The cool air of the night made her look very pale.

“Egad, there’s Satin,” murmured Fauchery when his eye lit upon her.

La Faloise questioned him. Oh dear, yes, she was a streetwalker—she

didn’t count. But she was such a scandalous sort that people amused

themselves by making her talk. And the journalist, raising his voice:

“What are you doing there, Satin?”

“I’m bogging,” replied Satin quietly without changing position.

The four men were charmed and fell a-laughing. Mignon assured them that

there was no need to hurry; it would take twenty minutes to set up the

scenery for the third act. But the two cousins, having drunk their

beer, wanted to go up into the theater again; the cold was making

itself felt. Then Mignon remained alone with Steiner, put his elbows on

the table and spoke to him at close quarters.

“It’s an understood thing, eh? We are to go to her house, and I’m to

introduce you. You know the thing’s quite between ourselves—my wife

needn’t know.”

Once more in their places, Fauchery and La Faloise noticed a pretty,

quietly dressed woman in the second tier of boxes. She was with a

serious-looking gentleman, a chief clerk at the office of the Ministry

of the Interior, whom La Faloise knew, having met him at the Muffats’.

As to Fauchery, he was under the impression that her name was Madame

Robert, a lady of honorable repute who had a lover, only one, and that

always a person of respectability.

But they had to turn round, for Daguenet was smiling at them. Now that

Nana had had a success he no longer hid himself: indeed, he had just

been scoring triumphs in the passages. By his side was the young truant

schoolboy, who had not quitted his seat, so stupefying was the state of

admiration into which Nana had plunged him. That was it, he thought;

that was the woman! And he blushed as he thought so and dragged his

gloves on and off mechanically. Then since his neighbor had spoken of

Nana, he ventured to question him.

“Will you pardon me for asking you, sir, but that lady who is acting—do

you know her?”

“Yes, I do a little,” murmured Daguenet with some surprise and

hesitation.

“Then you know her address?”

The question, addressed as it was to him, came so abruptly that he felt

inclined to respond with a box on the ear.

“No,” he said in a dry tone of voice.

And with that he turned his back. The fair lad knew that he had just

been guilty of some breach of good manners. He blushed more hotly than

ever and looked scared.

The traditional three knocks were given, and among the returning

throng, attendants, laden with pelisses and overcoats, bustled about at

a great rate in order to put away people’s things. The clappers

applauded the scenery, which represented a grotto on Mount Etna,

hollowed out in a silver mine and with sides glittering like new money.

In the background Vulcan’s forge glowed like a setting star. Diana,

since the second act, had come to a good understanding with the god,

who was to pretend that he was on a journey, so as to leave the way

clear for Venus and Mars. Then scarcely was Diana alone than Venus made

her appearance. A shiver of delight ran round the house. Nana was nude.

With quiet audacity she appeared in her nakedness, certain of the

sovereign power of her flesh. Some gauze enveloped her, but her rounded

shoulders, her Amazonian bosom, her wide hips, which swayed to and fro

voluptuously, her whole body, in fact, could be divined, nay discerned,

in all its foamlike whiteness of tint beneath the slight fabric she

wore. It was Venus rising from the waves with no veil save her tresses.

And when Nana lifted her arms the golden hairs in her armpits were

observable in the glare of the footlights. There was no applause.

Nobody laughed any more. The men strained forward with serious faces,

sharp features, mouths irritated and parched. A wind seemed to have

passed, a soft, soft wind, laden with a secret menace. Suddenly in the

bouncing child the woman stood discovered, a woman full of restless

suggestion, who brought with her the delirium of sex and opened the

gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was smiling still, but her

smile was now bitter, as of a devourer of men.

“By God,” said Fauchery quite simply to La Faloise.

Mars in the meantime, with his plume of feathers, came hurrying to the

trysting place and found himself between the two goddesses. Then ensued

a passage which Prullière played with great delicacy. Petted by Diana,

who wanted to make a final attack upon his feelings before delivering

him up to Vulcan, wheedled by Venus, whom the presence of her rival

excited, he gave himself up to these tender delights with the beatified

expression of a man in clover. Finally a grand trio brought the scene

to a close, and it was then that an attendant appeared in Lucy

Stewart’s box and threw on the stage two immense bouquets of white

lilacs. There was applause; Nana and Rose Mignon bowed, while Prullière

picked up the bouquets. Many of the occupants of the stalls turned

smilingly toward the ground-floor occupied by Steiner and Mignon. The

banker, his face blood-red, was suffering from little convulsive

twitchings of the chin, as though he had a stoppage in his throat.

What followed took the house by storm completely. Diana had gone off in

a rage, and directly afterward, Venus, sitting on a moss-clad seat,

called Mars to her. Never yet had a more glowing scene of seduction

been ventured on. Nana, her arms round Prullière’s neck, was drawing

him toward her when Fontan, with comically furious mimicry and an

exaggerated imitation of the face of an outraged husband who surprises

his wife in FLAGRANTE DELICTO, appeared at the back of the grotto. He

was holding the famous net with iron meshes. For an instant he poised

and swung it, as a fisherman does when he is going to make a cast, and

by an ingenious twist Venus and Mars were caught in the snare; the net

wrapped itself round them and held them motionless in the attitude of

happy lovers.

A murmur of applause swelled and swelled like a growing sigh. There was

some hand clapping, and every opera glass was fixed on Venus. Little by

little Nana had taken possession of the public, and now every man was

her slave.

A wave of lust had flowed from her as from an excited animal, and its

influence had spread and spread and spread till the whole house was

possessed by it. At that moment her slightest movement blew the flame

of desire: with her little finger she ruled men’s flesh. Backs were

arched and quivered as though unseen violin bows had been drawn across

their muscles; upon men’s shoulders appeared fugitive hairs, which flew

in air, blown by warm and wandering breaths, breathed one knew not from

what feminine mouth. In front of him Fauchery saw the truant schoolboy

half lifted from his seat by passion. Curiosity led him to look at the

Count de Vandeuvres—he was extremely pale, and his lips looked

pinched—at fat Steiner, whose face was purple to the verge of apoplexy;

at Labordette, ogling away with the highly astonished air of a horse

dealer admiring a perfectly shaped mare; at Daguenet, whose ears were

blood-red and twitching with enjoyment. Then a sudden idea made him

glance behind, and he marveled at what he saw in the Muffats’ box.

Behind the countess, who was white and serious as usual, the count was

sitting straight upright, with mouth agape and face mottled with red,

while close by him, in the shadow, the restless eyes of the Marquis de

Chouard had become catlike phosphorescent, full of golden sparkles. The

house was suffocating; people’s very hair grew heavy on their

perspiring heads. For three hours back the breath of the multitude had

filled and heated the atmosphere with a scent of crowded humanity.

Under the swaying glare of the gas the dust clouds in mid-air had grown

constantly denser as they hung motionless beneath the chandelier. The

whole house seemed to be oscillating, to be lapsing toward dizziness in

its fatigue and excitement, full, as it was, of those drowsy midnight

desires which flutter in the recesses of the bed of passion. And Nana,

in front of this languorous public, these fifteen hundred human beings

thronged and smothered in the exhaustion and nervous exasperation which

belong to the close of a spectacle, Nana still triumphed by right of

her marble flesh and that sexual nature of hers, which was strong

enough to destroy the whole crowd of her adorers and yet sustain no

injury.

The piece drew to a close. In answer to Vulcan’s triumphant summons all

the Olympians defiled before the lovers with ohs and ahs of

stupefaction and gaiety. Jupiter said, “I think it is light conduct on

your part, my son, to summon us to see such a sight as this.” Then a

reaction took place in favor of Venus. The chorus of cuckolds was again

ushered in by Iris and besought the master of the gods not to give

effect to its petition, for since women had lived at home, domestic

life was becoming impossible for the men: the latter preferred being

deceived and happy. That was the moral of the play. Then Venus was set

at liberty, and Vulcan obtained a partial divorce from her. Mars was

reconciled with Diana, and Jove, for the sake of domestic peace, packed

his little laundress off into a constellation. And finally they

extricated Love from his black hole, where instead of conjugating the

verb AMO he had been busy in the manufacture of “dollies.” The curtain

fell on an apotheosis, wherein the cuckolds’ chorus knelt and sang a

hymn of gratitude to Venus, who stood there with smiling lips, her

stature enhanced by her sovereign nudity.

The audience, already on their feet, were making for the exits. The

authors were mentioned, and amid a thunder of applause there were two

calls before the curtain. The shout of “Nana! Nana!” rang wildly forth.

Then no sooner was the house empty than it grew dark: the footlights

went out; the chandelier was turned down; long strips of gray canvas

slipped from the stage boxes and swathed the gilt ornamentation of the

galleries, and the house, lately so full of heat and noise, lapsed

suddenly into a heavy sleep, while a musty, dusty odor began to pervade

it. In the front of her box stood the Countess Muffat. Very erect and

closely wrapped up in her furs, she stared at the gathering shadows and

waited for the crowd to pass away.

In the passages the people were jostling the attendants, who hardly

knew what to do among the tumbled heaps of outdoor raiment. Fauchery

and La Faloise had hurried in order to see the crowd pass out. All

along the entrance hall men formed a living hedge, while down the

double staircase came slowly and in regular, complete formation two

interminable throngs of human beings. Steiner, in tow of Mignon, had

left the house among the foremost. The Count de Vandeuvres took his

departure with Blanche de Sivry on his arm. For a moment or two Gaga

and her daughter seemed doubtful how to proceed, but Labordette made

haste to go and fetch them a conveyance, the door whereof he gallantly

shut after them. Nobody saw Daguenet go by. As the truant schoolboy,

registering a mental vow to wait at the stage door, was running with

burning cheeks toward the Passage des Panoramas, of which he found the

gate closed, Satin, standing on the edge of the pavement, moved forward

and brushed him with her skirts, but he in his despair gave her a

savage refusal and vanished amid the crowd, tears of impotent desire in

his eyes. Members of the audience were lighting their cigars and

walking off, humming:

When Venus roams at eventide.

Satin had gone back in front of the Café des Variétés, where Auguste

let her eat the sugar that remained over from the customers’ orders. A

stout man, who came out in a very heated condition, finally carried her

off in the shadow of the boulevard, which was now gradually going to

sleep.

Still people kept coming downstairs. La Faloise was waiting for

Clarisse; Fauchery had promised to catch up Lucy Stewart with Caroline

Hequet and her mother. They came; they took up a whole corner of the

entrance hall and were laughing very loudly when the Muffats passed by

them with an icy expression. Bordenave had just then opened a little

door and, peeping out, had obtained from Fauchery the formal promise of

an article. He was dripping with perspiration, his face blazed, as

though he were drunk with success.

“You’re good for two hundred nights,” La Faloise said to him with

civility. “The whole of Paris will visit your theater.”

But Bordenave grew annoyed and, indicating with a jerk of his chin the

public who filled the entrance hall—a herd of men with parched lips and

ardent eyes, still burning with the enjoyment of Nana—he cried out

violently:

“Say ‘my brothel,’ you obstinate devil!”

CHAPTER II

At ten o’clock the next morning Nana was still asleep. She occupied the

second floor of a large new house in the Boulevard Haussmann, the

landlord of which let flats to single ladies in order by their means to

dry the paint. A rich merchant from Moscow, who had come to pass a

winter in Paris, had installed her there after paying six months’ rent

in advance. The rooms were too big for her and had never been

completely furnished. The vulgar sumptuosity of gilded consoles and

gilded chairs formed a crude contrast therein to the bric-a-brac of a

secondhand furniture shop—to mahogany round tables, that is to say, and

zinc candelabras, which sought to imitate Florentine bronze. All of

which smacked of the courtesan too early deserted by her first serious

protector and fallen back on shabby lovers, of a precarious first

appearance of a bad start, handicapped by refusals of credit and

threats of eviction.

Nana was sleeping on her face, hugging in her bare arms a pillow in

which she was burying cheeks grown pale in sleep. The bedroom and the

dressing room were the only two apartments which had been properly

furnished by a neighboring upholsterer. A ray of light, gliding in

under a curtain, rendered visible rosewood furniture and hangings and

chairbacks of figured damask with a pattern of big blue flowers on a

gray ground. But in the soft atmosphere of that slumbering chamber Nana

suddenly awoke with a start, as though surprised to find an empty place

at her side. She looked at the other pillow lying next to hers; there

was the dint of a human head among its flounces: it was still warm. And

groping with one hand, she pressed the knob of an electric bell by her

bed’s head.

“He’s gone then?” she asked the maid who presented herself.

“Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul went away not ten minutes back. As Madame

was tired, he did not wish to wake her. But he ordered me to tell

Madame that he would come tomorrow.”

As she spoke Zoé, the lady’s maid, opened the outer shutter. A flood of

daylight entered. Zoé, a dark brunette with hair in little plaits, had

a long canine face, at once livid and full of seams, a snub nose, thick

lips and two black eyes in continual movement.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” repeated Nana, who was not yet wide awake, “is

tomorrow the day?”

“Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul has always come on the Wednesday.”

“No, now I remember,” said the young woman, sitting up. “It’s all

changed. I wanted to tell him so this morning. He would run against the

nigger! We should have a nice to-do!”

“Madame did not warn me; I couldn’t be aware of it,” murmured Zoé.

“When Madame changes her days she will do well to tell me so that I may

know. Then the old miser is no longer due on the Tuesday?”

Between themselves they were wont thus gravely to nickname as “old

miser” and “nigger” their two paying visitors, one of whom was a

tradesman of economical tendencies from the Faubourg Saint-Denis, while

the other was a Walachian, a mock count, whose money, paid always at

the most irregular intervals, never looked as though it had been

honestly come by. Daguenet had made Nana give him the days subsequent

to the old miser’s visits, and as the trader had to be at home by eight

o’clock in the morning, the young man would watch for his departure

from Zoés kitchen and would take his place, which was still quite warm,

till ten o’clock. Then he, too, would go about his business. Nana and

he were wont to think it a very comfortable arrangement.

“So much the worse,” said Nana; “I’ll write to him this afternoon. And

if he doesn’t receive my letter, then tomorrow you will stop him coming

in.”

In the meantime Zoé was walking softly about the room. She spoke of

yesterday’s great hit. Madame had shown such talent; she sang so well!

Ah! Madame need not fret at all now!

Nana, her elbow dug into her pillow, only tossed her head in reply. Her

nightdress had slipped down on her shoulders, and her hair, unfastened

and entangled, flowed over them in masses.

“Without doubt,” she murmured, becoming thoughtful; “but what’s to be

done to gain time? I’m going to have all sorts of bothers today. Now

let’s see, has the porter come upstairs yet this morning?”

Then both the women talked together seriously. Nana owed three

quarters’ rent; the landlord was talking of seizing the furniture.

Then, too, there was a perfect downpour of creditors; there was a

livery-stable man, a needlewoman, a ladies’ tailor, a charcoal dealer

and others besides, who came every day and settled themselves on a

bench in the little hall. The charcoal dealer especially was a dreadful

fellow—he shouted on the staircase. But Nana’s greatest cause of

distress was her little Louis, a child she had given birth to when she

was sixteen and now left in charge of a nurse in a village in the

neighborhood of Rambouillet. This woman was clamoring for the sum of

three hundred francs before she would consent to give the little Louis

back to her. Nana, since her last visit to the child, had been seized

with a fit of maternal love and was desperate at the thought that she

could not realize a project, which had now become a hobby with her.

This was to pay off the nurse and to place the little man with his

aunt, Mme Lerat, at the Batignolles, whither she could go and see him

as often as she liked.

Meanwhile the lady’s maid kept hinting that her mistress ought to have

confided her necessities to the old miser.

“To be sure, I told him everything,” cried Nana, “and he told me in

answer that he had too many big liabilities. He won’t go beyond his

thousand francs a month. The nigger’s beggared just at present; I

expect he’s lost at play. As to that poor Mimi, he stands in great need

of a loan himself; a fall in stocks has cleaned him out—he can’t even

bring me flowers now.”

She was speaking of Daguenet. In the self-abandonment of her awakening

she had no secrets from Zoé, and the latter, inured to such

confidences, received them with respectful sympathy. Since Madame

condescended to speak to her of her affairs she would permit herself to

say what she thought. Besides, she was very fond of Madame; she had

left Mme Blanche for the express purpose of taking service with her,

and heaven knew Mme Blanche was straining every nerve to have her

again! Situations weren’t lacking; she was pretty well known, but she

would have stayed with Madame even in narrow circumstances, because she

believed in Madame’s future. And she concluded by stating her advice

with precision. When one was young one often did silly things. But this

time it was one’s duty to look alive, for the men only thought of

having their fun. Oh dear, yes! Things would right themselves. Madame

had only to say one word in order to quiet her creditors and find the

money she stood in need of.

“All that doesn’t help me to three hundred francs,” Nana kept repeating

as she plunged her fingers into the vagrant convolutions of her back

hair. “I must have three hundred francs today, at once! It’s stupid not

to know anyone who’ll give you three hundred francs.”

She racked her brains. She would have sent Mme Lerat, whom she was

expecting that very morning, to Rambouillet. The counteraction of her

sudden fancy spoiled for her the triumph of last night. Among all those

men who had cheered her, to think that there wasn’t one to bring her

fifteen louis! And then one couldn’t accept money in that way! Dear

heaven, how unfortunate she was! And she kept harking back again to the

subject of her baby—he had blue eyes like a cherub’s; he could lisp

“Mamma” in such a funny voice that you were ready to die of laughing!

But at this moment the electric bell at the outer door was heard to

ring with its quick and tremulous vibration. Zoé returned, murmuring

with a confidential air:

“It’s a woman.”

She had seen this woman a score of times, only she made believe never

to recognize her and to be quite ignorant of the nature of her

relations with ladies in difficulties.

“She has told me her name—Madame Tricon.”

“The Tricon,” cried Nana. “Dear me! That’s true. I’d forgotten her.

Show her in.”

Zoé ushered in a tall old lady who wore ringlets and looked like a

countess who haunts lawyers’ offices. Then she effaced herself,

disappearing noiselessly with the lithe, serpentine movement wherewith

she was wont to withdraw from a room on the arrival of a gentleman.

However, she might have stayed. The Tricon did not even sit down. Only

a brief exchange of words took place.

“I have someone for you today. Do you care about it?”

“Yes. How much?”

“Twenty louis.”

“At what o’clock?”

“At three. It’s settled then?”

“It’s settled.”

Straightway the Tricon talked of the state of the weather. It was dry

weather, pleasant for walking. She had still four or five persons to

see. And she took her departure after consulting a small memorandum

book. When she was once more alone Nana appeared comforted. A slight

shiver agitated her shoulders, and she wrapped herself softly up again

in her warm bedclothes with the lazy movements of a cat who is

susceptible to cold. Little by little her eyes closed, and she lay

smiling at the thought of dressing Louiset prettily on the following

day, while in the slumber into which she once more sank last night’s

long, feverish dream of endlessly rolling applause returned like a

sustained accompaniment to music and gently soothed her lassitude.

At eleven o’clock, when Zoé showed Mme Lerat into the room, Nana was

still asleep. But she woke at the noise and cried out at once:

“It’s you. You’ll go to Rambouillet today?”

“That’s what I’ve come for,” said the aunt. “There’s a train at twenty

past twelve. I’ve got time to catch it.”

“No, I shall only have the money by and by,” replied the young woman,

stretching herself and throwing out her bosom. “You’ll have lunch, and

then we’ll see.”

Zoé brought a dressing jacket.

“The hairdresser’s here, madame,” she murmured.

But Nana did not wish to go into the dressing room. And she herself

cried out:

“Come in, Francis.”

A well-dressed man pushed open the door and bowed. Just at that moment

Nana was getting out of bed, her bare legs in full view. But she did

not hurry and stretched her hands out so as to let Zoé draw on the

sleeves of the dressing jacket. Francis, on his part, was quite at his

ease and without turning away waited with a sober expression on his

face.

“Perhaps Madame has not seen the papers. There’s a very nice article in

the Figaro.”

He had brought the journal. Mme Lerat put on her spectacles and read

the article aloud, standing in front of the window as she did so. She

had the build of a policeman, and she drew herself up to her full

height, while her nostrils seemed to compress themselves whenever she

uttered a gallant epithet. It was a notice by Fauchery, written just

after the performance, and it consisted of a couple of very glowing

columns, full of witty sarcasm about the artist and of broad admiration

for the woman.

“Excellent!” Francis kept repeating.

Nana laughed good-humoredly at his chaffing her about her voice! He was

a nice fellow, was that Fauchery, and she would repay him for his

charming style of writing. Mme Lerat, after having reread the notice,

roundly declared that the men all had the devil in their shanks, and

she refused to explain her self further, being fully satisfied with a

brisk allusion of which she alone knew the meaning. Francis finished

turning up and fastening Nana’s hair. He bowed and said:

“I’ll keep my eye on the evening papers. At half-past five as usual,

eh?”

“Bring me a pot of pomade and a pound of burnt almonds from

Boissier’s,” Nana cried to him across the drawing room just as he was

shutting the door after him.

Then the two women, once more alone, recollected that they had not

embraced, and they planted big kisses on each other’s cheeks. The

notice warmed their hearts. Nana, who up till now had been half asleep,

was again seized with the fever of her triumph. Dear, dear, ’twas Rose

Mignon that would be spending a pleasant morning! Her aunt having been

unwilling to go to the theater because, as she averred, sudden emotions

ruined her stomach, Nana set herself to describe the events of the

evening and grew intoxicated at her own recital, as though all Paris

had been shaken to the ground by the applause. Then suddenly

interrupting herself, she asked with a laugh if one would ever have

imagined it all when she used to go traipsing about the Rue de la

Goutte-d’Or. Mme Lerat shook her head. No, no, one never could have

foreseen it! And she began talking in her turn, assuming a serious air

as she did so and calling Nana “daughter.” Wasn’t she a second mother

to her since the first had gone to rejoin Papa and Grandmamma? Nana was

greatly softened and on the verge of tears. But Mme Lerat declared that

the past was the past—oh yes, to be sure, a dirty past with things in

it which it was as well not to stir up every day. She had left off

seeing her niece for a long time because among the family she was

accused of ruining herself along with the little thing. Good God, as

though that were possible! She didn’t ask for confidences; she believed

that Nana had always lived decently, and now it was enough for her to

have found her again in a fine position and to observe her kind

feelings toward her son. Virtue and hard work were still the only

things worth anything in this world.

“Who is the baby’s father?” she said, interrupting herself, her eyes

lit up with an expression of acute curiosity.

Nana was taken by surprise and hesitated a moment.

“A gentleman,” she replied.

“There now!” rejoined the aunt. “They declared that you had him by a

stonemason who was in the habit of beating you. Indeed, you shall tell

me all about it someday; you know I’m discreet! Tut, tut, I’ll look

after him as though he were a prince’s son.”

She had retired from business as a florist and was living on her

savings, which she had got together sou by sou, till now they brought

her in an income of six hundred francs a year. Nana promised to rent

some pretty little lodgings for her and to give her a hundred francs a

month besides. At the mention of this sum the aunt forgot herself and

shrieked to her niece, bidding her squeeze their throats, since she had

them in her grasp. She was meaning the men, of course. Then they both

embraced again, but in the midst of her rejoicing Nana’s face, as she

led the talk back to the subject of Louiset, seemed to be overshadowed

by a sudden recollection.

“Isn’t it a bore I’ve got to go out at three o’clock?” she muttered.

“It IS a nuisance!”

Just then Zoé came in to say that lunch was on the table. They went

into the dining room, where an old lady was already seated at table.

She had not taken her hat off, and she wore a dark dress of an

indecisive color midway between puce and goose dripping. Nana did not

seem surprised at sight of her. She simply asked her why she hadn’t

come into the bedroom.

“I heard voices,” replied the old lady. “I thought you had company.”

Mme Maloir, a respectable-looking and mannerly woman, was Nana’s old

friend, chaperon and companion. Mme Lerat’s presence seemed to fidget

her at first. Afterward, when she became aware that it was Nana’s aunt,

she looked at her with a sweet expression and a die-away smile. In the

meantime Nana, who averred that she was as hungry as a wolf, threw

herself on the radishes and gobbled them up without bread. Mme Lerat

had become ceremonious; she refused the radishes as provocative of

phlegm. By and by when Zoé had brought in the cutlets Nana just chipped

the meat and contented herself with sucking the bones. Now and again

she scrutinized her old friend’s hat out of the corners of her eyes.

“It’s the new hat I gave you?” she ended by saying.

“Yes, I made it up,” murmured Mme Maloir, her mouth full of meat.

The hat was smart to distraction. In front it was greatly exaggerated,

and it was adorned with a lofty feather. Mme Maloir had a mania for

doing up all her hats afresh; she alone knew what really became her,

and with a few stitches she could manufacture a toque out of the most

elegant headgear. Nana, who had bought her this very hat in order not

to be ashamed of her when in her company out of doors, was very near

being vexed.

“Push it up, at any rate,” she cried.

“No, thank you,” replied the old lady with dignity. “It doesn’t get in

my way; I can eat very comfortably as it is.”

After the cutlets came cauliflowers and the remains of a cold chicken.

But at the arrival of each successive dish Nana made a little face,

hesitated, sniffed and left her plateful untouched. She finished her

lunch with the help of preserve.

Dessert took a long time. Zoé did not remove the cloth before serving

the coffee. Indeed, the ladies simply pushed back their plates before

taking it. They talked continually of yesterday’s charming evening.

Nana kept rolling cigarettes, which she smoked, swinging up and down on

her backward-tilted chair. And as Zoé had remained behind and was

lounging idly against the sideboard, it came about that the company

were favored with her history. She said she was the daughter of a

midwife at Bercy who had failed in business. First of all she had taken

service with a dentist and after that with an insurance agent, but

neither place suited her, and she thereupon enumerated, not without a

certain amount of pride, the names of the ladies with whom she had

served as lady’s maid. Zoé spoke of these ladies as one who had had the

making of their fortunes. It was very certain that without her more

than one would have had some queer tales to tell. Thus one day, when

Mme Blanche was with M. Octave, in came the old gentleman. What did Zoé

do? She made believe to tumble as she crossed the drawing room; the old

boy rushed up to her assistance, flew to the kitchen to fetch her a

glass of water, and M. Octave slipped away.

“Oh, she’s a good girl, you bet!” said Nana, who was listening to her

with tender interest and a sort of submissive admiration.

“Now I’ve had my troubles,” began Mme Lerat. And edging up to Mme

Maloir, she imparted to her certain confidential confessions. Both

ladies took lumps of sugar dipped in cognac and sucked them. But Mme

Maloir was wont to listen to other people’s secrets without even

confessing anything concerning herself. People said that she lived on a

mysterious allowance in a room whither no one ever penetrated.

All of a sudden Nana grew excited.

“Don’t play with the knives, Aunt. You know it gives me a turn!”

Without thinking about it Mme Lerat had crossed two knives on the table

in front of her. Notwithstanding this, the young woman defended herself

from the charge of superstition. Thus, if the salt were upset, it meant

nothing, even on a Friday; but when it came to knives, that was too

much of a good thing; that had never proved fallacious. There could be

no doubt that something unpleasant was going to happen to her. She

yawned, and then with an air, of profound boredom:

“Two o’clock already. I must go out. What a nuisance!”

The two old ladies looked at one another. The three women shook their

heads without speaking. To be sure, life was not always amusing. Nana

had tilted her chair back anew and lit a cigarette, while the others

sat pursing up their lips discreetly, thinking deeply philosophic

thoughts.

“While waiting for you to return we’ll play a game of bezique,” said

Mme Maloir after a short silence. “Does Madame play bezique?”

Certainly Mme Lerat played it, and that to perfection. It was no good

troubling Zoé, who had vanished—a corner of the table would do quite

well. And they pushed back the tablecloth over the dirty plates. But as

Mme Maloir was herself going to take the cards out of a drawer in the

sideboard, Nana remarked that before she sat down to her game it would

be very nice of her if she would write her a letter. It bored Nana to

write letters; besides, she was not sure of her spelling, while her old

friend could turn out the most feeling epistles. She ran to fetch some

good note paper in her bedroom. An inkstand consisting of a bottle of

ink worth about three sous stood untidily on one of the pieces of

furniture, with a pen deep in rust beside it. The letter was for

Daguenet. Mme Maloir herself wrote in her bold English hand, “My

darling little man,” and then she told him not to come tomorrow because

“that could not be” but hastened to add that “she was with him in

thought at every moment of the day, whether she were near or far away.”

“And I end with ‘a thousand kisses,’” she murmured.

Mme Lerat had shown her approval of each phrase with an emphatic nod.

Her eyes were sparkling; she loved to find herself in the midst of love

affairs. Nay, she was seized with a desire to add some words of her own

and, assuming a tender look and cooing like a dove, she suggested:

“A thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes.”

“That’s the thing: ‘a thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes’!” Nana

repeated, while the two old ladies assumed a beatified expression.

Zoé was rung for and told to take the letter down to a commissionaire.

She had just been talking with the theater messenger, who had brought

her mistress the day’s playbill and rehearsal arrangements, which he

had forgotten in the morning. Nana had this individual ushered in and

got him to take the latter to Daguenet on his return. Then she put

questions to him. Oh yes! M. Bordenave was very pleased; people had

already taken seats for a week to come; Madame had no idea of the

number of people who had been asking her address since morning. When

the man had taken his departure Nana announced that at most she would

only be out half an hour. If there were any visitors Zoé would make

them wait. As she spoke the electric bell sounded. It was a creditor in

the shape of the man of whom she jobbed her carriages. He had settled

himself on the bench in the anteroom, and the fellow was free to

twiddle his thumbs till night—there wasn’t the least hurry now.

“Come, buck up!” said Nana, still torpid with laziness and yawning and

stretching afresh. “I ought to be there now!”

Yet she did not budge but kept watching the play of her aunt, who had

just announced four aces. Chin on hand, she grew quite engrossed in it

but gave a violent start on hearing three o’clock strike.

“Good God!” she cried roughly.

Then Mme Maloir, who was counting the tricks she had won with her tens

and aces, said cheeringly to her in her soft voice:

“It would be better, dearie, to give up your expedition at once.”

“No, be quick about it,” said Mme Lerat, shuffling the cards. “I shall

take the half-past four o’clock train if you’re back here with the

money before four o’clock.”

“Oh, there’ll be no time lost,” she murmured.

Ten minutes after Zoé helped her on with a dress and a hat. It didn’t

matter much if she were badly turned out. Just as she was about to go

downstairs there was a new ring at the bell. This time it was the

charcoal dealer. Very well, he might keep the livery-stable keeper

company—it would amuse the fellows. Only, as she dreaded a scene, she

crossed the kitchen and made her escape by the back stairs. She often

went that way and in return had only to lift up her flounces.

“When one is a good mother anything’s excusable,” said Mme Maloir

sententiously when left alone with Mme Lerat.

“Four kings,” replied this lady, whom the play greatly excited.

And they both plunged into an interminable game.

The table had not been cleared. The smell of lunch and the cigarette

smoke filled the room with an ambient, steamy vapor. The two ladies had

again set to work dipping lumps of sugar in brandy and sucking the

same. For twenty minutes at least they played and sucked simultaneously

when, the electric bell having rung a third time, Zoé bustled into the

room and roughly disturbed them, just as if they had been her own

friends.

“Look here, that’s another ring. You can’t stay where you are. If many

folks call I must have the whole flat. Now off you go, off you go!”

Mme Maloir was for finishing the game, but Zoé looked as if she was

going to pounce down on the cards, and so she decided to carry them off

without in any way altering their positions, while Mme Lerat undertook

the removal of the brandy bottle, the glasses and the sugar. Then they

both scudded to the kitchen, where they installed themselves at the

table in an empty space between the dishcloths, which were spread out

to dry, and the bowl still full of dishwater.

“We said it was three hundred and forty. It’s your turn.”

“I play hearts.”

When Zoé returned she found them once again absorbed. After a silence,

as Mme Lerat was shuffling, Mme Maloir asked who it was.

“Oh, nobody to speak of,” replied the servant carelessly; “a slip of a

lad! I wanted to send him away again, but he’s such a pretty boy with

never a hair on his chin and blue eyes and a girl’s face! So I told him

to wait after all. He’s got an enormous bouquet in his hand, which he

never once consented to put down. One would like to catch him one—a

brat like that who ought to be at school still!”

Mme Lerat went to fetch a water bottle to mix herself some brandy and

water, the lumps of sugar having rendered her thirsty. Zoé muttered

something to the effect that she really didn’t mind if she drank

something too. Her mouth, she averred, was as bitter as gall.

“So you put him—?” continued Mme Maloir.

“Oh yes, I put him in the closet at the end of the room, the little

unfurnished one. There’s only one of my lady’s trunks there and a

table. It’s there I stow the lubbers.”

And she was putting plenty of sugar in her grog when the electric bell

made her jump. Oh, drat it all! Wouldn’t they let her have a drink in

peace? If they were to have a peal of bells things promised well.

Nevertheless, she ran off to open the door. Returning presently, she

saw Mme Maloir questioning her with a glance.

“It’s nothing,” she said, “only a bouquet.”

All three refreshed themselves, nodding to each other in token of

salutation. Then while Zoé was at length busy clearing the table,

bringing the plates out one by one and putting them in the sink, two

other rings followed close upon one another. But they weren’t serious,

for while keeping the kitchen informed of what was going on she twice

repeated her disdainful expression:

“Nothing, only a bouquet.”

Notwithstanding which, the old ladies laughed between two of their

tricks when they heard her describe the looks of the creditors in the

anteroom after the flowers had arrived. Madame would find her bouquets

on her toilet table. What a pity it was they cost such a lot and that

you could only get ten sous for them! Oh dear, yes, plenty of money was

wasted!

“For my part,” said Mme Maloir, “I should be quite content if every day

of my life I got what the men in Paris had spent on flowers for the

women.”

“Now, you know, you’re not hard to please,” murmured Mme Lerat. “Why,

one would have only just enough to buy thread with. Four queens, my

dear.”

It was ten minutes to four. Zoé was astonished, could not understand

why her mistress was out so long. Ordinarily when Madame found herself

obliged to go out in the afternoons she got it over in double-quick

time. But Mme Maloir declared that one didn’t always manage things as

one wished. Truly, life was beset with obstacles, averred Mme Lerat.

The best course was to wait. If her niece was long in coming it was

because her occupations detained her; wasn’t it so? Besides, they

weren’t overworked—it was comfortable in the kitchen. And as hearts

were out, Mme Lerat threw down diamonds.

The bell began again, and when Zoé reappeared she was burning with

excitement.

“My children, it’s fat Steiner!” she said in the doorway, lowering her

voice as she spoke. “I’ve put HIM in the little sitting room.”

Thereupon Mme Maloir spoke about the banker to Mme Lerat, who knew no

such gentleman. Was he getting ready to give Rose Mignon the go-by? Zoé

shook her head; she knew a thing or two. But once more she had to go

and open the door.

“Here’s bothers!” she murmured when she came back. “It’s the nigger!

’Twasn’t any good telling him that my lady’s gone out, and so he’s

settled himself in the bedroom. We only expected him this evening.”

At a quarter past four Nana was not in yet. What could she be after? It

was silly of her! Two other bouquets were brought round, and Zoé,

growing bored looked to see if there were any coffee left. Yes, the

ladies would willingly finish off the coffee; it would waken them up.

Sitting hunched up on their chairs, they were beginning to fall asleep

through dint of constantly taking their cards between their fingers

with the accustomed movement. The half-hour sounded. Something must

decidedly have happened to Madame. And they began whispering to each

other.

Suddenly Mme Maloir forgot herself and in a ringing voice announced:

“I’ve the five hundred! Trumps, Major Quint!”

“Oh, do be quiet!” said Zoé angrily. “What will all those gentlemen

think?” And in the silence which ensued and amid the whispered

muttering of the two old women at strife over their game, the sound of

rapid footsteps ascended from the back stairs. It was Nana at last.

Before she had opened the door her breathlessness became audible. She

bounced abruptly in, looking very red in the face. Her skirt, the

string of which must have been broken, was trailing over the stairs,

and her flounces had just been dipped in a puddle of something

unpleasant which had oozed out on the landing of the first floor, where

the servant girl was a regular slut.

“Here you are! It’s lucky!” said Mme Lerat, pursing up her lips, for

she was still vexed at Mme Maloir’s “five hundred.” “You may flatter

yourself at the way you keep folks waiting.”

“Madame isn’t reasonable; indeed, she isn’t!” added Zoé.

Nana was already harassed, and these reproaches exasperated her. Was

that the way people received her after the worry she had gone through?

“Will you blooming well leave me alone, eh?” she cried.

“Hush, ma’am, there are people in there,” said the maid.

Then in lower tones the young Woman stuttered breathlessly:

“D’you suppose I’ve been having a good time? Why, there was no end to

it. I should have liked to see you there! I was boiling with rage! I

felt inclined to smack somebody. And never a cab to come home in!

Luckily it’s only a step from here, but never mind that; I did just run

home.”

“You have the money?” asked the aunt.

“Dear, dear! That question!” rejoined Nana.

She had sat herself down on a chair close up against the stove, for her

legs had failed her after so much running, and without stopping to take

breath she drew from behind her stays an envelope in which there were

four hundred-franc notes. They were visible through a large rent she

had torn with savage fingers in order to be sure of the contents. The

three women round about her stared fixedly at the envelope, a big,

crumpled, dirty receptacle, as it lay clasped in her small gloved

hands.

It was too late now—Mme Lerat would not go to Rambouillet till

tomorrow, and Nana entered into long explanations.

“There’s company waiting for you,” the lady’s maid repeated.

But Nana grew excited again. The company might wait: she’d go to them

all in good time when she’d finished. And as her aunt began putting her

hand out for the money:

“Ah no! Not all of it,” she said. “Three hundred francs for the nurse,

fifty for your journey and expenses, that’s three hundred and fifty.

Fifty francs I keep.”

The big difficulty was how to find change. There were not ten francs in

the house. But they did not even address themselves to Mme Maloir who,

never having more than a six-sou omnibus fair upon her, was listening

in quite a disinterested manner. At length Zoé went out of the room,

remarking that she would go and look in her box, and she brought back a

hundred francs in hundred-sou pieces. They were counted out on a corner

of the table, and Mme Lerat took her departure at once after having

promised to bring Louiset back with her the following day.

“You say there’s company there?” continued Nana, still sitting on the

chair and resting herself.

“Yes, madame, three people.”

And Zoé mentioned the banker first. Nana made a face. Did that man

Steiner think she was going to let herself be bored because he had

thrown her a bouquet yesterday evening?

“Besides, I’ve had enough of it,” she declared. “I shan’t receive

today. Go and say you don’t expect me now.”

“Madame will think the matter over; Madame will receive Monsieur

Steiner,” murmured Zoé gravely, without budging from her place. She was

annoyed to see her mistress on the verge of committing another foolish

mistake.

Then she mentioned the Walachian, who ought by now to find time hanging

heavy on his hands in the bedroom. Whereupon Nana grew furious and more

obstinate than ever. No, she would see nobody, nobody! Who’d sent her

such a blooming leech of a man?

“Chuck ’em all out! I—I’m going to play a game of bezique with Madame

Maloir. I prefer doing that.”

The bell interrupted her remarks. That was the last straw. Another of

the beggars yet! She forbade Zoé to go and open the door, but the

latter had left the kitchen without listening to her, and when she

reappeared she brought back a couple of cards and said authoritatively:

“I told them that Madame was receiving visitors. The gentlemen are in

the drawing room.”

Nana had sprung up, raging, but the names of the Marquis de Chouard and

of Count Muffat de Beuville, which were inscribed on the cards, calmed

her down. For a moment or two she remained silent.

“Who are they?” she asked at last. “You know them?”

“I know the old fellow,” replied Zoé, discreetly pursing up her lips.

And her mistress continuing to question her with her eyes, she added

simply:

“I’ve seen him somewhere.”

This remark seemed to decide the young woman. Regretfully she left the

kitchen, that asylum of steaming warmth, where you could talk and take

your ease amid the pleasant fumes of the coffeepot which was being kept

warm over a handful of glowing embers. She left Mme Maloir behind her.

That lady was now busy reading her fortune by the cards; she had never

yet taken her hat off, but now in order to be more at her ease she

undid the strings and threw them back over her shoulders.

In the dressing room, where Zoé rapidly helped her on with a tea gown,

Nana revenged herself for the way in which they were all boring her by

muttering quiet curses upon the male sex. These big words caused the

lady’s maid not a little distress, for she saw with pain that her

mistress was not rising superior to her origin as quickly as she could

have desired. She even made bold to beg Madame to calm herself.

“You bet,” was Nana’s crude answer; “they’re swine; they glory in that

sort of thing.”

Nevertheless, she assumed her princesslike manner, as she was wont to

call it. But just when she was turning to go into the drawing room Zoé

held her back and herself introduced the Marquis de Chouard and the

Count Muffat into the dressing room. It was much better so.

“I regret having kept you waiting, gentlemen,” said the young woman

with studied politeness.

The two men bowed and seated themselves. A blind of embroidered tulle

kept the little room in twilight. It was the most elegant chamber in

the flat, for it was hung with some light-colored fabric and contained

a cheval glass framed in inlaid wood, a lounge chair and some others

with arms and blue satin upholsteries. On the toilet table the

bouquets—roses, lilacs and hyacinths—appeared like a very ruin of

flowers. Their perfume was strong and penetrating, while through the

dampish air of the place, which was full of the spoiled exhalations of

the washstand, came occasional whiffs of a more pungent scent, the

scent of some grains or dry patchouli ground to fine powder at the

bottom of a cup. And as she gathered herself together and drew up her

dressing jacket, which had been ill fastened, Nana had all the

appearance of having been surprised at her toilet: her skin was still

damp; she smiled and looked quite startled amid her frills and laces.

“Madame, you will pardon our insistence,” said the Count Muffat

gravely. “We come on a quest. Monsieur and I are members of the

Benevolent Organization of the district.”

The Marquis de Chouard hastened gallantly to add:

“When we learned that a great artiste lived in this house we promised

ourselves that we would put the claims of our poor people before her in

a very special manner. Talent is never without a heart.”

Nana pretended to be modest. She answered them with little assenting

movements of her head, making rapid reflections at the same time. It

must be the old man that had brought the other one: he had such wicked

eyes. And yet the other was not to be trusted either: the veins near

his temples were so queerly puffed up. He might quite well have come by

himself. Ah, now that she thought of it, it was this way: the porter

had given them her name, and they had egged one another on, each with

his own ends in view.

“Most certainly, gentlemen, you were quite right to come up,” she said

with a very good grace.

But the electric bell made her tremble again. Another call, and that

Zoé always opening the door! She went on:

“One is only too happy to be able to give.”

At bottom she was flattered.

“Ah, madame,” rejoined the marquis, “if only you knew about it! there’s

such misery! Our district has more than three thousand poor people in

it, and yet it’s one of the richest. You cannot picture to yourself

anything like the present distress—children with no bread, women ill,

utterly without assistance, perishing of the cold!”

“The poor souls!” cried Nana, very much moved.

Such was her feeling of compassion that tears flooded her fine eyes. No

longer studying deportment, she leaned forward with a quick movement,

and under her open dressing jacket her neck became visible, while the

bent position of her knees served to outline the rounded contour of the

thigh under the thin fabric of her skirt. A little flush of blood

appeared in the marquis’s cadaverous cheeks. Count Muffat, who was on

the point of speaking, lowered his eyes. The air of that little room

was too hot: it had the close, heavy warmth of a greenhouse. The roses

were withering, and intoxicating odors floated up from the patchouli in

the cup.

“One would like to be very rich on occasions like this,” added Nana.

“Well, well, we each do what we can. Believe me, gentlemen, if I had

known—”

She was on the point of being guilty of a silly speech, so melted was

she at heart. But she did not end her sentence and for a moment was

worried at not being able to remember where she had put her fifty

francs on changing her dress. But she recollected at last: they must be

on the corner of her toilet table under an inverted pomatum pot. As she

was in the act of rising the bell sounded for quite a long time.

Capital! Another of them still! It would never end. The count and the

marquis had both risen, too, and the ears of the latter seemed to be

pricked up and, as it were, pointing toward the door; doubtless he knew

that kind of ring. Muffat looked at him; then they averted their gaze

mutually. They felt awkward and once more assumed their frigid bearing,

the one looking square-set and solid with his thick head of hair, the

other drawing back his lean shoulders, over which fell his fringe of

thin white locks.

“My faith,” said Nana, bringing the ten big silver pieces and quite

determined to laugh about it, “I am going to entrust you with this,

gentlemen. It is for the poor.”

And the adorable little dimple in her chin became apparent. She assumed

her favorite pose, her amiable baby expression, as she held the pile of

five-franc pieces on her open palm and offered it to the men, as though

she were saying to them, “Now then, who wants some?” The count was the

sharper of the two. He took fifty francs but left one piece behind and,

in order to gain possession of it, had to pick it off the young woman’s

very skin, a moist, supple skin, the touch of which sent a thrill

through him. She was thoroughly merry and did not cease laughing.

“Come, gentlemen,” she continued. “Another time I hope to give more.”

The gentlemen no longer had any pretext for staying, and they bowed and

went toward the door. But just as they were about to go out the bell

rang anew. The marquis could not conceal a faint smile, while a frown

made the count look more grave than before. Nana detained them some

seconds so as to give Zoé time to find yet another corner for the

newcomers. She did not relish meetings at her house. Only this time the

whole place must be packed! She was therefore much relieved when she

saw the drawing room empty and asked herself whether Zoé had really

stuffed them into the cupboards.

“Au revoir, gentlemen,” she said, pausing on the threshold of the

drawing room.

It was as though she lapped them in her laughing smile and clear,

unclouded glance. The Count Muffat bowed slightly. Despite his great

social experience he felt that he had lost his equilibrium. He needed

air; he was overcome with the dizzy feeling engendered in that dressing

room with a scent of flowers, with a feminine essence which choked him.

And behind his back, the Marquis de Chouard, who was sure that he could

not be seen, made so bold as to wink at Nana, his whole face suddenly

altering its expression as he did so, and his tongue nigh lolling from

his mouth.

When the young woman re-entered the little room, where Zoé was awaiting

her with letters and visiting cards, she cried out, laughing more

heartily than ever:

“There are a pair of beggars for you! Why, they’ve got away with my

fifty francs!”

She wasn’t vexed. It struck her as a joke that MEN should have got

money out of her. All the same, they were swine, for she hadn’t a sou

left. But at sight of the cards and the letters her bad temper

returned. As to the letters, why, she said “pass” to them. They were

from fellows who, after applauding her last night, were now making

their declarations. And as to the callers, they might go about their

business!

Zoé had stowed them all over the place, and she called attention to the

great capabilities of the flat, every room in which opened on the

corridor. That wasn’t the case at Mme Blanche’s, where people had all

to go through the drawing room. Oh yes, Mme Blanche had had plenty of

bothers over it!

“You will send them all away,” continued Nana in pursuance of her idea.

“Begin with the nigger.”

“Oh, as to him, madame, I gave him his marching orders a while ago,”

said Zoé with a grin. “He only wanted to tell Madame that he couldn’t

come to-night.”

There was vast joy at this announcement, and Nana clapped her hands. He

wasn’t coming, what good luck! She would be free then! And she emitted

sighs of relief, as though she had been let off the most abominable of

tortures. Her first thought was for Daguenet. Poor duck, why, she had

just written to tell him to wait till Thursday! Quick, quick, Mme

Maloir should write a second letter! But Zoé announced that Mme Maloir

had slipped away unnoticed, according to her wont. Whereupon Nana,

after talking of sending someone to him, began to hesitate. She was

very tired. A long night’s sleep—oh, it would be so jolly! The thought

of such a treat overcame her at last. For once in a way she could allow

herself that!

“I shall go to bed when I come back from the theater,” she murmured

greedily, “and you won’t wake me before noon.”

Then raising her voice:

“Now then, gee up! Shove the others downstairs!”

Zoé did not move. She would never have dreamed of giving her mistress

overt advice, only now she made shift to give Madame the benefit of her

experience when Madame seemed to be running her hot head against a

wall.

“Monsieur Steiner as well?” she queried curtly.

“Why, certainly!” replied Nana. “Before all the rest.”

The maid still waited, in order to give her mistress time for

reflection. Would not Madame be proud to get such a rich gentleman away

from her rival Rose Mignon—a man, moreover, who was known in all the

theaters?

“Now make haste, my dear,” rejoined Nana, who perfectly understood the

situation, “and tell him he pesters me.”

But suddenly there was a reversion of feeling. Tomorrow she might want

him. Whereupon she laughed, winked once or twice and with a naughty

little gesture cried out:

“After all’s said and done, if I want him the best way even now is to

kick him out of doors.”

Zoé seemed much impressed. Struck with a sudden admiration, she gazed

at her mistress and then went and chucked Steiner out of doors without

further deliberation.

Meanwhile Nana waited patiently for a second or two in order to give

her time to sweep the place out, as she phrased it. No one would ever

have expected such a siege! She craned her head into the drawing room

and found it empty. The dining room was empty too. But as she continued

her visitation in a calmer frame of mind, feeling certain that nobody

remained behind, she opened the door of a closet and came suddenly upon

a very young man. He was sitting on the top of a trunk, holding a huge

bouquet on his knees and looking exceedingly quiet and extremely well

behaved.

“Goodness gracious me!” she cried. “There’s one of ’em in there even

now!” The very young man had jumped down at sight of her and was

blushing as red as a poppy. He did not know what to do with his

bouquet, which he kept shifting from one hand to the other, while his

looks betrayed the extreme of emotion. His youth, his embarrassment and

the funny figure he cut in his struggles with his flowers melted Nana’s

heart, and she burst into a pretty peal of laughter. Well, now, the

very children were coming, were they? Men were arriving in long

clothes. So she gave up all airs and graces, became familiar and

maternal, tapped her leg and asked for fun:

“You want me to wipe your nose; do you, baby?”

“Yes,” replied the lad in a low, supplicating tone.

This answer made her merrier than ever. He was seventeen years old, he

said. His name was Georges Hugon. He was at the Variétés last night and

now he had come to see her.

“These flowers are for me?”

“Yes.”

“Then give ’em to me, booby!”

But as she took the bouquet from him he sprang upon her hands and

kissed them with all the gluttonous eagerness peculiar to his charming

time of life. She had to beat him to make him let go. There was a

dreadful little dribbling customer for you! But as she scolded him she

flushed rosy-red and began smiling. And with that she sent him about

his business, telling him that he might call again. He staggered away;

he could not find the doors.

Nana went back into her dressing room, where Francis made his

appearance almost simultaneously in order to dress her hair for the

evening. Seated in front of her mirror and bending her head beneath the

hairdresser’s nimble hands, she stayed silently meditative. Presently,

however, Zoé entered, remarking:

“There’s one of them, madame, who refuses to go.”

“Very well, he must be left alone,” she answered quietly.

“If that comes to that they still keep arriving.”

“Bah! Tell ’em to wait. When they begin to feel too hungry they’ll be

off.” Her humor had changed, and she was now delighted to make people

wait about for nothing. A happy thought struck her as very amusing; she

escaped from beneath Francis’ hands and ran and bolted the doors. They

might now crowd in there as much as they liked; they would probably

refrain from making a hole through the wall. Zoé could come in and out

through the little doorway leading to the kitchen. However, the

electric bell rang more lustily than ever. Every five minutes a clear,

lively little ting-ting recurred as regularly as if it had been

produced by some well-adjusted piece of mechanism. And Nana counted

these rings to while the time away withal. But suddenly she remembered

something.

“I say, where are my burnt almonds?”

Francis, too, was forgetting about the burnt almonds. But now he drew a

paper bag from one of the pockets of his frock coat and presented it to

her with the discreet gesture of a man who is offering a lady a

present. Nevertheless, whenever his accounts came to be settled, he

always put the burnt almonds down on his bill. Nana put the bag between

her knees and set to work munching her sweetmeats, turning her head

from time to time under the hairdresser’s gently compelling touch.

“The deuce,” she murmured after a silence, “there’s a troop for you!”

Thrice, in quick succession, the bell had sounded. Its summonses became

fast and furious. There were modest tintinnabulations which seemed to

stutter and tremble like a first avowal; there were bold rings which

vibrated under some rough touch and hasty rings which sounded through

the house with shivering rapidity. It was a regular peal, as Zoé said,

a peal loud enough to upset the neighborhood, seeing that a whole mob

of men were jabbing at the ivory button, one after the other. That old

joker Bordenave had really been far too lavish with her address. Why,

the whole of yesterday’s house was coming!

“By the by, Francis, have you five louis?” said Nana.

He drew back, looked carefully at her headdress and then quietly

remarked:

“Five louis, that’s according!”

“Ah, you know if you want securities . . .” she continued.

And without finishing her sentence, she indicated the adjoining rooms

with a sweeping gesture. Francis lent the five louis. Zoé, during each

momentary respite, kept coming in to get Madame’s things ready. Soon

she came to dress her while the hairdresser lingered with the intention

of giving some finishing touches to the headdress. But the bell kept

continually disturbing the lady’s maid, who left Madame with her stays

half laced and only one shoe on. Despite her long experience, the maid

was losing her head. After bringing every nook and corner into

requisition and putting men pretty well everywhere, she had been driven

to stow them away in threes and fours, which was a course of procedure

entirely opposed to her principles. So much the worse for them if they

ate each other up! It would afford more room! And Nana, sheltering

behind her carefully bolted door, began laughing at them, declaring

that she could hear them pant. They ought to be looking lovely in there

with their tongues hanging out like a lot of bowwows sitting round on

their behinds. Yesterday’s success was not yet over, and this pack of

men had followed up her scent.

“Provided they don’t break anything,” she murmured.

She began to feel some anxiety, for she fancied she felt their hot

breath coming through chinks in the door. But Zoé ushered Labordette

in, and the young woman gave a little shout of relief. He was anxious

to tell her about an account he had settled for her at the justice of

peace’s court. But she did not attend and said:

“I’ll take you along with me. We’ll have dinner together, and afterward

you shall escort me to the Variétés. I don’t go on before half-past

nine.”

Good old Labordette, how lucky it was he had come! He was a fellow who

never asked for any favors. He was only the friend of the women, whose

little bits of business he arranged for them. Thus on his way in he had

dismissed the creditors in the anteroom. Indeed, those good folks

really didn’t want to be paid. On the contrary, if they HAD been

pressing for payment it was only for the sake of complimenting Madame

and of personally renewing their offers of service after her grand

success of yesterday.

“Let’s be off, let’s be off,” said Nana, who was dressed by now.

But at that moment Zoé came in again, shouting:

“I refuse to open the door any more. They’re waiting in a crowd all

down the stairs.”

A crowd all down the stairs! Francis himself, despite the English

stolidity of manner which he was wont to affect, began laughing as he

put up his combs. Nana, who had already taken Labordette’s arm, pushed

him into the kitchen and effected her escape. At last she was delivered

from the men and felt happily conscious that she might now enjoy his

society anywhere without fear of stupid interruptions.

“You shall see me back to my door,” she said as they went down the

kitchen stairs. “I shall feel safe, in that case. Just fancy, I want to

sleep a whole night quite by myself—yes, a whole night! It’s sort of

infatuation, dear boy!”

CHAPTER III

The Countess Sabine, as it had become customary to call Mme Muffat de

Beuville in order to distinguish her from the count’s mother, who had

died the year before, was wont to receive every Tuesday in her house in

the Rue Miromesnil at the corner of the Rue de Pentièvre. It was a

great square building, and the Muffats had lived in it for a hundred

years or more. On the side of the street its frontage seemed to

slumber, so lofty was it and dark, so sad and convent-like, with its

great outer shutters, which were nearly always closed. And at the back

in a little dark garden some trees had grown up and were straining

toward the sunlight with such long slender branches that their tips

were visible above the roof.

This particular Tuesday, toward ten o’clock in the evening, there were

scarcely a dozen people in the drawing room. When she was only

expecting intimate friends the countess opened neither the little

drawing room nor the dining room. One felt more at home on such

occasions and chatted round the fire. The drawing room was very large

and very lofty; its four windows looked out upon the garden, from

which, on this rainy evening of the close of April, issued a sensation

of damp despite the great logs burning on the hearth. The sun never

shone down into the room; in the daytime it was dimly lit up by a faint

greenish light, but at night, when the lamps and the chandelier were

burning, it looked merely a serious old chamber with its massive

mahogany First Empire furniture, its hangings and chair coverings of

yellow velvet, stamped with a large design. Entering it, one was in an

atmosphere of cold dignity, of ancient manners, of a vanished age, the

air of which seemed devotional.

Opposite the armchair, however, in which the count’s mother had died—a

square armchair of formal design and inhospitable padding, which stood

by the hearthside—the Countess Sabine was seated in a deep and cozy

lounge, the red silk upholsteries of which were soft as eider down. It

was the only piece of modern furniture there, a fanciful item

introduced amid the prevailing severity and clashing with it.

“So we shall have the shah of Persia,” the young woman was saying.

They were talking of the crowned heads who were coming to Paris for the

exhibition. Several ladies had formed a circle round the hearth, and

Mme du Joncquoy, whose brother, a diplomat, had just fulfilled a

mission in the East, was giving some details about the court of

Nazr-ed-Din.

“Are you out of sorts, my dear?” asked Mme Chantereau, the wife of an

ironmaster, seeing the countess shivering slightly and growing pale as

she did so.

“Oh no, not at all,” replied the latter, smiling. “I felt a little

cold. This drawing room takes so long to warm.”

And with that she raised her melancholy eyes and scanned the walls from

floor to ceiling. Her daughter Estelle, a slight, insignificant-looking

girl of sixteen, the thankless period of life, quitted the large

footstool on which she was sitting and silently came and propped up one

of the logs which had rolled from its place. But Mme de Chezelles, a

convent friend of Sabine’s and her junior by five years, exclaimed:

“Dear me, I would gladly be possessed of a drawing room such as yours!

At any rate, you are able to receive visitors. They only build boxes

nowadays. Oh, if I were in your place!”

She ran giddily on and with lively gestures explained how she would

alter the hangings, the seats—everything, in fact. Then she would give

balls to which all Paris should run. Behind her seat her husband, a

magistrate, stood listening with serious air. It was rumored that she

deceived him quite openly, but people pardoned her offense and received

her just the same, because, they said, “she’s not answerable for her

actions.”

“Oh that Leonide!” the Countess Sabine contented herself by murmuring,

smiling her faint smile the while.

With a languid movement she eked out the thought that was in her. After

having lived there seventeen years she certainly would not alter her

drawing room now. It would henceforth remain just such as her

mother-in-law had wished to preserve it during her lifetime. Then

returning to the subject of conversation:

“I have been assured,” she said, “that we shall also have the king of

Prussia and the emperor of Russia.”

“Yes, some very fine fêtes are promised,” said Mme du Joncquoy.

The banker Steiner, not long since introduced into this circle by

Leonide de Chezelles, who was acquainted with the whole of Parisian

society, was sitting chatting on a sofa between two of the windows. He

was questioning a deputy, from whom he was endeavoring with much

adroitness to elicit news about a movement on the stock exchange of

which he had his suspicions, while the Count Muffat, standing in front

of them, was silently listening to their talk, looking, as he did so,

even grayer than was his wont.

Four or five young men formed another group near the door round the

Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who in a low tone was telling them an

anecdote. It was doubtless a very risky one, for they were choking with

laughter. Companionless in the center of the room, a stout man, a chief

clerk at the Ministry of the Interior, sat heavily in an armchair,

dozing with his eyes open. But when one of the young men appeared to

doubt the truth of the anecdote Vandeuvres raised his voice.

“You are too much of a skeptic, Foucarmont; you’ll spoil all your

pleasures that way.”

And he returned to the ladies with a laugh. Last scion of a great

family, of feminine manners and witty tongue, he was at that time

running through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite which

nothing could appease. His racing stable, which was one of the best

known in Paris, cost him a fabulous amount of money; his betting losses

at the Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number of pounds,

while taking one year with another, his mistresses would be always

devouring now a farm, now some acres of arable land or forest, which

amounted, in fact, to quite a respectable slice of his vast estates in

Picardy.

“I advise you to call other people skeptics! Why, you don’t believe a

thing yourself,” said Leonide, making shift to find him a little space

in which to sit down at her side.

“It’s you who spoil your own pleasures.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “I wish to make others benefit by my

experience.”

But the company imposed silence on him: he was scandalizing M. Venot.

And, the ladies having changed their positions, a little old man of

sixty, with bad teeth and a subtle smile, became visible in the depths

of an easy chair. There he sat as comfortably as in his own house,

listening to everybody’s remarks and making none himself. With a slight

gesture he announced himself by no means scandalized. Vandeuvres once

more assumed his dignified bearing and added gravely:

“Monsieur Venot is fully aware that I believe what it is one’s duty to

believe.”

It was an act of faith, and even Leonide appeared satisfied. The young

men at the end of the room no longer laughed; the company were old

fogies, and amusement was not to be found there. A cold breath of wind

had passed over them, and amid the ensuing silence Steiner’s nasal

voice became audible. The deputy’s discreet answers were at last

driving him to desperation. For a second or two the Countess Sabine

looked at the fire; then she resumed the conversation.

“I saw the king of Prussia at Baden-Baden last year. He’s still full of

vigor for his age.”

“Count Bismarck is to accompany him,” said Mme du Joncquoy. “Do you

know the count? I lunched with him at my brother’s ages ago, when he

was representative of Prussia in Paris. There’s a man now whose latest

successes I cannot in the least understand.”

“But why?” asked Mme Chantereau.

“Good gracious, how am I to explain? He doesn’t please me. His

appearance is boorish and underbred. Besides, so far as I am concerned,

I find him stupid.”

With that the whole room spoke of Count Bismarck, and opinions differed

considerably. Vandeuvres knew him and assured the company that he was

great in his cups and at play. But when the discussion was at its

height the door was opened, and Hector de la Falois made his

appearance. Fauchery, who followed in his wake, approached the countess

and, bowing:

“Madame,” he said, “I have not forgotten your extremely kind

invitation.”

She smiled and made a pretty little speech. The journalist, after

bowing to the count, stood for some moments in the middle of the

drawing room. He only recognized Steiner and accordingly looked rather

out of his element. But Vandeuvres turned and came and shook hands with

him. And forthwith, in his delight at the meeting and with a sudden

desire to be confidential, Fauchery buttonholed him and said in a low

voice:

“It’s tomorrow. Are you going?”

“Egad, yes.”

“At midnight, at her house.

“I know, I know. I’m going with Blanche.”

He wanted to escape and return to the ladies in order to urge yet

another reason in M. de Bismarck’s favor. But Fauchery detained him.

“You never will guess whom she has charged me to invite.”

And with a slight nod he indicated Count Muffat, who was just then

discussing a knotty point in the budget with Steiner and the deputy.

“It’s impossible,” said Vandeuvres, stupefaction and merriment in his

tones. “My word on it! I had to swear that I would bring him to her.

Indeed, that’s one of my reasons for coming here.”

Both laughed silently, and Vandeuvres, hurriedly rejoining the circle

of ladies, cried out:

“I declare that on the contrary Monsieur de Bismarck is exceedingly

witty. For instance, one evening he said a charmingly epigrammatic

thing in my presence.”

La Faloise meanwhile had heard the few rapid sentences thus

whisperingly interchanged, and he gazed at Fauchery in hopes of an

explanation which was not vouchsafed him. Of whom were they talking,

and what were they going to do at midnight tomorrow? He did not leave

his cousin’s side again. The latter had gone and seated himself. He was

especially interested by the Countess Sabine. Her name had often been

mentioned in his presence, and he knew that, having been married at the

age of seventeen, she must now be thirty-four and that since her

marriage she had passed a cloistered existence with her husband and her

mother-in-law. In society some spoke of her as a woman of religious

chastity, while others pitied her and recalled to memory her charming

bursts of laughter and the burning glances of her great eyes in the

days prior to her imprisonment in this old town house. Fauchery

scrutinized her and yet hesitated. One of his friends, a captain who

had recently died in Mexico, had, on the very eve of his departure,

made him one of those gross postprandial confessions, of which even the

most prudent among men are occasionally guilty. But of this he only

retained a vague recollection; they had dined not wisely but too well

that evening, and when he saw the countess, in her black dress and with

her quiet smile, seated in that Old World drawing room, he certainly

had his doubts. A lamp which had been placed behind her threw into

clear relief her dark, delicate, plump side face, wherein a certain

heaviness in the contours of the mouth alone indicated a species of

imperious sensuality.

“What do they want with their Bismarck?” muttered La Faloise, whose

constant pretense it was to be bored in good society. “One’s ready to

kick the bucket here. A pretty idea of yours it was to want to come!”

Fauchery questioned him abruptly.

“Now tell me, does the countess admit someone to her embraces?”

“Oh dear, no, no! My dear fellow!” he stammered, manifestly taken aback

and quite forgetting his pose. “Where d’you think we are?”

After which he was conscious of a want of up-to-dateness in this

outburst of indignation and, throwing himself back on a great sofa, he

added:

“Gad! I say no! But I don’t know much about it. There’s a little chap

out there, Foucarmont they call him, who’s to be met with everywhere

and at every turn. One’s seen faster men than that, though, you bet.

However, it doesn’t concern me, and indeed, all I know is that if the

countess indulges in high jinks she’s still pretty sly about it, for

the thing never gets about—nobody talks.”

Then although Fauchery did not take the trouble to question him, he

told him all he knew about the Muffats. Amid the conversation of the

ladies, which still continued in front of the hearth, they both spoke

in subdued tones, and, seeing them there with their white cravats and

gloves, one might have supposed them to be discussing in chosen

phraseology some really serious topic. Old Mme Muffat then, whom La

Faloise had been well acquainted with, was an insufferable old lady,

always hand in glove with the priests. She had the grand manner,

besides, and an authoritative way of comporting herself, which bent

everybody to her will. As to Muffat, he was an old man’s child; his

father, a general, had been created count by Napoleon I, and naturally

he had found himself in favor after the second of December. He hadn’t

much gaiety of manner either, but he passed for a very honest man of

straightforward intentions and understanding. Add to these a code of

old aristocratic ideas and such a lofty conception of his duties at

court, of his dignities and of his virtues, that he behaved like a god

on wheels. It was the Mamma Muffat who had given him this precious

education with its daily visits to the confessional, its complete

absence of escapades and of all that is meant by youth. He was a

practicing Christian and had attacks of faith of such fiery violence

that they might be likened to accesses of burning fever. Finally, in

order to add a last touch to the picture, La Faloise whispered

something in his cousin’s ear.

“You don’t say so!” said the latter.

“On my word of honor, they swore it was true! He was still like that

when he married.”

Fauchery chuckled as he looked at the count, whose face, with its

fringe of whiskers and absence of mustaches, seemed to have grown

squarer and harder now that he was busy quoting figures to the

writhing, struggling Steiner.

“My word, he’s got a phiz for it!” murmured Fauchery. “A pretty present

he made his wife! Poor little thing, how he must have bored her! She

knows nothing about anything, I’ll wager!”

Just then the Countess Sabine was saying something to him. But he did

not hear her, so amusing and extraordinary did he esteem the Muffats’

case. She repeated the question.

“Monsieur Fauchery, have you not published a sketch of Monsieur de

Bismarck? You spoke with him once?”

He got up briskly and approached the circle of ladies, endeavoring to

collect himself and soon with perfect ease of manner finding an answer:

“Dear me, madame, I assure you I wrote that ‘portrait’ with the help of

biographies which had been published in Germany. I have never seen

Monsieur de Bismarck.”

He remained beside the countess and, while talking with her, continued

his meditations. She did not look her age; one would have set her down

as being twenty-eight at most, for her eyes, above all, which were

filled with the dark blue shadow of her long eyelashes, retained the

glowing light of youth. Bred in a divided family, so that she used to

spend one month with the Marquis de Chouard, another with the marquise,

she had been married very young, urged on, doubtless, by her father,

whom she embarrassed after her mother’s death. A terrible man was the

marquis, a man about whom strange tales were beginning to be told, and

that despite his lofty piety! Fauchery asked if he should have the

honor of meeting him. Certainly her father was coming, but only very

late; he had so much work on hand! The journalist thought he knew where

the old gentleman passed his evenings and looked grave. But a mole,

which he noticed close to her mouth on the countess’s left cheek,

surprised him. Nana had precisely the same mole. It was curious. Tiny

hairs curled up on it, only they were golden in Nana’s case, black as

jet in this. Ah well, never mind! This woman enjoyed nobody’s embraces.

“I have always felt a wish to know Queen Augusta,” she said. “They say

she is so good, so devout. Do you think she will accompany the king?”

“It is not thought that she will, madame,” he replied.

She had no lovers: the thing was only too apparent. One had only to

look at her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting so

insignificant and constrained on her footstool. That sepulchral drawing

room of hers, which exhaled odors suggestive of being in a church,

spoke as plainly as words could of the iron hand, the austere mode of

existence, that weighed her down. There was nothing suggestive of her

own personality in that ancient abode, black with the damps of years.

It was Muffat who made himself felt there, who dominated his

surroundings with his devotional training, his penances and his fasts.

But the sight of the little old gentleman with the black teeth and

subtle smile whom he suddenly discovered in his armchair behind the

group of ladies afforded him a yet more decisive argument. He knew the

personage. It was Theophile Venot, a retired lawyer who had made a

specialty of church cases. He had left off practice with a handsome

fortune and was now leading a sufficiently mysterious existence, for he

was received everywhere, treated with great deference and even somewhat

feared, as though he had been the representative of a mighty force, an

occult power, which was felt to be at his back. Nevertheless, his

behavior was very humble. He was churchwarden at the Madeleine Church

and had simply accepted the post of deputy mayor at the town house of

the Ninth Arrondissement in order, as he said, to have something to do

in his leisure time. Deuce take it, the countess was well guarded;

there was nothing to be done in that quarter.

“You’re right, it’s enough to make one kick the bucket here,” said

Fauchery to his cousin when he had made good his escape from the circle

of ladies. “We’ll hook it!”

But Steiner, deserted at last by the Count Muffat and the deputy, came

up in a fury. Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and he

grumbled huskily:

“Gad! Let ’em tell me nothing, if nothing they want to tell me. I shall

find people who will talk.”

Then he pushed the journalist into a corner and, altering his tone,

said in accents of victory:

“It’s tomorrow, eh? I’m of the party, my bully!”

“Indeed!” muttered Fauchery with some astonishment.

“You didn’t know about it. Oh, I had lots of bother to find her at

home. Besides, Mignon never would leave me alone.”

“But they’re to be there, are the Mignons.”

“Yes, she told me so. In fact, she did receive my visit, and she

invited me. Midnight punctually, after the play.”

The banker was beaming. He winked and added with a peculiar emphasis on

the words:

“You’ve worked it, eh?”

“Eh, what?” said Fauchery, pretending not to understand him. “She

wanted to thank me for my article, so she came and called on me.”

“Yes, yes. You fellows are fortunate. You get rewarded. By the by, who

pays the piper tomorrow?”

The journalist made a slight outward movement with his arms, as though

he would intimate that no one had ever been able to find out. But

Vandeuvres called to Steiner, who knew M. de Bismarck. Mme du Joncquoy

had almost convinced herself of the truth of her suppositions; she

concluded with these words:

“He gave me an unpleasant impression. I think his face is evil. But I

am quite willing to believe that he has a deal of wit. It would account

for his successes.”

“Without doubt,” said the banker with a faint smile. He was a Jew from

Frankfort.

Meanwhile La Faloise at last made bold to question his cousin. He

followed him up and got inside his guard:

“There’s supper at a woman’s tomorrow evening? With which of them, eh?

With which of them?”

Fauchery motioned to him that they were overheard and must respect the

conventions here. The door had just been opened anew, and an old lady

had come in, followed by a young man in whom the journalist recognized

the truant schoolboy, perpetrator of the famous and as yet unforgotten

“trés chic” of the Blonde Venus first night. This lady’s arrival caused

a stir among the company. The Countess Sabine had risen briskly from

her seat in order to go and greet her, and she had taken both her hands

in hers and addressed her as her “dear Madame Hugon.” Seeing that his

cousin viewed this little episode with some curiosity, La Faloise

sought to arouse his interest and in a few brief phrases explained the

position. Mme Hugon, widow of a notary, lived in retirement at Les

Fondettes, an old estate of her family’s in the neighborhood of

Orleans, but she also kept up a small establishment in Paris in a house

belonging to her in the Rue de Richelieu and was now passing some weeks

there in order to settle her youngest son, who was reading the law and

in his “first year.” In old times she had been a dear friend of the

Marquise de Chouard and had assisted at the birth of the countess, who,

prior to her marriage, used to stay at her house for months at a time

and even now was quite familiarly treated by her.

“I have brought Georges to see you,” said Mme Hugon to Sabine. “He’s

grown, I trust.”

The young man with his clear eyes and the fair curls which suggested a

girl dressed up as a boy bowed easily to the countess and reminded her

of a bout of battledore and shuttlecock they had had together two years

ago at Les Fondettes.

“Philippe is not in Paris?” asked Count Muffat.

“Dear me, no!” replied the old lady. “He is always in garrison at

Bourges.” She had seated herself and began talking with considerable

pride of her eldest son, a great big fellow who, after enlisting in a

fit of waywardness, had of late very rapidly attained the rank of

lieutenant. All the ladies behaved to her with respectful sympathy, and

conversation was resumed in a tone at once more amiable and more

refined. Fauchery, at sight of that respectable Mme Hugon, that

motherly face lit up with such a kindly smile beneath its broad tresses

of white hair, thought how foolish he had been to suspect the Countess

Sabine even for an instant.

Nevertheless, the big chair with the red silk upholsteries in which the

countess sat had attracted his attention. Its style struck him as

crude, not to say fantastically suggestive, in that dim old drawing

room. Certainly it was not the count who had inveigled thither that

nest of voluptuous idleness. One might have described it as an

experiment, marking the birth of an appetite and of an enjoyment. Then

he forgot where he was, fell into brown study and in thought even

harked back to that vague confidential announcement imparted to him one

evening in the dining room of a restaurant. Impelled by a sort of

sensuous curiosity, he had always wanted an introduction into the

Muffats’ circle, and now that his friend was in Mexico through all

eternity, who could tell what might happen? “We shall see,” he thought.

It was a folly, doubtless, but the idea kept tormenting him; he felt

himself drawn on and his animal nature aroused. The big chair had a

rumpled look—its nether cushions had been tumbled, a fact which now

amused him.

“Well, shall we be off?” asked La Faloise, mentally vowing that once

outside he would find out the name of the woman with whom people were

going to sup.

“All in good time,” replied Fauchery.

But he was no longer in any hurry and excused himself on the score of

the invitation he had been commissioned to give and had as yet not

found a convenient opportunity to mention. The ladies were chatting

about an assumption of the veil, a very touching ceremony by which the

whole of Parisian society had for the last three days been greatly

moved. It was the eldest daughter of the Baronne de Fougeray, who,

under stress of an irresistible vocation, had just entered the

Carmelite Convent. Mme Chantereau, a distant cousin of the Fougerays,

told how the baroness had been obliged to take to her bed the day after

the ceremony, so overdone was she with weeping.

“I had a very good place,” declared Leonide. “I found it interesting.”

Nevertheless, Mme Hugon pitied the poor mother. How sad to lose a

daughter in such a way!

“I am accused of being overreligious,” she said in her quiet, frank

manner, “but that does not prevent me thinking the children very cruel

who obstinately commit such suicide.”

“Yes, it’s a terrible thing,” murmured the countess, shivering a

little, as became a chilly person, and huddling herself anew in the

depths of her big chair in front of the fire.

Then the ladies fell into a discussion. But their voices were

discreetly attuned, while light trills of laughter now and again

interrupted the gravity of their talk. The two lamps on the chimney

piece, which had shades of rose-colored lace, cast a feeble light over

them while on scattered pieces of furniture there burned but three

other lamps, so that the great drawing room remained in soft shadow.

Steiner was getting bored. He was describing to Fauchery an escapade of

that little Mme de Chezelles, whom he simply referred to as Leonide. “A

blackguard woman,” he said, lowering his voice behind the ladies’

armchairs. Fauchery looked at her as she sat quaintly perched, in her

voluminous ball dress of pale blue satin, on the corner of her

armchair. She looked as slight and impudent as a boy, and he ended by

feeling astonished at seeing her there. People comported themselves

better at Caroline Hequet’s, whose mother had arranged her house on

serious principles. Here was a perfect subject for an article. What a

strange world was this world of Paris! The most rigid circles found

themselves invaded. Evidently that silent Theophile Venot, who

contented himself by smiling and showing his ugly teeth, must have been

a legacy from the late countess. So, too, must have been such ladies of

mature age as Mme Chantereau and Mme du Joncquoy, besides four or five

old gentlemen who sat motionless in corners. The Count Muffat attracted

to the house a series of functionaries, distinguished by the immaculate

personal appearance which was at that time required of the men at the

Tuileries. Among others there was the chief clerk, who still sat

solitary in the middle of the room with his closely shorn cheeks, his

vacant glance and his coat so tight of fit that he could scarce venture

to move. Almost all the young men and certain individuals with

distinguished, aristocratic manners were the Marquis de Chouard’s

contribution to the circle, he having kept touch with the Legitimist

party after making his peace with the empire on his entrance into the

Council of State. There remained Leonide de Chezelles and Steiner, an

ugly little knot against which Mme Hugon’s elderly and amiable serenity

stood out in strange contrast. And Fauchery, having sketched out his

article, named this last group “Countess Sabine’s little clique.”

“On another occasion,” continued Steiner in still lower tones, “Leonide

got her tenor down to Montauban. She was living in the Château de

Beaurecueil, two leagues farther off, and she used to come in daily in

a carriage and pair in order to visit him at the Lion d’Or, where he

had put up. The carriage used to wait at the door, and Leonide would

stay for hours in the house, while a crowd gathered round and looked at

the horses.”

There was a pause in the talk, and some solemn moments passed silently

by in the lofty room. Two young men were whispering, but they ceased in

their turn, and the hushed step of Count Muffat was alone audible as he

crossed the floor. The lamps seemed to have paled; the fire was going

out; a stern shadow fell athwart the old friends of the house where

they sat in the chairs they had occupied there for forty years back. It

was as though in a momentary pause of conversation the invited guests

had become suddenly aware that the count’s mother, in all her glacial

stateliness, had returned among them.

But the Countess Sabine had once more resumed:

“Well, at last the news of it got about. The young man was likely to

die, and that would explain the poor child’s adoption of the religious

life. Besides, they say that Monsieur de Fougeray would never have

given his consent to the marriage.”

“They say heaps of other things too,” cried Leonide giddily.

She fell a-laughing; she refused to talk. Sabine was won over by this

gaiety and put her handkerchief up to her lips. And in the vast and

solemn room their laughter sounded a note which struck Fauchery

strangely, the note of delicate glass breaking. Assuredly here was the

first beginning of the “little rift.” Everyone began talking again. Mme

du Joncquoy demurred; Mme Chantereau knew for certain that a marriage

had been projected but that matters had gone no further; the men even

ventured to give their opinions. For some minutes the conversation was

a babel of opinions, in which the divers elements of the circle,

whether Bonapartist or Legitimist or merely worldly and skeptical,

appeared to jostle one another simultaneously. Estelle had rung to

order wood to be put on the fire; the footman turned up the lamps; the

room seemed to wake from sleep. Fauchery began smiling, as though once

more at his ease.

“Egad, they become the brides of God when they couldn’t be their

cousin’s,” said Vandeuvres between his teeth.

The subject bored him, and he had rejoined Fauchery.

“My dear fellow, have you ever seen a woman who was really loved become

a nun?”

He did not wait for an answer, for he had had enough of the topic, and

in a hushed voice:

“Tell me,” he said, “how many of us will there be tomorrow? There’ll be

the Mignons, Steiner, yourself, Blanche and I; who else?”

“Caroline, I believe, and Simonne and Gaga without doubt. One never

knows exactly, does one? On such occasions one expects the party will

number twenty, and you’re really thirty.”

Vandeuvres, who was looking at the ladies, passed abruptly to another

subject:

“She must have been very nice-looking, that Du Joncquoy woman, some

fifteen years ago. Poor Estelle has grown lankier than ever. What a

nice lath to put into a bed!”

But interrupting himself, he returned to the subject of tomorrow’s

supper.

“What’s so tiresome of those shows is that it’s always the same set of

women. One wants a novelty. Do try and invent a new girl. By Jove,

happy thought! I’ll go and beseech that stout man to bring the woman he

was trotting about the other evening at the Variétés.”

He referred to the chief clerk, sound asleep in the middle of the

drawing room. Fauchery, afar off, amused himself by following this

delicate negotiation. Vandeuvres had sat himself down by the stout man,

who still looked very sedate. For some moments they both appeared to be

discussing with much propriety the question before the house, which

was, “How can one discover the exact state of feeling that urges a

young girl to enter into the religious life?” Then the count returned

with the remark:

“It’s impossible. He swears she’s straight. She’d refuse, and yet I

would have wagered that I once saw her at Laure’s.”

“Eh, what? You go to Laure’s?” murmured Fauchery with a chuckle. “You

venture your reputation in places like that? I was under the impression

that it was only we poor devils of outsiders who—”

“Ah, dear boy, one ought to see every side of life.”

Then they sneered and with sparkling eyes they compared notes about the

table d’hôte in the Rue des Martyrs, where big Laure Piedefer ran a

dinner at three francs a head for little women in difficulties. A nice

hole, where all the little women used to kiss Laure on the lips! And as

the Countess Sabine, who had overheard a stray word or two, turned

toward them, they started back, rubbing shoulders in excited merriment.

They had not noticed that Georges Hugon was close by and that he was

listening to them, blushing so hotly the while that a rosy flush had

spread from his ears to his girlish throat. The infant was full of

shame and of ecstasy. From the moment his mother had turned him loose

in the room he had been hovering in the wake of Mme de Chezelles, the

only woman present who struck him as being the thing. But after all is

said and done, Nana licked her to fits!

“Yesterday evening,” Mme Hugon was saying, “Georges took me to the

play. Yes, we went to the Variétés, where I certainly had not set foot

for the last ten years. That child adores music. As to me, I wasn’t in

the least amused, but he was so happy! They put extraordinary pieces on

the stage nowadays. Besides, music delights me very little, I confess.”

“What! You don’t love music, madame?” cried Mme du Joncquoy, lifting

her eyes to heaven. “Is it possible there should be people who don’t

love music?”

The exclamation of surprise was general. No one had dropped a single

word concerning the performance at the Variétés, at which the good Mme

Hugon had not understood any of the allusions. The ladies knew the

piece but said nothing about it, and with that they plunged into the

realm of sentiment and began discussing the masters in a tone of

refined and ecstatical admiration. Mme du Joncquoy was not fond of any

of them save Weber, while Mme Chantereau stood up for the Italians. The

ladies’ voices had turned soft and languishing, and in front of the

hearth one might have fancied one’s self listening in meditative,

religious retirement to the faint, discreet music of a little chapel.

“Now let’s see,” murmured Vandeuvres, bringing Fauchery back into the

middle of the drawing room, “notwithstanding it all, we must invent a

woman for tomorrow. Shall we ask Steiner about it?”

“Oh, when Steiner’s got hold of a woman,” said the journalist, “it’s

because Paris has done with her.”

Vandeuvres, however, was searching about on every side.

“Wait a bit,” he continued, “the other day I met Foucarmont with a

charming blonde. I’ll go and tell him to bring her.”

And he called to Foucarmont. They exchanged a few words rapidly. There

must have been some sort of complication, for both of them, moving

carefully forward and stepping over the dresses of the ladies, went off

in quest of another young man with whom they continued the discussion

in the embrasure of a window. Fauchery was left to himself and had just

decided to proceed to the hearth, where Mme du Joncquoy was announcing

that she never heard Weber played without at the same time seeing

lakes, forests and sunrises over landscapes steeped in dew, when a hand

touched his shoulder and a voice behind him remarked:

“It’s not civil of you.”

“What d’you mean?” he asked, turning round and recognizing La Faloise.

“Why, about that supper tomorrow. You might easily have got me

invited.”

Fauchery was at length about to state his reasons when Vandeuvres came

back to tell him:

“It appears it isn’t a girl of Foucarmont’s. It’s that man’s flame out

there. She won’t be able to come. What a piece of bad luck! But all the

same I’ve pressed Foucarmont into the service, and he’s going to try to

get Louise from the Palais-Royal.”

“Is it not true, Monsieur de Vandeuvres,” asked Mme Chantereau, raising

her voice, “that Wagner’s music was hissed last Sunday?”

“Oh, frightfully, madame,” he made answer, coming forward with his

usual exquisite politeness.

Then, as they did not detain him, he moved off and continued whispering

in the journalist’s ear:

“I’m going to press some more of them. These young fellows must know

some little ladies.”

With that he was observed to accost men and to engage them in

conversation in his usual amiable and smiling way in every corner of

the drawing room. He mixed with the various groups, said something

confidently to everyone and walked away again with a sly wink and a

secret signal or two. It looked as though he were giving out a

watchword in that easy way of his. The news went round; the place of

meeting was announced, while the ladies’ sentimental dissertations on

music served to conceal the small, feverish rumor of these recruiting

operations.

“No, do not speak of your Germans,” Mme Chantereau was saying. “Song is

gaiety; song is light. Have you heard Patti in the Barber of Seville?”

“She was delicious!” murmured Leonide, who strummed none but operatic

airs on her piano.

Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had rung. When on Tuesdays the number of

visitors was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself. While

directing a footman to clear a round table the countess followed the

Count de Vandeuvres with her eyes. She still smiled that vague smile

which slightly disclosed her white teeth, and as the count passed she

questioned him.

“What ARE you plotting, Monsieur de Vandeuvres?”

“What am I plotting, madame?” he answered quietly. “Nothing at all.”

“Really! I saw you so busy. Pray, wait, you shall make yourself

useful!”

She placed an album in his hands and asked him to put it on the piano.

But he found means to inform Fauchery in a low whisper that they would

have Tatan Nene, the most finely developed girl that winter, and Maria

Blond, the same who had just made her first appearance at the

Folies-Dramatiques. Meanwhile La Faloise stopped him at every step in

hopes of receiving an invitation. He ended by offering himself, and

Vandeuvres engaged him in the plot at once; only he made him promise to

bring Clarisse with him, and when La Faloise pretended to scruple about

certain points he quieted him by the remark:

“Since I invite you that’s enough!”

Nevertheless, La Faloise would have much liked to know the name of the

hostess. But the countess had recalled Vandeuvres and was questioning

him as to the manner in which the English made tea. He often betook

himself to England, where his horses ran. Then as though he had been

inwardly following up quite a laborious train of thought during his

remarks, he broke in with the question:

“And the marquis, by the by? Are we not to see him?”

“Oh, certainly you will! My father made me a formal promise that he

would come,” replied the countess. “But I’m beginning to be anxious.

His duties will have kept him.”

Vandeuvres smiled a discreet smile. He, too, seemed to have his doubts

as to the exact nature of the Marquis de Chouard’s duties. Indeed, he

had been thinking of a pretty woman whom the marquis occasionally took

into the country with him. Perhaps they could get her too.

In the meantime Fauchery decided that the moment had come in which to

risk giving Count Muff his invitation. The evening, in fact, was

drawing to a close.

“Are you serious?” asked Vandeuvres, who thought a joke was intended.

“Extremely serious. If I don’t execute my commission she’ll tear my

eyes out. It’s a case of landing her fish, you know.”

“Well then, I’ll help you, dear boy.”

Eleven o’clock struck. Assisted by her daughter, the countess was

pouring out the tea, and as hardly any guests save intimate friends had

come, the cups and the platefuls of little cakes were being circulated

without ceremony. Even the ladies did not leave their armchairs in

front of the fire and sat sipping their tea and nibbling cakes which

they held between their finger tips. From music the talk had declined

to purveyors. Boissier was the only person for sweetmeats and Catherine

for ices. Mme Chantereau, however, was all for Latinville. Speech grew

more and more indolent, and a sense of lassitude was lulling the room

to sleep. Steiner had once more set himself secretly to undermine the

deputy, whom he held in a state of blockade in the corner of a settee.

M. Venot, whose teeth must have been ruined by sweet things, was eating

little dry cakes, one after the other, with a small nibbling sound

suggestive of a mouse, while the chief clerk, his nose in a teacup,

seemed never to be going to finish its contents. As to the countess,

she went in a leisurely way from one guest to another, never pressing

them, indeed, only pausing a second or two before the gentlemen whom

she viewed with an air of dumb interrogation before she smiled and

passed on. The great fire had flushed all her face, and she looked as

if she were the sister of her daughter, who appeared so withered and

ungainly at her side. When she drew near Fauchery, who was chatting

with her husband and Vandeuvres, she noticed that they grew suddenly

silent; accordingly she did not stop but handed the cup of tea she was

offering to Georges Hugon beyond them.

“It’s a lady who desires your company at supper,” the journalist gaily

continued, addressing Count Muffat.

The last-named, whose face had worn its gray look all the evening,

seemed very much surprised. What lady was it?

“Oh, Nana!” said Vandeuvres, by way of forcing the invitation.

The count became more grave than before. His eyelids trembled just

perceptibly, while a look of discomfort, such as headache produces,

hovered for a moment athwart his forehead.

“But I’m not acquainted with that lady,” he murmured.

“Come, come, you went to her house,” remarked Vandeuvres.

“What d’you say? I went to her house? Oh yes, the other day, in behalf

of the Benevolent Organization. I had forgotten about it. But, no

matter, I am not acquainted with her, and I cannot accept.”

He had adopted an icy expression in order to make them understand that

this jest did not appear to him to be in good taste. A man of his

position did not sit down at tables of such women as that. Vandeuvres

protested: it was to be a supper party of dramatic and artistic people,

and talent excused everything. But without listening further to the

arguments urged by Fauchery, who spoke of a dinner where the Prince of

Scots, the son of a queen, had sat down beside an ex-music-hall singer,

the count only emphasized his refusal. In so doing, he allowed himself,

despite his great politeness, to be guilty of an irritated gesture.

Georges and La Faloise, standing in front of each other drinking their

tea, had overheard the two or three phrases exchanged in their

immediate neighborhood.

“Jove, it’s at Nana’s then,” murmured La Faloise. “I might have

expected as much!”

Georges said nothing, but he was all aflame. His fair hair was in

disorder; his blue eyes shone like tapers, so fiercely had the vice,

which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed and stirred his

blood. At last he was going to plunge into all that he had dreamed of!

“I don’t know the address,” La Faloise resumed.

“She lives on a third floor in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the Rue

de l’Arcade and the Rue Pesquier,” said Georges all in a breath.

And when the other looked at him in much astonishment, he added,

turning very red and fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment and

conceit:

“I’m of the party. She invited me this morning.”

But there was a great stir in the drawing room, and Vandeuvres and

Fauchery could not continue pressing the count. The Marquis de Chouard

had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet him. He had moved

painfully forward, his legs failing under him, and he now stood in the

middle of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking, as though he had

just come out of some dark alley and were blinded by the brightness of

the lamps.

“I scarcely hoped to see you tonight, Father,” said the countess. “I

should have been anxious till the morning.”

He looked at her without answering, as a man might who fails to

understand. His nose, which loomed immense on his shorn face, looked

like a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down. Seeing him such a

wreck, Mme Hugon, full of kind compassion, said pitying things to him.

“You work too hard. You ought to rest yourself. At our age we ought to

leave work to the young people.”

“Work! Ah yes, to be sure, work!” he stammered at last. “Always plenty

of work.”

He began to pull himself together, straightening up his bent figure and

passing his hand, as was his wont, over his scant gray hair, of which a

few locks strayed behind his ears.

“At what are you working as late as this?” asked Mme du Joncquoy. “I

thought you were at the financial minister’s reception?”

But the countess intervened with:

“My father had to study the question of a projected law.”

“Yes, a projected law,” he said; “exactly so, a projected law. I shut

myself up for that reason. It refers to work in factories, and I was

anxious for a proper observance of the Lord’s day of rest. It is really

shameful that the government is unwilling to act with vigor in the

matter. Churches are growing empty; we are running headlong to ruin.”

Vandeuvres had exchanged glances with Fauchery. They both happened to

be behind the marquis, and they were scanning him suspiciously. When

Vandeuvres found an opportunity to take him aside and to speak to him

about the good-looking creature he was in the habit of taking down into

the country, the old man affected extreme surprise. Perhaps someone had

seen him with the Baroness Decker, at whose house at Viroflay he

sometimes spent a day or so. Vandeuvres’s sole vengeance was an abrupt

question:

“Tell me, where have you been straying to? Your elbow is covered with

cobwebs and plaster.”

“My elbow,” he muttered, slightly disturbed. “Yes indeed, it’s true. A

speck or two, I must have come in for them on my way down from my

office.”

Several people were taking their departure. It was close on midnight.

Two footmen were noiselessly removing the empty cups and the plates

with cakes. In front of the hearth the ladies had re-formed and, at the

same time, narrowed their circle and were chatting more carelessly than

before in the languid atmosphere peculiar to the close of a party. The

very room was going to sleep, and slowly creeping shadows were cast by

its walls. It was then Fauchery spoke of departure. Yet he once more

forgot his intention at sight of the Countess Sabine. She was resting

from her cares as hostess, and as she sat in her wonted seat, silent,

her eyes fixed on a log which was turning into embers, her face

appeared so white and so impassable that doubt again possessed him. In

the glow of the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner of

her lip became white. It was Nana’s very mole, down to the color of the

hair. He could not refrain from whispering something about it in

Vandeuvres’s ear. Gad, it was true; the other had never noticed it

before. And both men continued this comparison of Nana and the

countess. They discovered a vague resemblance about the chin and the

mouth, but the eyes were not at all alike. Then, too, Nana had a

good-natured expression, while with the countess it was hard to

decide—she might have been a cat, sleeping with claws withdrawn and

paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous quiver.

“All the same, one could have her,” declared Fauchery.

Vandeuvres stripped her at a glance.

“Yes, one could, all the same,” he said. “But I think nothing of the

thighs, you know. Will you bet she has no thighs?”

He stopped, for Fauchery touched him briskly on the arm and showed him

Estelle, sitting close to them on her footstool. They had raised their

voices without noticing her, and she must have overheard them.

Nevertheless, she continued sitting there stiff and motionless, not a

hair having lifted on her thin neck, which was that of a girl who has

shot up all too quickly. Thereupon they retired three or four paces,

and Vandeuvres vowed that the countess was a very honest woman. Just

then voices were raised in front of the hearth. Mme du Joncquoy was

saying:

“I was willing to grant you that Monsieur de Bismarck was perhaps a

witty man. Only, if you go as far as to talk of genius—”

The ladies had come round again to their earliest topic of

conversation.

“What the deuce! Still Monsieur de Bismarck!” muttered Fauchery. “This

time I make my escape for good and all.”

“Wait a bit,” said Vandeuvres, “we must have a definite no from the

count.”

The Count Muffat was talking to his father-in-law and a certain

serious-looking gentleman. Vandeuvres drew him away and renewed the

invitation, backing it up with the information that he was to be at the

supper himself. A man might go anywhere; no one could think of

suspecting evil where at most there could only be curiosity. The count

listened to these arguments with downcast eyes and expressionless face.

Vandeuvres felt him to be hesitating when the Marquis de Chouard

approached with a look of interrogation. And when the latter was

informed of the question in hand and Fauchery had invited him in his

turn, he looked at his son-in-law furtively. There ensued an

embarrassed silence, but both men encouraged one another and would

doubtless have ended by accepting had not Count Muffat perceived M.

Venot’s gaze fixed upon him. The little old man was no longer smiling;

his face was cadaverous, his eyes bright and keen as steel.

“No,” replied the count directly, in so decisive a tone that further

insistence became impossible.

Then the marquis refused with even greater severity of expression. He

talked morality. The aristocratic classes ought to set a good example.

Fauchery smiled and shook hands with Vandeuvres. He did not wait for

him and took his departure immediately, for he was due at his newspaper

office.

“At Nana’s at midnight, eh?”

La Faloise retired too. Steiner had made his bow to the countess. Other

men followed them, and the same phrase went round—“At midnight, at

Nana’s”—as they went to get their overcoats in the anteroom. Georges,

who could not leave without his mother, had stationed himself at the

door, where he gave the exact address. “Third floor, door on your

left.” Yet before going out Fauchery gave a final glance. Vandeuvres

had again resumed his position among the ladies and was laughing with

Leonide de Chezelles. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard were

joining in the conversation, while the good Mme Hugon was falling

asleep open-eyed. Lost among the petticoats, M. Venot was his own small

self again and smiled as of old. Twelve struck slowly in the great

solemn room.

“What—what do you mean?” Mme du Joncquoy resumed. “You imagine that

Monsieur de Bismarck will make war on us and beat us! Oh, that’s

unbearable!”

Indeed, they were laughing round Mme Chantereau, who had just repeated

an assertion she had heard made in Alsace, where her husband owned a

foundry.

“We have the emperor, fortunately,” said Count Muffat in his grave,

official way.

It was the last phrase Fauchery was able to catch. He closed the door

after casting one more glance in the direction of the Countess Sabine.

She was talking sedately with the chief clerk and seemed to be

interested in that stout individual’s conversation. Assuredly he must

have been deceiving himself. There was no “little rift” there at all.

It was a pity.

“You’re not coming down then?” La Faloise shouted up to him from the

entrance hall.

And out on the pavement, as they separated, they once more repeated:

“Tomorrow, at Nana’s.”

CHAPTER IV

Since morning Zoé had delivered up the flat to a managing man who had

come from Brebant’s with a staff of helpers and waiters. Brebant was to

supply everything, from the supper, the plates and dishes, the glass,

the linen, the flowers, down to the seats and footstools. Nana could

not have mustered a dozen napkins out of all her cupboards, and not

having had time to get a proper outfit after her new start in life and

scorning to go to the restaurant, she had decided to make the

restaurant come to her. It struck her as being more the thing. She

wanted to celebrate her great success as an actress with a supper which

should set people talking. As her dining room was too small, the

manager had arranged the table in the drawing room, a table with

twenty-five covers, placed somewhat close together.

“Is everything ready?” asked Nana when she returned at midnight.

“Oh! I don’t know,” replied Zoé roughly, looking beside herself with

worry. “The Lord be thanked, I don’t bother about anything. They’re

making a fearful mess in the kitchen and all over the flat! I’ve had to

fight my battles too. The other two came again. My eye! I did just

chuck ’em out!”

She referred, of course, to her employer’s old admirers, the tradesman

and the Walachian, to whom Nana, sure of her future and longing to shed

her skin, as she phrased it, had decided to give the go-by.

“There are a couple of leeches for you!” she muttered.

“If they come back threaten to go to the police.”

Then she called Daguenet and Georges, who had remained behind in the

anteroom, where they were hanging up their overcoats. They had both met

at the stage door in the Passage des Panoramas, and she had brought

them home with her in a cab. As there was nobody there yet, she shouted

to them to come into the dressing room while Zoé was touching up her

toilet. Hurriedly and without changing her dress she had her hair done

up and stuck white roses in her chignon and at her bosom. The little

room was littered with the drawing-room furniture, which the workmen

had been compelled to roll in there, and it was full of a motley

assemblage of round tables, sofas and armchairs, with their legs in air

for the most part. Nana was quite ready when her dress caught on a

castor and tore upward. At this she swore furiously; such things only

happened to her! Ragingly she took off her dress, a very simple affair

of white foulard, of so thin and supple a texture that it clung about

her like a long shift. But she put it on again directly, for she could

not find another to her taste, and with tears in her eyes declared that

she was dressed like a ragpicker. Daguenet and Georges had to patch up

the rent with pins, while Zoé once more arranged her hair. All three

hurried round her, especially the boy, who knelt on the floor with his

hands among her skirts. And at last she calmed down again when Daguenet

assured her it could not be later than a quarter past twelve, seeing

that by dint of scamping her words and skipping her lines she had

effectually shortened the third act of the Blonde Venus.

“The play’s still far too good for that crowd of idiots,” she said.

“Did you see? There were thousands there tonight. Zoé, my girl, you

will wait in here. Don’t go to bed, I shall want you. By gum, it is

time they came. Here’s company!”

She ran off while Georges stayed where he was with the skirts of his

coat brushing the floor. He blushed, seeing Daguenet looking at him.

Notwithstanding which, they had conceived a tender regard the one for

the other. They rearranged the bows of their cravats in front of the

big dressing glass and gave each other a mutual dose of the

clothesbrush, for they were all white from their close contact with

Nana.

“One would think it was sugar,” murmured Georges, giggling like a

greedy little child.

A footman hired for the evening was ushering the guests into the small

drawing room, a narrow slip of a place in which only four armchairs had

been left in order the better to pack in the company. From the large

drawing room beyond came a sound as of the moving of plates and silver,

while a clear and brilliant ray of light shone from under the door. At

her entrance Nana found Clarisse Besnus, whom La Faloise had brought,

already installed in one of the armchairs.

“Dear me, you’re the first of ’em!” said Nana, who, now that she was

successful, treated her familiarly.

“Oh, it’s his doing,” replied Clarisse. “He’s always afraid of not

getting anywhere in time. If I’d taken him at his word I shouldn’t have

waited to take off my paint and my wig.”

The young man, who now saw Nana for the first time, bowed, paid her a

compliment and spoke of his cousin, hiding his agitation behind an

exaggeration of politeness. But Nana, neither listening to him nor

recognizing his face, shook hands with him and then went briskly toward

Rose Mignon, with whom she at once assumed a most distinguished manner.

“Ah, how nice of you, my dear madame! I was so anxious to have you

here!”

“It’s I who am charmed, I assure you,” said Rose with equal amiability.

“Pray, sit down. Do you require anything?”

“Thank you, no! Ah yes, I’ve left my fan in my pelisse, Steiner; just

look in the right-hand pocket.”

Steiner and Mignon had come in behind Rose. The banker turned back and

reappeared with the fan while Mignon embraced Nana fraternally and

forced Rose to do so also. Did they not all belong to the same family

in the theatrical world? Then he winked as though to encourage Steiner,

but the latter was disconcerted by Rose’s clear gaze and contented

himself by kissing Nana’s hand.

Just then the Count de Vandeuvres made his appearance with Blanche de

Sivry. There was an interchange of profound bows, and Nana with the

utmost ceremony conducted Blanche to an armchair. Meanwhile Vandeuvres

told them laughingly that Fauchery was engaged in a dispute at the foot

of the stairs because the porter had refused to allow Lucy Stewart’s

carriage to come in at the gate. They could hear Lucy telling the

porter he was a dirty blackguard in the anteroom. But when the footman

had opened the door she came forward with her laughing grace of manner,

announced her name herself, took both Nana’s hands in hers and told her

that she had liked her from the very first and considered her talent

splendid. Nana, puffed up by her novel role of hostess, thanked her and

was veritably confused. Nevertheless, from the moment of Fauchery’s

arrival she appeared preoccupied, and directly she could get near him

she asked him in a low voice:

“Will he come?”

“No, he did not want to,” was the journalist’s abrupt reply, for he was

taken by surprise, though he had got ready some sort of tale to explain

Count Muffat’s refusal.

Seeing the young woman’s sudden pallor, he became conscious of his

folly and tried to retract his words.

“He was unable to; he is taking the countess to the ball at the

Ministry of the Interior tonight.”

“All right,” murmured Nana, who suspected him of ill will, “you’ll pay

me out for that, my pippin.”

She turned on her heel, and so did he; they were angry. Just then

Mignon was pushing Steiner up against Nana, and when Fauchery had left

her he said to her in a low voice and with the good-natured cynicism of

a comrade in arms who wishes his friends to be happy:

“He’s dying of it, you know, only he’s afraid of my wife. Won’t you

protect him?”

Nana did not appear to understand. She smiled and looked at Rose, the

husband and the banker and finally said to the latter:

“Monsieur Steiner, you will sit next to me.”

With that there came from the anteroom a sound of laughter and

whispering and a burst of merry, chattering voices, which sounded as if

a runaway convent were on the premises. And Labordette appeared, towing

five women in his rear, his boarding school, as Lucy Stewart cruelly

phrased it. There was Gaga, majestic in a blue velvet dress which was

too tight for her, and Caroline Hequet, clad as usual in ribbed black

silk, trimmed with Chantilly lace. Léa de Horn came next, terribly

dressed up, as her wont was, and after her the big Tatan Nene, a

good-humored fair girl with the bosom of a wet nurse, at which people

laughed, and finally little Maria Blond, a young damsel of fifteen, as

thin and vicious as a street child, yet on the high road to success,

owing to her recent first appearance at the Folies. Labordette had

brought the whole collection in a single fly, and they were still

laughing at the way they had been squeezed with Maria Blond on her

knees. But on entering the room they pursed up their lips, and all grew

very conventional as they shook hands and exchanged salutations. Gaga

even affected the infantile and lisped through excess of genteel

deportment. Tatan Nene alone transgressed. They had been telling her as

they came along that six absolutely naked Negroes would serve up Nana’s

supper, and she now grew anxious about them and asked to see them.

Labordette called her a goose and besought her to be silent.

“And Bordenave?” asked Fauchery.

“Oh, you may imagine how miserable I am,” cried Nana; “he won’t be able

to join us.”

“Yes,” said Rose Mignon, “his foot caught in a trap door, and he’s got

a fearful sprain. If only you could hear him swearing, with his leg

tied up and laid out on a chair!”

Thereupon everybody mourned over Bordenave’s absence. No one ever gave

a good supper without Bordenave. Ah well, they would try and do without

him, and they were already talking about other matters when a burly

voice was heard:

“What, eh, what? Is that the way they’re going to write my obituary

notice?”

There was a shout, and all heads were turned round, for it was indeed

Bordenave. Huge and fiery-faced, he was standing with his stiff leg in

the doorway, leaning for support on Simonne Cabiroche’s shoulder.

Simonne was for the time being his mistress. This little creature had

had a certain amount of education and could play the piano and talk

English. She was a blonde on a tiny, pretty scale and so delicately

formed that she seemed to bend under Bordenave’s rude weight. Yet she

was smilingly submissive withal. He postured there for some moments,

for he felt that together they formed a tableau.

“One can’t help liking ye, eh?” he continued. “Zounds, I was afraid I

should get bored, and I said to myself, ‘Here goes.’”

But he interrupted himself with an oath.

“Oh, damn!”

Simonne had taken a step too quickly forward, and his foot had just

felt his full weight. He gave her a rough push, but she, still smiling

away and ducking her pretty head as some animal might that is afraid of

a beating, held him up with all the strength a little plump blonde can

command. Amid all these exclamations there was a rush to his

assistance. Nana and Rose Mignon rolled up an armchair, into which

Bordenave let himself sink, while the other women slid a second one

under his leg. And with that all the actresses present kissed him as a

matter of course. He kept grumbling and gasping.

“Oh, damn! Oh, damn! Ah well, the stomach’s unhurt, you’ll see.”

Other guests had arrived by this time, and motion became impossible in

the room. The noise of clinking plates and silver had ceased, and now a

dispute was heard going on in the big drawing room, where the voice of

the manager grumbled angrily. Nana was growing impatient, for she

expected no more invited guests and wondered why they did not bring in

supper. She had just sent Georges to find out what was going on when,

to her great surprise, she noticed the arrival of more guests, both

male and female. She did not know them in the least. Whereupon with

some embarrassment she questioned Bordenave, Mignon and Labordette

about them. They did not know them any more than she did, but when she

turned to the Count de Vandeuvres he seemed suddenly to recollect

himself. They were the young men he had pressed into her service at

Count Muffat’s. Nana thanked him. That was capital, capital! Only they

would all be terribly crowded, and she begged Labordette to go and have

seven more covers set. Scarcely had he left the room than the footman

ushered in three newcomers. Nay, this time the thing was becoming

ridiculous; one certainly could never take them all in. Nana was

beginning to grow angry and in her haughtiest manner announced that

such conduct was scarcely in good taste. But seeing two more arrive,

she began laughing; it was really too funny. So much the worse. People

would have to fit in anyhow! The company were all on their feet save

Gaga and Rose and Bordenave, who alone took up two armchairs. There was

a buzz of voices, people talking in low tones and stifling slight yawns

the while.

“Now what d’you say, my lass,” asked Bordenave, “to our sitting down at

table as if nothing had happened? We are all here, don’t you think?”

“Oh yes, we’re all here, I promise you!” she answered laughingly.

She looked round her but grew suddenly serious, as though she were

surprised at not finding someone. Doubtless there was a guest missing

whom she did not mention. It was a case of waiting. But a minute or two

later the company noticed in their midst a tall gentleman with a fine

face and a beautiful white beard. The most astonishing thing about it

was that nobody had seen him come in; indeed, he must have slipped into

the little drawing room through the bedroom door, which had remained

ajar. Silence reigned, broken only by a sound of whispering. The Count

de Vandeuvres certainly knew who the gentleman was, for they both

exchanged a discreet handgrip, but to the questions which the women

asked him he replied by a smile only. Thereupon Caroline Hequet wagered

in a low voice that it was an English lord who was on the eve of

returning to London to be married. She knew him quite well—she had had

him. And this account of the matter went the round of the ladies

present, Maria Blond alone asserting that, for her part, she recognized

a German ambassador. She could prove it, because he often passed the

night with one of her friends. Among the men his measure was taken in a

few rapid phrases. A real swell, to judge by his looks! Perhaps he

would pay for the supper! Most likely. It looked like it. Bah! Provided

only the supper was a good one! In the end the company remained

undecided. Nay, they were already beginning to forget the old

white-bearded gentleman when the manager opened the door of the large

drawing room.

“Supper is on the table, madame.”

Nana had already accepted Steiner’s proffered arm without noticing a

movement on the part of the old gentleman, who started to walk behind

her in solitary state. Thus the march past could not be organized, and

men and women entered anyhow, joking with homely good humor over this

absence of ceremony. A long table stretched from one end to the other

of the great room, which had been entirely cleared of furniture, and

this same table was not long enough, for the plates thereon were

touching one another. Four candelabra, with ten candles apiece, lit up

the supper, and of these one was gorgeous in silver plate with sheaves

of flowers to right and left of it. Everything was luxurious after the

restaurant fashion; the china was ornamented with a gold line and

lacked the customary monogram; the silver had become worn and tarnished

through dint of continual washings; the glass was of the kind that you

can complete an odd set of in any cheap emporium.

The scene suggested a premature housewarming in an establishment newly

smiled on by fortune and as yet lacking the necessary conveniences.

There was no central luster, and the candelabra, whose tall tapers had

scarcely burned up properly, cast a pale yellow light among the dishes

and stands on which fruit, cakes and preserves alternated

symmetrically.

“You sit where you like, you know,” said Nana. “It’s more amusing that

way.”

She remained standing midway down the side of the table. The old

gentleman whom nobody knew had placed himself on her right, while she

kept Steiner on her left hand. Some guests were already sitting down

when the sound of oaths came from the little drawing room. It was

Bordenave. The company had forgotten him, and he was having all the

trouble in the world to raise himself out of his two armchairs, for he

was howling amain and calling for that cat of a Simonne, who had

slipped off with the rest. The women ran in to him, full of pity for

his woes, and Bordenave appeared, supported, nay, almost carried, by

Caroline, Clarisse, Tatan Nene and Maria Blond. And there was much

to-do over his installation at the table.

“In the middle, facing Nana!” was the cry. “Bordenave in the middle!

He’ll be our president!”

Thereupon the ladies seated him in the middle. But he needed a second

chair for his leg, and two girls lifted it up and stretched it

carefully out. It wouldn’t matter; he would eat sideways.

“God blast it all!” he grumbled. “We’re squashed all the same! Ah, my

kittens, Papa recommends himself to your tender care!”

He had Rose Mignon on his right and Lucy Stewart on his left hand, and

they promised to take good care of him. Everybody was now getting

settled. Count de Vandeuvres placed himself between Lucy and Clarisse;

Fauchery between Rose Mignon and Caroline Hequet. On the other side of

the table Hector de la Faloise had rushed to get next Gaga, and that

despite the calls of Clarisse opposite, while Mignon, who never

deserted Steiner, was only separated from him by Blanche and had Tatan

Nene on his left. Then came Labordette and, finally, at the two ends of

the table were irregular crowding groups of young men and of women,

such as Simonne, Léa de Horn and Maria Blond. It was in this region

that Daguenet and Georges forgathered more warmly than ever while

smilingly gazing at Nana.

Nevertheless, two people remained standing, and there was much joking

about it. The men offered seats on their knees. Clarisse, who could not

move her elbows, told Vandeuvres that she counted on him to feed her.

And then that Bordenave did just take up space with his chairs! There

was a final effort, and at last everybody was seated, but, as Mignon

loudly remarked, they were confoundedly like herrings in a barrel.

“Thick asparagus soup à la comtesse, clear soup à la Deslignac,”

murmured the waiters, carrying about platefuls in rear of the guests.

Bordenave was loudly recommending the thick soup when a shout arose,

followed by protests and indignant exclamations. The door had just

opened, and three late arrivals, a woman and two men, had just come in.

Oh dear, no! There was no space for them! Nana, however, without

leaving her chair, began screwing up her eyes in the effort to find out

whether she knew them. The woman was Louise Violaine, but she had never

seen the men before.

“This gentleman, my dear,” said Vandeuvres, “is a friend of mine, a

naval officer, Monsieur de Foucarmont by name. I invited him.”

Foucarmont bowed and seemed very much at ease, for he added:

“And I took leave to bring one of my friends with me.”

“Oh, it’s quite right, quite right!” said Nana. “Sit down, pray. Let’s

see, you—Clarisse—push up a little. You’re a good deal spread out down

there. That’s it—where there’s a will—”

They crowded more tightly than ever, and Foucarmont and Louise were

given a little stretch of table, but the friend had to sit at some

distance from his plate and ate his supper through dint of making a

long arm between his neighbors’ shoulders. The waiters took away the

soup plates and circulated rissoles of young rabbit with truffles and

“niokys” and powdered cheese. Bordenave agitated the whole table with

the announcement that at one moment he had had the idea of bringing

with him Prullière, Fontan and old Bosc. At this Nana looked sedate and

remarked dryly that she would have given them a pretty reception. Had

she wanted colleagues, she would certainly have undertaken to ask them

herself. No, no, she wouldn’t have third-rate play actors. Old Bosc was

always drunk; Prullière was fond of spitting too much, and as to

Fontan, he made himself unbearable in society with his loud voice and

his stupid doings. Then, you know, third-rate play actors were always

out of place when they found themselves in the society of gentlemen

such as those around her.

“Yes, yes, it’s true,” Mignon declared.

All round the table the gentlemen in question looked unimpeachable in

the extreme, what with their evening dress and their pale features, the

natural distinction of which was still further refined by fatigue. The

old gentleman was as deliberate in his movements and wore as subtle a

smile as though he were presiding over a diplomatic congress, and

Vandeuvres, with his exquisite politeness toward the ladies next to

him, seemed to be at one of the Countess Muffat’s receptions. That very

morning Nana had been remarking to her aunt that in the matter of men

one could not have done better—they were all either wellborn or

wealthy, in fact, quite the thing. And as to the ladies, they were

behaving admirably. Some of them, such as Blanche, Léa and Louise, had

come in low dresses, but Gaga’s only was perhaps a little too low, the

more so because at her age she would have done well not to show her

neck at all. Now that the company were finally settled the laughter and

the light jests began to fail. Georges was under the impression that he

had assisted at merrier dinner parties among the good folks of Orleans.

There was scarcely any conversation. The men, not being mutually

acquainted, stared at one another, while the women sat quite quiet, and

it was this which especially surprised Georges. He thought them all

smugs—he had been under the impression that everybody would begin

kissing at once.

The third course, consisting of a Rhine carp à la Chambord and a saddle

of venison à l’anglaise, was being served when Blanche remarked aloud:

“Lucy, my dear, I met your Ollivier on Sunday. How he’s grown!”

“Dear me, yes! He’s eighteen,” replied Lucy. “It doesn’t make me feel

any younger. He went back to his school yesterday.”

Her son Ollivier, whom she was wont to speak of with pride, was a pupil

at the École de Marine. Then ensued a conversation about the young

people, during which all the ladies waxed very tender. Nana described

her own great happiness. Her baby, the little Louis, she said, was now

at the house of her aunt, who brought him round to her every morning at

eleven o’clock, when she would take him into her bed, where he played

with her griffon dog Lulu. It was enough to make one die of laughing to

see them both burying themselves under the clothes at the bottom of the

bed. The company had no idea how cunning Louiset had already become.

“Oh, yesterday I did just pass a day!” said Rose Mignon in her turn.

“Just imagine, I went to fetch Charles and Henry at their boarding

school, and I had positively to take them to the theater at night. They

jumped; they clapped their little hands: ‘We shall see Mamma act! We

shall see Mamma act!’ Oh, it was a to-do!”

Mignon smiled complaisantly, his eyes moist with paternal tenderness.

“And at the play itself,” he continued, “they were so funny! They

behaved as seriously as grown men, devoured Rose with their eyes and

asked me why Mamma had her legs bare like that.”

The whole table began laughing, and Mignon looked radiant, for his

pride as a father was flattered. He adored his children and had but one

object in life, which was to increase their fortunes by administering

the money gained by Rose at the theater and elsewhere with the

businesslike severity of a faithful steward. When as first fiddle in

the music hall where she used to sing he had married her, they had been

passionately fond of one another. Now they were good friends. There was

an understanding between them: she labored hard to the full extent of

her talent and of her beauty; he had given up his violin in order the

better to watch over her successes as an actress and as a woman. One

could not have found a more homely and united household anywhere!

“What age is your eldest?” asked Vandeuvres.

“Henry’s nine,” replied Mignon, “but such a big chap for his years!”

Then he chaffed Steiner, who was not fond of children, and with quiet

audacity informed him that were he a father, he would make a less

stupid hash of his fortune. While talking he watched the banker over

Blanche’s shoulders to see if it was coming off with Nana. But for some

minutes Rose and Fauchery, who were talking very near him, had been

getting on his nerves. Was Rose going to waste time over such a folly

as that? In that sort of case, by Jove, he blocked the way. And diamond

on finger and with his fine hands in great evidence, he finished

discussing a fillet of venison.

Elsewhere the conversation about children continued. La Faloise,

rendered very restless by the immediate proximity of Gaga, asked news

of her daughter, whom he had had the pleasure of noticing in her

company at the Variétés. Lili was quite well, but she was still such a

tomboy! He was astonished to learn that Lili was entering on her

nineteenth year. Gaga became even more imposing in his eyes, and when

he endeavored to find out why she had not brought Lili with her:

“Oh no, no, never!” she said stiffly. “Not three months ago she

positively insisted on leaving her boarding school. I was thinking of

marrying her off at once, but she loves me so that I had to take her

home—oh, so much against my will!”

Her blue eyelids with their blackened lashes blinked and wavered while

she spoke of the business of settling her young lady. If at her time of

life she hadn’t laid by a sou but was still always working to minister

to men’s pleasures, especially those very young men, whose grandmother

she might well be, it was truly because she considered a good match of

far greater importance than mere savings. And with that she leaned over

La Faloise, who reddened under the huge, naked, plastered shoulder with

which she well-nigh crushed him.

“You know,” she murmured, “if she fails it won’t be my fault. But

they’re so strange when they’re young!”

There was a considerable bustle round the table, and the waiters became

very active. After the third course the entrees had made their

appearance; they consisted of pullets à la marechale, fillets of sole

with shallot sauce and escalopes of Strasbourg paté. The manager, who

till then had been having Meursault served, now offered Chambertin and

Leoville. Amid the slight hubbub which the change of plates involved

Georges, who was growing momentarily more astonished, asked Daguenet if

all the ladies present were similarly provided with children, and the

other, who was amused by this question, gave him some further details.

Lucy Stewart was the daughter of a man of English origin who greased

the wheels of the trains at the Gare du Nord; she was thirty-nine years

old and had the face of a horse but was adorable withal and, though

consumptive, never died. In fact, she was the smartest woman there and

represented three princes and a duke. Caroline Hequet, born at

Bordeaux, daughter of a little clerk long since dead of shame, was

lucky enough to be possessed of a mother with a head on her shoulders,

who, after having cursed her, had made it up again at the end of a year

of reflection, being minded, at any rate, to save a fortune for her

daughter. The latter was twenty-five years old and very passionless and

was held to be one of the finest women it is possible to enjoy. Her

price never varied. The mother, a model of orderliness, kept the

accounts and noted down receipts and expenditures with severe

precision. She managed the whole household from some small lodging two

stories above her daughter’s, where, moreover, she had established a

workroom for dressmaking and plain sewing. As to Blanche de Sivry,

whose real name was Jacqueline Bandu, she hailed from a village near

Amiens. Magnificent in person, stupid and untruthful in character, she

gave herself out as the granddaughter of a general and never owned to

her thirty-two summers. The Russians had a great taste for her, owing

to her embonpoint. Then Daguenet added a rapid word or two about the

rest. There was Clarisse Besnus, whom a lady had brought up from

Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer in the capacity of maid while the lady’s husband

had started her in quite another line. There was Simonne Cabiroche, the

daughter of a furniture dealer in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, who had

been educated in a large boarding school with a view to becoming a

governess. Finally there were Maria Blond and Louise Violaine and Léa

de Horn, who had all shot up to woman’s estate on the pavements of

Paris, not to mention Tatan Nene, who had herded cows in Champagne till

she was twenty.

Georges listened and looked at these ladies, feeling dizzy and excited

by the coarse recital thus crudely whispered in his ear, while behind

his chair the waiters kept repeating in respectful tones:

“Pullets à la marechale; fillets of sole with ravigote sauce.”

“My dear fellow,” said Daguenet, giving him the benefit of his

experience, “don’t take any fish; it’ll do you no good at this time of

night. And be content with Leoville: it’s less treacherous.”

A heavy warmth floated upward from the candelabras, from the dishes

which were being handed round, from the whole table where thirty-eight

human beings were suffocating. And the waiters forgot themselves and

ran when crossing the carpet, so that it was spotted with grease.

Nevertheless, the supper grew scarce any merrier. The ladies trifled

with their meat, left half of it uneaten. Tatan Nene alone partook

gluttonously of every dish. At that advanced hour of the night hunger

was of the nervous order only, a mere whimsical craving born of an

exasperated stomach.

At Nana’s side the old gentleman refused every dish offered him; he had

only taken a spoonful of soup, and he now sat in front of his empty

plate, gazing silently about. There was some subdued yawning, and

occasionally eyelids closed and faces became haggard and white. It was

unutterably slow, as it always was, according to Vandeuvres’s dictum.

This sort of supper should be served anyhow if it was to be funny, he

opined. Otherwise when elegantly and conventionally done you might as

well feed in good society, where you were not more bored than here. Had

it not been for Bordenave, who was still bawling away, everybody would

have fallen asleep. That rum old buffer Bordenave, with his leg duly

stretched on its chair, was letting his neighbors, Lucy and Rose, wait

on him as though he were a sultan. They were entirely taken up with

him, and they helped him and pampered him and watched over his glass

and his plate, and yet that did not prevent his complaining.

“Who’s going to cut up my meat for me? I can’t; the table’s a league

away.”

Every few seconds Simonne rose and took up a position behind his back

in order to cut his meat and his bread. All the women took a great

interest in the things he ate. The waiters were recalled, and he was

stuffed to suffocation. Simonne having wiped his mouth for him while

Rose and Lucy were changing his plate, her act struck him as very

pretty and, deigning at length to show contentment:

“There, there, my daughter,” he said, “that’s as it should be. Women

are made for that!”

There was a slight reawakening, and conversation became general as they

finished discussing some orange sherbet. The hot roast was a fillet

with truffles, and the cold roast a galantine of guinea fowl in jelly.

Nana, annoyed by the want of go displayed by her guests, had begun

talking with the greatest distinctness.

“You know the Prince of Scots has already had a stage box reserved so

as to see the Blonde Venus when he comes to visit the exhibition.”

“I very much hope that all the princes will come and see it,” declared

Bordenave with his mouth full.

“They are expecting the shah of Persia next Sunday,” said Lucy Stewart.

Whereupon Rose Mignon spoke of the shah’s diamonds. He wore a tunic

entirely covered with gems; it was a marvel, a flaming star; it

represented millions. And the ladies, with pale faces and eyes

glittering with covetousness, craned forward and ran over the names of

the other kings, the other emperors, who were shortly expected. All of

them were dreaming of some royal caprice, some night to be paid for by

a fortune.

“Now tell me, dear boy,” Caroline Hequet asked Vandeuvres, leaning

forward as she did so, “how old’s the emperor of Russia?”

“Oh, he’s ‘present time,’” replied the count, laughing. “Nothing to be

done in that quarter, I warn you.”

Nana made pretense of being hurt. The witticism appeared somewhat too

stinging, and there was a murmur of protest. But Blanche gave a

description of the king of Italy, whom she had once seen at Milan. He

was scarcely good looking, and yet that did not prevent him enjoying

all the women. She was put out somewhat when Fauchery assured her that

Victor Emmanuel could not come to the exhibition. Louise Violaine and

Léa favored the emperor of Austria, and all of a sudden little Maria

Blond was heard saying:

“What an old stick the king of Prussia is! I was at Baden last year,

and one was always meeting him about with Count Bismarck.”

“Dear me, Bismarck!” Simonne interrupted. “I knew him once, I did. A

charming man.”

“That’s what I was saying yesterday,” cried Vandeuvres, “but nobody

would believe me.”

And just as at Countess Sabine’s, there ensued a long discussion about

Bismarck. Vandeuvres repeated the same phrases, and for a moment or two

one was again in the Muffats’ drawing room, the only difference being

that the ladies were changed. Then, just as last night, they passed on

to a discussion on music, after which, Foucarmont having let slip some

mention of the assumption of the veil of which Paris was still talking,

Nana grew quite interested and insisted on details about Mlle de

Fougeray. Oh, the poor child, fancy her burying herself alive like

that! Ah well, when it was a question of vocation! All round the table

the women expressed themselves much touched, and Georges, wearied at

hearing these things a second time discussed, was beginning to ask

Daguenet about Nana’s ways in private life, when the conversation

veered fatefully back to Count Bismarck. Tatan Nene bent toward

Labordette to ask him privily who this Bismarck might be, for she did

not know him. Whereupon Labordette, in cold blood, told her some

portentous anecdotes. This Bismarck, he said, was in the habit of

eating raw meat and when he met a woman near his den would carry her

off thither on his back; at forty years of age he had already had as

many as thirty-two children that way.

“Thirty-two children at forty!” cried Tatan Nene, stupefied and yet

convinced. “He must be jolly well worn out for his age.”

There was a burst of merriment, and it dawned on her that she was being

made game of.

“You sillies! How am I to know if you’re joking?”

Gaga, meanwhile, had stopped at the exhibition. Like all these ladies,

she was delightedly preparing for the fray. A good season, provincials

and foreigners rushing into Paris! In the long run, perhaps, after the

close of the exhibition she would, if her business had flourished, be

able to retire to a little house at Jouvisy, which she had long had her

eye on.

“What’s to be done?” she said to La Faloise. “One never gets what one

wants! Oh, if only one were still really loved!”

Gaga behaved meltingly because she had felt the young man’s knee gently

placed against her own. He was blushing hotly and lisping as elegantly

as ever. She weighed him at a glance. Not a very heavy little

gentleman, to be sure, but then she wasn’t hard to please. La Faloise

obtained her address.

“Just look there,” murmured Vandeuvres to Clarisse. “I think Gaga’s

doing you out of your Hector.”

“A good riddance, so far as I’m concerned,” replied the actress. “That

fellow’s an idiot. I’ve already chucked him downstairs three times. You

know, I’m disgusted when dirty little boys run after old women.”

She broke off and with a little gesture indicated Blanche, who from the

commencement of dinner had remained in a most uncomfortable attitude,

sitting up very markedly, with the intention of displaying her

shoulders to the old distinguished-looking gentleman three seats beyond

her.

“You’re being left too,” she resumed.

Vandeuvres smiled his thin smile and made a little movement to signify

he did not care. Assuredly ’twas not he who would ever have prevented

poor, dear Blanche scoring a success. He was more interested by the

spectacle which Steiner was presenting to the table at large. The

banker was noted for his sudden flames. That terrible German Jew who

brewed money, whose hands forged millions, was wont to turn imbecile

whenever he became enamored of a woman. He wanted them all too! Not one

could make her appearance on the stage but he bought her, however

expensive she might be. Vast sums were quoted. Twice had his furious

appetite for courtesans ruined him. The courtesans, as Vandeuvres used

to say, avenged public morality by emptying his moneybags. A big

operation in the saltworks of the Landes had rendered him powerful on

’change, and so for six weeks past the Mignons had been getting a

pretty slice out of those same saltworks. But people were beginning to

lay wagers that the Mignons would not finish their slice, for Nana was

showing her white teeth. Once again Steiner was in the toils, and so

deeply this time that as he sat by Nana’s side he seemed stunned; he

ate without appetite; his lip hung down; his face was mottled. She had

only to name a figure. Nevertheless, she did not hurry but continued

playing with him, breathing her merry laughter into his hairy ear and

enjoying the little convulsive movements which kept traversing his

heavy face. There would always be time enough to patch all that up if

that ninny of a Count Muffat were really to treat her as Joseph did

Potiphar’s wife.

“Leoville or Chambertin?” murmured a waiter, who came craning forward

between Nana and Steiner just as the latter was addressing her in a low

voice.

“Eh, what?” he stammered, losing his head. “Whatever you like—I don’t

care.”

Vandeuvres gently nudged Lucy Stewart, who had a very spiteful tongue

and a very fierce invention when once she was set going. That evening

Mignon was driving her to exasperation.

“He would gladly be bottleholder, you know,” she remarked to the count.

“He’s in hopes of repeating what he did with little Jonquier. You

remember: Jonquier was Rose’s man, but he was sweet on big Laure. Now

Mignon procured Laure for Jonquier and then came back arm in arm with

him to Rose, as if he were a husband who had been allowed a little

peccadillo. But this time the thing’s going to fail. Nana doesn’t give

up the men who are lent her.”

“What ails Mignon that he should be looking at his wife in that severe

way?” asked Vandeuvres.

He leaned forward and saw Rose growing exceedingly amorous toward

Fauchery. This was the explanation of his neighbor’s wrath. He resumed

laughingly:

“The devil, are you jealous?”

“Jealous!” said Lucy in a fury. “Good gracious, if Rose is wanting Léon

I give him up willingly—for what he’s worth! That’s to say, for a

bouquet a week and the rest to match! Look here, my dear boy, these

theatrical trollops are all made the same way. Why, Rose cried with

rage when she read Léon’s article on Nana; I know she did. So now, you

understand, she must have an article, too, and she’s gaining it. As for

me, I’m going to chuck Léon downstairs—you’ll see!”

She paused to say “Leoville” to the waiter standing behind her with his

two bottles and then resumed in lowered tones:

“I don’t want to shout; it isn’t my style. But she’s a cocky slut all

the same. If I were in her husband’s place I should lead her a lovely

dance. Oh, she won’t be very happy over it. She doesn’t know my

Fauchery: a dirty gent he is, too, palling up with women like that so

as to get on in the world. Oh, a nice lot they are!”

Vandeuvres did his best to calm her down, but Bordenave, deserted by

Rose and by Lucy, grew angry and cried out that they were letting Papa

perish of hunger and thirst. This produced a fortunate diversion. Yet

the supper was flagging; no one was eating now, though platefuls of

cepes a’ l’italienne and pineapple fritters à la Pompadour were being

mangled. The champagne, however, which had been drunk ever since the

soup course, was beginning little by little to warm the guests into a

state of nervous exaltation. They ended by paying less attention to

decorum than before. The women began leaning on their elbows amid the

disordered table arrangements, while the men, in order to breathe more

easily, pushed their chairs back, and soon the black coats appeared

buried between the light-colored bodices, and bare shoulders, half

turned toward the table, began to gleam as soft as silk. It was too

hot, and the glare of the candles above the table grew ever yellower

and duller. Now and again, when a women bent forward, the back of her

neck glowed golden under a rain of curls, and the glitter of a diamond

clasp lit up a lofty chignon. There was a touch of fire in the passing

jests, in the laughing eyes, in the sudden gleam of white teeth, in the

reflection of the candelabra on the surface of a glass of champagne.

The company joked at the tops of their voices, gesticulated, asked

questions which no one answered and called to one another across the

whole length of the room. But the loudest din was made by the waiters;

they fancied themselves at home in the corridors of their parent

restaurant; they jostled one another and served the ices and the

dessert to an accompaniment of guttural exclamations.

“My children,” shouted Bordenave, “you know we’re playing tomorrow. Be

careful! Not too much champagne!”

“As far as I’m concerned,” said Foucarmont, “I’ve drunk every

imaginable kind of wine in all the four quarters of the globe.

Extraordinary liquors some of ’em, containing alcohol enough to kill a

corpse! Well, and what d’you think? Why, it never hurt me a bit. I

can’t make myself drunk. I’ve tried and I can’t.”

He was very pale, very calm and collected, and he lolled back in his

chair, drinking without cessation.

“Never mind that,” murmured Louise Violaine. “Leave off; you’ve had

enough. It would be a funny business if I had to look after you the

rest of the night.”

Such was her state of exaltation that Lucy Stewart’s cheeks were

assuming a red, consumptive flush, while Rose Mignon with moist eyelids

was growing excessively melting. Tatan Nene, greatly astonished at the

thought that she had overeaten herself, was laughing vaguely over her

own stupidity. The others, such as Blanche, Caroline, Simonne and

Maria, were all talking at once and telling each other about their

private affairs—about a dispute with a coachman, a projected picnic and

innumerable complex stories of lovers stolen or restored. Meanwhile a

young man near Georges, having evinced a desire to kiss Léa de Horn,

received a sharp rap, accompanied by a “Look here, you, let me go!”

which was spoken in a tone of fine indignation; and Georges, who was

now very tipsy and greatly excited by the sight of Nana, hesitated

about carrying out a project which he had been gravely maturing. He had

been planning, indeed, to get under the table on all fours and to go

and crouch at Nana’s feet like a little dog. Nobody would have seen

him, and he would have stayed there in the quietest way. But when at

Léa’s urgent request Daguenet had told the young man to sit still,

Georges all at once felt grievously chagrined, as though the reproof

had just been leveled at him. Oh, it was all silly and slow, and there

was nothing worth living for! Daguenet, nevertheless, began chaffing

and obliged him to swallow a big glassful of water, asking him at the

same time what he would do if he were to find himself alone with a

woman, seeing that three glasses of champagne were able to bowl him

over.

“Why, in Havana,” resumed Foucarmont, “they make a spirit with a

certain wild berry; you think you’re swallowing fire! Well now, one

evening I drank more than a liter of it, and it didn’t hurt me one bit.

Better than that, another time when we were on the coast of Coromandel

some savages gave us I don’t know what sort of a mixture of pepper and

vitriol, and that didn’t hurt me one bit. I can’t make myself drunk.”

For some moments past La Faloise’s face opposite had excited his

displeasure. He began sneering and giving vent to disagreeable

witticisms. La Faloise, whose brain was in a whirl, was behaving very

restlessly and squeezing up against Gaga. But at length he became the

victim of anxiety; somebody had just taken his handkerchief, and with

drunken obstinacy he demanded it back again, asked his neighbors about

it, stooped down in order to look under the chairs and the guests’

feet. And when Gaga did her best to quiet him:

“It’s a nuisance,” he murmured, “my initials and my coronet are worked

in the corner. They may compromise me.”

“I say, Monsieur Falamoise, Lamafoise, Mafaloise!” shouted Foucarmont,

who thought it exceedingly witty thus to disfigure the young man’s name

ad infinitum.

But La Faloise grew wroth and talked with a stutter about his ancestry.

He threatened to send a water bottle at Foucarmont’s head, and Count de

Vandeuvres had to interfere in order to assure him that Foucarmont was

a great joker. Indeed, everybody was laughing. This did for the already

flurried young man, who was very glad to resume his seat and to begin

eating with childlike submissiveness when in a loud voice his cousin

ordered him to feed. Gaga had taken him back to her ample side; only

from time to time he cast sly and anxious glances at the guests, for he

ceased not to search for his handkerchief.

Then Foucarmont, being now in his witty vein, attacked Labordette right

at the other end of the table. Louise Violaine strove to make him hold

his tongue, for, she said, “when he goes nagging at other people like

that it always ends in mischief for me.” He had discovered a witticism

which consisted in addressing Labordette as “Madame,” and it must have

amused him greatly, for he kept on repeating it while Labordette

tranquilly shrugged his shoulders and as constantly replied:

“Pray hold your tongue, my dear fellow; it’s stupid.”

But as Foucarmont failed to desist and even became insulting without

his neighbors knowing why, he left off answering him and appealed to

Count Vandeuvres.

“Make your friend hold his tongue, monsieur. I don’t wish to become

angry.”

Foucarmont had twice fought duels, and he was in consequence most

politely treated and admitted into every circle. But there was now a

general uprising against him. The table grew merry at his sallies, for

they thought him very witty, but that was no reason why the evening

should be spoiled. Vandeuvres, whose subtle countenance was darkening

visibly, insisted on his restoring Labordette his sex. The other

men—Mignon, Steiner and Bordenave—who were by this time much exalted,

also intervened with shouts which drowned his voice. Only the old

gentleman sitting forgotten next to Nana retained his stately demeanor

and, still smiling in his tired, silent way, watched with lackluster

eyes the untoward finish of the dessert.

“What do you say to our taking coffee in here, duckie?” said Bordenave.

“We’re very comfortable.”

Nana did not give an immediate reply. Since the beginning of supper she

had seemed no longer in her own house. All this company had overwhelmed

and bewildered her with their shouts to the waiters, the loudness of

their voices and the way in which they put themselves at their ease,

just as though they were in a restaurant. Forgetting her role of

hostess, she busied herself exclusively with bulky Steiner, who was

verging on apoplexy beside her. She was listening to his proposals and

continually refusing them with shakes of the head and that temptress’s

laughter which is peculiar to a voluptuous blonde. The champagne she

had been drinking had flushed her a rosy-red; her lips were moist; her

eyes sparkled, and the banker’s offers rose with every kittenish

movement of her shoulders, with every little voluptuous lift and fall

of her throat, which occurred when she turned her head. Close by her

ear he kept espying a sweet little satiny corner which drove him crazy.

Occasionally Nana was interrupted, and then, remembering her guests,

she would try and be as pleased as possible in order to show that she

knew how to receive. Toward the end of the supper she was very tipsy.

It made her miserable to think of it, but champagne had a way of

intoxicating her almost directly! Then an exasperating notion struck

her. In behaving thus improperly at her table, these ladies were

showing themselves anxious to do her an ugly turn. Oh yes, she could

see it all distinctly. Lucy had given Foucarmont a wink in order to egg

him on against Labordette, while Rose, Caroline and the others were

doing all they could to stir up the men. Now there was such a din you

couldn’t hear your neighbor speak, and so the story would get about

that you might allow yourself every kind of liberty when you supped at

Nana’s. Very well then! They should see! She might be tipsy, if you

like, but she was still the smartest and most ladylike woman there.

“Do tell them to serve the coffee here, duckie,” resumed Bordenave. “I

prefer it here because of my leg.”

But Nana had sprung savagely to her feet after whispering into the

astonished ears of Steiner and the old gentleman:

“It’s quite right; it’ll teach me to go and invite a dirty lot like

that.”

Then she pointed to the door of the dining room and added at the top of

her voice:

“If you want coffee it’s there, you know.”

The company left the table and crowded toward the dining room without

noticing Nana’s indignant outburst. And soon no one was left in the

drawing room save Bordenave, who advanced cautiously, supporting

himself against the wall and cursing away at the confounded women who

chucked Papa the moment they were chock-full. The waiters behind him

were already busy removing the plates and dishes in obedience to the

loudly voiced orders of the manager. They rushed to and fro, jostled

one another, caused the whole table to vanish, as a pantomime property

might at the sound of the chief scene-shifter’s whistle. The ladies and

gentlemen were to return to the drawing room after drinking their

coffee.

“By gum, it’s less hot here,” said Gaga with a slight shiver as she

entered the dining room.

The window here had remained open. Two lamps illuminated the table,

where coffee and liqueurs were set out. There were no chairs, and the

guests drank their coffee standing, while the hubbub the waiters were

making in the next room grew louder and louder. Nana had disappeared,

but nobody fretted about her absence. They did without her excellently

well, and everybody helped himself and rummaged in the drawers of the

sideboard in search of teaspoons, which were lacking. Several groups

were formed; people separated during supper rejoined each other, and

there was an interchange of glances, of meaning laughter and of phrases

which summed up recent situations.

“Ought not Monsieur Fauchery to come and lunch with us one of these

days, Auguste?” said Rose Mignon.

Mignon, who was toying with his watch chain, eyed the journalist for a

second or two with his severe glance. Rose was out of her senses. As

became a good manager, he would put a stop to such spendthrift courses.

In return for a notice, well and good, but afterward, decidedly not.

Nevertheless, as he was fully aware of his wife’s wrongheadedness and

as he made it a rule to wink paternally at a folly now and again, when

such was necessary, he answered amiably enough:

“Certainly, I shall be most happy. Pray come tomorrow, Monsieur

Fauchery.”

Lucy Stewart heard this invitation given while she was talking with

Steiner and Blanche and, raising her voice, she remarked to the banker:

“It’s a mania they’ve all of them got. One of them even went so far as

to steal my dog. Now, dear boy, am I to blame if you chuck her?”

Rose turned round. She was very pale and gazed fixedly at Steiner as

she sipped her coffee. And then all the concentrated anger she felt at

his abandonment of her flamed out in her eyes. She saw more clearly

than Mignon; it was stupid in him to have wished to begin the Jonquier

ruse a second time—those dodgers never succeeded twice running. Well,

so much the worse for him! She would have Fauchery! She had been

getting enamored of him since the beginning of supper, and if Mignon

was not pleased it would teach him greater wisdom!

“You are not going to fight?” said Vandeuvres, coming over to Lucy

Stewart.

“No, don’t be afraid of that! Only she must mind and keep quiet, or I

let the cat out of the bag!”

Then signing imperiously to Fauchery:

“I’ve got your slippers at home, my little man. I’ll get them taken to

your porter’s lodge for you tomorrow.”

He wanted to joke about it, but she swept off, looking like a queen.

Clarisse, who had propped herself against a wall in order to drink a

quiet glass of kirsch, was seen to shrug her shoulders. A pleasant

business for a man! Wasn’t it true that the moment two women were

together in the presence of their lovers their first idea was to do one

another out of them? It was a law of nature! As to herself, why, in

heaven’s name, if she had wanted to she would have torn out Gaga’s eyes

on Hector’s account! But la, she despised him! Then as La Faloise

passed by, she contented herself by remarking to him:

“Listen, my friend, you like ’em well advanced, you do! You don’t want

’em ripe; you want ’em mildewed!”

La Faloise seemed much annoyed and not a little anxious. Seeing

Clarisse making game of him, he grew suspicious of her.

“No humbug, I say,” he muttered. “You’ve taken my handkerchief. Well

then, give it back!”

“He’s dreeing us with that handkerchief of his!” she cried. “Why, you

ass, why should I have taken it from you?”

“Why should you?” he said suspiciously. “Why, that you may send it to

my people and compromise me.”

In the meantime Foucarmont was diligently attacking the liqueurs. He

continued to gaze sneeringly at Labordette, who was drinking his coffee

in the midst of the ladies. And occasionally he gave vent to

fragmentary assertions, as thus: “He’s the son of a horse dealer; some

say the illegitimate child of a countess. Never a penny of income, yet

always got twenty-five louis in his pocket! Footboy to the ladies of

the town! A big lubber, who never goes with any of ’em! Never, never,

never!” he repeated, growing furious. “No, by Jove! I must box his

ears.”

He drained a glass of chartreuse. The chartreuse had not the slightest

effect upon him; it didn’t affect him “even to that extent,” and he

clicked his thumbnail against the edge of his teeth. But suddenly, just

as he was advancing upon Labordette, he grew ashy white and fell down

in a heap in front of the sideboard. He was dead drunk. Louise Violaine

was beside herself. She had been quite right to prophesy that matters

would end badly, and now she would have her work cut out for the

remainder of the night. Gaga reassured her. She examined the officer

with the eye of a woman of experience and declared that there was

nothing much the matter and that the gentleman would sleep like that

for at least a dozen or fifteen hours without any serious consequences.

Foucarmont was carried off.

“Well, where’s Nana gone to?” asked Vandeuvres.

Yes, she had certainly flown away somewhere on leaving the table. The

company suddenly recollected her, and everybody asked for her. Steiner,

who for some seconds had been uneasy on her account, asked Vandeuvres

about the old gentleman, for he, too, had disappeared. But the count

reassured him—he had just brought the old gentleman back. He was a

stranger, whose name it was useless to mention. Suffice it to say that

he was a very rich man who was quite pleased to pay for suppers! Then

as Nana was once more being forgotten, Vandeuvres saw Daguenet looking

out of an open door and beckoning to him. And in the bedroom he found

the mistress of the house sitting up, white-lipped and rigid, while

Daguenet and Georges stood gazing at her with an alarmed expression.

“What IS the matter with you?” he asked in some surprise.

She neither answered nor turned her head, and he repeated his question.

“Why, this is what’s the matter with me,” she cried out at length; “I

won’t let them make bloody sport of me!”

Thereupon she gave vent to any expression that occurred to her. Yes, oh

yes, SHE wasn’t a ninny—she could see clearly enough. They had been

making devilish light of her during supper and saying all sorts of

frightful things to show that they thought nothing of her! A pack of

sluts who weren’t fit to black her boots! Catch her bothering herself

again just to be badgered for it after! She really didn’t know what

kept her from chucking all that dirty lot out of the house! And with

this, rage choked her and her voice broke down in sobs.

“Come, come, my lass, you’re drunk,” said Vandeuvres, growing familiar.

“You must be reasonable.”

No, she would give her refusal now; she would stay where she was.

“I am drunk—it’s quite likely! But I want people to respect me!”

For a quarter of an hour past Daguenet and Georges had been vainly

beseeching her to return to the drawing room. She was obstinate,

however; her guests might do what they liked; she despised them too

much to come back among them.

No, she never would, never. They might tear her in pieces before she

would leave her room!

“I ought to have had my suspicions,” she resumed.

“It’s that cat of a Rose who’s got the plot up! I’m certain Rose’ll

have stopped that respectable woman coming whom I was expecting

tonight.”

She referred to Mme Robert. Vandeuvres gave her his word of honor that

Mme Robert had given a spontaneous refusal. He listened and he argued

with much gravity, for he was well accustomed to similar scenes and

knew how women in such a state ought to be treated. But the moment he

tried to take hold of her hands in order to lift her up from her chair

and draw her away with him she struggled free of his clasp, and her

wrath redoubled. Now, just look at that! They would never get her to

believe that Fauchery had not put the Count Muffat off coming! A

regular snake was that Fauchery, an envious sort, a fellow capable of

growing mad against a woman and of destroying her whole happiness. For

she knew this—the count had become madly devoted to her! She could have

had him!

“Him, my dear, never!” cried Vandeuvres, forgetting himself and

laughing loud.

“Why not?” she asked, looking serious and slightly sobered.

“Because he’s thoroughly in the hands of the priests, and if he were

only to touch you with the tips of his fingers he would go and confess

it the day after. Now listen to a bit of good advice. Don’t let the

other man escape you!”

She was silent and thoughtful for a moment or two. Then she got up and

went and bathed her eyes. Yet when they wanted to take her into the

dining room she still shouted “No!” furiously. Vandeuvres left the

bedroom, smiling and without further pressing her, and the moment he

was gone she had an access of melting tenderness, threw herself into

Daguenet’s arms and cried out:

“Ah, my sweetie, there’s only you in the world. I love you! YES, I love

you from the bottom of my heart! Oh, it would be too nice if we could

always live together. My God! How unfortunate women are!”

Then her eye fell upon Georges, who, seeing them kiss, was growing very

red, and she kissed him too. Sweetie could not be jealous of a baby!

She wanted Paul and Georges always to agree, because it would be so

nice for them all three to stay like that, knowing all the time that

they loved one another very much. But an extraordinary noise disturbed

them: someone was snoring in the room. Whereupon after some searching

they perceived Bordenave, who, since taking his coffee, must have

comfortably installed himself there. He was sleeping on two chairs, his

head propped on the edge of the bed and his leg stretched out in front.

Nana thought him so funny with his open mouth and his nose moving with

each successive snore that she was shaken with a mad fit of laughter.

She left the room, followed by Daguenet and Georges, crossed the dining

room, entered the drawing room, her merriment increasing at every step.

“Oh, my dear, you’ve no idea!” she cried, almost throwing herself into

Rose’s arms. “Come and see it.”

All the women had to follow her. She took their hands coaxingly and

drew them along with her willy-nilly, accompanying her action with so

frank an outburst of mirth that they all of them began laughing on

trust. The band vanished and returned after standing breathlessly for a

second or two round Bordenave’s lordly, outstretched form. And then

there was a burst of laughter, and when one of them told the rest to be

quiet Bordenave’s distant snorings became audible.

It was close on four o’clock. In the dining room a card table had just

been set out, at which Vandeuvres, Steiner, Mignon and Labordette had

taken their seats. Behind them Lucy and Caroline stood making bets,

while Blanche, nodding with sleep and dissatisfied about her night,

kept asking Vandeuvres at intervals of five minutes if they weren’t

going soon. In the drawing room there was an attempt at dancing.

Daguenet was at the piano or “chest of drawers,” as Nana called it. She

did not want a “thumper,” for Mimi would play as many waltzes and

polkas as the company desired. But the dance was languishing, and the

ladies were chatting drowsily together in the corners of sofas.

Suddenly, however, there was an outburst of noise. A band of eleven

young men had arrived and were laughing loudly in the anteroom and

crowding to the drawing room. They had just come from the ball at the

Ministry of the Interior and were in evening dress and wore various

unknown orders. Nana was annoyed at this riotous entry, called to the

waiters who still remained in the kitchen and ordered them to throw

these individuals out of doors. She vowed that she had never seen any

of them before. Fauchery, Labordette, Daguenet and the rest of the men

had all come forward in order to enforce respectful behavior toward

their hostess. Big words flew about; arms were outstretched, and for

some seconds a general exchange of fisticuffs was imminent.

Notwithstanding this, however, a little sickly looking light-haired man

kept insistently repeating:

“Come, come, Nana, you saw us the other evening at Peters’ in the great

red saloon! Pray remember, you invited us.”

The other evening at Peters’? She did not remember it all. To begin

with, what evening?

And when the little light-haired man had mentioned the day, which was

Wednesday, she distinctly remembered having supped at Peters’ on the

Wednesday, but she had given no invitation to anyone; she was almost

sure of that.

“However, suppose you HAVE invited them, my good girl,” murmured

Labordette, who was beginning to have his doubts. “Perhaps you were a

little elevated.”

Then Nana fell a-laughing. It was quite possible; she really didn’t

know. So then, since these gentlemen were on the spot, they had her

leave to come in. Everything was quietly arranged; several of the

newcomers found friends in the drawing room, and the scene ended in

handshakings. The little sickly looking light-haired man bore one of

the greatest names in France. Furthermore, the eleven announced that

others were to follow them, and, in fact, the door opened every few

moments, and men in white gloves and official garb presented

themselves. They were still coming from the ball at the Ministry.

Fauchery jestingly inquired whether the minister was not coming, too,

but Nana answered in a huff that the minister went to the houses of

people she didn’t care a pin for. What she did not say was that she was

possessed with a hope of seeing Count Muffat enter her room among all

that stream of people. He might quite have reconsidered his decision,

and so while talking to Rose she kept a sharp eye on the door.

Five o’clock struck. The dancing had ceased, and the cardplayers alone

persisted in their game. Labordette had vacated his seat, and the women

had returned into the drawing room. The air there was heavy with the

somnolence which accompanies a long vigil, and the lamps cast a

wavering light while their burned-out wicks glowed red within their

globes. The ladies had reached that vaguely melancholy hour when they

felt it necessary to tell each other their histories. Blanche de Sivry

spoke of her grandfather, the general, while Clarisse invented a

romantic story about a duke seducing her at her uncle’s house, whither

he used to come for the boar hunting. Both women, looking different

ways, kept shrugging their shoulders and asking themselves how the

deuce the other could tell such whoppers! As to Lucy Stewart, she

quietly confessed to her origin and of her own accord spoke of her

childhood and of the days when her father, the wheel greaser at the

Northern Railway Terminus, used to treat her to an apple puff on

Sundays.

“Oh, I must tell you about it!” cried the little Maria Blond abruptly.

“Opposite to me there lives a gentleman, a Russian, an awfully rich

man! Well, just fancy, yesterday I received a basket of fruit—oh, it

just was a basket! Enormous peaches, grapes as big as that, simply

wonderful for the time of year! And in the middle of them six

thousand-franc notes! It was the Russian’s doing. Of course I sent the

whole thing back again, but I must say my heart ached a little—when I

thought of the fruit!”

The ladies looked at one another and pursed up their lips. At her age

little Maria Blond had a pretty cheek! Besides, to think that such

things should happen to trollops like her! Infinite was their contempt

for her among themselves. It was Lucy of whom they were particularly

jealous, for they were beside themselves at the thought of her three

princes. Since Lucy had begun taking a daily morning ride in the Bois

they all had become Amazons, as though a mania possessed them.

Day was about to dawn, and Nana turned her eyes away from the door, for

she was relinquishing all hope. The company were bored to distraction.

Rose Mignon had refused to sing the “Slipper” and sat huddled up on a

sofa, chatting in a low voice with Fauchery and waiting for Mignon, who

had by now won some fifty louis from Vandeuvres. A fat gentleman with a

decoration and a serious cast of countenance had certainly given a

recitation in Alsatian accents of “Abraham’s Sacrifice,” a piece in

which the Almighty says, “By My blasted Name” when He swears, and Isaac

always answers with a “Yes, Papa!” Nobody, however, understood what it

was all about, and the piece had been voted stupid. People were at

their wits’ end how to make merry and to finish the night with fitting

hilarity. For a moment or two Labordette conceived the idea of

denouncing different women in a whisper to La Faloise, who still went

prowling round each individual lady, looking to see if she were hiding

his handkerchief in her bosom. Soon, as there were still some bottles

of champagne on the sideboard, the young men again fell to drinking.

They shouted to one another; they stirred each other up, but a dreary

species of intoxication, which was stupid enough to drive one to

despair, began to overcome the company beyond hope of recovery. Then

the little fair-haired fellow, the man who bore one of the greatest

names in France and had reached his wit’s end and was desperate at the

thought that he could not hit upon something really funny, conceived a

brilliant notion: he snatched up his bottle of champagne and poured its

contents into the piano. His allies were convulsed with laughter.

“La now! Why’s he putting champagne into the piano?” asked Tatan Nene

in great astonishment as she caught sight of him.

“What, my lass, you don’t know why he’s doing that?” replied Labordette

solemnly. “There’s nothing so good as champagne for pianos. It gives

’em tone.”

“Ah,” murmured Tatan Nene with conviction.

And when the rest began laughing at her she grew angry. How should she

know? They were always confusing her.

Decidedly the evening was becoming a big failure. The night threatened

to end in the unloveliest way. In a corner by themselves Maria Blond

and Léa de Horn had begun squabbling at close quarters, the former

accusing the latter of consorting with people of insufficient wealth.

They were getting vastly abusive over it, their chief stumbling block

being the good looks of the men in question. Lucy, who was plain, got

them to hold their tongues. Good looks were nothing, according to her;

good figures were what was wanted. Farther off, on a sofa, an attache

had slipped his arm round Simonne’s waist and was trying to kiss her

neck, but Simonne, sullen and thoroughly out of sorts, pushed him away

at every fresh attempt with cries of “You’re pestering me!” and sound

slaps of the fan across his face. For the matter of that, not one of

the ladies allowed herself to be touched. Did people take them for

light women? Gaga, in the meantime, had once more caught La Faloise and

had almost hoisted him upon her knees while Clarisse was disappearing

from view between two gentlemen, shaking with nervous laughter as women

will when they are tickled. Round about the piano they were still busy

with their little game, for they were suffering from a fit of stupid

imbecility, which caused each man to jostle his fellow in his frantic

desire to empty his bottle into the instrument. It was a simple process

and a charming one.

“Now then, old boy, drink a glass! Devil take it, he’s a thirsty piano!

Hi! ’Tenshun! Here’s another bottle! You mustn’t lose a drop!”

Nana’s back was turned, and she did not see them. Emphatically she was

now falling back on the bulky Steiner, who was seated next to her. So

much the worse! It was all on account of that Muffat, who had refused

what was offered him. Sitting there in her white foulard dress, which

was as light and full of folds as a shift, sitting there with drooped

eyelids and cheeks pale with the touch of intoxication from which she

was suffering, she offered herself to him with that quiet expression

which is peculiar to a good-natured courtesan. The roses in her hair

and at her throat had lost their leaves, and their stalks alone

remained. Presently Steiner withdrew his hand quickly from the folds of

her skirt, where he had come in contact with the pins that Georges had

stuck there. Some drops of blood appeared on his fingers, and one fell

on Nana’s dress and stained it.

“Now the bargain’s struck,” said Nana gravely.

The day was breaking apace. An uncertain glimmer of light, fraught with

a poignant melancholy, came stealing through the windows. And with that

the guests began to take their departure. It was a most sour and

uncomfortable retreat. Caroline Hequet, annoyed at the loss of her

night, announced that it was high time to be off unless you were

anxious to assist at some pretty scenes. Rose pouted as if her womanly

character had been compromised. It was always so with these girls; they

didn’t know how to behave and were guilty of disgusting conduct when

they made their first appearance in society! And Mignon having cleaned

Vandeuvres out completely, the family took their departure. They did

not trouble about Steiner but renewed their invitation for tomorrow to

Fauchery. Lucy thereupon refused the journalist’s escort home and sent

him back shrilly to his “strolling actress.” At this Rose turned round

immediately and hissed out a “Dirty sow” by way of answer. But Mignon,

who in feminine quarrels was always paternal, for his experience was a

long one and rendered him superior to them, had already pushed her out

of the house, telling her at the same time to have done. Lucy came

downstairs in solitary state behind them. After which Gaga had to carry

off La Faloise, ill, sobbing like a child, calling after Clarisse, who

had long since gone off with her two gentlemen. Simonne, too, had

vanished. Indeed, none remained save Tatan, Léa and Maria, whom

Labordette complaisantly took under his charge.

“Oh, but I don’t the least bit want to go to bed!” said Nana. “One

ought to find something to do.”

She looked at the sky through the windowpanes. It was a livid sky, and

sooty clouds were scudding across it. It was six o’clock in the

morning. Over the way, on the opposite side of the Boulevard Haussmann,

the glistening roofs of the still-slumbering houses were sharply

outlined against the twilight sky while along the deserted roadway a

gang of street sweepers passed with a clatter of wooden shoes. As she

viewed Paris thus grimly awakening, she was overcome by tender, girlish

feelings, by a yearning for the country, for idyllic scenes, for things

soft and white.

“Now guess what you’re to do,” she said, coming back to Steiner.

“You’re going to take me to the Bois de Boulogne, and we’ll drink milk

there.”

She clapped her hands in childish glee. Without waiting for the

banker’s reply—he naturally consented, though he was really rather

bored and inclined to think of other things—she ran off to throw a

pelisse over her shoulders. In the drawing room there was now no one

with Steiner save the band of young men. These had by this time dropped

the very dregs of their glasses into the piano and were talking of

going, when one of their number ran in triumphantly. He held in his

hands a last remaining bottle, which he had brought back with him from

the pantry.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” he shouted. “Here’s a bottle of

chartreuse; that’ll pick him up! And now, my young friends, let’s hook

it. We’re blooming idiots.”

In the dressing room Nana was compelled to wake up Zoé, who had dozed

off on a chair. The gas was still alight, and Zoé shivered as she

helped her mistress on with her hat and pelisse.

“Well, it’s over; I’ve done what you wanted me to,” said Nana, speaking

familiarly to the maid in a sudden burst of expansive confidence and

much relieved at the thought that she had at last made her election.

“You were quite right; the banker’s as good as another.”

The maid was cross, for she was still heavy with sleep. She grumbled

something to the effect that Madame ought to have come to a decision

the first evening. Then following her into the bedroom, she asked what

she was going to do with “those two,” meaning Bordenave, who was

snoring away as usual, and Georges, who had slipped in slyly, buried

his head in a pillow and, finally falling asleep there, was now

breathing as lightly and regularly as a cherub. Nana in reply told her

that she was to let them sleep on. But seeing Daguenet come into the

room, she again grew tender. He had been watching her from the kitchen

and was looking very wretched.

“Come, my sweetie, be reasonable,” she said, taking him in her arms and

kissing him with all sorts of little wheedling caresses. “Nothing’s

changed; you know that it’s sweetie whom I always adore! Eh, dear? I

had to do it. Why, I swear to you we shall have even nicer times now.

Come tomorrow, and we’ll arrange about hours. Now be quick, kiss and

hug me as you love me. Oh, tighter, tighter than that!”

And she escaped and rejoined Steiner, feeling happy and once more

possessed with the idea of drinking milk. In the empty room the Count

de Vandeuvres was left alone with the “decorated” man who had recited

“Abraham’s Sacrifice.” Both seemed glued to the card table; they had

lost count of their whereabouts and never once noticed the broad light

of day without, while Blanche had made bold to put her feet up on a

sofa in order to try and get a little sleep.

“Oh, Blanche is with them!” cried Nana. “We are going to drink milk,

dear. Do come; you’ll find Vandeuvres here when we return.”

Blanche got up lazily. This time the banker’s fiery face grew white

with annoyance at the idea of having to take that big wench with him

too. She was certain to bore him. But the two women had already got him

by the arms and were reiterating:

“We want them to milk the cow before our eyes, you know.”

CHAPTER V

At the Variétés they were giving the thirty-fourth performance of the

Blonde Venus. The first act had just finished, and in the greenroom

Simonne, dressed as the little laundress, was standing in front of a

console table, surmounted by a looking glass and situated between the

two corner doors which opened obliquely on the end of the dressing-room

passage. No one was with her, and she was scrutinizing her face and

rubbing her finger up and down below her eyes with a view to putting

the finishing touches to her make-up. The gas jets on either side of

the mirror flooded her with warm, crude light.

“Has he arrived?” asked Prullière, entering the room in his Alpine

admiral’s costume, which was set off by a big sword, enormous top boots

and a vast tuft of plumes.

“Who d’you mean?” said Simonne, taking no notice of him and laughing

into the mirror in order to see how her lips looked.

“The prince.”

“I don’t know; I’ve just come down. Oh, he’s certainly due here

tonight; he comes every time!”

Prullière had drawn near the hearth opposite the console table, where a

coke fire was blazing and two more gas jets were flaring brightly. He

lifted his eyes and looked at the clock and the barometer on his right

hand and on his left. They had gilded sphinxes by way of adornment in

the style of the First Empire. Then he stretched himself out in a huge

armchair with ears, the green velvet of which had been so worn by four

generations of comedians that it looked yellow in places, and there he

stayed, with moveless limbs and vacant eyes, in that weary and resigned

attitude peculiar to actors who are used to long waits before their

turn for going on the stage.

Old Bosc, too, had just made his appearance. He came in dragging one

foot behind the other and coughing. He was wrapped in an old box coat,

part of which had slipped from his shoulder in such a way as to uncover

the gold-laced cloak of King Dagobert. He put his crown on the piano

and for a moment or two stood moodily stamping his feet. His hands were

trembling slightly with the first beginnings of alcoholism, but he

looked a sterling old fellow for all that, and a long white beard lent

that fiery tippler’s face of his a truly venerable appearance. Then in

the silence of the room, while the shower of hail was whipping the

panes of the great window that looked out on the courtyard, he shook

himself disgustedly.

“What filthy weather!” he growled.

Simonne and Prullière did not move. Four or five pictures—a landscape,

a portrait of the actor Vernet—hung yellowing in the hot glare of the

gas, and a bust of Potier, one of the bygone glories of the Variétés,

stood gazing vacant-eyed from its pedestal. But just then there was a

burst of voices outside. It was Fontan, dressed for the second act. He

was a young dandy, and his habiliments, even to his gloves, were

entirely yellow.

“Now say you don’t know!” he shouted, gesticulating. “Today’s my patron

saint’s day!”

“What?” asked Simonne, coming up smilingly, as though attracted by the

huge nose and the vast, comic mouth of the man. “D’you answer to the

name of Achille?”

“Exactly so! And I’m going to get ’em to tell Madame Bron to send up

champagne after the second act.”

For some seconds a bell had been ringing in the distance. The

long-drawn sound grew fainter, then louder, and when the bell ceased a

shout ran up the stair and down it till it was lost along the passages.

“All on the stage for the second act! All on the stage for the second

act!” The sound drew near, and a little pale-faced man passed by the

greenroom doors, outside each of which he yelled at the top of his

shrill voice, “On the stage for the second act!”

“The deuce, it’s champagne!” said Prullière without appearing to hear

the din. “You’re prospering!”

“If I were you I should have it in from the cafe,” old Bosc slowly

announced. He was sitting on a bench covered with green velvet, with

his head against the wall.

But Simonne said that it was one’s duty to consider Mme Bron’s small

perquisites. She clapped her hands excitedly and devoured Fontan with

her gaze while his long goatlike visage kept up a continuous twitching

of eyes and nose and mouth.

“Oh, that Fontan!” she murmured. “There’s no one like him, no one like

him!”

The two greenroom doors stood wide open to the corridor leading to the

wings. And along the yellow wall, which was brightly lit up by a gas

lamp out of view, passed a string of rapidly moving shadows—men in

costume, women with shawls over their scant attire, in a word, the

whole of the characters in the second act, who would shortly make their

appearance as masqeuraders in the ball at the Boule Noire. And at the

end of the corridor became audible a shuffling of feet as these people

clattered down the five wooden steps which led to the stage. As the big

Clarisse went running by Simonne called to her, but she said she would

be back directly. And, indeed, she reappeared almost at once, shivering

in the thin tunic and scarf which she wore as Iris.

“God bless me!” she said. “It isn’t warm, and I’ve left my furs in my

dressing room!”

Then as she stood toasting her legs in their warm rose-colored tights

in front of the fireplace she resumed:

“The prince has arrived.”

“Oh!” cried the rest with the utmost curiosity.

“Yes, that’s why I ran down: I wanted to see. He’s in the first stage

box to the right, the same he was in on Thursday. It’s the third time

he’s been this week, eh? That’s Nana; well, she’s in luck’s way! I was

willing to wager he wouldn’t come again.”

Simonne opened her lips to speak, but her remarks were drowned by a

fresh shout which arose close to the greenroom. In the passage the

callboy was yelling at the top of his shrill voice, “They’ve knocked!”

“Three times!” said Simonne when she was again able to speak. “It’s

getting exciting. You know, he won’t go to her place; he takes her to

his. And it seems that he has to pay for it too!”

“Egad! It’s a case of when one ‘has to go out,’” muttered Prullière

wickedly, and he got up to have a last look at the mirror as became a

handsome fellow whom the boxes adored.

“They’ve knocked! They’ve knocked!” the callboy kept repeating in tones

that died gradually away in the distance as he passed through the

various stories and corridors.

Fontan thereupon, knowing how it had all gone off on the first occasion

the prince and Nana met, told the two women the whole story while they

in their turn crowded against him and laughed at the tops of their

voices whenever he stooped to whisper certain details in their ears.

Old Bosc had never budged an inch—he was totally indifferent. That sort

of thing no longer interested him now. He was stroking a great

tortoise-shell cat which was lying curled up on the bench. He did so

quite beautifully and ended by taking her in his arms with the tender

good nature becoming a worn-out monarch. The cat arched its back and

then, after a prolonged sniff at the big white beard, the gluey odor of

which doubtless disgusted her, she turned and, curling herself up, went

to sleep again on the bench beside him. Bosc remained grave and

absorbed.

“That’s all right, but if I were you I should drink the champagne at

the restaurant—its better there,” he said, suddenly addressing Fontan

when he had finished his recital.

“The curtain’s up!” cried the callboy in cracked and long-drawn accents

“The curtain’s up! The curtain’s up!”

The shout sounded for some moments, during which there had been a noise

of rapid footsteps. Through the suddenly opened door of the passage

came a burst of music and a far-off murmur of voices, and then the door

shut to again and you could hear its dull thud as it wedged itself into

position once more.

A heavy, peaceful, atmosphere again pervaded the greenroom, as though

the place were situated a hundred leagues from the house where crowds

were applauding. Simonne and Clarisse were still on the topic of Nana.

There was a girl who never hurried herself! Why, yesterday she had

again come on too late! But there was a silence, for a tall damsel had

just craned her head in at the door and, seeing that she had made a

mistake, had departed to the other end of the passage. It was Satin.

Wearing a hat and a small veil for the nonce she was affecting the

manner of a lady about to pay a call.

“A pretty trollop!” muttered Prullière, who had been coming across her

for a year past at the Café des Variétés. And at this Simonne told them

how Nana had recognized in Satin an old schoolmate, had taken a vast

fancy to her and was now plaguing Bordenave to let her make a first

appearance on the stage.

“How d’ye do?” said Fontan, shaking hands with Mignon and Fauchery, who

now came into the room.

Old Bosc himself gave them the tips of his fingers while the two women

kissed Mignon.

“A good house this evening?” queried Fauchery.

“Oh, a splendid one!” replied Prullière. “You should see ’em gaping.”

“I say, my little dears,” remarked Mignon, “it must be your turn!”

Oh, all in good time! They were only at the fourth scene as yet, but

Bosc got up in obedience to instinct, as became a rattling old actor

who felt that his cue was coming. At that very moment the callboy was

opening the door.

“Monsieur Bosc!” he called. “Mademoiselle Simonne!”

Simonne flung a fur-lined pelisse briskly over her shoulders and went

out. Bosc, without hurrying at all, went and got his crown, which he

settled on his brow with a rap. Then dragging himself unsteadily along

in his greatcoat, he took his departure, grumbling and looking as

annoyed as a man who has been rudely disturbed.

“You were very amiable in your last notice,” continued Fontan,

addressing Fauchery. “Only why do you say that comedians are vain?”

“Yes, my little man, why d’you say that?” shouted Mignon, bringing down

his huge hands on the journalist’s slender shoulders with such force as

almost to double him up.

Prullière and Clarisse refrained from laughing aloud. For some time

past the whole company had been deriving amusement from a comedy which

was going on in the wings. Mignon, rendered frantic by his wife’s

caprice and annoyed at the thought that this man Fauchery brought

nothing but a certain doubtful notoriety to his household, had

conceived the idea of revenging himself on the journalist by

overwhelming him with tokens of friendship. Every evening, therefore,

when he met him behind scenes he would shower friendly slaps on his

back and shoulders, as though fairly carried away by an outburst of

tenderness, and Fauchery, who was a frail, small man in comparison with

such a giant, was fain to take the raps with a strained smile in order

not to quarrel with Rose’s husband.

“Aha, my buck, you’ve insulted Fontan,” resumed Mignon, who was doing

his best to force the joke. “Stand on guard! One—two—got him right in

the middle of his chest!”

He lunged and struck the young man with such force that the latter grew

very pale and could not speak for some seconds. With a wink Clarisse

showed the others where Rose Mignon was standing on the threshold of

the greenroom. Rose had witnessed the scene, and she marched straight

up to the journalist, as though she had failed to notice her husband

and, standing on tiptoe, bare-armed and in baby costume, she held her

face up to him with a caressing, infantine pout.

“Good evening, baby,” said Fauchery, kissing her familiarly.

Thus he indemnified himself. Mignon, however, did not seem to have

observed this kiss, for everybody kissed his wife at the theater. But

he laughed and gave the journalist a keen little look. The latter would

assurely have to pay for Rose’s bravado.

In the passage the tightly shutting door opened and closed again, and a

tempest of applause was blown as far as the greenroom. Simonne came in

after her scene.

“Oh, Father Bosc HAS just scored!” she cried. “The prince was writhing

with laughter and applauded with the rest as though he had been paid

to. I say, do you know the big man sitting beside the prince in the

stage box? A handsome man, with a very sedate expression and splendid

whiskers!”

“It’s Count Muffat,” replied Fauchery. “I know that the prince, when he

was at the empress’s the day before yesterday, invited him to dinner

for tonight. He’ll have corrupted him afterward!”

“So that’s Count Muffat! We know his father-in-law, eh, Auguste?” said

Rose, addressing her remark to Mignon. “You know the Marquis de

Chouard, at whose place I went to sing? Well, he’s in the house too. I

noticed him at the back of a box. There’s an old boy for you!”

Prullière, who had just put on his huge plume of feathers, turned round

and called her.

“Hi, Rose! Let’s go now!”

She ran after him, leaving her sentence unfinished. At that moment Mme

Bron, the portress of the theater, passed by the door with an immense

bouquet in her arms. Simonne asked cheerfully if it was for her, but

the porter woman did not vouchsafe an answer and only pointed her chin

toward Nana’s dressing room at the end of the passage. Oh, that Nana!

They were loading her with flowers! Then when Mme Bron returned she

handed a letter to Clarisse, who allowed a smothered oath to escape

her. That beggar La Faloise again! There was a fellow who wouldn’t let

her alone! And when she learned the gentleman in question was waiting

for her at the porter’s lodge she shrieked:

“Tell him I’m coming down after this act. I’m going to catch him one on

the face.”

Fontan had rushed forward, shouting:

“Madame Bron, just listen. Please listen, Madame Bron. I want you to

send up six bottles of champagne between the acts.”

But the callboy had again made his appearance. He was out of breath,

and in a singsong voice he called out:

“All to go on the stage! It’s your turn, Monsieur Fontan. Make haste,

make haste!”

“Yes, yes, I’m going, Father Barillot,” replied Fontan in a flurry.

And he ran after Mme Bron and continued:

“You understand, eh? Six bottles of champagne in the greenroom between

the acts. It’s my patron saint’s day, and I’m standing the racket.”

Simonne and Clarisse had gone off with a great rustling of skirts.

Everybody was swallowed up in the distance, and when the passage door

had banged with its usual hollow sound a fresh hail shower was heard

beating against the windows in the now-silent greenroom. Barillot, a

small, pale-faced ancient, who for thirty years had been a servant in

the theater, had advanced familiarly toward Mignon and had presented

his open snuffbox to him. This proffer of a pinch and its acceptance

allowed him a minute’s rest in his interminable career up and down

stairs and along the dressing-room passage. He certainly had still to

look up Mme Nana, as he called her, but she was one of those who

followed her own sweet will and didn’t care a pin for penalties. Why,

if she chose to be too late she was too late! But he stopped short and

murmured in great surprise:

“Well, I never! She’s ready; here she is! She must know that the prince

is here.”

Indeed, Nana appeared in the corridor. She was dressed as a fish hag:

her arms and face were plastered with white paint, and she had a couple

of red dabs under her eyes. Without entering the greenroom she

contented herself by nodding to Mignon and Fauchery.

“How do? You’re all right?”

Only Mignon shook her outstretched hand, and she hied royally on her

way, followed by her dresser, who almost trod on her heels while

stooping to adjust the folds of her skirt. In the rear of the dresser

came Satin, closing the procession and trying to look quite the lady,

though she was already bored to death.

“And Steiner?” asked Mignon sharply.

“Monsieur Steiner has gone away to the Loiret,” said Barillot,

preparing to return to the neighborhood of the stage. “I expect he’s

gone to buy a country place in those parts.”

“Ah yes, I know, Nana’s country place.”

Mignon had grown suddenly serious. Oh, that Steiner! He had promised

Rose a fine house in the old days! Well, well, it wouldn’t do to grow

angry with anybody. Here was a position that would have to be won

again. From fireplace to console table Mignon paced, sunk in thought

yet still unconquered by circumstances. There was no one in the

greenroom now save Fauchery and himself. The journalist was tired and

had flung himself back into the recesses of the big armchair. There he

stayed with half-closed eyes and as quiet as quiet could be, while the

other glanced down at him as he passed. When they were alone Mignon

scorned to slap him at every turn. What good would it have done, since

nobody would have enjoyed the spectacle? He was far too disinterested

to be personally entertained by the farcical scenes in which he figured

as a bantering husband. Glad of this short-lived respite, Fauchery

stretched his feet out languidly toward the fire and let his upturned

eyes wander from the barometer to the clock. In the course of his march

Mignon planted himself in front of Potier’s bust, looked at it without

seeming to see it and then turned back to the window, outside which

yawned the darkling gulf of the courtyard. The rain had ceased, and

there was now a deep silence in the room, which the fierce heat of the

coke fire and the flare of the gas jets rendered still more oppressive.

Not a sound came from the wings: the staircase and the passages were

deadly still.

That choking sensation of quiet, which behind the scenes immediately

precedes the end of an act, had begun to pervade the empty greenroom.

Indeed, the place seemed to be drowsing off through very breathlessness

amid that faint murmur which the stage gives forth when the whole

troupe are raising the deafening uproar of some grand finale.

“Oh, the cows!” Bordenave suddenly shouted in his hoarse voice.

He had only just come up, and he was already howling complaints about

two chorus girls who had nearly fallen flat on the stage because they

were playing the fool together. When his eye lit on Mignon and Fauchery

he called them; he wanted to show them something. The prince had just

notified a desire to compliment Nana in her dressing room during the

next interval. But as he was leading them into the wings the stage

manager passed.

“Just you find those hags Fernande and Maria!” cried Bordenave

savagely.

Then calming down and endeavoring to assume the dignified expression

worn by “heavy fathers,” he wiped his face with his pocket handkerchief

and added:

“I am now going to receive His Highness.”

The curtain fell amid a long-drawn salvo of applause. Then across the

twilight stage, which was no longer lit up by the footlights, there

followed a disorderly retreat. Actors and supers and chorus made haste

to get back to their dressing rooms while the sceneshifters rapidly

changed the scenery. Simonne and Clarisse, however, had remained “at

the top,” talking together in whispers. On the stage, in an interval

between their lines, they had just settled a little matter. Clarisse,

after viewing the thing in every light, found she preferred not to see

La Faloise, who could never decide to leave her for Gaga, and so

Simonne was simply to go and explain that a woman ought not to be

palled up to in that fashion! At last she agreed to undertake the

mission.

Then Simonne, in her theatrical laundress’s attire but with furs over

her shoulders, ran down the greasy steps of the narrow, winding stairs

which led between damp walls to the porter’s lodge. This lodge,

situated between the actors’ staircase and that of the management, was

shut in to right and left by large glass partitions and resembled a

huge transparent lantern in which two gas jets were flaring.

There was a set of pigeonholes in the place in which were piled letters

and newspapers, while on the table various bouquets lay awaiting their

recipients in close proximity to neglected heaps of dirty plates and to

an old pair of stays, the eyelets of which the portress was busy

mending. And in the middle of this untidy, ill-kept storeroom sat four

fashionable, white-gloved society men. They occupied as many ancient

straw-bottomed chairs and, with an expression at once patient and

submissive, kept sharply turning their heads in Mme Bron’s direction

every time she came down from the theater overhead, for on such

occasions she was the bearer of replies. Indeed, she had but now handed

a note to a young man who had hurried out to open it beneath the

gaslight in the vestibule, where he had grown slightly pale on reading

the classic phrase—how often had others read it in that very

place!—“Impossible tonight, my dearie! I’m booked!” La Faloise sat on

one of these chairs at the back of the room, between the table and the

stove. He seemed bent on passing the evening there, and yet he was not

quite happy. Indeed, he kept tucking up his long legs in his endeavors

to escape from a whole litter of black kittens who were gamboling

wildly round them while the mother cat sat bolt upright, staring at him

with yellow eyes.

“Ah, it’s you, Mademoiselle Simonne! What can I do for you?” asked the

portress.

Simonne begged her to send La Faloise out to her. But Mme Bron was

unable to comply with her wishes all at once. Under the stairs in a

sort of deep cupboard she kept a little bar, whither the supers were

wont to descend for drinks between the acts, and seeing that just at

that moment there were five or six tall lubbers there who, still

dressed as Boule Noire masqueraders, were dying of thirst and in a

great hurry, she lost her head a bit. A gas jet was flaring in the

cupboard, within which it was possible to descry a tin-covered table

and some shelves garnished with half-emptied bottles. Whenever the door

of this coalhole was opened a violent whiff of alcohol mingled with the

scent of stale cooking in the lodge, as well as with the penetrating

scent of the flowers upon the table.

“Well now,” continued the portress when she had served the supers, “is

it the little dark chap out there you want?”

“No, no; don’t be silly!” said Simonne. “It’s the lanky one by the side

of the stove. Your cat’s sniffing at his trouser legs!”

And with that she carried La Faloise off into the lobby, while the

other gentlemen once more resigned themselves to their fate and to

semisuffocation and the masqueraders drank on the stairs and indulged

in rough horseplay and guttural drunken jests.

On the stage above Bordenave was wild with the sceneshifters, who

seemed never to have done changing scenes. They appeared to be acting

of set purpose—the prince would certainly have some set piece or other

tumbling on his head.

“Up with it! Up with it!” shouted the foreman.

At length the canvas at the back of the stage was raised into position,

and the stage was clear. Mignon, who had kept his eye on Fauchery,

seized this opportunity in order to start his pummeling matches again.

He hugged him in his long arms and cried:

“Oh, take care! That mast just missed crushing you!”

And he carried him off and shook him before setting him down again. In

view of the sceneshifters’ exaggerated mirth, Fauchery grew white. His

lips trembled, and he was ready to flare up in anger while Mignon,

shamming good nature, was clapping him on the shoulder with such

affectionate violence as nearly to pulverize him.

“I value your health, I do!” he kept repeating. “Egad! I should be in a

pretty pickle if anything serious happened to you!”

But just then a whisper ran through their midst: “The prince! The

prince!” And everybody turned and looked at the little door which

opened out of the main body of the house. At first nothing was visible

save Bordenave’s round back and beefy neck, which bobbed down and

arched up in a series of obsequious obeisances. Then the prince made

his appearance. Largely and strongly built, light of beard and rosy of

hue, he was not lacking in the kind of distinction peculiar to a sturdy

man of pleasure, the square contours of whose limbs are clearly defined

by the irreproachable cut of a frock coat. Behind him walked Count

Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard, but this particular corner of the

theater being dark, the group were lost to view amid huge moving

shadows.

In order fittingly to address the son of a queen, who would someday

occupy a throne, Bordenave had assumed the tone of a man exhibiting a

bear in the street. In a voice tremulous with false emotion he kept

repeating:

“If His Highness will have the goodness to follow me—would His Highness

deign to come this way? His Highness will take care!”

The prince did not hurry in the least. On the contrary, he was greatly

interested and kept pausing in order to look at the sceneshifters’

maneuvers. A batten had just been lowered, and the group of gaslights

high up among its iron crossbars illuminated the stage with a wide beam

of light. Muffat, who had never yet been behind scenes at a theater,

was even more astonished than the rest. An uneasy feeling of mingled

fear and vague repugnance took possession of him. He looked up into the

heights above him, where more battens, the gas jets on which were

burning low, gleamed like galaxies of little bluish stars amid a chaos

of iron rods, connecting lines of all sizes, hanging stages and

canvases spread out in space, like huge cloths hung out to dry.

“Lower away!” shouted the foreman unexpectedly.

And the prince himself had to warn the count, for a canvas was

descending. They were setting the scenery for the third act, which was

the grotto on Mount Etna. Men were busy planting masts in the sockets,

while others went and took frames which were leaning against the walls

of the stage and proceeded to lash them with strong cords to the poles

already in position. At the back of the stage, with a view to producing

the bright rays thrown by Vulcan’s glowing forge, a stand had been

fixed by a limelight man, who was now lighting various burners under

red glasses. The scene was one of confusion, verging to all appearances

on absolute chaos, but every little move had been prearranged. Nay,

amid all the scurry the whistle blower even took a few turns, stepping

short as he did so, in order to rest his legs.

“His Highness overwhelms me,” said Bordenave, still bowing low. “The

theater is not large, but we do what we can. Now if His Highness deigns

to follow me—”

Count Muffat was already making for the dressing-room passage. The

really sharp downward slope of the stage had surprised him

disagreeably, and he owed no small part of his present anxiety to a

feeling that its boards were moving under his feet. Through the open

sockets gas was descried burning in the “dock.” Human voices and blasts

of air, as from a vault, came up thence, and, looking down into the

depths of gloom, one became aware of a whole subterranean existence.

But just as the count was going up the stage a small incident occurred

to stop him. Two little women, dressed for the third act, were chatting

by the peephole in the curtain. One of them, straining forward and

widening the hole with her fingers in order the better to observe

things, was scanning the house beyond.

“I see him,” said she sharply. “Oh, what a mug!”

Horrified, Bordenave had much ado not to give her a kick. But the

prince smiled and looked pleased and excited by the remark. He gazed

warmly at the little woman who did not care a button for His Highness,

and she, on her part, laughed unblushingly. Bordenave, however,

persuaded the prince to follow him. Muffat was beginning to perspire;

he had taken his hat off. What inconvenienced him most was the stuffy,

dense, overheated air of the place with its strong, haunting smell, a

smell peculiar to this part of a theater, and, as such, compact of the

reek of gas, of the glue used in the manufacture of the scenery, of

dirty dark nooks and corners and of questionably clean chorus girls. In

the passage the air was still more suffocating, and one seemed to

breathe a poisoned atmosphere, which was occasionally relieved by the

acid scents of toilet waters and the perfumes of various soaps

emanating from the dressing rooms. The count lifted his eyes as he

passed and glanced up the staircase, for he was well-nigh startled by

the keen flood of light and warmth which flowed down upon his back and

shoulders. High up above him there was a clicking of ewers and basins,

a sound of laughter and of people calling to one another, a banging of

doors, which in their continual opening and shutting allowed an odor of

womankind to escape—a musky scent of oils and essences mingling with

the natural pungency exhaled from human tresses. He did not stop. Nay,

he hastened his walk: he almost ran, his skin tingling with the breath

of that fiery approach to a world he knew nothing of.

“A theater’s a curious sight, eh?” said the Marquis de Chouard with the

enchanted expression of a man who once more finds himself amid familiar

surroundings.

But Bordenave had at length reached Nana’s dressing room at the end of

the passage. He quietly turned the door handle; then, cringing again:

“If His Highness will have the goodness to enter—”

They heard the cry of a startled woman and caught sight of Nana as,

stripped to the waist, she slipped behind a curtain while her dresser,

who had been in the act of drying her, stood, towel in air, before

them.

“Oh, it IS silly to come in that way!” cried Nana from her hiding

place. “Don’t come in; you see you mustn’t come in!”

Bordenave did not seem to relish this sudden flight.

“Do stay where you were, my dear. Why, it doesn’t matter,” he said.

“It’s His Highness. Come, come, don’t be childish.”

And when she still refused to make her appearance—for she was startled

as yet, though she had begun to laugh—he added in peevish, paternal

tones:

“Good heavens, these gentlemen know perfectly well what a woman looks

like. They won’t eat you.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said the prince wittily.

With that the whole company began laughing in an exaggerated manner in

order to pay him proper court.

“An exquisitely witty speech—an altogether Parisian speech,” as

Bordenave remarked.

Nana vouchsafed no further reply, but the curtain began moving.

Doubtless she was making up her mind. Then Count Muffat, with glowing

cheeks, began to take stock of the dressing room. It was a square room

with a very low ceiling, and it was entirely hung with a light-colored

Havana stuff. A curtain of the same material depended from a copper rod

and formed a sort of recess at the end of the room, while two large

windows opened on the courtyard of the theater and were faced, at a

distance of three yards at most, by a leprous-looking wall against

which the panes cast squares of yellow light amid the surrounding

darkness. A large dressing glass faced a white marble toilet table,

which was garnished with a disorderly array of flasks and glass boxes

containing oils, essences and powders. The count went up to the

dressing glass and discovered that he was looking very flushed and had

small drops of perspiration on his forehead. He dropped his eyes and

came and took up a position in front of the toilet table, where the

basin, full of soapy water, the small, scattered, ivory toilet utensils

and the damp sponges, appeared for some moments to absorb his

attention. The feeling of dizziness which he had experienced when he

first visited Nana in the Boulevard Haussmann once more overcame him.

He felt the thick carpet soften under foot, and the gasjets burning by

the dressing table and by the glass seemed to shoot whistling flames

about his temples. For one moment, being afraid of fainting away under

the influence of those feminine odors which he now re-encountered,

intensified by the heat under the low-pitched ceiling, he sat down on

the edge of a softly padded divan between the two windows. But he got

up again almost directly and, returning to the dressing table, seemed

to gaze with vacant eyes into space, for he was thinking of a bouquet

of tuberoses which had once faded in his bedroom and had nearly killed

him in their death. When tuberoses are turning brown they have a human

smell.

“Make haste!” Bordenave whispered, putting his head in behind the

curtain.

The prince, however, was listening complaisantly to the Marquis de

Chouard, who had taken up a hare’s-foot on the dressing table and had

begun explaining the way grease paint is put on. In a corner of the

room Satin, with her pure, virginal face, was scanning the gentlemen

keenly, while the dresser, Mme Jules by name, was getting ready Venus’

tights and tunic. Mme Jules was a woman of no age. She had the

parchment skin and changeless features peculiar to old maids whom no

one ever knew in their younger years. She had indeed shriveled up in

the burning atmosphere of the dressing rooms and amid the most famous

thighs and bosoms in all Paris. She wore everlastingly a faded black

dress, and on her flat and sexless chest a perfect forest of pins

clustered above the spot where her heart should have been.

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” said Nana, drawing aside the curtain,

“but you took me by surprise.”

They all turned round. She had not clothed herself at all, had, in

fact, only buttoned on a little pair of linen stays which half revealed

her bosom. When the gentlemen had put her to flight she had scarcely

begun undressing and was rapidly taking off her fishwife’s costume.

Through the opening in her drawers behind a corner of her shift was

even now visible. There she stood, bare-armed, bare-shouldered,

bare-breasted, in all the adorable glory of her youth and plump, fair

beauty, but she still held the curtain with one hand, as though ready

to draw it to again upon the slightest provocation.

“Yes, you took me by surprise! I never shall dare—” she stammered in

pretty, mock confusion, while rosy blushes crossed her neck and

shoulders and smiles of embarrassment played about her lips.

“Oh, don’t apologize,” cried Bordenave, “since these gentlemen approve

of your good looks!”

But she still tried the hesitating, innocent, girlish game, and,

shivering as though someone were tickling her, she continued:

“His Highness does me too great an honor. I beg His Highness will

excuse my receiving him thus—”

“It is I who am importunate,” said the prince, “but, madame, I could

not resist the desire of complimenting you.”

Thereupon, in order to reach her dressing table, she walked very

quietly and just as she was through the midst of the gentlemen, who

made way for her to pass.

She had strongly marked hips, which filled her drawers out roundly,

while with swelling bosom she still continued bowing and smiling her

delicate little smile. Suddenly she seemed to recognize Count Muffat,

and she extended her hand to him as an old friend. Then she scolded him

for not having come to her supper party. His Highness deigned to chaff

Muffat about this, and the latter stammered and thrilled again at the

thought that for one second he had held in his own feverish clasp a

little fresh and perfumed hand. The count had dined excellently at the

prince’s, who, indeed, was a heroic eater and drinker. Both of them

were even a little intoxicated, but they behaved very creditably. To

hide the commotion within him Muffat could only remark about the heat.

“Good heavens, how hot it is here!” he said. “How do you manage to live

in such a temperature, madame?”

And conversation was about to ensue on this topic when noisy voices

were heard at the dressing-room door. Bordenave drew back the slide

over a grated peephole of the kind used in convents. Fontan was outside

with Prullière and Bosc, and all three had bottles under their arms and

their hands full of glasses. He began knocking and shouting out that it

was his patron saint’s day and that he was standing champagne round.

Nana consulted the prince with a glance. Eh! Oh dear, yes! His Highness

did not want to be in anyone’s way; he would be only too happy! But

without waiting for permission Fontan came in, repeating in baby

accents:

“Me not a cad, me pay for champagne!”

Then all of a sudden he became aware of the prince’s presence of which

he had been totally ignorant. He stopped short and, assuming an air of

farcical solemnity, announced:

“King Dagobert is in the corridor and is desirous of drinking the

health of His Royal Highness.”

The prince having made answer with a smile, Fontan’s sally was voted

charming. But the dressing room was too small to accommodate everybody,

and it became necessary to crowd up anyhow, Satin and Mme Jules

standing back against the curtain at the end and the men clustering

closely round the half-naked Nana. The three actors still had on the

costumes they had been wearing in the second act, and while Prullière

took off his Alpine admiral’s cocked hat, the huge plume of which would

have knocked the ceiling, Bosc, in his purple cloak and tinware crown,

steadied himself on his tipsy old legs and greeted the prince as became

a monarch receiving the son of a powerful neighbor. The glasses were

filled, and the company began clinking them together.

“I drink to Your Highness!” said ancient Bosc royally.

“To the army!” added Prullière.

“To Venus!” cried Fontan.

The prince complaisantly poised his glass, waited quietly, bowed thrice

and murmured:

“Madame! Admiral! Your Majesty!”

Then he drank it off. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had

followed his example. There was no more jesting now—the company were at

court. Actual life was prolonged in the life of the theater, and a sort

of solemn farce was enacted under the hot flare of the gas. Nana, quite

forgetting that she was in her drawers and that a corner of her shift

stuck out behind, became the great lady, the queen of love, in act to

open her most private palace chambers to state dignitaries. In every

sentence she used the words “Royal Highness” and, bowing with the

utmost conviction, treated the masqueraders, Bosc and Prullière, as if

the one were a sovereign and the other his attendant minister. And no

one dreamed of smiling at this strange contrast, this real prince, this

heir to a throne, drinking a petty actor’s champagne and taking his

ease amid a carnival of gods, a masquerade of royalty, in the society

of dressers and courtesans, shabby players and showmen of venal beauty.

Bordenave was simply ravished by the dramatic aspects of the scene and

began dreaming of the receipts which would have accrued had His

Highness only consented thus to appear in the second act of the Blonde

Venus.

“I say, shall we have our little women down?” he cried, becoming

familiar.

Nana would not hear of it. But notwithstanding this, she was giving way

herself. Fontan attracted her with his comic make-up. She brushed

against him and, eying him as a woman in the family way might do when

she fancies some unpleasant kind of food, she suddenly became extremely

familiar:

“Now then, fill up again, ye great brute!”

Fontan charged the glasses afresh, and the company drank, repeating the

same toasts.

“To His Highness!”

“To the army!”

“To Venus!”

But with that Nana made a sign and obtained silence. She raised her

glass and cried:

“No, no! To Fontan! It’s Fontan’s day; to Fontan! To Fontan!”

Then they clinked glasses a third time and drank Fontan with all the

honors. The prince, who had noticed the young woman devouring the actor

with her eyes, saluted him with a “Monsieur Fontan, I drink to your

success!” This he said with his customary courtesy.

But meanwhile the tail of his highness’s frock coat was sweeping the

marble of the dressing table. The place, indeed, was like an alcove or

narrow bathroom, full as it was of the steam of hot water and sponges

and of the strong scent of essences which mingled with the tartish,

intoxicating fumes of the champagne. The prince and Count Muffat,

between whom Nana was wedged, had to lift up their hands so as not to

brush against her hips or her breast with every little movement. And

there stood Mme Jules, waiting, cool and rigid as ever, while Satin,

marveling in the depths of her vicious soul to see a prince and two

gentlemen in black coats going after a naked woman in the society of

dressed-up actors, secretly concluded that fashionable people were not

so very particular after all.

But Father Barillot’s tinkling bell approached along the passage. At

the door of the dressing room he stood amazed when he caught sight of

the three actors still clad in the costumes which they had worn in the

second act.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he stammered, “do please make haste. They’ve

just rung the bell in the public foyer.”

“Bah, the public will have to wait!” said Bordenave placidly.

However, as the bottles were now empty, the comedians went upstairs to

dress after yet another interchange of civilities. Bosc, having dipped

his beard in the champagne, had taken it off, and under his venerable

disguise the drunkard had suddenly reappeared. His was the haggard,

empurpled face of the old actor who has taken to drink. At the foot of

the stairs he was heard remarking to Fontan in his boozy voice:

“I pulverized him, eh?”

He was alluding to the prince.

In Nana’s dressing room none now remained save His Highness, the count

and the marquis. Bordenave had withdrawn with Barillot, whom he advised

not to knock without first letting Madame know.

“You will excuse me, gentlemen?” asked Nana, again setting to work to

make up her arms and face, of which she was now particularly careful,

owing to her nude appearance in the third act.

The prince seated himself by the Marquis de Chouard on the divan, and

Count Muffat alone remained standing. In that suffocating heat the two

glasses of champagne they had drunk had increased their intoxication.

Satin, when she saw the gentlemen thus closeting themselves with her

friend, had deemed it discreet to vanish behind the curtain, where she

sat waiting on a trunk, much annoyed at being compelled to remain

motionless, while Mme Jules came and went quietly without word or look.

“You sang your numbers marvelously,” said the prince.

And with that they began a conversation, but their sentences were short

and their pauses frequent. Nana, indeed, was not always able to reply.

After rubbing cold cream over her arms and face with the palm of her

hand she laid on the grease paint with the corner of a towel. For one

second only she ceased looking in the glass and smilingly stole a

glance at the prince.

“His Highness is spoiling me,” she murmured without putting down the

grease paint.

Her task was a complicated one, and the Marquis de Chouard followed it

with an expression of devout enjoyment. He spoke in his turn.

“Could not the band accompany you more softly?” he said. “It drowns

your voice, and that’s an unpardonable crime.”

This time Nana did not turn round. She had taken up the hare’s-foot and

was lightly manipulating it. All her attention was concentrated on this

action, and she bent forward over her toilet table so very far that the

white round contour of her drawers and the little patch of chemise

stood out with the unwonted tension. But she was anxious to prove that

she appreciated the old man’s compliment and therefore made a little

swinging movement with her hips.

Silence reigned. Mme Jules had noticed a tear in the right leg of her

drawers. She took a pin from over her heart and for a second or so

knelt on the ground, busily at work about Nana’s leg, while the young

woman, without seeming to notice her presence, applied the rice powder,

taking extreme pains as she did so, to avoid putting any on the upper

part of her cheeks. But when the prince remarked that if she were to

come and sing in London all England would want to applaud her, she

laughed amiably and turned round for a moment with her left cheek

looking very white amid a perfect cloud of powder. Then she became

suddenly serious, for she had come to the operation of rouging. And

with her face once more close to the mirror, she dipped her finger in a

jar and began applying the rouge below her eyes and gently spreading it

back toward her temples. The gentlemen maintained a respectful silence.

Count Muffat, indeed, had not yet opened his lips. He was thinking

perforce of his own youth. The bedroom of his childish days had been

quite cold, and later, when he had reached the age of sixteen and would

give his mother a good-night kiss every evening, he used to carry the

icy feeling of the embrace into the world of dreams. One day in passing

a half-open door he had caught sight of a maidservant washing herself,

and that was the solitary recollection which had in any way troubled

his peace of mind from the days of puberty till the time of marriage.

Afterward he had found his wife strictly obedient to her conjugal

duties but had himself felt a species of religious dislike to them. He

had grown to man’s estate and was now aging, in ignorance of the flesh,

in the humble observance of rigid devotional practices and in obedience

to a rule of life full of precepts and moral laws. And now suddenly he

was dropped down in this actress’s dressing room in the presence of

this undraped courtesan.

He, who had never seen the Countess Muffat putting on her garters, was

witnessing, amid that wild disarray of jars and basins and that strong,

sweet perfume, the intimate details of a woman’s toilet. His whole

being was in turmoil; he was terrified by the stealthy, all-pervading

influence which for some time past Nana’s presence had been exercising

over him, and he recalled to mind the pious accounts of diabolic

possession which had amused his early years. He was a believer in the

devil, and, in a confused kind of way, Nana was he, with her laughter

and her bosom and her hips, which seemed swollen with many vices. But

he promised himself that he would be strong—nay, he would know how to

defend himself.

“Well then, it’s agreed,” said the prince, lounging quite comfortably

on the divan. “You will come to London next year, and we shall receive

you so cordially that you will never return to France again. Ah, my

dear Count, you don’t value your pretty women enough. We shall take

them all from you!”

“That won’t make much odds to him,” murmured the Marquis de Chouard

wickedly, for he occasionally said a risky thing among friends. “The

count is virtue itself.”

Hearing his virtue mentioned, Nana looked at him so comically that

Muffat felt a keen twinge of annoyance. But directly afterward he was

surprised and angry with himself. Why, in the presence of this

courtesan, should the idea of being virtuous embarrass him? He could

have struck her. But in attempting to take up a brush Nana had just let

it drop on the ground, and as she stooped to pick it up he rushed

forward. Their breath mingled for one moment, and the loosened tresses

of Venus flowed over his hands. But remorse mingled with his enjoyment,

a kind of enjoyment, moreover, peculiar to good Catholics, whom the

fear of hell torments in the midst of their sin.

At this moment Father Barillot’s voice was heard outside the door.

“May I give the knocks, madame? The house is growing impatient.”

“All in good time,” answered Nana quietly.

She had dipped her paint brush in a pot of kohl, and with the point of

her nose close to the glass and her left eye closed she passed it

delicately along between her eyelashes. Muffat stood behind her,

looking on. He saw her reflection in the mirror, with her rounded

shoulders and her bosom half hidden by a rosy shadow. And despite all

his endeavors he could not turn away his gaze from that face so merry

with dimples and so worn with desire, which the closed eye rendered

more seductive. When she shut her right eye and passed the brush along

it he understood that he belonged to her.

“They are stamping their feet, madame,” the callboy once more cried.

“They’ll end by smashing the seats. May I give the knocks?”

“Oh, bother!” said Nana impatiently. “Knock away; I don’t care! If I’m

not ready, well, they’ll have to wait for me!”

She grew calm again and, turning to the gentlemen, added with a smile:

“It’s true: we’ve only got a minute left for our talk.”

Her face and arms were now finished, and with her fingers she put two

large dabs of carmine on her lips. Count Muffat felt more excited than

ever. He was ravished by the perverse transformation wrought by powders

and paints and filled by a lawless yearning for those young painted

charms, for the too-red mouth and the too-white face and the

exaggerated eyes, ringed round with black and burning and dying for

very love. Meanwhile Nana went behind the curtain for a second or two

in order to take off her drawers and slip on Venus’ tights. After

which, with tranquil immodesty, she came out and undid her little linen

stays and held out her arms to Mme Jules, who drew the short-sleeved

tunic over them.

“Make haste; they’re growing angry!” she muttered.

The prince with half-closed eyes marked the swelling lines of her bosom

with an air of connoisseurship, while the Marquis de Chouard wagged his

head involuntarily. Muffat gazed at the carpet in order not to see any

more. At length Venus, with only her gauze veil over her shoulders, was

ready to go on the stage. Mme Jules, with vacant, unconcerned eyes and

an expression suggestive of a little elderly wooden doll, still kept

circling round her. With brisk movements she took pins out of the

inexhaustible pincushion over her heart and pinned up Venus’ tunic, but

as she ran over all those plump nude charms with her shriveled hands,

nothing was suggested to her. She was as one whom her sex does not

concern.

“There!” said the young woman, taking a final look at herself in the

mirror.

Bordenave was back again. He was anxious and said the third act had

begun.

“Very well! I’m coming,” replied Nana. “Here’s a pretty fuss! Why, it’s

usually I that waits for the others.”

The gentlemen left the dressing room, but they did not say good-by, for

the prince had expressed a desire to assist behind the scenes at the

performance of the third act. Left alone, Nana seemed greatly surprised

and looked round her in all directions.

“Where can she be?” she queried.

She was searching for Satin. When she had found her again, waiting on

her trunk behind the curtain, Satin quietly replied:

“Certainly I didn’t want to be in your way with all those men there!”

And she added further that she was going now. But Nana held her back.

What a silly girl she was! Now that Bordenave had agreed to take her

on! Why, the bargain was to be struck after the play was over! Satin

hesitated. There were too many bothers; she was out of her element!

Nevertheless, she stayed.

As the prince was coming down the little wooden staircase a strange

sound of smothered oaths and stamping, scuffling feet became audible on

the other side of the theater. The actors waiting for their cues were

being scared by quite a serious episode. For some seconds past Mignon

had been renewing his jokes and smothering Fauchery with caresses. He

had at last invented a little game of a novel kind and had begun

flicking the other’s nose in order, as he phrased it, to keep the flies

off him. This kind of game naturally diverted the actors to any extent.

But success had suddenly thrown Mignon off his balance. He had launched

forth into extravagant courses and had given the journalist a box on

the ear, an actual, a vigorous, box on the ear. This time he had gone

too far: in the presence of so many spectators it was impossible for

Fauchery to pocket such a blow with laughing equanimity. Whereupon the

two men had desisted from their farce, had sprung at one another’s

throats, their faces livid with hate, and were now rolling over and

over behind a set of side lights, pounding away at each other as though

they weren’t breakable.

“Monsieur Bordenave, Monsieur Bordenave!” said the stage manager,

coming up in a terrible flutter.

Bordenave made his excuses to the prince and followed him. When he

recognized Fauchery and Mignon in the men on the floor he gave vent to

an expression of annoyance. They had chosen a nice time, certainly,

with His Highness on the other side of the scenery and all that

houseful of people who might have overheard the row! To make matters

worse, Rose Mignon arrived out of breath at the very moment she was due

on the stage. Vulcan, indeed, was giving her the cue, but Rose stood

rooted to the ground, marveling at sight of her husband and her lover

as they lay wallowing at her feet, strangling one another, kicking,

tearing their hair out and whitening their coats with dust. They barred

the way. A sceneshifter had even stopped Fauchery’s hat just when the

devilish thing was going to bound onto the stage in the middle of the

struggle. Meanwhile Vulcan, who had been gagging away to amuse the

audience, gave Rose her cue a second time. But she stood motionless,

still gazing at the two men.

“Oh, don’t look at THEM!” Bordenave furiously whispered to her. “Go on

the stage; go on, do! It’s no business of yours! Why, you’re missing

your cue!”

And with a push from the manager, Rose stepped over the prostrate

bodies and found herself in the flare of the footlights and in the

presence of the audience. She had quite failed to understand why they

were fighting on the floor behind her. Trembling from head to foot and

with a humming in her ears, she came down to the footlights, Diana’s

sweet, amorous smile on her lips, and attacked the opening lines of her

duet with so feeling a voice that the public gave her a veritable

ovation.

Behind the scenery she could hear the dull thuds caused by the two men.

They had rolled down to the wings, but fortunately the music covered

the noise made by their feet as they kicked against them.

“By God!” yelled Bordenave in exasperation when at last he had

succeeded in separating them. “Why couldn’t you fight at home? You know

as well as I do that I don’t like this sort of thing. You, Mignon,

you’ll do me the pleasure of staying over here on the prompt side, and

you, Fauchery, if you leave the O.P. side I’ll chuck you out of the

theater. You understand, eh? Prompt side and O.P. side or I forbid Rose

to bring you here at all.”

When he returned to the prince’s presence the latter asked what was the

matter.

“Oh, nothing at all,” he murmured quietly.

Nana was standing wrapped in furs, talking to these gentlemen while

awaiting her cue. As Count Muffat was coming up in order to peep

between two of the wings at the stage, he understood from a sign made

him by the stage manager that he was to step softly. Drowsy warmth was

streaming down from the flies, and in the wings, which were lit by

vivid patches of light, only a few people remained, talking in low

voices or making off on tiptoe. The gasman was at his post amid an

intricate arrangement of cocks; a fireman, leaning against the side

lights, was craning forward, trying to catch a glimpse of things, while

on his seat, high up, the curtain man was watching with resigned

expression, careless of the play, constantly on the alert for the bell

to ring him to his duty among the ropes. And amid the close air and the

shuffling of feet and the sound of whispering, the voices of the actors

on the stage sounded strange, deadened, surprisingly discordant.

Farther off again, above the confused noises of the band, a vast

breathing sound was audible. It was the breath of the house, which

sometimes swelled up till it burst in vague rumors, in laughter, in

applause. Though invisible, the presence of the public could be felt,

even in the silences.

“There’s something open,” said Nana sharply, and with that she

tightened the folds of her fur cloak. “Do look, Barillot. I bet they’ve

just opened a window. Why, one might catch one’s death of cold here!”

Barillot swore that he had closed every window himself but suggested

that possibly there were broken panes about. The actors were always

complaining of drafts. Through the heavy warmth of that gaslit region

blasts of cold air were constantly passing—it was a regular influenza

trap, as Fontan phrased it.

“I should like to see YOU in a low-cut dress,” continued Nana, growing

annoyed.

“Hush!” murmured Bordenave.

On the stage Rose rendered a phrase in her duet so cleverly that the

stalls burst into universal applause. Nana was silent at this, and her

face grew grave. Meanwhile the count was venturing down a passage when

Barillot stopped him and said he would make a discovery there. Indeed,

he obtained an oblique back view of the scenery and of the wings which

had been strengthened, as it were, by a thick layer of old posters.

Then he caught sight of a corner of the stage, of the Etna cave

hollowed out in a silver mine and of Vulcan’s forge in the background.

Battens, lowered from above, lit up a sparkling substance which had

been laid on with large dabs of the brush. Side lights with red glasses

and blue were so placed as to produce the appearance of a fiery

brazier, while on the floor of the stage, in the far background, long

lines of gaslight had been laid down in order to throw a wall of dark

rocks into sharp relief. Hard by on a gentle, “practicable” incline,

amid little points of light resembling the illumination lamps scattered

about in the grass on the night of a public holiday, old Mme Drouard,

who played Juno, was sitting dazed and sleepy, waiting for her cue.

Presently there was a commotion, for Simonne, while listening to a

story Clarisse was telling her, cried out:

“My! It’s the Tricon!”

It was indeed the Tricon, wearing the same old curls and looking as

like a litigious great lady as ever.

When she saw Nana she went straight up to her.

“No,” said the latter after some rapid phrases had been exchanged, “not

now.” The old lady looked grave. Just then Prullière passed by and

shook hands with her, while two little chorus girls stood gazing at her

with looks of deep emotion. For a moment she seemed to hesitate. Then

she beckoned to Simonne, and the rapid exchange of sentences began

again.

“Yes,” said Simonne at last. “In half an hour.”

But as she was going upstairs again to her dressing room, Mme Bron, who

was once more going the rounds with letters, presented one to her.

Bordenave lowered his voice and furiously reproached the portress for

having allowed the Tricon to come in. That woman! And on such an

evening of all others! It made him so angry because His Highness was

there! Mme Bron, who had been thirty years in the theater, replied

quite sourly. How was she to know? she asked. The Tricon did business

with all the ladies—M. le Directeur had met her a score of times

without making remarks. And while Bordenave was muttering oaths the

Tricon stood quietly by, scrutinizing the prince as became a woman who

weighs a man at a glance. A smile lit up her yellow face. Presently she

paced slowly off through the crowd of deeply deferential little women.

“Immediately, eh?” she queried, turning round again to Simonne.

Simonne seemed much worried. The letter was from a young man to whom

she had engaged herself for that evening. She gave Mme Bron a scribbled

note in which were the words, “Impossible tonight, darling—I’m booked.”

But she was still apprehensive; the young man might possibly wait for

her in spite of everything. As she was not playing in the third act,

she had a mind to be off at once and accordingly begged Clarisse to go

and see if the man were there. Clarisse was only due on the stage

toward the end of the act, and so she went downstairs while Simonne ran

up for a minute to their common dressing room.

In Mme Bron’s drinking bar downstairs a super, who was charged with the

part of Pluto, was drinking in solitude amid the folds of a great red

robe diapered with golden flames. The little business plied by the good

portress must have been progressing finely, for the cellarlike hole

under the stairs was wet with emptied heeltaps and water. Clarisse

picked up the tunic of Iris, which was dragging over the greasy steps

behind her, but she halted prudently at the turn in the stairs and was

content simply to crane forward and peer into the lodge. She certainly

had been quick to scent things out! Just fancy! That idiot La Faloise

was still there, sitting on the same old chair between the table and

the stove! He had made pretense of sneaking off in front of Simonne and

had returned after her departure. For the matter of that, the lodge was

still full of gentlemen who sat there gloved, elegant, submissive and

patient as ever. They were all waiting and viewing each other gravely

as they waited. On the table there were now only some dirty plates, Mme

Bron having recently distributed the last of the bouquets. A single

fallen rose was withering on the floor in the neighborhood of the black

cat, who had lain down and curled herself up while the kittens ran wild

races and danced fierce gallops among the gentlemen’s legs. Clarisse

was momentarily inclined to turn La Faloise out. The idiot wasn’t fond

of animals, and that put the finishing touch to him! He was busy

drawing in his legs because the cat was there, and he didn’t want to

touch her.

“He’ll nip you; take care!” said Pluto, who was a joker, as he went

upstairs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

After that Clarisse gave up the idea of hauling La Faloise over the

coals. She had seen Mme Bron giving the letter to Simonne’s young man,

and he had gone out to read it under the gas light in the lobby.

“Impossible tonight, darling—I’m booked.” And with that he had

peaceably departed, as one who was doubtless used to the formula. He,

at any rate, knew how to conduct himself! Not so the others, the

fellows who sat there doggedly on Mme Bron’s battered straw-bottomed

chairs under the great glazed lantern, where the heat was enough to

roast you and there was an unpleasant odor. What a lot of men it must

have held! Clarisse went upstairs again in disgust, crossed over behind

scenes and nimbly mounted three flights of steps which led to the

dressing rooms, in order to bring Simonne her reply.

Downstairs the prince had withdrawn from the rest and stood talking to

Nana. He never left her; he stood brooding over her through half-shut

eyelids. Nana did not look at him but, smiling, nodded yes. Suddenly,

however, Count Muffat obeyed an overmastering impulse, and leaving

Bordenave, who was explaining to him the working of the rollers and

windlasses, he came up in order to interrupt their confabulations. Nana

lifted her eyes and smiled at him as she smiled at His Highness. But

she kept her ears open notwithstanding, for she was waiting for her

cue.

“The third act is the shortest, I believe,” the prince began saying,

for the count’s presence embarrassed him.

She did not answer; her whole expression altered; she was suddenly

intent on her business. With a rapid movement of the shoulders she had

let her furs slip from her, and Mme Jules, standing behind, had caught

them in her arms. And then after passing her two hands to her hair as

though to make it fast, she went on the stage in all her nudity.

“Hush, hush!” whispered Bordenave.

The count and the prince had been taken by surprise. There was profound

silence, and then a deep sigh and the far-off murmur of a multitude

became audible. Every evening when Venus entered in her godlike

nakedness the same effect was produced. Then Muffat was seized with a

desire to see; he put his eye to the peephole. Above and beyond the

glowing arc formed by the footlights the dark body of the house seemed

full of ruddy vapor, and against this neutral-tinted background, where

row upon row of faces struck a pale, uncertain note, Nana stood forth

white and vast, so that the boxes from the balcony to the flies were

blotted from view. He saw her from behind, noted her swelling hips, her

outstretched arms, while down on the floor, on the same level as her

feet, the prompter’s head—an old man’s head with a humble, honest

face—stood on the edge of the stage, looking as though it had been

severed from the body. At certain points in her opening number an

undulating movement seemed to run from her neck to her waist and to die

out in the trailing border of her tunic. When amid a tempest of

applause she had sung her last note she bowed, and the gauze floated

forth round about her limbs, and her hair swept over her waist as she

bent sharply backward. And seeing her thus, as with bending form and

with exaggerated hips she came backing toward the count’s peephole, he

stood upright again, and his face was very white. The stage had

disappeared, and he now saw only the reverse side of the scenery with

its display of old posters pasted up in every direction. On the

practicable slope, among the lines of gas jets, the whole of Olympus

had rejoined the dozing Mme Drouard. They were waiting for the close of

the act. Bosc and Fontan sat on the floor with their knees drawn up to

their chins, and Prullière stretched himself and yawned before going

on. Everybody was worn out; their eyes were red, and they were longing

to go home to sleep.

Just then Fauchery, who had been prowling about on the O.P. side ever

since Bordenave had forbidden him the other, came and buttonholed the

count in order to keep himself in countenance and offered at the same

time to show him the dressing rooms. An increasing sense of languor had

left Muffat without any power of resistance, and after looking round

for the Marquis de Chouard, who had disappeared, he ended by following

the journalist. He experienced a mingled feeling of relief and anxiety

as he left the wings whence he had been listening to Nana’s songs.

Fauchery had already preceded him up the staircase, which was closed on

the first and second floors by low-paneled doors. It was one of those

stairways which you find in miserable tenements. Count Muffat had seen

many such during his rounds as member of the Benevolent Organization.

It was bare and dilapidated: there was a wash of yellow paint on its

walls; its steps had been worn by the incessant passage of feet, and

its iron balustrade had grown smooth under the friction of many hands.

On a level with the floor on every stairhead there was a low window

which resembled a deep, square venthole, while in lanterns fastened to

the walls flaring gas jets crudely illuminated the surrounding squalor

and gave out a glowing heat which, as it mounted up the narrow

stairwell, grew ever more intense.

When he reached the foot of the stairs the count once more felt the hot

breath upon his neck and shoulders. As of old it was laden with the

odor of women, wafted amid floods of light and sound from the dressing

rooms above, and now with every upward step he took the musky scent of

powders and the tart perfume of toilet vinegars heated and bewildered

him more and more. On the first floor two corridors ran backward,

branching sharply off and presenting a set of doors to view which were

painted yellow and numbered with great white numerals in such a way as

to suggest a hotel with a bad reputation. The tiles on the floor had

been many of them unbedded, and the old house being in a state of

subsidence, they stuck up like hummocks. The count dashed recklessly

forward, glanced through a half-open door and saw a very dirty room

which resembled a barber’s shop in a poor part of the town. In was

furnished with two chairs, a mirror and a small table containing a

drawer which had been blackened by the grease from brushes and combs. A

great perspiring fellow with smoking shoulders was changing his linen

there, while in a similar room next door a woman was drawing on her

gloves preparatory to departure. Her hair was damp and out of curl, as

though she had just had a bath. But Fauchery began calling the count,

and the latter was rushing up without delay when a furious “damn!”

burst from the corridor on the right. Mathilde, a little drab of a

miss, had just broken her washhand basin, the soapy water from which

was flowing out to the stairhead. A dressing room door banged noisily.

Two women in their stays skipped across the passage, and another, with

the hem of her shift in her mouth, appeared and immediately vanished

from view. Then followed a sound of laughter, a dispute, the snatch of

a song which was suddenly broken off short. All along the passage naked

gleams, sudden visions of white skin and wan underlinen were observable

through chinks in doorways. Two girls were making very merry, showing

each other their birthmarks. One of them, a very young girl, almost a

child, had drawn her skirts up over her knees in order to sew up a rent

in her drawers, and the dressers, catching sight of the two men, drew

some curtains half to for decency’s sake. The wild stampede which

follows the end of a play had already begun, the grand removal of white

paint and rouge, the reassumption amid clouds of rice powder of

ordinary attire. The strange animal scent came in whiffs of redoubled

intensity through the lines of banging doors. On the third story Muffat

abandoned himself to the feeling of intoxication which was overpowering

him. For the chorus girls’ dressing room was there, and you saw a crowd

of twenty women and a wild display of soaps and flasks of lavender

water. The place resembled the common room in a slum lodging house. As

he passed by he heard fierce sounds of washing behind a closed door and

a perfect storm raging in a washhand basin. And as he was mounting up

to the topmost story of all, curiosity led him to risk one more little

peep through an open loophole. The room was empty, and under the flare

of the gas a solitary chamber pot stood forgotten among a heap of

petticoats trailing on the floor. This room afforded him his ultimate

impression. Upstairs on the fourth floor he was well-nigh suffocated.

All the scents, all the blasts of heat, had found their goal there. The

yellow ceiling looked as if it had been baked, and a lamp burned amid

fumes of russet-colored fog. For some seconds he leaned upon the iron

balustrade which felt warm and damp and well-nigh human to the touch.

And he shut his eyes and drew a long breath and drank in the sexual

atmosphere of the place. Hitherto he had been utterly ignorant of it,

but now it beat full in his face.

“Do come here,” shouted Fauchery, who had vanished some moments ago.

“You’re being asked for.”

At the end of the corridor was the dressing room belonging to Clarisse

and Simonne. It was a long, ill-built room under the roof with a garret

ceiling and sloping walls. The light penetrated to it from two deep-set

openings high up in the wall, but at that hour of the night the

dressing room was lit by flaring gas. It was papered with a paper at

seven sous a roll with a pattern of roses twining over green

trelliswork. Two boards, placed near one another and covered with

oilcloth, did duty for dressing tables. They were black with spilled

water, and underneath them was a fine medley of dinted zinc jugs, slop

pails and coarse yellow earthenware crocks. There was an array of fancy

articles in the room—a battered, soiled and well-worn array of chipped

basins, of toothless combs, of all those manifold untidy trifles which,

in their hurry and carelessness, two women will leave scattered about

when they undress and wash together amid purely temporary surroundings,

the dirty aspect of which has ceased to concern them.

“Do come here,” Fauchery repeated with the good-humored familiarity

which men adopt among their fallen sisters. “Clarisse is wanting to

kiss you.”

Muffat entered the room at last. But what was his surprise when he

found the Marquis de Chouard snugly enscounced on a chair between the

two dressing tables! The marquis had withdrawn thither some time ago.

He was spreading his feet apart because a pail was leaking and letting

a whitish flood spread over the floor. He was visibly much at his ease,

as became a man who knew all the snug corners, and had grown quite

merry in the close dressing room, where people might have been bathing,

and amid those quietly immodest feminine surroundings which the

uncleanness of the little place rendered at once natural and poignant.

“D’you go with the old boy?” Simonne asked Clarisse in a whisper.

“Rather!” replied the latter aloud.

The dresser, a very ugly and extremely familiar young girl, who was

helping Simonne into her coat, positively writhed with laughter. The

three pushed each other and babbled little phrases which redoubled

their merriment.

“Come, Clarisse, kiss the gentleman,” said Fauchery. “You know, he’s

got the rhino.”

And turning to the count:

“You’ll see, she’s very nice! She’s going to kiss you!”

But Clarisse was disgusted by the men. She spoke in violent terms of

the dirty lot waiting at the porter’s lodge down below. Besides, she

was in a hurry to go downstairs again; they were making her miss her

last scene. Then as Fauchery blocked up the doorway, she gave Muffat a

couple of kisses on the whiskers, remarking as she did so:

“It’s not for you, at any rate! It’s for that nuisance Fauchery!”

And with that she darted off, and the count remained much embarrassed

in his father-in-law’s presence. The blood had rushed to his face. In

Nana’s dressing room, amid all the luxury of hangings and mirrors, he

had not experienced the sharp physical sensation which the shameful

wretchedness of that sorry garret excited within him, redolent as it

was of these two girls’ self-abandonment. Meanwhile the marquis had

hurried in the rear of Simonne, who was making off at the top of her

pace, and he kept whispering in her ear while she shook her head in

token of refusal. Fauchery followed them, laughing. And with that the

count found himself alone with the dresser, who was washing out the

basins. Accordingly he took his departure, too, his legs almost failing

under him. Once more he put up flights of half-dressed women and caused

doors to bang as he advanced. But amid the disorderly, disbanded troops

of girls to be found on each of the four stories, he was only

distinctly aware of a cat, a great tortoise-shell cat, which went

gliding upstairs through the ovenlike place where the air was poisoned

with musk, rubbing its back against the banisters and keeping its tail

exceedingly erect.

“Yes, to be sure!” said a woman hoarsely. “I thought they’d keep us

back tonight! What a nuisance they are with their calls!”

The end had come; the curtain had just fallen. There was a veritable

stampede on the staircase—its walls rang with exclamations, and

everyone was in a savage hurry to dress and be off. As Count Muffat

came down the last step or two he saw Nana and the prince passing

slowly along the passage. The young woman halted and lowered her voice

as she said with a smile:

“All right then—by and by!”

The prince returned to the stage, where Bordenave was awaiting him. And

left alone with Nana, Muffat gave way to an impulse of anger and

desire. He ran up behind her and, as she was on the point of entering

her dressing room, imprinted a rough kiss on her neck among little

golden hairs curling low down between her shoulders. It was as though

he had returned the kiss that had been given him upstairs. Nana was in

a fury; she lifted her hand, but when she recognized the count she

smiled.

“Oh, you frightened me,” she said simply.

And her smile was adorable in its embarrassment and submissiveness, as

though she had despaired of this kiss and were happy to have received

it. But she could do nothing for him either that evening or the day

after. It was a case of waiting. Nay, even if it had been in her power

she would still have let herself be desired. Her glance said as much.

At length she continued:

“I’m a landowner, you know. Yes, I’m buying a country house near

Orleans, in a part of the world to which you sometimes betake yourself.

Baby told me you did—little Georges Hugon, I mean. You know him? So

come and see me down there.”

The count was a shy man, and the thought of his roughness had

frightened him; he was ashamed of what he had done and he bowed

ceremoniously, promising at the same time to take advantage of her

invitation. Then he walked off as one who dreams.

He was rejoining the prince when, passing in front of the foyer, he

heard Satin screaming out:

“Oh, the dirty old thing! Just you bloody well leave me alone!”

It was the Marquis de Chouard who was tumbling down over Satin. The

girl had decidedly had enough of the fashionable world! Nana had

certainly introduced her to Bordenave, but the necessity of standing

with sealed lips for fear of allowing some awkward phrase to escape her

had been too much for her feelings, and now she was anxious to regain

her freedom, the more so as she had run against an old flame of hers in

the wings. This was the super, to whom the task of impersonating Pluto

had been entrusted, a pastry cook, who had already treated her to a

whole week of love and flagellation. She was waiting for him, much

irritated at the things the marquis was saying to her, as though she

were one of those theatrical ladies! And so at last she assumed a

highly respectable expression and jerked out this phrase:

“My husband’s coming! You’ll see.”

Meanwhile the worn-looking artistes were dropping off one after the

other in their outdoor coats. Groups of men and women were coming down

the little winding staircase, and the outlines of battered hats and

worn-out shawls were visible in the shadows. They looked colorless and

unlovely, as became poor play actors who have got rid of their paint.

On the stage, where the side lights and battens were being

extinguished, the prince was listening to an anecdote Bordenave was

telling him. He was waiting for Nana, and when at length she made her

appearance the stage was dark, and the fireman on duty was finishing

his round, lantern in hand. Bordenave, in order to save His Highness

going about by the Passage des Panoramas, had made them open the

corridor which led from the porter’s lodge to the entrance hall of the

theater. Along this narrow alley little women were racing pell-mell,

for they were delighted to escape from the men who were waiting for

them in the other passage. They went jostling and elbowing along,

casting apprehensive glances behind them and only breathing freely when

they got outside. Fontan, Bosc and Prullière, on the other hand,

retired at a leisurely pace, joking at the figure cut by the serious,

paying admirers who were striding up and down the Galerie des Variétés

at a time when the little dears were escaping along the boulevard with

the men of their hearts. But Clarisse was especially sly. She had her

suspicions about La Faloise, and, as a matter of fact, he was still in

his place in the lodge among the gentlemen obstinately waiting on Mme

Bron’s chairs. They all stretched forward, and with that she passed

brazenly by in the wake of a friend. The gentlemen were blinking in

bewilderment over the wild whirl of petticoats eddying at the foot of

the narrow stairs. It made them desperate to think they had waited so

long, only to see them all flying away like this without being able to

recognize a single one. The litter of little black cats were sleeping

on the oilcloth, nestled against their mother’s belly, and the latter

was stretching her paws out in a state of beatitude while the big

tortoise-shell cat sat at the other end of the table, her tail

stretched out behind her and her yellow eyes solemnly following the

flight of the women.

“If His Highness will be good enough to come this way,” said Bordenave

at the bottom of the stairs, and he pointed to the passage.

Some chorus girls were still crowding along it. The prince began

following Nana while Muffat and the marquis walked behind.

It was a long, narrow passage lying between the theater and the house

next door, a kind of contracted by-lane which had been covered with a

sloping glass roof. Damp oozed from the walls, and the footfall sounded

as hollow on the tiled floor as in an underground vault. It was crowded

with the kind of rubbish usually found in a garret. There was a

workbench on which the porter was wont to plane such parts of the

scenery as required it, besides a pile of wooden barriers which at

night were placed at the doors of the theater for the purpose of

regulating the incoming stream of people. Nana had to pick up her dress

as she passed a hydrant which, through having been carelessly turned

off, was flooding the tiles underfoot. In the entrance hall the company

bowed and said good-by. And when Bordenave was alone he summed up his

opinion of the prince in a shrug of eminently philosophic disdain.

“He’s a bit of a duffer all the same,” he said to Fauchery without

entering on further explanations, and with that Rose Mignon carried the

journalist off with her husband in order to effect a reconciliation

between them at home.

Muffat was left alone on the sidewalk. His Highness had handed Nana

quietly into his carriage, and the marquis had slipped off after Satin

and her super. In his excitement he was content to follow this vicious

pair in vague hopes of some stray favor being granted him. Then with

brain on fire Muffat decided to walk home. The struggle within him had

wholly ceased. The ideas and beliefs of the last forty years were being

drowned in a flood of new life. While he was passing along the

boulevards the roll of the last carriages deafened him with the name of

Nana; the gaslights set nude limbs dancing before his eyes—the nude

limbs, the lithe arms, the white shoulders, of Nana. And he felt that

he was hers utterly: he would have abjured everything, sold everything,

to possess her for a single hour that very night. Youth, a lustful

puberty of early manhood, was stirring within him at last, flaming up

suddenly in the chaste heart of the Catholic and amid the dignified

traditions of middle age.

CHAPTER VI

Count Muffat, accompanied by his wife and daughter, had arrived

overnight at Les Fondettes, where Mme Hugon, who was staying there with

only her son Georges, had invited them to come and spend a week. The

house, which had been built at the end of the eighteenth century, stood

in the middle of a huge square enclosure. It was perfectly unadorned,

but the garden possessed magnificent shady trees and a chain of tanks

fed by running spring water. It stood at the side of the road which

leads from Orleans to Paris and with its rich verdure and

high-embowered trees broke the monotony of that flat countryside, where

fields stretched to the horizon’s verge.

At eleven o’clock, when the second lunch bell had called the whole

household together, Mme Hugon, smiling in her kindly maternal way, gave

Sabine two great kisses, one on each cheek, and said as she did so:

“You know it’s my custom in the country. Oh, seeing you here makes me

feel twenty years younger. Did you sleep well in your old room?”

Then without waiting for her reply she turned to Estelle:

“And this little one, has she had a nap too? Give me a kiss, my child.”

They had taken their seats in the vast dining room, the windows of

which looked out on the park. But they only occupied one end of the

long table, where they sat somewhat crowded together for company’s

sake. Sabine, in high good spirits, dwelt on various childish memories

which had been stirred up within her—memories of months passed at Les

Fondettes, of long walks, of a tumble into one of the tanks on a summer

evening, of an old romance of chivalry discovered by her on the top of

a cupboard and read during the winter before fires made of vine

branches. And Georges, who had not seen the countess for some months,

thought there was something curious about her. Her face seemed changed,

somehow, while, on the other hand, that stick of an Estelle seemed more

insignificant and dumb and awkward than ever.

While such simple fare as cutlets and boiled eggs was being discussed

by the company, Mme Hugon, as became a good housekeeper, launched out

into complaints. The butchers, she said, were becoming impossible. She

bought everything at Orleans, and yet they never brought her the pieces

she asked for. Yet, alas, if her guests had nothing worth eating it was

their own fault: they had come too late in the season.

“There’s no sense in it,” she said. “I’ve been expecting you since

June, and now we’re half through September. You see, it doesn’t look

pretty.”

And with a movement she pointed to the trees on the grass outside, the

leaves of which were beginning to turn yellow. The day was covered, and

the distance was hidden by a bluish haze which was fraught with a sweet

and melancholy peacefulness.

“Oh, I’m expecting company,” she continued. “We shall be gayer then!

The first to come will be two gentlemen whom Georges has

invited—Monsieur Fauchery and Monsieur Daguenet; you know them, do you

not? Then we shall have Monsieur de Vandeuvres, who has promised me a

visit these five years past. This time, perhaps, he’ll make up his

mind!”

“Oh, well and good!” said the countess, laughing. “If we only can get

Monsieur de Vandeuvres! But he’s too much engaged.”

“And Philippe?” queried Muffat.

“Philippe has asked for a furlough,” replied the old lady, “but without

doubt you won’t be at Les Fondettes any longer when he arrives.”

The coffee was served. Paris was now the subject of conversation, and

Steiner’s name was mentioned, at which Mme Hugon gave a little cry.

“Let me see,” she said; “Monsieur Steiner is that stout man I met at

your house one evening. He’s a banker, is he not? Now there’s a

detestable man for you! Why, he’s gone and bought an actress an estate

about a league from here, over Gumières way, beyond the Choue. The

whole countryside’s scandalized. Did you know about that, my friend?”

“I knew nothing about it,” replied Muffat. “Ah, then, Steiner’s bought

a country place in the neighborhood!”

Hearing his mother broach the subject, Georges looked into his coffee

cup, but in his astonishment at the count’s answer he glanced up at him

and stared. Why was he lying so glibly? The count, on his side, noticed

the young fellow’s movement and gave him a suspicious glance. Mme Hugon

continued to go into details: the country place was called La Mignotte.

In order to get there one had to go up the bank of the Choue as far as

Gumières in order to cross the bridge; otherwise one got one’s feet wet

and ran the risk of a ducking.

“And what is the actress’s name?” asked the countess.

“Oh, I wasn’t told,” murmured the old lady. “Georges, you were there

the morning the gardener spoke to us about it.”

Georges appeared to rack his brains. Muffat waited, twirling a teaspoon

between his fingers. Then the countess addressed her husband:

“Isn’t Monsieur Steiner with that singer at the Variétés, that Nana?”

“Nana, that’s the name! A horrible woman!” cried Mme Hugon with growing

annoyance. “And they are expecting her at La Mignotte. I’ve heard all

about it from the gardener. Didn’t the gardener say they were expecting

her this evening, Georges?”

The count gave a little start of astonishment, but Georges replied with

much vivacity:

“Oh, Mother, the gardener spoke without knowing anything about it.

Directly afterward the coachman said just the opposite. Nobody’s

expected at La Mignotte before the day after tomorrow.”

He tried hard to assume a natural expression while he slyly watched the

effect of his remarks on the count. The latter was twirling his spoon

again as though reassured. The countess, her eyes fixed dreamily on the

blue distances of the park, seemed to have lost all interest in the

conversation. The shadow of a smile on her lips, she seemed to be

following up a secret thought which had been suddenly awakened within

her. Estelle, on the other hand, sitting stiffly on her chair, had

heard all that had been said about Nana, but her white, virginal face

had not betrayed a trace of emotion.

“Dear me, dear me! I’ve got no right to grow angry,” murmured Mme Hugon

after a pause, and with a return to her old good humor she added:

“Everybody’s got a right to live. If we meet this said lady on the road

we shall not bow to her—that’s all!”

And as they got up from table she once more gently upbraided the

Countess Sabine for having been so long in coming to her that year. But

the countess defended herself and threw the blame of the delays upon

her husband’s shoulders. Twice on the eve of departure, when all the

trunks were locked, he counterordered their journey on the plea of

urgent business. Then he had suddenly decided to start just when the

trip seemed shelved. Thereupon the old lady told them how Georges in

the same way had twice announced his arrival without arriving and had

finally cropped up at Les Fondettes the day before yesterday, when she

was no longer expecting him. They had come down into the garden, and

the two men, walking beside the ladies, were listening to them in

consequential silence.

“Never mind,” said Mme Hugon, kissing her son’s sunny locks, “Zizi is a

very good boy to come and bury himself in the country with his mother.

He’s a dear Zizi not to forget me!”

In the afternoon she expressed some anxiety, for Georges, directly

after leaving the table, had complained of a heavy feeling in his head

and now seemed in for an atrocious sick headache. Toward four o’clock

he said he would go upstairs to bed: it was the only remedy. After

sleeping till tomorrow morning he would be perfectly himself again. His

mother was bent on putting him to bed herself, but as she left the room

he ran and locked the door, explaining that he was shutting himself in

so that no one should come and disturb him. Then caressingly he

shouted, “Good night till tomorrow, little Mother!” and promised to

take a nap. But he did not go to bed again and with flushed cheeks and

bright eyes noiselessly put on his clothes. Then he sat on a chair and

waited. When the dinner bell rang he listened for Count Muffat, who was

on his way to the dining room, and ten minutes later, when he was

certain that no one would see him, he slipped from the window to the

ground with the assistance of a rain pipe. His bedroom was situated on

the first floor and looked out upon the rear of the house. He threw

himself among some bushes and got out of the park and then galloped

across the fields with empty stomach and heart beating with excitement.

Night was closing in, and a small fine rain was beginning to fall.

It was the very evening that Nana was due at La Mignotte. Ever since in

the preceding May Steiner had bought her this country place she had

from time to time been so filled with the desire of taking possession

that she had wept hot tears about, but on each of these occasions

Bordenave had refused to give her even the shortest leave and had

deferred her holiday till September on the plea that he did not intend

putting an understudy in her place, even for one evening, now that the

exhibition was on. Toward the close of August he spoke of October. Nana

was furious and declared that she would be at La Mignotte in the middle

of September. Nay, in order to dare Bordenave, she even invited a crowd

of guests in his very presence. One afternoon in her rooms, as Muffat,

whose advances she still adroitly resisted, was beseeching her with

tremulous emotion to yield to his entreaties, she at length promised to

be kind, but not in Paris, and to him, too, she named the middle of

September. Then on the twelfth she was seized by a desire to be off

forthwith with Zoé as her sole companion. It might be that Bordenave

had got wind of her intentions and was about to discover some means of

detaining her. She was delighted at the notion of putting him in a fix,

and she sent him a doctor’s certificate. When once the idea had entered

her head of being the first to get to La Mignotte and of living there

two days without anybody knowing anything about it, she rushed Zoé

through the operation of packing and finally pushed her into a cab,

where in a sudden burst of extreme contrition she kissed her and begged

her pardon. It was only when they got to the station refreshment room

that she thought of writing Steiner of her movements. She begged him to

wait till the day after tomorrow before rejoining her if he wanted to

find her quite bright and fresh. And then, suddenly conceiving another

project, she wrote a second letter, in which she besought her aunt to

bring little Louis to her at once. It would do Baby so much good! And

how happy they would be together in the shade of the trees! In the

railway carriage between Paris and Orleans she spoke of nothing else;

her eyes were full of tears; she had an unexpected attack of maternal

tenderness and mingled together flowers, birds and child in her every

sentence.

La Mignotte was more than three leagues away from the station, and Nana

lost a good hour over the hire of a carriage, a huge, dilapidated

calash, which rumbled slowly along to an accompaniment of rattling old

iron. She had at once taken possession of the coachman, a little

taciturn old man whom she overwhelmed with questions. Had he often

passed by La Mignotte? It was behind this hill then? There ought to be

lots of trees there, eh? And the house could one see it at a distance?

The little old man answered with a succession of grunts. Down in the

calash Nana was almost dancing with impatience, while Zoé, in her

annoyance at having left Paris in such a hurry, sat stiffly sulking

beside her. The horse suddenly stopped short, and the young woman

thought they had reached their destination. She put her head out of the

carriage door and asked:

“Are we there, eh?”

By way of answer the driver whipped up his horse, which was in the act

of painfully climbing a hill. Nana gazed ecstatically at the vast plain

beneath the gray sky where great clouds were banked up.

“Oh, do look, Zoé! There’s greenery! Now, is that all wheat? Good lord,

how pretty it is!”

“One can quite see that Madame doesn’t come from the country,” was the

servant’s prim and tardy rejoinder. “As for me, I knew the country only

too well when I was with my dentist. He had a house at Bougival. No,

it’s cold, too, this evening. It’s damp in these parts.”

They were driving under the shadow of a wood, and Nana sniffed up the

scent of the leaves as a young dog might. All of a sudden at a turn of

the road she caught sight of the corner of a house among the trees.

Perhaps it was there! And with that she began a conversation with the

driver, who continued shaking his head by way of saying no. Then as

they drove down the other side of the hill he contented himself by

holding out his whip and muttering, “’Tis down there.”

She got up and stretched herself almost bodily out of the carriage

door.

“Where is it? Where is it?” she cried with pale cheeks, but as yet she

saw nothing.

At last she caught sight of a bit of wall. And then followed a

succession of little cries and jumps, the ecstatic behavior of a woman

overcome by a new and vivid sensation.

“I see it! I see it, Zoé! Look out at the other side. Oh, there’s a

terrace with brick ornaments on the roof! And there’s a hothouse down

there! But the place is immense. Oh, how happy I am! Do look, Zoé! Now,

do look!”

The carriage had by this time pulled up before the park gates. A side

door was opened, and the gardener, a tall, dry fellow, made his

appearance, cap in hand. Nana made an effort to regain her dignity, for

the driver seemed now to be suppressing a laugh behind his dry,

speechless lips. She refrained from setting off at a run and listened

to the gardener, who was a very talkative fellow. He begged Madame to

excuse the disorder in which she found everything, seeing that he had

only received Madame’s letter that very morning. But despite all his

efforts, she flew off at a tangent and walked so quickly that Zoé could

scarcely follow her. At the end of the avenue she paused for a moment

in order to take the house in at a glance. It was a great pavilion-like

building in the Italian manner, and it was flanked by a smaller

construction, which a rich Englishman, after two years’ residence in

Naples, had caused to be erected and had forthwith become disgusted

with.

“I’ll take Madame over the house,” said the gardener.

But she had outrun him entirely, and she shouted back that he was not

to put himself out and that she would go over the house by herself. She

preferred doing that, she said. And without removing her hat she dashed

into the different rooms, calling to Zoé as she did so, shouting her

impressions from one end of each corridor to the other and filling the

empty house, which for long months had been uninhabited, with

exclamations and bursts of laughter. In the first place, there was the

hall. It was a little damp, but that didn’t matter; one wasn’t going to

sleep in it. Then came the drawing room, quite the thing, the drawing

room, with its windows opening on the lawn. Only the red upholsteries

there were hideous; she would alter all that. As to the dining

room-well, it was a lovely dining room, eh? What big blowouts you might

give in Paris if you had a dining room as large as that! As she was

going upstairs to the first floor it occurred to her that she had not

seen the kitchen, and she went down again and indulged in ecstatic

exclamations. Zoé ought to admire the beautiful dimensions of the sink

and the width of the hearth, where you might have roasted a sheep! When

she had gone upstairs again her bedroom especially enchanted her. It

had been hung with delicate rose-colored Louis XVI cretonne by an

Orleans upholsterer. Dear me, yes! One ought to sleep jolly sound in

such a room as that; why, it was a real best bedroom! Then came four or

five guest chambers and then some splendid garrets, which would be

extremely convenient for trunks and boxes. Zoé looked very gruff and

cast a frigid glance into each of the rooms as she lingered in Madame’s

wake. She saw Nana disappearing up the steep garret ladder and said,

“Thanks, I haven’t the least wish to break my legs.” But the sound of a

voice reached her from far away; indeed, it seemed to come whistling

down a chimney.

“Zoé, Zoé, where are you? Come up, do! You’ve no idea! It’s like

fairyland!”

Zoé went up, grumbling. On the roof she found her mistress leaning

against the brickwork balustrade and gazing at the valley which spread

out into the silence. The horizon was immeasurably wide, but it was now

covered by masses of gray vapor, and a fierce wind was driving fine

rain before it. Nana had to hold her hat on with both hands to keep it

from being blown away while her petticoats streamed out behind her,

flapping like a flag.

“Not if I know it!” said Zoé, drawing her head in at once. “Madame will

be blown away. What beastly weather!”

Madame did not hear what she said. With her head over the balustrade

she was gazing at the grounds beneath. They consisted of seven or eight

acres of land enclosed within a wall. Then the view of the kitchen

garden entirely engrossed her attention. She darted back, jostling the

lady’s maid at the top of the stairs and bursting out:

“It’s full of cabbages! Oh, such woppers! And lettuces and sorrel and

onions and everything! Come along, make haste!”

The rain was falling more heavily now, and she opened her white silk

sunshade and ran down the garden walks.

“Madame will catch cold,” cried Zoé, who had stayed quietly behind

under the awning over the garden door.

But Madame wanted to see things, and at each new discovery there was a

burst of wonderment.

“Zoé, here’s spinach! Do come. Oh, look at the artichokes! They are

funny. So they grow in the ground, do they? Now, what can that be? I

don’t know it. Do come, Zoé, perhaps you know.”

The lady’s maid never budged an inch. Madame must really be raving mad.

For now the rain was coming down in torrents, and the little white silk

sunshade was already dark with it. Nor did it shelter Madame, whose

skirts were wringing wet. But that didn’t put her out in the smallest

degree, and in the pouring rain she visited the kitchen garden and the

orchard, stopping in front of every fruit tree and bending over every

bed of vegetables. Then she ran and looked down the well and lifted up

a frame to see what was underneath it and was lost in the contemplation

of a huge pumpkin. She wanted to go along every single garden walk and

to take immediate possession of all the things she had been wont to

dream of in the old days, when she was a slipshod work-girl on the

Paris pavements. The rain redoubled, but she never heeded it and was

only miserable at the thought that the daylight was fading. She could

not see clearly now and touched things with her fingers to find out

what they were. Suddenly in the twilight she caught sight of a bed of

strawberries, and all that was childish in her awoke.

“Strawberries! Strawberries! There are some here; I can feel them. A

plate, Zoé! Come and pick strawberries.”

And dropping her sunshade, Nana crouched down in the mire under the

full force of the downpour. With drenched hands she began gathering the

fruit among the leaves. But Zoé in the meantime brought no plate, and

when the young woman rose to her feet again she was frightened. She

thought she had seen a shadow close to her.

“It’s some beast!” she screamed.

But she stood rooted to the path in utter amazement. It was a man, and

she recognized him.

“Gracious me, it’s Baby! What ARE you doing there, baby?”

“’Gad, I’ve come—that’s all!” replied Georges.

Her head swam.

“You knew I’d come through the gardener telling you? Oh, that poor

child! Why, he’s soaking!”

“Oh, I’ll explain that to you! The rain caught me on my way here, and

then, as I didn’t wish to go upstream as far as Gumières, I crossed the

Choue and fell into a blessed hole.”

Nana forgot the strawberries forthwith. She was trembling and full of

pity. That poor dear Zizi in a hole full of water! And she drew him

with her in the direction of the house and spoke of making up a roaring

fire.

“You know,” he murmured, stopping her among the shadows, “I was in

hiding because I was afraid of being scolded, like in Paris, when I

come and see you and you’re not expecting me.”

She made no reply but burst out laughing and gave him a kiss on the

forehead. Up till today she had always treated him like a naughty

urchin, never taking his declarations seriously and amusing herself at

his expense as though he were a little man of no consequence whatever.

There was much ado to install him in the house. She absolutely insisted

on the fire being lit in her bedroom, as being the most comfortable

place for his reception. Georges had not surprised Zoé, who was used to

all kinds of encounters, but the gardener, who brought the wood

upstairs, was greatly nonplused at sight of this dripping gentleman to

whom he was certain he had not opened the front door. He was, however,

dismissed, as he was no longer wanted.

A lamp lit up the room, and the fire burned with a great bright flame.

“He’ll never get dry, and he’ll catch cold,” said Nana, seeing Georges

beginning to shiver.

And there were no men’s trousers in her house! She was on the point of

calling the gardener back when an idea struck her. Zoé, who was

unpacking the trunks in the dressing room, brought her mistress a

change of underwear, consisting of a shift and some petticoats with a

dressing jacket.

“Oh, that’s first rate!” cried the young woman. “Zizi can put ’em all

on. You’re not angry with me, eh? When your clothes are dry you can put

them on again, and then off with you, as fast as fast can be, so as not

to have a scolding from your mamma. Make haste! I’m going to change my

things, too, in the dressing room.”

Ten minutes afterward, when she reappeared in a tea gown, she clasped

her hands in a perfect ecstasy.

“Oh, the darling! How sweet he looks dressed like a little woman!”

He had simply slipped on a long nightgown with an insertion front, a

pair of worked drawers and the dressing jacket, which was a long

cambric garment trimmed with lace. Thus attired and with his delicate

young arms showing and his bright damp hair falling almost to his

shoulders, he looked just like a girl.

“Why, he’s as slim as I am!” said Nana, putting her arm round his

waist. “Zoé, just come here and see how it suits him. It’s made for

him, eh? All except the bodice part, which is too large. He hasn’t got

as much as I have, poor, dear Zizi!”

“Oh, to be sure, I’m a bit wanting there,” murmured Georges with a

smile.

All three grew very merry about it. Nana had set to work buttoning the

dressing jacket from top to bottom so as to make him quite decent. Then

she turned him round as though he were a doll, gave him little thumps,

made the skirt stand well out behind. After which she asked him

questions. Was he comfortable? Did he feel warm? Zounds, yes, he was

comfortable! Nothing fitted more closely and warmly than a woman’s

shift; had he been able, he would always have worn one. He moved round

and about therein, delighted with the fine linen and the soft touch of

that unmanly garment, in the folds of which he thought he discovered

some of Nana’s own warm life.

Meanwhile Zoé had taken the soaked clothes down to the kitchen in order

to dry them as quickly as possible in front of a vine-branch fire. Then

Georges, as he lounged in an easy chair, ventured to make a confession.

“I say, are you going to feed this evening? I’m dying of hunger. I

haven’t dined.”

Nana was vexed. The great silly thing to go sloping off from Mamma’s

with an empty stomach, just to chuck himself into a hole full of water!

But she was as hungry as a hunter too. They certainly must feed! Only

they would have to eat what they could get. Whereupon a round table was

rolled up in front of the fire, and the queerest of dinners was

improvised thereon. Zoé ran down to the gardener’s, he having cooked a

mess of cabbage soup in case Madame should not dine at Orleans before

her arrival. Madame, indeed, had forgotten to tell him what he was to

get ready in the letter she had sent him. Fortunately the cellar was

well furnished. Accordingly they had cabbage soup, followed by a piece

of bacon. Then Nana rummaged in her handbag and found quite a heap of

provisions which she had taken the precaution of stuffing into it.

There was a Strasbourg paté, for instance, and a bag of sweet-meats and

some oranges. So they both ate away like ogres and, while they

satisfied their healthy young appetites, treated one another with easy

good fellowship. Nana kept calling Georges “dear old girl,” a form of

address which struck her as at once tender and familiar. At dessert, in

order not to give Zoé any more trouble, they used the same spoon turn

and turn about while demolishing a pot of preserves they had discovered

at the top of a cupboard.

“Oh, you dear old girl!” said Nana, pushing back the round table. “I

haven’t made such a good dinner these ten years past!”

Yet it was growing late, and she wanted to send her boy off for fear he

should be suspected of all sorts of things. But he kept declaring that

he had plenty of time to spare. For the matter of that, his clothes

were not drying well, and Zoé averred that it would take an hour longer

at least, and as she was dropping with sleep after the fatigues of the

journey, they sent her off to bed. After which they were alone in the

silent house.

It was a very charming evening. The fire was dying out amid glowing

embers, and in the great blue room, where Zoé had made up the bed

before going upstairs, the air felt a little oppressive. Nana, overcome

by the heavy warmth, got up to open the window for a few minutes, and

as she did so she uttered a little cry.

“Great heavens, how beautiful it is! Look, dear old girl!”

Georges had come up, and as though the window bar had not been

sufficiently wide, he put his arm round Nana’s waist and rested his

head against her shoulder. The weather had undergone a brisk change:

the skies were clearing, and a full moon lit up the country with its

golden disk of light. A sovereign quiet reigned over the valley. It

seemed wider and larger as it opened on the immense distances of the

plain, where the trees loomed like little shadowy islands amid a

shining and waveless lake. And Nana grew tenderhearted, felt herself a

child again. Most surely she had dreamed of nights like this at an

epoch which she could not recall. Since leaving the train every object

of sensation—the wide countryside, the green things with their pungent

scents, the house, the vegetables—had stirred her to such a degree that

now it seemed to her as if she had left Paris twenty years ago.

Yesterday’s existence was far, far away, and she was full of sensations

of which she had no previous experience. Georges, meanwhile, was giving

her neck little coaxing kisses, and this again added to her sweet

unrest. With hesitating hand she pushed him from her, as though he were

a child whose affectionate advances were fatiguing, and once more she

told him that he ought to take his departure. He did not gainsay her.

All in good time—he would go all in good time!

But a bird raised its song and again was silent. It was a robin in an

elder tree below the window.

“Wait one moment,” whispered Georges; “the lamp’s frightening him. I’ll

put it out.”

And when he came back and took her waist again he added:

“We’ll relight it in a minute.”

Then as she listened to the robin and the boy pressed against her side,

Nana remembered. Ah yes, it was in novels that she had got to know all

this! In other days she would have given her heart to have a full moon

and robins and a lad dying of love for her. Great God, she could have

cried, so good and charming did it all seem to her! Beyond a doubt she

had been born to live honestly! So she pushed Georges away again, and

he grew yet bolder.

“No, let me be. I don’t care about it. It would be very wicked at your

age. Now listen—I’ll always be your mamma.”

A sudden feeling of shame overcame her. She was blushing exceedingly,

and yet not a soul could see her. The room behind them was full of

black night while the country stretched before them in silence and

lifeless solitude. Never had she known such a sense of shame before.

Little by little she felt her power of resistance ebbing away, and that

despite her embarrassed efforts to the contrary. That disguise of his,

that woman’s shift and that dressing jacket set her laughing again. It

was as though a girl friend were teasing her.

“Oh, it’s not right; it’s not right!” she stammered after a last

effort.

And with that, in face of the lovely night, she sank like a young

virgin into the arms of this mere child. The house slept.

Next morning at Les Fondettes, when the bell rang for lunch, the

dining-room table was no longer too big for the company. Fauchery and

Daguenet had been driven up together in one carriage, and after them

another had arrived with the Count de Vandeuvres, who had followed by

the next train. Georges was the last to come downstairs. He was looking

a little pale, and his eyes were sunken, but in answer to questions he

said that he was much better, though he was still somewhat shaken by

the violence of the attack. Mme Hugon looked into his eyes with an

anxious smile and adjusted his hair which had been carelessly combed

that morning, but he drew back as though embarrassed by this tender

little action. During the meal she chaffed Vandeuvres very pleasantly

and declared that she had expected him for five years past.

“Well, here you are at last! How have you managed it?”

Vandeuvres took her remarks with equal pleasantry. He told her that he

had lost a fabulous sum of money at the club yesterday and thereupon

had come away with the intention of ending up in the country.

“’Pon my word, yes, if only you can find me an heiress in these rustic

parts! There must be delightful women hereabouts.”

The old lady rendered equal thanks to Daguenet and Fauchery for having

been so good as to accept her son’s invitation, and then to her great

and joyful surprise she saw the Marquis de Chouard enter the room. A

third carriage had brought him.

“Dear me, you’ve made this your trysting place today!” she cried.

“You’ve passed word round! But what’s happening? For years I’ve never

succeeded in bringing you all together, and now you all drop in at

once. Oh, I certainly don’t complain.”

Another place was laid. Fauchery found himself next the Countess

Sabine, whose liveliness and gaiety surprised him when he remembered

her drooping, languid state in the austere Rue Miromesnil drawing room.

Daguenet, on the other hand, who was seated on Estelle’s left, seemed

slightly put out by his propinquity to that tall, silent girl. The

angularity of her elbows was disagreeable to him. Muffat and Chouard

had exchanged a sly glance while Vandeuvres continued joking about his

coming marriage.

“Talking of ladies,” Mme Hugon ended by saying, “I have a new neighbor

whom you probably know.”

And she mentioned Nana. Vandeuvres affected the liveliest astonishment.

“Well, that is strange! Nana’s property near here!”

Fauchery and Daguenet indulged in a similar demonstration while the

Marquis de Chouard discussed the breast of a chicken without appearing

to comprehend their meaning. Not one of the men had smiled.

“Certainly,” continued the old lady, “and the person in question

arrived at La Mignotte yesterday evening, as I was saying she would. I

got my information from the gardener this morning.”

At these words the gentlemen could not conceal their very real

surprise. They all looked up. Eh? What? Nana had come down! But they

were only expecting her next day; they were privately under the

impression that they would arrive before her! Georges alone sat looking

at his glass with drooped eyelids and a tired expression. Ever since

the beginning of lunch he had seemed to be sleeping with open eyes and

a vague smile on his lips.

“Are you still in pain, my Zizi?” asked his mother, who had been gazing

at him throughout the meal.

He started and blushed as he said that he was very well now, but the

worn-out insatiate expression of a girl who has danced too much did not

fade from his face.

“What’s the matter with your neck?” resumed Mme Hugon in an alarmed

tone. “It’s all red.”

He was embarrassed and stammered. He did not know—he had nothing the

matter with his neck. Then drawing his shirt collar up:

“Ah yes, some insect stung me there!”

The Marquis de Chouard had cast a sidelong glance at the little red

place. Muffat, too, looked at Georges. The company was finishing lunch

and planning various excursions. Fauchery was growing increasingly

excited with the Countess Sabine’s laughter. As he was passing her a

dish of fruit their hands touched, and for one second she looked at him

with eyes so full of dark meaning that he once more thought of the

secret which had been communicated to him one evening after an

uproarious dinner. Then, too, she was no longer the same woman.

Something was more pronounced than of old, and her gray foulard gown

which fitted loosely over her shoulders added a touch of license to her

delicate, high-strung elegance.

When they rose from the table Daguenet remained behind with Fauchery in

order to impart to him the following crude witticism about Estelle: “A

nice broomstick that to shove into a man’s hands!” Nevertheless, he

grew serious when the journalist told him the amount she was worth in

the way of dowry.

“Four hundred thousand francs.”

“And the mother?” queried Fauchery. “She’s all right, eh?”

“Oh, SHE’LL work the oracle! But it’s no go, my dear man!”

“Bah! How are we to know? We must wait and see.”

It was impossible to go out that day, for the rain was still falling in

heavy showers. Georges had made haste to disappear from the scene and

had double-locked his door. These gentlemen avoided mutual

explanations, though they were none of them deceived as to the reasons

which had brought them together. Vandeuvres, who had had a very bad

time at play, had really conceived the notion of lying fallow for a

season, and he was counting on Nana’s presence in the neighborhood as a

safeguard against excessive boredom. Fauchery had taken advantage of

the holidays granted him by Rose, who just then was extremely busy. He

was thinking of discussing a second notice with Nana, in case country

air should render them reciprocally affectionate. Daguenet, who had

been just a little sulky with her since Steiner had come upon the

scene, was dreaming of resuming the old connection or at least of

snatching some delightful opportunities if occasion offered. As to the

Marquis de Chouard, he was watching for times and seasons. But among

all those men who were busy following in the tracks of Venus—a Venus

with the rouge scarce washed from her cheeks—Muffat was at once the

most ardent and the most tortured by the novel sensations of desire and

fear and anger warring in his anguished members. A formal promise had

been made him; Nana was awaiting him. Why then had she taken her

departure two days sooner than was expected?

He resolved to betake himself to La Mignotte after dinner that same

evening. At night as the count was leaving the park Georges fled forth

after him. He left him to follow the road to Gumières, crossed the

Choue, rushed into Nana’s presence, breathless, furious and with tears

in his eyes. Ah yes, he understood everything! That old fellow now on

his way to her was coming to keep an appointment! Nana was dumfounded

by this ebullition of jealousy, and, greatly moved by the way things

were turning out, she took him in her arms and comforted him to the

best of her ability. Oh no, he was quite beside the mark; she was

expecting no one. If the gentleman came it would not be her fault. What

a great ninny that Zizi was to be taking on so about nothing at all! By

her child’s soul she swore she loved nobody except her own Georges. And

with that she kissed him and wiped away his tears.

“Now just listen! You’ll see that it’s all for your sake,” she went on

when he had grown somewhat calmer. “Steiner has arrived—he’s up above

there now. You know, duckie, I can’t turn HIM out of doors.”

“Yes, I know; I’m not talking of HIM,” whispered the boy.

“Very well then, I’ve stuck him into the room at the end. I said I was

out of sorts. He’s unpacking his trunk. Since nobody’s seen you, be

quick and run up and hide in my room and wait for me.”

Georges sprang at her and threw his arms round her neck. It was true

after all! She loved him a little! So they would put the lamp out as

they did yesterday and be in the dark till daytime! Then as the

front-door bell sounded he quietly slipped away. Upstairs in the

bedroom he at once took off his shoes so as not to make any noise and

straightway crouched down behind a curtain and waited soberly.

Nana welcomed Count Muffat, who, though still shaken with passion, was

now somewhat embarrassed. She had pledged her word to him and would

even have liked to keep it since he struck her as a serious,

practicable lover. But truly, who could have foreseen all that happened

yesterday? There was the voyage and the house she had never set eyes on

before and the arrival of the drenched little lover! How sweet it had

all seemed to her, and how delightful it would be to continue in it! So

much the worse for the gentleman! For three months past she had been

keeping him dangling after her while she affected conventionality in

order the further to inflame him. Well, well! He would have to continue

dangling, and if he didn’t like that he could go! She would sooner have

thrown up everything than have played false to Georges.

The count had seated himself with all the ceremonious politeness

becoming a country caller. Only his hands were trembling slightly.

Lust, which Nana’s skillful tactics daily exasperated, had at last

wrought terrible havoc in that sanguine, uncontaminated nature. The

grave man, the chamberlain who was wont to tread the state apartments

at the Tuileries with slow and dignified step, was now nightly driven

to plunge his teeth into his bolster, while with sobs of exasperation

he pictured to himself a sensual shape which never changed. But this

time he was determined to make an end of the torture. Coming along the

highroad in the deep quiet of the gloaming, he had meditated a fierce

course of action. And the moment he had finished his opening remarks he

tried to take hold of Nana with both hands.

“No, no! Take care!” she said simply. She was not vexed; nay, she even

smiled.

He caught her again, clenching his teeth as he did so. Then as she

struggled to get free he coarsely and crudely reminded her that he had

come to stay the night. Though much embarrassed at this, Nana did not

cease to smile. She took his hands and spoke very familiarly in order

to soften her refusal.

“Come now, darling, do be quiet! Honor bright, I can’t: Steiner’s

upstairs.”

But he was beside himself. Never yet had she seen a man in such a

state. She grew frightened and put her hand over his mouth in order to

stifle his cries. Then in lowered tones she besought him to be quiet

and to let her alone. Steiner was coming downstairs. Things were

getting stupid, to be sure! When Steiner entered the room he heard Nana

remarking:

“I adore the country.”

She was lounging comfortably back in her deep easy chair, and she

turned round and interrupted herself.

“It’s Monsieur le Comte Muffat, darling. He saw a light here while he

was strolling past, and he came in to bid us welcome.”

The two men clasped hands. Muffat, with his face in shadow, stood

silent for a moment or two. Steiner seemed sulky. Then they chatted

about Paris: business there was at a standstill; abominable things had

been happening on ’change. When a quarter of an hour had elapsed Muffat

took his departure, and, as the young woman was seeing him to the door,

he tried without success to make an assignation for the following

night. Steiner went up to bed almost directly afterward, grumbling, as

he did so, at the everlasting little ailments that seemed to afflict

the genus courtesan. The two old boys had been packed off at last! When

she was able to rejoin him Nana found Georges still hiding exemplarily

behind the curtain. The room was dark. He pulled her down onto the

floor as she sat near him, and together they began playfully rolling on

the ground, stopping now and again and smothering their laughter with

kisses whenever they struck their bare feet against some piece of

furniture. Far away, on the road to Gumières, Count Muffat walked

slowly home and, hat in hand, bathed his burning forehead in the

freshness and silence of the night.

During the days that followed Nana found life adorable. In the lad’s

arms she was once more a girl of fifteen, and under the caressing

influence of this renewed childhood love’s white flower once more

blossomed forth in a nature which had grown hackneyed and disgusted in

the service of the other sex. She would experience sudden fits of

shame, sudden vivid emotions, which left her trembling. She wanted to

laugh and to cry, and she was beset by nervous, maidenly feelings,

mingled with warm desires that made her blush again. Never yet had she

felt anything comparable to this. The country filled her with tender

thoughts. As a little girl she had long wished to dwell in a meadow,

tending a goat, because one day on the talus of the fortifications she

had seen a goat bleating at the end of its tether. Now this estate,

this stretch of land belonging to her, simply swelled her heart to

bursting, so utterly had her old ambition been surpassed. Once again

she tasted the novel sensations experienced by chits of girls, and at

night when she went upstairs, dizzy with her day in the open air and

intoxicated by the scent of green leaves, and rejoined her Zizi behind

the curtain, she fancied herself a schoolgirl enjoying a holiday

escapade. It was an amour, she thought, with a young cousin to whom she

was going to be married. And so she trembled at the slightest noise and

dread lest parents should hear her, while making the delicious

experiments and suffering the voluptuous terrors attendant on a girl’s

first slip from the path of virtue.

Nana in those days was subject to the fancies a sentimental girl will

indulge in. She would gaze at the moon for hours. One night she had a

mind to go down into the garden with Georges when all the household was

asleep. When there they strolled under the trees, their arms round each

other’s waists, and finally went and laid down in the grass, where the

dew soaked them through and through. On another occasion, after a long

silence up in the bedroom, she fell sobbing on the lad’s neck,

declaring in broken accents that she was afraid of dying. She would

often croon a favorite ballad of Mme Lerat’s, which was full of flowers

and birds. The song would melt her to tears, and she would break off in

order to clasp Georges in a passionate embrace and to extract from him

vows of undying affection. In short she was extremely silly, as she

herself would admit when they both became jolly good fellows again and

sat up smoking cigarettes on the edge of the bed, dangling their bare

legs over it the while and tapping their heels against its wooden side.

But what utterly melted the young woman’s heart was Louiset’s arrival.

She had an access of maternal affection which was as violent as a mad

fit. She would carry off her boy into the sunshine outside to watch him

kicking about; she would dress him like a little prince and roll with

him in the grass. The moment he arrived she decided that he was to

sleep near her, in the room next hers, where Mme Lerat, whom the

country greatly affected, used to begin snoring the moment her head

touched the pillow. Louiset did not hurt Zizi’s position in the least.

On the contrary, Nana said that she had now two children, and she

treated them with the same wayward tenderness. At night, more than ten

times running, she would leave Zizi to go and see if Louiset were

breathing properly, but on her return she would re-embrace her Zizi and

lavish on him the caresses that had been destined for the child. She

played at being Mamma while he wickedly enjoyed being dandled in the

arms of the great wench and allowed himself to be rocked to and fro

like a baby that is being sent to sleep. It was all so delightful, and

Nana was so charmed with her present existence, that she seriously

proposed to him never to leave the country. They would send all the

other people away, and he, she and the child would live alone. And with

that they would make a thousand plans till daybreak and never once hear

Mme Lerat as she snored vigorously after the fatigues of a day spent in

picking country flowers.

This charming existence lasted nearly a week. Count Muffat used to come

every evening and go away again with disordered face and burning hands.

One evening he was not even received, as Steiner had been obliged to

run up to Paris. He was told that Madame was not well. Nana grew daily

more disgusted at the notion of deceiving Georges. He was such an

innocent lad, and he had such faith in her! She would have looked on

herself as the lowest of the low had she played him false. Besides, it

would have sickened her to do so! Zoé, who took her part in this affair

in mute disdain, believed that Madame was growing senseless.

On the sixth day a band of visitors suddenly blundered into Nana’s

idyl. She had, indeed, invited a whole swarm of people under the belief

that none of them would come. And so one fine afternoon she was vastly

astonished and annoyed to see an omnibus full of people pulling up

outside the gate of La Mignotte.

“It’s us!” cried Mignon, getting down first from the conveyance and

extracting then his sons Henri and Charles.

Labordette thereupon appeared and began handing out an interminable

file of ladies—Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet, Tatan Nene, Maria Blond.

Nana was in hopes that they would end there, when La Faloise sprang

from the step in order to receive Gaga and her daughter Amelie in his

trembling arms. That brought the number up to eleven people. Their

installation proved a laborious undertaking. There were five spare

rooms at La Mignotte, one of which was already occupied by Mme Lerat

and Louiset. The largest was devoted to the Gaga and La Faloise

establishment, and it was decided that Amelie should sleep on a truckle

bed in the dressing room at the side. Mignon and his two sons had the

third room. Labordette the fourth. There thus remained one room which

was transformed into a dormitory with four beds in it for Lucy,

Caroline, Tatan and Maria. As to Steiner, he would sleep on the divan

in the drawing room. At the end of an hour, when everyone was duly

settled, Nana, who had begun by being furious, grew enchanted at the

thought of playing hostess on a grand scale. The ladies complimented

her on La Mignotte. “It’s a stunning property, my dear!” And then, too,

they brought her quite a whiff of Parisian air, and talking all

together with bursts of laughter and exclamation and emphatic little

gestures, they gave her all the petty gossip of the week just past. By

the by, and how about Bordenave? What had he said about her prank? Oh,

nothing much! After bawling about having her brought back by the

police, he had simply put somebody else in her place at night. Little

Violaine was the understudy, and she had even obtained a very pretty

success as the Blonde Venus. Which piece of news made Nana rather

serious.

It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, and there was some talk of

taking a stroll around.

“Oh, I haven’t told you,” said Nana, “I was just off to get up potatoes

when you arrived.”

Thereupon they all wanted to go and dig potatoes without even changing

their dresses first. It was quite a party. The gardener and two helpers

were already in the potato field at the end of the grounds. The ladies

knelt down and began fumbling in the mold with their beringed fingers,

shouting gaily whenever they discovered a potato of exceptional size.

It struck them as so amusing! But Tatan Nene was in a state of triumph!

So many were the potatoes she had gathered in her youth that she forgot

herself entirely and gave the others much good advice, treating them

like geese the while. The gentlemen toiled less strenuously. Mignon

looked every inch the good citizen and father and made his stay in the

country an occasion for completing his boys’ education. Indeed, he

spoke to them of Parmentier!

Dinner that evening was wildly hilarious. The company ate ravenously.

Nana, in a state of great elevation, had a warm disagreement with her

butler, an individual who had been in service at the bishop’s palace in

Orleans. The ladies smoked over their coffee. An earsplitting noise of

merrymaking issued from the open windows and died out far away under

the serene evening sky while peasants, belated in the lanes, turned and

looked at the flaring rooms.

“It’s most tiresome that you’re going back the day after tomorrow,”

said Nana. “But never mind, we’ll get up an excursion all the same!”

They decided to go on the morrow, Sunday, and visit the ruins of the

old Abbey of Chamont, which were some seven kilometers distant. Five

carriages would come out from Orleans, take up the company after lunch

and bring them back to dinner at La Mignotte at about seven. It would

be delightful.

That evening, as his wont was, Count Muffat mounted the hill to ring at

the outer gate. But the brightly lit windows and the shouts of laughter

astonished him. When, however, he recognized Mignon’s voice, he

understood it all and went off, raging at this new obstacle, driven to

extremities, bent on some violent act. Georges passed through a little

door of which he had the key, slipped along the staircase walls and

went quietly up into Nana’s room. Only he had to wait for her till past

midnight. She appeared at last in a high state of intoxication and more

maternal even than on the previous nights. Whenever she had drunk

anything she became so amorous as to be absurd. Accordingly she now

insisted on his accompanying her to the Abbey of Chamont. But he stood

out against this; he was afraid of being seen. If he were to be seen

driving with her there would be an atrocious scandal. But she burst

into tears and evinced the noisy despair of a slighted woman. And he

thereupon consoled her and formally promised to be one of the party.

“So you do love me very much,” she blurted out. “Say you love me very

much. Oh, my darling old bear, if I were to die would you feel it very

much? Confess!”

At Les Fondettes the near neighborhood of Nana had utterly disorganized

the party. Every morning during lunch good Mme Hugon returned to the

subject despite herself, told her guests the news the gardener had

brought her and gave evidence of the absorbing curiosity with which

notorious courtesans are able to inspire even the worthiest old ladies.

Tolerant though she was, she was revolted and maddened by a vague

presentiment of coming ill, which frightened her in the evenings as

thoroughly as if a wild beast had escaped from a menagerie and were

known to be lurking in the countryside.

She began trying to pick a little quarrel with her guests, whom she

each and all accused of prowling round La Mignotte. Count Vandeuvres

had been seen laughing on the highroad with a golden-haired lady, but

he defended himself against the accusation; he denied that it was Nana,

the fact being that Lucy had been with him and had told him how she had

just turned her third prince out of doors. The Marquis de Chouard used

also to go out every day, but his excuse was doctor’s orders. Toward

Daguenet and Fauchery Mme Hugon behaved unjustly too. The former

especially never left Les Fondettes, for he had given up the idea of

renewing the old connection and was busy paying the most respectful

attentions to Estelle. Fauchery also stayed with the Muffat ladies. On

one occasion only he had met Mignon with an armful of flowers, putting

his sons through a course of botanical instruction in a by-path. The

two men had shaken hands and given each other the news about Rose. She

was perfectly well and happy; they had both received a letter from her

that morning in which she besought them to profit by the fresh country

air for some days longer. Among all her guests the old lady spared only

Count Muffat and Georges. The count, who said he had serious business

in Orleans, could certainly not be running after the bad woman, and as

to Georges, the poor child was at last causing her grave anxiety,

seeing that every evening he was seized with atrocious sick headaches

which kept him to his bed in broad daylight.

Meanwhile Fauchery had become the Countess Sabine’s faithful attendant

in the absence during each afternoon of Count Muffat. Whenever they

went to the end of the park he carried her campstool and her sunshade.

Besides, he amused her with the original witticisms peculiar to a

second-rate journalist, and in so doing he prompted her to one of those

sudden intimacies which are allowable in the country. She had

apparently consented to it from the first, for she had grown quite a

girl again in the society of a young man whose noisy humor seemed

unlikely to compromise her. But now and again, when for a second or two

they found themselves alone behind the shrubs, their eyes would meet;

they would pause amid their laughter, grow suddenly serious and view

one another darkly, as though they had fathomed and divined their

inmost hearts.

On Friday a fresh place had to be laid at lunch time. M. Theophile

Venot, whom Mme Hugon remembered to have invited at the Muffats’ last

winter, had just arrived. He sat stooping humbly forward and behaved

with much good nature, as became a man of no account, nor did he seem

to notice the anxious deference with which he was treated. When he had

succeeded in getting the company to forget his presence he sat nibbling

small lumps of sugar during dessert, looking sharply up at Daguenet as

the latter handed Estelle strawberries and listening to Fauchery, who

was making the countess very merry over one of his anecdotes. Whenever

anyone looked at HIM he smiled in his quiet way. When the guests rose

from table he took the count’s arm and drew him into the park. He was

known to have exercised great influence over the latter ever since the

death of his mother. Indeed, singular stories were told about the kind

of dominion which the ex-lawyer enjoyed in that household. Fauchery,

whom his arrival doubtless embarrassed, began explaining to Georges and

Daguenet the origin of the man’s wealth. It was a big lawsuit with the

management of which the Jesuits had entrusted him in days gone by. In

his opinion the worthy man was a terrible fellow despite his gentle,

plump face and at this time of day had his finger in all the intrigues

of the priesthood. The two young men had begun joking at this, for they

thought the little old gentleman had an idiotic expression. The idea of

an unknown Venot, a gigantic Venot, acting for the whole body of the

clergy, struck them in the light of a comical invention. But they were

silenced when, still leaning on the old man’s arm, Count Muffat

reappeared with blanched cheeks and eyes reddened as if by recent

weeping.

“I bet they’ve been chatting about hell,” muttered Fauchery in a

bantering tone.

The Countess Sabine overheard the remark. She turned her head slowly,

and their eyes met in that long gaze with which they were accustomed to

sound one another prudently before venturing once for all.

After the breakfast it was the guests’ custom to betake themselves to a

little flower garden on a terrace overlooking the plain. This Sunday

afternoon was exquisitely mild. There had been signs of rain toward ten

in the morning, but the sky, without ceasing to be covered, had, as it

were, melted into milky fog, which now hung like a cloud of luminous

dust in the golden sunlight. Soon Mme Hugon proposed that they should

step down through a little doorway below the terrace and take a walk on

foot in the direction of Gumières and as far as the Choue. She was fond

of walking and, considering her threescore years, was very active.

Besides, all her guests declared that there was no need to drive. So in

a somewhat straggling order they reached the wooden bridge over the

river. Fauchery and Daguenet headed the column with the Muffat ladies

and were followed by the count and the marquis, walking on either side

of Mme Hugon, while Vandeuvres, looking fashionable and out of his

element on the highroad, marched in the rear, smoking a cigar. M.

Venot, now slackening, now hastening his pace, passed smilingly from

group to group, as though bent on losing no scrap of conversation.

“To think of poor dear Georges at Orleans!” said Mme Hugon. “He was

anxious to consult old Doctor Tavernier, who never goes out now, on the

subject of his sick headaches. Yes, you were not up, as he went off

before seven o’clock. But it’ll be a change for him all the same.”

She broke off, exclaiming:

“Why, what’s making them stop on the bridge?”

The fact was the ladies and Fauchery and Daguenet were standing

stock-still on the crown of the bridge. They seemed to be hesitating as

though some obstacle or other rendered them uneasy and yet the way lay

clear before them.

“Go on!” cried the count.

They never moved and seemed to be watching the approach of something

which the rest had not yet observed. Indeed the road wound considerably

and was bordered by a thick screen of poplar trees. Nevertheless, a

dull sound began to grow momentarily louder, and soon there was a noise

of wheels, mingled with shouts of laughter and the cracking of whips.

Then suddenly five carriages came into view, driving one behind the

other. They were crowded to bursting, and bright with a galaxy of

white, blue and pink costumes.

“What is it?” said Mme Hugon in some surprise.

Then her instinct told her, and she felt indignant at such an untoward

invasion of her road.

“Oh, that woman!” she murmured. “Walk on, pray walk on. Don’t appear to

notice.”

But it was too late. The five carriages which were taking Nana and her

circle to the ruins of Chamont rolled on to the narrow wooden bridge.

Fauchery, Daguenet and the Muffat ladies were forced to step backward,

while Mme Hugon and the others had also to stop in Indian file along

the roadside. It was a superb ride past! The laughter in the carriages

had ceased, and faces were turned with an expression of curiosity. The

rival parties took stock of each other amid a silence broken only by

the measured trot of the horses. In the first carriage Maria Blond and

Tatan Nene were lolling backward like a pair of duchesses, their skirts

swelling forth over the wheels, and as they passed they cast disdainful

glances at the honest women who were walking afoot. Then came Gaga,

filling up a whole seat and half smothering La Faloise beside her so

that little but his small anxious face was visible. Next followed

Caroline Hequet with Labordette, Lucy Stewart with Mignon and his boys

and at the close of all Nana in a victoria with Steiner and on a

bracket seat in front of her that poor, darling Zizi, with his knees

jammed against her own.

“It’s the last of them, isn’t it?” the countess placidly asked

Fauchery, pretending at the same time not to recognize Nana.

The wheel of the victoria came near grazing her, but she did not step

back. The two women had exchanged a deeply significant glance. It was,

in fact, one of those momentary scrutinies which are at once complete

and definite. As to the men, they behaved unexceptionably. Fauchery and

Daguenet looked icy and recognized no one. The marquis, more nervous

than they and afraid of some farcical ebullition on the part of the

ladies, had plucked a blade of grass and was rolling it between his

fingers. Only Vandeuvres, who had stayed somewhat apart from the rest

of the company, winked imperceptibly at Lucy, who smiled at him as she

passed.

“Be careful!” M. Venot had whispered as he stood behind Count Muffat.

The latter in extreme agitation gazed after this illusive vision of

Nana while his wife turned slowly round and scrutinized him. Then he

cast his eyes on the ground as though to escape the sound of galloping

hoofs which were sweeping away both his senses and his heart. He could

have cried aloud in his agony, for, seeing Georges among Nana’s skirts,

he understood it all now. A mere child! He was brokenhearted at the

thought that she should have preferred a mere child to him! Steiner was

his equal, but that child!

Mme Hugon, in the meantime, had not at once recognized Georges.

Crossing the bridge, he was fain to jump into the river, but Nana’s

knees restrained him. Then white as a sheet and icy cold, he sat

rigidly up in his place and looked at no one. It was just possible no

one would notice him.

“Oh, my God!” said the old lady suddenly. “Georges is with her!”

The carriages had passed quite through the uncomfortable crowd of

people who recognized and yet gave no sign of recognition. The short

critical encounter seemed to have been going on for ages. And now the

wheels whirled away the carriageloads of girls more gaily than ever.

Toward the fair open country they went, amid the buffetings of the

fresh air of heaven. Bright-colored fabrics fluttered in the wind, and

the merry laughter burst forth anew as the voyagers began jesting and

glancing back at the respectable folks halting with looks of annoyance

at the roadside. Turning round, Nana could see the walking party

hesitating and then returning the way they had come without crossing

the bridge. Mme Hugon was leaning silently on Count Muffat’s arm, and

so sad was her look that no one dared comfort her.

“I say, did you see Fauchery, dear?” Nana shouted to Lucy, who was

leaning out of the carriage in front. “What a brute he was! He shall

pay out for that. And Paul, too, a fellow I’ve been so kind to! Not a

sign! They’re polite, I’m sure.”

And with that she gave Steiner a terrible dressing, he having ventured

to suggest that the gentlemen’s attitude had been quite as it should

be. So then they weren’t even worth a bow? The first blackguard that

came by might insult them? Thanks! He was the right sort, too, he was!

It couldn’t be better! One ought always to bow to a woman.

“Who’s the tall one?” asked Lucy at random, shouting through the noise

of the wheels.

“It’s the Countess Muffat,” answered Steiner.

“There now! I suspected as much,” said Nana. “Now, my dear fellow, it’s

all very well her being a countess, for she’s no better than she should

be. Yes, yes, she’s no better that she should be. You know, I’ve got an

eye for such things, I have! And now I know your countess as well as if

I had been at the making of her! I’ll bet you that she’s the mistress

of that viper Fauchery! I tell you, she’s his mistress! Between women

you guess that sort of thing at once!”

Steiner shrugged his shoulders. Since the previous day his irritation

had been hourly increasing. He had received letters which necessitated

his leaving the following morning, added to which he did not much

appreciate coming down to the country in order to sleep on the

drawing-room divan.

“And this poor baby boy!” Nana continued, melting suddenly at sight of

Georges’s pale face as he still sat rigid and breathless in front of

her.

“D’you think Mamma recognized me?” he stammered at last.

“Oh, most surely she did! Why, she cried out! But it’s my fault. He

didn’t want to come with us; I forced him to. Now listen, Zizi, would

you like me to write to your mamma? She looks such a kind, decent sort

of lady! I’ll tell her that I never saw you before and that it was

Steiner who brought you with him for the first time today.”

“No, no, don’t write,” said Georges in great anxiety. “I’ll explain it

all myself. Besides, if they bother me about it I shan’t go home

again.”

But he continued plunged in thought, racking his brains for excuses

against his return home in the evening. The five carriages were rolling

through a flat country along an interminable straight road bordered by

fine trees. The country was bathed in a silvery-gray atmosphere. The

ladies still continued shouting remarks from carriage to carriage

behind the backs of the drivers, who chuckled over their extraordinary

fares. Occasionally one of them would rise to her feet to look at the

landscape and, supporting herself on her neighbor’s shoulder, would

grow extremely excited till a sudden jolt brought her down to the seat

again. Caroline Hequet in the meantime was having a warm discussion

with Labordette. Both of them were agreed that Nana would be selling

her country house before three months were out, and Caroline was urging

Labordette to buy it back for her for as little as it was likely to

fetch. In front of them La Faloise, who was very amorous and could not

get at Gaga’s apoplectic neck, was imprinting kisses on her spine

through her dress, the strained fabric of which was nigh splitting,

while Amelie, perching stiffly on the bracket seat, was bidding them be

quiet, for she was horrified to be sitting idly by, watching her mother

being kissed. In the next carriage Mignon, in order to astonish Lucy,

was making his sons recite a fable by La Fontaine. Henri was prodigious

at this exercise; he could spout you one without pause or hesitation.

But Maria Blond, at the head of the procession, was beginning to feel

extremely bored. She was tired of hoaxing that blockhead of a Tatan

Nene with a story to the effect that the Parisian dairywomen were wont

to fabricate eggs with a mixture of paste and saffron. The distance was

too great: were they never going to get to their destination? And the

question was transmitted from carriage to carriage and finally reached

Nana, who, after questioning her driver, got up and shouted:

“We’ve not got a quarter of an hour more to go. You see that church

behind the trees down there?”

Then she continued:

“Do you know, it appears the owner of the Château de Chamont is an old

lady of Napoleon’s time? Oh, SHE was a merry one! At least, so Joseph

told me, and he heard it from the servants at the bishop’s palace.

There’s no one like it nowadays, and for the matter of that, she’s

become goody-goody.”

“What’s her name?” asked Lucy.

“Madame d’Anglars.”

“Irma d’Anglars—I knew her!” cried Gaga.

Admiring exclamations burst from the line of carriages and were borne

down the wind as the horses quickened their trot. Heads were stretched

out in Gaga’s direction; Maria Blond and Tatan Nene turned round and

knelt on the seat while they leaned over the carriage hood, and the air

was full of questions and cutting remarks, tempered by a certain

obscure admiration. Gaga had known her! The idea filled them all with

respect for that far-off past.

“Dear me, I was young then,” continued Gaga. “But never mind, I

remember it all. I saw her pass. They said she was disgusting in her

own house, but, driving in her carriage, she WAS just smart! And the

stunning tales about her! Dirty doings and money flung about like one

o’clock! I don’t wonder at all that she’s got a fine place. Why, she

used to clean out a man’s pockets as soon as look at him. Irma

d’Anglars still in the land of the living! Why, my little pets, she

must be near ninety.”

At this the ladies became suddenly serious. Ninety years old! The

deuce, there wasn’t one of them, as Lucy loudly declared, who would

live to that age. They were all done for. Besides, Nana said she didn’t

want to make old bones; it wouldn’t be amusing. They were drawing near

their destination, and the conversation was interrupted by the cracking

of whips as the drivers put their horses to their best paces. Yet amid

all the noise Lucy continued talking and, suddenly changing the

subject, urged Nana to come to town with them all to-morrow. The

exhibition was soon to close, and the ladies must really return to

Paris, where the season was surpassing their expectations. But Nana was

obstinate. She loathed Paris; she wouldn’t set foot there yet!

“Eh, darling, we’ll stay?” she said, giving Georges’s knees a squeeze,

as though Steiner were of no account.

The carriages had pulled up abruptly, and in some surprise the company

got out on some waste ground at the bottom of a small hill. With his

whip one of the drivers had to point them out the ruins of the old

Abbey of Chamont where they lay hidden among trees. It was a great

sell! The ladies voted them silly. Why, they were only a heap of old

stones with briers growing over them and part of a tumble-down tower.

It really wasn’t worth coming a couple of leagues to see that! Then the

driver pointed out to them the countryseat, the park of which stretched

away from the abbey, and he advised them to take a little path and

follow the walls surrounding it. They would thus make the tour of the

place while the carriages would go and await them in the village

square. It was a delightful walk, and the company agreed to the

proposition.

“Lord love me, Irma knows how to take care of herself!” said Gaga,

halting before a gate at the corner of the park wall abutting on the

highroad.

All of them stood silently gazing at the enormous bush which stopped up

the gateway. Then following the little path, they skirted the park

wall, looking up from time to time to admire the trees, whose lofty

branches stretched out over them and formed a dense vault of greenery.

After three minutes or so they found themselves in front of a second

gate. Through this a wide lawn was visible, over which two venerable

oaks cast dark masses of shadow. Three minutes farther on yet another

gate afforded them an extensive view of a great avenue, a perfect

corridor of shadow, at the end of which a bright spot of sunlight

gleamed like a star. They stood in silent, wondering admiration, and

then little by little exclamations burst from their lips. They had been

trying hard to joke about it all with a touch of envy at heart, but

this decidedly and immeasurably impressed them. What a genius that Irma

was! A sight like this gave you a rattling notion of the woman! The

trees stretched away and away, and there were endlessly recurrent

patches of ivy along the wall with glimpses of lofty roofs and screens

of poplars interspersed with dense masses of elms and aspens. Was there

no end to it then? The ladies would have liked to catch sight of the

mansion house, for they were weary of circling on and on, weary of

seeing nothing but leafy recesses through every opening they came to.

They took the rails of the gate in their hands and pressed their faces

against the ironwork. And thus excluded and isolated, a feeling of

respect began to overcome them as they thought of the castle lost to

view in surrounding immensity. Soon, being quite unused to walking,

they grew tired. And the wall did not leave off; at every turn of the

small deserted path the same range of gray stones stretched ahead of

them. Some of them began to despair of ever getting to the end of it

and began talking of returning. But the more their long walk fatigued

them, the more respectful they became, for at each successive step they

were increasingly impressed by the tranquil, lordly dignity of the

domain.

“It’s getting silly, this is!” said Caroline Hequet, grinding her

teeth.

Nana silenced her with a shrug. For some moments past she had been

rather pale and extremely serious and had not spoken a single word.

Suddenly the path gave a final turn; the wall ended, and as they came

out on the village square the mansion house stood before them on the

farther side of its grand outer court. All stopped to admire the proud

sweep of the wide steps, the twenty frontage windows, the arrangement

of the three wings, which were built of brick framed by courses of

stone. Henri IV had erewhile inhabited this historic mansion, and his

room, with its great bed hung with Genoa velvet, was still preserved

there. Breathless with admiration, Nana gave a little childish sigh.

“Great God!” she whispered very quietly to herself.

But the party were deeply moved when Gaga suddenly announced that Irma

herself was standing yonder in front of the church. She recognized her

perfectly. She was as upright as of old, the hoary campaigner, and that

despite her age, and she still had those eyes which flashed when she

moved in that proud way of hers! Vespers were just over, and for a

second or two Madame stood in the church porch. She was dressed in a

dark brown silk and looked very simple and very tall, her venerable

face reminding one of some old marquise who had survived the horrors of

the Great Revolution. In her right hand a huge Book of Hours shone in

the sunlight, and very slowly she crossed the square, followed some

fifteen paces off by a footman in livery. The church was emptying, and

all the inhabitants of Chamont bowed before her with extreme respect.

An old man even kissed her hand, and a woman wanted to fall on her

knees. Truly this was a potent queen, full of years and honors. She

mounted her flight of steps and vanished from view.

“That’s what one attains to when one has methodical habits!” said

Mignon with an air of conviction, looking at his sons and improving the

occasion.

Then everybody said his say. Labordette thought her extraordinarily

well preserved. Maria Blond let slip a foul expression and vexed Lucy,

who declared that one ought to honor gray hairs. All the women, to sum

up, agreed that she was a perfect marvel. Then the company got into

their conveyances again. From Chamont all the way to La Mignotte Nana

remained silent. She had twice turned round to look back at the house,

and now, lulled by the sound of the wheels, she forgot that Steiner was

at her side and that Georges was in front of her. A vision had come up

out of the twilight, and the great lady seemed still to be sweeping by

with all the majesty of a potent queen, full of years and of honors.

That evening Georges re-entered Les Fondettes in time for dinner. Nana,

who had grown increasingly absent-minded and singular in point of

manner, had sent him to ask his mamma’s forgiveness. It was his plain

duty, she remarked severely, growing suddenly solicitous for the

decencies of family life. She even made him swear not to return for the

night; she was tired, and in showing proper obedience he was doing no

more than his duty. Much bored by this moral discourse, Georges

appeared in his mother’s presence with heavy heart and downcast head.

Fortunately for him his brother Philippe, a great merry devil of a

military man, had arrived during the day, a fact which greatly

curtailed the scene he was dreading. Mme Hugon was content to look at

him with eyes full of tears while Philippe, who had been put in

possession of the facts, threatened to go and drag him home by the

scruff of the neck if ever he went back into that woman’s society.

Somewhat comforted, Georges began slyly planning how to make his escape

toward two o’clock next day in order to arrange about future meetings

with Nana.

Nevertheless, at dinnertime the house party at Les Fondettes seemed not

a little embarrassed. Vandeuvres had given notice of departure, for he

was anxious to take Lucy back to Paris with him. He was amused at the

idea of carrying off this girl whom he had known for ten years yet

never desired. The Marquis de Chouard bent over his plate and meditated

on Gaga’s young lady. He could well remember dandling Lili on his knee.

What a way children had of shooting up! This little thing was becoming

extremely plump! But Count Muffat especially was silent and absorbed.

His cheeks glowed, and he had given Georges one long look. Dinner over,

he went upstairs, intending to shut himself in his bedroom, his pretext

being a slight feverish attack. M. Venot had rushed after him, and

upstairs in the bedroom a scene ensued. The count threw himself upon

the bed and strove to stifle a fit of nervous sobbing in the folds of

the pillow while M. Venot, in a soft voice, called him brother and

advised him to implore heaven for mercy. But he heard nothing: there

was a rattle in his throat. Suddenly he sprang off the bed and

stammered:

“I am going there. I can’t resist any longer.”

“Very well,” said the old man, “I go with you.”

As they left the house two shadows were vanishing into the dark depths

of a garden walk, for every evening now Fauchery and the Countess

Sabine left Daguenet to help Estelle make tea. Once on the highroad the

count walked so rapidly that his companion had to run in order to

follow him. Though utterly out of breath, the latter never ceased

showering on him the most conclusive arguments against the temptations

of the flesh. But the other never opened his mouth as he hurried away

into the night. Arrived in front of La Mignotte, he said simply:

“I can’t resist any longer. Go!”

“God’s will be done then!” muttered M. Venot. “He uses every method to

assure His final triumph. Your sin will become His weapon.”

At La Mignotte there was much wrangling during the evening meal. Nana

had found a letter from Bordenave awaiting her, in which he advised

rest, just as though he were anxious to be rid of her. Little Violaine,

he said, was being encored twice nightly. But when Mignon continued

urging her to come away with them on the morrow Nana grew exasperated

and declared that she did not intend taking advice from anybody. In

other ways, too, her behavior at table was ridiculously stuck up. Mme

Lerat having made some sharp little speech or other, she loudly

announced that, God willing, she wasn’t going to let anyone—no, not

even her own aunt—make improper remarks in her presence. After which

she dreed her guests with honorable sentiments. She seemed to be

suffering from a fit of stupid right-mindedness, and she treated them

all to projects of religious education for Louiset and to a complete

scheme of regeneration for herself. When the company began laughing she

gave vent to profound opinions, nodding her head like a grocer’s wife

who knows what she is saying. Nothing but order could lead to fortune!

And so far as she was concerned, she had no wish to die like a beggar!

She set the ladies’ teeth on edge. They burst out in protest. Could

anyone have been converting Nana? No, it was impossible! But she sat

quite still and with absent looks once more plunged into dreamland,

where the vision of an extremely wealthy and greatly courted Nana rose

up before her.

The household were going upstairs to bed when Muffat put in an

appearance. It was Labordette who caught sight of him in the garden. He

understood it all at once and did him a service, for he got Steiner out

of the way and, taking his hand, led him along the dark corridor as far

as Nana’s bedroom. In affairs of this kind Labordette was wont to

display the most perfect tact and cleverness. Indeed, he seemed

delighted to be making other people happy. Nana showed no surprise; she

was only somewhat annoyed by the excessive heat of Muffat’s pursuit.

Life was a serious affair, was it not? Love was too silly: it led to

nothing. Besides, she had her scruples in view of Zizi’s tender age.

Indeed, she had scarcely behaved quite fairly toward him. Dear me, yes,

she was choosing the proper course again in taking up with an old

fellow.

“Zoé,” she said to the lady’s maid, who was enchanted at the thought of

leaving the country, “pack the trunks when you get up tomorrow. We are

going back to Paris.”

And she went to bed with Muffat but experienced no pleasure.

CHAPTER VII

One December evening three months afterward Count Muffat was strolling

in the Passage des Panoramas. The evening was very mild, and owing to a

passing shower, the passage had just become crowded with people. There

was a perfect mob of them, and they thronged slowly and laboriously

along between the shops on either side. Under the windows, white with

reflected light, the pavement was violently illuminated. A perfect

stream of brilliancy emanated from white globes, red lanterns, blue

transparencies, lines of gas jets, gigantic watches and fans, outlined

in flame and burning in the open. And the motley displays in the shops,

the gold ornaments of the jeweler’s, the glass ornaments of the

confectioner’s, the light-colored silks of the modiste’s, seemed to

shine again in the crude light of the reflectors behind the clear

plate-glass windows, while among the bright-colored, disorderly array

of shop signs a huge purple glove loomed in the distance like a

bleeding hand which had been severed from an arm and fastened to a

yellow cuff.

Count Muffat had slowly returned as far as the boulevard. He glanced

out at the roadway and then came sauntering back along the shopwindows.

The damp and heated atmosphere filled the narrow passage with a slight

luminous mist. Along the flagstones, which had been wet by the

drip-drop of umbrellas, the footsteps of the crowd rang continually,

but there was no sound of voices. Passers-by elbowed him at every turn

and cast inquiring looks at his silent face, which the gaslight

rendered pale. And to escape these curious manifestations the count

posted himself in front of a stationer’s, where with profound attention

contemplated an array of paperweights in the form of glass bowls

containing floating landscapes and flowers.

He was conscious of nothing: he was thinking of Nana. Why had she lied

to him again? That morning she had written and told him not to trouble

about her in the evening, her excuse being that Louiset was ill and

that she was going to pass the night at her aunt’s in order to nurse

him. But he had felt suspicious and had called at her house, where he

learned from the porter that Madame had just gone off to her theater.

He was astonished at this, for she was not playing in the new piece.

Why then should she have told him this falsehood, and what could she be

doing at the Variétés that evening? Hustled by a passer-by, the count

unconsciously left the paperweights and found himself in front of a

glass case full of toys, where he grew absorbed over an array of

pocketbooks and cigar cases, all of which had the same blue swallow

stamped on one corner. Nana was most certainly not the same woman! In

the early days after his return from the country she used to drive him

wild with delight, as with pussycat caresses she kissed him all round

his face and whiskers and vowed that he was her own dear pet and the

only little man she adored. He was no longer afraid of Georges, whom

his mother kept down at Les Fondettes. There was only fat Steiner to

reckon with, and he believed he was really ousting him, but he did not

dare provoke an explanation on his score. He knew he was once more in

an extraordinary financial scrape and on the verge of being declared

bankrupt on ’change, so much so that he was clinging fiercely to the

shareholders in the Landes Salt Pits and striving to sweat a final

subscription out of them. Whenever he met him at Nana’s she would

explain reasonably enough that she did not wish to turn him out of

doors like a dog after all he had spent on her. Besides, for the last

three months he had been living in such a whirl of sensual excitement

that, beyond the need of possessing her, he had felt no very distinct

impressions. His was a tardy awakening of the fleshly instinct, a

childish greed of enjoyment, which left no room for either vanity or

jealousy. Only one definite feeling could affect him now, and that was

Nana’s decreasing kindness. She no longer kissed him on the beard! It

made him anxious, and as became a man quite ignorant of womankind, he

began asking himself what possible cause of offense he could have given

her. Besides, he was under the impression that he was satisfying all

her desires. And so he harked back again and again to the letter he had

received that morning with its tissue of falsehoods, invented for the

extremely simple purpose of passing an evening at her own theater. The

crowd had pushed him forward again, and he had crossed the passage and

was puzzling his brain in front of the entrance to a restaurant, his

eyes fixed on some plucked larks and on a huge salmon laid out inside

the window.

At length he seemed to tear himself away from this spectacle. He shook

himself, looked up and noticed that it was close on nine o’clock. Nana

would soon be coming out, and he would make her tell the truth. And

with that he walked on and recalled to memory the evenings he once

passed in that region in the days when he used to meet her at the door

of the theater.

He knew all the shops, and in the gas-laden air he recognized their

different scents, such, for instance, as the strong savor of Russia

leather, the perfume of vanilla emanating from a chocolate dealer’s

basement, the savor of musk blown in whiffs from the open doors of the

perfumers. But he did not dare linger under the gaze of the pale

shopwomen, who looked placidly at him as though they knew him by sight.

For one instant he seemed to be studying the line of little round

windows above the shops, as though he had never noticed them before

among the medley of signs. Then once again he went up to the boulevard

and stood still a minute or two. A fine rain was now falling, and the

cold feel of it on his hands calmed him. He thought of his wife who was

staying in a country house near Macon, where her friend Mme de

Chezelles had been ailing a good deal since the autumn. The carriages

in the roadway were rolling through a stream of mud. The country, he

thought, must be detestable in such vile weather. But suddenly he

became anxious and re-entered the hot, close passage down which he

strode among the strolling people. A thought struck him: if Nana were

suspicious of his presence there she would be off along the Galerie

Montmartre.

After that the count kept a sharp lookout at the very door of the

theater, though he did not like this passage end, where he was afraid

of being recognized. It was at the corner between the Galerie des

Variétés and the Galerie Saint-Marc, an equivocal corner full of

obscure little shops. Of these last one was a shoemaker’s, where

customers never seemed to enter. Then there were two or three

upholsterers’, deep in dust, and a smoky, sleepy reading room and

library, the shaded lamps in which cast a green and slumberous light

all the evening through. There was never anyone in this corner save

well-dressed, patient gentlemen, who prowled about the wreckage

peculiar to a stage door, where drunken sceneshifters and ragged chorus

girls congregate. In front of the theater a single gas jet in a

ground-glass globe lit up the doorway. For a moment or two Muffat

thought of questioning Mme Bron; then he grew afraid lest Nana should

get wind of his presence and escape by way of the boulevard. So he went

on the march again and determined to wait till he was turned out at the

closing of the gates, an event which had happened on two previous

occasions. The thought of returning home to his solitary bed simply

wrung his heart with anguish. Every time that golden-haired girls and

men in dirty linen came out and stared at him he returned to his post

in front of the reading room, where, looking in between two

advertisements posted on a windowpane, he was always greeted by the

same sight. It was a little old man, sitting stiff and solitary at the

vast table and holding a green newspaper in his green hands under the

green light of one of the lamps. But shortly before ten o’clock another

gentleman, a tall, good-looking, fair man with well-fitting gloves, was

also walking up and down in front of the stage door. Thereupon at each

successive turn the pair treated each other to a suspicious sidelong

glance. The count walked to the corner of the two galleries, which was

adorned with a high mirror, and when he saw himself therein, looking

grave and elegant, he was both ashamed and nervous.

Ten o’clock struck, and suddenly it occurred to Muffat that it would be

very easy to find out whether Nana were in her dressing room or not. He

went up the three steps, crossed the little yellow-painted lobby and

slipped into the court by a door which simply shut with a latch. At

that hour of the night the narrow, damp well of a court, with its

pestiferous water closets, its fountain, its back view of the kitchen

stove and the collection of plants with which the portress used to

litter the place, was drenched in dark mist; but the two walls, rising