Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

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 motherin-law had wished to preserve it during her lifetime.

Then returning to the subject of conversation:

 

“I have been assured,” she said, “that we shall also have the king

of Prussia and the emperor of Russia.”

 

‘Yes, some very fine fetes are promised,” said Mme du Joncquoy.

 

The banker Steiner, not long since introduced into this circle by

Leonide de Chezelles, who was acquainted with the whole of Parisian

society, was sitting chatting on a sofa between two of the windows.

He was questioning a deputy, from whom he was endeavoring with much

adroitness to elicit news about a movement on the stock exchange of

which he had his suspicions, while the Count Muffat, standing in

front of them, was silently listening to their talk, looking, as he

did so, even grayer than was his wont.

 

Four or five young men formed another group near the door round the

Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who in a low tone was telling them an

anecdote. It was doubtless a very risky one, for they were choking

with laughter. Companionless in the center of the room, a stout

man, a chief clerk at the Ministry of the Interior, sat heavily in

an armchair, dozing with his eyes open. But when one of the young

men appeared to doubt the truth of the anecdote Vandeuvres raised

his voice.

 

“You are too much of a skeptic, Foucarmont; you’ll spoil all your

pleasures that way.”

 

And he returned to the ladies with a laugh. Last scion of a great

family, of feminine manners and witty tongue, he was at that time

running through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite which

nothing could appease. His racing stable, which was one of the best

known in Paris, cost him a fabulous amount of money; his betting

losses at the Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number

of pounds, while taking one year with another, his mistresses would

be always devouring now a farm, now some acres of arable land or

forest, which amounted, in fact, to quite a respectable slice of his

vast estates in Picardy.

 

“I advise you to call other people skeptics! Why, you don’t believe

a thing yourself,” said Leonide, making shift to find him a little

space in which to sit down at her side.

 

“It’s you who spoil your own pleasures.”

 

“Exactly,” he replied. “I wish to make others benefit by my

experience.”

 

But the company imposed silence on him: he was scandalizing M.

Venot. And, the ladies having changed their positions, a little old

man of sixty, with bad teeth and a subtle smile, became visible in

the depths of an easy chair. There he sat as comfortably as in his

own house, listening to everybody’s remarks and making none himself.

With a slight gesture he announced himself by no means scandalized.

Vandeuvres once more assumed his dignified bearing and added

gravely:

 

“Monsieur Venot is fully aware that I believe what it is one’s duty

to believe.”

 

It was an act of faith, and even Leonide appeared satisfied. The

young men at the end of the room no longer laughed; the company were

old fogies, and amusement was not to be found there. A cold breath

of wind had passed over them, and amid the ensuing silence Steiner’s

nasal voice became audible. The deputy’s discreet answers were at

last driving him to desperation. For a second or two the Countess

Sabine looked at the fire; then she resumed the conversation.

 

“I saw the king of Prussia at Baden-Baden last year. He’s still

full of vigor for his age.”

 

“Count Bismarck is to accompany him,” said Mme du Joncquoy. “Do you

know the count? I lunched with him at my brother’s ages ago, when

he was representative of Prussia in Paris. There’s a man now whose

latest successes I cannot in the least understand.”

 

“But why?” asked Mme Chantereau.

 

“Good gracious, how am I to explain? He doesn’t please me. His

appearance is boorish and underbred. Besides, so far as I am

concerned, I find him stupid.”

 

With that the whole room spoke of Count Bismarck, and opinions

differed considerably. Vandeuvres knew him and assured the company

that he was great in his cups and at play. But when the discussion

was at its height the door was opened, and Hector de la Falois made

his appearance. Fauchery, who followed in his wake, approached the

countess and, bowing:

 

“Madame,” he said, “I have not forgotten your extremely kind

invitation.”

 

She smiled and made a pretty little speech. The journalist, after

bowing to the count, stood for some moments in the middle of the

drawing room. He only recognized Steiner and accordingly looked

rather out of his element. But Vandeuvres turned and came and shook

hands with him. And forthwith, in his delight at the meeting and

with a sudden desire to be confidential, Fauchery buttonholed him

and said in a low voice:

 

“It’s tomorrow. Are you going?”

 

“Egad, yes.”

 

“At midnight, at her house.

 

“I know, I know. I’m going with Blanche.”

 

He wanted to escape and return to the ladies in order to urge yet

another reason in M. de Bismarck’s favor. But Fauchery detained

him.

 

“You never will guess whom she has charged me to invite.”

 

And with a slight nod he indicated Count Muffat, who was just then

discussing a knotty point in the budget with Steiner and the deputy.

 

“It’s impossible,” said Vandeuvres, stupefaction and merriment in

his tones. “My word on it! I had to swear that I would bring him

to her. Indeed, that’s one of my reasons for coming here.”

 

Both laughed silently, and Vandeuvres, hurriedly rejoining the

circle of ladies, cried out:

 

“I declare that on the contrary Monsieur de Bismarck is exceedingly

witty. For instance, one evening he said a charmingly epigrammatic

thing in my presence.”

 

La Faloise meanwhile had heard the few rapid sentences thus

whisperingly interchanged, and he gazed at Fauchery in hopes of an

explanation which was not vouchsafed him. Of whom were they

talking, and what were they going to do at midnight tomorrow? He

did not leave his cousin’s side again. The latter had gone and

seated himself. He was especially interested by the Countess

Sabine. Her name had often been mentioned in his presence, and he

knew that, having been married at the age of seventeen, she must now

be thirty-four and that since her marriage she had passed a

cloistered existence with her husband and her motherin-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,