Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

struggling Steiner.

 

“My word, he’s got a phiz for it!” murmured Fauchery. “A pretty

present he made his wife! Poor little thing, how he must have bored

her! She knows nothing about anything, I’ll wager!”

 

Just then the Countess Sabine was saying something to him. But he

did not hear her, so amusing and extraordinary did he esteem the

Muffats’ case. She repeated the question.

 

“Monsieur Fauchery, have you not published a sketch of Monsieur de

Bismarck? You spoke with him once?”

 

He got up briskly and approached the circle of ladies, endeavoring

to collect himself and soon with perfect ease of manner finding an

answer:

 

“Dear me, madame, I assure you I wrote that ‘portrait’ with the help

of biographies which had been published in Germany. I have never

seen Monsieur de Bismarck.”

 

He remained beside the countess and, while talking with her,

continued his meditations. She did not look her age; one would have

set her down as being twenty-eight at most, for her eyes, above all,

which were filled with the dark blue shadow of her long eyelashes,

retained the glowing light of youth. Bred in a divided family, so

that she used to spend one month with the Marquis de Chouard,

another with the marquise, she had been married very young, urged

on, doubtless, by her father, whom she embarrassed after her

mother’s death. A terrible man was the marquis, a man about whom

strange tales were beginning to be told, and that despite his lofty

piety! Fauchery asked if he should have the honor of meeting him.

Certainly her father was coming, but only very late; he had so much

work on hand! The journalist thought he knew where the old

gentleman passed his evenings and looked grave. But a mole, which

he noticed close to her mouth on the countess’s left cheek,

surprised him. Nana had precisely the same mole. It was curious.

Tiny hairs curled up on it, only they were golden in Nana’s case,

black as jet in this. Ah well, never mind! This woman enjoyed

nobody’s embraces.

 

“I have always felt a wish to know Queen Augusta,” she said. “They

say she is so good, so devout. Do you think she will accompany the

king?”

 

“It is not thought that she will, madame,” he replied.

 

She had no lovers: the thing was only too apparent. One had only to

look at her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting so

insignificant and constrained on her footstool. That sepulchral

drawing room of hers, which exhaled odors suggestive of being in a

church, spoke as plainly as words could of the iron hand, the

austere mode of existence, that weighed her down. There was nothing

suggestive of her own personality in that ancient abode, black with

the damps of years. It was Muffat who made himself felt there, who

dominated his surroundings with his devotional training, his

penances and his fasts. But the sight of the little old gentleman

with the black teeth and subtle smile whom he suddenly discovered in

his armchair behind the group of ladies afforded him a yet more

decisive argument. He knew the personage. It was Theophile Venot,

a retired lawyer who had made a specialty of church cases. He had

left off practice with a handsome fortune and was now leading a

sufficiently mysterious existence, for he was received everywhere,

treated with great deference and even somewhat feared, as though he

had been the representative of a mighty force, an occult power,

which was felt to be at his back. Nevertheless, his behavior was

very humble. He was churchwarden at the Madeleine Church and had

simply accepted the post of deputy mayor at the town house of the

Ninth Arrondissement in order, as he said, to have something to do

in his leisure time. Deuce take it, the countess was well guarded;

there was nothing to be done in that quarter.

 

“You’re right, it’s enough to make one kick the bucket here,” said

Fauchery to his cousin when he had made good his escape from the

circle of ladies. “We’ll hook it!”

 

But Steiner, deserted at last by the Count Muffat and the deputy,

came up in a fury. Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and

he grumbled huskily:

 

“Gad! Let ‘em tell me nothing, if nothing they want to tell me. I

shall find people who will talk.”

 

Then he pushed the journalist into a corner and, altering his tone,

said in accents of victory:

 

“It’s tomorrow, eh? I’m of the party, my bully!”

 

“Indeed!” muttered Fauchery with some astonishment.

 

“You didn’t know about it. Oh, I had lots of bother to find her at

home. Besides, Mignon never would leave me alone.”

 

“But they’re to be there, are the Mignons.”

 

“Yes, she told me so. In fact, she did receive my visit, and she

invited me. Midnight punctually, after the play.”

 

The banker was beaming. He winked and added with a peculiar

emphasis on the words:

 

“You’ve worked it, eh?”

 

“Eh, what?” said Fauchery, pretending not to understand him. “She

wanted to thank me for my article, so she came and called on me.”

 

“Yes, yes. You fellows are fortunate. You get rewarded. By the

by, who pays the piper tomorrow?”

 

The journalist made a slight outward movement with his arms, as

though he would intimate that no one had ever been able to find out.

But Vandeuvres called to Steiner, who knew M. de Bismarck. Mme du

Joncquoy had almost convinced herself of the truth of her

suppositions; she concluded with these words:

 

“He gave me an unpleasant impression. I think his face is evil.

But I am quite willing to believe that he has a deal of wit. It

would account for his successes.”

 

“Without doubt,” said the banker with a faint smile. He was a Jew

from Frankfort.

 

Meanwhile La Faloise at last made bold to question his cousin. He

followed him up and got inside his guard:

 

“There’s supper at a woman’s tomorrow evening? With which of them,

eh? With which of them?”

 

Fauchery motioned to him that they were overheard and must respect

the conventions here. The door had just been opened anew, and an

old lady had come in, followed by a young man in whom the journalist

recognized the truant schoolboy, perpetrator of the famous and as

yet unforgotten “tres chic” of the Blonde Venus first night. This

lady’s arrival caused a stir among the company. The Countess Sabine

had risen briskly from her seat in order to go and greet her, and

she had taken both her hands in hers and addressed her as her “dear

Madame Hugon.” Seeing that his cousin viewed this little episode

with some curiosity, La Faloise sought to arouse his interest and in

a few brief phrases explained the position. Mme Hugon, widow of a

notary, lived in retirement at Les Fondettes, an old estate of her

family’s in the neighborhood of Orleans, but she also kept up a

small establishment in Paris in a house belonging to her in the Rue

de Richelieu and was now passing some weeks there in order to settle

her youngest son, who was reading the law and in his “first year.”

In old times she had been a dear friend of the Marquise de Chouard

and had assisted at the birth of the countess, who, prior to her

marriage, used to stay at her house for months at a time and even

now was quite familiarly treated by her.

 

“I have brought Georges to see you,” said Mme Hugon to Sabine.

“He’s grown, I trust.”

 

The young man with his clear eyes and the fair curls which suggested

a girl dressed up as a boy bowed easily to the countess and reminded

her of a bout of battledore and shuttlecock they had had together

two years ago at Les Fondettes.

 

“Philippe is not in Paris?” asked Count Muffat.

 

“Dear me, no!” replied the old lady. “He is always in garrison at

Bourges.” She had seated herself and began talking with

considerable pride of her eldest son, a great big fellow who, after

enlisting in a fit of waywardness, had of late very rapidly attained

the rank of lieutenant. All the ladies behaved to her with

respectful sympathy, and conversation was resumed in a tone at once

more amiable and more refined. Fauchery, at sight of that

respectable Mme Hugon, that motherly face lit up with such a kindly

smile beneath its broad tresses of white hair, thought how foolish

he had been to suspect the Countess Sabine even for an instant.

 

Nevertheless, the big chair with the red silk upholsteries in which

the countess sat had attracted his attention. Its style struck him

as crude, not to say fantastically suggestive, in that dim old

drawing room. Certainly it was not the count who had inveigled

thither that nest of voluptuous idleness. One might have described

it as an experiment, marking the birth of an appetite and of an

enjoyment. Then he forgot where he was, fell into brown study and

in thought even harked back to that vague confidential announcement

imparted to him one evening in the dining room of a restaurant.

Impelled by a sort of sensuous curiosity, he had always wanted an

introduction into the Muffats’ circle, and now that his friend was

in Mexico through all eternity, who could tell what might happen?

“We shall see,” he thought. It was a folly, doubtless, but the idea

kept tormenting him; he felt himself drawn on and his animal nature

aroused. The big chair had a rumpled look—its nether cushions had

been tumbled, a fact which now amused him.

 

“Well, shall we be off?” asked La Faloise, mentally vowing that once

outside he would find out the name of the woman with whom people

were going to sup.

 

“All in good time,” replied Fauchery.

 

But he was no longer in any hurry and excused himself on the score

of the invitation he had been commissioned to give and had as yet

not found a convenient opportunity to mention. The ladies were

chatting about an assumption of the veil, a very touching ceremony

by which the whole of Parisian society had for the last three days

been greatly moved. It was the eldest daughter of the Baronne de

Fougeray, who, under stress of an irresistible vocation, had just

entered the Carmelite Convent. Mme Chantereau, a distant cousin of

the Fougerays, told how the baroness had been obliged to take to her

bed the day after the ceremony, so overdone was she with weeping.

 

“I had a very good place,” declared Leonide. “I found it

interesting.”

 

Nevertheless, Mme Hugon pitied the poor mother. How sad to lose a

daughter in such a way!

 

“I am accused of being overreligious,” she said in her quiet, frank

manner, “but that does not prevent me thinking the children very

cruel who obstinately commit such suicide.”

 

“Yes, it’s a terrible thing,” murmured the countess, shivering a

little, as became a chilly person, and huddling herself anew in the

depths of her big chair in front of the fire.

 

Then the ladies fell into a discussion. But their voices were

discreetly attuned, while light trills of laughter now and again

interrupted the gravity of their talk. The two lamps on the chimney

piece, which had shades of rose-colored lace, cast a feeble light

over them while on scattered pieces of furniture there burned but

three other lamps, so that the great drawing room remained in soft

shadow.

 

Steiner was getting bored. He was describing to Fauchery an

escapade of that little Mme de Chezelles, whom he simply referred to

as Leonide. “A blackguard woman,” he