Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

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

Chateau 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 Varietes.”

 

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’hote 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 Varietes, 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 Varietes, 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