Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

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 shonc

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