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“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 wornout 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 Prulliere, 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 Varietes 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 Gumieres 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 Gumieres 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 Varietes, 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

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