Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

reassured. The countess, her eyes fixed

dreamily on the blue distances of the park, seemed to have lost all

interest in the conversation. The shadow of a smile on her lips,

she seemed to be following up a secret thought which had been

suddenly awakened within her. Estelle, on the other hand, sitting

stiffly on her chair, had heard all that had been said about Nana,

but her white, virginal face had not betrayed a trace of emotion.

 

“Dear me, dear me! I’ve got no right to grow angry,” murmured Mme

Hugon after a pause, and with a return to her old good humor she

added:

 

“Everybody’s got a right to live. If we meet this said lady on the

road we shall not bow to her—that’s all!”

 

And as they got up from table she once more gently upbraided the

Countess Sabine for having been so long in coming to her that year.

But the countess defended herself and threw the blame of the delays

upon her husband’s shoulders. Twice on the eve of departure, when

all the trunks were locked, he counterordered their journey on the

plea of urgent business. Then he had suddenly decided to start just

when the trip seemed shelved. Thereupon the old lady told them how

Georges in the same way had twice announced his arrival without

arriving and had finally cropped up at Les Fondettes the day before

yesterday, when she was no longer expecting him. They had come down

into the garden, and the two men, walking beside the ladies, were

listening to them in consequential silence.

 

“Never mind,” said Mme Hugon, kissing her son’s sunny locks, “Zizi

is a very good boy to come and bury himself in the country with his

mother. He’s a dear Zizi not to forget me!”

 

In the afternoon she expressed some anxiety, for Georges, directly

after leaving the table, had complained of a heavy feeling in his

head and now seemed in for an atrocious sick headache. Toward four

o’clock he said he would go upstairs to bed: it was the only remedy.

After sleeping till tomorrow morning he would be perfectly himself

again. His mother was bent on putting him to bed herself, but as

she left the room he ran and locked the door, explaining that he was

shutting himself in so that no one should come and disturb him.

Then caressingly he shouted, “Good night till tomorrow, little

Mother!” and promised to take a nap. But he did not go to bed again

and with flushed cheeks and bright eyes noiselessly put on his

clothes. Then he sat on a chair and waited. When the dinner bell

rang he listened for Count Muffat, who was on his way to the dining

room, and ten minutes later, when he was certain that no one would

see him, he slipped from the window to the ground with the

assistance of a rain pipe. His bedroom was situated on the first

floor and looked out upon the rear of the house. He threw himself

among some bushes and got out of the park and then galloped across

the fields with empty stomach and heart beating with excitement.

Night was closing in, and a small fine rain was beginning to fall.

 

It was the very evening that Nana was due at La Mignotte. Ever

since in the preceding May Steiner had bought her this country place

she had from time to time been so filled with the desire of taking

possession that she had wept hot tears about, but on each of these

occasions Bordenave had refused to give her even the shortest leave

and had deferred her holiday till September on the plea that he did

not intend putting an understudy in her place, even for one evening,

now that the exhibition was on. Toward the close of August he spoke

of October. Nana was furious and declared that she would be at La

Mignotte in the middle of September. Nay, in order to dare

Bordenave, she even invited a crowd of guests in his very presence.

One afternoon in her rooms, as Muffat, whose advances she still

adroitly resisted, was beseeching her with tremulous emotion to

yield to his entreaties, she at length promised to be kind, but not

in Paris, and to him, too, she named the middle of September. Then

on the twelfth she was seized by a desire to be off forthwith with

Zoe as her sole companion. It might be that Bordenave had got wind

of her intentions and was about to discover some means of detaining

her. She was delighted at the notion of putting him in a fix, and

she sent him a doctor’s certificate. When once the idea had entered

her head of being the first to get to La Mignotte and of living

there two days without anybody knowing anything about it, she rushed

Zoe through the operation of packing and finally pushed her into a

cab, where in a sudden burst of extreme contrition she kissed her

and begged her pardon. It was only when they got to the station

refreshment room that she thought of writing Steiner of her

movements. She begged him to wait till the day after tomorrow

before rejoining her if he wanted to find her quite bright and

fresh. And then, suddenly conceiving another project, she wrote a

second letter, in which she besought her aunt to bring little Louis

to her at once. It would do Baby so much good! And how happy they

would be together in the shade of the trees! In the railway

carriage between Paris and Orleans she spoke of nothing else; her

eyes were full of tears; she had an unexpected attack of maternal

tenderness and mingled together flowers, birds and child in her

every sentence.

 

La Mignotte was more than three leagues away from the station, and

Nana lost a good hour over the hire of a carriage, a huge,

dilapidated calash, which rumbled slowly along to an accompaniment

of rattling old iron. She had at once taken possession of the

coachman, a little taciturn old man whom she overwhelmed with

questions. Had he often passed by La Mignotte? It was behind this

hill then? There ought to be lots of trees there, eh? And the

house could one see it at a distance? The little old man answered

with a succession of grunts. Down in the calash Nana was almost

dancing with impatience, while Zoe, in her annoyance at having left

Paris in such a hurry, sat stiffly sulking beside her. The horse

suddenly stopped short, and the young woman thought they had reached

their destination. She put her head out of the carriage door and

asked:

 

“Are we there, eh?”

 

By way of answer the driver whipped up his horse, which was in the

act of painfully climbing a hill. Nana gazed ecstatically at the

vast plain beneath the gray sky where great clouds were banked up.

 

“Oh, do look, Zoe! There’s greenery! Now, is that all wheat? Good

lord, how pretty it is!”

 

“One can quite see that Madame doesn’t come from the country,” was

the servant’s prim and tardy rejoinder. “As for me, I knew the

country only too well when I was with my dentist. He had a house at

Bougival. No, it’s cold, too, this evening. It’s damp in these

parts.”

 

They were driving under the shadow of a wood, and Nana sniffed up

the scent of the leaves as a young dog might. All of a sudden at a

turn of the road she caught sight of the corner of a house among the

trees. Perhaps it was there! And with that she began a

conversation with the driver, who continued shaking his head by way

of saying no. Then as they drove down the other side of the hill he

contented himself by holding out his whip and muttering, “‘Tis down

there.”

 

She got up and stretched herself almost bodily out of the carriage

door.

 

“Where is it? Where is it?” she cried with pale cheeks, but as yet

she saw nothing.

 

At last she caught sight of a bit of wall. And then followed a

succession of little cries and jumps, the ecstatic behavior of a

woman overcome by a new and vivid sensation.

 

“I see it! I see it, Zoe! Look out at the other side. Oh, there’s

a terrace with brick ornaments on the roof! And there’s a hothouse

down there! But the place is immense. Oh, how happy I am! Do

look, Zoe! Now, do look!”

 

The carriage had by this time pulled up before the park gates. A

side door was opened, and the gardener, a tall, dry fellow, made his

appearance, cap in hand. Nana made an effort to regain her dignity,

for the driver seemed now to be suppressing a laugh behind his dry,

speechless lips. She refrained from setting off at a run and

listened to the gardener, who was a very talkative fellow. He

begged Madame to excuse the disorder in which she found everything,

seeing that he had only received Madame’s letter that very morning.

But despite all his efforts, she flew off at a tangent and walked so

quickly that Zoe could scarcely follow her. At the end of the

avenue she paused for a moment in order to take the house in at a

glance. It was a great pavilionlike building in the Italian manner,

and it was flanked by a smaller construction, which a rich

Englishman, after two years’ residence in Naples, had caused to be

erected and had forthwith become disgusted with.

 

“I’ll take Madame over the house,” said the gardener.

 

But she had outrun him entirely, and she shouted back that he was

not to put himself out and that she would go over the house by

herself. She preferred doing that, she said. And without removing

her hat she dashed into the different rooms, calling to Zoe as she

did so, shouting her impressions from one end of each corridor to

the other and filling the empty house, which for long months had

been uninhabited, with exclamations and bursts of laughter. In the

first place, there was the hall. It was a little damp, but that

didn’t matter; one wasn’t going to sleep in it. Then came the

drawing room, quite the thing, the drawing room, with its windows

opening on the lawn. Only the red upholsteries there were hideous;

she would alter all that. As to the dining room-well, it was a

lovely dining room, eh? What big blowouts you might give in Paris

if you had a dining room as large as that! As she was going

upstairs to the first floor it occurred to her that she had not seen

the kitchen, and she went down again and indulged in ecstatic

exclamations. Zoe ought to admire the beautiful dimensions of the

sink and the width of the hearth, where you might have roasted a

sheep! When she had gone upstairs again her bedroom especially

enchanted her. It had been hung with delicate rose-colored Louis

XVI cretonne by an Orleans upholsterer. Dear me, yes! One ought to

sleep jolly sound in such a room as that; why, it was a real best

bedroom! Then came four or five guest chambers and then some

splendid garrets, which would be extremely convenient for trunks and

boxes. Zoe looked very gruff and cast a frigid glance into each of

the rooms as she lingered in Madame’s wake. She saw Nana

disappearing up the steep garret ladder and said, “Thanks, I haven’t

the least wish to break my legs.” But the sound of a voice reached

her from far away; indeed, it seemed to come whistling down a

chimney.

 

“Zoe, Zoe, where are you? Come up, do! You’ve no idea! It’s