Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

entrapped and must, nevertheless, behave prettily. But in

the end she grew resigned and determined to gain time. If only she

could get rid of the count toward midnight everything would happen

as she wished.

 

“Yes, it’s true; you’re a bachelor tonight,” she murmured. “Your

wife doesn’t return till tomorrow, eh?”

 

“Yes,” replied Muffat. It embarrassed him somewhat to hear her

talking familiarly about the countess.

 

But she pressed him further, asking at what time the train was due

and wanting to know whether he were going to the station to meet

her. She had begun to walk more slowly than ever, as though the

shops interested her very much.

 

“Now do look!” she said, pausing anew before a jeweler’s window,

“what a funny bracelet!”

 

She adored the Passage des Panoramas. The tinsel of the ARTICLE DE

PARIS, the false jewelry, the gilded zinc, the cardboard made to

look like leather, had been the passion of her early youth. It

remained, and when she passed the shopwindows she could not tear

herself away from them. It was the same with her today as when she

was a ragged, slouching child who fell into reveries in front of the

chocolate maker’s sweet-stuff shows or stood listening to a musical

box in a neighboring shop or fell into supreme ecstasies over cheap,

vulgarly designed knickknacks, such as nutshell workboxes,

ragpickers’ baskets for holding toothpicks, Vendome columns and

Luxor obelisks on which thermometers were mounted. But that evening

she was too much agitated and looked at things without seeing them.

When all was said and done, it bored her to think she was not free.

An obscure revolt raged within her, and amid it all she felt a wild

desire to do something foolish. It was a great thing gained,

forsooth, to be mistress of men of position! She had been devouring

the prince’s substance and Steiner’s, too, with her childish

caprices, and yet she had no notion where her money went. Even at

this time of day her flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was not

entirely furnished. The drawing room alone was finished, and with

its red satin upholsteries and excess of ornamentation and furnirure

it struck a decidedly false note. Her creditors, moreover, would

now take to tormenting her more than ever before whenever she had no

money on hand, a fact which caused her constant surprise, seeing

that she was wont to quote her self as a model of economy. For a

month past that thief Steiner had been scarcely able to pay up his

thousand francs on the occasions when she threatened to kick him out

of doors in case he failed to bring them. As to Muffat, he was an

idiot: he had no notion as to what it was usual to give, and she

could not, therefore, grow angry with him on the score of

miserliness. Oh, how gladly she would have turned all these folks

off had she not repeated to herself a score of times daily a whole

string of economical maxims!

 

One ought to be sensible, Zoe kept saying every morning, and Nana

herself was constantly haunted by the queenly vision seen at

Chamont. It had now become an almost religious memory with her, and

through dint of being ceaselessly recalled it grew even more

grandiose. And for these reasons, though trembling with repressed

indignation, she now hung submissively on the count’s arm as they

went from window to window among the fast-diminishing crowd. The

pavement was drying outside, and a cool wind blew along the gallery,

swept the close hot air up beneath the glass that imprisoned it and

shook the colored lanterns and the lines of gas jets and the giant

fan which was flaring away like a set piece in an illumination. At

the door of the restaurant a waiter was putting out the gas, while

the motionless attendants in the empty, glaring shops looked as

though they had dropped off to sleep with their eyes open.

 

“Oh, what a duck!” continued Nana, retracing her steps as far as the

last of the shops in order to go into ecstasies over a porcelain

greyhound standing with raised forepaw in front of a nest hidden

among roses.

 

At length they quitted the passage, but she refused the offer of a

cab. It was very pleasant out she said; besides, they were in no

hurry, and it would be charming to return home on foot. When they

were in front of the Cafe Anglais she had a sudden longing to eat

oysters. Indeed, she said that owing to Louiset’s illness she had

tasted nothing since morning. Muffat dared not oppose her. Yet as

he did not in those days wish to be seen about with her he asked for

a private supper room and hurried to it along the corridors. She

followed him with the air of a woman familiar with the house, and

they were on the point of entering a private room, the door of which

a waiter held open, when from a neighboring saloon, whence issued a

perfect tempest of shouts and laughter, a man rapidiy emerged. It

was Daguenet.

 

“By Jove, it’s Nana!” he cried.

 

The count had briskly disappeared into the private room, leaving the

door ajar behind him. But Daguenet winked behind his round

shoulders and added in chaffing tones:

 

“The deuce, but you’re doing nicely! You catch ‘em in the Tuileries

nowadays!”

 

Nana smiled and laid a finger on her lips to beg him to be silent.

She could see he was very much exalted, and yet she was glad to have

met him, for she still felt tenderly toward him, and that despite

the nasty way he had cut her when in the company of fashionable

ladies.

 

“What are you doing now?” she asked amicably.

 

“Becoming respectable. Yes indeed, I’m thinking of getting

married.”

 

She shrugged her shoulders with a pitying air. But he jokingly

continued to the effect that to be only just gaining enough on

‘change to buy ladies bouquets could scarcely be called an income,

provided you wanted to look respectable too! His three hundred

thousand francs had only lasted him eighteen months! He wanted to

be practical, and he was going to marry a girl with a huge dowry and

end off as a PREFET, like his father before him! Nana still smiled

incredulously. She nodded in the direction of the saloon: “Who are

you with in there?”

 

“Oh, a whole gang,” he said, forgetting all about his projects under

the influence of returning intoxication. “Just think! Lea is

telling us about her trip in Egypt. Oh, it’s screaming! There’s a

bathing story—”

 

And he told the story while Nana lingered complaisantly. They had

ended by leaning up against the wall in the corridor, facing one

another. Gas jets were flaring under the low ceiling, and a vague

smell of cookery hung about the folds of the hangings. Now and

again, in order to hear each other’s voices when the din in the

saloon became louder than ever, they had to lean well forward.

Every few seconds, however, a waiter with an armful of dishes found

his passage barred and disturbed them. But they did not cease their

talk for that; on the contrary, they stood close up to the walls

and, amid the uproar of the supper party and the jostlings of the

waiters, chatted as quietly as if they were by their own firesides.

 

“Just look at that,” whispered the young man, pointing to the door

of the private room through which Muffat had vanished.

 

Both looked. The door was quivering slightly; a breath of air

seemed to be disturbing it, and at last, very, very slowly and

without the least sound, it was shut to. They exchanged a silent

chuckle. The count must be looking charmingly happy all alone in

there!

 

“By the by,” she asked, “have you read Fauchery’s article about me?”

 

“Yes, ‘The Golden Fly,’” replied Daguenet; “I didn’t mention it to

you as I was afraid of paining you.”

 

“Paining me—why? His article’s a very long one.”

 

She was flattered to think that the Figaro should concern itself

about her person. But failing the explanations of her hairdresser

Francis, who had brought her the paper, she would not have

understood that it was she who was in question. Daguenet

scrutinized her slyly, sneering in his chaffing way. Well, well,

since she was pleased, everybody else ought to be.

 

“By your leave!” shouted a waiter, holding a dish of iced cheese in

both hands as he separated them.

 

Nana had stepped toward the little saloon where Muffat was waiting.

 

“Well, good-by!” continued Daguenet. “Go and find your cuckold

again.”

 

But she halted afresh.

 

“Why d’you call him cuckold?”

 

“Because he is a cuckold, by Jove!”

 

She came and leaned against the wall again; she was profoundly

interested.

 

“Ah!” she said simply.

 

“What, d’you mean to say you didn’t know that? Why, my dear girl,

his wife’s Fauchery’s mistress. It probably began in the country.

Some time ago, when I was coming here, Fauchery left me, and I

suspect he’s got an assignation with her at his place tonight.

They’ve made up a story about a journey, I fancy.”

 

Overcome with surprise, Nana remained voiceless.

 

“I suspected it,” she said at last, slapping her leg. “I guessed it

by merely looking at her on the highroad that day. To think of its

being possible for an honest woman to deceive her husband, and with

that blackguard Fauchery too! He’ll teach her some pretty things!”

 

“Oh, it isn’t her trial trip,” muttered Daguenet wickedly. “Perhaps

she knows as much about it as he does.”

 

At this Nana gave vent to an indignant exclamation.

 

“Indeed she does! What a nice world! It’s too foul!”

 

“By your leave!” shouted a waiter, laden with bottles, as he

separated them.

 

Daguenet drew her forward again and held her hand for a second or

two. He adopted his crystalline tone of voice, the voice with notes

as sweet as those of a harmonica, which had gained him his success

among the ladies of Nana’s type.

 

“Good-by, darling! You know I love you always.”

 

She disengaged her hand from his, and while a thunder of shouts and

bravos, which made the door in the saloon tremble again, almost

drowned her words she smilingly remarked:

 

“It’s over between us, stupid! But that doesn’t matter. Do come up

one of these days, and we’ll have a chat.”

 

Then she became serious again and in the outraged tones of a

respectable woman:

 

“So he’s a cuckold, is he?” she cried. “Well, that IS a nuisance,

dear boy. They’ve always sickened me, cuckolds have.”

 

When at length she went into the private room she noticed that

Muffat was sitting resignedly on a narrow divan with pale face and

twitching hands. He did not reproach her at all, and she, greatly

moved, was divided between feelings of pity and of contempt. The

poor man! To think of his being so unworthily cheated by a vile

wife! She had a good mind to throw her arms round his neck and

comfort him. But it was only fair all the same! He was a fool with

women, and this would teach him a lesson! Nevertheless, pity

overcame her. She did not get rid of him as she had determined to

do after the oysters had been discussed. They scarcely stayed a

quarter of an hour in the Cafe Anglais, and together they went into

the house in the Boulevard Haussmann. It was then eleven. Before

midnight she would have easily have discovered some means of getting

rid of him kindly.

 

In the anteroom, however, she