Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

CHAPTER VIII

We are in a little set of lodgings on the fourth floor in the Rue

Veron at Montmartre. Nana and Fontan have invited a few friends to

cut their Twelfth-Night cake with them. They are giving their

housewarming, though they have been only three days settled.

 

They had no fixed intention of keeping house together, but the whole

thing had come about suddenly in the first glow of the honeymoon.

After her grand blowup, when she had turned the count and the banker

so vigorously out of doors, Nana felt the world crumbling about her

feet. She estimated the situation at a glance; the creditors would

swoop down on her anteroom, would mix themselves up with her love

affairs and threaten to sell her little all unless she continued to

act sensibly. Then, too, there would be no end of disputes and

carking anxieties if she attempted to save her furniture from their

clutches. And so she preferred giving up everything. Besides, the

flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was plaguing her to death. It was

so stupid with its great gilded rooms! In her access of tenderness

for Fontan she began dreaming of a pretty little bright chamber.

Indeed, she returned to the old ideals of the florist days, when her

highest ambition was to have a rosewood cupboard with a plate-glass

door and a bed hung with blue “reps.” In the course of two days she

sold what she could smuggle out of the house in the way of

knickknacks and jewelry and then disappeared, taking with her ten

thousand francs and never even warning the porter’s wife. It was a

plunge into the dark, a merry spree; never a trace was left behind.

In this way she would prevent the men from coming dangling after

her. Fontain was very nice. He did not say no to anything but just

let her do as she liked. Nay, he even displayed an admirable spirit

of comradeship. He had, on his part, nearly seven thousand francs,

and despite the fact that people accused him of stinginess, he

consented to add them to the young woman’s ten thousand. The sum

struck them as a solid foundation on which to begin housekeeping.

And so they started away, drawing from their common hoard, in order

to hire and furnish the two rooms in the Rue Veron, and sharing

everything together like old friends. In the early days it was

really delicious.

 

On Twelfth Night Mme Lerat and Louiset were the first to arrive. As

Fontan had not yet come home, the old lady ventured to give

expression to her fears, for she trembled to see her niece

renouncing the chance of wealth.

 

“Oh, Aunt, I love him so dearly!” cried Nana, pressing her hands to

her heart with the prettiest of gestures.

 

This phrase produced an extraordinary effect on Mme Lerat, and tears

came into her eyes.

 

“That’s true,” she said with an air of conviction. “Love before all

things!”

 

And with that she went into raptures over the prettiness of the

rooms. Nana took her to see the bedroom, the parlor and the very

kitchen. Gracious goodness, it wasn’t a vast place, but then, they

had painted it afresh and put up new wallpapers. Besides, the sun

shone merrily into it during the daytime.

 

Thereupon Mme Lerat detained the young woman in the bedroom, while

Louiset installed himself behind the charwoman in the kitchen in

order to watch a chicken being roasted. If, said Mme Lerat, she

permitted herself to say what was in her mind, it was because Zoe

had just been at her house. Zoe had stayed courageously in the

breach because she was devoted to her mistress. Madame would pay

her later on; she was in no anxiety about that! And amid the

breakup of the Boulevard Haussmann establishment it was she who

showed the creditors a bold front; it was she who conducted a

dignified retreat, saving what she could from the wreck and telling

everyone that her mistress was traveling. She never once gave them

her address. Nay, through fear of being followed, she even deprived

herself of the pleasure of calling on Madame. Nevertheless, that

same morning she had run round to Mme Lerat’s because matters were

taking a new turn. The evening before creditors in the persons of

the upholsterer, the charcoal merchant and the laundress had put in

an appearance and had offered to give Madame an extension of time.

Nay, they had even proposed to advance Madame a very considerable

amount if only Madame would return to her flat and conduct herself

like a sensible person. The aunt repeated Zoe’s words. Without

doubt there was a gentleman behind it all.

 

“I’ll never consent!” declared Nana in great disgust. “Ah, they’re

a pretty lot those tradesmen! Do they think I’m to be sold so that

they can get their bills paid? Why, look here, I’d rather die of

hunger than deceive Fontan.”

 

“That’s what I said,” averred Mme Lerat. “‘My niece,’ I said, ‘is

too noblehearted!’”

 

Nana, however, was much vexed to learn that La Mignotte was being

sold and that Labordette was buying it for Caroline Hequet at an

absurdly low price. It made her angry with that clique. Oh, they

were a regular cheap lot, in spite of their airs and graces! Yes,

by Jove, she was worth more than the whole lot of them!

 

“They can have their little joke out,” she concluded, “but money

will never give them true happiness! Besides, you know, Aunt, I

don’t even know now whether all that set are alive or not. I’m much

too happy.”

 

At that very moment Mme Maloir entered, wearing one of those hats of

which she alone understood the shape. It was delightful meeting

again. Mme Maloir explained that magnificence frightened her and

that NOW, from time to time, she would come back for her game of

bezique. A second visit was paid to the different rooms in the

lodgings, and in the kitchen Nana talked of economy in the presence

of the charwoman, who was basting the fowl, and said that a servant

would have cost too much and that she was herself desirous of

looking after things. Louiset was gazing beatifically at the

roasting process.

 

But presently there was a loud outburst of voices. Fontan had come

in with Bosc and Prulliere, and the company could now sit down to

table. The soup had been already served when Nana for the third

time showed off the lodgings.

 

“Ah, dear children, how comfortable you are here!” Bosc kept

repeating, simply for the sake of pleasing the chums who were

standing the dinner. At bottom the subject of the “nook,” as he

called it, nowise touched him.

 

In the bedroom he harped still more vigorously on the amiable note.

Ordinarily he was wont to treat women like cattle, and the idea of a

man bothering himself about one of the dirty brutes excited within

him the only angry feelings of which, in his comprehensive, drunken

disdain of the universe, he was still capable.

 

“Ah, ah, the villains,” he continued with a wink, “they’ve done this

on the sly. Well, you were certainly right. It will be charming,

and, by heaven, we’ll come and see you!”

 

But when Louiset arrived on the scene astride upon a broomstick,

Prulliere chuckled spitefully and remarked:

 

“Well, I never! You’ve got a baby already?”

 

This struck everybody as very droll, and Mme Lerat and Mme Maloir

shook with laughter. Nana, far from being vexed, laughed tenderly

and said that unfortunately this was not the case. She would very

much have liked it, both for the little one’s sake and for her own,

but perhaps one would arrive all the same. Fontan, in his role of

honest citizen, took Louiset in his arms and began playing with him

and lisping.

 

“Never mind! It loves its daddy! Call me ‘Papa,’ you little

blackguard!”

 

“Papa, Papa!” stammered the child.

 

The company overwhelmed him with caresses, but Bosc was bored and

talked of sitting down to table. That was the only serious business

in life. Nana asked her guests’ permission to put Louiset’s chair

next her own. The dinner was very merry, but Bosc suffered from the

near neighborhood of the child, from whom he had to defend his

plate. Mme Lerat