Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

bored him too. She was in a melting mood and kept

whispering to him all sorts of mysterious things about gentlemen of

the first fashion who were still running after Nana. Twice he had

to push away her knee, for she was positively invading him in her

gushing, tearful mood. Prulliere behaved with great incivility

toward Mme Maloir and did not once help her to anything. He was

entirely taken up with Nana and looked annoyed at seeing her with

Fontan. Besides, the turtle doves were kissing so excessively as to

be becoming positive bores. Contrary to all known rules, they had

elected to sit side by side.

 

“Devil take it! Why don’t you eat? You’ve got plenty of time ahead

of you!” Bosc kept repeating with his mouth full. “Wait till we

are gone!”

 

But Nana could not restrain herself. She was in a perfect ecstasy

of love. Her face was as full of blushes as an innocent young

girl’s, and her looks and her laughter seemed to overflow with

tenderness. Gazing on Fontan, she overwhelmed him with pet names—

“my doggie, my old bear, my kitten”—and whenever he passed her the

water or the salt she bent forward and kissed him at random on lips,

eyes, nose or ear. Then if she met with reproof she would return to

the attack with the cleverest maneuvers and with infinite

submissiveness and the supple cunning of a beaten cat would catch

hold of his hand when no one was looking, in order to kiss it again.

It seemed she must be touching something belonging to him. As to

Fontan, he gave himself airs and let himself be adored with the

utmost condescension. His great nose sniffed with entirely sensual

content; his goat face, with its quaint, monstrous ugliness,

positively glowed in the sunlight of devoted adoration lavished upon

him by that superb woman who was so fair and so plump of limb.

Occasionally he gave a kiss in return, as became a man who is having

all the enjoyment and is yet willing to behave prettily.

 

“Well, you’re growing maddening!” cried Prulliere. “Get away from

her, you fellow there!”

 

And he dismissed Fontan and changed covers, in order to take his

place at Nana’s side. The company shouted and applauded at this and

gave vent to some stiffish epigrammatic witticisms. Fontan

counterfeited despair and assumed the quaint expression of Vulcan

crying for Venus. Straightway Prulliere became very gallant, but

Nana, whose foot he was groping for under the table, caught him a

slap to make him keep quiet. No, no, she was certainly not going to

become his mistress. A month ago she had begun to take a fancy to

him because of his good looks, but now she detested him. If he

pinched her again under pretense of picking up her napkin, she would

throw her glass in his face!

 

Nevertheless, the evening passed off well. The company had

naturally begun talking about the Varietes. Wasn’t that cad of a

Bordenave going to go off the hooks after all? His nasty diseases

kept reappearing and causing him such suffering that you couldn’t

come within six yards of him nowadays. The day before during

rehearsal he had been incessantly yelling at Simonne. There was a

fellow whom the theatrical people wouldn’t shed many tears over.

Nana announced that if he were to ask her to take another part she

would jolly well send him to the rightabout. Moreover, she began

talking of leaving the stage; the theater was not to compare with

her home. Fontan, who was not in the present piece or in that which

was then being rehearsed, also talked big about the joy of being

entirely at liberty and of passing his evenings with his feet on the

fender in the society of his little pet. And at this the rest

exclaimed delightedly, treating their entertainers as lucky people

and pretending to envy their felicity.

 

The Twelfth-Night cake had been cut and handed round. The bean had

fallen to the lot of Mme Lerat, who popped it into Bosc’s glass.

Whereupon there were shouts of “The king drinks! The king drinks!”

Nana took advantage of this outburst of merriment and went and put

her arms round Fontan’s neck again, kissing him and whispering in

his ear. But Prulliere, laughing angrily, as became a pretty man,

declared that they were not playing the game. Louiset, meanwhile,

slept soundly on two chairs. It was nearing one o’clock when the

company separated, shouting au revoir as they went downstairs.

 

For three weeks the existence of the pair of lovers was really

charming. Nana fancied she was returning to those early days when

her first silk dress had caused her infinite delight. She went out

little and affected a life of solitude and simplicity. One morning

early, when she had gone down to buy fish IN PROPRIA PERSONA in La

Rouchefoucauld Market, she was vastly surprised to meet her old hair

dresser Francis face to face. His getup was as scrupulously careful

as ever: he wore the finest linen, and his frock coat was beyond

reproach; in fact, Nana felt ashamed that he should see her in the

street with a dressing jacket and disordered hair and down-at-heel

shoes. But he had the tact, if possible, to intensify his

politeness toward her. He did not permit himself a single inquiry

and affected to believe that Madame was at present on her travels.

Ah, but Madame had rendered many persons unhappy when she decided to

travel! All the world had suffered loss. The young woman, however,

ended by asking him questions, for a sudden fit of curiosity had

made her forget her previous embarrassment. Seeing that the crowd

was jostling them, she pushed him into a doorway and, still holding

her little basket in one hand, stood chatting in front of him. What

were people saying about her high jinks? Good heavens! The ladies

to whom he went said this and that and all sorts of things. In

fact, she had made a great noise and was enjoying a real boom: And

Steiner? M. Steiner was in a very bad way, would make an ugly

finish if he couldn’t hit on some new commercial operation. And

Daguenet? Oh, HE was getting on swimmingly. M. Daguenet was

settling down. Nana, under the exciting influence of various

recollections, was just opening her mouth with a view to a further

examination when she felt it would be awkward to utter Muffat’s

name. Thereupon Francis smiled and spoke instead of her. As to

Monsieur le Comte, it was all a great pity, so sad had been his

sufferings since Madame’s departure.

 

He had been like a soul in pain—you might have met him wherever

Madame was likely to be found. At last M. Mignon had come across

him and had taken him home to his own place. This piece of news

caused Nana to laugh a good deal. But her laughter was not of the

easiest kind.

 

“Ah, he’s with Rose now,” she said. “Well then, you must know,

Francis, I’ve done with him! Oh, the canting thing! It’s learned

some pretty habits—can’t even go fasting for a week now! And to

think that he used to swear he wouldn’t have any woman after me!”

 

She was raging inwardly.

 

“My leavings, if you please!” she continued. “A pretty Johnnie for

Rose to go and treat herself to! Oh, I understand it all now: she

wanted to have her revenge because I got that brute of a Steiner

away from her. Ain’t it sly to get a man to come to her when I’ve

chucked him out of doors?”

 

“M. Mignon doesn’t tell that tale,” said the hairdresser.

“According to his account, it was Monsieur le Comte who chucked you

out. Yes, and in a pretty disgusting way too—with a kick on the

bottom!”

 

Nana became suddenly very pale.

 

“Eh, what?” she cried. “With a kick on my bottom? He’s going too

far, he is! Look here, my little friend, it was I who threw him

downstairs, the cuckold, for he is a cuckold, I must inform you.

His countess is making him one with every man she meets—yes, even

with that good-for-nothing of a Fauchery. And that Mignon, who goes

loafing about the pavement in behalf of his harridan of a wife, whom

nobody wants because she’s so lean! What a foul lot! What a foul

lot!”

 

She was choking, and she paused for breath

 

“Oh, that’s what they say, is it? Very well, my little Francis,

I’ll go and look ‘em up, I will. Shall you and I go to them at

once? Yes, I’ll go, and we’ll see whether they will have the cheek

to go telling about kicks on the bottom. Kick’s! I never took one

from anybody! And nobody’s ever going to strike me—d’ye see?—for

I’d smash the man who laid a finger on me!”

 

Nevertheless, the storm subsided at last. After all, they might

jolly well what they liked! She looked upon them as so much filth

underfoot! It would have soiled her to bother about people like

that. She had a conscience of her own, she had! And Francis,

seeing her thus giving herself away, what with her housewife’s

costume and all, became familiar and, at parting, made so bold as to

give her some good advice. It was wrong of her to be sacrificing

everything for the sake of an infatuation; such infatuations ruined

existence. She listened to him with bowed head while he spoke to

her with a pained expression, as became a connoisseur who could not

bear to see so fine a girl making such a hash of things.

 

“Well, that’s my affair,” she said at last “Thanks all the same,

dear boy.” She shook his hand, which despite his perfect dress was

always a little greasy, and then went off to buy her fish. During

the day that story about the kick on the bottom occupied her

thoughts. She even spoke about it to Fontan and again posed as a

sturdy woman who was not going to stand the slightest flick from

anybody. Fontan, as became a philosophic spirit, declared that all

men of fashion were beasts whom it was one’s duty to despise. And

from that moment forth Nana was full of very real disdain.

 

That same evening they went to the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre to see

a little woman of Fontan’s acquaintance make her debut in a part of

some ten lines. It was close on one o’clock when they once more

trudged up the heights of Montmartre. They had purchased a cake, a

“mocha,” in the Rue de la Chausseed’Antin, and they ate it in bed,

seeing that the night was not warm and it was not worth while

lighting a fire. Sitting up side by side, with the bedclothes

pulled up in front and the pillows piled up behind, they supped and

talked about the little woman. Nana thought her plain and lacking

in style. Fontan, lying on his stomach, passed up the pieces of

cake which had been put between the candle and the matches on the

edge of the night table. But they ended by quarreling.

 

“Oh, just to think of it!” cried Nana. “She’s got eyes like gimlet

holes, and her hair’s the color of tow.”

 

“Hold your tongue, do!” said Fontan. “She has a superb head of hair

and such fire in her looks! It’s lovely the way you women always

tear each other to pieces!”

 

He looked annoyed.

 

“Come now, we’ve had enough of it!” he said at last in savage tones.

“You know I don’t like being bored. Let’s go to sleep, or things’ll

take a nasty turn.”

 

And he blew out the candle, but Nana was furious and went on

talking. She