Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

the dance. She was at home in that: hand on hip, she

enthroned Venus in the gutter by the pavement side. And the music

seemed made for her plebeian voice—shrill, piping music, with

reminiscences of Saint-Cloud Fair, wheezings of clarinets and

playful trills on the part of the little flutes.

 

Two numbers were again encored. The opening waltz, that waltz with

the naughty rhythmic beat, had returned and swept the gods with it.

Juno, as a peasant woman, caught Jupiter and his little laundress

cleverly and boxed his ears. Diana, surprising Venus in the act of

making an assignation with Mars, made haste to indicate hour and

place to Vulcan, who cried, “I’ve hit on a plan!” The rest of the

act did not seem very clear. The inquiry ended in a final galop

after which Jupiter, breathless, streaming with perspiration and

minus his crown, declared that the little women of Earth were

delicious and that the men were all to blame.

 

The curtain was falling, when certain voices, rising above the storm

of bravos, cried uproariously:

 

“All! All!”

 

Thereupon the curtain rose again; the artistes reappeared hand in

hand. In the middle of the line Nana and Rose Mignon stood side by

side, bowing and curtsying. The audience applauded; the clappers

shouted acclamations. Then little by little the house emptied.

 

“I must go and pay my respects to the Countess Muffat,” said La

Faloise. “Exactly so; you’ll present me,” replied Fauchery; “we’ll

go down afterward.”

 

But it was not easy to get to the first-tier boxes. In the passage

at the top of the stairs there was a crush. In order to get forward

at all among the various groups you had to make yourself small and

to slide along, using your elbows in so doing. Leaning under a

copper lamp, where a jet of gas was burning, the bulky critic was

sitting in judgment on the piece in presence of an attentive circle.

People in passing mentioned his name to each other in muttered

tones. He had laughed the whole act through—that was the rumor

going the round of the passages—nevertheless, he was now very

severe and spoke of taste and morals. Farther off the thin-lipped

critic was brimming over with a benevolence which had an unpleasant

aftertaste, as of milk turned sour.

 

Fauchery glanced along, scrutinizing the boxes through the round

openings in each door. But the Count de Vandeuvres stopped him with

a question, and when he was informed that the two cousins were going

to pay their respects to the Muffats, he pointed out to them box

seven, from which he had just emerged. Then bending down and

whispering in the journalist’s ear:

 

“Tell me, my dear fellow,” he said, “this Nana—surely she’s the

girl we saw one evening at the corner of the Rue de Provence?”

 

“By Jove, you’re right!” cried Fauchery. “I was saying that I had

come across her!”

 

La Faloise presented his cousin to Count Muffat de Beuville, who

appeared very frigid. But on hearing the name Fauchery the countess

raised her head and with a certain reserve complimented the

paragraphist on his articles in the Figaro. Leaning on the velvet-covered support in front of her, she turned half round with a pretty

movement of the shoulders. They talked for a short time, and the

Universal Exhibition was mentioned.

 

“It will be very fine,” said the count, whose square-cut, regular-featured face retained a certain gravity.

 

“I visited the Champ de Mars today and returned thence truly

astonished.”

 

“They say that things won’t be ready in time,” La Faloise ventured

to remark. “There’s infinite confusion there—”

 

But the count interrupted him in his severe voice:

 

“Things will be ready. The emperor desires it.”

 

Fauchery gaily recounted how one day, when he had gone down thither

in search of a subject for an article, he had come near spending all

his time in the aquarium, which was then in course of construction.

The countess smiled. Now and again she glanced down at the body of

the house, raising an arm which a white glove covered to the elbow

and fanning herself with languid hand. The house dozed, almost

deserted. Some gentlemen in the stalls had opened out newspapers,

and ladies received visits quite comfortably, as though they were at

their own homes. Only a well-bred whispering was audible under the

great chandelier, the light of which was softened in the fine cloud

of dust raised by the confused movements of the interval. At the

different entrances men were crowding in order to talk to ladies who

remained seated. They stood there motionless for a few seconds,

craning forward somewhat and displaying the great white bosoms of

their shirt fronts.

 

“We count on you next Tuesday,” said the countess to La Faloise, and

she invited Fauchery, who bowed.

 

Not a word was said of the play; Nana’s name was not once mentioned.

The count was so glacially dignified that he might have been

supposed to be taking part at a sitting of the legislature. In

order to explain their presence that evening he remarked simply that

his father-in-law was fond of the theater. The door of the box must

have remained open, for the Marquis de Chouard, who had gone out in

order to leave his seat to the visitors, was back again. He was

straightening up his tall, old figure. His face looked soft and

white under a broad-brimmed hat, and with his restless eyes he

followed the movements of the women who passed.

 

The moment the countess had given her invitation Fauchery took his

leave, feeling that to talk about the play would not be quite the

thing. La Faloise was the last to quit the box. He had just

noticed the fair-haired Labordette, comfortably installed in the

Count de Vandeuvres’s stage box and chatting at very close quarters

with Blanche de Sivry.

 

“Gad,” he said after rejoining his cousin, “that Labordette knows

all the girls then! He’s with Blanche now.”

 

“Doubtless he knows them all,” replied Fauchery quietly. “What

d’you want to be taken for, my friend?”

 

The passage was somewhat cleared of people, and Fauchery was just

about to go downstairs when Lucy Stewart called him. She was quite

at the other end of the corridor, at the door of her stage box.

They were getting cooked in there, she said, and she took up the

whole corridor in company with Caroline Hequet and her mother, all

three nibbling burnt almonds. A box opener was chatting maternally

with them. Lucy fell out with the journalist. He was a pretty

fellow; to be sure! He went up to see other women and didn’t even

come and ask if they were thirsty! Then, changing the subject:

 

“You know, dear boy, I think Nana very nice.”

 

She wanted him to stay in the stage box for the last act, but he

made his escape, promising to catch them at the door afterward.

Downstairs in front of the theater Fauchery and La Faloise lit

cigarettes. A great gathering blocked the sidewalk, a stream of men

who had come down from the theater steps and were inhaling the fresh

night air in the boulevards, where the roar and battle had

diminished.

 

Meanwhile Mignon had drawn Steiner away to the Cafe des Varietes.

Seeing Nana’s success, he had set to work to talk enthusiastically

about her, all the while observing the banker out of the corners of

his eyes. He knew him well; twice he had helped him to deceive Rose

and then, the caprice being over, had brought him back to her,

faithful and repentant. In the cafe the too numerous crowd of

customers were squeezing themselves round the marble-topped tables.

Several were standing up, drinking in a great hurry. The tall

mirrors reflected this thronging world of heads to infinity and

magnified the narrow room beyond measure with its three chandeliers,

its moleskin-covered seats and its winding staircase draped with

red. Steiner went and seated himself at a table in the first

saloon, which opened full on the boulevard, its doors having been

removed rather early for the time of year. As Fauchery and La

Faloise were passing the banker stopped them.

 

“Come and take a bock with us, eh?” they said.

 

But he was too preoccupied by an idea; he wanted to have a bouquet

thrown to Nana. At last he called a waiter belonging to the cafe,

whom he familiarly addressed as Auguste. Mignon, who was listening,

looked at him so sharply that he lost countenance and stammered out:

 

“Two bouquets, Auguste, and deliver them to the attendant. A

bouquet for each of these ladies! Happy thought, eh?”

 

At the other end of the saloon, her shoulders resting against the

frame of a mirror, a girl, some eighteen years of age at the

outside, was leaning motionless in front of her empty glass as

though she had been benumbed by long and fruitless waiting. Under

the natural curls of her beautiful gray-gold hair a virginal face

looked out at you with velvety eyes, which were at once soft and

candid.

 

She wore a dress of faded green silk and a round hat which blows had

dinted. The cool air of the night made her look very pale.

 

“Egad, there’s Satin,” murmured Fauchery when his eye lit upon her.

 

La Faloise questioned him. Oh dear, yes, she was a streetwalker—

she didn’t count. But she was such a scandalous sort that people

amused themselves by making her talk. And the journalist, raising

his voice:

 

“What are you doing there, Satin?”

 

“I’m bogging,” replied Satin quietly without changing position.

 

The four men were charmed and fell a-laughing. Mignon assured them

that there was no need to hurry; it would take twenty minutes to set

up the scenery for the third act. But the two cousins, having drunk

their beer, wanted to go up into the theater again; the cold was

making itself felt. Then Mignon remained alone with Steiner, put

his elbows on the table and spoke to him at close quarters.

 

“It’s an understood thing, eh? We are to go to her house, and I’m

to introduce you. You know the thing’s quite between ourselves—my

wife needn’t know.”

 

Once more in their places, Fauchery and La Faloise noticed a pretty,

quietly dressed woman in the second tier of boxes. She was with a

serious-looking gentleman, a chief clerk at the office of the

Ministry of the Interior, whom La Faloise knew, having met him at

the Muffats’. As to Fauchery, he was under the impression that her

name was Madame Robert, a lady of honorable repute who had a lover,

only one, and that always a person of respectability.

 

But they had to turn round, for Daguenet was smiling at them. Now

that Nana had had a success he no longer hid himself: indeed, he had

just been scoring triumphs in the passages. By his side was the

young truant schoolboy, who had not quitted his seat, so stupefying

was the state of admiration into which Nana had plunged him. That

was it, he thought; that was the woman! And he blushed as he

thought so and dragged his gloves on and off mechanically. Then

since his neighbor had spoken of Nana, he ventured to question him.

 

“Will you pardon me for asking you, sir, but that lady who is

acting—do you know her?”

 

“Yes, I do a little,” murmured Daguenet with some surprise and

hesitation.

 

“Then you know her address?”

 

The question, addressed as it was to him, came so abruptly that he

felt inclined to respond with a box on the ear.

 

“No,” he said in a dry tone of voice.

 

And with that he turned his