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give in when she met Satin’s eyes

once more. Then she grew inflexible. No, the thing was out of the

question! The count, deeply moved and with a look of suffering, had

risen and was going in quest of his hat. But in the doorway he

remembered the set of sapphires; he could feel the case in his

pocket. He had been wanting to hide it at the bottom of the bed so

that when she entered it before him she should feel it against her

legs. Since dinnertime he had been meditating this little surprise

like a schoolboy, and now, in trouble and anguish of heart at being

thus dismissed, he gave her the case without further ceremony.

 

“What is it?” she queried. “Sapphires? Dear me! Oh yes, it’s that

set. How sweet you are! But I say, my darling, d’you believe it’s

the same one? In the shopwindow it made a much greater show.”

 

That was all the thanks he got, and she let him go away. He noticed

Satin stretched out silent and expectant, and with that he gazed at

both women and without further insistence submitted to his fate and

went downstairs. The hall door had not yet closed when Satin caught

Nana round the waist and danced and sang. Then she ran to the

window.

 

“Oh, just look at the figure he cuts down in the street!” The two

women leaned upon the wrought-iron window rail in the shadow of the

curtains. One o’clock struck. The Avenue de Villiers was deserted,

and its double file of gas lamps stretched away into the darkness of

the damp March night through which great gusts of wind kept

sweeping, laden with rain. There were vague stretches of land on

either side of the road which looked like gulfs of shadow, while

scaffoldings round mansions in process of construction loomed upward

under the dark sky. They laughed uncontrollably as they watched

Muffat’s rounded back and glistening shadow disappearing along the

wet sidewalk into the glacial, desolate plains of new Paris. But

Nana silenced Satin.

 

“Take care; there are the police!”

 

Thereupon they smothered their laughter and gazed in secret fear at

two dark figures walking with measured tread on the opposite side of

the avenue. Amid all her luxurious surroundings, amid all the royal

splendors of the woman whom all must obey, Nana still stood in

horror of the police and did not like to hear them mentioned any

oftener than death. She felt distinctly unwell when a policeman

looked up at her house. One never knew what such people might do!

They might easily take them for loose women if they heard them

laughing at that hour of the night. Satin, with a little shudder,

had squeezed herself up against Nana. Nevertheless, the pair stayed

where they were and were soon interested in the approach of a

lantern, the light of which danced over the puddles in the road. It

was an old ragpicker woman who was busy raking in the gutters.

Satin recognized her.

 

“Dear me,” she exclaimed, “it’s Queen Pomare with her wickerwork

shawl!”

 

And while a gust of wind lashed the fine rain in their faces she

told her beloved the story of Queen Pomare. Oh, she had been a

splendid girl once upon a time: all Paris had talked of her beauty.

And such devilish go and such cheek! Why, she led the men about

like dogs, and great people stood blubbering on her stairs! Now she

was in the habit of getting tipsy, and the women round about would

make her drink absinthe for the sake of a laugh, after which the

street boys would throw stones at her and chase her. In fact, it

was a regular smashup; the queen had tumbled into the mud! Nana

listened, feeling cold all over.

 

“You shall see,” added Satin.

 

She whistled a man’s whistle, and the ragpicker, who was then below

the window, lifted her head and showed herself by the yellow flare

of her lantern. Framed among rags, a perfect bundle of them, a face

looked out from under a tattered kerchief—a blue, seamed face with

a toothless, cavernous mouth and fiery bruises where the eyes should

be. And Nana, seeing the frightful old woman, the wanton drowned in

drink, had a sudden fit of recollection and saw far back amid the

shadows of consciousness the vision of Chamont—Irma d’Anglars, the

old harlot crowned with years and honors, ascending the steps in

front of her chateau amid abjectly reverential villagers. Then as

Satin whistled again, making game of the old hag, who could not see

her:

 

“Do leave off; there are the police!” she murmured in changed tones.

“In with us, quick, my pet!”

 

The measured steps were returning, and they shut the window.

Turning round again, shivering, and with the damp of night on her

hair, Nana was momentarily astounded at sight of her drawing room.

It seemed as though she had forgotten it and were entering an

unknown chamber. So warm, so full of perfume, was the air she

encountered that she experienced a sense of delighted surprise. The

heaped-up wealth of the place, the Old World furniture, the fabrics

of silk and gold, the ivory, the bronzes, were slumbering in the

rosy light of the lamps, while from the whole of the silent house a

rich feeling of great luxury ascended, the luxury of the solemn

reception rooms, of the comfortable, ample dining room, of the vast

retired staircase, with their soft carpets and seats. Her

individuality, with its longing for domination and enjoyment and its

desire to possess everything that she might destroy everything, was

suddenly increased. Never before had she felt so profoundly the

puissance of her sex. She gazed slowly round and remarked with an

expression of grave philosophy:

 

“Ah well, all the same, one’s jolly well right to profit by things

when one’s young!”

 

But now Satin was rolling on the bearskins in the bedroom and

calling her.

 

“Oh, do come! Do come!”

 

Nana undressed in the dressing room, and in order to be quicker

about it she took her thick fell of blonde hair in both hands and

began shaking it above the silver wash hand basin, while a downward

hail of long hairpins rang a little chime on the shining metal.

CHAPTER XI

One Sunday the race for the Grand Prix de Paris was being run in the

Bois de Boulogne beneath skies rendered sultry by the first heats of

June. The sun that morning had risen amid a mist of dun-colored

dust, but toward eleven o’clock, just when the carriages were

reaching the Longchamps course, a southerly wind had swept away the

clouds; long streamers of gray vapor were disappearing across the

sky, and gaps showing an intense blue beyond were spreading from one

end of the horizon to the other. In the bright bursts of sunlight

which alternated with the clouds the whole scene shone again, from

the field which was gradually filling with a crowd of carriages,

horsemen and pedestrians, to the still-vacant course, where the

judge’s box stood, together with the posts and the masts for

signaling numbers, and thence on to the five symmetrical stands of

brickwork and timber, rising gallery upon gallery in the middle of

the weighing enclosure opposite. Beyond these, bathed in the light

of noon, lay the vast level plain, bordered with little trees and

shut in to the westward by the wooded heights of Saint-Cloud and the

Suresnes, which, in their turn, were dominated by the severe

outlines of Mont-Valerien.

 

Nana, as excited as if the Grand Prix were going to make her

fortune, wanted to take up a position by the railing next the

winning post. She had arrived very early—she was, in fact, one of

the first to come—in a landau adorned with silver and drawn, a la

Daumont, by four splendid white horses. This landau was a present

from Count Muffat. When she had made her appearance at the entrance

to the field with two postilions jogging blithely on the near horses

and two footmen perching motionless behind the carriage, the people

had rushed to look as though a queen were passing. She sported the

blue and white colors of the Vandeuvres stable, and her dress was

remarkable. It consisted of a little blue silk bodice and tunic,

which fitted closely to the body and bulged out enormously behind

her waist, thereby bringing her lower limbs into bold relief in such

a manner as to be extremely noticeable in that epoch of voluminous

skirts. Then there was a white satin dress with white satin sleeves

and a sash worn crosswise over the shoulders, the whole ornamented

with silver guipure which shone in the sun. In addition to this, in

order to be still more like a jockey, she had stuck a blue toque

with a white feather jauntily upon her chignon, the fair tresses

from which flowed down beyond her shoulders and resembled an

enormous russet pigtail.

 

Twelve struck. The public would have to wait more than three hours

for the Grand Prix to be run. When the landau had drawn up beside

the barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she

were in her own house. A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and

Louiset with her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering

with cold despite the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of

ribbons and laces the child’s poor little face looked waxen and dumb

and white in the open air. Meanwhile the young woman, without

troubling about the people near her, talked at the top of her voice

with Georges and Philippe Hugon, who were seated opposite on the

front seat among such a mountain of bouquets of white roses and blue

myosotis that they were buried up to their shoulders.

 

“Well then,” she was saying, “as he bored me to death, I showed him

the door. And now it’s two days that he’s been sulking.”

 

She was talking of Muffat, but she took care not to confess to the

young men the real reason for this first quarrel, which was that one

evening he had found a man’s hat in her bedroom. She had indeed

brought home a passer-by out of sheer ennui—a silly infatuation.

 

“You have no idea how funny he is,” she continued, growing merry

over the particulars she was giving. “He’s a regular bigot at

bottom, so he says his prayers every evening. Yes, he does. He’s

under the impression I notice nothing because I go to bed first so

as not to be in his way, but I watch him out of the corner of my

eye. Oh, he jaws away, and then he crosses himself when he turns

round to step over me and get to the inside of the bed.”

 

“Jove, it’s sly,” muttered Philippe. “That’s what happens before,

but afterward, what then?”

 

She laughed merrily.

 

“Yes, just so, before and after! When I’m going to sleep I hear him

jawing away again. But the biggest bore of all is that we can’t

argue about anything now without his growing ‘pi.’ I’ve always been

religious. Yes, chaff as much as you like; that won’t prevent me

believing what I do believe! Only he’s too much of a nuisance: he

blubbers; he talks about remorse. The day before yesterday, for

instance, he had a regular fit of it after our usual row, and I

wasn’t the least bit reassured when all was over.”

 

But she broke off, crying out:

 

“Just look at the Mignons arriving. Dear me, they’ve brought the

children! Oh, how those little chaps are dressed up!”

 

The Mignons were in a landau of severe hue; there was something

substantially luxurious about their turnout, suggesting rich

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