Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

retired

tradespeople. Rose was in a gray silk gown trimmed with red knots

and with puffs; she was smiling happily at the joyous behavior of

Henri and Charles, who sat on the front seat, looking awkward in

their ill-fitting collegians’ tunics. But when the landau had drawn

up by the rails and she perceived Nana sitting in triumph among her

bouquets, with her four horses and her liveries, she pursed up her

lips, sat bolt upright and turned her head away. Mignon, on the

other hand, looking the picture of freshness and gaiety, waved her a

salutation. He made it a matter of principle to keep out of

feminine disagreements.

 

“By the by,” Nana resumed, “d’you know a little old man who’s very

clean and neat and has bad teeth—a Monsieur Venot? He came to see

me this morning.”

 

“Monsieur Venot?” said Georges in great astonishment. “It’s

impossible! Why, the man’s a Jesuit!”

 

“Precisely; I spotted that. Oh, you have no idea what our

conversation was like! It was just funny! He spoke to me about the

count, about his divided house, and begged me to restore a family

its happiness. He was very polite and very smiling for the matter

of that. Then I answered to the effect that I wanted nothing

better, and I undertook to reconcile the count and his wife. You

know it’s not humbug. I should be delighted to see them all happy

again, the poor things! Besides, it would be a relief to me for

there are days—yes, there are days—when he bores me to death.”

 

The weariness of the last months escaped her in this heartfelt

outburst. Moreover, the count appeared to be in big money

difficulties; he was anxious and it seemed likely that the bill

which Labordette had put his name to would not be met.

 

“Dear me, the countess is down yonder,” said Georges, letting his

gaze wander over the stands.

 

“Where, where?” cried Nana. “What eyes that baby’s got! Hold my

sunshade, Philippe.”

 

But with a quick forward dart Georges had outstripped his brother.

It enchanted him to be holding the blue silk sunshade with its

silver fringe. Nana was scanning the scene through a huge pair of

field glasses.

 

“Ah yes! I see her,” she said at length. “In the right-hand stand,

near a pillar, eh? She’s in mauve, and her daughter in white by her

side. Dear me, there’s Daguenet going to bow to them.”

 

Thereupon Philippe talked of Daguenet’s approaching marriage with

that lath of an Estelle. It was a settled matter—the banns were

being published. At first the countess had opposed it, but the

count, they said, had insisted. Nana smiled.

 

“I know, I know,” she murmured. “So much the better for Paul. He’s

a nice boy—he deserves it”

 

And leaning toward Louiset:

 

“You’re enjoying yourself, eh? What a grave face!”

 

The child never smiled. With a very old expression he was gazing at

all those crowds, as though the sight of them filled him with

melancholy reflections. Bijou, chased from the skirts of the young

woman who was moving about a great deal, had come to nestle,

shivering, against the little fellow.

 

Meanwhile the field was filling up. Carriages, a compact,

interminable file of them, were continually arriving through the

Porte de la Cascade. There were big omnibuses such as the Pauline,

which had started from the Boulevard des Italiens, freighted with

its fifty passengers, and was now going to draw up to the right of

the stands. Then there were dogcarts, victorias, landaus, all

superbly well turned out, mingled with lamentable cabs which jolted

along behind sorry old hacks, and four-in-hands, sending along their

four horses, and mail coaches, where the masters sat on the seats

above and left the servants to take care of the hampers of champagne

inside, and “spiders,” the immense wheels of which were a flash of

glittering steel, and light tandems, which looked as delicately

formed as the works of a clock and slipped along amid a peal of

little bells. Every few seconds an equestrian rode by, and a swarm

of people on foot rushed in a scared way among the carriages. On

the green the far-off rolling sound which issued from the avenues in

the Bois died out suddenly in dull rustlings, and now nothing was

audible save the hubbub of the ever-increasing crowds and cries and

calls and the crackings of whips in the open. When the sun, amid

bursts of wind, reappeared at the edge of a cloud, a long ray of

golden light ran across the field, lit up the harness and the

varnished coach panels and touched the ladies’ dresses with fire,

while amid the dusty radiance the coachmen, high up on their boxes,

flamed beside their great whips.

 

Labordette was getting out of an open carriage where Gaga, Clarisse

and Blanche de Sivry had kept a place for him. As he was hurrying

to cross the course and enter the weighing enclosure Nana got

Georges to call him. Then when he came up:

 

“What’s the betting on me?” she asked laughingly.

 

She referred to the filly Nana, the Nana who had let herself be

shamefully beaten in the race for the Prix de Diane and had not even

been placed in April and May last when she ran for the Prix des Cars

and the Grande Poule des Produits, both of which had been gained by

Lusignan, the other horse in the Vandeuvres stable. Lusignan had

all at once become prime favorite, and since yesterday he had been

currently taken at two to one.

 

“Always fifty to one against,” replied Labordette.

 

“The deuce! I’m not worth much,” rejoined Nana, amused by the jest.

“I don’t back myself then; no, by jingo! I don’t put a single louis

on myself.”

 

Labordette went off again in a great hurry, but she recalled him.

She wanted some advice. Since he kept in touch with the world of

trainers and jockeys he had special information about various

stables. His prognostications had come true a score of times

already, and people called him the “King of Tipsters.”

 

“Let’s see, what horses ought I to choose?” said the young woman.

“What’s the betting on the Englishman?”

 

“Spirit? Three to one against. Valerio II, the same. As to the

others, they’re laying twenty-five to one against Cosinus, forty to

one against Hazard, thirty to one against Bourn, thirty-five to one

against Pichenette, ten to one against Frangipane.”

 

“No, I don’t bet on the Englishman, I don’t. I’m a patriot.

Perhaps Valerio II would do, eh? The Duc de Corbreuse was beaming a

little while ago. Well, no, after all! Fifty louis on Lusignan;

what do you say to that?”

 

Labordette looked at her with a singular expression. She leaned

forward and asked him questions in a low voice, for she was aware

that Vandeuvres commissioned him to arrange matters with the

bookmakers so as to be able to bet the more easily. Supposing him

to have got to know something, he might quite well tell it her. But

without entering into explanations Labordette persuaded her to trust

to his sagacity. He would put on her fifty louis for her as he

might think best, and she would not repent of his arrangement.

 

“All the horses you like!” she cried gaily, letting him take his

departure, “but no Nana; she’s a jade!”

 

There was a burst of uproarious laughter in the carriage. The young

men thought her sally very amusing, while Louiset in his ignorance

lifted his pale eyes to his mother’s face, for her loud exclamations

surprised him. However, there was no escape for Labordette as yet.

Rose Mignon had made a sign to him and was now giving him her

commands while he wrote figures in a notebook. Then Clarisse and

Gaga called him back in order to change their bets, for they had

heard things said in the crowd, and now they didn’t want to have

anything more to do with Valerio II and were choosing Lusignan. He

wrote down their wishes with an impassible expression and at length

managed to escape. He could be seen disappearing between two of the

stands on the other side of the course.

 

Carriages were still arriving. They were by this time drawn up five

rows deep, and a dense mass of them spread along the barriers,

checkered by the light coats of white horses. Beyond them other

carriages stood about in comparative isolation, looking as though

they had stuck fast in the grass. Wheels and harness were here,

there and everywhere, according as the conveyances to which they

belonged were side by side, at an angle, across and across or head

to head. Over such spaces of turf as still remained unoccupied

cavaliers kept trotting, and black groups of pedestrians moved

continually. The scene resembled the field where a fair is being

held, and above it all, amid the confused motley of the crowd, the

drinking booths raised their gray canvas roofs which gleamed white

in the sunshine. But a veritable tumult, a mob, an eddy of hats,

surged round the several bookmakers, who stood in open carriages

gesticulating like itinerant dentists while their odds were pasted

up on tall boards beside them.

 

“All the same, it’s stupid not to know on what horse one’s betting,”

Nana was remarking. “I really must risk some louis in person.”

 

She had stood up to select a bookmaker with a decent expression of

face but forgot what she wanted on perceiving a perfect crowd of her

acquaintance. Besides the Mignons, besides Gaga, Clarisse and

Blanche, there were present, to the right and left, behind and in

the middle of the mass of carriages now hemming in her landau, the

following ladies: Tatan Nene and Maria Blond in a victoria, Caroline

Hequet with her mother and two gentlemen in an open carriage, Louise

Violaine quite alone, driving a little basket chaise decked with

orange and green ribbons, the colors of the Mechain stables, and

finally, Lea de Horn on the lofty seat of a mail coach, where a band

of young men were making a great din. Farther off, in a HUIT

RESSORTS of aristocratic appearance, Lucy Stewart, in a very simple

black silk dress, sat, looking distinguished beside a tall young man

in the uniform of a naval cadet. But what most astounded Nana was

the arrival of Simonne in a tandem which Steiner was driving, while

a footman sat motionless, with folded arms, behind them. She looked

dazzling in white satin striped with yellow and was covered with

diamonds from waist to hat. The banker, on his part, was handling a

tremendous whip and sending along his two horses, which were

harnessed tandemwise, the leader being a little warm-colored

chestnut with a mouselike trot, the shaft horse a big brown bay, a

stepper, with a fine action.

 

“Deuce take it!” said Nana. “So that thief Steiner has cleared the

Bourse again, has he? I say, isn’t Simonne a swell! It’s too much

of a good thing; he’ll get into the clutches of the law!”

 

Nevertheless, she exchanged greetings at a distance. Indeed, she

kept waving her hand and smiling, turning round and forgetting no

one in her desire to be seen by everybody. At the same time she

continued chatting.

 

“It’s her son Lucy’s got in tow! He’s charming in his uniform.

That’s why she’s looking so grand, of course! You know she’s afraid

of him and that she passes herself off as an actress. Poor young

man, I pity him all the same! He seems quite unsuspicious.”

 

“Bah,” muttered Philippe, laughing, “she’ll be able to find him an

heiress in the country when she likes.”

 

Nana was silent, for she had just noticed the Tricon amid