Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

ordinarily rode Nana? Besides, they were astonished to

see him confiding Lusignan to this man Gresham, who, according to La

Faloise, never got a place. But all these remarks were swallowed up

in jokes, contradictions and an extraordinarily noisy confusion of

opinions. In order to kill time the company once more set

themselves to drain bottles of champagne. Presently a whisper ran

round, and the different groups opened outward. It was Vandeuvres.

Nana affected vexation.

 

“Dear me, you’re a nice fellow to come at this time of day! Why,

I’m burning to see the enclosure.”

 

“Well, come along then,” he said; “there’s still time. You’ll take

a stroll round with me. I just happen to have a permit for a lady

about me.”

 

And he led her off on his arm while she enjoyed the jealous glances

with which Lucy, Caroline and the others followed her. The young

Hugons and La Faloise remained in the landau behind her retreating

figure and continued to do the honors of her champagne. She shouted

to them that she would return immediately.

 

But Vandeuvres caught sight of Labordette and called him, and there

was an interchange of brief sentences.

 

“You’ve scraped everything up?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“To what amount?”

 

“Fifteen hundred louis—pretty well all over the place.”

 

As Nana was visibly listening, and that with much curiosity, they

held their tongues. Vandeuvres was very nervous, and he had those

same clear eyes, shot with little flames, which so frightened her

the night he spoke of burning himself and his horses together. As

they crossed over the course she spoke low and familiarly.

 

“I say, do explain this to me. Why are the odds on your filly

changing?”

 

He trembled, and this sentence escaped him:

 

“Ah, they’re talking, are they? What a set those betting men are!

When I’ve got the favorite they all throw themselves upon him, and

there’s no chance for me. After that, when an outsider’s asked for,

they give tongue and yell as though they were being skinned.”

 

“You ought to tell me what’s going to happen—I’ve made my bets,”

she reioined. “Has Nana a chance?”

 

A sudden, unreasonable burst of anger overpowered him.

 

“Won’t you deuced well let me be, eh? Every horse has a chance.

The odds are shortening because, by Jove, people have taken the

horse. Who, I don’t know. I should prefer leaving you if you must

needs badger me with your idiotic questions.”

 

Such a tone was not germane either to his temperament or his habits,

and Nana was rather surprised than wounded. Besides, he was ashamed

of himself directly afterward, and when she begged him in a dry

voice to behave politely he apologized. For some time past he had

suffered from such sudden changes of temper. No one in the Paris of

pleasure or of society was ignorant of the fact that he was playing

his last trump card today. If his horses did not win, if, moreover,

they lost him the considerable sums wagered upon them, it would mean

utter disaster and collapse for him, and the bulwark of his credit

and the lofty appearance which, though undermined, he still kept up,

would come ruining noisily down. Moreover, no one was ignorant of

the fact that Nana was the devouring siren who had finished him off,

who had been the last to attack his crumbling fortunes and to sweep

up what remained of them. Stories were told of wild whims and

fancies, of gold scattered to the four winds, of a visit to Baden-Baden, where she had not left him enough to pay the hotel bill, of a

handful of diamonds cast on the fire during an evening of

drunkenness in order to see whether they would burn like coal.

Little by little her great limbs and her coarse, plebeian way of

laughing had gained complete mastery over this elegant, degenerate

son of an ancient race. At that time he was risking his all, for he

had been so utterly overpowered by his taste for ordure and

stupidity as to have even lost the vigor of his skepticism. A week

before Nana had made him promise her a chateau on the Norman coast

between Havre and Trouville, and now he was staking the very

foundations of his honor on the fulfillment of his word. Only she

was getting on his nerves, and he could have beaten her, so stupid

did he feel her to be.

 

The man at the gate, not daring to stop the woman hanging on the

count’s arm, had allowed them to enter the enclosure. Nana, greatly

puffed up at the thought that at last she was setting foot on the

forbidden ground, put on her best behavior and walked slowly by the

ladies seated at the foot of the stands. On ten rows of chairs the

toilets were densely massed, and in the blithe open air their bright

colors mingled harmoniously. Chairs were scattered about, and as

people met one another friendly circles were formed, just as though

the company had been sitting under the trees in a public garden.

Children had been allowed to go free and were running from group to

group, while over head the stands rose tier above crowded tier and

the light-colored dresses therein faded into the delicate shadows of

the timberwork. Nana stared at all these ladies. She stared

steadily and markedly at the Countess Sabine. After which, as she

was passing in front of the imperial stand, the sight of Muffat,

looming in all his official stiffness by the side of the empress,

made her very merry.

 

“Oh, how silly he looks!” she said at the top of her voice to

Vandeuvres. She was anxious to pay everything a visit. This small

parklike region, with its green lawns and groups of trees, rather

charmed her than otherwise. A vendor of ices had set up a large

buffet near the entrance gates, and beneath a rustic thatched roof a

dense throng of people were shouting and gesticulating. This was

the ring. Close by were some empty stalls, and Nana was

disappointed at discovering only a gendarme’s horse there. Then

there was the paddock, a small course some hundred meters in

circumference, where a stable help was walking about Valerio II in

his horsecloths. And, oh, what a lot of men on the graveled

sidewalks, all of them with their tickets forming an orange-colored

patch in their bottonholes! And what a continual parade of people

in the open galleries of the grandstands! The scene interested her

for a moment or two, but truly, it was not worth while getting the

spleen because they didn’t admit you inside here.

 

Daguenet and Fauchery passed by and bowed to her. She made them a

sign, and they had to come up. Thereupon she made hay of the

weighing-in enclosure. But she broke off abruptly:

 

“Dear me, there’s the Marquis de Chouard! How old he’s growing!

That old man’s killing himself! Is he still as mad about it as

ever?”

 

Thereupon Daguenet described the old man’s last brilliant stroke.

The story dated from the day before yesterday, and no one knew it as

yet. After dangling about for months he had bought her daughter

Amelie from Gaga for thirty thousand francs, they said.

 

“Good gracious! That’s a nice business!” cried Nana in disgust. “Go

in for the regular thing, please! But now that I come to think of

it, that must be Lili down there on the grass with a lady in a

brougham. I recognized the face. The old boy will have brought her

out.”

 

Vandeuvres was not listening; he was impatient and longed to get rid

of her. But Fauchery having remarked at parting that if she had not

seen the bookmakers she had seen nothing, the count was obliged to

take her to them in spite of his obvious repugnance. And she was

perfectly happy at once; that truly was a curious sight, she said!

 

Amid lawns bordered by young horse-chestnut trees there was a round

open enclosure, where, forming a vast circle under the shadow of the

tender green leaves, a dense line of bookmakers was waiting for

betting men, as though they had been hucksters at a fair. In order

to overtop and command the surrounding crowd they had taken up

positions on wooden benches, and they were advertising their prices

on the trees beside them. They had an ever-vigilant glance, and

they booked wagers in answer to a single sign, a mere wink, so

rapidly that certain curious onlookers watched them openmouthed,

without being able to understand it all. Confusion reigned; prices

were shouted, and any unexpected change in a quotation was received

with something like tumult. Occasionally scouts entered the place

at a run and redoubled the uproar as they stopped at the entrance to

the rotunda and, at the tops of their voices, announced departures

and arrivals. In this place, where the gambling fever was pulsing

in the sunshine, such announcements were sure to raise a prolonged

muttering sound.

 

“They ARE funny!” murmured Nana, greatly entertained.

 

“Their features look as if they had been put on the wrong way. Just

you see that big fellow there; I shouldn’t care to meet him all

alone in the middle of a wood.”

 

But Vandeuvres pointed her out a bookmaker, once a shopman in a

fancy repository, who had made three million francs in two years.

He was slight of build, delicate and fair, and people all round him

treated him with great respect. They smiled when they addressed

him, while others took up positions close by in order to catch a

glimpse of him.

 

They were at length leaving the ring when Vandeuvres nodded slightly

to another bookmaker, who thereupon ventured to call him. It was

one of his former coachmen, an enormous fellow with the shoulders of

an ox and a high color. Now that he was trying his fortunes at race

meetings on the strength of some mysteriously obtained capital, the

count was doing his utmost to push him, confiding to him his secret

bets and treating him on all occasions as a servant to whom one

shows one’s true character. Yet despite this protection, the man

had in rapid succession lost very heavy sums, and today he, too, was

playing his last card. There was blood in his eyes; he looked fit

to drop with apoplexy.

 

“Well, Marechal,” queried the count in the lowest of voices, “to

what amount have you laid odds?”

 

“To five thousand louis, Monsieur le Comte,” replied the bookmaker,

likewise lowering his voice. “A pretty job, eh? I’ll confess to

you that I’ve increased the odds; I’ve made it three to one.”

 

Vandeuvres looked very much put out.

 

“No, no, I don’t want you to do that. Put it at two to one again

directly. I shan’t tell you any more, Marechal.”

 

“Oh, how can it hurt, Monsieur le Comte, at this time o’ day?”

rejoined the other with the humble smile befitting an accomplice.

“I had to attract the people so as to lay your two thousand louis.”

 

At this Vandeuvres silenced him. But as he was going off Marechal

remembered something and was sorry he had not questioned him about

the shortening of the odds on the filly. It would be a nice

business for him if the filly stood a chance, seeing that he had

just laid fifty to one about her in two hundreds.

 

Nana, though she did not understand a word of what the count was

whispering, dared not, however, ask for new explanations. He seemed

more nervous than before and abruptly handed her over to Labordette,

whom they came upon in front of the weighing-in room.

 

“You’ll take her back,” he said. “I’ve got something