Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

delicate, victorious smile.

But Dr Boutarel made his appearance.

 

“Well, and how’s this dear child?” he said familiarly to Muffat,

whom he treated as her husband. “The deuce, but we’ve made her

talk!”

 

The doctor was a good-looking man and still young. He had a superb

practice among the gay world, and being very merry by nature and

ready to laugh and joke in the friendliest way with the demimonde

ladies with whom, however, he never went farther, he charged very

high fees and got them paid with the greatest punctuality.

Moreover, he would put himself out to visit them on the most trivial

occasions, and Nana, who was always trembling at the fear of death,

would send and fetch him two or three times a week and would

anxiously confide to him little infantile ills which he would cure

to an accompaniment of amusing gossip and harebrained anecdotes.

The ladies all adored him. But this time the little ill was

serious.

 

Muffat withdrew, deeply moved. Seeing his poor Nana so very weak,

his sole feeling was now one of tenderness. As he was leaving the

room she motioned him back and gave him her forehead to kiss. In a

low voice and with a playfully threatening look she said:

 

“You know what I’ve allowed you to do. Go back to your wife, or

it’s all over and I shall grow angry!”

 

The Countess Sabine had been anxious that her daughter’s wedding

contract should be signed on a Tuesday in order that the renovated

house, where the paint was still scarcely dry, might be reopened

with a grand entertainment. Five hundred invitations had been

issued to people in all kinds of sets. On the morning of the great

day the upholsterers were still nailing up hangings, and toward nine

at night, just when the lusters were going to be lit, the architect,

accompanied by the eager and interested countess, was given his

final orders.

 

It was one of those spring festivities which have a delicate charm

of their own. Owing to the warmth of the June nights, it had become

possible to open the two doors of the great drawing room and to

extend the dancing floor to the sanded paths of the garden. When

the first guests arrived and were welcomed at the door by the count

and the countess they were positively dazzled. One had only to

recall to mind the drawing room of the past, through which flitted

the icy, ghostly presence of the Countess Muffat, that antique room

full of an atmosphere of religious austerity with its massive First

Empire mahogany furniture, its yellow velvet hangings, its moldy

ceiling through which the damp had soaked. Now from the very

threshold of the entrance hall mosaics set off with gold were

glittering under the lights of lofty candelabras, while the marble

staircase unfurled, as it were, a delicately chiseled balustrade.

Then, too, the drawing room looked splendid; it was hung with Genoa

velvet, and a huge decorative design by Boucher covered the ceiling,

a design for which the architect had paid a hundred thousand francs

at the sale of the Chateau de Dampierre. The lusters and the

crystal ornaments lit up a luxurious display of mirrors and precious

furniture. It seemed as though Sabine’s long chair, that solitary

red silk chair, whose soft contours were so marked in the old days,

had grown and spread till it filled the whole great house with

voluptuous idleness and a sense of tense enjoyment not less fierce

and hot than a fire which has been long in burning up.

 

People were already dancing. The band, which had been located in

the garden, in front of one of the open windows, was playing a

waltz, the supple rhythm of which came softly into the house through

the intervening night air. And the garden seemed to spread away and

away, bathed in transparent shadow and lit by Venetian lamps, while

in a purple tent pitched on the edge of a lawn a table for

refreshments had been established. The waltz, which was none other

than the quaint, vulgar one in the Blonde Venus, with its laughing,

blackguard lilt, penetrated the old hotel with sonorous waves of

sound and sent a feverish thrill along its walls. It was as though

some fleshly wind had come up out of the common street and were

sweeping the relics of a vanished epoch out of the proud old

dwelling, bearing away the Muffats’ past, the age of honor and

religious faith which had long slumbered beneath the lofty ceilings.

 

Meanwhile near the hearth, in their accustomed places, the old

friends of the count’s mother were taking refuge. They felt out of

their element—they were dazzled and they formed a little group amid

the slowly invading mob. Mme du Joncquoy, unable to recognize the

various rooms, had come in through the dining saloon. Mme

Chantereau was gazing with a stupefied expression at the garden,

which struck her as immense. Presently there was a sound of low

voices, and the corner gave vent to all sorts of bitter reflections.

 

“I declare,” murmured Mme Chantereau, “just fancy if the countess

were to return to life. Why, can you not imagine her coming in

among all these crowds of people! And then there’s all this gilding

and this uproar! It’s scandalous!”

 

“Sabine’s out of her senses,” replied Mme du Joncquoy. “Did you see

her at the door? Look, you can catch sight of her here; she’s

wearing all her diamonds.”

 

For a moment or two they stood up in order to take a distant view of

the count and countess. Sabine was in a white dress trimmed with

marvelous English point lace. She was triumphant in beauty; she

looked young and gay, and there was a touch of intoxication in her

continual smile. Beside her stood Muffat, looking aged and a little

pale, but he, too, was smiling in his calm and worthy fashion.

 

“And just to think that he was once master,” continued Mme

Chantereau, “and that not a single rout seat would have come in

without his permission! Ah well, she’s changed all that; it’s her

house now. D’you remember when she did not want to do her drawing

room up again? She’s done up the entire house.”

 

But the ladies grew silent, for Mme de Chezelles was entering the

room, followed by a band of young men. She was going into ecstasies

and marking her approval with a succession of little exclamations.

 

“Oh, it’s delicious, exquisite! What taste!” And she shouted back

to her followers:

 

“Didn’t I say so? There’s nothing equal to these old places when

one takes them in hand. They become dazzling! It’s quite in the

grand seventeenth-century style. Well, NOW she can receive.”

 

The two old ladies had again sat down and with lowered tones began

talking about the marriage, which was causing astonishment to a good

many people. Estelle had just passed by them. She was in a pink

silk gown and was as pale, flat, silent and virginal as ever. She

had accepted Daguenet very quietly and now evinced neither joy nor

sadness, for she was still as cold and white as on those winter

evenings when she used to put logs on the fire. This whole fete

given in her honor, these lights and flowers and tunes, left her

quite unmoved.

 

“An adventurer,” Mme du Joncquoy was saying. “For my part, I’ve

never seen him.”

 

“Take care, here he is,” whispered Mme Chantereau.

 

Daguenet, who had caught sight of Mme Hugon and her sons, had

eagerly offered her his arm. He laughed and was effusively

affectionate toward her, as though she had had a hand in his sudden

good fortune.

 

“Thank you,” she said, sitting down near the fireplace. “You see,

it’s my old corner.”

 

“You know him?” queried Mme du Joncquoy, when Daguenet had gone.

“Certainly I do—a charming young man. Georges is very fond of him.

Oh, they’re a most respected family.”

 

And the good lady defended him against the mute hostility which was

apparent to her. His father, held in high esteem by Louis Philippe,

had been a PREFET up to the time of his death. The son had been a

little dissipated, perhaps; they said he was ruined, but in any

case, one of his uncles, who was a great landowner, was bound to

leave him his fortune. The ladies, however, shook their heads,

while Mme Hugon, herself somewhat embarrassed, kept harking back to

the extreme respectability of his family. She was very much

fatigued and complained of her feet. For some months she had been

occupying her house in the Rue Richelieu, having, as she said, a

whole lot of things on hand. A look of sorrow overshadowed her

smiling, motherly face.

 

“Never mind,” Mme Chantereau concluded. “Estelle could have aimed

at something much better.”

 

There was a flourish. A quadrille was about to begin, and the crowd

flowed back to the sides of the drawing room in order to leave the

floor clear. Bright dresses flitted by and mingled together amid

the dark evening coats, while the intense light set jewels flashing

and white plumes quivering and lilacs and roses gleaming and

flowering amid the sea of many heads. It was already very warm, and

a penetrating perfume was exhaled from light tulles and crumpled

silks and satins, from which bare shoulders glimmered white, while

the orchestra played its lively airs. Through open doors ranges of

seated ladies were visible in the background of adjoining rooms;

they flashed a discreet smile; their eyes glowed, and they made

pretty mouths as the breath of their fans caressed their faces. And

guests still kept arriving, and a footman announced their names

while gentlemen advanced slowly amid the surrounding groups,

striving to find places for ladies, who hung with difficulty on

their arms, and stretching forward in quest of some far-off vacant

armchair. The house kept filling, and crinolined skirts got jammed

together with a little rustling sound. There were corners where an

amalgam of laces, bunches and puffs would completely bar the way,

while all the other ladies stood waiting, politely resigned and

imperturbably graceful, as became people who were made to take part

in these dazzling crushes. Meanwhile across the garden couples, who

had been glad to escape from the close air of the great drawing

room, were wandering away under the roseate gleam of the Venetian

lamps, and shadowy dresses kept flitting along the edge of the lawn,

as though in rhythmic time to the music of the quadrille, which

sounded sweet and distant behind the trees.

 

Steiner had just met with Foucarmont and La Faloise, who were

drinking a glass of champagne in front of the buffet.

 

“It’s beastly smart,” said La Faloise as he took a survey of the

purple tent, which was supported by gilded lances. “You might fancy

yourself at the Gingerbread Fair. That’s it—the Gingerbread Fair!”

 

In these days he continually affected a bantering tone, posing as

the young man who has abused every mortal thing and now finds

nothing worth taking seriously.

 

“How surprised poor Vandeuvres would be if he were to come back,”

murmured Foucarmont. “You remember how he simply nearly died of

boredom in front of the fire in there. Egad, it was no laughing

matter.”

 

“Vandeuvres—oh, let him be. He’s a gone coon!” La Faloise

disdainfully rejoined. “He jolly well choused himself, he did, if

he thought he could make us sit up with his roast-meat story! Not a

soul mentions it now. Blotted out, done for, buried—that’s what’s

the matter with Vandeuvres! Here’s to the next man!”

 

Then as Steiner shook hands with him:

 

“You know Nana’s just arrived. Oh, my boys, it was a state entry.

It was too brilliant for anything!