Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

with such gleeful energy that she could

not remember having enjoyed herself so much for an age past.

Without letting go of him she said caressingly:

 

“I say, dearie, you ought certainly to bring me ten louis tomorrow.

It’s a bore, but there’s the baker’s bill worrying me awfully.”

 

He had grown pale. Then imprinting a final kiss on her forehead, he

said simply:

 

“I’ll try.”

 

Silence reigned. She was dressing, and he stood pressing his

forehead against the windowpanes. A minute passed, and he returned

to her and deliberately continued:

 

“Nana, you ought to marry me.”

 

This notion straightway so tickled the young woman that she was

unable to finish tying on her petticoats.

 

“My poor pet, you’re ill! D’you offer me your hand because I ask

you for ten louis? No, never! I’m too fond of you. Good gracious,

what a silly question!”

 

And as Zoe entered in order to put her boots on, they ceased talking

of the matter. The lady’s maid at once espied the presents lying

broken in pieces on the table. She asked if she should put these

things away, and, Madame having bidden her get rid of them, she

carried the whole collection off in the folds of her dress. In the

kitchen a sorting-out process began, and Madame’s debris were shared

among the servants.

 

That day Georges had slipped into the house despite Nana’s orders to

the contrary. Francois had certainly seen him pass, but the

servants had now got to laugh among themselves at their good lady’s

embarrassing situations. He had just slipped as far as the little

drawing room when his brother’s voice stopped him, and, as one

powerless to tear himself from the door, he overheard everything

that went on within, the kisses, the offer of marriage. A feeling

of horror froze him, and he went away in a state bordering on

imbecility, feeling as though there were a great void in his brain.

It was only in his own room above his mother’s flat in the Rue

Richelieu that his heart broke in a storm of furious sobs. This

time there could be no doubt about the state of things; a horrible

picture of Nana in Philippe’s arms kept rising before his mind’s

eye. It struck him in the light of an incest. When he fancied

himself calm again the remembrance of it all would return, and in

fresh access of raging jealousy he would throw himself on the bed,

biting the coverlet, shouting infamous accusations which maddened

him the more. Thus the day passed. In order to stay shut up in his

room he spoke of having a sick headache. But the night proved more

terrible still; a murder fever shook him amid continual nightmares.

Had his brother lived in the house, he would have gone and killed

him with the stab of a knife. When day returned he tried to reason

things out. It was he who ought to die, and he determined to throw

himself out of the window when an omnibus was passing.

Nevertheless, he went out toward ten o’clock and traversed Paris,

wandered up and down on the bridges and at the last moment felt an

unconquerable desire to see Nana once more. With one word, perhaps,

she would save him. And three o’clock was striking when he entered

the house in the Avenue de Villiers.

 

Toward noon a frightful piece of news had simply crushed Mme Hugon.

Philippe had been in prison since the evening of the previous day,

accused of having stolen twelve thousand francs from the chest of

his regiment. For the last three months he had been withdrawing

small sums therefrom in the hope of being able to repay them, while

he had covered the deficit with false money. Thanks to the

negligence of the administrative committee, this fraud had been

constantly successful. The old lady, humbled utterly by her child’s

crime, had at once cried out in anger against Nana. She knew

Philippe’s connection with her, and her melancholy had been the

result of this miserable state of things which kept her in Paris in

constant dread of some final catastrophe. But she had never looked

forward to such shame as this, and now she blamed herself for

refusing him money, as though such refusal had made her accessory to

his act. She sank down on an armchair; her legs were seized with

paralysis, and she felt herself to be useless, incapable of action

and destined to stay where she was till she died. But the sudden

thought of Georges comforted her. Georges was still left her; he

would be able to act, perhaps to save them. Thereupon, without

seeking aid of anyone else—for she wished to keep these matters

shrouded in the bosom of her family—she dragged herself up to the

next story, her mind possessed by the idea that she still had

someone to love about her. But upstairs she found an empty room.

The porter told her that M. Georges had gone out at an early hour.

The room was haunted by the ghost of yet another calamity; the bed

with its gnawed bedclothes bore witness to someone’s anguish, and a

chair which lay amid a heap of clothes on the ground looked like

something dead. Georges must be at that woman’s house, and so with

dry eyes and feet that had regained their strength Mme Hugon went

downstairs. She wanted her sons; she was starting to reclaim them.

 

Since morning Nana had been much worried. First of all it was the

baker, who at nine o’clock had turned up, bill in hand. It was a

wretched story. He had supplied her with bread to the amount of a

hundred and thirty-three francs, and despite her royal housekeeping

she could not pay it. In his irritation at being put off he had

presented himself a score of times since the day he had refused

further credit, and the servants were now espousing his cause.

Francois kept saying that Madame would never pay him unless he made

a fine scene; Charles talked of going upstairs, too, in order to get

an old unpaid straw bill settled, while Victorine advised them to

wait till some gentleman was with her, when they would get the money

out of her by suddenly asking for it in the middle of conversation.

The kitchen was in a savage mood: the tradesmen were all kept posted

in the course events were taking, and there were gossiping

consultations, lasting three or four hours on a stretch, during

which Madame was stripped, plucked and talked over with the wrathful

eagerness peculiar to an idle, overprosperous servants’ hall.

Julien, the house steward, alone pretended to defend his mistress.

She was quite the thing, whatever they might say! And when the

others accused him of sleeping with her he laughed fatuously,

thereby driving the cook to distraction, for she would have liked to

be a man in order to “spit on such women’s backsides,” so utterly

would they have disgusted her. Francois, without informing Madame

of it, had wickedly posted the baker in the hall, and when she came

downstairs at lunch time she found herself face to face with him.

Taking the bill, she told him to return toward three o’clock,

whereupon, with many foul expressions, he departed, vowing that he

would have things properly settled and get his money by hook or by

crook.

 

Nana made a very bad lunch, for the scene had annoyed her. Next

time the man would have to be definitely got rid of. A dozen times

she had put his money aside for him, but it had as constantly melted

away, sometimes in the purchase of flowers, at others in the shape

of a subscription got up for the benefit of an old gendarme.

Besides, she was counting on Philippe and was astonished not to see

him make his appearance with his two hundred francs. It was regular

bad luck, seeing that the day before yesterday she had again given

Satin an outfit, a perfect trousseau this time, some twelve hundred

francs’ worth of dresses and linen, and now she had not a louis

remaining.

 

Toward two o’clock, when Nana was beginning to be anxious,

Labordette presented himself. He brought with him the designs for

the bed, and this caused a diversion, a joyful interlude which made

the young woman forget all her troubles. She clapped her hands and

danced about. After which, her heart bursting wish curiosity, she

leaned over a table in the drawing room and examined the designs,

which Labordette proceeded to explain to her.

 

“You see,” he said, “this is the body of the bed. In the middle

here there’s a bunch of roses in full bloom, and then comes a

garland of buds and flowers. The leaves are to be in yellow and the

roses in red-gold. And here’s the grand design for the bed’s head;

Cupids dancing in a ring on a silver trelliswork.”

 

But Nana interrupted him, for she was beside herself with ecstasy.

 

“Oh, how funny that little one is, that one in the corner, with his

behind in the air! Isn’t he now? And what a sly laugh! They’ve

all got such dirty, wicked eyes! You know, dear boy, I shall never

dare play any silly tricks before THEM!”

 

Her pride was flattered beyond measure. The goldsmiths had declared

that no queen anywhere slept in such a bed. However, a difficulty

presented itself. Labordette showed her two designs for the

footboard, one of which reproduced the pattern on the sides, while

the other, a subject by itself, represented Night wrapped in her

veil and discovered by a faun in all her splendid nudity. He added

that if she chose this last subject the goldsmiths intended making

Night in her own likeness. This idea, the taste of which was rather

risky, made her grow white with pleasure, and she pictured herself

as a silver statuette, symbolic of the warm, voluptuous delights of

darkness.

 

“Of course you will only sit for the head and shoulders,” said

Labordette.

 

She looked quietly at him.

 

“Why? The moment a work of art’s in question I don’t mind the

sculptor that takes my likeness a blooming bit!”

 

Of course it must be understood that she was choosing the subject.

But at this he interposed.

 

“Wait a moment; it’s six thousand francs extra.”

 

“It’s all the same to me, by Jove!” she cried, bursting into a

laugh. “Hasn’t my little rough got the rhino?”

 

Nowadays among her intimates she always spoke thus of Count Muffat,

and the gentlemen had ceased to inquire after him otherwise.

 

“Did you see your little rough last night?” they used to say.

 

“Dear me, I expected to find the little rough here!”

 

It was a simple familiarity enough, which, nevertheless, she did not

as yet venture on in his presence.

 

Labordette began rolling up the designs as he gave the final

explanations. The goldsmiths, he said, were undertaking to deliver

the bed in two months’ time, toward the twenty-fifth of December,

and next week a sculptor would come to make a model for the Night.

As she accompanied him to the door Nana remembered the baker and

briskly inquired:

 

“By the by, you wouldn’t be having ten louis about you?”

 

Labordette made it a solemn rule, which stood him in good stead,

never to lend women money. He used always to make the same reply.

 

“No, my girl, I’m short. But would you like me to go to your little

rough?”

 

She refused; it was useless. Two days before she had succeeded in

getting five thousand francs out of the count. However, she soon

regretted her discreet conduct, for the moment Labordette had gone

the baker reappeared, though it was