Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

over against

him there was the gold and silver bed, which shone in all the fresh

splendor of its chiseled workmanship, a throne this of sufficient

extent for Nana to display the outstretched glory of her naked

limbs, an altar of Byzantine sumptuousness, worthy of the almighty

puissance of Nana’s sex, which at this very hour lay nudely

displayed there in the religious immodesty befitting an idol of all

men’s worship. And close by, beneath the snowy reflections of her

bosom and amid the triumph of the goddess, lay wallowing a shameful,

decrepit thing, a comic and lamentable ruin, the Marquis de Chouard

in his nightshirt.

 

The count had clasped his hands together and, shaken by a paroxysmal

shuddering, he kept crying:

 

“My God! My God!”

 

It was for the Marquis de Chouard, then, that the golden roses

flourished on the side panels, those bunches of golden roses

blooming among the golden leaves; it was for him that the Cupids

leaned forth with amorous, roguish laughter from their tumbling ring

on the silver trelliswork. And it was for him that the faun at his

feet discovered the nymph sleeping, tired with dalliance, the figure

of Night copied down to the exaggerated thighs—which caused her to

be recognizable of all—from Nana’s renowned nudity. Cast there

like the rag of something human which has been spoiled and dissolved

by sixty years of debauchery, he suggested the charnelhouse amid the

glory of the woman’s dazzling contours. Seeing the door open, he

had risen up, smitten with sudden terror as became an infirm old

man. This last night of passion had rendered him imbecile; he was

entering on his second childhood; and, his speech failing him, he

remained in an attitude of flight, half-paralyzed, stammering,

shivering, his nightshirt half up his skeleton shape, and one leg

outside the clothes, a livid leg, covered with gray hair. Despite

her vexation Nana could not keep from laughing.

 

“Do lie down! Stuff yourself into the bed,” she said, pulling him

back and burying him under the coverlet, as though he were some

filthy thing she could not show anyone.

 

Then she sprang up to shut the door again. She was decidedly never

lucky with her little rough. He was always coming when least

wanted. And why had he gone to fetch money in Normandy? The old

man had brought her the four thousand francs, and she had let him

have his will of her. She pushed back the two flaps of the door and

shouted:

 

“So much the worse for you! It’s your fault. Is that the way to

come into a room? I’ve had enough of this sort of thing. Ta ta!”

 

Muffat remained standing before the closed door, thunderstruck by

what he had just seen. His shuddering fit increased. It mounted

from his feet to his heart and brain. Then like a tree shaken by a

mighty wind, he swayed to and fro and dropped on his knees, all his

muscles giving way under him. And with hands despairingly

outstretched he stammered:

 

“This is more than I can bear, my God! More than I can bear!”

 

He had accepted every situation but he could do so no longer. He

had come to the end of his strength and was plunged in the dark void

where man and his reason are together overthrown. In an extravagant

access of faith he raised his hands ever higher and higher,

searching for heaven, calling on God.

 

“Oh no, I do not desire it! Oh, come to me, my God! Succor me;

nay, let me die sooner! Oh no, not that man, my God! It is over;

take me, carry me away, that I may not see, that I may not feel any

longer! Oh, I belong to you, my God! Our Father which art in

heaven—”

 

And burning with faith, he continued his supplication, and an ardent

prayer escaped from his lips. But someone touched him on the

shoulder. He lifted his eyes; it was M. Venot. He was surprised to

find him praying before that closed door. Then as though God

Himself had responded to his appeal, the count flung his arms round

the little old gentleman’s neck. At last he could weep, and he

burst out sobbing and repeated:

 

“My brother, my brother.”

 

All his suffering humanity found comfort in that cry. He drenched

M. Venot’s face with tears; he kissed him, uttering fragmentary

ejaculations.

 

“Oh, my brother, how I am suffering! You only are left me, my

brother. Take me away forever—oh, for mercy’s sake, take me away!”

 

Then M. Venot pressed him to his bosom and called him “brother”

also. But he had a fresh blow in store for him. Since yesterday he

had been searching for him in order to inform him that the Countess

Sabine, in a supreme fit of moral aberration, had but now taken

flight with the manager of one of the departments in a large, fancy

emporium. It was a fearful scandal, and all Paris was already

talking about it. Seeing him under the influence of such religious

exaltation, Venot felt the opportunity to be favorable and at once

told him of the meanly tragic shipwreck of his house. The count was

not touched thereby. His wife had gone? That meant nothing to him;

they would see what would happen later on. And again he was seized

with anguish, and gazing with a look of terror at the door, the

walls, the ceiling, he continued pouring forth his single

supplication:

 

“Take me away! I cannot bear it any longer! Take me away!”

 

M. Venot took him away as though he had been a child. From that day

forth Muffat belonged to him entirely; he again became strictly

attentive to the duties of religion; his life was utterly blasted.

He had resigned his position as chamberlain out of respect for the

outraged modesty of the Tuileries, and soon Estelle, his daughter,

brought an action against him for the recovery of a sum of sixty

thousand francs, a legacy left her by an aunt to which she ought to

have succeeded at the time of her marriage. Ruined and living

narrowly on the remains of his great fortune, he let himself be

gradually devoured by the countess, who ate up the husks Nana had

rejected. Sabine was indeed ruined by the example of promiscuity

set her by her husband’s intercourse with the wanton. She was prone

to every excess and proved the ultimate ruin and destruction of his

very hearth. After sundry adventures she had returned home, and he

had taken her back in a spirit of Christian resignation and

forgiveness. She haunted him as his living disgrace, but he grew

more and more indifferent and at last ceased suffering from these

distresses. Heaven took him out of his wife’s hands in order to

restore him to the arms of God, and so the voluptuous pleasures he

had enjoyed with Nana were prolonged in religious ecstasies,

accompanied by the old stammering utterances, the old prayers and

despairs, the old fits of humility which befit an accursed creature

who is crushed beneath the mire whence he sprang. In the recesses

of churches, his knees chilled by the pavement, he would once more

experience the delights of the past, and his muscles would twitch,

and his brain would whirl deliciously, and the satisfaction of the

obscure necessities of his existence would be the same as of old.

 

On the evening of the final rupture Mignon presented himself at the

house in the Avenue de Villiers. He was growing accustomed to

Fauchery and was beginning at last to find the presence of his

wife’s husband infinitely advantageous to him. He would leave all

the little household cares to the journalist and would trust him in

the active superintendence of all their affairs. Nay, he devoted

the money gained by his dramatic successes to the daily expenditure

of the family, and as, on his part, Fauchery behaved sensibly,

avoiding ridiculous jealousy and proving not less pliant than Mignon

himself whenever Rose found her opportunity, the mutual

understanding between the two men constantly improved. In fact,

they were happy in a partnership which was so fertile in all kinds

of amenities, and they settled down side by side and adopted a

family arrangement which no longer proved a stumbling block. The

whole thing was conducted according to rule; it suited admirably,

and each man vied with the other in his efforts for the common

happiness. That very evening Mignon had come by Fauchery’s advice

to see if he could not steal Nana’s lady’s maid from her, the

journalist having formed a high opinion of the woman’s extraordinary

intelligence. Rose was in despair; for a month past she had been

falling into the hands of inexperienced girls who were causing her

continual embarrassment. When Zoe received him at the door he

forthwith pushed her into the dining room. But at his opening

sentence she smiled. The thing was impossible, she said, for she

was leaving Madame and establishing herself on her own account. And

she added with an expression of discreet vanity that she was daily

receiving offers, that the ladies were fighting for her and that Mme

Blanche would give a pile of gold to have her back.

 

Zoe was taking the Tricon’s establishment. It was an old project

and had been long brooded over. It was her ambition to make her

fortune thereby, and she was investing all her savings in it. She

was full of great ideas and meditated increasing the business and

hiring a house and combining all the delights within its walls. It

was with this in view that she had tried to entice Satin, a little

pig at that moment dying in hospital, so terribly had she done for

herself.

 

Mignon still insisted with his offer and spoke of the risks run in

the commercial life, but Zoe, without entering into explanations

about the exact nature of her establishment, smiled a pinched smile,

as though she had just put a sweetmeat in her mouth, and was content

to remark:

 

“Oh, luxuries always pay. You see, I’ve been with others quite long

enough, and now I want others to be with me.”

 

And a fierce look set her lip curling. At last she would be

“Madame,” and for the sake of earning a few louis all those women

whose slops she had emptied during the last fifteen years would

prostrate themselves before her.

 

Mignon wished to be announced, and Zoe left him for a moment after

remarking that Madame had passed a miserable day. He had only been

at the house once before, and he did not know it at all. The dining

room with its Gobelin tapestry, its sideboard and its plate filled

him with astonishment. He opened the doors familiarly and visited

the drawing room and the winter garden, returning thence into the

hall. This overwhelming luxury, this gilded furniture, these silks

and velvets, gradually filled him with such a feeling of admiration

that it set his heart beating. When Zoe came down to fetch him she

offered to show him the other rooms, the dressing room, that is to

say, and the bedroom. In the latter Mignon’s feelings overcame him;

he was carried away by them; they filled him with tender enthusiasm.

 

That damned Nana was simply stupefying him, and yet he thought he

knew a thing or two. Amid the downfall of the house and the

servants’ wild, wasteful race to destruction, massed-up riches still

filled every gaping hole and overtopped every ruined wall. And

Mignon, as he viewed this lordly monument of wealth, began recalling

to mind the various great works he had seen. Near Marseilles they

had shown him an aqueduct, the stone arches of which bestrode an

abyss, a Cyclopean work which