Nana/Miller's Daughter/Captain Burle/Death of Olivier Becaille
by Emile Zola
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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"Yes, let's go on," Fauchery repeated. "We'll arrange the scene
tomorrow."

And with that they dragged on again and rehearsed their parts with
as much listlessness and as fine an indifference as ever. During
the dispute between manager and author Fontan and the rest had been
taking things very comfortably on the rustic bench and seats at the
back of the stage, where they had been chuckling, grumbling and
saying fiercely cutting things. But when Simonne came back, still
smarting from her blow and choking with sobs, they grew melodramatic
and declared that had they been in her place they would have
strangled the swine. She began wiping her eyes and nodding
approval. It was all over between them, she said. She was leaving
him, especially as Steiner had offered to give her a grand start in
life only the day before. Clarisse was much astonished at this, for
the banker was quite ruined, but Prulliere began laughing and
reminded them of the neat manner in which that confounded Israelite
had puffed himself alongside of Rose in order to get his Landes
saltworks afloat on 'change. Just at that time he was airing a new
project, namely, a tunnel under the Bosporus. Simonne listened with
the greatest interest to this fresh piece of information.

As to Clarisse, she had been raging for a week past. Just fancy,
that beast La Faloise, whom she had succeeded in chucking into
Gaga's venerable embrace, was coming into the fortune of a very rich
uncle! It was just her luck; she had always been destined to make
things cozy for other people. Then, too, that pig Bordenave had
once more given her a mere scrap of a part, a paltry fifty lines,
just as if she could not have played Geraldine! She was yearning
for that role and hoping that Nana would refuse it.

"Well, and what about me?" said Prulliere with much bitterness. "I
haven't got more than two hundred lines. I wanted to give the part
up. It's too bad to make me play that fellow Saint-Firmin; why,
it's a regular failure! And then what a style it's written in, my
dears! It'll fall dead flat, you may be sure."

But just then Simonne, who had been chatting with Father Barillot,
came back breathless and announced:

"By the by, talking of Nana, she's in the house."

"Where, where?" asked Clarisse briskly, getting up to look for her.

The news spread at once, and everyone craned forward. The rehearsal
was, as it were, momentarily interrupted. But Bordenave emerged
from his quiescent condition, shouting:

"What's up, eh? Finish the act, I say. And be quiet out there;
it's unbearable!"

Nana was still following the piece from the corner box. Twice
Labordette showed an inclination to chat, but she grew impatient and
nudged him to make him keep silent. The second act was drawing to a
close, when two shadows loomed at the back of the theater. They
were creeping softly down, avoiding all noise, and Nana recognized
Mignon and Count Muffat. They came forward and silently shook hands
with Bordenave.

"Ah, there they are," she murmured with a sigh of relief.

Rose Mignon delivered the last sentences of the act. Thereupon
Bordenave said that it was necessary to go through the second again
before beginning the third. With that he left off attending to the
rehearsal and greeted the count with looks of exaggerated
politeness, while Fauchery pretended to be entirely engrossed with
his actors, who now grouped themselves round him. Mignon stood
whistling carelessly, with his hands behind his back and his eyes
fixed complacently on his wife, who seemed rather nervous.

"Well, shall we go upstairs?" Labordette asked Nana. "I'll install
you in the dressing room and come down again and fetch him."

Nana forthwith left the corner box. She had to grope her way along
the passage outside the stalls, but Bordenave guessed where she was
as she passed along in the dark and caught her up at the end of the
corridor passing behind the scenes, a narrow tunnel where the gas
burned day and night. Here, in order to bluff her into a bargain,
he plunged into a discussion of the courtesan's part.

"What a part it is, eh? What a wicked little part! It's made for
you. Come and rehearse tomorrow."

Nana was frigid. She wanted to know what the third act was like.

"Oh, it's superb, the third act is! The duchess plays the courtesan
in her own house and this disgusts Beaurivage and makes him amend
his way. Then there's an awfully funny QUID PRO QUO, when Tardiveau
arrives and is under the impression that he's at an opera dancer's
house."

"And what does Geraldine do in it all?" interrupted Nana.

"Geraldine?" repeated Bordenave in some embarrassment. "She has a
scene--not a very long one, but a great success. It's made for you,
I assure you! Will you sign?"

She looked steadily at him and at length made answer:

"We'll see about that all in good time."

And she rejoined Labordette, who was waiting for her on the stairs.
Everybody in the theater had recognized her, and there was now much
whispering, especially between Prulliere, who was scandalized at her
return, and Clarisse who was very desirous of the part. As to
Fontan, he looked coldly on, pretending unconcern, for he did not
think it becoming to round on a woman he had loved. Deep down in
his heart, though, his old love had turned to hate, and he nursed
the fiercest rancor against her in return for the constant devotion,
the personal beauty, the life in common, of which his perverse and
monstrous tastes had made him tire.

In the meantime, when Labordette reappeared and went up to the
count, Rose Mignon, whose suspicions Nana's presence had excited,
understood it all forthwith. Muffat was bothering her to death, but
she was beside herself at the thought of being left like this. She
broke the silence which she usually maintained on such subjects in
her husband's society and said bluntly:

"You see what's going on? My word, if she tries the Steiner trick
on again I'll tear her eyes out!"

Tranquilly and haughtily Mignon shrugged his shoulders, as became a
man from whom nothing could be hidden.

"Do be quiet," he muttered. "Do me the favor of being quiet, won't
you?"

He knew what to rely on now. He had drained his Muffat dry, and he
knew that at a sign from Nana he was ready to lie down and be a
carpet under her feet. There is no fighting against passions such
as that. Accordingly, as he knew what men were, he thought of
nothing but how to turn the situation to the best possible account.

It would be necessary to wait on the course of events. And he
waited on them.

"Rose, it's your turn!" shouted Bordenave. "The second act's being
begun again."

"Off with you then," continued Mignon, "and let me arrange matters."

Then he began bantering, despite all his troubles, and was pleased
to congratulate Fauchery on his piece. A very strong piece! Only
why was his great lady so chaste? It wasn't natural! With that he
sneered and asked who had sat for the portrait of the Duke of
Beaurivage, Geraldine's wornout roue. Fauchery smiled; he was far
from annoyed. But Bordenave glanced in Muffat's direction and
looked vexed, and Mignon was struck at this and became serious
again.

"Let's begin, for God's sake!" yelled the manager. "Now then,
Barillot! Eh? What? Isn't Bosc there? Is he bloody well making
game of me now?"

Bosc, however, made his appearance quietly enough, and the rehearsal
began again just as Labordette was taking the count away with him.
The latter was tremulous at the thought of seeing Nana once more.
After the rupture had taken place between them there had been a
great void in his life. He was idle and fancied himself about to
suffer through the sudden change his habits had undergone, and
accordingly he had let them take him to see Rose. Besides, his
brain had been in such a whirl that he had striven to forget
everything and had strenuously kept from seeking out Nana while
avoiding an explanation with the countess. He thought, indeed, that
he owed his dignity such a measure of forgetfulness. But mysterious
forces were at work within, and Nana began slowly to reconquer him.
First came thoughts of her, then fleshly cravings and finally a new
set of exclusive, tender, well-nigh paternal feelings.

The abominable events attendant on their last interview were
gradually effacing themselves. He no longer saw Fontan; he no
longer heard the stinging taunt about his wife's adultery with which
Nana cast him out of doors. These things were as words whose memory
vanished. Yet deep down in his heart there was a poignant smart
which wrung him with such increasing pain that it nigh choked him.
Childish ideas would occur to him; he imagined that she would never
have betrayed him if he had really loved her, and he blamed himself
for this. His anguish was becoming unbearable; he was really very
wretched. His was the pain of an old wound rather than the blind,
present desire which puts up with everything for the sake of
immediate possession. He felt a jealous passion for the woman and
was haunted by longings for her and her alone, her hair, her mouth,
her body. When he remembered the sound of her voice a shiver ran
through him; he longed for her as a miser might have done, with
refinements of desire beggaring description. He was, in fact, so
dolorously possessed by his passion that when Labordette had begun
to broach the subject of an assignation he had thrown himself into
his arms in obedience to irresistible impulse. Directly afterward
he had, of course, been ashamed of an act of self-abandonment which
could not but seem very ridicubus in a man of his position; but
Labordette was one who knew when to see and when not to see things,
and he gave a further proof of his tact when he left the count at
the foot of the stairs and without effort let slip only these simple
words:

"The right-hand passage on the second floor. The door's not shut."

Muffat was alone in that silent corner of the house. As he passed
before the players' waiting room, he had peeped through the open
doors and noticed the utter dilapidation of the vast chamber, which
looked shamefully stained and worn in broad daylight. But what
surprised him most as he emerged from the darkness and confusion of
the stage was the pure, clear light and deep quiet at present
pervading the lofty staircase, which one evening when he had seen it
before had been bathed in gas fumes and loud with the footsteps of
women scampering over the different floors. He felt that the
dressing rooms were empty, the corridors deserted; not a soul was
there; not a sound broke the stillness, while through the square
windows on the level of the stairs the pale November sunlight
filtered and cast yellow patches of light, full of dancing dust,
amid the dead, peaceful air which seemed to descend from the regions
above.

He was glad of this calm and the silence, and he went slowly up,
trying to regain breath as he went, for his heart was thumping, and
he was afraid lest he might behave childishly and give way to sighs
and tears. Accordingly on the first-floor landing he leaned up
against a wall--for he was sure of not being observed--and pressed
his handkerchief to his mouth and gazed at the warped steps, the
iron balustrade bright with the friction of many hands, the scraped
paint on the walls--all the squalor, in fact, which that house of
tolerance so crudely displayed at the pale afternoon hour when
courtesans are asleep. When he reached the second floor he had to
step over a big yellow cat which was lying curled up on a step.
With half-closed eyes this cat was keeping solitary watch over the
house, where the close and now frozen odors which the women nightly
left behind them had rendered him somnolent.

In the right-hand corridor the door of the dressing room had,
indeed, not been closed entirely. Nana was waiting. That little
Mathilde, a drab of a young girl, kept her dressing room in a filthy
state. Chipped jugs stood about anyhow; the dressing table was
greasy, and there was a chair covered with red stains, which looked
as if someone had bled over the straw. The paper pasted on walls
and ceiling was splashed from top to bottom with spots of soapy
water and this smelled so disagreeably of lavender scent turned sour
that Nana opened the window and for some moments stayed leaning on
the sill, breathing the fresh air and craning forward to catch sight
of Mme Bron underneath. She could hear her broom wildly at work on
the mildewed pantiles of the narrow court which was buried in
shadow. A canary, whose cage hung on a shutter, was trilling away
piercingly. The sound of carriages in the boulevard and neighboring
streets was no longer audible, and the quiet and the wide expanse of
sleeping sunlight suggested the country. Looking farther afield,
her eye fell on the small buildings and glass roofs of the galleries
in the passage and, beyond these, on the tall houses in the Rue
Vivienne, the backs of which rose silent and apparently deserted
over against her. There was a succession of terrace roofs close by,
and on one of these a photographer had perched a big cagelike
construction of blue glass. It was all very gay, and Nana was
becoming absorbed in contemplation, when it struck her someone had
knocked at the door.

She turned round and shouted:

"Come in!"

At sight of the count she shut the window, for it was not warm, and
there was no need for the eavesdropping Mme Bron to listen. The
pair gazed at one another gravely. Then as the count still kept
standing stiffly in front of her, looking ready to choke with
emotion, she burst out laughing and said:

"Well! So you're here again, you silly big beast!"

The tumult going on within him was so great that he seemed a man
frozen to ice. He addressed Nana as "madame" and esteemed himself
happy to see her again. Thereupon she became more familiar than
ever in order to bounce matters through.

"Don't do it in the dignified way! You wanted to see me, didn't
you? But you didn't intend us to stand looking at one another like
a couple of chinaware dogs. We've both been in the wrong--Oh, I
certainly forgive you!"

And herewith they agreed not to talk of that affair again, Muffat
nodding his assent as Nana spoke. He was calmer now but as yet
could find nothing to say, though a thousand things rose
tumultuously to his lips. Surprised at his apparent coldness, she
began acting a part with much vigor.

"Come," she continued with a faint smile, "you're a sensible man!
Now that we've made our peace let's shake hands and be good friends
in future."

"What? Good friends?" he murmured in sudden anxiety.

"Yes; it's idiotic, perhaps, but I should like you to think well of
me. We've had our little explanation out, and if we meet again we
shan't, at any rate look like a pair of boobies."

He tried to interrupt her with a movement of the hand.

"Let me finish! There's not a man, you understand, able to accuse
me of doing him a blackguardly turn; well, and it struck me as
horrid to begin in your case. We all have our sense of honor, dear
boy."

"But that's not my meaning!" he shouted violently. "Sit down--
listen to me!"  And as though he were afraid of seeing her take her
departure, he pushed her down on the solitary chair in the room.
Then he paced about in growing agitation. The little dressing room
was airless and full of sunlight, and no sound from the outside
world disturbed its pleasant, peaceful, dampish atmosphere. In the
pauses of conversation the shrillings of the canary were alone
audible and suggested the distant piping of a flute.

"Listen," he said, planting himself in front of her, "I've come to
possess myself of you again. Yes, I want to begin again. You know
that well; then why do you talk to me as you do? Answer me; tell me
you consent."

Her head was bent, and she was scratching the blood-red straw of the
seat underneath her. Seeing him so anxious, she did not hurry to
answer. But at last she lifted up her face. It had assumed a grave
expression, and into the beautiful eyes she had succeeded in
infusing a look of sadness.

"Oh, it's impossible, little man. Never, never, will I live with
you again."

"Why?" he stuttered, and his face seemed contracted in unspeakable
suffering.

"Why? Hang it all, because--It's impossible; that's about it. I
don't want to."

He looked ardently at her for some seconds longer. Then his legs
curved under him and he fell on the floor. In a bored voice she
added this simple advice:

"Ah, don't be a baby!"

But he was one already. Dropping at her feet, he had put his arms
round her waist and was hugging her closely, pressing his face hard
against her knees. When he felt her thus--when he once more divined
the presence of her velvety limbs beneath the thin fabric of her
dress--he was suddenly convulsed and trembled, as it were, with
fever, while madly, savagely, he pressed his face against her knees
as though he had been anxious to force through her flesh. The old
chair creaked, and beneath the low ceiling, where the air was
pungent with stale perfumes, smothered sobs of desire were audible.

"Well, and after?" Nana began saying, letting him do as he would.
"All this doesn't help you a bit, seeing that the thing's
impossible. Good God, what a child you are!"

His energy subsided, but he still stayed on the floor, nor did he
relax his hold of her as he said in a broken voice:

"Do at least listen to what I came to offer you. I've already seen
a town house close to the Parc Monceau--I would gladly realize your
smallest wish. In order to have you all to myself, I would give my
whole fortune. Yes, that would be my only condition, that I should
have you all to myself! Do you understand? And if you were to
consent to be mine only, oh, then I should want you to be the
loveliest, the richest, woman on earth. I should give you carriages
and diamonds and dresses!"

At each successive offer Nana shook her head proudly. Then seeing
that he still continued them, that he even spoke of settling money
on her--for he was at loss what to lay at her feet--she apparently
lost patience.

"Come, come, have you done bargaining with me? I'm a good sort, and
I don't mind giving in to you for a minute or two, as your feelings
are making you so ill, but I've had enough of it now, haven't I? So
let me get up. You're tiring me."

She extricated herself from his clasp, and once on her feet:

"No, no, no!" she said. "I don't want to!"

With that he gathered himself up painfully and feebly dropped into a
chair, in which he leaned back with his face in his hands. Nana
began pacing up and down in her turn. For a second or two she
looked at the stained wallpaper, the greasy toilet table, the whole
dirty little room as it basked in the pale sunlight. Then she
paused in front of the count and spoke with quiet directness.

"It's strange how rich men fancy they can have everything for their
money. Well, and if I don't want to consent--what then? I don't
care a pin for your presents! You might give me Paris, and yet I
should say no! Always no! Look here, it's scarcely clean in this
room, yet I should think it very nice if I wanted to live in it with
you. But one's fit to kick the bucket in your palaces if one isn't
in love. Ah, as to money, my poor pet, I can lay my hands on that
if I want to, but I tell you, I trample on it; I spit on it!"

And with that she assumed a disgusted expression. Then she became
sentimental and added in a melancholy tone:

"I know of something worth more than money. Oh, if only someone
were to give me what I long for!"

He slowly lifted his head, and there was a gleam of hope in his eyes.

"Oh, you can't give it me," she continued; "it doesn't depend on
you, and that's the reason I'm talking to you about it. Yes, we're
having a chat, so I may as well mention to you that I should like to
play the part of the respectable woman in that show of theirs."

"What respectable woman?" he muttered in astonishment.

"Why, their Duchess Helene! If they think I'm going to play
Geraldine, a part with nothing in it, a scene and nothing besides--
if they think that! Besides, that isn't the reason. The fact is
I've had enough of courtesans. Why, there's no end to 'em! They'll
be fancying I've got 'em on the brain; to be sure they will!
Besides, when all's said and done, it's annoying, for I can quite
see they seem to think me uneducated. Well, my boy, they're jolly
well in the dark about it, I can tell you! When I want to be a
perfect lady, why then I am a swell, and no mistake! Just look at
this."

And she withdrew as far as the window and then came swelling back
with the mincing gait and circumspect air of a portly hen that fears
to dirty her claws. As to Muffat, he followed her movements with
eyes still wet with tears. He was stupefied by this sudden
transition from anguish to comedy. She walked about for a moment or
two in order the more thoroughly to show off her paces, and as she
walked she smiled subtlely, closed her eyes demurely and managed her
skirts with great dexterity. Then she posted herself in front of
him again.

"I guess I've hit it, eh?"

"Oh, thoroughly," he stammered with a broken voice and a troubled
expression.

"I tell you I've got hold of the honest woman! I've tried at my own
place. Nobody's got my little knack of looking like a duchess who
don't care a damn for the men. Did you notice it when I passed in
front of you? Why, the thing's in my blood! Besides, I want to
play the part of an honest woman. I dream about it day and night--
I'm miserable about it. I must have the part, d'you hear?"

And with that she grew serious, speaking in a hard voice and looking
deeply moved, for she was really tortured by her stupid, tiresome
wish. Muffat, still smarting from her late refusals, sat on without
appearing to grasp her meaning. There was a silence during which
the very flies abstained from buzzing through the quiet, empty place.

"Now, look here," she resumed bluntly, "you're to get them to give
me the part."

He was dumfounded, and with a despairing gesture:

"Oh, it's impossible! You yourself were saying just now that it
didn't depend on me."

She interrupted him with a shrug of the shoulders.

"You'll just go down, and you'll tell Bordenave you want the part.
Now don't be such a silly! Bordenave wants money--well, you'll lend
him some, since you can afford to make ducks and drakes of it."

And as he still struggled to refuse her, she grew angry.

"Very well, I understand; you're afraid of making Rose angry. I
didn't mention the woman when you were crying down on the floor--I
should have had too much to say about it all. Yes, to be sure, when
one has sworn to love a woman forever one doesn't usually take up
with the first creature that comes by directly after. Oh, that's
where the shoe pinches, I remember! Well, dear boy, there's nothing
very savory in the Mignon's leavings! Oughtn't you to have broken
it off with that dirty lot before coming and squirming on my knees?"

He protested vaguely and at last was able to get out a phrase.

"Oh, I don't care a jot for Rose; I'll give her up at once."

Nana seemed satisfied on this point. She continued:

"Well then, what's bothering you? Bordenave's master here. You'll
tell me there's Fauchery after Bordenave--"

She had sunk her voice, for she was coming to the delicate part of
the matter. Muffat sat silent, his eyes fixed on the ground. He
had remained voluntarily ignorant of Fauchery's assiduous attentions
to the countess, and time had lulled his suspicions and set him
hoping that he had been deceiving himself during that fearful night
passed in a doorway of the Rue Taitbout. But he still felt a dull,
angry repugnance to the man.

"Well, what then? Fauchery isn't the devil!" Nana repeated, feeling
her way cautiously and trying to find out how matters stood between
husband and lover. "One can get over his soft side. I promise you,
he's a good sort at bottom! So it's a bargain, eh? You'll tell him
that it's for my sake?"

The idea of taking such a step disgusted the count.

"No, no! Never!" he cried.

She paused, and this sentence was on the verge of utterance:

"Fauchery can refuse you nothing."

But she felt that by way of argument it was rather too much of a
good thing. So she only smiled a queer smile which spoke as plainly
as words. Muffat had raised his eyes to her and now once more
lowered them, looking pale and full of embarrassment.

"Ah, you're not good natured," she muttered at last.

"I cannot," he said with a voice and a look of the utmost anguish.
"I'll do whatever you like, but not that, dear love! Oh, I beg you
not to insist on that!"

Thereupon she wasted no more time in discussion but took his head
between her small hands, pushed it back a little, bent down and
glued her mouth to his in a long, long kiss. He shivered violently;
he trembled beneath her touch; his eyes were closed, and he was
beside himself. She lifted him to his feet.

"Go," said she simply.

He walked off, making toward the door. But as he passed out she
took him in her arms again, became meek and coaxing, lifted her face
to his and rubbed her cheek against his waistcoat, much as a cat
might have done.

"Where's the fine house?" she whispered in laughing embarrassment,
like a little girl who returns to the pleasant things she has
previously refused.

"In the Avenue de Villiers."

"And there are carriages there?"

"Yes."

"Lace? Diamonds?"

"Yes."

"Oh, how good you are, my old pet! You know it was all jealousy
just now! And this time I solemnly promise you it won't be like the
first, for now you understand what's due to a woman. You give all,
don't you? Well then, I don't want anybody but you! Why, look
here, there's some more for you! There and there AND there!"

When she had pushed him from the room after firing his blood with a
rain of kisses on hands and on face, she panted awhile. Good
heavens, what an unpleasant smell there was in that slut Mathilde's
dressing room! It was warm, if you will, with the tranquil warmth
peculiar to rooms in the south when the winter sun shines into them,
but really, it smelled far too strong of stale lavender water, not
to mention other less cleanly things! She opened the window and,
again leaning on the window sill, began watching the glass roof of
the passage below in order to kill time.

Muffat went staggering downstairs. His head was swimming. What
should he say? How should he broach the matter which, moreover, did
not concern him? He heard sounds of quarreling as he reached the
stage. The second act was being finished, and Prulliere was beside
himself with wrath, owing to an attempt on Fauchery's part to cut
short one of his speeches.

"Cut it all out then," he was shouting. "I should prefer that!
Just fancy, I haven't two hundred lines, and they're still cutting
me down. No, by Jove, I've had enough of it; I give the part up."

He took a little crumpled manuscript book out of his pocket and
fingered its leaves feverishly, as though he were just about to
throw it on Cossard's lap. His pale face was convulsed by outraged
vanity; his lips were drawn and thin, his eyes flamed; he was quite
unable to conceal the struggle that was going on inside him. To
think that he, Prulliere, the idol of the public, should play a part
of only two hundred lines!

"Why not make me bring in letters on a tray?" he continued bitterly.

"Come, come, Prulliere, behave decently," said Bordenave, who was
anxious to treat him tenderly because of his influence over the
boxes. "Don't begin making a fuss. We'll find some points. Eh,
Fauchery, you'll add some points? In the third act it would even be
possible to lengthen a scene out."

"Well then, I want the last speech of all," the comedian declared.
"I certainly deserve to have it."

Fauchery's silence seemed to give consent, and Prulliere, still
greatly agitated and discontented despite everything, put his part
back into his pocket. Bosc and Fontan had appeared profoundly
indifferent during the course of this explanation. Let each man
fight for his own hand, they reflected; the present dispute had
nothing to do with them; they had no interest therein! All the
actors clustered round Fauchery and began questioning him and
fishing for praise, while Mignon listened to the last of Prulliere's
complaints without, however, losing sight of Count Muffat, whose
return he had been on the watch for.

Entering in the half-light, the count had paused at the back of the
stage, for he hesitated to interrupt the quarrel. But Bordenave
caught sight of him and ran forward.

"Aren't they a pretty lot?" he muttered. "You can have no idea what
I've got to undergo with that lot, Monsieur le Comte. Each man's
vainer than his neighbor, and they're wretched players all the same,
a scabby lot, always mixed up in some dirty business or other! Oh,
they'd be delighted if I were to come to smash. But I beg pardon--
I'm getting beside myself."

He ceased speaking, and silence reigned while Muffat sought how to
broach his announcement gently. But he failed and, in order to get
out of his difficulty the more quickly, ended by an abrupt
announcement:

"Nana wants the duchess's part."

Bordenave gave a start and shouted:

"Come now, it's sheer madness!"

Then looking at the count and finding him so pale and so shaken, he
was calm at once.

"Devil take it!" he said simply.

And with that there ensued a fresh silence. At bottom he didn't
care a pin about it. That great thing Nana playing the duchess
might possibly prove amusing! Besides, now that this had happened
he had Muffat well in his grasp. Accordingly he was not long in
coming to a decision, and so he turned round and called out:

"Fauchery!"

The count had been on the point of stopping him. But Fauchery did
not hear him, for he had been pinned against the curtain by Fontan
and was being compelled to listen patiently to the comedian's
reading of the part of Tardiveau. Fontan imagined Tardiveau to be a
native of Marseilles with a dialect, and he imitated the dialect.
He was repeating whole speeches. Was that right? Was this the
thing? Apparently he was only submitting ideas to Fauchery of which
he was himself uncertain, but as the author seemed cold and raised
various objections, he grew angry at once.

Oh, very well, the moment the spirit of the part escaped him it
would be better for all concerned that he shouldn't act it at all!

"Fauchery!" shouted Bordenave once more.

Thereupon the young man ran off, delighted to escape from the actor,
who was wounded not a little by his prompt retreat.

"Don't let's stay here," continued Bordenave. "Come this way,
gentlemen."

In order to escape from curious listeners he led them into the
property room behind the scenes, while Mignon watched their
disappearance in some surprise. They went down a few steps and
entered a square room, whose two windows opened upon the courtyard.
A faint light stole through the dirty panes and hung wanly under the
low ceiling. In pigeonholes and shelves, which filled the whole
place up, lay a collection of the most varied kind of bric-a-brac.
Indeed, it suggested an old-clothes shop in the Rue de Lappe in
process of selling off, so indescribable was the hotchpotch of
plates, gilt pasteboard cups, old red umbrellas, Italian jars,
clocks in all styles, platters and inkpots, firearms and squirts,
which lay chipped and broken and in unrecognizable heaps under a
layer of dust an inch deep. An unendurable odor of old iron, rags
and damp cardboard emanated from the various piles, where the debris
of forgotten dramas had been collecting for half a century.

"Come in," Bordenave repeated. "We shall be alone, at any rate."

The count was extremely embarrassed, and he contrived to let the
manager risk his proposal for him. Fauchery was astonished.

"Eh? What?" he asked.

"Just this," said Bordenave finally. "An idea has occurred to us.
Now whatever you do, don't jump! It's most serious. What do you
think of Nana for the duchess's part?"

The author was bewildered; then he burst out with:

"Ah no, no! You're joking, aren't you? People would laugh far too
much."

"Well, and it's a point gained already if they do laugh! Just
reflect, my dear boy. The idea pleases Monsieur le Comte very
much."

In order to keep himself in countenance Muffat had just picked out
of the dust on a neighboring shelf an object which he did not seem
to recognize. It was an eggcup, and its stem had been mended with
plaster. He kept hold of it unconsciously and came forward,
muttering:

"Yes, yes, it would be capital."

Fauchery turned toward him with a brisk, impatient gesture. The
count had nothing to do with his piece, and he said decisively:

"Never! Let Nana play the courtesan as much as she likes, but a
lady--No, by Jove!"

"You are mistaken, I assure you," rejoined the count, growing
bolder. "This very minute she has been playing the part of a pure
woman for my benefit."

"Where?" queried Fauchery with growing surprise.

"Upstairs in a dressing room. Yes, she has, indeed, and with such
distinction! She's got a way of glancing at you as she goes by you--
something like this, you know!"

And eggcup in hand, he endeavored to imitate Nana, quite forgetting
his dignity in his frantic desire to convince the others. Fauchery
gazed at him in a state of stupefaction. He understood it all now,
and his anger had ceased. The count felt that he was looking at him
mockingly and pityingly, and he paused with a slight blush on his
face.

"Egad, it's quite possible!" muttered the author complaisantly.
"Perhaps she would do very well, only the part's been assigned. We
can't take it away from Rose."

"Oh, if that's all the trouble," said Bordenave, "I'll undertake to
arrange matters."

But presently, seeing them both against him and guessing that
Bordenave had some secret interest at stake, the young man thought
to avoid aquiescence by redoubling the violence of his refusal. The
consultation was on the verge of being broken up.

"Oh, dear! No, no! Even if the part were unassigned I should never
give it her! There, is that plain? Do let me alone; I have no wish
to ruin my play!"

He lapsed into silent embarrassment. Bordenave, deeming himself DE
TROP, went away, but the count remained with bowed head. He raised
it with an effort and said in a breaking voice:

"Supposing, my dear fellow, I were to ask this of you as a favor?"

"I cannot, I cannot," Fauchery kept repeating as he writhed to get
free.

Muffat's voice became harder.

"I pray and beseech you for it! I want it!"

And with that he fixed his eyes on him. The young man read menaces
in that darkling gaze and suddenly gave way with a splutter of
confused phrases:

"Do what you like--I don't care a pin about it. Yes, yes, you're
abusing your power, but you'll see, you'll see!"

At this the embarrassment of both increased. Fauchery was leaning
up against a set of shelves and was tapping nervously on the ground
with his foot. Muffat seemed busy examining the eggcup, which he
was still turning round and about.

"It's an eggcup," Bordenave obligingly came and remarked.

"Yes, to be sure! It's an eggeup," the count repeated.

"Excuse me, you're covered with dust," continued the manager,
putting the thing back on a shelf. "If one had to dust every day
there'd be no end to it, you understand. But it's hardly clean
here--a filthy mess, eh? Yet you may believe me or not when I tell
you there's money in it. Now look, just look at all that!"

He walked Muffat round in front of the pigeonholes and shelves and
in the greenish light which filtered through the courtyard, told him
the names of different properties, for he was anxious to interest
him in his marine-stores inventory, as he jocosely termed it.

Presently, when they had returned into Fauchery's neighborhood, he
said carelessly enough:

"Listen, since we're all of one mind, we'll finish the matter at
once. Here's Mignon, just when he's wanted."

For some little time past Mignon had been prowling in the adjoining
passage, and the very moment Bordenave began talking of a
modification of their agreement he burst into wrathful protest. It
was infamous--they wanted to spoil his wife's career--he'd go to law
about it! Bordenave, meanwhile, was extremely calm and full of
reasons. He did not think the part worthy of Rose, and he preferred
to reserve her for an operetta, which was to be put on after the
Petite Duchesse. But when her husband still continued shouting he
suddenly offered to cancel their arrangement in view of the offers
which the Folies-Dramatiques had been making the singer. At this
Mignon was momenrarily put out, so without denying the truth of
these offers he loudly professed a vast disdain for money. His
wife, he said, had been engaged to play the Duchess Helene, and she
would play the part even if he, Mignon, were to be ruined over it.
His dignity, his honor, were at stake! Starting from this basis,
the discussion grew interminable. The manager, however, always
returned to the following argument: since the Folies had offered
Rose three hundred francs a night during a hundred performances, and
since she only made a hundred and fifty with him, she would be the
gainer by fifteen thousand francs the moment he let her depart. The
husband, on his part, did not desert the artist's position. What
would people say if they saw his wife deprived of her part? Why,
that she was not equal to it; that it had been deemed necessary to
find a substitute for her! And this would do great harm to Rose's
reputation as an artist; nay, it would diminish it. Oh no, no!
Glory before gain! Then without a word of warning he pointed out a
possible arrangement: Rose, according to the terms of her agreement,
was pledged to pay a forfeit of ten thousand francs in case she gave
up the part. Very well then, let them give her ten thousand francs,
and she would go to the Folies-Dramatiques. Bordenave was utterly
dumfounded while Mignon, who had never once taken his eyes off the
count, tranquilly awaited results.

"Then everything can be settled," murmured Muffat in tones of
relief; "we can come to an understanding."

"The deuce, no! That would be too stupid!" cried Bordenave,
mastered by his commercial instincts. "Ten thousand francs to let
Rose go! Why, people would make game of me!"

But the count, with a multiplicity of nods, bade him accept. He
hesitated, and at last with much grumbling and infinite regret over
the ten thousand francs which, by the by, were not destined to come
out of his own pocket he bluntly continued:

"After all, I consent. At any rate, I shall have you off my hands."

For a quarter of an hour past Fontan had been listening in the
courtyard. Such had been his curiosity that he had come down and
posted himself there, but the moment he understood the state of the
case he went upstairs again and enjoyed the treat of telling Rose.
Dear me! They were just haggling in her behalf! He dinned his
words into her ears; she ran off to the property room. They were
silent as she entered. She looked at the four men. Muffat hung his
head; Fauchery answered her questioning glance with a despairing
shrug of the shoulders; as to Mignon, he was busy discussing the
terms of the agreement with Bordenave.

"What's up?" she demanded curtly.

"Nothing," said her husband. "Bordenave here is giving ten thousand
francs in order to get you to give up your part."

She grew tremulous with anger and very pale, and she clenched her
little fists. For some moments she stared at him, her whole nature
in revolt. Ordinarily in matters of business she was wont to trust
everything obediently to her husband, leaving him to sign agreements
with managers and lovers. Now she could but cry:

"Oh, come, you're too base for anything!"

The words fell like a lash. Then she sped away, and Mignon, in
utter astonishment, ran after her. What next? Was she going mad?
He began explaining to her in low tones that ten thousand francs
from one party and fifteen thousand from the other came to twenty-
five thousand. A splendid deal! Muffat was getting rid of her in
every sense of the word; it was a pretty trick to have plucked him
of this last feather! But Rose in her anger vouchsafed no answer.
Whereupon Mignon in disdain left her to her feminine spite and,
turning to Bordenave, who was once more on the stage with Fauchery
and Muffat, said:

"We'll sign tomorrow morning. Have the money in readiness."

At this moment Nana, to whom Labordette had brought the news, came
down to the stage in triumph. She was quite the honest woman now
and wore a most distinguished expression in order to overwhelm her
friends and prove to the idiots that when she chose she could give
them all points in the matter of smartness. But she nearly got into
trouble, for at the sight of her Rose darted forward, choking with
rage and stuttering:

"Yes, you, I'll pay you out! Things can't go on like this; d'you
understand?"  Nana forgot herself in face of this brisk attack and
was going to put her arms akimbo and give her what for. But she
controlled herself and, looking like a marquise who is afraid of
treading on an orange peel, fluted in still more silvery tones.

"Eh, what?" said she. "You're mad, my dear!"

And with that she continued in her graceful affectation while Rose
took her departure, followed by Mignon, who now refused to recognize
her. Clarisse was enraptured, having just obtained the part of
Geraldine from Bordenave. Fauchery, on the other hand, was gloomy;
he shifted from one foot to the other; he could not decide whether
to leave the theater or no. His piece was bedeviled, and he was
seeking how best to save it. But Nana came up, took him by both
hands and, drawing him toward her, asked whether he thought her so
very atrocious after all. She wasn't going to eat his play--not
she! Then she made him laugh and gave him to understand that he
would be foolish to be angry with her, in view of his relationship
to the Muffats. If, she said, her memory failed her she would take
her lines from the prompter. The house, too, would be packed in
such a way as to ensure applause. Besides, he was mistaken about
her, and he would soon see how she would rattle through her part.
By and by it was arranged that the author should make a few changes
in the role of the duchess so as to extend that of Prulliere. The
last-named personage was enraptured. Indeed, amid all the joy which
Nana now quite naturally diffused, Fontan alone remained unmoved.
In the middle of the yellow lamplight, against which the sharp
outline offa, there were twenty thousand francs' worth of POINT
DE VENISE lace. The furniture was lacquered blue and white under
designs in silver filigree, and everywhere lay such numbers of white
bearskins that they hid the carpet. This was a luxurious caprice on
Nana's part, she having never been able to break herself of the
habit of sitting on the floor to take her stockings off. Next door
to the bedroom the little saloon was full of an amusing medley of
exquisitely artistic objects. Against the hangings of pale rose-
colored silk--a faded Turkish rose color, embroidered with gold
thread--a whole world of them stood sharply outlined. They were
from every land and in every possible style. There were Italian
cabinets, Spanish and Portuguese coffers, models of Chinese pagodas,
a Japanese screen of precious workmanship, besides china, bronzes,
embroidered silks,  his goatlike profile shone out with great distinctness,
he stood showing off his figure and affecting the pose of one who
has been cruelly abandoned. Nana went quietly up and shook hands
with him.

"How are you getting on?"

"Oh, pretty fairly. And how are you?"

"Very well, thank you."

That was all. They seemed to have only parted at the doors of the
theater the day before. Meanwhile the players were waiting about,
but Bordenave said that the third act would not be rehearsed. And
so it chanced that old Bosc went grumbling away at the proper time,
whereas usually the company were needlessly detained and lost whole
afternoons in consequence. Everyone went off. Down on the pavement
they were blinded by the broad daylight and stood blinking their
eyes in a dazed sort of way, as became people who had passed three
hours squabbling with tight-strung nerves in the depths of a cellar.
The count, with racked limbs and vacant brain, got into a conveyance
with Nana, while Labordette took Fauchery off and comforted him.

A month later the first night of the Petite Duchesse proved
supremely disastrous to Nana. She was atrociously bad and displayed
such pretentions toward high comedy that the public grew mirthful.
They did not hiss--they were too amused. From a stage box Rose
Mignon kept greeting her rival's successive entrances with a shrill
laugh, which set the whole house off. It was the beginning of her
revenge. Accordingly, when at night Nana, greatly chagrined, found
herself alone with Muffat, she said furiously:

"What a conspiracy, eh? It's all owing to jealousy. Oh, if they
only knew how I despise 'em! What do I want them for nowadays?
Look here! I'll bet a hundred louis that I'll bring all those who
made fun today and make 'em lick the ground at my feet! Yes, I'll
fine-lady your Paris for you, I will!"

CHAPTER X

Thereupon Nana became a smart woman, mistress of all that is foolish
and filthy in man, marquise in the ranks of her calling. It was a
sudden but decisive start, a plunge into the garish day of gallant
notoriety and mad expenditure and that daredevil wastefulness
peculiar to beauty. She at once became queen among the most
expensive of her kind. Her photographs were displayed in
shopwindows, and she was mentioned in the papers. When she drove in
her carriage along the boulevards the people would turn and tell one
another who that was with all the unction of a nation saluting its
sovereign, while the object of their adoration lolled easily back in
her diaphanous dresses and smiled gaily under the rain of little
golden curls which ran riot above the blue of her made-up eyes and
the red of her painted lips. And the wonder of wonders was that the
great creature, who was so awkward on the stage, so very absurd the
moment she sought to act the chaste woman, was able without effort
to assume the role of an enchantress in the outer world. Her
movements were lithe as a serpent's, and the studied and yet
seemingly involuntary carelessness with which she dressed was really
exquisite in its elegance. There was a nervous distinction in all
she did which suggested a wellborn Persian cat; she was an
aristocrat in vice and proudly and rebelliously trampled upon a
prostrate Paris like a sovereign whom none dare disobey. She set
the fashion, and great ladies imitated her.

Nana's fine house was situated at the hangingscorner of the Rue Cardinet, in
the Avenue de Villiers. The avenue was part of the luxurious
quarter at that time springing up in the vague district which had
once been the Plaine Monceau. The house had been built by a young
painter, who was intoxicated by a first success, and had been
perforce resold almost as soon as it was habitable. It was in the
palatial Renaissance manner and had fantastic interior arrangements
which consisted of modern conveniences framed in a setting of
somewhat artificial originality. Count Muffat had bought the house
ready furnished and full of hosts of beautiful objects--lovely
Eastern hangings, old credences, huge chairs of the Louis XIII
epoch. And thus Nana had come into artistic surroundings of the
choicest kind and of the most extravagantly various dates. But
since the studio, which occupied the central portion of the house,
could not be of any use to her, she had upset existing arrangements,
establishing a small drawing room on the first floor, next to her
bedroom and dressing room, and leaving a conservatory, a large
drawing room and a dining room to look after themselves underneath.
She astonished the architect with her ideas, for, as became a
Parisian workgirl who understands the elegancies of life by
instinct, she had suddenly developed a very pretty taste for every
species of luxurious refinement. Indeed, she did not spoil her
house overmuch; nay, she even added to the richness of the
furniture, save here and there, where certain traces of tender
foolishness and vulgar magnificence betrayed the ex-flower seller
who had been wont to dream in front of shopwindows in the arcades.

A carpet was spread on the steps beneath the great awning over the
front door in the court, and the moment you entered the hall you
were greeted by a perfume as of violets and a soft, warm atmosphere
which thick hangings helped to produce. A window, whose yellow- and
rose-colored panes suggested the warm pallor of human flesh, gave
light to the wide staircase, at the foot of which a Negro in carved
wood held out a silver tray full of visiting cards and four white
marble women, with bosoms displayed, raised lamps in their uplifted
hands. Bronzes and Chinese vases full of flowers, divans covered
with old Persian rugs, armchairs upholstered in old tapestry,
furnished the entrance hall, adorned the stairheads and gave the
first-floor landing the appearance of an anteroom. Here men's
overcoats and hats were always in evidence, and there were thick
hangings which deadened every sound. It seemed a place apart: on
entering it you might have fancied yourself in a chapel, whose very
air was thrilling with devotion, whose very silence and seclusion
were fraught with mystery.

Nana only opened the large and somewhat too-sumptuous Louis XVI
drawing room on those gala nights when she received society from the
Tuileries or strangers of distinction. Ordinarily she only came
downstairs at mealtimes, and she woul of the finest needlework. Armchairs
wide as beds and sofas deep as alcoves suggested voluptuous idleness
and the somnolent life of the seraglio. The prevailing tone of the
room was old gold blended with green and red, and nothing it
contained too forcibly indicated the presence of the courtesan save
the luxuriousness of the seats. Only two "biscuit" statuettes, a
woman in her shift, hunting for fleas, and another with nothing at
all on, walking on her hands and waving her feet in the air,
sufficed to sully the room with a note of stupid originality.

Through a door, which was nearly always ajar, the dressing room was
visible. It was all in marble and glass with a white bath, silver
jugs and basins and crystal and ivory appointments. A drawn curtain
filled the place with a clear twilight which seemed to slumber in
the warm scent of violets, that suggestive perfume peculiar to Nana
wherewith the whole house, from the roof to the very courtyard, was
penetrated.

The furnishing of the house was a most important undertaking. Nana
certainly had Zoe with her, that girl so devoted to her fortunes.
For months she had been tranquilly awaiting this abrupt, new
departure, as became a woman who was certain of her powers of
prescience, and now she was triumphant; she was mistress of the
house and was putting by a round sum while serving Madame as
honestly as possible. But a solitary lady's maid wasd feel rather lost on such days
as she lunched by herself in the lofty dining room with its Gobelin
tapestry and its monumental sideboard, adorned with old porcelain
and marvelous pieces of ancient plate. She used to go upstairs
again as quickly as possible, for her home was on the first floor,
in the three rooms, the bed, dressing and small drawing room above
described. Twice already she had done the bedchamber up anew: on
the first occasion in mauve satin, on the second in blue silk under
lace. But she had not been satisfied with this; it had struck her
as "nohowish," and she was still unsuccessfully seeking for new
colors and designs. On the elaborately upholstered bed, which was
as low as a so no longer
sufficient. A butler, a coachman, a porter and a cook were wanted.
Besides, it was necessary to fill the stables. It was then that
Labordette made himself most useful. He undertook to perform all
sorts of errands which bored the count; he made a comfortable job of
the purchase of horses; he visited the coachbuilders; he guided the
young woman in her choice of things. She was to be met with at the
shops, leaning on his arm. Labordette even got in the servants--
Charles, a great, tall coachman, who had been in service with the
Duc de Corbreuse; Julien, a little, smiling, much-becurled butler,
and a married couple, of whom the wife Victorine became cook while
the husband Francois was taken on as porter and footman. The last
mentioned in powder and breeches wore Nana's livery, which was a
sky-blue one adorned with silver lace, and he received visitors in
the hall. The whole thing was princely in the correctness of its
style.

At the end of two months the house was set going. The cost had been
more than three hundred thousand francs. There were eight horses in
the stables, and five carriages in the coach houses, and of these
five one was a landau with silver embellishments, which for the
moment occupied the attention of all Paris. And amid this great
wealth Nana began settling down and making her nest. After the
third representation of the Petite Duchesse she had quitted the
theater, leaving Bordenave to struggle on against a bankruptcy
which, despite the count's money, was imminent. Nevertheless, she
was still bitter about her failure. It added to that other
bitterness, the lesson Fontan had given her, a shameful lesson for
which she held all men responsible. Accordingly she now declared
herself very firm and quite proof against sudden infatuations, but
thoughts of vengeance took no hold of her volatile brain. What did
maintain a hold on it in the hours when she was not indignant was an
ever-wakeful lust of expenditure, added to a natural contempt for
the man who paid and to a perpetual passion for consumption and
waste, which took pride in the ruin of her lovers.

At starting Nana put the count on a proper footing and clearly
mapped out the conditions of their relationship. The count gave
twelve thousand francs monthly, presents excepted, and demanded
nothing in return save absolute fidelity. She swore fidelity but
insisted also on being treated with the utmost consideration, on
enjoying complete liberty as mistress of the house and on having her
every wish respected. For instance, she was to receive her friends
every day, and he was to come only at stated times. In a word, he
was to repose a blind confidence in her in everything. And when he
was seized with jealous anxiety and hesitated to grant what she
wanted, she stood on her dignity and threatened to give him back all
he had given or even swore by little Louiset to perform what she
promised. This was to suffice him. There was no love where mutual
esteem was wanting. At the end of the first month Muffat respected
her.

But she desired and obtained still more. Soon she began to
influence him, as became a good-natured courtesan. When he came to
her in a moody condition she cheered him up, confessed him and then
gave him good advice. Little by little she interested herself in
the annoyanceut of
the troubled waters.

One morning when Muffat had not yet left the bedroom Zoe ushered a
gentleman into the dressing room, where Nana was changing her
underwear. He was trembling violently.

"Good gracious! It's Zizi!" said the young woman in great
astonishment.

It was, indeed, Georges. But when he saw her in her shift, with her
golden hair over her bare shoulders, he threw his arms round her
neck and round her waist and kissed her in all directions. She
began struggling to get free, for she was frightened, and in
smothered tones she stammered:

"Do leave off! He's there! Oh, it's silly of you! And you, Zoe,
are you out of your senses? Take him away and keep him downstairs;
I'll try and come down."

Zoe had to push him in front of her. When Nana was able to rejoin
them in the drawing room downstairs she scolded them both, and Zoe
pursed up her lips and took her departure with a vexed expression,
remarking that she had only been anxious to give Madame a pleasure.
Georges was so glad to see Nana again and gazed at her with such
delight that his fine eyes began filling with tears. The miserable
days were over now; his mother believed him to have grown reasonable
and had allowed him to leave Les Fondettes. Accordingly, the moment
he had reached the terminus, he had got a conveyance in order the
more quickly to come and kiss his sweet darling. He spoke of living
at her sids of his home life, in his wife, in his daughter, in
his love affairs and financial difficulties; she was very sensible,
very fair and right-minded. On one occasion only did she let anger
get the better of her, and that was when he confided to her that
doubtless Daguenet was going to ask for his daughter Estelle in
marriage. When the count began making himself notorious Daguenet
had thought it a wise move to break off with Nana. He had treated
her like a base hussy and had sworn to snatch his future father-in-
law out of the creature's clutches. In return Nana abused her old
Mimi in a charming fashion. He was a renegade who had devoured his
fortune in the company of vile women; he had no moral sense. True,
he did not let them pay him money, but he profited by that of others
and only repaid them at rare intervals with a bouquet or a dinner.
And when the count seemed inclined to find excuses for these
failings she bluntly informed him that Daguenet had enjoyed her
favors, and she added disgusting particulars. Muffat had grown
ashen-pale. There was no question of the young man now. This would
teach him to be lacking in gratitude!

Meanwhile the house had not been entirely furnished, when one
evening after she had lavished the most energetic promises of
fidelity on Muffat Nana kept the Count Xavier de Vandeuvres for the
night. For the last fortnight he had been paying her assiduous
court, visiting her and sending presents of flowers, and now she
gave way not so much out of sudden infatuation as to prove that she
was a free woman. The idea of gain followed later when, the day
after, Vandeuvres helped her to pay a bill which she did not wish to
mention to the other man. From Vandeuvres she would certainly
derive from eight to ten thousand francs a month, and this would
prove very useful as pocket money. In those days he was finishing
the last of his fortune in an access of burning, feverish folly.
His horses and Lucy had devoured three of his farms, and at one gulp
Nana was going to swallow his last chateau, near Amiens. He seemed
in a hurry to sweep everything away, down to the ruins of the old
tower built by a Vandeuvres under Philip Augustus. He was mad for
ruin and thought it a great thing to leave the last golden bezants
of his coat of arms in the grasp of this courtesan, whom the world
of Paris desired. He, too, accepted Nana's conditions, leaving her
entire freedom of action and claiming her caresses only on certain
days. He was not even naively impassioned enough to require her to
make vows. Muffat suspected nothing. As to Vandeuvres, he knew
things would take place for a certainty, but he never made the least
allusion to them and pretended total ignorance, while his lips wore
the subtle smile of the skeptical man of pleasure who does not seek
the impossible, provided he can have his day and that Paris is aware
of it.

From that time forth Nana's house was really properly appointed.
The staff of servants was complete in the stable, in the kitchen and
in my lady's chamber. Zoe organized everything and passed
successfully through the most unforeseen difficulties. The
household moved as easily as the scenery in a theater and was
regulated like a grand administrative concern. Indeed, it worked
with such precision that during the early months there were no jars
and no derangements. Madame, however, pained Zoe extremely with her
imprudent acts, her sudden fits of unwisdom, her mad bravado. Still
the lady's maid grew gradually lenient, for she had noticed that she
made increased profits in seasons of wanton waste when Madame had
committed a folly which must be made up for. It was then that the
presents began raining on her, and she fished up many a louis oe in future, as he used to do down in
the country when he
waited for her, barefooted, in the bedroom at La Mignotte. And as
he told her about himself, he let his fingers creep forward, for he
longed to touch her after that cruel year of separation. Then he
got possession of her hands, felt about the wide sleeves of her
dressing jacket, traveled up as far as her shoulders.

"You still love your baby?" he asked in his child voice.

"Oh, I certainly love him!" answered Nana, briskly getting out of
his clutches. "But you come popping in without warning. You know,
my little man, I'm not my own mistress; you must be good!"

Georges, when he got out of his cab, had been so dizzy with the
feeling that his long desire was at last about to be satisfied that
he had not even noticed what sort of house he was entering. But now
he became conscious of a change in the things around him. He
examined the sumptuous dining room with its lofty decorated ceiling,
its Gobelin hangings, its buffet blazing with plate.

"Yes, yes!" he remarked sadly.

And with that she made him understand that he was never to come in
the mornings but between four and six in the afternoon, if he cared
to. That was her reception time. Then as he looked at her with
suppliant, questioning eyes and craved no boon at all, she, in her
turn, kissed him on the forehead in the most amiable way.

"Be very good," she whispered. "I'll do all I can."

But the truth was that this remark now meant nothing. She thought
Georges very nice and would have liked him as a companion, but as
nothing else. Nevertheless, when he arrived daily at four o'clock
he seemed so wretched that she was often fain to be as compliant as
of old and would hide him in cupboards and constantly allow him to
pick up the crumbs from Beauty's table. He hardly ever left the
house now and became as much one of its inmates as the little dog
Bijou. Together they nestled among Mistress's skirts and enjoyed a
little of her at a time, even when she was with another man, while
doles of sugar and stray caresses not seldom fell to their share in
her hours of loneliness and boredom.

Doubtless Mme Hugon found out that the lad had again returned to
that wicked woman's arms, for she hurried up to Paris and came and
sought aid from her other son, the Lieutenant Philippe, who was then
in garrison at Vincennes. Georges, who was hiding from his elder
brother, was seized with despairing apprehension, for he feared the
latter might adopt violent tactics, and as his tenderness for Nana
was so nervously expansive that he could not keep anything from her,
he soon began talking of nothing but his big brother, a great,
strong fellow, who was capable of all kinds of things.

"You know," he explained, "Mamma won't come to you while she can
send my brother. Oh, she'll certainly send Philippe to fetch me."

The first time he said this Nana was deeply wounded. She said
frigidly:

"Gracious me, I should like to see him come! For all that he's a
lieutenant in the army, Francois will chuck him out in double-quick
time!"

Soon, as the lad kept returning to the subject of his brother, she
ended by taking a certain interest in Philippe, and in a week's time
she knew him from head to foot--knew him as very tall and very
strong and merry and somewhat rough. She learned intimate details,
too, and found out that he had hair on his arms and a birthmark on
his shoulder. So thoroughly did she learn her lesson that one day,
when she was full of the image of the man who was to be turned out
of doors by her orders, she cried out:

"I say, Zizi, your brother's not coming. He's a base deserter!"

The next day, when Georges and Nana were alone together, Francois
came upstairs to ask whether Madame would receive Lieutenant
Philippe Hugon. Georges grew extremely white and murmured:

"I suspected it; Mamma was talking about it this morning."

And he besought the young woman to send down word that she could not
see visitors. But she was already on her feet and seemed all aflame
as she said:

"Why should I not see him? He would think me afraid. Dear me,
we'll have a good laugh! Just leave the gentleman in the drawing
room for a quarter of an hour, Francois; afterward bring him up to
me."

She did not sit down again but began pacing feverishly to and fro
between the fireplace and a Venetian mirror hanging above an Italian
chest. And each time she reached the latter she glanced at the
glass and tried the effect of a smile, while Georges sat nervously
on a sofa, trembling at the thought of the coming scene. As she
walked up and down she kept jerking out such little phrases as:

"It will calm the fellow down if he has to wait a quarter of an
hour. Besides, if he thinks he's calling on a tottie the drawing
room will stun him! Yes, yes, have a good look at everything, my
fine fellow! It isn't imitation, and it'll teach you to respect the
lady who owns it. Respect's what men need to feel! The quarter of
an hour's gone by, eh? No? Only ten minutes? Oh, we've got plenty
of time."

She did not stay where she was, however. At the end of the quarter
of an hour she sent Georges away after making him solemnly promise
not to listen at the door, as such conduct would scarcely look
proper in case the servants saw him. As he went into her bedroom
Zizi ventured in a choking sort of way to remark:

"It's my brother, you know--"

"Don't you fear," she said with much dignity; "if he's polite I'll
be polite."

Francois ushered in Philippe Hugon, who wore morning dress. Georges
began crossing on tiptoe on the other side of the room, for he was
anxious to obey the young woman. But the sound of voices retained
him, and he hesitated in such anguish of mind that his knees gave
way under him. He began imagining that a dread catastrophe would
befall, that blows would be struck, that something abominable would
happen, which would make Nana everlastingly odious to him. And so
he could not withstand the temptation to come back and put his ear
against the door. He heard very ill, for the thick portieres
deadened every sound, but he managed to catch certain words spoken
by Philippe, stern phrases in which such terms as "mere child,"
"family," "honor," were distinctly audible. He was so anxious about
his darling's possible answers that his heart beat violently and
filled his head with a confused, buzzing noise. She was sure to
give vent to a "Dirty blackguard!" or to a "Leave me bloody well
alone! I'm in my own house!"  But nothing happened--not a breath
came from her direction. Nana seemed dead in there! Soon even his
brother's voice grew gentler, and he could not make it out at all,
when a strange murmuring sound finally stupefied him. Nana was
sobbing! For a moment or two he was the prey of contending feelings
and knew not whether to run away or to fall upon Philippe. But just
then Zoe came into the room, and he withdrew from the door, ashamed
at being thus surprised.

She began quietly to put some linen away in a cupboard while he
stood mute and motionless, pressing his forehead against a
windowpane. He was tortured by uncertainty. After a short silence
the woman asked:

"It's your brother that's with Madame?"

"Yes," replied the lad in a choking voice.

There was a fresh silence.

"And it makes you anxious, doesn't it, Monsieur Georges?"

"Yes," he rejoined in the same painful, suffering tone.

Zoe was in no hurry. She folded up some lace and said slowly:

"You're wrong; Madame will manage it all."

And then the conversation ended; they said not another word. Still
she did not leave the room. A long quarter of an hour passed, and
she turned round again without seeming to notice the look of
exasperation overspreading the lad's face, which was already white
with the effects of uncertainty and constraint. He was casting
sidelong glances in the direction of the drawing room.

Maybe Nana was still crying. The other must have grown savage and
have dealt her blows. Thus when Zoe finally took her departure he
ran to the door and once more pressed his ear against it. He was
thunderstruck; his head swam, for he heard a brisk outburst of
gaiety, tender, whispering voices and the smothered giggles of a
woman who is being tickled. Besides, almost directly afterward,
Nana conducted Philippe to the head of the stairs, and there was an
exchange of cordial and familiar phrases.

When Georges again ventured into the drawing room the young woman
was standing before the mirror, looking at herself.

"Well?" he asked in utter bewilderment.

"Well, what?" she said without turning round. Then negligently:

"What did you mean? He's very nice, is your brother!"

"So it's all right, is it?"

"Oh, certainly it's all right! Goodness me, what's come over you?
One would have thought we were going to fight!"

Georges still failed to understand.

"I thought I heard--that is, you didn't cry?" he stammered out.

"Me cry!" she exclaimed, looking fixedly at him. "Why, you're
dreaming! What makes you think I cried?"

Thereupon the lad was treated to a distressing scene for having
disobeyed and played Paul Pry behind the door. She sulked, and he
returned with coaxing submissiveness to the old subject, for he
wished to know all about it.

"And my brother then?"

"Your brother saw where he was at once. You know, I might have been
a tottie, in which case his interference would have been accounted
for by your age and the family honor! Oh yes, I understand those
kinds of feelings! But a single glance was enough for him, and he
behaved like a well-bred man at once. So don't be anxious any
longer. It's all over--he's gone to quiet your mamma!"

And she went on laughingly:

"For that matter, you'll see your brother here. I've invited him,
and he's going to return."

"Oh, he's going to return," said the lad, growing white. He added
nothing, and they ceased talking of Philippe. She began dressing to
go out, and he watched her with his great, sad eyes. Doubtless he
was very glad that matters had got settled, for he would have
preferred death to a rupture of their connection, but deep down in
his heart there was a silent anguish, a profound sense of pain,
which he had no experience of and dared not talk about. How
Philippe quieted their mother's fears he never knew, but three days
later she returned to Les Fondettes, apparently satisfied. On the
evening of her return, at Nana's house, he trembled when Francois
announced the lieutenant, but the latter jested gaily and treated
him like a young rascal, whose escapade he had favored as something
not likely to have any consequences. The lad's heart was sore
within him; he scarcely dared move and blushed girlishly at the
least word that was spoken to him. He had not lived much in
Philippe's society; he was ten years his junior, and he feared him
as he would a father, from whom stories about women are concealed.
Accordingly he experienced an uneasy sense of shame when he saw him
so free in Nana's company and heard him laugh uproariously, as
became a man who was plunging into a life of pleasure with the gusto
born of magnificent health. Nevertheless, when his brother shortly
began to present himself every day, Georges ended by getting
somewhat used to it all. Nana was radiant.

This, her latest installation, had been involving all the riotous
waste attendant on the life of gallantry, and now her housewarming
was being defiantly celebrated in a grand mansion positively
overflowing with males and with furniture.

One afternoon when the Hugons were there Count Muffat arrived out of
hours. But when Zoe told him that Madame was with friends he
refused to come in and took his departure discreetly, as became a
gallant gentleman. When he made his appearance again in the evening
Nana received him with the frigid indignation of a grossly affronted
woman.

"Sir," she said, "I have given you no cause why you should insult
me. You must understand this: when I am at home to visitors, I beg
you to make your appearance just like other people."

The count simply gaped in astonishment. "But, my dear--" he
endeavored to explain.

"Perhaps it was because I had visitors! Yes, there were men here,
but what d'you suppose I was doing with those men? You only
advertise a woman's affairs when you act the discreet lover, and I
don't want to be advertised; I don't!"

He obtained his pardon with difficulty, but at bottom he was
enchanted. It was with scenes such as these that she kept him in
unquestioning and docile submission. She had long since succeeded
in imposing Georges on him as a young vagabond who, she declared,
amused her. She made him dine with Philippe, and the count behaved
with great amiability. When they rose from table he took the young
man on one side and asked news of his mother. From that time forth
the young Hugons, Vandeuvres and Muffat were openly about the house
and shook hands as guests and intimates might have done. It was a
more convenient arrangement than the previous one. Muffat alone
still abstained discreetly from too-frequent visits, thus adhering
to the ceremonious policy of an ordinary strange caller. At night
when Nana was sitting on her bearskins drawing off her stockings, he
would talk amicably about the other three gentlemen and lay especial
stress on Philippe, who was loyalty itself.

"It's very true; they're nice," Nana would say as she lingered on
the floor to change her shift. "Only, you know, they see what I am.
One word about it and I should chuck 'em all out of doors for you!"

Nevertheless, despite her luxurious life and her group of courtiers,
Nana was nearly bored to death. She had men for every minute of the
night, and money overflowed even among the brushes and combs in the
drawers of her dressing table. But all this had ceased to satisfy
her; she felt that there was a void somewhere or other, an empty
place provocative of yawns. Her life dragged on, devoid of
occupation, and successive days only brought back the same
monotonous hours. Tomorrow had ceased to be; she lived like a bird:
sure of her food and ready to perch and roost on any branch which
she came to. This certainty of food and drink left her lolling
effortless for whole days, lulled her to sleep in conventual
idleness and submission as though she were the prisoner of her
trade. Never going out except to drive, she was losing her walking
powers. She reverted to low childish tastes, would kiss Bijou from
morning to night and kill time with stupid pleasures while waiting
for the man whose caresses she tolerated with an appearance of
complaisant lassitude. Amid this species of self-abandonment she
now took no thought about anything save her personal beauty; her
sole care was to look after herself, to wash and to perfume her
limbs, as became one who was proud of being able to undress at any
moment and in face of anybody without having to blush for her
imperfections.

At ten in the morning Nana would get up. Bijou, the Scotch griffon
dog, used to lick her face and wake her, and then would ensue a game
of play lasting some five minutes, during which the dog would race
about over her arms and legs and cause Count Muffat much distress.
Bijou was the first little male he had ever been jealous of. It was
not at all proper, he thought, that an animal should go poking its
nose under the bedclothes like that! After this Nana would proceed
to her dressing room, where she took a bath. Toward eleven o'clock
Francois would come and do up her hair before beginning the
elaborate manipulations of the afternoon.

At breakfast, as she hated feeding alone, she nearly always had Mme
Maloir at table with her. This lady would arrive from unknown
regions in the morning, wearing her extravagantly quaint hats, and
would return at night to that mysterious existence of hers, about
which no one ever troubled. But the hardest to bear were the two or
three hours between lunch and the toilet. On ordinary occasions she
proposed a game of bezique to her old friend; on others she would
read the Figaro, in which the theatrical echoes and the fashionable
news interested her. Sometimes she even opened a book, for she
fancied herself in literary matters. Her toilet kept her till close
on five o'clock, and then only she would wake from her daylong
drowse and drive out or receive a whole mob of men at her own house.
She would often dine abroad and always go to bed very late, only to
rise again on the morrow with the same languor as before and to
begin another day, differing in nothing from its predecessor.

The great distraction was to go to the Batignolles and see her
little Louis at her aunt's. For a fortnight at a time she forgot
all about him, and then would follow an access of maternal love, and
she would hurry off on foot with all the modesty and tenderness
becoming a good mother. On such occasions she would be the bearer
of snuff for her aunt and of oranges and biscuits for the child, the
kind of presents one takes to a hospital. Or again she would drive
up in her landau on her return from the Bois, decked in costumes,
the resplendence of which greatly excited the dwellers in the
solitary street. Since her niece's magnificent elevation Mme Lerat
had been puffed up with vanity. She rarely presented herself in the
Avenue de Villiers, for she was pleased to remark that it wasn't her
place to do so, but she enjoyed triumphs in her own street. She was
delighted when the young woman arrived in dresses that had cost four
or five thousand francs and would be occupied during the whole of
the next day in showing off her presents and in citing prices which
quite stupefied the neighbors. As often as not, Nana kept Sunday
free for the sake of "her family," and on such occasions, if Muffat
invited her, she would refuse with the smile of a good little
shopwoman. It was impossible, she would answer; she was dining at
her aunt's; she was going to see Baby. Moreover, that poor little
man Louiset was always ill. He was almost three years old, growing
quite a great boy! But he had had an eczema on the back of his
neck, and now concretions were forming in his ears, which pointed,
it was feared, to decay of the bones of the skull. When she saw how
pale he looked, with his spoiled blood and his flabby flesh all out
in yellow patches, she would become serious, but her principal
feeling would be one of astonishment. What could be the matter with
the little love that he should grow so weakly? She, his mother, was
so strong and well!

On the days when her child did not engross attention Nana would
again sink back into the noisy monotony of her existence, with its
drives in the Bois, first nights at the theater, dinners and suppers
at the Maison-d'Or or the Cafe Anglais, not to mention all the
places of public resort, all the spectacles to which crowds rushed--
Mabille, the reviews, the races. But whatever happened she still
felt that stupid, idle void, which caused her, as it were, to suffer
internal cramps. Despite the incessant infatuations that possessed
her heart, she would stretch out her arms with a gesture of immense
weariness the moment she was left alone. Solitude rendered her low
spirited at once, for it brought her face to face with the emptiness
and boredom within her. Extremely gay by nature and profession, she
became dismal in solitude and would sum up her life in the following
ejaculation, which recurred incessantly between her yawns:

"Oh, how the men bother me!"

One afternoon as she was returning home from a concert, Nana, on the
sidewalk in the Rue Montmartre, noticed a woman trotting along in
down-at-the-heel boots, dirty petticoats and a hat utterly ruined by
the rain. She recognized her suddenly.

"Stop, Charles!" she shouted to the coachman and began calling:
"Satin, Satin!"

Passers-by turned their heads; the whole street stared. Satin had
drawn near and was still further soiling herself against the
carriage wheels.

"Do get in, my dear girl," said Nana tranquilly, disdaining the
onlookers.

And with that she picked her up and carried her off, though she was
in disgusting contrast to her light blue landau and her dress of
pearl-gray silk trimmed with Chantilly, while the street smiled at
the coachman's loftily dignified demeanor.

From that day forth Nana had a passion to occupy her thoughts.
Satin became her vicious foible. Washed and dressed and duly
installed in the house in the Avenue de Villiers, during three days
the girl talked of Saint-Lazare and the annoyances the sisters had
caused her and how those dirty police people had put her down on the
official list. Nana grew indignant and comforted her and vowed she
would get her name taken off, even though she herself should have to
go and find out the minister of the interior. Meanwhile there was
no sort of hurry: nobody would come and search for her at Nana's--
that was certain. And thereupon the two women began to pass tender
afternoons together, making numberless endearing little speeches and
mingling their kisses with laughter. The same little sport, which
the arrival of the plainclothes men had interrupted in the Rue de
Laval, was beginning again in a jocular sort of spirit. One fine
evening, however, it became serious, and Nana, who had been so
disgusted at Laure's, now understood what it meant. She was upset
and enraged by it, the more so because Satin disappeared on the
morning of the fourth day. No one had seen her go our. She had,
indeed, slipped away in her new dress, seized by a longing for air,
full of sentimental regret for her old street existence.

That day there was such a terrible storm in the house that all the
servants hung their heads in sheepish silence. Nana had come near
beating Francois for not throwing himself across the door through
which Satin escaped. She did her best, however, to control herself,
and talked of Satin as a dirty swine. Oh, it would teach her to
pick filthy things like that out of the gutter!

When Madame shut herself up in her room in the afternoon Zoe heard
her sobbing. In the evening she suddenly asked for her carriage and
had herself driven to Laure's. It had occurred to her that she
would find Satin at the table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs. She
was not going there for the sake of seeing her again but in order to
catch her one in the face! As a matter of fact Satin was dining at
a little table with Mme Robert. Seeing Nana, she began to laugh,
but the former, though wounded to the quick, did not make a scene.
On the contrary, she was very sweet and very compliant. She paid
for champagne made five or six tablefuls tipsy and then carried off
Satin when Mme Robert was in the closets. Not till they were in the
carriage did she make a mordant attack on her, threatening to kill
her if she did it again.

After that day the same little business began again continually. On
twenty different occasions Nana, tragically furious, as only a
jilted woman can be ran off in pursuit of this sluttish creature,
whose flights were prompted by the boredom she suffered amid the
comforts of her new home. Nana began to talk of boxing Mme Robert's
ears; one day she even meditated a duel; there was one woman too
many, she said.

In these latter times, whenever she dined at Laure's, she donned her
diamonds and occasionally brought with her Louise Violaine, Maria
Blond and Tatan Nene, all of them ablaze with finery; and while the
sordid feast was progressing in the three saloons and the yellow
gaslight flared overhead, these four resplendent ladies would demean
themselves with a vengeance, for it was their delight to dazzle the
little local courtesans and to carry them off when dinner was over.
On days such as these Laure, sleek and tight-laced as ever would
kiss everyone with an air of expanded maternity. Yet
notwithstanding all these circumstances Satin's blue eyes and pure
virginal face remained as calm as heretofore; torn, beaten and
pestered by the two women, she would simply remark that it was a
funny business, and they would have done far better to make it up at
once. It did no good to slap her; she couldn't cut herself in two,
however much she wanted to be nice to everybody. It was Nana who
finally carried her off in triumph, so assiduously had she loaded
Satin with kindnesses and presents. In order to be revenged,
however, Mme Robert wrote abominable, anonymous letters to her
rival's lovers.

For some time past Count Muffat had appeared suspicious, and one
morning, with considerable show of feeling, he laid before Nana an
anonymous letter, where in the very first sentences she read that
she was accused of deceiving the count with Vandeuvres and the young
Hugons.

"It's false! It's false!" she loudly exclaimed in accents of
extraordinary candor.

"You swear?" asked Muffat, already willing to be comforted.

"I'll swear by whatever you like--yes, by the head of my child!"

But the letter was long. Soon her connection with Satin was
described in the broadest and most ignoble terms. When she had done
reading she smiled.

"Now I know who it comes from," she remarked simply.

And as Muffat wanted her denial to the charges therein contained,
she resumed quietly enough:

"That's a matter which doesn't concern you, dear old pet. How can
it hurt you?"

She did not deny anything. He used some horrified expressions.
Thereupon she shrugged her shoulders. Where had he been all this
time? Why, it was done everywhere! And she mentioned her friends
and swore that fashionable ladies went in for it. In fact, to hear
her speak, nothing could be commoner or more natural. But a lie was
a lie, and so a moment ago he had seen how angry she grew in the
matter of Vandeuvres and the young Hugons! Oh, if that had been
true he would have been justified in throttling her! But what was
the good of lying to him about a matter of no consequence? And with
that she repeated her previous expression:

"Come now, how can it hurt you?"

Then as the scene still continued, she closed it with a rough
speech:

"Besides, dear boy, if the thing doesn't suit you it's very simple:
the house door's open! There now, you must take me as you find me!"

He hung his head, for the young woman's vows of fidelity made him
happy at bottom. She, however, now knew her power over him and
ceased to consider his feelings. And from that time forth Satin was
openly installed in the house on the same footing as the gentlemen.
Vandeuvres had not needed anonymous letters in order to understand
how matters stood, and accordingly he joked and tried to pick
jealous quarrels with Satin. Philippe and Georges, on their parts,
treated her like a jolly good fellow, shaking hands with her and
cracking the riskiest jokes imaginable.

Nana had an adventure one evening when this slut of a girl had given
her the go-by and she had gone to dine in the Rue des Martyrs
without being able to catch her. While she was dining by herself
Daguenet had appeared on the scene, for although he had reformed, he
still occasionally dropped in under the influence of his old vicious
inclinations. He hoped of course that no one would meet him in
these black recesses, dedicated to the town's lowest depravity.
Accordingly even Nana's presence seemed to embarrass him at the
outset. But he was not the man to run away and, coming forward with
a smile, he asked if Madame would be so kind as to allow him to dine
at her table. Noticing his jocular tone, Nana assumed her
magnificently frigid demeanor and icily replied:

"Sit down where you please, sir. We are in a public place."

Thus begun, the conversation proved amusing. But at dessert Nana,
bored and burning for a triumph, put her elbows on the table and
began in the old familiar way:

"Well, what about your marriage, my lad? Is it getting on all
right?"

"Not much," Daguenet averred.

As a matter of fact, just when he was about to venture on his
request at the Muffats', he had met with such a cold reception from
the count that he had prudently refrained. The business struck him
as a failure. Nana fixed her clear eyes on him; she was sitting,
leaning her chin on her hand, and there was an ironical curve about
her lips.

"Oh yes! I'm a baggage," she resumed slowly. "Oh yes, the future
father-in-law will have to be dragged from between my claws! Dear
me, dear me, for a fellow with NOUS, you're jolly stupid! What!
D'you mean to say you're going to tell your tales to a man who
adores me and tells me everything? Now just listen: you shall marry
if I wish it, my little man!"

For a minute or two he had felt the truth of this, and now he began
scheming out a method of submission. Nevertheless, he still talked
jokingly, not wishing the matter to grow serious, and after he had
put on his gloves he demanded the hand of Mlle Estelle de Beuville
in the strict regulation manner. Nana ended by laughing, as though
she had been tickled. Oh, that Mimi! It was impossible to bear him
a grudge! Daguenet's great successes with ladies of her class were
due to the sweetness of his voice, a voice of such musical purity
and pliancy as to have won him among courtesans the sobriquet of
"Velvet-Mouth."  Every woman would give way to him when he lulled
her with his sonorous caresses. He knew this power and rocked Nana
to sleep with endless words, telling her all kinds of idiotic
anecdotes. When they left the table d'hote she was blushing rosy-
red; she trembled as she hung on his arm; he had reconquered her.
As it was very fine, she sent her carriage away and walked with him
as far as his own place, where she went upstairs with him naturally
enough. Two hours later, as she was dressing again, she said:

"So you hold to this marriage of yours, Mimi?"

"Egad," he muttered, "it's the best thing I could possibly do after
all! You know I'm stony broke."

She summoned him to button her boots, and after a pause:

"Good heavens! I've no objection. I'll shove you on! She's as dry
as a lath, is that little thing, but since it suits your game--oh,
I'm agreeable: I'll run the thing through for you."

Then with bosom still uncovered, she began laughing:

"Only what will you give me?"

He had caught her in his arms and was kissing her on the shoulders
in a perfect access of gratitude while she quivered with excitement
and struggled merrily and threw herself backward in her efforts to
be free.

"Oh, I know," she cried, excited by the contest. "Listen to what I
want in the way of commission. On your wedding day you shall make
me a present of your innocence. Before your wife, d'you
understand?"

"That's it! That's it!" he said, laughing even louder than Nana.

The bargain amused them--they thought the whole business very good,
indeed.

Now as it happened, there was a dinner at Nana's next day. For the
matter of that, it was the customary Thursday dinner, and Muffat,
Vandeuvres, the young Hugons and Satin were present. The count
arrived early. He stood in need of eighty thousand francs wherewith
to free the young woman from two or three debts and to give her a
set of sapphires she was dying to possess. As he had already
seriously lessened his capital, he was in search of a lender, for he
did not dare to sell another property. With the advice of Nana
herself he had addressed himself to Labordette, but the latter,
deeming it too heavy an undertaking, had mentioned it to the
hairdresser Francis, who willingly busied himself in such affairs in
order to oblige his lady clients. The count put himself into the
hands of these gentlemen but expressed a formal desire not to appear
in the matter, and they both undertook to keep in hand the bill for
a hundred thousand francs which he was to sign, excusing themselves
at the same time for charging a matter of twenty thousand francs
interest and loudly denouncing the blackguard usurers to whom, they
declared, it had been necessary to have recourse. When Muffat had
himself announced, Francis was putting the last touches to Nana's
coiffure. Labordette also was sitting familiarly in the dressing
room, as became a friend of no consequence. Seeing the count, he
discreetly placed a thick bundle of bank notes among the powders and
pomades, and the bill was signed on the marble-topped dressing
table. Nana was anxious to keep Labordette to dinner, but he
declined--he was taking a rich foreigner about Paris. Muffat,
however, led him aside and begged him to go to Becker, the jeweler,
and bring him back thence the set of sapphires, which he wanted to
present the young woman by way of surprise that very evening.
Labordette willingly undertook the commission, and half an hour
later Julien handed the jewel case mysteriously to the count.

During dinnertime Nana was nervous. The sight of the eighty
thousand francs had excited her. To think all that money was to go
to tradespeople! It was a disgusting thought. After soup had been
served she grew sentimental, and in the splendid dining room,
glittering with plate and glass, she talked of the bliss of poverty.
The men were in evening dress, Nana in a gown of white embroidered
satin, while Satin made a more modest appearance in black silk with
a simple gold heart at her throat, which was a present from her kind
friend. Julien and Francois waited behind the guests and were
assisted in this by Zoe. All three looked most dignified.

"It's certain I had far greater fun when I hadn't a cent!" Nana
repeated.

She had placed Muffat on her right hand and Vandeuvres on her left,
but she scarcely looked at them, so taken up was she with Satin, who
sat in state between Philippe and Georges on the opposite side of
the table.

"Eh, duckie?" she kept saying at every turn. "How we did use to
laugh in those days when we went to Mother Josse's school in the Rue
Polonceau!"

When the roast was being served the two women plunged into a world
of reminiscences. They used to have regular chattering fits of this
kind when a sudden desire to stir the muddy depths of their
childhood would possess them. These fits always occurred when men
were present: it was as though they had given way to a burning
desire to treat them to the dunghill on which they had grown to
woman's estate. The gentlemen paled visibly and looked embarrassed.
The young Hugons did their best to laugh, while Vandeuvres nervously
toyed with his beard and Muffat redoubled his gravity.

"You remember Victor?" said Nana. "There was a wicked little fellow
for you! Why, he used to take the little girls into cellars!"

"I remember him perfectly," replied Satin. "I recollect the big
courtyard at your place very well. There was a portress there with
a broom!"

"Mother Boche--she's dead."

"And I can still picture your shop. Your mother was a great fatty.
One evening when we were playing your father came in drunk. Oh, so
drunk!"

At this point Vandeuvres tried to intercept the ladies'
reminiscences and to effect a diversion,

"I say, my dear, I should be very glad to have some more truffles.
They're simply perfect. Yesterday I had some at the house of the
Duc de Corbreuse, which did not come up to them at all."

"The truffles, Julien!" said Nana roughly.

Then returning to the subject:

"By Jove, yes, Dad hadn't any sense! And then what a smash there
was! You should have seen it--down, down, down we went, starving
away all the time. I can tell you I've had to bear pretty well
everything and it's a miracle I didn't kick the bucket over it, like
Daddy and Mamma."

This time Muffat, who was playing with his knife in a state of
infinite exasperation, made so bold as to intervene.

"What you're telling us isn't very cheerful."

"Eh, what? Not cheerful!" she cried with a withering glance. "I
believe you; it isn't cheerful! Somebody had to earn a living for
us dear boy. Oh yes, you know, I'm the right sort; I don't mince
matters. Mamma was a laundress; Daddy used to get drunk, and he
died of it! There! If it doesn't suit you--if you're ashamed of my
family--"

They all protested. What was she after now? They had every sort of
respect for her family! But she went on:

"If you're ashamed of my family you'll please leave me, because I'm
not one of those women who deny their father and mother. You must
take me and them together, d'you understand?"

They took her as required; they accepted the dad, the mamma, the
past; in fact, whatever she chose. With their eyes fixed on the
tablecloth, the four now sat shrinking and insignificant while Nana,
in a transport of omnipotence, trampled on them in the old muddy
boots worn long since in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. She was
determined not to lay down the cudgels just yet. It was all very
fine to bring her fortunes, to build her palaces; she would never
leave off regretting the time when she munched apples! Oh, what
bosh that stupid thing money was! It was made for the tradespeople!
Finally her outburst ended in a sentimentally expressed desire for a
simple, openhearted existence, to be passed in an atmosphere of
universal benevolence.

When she got to this point she noticed Julien waiting idly by.

"Well, what's the matter? Hand the champagne then!" she said. "Why
d'you stand staring at me like a goose?"

During this scene the servants had never once smiled. They
apparently heard nothing, and the more their mistress let herself
down, the more majestic they became. Julien set to work to pour out
the champagne and did so without mishap, but Francois, who was
handing round the fruit, was so unfortunate as to tilt the fruit
dish too low, and the apples, the pears and the grapes rolled on the
table.

"You bloody clumsy lot!" cried Nana.

The footman was mistaken enough to try and explain that the fruit
had not been firmly piled up. Zoe had disarranged it by taking out
some oranges.

"Then it's Zoe that's the goose!" said Nana.

"Madame--" murmured the lady's maid in an injured tone.

Straightway Madame rose to her feet, and in a sharp voice and with
royally authoritative gesture:

"We've had enough of this, haven't we? Leave the room, all of you!
We don't want you any longer!"

This summary procedure calmed her down, and she was forthwith all
sweetness and amiability. The dessert proved charming, and the
gentlemen grew quite merry waiting on themselves. But Satin, having
peeled a pear, came and ate it behind her darling, leaning on her
shoulder the while and whispering sundry little remarks in her ear,
at which they both laughed very loudly. By and by she wanted to
share her last piece of pear with Nana and presented it to her
between her teeth. Whereupon there was a great nibbling of lips,
and the pear was finished amid kisses. At this there was a burst of
comic protest from the gentlemen, Philippe shouting to them to take
it easy and Vandeuvres asking if one ought to leave the room.
Georges, meanwhile, had come and put his arm round Satin's waist and
had brought her back to her seat.

"How silly of you!" said Nana. "You're making her blush, the poor,
darling duck. Never mind, dear girl, let them chaff. It's our own
little private affair."

And turning to Muffat, who was watching them with his serious
expression:

"Isn't it, my friend?"

"Yes, certainly," he murmured with a slow nod of approval.

He no longer protested now. And so amid that company of gentlemen
with the great names and the old, upright traditions, the two women
sat face to face, exchanging tender glances, conquering, reigning,
in tranquil defiance of the laws of sex, in open contempt for the
male portion of the community. The gentlemen burst into applause.

The company went upstairs to take coffee in the little drawing room,
where a couple of lamps cast a soft glow over the rosy hangings and
the lacquer and old gold of the knickknacks. At that hour of the
evening the light played discreetly over coffers, bronzes and china,
lighting up silver or ivory inlaid work, bringing into view the
polished contours of a carved stick and gleaming over a panel with
glossy silky reflections. The fire, which had been burning since
the afternoon, was dying out in glowing embers. It was very warm--
the air behind the curtains and hangings was languid with warmth.
The room was full of Nana's intimate existence: a pair of gloves, a
fallen handkerchief, an open book, lay scattered about, and their
owner seemed present in careless attire with that well-known odor of
violets and that species of untidiness which became her in her
character of good-natured courtesan and had such a charming effect
among all those rich surroundings. The very armchairs, which were
as wide as beds, and the sofas, which were as deep as alcoves,
invited to slumber oblivious of the flight of time and to tender
whispers in shadowy corners.

Satin went and lolled back in the depths of a sofa near the
fireplace. She had lit a cigarette, but Vandeuvres began amusing
himself by pretending to be ferociously jealous. Nay, he even
threatened to send her his seconds if she still persisted in keeping
Nana from her duty. Philippe and Georges joined him and teased her
and badgered her so mercilessly that at last she shouted out:

"Darling! Darling! Do make 'em keep quiet! They're still after
me!"

"Now then, let her be," said Nana seriously. "I won't have her
tormented; you know that quite well. And you, my pet, why d'you
always go mixing yourself up with them when they've got so little
sense?"

Satin, blushing all over and putting out her tongue, went into the
dressing room, through the widely open door of which you caught a
glimpse of pale marbles gleaming in the milky light of a gas flame
in a globe of rough glass. After that Nana talked to the four men
as charmingly as hostess could. During the day she had read a novel
which was at that time making a good deal of noise. It was the
history of a courtesan, and Nana was very indignant, declaring the
whole thing to be untrue and expressing angry dislike to that kind
of monstrous literature which pretends to paint from nature. "Just
as though one could describe everything," she said. Just as though
a novel ought not to be written so that the reader may while away an
hour pleasantly! In the matter of books and of plays Nana had very
decided opinions: she wanted tender and noble productions, things
that would set her dreaming and would elevate her soul. Then
allusion being made in the course of conversation to the troubles
agitating Paris, the incendiary articles in the papers, the
incipient popular disturbances which followed the calls to arms
nightly raised at public meetings, she waxed wroth with the
Republicans. What on earth did those dirty people who never washed
really want? Were folks not happy? Had not the emperor done
everything for the people? A nice filthy lot of people! She knew
'em; she could talk about 'em, and, quite forgetting the respect
which at dinner she had just been insisting should be paid to her
humble circle in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or, she began blackguarding
her own class with all the terror and disgust peculiar to a woman
who had risen successfully above it. That very afternoon she had
read in the Figaro an account of the proceedings at a public meeting
which had verged on the comic. Owing to the slang words that had
been used and to the piggish behavior of a drunken man who had got
himself chucked, she was laughing at those proceedings still.

"Oh, those drunkards!" she said with a disgusted air. "No, look you
here, their republic would be a great misfortune for everybody! Oh,
may God preserve us the emperor as long as possible!"

"God will hear your prayer, my dear," Muffat replied gravely. "To
be sure, the emperor stands firm."

He liked her to express such excellent views. Both, indeed,
understood one another in political matters. Vandeuvres and
Philippe Hugon likewise indulged in endless jokes against the
"cads," the quarrelsome set who scuttled off the moment they clapped
eyes on a bayonet. But Georges that evening remained pale and
somber.

"What can be the matter with that baby?" asked Nana, noticing his
troubled appearance.

"With me? Nothing--I am listening," he muttered.

But he was really suffering. On rising from table he had heard
Philippe joking with the young woman, and now it was Philippe, and
not himself, who sat beside her. His heart, he knew not why,
swelled to bursting. He could not bear to see them so close
together; such vile thoughts oppressed him that shame mingled with
his anguish. He who laughed at Satin, who had accepted Steiner and
Muffat and all the rest, felt outraged and murderous at the thought
that Philippe might someday touch that woman.

"Here, take Bijou," she said to comfort him, and she passed him the
little dog which had gone to sleep on her dress.

And with that Georges grew happy again, for with the beast still
warm from her lap in his arms, he held, as it were, part of her.

Allusion had been made to a considerable loss which Vandeuvres had
last night sustained at the Imperial Club. Muffat, who did not
play, expressed great astonishment, but Vandeuvres smilingly alluded
to his imminent ruin, about which Paris was already talking. The
kind of death you chose did not much matter, he averred; the great
thing was to die handsomely. For some time past Nana had noticed
that he was nervous and had a sharp downward droop of the mouth and
a fitful gleam in the depths of his clear eyes. But he retained his
haughty aristocratic manner and the delicate elegance of his
impoverished race, and as yet these strange manifestations were
only, so to speak, momentary fits of vertigo overcoming a brain
already sapped by play and by debauchery. One night as he lay
beside her he had frightened her with a dreadful story. He had told
her he contemplated shutting himself up in his stable and setting
fire to himself and his horses at such time as he should have
devoured all his substance. His only hope at that period was a
horse, Lusignan by name, which he was training for the Prix de
Paris. He was living on this horse, which was the sole stay of his
shaken credit, and whenever Nana grew exacting he would put her off
till June and to the probability of Lusignan's winning.

"Bah! He may very likely lose," she said merrily, "since he's going
to clear them all out at the races."

By way of reply he contented himself by smiling a thin, mysterious
smile. Then carelessly:

"By the by, I've taken the liberty of giving your name to my
outsider, the filly. Nana, Nana--that sounds well. You're not
vexed?"

"Vexed, why?" she said in a state of inward ecstasy.

The conversation continued, and same mention was made of an
execution shortly to take place. The young woman said she was
burning to go to it when Satin appeared at the dressing-room door
and called her in tones of entreaty. She got up at once and left
the gentlemen lolling lazily about, while they finished their cigars
and discussed the grave question as to how far a murderer subject to
chronic alcoholism is responsible for his act. In the dressing room
Zoe sat helpless on a chair, crying her heart out, while Satin
vainly endeavored to console her.

"What's the matter?" said Nana in surprise.

"Oh, darling, do speak to her!" said Satin. "I've been trying to
make her listen to reason for the last twenty minutes. She's crying
because you called her a goose."

"Yes, madame, it's very hard--very hard," stuttered Zoe, choked by a
fresh fit of sobbing.

This sad sight melted the young woman's heart at once. She spoke
kindly, and when the other woman still refused to grow calm she sank
down in front of her and took her round the waist with truly cordial
familiarity:

"But, you silly, I said 'goose' just as I might have said anything
else. How shall I explain? I was in a passion--it was wrong of me;
now calm down."

"I who love Madame so," stuttered Zoe; "after all I've done for
Madame."

Thereupon Nana kissed the lady's maid and, wishing to show her she
wasn't vexed, gave her a dress she had worn three times. Their
quarrels always ended up in the giving of presents! Zoe plugged her
handkerchief into her eyes. She carried the dress off over her arm
and added before leaving that they were very sad in the kitchen and
that Julien and Francois had been unable to eat, so entirely had
Madame's anger taken away their appetites. Thereupon Madame sent
them a louis as a pledge of reconciliation. She suffered too much
if people around her were sorrowful.

Nana was returning to the drawing room, happy in the thought that
she had patched up a disagreement which was rendering her quietly
apprehensive of the morrow, when Satin came and whispered vehemently
in her ear. She was full of complaint, threatened to be off if
those men still went on teasing her and kept insisting that her
darling should turn them all out of doors for that night, at any
rate. It would be a lesson to them. And then it would be so nice
to be alone, both of them! Nana, with a return of anxiety, declared
it to be impossible. Thereupon the other shouted at her like a
violent child and tried hard to overrule her.

"I wish it, d'you see? Send 'em away or I'm off!"

And she went back into the drawing room, stretched herself out in
the recesses of a divan, which stood in the background near the
window, and lay waiting, silent and deathlike, with her great eyes
fixed upon Nana.

The gentlemen were deciding against the new criminological theories.
Granted that lovely invention of irresponsibility in certain
pathological cases, and criminals ceased to exist and sick people
alone remained. The young woman, expressing approval with an
occasional nod, was busy considering how best to dismiss the count.
The others would soon be going, but he would assuredly prove
obstinate. In fact, when Philippe got up to withdraw, Georges
followed him at once--he seemed only anxious not to leave his
brother behind. Vandeuvres lingered some minutes longer, feeling
his way, as it were, and waiting to find out if, by any chance, some
important business would oblige Muffat to cede him his place. Soon,
however, when he saw the count deliberately taking up his quarters
for the night, he desisted from his purpose and said good-by, as
became a man of tact. But on his way to the door, he noticed Satin
staring fixedly at Nana, as usual. Doubtless he understood what
this meant, for he seemed amused and came and shook hands with her.

"We're not angry, eh?" he whispered. "Pray pardon me. You're the
nicer attraction of the two, on my honor!"

Satin deigned no reply. Nor did she take her eyes off Nana and the
count, who were now alone. Muffat, ceasing to be ceremonious, had
come to sit beside the young woman. He took her fingers and began
kissing them. Whereupon Nana, seeking to change the current of his
thoughts, asked him if his daughter Estelle were better. The
previous night he had been complaining of the child's melancholy
behavior--he could not even spend a day happily at his own house,
with his wife always out and his daughter icily silent.

In family matters of this kind Nana was always full of good advice,
and when Muffat abandoned all his usual self-control under the
influence of mental and physical relaxation and once more launched
out into his former plaints, she remembered the promise she had
made.

"Suppose you were to marry her?" she said. And with that she
ventured to talk of Daguenet. At the mere mention of the name the
count was filled with disgust. "Never," he said after what she had
told him!

She pretended great surprise and then burst out laughing and put her
arm round his neck.

"Oh, the jealous man! To think of it! Just argue it out a little.
Why, they slandered me to you--I was furious. At present I should
be ever so sorry if--"

But over Muffat's shoulder she met Satin's gaze. And she left him
anxiously and in a grave voice continued:

"This marriage must come off, my friend; I don't want to prevent
your daughter's happiness. The young man's most charming; you could
not possibly find a better sort."

And she launched into extraordinary praise of Daguenet. The count
had again taken her hands; he no longer refused now; he would see
about it, he said, they would talk the matter over. By and by, when
he spoke of going to bed, she sank her voice and excused herself.
It was impossible; she was not well. If he loved her at all he
would not insist! Nevertheless, he was obstinate; he refused to go
away, and she was beginning to give in when she met Satin's eyes
once more. Then she grew inflexible. No, the thing was out of the
question! The count, deeply moved and with a look of suffering, had
risen and was going in quest of his hat. But in the doorway he
remembered the set of sapphires; he could feel the case in his
pocket. He had been wanting to hide it at the bottom of the bed so
that when she entered it before him she should feel it against her
legs. Since dinnertime he had been meditating this little surprise
like a schoolboy, and now, in trouble and anguish of heart at being
thus dismissed, he gave her the case without further ceremony.

"What is it?" she queried. "Sapphires? Dear me! Oh yes, it's that
set. How sweet you are! But I say, my darling, d'you believe it's
the same one? In the shopwindow it made a much greater show."

That was all the thanks he got, and she let him go away. He noticed
Satin stretched out silent and expectant, and with that he gazed at
both women and without further insistence submitted to his fate and
went downstairs. The hall door had not yet closed when Satin caught
Nana round the waist and danced and sang. Then she ran to the
window.

"Oh, just look at the figure he cuts down in the street!"  The two
women leaned upon the wrought-iron window rail in the shadow of the
curtains. One o'clock struck. The Avenue de Villiers was deserted,
and its double file of gas lamps stretched away into the darkness of
the damp March night through which great gusts of wind kept
sweeping, laden with rain. There were vague stretches of land on
either side of the road which looked like gulfs of shadow, while
scaffoldings round mansions in process of construction loomed upward
under the dark sky. They laughed uncontrollably as they watched
Muffat's rounded back and glistening shadow disappearing along the
wet sidewalk into the glacial, desolate plains of new Paris. But
Nana silenced Satin.

"Take care; there are the police!"

Thereupon they smothered their laughter and gazed in secret fear at
two dark figures walking with measured tread on the opposite side of
the avenue. Amid all her luxurious surroundings, amid all the royal
splendors of the woman whom all must obey, Nana still stood in
horror of the police and did not like to hear them mentioned any
oftener than death. She felt distinctly unwell when a policeman
looked up at her house. One never knew what such people might do!
They might easily take them for loose women if they heard them
laughing at that hour of the night. Satin, with a little shudder,
had squeezed herself up against Nana. Nevertheless, the pair stayed
where they were and were soon interested in the approach of a
lantern, the light of which danced over the puddles in the road. It
was an old ragpicker woman who was busy raking in the gutters.
Satin recognized her.

"Dear me," she exclaimed, "it's Queen Pomare with her wickerwork
shawl!"

And while a gust of wind lashed the fine rain in their faces she
told her beloved the story of Queen Pomare. Oh, she had been a
splendid girl once upon a time: all Paris had talked of her beauty.
And such devilish go and such cheek! Why, she led the men about
like dogs, and great people stood blubbering on her stairs! Now she
was in the habit of getting tipsy, and the women round about would
make her drink absinthe for the sake of a laugh, after which the
street boys would throw stones at her and chase her. In fact, it
was a regular smashup; the queen had tumbled into the mud! Nana
listened, feeling cold all over.

"You shall see," added Satin.

She whistled a man's whistle, and the ragpicker, who was then below
the window, lifted her head and showed herself by the yellow flare
of her lantern. Framed among rags, a perfect bundle of them, a face
looked out from under a tattered kerchief--a blue, seamed face with
a toothless, cavernous mouth and fiery bruises where the eyes should
be. And Nana, seeing the frightful old woman, the wanton drowned in
drink, had a sudden fit of recollection and saw far back amid the
shadows of consciousness the vision of Chamont--Irma d'Anglars, the
old harlot crowned with years and honors, ascending the steps in
front of her chateau amid abjectly reverential villagers. Then as
Satin whistled again, making game of the old hag, who could not see
her:

"Do leave off; there are the police!" she murmured in changed tones.
"In with us, quick, my pet!"

The measured steps were returning, and they shut the window.
Turning round again, shivering, and with the damp of night on her
hair, Nana was momentarily astounded at sight of her drawing room.
It seemed as though she had forgotten it and were entering an
unknown chamber. So warm, so full of perfume, was the air she
encountered that she experienced a sense of delighted surprise. The
heaped-up wealth of the place, the Old World furniture, the fabrics
of silk and gold, the ivory, the bronzes, were slumbering in the
rosy light of the lamps, while from the whole of the silent house a
rich feeling of great luxury ascended, the luxury of the solemn
reception rooms, of the comfortable, ample dining room, of the vast
retired staircase, with their soft carpets and seats. Her
individuality, with its longing for domination and enjoyment and its
desire to possess everything that she might destroy everything, was
suddenly increased. Never before had she felt so profoundly the
puissance of her sex. She gazed slowly round and remarked with an
expression of grave philosophy:

"Ah well, all the same, one's jolly well right to profit by things
when one's young!"

But now Satin was rolling on the bearskins in the bedroom and
calling her.

"Oh, do come! Do come!"

Nana undressed in the dressing room, and in order to be quicker
about it she took her thick fell of blonde hair in both hands and
began shaking it above the silver wash hand basin, while a downward
hail of long hairpins rang a little chime on the shining metal.

CHAPTER XI

One Sunday the race for the Grand Prix de Paris was being run in the
Bois de Boulogne beneath skies rendered sultry by the first heats of
June. The sun that morning had risen amid a mist of dun-colored
dust, but toward eleven o'clock, just when the carriages were
reaching the Longchamps course, a southerly wind had swept away the
clouds; long streamers of gray vapor were disappearing across the
sky, and gaps showing an intense blue beyond were spreading from one
end of the horizon to the other. In the bright bursts of sunlight
which alternated with the clouds the whole scene shone again, from
the field which was gradually filling with a crowd of carriages,
horsemen and pedestrians, to the still-vacant course, where the
judge's box stood, together with the posts and the masts for
signaling numbers, and thence on to the five symmetrical stands of
brickwork and timber, rising gallery upon gallery in the middle of
the weighing enclosure opposite. Beyond these, bathed in the light
of noon, lay the vast level plain, bordered with little trees and
shut in to the westward by the wooded heights of Saint-Cloud and the
Suresnes, which, in their turn, were dominated by the severe
outlines of Mont-Valerien.

Nana, as excited as if the Grand Prix were going to make her
fortune, wanted to take up a position by the railing next the
winning post. She had arrived very early--she was, in fact, one of
the first to come--in a landau adorned with silver and drawn, a la
Daumont, by four splendid white horses. This landau was a present
from Count Muffat. When she had made her appearance at the entrance
to the field with two postilions jogging blithely on the near horses
and two footmen perching motionless behind the carriage, the people
had rushed to look as though a queen were passing. She sported the
blue and white colors of the Vandeuvres stable, and her dress was
remarkable. It consisted of a little blue silk bodice and tunic,
which fitted closely to the body and bulged out enormously behind
her waist, thereby bringing her lower limbs into bold relief in such
a manner as to be extremely noticeable in that epoch of voluminous
skirts. Then there was a white satin dress with white satin sleeves
and a sash worn crosswise over the shoulders, the whole ornamented
with silver guipure which shone in the sun. In addition to this, in
order to be still more like a jockey, she had stuck a blue toque
with a white feather jauntily upon her chignon, the fair tresses
from which flowed down beyond her shoulders and resembled an
enormous russet pigtail.

Twelve struck. The public would have to wait more than three hours
for the Grand Prix to be run. When the landau had drawn up beside
the barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she
were in her own house. A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and
Louiset with her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering
with cold despite the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of
ribbons and laces the child's poor little face looked waxen and dumb
and white in the open air. Meanwhile the young woman, without
troubling about the people near her, talked at the top of her voice
with Georges and Philippe Hugon, who were seated opposite on the
front seat among such a mountain of bouquets of white roses and blue
myosotis that they were buried up to their shoulders.

"Well then," she was saying, "as he bored me to death, I showed him
the door. And now it's two days that he's been sulking."

She was talking of Muffat, but she took care not to confess to the
young men the real reason for this first quarrel, which was that one
evening he had found a man's hat in her bedroom. She had indeed
brought home a passer-by out of sheer ennui--a silly infatuation.

"You have no idea how funny he is," she continued, growing merry
over the particulars she was giving. "He's a regular bigot at
bottom, so he says his prayers every evening. Yes, he does. He's
under the impression I notice nothing because I go to bed first so
as not to be in his way, but I watch him out of the corner of my
eye. Oh, he jaws away, and then he crosses himself when he turns
round to step over me and get to the inside of the bed."

"Jove, it's sly," muttered Philippe. "That's what happens before,
but afterward, what then?"

She laughed merrily.

"Yes, just so, before and after! When I'm going to sleep I hear him
jawing away again. But the biggest bore of all is that we can't
argue about anything now without his growing 'pi.'  I've always been
religious. Yes, chaff as much as you like; that won't prevent me
believing what I do believe! Only he's too much of a nuisance: he
blubbers; he talks about remorse. The day before yesterday, for
instance, he had a regular fit of it after our usual row, and I
wasn't the least bit reassured when all was over."

But she broke off, crying out:

"Just look at the Mignons arriving. Dear me, they've brought the
children! Oh, how those little chaps are dressed up!"

The Mignons were in a landau of severe hue; there was something
substantially luxurious about their turnout, suggesting rich 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 the thick
of the carriages. Having arrived in a cab, whence she could not see
anything, the Tricon had quietly mounted the coach box. And there,
straightening up her tall figure, with her noble face enshrined in
its long curls, she dominated the crowd as though enthroned amid her
feminine subjects. All the latter smiled discreetly at her while
she, in her superiority, pretended not to know them. She wasn't
there for business purposes: she was watching the races for the love
of the thing, as became a frantic gambler with a passion for
horseflesh.

"Dear me, there's that idiot La Faloise!" said Georges suddenly.

It was a surprise to them all. Nana did not recognize her La
Faloise, for since he had come into his inheritance he had grown
extraordinarily up to date. He wore a low collar and was clad in a
cloth of delicate hue which fitted close to his meager shoulders.
His hair was in little bandeaux, and he affected a weary kind of
swagger, a soft tone of voice and slang words and phrases which he
did not take the trouble to finish.

"But he's quite the thing!" declared Nana in perfect enchantment.

Gaga and Clarisse had called La Faloise and were throwing themselves
at him in their efforts to regain his allegiance, but he left them
immediately, rolling off in a chaffing, disdainful manner. Nana
dazzled him. He rushed up to her and stood on the carriage step,
and when she twitted him about Gaga he murmured:

"Oh dear, no! We've seen the last of the old lot! Mustn't play her
off on me any more. And then, you know, it's you now, Juliet mine!"

He had put his hand to his heart. Nana laughed a good deal at this
exceedingly sudden out-of-door declaration. She continued:

"I say, that's not what I'm after. You're making me forget that I
want to lay wagers. Georges, you see that bookmaker down there, a
great red-faced man with curly hair? He's got a dirty blackguard
expression which I like. You're to go and choose--Oh, I say, what
can one choose?"

"I'm not a patriotic soul--oh dear, no!" La Faloise blurted out.
"I'm all for the Englishman. It will be ripping if the Englishman
gains! The French may go to Jericho!"

Nana was scandalized. Presently the merits of the several horses
began to be discussed, and La Faloise, wishing to be thought very
much in the swim, spoke of them all as sorry jades. Frangipane,
Baron Verdier's horse, was by The Truth out of Lenore. A big bay
horse he was, who would certainly have stood a chance if they hadn't
let him get foundered during training. As to Valerio II from the
Corbreuse stable, he wasn't ready yet; he'd had the colic in April.
Oh yes, they were keeping that dark, but he was sure of it, on his
honor! In the end he advised Nana to choose Hazard, the most
defective of the lot, a horse nobody would have anything to do with.
Hazard, by jingo--such superb lines and such an action! That horse
was going to astonish the people.

"No," said Nana, "I'm going to put ten louis on Lusignan and five on
Boum."

La Faloise burst forth at once:

"But, my dear girl, Boum's all rot! Don't choose him! Gasc himself
is chucking up backing his own horse. And your Lusignan--never!
Why, it's all humbug! By Lamb and Princess--just think! By Lamb
and Princess--no, by Jove! All too short in the legs!"

He was choking. Philippe pointed out that, notwithstanding this,
Lusignan had won the Prix des Cars and the Grande Poule des
Produits. But the other ran on again. What did that prove?
Nothing at all. On the contrary, one ought to distrust him. And
besides, Gresham rode Lusignan; well then, let them jolly well dry
up! Gresham had bad luck; he would never get to the post.

And from one end of the field to the other the discussion raging in
Nana's landau seemed to spread and increase. Voices were raised in
a scream; the passion for gambling filled the air, set faces glowing
and arms waving excitedly, while the bookmakers, perched on their
conveyances, shouted odds and jotted down amounts right furiously.
Yet these were only the small fry of the betting world; the big bets
were made in the weighing enclosure. Here, then, raged the keen
contest of people with light purses who risked their five-franc
pieces and displayed infinite covetousness for the sake of a
possible gain of a few louis. In a word, the battle would be
between Spirit and Lusignan. Englishmen, plainly recognizable as
such, were strolling about among the various groups. They were
quite at home; their faces were fiery with excitement; they were
afready triumphant. Bramah, a horse belonging to Lord Reading, had
gained the Grand Prix the previous year, and this had been a defeat
over which hearts were still bleeding. This year it would be
terrible if France were beaten anew. Accordingly all the ladies
were wild with national pride. The Vandeuvres stable became the
rampart of their honor, and Lusignan was pushed and defended and
applauded exceedingly. Gaga, Blanche, Caroline and the rest betted
on Lusignan. Lucy Stewart abstained from this on account of her
son, but it was bruited abroad that Rose Mignon had commissioned
Labordette to risk two hundred louis for her. The Tricon, as she
sat alone next her driver, waited till the last moment. Very cool,
indeed, amid all these disputes, very far above the ever-increasing
uproar in which horses' names kept recurring and lively Parisian
phrases mingled with guttural English exclamations, she sat
listening and taking notes majestically.

"And Nana?" said Georges. "Does no one want her?"

Indeed, nobody was asking for the filly; she was not even being
mentioned. The outsider of the Vandeuvres's stud was swamped by
Lusignan's popularity. But La Faloise flung his arms up, crying:

"I've an inspiration. I'll bet a louis on Nana."

"Bravo! I bet a couple," said Georges.

"And I three," added Philippe.

And they mounted up and up, bidding against one another good-
humoredly and naming prices as though they had been haggling over
Nana at an auction. La Faloise said he would cover her with gold.
Besides, everybody was to be made to back her; they would go and
pick up backers. But as the three young men were darting off to
propagandize, Nana shouted after them:

"You know I don't want to have anything to do with her; I don't for
the world! Georges, ten louis on Lusignan and five on Valerio II."

Meanwhile they had started fairly off, and she watched them gaily as
they slipped between wheels, ducked under horses' heads and scoured
the whole field. The moment they recognized anyone in a carriage
they rushed up and urged Nana's claims. And there were great bursts
of laughter among the crowd when sometimes they turned back,
triumphantly signaling amounts with their fingers, while the young
woman stood and waved her sunshade. Nevertheless, they made poor
enough work of it. Some men let themselves be persuaded; Steiner,
for instance, ventured three louis, for the sight of Nana stirred
him. But the women refused point-blank. "Thanks," they said; "to
lose for a certainty!"  Besides, they were in no hurry to work for
the benefit of a dirty wench who was overwhelming them all with her
four white horses, her postilions and her outrageous assumption of
side. Gaga and Clarisse looked exceedingly prim and asked La
Faloise whether he was jolly well making fun of them. When Georges
boldly presented himself before the Mignons' carriage Rose turned
her head away in the most marked manner and did not answer him. One
must be a pretty foul sort to let one's name be given to a horse!
Mignon, on the contrary, followed the young man's movements with a
look of amusement and declared that the women always brought luck.

"Well?" queried Nana when the young men returned after a prolonged
visit to the bookmakers.

"The odds are forty to one against you," said La Faloise.

"What's that? Forty to one!" she cried, astounded. "They were
fifty to one against me. What's happened?"

Labordette had just then reappeared. The course was being cleared,
and the pealing of a bell announced the first race. Amid the
expectant murmur of the bystanders she questioned him about this
sudden rise in her value. But he replied evasively; doubtless a
demand for her had arisen. She had to content herself with this
explanation. Moreover, Labordette announced with a preoccupied
expression that Vandeuvres was coming if he could get away.

The race was ending unnoticed; people were all waiting for the Grand
Prix to be run--when a storm burst over the Hippodrome. For some
minutes past the sun had disappeared, and a wan twilight had
darkened over the multitude. Then the wind rose, and there ensued a
sudden deluge. Huge drops, perfect sheets of water, fell. There
was a momentary confusion, and people shouted and joked and swore,
while those on foot scampered madly off to find refuge under the
canvas of the drinking booths. In the carriages the women did their
best to shelter themselves, grasping their sunshades with both
hands, while the bewildered footmen ran to the hoods. But the
shower was already nearly over, and the sun began shining
brilliantly through escaping clouds of fine rain. A blue cleft
opened in the stormy mass, which was blown off over the Bois, and
the skies seemed to smile again and to set the women laughing in a
reassured manner, while amid the snorting of horses and the disarray
and agitation of the drenched multitude that was shaking itself dry
a broad flush of golden light lit up the field, still dripping and
glittering with crystal drops.

"Oh, that poor, dear Louiset!" said Nana. "Are you very drenched,
my darling?"

The little thing silently allowed his hands to be wiped. The young
woman had taken out her handkerchief. Then she dabbed it over
Bijou, who was trembling more violently than ever. It would not
matter in the least; there were a few drops on the white satin of
her dress, but she didn't care a pin for them. The bouquets,
refreshed by the rain, glowed like snow, and she smelled one
ecstatically, drenching her lips in it as though it were wet with
dew.

Meanwhile the burst of rain had suddenly filled the stands. Nana
looked at them through her field glasses. At that distance you
could only distinguish a compact, confused mass of people, heaped
up, as it were, on the ascending ranges of steps, a dark background
relieved by light dots which were human faces. The sunlight
filtered in through openings near the roof at each end of the stand
and detached and illumined portions of the seated multitude, where
the ladies' dresses seemed to lose their distinguishing colors. But
Nana was especially amused by the ladies whom the shower had driven
from the rows of chairs ranged on the sand at the base of the
stands. As courtesans were absolutely forbidden to enter the
enclosure, she began making exceedingly bitter remarks about all the
fashionable women therein assembled. She thought them fearfully
dressed up, and such guys!

There was a rumor that the empress was entering the little central
stand, a pavilion built like a chalet, with a wide balcony furnished
with red armchairs.

"Why, there he is!" said Georges. "I didn't think he was on duty
this week."

The stiff and solemn form of the Count Muffat had appeared behind
the empress. Thereupon the young men jested and were sorry that
Satin wasn't there to go and dig him in the ribs. But Nana's field
glass focused the head of the Prince of Scots in the imperial stand.

"Gracious, it's Charles!" she cried.

She thought him stouter than formerly. In eighteen months he had
broadened, and with that she entered into particulars. Oh yes, he
was a big, solidly built fellow!

All round her in the ladies' carriages they were whispering that the
count had given her up. It was quite a long story. Since he had
been making himself noticeable, the Tuileries had grown scandalized
at the chamberlain's conduct. Whereupon, in order ro retain his
position, he had recently broken it off with Nana. La Faloise
bluntly reported this account of matters to the young woman and,
addressing her as his Juliet, again offered himself. But she
laughed merrily and remarked:

"It's idiotic! You won't know him; I've only to say, 'Come here,'
for him to chuck up everything."

For some seconds past she had been examining the Countess Sabine and
Estelle. Daguenet was still at their side. Fauchery had just
arrived and was disturbing the people round him in his desire to
make his bow to them. He, too, stayed smilingly beside them. After
that Nana pointed with disdainful action at the stands and
continued:

"Then, you know, those people don't fetch me any longer now! I know
'em too well. You should see 'em behind scenes. No more honor!
It's all up with honor! Filth belowstairs, filth abovestairs, filth
everywhere. That's why I won't be bothered about 'em!"

And with a comprehensive gesture she took in everybody, from the
grooms leading the horses on to the course to the sovereign lady
busy chatting with with Charles, a prince and a dirty fellow to
boot.

"Bravo, Nana! Awfully smart, Nana!" cried La Faloise
enthusiastically.

The tolling of a bell was lost in the wind; the races continued.
The Prix d'Ispahan had just been run for and Berlingot, a horse
belonging to the Mechain stable, had won. Nana recalled Labordette
in order to obtain news of the hundred louis, but he burst out
laughing and refused to let her know the horses he had chosen for
her, so as not to disturb the luck, as he phrased it. Her money was
well placed; she would see that all in good time. And when she
confessed her bets to him and told him how she had put ten louis on
Lusignan and five on Valerio II, he shrugged his shoulders, as who
should say that women did stupid things whatever happened. His
action surprised her; she was quite at sea.

Just then the field grew more animated than before. Open-air
lunches were arranged in the interval before the Grand Prix. There
was much eating and more drinking in all directions, on the grass,
on the high seats of the four-in-hands and mail coaches, in the
victorias, the broughams, the landaus. There was a universal spread
of cold viands and a fine disorderly display of champagne baskets
which footmen kept handing down out of the coach boots. Corks came
out with feeble pops, which the wind drowned. There was an
interchange of jests, and the sound of breaking glasses imparted a
note of discord to the high-strung gaiety of the scene. Gaga and
Clarisse, together with Blanche, were making a serious repast, for
they were eating sandwiches on the carriage rug with which they had
been covering their knees. Louise Violaine had got down from her
basket carriage and had joined Caroline Hequet. On the turf at
their feet some gentlemen had instituted a drinking bar, whither
Tatan, Maria, Simonne and the rest came to refresh themselves, while
high in air and close at hand bottles were being emptied on Lea de
Horn's mail coach, and, with infinite bravado and gesticulation, a
whole band were making themselves tipsy in the sunshine, above the
heads of the crowd. Soon, however, there was an especially large
crowd by Nana's landau. She had risen to her feet and had set
herself to pour out glasses of champagne for the men who came to pay
her their respects. Francois, one of the footmen, was passing up
the bottles while La Faloise, trying hard to imitate a coster's
accents, kept pattering away:

"'Ere y're, given away, given away! There's some for everybody!"

"Do be still, dear boy," Nana ended by saying. "We look like a set
of tumblers."

She thought him very droll and was greatly entertained. At one
moment she conceived the idea of sending Georges with a glass of
champagne to Rose Mignon, who was affecting temperance. Henri and
Charles were bored to distraction; they would have been glad of some
champagne, the poor little fellows. But Georges drank the glassful,
for he feared an argument. Then Nana remembered Louiset, who was
sitting forgotten behind her. Maybe he was thirsty, and she forced
him to take a drop or two of wine, which made him cough dreadfully.

"'Ere y'are, 'ere y'are, gemmen!" La Faloise reiterated. "It don't
cost two sous; it don't cost one. We give it away."

But Nana broke in with an exclamation:

"Gracious, there's Bordenave down there! Call him. Oh, run,
please, please do!"

It was indeed Bordenave. He was strolling about with his hands
behind his back, wearing a hat that looked rusty in the sunlight and
a greasy frock coat that was glossy at the seams. It was Bordenave
shattered by bankruptcy, yet furious despite all reverses, a
Bordenave who flaunted his misery among all the fine folks with the
hardihood becoming a man ever ready to take Dame Fortune by storm.

"The deuce, how smart we are!" he said when Nana extended her hand
to him like the good-natured wench she was.

Presently, after emptying a glass of champagne, he gave vent to the
followmg profoundly regretful phrase:

"Ah, if only I were a woman! But, by God, that's nothing! Would
you like to go on the stage again? I've a notion: I'll hire the
Gaite, and we'll gobble up Paris between us. You certainly owe it
me, eh?"

And he lingered, grumbling, beside her, though glad to see her
again; for, he said, that confounded Nana was balm to his feelings.
Yes, it was balm to them merely to exist in her presence! She was
his daughter; she was blood of his blood!

The circle increased, for now La Faloise was filling glasses, and
Georges and Philippe were picking up friends. A stealthy impulse
was gradually bringing in the whole field. Nana would fling
everyone a laughing smile or an amusing phrase. The groups of
tipplers were drawing near, and all the champagne scattered over the
place was moving in her direction. Soon there was only one noisy
crowd, and that was round her landau, where she queened it among
outstretched glasses, her yellow hair floating on the breeze and her
snowy face bathed in the sunshine. Then by way of a finishing touch
and to make the other women, who were mad at her triumph, simply
perish of envy, she lifted a brimming glass on high and assumed her
old pose as Venus Victrix.

But somebody touched her shoulder, and she was surprised, on turning
round, to see Mignon on the seat. She vanished from view an instant
and sat herself down beside him, for he had come to communicate a
matter of importance. Mignon had everywhere declared that it was
ridiculous of his wife to bear Nana a grudge; he thought her
attitude stupid and useless.

"Look here, my dear," he whispered. "Be careful: don't madden Rose
too much. You understand, I think it best to warn you. Yes, she's
got a weapon in store, and as she's never forgiven you the Petite
Duchesse business--"

"A weapon," said Nana; "what's that blooming well got to do with
me?"

"Just listen: it's a letter she must have found in Fauchery's
pocket, a letter written to that screw Fauchery by the Countess
Muffat. And, by Jove, it's clear the whole story's in it. Well
then, Rose wants to send the letter to the count so as to be
revenged on him and on you."

"What the deuce has that got to do with me?" Nana repeated. "It's a
funny business. So the whole story about Fauchery's in it! Very
well, so much the better; the woman has been exasperating me! We
shall have a good laugh!"

"No, I don't wish it," Mignon briskly rejoined. "There'll be a
pretty scandal! Besides, we've got nothing to gain."

He paused, fearing lest he should say too much, while she loudly
averred that she was most certainly not going to get a chaste woman
into trouble.

But when he still insisted on his refusal she looked steadily at
him. Doubtless he was afraid of seeing Fauchery again introduced
into his family in case he broke with the countess. While avenging
her own wrongs, Rose was anxious for that to happen, since she still
felt a kindness toward the journalist. And Nana waxed meditative
and thought of M. Venot's call, and a plan began to take shape in
her brain, while Mignon was doing his best to talk her over.

"Let's suppose that Rose sends the letter, eh? There's food for
scandal: you're mixed up in the business, and people say you're the
cause of it all. Then to begin with, the count separates from his
wife."

"Why should he?" she said. "On the contrary--"

She broke off, in her turn. There was no need for her to think
aloud. So in order to be rid of Mignon she looked as though she
entered into his view of the case, and when he advised her to give
Rose some proof of her submission--to pay her a short visit on the
racecourse, for instance, where everybody would see her--she replied
that she would see about it, that she would think the matter over.

A commotion caused her to stand up again. On the course the horses
were coming in amid a sudden blast of wind. The prize given by the
city of Paris had just been run for, and Cornemuse had gained it.
Now the Grand Prix was about to be run, and the fever of the crowd
increased, and they were tortured by anxiety and stamped and swayed
as though they wanted to make the minutes fly faster. At this
ultimate moment the betting world was surprised and startled by the
continued shortening of the odds against Nana, the outsider of the
Vandeuvres stables. Gentlemen kept returning every few moments with
a new quotation: the betting was thirty to one against Nana; it was
twenty-five to one against Nana, then twenty to one, then fifteen to
one. No one could understand it. A filly beaten on all the
racecourses! A filly which that same morning no single sportsman
would take at fifty to one against! What did this sudden madness
betoken? Some laughed at it and spoke of the pretty doing awaiting
the duffers who were being taken in by the joke. Others looked
serious and uneasy and sniffed out something ugly under it all.
Perhaps there was a "deal" in the offing. Allusion was made to
well-known stories about the robberies which are winked at on
racecourses, but on this occasion the great name of Vandeuvres put a
stop to all such accusations, and the skeptics in the end prevailed
when they prophesied that Nana would come in last of all.

"Who's riding Nana?" queried La Faloise.

Just then the real Nana reappeared, whereat the gentlemen lent his
question an indecent meaning and burst into an uproarious fit of
laughter. Nana bowed.

"Price is up," she replied.

And with that the discussion began again. Price was an English
celebrity. Why had Vandeuvres got this jockey to come over, seeing
that Gresham 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 on hand. Au
revoir!"

And he entered the room, which was narrow and low-pitched and half
filled with a great pair of scales. It was like a waiting room in a
suburban station, and Nana was again hugely disillusioned, for she
had been picturing to herself something on a very vast scale, a
monumental machine, in fact, for weighing horses. Dear me, they
only weighed the jockeys! Then it wasn't worth while making such a
fuss with their weighing! In the scale a jockey with an idiotic
expression was waiting, harness on knee, till a stout man in a frock
coat should have done verifying his weight. At the door a stable
help was holding a horse, Cosinus, round which a silent and deeply
interested throng was clustering.

The course was about to be cleared. Labordette hurried Nana but
retraced his steps in order to show her a little man talking with
Vandeuvres at some distance from the rest.

"Dear me, there's Price!" he said.

"Ah yes, the man who's mounting me," she murmured laughingly.

And she declared him to be exquisitely ugly. All jockeys struck her
as looking idiotic, doubtless, she said, because they were prevented
from growing bigger. This particular jockey was a man of forty, and
with his long, thin, deeply furrowed, hard, dead countenance, he
looked like an old shriveled-up child. His body was knotty and so
reduced in size that his blue jacket with its white sleeves looked
as if it had been thrown over a lay figure.

"No," she resumed as she walked away, "he would never make me very
happy, you know."

A mob of people were still crowding the course, the turf of which
had been wet and trampled on till it had grown black. In front of
the two telegraphs, which hung very high up on their cast-iron
pillars, the crowd were jostling together with upturned faces,
uproariously greeting the numbers of the different horses as an
electric wire in connection with the weighing room made them appear.
Gentlemen were pointing at programs: Pichenette had been scratched
by his owner, and this caused some noise. However, Nana did not do
more than cross over the course on Labordette's arm. The bell
hanging on the flagstaff was ringing persistently to warn people to
leave the course.

"Ah, my little dears," she said as she got up into her landau again,
"their enclosure's all humbug!"

She was welcomed with acclamation; people around her clapped their
hands.

"Bravo, Nana! Nana's ours again!"

What idiots they were, to be sure! Did they think she was the sort
to cut old friends? She had come back just at the auspicious
moment. Now then, 'tenshun! The race was beginning! And the
champagne was accordingly forgotten, and everyone left off drinking.

But Nana was astonished to find Gaga in her carriage, sitting with
Bijou and Louiset on her knees. Gaga had indeed decided on this
course of action in order to be near La Faloise, but she told Nana
that she had been anxious to kiss Baby. She adored children.

"By the by, what about Lili?" asked Nana. "That's certainly she
over there in that old fellow's brougham. They've just told me
something very nice!"

Gaga had adopted a lachrymose expression.

"My dear, it's made me ill," she said dolorously. "Yesterday I had
to keep my bed, I cried so, and today I didn't think I should be
able to come. You know what my opinions were, don't you? I didn't
desire that kind of thing at all. I had her educated in a convent
with a view to a good marriage. And then to think of the strict
advice she had and the constant watching! Well, my dear, it was she
who wished it. We had such a scene--tears--disagreeable speeches!
It even got to such a point that I caught her a box on the ear. She
was too much bored by existence, she said; she wanted to get out of
it. By and by, when she began to say, ''Tisn't you, after all,
who've got the right to prevent me,' I said to her: 'you're a
miserable wretch; you're bringing dishonor upon us. Begone!'  And
it was done. I consented to arrange about it. But my last hope's
blooming well blasted, and, oh, I used to dream about such nice
things!"

The noise of a quarrel caused them to rise. It was Georges in the
act of defending Vandeuvres against certain vague rumors which were
circulating among the various groups.

"Why should you say that he's laying off his own horse?" the young
man was exclaiming. "Yesterday in the Salon des Courses he took the
odds on Lusignan for a thousand louis."

"Yes, I was there," said Philippe in affirmation of this. "And he
didn't put a single louis on Nana. If the betting's ten to one
against Nana he's got nothing to win there. It's absurd to imagine
people are so calculating. Where would his interest come in?"

Labordette was listening with a quiet expression. Shrugging his
shoulders, he said:

"Oh, leave them alone; they must have their say. The count has
again laid at least as much as five hundred louis on Lusignan, and
if he's wanted Nana to run to a hundred louis it's because an owner
ought always to look as if he believes in his horses."

"Oh, bosh! What the deuce does that matter to us?" shouted La
Faloise with a wave of his arms. "Spirit's going to win! Down with
France--bravo, England!"

A long shiver ran through the crowd, while a fresh peal from the
bell announced the arrival of the horses upon the racecourse. At
this Nana got up and stood on one of the seats of her carriage so as
to obtain a better view, and in so doing she trampled the bouquets
of roses and myosotis underfoot. With a sweeping glance she took in
the wide, vast horizon. At this last feverish moment the course was
empty and closed by gray barriers, between the posts of which stood
a line of policemen. The strip of grass which lay muddy in front of
her grew brighter as it stretched away and turned into a tender
green carpet in the distance. In the middle landscape, as she
lowered her eyes, she saw the field swarming with vast numbers of
people, some on tiptoe, others perched on carriages, and all heaving
and jostling in sudden passionate excitement.

Horses were neighing; tent canvases flapped, while equestrians urged
their hacks forward amid a crowd of pedestrians rushing to get
places along the barriers. When Nana turned in the direction of the
stands on the other side the faces seemed diminished, and the dense
masses of heads were only a confused and motley array, filling
gangways, steps and terraces and looming in deep, dark, serried
lines against the sky. And beyond these again she over looked the
plain surrounding the course. Behind the ivy-clad mill to the
right, meadows, dotted over with great patches of umbrageous wood,
stretched away into the distance, while opposite to her, as far as
the Seine flowing at the foot of a hill, the avenues of the park
intersected one another, filled at that moment with long, motionless
files of waiting carriages; and in the direction of Boulogne, on the
left, the landscape widened anew and opened out toward the blue
distances of Meudon through an avenue of paulownias, whose rosy,
leafless tops were one stain of brilliant lake color. People were
still arriving, and a long procession of human ants kept coming
along the narrow ribbon of road which crossed the distance, while
very far away, on the Paris side, the nonpaying public, herding like
sheep among the wood, loomed in a moving line of little dark spots
under the trees on the skirts of the Bois.

Suddenly a cheering influence warmed the hundred thousand souls who
covered this part of the plain like insects swarming madly under the
vast expanse of heaven. The sun, which had been hidden for about a
quarter of an hour, made his appearance again and shone out amid a
perfect sea of light. And everything flamed afresh: the women's
sunshades turned into countless golden targets above the heads of
the crowd. The sun was applauded, saluted with bursts of laughter.
And people stretched their arms out as though to brush apart the
clouds.

Meanwhile a solitary police officer advanced down the middle of the
deserted racecourse, while higher up, on the left, a man appeared
with a red flag in his hand.

"It's the starter, the Baron de Mauriac," said Labordette in reply
to a question from Nana. All round the young woman exclamations
were bursting from the men who were pressing to her very carriage
step. They kept up a disconnected conversation, jerking out phrases
under the immediate influence of passing impressions. Indeed,
Philippe and Georges, Bordenave and La Faloise, could not be quiet.

"Don't shove! Let me see! Ah, the judge is getting into his box.
D'you say it's Monsieur de Souvigny? You must have good eyesight--
eh?--to be able to tell what half a head is out of a fakement like
that! Do hold your tongue--the banner's going up. Here they are--
'tenshun! Cosinus is the first!"

A red and yellow banner was flapping in mid-air at the top of a
mast. The horses came on the course one by one; they were led by
stableboys, and the jockeys were sitting idle-handed in the saddles,
the sunlight making them look like bright dabs of color. After
Cosinus appeared Hazard and Boum. Presently a murmur of approval
greeted Spirit, a magnificent big brown bay, the harsh citron color
and black of whose jockey were cheerlessly Britannic. Valerio II
scored a success as he came in; he was small and very lively, and
his colors were soft green bordered with pink. The two Vandeuvres
horses were slow to make their appearance, but at last, in
Frangipane's rear, the blue and white showed themselves. But
Lusignan, a very dark bay of irreproachable shape, was almost
forgotten amid the astonishment caused by Nana. People had not seen
her looking like this before, for now the sudden sunlight was dyeing
the chestnut filly the brilliant color of a girl's red-gold hair.
She was shining in the light like a new gold coin; her chest was
deep; her head and neck tapered lightly from the delicate, high-
strung line of her long back.

"Gracious, she's got my hair!" cried Nana in an ecstasy. "You bet
you know I'm proud of it!"

The men clambered up on the landau, and Bordenave narrowly escaped
putting his foot on Louiset, whom his mother had forgotten. He took
him up with an outburst of paternal grumbling and hoisted him on his
shoulder, muttering at the same time:

"The poor little brat, he must be in it too! Wait a bit, I'll show
you Mamma. Eh? Look at Mummy out there."

And as Bijou was scratching his legs, he took charge of him, too,
while Nana, rejoicing in the brute that bore her name, glanced round
at the other women to see how they took it. They were all raging
madly. Just then on the summit of her cab the Tricon, who had not
moved till that moment, began waving her hand and giving her
bookmaker her orders above the heads of the crowd. Her instinct had
at last prompted her; she was backing Nana.

La Faloise meanwhile was making an insufferable noise. He was
getting wild over Frangipane.

"I've an inspiration," he kept shouting. "Just look at Frangipane.
What an action, eh? I back Frangipane at eight to one. Who'll take
me?"

"Do keep quiet now," said Labordette at last. "You'll be sorry for
it if you do."

"Frangipane's a screw," Philippe declared. "He's been utterly blown
upon already. You'll see the canter."

The horses had gone up to the right, and they now started for the
preliminary canter, passing in loose order before the stands.
Thereupon there was a passionate fresh burst of talk, and people all
spoke at once.

"Lusignan's too long in the back, but he's very fit. Not a cent, I
tell you, on Valerio II; he's nervous--gallops with his head up--
it's a bad sign. Jove! Burne's riding Spirit. I tell you, he's
got no shoulders. A well-made shoulder--that's the whole secret.
No, decidedly, Spirit's too quiet. Now listen, Nana, I saw her
after the Grande Poule des Produits, and she was dripping and
draggled, and her sides were trembling like one o'clock. I lay
twenty louis she isn't placed! Oh, shut up! He's boring us with
his Frangipane. There's no time to make a bet now; there, they're
off!"

Almost in tears, La Faloise was struggling to find a bookmaker. He
had to be reasoned with. Everyone craned forward, but the first go-
off was bad, the starter, who looked in the distance like a slim
dash of blackness, not having lowered his flag. The horses came
back to their places after galloping a moment or two. There were
two more false starts. At length the starter got the horses
together and sent them away with such address as to elicit shouts of
applause.

"Splendid! No, it was mere chance! Never mind--it's done it!"

The outcries were smothered by the anxiety which tortured every
breast. The betting stopped now, and the game was being played on
the vast course itself. Silence reigned at the outset, as though
everyone were holding his breath. White faces and trembling forms
were stretched forward in all directions. At first Hazard and
Cosinus made the running at the head of the rest; Valerio II
followed close by, and the field came on in a confused mass behind.
When they passed in front of the stands, thundering over the ground
in their course like a sudden stormwind, the mass was already some
fourteen lengths in extent. Frangipane was last, and Nana was
slightly behind Lusignan and Spirit.

"Egad!" muttered Labordette, "how the Englishman is pulling it off
out there!"

The whole carriageload again burst out with phrases and
exclamations. Everyone rose on tiptoe and followed the bright
splashes of color which were the jockeys as they rushed through the
sunlight.

At the rise Valerio II took the lead, while Cosinus and Hazard lost
ground, and Lusignan and Spirit were running neck and neck with Nana
still behind them.

"By jingo, the Englishman's gained! It's palpable!" said Bordenave.
"Lusignan's in difficulties, and Valerio II can't stay."

"Well, it will be a pretty biz if the Englishman wins!" cried
Philippe in an access of patriotic grief.

A feeling of anguish was beginning to choke all that crowded
multitude. Another defeat! And with that a strange ardent prayer,
which was almost religious, went up for Lusignan, while people
heaped abuse on Spirit and his dismal mute of a jockey. Among the
crowd scattered over the grass the wind of excitement put up whole
groups of people and set their boot soles flashing in air as they
ran. Horsemen crossed the green at a furious gallop. And Nana, who
was slowly revolving on her own axis, saw beneath her a surging
waste of beasts and men, a sea of heads swayed and stirred all round
the course by the whirlwind of the race, which clove the horizon
with the bright lightning flash of the jockeys. She had been
following their movement from behind while the cruppers sped away
and the legs seemed to grow longer as they raced and then diminished
till they looked slender as strands of hair. Now the horses were
running at the end of the course, and she caught a side view of them
looking minute and delicate of outline against the green distances
of the Bois. Then suddenly they vanished behind a great clump of
trees growing in the middle of the Hippodrome.

"Don't talk about it!" cried Georges, who was still full of hope.
"It isn't over yet. The Englishman's touched."

But La Faloise was again seized with contempt for his country and
grew positively outrageous in his applause of Spirit. Bravo! That
was right! France needed it! Spirit first and Frangipane second--
that would be a nasty one for his native land! He exasperated
Labordette, who threatened seriously to throw him off the carriage.

"Let's see how many minutes they'll be about it," said Bordenave
peaceably, for though holding up Louiset, he had taken out his
watch.

One after the other the horses reappeared from behind the clump of
trees. There was stupefaction; a long murmur arose among the crowd.
Valerio II was still leading, but Spirit was gaining on him, and
behind him Lusignan had slackened while another horse was taking his
place. People could not make this out all at once; they were
confused about the colors. Then there was a burst of exclamations.

"But it's Nana! Nana? Get along! I tell you Lusignan hasn't
budged. Dear me, yes, it's Nana. You can certainly recognize her
by her golden color. D'you see her now? She's blazing away.
Bravo, Nana! What a ripper she is! Bah, it doesn't matter a bit:
she's making the running for Lusignan!"

For some seconds this was everybody's opinion. But little by little
the filly kept gaining and gaining, spurting hard all the while.
Thereupon a vast wave of feeling passed over the crowd, and the tail
of horses in the rear ceased to interest. A supreme struggle was
beginning between Spirit, Nana, Lusignan and Valerio II. They were
pointed out; people estimated what ground they had gained or lost in
disconnected, gasping phrases. And Nana, who had mounted up on the
coach box, as though some power had lifted her thither, stood white
and trembling and so deeply moved as not to be able to speak. At
her side Labordette smiled as of old.

"The Englishman's in trouble, eh?" said Philippe joyously. "He's
going badly."

"In any case, it's all up with Lusignan," shouted La Faloise.
"Valerio II is coming forward. Look, there they are all four
together."

The same phrase was in every mouth.

"What a rush, my dears! By God, what a rush!"

The squad of horses was now passing in front of them like a flash of
lightning. Their approach was perceptible--the breath of it was as
a distant muttering which increased at every second. The whole
crowd had thrown themselves impetuously against the barriers, and a
deep clamor issued from innumerable chests before the advance of the
horses and drew nearer and nearer like the sound of a foaming tide.
It was the last fierce outburst of colossal partisanship; a hundred
thousand spectators were possessed by a single passion, burning with
the same gambler's lust, as they gazed after the beasts, whose
galloping feet were sweeping millions with them. The crowd pushed
and crushed--fists were clenched; people gaped, openmouthed; every
man was fighting for himself; every man with voice and gesture was
madly speeding the horse of his choice. And the cry of all this
multitude, a wild beast's cry despite the garb of civilization, grew
ever more distinct:

"Here they come! Here they come! Here they come!"

But Nana was still gaining ground, and now Valerio II was distanced,
and she was heading the race, with Spirit two or three necks behind.
The rolling thunder of voices had increased. They were coming in; a
storm of oaths greeted them from the landau.

"Gee up, Lusignan, you great coward! The Englishman's stunning! Do
it again, old boy; do it again! Oh, that Valerio! It's sickening!
Oh, the carcass! My ten louis damned well lost! Nana's the only
one! Bravo, Nana! Bravo!"

And without being aware of it Nana, upon her seat, had begun jerking
her hips and waist as though she were racing herself. She kept
striking her side--she fancied it was a help to the filly. With
each stroke she sighed with fatigue and said in low, anguished
tones:

"Go it, go it!"

Then a splendid sight was witnessed. Price, rising in his stirrups
and brandishing his whip, flogged Nana with an arm of iron. The old
shriveled-up child with his long, hard, dead face seemed to breath
flame. And in a fit of furious audacity and triumphant will he put
his heart into the filly, held her up, lifted her forward, drenched
in foam, with eyes of blood. The whole rush of horses passed with a
roar of thunder: it took away people's breaths; it swept the air
with it while the judge sat frigidly waiting, his eye adjusted to
its task. Then there was an immense re-echoing burst of
acclamation. With a supreme effort Price had just flung Nana past
the post, thus beating Spirit by a head.

There was an uproar as of a rising tide. "Nana! Nana! Nana!"  The
cry rolled up and swelled with the violence of a tempest, till
little by little it filled the distance, the depths of the Bois as
far as Mont Valerien, the meadows of Longchamps and the Plaine de
Boulogne. In all parts of the field the wildest enthusiasm declared
itself. "Vive Nana! Vive la France! Down with England!"  The
women waved their sunshades; men leaped and spun round, vociferating
as they did so, while others with shouts of nervous laughter threw
their hats in the air. And from the other side of the course the
enclosure made answer; the people on the stands were stirred, though
nothing was distinctly visible save a tremulous motion of the air,
as though an invisible flame were burning in a brazier above the
living mass of gesticulating arms and little wildly moving faces,
where the eyes and gaping mouths looked like black dots. The noise
did not cease but swelled up and recommenced in the recesses of
faraway avenues and among the people encamped under the trees, till
it spread on and on and attained its climax in the imperial stand,
where the empress herself had applauded. "Nana! Nana! Nana!"  The
cry rose heavenward in the glorious sunlight, whose golden rain beat
fiercely on the dizzy heads of the multitude.

Then Nana, looming large on the seat of her landau, fancied that it
was she whom they were applauding. For a moment or two she had
stood devoid of motion, stupefied by her triumph, gazing at the
course as it was invaded by so dense a flood of people that the turf
became invisible beneath the sea of black hats. By and by, when
this crowd had become somewhat less disorderly and a lane had been
formed as far as the exit and Nana was again applauded as she went
off with Price hanging lifelessly and vacantly over her neck, she
smacked her thigh energetically, lost all self-possession, triumphed
in crude phrases:

"Oh, by God, it's me; it's me. Oh, by God, what luck!"

And, scarce knowing how to give expression to her overwhelming joy,
she hugged and kissed Louiset, whom she now discovered high in the
air on Bordenave's shoulder.

"Three minutes and fourteen seconds," said the latter as he put his
watch back in his pocket.

Nana kept hearing her name; the whole plain was echoing it back to
her. Her people were applauding her while she towered above them in
the sunlight, in the splendor of her starry hair and white-and-sky-
blue dress. Labordette, as he made off, had just announced to her a
gain of two thousand louis, for he had put her fifty on Nana at
forty to one. But the money stirred her less than this unforeseen
victory, the fame of which made her queen of Paris. All the other
ladies were losers. With a raging movement Rose Mignon had snapped
her sunshade, and Caroline Hequet and Clarisse and Simonne--nay,
Lucy Stewart herself, despite the presence of her son--were swearing
low in their exasperation at that great wench's luck, while the
Tricon, who had made the sign of the cross at both start and finish,
straightened up her tall form above them, went into an ecstasy over
her intuition and damned Nana admiringly as became an experienced
matron.

Meanwhile round the landau the crush of men increased. The band of
Nana's immediate followers had made a fierce uproar, and now
Georges, choking with emotion, continued shouting all by himself in
breaking tones. As the champagne had given out, Philippe, taking
the footmen with him, had run to the wine bars. Nana's court was
growing and growing, and her present triumph caused many loiterers
to join her. Indeed, that movement which had made her carriage a
center of attraction to the whole field was now ending in an
apotheosis, and Queen Venus was enthroned amid suddenly maddened
subjects. Bordenave, behind her, was muttering oaths, for he
yearned to her as a father. Steiner himself had been reconquered--
he had deserted Simonne and had hoisted himself upon one of Nana's
carriage steps. When the champagne had arrived, when she lifted her
brimming glass, such applause burst forth, and "Nana! Nana! Nana!"
was so loudly repeated that the crowd looked round in astonishment
for the filly, nor could any tell whether it was the horse or the
woman that filled all hearts.

While this was going on Mignon came hastening up in defiance of
Rose's terrible frown. That confounded girl simply maddened him,
and he wanted to kiss her. Then after imprinting a paternal salute
on both her cheeks:

"What bothers me," he said, "is that now Rose is certainly going to
send the letter. She's raging, too, fearfully."

"So much the better! It'll do my business for me!" Nana let slip.

But noting his utter astonishment, she hastily continued:

"No, no, what am I saying? Indeed, I don't rightly know what I'm
saying now! I'm drunk."

And drunk, indeed, drunk with joy, drunk with sunshine, she still
raised her glass on high and applauded herself.

"To Nana! To Nana!" she cried amid a redoubled uproar of laughter
and bravoes, which little by little overspread the whole Hippodrome.

The races were ending, and the Prix Vaublanc was run for. Carriages
began driving off one by one. Meanwhile, amid much disputing, the
name of Vandeuvres was again mentioned. It was quite evident now:
for two years past Vandeuvres had been preparing his final stroke
and had accordingly told Gresham to hold Nana in, while he had only
brought Lusignan forward in order to make play for the filly. The
losers were vexed; the winners shrugged their shoulders. After all,
wasn't the thing permissible? An owner was free to run his stud in
his own way. Many others had done as he had! In fact, the majority
thought Vandeuvres had displayed great skill in raking in all he
could get about Nana through the agency of friends, a course of
action which explained the sudden shortening of the odds. People
spoke of his having laid two thousand louis on the horse, which,
supposing the odds to be thirty to one against, gave him twelve
hundred thousand francs, an amount so vast as to inspire respect and
to excuse everything.

But other rumors of a very serious nature were being whispered
about: they issued in the first instance from the enclosure, and the
men who returned thence were full of exact particulars. Voices were
raised; an atrocious scandal began to be openly canvassed. That
poor fellow Vandeuvres was done for; he had spoiled his splendid hit
with a piece of flat stupidity, an idiotic robbery, for he had
commissioned Marechal, a shady bookmaker, to lay two thousand louis
on his account against Lusignan, in order thereby to get back his
thousand and odd openly wagered louis. It was a miserable business,
and it proved to be the last rift necessary to the utter breakup of
his fortune. The bookmaker being thus warned that the favorite
would not win, had realized some sixty thousand francs over the
horse. Only Labordette, for lack of exact and detailed
instructions, had just then gone to him to put two hundred louis on
Nana, which the bookmaker, in his ignorance of the stroke actually
intended, was still quoting at fifty to one against. Cleared of one
hundred thousand francs over the filly and a loser to the tune of
forty thousand, Marechal, who felt the world crumbling under his
feet, had suddenly divined the situation when he saw the count and
Labordette talking together in front of the enclosure just after the
race was over. Furious, as became an ex-coachman of the count's,
and brutally frank as only a cheated man can be, he had just made a
frightful scene in public, had told the whole story in atrocious
terms and had thrown everyone into angry excitement. It was further
stated that the stewards were about to meet.

Nana, whom Philippe and Georges were whisperingly putting in
possession of the facts, gave vent to a series of reflections and
yet ceased not to laugh and drink. After all, it was quite likely;
she remembered such things, and then that Marechal had a dirty,
hangdog look. Nevertheless, she was still rather doubtful when
Labordette appeared. He was very white.

"Well?" she asked in a low voice.

"Bloody well smashed up!" he replied simply.

And he shrugged his shoulders. That Vandeuvres was a mere child!
She made a bored little gesture.

That evening at the Bal Mabille Nana obtained a colossal success.
When toward ten o'clock she made her appearance, the uproar was
afready formidable. That classic night of madness had brought
together all that was young and pleasure loving, and now this smart
world was wallowing in the coarseness and imbecility of the
servants' hall. There was a fierce crush under the festoons of gas
lamps, and men in evening coats and women in outrageous low-necked
old toilets, which they did not mind soiling, were howling and
surging to and fro under the maddening influence of a vast drunken
fit. At a distance of thirty paces the brass instruments of the
orchestra were inaudible. Nobody was dancing. Stupid witticisms,
repeated no one knew why, were going the round of the various
groups. People were straining after wit without succeeding in being
funny. Seven women, imprisoned in the cloakroom, were crying to be
set free. A shallot had been found, put up to auction and knocked
down at two louis. Just then Nana arrived, still wearing her blue-
and-white racecourse costume, and amid a thunder of applause the
shallot was presented to her. People caught hold of her in her own
despite, and three gentlemen bore her triumphantly into the garden,
across ruined grassplots and ravaged masses of greenery. As the
bandstand presented an obstacle to her advance, it was taken by
storm, and chairs and music stands were smashed. A paternal police
organized the disorder.

It was only on Tuesday that Nana recovered from the excitements of
victory. That morning she was chatting with Mme Lerat, the old lady
having come in to bring her news of Louiset, whom the open air had
upset. A long story, which was occupying the attention of all
Paris, interested her beyond measure. Vandeuvres, after being
warned off all racecourses and posted at the Cercle Imperial on the
very evening after the disaster, had set fire to his stable on the
morrow and had burned himself and his horses to death.

"He certainly told me he was going to," the young woman kept saying.
"That man was a regular maniac! Oh, how they did frighten me when
they told me about it yesterday evening! You see, he might easily
have murdered me some fine night. And besides, oughtn't he to have
given me a hint about his horse? I should at any rate have made my
fortune! He said to Labordette that if I knew about the matter I
would immediately inform my hairdresser and a whole lot of other
men. How polite, eh? Oh dear, no, I certainly can't grieve much
for him."

After some reflection she had grown very angry. Just then
Labordette came in; he had seen about her bets and was now the
bearer of some forty thousand francs. This only added to her bad
temper, for she ought to have gained a million. Labordette, who
during the whole of this episode had been pretending entire
innocence, abandoned Vandeuvres in decisive terms. Those old
families, he opined, were worn out and apt to make a stupid ending.

"Oh dear no!" said Nana. "It isn't stupid to burn oneself in one's
stable as he did. For my part, I think he made a dashing finish;
but, oh, you know, I'm not defending that story about him and
Marechal. It's too silly. Just to think that Blanche has had the
cheek to want to lay the blame of it on me! I said to her: 'Did I
tell him to steal?'  Don't you think one can ask a man for money
without urging him to commit crime? If he had said to me, 'I've got
nothing left,' I should have said to him, 'All right, let's part.'  
And the matter wouldn't have gone further."

"Just so," said the aunt gravely "When men are obstinate about a
thing, so much the worse for them!"

"But as to the merry little finish up, oh, that was awfully smart!"
continued Nana. "It appears to have been terrible enough to give
you the shudders! He sent everybody away and boxed himself up in
the place with a lot of petroleum. And it blazed! You should have
seen it! Just think, a great big affair, almost all made of wood
and stuffed with hay and straw! The flames simply towered up, and
the finest part of the business was that the horses didn't want to
be roasted. They could be heard plunging, throwing themselves
against the doors, crying aloud just like human beings. Yes, people
haven't got rid of the horror of it yet."

Labordette let a low, incredulous whistle escape him. For his part,
he did not believe in the death of Vandeuvres. Somebody had sworn
he had seen him escaping through a window. He had set fire to his
stable in a fit of aberration, but when it had begun to grow too
warm it must have sobered him. A man so besotted about the women
and so utterly worn out could not possibly die so pluckily.

Nana listened in her disillusionment and could only remark:

"Oh, the poor wretch, it was so beautiful!"

CHAPTER XII

Toward one in the morning, in the great bed of the Venice point
draperies, Nana and the count lay still awake. He had returned to
her that evening after a three days sulking fit. The room, which
was dimly illumined by a lamp, seemed to slumber amid a warm, damp
odor of love, while the furniture, with its white lacquer and silver
incrustations, loomed vague and wan through the gloom. A curtain
had been drawn to, so that the bed lay flooded with shadow. A sigh
became audible; then a kiss broke the silence, and Nana, slipping
off the coverlet, sat for a moment or two, barelegged, on the edge
of the bed. The count let his head fall back on the pillow and
remained in darkness.

"Dearest, you believe in the good God, don't you?" she queried after
some moments' reflection. Her face was serious; she had been
overcome by pious terrors on quitting her lover's arms.

Since morning, indeed, she had been complaining of feeling
uncomfortable, and all her stupid notions, as she phrased it,
notions about death and hell, were secretly torturing her. From
time to time she had nights such as these, during which childish
fears and atrocious fancies would thrill her with waking nightmares.
She continued:

"I say, d'you think I shall go to heaven?"

And with that she shivered, while the count, in his surprise at her
putting such singular questions at such a moment, felt his old
religious remorse returning upon him. Then with her chemise
slipping from her shoulders and her hair unpinned, she again threw
herself upon his breast, sobbing and clinging to him as she did so.

"I'm afraid of dying! I'm afraid of dying!"  He had all the trouble
in the world to disengage himself. Indeed, he was himself afraid of
giving in to the sudden madness of this woman clinging to his body
in her dread of the Invisible. Such dread is contagious, and he
reasoned with her. Her conduct was perfect--she had only to conduct
herself well in order one day to merit pardon. But she shook her
head. Doubtless she was doing no one any harm; nay, she was even in
the constant habit of wearing a medal of the Virgin, which she
showed to him as it hung by a red thread between her breasts. Only
it had been foreordained that all unmarried women who held
conversation with men would go to hell. Scraps of her catechism
recurred to her remembrance. Ah, if one only knew for certain, but,
alas, one was sure of nothing; nobody ever brought back any
information, and then, truly, it would be stupid to bother oneself
about things if the priests were talking foolishness all the time.
Nevertheless, she religiously kissed her medal, which was still warm
from contact with her skin, as though by way of charm against death,
the idea of which filled her with icy horror. Muffat was obliged to
accompany her into the dressing room, for she shook at the idea of
being alone there for one moment, even though she had left the door
open. When he had lain down again she still roamed about the room,
visiting its several corners and starting and shivering at the
slightest noise. A mirror stopped her, and as of old she lapsed
into obvious contemplation of her nakedness. But the sight of her
breast, her waist and her thighs only doubled her terror, and she
ended by feeling with both hands very slowly over the bones of her
face.

"You're ugly when you're dead," she said in deliberate tones.

And she pressed her cheeks, enlarging her eyes and pushing down her
jaw, in order to see how she would look. Thus disfigured, she
turned toward the count.

"Do look! My head'll be quite small, it will!"

At this he grew vexed.

"You're mad; come to bed!"

He fancied he saw her in a grave, emaciated by a century of sleep,
and he joined his hands and stammered a prayer. It was some time
ago that the religious sense had reconquered him, and now his daily
access of faith had again assumed the apoplectic intensity which was
wont to leave him well-nigh stunned. The joints of his fingers used
to crack, and he would repeat without cease these words only: "My
God, my God, my God!"  It was the cry of his impotence, the cry of
that sin against which, though his damnation was certain, he felt
powerless to strive. When Nana returned she found him hidden
beneath the bedclothes; he was haggard; he had dug his nails into
his bosom, and his eyes stared upward as though in search of heaven.
And with that she started to weep again. Then they both embraced,
and their teeth chattered they knew not why, as the same imbecile
obsession over-mastered them. They had already passed a similar
night, but on this occasion the thing was utterly idiotic, as Nana
declared when she ceased to be frightened. She suspected something,
and this caused her to question the count in a prudent sort of way.
It might be that Rose Mignon had sent the famous letter! But that
was not the case; it was sheer fright, nothing more, for he was
still ignorant whether he was a cuckold or no.

Two days later, after a fresh disappearance, Muffat presented
himself in the morning, a time of day at which he never came. He
was livid; his eyes were red and his whole man still shaken by a
great internal struggle. But Zoe, being scared herself, did not
notice his troubled state. She had run to meet him and now began
crying:

"Oh, monsieur, do come in! Madame nearly died yesterday evening!"

And when he asked for particulars:

"Something it's impossible to believe has happened--a miscarriage,
monsieur."

Nana had been in the family way for the past three months. For long
she had simply thought herself out of sorts, and Dr Boutarel had
himself been in doubt. But when afterward he made her a decisive
announcement, she felt so bored thereby that she did all she
possibly could to disguise her condition. Her nervous terrors, her
dark humors, sprang to some extent from this unfortunate state of
things, the secret of which she kept very shamefacedly, as became a
courtesan mother who is obliged to conceal her plight. The thing
struck her as a ridiculous accident, which made her appear small in
her own eyes and would, had it been known, have led people to chaff
her.

"A poor joke, eh?" she said. "Bad luck, too, certainly."

She was necessarily very sharp set when she thought her last hour
had come. There was no end to her surprise, too; her sexual economy
seemed to her to have got out of order; it produced children then
even when one did not want them and when one employed it for quite
other purposes! Nature drove her to exasperation; this appearance
of serious motherhood in a career of pleasure, this gift of life
amid all the deaths she was spreading around, exasperated her. Why
could one not dispose of oneself as fancy dictated, without all this
fuss? And whence had this brat come? She could not even suggest a
father. Ah, dear heaven, the man who made him would have a splendid
notion had he kept him in his own hands, for nobody asked for him;
he was in everybody's way, and he would certainly not have much
happiness in life!

Meanwhile Zoe described the catastrophe.

"Madame was seized with colic toward four o'clock. When she didn't
come back out of the dressing room I went in and found her lying
stretched on the floor in a faint. Yes, monsieur, on the floor in a
pool of blood, as though she had been murdered. Then I understood,
you see. I was furious; Madame might quite well have confided her
trouble to me. As it happened, Monsieur Georges was there, and he
helped me to lift her up, and directly a miscarriage was mentioned
he felt ill in his turn! Oh, it's true I've had the hump since
yesterday!"

In fact, the house seemed utterly upset. All the servants were
galloping upstairs, downstairs and through the rooms. Georges had
passed the night on an armchair in the drawing room. It was he who
had announced the news to Madame's friends at that hour of the
evening when Madame was in the habit of receiving. He had still
been very pale, and he had told his story very feelingly, and as
though stupefied. Steiner, La Faloise, Philippe and others,
besides, had presented themselves, and at the end of the lad's first
phrase they burst into exclamations. The thing was impossible! It
must be a farce! After which they grew serious and gazed with an
embarrassed expression at her bedroom door. They shook their heads;
it was no laughing matter.

Till midnight a dozen gentlemen had stood talking in low voices in
front of the fireplace. All were friends; all were deeply exercised
by the same idea of paternity. They seemed to be mutually excusing
themselves, and they looked as confused as if they had done
something clumsy. Eventually, however, they put a bold face on the
matter. It had nothing to do with them: the fault was hers! What a
stunner that Nana was, eh? One would never have believed her
capable of such a fake! And with that they departed one by one,
walking on tiptoe, as though in a chamber of death where you cannot
laugh.

"Come up all the same, monsieur," said Zoe to Muffat. "Madame is
much better and will see you. We are expecting the doctor, who
promised to come back this morning."

The lady's maid had persuaded Georges to go back home to sleep, and
upstairs in the drawing room only Satin remained. She lay stretched
on a divan, smoking a cigarette and scanning the ceiling. Amid the
household scare which had followed the accident she had been white
with rage, had shrugged her shoulders violently and had made
ferocious remarks. Accordingly, when Zoe was passing in front of
her and telling Monsieur that poor, dear Madame had suffered a great
deal:

"That's right; it'll teach him!" said Satin curtly.

They turned round in surprise, but she had not moved a muscle; her
eyes were still turned toward the ceiling, and her cigarette was
still wedged tightly between her lips.

"Dear me, you're charming, you are!" said Zoe.

But Satin sat up, looked savagely at the count and once more hurled
her remark at him.

"That's right; it'll teach him!"

And she lay down again and blew forth a thin jet of smoke, as though
she had no interest in present events and were resolved not to
meddle in any of them. No, it was all too silly!

Zoe, however, introduced Muffat into the bedroom, where a scent of
ether lingered amid warm, heavy silence, scarce broken by the dull
roll of occasional carriages in the Avenue de Villiers. Nana,
looking very white on her pillow, was lying awake with wide-open,
meditative eyes. She smiled when she saw the count but did not
move.

"Ah, dear pet!" she slowly murmured. "I really thought I should
never see you again."

Then as he leaned forward to kiss her on the hair, she grew tender
toward him and spoke frankly about the child, as though he were its
father.

"I never dared tell you; I felt so happy about it! Oh, I used to
dream about it; I should have liked to be worthy of you! And now
there's nothing left. Ah well, perhaps that's best. I don't want
to bring a stumbling block into your life."

Astounded by this story of paternity, he began stammering vague
phrases. He had taken a chair and had sat down by the bed, leaning
one arm on the coverlet. Then the young woman noticed his wild
expression, the blood reddening his eyes, the fever that set his
lips aquiver.

"What's the matter then?" she asked. "You're ill too."

"No," he answered with extreme difficulty.

She gazed at him with a profound expression. Then she signed to Zoe
to retire, for the latter was lingering round arranging the medicine
bottles. And when they were alone she drew him down to her and
again asked:

"What's the matter with you, darling? The tears are ready to burst
from your eyes--I can see that quite well. Well now, speak out;
you've come to tell me something."

"No, no, I swear I haven't," he blurted out. But he was choking
with suffering, and this sickroom, into which he had suddenly
entered unawares, so worked on his feelings that he burst out
sobbing and buried his face in the bedclothes to smother the
violence of his grief. Nana understood. Rose Mignon had most
assuredly decided to send the letter. She let him weep for some
moments, and he was shaken by convulsions so fierce that the bed
trembled under her. At length in accents of motherly compassion she
queried:

"You've had bothers at your home?"

He nodded affirmatively. She paused anew, and then very low:

"Then you know all?"

He nodded assent. And a heavy silence fell over the chamber of
suffering. The night before, on his return from a party given by
the empress, he had received the letter Sabine had written her
lover. After an atrocious night passed in the meditation of
vengeance he had gone out in the morning in order to resist a
longing which prompted him to kill his wife. Outside, under a
sudden, sweet influence of a fine June morning, he had lost the
thread of his thoughts and had come to Nana's, as he always came at
terrible moments in his life. There only he gave way to his misery,
for he felt a cowardly joy at the thought that she would console
him.

"Now look here, be calm!" the young woman continued, becoming at the
same time extremely kind. "I've known it a long time, but it was
certainly not I that would have opened your eyes. You remember you
had your doubts last year, but then things arranged themselves,
owing to my prudence. In fact, you wanted proofs. The deuce,
you've got one today, and I know it's hard lines. Nevertheless, you
must look at the matter quietly: you're not dishonored because it's
happened."

He had left off weeping. A sense of shame restrained him from
saying what he wanted to, although he had long ago slipped into the
most intimate confessions about his household. She had to encourage
him. Dear me, she was a woman; she could understand everything.
When in a dull voice he exclaimed:

"You're ill. What's the good of tiring you? It was stupid of me to
have come. I'm going--"

"No," she answered briskly enough. "Stay! Perhaps I shall be able
to give you some good advice. Only don't make me talk too much; the
medical man's forbidden it."

He had ended by rising, and he was now walking up and down the room.
Then she questioned him:

"Now what are you going to do?

"I'm going to box the man's ears--by heavens, yes!"

She pursed up her lips disapprovingly.

"That's not very wise. And about your wife?"

"I shall go to law; I've proofs."

"Not at all wise, my dear boy. It's stupid even. You know I shall
never let you do that!"

And in her feeble voice she showed him decisively how useless and
scandalous a duel and a trial would be. He would be a nine days'
newspaper sensation; his whole existence would be at stake, his
peace of mind, his high situation at court, the honor of his name,
and all for what? That he might have the laughers against him.

"What will it matter?" he cried. "I shall have had my revenge."

"My pet," she said, "in a business of that kind one never has one's
revenge if one doesn't take it directly."

He paused and stammered. He was certainly no poltroon, but he felt
that she was right. An uneasy feeling was growing momentarily
stronger within him, a poor, shameful feeling which softened his
anger now that it was at its hottest. Moreover, in her frank desire
to tell him everything, she dealt him a fresh blow.

"And d'you want to know what's annoying you, dearest? Why, that you
are deceiving your wife yourself. You don't sleep away from home
for nothing, eh? Your wife must have her suspicions. Well then,
how can you blame her? She'll tell you that you've set her the
example, and that'll shut you up. There, now, that's why you're
stamping about here instead of being at home murdering both of 'em."

Muffat had again sunk down on the chair; he was overwhelmed by these
home thrusts. She broke off and took breath, and then in a low
voice:

"Oh, I'm a wreck! Do help me sit up a bit. I keep slipping down,
and my head's too low."

When he had helped her she sighed and felt more comfortable. And
with that she harked back to the subject. What a pretty sight a
divorce suit would be! Couldn't he imagine the advocate of the
countess amusing Paris with his remarks about Nana? Everything
would have come out--her fiasco at the Varietes, her house, her
manner of life. Oh dear, no! She had no wish for all that amount
of advertising. Some dirty women might, perhaps, have driven him to
it for the sake of getting a thundering big advertisement, but she--
she desired his happiness before all else. She had drawn him down
toward her and, after passing her arm around his neck, was nursing
his head close to hers on the edge of the pillow. And with that she
whispered softly:

"Listen, my pet, you shall make it up with your wife."

But he rebelled at this. It could never be! His heart was nigh
breaking at the thought; it was too shameful. Nevertheless, she
kept tenderly insisting.

"You shall make it up with your wife. Come, come, you don't want to
hear all the world saying that I've tempted you away from your home?
I should have too vile a reputation! What would people think of me?
Only swear that you'll always love me, because the moment you go
with another woman--"

Tears choked her utterance, and he intervened with kisses and said:

"You're beside yourself; it's impossible!"

"Yes, yes," she rejoined, "you must. But I'll be reasonable. After
all, she's your wife, and it isn't as if you were to play me false
with the firstcomer."

And she continued in this strain, giving him the most excellent
advice. She even spoke of God, and the count thought he was
listening to M. Venot, when that old gentleman endeavored to
sermonize him out of the grasp of sin. Nana, however, did not speak
of breaking it off entirely: she preached indulgent good nature and
suggested that, as became a dear, nice old fellow, he should divide
his attentions between his wife and his mistress, so that they would
all enjoy a quiet life, devoid of any kind of annoyance, something,
in fact, in the nature of a happy slumber amid the inevitable
miseries of existence. Their life would be nowise changed: he would
still be the little man of her heart. Only he would come to her a
bit less often and would give the countess the nights not passed
with her. She had got to the end of her strength and left off,
speaking under her breath:

"After that I shall feel I've done a good action, and you'll love me
all the more."

Silence reigned. She had closed her eyes and lay wan upon her
pillow. The count was patiently listening to her, not wishing her
to tire herself. A whole minute went by before she reopened her
eyes and murmured:

"Besides, how about the money? Where would you get the money from
if you must grow angry and go to law? Labordette came for the bill
yesterday. As for me, I'm out of everything; I have nothing to put
on now."

Then she shut her eyes again and looked like one dead. A shadow of
deep anguish had passed over Muffat's brow. Under the present
stroke he had since yesterday forgotten the money troubles from
which he knew not how to escape. Despite formal promises to the
contrary, the bill for a hundred thousand francs had been put in
circulation after being once renewed, and Labordette, pretending to
be very miserable about it, threw all the blame on Francis,
declaring that he would never again mix himself up in such a matter
with an uneducated man. It was necessary to pay, for the count
would never have allowed his signature to be protested. Then in
addition to Nana's novel demands, his home expenses were
extraordinarily confused. On their return from Les Fondettes the
countess had suddenly manifested a taste for luxury, a longing for
worldly pleasures, which was devouring their fortune. Her ruinous
caprices began to be talked about. Their whole household management
was altered, and five hundred thousand francs were squandered in
utterly transforming the old house in the Rue Miromesnil. Then
there were extravagantly magnificent gowns and large sums
disappeared, squandered or perhaps given away, without her ever
dreaming of accounting for them. Twice Muffat ventured to mention
this, for he was anxious to know how the money went, but on these
occasions she had smiled and gazed at him with so singular an
expression that he dared not interrogate her further for fear of a
too-unmistakable answer. If he were taking Daguenet as son-in-law
as a gift from Nana it was chiefly with the hope of being able to
reduce Estelle's dower to two hundred thousand francs and of then
being free to make any arrangements he chose about the remainder
with a young man who was still rejoicing in this unexpected match.

Nevertheless, for the last week, under the immediate necessity of
finding Labordette's hundred thousand francs, Muffat had been able
to hit on but one expedient, from which he recoiled. This was that
he should sell the Bordes, a magnificent property valued at half a
million, which an uncle had recently left the countess. However,
her signature was necessary, and she herself, according to the terms
of the deed, could not alienate the property without the count's
authorization. The day before he had indeed resolved to talk to his
wife about this signature. And now everything was ruined; at such a
moment he would never accept of such a compromise. This reflection
added bitterness to the frightful disgrace of the adultery. He
fully understood what Nana was asking for, since in that ever-
growing self-abandonment  which prompted him to put her in
possession of all his secrets, he had complained to her of his
position and had confided to her the tiresome difficulty he was in
with regard to the signature of the countess.

Nana, however, did not seem to insist. She did not open her eyes
again, and, seeing her so pale, he grew frightened and made her
inhale a little ether. She gave a sigh and without mentioning
Daguenet asked him some questions.

"When is the marriage?"

"We sign the contract on Tuesday, in five days' time," he replied.

Then still keeping her eyelids closed, as though she were speaking
from the darkness and silence of her brain:

"Well then, pet, see to what you've got to do. As far as I'm
concerned, I want everybody to be happy and comfortable."

He took her hand and soothed her. Yes, he would see about it; the
important thing now was for her to rest. And the revolt within him
ceased, for this warm and slumberous sickroom, with its all-
pervading scent of ether, had ended by lulling him into a mere
longing for happiness and peace. All his manhood, erewhile maddened
by wrong, had departed out of him in the neighborhood of that warm
bed and that suffering woman, whom he was nursing under the
influence of her feverish heat and of remembered delights. He
leaned over her and pressed her in a close embrace, while despite
her unmoved features her lips wore a 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! First of all she kissed the
countess. Then when the children came up she gave them her blessing
and said to Daguenet, 'Listen, Paul, if you go running after the
girls you'll have to answer for it to me.'  What, d'you mean to say
you didn't see that? Oh, it WAS smart. A success, if you like!"

The other two listened to him, openmouthed, and at last burst out
laughing. He was enchanted and thought himself in his best vein.

"You thought it had really happened, eh? Confound it, since Nana's
made the match! Anyway, she's one of the family."

The young Hugons were passing, and Philippe silenced him. And with
that they chatted about the marriage from the male point of view.
Georges was vexed with La Faloise for telling an anecdote.
Certainly Nana had fubbed off on Muffat one of her old flames as
son-in-law; only it was not true that she had been to bed with
Daguenet as lately as yesterday. Foucarmont made bold to shrug his
shoulders. Could anyone ever tell when Nana was in bed with anyone?
But Georges grew excited and answered with an "I can tell, sir!"
which set them all laughing. In a word, as Steiner put it, it was
all a very funny kettle of fish!

The buffet was gradually invaded by the crowd, and, still keeping
together, they vacated their positions there. La Faloise stared
brazenly at the women as though he believed himself to be Mabille.
At the end of a garden walk the little band was surprised to find M.
Venot busily conferring with Daguenet, and with that they indulged
in some facile pleasantries which made them very merry. He was
confessing him, giving him advice about the bridal night! Presently
they returned in front of one of the drawing-room doors, within
which a polka was sending the couples whirling to and fro till they
seemed to leave a wake behind them among the crowd of men who
remained standing about. In the slight puffs of air which came from
outside the tapers flared up brilliantly, and when a dress floated
by in time to the rat-tat of the measure, a little gust of wind
cooled the sparkling heat which streamed down from the lusters.

"Egad, they're not cold in there!" muttered La Faloise.

They blinked after emerging from the mysterious shadows of the
garden. Then they pointed out to one another the Marquis de Chouard
where he stood apart, his tall figure towering over the bare
shoulders which surrounded him. His face was pale and very stern,
and beneath its crown of scant white hair it wore an expression of
lofty dignity. Scandalized by Count Muffat's conduct, he had
publicly broken off all intercourse with him and was by way of never
again setting foot in the house. If he had consented to put in an
appearance that evening it was because his granddaughter had begged
him to. But he disapproved of her marriage and had inveighed
indignantly against the way in which the government classes were
being disorganized by the shameful compromises engendered by modern
debauchery.

"Ah, it's the end of all things," Mme du Joncquoy whispered in Mme
Chantereau's ear as she sat near the fireplace. "That bad woman has
bewitched the unfortunate man. And to think we once knew him such a
true believer, such a noblehearted gentleman!"

"It appears he is ruining himself," continued Mme Chantereau. "My
husband has had a bill of his in his hands. At present he's living
in that house in the Avenue de Villiers; all Paris is talking about
it. Good heavens! I don't make excuses for Sabine, but you must
admit that he gives her infinite cause of complaint, and, dear me,
if she throws money out of the window, too--"

"She does not only throw money," interrupted the other. "In fact,
between them, there's no knowing where they'll stop; they'll end in
the mire, my dear."

But just then a soft voice interrupted them. It was M. Venot, and
he had come and seated himself behind them, as though anxious to
disappear from view. Bending forward, he murmured:

"Why despair? God manifests Himself when all seems lost."

He was assisting peacefully at the downfall of the house which he
erewhile governed. Since his stay at Les Fondettes he had been
allowing the madness to increase, for he was very clearly aware of
his own powerlessness. He had, indeed, accepted the whole position--
the count's wild passion for Nana, Fauchery's presence, even
Estelle's marriage with Daguenet. What did these things matter? He
even became more supple and mysterious, for he nursed a hope of
being able to gain the same mastery over the young as over the
disunited couple, and he knew that great disorders lead to great
conversions. Providence would have its opportunity.

"Our friend," he continued in a low voice, "is always animated by
the best religious sentiments. He has given me the sweetest proofs
of this."

"Well," said Mme du Joncquoy, "he ought first to have made it up
with his wife."

"Doubtless. At this moment I have hopes that the reconciliation
will be shortly effected."

Whereupon the two old ladies questioned him.

But he grew very humble again. "Heaven," he said, "must be left to
act."  His whole desire in bringing the count and the countess
together again was to avoid a public scandal, for religion tolerated
many faults when the proprieties were respected.

"In fact," resumed Mme du Joncquoy, "you ought to have prevented
this union with an adventurer."

The little old gentleman assumed an expression of profound
astonishment. "You deceive yourself. Monsieur Daguenet is a young
man of the greatest merit. I am acquainted with his thoughts; he is
anxious to live down the errors of his youth. Estelle will bring
him back to the path of virtue, be sure of that."

"Oh, Estelle!" Mme Chantereau murmured disdainfully. "I believe the
dear young thing to be incapable of willing anything; she is so
insignificant!"

This opinion caused M. Venot to smile. However, he went into no
explanations about the young bride and, shutting his eyes, as though
to avoid seeming to take any further interest in the matter, he once
more lost himself in his corner behind the petticoats. Mme Hugon,
though weary and absent-minded, had caught some phrases of the
conversation, and she now intervened and summed up in her tolerant
way by remarking to the Marquis de Chouard, who just then bowed to
her:

"These ladies are too severe. Existence is so bitter for every one
of us! Ought we not to forgive others much, my friend, if we wish
to merit forgiveness ourselves?"

For some seconds the marquis appeared embarrassed, for he was afraid
of allusions. But the good lady wore so sad a smile that he
recovered almost at once and remarked:

"No, there is no forgiveness for certain faults. It is by reason of
this kind of accommodating spirit that a society sinks into the
abyss of ruin."

The ball had grown still more animated. A fresh quadrille was
imparting a slight swaying motion to the drawing-room floor, as
though the old dwelling had been shaken by the impulse of the dance.
Now and again amid the wan confusion of heads a woman's face with
shining eyes and parted lips stood sharply out as it was whirled
away by the dance, the light of the lusters gleaming on the white
skin. Mme du Joncquoy declared that the present proceedings were
senseless. It was madness to crowd five hundred people into a room
which would scarcely contain two hundred. In fact, why not sign the
wedding contract on the Place du Carrousel? This was the outcome of
the new code of manners, said Mme Chantereau. In old times these
solemnities took place in the bosom of the family, but today one
must have a mob of people; the whole street must be allowed to enter
quite freely, and there must be a great crush, or else the evening
seems a chilly affair. People now advertised their luxury and
introduced the mere foam on the wave of Parisian society into their
houses, and accordingly it was only too natural if illicit
proceedings such as they had been discussing afterward polluted the
hearth. The ladies complained that they could not recognize more
than fifty people. Where did all this crowd spring from? Young
girls with low necks were making a great display of their shoulders.
A woman had a golden dagger stuck in her chignon, while a bodice
thickly embroidered with jet beads clothed her in what looked like a
coat of mail. People's eyes kept following another lady smilingly,
so singularly marked were her clinging skirts. All the luxuriant
splendor of the departing winter was there--the overtolerant world
of pleasure, the scratch gathering a hostess can get together after
a first introduction, the sort of society, in fact, in which great
names and great shames jostle together in the same fierce quest of
enjoyment. The heat was increasing, and amid the overcrowded rooms
the quadrille unrolled the cadenced symmetry of its figures.

"Very smart--the countess!" La Faloise continued at the garden door.
"She's ten years younger than her daughter. By the by, Foucarmont,
you must decide on a point. Vandeuvres once bet that she had no
thighs."

This affectation of cynicism bored the other gentlemen, and
Foucarmont contented himself by saying:

"Ask your cousin, dear boy. Here he is."

"Jove, it's a happy thought!" cried La Faloise. "I bet ten louis
she has thighs."

Fauchery did indeed come up. As became a constant inmate of the
house, he had gone round by the dining room in order to avoid the
crowded doors. Rose had taken him up again at the beginning of the
winter, and he was now dividing himself between the singer and the
countess, but he was extremely fatigued and did not know how to get
rid of one of them. Sabine flattered his vanity, but Rose amused
him more than she. Besides, the passion Rose felt was a real one:
her tenderness for him was marked by a conjugal fidelity which drove
Mignon to despair.

"Listen, we want some information," said La Faloise as he squeezed
his cousin's arm. "You see that lady in white silk?"

Ever since his inheritance had given him a kind of insolent dash of
manner he had affected to chaff Fauchery, for he had an old grudge
to satisfy and wanted to be revenged for much bygone raillery,
dating from the days when he was just fresh from his native
province.

"Yes, that lady with the lace."

The journalist stood on tiptoe, for as yet he did not understand.

"The countess?" he said at last.

"Exactly, my good friend. I've bet ten louis--now, has she thighs?"

And he fell a-laughing, for he was delighted to have succeeded in
snubbing a fellow who had once come heavily down on him for asking
whether the countess slept with anyone. But Fauchery, without
showing the very slightest astonishment, looked fixedly at him.

"Get along, you idiot!" he said finally as he shrugged his
shoulders.

Then he shook hands with the other gentlemen, while La Faloise, in
his discomfiture, felt rather uncertain whether he had said
something funny. The men chatted. Since the races the banker and
Foucarmont had formed part of the set in the Avenue de Villiers.
Nana was going on much better, and every evening the count came and
asked how she did. Meanwhile Fauchery, though he listened, seemed
preoccupied, for during a quarrel that morning Rose had roundly
confessed to the sending of the letter. Oh yes, he might present
himself at his great lady's house; he would be well received! After
long hesitation he had come despite everything--out of sheer
courage. But La Faloise's imbecile pleasantry had upset him in
spite of his apparent tranquillity.

"What's the matter?" asked Philippe. "You seem in trouble."

"I do? Not at all. I've been working: that's why I came so late."

Then coldly, in one of those heroic moods which, although unnoticed,
are wont to solve the vulgar tragedies of existence:

"All the same, I haven't made my bow to our hosts. One must be
civil."

He even ventured on a joke, for he turned to La Faloise and said:

"Eh, you idiot?"

And with that he pushed his way through the crowd. The valet's full
voice was no longer shouting out names, but close to the door the
count and countess were still talking, for they were detained by
ladies coming in. At length he joined them, while the gentlemen who
were still on the garden steps stood on tiptoe so as to watch the
scene. Nana, they thought, must have been chattering.

"The count hasn't noticed him," muttered Georges. "Look out! He's
turning round; there, it's done!"

The band had again taken up the waltz in the Blonde Venus. Fauchery
had begun by bowing to the countess, who was still smiling in
ecstatic serenity. After which he had stood motionless a moment,
waiting very calmly behind the count's back. That evening the
count's deportment was one of lofty gravity: he held his head high,
as became the official and the great dignitary. And when at last he
lowered his gaze in the direction of the journalist he seemed still
further to emphasize the majesty of his attitude. For some seconds
the two men looked at one another. It was Fauchery who first
stretched out his hand. Muffat gave him his. Their hands remained
clasped, and the Countess Sabine with downcast eyes stood smiling
before them, while the waltz continually beat out its mocking,
vagabond rhythm.

"But the thing's going on wheels!" said Steiner.

"Are their hands glued together?" asked Foucarmont, surprised at
this prolonged clasp. A memory he could not forget brought a faint
glow to Fanchery's pale cheeks, and in his mind's eye he saw the
property room bathed in greenish twilight and filled with dusty
bric-a-brac. And Muffat was there, eggcup in hand, making a clever
use of his suspicions. At this moment Muffat was no longer
suspicious, and the last vestige of his dignity was crumbling in
ruin. Fauchery's fears were assuaged, and when he saw the frank
gaiety of the countess he was seized with a desire to laugh. The
thing struck him as comic.

"Aha, here she is at last!" cried La Faloise, who did not abandon a
jest when he thought it a good one. "D'you see Nana coming in over
there?"

"Hold your tongue, do, you idiot!" muttered Philippe.

"But I tell you, it is Nana! They're playing her waltz for her, by
Jove! She's making her entry. And she takes part in the
reconciliation, the devil she does! What? You don't see her?
She's squeezing all three of 'em to her heart--my cousin Fauchery,
my lady cousin and her husband, and she's calling 'em her dear
kitties. Oh, those family scenes give me a turn!"

Estelle had come up, and Fauchery complimented her while she stood
stiffly up in her rose-colored dress, gazing at him with the
astonished look of a silent child and constantly glancing aside at
her father and mother. Daguenet, too, exchanged a hearty shake of
the hand with the journalist. Together they made up a smiling
group, while M. Venot came gliding in behind them. He gloated over
them with a beatified expression and seemed to envelop them in his
pious sweetness, for he rejoiced in these last instances of self-
abandonment which were preparing the means of grace.

But the waltz still beat out its swinging, laughing, voluptuous
measure; it was like a shrill continuation of the life of pleasure
which was beating against the old house like a rising tide. The
band blew louder trills from their little flutes; their violins sent
forth more swooning notes. Beneath the Genoa velvet hangings, the
gilding and the paintings, the lusters exhaled a living heat and a
great glow of sunlight, while the crowd of guests, multiplied in the
surrounding mirrors, seemed to grow and increase as the murmur of
many voices rose ever louder. The couples who whirled round the
drawing room, arm about waist, amid the smiles of the seated ladies,
still further accentuated the quaking of the floors. In the garden
a dull, fiery glow fell from the Venetian lanterns and threw a
distant reflection of flame over the dark shadows moving in search
of a breath of air about the walks at its farther end. And this
trembling of walls and this red glow of light seemed to betoken a
great ultimate conflagration in which the fabric of an ancient honor
was cracking and burning on every side. The shy early beginnings of
gaiety, of which Fauchery one April evening had heard the vocal
expression in the sound of breaking glass, had little by little
grown bolder, wilder, till they had burst forth in this festival.
Now the rift was growing; it was crannying the house and announcing
approaching downfall. Among drunkards in the slums it is black
misery, an empty cupboard, which put an end to ruined families; it
is the madness of drink which empties the wretched beds. Here the
waltz tune was sounding the knell of an old race amid the suddenly
ignited ruins of accumulated wealth, while Nana, although unseen,
stretched her lithe limbs above the dancers' heads and sent
corruption through their caste, drenching the hot air with the
ferment of her exhalations and the vagabond lilt of the music.

On the evening after the celebration of the church marriage Count
Muffat made his appearance in his wife's bedroom, where he had not
entered for the last two years. At first, in her great surprise,
the countess drew back from him. But she was still smiling the
intoxicated smile which she now always wore. He began stammering in
extreme embarrassment; whereupon she gave him a short moral lecture.
However, neither of them risked a decisive explanation. It was
religion, they pretended, which required this process of mutual
forgiveness, and they agreed by a tacit understanding to retain
their freedom. Before going to bed, seeing that the countess still
appeared to hesitate, they had a business conversation, and the
count was the first to speak of selling the Bordes. She consented
at once. They both stood in great want of money, and they would
share and share alike. This completed the reconciliation, and
Muffat, remorseful though he was, felt veritably relieved.

That very day, as Nana was dozing toward two in the afternoon, Zoe
made so bold as to knock at her bedroom door. The curtains were
drawn to, and a hot breath of wind kept blowing through a window
into the fresh twilight stillness within. During these last days
the young woman had been getting up and about again, but she was
still somewhat weak. She opened her eyes and asked:

"Who is it?"

Zoe was about to reply, but Daguenet pushed by her and announced
himself in person. Nana forthwith propped herself up on her pillow
and, dismissing the lady's maid:

"What! Is that you?" she cried. "On the day of your marriage?
What can be the matter?"

Taken aback by the darkness, he stood still in the middle of the
room. However, he grew used to it and came forward at last. He was
in evening dress and wore a white cravat and gloves.

"Yes, to be sure, it's me!" he said. "You don't remember?"

No, she remembered nothing, and in his chaffing way he had to offer
himself frankly to her.

"Come now, here's your commission. I've brought you the handsel of
my innocence!"

And with that, as he was now by the bedside, she caught him in her
bare arms and shook with merry laughter and almost cried, she
thought it so pretty of him.

"Oh, that Mimi, how funny he is! He's thought of it after all! And
to think I didn't remember it any longer! So you've slipped off;
you're just out of church. Yes, certainly, you've got a scent of
incense about you. But kiss me, kiss me! Oh, harder than that,
Mimi dear! Bah! Perhaps it's for the last time."

In the dim room, where a vague odor of ether still lingered, their
tender laughter died away suddenly. The heavy, warm breeze swelled
the window curtains, and children's voices were audible in the
avenue without. Then the lateness of the hour tore them asunder and
set them joking again. Daguenet took his departure with his wife
directly after the breakfast.

CHAPTER XIII

Toward the end of September Count Muffat, who was to dine at Nana's
that evening, came at nightfall to inform her of a summons to the
Tuileries. The lamps in the house had not been lit yet, and the
servants were laughing uproariously in the kitchen regions as he
softly mounted the stairs, where the tall windows gleamed in warm
shadow. The door of the drawing room up-stairs opened noiselessly.
A faint pink glow was dying out on the ceiling of the room, and the
red hangings, the deep divans, the lacquered furniture, with their
medley of embroidered fabrics and bronzes and china, were already
sleeping under a slowly creeping flood of shadows, which drowned
nooks and corners and blotted out the gleam of ivory and the glint
of gold. And there in the darkness, on the white surface of a wide,
outspread petticoat, which alone remained clearly visible, he saw
Nana lying stretched in the arms of Georges. Denial in any shape or
form was impossible. He gave a choking cry and stood gaping at
them.

Nana had bounded up, and now she pushed him into the bedroom in
order to give the lad time to escape.

"Come in," she murmured with reeling senses, "I'll explain."

She was exasperated at being thus surprised. Never before had she
given way like this in her own house, in her own drawing room, when
the doors were open. It was a long story: Georges and she had had a
disagreement; he had been mad with jealousy of Philippe, and he had
sobbed so bitterly on her bosom that she had yielded to him, not
knowing how else to calm him and really very full of pity for him at
heart. And on this solitary occasion, when she had been stupid
enough to forget herself thus with a little rascal who could not
even now bring her bouquets of violets, so short did his mother keep
him--on this solitary occasion the count turned up and came straight
down on them. 'Gad, she had very bad luck! That was what one got
if one was a good-natured wench!

Meanwhile in the bedroom, into which she had pushed Muffat, the
darkness was complete. Whereupon after some groping she rang
furiously and asked for a lamp. It was Julien's fault too! If
there had been a lamp in the drawing room the whole affair would not
have happened. It was the stupid nightfall which had got the better
of her heart.

"I beseech you to be reasonable, my pet," she said when Zoe had
brought in the lights.

The count, with his hands on his knees, was sitting gazing at the
floor. He was stupefied by what he had just seen. He did not cry
out in anger. He only trembled, as though overtaken by some horror
which was freezing him. This dumb misery touched the young woman,
and she tried to comfort him.

"Well, yes, I've done wrong. It's very bad what I did. You see I'm
sorry for my fault. It makes me grieve very much because it annoys
you. Come now, be nice, too, and forgive me."

She had crouched down at his feet and was striving to catch his eye
with a look of tender submission. She was fain to know whether he
was very vexed with her. Presently, as he gave a long sigh and
seemed to recover himself, she grew more coaxing and with grave
kindness of manner added a final reason:

"You see, dearie, you must try and understand how it is: I can't
refuse it to my poor friends."

The count consented to give way and only insisted that Georges
should be dismissed once for all. But all his illusions had
vanished, and he no longer believed in her sworn fidelity. Next day
Nana would deceive him anew, and he only remained her miserable
possessor in obedience to a cowardly necessity and to terror at the
thought of living without her.

This was the epoch in her existence when Nana flared upon Paris with
redoubled splendor. She loomed larger than heretofore on the
horizon of vice and swayed the town with her impudently flaunted
splendor and that contempt of money which made her openly squander
fortunes. Her house had become a sort of glowing smithy, where her
continual desires were the flames and the slightest breath from her
lips changed gold into fine ashes, which the wind hourly swept away.
Never had eye beheld such a rage of expenditure. The great house
seemed to have been built over a gulf in which men--their worldly
possessions, their fortunes, their very names--were swallowed up
without leaving even a handful of dust behind them. This courtesan,
who had the tastes of a parrot and gobbled up radishes and burnt
almonds and pecked at the meat upon her plate, had monthly table
bills amounting to five thousand francs. The wildest waste went on
in the kitchen: the place, metaphorically speaking was one great
river which stove in cask upon cask of wine and swept great bills
with it, swollen by three or four successive manipulators.
Victorine and Francois reigned supreme in the kitchen, whither they
invited friends. In addition to these there was quite a little
tribe of cousins, who were cockered up in their homes with cold
meats and strong soup. Julien made the trades-people give him
commissions, and the glaziers never put up a pane of glass at a cost
of a franc and a half but he had a franc put down to himself.
Charles devoured the horses' oats and doubled the amount of their
provender, reselling at the back door what came in at the carriage
gate, while amid the general pillage, the sack of the town after the
storm, Zoe, by dint of cleverness, succeeded in saving appearances
and covering the thefts of all in order the better to slur over and
make good her own. But the household waste was worse than the
household dishonesty. Yesterday's food was thrown into the gutter,
and the collection of provisions in the house was such that the
servants grew disgusted with it. The glass was all sticky with
sugar, and the gas burners flared and flared till the rooms seemed
ready to explode. Then, too, there were instances of negligence and
mischief and sheer accident--of everything, in fact, which can
hasten the ruin of a house devoured by so many mouths. Upstairs in
Madame's quarters destruction raged more fiercely still. Dresses,
which cost ten thousand francs and had been twice worn, were sold by
Zoe; jewels vanished as though they had crumbled deep down in their
drawers; stupid purchases were made; every novelty of the day was
brought and left to lie forgotten in some corner the morning after
or swept up by ragpickers in the street. She could not see any very
expensive object without wanting to possess it, and so she
constantly surrounded herself with the wrecks of bouquets and costly
knickknacks and was the happier the more her passing fancy cost.
Nothing remained intact in her hands; she broke everything, and this
object withered, and that grew dirty in the clasp of her lithe white
fingers. A perfect heap of nameless debris, of twisted shreds and
muddy rags, followed her and marked her passage. Then amid this
utter squandering of pocket money cropped up a question about the
big bills and their settlement. Twenty thousand francs were due to
the modiste, thirty thousand to the linen draper, twelve thousand to
the bootmaker. Her stable devoured fifty thousand for her, and in
six months she ran up a bill of a hundred and twenty thousand francs
at her ladies' tailor. Though she had not enlarged her scheme of
expenditure, which Labordette reckoned at four hundred thousand
francs on an average, she ran up that same year to a million. She
was herself stupefied by the amount and was unable to tell whither
such a sum could have gone. Heaps upon heaps of men, barrowfuls of
gold, failed to stop up the hole, which, amid this ruinous luxury,
continually gaped under the floor of her house.

Meanwhile Nana had cherished her latest caprice. Once more
exercised by the notion that her room needed redoing, she fancied
she had hit on something at last. The room should be done in velvet
of the color of tea roses, with silver buttons and golden cords,
tassels and fringes, and the hangings should be caught up to the
ceiling after the manner of a tent. This arrangement ought to be
both rich and tender, she thought, and would form a splendid
background to her blonde vermeil-tinted skin. However, the bedroom
was only designed to serve as a setting to the bed, which was to be
a dazzling affair, a prodigy. Nana meditated a bed such as had
never before existed; it was to be a throne, an altar, whither Paris
was to come in order to adore her sovereign nudity. It was to be
all in gold and silver beaten work--it should suggest a great piece
of jewelry with its golden roses climbing on a trelliswork of
silver. On the headboard a band of Loves should peep forth laughing
from amid the flowers, as though they were watching the voluptuous
dalliance within the shadow of the bed curtains. Nana had applied
to Labordette who had brought two goldsmiths to see her. They were
already busy with the designs. The bed would cost fifty thousand
francs, and Muffat was to give it her as a New Year's present.

What most astonished the young woman was that she was endlessly
short of money amid a river of gold, the tide of which almost
enveloped her. On certain days she was at her wit's end for want of
ridiculously small sums--sums of only a few louis. She was driven
to borrow from Zoe, or she scraped up cash as well as she could on
her own account. But before resignedly adopting extreme measures
she tried her friends and in a joking sort of way got the men to
give her all they had about them, even down to their coppers. For
the last three months she had been emptying Philippe's pockets
especially, and now on days of passionate enjoyment he never came
away but he left his purse behind him. Soon she grew bolder and
asked him for loans of two hundred francs, three hundred francs--
never more than that--wherewith to pay the interest of bills or to
stave off outrageous debts. And Philippe, who in July had been
appointed paymaster to his regiment, would bring the money the day
after, apologizing at the same time for not being rich, seeing that
good Mamma Hugon now treated her sons with singular financial
severity. At the close of three months these little oft-renewed
loans mounted up to a sum of ten thousand francs. The captain still
laughed his hearty-sounding laugh, but he was growing visibly
thinner, and sometimes he seemed absent-minded, and a shade of
suffering would pass over his face. But one look from Nana's eyes
would transfigure him in a sort of sensual ecstasy. She had a very
coaxing way with him and would intoxicate him with furtive kisses
and yield herself to him in sudden fits of self-abandonment, which
tied him to her apron strings the moment he was able to escape from
his military duties.

One evening, Nana having announced that her name, too, was Therese
and that her fete day was the fifteenth of October, the gentlemen
all sent her presents. Captain Philippe brought his himself; it was
an old comfit dish in Dresden china, and it had a gold mount. He
found her alone in her dressing room. She had just emerged from the
bath, had nothing on save a great red-and-white flannel bathing wrap
and was very busy examining her presents, which were ranged on a
table. She had already broken a rock-crystal flask in her attempts
to unstopper it.

"Oh, you're too nice!" she said. "What is it? Let's have a peep!
What a baby you are to spend your pennies in little fakements like
that!"

She scolded him, seeing that he was not rich, but at heart she was
delighted to see him spending his whole substance for her. Indeed,
this was the only proof of love which had power to touch her.
Meanwhile she was fiddling away at the comfit dish, opening it and
shutting it in her desire to see how it was made.

"Take care," he murmured, "it's brittle."

But she shrugged her shoulders. Did he think her as clumsy as a
street porter? And all of a sudden the hinge came off between her
fingers and the lid fell and was broken. She was stupefied and
remained gazing at the fragments as she cried:

"Oh, it's smashed!"

Then she burst out laughing. The fragments lying on the floor
tickled her fancy. Her merriment was of the nervous kind, the
stupid, spiteful laughter of a child who delights in destruction.
Philippe had a little fit of disgust, for the wretched girl did not
know what anguish this curio had cost him. Seeing him thoroughly
upset, she tried to contain herself.

"Gracious me, it isn't my fault! It was cracked; those old things
barely hold together. Besides, it was the cover! Didn't you see
the bound it gave?

And she once more burst into uproarious mirth.

But though he made an effort to the contrary, tears appeared in the
young man's eyes, and with that she flung her arms tenderly round
his neck.

"How silly you are! You know I love you all the same. If one never
broke anything the tradesmen would never sell anything. All that
sort of thing's made to be broken. Now look at this fan; it's only
held together with glue!"

She had snatched up a fan and was dragging at the blades so that the
silk was torn in two. This seemed to excite her, and in order to
show that she scorned the other presents, the moment she had ruined
his she treated herself to a general massacre, rapping each
successive object and proving clearly that not one was solid in that
she had broken them all. There was a lurid glow in her vacant eyes,
and her lips, slightly drawn back, displayed her white teeth. Soon,
when everything was in fragments, she laughed cheerily again and
with flushed cheeks beat on the table with the flat of her hands,
lisping like a naughty little girl:

"All over! Got no more! Got no more!"

Then Philippe was overcome by the same mad excitement, and, pushing
her down, he merrily kissed her bosom. She abandoned herself to him
and clung to his shoulders 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 barely half-past two, and with
many loud oaths roughly settled himself on a bench in the hall. The
young woman listened to him from the first floor. She was pale, and
it caused her especial pain to hear the servants' secret rejoicings
swelling up louder and louder till they even reached her ears. Down
in the kitchen they were dying of laughter. The coachman was
staring across from the other side of the court; Francois was
crossing the hall without any apparent reason. Then he hurried off
to report progress, after sneering knowingly at the baker. They
didn't care a damn for Madame; the walls were echoing to their
laughter, and she felt that she was deserted on all hands and
despised by the servants' hall, the inmates of which were watching
her every movement and liberally bespattering her with the filthiest
of chaff. Thereupon she abandoned the intention of borrowing the
hundred and thirty-three francs from Zoe; she already owed the maid
money, and she was too proud to risk a refusal now. Such a burst of
feeling stirred her that she went back into her room, loudly
remarking:

"Come, come, my girl, don't count on anyone but yourself. Your
body's your own property, and it's better to make use of it than to
let yourself be insulted."

And without even summoning Zoe she dressed herself with feverish
haste in order to run round to the Tricon's. In hours of great
embarrassment this was her last resource. Much sought after and
constantly solicited by the old lady, she would refuse or resign
herself according to her needs, and on these increasingly frequent
occasions when both ends would not meet in her royally conducted
establishment, she was sure to find twenty-five louis awaiting her
at the other's house. She used to betake herself to the Tricon's
with the ease born of use, just as the poor go to the pawnshop.

But as she left her own chamber Nana came suddenly upon Georges
standing in the middle of the drawing room. Not noticing his waxen
pallor and the somber fire in his wide eyes, she gave a sigh of
relief.

"Ah, you've come from your brother."

"No," said the lad, growing yet paler.

At this she gave a despairing shrug. What did he want? Why was he
barring her way? She was in a hurry--yes, she was. Then returning
to where he stood:

"You've no money, have you?"

"No."

"That's true. How silly of me! Never a stiver; not even their
omnibus fares Mamma doesn't wish it! Oh, what a set of men!"

And she escaped. But he held her back; he wanted to speak to her.
She was fairly under way and again declared she had no time, but he
stopped her with a word.

"Listen, I know you're going to marry my brother."

Gracious! The thing was too funny! And she let herself down into a
chair in order to laugh at her ease.

"Yes," continued the lad, "and I don't wish it. It's I you're going
to marry. That's why I've come."

"Eh, what? You too?" she cried. "Why, it's a family disease, is
it? No, never! What a fancy, to be sure! Have I ever asked you to
do anything so nasty? Neither one nor t'other of you! No, never!"

The lad's face brightened. Perhaps he had been deceiving himself!
He continued:

"Then swear to me that you don't go to bed with my brother."

"Oh, you're beginning to bore me now!" said Nana, who had risen with
renewed impatience. "It's amusing for a little while, but when I
tell you I'm in a hurry--I go to bed with your brother if it pleases
me. Are you keeping me--are you paymaster here that you insist on
my making a report? Yes, I go to bed with your brother."

He had caught hold of her arm and squeezed it hard enough to break
it as he stuttered:

"Don't say that! Don't say that!"

With a slight blow she disengaged herself from his grasp.

"He's maltreating me now! Here's a young ruffian for you! My
chicken, you'll leave this jolly sharp. I used to keep you about
out of niceness. Yes, I did! You may stare! Did you think I was
going to be your mamma till I died? I've got better things to do
than to bring up brats."

He listened to her stark with anguish, yet in utter submission. Her
every word cut him to the heart so sharply that he felt he should
die. She did not so much as notice his suffering and continued
delightedly to revenge herself on him for the annoyance of the
morning.

"It's like your brother; he's another pretty Johnny, he is! He
promised me two hundred francs. Oh, dear me; yes, I can wait for
'em. It isn't his money I care for! I've not got enough to pay for
hair oil. Yes, he's leaving me in a jolly fix! Look here, d'you
want to know how matters stand? Here goes then: it's all owing to
your brother that I'm going out to earn twenty-five louis with
another man."

At these words his head spun, and he barred her egress. He cried;
he besought her not to go, clasping his hands together and blurting
out:

"Oh no! Oh no!"

"I want to, I do," she said. "Have you the money?"

No, he had not got the money. He would have given his life to have
the money! Never before had he felt so miserable, so useless, so
very childish. All his wretched being was shaken with weeping and
gave proof of such heavy suffering that at last she noticed it and
grew kind. She pushed him away softly.

"Come, my pet, let me pass; I must. Be reasonable. You're a baby
boy, and it was very nice for a week, but nowadays I must look after
my own affairs. Just think it over a bit. Now your brother's a
man; what I'm saying doesn't apply to him. Oh, please do me a
favor; it's no good telling him all this. He needn't know where I'm
going. I always let out too much when I'm in a rage."

She began laughing. Then taking him in her arms and kissing him on
the forehead:

"Good-by, baby," she said; "it's over, quite over between us; d'you
understand? And now I'm off!"

And she left him, and he stood in the middle of the drawing room.
Her last words rang like the knell of a tocsin in his ears: "It's
over, quite over!"  And he thought the ground was opening beneath
his feet. There was a void in his brain from which the man awaiting
Nana had disappeared. Philippe alone remained there in the young
woman's bare embrace forever and ever. She did not deny it: she
loved him, since she wanted to spare him the pain of her infidelity.
It was over, quite over. He breathed heavily and gazed round the
room, suffocating beneath a crushing weight. Memories kept
recurring to him one after the other--memories of merry nights at La
Mignotte, of amorous hours during which he had fancied himself her
child, of pleasures stolen in this very room. And now these things
would never, never recur! He was too small; he had not grown up
quickly enough; Philippe was supplanting him because he was a
bearded man. So then this was the end; he could not go on living.
His vicious passion had become transformed into an infinite
tenderness, a sensual adoration, in which his whole being was
merged. Then, too, how was he to forget it all if his brother
remained--his brother, blood of his blood, a second self, whose
enjoyment drove him mad with jealousy? It was the end of all
things; he wanted to die.

All the doors remained open, as the servants noisily scattered over
the house after seeing Madame make her exit on foot. Downstairs on
the bench in the hall the baker was laughing with Charles and
Francois. Zoe came running across the drawing room and seemed
surprised at sight of Georges. She asked him if he were waiting for
Madame. Yes, he was waiting for her; he had for-gotten to give her
an answer to a question. And when he was alone he set to work and
searched. Finding nothing else to suit his purpose, he took up in
the dressing room a pair of very sharply pointed scissors with which
Nana had a mania for ceaselessly trimming herself, either by
polishing her skin or cutting off little hairs. Then for a whole
hour he waited patiently, his hand in his pocket and his fingers
tightly clasped round the scissors.

"Here's Madame," said Zoe, returning. She must have espied her
through the bedroom window.

There was a sound of people racing through the house, and laughter
died away and doors were shut. Georges heard Nana paying the baker
and speaking in the curtest way. Then she came upstairs.

"What, you're here still!" she said as she noticed him. "Aha!
We're going to grow angry, my good man!"

He followed her as she walked toward her bedroom.

"Nana, will you marry me?"

She shrugged her shoulders. It was too stupid; she refused to
answer any more and conceived the idea of slamming the door in his
face.

"Nana, will you marry me?"

She slammed the door. He opened it with one hand while he brought
the other and the scissors out of his pocket. And with one great
stab he simply buried them in his breast.

Nana, meanwhile, had felt conscious that something dreadful would
happen, and she had turned round. When she saw him stab himself she
was seized with indignation.

"Oh, what a fool he is! What a fool! And with my scissors! Will
you leave off, you naughty little rogue? Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

She was scared. Sinking on his knees, the boy had just given
himself a second stab, which sent him down at full length on the
carpet. He blocked the threshold of the bedroom. With that Nana
lost her head utterly and screamed with all her might, for she dared
not step over his body, which shut her in and prevented her from
running to seek assistance.

"Zoe! Zoe! Come at once. Make him leave off. It's getting
stupid--a child like that! He's killing himself now! And in my
place too! Did you ever see the like of it?"

He was frightening her. He was all white, and his eyes were shut.
There was scarcely any bleeding--only a little blood, a tiny stain
which was oozing down into his waistcoat. She was making up her
mind to step over the body when an apparition sent her starting
back. An old lady was advancing through the drawing-room door,
which remained wide open opposite. And in her terror she recognized
Mme Hugon but could not explain her presence. Still wearing her
gloves and hat, Nana kept edging backward, and her terror grew so
great that she sought to defend herself, and in a shaky voice:

"Madame," she cried, "it isn't I; I swear to you it isn't. He
wanted to marry me, and I said no, and he's killed himself!"

Slowly Mme Hugon drew near--she was in black, and her face showed
pale under her white hair. In the carriage, as she drove thither,
the thought of Georges had vanished and that of Philippe's misdoing
had again taken complete possession of her. It might be that this
woman could afford explanations to the judges which would touch
them, and so she conceived the project of begging her to bear
witness in her son's favor. Downstairs the doors of the house stood
open, but as she mounted to the first floor her sick feet failed
her, and she was hesitating as to which way to go when suddenly
horror-stricken cries directed her. Then upstairs she found a man
lying on the floor with bloodstained shirt. It was Georges--it was
her other child.

Nana, in idiotic tones, kept saying:

"He wanted to marry me, and I said no, and he's killed himself."

Uttering no cry, Mme Hugon stooped down. Yes, it was the other one;
it was Georges. The one was brought to dishonor, the other
murdered! It caused her no surprise, for her whole life was ruined.
Kneeling on the carpet, utterly forgetting where she was, noticing
no one else, she gazed fixedly at her boy's face and listened with
her hand on his heart. Then she gave a feeble sigh--she had felt
the heart beating. And with that she lifted her head and
scrutinized the room and the woman and seemed to remember. A fire
glowed forth in her vacant eyes, and she looked so great and
terrible in her silence that Nana trembled as she continued to
defend herself above the body that divided them.

"I swear it, madame! If his brother were here he could explain it
to you."

"His brother has robbed--he is in prison," said the mother in a hard
voice.

Nana felt a choking sensation. Why, what was the reason of it all?
The other had turned thief now! They were mad in that family! She
ceased struggling in self-defense; she seemed no longer mistress in
her own house and allowed Mme Hugon to give what orders she liked.
The servants had at last hurried up, and the old lady insisted on
their carrying the fainting Georges down to her carriage. She
preferred killing him rather than letting him remain in that house.
With an air of stupefaction Nana watched the retreating servants as
they supported poor, dear Zizi by his legs and shoulders. The
mother walked behind them in a state of collapse; she supported
herself against the furniture; she felt as if all she held dear had
vanished in the void. On the landing a sob escaped her; she turned
and twice ejaculated:

"Oh, but you've done us infinite harm! You've done us infinite
harm!"

That was all. In her stupefaction Nana had sat down; she still wore
her gloves and her hat. The house once more lapsed into heavy
silence; the carriage had driven away, and she sat motionless, not
knowing what to do next. her head swimming after all she had gone
through. A quarter of an hour later Count Muffat found her thus,
but at sight of him she relieved her feelings in an overflowing
current of talk. She told him all about the sad incident, repeated
the same details twenty times over, picked up the bloodstained
scissors in order to imitate Zizi's gesture when he stabbed himself.
And above all she nursed the idea of proving her own innocence.

"Look you here, dearie, is it my fault? If you were the judge would
you condemn me? I certainly didn't tell Philippe to meddle with the
till any more than I urged that wretched boy to kill himself. I've
been most unfortunate throughout it all. They come and do stupid
things in my place; they make me miserable; they treat me like a
hussy."

And she burst into tears. A fit of nervous expansiveness rendered
her soft and doleful, and her immense distress melted her utterly.

"And you, too, look as if you weren't satisfied. Now do just ask
Zoe if I'm at all mixed up in it. Zoe, do speak: explain to
Monsieur--"

The lady's maid, having brought a towel and a basin of water out of
the dressing room, had for some moments past been rubbing the carpet
in order to remove the bloodstains before they dried.

"Oh, monsieur, " she declared, "Madame is utterly miserable!"

Muffat was still stupefied; the tragedy had frozen him, and his
imagination was full of the mother weeping for her sons. He knew
her greatness of heart and pictured her in her widow's weeds,
withering solitarily away at Les Fondettes. But Nana grew ever more
despondent, for now the memory of Zizi lying stretched on the floor,
with a red hole in his shirt, almost drove her senseless.

"He used to be such a darling, so sweet and caressing. Oh, you
know, my pet--I'm sorry if it vexes you--I loved that baby! I can't
help saying so; the words must out. Besides, now it ought not to
hurt you at all. He's gone. You've got what you wanted; you're
quite certain never to surprise us again."

And this last reflection tortured her with such regret that he ended
by turning comforter. Well, well, he said, she ought to be brave;
she was quite right; it wasn't her fault! But she checked her
lamentations of her own accord in order to say:

"Listen, you must run round and bring me news of him. At once! I
wish it!"

He took his hat and went to get news of Georges. When he returned
after some three quarters of an hour he saw Nana leaning anxiously
out of a window, and he shouted up to her from the pavement that the
lad was not dead and that they even hoped to bring him through. At
this she immediately exchanged grief for excess of joy and began to
sing and dance and vote existence delightful. Zoe, meanwhile, was
still dissatisfied with her washing. She kept looking at the stain,
and every time she passed it she repeated:

"You know it's not gone yet, madame."

As a matter of fact, the pale red stain kept reappearing on one of
the white roses in the carpet pattern. It was as though, on the
very threshold of the room, a splash of blood were barring the
doorway.

"Bah!" said the joyous Nana. "That'l be rubbed out under people's
feet."

After the following day Count Muffat had likewise forgotten the
incident. For a moment or two, when in the cab which drove him to
the Rue Richelieu, he had busily sworn never to return to that
woman's house. Heaven was warning him; the misfortunes of Philippe
and Georges were, he opined, prophetic of his proper ruin. But
neither the sight of Mme Hugon in tears nor that of the boy burning
with fever had been strong enough to make him keep his vow, and the
short-lived horror of the situation had only left behind it a sense
of secret delight at the thought that he was now well quit of a
rival, the charm of whose youth had always exasperated him. His
passion had by this time grown exclusive; it was, indeed, the
passion of a man who has had no youth. He loved Nana as one who
yearned to be her sole possessor, to listen to her, to touch her, to
be breathed on by her. His was now a supersensual tenderness,
verging on pure sentiment; it was an anxious affection and as such
was jealous of the past and apt at times to dream of a day of
redemption and pardon received, when both should kneel before God
the Father. Every day religion kept regaining its influence over
him. He again became a practicing Christian; he confessed himself
and communicated, while a ceaseless struggle raged within him, and
remorse redoubled the joys of sin and of repentance. Afterward,
when his director gave him leave to spend his passion, he had made a
habit of this daily perdition and would redeem the same by ecstasies
of faith, which were full of pious humility. Very naively he
offered heaven, by way of expiatory anguish, the abominable torment
from which he was suffering. This torment grew and increased, and
he would climb his Calvary with the deep and solemn feelings of a
believer, though steeped in a harlot's fierce sensuality. That
which made his agony most poignant was this woman's continued
faithlessness. He could not share her with others, nor did he
understand her imbecile caprices. Undying, unchanging love was what
he wished for. However, she had sworn, and he paid her as having
done so. But he felt that she was untruthful, incapable of common
fidelity, apt to yield to friends, to stray passers-by, like a good-
natured animal, born to live minus a shift.

One morning when he saw Foucarmont emerging from her bedroom at an
unusual hour, he made a scene about it. But in her weariness of his
jealousy she grew angry directly. On several occasions ere that she
had behaved rather prettily. Thus the evening when he surprised her
with Georges she was the first to regain her temper and to confess
herself in the wrong. She had loaded him with caresses and dosed
him with soft speeches in order to make him swallow the business.
But he had ended by boring her to death with his obstinate refusals
to understand the feminine nature, and now she was brutal.

"Very well, yes! I've slept with Foucarmont. What then? That's
flattened you out a bit, my little rough, hasn't it?"

It was the first time she had thrown "my little rough" in his teeth.
The frank directness of her avowal took his breath away, and when he
began clenching his fists she marched up to him and looked him full
in the face.

"We've had enough of this, eh? If it doesn't suit you you'll do me
the pleasure of leaving the house. I don't want you to go yelling
in my place. Just you get it into your noodle that I mean to be
quite free. When a man pleases me I go to bed with him. Yes, I do--
that's my way! And you must make up your mind directly. Yes or
no! If it's no, out you may walk!"

She had gone and opened the door, but he did not leave. That was
her way now of binding him more closely to her. For no reason
whatever, at the slightest approach to a quarrel she would tell him
he might stop or go as he liked, and she would accompany her
permission with a flood of odious reflections. She said she could
always find better than he; she had only too many from whom to
choose; men in any quantity could be picked up in the street, and
men a good deal smarter, too, whose blood boiled in their veins. At
this he would hang his head and wait for those gentler moods when
she wanted money. She would then become affectionate, and he would
forget it all, one night of tender dalliance making up for the
tortures of a whole week. His reconciliation with his wife had
rendered his home unbearable. Fauchery, having again fallen under
Rose's dominion, the countess was running madly after other loves.
She was entering on the forties, that restless, feverish time in the
life of women, and ever hysterically nervous, she now filled her
mansion with the maddening whirl of her fashionable life. Estelle,
since her marriage, had seen nothing of her father; the undeveloped,
insignificant girl had suddenly become a woman of iron will, so
imperious withal that Daguenet trembled in her presence. In these
days he accompanied her to mass: he was converted, and he raged
against his father-in-law for ruining them with a courtesan. M.
Venot alone still remained kindly inclined toward the count, for he
was biding his time. He had even succeeded in getting into Nana's
immediate circle. In fact, he frequented both houses, where you
encountered his continual smile behind doors. So Muffat, wretched
at home, driven out by ennui and shame, still preferred to live in
the Avenue de Villiers, even though he was abused there.

Soon there was but one question between Nana and the count, and that
was "money."  One day after having formally promised her ten
thousand francs he had dared keep his appointment empty handed. For
two days past she had been surfeiting him with love, and such a
breach of faith, such a waste of caresses, made her ragingly
abusive. She was white with fury.

"So you've not got the money, eh? Then go back where you came from,
my little rough, and look sharp about it! There's a bloody fool for
you! He wanted to kiss me again! Mark my words--no money, no
nothing!"

He explained matters; he would be sure to have the money the day
after tomorrow. But she interrupted him violently:

"And my bills! They'll sell me up while Monsieur's playing the
fool. Now then, look at yourself. D'ye think I love you for your
figure? A man with a mug like yours has to pay the women who are
kind enough to put up with him. By God, if you don't bring me that
ten thousand francs tonight you shan't even have the tip of my
little finger to suck. I mean it! I shall send you back to your
wife!"

At night he brought the ten thousand francs. Nana put up her lips,
and he took a long kiss which consoled him for the whole day of
anguish. What annoyed the young woman was to have him continually
tied to her apron strings. She complained to M. Venot, begging him
to take her little rough off to the countess. Was their
reconciliation good for nothing then? She was sorry she had mixed
herself up in it, since despite everything he was always at her
heels. On the days when, out of anger, she forgot her own interest,
she swore to play him such a dirty trick that he would never again
be able to set foot in her place. But when she slapped her leg and
yelled at him she might quite as well have spat in his face too: he
would still have stayed and even thanked her. Then the rows about
money matters kept continually recurring. She demanded money
savagely; she rowed him over wretched little amounts; she was
odiously stingy with every minute of her time; she kept fiercely
informing him that she slept with him for his money, not for any
other reasons, and that she did not enjoy it a bit, that, in fact,
she loved another and was awfully unfortunate in needing an idiot of
his sort! They did not even want him at court now, and there was
some talk of requiring him to send in his resignation. The empress
had said, "He is too disgusting."  It was true enough. So Nana
repeated the phrase by way of closure to all their quarrels.

"Look here! You disgust me!"

Nowadays she no longer minded her ps and qs; she had regained the
most perfect freedom.

Every day she did her round of the lake, beginning acquaintanceships
which ended elsewhere. Here was the happy hunting ground par
excellence, where courtesans of the first water spread their nets in
open daylight and flaunted themselves amid the tolerating smiles and
brilliant luxury of Paris. Duchesses pointed her out to one another
with a passing look--rich shopkeepers' wives copied the fashion of
her hats. Sometimes her landau, in its haste to get by, stopped a
file of puissant turnouts, wherein sat plutocrats able to buy up all
Europe or Cabinet ministers with plump fingers tight-pressed to the
throat of France. She belonged to this Bois society, occupied a
prominent place in it, was known in every capital and asked about by
every foreigner. The splendors of this crowd were enhanced by the
madness of her profligacy as though it were the very crown, the
darling passion, of the nation. Then there were unions of a night,
continual passages of desire, which she lost count of the morning
after, and these sent her touring through the grand restaurants and
on fine days, as often as not, to "Madrid."  The staffs of all the
embassies visited her, and she, Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet and
Maria Blond would dine in the society of gentlemen who murdered the
French language and paid to be amused, engaging them by the evening
with orders to be funny and yet proving so blase and so worn out
that they never even touched them. This the ladies called "going on
a spree," and they would return home happy at having been despised
and would finish the night in the arms of the lovers of their
choice.

When she did not actually throw the men at his head Count Muffat
pretended not to know about all this. However, he suffered not a
little from the lesser indignities of their daily life. The mansion
in the Avenue de Villiers was becoming a hell, a house full of mad
people, in which every hour of the day wild disorders led to hateful
complications. Nana even fought with her servants. One moment she
would be very nice with Charles, the coachman. When she stopped at
a restaurant she would send him out beer by the waiter and would
talk with him from the inside of her carriage when he slanged the
cabbies at a block in the traffic, for then he struck her as funny
and cheered her up. Then the next moment she called him a fool for
no earthly reason. She was always squabbling over the straw, the
bran or the oats; in spite of her love for animals she thought her
horses ate too much. Accordingly one day when she was settling up
she accused the man of robbing her. At this Charles got in a rage
and called her a whore right out; his horses, he said, were
distinctly better than she was, for they did not sleep with
everybody. She answered him in the same strain, and the count had
to separate them and give the coachman the sack. This was the
beginning of a rebellion among the servants. When her diamonds had
been stolen Victorine and Francois left. Julien himself
disappeared, and the tale ran that the master had given him a big
bribe and had begged him to go, because he slept with the mistress.
Every week there were new faces in the servants' hall. Never was
there such a mess; the house was like a passage down which the scum
of the registry offices galloped, destroying everything in their
path. Zoe alone kept her place; she always looked clean, and her
only anxiety was how to organize this riot until she had got enough
together to set up on her own account in fulfillment of a plan she
had been hatching for some time past.

These, again, were only the anxieties he could own to. The count
put up with the stupidity of Mme Maloir, playing bezique with her in
spite of her musty smell. He put up with Mme Lerat and her
encumbrances, with Louiset and the mournful complaints peculiar to a
child who is being eaten up with the rottenness inherited from some
unknown father. But he spent hours worse than these. One evening
he had heard Nana angrily telling her maid that a man pretending to
be rich had just swindled her--a handsome man calling himself an
American and owning gold mines in his own country, a beast who had
gone off while she was asleep without giving her a copper and had
even taken a packet of cigarette papers with him. The count had
turned very pale and had gone downstairs again on tiptoe so as not
to hear more. But later he had to hear all. Nana, having been
smitten with a baritone in a music hall and having been thrown over
by him, wanted to commit suicide during a fit of sentimental
melancholia. She swallowed a glass of water in which she had soaked
a box of matches. This made her terribly sick but did not kill her.
The count had to nurse her and to listen to the whole story of her
passion, her tearful protests and her oaths never to take to any man
again. In her contempt for those swine, as she called them, she
could not, however, keep her heart free, for she always had some
sweetheart round her, and her exhausted body inclined to
incomprehensible fancies and perverse tastes. As Zoe designedly
relaxed her efforts the service of the house had got to such a pitch
that Muffat did not dare to push open a door, to pull a curtain or
to unclose a cupboard. The bells did not ring; men lounged about
everywhere and at every moment knocked up against one another. He
had now to cough before entering a room, having almost caught the
girl hanging round Francis' neck one evening that he had just gone
out of the dressing room for two minutes to tell the coachman to put
the horses to, while her hairdresser was finishing her hair. She
gave herself up suddenly behind his back; she took her pleasure in
every corner, quickly, with the first man she met. Whether she was
in her chemise or in full dress did not matter. She would come back
to the count red all over, happy at having cheated him. As for him,
he was plagued to death; it was an abominable infliction!

In his jealous anguish the unhappy man was comparatively at peace
when he left Nana and Satin alone together. He would have willingly
urged her on to this vice, to keep the men off her. But all was
spoiled in this direction too. Nana deceived Satin as she deceived
the count, going mad over some monstrous fancy or other and picking
up girls at the street corners. Coming back in her carriage, she
would suddenly be taken with a little slut that she saw on the
pavement; her senses would be captivated, her imagination excited.
She would take the little slut in with her, pay her and send her
away again. Then, disguised as a man, she would go to infamous
houses and look on at scenes of debauch to while away hours of
boredom. And Satin, angry at being thrown over every moment, would
turn the house topsy-turvy with the most awful scenes. She had at
last acquired a complete ascendancy over Nana, who now respected
her. Muffat even thought of an alliance between them. When he
dared not say anything he let Satin loose. Twice she had compelled
her darling to take up with him again, while he showed himself
obliging and effaced himself in her favor at the least sign. But
this good understanding lasted no time, for Satin, too, was a little
cracked. On certain days she would very nearly go mad and would
smash everything, wearing herself out in tempest of love and anger,
but pretty all the time. Zoe must have excited her, for the maid
took her into corners as if she wanted to tell her about her great
design of which she as yet spoke to no one.

At times, however, Count Muffat was still singularly revolted. He
who had tolerated Satin for months, who had at last shut his eyes to
the unknown herd of men that scampered so quickly through Nana's
bedroom, became terribly enraged at being deceived by one of his own
set or even by an acquaintance. When she confessed her relations
with Foucarmont he suffered so acutely, he thought the treachery of
the young man so base, that he wished to insult him and fight a
duel. As he did not know where to find seconds for such an affair,
he went to Labordette. The latter, astonished, could not help
laughing.

"A duel about Nana? But, my dear sir, all Paris would be laughing
at you. Men do not fight for Nana; it would be ridiculous."

The count grew very pale and made a violent gesture.

"Then I shall slap his face in the open street."

For an hour Labordette had to argue with him. A blow would make the
affair odious; that evening everyone would know the real reason of
the meeting; it would be in all the papers. And Labordette always
finished with the same expression:

"It is impossible; it would be ridiculous."

Each time Muffat heard these words they seemed sharp and keen as a
stab. He could not even fight for the woman he loved; people would
have burst out laughing. Never before had he felt more bitterly the
misery of his love, the contrast between his heavy heart and the
absurdity of this life of pleasure in which it was now lost. This
was his last rebellion; he allowed Labordette to convince him, and
he was present afterward at the procession of his friends, who lived
there as if at home.

Nana in a few months finished them up greedily, one after the other.
The growing needs entailed by her luxurious way of life only added
fuel to her desires, and she finished a man up at one mouthful.
First she had Foucarmont, who did not last a fortnight. He was
thinking of leaving the navy, having saved about thirty thousand
francs in his ten years of service, which he wished to invest in the
United States. His instincts, which were prudential, even miserly,
were conquered; he gave her everything, even his signature to notes
of hand, which pledged his future. When Nana had done with him he
was penniless. But then she proved very kind; she advised him to
return to his ship. What was the good of getting angry? Since he
had no money their relations were no longer possible. He ought to
understand that and to be reasonable. A ruined man fell from her
hands like a ripe fruit, to rot on the ground by himself.

Then Nana took up with Steiner without disgust but without love.
She called him a dirty Jew; she seemed to be paying back an old
grudge, of which she had no distinct recollection. He was fat; he
was stupid, and she got him down and took two bites at a time in
order the quicker to do for this Prussian. As for him, he had
thrown Simonne over. His Bosphorous scheme was getting shaky, and
Nana hastened the downfall by wild expenses. For a month he
struggled on, doing miracles of finance. He filled Europe with
posters, advertisements and prospectuses of a colossal scheme and
obtained money from the most distant climes. All these savings, the
pounds of speculators and the pence of the poor, were swallowed up
in the Avenue de Villiers. Again he was partner in an ironworks in
Alsace, where in a small provincial town workmen, blackened with
coal dust and soaked with sweat, day and night strained their sinews
and heard their bones crack to satisfy Nana's pleasures. Like a
huge fire she devoured all the fruits of stock-exchange swindling
and the profits of labor. This time she did for Steiner; she
brought him to the ground, sucked him dry to the core, left him so
cleaned out that he was unable to invent a new roguery. When his
bank failed he stammered and trembled at the idea of prosecution.
His bankruptcy had just been published, and the simple mention of
money flurried him and threw him into a childish embarrassment. And
this was he who had played with millions. One evening at Nana's he
began to cry and asked her for a loan of a hundred francs wherewith
to pay his maidservant. And Nana, much affected and amused at the
end of this terrible old man who had squeezed Paris for twenty
years, brought it to him and said:

"I say, I'm giving it you because it seems so funny! But listen to
me, my boy, you are too old for me to keep. You must find something
else to do."

Then Nana started on La Faloise at once. He had for some time been
longing for the honor of being ruined by her in order to put the
finishing stroke on his smartness. He needed a woman to launch him
properly; it was the one thing still lacking. In two months all
Paris would be talking of him, and he would see his name in the
papers. Six weeks were enough. His inheritance was in landed
estate, houses, fields, woods and farms. He had to sell all, one
after the other, as quickly as he could. At every mouthful Nana
swallowed an acre. The foliage trembling in the sunshine, the wide
fields of ripe grain, the vineyards so golden in September, the tall
grass in which the cows stood knee-deep, all passed through her
hands as if engulfed by an abyss. Even fishing rights, a stone
quarry and three mills disappeared. Nana passed over them like an
invading army or one of those swarms of locusts whose flight scours
a whole province. The ground was burned up where her little foot
had rested. Farm by farm, field by field, she ate up the man's
patrimony very prettily and quite inattentively, just as she would
have eaten a box of sweet-meats flung into her lap between
mealtimes. There was no harm in it all; they were only sweets! But
at last one evening there only remained a single little wood. She
swallowed it up disdainfully, as it was hardly worth the trouble
opening one's mouth for. La Faloise laughed idiotically and sucked
the top of his stick. His debts were crushing him; he was not worth
a hundred francs a year, and he saw that he would be compelled to go
back into the country and live with his maniacal uncle. But that
did not matter; he had achieved smartness; the Figaro had printed
his name twice. And with his meager neck sticking up between the
turndown points of his collar and his figure squeezed into all too
short a coat, he would swagger about, uttering his parrotlike
exclamations and affecting a solemn listlessness suggestive of an
emotionless marionette. He so annoyed Nana that she ended by
beating him.

Meanwhile Fauchery had returned, his cousin having brought him.
Poor Fauchery had now set up housekeeping. After having thrown over
the countess he had fallen into Rose's hands, and she treated him as
a lawful wife would have done. Mignon was simply Madame's major-
domo. Installed as master of the house, the journalist lied to Rose
and took all sorts of precautions when he deceived her. He was as
scrupulous as a good husband, for he really wanted to settle down at
last. Nana's triumph consisted in possessing and in ruining a
newspaper that he had started with a friend's capital. She did not
proclaim her triumph; on the contrary, she delighted in treating him
as a man who had to be circumspect, and when she spoke of Rose it
was as "poor Rose."  The newspaper kept her in flowers for two
months. She took all the provincial subscriptions; in fact, she
took everything, from the column of news and gossip down to the
dramatic notes. Then the editorial staff having been turned topsy-
turvy and the management completely disorganized, she satisfied a
fanciful caprice and had a winter garden constructed in a corner of
her house: that carried off all the type. But then it was no joke
after all! When in his delight at the whole business Mignon came to
see if he could not saddle Fauchery on her altogether, she asked him
if he took her for a fool. A penniless fellow living by his
articles and his plays--not if she knew it! That sort of
foolishness might be all very well for a clever woman like her poor,
dear Rose! She grew distrustful: she feared some treachery on
Mignon's part, for he was quite capable of preaching to his wife,
and so she gave Fauchery his CONGE as he now only paid her in fame.

But she always recollected him kindly. They had both enjoyed
themselves so much at the expense of that fool of a La Faloise!
They would never have thought of seeing each other again if the
delight of fooling such a perfect idiot had not egged them on! It
seemed an awfully good joke to kiss each other under his very nose.
They cut a regular dash with his coin; they would send him off full
speed to the other end of Paris in order to be alone and then when
he came back, they would crack jokes and make allusions he could not
understand. One day, urged by the journalist, she bet that she
would smack his face, and that she did the very same evening and
went on to harder blows, for she thought it a good joke and was glad
of the opportunity of showing how cowardly men were. She called him
her "slapjack" and would tell him to come and have his smack! The
smacks made her hands red, for as yet she was not up to the trick.
La Faloise laughed in his idiotic, languid way, though his eyes were
full of tears. He was delighted at such familiarity; he thought it
simply stunning.

One night when he had received sundry cuffs and was greatly excited:

"Now, d'you know," he said, "you ought to marry me. We should be as
jolly as grigs together, eh?"

This was no empty suggestion. Seized with a desire to astonish
Paris, he had been slyly projecting this marriage. "Nana's husband!
Wouldn't that sound smart, eh?"  Rather a stunning apotheosis that!
But Nana gave him a fine snubbing.

"Me marry you! Lovely! If such an idea had been tormenting me I
should have found a husband a long time ago! And he'd have been a
man worth twenty of you, my pippin! I've had a heap of proposals.
Why, look here, just reckon 'em up with me: Philippe, Georges,
Foucarmont, Steiner--that makes four, without counting the others
you don't know. It's a chorus they all sing. I can't be nice, but
they forthwith begin yelling, 'Will you marry me? Will you marry
me?'"

She lashed herself up and then burst out in fine indignation:

"Oh dear, no! I don't want to! D'you think I'm built that way?
Just look at me a bit! Why, I shouldn't be Nana any longer if I
fastened a man on behind! And, besides, it's too foul!"

And she spat and hiccuped with disgust, as though she had seen all
the dirt in the world spread out beneath her.

One evening La Faloise vanished, and a week later it became known
that he was in the country with an uncle whose mania was botany. He
was pasting his specimens for him and stood a chance of marrying a
very plain, pious cousin. Nana shed no tears for him. She simply
said to the count:

"Eh, little rough, another rival less! You're chortling today. But
he was becoming serious! He wanted to marry me."

He waxed pale, and she flung her arms round his neck and hung there,
laughing, while she emphasized every little cruel speech with a
caress.

"You can't marry Nana! Isn't that what's fetching you, eh? When
they're all bothering me with their marriages you're raging in your
corner. It isn't possible; you must wait till your wife kicks the
bucket. Oh, if she were only to do that, how you'd come rushing
round! How you'd fling yourself on the ground and make your offer
with all the grand accompaniments--sighs and tears and vows!
Wouldn't it be nice, darling, eh?"

Her voice had become soft, and she was chaffing him in a ferociously
wheedling manner. He was deeply moved and began blushing as he paid
her back her kisses. Then she cried:

"By God, to think I should have guessed! He's thought about it;
he's waiting for his wife to go off the hooks! Well, well, that's
the finishing touch! Why, he's even a bigger rascal than the
others!"

Muffat had resigned himself to "the others."  Nowadays he was
trusting to the last relics of his personal dignity in order to
remain "Monsieur" among the servants and intimates of the house, the
man, in fact, who because he gave most was the official lover. And
his passion grew fiercer. He kept his position because he paid for
it, buying even smiles at a high price. He was even robbed and he
never got his money's worth, but a disease seemed to be gnawing his
vitals from which he could not prevent himself suffering. Whenever
he entered Nana's bedroom he was simply content to open the windows
for a second or two in order to get rid of the odors the others left
behind them, the essential smells of fair-haired men and dark, the
smoke of cigars, of which the pungency choked him. This bedroom was
becoming a veritable thoroughfare, so continually were boots wiped
on its threshold. Yet never a man among them was stopped by the
bloodstain barring the door. Zoe was still preoccupied by this
stain; it was a simple mania with her, for she was a clean girl, and
it horrified her to see it always there. Despite everything her
eyes would wander in its direction, and she now never entered
Madame's room without remarking:

"It's strange that don't go. All the same, plenty of folk come in
this way."

Nana kept receiving the best news from Georges, who was by that time
already convalescent in his mother's keeping at Les Fondettes, and
she used always to make the same reply.

"Oh, hang it, time's all that's wanted. It's apt to grow paler as
feet cross it."

As a matter of fact, each of the gentlemen, whether Foucarmont,
Steiner, La Faloise or Fauchery, had borne away some of it on their
bootsoles. And Muffat, whom the bloodstain preoccupied as much as
it did Zoe, kept studying it in his own despite, as though in its
gradual rosy disappearance he would read the number of men that
passed. He secretly dreaded it and always stepped over it out of a
vivid fear of crushing some live thing, some naked limb lying on the
floor.

But in the bedroom within he would grow dizzy and intoxicated and
would forget everything--the mob of men which constantly crossed it,
the sign of mourning which barred its door. Outside, in the open
air of the street, he would weep occasionally out of sheer shame and
disgust and would vow never to enter the room again. And the moment
the portiere had closed behind him he was under the old influence
once more and felt his whole being melting in the damp warm air of
the place, felt his flesh penetrated by a perfume, felt himself
overborne by a voluptuous yearning for self-annihilation. Pious and
habituated to ecstatic experiences in sumptuous chapels, he there
re-encountered precisely the same mystical sensations as when he
knelt under some painted window and gave way to the intoxication of
organ music and incense. Woman swayed him as jealously and
despotically as the God of wrath, terrifying him, granting him
moments of delight, which were like spasms in their keenness, in
return for hours filled with frightful, tormenting visions of hell
and eternal tortures. In Nana's presence, as in church, the same
stammering accents were his, the same prayers and the same fits of
despair--nay, the same paroxysms of humility peculiar to an accursed
creature who is crushed down in the mire from whence he has sprung.
His fleshly desires, his spiritual needs, were confounded together
and seemed to spring from the obscure depths of his being and to
bear but one blossom on the tree of his existence. He abandoned
himself to the power of love and of faith, those twin levers which
move the world. And despite all the struggles of his reason this
bedroom of Nana's always filled him with madness, and he would sink
shuddering under the almighty dominion of sex, just as he would
swoon before the vast unknown of heaven.

Then when she felt how humble he was Nana grew tyrannously
triumphant. The rage for debasing things was inborn in her. It did
not suffice her to destroy them; she must soil them too. Her
delicate hands left abominable traces and themselves decomposed
whatever they had broken. And he in his imbecile condition lent
himself to this sort of sport, for he was possessed by vaguely
remembered stories of saints who were devoured by vermin and in turn
devoured their own excrements. When once she had him fast in her
room and the doors were shut, she treated herself to a man's infamy.
At first they joked together, and she would deal him light blows and
impose quaint tasks on him, making him lisp like a child and repeat
tags of sentences.

"Say as I do: 'tonfound it! Ickle man damn vell don't tare about
it!"

He would prove so docile as to reproduce her very accent.

"'Tonfound it! Ickle man damn vell don't tare about it!"

Or again she would play bear, walking on all fours on her rugs when
she had only her chemise on and turning round with a growl as though
she wanted to eat him. She would even nibble his calves for the fun
of the thing. Then, getting up again:

"It's your turn now; try it a bit. I bet you don't play bear like
me."

It was still charming enough. As bear she amused him with her white
skin and her fell of ruddy hair. He used to laugh and go down on
all fours, too, and growl and bite her calves, while she ran from
him with an affectation of terror.

"Are we beasts, eh?" she would end by saying. "You've no notion how
ugly you are, my pet! Just think if they were to see you like that
at the Tuileries!"

But ere long these little games were spoiled. It was not cruelty in
her case, for she was still a good-natured girl; it was as though a
passing wind of madness were blowing ever more strongly in the shut-
up bedroom. A storm of lust disordered their brains, plunged them
into the delirious imaginations of the flesh. The old pious terrors
of their sleepless nights were now transforming themselves into a
thirst for bestiality, a furious longing to walk on all fours, to
growl and to bite. One day when he was playing bear she pushed him
so roughly that he fell against a piece of furniture, and when she
saw the lump on his forehead she burst into involuntary laughter.
After that her experiments on La Faloise having whetted her
appetite, she treated him like an animal, threshing him and chasing
him to an accompaniment of kicks.

"Gee up! Gee up! You're a horse. Hoi! Gee up! Won't you hurry
up, you dirty screw?"

At other times he was a dog. She would throw her scented
handkerchief to the far end of the room, and he had to run and pick
it up with his teeth, dragging himself along on hands and knees.

"Fetch it, Caesar! Look here, I'll give you what for if you don't
look sharp! Well done, Caesar! Good dog! Nice old fellow! Now
behave pretty!"

And he loved his abasement and delighted in being a brute beast. He
longed to sink still further and would cry:

"Hit harder. On, on! I'm wild! Hit away!"

She was seized with a whim and insisted on his coming to her one
night clad in his magnificent chamberlain's costume. Then how she
did laugh and make fun of him when she had him there in all his
glory, with the sword and the cocked hat and the white breeches and
the full-bottomed coat of red cloth laced with gold and the symbolic
key hanging on its left-hand skirt. This key made her especially
merry and urged her to a wildly fanciful and extremely filthy
discussion of it. Laughing without cease and carried away by her
irreverence for pomp and by the joy of debasing him in the official
dignity of his costume, she shook him, pinched him, shouted, "Oh,
get along with ye, Chamberlain!" and ended by an accompaniment of
swinging kicks behind. Oh, those kicks! How heartily she rained
them on the Tuileries and the majesty of the imperial court,
throning on high above an abject and trembling people. That's what
she thought of society! That was her revenge! It was an affair of
unconscious hereditary spite; it had come to her in her blood. Then
when once the chamberlain was undressed and his coat lay spread on
the ground she shrieked, "Jump!"  And he jumped. She shrieked,
"Spit!"  And he spat. With a shriek she bade him walk on the gold,
on the eagles, on the decorations, and he walked on them. Hi tiddly
hi ti! Nothing was left; everything was going to pieces. She
smashed a chamberlain just as she smashed a flask or a comfit box,
and she made filth of him, reduced him to a heap of mud at a street
corner.

Meanwhile the goldsmiths had failed to keep their promise, and the
bed was not delivered till one day about the middle of January.
Muffat was just then in Normandy, whither he had gone to sell a last
stray shred of property, but Nana demanded four thousand francs
forthwith. He was not due in Paris till the day after tomorrow, but
when his business was once finished he hastened his return and
without even paying a flying visit in the Rue Miromesnil came direct
to the Avenue de Villiers. Ten o'clock was striking. As he had a
key of a little door opening on the Rue Cardinet, he went up
unhindered. In the drawing room upstairs Zoe, who was polishing the
bronzes, stood dumfounded at sight of him, and not knowing how to
stop him, she began with much circumlocution, informing him that M.
Venot, looking utterly beside himself, had been searching for him
since yesterday and that he had already come twice to beg her to
send Monsieur to his house if Monsieur arrived at Madame's before
going home. Muffat listened to her without in the least
understanding the meaning of her recital; then he noticed her
agitation and was seized by a sudden fit of jealousy of which he no
longer believed himself capable. He threw himself against the
bedroom door, for he heard the sound of laughter within. The door
gave; its two flaps flew asunder, while Zoe withdrew, shrugging her
shoulders. So much the worse for Madame! As Madame was bidding
good-by to her wits, she might arrange matters for herself.

And on the threshold Muffat uttered a cry at the sight that was
presented to his view.

"My God! My God!"

The renovated bedroom was resplendent in all its royal luxury.
Silver buttons gleamed like bright stars on the tea-rose velvet of
the hangings. These last were of that pink flesh tint which the
skies assume on fine evenings, when Venus lights her fires on the
horizon against the clear background of fading daylight. The golden
cords and tassels hanging in corners and the gold lace-work
surrounding the panels were like little flames of ruddy strands of
loosened hair, and they half covered the wide nakedness of the room
while they emphasized its pale, voluptuous tone. Then 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 cost millions of money and ten years
of intense labor. At Cherbourg he had seen the new harbor with its
enormous works, where hundreds of men sweated in the sun while
cranes filled the sea with huge squares of rock and built up a wall
where a workman now and again remained crushed into bloody pulp.
But all that now struck him as insignificant. Nana excited him far
more. Viewing the fruit of her labors, he once more experienced the
feelings of respect that had overcome him one festal evening in a
sugar refiner's chateau. This chateau had been erected for the
refiner, and its palatial proportions and royal splendor had been
paid for by a single material--sugar. It was with something quite
different, with a little laughable folly, a little delicate nudity--
it was with this shameful trifle, which is so powerful as to move
the universe, that she alone, without workmen, without the
inventions of engineers, had shaken Paris to its foundations and had
built up a fortune on the bodies of dead men.

"Oh, by God, what an implement!"

Mignon let the words escape him in his ecstasy, for he felt a return
of personal gratitude.

Nana had gradually lapsed into a most mournful condition. To begin
with, the meeting of the marquis and the count had given her a
severe fit of feverish nervousness, which verged at times on
laughter. Then the thought of this old man going away half dead in
a cab and of her poor rough, whom she would never set eyes on again
now that she had driven him so wild, brought on what looked like the
beginnings of melancholia. After that she grew vexed to hear about
Satin's illness. The girl had disappeared about a fortnight ago and
was now ready to die at Lariboisiere, to such a damnable state had
Mme Robert reduced her. When she ordered the horses to be put to in
order that she might have a last sight of this vile little wretch
Zoe had just quietly given her a week's notice. The announcement
drove her to desperation at once! It seemed to her she was losing a
member of her own family. Great heavens! What was to become of her
when left alone? And she besought Zoe to stay, and the latter, much
flattered by Madame's despair, ended by kissing her to show that she
was not going away in anger. No, she had positively to go: the
heart could have no voice in matters of business.

But that day was one of annoyances. Nana was thoroughly disgusted
and gave up the idea of going out. She was dragging herself wearily
about the little drawing room when Labordette came up to tell her of
a splendid chance of buying magnificent lace and in the course of
his remarks casually let slip the information that Georges was dead.
The announcement froze her.

"Zizi dead!" she cried.

And involuntarily her eyes sought the pink stain on the carpet, but
it had vanished at last; passing footsteps had worn it away.
Meanwhile Labordette entered into particulars. It was not exactly
known how he died. Some spoke of a wound reopening, others of
suicide. The lad had plunged, they said, into a tank at Les
Fondettes. Nana kept repeating:

"Dead! Dead!"

She had been choking with grief since morning, and now she burst out
sobbing and thus sought relief. Hers was an infinite sorrow: it
overwhelmed her with its depth and immensity. Labordette wanted to
comfort her as touching Georges, but she silenced him with a gesture
and blurted out:

"It isn't only he; it's everything, everything. I'm very wretched.
Oh yes, I know! They'll again be saying I'm a hussy. To think of
the mother mourning down there and of the poor man who was groaning
in front of my door this morning and of all the other people that
are now ruined after running through all they had with me! That's
it; punish Nana; punish the beastly thing! Oh, I've got a broad
back! I can hear them as if I were actually there! 'That dirty
wench who lies with everybody and cleans out some and drives others
to death and causes a whole heap of people pain!'"

She was obliged to pause, for tears choked her utterance, and in her
anguish she flung herself athwart a divan and buried her face in a
cushion. The miseries she felt to be around her, miseries of which
she was the cause, overwhelmed her with a warm, continuous stream of
self-pitying tears, and her voice failed as she uttered a little
girl's broken plaint:

"Oh, I'm wretched! Oh, I'm wretched! I can't go on like this: it's
choking me. It's too hard to be misunderstood and to see them all
siding against you because they're stronger. However, when you've
got nothing to reproach yourself with and your conscious is clear,
why, then I say, 'I won't have it! I won't have it!'"

In her anger she began rebeling against circumstances, and getting
up, she dried her eyes, and walked about in much agitation.

"I won't have it! They can say what they like, but it's not my
fault! Am I a bad lot, eh? I give away all I've got; I wouldn't
crush a fly! It's they who are bad! Yes, it's they! I never
wanted to be horrid to them. And they came dangling after me, and
today they're kicking the bucket and begging and going to ruin on
purpose."

Then she paused in front of Labordette and tapped his shoulders.

"Look here," she said, "you were there all along; now speak the
truth: did I urge them on? Weren't there always a dozen of 'em
squabbling who could invent the dirtiest trick? They used to
disgust me, they did! I did all I knew not to copy them: I was
afraid to. Look here, I'll give you a single instance: they all
wanted to marry me! A pretty notion, eh? Yes, dear boy, I could
have been countess or baroness a dozen times over and more, if I'd
consented. Well now, I refused because I was reasonable. Oh yes, I
saved 'em some crimes and other foul acts! They'd have stolen,
murdered, killed father and mother. I had only to say one word, and
I didn't say it. You see what I've got for it today. There's
Daguenet, for instance; I married that chap off! I made a position
for the beggarly fellow after keeping him gratis for weeks! And I
met him yesterday, and he looks the other way! Oh, get along, you
swine! I'm less dirty than you!"

She had begun pacing about again, and now she brought her fist
violently down on a round table.

"By God it isn't fair! Society's all wrong. They come down on the
women when it's the men who want you to do things. Yes, I can tell
you this now: when I used to go with them--see? I didn't enjoy it;
no, I didn't enjoy it one bit. It bored me, on my honor. Well
then, I ask you whether I've got anything to do with it! Yes, they
bored me to death! If it hadn't been for them and what they made of
me, dear boy, I should be in a convent saying my prayers to the good
God, for I've always had my share of religion. Dash it, after all,
if they have dropped their money and their lives over it, what do I
care? It's their fault. I've had nothing to do with it!"

"Certainly not," said Labordette with conviction.

Zoe ushered in Mignon, and Nana received him smilingly. She had
cried a good deal, but it was all over now. Still glowing with
enthusiasm, he complimented her on her installation, but she let him
see that she had had enough of her mansion and that now she had
other projects and would sell everything up one of these days. Then
as he excused himself for calling on the ground that he had come
about a benefit performance in aid of old Bose, who was tied to his
armchair by paralysis, she expressed extreme pity and took two
boxes. Meanwhile Zoe announced that the carriage was waiting for
Madame, and she asked for her hat and as she tied the strings told
them about poor, dear Satin's mishap, adding:

"I'm going to the hospital. Nobody ever loved me as she did. Oh,
they're quite right when they accuse the men of heartlessness! Who
knows? Perhaps I shan't see her alive. Never mind, I shall ask to
see her: I want to give her a kiss."

Labordette and Mignon smiled, and as Nana was no longer melancholy
she smiled too. Those two fellows didn't count; they could enter
into her feelings. And they both stood and admired her in silent
abstraction while she finished buttoning her gloves. She alone kept
her feet amid the heaped-up riches of her mansion, while a whole
generation of men lay stricken down before her. Like those antique
monsters whose redoubtable domains were covered with skeletons, she
rested her feet on human skulls. She was ringed round with
catastrophes. There was the furious immolation of Vandeuvres; the
melancholy state of Foucarmont, who was lost in the China seas; the
smashup of Steiner, who now had to live like an honest man; the
satisfied idiocy of La Faloise, and the tragic shipwreck of the
Muffats. Finally there was the white corpse of Georges, over which
Philippe was now watching, for he had come out of prison but
yesterday. She had finished her labor of ruin and death. The fly
that had flown up from the ordure of the slums, bringing with it the
leaven of social rottenness, had poisoned all these men by merely
alighting on them. It was well done--it was just. She had avenged
the beggars and the wastrels from whose caste she issued. And
while, metaphorically speaking, her sex rose in a halo of glory and
beamed over prostrate victims like a mounting sun shining brightly
over a field of carnage, the actual woman remained as unconscious as
a splendid animal, and in her ignorance of her mission was the good-
natured courtesan to the last. She was still big; she was still
plump; her health was excellent, her spirits capital. But this went
for nothing now, for her house struck her as ridiculous. It was too
small; it was full of furniture which got in her way. It was a
wretched business, and the long and the short of the matter was she
would have to make a fresh start. In fact, she was meditating
something much better, and so she went off to kiss Satin for the
last time. She was in all her finery and looked clean and solid and
as brand new as if she had never seen service before.

CHAPTER XIV

Nana suddenly disappeared. It was a fresh plunge, an escapade, a
flight into barbarous regions. Before her departure she had treated
herself to a new sensation: she had held a sale and had made a clean
sweep of everything--house, furniture, jewelry, nay, even dresses
and linen. Prices were cited--the five days' sale produced more
than six hundred thousand francs. For the last time Paris had seen
her in a fairy piece. It was called Melusine, and it played at the
Theatre de la Gaite, which the penniless Bordenave had taken out of
sheer audacity. Here she again found herself in company with
Prulliere and Fontan. Her part was simply spectacular, but it was
the great attraction of the piece, consisting, as it did, of three
POSES PLASTIQUES, each of which represented the same dumb and
puissant fairy. Then one fine morning amid his grand success, when
Bordenave, who was mad after advertisement, kept firing the Parisian
imagination with colossal posters, it became known that she must
have started for Cairo the previous day. She had simply had a few
words with her manager. Something had been said which did not
please her; the whole thing was the caprice of a woman who is too
rich to let herself be annoyed. Besides, she had indulged an old
infatuation, for she had long meditated visiting the Turks.

Months passed--she began to be forgotten. When her name was
mentioned among the ladies and gentlemen, the strangest stories were
told, and everybody gave the most contradictory and at the same time
prodigious information. She had made a conquest of the viceroy; she
was reigning, in the recesses of a palace, over two hundred slaves
whose heads she now and then cut off for the sake of a little
amusement. No, not at all! She had ruined herself with a great big
nigger! A filthy passion this, which had left her wallowing without
a chemise to her back in the crapulous debauchery of Cairo. A
fortnight later much astonishment was produced when someone swore to
having met her in Russia. A legend began to be formed: she was the
mistress of a prince, and her diamonds were mentioned. All the
women were soon acquainted with them from the current descriptions,
but nobody could cite the precise source of all this information.
There were finger rings, earrings, bracelets, a REVIERE of
phenomenal width, a queenly diadem surmounted by a central brilliant
the size of one's thumb. In the retirement of those faraway
countries she began to gleam forth as mysteriously as a gem-laden
idol. People now mentioned her without laughing, for they were full
of meditative respect for this fortune acquired among the
barbarians.

One evening in July toward eight o'clock, Lucy, while getting out of
her carriage in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, noticed Caroline
Hequet, who had come out on foot to order something at a neighboring
tradesman's. Lucy called her and at once burst out with:

"Have you dined? Are you disengaged? Oh, then come with me, my
dear. Nana's back."

The other got in at once, and Lucy continued:

"And you know, my dear, she may be dead while we're gossiping."

"Dead! What an idea!" cried Caroline in stupefaction. "And where
is she? And what's it of?"

"At the Grand Hotel, of smallpox. Oh, it's a long story!"

Lucy had bidden her coachman drive fast, and while the horses
trotted rapidly along the Rue Royale and the boulevards, she told
what had happened to Nana in jerky, breathless sentences.

"You can't imagine it. Nana plumps down out of Russia. I don't
know why--some dispute with her prince. She leaves her traps at the
station; she lands at her aunt's--you remember the old thing. Well,
and then she finds her baby dying of smallpox. The baby dies next
day, and she has a row with the aunt about some money she ought to
have sent, of which the other one has never seen a sou. Seems the
child died of that: in fact, it was neglected and badly cared for.
Very well; Nana slopes, goes to a hotel, then meets Mignon just as
she was thinking of her traps. She has all sorts of queer feelings,
shivers, wants to be sick, and Mignon takes her back to her place
and promises to look after her affairs. Isn't it odd, eh? Doesn't
it all happen pat? But this is the best part of the story: Rose
finds out about Nana's illness and gets indignant at the idea of her
being alone in furnished apartments. So she rushes off, crying, to
look after her. You remember how they used to detest one another--
like regular furies! Well then, my dear, Rose has had Nana
transported to the Grand Hotel, so that she should, at any rate, die
in a smart place, and now she's already passed three nights there
and is free to die of it after. It's Labordette who told me all
about it. Accordingly I wanted to see for myself--"

"Yes, yes," interrupted Caroline in great excitement "We'll go up to
her."

They had arrived at their destination. On the boulevard the
coachman had had to rein in his horses amid a block of carriages and
people on foot. During the day the Corps Legislatif had voted for
war, and now a crowd was streaming down all the streets, flowing
along all the pavements, invading the middle of the roadway. Beyond
the Madeleine the sun had set behind a blood-red cloud, which cast a
reflection as of a great fire and set the lofty windows flaming.
Twilight was falling, and the hour was oppressively melancholy, for
now the avenues were darkening away into the distance but were not
as yet dotted over by the bright sparks of the gas lamps. And among
the marching crowds distant voices swelled and grew ever louder, and
eyes gleamed from pale faces, while a great spreading wind of
anguish and stupor set every head whirling.

"Here's Mignon," said Lucy. "He'll give us news."

Mignon was standing under the vast porch of the Grand Hotel. He
looked nervous and was gazing at the crowd. After Lucy's first few
questions he grew impatient and cried out:

"How should I know? These last two days I haven't been able to tear
Rose away from up there. It's getting stupid, when all's said, for
her to be risking her life like that! She'll be charming if she
gets over it, with holes in her face! It'll suit us to a tee!"

The idea that Rose might lose her beauty was exasperating him. He
was giving up Nana in the most downright fashion, and he could not
in the least understand these stupid feminine devotions. But
Fauchery was crossing the boulevard, and he, too, came up anxiously
and asked for news. The two men egged each other on. They
addressed one another familiarly in these days.

"Always the same business, my sonny," declared Mignon. "You ought
to go upstairs; you would force her to follow you."

"Come now, you're kind, you are!" said the journalist. "Why don't
you go upstairs yourself?"

Then as Lucy began asking for Nana's number, they besought her to
make Rose come down; otherwise they would end by getting angry.

Nevertheless, Lucy and Caroline did not go up at once. They had
caught sight of Fontan strolling about with his hands in his pockets
and greatly amused by the quaint expressions of the mob. When he
became aware that Nana was lying ill upstairs he affected sentiment
and remarked:

"The poor girl! I'll go and shake her by the hand. What's the
matter with her, eh?"

"Smallpox," replied Mignon.

The actor had already taken a step or two in the direction of the
court, but he came back and simply murmured with a shiver:

"Oh, damn it!"

The smallpox was no joke. Fontan had been near having it when he
was five years old, while Mignon gave them an account of one of his
nieces who had died of it. As to Fauchery, he could speak of it
from personal experience, for he still bore marks of it in the shape
of three little lumps at the base of his nose, which he showed them.
And when Mignon again egged him on to the ascent, on the pretext
that you never had it twice, he violently combated this theory and
with infinite abuse of the doctors instanced various cases. But
Lucy and Caroline interrupted them, for the growing multitude filled
them with astonishment.

"Just look! Just look what a lot of people!"  The night was
deepening, and in the distance the gas lamps were being lit one by
one. Meanwhile interested spectators became visible at windows,
while under the trees the human flood grew every minute more dense,
till it ran in one enormous stream from the Madeleine to the
Bastille. Carriages rolled slowly along. A roaring sound went up
from this compact and as yet inarticulate mass. Each member of it
had come out, impelled by the desire to form a crowd, and was now
trampling along, steeping himself in the pervading fever. But a
great movement caused the mob to flow asunder. Among the jostling,
scattering groups a band of men in workmen's caps and white blouses
had come in sight, uttering a rhythmical cry which suggested the
beat of hammers upon an anvil.

"To Ber-lin! To Ber-lin! To Ber-lin!"  And the crowd stared in
gloomy distrust yet felt themselves already possessed and inspired
by heroic imaginings, as though a military band were passing.

"Oh yes, go and get your throats cut!" muttered Mignon, overcome by
an access of philosophy.

But Fontan thought it very fine, indeed, and spoke of enlisting.
When the enemy was on the frontier all citizens ought to rise up in
defense of the fatherland! And with that he assumed an attitude
suggestive of Bonaparte at Austerlitz.

"Look here, are you coining up with us?" Lucy asked him.

"Oh dear, no! To catch something horrid?" he said.

On a bench in front of the Grand Hotel a man sat hiding his face in
a handkerchief. On arriving Fauchery had indicated him to Mignon
with a wink of the eye. Well, he was still there; yes, he was
always there. And the journalist detained the two women also in
order to point him out to them. When the man lifted his head they
recognized him; an exclamation escaped them. It was the Count
Muffat, and he was giving an upward glance at one of the windows.

"You know, he's bemight be the face. Lucy
added:

"I never saw her since that time at the Gaite, when she was at the
end of the grotto."

At this Rose awoke from her stupor and smiled as she said:

"Ah, she's changed; she's changed."

Then she once more lapsed into contemplation and neither moved nor
spoke. Perhaps they would be able to look at her presently! And
with that the three women joined the others in front of the
fireplace. Simonne and Clarisse were discussing the dead woman's
diamonds in low tones. Well, did they really exist--those diamonds?
Nobody had seen them; it must be a bit of humbug. But Lea de Horn
knew someone who knew all about them. Oh, they were monster stones!
Besides, they weren't all; she had brought back lots of other
precious property from Russia--embroidered stuffs, for instance,
valuable knickknacks, a gold dinner service, nay, even en waiting there since this morning," Mignon
informed them. "I saw him at six o'clock, and he hasn't moved
since. Directly Labordette spoke about it he came there with his
handkerchief up to his face. Every half-hour he comes dragging
himself to where we're standing to ask if the person upstairs is
doing better, and then he goes back and sits down. Hang it, that
room isn't healthy! It's all very well being fond of people, but
one doesn't want to kick the bucket."

The count sat with uplifted eyes and did not seem conscious of what
was going on around him. Doubtless he was ignorant of the
declaration of war, and he neither felt nor saw the crowd.

"Look, here he comes!" said Fauchery. "Now you'll see."

The count had, in fact, quitted his bench and was entering the lofty
porch. But the porter, who was getting to know his face at last,
did not give him time to put his question. He said sharply:

"She's dead, monsieur, this very minute."

Nana dead! It was a blow to them all. Without a word Muffat had
gone back to the bench, his face still buried in his handkerchief.
The others burst into exclamations, but they were cut short, for a
fresh band passed by, howling, "A BERLIN! A BERLIN! A BERLIN!"  
Nana dead! Hang it, and such a fine girl too! Mignon sighed and
looked relieved, for at last Rose would come down. A chill fell on
the company. Fontan, meditating a tragic role, had assumed a look
of woe and was drawing down the corners of his mouth and rolling his
eyes askance, while Fauchery chewed his cigar nervously, for despite
his cheap journalistic chaff he was really touched. Nevertheless,
the two women continued to give vent to their feelings of surprise.
The last time Lucy had seen her was at the Gaite; Blanche, too, had
seen her in Melusine. Oh, how stunning it was, my dear, when she
appeared in the depths of the crystal grot! The gentlemen
remembered the occasion perfectly. Fontan had played the Prince
Cocorico. And their memories once stirred up, they launched into