never pressing them, indeed, only pausing a second or two before the
gentlemen whom she viewed with an air of dumb interrogation before
she smiled and passed on. The great fire had flushed all her face,
and she looked as if she were the sister of her daughter, who
appeared so withered and ungainly at her side. When she drew near
Fauchery, who was chatting with her husband and Vandeuvres, she
noticed that they grew suddenly silent; accordingly she did not stop
but handed the cup of tea she was offering to Georges Hugon beyond
them.
"It's a lady who desires your company at supper," the journalist
gaily continued, addressing Count Muffat.
The last-named, whose face had worn its gray look all the evening,
seemed very much surprised. What lady was it?
"Oh, Nana!" said Vandeuvres, by way of forcing the invitation.
The count became more grave than before. His eyelids trembled just
perceptibly, while a look of discomfort, such as headache produces,
hovered for a moment athwart his forehead.
"But I'm not acquainted with that lady," he murmured.
"Come, come, you went to her house," remarked Vandeuvres.
"What d'you say? I went to her house? Oh yes, the other day, in
behalf of the Benevolent Organization. I had forgotten about it.
But, no matter, I am not acquainted with her, and I cannot accept."
He had adopted an icy expression in order to make them understand
that this jest did not appear to him to be in good taste. A man of
his position did not sit down at tables of such women as that.
Vandeuvres protested: it was to be a supper party of dramatic and
artistic people, and talent excused everything. But without
listening further to the arguments urged by Fauchery, who spoke of a
dinner where the Prince of Scots, the son of a queen, had sat down
beside an ex-music-hall singer, the count only emphasized his
refusal. In so doing, he allowed himself, despite his great
politeness, to be guilty of an irritated gesture.
Georges and La Faloise, standing in front of each other drinking
their tea, had overheard the two or three phrases exchanged in their
immediate neighborhood.
"Jove, it's at Nana's then," murmured La Faloise. "I might have
expected as much!"
Georges said nothing, but he was all aflame. His fair hair was in
disorder; his blue eyes shone like tapers, so fiercely had the vice,
which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed and stirred
his blood. At last he was going to plunge into all that he had
dreamed of!
"I don't know the address," La Faloise resumed.
"She lives on a third floor in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the
Rue de l'Arcade and the Rue Pesquier," said Georges all in a breath.
And when the other looked at him in much astonishment, he added,
turning very red and fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment
and conceit:
"I'm of the party. She invited me this morning."
But there was a great stir in the drawing room, and Vandeuvres and
Fauchery could not continue pressing the count. The Marquis de
Chouard had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet him. He
had moved painfully forward, his legs failing under him, and he now
stood in the middle of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking,
as though he had just come out of some dark alley and were blinded
by the brightness of the lamps.
"I scarcely hoped to see you tonight, Father," said the countess.
"I should have been anxious till the morning."
He looked at her without answering, as a man might who fails to
understand. His nose, which loomed immense on his shorn face,
looked like a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down. Seeing
him such a wreck, Mme Hugon, full of kind compassion, said pitying
things to him.
"You work too hard. You ought to rest yourself. At our age we
ought to leave work to the young people."
"Work! Ah yes, to be sure, work!" he stammered at last. "Always
plenty of work."
He began to pull himself together, straightening up his bent figure
and passing his hand, as was his wont, over his scant gray hair, of
which a few locks strayed behind his ears.
"At what are you working as late as this?" asked Mme du Joncquoy.
"I thought you were at the financial minister's reception?"
But the countess intervened with:
"My father had to study the question of a projected law."
"Yes, a projected law," he said; "exactly so, a projected law. I
shut myself up for that reason. It refers to work in factories, and
I was anxious for a proper observance of the Lord's day of rest. It
is really shameful that the government is unwilling to act with
vigor in the matter. Churches are growing empty; we are running
headlong to ruin."
Vandeuvres had exchanged glances with Fauchery. They both happened
to be behind the marquis, and they were scanning him suspiciously.
When Vandeuvres found an opportunity to take him aside and to speak
to him about the good-looking creature he was in the habit of taking
down into the country, the old man affected extreme surprise.
Perhaps someone had seen him with the Baroness Decker, at whose
house at Viroflay he sometimes spent a day or so. Vandeuvres's sole
vengeance was an abrupt question:
"Tell me, where have you been straying to? Your elbow is covered
with cobwebs and plaster."
"My elbow," he muttered, slightly disturbed. "Yes indeed, it's
true. A speck or two, I must have come in for them on my way down
from my office."
Several people were taking their departure. It was close on
midnight. Two footmen were noiselessly removing the empty cups and
the plates with cakes. In front of the hearth the ladies had re-
formed and, at the same time, narrowed their circle and were
chatting more carelessly than before in the languid atmosphere
peculiar to the close of a party. The very room was going to sleep,
and slowly creeping shadows were cast by its walls. It was then
Fauchery spoke of departure. Yet he once more forgot his intention
at sight of the Countess Sabine. She was resting from her cares as
hostess, and as she sat in her wonted seat, silent, her eyes fixed
on a log which was turning into embers, her face appeared so white
and so impassable that doubt again possessed him. In the glow of
the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner of her lip
became white. It was Nana's very mole, down to the color of the
hair. He could not refrain from whispering something about it in
Vandeuvres's ear. Gad, it was true; the other had never noticed it
before. And both men continued this comparison of Nana and the
countess. They discovered a vague resemblance about the chin and
the mouth, but the eyes were not at all alike. Then, too, Nana had
a good-natured expression, while with the countess it was hard to
decide--she might have been a cat, sleeping with claws withdrawn and
paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous quiver.
"All the same, one could have her," declared Fauchery.
Vandeuvres stripped her at a glance.
"Yes, one could, all the same," he said. "But I think nothing of
the thighs, you know. Will you bet she has no thighs?"
He stopped, for Fauchery touched him briskly on the arm and showed
him Estelle, sitting close to them on her footstool. They had
raised their voices without noticing her, and she must have
overheard them. Nevertheless, she continued sitting there stiff and
motionless, not a hair having lifted on her thin neck, which was
that of a girl who has shot up all too quickly. Thereupon they
retired three or four paces, and Vandeuvres vowed that the countess
was a very honest woman. Just then voices were raised in front of
the hearth. Mme du Joncquoy was saying:
"I was willing to grant you that Monsieur de Bismarck was perhaps a
witty man. Only, if you go as far as to talk of genius--"
The ladies had come round again to their earliest topic of
conversation.
"What the deuce! Still Monsieur de Bismarck!" muttered Fauchery.
"This time I make my escape for good and all."
"Wait a bit," said Vandeuvres, "we must have a definite no from the
count."
The Count Muffat was talking to his father-in-law and a certain
serious-looking gentleman. Vandeuvres drew him away and renewed the
invitation, backing it up with the information that he was to be at
the supper himself. A man might go anywhere; no one could think of
suspecting evil where at most there could only be curiosity. The
count listened to these arguments with downcast eyes and
expressionless face. Vandeuvres felt him to be hesitating when the
Marquis de Chouard approached with a look of interrogation. And
when the latter was informed of the question in hand and Fauchery
had invited him in his turn, he looked at his son-in-law furtively.
There ensued an embarrassed silence, but both men encouraged one
another and would doubtless have ended by accepting had not Count
Muffat perceived M. Venot's gaze fixed upon him. The little old man
was no longer smiling; his face was cadaverous, his eyes bright and
keen as steel.
'No," replied the count directly, in so decisive a tone that further
insistence became impossible.
Then the marquis refused with even greater severity of expression.
He talked morality. The aristocratic classes ought to set a good
example. Fauchery smiled and shook hands with Vandeuvres. He did
not wait for him and took his departure immediately, for he was due
at his newspaper office.
"At Nana's at midnight, eh?"
La Faloise retired too. Steiner had made his bow to the countess.
Other men followed them, and the same phrase went round--"At
midnight, at Nana's"--as they went to get their overcoats in the
anteroom. Georges, who could not leave without his mother, had
stationed himself at the door, where he gave the exact address.
"Third floor, door on your left." Yet before going out Fauchery
gave a final glance. Vandeuvres had again resumed his position
among the ladies and was laughing with Leonide de Chezelles. Count
Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard were joining in the conversation,
while the good Mme Hugon was falling asleep open-eyed. Lost among
the petticoats, M. Venot was his own small self again and smiled as
of old. Twelve struck slowly in the great solemn room.
"What--what do you mean?" Mme du Joncquoy resumed. "You imagine
that Monsieur de Bismarck will make war on us and beat us! Oh,
that's unbearable!"
Indeed, they were laughing round Mme Chantereau, who had just
repeated an assertion she had heard made in Alsace, where her
husband owned a foundry.
"We have the emperor, fortunately," said Count Muffat in his grave,
official way.
It was the last phrase Fauchery was able to catch. He closed the
door after casting one more glance in the direction of the Countess
Sabine. She was talking sedately with the chief clerk and seemed to
be interested in that stout individual's conversation. Assuredly he
must have been deceiving himself. There was no "little rift" there
at all. It was a pity.
"You're not coming down then?" La Faloise shouted up to him from the
entrance hall.
And out on the pavement, as they separated, they once more repeated:
"Tomorrow, at Nana's."
CHAPTER IV
Since morning Zoe had delivered up the flat to a managing man who
had come from Brebant's with a staff of helpers and waiters.
Brebant was to supply everything, from the supper, the plates and
dishes, the glass, the linen, the flowers, down to the seats and
footstools. Nana could not have mustered a dozen napkins out of all
her cupboards, and not having had time to get a proper outfit after
her new start in life and scorning to go to the restaurant, she had
decided to make the restaurant come to her. It struck her as being
more the thing. She wanted to celebrate her great success as an
actress with a supper which should set people talking. As her
dining room was too small, the manager had arranged the table in the
drawing room, a table with twenty-five covers, placed somewhat close
together.
"Is everything ready?" asked Nana when she returned at midnight.
"Oh! I don't know," replied Zoe roughly, looking beside herself with
worry. "The Lord be thanked, I don't bother about anything.
They're making a fearful mess in the kitchen and all over the flat!
I've had to fight my battles too. The other two came again. My
eye! I did just chuck 'em out!"
She referred, of course, to her employer's old admirers, the
tradesman and the Walachian, to whom Nana, sure of her future and
longing to shed her skin, as she phrased it, had decided to give the
go-by.
"There are a couple of leeches for you!" she muttered.
"If they come back threaten to go to the police."
Then she called Daguenet and Georges, who had remained behind in the
anteroom, where they were hanging up their overcoats. They had both
met at the stage door in the Passage des Panoramas, and she had
brought them home with her in a cab. As there was nobody there yet,
she shouted to them to come into the dressing room while Zoe was
touching up her toilet. Hurriedly and without changing her dress
she had her hair done up and stuck white roses in her chignon and at
her bosom. The little room was littered with the drawing-room
furniture, which the workmen had been compelled to roll in there,
and it was full of a motley assemblage of round tables, sofas and
armchairs, with their legs in air for the most part. Nana was quite
