He disappeared, enchanted at having fired his public. Mignon
shrugged his shoulders, reminding Steiner that Rose was awaiting him
in order to show him the costume she was about to wear in the first
act.
"By Jove! There's Lucy out there, getting down from her carriage,"
said La Faloise to Fauchery.
It was, in fact, Lucy Stewart, a plain little woman, some forty
years old, with a disproportionately long neck, a thin, drawn face,
a heavy mouth, but withal of such brightness, such graciousness of
manner, that she was really very charming. She was bringing with
her Caroline Hequet and her mother--Caroline a woman of a cold type
of beauty, the mother a person of a most worthy demeanor, who looked
as if she were stuffed with straw.
"You're coming with us? I've kept a place for you," she said to
Fauchery. "Oh, decidedly not! To see nothing!" he made answer.
"I've a stall; I prefer being in the stalls."
Lucy grew nettled. Did he not dare show himself in her company?
Then, suddenly restraining herself and skipping to another topic:
"Why haven't you told me that you knew Nana?"
"Nana! I've never set eyes on her."
"Honor bright? I've been told that you've been to bed with her."
But Mignon, coming in front of them, his finger to his lips, made
them a sign to be silent. And when Lucy questioned him he pointed
out a young man who was passing and murmured:
"Nana's fancy man."
Everybody looked at him. He was a pretty fellow. Fauchery
recognized him; it was Daguenet, a young man who had run through
three hundred thousand francs in the pursuit of women and who now
was dabbling in stocks, in order from time to time to treat them to
bouquets and dinners. Lucy made the discovery that he had fine
eyes.
"Ah, there's Blanche!" she cried. "It's she who told me that you
had been to bed with Nana."
Blanche de Sivry, a great fair girl, whose good-looking face showed
signs of growing fat, made her appearance in the company of a spare,
sedulously well-groomed and extremely distinguished man.
"The Count Xavier de Vandeuvres," Fauchery whispered in his
companion's ear.
The count and the journalist shook hands, while Blanche and Lucy
entered into a brisk, mutual explanation. One of them in blue, the
other in rose-pink, they stood blocking the way with their deeply
flounced skirts, and Nana's name kept repeating itself so shrilly in
their conversation that people began to listen to them. The Count
de Vandeuvres carried Blanche off. But by this time Nana's name was
echoing more loudly than ever round the four walls of the entrance
hall amid yearnings sharpened by delay. Why didn't the play begin?
The men pulled out their watches; late-comers sprang from their
conveyances before these had fairly drawn up; the groups left the
sidewalk, where the passers-by were crossing the now-vacant space of
gaslit pavement, craning their necks, as they did so, in order to
get a peep into the theater. A street boy came up whistling and
planted himself before a notice at the door, then cried out, "Woa,
Nana!" in the voice of a tipsy man and hied on his way with a
rolling gait and a shuffling of his old boots. A laugh had arisen
at this. Gentlemen of unimpeachable appearance repeated: "Nana,
woa, Nana!" People were crushing; a dispute arose at the ticket
office, and there was a growing clamor caused by the hum of voices
calling on Nana, demanding Nana in one of those accesses of silly
facetiousness and sheer animalism which pass over mobs.
But above all the din the bell that precedes the rise of the curtain
became audible. "They've rung; they've rung!" The rumor reached
the boulevard, and thereupon followed a stampede, everyone wanting
to pass in, while the servants of the theater increased their
forces. Mignon, with an anxious air, at last got hold of Steiner
again, the latter not having been to see Rose's costume. At the
very first tinkle of the bell La Faloise had cloven a way through
the crowd, pulling Fauchery with him, so as not to miss the opening
scene. But all this eagerness on the part of the public irritated
Lucy Stewart. What brutes were these people to be pushing women
like that! She stayed in the rear of them all with Caroline Hequet
and her mother. The entrance hall was now empty, while beyond it
was still heard the long-drawn rumble of the boulevard.
"As though they were always funny, those pieces of theirs!" Lucy
kept repeating as she climbed the stair.
In the house Fauchery and La Faloise, in front of their stalls, were
gazing about them anew. By this time the house was resplendent.
High jets of gas illumined the great glass chandelier with a
rustling of yellow and rosy flames, which rained down a stream of
brilliant light from dome to floor. The cardinal velvets of the
seats were shot with hues of lake, while all the gilding shonc
again, the soft green decorations chastening its effect beneath the
too-decided paintings of the ceiling. The footlights were turned up
and with a vivid flood of brilliance lit up the curtain, the heavy
purple drapery of which had all the richness befitting a palace in a
fairy tale and contrasted with the meanness of the proscenium, where
cracks showed the plaster under the gilding. The place was already
warm. At their music stands the orchestra were tuning their
instruments amid a delicate trilling of flutes, a stifled tooting of
horns, a singing of violin notes, which floated forth amid the
increasing uproar of voices. All the spectators were talking,
jostling, settling themselves in a general assault upon seats; and
the hustling rush in the side passages was now so violent that every
door into the house was laboriously admitting the inexhaustible
flood of people. There were signals, rustlings of fabrics, a
continual march past of skirts and head dresses, accentuated by the
black hue of a dress coat or a surtout. Notwithstanding this, the
rows of seats were little by little getting filled up, while here
and there a light toilet stood out from its surroundings, a head
with a delicate profile bent forward under its chignon, where
flashed the lightning of a jewel. In one of the boxes the tip of a
bare shoulder glimmered like snowy silk. Other ladies, sitting at
ease, languidly fanned themselves, following with their gaze the
pushing movements of the crowd, while young gentlemen, standing up
in the stalls, their waistcoats cut very low, gardenias in their
buttonholes, pointed their opera glasses with gloved finger tips.
It was now that the two cousins began searching for the faces of
those they knew. Mignon and Steiner were together in a lower box,
sitting side by side with their arms leaning for support on the
velvet balustrade. Blanche de Sivry seemed to be in sole possession
of a stage box on the level of the stalls. But La Faloise examined
Daguenet before anyone else, he being in occupation of a stall two
rows in front of his own. Close to him, a very young man, seventeen
years old at the outside, some truant from college, it may be, was
straining wide a pair of fine eyes such as a cherub might have
owned. Fauchery smiled when he looked at him.
"Who is that lady in the balcony?" La Faloise asked suddenly. "The
lady with a young girl in blue beside her."
He pointed out a large woman who was excessively tight-laced, a
woman who had been a blonde and had now become white and yellow of
tint, her broad face, reddened with paint, looking puffy under a
rain of little childish curls.
"It's Gaga," was Fauchery's simple reply, and as this name seemed to
astound his cousin, he added:
"You don't know Gaga? She was the delight of the early years of
Louis Philippe. Nowadays she drags her daughter about with her
wherever she goes."
La Faloise never once glanced at the young girl. The sight of Gaga
moved him; his eyes did not leave her again. He still found her
very good looking but he dared not say so.
Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra
attacked the overture. People still kept coming in; the stir and
noise were on the increase. Among that public, peculiar to first
nights and never subject to change, there were little subsections
composed of intimate friends, who smilingly forgathered again. Old
first-nighters, hat on head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and
kept exchanging salutations. All Paris was there, the Paris of
literature, of finance and of pleasure. There were many
journalists, several authors, a number of stock-exchange people and
more courtesans than honest women. It was a singularly mixed world,
composed, as it was, of all the talents and tarnished by all the
vices, a world where the same fatigue and the same fever played over
every face. Fauchery, whom his cousin was questioning, showed him
the boxes devoted to the newspapers and to the clubs and then named
the dramatic critics--a lean, dried-up individual with thin,
spiteful lips and, chief of all, a big fellow with a good-natured
expression, lolling on the shoulder of his neighbor, a young miss
over whom he brooded with tender and paternal eyes.
But he interrupted himself on seeing La Faloise in the act of bowing
to some persons who occupied the box opposite. He appeared
surprised.
"What?" he queried. "You know the Count Muffat de Beuville?"
"Oh, for a long time back," replied Hector. "The Muffats had a
property near us. I often go to their house. The count's with his
wife and his father-in-law, the Marquis de Chouard."
And with some vanity--for he was happy in his cousin's astonishment--
he entered into particulars. The marquis was a councilor of state;
the count had recently been appointed chamberlain to the empress.
Fauchery, who had caught up his opera glass, looked at the countess,
a plump brunette with a white skin and fine dark eyes.
"You shall present me to them between the acts," he ended by saying.
"I have already met the count, but I should like to go to them on
their Tuesdays."
Energetic cries of "Hush" came from the upper galleries. The
overture had begun, but people were still coming in. Late arrivals
were obliging whole rows of spectators to rise; the doors of boxes
were banging; loud voices were heard disputing in the passages. And
there was no cessation of the sound of many conversations, a sound
similar to the loud twittering of talkative sparrows at close of
day. All was in confusion; the house was a medley of heads and arms
which moved to and fro, their owners seating themselves or trying to
make themselves comfortable or, on the other hand, excitedly
endeavoring to remain standing so as to take a final look round.
The cry of "Sit down, sit down!" came fiercely from the obscure
depths of the pit. A shiver of expectation traversed the house: at
last people were going to make the acquaintance of this famous Nana
with whom Paris had been occupying itself for a whole week!
Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down
among occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech. And amid this
swooning murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra
struck up the small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm
bubbling with roguish laughter. The public were titillated; they
were already on the grin. But the gang of clappers in the foremost
rows of the pit applauded furiously. The curtain rose.
"By George!" exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away. "There's a
man with Lucy."
He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the
front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying. At the back of
this box were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline's mother
and the side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light
hair and an irreproachable getup.
"Do look!" La Faloise again insisted. "There's a man there."
Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he
turned round again directly.
"Oh, it's Labordette," he muttered in a careless voice, as though
that gentle man's presence ought to strike all the world as though
both natural and immaterial.
Behind the cousins people shouted "Silence!" They had to cease
talking. A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches
of heads, all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to
topmost gallery. The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in
Olympus, a pasteboard Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the
throne of Jupiter on the right of the stage. First of all Iris and
Ganymede, aided by a troupe of celestial attendants, sang a chorus
while they arranged the seats of the gods for the council. Once
again the prearranged applause of the clappers alone burst forth;
the public, a little out of their depth, sat waiting. Nevertheless,
La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one of Bordenave's little
women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with a great scarf of
the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her waist.
"You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on," he said to
Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him. "We tried
the trick this morning. It was all up under her arms and round the
small of her back."
But a slight rustling movement ran through the house; Rose Mignon
had just come on the stage as Diana. Now though she had neither the
face nor the figure for the part, being thin and dark and of the
adorable type of ugliness peculiar to a Parisian street child, she
nonetheless appeared charming and as though she were a satire on the
