with many vices. But he promised himself that he would be strong--
nay, he would know how to defend himself.
"Well then, it's agreed," said the prince, lounging quite
comfortably on the divan. "You will come to London next year, and
we shall receive you so cordially that you will never return to
France again. Ah, my dear Count, you don't value your pretty women
enough. We shall take them all from you!"
"That won't make much odds to him," murmured the Marquis de Chouard
wickedly, for he occasionally said a risky thing among friends.
"The count is virtue itself."
Hearing his virtue mentioned, Nana looked at him so comically that
Muffat felt a keen twinge of annoyance. But directly afterward he
was surprised and angry with himself. Why, in the presence of this
courtesan, should the idea of being virtuous embarrass him? He
could have struck her. But in attempting to take up a brush Nana
had just let it drop on the ground, and as she stooped to pick it up
he rushed forward. Their breath mingled for one moment, and the
loosened tresses of Venus flowed over his hands. But remorse
mingled with his enjoyment, a kind of enjoyment, moreover, peculiar
to good Catholics, whom the fear of hell torments in the midst of
their sin.
At this moment Father Barillot's voice was heard outside the door.
"May I give the knocks, madame? The house is growing impatient."
"All in good time," answered Nana quietly.
She had dipped her paint brush in a pot of kohl, and with the point
of her nose close to the glass and her left eye closed she passed it
delicately along between her eyelashes. Muffat stood behind her,
looking on. He saw her reflection in the mirror, with her rounded
shoulders and her bosom half hidden by a rosy shadow. And despite
all his endeavors he could not turn away his gaze from that face so
merry with dimples and so worn with desire, which the closed eye
rendered more seductive. When she shut her right eye and passed the
brush along it he understood that he belonged to her.
"They are stamping their feet, madame," the callboy once more cried.
"They'll end by smashing the seats. May I give the knocks?"
"Oh, bother!" said Nana impatiently. "Knock away; I don't care! If
I'm not ready, well, they'll have to wait for me!"
She grew calm again and, turning to the gentlemen, added with a
smile:
"It's true: we've only got a minute left for our talk."
Her face and arms were now finished, and with her fingers she put
two large dabs of carmine on her lips. Count Muffat felt more
excited than ever. He was ravished by the perverse transformation
wrought by powders and paints and filled by a lawless yearning for
those young painted charms, for the too-red mouth and the too-white
face and the exaggerated eyes, ringed round with black and burning
and dying for very love. Meanwhile Nana went behind the curtain for
a second or two in order to take off her drawers and slip on Venus'
tights. After which, with tranquil immodesty, she came out and
undid her little linen stays and held out her arms to Mme Jules, who
drew the short-sleeved tunic over them.
"Make haste; they're growing angry!" she muttered.
The prince with half-closed eyes marked the swelling lines of her
bosom with an air of connoisseurship, while the Marquis de Chouard
wagged his head involuntarily. Muffat gazed at the carpet in order
not to see any more. At length Venus, with only her gauze veil over
her shoulders, was ready to go on the stage. Mme Jules, with
vacant, unconcerned eyes and an expression suggestive of a little
elderly wooden doll, still kept circling round her. With brisk
movements she took pins out of the inexhaustible pincushion over her
heart and pinned up Venus' tunic, but as she ran over all those
plump nude charms with her shriveled hands, nothing was suggested to
her. She was as one whom her sex does not concern.
"There!" said the young woman, taking a final look at herself in the
mirror.
Bordenave was back again. He was anxious and said the third act had
begun.
"Very well! I'm coming," replied Nana. "Here's a pretty fuss!
Why, it's usually I that waits for the others."
The gentlemen left the dressing room, but they did not say good-by,
for the prince had expressed a desire to assist behind the scenes at
the performance of the third act. Left alone, Nana seemed greatly
surprised and looked round her in all directions.
"Where can she be?" she queried.
She was searching for Satin. When she had found her again, waiting
on her trunk behind the curtain, Satin quietly replied:
"Certainly I didn't want to be in your way with all those men
there!"
And she added further that she was going now. But Nana held her
back. What a silly girl she was! Now that Bordenave had agreed to
take her on! Why, the bargain was to be struck after the play was
over! Satin hesitated. There were too many bothers; she was out of
her element! Nevertheless, she stayed.
As the prince was coming down the little wooden staircase a strange
sound of smothered oaths and stamping, scuffling feet became audible
on the other side of the theater. The actors waiting for their cues
were being scared by quite a serious episode. For some seconds past
Mignon had been renewing his jokes and smothering Fauchery with
caresses. He had at last invented a little game of a novel kind and
had begun flicking the other's nose in order, as he phrased it, to
keep the flies off him. This kind of game naturally diverted the
actors to any extent.
But success had suddenly thrown Mignon off his balance. He had
launched forth into extravagant courses and had given the journalist
a box on the ear, an actual, a vigorous, box on the ear. This time
he had gone too far: in the presence of so many spectators it was
impossible for Fauchery to pocket such a blow with laughing
equanimity. Whereupon the two men had desisted from their farce,
had sprung at one another's throats, their faces livid with hate,
and were now rolling over and over behind a set of side lights,
pounding away at each other as though they weren't breakable.
"Monsieur Bordenave, Monsieur Bordenave!" said the stage manager,
coming up in a terrible flutter.
Bordenave made his excuses to the prince and followed him. When he
recognized Fauchery and Mignon in the men on the floor he gave vent
to an expression of annoyance. They had chosen a nice time,
certainly, with His Highness on the other side of the scenery and
all that houseful of people who might have overheard the row! To
make matters worse, Rose Mignon arrived out of breath at the very
moment she was due on the stage. Vulcan, indeed, was giving her the
cue, but Rose stood rooted to the ground, marveling at sight of her
husband and her lover as they lay wallowing at her feet, strangling
one another, kicking, tearing their hair out and whitening their
coats with dust. They barred the way. A sceneshifter had even
stopped Fauchery's hat just when the devilish thing was going to
bound onto the stage in the middle of the struggle. Meanwhile
Vulcan, who had been gagging away to amuse the audience, gave Rose
her cue a second time. But she stood motionless, still gazing at
the two men.
"Oh, don't look at THEM!" Bordenave furiously whispered to her. "Go
on the stage; go on, do! It's no business of yours! Why, you're
missing your cue!"
And with a push from the manager, Rose stepped over the prostrate
bodies and found herself in the flare of the footlights and in the
presence of the audience. She had quite failed to understand why
they were fighting on the floor behind her. Trembling from head to
foot and with a humming in her ears, she came down to the
footlights, Diana's sweet, amorous smile on her lips, and attacked
the opening lines of her duet with so feeling a voice that the
public gave her a veritable ovation.
Behind the scenery she could hear the dull thuds caused by the two
men. They had rolled down to the wings, but fortunately the music
covered the noise made by their feet as they kicked against them.
"By God!" yelled Bordenave in exasperation when at last he had
succeeded in separating them. "Why couldn't you fight at home? You
know as well as I do that I don't like this sort of thing. You,
Mignon, you'll do me the pleasure of staying over here on the prompt
side, and you, Fauchery, if you leave the O.P. side I'll chuck you
out of the theater. You understand, eh? Prompt side and O.P. side
or I forbid Rose to bring you here at all."
When he returned to the prince's presence the latter asked what was
the matter.
"Oh, nothing at all," he murmured quietly.
Nana was standing wrapped in furs, talking to these gentlemen while
awaiting her cue. As Count Muffat was coming up in order to peep
between two of the wings at the stage, he understood from a sign
made him by the stage manager that he was to step softly. Drowsy
warmth was streaming down from the flies, and in the wings, which
were lit by vivid patches of light, only a few people remained,
talking in low voices or making off on tiptoe. The gasman was at
his post amid an intricate arrangement of cocks; a fireman, leaning
against the side lights, was craning forward, trying to catch a
glimpse of things, while on his seat, high up, the curtain man was
watching with resigned expression, careless of the play, constantly
on the alert for the bell to ring him to his duty among the ropes.
And amid the close air and the shuffling of feet and the sound of
whispering, the voices of the actors on the stage sounded strange,
deadened, surprisingly discordant. Farther off again, above the
confused noises of the band, a vast breathing sound was audible. It
was the breath of the house, which sometimes swelled up till it
burst in vague rumors, in laughter, in applause. Though invisible,
the presence of the public could be felt, even in the silences.
"There's something open," said Nana sharply, and with that she
tightened the folds of her fur cloak. "Do look, Barillot. I bet
they've just opened a window. Why, one might catch one's death of
cold here!"
Barillot swore that he had closed every window himself but suggested
that possibly there were broken panes about. The actors were always
complaining of drafts. Through the heavy warmth of that gaslit
region blasts of cold air were constantly passing--it was a regular
influenza trap, as Fontan phrased it.
"I should like to see YOU in a low-cut dress," continued Nana,
growing annoyed.
"Hush!" murmured Bordenave.
On the stage Rose rendered a phrase in her duet so cleverly that the
stalls burst into universal applause. Nana was silent at this, and
her face grew grave. Meanwhile the count was venturing down a
passage when Barillot stopped him and said he would make a discovery
there. Indeed, he obtained an oblique back view of the scenery and
of the wings which had been strengthened, as it were, by a thick
layer of old posters. Then he caught sight of a corner of the
stage, of the Etna cave hollowed out in a silver mine and of
Vulcan's forge in the background. Battens, lowered from above, lit
up a sparkling substance which had been laid on with large dabs of
the brush. Side lights with red glasses and blue were so placed as
to produce the appearance of a fiery brazier, while on the floor of
the stage, in the far background, long lines of gaslight had been
laid down in order to throw a wall of dark rocks into sharp relief.
Hard by on a gentle, "practicable" incline, amid little points of
light resembling the illumination lamps scattered about in the grass
on the night of a public holiday, old Mme Drouard, who played Juno,
was sitting dazed and sleepy, waiting for her cue.
Presently there was a commotion, for Simonne, while listening to a
story Clarisse was telling her, cried out:
"My! It's the Tricon!"
It was indeed the Tricon, wearing the same old curls and looking as
like a litigious great lady as ever.
When she saw Nana she went straight up to her.
"No," said the latter after some rapid phrases had been exchanged,
"not now." The old lady looked grave. Just then Prulliere passed
by and shook hands with her, while two little chorus girls stood
gazing at her with looks of deep emotion. For a moment she seemed
to hesitate. Then she beckoned to Simonne, and the rapid exchange
of sentences began again.
"Yes," said Simonne at last. "In half an hour."
But as she was going upstairs again to her dressing room, Mme Bron,
who was once more going the rounds with letters, presented one to
her. Bordenave lowered his voice and furiously reproached the
portress for having allowed the Tricon to come in. That woman! And
on such an evening of all others! It made him so angry because His
Highness was there! Mme Bron, who had been thirty years in the
theater, replied quite sourly. How was she to know? she asked. The
Tricon did business with all the ladies--M. le Directeur had met her
a score of times without making remarks. And while Bordenave was
muttering oaths the Tricon stood quietly by, scrutinizing the prince
as became a woman who weighs a man at a glance. A smile lit up her
yellow face. Presently she paced slowly off through the crowd of
deeply deferential little women.
"Immediately, eh?" she queried, turning round again to Simonne.
Simonne seemed much worried. The letter was from a young man to
whom she had engaged herself for that evening. She gave Mme Bron a
