of the dirty lot waiting at the porter's lodge down below. Besides,
she was in a hurry to go downstairs again; they were making her miss
her last scene. Then as Fauchery blocked up the doorway, she gave
Muffat a couple of kisses on the whiskers, remarking as she did so:
"It's not for you, at any rate! It's for that nuisance Fauchery!"
And with that she darted off, and the count remained much
embarrassed in his father-in-law's presence. The blood had rushed
to his face. In Nana's dressing room, amid all the luxury of
hangings and mirrors, he had not experienced the sharp physical
sensation which the shameful wretchedness of that sorry garret
excited within him, redolent as it was of these two girls' self-
abandonment. Meanwhile the marquis had hurried in the rear of
Simonne, who was making off at the top of her pace, and he kept
whispering in her ear while she shook her head in token of refusal.
Fauchery followed them, laughing. And with that the count found
himself alone with the dresser, who was washing out the basins.
Accordingly he took his departure, too, his legs almost failing
under him. Once more he put up flights of half-dressed women and
caused doors to bang as he advanced. But amid the disorderly,
disbanded troops of girls to be found on each of the four stories,
he was only distinctly aware of a cat, a great tortoise-shell cat,
which went gliding upstairs through the ovenlike place where the air
was poisoned with musk, rubbing its back against the banisters and
keeping its tail exceedingly erect.
"Yes, to be sure!" said a woman hoarsely. "I thought they'd keep us
back tonight! What a nuisance they are with their calls!"
The end had come; the curtain had just fallen. There was a
veritable stampede on the staircase--its walls rang with
exclamations, and everyone was in a savage hurry to dress and be
off. As Count Muffat came down the last step or two he saw Nana and
the prince passing slowly along the passage. The young woman halted
and lowered her voice as she said with a smile:
"All right then--by and by!"
The prince returned to the stage, where Bordenave was awaiting him.
And left alone with Nana, Muffat gave way to an impulse of anger and
desire. He ran up behind her and, as she was on the point of
entering her dressing room, imprinted a rough kiss on her neck among
little golden hairs curling low down between her shoulders. It was
as though he had returned the kiss that had been given him upstairs.
Nana was in a fury; she lifted her hand, but when she recognized the
count she smiled.
"Oh, you frightened me," she said simply.
And her smile was adorable in its embarrassment and submissiveness,
as though she had despaired of this kiss and were happy to have
received it. But she could do nothing for him either that evening
or the day after. It was a case of waiting. Nay, even if it had
been in her power she would still have let herself be desired. Her
glance said as much. At length she continued:
"I'm a landowner, you know. Yes, I'm buying a country house near
Orleans, in a part of the world to which you sometimes betake
yourself. Baby told me you did--little Georges Hugon, I mean. You
know him? So come and see me down there."
The count was a shy man, and the thought of his roughness had
frightened him; he was ashamed of what he had done and he bowed
ceremoniously, promising at the same time to take advantage of her
invitation. Then he walked off as one who dreams.
He was rejoining the prince when, passing in front of the foyer, he
heard Satin screaming out:
"Oh, the dirty old thing! Just you bloody well leave me alone!"
It was the Marquis de Chouard who was tumbling down over Satin. The
girl had decidedly had enough of the fashionable world! Nana had
certainly introduced her to Bordenave, but the necessity of standing
with sealed lips for fear of allowing some awkward phrase to escape
her had been too much for her feelings, and now she was anxious to
regain her freedom, the more so as she had run against an old flame
of hers in the wings. This was the super, to whom the task of
impersonating Pluto had been entrusted, a pastry cook, who had
already treated her to a whole week of love and flagellation. She
was waiting for him, much irritated at the things the marquis was
saying to her, as though she were one of those theatrical ladies!
And so at last she assumed a highly respectable expression and
jerked out this phrase:
"My husband's coming! You'll see."
Meanwhile the worn-looking artistes were dropping off one after the
other in their outdoor coats. Groups of men and women were coming
down the little winding staircase, and the outlines of battered hats
and worn-out shawls were visible in the shadows. They looked
colorless and unlovely, as became poor play actors who have got rid
of their paint. On the stage, where the side lights and battens
were being extinguished, the prince was listening to an anecdote
Bordenave was telling him. He was waiting for Nana, and when at
length she made her appearance the stage was dark, and the fireman
on duty was finishing his round, lantern in hand. Bordenave, in
order to save His Highness going about by the Passage des Panoramas,
had made them open the corridor which led from the porter's lodge to
the entrance hall of the theater. Along this narrow alley little
women were racing pell-mell, for they were delighted to escape from
the men who were waiting for them in the other passage. They went
jostling and elbowing along, casting apprehensive glances behind
them and only breathing freely when they got outside. Fontan, Bosc
and Prulliere, on the other hand, retired at a leisurely pace,
joking at the figure cut by the serious, paying admirers who were
striding up and down the Galerie des Varietes at a time when the
little dears were escaping along the boulevard with the men of their
hearts. But Clarisse was especially sly. She had her suspicions
about La Faloise, and, as a matter of fact, he was still in his
place in the lodge among the gentlemen obstinately waiting on Mme
Bron's chairs. They all stretched forward, and with that she passed
brazenly by in the wake of a friend. The gentlemen were blinking in
bewilderment over the wild whirl of petticoats eddying at the foot
of the narrow stairs. It made them desperate to think they had
waited so long, only to see them all flying away like this without
being able to recognize a single one. The litter of little black
cats were sleeping on the oilcloth, nestled against their mother's
belly, and the latter was stretching her paws out in a state of
beatitude while the big tortoise-shell cat sat at the other end of
the table, her tail stretched out behind her and her yellow eyes
solemnly following the flight of the women.
"If His Highness will be good enough to come this way," said
Bordenave at the bottom of the stairs, and he pointed to the
passage.
Some chorus girls were still crowding along it. The prince began
following Nana while Muffat and the marquis walked behind.
It was a long, narrow passage lying between the theater and the
house next door, a kind of contracted by-lane which had been covered
with a sloping glass roof. Damp oozed from the walls, and the
footfall sounded as hollow on the tiled floor as in an underground
vault. It was crowded with the kind of rubbish usually found in a
garret. There was a workbench on which the porter was wont to plane
such parts of the scenery as required it, besides a pile of wooden
barriers which at night were placed at the doors of the theater for
the purpose of regulating the incoming stream of people. Nana had
to pick up her dress as she passed a hydrant which, through having
been carelessly turned off, was flooding the tiles underfoot. In
the entrance hall the company bowed and said good-by. And when
Bordenave was alone he summed up his opinion of the prince in a
shrug of eminently philosophic disdain.
"He's a bit of a duffer all the same," he said to Fauchery without
entering on further explanations, and with that Rose Mignon carried
the journalist off with her husband in order to effect a
reconciliation between them at home.
Muffat was left alone on the sidewalk. His Highness had handed Nana
quietly into his carriage, and the marquis had slipped off after
Satin and her super. In his excitement he was content to follow
this vicious pair in vague hopes of some stray favor being granted
him. Then with brain on fire Muffat decided to walk home. The
struggle within him had wholly ceased. The ideas and beliefs of the
last forty years were being drowned in a flood of new life. While
he was passing along the boulevards the roll of the last carriages
deafened him with the name of Nana; the gaslights set nude limbs
dancing before his eyes--the nude limbs, the lithe arms, the white
shoulders, of Nana. And he felt that he was hers utterly: he would
have abjured everything, sold everything, to possess her for a
single hour that very night. Youth, a lustful puberty of early
manhood, was stirring within him at last, flaming up suddenly in the
chaste heart of the Catholic and amid the dignified traditions of
middle age.
CHAPTER VI
Count Muffat, accompanied by his wife and daughter, had arrived
overnight at Les Fondettes, where Mme Hugon, who was staying there
with only her son Georges, had invited them to come and spend a
week. The house, which had been built at the end of the eighteenth
century, stood in the middle of a huge square enclosure. It was
perfectly unadorned, but the garden possessed magnificent shady
trees and a chain of tanks fed by running spring water. It stood at
the side of the road which leads from Orleans to Paris and with its
rich verdure and high-embowered trees broke the monotony of that
flat countryside, where fields stretched to the horizon's verge.
At eleven o'clock, when the second lunch bell had called the whole
household together, Mme Hugon, smiling in her kindly maternal way,
gave Sabine two great kisses, one on each cheek, and said as she did
so:
"You know it's my custom in the country. Oh, seeing you here makes
me feel twenty years younger. Did you sleep well in your old room?"
Then without waiting for her reply she turned to Estelle:
"And this little one, has she had a nap too? Give me a kiss, my
child."
They had taken their seats in the vast dining room, the windows of
which looked out on the park. But they only occupied one end of the
long table, where they sat somewhat crowded together for company's
sake. Sabine, in high good spirits, dwelt on various childish
memories which had been stirred up within her--memories of months
passed at Les Fondettes, of long walks, of a tumble into one of the
tanks on a summer evening, of an old romance of chivalry discovered
by her on the top of a cupboard and read during the winter before
fires made of vine branches. And Georges, who had not seen the
countess for some months, thought there was something curious about
her. Her face seemed changed, somehow, while, on the other hand,
that stick of an Estelle seemed more insignificant and dumb and
awkward than ever.
While such simple fare as cutlets and boiled eggs was being
discussed by the company, Mme Hugon, as became a good housekeeper,
launched out into complaints. The butchers, she said, were becoming
impossible. She bought everything at Orleans, and yet they never
brought her the pieces she asked for. Yet, alas, if her guests had
nothing worth eating it was their own fault: they had come too late
in the season.
"There's no sense in it," she said. "I've been expecting you since
June, and now we're half through September. You see, it doesn't
look pretty."
And with a movement she pointed to the trees on the grass outside,
the leaves of which were beginning to turn yellow. The day was
covered, and the distance was hidden by a bluish haze which was
fraught with a sweet and melancholy peacefulness.
"Oh, I'm expecting company," she continued. "We shall be gayer
then! The first to come will be two gentlemen whom Georges has
invited--Monsieur Fauchery and Monsieur Daguenet; you know them, do
you not? Then we shall have Monsieur de Vandeuvres, who has
promised me a visit these five years past. This time, perhaps,
he'll make up his mind!"
"Oh, well and good!" said the countess, laughing. "If we only can
get Monsieur de Vandeuvres! But he's too much engaged."
"And Philippe?" queried Muffat.
"Philippe has asked for a furlough," replied the old lady, "but
without doubt you won't be at Les Fondettes any longer when he
arrives."
The coffee was served. Paris was now the subject of conversation,
and Steiner's name was mentioned, at which Mme Hugon gave a little
cry.
"Let me see," she said; "Monsieur Steiner is that stout man I met at
your house one evening. He's a banker, is he not? Now there's a
detestable man for you! Why, he's gone and bought an actress an
estate about a league from here, over Gumieres way, beyond the
Choue. The whole countryside's scandalized. Did you know about
that, my friend?"
"I knew nothing about it," replied Muffat. "Ah, then, Steiner's
bought a country place in the neighborhood!"
Hearing his mother broach the subject, Georges looked into his
coffee cup, but in his astonishment at the count's answer he glanced
up at him and stared. Why was he lying so glibly? The count, on
his side, noticed the young fellow's movement and gave him a
