while he wickedly enjoyed being dandled in the arms of the great
wench and allowed himself to be rocked to and fro like a baby that
is being sent to sleep. It was all so delightful, and Nana was so
charmed with her present existence, that she seriously proposed to
him never to leave the country. They would send all the other
people away, and he, she and the child would live alone. And with
that they would make a thousand plans till daybreak and never once
hear Mme Lerat as she snored vigorously after the fatigues of a day
spent in picking country flowers.
This charming existence lasted nearly a week. Count Muffat used to
come every evening and go away again with disordered face and
burning hands. One evening he was not even received, as Steiner had
been obliged to run up to Paris. He was told that Madame was not
well. Nana grew daily more disgusted at the notion of deceiving
Georges. He was such an innocent lad, and he had such faith in her!
She would have looked on herself as the lowest of the low had she
played him false. Besides, it would have sickened her to do so!
Zoe, who took her part in this affair in mute disdain, believed that
Madame was growing senseless.
On the sixth day a band of visitors suddenly blundered into Nana's
idyl. She had, indeed, invited a whole swarm of people under the
belief that none of them would come. And so one fine afternoon she
was vastly astonished and annoyed to see an omnibus full of people
pulling up outside the gate of La Mignotte.
"It's us!" cried Mignon, getting down first from the conveyance and
extracting then his sons Henri and Charles.
Labordette thereupon appeared and began handing out an interminable
file of ladies--Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet, Tatan Nene, Maria
Blond. Nana was in hopes that they would end there, when La Faloise
sprang from the step in order to receive Gaga and her daughter
Amelie in his trembling arms. That brought the number up to eleven
people. Their installation proved a laborious undertaking. There
were five spare rooms at La Mignotte, one of which was already
occupied by Mme Lerat and Louiset. The largest was devoted to the
Gaga and La Faloise establishment, and it was decided that Amelie
should sleep on a truckle bed in the dressing room at the side.
Mignon and his two sons had the third room. Labordette the fourth.
There thus remained one room which was transformed into a dormitory
with four beds in it for Lucy, Caroline, Tatan and Maria. As to
Steiner, he would sleep on the divan in the drawing room. At the
end of an hour, when everyone was duly settled, Nana, who had begun
by being furious, grew enchanted at the thought of playing hostess
on a grand scale. The ladies complimented her on La Mignotte.
"It's a stunning property, my dear!" And then, too, they brought
her quite a whiff of Parisian air, and talking all together with
bursts of laughter and exclamation and emphatic little gestures,
they gave her all the petty gossip of the week just past. By the
by, and how about Bordenave? What had he said about her prank? Oh,
nothing much! After bawling about having her brought back by the
police, he had simply put somebody else in her place at night.
Little Violaine was the understudy, and she had even obtained a very
pretty success as the Blonde Venus. Which piece of news made Nana
rather serious.
It was only four o'clock in the afternoon, and there was some talk
of taking a stroll around.
"Oh, I haven't told you," said Nana, "I was just off to get up
potatoes when you arrived."
Thereupon they all wanted to go and dig potatoes without even
changing their dresses first. It was quite a party. The gardener
and two helpers were already in the potato field at the end of the
grounds. The ladies knelt down and began fumbling in the mold with
their beringed fingers, shouting gaily whenever they discovered a
potato of exceptional size. It struck them as so amusing! But
Tatan Nene was in a state of triumph! So many were the potatoes she
had gathered in her youth that she forgot herself entirely and gave
the others much good advice, treating them like geese the while.
The gentlemen toiled less strenuously. Mignon looked every inch the
good citizen and father and made his stay in the country an occasion
for completing his boys' education. Indeed, he spoke to them of
Parmentier!
Dinner that evening was wildly hilarious. The company ate
ravenously. Nana, in a state of great elevation, had a warm
disagreement with her butler, an individual who had been in service
at the bishop's palace in Orleans. The ladies smoked over their
coffee. An earsplitting noise of merrymaking issued from the open
windows and died out far away under the serene evening sky while
peasants, belated in the lanes, turned and looked at the flaring
rooms.
"It's most tiresome that you're going back the day after tomorrow,"
said Nana. "But never mind, we'll get up an excursion all the
same!"
They decided to go on the morrow, Sunday, and visit the ruins of the
old Abbey of Chamont, which were some seven kilometers distant.
Five carriages would come out from Orleans, take up the company
after lunch and bring them back to dinner at La Mignotte at about
seven. It would be delightful.
That evening, as his wont was, Count Muffat mounted the hill to ring
at the outer gate. But the brightly lit windows and the shouts of
laughter astonished him. When, however, he recognized Mignon's
voice, he understood it all and went off, raging at this new
obstacle, driven to extremities, bent on some violent act. Georges
passed through a little door of which he had the key, slipped along
the staircase walls and went quietly up into Nana's room. Only he
had to wait for her till past midnight. She appeared at last in a
high state of intoxication and more maternal even than on the
previous nights. Whenever she had drunk anything she became so
amorous as to be absurd. Accordingly she now insisted on his
accompanying her to the Abbey of Chamont. But he stood out against
this; he was afraid of being seen. If he were to be seen driving
with her there would be an atrocious scandal. But she burst into
tears and evinced the noisy despair of a slighted woman. And he
thereupon consoled her and formally promised to be one of the party.
"So you do love me very much," she blurted out. "Say you love me
very much. Oh, my darling old bear, if I were to die would you feel
it very much? Confess!"
At Les Fondettes the near neighborhood of Nana had utterly
disorganized the party. Every morning during lunch good Mme Hugon
returned to the subject despite herself, told her guests the news
the gardener had brought her and gave evidence of the absorbing
curiosity with which notorious courtesans are able to inspire even
the worthiest old ladies. Tolerant though she was, she was revolted
and maddened by a vague presentiment of coming ill, which frightened
her in the evenings as thoroughly as if a wild beast had escaped
from a menagerie and were known to be lurking in the countryside.
She began trying to pick a little quarrel with her guests, whom she
each and all accused of prowling round La Mignotte. Count
Vandeuvres had been seen laughing on the highroad with a golden-
haired lady, but he defended himself against the accusation; he
denied that it was Nana, the fact being that Lucy had been with him
and had told him how she had just turned her third prince out of
doors. The Marquis de Chouard used also to go out every day, but
his excuse was doctor's orders. Toward Daguenet and Fauchery Mme
Hugon behaved unjustly too. The former especially never left Les
Fondettes, for he had given up the idea of renewing the old
connection and was busy paying the most respectful attentions to
Estelle. Fauchery also stayed with the Muffat ladies. On one
occasion only he had met Mignon with an armful of flowers, putting
his sons through a course of botanical instruction in a by-path.
The two men had shaken hands and given each other the news about
Rose. She was perfectly well and happy; they had both received a
letter from her that morning in which she besought them to profit by
the fresh country air for some days longer. Among all her guests
the old lady spared only Count Muffat and Georges. The count, who
said he had serious business in Orleans, could certainly not be
running after the bad woman, and as to Georges, the poor child was
at last causing her grave anxiety, seeing that every evening he was
seized with atrocious sick headaches which kept him to his bed in
broad daylight.
Meanwhile Fauchery had become the Countess Sabine's faithful
attendant in the absence during each afternoon of Count Muffat.
Whenever they went to the end of the park he carried her campstool
and her sunshade. Besides, he amused her with the original
witticisms peculiar to a second-rate journalist, and in so doing he
prompted her to one of those sudden intimacies which are allowable
in the country. She had apparently consented to it from the first,
for she had grown quite a girl again in the society of a young man
whose noisy humor seemed unlikely to compromize her. But now and
again, when for a second or two they found themselves alone behind
the shrubs, their eyes would meet; they would pause amid their
laughter, grow suddenly serious and view one another darkly, as
though they had fathomed and divined their inmost hearts.
On Friday a fresh place had to be laid at lunch time. M. Theophile
Venot, whom Mme Hugon remembered to have invited at the Muffats'
last winter, had just arrived. He sat stooping humbly forward and
behaved with much good nature, as became a man of no account, nor
did he seem to notice the anxious deference with which he was
treated. When he had succeeded in getting the company to forget his
presence he sat nibbling small lumps of sugar during dessert,
looking sharply up at Daguenet as the latter handed Estelle
strawberries and listening to Fauchery, who was making the countess
very merry over one of his anecdotes. Whenever anyone looked at HIM
he smiled in his quiet way. When the guests rose from table he took
the count's arm and drew him into the park. He was known to have
exercised great influence over the latter ever since the death of
his mother. Indeed, singular stories were told about the kind of
dominion which the ex-lawyer enjoyed in that household. Fauchery,
whom his arrival doubtless embarrassed, began explaining to Georges
and Daguenet the origin of the man's wealth. It was a big lawsuit
with the management of which the Jesuits had entrusted him in days
gone by. In his opinion the worthy man was a terrible fellow
despite his gentle, plump face and at this time of day had his
finger in all the intrigues of the priesthood. The two young men
had begun joking at this, for they thought the little old gentleman
had an idiotic expression. The idea of an unknown Venot, a gigantic
Venot, acting for the whole body of the clergy, struck them in the
light of a comical invention. But they were silenced when, still
leaning on the old man's arm, Count Muffat reappeared with blanched
cheeks and eyes reddened as if by recent weeping.
I bet they've been chatting about hell," muttered Fauchery in a
bantering tone.
The Countess Sabine overheard the remark. She turned her head
slowly, and their eyes met in that long gaze with which they were
accustomed to sound one another prudently before venturing once for
all.
After the breakfast it was the guests' custom to betake themselves
to a little flower garden on a terrace overlooking the plain. This
Sunday afternoon was exquisitely mild. There had been signs of rain
toward ten in the morning, but the sky, without ceasing to be
covered, had, as it were, melted into milky fog, which now hung like
a cloud of luminous dust in the golden sunlight. Soon Mme Hugon
proposed that they should step down through a little doorway below
the terrace and take a walk on foot in the direction of Gumieres and
as far as the Choue. She was fond of walking and, considering her
threescore years, was very active. Besides, all her guests declared
that there was no need to drive. So in a somewhat straggling order
they reached the wooden bridge over the river. Fauchery and
Daguenet headed the column with the Muffat ladies and were followed
by the count and the marquis, walking on either side of Mme Hugon,
while Vandeuvres, looking fashionable and out of his element on the
highroad, marched in the rear, smoking a cigar. M. Venot, now
slackening, now hastening his pace, passed smilingly from group to
group, as though bent on losing no scrap of conversation.
"To think of poor dear Georges at Orleans!" said Mme Hugon. "He was
anxious to consult old Doctor Tavernier, who never goes out now, on
the subject of his sick headaches. Yes, you were not up, as he went
off before seven o'clock. But it'll be a change for him all the
same."
She broke off, exclaiming:
"Why, what's making them stop on the bridge?"
The fact was the ladies and Fauchery and Daguenet were standing
stock-still on the crown of the bridge. They seemed to be
hesitating as though some obstacle or other rendered them uneasy and
yet the way lay clear before them.
"Go on!" cried the count.
They never moved and seemed to be watching the approach of something
which the rest had not yet observed. Indeed the road wound
considerably and was bordered by a thick screen of poplar trees.
Nevertheless, a dull sound began to grow momentarily louder, and
soon there was a noise of wheels, mingled with shouts of laughter
and the cracking of whips. Then suddenly five carriages came into
