personage she represented. Her song at her entrance on the stage
was full of lines quaint enough to make you cry with laughter and of
complaints about Mars, who was getting ready to desert her for the
companionship of Venus. She sang it with a chaste reserve so full
of sprightly suggestiveness that the public warmed amain. The
husband and Steiner, sitting side by side, were laughing
complaisantly, and the whole house broke out in a roar when
Prulliere, that great favorite, appeared as a general, a masquerade
Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging along a sword, the
hilt of which reached to his shoulder. As for him, he had had
enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him, he
averred. Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to
be revenged. The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prulliere
delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat. He had
about him all the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman
whose love affairs prosper, and he rolled around the most swaggering
glances, which excited shrill feminine laughter in the boxes.
Then the public cooled again, for the ensuing scenes were found
tiresome. Old Bosc, an imbecile Jupiter with head crushed beneath
the weight of an immense crown, only just succeeded in raising a
smile among his audience when he had a domestic altercation with
Juno on the subject of the cook's accounts. The march past of the
gods, Neptune, Pluto, Minerva and the rest, was well-nigh spoiling
everything. People grew impatient; there was a restless, slowly
growing murmur; the audience ceased to take an interest in the
performance and looked round at the house. Lucy began laughing with
Labordette; the Count de Vandeuvres was craning his neck in
conversation behind Blanche's sturdy shoulders, while Fauchery, out
of the corners of his eyes, took stock of the Muffats, of whom the
count appeared very serious, as though he had not understood the
allusions, and the countess smiled vaguely, her eyes lost in
reverie. But on a sudden, in this uncomfortable state of things,
the applause of the clapping contingent rattled out with the
regularity of platoon firing. People turned toward the stage. Was
it Nana at last? This Nana made one wait with a vengeance.
It was a deputation of mortals whom Ganymede and Iris had
introduced, respectable middle-class persons, deceived husbands, all
of them, and they came before the master of the gods to proffer a
complaint against Venus, who was assuredly inflaming their good
ladies with an excess of ardor. The chorus, in quaint, dolorous
tones, broken by silences full of pantomimic admissions, caused
great amusement. A neat phrase went the round of the house: "The
cuckolds' chorus, the cuckolds' chorus," and it "caught on," for
there was an encore. The singers' heads were droll; their faces were
discovered to be in keeping with the phrase, especially that of a
fat man which was as round as the moon. Meanwhile Vulcan arrived in
a towering rage, demanding back his wife who had slipped away three
days ago. The chorus resumed their plaint, calling on Vulcan, the
god of the cuckolds. Vulcan's part was played by Fontan, a comic
actor of talent, at once vulgar and original, and he had a role of
the wildest whimsicality and was got up as a village blacksmith,
fiery red wig, bare arms tattooed with arrow-pierced hearts and all
the rest of it. A woman's voice cried in a very high key, "Oh,
isn't he ugly?" and all the ladies laughed and applauded.
Then followed a scene which seemed interminable. Jupiter in the
course of it seemed never to be going to finish assembling the
Council of Gods in order to submit thereto the deceived husband's
requests. And still no Nana! Was the management keeping Nana for
the fall of the curtain then? So long a period of expectancy had
ended by annoying the public. Their murmurings began again.
"It's going badly," said Mignon radiantly to Steiner. "She'll get a
pretty reception; you'll see!"
At that very moment the clouds at the back of the stage were cloven
apart and Venus appeared. Exceedingly tall, exceedingly strong, for
her eighteen years, Nana, in her goddess's white tunic and with her
light hair simply flowing unfastened over her shoulders, came down
to the footlights with a quiet certainty of movement and a laugh of
greeting for the public and struck up her grand ditty:
"When Venus roams at eventide."
From the second verse onward people looked at each other all over
the house. Was this some jest, some wager on Bordenave's part?
Never had a more tuneless voice been heard or one managed with less
art. Her manager judged of her excellently; she certainly sang like
a squirt. Nay, more, she didn't even know how to deport herself on
the stage: she thrust her arms in front of her while she swayed her
whole body to and fro in a manner which struck the audience as
unbecoming and disagreeable. Cries of "Oh, oh!" were already rising
in the pit and the cheap places. There was a sound of whistling,
too, when a voice in the stalls, suggestive of a molting cockerel,
cried out with great conviction:
"That's very smart!"
All the house looked round. It was the cherub, the truant from the
boardingschool, who sat with his fine eyes very wide open and his
fair face glowing very hotly at sight of Nana. When he saw
everybody turning toward him be grew extremely red at the thought of
having thus unconsciously spoken aloud. Daguenet, his neighbor,
smilingly examined him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and
no longer anxious to hiss; while the young gentlemen in white
gloves, fascinated in their turn by Nana's gracious contours, lolled
back in their seats and applauded.
"That's it! Well done! Bravo!"
Nana, in the meantime, seeing the house laughing, began to laugh
herself. The gaiety of all redoubled itself. She was an amusing
creature, all the same, was that fine girl! Her laughter made a
love of a little dimple appear in her chin. She stood there
waiting, not bored in the least, familiar with her audience, falling
into step with them at once, as though she herself were admitting
with a wink that she had not two farthings' worth of talent but that
it did not matter at all, that, in fact, she had other good points.
And then after having made a sign to the conductor which plainly
signified, "Go ahead, old boy!" she began her second verse:
"'Tis Venus who at midnight passes--"
Still the same acidulated voice, only that now it tickled the public
in the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to
give a little shiver of pleasure. Nana still smiled her smile: it
lit up her little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were
of the clearest blue. When she came to certain rather lively verses
a delicate sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, the rosy
nostrils of which lifted and fell, while a bright flush suffused her
cheeks. She still swung herself up and down, for she only knew how
to do that. And the trick was no longer voted ugly; on the
contrary, the men raised their opera glasses. When she came to the
end of a verse her voice completely failed her, and she was well
aware that she never would get through with it. Thereupon, rather
than fret herself, she kicked up her leg, which forthwith was
roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent sharply backward,
so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and stretched her
arms out. Applause burst forth on all sides. In the twinkling of
an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the stage,
presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators' gaze, a neck
where the red-gold hair showed like some animal's fell. Then the
plaudits became frantic.
The close of the act was not so exciting. Vulcan wanted to slap
Venus. The gods held a consultation and decided to go and hold an
inquiry on earth before granting the deceived husband satisfaction.
It was then that Diana surprised a tender conversation between Venus
and Mars and vowed that she would not take her eyes off them during
the whole of the voyage. There was also a scene where Love, played
by a little twelve-year-old chit, answered every question put to her
with "Yes, Mamma! No, Mamma!" in a winy-piny tone, her fingers in
her nose. At last Jupiter, with the severity of a master who is
growing cross, shut Love up in a dark closet, bidding her conjugate
the verb "I love" twenty times. The finale was more appreciated: it
was a chorus which both troupe and orchestra performed with great
brilliancy. But the curtain once down, the clappers tried in vain
to obtain a call, while the whole house was already up and making
for the doors.
The crowd trampled and jostled, jammed, as it were, between the rows
of seats, and in so doing exchanged expressions. One phrase only
went round:
"It's idiotic." A critic was saying that it would be one's duty to
do a pretty bit of slashing. The piece, however, mattered very
little, for people were talking about Nana before everything else.
Fauchery and La Faloise, being among the earliest to emerge, met
Steiner and Mignon in the passage outside the stalls. In this
gaslit gut of a place, which was as narrow and circumscribed as a
gallery in a mine, one was well-nigh suffocated. They stopped a
moment at the foot of the stairs on the right of the house,
protected by the final curve of the balusters. The audience from
the cheap places were coming down the steps with a continuous tramp
of heavy boots; a stream of black dress coats was passing, while an
attendant was making every possible effort to protect a chair, on
which she had piled up coats and cloaks, from the onward pushing of
the crowd.
"Surely I know her," cried Steiner, the moment he perceived
Fauchery. "I'm certain I've seen her somewhere--at the casino, I
imagine, and she got herself taken up there--she was so drunk."
"As for me," said the journalist, "I don't quite know where it was.
I am like you; I certainly have come across her."
He lowered his voice and asked, laughing:
"At the Tricons', perhaps."
"Egad, it was in a dirty place," Mignon declared. He seemed
exasperated. "It's disgusting that the public give such a reception
to the first trollop that comes by. There'll soon be no more decent
women on the stage. Yes, I shall end by forbidding Rose to play."
Fauchery could not restrain a smile. Meanwhile the downward shuffle
of the heavy shoes on the steps did not cease, and a little man in a
workman's cap was heard crying in a drawling voice:
"Oh my, she ain't no wopper! There's some pickings there!"
In the passage two young men, delicately curled and formally
resplendent in turndown collars and the rest, were disputing
together. One of them was repeating the words, "Beastly, beastly!"
without stating any reasons; the other was replying with the words,
"Stunning, stunning!" as though he, too, disdained all argument.
La Faloise declared her to be quite the thing; only he ventured to
opine that she would be better still if she were to cultivate her
voice. Steiner, who was no longer listening, seemed to awake with a
start. Whatever happens, one must wait, he thought. Perhaps
everything will be spoiled in the following acts. The public had
shown complaisance, but it was certainly not yet taken by storm.
Mignon swore that the piece would never finish, and when Fauchery
and La Faloise left them in order to go up to the foyer he took
Steiner's arm and, leaning hard against his shoulder, whispered in
his ear:
"You're going to see my wife's costume for the second act, old
fellow. It IS just blackguardly."
Upstairs in the foyer three glass chandeliers burned with a
brilliant light. The two cousins hesitated an instant before
entering, for the widely opened glazed doors afforded a view right
through the gallery--a view of a surging sea of heads, which two
currents, as it were, kept in a continuous eddying movement. But
they entered after all. Five or six groups of men, talking very
loudly and gesticulating, were obstinately discussing the play amid
these violent interruptions; others were filing round, their heels,
as they turned, sounding sharply on the waxed floor. To right and
left, between columns of variegated imitation marble, women were
sitting on benches covered with red velvet and viewing the passing
movement of the crowd with an air of fatigue as though the heat had
rendered them languid. In the lofty mirrors behind them one saw the
reflection of their chignons. At the end of the room, in front of
the bar, a man with a huge corporation was drinking a glass of fruit
syrup.
But Fauchery, in order to breathe more freely, had gone to the
balcony. La Faloise, who was studying the photographs of actresses
hung in frames alternating with the mirrors between the columns,
ended by following him. They had extinguished the line of gas jets
on the facade of the theater, and it was dark and very cool on the
balcony, which seemed to them unoccupied. Solitary and enveloped in
shadow, a young man was standing, leaning his arms on the stone
balustrade, in the recess to the right. He was smoking a cigarette,
of which the burning end shone redly. Fauchery recognized Daguenet.
They shook hands warmly.
"What are you after there, my dear fellow?" asked the journalist.
"You're hiding yourself in holes and crannies--you, a man who never
leaves the stalls on a first night!"
"But I'm smoking, you see," replied Daguenet.
