The count had briskly disappeared into the private room, leaving the
door ajar behind him. But Daguenet winked behind his round
shoulders and added in chaffing tones:
"The deuce, but you're doing nicely! You catch 'em in the Tuileries
nowadays!"
Nana smiled and laid a finger on her lips to beg him to be silent.
She could see he was very much exalted, and yet she was glad to have
met him, for she still felt tenderly toward him, and that despite
the nasty way he had cut her when in the company of fashionable
ladies.
"What are you doing now?" she asked amicably.
"Becoming respectable. Yes indeed, I'm thinking of getting
married."
She shrugged her shoulders with a pitying air. But he jokingly
continued to the effect that to be only just gaining enough on
'change to buy ladies bouquets could scarcely be called an income,
provided you wanted to look respectable too! His three hundred
thousand francs had only lasted him eighteen months! He wanted to
be practical, and he was going to marry a girl with a huge dowry and
end off as a PREFET, like his father before him! Nana still smiled
incredulously. She nodded in the direction of the saloon: "Who are
you with in there?"
"Oh, a whole gang," he said, forgetting all about his projects under
the influence of returning intoxication. "Just think! Lea is
telling us about her trip in Egypt. Oh, it's screaming! There's a
bathing story--"
And he told the story while Nana lingered complaisantly. They had
ended by leaning up against the wall in the corridor, facing one
another. Gas jets were flaring under the low ceiling, and a vague
smell of cookery hung about the folds of the hangings. Now and
again, in order to hear each other's voices when the din in the
saloon became louder than ever, they had to lean well forward.
Every few seconds, however, a waiter with an armful of dishes found
his passage barred and disturbed them. But they did not cease their
talk for that; on the contrary, they stood close up to the walls
and, amid the uproar of the supper party and the jostlings of the
waiters, chatted as quietly as if they were by their own firesides.
"Just look at that," whispered the young man, pointing to the door
of the private room through which Muffat had vanished.
Both looked. The door was quivering slightly; a breath of air
seemed to be disturbing it, and at last, very, very slowly and
without the least sound, it was shut to. They exchanged a silent
chuckle. The count must be looking charmingly happy all alone in
there!
"By the by," she asked, "have you read Fauchery's article about me?"
"Yes, 'The Golden Fly,'" replied Daguenet; "I didn't mention it to
you as I was afraid of paining you."
"Paining me--why? His article's a very long one."
She was flattered to think that the Figaro should concern itself
about her person. But failing the explanations of her hairdresser
Francis, who had brought her the paper, she would not have
understood that it was she who was in question. Daguenet
scrutinized her slyly, sneering in his chaffing way. Well, well,
since she was pleased, everybody else ought to be.
"By your leave!" shouted a waiter, holding a dish of iced cheese in
both hands as he separated them.
Nana had stepped toward the little saloon where Muffat was waiting.
"Well, good-by!" continued Daguenet. "Go and find your cuckold
again."
But she halted afresh.
"Why d'you call him cuckold?"
"Because he is a cuckold, by Jove!"
She came and leaned against the wall again; she was profoundly
interested.
"Ah!" she said simply.
"What, d'you mean to say you didn't know that? Why, my dear girl,
his wife's Fauchery's mistress. It probably began in the country.
Some time ago, when I was coming here, Fauchery left me, and I
suspect he's got an assignation with her at his place tonight.
They've made up a story about a journey, I fancy."
Overcome with surprise, Nana remained voiceless.
"I suspected it," she said at last, slapping her leg. "I guessed it
by merely looking at her on the highroad that day. To think of its
being possible for an honest woman to deceive her husband, and with
that blackguard Fauchery too! He'll teach her some pretty things!"
"Oh, it isn't her trial trip," muttered Daguenet wickedly. "Perhaps
she knows as much about it as he does."
At this Nana gave vent to an indignant exclamation.
"Indeed she does! What a nice world! It's too foul!"
"By your leave!" shouted a waiter, laden with bottles, as he
separated them.
Daguenet drew her forward again and held her hand for a second or
two. He adopted his crystalline tone of voice, the voice with notes
as sweet as those of a harmonica, which had gained him his success
among the ladies of Nana's type.
"Good-by, darling! You know I love you always."
She disengaged her hand from his, and while a thunder of shouts and
bravos, which made the door in the saloon tremble again, almost
drowned her words she smilingly remarked:
"It's over between us, stupid! But that doesn't matter. Do come up
one of these days, and we'll have a chat."
Then she became serious again and in the outraged tones of a
respectable woman:
"So he's a cuckold, is he?" she cried. "Well, that IS a nuisance,
dear boy. They've always sickened me, cuckolds have."
When at length she went into the private room she noticed that
Muffat was sitting resignedly on a narrow divan with pale face and
twitching hands. He did not reproach her at all, and she, greatly
moved, was divided between feelings of pity and of contempt. The
poor man! To think of his being so unworthily cheated by a vile
wife! She had a good mind to throw her arms round his neck and
comfort him. But it was only fair all the same! He was a fool with
women, and this would teach him a lesson! Nevertheless, pity
overcame her. She did not get rid of him as she had determined to
do after the oysters had been discussed. They scarcely stayed a
quarter of an hour in the Cafe Anglais, and together they went into
the house in the Boulevard Haussmann. It was then eleven. Before
midnight she would have easily have discovered some means of getting
rid of him kindly.
In the anteroom, however, she took the precaution of giving Zoe an
order. "You'll look out for him, and you'll tell him not to make a
noise if the other man's still with me."
"But where shall I put him, madame?"
"Keep him in the kitchen. It's more safe."
In the room inside Muffat was already taking off his overcoat. A
big fire was burning on the hearth. It was the same room as of old,
with its rosewood furniture and its hangings and chair coverings of
figured damask with the large blue flowers on a gray background. On
two occasions Nana had thought of having it redone, the first in
black velvet, the second in white satin with bows, but directly
Steiner consented she demanded the money that these changes would
cost simply with a view to pillaging him. She had, indeed, only
indulged in a tiger skin rug for the hearth and a cut-glass hanging
lamp.
"I'm not sleepy; I'm not going to bed," she said the moment they
were shut in together.
The count obeyed her submissively, as became a man no longer afraid
of being seen. His one care now was to avoid vexing her.
"As you will," he murmured.
Nevertheless, he took his boots off, too, before seating himself in
front of the fire. One of Nana's pleasures consisted in undressing
herself in front of the mirror on her wardrobe door, which reflected
her whole height. She would let everything slip off her in turn and
then would stand perfectly naked and gaze and gaze in complete
oblivion of all around her. Passion for her own body, ecstasy over
her satin skin and the supple contours of her shape, would keep her
serious, attentive and absorbed in the love of herself. The
hairdresser frequently found her standing thus and would enter
without her once turning to look at him. Muffat used to grow angry
then, but he only succeeded in astonishing her. What was coming
over the man? She was doing it to please herself, not other people.
That particular evening she wanted to have a better view of herself,
and she lit the six candles attached to the frame of the mirror.
But while letting her shift slip down she paused. She had been
preoccupied for some moments past, and a question was on her lips.
"You haven't read the Figaro article, have you? The paper's on the
table." Daguenet's laugh had recurred to her recollections, and she
was harassed by a doubt. If that Fauchery had slandered her she
would be revenged.
"They say that it's about me," she continued, affecting
indifference. "What's your notion, eh, darling?"
And letting go her shift and waiting till Muffat should have done
reading, she stood naked. Muffat was reading slowly Fauchery's
article entitled "The Golden Fly," describing the life of a harlot
descended from four or five generations of drunkards and tainted in
her blood by a cumulative inheritance of misery and drink, which in
her case has taken the form of a nervous exaggeration of the sexual
instinct. She has shot up to womanhood in the slums and on the
pavements of Paris, and tall, handsome and as superbly grown as a
dunghill plant, she avenges the beggars and outcasts of whom she is
the ultimate product. With her the rottenness that is allowed to
ferment among the populace is carried upward and rots the
aristocracy. She becomes a blind power of nature, a leaven of
destruction, and unwittingly she corrupts and disorganizes all
Paris, churning it between her snow-white thighs as milk is monthly
churned by housewives. And it was at the end of this article that
the comparison with a fly occurred, a fly of sunny hue which has
flown up out of the dung, a fly which sucks in death on the carrion
tolerated by the roadside and then buzzing, dancing and glittering
like a precious stone enters the windows of palaces and poisons the
men within by merely settling on them in her flight.
Muffat lifted his head; his eyes stared fixedly; he gazed at the
fire.
"Well?" asked Nana.
But he did not answer. It seemed as though he wanted to read the
article again. A cold, shivering feeling was creeping from his
scalp to his shoulders. This article had been written anyhow. The
phrases were wildly extravagant; the unexpected epigrams and quaint
collocations of words went beyond all bounds. Yet notwithstanding
this, he was struck by what he had read, for it had rudely awakened
within him much that for months past he had not cared to think
about.
He looked up. Nana had grown absorbed in her ecstatic self-
contemplation. She was bending her neck and was looking attentively
in the mirror at a little brown mark above her right haunch. She
was touching it with the tip of her finger and by dint of bending
backward was making it stand out more clearly than ever. Situated
where it was, it doubtless struck her as both quaint and pretty.
After that she studied other parts of her body with an amused
expression and much of the vicious curiosity of a child. The sight
of herself always astonished her, and she would look as surprised
and ecstatic as a young girl who has discovered her puberty.
Slowly, slowly, she spread out her arms in order to give full value
to her figure, which suggested the torso of a plump Venus. She bent
herself this way and that and examined herself before and behind,
stooping to look at the side view of her bosom and at the sweeping
contours of her thighs. And she ended with a strange amusement
which consisted of swinging to right and left, her knees apart and
her body swaying from the waist with the perpetual jogging,
twitching movements peculiar to an oriental dancer in the danse du
ventre.
Muffat sat looking at her. She frightened him. The newspaper had
dropped from his hand. For a moment he saw her as she was, and he
despised himself. Yes, it was just that; she had corrupted his
life; he already felt himself tainted to his very marrow by
impurities hitherto undreamed of. Everything was now destined to
rot within him, and in the twinkling of an eye he understood what
this evil entailed. He saw the ruin brought about by this kind of
"leaven"--himself poisoned, his family destroyed, a bit of the
social fabric cracking and crumbling. And unable to take his eyes
from the sight, he sat looking fixedly at her, striving to inspire
himself with loathing for her nakedness.
Nana no longer moved. With an arm behind her neck, one hand clasped
in the other, and her elbows far apart, she was throwing back her
head so that he could see a foreshortened reflection of her half-
closed eyes, her parted lips, her face clothed with amorous
laughter. Her masses of yellow hair were unknotted behind, and they
covered her back with the fell of a lioness.
Bending back thus, she displayed her solid Amazonian waist and firm
bosom, where strong muscles moved under the satin texture of the
skin. A delicate line, to which the shoulder and the thigh added
their slight undulations, ran from one of her elbows to her foot,
and Muffat's eyes followed this tender profile and marked how the
outlines of the fair flesh vanished in golden gleams and how its
rounded contours shone like silk in the candlelight. He thought of
his old dread of Woman, of the Beast of the Scriptures, at once lewd
