examination when she felt it would be awkward to utter Muffat's
name. Thereupon Francis smiled and spoke instead of her. As to
Monsieur le Comte, it was all a great pity, so sad had been his
sufferings since Madame's departure.
He had been like a soul in pain--you might have met him wherever
Madame was likely to be found. At last M. Mignon had come across
him and had taken him home to his own place. This piece of news
caused Nana to laugh a good deal. But her laughter was not of the
easiest kind.
"Ah, he's with Rose now," she said. "Well then, you must know,
Francis, I've done with him! Oh, the canting thing! It's learned
some pretty habits--can't even go fasting for a week now! And to
think that he used to swear he wouldn't have any woman after me!"
She was raging inwardly.
"My leavings, if you please!" she continued. "A pretty Johnnie for
Rose to go and treat herself to! Oh, I understand it all now: she
wanted to have her revenge because I got that brute of a Steiner
away from her. Ain't it sly to get a man to come to her when I've
chucked him out of doors?"
"M. Mignon doesn't tell that tale," said the hairdresser.
"According to his account, it was Monsieur le Comte who chucked you
out. Yes, and in a pretty disgusting way too--with a kick on the
bottom!"
Nana became suddenly very pale.
"Eh, what?" she cried. "With a kick on my bottom? He's going too
far, he is! Look here, my little friend, it was I who threw him
downstairs, the cuckold, for he is a cuckold, I must inform you.
His countess is making him one with every man she meets--yes, even
with that good-for-nothing of a Fauchery. And that Mignon, who goes
loafing about the pavement in behalf of his harridan of a wife, whom
nobody wants because she's so lean! What a foul lot! What a foul
lot!"
She was choking, and she paused for breath
"Oh, that's what they say, is it? Very well, my little Francis,
I'll go and look 'em up, I will. Shall you and I go to them at
once? Yes, I'll go, and we'll see whether they will have the cheek
to go telling about kicks on the bottom. Kick's! I never took one
from anybody! And nobody's ever going to strike me--d'ye see?--for
I'd smash the man who laid a finger on me!"
Nevertheless, the storm subsided at last. After all, they might
jolly well what they liked! She looked upon them as so much filth
underfoot! It would have soiled her to bother about people like
that. She had a conscience of her own, she had! And Francis,
seeing her thus giving herself away, what with her housewife's
costume and all, became familiar and, at parting, made so bold as to
give her some good advice. It was wrong of her to be sacrificing
everything for the sake of an infatuation; such infatuations ruined
existence. She listened to him with bowed head while he spoke to
her with a pained expression, as became a connoisseur who could not
bear to see so fine a girl making such a hash of things.
"Well, that's my affair," she said at last "Thanks all the same,
dear boy." She shook his hand, which despite his perfect dress was
always a little greasy, and then went off to buy her fish. During
the day that story about the kick on the bottom occupied her
thoughts. She even spoke about it to Fontan and again posed as a
sturdy woman who was not going to stand the slightest flick from
anybody. Fontan, as became a philosophic spirit, declared that all
men of fashion were beasts whom it was one's duty to despise. And
from that moment forth Nana was full of very real disdain.
That same evening they went to the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre to see
a little woman of Fontan's acquaintance make her debut in a part of
some ten lines. It was close on one o'clock when they once more
trudged up the heights of Montmartre. They had purchased a cake, a
"mocha," in the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin, and they ate it in bed,
seeing that the night was not warm and it was not worth while
lighting a fire. Sitting up side by side, with the bedclothes
pulled up in front and the pillows piled up behind, they supped and
talked about the little woman. Nana thought her plain and lacking
in style. Fontan, lying on his stomach, passed up the pieces of
cake which had been put between the candle and the matches on the
edge of the night table. But they ended by quarreling.
"Oh, just to think of it!" cried Nana. "She's got eyes like gimlet
holes, and her hair's the color of tow."
"Hold your tongue, do!" said Fontan. "She has a superb head of hair
and such fire in her looks! It's lovely the way you women always
tear each other to pieces!"
He looked annoyed.
"Come now, we've had enough of it!" he said at last in savage tones.
"You know I don't like being bored. Let's go to sleep, or things'll
take a nasty turn."
And he blew out the candle, but Nana was furious and went on
talking. She was not going to be spoken to in that voice; she was
accustomed to being treated with respect! As he did not vouchsafe
any further answer, she was silenced, but she could not go to sleep
and lay tossing to and fro.
"Great God, have you done moving about?" cried he suddenly, giving a
brisk jump upward.
"It isn't my fault if there are crumbs in the bed," she said curtly.
In fact, there were crumbs in the bed. She felt them down to her
middle; she was everywhere devoured by them. One single crumb was
scorching her and making her scratch herself till she bled.
Besides, when one eats a cake isn't it usual to shake out the
bedclothes afterward? Fontan, white with rage, had relit the
candle, and they both got up and, barefooted and in their night
dresses, they turned down the clothes and swept up the crumbs on the
sheet with their hands. Fontan went to bed again, shivering, and
told her to go to the devil when she advised him to wipe the soles
of his feet carefully. And in the end she came back to her old
position, but scarce had she stretched herself out than she danced
again. There were fresh crumbs in the bed!
"By Jove, it was sure to happen!" she cried. "You've brought them
back again under your feet. I can't go on like this! No, I tell
you, I can't go on like this!"
And with that she was on the point of stepping over him in order to
jump out of bed again, when Fontan in his longing for sleep grew
desperate and dealt her a ringing box on the ear. The blow was so
smart that Nana suddenly found herself lying down again with her
head on the pillow.
She lay half stunned.
"Oh!" she ejaculated simply, sighing a child's big sigh.
For a second or two he threatened her with a second slap, asking her
at the same time if she meant to move again. Then he put out the
light, settled himself squarely on his back and in a trice was
snoring. But she buried her face in the pillow and began sobbing
quietly to herself. It was cowardly of him to take advantage of his
superior strength! She had experienced very real terror all the
same, so terrible had that quaint mask of Fontan's become. And her
anger began dwindling down as though the blow had calmed her. She
began to feel respect toward him and accordingly squeezed herself
against the wall in order to leave him as much room as possible.
She even ended by going to sleep, her cheek tingling, her eyes full
of tears and feeling so deliciously depressed and wearied and
submissive that she no longer noticed the crumbs. When she woke up
in the morning she was holding Fontain in her naked arms and
pressing him tightly against her breast. He would never begin it
again, eh? Never again? She loved him too dearly. Why, it was
even nice to be beaten if he struck the blow!
After that night a new life began. For a mere trifle--a yes, a no--
Fontan would deal her a blow. She grew accustomed to it and
pocketed everything. Sometimes she shed tears and threatened him,
but he would pin her up against the wall and talk of strangling her,
which had the effect of rendering her extremely obedient. As often
as not, she sank down on a chair and sobbed for five minutes on end.
But afterward she would forget all about it, grow very merry, fill
the little lodgings with the sound of song and laughter and the
rapid rustle of skirts. The worst of it was that Fontan was now in
the habit of disappearing for the whole day and never returning home
before midnight, for he was going to cafes and meeting his old
friends again. Nana bore with everything. She was tremulous and
caressing, her only fear being that she might never see him again if
she reproached him. But on certain days, when she had neither Mme
Maloir nor her aunt and Louiset with her, she grew mortally dull.
Thus one Sunday, when she was bargaining for some pigeons at La
Rochefoucauld Market, she was delighted to meet Satin, who, in her
turn, was busy purchasing a bunch of radishes. Since the evening
when the prince had drunk Fontan's champagne they had lost sight of
one another.
"What? It's you! D'you live in our parts?" said Satin, astounded
at seeing her in the street at that hour of the morning and in
slippers too. "Oh, my poor, dear girl, you're really ruined then!"
Nana knitted her brows as a sign that she was to hold her tongue,
for they were surrounded by other women who wore dressing gowns and
were without linen, while their disheveled tresses were white with
fluff. In the morning, when the man picked up overnight had been
newly dismissed, all the courtesans of the quarter were wont to come
marketing here, their eyes heavy with sleep, their feet in old down-
at-heel shoes and themselves full of the weariness and ill humor
entailed by a night of boredom. From the four converging streets
they came down into the market, looking still rather young in some
cases and very pale and charming in their utter unconstraint; in
others, hideous and old with bloated faces and peeling skin. The
latter did not the least mind being seen thus outside working hours,
and not one of them deigned to smile when the passers-by on the
sidewalk turned round to look at them. Indeed, they were all very
full of business and wore a disdainful expression, as became good
housewives for whom men had ceased to exist. Just as Satin, for
instance, was paying for her bunch of radishes a young man, who
might have been a shop-boy going late to his work, threw her a
passing greeting:
"Good morning, duckie."
She straightened herself up at once and with the dignified manner
becoming an offended queen remarked:
"What's up with that swine there?"
Then she fancied she recognized him. Three days ago toward
midnight, as the was coming back alone from the boulevards, she had
talked to him at the corner of the Rue Labruyere for nearly half an
hour, with a view to persuading him to come home with her. But this
recollection only angered her the more.
"Fancy they're brutes enough to shout things to you in broad
daylight!" she continued. "When one's out on business one ought to
be respecifully treated, eh?"
Nana had ended by buying her pigeons, although she certainly had her
doubts of their freshness. After which Satin wanted to show her
where she lived in the Rue Rochefoucauld close by. And the moment
they were alone Nana told her of her passion for Fontan. Arrived in
front of the house, the girl stopped with her bundle of radishes
under her arm and listened eagerly to a final detail which the other
imparted to her. Nana fibbed away and vowed that it was she who had
turned Count Muffat out of doors with a perfect hail of kickastliness of
the men. Nana was overpowering on the subject of Fontan. She could
not say a dozen words without lapsing into endless repetitions of
his sayings and his doings. But Satin, like a good-natured girl,
would listen unwearyingly to everlasting accounts of how Nana had
watched for him at the window, how they had fallen out over a burnt
dish of hash and how they had made it up in bed after hours of
silent sulking. In her desire to be always talking about these
things Nana had gs on the
posterior.
"Oh how smart!" Satin repeated. "How very smart! Kicks, eh? And
he never said a word, did he? What a blooming coward! I wish I'd
been there to see his ugly mug! My dear girl, you were quite right.
A pin for the coin! When I'M on with a mash I starve for it!
You'll come and see me, eh? You promise? It's the left-hand door.
Knock three knocks, for there's a whole heap of damned squints
about."
After that whenever Nana grew too weary of life she went down and
saw Satin. She was always sure of finding her, for the girl never
went out before six in the evening. Satin occupied a couple of
rooms which a chemist had furnished for her in order to save her
from the clutches of the police, but in little more than a
twelvemonth she had broken the furniture, knocked in the chairs,
dirtied the curtains, and that in a manner so furiously filthy and
untidy that the lodgings seemed as though inhabited by a pack of mad
cats. On the mornings when she grew disgusted with herself and
thought about cleaning up a bit, chair rails and strips of curtain
would come off in her hands during her struggle with superincumbent
dirt. On such days the place was fouler than ever, and it was
impossible to enter it, owing to the things which had fallen down
across the doorway. At length she ended by leaving her house
severely alone. When the lamp was lit the cupboard with plate-glass
