occasionally emitting a little contemptuous sniff. Where was
Talma's tradition? Nowhere. Very well, let them leave him jolly
well alone! It was too stupid to go on as they were doing!
One evening he found Nana in tears. She took off her dressing
jacket in order to show him her back and her arms, which were black
and blue. He looked at her skin without being tempted to abuse the
opportunity, as that ass of a Prulliere would have been. Then,
sententiously:
"My dear girl, where there are women there are sure to be ructions.
It was Napoleon who said that, I think. Wash yourself with salt
water. Salt water's the very thing for those little knocks. Tut,
tut, you'll get others as bad, but don't complain so long as no
bones are broken. I'm inviting myself to dinner, you know; I've
spotted a leg of mutton."
But Mme Lerat had less philosophy. Every time Nana showed her a
fresh bruise on the white skin she screamed aloud. They were
killing her niece; things couldn't go on as they were doing. As a
matter of fact, Fontan had turned Mme Lerat out of doors and had
declared that he would not have her at his house in the future, and
ever since that day, when he returned home and she happened to be
there, she had to make off through the kitchen, which was a horrible
humiliation to her. Accordingly she never ceased inveighing against
that brutal individual. She especially blamed his ill breeding,
pursing up her lips, as she did so, like a highly respectable lady
whom nobody could possibly remonstrate with on the subject of good
manners.
"Oh, you notice it at once," she used to tell Nana; "he hasn't the
barest notion of the very smallest proprieties. His mother must
have been common! Don't deny it--the thing's obvious! I don't
speak on my own account, though a person of my years has a right to
respectful treatment, but YOU--how do YOU manage to put up with his
bad manners? For though I don't want to flatter myself, I've always
taught you how to behave, and among our own people you always
enjoyed the best possible advice. We were all very well bred in our
family, weren't we now?"
Nana used never to protest but would listen with bowed head.
"Then, too," continued the aunt, "you've only known perfect
gentlemen hitherto. We were talking of that very topic with Zoe at
my place yesterday evening. She can't understand it any more than I
can. 'How is it,' she said, 'that Madame, who used to have that
perfect gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, at her beck and call'--for
between you and me, it seems you drove him silly--'how is it that
Madame lets herself be made into mincemeat by that clown of a
fellow?' I remarked at the time that you might put up with the
beatings but that I would never have allowed him to be lacking in
proper respect. In fact, there isn't a word to be said for him. I
wouldn't have his portrait in my room even! And you ruin yourself
for such a bird as that; yes, you ruin yourself, my darling; you
toil and you moil, when there are so many others and such rich men,
too, some of them even connected with the government! Ah well, it's
not I who ought to be telling you this, of course! But all the
same, when next he tries any of his dirty tricks on I should cut him
short with a 'Monsieur, what d'you take me for?' You know how to
say it in that grand way of yours! It would downright cripple him."
Thereupon Nana burst into sobs and stammered out:
"Oh, Aunt, I love him!"
The fact of the matter was that Mme Lerat was beginning to feel
anxious at the painful way her niece doled out the sparse,
occasional francs destined to pay for little Louis's board and
lodging. Doubtless she was willing to make sacrifices and to keep
the child by her whatever might happen while waiting for more
prosperous times, but the thought that Fontan was preventing her and
the brat and its mother from swimming in a sea of gold made her so
savage that she was ready to deny the very existence of true love.
Accordingly she ended up with the following severe remarks:
"Now listen, some fine day when he's taken the skin off your back,
you'll come and knock at my door, and I'll open it to you."
Soon money began to engross Nana's whole attention. Fontan had
caused the seven thousand francs to vanish away. Without doubt they
were quite safe; indeed, she would never have dared ask him
questions about them, for she was wont to be blushingly diffident
with that bird, as Mme Lerat called him. She trembled lest he
should think her capable of quarreling with him about halfpence. He
had certainly promised to subscribe toward their common household
expenses, and in the early days he had given out three francs every
morning. But he was as exacting as a boarder; he wanted everything
for his three francs--butter, meat, early fruit and early
vegetables--and if she ventured to make an observation, if she
hinted that you could not have everything in the market for three
francs, he flew into a temper and treated her as a useless, wasteful
woman, a confounded donkey whom the tradespeople were robbing.
Moreover, he was always ready to threaten that he would take
lodgings somewhere else. At the end of a month on certain mornings
he had forgotten to deposit the three francs on the chest of
drawers, and she had ventured to ask for them in a timid, roundabout
way. Whereupon there had been such bitter disputes and he had
seized every pretext to render her life so miserable that she had
found it best no longer to count upon him. Whenever, however, he
had omitted to leave behind the three one-franc pieces and found a
dinner awaiting him all the same, he grew as merry as a sandboy,
kissed Nana gallantly and waltzed with the chairs. And she was so
charmed by this conduct that she at length got to hope that nothing
would be found on the chest of drawers, despite the difficulty she
experienced in making both ends meet. One day she even returned him
his three francs, telling him a tale to the effect that she still
had yesterday's money. As he had given her nothing then, he
hesitated for some moments, as though he dreaded a lecture. But she
gazed at him with her loving eyes and hugged him in such utter self-
surrender that he pocketed the money again with that little
convulsive twitch or the fingers peculiar to a miser when he regains
possession of that which has been well-nigh lost. From that day
forth he never troubled himself about money again or inquired whence
it came. But when there were potatoes on the table he looked
intoxicated with delight and would laugh and smack his lips before
her turkeys and legs of mutton, though of course this did not
prevent his dealing Nana sundry sharp smacks, as though to keep his
hand in amid all his happiness.
Nana had indeed found means to provide for all needs, and the place
on certain days overflowed with good things. Twice a week,
regularly, Bosc had indigestion. One evening as Mme Lerat was
withdrawing from the scene in high dudgeon because she had noticed a
copious dinner she was not destined to eat in process of
preparation, she could not prevent herself asking brutally who paid
for it all. Nana was taken by surprise; she grew foolish and began
crying.
"Ah, that's a pretty business," said the aunt, who had divined her
meaning.
Nana had resigned herself to it for the sake of enjoying peace in
her own home. Then, too, the Tricon was to blame. She had come
across her in the Rue de Laval one fine day when Fontan had gone out
raging about a dish of cod. She had accordingly consented to the
proposals made her by the Tricon, who happened just then to be in
difficulty. As Fontan never came in before six o'clock, she made
arrangements for her afternoons and used to bring back forty francs,
sixty francs, sometimes more. She might have made it a matter of
ten and fifteen louis had she been able to maintain her former
position, but as matters stood she was very glad thus to earn enough
to keep the pot boiling. At night she used to forget all her
sorrows when Bosc sat there bursting with dinner and Fontan leaned
on his elbows and with an expression of lofty superiority becoming a
man who is loved for his own sake allowed her to kiss him on the
eyelids.
In due course Nana's very adoration of her darling, her dear old
duck, which was all the more passionately blind, seeing that now she
paid for everything, plunged her back into the muddiest depths of
her calling. She roamed the streets and loitered on the pavement in
quest of a five-franc piece, just as when she was a slipshod baggage
years ago. One Sunday at La Rochefoucauld Market she had made her
peace with Satin after having flown at her with furious reproaches
about Mme Robert. But Satin had been content to answer that when
one didn't like a thing there was no reason why one should want to
disgust others with it. And Nana, who was by way of being wide-
minded, had accepted the philosophic view that you never can tell
where your tastes will lead you and had forgiven her. Her curiosity
was even excited, and she began questioning her about obscure vices
and was astounded to be adding to her information at her time of
life and with her knowledge. She burst out laughing and gave vent
to various expressions of surprise. It struck her as so queer, and
yet she was a little shocked by it, for she was really quite the
philistine outside the pale of her own habits. So she went back to
Laure's and fed there when Fontan was dining out. She derived much
amusement from the stories and the amours and the jealousies which
inflamed the female customers without hindering their appetites in
the slightest degree. Nevertheless, she still was not quite in it,
as she herself phrased it. The vast Laure, meltingly maternal as
ever, used often to invite her to pass a day or two at her Asnieries
Villa, a country house containing seven spare bedrooms. But she
used to refuse; she was afraid. Satin, however, swore she was
mistaken about it, that gentlemen from Paris swung you in swings and
played tonneau with you, and so she promised to come at some future
time when it would be possible for her to leave town.
At that time Nana was much tormented by circumstances and not at all
festively inclined. She needed money, and when the Tricon did not
want her, which too often happened, she had no notion where to
bestow her charms. Then began a series of wild descents upon the
Parisian pavement, plunges into the baser sort of vice, whose
votaries prowl in muddy bystreets under the restless flicker of gas
lamps. Nana went back to the public-house balls in the suburbs,
where she had kicked up her heels in the early ill-shod days. She
revisited the dark corners on the outer boulevards, where when she
was fifteen years old men used to hug her while her father was
looking for her in order to give her a hiding. Both the women would
speed along, visiting all the ballrooms and restaurants in a quarter
and climbing innumerable staircases which were wet with spittle and
spilled beer, or they would stroll quietly about, going up streets
and planting themselves in front of carriage gates. Satin, who had
served her apprenticeship in the Quartier Latin, used to take Nana
to Bullier's and the public houses in the Boulevard Saint-Michel.
But the vacations were drawing on, and the Quarter looked too
starved. Eventually they always returned to the principal
boulevards, for it was there they ran the best chance of getting
what they wanted. From the heights of Montmartre to the observatory
plateau they scoured the whole town in the way we have been
describing. They were out on rainy evenings, when their boots got
worn down, and on hot evenings, when their linen clung to their
skins. There were long periods of waiting and endless periods of
walking; there were jostlings and disputes and the nameless, brutal
caresses of the stray passer-by who was taken by them to some
miserable furnished room and came swearing down the greasy stairs
afterward.
The summer was drawing to a close, a stormy summer of burning
nights. The pair used to start out together after dinner, toward
nine o'clock. On the pavements of the Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette
two long files of women scudded along with tucked-up skirts and bent
heads, keeping close to the shops but never once glancing at the
displays in the shopwindows as they hurried busily down toward the
boulevards. This was the hungry exodus from the Quartier Breda
which took place nightly when the street lamps had just been lit.
Nana and Satin used to skirt the church and then march off along the
Rue le Peletier. When they were some hundred yards from the Cafe
Riche and had fairly reached their scene of operations they would
shake out the skirts of their dresses, which up till that moment
they had been holding carefully up, and begin sweeping the
pavements, regardless of dust. With much swaying of the hips they
strolled delicately along, slackening their pace when they crossed
the bright light thrown from one of the great cafes. With shoulders
thrown back, shrill and noisy laughter and many backward glances at
the men who turned to look at them, they marched about and were
completely in their element. In the shadow of night their
artificially whitened faces, their rouged lips and their darkened
eyelids became as charming and suggestive as if the inmates of a
make-believe trumpery oriental bazaar had been sent forth into the
open street. Till eleven at night they sauntered gaily along among
the rudely jostling crowds, contenting themselves with an occasional
"dirty ass!" hurled after the clumsy people whose boot heels had
