Faloise were passing the banker stopped them.
"Come and take a bock with us, eh?" they said.
But he was too preoccupied by an idea; he wanted to have a bouquet
thrown to Nana. At last he called a waiter belonging to the cafe,
whom he familiarly addressed as Auguste. Mignon, who was listening,
looked at him so sharply that he lost countenance and stammered out:
"Two bouquets, Auguste, and deliver them to the attendant. A
bouquet for each of these ladies! Happy thought, eh?"
At the other end of the saloon, her shoulders resting against the
frame of a mirror, a girl, some eighteen years of age at the
outside, was leaning motionless in front of her empty glass as
though she had been benumbed by long and fruitless waiting. Under
the natural curls of her beautiful gray-gold hair a virginal face
looked out at you with velvety eyes, which were at once soft and
candid.
She wore a dress of faded green silk and a round hat which blows had
dinted. The cool air of the night made her look very pale.
"Egad, there's Satin," murmured Fauchery when his eye lit upon her.
La Faloise questioned him. Oh dear, yes, she was a streetwalker--
she didn't count. But she was such a scandalous sort that people
amused themselves by making her talk. And the journalist, raising
his voice:
"What are you doing there, Satin?"
"I'm bogging," replied Satin quietly without changing position.
The four men were charmed and fell a-laughing. Mignon assured them
that there was no need to hurry; it would take twenty minutes to set
up the scenery for the third act. But the two cousins, having drunk
their beer, wanted to go up into the theater again; the cold was
making itself felt. Then Mignon remained alone with Steiner, put
his elbows on the table and spoke to him at close quarters.
"It's an understood thing, eh? We are to go to her house, and I'm
to introduce you. You know the thing's quite between ourselves--my
wife needn't know."
Once more in their places, Fauchery and La Faloise noticed a pretty,
quietly dressed woman in the second tier of boxes. She was with a
serious-looking gentleman, a chief clerk at the office of the
Ministry of the Interior, whom La Faloise knew, having met him at
the Muffats'. As to Fauchery, he was under the impression that her
name was Madame Robert, a lady of honorable repute who had a lover,
only one, and that always a person of respectability.
But they had to turn round, for Daguenet was smiling at them. Now
that Nana had had a success he no longer hid himself: indeed, he had
just been scoring triumphs in the passages. By his side was the
young truant schoolboy, who had not quitted his seat, so stupefying
was the state of admiration into which Nana had plunged him. That
was it, he thought; that was the woman! And he blushed as he
thought so and dragged his gloves on and off mechanically. Then
since his neighbor had spoken of Nana, he ventured to question him.
"Will you pardon me for asking you, sir, but that lady who is
acting--do you know her?"
"Yes, I do a little," murmured Daguenet with some surprise and
hesitation.
"Then you know her address?"
The question, addressed as it was to him, came so abruptly that he
felt inclined to respond with a box on the ear.
"No," he said in a dry tone of voice.
And with that he turned his back. The fair lad knew that he had
just been guilty of some breach of good manners. He blushed more
hotly than ever and looked scared.
The traditional three knocks were given, and among the returning
throng, attendants, laden with pelisses and overcoats, bustled about
at a great rate in order to put away people's things. The clappers
applauded the scenery, which represented a grotto on Mount Etna,
hollowed out in a silver mine and with sides glittering like new
money. In the background Vulcan's forge glowed like a setting star.
Diana, since the second act, had come to a good understanding with
the god, who was to pretend that he was on a journey, so as to leave
the way clear for Venus and Mars. Then scarcely was Diana alone
than Venus made her appearance. A shiver of delight ran round the
house. Nana was nude. With quiet audacity she appeared in her
nakedness, certain of the sovereign power of her flesh. Some gauze
enveloped her, but her rounded shoulders, her Amazonian bosom, her
wide hips, which swayed to and fro voluptuously, her whole body, in
fact, could be divined, nay discerned, in all its foamlike whiteness
of tint beneath the slight fabric she wore. It was Venus rising
from the waves with no veil save her tresses. And when Nana lifted
her arms the golden hairs in her armpits were observable in the
glare of the footlights. There was no applause. Nobody laughed any
more. The men strained forward with serious faces, sharp features,
mouths irritated and parched. A wind seemed to have passed, a soft,
soft wind, laden with a secret menace. Suddenly in the bouncing
child the woman stood discovered, a woman full of restless
suggestion, who brought with her the delirium of sex and opened the
gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was smiling still, but
her smile was now bitter, as of a devourer of men.
"By God," said Fauchery quite simply to La Faloise.
Mars in the meantime, with his plume of feathers, came hurrying to
the trysting place and found himself between the two goddesses.
Then ensued a passage which Prulliere played with great delicacy.
Petted by Diana, who wanted to make a final attack upon his feelings
before delivering him up to Vulcan, wheedled by Venus, whom the
presence of her rival excited, he gave himself up to these tender
delights with the beatified expression of a man in clover. Finally
a grand trio brought the scene to a close, and it was then that an
attendant appeared in Lucy Stewart's box and threw on the stage two
immense bouquets of white lilacs. There was applause; Nana and Rose
Mignon bowed, while Prulliere picked up the bouquets. Many of the
occupants of the stalls turned smilingly toward the ground-floor
occupied by Steiner and Mignon. The banker, his face blood-red, was
suffering from little convulsive twitchings of the chin, as though
he had a stoppage in his throat.
What followed took the house by storm completely. Diana had gone
off in a rage, and directly afterward, Venus, sitting on a moss-clad
seat, called Mars to her. Never yet had a more glowing scene of
seduction been ventured on. Nana, her arms round Prulliere's neck,
was drawing him toward her when Fontan, with comically furious
mimicry and an exaggerated imitation of the face of an outraged
husband who surprises his wife in FLAGRANTE DELICTO, appeared at the
back of the grotto. He was holding the famous net with iron meshes.
For an instant he poised and swung it, as a fisherman does when he
is going to make a cast, and by an ingenious twist Venus and Mars
were caught in the snare; the net wrapped itself round them and held
them motionless in the attitude of happy lovers.
A murmur of applause swelled and swelled like a growing sigh. There
was some hand clapping, and every opera glass was fixed on Venus.
Little by little Nana had taken possession of the public, and now
every man was her slave.
A wave of lust had flowed from her as from an excited animal, and
its influence had spread and spread and spread till the whole house
was possessed by it. At that moment her slightest movement blew the
flame of desire: with her little finger she ruled men's flesh.
Backs were arched and quivered as though unseen violin bows had been
drawn across their muscles; upon men's shoulders appeared fugitive
hairs, which flew in air, blown by warm and wandering breaths,
breathed one knew not from what feminine mouth. In front of him
Fauchery saw the truant schoolboy half lifted from his seat by
passion. Curiosity led him to look at the Count de Vandeuvres--he
was extremely pale, and his lips looked pinched--at fat Steiner,
whose face was purple to the verge of apoplexy; at Labordette,
ogling away with the highly astonished air of a horse dealer
admiring a perfectly shaped mare; at Daguenet, whose ears were
blood-red and twitching with enjoyment. Then a sudden idea made him
glance behind, and he marveled at what he saw in the Muffats' box.
Behind the countess, who was white and serious as usual, the count
was sitting straight upright, with mouth agape and face mottled with
red, while close by him, in the shadow, the restless eyes of the
Marquis de Chouard had become catlike phosphorescent, full of golden
sparkles. The house was suffocating; people's very hair grew heavy
on their perspiring heads. For three hours back the breath of the
multitude had filled and heated the atmosphere with a scent of
crowded humanity. Under the swaying glare of the gas the dust
clouds in mid-air had grown constantly denser as they hung
motionless beneath the chandelier. The whole house seemed to be
oscillating, to be lapsing toward dizziness in its fatigue and
excitement, full, as it was, of those drowsy midnight desires which
flutter in the recesses of the bed of passion. And Nana, in front
of this languorous public, these fifteen hundred human beings
thronged and smothered in the exhaustion and nervous exasperation
which belong to the close of a spectacle, Nana still triumphed by
right of her marble flesh and that sexual nature of hers, which was
strong enough to destroy the whole crowd of her adorers and yet
sustain no injury.
The piece drew to a close. In answer to Vulcan's triumphant summons
all the Olympians defiled before the lovers with ohs and ahs of
stupefaction and gaiety. Jupiter said, "I think it is light conduct
on your part, my son, to summon us to see such a sight as this."
Then a reaction took place in favor of Venus. The chorus of
cuckolds was again ushered in by Iris and besought the master of the
gods not to give effect to its petition, for since women had lived
at home, domestic life was becoming impossible for the men: the
latter preferred being deceived and happy. That was the moral of
the play. Then Venus was set at liberty, and Vulcan obtained a
partial divorce from her. Mars was reconciled with Diana, and Jove,
for the sake of domestic peace, packed his little laundress off into
a constellation. And finally they extricated Love from his black
hole, where instead of conjugating the verb AMO he had been busy in
the manufacture of "dollies." The curtain fell on an apotheosis,
wherein the cuckolds' chorus knelt and sang a hymn of gratitude to
Venus, who stood there with smiling lips, her stature enhanced by
her sovereign nudity.
The audience, already on their feet, were making for the exits. The
authors were mentioned, and amid a thunder of applause there were
two calls before the curtain. The shout of "Nana! Nana!" rang
wildly forth. Then no sooner was the house empty than it grew dark:
the footlights went out; the chandelier was turned down; long strips
of gray canvas slipped from the stage boxes and swathed the gilt
ornamentation of the galleries, and the house, lately so full of
heat and noise, lapsed suddenly into a heavy sleep, while a musty,
dusty odor began to pervade it. In the front of her box stood the
Countess Muffat. Very erect and closely wrapped up in her furs, she
stared at the gathering shadows and waited for the crowd to pass
away.
In the passages the people were jostling the attendants, who hardly
knew what to do among the tumbled heaps of outdoor raiment.
Fauchery and La Faloise had hurried in order to see the crowd pass
out. All along the entrance hall men formed a living hedge, while
down the double staircase came slowly and in regular, complete
formation two interminable throngs of human beings. Steiner, in tow
of Mignon, had left the house among the foremost. The Count de
Vandeuvres took his departure with Blanche de Sivry on his arm. For
a moment or two Gaga and her daughter seemed doubtful how to
proceed, but Labordette made haste to go and fetch them a
conveyance, the door whereof he gallantly shut after them. Nobody
saw Daguenet go by. As the truant schoolboy, registering a mental
vow to wait at the stage door, was running with burning cheeks
toward the Passage des Panoramas, of which he found the gate closed,
Satin, standing on the edge of the pavement, moved forward and
brushed him with her skirts, but he in his despair gave her a savage
refusal and vanished amid the crowd, tears of impotent desire in his
eyes. Members of the audience were lighting their cigars and
walking off, humming:
When Venus roams at eventide.
Satin had gone back in front of the Cafe des Varietes, where Auguste
let her eat the sugar that remained over from the customers' orders.
A stout man, who came out in a very heated condition, finally
carried her off in the shadow of the boulevard, which was now
gradually going to sleep.
Still people kept coming downstairs. La Faloise was waiting for
Clarisse; Fauchery had promised to catch up Lucy Stewart with
Caroline Hequet and her mother. They came; they took up a whole
corner of the entrance hall and were laughing very loudly when the
Muffats passed by them with an icy expression. Bordenave had just
then opened a little door and, peeping out, had obtained from
Fauchery the formal promise of an article. He was dripping with
perspiration, his face blazed, as though he were drunk with success.
"You're good for two hundred nights," La Faloise said to him with
civility. "The whole of Paris will visit your theater."
But Bordenave grew annoyed and, indicating with a jerk of his chin
the public who filled the entrance hall--a herd of men with parched
