"So it's all right, is it?"
"Oh, certainly it's all right! Goodness me, what's come over you?
One would have thought we were going to fight!"
Georges still failed to understand.
"I thought I heard--that is, you didn't cry?" he stammered out.
"Me cry!" she exclaimed, looking fixedly at him. "Why, you're
dreaming! What makes you think I cried?"
Thereupon the lad was treated to a distressing scene for having
disobeyed and played Paul Pry behind the door. She sulked, and he
returned with coaxing submissiveness to the old subject, for he
wished to know all about it.
"And my brother then?"
"Your brother saw where he was at once. You know, I might have been
a tottie, in which case his interference would have been accounted
for by your age and the family honor! Oh yes, I understand those
kinds of feelings! But a single glance was enough for him, and he
behaved like a well-bred man at once. So don't be anxious any
longer. It's all over--he's gone to quiet your mamma!"
And she went on laughingly:
"For that matter, you'll see your brother here. I've invited him,
and he's going to return."
"Oh, he's going to return," said the lad, growing white. He added
nothing, and they ceased talking of Philippe. She began dressing to
go out, and he watched her with his great, sad eyes. Doubtless he
was very glad that matters had got settled, for he would have
preferred death to a rupture of their connection, but deep down in
his heart there was a silent anguish, a profound sense of pain,
which he had no experience of and dared not talk about. How
Philippe quieted their mother's fears he never knew, but three days
later she returned to Les Fondettes, apparently satisfied. On the
evening of her return, at Nana's house, he trembled when Francois
announced the lieutenant, but the latter jested gaily and treated
him like a young rascal, whose escapade he had favored as something
not likely to have any consequences. The lad's heart was sore
within him; he scarcely dared move and blushed girlishly at the
least word that was spoken to him. He had not lived much in
Philippe's society; he was ten years his junior, and he feared him
as he would a father, from whom stories about women are concealed.
Accordingly he experienced an uneasy sense of shame when he saw him
so free in Nana's company and heard him laugh uproariously, as
became a man who was plunging into a life of pleasure with the gusto
born of magnificent health. Nevertheless, when his brother shortly
began to present himself every day, Georges ended by getting
somewhat used to it all. Nana was radiant.
This, her latest installation, had been involving all the riotous
waste attendant on the life of gallantry, and now her housewarming
was being defiantly celebrated in a grand mansion positively
overflowing with males and with furniture.
One afternoon when the Hugons were there Count Muffat arrived out of
hours. But when Zoe told him that Madame was with friends he
refused to come in and took his departure discreetly, as became a
gallant gentleman. When he made his appearance again in the evening
Nana received him with the frigid indignation of a grossly affronted
woman.
"Sir," she said, "I have given you no cause why you should insult
me. You must understand this: when I am at home to visitors, I beg
you to make your appearance just like other people."
The count simply gaped in astonishment. "But, my dear--" he
endeavored to explain.
"Perhaps it was because I had visitors! Yes, there were men here,
but what d'you suppose I was doing with those men? You only
advertise a woman's affairs when you act the discreet lover, and I
don't want to be advertised; I don't!"
He obtained his pardon with difficulty, but at bottom he was
enchanted. It was with scenes such as these that she kept him in
unquestioning and docile submission. She had long since succeeded
in imposing Georges on him as a young vagabond who, she declared,
amused her. She made him dine with Philippe, and the count behaved
with great amiability. When they rose from table he took the young
man on one side and asked news of his mother. From that time forth
the young Hugons, Vandeuvres and Muffat were openly about the house
and shook hands as guests and intimates might have done. It was a
more convenient arrangement than the previous one. Muffat alone
still abstained discreetly from too-frequent visits, thus adhering
to the ceremonious policy of an ordinary strange caller. At night
when Nana was sitting on her bearskins drawing off her stockings, he
would talk amicably about the other three gentlemen and lay especial
stress on Philippe, who was loyalty itself.
"It's very true; they're nice," Nana would say as she lingered on
the floor to change her shift. "Only, you know, they see what I am.
One word about it and I should chuck 'em all out of doors for you!"
Nevertheless, despite her luxurious life and her group of courtiers,
Nana was nearly bored to death. She had men for every minute of the
night, and money overflowed even among the brushes and combs in the
drawers of her dressing table. But all this had ceased to satisfy
her; she felt that there was a void somewhere or other, an empty
place provocative of yawns. Her life dragged on, devoid of
occupation, and successive days only brought back the same
monotonous hours. Tomorrow had ceased to be; she lived like a bird:
sure of her food and ready to perch and roost on any branch which
she came to. This certainty of food and drink left her lolling
effortless for whole days, lulled her to sleep in conventual
idleness and submission as though she were the prisoner of her
trade. Never going out except to drive, she was losing her walking
powers. She reverted to low childish tastes, would kiss Bijou from
morning to night and kill time with stupid pleasures while waiting
for the man whose caresses she tolerated with an appearance of
complaisant lassitude. Amid this species of self-abandonment she
now took no thought about anything save her personal beauty; her
sole care was to look after herself, to wash and to perfume her
limbs, as became one who was proud of being able to undress at any
moment and in face of anybody without having to blush for her
imperfections.
At ten in the morning Nana would get up. Bijou, the Scotch griffon
dog, used to lick her face and wake her, and then would ensue a game
of play lasting some five minutes, during which the dog would race
about over her arms and legs and cause Count Muffat much distress.
Bijou was the first little male he had ever been jealous of. It was
not at all proper, he thought, that an animal should go poking its
nose under the bedclothes like that! After this Nana would proceed
to her dressing room, where she took a bath. Toward eleven o'clock
Francois would come and do up her hair before beginning the
elaborate manipulations of the afternoon.
At breakfast, as she hated feeding alone, she nearly always had Mme
Maloir at table with her. This lady would arrive from unknown
regions in the morning, wearing her extravagantly quaint hats, and
would return at night to that mysterious existence of hers, about
which no one ever troubled. But the hardest to bear were the two or
three hours between lunch and the toilet. On ordinary occasions she
proposed a game of bezique to her old friend; on others she would
read the Figaro, in which the theatrical echoes and the fashionable
news interested her. Sometimes she even opened a book, for she
fancied herself in literary matters. Her toilet kept her till close
on five o'clock, and then only she would wake from her daylong
drowse and drive out or receive a whole mob of men at her own house.
She would often dine abroad and always go to bed very late, only to
rise again on the morrow with the same languor as before and to
begin another day, differing in nothing from its predecessor.
The great distraction was to go to the Batignolles and see her
little Louis at her aunt's. For a fortnight at a time she forgot
all about him, and then would follow an access of maternal love, and
she would hurry off on foot with all the modesty and tenderness
becoming a good mother. On such occasions she would be the bearer
of snuff for her aunt and of oranges and biscuits for the child, the
kind of presents one takes to a hospital. Or again she would drive
up in her landau on her return from the Bois, decked in costumes,
the resplendence of which greatly excited the dwellers in the
solitary street. Since her niece's magnificent elevation Mme Lerat
had been puffed up with vanity. She rarely presented herself in the
Avenue de Villiers, for she was pleased to remark that it wasn't her
place to do so, but she enjoyed triumphs in her own street. She was
delighted when the young woman arrived in dresses that had cost four
or five thousand francs and would be occupied during the whole of
the next day in showing off her presents and in citing prices which
quite stupefied the neighbors. As often as not, Nana kept Sunday
free for the sake of "her family," and on such occasions, if Muffat
invited her, she would refuse with the smile of a good little
shopwoman. It was impossible, she would answer; she was dining at
her aunt's; she was going to see Baby. Moreover, that poor little
man Louiset was always ill. He was almost three years old, growing
quite a great boy! But he had had an eczema on the back of his
neck, and now concretions were forming in his ears, which pointed,
it was feared, to decay of the bones of the skull. When she saw how
pale he looked, with his spoiled blood and his flabby flesh all out
in yellow patches, she would become serious, but her principal
feeling would be one of astonishment. What could be the matter with
the little love that he should grow so weakly? She, his mother, was
so strong and well!
On the days when her child did not engross attention Nana would
again sink back into the noisy monotony of her existence, with its
drives in the Bois, first nights at the theater, dinners and suppers
at the Maison-d'Or or the Cafe Anglais, not to mention all the
places of public resort, all the spectacles to which crowds rushed--
Mabille, the reviews, the races. But whatever happened she still
felt that stupid, idle void, which caused her, as it were, to suffer
internal cramps. Despite the incessant infatuations that possessed
her heart, she would stretch out her arms with a gesture of immense
weariness the moment she was left alone. Solitude rendered her low
spirited at once, for it brought her face to face with the emptiness
and boredom within her. Extremely gay by nature and profession, she
became dismal in solitude and would sum up her life in the following
ejaculation, which recurred incessantly between her yawns:
"Oh, how the men bother me!"
One afternoon as she was returning home from a concert, Nana, on the
sidewalk in the Rue Montmartre, noticed a woman trotting along in
down-at-the-heel boots, dirty petticoats and a hat utterly ruined by
the rain. She recognized her suddenly.
"Stop, Charles!" she shouted to the coachman and began calling:
"Satin, Satin!"
Passers-by turned their heads; the whole street stared. Satin had
drawn near and was still further soiling herself against the
carriage wheels.
"Do get in, my dear girl," said Nana tranquilly, disdaining the
onlookers.
And with that she picked her up and carried her off, though she was
in disgusting contrast to her light blue landau and her dress of
pearl-gray silk trimmed with Chantilly, while the street smiled at
the coachman's loftily dignified demeanor.
From that day forth Nana had a passion to occupy her thoughts.
Satin became her vicious foible. Washed and dressed and duly
installed in the house in the Avenue de Villiers, during three days
the girl talked of Saint-Lazare and the annoyances the sisters had
caused her and how those dirty police people had put her down on the
official list. Nana grew indignant and comforted her and vowed she
would get her name taken off, even though she herself should have to
go and find out the minister of the interior. Meanwhile there was
no sort of hurry: nobody would come and search for her at Nana's--
that was certain. And thereupon the two women began to pass tender
afternoons together, making numberless endearing little speeches and
mingling their kisses with laughter. The same little sport, which
the arrival of the plainclothes men had interrupted in the Rue de
Laval, was beginning again in a jocular sort of spirit. One fine
evening, however, it became serious, and Nana, who had been so
disgusted at Laure's, now understood what it meant. She was upset
and enraged by it, the more so because Satin disappeared on the
morning of the fourth day. No one had seen her go our. She had,
indeed, slipped away in her new dress, seized by a longing for air,
full of sentimental regret for her old street existence.
That day there was such a terrible storm in the house that all the
servants hung their heads in sheepish silence. Nana had come near
beating Francois for not throwing himself across the door through
which Satin escaped. She did her best, however, to control herself,
and talked of Satin as a dirty swine. Oh, it would teach her to
pick filthy things like that out of the gutter!
When Madame shut herself up in her room in the afternoon Zoe heard
her sobbing. In the evening she suddenly asked for her carriage and
had herself driven to Laure's. It had occurred to her that she
