rate. It would be a lesson to them. And then it would be so nice
to be alone, both of them! Nana, with a return of anxiety, declared
it to be impossible. Thereupon the other shouted at her like a
violent child and tried hard to overrule her.
"I wish it, d'you see? Send 'em away or I'm off!"
And she went back into the drawing room, stretched herself out in
the recesses of a divan, which stood in the background near the
window, and lay waiting, silent and deathlike, with her great eyes
fixed upon Nana.
The gentlemen were deciding against the new criminological theories.
Granted that lovely invention of irresponsibility in certain
pathological cases, and criminals ceased to exist and sick people
alone remained. The young woman, expressing approval with an
occasional nod, was busy considering how best to dismiss the count.
The others would soon be going, but he would assuredly prove
obstinate. In fact, when Philippe got up to withdraw, Georges
followed him at once--he seemed only anxious not to leave his
brother behind. Vandeuvres lingered some minutes longer, feeling
his way, as it were, and waiting to find out if, by any chance, some
important business would oblige Muffat to cede him his place. Soon,
however, when he saw the count deliberately taking up his quarters
for the night, he desisted from his purpose and said good-by, as
became a man of tact. But on his way to the door, he noticed Satin
staring fixedly at Nana, as usual. Doubtless he understood what
this meant, for he seemed amused and came and shook hands with her.
"We're not angry, eh?" he whispered. "Pray pardon me. You're the
nicer attraction of the two, on my honor!"
Satin deigned no reply. Nor did she take her eyes off Nana and the
count, who were now alone. Muffat, ceasing to be ceremonious, had
come to sit beside the young woman. He took her fingers and began
kissing them. Whereupon Nana, seeking to change the current of his
thoughts, asked him if his daughter Estelle were better. The
previous night he had been complaining of the child's melancholy
behavior--he could not even spend a day happily at his own house,
with his wife always out and his daughter icily silent.
In family matters of this kind Nana was always full of good advice,
and when Muffat abandoned all his usual self-control under the
influence of mental and physical relaxation and once more launched
out into his former plaints, she remembered the promise she had
made.
"Suppose you were to marry her?" she said. And with that she
ventured to talk of Daguenet. At the mere mention of the name the
count was filled with disgust. "Never," he said after what she had
told him!
She pretended great surprise and then burst out laughing and put her
arm round his neck.
"Oh, the jealous man! To think of it! Just argue it out a little.
Why, they slandered me to you--I was furious. At present I should
be ever so sorry if--"
But over Muffat's shoulder she met Satin's gaze. And she left him
anxiously and in a grave voice continued:
"This marriage must come off, my friend; I don't want to prevent
your daughter's happiness. The young man's most charming; you could
not possibly find a better sort."
And she launched into extraordinary praise of Daguenet. The count
had again taken her hands; he no longer refused now; he would see
about it, he said, they would talk the matter over. By and by, when
he spoke of going to bed, she sank her voice and excused herself.
It was impossible; she was not well. If he loved her at all he
would not insist! Nevertheless, he was obstinate; he refused to go
away, and she was beginning to give in when she met Satin's eyes
once more. Then she grew inflexible. No, the thing was out of the
question! The count, deeply moved and with a look of suffering, had
risen and was going in quest of his hat. But in the doorway he
remembered the set of sapphires; he could feel the case in his
pocket. He had been wanting to hide it at the bottom of the bed so
that when she entered it before him she should feel it against her
legs. Since dinnertime he had been meditating this little surprise
like a schoolboy, and now, in trouble and anguish of heart at being
thus dismissed, he gave her the case without further ceremony.
"What is it?" she queried. "Sapphires? Dear me! Oh yes, it's that
set. How sweet you are! But I say, my darling, d'you believe it's
the same one? In the shopwindow it made a much greater show."
That was all the thanks he got, and she let him go away. He noticed
Satin stretched out silent and expectant, and with that he gazed at
both women and without further insistence submitted to his fate and
went downstairs. The hall door had not yet closed when Satin caught
Nana round the waist and danced and sang. Then she ran to the
window.
"Oh, just look at the figure he cuts down in the street!" The two
women leaned upon the wrought-iron window rail in the shadow of the
curtains. One o'clock struck. The Avenue de Villiers was deserted,
and its double file of gas lamps stretched away into the darkness of
the damp March night through which great gusts of wind kept
sweeping, laden with rain. There were vague stretches of land on
either side of the road which looked like gulfs of shadow, while
scaffoldings round mansions in process of construction loomed upward
under the dark sky. They laughed uncontrollably as they watched
Muffat's rounded back and glistening shadow disappearing along the
wet sidewalk into the glacial, desolate plains of new Paris. But
Nana silenced Satin.
"Take care; there are the police!"
Thereupon they smothered their laughter and gazed in secret fear at
two dark figures walking with measured tread on the opposite side of
the avenue. Amid all her luxurious surroundings, amid all the royal
splendors of the woman whom all must obey, Nana still stood in
horror of the police and did not like to hear them mentioned any
oftener than death. She felt distinctly unwell when a policeman
looked up at her house. One never knew what such people might do!
They might easily take them for loose women if they heard them
laughing at that hour of the night. Satin, with a little shudder,
had squeezed herself up against Nana. Nevertheless, the pair stayed
where they were and were soon interested in the approach of a
lantern, the light of which danced over the puddles in the road. It
was an old ragpicker woman who was busy raking in the gutters.
Satin recognized her.
"Dear me," she exclaimed, "it's Queen Pomare with her wickerwork
shawl!"
And while a gust of wind lashed the fine rain in their faces she
told her beloved the story of Queen Pomare. Oh, she had been a
splendid girl once upon a time: all Paris had talked of her beauty.
And such devilish go and such cheek! Why, she led the men about
like dogs, and great people stood blubbering on her stairs! Now she
was in the habit of getting tipsy, and the women round about would
make her drink absinthe for the sake of a laugh, after which the
street boys would throw stones at her and chase her. In fact, it
was a regular smashup; the queen had tumbled into the mud! Nana
listened, feeling cold all over.
"You shall see," added Satin.
She whistled a man's whistle, and the ragpicker, who was then below
the window, lifted her head and showed herself by the yellow flare
of her lantern. Framed among rags, a perfect bundle of them, a face
looked out from under a tattered kerchief--a blue, seamed face with
a toothless, cavernous mouth and fiery bruises where the eyes should
be. And Nana, seeing the frightful old woman, the wanton drowned in
drink, had a sudden fit of recollection and saw far back amid the
shadows of consciousness the vision of Chamont--Irma d'Anglars, the
old harlot crowned with years and honors, ascending the steps in
front of her chateau amid abjectly reverential villagers. Then as
Satin whistled again, making game of the old hag, who could not see
her:
"Do leave off; there are the police!" she murmured in changed tones.
"In with us, quick, my pet!"
The measured steps were returning, and they shut the window.
Turning round again, shivering, and with the damp of night on her
hair, Nana was momentarily astounded at sight of her drawing room.
It seemed as though she had forgotten it and were entering an
unknown chamber. So warm, so full of perfume, was the air she
encountered that she experienced a sense of delighted surprise. The
heaped-up wealth of the place, the Old World furniture, the fabrics
of silk and gold, the ivory, the bronzes, were slumbering in the
rosy light of the lamps, while from the whole of the silent house a
rich feeling of great luxury ascended, the luxury of the solemn
reception rooms, of the comfortable, ample dining room, of the vast
retired staircase, with their soft carpets and seats. Her
individuality, with its longing for domination and enjoyment and its
desire to possess everything that she might destroy everything, was
suddenly increased. Never before had she felt so profoundly the
puissance of her sex. She gazed slowly round and remarked with an
expression of grave philosophy:
"Ah well, all the same, one's jolly well right to profit by things
when one's young!"
But now Satin was rolling on the bearskins in the bedroom and
calling her.
"Oh, do come! Do come!"
Nana undressed in the dressing room, and in order to be quicker
about it she took her thick fell of blonde hair in both hands and
began shaking it above the silver wash hand basin, while a downward
hail of long hairpins rang a little chime on the shining metal.
CHAPTER XI
One Sunday the race for the Grand Prix de Paris was being run in the
Bois de Boulogne beneath skies rendered sultry by the first heats of
June. The sun that morning had risen amid a mist of dun-colored
dust, but toward eleven o'clock, just when the carriages were
reaching the Longchamps course, a southerly wind had swept away the
clouds; long streamers of gray vapor were disappearing across the
sky, and gaps showing an intense blue beyond were spreading from one
end of the horizon to the other. In the bright bursts of sunlight
which alternated with the clouds the whole scene shone again, from
the field which was gradually filling with a crowd of carriages,
horsemen and pedestrians, to the still-vacant course, where the
judge's box stood, together with the posts and the masts for
signaling numbers, and thence on to the five symmetrical stands of
brickwork and timber, rising gallery upon gallery in the middle of
the weighing enclosure opposite. Beyond these, bathed in the light
of noon, lay the vast level plain, bordered with little trees and
shut in to the westward by the wooded heights of Saint-Cloud and the
Suresnes, which, in their turn, were dominated by the severe
outlines of Mont-Valerien.
Nana, as excited as if the Grand Prix were going to make her
fortune, wanted to take up a position by the railing next the
winning post. She had arrived very early--she was, in fact, one of
the first to come--in a landau adorned with silver and drawn, a la
Daumont, by four splendid white horses. This landau was a present
from Count Muffat. When she had made her appearance at the entrance
to the field with two postilions jogging blithely on the near horses
and two footmen perching motionless behind the carriage, the people
had rushed to look as though a queen were passing. She sported the
blue and white colors of the Vandeuvres stable, and her dress was
remarkable. It consisted of a little blue silk bodice and tunic,
which fitted closely to the body and bulged out enormously behind
her waist, thereby bringing her lower limbs into bold relief in such
a manner as to be extremely noticeable in that epoch of voluminous
skirts. Then there was a white satin dress with white satin sleeves
and a sash worn crosswise over the shoulders, the whole ornamented
with silver guipure which shone in the sun. In addition to this, in
order to be still more like a jockey, she had stuck a blue toque
with a white feather jauntily upon her chignon, the fair tresses
from which flowed down beyond her shoulders and resembled an
enormous russet pigtail.
Twelve struck. The public would have to wait more than three hours
for the Grand Prix to be run. When the landau had drawn up beside
the barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she
were in her own house. A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and
Louiset with her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering
with cold despite the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of
ribbons and laces the child's poor little face looked waxen and dumb
and white in the open air. Meanwhile the young woman, without
troubling about the people near her, talked at the top of her voice
with Georges and Philippe Hugon, who were seated opposite on the
front seat among such a mountain of bouquets of white roses and blue
myosotis that they were buried up to their shoulders.
"Well then," she was saying, "as he bored me to death, I showed him
the door. And now it's two days that he's been sulking."
She was talking of Muffat, but she took care not to confess to the
young men the real reason for this first quarrel, which was that one
evening he had found a man's hat in her bedroom. She had indeed
brought home a passer-by out of sheer ennui--a silly infatuation.
"You have no idea how funny he is," she continued, growing merry
over the particulars she was giving. "He's a regular bigot at
bottom, so he says his prayers every evening. Yes, he does. He's
