steadily and markedly at the Countess Sabine. After which, as she
was passing in front of the imperial stand, the sight of Muffat,
looming in all his official stiffness by the side of the empress,
made her very merry.
"Oh, how silly he looks!" she said at the top of her voice to
Vandeuvres. She was anxious to pay everything a visit. This small
parklike region, with its green lawns and groups of trees, rather
charmed her than otherwise. A vendor of ices had set up a large
buffet near the entrance gates, and beneath a rustic thatched roof a
dense throng of people were shouting and gesticulating. This was
the ring. Close by were some empty stalls, and Nana was
disappointed at discovering only a gendarme's horse there. Then
there was the paddock, a small course some hundred meters in
circumference, where a stable help was walking about Valerio II in
his horsecloths. And, oh, what a lot of men on the graveled
sidewalks, all of them with their tickets forming an orange-colored
patch in their bottonholes! And what a continual parade of people
in the open galleries of the grandstands! The scene interested her
for a moment or two, but truly, it was not worth while getting the
spleen because they didn't admit you inside here.
Daguenet and Fauchery passed by and bowed to her. She made them a
sign, and they had to come up. Thereupon she made hay of the
weighing-in enclosure. But she broke off abruptly:
"Dear me, there's the Marquis de Chouard! How old he's growing!
That old man's killing himself! Is he still as mad about it as
ever?"
Thereupon Daguenet described the old man's last brilliant stroke.
The story dated from the day before yesterday, and no one knew it as
yet. After dangling about for months he had bought her daughter
Amelie from Gaga for thirty thousand francs, they said.
"Good gracious! That's a nice business!" cried Nana in disgust. "Go
in for the regular thing, please! But now that I come to think of
it, that must be Lili down there on the grass with a lady in a
brougham. I recognized the face. The old boy will have brought her
out."
Vandeuvres was not listening; he was impatient and longed to get rid
of her. But Fauchery having remarked at parting that if she had not
seen the bookmakers she had seen nothing, the count was obliged to
take her to them in spite of his obvious repugnance. And she was
perfectly happy at once; that truly was a curious sight, she said!
Amid lawns bordered by young horse-chestnut trees there was a round
open enclosure, where, forming a vast circle under the shadow of the
tender green leaves, a dense line of bookmakers was waiting for
betting men, as though they had been hucksters at a fair. In order
to overtop and command the surrounding crowd they had taken up
positions on wooden benches, and they were advertising their prices
on the trees beside them. They had an ever-vigilant glance, and
they booked wagers in answer to a single sign, a mere wink, so
rapidly that certain curious onlookers watched them openmouthed,
without being able to understand it all. Confusion reigned; prices
were shouted, and any unexpected change in a quotation was received
with something like tumult. Occasionally scouts entered the place
at a run and redoubled the uproar as they stopped at the entrance to
the rotunda and, at the tops of their voices, announced departures
and arrivals. In this place, where the gambling fever was pulsing
in the sunshine, such announcements were sure to raise a prolonged
muttering sound.
"They ARE funny!" murmured Nana, greatly entertained.
"Their features look as if they had been put on the wrong way. Just
you see that big fellow there; I shouldn't care to meet him all
alone in the middle of a wood."
But Vandeuvres pointed her out a bookmaker, once a shopman in a
fancy repository, who had made three million francs in two years.
He was slight of build, delicate and fair, and people all round him
treated him with great respect. They smiled when they addressed
him, while others took up positions close by in order to catch a
glimpse of him.
They were at length leaving the ring when Vandeuvres nodded slightly
to another bookmaker, who thereupon ventured to call him. It was
one of his former coachmen, an enormous fellow with the shoulders of
an ox and a high color. Now that he was trying his fortunes at race
meetings on the strength of some mysteriously obtained capital, the
count was doing his utmost to push him, confiding to him his secret
bets and treating him on all occasions as a servant to whom one
shows one's true character. Yet despite this protection, the man
had in rapid succession lost very heavy sums, and today he, too, was
playing his last card. There was blood in his eyes; he looked fit
to drop with apoplexy.
"Well, Marechal," queried the count in the lowest of voices, "to
what amount have you laid odds?"
"To five thousand louis, Monsieur le Comte," replied the bookmaker,
likewise lowering his voice. "A pretty job, eh? I'll confess to
you that I've increased the odds; I've made it three to one."
Vandeuvres looked very much put out.
"No, no, I don't want you to do that. Put it at two to one again
directly. I shan't tell you any more, Marechal."
"Oh, how can it hurt, Monsieur le Comte, at this time o' day?"
rejoined the other with the humble smile befitting an accomplice.
"I had to attract the people so as to lay your two thousand louis."
At this Vandeuvres silenced him. But as he was going off Marechal
remembered something and was sorry he had not questioned him about
the shortening of the odds on the filly. It would be a nice
business for him if the filly stood a chance, seeing that he had
just laid fifty to one about her in two hundreds.
Nana, though she did not understand a word of what the count was
whispering, dared not, however, ask for new explanations. He seemed
more nervous than before and abruptly handed her over to Labordette,
whom they came upon in front of the weighing-in room.
"You'll take her back," he said. "I've got something on hand. Au
revoir!"
And he entered the room, which was narrow and low-pitched and half
filled with a great pair of scales. It was like a waiting room in a
suburban station, and Nana was again hugely disillusioned, for she
had been picturing to herself something on a very vast scale, a
monumental machine, in fact, for weighing horses. Dear me, they
only weighed the jockeys! Then it wasn't worth while making such a
fuss with their weighing! In the scale a jockey with an idiotic
expression was waiting, harness on knee, till a stout man in a frock
coat should have done verifying his weight. At the door a stable
help was holding a horse, Cosinus, round which a silent and deeply
interested throng was clustering.
The course was about to be cleared. Labordette hurried Nana but
retraced his steps in order to show her a little man talking with
Vandeuvres at some distance from the rest.
"Dear me, there's Price!" he said.
"Ah yes, the man who's mounting me," she murmured laughingly.
And she declared him to be exquisitely ugly. All jockeys struck her
as looking idiotic, doubtless, she said, because they were prevented
from growing bigger. This particular jockey was a man of forty, and
with his long, thin, deeply furrowed, hard, dead countenance, he
looked like an old shriveled-up child. His body was knotty and so
reduced in size that his blue jacket with its white sleeves looked
as if it had been thrown over a lay figure.
"No," she resumed as she walked away, "he would never make me very
happy, you know."
A mob of people were still crowding the course, the turf of which
had been wet and trampled on till it had grown black. In front of
the two telegraphs, which hung very high up on their cast-iron
pillars, the crowd were jostling together with upturned faces,
uproariously greeting the numbers of the different horses as an
electric wire in connection with the weighing room made them appear.
Gentlemen were pointing at programs: Pichenette had been scratched
by his owner, and this caused some noise. However, Nana did not do
more than cross over the course on Labordette's arm. The bell
hanging on the flagstaff was ringing persistently to warn people to
leave the course.
"Ah, my little dears," she said as she got up into her landau again,
"their enclosure's all humbug!"
She was welcomed with acclamation; people around her clapped their
hands.
"Bravo, Nana! Nana's ours again!"
What idiots they were, to be sure! Did they think she was the sort
to cut old friends? She had come back just at the auspicious
moment. Now then, 'tenshun! The race was beginning! And the
champagne was accordingly forgotten, and everyone left off drinking.
But Nana was astonished to find Gaga in her carriage, sitting with
Bijou and Louiset on her knees. Gaga had indeed decided on this
course of action in order to be near La Faloise, but she told Nana
that she had been anxious to kiss Baby. She adored children.
"By the by, what about Lili?" asked Nana. "That's certainly she
over there in that old fellow's brougham. They've just told me
something very nice!"
Gaga had adopted a lachrymose expression.
"My dear, it's made me ill," she said dolorously. "Yesterday I had
to keep my bed, I cried so, and today I didn't think I should be
able to come. You know what my opinions were, don't you? I didn't
desire that kind of thing at all. I had her educated in a convent
with a view to a good marriage. And then to think of the strict
advice she had and the constant watching! Well, my dear, it was she
who wished it. We had such a scene--tears--disagreeable speeches!
It even got to such a point that I caught her a box on the ear. She
was too much bored by existence, she said; she wanted to get out of
it. By and by, when she began to say, ''Tisn't you, after all,
who've got the right to prevent me,' I said to her: 'you're a
miserable wretch; you're bringing dishonor upon us. Begone!' And
it was done. I consented to arrange about it. But my last hope's
blooming well blasted, and, oh, I used to dream about such nice
things!"
The noise of a quarrel caused them to rise. It was Georges in the
act of defending Vandeuvres against certain vague rumors which were
circulating among the various groups.
"Why should you say that he's laying off his own horse?" the young
man was exclaiming. "Yesterday in the Salon des Courses he took the
odds on Lusignan for a thousand louis."
"Yes, I was there," said Philippe in affirmation of this. "And he
didn't put a single louis on Nana. If the betting's ten to one
against Nana he's got nothing to win there. It's absurd to imagine
people are so calculating. Where would his interest come in?"
Labordette was listening with a quiet expression. Shrugging his
shoulders, he said:
"Oh, leave them alone; they must have their say. The count has
again laid at least as much as five hundred louis on Lusignan, and
if he's wanted Nana to run to a hundred louis it's because an owner
ought always to look as if he believes in his horses."
"Oh, bosh! What the deuce does that matter to us?" shouted La
Faloise with a wave of his arms. "Spirit's going to win! Down with
France--bravo, England!"
A long shiver ran through the crowd, while a fresh peal from the
bell announced the arrival of the horses upon the racecourse. At
this Nana got up and stood on one of the seats of her carriage so as
to obtain a better view, and in so doing she trampled the bouquets
of roses and myosotis underfoot. With a sweeping glance she took in
the wide, vast horizon. At this last feverish moment the course was
empty and closed by gray barriers, between the posts of which stood
a line of policemen. The strip of grass which lay muddy in front of
her grew brighter as it stretched away and turned into a tender
green carpet in the distance. In the middle landscape, as she
lowered her eyes, she saw the field swarming with vast numbers of
people, some on tiptoe, others perched on carriages, and all heaving
and jostling in sudden passionate excitement.
Horses were neighing; tent canvases flapped, while equestrians urged
their hacks forward amid a crowd of pedestrians rushing to get
places along the barriers. When Nana turned in the direction of the
stands on the other side the faces seemed diminished, and the dense
masses of heads were only a confused and motley array, filling
gangways, steps and terraces and looming in deep, dark, serried
lines against the sky. And beyond these again she over looked the
plain surrounding the course. Behind the ivy-clad mill to the
right, meadows, dotted over with great patches of umbrageous wood,
stretched away into the distance, while opposite to her, as far as
the Seine flowing at the foot of a hill, the avenues of the park
intersected one another, filled at that moment with long, motionless
files of waiting carriages; and in the direction of Boulogne, on the
left, the landscape widened anew and opened out toward the blue
distances of Meudon through an avenue of paulownias, whose rosy,
leafless tops were one stain of brilliant lake color. People were
still arriving, and a long procession of human ants kept coming
along the narrow ribbon of road which crossed the distance, while
very far away, on the Paris side, the nonpaying public, herding like
