fears and atrocious fancies would thrill her with waking nightmares.
She continued:
"I say, d'you think I shall go to heaven?"
And with that she shivered, while the count, in his surprise at her
putting such singular questions at such a moment, felt his old
religious remorse returning upon him. Then with her chemise
slipping from her shoulders and her hair unpinned, she again threw
herself upon his breast, sobbing and clinging to him as she did so.
"I'm afraid of dying! I'm afraid of dying!" He had all the trouble
in the world to disengage himself. Indeed, he was himself afraid of
giving in to the sudden madness of this woman clinging to his body
in her dread of the Invisible. Such dread is contagious, and he
reasoned with her. Her conduct was perfect--she had only to conduct
herself well in order one day to merit pardon. But she shook her
head. Doubtless she was doing no one any harm; nay, she was even in
the constant habit of wearing a medal of the Virgin, which she
showed to him as it hung by a red thread between her breasts. Only
it had been foreordained that all unmarried women who held
conversation with men would go to hell. Scraps of her catechism
recurred to her remembrance. Ah, if one only knew for certain, but,
alas, one was sure of nothing; nobody ever brought back any
information, and then, truly, it would be stupid to bother oneself
about things if the priests were talking foolishness all the time.
Nevertheless, she religiously kissed her medal, which was still warm
from contact with her skin, as though by way of charm against death,
the idea of which filled her with icy horror. Muffat was obliged to
accompany her into the dressing room, for she shook at the idea of
being alone there for one moment, even though she had left the door
open. When he had lain down again she still roamed about the room,
visiting its several corners and starting and shivering at the
slightest noise. A mirror stopped her, and as of old she lapsed
into obvious contemplation of her nakedness. But the sight of her
breast, her waist and her thighs only doubled her terror, and she
ended by feeling with both hands very slowly over the bones of her
face.
"You're ugly when you're dead," she said in deliberate tones.
And she pressed her cheeks, enlarging her eyes and pushing down her
jaw, in order to see how she would look. Thus disfigured, she
turned toward the count.
"Do look! My head'll be quite small, it will!"
At this he grew vexed.
"You're mad; come to bed!"
He fancied he saw her in a grave, emaciated by a century of sleep,
and he joined his hands and stammered a prayer. It was some time
ago that the religious sense had reconquered him, and now his daily
access of faith had again assumed the apoplectic intensity which was
wont to leave him well-nigh stunned. The joints of his fingers used
to crack, and he would repeat without cease these words only: "My
God, my God, my God!" It was the cry of his impotence, the cry of
that sin against which, though his damnation was certain, he felt
powerless to strive. When Nana returned she found him hidden
beneath the bedclothes; he was haggard; he had dug his nails into
his bosom, and his eyes stared upward as though in search of heaven.
And with that she started to weep again. Then they both embraced,
and their teeth chattered they knew not why, as the same imbecile
obsession over-mastered them. They had already passed a similar
night, but on this occasion the thing was utterly idiotic, as Nana
declared when she ceased to be frightened. She suspected something,
and this caused her to question the count in a prudent sort of way.
It might be that Rose Mignon had sent the famous letter! But that
was not the case; it was sheer fright, nothing more, for he was
still ignorant whether he was a cuckold or no.
Two days later, after a fresh disappearance, Muffat presented
himself in the morning, a time of day at which he never came. He
was livid; his eyes were red and his whole man still shaken by a
great internal struggle. But Zoe, being scared herself, did not
notice his troubled state. She had run to meet him and now began
crying:
"Oh, monsieur, do come in! Madame nearly died yesterday evening!"
And when he asked for particulars:
"Something it's impossible to believe has happened--a miscarriage,
monsieur."
Nana had been in the family way for the past three months. For long
she had simply thought herself out of sorts, and Dr Boutarel had
himself been in doubt. But when afterward he made her a decisive
announcement, she felt so bored thereby that she did all she
possibly could to disguise her condition. Her nervous terrors, her
dark humors, sprang to some extent from this unfortunate state of
things, the secret of which she kept very shamefacedly, as became a
courtesan mother who is obliged to conceal her plight. The thing
struck her as a ridiculous accident, which made her appear small in
her own eyes and would, had it been known, have led people to chaff
her.
"A poor joke, eh?" she said. "Bad luck, too, certainly."
She was necessarily very sharp set when she thought her last hour
had come. There was no end to her surprise, too; her sexual economy
seemed to her to have got out of order; it produced children then
even when one did not want them and when one employed it for quite
other purposes! Nature drove her to exasperation; this appearance
of serious motherhood in a career of pleasure, this gift of life
amid all the deaths she was spreading around, exasperated her. Why
could one not dispose of oneself as fancy dictated, without all this
fuss? And whence had this brat come? She could not even suggest a
father. Ah, dear heaven, the man who made him would have a splendid
notion had he kept him in his own hands, for nobody asked for him;
he was in everybody's way, and he would certainly not have much
happiness in life!
Meanwhile Zoe described the catastrophe.
"Madame was seized with colic toward four o'clock. When she didn't
come back out of the dressing room I went in and found her lying
stretched on the floor in a faint. Yes, monsieur, on the floor in a
pool of blood, as though she had been murdered. Then I understood,
you see. I was furious; Madame might quite well have confided her
trouble to me. As it happened, Monsieur Georges was there, and he
helped me to lift her up, and directly a miscarriage was mentioned
he felt ill in his turn! Oh, it's true I've had the hump since
yesterday!"
In fact, the house seemed utterly upset. All the servants were
galloping upstairs, downstairs and through the rooms. Georges had
passed the night on an armchair in the drawing room. It was he who
had announced the news to Madame's friends at that hour of the
evening when Madame was in the habit of receiving. He had still
been very pale, and he had told his story very feelingly, and as
though stupefied. Steiner, La Faloise, Philippe and others,
besides, had presented themselves, and at the end of the lad's first
phrase they burst into exclamations. The thing was impossible! It
must be a farce! After which they grew serious and gazed with an
embarrassed expression at her bedroom door. They shook their heads;
it was no laughing matter.
Till midnight a dozen gentlemen had stood talking in low voices in
front of the fireplace. All were friends; all were deeply exercised
by the same idea of paternity. They seemed to be mutually excusing
themselves, and they looked as confused as if they had done
something clumsy. Eventually, however, they put a bold face on the
matter. It had nothing to do with them: the fault was hers! What a
stunner that Nana was, eh? One would never have believed her
capable of such a fake! And with that they departed one by one,
walking on tiptoe, as though in a chamber of death where you cannot
laugh.
"Come up all the same, monsieur," said Zoe to Muffat. "Madame is
much better and will see you. We are expecting the doctor, who
promised to come back this morning."
The lady's maid had persuaded Georges to go back home to sleep, and
upstairs in the drawing room only Satin remained. She lay stretched
on a divan, smoking a cigarette and scanning the ceiling. Amid the
household scare which had followed the accident she had been white
with rage, had shrugged her shoulders violently and had made
ferocious remarks. Accordingly, when Zoe was passing in front of
her and telling Monsieur that poor, dear Madame had suffered a great
deal:
"That's right; it'll teach him!" said Satin curtly.
They turned round in surprise, but she had not moved a muscle; her
eyes were still turned toward the ceiling, and her cigarette was
still wedged tightly between her lips.
"Dear me, you're charming, you are!" said Zoe.
But Satin sat up, looked savagely at the count and once more hurled
her remark at him.
"That's right; it'll teach him!"
And she lay down again and blew forth a thin jet of smoke, as though
she had no interest in present events and were resolved not to
meddle in any of them. No, it was all too silly!
Zoe, however, introduced Muffat into the bedroom, where a scent of
ether lingered amid warm, heavy silence, scarce broken by the dull
roll of occasional carriages in the Avenue de Villiers. Nana,
looking very white on her pillow, was lying awake with wide-open,
meditative eyes. She smiled when she saw the count but did not
move.
"Ah, dear pet!" she slowly murmured. "I really thought I should
never see you again."
Then as he leaned forward to kiss her on the hair, she grew tender
toward him and spoke frankly about the child, as though he were its
father.
"I never dared tell you; I felt so happy about it! Oh, I used to
dream about it; I should have liked to be worthy of you! And now
there's nothing left. Ah well, perhaps that's best. I don't want
to bring a stumbling block into your life."
Astounded by this story of paternity, he began stammering vague
phrases. He had taken a chair and had sat down by the bed, leaning
one arm on the coverlet. Then the young woman noticed his wild
expression, the blood reddening his eyes, the fever that set his
lips aquiver.
"What's the matter then?" she asked. "You're ill too."
"No," he answered with extreme difficulty.
She gazed at him with a profound expression. Then she signed to Zoe
to retire, for the latter was lingering round arranging the medicine
bottles. And when they were alone she drew him down to her and
again asked:
"What's the matter with you, darling? The tears are ready to burst
from your eyes--I can see that quite well. Well now, speak out;
you've come to tell me something."
"No, no, I swear I haven't," he blurted out. But he was choking
with suffering, and this sickroom, into which he had suddenly
entered unawares, so worked on his feelings that he burst out
sobbing and buried his face in the bedclothes to smother the
violence of his grief. Nana understood. Rose Mignon had most
assuredly decided to send the letter. She let him weep for some
moments, and he was shaken by convulsions so fierce that the bed
trembled under her. At length in accents of motherly compassion she
queried:
"You've had bothers at your home?"
He nodded affirmatively. She paused anew, and then very low:
"Then you know all?"
He nodded assent. And a heavy silence fell over the chamber of
suffering. The night before, on his return from a party given by
the empress, he had received the letter Sabine had written her
lover. After an atrocious night passed in the meditation of
vengeance he had gone out in the morning in order to resist a
longing which prompted him to kill his wife. Outside, under a
sudden, sweet influence of a fine June morning, he had lost the
thread of his thoughts and had come to Nana's, as he always came at
terrible moments in his life. There only he gave way to his misery,
for he felt a cowardly joy at the thought that she would console
him.
"Now look here, be calm!" the young woman continued, becoming at the
same time extremely kind. "I've known it a long time, but it was
certainly not I that would have opened your eyes. You remember you
had your doubts last year, but then things arranged themselves,
owing to my prudence. In fact, you wanted proofs. The deuce,
you've got one today, and I know it's hard lines. Nevertheless, you
must look at the matter quietly: you're not dishonored because it's
happened."
He had left off weeping. A sense of shame restrained him from
saying what he wanted to, although he had long ago slipped into the
most intimate confessions about his household. She had to encourage
him. Dear me, she was a woman; she could understand everything.
When in a dull voice he exclaimed:
"You're ill. What's the good of tiring you? It was stupid of me to
have come. I'm going--"
"No," she answered briskly enough. "Stay! Perhaps I shall be able
to give you some good advice. Only don't make me talk too much; the
medical man's forbidden it."
He had ended by rising, and he was now walking up and down the room.
Then she questioned him:
"Now what are you going to do?
"I'm going to box the man's ears--by heavens, yes!"
She pursed up her lips disapprovingly.
"That's not very wise. And about your wife?"
"I shall go to law; I've proofs."
"Not at all wise, my dear boy. It's stupid even. You know I shall
