Now and again amid the wan confusion of heads a woman's face with
shining eyes and parted lips stood sharply out as it was whirled
away by the dance, the light of the lusters gleaming on the white
skin. Mme du Joncquoy declared that the present proceedings were
senseless. It was madness to crowd five hundred people into a room
which would scarcely contain two hundred. In fact, why not sign the
wedding contract on the Place du Carrousel? This was the outcome of
the new code of manners, said Mme Chantereau. In old times these
solemnities took place in the bosom of the family, but today one
must have a mob of people; the whole street must be allowed to enter
quite freely, and there must be a great crush, or else the evening
seems a chilly affair. People now advertised their luxury and
introduced the mere foam on the wave of Parisian society into their
houses, and accordingly it was only too natural if illicit
proceedings such as they had been discussing afterward polluted the
hearth. The ladies complained that they could not recognize more
than fifty people. Where did all this crowd spring from? Young
girls with low necks were making a great display of their shoulders.
A woman had a golden dagger stuck in her chignon, while a bodice
thickly embroidered with jet beads clothed her in what looked like a
coat of mail. People's eyes kept following another lady smilingly,
so singularly marked were her clinging skirts. All the luxuriant
splendor of the departing winter was there--the overtolerant world
of pleasure, the scratch gathering a hostess can get together after
a first introduction, the sort of society, in fact, in which great
names and great shames jostle together in the same fierce quest of
enjoyment. The heat was increasing, and amid the overcrowded rooms
the quadrille unrolled the cadenced symmetry of its figures.
"Very smart--the countess!" La Faloise continued at the garden door.
"She's ten years younger than her daughter. By the by, Foucarmont,
you must decide on a point. Vandeuvres once bet that she had no
thighs."
This affectation of cynicism bored the other gentlemen, and
Foucarmont contented himself by saying:
"Ask your cousin, dear boy. Here he is."
"Jove, it's a happy thought!" cried La Faloise. "I bet ten louis
she has thighs."
Fauchery did indeed come up. As became a constant inmate of the
house, he had gone round by the dining room in order to avoid the
crowded doors. Rose had taken him up again at the beginning of the
winter, and he was now dividing himself between the singer and the
countess, but he was extremely fatigued and did not know how to get
rid of one of them. Sabine flattered his vanity, but Rose amused
him more than she. Besides, the passion Rose felt was a real one:
her tenderness for him was marked by a conjugal fidelity which drove
Mignon to despair.
"Listen, we want some information," said La Faloise as he squeezed
his cousin's arm. "You see that lady in white silk?"
Ever since his inheritance had given him a kind of insolent dash of
manner he had affected to chaff Fauchery, for he had an old grudge
to satisfy and wanted to be revenged for much bygone raillery,
dating from the days when he was just fresh from his native
province.
"Yes, that lady with the lace."
The journalist stood on tiptoe, for as yet he did not understand.
"The countess?" he said at last.
"Exactly, my good friend. I've bet ten louis--now, has she thighs?"
And he fell a-laughing, for he was delighted to have succeeded in
snubbing a fellow who had once come heavily down on him for asking
whether the countess slept with anyone. But Fauchery, without
showing the very slightest astonishment, looked fixedly at him.
"Get along, you idiot!" he said finally as he shrugged his
shoulders.
Then he shook hands with the other gentlemen, while La Faloise, in
his discomfiture, felt rather uncertain whether he had said
something funny. The men chatted. Since the races the banker and
Foucarmont had formed part of the set in the Avenue de Villiers.
Nana was going on much better, and every evening the count came and
asked how she did. Meanwhile Fauchery, though he listened, seemed
preoccupied, for during a quarrel that morning Rose had roundly
confessed to the sending of the letter. Oh yes, he might present
himself at his great lady's house; he would be well received! After
long hesitation he had come despite everything--out of sheer
courage. But La Faloise's imbecile pleasantry had upset him in
spite of his apparent tranquillity.
"What's the matter?" asked Philippe. "You seem in trouble."
"I do? Not at all. I've been working: that's why I came so late."
Then coldly, in one of those heroic moods which, although unnoticed,
are wont to solve the vulgar tragedies of existence:
"All the same, I haven't made my bow to our hosts. One must be
civil."
He even ventured on a joke, for he turned to La Faloise and said:
"Eh, you idiot?"
And with that he pushed his way through the crowd. The valet's full
voice was no longer shouting out names, but close to the door the
count and countess were still talking, for they were detained by
ladies coming in. At length he joined them, while the gentlemen who
were still on the garden steps stood on tiptoe so as to watch the
scene. Nana, they thought, must have been chattering.
"The count hasn't noticed him," muttered Georges. "Look out! He's
turning round; there, it's done!"
The band had again taken up the waltz in the Blonde Venus. Fauchery
had begun by bowing to the countess, who was still smiling in
ecstatic serenity. After which he had stood motionless a moment,
waiting very calmly behind the count's back. That evening the
count's deportment was one of lofty gravity: he held his head high,
as became the official and the great dignitary. And when at last he
lowered his gaze in the direction of the journalist he seemed still
further to emphasize the majesty of his attitude. For some seconds
the two men looked at one another. It was Fauchery who first
stretched out his hand. Muffat gave him his. Their hands remained
clasped, and the Countess Sabine with downcast eyes stood smiling
before them, while the waltz continually beat out its mocking,
vagabond rhythm.
"But the thing's going on wheels!" said Steiner.
"Are their hands glued together?" asked Foucarmont, surprised at
this prolonged clasp. A memory he could not forget brought a faint
glow to Fanchery's pale cheeks, and in his mind's eye he saw the
property room bathed in greenish twilight and filled with dusty
bric-a-brac. And Muffat was there, eggcup in hand, making a clever
use of his suspicions. At this moment Muffat was no longer
suspicious, and the last vestige of his dignity was crumbling in
ruin. Fauchery's fears were assuaged, and when he saw the frank
gaiety of the countess he was seized with a desire to laugh. The
thing struck him as comic.
"Aha, here she is at last!" cried La Faloise, who did not abandon a
jest when he thought it a good one. "D'you see Nana coming in over
there?"
"Hold your tongue, do, you idiot!" muttered Philippe.
"But I tell you, it is Nana! They're playing her waltz for her, by
Jove! She's making her entry. And she takes part in the
reconciliation, the devil she does! What? You don't see her?
She's squeezing all three of 'em to her heart--my cousin Fauchery,
my lady cousin and her husband, and she's calling 'em her dear
kitties. Oh, those family scenes give me a turn!"
Estelle had come up, and Fauchery complimented her while she stood
stiffly up in her rose-colored dress, gazing at him with the
astonished look of a silent child and constantly glancing aside at
her father and mother. Daguenet, too, exchanged a hearty shake of
the hand with the journalist. Together they made up a smiling
group, while M. Venot came gliding in behind them. He gloated over
them with a beatified expression and seemed to envelop them in his
pious sweetness, for he rejoiced in these last instances of self-
abandonment which were preparing the means of grace.
But the waltz still beat out its swinging, laughing, voluptuous
measure; it was like a shrill continuation of the life of pleasure
which was beating against the old house like a rising tide. The
band blew louder trills from their little flutes; their violins sent
forth more swooning notes. Beneath the Genoa velvet hangings, the
gilding and the paintings, the lusters exhaled a living heat and a
great glow of sunlight, while the crowd of guests, multiplied in the
surrounding mirrors, seemed to grow and increase as the murmur of
many voices rose ever louder. The couples who whirled round the
drawing room, arm about waist, amid the smiles of the seated ladies,
still further accentuated the quaking of the floors. In the garden
a dull, fiery glow fell from the Venetian lanterns and threw a
distant reflection of flame over the dark shadows moving in search
of a breath of air about the walks at its farther end. And this
trembling of walls and this red glow of light seemed to betoken a
great ultimate conflagration in which the fabric of an ancient honor
was cracking and burning on every side. The shy early beginnings of
gaiety, of which Fauchery one April evening had heard the vocal
expression in the sound of breaking glass, had little by little
grown bolder, wilder, till they had burst forth in this festival.
Now the rift was growing; it was crannying the house and announcing
approaching downfall. Among drunkards in the slums it is black
misery, an empty cupboard, which put an end to ruined families; it
is the madness of drink which empties the wretched beds. Here the
waltz tune was sounding the knell of an old race amid the suddenly
ignited ruins of accumulated wealth, while Nana, although unseen,
stretched her lithe limbs above the dancers' heads and sent
corruption through their caste, drenching the hot air with the
ferment of her exhalations and the vagabond lilt of the music.
On the evening after the celebration of the church marriage Count
Muffat made his appearance in his wife's bedroom, where he had not
entered for the last two years. At first, in her great surprise,
the countess drew back from him. But she was still smiling the
intoxicated smile which she now always wore. He began stammering in
extreme embarrassment; whereupon she gave him a short moral lecture.
However, neither of them risked a decisive explanation. It was
religion, they pretended, which required this process of mutual
forgiveness, and they agreed by a tacit understanding to retain
their freedom. Before going to bed, seeing that the countess still
appeared to hesitate, they had a business conversation, and the
count was the first to speak of selling the Bordes. She consented
at once. They both stood in great want of money, and they would
share and share alike. This completed the reconciliation, and
Muffat, remorseful though he was, felt veritably relieved.
That very day, as Nana was dozing toward two in the afternoon, Zoe
made so bold as to knock at her bedroom door. The curtains were
drawn to, and a hot breath of wind kept blowing through a window
into the fresh twilight stillness within. During these last days
the young woman had been getting up and about again, but she was
still somewhat weak. She opened her eyes and asked:
"Who is it?"
Zoe was about to reply, but Daguenet pushed by her and announced
himself in person. Nana forthwith propped herself up on her pillow
and, dismissing the lady's maid:
"What! Is that you?" she cried. "On the day of your marriage?
What can be the matter?"
Taken aback by the darkness, he stood still in the middle of the
room. However, he grew used to it and came forward at last. He was
in evening dress and wore a white cravat and gloves.
"Yes, to be sure, it's me!" he said. "You don't remember?"
No, she remembered nothing, and in his chaffing way he had to offer
himself frankly to her.
"Come now, here's your commission. I've brought you the handsel of
my innocence!"
And with that, as he was now by the bedside, she caught him in her
bare arms and shook with merry laughter and almost cried, she
thought it so pretty of him.
"Oh, that Mimi, how funny he is! He's thought of it after all! And
to think I didn't remember it any longer! So you've slipped off;
you're just out of church. Yes, certainly, you've got a scent of
incense about you. But kiss me, kiss me! Oh, harder than that,
Mimi dear! Bah! Perhaps it's for the last time."
In the dim room, where a vague odor of ether still lingered, their
tender laughter died away suddenly. The heavy, warm breeze swelled
the window curtains, and children's voices were audible in the
avenue without. Then the lateness of the hour tore them asunder and
set them joking again. Daguenet took his departure with his wife
directly after the breakfast.
CHAPTER XIII
Toward the end of September Count Muffat, who was to dine at Nana's
that evening, came at nightfall to inform her of a summons to the
Tuileries. The lamps in the house had not been lit yet, and the
servants were laughing uproariously in the kitchen regions as he
softly mounted the stairs, where the tall windows gleamed in warm
shadow. The door of the drawing room up-stairs opened noiselessly.
A faint pink glow was dying out on the ceiling of the room, and the
red hangings, the deep divans, the lacquered furniture, with their
