that Muffat did not dare to push open a door, to pull a curtain or
to unclose a cupboard. The bells did not ring; men lounged about
everywhere and at every moment knocked up against one another. He
had now to cough before entering a room, having almost caught the
girl hanging round Francis' neck one evening that he had just gone
out of the dressing room for two minutes to tell the coachman to put
the horses to, while her hairdresser was finishing her hair. She
gave herself up suddenly behind his back; she took her pleasure in
every corner, quickly, with the first man she met. Whether she was
in her chemise or in full dress did not matter. She would come back
to the count red all over, happy at having cheated him. As for him,
he was plagued to death; it was an abominable infliction!
In his jealous anguish the unhappy man was comparatively at peace
when he left Nana and Satin alone together. He would have willingly
urged her on to this vice, to keep the men off her. But all was
spoiled in this direction too. Nana deceived Satin as she deceived
the count, going mad over some monstrous fancy or other and picking
up girls at the street corners. Coming back in her carriage, she
would suddenly be taken with a little slut that she saw on the
pavement; her senses would be captivated, her imagination excited.
She would take the little slut in with her, pay her and send her
away again. Then, disguised as a man, she would go to infamous
houses and look on at scenes of debauch to while away hours of
boredom. And Satin, angry at being thrown over every moment, would
turn the house topsy-turvy with the most awful scenes. She had at
last acquired a complete ascendancy over Nana, who now respected
her. Muffat even thought of an alliance between them. When he
dared not say anything he let Satin loose. Twice she had compelled
her darling to take up with him again, while he showed himself
obliging and effaced himself in her favor at the least sign. But
this good understanding lasted no time, for Satin, too, was a little
cracked. On certain days she would very nearly go mad and would
smash everything, wearing herself out in tempest of love and anger,
but pretty all the time. Zoe must have excited her, for the maid
took her into corners as if she wanted to tell her about her great
design of which she as yet spoke to no one.
At times, however, Count Muffat was still singularly revolted. He
who had tolerated Satin for months, who had at last shut his eyes to
the unknown herd of men that scampered so quickly through Nana's
bedroom, became terribly enraged at being deceived by one of his own
set or even by an acquaintance. When she confessed her relations
with Foucarmont he suffered so acutely, he thought the treachery of
the young man so base, that he wished to insult him and fight a
duel. As he did not know where to find seconds for such an affair,
he went to Labordette. The latter, astonished, could not help
laughing.
"A duel about Nana? But, my dear sir, all Paris would be laughing
at you. Men do not fight for Nana; it would be ridiculous."
The count grew very pale and made a violent gesture.
"Then I shall slap his face in the open street."
For an hour Labordette had to argue with him. A blow would make the
affair odious; that evening everyone would know the real reason of
the meeting; it would be in all the papers. And Labordette always
finished with the same expression:
"It is impossible; it would be ridiculous."
Each time Muffat heard these words they seemed sharp and keen as a
stab. He could not even fight for the woman he loved; people would
have burst out laughing. Never before had he felt more bitterly the
misery of his love, the contrast between his heavy heart and the
absurdity of this life of pleasure in which it was now lost. This
was his last rebellion; he allowed Labordette to convince him, and
he was present afterward at the procession of his friends, who lived
there as if at home.
Nana in a few months finished them up greedily, one after the other.
The growing needs entailed by her luxurious way of life only added
fuel to her desires, and she finished a man up at one mouthful.
First she had Foucarmont, who did not last a fortnight. He was
thinking of leaving the navy, having saved about thirty thousand
francs in his ten years of service, which he wished to invest in the
United States. His instincts, which were prudential, even miserly,
were conquered; he gave her everything, even his signature to notes
of hand, which pledged his future. When Nana had done with him he
was penniless. But then she proved very kind; she advised him to
return to his ship. What was the good of getting angry? Since he
had no money their relations were no longer possible. He ought to
understand that and to be reasonable. A ruined man fell from her
hands like a ripe fruit, to rot on the ground by himself.
Then Nana took up with Steiner without disgust but without love.
She called him a dirty Jew; she seemed to be paying back an old
grudge, of which she had no distinct recollection. He was fat; he
was stupid, and she got him down and took two bites at a time in
order the quicker to do for this Prussian. As for him, he had
thrown Simonne over. His Bosphorous scheme was getting shaky, and
Nana hastened the downfall by wild expenses. For a month he
struggled on, doing miracles of finance. He filled Europe with
posters, advertisements and prospectuses of a colossal scheme and
obtained money from the most distant climes. All these savings, the
pounds of speculators and the pence of the poor, were swallowed up
in the Avenue de Villiers. Again he was partner in an ironworks in
Alsace, where in a small provincial town workmen, blackened with
coal dust and soaked with sweat, day and night strained their sinews
and heard their bones crack to satisfy Nana's pleasures. Like a
huge fire she devoured all the fruits of stock-exchange swindling
and the profits of labor. This time she did for Steiner; she
brought him to the ground, sucked him dry to the core, left him so
cleaned out that he was unable to invent a new roguery. When his
bank failed he stammered and trembled at the idea of prosecution.
His bankruptcy had just been published, and the simple mention of
money flurried him and threw him into a childish embarrassment. And
this was he who had played with millions. One evening at Nana's he
began to cry and asked her for a loan of a hundred francs wherewith
to pay his maidservant. And Nana, much affected and amused at the
end of this terrible old man who had squeezed Paris for twenty
years, brought it to him and said:
"I say, I'm giving it you because it seems so funny! But listen to
me, my boy, you are too old for me to keep. You must find something
else to do."
Then Nana started on La Faloise at once. He had for some time been
longing for the honor of being ruined by her in order to put the
finishing stroke on his smartness. He needed a woman to launch him
properly; it was the one thing still lacking. In two months all
Paris would be talking of him, and he would see his name in the
papers. Six weeks were enough. His inheritance was in landed
estate, houses, fields, woods and farms. He had to sell all, one
after the other, as quickly as he could. At every mouthful Nana
swallowed an acre. The foliage trembling in the sunshine, the wide
fields of ripe grain, the vineyards so golden in September, the tall
grass in which the cows stood knee-deep, all passed through her
hands as if engulfed by an abyss. Even fishing rights, a stone
quarry and three mills disappeared. Nana passed over them like an
invading army or one of those swarms of locusts whose flight scours
a whole province. The ground was burned up where her little foot
had rested. Farm by farm, field by field, she ate up the man's
patrimony very prettily and quite inattentively, just as she would
have eaten a box of sweet-meats flung into her lap between
mealtimes. There was no harm in it all; they were only sweets! But
at last one evening there only remained a single little wood. She
swallowed it up disdainfully, as it was hardly worth the trouble
opening one's mouth for. La Faloise laughed idiotically and sucked
the top of his stick. His debts were crushing him; he was not worth
a hundred francs a year, and he saw that he would be compelled to go
back into the country and live with his maniacal uncle. But that
did not matter; he had achieved smartness; the Figaro had printed
his name twice. And with his meager neck sticking up between the
turndown points of his collar and his figure squeezed into all too
short a coat, he would swagger about, uttering his parrotlike
exclamations and affecting a solemn listlessness suggestive of an
emotionless marionette. He so annoyed Nana that she ended by
beating him.
Meanwhile Fauchery had returned, his cousin having brought him.
Poor Fauchery had now set up housekeeping. After having thrown over
the countess he had fallen into Rose's hands, and she treated him as
a lawful wife would have done. Mignon was simply Madame's major-
domo. Installed as master of the house, the journalist lied to Rose
and took all sorts of precautions when he deceived her. He was as
scrupulous as a good husband, for he really wanted to settle down at
last. Nana's triumph consisted in possessing and in ruining a
newspaper that he had started with a friend's capital. She did not
proclaim her triumph; on the contrary, she delighted in treating him
as a man who had to be circumspect, and when she spoke of Rose it
was as "poor Rose." The newspaper kept her in flowers for two
months. She took all the provincial subscriptions; in fact, she
took everything, from the column of news and gossip down to the
dramatic notes. Then the editorial staff having been turned topsy-
turvy and the management completely disorganized, she satisfied a
fanciful caprice and had a winter garden constructed in a corner of
her house: that carried off all the type. But then it was no joke
after all! When in his delight at the whole business Mignon came to
see if he could not saddle Fauchery on her altogether, she asked him
if he took her for a fool. A penniless fellow living by his
articles and his plays--not if she knew it! That sort of
foolishness might be all very well for a clever woman like her poor,
dear Rose! She grew distrustful: she feared some treachery on
Mignon's part, for he was quite capable of preaching to his wife,
and so she gave Fauchery his CONGE as he now only paid her in fame.
But she always recollected him kindly. They had both enjoyed
themselves so much at the expense of that fool of a La Faloise!
They would never have thought of seeing each other again if the
delight of fooling such a perfect idiot had not egged them on! It
seemed an awfully good joke to kiss each other under his very nose.
They cut a regular dash with his coin; they would send him off full
speed to the other end of Paris in order to be alone and then when
he came back, they would crack jokes and make allusions he could not
understand. One day, urged by the journalist, she bet that she
would smack his face, and that she did the very same evening and
went on to harder blows, for she thought it a good joke and was glad
of the opportunity of showing how cowardly men were. She called him
her "slapjack" and would tell him to come and have his smack! The
smacks made her hands red, for as yet she was not up to the trick.
La Faloise laughed in his idiotic, languid way, though his eyes were
full of tears. He was delighted at such familiarity; he thought it
simply stunning.
One night when he had received sundry cuffs and was greatly excited:
"Now, d'you know," he said, "you ought to marry me. We should be as
jolly as grigs together, eh?"
This was no empty suggestion. Seized with a desire to astonish
Paris, he had been slyly projecting this marriage. "Nana's husband!
Wouldn't that sound smart, eh?" Rather a stunning apotheosis that!
But Nana gave him a fine snubbing.
"Me marry you! Lovely! If such an idea had been tormenting me I
should have found a husband a long time ago! And he'd have been a
man worth twenty of you, my pippin! I've had a heap of proposals.
Why, look here, just reckon 'em up with me: Philippe, Georges,
Foucarmont, Steiner--that makes four, without counting the others
you don't know. It's a chorus they all sing. I can't be nice, but
they forthwith begin yelling, 'Will you marry me? Will you marry
me?'"
She lashed herself up and then burst out in fine indignation:
"Oh dear, no! I don't want to! D'you think I'm built that way?
Just look at me a bit! Why, I shouldn't be Nana any longer if I
fastened a man on behind! And, besides, it's too foul!"
And she spat and hiccuped with disgust, as though she had seen all
the dirt in the world spread out beneath her.
One evening La Faloise vanished, and a week later it became known
that he was in the country with an uncle whose mania was botany. He
was pasting his specimens for him and stood a chance of marrying a
very plain, pious cousin. Nana shed no tears for him. She simply
said to the count:
"Eh, little rough, another rival less! You're chortling today. But
he was becoming serious! He wanted to marry me."
He waxed pale, and she flung her arms round his neck and hung there,
laughing, while she emphasized every little cruel speech with a
caress.
"You can't marry Nana! Isn't that what's fetching you, eh? When
they're all bothering me with their marriages you're raging in your
