Nana/Miller's Daughter/Captain Burle/Death of Olivier Becaille
by Emile Zola
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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NANA

THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER

CAPTAIN BURLE

THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BACAILLE

NANA

by

Emile Zola

CHAPTER I

At nine o'clock in the evening the body of the house at the Theatres
des Varietes was still all but empty. A few individuals, it is
true, were sitting quietly waiting in the balcony and stalls, but
these were lost, as it were, among the ranges of seats whose
coverings of cardinal velvet loomed in the subdued light of the
dimly burning luster. A shadow enveloped the great red splash of
the curtain, and not a sound came from the stage, the unlit
footlights, the scattered desks of the orchestra. It was only high
overhead in the third gallery, round the domed ceiling where nude
females and children flew in heavens which had turned green in the
gaslight, that calls and laughter were audible above a continuous
hubbub of voices, and heads in women's and workmen's caps were
ranged, row above row, under the wide-vaulted bays with their gilt-
surrounding adornments. Every few seconds an attendant would make
her appearance, bustling along with tickets in her hand and piloting
in front of her a gentleman and a lady, who took their seats, he in
his evening dress, she sitting slim and undulant beside him while
her eyes wandered slowly round the house.

Two young men appeared in the stalls; they kept standing and looked
about them.

"Didn't I say so, Hector?" cried the elder of the two, a tall fellow
with little black mustaches. "We're too early! You might quite
well have allowed me to finish my cigar."

An attendant was passing.

"Oh, Monsieur Fauchery," she said familiarly, "it won't begin for
half an hour yet!"

"Then why do they advertise for nine o'clock?" muttered Hector,
whose long thin face assumed an expression of vexation. "Only this
morning Clarisse, who's in the piece, swore that they'd begin at
nine o'clock punctually."

For a moment they remained silent and, looking upward, scanned the
shadowy boxes. But the green paper with which these were hung
rendered them more shadowy still. Down below, under the dress
circle, the lower boxes were buried in utter night. In those on the
second tier there was only one stout lady, who was stranded, as it
were, on the velvet-covered balustrade in front of her. On the
right hand and on the left, between lofty pilasters, the stage
boxes, bedraped with long-fringed scalloped hangings, remained
untenanted. The house with its white and gold, relieved by soft
green tones, lay only half disclosed to view, as though full of a
fine dust shed from the little jets of flame in the great glass
luster.

"Did you get your stage box for Lucy?" asked Hector.

"Yes," replied his companion, "but I had some trouble to get it.
Oh, there's no danger of Lucy coming too early!"

He stifled a slight yawn; then after a pause:

"You're in luck's way, you are, since you haven't been at a first
night before. The Blonde Venus will be the event of the year.
People have been talking about it for six months. Oh, such music,
my dear boy! Such a sly dog, Bordenave! He knows his business and
has kept this for the exhibition season."  Hector was religiously
attentive. He asked a question.

"And Nana, the new star who's going to play Venus, d'you know her?"

"There you are; you're beginning again!" cried Fauchery, casting up
his arms. "Ever since this morning people have been dreeing me with
Nana. I've met more than twenty people, and it's Nana here and Nana
there! What do I know? Am I acquainted with all the light ladies
in Paris? Nana is an invention of Bordenave's! It must be a fine
one!"

He calmed himself, but the emptiness of the house, the dim light of
the luster, the churchlike sense of self-absorption which the place
inspired, full as it was of whispering voices and the sound of doors
banging--all these got on his nerves.

"No, by Jove," he said all of a sudden, "one's hair turns gray here.
I--I'm going out. Perhaps we shall find Bordenave downstairs.
He'll give us information about things."

Downstairs in the great marble-paved entrance hall, where the box
office was, the public were beginning to show themselves. Through
the three open gates might have been observed, passing in, the
ardent life of the boulevards, which were all astir and aflare under
the fine April night. The sound of carriage wheels kept stopping
suddenly; carriage doors were noisily shut again, and people began
entering in small groups, taking their stand before the ticket
bureau and climbing the double flight of stairs at the end of the
hall, up which the women loitered with swaying hips. Under the
crude gaslight, round the pale, naked walls of the entrance hall,
which with its scanty First Empire decorations suggested the
peristyle of a toy temple, there was a flaring display of lofty
yellow posters bearing the name of "Nana" in great black letters.
Gentlemen, who seemed to be glued to the entry, were reading them;
others, standing about, were engaged in talk, barring the doors of
the house in so doing, while hard by the box office a thickset man
with an extensive, close-shaven visage was giving rough answers to
such as pressed to engage seats.

"There's Bordenave," said Fauchery as he came down the stairs. But
the manager had already seen him.

"Ah, ah! You're a nice fellow!" he shouted at him from a distance.
"That's the way you give me a notice, is it? Why, I opened my
Figaro this morning--never a word!"

"Wait a bit," replied Fauchery. "I certainly must make the
acquaintance of your Nana before talking about her. Besides, I've
made no promises."

Then to put an end to the discussion, he introduced his cousin, M.
Hector de la Faloise, a young man who had come to finish his
education in Paris. The manager took the young man's measure at a
glance. But Hector returned his scrutiny with deep interest. This,
then, was that Bordenave, that showman of the sex who treated women
like a convict overseer, that clever fellow who was always at full
steam over some advertising dodge, that shouting, spitting, thigh-
slapping fellow, that cynic with the soul of a policeman! Hector
was under the impression that he ought to discover some amiable
observation for the occasion.

"Your theater--" he began in dulcet tones.

Bordenave interrupted him with a savage phrase, as becomes a man who
dotes on frank situations.

"Call it my brothel!"

At this Fauchery laughed approvingly, while La Faloise stopped with
his pretty speech strangled in his throat, feeling very much shocked
and striving to appear as though he enjoyed the phrase. The manager
had dashed off to shake hands with a dramatic critic whose column
had considerable influence. When he returned La Faloise was
recovering. He was afraid of being treated as a provincial if he
showed himself too much nonplused.

"I have been told," he began again, longing positively to find
something to say, "that Nana has a delicious voice."

"Nana?" cried the manager, shrugging his shoulders. "The voice of a
squirt!"

The young man made haste to add:

"Besides being a first-rate comedian!"

"She? Why she's a lump! She has no notion what to do with her
hands and feet."

La Faloise blushed a little. He had lost his bearings. He
stammered:

"I wouldn't have missed this first representation tonight for the
world. I was aware that your theater--"

"Call it my brothel," Bordenave again interpolated with the frigid
obstinacy of a man convinced.

Meanwhile Fauchery, with extreme calmness, was looking at the women
as they came in. He went to his cousin's rescue when he saw him all
at sea and doubtful whether to laugh or to be angry.

"Do be pleasant to Bordenave--call his theater what he wishes you
to, since it amuses him. And you, my dear fellow, don't keep us
waiting about for nothing. If your Nana neither sings nor acts
you'll find you've made a blunder, that's all. It's what I'm afraid
of, if the truth be told."

"A blunder! A blunder!" shouted the manager, and his face grew
purple. "Must a woman know how to act and sing? Oh, my chicken,
you're too STOOPID. Nana has other good points, by heaven!--
something which is as good as all the other things put together.
I've smelled it out; it's deuced pronounced with her, or I've got
the scent of an idiot. You'll see, you'll see! She's only got to
come on, and all the house will be gaping at her."

He had held up his big hands which were trembling under the
influence of his eager enthusiasm, and now, having relieved his
feelings, he lowered his voice and grumbled to himself:

"Yes, she'll go far! Oh yes, s'elp me, she'll go far! A skin--oh,
what a skin she's got!"

Then as Fauchery began questioning him he consented to enter into a
detailed explanation, couched in phraseology so crude that Hector de
la Faloise felt slightly disgusted. He had been thick with Nana,
and he was anxious to start her on the stage. Well, just about that
time he was in search of a Venus. He--he never let a woman encumber
him for any length of time; he preferred to let the public enjoy the
benefit of her forthwith. But there was a deuce of a row going on
in his shop, which had been turned topsy-turvy by that big damsel's
advent. Rose Mignon, his star, a comic actress of much subtlety and
an adorable singer, was daily threatening to leave him in the lurch,
for she was furious and guessed the presence of a rival. And as for
the bill, good God! What a noise there had been about it all! It
had ended by his deciding to print the names of the two actresses in
the same-sized type. But it wouldn't do to bother him. Whenever
any of his little women, as he called them--Simonne or Clarisse, for
instance--wouldn't go the way he wanted her to he just up with his
foot and caught her one in the rear. Otherwise life was impossible.
Oh yes, he sold 'em; HE knew what they fetched, the wenches!

"Tut!" he cried, breaking off short. "Mignon and Steiner. Always
together. You know, Steiner's getting sick of Rose; that's why the
husband dogs his steps now for fear of his slipping away."

On the pavement outside, the row of gas jets flaring on the cornice
of the theater cast a patch of brilliant light. Two small trees,
violently green, stood sharply out against it, and a column gleamed
in such vivid illumination that one could read the notices thereon
at a distance, as though in broad daylight, while the dense night of
the boulevard beyond was dotted with lights above the vague outline
of an ever-moving crowd. Many men did not enter the theater at once
but stayed outside to talk while finishing their cigars under the
rays of the line of gas jets, which shed a sallow pallor on their
faces and silhouetted their short black shadows on the asphalt.
Mignon, a very tall, very broad fellow, with the square-shaped head
of a strong man at a fair, was forcing a passage through the midst
of the groups and dragging on his arm the banker Steiner, an
exceedingly small man with a corporation already in evidence and a
round face framed in a setting of beard which was already growing
gray.

"Well," said Bordenave to the banker, "you met her yesterday in my
office."

"Ah! It was she, was it?" ejaculated Steiner. "I suspected as
much. Only I was coming out as she was going in, and I scarcely
caught a glimpse of her."

Mignon was listening with half-closed eyelids and nervously twisting
a great diamond ring round his finger. He had quite understood that
Nana was in question. Then as Bordenave was drawing a portrait of
his new star, which lit a flame in the eyes of the banker, he ended
by joining in the conversation.

"Oh, let her alone, my dear fellow; she's a low lot! The public
will show her the door in quick time. Steiner, my laddie, you know
that my wife is waiting for you in her box."

He wanted to take possession of him again. But Steiner would not
quit Bordenave. In front of them a stream of people was crowding
and crushing against the ticket office, and there was a din of
voices, in the midst of which the name of Nana sounded with all the
melodious vivacity of its two syllables. The men who stood planted
in front of the notices kept spelling it out loudly; others, in an
interrogative tone, uttered it as they passed; while the women, at
once restless and smiling, repeated it softly with an air of
surprise. Nobody knew Nana. Whence had Nana fallen? And stories
and jokes, whispered from ear to ear, went the round of the crowd.
The name was a caress in itself; it was a pet name, the very
familiarity of which suited every lip. Merely through enunciating
it thus, the throng worked itself into a state of gaiety and became
highly good natured. A fever of curiosity urged it forward, that
kind of Parisian curiosity which is as violent as an access of
positive unreason. Everybody wanted to see Nana. A lady had the
flounce of her dress torn off; a man lost his hat.

"Oh, you're asking me too many questions about it!" cried Bordenave,
whom a score of men were besieging with their queries. "You're
going to see her, and I'm off; they want me."

He disappeared, enchanted at having fired his public. Mignon
shrugged his shoulders, reminding Steiner that Rose was awaiting him
in order to show him the costume she was about to wear in the first
act.

"By Jove! There's Lucy out there, getting down from her carriage,"
said La Faloise to Fauchery.

It was, in fact, Lucy Stewart, a plain little woman, some forty
years old, with a disproportionately long neck, a thin, drawn face,
a heavy mouth, but withal of such brightness, such graciousness of
manner, that she was really very charming. She was bringing with
her Caroline Hequet and her mother--Caroline a woman of a cold type
of beauty, the mother a person of a most worthy demeanor, who looked
as if she were stuffed with straw.

"You're coming with us? I've kept a place for you," she said to
Fauchery. "Oh, decidedly not! To see nothing!" he made answer.
"I've a stall; I prefer being in the stalls."

Lucy grew nettled. Did he not dare show himself in her company?
Then, suddenly restraining herself and skipping to another topic:

"Why haven't you told me that you knew Nana?"

"Nana! I've never set eyes on her."

"Honor bright? I've been told that you've been to bed with her."

But Mignon, coming in front of them, his finger to his lips, made
them a sign to be silent. And when Lucy questioned him he pointed
out a young man who was passing and murmured:

"Nana's fancy man."

Everybody looked at him. He was a pretty fellow. Fauchery
recognized him; it was Daguenet, a young man who had run through
three hundred thousand francs in the pursuit of women and who now
was dabbling in stocks, in order from time to time to treat them to
bouquets and dinners. Lucy made the discovery that he had fine
eyes.

"Ah, there's Blanche!" she cried. "It's she who told me that you
had been to bed with Nana."

Blanche de Sivry, a great fair girl, whose good-looking face showed
signs of growing fat, made her appearance in the company of a spare,
sedulously well-groomed and extremely distinguished man.

"The Count Xavier de Vandeuvres," Fauchery whispered in his
companion's ear.

The count and the journalist shook hands, while Blanche and Lucy
entered into a brisk, mutual explanation. One of them in blue, the
other in rose-pink, they stood blocking the way with their deeply
flounced skirts, and Nana's name kept repeating itself so shrilly in
their conversation that people began to listen to them. The Count
de Vandeuvres carried Blanche off. But by this time Nana's name was
echoing more loudly than ever round the four walls of the entrance
hall amid yearnings sharpened by delay. Why didn't the play begin?
The men pulled out their watches; late-comers sprang from their
conveyances before these had fairly drawn up; the groups left the
sidewalk, where the passers-by were crossing the now-vacant space of
gaslit pavement, craning their necks, as they did so, in order to
get a peep into the theater. A street boy came up whistling and
planted himself before a notice at the door, then cried out, "Woa,
Nana!" in the voice of a tipsy man and hied on his way with a
rolling gait and a shuffling of his old boots. A laugh had arisen
at this. Gentlemen of unimpeachable appearance repeated: "Nana,
woa, Nana!"  People were crushing; a dispute arose at the ticket
office, and there was a growing clamor caused by the hum of voices
calling on Nana, demanding Nana in one of those accesses of silly
facetiousness and sheer animalism which pass over mobs.

But above all the din the bell that precedes the rise of the curtain
became audible. "They've rung; they've rung!"  The rumor reached
the boulevard, and thereupon followed a stampede, everyone wanting
to pass in, while the servants of the theater increased their
forces. Mignon, with an anxious air, at last got hold of Steiner
again, the latter not having been to see Rose's costume. At the
very first tinkle of the bell La Faloise had cloven a way through
the crowd, pulling Fauchery with him, so as not to miss the opening
scene. But all this eagerness on the part of the public irritated
Lucy Stewart. What brutes were these people to be pushing women
like that! She stayed in the rear of them all with Caroline Hequet
and her mother. The entrance hall was now empty, while beyond it
was still heard the long-drawn rumble of the boulevard.

"As though they were always funny, those pieces of theirs!" Lucy
kept repeating as she climbed the stair.

In the house Fauchery and La Faloise, in front of their stalls, were
gazing about them anew. By this time the house was resplendent.
High jets of gas illumined the great glass chandelier with a
rustling of yellow and rosy flames, which rained down a stream of
brilliant light from dome to floor. The cardinal velvets of the
seats were shot with hues of lake, while all the gilding shonc
again, the soft green decorations chastening its effect beneath the
too-decided paintings of the ceiling. The footlights were turned up
and with a vivid flood of brilliance lit up the curtain, the heavy
purple drapery of which had all the richness befitting a palace in a
fairy tale and contrasted with the meanness of the proscenium, where
cracks showed the plaster under the gilding. The place was already
warm. At their music stands the orchestra were tuning their
instruments amid a delicate trilling of flutes, a stifled tooting of
horns, a singing of violin notes, which floated forth amid the
increasing uproar of voices. All the spectators were talking,
jostling, settling themselves in a general assault upon seats; and
the hustling rush in the side passages was now so violent that every
door into the house was laboriously admitting the inexhaustible
flood of people. There were signals, rustlings of fabrics, a
continual march past of skirts and head dresses, accentuated by the
black hue of a dress coat or a surtout. Notwithstanding this, the
rows of seats were little by little getting filled up, while here
and there a light toilet stood out from its surroundings, a head
with a delicate profile bent forward under its chignon, where
flashed the lightning of a jewel. In one of the boxes the tip of a
bare shoulder glimmered like snowy silk. Other ladies, sitting at
ease, languidly fanned themselves, following with their gaze the
pushing movements of the crowd, while young gentlemen, standing up
in the stalls, their waistcoats cut very low, gardenias in their
buttonholes, pointed their opera glasses with gloved finger tips.

It was now that the two cousins began searching for the faces of
those they knew. Mignon and Steiner were together in a lower box,
sitting side by side with their arms leaning for support on the
velvet balustrade. Blanche de Sivry seemed to be in sole possession
of a stage box on the level of the stalls. But La Faloise examined
Daguenet before anyone else, he being in occupation of a stall two
rows in front of his own. Close to him, a very young man, seventeen
years old at the outside, some truant from college, it may be, was
straining wide a pair of fine eyes such as a cherub might have
owned. Fauchery smiled when he looked at him.

"Who is that lady in the balcony?" La Faloise asked suddenly. "The
lady with a young girl in blue beside her."

He pointed out a large woman who was excessively tight-laced, a
woman who had been a blonde and had now become white and yellow of
tint, her broad face, reddened with paint, looking puffy under a
rain of little childish curls.

"It's Gaga," was Fauchery's simple reply, and as this name seemed to
astound his cousin, he added:

"You don't know Gaga? She was the delight of the early years of
Louis Philippe. Nowadays she drags her daughter about with her
wherever she goes."

La Faloise never once glanced at the young girl. The sight of Gaga
moved him; his eyes did not leave her again. He still found her
very good looking but he dared not say so.

Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra
attacked the overture. People still kept coming in; the stir and
noise were on the increase. Among that public, peculiar to first
nights and never subject to change, there were little subsections
composed of intimate friends, who smilingly forgathered again. Old
first-nighters, hat on head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and
kept exchanging salutations. All Paris was there, the Paris of
literature, of finance and of pleasure. There were many
journalists, several authors, a number of stock-exchange people and
more courtesans than honest women. It was a singularly mixed world,
composed, as it was, of all the talents and tarnished by all the
vices, a world where the same fatigue and the same fever played over
every face. Fauchery, whom his cousin was questioning, showed him
the boxes devoted to the newspapers and to the clubs and then named
the dramatic critics--a lean, dried-up individual with thin,
spiteful lips and, chief of all, a big fellow with a good-natured
expression, lolling on the shoulder of his neighbor, a young miss
over whom he brooded with tender and paternal eyes.

But he interrupted himself on seeing La Faloise in the act of bowing
to some persons who occupied the box opposite. He appeared
surprised.

"What?" he queried. "You know the Count Muffat de Beuville?"

"Oh, for a long time back," replied Hector. "The Muffats had a
property near us. I often go to their house. The count's with his
wife and his father-in-law, the Marquis de Chouard."

And with some vanity--for he was happy in his cousin's astonishment--
he entered into particulars. The marquis was a councilor of state;
the count had recently been appointed chamberlain to the empress.
Fauchery, who had caught up his opera glass, looked at the countess,
a plump brunette with a white skin and fine dark eyes.

"You shall present me to them between the acts," he ended by saying.
"I have already met the count, but I should like to go to them on
their Tuesdays."

Energetic cries of "Hush" came from the upper galleries. The
overture had begun, but people were still coming in. Late arrivals
were obliging whole rows of spectators to rise; the doors of boxes
were banging; loud voices were heard disputing in the passages. And
there was no cessation of the sound of many conversations, a sound
similar to the loud twittering of talkative sparrows at close of
day. All was in confusion; the house was a medley of heads and arms
which moved to and fro, their owners seating themselves or trying to
make themselves comfortable or, on the other hand, excitedly
endeavoring to remain standing so as to take a final look round.
The cry of "Sit down, sit down!" came fiercely from the obscure
depths of the pit. A shiver of expectation traversed the house: at
last people were going to make the acquaintance of this famous Nana
with whom Paris had been occupying itself for a whole week!

Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down
among occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech. And amid this
swooning murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra
struck up the small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm
bubbling with roguish laughter. The public were titillated; they
were already on the grin. But the gang of clappers in the foremost
rows of the pit applauded furiously. The curtain rose.

"By George!" exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away. "There's a
man with Lucy."

He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the
front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying. At the back of
this box were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline's mother
and the side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light
hair and an irreproachable getup.

"Do look!" La Faloise again insisted. "There's a man there."

Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he
turned round again directly.

"Oh, it's Labordette," he muttered in a careless voice, as though
that gentle man's presence ought to strike all the world as though
both natural and immaterial.

Behind the cousins people shouted "Silence!"  They had to cease
talking. A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches
of heads, all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to
topmost gallery. The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in
Olympus, a pasteboard Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the
throne of Jupiter on the right of the stage. First of all Iris and
Ganymede, aided by a troupe of celestial attendants, sang a chorus
while they arranged the seats of the gods for the council. Once
again the prearranged applause of the clappers alone burst forth;
the public, a little out of their depth, sat waiting. Nevertheless,
La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one of Bordenave's little
women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with a great scarf of
the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her waist.

"You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on," he said to
Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him. "We tried
the trick this morning. It was all up under her arms and round the
small of her back."

But a slight rustling movement ran through the house; Rose Mignon
had just come on the stage as Diana. Now though she had neither the
face nor the figure for the part, being thin and dark and of the
adorable type of ugliness peculiar to a Parisian street child, she
nonetheless appeared charming and as though she were a satire on the
personage she represented. Her song at her entrance on the stage
was full of lines quaint enough to make you cry with laughter and of
complaints about Mars, who was getting ready to desert her for the
companionship of Venus. She sang it with a chaste reserve so full
of sprightly suggestiveness that the public warmed amain. The
husband and Steiner, sitting side by side, were laughing
complaisantly, and the whole house broke out in a roar when
Prulliere, that great favorite, appeared as a general, a masquerade
Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging along a sword, the
hilt of which reached to his shoulder. As for him, he had had
enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him, he
averred. Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to
be revenged. The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prulliere
delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat. He had
about him all the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman
whose love affairs prosper, and he rolled around the most swaggering
glances, which excited shrill feminine laughter in the boxes.

Then the public cooled again, for the ensuing scenes were found
tiresome. Old Bosc, an imbecile Jupiter with head crushed beneath
the weight of an immense crown, only just succeeded in raising a
smile among his audience when he had a domestic altercation with
Juno on the subject of the cook's accounts. The march past of the
gods, Neptune, Pluto, Minerva and the rest, was well-nigh spoiling
everything. People grew impatient; there was a restless, slowly
growing murmur; the audience ceased to take an interest in the
performance and looked round at the house. Lucy began laughing with
Labordette; the Count de Vandeuvres was craning his neck in
conversation behind Blanche's sturdy shoulders, while Fauchery, out
of the corners of his eyes, took stock of the Muffats, of whom the
count appeared very serious, as though he had not understood the
allusions, and the countess smiled vaguely, her eyes lost in
reverie. But on a sudden, in this uncomfortable state of things,
the applause of the clapping contingent rattled out with the
regularity of platoon firing. People turned toward the stage. Was
it Nana at last? This Nana made one wait with a vengeance.

It was a deputation of mortals whom Ganymede and Iris had
introduced, respectable middle-class persons, deceived husbands, all
of them, and they came before the master of the gods to proffer a
complaint against Venus, who was assuredly inflaming their good
ladies with an excess of ardor. The chorus, in quaint, dolorous
tones, broken by silences full of pantomimic admissions, caused
great amusement. A neat phrase went the round of the house: "The
cuckolds' chorus, the cuckolds' chorus," and it "caught on," for
there was an encore. The singers' heads were droll; their faces were
discovered to be in keeping with the phrase, especially that of a
fat man which was as round as the moon. Meanwhile Vulcan arrived in
a towering rage, demanding back his wife who had slipped away three
days ago. The chorus resumed their plaint, calling on Vulcan, the
god of the cuckolds. Vulcan's part was played by Fontan, a comic
actor of talent, at once vulgar and original, and he had a role of
the wildest whimsicality and was got up as a village blacksmith,
fiery red wig, bare arms tattooed with arrow-pierced hearts and all
the rest of it. A woman's voice cried in a very high key, "Oh,
isn't he ugly?" and all the ladies laughed and applauded.

Then followed a scene which seemed interminable. Jupiter in the
course of it seemed never to be going to finish assembling the
Council of Gods in order to submit thereto the deceived husband's
requests. And still no Nana! Was the management keeping Nana for
the fall of the curtain then? So long a period of expectancy had
ended by annoying the public. Their murmurings began again.

"It's going badly," said Mignon radiantly to Steiner. "She'll get a
pretty reception; you'll see!"

At that very moment the clouds at the back of the stage were cloven
apart and Venus appeared. Exceedingly tall, exceedingly strong, for
her eighteen years, Nana, in her goddess's white tunic and with her
light hair simply flowing unfastened over her shoulders, came down
to the footlights with a quiet certainty of movement and a laugh of
greeting for the public and struck up her grand ditty:

     "When Venus roams at eventide."

From the second verse onward people looked at each other all over
the house. Was this some jest, some wager on Bordenave's part?
Never had a more tuneless voice been heard or one managed with less
art. Her manager judged of her excellently; she certainly sang like
a squirt. Nay, more, she didn't even know how to deport herself on
the stage: she thrust her arms in front of her while she swayed her
whole body to and fro in a manner which struck the audience as
unbecoming and disagreeable. Cries of "Oh, oh!" were already rising
in the pit and the cheap places. There was a sound of whistling,
too, when a voice in the stalls, suggestive of a molting cockerel,
cried out with great conviction:

"That's very smart!"

All the house looked round. It was the cherub, the truant from the
boardingschool, who sat with his fine eyes very wide open and his
fair face glowing very hotly at sight of Nana. When he saw
everybody turning toward him be grew extremely red at the thought of
having thus unconsciously spoken aloud. Daguenet, his neighbor,
smilingly examined him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and
no longer anxious to hiss; while the young gentlemen in white
gloves, fascinated in their turn by Nana's gracious contours, lolled
back in their seats and applauded.

"That's it! Well done! Bravo!"

Nana, in the meantime, seeing the house laughing, began to laugh
herself. The gaiety of all redoubled itself. She was an amusing
creature, all the same, was that fine girl! Her laughter made a
love of a little dimple appear in her chin. She stood there
waiting, not bored in the least, familiar with her audience, falling
into step with them at once, as though she herself were admitting
with a wink that she had not two farthings' worth of talent but that
it did not matter at all, that, in fact, she had other good points.
And then after having made a sign to the conductor which plainly
signified, "Go ahead, old boy!" she began her second verse:

     "'Tis Venus who at midnight passes--"

Still the same acidulated voice, only that now it tickled the public
in the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to
give a little shiver of pleasure. Nana still smiled her smile: it
lit up her little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were
of the clearest blue. When she came to certain rather lively verses
a delicate sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, the rosy
nostrils of which lifted and fell, while a bright flush suffused her
cheeks. She still swung herself up and down, for she only knew how
to do that. And the trick was no longer voted ugly; on the
contrary, the men raised their opera glasses. When she came to the
end of a verse her voice completely failed her, and she was well
aware that she never would get through with it. Thereupon, rather
than fret herself, she kicked up her leg, which forthwith was
roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent sharply backward,
so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and stretched her
arms out. Applause burst forth on all sides. In the twinkling of
an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the stage,
presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators' gaze, a neck
where the red-gold hair showed like some animal's fell. Then the
plaudits became frantic.

The close of the act was not so exciting. Vulcan wanted to slap
Venus. The gods held a consultation and decided to go and hold an
inquiry on earth before granting the deceived husband satisfaction.
It was then that Diana surprised a tender conversation between Venus
and Mars and vowed that she would not take her eyes off them during
the whole of the voyage. There was also a scene where Love, played
by a little twelve-year-old chit, answered every question put to her
with "Yes, Mamma! No, Mamma!" in a winy-piny tone, her fingers in
her nose. At last Jupiter, with the severity of a master who is
growing cross, shut Love up in a dark closet, bidding her conjugate
the verb "I love" twenty times. The finale was more appreciated: it
was a chorus which both troupe and orchestra performed with great
brilliancy. But the curtain once down, the clappers tried in vain
to obtain a call, while the whole house was already up and making
for the doors.

The crowd trampled and jostled, jammed, as it were, between the rows
of seats, and in so doing exchanged expressions. One phrase only
went round:

"It's idiotic."  A critic was saying that it would be one's duty to
do a pretty bit of slashing. The piece, however, mattered very
little, for people were talking about Nana before everything else.
Fauchery and La Faloise, being among the earliest to emerge, met
Steiner and Mignon in the passage outside the stalls. In this
gaslit gut of a place, which was as narrow and circumscribed as a
gallery in a mine, one was well-nigh suffocated. They stopped a
moment at the foot of the stairs on the right of the house,
protected by the final curve of the balusters. The audience from
the cheap places were coming down the steps with a continuous tramp
of heavy boots; a stream of black dress coats was passing, while an
attendant was making every possible effort to protect a chair, on
which she had piled up coats and cloaks, from the onward pushing of
the crowd.

"Surely I know her," cried Steiner, the moment he perceived
Fauchery. "I'm certain I've seen her somewhere--at the casino, I
imagine, and she got herself taken up there--she was so drunk."

"As for me," said the journalist, "I don't quite know where it was.
I am like you; I certainly have come across her."

He lowered his voice and asked, laughing:

"At the Tricons', perhaps."

"Egad, it was in a dirty place," Mignon declared. He seemed
exasperated. "It's disgusting that the public give such a reception
to the first trollop that comes by. There'll soon be no more decent
women on the stage. Yes, I shall end by forbidding Rose to play."

Fauchery could not restrain a smile. Meanwhile the downward shuffle
of the heavy shoes on the steps did not cease, and a little man in a
workman's cap was heard crying in a drawling voice:

"Oh my, she ain't no wopper! There's some pickings there!"

In the passage two young men, delicately curled and formally
resplendent in turndown collars and the rest, were disputing
together. One of them was repeating the words, "Beastly, beastly!"
without stating any reasons; the other was replying with the words,
"Stunning, stunning!" as though he, too, disdained all argument.

La Faloise declared her to be quite the thing; only he ventured to
opine that she would be better still if she were to cultivate her
voice. Steiner, who was no longer listening, seemed to awake with a
start. Whatever happens, one must wait, he thought. Perhaps
everything will be spoiled in the following acts. The public had
shown complaisance, but it was certainly not yet taken by storm.
Mignon swore that the piece would never finish, and when Fauchery
and La Faloise left them in order to go up to the foyer he took
Steiner's arm and, leaning hard against his shoulder, whispered in
his ear:

"You're going to see my wife's costume for the second act, old
fellow. It IS just blackguardly."

Upstairs in the foyer three glass chandeliers burned with a
brilliant light. The two cousins hesitated an instant before
entering, for the widely opened glazed doors afforded a view right
through the gallery--a view of a surging sea of heads, which two
currents, as it were, kept in a continuous eddying movement. But
they entered after all. Five or six groups of men, talking very
loudly and gesticulating, were obstinately discussing the play amid
these violent interruptions; others were filing round, their heels,
as they turned, sounding sharply on the waxed floor. To right and
left, between columns of variegated imitation marble, women were
sitting on benches covered with red velvet and viewing the passing
movement of the crowd with an air of fatigue as though the heat had
rendered them languid. In the lofty mirrors behind them one saw the
reflection of their chignons. At the end of the room, in front of
the bar, a man with a huge corporation was drinking a glass of fruit
syrup.

But Fauchery, in order to breathe more freely, had gone to the
balcony. La Faloise, who was studying the photographs of actresses
hung in frames alternating with the mirrors between the columns,
ended by following him. They had extinguished the line of gas jets
on the facade of the theater, and it was dark and very cool on the
balcony, which seemed to them unoccupied. Solitary and enveloped in
shadow, a young man was standing, leaning his arms on the stone
balustrade, in the recess to the right. He was smoking a cigarette,
of which the burning end shone redly. Fauchery recognized Daguenet.
They shook hands warmly.

"What are you after there, my dear fellow?" asked the journalist.
"You're hiding yourself in holes and crannies--you, a man who never
leaves the stalls on a first night!"

"But I'm smoking, you see," replied Daguenet.

Then Fauchery, to put him out of countenance:

"Well, well! What's your opinion of the new actress? She's being
roughly handled enough in the passages."

"Bah!" muttered Daguenet. "They're people whom she'll have had
nothing to do with!"

That was the sum of his criticism of Nana's talent. La Faloise
leaned forward and looked down at the boulevard. Over against them
the windows of a hotel and of a club were brightly lit up, while on
the pavement below a dark mass of customers occupied the tables of
the Cafe de Madrid. Despite the lateness of the hour the crowd were
still crushing and being crushed; people were advancing with
shortened step; a throng was constantly emerging from the Passage
Jouffroy; individuals stood waiting five or six minutes before they
could cross the roadway, to such a distance did the string of
carriages extend.

"What a moving mass! And what a noise!" La Faloise kept
reiterating, for Paris still astonished him.

The bell rang for some time; the foyer emptied. There was a
hurrying of people in the passages. The curtain was already up when
whole bands of spectators re-entered the house amid the irritated
expressions of those who were once more in their places. Everyone
took his seat again with an animated look and renewed attention. La
Faloise directed his first glance in Gaga's direction, but he was
dumfounded at seeing by her side the tall fair man who but recently
had been in Lucy's stage box.

"What IS that man's name?" he asked.

Fauchery failed to observe him.

"Ah yes, it's Labordette," he said at last with the same careless
movement. The scenery of the second act came as a surprise. It
represented a suburban Shrove Tuesday dance at the Boule Noire.
Masqueraders were trolling a catch, the chorus of which was
accompanied with a tapping of their heels. This 'Arryish departure,
which nobody had in the least expected, caused so much amusement
that the house encored the catch. And it was to this entertainment
that the divine band, let astray by Iris, who falsely bragged that
he knew the Earth well, were now come in order to proceed with their
inquiry. They had put on disguises so as to preserve their
incognito. Jupiter came on the stage as King Dagobert, with his
breeches inside out and a huge tin crown on his head. Phoebus
appeared as the Postillion of Lonjumeau and Minerva as a Norman
nursemaid. Loud bursts of merriment greeted Mars, who wore an
outrageous uniform, suggestive of an Alpine admiral. But the shouts
of laughter became uproarious when Neptune came in view, clad in a
blouse, a high, bulging workman's cap on his head, lovelocks glued
to his temples. Shuffling along in slippers, he cried in a thick
brogue.

"Well, I'm blessed! When ye're a masher it'll never do not to let
'em love yer!"

There were some shouts of "Oh! Oh!" while the ladies held their fans
one degree higher. Lucy in her stage box laughed so obstreperously
that Caroline Hequet silenced her with a tap of her fan.

From that moment forth the piece was saved--nay, more, promised a
great success. This carnival of the gods, this dragging in the mud
of their Olympus, this mock at a whole religion, a whole world of
poetry, appeared in the light of a royal entertainment. The fever
of irreverence gained the literary first-night world: legend was
trampled underfoot; ancient images were shattered. Jupiter's make-
up was capital. Mars was a success. Royalty became a farce and the
army a thing of folly. When Jupiter, grown suddenly amorous of a
little laundress, began to knock off a mad cancan, Simonne, who was
playing the part of the laundress, launched a kick at the master of
the immortals' nose and addressed him so drolly as "My big daddy!"
that an immoderate fit of laughter shook the whole house. While
they were dancing Phoebus treated Minerva to salad bowls of negus,
and Neptune sat in state among seven or eight women who regaled him
with cakes. Allusions were eagerly caught; indecent meanings were
attached to them; harmless phrases were diverted from their proper
significations in the light of exclamations issuing from the stalls.
For a long time past the theatrical public had not wallowed in folly
more irreverent. It rested them.

Nevertheless, the action of the piece advanced amid these fooleries.
Vulcan, as an elegant young man clad, down to his gloves, entirely
in yellow and with an eyeglass stuck in his eye, was forever running
after Venus, who at last made her appearance as a fishwife, a
kerchief on her head and her bosom, covered with big gold trinkets,
in great evidence. Nana was so white and plump and looked so
natural in a part demanding wide hips and a voluptuous mouth that
she straightway won the whole house. On her account Rose Mignon was
forgotten, though she was made up as a delicious baby, with a
wicker-work burlet on her head and a short muslin frock and had just
sighed forth Diana's plaints in a sweetly pretty voice. The other
one, the big wench who slapped her thighs and clucked like a hen,
shed round her an odor of life, a sovereign feminine charm, with
which the public grew intoxicated. From the second act onward
everything was permitted her. She might hold herself awkwardly; she
might fail to sing some note in tune; she might forget her words--it
mattered not: she had only to turn and laugh to raise shouts of
applause. When she gave her famous kick from the hip the stalls
were fired, and a glow of passion rose upward, upward, from gallery
to gallery, till it reached the gods. It was a triumph, too, when
she led the dance. She was at home in that: hand on hip, she
enthroned Venus in the gutter by the pavement side. And the music
seemed made for her plebeian voice--shrill, piping music, with
reminiscences of Saint-Cloud Fair, wheezings of clarinets and
playful trills on the part of the little flutes.

Two numbers were again encored. The opening waltz, that waltz with
the naughty rhythmic beat, had returned and swept the gods with it.
Juno, as a peasant woman, caught Jupiter and his little laundress
cleverly and boxed his ears. Diana, surprising Venus in the act of
making an assignation with Mars, made haste to indicate hour and
place to Vulcan, who cried, "I've hit on a plan!"  The rest of the
act did not seem very clear. The inquiry ended in a final galop
after which Jupiter, breathless, streaming with perspiration and
minus his crown, declared that the little women of Earth were
delicious and that the men were all to blame.

The curtain was falling, when certain voices, rising above the storm
of bravos, cried uproariously:

"All! All!"

Thereupon the curtain rose again; the artistes reappeared hand in
hand. In the middle of the line Nana and Rose Mignon stood side by
side, bowing and curtsying. The audience applauded; the clappers
shouted acclamations. Then little by little the house emptied.

"I must go and pay my respects to the Countess Muffat," said La
Faloise. "Exactly so; you'll present me," replied Fauchery; "we'll
go down afterward."

But it was not easy to get to the first-tier boxes. In the passage
at the top of the stairs there was a crush. In order to get forward
at all among the various groups you had to make yourself small and
to slide along, using your elbows in so doing. Leaning under a
copper lamp, where a jet of gas was burning, the bulky critic was
sitting in judgment on the piece in presence of an attentive circle.
People in passing mentioned his name to each other in muttered
tones. He had laughed the whole act through--that was the rumor
going the round of the passages--nevertheless, he was now very
severe and spoke of taste and morals. Farther off the thin-lipped
critic was brimming over with a benevolence which had an unpleasant
aftertaste, as of milk turned sour.

Fauchery glanced along, scrutinizing the boxes through the round
openings in each door. But the Count de Vandeuvres stopped him with
a question, and when he was informed that the two cousins were going
to pay their respects to the Muffats, he pointed out to them box
seven, from which he had just emerged. Then bending down and
whispering in the journalist's ear:

"Tell me, my dear fellow," he said, "this Nana--surely she's the
girl we saw one evening at the corner of the Rue de Provence?"

"By Jove, you're right!" cried Fauchery. "I was saying that I had
come across her!"

La Faloise presented his cousin to Count Muffat de Beuville, who
appeared very frigid. But on hearing the name Fauchery the countess
raised her head and with a certain reserve complimented the
paragraphist on his articles in the Figaro. Leaning on the velvet-
covered support in front of her, she turned half round with a pretty
movement of the shoulders. They talked for a short time, and the
Universal Exhibition was mentioned.

"It will be very fine," said the count, whose square-cut, regular-
featured face retained a certain gravity.

"I visited the Champ de Mars today and returned thence truly
astonished."

"They say that things won't be ready in time," La Faloise ventured
to remark. "There's infinite confusion there--"

But the count interrupted him in his severe voice:

"Things will be ready. The emperor desires it."

Fauchery gaily recounted how one day, when he had gone down thither
in search of a subject for an article, he had come near spending all
his time in the aquarium, which was then in course of construction.
The countess smiled. Now and again she glanced down at the body of
the house, raising an arm which a white glove covered to the elbow
and fanning herself with languid hand. The house dozed, almost
deserted. Some gentlemen in the stalls had opened out newspapers,
and ladies received visits quite comfortably, as though they were at
their own homes. Only a well-bred whispering was audible under the
great chandelier, the light of which was softened in the fine cloud
of dust raised by the confused movements of the interval. At the
different entrances men were crowding in order to talk to ladies who
remained seated. They stood there motionless for a few seconds,
craning forward somewhat and displaying the great white bosoms of
their shirt fronts.

"We count on you next Tuesday," said the countess to La Faloise, and
she invited Fauchery, who bowed.

Not a word was said of the play; Nana's name was not once mentioned.
The count was so glacially dignified that he might have been
supposed to be taking part at a sitting of the legislature. In
order to explain their presence that evening he remarked simply that
his father-in-law was fond of the theater. The door of the box must
have remained open, for the Marquis de Chouard, who had gone out in
order to leave his seat to the visitors, was back again. He was
straightening up his tall, old figure. His face looked soft and
white under a broad-brimmed hat, and with his restless eyes he
followed the movements of the women who passed.

The moment the countess had given her invitation Fauchery took his
leave, feeling that to talk about the play would not be quite the
thing. La Faloise was the last to quit the box. He had just
noticed the fair-haired Labordette, comfortably installed in the
Count de Vandeuvres's stage box and chatting at very close quarters
with Blanche de Sivry.

"Gad," he said after rejoining his cousin, "that Labordette knows
all the girls then! He's with Blanche now."

"Doubtless he knows them all," replied Fauchery quietly. "What
d'you want to be taken for, my friend?"

The passage was somewhat cleared of people, and Fauchery was just
about to go downstairs when Lucy Stewart called him. She was quite
at the other end of the corridor, at the door of her stage box.
They were getting cooked in there, she said, and she took up the
whole corridor in company with Caroline Hequet and her mother, all
three nibbling burnt almonds. A box opener was chatting maternally
with them. Lucy fell out with the journalist. He was a pretty
fellow; to be sure! He went up to see other women and didn't even
come and ask if they were thirsty! Then, changing the subject:

"You know, dear boy, I think Nana very nice."

She wanted him to stay in the stage box for the last act, but he
made his escape, promising to catch them at the door afterward.
Downstairs in front of the theater Fauchery and La Faloise lit
cigarettes. A great gathering blocked the sidewalk, a stream of men
who had come down from the theater steps and were inhaling the fresh
night air in the boulevards, where the roar and battle had
diminished.

Meanwhile Mignon had drawn Steiner away to the Cafe des Varietes.
Seeing Nana's success, he had set to work to talk enthusiastically
about her, all the while observing the banker out of the corners of
his eyes. He knew him well; twice he had helped him to deceive Rose
and then, the caprice being over, had brought him back to her,
faithful and repentant. In the cafe the too numerous crowd of
customers were squeezing themselves round the marble-topped tables.
Several were standing up, drinking in a great hurry. The tall
mirrors reflected this thronging world of heads to infinity and
magnified the narrow room beyond measure with its three chandeliers,
its moleskin-covered seats and its winding staircase draped with
red. Steiner went and seated himself at a table in the first
saloon, which opened full on the boulevard, its doors having been
removed rather early for the time of year. As Fauchery and La
Faloise were passing the banker stopped them.

"Come and take a bock with us, eh?" they said.

But he was too preoccupied by an idea; he wanted to have a bouquet
thrown to Nana. At last he called a waiter belonging to the cafe,
whom he familiarly addressed as Auguste. Mignon, who was listening,
looked at him so sharply that he lost countenance and stammered out:

"Two bouquets, Auguste, and deliver them to the attendant. A
bouquet for each of these ladies! Happy thought, eh?"

At the other end of the saloon, her shoulders resting against the
frame of a mirror, a girl, some eighteen years of age at the
outside, was leaning motionless in front of her empty glass as
though she had been benumbed by long and fruitless waiting. Under
the natural curls of her beautiful gray-gold hair a virginal face
looked out at you with velvety eyes, which were at once soft and
candid.

She wore a dress of faded green silk and a round hat which blows had
dinted. The cool air of the night made her look very pale.

"Egad, there's Satin," murmured Fauchery when his eye lit upon her.

La Faloise questioned him. Oh dear, yes, she was a streetwalker--
she didn't count. But she was such a scandalous sort that people
amused themselves by making her talk. And the journalist, raising
his voice:

"What are you doing there, Satin?"

"I'm bogging," replied Satin quietly without changing position.

The four men were charmed and fell a-laughing. Mignon assured them
that there was no need to hurry; it would take twenty minutes to set
up the scenery for the third act. But the two cousins, having drunk
their beer, wanted to go up into the theater again; the cold was
making itself felt. Then Mignon remained alone with Steiner, put
his elbows on the table and spoke to him at close quarters.

"It's an understood thing, eh? We are to go to her house, and I'm
to introduce you. You know the thing's quite between ourselves--my
wife needn't know."

Once more in their places, Fauchery and La Faloise noticed a pretty,
quietly dressed woman in the second tier of boxes. She was with a
serious-looking gentleman, a chief clerk at the office of the
Ministry of the Interior, whom La Faloise knew, having met him at
the Muffats'. As to Fauchery, he was under the impression that her
name was Madame Robert, a lady of honorable repute who had a lover,
only one, and that always a person of respectability.

But they had to turn round, for Daguenet was smiling at them. Now
that Nana had had a success he no longer hid himself: indeed, he had
just been scoring triumphs in the passages. By his side was the
young truant schoolboy, who had not quitted his seat, so stupefying
was the state of admiration into which Nana had plunged him. That
was it, he thought; that was the woman! And he blushed as he
thought so and dragged his gloves on and off mechanically. Then
since his neighbor had spoken of Nana, he ventured to question him.

"Will you pardon me for asking you, sir, but that lady who is
acting--do you know her?"

"Yes, I do a little," murmured Daguenet with some surprise and
hesitation.

"Then you know her address?"

The question, addressed as it was to him, came so abruptly that he
felt inclined to respond with a box on the ear.

"No," he said in a dry tone of voice.

And with that he turned his back. The fair lad knew that he had
just been guilty of some breach of good manners. He blushed more
hotly than ever and looked scared.

The traditional three knocks were given, and among the returning
throng, attendants, laden with pelisses and overcoats, bustled about
at a great rate in order to put away people's things. The clappers
applauded the scenery, which represented a grotto on Mount Etna,
hollowed out in a silver mine and with sides glittering like new
money. In the background Vulcan's forge glowed like a setting star.
Diana, since the second act, had come to a good understanding with
the god, who was to pretend that he was on a journey, so as to leave
the way clear for Venus and Mars. Then scarcely was Diana alone
than Venus made her appearance. A shiver of delight ran round the
house. Nana was nude. With quiet audacity she appeared in her
nakedness, certain of the sovereign power of her flesh. Some gauze
enveloped her, but her rounded shoulders, her Amazonian bosom, her
wide hips, which swayed to and fro voluptuously, her whole body, in
fact, could be divined, nay discerned, in all its foamlike whiteness
of tint beneath the slight fabric she wore. It was Venus rising
from the waves with no veil save her tresses. And when Nana lifted
her arms the golden hairs in her armpits were observable in the
glare of the footlights. There was no applause. Nobody laughed any
more. The men strained forward with serious faces, sharp features,
mouths irritated and parched. A wind seemed to have passed, a soft,
soft wind, laden with a secret menace. Suddenly in the bouncing
child the woman stood discovered, a woman full of restless
suggestion, who brought with her the delirium of sex and opened the
gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was smiling still, but
her smile was now bitter, as of a devourer of men.

"By God," said Fauchery quite simply to La Faloise.

Mars in the meantime, with his plume of feathers, came hurrying to
the trysting place and found himself between the two goddesses.
Then ensued a passage which Prulliere played with great delicacy.
Petted by Diana, who wanted to make a final attack upon his feelings
before delivering him up to Vulcan, wheedled by Venus, whom the
presence of her rival excited, he gave himself up to these tender
delights with the beatified expression of a man in clover. Finally
a grand trio brought the scene to a close, and it was then that an
attendant appeared in Lucy Stewart's box and threw on the stage two
immense bouquets of white lilacs. There was applause; Nana and Rose
Mignon bowed, while Prulliere picked up the bouquets. Many of the
occupants of the stalls turned smilingly toward the ground-floor
occupied by Steiner and Mignon. The banker, his face blood-red, was
suffering from little convulsive twitchings of the chin, as though
he had a stoppage in his throat.

What followed took the house by storm completely. Diana had gone
off in a rage, and directly afterward, Venus, sitting on a moss-clad
seat, called Mars to her. Never yet had a more glowing scene of
seduction been ventured on. Nana, her arms round Prulliere's neck,
was drawing him toward her when Fontan, with comically furious
mimicry and an exaggerated imitation of the face of an outraged
husband who surprises his wife in FLAGRANTE DELICTO, appeared at the
back of the grotto. He was holding the famous net with iron meshes.
For an instant he poised and swung it, as a fisherman does when he
is going to make a cast, and by an ingenious twist Venus and Mars
were caught in the snare; the net wrapped itself round them and held
them motionless in the attitude of happy lovers.

A murmur of applause swelled and swelled like a growing sigh. There
was some hand clapping, and every opera glass was fixed on Venus.
Little by little Nana had taken possession of the public, and now
every man was her slave.

A wave of lust had flowed from her as from an excited animal, and
its influence had spread and spread and spread till the whole house
was possessed by it. At that moment her slightest movement blew the
flame of desire: with her little finger she ruled men's flesh.
Backs were arched and quivered as though unseen violin bows had been
drawn across their muscles; upon men's shoulders appeared fugitive
hairs, which flew in air, blown by warm and wandering breaths,
breathed one knew not from what feminine mouth. In front of him
Fauchery saw the truant schoolboy half lifted from his seat by
passion. Curiosity led him to look at the Count de Vandeuvres--he
was extremely pale, and his lips looked pinched--at fat Steiner,
whose face was purple to the verge of apoplexy; at Labordette,
ogling away with the highly astonished air of a horse dealer
admiring a perfectly shaped mare; at Daguenet, whose ears were
blood-red and twitching with enjoyment. Then a sudden idea made him
glance behind, and he marveled at what he saw in the Muffats' box.
Behind the countess, who was white and serious as usual, the count
was sitting straight upright, with mouth agape and face mottled with
red, while close by him, in the shadow, the restless eyes of the
Marquis de Chouard had become catlike phosphorescent, full of golden
sparkles. The house was suffocating; people's very hair grew heavy
on their perspiring heads. For three hours back the breath of the
multitude had filled and heated the atmosphere with a scent of
crowded humanity. Under the swaying glare of the gas the dust
clouds in mid-air had grown constantly denser as they hung
motionless beneath the chandelier. The whole house seemed to be
oscillating, to be lapsing toward dizziness in its fatigue and
excitement, full, as it was, of those drowsy midnight desires which
flutter in the recesses of the bed of passion. And Nana, in front
of this languorous public, these fifteen hundred human beings
thronged and smothered in the exhaustion and nervous exasperation
which belong to the close of a spectacle, Nana still triumphed by
right of her marble flesh and that sexual nature of hers, which was
strong enough to destroy the whole crowd of her adorers and yet
sustain no injury.

The piece drew to a close. In answer to Vulcan's triumphant summons
all the Olympians defiled before the lovers with ohs and ahs of
stupefaction and gaiety. Jupiter said, "I think it is light conduct
on your part, my son, to summon us to see such a sight as this."  
Then a reaction took place in favor of Venus. The chorus of
cuckolds was again ushered in by Iris and besought the master of the
gods not to give effect to its petition, for since women had lived
at home, domestic life was becoming impossible for the men: the
latter preferred being deceived and happy. That was the moral of
the play. Then Venus was set at liberty, and Vulcan obtained a
partial divorce from her. Mars was reconciled with Diana, and Jove,
for the sake of domestic peace, packed his little laundress off into
a constellation. And finally they extricated Love from his black
hole, where instead of conjugating the verb AMO he had been busy in
the manufacture of "dollies."  The curtain fell on an apotheosis,
wherein the cuckolds' chorus knelt and sang a hymn of gratitude to
Venus, who stood there with smiling lips, her stature enhanced by
her sovereign nudity.

The audience, already on their feet, were making for the exits. The
authors were mentioned, and amid a thunder of applause there were
two calls before the curtain. The shout of "Nana! Nana!" rang
wildly forth. Then no sooner was the house empty than it grew dark:
the footlights went out; the chandelier was turned down; long strips
of gray canvas slipped from the stage boxes and swathed the gilt
ornamentation of the galleries, and the house, lately so full of
heat and noise, lapsed suddenly into a heavy sleep, while a musty,
dusty odor began to pervade it. In the front of her box stood the
Countess Muffat. Very erect and closely wrapped up in her furs, she
stared at the gathering shadows and waited for the crowd to pass
away.

In the passages the people were jostling the attendants, who hardly
knew what to do among the tumbled heaps of outdoor raiment.
Fauchery and La Faloise had hurried in order to see the crowd pass
out. All along the entrance hall men formed a living hedge, while
down the double staircase came slowly and in regular, complete
formation two interminable throngs of human beings. Steiner, in tow
of Mignon, had left the house among the foremost. The Count de
Vandeuvres took his departure with Blanche de Sivry on his arm. For
a moment or two Gaga and her daughter seemed doubtful how to
proceed, but Labordette made haste to go and fetch them a
conveyance, the door whereof he gallantly shut after them. Nobody
saw Daguenet go by. As the truant schoolboy, registering a mental
vow to wait at the stage door, was running with burning cheeks
toward the Passage des Panoramas, of which he found the gate closed,
Satin, standing on the edge of the pavement, moved forward and
brushed him with her skirts, but he in his despair gave her a savage
refusal and vanished amid the crowd, tears of impotent desire in his
eyes. Members of the audience were lighting their cigars and
walking off, humming:

     When Venus roams at eventide.

Satin had gone back in front of the Cafe des Varietes, where Auguste
let her eat the sugar that remained over from the customers' orders.
A stout man, who came out in a very heated condition, finally
carried her off in the shadow of the boulevard, which was now
gradually going to sleep.

Still people kept coming downstairs. La Faloise was waiting for
Clarisse; Fauchery had promised to catch up Lucy Stewart with
Caroline Hequet and her mother. They came; they took up a whole
corner of the entrance hall and were laughing very loudly when the
Muffats passed by them with an icy expression. Bordenave had just
then opened a little door and, peeping out, had obtained from
Fauchery the formal promise of an article. He was dripping with
perspiration, his face blazed, as though he were drunk with success.

"You're good for two hundred nights," La Faloise said to him with
civility. "The whole of Paris will visit your theater."

But Bordenave grew annoyed and, indicating with a jerk of his chin
the public who filled the entrance hall--a herd of men with parched
lips and ardent eyes, still burning with the enjoyment of Nana--he
cried out violently:

"Say 'my brothel,' you obstinate devil!"

CHAPTER II

At ten o'clock the next morning Nana was still asleep. She occupied
the second floor of a large new house in the Boulevard Haussmann,
the landlord of which let flats to single ladies in order by their
means to dry the paint. A rich merchant from Moscow, who had come
to pass a winter in Paris, had installed her there after paying six
months' rent in advance. The rooms were too big for her and had
never been completely furnished. The vulgar sumptuosity of gilded
consoles and gilded chairs formed a crude contrast therein to the
bric-a-brac of a secondhand furniture shop--to mahogany round
tables, that is to say, and zinc candelabras, which sought to
imitate Florentine bronze. All of which smacked of the courtesan
too early deserted by her first serious protector and fallen back on
shabby lovers, of a precarious first appearance of a bad start,
handicapped by refusals of credit and threats of eviction.

Nana was sleeping on her face, hugging in her bare arms a pillow in
which she was burying cheeks grown pale in sleep. The bedroom and
the dressing room were the only two apartments which had been
properly furnished by a neighboring upholsterer. A ray of light,
gliding in under a curtain, rendered visible rosewood furniture and
hangings and chairbacks of figured damask with a pattern of big blue
flowers on a gray ground. But in the soft atmosphere of that
slumbering chamber Nana suddenly awoke with a start, as though
surprised to find an empty place at her side. She looked at the
other pillow lying next to hers; there was the dint of a human head
among its flounces: it was still warm. And groping with one hand,
she pressed the knob of an electric bell by her bed's head.

"He's gone then?" she asked the maid who presented herself.

"Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul went away not ten minutes back. As
Madame was tired, he did not wish to wake her. But he ordered me to
tell Madame that he would come tomorrow."

As she spoke Zoe, the lady's maid, opened the outer shutter. A
flood of daylight entered. Zoe, a dark brunette with hair in little
plaits, had a long canine face, at once livid and full of seams, a
snub nose, thick lips and two black eyes in continual movement.

"Tomorrow, tomorrow," repeated Nana, who was not yet wide awake, "is
tomorrow the day?"

"Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul has always come on the Wednesday."

"No, now I remember," said the young woman, sitting up. "It's all
changed. I wanted to tell him so this morning. He would run
against the nigger! We should have a nice to-do!"

"Madame did not warn me; I couldn't be aware of it," murmured Zoe.
"When Madame changes her days she will do well to tell me so that I
may know. Then the old miser is no longer due on the Tuesday?"

Between themselves they were wont thus gravely to nickname as "old
miser" and "nigger" their two paying visitors, one of whom was a
tradesman of economical tendencies from the Faubourg Saint-Denis,
while the other was a Walachian, a mock count, whose money, paid
always at the most irregular intervals, never looked as though it
had been honestly come by. Daguenet had made Nana give him the days
subsequent to the old miser's visits, and as the trader had to be at
home by eight o'clock in the morning, the young man would watch for
his departure from Zoes kitchen and would take his place, which was
still quite warm, till ten o'clock. Then he, too, would go about
his business. Nana and he were wont to think it a very comfortable
arrangement.

"So much the worse," said Nana; "I'll write to him this afternoon.
And if he doesn't receive my letter, then tomorrow you will stop him
coming in."

In the meantime Zoe was walking softly about the room. She spoke of
yesterday's great hit. Madame had shown such talent; she sang so
well! Ah! Madame need not fret at all now!

Nana, her elbow dug into her pillow, only tossed her head in reply.
Her nightdress had slipped down on her shoulders, and her hair,
unfastened and entangled, flowed over them in masses.

"Without doubt," she murmured, becoming thoughtful; "but what's to
be done to gain time? I'm going to have all sorts of bothers today.
Now let's see, has the porter come upstairs yet this morning?"

Then both the women talked together seriously. Nana owed three
quarters' rent; the landlord was talking of seizing the furniture.
Then, too, there was a perfect downpour of creditors; there was a
livery-stable man, a needlewoman, a ladies' tailor, a charcoal
dealer and others besides, who came every day and settled themselves
on a bench in the little hall. The charcoal dealer especially was a
dreadful fellow--he shouted on the staircase. But Nana's greatest
cause of distress was her little Louis, a child she had given birth
to when she was sixteen and now left in charge of a nurse in a
village in the neighborhood of Rambouillet. This woman was
clamoring for the sum of three hundred francs before she would
consent to give the little Louis back to her. Nana, since her last
visit to the child, had been seized with a fit of maternal love and
was desperate at the thought that she could not realize a project,
which had now become a hobby with her. This was to pay off the
nurse and to place the little man with his aunt, Mme Lerat, at the
Batignolles, whither she could go and see him as often as she liked.

Meanwhile the lady's maid kept hinting that her mistress ought to
have confided her necessities to the old miser.

"To be sure, I told him everything," cried Nana, "and he told me in
answer that he had too many big liabilities. He won't go beyond his
thousand francs a month. The nigger's beggared just at present; I
expect he's lost at play. As to that poor Mimi, he stands in great
need of a loan himself; a fall in stocks has cleaned him out--he
can't even bring me flowers now."

She was speaking of Daguenet. In the self-abandonment of her
awakening she had no secrets from Zoe, and the latter, inured to
such confidences, received them with respeciful sympathy. Since
Madame condescended to speak to her of her affairs she would permit
herself to say what she thought. Besides, she was very fond of
Madame; she had left Mme Blanche for the express purpose of taking
service with her, and heaven knew Mme Blanche was straining every
nerve to have her again! Situations weren't lacking; she was pretty
well known, but she would have stayed with Madame even in narrow
circumstances, because she believed in Madame's future. And she
concluded by stating her advice with precision. When one was young
one often did silly things. But this time it was one's duty to look
alive, for the men only thought of having their fun. Oh dear, yes!
Things would right themselves. Madame had only to say one word in
order to quiet her creditors and find the money she stood in need
of.

"All that doesn't help me to three hundred francs," Nana kept
repeating as she plunged her fingers into the vagrant convolutions
of her back hair. "I must have three hundred francs today, at once!
It's stupid not to know anyone who'll give you three hundred
francs."

She racked her brains. She would have sent Mme Lerat, whom she was
expecting that very morning, to Rambouillet. The counteraction of
her sudden fancy spoiled for her the triumph of last night. Among
all those men who had cheered her, to think that there wasn't one to
bring her fifteen louis! And then one couldn't accept money in that
way! Dear heaven, how unfortunate she was! And she kept harking
back again to the subject of her baby--he had blue eyes like a
cherub's; he could lisp "Mamma" in such a funny voice that you were
ready to die of laughing!

But at this moment the electric bell at the outer door was heard to
ring with its quick and tremulous vibration. Zoe returned,
murmuring with a confidential air:

"It's a woman."

She had seen this woman a score of times, only she made believe
never to recognize her and to be quite ignorant of the nature of her
relations with ladies in difficulties.

"She has told me her name--Madame Tricon."

"The Tricon," cried Nana. "Dear me! That's true. I'd forgotten
her. Show her in."

Zoe ushered in a tall old lady who wore ringlets and looked like a
countess who haunts lawyers' offices. Then she effaced herself,
disappearing noiselessly with the lithe, serpentine movement
wherewith she was wont to withdraw from a room on the arrival of a
gentleman. However, she might have stayed. The Tricon did not even
sit down. Only a brief exchange of words took place.

"I have someone for you today. Do you care about it?"

"Yes. How much?"

"Twenty louis."

"At what o'clock?"

"At three. It's settled then?"

"It's settled."

Straightway the Tricon talked of the state of the weather. It was
dry weather, pleasant for walking. She had still four or five
persons to see. And she took her departure after consulting a small
memorandum book. When she was once more alone Nana appeared
comforted. A slight shiver agitated her shoulders, and she wrapped
herself softly up again in her warm bedclothes with the lazy
movements of a cat who is susceptible to cold. Little by little her
eyes closed, and she lay smiling at the thought of dressing Louiset
prettily on the following day, while in the slumber into which she
once more sank last night's long, feverish dream of endlessly
rolling applause returned like a sustained accompaniment to music
and gently soothed her lassitude.

At eleven o'clock, when Zoe showed Mme Lerat into the room, Nana was
still asleep. But she woke at the noise and cried out at once:

"It's you. You'll go to Rambouillet today?"

"That's what I've come for," said the aunt. "There's a train at
twenty past twelve. I've got time to catch it."

"No, I shall only have the money by and by," replied the young
woman, stretching herself and throwing out her bosom. "You'll have
lunch, and then we'll see."

Zoe brought a dressing jacket.

"The hairdresser's here, madame," she murmured.

But Nana did not wish to go into the dressing room. And she herself
cried out:

"Come in, Francis."

A well-dressed man pushed open the door and bowed. Just at that
moment Nana was getting out of bed, her bare legs in full view. But
she did not hurry and stretched her hands out so as to let Zoe draw
on the sleeves of the dressing jacket. Francis, on his part, was
quite at his ease and without turning away waited with a sober
expression on his face.

"Perhaps Madame has not seen the papers. There's a very nice
article in the Figaro."

He had brought the journal. Mme Lerat put on her spectacles and
read the article aloud, standing in front of the window as she did
so. She had the build of a policeman, and she drew herself up to
her full height, while her nostrils seemed to compress themselves
whenever she uttered a gallant epithet. It was a notice by
Fauchery, written just after the performance, and it consisted of a
couple of very glowing columns, full of witty sarcasm about the
artist and of broad admiration for the woman.

"Excellent!" Francis kept repeating.

Nana laughed good-humoredly at his chaffing her about her voice! He
was a nice fellow, was that Fauchery, and she would repay him for
his charming style of writing. Mme Lerat, after having reread the
notice, roundly declared that the men all had the devil in their
shanks, and she refused to explain her self further, being fully
satisfied with a brisk allusion of which she alone knew the meaning her in an income of six hundred
francs a year. Nana
promised to rent some pretty little lodgings for her and to give her
a hundred francs a month besides. At the mention of this sum the
aunt forgot herself and shrieked to her niece, bidding her squeeze
their throats, since she had them in her grasp. She was meaning the
men, of course. Then they both embraced again, but i.
Francis finished turning up and fastening Nana's hair. He bowed and
said:

"I'll keep my eye on the evening papers. At half-past five as
usual, eh?"

"Bring me a pot of pomade and a pound of burnt almonds from
Boissier's," Nana cried to him across the drawing room just as he
was shutting the door after him.

Then the two women, once more alone, recollected that they had not
embraced, and they planted big kisses on each other's cheeks. The
notice warmed their hearts. Nana, who up till now had been half
asleep, was again seized with the fever of her triumph. Dear, dear,
'twas Rose Mignon that would be spending a pleasant morning! Her
aunt having been unwilling to go to the theater because, as she
averred, sudden emotions ruined her stomach, Nana set herself to
describe the events of the evening and grew intoxicated at her own
recital, as though all Paris had been shaken to the ground by the
applause. Then suddenly interrupting herself, she asked with a
laugh if one would ever have imagined it all when she used to go
traipsing about the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. Mme Lerat shook her
head. No, no, one never could have foreseen it! And she began
talking in her turn, assuming a serious air as she did so and
calling Nana "daughter."  Wasn't she a second mother to her since
the first had gone to rejoin Papa and Grandmamma? Nana was greatly
softened and on the verge of tears. But Mme Lerat declared that the
past was the past--oh yes, to be sure, a dirty past with things in
it which it was as well not to stir up every day. She had left off
seeing her niece for a long time because among the family she was
accused of ruining herself along with the little thing. Good God,
as though that were possible! She didn't ask for confidences; she
believed that Nana had always lived decently, and now it was enough
for her to have found her again in a fine position and to observe
her kind feelings toward her son. Virtue and hard work were still
the only things worth anything in this world.

"Who is the baby's father?" she said, interrupting herself, her eyes
lit up with an exhad crossed two knives on the
table in front of her. Notwithstanding this, the young woman
defended herself from the charge of superstition. Thus, if the salt
were upset, it meant nothing, even on a Friday; but when it came to
knives, that was too much of a good thing; that had never proved
fallacious. There could be no doubt that something unpleasant was
going to happen to her. She yawned, and then with an air, of
profound boredom:

"Two o'clock already. I must go out. What a nuisance!"

The two old ladies looked at one another. The three women shook
their heads without speaking. To be sure, life was not always
amusing. Nana had tilted her chair back anew and lit a cigarette,
while the others sat pursing up their lips discreetly, thinking
deeply philosophic thoughts.

"While waiting for you to return we'll play a game of bezique," said
Mme Maloir after a short silence. "Does Madame play bezique?"

Certainly Mme Lerat played it, and that to perfection. It was no
good troubling Zoe, who had vanished--a corner of the table would do
quite well. And they pushepression of acute curiosity.

Nana was taken by surprise and hesitated a moment.

"A gentleman," she replied.

"There now!" rejoined the aunt. "They declared that you had him by
a stonemason who was in the habit of beating you. Indeed, you shall
tell me all about it someday; you know I'm discreet! Tut, tut, I'll
look after him as though he were a prince's son."

She had retired from business as a florist and was living on her
savings, which she had got together sou by sou, till now they
broughtn the midst of
her rejoicing Nana's face, as she led the talk back to the subject
of Louiset, seemed to be overshadowed by a sudden recollection.

"Isn't it a bore I've got to go out at three o'clock?" she muttered.
"It IS a nuisance!"

Just then Zoe came in to say that lunch was on the table. They went
into the dining room, where an old lady was already seated at table.
She had not taken her hat off, and she wore a dark dress of an
indecisive color midway between puce and goose dripping. Nana did
not seem surprised at sight of her. She simply asked her why she
hadn't come into the bedroom.

"I heard voices," replied the old lady. "I thought you had
company."

Mme Maloir, a respectable-looking and mannerly woman, was Nana's old
friend, chaperon and companion. Mme Lerat's presence seemed to
fidget her at first. Afterward, when she became aware that it was
Nana's aunt, she looked at her with a sweet expression and a die-
away smile. In the meantime Nana, who averred that she was as
hungry as a wolf, threw herself on the radishes and gobbled them up
without bread. Mme Lerat had become ceremonious; she refused the
radishes as provocative of phlegm. By and by when Zoe had brought
in the cutlets Nana just chipped the meat and contented herself with
sucking the bones. Now and again she scrutinized her old friend's
hat out of the corners of her eyes.

"It's the new hat I gave you?" she ended by saying.

"Yes, I made it up," murmured Mme Maloir, her mouth full of meat.

The hat was smart to distraction. In front it was greatly
exaggerated, and it was adorned with a lofty feather. Mme Maloir
had a mania for doing up all her hats afresh; she alone knew what
really became her, and with a few stitches she could manufacture a
toque out of the most elegant headgear. Nana, who had bought her
this very hat in order not to be ashamed of her when in her company
out of doors, was very near being vexed.

"Push it up, at any rate," she cried.

"No, thank you," replied the old lady with dignity. "It doesn't get
in my way; I can eat very comfortably as it is."

After the cutlets came cauliflowers and the remains of a cold
chicken. But at the arrival of each successive dish Nana made a
little face, hesitated, sniffed and left her plateful untouched.
She finished her lunch with the help of preserve.

Dessert took a long time. Zoe did not remove the cloth before
serving the coffee. Indeed, the ladies simply pushed back their
plates before taking it. They talked continually of yesterday's
charming evening. Nana kept rolling cigarettes, which she smoked,
swinging up and down on her backward-tilted chair. And as Zoe had
remained behind and was lounging idly against the sideboard, it came
about that the company were favored with her history. She said she
was the daughter of a midwife at Bercy who had failed in business.
First of all she had taken service with a dentist and after that
with an insurance agent, but neither place suited her, and she
thereupon enumerated, not without a certain amount of pride, the
names of the ladies with whom she had served as lady's maid. Zoe
spoke of these ladies as one who had had the making of their
fortunes. It was very certain that without her more than one would
have had some queer tales to tell. Thus one day, when Mme Blanche
was with M. Octave, in came the old gentleman. What did Zoe do?
She made believe to tumble as she crossed the drawing room; the old
boy rushed up to her assistance, flew to the kitchen to fetch her a
glass of water, and M. Octave slipped away.

"Oh, she's a good girl, you bet!" said Nana, who was listening to
her with tender interest and a sort of submissive admiration.

"Now I've had my troubles," began Mme Lerat. And edging up to Mme
Maloir, she imparted to her certain confidential confessions. Both
ladies took lumps of sugar dipped in cognac and sucked them. But
Mme Maloir was wont to listen to other people's secrets without even
confessing anything concerning herself. People said that she lived
on a mysterious allowance in a room whither no one ever penetrated.

All of a sudden Nana grew excited.

"Don't play with the knives, Aunt. You know it gives me a turn!"

Without thinking about it Mme Lerat d back the tablecloth over the dirty
plates. But as Mme Maloir was herself going to take the cards out
of a drawer in the sideboard, Nana remarked that before she sat down
to her game it would be very nice of her if she would write her a
letter. It bored Nana to write letters; besides, she was not sure
of her spelling, while her old friend could turn out the most
feeling epistles. She ran to fetch some good note paper in her
bedroom. An inkstand consisting of a bottle of ink worth about
three sous stood untidily on one of the pieces of furniture, with a
pen deep in rust beside it. The letter was for Daguenet. Mme
Maloir herself wrote in her bold English hand, "My darling little
man," and then she told him not to come tomorrow because "that could
not be" but hastened to add that "she was with him in thought at
every moment of the day, whether she were near or far away."

"And I end with 'a thousand kisses,'" she murmured.

Mme Lerat had shown her approval of each phrase with an emphatic
nod. Her eyes were sparkling; she loved to find herself in the
midst of love affairs. Nay, she was seized with a desire to add
some words of her own and, assuming a tender look and cooing like a
dove, she suggested:

"A thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes."

"That's the thing: 'a thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes'!"  Nana
repeated, while the two old ladies assumed a beatified expression.

Zoe was rung for and told to take the letter down to a
commissionaire. She had just been talking with the theater
messenger, who had brought her mistress the day's playbill and
rehearsal arrangements, which he had forgotten in the morning. Nana
had this individual ushered in and got him to take the latter to
Daguenet on his return. Then she put questions to him. Oh yes! M.
Bordenave was very pleased; people had already taken seats for a
week to come; Madame had no idea of the number of people who had
been asking her address since morning. When the man had taken his
departure Nana announced that at most she would only be out half an
hour. If there were any visitors Zoe would make them wait. As she
spoke the electric bell sounded. It was a creditor in the shape of
the man of whom she jobbed her carriages. He had settled himself on
the bench in the anteroom, and the fellow was free to twiddle his
thumbs till night--there wasn't the least hurry now.

"Come, buck up!" said Nana, still torpid with laziness and yawning
and stretching afresh. "I ought to be there now!"

Yet she did not budge but kept watching the play of her aunt, who
had just announced four aces. Chin on hand, she grew quite
engrossed in it but gave a violent start on hearing three o'clock
strike.

"Good God!" she cried roughly.

Then Mme Maloir, who was counting the tricks she had won with her
tens and aces, said cheeringly to her in her soft voice:

"It would be better, dearie, to give up your expedition at once."

"No, be quick about it," said Mme Lerat, shuffling the cards. "I
shall take the half-past four o'clock train if you're back here with
the money before four o'clock."

"Oh, there'll be no time lost," she murmured.

Ten minutes after Zoe helped her on with a dress and a hat. It
didn't matter much if she were badly turned out. Just as she was
about to go downstairs there was a new ring at the bell. This time
it was the charcoal dealer. Very well, he might keep the livery-
stable keeper company--it would amuse the fellows. Only, as she
dreaded a scene, she crossed the kitchen and made her escape by the
back stairs. She often went that way and in return had only to lift
up her flounces.

"When one is a good mother anything's excusable," said Mme Maloir
sententiously when left alone with Mme Lerat.

"Four kings," replied this lady, whom the play greatly excited.

And they both plunged into an interminable game.

The table had not been cleared. The smell of lunch and the
cigarette smoke filled the room with an ambient, steamy vapor. The
two ladies had again set to work dipping lumps of sugar in brandy
and sucking the same. For twenty minutes at least they played and
sucked simultaneously when, the electric bell having rung a third
time, Zoe bustled into the room and roughly disturbed them, just as
if they had been her own friends.

"Look here, that's another ring. You can't stay where you are. If
many foiks call I must have the whole flat. Now off you go, off you
go!"

Mme Maloir was for finishing the game, but Zoe looked as if she was
going to pounce down on the cards, and so she decided to carry them
off without in any way altering their positions, while Mme Lerat
undertook the removal of the brandy bottle, the glasses and the
sugar. Then they both scudded to the kitchen, where they installed
themselves at the table in an empty space between the dishcloths,
which were spread out to dry, and the bowl still full of dishwater.

"We said it was three hundred and forty. It's your turn."

"I play hearts."

When Zoe returned she found them once again absorbed. After a
silence, as Mme Lerat was shuffling, Mme Maloir asked who it was.

"Oh, nobody to speak of," replied the servant carelessly; "a slip of
a lad! I wanted to send him away again, but he's such a pretty boy
with never a hair on his chin and blue eyes and a girl's face! So I
told him to wait after all. He's got an enormous bouquet in his
hand, which he never once consented to put down. One would like to
catch him one--a brat like that who ought to be at school still!"

Mme Lerat went to fetch a water bottle to mix herself some brandy
and water, the lumps of sugar having rendered her thirsty. Zoe
muttered something to the effect that she really didn't mind if she
drank something too. Her mouth, she averred, was as bitter as gall.

"So you put him--?" continued Mme Maloir.

"Oh yes, I put him in the closet at the end of the room, the little
unfurnished one. There's only one of my lady's trunks there and a
table. It's there I stow the lubbers."

And she was putting plenty of sugar in her grog when the electric
bell made her jump. Oh, drat it all! Wouldn't they let her have a
drink in peace? If they were to have a peal of bells things
promised well. Nevertheless, she ran off to open the door.
Returning presently, she saw Mme Maloir questioning her with a
glance.

"It's nothing," she said, "only a bouquet."

All three refreshed themselves, nodding to each other in token of
salutation. Then while Zoe was at length busy clearing the table,
bringing the plates out one by one and putting them in the sink, two
other rings followed close upon one another. But they weren't
serious, for while keeping the kitchen informed of what was going on
she twice repeated her disdainful expression:

"Nothing, only a bouquet."

Notwithstanding which, the old ladies laughed between two of their
tricks when they heard her describe the looks of the creditors in
the anteroom after the flowers had arrived. Madame would find her
bouquets on her toilet table. What a pity it was they cost such a
lot and that you could only get ten sous for them! Oh dear, yes,
plenty of money was wasted!

"For my part," said Mme Maloir, "I should be quite content if every
day of my life I got what the men in Paris had spent on flowers for
the women."

"Now, you know, you're not hard to please," murmured Mme Lerat.
"Why, one would have only just enough to buy thread with. Four
queens, my dear."

It was ten minutes to four. Zoe was astonished, could not
understand why her mistress was out so long. Ordinarily when Madame
found herself obliged to go out in the afternoons she got it over in
double-quick time. But Mme Maloir declared that one didn't always
manage things as one wished. Truly, life was beset with obstacles,
averred Mme Lerat. The best course was to wait. If her niece was
long in coming it was because her occupations detained her; wasn't
it so? Besides, they weren't overworked--it was comfortable in the
kitchen. And as hearts were out, Mme Lerat threw down diamonds.

The bell began aga in
her small gloved hands.

It was too late now--Mme Lerat would not go to Rambouillet till
tomorrow, and Nana entered into long explanations.

"There's company waiting for you," the lady's maid repeated.

But Nana grew excited again. The company might wait: she'd go to
them all in good time when she'd finished. And as her aunt began
putting her hand out for the money:

"Ah no! Not all of it," she said. "Three hundred francs for the
nurse, fifty for your journey and expenses, that's three hundred and
fifty. Fifty francs I keep."

The big difficulty was how to find change. There were not ten
francs in the house. But they did not even address themselves to
Mme Maloir who, never having more than a six-sou omnibus fair upon
her, was listening in quite a disinterested manner. At length Zoe
went out of the room, remarking that she would go and looin, and when Zoe reappeared she was burning
with
excitement.

"My children, it's fat Steiner!" she said in the doorway, lowering
her voice as she spoke. "I've put HIM in the little sitting room."

Thereupon Mme Maloir spoke about the banker to Mme Lerat, who knew
no such gentleman. Was he getting ready to give Rose Mignon the go-
by? Zoe shook her head; she knew a thing or two. But once more she
had to go and open the door.

"Here's bothers!" she murmured when she came back. "It's the
nigger! 'Twasn't any good telling him that my lady's gone out, and
so he's settled himself in the bedroom. We only expected him this
evening."

At a quarter past four Nana was not in yet. What could she be
after? It was silly of her! Two other bouquets were brought round,
and Zoe, growing bored looked to see if there were any coffee left.
Yes, the ladies would willingly finish off the coffee; it would
waken them up. Sitting hunched up on their chairs, they were
beginning to fall asleep through dint of constantly taking their
cards between their fingers with the accustomed movement. The half-
hour sounded. Something must decidedly have happened to Madame.
And they began whispering to each other.

Suddenly Mme Maloir forgot herself and in a ringing voice announced:
"I've the five hundred! Trumps, Major Quint!"

"Oh, do be quiet!" said Zoe angrily. "What will all those gentlemen
think?"  And in the silence which ensued and amid the whispered
muttering of the two old women at strife over their game, the sound
of rapid footsteps ascended from the back stairs. It was Nana at
last. Before she had opened the door her breathlessness became
audible. She bounced abruptly in, looking very red in the face.
Her skirt, the string of which must have been broken, was trailing
over the stairs, and her flounces had just been dipped in a puddle
of something unpleasant which had oozed out on the landing of the
first floor, where the servant girl was a regular slut.

"Here you are! It's lucky!" said Mme Lerat, pursing up her lips,
for she was still vexed at Mme Maloir's "five hundred."  "You may
flatter yourself at the way you keep folks waiting."

"Madame isn't reasonable; indeed, she isn't!" added Zoe.

Nana was already harassed, and these reproaches exasperated her.
Was that the way people received her after the worry she had gone
through?

"Will you blooming well leave me alone, eh?" she cried.

"Hush, ma'am, there are people in there," said the maid.

Then in lower tones the young Woman stuttered breathlessly:

"D'you suppose I've been having a good time? Why, there was no end
to it. I should have liked to see you there! I was boiling with
rage! I felt inclined to smack somebody. And never a cab to come
home in! Luckily it's only a step from here, but never mind that; I
did just run home."

"You have the money?" asked the aunt.

"Dear, dear! That question!" rejoined Nana.

She had sat herself down on a chair close up against the stove, for
her legs had failed her after so much running, and without stopping
to take breath she drew from behind her stays an envelope in which
there were four hundred-franc notes. They were visible through a
large rent she had torn with savage fingers in order to be sure of
the contents. The three women round about her stared fixedly at the
envelope, a big, crumpled, dirty receptacle, as it lay claspedk in her
box, and she brought back a hundred francs in hundred-sou pieces.
They were counted out on a corner of the table, and Mme Lerat took
her departure at once after having promised to bring Louiset back
with her the following day.

"You say there's company there?" continued Nana, still sitting on
the chair and resting herself.

"Yes, madame, three people."

And Zoe mentioned the banker first. Nana made a face. Did that man
Steiner think she was going to let herself be bored because he had
thrown her a bouquet yesterday evening?

"Besides, I've had enough of it," she declared. "I shan't receive
today. Go and say you don't expect me now."

"Madame will think the matter over; Madame will receive Monsieur
Steiner," murmured Zoe gravely, without budging from her place. She
was annoyed to see her mistress on the verge of committing another
foolish mistake.

Then she mentioned the Walachian, who ought by now to find time
hanging heavy on his hands in the bedroom. Whereupon Nana grew
furious and more obstinate than ever. No, she would see nobody,
nobody! Who'd sent her such a blooming leech of a man?

"Chuck 'em all out! I--I'm going to play a game of bezique with
Madame Maloir. I prefer doing that."

The bell interrupted her remarks. That was the last straw. Another
of the beggars yet! She forbade Zoe to go and open the door, but
the latter had left the kitchen without listening to her, and when
she reappeared she brought back a couple of cards and said
authoritatively:

"I told them that Madame was receiving visitors. The gentlemen are
in the drawing room."

Nana had sprung up, raging, but the names of the Marquis de Chouard
and of Count Muffat de Beuville, which were inscribed on the cards,
calmed her down. For a moment or two she remained silent.

"Who are they?" she asked at last. "You know them?"

"I know the old fellow," replied Zoe, discreetly pursing up her
lips.

And her mistress continuing to question her with her eyes, she added
simply:

"I've seen him somewhere."

This remark seemed to decide the young woman. Regretfully she left
the kitchen, that asylum of steaming warmth, where you could talk
and take your ease amid the pleasant fumes of the coffeepot which
was being kept warm over a handful of glowing embers. She left Mme
Maloir behind her. That lady was now busy reading her fortune by
the cards; she had never yet taken her hat off, but now in order to
be more at her ease she undid the strings and threw them back over
her shoulders.

In the dressing room, where Zoe rapidly helped her on with a tea
gown, Nana revenged herself for the way in which they were all
boring her by muttering quiet curses upon the male sex. These big
words caused the lady's maid not a little distress, for she saw with
pain that her mistress was not rising superior to her origin as
quickly as she could have desired. She even made bold to beg Madame
to calm herself.

"You bet," was Nana's crude answer; "they're swine; they glory in
that sort of thing."

Nevertheless, she assumed her princesslike manner, as she was wont
to call it. But just when she was turning to go into the drawing
room Zoe held her back and herself introduced the Marquis de Chouard
and the Count Muffat into the dressing room. It was much better so.

"I regret having kept you waiting, gentlemen," said the young woman
with studied politeness.

The two men bowed and seated themselves. A blind of embroidered
tulle kept the little room in twilight. It was the most elegant
chamber in the flat, for it was hung with some light-colored fabric
and contained a cheval glass framed in inlaid wood, a lounge chair
and some others with arms and blue satin upholsteries. On the
toilet table the bouquets--roses, lilacs and hyacinths--appeared
like a very ruin of flowers. Their perfume was strong and
penetrating, while through the dampish air of the place, which was
full of the spoiled exhalations of the washstand, came occasional
whiffs of a more pungent scent, the scent of some grains or dry
patchouli ground to fine powder at the bottom of a cup. And as she
gathered herself together and drew up her dressing jacket, which had
been ill fastened, Nana had all the appearance of having been
surprised at her toilet: her skin was still damp; she smiled and
looked quite startled amid her frills and laces.

"Madame, you will pardon our insistence," said the Count Muffat
gravely. "We come on a quest. Monsieur and I are members of the
Benevolent Organization of the district."

The Marquis de Chouard hastened gallantly to add:

"When we learned that a great artiste lived in this house we
promised ourselves that we would put the claims of our poor people
before her in a very special manner. Talent is never without a
heart."

Nana pretended to be modest. She answered them with little
assenting movements of her head, making rapid reflections at the
same time. It must be the old man that had brought the other one:
he had such wicked eyes. And yet the other was not to be trusted
either: the veins near his temples were so queerly puffed up. He
might quite well have come by himself. Ah, now that she thought of
it, it was this way: the porter had given them her name, and they
had egged one another on, each with his own ends in view.

"Most certainly, gentlemen, you were quite right to come up," she
said with a very good grace.

But the electric bell made her tremble again. Another call, and
that Zoe always opening the door! She went on:

"One is only too happy to be able to give."

At bottom she was flattered.

"Ah, madame," rejoined the marquis, "if only you knew about it!
there's such misery! Our district has more than three thousand poor
people in it, and yet it's one of the richest. You cannot picture
to yourself anything like the present distress--children with no
bread, women ill, utterly without assistance, perishing of the
cold!"

"The poor souls!" cried Nana, very much moved.

Such was her feeling of compassion that tears flooded her fine eyes.
No longer studying deportment, she leaned forward with a quick
movement, and under her open dressing jacket her neck became
visible, while the bent position of her knees served to outline the
rounded contour of the thigh under the thin fabric of her skirt. A
little flush of blood appeared in the marquis's cadaverous cheeks.
Count Muffat, who was on the point of speaking, lowered his eyes.
The air of that little room was too hot: it had the close, heavy
warmth of a greenhouse. The roses were withering, and intoxicating
odors floated up from the patchouli in the cup.

"One would like to be very rich on occasions like this," added Nana.
"Well, well, we each do what we can. Believe me, gentlemen, if I
had known--"

She was on the point of being guilty of a silly speech, so melted
was she at heart. But she did not end her sentence and for a moment
was worried at not being able to remember where she had put her
fifty francs on changing her dress. But she recollected at last:
they must be on the corner of her toilet table under an inverted
pomatum pot. As she was in the act of rising the bell sounded for
quite a long time. Capital! Another of them still! It would never
end. The count and the marquis had both risen, too, and the ears of
the latter seemed to be pricked up and, as it were, pointing toward
the door; doubtless he knew that kind of ring. Muffat looked at
him; then they averted their gaze mutually. They felt awkward and
once more assumed their frigid bearing, the one looking square-set
and solid with his thick head of hair, the other drawing back his
lean shoulders, over which fell his fringe of thin white locks.

"My faith," said Nana, bringing the ten big silver pieces and quite
determined to laugh about it, "I am going to entrust you with this,
gentlemen. It is for the poor."

And the adorable little dimple in her chin became apparent. She
assumed her favorite pose, her amiable baby expression, as she held
the pile of five-franc pieces on her open palm and offered it to the
men, as though she were saying to them, "Now then, who wants some?"  
The count was the sharper of the two. He took fifty francs but left
one piece behind and, in order to gain possession of it, had to pick
it off the young woman's very skin, a moist, supple skin, the touch
of which sent a thrill through him. She was thoroughly merry and
did not cease laughing.

"Come, gentlemen," she continued. "Another time I hope to give
more."

The gentlemen no longer had any pretext for staying, and they bowed
and went toward the door. But just as they were about to go out the
bell rang anew. The marquis could not conceal a faint smile, while
a frown made the count look more grave than before. Nana detained
them some seconds so as to give Zoe time to find yet another corner
for the newcomers. She did not relish meetings at her house. Only
this time the whole place must be packed! She was therefore much
relieved when she saw the drawing room empty and asked herself
whether Zoe had really stuffed them into the cupboards.

"Au revoir, gentlemen," she said, pausing on the threshold of the
drawing room.

It was as though she lapped them in her laughing smile and clear,
unclouded glance. The Count Muffat bowed slightly. Despite his
great social experience he felt that he had lost his equilibrium.
He needed air; he was overcome with the dizzy feeling engendered in
that dressing room with a scent of flowers, with a feminine essence
which choked him. And behind his back, the Marquis de Chouard, who
was sure that he could not be seen, made so bold as to wink at Nana,
his whole face suddenly altering its expression as he did so, and
his tongue nigh lolling from his mouth.

When the young woman re-entered the little room, where Zoe was
awaiting her with letters and visiting cards, she cried out,
laughing more heartily than ever:

"There are a pair of beggars for you! Why, they've got away with my
fifty francs!"

She wasn't vexed. It struck her as a joke that MEN should have got
money out of her. All the same, they were swine, for she hadn't a
sou left. But at sight of the cards and the letters her bad temper
returned. As to the letters, why, she said "pass" to them. They
were from fellows who, after applauding her last night, were now
making their declarations. And as to the callers, they might go
about their business!

Zoe had stowed them all over the place, and she called attention to
the great capabilities of the flat, every room in which opened on
the corridor. That wasn't the case at Mme Blanche's, where people
had all to go through the drawing room. Oh yes, Mme Blanche had had
plenty of bothers over it!

"You will send them all away," continued Nana in pursuance of her
idea. "Begin with the nigger."

"Oh, as to him, madame, I gave him his marching orders a while ago,"
said Zoe with a grin. "He only wanted to tell Madame that he
couldn't come to-night."

There was vast joy at this announcement, and Nana clapped her hands.
He wasn't coming, what good luck! She would be free then! And she
emitted sighs of relief, as though she had been let off the most
abominable of tortures. Her first thought was for Daguenet. Poor
duck, why, she had just written to tell him to wait till Thursday!
Quick, quick, Mme Maloir should write a second letter! But Zoe
announced that Mme Maloir had slipped away unnoticed, according to
her wont. Whereupon Nana, after talking of sending someone to him,
began to hesitate. She was very tired. A long night's sleep--oh,
it would be so jolly! The thought of such a treat overcame her at
last. For once in a way she could allow herself that!

"I shall go to bed when I come back from the theater," she murmured
greedily, "and you won't wake me before noon."

Then raising her voice:

"Now then, gee up! Shove the others downstairs!"

Zoe did not move. She would never have dreamed of giving her
mistress overt advice, only now she made shift to give Madame the
benefit of her experience when Madame seemed to be running her hot
head against a wall.

"Monsieur Steiner as well?" she queried curtly.

"Why, certainly!" replied Nana. "Before all the rest."

The maid still waited, in order to give her mistress time for
reflection. Would not Madame be proud to get such a rich gentleman
away from her rival Rose Mignon--a man, moreover, who was known in
all the theaters?

"Now make haste, my dear," rejoined Nana, who perfectly understood
the situation, "and tell him he pesters me."

But suddenly there was a reversion of feeling. Tomorrow she might
want him. Whereupon she laughed, winked once or twice and with a
naughty little gesture cried out:

"After all's said and done, if I want him the best way even now is
to kick him out of doors."

Zoe seemed much impressed. Struck with a sudden admiration, she
gazed at her mistress and then went and chucked Steiner out of doors
without further deliberation.

Meanwhile Nana waited patiently for a second or two in order to give
her time to sweep the place out, as she phrased it. No one would
ever have expected such a siege! She craned her head into the
drawing room and found it empty. The dining room was empty too.
But as she continued her visitation in a calmer frame of mind,
feeling certain that nobody remained behind, she opened the door of
a closet and came suddenly upon a very young man. He was sitting on
the top of a trunk, holding a huge bouquet on his knees and looking
exceedingly quiet and extremely well behaved.

"Goodness gracious me!" she cried. "There's one of 'em in there
even now!"  The very young man had jumped down at sight of her and
was blushing as red as a poppy. He did not know what to do with his
bouquet, which he kept shifting from one hand to the other, while
his looks betrayed the extreme of emotion. His youth, his
embarrassment and the funny figure he cut in his struggles with his
flowers melted Nana's heart, and she burst into a pretty peal of
laughter. Well, now, the very children were coming, were they? Men
were arriving in long clothes. So she gave up all airs and graces,
became familiar and maternal, tapped her leg and asked for fun:

"You want me to wipe your nose; do you, baby?"

"Yes," replied the lad in a low, supplicating tone.

This answer made her merrier than ever. He was seventeen years old,
he said. His name was Georges Hugon. He was at the Varietes last
night and now he had come to see her.

"These flowers are for me?"

"Yes."

"Then give 'em to me, booby!"

But as she took the bouquet from him he sprang upon her hands and
kissed them with all the gluttonous eagerness peculiar to his
charming time of life. She had to beat him to make him let go.
There was a dreadful little dribbling customer for you! But as she
scolded him she flushed rosy-red and began smiling. And with that
she sent him about his business, telling him that he might call
again. He staggered away; he could not find the doors.

Nana went back into her dressing room, where Francis made his
appearance almost simultaneously in order to dress her hair for the
evening. Seated in front of her mirror and bending her head beneath
the hairdresser's nimble hands, she stayed silently meditative.
Presently, however, Zoe entered, remarking:

"There's one of them, madame, who refuses to go."

"Very well, he must be left alone," she answered quietly.

"If that comes to that they still keep arriving."

"Bah! Tell 'em to wait. When they begin to feel too hungry they'll
be off."  Her humor had changed, and she was now delighted to make
people wait about for nothing. A happy thought struck her as very
amusing; she escaped from beneath Francis' hands and ran and bolted
the doors. They might now crowd in there as much as they liked;
they would probably refrain from making a hole through the wall.
Zoe could come in and out through the little doorway leading to the
kitchen. However, the electric bell rang more lustily than ever.
Every five minutes a clear, lively little ting-ting recurred as
regularly as if it had been produced by some well-adjusted piece of
mechanism. And Nana counted these rings to while the time away
withal. But suddenly she remembered something.

"I say, where are my burnt almonds?"

Francis, too, was forgetting about the burnt almonds. But now he
drew a paper bag from one of the pockets of his frock coat and
presented it to her with the discreet gesture of a man who is
offering a lady a present. Nevertheless, whenever his accounts came
to be settled, he always put the burnt almonds down on his bill.
Nana put the bag between her knees and set to work munching her
sweetmeats, turning her head from time to time under the
hairdresser's gently compelling touch.

"The deuce," she murmured after a silence, "there's a troop for
you!"

Thrice, in quick succession, the bell had sounded. Its summonses
became fast and furious. There were modest tintinnabulations which
seemed to stutter and tremble like a first avowal; there were bold
rings which vibrated under some rough touch and hasty rings which
sounded through the house with shivering rapidity. It was a regular
peal, as Zoe said, a peal loud enough to upset the neighborhood,
seeing that a whole mob of men were jabbing at the ivory button, one
after the other. That old joker Bordenave had really been far too
lavish with her address. Why, the whole of yesterday's house was
coming!

"By the by, Francis, have you five louis?" said Nana.

He drew back, looked carefully at her headdress and then quietly
remarked:

"Five louis, that's according!"

"Ah, you know if you want securities. . ." she continued.

And without finishing her sentence, she indicated the adjoining
rooms with a sweeping gesture. Francis lent the five louis. Zoe,
during each momentary respite, kept coming in to get Madame's things
ready. Soon she came to dress her while the hairdresser lingered
with the intention of giving some finishing touches to the
headdress. But the bell kept continually disturbing the lady's
maid, who left Madame with her stays half laced and only one shoe
on. Despite her long experience, the maid was losing her head.
After bringing every nook and corner into requisition and putting
men pretty well everywhere, she had been driven to stow them away in
threes and fours, which was a course of procedure entirely opposed
to her principles. So much the worse for them if they ate each
other up! It would afford more room! And Nana, sheltering behind
her carefully bolted door, began laughing at them, declaring that
she could hear them pant. They ought to be looking lovely in there
with their tongues hanging out like a lot of bowwows sitting round
on their behinds. Yesterday's success was not yet over, and this
pack of men had followed up her scent.

"Provided they don't break anything," she murmured.

She began to feel some anxiety, for she fancied she felt their hot
breath coming through chinks in the door. But Zoe ushered
Labordette in, and the young woman gave a little shout of relief.
He was anxious to tell her about an account he had settled for her
at the justice of peace's court. But she did not attend and said:

"I'll take you along with me. We'll have dinner together, and
afterward you shall escort me to the Varietes. I don't go on before
half-past nine."

Good old Labordette, how lucky it was he had come! He was a fellow
who never asked for any favors. He was only the friend of the
women, whose little bits of business he arranged for them. Thus on
his way in he had dismissed the creditors in the anteroom. Indeed,
those good folks really didn't want to be paid. On the contrary, if
they HAD been pressing for payment it was only for the sake of
complimenting Madame and of personally renewing their offers of
service after her grand success of yesterday.

"Let's be off, let's be off," said Nana, who was dressed by now.

But at that moment Zoe came in again, shouting:

"I refuse to open the door any more. They're waiting in a crowd all
down the stairs."

A crowd all down the stairs! Francis himself, despite the English
stolidity of manner which he was wont to affect, began laughing as
he put up his combs. Nana, who had already taken Labordette's arm,
pushed him into the kitchen and effected her escape. At last she
was delivered from the men and felt happily conscious that she might
now enjoy his society anywhere without fear of stupid interruptions.

"You shall see me back to my door," she said as they went down the
kitchen stairs. "I shall feel safe, in that case. Just fancy, I
want to sleep a whole night quite by myself--yes, a whole night!
It's sort of infatuation, dear boy!"

CHAPTER III

The countess Sabine, as it had become customary to call Mme Muffat
de Beuville in order to distinguish her from the count's mother, who
had died the year before, was wont to receive every Tuesday in her
house in the Rue Miromesnil at the corner of the Rue de Pentievre.
It was a great square building, and the Muffats had lived in it for
a hundred years or more. On the side of the street its frontage
seemed to slumber, so lofty was it and dark, so sad and conventlike,
with its great outer shutters, which were nearly always closed. And
at the back in a little dark garden some trees had grown up and were
straining toward the sunlight with such long slender branches that
their tips were visible above the roof.

This particular Tuesday, toward ten o'clock in the evening, there
were scarcely a dozen people in the drawing room. When she was only
expecting intimate friends the countess opened neither the little
drawing room nor the dining room. One felt more at home on such
occasions and chatted round the fire. The drawing room was very
large and very lofty; its four windows looked out upon the garden,
from which, on this rainy evening of the close of April, issued a
sensation of damp despite the great logs burning on the hearth. The
sun never shone down into the room; in the daytime it was dimly lit
up by a faint greenish light, but at night, when the lamps and the
chandelier were burning, it looked merely a serious old chamber with
its massive mahogany First Empire furniture, its hangings and chair
coverings of yellow velvet, stamped with a large design. Entering
it, one was in an atmosphere of cold dignity, of ancient manners, of
a vanished age, the air of which seemed devotional.

Opposite the armchair, however, in which the count's mother had
died--a square armchair of formal design and inhospitable padding,
which stood by the hearthside--the Countess Sabine was seated in a
deep and cozy lounge, the red silk upholsteries of which were soft
as eider down. It was the only piece of modern furniture there, a
fanciful item introduced amid the prevailing severity and clashing
with it.

"So we shall have the shah of Persia," the young woman was saying.

They were talking of the crowned heads who were coming to Paris for
the exhibition. Several ladies had formed a circle round the
hearth, and Mme du Joncquoy, whose brother, a diplomat, had just
fulfilled a mission in the East, was giving some details about the
court of Nazr-ed-Din.

"Are you out of sorts, my dear?" asked Mme Chantereau, the wife of
an ironmaster, seeing the countess shivering slightly and growing
pale as she did so.

"Oh no, not at all," replied the latter, smiling. "I felt a little
cold. This drawing room takes so long to warm."

And with that she raised her melancholy eyes and scanned the walls
from floor to ceiling. Her daughter Estelle, a slight, insignificant-
looking girl of sixteen, the thankless period of life, quitted
the large footstool on which she was sitting and silently came
and propped up one of the logs which had rolled from its place.
But Mme de Chezelles, a convent friend of Sabine's and her junior by
five years, exclaimed:

"Dear me, I would gladly be possessed of a drawing room such as
yours! At any rate, you are able to receive visitors. They only
build boxes nowadays. Oh, if I were in your place!"

She ran giddily on and with lively gestures explained how she would
alter the hangings, the seats--everything, in fact. Then she would
give balls to which all Paris should run. Behind her seat her
husband, a magistrate, stood listening with serious air. It was
rumored that she deceived him quite openly, but people pardoned her
offense and received her just the same, because, they said, "she's
not answerable for her actions."

"Oh that Leonide!" the Countess Sabine contented herself by
murmuring, smiling her faint smile the while.

With a languid movement she eked out the thought that was in her.
After having lived there seventeen years she certainly would not
alter her drawing room now. It would henceforth remain just such as
her mother-in-law had wished to preserve it during her lifetime.
Then returning to the subject of conversation:

"I have been assured," she said, "that we shall also have the king
of Prussia and the emperor of Russia."

'Yes, some very fine fetes are promised," said Mme du Joncquoy.

The banker Steiner, not long since introduced into this circle by
Leonide de Chezelles, who was acquainted with the whole of Parisian
society, was sitting chatting on a sofa between two of the windows.
He was questioning a deputy, from whom he was endeavoring with much
adroitness to elicit news about a movement on the stock exchange of
which he had his suspicions, while the Count Muffat, standing in
front of them, was silently listening to their talk, looking, as he
did so, even grayer than was his wont.

Four or five young men formed another group near the door round the
Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who in a low tone was telling them an
anecdote. It was doubtless a very risky one, for they were choking
with laughter. Companionless in the center of the room, a stout
man, a chief clerk at the Ministry of the Interior, sat heavily in
an armchair, dozing with his eyes open. But when one of the young
men appeared to doubt the truth of the anecdote Vandeuvres raised
his voice.

"You are too much of a skeptic, Foucarmont; you'll spoil all your
pleasures that way."

And he returned to the ladies with a laugh. Last scion of a great
family, of feminine manners and witty tongue, he was at that time
running through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite which
nothing could appease. His racing stable, which was one of the best
known in Paris, cost him a fabulous amount of money; his betting
losses at the Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number
of pounds, while taking one year with another, his mistresses would
be always devouring now a farm, now some acres of arable land or
forest, which amounted, in fact, to quite a respectable slice of his
vast estates in Picardy.

"I advise you to call other people skeptics! Why, you don't believe
a thing yourself," said Leonide, making shift to find him a little
space in which to sit down at her side.

"It's you who spoil your own pleasures."

"Exactly," he replied. "I wish to make others benefit by my
experience."

But the company imposed silence on him: he was scandalizing M.
Venot. And, the ladies having changed their positions, a little old
man of sixty, with bad teeth and a subtle smile, became visible in
the depths of an easy chair. There he sat as comfortably as in his
own house, listening to everybody's remarks and making none himself.
With a slight gesture he announced himself by no means scandalized.
Vandeuvres once more assumed his dignified bearing and added
gravely:

"Monsieur Venot is fully aware that I believe what it is one's duty
to believe."

It was an act of faith, and even Leonide appeared satisfied. The
young men at the end of the room no longer laughed; the company were
old fogies, and amusement was not to be found there. A cold breath
of wind had passed over them, and amid the ensuing silence Steiner's
nasal voice became audible. The deputy's discreet answers were at
last driving him to desperation. For a second or two the Countess
Sabine looked at the fire; then she resumed the conversation.

"I saw the king of Prussia at Baden-Baden last year. He's still
full of vigor for his age."

"Count Bismarck is to accompany him," said Mme du Joncquoy. "Do you
know the count? I lunched with him at my brother's ages ago, when
he was representative of Prussia in Paris. There's a man now whose
latest successes I cannot in the least understand."

"But why?" asked Mme Chantereau.

"Good gracious, how am I to explain? He doesn't please me. His
appearance is boorish and underbred. Besides, so far as I am
concerned, I find him stupid."

With that the whole room spoke of Count Bismarck, and opinions
differed considerably. Vandeuvres knew him and assured the company
that he was great in his cups and at play. But when the discussion
was at its height the door was opened, and Hector de la Falois made
his appearance. Fauchery, who followed in his wake, approached the
countess and, bowing:

"Madame," he said, "I have not forgotten your extremely kind
invitation."

She smiled and made a pretty little speech. The journalist, after
bowing to the count, stood for some moments in the middle of the
drawing room. He only recognized Steiner and accordingly looked
rather out of his element. But Vandeuvres turned and came and shook
hands with him. And forthwith, in his delight at the meeting and
with a sudden desire to be confidential, Fauchery buttonholed him
and said in a low voice:

"It's tomorrow. Are you going?"

"Egad, yes."

"At midnight, at her house.

"I know, I know. I'm going with Blanche."

He wanted to escape and return to the ladies in order to urge yet
another reason in M. de Bismarck's favor. But Fauchery detained
him.

"You never will guess whom she has charged me to invite."

And with a slight nod he indicated Count Muffat, who was just then
discussing a knotty point in the budget with Steiner and the deputy.

"It's impossible," said Vandeuvres, stupefaction and merriment in
his tones. "My word on it! I had to swear that I would bring him
to her. Indeed, that's one of my reasons for coming here."

Both laughed silently, and Vandeuvres, hurriedly rejoining the
circle of ladies, cried out:

"I declare that on the contrary Monsieur de Bismarck is exceedingly
witty. For instance, one evening he said a charmingly epigrammatic
thing in my presence."

La Faloise meanwhile had heard the few rapid sentences thus
whisperingly interchanged, and he gazed at Fauchery in hopes of an
explanation which was not vouchsafed him. Of whom were they
talking, and what were they going to do at midnight tomorrow? He
did not leave his cousin's side again. The latter had gone and
seated himself. He was especially interested by the Countess
Sabine. Her name had often been mentioned in his presence, and he
knew that, having been married at the age of seventeen, she must now
be thirty-four and that since her marriage she had passed a
cloistered existence with her husband and her mother-in-law. In
society some spoke of her as a woman of religious chastity, while
others pitied her and recalled to memory her charming bursts of
laughter and the burning glances of her great eyes in the days prior
to her imprisonment in this old town house. Fauchery scrutinized
her and yet hesitated. One of his friends, a captain who had
recently died in Mexico, had, on the very eve of his departure, made
him one of those gross postprandial confessions, of which even the
most prudent among men are occasionally guilty. But of this he only
retained a vague recollection; they had dined not wisely but too
well that evening, and when he saw the countess, in her black dress
and with her quiet smile, seated in that Old World drawing room, he
certainly had his doubts. A lamp which had been placed behind her
threw into clear relief her dark, delicate, plump side face, wherein
a certain heaviness in the contours of the mouth alone indicated a
species of imperious sensuality.

"What do they want with their Bismarck?" muttered La Faloise, whose
constant pretense it was to be bored in good society. "One's ready
to kick the bucket here. A pretty idea of yours it was to want to
come!"

Fauchery questioned him abruptly.

"Now tell me, does the countess admit someone to her embraces?"

"Oh dear, no, no! My dear fellow!" he stammered, manifestly taken
aback and quite forgetting his pose. "Where d'you think we are?"

After which he was conscious of a want of up-to-dateness in this
outburst of indignation and, throwing himself back on a great sofa,
he added:

"Gad! I say no! But I don't know much about it. There's a little
chap out there, Foucarmont they call him, who's to be met with
everywhere and at every turn. One's seen faster men than that,
though, you bet. However, it doesn't concern me, and indeed, all I
know is that if the countess indulges in high jinks she's still
pretty sly about it, for the thing never gets about--nobody talks."

Then although Fauchery did not take the trouble to question him, he
told him all he knew about the Muffats. Amid the conversation of
the ladies, which still continued in front of the hearth, they both
spoke in subdued tones, and, seeing them there with their white
cravats and gloves, one might have supposed them to be discussing in
chosen phraseology some really serious topic. Old Mme Muffat then,
whom La Faloise had been well acquainted with, was an insufferable
old lady, always hand in glove with the priests. She had the grand
manner, besides, and an authoritative way of comporting herself,
which bent everybody to her will. As to Muffat, he was an old man's
child; his father, a general, had been created count by Napoleon I,
and naturally he had found himself in favor after the second of
December. He hadn't much gaiety of manner either, but he passed for
a very honest man of straightforward intentions and understanding.
Add to these a code of old aristocratic ideas and such a lofty
conception of his duties at court, of his dignities and of his
virtues, that he behaved like a god on wheels. It was the Mamma
Muffat who had given him this precious education with its daily
visits to the confessional, its complete absence of escapades and of
all that is meant by youth. He was a practicing Christian and had
attacks of faith of such fiery violence that they might be likened
to accesses of burning fever. Finally, in order to add a last touch
to the picture, La Faloise whispered something in his cousin's ear.

"You don't say so!" said the latter.

"On my word of honor, they swore it was true! He was still like
that when he married."

Fauchery chuckled as he looked at the count, whose face, with its
fringe of whiskers and absence of mustaches, seemed to have grown
squarer and harder now that he was busy quoting figures to the
writhing, struggling Steiner.

"My word, he's got a phiz for it!" murmured Fauchery. "A pretty
present he made his wife! Poor little thing, how he must have bored
her! She knows nothing about anything, I'll wager!"

Just then the Countess Sabine was saying something to him. But he
did not hear her, so amusing and extraordinary did he esteem the
Muffats' case. She repeated the question.

"Monsieur Fauchery, have you not published a sketch of Monsieur de
Bismarck? You spoke with him once?"

He got up briskly and approached the circle of ladies, endeavoring
to collect himself and soon with perfect ease of manner finding an
answer:

"Dear me, madame, I assure you I wrote that 'portrait' with the help
of biographies which had been published in Germany. I have never
seen Monsieur de Bismarck."

He remained beside the countess and, while talking with her,
continued his meditations. She did not look her age; one would have
set her down as being twenty-eight at most, for her eyes, above all,
which were filled with the dark blue shadow of her long eyelashes,
retained the glowing light of youth. Bred in a divided family, so
that she used to spend one month with the Marquis de Chouard,
another with the marquise, she had been married very young, urged
on, doubtless, by her father, whom she embarrassed after her
mother's death. A terrible man was the marquis, a man about whom
strange tales were beginning to be told, and that despite his lofty
piety! Fauchery asked if he should have the honor of meeting him.
Certainly her father was coming, but only very late; he had so much
work on hand! The journalist thought he knew where the old
gentleman passed his evenings and looked grave. But a mole, which
he noticed close to her mouth on the countess's left cheek,
surprised him. Nana had precisely the same mole. It was curious.
Tiny hairs curled up on it, only they were golden in Nana's case,
black as jet in this. Ah well, never mind! This woman enjoyed
nobody's embraces.

"I have always felt a wish to know Queen Augusta," she said. "They
say she is so good, so devout. Do you think she will accompany the
king?"

"It is not thought that she will, madame," he replied.

She had no lovers: the thing was only too apparent. One had only to
look at her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting so
insignificant and constrained on her footstool. That sepulchral
drawing room of hers, which exhaled odors suggestive of being in a
church, spoke as plainly as words could of the iron hand, the
austere mode of existence, that weighed her down. There was nothing
suggestive of her own personality in that ancient abode, black with
the damps of years. It was Muffat who made himself felt there, who
dominated his surroundings with his devotional training, his
penances and his fasts. But the sight of the little old gentleman
with the black teeth and subtle smile whom he suddenly discovered in
his armchair behind the group of ladies afforded him a yet more
decisive argument. He knew the personage. It was Theophile Venot,
a retired lawyer who had made a specialty of church cases. He had
left off practice with a handsome fortune and was now leading a
sufficiently mysterious existence, for he was received everywhere,
treated with great deference and even somewhat feared, as though he
had been the representative of a mighty force, an occult power,
which was felt to be at his back. Nevertheless, his behavior was
very humble. He was churchwarden at the Madeleine Church and had
simply accepted the post of deputy mayor at the town house of the
Ninth Arrondissement in order, as he said, to have something to do
in his leisure time. Deuce take it, the countess was well guarded;
there was nothing to be done in that quarter.

"You're right, it's enough to make one kick the bucket here," said
Fauchery to his cousin when he had made good his escape from the
circle of ladies. "We'll hook it!"

But Steiner, deserted at last by the Count Muffat and the deputy,
came up in a fury. Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and
he grumbled huskily:

"Gad! Let 'em tell me nothing, if nothing they want to tell me. I
shall find people who will talk."

Then he pushed the journalist into a corner and, altering his tone,
said in accents of victory:

"It's tomorrow, eh? I'm of the party, my bully!"

"Indeed!" muttered Fauchery with some astonishment.

"You didn't know about it. Oh, I had lots of bother to find her at
home. Besides, Mignon never would leave me alone."

"But they're to be there, are the Mignons."

"Yes, she told me so. In fact, she did receive my visit, and she
invited me. Midnight punctually, after the play."

The banker was beaming. He winked and added with a peculiar
emphasis on the words:

"You've worked it, eh?"

"Eh, what?" said Fauchery, pretending not to understand him. "She
wanted to thank me for my article, so she came and called on me."

"Yes, yes. You fellows are fortunate. You get rewarded. By the
by, who pays the piper tomorrow?"

The journalist made a slight outward movement with his arms, as
though he would intimate that no one had ever been able to find out.
But Vandeuvres called to Steiner, who knew M. de Bismarck. Mme du
Joncquoy had almost convinced herself of the truth of her
suppositions; she concluded with these words:

"He gave me an unpleasant impression. I think his face is evil.
But I am quite willing to believe that he has a deal of wit. It
would account for his successes."

"Without doubt," said the banker with a faint smile. He was a Jew
from Frankfort.

Meanwhile La Faloise at last made bold to question his cousin. He
followed him up and got inside his guard:

"There's supper at a woman's tomorrow evening? With which of them,
eh? With which of them?"

Fauchery motioned to him that they were overheard and must respect
the conventions here. The door had just been opened anew, and an
old lady had come in, followed by a young man in whom the journalist
recognized the truant schoolboy, perpetrator of the famous and as
yet unforgotten "tres chic" of the Blonde Venus first night. This
lady's arrival caused a stir among the company. The Countess Sabine
had risen briskly from her seat in order to go and greet her, and
she had taken both her hands in hers and addressed her as her "dear
Madame Hugon."  Seeing that his cousin viewed this little episode
with some curiosity, La Faloise sought to arouse his interest and in
a few brief phrases explained the position. Mme Hugon, widow of a
notary, lived in retirement at Les Fondettes, an old estate of her
family's in the neighborhood of Orleans, but she also kept up a
small establishment in Paris in a house belonging to her in the Rue
de Richelieu and was now passing some weeks there in order to settle
her youngest son, who was reading the law and in his "first year."  
In old times she had been a dear friend of the Marquise de Chouard
and had assisted at the birth of the countess, who, prior to her
marriage, used to stay at her house for months at a time and even
now was quite familiarly treated by her.

"I have brought Georges to see you," said Mme Hugon to Sabine.
"He's grown, I trust."

The young man with his clear eyes and the fair curls which suggested
a girl dressed up as a boy bowed easily to the countess and reminded
her of a bout of battledore and shuttlecock they had had together
two years ago at Les Fondettes.

"Philippe is not in Paris?" asked Count Muffat.

"Dear me, no!" replied the old lady. "He is always in garrison at
Bourges."  She had seated herself and began talking with
considerable pride of her eldest son, a great big fellow who, after
enlisting in a fit of waywardness, had of late very rapidly attained
the rank of lieutenant. All the ladies behaved to her with
respectful sympathy, and conversation was resumed in a tone at once
more amiable and more refined. Fauchery, at sight of that
respectable Mme Hugon, that motherly face lit up with such a kindly
smile beneath its broad tresses of white hair, thought how foolish
he had been to suspect the Countess Sabine even for an instant.

Nevertheless, the big chair with the red silk upholsteries in which
the countess sat had attracted his attention. Its style struck him
as crude, not to say fantastically suggestive, in that dim old
drawing room. Certainly it was not the count who had inveigled
thither that nest of voluptuous idleness. One might have described
it as an experiment, marking the birth of an appetite and of an
enjoyment. Then he forgot where he was, fell into brown study and
in thought even harked back to that vague confidential announcement
imparted to him one evening in the dining room of a restaurant.
Impelled by a sort of sensuous curiosity, he had always wanted an
introduction into the Muffats' circle, and now that his friend was
in Mexico through all eternity, who could tell what might happen?
"We shall see," he thought. It was a folly, doubtless, but the idea
kept tormenting him; he felt himself drawn on and his animal nature
aroused. The big chair had a rumpled look--its nether cushions had
been tumbled, a fact which now amused him.

"Well, shall we be off?" asked La Faloise, mentally vowing that once
outside he would find out the name of the woman with whom people
were going to sup.

"All in good time," replied Fauchery.

But he was no longer in any hurry and excused himself on the score
of the invitation he had been commissioned to give and had as yet
not found a convenient opportunity to mention. The ladies were
chatting about an assumption of the veil, a very touching ceremony
by which the whole of Parisian society had for the last three days
been greatly moved. It was the eldest daughter of the Baronne de
Fougeray, who, under stress of an irresistible vocation, had just
entered the Carmelite Convent. Mme Chantereau, a distant cousin of
the Fougerays, told how the baroness had been obliged to take to her
bed the day after the ceremony, so overdone was she with weeping.

"I had a very good place," declared Leonide. "I found it
interesting."

Nevertheless, Mme Hugon pitied the poor mother. How sad to lose a
daughter in such a way!

"I am accused of being overreligious," she said in her quiet, frank
manner, "but that does not prevent me thinking the children very
cruel who obstinately commit such suicide."

"Yes, it's a terrible thing," murmured the countess, shivering a
little, as became a chilly person, and huddling herself anew in the
depths of her big chair in front of the fire.

Then the ladies fell into a discussion. But their voices were
discreetly attuned, while light trills of laughter now and again
interrupted the gravity of their talk. The two lamps on the chimney
piece, which had shades of rose-colored lace, cast a feeble light
over them while on scattered pieces of furniture there burned but
three other lamps, so that the great drawing room remained in soft
shadow.

Steiner was getting bored. He was describing to Fauchery an
escapade of that little Mme de Chezelles, whom he simply referred to
as Leonide. "A blackguard woman," he said, lowering his voice
behind the ladies' armchairs. Fauchery looked at her as she sat
quaintly perched, in her voluminous ball dress of pale blue satin,
on the corner of her armchair. She looked as slight and impudent as
a boy, and he ended by feeling astonished at seeing her there.
People comported themselves better at Caroline Hequet's, whose
mother had arranged her house on serious principles. Here was a
perfect subject for an article. Whuat a strange world was this world
of Paris! The most rigid circles found themselves invaded.
Evidently that silent Theophile Venot, who contented himself by
smiling and showing his ugly teeth, must have been a legacy from the
late countess. So, too, must have been such ladies of mature age as
Mme Chantereau and Mme du Joncquoy, besides four or five old
gentlemen who sat motionless in corners. The Count Muffat attracted
to the house a series of functionaries, distinguished by the
immaculate personal appearance which was at that time required of
the men at the Tuileries. Among others there was the chief clerk,
who still sat solitary in the middle of the room with his closely
shorn cheeks, his vacant glance and his coat so tight of fit that he
could scarce venture to move. Almost all the young men and certain
individuals with distinguished, aristocratic manners were the
Marquis de Chouard's contribution to the circle, he having kept
touch with the Legitimist party after making his peace with the
empire on his entrance into the Council of State. There remained
Leonide de Chezelles and Steiner, an ugly little knot against which
Mme Hugon's elderly and amiable serenity stood out in strange
contrast. And Fauchery, having sketched out his article, named this
last group "Countess Sabine's little clique."

"On another occasion," continued Steiner in still lower tones,
"Leonide got her tenor down to Montauban. She was living in the
Chateau de Beaurecueil, two leagues farther off, and she used to
come in daily in a carriage and pair in order to visit him at the
Lion d'Or, where he had put up. The carriage used to wait at the
door, and Leonide would stay for hours in the house, while a crowd
gathered round and looked at the horses."

There was a pause in the talk, and some solemn moments passed
silently by in the lofty room. Two young men were whispering, but
they ceased in their turn, and the hushed step of Count Muffat was
alone audible as he crossed the floor. The lamps seemed to have
paled; the fire was going out; a stern shadow fell athwart the old
friends of the house where they sat in the chairs they had occupied
there for forty years back. It was as though in a momentary pause
of conversation the invited guests had become suddenly aware that
the count's mother, in all her glacial stateliness, had returned
among them.

But the Countess Sabine had once more resumed:

"Well, at last the news of it got about. The young man was likely
to die, and that would explain the poor child's adoption of the
religious life. Besides, they say that Monsieur de Fougeray wold
never have given his consent to the marriage."

"They say heaps of other things too," cried Leonide giddily.

She fell a-laughing; she refused to talk. Sabine was won over by
this gaiety and put her handkerchief up to her lips. And in the
vast and solemn room their laughter sounded a note which struck
Fauchery strangely, the note of delicate glass breaking. Assuredly
here was the first beginning of the "little rift."  Everyone began
talking again. Mme du Joncquoy demurred; Mme Chantereau knew for
certain that a marriage had been projected but that matters had gone
no further; the men even ventured to give their opinions. For some
minutes the conversation was a babel of opinions, in which the
divers elements of the circle, whether Bonapartist or Legitimist or
merely worldly and skeptical, appeared to jostle one another
simultaneously. Estelle had rung to order wood to be put on the
fire; the footman turned up the lamps; the room seemed to wake from
sleep. Fauchery began smiling, as though once more at his ease.

"Egad, they become the brides of God when they couldn't be their
cousin's," said Vandeuvres between his teeth.

The subject bored him, and he had rejoined Fauchery.

"My dear fellow, have you ever seen a woman who was really loved
become a nun?"

He did not wait for an answer, for he had had enough of the topic,
and in a hushed voice:

"Tell me," he said, "how many of us will there be tomorrow?
There'll be the Mignons, Steiner, yourself, Blanche and I; who
else?"

"Caroline, I believe, and Simonne and Gaga without doubt. One never
knows exactly, does one? On such occasions one expects the party
will number twenty, and you're really thirty."

Vandeuvres, who was looking at the ladies, passed abruptly to
another subject:

"She must have been very nice-looking, that Du Joncquoy woman, some
fifteen years ago. Poor Estelle has grown lankier than ever. What
a nice lath to put into a bed!"

But interrupting himself, he returned to the subject of tomorrow's
supper.

"What's so tiresome of those shows is that it's always the same set
of women. One wants a novelty. Do try and invent a new girl. By
Jove, happy thought! I'll go and beseech that stout man to bring
the woman he was trotting about the other evening at the Varietes."

He referred to the chief clerk, sound asleep in the middle of the
drawing room. Fauchery, afar off, amused himself by following this
delicate negotiation. Vandeuvres had sat himself down by the stout
man, who still looked very sedate. For some moments they both
appeared to be discussing with much propriety the question before
the house, which was, "How can one discover the exact state of
feeling that urges a young girl to enter into the religious life?"  
Then the count returned with the remark:

"It's impossible. He swears she's straight. She'd refuse, and yet
I would have wagered that I once saw her at Laure's."

"Eh, what? You go to Laure's?" murmured Fauchery with a chuckle.
"You venture your reputation in places like that? I was under the
impression that it was only we poor devils of outsiders who--"

"Ah, dear boy, one ought to see every side of life."

Then they sneered and with sparkling eyes they compared notes about
the table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs, where big Laure Piedefer
ran a dinner at three francs a head for little women in
difficulties. A nice hole, where all the little women used to kiss
Laure on the lips! And as the Countess Sabine, who had overheard a
stray word or two, turned toward them, they started back, rubbing
shoulders in excited merriment. They had not noticed that Georges
Hugon was close by and that he was listening to them, blushing so
hotly the while that a rosy flush had spread from his ears to his
girlish throat. The infant was full of shame and of ecstasy. From
the moment his mother had turned him loose in the room he had been
hovering in the wake of Mme de Chezelles, the only woman present who
struck him as being the thing. But after all is said and done, Nana
licked her to fits!

"Yesterday evening," Mme Hugon was saying, "Georges took me to the
play. Yes, we went to the Varietes, where I certainly had not set
foot for the last ten years. That child adores music. As to me, I
wasn't in the least amused, but he was so happy! They put
extraordinary pieces on the stage nowadays. Besides, music delights
me very little, I confess."

"What! You don't love music, madame?" cried Mme du Joncquoy,
lifting her eyes to heaven. "Is it possible there should be people
who don't love music?"

The exclamation of surprise was general. No one had dropped a
single word concerning the performance at the Varietes, at which the
good Mme Hugon had not understood any of the allusions. The ladies
knew the piece but said nothing about it, and with that they plunged
into the realm of sentiment and began discussing the masters in a
tone of refined and ecstatical admiration. Mme du Joncquoy was not
fond of any of them save Weber, while Mme Chantereau stood up for
the Italians. The ladies' voices had turned soft and languishing,
and in front of the hearth one might have fancied one's self
listening in meditative, religious retirement to the faint, discreet
music of a little chapel.

"Now let's see," murmured Vandeuvres, bringing Fauchery back into
the middle of the drawing room, "notwithstanding it all, we must
invent a woman for tomorrow. Shall we ask Steiner about it?"

"Oh, when Steiner's got hold of a woman," said the journalist, "it's
because Paris has done with her."

Vandeuvres, however, was searching about on every side.

"Wait a bit," he continued, "the other day I met Foucarmont with a
charming blonde. I'll go and tell him to bring her."

And he called to Foucarmont. They exchanged a few words rapidly.
There must have been some sort of complication, for both of them,
moving carefully forward and stepping over the dresses of the
ladies, went off in quest of another young man with whom they
continued the discussion in the embrasure of a window. Fauchery was
left to himself and had just decided to proceed to the hearth, where
Mme du Joncquoy was announcing that she never heard Weber played
without at the same time seeing lakes, forests and sunrises over
landscapes steeped in dew, when a hand touched his shoulder and a
voice behind him remarked:

"It's not civil of you."

"What d'you mean?" he asked, turning round and recognizing La
Faloise.

"Why, about that supper tomorrow. You might easily have got me
invited."

Fauchery was at length about to state his reasons when Vandeuvres
came back to tell him:

"It appears it isn't a girl of Foucarmont's. It's that man's flame
out there. She won't be able to come. What a piece of bad luck!
But all the same I've pressed Foucarmont into the service, and he's
going to try to get Louise from the Palais-Royal."

"Is it not true, Monsieur de Vandeuvres," asked Mme Chantereau,
raising her voice, "that Wagner's music was hissed last Sunday?"

"Oh, frightfully, madame," he made answer, coming forward with his
usual exquisite politeness.

Then, as they did not detain him, he moved off and continued
whispering in the journalist's ear:

"I'm going to press some more of them. These young fellows must
know some little ladies."

With that he was observed to accost men and to engage them in
conversation in his usual amiable and smiling way in every corner of
the drawing room. He mixed with the various groups, said something
confidently to everyone and walked away again with a sly wink and a
secret signal or two. It looked as though he were giving out a
watchword in that easy way of his. The news went round; the place
of meeting was announced, while the ladies' sentimental
dissertations on music served to conceal the small, feverish rumor
of these recruiting operations.

"No, do not speak of your Germans," Mme Chantereau was saying.
"Song is gaiety; song is light. Have you heard Patti in the Barber
of Seville?"

"She was delicious!" murmured Leonide, who strummed none but
operatic airs on her piano.

Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had rung. When on Tuesdays the number
of visitors was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself.
While directing a footman to clear a round table the countess
followed the Count de Vandeuvres with her eyes. She still smiled
that vague smile which slightly disclosed her white teeth, and as
the count passed she questioned him.

"What ARE you plotting, Monsieur de Vandeuvres?"

"What am I plotting, madame?" he answered quietly. "Nothing at
all."

"Really! I saw you so busy. Pray, wait, you shall make yourself
useful!"

She placed an album in his hands and asked him to put it on the
piano. But he found means to inform Fauchery in a low whisper that
they would have Tatan Nene, the most finely developed girl that
winter, and Maria Blond, the same who had just made her first
appearance at the Folies-Dramatiques. Meanwhile La Faloise stopped
him at every step in hopes of receiving an invitation. He ended by
offering himself, and Vandeuvres engaged him in the plot at once;
only he made him promise to bring Clarisse with him, and when La
Faloise pretended to scruple about certain points he quieted him by
the remark:

"Since I invite you that's enough!"

Nevertheless, La Faloise would have much liked to know the name of
the hostess. But the countess had recalled Vandeuvres and was
questioning him as to the manner in which the English made tea. He
often betook himself to England, where his horses ran. Then as
though he had been inwardly following up quite a laborious train of
thought during his remarks, he broke in with the question:

"And the marquis, by the by? Are we not to see him?"

"Oh, certainly you will! My father made me a formal promise that he
would come," replied the countess. "But I'm beginning to be
anxious. His duties will have kept him."

Vandeuvres smiled a discreet smile. He, too, seemed to have his
doubts as to the exact nature of the Marquis de Chouard's duties.
Indeed, he had been thinking of a pretty woman whom the marquis
occasionally took into the country with him. Perhaps they could get
her too.

In the meantime Fauchery decided that the moment had come in which
to risk giving Count Muff  his invitation. The evening, in fact,
was drawing to a close.

"Are you serious?" asked Vandeuvres, who thought a joke was
intended.

"Extremely serious. If I don't execute my commission she'll tear my
eyes out. It's a case of landing her fish, you know."

"Well then, I'll help you, dear boy."

Eleven o'clock struck. Assisted by her daughter, the countess was
pouring out the tea, and as hardly any guests save intimate friends
had come, the cups and the platefuls of little cakes were being
circulated without ceremony. Even the ladies did not leave their
armchairs in front of the fire and sat sipping their tea and
nibbling cakes which they held between their finger tips. From
music the talk had declined to purveyors. Boissier was the only
person for sweetmeats and Catherine for ices. Mme Chantereau,
however, was all for Latinville. Speech grew more and more
indolent, and a sense of lassitude was lulling the room to sleep.
Steiner had once more set himself secretly to undermine the deputy,
whom he held in a state of blockade in the corner of a settee. M.
Venot, whose teeth must have been ruined by sweet things, was eating
little dry cakes, one after the other, with a small nibbling sound
suggestive of a mouse, while the chief clerk, his nose in a teacup,
seemed never to be going to finish its contents. As to the
countess, she went in a leisurely way from one guest to another,
never pressing them, indeed, only pausing a second or two before the
gentlemen whom she viewed with an air of dumb interrogation before
she smiled and passed on. The great fire had flushed all her face,
and she looked as if she were the sister of her daughter, who
appeared so withered and ungainly at her side. When she drew near
Fauchery, who was chatting with her husband and Vandeuvres, she
noticed that they grew suddenly silent; accordingly she did not stop
but handed the cup of tea she was offering to Georges Hugon beyond
them.

"It's a lady who desires your company at supper," the journalist
gaily continued, addressing Count Muffat.

The last-named, whose face had worn its gray look all the evening,
seemed very much surprised. What lady was it?

"Oh, Nana!" said Vandeuvres, by way of forcing the invitation.

The count became more grave than before. His eyelids trembled just
perceptibly, while a look of discomfort, such as headache produces,
hovered for a moment athwart his forehead.

"But I'm not acquainted with that lady," he murmured.

"Come, come, you went to her house," remarked Vandeuvres.

"What d'you say? I went to her house? Oh yes, the other day, in
behalf of the Benevolent Organization. I had forgotten about it.
But, no matter, I am not acquainted with her, and I cannot accept."

He had adopted an icy expression in order to make them understand
that this jest did not appear to him to be in good taste. A man of
his position did not sit down at tables of such women as that.
Vandeuvres protested: it was to be a supper party of dramatic and
artistic people, and talent excused everything. But without
listening further to the arguments urged by Fauchery, who spoke of a
dinner where the Prince of Scots, the son of a queen, had sat down
beside an ex-music-hall singer, the count only emphasized his
refusal. In so doing, he allowed himself, despite his great
politeness, to be guilty of an irritated gesture.

Georges and La Faloise, standing in front of each other drinking
their tea, had overheard the two or three phrases exchanged in their
immediate neighborhood.

"Jove, it's at Nana's then," murmured La Faloise. "I might have
expected as much!"

Georges said nothing, but he was all aflame. His fair hair was in
disorder; his blue eyes shone like tapers, so fiercely had the vice,
which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed and stirred
his blood. At last he was going to plunge into all that he had
dreamed of!

"I don't know the address," La Faloise resumed.

"She lives on a third floor in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the
Rue de l'Arcade and the Rue Pesquier," said Georges all in a breath.

And when the other looked at him in much astonishment, he added,
turning very red and fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment
and conceit:

"I'm of the party. She invited me this morning."

But there was a great stir in the drawing room, and Vandeuvres and
Fauchery could not continue pressing the count. The Marquis de
Chouard had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet him. He
had moved painfully forward, his legs failing under him, and he now
stood in the middle of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking,
as though he had just come out of some dark alley and were blinded
by the brightness of the lamps.

"I scarcely hoped to see you tonight, Father," said the countess.
"I should have been anxious till the morning."

He looked at her without answering, as a man might who fails to
understand. His nose, which loomed immense on his shorn face,
looked like a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down. Seeing
him such a wreck, Mme Hugon, full of kind compassion, said pitying
things to him.

"You work too hard. You ought to rest yourself. At our age we
ought to leave work to the young people."

"Work! Ah yes, to be sure, work!" he stammered at last. "Always
plenty of work."

He began to pull himself together, straightening up his bent figure
and passing his hand, as was his wont, over his scant gray hair, of
which a few locks strayed behind his ears.

"At what are you working as late as this?" asked Mme du Joncquoy.
"I thought you were at the financial minister's reception?"

But the countess intervened with:

"My father had to study the question of a projected law."

"Yes, a projected law," he said; "exactly so, a projected law. I
shut myself up for that reason. It refers to work in factories, and
I was anxious for a proper observance of the Lord's day of rest. It
is really shameful that the government is unwilling to act with
vigor in the matter. Churches are growing empty; we are running
headlong to ruin."

Vandeuvres had exchanged glances with Fauchery. They both happened
to be behind the marquis, and they were scanning him suspiciously.
When Vandeuvres found an opportunity to take him aside and to speak
to him about the good-looking creature he was in the habit of taking
down into the country, the old man affected extreme surprise.
Perhaps someone had seen him with the Baroness Decker, at whose
house at Viroflay he sometimes spent a day or so. Vandeuvres's sole
vengeance was an abrupt question:

"Tell me, where have you been straying to? Your elbow is covered
with cobwebs and plaster."

"My elbow," he muttered, slightly disturbed. "Yes indeed, it's
true. A speck or two, I must have come in for them on my way down
from my office."

Several people were taking their departure. It was close on
midnight. Two footmen were noiselessly removing the empty cups and
the plates with cakes. In front of the hearth the ladies had re-
formed and, at the same time, narrowed their circle and were
chatting more carelessly than before in the languid atmosphere
peculiar to the close of a party. The very room was going to sleep,
and slowly creeping shadows were cast by its walls. It was then
Fauchery spoke of departure. Yet he once more forgot his intention
at sight of the Countess Sabine. She was resting from her cares as
hostess, and as she sat in her wonted seat, silent, her eyes fixed
on a log which was turning into embers, her face appeared so white
and so impassable that doubt again possessed him. In the glow of
the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner of her lip
became white. It was Nana's very mole, down to the color of the
hair. He could not refrain from whispering something about it in
Vandeuvres's ear. Gad, it was true; the other had never noticed it
before. And both men continued this comparison of Nana and the
countess. They discovered a vague resemblance about the chin and
the mouth, but the eyes were not at all alike. Then, too, Nana had
a good-natured expression, while with the countess it was hard to
decide--she might have been a cat, sleeping with claws withdrawn and
paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous quiver.

"All the same, one could have her," declared Fauchery.

Vandeuvres stripped her at a glance.

"Yes, one could, all the same," he said. "But I think nothing of
the thighs, you know. Will you bet she has no thighs?"

He stopped, for Fauchery touched him briskly on the arm and showed
him Estelle, sitting close to them on her footstool. They had
raised their voices without noticing her, and she must have
overheard them. Nevertheless, she continued sitting there stiff and
motionless, not a hair having lifted on her thin neck, which was
that of a girl who has shot up all too quickly. Thereupon they
retired three or four paces, and Vandeuvres vowed that the countess
was a very honest woman. Just then voices were raised in front of
the hearth. Mme du Joncquoy was saying:

"I was willing to grant you that Monsieur de Bismarck was perhaps a
witty man. Only, if you go as far as to talk of genius--"

The ladies had come round again to their earliest topic of
conversation.

"What the deuce! Still Monsieur de Bismarck!" muttered Fauchery.
"This time I make my escape for good and all."

"Wait a bit," said Vandeuvres, "we must have a definite no from the
count."

The Count Muffat was talking to his father-in-law and a certain
serious-looking gentleman. Vandeuvres drew him away and renewed the
invitation, backing it up with the information that he was to be at
the supper himself. A man might go anywhere; no one could think of
suspecting evil where at most there could only be curiosity. The
count listened to these arguments with downcast eyes and
expressionless face. Vandeuvres felt him to be hesitating when the
Marquis de Chouard approached with a look of interrogation. And
when the latter was informed of the question in hand and Fauchery
had invited him in his turn, he looked at his son-in-law furtively.
There ensued an embarrassed silence, but both men encouraged one
another and would doubtless have ended by accepting had not Count
Muffat perceived M. Venot's gaze fixed upon him. The little old man
was no longer smiling; his face was cadaverous, his eyes bright and
keen as steel.

'No," replied the count directly, in so decisive a tone that further
insistence became impossible.

Then the marquis refused with even greater severity of expression.
He talked morality. The aristocratic classes ought to set a good
example. Fauchery smiled and shook hands with Vandeuvres. He did
not wait for him and took his departure immediately, for he was due
at his newspaper office.

"At Nana's at midnight, eh?"

La Faloise retired too. Steiner had made his bow to the countess.
Other men followed them, and the same phrase went round--"At
midnight, at Nana's"--as they went to get their overcoats in the
anteroom. Georges, who could not leave without his mother, had
stationed himself at the door, where he gave the exact address.
"Third floor, door on your left."  Yet before going out Fauchery
gave a final glance. Vandeuvres had again resumed his position
among the ladies and was laughing with Leonide de Chezelles. Count
Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard were joining in the conversation,
while the good Mme Hugon was falling asleep open-eyed. Lost among
the petticoats, M. Venot was his own small self again and smiled as
of old. Twelve struck slowly in the great solemn room.

"What--what do you mean?" Mme du Joncquoy resumed. "You imagine
that Monsieur de Bismarck will make war on us and beat us! Oh,
that's unbearable!"

Indeed, they were laughing round Mme Chantereau, who had just
repeated an assertion she had heard made in Alsace, where her
husband owned a foundry.

"We have the emperor, fortunately," said Count Muffat in his grave,
official way.

It was the last phrase Fauchery was able to catch. He closed the
door after casting one more glance in the direction of the Countess
Sabine. She was talking sedately with the chief clerk and seemed to
be interested in that stout individual's conversation. Assuredly he
must have been deceiving himself. There was no "little rift" there
at all. It was a pity.

"You're not coming down then?" La Faloise shouted up to him from the
entrance hall.

And out on the pavement, as they separated, they once more repeated:

"Tomorrow, at Nana's."

CHAPTER IV

Since morning Zoe had delivered up the flat to a managing man who
had come from Brebant's with a staff of helpers and waiters.
Brebant was to supply everything, from the supper, the plates and
dishes, the glass, the linen, the flowers, down to the seats and
footstools. Nana could not have mustered a dozen napkins out of all
her cupboards, and not having had time to get a proper outfit after
her new start in life and scorning to go to the restaurant, she had
decided to make the restaurant come to her. It struck her as being
more the thing. She wanted to celebrate her great success as an
actress with a supper which should set people talking. As her
dining room was too small, the manager had arranged the table in the
drawing room, a table with twenty-five covers, placed somewhat close
together.

"Is everything ready?" asked Nana when she returned at midnight.

"Oh! I don't know," replied Zoe roughly, looking beside herself with
worry. "The Lord be thanked, I don't bother about anything.
They're making a fearful mess in the kitchen and all over the flat!
I've had to fight my battles too. The other two came again. My
eye! I did just chuck 'em out!"

She referred, of course, to her employer's old admirers, the
tradesman and the Walachian, to whom Nana, sure of her future and
longing to shed her skin, as she phrased it, had decided to give the
go-by.

"There are a couple of leeches for you!" she muttered.

"If they come back threaten to go to the police."

Then she called Daguenet and Georges, who had remained behind in the
anteroom, where they were hanging up their overcoats. They had both
met at the stage door in the Passage des Panoramas, and she had
brought them home with her in a cab. As there was nobody there yet,
she shouted to them to come into the dressing room while Zoe was
touching up her toilet. Hurriedly and without changing her dress
she had her hair done up and stuck white roses in her chignon and at
her bosom. The little room was littered with the drawing-room
furniture, which the workmen had been compelled to roll in there,
and it was full of a motley assemblage of round tables, sofas and
armchairs, with their legs in air for the most part. Nana was quite
ready when her dress caught on a castor and tore upward. At this
she swore furiously; such things only happened to her! Ragingly she
took off her dress, a very simple affair of white foulard, of so
thin and supple a texture that it clung about her like a long shift.
But she put it on again directly, for she could not find another to
her taste, and with tears in her eyes declared that she was dressed
like a ragpicker. Daguenet and Georges had to patch up the rent
with pins, while Zoe once more arranged her hair. All three hurried
round her, especially the boy, who knelt on the floor with his hands
among her skirts. And at last she calmed down again when Daguenet
assured her it could not be later than a quarter past twelve, seeing
that by dint of scamping her words and skipping her lines she had
effectually shortened the third act of the Blonde Venus.

"The play's still far too good for that crowd of idiots," she said.
"Did you see? There were thousands there tonight. Zoe, my girl,
you will wait in here. Don't go to bed, I shall want you. By gum,
it is time they came. Here's company!"

She ran off while Georges stayed where he was with the skirts of his
coat brushing the floor. He blushed, seeing Daguenet looking at
him. Notwithstanding which, they had conceived a tender regard the
one for the other. They rearranged the bows of their cravats in
front of the big dressing glass and gave each other a mutual dose of
the clothesbrush, for they were all white from their close contact
with Nana.

"One would think it was sugar," murmured Georges, giggling like a
greedy little child.

A footman hired for the evening was ushering the guests into the
small drawing room, a narrow slip of a place in which only four
armchairs had been left in order the better to pack in the company.
From the large drawing room beyond came a sound as of the moving of
plates and silver, while a clear and brilliant ray of light shone
from under the door. At her entrance Nana found Clarisse Besnus,
whom La Faloise had brought, already installed in one of the
armchairs.

"Dear me, you're the first of 'em!" said Nana, who, now that she was
successful, treated her familiarly.

"Oh, it's his doing," replied Clarisse. "He's always afraid of not
getting anywhere in time. If I'd taken him at his word I shouldn't
have waited to take off my paint and my wig."

The young man, who now saw Nana for the first time, bowed, paid her
a compliment and spoke of his cousin, hiding his agitation behind an
exaggeration of politeness. But Nana, neither listening to him nor
recognizing his face, shook hands with him and then went briskly
toward Rose Mignon, with whom she at once assumed a most
distinguished manner.

"Ah, how nice of you, my dear madame! I was so anxious to have you
here!"

"It's I who am charmed, I assure you," said Rose with equal
amiability.

"Pray, sit down. Do you require anything?"

"Thank you, no! Ah yes, I've left my fan in my pelisse, Steiner;
just look in the right-hand pocket."

Steiner and Mignon had come in behind Rose. The banker turned back
and reappeared with the fan while Mignon embraced Nana fraternally
and forced Rose to do so also. Did they not all belong to the same
family in the theatrical world? Then he winked as though to
encourage Steiner, but the latter was disconcerted by Rose's clear
gaze and contented himself by kissing Nana's hand.

Just then the Count de Vandeuvres made his appearance with Blanche
de Sivry. There was an interchange of profound bows, and Nana with
the utmost ceremony conducted Blanche to an armchair. Meanwhile
Vandeuvres told them laughingly that Fauchery was engaged in a
dispute at the foot of the stairs because the porter had refused to
allow Lucy Stewart's carriage to come in at the gate. They could
hear Lucy telling the porter he was a dirty blackguard in the
anteroom. But when the footman had opened the door she came forward
with her laughing grace of manner, announced her name herself, took
both Nana's hands in hers and told her that she had liked her from
the very first and considered her talent splendid. Nana, puffed up
by her novel role of hostess, thanked her and was veritably
confused. Nevertheless, from the moment of Fauchery's arrival she
appeared preoccupied, and directly she could get near him she asked
him in a low voice:

"Will he come?"

"No, he did not want to," was the journalist's abrupt reply, for he
was taken by surprise, though he had got ready some sort of tale to
explain Count Muffat's refusal.

Seeing the young woman's sudden pallor, he became conscious of his
folly and tried to retract his words.

"He was unable to; he is taking the countess to the ball at the
Ministry of the Interior tonight."

"All right," murmured Nana, who suspected him of ill will, "you'll
pay me out for that, my pippin."

She turned on her heel, and so did he; they were angry. Just then
Mignon was pushing Steiner up against Nana, and when Fauchery had
left her he said to her in a low voice and with the good-natured
cynicism of a comrade in arms who wishes his friends to be happy:

"He's dying of it, you know, only he's afraid of my wife. Won't you
protect him?"

Nana did not appear to understand. She smiled and looked at Rose,
the husband and the banker and finally said to the latter:

"Monsieur Steiner, you will sit next to me."

With that there came from the anteroom a sound of laughter and
whispering and a burst of merry, chattering voices, which sounded as
if a runaway convent were on the premises. And Labordette appeared,
towing five women in his rear, his boarding school, as Lucy Stewart
cruelly phrased it. There was Gaga, majestic in a blue velvet dress
which was too tight for her, and Caroline Hequet, clad as usual in
ribbed black silk, trimmed with Chantilly lace. Lea de Horn came
next, terribly dressed up, as her wont was, and after her the big
Tatan Nene, a good-humored fair girl with the bosom of a wet nurse,
at which people laughed, and finally little Maria Blond, a young
damsel of fifteen, as thin and vicious as a street child, yet on the
high road to success, owing to her recent first appearance at the
Folies. Labordette had brought the whole collection in a single
fly, and they were stlll laughing at the way they had been squeezed
with Maria Blond on her knees. But on entering the room they pursed
up their lips, and all grew very conventional as they shook hands
and exchanged salutations. Gaga even affected the infantile and
lisped through excess of genteel deportment. Tatan Nene alone
transgressed. They had been telling her as they came along that six
absolutely naked Negroes would serve up Nana's supper, and she now
grew anxious about them and asked to see them. Labordette called
her a goose and besought her to be silent.

"And Bordenave?" asked Fauchery.

"Oh, you may imagine how miserable I am," cried Nana; "he won't be
able to join us."

"Yes," said Rose Mignon, "his foot caught in a trap door, and he's
got a fearful sprain. If only you could hear him swearing, with his
leg tied up and laid out on a chair!"

Thereupon everybody mourned over Bordenave's absence. No one ever
gave a good supper without Bordenave. Ah well, they would try and
do without him, and they were already talking about other matters
when a burly voice was heard:

"What, eh, what? Is that the way they're going to write my obituary
notice?"

There was a shout, and all heads were turned round, for it was
indeed Bordenave. Huge and fiery-faced, he was standing with his
stiff leg in the doorway, leaning for support on Simonne Cabiroche's
shoulder. Simonne was for the time being his mistress. This little
creature had had a certain amount of education and could play the
piano and talk English. She was a blonde on a tiny, pretty scale
and so delicately formed that she seemed to bend under Bordenave's
rude weight. Yet she was smilingly submissive withal. He postured
there for some moments, for he felt that together they formed a
tableau.

"One can't help liking ye, eh?" he continued. "Zounds, I was afraid
I should get bored, and I said to myself, 'Here goes.'"

But he interrupted himself with an oath.

"Oh, damn!"

Simonne had taken a step too quickly forward, and his foot had just
felt his full weight. He gave her a rough push, but she, still
smiling away and ducking her pretty head as some animal might that
is afraid of a beating, held him up with all the strength a little
plump blonde can command. Amid all these exclamations there was a
rush to his assistance. Nana and Rose Mignon rolled up an armchair,
into which Bordenave let himself sink, while the other women slid a
second one under his leg. And with that all the actresses present
kissed him as a matter of course. He kept grumbling and gasping.

"Oh, damn! Oh, damn! Ah well, the stomach's unhurt, you'll see."

Other guests had arrived by this time, and motion became impossible
in the room. The noise of clinking plates and silver had ceased,
and now a dispute was heard going on in the big drawing room, where
the voice of the manager grumbled angrily. Nana was growing
impatient, for she expected no more invited guests and wondered why
they did not bring in supper. She had just sent Georges to find out
what was going on when, to her great surprise, she noticed the
arrival of more guests, both male and female. She did not know them
in the least. Whereupon with some embarrassment she questioned
Bordenave, Mignon and Labordette about them. They did not know them
any more than she did, but when she turned to the Count de
Vandeuvres he seemed suddenly to recollect himself. They were the
young men he had pressed into her service at Count Muffat's. Nana
thanked him. That was capital, capital! Only they would all be
terribly crowded, and she begged Labordette to go and have seven
more covers set. Scarcely had he left the room than the footman
ushered in three newcomers. Nay, this time the thing was becoming
ridiculous; one certainly could never take them all in. Nana was
beginning to grow angry and in her haughtiest manner announced that
such conduct was scarcely in good taste. But seeing two more
arrive, she began laughing; it was really too funny. So much the
worse. People would have to fit in anyhow! The company were all on
their feet save Gaga and Rose and Bordenave, who alone took up two
armchairs. There was a buzz of voices, people talking in low tones
and stifling slight yawns the while.

"Now what d'you say, my lass," asked Bordenave, "to our sitting down
at table as if nothing had happened? We are all here, don't you
think?"

"Oh yes, we're all here, I promise you!" she answered laughingly.

She looked round her but grew suddenly serious, as though she were
surprised at not finding someone. Doubtless there was a guest
missing whom she did not mention. It was a case of waiting. But a
minute or two later the company noticed in their midst a tall
gentleman with a fine face and a beautiful white beard. The most
astonishing thing about it was that nobody had seen him come in;
indeed, he must have slipped into the little drawing room through
the bedroom door, which had remained ajar. Silence reigned, broken
only by a sound of whispering. The Count de Vandeuvres certainly
knew who the gentleman was, for they both exchanged a discreet
handgrip, but to the questions which the women asked him he replied
by a smile only. Thereupon Caroline Hequet wagered in a low voice
that it was an English lord who was on the eve of returning to
London to be married. She knew him quite well--she had had him.
And this account of the matter went the round of the ladies present,
Maria Blond alone asserting that, for her part, she recognized a
German ambassador. She could prove it, because he often passed the
night with one of her friends. Among the men his measure was taken
in a few rapid phrases. A real swell, to judge by his looks!
Perhaps he would pay for the supper! Most likely. It looked like
it. Bah! Provided only the supper was a good one! In the end the
company remained undecided. Nay, they were already beginning to
forget the old white-bearded gentleman when the manager opened the
door of the large drawing room.

"Supper is on the table, madame."

Nana had already accepted Steiner's proffered arm without noticing a
movement on the part of the old gentleman, who started to walk
behind her in solitary state. Thus the march past could not be
organized, and men and women entered anyhow, joking with homely good
humor over this absence of ceremony. A long table stretched from
one end to the other of the great room, which had been entirely
cleared of furniture, and this same table was not long enough, for
the plates thereon were touching one another. Four candelabra, with
ten candles apiece, lit up the supper, and of these one was gorgeous
in silver plate with sheaves of flowers to right and left of it.
Everything was luxurious after the restaurant fashion; the china was
ornamented with a gold line and lacked the customary monogram; the
silver had become worn and tarnished through dint of continual
washings; the glass was of the kind that you can complete an odd set
of in any cheap emporium.

The scene suggested a premature housewarming in an establishment
newly smiled on by fortune and as yet lacking the necessary
conveniences. There was no central luster, and the candelabra,
whose tall tapers had scarcely burned up properly, cast a pale
yellow light among the dishes and stands on which fruit, cakes and
preserves alternated symmetrically.

"You sit where you like, you know," said Nana. "It's more amusing
that way."

She remained standing midway down the side of the table. The old
gentleman whom nobody knew had placed himself on her right, while
she kept Steiner on her left hand. Some guests were already sitting
down when the sound of oaths came from the little drawing room. It
was Bordenave. The company had forgotten him, and he was having all
the trouble in the world to raise himself out of his two armchairs,
for he was howling amain and calling for that cat of a Simonne, who
had slipped off with the rest. The women ran in to him, full of
pity for his woes, and Bordenave appeared, supported, nay, almost
carried, by Caroline, Clarisse, Tatan Nene and Maria Blond. And
there was much to-do over his installation at the table.

"In the middle, facing Nana!" was the cry. "Bordenave in the
middle! He'll be our president!"

Thereupon the ladies seated him in the middle. But he needed a
second chair for his leg, and two girls lifted it up and stretched
it carefully out. It wouldn't matter; he would eat sideways.

"God blast it all!" he grumbled. "We're squashed all the same! Ah,
my kittens, Papa recommends himself to your tender care!"

He had Rose Mignon on his right and Lucy Stewart on his left hand,
and they promised to take good care of him. Everybody was now
getting settled. Count de Vandeuvres placed himself between Lucy
and Clarisse; Fauchery between Rose Mignon and Caroline Hequet. On
the other side of the table Hector de la Faloise had rushed to get
next Gaga, and that despite the calls of Clarisse opposite, while
Mignon, who never deserted Steiner, was only separated from him by
Blanche and had Tatan Nene on his left. Then came Labordette and,
finally, at the two ends of the table were irregular crowding groups
of young men and of women, such as Simonne, Lea de Horn and Maria
Blond. It was in this region that Daguenet and Georges forgathered
more warmly than ever while smilingly gazing at Nana.

Nevertheless, two people remained standing, and there was much
joking about it. The men offered seats on their knees. Clarisse,
who could not move her elbows, told Vandeuvres that she counted on
him to feed her. And then that Bordenave did just take up space
with his chairs! There was a final effort, and at last everybody
was seated, but, as Mignon loudly remarked, they were confoundedly
like herrings in a barrel.

"Thick asparagus soup a la comtesse, clear soup a la Deslignac,"
murmured the waiters, carrying about platefuls in rear of the
guests.

Bordenave was loudly recommending the thick soup when a shout arose,
followed by protests and indignant exclamations. The door had just
opened, and three late arrivals, a woman and two men, had just come
in. Oh dear, no! There was no space for them! Nana, however,
without leaving her chair, began screwing up her eyes in the effort
to find out whether she knew them. The woman was Louise Violaine,
but she had never seen the men before.

"This gentleman, my dear," said Vandeuvres, "is a friend of mine, a
naval officer, Monsieur de Foucarmont by name. I invited him."

Foucarmont bowed and seemed very much at ease, for he added:

"And I took leave to bring one of my friends with me."

"Oh, it's quite right, quite right!" said Nana. "Sit down, pray.
Let's see, you--Clarisse--push up a little. You're a good deal
spread out down there. That's it--where there's a will--"

They crowded more tightly than ever, and Foucarmont and Louise were
given a little stretch of table, but the friend had to sit at some
distance from his plate and ate his supper through dint of making a
long arm between his neighbors' shoulders. The waiters took away
the soup plates and circulated rissoles of young rabbit with
truffles and "niokys" and powdered cheese. Bordenave agitated the
whole table with the announcement that at one moment he had had the
idea of bringing with him Prulliere, Fontan and old Bosc. At this
Nana looked sedate and remarked dryly that she would have given them
a pretty reception. Had she wanted colleagues, she would certainly
have undertaken to ask them herself. No, no, she wouldn't have
third-rate play actors. Old Bosc was always drunk; Prulliere was
fond of spitting too much, and as to Fontan, he made himself
unbearable in society with his loud voice and his stupid doings.
Then, you know, third-rate play actors were always out of place when
they found themselves in the society of gentlemen such as those
around her.

"Yes, yes, it's true," Mignon declared.

All round the table the gentlemen in question looked unimpeachable
in the extreme, what with their evening dress and their pale
features, the natural distinction of which was still further refined
by fatigue. The old gentleman was as deliberate in his movements
and wore as subtle a smile as though he were presiding over a
diplomatic congress, and Vandeuvres, with his exquisite politeness
toward the ladies next to him, seemed to be at one of the Countess
Muffat's receptions. That very morning Nana had been remarking to
her aunt that in the matter of men one could not have done better--
they were all either wellborn or wealthy, in fact, quite the thing.
And as to the ladies, they were behaving admirably. Some of them,
such as Blanche, Lea and Louise, had come in low dresses, but Gaga's
only was perhaps a little too low, the more so because at her age
she would have done well not to show her neck at all. Now that the
company were finally settled the laughter and the light jests began
to fail. Georges was under the impression that he had assisted at
merrier dinner parties among the good folks of Orleans. There was
scarcely any conversation. The men, not being mutually acquainted,
stared at one another, while the women sat quite quiet, and it was
this which especially surprised Georges. He thought them all smugs--
he had been under the impression that everybody would begin kissing
at once.

The third course, consisting of a Rhine carp a la Chambord and a
saddle of venison a l'anglaise, was being served when Blanche
remarked aloud:

"Lucy, my dear, I met your Ollivier on Sunday. How he's grown!"

"Dear me, yes! He's eighteen," replied Lucy. "It doesn't make me
feel any younger. He went back to his school yesterday."

Her son Ollivier, whom she was wont to speak of with pride, was a
pupil at the Ecole de Marine. Then ensued a conversation about the
young people, during which all the ladies waxed very tender. Nana
described her own great happiness. Her baby, the little Louis, she
said, was now at the house of her aunt, who brought him round to her
every morning at eleven o'clock, when she would take him into her
bed, where he played with her griffon dog Lulu. It was enough to
make one die of laughing to see them both burying themselves under
the clothes at the bottom of the bed. The company had no idea how
cunning Louiset had already become.

"Oh, yesterday I did just pass a day!" said Rose Mignon in her turn.
"Just imagine, I went to fetch Charles and Henry at their boarding
school, and I had positively to take them to the theater at night.
They jumped; they clapped their little hands: 'We shall see Mamma
act! We shall see Mamma act!'  Oh, it was a to-do!"

Mignon smiled complaisantly, his eyes moist with paternal
tenderness.

"And at the play itself," he continued, "they were so funny! They
behaved as seriously as grown men, devoured Rose with their eyes and
asked me why Mamma had her legs bare like that."

The whole table began laughing, and Mignon looked radiant, for his
pride as a father was flattered. He adored his children and had but
one object in life, which was to increase their fortunes by
administering the money gained by Rose at the theater and elsewhere
with the businesslike severity of a faithful steward. When as first
fiddle in the music hall where she used to sing he had married her,
they had been passionately fond of one another. Now they were good
friends. There was an understanding between them: she labored hard
to the full extent of her talent and of her beauty; he had given up
his violin in order the better to watch over her successes as an
actress and as a woman. One could not have found a more homely and
united household anywhere!

"What age is your eldest?" asked Vandeuvres.

"Henry's nine," replied Mignon, "but such a big chap for his years!"

Then he chaffed Steiner, who was not fond of children, and with
quiet audacity informed him that were he a father, he would make a
less stupid hash of his fortune. While talking he watched the
banker over Blanche's shoulders to see if it was coming off with
Nana. But for some minutes Rose and Fauchery, who were talking very
near him, had been getting on his nerves. Was Rose going to waste
time over such a folly as that? In that sort of case, by Jove, he
blocked the way. And diamond on finger and with his fine hands in
great evidence, he finished discussing a fillet of venison.

Elsewhere the conversation about children continued. La Faloise,
rendered very restless by the immediate proximity of Gaga, asked
news of her daughter, whom he had had the pleasure of noticing in
her company at the Varietes. Lili was quite well, but she was still
such a tomboy! He was astonished to learn that Lili was entering on
her nineteenth year. Gaga became even more imposing in his eyes,
and when he endeavored to find out why she had not brought Lili with
her:

"Oh no, no, never!" she said stiffly. "Not three months ago she
positively insisted on leaving her boarding school. I was thinking
of marrying her off at once, but she loves me so that I had to take
her home--oh, so much against my will!"

Her blue eyelids with their blackened lashes blinked and wavered
while she spoke of the business of settling her young lady. If at
her time of life she hadn't laid by a sou but was still always
working to minister to men's pleasures, especially those very young
men, whose grandmother she might well be, it was truly because she
considered a good match of far greater importance than mere savings.
And with that she leaned over La Faloise, who reddened under the
huge, naked, plastered shoulder with which she well-nigh crushed
him.

"You know," she murmured, "if she fails it won't be my fault. But
they're so strange when they're young!"

There was a considerable bustle round the table, and the waiters
became very active. After the third course the entrees had made
their appearance; they consisted of pullets a la marechale, fillets
of sole with shallot sauce and escalopes of Strasbourg pate. The
manager, who till then had been having Meursault served, now offered
Chambertin and Leoville. Amid the slight hubbub which the change of
plates involved Georges, who was growing momentarily more
astonished, asked Daguenet if all the ladies present were similarly
provided with children, and the other, who was amused by this
question, gave him some further details. Lucy Stewart was the
daughter of a man of English origin who greased the wheels of the
trains at the Gare du Nord; she was thirty-nine years old and had
the face of a horse but was adorable withal and, though consumptive,
never died. In fact, she was the smartest woman there and
represented three princes and a duke. Caroline Hequet, born at
Bordeaux, daughter of a little clerk long since dead of shame, was
lucky enough to be possessed of a mother with a head on her
shoulders, who, after having cursed her, had made it up again at the
end of a year of reflection, being minded, at any rate, to save a
fortune for her daughter. The latter was twenty-five years old and
very passionless and was held to be one of the finest women it is
possible to enjoy. Her price never varied. The mother, a model of
orderliness, kept the accounts and noted down receipts and
expenditures with severe precision. She managed the whole household
from some small lodging two stories above her daughter's, where,
moreover, she had established a workroom for dressmaking and plain
sewing. As to Blanche de Sivry, whose real name was Jacqueline
Bandu, she hailed from a village near Amiens. Magnificent in
person, stupid and untruthful in character, she gave herself out as
the granddaughter of a general and never owned to her thirty-two
summers. The Russians had a great taste for her, owing to her
embonpoint. Then Daguenet added a rapid word or two about the rest.
There was Clarisse Besnus, whom a lady had brought up from Saint-
Aubin-sur-Mer in the capacity of maid while the lady's husband had
started her in quite another line. There was Simonne Cabiroche, the
daughter of a furniture dealer in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, who
had been educated in a large boarding school with a view to becoming
a governess. Finally there were Maria Blond and Louise Violaine and
Lea de Horn, who had all shot up to woman's estate on the pavements
of Paris, not to mention Tatan Nene, who had herded cows in
Champagne till she was twenty.

Georges listened and looked at these ladies, feeling dizzy and
excited by the coarse recital thus crudely whispered in his ear,
while behind his chair the waiters kept repeating in respectful
tones:

"Pullets a la marechale; fillets of sole with ravigote sauce."

"My dear fellow," said Daguenet, giving him the benefit of his
experience, "don't take any fish; it'll do you no good at this time
of night. And be content with Leoville: it's less treacherous."

A heavy warmth floated upward from the candelabras, from the dishes
which were being handed round, from the whole table where thirty-
eight human beings were suffocating. And the waiters forgot
themselves and ran when crossing the carpet, so that it was spotted
with grease. Nevertheless, the supper grew scarce any merrier. The
ladies trifled with their meat, left half of it uneaten. Tatan Nene
alone partook gluttonously of every dish. At that advanced hour of
the night hunger was of the nervous order only, a mere whimsical
craving born of an exasperated stomach.

At Nana's side the old gentleman refused every dish offered him; he
had only taken a spoonful of soup, and he now sat in front of his
empty plate, gazing silently about. There was some subdued yawning,
and occasionally eyelids closed and faces became haggard and white.
It was unutterably slow, as it always was, according to Vandeuvres's
dictum. This sort of supper should be served anyhow if it was to be
funny, he opined. Otherwise when elegantly and conventionally done
you might as well feed in good society, where you were not more
bored than here. Had it not been for Bordenave, who was still
bawling away, everybody would have fallen asleep. That rum old
buffer Bordenave, with his leg duly stretched on its chair, was
letting his neighbors, Lucy and Rose, wait on him as though he were
a sultan. They were entirely taken up with him, and they helped him
and pampered him and watched over his glass and his plate, and yet
that did not prevent his complaining.

"Who's going to cut up my meat for me? I can't; the table's a
league away."

Every few seconds Simonne rose and took up a position behind his
back in order to cut his meat and his bread. All the women took a
great interest in the things he ate. The waiters were recalled, and
he was stuffed to suffocation. Simonne having wiped his mouth for
him while Rose and Lucy were changing his plate, her act struck him
as very pretty and, deigning at length to show contentment:

"There, there, my daughter," he said, "that's as it should be.
Women are made for that!"

There was a slight reawakening, and conversation became general as
they finished discussing some orange sherbet. The hot roast was a
fillet with truffles, and the cold roast a galantine of guinea fowl
in jelly. Nana, annoyed by the want of go displayed by her guests,
had begun talking with the greatest distinctness.

"You know the Prince of Scots has already had a stage box reserved
so as to see the Blonde Venus when he comes to visit the
exhibition."

"I very much hope that all the princes will come and see it,"
declared Bordenave with his mouth full.

"They are expecting the shah of Persia next Sunday," said Lucy
Stewart. Whereupon Rose Mignon spoke of the shah's diamonds. He
wore a tunic entirely covered with gems; it was a marvel, a flaming
star; it represented millions. And the ladies, with pale faces and
eyes glittering with covetousness, craned forward and ran over the
names of the other kings, the other emperors, who were shortly
expected. All of them were dreaming of some royal caprice, some
night to be paid for by a fortune.

"Now tell me, dear boy," Caroline Hequet asked Vandeuvres, leaning
forward as she did so, "how old's the emperor of Russia?"

"Oh, he's 'present time,'" replied the count, laughing. "Nothing to
be done in that quarter, I warn you."

Nana made pretense of being hurt. The witticism appeared somewhat
too stinging, and there was a murmur of protest. But Blanche gave a
description of the king of Italy, whom she had once seen at Milan.
He was scarcely good looking, and yet that did not prevent him
enjoying all the women. She was put out somewhat when Fauchery
assured her that Victor Emmanuel could not come to the exhibition.
Louise Violaine and Lea favored the emperor of Austria, and all of a
sudden little Maria Blond was heard saying:

"What an old stick the king of Prussia is! I was at Baden last
year, and one was always meeting him about with Count Bismarck."

"Dear me, Bismarck!" Simonne interrupted. "I knew him once, I did.
A charming man."

"That's what I was saying yesterday," cried Vandeuvres, "but nobody
would believe me."

And just as at Countess Sabine's, there ensued a long discussion
about Bismarck. Vandeuvres repeated the same phrases, and for a
moment or two one was again in the Muffats' drawing room, the only
difference being that the ladies were changed. Then, just as last
night, they passed on to a discussion on music, after which,
Foucarmont having let slip some mention of the assumption of the
veil of which Paris was still talking, Nana grew quite interested
and insisted on details about Mlle de Fougeray. Oh, the poor child,
fancy her burying herself alive like that! Ah well, when it was a
question of vocation! All round the table the women expressed
themselves much touched, and Georges, wearied at hearing these
things a second time discussed, was beginning to ask Daguenet about
Nana's ways in private life, when the conversation veered fatefully
back to Count Bismarck. Tatan Nene bent toward Labordette to ask
him privily who this Bismarck might be, for she did not know him.
Whereupon Labordette, in cold blood, told her some portentous
anecdotes. This Bismarck, he said, was in the habit of eating raw
meat and when he met a woman near his den would carry her off
thither on his back; at forty years of age he had already had as
many as thirty-two children that way.

"Thirty-two children at forty!" cried Tatan Nene, stupefied and yet
convinced. "He must be jolly well worn out for his age."

There was a burst of merriment, and it dawned on her that she was
being made game of.

"You sillies! How am I to know if you're joking?"

Gaga, meanwhile, had stopped at the exhibition. Like all these
ladies, she was delightedly preparing for the fray. A good season,
provincials and foreigners rushing into Paris! In the long run,
perhaps, after the close of the exhibition she would, if her
business had flourished, be able to retire to a little house at
Jouvisy, which she had long had her eye on.

"What's to be done?" she said to La Faloise. "One never gets what
one wants! Oh, if only one were still really loved!"

Gaga behaved meltingly because she had felt the young man's knee
gently placed against her own. He was blushing hotly and lisping as
elegantly as ever. She weighed him at a glance. Not a very heavy
little gentleman, to be sure, but then she wasn't hard to please.
La Faloise obtained her address.

"Just look there," murmured Vandeuvres to Clarisse. "I think Gaga's
doing you out of your Hector."

"A good riddance, so far as I'm concerned," replied the actress.
"That fellow's an idiot. I've already chucked him downstairs three
times. You know, I'm disgusted when dirty little boys run after old
women."

She broke off and with a little gesture indicated Blanche, who from
the commencement of dinner had remained in a most uncomfortable
attitude, sitting up very markedly, with the intention of displaying
her shoulders to the old distinguished-looking gentleman three seats
beyond her.

"You're being left too," she resumed.

Vandeuvres smiled his thin smile and made a little movement to
signify he did not care. Assuredly 'twas not he who would ever have
prevented poor, dear Blanche scoring a success. He was more
interested by the spectacle which Steiner was presenting to the
table at large. The banker was noted for his sudden flames. That
terrible German Jew who brewed money, whose hands forged millions,
was wont to turn imbecile whenever he became enamored of a woman.
He wanted them all too! Not one could make her appearance on the
stage but he bought her, however expensive she might be. Vast sums
were quoted. Twice had his furious appetite for courtesans ruined
him. The courtesans, as Vandeuvres used to say, avenged public
morality by emptying his moneybags. A big operation in the
saltworks of the Landes had rendered him powerful on 'change, and so
for six weeks past the Mignons had been getting a pretty slice out
of those same saltworks. But people were beginning to lay wagers
that the Mignons would not finish their slice, for Nana was showing
her white teeth. Once again Steiner was in the toils, and so deeply
this time that as he sat by Nana's side he seemed stunned; he ate
without appetite; his lip hung down; his face was mottled. She had
only to name a figure. Nevertheless, she did not hurry but
continued playing with him, breathing her merry laughter into his
hairy ear and enjoying the little convulsive movements which kept
traversing his heavy face. There would always be time enough to
patch all that up if that ninny of a Count Muffat were really to
treat her as Joseph did Potiphar's wife.

"Leoville or Chambertin?" murmured a waiter, who came craning
forward between Nana and Steiner just as the latter was addressing
her in a low voice.

"Eh, what?" he stammered, losing his head. "Whatever you like--I
don't care."

Vandeuvres gently nudged Lucy Stewart, who had a very spiteful
tongue and a very fierce invention when once she was set going.
That evening Mignon was driving her to exasperation.

"He would gladly be bottleholder, you know," she remarked to the
count. "He's in hopes of repeating what he did with little
Jonquier. You remember: Jonquier was Rose's man, but he was sweet
on big Laure. Now Mignon procured Laure for Jonquier and then came
back arm in arm with him to Rose, as if he were a husband who had
been allowed a little peccadillo. But this time the thing's going
to fail. Nana doesn't give up the men who are lent her."

"What ails Mignon that he should be looking at his wife in that
severe way?" asked Vandeuvres.

He leaned forward and saw Rose growing exceedingly amorous toward
Fauchery. This was the explanation of his neighbor's wrath. He
resumed laughingly:

"The devil, are you jealous?"

"Jealous!" said Lucy in a fury. "Good gracious, if Rose is wanting
Leon I give him up willingly--for what he's worth! That's to say,
for a bouquet a week and the rest to match! Look here, my dear boy,
these theatrical trollops are all made the same way. Why, Rose
cried with rage when she read Leon's article on Nana; I know she
did. So now, you understand, she must have an article, too, and
she's gaining it. As for me, I'm going to chuck Leon downstairs--
you'll see!"

She paused to say "Leoville" to the waiter standing behind her with
his two bottles and then resumed in lowered tones:

"I don't want to shout; it isn't my style. But she's a cocky slut
all the same. If I were in her husband's place I should lead her a
lovely dance. Oh, she won't be very happy over it. She doesn't
know my Fauchery: a dirty gent he is, too, palling up with women
like that so as to get on in the world. Oh, a nice lot they are!"

Vandeuvres did his best to calm her down, but Bordenave, deserted by
Rose and by Lucy, grew angry and cried out that they were letting
Papa perish of hunger and thirst. This produced a fortunate
diversion. Yet the supper was flagging; no one was eating now,
though platefuls of cepes a' l'italienne and pineapple fritters a la
Pompadour were being mangled. The champagne, however, which had
been drunk ever since the soup course, was beginning little by
little to warm the guests into a state of nervous exaltation. They
ended by paying less attention to decorum than before. The women
began leaning on their elbows amid the disordered table
arrangements, while the men, in order to breathe more easily, pushed
their chairs back, and soon the black coats appeared buried between
the light-colored bodices, and bare shoulders, half turned toward
the table, began to gleam as soft as silk. It was too hot, and the
glare of the candles above the table grew ever yellower and duller.
Now and again, when a women bent forward, the back of her neck
glowed golden under a rain of curls, and the glitter of a diamond
clasp lit up a lofty chignon. There was a touch of fire in the
passing jests, in the laughing eyes, in the sudden gleam of white
teeth, in the reflection of the candelabra on the surface of a glass
of champagne. The company joked at the tops of their voices,
gesticulated, asked questions which no one answered and called to
one another across the whole length of the room. But the loudest
din was made by the waiters; they fancied themselves at home in the
corridors of their parent restaurant; they jostled one another and
served the ices and the dessert to an accompaniment of guttural
exclamations.

"My children," shouted Bordenave, "you know we're playing tomorrow.
Be careful! Not too much champagne!"

"As far as I'm concerned," said Foucarmont, "I've drunk every
imaginable kind of wine in all the four quarters of the globe.
Extraordinary liquors some of 'em, containing alcohol enough to kill
a corpse! Well, and what d'you think? Why, it never hurt me a bit.
I can't make myself drunk. I've tried and I can't."

He was very pale, very calm and collected, and he lolled back in his
chair, drinking without cessation.

"Never mind that," murmured Louise Violaine. "Leave off; you've had
enough. It would be a funny business if I had to look after you the
rest of the night."

Such was her state of exaltation that Lucy Stewart's cheeks were
assuming a red, consumptive flush, while Rose Mignon with moist
eyelids was growing excessively melting. Tatan Nene, greatly
astonished at the thought that she had overeaten herself, was
laughing vaguely over her own stupidity. The others, such as
Blanche, Caroline, Simonne and Maria, were all talking at once and
telling each other about their private affairs--about a dispute with
a coachman, a projected picnic and innumerable complex stories of
lovers stolen or restored. Meanwhile a young man near Georges,
having evinced a desire to kiss Lea de Horn, received a sharp rap,
accompanied by a "Look here, you, let me go!" which was spoken in a
tone of fine indignation; and Georges, who was now very tipsy and
greatly excited by the sight of Nana, hesitated about carrying out a
project which he had been gravely maturing. He had been planning,
indeed, to get under the table on all fours and to go and crouch at
Nana's feet like a little dog. Nobody would have seen him, and he
would have stayed there in the quietest way. But when at Lea's
urgent request Daguenet had told the young man to sit still, Georges
all at once felt grievously chagrined, as though the reproof had
just been leveled at him. Oh, it was all silly and slow, and there
was nothing worth living for! Daguenet, nevertheless, began
chaffing and obliged him to swallow a big glassful of water, asking
him at the same time what he would do if he were to find himself
alone with a woman, seeing that three glasses of champagne were able
to bowl him over.

"Why, in Havana," resumed Foucarmont, "they make a spirit with a
certain wild berry; you think you're swallowing fire! Well now, one
evening I drank more than a liter of it, and it didn't hurt me one
bit. Better than that, another time when we were on the coast of
Coromandel some savages gave us I don't know what sort of a mixture
of pepper and vitriol, and that didn't hurt me one bit. I can't
make myself drunk."

For some moments past La Faloise's face opposite had excited his
displeasure. He began sneering and giving vent to disagreeable
witticisms. La Faloise, whose brain was in a whirl, was behaving
very restlessly and squeezing up against Gaga. But at length he
became the victim of anxiety; somebody had just taken his
handkerchief, and with drunken obstinacy he demanded it back again,
asked his neighbors about it, stooped down in order to look under
the chairs and the guests' feet. And when Gaga did her best to
quiet him:

"It's a nuisance," he murmured, "my initials and my coronet are
worked in the corner. They may compromise me."

"I say, Monsieur Falamoise, Lamafoise, Mafaloise!" shouted
Foucarmont, who thought it exceedingly witty thus to disfigure the
young man's name ad infinitum.

But La Faloise grew wroth and talked with a stutter about his
ancestry. He threatened to send a water bottle at Foucarmont's
head, and Count de Vandeuvres had to interfere in order to assure
him that Foucarmont was a great joker. Indeed, everybody was
laughing. This did for the already flurried young man, who was very
glad to resume his seat and to begin eating with childlike
submissiveness when in a loud voice his cousin ordered him to feed.
Gaga had taken him back to her ample side; only from time to time he
cast sly and anxious glances at the guests, for he ceased not to
search for his handkerchief.

Then Foucarmont, being now in his witty vein, attacked Labordette
right at the other end of the table. Louise Violaine strove to make
him hold his tongue, for, she said, "when he goes nagging at other
people like that it always ends in mischief for me."  He had
discovered a witticism which consisted in addressing Labordette as
"Madame," and it must have amused him greatly, for he kept on
repeating it while Labordette tranquilly shrugged his shoulders and
as constantly replied:

"Pray hold your tongue, my dear fellow; it's stupid."

But as Foucarmont failed to desist and even became insulting without
his neighbors knowing why, he left off answering him and appealed to
Count Vandeuvres.

"Make your friend hold his tongue, monsieur. I don't wish to become
angry."

Foucarmont had twice fought duels, and he was in consequence most
politely treated and admitted into every circle. But there was now
a general uprising against him. The table grew merry at his
sallies, for they thought him very witty, but that was no reason why
the evening should be spoiled. Vandeuvres, whose subtle countenance
was darkening visibly, insisted on his restoring Labordette his sex.
The other men--Mignon, Steiner and Bordenave--who were by this time
much exalted, also intervened with shouts which drowned his voice.
Only the old gentleman sitting forgotten next to Nana retained his
stately demeanor and, still smiling in his tired, silent way,
watched with lackluster eyes the untoward finish of the dessert.

"What do you say to our taking coffee in here, duckie?" said
Bordenave. "We're very comfortable."

Nana did not give an immediate reply. Since the beginning of supper
she had seemed no longer in her own house. All this company had
overwhelmed and bewildered her with their shouts to the waiters, the
loudness of their voices and the way in which they put themselves at
their ease, just as though they were in a restaurant. Forgetting
her role of hostess, she busied herself exclusively with bulky
Steiner, who was verging on apoplexy beside her. She was listening
to his proposals and continually refusing them with shakes of the
head and that temptress's laughter which is peculiar to a voluptuous
blonde. The champagne she had been drinking had flushed her a rosy-
red; her lips were moist; her eyes sparkled, and the banker's offers
rose with every kittenish movement of her shoulders, with every
little voluptuous lift and fall of her throat, which occurred when
she turned her head. Close by her ear he kept espying a sweet
little satiny corner which drove him crazy. Occasionally Nana was
interrupted, and then, remembering her guests, she would try and be
as pleased as possible in order to show that she knew how to
receive. Toward the end of the supper she was very tipsy. It made
her miserable to think of it, but champagne had a way of
intoxicating her almost directly! Then an exasperating notion
struck her. In behaving thus improperly at her table, these ladies
were showing themselves anxious to do her an ugly turn. Oh yes, she
could see it all distinctly. Lucy had given Foucarmont a wink in
order to egg him on against Labordette, while Rose, Caroline and the
others were doing all they could to stir up the men. Now there was
such a din you couldn't hear your neighbor speak, and so the story
would get about that you might allow yourself every kind of liberty
when you supped at Nana's. Very well then! They should see! She
might be tipsy, if you like, but she was still the smartest and most
ladylike woman there.

"Do tell them to serve the coffee here, duckie," resumed Bordenave.
"I prefer it here because of my leg."

But Nana had sprung savagely to her feet after whispering into the
astonished ears of Steiner and the old gentleman:

"It's quite right; it'll teach me to go and invite a dirty lot like
that."

Then she pointed to the door of the dining room and added at the top
of her voice:

"If you want coffee it's there, you know."

The company left the table and crowded toward the dining room
without noticing Nana's indignant outburst. And soon no one was
left in the drawing room save Bordenave, who advanced cautiously,
supporting himself against the wall and cursing away at the
confounded women who chucked Papa the moment they were chock-full.
The waiters behind him were already busy removing the plates and
dishes in obedience to the loudly voiced orders of the manager.
They rushed to and fro, jostled one another, caused the whole table
to vanish, as a pantomime property might at the sound of the chief
scene-shifter's whistle. The ladies and gentlemen were to return to
the drawing room after drinking their coffee.

"By gum, it's less hot here," said Gaga with a slight shiver as she
entered the dining room.

The window here had remained open. Two lamps illuminated the table,
where coffee and liqueurs were set out. There were no chairs, and
the guests drank their coffee standing, while the hubbub the waiters
were making in the next room grew louder and louder. Nana had
disappeared, but nobody fretted about her absence. They did without
her excellently well, and everybody helped himself and rummaged in
the drawers of the sideboard in search of teaspoons, which were
lacking. Several groups were formed; people separated during supper
rejoined each other, and there was an interchange of glances, of
meaning laughter and of phrases which summed up recent situations.

"Ought not Monsieur Fauchery to come and lunch with us one of these
days, Auguste?" said Rose Mignon.

Mignon, who was toying with his watch chain, eyed the journalist for
a second or two with his severe glance. Rose was out of her senses.
As became a good manager, he would put a stop to such spendthrift
courses. In return for a notice, well and good, but afterward,
decidedly not. Nevertheless, as he was fully aware of his wife's
wrongheadedness and as he made it a rule to wink paternally at a
folly now and again, when such was necessary, he answered amiably
enough:

"Certainly, I shall be most happy. Pray come tomorrow, Monsieur
Fauchery."

Lucy Stewart heard this invitation given while she was talking with
Steiner and Blanche and, raising her voice, she remarked to the
banker:

"It's a mania they've all of them got. One of them even went so far
as to steal my dog. Now, dear boy, am I to blame if you chuck her?"

Rose turned round. She was very pale and gazed fixedly at Steiner
as she sipped her coffee. And then all the concentrated anger she
felt at his abandonment of her flamed out in her eyes. She saw more
clearly than Mignon; it was stupid in him to have wished to begin
the Jonquier ruse a second time--those dodgers never succeeded twice
running. Well, so much the worse for him! She would have Fauchery!
She had been getting enamored of him since the beginning of supper,
and if Mignon was not pleased it would teach him greater wisdom!

"You are not going to fight?" said Vandeuvres, coming over to Lucy
Stewart.

"No, don't be afraid of that! Only she must mind and keep quiet, or
I let the cat out of the bag!"

Then signing imperiously to Fauchery:

"I've got your slippers at home, my little man. I'll get them taken
to your porter's lodge for you tomorrow."

He wanted to joke about it, but she swept off, looking like a queen.
Clarisse, who had propped herself against a wall in order to drink a
quiet glass of kirsch, was seen to shrug her shoulders. A pleasant
business for a man! Wasn't it true that the moment two women were
together in the presence of their lovers their first idea was to do
one another out of them? It was a law of nature! As to herself,
why, in heaven's name, if she had wanted to she would have torn out
Gaga's eyes on Hector's account! But la, she despised him! Then as
La Faloise passed by, she contented herself by remarking to him:

"Listen, my friend, you like 'em well advanced, you do! You don't
want 'em ripe; you want 'em mildewed!"

La Faloise seemed much annoyed and not a little anxious. Seeing
Clarisse making game of him, he grew suspicious of her.

"No humbug, I say," he muttered. "You've taken my handkerchief.
Well then, give it back!"

"He's dreeing us with that handkerchief of his!" she cried. "Why,
you ass, why should I have taken it from you?"

"Why should you?" he said suspiciously. "Why, that you may send it
to my people and compromise me."

In the meantime Foucarmont was diligently attacking the liqueurs.
He continued to gaze sneeringly at Labordette, who was drinking his
coffee in the midst of the ladies. And occasionally he gave vent to
fragmentary assertions, as thus: "He's the son of a horse dealer;
some say the illegitimate child of a countess. Never a penny of
income, yet always got twenty-five louis in his pocket! Footboy to
the ladies of the town! A big lubber, who never goes with any of
'em! Never, never, never!" he repeated, growing furious. "No, by
Jove! I must box his ears."

He drained a glass of chartreuse. The chartreuse had not the
slightest effect upon him; it didn't affect him "even to that
extent," and he clicked his thumbnail against the edge of his teeth.
But suddenly, just as he was advancing upon Labordette, he grew ashy
white and fell down in a heap in front of the sideboard. He was
dead drunk. Louise Violaine was beside herself. She had been quite
right to prophesy that matters would end badly, and now she would
have her work cut out for the remainder of the night. Gaga
reassured her. She examined the officer with the eye of a woman of
experience and declared that there was nothing much the matter and
that the gentleman would sleep like that for at least a dozen or
fifteen hours without any serious consequences. Foucarmont was
carried off.

"Well, where's Nana gone to?" asked Vandeuvres.

Yes, she had certainly flown away somewhere on leaving the table.
The company suddenly recollected her, and everybody asked for her.
Steiner, who for some seconds had been uneasy on her account, asked
Vandeuvres about the old gentleman, for he, too, had disappeared.
But the count reassured him--he had just brought the old gentleman
back. He was a stranger, whose name it was useless to mention.
Suffice it to say that he was a very rich man who was quite pleased
to pay for suppers! Then as Nana was once more being forgotten,
Vandeuvres saw Daguenet looking out of an open door and beckoning to
him. And in the bedroom he found the mistress of the house sitting
up, white-lipped and rigid, while Daguenet and Georges stood gazing
at her with an alarmed expression.

"What IS the matter with you?" he asked in some surprise.

She neither answered nor turned her head, and he repeated his
question.

"Why, this is what's the matter with me," she cried out at length;
"I won't let them make bloody sport of me!"

Thereupon she gave vent to any expression that occurred to her.
Yes, oh yes, SHE wasn't a ninny--she could see clearly enough. They
had been making devilish light of her during supper and saying all
sorts of frightful things to show that they thought nothing of her!
A pack of sluts who weren't fit to black her boots! Catch her
bothering herself again just to be badgered for it after! She
really didn't know what kept her from chucking all that dirty lot
out of the house! And with this, rage choked her and her voice
broke down in sobs.

"Come, come, my lass, you're drunk," said Vandeuvres, growing
familiar. "You must be reasonable."

No, she would give her refusal now; she would stay where she was.

"I am drunk--it's quite likely! But I want people to respect me!"

For a quarter of an hour past Daguenet and Georges had been vainly
beseeching her to return to the drawing room. She was obstinate,
however; her guests might do what they liked; she despised them too
much to come back among them.

No, she never would, never. They might tear her in pieces before
she would leave her room!

"I ought to have had my suspicions," she resumed.

"It's that cat of a Rose who's got the plot up! I'm certain Rose'll
have stopped that respectable woman coming whom I was expecting
tonight."

She referred to Mme Robert. Vandeuvres gave her his word of honor
that Mme Robert had given a spontaneous refusal. He listened and he
argued with much gravity, for he was well accustomed to similar
scenes and knew how women in such a state ought to be treated. But
the moment he tried to take hold of her hands in order to lift her
up from her chair and draw her away with him she struggled free of
his clasp, and her wrath redoubled. Now, just look at that! They
would never get her to believe that Fauchery had not put the Count
Muffat off coming! A regular snake was that Fauchery, an envious
sort, a fellow capable of growing mad against a woman and of
destroying her whole happiness. For she knew this--the count had
become madly devoted to her! She could have had him!

"Him, my dear, never!" cried Vandeuvres, forgetting himself and
laughing loud.

"Why not?" she asked, looking serious and slightly sobered.

"Because he's thoroughly in the hands of the priests, and if he were
only to touch you with the tips of his fingers he would go and
confess it the day after. Now listen to a bit of good advice.
Don't let the other man escape you!"

She was silent and thoughtful for a moment or two. Then she got up
and went and bathed her eyes. Yet when they wanted to take her into
the dining room she still shouted "No!" furiously. Vandeuvres left
the bedroom, smiling and without further pressing her, and the
moment he was gone she had an access of melting tenderness, threw
herself into Daguenet's arms and cried out:

"Ah, my sweetie, there's only you in the world. I love you! YES, I
love you from the bottom of my heart! Oh, it would be too nice if
we could always live together. My God! How unfortunate women are!"

Then her eye fell upon Georges, who, seeing them kiss, was growing
very red, and she kissed him too. Sweetie could not be jealous of a
baby! She wanted Paul and Georges always to agree, because it would
be so nice for them all three to stay like that, knowing all the
time that they loved one another very much. But an extraordinary
noise disturbed them: someone was snoring in the room. Whereupon
after some searching they perceived Bordenave, who, since taking his
coffee, must have comfortably installed himself there. He was
sleeping on two chairs, his head propped on the edge of the bed and
his leg stretched out in front. Nana thought him so funny with his
open mouth and his nose moving with each successive snore that she
was shaken with a mad fit of laughter. She left the room, followed
by Daguenet and Georges, crossed the dining room, entered the
drawing room, her merriment increasing at every step.

"Oh, my dear, you've no idea!" she cried, almost throwing herself
into Rose's arms. "Come and see it."

All the women had to follow her. She took their hands coaxingly and
drew them along with her willy-nilly, accompanying her action with
so frank an outburst of mirth that they all of them began laughing
on trust. The band vanished and returned after standing
breathlessly for a second or two round Bordenave's lordly,
outstretched form. And then there was a burst of laughter, and when
one of them told the rest to be quiet Bordenave's distant snorings
became audible.

It was close on four o'clock. In the dining room a card table had
just been set out, at which Vandeuvres, Steiner, Mignon and
Labordette had taken their seats. Behind them Lucy and Caroline
stood making bets, while Blanche, nodding with sleep and
dissatisfied about her night, kept asking Vandeuvres at intervals of
five minutes if they weren't going soon. In the drawing room there
was an attempt at dancing. Daguenet was at the piano or "chest of
drawers," as Nana called it. She did not want a "thumper," for Mimi
would play as many waltzes and polkas as the company desired. But
the dance was languishing, and the ladies were chatting drowsily
together in the corners of sofas. Suddenly, however, there was an
outburst of noise. A band of eleven young men had arrived and were
laughing loudly in the anteroom and crowding to the drawing room.
They had just come from the ball at the Ministry of the Interior and
were in evening dress and wore various unknown orders. Nana was
annoyed at this riotous entry, called to the waiters who still
remained in the kitchen and ordered them to throw these individuals
out of doors. She vowed that she had never seen any of them before.
Fauchery, Labordette, Daguenet and the rest of the men had all come
forward in order to enforce respectful behavior toward their
hostess. Big words flew about; arms were outstretched, and for some
seconds a general exchange of fisticuffs was imminent.
Notwithstanding this, however, a little sickly looking light-haired
man kept insistently repeating:

"Come, come, Nana, you saw us the other evening at Peters' in the
great red saloon! Pray remember, you invited us."

The other evening at Peters'? She did not remember it all. To
begin with, what evening?

And when the little light-haired man had mentioned the day, which
was Wednesday, she distinctly remembered having supped at Peters' on
the Wednesday, but she had given no invitation to anyone; she was
almost sure of that.

"However, suppose you HAVE invited them, my good girl," murmured
Labordette, who was beginning to have his doubts. "Perhaps you were
a little elevated."

Then Nana fell a-laughing. It was quite possible; she really didn't
know. So then, since these gentlemen were on the spot, they had her
leave to come in. Everything was quietly arranged; several of the
newcomers found friends in the drawing room, and the scene ended in
handshakings. The little sickly looking light-haired man bore one
of the greatest names in France. Furthermore, the eleven announced
that others were to follow them, and, in fact, the door opened every
few moments, and men in white gloves and official garb presented
themselves. They were still coming from the ball at the Ministry.
Fauchery jestingly inquired whether the minister was not coming,
too, but Nana answered in a huff that the minister went to the
houses of people she didn't care a pin for. What she did not say
was that she was possessed with a hope of seeing Count Muffat enter
her room among all that stream of people. He might quite have
reconsidered his decision, and so while talking to Rose she kept a
sharp eye on the door.

Five o'clock struck. The dancing had ceased, and the cardplayers
alone persisted in their game. Labordette had vacated his seat, and
the women had returned into the drawing room. The air there was
heavy with the somnolence which accompanies a long vigil, and the
lamps cast a wavering light while their burned-out wicks glowed red
within their globes. The ladies had reached that vaguely melancholy
hour when they felt it necessary to tell each other their histories.
Blanche de Sivry spoke of her grandfather, the general, while
Clarisse invented a romantic story about a duke seducing her at her
uncle's house, whither he used to come for the boar hunting. Both
women, looking different ways, kept shrugging their shoulders and
asking themselves how the deuce the other could tell such whoppers!
As to Lucy Stewart, she quietly confessed to her origin and of her
own accord spoke of her childhood and of the days when her father,
the wheel greaser at the Northern Railway Terminus, used to treat
her to an apple puff on Sundays.

"Oh, I must tell you about it!" cried the little Maria Blond
abruptly. "Opposite to me there lives a gentleman, a Russian, an
awfully rich man! Well, just fancy, yesterday I received a basket
of fruit--oh, it just was a basket! Enormous peaches, grapes as big
as that, simply wonderful for the time of year! And in the middle
of them six thousand-franc notes! It was the Russian's doing. Of
course I sent the whole thing back again, but I must say my heart
ached a little--when I thought of the fruit!"

The ladies looked at one another and pursed up their lips. At her
age little Maria Blond had a pretty cheek! Besides, to think that
such things should happen to trollops like her! Infinite was their
contempt for her among themselves. It was Lucy of whom they were
particularly jealous, for they were beside themselves at the thought
of her three princes. Since Lucy had begnn taking a daily morning
ride in the Bois they all had become Amazons, as though a mania
possessed them.

Day was about to dawn, and Nana turned her eyes away from the door,
for she was relinquishing all hope. The company were bored to
distraction. Rose Mignon had refused to sing the "Slipper" and sat
huddled up on a sofa, chatting in a low voice with Fauchery and
waiting for Mignon, who had by now won some fifty louis from
Vandeuvres. A fat gentleman with a decoration and a serious cast of
countenance had certainly given a recitation in Alsatian accents of
"Abraham's Sacrifice," a piece in which the Almighty says, "By My
blasted Name" when He swears, and Isaac always answers with a "Yes,
Papa!"  Nobody, however, understood what it was all about, and the
piece had been voted stupid. People were at their wits' end how to
make merry and to finish the night with fitting hilarity. For a
moment or two Labordette conceived the idea of denouncing different
women in a whisper to La Faloise, who still went prowling round each
individual lady, looking to see if she were hiding his handkerchief
in her bosom. Soon, as there were still some bottles of champagne
on the sideboard, the young men again fell to drinking. They
shouted to one another; they stirred each other up, but a dreary
species of intoxication, which was stupid enough to drive one to
despair, began to overcome the company beyond hope of recovery.
Then the little fair-haired fellow, the man who bore one of the
greatest names in France and had reached his wit's end and was
desperate at the thought that he could not hit upon something really
funny, conceived a brilliant notion: he snatched up his bottle of
champagne and poured its contents into the piano. His allies were
convulsed with laughter.

"La now! Why's he putting champagne into the piano?" asked Tatan
Nene in great astonishment as she caught sight of him.

"What, my lass, you don't know why he's doing that?" replied
Labordette solemnly. "There's nothing so good as champagne for
pianos. It gives 'em tone."

"Ah," murmured Tatan Nene with conviction.

And when the rest began laughing at her she grew angry. How should
she know? They were always confusing her.

Decidedly the evening was becoming a big failure. The night
threatened to end in the unloveliest way. In a corner by themselves
Maria Blond and Lea de Horn had begun squabbling at close quarters,
the former accusing the latter of consorting with people of
insufficient wealth. They were getting vastly abusive over it,
their chief stumbling block being the good looks of the men in
question. Lucy, who was plain, got them to hold their tongues.
Good looks were nothing, according to her; good figures were what
was wanted. Farther off, on a sofa, an attache had slipped his arm
round Simonne's waist and was trying to kiss her neck, but Simonne,
sullen and thoroughly out of sorts, pushed him away at every fresh
attempt with cries of "You're pestering me!" and sound slaps of the
fan across his face. For the matter of that, not one of the ladies
allowed herself to be touched. Did people take them for light
women? Gaga, in the meantime, had once more caught La Faloise and
had almost hoisted him upon her knees while Clarisse was
disappearing from view between two gentlemen, shaking with nervous
laughter as women will when they are tickled. Round about the piano
they were still busy with their little game, for they were suffering
from a fit of stupid imbecillty, which caused each man to jostle his
fellow in his frantic desire to empty his bottle into the
instrument. It was a simple process and a charming one.

"Now then, old boy, drink a glass! Devil take it, he's a thirsty
piano! Hi! 'Tenshun! Here's another bottle! You mustn't lose a
drop!"

Nana's back was turned, and she did not see them. Emphatically she
was now falling back on the bulky Steiner, who was seated next to
her. So much the worse! It was all on account of that Muffat, who
had refused what was offered him. Sitting there in her white
foulard dress, which was as light and full of folds as a shift,
sitting there with drooped eyelids and cheeks pale with the touch of
intoxication from which she was suffering, she offered herself to
him with that quiet expression which is peculiar to a good-natured
courtesan. The roses in her hair and at her throat had lost their
leaves, and their stalks alone remained. Presently Steiner withdrew
his hand quickly from the folds of her skirt, where he had come in
contact with the pins that Georges had stuck there. Some drops of
blood appeared on his fingers, and one fell on Nana's dress and
stained it.

"Now the bargain's struck," said Nana gravely.

The day was breaking apace. An uncertain glimmer of light, fraught
with a poignant melancholy, came stealing through the windows. And
with that the guests began to take their departure. It was a most
sour and uncomfortable retreat. Caroline Hequet, annoyed at the
loss of her night, announced that it was high time to be off unless
you were anxious to assist at some pretty scenes. Rose pouted as if
her womanly character had been compromised. It was always so with
these girls; they didn't know how to behave and were guilty of
disgusting conduct when they made their first appearance in society!
And Mignon having cleaned Vandeuvres out completely, the family took
their departure. They did not trouble about Steiner but renewed
their invitation for tomorrow to Fauchery. Lucy thereupon refused
the journalist's escort home and sent him back shrilly to his
"strolling actress."  At this Rose turned round immediately and
hissed out a "Dirty sow" by way of answer. But Mignon, who in
feminine quarrels was always paternal, for his experience was a long
one and rendered him superior to them, had already pushed her out of
the house, telling her at the same time to have done. Lucy came
downstairs in solitary state behind them. After which Gaga had to
carry off La Faloise, ill, sobbing like a child, calling after
Clarisse, who had long since gone off with her two gentlemen.
Simonne, too, had vanished. Indeed, none remained save Tatan, Lea
and Maria, whom Labordette complaisantly took under his charge.

"Oh, but I don't the least bit want to go to bed!" said Nana. "One
ought to find something to do."

She looked at the sky through the windowpanes. It was a livid sky,
and sooty clouds were scudding across it. It was six o'clock in the
morning. Over the way, on the opposite side of the Boulevard
Haussmann, the glistening roofs of the still-slumbering houses were
sharply outlined against the twilight sky while along the deserted
roadway a gang of street sweepers passed with a clatter of wooden
shoes. As she viewed Paris thus grimly awakening, she was overcome
by tender, girlish feelings, by a yearning for the country, for
idyllic scenes, for things soft and white.

"Now guess what you're to do," she said, coming back to Steiner.
"You're going to take me to the Bois de Boulogne, and we'll drink
milk there."

She clapped her hands in childish glee. Without waiting for the
banker's reply--he naturally consented, though he was really rather
bored and inclined to think of other things--she ran off to throw a
pelisse over her shoulders. In the drawing room there was now no
one with Steiner save the band of young men. These had by this time
dropped the very dregs of their glasses into the piano and were
talking of going, when one of their number ran in triumphantly. He
held in his hands a last remaining bottle, which he had brought back
with him from the pantry.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" he shouted. "Here's a bottle of
chartreuse; that'll pick him up! And now, my young friends, let's
hook it. We're blooming idiots."

In the dressing room Nana was compelled to wake up Zoe, who had
dozed off on a chair. The gas was still alight, and Zoe shivered as
she helped her mistress on with her hat and pelisse.

"Well, it's over; I've done what you wanted me to," said Nana,
speaking familiarly to the maid in a sudden burst of expansive
confidence and much relieved at the thought that she had at last
made her election. "You were quite right; the banker's as good as
another."

The maid was cross, for she was still heavy with sleep. She
grumbled something to the effect that Madame ought to have come to a
decision the first evening. Then following her into the bedroom,
she asked what she was going to do with "those two," meaning
Bordenave, who was snoring away as usual, and Georges, who had
slipped in slyly, buried his head in a pillow and, finally falling
asleep there, was now breathing as lightly and regularly as a
cherub. Nana in reply told her that she was to let them sleep on.
But seeing Daguenet come into the room, she again grew tender. He
had been watching her from the kitchen and was looking very
wretched.

"Come, my sweetie, be reasonable," she said, taking him in her arms
and kissing him with all sorts of little wheedling caresses.
"Nothing's changed; you know that it's sweetie whom I always adore!
Eh, dear? I had to do it. Why, I swear to you we shall have even
nicer times now. Come tomorrow, and we'll arrange about hours. Now
be quick, kiss and hug me as you love me. Oh, tighter, tighter than
that!"

And she escaped and rejoined Steiner, feeling happy and once more
possessed with the idea of drinking milk. In the empty room the
Count de Vandeuvres was left alone with the "decorated" man who had
recited "Abraham's Sacrifice."  Both seemed glued to the card table;
they had lost count of their whereabouts and never once noticed the
broad light of day without, while Blanche had made bold to put her
feet up on a sofa in order to try and get a little sleep.

"Oh, Blanche is with them!" cried Nana. "We are going to drink
milk, dear. Do come; you'll find Vandeuvres here when we return."

Blanche got up lazily. This time the banker's fiery face grew white
with annoyance at the idea of having to take that big wench with him
too. She was certain to bore him. But the two women had already
got him by the arms and were reiterating:

"We want them to milk the cow before our eyes, you know."

CHAPTER V

At the Varietes they were giving the thirty-fourth performance of
the Blonde Venus. The first act had just finished, and in the
greenroom Simonne, dressed as the little laundress, was standing in
front of a console table, surmounted by a looking glass and situated
between the two corner doors which opened obliquely on the end of
the dressing-room passage. No one was with her, and she was
scrutinizing her face and rubbing her finger up and down below her
eyes with a view to putting the finishing touches to her make-up.
The gas jets on either side of the mirror flooded her with warm,
crude light.

"Has he arrived?" asked Prulliere, entering the room in his Alpine
admiral's costume, which was set off by a big sword, enormous top
boots and a vast tuft of plumes.

"Who d'you mean?" said Simonne, taking no notice of him and laughing
into the mirror in order to see how her lips looked.

"The prince."

"I don't know; I've just come down. Oh, he's certainly due here
tonight; he comes every time!"

Prulliere had drawn near the hearth opposite the console table,
where a coke fire was blazing and two more gas jets were flaring
brightly. He lifted his eyes and looked at the clock and the
barometer on his right hand and on his left. They had gilded
sphinxes by way of adornment in the style of the First Empire. Then
he stretched himself out in a huge armchair with ears, the green
velvet of which had been so worn by four generations of comedians
that it looked yellow in places, and there he stayed, with moveless
limbs and vacant eyes, in that weary and resigned attitude peculiar
to actors who are used to long waits before their turn for going on
the stage.

Old Bosc, too, had just made his appearance. He came in dragging
one foot behind the other and coughing. He was wrapped in an old
box coat, part of which had slipped from his shoulder in such a way
as to uncover the gold-laced cloak of King Dagobert. He put his
crown on the piano and for a moment or two stood moodily stamping
his feet. His hands were trembling slightly with the first
beginnings of alcoholism, but he looked a sterling old fellow for
all that, and a long white beard lent that fiery tippler's face of
his a truly venerable appearance. Then in the silence of the room,
while the shower of hail was whipping the panes of the great window
that looked out on the courtyard, he shook himself disgustedly.

"What filthy weather!" he growled.

Simonne and Prulliere did not move. Four or five pictures--a
landscape, a portrait of the actor Vernet--hung yellowing in the hot
glare of the gas, and a bust of Potier, one of the bygone glories of
the Varietes, stood gazing vacant-eyed from its pedestal. But just
then there was a burst of voices outside. It was Fontan, dressed
for the second act. He was a young dandy, and his habiliments, even
to his gloves, were entirely yellow.

"Now say you don't know!" he shouted, gesticulating. "Today's my
patron saint's day!"

"What?" asked Simonne, coming up smilingly, as though attracted by
the huge nose and the vast, comic mouth of the man. "D'you answer
to the name of Achille?"

"Exactly so! And I'm going to get 'em to tell Madame Bron to send
up champagne after the second act."

For some seconds a bell had been ringing in the distance. The long-
drawn sound grew fainter, then louder, and when the bell ceased a
shout ran up the stair and down it till it was lost along the
passages. "All on the stage for the second act! All on the stage
for the second act!"  The sound drew near, and a little pale-faced
man passed by the greenroom doors, outside each of which he yelled
at the top of his shrill voice, "On the stage for the second act!"

"The deuce, it's champagne!" said Prulliere without appearing to
hear the din. "You're prospering!"

"If I were you I should have it in from the cafe," old Bosc slowly
announced. He was sitting on a bench covered with green velvet,
with his head against the wall.

But Simonne said that it was one's duty to consider Mme Bron's small
perquisites. She clapped her hands excitedly and devoured Fontan
with her gaze while his long goatlike visage kept up a continuous
twitching of eyes and nose and mouth.

"Oh, that Fontan!" she murmured. "There's no one like him, no one
like him!"

The two greenroom doors stood wide open to the corridor leading to
the wings. And along the yellow wall, which was brightly lit up by
a gas lamp out of view, passed a string of rapidly moving shadows--
men in costume, women with shawls over their scant attire, in a
word, the whole of the characters in the second act, who would
shortly make their appearance as masqeuraders in the ball at the
Boule Noire. And at the end of the corridor became audible a
shuffling of feet as these people clattered down the five wooden
steps which led to the stage. As the big Clarisse went running by
Simonne called to her, but she said she would be back directly.
And, indeed, she reappeared almost at once, shivering in the thin
tunic and scarf which she wore as Iris.

"God bless me!" she said. "It isn't warm, and I've left my furs in
my dressing room!"

Then as she stood toasting her legs in their warm rose-colored
tights in front of the fireplace she resumed:

"The prince has arrived."

"Oh!" cried the rest with the utmost curiosity.

"Yes, that's why I ran down: I wanted to see. He's in the first
stage box to the right, the same he was in on Thursday. It's the
third time he's been this week, eh? That's Nana; well, she's in
luck's way! I was willing to wager he wouldn't come again."

Simonne opened her lips to speak, but her remarks were drowned by a
fresh shout which arose close to the greenroom. In the passage the
callboy was yelling at the top of his shrill voice, "They've
knocked!"

"Three times!" said Simonne when she was again able to speak. "It's
getting exciting. You know, he won't go to her place; he takes her
to his. And it seems that he has to pay for it too!"

"Egad! It's a case of when one 'has to go out,'" muttered Prulliere
wickedly, and he got up to have a last look at the mirror as became
a handsome fellow whom the boxes adored.

"They've knocked! They've knocked!" the callboy kept repeating in
tones that died gradually away in the distance as he passed through
the various stories and corridors.

Fontan thereupon, knowing how it had all gone off on the first
occasion the prince and Nana met, told the two women the whole story
while they in their turn crowded against him and laughed at the tops
of their voices whenever he stooped to whisper certain details in
their ears. Old Bosc had never budged an inch--he was totally
indifferent. That sort of thing no longer interested him now. He
was stroking a great tortoise-shell cat which was lying curled up on
the bench. He did so quite beautifully and ended by taking her in
his arms with the tender good nature becoming a worn-out monarch.
The cat arched its back and then, after a prolonged sniff at the big
white beard, the gluey odor of which doubtless disgusted her, she
turned and, curling herself up, went to sleep again on the bench
beside him. Bosc remained grave and absorbed.

"That's all right, but if I were you I should drink the champagne at
the restaurant--its better there," he said, suddenly addressing
Fontan when he had finished his recital.

"The curtain's up!" cried the callboy in cracked and long-drawn
accents "The curtain's up! The curtain's up!"

The shout sounded for some moments, during which there had been a
noise of rapid footsteps. Through the suddenly opened door of the
passage came a burst of music and a far-off murmur of voices, and
then the door shut to again and you could hear its dull thud as it
wedged itself into position once more.

A heavy, peaceful, atmosphere again pervaded the greenroom, as
though the place were situated a hundred leagues from the house
where crowds were applauding. Simonne and Clarisse were still on
the topic of Nana. There was a girl who never hurried herself!
Why, yesterday she had again come on too late! But there was a
silence, for a tall damsel had just craned her head in at the door
and, seeing that she had made a mistake, had departed to the other
end of the passage. It was Satin. Wearing a hat and a small veil
for the nonce she was affecting the manner of a lady about to pay a
call.

"A pretty trollop!" muttered Prulliere, who had been coming across
her for a year past at the Cafe des Varietes. And at this Simonne
told them how Nana had recognized in Satin an old schoolmate, had
taken a vast fancy to her and was now plaguing Bordenave to let her
make a first appearance on the stage.

"How d'ye do?" said Fontan, shaking hands with Mignon and Fauchery,
who now came into the room.

Old Bosc himself gave them the tips of his fingers while the two
women kissed Mignon.

"A good house this evening?" queried Fauchery.

"Oh, a splendid one!" replied Prulliere. "You should see 'em
gaping."

"I say, my little dears," remarked Mignon, "it must be your turn!"

Oh, all in good time! They were only at the fourth scene as yet,
but Bosc got up in obedience to instinct, as became a rattling old
actor who felt that his cue was coming. At that very moment the
callboy was opening the door.

"Monsieur Bosc!" he called. "Mademoiselle Simonne!"

Simonne flung a fur-lined pelisse briskly over her shoulders and
went out. Bosc, without hurrying at all, went and got his crown,
which he settled on his brow with a rap. Then dragging himself
unsteadily along in his greatcoat, he took his departure, grumbling
and looking as annoyed as a man who has been rudely disturbed.

"You were very amiable in your last notice," continued Fontan,
addressing Fauchery. "Only why do you say that comedians are vain?"

"Yes, my little man, why d'you say that?" shouted Mignon, bringing
down his huge hands on the journalist's slender shoulders with such
force as almost to double him up.

Prulliere and Clarisse refrained from laughing aloud. For some time
past the whole company had been deriving amusement from a comedy
which was going on in the wings. Mignon, rendered frantic by his
wife's caprice and annoyed at the thought that this man Fauchery
brought nothing but a certain doubiful notoriety to his household,
had conceived the idea of revenging himself on the journalist by
overwhelming him with tokens of friendship. Every evening,
therefore, when he met him behind scenes he would shower friendly
slaps on his back and shoulders, as though fairly carried away by an
outburst of tenderness, and Fauchery, who was a frail, small man in
comparison with such a giant, was fain to take the raps with a
strained smile in order not to quarrel with Rose's husband.

"Aha, my buck, you've insulted Fontan," resumed Mignon, who was
doing his best to force the joke. "Stand on guard! One--two--got
him right in the middle of his chest!"

He lunged and struck the young man with such force that the latter
grew very pale and could not speak for some seconds. With a wink
Clarisse showed the others where Rose Mignon was standing on the
threshold of the greenroom. Rose had witnessed the scene, and she
marched straight up to the journalist, as though she had failed to
notice her husband and, standing on tiptoe, bare-armed and in baby
costume, she held her face up to him with a caressing, infantine
pout.

"Good evening, baby," said Fauchery, kissing her familiarly.

Thus he indemnified himself. Mignon, however, did not seem to have
observed this kiss, for everybody kissed his wife at the theater.
But he laughed and gave the journalist a keen little look. The
latter would assurely have to pay for Rose's bravado.

In the passage the tightly shutting door opened and closed again,
and a tempest of applause was blown as far as the greenroom.
Simonne came in after her scene.

"Oh, Father Bosc HAS just scored!" she cried. "The prince was
writhing with laughter and applauded with the rest as though he had
been paid to. I say, do you know the big man sitting beside the
prince in the stage box? A handsome man, with a very sedate
expression and splendid whiskers!"

"It's Count Muffat," replied Fauchery. "I know that the prince,
when he was at the empress's the day before yesterday, invited him
to dinner for tonight. He'll have corrupted him afterward!"

"So that's Count Muffat! We know his father-in-law, eh, Auguste?"
said Rose, addressing her remark to Mignon. "You know the Marquis
de Chouard, at whose place I went to sing? Well, he's in the house
too. I noticed him at the back of a box. There's an old boy for
you!"

Prulliere, who had just put on his huge plume of feathers, turned
round and called her.

"Hi, Rose! Let's go now!"

She ran after him, leaving her sentence unfinished. At that moment
Mme Bron, the portress of the theater, passed by the door with an
immense bouquet in her arms. Simonne asked cheerfully if it was for
her, but the porter woman did not vouchsafe an answer and only
pointed her chin toward Nana's dressing room at the end of the
passage. Oh, that Nana! They were loading her with flowers! Then
when Mme Bron returned she handed a letter to Clarisse, who allowed
a smothered oath to escape her. That beggar La Faloise again!
There was a fellow who wouldn't let her alone! And when she learned
the gentleman in question was waiting for her at the porter's lodge
she shrieked:

"Tell him I'm coming down after this act. I'm going to catch him
one on the face."

Fontan had rushed forward, shouting:

"Madame Bron, just listen. Please listen, Madame Bron. I want you
to send up six bottles of champagne between the acts."

But the callboy had again made his appearance. He was out of
breath, and in a singsong voice he called out:

"All to go on the stage! It's your turn, Monsieur Fontan. Make
haste, make haste!"

"Yes, yes, I'm going, Father Barillot," replied Fontan in a flurry.

And he ran after Mme Bron and continued:

"You understand, eh? Six bottles of champagne in the greenroom
between the acts. It's my patron saint's day, and I'm standing the
racket."

Simonne and Clarisse had gone off with a great rustling of skirts.
Everybody was swallowed up in the distance, and when the passage
door had banged with its usual hollow sound a fresh hail shower was
heard beating against the windows in the now-silent greenroom.
Barillot, a small, pale-faced ancient, who for thirty years had been
a servant in the theater, had advanced familiarly toward Mignon and
had presented his open snuffbox to him. This proffer of a pinch and
its acceptance allowed him a minute's rest in his interminable
career up and down stairs and along the dressing-room passage. He
certainly had still to look up Mme Nana, as he called her, but she
was one of those who followed her own sweet will and didn't care a
pin for penalties. Why, if she chose to be too late she was too
late! But he stopped short and murmured in great surprise:

"Well, I never! She's ready; here she is! She must know that the
prince is here."

Indeed, Nana appeared in the corridor. She was dressed as a fish
hag: her arms and face were plastered with white paint, and she had
a couple of red dabs under her eyes. Without entering the greenroom
she contented herself by nodding to Mignon and Fauchery.

"How do? You're all right?"

Only Mignon shook her outstretched hand, and she hied royally on her
way, followed by her dresser, who almost trod on her heels while
stooping to adjust the folds of her skirt. In the rear of the
dresser came Satin, closing the procession and trying to look quite
the lady, though she was already bored to death.

"And Steiner?" asked Mignon sharply.

"Monsieur Steiner has gone away to the Loiret," said Barillot,
preparing to return to the neighborhood of the stage. "I expect
he's gone to buy a country place in those parts."

"Ah yes, I know, Nana's country place."

Mignon had grown suddenly serious. Oh, that Steiner! He had
promised Rose a fine house in the old days! Well, well, it wouldn't
do to grow angry with anybody. Here was a position that would have
to be won again. From fireplace to console table Mignon paced, sunk
in thought yet still unconquered by circumstances. There was no one
in the greenroom now save Fauchery and himself. The journalist was
tired and had flung himself back into the recesses of the big
armchair. There he stayed with half-closed eyes and as quiet as
quiet could be, while the other glanced down at him as he passed.
When they were alone Mignon scorned to slap him at every turn. What
good would it have done, since nobody would have enjoyed the
spectacle? He was far too disinterested to be personally
entertained by the farcical scenes in which he figured as a
bantering husband. Glad of this short-lived respite, Fauchery
stretched his feet out languidly toward the fire and let his
upturned eyes wander from the barometer to the clock. In the course
of his march Mignon planted himself in front of Potier's bust,
looked at it without seeming to see it and then turned back to the
window, outside which yawned the darkling gulf of the courtyard.
The rain had ceased, and there was now a deep silence in the room,
which the fierce heat of the coke fire and the flare of the gas jets
rendered still more oppressive. Not a sound came from the wings:
the staircase and the passages were deadly still.

That choking sensation of quiet, which behind the scenes immediately
precedes the end of an act, had begun to pervade the empty
greenroom. Indeed, the place seemed to be drowsing off through very
breathlessness amid that faint murmur which the stage gives forth
when the whole troupe are raising the deafening uproar of some grand
finale.

"Oh, the cows!" Bordenave suddeniy shouted in his hoarse voice.

He had only just come up, and he was already howling complaints
about two chorus girls who had nearly fallen flat on the stage
because they were playing the fool together. When his eye lit on
Mignon and Fauchery he called them; he wanted to show them
something. The prince had just notified a desire to compliment Nana
in her dressing room during the next interval. But as he was
leading them into the wings the stage manager passed.

"Just you find those hags Fernande and Maria!" cried Bordenave
savagely.

Then calming down and endeavoring to assume the dignified expression
worn by "heavy fathers," he wiped his face with his pocket
handkerchief and added:

"I am now going to receive His Highness."

The curtain fell amid a long-drawn salvo of applause. Then across
the twilight stage, which was no longer lit up by the footlights,
there followed a disorderly retreat. Actors and supers and chorus
made haste to get back to their dressing rooms while the
sceneshifters rapidly changed the scenery. Simonne and Clarisse,
however, had remained "at the top," talking together in whispers.
On the stage, in an interval between their lines, they had just
settled a little matter. Clarisse, after viewing the thing in every
light, found she preferred not to see La Faloise, who could never
decide to leave her for Gaga, and so Simonne was simply to go and
explain that a woman ought not to be palled up to in that fashion!
At last she agreed to undertake the mission.

Then Simonne, in her theatrical laundress's attire but with furs
over her shoulders, ran down the greasy steps of the narrow, winding
stairs which led between damp walls to the porter's lodge. This
lodge, situated between the actors' staircase and that of the
management, was shut in to right and left by large glass partitions
and resembled a huge transparent lantern in which two gas jets were
flaring.

There was a set of pigeonholes in the place in which were piled
letters and newspapers, while on the table various bouquets lay
awaiting their recipients in close proximity to neglected heaps of
dirty plates and to an old pair of stays, the eyelets of which the
portress was busy mending. And in the middle of this untidy, ill-
kept storeroom sat four fashionable, white-gloved society men. They
occupied as many ancient straw-bottomed chairs and, with an
expression at once patient and submissive, kept sharply turning
their heads in Mme Bron's direction every time she came down from
the theater overhead, for on such occasions she was the bearer of
replies. Indeed, she had but now handed a note to a young man who
had hurried out to open it beneath the gaslight in the vestibule,
where he had grown slightly pale on reading the classic phrase--how
often had others read it in that very place!--"Impossible tonight,
my dearie! I'm booked!"  La Faloise sat on one of these chairs at
the back of the room, between the table and the stove. He seemed
bent on passing the evening there, and yet he was not quite happy.
Indeed, he kept tucking up his long legs in his endeavors to escape
from a whole litter of black kittens who were gamboling wildly round
them while the mother cat sat bolt upright, staring at him with
yellow eyes.

"Ah, it's you, Mademoiselle Simonne! What can I do for you?" asked
the portress.

Simonne begged her to send La Faloise out to her. But Mme Bron was
unable to comply with her wishes all at once. Under the stairs in a
sort of deep cupboard she kept a little bar, whither the supers were
wont to descend for drinks between the acts, and seeing that just at
that moment there were five or six tall lubbers there who, still
dressed as Boule Noire masqueraders, were dying of thirst and in a
great hurry, she lost her head a bit. A gas jet was flaring in the
cupboard, within which it was possible to descry a tin-covered table
and some shelves garnished with half-emptied bottles. Whenever the
door of this coalhole was opened a violent whiff of alcohol mingled
with the scent of stale cooking in the lodge, as well as with the
penetrating scent of the flowers upon the table.

"Well now," continued the portress when she had served the supers,
"is it the little dark chap out there you want?"

"No, no; don't be silly!" said Simonne. "It's the lanky one by the
side of the stove. Your cat's sniffing at his trouser legs!"

And with that she carried La Faloise off into the lobby, while the
other gentlemen once more resigned themselves to their fate and to
semisuffocation and the masqueraders drank on the stairs and
indulged in rough horseplay and guttural drunken jests.

On the stage above Bordenave was wild with the sceneshifters, who
seemed never to have done changing scenes. They appeared to be
acting of set purpose--the prince would certainly have some set
piece or other tumbling on his head.

"Up with it! Up with it!" shouted the foreman.

At length the canvas at the back of the stage was raised into
position, and the stage was clear. Mignon, who had kept his eye on
Fauchery, seized this opportunity in order to start his pummeling
matches again. He hugged him in his long arms and cried:

"Oh, take care! That mast just missed crushing you!"

And he carried him off and shook him before setting him down again.
In view of the sceneshifters' exaggerated mirth, Fauchery grew
white. His lips trembled, and he was ready to flare up in anger
while Mignon, shamming good nature, was clapping him on the shoulder
with such affectionate violence as nearly to pulverize him.

"I value your health, I do!" he kept repeating. "Egad! I should be
in a pretty pickle if anything serious happened to you!"

But just then a whisper ran through their midst: "The prince! The
prince! And everybody turned and looked at the little door which
opened out of the main body of the house. At first nothing was
visible save Bordenave's round back and beefy neck, which bobbed
down and arched up in a series of obsequious obeisances. Then the
prince made his appearance. Largely and strongly built, light of
beard and rosy of hue, he was not lacking in the kind of distinction
peculiar to a sturdy man of pleasure, the square contours of whose
limbs are clearly defined by the irreproachable cut of a frock coat.
Behind him walked Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard, but this
particular corner of the theater being dark, the group were lost to
view amid huge moving shadows.

In order fittingly to address the son of a queen, who would someday
occupy a throne, Bordenave had assumed the tone of a man exhibiting
a bear in the street. In a voice tremulous with false emotion he
kept repeating:

"If His Highness will have the goodness to follow me--would His
Highness deign to come this way? His Highness will take care!"

The prince did not hurry in the least. On the contrary, he was
greatly interested and kept pausing in order to look at the
sceneshifters' maneuvers. A batten had just been lowered, and the
group of gaslights high up among its iron crossbars illuminated the
stage with a wide beam of light. Muffat, who had never yet been
behind scenes at a theater, was even more astonished than the rest.
An uneasy feeling of mingled fear and vague repugnance took
possession of him. He looked up into the heights above him, where
more battens, the gas jets on which were burning low, gleamed like
galaxies of little bluish stars amid a chaos of iron rods,
connecting lines of all sizes, hanging stages and canvases spread
out in space, like huge cloths hung out to dry.

"Lower away!" shouted the foreman unexpectedly.

And the prince himself had to warn the count, for a canvas was
descending. They were setting the scenery for the third act, which
was the grotto on Mount Etna. Men were busy planting masts in the
sockets, while others went and took frames which were leaning
against the walls of the stage and proceeded to lash them with
strong cords to the poles already in position. At the back of the
stage, with a view to producing the bright rays thrown by Vulcan's
glowing forge, a stand had been fixed by a limelight man, who was
now lighting various burners under red glasses. The scene was one
of confusion, verging to all appearances on absolute chaos, but
every little move had been prearranged. Nay, amid all the scurry
the whistle blower even took a few turns, stepping short as he did
so, in order to rest his legs.

"His Highness overwhelms me," said Bordenave, still bowing low.
"The theater is not large, but we do what we can. Now if His
Highness deigns to follow me--"

Count Muffat was already making for the dressing-room passage. The
really sharp downward slope of the stage had surprised him
disagreeably, and he owed no small part of his present anxiety to a
feeling that its boards were moving under his feet. Through the
open sockets gas was descried burning in the "dock."  Human voices
and blasts of air, as from a vault, came up thence, and, looking
down into the depths of gloom, one became aware of a whole
subterranean existence. But just as the count was going up the
stage a small incident occurred to stop him. Two little women,
dressed for the third act, were chatting by the peephole in the
curtain. One of them, straining forward and widening the hole with
her fingers in order the better to observe things, was scanning the
house beyond.

"I see him," said she sharply. "Oh, what a mug!"

Horrified, Bordenave had much ado not to give her a kick. But the
prince smiled and looked pleased and excited by the remark. He
gazed warmly at the little woman who did not care a button for His
Highness, and she, on her part, laughed unblushingly. Bordenave,
however, persuaded the prince to follow him. Muffat was beginning
to perspire; he had taken his hat off. What inconvenienced him most
was the stuffy, dense, overheated air of the place with its strong,
haunting smell, a smell peculiar to this part of a theater, and, as
such, compact of the reek of gas, of the glue used in the
manufacture of the scenery, of dirty dark nooks and corners and of
questionably clean chorus girls. In the passage the air was still
more suffocating, and one seemed to breathe a poisoned atmosphere,
which was occasionally relieved by the acid scents of toilet waters
and the perfumes of various soaps emanating from the dressing rooms.
The count lifted his eyes as he passed and glanced up the staircase,
for he was well-nigh startled by the keen flood of light and warmth
which flowed down upon his back and shoulders. High up above him
there was a clicking of ewers and basins, a sound of laughter and of
people calling to one another, a banging of doors, which in their
continual opening and shutting allowed an odor of womankind to
escape--a musky scent of oils and essences mingling with the natural
pungency exhaled from human tresses. He did not stop. Nay, he
hastened his walk: he almost ran, his skin tingling with the breath
of that fiery approach to a world he knew nothing of.

"A theater's a curious sight, eh?" said the Marquis de Chouard with
the enchanted expression of a man who once more finds himself amid
familiar surroundings.

But Bordenave had at length reached Nana's dressing room at the end
of the passage. He quietly turned the door handle; then, cringing
again:

"If His Highness will have the goodness to enter--"

They heard the cry of a startled woman and caught sight of Nana as,
stripped to the waist, she slipped behind a curtain while her
dresser, who had been in the act of drying her, stood, towel in air,
before them.

"Oh, it IS silly to come in that way!" cried Nana from her hiding
place. "Don't come in; you see you mustn't come in!"

Bordenave did not seem to relish this sudden flight.

"Do stay where you were, my dear. Why, it doesn't matter," he said.
"It's His Highness. Come, come, don't be childish."

And when she still refused to make her appearance--for she was
startled as yet, though she had begun to laugh--he added in peevish,
paternal tones:

"Good heavens, these gentlemen know perfectly well what a woman
looks like. They won't eat you."

"I'm not so sure of that," said the prince wittily.

With that the whole company began laughing in an exaggerated manner
in order to pay him proper court.

"An exquisitely witty speech--an altogether Parisian speech," as
Bordenave remarked.

Nana vouchsafed no further reply, but the curtain began moving.
Doubtless she was making up her mind. Then Count Muffat, with
glowing cheeks, began to take stock of the dressing room. It was a
square room with a very low ceiling, and it was entirely hung with a
light-colored Havana stuff. A curtain of the same material depended
from a copper rod and formed a sort of recess at the end of the
room, while two large windows opened on the courtyard of the theater
and were faced, at a distance of three yards at most, by a leprous-
looking wall against which the panes cast squares of yellow light
amid the surrounding darkness. A large dressing glass faced a white
marble toilet table, which was garnished with a disorderly array of
flasks and glass boxes containing oils, essences and powders. The
count went up to the dressing glass and discovered that he was
looking very flushed and had small drops of perspiration on his
forehead. He dropped his eyes and came and took up a position in
front of the toilet table, where the basin, full of soapy water, the
small, scattered, ivory toilet utensils and the damp sponges,
appeared for some moments to absorb his attention. The feeling of
dizziness which he had experienced when he first visited Nana in the
Boulevard Haussmann once more overcame him. He felt the thick
carpet soften under foot, and the gasjets burning by the dressing
table and by the glass seemed to shoot whistling flames about his
temples. For one moment, being afraid of fainting away under the
influence of those feminine odors which he now re-encountered,
intensified by the heat under the low-pitched ceiling, he sat down
on the edge of a softly padded divan between the two windows. But
he got up again almost directly and, returning to the dressing
table, seemed to gaze with vacant eyes into space, for he was
thinking of a bouquet of tuberoses which had once faded in his
bedroom and had nearly killed him in their death. When tuberoses
are turning brown they have a human smell.

"Make haste!" Bordenave whispered, putting his head in behind the
curtain.

The prince, however, was listening complaisantly to the Marquis de
Chouard, who had taken up a hare's-foot on the dressing table and
had begun explaining the way grease paint is put on. In a corner of
the room Satin, with her pure, virginal face, was scanning the
gentlemen keenly, while the dresser, Mme Jules by name, was getting
ready Venus' tights and tunic. Mme Jules was a woman of no age.
She had the parchment skin and changeless features peculiar to old
maids whom no one ever knew in their younger years. She had indeed
shriveled up in the burning atmosphere of the dressing rooms and
amid the most famous thighs and bosoms in all Paris. She wore
everlastingly a faded black dress, and on her flat and sexless chest
a perfect forest of pins clustered above the spot where her heart
should have been.

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said Nana, drawing aside the
curtain, "but you took me by surprise."

They all turned round. She had not clothed herself at all, had, in
fact, only buttoned on a little pair of linen stays which half
revealed her bosom. When the gentlemen had put her to flight she
had scarcely begun undressing and was rapidly taking off her
fishwife's costume. Through the opening in her drawers behind a
corner of her shift was even now visible. There she stood, bare-
armed, bare-shouldered, bare-breasted, in all the adorable glory of
her youth and plump, fair beauty, but she still held the curtain
with one hand, as though ready to draw it to again upon the
slightest provocation.

"Yes, you took me by surprise! I never shall dare--" she stammered
in pretty, mock confusion, while rosy blushes crossed her neck and
shoulders and smiles of embarrassment played about her lips.

"Oh, don't apologize," cried Bordenave, "since these gentlemen
approve of your good looks!"

But she still tried the hesitating, innocent, girlish game, and,
shivering as though someone were tickling her, she continued:

"His Highness does me too great an honor. I beg His Highness will
excuse my receiving him thus--"

"It is I who am importunate," said the prince, "but, madame, I could
not resist the desire of complimenting you."

Thereupon, in order to reach her dressing table, she walked very
quietly and just as she was through the midst of the gentlemen, who
made way for her to pass.

She had strongly marked hips, which filled her drawers out roundly,
while with swelling bosom she still continued bowing and smiling her
delicate little smile. Suddenly she seemed to recognize Count
Muffat, and she extended her hand to him as an old friend. Then she
scolded him for not having come to her supper party. His Highness
deigned to chaff Muffat about this, and the latter stammered and
thrilled again at the thought that for one second he had held in his
own feverish clasp a little fresh and perfumed hand. The count had
dined excellently at the prince's, who, indeed, was a heroic eater
and drinker. Both of them were even a little intoxicated, but they
behaved very creditably. To hide the commotion within him Muffat
could only remark about the heat.

"Good heavens, how hot it is here!" he said. "How do you manage to
live in such a temperature, madame?"

And conversation was about to ensue on this topic when noisy voices
were heard at the dressing-room door. Bordenave drew back the slide
over a grated peephole of the kind used in convents. Fontan was
outside with Prulliere and Bosc, and all three had bottles under
their arms and their hands full of glasses. He began knocking and
shouting out that it was his patron saint's day and that he was
standing champagne round. Nana consulted the prince with a glance.
Eh! Oh dear, yes! His Highness did not want to be in anyone's way;
he would be only too happy! But without waiting for permission
Fontan came in, repeating in baby accents:

"Me not a cad, me pay for champagne!"

Then all of a sudden he became aware of the prince's presence of
which he had been totally ignorant. He stopped short and, assuming
an air of farcical solemnity, announced:

"King Dagobert is in the corridor and is desirous of drinking the
health of His Royal Highness."

The prince having made answer with a smile, Fontan's sally was voted
charming. But the dressing room was too small to accommodate
everybody, and it became necessary to crowd up anyhow, Satin and Mme
Jules standing back against the curtain at the end and the men
clustering closely round the half-naked Nana. The three actors
still had on the costumes they had been wearing in the second act,
and while Prulliere took off his Alpine admiral's cocked hat, the
huge plume of which would have knocked the ceiling, Bosc, in his
purple cloak and tinware crown, steadied himself on his tipsy old
legs and greeted the prince as became a monarch receiving the son of
a powerful neighbor. The glasses were filled, and the company began
clinking them together.

"I drink to Your Highness!" said ancient Bosc royally.

"To the army!" added Prulliere.

"To Venus!" cried Fontan.

The prince complaisantly poised his glass, waited quietly, bowed
thrice and murmured:

"Madame! Admiral! Your Majesty!"

Then he drank it off. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had
followed his example. There was no more jesting now--the company
were at court. Actual life was prolonged in the life of the
theater, and a sort of solemn farce was enacted under the hot flare
of the gas. Nana, quite forgetting that she was in her drawers and
that a corner of her shift stuck out behind, became the great lady,
the queen of love, in act to open her most private palace chambers
to state dignitaries. In every sentence she used the words "Royal
Highness" and, bowing with the utmost conviction, treated the
masqueraders, Bosc and Prulliere, as if the one were a sovereign and
the other his attendant minister. And no one dreamed of smiling at
this strange contrast, this real prince, this heir to a throne,
drinking a petty actor's champagne and taking his ease amid a
carnival of gods, a masquerade of royalty, in the society of
dressers and courtesans, shabby players and showmen of venal beauty.
Bordenave was simply ravished by the dramatic aspects of the scene
and began dreaming of the receipts which would have accrued had His
Highness only consented thus to appear in the second act of the
Blonde Venus.

"I say, shall we have our little women down?" he cried, becoming
familiar.

Nana would not hear of it. But notwithstanding this, she was giving
way herself. Fontan attracted her with his comic make-up. She
brushed against him and, eying him as a woman in the family way
might do when she fancies some unpleasant kind of food, she suddenly
became extremely familiar:

"Now then, fill up again, ye great brute!"

Fontan charged the glasses afresh, and the company drank, repeating
the same toasts.

"To His Highness!"

"To the army!"

"To Venus!"

But with that Nana made a sign and obtained silence. She raised her
glass and cried:

"No, no! To Fontan! It's Fontan's day; to Fontan! To Fontan!"

Then they clinked glasses a third time and drank Fontan with all the
honors. The prince, who had noticed the young woman devouring the
actor with her eyes, saluted him with a "Monsieur Fontan, I drink to
your success!"  This he said with his customary courtesy.

But meanwhile the tail of his highness's frock coat was sweeping the
marble of the dressing table. The place, indeed, was like an alcove
or narrow bathroom, full as it was of the steam of hot water and
sponges and of the strong scent of essences which mingled with the
tartish, intoxicating fumes of the champagne. The prince and Count
Muffat, between whom Nana was wedged, had to lift up their hands so
as not to brush against her hips or her breast with every little
movement. And there stood Mme Jules, waiting, cool and rigid as
ever, while Satin, marveling in the depths of her vicious soul to
see a prince and two gentlemen in black coats going after a naked
woman in the society of dressed-up actors, secretly concluded that
fashionable people were not so very particular after all.

But Father Barillot's tinkling bell approached along the passage.
At the door of the dressing room he stood amazed when he caught
sight of the three actors still clad in the costumes which they had
worn in the second act.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he stammered, "do please make haste.
They've just rung the bell in the public foyer."

"Bah, the public will have to wait!" said Bordenave placidly.

However, as the bottles were now empty, the comedians went upstairs
to dress after yet another interchange of civilities. Bosc, having
dipped his beard in the champagne, had taken it off, and under his
venerable disguise the drunkard had suddenly reappeared. His was
the haggard, empurpled face of the old actor who has taken to drink.
At the foot of the stairs he was heard remarking to Fontan in his
boozy voice:

"I pulverized him, eh?"

He was alluding to the prince.

In Nana's dressing room none now remained save His Highness, the
count and the marquis. Bordenave had withdrawn with Barillot, whom
he advised not to knock without first letting Madame know.

"You will excuse me, gentlemen?" asked Nana, again setting to work
to make up her arms and face, of which she was now particularly
careful, owing to her nude appearance in the third act.

The prince seated himself by the Marquis de Chouard on the divan,
and Count Muffat alone remained standing. In that suffocating heat
the two glasses of champagne they had drunk had increased their
intoxication. Satin, when she saw the gentlemen thus closeting
themselves with her friend, had deemed it discreet to vanish behind
the curtain, where she sat waiting on a trunk, much annoyed at being
compelled to remain motionless, while Mme Jules came and went
quietly without word or look.

"You sang your numbers marvelously," said the prince.

And with that they began a conversation, but their sentences were
short and their pauses frequent. Nana, indeed, was not always able
to reply. After rubbing cold cream over her arms and face with the
palm of her hand she laid on the grease paint with the corner of a
towel. For one second only she ceased looking in the glass and
smilingly stole a glance at the prince.

"His Highness is spoiling me," she murmured without putting down the
grease paint.

Her task was a complicated one, and the Marquis de Chouard followed
it with an expression of devout enjoyment. He spoke in his turn.

"Could not the band accompany you more softly?" he said. "It drowns
your voice, and that's an unpardonable crime."

This time Nana did not turn round. She had taken up the hare's-foot
and was lightly manipulating it. All her attention was concentrated
on this action, and she bent forward over her toilet table so very
far that the white round contour of her drawers and the little patch
of chemise stood out with the unwonted tension. But she was anxious
to prove that she appreciated the old man's compliment and therefore
made a little swinging movement with her hips.

Silence reigned. Mme Jules had noticed a tear in the right leg of
her drawers. She took a pin from over her heart and for a second or
so knelt on the ground, busily at work about Nana's leg, while the
young woman, without seeming to notice her presence, applied the
rice powder, taking extreme pains as she did so, to avoid putting
any on the upper part of her cheeks. But when the prince remarked
that if she were to come and sing in London all England would want
to applaud her, she laughed amiably and turned round for a moment
with her left cheek looking very white amid a perfect cloud of
powder. Then she became suddenly serious, for she had come to the
operation of rouging. And with her face once more close to the
mirror, she dipped her finger in a jar and began applying the rouge
below her eyes and gently spreading it back toward her temples. The
gentlemen maintained a respectful silence.

Count Muffat, indeed, had not yet opened his lips. He was thinking
perforce of his own youth. The bedroom of his childish days had
been quite cold, and later, when he had reached the age of sixteen
and would give his mother a good-night kiss every evening, he used
to carry the icy feeling of the embrace into the world of dreams.
One day in passing a half-open door he had caught sight of a
maidservant washing herself, and that was the solitary recollection
which had in any way troubled his peace of mind from the days of
puberty till the time of marriage. Afterward he had found his wife
strictly obedient to her conjugal duties but had himself felt a
species of religious dislike to them. He had grown to man's estate
and was now aging, in ignorance of the flesh, in the humble
observance of rigid devotional practices and in obedience to a rule
of life full of precepts and moral laws. And now suddenly he was
dropped down in this actress's dressing room in the presence of this
undraped courtesan.

He, who had never seen the Countess Muffat putting on her garters,
was witnessing, amid that wild disarray of jars and basins and that
strong, sweet perfume, the intimate details of a woman's toilet.
His whole being was in turmoil; he was terrified by the stealthy,
all-pervading influence which for some time past Nana's presence had
been exercising over him, and he recalled to mind the pious accounts
of diabolic possession which had amused his early years. He was a
believer in the devil, and, in a confused kind of way, Nana was he,
with her laughter and her bosom and her hips, which seemed swollen
with many vices. But he promised himself that he would be strong--
nay, he would know how to defend himself.

"Well then, it's agreed," said the prince, lounging quite
comfortably on the divan. "You will come to London next year, and
we shall receive you so cordially that you will never return to
France again. Ah, my dear Count, you don't value your pretty women
enough. We shall take them all from you!"

"That won't make much odds to him," murmured the Marquis de Chouard
wickedly, for he occasionally said a risky thing among friends.
"The count is virtue itself."

Hearing his virtue mentioned, Nana looked at him so comically that
Muffat felt a keen twinge of annoyance. But directly afterward he
was surprised and angry with himself. Why, in the presence of this
courtesan, should the idea of being virtuous embarrass him? He
could have struck her. But in attempting to take up a brush Nana
had just let it drop on the ground, and as she stooped to pick it up
he rushed forward. Their breath mingled for one moment, and the
loosened tresses of Venus flowed over his hands. But remorse
mingled with his enjoyment, a kind of enjoyment, moreover, peculiar
to good Catholics, whom the fear of hell torments in the midst of
their sin.

At this moment Father Barillot's voice was heard outside the door.

"May I give the knocks, madame? The house is growing impatient."

"All in good time," answered Nana quietly.

She had dipped her paint brush in a pot of kohl, and with the point
of her nose close to the glass and her left eye closed she passed it
delicately along between her eyelashes. Muffat stood behind her,
looking on. He saw her reflection in the mirror, with her rounded
shoulders and her bosom half hidden by a rosy shadow. And despite
all his endeavors he could not turn away his gaze from that face so
merry with dimples and so worn with desire, which the closed eye
rendered more seductive. When she shut her right eye and passed the
brush along it he understood that he belonged to her.

"They are stamping their feet, madame," the callboy once more cried.
"They'll end by smashing the seats. May I give the knocks?"

"Oh, bother!" said Nana impatiently. "Knock away; I don't care! If
I'm not ready, well, they'll have to wait for me!"

She grew calm again and, turning to the gentlemen, added with a
smile:

"It's true: we've only got a minute left for our talk."

Her face and arms were now finished, and with her fingers she put
two large dabs of carmine on her lips. Count Muffat felt more
excited than ever. He was ravished by the perverse transformation
wrought by powders and paints and filled by a lawless yearning for
those young painted charms, for the too-red mouth and the too-white
face and the exaggerated eyes, ringed round with black and burning
and dying for very love. Meanwhile Nana went behind the curtain for
a second or two in order to take off her drawers and slip on Venus'
tights. After which, with tranquil immodesty, she came out and
undid her little linen stays and held out her arms to Mme Jules, who
drew the short-sleeved tunic over them.

"Make haste; they're growing angry!" she muttered.

The prince with half-closed eyes marked the swelling lines of her
bosom with an air of connoisseurship, while the Marquis de Chouard
wagged his head involuntarily. Muffat gazed at the carpet in order
not to see any more. At length Venus, with only her gauze veil over
her shoulders, was ready to go on the stage. Mme Jules, with
vacant, unconcerned eyes and an expression suggestive of a little
elderly wooden doll, still kept circling round her. With brisk
movements she took pins out of the inexhaustible pincushion over her
heart and pinned up Venus' tunic, but as she ran over all those
plump nude charms with her shriveled hands, nothing was suggested to
her. She was as one whom her sex does not concern.

"There!" said the young woman, taking a final look at herself in the
mirror.

Bordenave was back again. He was anxious and said the third act had
begun.

"Very well! I'm coming," replied Nana. "Here's a pretty fuss!
Why, it's usually I that waits for the others."

The gentlemen left the dressing room, but they did not say good-by,
for the prince had expressed a desire to assist behind the scenes at
the performance of the third act. Left alone, Nana seemed greatly
surprised and looked round her in all directions.

"Where can she be?" she queried.

She was searching for Satin. When she had found her again, waiting
on her trunk behind the curtain, Satin quietly replied:

"Certainly I didn't want to be in your way with all those men
there!"

And she added further that she was going now. But Nana held her
back. What a silly girl she was! Now that Bordenave had agreed to
take her on! Why, the bargain was to be struck after the play was
over! Satin hesitated. There were too many bothers; she was out of
her element! Nevertheless, she stayed.

As the prince was coming down the little wooden staircase a strange
sound of smothered oaths and stamping, scuffling feet became audible
on the other side of the theater. The actors waiting for their cues
were being scared by quite a serious episode. For some seconds past
Mignon had been renewing his jokes and smothering Fauchery with
caresses. He had at last invented a little game of a novel kind and
had begun flicking the other's nose in order, as he phrased it, to
keep the flies off him. This kind of game naturally diverted the
actors to any extent.

But success had suddenly thrown Mignon off his balance. He had
launched forth into extravagant courses and had given the journalist
a box on the ear, an actual, a vigorous, box on the ear. This time
he had gone too far: in the presence of so many spectators it was
impossible for Fauchery to pocket such a blow with laughing
equanimity. Whereupon the two men had desisted from their farce,
had sprung at one another's throats, their faces livid with hate,
and were now rolling over and over behind a set of side lights,
pounding away at each other as though they weren't breakable.

"Monsieur Bordenave, Monsieur Bordenave!" said the stage manager,
coming up in a terrible flutter.

Bordenave made his excuses to the prince and followed him. When he
recognized Fauchery and Mignon in the men on the floor he gave vent
to an expression of annoyance. They had chosen a nice time,
certainly, with His Highness on the other side of the scenery and
all that houseful of people who might have overheard the row! To
make matters worse, Rose Mignon arrived out of breath at the very
moment she was due on the stage. Vulcan, indeed, was giving her the
cue, but Rose stood rooted to the ground, marveling at sight of her
husband and her lover as they lay wallowing at her feet, strangling
one another, kicking, tearing their hair out and whitening their
coats with dust. They barred the way. A sceneshifter had even
stopped Fauchery's hat just when the devilish thing was going to
bound onto the stage in the middle of the struggle. Meanwhile
Vulcan, who had been gagging away to amuse the audience, gave Rose
her cue a second time. But she stood motionless, still gazing at
the two men.

"Oh, don't look at THEM!" Bordenave furiously whispered to her. "Go
on the stage; go on, do! It's no business of yours! Why, you're
missing your cue!"

And with a push from the manager, Rose stepped over the prostrate
bodies and found herself in the flare of the footlights and in the
presence of the audience. She had quite failed to understand why
they were fighting on the floor behind her. Trembling from head to
foot and with a humming in her ears, she came down to the
footlights, Diana's sweet, amorous smile on her lips, and attacked
the opening lines of her duet with so feeling a voice that the
public gave her a veritable ovation.

Behind the scenery she could hear the dull thuds caused by the two
men. They had rolled down to the wings, but fortunately the music
covered the noise made by their feet as they kicked against them.

"By God!" yelled Bordenave in exasperation when at last he had
succeeded in separating them. "Why couldn't you fight at home? You
know as well as I do that I don't like this sort of thing. You,
Mignon, you'll do me the pleasure of staying over here on the prompt
side, and you, Fauchery, if you leave the O.P. side I'll chuck you
out of the theater. You understand, eh? Prompt side and O.P. side
or I forbid Rose to bring you here at all."

When he returned to the prince's presence the latter asked what was
the matter.

"Oh, nothing at all," he murmured quietly.

Nana was standing wrapped in furs, talking to these gentlemen while
awaiting her cue. As Count Muffat was coming up in order to peep
between two of the wings at the stage, he understood from a sign
made him by the stage manager that he was to step softly. Drowsy
warmth was streaming down from the flies, and in the wings, which
were lit by vivid patches of light, only a few people remained,
talking in low voices or making off on tiptoe. The gasman was at
his post amid an intricate arrangement of cocks; a fireman, leaning
against the side lights, was craning forward, trying to catch a
glimpse of things, while on his seat, high up, the curtain man was
watching with resigned expression, careless of the play, constantly
on the alert for the bell to ring him to his duty among the ropes.
And amid the close air and the shuffling of feet and the sound of
whispering, the voices of the actors on the stage sounded strange,
deadened, surprisingly discordant. Farther off again, above the
confused noises of the band, a vast breathing sound was audible. It
was the breath of the house, which sometimes swelled up till it
burst in vague rumors, in laughter, in applause. Though invisible,
the presence of the public could be felt, even in the silences.

"There's something open," said Nana sharply, and with that she
tightened the folds of her fur cloak. "Do look, Barillot. I bet
they've just opened a window. Why, one might catch one's death of
cold here!"

Barillot swore that he had closed every window himself but suggested
that possibly there were broken panes about. The actors were always
complaining of drafts. Through the heavy warmth of that gaslit
region blasts of cold air were constantly passing--it was a regular
influenza trap, as Fontan phrased it.

"I should like to see YOU in a low-cut dress," continued Nana,
growing annoyed.

"Hush!" murmured Bordenave.

On the stage Rose rendered a phrase in her duet so cleverly that the
stalls burst into universal applause. Nana was silent at this, and
her face grew grave. Meanwhile the count was venturing down a
passage when Barillot stopped him and said he would make a discovery
there. Indeed, he obtained an oblique back view of the scenery and
of the wings which had been strengthened, as it were, by a thick
layer of old posters. Then he caught sight of a corner of the
stage, of the Etna cave hollowed out in a silver mine and of
Vulcan's forge in the background. Battens, lowered from above, lit
up a sparkling substance which had been laid on with large dabs of
the brush. Side lights with red glasses and blue were so placed as
to produce the appearance of a fiery brazier, while on the floor of
the stage, in the far background, long lines of gaslight had been
laid down in order to throw a wall of dark rocks into sharp relief.
Hard by on a gentle, "practicable" incline, amid little points of
light resembling the illumination lamps scattered about in the grass
on the night of a public holiday, old Mme Drouard, who played Juno,
was sitting dazed and sleepy, waiting for her cue.

Presently there was a commotion, for Simonne, while listening to a
story Clarisse was telling her, cried out:

"My! It's the Tricon!"

It was indeed the Tricon, wearing the same old curls and looking as
like a litigious great lady as ever.

When she saw Nana she went straight up to her.

"No," said the latter after some rapid phrases had been exchanged,
"not now."  The old lady looked grave. Just then Prulliere passed
by and shook hands with her, while two little chorus girls stood
gazing at her with looks of deep emotion. For a moment she seemed
to hesitate. Then she beckoned to Simonne, and the rapid exchange
of sentences began again.

"Yes," said Simonne at last. "In half an hour."

But as she was going upstairs again to her dressing room, Mme Bron,
who was once more going the rounds with letters, presented one to
her. Bordenave lowered his voice and furiously reproached the
portress for having allowed the Tricon to come in. That woman! And
on such an evening of all others! It made him so angry because His
Highness was there! Mme Bron, who had been thirty years in the
theater, replied quite sourly. How was she to know? she asked. The
Tricon did business with all the ladies--M. le Directeur had met her
a score of times without making remarks. And while Bordenave was
muttering oaths the Tricon stood quietly by, scrutinizing the prince
as became a woman who weighs a man at a glance. A smile lit up her
yellow face. Presently she paced slowly off through the crowd of
deeply deferential little women.

"Immediately, eh?" she queried, turning round again to Simonne.

Simonne seemed much worried. The letter was from a young man to
whom she had engaged herself for that evening. She gave Mme Bron a
scribbled note in which were the words, "Impossible tonight,
darling--I'm booked."  But she was still apprehensive; the young man
might possibly wait for her in spite of everything. As she was not
playing in the third act, she had a mind to be off at once and
accordingly begged Clarisse to go and see if the man were there.
Clarisse was only due on the stage toward the end of the act, and so
she went downstairs while Simonne ran up for a minute to their
common dressing room.

In Mme Bron's drinking bar downstairs a super, who was charged with
the part of Pluto, was drinking in solitude amid the folds of a
great red robe diapered with golden flames. The little business
plied by the good portress must have been progressing finely, for
the cellarlike hole under the stairs was wet with emptied heeltaps
and water. Clarisse picked up the tunic of Iris, which was dragging
over the greasy steps behind her, but she halted prudently at the
turn in the stairs and was content simply to crane forward and peer
into the lodge. She certainly had been quick to scent things out!
Just fancy! That idiot La Faloise was still there, sitting on the
same old chair between the table and the stove! He had made
pretense of sneaking off in front of Simonne and had returned after
her departure. For the matter of that, the lodge was still full of
gentlemen who sat there gloved, elegant, submissive and patient as
ever. They were all waiting and viewing each other gravely as they
waited. On the table there were now only some dirty plates, Mme
Bron having recently distributed the last of the bouquets. A single
fallen rose was withering on the floor in the neighborhood of the
black cat, who had lain down and curled herself up while the kittens
ran wild races and danced fierce gallops among the gentlemen's legs.
Clarisse was momentarily inclined to turn La Faloise out. The idiot
wasn't fond of animals, and that put the finishing touch to him! He
was busy drawing in his legs because the cat was there, and he
didn't want to touch her.

"He'll nip you; take care!" said Pluto, who was a joker, as he went
upstairs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

After that Clarisse gave up the idea of hauling La Faloise over the
coals. She had seen Mme Bron giving the letter to Simonne's young
man, and he had gone out to read it under the gas light in the
lobby. "Impossible tonight, darling--I'm booked."  And with that he
had peaceably departed, as one who was doubtless used to the
formula. He, at any rate, knew how to conduct himself! Not so the
others, the fellows who sat there doggedly on Mme Bron's battered
straw-bottomed chairs under the great glazed lantern, where the heat
was enough to roast you and there was an unpleasant odor. What a
lot of men it must have held! Clarisse went upstairs again in
disgust, crossed over behind scenes and nimbly mounted three flights
of steps which led to the dressing rooms, in order to bring Simonne
her reply.

Downstairs the prince had withdrawn from the rest and stood talking
to Nana. He never left her; he stood brooding over her through
half-shut eyelids. Nana did not look at him but, smiling, nodded
yes. Suddenly, however, Count Muffat obeyed an overmastering
impulse, and leaving Bordenave, who was explaining to him the
working of the rollers and windlasses, he came up in order to
interrupt their confabulations. Nana lifted her eyes and smiled at
him as she smiled at His Highness. But she kept her ears open
notwithstanding, for she was waiting for her cue.

"The third act is the shortest, I believe," the prince began saying,
for the count's presence embarrassed him.

She did not answer; her whole expression altered; she was suddenly
intent on her business. With a rapid movement of the shoulders she
had let her furs slip from her, and Mme Jules, standing behind, had
caught them in her arms. And then after passing her two hands to
her hair as though to make it fast, she went on the stage in all her
nudity.

"Hush, hush!" whispered Bordenave.

The count and the prince had been taken by surprise. There was
profound silence, and then a deep sigh and the far-off murmur of a
multitude became audible. Every evening when Venus entered in her
godlike nakedness the same effect was produced. Then Muffat was
seized with a desire to see; he put his eye to the peephole. Above
and beyond the glowing arc formed by the footlights the dark body of
the house seemed full of ruddy vapor, and against this neutral-
tinted background, where row upon row of faces struck a pale,
uncertain note, Nana stood forth white and vast, so that the boxes
from the balcony to the flies were blotted from view. He saw her
from behind, noted her swelling hips, her outstretched arms, while
down on the floor, on the same level as her feet, the prompter's
head--an old man's head with a humble, honest face--stood on the
edge of the stage, looking as though it had been severed from the
body. At certain points in her opening number an undulating
movement seemed to run from her neck to her waist and to die out in
the trailing border of her tunic. When amid a tempest of applause
she had sung her last note she bowed, and the gauze floated forth
round about her limbs, and her hair swept over her waist as she bent
sharply backward. And seeing her thus, as with bending form and
with exaggerated hips she came backing toward the count's peephole,
he stood upright again, and his face was very white. The stage had
disappeared, and he now saw only the reverse side of the scenery
with its display of old posters pasted up in every direction. On
the practicable slope, among the lines of gas jets, the whole of
Olympus had rejoined the dozing Mme Drouard. They were waiting for
the close of the act. Bosc and Fontan sat on the floor with their
knees drawn up to their chins, and Prulliere stretched himself and
yawned before going on. Everybody was worn out; their eyes were
red, and they were longing to go home to sleep.

Just then Fauchery, who had been prowling about on the O.P. side
ever since Bordenave had forbidden him the other, came and
buttonholed the count in order to keep himself in countenance and
offered at the same time to show him the dressing rooms. An
increasing sense of languor had left Muffat without any power of
resistance, and after looking round for the Marquis de Chouard, who
had disappeared, he ended by following the journalist. He
experienced a mingled feeling of relief and anxiety as he left the
wings whence he had been listening to Nana's songs.

Fauchery had already preceded him up the staircase, which was closed
on the first and second floors by low-paneled doors. It was one of
those stairways which you find in miserable tenements. Count Muffat
had seen many such during his rounds as member of the Benevolent
Organization. It was bare and dilapidated: there was a wash of
yellow paint on its walls; its steps had been worn by the incessant
passage of feet, and its iron balustrade had grown smooth under the
friction of many hands. On a level with the floor on every
stairhead there was a low window which resembled a deep, square
venthole, while in lanterns fastened to the walls flaring gas jets
crudely illuminatcd the surrounding squalor and gave out a glowing
heat which, as it mounted up the narrow stairwell, grew ever more
intense.

When he reached the foot of the stairs the count once more felt the
hot breath upon his neck and shoulders. As of old it was laden with
the odor of women, wafted amid floods of light and sound from the
dressing rooms above, and now with every upward step he took the
musky scent of powders and the tart perfume of toilet vinegars
heated and bewildered him more and more. On the first floor two
corridors ran backward, branching sharply off and presenting a set
of doors to view which were painted yellow and numbered with great
white numerals in such a way as to suggest a hotel with a bad
reputation. The tiles on the floor had been many of them unbedded,
and the old house being in a state of subsidence, they stuck up like
hummocks. The count dashed recklessly forward, glanced through a
half-open door and saw a very dirty room which resembled a barber's
shop in a poor part of the town. In was furnished with two chairs,
a mirror and a small table containing a drawer which had been
blackened by the grease from brushes and combs. A great perspiring
fellow with smoking shoulders was changing his linen there, while in
a similar room next door a woman was drawing on her gloves
preparatory to departure. Her hair was damp and out of curl, as
though she had just had a bath. But Fauchery began calling the
count, and the latter was rushing up without delay when a furious
"damn!" burst from the corridor on the right. Mathilde, a little
drab of a miss, had just broken her washhand basin, the soapy water
from which was flowing out to the stairhead. A dressing room door
banged noisily. Two women in their stays skipped across the
passage, and another, with the hem of her shift in her mouth,
appeared and immediately vanished from view. Then followed a sound
of laughter, a dispute, the snatch of a song which was suddenly
broken off short. All along the passage naked gleams, sudden
visions of white skin and wan underlinen were observable through
chinks in doorways. Two girls were making very merry, showing each
other their birthmarks. One of them, a very young girl, almost a
child, had drawn her skirts up over her knees in order to sew up a
rent in her drawers, and the dressers, catching sight of the two
men, drew some curtains half to for decency's sake. The wild
stampede which follows the end of a play had already begun, the
grand removal of white paint and rouge, the reassumption amid clouds
of rice powder of ordinary attire. The strange animal scent came in
whiffs of redoubled intensity through the lines of banging doors.
On the third story Muffat abandoned himself to the feeling of
intoxication which was overpowering him. For the chorus girls'
dressing room was there, and you saw a crowd of twenty women and a
wild display of soaps and flasks of lavender water. The place
resembled the common room in a slum lodging house. As he passed by
he heard fierce sounds of washing behind a closed door and a perfect
storm raging in a washhand basin. And as he was mounting up to the
topmost story of all, curiosity led him to risk one more little peep
through an open loophole. The room was empty, and under the flare
of the gas a solitary chamber pot stood forgotten among a heap of
petticoats trailing on the floor. This room afforded him his
ultimate impression. Upstairs on the fourth floor he was well-nigh
suffocated. All the scents, all the blasts of heat, had found their
goal there. The yellow ceiling looked as if it had been baked, and
a lamp burned amid fumes of russet-colored fog. For some seconds he
leaned upon the iron balustrade which felt warm and damp and well-
nigh human to the touch. And he shut his eyes and drew a long
breath and drank in the sexual atmosphere of the place. Hitherto he
had been utterly ignorant of it, but now it beat full in his face.

"Do come here," shouted Fauchery, who had vanished some moments ago.
"You're being asked for."

At the end of the corridor was the dressing room belonging to
Clarisse and Simonne. It was a long, ill-built room under the roof
with a garret ceiling and sloping walls. The light penetrated to it
from two deep-set openings high up in the wall, but at that hour of
the night the dressing room was lit by flaring gas. It was papered
with a paper at seven sous a roll with a pattern of roses twining
over green trelliswork. Two boards, placed near one another and
covered with oilcloth, did duty for dressing tables. They were
black with spilled water, and underneath them was a fine medley of
dinted zinc jugs, slop pails and coarse yellow earthenware crocks.
There was an array of fancy articles in the room--a battered, soiled
and well-worn array of chipped basins, of toothless combs, of all
those manifold untidy trifles which, in their hurry and
carelessness, two women will leave scattered about when they undress
and wash together amid purely temporary surroundings, the dirty
aspect of which has ceased to concern them.

"Do come here," Fauchery repeated with the good-humored familiarity
which men adopt among their fallen sisters. "Clarisse is wanting to
kiss you."

Muffat entered the room at last. But what was his surprise when he
found the Marquis de Chouard snugly enscounced on a chair between
the two dressing tables! The marquis had withdrawn thither some
time ago. He was spreading his feet apart because a pail was
leaking and letting a whitish flood spread over the floor. He was
visibly much at his ease, as became a man who knew all the snug
corners, and had grown quite merry in the close dressing room, where
people might have been bathing, and amid those quietly immodest
feminine surroundings which the uncleanness of the little place
rendered at once natural and poignant.

"D'you go with the old boy?" Simonne asked Clarisse in a whisper.

"Rather!" replied the latter aloud.

The dresser, a very ugly and extremely familiar young girl, who was
helping Simonne into her coat, positively writhed with laughter.
The three pushed each other and babbled little phrases which
redoubled their merriment.

"Come, Clarisse, kiss the gentleman," said Fauchery. "You know,
he's got the rhino."

And turning to the count:

"You'll see, she's very nice! She's going to kiss you!"

But Clarisse was disgusted by the men. She spoke in violent terms
of the dirty lot waiting at the porter's lodge down below. Besides,
she was in a hurry to go downstairs again; they were making her miss
her last scene. Then as Fauchery blocked up the doorway, she gave
Muffat a couple of kisses on the whiskers, remarking as she did so:

"It's not for you, at any rate! It's for that nuisance Fauchery!"

And with that she darted off, and the count remained much
embarrassed in his father-in-law's presence. The blood had rushed
to his face. In Nana's dressing room, amid all the luxury of
hangings and mirrors, he had not experienced the sharp physical
sensation which the shameful wretchedness of that sorry garret
excited within him, redolent as it was of these two girls' self-
abandonment. Meanwhile the marquis had hurried in the rear of
Simonne, who was making off at the top of her pace, and he kept
whispering in her ear while she shook her head in token of refusal.
Fauchery followed them, laughing. And with that the count found
himself alone with the dresser, who was washing out the basins.
Accordingly he took his departure, too, his legs almost failing
under him. Once more he put up flights of half-dressed women and
caused doors to bang as he advanced. But amid the disorderly,
disbanded troops of girls to be found on each of the four stories,
he was only distinctly aware of a cat, a great tortoise-shell cat,
which went gliding upstairs through the ovenlike place where the air
was poisoned with musk, rubbing its back against the banisters and
keeping its tail exceedingly erect.

"Yes, to be sure!" said a woman hoarsely. "I thought they'd keep us
back tonight! What a nuisance they are with their calls!"

The end had come; the curtain had just fallen. There was a
veritable stampede on the staircase--its walls rang with
exclamations, and everyone was in a savage hurry to dress and be
off. As Count Muffat came down the last step or two he saw Nana and
the prince passing slowly along the passage. The young woman halted
and lowered her voice as she said with a smile:

"All right then--by and by!"

The prince returned to the stage, where Bordenave was awaiting him.
And left alone with Nana, Muffat gave way to an impulse of anger and
desire. He ran up behind her and, as she was on the point of
entering her dressing room, imprinted a rough kiss on her neck among
little golden hairs curling low down between her shoulders. It was
as though he had returned the kiss that had been given him upstairs.
Nana was in a fury; she lifted her hand, but when she recognized the
count she smiled.

"Oh, you frightened me," she said simply.

And her smile was adorable in its embarrassment and submissiveness,
as though she had despaired of this kiss and were happy to have
received it. But she could do nothing for him either that evening
or the day after. It was a case of waiting. Nay, even if it had
been in her power she would still have let herself be desired. Her
glance said as much. At length she continued:

"I'm a landowner, you know. Yes, I'm buying a country house near
Orleans, in a part of the world to which you sometimes betake
yourself. Baby told me you did--little Georges Hugon, I mean. You
know him? So come and see me down there."

The count was a shy man, and the thought of his roughness had
frightened him; he was ashamed of what he had done and he bowed
ceremoniously, promising at the same time to take advantage of her
invitation. Then he walked off as one who dreams.

He was rejoining the prince when, passing in front of the foyer, he
heard Satin screaming out:

"Oh, the dirty old thing! Just you bloody well leave me alone!"

It was the Marquis de Chouard who was tumbling down over Satin. The
girl had decidedly had enough of the fashionable world! Nana had
certainly introduced her to Bordenave, but the necessity of standing
with sealed lips for fear of allowing some awkward phrase to escape
her had been too much for her feelings, and now she was anxious to
regain her freedom, the more so as she had run against an old flame
of hers in the wings. This was the super, to whom the task of
impersonating Pluto had been entrusted, a pastry cook, who had
already treated her to a whole week of love and flagellation. She
was waiting for him, much irritated at the things the marquis was
saying to her, as though she were one of those theatrical ladies!
And so at last she assumed a highly respectable expression and
jerked out this phrase:

"My husband's coming! You'll see."

Meanwhile the worn-looking artistes were dropping off one after the
other in their outdoor coats. Groups of men and women were coming
down the little winding staircase, and the outlines of battered hats
and worn-out shawls were visible in the shadows. They looked
colorless and unlovely, as became poor play actors who have got rid
of their paint. On the stage, where the side lights and battens
were being extinguished, the prince was listening to an anecdote
Bordenave was telling him. He was waiting for Nana, and when at
length she made her appearance the stage was dark, and the fireman
on duty was finishing his round, lantern in hand. Bordenave, in
order to save His Highness going about by the Passage des Panoramas,
had made them open the corridor which led from the porter's lodge to
the entrance hall of the theater. Along this narrow alley little
women were racing pell-mell, for they were delighted to escape from
the men who were waiting for them in the other passage. They went
jostling and elbowing along, casting apprehensive glances behind
them and only breathing freely when they got outside. Fontan, Bosc
and Prulliere, on the other hand, retired at a leisurely pace,
joking at the figure cut by the serious, paying admirers who were
striding up and down the Galerie des Varietes at a time when the
little dears were escaping along the boulevard with the men of their
hearts. But Clarisse was especially sly. She had her suspicions
about La Faloise, and, as a matter of fact, he was still in his
place in the lodge among the gentlemen obstinately waiting on Mme
Bron's chairs. They all stretched forward, and with that she passed
brazenly by in the wake of a friend. The gentlemen were blinking in
bewilderment over the wild whirl of petticoats eddying at the foot
of the narrow stairs. It made them desperate to think they had
waited so long, only to see them all flying away like this without
being able to recognize a single one. The litter of little black
cats were sleeping on the oilcloth, nestled against their mother's
belly, and the latter was stretching her paws out in a state of
beatitude while the big tortoise-shell cat sat at the other end of
the table, her tail stretched out behind her and her yellow eyes
solemnly following the flight of the women.

"If His Highness will be good enough to come this way," said
Bordenave at the bottom of the stairs, and he pointed to the
passage.

Some chorus girls were still crowding along it. The prince began
following Nana while Muffat and the marquis walked behind.

It was a long, narrow passage lying between the theater and the
house next door, a kind of contracted by-lane which had been covered
with a sloping glass roof. Damp oozed from the walls, and the
footfall sounded as hollow on the tiled floor as in an underground
vault. It was crowded with the kind of rubbish usually found in a
garret. There was a workbench on which the porter was wont to plane
such parts of the scenery as required it, besides a pile of wooden
barriers which at night were placed at the doors of the theater for
the purpose of regulating the incoming stream of people. Nana had
to pick up her dress as she passed a hydrant which, through having
been carelessly turned off, was flooding the tiles underfoot. In
the entrance hall the company bowed and said good-by. And when
Bordenave was alone he summed up his opinion of the prince in a
shrug of eminently philosophic disdain.

"He's a bit of a duffer all the same," he said to Fauchery without
entering on further explanations, and with that Rose Mignon carried
the journalist off with her husband in order to effect a
reconciliation between them at home.

Muffat was left alone on the sidewalk. His Highness had handed Nana
quietly into his carriage, and the marquis had slipped off after
Satin and her super. In his excitement he was content to follow
this vicious pair in vague hopes of some stray favor being granted
him. Then with brain on fire Muffat decided to walk home. The
struggle within him had wholly ceased. The ideas and beliefs of the
last forty years were being drowned in a flood of new life. While
he was passing along the boulevards the roll of the last carriages
deafened him with the name of Nana; the gaslights set nude limbs
dancing before his eyes--the nude limbs, the lithe arms, the white
shoulders, of Nana. And he felt that he was hers utterly: he would
have abjured everything, sold everything, to possess her for a
single hour that very night. Youth, a lustful puberty of early
manhood, was stirring within him at last, flaming up suddenly in the
chaste heart of the Catholic and amid the dignified traditions of
middle age.

CHAPTER VI

Count Muffat, accompanied by his wife and daughter, had arrived
overnight at Les Fondettes, where Mme Hugon, who was staying there
with only her son Georges, had invited them to come and spend a
week. The house, which had been built at the end of the eighteenth
century, stood in the middle of a huge square enclosure. It was
perfectly unadorned, but the garden possessed magnificent shady
trees and a chain of tanks fed by running spring water. It stood at
the side of the road which leads from Orleans to Paris and with its
rich verdure and high-embowered trees broke the monotony of that
flat countryside, where fields stretched to the horizon's verge.

At eleven o'clock, when the second lunch bell had called the whole
household together, Mme Hugon, smiling in her kindly maternal way,
gave Sabine two great kisses, one on each cheek, and said as she did
so:

"You know it's my custom in the country. Oh, seeing you here makes
me feel twenty years younger. Did you sleep well in your old room?"

Then without waiting for her reply she turned to Estelle:

"And this little one, has she had a nap too? Give me a kiss, my
child."

They had taken their seats in the vast dining room, the windows of
which looked out on the park. But they only occupied one end of the
long table, where they sat somewhat crowded together for company's
sake. Sabine, in high good spirits, dwelt on various childish
memories which had been stirred up within her--memories of months
passed at Les Fondettes, of long walks, of a tumble into one of the
tanks on a summer evening, of an old romance of chivalry discovered
by her on the top of a cupboard and read during the winter before
fires made of vine branches. And Georges, who had not seen the
countess for some months, thought there was something curious about
her. Her face seemed changed, somehow, while, on the other hand,
that stick of an Estelle seemed more insignificant and dumb and
awkward than ever.

While such simple fare as cutlets and boiled eggs was being
discussed by the company, Mme Hugon, as became a good housekeeper,
launched out into complaints. The butchers, she said, were becoming
impossible. She bought everything at Orleans, and yet they never
brought her the pieces she asked for. Yet, alas, if her guests had
nothing worth eating it was their own fault: they had come too late
in the season.

"There's no sense in it," she said. "I've been expecting you since
June, and now we're half through September. You see, it doesn't
look pretty."

And with a movement she pointed to the trees on the grass outside,
the leaves of which were beginning to turn yellow. The day was
covered, and the distance was hidden by a bluish haze which was
fraught with a sweet and melancholy peacefulness.

"Oh, I'm expecting company," she continued. "We shall be gayer
then! The first to come will be two gentlemen whom Georges has
invited--Monsieur Fauchery and Monsieur Daguenet; you know them, do
you not? Then we shall have Monsieur de Vandeuvres, who has
promised me a visit these five years past. This time, perhaps,
he'll make up his mind!"

"Oh, well and good!" said the countess, laughing. "If we only can
get Monsieur de Vandeuvres! But he's too much engaged."

"And Philippe?" queried Muffat.

"Philippe has asked for a furlough," replied the old lady, "but
without doubt you won't be at Les Fondettes any longer when he
arrives."

The coffee was served. Paris was now the subject of conversation,
and Steiner's name was mentioned, at which Mme Hugon gave a little
cry.

"Let me see," she said; "Monsieur Steiner is that stout man I met at
your house one evening. He's a banker, is he not? Now there's a
detestable man for you! Why, he's gone and bought an actress an
estate about a league from here, over Gumieres way, beyond the
Choue. The whole countryside's scandalized. Did you know about
that, my friend?"

"I knew nothing about it," replied Muffat. "Ah, then, Steiner's
bought a country place in the neighborhood!"

Hearing his mother broach the subject, Georges looked into his
coffee cup, but in his astonishment at the count's answer he glanced
up at him and stared. Why was he lying so glibly? The count, on
his side, noticed the young fellow's movement and gave him a
suspicious glance. Mme Hugon continued to go into details: the
country place was called La Mignotte. In order to get there one had
to go up the bank of the Choue as far as Gumieres in order to cross
the bridge; otherwise one got one's feet wet and ran the risk of a
ducking.

"And what is the actress's name?" asked the countess.

"Oh, I wasn't told," murmured the old lady. "Georges, you were
there the morning the gardener spoke to us about it."

Georges appeared to rack his brains. Muffat waited, twirling a
teaspoon between his fingers. Then the countess addressed her
husband:

"Isn't Monsieur Steiner with that singer at the Varietes, that
Nana?"

"Nana, that's the name! A horrible woman!" cried Mme Hugon with
growing annoyance. "And they are expecting her at La Mignotte.
I've heard all about it from the gardener. Didn't the gardener say
they were expecting her this evening, Georges?"

The count gave a little start of astonishment, but Georges replied
with much vivacity:

"Oh, Mother, the gardener spoke without knowing anything about it.
Directly afterward the coachman said just the opposite. Nobody's
expected at La Mignotte before the day after tomorrow."

He tried hard to assume a natural expression while he slyly watched
the effect of his remarks on the count. The latter was twirling his
spoon again as though reassured. The countess, her eyes fixed
dreamily on the blue distances of the park, seemed to have lost all
interest in the conversation. The shadow of a smile on her lips,
she seemed to be following up a secret thought which had been
suddenly awakened within her. Estelle, on the other hand, sitting
stiffly on her chair, had heard all that had been said about Nana,
but her white, virginal face had not betrayed a trace of emotion.

"Dear me, dear me! I've got no right to grow angry," murmured Mme
Hugon after a pause, and with a return to her old good humor she
added:

"Everybody's got a right to live. If we meet this said lady on the
road we shall not bow to her--that's all!"

And as they got up from table she once more gently upbraided the
Countess Sabine for having been so long in coming to her that year.
But the countess defended herself and threw the blame of the delays
upon her husband's shoulders. Twice on the eve of departure, when
all the trunks were locked, he counterordered their journey on the
plea of urgent business. Then he had suddenly decided to start just
when the trip seemed shelved. Thereupon the old lady told them how
Georges in the same way had twice announced his arrival without
arriving and had finally cropped up at Les Fondettes the day before
yesterday, when she was no longer expecting him. They had come down
into the garden, and the two men, walking beside the ladies, were
listening to them in consequential silence.

"Never mind," said Mme Hugon, kissing her son's sunny locks, "Zizi
is a very good boy to come and bury himself in the country with his
mother. He's a dear Zizi not to forget me!"

In the afternoon she expressed some anxiety, for Georges, directly
after leaving the table, had complained of a heavy feeling in his
head and now seemed in for an atrocious sick headache. Toward four
o'clock he said he would go upstairs to bed: it was the only remedy.
After sleeping till tomorrow morning he would be perfectly himself
again. His mother was bent on putting him to bed herself, but as
she left the room he ran and locked the door, explaining that he was
shutting himself in so that no one should come and disturb him.
Then caressingly he shouted, "Good night till tomorrow, little
Mother!" and promised to take a nap. But he did not go to bed again
and with flushed cheeks and bright eyes noiselessly put on his
clothes. Then he sat on a chair and waited. When the dinner bell
rang he listened for Count Muffat, who was on his way to the dining
room, and ten minutes later, when he was certain that no one would
see him, he slipped from the window to the ground with the
assistance of a rain pipe. His bedroom was situated on the first
floor and looked out upon the rear of the house. He threw himself
among some bushes and got out of the park and then galloped across
the fields with empty stomach and heart beating with excitement.
Night was closing in, and a small fine rain was beginning to fall.

It was the very evening that Nana was due at La Mignotte. Ever
since in the preceding May Steiner had bought her this country place
she had from time to time been so filled with the desire of taking
possession that she had wept hot tears about, but on each of these
occasions Bordenave had refused to give her even the shortest leave
and had deferred her holiday till September on the plea that he did
not intend putting an understudy in her place, even for one evening,
now that the exhibition was on. Toward the close of August he spoke
of October. Nana was furious and declared that she would be at La
Mignotte in the middle of September. Nay, in order to dare
Bordenave, she even invited a crowd of guests in his very presence.
One afternoon in her rooms, as Muffat, whose advances she still
adroitly resisted, was beseeching her with tremulous emotion to
yield to his entreaties, she at length promised to be kind, but not
in Paris, and to him, too, she named the middle of September. Then
on the twelfth she was seized by a desire to be off forthwith with
Zoe as her sole companion. It might be that Bordenave had got wind
of her intentions and was about to discover some means of detaining
her. She was delighted at the notion of putting him in a fix, and
she sent him a doctor's certificate. When once the idea had entered
her head of being the first to get to La Mignotte and of living
there two days without anybody knowing anything about it, she rushed
Zoe through the operation of packing and finally pushed her into a
cab, where in a sudden burst of extreme contrition she kissed her
and begged her pardon. It was only when they got to the station
refreshment room that she thought of writing Steiner of her
movements. She begged him to wait till the day after tomorrow
before rejoining her if he wanted to find her quite bright and
fresh. And then, suddenly conceiving another project, she wrote a
second letter, in which she besought her aunt to bring little Louis
to her at once. It would do Baby so much good! And how happy they
would be together in the shade of the trees! In the railway
carriage between Paris and Orleans she spoke of nothing else; her
eyes were full of tears; she had an unexpected attack of maternal
tenderness and mingled together flowers, birds and child in her
every sentence.

La Mignotte was more than three leagues away from the station, and
Nana lost a good hour over the hire of a carriage, a huge,
dilapidated calash, which rumbled slowly along to an accompaniment
of rattling old iron. She had at once taken possession of the
coachman, a little taciturn old man whom she overwhelmed with
questions. Had he often passed by La Mignotte? It was behind this
hill then? There ought to be lots of trees there, eh? And the
house could one see it at a distance? The little old man answered
with a succession of grunts. Down in the calash Nana was almost
dancing with impatience, while Zoe, in her annoyance at having left
Paris in such a hurry, sat stiffly sulking beside her. The horse
suddenly stopped short, and the young woman thought they had reached
their destination. She put her head out of the carriage door and
asked:

"Are we there, eh?"

By way of answer the driver whipped up his horse, which was in the
act of painfully climbing a hill. Nana gazed ecstatically at the
vast plain beneath the gray sky where great clouds were banked up.

"Oh, do look, Zoe! There's greenery! Now, is that all wheat? Good
lord, how pretty it is!"

"One can quite see that Madame doesn't come from the country," was
the servant's prim and tardy rejoinder. "As for me, I knew the
country only too well when I was with my dentist. He had a house at
Bougival. No, it's cold, too, this evening. It's damp in these
parts."

They were driving under the shadow of a wood, and Nana sniffed up
the scent of the leaves as a young dog might. All of a sudden at a
turn of the road she caught sight of the corner of a house among the
trees. Perhaps it was there! And with that she began a
conversation with the driver, who continued shaking his head by way
of saying no. Then as they drove down the other side of the hill he
contented himself by holding out his whip and muttering, "'Tis down
there."

She got up and stretched herself almost bodily out of the carriage
door.

"Where is it? Where is it?" she cried with pale cheeks, but as yet
she saw nothing.

At last she caught sight of a bit of wall. And then followed a
succession of little cries and jumps, the ecstatic behavior of a
woman overcome by a new and vivid sensation.

"I see it! I see it, Zoe! Look out at the other side. Oh, there's
a terrace with brick ornaments on the roof! And there's a hothouse
down there! But the place is immense. Oh, how happy I am! Do
look, Zoe! Now, do look!"

The carriage had bthin a wall. Then the view
of the kitchen garden entirely engrossed her attention. She darted
back, jostling the lady's maid at the top of the stairs and bursting
out:

"It's full of cabbages! Oh, such woppers! And lettuces and sorrel
and onions and everything! Come along, make haste!"

The rain was falling more heavily now, and she opened her white silk
sunshade and ran down the garden walks.

"Madame will catch cold," cried Zoe, who had stayed quietly behind
under the awning over the garden door.

But Madame wanted to see things, and at each new discovery there was
a burst of wonderment.

"Zoe, here's spinach! Do come. Oh, look at the artichokes! They
are funny. So they grow in the ground, do they? Now, what can that
be? I don't know it. Do come, Zoe, perhaps you know."

The lady's maid never budged an inch. Madame must really be raving
mad. For now the rain was coming down in torrents, and the little
white silk sunshade was aly this time pulled up before the park gates. A
side door was opened, and the gardener, a tall, dry fellow, made his
appearance, cap in hand. Nana made an effort to regain her dignity,
for the driver seemed now to be suppressing a laugh behind his dry,
speechless lips. She refrained from setting off at a run and
listened to the gardener, who was a very talkative fellow. He
begged Madame to excuse the disorder in which she found everything,
seeing that he had only received Madame's letter that very morning.
But despite all his efforts, she flew off at a tangent and walked so
quickly that Zoe could scarcely follow her. At the end of the
avenue she paused for a moment in order to take the house in at a
glance. It was a great pavilionlike building in the Italian manner,
and it was flanked by a smaller construction, which a rich
Englishman, after two years' residence in Naples, had caused to be
erected and had forthwith become disgusted with.

"I'll take Madame over the house," said the gardener.

But she had outrun him entirely, and she shouted back that he was
not to put himself out and that she would go over the house by
herself. She preferred doing that, she said. And without removing
her hat she dashed into the different rooms, calling to Zoe as she
did so, shouting her impressions from one end of each corridor to
the other and filling the empty house, which for long months had
been uninhabited, with exclamations and bursts of laughter. In the
first place, there was the hall. It was a little damp, but that
didn't matter; one wasn't going to sleep in it. Then came the
drawing room, quite the thing, the drawing room, with its windows
opening on the lawn. Only the red upholsteries there were hideous;
she would alter all that. As to the dining room-well, it was a
lovely dining room, eh? What big blowouts you might give in Paris
if you had a dining room as large as that! As she was going
upstairs to the first floor it occurred to her that she had not seen
the kitchen, and she went down again and indulged in ecstatic
exclamations. Zoe ought to admire the beautiful dimensions of the
sink and the width of the hearth, where you might have roasted a
sheep! When she had gone upstairs again her bedroom especially
enchanted her. It had been hung with delicate rose-colored Louis
XVI cretonne by an Orleans upholsterer. Dear me, yes! One ought to
sleep jolly sound in such a room as that; why, it was a real best
bedroom! Then came four or five guest chambers and then some
splendid garrets, which would be extremely convenient for trunks and
boxes. Zoe looked very gruff and cast a frigid glance into each of
the rooms as she lingered in Madame's wake. She saw Nana
disappearing up the steep garret ladder and said, "Thanks, I haven't
the least wish to break my legs."  But the sound of a voice reached
her from far away; indeed, it seemed to come whistling down a
chimney.

"Zoe, Zoe, where are you? Come up, do! You've no idea! It's like
fairyland!"

Zoe went up, grumbling. On the roof she found her mistress leaning
against the brickwork balustrade and gazing at the valley which
spread out into the silence. The horizon was immeasurably wide, but
it was now covered by masses of gray vapor, and a fierce wind was
driving fine rain before it. Nana had to hold her hat on with both
hands to keep it from being blown away while her petticoats streamed
out behind her, flapping like a flag.

"Not if I know it!" said Zoe, drawing her head in at once. "Madame
will be blown away. What beastly weather!"

Madame did not hear what she said. With her head over the
balustrade she was gazing at the grounds beneath. They consisted of
seven or eight acres of land enclosed wiready dark with it. Nor did it shelter
Madame, whose skirts were wringing wet. But that didn't put her out
in the smallest degree, and in the pouring rain she visited the
kitchen garden and the orchard, stopping in front of every fruit
tree and bending over every bed of vegetables. Then she ran and
looked down the well and lifted up a frame to see what was
underneath it and was lost in the contemplation of a huge pumpkin.
She wanted to go along every single garden walk and to take
immediate possession of all the things she had been wont to dream of
in the old days, when she was a slipshod work-girl on the Paris
pavements. The rain redoubled, but she never heeded it and was only
miserable at the thought that the daylight was fading. She could
not see clearly now and touched things with her fingers to find out
what they were. Suddenly in the twilight she caught sight of a bed
of strawberries, and all that was childish in her awoke.

"Strawberries! Strawberries! There are some here; I can feel them.
A plate, Zoe! Come and pick strawberries."

And dropping her sunshade, Nana crouched down in the mire under the
full force of the downpour. With drenched hands she began gathering
the fruit among the leaves. But Zoe in the meantime brought no
plate, and when the young woman rose to her feet again she was
frightened. She thought she had seen a shadow close to her.

"It's some beast!" she screamed.

But she stood rooted to the path in utter amazement. It was a man,
and she recognized him.

"Gracious me, it's Baby! What ARE you doing there, baby?"

"'Gad, I've come--that's all!" replied Georges.

Her head swam.

"You knew I'd come through the gardener telling you? Oh, that poor
child! Why, he's soaking!"

"Oh, I'll explain that to you! The rain caught me on my way here,
and then, as I didn't wish to go upstream as far as Gumieres, I
crossed the Choue and fell into a blessed hole."

Nana forgot the strawberries forthwith. She was trembling and full
of pity. That poor dear Zizi in a hole full of water! And she drew
him with her in the direction of the house and spoke of making up a
roaring fire.

"You know," he murmured, stopping her among the shadows, "I was in
hiding because I was afraid of being scolded, like in Paris, when I
come and see you and you're not expecting me."

She made no reply but burst out laughing and gave him a kiss on the
forehead. Up till today she had always treated him like a naughty
urchin, never taking his declarations seriously and amusing herself
at his expense as though he were a little man of no consequence
whatever. There was much ado to install him in the house. She
absolutely insisted on the fire being lit in her bedroom, as being
the most comfortable place for his reception. Georges had not
surprised Zoe, who was used to all kinds of encounters, but the
gardener, who brought the wood upstairs, was greatly nonplused at
sight of this dripping gentleman to whom he was certain he had not
opened the front door. He was, however, dismissed, as he was no
longer wanted.

A lamp lit up the room, and the fire burned with a great bright
flame.

"He'll never get dry, and he'll catch cold," said Nana, seeing
Georges beginning to shiver.

And there  and with his
delicate young arms showing and his bright damp hair falling almost
to his shoulders, he looked just like a girl.

"Why, he's as slim as I am!" said Nana, putting her arm round his
waist. "Zoe, just come here and see how it suits him. It's were no men's trousers in her house!
She was on the point
of calling the gardener back when an idea struck her. Zoe, who was
unpacking the trunks in the dressing room, brought her mistress a
change of underwear, consisting of a shift and some petticoats with
a dressing jacket.

"Oh, that's first rate!" cried the young woman. "Zizi can put 'em
all on. You're not angry with me, eh? When your clothes are dry
you can put them on again, and then off with you, as fast as fast
can be, so as not to have a scolding from your mamma. Make haste!
I'm going to change my things, too, in the dressing room."

Ten minutes afterward, when she reappeared in a tea gown, she
clasped her hands in a perfect ecstasy.

"Oh, the darling! How sweet he looks dressed like a little woman!"

He had simply slipped on a long nightgown with an insertion front, a
pair of worked drawers and the dressing jacket, which was a long
cambric garment trimmed with lace. Thus attiredmade
for him, eh? All except the bodice part, which is too large. He
hasn't got as much as I have, poor, dear Zizi!"

"Oh, to be sure, I'm a bit wanting there," murmured Georges with a
smile.

All three grew very merry about it. Nana had set to work buttoning
the dressing jacket from top to bottom so as to make him quite
decent. Then she turned him round as though he were a doll, gave
him little thumps, made the skirt stand well out behind. After
which she asked him questions. Was he comfortable? Did he feel
warm? Zounds, yes, he was comfortable! Nothing fitted more closely
and warmly than a woman's shift; had he been able, he would always
have worn one. He moved round and about therein, delighted with the
fine linen and the soft touch of that unmanly garment, in the folds
of which he thought he discovered some of Nana's own warm life.

Meanwhile Zoe had taken the soaked clothes down to the kitchen in
order to dry them as quickly as possible in front of a vine-branch
fire. Then Georges, as he lounged in an easy chair, ventured to
make a confession.

"I say, are you going to feed this evening? I'm dying of hunger. I
haven't dined."

Nana was vexed. The great silly thing to go sloping off from
Mamma's with an empty stomach, just to chuck himself into a hole
full of water! But she was as hungry as a hunter too. They
certainly must feed! Only they would have to eat what they could
get. Whereupon a round table was rolled up in front of the fire,
and the queerest of dinners was improvised thereon. Zoe ran down to
the gardener's, he having cooked a mess of cabbage soup in case
Madame should not dine at Orleans before her arrival. Madame,
indeed, had forgotten to tell him what he was to get ready in the
letter she had sent him. Fortunately the cellar was well furnished.
Accordingly they had cabbage soup, followed by a piece of bacon.
Then Nana rummaged in her handbag and found quite a heap of
provisions which she had taken the precaution of stuffing into it.
There was a Strasbourg pate, for instance, and a bag of sweet-meats
and some oranges. So they both ate away like ogres and, while they
satisfied their healthy young appetites, treated one another with
easy good fellowship. Nana kept calling Georges "dear old girl," a
form of address which struck her as at once tender and familiar. At
dessert, in order not to give Zoe any more trouble, they used the
same spoon turn and turn about while demolishing a pot of preserves
they had discovered at the top of a cupboard.

"Oh, you dear old girl!" said Nana, pushing back the round table.
"I haven't made such a good dinner these ten years past!"

Yet it was growing late, and she wanted to send her boy off for fear
he should be suspected of all sorts of things. But he kept
declaring that he had plenty of time to spare. For the matter of
that, his clothes were not drying well, and Zoe averred that it
would take an hour longer at least, and as she was dropping with
sleep after the fatigues of the journey, they sent her off to bed.
After which they were alone in the silent house.

It was a very charming evening. The fire was dying out amid glowing
embers, and in the great blue room, where Zoe had made up the bed
before going upstairs, the air felt a little oppressive. Nana,
overcome by the heavy warmth, got up to open the window for a few
minutes, and as she did so she uttered a little cry.

"Great heavens, how beautiful it is! Look, dear old girl!"

Georges had come up, and as though the window bar had not been
sufficiently wide, he put his arm round Nana's waist and rested his
head against her shoulder. The weather had undergone a brisk
change: the skies were clearing, and a full moon lit up the country
with its golden disk of light. A sovereign quiet reigned over the
valley. It seemed wider and larger as it opened on the immense
distances of the plain, where the trees loomed like little shadowy
islands amid a shining and waveless lake. And Nana grew
tenderhearted, felt herself a child again. Most surely she had
dreamed of nights like this at an epoch which she could not recall.
Since leaving the train every object of sensation--the wide
countryside, the green things with their pungent scents, the house,
the vegetables--had stirred her to such a degree that now it seemed
to her as if she had left Paris twenty years ago. Yesterday's
existence was far, far away, and she was full of sensations of which
she had no previous experience. Georges, meanwhile, was giving her
neck little coaxing kisses, and this again added to her sweet
unrest. With hesitating hand she pushed him from her, as though he
were a child whose affectionate advances were fatiguing, and once
more she told him that he ought to take his departure. He did not
gainsay her. All in good time--he would go all in good time!

But a bird raised its song and again was silent. It was a robin in
an elder tree below the window.

"Wait one moment," whispered Georges; "the lamp's frightening him.
I'll put it out."

And when he came back and took her waist again he added:

"We'll relight it in a minute."

Then as she listened to the robin and the boy pressed against her
side, Nana remembered. Ah yes, it was in novels that she had got to
know all this! In other days she would have given her heart to have
a full moon and robins and a lad dying of love for her. Great God,
she could have cried, so good and charming did it all seem to her!
Beyond a doubt she had been born to live honestly! So she pushed
Georges away again, and he grew yet bolder.

"No, let me be. I don't care about it. It would be very wicked at
your age. Now listen--I'll always be your mamma."

A sudden feeling of shame overcame her. She was blushing
exceedingly, and yet not a soul could see her. The room behind them
was full of black night while the country stretched before them in
silence and lifeless solitude. Never had she known such a sense of
shame before. Little by little she felt her power of resistance
ebbing away, and that despite her embarrassed efforts to the
contrary. That disguise of his, that woman's shift and that
dressing jacket set her laughing again. It was as though a girl
friend were teasing her.

"Oh, it's not right; it's not right!" she stammered after a last
effort.

And with that, in face of the lovely night, she sank like a young
virgin into the arms of this mere child. The house slept.

Next morning at Les Fondettes, when the bell rang for lunch, the
dining-room table was no longer too big for the company. Fauchery
and Daguenet had been driven up together in one carriage, and after
them another had arrived with the Count de Vandeuvres, who had
followed by the next train. Georges was the last to come
downstairs. He was looking a little pale, and his eyes were sunken,
but in answer to questions he said that he was much better, though
he was still somewhat shaken by the violence of the attack. Mme
Hugon looked into his eyes with an anxious smile and adjusted his
hair which had been carelessly combed that morning, but he drew back
as though embarrassed by this tender little action. During the meal
she chaffed Vandeuvres very pleasantly and declared that she had
expected him for five years past.

"Well, here you are at last! How have you managed it?"

Vandeuvres took her remarks with equal pleasantry. He told her that
he had lost a fabulous sum of money at the club yesterday and
thereupon had come away with the intention of ending up in the
country.

"'Pon my word, yes, if only you can find me an heiress in these
rustic parts! There must be delightful women hereabouts."

The old lady rendered equal thanks to Daguenet and Fauchery for
having been so good as to accept her son's invitation, and then to
her great and joyful surprise she saw the Marquis de Chouard enter
the room. A third carriage had brought him.

"Dear me, you've made this your trysting place today!" she cried.
"You've passed word round! But what's happening? For years I've
never succeeded in bringing you all together, and now you all drop
in at once. Oh, I certainly don't complain."

Another place was laid. Fauchery found himself next the Countess
Sabine, whose liveliness and gaiety surprised him when he remembered
her drooping, languid state in the austere Rue Miromesnil drawing
room. Daguenet, on the other hand, who was seated on Estelle's
left, seemed slightly put out by his propinquity to that tall,
silent girl. The angularity of her elbows was disagreeable to him.
Muffat and Chouard had exchanged a sly glance while Vandeuvres
continued joking about his coming marriage.

"Talking of ladies," Mme Hugon ended by saying, "I have a new
neighbor whom you probably know."

And she mentioned Nana. Vandeuvres affected the liveliest
astonishment.

"Well, that is strange! Nana's property near here!"

Fauchery and Daguenet indulged in a similar demonstration while the
Marquis de Chouard discussed the breast of a chicken without
appearing to comprehend their meaning. Not one of the men had
smiled.

"Certainly," continued the old lady, "and the person in question
arrived at La Mignotte yesterday evening, as I was saying she would.
I got my information from the gardener this morning."

At these words the gentlemen could not conceal their very real
surprise. They all looked up. Eh? What? Nana had come down! But
they were only expecting her next day; they were privately under the
impression that they would arrive before her! Georges alone sat
looking at his glass with drooped eyelids and a tired expression.
Ever since the beginning of lunch he had seemed to be sleeping with
open eyes and a vague smile on his lips.

"Are you still in pain, my Zizi?" asked his mother, who had been
gazing at him throughout the meal.

He started and blushed as he said that he was very well now, but the
worn-out insatiate expression of a girl who has danced too much did
not fade from his face.

"What's the matter with your neck?" resumed Mme Hugon in an alarmed
tone. "It's all red."

He was embarrassed and stammered. He did not know--he had nothing
the matter with his neck. Then drawing his shirt collar up:

"Ah yes, some insect stung me there!"

The Marquis de Chouard had cast a sidelong glance at the little red
place. Muffat, too, looked at Georges. The company was finishing
lunch and planning various excursions. Fauchery was growing
increasingly excited with the Countess Sabine's laughter. As he was
passing her a dish of fruit their hands touched, and for one second
she looked at him with eyes so full of dark meaning that he once
more thought of the secret which had been communicated to him one
evening after an uproarious dinner. Then, too, she was no longer
the same woman. Something was more pronounced than of old, and her
gray foulard gown which fitted loosely over her shoulders added a
touch of license to her delicate, high-strung elegance.

When they rose from the table Daguenet remained behind with Fauchery
in order to impart to him the following crude witticism about
Estelle: "A nice broomstick that to shove into a man's hands!"  
Nevertheless, he grew serious when the journalist told him the
amount she was worth in the way of dowry.

"Four hundred thousand francs."

"And the mother?" queried Fauchery. "She's all right, eh?"

"Oh, SHE'LL work the oracle! But it's no go, my dear man!"

"Bah! How are we to know? We must wait and see."

It was impossible to go out that day, for the rain was still falling
in heavy showers. Georges had made haste to disappear from the
scene and had double-locked his door. These gentlemen avoided
mutual explanations, though they were none of them deceived as to
the reasons which had brought them together. Vandeuvres, who had
had a very bad time at play, had really conceived the notion of
lying fallow for a season, and he was counting on Nana's presence in
the neighborhood as a safeguard against excessive boredom. Fauchery
had taken advantage of the holidays granted him by Rose, who just
then was extremely busy. He was thinking of discussing a second
notice with Nana, in case country air should render them
reciprocally affectionate. Daguenet, who had been just a little
sulky with her since Steiner had come upon the scene, was dreaming
of resuming the old connection or at least of snatching some
delightful opportunities if occasion offered. As to the Marquis de
Chouard, he was watching for times and seasons. But among all those
men who were busy following in the tracks of Venus--a Venus with the
rouge scarce washed from her cheeks--Muffat was at once the most
ardent and the most tortured by the novel sensations of desire and
fear and anger warring in his anguished members. A formal promise
had been made him; Nana was awaiting him. Why then had she taken
her departure two days sooner than was expected?

He resolved to betake himself to La Mignotte after dinner that same
evening. At night as the count was leaving the park Georges fled
forth after him. He left him to follow the road to Gumieres,
crossed the Choue, rushed into Nana's presence, breathless, furious
and with tears in his eyes. Ah yes, he understood everything! That
old fellow now on his way to her was coming to keep an appointment!
Nana was dumfounded by this ebullition of jealousy, and, greatly
moved by the way things were turning out, she took him in her arms
and comforted him to the best of her ability. Oh no, he was quite
beside the mark; she was expecting no one. If the gentleman came it
would not be her fault. What a great ninny that Zizi was to be
taking on so about nothing at all! By her child's soul she swore
she loved nobody except her own Georges. And with that she kissed
him and wiped away his tears.

"Now just listen! You'll see that it's all for your sake," she went
on when he had grown somewhat calmer. "Steiner has arrived--he's up
above there now. You know, duckie, I can't turn HIM out of doors."

"Yes, I know; I'm not talking of HIM," whispered the boy.

"Very well then, I've stuck him into the room at the end. I said I
was out of sorts. He's unpacking his trunk. Since nobody's seen
you, be quick and run up and hide in my room and wait for me.

Georges sprang at her and threw his arms round her neck. It was
true after all! She loved him a little! So they would put the lamp
out as they did yesterday and be in the dark till daytime! Then as
the front-door bell sounded he quietly slipped away. Upstairs in
the bedroom he at once took off his shoes so as not to make any
noise and straightway crouched down behind a curtain and waited
soberly.

Nana welcomed Count Muffat, who, though still shaken with passion,
was now somewhat embarrassed. She had pledged her word to him and
would even have liked to keep it since he struck her as a serious,
practicable lover. But truly, who could have foreseen all that
happened yesterday? There was the voyage and the house she had
never set eyes on before and the arrival of the drenched little
lover! How sweet it had all seemed to her, and how delightful it
would be to continue in it! So much the worse for the gentleman!
For three months past she had been keeping him dangling after her
while she affected conventionality in order the further to inflame
him. Well, well! He would have to continue dangling, and if he
didn't like that he could go! She would sooner have thrown up
everything than have played false to Georges.

The count had seated himself with all the ceremonious politeness
becoming a country caller. Only his hands were trembling slightly.
Lust, which Nana's skillful tactics daily exasperated, had at last
wrought terrible havoc in that sanguine, uncontaminated nature. The
grave man, the chamberlain who was wont to tread the state
apartments at the Tuileries with slow and dignified step, was now
nightly driven to plunge his teeth into his bolster, while with sobs
of exasperation he pictured to himself a sensual shape which never
changed. But this time he was determined to make an end of the
torture. Coming along the highroad in the deep quiet of the
gloaming, he had meditated a fierce course of action. And the
moment he had finished his opening remarks he tried to take hold of
Nana with both hands.

"No, no! Take care!" she said simply. She was not vexed; nay, she
even smiled.

He caught her again, clenching his teeth as he did so. Then as she
struggled to get free he coarsely and crudely reminded her that he
had come to stay the night. Though much embarrassed at this, Nana
did not cease to smile. She took his hands and spoke very
familiarly in order to soften her refusal.

"Come now, darling, do be quiet! Honor bright, I can't: Steiner's
upstairs."

But he was beside himself. Never yet had she seen a man in such a
state. She grew frightened and put her hand over his mouth in order
to stifle his cries. Then in lowered tones she besought him to be
quiet and to let her alone. Steiner was coming downstairs. Things
were getting stupid, to be sure! When Steiner entered the room he
heard Nana remarking:

"I adore the country."

She was lounging comfortably back in her deep easy chair, and she
turned round and interrupted herself.

"It's Monsieur le Comte Muffat, darling. He saw a light here while
he was strolling past, and he came in to bid us welcome."

The two men clasped hands. Muffat, with his face in shadow, stood
silent for a moment or two. Steiner seemed sulky. Then they
chatted about Paris: business there was at a standstill; abominable
things had been happening on 'change. When a quarter of an hour had
elapsed Muffat took his departure, and, as the young woman was
seeing him to the door, he tried without success to make an
assignation for the following night. Steiner went up to bed almost
directly afterward, grumbling, as he did so, at the everlasting
little ailments that seemed to afflict the genus courtesan. The two
old boys had been packed off at last! When she was able to rejoin
him Nana found Georges still hiding exemplarily behind the curtain.
The room was dark. He pulled her down onto the floor as she sat
near him, and together they began playfully rolling on the ground,
stopping now and again and smothering their laughter with kisses
whenever they struck their bare feet against some piece of
furniture. Far away, on the road to Gumieres, Count Muffat walked
slowly home and, hat in hand, bathed his burning forehead in the
freshness and silence of the night.

During the days that followed Nana found life adorable. In the
lad's arms she was once more a girl of fifteen, and under the
caressing influence of this renewed childhood love's white flower
once more blossomed forth in a nature which had grown hackneyed and
disgusted in the service of the other sex. She would experience
sudden fits of shame, sudden vivid emotions, which left her
trembling. She wanted to laugh and to cry, and she was beset by
nervous, maidenly feelings, mingled with warm desires that made her
blush again. Never yet had she felt anything comparable to this.
The country filled her with tender thoughts. As a little girl she
had long wished to dwell in a meadow, tending a goat, because one
day on the talus of the fortifications she had seen a goat bleating
at the end of its tether. Now this estate, this stretch of land
belonging to her, simply swelled her heart to bursting, so utterly
had her old ambition been surpassed. Once again she tasted the
novel sensations experienced by chits of girls, and at night when
she went upstairs, dizzy with her day in the open air and
intoxicated by the scent of green leaves, and rejoined her Zizi
behind the curtain, she fancied herself a schoolgirl enjoying a
holiday escapade. It was an amour, she thought, with a young cousin
to whom she was going to be married. And so she trembled at the
slightest noise and dread lest parents should hear her, while making
the delicious experiments and suffering the voluptuous terrors
attendant on a girl's first slip from the path of virtue.

Nana in those days was subject to the fancies a sentimental girl
will indulge in. She would gaze at the moon for hours. One night
she had a mind to go down into the garden with Georges when all the
household was asleep. When there they strolled under the trees,
their arms round each other's waists, and finally went and laid down
in the grass, where the dew soaked them through and through. On
another occasion, after a long silence up in the bedroom, she fell
sobbing on the lad's neck, declaring in broken accents that she was
afraid of dying. She would often croon a favorite ballad of Mme
Lerat's, which was full of flowers and birds. The song would melt
her to tears, and she would break off in order to clasp Georges in a
passionate embrace and to extract from him vows of undying
affection. In short she was extremely silly, as she herself would
admit when they both became jolly good fellows again and sat up
smoking cigarettes on the edge of the bed, dangling their bare legs
over it the while and tapping their heels against its wooden side.

But what utterly melted the young woman's heart was Louiset's
arrival. She had an access of maternal affection which was as
violent as a mad fit. She would carry off her boy into the sunshine
outside to watch him kicking about; she would dress him like a
little prince and roll with him in the grass. The moment he arrived
she decided that he was to sleep near her, in the room next hers,
where Mme Lerat, whom the country greatly affected, used to begin
snoring the moment her head touched the pillow. Louiset did not
hurt Zizi's position in the least. On the contrary, Nana said that
she had now two children, and she treated them with the same wayward
tenderness. At night, more than ten times running, she