CHAPTER V

The “Blonde Venus” was being performed for the thirty-fourth time at the Variety Theatre. The first act had just ended. Simone, got up as a washerwoman, was in the green-room, standing before a mirror placed between the two doors that opened on to the passage leading to the dressing-rooms. She was all alone, and, lighted by the naked flames of the gas-jets on either side, was occupied in improving her make-up by passing a finger under her eyes.

“Do you know if he’s arrived yet?” asked Prullière, who entered in his costume of a Swiss admiral, with his long sword, his high boots, and his immense plume.

“Whom do you mean?” said Simone, without disturbing herself, and laughing at the glass so as to see her lips.

“The prince.”

“I don’t know, I’m going down. Ah! so he’s coming. He comes, then, every day! ”

Prullière walked up to the fire-place, which faced the mirror, and in which a coke fire was burning; two gas-jets were flaring away on either side. He raised his eyes and looked at the clock and the barometer, placed to the right and the left, and accompanied by gilded sphinxes in the style of the Empire. Then he buried himself in a vast high-backed arm-chair, the green velvet of which, worn and soiled by four generations of actors, had here and there turned to a yellowish hue, and he remained there immovable, his eyes vaguely gazing into space, in the weary and resigned attitude of actors accustomed to the “waits” between their cues. Old Bosc had just made his appearance, coughing and shuffling his feet, and wrapped in an old yellow box-coat, which had slipped off one shoulder and displayed King Dagobert’s laminated golden cassock. For an instant, after having placed his crown on the piano, without saying a word, he angrily stamped his feet, looking all the while, however, a thoroughly good-natured fellow, with his hands slightly shaking from an over-abuse of alcohol, whilst a long white beard gave a venerable appearance to his inflamed tippling-looking face. Then, as the silence was broken by a shower of rain and hail striking against the panes of the large square window which looked on to the court-yard, he made a gesture of disgust.

“What beastly weather! ” he grunted.

Neither Simone nor Prullière moved. On the walls four or five pictures, landscapes, and a portrait of Vernet the actor, were gradually turning yellow through the beat of the gas. On the shaft of a column a bust of Potier, one of the old glories of the Variety Theatre, looked on with its empty eyes. But there suddenly arose the sounds of a voice. It was Fontan, in his second act dress, that of a stylish young man, clothed all in yellow, and with yellow gloves on his hands.

“I say!” he cried, gesticulating, “don’t you know?—it’s my saint’s-day to-day.”

“Is it now, really?” asked Simone, going up to him with a smile, as though attracted by his long nose and his big comical mouth. “Were you, then, christened Achilles?”

“Exactly! And I’m going to tell Madame Bron to bring up some champagne, after the second act.”

For a moment past a bell had been heard tingling in the distance. The prolonged sound died away and then returned; and, when the bell finally left off ringing, a cry resounded which went up and down the staircase and was lost in the passages : “The overture’s on for the second act! The overture’s on for the second act!” This cry at length approached the green-room, and a pale little man passed before the doors shouting at the top of his shrill voice: “The overture’s on for the second act! ”

“The deuce! champagne!” said Prullière, without seeming to have noticed the row. “You are going it fine.”

“Were I you, I’d have it sent in from the café,” slowly observed old Bosc, who had seated himself on a bench covered with green velvet, his head resting against the wall.

But Simone said they ought not to forget Madame Bron’s little profit. She clapped her hands, delighted, devouring Fontan with her eyes, whilst his goat-like face kept moving with a continual play of the eyes, nose, and mouth. “Oh! that Fontan!” she murmured; “there is nobody like him, there is nobody like him!”

The two doors were wide open, showing the passage leading to the dressing-rooms; and along the yellow wall, vividly lighted up by an unseen gas-lamp, shadows were rapidly passing of men in various costumes, women, half-naked, wrapped in shawls, all the chorus of the second act, with the masqueraders of the “Boule Noire”; and from the end of the passage one could hear the sound of their feet stamping on the five wooden steps which led on to the stage. As tall Clarisse rapidly passed by, Simone called to her; but she answered that she would be back in a minute. And, in fact, she returned shortly afterwards, shivering in the thin tunic and sash which formed Iris’s costume.

“By Jove!” said she, “it isn’t very warm; and I’ve been and left my fur-cloak in my dressing-room!” Then, standing before the fire, warming her legs, the tights covering which showed the colour of the flesh beneath, she continued, “The prince has arrived.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the others inquisitively.

“Yes; I went to ascertain; I wanted to see. He is in the first stage-box on the right, the same as on Thursday. Well! it’s the third time he’s been in a week. Isn’t she lucky, Nana? I had bet that he wouldn’t come again.”

Simone opened her mouth, but her words were drowned by a fresh cry, which burst out close to the green-room. The shrill voice of the old call-boy shouted along the passage, “The curtain is going up!”

“Three times! Well, it’s becoming something surprising,” said Simone, as soon as she could be heard. “You know, he won’t go to her place; he takes her to his. And it seems it costs him a pretty penny.”

“Why, of course! one must pay for one’s enjoyments!” maliciously observed Prullière, rising to glance into the glass at his well-formed figure, which created such havoc among the occupants of the boxes.

“The curtain’s rising! the curtain’s rising!” repeated the old call-boy in the distance, as he hurried along the different passages.

Then Fontan, who knew what had taken place the first time between the prince and Nana, related the story to the two women who were squeezing up against him, and laughed very loud each time he stooped to give them certain details. Old Bosc, full of indifference, hadn’t moved. Such tales as that didn’t interest him. He was stroking a big tortoise-shell cat curled up asleep on the bench; and he ended by taking it in his arms with the tender simplicity of a crazy king. The cat arched its back; then, after sniffing a considerable while at his long white beard, disgusted, apparently, by the smell of the gum, it returned to the bench, where, curling itself up, it soon fell asleep. Bosc remained solemn and thoughtful.

“All the same, if I were you, I would have the champagne from the café; it will be much better,” said he suddenly to Fontan, as the latter finished his story.

“The curtain’s up!” drawlingly exclaimed the old call-boy in a cracked tone of voice. “The curtain’s up! the curtain’s up!”

The cry lasted for an instant, and then died away. There was a sound of scurrying footsteps; then the sudden opening of the door at the end of the passage admitted a blast of music, a distant hubbub, and the door closed again with a dull thud. Once more a heavy quiet reigned in the green-room, as though it were a hundred miles away from the crowded audience that was applauding vociferously. Simone and Clarisse were still talking of Nana. She never hurried herself!—only the night before she missed her entrance cue. But they stopped speaking as a tall girl thrust her head in at the door, then, seeing she had made a mistake, hurried off to the end of the passage. It was Satin, wearing a bonnet and veil, and looking like a lady out visiting. “A pretty piece of goods!” murmured Prullière, who had constantly been in the habit of seeing her for a year past at the Café des Variétés. And Simone related how Nana, having come across Satin, an old school-fellow of hers, had taken a great fancy to her, and was bothering Bordenave to bring her out.

“Hallo! good evening,” said Fontan, shaking hands with Fauchery and Mignon who just then entered.

Even old Bosc held out a finger, whilst the two women embraced Mignon.

“Is there a good house to-night?” inquired Fauchery.

“Oh! superb!” answered Prullière. “You should see how they’re all taking it in!”

“I say, my children,” remarked Mignon, “it’s time for you to go on, isn’t it?”

“Yes, shortly.” They did not appear till the fourth scene. Bosc alone rose, with the instinct of an old veteran of the boards who scents his cue from afar. And at that moment the old call-boy appeared at the door. “Monsieur Bosc! Mademoiselle Simone!” he cried.

Simone quickly threw a fur cloak over her shoulders, and hastened out. Bosc, without hurrying himself, fetched his crown and banged it on his head. Then, dragging his mantle after him, he went off, unsteady on his legs, grunting, and with the annoyed look of a man who has been disturbed.

“You said some very kind things in your last article,” remarked Fontan to Fauchery. “Only why did you state that comedians are vain?”

“Yes, young ’un, why did you say that?” exclaimed Mignon, bringing his enormous hands down on the journalist’s slender shoulders so roughly that the latter sank beneath the shock.

Prullière and Clarisse with difficulty refrained from laughing. For some time past the members of the company had been highly amused by a comedy that was being performed behind the scenes. Mignon, rendered furious by his wife’s infatuation, disgusted at seeing that Fauchery never contributed towards their expenses anything more than a questionable publicity, had conceived the brilliant idea of avenging himself by overwhelming the journalist with various proofs of his friendship. Every evening, when he met him behind the scenes, he quite belaboured him with blows, as though carried away by an excess of affection; and Fauchery, looking most puny beside this colossus, was obliged to submit, smiling the while in a constrained manner, so as not to quarrel with Rose’s husband.

“Ah! my fine fellow, so you insult Fontan!” resumed Mignon, continuing the farce. “Attention! One, two, and full in the chest!”

He had struck out and hit the young man so severe a blow that the latter remained for an instant very pale and quite speechless. But, with a wink of her eye, Clarisse drew the others’ attention to Rose Mignon, who was standing in the doorway. Rose had seen all that had passed. She went straight up to the journalist, as though unaware of her husband’s presence, and standing on tiptoe, her arms bare, and in her baby costume, she offered her forehead to him with a childish pout.

“Good evening, baby,” said Fauchery, familiarly kissing her.

That was his reward. Mignon pretended not to notice the embrace; every one kissed his wife at the theatre. But he laughed as he cast a rapid glance at the journalist. The latter would certainly pay dearly for Rose’s temerity. The door of the passage opened and shut, admitting the sound of tempestuous applause into the green-room. Simone had returned after going through her scene.

“Oh! old Bosc made such a hit!” cried she. “The prince was wriggling with laughter, and he applauded just like the others as though he had been paid to do so. I say, do you know the tall gentleman who is sitting beside the prince, in the stage-box? A handsome man, looking most dignified, and he’s got such lovely whiskers.”

“It’s Count Muffat,” replied Fauchery. “I know that the day before yesterday, at the Empress’s, the prince invited him to dinner for this evening. He probably prevailed upon him to come here afterwards.”

“Count Muffat! why we know his father-in-law, don’t we, Augustus?” asked Rose of Mignon. “You know the Marquis de Chouard, at whose house I went to sing? He is also here to-night. I noticed him at the back of a box. He’s an old—”

Prullière, who had just placed the hat with the enormous plume on his head, turned round and called to her, “Hi! Rose, look sharp!”

She hurried after him, without finishing her sentence. At this moment the doorkeeper of the theatre, Madame Bron, passed by, carrying an enormous bouquet. Simone jokingly asked if it was for her; but the old woman, without answering, indicated with her chin the door of Nana’s dressing-room at the end of the passage. That Nana! how they covered her with flowers. Then, as she returned, Madame Bron handed a letter to Clarisse, who muttered an oath beneath her breath. Again that confounded La Faloise! there was a fellow who wouldn’t leave her alone! And when she heard that the gentleman was waiting in the doorkeeper’s room, she exclaimed, “Tell him I’ll come down when the act is over. I mean to smack his face.”

Fontan rushed forward, shouting, “Madame Bron, listen—now listen, Madame Bron. After the act bring up six bottles of champagne.”

But the old call-boy reappeared, quite out of breath, repeating in a singsong voice, “Every one on the stage! every one on the stage! Be quick, M. Fontan! Be quick! be quick!”

“Yes, yes, I’m going, old Barillot,” replied Fontan, quite bewildered; and, running after Madame Bron, he continued, “Now you understand? Six bottles of champagne, in the green-room, after the act. It’s my saint’s-day; I’m going to stand treat.”

Simone and Clarisse had gone off, making a great noise with their skirts. When they had all left, and the door at the end of the passage was once more closed, one could hear in the silence of the green-room the sound of a fresh shower striking against the window panes. Barillot, a little pale old man, who had been call-boy at the theatre for thirty years past, went familiarly up to Mignon and offered him his snuff-box. This pinch of snuff offered and accepted procured him a minute’s rest in his continual running up and down the stairs and passages. There was still, to be sure, Madame Nana, as he called her; but she only did as she chose, and never cared a fig for the fines. When she chose to miss her cue, she missed it. He stopped suddenly, murmuring in astonishment:

“Why! here she is; she’s actually ready! She must know that the prince is there.”

Nana had, indeed, appeared in the passage, dressed as a fisherwoman, her arms and face all white, excepting two dabs of colour under her eyes. She did not enter the green-room, but simply nodded to Mignon and Fauchery.

“Good-day, how are you?”

Mignon alone shook the hand she held out; and Nana continued on her way in queenly style, followed by her dresser, who, as she trod close on her heels, bent down to give a finishing touch to the folds of her skirt. Then, behind the dresser, bringing up the rear of the procession, came Satin, trying to look very lady-like, and really feeling bored to death.

“And Steiner?” suddenly queried Mignon.

“Monsieur Steiner left yesterday for the Loiret,” said Barillot, who was returning to the stage. “I believe he is going to purchase a country residence there.”

“Ah! yes, I know; an estate for Nana.”

Mignon became very grave. That Steiner had once promised Rose a mansion! Well, it was of no use quarrelling with anybody; it was an opportunity which he had lost, and which he must regain. Full of thought, but still quite master of himself, Mignon walked up and down from the fire-place to the mirror. There were only he and Fauchery left in the green-room. The journalist, feeling tired, had just stretched himself out in the easy-chair; and he kept very quiet, his eyes half closed, beneath the glances which the other gave him as he passed to and fro. When they were alone, Mignon disdained to pommel him. What would have been the use? as no one would have been there to enjoy the fun. He cared too little about the matter to find any amusement for himself in playing the bantering husband. Fauchery, thankful for this short respite, was languidly stretching his legs out before the fire, as his eyes wandered from the barometer to the clock. Mignon interrupted his walk for a moment, and stood before the bust of Potier, which he looked at without seeing. Then he went and placed himself at the window opening on to the dark court-yard beneath. It had left off raining, and a profound silence had succeeded, whilst the atmosphere had become closer through the heat of the coke fire and the flaring of the gas-jets. Not a sound could be heard from the stage. The staircase and the passages were as still as the tomb. It was the hushed peacefulness occasioned by the end of an act, when all the company are on the stage joining in the deafening uproar of some finale, whilst the empty green-room is under the influence of asphyxia.

“Oh! the strumpets!” suddenly exclaimed Bordenave, in a hoarse voice.

He had only just arrived, and he was already bellowing at two of his chorus-girls, who had almost fallen down on the stage through playing the fool. When he saw Mignon and Fauchery he called them to him to show them something: the prince had just requested permission to compliment Nana in her dressing-room, between the acts. But as he was taking them on to the stage, the stage-manager passed.

“Just fine those hussies, Fernande and Maria!” shouted Bordenave, furiously. Then calming himself, and trying to look dignified like a father and a nobleman, after passing his handkerchief over his face, he added, “I will go and receive His Highness.”

The curtain fell amidst thunders of applause. Immediately there was a regular stampede in the semi-obscurity of the stage, no longer under the glare of the foot-lights; the actors and the supers were hastening to reach their dressing-rooms, whilst the carpenters were rapidly changing the scenery. Simone and Clarisse, however, remained at the back of the stage, whispering together. During the last scene, between two of their lines, they had just arranged a little affair. Clarisse, after thinking the matter over, preferred not to see La Faloise, who no longer wished to leave her to go with Gaga. It would be better for Simone quietly to explain to him that it was not the thing to stick to a woman to that extent. In short, she was to send him about his business.

Then Simone, dressed as a washerwoman in a comic opera, with her fur cape thrown over her shoulders, descended the narrow winding staircase, with its greasy stairs and its damp walls, which led to the doorkeeper’s room. This room, situated between the actors’ and manager’s staircases, shut in on the right and the left by some glass partitioning, was like a huge transparent lantern, inside which two gas-jets were flaring high. A set of pigeon-holes was crammed full of letters and newspapers. On the table bouquets of flowers were lying beside forgotten dirty plates and an old bodice, the button-holes of which the doorkeeper was occupied in mending. And, in the midst of all this disorder, similar to the confusion of a lumber-room, some fashionable gentlemen, stylishly dressed and wearing light kid gloves, occupied the four old rush-bottomed chairs, with patient and submissive looks, and quickly turning their heads each time Madame Bron returned from the interior of the theatre with answers for them. She had just handed a note to a young man, who hastened to open it beneath the gas-jet in the hall, and who turned slightly pale as his eyes encountered this classic phrase, which he had so often read before in the same place, “Not to-night, ducky; I’m engaged.” La Faloise was on one of the chairs at the end of the room, between the table and stove. He seemed ready to pass the evening there, looking rather anxious though, and keeping his long legs under his chair because a litter of little black kittens were gambolling around him, whilst the mother sat staring at him with her yellow eyes.

“What! you here, Mademoiselle Simone? Whatever do you want?” asked the doorkeeper.

Simone wished La Faloise to be sent out to her; but Madame Bron could not see to this at once. In a sort of deep cupboard, under the stairs, she kept a little bar where the supers came to drink between the acts, and as she then had four or five big fellows there, still dressed as masqueraders at the “Boule Noire,” all of them in a great hurry and clamouring for drink, she was a little bit flurried. By the aid of the gas that was blazing away in the cupboard, one could distinguish a table covered with a sheet of tin, and several shelves stocked with partly emptied bottles. When the door of this coal-hole was opened there issued from it a violent stench of alcohol, which mingled with the smell of burnt fat that always pervaded the room, and the strong perfume of the bouquets left on the table.

“So,” resumed the doorkeeper, when she had finished serving the supers, “it’s the little dark fellow over there that you want to speak to?”

“No, don’t be absurd!” said Simone. “It’s the thin one sitting beside the stove—the one your cat’s snuffing the trousers of.”

And she led La Faloise into the hall, whilst the other gentlemen, though half suffocating, appeared as resigned as ever, and the supers stood drinking on the stairs, indulging among themselves in a good deal of noisy drunken horse-play. Upstairs, Bordenave was yelling at the scene-shifters, who were still engaged in changing the scenery. They were such a time; it was done on purpose; the prince would receive some of it on his head.

“Now then! shove away—all together!” exclaimed the chief of the gang.

At length the drop scene at the back was raised, and the stage was free. Mignon, who had been watching for Fauchery, seized this opportunity of continuing his delicate attentions. He caught him up in his strong arms, crying out, “Take care! that pole almost fell on you.”

And he carried him off, and even shook him before placing him on the ground again. Fauchery turned pale as the workmen roared with laughter, his lips quivered, and he was on the point of giving vent to his passion, whilst Mignon went on in a most good-natured sort of way, slapping him affectionately on the shoulder almost hard enough to double him up, and saying each time, “You know I am very anxious about your health! By Jove! I should be in a fine way if any accident happened to you!”

But a whisper passed from mouth to mouth, “The prince! the prince!” And every one looked towards the little door that gave access to the auditorium. At first one could only see Bordenave’s round back and his butcher’s neck, as he puffed and blowed and bent himself double in a series of obsequious bows. Then appeared the prince, tall and strong, wearing a fair beard, his complexion of a deep rose colour, and looking altogether like a solid man about town, whose well-shaped figure was discernible beneath an irreproachably fitting overcoat. He was followed by Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard. The corner of the theatre where they were was very dark, and they almost disappeared among the big ever-moving shadows. To speak to this son of a queen, the future inheritor of a throne, Bordenave had adopted the tones of a lion-tamer’s voice trembling with a pretended emotion. He kept saying:

“If your Highness will kindly follow me—Will Your Highness deign to pass this way? Your Highness, please to take care—”

The prince did not hurry himself in the least; on the contrary, he waited and watched the scene-shifters with a good deal of interest. A float had just been lowered from the flies, and the row of flaring gas-jets, encompassed in wire net-work, shed a brilliant light upon the stage. Muffat, never having been behind the scenes of a theatre before, was especially lost in astonishment, and was seized with an unpleasant sensation, a vague repugnance mixed with fear. He looked up towards the flies, where other floats, the gas-lights of which were turned down, appeared like so many constellations of little blue stars in all the chaos of the light wooden frame-work, and the ropes and pulleys of different sizes, of the hanging-stages, and the back-drops spread out aloft, looking like immense cloths hung out to dry.

“Let go!” suddenly exclaimed the head scene-shifter.

And the prince himself was obliged to warn the count. One of the drop-scenes was being lowered. They were placing the scenery of the third act—the grotto in Mount Etna. Some men were fixing poles in openings made for the purpose in the flooring; others fetched the frames, which were leaning against the walls, and fastened them to the poles with strong cords. At the back of the stage a lamp-lighter was lighting a number of red lamps, to produce the reflection of Vulcan’s fiery forge. There seemed to be great confusion and hustling about, yet the least movements were regulated; whilst, amidst all this hurry, the prompter walked slowly up and down to stretch his legs.

“Your Highness overwhelms me,” Bordenave was saying, still continuing to bow. “The theatre is not large; we do the best we can. Now, if Your Highness will deign to follow me—”

Count Muffat had already moved off in the direction of the passage leading to the dressing-rooms. The rather sharp incline of the stage surprised him, and his uneasiness was to a great extent caused by these boards, which seemed to move beneath his feet. Through the open trap-doors he could see the gas-lights burning beneath. It was quite an underground world, with deep and obscure abysses, from which arose the sound of men’s voices, and the musty smell peculiar to cellars. But, as he passed along, a slight incident detained him. Two little women, dressed for the third act, were conversing together before the peep-hole of the curtain. One of them, leaning forward and widening the opening with her fingers, so as to see better, was looking round the house.

“I see him,” she suddenly exclaimed. “Oh! what a mug!”

Bordenave, awfully scandalized, only restrained himself with difficulty from kicking her behind; but the prince smiled, looking delighted and excited at having overheard the words, whilst he gazed tenderly on the little woman, who didn’t care a fig for His Highness. She laughed impudently. However, Bordenave at length induced the prince to follow him. Count Muffat, all in a perspiration, removed his hat. What inconvenienced him most was the closeness of the atmosphere, which had become overheated and, so to say, thick, and in which hovered a very strong smell—that odour of behind the scenes, stinking of gas, the glue of the scenery, the mouldy dirt in out-of-the-way corners, and the unwashed bodies of the female supers. In the passage the oppressiveness increased. The stench of dirty water, the perfume of scented soaps, escaped from the dressing-rooms, mingled now and again with the poisonous exhalations of foul breaths. As he passed, the count rapidly glanced up the staircase, struck by the sudden flood of light and warmth which descended upon him. From above came sounds of people washing, laughing, and calling to one another, a great noise of opening and shutting of doors, emitting feminine odours, the musk of the make-up mixed with the smell of perspiring heads of yellowy-red hair. He did not linger, but hastened his footsteps, almost flying under the emotion caused by this sudden glimpse of a world hitherto unknown to him.

“Well, a theatre is a curious place, is it not?” observed the Marquis de Chouard, with the delighted manner of a man finding himself once more at home.

But Bordenave had at length reached Nana’s dressing-room at the end of the passage. He coolly turned the door handle; then, standing aside, said, “If Your Highness will please to enter.”

There was a cry of a woman taken by surprise, and one saw Nana, naked to the waist, run and hide herself behind a curtain, whilst her dresser, who had been occupied in drying her, was left standing with the towel in her hands.

“Oh! how stupid it is to enter a room like that!” exclaimed Nana from her hiding-place. “Don’t come in; you see very well you cannot come in!”

Bordenave seemed put out by this bashfulness. “Don’t run away, my dear; there is not the slightest necessity for doing so,” said he. “His Highness is here. Come, don’t be a child.” And, as she refused to appear, being slightly startled still, though, nevertheless, already beginning to laugh, he added, in a grumpy, paternal tone of voice, “Why, bless me! these gentlemen know very well what a woman’s like. They won’t eat you.”

“But that is not certain,” gallantly observed the prince.

Every one laughed, courtier-like, in a most exaggerated manner. A most witty remark, thoroughly Parisian, according to Bordenave. Nana no longer answered. The curtain shook; no doubt she was making up her mind to appear. Then Count Muffat, who had become very red in the face, looked about him. It was a square room, very low in the ceiling, and hung throughout with some light West Indian material. A curtain of the same stuff, hanging on a brass rod, completely shut off one end of the chamber. Two large windows looked out on to the courtyard of the theatre, at a distance of only a few feet from a leprous-looking wall, on to which, in the darkness of the night, the panes of glass reflected a series of yellow squares. A big cheval-glass^ak stood opposite a marble dressing-table, which was covered with innumerable glass bottles and pots containing hair oils, scents, face powders, and all the ingredients necessary for making up. Approaching the mirror, the count caught sight of his own red face, with beads of perspiration resting on his forehead. He lowered his eyes, and proceeded to place himself before the dressing-table, on which a basin full of soapy water, some wet sponges, and various little ivory implements scattered about seemed to absorb his mind for a while. The same dizzy feeling he had experienced on the occasion of his visit to Nana, in the Boulevard Haussmann, again seized hold of him. He seemed to sink deeper into the thick carpet beneath his feet; the gas-jets burning on either side of the dressing-table and the cheval-glass were like the hissing flames of a furnace surrounding his temples. One minute, fearful of fainting away under the influence of all the feminine odour, full of warmth, and rendered ten times more pronounced by the lowness of the ceiling, which he encountered for the second time, he seated himself on the edge of the well-padded sofa that occupied the space between the two windows. But he rose up again almost immediately, and returned to the dressing-table, no longer to examine anything, but with a vague expression in his eyes, and thinking of a bouquet of tuberoses which had been allowed to fade in his room a long time ago, their powerful smell having nearly killed him. When tuberoses decay they emit a kind of human odour.

“Do be quick!” whispered Bordenave, passing his head behind the curtain.

The prince, meanwhile, was complaisantly listening to the Marquis de Chouard, who, having taken up a hare’s foot from the dressing-table, was explaining how actresses put on the powder with it. Satin, sitting in a corner, with her virgin-like face, was staring at the gentlemen; whilst the dresser, Madame Jules, was preparing the tunic and tights composing Venus’s costume. Madame Jules no longer had an age; her face had much the appearance of parchment, and her features were immovable, like those of old maids whom no one has ever known to have been young. She had dried up in the heated atmosphere of the dressing-rooms, in the midst of the most celebrated legs and breasts of Paris. She always wore a faded black dress, and over her flat and sexless bosom a forest of pins were stuck next to the heart.

“You must excuse me, gentlemen,” said Nana, drawing aside the curtain. “I was taken by surprise.”

Every one turned towards her. She had not dressed herself at all, but had merely buttoned up a little cambric chemisette, which only half hid her bosom. When the gentlemen surprised her, she had but partly undressed herself, having rapidly doffed her fisher-woman’s costume, and the end of her chemise could be seen protruding through the opening in her drawers. With bare arms and shoulders and firm projecting breasts, in her adorable freshness of a plump young blonde, she continued to hold the curtain with one hand, as though ready to draw it again should the least thing occur to scare her.

“Yes, I was taken by surprise. I shall never dare—” stammered she, pretending to be very much confused, blushing down to her neck, and smiling in an embarrassed sort of way.

“Oh! nonsense!” exclaimed Bordenave; “you look very well as you are!”

She risked a few more of her hesitating, ingenuous ways, quivering the while as though she was being tickled, and repeating, “His Highness honours me too much. I beg His Highness to excuse me for receiving him in such a condition—”

“It is I, madame, who am obtrusive,” said the prince; “but I could not resist the desire of coming to compliment you.”

Then, in order to get to her dressing-table, she quietly walked in her drawers through the midst of the gentlemen, who all made way for her. Around her substantial hips her drawers looked like a balloon, as, with chest expanded, she continued to greet her visitors with her sly smile. Suddenly she appeared to recognise Count Muffat, and she shook hands with him as a friend. Then she scolded him for not having come to her supper. His Highness deigned to chaff Muffat, who stuttered out an explanation, trembling at the idea of having held in his hot hand for a second those tiny fingers, that were as cool as the water they had just been washed in. The count had dined well at the prince’s, who was a great eater and a splendid drinker. They were both, in fact, slightly tipsy, although they did not show it. To hide his confusion Muffat was only able to make a remark about the heat.

“How very warm it is in here,” said he. “However do you manage to exist in such a temperature, madame?”

And the conversation was about to start from that, when the sound of loud voices was heard at the door. Bordenave slid aside a little board that closed a convent-like peep-hole. It was Fontan, who was accompanied by Prullière and Bosc, all three carrying bottles of champagne under their arms, and with their hands full of glasses. He knocked, he shouted that it was his saint’s-day and that he was standing champagne. Nana, with a look, consulted the prince. Why, of course! His Highness did not wish to be in anyone’s way, he would be only too delighted! But without waiting for the permission, Fontan entered the room, saying:

“I’m not ill-bred; I stand champagne—”

But he suddenly caught sight of the prince, whom he did not know was there. He stopped short, and putting on a ludicrously solemn look, he said:

“King Dagobert is outside, and requests the honour of drinking with Your Royal Highness.”

The prince having smiled, everyone thought it very witty. The dressing-room, however, was too small for all these people. They were obliged to huddle up together, Satin and Madame Jules at the end of the room, against the curtain, and the gentlemen close to each other around Nana, who was half-naked. The three actors were still in their second act costumes. While Prullière took off his Swiss admiral’s hat, the immense plume of which would have touched the ceiling, Bosc, in his purple cassock and his tin crown, steadied himself on his drunken legs, and greeted the prince like a monarch receiving the son of a powerful neighbour. The wine was poured out and they clinked glasses.

“I drink to Your Highness!” said old Bosc, right royally.

“To the army!” added Prullière.

“To Venus!” shouted Fontan.

The prince complaisantly balanced his glass in his hand. He waited, and then bowed thrice, murmuring, “Madame—admiral—sire.”

And he swallowed the wine at a draught. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had done the same. There was no more jesting now, they were all at court. This theatrical world was making them forget the real one, with a serious farce performed beneath the hot glare of the gas. Nana, forgetting that she was in her drawers and displaying the tail of her chemise, acted the grand lady, Queen Venus, opening her private apartments to the great personages of the state. To every sentence she uttered she added the words “royal highness,” which she accompanied with curtsies, and she treated those masqueraders, Bosc and Prullière, in the style of a queen accompanied by her prime minister. And no one smiled at the strange mixture, of a real prince, heir to a throne, who was drinking a stroller’s champagne, quite at his ease in this carnival of the gods, in this masquerade of royalty, in the midst of a crowd composed of dressers and strumpets, players and exhibitors of women. Bordenave, carried away by the scene, was thinking of the money he would make if His Highness would only consent to appear like that in the second act of the “Blonde Venus.”

“I say!” he exclaimed, becoming very familiar. “I’ll have all my little women down.”

But Nana objected, though she was beginning to forget herself. Fontan attracted her with his grotesque face. She kept close to his side, looking tenderly at him like a pregnant woman with a longing for something the reverse of nice; suddenly she addressed him most familiarly:

“Come, pour out, you big ninny!”

Fontan filled the glasses again, and they drank, repeating the same toasts.

“His Highness!”

“The army!”

“Venus!”

But Nana motioned for silence. She held her glass high above her head, and said, “No, no, we must drink to Fontan! It’s Fontan’s saint’s-day. To Fontan! Fontan!”

Then they clinked glasses a third time, and they all exclaimed “Fontan.” The prince, who had noticed the young woman devour the actor with her eyes, bowed to him.

“M. Fontan,” said he, with true politeness, “I drink to your successes.”

Meanwhile His Highness’s overcoat was rubbing against the marble dressing-table behind him. It was like being in the depths of an alcove, or a narrow bath-room, with this vapour from the basin and the sponges, the strong perfume from the scents mixed with the slightly sourish intoxicating odour of the champagne. The prince and Count Muffat, between whom Nana now found herself, were obliged to hold up their hands so as not to touch her hips or her bosom each time they moved. And Madame Jules, without the least sign of perspiration, was waiting, standing as erect as a post; whilst Satin, with all her vice, astonished at seeing a prince and gentlemen in evening-dress join in a lot of mummers in running after a naked woman, thought to herself that fashionable people were not so very virtuous after all.

Old Barillot now came along the passage tingling his bell. When he appeared at the dressing-room door and saw the three actors still in their second act costumes, he was almost dumb-foundered.

“Oh! gentlemen, gentlemen,” he stammered out, “do be quick. The bell has just rung in the foyer.”

“Never mind!” said Bordenave, coolly; “the audience can wait.”

Nevertheless, as the bottles were empty, the actors went up to dress, after again bowing. Bosc, having soaked his beard with champagne, had taken it off, and beneath the venerable appendage the drunkard had suddenly reappeared, with the diseased and purple face of an old actor who had taken to drink. He was heard at the foot of the stair-case saying to Fontan, in his hoarse voice, in allusion to the prince:

“Now, didn’t I astonish him?”

His Highness, the count, and the marquis still remained with Nana. Bordenave had gone off with Barillot, after ordering him not to have the curtain raised without first warning madame.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Nana, as she proceeded to make up her face and arms again with more than ordinary care on account of the nudity of the third act. The prince seated himself on the sofa with the Marquis de Chouard. Only Count Muffat remained standing. The couple of glasses of champagne, taken in that suffocating atmosphere, had increased their intoxication. Satin, seeing the gentlemen shut in with her friend, had discreetly retired behind the curtain, and there she waited, seated on a trunk, tired of doing nothing; whilst Madame Jules quietly moved about the room, without a word, and without looking either to the right or to the left.

“You sang your rondeau marvellously well,” observed the prince.

Then the conversation was established, but only in short phrases, broken by numerous pauses. Nana could not always be answering. After spreading some cold cream over her face and arms with her hand, she laid on the white paint with the corner of a towel. For an instant she ceased looking at herself in the glass, and smiled as she glanced at the prince, without, however, laying down the towel and the paint.

“Your Highness is spoiling me,” she murmured.

The making-up was a most complicated business, which the Marquis de Chouard followed with extreme delight. He, also, ventured an observation.

“Could not the orchestra,” he asked, “accompany you more softly? It drowns your voice, and that is an unpardonable crime.”

This time Nana did not turn round. She had taken the hare’s foot, and was passing it very lightly and carefully over her face, leaning so forward over the dressing-table as to cause the rounded portion of her white drawers to swell out, the corner of her chemise still protruding. To show that she was sensible of the old gentleman’s compliment, she slightly moved her hips. A pause ensued. Madame Jules had observed a rent in the drawers. She took one of the pins stuck over her heart, and remained kneeling for a moment on the ground, occupied about Nana’s leg; whilst the young woman, without appearing to know that she was there, was covering herself with powder, being careful, however, not to lay any on the upper part of her cheeks. When the prince remarked that, if she came to sing in London, all England would want to applaud her, she laughed pleasantly, and turned herself round for a second, her left cheek very white in the midst of a cloud of powder. Then she suddenly became very serious: she was about to put on the rouge. Once more, standing with her face close to the glass, she dipped her finger in a pot, and applied the rouge under her eyes, spreading it gently up to the temples. The gentlemen maintained a respectful silence.

Count Muffat had scarcely said a word: he was immersed in thoughts of his youth. The room he had when a child had been very cold. Later on, when sixteen years old, he used to kiss his mother every night, and would then feel, even in his sleep, the icy coldness of her embrace. One day, as he passed a half-closed door, he caught a glimpse of a maid-servant washing herself; and that was the only reminiscence that had troubled him from the age of puberty to the day of his marriage. Then he had encountered in his wife a strict observance of conjugal duties; he himself experienced a sort of devout repugnance. He grew up, he grew old, ignorant of the ways of the flesh, bent to rigid religious practices, having regulated his life according to precepts and laws; and suddenly he found himself deposited in this actress’s dressing-room, in company of this almost naked girl. He who had never even seen Countess Muffat put on her garters was now assisting at the most secret details of a woman’s toilet, in the midst of that fascinating and powerful odour, surrounded by all those pots and basins. His whole being revolted; the slow possession that Nana had taken of him for some little time past terrified him, as it recalled to his mind the pious stories he had read in his childhood of persons possessed by devils. He believed in the devil. In his confused state of mind, Nana, with her smiles and her body full of vice, was the devil in person. But he would be strong; he would know how to defend himself.

“Then that is settled,” the prince was saying, as he took his ease on the sofa. “Next year you come to London, and you will receive such a welcome that you will never return to France. Ah! my dear count, you do not value your pretty women sufficiently. We shall take them all from you.”

“He will not miss them,” maliciously murmured the Marquis de Chouard, who threw off his mask on such occasions as the present. “The count is virtue itself.”

Hearing the count’s virtue spoken of, Nana looked at him in so peculiar a manner that Muffat felt greatly annoyed. Then he was surprised at having given way to the feeling, and became angry with himself. Why should the fact of his being virtuous embarrass him in the presence of that girl? He could have beaten her. But Nana, reaching over for a hair pencil, let it fall; and as she stooped to pick it up, he hastened to anticipate her. Their breaths mingled, and Venus’s golden locks fell over his hands. It was a pleasure alloyed with remorse—one of those pleasures of Catholics whom the fear of hell is perpetually goading when in sin.

Just then old Barillot’s voice was heard outside. “Madame, may I give the signal? The audience is becoming very impatient.”

“Presently,” replied Nana, without hurrying herself.

She had dipped the hair pencil into a pot of black; then, her nose almost touching the looking-glass, her left eye closed, she delicately painted the lashes. Muffat stood behind her, looking on. He saw her in the glass, with her plump shoulders and her neck drowned in a roseate shadow; and he could not, in spite of his efforts, withdraw his gaze from that face rendered so provoking by the closed eye, and full of dimples, as though transported with desires. When she shut her right eye, and applied the pencil, he felt that he belonged to her wholly.

“Madame,” again cried the panting voice of the old call-boy, “they are stamping their feet; they will end by smashing the seats. May I give the signal?”

“Oh! damn ’em!” said Nana angrily. “Give the signal; I don’t care! If I’m not ready, well! they’ll have to wait for me.” Suddenly calming herself, she turned towards the gentlemen, and added with a smile, “It’s true; one can’t even have a few minutes’ quiet conversation.”

She had now finished her face and arms. She added, with her finger, two broad streaks of carmine to her lips. Count Muffat felt more agitated still, bewitched by the perversion of the powders and the pigments, seized with an inordinate desire for that painted beauty, with her mouth too red and her face too white, her eyes enlarged, ardent and circled with black, as though wounded by love. However, Nana passed behind the curtain for a moment to get into Venus’s tights, after taking off her drawers. Then, without the least shame, she doffed her chemisette, and held out her arms to Madame Jules, who slipped on the short sleeves of the tunic.

“Now, let me dress you quick, as they are making a disturbance!” murmured the old woman.

The prince, with half closed eyes, examined the symmetry of her neck and chest with the eye of a connoisseur, whilst the Marquis de Chouard wagged his head involuntarily. Muffat, in order that he might see no more, gazed down at the carpet. Venus was now ready, as that gauze drapery was all that she wore over her shoulders. Madame Jules hovered round her, looking like an old woman carved out of wood, with clear, expressionless eyes, and every now and then she kept taking pins from the inexhaustible cushion over her heart to pin Venus’s tunic, passing her bony hands over those next to naked rolls of fat, without their awakening in her mind a single recollection, and with the greatest indifference for her sex.

“There!” said the young woman, as she gave a last look at herself in the glass.

Bordenave came back, very anxious, saying that the third act had commenced.

“Well! I am ready,” resumed she. “What a fuss to make! I always have to wait for the others.”

The gentlemen left the dressing-room, but they did not say good-bye, the prince having a desire to witness the third act from the wings. Left alone, Nana looked about her with surprise.

“Wherever has she got to?” asked she.

She was seeking Satin. When she at length found her behind the curtain, sitting waiting on the trunk, Satin quietly said, “I certainly didn’t intend to be in your way there, with all those men!” And she added that she would now go off. But Nana stopped her. She must be cracked to think of such a thing, when Bordenave had consented to engage her! They could settle the matter after the performance. Satin hesitated. It was altogether such a queer place, nothing like anything she had been used to. In spite of all this, however, she remained.

As the prince descended the little wooden staircase, a strange noise, a mixture of stifled oaths and stampings of feet as of men struggling, reached him from the other side of the theatre. It was caused by an occurrence that quite scared the actors and actresses awaiting their cues. For some little while Mignon had been amusing himself again by overwhelming Fauchery with delicate attentions. He had just imagined a little game, which consisted in every now and then snapping his fingers close to the journalistic nose, to keep the flies off, as he said. This little business naturally amused the onlookers immensely. But suddenly, Mignon, carried away by his success, taking a greater interest in the performance, gave the journalist what was really a blow, and a good hard blow too. This time he had gone too far. Fauchery could not, in the presence of the others, smilingly receive such a punch on the nose. And the two men, putting an end to the comedy, their faces livid and full of hate, had sprung at each others’ throats. They rolled about the stage, behind one of the side-scenes, calling each other the vilest names imaginable.

“M. Bordenave! M. Bordenave!” cried the terrified stage-manager, panting for breath.

Bordenave followed him, after having begged to be excused by the prince. When he recognised Fauchery and Mignon on the ground, he made a gesture implying that he was very much put out. Really, they chose a nice time, with His Highness on the other side of the scenery, and all the audience, who could overhear them! To complete his annoyance, Rose Mignon arrived, all out of breath, and at the moment she had to go on the stage. Vulcan gave her her cue, but Rose remained as though petrified, as she caught sight of her husband and her lover lying at her feet, strangling each other, struggling together, their hair all in disorder, their clothes covered with dust. She was unable to pass them, and one of the scene-shifters only just succeeded in catching hold of Fauchery’s hat as it was rolling into view of the audience. Vulcan, who had meanwhile interpolated a string of gag to amuse the audience, again gave Rose her cue. But she stood watching the two men, without moving.

“Don’t look at them!” angrily whispered Bordenave behind her. “Go on! go on! It’s nothing to do with you! You’re missing your cue!”

And, pushed forward by him, Rose stepped over the prostrate bodies, and found herself before the audience in the glare of the footlights. She had not understood why they were on the ground fighting together. All in a tremble, and with a buzzing in her ears, she walked towards the conductor with the bewitching smile of an amorous Diana, and gave the first line of her duo in so warm a voice, that she received quite an ovation. But she could still hear the two men pommelling each other at the side. They had now rolled to within a few steps of the footlights. Fortunately the noise of the band prevented the sound of the blows reaching the audience.

“Damnation!” exclaimed Bordenave, exasperated, when he had at length succeeded in separating the pair, “couldn’t you go and fight it out in your own place? You know very well I don’t like this sort of thing. You, Mignon, you will do me the pleasure of remaining here, on the prompt side; and you, Fauchery, I’ll kick you out of the theatre if you dare to leave the o.p.^al side. Now, that’s understood, eh? Prompt side and o.p. side, or else I’ll forbid Rose to bring you here again.”

When he returned to the prince, the latter asked what had been the matter. “Oh! nothing at all,” he calmly murmured.

Nana, wrapped in a fur cloak, stood talking to the gentlemen while she waited for her cue. As Count Muffat advanced to obtain a view of the stage between two side scenes, he understood from a sign of the stage-manager that he must tread softly. All was quiet up above. In the wings, which were most brilliantly lighted up, a few persons were standing talking in whispers, or moving off on tiptoe. The gas-man was at his post, close to the complicated collection of taps; a fireman, leaning against one of the supports, was stretching his neck trying to get a glimpse of the performance; whilst the man who manœuvred the curtain was waiting on his seat up aloft, with a resigned look on his countenance, quite ignoring the piece and merely listening for the bell which directed his movements. And, in the midst of this stifling atmosphere and the faint noise caused by the light footsteps and the low whispers, the sound of the voices of the actors on the stage seemed strange and hushed, and surprisingly out of tune. Then, farther off, beyond the din of the orchestra, there was the audience breathing as with one immense respiration, which now and again swelled as it broke out in murmurs, laughter, and applause. One could feel the public without seeing it, even when it was silent.

“There is something open,” said Nana suddenly, drawing her fur cloak closer around her. “Look and see, Barillot. I’m sure some one has opened a window. Really, the place will be the death of me!”

Barillot swore that he had shut everything himself. Perhaps there was a broken window somewhere. Actors were always complaining of draughts. In the oppressive heat of the gas, one of those currents of cold air, productive of inflammation of the lungs, as Fontan said, might frequently be felt.

“I should like to see you have to stand here with hardly anything on you,” continued Nana, who was getting angry.

“Hush!” muttered Bordenave.

On the stage, Rose had thrown so much expression into a phrase of her duo that the applause quite drowned the music. Nana left off talking, and looked very serious. On the count advancing too far along one of the wings, Barillot stopped him, saying that he might be seen. He caught sight of the reverse of the side-scenes slantwise, with the backs of the frames consolidated by a thick layer of old posters, and a portion of the further drop, representing the silver cavern of Mount Etna, with Vulcan’s forge in the background. The floats that had been lowered cast a glare of light on the daubs of metallic paint representing the silver. Some red and blue glass judiciously intermingled imitated the flames of a furnace; whilst midway up the stage a number of flaring gas-jets running along the floor lit up a row of black rocks. And behind these, reclining on a gently sloping boulder, surrounded by all the lights, which looked like so many Chinese lanterns among the grass on a day of illuminations, old Madame Drouard who played Juno, and was half blinded by the glitter, drowsily awaited the moment to make her appearance.

Just then there was a slight commotion. Simone, who was listening to a story of Clarisse’s, exclaimed, “Halloa! there’s old Tricon!”

It was, indeed, old Tricon, with her long curls and her air of a countess consulting her solicitor. As soon as she caught sight of Nana, she went straight up to her.

“No,” said the latter, after a rapid exchange of words. “Not this time.”

The old lady looked very solemn. Prullière shook hands with her, as he passed by. Two little chorus girls gazed on her with emotion. For a moment she seemed to hesitate; then she beckoned to Simone, and another rapid exchange of words took place.

“Yes,” said Simone, at last. “In half an hour.”

But, as she went up to her dressing-room, Madame Bron, who was again distributing some letters, handed her one. Bordenave, in a low tone of voice, began abusing the doorkeeper for having let old Tricon into the theatre. That woman in the place when His Highness was there! it was disgusting! Madame Bron, who had been thirty years in the theatre, replied in a surly tone of voice: How was she to know? Madame Tricon transacted business with all the ladies. M. Bordenave had seen her there dozens of times without ever saying a word; and whilst the manager muttered a string of oaths, old Tricon coolly examined the prince, staring him straight in the face, like a woman who weighs a man with a glance. A smile lighted up her yellow countenance. Then she slowly retired in the midst of the little women, who respectfully made way for her to pass.

“As soon as possible; now don’t forget,” said she, turning towards Simone.

Simone seemed very much worried. The letter was from a young man whom she had promised to meet that evening. She gave Madame Bron a note she had hastily scribbled, “Not to-night, ducky; I’m engaged.” But she remained very anxious; the young man might wait for her all the same. As she was not in the third act, she wished to get away at once, so she asked Clarisse to go and see. The latter had nothing to do until almost the end of the piece. She went down stairs, whilst Simone returned for a minute to the dressing-room they shared together. There was no one in Madame Bron’s little bar below but a super, dressed in a red and gold costume, who personated Pluto. The door-keeper’s little business had evidently gone well, for the recess under the stairs was quite damp from the rinsings of the glasses. Clarisse gathered up the skirts of her robe, which dragged on the greasy steps; but she prudently stopped when she got to where the staircase turned, and, stretching out her neck, took a peep into the room.

She was well inspired, for that idiot La Faloise was still waiting there, on the same chair, between the table and the stove! He had pretended to go off when Simone had spoken to him, and returned directly after. The room, too, was still full of gentlemen in evening dress, with light kid gloves, and looking submissive and patient. They were all waiting, gravely eyeing one another. On the table there only remained the dirty plates, Madame Bron having just distributed the last bouquets; a rose alone, fallen from one of them, was lying half faded, close to the old cat, who had curled herself up and gone to sleep, whilst the kittens were madly careering between the gentlemen’s legs. For a moment Clarisse thought of having La Faloise turned out. The fool didn’t like animals; that showed what sort of a person he was. He kept his arms close to his sides for fear of touching the old cat, asleep on the table by him.

“Take care! he’ll catch you,” said Pluto, a funny fellow, as he went upstairs wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

Then Clarisse gave up the idea of having a row with La Faloise. She had seen Madame Bron hand Simone’s letter to the young man, who went and read it under the gas-jet in the passage: “Not to-night, ducky; I’m engaged”; and, no doubt used to the phrase, he quietly went off. He, at least, knew how to behave! He wasn’t like the others, who obstinately sat waiting there on Madame Bron’s old worn-out cane chairs, in that lantern-like glass box, which was as hot as an oven, and which didn’t smell particularly nice. What dirty beasts men were! Clarisse returned upstairs, thoroughly disgusted. She passed at the back of the stage, and ran up the three flights of stairs leading to her dressing-room to let Simone know that the young man had gone off. At the wings, the prince had drawn Nana on one side and was conversing with her. He had remained with her all the time, glancing tenderly at her with his half closed eyes. Nana, without looking at him, smilingly said “yes,” with a nod of her head. But suddenly Count Muffat obeyed an invincible feeling within him. He quitted Bordenave, who was giving him some information respecting the manoeuvring of the windlasses and the drums, and advanced to interrupt their conversation. Nana raised her eyes and smiled at him, the same as she smiled at His Highness. She was, however, listening all the while for her cue.

“The third act is the shortest, I think,” said the prince, whom the count’s presence embarrassed.

She did not answer. Her face changed in a moment, and she was entirely occupied with her business. She rapidly let the fur cloak slip from off her shoulders, and Madame Jules, standing behind her, received it in her arms; and, after passing her hands over her hair as though to smooth it, she advanced on the stage in an almost nude state.

“Hush! hush!” whispered Bordenave.

The count and the prince remained lost in surprise. In the midst of the silence there arose a profound sigh, the distant murmur of a vast crowd. Every night the same effect was produced as Venus appeared in her goddess-like nudity. Then Muffat, wishing to see, looked through a hole in the scenery. Beyond the dazzling semi-circle formed by the foot-lights, the house wore a sombre look, as though filled with a reddish coloured smoke; and on that neutral background, over which the rows of faces seemed to cast a confused pallor, Nana stood out all in white, looking taller, and quite hiding the boxes from the first tier to the amphitheatre. He could see her bent back and her opened arms, whilst on a level with her feet was the old prompter’s head, looking as though it was severed from his body, and wearing a poor and honest expression. At certain lines of Nana’s song, an undulating movement seemed to start from her neck, to descend to her waist, and then expire at the trailing edge of her flimsy tunic. When she had uttered her last note, in the midst of a tempest of applause, she bowed, the gauze drapery waving about her, and her hair reaching to her hips as she did so. Seeing her thus, bent forward and with her haunches expanded, move backwards towards the hole through which he was watching her, the count became very pale, and turned away. The stage disappeared, and all he saw was the wrong side of the scenery, the medley of posters pasted in all sorts of ways. Amidst the gas-jets, behind the row of rocks, the other Olympian gods and goddesses had joined Madame Drouard who was still dozing. They were awaiting the end of the act; Bosc and Fontan seated on the ground, their chins buried in their knees, Prullière yawning and stretching himself before making his last appearance of the evening, all of them looking worn out, with bloodshot eyes, and impatient to get home to bed.

Just then, Fauchery, who had been wandering about on the o.p. side, since Bordenave had forbidden him to appear on the prompt one, got hold of the count, for want of some one better, and offered to show him the dressing-rooms. Muffat, whom an increasing indolence left without any will of his own, ended by following the journalist, after looking about for the Marquis de Chouard, who was no longer there. He felt, at the same time, a relief and a slight uneasiness on leaving the wings, from whence he could hear Nana’s voice. Fauchery had already preceded him up the staircase, which was shut off on the first and second floors by little wooden doors. It was one of those staircases that are generally met with in houses of evil reputation—such as Count Muffat had occasionally come across in his rounds as member of the poor relief committee—with bare, tumble-down, yellow walls, steps all worn with the constant traffic of feet, and an iron rail highly polished by the hands that rubbed along it. On each landing, on a level with the floor, was a low window, looking like the air-hole of a cellar; and, in lanterns fixed against the walls, jets of gas were blazing, crudely lighting up all this wretchedness, whilst emitting a heat that ascended and accumulated beneath the narrow ceilings of the landing-places.

As the count reached the foot of the stairs, he again felt a scorching breath at the back of his neck, that feminine odour coming from the dressing-rooms above, in a flood of light and noise; and now, at every step he mounted, the musky smell of the face powders, the tartness of the toilet-vinegars, heated him and stupefied him all the more. On the first landing two passages branched off with a sharp turn, and on to these several doors, painted yellow and bearing large white numbers, opened, giving to the place very much the appearance of an hotel of suspicious character. Several of the tiles composing the flooring were missing, and left so many holes. The count ventured along one of the passages, and glancing into a room, the door of which was only half closed, he beheld a wretched den, looking not unlike a barber’s shanty in some low neighbourhood, and furnished with two chairs, a looking-glass, and a dressing-table containing a drawer, blackened by the grease and scurf from the combs. A big fellow, covered with perspiration, and his shoulders steaming, was changing his underlinen; whilst in a similar room, situated close by, a woman, ready to leave, was putting on her gloves, with her hair all damp and uncurled, as though she had just come out of a bath.

Fauchery here called to the count, and the latter reached the second storey just as a furiously uttered oath issued from the passage on the right. Mathilde, a smutty little thing, who personated virtuous persecuted damsels, had just broken her basin, the soapy water from which ran out on to the landing. A door was closed violently. Two women in their stays jumped across the passage; another, holding the tail of her chemise between her teeth, suddenly appeared, and as hastily made off. Then were heard a great deal of laughing, the sound of a quarrel, a song commenced and almost immediately interrupted. Through the cracks in the walls and the doors of the passage, one caught glimpses of nudity, rosy skins and white underlinen. Two girls, who were very merry, were showing one another the different marks on their bodies; a third, very young, almost a child, had lifted up her skirts, and was mending her drawers; whilst the dressers, seeing the two men, gently closed the curtains out of decency.

It was the jostling at the end of the performance, the great washing off of white paint and rouge, the resumption of everyday dress in the midst of a cloud of face powder, an increase of the human odour which issued through the slamming doors. Arrived on the third storey, Muffat abandoned himself to the intoxication which was taking possession of him. The dressing-room of the female supers was there: twenty women heaped together, a confusion of soaps and bottles of lavender water, resembling the common room of a house of ill-fame in the suburbs. As he passed, he heard behind a closed door a great noise of washing, a storm in a basin. And he was moving on to the top storey, when he had the curiosity to look through a peep-hole left open in a door; the room was unoccupied, and all he could see by the light of the flaring gas was a familiar utensil forgotten amidst a pile of skirts thrown on the floor. This was the last vision he carried away with him. Up above, on the fourth storey, he felt as though he would choke. All the odours, all the heat congregated there. The yellow ceiling had a roasted appearance; a gas-lamp was burning in a sort of ruddy mist. For a moment he clung to the iron railing, which had the cool feeling of living flesh, and, closing his eyes, he drew a long breath, seeming by doing so to inhale all that pertained to the female sex he was still unacquainted with, although he was, as it were, enveloped by it.

“Come on,” cried Fauchery, who had disappeared a moment before; “someone wants you.”

He was in Clarisse’s and Simone’s dressing-room—a long sort of attic under the slates, badly constructed, with innumerable angles. Two deep openings in the roof admitted the light. But, at that time of night, flames of gas illuminated the room, hung with wall-paper, rose-coloured flowers on a green trellis-work, costing a farthing a yard. Side by side two wooden shelves, deal-boards covered with oil-cloth, blackened by the dirty water constantly spilt upon it, served as dressing-tables; beneath them were scattered some zinc cans very much the worse for wear, two or three pails full of slops, and several coarse yellow earthenware jugs. There were, in fact, an infinity of things more or less damaged or dirtied by use—chipped basins, horn combs with half the teeth broken off, all, indeed, which the haste and carelessness of two women, who dress and wash in common, leave untidily about them in a place that they only momentarily occupy, and the dirt and disorder of which no longer affects them when once they are out of it.

“Come on,” repeated Fauchery, with that comradeship which men affect when in company with damsels of easy virtue; “Clarisse wants to kiss you.”

Muffat at length entered the room, but he was greatly surprised to find the Marquis de Chouard seated on a chair between the two dressing-tables. The marquis had retired there. He kept his feet wide apart because one of the pails leaked, making a big pool of soapy water on the floor. He appeared to be very much at his ease, evidently knowing the best places, and looking quite young again in that oppressive bath-room atmosphere, in the presence of that quiet feminine wantonness, which the unclean surroundings rendered the more natural and, so to say, excusable.

“Are you going with the old boy?” asked Simone of Clarisse, in a whisper.

“Never! not if I know it!” answered the latter out loud.

The dresser, a very ugly and very familiar young girl, who was helping Simone to put on her cloak, burst out laughing. They all three incited one another, murmuring words which redoubled their merriment.

“Come, Clarisse; kiss the gentleman,” said Fauchery. “You know he can afford it.” And turning towards the count, he added, “You’ll see, she’s very nice; she’s going to kiss you.”

But Clarisse had had enough of the men. She spoke vehemently of the beasts who were waiting below in the doorkeeper’s room. Besides, she was in a hurry to get down, they would make her miss her cue in the last scene. Then, as Fauchery stood in front of the door to detain her, she kissed Muffat’s whiskers, saying:

“It’s not because it’s you, anyhow! it’s merely because Fauchery bothers me!” And she hastened away.

The count felt very uneasy in the presence of his father-in-law. He became very red in the face. When in Nana’s dressing-room, surrounded by all the luxury of mirrors and hangings, he had not experienced the acrid excitation of the shameful misery of that garret, full of the two women’s indelicacy. The marquis, however, had gone off after Simone, who seemed in a great hurry, whispering in her ear, whilst she kept shaking her head. Fauchery followed them laughing. Then the count found himself left alone with the dresser, who was rinsing out the basins. So he also went off and descended the staircase, his legs scarcely able to bear his weight, startling women in their petticoats, and causing doors to be hastily closed as he passed. But in the midst of this hurry-skurry of girls across the four storeys, the only thing he distinctly saw was a cat—the big tortoise-shell cat who, in that furnace poisoned with musk, crawled down the stairs rubbing its back against the rails of the balustrade, with its tail erect.

“Well! exclaimed a woman’s hoarse voice, ”I thought they were going to keep us to-night! They’re always having calls!”

It was the end; the curtain had just gone down. There was a rush up the staircase, which resounded with exclamations of all kinds; everyone was in a violent hurry to get dressed and go home. As Count Muffat reached the foot of the stairs he saw Nana and the prince walking slowly along the passage. Stopping suddenly, the young woman smiled and said in a low tone of voice:

“Very well, then; in a few minutes.”

The prince returned to the stage, where Bordenave awaited him. Then, finding himself alone with Nana, Muffat gave way to an impulse of rage and desire and hastened after her, and, just as she reached her dressing-room, he kissed her roughly on the back of the neck, where the little golden curls hung between her shoulders. It was as though he was returning the kiss he had received upstairs. Nana, in a fury, raised her arm, but, when she recognised the count, she smiled.

“Oh! you frightened me,” was all she said.

And her smile was adorable, confused and submissive, as if she had despaired of that kiss and was happy at having received it. But she could not respond to it, neither then nor on the morrow. They must wait. Even if she had not been obliged to do so, she would have made him wait. Her look said all these things. At length she resumed:

“You know, I am a landowner now. Yes, I have purchased a small estate near Orleans, in a part of the country where you go sometimes. Baby told me so—little George Hugon; you know him, do you not? Come and see me there.”

The timid count, frightened at his own rude outburst, ashamed of what he had done, bowed ceremoniously and promised to avail himself of her invitation. Then he went off to rejoin the prince, walking as though in a dream, and as he passed the green-room he heard Satin exclaim:

“You are a dirty old beast! Leave me alone!”

It was the Marquis de Chouard, who, for want of some one better had pitched upon Satin. The latter thought she had decidedly had enough of those fashionable people. Nana had, it is true, presented her to Bordenave; but it had bored her too much to remain all the while with her mouth shut, for fear of saying something stupid, and she wanted to make up for the waste of time, the more especially as she had run against an old flame of hers in the wings, the super who personated Pluto, a pastry-cook who had already given her a whole week of love and blows. She was waiting for him, and felt greatly annoyed with the marquis for addressing her as though she was one of the women of the theatre. So she ended by saying in a very dignified tone of voice:

“My husband will be here directly, and then you will see!”

The actors, with their overcoats on, and looking very fatigued, now began to leave one by one. Groups of men and women went down the little winding staircase, casting shadows of old knocked-about hats and ragged shawls on the wall, with the ghastliness of strollers who have wiped off their rouge. On the stage, where all the gas-jets were being turned out, the prince was listening to an anecdote of Bordenave’s. He was waiting for Nana. When she at length appeared, the stage was in darkness, and the fireman was going round with a lantern giving a last look to everything. To save His Highness from having to go through the Passage des Panoramas, Bordenave had the doors opened of the corridor leading from near the doorkeeper’s room to the vestibule of the theatre, and several of the women scurried along there, delighted at escaping from the men who were waiting for them outside the stage-door. They pushed against each other, squeezing their way through, glancing back every instant, and holding their breath until they found themselves outside; whilst Fontan, Bosc, and Prulliere moved slowly off home, joking amongst themselves about the ladies’ protectors—solemn-looking gentlemen, who were walking up and down the Galerie des Variétés near the stage-door, at the same time that the damsels themselves were hastening along the Boulevards in the company of the chosen ones of their hearts. But Clarisse was especially cunning. She determined to beware of La Faloise. And, in fact, he was still in the doorkeeper’s room with the other gentlemen who obstinately stuck to Madame Bron’s chairs. They were all watching and listening intently; so, keeping close to a friend, she passed rapidly before them. The gentlemen blinked their eyes, bewildered by the rapid succession of skirts whirling round at the foot of the narrow stair-case, and quite despondent, after having waited so long for the ladies, at seeing them all disappear like that without being able to recognise a single one. The litter of black kittens were asleep on the oil-cloth, cuddled up against their mother, who, with a look of intense happiness, had separated her legs to receive them; whilst the big tortoise-shell cat, seated at the other end of the table with its tail stretched out, watched with its yellow eyes the women hurrying away.

“If His Highness will pass through here,” said Bordenave, at the foot of the stairs, as he pointed to the corridor.

A few women were still there pushing past each other. The prince followed Nana, and Muffat and the marquis came after them. It was a long passage situated between the theatre and the next house, in fact, a sort of narrow alley covered with a sloping roof, in which were two or three sky-lights. A dampness hung about the walls, and the footsteps resounded over the pavement the same as in a tunnel. It was full of the disorder of a garret. There was a carpenter’s bench, on which the doorkeeper’s husband occasionally planed a piece of scenery, and quite a collection of wooden barriers used of an evening to regulate the pressure of the crowd. Nana was obliged to hold up her skirts as she passed a water-tap which, not being properly turned off, was inundating the place. On reaching the vestibule everyone bowed. And when Bordenave was left alone, he summed up his opinion of the prince with a shrug of the shoulders, full of a disdainful philosophy.

“He’s a bit of a muff, all the same,” said he, without explaining himself further to Fauchery, whom Rose Mignon was taking home with her husband with the intention of making them good friends again.

Muffat found himself alone on the footpath outside. His Highness had quietly placed Nana in his carriage and driven off. The marquis, in a very excited state, had followed Satin and her super, contenting himself with keeping close to those two embodiments of vice, with the vague hope of their taking compassion on him. Then Muffat, his head as hot as a furnace, decided to go home on foot. All combat within him had ceased. A new era of life had drowned all his ideas and his beliefs of forty years’ standing. As he walked along the Boulevards the noise caused by the belated vehicles seemed to deafen him with the sound of Nana’s name, whilst in the gas-lamps a naked vision, Nana’s supple arms and her white shoulders, appeared to dance before his eyes, and he felt that he was wholly hers; he would have abjured all, have sold everything he possessed, to have had her with him but for one short hour that very night. It was his youth that was at length awakening within him, the gluttonous puberty of an adolescent that had suddenly become inflamed in the midst of his jesuitical coldness and his dignity of mature age.