CHAPTER VII
Three months later, one night in December, Count Muffat was walking up and down the Passage des Panoramas. It was a very mild evening. A shower had just driven a crowd of people into the Passage. There was quite a mob, and it was a slow and difficult task to pass along between the shops on either side. Beneath the glass roof, brightened by the reflection, there was a most fierce illumination, consisting of an endless string of lights—white globes, red and blue lamps, rows of flaring gas-jets, and monstrous watches and fans formed of flames of fire—burning without any protection whatsoever; and the medley of colours in the various shop windows—the gold of the jewellers, the crystal vases of the confectioners, the pale silks of the milliners—blazed behind the spotless plate-glass, in the strong light cast by the reflectors; whilst among the chaos of gaudily painted signs, an enormous red glove in the distance looked like a bleeding hand, cut off and fixed to a yellow cuff.
Count Muffat had strolled leisurely as far as the Boulevard. He cast a glance on the pavement, then slowly retraced his footsteps, keeping close to the shops. A damp and warm air filled the narrow thoroughfare with a kind of luminous vapour. Along the flagstones, wet from the drippings of umbrellas, footsteps reverberated continuously, without the sound of a single voice. The passers-by, elbowing the count at each turn, gazed at his impassive face, rendered paler than usual by the glare of the gas. So, to escape from their curiosity, he went and stood in front of a stationer’s shop, where he inspected, apparently with profound attention, a display of glass paper-weights, containing coloured representations of landscapes and flowers.
But in reality he saw nothing. He was thinking of Nana. Why had she lied to him again? That morning she had written to tell him not to come to her in the evening, pretending that little Louis was ill, and that she would stay with him all night at 193 her aunt’s. But he, being suspicious, had called at her house, and had learned from the concierge that madame had just gone off to her theatre. It surprised him, for he knew that she had no part in the new piece. Why, then, that lie, and what could she be doing at the Variety Theatre that evening?
Pushed against by some passer-by, the count, without knowing he did so, quitted the paper-weights, and found himself in front of a window full of miscellaneous articles, and looking in his absorbed way at a quantity of pocket-books and cigar-cases, all which had the same little blue swallow painted on one of the corners. Nana was certainly altered. In the early days, after her return from the country, she used to send him mad when she kissed him on the face and whiskers, with the little playful ways of a kitten, swearing that he was her ducky darling, the only little man whom she adored. He no longer feared George, who was kept by his mother at Les Fondettes. There remained fat old Steiner, whose place he supposed he had taken, but he had never dared to ask a question on the subject. He knew that Steiner was in a great mess about money matters, and on the point of being declared a defaulter at the Bourse, and that his only chance was a rise in the shares of the Salt Works of the Landes. If he ever met him at Nana’s she would always explain, in a reasonable sort of way, that she had not the heart to send him off like a dog, after all he had spent upon her. Besides, for three months past, he, the count, had lived in the midst of a sort of a sensual whirlpool, outside of which he understood nothing very clearly but the necessity of possessing Nana. This late awakening of his flesh was like the gluttony of a child, which leaves no room for either vanity or jealousy. Only a precise sensation could strike him: Nana was not as nice as at first, she no longer kissed him on the beard. This caused him some anxiety, and, as a man ignorant of the ways of women, he asked himself what she could have to reproach him with. Yet, he fancied that he satisfied all her desires; and his thoughts returned to the letter of the morning, to that complicated lie, told for the simple object of spending the evening at her theatre. Jostled again by the crowd, he had crossed the Passage, and was racking his brain at the entrance to a restaurant, his eyes fixed on some plucked larks and a fine salmon, which were displayed in the window.
At length he seemed to tear himself from this spectacle. He pulled himself together, and, raising his eyes, noticed that it was close upon nine o’clock. Nana would soon be coming out, and he would insist upon knowing the truth; and he walked about, recalling to mind the evenings already spent in that place, when he used to call for her at the stage door of the theatre. He knew all the shops. He recognised their odours in the atmosphere laden with the stench of gas, the strong smell of Russian leather, the fragrance of vanilla which came from the basement of a dealer in chocolate, the whiffs of musk issuing from the open doors of the perfumers; and he no longer dared stop in front of the pale faces of the shop-women, who placidly surveyed him as an old acquaintance. One minute he appeared to study the row of little round windows above the shops, in the midst of the different signs, as though he saw them for the first time. Then he went again as far as the Boulevard, and stood there a little while. The rain now only came down in very fine drops, which, falling cold upon his hands, calmed him. Now his thoughts wandered to his wife, who was at a château near Mâcon, with her friend Madame de Chezelles, who had been very unwell ever since the autumn. The vehicles on the Boulevard rolled along in a river of mud. The country must be unbearable in such weather. But, this anxiety suddenly returning, he plunged once more into the stifling heat of the Passage, and walked with rapid strides past the loungers. The idea had just occurred to him that, if Nana had any doubts about his coming, she might make off by the Galerie Montmartre.
From that moment the count watched at the stage-door itself. He did not like waiting in that bit of a lobby, where he was afraid of being recognised. It was at the junction of the Galerie des Variétés and of the Galerie Saint-Marc,
1 a nasty corner, with some obscure shops—a cobbler who never had any customers, dealers in musty furniture, a smoky reading-room in a state of somnolence, with its shaded lamps shedding a green light at night. Hereabouts one could always see gentlemen stylishly dressed, patiently wandering about amongst all that usually encumbers a stage-door—drunken scene-shifters, and painted hussies in gaudy rags. A single gas-jet, in an unwashed globe, lighted up the entrance. One moment Muffat had the idea of questioning Madame Bron, but then he feared that, should Nana hear of his being there, she might leave by the Boulevard. He resumed his walk, resolved to wait until he was turned out when the man shut the gates, as had already happened to him on two occasions.
The thought of going back alone filled his heart with anguish. Each time that any dressed-up girls, or men in dirty garments, came out and looked at him, he went and stood in front of the reading-room, where, between a couple of posters in the window, he always beheld the same sight—a little old man, sitting upright and alone at the immense table, in the green light of a lamp, reading a green newspaper which he held in his green hands. But a few minutes before ten o’clock, another gentleman—a tall handsome man, fair, and wearing well-fitting gloves, began also to wander about outside the theatre. Then every time they met, they mistrustfully gave each other a sidelong glance. The count walked as far as the junction of the two galleries, which was decorated with a tall mirror; and, seeing himself in it looking so solemn-faced, and with such a correct gait, he was seized with shame, mixed with fear.
Ten o’clock struck. Muffat suddenly remembered that it was easy enough for him to see if Nana was in her dressing-room. He went up the three steps, passed through the little hall besmeared with a coat of yellow paint, and reached the courtyard by a door that was only latched. At that hour the courtyard, narrow and damp like a well, with its foul-smelling closets, its water-tap, the kitchen-stove, and the plants with which the doorkeeper lumbered it, was bathed in a black mist; but the two walls which rose up, studded with windows, were ablaze with light. Below were the property-room and the firemen’s station, on the left the manager’s rooms, on the right and up above the dressing-rooms. On the sides of this well they looked like so many oven doors opening into darkness. The count had at once noticed a light in the window of the dressing-room on the first floor; and, feeling relieved and happy, he stood there in the greasy mud, looking up in the air, and inhaling the unsavoury stench at this back of an old Parisian house. Large drops were running down from a cracked water pipe. A ray of gaslight, from Madame Bron’s window, gave a yellow tinge to a bit of the moss-covered pavement, to the foot of a wall eaten away by the water from a sink, and to a heap of rubbish on which innumerable old pails and cracked pots and pans had been thrown together, with a saucepan in which a scraggy spindle-tree was vainly endeavouring to grow. There was heard the sound of a window opening, and the count hastened away.
Nana would certainly be coming out directly. He returned to the window of the reading-room. In the deep shadow, broken only by a faint glimmer like that of a night-light, the little old man could still be seen there with his face buried in his paper. Then the count walked about again, strolling rather farther off. He crossed the main gallery, and followed the Galerie des Variétés as far as the Galerie Feydeau, cold and deserted, and plunged in a lugubrious obscurity; and then he returned, and, passing before the theatre, ventured along the Galerie Saint-Marc as far as the Galerie Montmartre, where he watched a machine cutting up sugar in a grocer’s shop. But on his third turn, the fear that Nana might go off behind his back made him lose all self-respect. He went and stood with the fair gentleman right opposite the stage-door, and they both exchanged a glance of fraternal humility, lighted up with a remnant of mistrust as to a possible rivalry. Some scene-shifters who came out to smoke their pipes during one of the acts shoved up against them, without either of them daring to complain. Three big girls, with tangled hair and dirty dresses, appeared in the doorway, eating apples and spitting out the cores; and the two men hung down their heads, and submitted to the effrontery of their stares and the coarseness of their remarks, consenting to be dirtied and bespattered by these hussies, who amused themselves by jostling against them as they roughly played together.
Just then Nana came down the three steps. She turned deadly pale as she caught sight of Muffat.
“Ah! it’s you,” she stammered.
The jeering girls became frightened when they recognised her; and they stood still in a row, erect and serious, like servants caught by their mistress when doing wrong. The tall fair gentleman had moved a little distance off, sad and reassured at the same time.
“Well! give me your arm,” resumed Nana abruptly.
They walked slowly away. The count, who had prepared a number of questions, could find nothing to say. It was she who, in a rapid tone of voice, related a long rigmarole—she had stayed at her aunt’s till eight o’clock; then, seeing that little Louis was a great deal better, she had had the idea of coming to the theatre for a short time.
“For anything particular?” asked he.
“Yes, a new piece,” she replied, after a slight hesitation. “They wanted to have my opinion.”
He knew that she lied. But the warmth of her arm, leaning heavily on his, left him without strength to say a word. His anger and his annoyance at having had to wait for her so long had disappeared; his sole anxiety was to keep her, now that he had her with him. On the morrow he would try and find out what she had been about in her dressing-room. Nana, still hesitating, and visibly a prey to the inward struggle of a person trying to regain her composure and to decide on a course of action, stopped, on turning the corner of the Galerie des Varietes, in front of a fan-maker’s window.
“Look! isn’t it lovely?” she murmured, “the mother-of-pearl one trimmed with feathers.” Then, in a careless tone of voice, she added, “So, you are coming home with me?”
“Why, of course,” said Muffat, astonished, “as your child is better.”
She regretted her long-winded story. Perhaps little Louis had had another attack, and she talked of returning to Batignolles: but as he offered to go too, she let the subject drop. One minute she boiled with rage, like a woman who finds herself caught and who is obliged to show herself submissive and gentle. However, she became resigned to her fate, and resolved to gain time; if she could only get rid of the count by midnight, all would go as she wished.
“Ah! yes; you are a bachelor to-night,” she resumed. “Your wife does not return till to-morrow morning, does she?”
“No,” replied Muffat, slightly annoyed at hearing her speak of the countess in that familiar way. But she continued to question him, asking the time of the arrival of the train, and wishing to know whether he intended going to the station to meet his wife. She had again slackened her footsteps, as though very much interested in the contents of the shop windows.
“Oh! Look there!” she exclaimed, stopping in front of a jeweller’s, “what a funny bracelet! ”
She loved the Passage des Panoramas. Ever since her girlhood she had had a passion for the glitter of Paris gew-gaws, counterfeit jewellery, gilded zinc, and imitation leather. Whenever she passed through it she could not drag herself away from the shops, just the same as when she used to run about the streets, lingering opposite the sweets of a confectioner’s, listening to the playing of an organ next door, smitten above all by the bad taste of the articles that seemed marvels of cheapness—housewives contained in monstrous walnut shells, rag-pickers’ baskets full of toothpicks, Vendome columns and Luxor obelisks
an holding thermometers. But that night she was too much upset, she looked without seeing. It bothered her immensely not to have her evening to herself, and, in her secret revolt, she felt a longing to do something foolish. A fat lot of use it was to have men well off! She had just run through the prince and Steiner, indulging all her childish caprices, without in the least knowing where the money had gone to. Her rooms in the Boulevard Haussmann were not even now completely furnished; the drawing-room alone, all in crimson satin, but too full and too lavishly decorated, had a certain effect. At this time, too, her creditors were dunning her more than ever before, when she was quite without means, and this surprised her immensely, for she looked upon herself as a model of economy. For a month past, that old thief Steiner could only find a thousand francs with the greatest difficulty on occasions when she threatened to kick him out of the place if he did not bring the money. As for Muffat, he was a fool; he had no idea of what a man should give a woman like her, so she could not blame him for his stinginess.
Ah! she would have sent the whole of them to the right about if she had not all day kept repeating to herself a number of wise maxims! One must be reasonable, Zoé was in the habit of saying to her every morning, and she herself had ever present to her mind a sacred recollection, the royal vision of Chamont, constantly invoked and embellished. And that was why, in spite of a tremor of suppressed rage, she walked submissively along, leaning on the count’s arm, going from one shop window to another in the midst of the now less frequent passers-by. Outside, the foot-pavement was gradually drying, a cool breeze entered the Passage, sending before it the hot air collected beneath the glass roof, and creating quite a commotion among the coloured lamps, the rows of gas-jets, and the monstrous fan flaming away like fire-works. A waiter was turning out the lights at the door of the restaurant, whilst in the empty and brilliantly illuminated shops, the immovable shop-women seemed sleeping with their eyes open.
“Oh! the love!” exclaimed Nana, glancing in at the last window, and returning a few steps to admire a porcelain grey-hound, which was raising its paw over a nest hidden among some roses.
They at length quitted the Passage, and she would not take a cab. It was very nice out of doors, said she; besides, there was no occasion to hurry, it would be delightful to walk home. Then, when they had got as far as the Café Anglais, she longed to have some oysters, saying that she had eaten nothing since the morning, on account of little Louis’s illness. Muffat did not like to disappoint her. As yet, he had not ventured much about with her in public, so he asked for a private room, and hurried along the corridor. She followed him slowly, like a woman thoroughly acquainted with the establishment, and they were just on the point of entering an apartment of which a waiter had opened the door, when a man suddenly rushed out of an adjoining room, from which issued a regular tempest of shouts and laughter. It was Daguenet.
“Hallo! Nana!” cried he.
The count quickly vanished inside his room, leaving the door ajar. But, as his broad back disappeared, Daguenet winked his eye, and added jokingly:
“The deuce! you are getting on; you take them from the Tuileries now!”
Nana smiled, and placed her finger on her lips to make him hold his tongue. She saw that he was a bit on, but was happy all the same at meeting him, still keeping a little corner in her heart for him, in spite of his shabby behaviour in not recognizing her when he was in the company of ladies.
“What are you doing now?” she inquired in a friendly way.
“I am turning over a new leaf. In fact, I am seriously thinking of getting married.”
She shrugged her shoulders with a look of pity. But he, continuing his joking tone, said that it was not a life worth living just to earn on the Bourse barely sufficient to pay for the bouquets he gave to his lady friends, in order that they should not think him mean. His three hundred thousand francs had only lasted him eighteen months. He intended to be more practical. He would marry a big dowry and die a prefect like his father. Nana continued to smile incredulously. She nodded her head in the direction of the room he had just left.
“Whom are you with?”
“Oh! quite a party,” said he, forgetting his projects in a burst of intoxication. “Just fancy, Léa is relating her journey in Egypt. It’s awfully funny! There’s a certain story of a bath—”
And he related the story. Nana complaisantly waited to hear it. They had ended by leaning against the walls of the corridor, one in front of the other. Jets of gas were flaring beneath the low ceiling, a vague odour of cookery hung about the folds of the hangings. Now and then, in order to hear themselves above the occasionally increasing noise, they were obliged to put their faces close together. Every few seconds, a waiter laden with dishes, finding the way blocked up, was forced to disturb the pair. But they, without interrupting themselves, squeezed close up against the walls, calmly conversing together amidst the din caused by the customers, and the interruptions of the servants.
“Look there,” whispered the young man, pointing to the door of the room Muffat had entered.
They both watched. The door shook softly, as though moved by some gentle breeze; then it slowly closed, without the least sound. They exchanged a silent laugh. The count must cut a funny figure, all alone there by himself.
“By the way,” asked she, “have you read the article Fauchery has written about me?”
“Yes, the ‘Golden Fly,’ ” replied Daguenet. “I did not speak of it, as I though you might not like it.”
“Not like it, why? It’s a very long article.”
She felt flattered by being written about in the “Figaro.” Without the explanations of Francis, her hairdresser, who had brought her the paper, she would not have known that she was the person alluded to. Daguenet watched her from out the corner of his eye, with a sneer on his face. Well, as she was pleased, every one else ought to be.
“By your leave!” cried a waiter, as he passed between them, holding in both hands a magnum of champagne in ice.
Nana moved a step in the direction of the room where Muffat awaited her.
“Well! good-bye,” said Daguenet. “Go back to your cuckold.”
“Why do you call him a cuckold?” she inquired, standing still again.
“Because he is a cuckold, of course!”
Very much interested, she returned to him, and, leaning up against the wall as before, merely said, “Ah!”
“What, didn’t you know it? His wife has succumbed to Fauchery, my dear. It probably first took place when they were staying together in the country. Fauchery left me just now as I was coming here, and I fancy they have arranged a meeting at his place for to-night. They have invented some journey, I believe.”
For some minutes Nana remained dumb with emotion. “I thought as much!” said she at length, slapping her thighs. “I guessed it the first time I saw her, you recollect, when we passed them on that country road. Is it possible, a respectable woman to deceive her husband, and with such a dirty blackguard as Fauchery! He’ll teach her some fine things.”
“Oh!” murmured Daguenet maliciously, “this isn’t her first trial by a long way. She knows perhaps as much as he does.”
“Really? Well, they’re a nice lot! it’s too abominable!” she exclaimed, indignantly.
“By your leave!” cried another waiter, passing between them, laden with several more bottles of wine.
Daguenet walked with her towards her room, and then held her for a moment by the hand. He assumed his crystal-toned voice—a voice that sounded like a harmonica, and which was the cause of his great success among the ladies.
“Good-bye, darling. You know I love you always.”
She released herself; and smiling on him, her voice drowned by a thunder of cries and bravos which shook the door of the room in which the party was being held, she said:
“Don’t be a fool; that’s all over now. But, all the same, come and see me one of these days. We can have a long chat.” Then, becoming very serious, she added, in the highly indignant tone of a most respectable woman, “Ah! he’s a cuckold. Well! my boy, that’s a confounded nuisance. I’ve always felt the greatest disgust for a cuckold.”
When she at length entered the room, she found Muffat, with pale face and trembling hands, resignedly sitting on a narrow sofa. He did not utter a single reproach. She, dreadfully excited, was divided between feelings of pity and contempt. The poor man, who was so shamefully deceived by a wicked woman! She had a longing to put her arms round his neck, and to console him. But yet it was only just; he was such a fool with women, it would be a lesson for him. Her pity, however, got the better of her. She did not send him off, after having her oysters, as she had intended doing. They remained a quarter of an hour longer at the Café Anglais, and then went home together to the Boulevard Haussmann. It was eleven o’clock; by midnight she would easily discover some pleasant means of getting rid of him.
When she was in the anteroom she prudently gave Zoé some instructions.
“You must watch for him, and when he comes tell him not to make any noise, if the other one is still with me.”
“But where shall I put him, madame?”
“Keep him in the kitchen; that will be the safest.”
Muffat was taking off his overcoat in the bedroom. A big fire was burning in the grate. It was the same room, with its violet ebony furniture, its hangings and chair coverings of figured damask, large blue flowers on a grey ground. On two occasions Nana had thought of having it altered—the first time she wished it to be all in black velvet, the second in white satin, with rose-coloured ribbons; but as soon as Steiner consented, she squandered the money she obtained from him to pay for it. All she had added was a tiger skin in front of the fire-place, and a crystal lamp that hung from the ceiling.
“I’m not at all sleepy; I’m not going to bed yet,” said Nana, as soon as they had shut themselves in.
The count obeyed her with the submission of a man who is no longer afraid of being seen. His sole anxiety was not to anger her.
“As you please,” he murmured.
However, he took off his boots, before sitting down in front of the fire. One of Nana’s delights was to undress herself opposite her wardrobe, which had a glass door in which she could see herself full length. She would remove everything, and would then become lost in self-contemplation. A passion which she had for her own person—a rapturous admiration of her satin-like skin and the suppleness of her form—would root her there, serious and attentive, absorbed in a love of herself. The hairdresser would at times enter the room and find her thus occupied, without her even turning her head. Then Count Muffat would fly into a passion, and she would be greatly surprised. What was the matter with him? It wasn’t for the benefit of others that she did it; it was for her own.
That night she had lighted all the candles, and, as she was about to let her last garment drop from her shoulders, she stood still, pre-occupied for a moment, having a question at the tip of her tongue.
“Have you read the article in the ‘Figaro’? The paper is there, on the table.” The recollection of Daguenet’s sneering laugh had returned to her; she was filled with a doubt. If that Fauchery had been slandering her, she would have her revenge. “They say that it refers to me,” she resumed, affecting an air of indifference. “Well, what do you think, ducky?”
And slipping off her chemise she remained naked, waiting until Muffat had finished reading. Muffat read slowly. Fauchery’s article, entitled the “Golden Fly,” was the story of a girl born from four or five generations of drunkards, her blood tainted by a long succession of misery and drink, which, in her, had transformed itself into a nervous decay of her sex. She had sprouted on the pavement of one of the Paris suburbs; and, tall, handsome, of superb flesh, the same as a plant growing on a dunghill, she avenged the rogues and vagabonds from whom she sprung. With her, the putrefaction that was left to ferment among the people, rose and polluted the aristocracy. She became, without herself wishing it, one of nature’s instruments, a ferment of destruction, corrupting and disorganizing Paris. It was at the end of the article that the comparison with the fly occurred—a fly of the colour of the sun, which had flown from out some filth—a fly that gathered death on the carrion left by the roadside, and that, buzzing and dancing, and emitting a sparkle of precious stones, poisoned men by merely touching them in their palaces which it entered by the windows.
2Muffat raised his head and looked fixedly into the fire.
“Well, what do you think of it?” asked Nana.
But he did not answer. He appeared inclined to read the article over again. A cold shudder passed from his head to his shoulders. The article was written in a most diabolical style, with capering phrases, an excess of unexpected words and strange comparisons. However, he remained very much struck by it; it had abruptly aroused in him all that which, for some months past, he had not cared to disturb.
Then he raised his eyes. Nana was absorbed in her admiration of herself. She had bent her neck and was looking attentively in the glass at a little brown mole on her side, and she touched it with the tip of her finger, making it stand out more by slightly leaning back, thinking, no doubt, that it looked droll and pretty. Then she amused herself by studying other parts of her body with the vicious curiosity of her childhood. It always surprised her thus to see herself; she appeared amazed and fascinated like a young girl on first discovering her puberty. After slowly spreading out her arms to develop her plump Venus-like frame, she ended by swinging herself from right to left, her knees wide apart, her body bent back over her loins, with the continual quivering movement of an almeh dancing the stomach dance.
Muffat watched her. She frightened him. The newspaper had fallen from his hands. In that moment of clear understanding, he despised himself. It was true. In three months she had corrupted his life, he already felt tainted to his very marrow by an abomination which he would never himself have dreamt of. At that hour everything was beginning to fester within him. For an instant he was conscious of the results of sin, he beheld the disorganization wrought by this ferment, himself poisoned, his family destroyed, a corner of society cracking and tumbling into ruins. And, not being able to withdraw his gaze, he watched Nana fixedly, and sought to add to his disgust.
Nana was not moving now. With an arm passed behind her neck, and one hand clasped in the other, she was leaning back her head, with her elbows wide apart. He caught sight obliquely of her half-closed eyes, her slightly opened mouth, her face covered with a bewitching smile, her firm amazonian breasts with their sturdy muscles quivering beneath the satin of her skin, and behind her her loose yellow hair covering her back with a mane like a lioness. Muffat followed this delicate profile, these flakes of rosy flesh disappearing in a golden shadow, these curves which the light of the candles caused to shine like silk. He thought of his old horror of woman, the monster of Scripture,
ao lecherous and bestial. Nana was covered all over with a reddish down which gave to her skin the appearance of velvet; whilst, in her flanks and mare-like thighs, in the thick rolls of flesh which veiled her sex with their troubled shadow, there was something of the beast. It was the golden insect, unconscious of its power, but yet destroying the world with its smell alone. Muffat still continued to look, so completely possessed by the sight that, having for a moment lowered his eyelids and withdrawn his gaze, the animal reappeared in the depths of the darkness, enlarged, terrible, and with its posture exaggerated. And it would remain there, before his eyes in his very flesh, as it were, for evermore.
Nana was now rolling herself up. A tremor of endearment seemed to have passed through her limbs. With moistened eyes she tried to become smaller, as though to feel herself all the better. Then she unclasped her hands behind her neck, and let them slip slowly down to her breasts, which she pressed in a nervous embrace. And, satiated, melting into a caress of her whole body, she fondlingly rubbed her cheeks, right and left, against her shoulders. Her rapacious mouth breathed desire upon her. She pouted her lips and kissed herself longingly close to her arm-pit, smiling the while at that other Nana who was also kissing herself in the looking-glass.
Then Muffat uttered a low and prolonged sigh. This self-enjoyment exasperated him. All his reason was abruptly swept away as though by a gale of wind. He seized Nana round the waist, and, in an outburst of brutal passion, flung her on to the carpet.
“Let me be,” cried she—“you have hurt me!”
He was conscious of his defeat. He knew that she was stupid, ribald and deceitful, and he desired her all the same, even poisonous though she might be.
“Oh! it’s ridiculous!” said she, in a fury, when she had regained her feet.
However, she became calmer. He would soon be going off. After putting on a night-dress trimmed with lace, she sat down on the rug before the fire. It was her favourite place. As she again questioned him respecting Fauchery’s article, Muffat gave vague answers, anxious to avoid a scene. Then she lapsed into a long silence, thinking of some means of getting rid of the count.
She wanted to do it pleasantly, for she was a good-natured girl, and was sorry to pain others, and more especially him, because he was a cuckold—a circumstance that had led to making her feel more kindly disposed towards him.
“So it’s to-morrow morning,” she at length observed, “that you are expecting your wife?”
Muffat had thrown himself into an easy-chair. He looked drowsy and tired. He nodded his head. Nana watched him seriously, racking her brain the while. Still seated on the rug, amidst the rumpled lace, she was nursing one of her bare feet between her hands, and kept turning it about mechanically.
“How long have you been married?” asked she.
“Nineteen years,” replied the count.
“Ah! And your wife, is she nice? Do you get on well together?”
He did not answer. Then, in an embarrassed sort of way, he said, “You know, I have asked you never to speak of such matters.”
“Really! And why, pray?” she cried, already beginning to lose her temper. “I sha’n’t eat your wife by speaking of her, that’s very certain. My dear fellow, all women are alike.”
Here she paused, afraid of saying too much. Only, she assumed a superior sort of an air, as she thought herself exceedingly kind. The poor man, one ought not to be too hard on. him. Besides, a merry idea had just occurred to her. She smiled as she critically examined him. She resumed,
“I say, I haven’t told you the report that Fauchery has spread about you—he’s a regular viper! I’ve no ill-feeling against him, because his article might be true; but, all the same, he’s a regular viper.” And laughing boisterously, and letting go of her foot, she crawled along the rug and leant her bosom against the count’s knees. “Only fancy, he swears you were a perfect innocent when you married your wife! Do you understand? Is it true?”
She looked him straight in the face, and placing her hands on his shoulders, she shook him to make him confess.
“Of course it is,” he at length replied in a solemn tone of voice.
Then she again rolled herself at his feet in a wild fit of laughter, stuttering and slapping his legs.
“No, it’s not possible. Such a thing could only happen to you. You’re a phenomenon. But, my poor ducky, you must have looked foolish! When a man knows nothing it’s always so funny! By Jove, I should have liked to have seen you! And did it go off all right? Tell me, oh! come now, tell me all about it.”
She pressed him with questions, asking everything, insisting on having details. And she laughed so heartily, with such sudden outbursts as made her roll about in her night-dress-which one moment slipped from her shoulders, and the next curled itself up under her, and displayed her skin shining like gold in front of the blazing fire—that the count, little by little, gave her the history of his wedding-night. He no longer felt any repugnance, and ended by thinking it great fun to explain. He merely chose his words, through a remnant of shame. The young woman, very excited, questioned him about the countess. She was beautifully made, but a regular icicle, so he pretended.
“Oh! you’ve no cause for jealousy,” he despicably murmured.
Nana had left off laughing, and had resumed her seat, her back to the fire, and her chin resting on her knees, round which she had clasped her hands.
“My dear fellow, it’s the greatest mistake out for a man to appear a ninny to his wife on the first night,” declared she, in a grave tone of voice.
“Why?” asked the count, in surprise.
“Because,” replied she, slowly, like a professor.
She was lecturing, she wagged her head. However, she deigned to explain herself.
“You see, I know all about it. Well! my boy, women don’t like simpletons. They say nothing, on account of their modesty, you know; but you may be quite sure they think a great deal, and, sooner or later, when they haven’t had what they expected, they seek for it elsewhere. There, now you know as much as I do.”
He did not seem to understand, so she was more circumstantial. She became quite maternal, and gave him this lesson in a friendly way, out of the kindness of her heart. Ever since she had heard that he was a cuckold, the knowledge of this circumstance worried her. She had a hankering to discuss the matter with him.
“Well, really! I’ve been talking of things that don’t concern me. What I say is simply because I want every one to be happy. We’re merely having a chat, aren’t we? Come, now, you must answer me truly.”
But she interrupted herself to change her position. The fire was so fierce.
“By Jove! isn’t it hot? My back’s quite cooked. Wait a moment, I’ll cook my stomach a bit now; it’s good for the spasms!”
And when she had turned herself round, with her legs doubled under her, she resumed, “You and your wife don’t occupy the same room, do you?”
“No, I assure you,” replied Muffat, afraid not to answer.
“And you think that she’s a regular stick?”
He affirmatively bowed his head.
“And that’s why you come to me? Answer me! I sha’n’t be angry.”
He bowed his head again.
“Very well!” concluded she, “I thought as much. Ah! poor fellow! You know my aunt, Madame Lerat? Next time she comes get her to tell you the story of the green-grocer who lives in her street. Just fancy, the green-grocer-Drat it! the fire is hot; I must turn round again. I’ll cook my left side this time.”
As she presented her hip to the flames, a funny idea seized hold of her, and she joked herself in a jolly sort of way, delighted at seeing how plump and rosy she looked in the reflection of the fire.
“I say! I’m just like a goose. Yes! that’s it—a goose roasting. I turn, I turn. Really, I’m cooking in my own juice.”
Again she laughed aloud, when suddenly there was a sound of voices and of closing doors. Muffat, surprised, interrogated her with a look. She at once became serious, and there was an anxious expression on her face. It was no doubt Zoé’s cat, a confounded beast that was always breaking everything. Half past twelve. Whatever had she been thinking of, wasting her time in working for her cuckold’s happiness? Now that the other one was there she must get rid of him, and quickly, too.
“What were you saying?” asked the count complaisantly, delighted at finding her so amiable.
But in her desire to send him off, her humour quickly changed. She was coarse, and no longer minced her words.
“Ah! yes, the green-grocer and his wife. Well! my boy, they never got on together, not a bit! She, you know, expected all sorts of things; but he was a ninny. And so it went on till it ended like this—he, thinking her a stick, went with a lot of strumpets, and got more than he bargained for; whilst she, on her side, consoled herself with some fellows who knew a trifle more than her simpleton of a husband. And it always ends like that when you don’t understand each other. I know it does!”
Muffat paled, understanding at last her allusions, and wished to make her leave off. But she intended to have her say.
“No, hold your row! If you were not all a set of fools, you would be just as nice with your wives as you are with us; and if your wives were not a lot of geese, they would take the same trouble to keep you to themselves that we take to hook you. But you all give yourselves such confounded airs. There, my boy; put that in your pipe and smoke it.
“Do not talk about respectable women,” said he, severely. “You do not know anything about them.”
On hearing this, Nana rose on her knees.
“I don’t know anything about them! But they’re not even clean, your respectable women! No, they’re not even clean! I defy you to find one who would dare to show herself as I am here. Really, you make me laugh, with your respectable women! Don’t drive me too hard; don’t force me to say things that I should regret afterwards.”
For sole rejoinder, the count muttered a foul word between his teeth. Nana, in her turn, became deadly pale. She looked at him for a few seconds without speaking. Then, in a clear voice, she asked,
“What would you do if your wife deceived you?”
He made a menacing gesture.
“Well! and I, supposing I deceived you?”
“Oh! you,” he murmured, shrugging his shoulders.
Nana was certainly not unfeeling. Ever since the first words, she had been resisting a desire to tell him of his cuckoldom to his face. She would have liked to have confessed him quietly. But he exasperated her; she must put an end to it.
“Therefore, my boy,” she resumed, “I don’t know what the devil you’re doing here. You’ve done nothing but pester me for the last two hours. So go and join your wife, who’s consoling herself with Fauchery. Yes, I know what I’m saying; in the Rue Taitbout, at the corner of the Rue de Provence. I give you the address, you see.” Then, seeing Muffat rise on his feet, staggering like an ox that had just received a stunning blow, she added triumphantly, “Ah! they’re getting on well, your respectable women! They even interfere with us now, and take our lovers!”
But she was unable to continue. In a terrible passion he threw her full length on the floor, and raising his heel, was about to crush her face to silence her. For the moment she had an awful fright; but he, blinded, and as though mad, left her, and rushed helplessly about the room. Then the choking silence he maintained, the sight of the internal struggle which shook his frame, brought tears to her eyes. She felt a mortal regret; and curling herself up before the fire, so as to cook her right side, she undertook to console him.
“I assure you, darling, I thought you knew of it. Otherwise, I would certainly not have spoken. Then, after all, perhaps it isn’t true. I’m not sure of anything. I merely heard it—people talk about it; but that proves nothing, does it? Ah! really now, you’re very stupid to be put out about it. If I was a man, I wouldn’t care a tinker’s curse for any woman! Women, my boy, high or low, are all the same—all loose fish; it’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.”
She went in for abusing women in general, so as to make the blow less hard to bear; but he did not listen to her, he did not hear her. Whilst stamping about, he had somehow or other managed to get on his boots and his overcoat. For a moment longer he wandered about the room; then, with a last rush, as though he had only just discovered the door, he disappeared. Nana felt very much put out.
“Well! ta ta!” she continued aloud, though all alone. “He’s polite, he is, when he’s being spoken to! And I, who was sweating away to make it up again with him! Anyhow, I was the first to hold out my hand. I made quite enough excuses, I think! Besides, he shouldn’t have stopped here annoying me!” However, she remained displeased with herself, scratching her legs with both hands; but she at length muttered consolingly,
“Oh! dash it! It isn’t my fault that he’s a cuckold!”
And, roasted on all sides, as hot as a quail just removed from the spit, she jumped into bed, after ringing for Zoé to usher in the other one, who was waiting in the kitchen.
Outside, Muffat continued to hurry on. Another shower had just fallen. He slipped along the greasy pavement. As he mechanically looked up in the air he saw large black clouds floating rapidly across the moon. At that hour the Boulevard Haussmann was almost deserted. He passed by the scaffoldings of the new Opera-house, keeping in the shadow and stammering disconnected sentences. The girl lied. She had cruelly invented that to annoy him. He ought to have crushed her head when he had it beneath his heel. It was too shameful. He would never touch her nor see her again; if he did, he would indeed be a cur. And he drew a long breath of relief at his deliverance. Ah! that stupid naked monster, cooking like a goose, drivelling about all that he had respected for forty years past! The clouds had cleared away from the moon, which now lighted up the empty street. He was seized with fear and burst into sobs, suddenly giving way to despair, as though he had been precipitated into illimitable space.
“Oh! heaven!” he stammered, “all is over, there is nothing more.”
Along the Boulevards a few belated pedestrians were hurrying home. The count tried to compose himself. The girl’s story kept perplexing his heated brain; he wished to examine it calmly. That very morning the countess was to return from Madame de Chezelles’s château. There was nothing to have prevented her returning on the previous evening, and passing the night with that man. He now recalled certain things that had occurred during their stay at Les Fondettes. One night he had found Sabine wandering about among the trees, and she was so agitated that for some time she was unable to answer him. That man was there, then. Why should she not be with him now? The more he thought of it, the more it seemed to him possible. He ended by thinking it only natural, and even inevitable. Whilst he had been taking off his coat at a harlot’s his wife had been disrobing herself in a lover’s bedchamber; there was nothing more simple or more logical. And, as he reasoned thus, he forced himself to keep cool. He experienced the sensation of a fall into the follies of the flesh, which, spreading and gaining on him, swept the world away from around him. Phantoms, created by his heated imagination, pursued him. Nana undressed, abruptly evoked Sabine, undressed also. At this vision, which gave the two women a like parentage of wantonness and the same inordinate desires, he stumbled. A cab passing along the road nearly crushed him; some women, coming out of a café, pushed up against him, laughing coarsely. Then, again giving way to tears, in spite of his efforts, and not wishing to sob aloud before the passers-by, he turned down a dark, empty street, the Rue Rossini, where he cried like a child as he moved past the silent houses.
“All is over,” he kept saying in a hollow voice. “There is nothing more, nothing more.”
His tears so mastered him that he leant against a door, burying his wet face in his hands. A sound of footsteps chased him away. He felt such shame and such fear that he fled from everyone, with the cautious tread of a night prowler. Whenever anybody passed him on the pavement he tried to assume a careless gait, as though he imagined that his history could be read in the movement of his shoulders. He had turned down the Rue de la Grange-Batelière and reached the Faubourg Montmartre, but the bright lights caused him to retrace his footsteps, and for close upon an hour he wandered thus about the neighbourhood, choosing always the darkest turnings. He had, no doubt, a goal to which his feet instinctively conducted him, patiently and by a most circuitous road. At length, at the turn of a street, he raised his eyes. He had arrived. It was the corner of the Rue Taitbout and of the Rue de Provence. He had, in the painful disorder of his brain, taken an hour to reach it, while he might have done so in five minutes. One morning, in the previous month, he recollected having called on Fauchery to thank him for having mentioned his name in the description of a ball at the Tuileries. The apartment was on the first floor, with little square windows half hidden by the colossal sign-board of the shop. The last window on the left was divided by a streak of brilliant light, the ray of a lamp passing between the partly closed curtains. And, with his eyes fixed on that bright line, he stood absorbed, awaiting something.
The moon had disappeared in an inky sky, from which a drizzling, icy rain fell. Two o’clock struck at the church of the Trinity. The Rue de Provence and the Rue Taitbout, with their lighted gas-lamps, disappeared in the distance in a yellow vapour. Muffat did not stir. That was the room. He recollected it well, hung in crimson, and with a Louis XIII. bedstead at the back of the apartment. The lamp was probably to the right, on the mantel-piece. No doubt they were in bed, for not a shadow passed the immovable line of light; and he, still watching, arranged a plan. He would ring, and hastening upstairs in spite of the door-keeper, would burst into the room and fall upon them in bed, without even giving them time to disengage their arms. The knowledge that he had no weapon arrested him for a moment. Then he decided that he would strangle them. He turned his plan over in his head, he perfected it, always awaiting something, some sign, to make him certain. Had the shadow of a woman’s form appeared at that moment, he would have rung the bell; but the thought that he was perhaps mistaken froze him. What would he be able to say? His doubts returned to him. His wife could not be with that man. The idea was monstrous and impossible; but still he stayed on, overcome by degrees by numbness, succumbing to weakness, in that long vigil, to which the fixity of his look imparted a sense of hallucination.
The shower increased. Two police officers drew near, and he was obliged to leave the door-post against which he had sought shelter. When they had disappeared down the Rue de Provence he returned, wet and shivering. The bright line still showed across the window. This time he was going away, when a shadow passed. The movement was so rapid that he thought he might be mistaken, but one after another other shadows passed, and there seemed quite a commotion in the room. Rivetted again to the pavement opposite, he experienced an insupportable sensation of burning in the stomach. Profiles or arms and legs came and went. An enormous hand, bearing the silhouette of a water-can, glided by. He distinguished nothing clearly, yet he thought he recognised a woman’s head of hair; and he argued within himself, it was like Sabine’s head-dress, only the back of the neck seemed broader than hers. But at that hour he was incapable of determining, he could not tell. His stomach caused him so much suffering that he pressed up against a door, like a shivering outcast, to obtain relief in the agony of this frightful uncertainty. Then as, in spite of all, he could not take his eyes from off that window, his anger melted into the imagination of a moralist. He saw himself a deputy. He was speaking in the Chamber, inveighing against debauchery, prophesying catastrophes, and he repeated the arguments in Fauchery’s article on the poisonous fly, and declared that society could no longer exist with the manners and customs of the Second Empire. This did him some good. The shadows had now disappeared. No doubt they had gone back to bed. He, ever on the watch, still waited.
Three o’clock struck, then four o’clock. He could not tear himself away. Each time a shower came down he squeezed up against the door-post, the rain beating on his legs. No one passed by now. Occasionally his eyes closed, as though burnt by the ray of light, on which, with obstinate folly, he persistently fixed them. Twice again did the shadows reappear, going through the same movements, carrying the same gigantic water-can; and each time afterwards all became still as before, whilst the lamp continued to glimmer discreetly. These shadows increased his doubts. Besides, a sudden idea had just appeased him, in deferring the hour of action. He had merely to wait till the woman came out. He would easily recognise Sabine. Nothing could be simpler, there would be no scandal, and he would no longer be in doubt. All he had to do was to remain there. Of all the confused feelings that had hitherto agitated him, he no longer experienced anything but a morbid desire to know. Having nothing to do, however, standing up against that door, soon made him feel drowsy. To keep himself awake, he tried to calculate the time it would be necessary for him to wait. Sabine was to have arrived at the station at about nine o’clock. That gave him almost four and a half hours. He was full of patience. He would never have moved again, finding a charm in fancying that his night vigil would be an eternal one.
Suddenly, the ray of light disappeared. This very simple occurrence was an unexpected catastrophe for him, something disagreeable and annoying. They had evidently turned out the lamp, and were going to sleep. At such an hour it was only natural. But he felt irritated, because that window, being now in darkness, no longer interested him. He watched it for a quarter of an hour longer, then it tired him, so he left the doorway and took a few steps along the pavement. Until five o’clock, he walked to and fro, occasionally raising his eyes. The window remained in the same dormant state; and at times he would ask himself whether he had not dreamed that he had seen shadows cross those panes. A great fatigue overwhelmed him, which made him forget what he was waiting for at that street-corner, stumbling over the paving-stones, awaking with starts and the cold shiver of a man who no longer knows where he is. What was the good of his bothering himself about the matter? As the people had gone to sleep, all he had to do was to leave them in peace. Why should he mix himself up in their affairs? It was very dark, no one would know of his having waited there; and then all feeling in him, even his curiosity, fled, carried away in a desire to have done with it all, and to seek some solace elsewhere. The cold increased, the street became unbearable. Twice he moved away, then returned slowly, but only to move away again, farther off. It was over, there was nothing more. He went in the direction of the Boulevards, and did not return.
He wandered silently through the streets. He walked slowly, always with the same step, and keeping close to the wall. His heels resounded on the pavement; he beheld nothing but his shadow, which turned at each lamp-post, becoming larger and smaller. That amused him, mechanically occupying him. Afterwards, he could never recall through what streets he had gone; he seemed to have dragged himself along for hours in a circle. One single recollection remained, and that very clearly. He had found himself, he could not tell how, with his face pressed against the iron railings that closed the Passage des Panoramas, clasping the bars in his hands. He was not shaking them, he was merely trying to see into the Passage, under the influence of an emotion, with which his heart was bursting. But he could distinguish nothing; darkness reigned in the deserted gallery, whilst the wind which entered by the Rue Saint-Marc blew the dampness of a cellar into his face. And a strange infatuation kept him there. Then, awakening as though from a dream, he was filled with surprise, and asked himself what he was seeking at that hour, pressed against those railings with such a force, that the bars had left their marks upon his face. And he resumed his tramp in despair, his heart filled with a great sadness, as if betrayed and alone for evermore in all that darkness.
Day at length broke, and to the winter night there succeeded that dull light which looks so melancholy on the muddy pavement of Paris. Muffat had returned into the large new roads that were being made around the scaffoldings of the new Opera-house.
ap Soaked by the showers, broken up by the heavy carts, the chalky soil had become changed into a miry lake. And, without looking where he placed his feet, he continued walking on, slipping, and with difficulty keeping his legs. The awakening of Paris, the gangs of scavengers and the early groups of workmen, brought him a fresh worry as the day advanced. He was stared at with surprise, with his wild appearance, his muddy clothes, and his hat soaked with the rain. For a long time he sought refuge against the palings, among the scaffolding. In his empty head one idea alone remained, which was that he was very miserable.
Then his thoughts turned to God. The sudden idea of divine assistance, of a superhuman consolation, surprised him, like something extraordinary and unexpected. It awakened in his mind the picture of M. Venot. He beheld his plump little person, his decayed teeth. For certain, M. Venot, whom for months past he had been grieving by not going near him, would be very happy were he now to knock at his door, and weep on his breast. At other times God had always been merciful to him. At the least sorrow, or the smallest obstacle encountered in life, he would enter a church, and, kneeling, would humble himself before the Supreme Being, and he would come out fortified by prayer, ready to enjoy the sweets of life, with the sole desire for the salvation of his soul; but now, he could only pray by fits and starts, just when a fear of hell seized upon him. He had given way to a great indolence. Nana interfered with his duties, and the thought of God surprised him. Why had he not thought of the Almighty in the first instance, during that frightful crisis in which his weak humanity succumbed?
Then, with feeble footsteps, he sought a church. He could remember nothing. The early hour seemed to alter the streets. As he turned the corner of the Rue de la Chassée d’Antin, however, he caught sight of the church of the Trinity in the distance, its steeple seen very indistinctly in the fog. The white statues overlooking the naked garden appeared like so many shining Venuses among the faded yellow leaves of a park. Beneath the porch he paused a moment to take breath, fatigued by the ascent of the high flight of steps. Then he entered. The church was very cold, the great stove having been extinguished the previous evening, and the tall arches were filled with a fine mist, which had filtered in through the apertures of the glass windows. A shadow hung over the lower part. Not a soul was there beyond a beadle, who, in the midst of that semi-darkness, dragged his feet over the stones in the sullenness of the awaking hour. Muffat, after knocking up against a number of chairs, feeling lost, his heart fit to burst, had fallen on his knees against the railings of a little side chapel, close to a holy-water font. He had clasped his hands, trying to find a prayer in which he could pour forth his very soul, but his lips alone muttered words. His mind was elsewhere—outside, following the streets, without repose, as though beneath the lash of some implacable necessity; and he repeated: “O Lord help me! O God, do not abandon your creature, who abandons himself to your justice! O merciful Father, I adore you; will you let me perish beneath the blows of your enemies!” Nothing seemed to answer. The shadow and the cold hung about his shoulders. The noise of the beadle walking in the distance continued, and prevented him from praying. He heard nought but that irritating sound in the deserted church, which had not even then been swept, nor had the early mass been performed. Then, holding on to a chair, he raised himself, with a cracking of his knees. God had not yet arrived. Why should he go and weep on M. Venot’s breast? That man could do nothing.
And he mechanically returned to Nana’s. Outside, having slipped, he felt tears come to his eyes, not with anger against fate, but simply because he felt weak and ill. He was really too tired; he had been out too long in the rain, he felt the cold too much. It froze him to think of going back to his dismal home in the Rue Miromesnil. At Nana’s the street-door was not open, he had to wait till the concierge appeared. As he went up-stairs he smiled, already feeling the pleasant warmth of that nest, where he would at length be able to stretch himself and sleep.
When Zoé let him in, she made a gesture of amazement and uneasiness. Madame, having been seized by a violent headache, hadn’t closed her eyes all night. However, she would go and see whether she had fallen asleep or not; and she glided into the bed-room, whilst he sank down on a chair in the drawing-room. But Nana appeared almost instantly. She had jumped out of bed, scarcely taking time to put on a petticoat, and entered with bare feet, her hair hanging about her shoulders, her night dress rumpled and torn, in the disorder of a night of love.
“What! you here again!” cried she, red with passion. Under the influence of her rage, she was hastening to put him out herself; but seeing him in such a state, so utterly helpless, she was once more moved to pity. “Well! you’re in a nice mess, my poor fellow!” she resumed in a more pleasant tone of voice. “What is the matter with you? Ah! you’ve been watching them, you’ve been having a fine time of it!”
He said nothing; he looked like a stunned ox. Yet she understood that he had not been able to obtain any proof, as she added, just to bring him to himself again:
“You see, I was mistaken. Your wife is all right, on my word she is! Now, my boy, you must go home and get to bed. You are in want of sleep.”
He did not stir.
“Come, be off; I can’t keep you here. You don’t, I suppose, want to stop at this time of day?”
“Yes, let us go to sleep,” he muttered.
She repressed a violent gesture. She was fast losing patience. Was he going crazy?
“Come, be off,” said she a second time.
“No.”
Then, thoroughly exasperated, she broke out in revolt.
“But it’s disgusting! Understand me, I’ve had a great deal too much of you. Go and find your wife, who’s making a cuckold of you. Yes, she’s making a cuckold of you—it’s I who tell you so, now. There! have you got what you wanted? Will you leave me or not?”
Muffat’s eyes filled with tears. He clasped his hands.
“Let us go to sleep.”
Nana scarcely knew what she did, choking as she was with nervous sobs. It was too much! Did all these matters concern her? She had certainly taken all possible precaution in telling him, so as not to hurt his feelings, and now she was to pay for the broken glass! Oh, no! if you please! She was good-natured, but not to that extent.
“Damnation! I’ve had enough of it all!” swore she, striking the furniture with her clenched fists. “Ah, well! I who took so much care to keep faithful. Why, my fine fellow! I could be as rich as ever to-morrow, if I only said a word.”
He raised his head in surprise. He had never given the money question a thought. If she would express a desire, he would gratify it at once. His whole fortune was hers.
“No, it’s too late,” replied she, furiously. “I like the men who give without being asked. No, were you to offer me a million for one embrace, I would refuse you. It’s all over, I have something better there. Be off, or I will no longer answer for myself. I shall do something dreadful.”
And she advanced towards him, menacingly; but in the midst of this exasperation of a kind-hearted girl pushed to extremes, and convinced of her right and of her superiority over the worthy people who pestered her, the door suddenly opened and Steiner appeared. This was the last straw. She uttered a terrible cry.
“Hallo! here’s the other one now!”
Steiner, bewildered by the noise of her voice, stood still. Muffat’s unexpected presence annoyed him, for he was afraid of an explanation, from which he had kept aloof for three months past. Blinking his eyes, he twisted himself about in an uneasy sort of way, and avoided looking at the count; and he breathed hard, with the red and distorted features of a man who has rushed about Paris to bring some good news, and who finds he has fallen into a catastrophe.
“What do you want—you, eh?” asked Nana, roughly, speaking familiarly to him, in spite of the count’s presence.
“I—I—,” he stammered, “I have brought you—you know what.”
“What’s that?”
He hesitated. Two days before she had told him not to show himself there again without bringing a thousand francs, which she required to pay a bill. For two days he had been seeking the money, and he had just succeeded in completing the sum that very morning.
“The thousand francs,” he ended by saying, as he withdrew an envelope from his pocket.
Nana had forgotten all about them.
“The thousand francs!” cried she. “Do I ask for charity? Look! see what I do with your thousand francs!”
And seizing the envelope, she threw it in his face. Like a prudent Jew he picked it up, though painfully. He glanced at the young woman in a stupefied fashion. Muffat exchanged a look of despair with him, whilst Nana placed her hands on her hips in order to shout the louder.
“I say now, have you nearly finished insulting me? As for you, my boy, I’m glad you’ve also come; for now, look here, I can have a clean sweep. Now then! out you go!” Then, as they did not seem to hurry themselves, but stood as though paralysed, she went on: “What! you say I’m foolish? That’s possible! but you’ve plagued me too much; and, drat it all! I’ve had enough of a fashionable existence! If I bust up, it’s my lookout.
“One—two—you refuse to go? Well! look here then, I’ve got a friend.”
With a sudden movement she threw the bedroom door wide open. Then the two men beheld Fontan in the middle of the tumbled bed. He had not expected to be exhibited thus, with his dusky person spread out like a goat in the midst of the crumpled lace, his legs showing under the flying tail of his night shirt. He was not, however, by any means embarrassed, used as he was to the surprises of the stage. After the first shock was over, he was able to make a face which insured him the honours of war. He did the rabbit, as he called it, thrusting out his mouth, curling his nose, and moving all the muscles of his face at the same time. His head, resembling that of a libidinous faun, exuded vice through every pore. It was Fontan whom Nana, seized by that mad infatuation of women for the hideous grimaces of ugly comic actors, had been fetching nightly, for a week past, from the Variety Theatre.
“There!” said she, pointing to him with a tragic gesture.
Muffat, who was prepared for almost anything, indignantly resented the affront.
“Strumpet!” he stammered.
But Nana, already in the bedroom, returned to have the last word.
“Strumpet, indeed! Then what about your wife?”
And, turning on her heel, she loudly banged the door after her and bolted it. The two men, left alone, looked at each other in silence. Zoé then entered the room. She did not hurry them off, but talked very sensibly to them. Like a reasonable being, she thought madame had behaved very foolishly. However, she took her part. Her mania for that wretched stroller wouldn’t last long. All they had to do was to wait till she had got over it. They then withdrew. They had not uttered a word. Outside on the pavement, moved by a sort of fraternal feeling, they silently shook hands; and, turning their backs on each other, and dragging their legs along, they went off in opposite directions.
When Muffat at length returned to his house in the Rue Miromesnil, his wife had just arrived there. They both met on the broad staircase, the sombre walls of which diffused an icy chill around. Raising their eyes, they beheld each other. The count was still in his muddy clothes, and his face had the frightful pallor of a man returning from a surfeit of vice. The countess, blear-eyed, with her hair all dishevelled, and looking thoroughly exhausted by a night passed in the train, seemed scarcely able to keep awake.