CHAPTER XIII

Towards the end of September, Count Muffat, who was to dine at Nana’s that evening, came at dusk to inform her of a sudden order he had received to be at the Tuileries. The house was not yet lighted up, the servants were laughing very loudly in the kitchen. He slowly ascended the staircase, the windows of which shone in the prevailing warm shadow. Upstairs, the parlour door made no noise as he opened it. A rosy daylight was fading from the ceiling of the room. The crimson hangings, the capacious sofas, the lacquer furniture, all that medley of embroidered stuffs, of bronzes and of china, was already disappearing beneath a slowly deepening veil of gloom, which penetrated the corners, hiding alike the brilliancy of the ivory and the glitter of the gold. And there, in this obscurity, by the aid alone of the light colour of her dress, he beheld Nana reclining in George’s arms. All denial on their part was impossible. He uttered a suppressed cry, and stood as one lost.

Nana sprang to her feet and pushed him into the bedroom, to give the youngster time to get off.

“Come in here,” she murmured, scarcely knowing what she said. “I will explain—”

She was exasperated at being caught like that. She had never before given way in such a manner at home, in that parlour with the doors unfastened. A number of things had tended to bring it about—a quarrel with George, who was madly jealous of Philippe. He sobbed so bitterly on her neck that she could not resist, scarcely knowing how to calm him, and pitying him in her heart. And, on the one occasion when she was so foolish as to forget herself thus—with a youngster who could not even bring her bunches of violets now, as his mother guarded him so strictly—the count must needs come and catch them. Really, she had no luck! That was all one got by being a good-natured girl!

However, the obscurity in the bed-room, where she had 389 pushed the count, was complete. Then, feeling her way, she went and rang furiously for a lamp. After all, it was that Julien’s fault! If there had been a light in the parlour, nothing of all this would have happened. That stupid darkness which had come on had played the deuce with her heart.

“I beg of you, ducky, be reasonable,” said she, when Zoé brought a light.

The count, sitting down, his hands on his knees, looked on the ground, overcome by what he had just seen. He could not utter a word of anger. He trembled, as though seized with a horror which froze him. This silent anguish deeply affected the young woman. She tried to console him.

“Well! yes, I was wrong. It was very naughty of me. You see, I am sorry for my fault. I am very grieved, as it annoys you so much. Come now; you, too, be nice, and forgive me.”

She had sat down at his feet, and was seeking his glance with a look of submissive tenderness, to see if he was very angry with her. Then as, heaving a deep sigh, he recovered himself, she became more wheedling.

The count yielded to her entreaties. He merely insisted on George being sent away. But all illusion was gone; he could no longer believe in Nana’s sworn fidelity. On the morrow Nana would deceive him again; and he remained in the torment of possessing her simply through cowardice—through his fright at the idea of living without her.

This was the epoch of her existence when Nana brightened Paris with an increase of splendour. She became more imposing still on the horizon of vice; she domineered over the city with the insolent display of her luxury, with her contempt for money, which caused her to publicly melt away fortunes. In her mansion there was like the glare of a furnace. Her continual desires fed it. The least breath from her lips would change the gold into fine ashes, which the wind swept away at every hour. Never before had such a mania for expense been seen. The house seemed built over an abyss, into which men with their wealth, their bodies, even their names, were precipitated, without leaving the trace of a little dust behind. This girl with the tastes of a parrot, nibbling radishes and burnt almonds, playing with her meat, had bills to the extent of five thousand francs a month for her table. In the servants’ hall there was unbridled waste, a ferocious leakage, which emptied the casks of wine, and ran up bills increased by three or four hands through which they passed. Victorine and François reigned supreme in the kitchen, where they invited their friends, not to speak of a host of cousins whom they fed at their own homes with cold joints and meat soups. Julien exacted commissions from all the tradespeople. A glazier did not put in a thirty sou pane of glass but the butler had twenty added on for himself. Charles devoured the oats for the horses, ordering double the necessary supply, selling by a back door what came in by the front one; whilst in the midst of this universal pillage, of this sack of a town taken by assault, Zoé, by great art, succeeded in saving appearances, covering the thefts of all the others the better to hide and secure her own. But what was wasted was still worse—the food of the previous day thrown in the gutter, an incumbrance of victuals at which the servants turned up their noses, the glasses all sticky with sugar, gas-jets blazing away, turned on recklessly, sufficient to blow up the place; and negligences, and spitefulness, and accidents, all that can hasten ruin in an establishment devoured by so many mouths.

Then, upstairs in madame’s rooms, the downfall was even greater still. Dresses costing ten thousand francs, worn only twice, and sold by Zoé; jewels which disappeared as though they had crumbled away at the bottoms of the drawers; idiotic purchases, novelties of the day, forgotten in a corner on the morrow, and swept into the street. She could never see anything costing a great deal without desiring it; she thus created around her a continual devastation of flowers and precious knick-knacks, being all the more delighted in proportion to the price paid for them. Nothing remained perfect in her hands; she broke everything, or it faded or became soiled between her little white fingers; a strewing of nameless remnants, of crumpled rags, of muddy tatters, followed in her wake. Then the heavy settlements burst out in the midst of this waste of pocket-money. Twenty thousand francs owing to the milliner, thirty thousand to the linendraper, twelve thousand to the bootmaker, her stable had swallowed fifty thousand, in six months her dressmaker’s bill had run up to a hundred thousand francs. Without her having added to her household, which Labordette had estimated would cost on an average four hundred thousand francs yearly, she reached that year a million, amazed herself at the sum, and quite incapable of saying where all the money could possibly have gone to. Men piled up one upon the other, gold emptied out in barrowfuls, were unable to fill that chasm which was for ever opening deeper and deeper beneath the foundations of her house, in the disruption of her luxury.

Nana, however, still nursed a last caprice. Agitated once more with the idea of re-decorating her bed-room, she thought she had at last found something to suit her fancy—a room hung in tea-rose velvet, padded and reaching up to the ceiling, in the shape of a tent, ornamented with little silver buttons and with gold lace and cords. It seemed to her that this would look both rich and tender, a superb background to her fair skin. But the room, however, was merely to serve as a framework to the bed, a prodigy of dazzling brightness. Nana dreamed of a bed such as was never seen before—a throne, an altar, to which all Paris would come to adore her sovereign nudity. It was to be entirely of gold and silver, like an immense jewel, golden roses scattered over a silver network; at the head, a band of cupids amongst the flowers would be glancing down, with laughter on their faces, watching the voluptuous pleasures in the shadow of the curtains. She had consulted Labordette, who had brought two goldsmiths to see her. They were already preparing the drawings. The bed was to cost fifty thousand francs, and Muffat was to present her with it as a new year gift.

What surprised the young woman was that in this ever-flowing river of gold she was constantly without money. Some days she scarcely knew what to do for want of the most ridiculous sums, of a few louis. She had to borrow of Zoé or else raise funds any way she could. But before resigning herself to extreme measures, she would sound her friends, getting out of the men whatever they had about them, even sous, in a jocular sort of way. For three months past she had especially been emptying Philippe’s pockets in this manner. He now never called, whenever there was a crisis at hand, without leaving his purse behind him on leaving. Soon, becoming bolder, Nana had begun to ask him for loans—two hundred francs, three hundred francs, never more—for bills becoming due, or debts that could not remain longer unpaid; and Philippe, who, in July, had been made a captain, and pay-master of his regiment, would bring the money on the morrow, with the excuse that he was not rich, for good Madame Hugon now treated her sons with singular harshness. At the end of three months these little loans, often repeated, amounted to some ten thousand francs. The captain still laughed in his hearty, sonorous way, yet he was growing thin, appearing absent-minded at times, with a look of suffering on his face; but a glance from Nana transfigured him, in a sort of sensual ecstasy. She was very playful with him, intoxicating him with kisses behind doors, bewitching him with sudden abandonments of herself, which tied him to her petticoats the whole time he was off duty.

One night, Nana having mentioned that her name was also Thérèse, and that her saint’s-day was on the 15th October, the gentlemen all sent her presents. Captain Philippe brought his—an old Saxon china comfit-box,^bd mounted with gold. He found her alone in her dressing-room, having just come out of her bath, clothed only in a loose scarlet and white flannel dressing-gown, and very busy examining the presents spread out on a table. She had already broken a scent bottle in rock crystal in trying to take the stopper out.

“Oh! you are too nice,” said she. “Whatever is it? show me. What a child you are to spend your money in things like this!”

She scolded him, because he was not rich, although really very pleased to see him spend all he had on her, the only proof of love which ever touched her. However, she handled the comfit-box, wishing to see how it was made, opening and shutting it.

“Take care,” he murmured; “it’s not very strong.”

But she shrugged her shoulders. Did he think she had the hands of a railway porter? And suddenly the hinge remained between her fingers, whilst the lid fell to the ground and broke. She stood lost in amazement, with her eyes fixed on the pieces.

“Oh! it’s broken!” said she.

Then she began to laugh. The pieces on the floor looked funny to her. It was a nervous gaiety. She had the stupid and cruel laugh of a child who finds amusement in destruction. Philippe was seized for a moment with a feeling of indignation. The wretched woman did not know what agony that trifle had cost him. When she saw him looking so upset, she endeavoured to restrain herself.

“Anyhow, it wasn’t my fault. It was cracked. Those old things never keep together. It was the lid! Did you see the stupid way in which it fell off?”

And she burst out laughing again. But as the young man’s eyes filled with tears, in spite of his efforts to restrain them, she lovingly threw her arms round his neck.

“How silly you are! I love you all the same. If nothing was ever broken, the dealers would never sell anything. It’s all made to be broken. Look at this fan! it isn’t even stuck together!”

She seized hold of a fan and roughly pulled it open. The silk tore in two. That seemed to excite her. To show that she did not care anything for the other presents, as she had spoilt his, she regaled herself with a general massacre, knocking the different things about, proving, as she destroyed them all, there was not one of them that was solid. A glimmer lighted up her vacant eyes, a slight curl of her lips displayed her white teeth. Then when all the things were in pieces, she struck the table with her open hands, looking very red, and laughing louder than ever, and stammered forth in a childish voice,

“All gone! no more! no more!”

Then Philippe, yielding to the intoxication, cheered up, and pressing against her, kissed her on the neck and bosom. She abandoned herself to him, clinging to his shoulders, feeling so happy that she could not recollect having ever enjoyed herself so much before. And without leaving go of him, she caressingly said,

“I say, darling; you might manage to bring me ten louis to-morrow. It’s an awful nuisance—a baker’s bill which is worrying me.”

He became very pale; then kissing her for a last time on the forehead, he merely said,

“I will do my best.”

A pause ensued. She was dressing herself. He was pressing his face against the window pane. At the end of a minute he returned to where she stood, and said slowly,

“Nana, you ought to marry me.”

The idea seemed so ludicrous to the young woman, that she could not finish fastening her petticoats.

“But, my poor fellow, you must be ill! Is it because I’ve asked you for ten louis that you offer me your hand? Never, I love you too much for that. What a stupid idea to get into your head!”

And, as Zoé entered the room to put madame’s boots on, they dropped the subject. The maid had at once caught sight of the remnants of the presents scattered over the table. She asked if they were to be put anywhere; and madame having said that they could be thrown away, she gathered them up in her apron. Down in the kitchen, the servants quarrelled together as they shared madame’s leavings.

That day George, in spite of having been forbidden by Nana to do so, had sneaked into the house. François had plainly enough seen him come in, but now the servants merely laughed among themselves over their mistress’s embarrassments. He had crept into the parlour, when the sound of his brother’s voice arrested his advance; and, with his ear at the key-hole, he had heard all that had taken place—the kisses, the offer of marriage. A feeling of horror froze him, he went off, idiotic and with a sensation of emptiness in his head. It was only when he reached the Rue Richelieu, in his room over his mother‘s, that his heart found relief in furious sobs. This time, doubt was impossible. An abominable vision kept appearing before his eyes—Nana in Philippe’s arms; and it seemed to him an incest. When he thought himself calmed, memory returned, and in a fresh fit of jealous rage, he threw himself on his bed, biting the sheets and uttering horrible oaths, which increased his passion. The rest of the day passed thus. He complained of a headache, so as to be able to remain in his room. But the night was more terrible still: a murderous fever shook his frame in a continuous nightmare. If his brother had lived in the house, he would have gone and stabbed him with a knife. When day returned, he tried to reason with himself. It was he who ought to die, he would throw himself from the window as an omnibus passed. However, towards ten o’clock he went out; he wandered about Paris, rambled over the bridges, and then at last felt an invincible longing to see Nana. Perhaps with a word she would save him. And three o’clock was striking as he entered the house in the Avenue de Villiers.

Towards midday some shocking news had quite overwhelmed Madame Hugon. Philippe had been in prison since the previous evening, accused of having stolen twelve thousand francs from the regimental chest. For three months past he had been embezzling small sums, hoping to replace them, and hiding the deficit by means of false accounts; and this fraud had succeeded, thanks to the negligence of the managing council. The old lady, crushed by her child’s crime, uttered at first a cry of rage against Nana. She knew of Philippe’s intimacy with the young woman. Her sadness came from this misfortune, which was the cause of her remaining in Paris, through the fear of some catastrophe; but never had she dreaded such shame, and now she reproached herself for having refused him money, as though she had been an accomplice. Having sunk into an arm-chair, her legs, so to say, paralysed, she felt herself useless, incapable of doing anything, only fit to die; but the sudden thought of George consoled her. George was left her—he might do something, perhaps save them both. Then, without asking help from anyone, desirous of hiding all this amongst themselves, she dragged herself along and ascended the stairs, fortified by the thought that she still had one love remaining. But the room above was empty. The door-keeper told her that Monsieur George had gone out early. The signs of a second misfortune hovered about the room. The bed, with its torn and crumpled sheets, told an unmistakable tale of anguish; a chair knocked over on the ground amongst some clothes, seemed to forebode death. George was probably at that woman’s, and Madame Hugon, with dry eyes and a firm step, descended the staircase. She wanted her sons, she was going to demand them.

Ever since the morning Nana had had nothing but worry. First of all there was that baker, who, as early as nine o‘clock had called with his bill, a mere nothing—a hundred and thirty-three, francs’ worth of bread, which she had been unable to settle for, in the midst of her regal style of living. He had called twenty times, exasperated at having lost the custom on the day he had declined to give further credit; and the servants espoused his cause. François said that madame would never pay him if he did not make a great fuss; Charles talked of going upstairs to get an old bill for straw settled; whilst Victorine advised them to wait till some gentleman called, and to get the money by going to the drawing-room when he was there. The servants’ hall was deeply interested, all the tradespeople were kept informed of what was going on. There were gossipings of three and four hours’ duration. Madame was disrobed, pulled to pieces, talked about, with the rancour of idle menials bursting with good living. Julien, the butler, alone pretended to take madame’s part. She was, all the same, a fine woman; and when the others accused him of having enjoyed some of her favours, he laughed in a foppish sort of way, which put the cook beside herself, for she would have liked to have been a man to spit on such women, they disgusted her so much. François had maliciously left the baker waiting in the hall, without informing madame. As she came downstairs at lunch-time, she found herself face to face with him. She took his bill, and told him to call again about three o’clock. Then, muttering a number of filthy expressions, he went off, swearing to be punctual, and to pay himself some way or other.

Nana made a very poor lunch, being upset by this scene. This time she would have to satisfy the man. On ten different occasions at least, she had put the money for him on one side; but somehow or other it had always dribbled away—one day for flowers, or another day for a subscription for an old gendarme. She was, however, counting on Philippe, and was even surprised that he had not already been with his two hundred francs. It was awful ill-luck. Two days before she had again rigged out Satin, a regular trousseau, spending nearly twelve hundred francs in dresses and underclothing, and she had not a louis left.

Towards two o’clock, as Nana was beginning to be anxious, Labordette called. He brought the designs for the bedstead. It was a diversion, and produced a fit of joy which caused the young woman to forget everything else. She clapped her hands, she danced; then, brimful of curiosity, leaning over a table in the parlour, she examined the drawings, which Labordette explained to her.

“You see, this is the boat; in the centre a bunch of full-blown roses, then a garland of flowers and buds; the leaves will be in green gold and the roses in red gold. And this is the great design for the head—a troop of cupids dancing in a circle against a silver trellis.”

But Nana interrupted him, carried away by rapture.

“Oh! isn’t he funny, the little one, the one in the corner, turning a somersault? And look at his saucy laugh! They’ve all got such wicked eyes! I say, my boy, I shall have to be careful of what I do before them!”

She was in an extraordinary state of satisfied pride. The goldsmiths had said that no queen ever slept on such a bedstead. Only there was a slight complication. Labordette showed her two designs for the piece at the foot, the one which reproduced the subject of the boat and cupids, the other which was altogether a new design—a female figure representing Night enveloped in her veil, which a faun was drawing aside, displaying her radiant nudity. He added that if she selected this second design, the goldsmiths intended to make the figure representing Night like her. This idea, which was in questionable taste, made her turn pale with pleasure. She saw herself as a little silver statue, the symbol of the tepid, voluptuous pleasures of darkness,

“Of course, you will only sit for the head and shoulders,” said Labordette.

“Why!” asked she, coolly looking him in the face. “As it is a question of a work of art, I sha’n’t care a fig for the sculptor who copies me!”

So it was settled. She chose the second subject also; but he stopped her.

“Wait. It will cost six thousand francs more.”

“Well! that’s all the same to me!” cried she, bursting out laughing. “My little muff will pay!”

It was thus she called Count Muffat now amongst her intimate acquaintances; and the gentlemen never asked after him otherwise than as, “Did you see your little muff last night? Ah! I thought I should have found the little muff here!” A simple familiarity which, however, she did not as yet allow herself to make use of in his presence.

Labordette rolled up the drawings as he gave her some final information: the goldsmiths engaged to deliver the bedstead in two months’ time, towards the 25th December; the very next week a sculptor would come to make the rough model for the figure of Night. As she walked with him to the stairs, Nana remembered the baker, and said suddenly,

“By the way, do you happen to have ten louis about you?”

One of Labordette’s principles, and which he found invaluable, was never to lend money to women. He always gave the same answer,

“No, my girl; I’m quite stumped. But would you like me to call on your little muff?”

She refused; it was useless. Two days before she had got five thousand francs out of the count. Following Labordette, though it was scarcely half-past two when he called, the baker reappeared; and he roughly seated himself on a bench in the hall, swearing very loud. The young woman was listening to him up on the first floor. She turned pale; she suffered especially at hearing up there the secret joy of the servants. They were splitting their sides with laughing in the kitchen. The coachman looked on from the yard; François passed across the hall without any necessity, and then went and told the others how things were progressing, after bestowing a chuckle of intelligence on the baker. They did not care a straw for madame; the walls seemed bursting with the sounds of their mirth. She felt herself all alone, despised by her servants, who spied on her and bespattered her with their filthy jokes. Then as she had had an idea of borrowing the hundred and thirty-three francs from Zoé, she gave it up. She already owed her some money; she was too proud to risk a refusal. So strong an emotion possessed her that she returned to her bed-room, saying aloud,

“Never mind, my girl; only depend upon yourself. Your body’s your own, and it’s best to make use of it rather than to submit to an insult.”

And without even ringing for Zoé, she hastily dressed herself to go to old Tricon’s. It was her supreme resource in the hours of great distress. Very much asked for, always required by the old woman, she refused or accepted, according to her wants; and the days, which were becoming more and more frequent, when she suffered from any embarrassment in her royal career, she was always sure of finding twenty-five louis awaiting her there. She would go to old Tricon’s in the easy style gained by habit, the same as poor people go to the pawn-shop.

But on leaving her bed-room, she ran up against George, standing in the middle of the parlour. She did not notice his wax-like paleness, the dull light in his wide open eyes. She uttered a sigh of relief.

“Ah! you’ve come from your brother?”

“No,” said the youngster, turning paler still.

Then she made a gesture of despair. What did he want? Why was he standing in front of her? Come, she was in a hurry; and she passed him. Then retracing her steps, she asked,

“Have you any money with you?”

“No.”

“It’s true—how stupid of me! Never a thing, not even the six sous for their omnibus. Mamma won’t. What men!”

And she was hurrying off; but he stopped her. He wished to speak to her. She, excited, kept saying that she had not time, when with a word he made her leave off.

“Listen, I know you are going to marry my brother.”

Well, that was comic. She dropped into a chair to laugh at her ease.

“Yes,” continued the youngster; “and I will not have it. It is I whom you must marry. That is why I have come.”

“Eh, what? you also?” she exclaimed. “Is it then a family complaint? But, never! What an idea! Did I ever ask you to do such a disgraceful thing? Neither the one nor the other—never!”

Then George’s face brightened up. He might by chance have been mistaken. He resumed, “Then swear to me that you are not my brother’s mistress.”

“Ah! you’re becoming a confounded nuisance!” said Nana, rising to her feet, impatient to be off. “It’s funny for a minute, but I tell you I’m in a hurry! I’m your brother’s mistress when I choose to be. Do you keep me—do you pay here, that you come and call me to account? Yes, I’m your brother’s mistress.”

He had seized her arm, and squeezed it almost enough to break it, as he stammered out, “Don’t say that—don’t say that—”

With a slap she freed herself.

“He’s whipping me now! the young monkey! My little fellow, you must be off, and at once too. I’ve let you be here through kindness. It’s just so, however wide you may open your eyes! You didn’t expect, I suppose, to have me for your mamma until the day of my death. I’ve something better to do than to nurse brats.”

He listened to her in an agony which stiffened his limbs and left him powerless. Each word stabbed him to the heart, with a blow so hard that he felt it was killing him. She, not even noticing his suffering, continued, happy at being able to vent herself on him for all her worries of the morning.

“It’s just the same with your brother; he’s a nice one, he is! He promised me two hundred francs. Ah, well! I may wait for ever for him. It’s not that I care about his money! Not enough to pay for my pomades. But he’s left me in a fix! Now would you like to know? Well, through your brother’s fault, I’m going out to earn twenty-five louis from another man.”

Then, in a state of bewilderment, he stood before the door; and he cried, and implored, clasping his hands together, and muttering, “Oh, no! oh, no!”

“Well, I’m willing,” said she. ”Have you the money?”

No, he had not got the money. He would have given his life to have had it. Never before had he felt so miserable, so useless, such a child. All his poor body, shaken with sobs, expressed a grief so great that she ended by seeing it and feeling for him. She pushed him gently on one side.

“Come, ducky, let me pass; you must. Be reasonable. You’re a baby, and it was all very nice for a week; but to-day I must attend to my affairs. Think it over now. Your brother, too, is a man. I don’t say with him—Ah! do me a kindness; don’t mention to him anything of all this. He has no need to know where I’m going. I always say too much when I’m angry.”

She laughed. Then, putting her arms round him and kissing him on the forehead, she added,

“Good-bye, baby; it’s over, all over, you understand. Now, I’m off.”

And she left him. He was standing in the centre of the parlour. The last words sounded like a knell in his ears, “It is over, all over”; and the ground seemed to open beneath his feet. In the vacuum of his brain, the man who was awaiting Nana had disappeared; Philippe alone remained, continually in the woman’s bare arms. She did not deny it; she certainly loved him, as she wished to spare him the grief of knowing her to be unfaithful. It was over, all over. He drew a long breath, he gazed around the room, choked by a weight that was crushing him. Recollections returned to him one by one—the merry nights at La Mignotte, hours of love during which he thought himself her child, the voluptuous pleasures snatched in that very room. And never, never more! He was too little, he had not grown quick enough; Philippe had taken his place, because he had a beard. So, it was the end, he could no longer live. His vice had become full of an infinite tenderness, of a sensual adoration, in which his whole being was centred. Then, how could he forget, when his brother would remain there—his brother, who was of the same blood, another self whose pleasure drove him mad with jealousy? It was the end, he wished to die.

All the doors were left open as the servants noisily scuttled about, they having seen madame go out on foot. Downstairs, on the bench in the hall, the baker was laughing with Charles and François. As Zoé crossed the parlour at a run, she appeared surprised at seeing George, and asked him if he was waiting for madame. Yes, he was waiting for her, he had forgotten to tell her something. And, when he was again alone, he ferreted about. Finding nothing better, he took from the dressing-room a pair of sharply pointed scissors, which Nana was continually using, cutting her hangnails and little hairs with them.

Then, for an hour, he waited patiently, his hand in his pocket, his fingers nervously clutching the scissors.

“Here’s madame,” said Zoé, coming back; she had probably been watching for her out of the bed-room window.

More scuttling about was heard in the house, and sounds of laughter died away as doors were closed. George heard Nana pay the baker and utter a few brief words. Then she came up the stairs.

“What! you’re still here!” said she, as she caught sight of him. “Ah! we shall have a row, my little man!”

He followed her whilst she moved towards the bed-room.

“Nana, will you marry me?”

But she shrugged her shoulders. It was too absurd, she did not answer. Her idea was to bang the door in his face.

“Nana, will you marry me?”

She slammed the door. With one hand he opened it, whilst he withdrew the other hand holding the scissors from his pocket. And, simply, with one violent blow, he thrust them into his chest.

Nana, however, had had a feeling that something terrible was going to happen. She turned round. When she saw him strike himself, she was seized with indignation.

“But he’s cracked! he’s cracked! And with my scissors too! Will you leave off, you wicked child! Ah! good heavens!—ah! good heavens!”

She was seized with fear. The youngster, fallen on his knees, had struck himself a second blow, which had laid him flat on the carpet. He blocked the threshold of the bed-room. Then she became quite bewildered; she shouted with all her might, not daring to step over that body, which shut her in and prevented her running for help.

“Zoé! Zoé! come quick. Make him leave off. It’s absurd, a child like that! He’s killing himself now! and in my house, too! Did anyone ever see such a thing?”

He frightened her. He was all white, and his eyes were closed. The wound scarcely bled at all, there was only a little blood which trickled from under the waistcoat. She had nerved herself to pass over the body, when an apparition caused her to draw back. Opposite to her, by the open door of the parlour, she beheld an old lady advancing, and she recognised Madame Hugon, terrified, unable to account for her presence. She continued to step back; she still wore her bonnet and gloves. Her terror became such that she attempted to defend herself in a hesitating voice.

“Madame, it was not I, I swear to you. He wanted to marry me, I said ‘no,’ and he’s killed himself.”

Madame Hugon slowly approached, dressed in black, with her pale face and white hair. In the carriage the thought of George had left her, and Philippe’s sin had alone occupied her mind. Perhaps that woman could give some explanations to the judges which might cause them to be more lenient; and her intention was to implore her to bear witness in her son’s favour. Downstairs the doors of the mansion were wide open. She hesitated at the staircase, with her poor legs, when, suddenly, shouts of fear had directed her steps. Then, upstairs, she beheld a man lying on the floor, his shirt stained with blood. It was George—it was her other child.

Nana kept repeating, in an idiotic way: “He wanted to marry me. I said ‘no,’ and he’s killed himself.”

Without a cry, Madame Hugon stooped down. Yes, it was the other one, it was George. The one dishonoured, the other dead. It did not surprise her, in the downfall of her whole existence. Kneeling on the carpet, ignoring the place where she was, noticing no one, she looked fixedly in George’s face, she listened with a hand upon his heart. Suddenly she uttered a faint sigh. She had felt his heart beat. Then she raised her head, examined the room and the woman, and seemed to recollect. A fire lighted up her vacant eyes. She was so grand and so terrible that Nana trembled as she continued to defend herself, over that corpse which separated them.

“I swear to you, madame—if his brother was here, he could explain.”

“His brother is a thief, he is in prison,” said the mother harshly.

Nana remained transfixed, gasping for breath. But why all that? The other had robbed—they were mad then, in that family! She ceased struggling, no longer seeming to be in her own house, but leaving Madame Hugon to give her own orders. Some of the servants had at last hastened to the spot; the old lady insisted on having George, insensible as he was, taken to her carriage. She would remove him from that house, though it killed him. Nana, with a stupefied gaze, watched the servants carrying that poor Zizi by his legs and shoulders. The mother followed behind, quite exhausted now, leaning on the furniture, as though sunk into the nothingness of all she loved. On the landing she sighed and turning round, said twice,

“Ah! you have done us much harm! You have done us much harm!”

That was all. Nana seated herself, in her stupor, with her gloves still on her hands, and her bonnet on her head. The house relapsed into a dull silence, the carriage had just gone off; and she remained immovable, without an idea, her head all buzzing with what had just transpired. A quarter of an hour later, Count Muffat found her in the same place. But then she eased herself with a great flow of words, telling him of the misfortune, repeating twenty times the same details, picking up the scissors smeared with blood, to imitate Zizi’s gesture when he stabbed himself. And she seemed especially anxious to prove her innocence.

“Come now, darling, was it my fault? If you were Justice, would you condemn me? I never told Philippe to steal, that’s very certain, any more than I drove this poor fellow to kill himself. In all this, I’m the most miserable. They come and make fools of themselves here; they cause me a great deal of pain; I’m treated like a wretch of a woman.”

And she burst out crying. Her nerves were highly unstrung, which rendered her weak and doleful, and deeply moved with an immense sorrow.

“You, too, you don’t seem very pleased. Ask Zoé, now, if I’m at all to blame. Zoé, speak; explain to the count—”

For some few minutes the maid, having fetched from the dressing-room a towel and a basin of water, had been rubbing the carpet to get rid of a stain of blood, whilst it was still wet.

“Oh, sir!” she declared; “madame is quite broken-hearted!”

Muffat was greatly affected, feeling stunned by the drama, his thoughts full of that mother weeping for her two children. He knew her great heart; he saw her in her widow’s weeds, pining away all alone at Les Fondettes. But Nana’s despair increased. Now, the picture of Zizi, lying on the floor, with a red spot on his shirt, put her quite beside herself.

“He was so pretty, so gentle, so caressing! Ah! you know, ducky, it’s so much the worse if you don’t like it. I loved him, the baby! I can’t control myself; it’s stronger than I am. And then it can’t matter to you now. He is no longer here. You have what you wanted; you may be quite sure of never catching us together again.”

This last idea overwhelmed him with such regret that he ended by trying to console her. She must bear up. She was right; it was not her fault. But she stopped him to say,

“Listen, you must run and bring me news of him. At once! I insist! ”

He took his hat and went off to obtain news of George. When he returned, at the end of three quarters of an hour, he beheld Nana leaning out of the window anxiously awaiting him; and he called to her from the pavement that the little fellow was not dead, and that they even hoped to save his life. Then she changed at once to a great joy. She sang, danced, and thought life beautiful. Zoé, however, was not satisfied with her cleansing. She kept looking at the stain, and saying each time she passed,

“You know, madame, it hasn’t gone away.”

And in fact, as it dried, the stain appeared a pale red on one of the white ornaments of the carpet. It was on the very threshold of the room, like a line of blood barring the way.

“Bah!” said Nana, happy once more, “the footsteps will wear it away.”

By the morrow Count Muffat had also forgotten the incident. When in the cab on the way to the Rue Richelieu, he had sworn never to return to that woman. Heaven gave him a warning. He looked on Philippe’s and George’s calamity as foreboding his own ruin. But neither the spectacle of Madame Hugon in tears, nor the sight of the youth consumed with fever, had had the power to make him keep his oath; and from the short moment of emotion caused by the drama, all that remained to him was the secret joy of being rid of a rival, whose charming youth had always exasperated him. He now experienced an exclusive passion, one of those passions of men who have had no youth. He loved Nana with a necessity always to know that she was his alone—to hear her, to touch her, to be under the influence of her breath. It was an attachment which had got beyond the mere gratification of his senses, and had reached the purer feeling—an anxious affection, jealous of the past, dreaming at times of redemption, of pardon bestowed, both of them kneeling before God the Father. Each day religion regained some of its ascendeney over him. He again practised going to confession and communicating, struggling unceasingly, mingling his remorse with the joys of sin and of penitence. Then, his spiritual director having permitted him to wear out his passion, he had made a habit of that daily damnation, which he redeemed by bursts of faith, full of a devout humility. He very naively offered to heaven, as an expiatory suffering, the abominable torment he endured. This torment continued to increase. It raised his calvary of a believer, of a grave and profound heart, fallen into the mad sensuality of a courtesan. What caused him the most agony were the continual infidelities of that woman, for he could not accustom himself to share with others, failing to understand her stupid infatuations. He longed for an eternal love, ever the same. Yet, she had sworn to be faithful, and he paid her for that; but he felt that she lied, unable to guard herself, giving herself to her friends and the passersby, like some good animal born to live in a state of nakedness.

One morning that he observed Foucarmont leaving her house at a rather peculiar hour, he sought an explanation. She at once flew into a passion, tired of his jealousy. She had already, on several occasions, been very nice. For instance, the night when he had caught her with George she had been the first to make it up, admitting her fault, loading him with caresses and pretty words, to help him get over it; but at length he bored her with his obstinacy in not understanding women, and she roughly said,

“Well! yes, I’ve been Foucarmont’s mistress. What next? Eh! that puts your hair out of curl, my little muff! ”

It was the first time she called him “little muff” to his face. He remained bursting with rage at the brazenness of her avowal; and, as he clinched his fists, she walked towards him, and looked him straight in the face.

“Now, that’s enough, do you hear? If it doesn’t please you, just oblige me by going off. I won’t have you kicking up a row in my house. Understand that I intend to be free to do as I like. When a man pleases me, I’ll have him here. Exactly, that’s what I mean. And you must make up your mind at once: yes or no, the door is open.”

She had gone and opened the door. He did not go. So now it became her way of attaching him to her all the more; for nothing at all, at the least quarrel, she gave him his choice, accompanied by some of the most abominable reflections. Ah, well! she would always be able to find some one better than he, she had only too many people to choose from; one could pick up men outside, as many as one wanted, and fellows who were not such ninnies as he, whose blood boiled in their veins. He bowed his head, he waited for better times, when she would be in want of money; then she became caressing, and he forgot everything—a night of love compensated for the tortures of a week. His reconciliation with his wife had made his home unbearable. The countess, cast off by Fauchery, who was once more completely under Rose’s influence, sought forgetfulness in other amours, in the attack of the feverish anxiety of her forty years, ever nervous, and filling the house with the exasperating commotion of her mode of living. Since her marriage, Estelle no longer saw her father. This skinny and insignificant looking girl had suddenly developed into a woman with an iron will so absolute that Daguenet trembled before her; now he accompanied her to church, converted, and furious with his father-in-law, who was ruining them with an abandoned female. M. Venot alone remained affectionate towards the count, whilst biding his time. He had even succeeded in gaining access to Nana; he frequented the two houses, where one often came across his continual smile behind the doors. And Muffat, miserable in his own home, driven from thence by dulness and shame, preferred rather to live amidst the insults of the Avenue de Villiers.

Soon, only one question remained between Nana and the count; that of money. One day, after formally promising to bring ten thousand francs, he had dared to present himself at the appointed time empty-handed. For the previous two days, she had been exciting him with endless caresses. Such a breaking of his word, so many endearing little ways wasted, threw her into an abusive rage. She became quite white.

“Eh! you’ve no money? Then, my little muff, return to whence you came, and quicker than that too! What a sordid wretch! and he was going to kiss me! No money, no anything! you understand!”

He entered into some explanations. He would have the money the day after the morrow. But she interrupted him violently.

“And my bills that are coming due! They’ll seize my goods, whilst his lordship comes here on tick. Now, just look at yourself! Do you think I love you for yourself? When one has a mug like yours, one pays the women who are willing to put up with you. Damnation! if you don’t bring me the ten thousand francs to-night, you sha’n’t even so much as suck the tip of my little finger. Really! I must send you back to your wife!”

That night he brought the ten thousand francs. Nana held out her lips. He took a long kiss, which consoled him for all his day of agony. What annoyed the young woman was always having him attached to her skirts. She complained to M. Venot, imploring him to take her little muff to the countess. Their reconciliation did not appear to have been of much use and she regretted having had anything to do with it, as he was for ever at her back. The days when, blinded by anger, she forgot her interests, she swore to play him such a dirty trick that he would never again be able to come near her. But while she blackguarded him, slapping her thighs meanwhile—she might even have spat in his face—he would have remained and thanked her. Then they had continual quarrels about money. She roughly demanded it. She abused him in regard to the most miserable sums, odiously greedy every minute, delighting in cruelly telling him that she only tolerated him for his money and for nothing else, that she didn’t care for him, that she loved another, and that she was very unfortunate in having to do with such an idiot as he! They did not even want to have him any longer at court, where there was a talk of requesting him to send in his resignation. The Empress had said, “He is too disgusting.” That was very true. And Nana always repeated the words as a parting shot in their quarrels.

“Really! you are too disgusting!”

She no longer put the least constraint upon herself now, she had regained complete liberty. Every day she took her drive in the Bois round the lake, forming acquaintances there which became more intimate elsewhere. It was the great angling match for men, the baiting in the full light of day, the hooking by illustrious harlots, beneath the smile of toleration and the dazzling luxury of Paris. Duchesses drew each other’s attention to her, the wives of wealthy tradesmen copied her bonnets; at times her landau, when striving to pass, would arrest a long string of grand equipages, containing financiers holding all Europe in their cash-boxes, and ministers whose big fingers were half throttling France; and she formed a part of this world of the Bois. She occupied an important position there, known by the people of every capital, greatly in demand with all foreigners, adding the mad fit of her debauchery to the splendours of that crowd like the very glory and keen enjoyment of a nation. Then the intimacies of a night—mere birds of passage, of which she herself lost all recollection on the morrow—would take her to the grand restaurants, often to the Café de Madrid, when the weather was fine. All the staff of the embassies defiled there; she dined with Lucy Stewart, who murdered the French language, and who paid to be amused, taking the girls at so much an evening, with instructions to them to be funny, while they themselves were so sick of everything and so worn out that they never even touched them. And the girls called it going on the spree. They returned home delighted at having been treated with such disdain, and finished the night with some lover of their choice.

Count Muffat pretended to be ignorant of these goings on, when Nana did not tell him of them herself. He suffered, too, a great deal from the disgraces of his daily existence. The mansion in the Avenue de Villiers was becoming a regular hell, a mad-house in which sudden crazes at all hours of the day led to the most odious scenes. Nana had arrived at the point of battling with her servants. At one time she was especially good to Charles, the coachman. Whenever she stopped at a restaurant, she sent him out refreshments by the waiters; she would talk to him from inside her landau, highly amused, thinking him very funny as he roundly abused the other drivers whenever there was a block in the street. Then, without rhyme or reason, she completely changed and treated him as a fool. She was always wrangling about the straw, the bran, and the oats; in spite of her love for animals, she considered that her horses ate too much. So at length, one settling day, as she accused him of robbing her, Charles flew into a passion, and bluntly called her a strumpet; her horses, anyhow, were worth more than she, they did not let everyone muck them about. She retorted in a similar style, and the count was obliged to separate them and turn the coachman off the premises.

But this was only the beginning of a general stampede of the servants. Victorine and François went off, after the discovery of a robbery of diamonds. Even Julien disappeared, and a story was circulated that the count had implored him to go, giving him at the same time a large sum of money, because madame had taken a great fancy to him. Every week fresh faces were seen in the servants’ hall. Never had there been such waste; the house was like a passage through which the scum of the servants’ registry-offices defiled in a massacring gallop. Zoé alone kept her place, with her neat look and her only anxiety of organising the disorder, so long as she had not saved sufficient to settle down on her own account, a plan which she had been working at for a long time past.

And yet those were only the avowable cares. The count bore with Madame Maloir’s stupidity, playing at bezique with her, in spite of her rank odour. He put up with Madame Lerat and her cackling, and with little Louis and his doleful complaints of a child devoured by disease—some putrefaction bequeathed by an unknown father. But he had to endure other things far worse. One night, behind a door, he had heard Nana furiously telling her maid that a pretended rich man had just taken her in. Yes, a handsome fellow, who said he was American, and owned gold mines in his own country—a mean vagabond who had gone off whilst she was asleep, without leaving a sou behind, and even taking a packet of cigarette papers away with him; and the count, very pale, had crept downstairs again on tiptoe, so that he might feign ignorance of the occurrence. On another occasion he was obliged to be aware of everything. Nana, infatuated with a singer at a music-hall, and forsaken by him, wanted to commit suicide in a fit of gloomy sentimentality. She swallowed a glass of water in which she had soaked a handful of matches, and was horribly ill in consequence, but did not die. The count had to nurse her and listen to the story of her passion intermingled with tears and oaths never to care for men again. In her contempt for the pigs, as she called them, she could not, however, keep her heart free, having always some sweetheart about her skirts, and indulging in the most inexplicable caprices, through the depraved tastes of her wearied body.

Since Zoé relaxed her supervision to meet her own ends, the good management of the household had disappeared to the extent that Muffat dared not open a door, draw a curtain, or look into a cupboard. The machinery no longer worked. Gentlemen were hanging about everywhere; at every minute they were knocking up against each other. Now, he invariably coughed before entering a room, having almost found the young woman with her arms round Francis’s neck one evening that he had left the dressing-room for a couple of minutes to order the carriage, whilst the hairdresser was giving a few finishing touches to madame’s hair. It was for ever sudden abandonments behind his back—pleasures snatched in odd corners, quickly, and in her chemise or in her most gorgeous costumes, with whoever happened to be with her. Then delighted with her robbery, she would rejoin him, looking very red in the face. With him there would have been no pleasure; he was such an abominable nuisance!

In the agony of his jealousy, the unhappy man had reached the state of feeling easy whenever he left Nana and Satin alone together. He would have encouraged her in this connection for the sake of keeping the men away. But on this side also everything went wrong. Nana deceived Satin, the same as she deceived the count, having a rage for the most monstrous crazes, picking up girls from the street corners. When returning home in her carriage, she would at times become enamoured of some strumpet caught sight of on the pavement, her senses inflamed, her imagination kindled; and she would take the woman with her, then pay her and send her away. At other times, disguised as a man, she would frequent houses of ill repute, and witness spectacles of debauchery, which helped her to forget her weariness; and Satin, annoyed at being continually forsaken, would disturb the house with the most atrocious scenes. She had ended by gaining complete mastery over Nana, who respected her. Muffat even thought of allying himself with her. When he did not dare to do anything himself, he would set Satin to work. Twice she had made her darling take him back; whilst he showed himself very obliging, giving her a word of warning or making himself scarce at the least sign.

Only the understanding did not last long; for Satin too was cracked. On certain days she would smash everything, feeling half dead, ruining what little health she had left in excesses of anger or of dissipation, looking pretty though, in spite of all. Zoé probably set her off; for she took her into corners, as though she wished to gain her over in the interests of that grand business of hers, that plan of which she had never yet spoken to anyone.

Singular fits of revolt, however, still took possession of Count Muffat. He who had tolerated Satin for months past, who had ended by accepting strangers, all that troop of men galloping through Nana’s bedroom, became enraged at the idea of being deceived by any of his friends, or even acquaintances. When she owned to him her intimacy with Foucarmont, he suffered so much, he considered the young man’s treachery so abominable, that he wished to provoke him to a duel. As he did not know whom to ask to be his seconds in such an affair, he consulted Labordette. The latter was so astounded, that he could not refrain from laughing.

“A duel about Nana! But, dear sir, all Paris would laugh at you. No one could fight for Nana; it would be too ridiculous.”

The count became very pale. He made a violent gesture. “Then I will strike him, in the street before every one.”

For an hour Labordette had to reason with him. A blow would make the story odious; by the evening every one would know the real cause of the meeting—he would be the laughing-stock of the newspapers. And Labordette kept returning to this conclusion.

“Impossible, it would be too ridiculous!”

Each time these words fell upon Muffat sharp and clean like the blow of a knife. He could not even fight for the woman he loved; every one would split their sides with laughing. Never before had he so painfully felt the misery of his love, that solemn feeling of his heart lost in that fooling of pleasure. This was his last revolt; he let himself be convinced. From that time he assisted at the procession of his friends, of all the men who lived there in the privacy of the mansion.

In a few months Nana devoured them greedily, one after the other. The increasing requirements of her luxury whetted her appetite, she cleaned a man out with the craunch^be of her teeth. First, she had Foucarmont, who did not last a fortnight. He had dreamed of leaving the navy. In ten years of a seafaring life he had saved some thirty thousand francs, which he wanted to risk in the United States; and his prudent and even miserly instincts were silenced—he gave all, even his signature to accommodation bills, thus affecting his future. When Nana turned him adrift, he was penniless. However, she showed herself very kind-hearted—she advised him to return to his ship. What was the use of being obstinate? As he had no money left, he could not possibly remain with her. He ought to understand that and be reasonable. A ruined man fell from her hands like ripe fruit, to rot on the earth all by himself.

Next, Nana tackled Steiner without disgust, but also without love. She called him a dirty Jew. She seemed to be gratifying an old hatred which she could not very well explain to herself. He was fat, he was stupid, and she turned him about, taking double mouthfuls, wishing to have done with the Prussian all the quicker. He had given up Simone. His Bosphorus speculation was already in jeopardy. Nana hastened his downfall by the most lavish expenditure. For a month still he struggled, performing miracles. He covered Europe with a colossal publicity—posters, advertisements, prospectuses—and extracted money from the most distant countries. All those savings, the louis of the speculators the same as the sous of the poor people, were swallowed up in the Avenue de Villiers. He had also gone into partnership with an iron-founder in Alsace. There were there, in a corner of the country, workmen black with coal dust, bathed with perspiration, who, night and day, tightened their muscles and heard their bones crack, to supply the means for Nana’s pleasures. She devoured all like a great fire—the thefts at the Bourse, the earnings of labour.

This time she finished Steiner. She returned him to the pavement, sucked to the bone, so emptied that he remained even incapable of inventing a fresh roguery. In the collapse of his banking establishment he went crazy; he trembled at the name of the police. He was made a bankrupt; and the mere word “money” bewildered him, threw him into a childish state of embarrassment—he who had handled millions. One evening when with her, he burst out crying. He asked her to lend him a hundred francs to pay his servant; and Nana, affected and amused by this ending of the terrible old man who for twenty years past had been skimming the Paris market, brought him the money, saying,

“You know, I give ’em you because it’s funny; but listen, my little man, you’re not of an age for me to keep you. You must seek some other occupation.”

Then Nana at once started on La Faloise. He had for a long time been soliciting the honour of being ruined by her, so as to be a perfect swell. That was what he was in want of; he must have a woman to bring him out. In two months Paris would know him, and he would read his own name in all the newspapers. Six weeks sufficed. His inheritance consisted of landed estates, fields, pastures, woods, and farms. He had to sell them rapidly, one after the other. At every bite Nana devoured an acre. The foliage frizzling beneath the sun, the rich ripe corn, the golden vines in September, the tall grass in which the cows buried themselves up to their shoulders—all went as though engulfed in some abyss; and there were also a stream, a lime quarry, and three windmills which disappeared. Nana passed like an invading army—like one of those clouds of locusts whose flight destroys a whole province similar to a flame of fire. She burnt the earth wherever she placed her tiny foot. Farm after farm, meadow after meadow, she nibbled up the inheritance in her pretty way, without even noticing what she was about, just the same as she would craunch up a bag of burnt almonds, placed on her knees, between her meals. It was a matter of no consequence; they were merely sweeties. But one night there only remained a small wood. She swallowed it with a disdainful air, for it was really not worth the trouble of opening one’s mouth for.

La Faloise laughed in an idiotic way as he sucked the knob of his walking-stick. Debts were crushing him down; he no longer possessed a hundred francs of income. He saw himself obliged to go back to the country and live with a maniacal uncle. But that did not matter; he was a swell. The “Figaro” had twice printed his name; and with his skinny neck rising out of his collar slightly turned down in front, his waist encased in a waistcoat a great deal too tight, he swaggered about, uttering exclamations like a parrot, and affecting the languors of a wooden puppet that has never had an emotion. Nana, whom he irritated immensely, ended by beating him.

Fauchery, however, had returned, brought by his cousin. The unfortunate Fauchery at this time had become quite a family man. After breaking off with the countess, he found himself in the hands of Rose, who treated him as a real husband. Mignon simply remained madame’s major-domo. Installed as master, the journalist used to lie to Rose, and, whenever he deceived her, had to take all sorts of precautions, full of the scruples of a good spouse desirous of at length settling down. Nana’s triumph was to hook him and to devour a newspaper he had started with the money of one of his friends. She did not openly go about with him. She took a delight, on the contrary, in treating him as a gentleman who must conceal his movements; and whenever she spoke of Rose, she would say “that poor Rose.” The newspaper supplied her with flowers for a couple of months. She had subscribers in the country. She took everything, from the leading article to the theatrical notes. Then, after wearing out the editors, dislocating the management, she satisfied one of her big caprices—a winter garden in a corner of her mansion—which carried off the printing establishment.

It was merely by way of amusement, however. When Mignon, delighted with what was taking place, hastened to see if he could not fix Fauchery on her for good, she asked him if he was poking fun at her—a fellow without a sou, living on his articles and his plays; not if she knew it! Such stupidity was only worthy of a woman of talent like that poor Rose; and, full of mistrust, fearing some underhand dealing on Mignon’s part, who was quite capable of denouncing them to his wife, she dismissed Fauchery, who for some time had only been paying her in advertisements.

But she remembered him with pleasure; they had amused themselves so much together with that idiot La Faloise. They would never perhaps have thought of being together again, if the pleasure of humbugging such a fool had not excited them. It seemed to them so funny. They would embrace each other under his nose, they lived the merriest possible life at his expense, they would send him on some errand to the other end of Paris, whenever they wanted to be alone together; then, when he returned, they would make jokes and allusions that he was unable to understand. One day, incited by the journalist, she bet that she would give La Faloise a slap in the face; that very evening she did so, then continued to beat him, finding it amusing, and delighted at being able to show what cowards men were. She called him her slapping machine, told him to come up and receive his slaps, slaps which made her hand quite red, because she was not yet accustomed to the exercise. La Faloise laughed in his idiotic way, with his eyes full of tears. This familiarity delighted him; he thought it grand.

“You don’t know,” said he one night, very excited after receiving a shower of blows, “you ought to marry me. Eh! shouldn’t we make a jolly couple?”

It was not an empty remark. He had slyly projected this marriage, seized with a mania for astonishing Paris. Nana’s husband—eh! what an effect! A rather grand apotheosis! But Nana snuffed him out in fine style.

“I marry you! Well! if I’d been worried with any such idea I could long ago have found a husband! And a man who would be worth twenty such as you, my little fellow. I have received no end of proposals. Come reckon them up with me: Philippe, George, Foucarmont, Steiner, there’s four, without counting the others whom you don’t know. They all sing the same chorus. I can’t be nice with them without they at once start off singing: ‘Will you marry me? will you marry me?’ ” She was becoming excited. Then she burst out indignantly, “Well! no, I won’t! Was I ever made for such a life as that? Look at me. I should no longer be Nana if I saddled myself with a husband. And, besides, it’s too disgusting.”

And she spat on the ground, she hiccoughed with disgust, as though she saw all the filth of the earth spreading beneath her.

One night La Faloise disappeared. A week later it was stated that he was in the country with his uncle, who had a mania for botanising; he mounted his specimens, and stood a chance of marrying a cousin who was very ugly and extremely devout. Nana did not weep for him much. She merely said to the count,

“Well, my little muff! that’s another rival the less. You’re in high feather to-day. But he was becoming serious; he wanted to marry me.”

As he turned pale, she laughingly put her arms round his neck, thrusting each of her cruelties into him with a caress.

“And it’s that which bothers you, isn’t it? You can’t marry Nana. Whilst they’re all trying to get me to marry them, you’re chafing all alone in your corner. It’s not possible, you must wait till your wife croaks. Ah! if your wife was to croak, wouldn’t you just hasten to me—wouldn’t you just throw yourself at my feet and offer me everything, all the usual style, with sighs, and tears, and protestations? Eh, darling! it would be so nice!”

Her voice had become soft, she fooled him with an air of ferocious cajolery. He, deeply moved, blushed as he returned her embraces. Then she cried,

“Damn it all! to think that I guessed right! He has thought of it, he’s waiting till his wife croaks. Ah, well! this is too much—he’s a bigger scamp than the others!”

Muffat had accepted the others. Now he made it a last point of dignity to remain the “master” with the servants and the frequenters of the house—the man who, giving the most, was the official lover. And his passion became madder than ever. He kept his place by paying, buying even smiles at fabulous prices, often robbed and never receiving his money’s worth; but it was like a disease that was devouring him, he could not help suffering from it. When he entered Nana’s bed-room, he contented himself with opening the windows for a minute, so as to get rid of the odours left by the others—the effluvia of both dark and fair, the cigar smoke, the staleness of which nearly suffocated him. The room was becoming a public square; boots of all kinds were continually being wiped on the threshold, and not one was arrested by that bloody mark which barred the entry. Zoé was greatly worried by that stain, merely a tidy girl’s mania. She was annoyed at always seeing it there; her eyes were attracted to it in spite of herself. She never entered madame’s room without saying,

“It’s funny it doesn’t go away; yet a great many people come here.”

Nana, who had been receiving better news of George, then in a state of convalescence at Les Fondettes with his mother, each time made the same reply:

“Ah, well! you must give it time. It’s gradually becoming paler beneath the footsteps.”

And, indeed, each one of the gentlemen—Foucarmont, Steiner, La Faloise, Fauchery, and the others—had carried away a little of the stain on the soles of their boots. And Muffat, who was worried as much as Zoé by the mark of blood, studied it in spite of himself, to read, as it were, in its rosier and rosier effacement, the number of men who passed there. He had a secret dread of it, always stepping over it through a sudden fear of crushing something living—a naked limb lying on the floor.

Then in that room an unconquerable feeling intoxicated him. He forgot all—the mob of other men who passed through it, the mourning that barred the door. Outside, at times, in the open air of the street, he would shed tears of shame and indignation, and swear never to return there; and the moment he had passed the threshold, he was recaptured. He felt his will give way in the warmth of the apartment; his flesh penetrated with a perfume, overpowered by a voluptuous desire of annihilation. He, devout and used to the rapturous feelings enkindled by the contemplation of gorgeous shrines, experienced exactly the same sensations of a believer, as when, kneeling in some church, he became entranced by the sounds of the organ and the perfume of the incense. The woman ruled him with the jealous despotism of a god of anger, terrifying him, giving him seconds of joy, acute as spasms, for hours of frightful torments, of visions of hell and everlasting damnation. It was always the same stutterings, the same prayers, and the same despondencies, especially the same humilities of an accursed creature crushed beneath the mud of his origin. The desires of his flesh, the requirements of his soul, mingled and seemed to rise from the obscure depths of his being, like a single blossom of the tree of life. He abandoned himself to the power of love and faith, whose double lever animates the world. And always, in spite of the struggles of his reason, Nana’s room filled him with madness. He shiveringly succumbed to the all-powerfulness of her sex, the same as he felt lost before the vast unknown of heaven.

Then when she found him so humble, Nana’s triumph became tyrannical. She instinctively had a rage for debasing everything. It was not sufficient for her to destroy things; she polluted them. Her delicate hands left abominable traces behind them; they decomposed by their mere touch all that they had broken. And he, idiot that he was, lent himself to this sport, with the vague remembrance of saints devoured by lice, and who eat what they had voided. When she had him in her room, with the doors fastened, she would feast herself with the sight of man’s infamy. At first it was merely fun. She would give him little slaps and make him do comical things, such as lisping like a child, repeating ends of sentences.

“Say it like me, ‘And dash it all! Coco doesn’t care!’ ”

He would be obedient even to imitating her accent.

“And dash it all! Coco doesn’t care!”

Or she would do the woolly bear, on all fours on the fur rugs, in her chemise, and turning round and round and grunting, as though she meant to eat him up; and she would even bite his calves, just for fun. Then she would get up and say,

“Now it’s your turn. I bet you won’t do the woolly bear as well as me.”

It was charming. She amused him as a bear, with her white skin and her golden mane. He laughed, he also went on all fours, he grunted and bit her calves, whilst she hopped about, pretending to be greatly frightened.

“Aren’t we stupid, eh?” she would end by saying. “You’ve no idea how ugly you look, my dear! Ah, well! if they could only see you now, at the Tuileries!”

But these little games soon took an ugly turn. It wasn’t through cruelty on her part, for she still remained a good-natured girl; it was like a breath of madness, which passed and increased little by little in the closed room. A lewdness seemed to possess them, and inspire them with the delirious imaginations of the flesh. The old devout frights of their night of wakefulness had now turned into a thirst for bestiality, a mania for going on all fours, for grunting and biting. Then one day, as he was doing the woolly bear, she pushed him so roughly that he fell against a piece of furniture; and she broke out into an involuntary laugh as she saw a bump on his forehead. From that time, having already acquired a taste for it by her experiment on La Faloise, she treated him as an animal, goaded him and pursued him with kicks.

“Gee up! gee up! you’re the horse. Haw, gee! dirty jade! move along quicker than that!”

At other times he was a dog. She would throw her scented handkerchief to the other end of the room, and he had to go and pick it up with his teeth, crawling along on his hands and knees.

“Fetch it, Cæsar! I’ll give you the stick if you’re not quick! Good dog, Caesar! pretty, obedient fellow! Now, beg!”

And he delighted in his baseness, and relished the enjoyment of being a brute. He aspired at falling still lower—he would cry out,

“Hit harder! Bow wow! I’m mad, hit away!”

She was seized with a caprice. She insisted on his coming one evening arrayed in his gorgeous chamberlain’s costume. Then she laughed and ridiculed him when she had him in his court dress, with the sword, and the hat, and the white breeches, and the scarlet cloth dress coat bedizened with gold, and the symbolical key hanging over the left-hand tail. This key especially amused her, and filled her with a mad fancy for filthy explanations. Always laughing, and carried away by a disrespect for greatness, and by the delight of vilifying it beneath the official pomp of that costume, she shook him and pinched him, and kept exclaiming, “Eh! get along, you chamberlain!” ending by accompanying her words with kicks behind; and she heartily meant those kicks for the Tuileries, for the majesty of the imperial court, throning herself on high, over the fear and the prostration of all. That was what she thought of society! It was her revenge—an unconscious family grudge, bequeathed with the blood. Then, the chamberlain having undressed, his coat spread out on the floor, she cried to him to jump, and he jumped; she cried to him to spit, and he spat; she cried to him to walk over the gold, over the eagles, over the decorations, and he walked. Slap! bang! there was nothing left—all had collapsed. She demolished a chamberlain as easily as she broke a scent-bottle or a comfit-box, and she turned him into a lump of filth—a heap of mud at a street corner.

The goldsmiths, however, had not kept their word. The bedstead was not delivered until towards the middle of January. Muffat at the time was in Normandy, where he had gone to sell a last remnant of the wreck. He was not expected back until two days later; but, having settled his business, he hastened his return, and without even calling at the Rue Miromesnil, he went to the Avenue de Villiers. Ten o’clock was striking. As he had the key of a little door opening on to the Rue Cardinet, he entered without being noticed. Upstairs, in the parlour, Zoé, who was dusting some bronzes, was struck with amazement; and, not knowing how to detain him, began telling him a long story about M. Venot, who, in a most agitated state of mind, had been seeking him since the day before; that he had already called there twice, and implored her to send the count at once to him if he came to madame’s first. Muffat listened to her without understanding anything of the rigmarole; then he noticed her confusion, and seized suddenly with a jealous rage, of which he no longer thought himself capable, he rushed against the door of the bed-room, from whence issued sounds of laughter. The door gave way and flew open, whilst Zoé retired shrugging her shoulders. So much the worse! As madame was going mad, madame must get out of the mess by herself.

And Muffat, on the threshold, uttered a cry at the sight before him.

“My God! my God!”

The newly decorated room was resplendent in its regal luxury. Silver buttons strewed the tea rose velvet hangings with shining stars. It was the rosy colour of flesh which illuminates the sky on fine nights, when Venus sparkles at the horizon on the light background of the expiring day; whilst the cords of gold hanging down at the corners, the gold lace framing the panels, were like bright flames, or loose switches of red hair, half covering the great nudity of the room, the voluptuous paleness of which they enriched. Then, opposite, was the gold and silver bedstead, which shone with the new brightness of its chasings—a throne large enough for Nana to stretch the royalty of her naked limbs—an altar of a Byzantine richness, worthy of the all-powerfulness of her sex, and on which at this very moment she displayed it, uncovered, and in the religious immodesty of a dreaded idol. And, near her, beneath the snowy reflection of her bosom, in the midst of her goddess-like triumph, sprawled a shameful and decrepit object, a comical and lamentable ruin, the Marquis de Chouard in his night-shirt.

The count joined his hands. Seized with a great fit of trembling, he repeated, “My God! my God!”

It was for the Marquis de Chouard that the golden roses of the boat flowered—bunches of golden roses blooming amidst the golden foliage; it was for him that the cupids, dancing in a circle against the silver trellis, leant forward with a laugh of amorous sauciness; and it was for him that the faun at his feet uncovered the sleeping nymph, wearied with voluptuousness—that figure of Night, copied from Nana’s celebrated nudity, even to the too amply developed thighs, which would cause everyone to recognise her. Thrown there like a piece of human rubbish, corrupted and shattered by sixty years of debauchery, the marquis appeared as a corner of a charnel-house, surrounded by the glory of the woman’s dazzling flesh. When he saw the door open he raised himself up, seized with the fright of a paralytic old man. This last night of licentious-ness had smitten him with imbecility, he had fallen into his second childhood; and, no longer able to find his words—half paralysed, stuttering, shivering—he remained in an attitude of flight, his night-shirt rucked up over his skeleton of a body, one leg outside the clothes—a poor, livid leg covered with grey hairs. Nana, in spite of her annoyance, could not help laughing.

“Lie down—get under the clothes,” said she, pushing him back and covering him with the sheet, like some bit of dirt one does not wish to be seen.

And she ran to close the door. She had really no luck with her little muff!—he was always putting in an appearance at an awkward moment. And why, too, did he go off to seek for money in Normandy? The old fellow had brought her four thousand francs, and she had let him have his way. She pushed the door to again, and cried,

“So much the worse! it’s all your fault. That’s not the way to enter a room! There, that’ll do. Good-bye!”

Muffat stood in front of that closed door, utterly crushed by what he had just seen. His fit of trembling increased—a trembling which ascended from his legs to his chest and to his head. Then, like a tree caught in the hurricane, he staggered and fell on his knees, cracking in all his limbs; and, despairingly holding out his hands, he muttered,

“It is too much. Oh, God! it is too much!”

He had accepted everything, but he could no longer bear it. He felt himself without strength, in that darkness where man succumbs with his reason. With an extraordinary outburst, holding high his joined hands, he sought Heaven, he called on God.

“Oh, no! I will not! Oh! come to me, my God! help me, or rather let me die! Oh, no! not that man, my God! it is ended—take me, carry me off, that I may no longer see, that I may no longer feel. Oh! I belong to Thee, my God! Our Father which art in Heaven—”

And he continued, burning with faith, and an ardent prayer came from his lips. But someone touched him on the shoulder. He raised his eyes: it was M. Venot, surprised at finding him praying before that closed door. Then, as though God Himself had replied to his appeal, he threw himself into the little old man’s arms. At last he could weep: he sobbed, and kept repeating,

“My brother, my brother—”

All his suffering humanity found relief in this cry. He bathed M. Venot’s face with his tears, he kissed him, uttering disconnected sentences.

“Oh, my brother, how I suffer! You alone are left to me, my brother. Take me away for ever, oh! for mercy’s sake, take me away.”

Then M. Venot pressed him to his bosom. He called him his brother also. But he had another blow to deal him. Since the previous day he had been seeking him to tell him that Countess Sabine had crowned her follies by eloping with a young man employed at a large linen-draper’s—a frightful scandal, of which all Paris was already gossiping. Seeing him under the influence of such a religious exaltation, he thought the moment a favourable one, and told him at once what had occurred, that flatly tragical end in which his house was foundering. The count was not affected in the least; his wife had gone off, that was nothing to him, he would see about it later on. And, again giving way to his anguish, looking at the door, the walls, the ceiling, in a terrified manner, he could do no more than utter these imploring words:

“Take me away, I can bear it no longer; take me away.”

M. Venot took him off like a child. From that time he was his entirely. Muffat once more returned to the strict duties of religion. His life was blasted. He had resigned his chamberlain’s office in accordance with the desire of the offended modesty of the Tuileries. His daughter Estelle had commenced an action against him to recover a sum of sixty thousand francs left her by an aunt, and which she ought to have received at the time of her marriage. Ruined, and living very moderately with the remnants of his great fortune, he allowed himself to be finished little by little by the countess, who devoured the leavings Nana had disdained. Sabine, corrupted by that woman’s promiscuousness, incited to extremes, became the final sapper, the very canker of the home. After various adventures she had returned, and he had taken her back in the resignation of Christian pardon. She accompanied him like his living shame. But he, becoming more and more indifferent, ended by no longer suffering from such things. Heaven had rescued him from the arms of woman to place him again in the very arms of God. It was a religious prolongation of Nana’s voluptuous pleasures, with the stutterings, the prayers, and the despondencies—the humilities of an accursed creature crushed beneath the mud of his origin. In the dark corners of churches, his knees chilled by the cold stones, he found again his enjoyments of former days, the spasms of his muscles and the delicious perturbations of his intelligence, in the same atonement of the obscure requirements of his being.

The night of the rupture Mignon called at the Avenue de Villiers. He had got accustomed to Fauchery, he had ended by discovering a thousand advantages in the presence of a husband at his wife’s. He left to him all the little cares of the home, relied on him for an active supervision, and used the money that came from his dramatic successes for the daily expenses of the household; and as, on the other hand, Fauchery behaved very reasonably—never indulging in any ridiculous jealousy, but being as accommodating as Mignon himself with regard to the opportunities Rose had—the two men got on together better than ever, delighted with their association, so fertile in every kind of happiness, and each one making his nest beside the other, in a home where neither of them any longer stood on ceremony. It was regulated, it worked very well, they rivalled each other in their exertions for the common felicity. It just happened that Mignon had called, by Fauchery’s advice, to see if he could not entice away Nana’s maid, whose wonderful intelligence the journalist had fully appreciated. Rose was in great distress. For a month past she had had to put up with inexperienced girls, who caused her continual embarrassments.

As Zoé admitted him, he pushed her at once into the dining-room. At the first word she smiled. It was impossible. She was leaving madame, she was about to set up in business on her own account; and she added, with an air of discreet vanity, that every day she was receiving proposals—all the ladies wanted her. Madame Blanche had offered her a bridge of gold to get her back. Zoé was going to acquire old Tricon’s business, an old project which she had nursed for a long while, an ambition to realise a fortune, in which she was about to invest her savings. She was full of great ideas. She dreamed of enlarging the concern, of taking a mansion, and collecting in it every pleasure. It was for this that she had even tried to get hold of Satin, a little blockhead who was now dying in the hospital, she had so ruined her health.

Mignon having persisted in his offer, mentioning the risks one runs in business, Zoé, without explaining herself as to the nature of her projected establishment, contented herself with saying, with a self-satisfied smile, just as though she had taken a confectioner’s shop,

“Oh! affairs of luxury always succeed. You see I have been so long with the others that now I wish the others to be with me.”

And a ferocious feeling made her curl her lip. She would at last be “madame.” She would have at her feet, for the sum of a few louis, those women whose slops she had been emptying for fifteen years past.

Mignon wished to see Nana, and Zoé left him for a minute, after saying that madame had passed a very unpleasant day. He had only called there once, he did not know the house at all. The dining-room, with its Gobelin tapestry, its sideboard, and its silver plate, amazed him. He familiarly opened the doors, and visited the drawing-room and the winter garden, and then returned to the hall; and this excessive luxury—the gilded furniture, the silks, and the velvets—filled him little by little with an admiration which caused his heart to bump. When Zoé came downstairs to fetch him, she offered to show him the other rooms—the bed-room, the dressing-room. Then, in the bedroom, Mignon’s heart almost burst. He was excited to the highest point of enthusiasm. That confounded Nana astounded him, he who was not easily surprised at anything. In the midst of the downfall of the establishment, of the waste and the massacring gallop of the servants, there was a pile of riches which stopped up the holes and covered the ruins.

And Mignon, in the face of that magisterial monument, recalled many great works he had seen. Near Marseilles he had been shown an aqueduct, the stone arches of which spanned an abyss—a Cyclopean work which had cost millions and ten years of struggle. At Cherbourg he had seen the new harbour in course of construction—a gigantic undertaking, hundreds of men sweating in the sunshine, machines filling the sea with huge masses of rock, erecting a wall where at times workmen were squashed to a bloody pulp. But all that seemed small to him now. Nana exalted him far more; and in contemplating her work, he experienced once again that sensation of respect experienced by him one night at an entertainment in a château which a sugar refiner had had built—a palace the royal splendour of which had been paid for by one single thing, sugar. She had paid with something different, a bit of fun at which one laughed—a little of her delicate nudity. It was with this shameful and yet so mighty a nothing, the power of which excited the world, that all alone, without workmen, without machinery invented by engineers, she had shaken Paris and built up that fortune beneath which dead bodies were slumbering.

“Ah! damn it all! what a tool!” exclaimed Mignon enraptured, and with a return of personal gratitude.

Nana little by little had become very sorrowful. At first the meeting of the marquis and the count had thrown her into a nervous fever, accompanied by a slight touch of gaiety. Then, the thought of the old fellow who had gone off in a cab, half dead, and of her poor muff whom she would never see again, after having so often vexed him, brought about the beginning of a sentimental melancholy. After this she had got quite angry on hearing of Satin’s illness. The girl had disappeared a fortnight before, and was now gradually dying at the Lariboisière Hospital, Madame Robert having put her into such a frightful state. As she was ordering the carriage to go and see the little baggage once more, Zoé had quietly given her a week’s notice to leave. That threw her into despair. It seemed as though she was losing one of her family; and she implored Zoé to remain. The latter, highly flattered by madame’s grief, ended by kissing her, to show that there was no ill-feeling at parting. She was obliged to go; the heart was silent when business was in question. But that was a day of worries. Nana, thoroughly disgusted, no longer thinking of going out, was wandering about her parlour, when Labordette, who had come to tell her of some magnificent lace to be had at a bargain, mentioned between two other phrases about nothing at all that George was dead. She turned icy cold.

“Zizi! dead!” she cried.

And her glance, by an involuntary movement, sought the pink stain on the carpet. But it had vanished at last; the footsteps had worn it away. Labordette, however, gave her some particulars. One did not know exactly how it had happened: some talked of a wound having opened, others told the story of a suicide—a plunge into one of the fountains at Les Fondettes. Nana kept repeating,

“Dead! dead!”

Then she burst into sobs, and relieved her feelings pent up since the morning. It was an infinite sadness—something profound and immense which overwhelmed her. Labordette having tried to console her about George, she waved her hand to make him desist, and said in broken tones,

“It’s not only him, it’s all, it’s everything. I’m very unhappy, Oh! I know! they’ll again say that I’m an abominable woman. That mother who is weeping there, and that poor man who was moaning this morning at my door, and the others who are all ruined, after having squandered their sous with me. That’s right, give it to Nana, give it to the beast! Oh! I’ve a broad back, I can hear them as though I was there. That dirty strumpet who entices everyone; who clears out some, and kills the others; who causes pain to no end of people—”

She was forced to interrupt herself; suffocated by her tears, she had fallen in her anguish across a sofa, with her head buried in a cushion. The misfortunes she felt around her, those miseries that she had caused, enveloped her in a warm and continuous flow of sensibility; and her voice became lost in the plaintive accents of a little girl.

“Oh! I suffer—oh! I suffer. I cannot, it’s stifling me. It’s too hard not to be understood, to see everyone put themselves against you, because they’re the strongest. Yet, when one has nothing to reproach oneself with, when one has a free conscience—well, no! well, no—”

Her anger changed to indignation. She got up, wiped her eyes; and paced agitatedly about the room.

“Well, no! they may say what they like, it isn’t my fault! Am I cruel? I give all I have—I wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s they; yes, it’s they! I never wanted to be unpleasant to any of them. And they were always hanging about my skirts, and now they croak, or beg, and all pretend to be in despair.”

Then, stopping in front of Labordette, and tapping him on the shoulders, she continued,

“Come now, you were there, speak the truth. Was it I who led them on? Weren’t there always a dozen exerting themselves to invent something more abominable than the others? They disgusted me! I held myself aloof so as not to follow in their wake, I was afraid. Here’s an instance—they all wanted to marry me. A nice idea! Eh! yes, my dear fellow, I might have been twenty times a baroness or a countess if I had consented. Well! I refused, because I was reasonable. Ah! I preserved them from many detestable actions and many crimes! They would have stolen, murdered, killed father and mother. I had but to say a word, and I didn’t say it. To-day, you see my reward. It’s like that Daguenet whom I got married—a half-starved wretch whose position I made, after keeping him for nothing for weeks together. Yesterday, I met him; he turned away his head. Well! go to the devil, pig! I’m not so foul as you are!”

She was walking about again; she violently banged her fist down on a small round table.

“Damn it all! it’s not just! Society is badly constructed. The women are abused, when it’s the men who are entirely to blame, they expect such things. Listen! I can tell you now—in all I’ve ever had to do with men, well! I never had the least pleasure—no, not the least. They always bored me, on my word of honour! So, I ask you now if there’s any fault of mine in all this? Ah, yes! they almost badgered me out of my life! Without them, my dear fellow, and what they’ve made me, I should be now in a convent praying, for I’ve always been religious. And, hang ’em! after all, if they have left their money and their skin, it’s their own fault! I’ve nothing to do with it!”

“Of course,” said Labordette, convinced.

Zoé ushered in Mignon. Nana received him smiling; she had had a good cry, but now it was over. He complimented her on her abode, still warmed with enthusiasm; but she soon let him see that she had had enough of her mansion. Now she was dreaming of something else—she would get rid of it all, one fine day. Then, as he mentioned as a pretext for his visit a benefit performance to be given for old Bosc, who was tied to his chair by an attack of paralysis, she expressed a great deal of sorrow, and took two boxes. Zoé, however, having said that the carriage was waiting, she asked for her bonnet; and as she tied the strings, she related the story of poor Satin’s mishap, then added:

“I’m off to the hospital. No one ever loved me as she did. Ah! one is quite right in accusing men of having no hearts! Who knows? she’s perhaps dead already. All the same, I shall ask to see her. I must kiss her once more.”

Labordette and Mignon smiled. She was no longer sad, she smiled also, for those two did not count, they could understand. And they both admired her, in a thoughtful silence, as she finished buttoning her gloves. She alone stood erect, in the midst of the piled-up wealth of her mansion, with a crowd of men trampled beneath her feet. Like those antique monsters whose dreaded domain was covered with bones, she trod on skulls, and catastrophe surrounded her: Vandeuvres’s furious conflagration; the melancholy of Foucarmont, drowned in the China seas; the collapse of Steiner, now forced to live as an honest man; the satisfied imbecility of La Faloise, and the tragical downfall of the Muffats; and George’s white corpse watched over by Philippe, discharged from prison the day before. Her work of ruin and death was accomplished, the fly that had taken its flight from the filth of the slums, carrying with it the ferment of social decay, had poisoned those men merely by touching them. It was good, it was just; she had avenged her people, the rogues and the vagabonds from whom she sprang. And whilst in a halo her sex ascended and shone on her scattered victims like a rising sun lighting up a field of carnage, she retained her unconsciousness of a superb beast, ignorant of her work, always good-natured. She remained big and plump, with beautiful health and unalloyed gaiety. But all that no longer counted. Her mansion seemed to her idiotic—it was so small, and full of a heap of furniture which was always in her way. A mere nothing, she only wanted to commence again. She dreamed, too, of something better; and she went off in a gorgeous costume to kiss Satin a last time—clean, solid, looking quite new, as though she had never been in use.