Part 11

But a murmur ran through the crowd: "The prince! The prince!" And everyone turned their eyes toward the small door of the hall. As yet only the round back of Bordenave could be seen, with his butcher's neck, bending and swelling in a series of obsequious bows. Then the prince appeared, tall, sturdy, with a blond beard and pink skin, of a distinguished solid man-about-town type, whose square limbs showed beneath the irreproachable cut of his frock coat. Behind him walked Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard. This corner of the theater was dark, the group was lost there amid great shifting shadows. To speak to a queen's son, the future heir to a throne, Bordenave had adopted a bear-leader's voice, trembling with false emotion. He kept repeating:

-- If Your Highness will be good enough to follow me... Would Your Highness deign to pass this way... Let Your Highness take care...

The prince was in no hurry, greatly interested, on the contrary lingering to watch the stagehands at work. They had just lowered a gridiron, and this row of gas jets, suspended in its iron mesh, lit the stage with a broad band of light. Muffat especially, who had never visited the wings of a theater, was astonished, seized with a discomfort, a vague repugnance mixed with fear. He raised his eyes toward the flies, where other grids, their burners lowered, set constellations of little bluish stars in the chaos of the gridiron and ropes of every thickness, the flying bridges, the backdrops spread out in the air like immense linen drying.

-- Load! suddenly cried the head stagehand.

And the prince himself had to warn the count. A cloth was descending. They were setting the third-act scenery, the grotto of Mount Etna. Men were planting masts in the side grooves, others went to fetch the frames against the stage walls and came to attach them to the masts with strong cords. At the back, to produce the burst of light thrown by Vulcan's blazing forge, a lampman had fixed a wing-piece, whose burners fitted with red glass he was lighting. It was a confusion, an apparent scramble, where the slightest movements were regulated; while, in this haste, the prompter, to rest his legs, walked up and down with little steps.

-- Your Highness overwhelms me, said Bordenave, still bowing. The theater is not large, we do what we can... Now, if Your Highness deigns to follow me...

Already Count Muffat was heading toward the dressing-room corridor. The rather steep slope of the stage had surprised him, and his uneasiness came largely from this floor which he felt moving beneath his feet; through the open side grooves one could see gas burning in the cellars; it was an underground life, with depths of darkness, men's voices, cellar breaths. But, as he went up again, an incident stopped him. Two small women, in costume for the third act, were chatting in front of the peephole in the curtain. One of them, her loins thrust forward, widening the hole with her fingers to see better, was searching the house.

-- I see him, she said abruptly. Oh! that mug!

Bordenave, scandalized, restrained himself from kicking her in the behind. But the prince was smiling, with the happy and excited air of having heard that, gazing at the little woman who was making fun of His Highness. She laughed shamelessly. Meanwhile Bordenave decided the prince to follow him. Count Muffat, in a sweat, had just taken off his hat; what bothered him above all was the stuffiness of the air, thickened, overheated, trailing a strong odor, this smell of the wings, stinking of gas, of the glue of the sets, of the dirt of the dark corners, the dubious underskirts of the supernumeraries. In the corridor the suffocation increased still more; sournesses of toilet waters, perfumes of soaps, descending from the dressing rooms, at times cut through the poisoning of the breaths. As he passed, the count lifted his head, threw a glance into the stairwell, seized by the sudden flood of light and heat that fell on his neck. Up above there were sounds of basins, laughter and calls, a racket of doors whose continual slamming let loose scents of woman, the musk of paints mixed with the tawny harshness of hair. And he did not stop, hastening his step, almost fleeing, carrying on the surface of his skin the shiver of that ardent opening onto a world he knew nothing of.

-- Eh? it's curious, a theater, said the Marquis de Chouard, with the enchanted air of a man who finds himself at home.

But Bordenave had at last arrived at Nana's dressing room, at the end of the corridor. He quietly turned the door handle; then, stepping aside:

-- If Your Highness will enter...

A cry of surprised woman was heard, and Nana was seen, naked to the waist, fleeing behind a curtain, while her dresser, in the act of wiping her, remained with the towel in the air.

-- Oh! it's stupid to come in like that! cried Nana hidden. Don't come in, you can see perfectly well one can't come in!

Bordenave seemed displeased at this flight.

-- Stay, my dear, it doesn't matter, said he. It is His Highness. Come now, don't be childish.

And, as she refused to appear, still shaking, yet already laughing, he added in a gruff and fatherly voice:

-- Good heavens! these gentlemen know well enough what a woman is made of. They won't eat you.

-- But that's not certain, said the prince finely.

Everyone began to laugh, in an exaggerated way, to pay court. An exquisite word, quite Parisian, as Bordenave remarked. Nana no longer answered, the curtain stirred, she was no doubt deciding. Then Count Muffat, blood in his cheeks, examined the dressing room. It was a square room, very low of ceiling, entirely hung with a light Havana cloth. The curtain of the same cloth, carried by a brass rod, made a sort of cabinet at the back. Two wide windows opened onto the theater courtyard, at most three meters from a leprous wall, against which, in the black of night, the panes cast yellow squares. A large pier glass faced a white marble toilet table, furnished with a disorder of flasks and crystal boxes, for oils, essences and powders. The count approached the pier glass, saw himself very red, with fine drops of sweat on his brow; he lowered his eyes, he came to plant himself before the toilet table, where the basin full of soapy water, the little ivory tools scattered, the damp sponges, seemed to absorb him an instant. That vertigo which he had felt on his first visit to Nana's, on the Boulevard Haussmann, was invading him anew. Beneath his feet he felt the thick carpet of the dressing room soften; the gas burners, which burned at the toilet table and the pier glass, set whistlings of flame around his temples. For a moment, fearing to faint in that smell of woman which he found again, heated, decupled beneath the low ceiling, he sat on the edge of the padded couch, between the two windows. But he rose at once, went back near the toilet table, looked at nothing more, his eyes vague, thinking of a bunch of tuberoses, which had faded in his room long ago, and of which he had nearly died. When tuberoses decompose, they have a human odor.

-- Do hurry up! breathed Bordenave, putting his head behind the curtain.

The prince, moreover, was listening complaisantly to the Marquis de Chouard, who, taking the hare's foot from the toilet table, was explaining how one spread the greasy white. In a corner, Satin, with her pure virgin face, was staring at the gentlemen; while the dresser, Madame Jules, was preparing the tights and the tunic of Venus. Madame Jules was ageless, her face parchment-like, with the immobile features of old maids whom no one has known young. She had dried up in the fiery air of dressing rooms, amid the thighs and breasts most famous in Paris. She wore an eternal faded black dress, and on her flat and sexless bodice a forest of pins was stuck, in place of the heart.

-- I beg your pardon, gentlemen, said Nana, drawing the curtain aside, but I was surprised...

All turned. She had not covered herself at all, she had simply buttoned a little percale bodice, which half hid her bosom. When these gentlemen had put her to flight, she was scarcely undressing, quickly removing her Fishwife costume. Behind, her drawers still let a bit of her shift show. And with bare arms, bare shoulders, the tips of her breasts in the air, in her adorable youth of a plump blonde, she still held the curtain with one hand, as if to draw it again at the least start.

-- Yes, I was surprised, never shall I dare..., she stammered, playing confusion, with pink tones on her neck and embarrassed smiles.

-- Go on, since you are found very nice! cried Bordenave.

She risked still hesitant ingénue airs, moving as if tickled, repeating:

-- Your Highness does me too much honor... I pray Your Highness to excuse me, if I receive him thus...

-- It is I who am importunate, said the prince; but I could not, madame, resist the desire to compliment you...

Then, quietly, to go to the toilet table, she passed in drawers amid these gentlemen, who drew aside. She had very strong hips, the drawers ballooned, while, chest forward, she bowed again with her fine smile. Suddenly she seemed to recognize Count Muffat, and she held out her hand, as a friend. Then she scolded him for not having come to her supper. His Highness deigned to joke with Muffat, who stammered, shivering at having held for a second, in his burning hand, that little hand, fresh with toilet waters. The count had dined heavily at the prince's, a great eater and fine drinker. Both were even a little tipsy. But they behaved very well. Muffat, to hide his trouble, found only a phrase about the heat.

-- Good heavens! how hot it is here, said he. How do you manage, madame, to live in such a temperature?

And the conversation was about to start from there, when noisy voices rose at the dressing-room door. Bordenave pulled the little board of a grated convent judas. It was Fontan, followed by Prullière and Bosc, all three with bottles under their arms, and their hands loaded with glasses. He knocked, he cried that it was his feast day, that he was paying for champagne. Nana, with a glance, had consulted the prince. But of course! His Highness did not wish to constrain anyone, she would be too happy! But, without waiting for permission, Fontan entered, lisping, repeating:

-- Me no boor, me pay for champagne...

Abruptly he caught sight of the prince, whom he did not know was there. He stopped short, he took an air of buffoon solemnity, saying:

-- King Dagobert is in the corridor, who asks to drink with Your Royal Highness.

The prince having smiled, they found that charming. Meanwhile the dressing room was too small for all this world. They had to pack in, Satin and Madame Jules at the back, against the curtain, the men crowded around Nana half-naked. The three actors still had their second-act costumes. While Prullière removed his Swiss Admiral hat, whose immense plume would not have fit under the ceiling, Bosc, with his purple jacket and his tin crown, steadied himself on his drunkard's legs and saluted the prince, as a monarch receiving the son of a powerful neighbor. The glasses were full, they drank.

-- I drink to Your Highness! said royally old Bosc.

-- To the army! added Prullière.

-- To Venus! cried Fontan.

Complaisantly, the prince balanced his glass. He waited, he bowed three times, murmuring:

-- Madame... admiral... sire...

And he drank at a draught. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had imitated him. They no longer joked, they were at court. This theater world prolonged the real world, in a grave farce, beneath the ardent haze of the gas. Nana, forgetting she was in drawers, with her bit of shift, played the great lady, Queen Venus, opening her little apartments to the personages of the State. At each phrase, she let fall the words of Royal Highness, she made convinced reverences, treating those good-for-nothings Bosc and Prullière as a sovereign whom his minister accompanies. And no one smiled at this strange mixture, at this true prince, heir to a throne, who drank the champagne of a stroller, very much at ease in this carnival of the gods, in this masquerade of royalty, amid a people of dressers and girls, of board-shifters and woman-showers. Bordenave, carried away by this staging, was thinking of the receipts he would make, if His Highness had consented to appear thus, in the second act of _The Blonde Venus_.

-- I say, cried he, growing familiar, we are going to bring down my little women.

Nana would not have it. She herself, however, was letting go. Fontan attracted her, with his grotesque mask. Rubbing against him, covering him with the look of a pregnant woman who has a mind to eat something dirty, she suddenly tutoyed him.

-- Come now, pour, you great fool!

Fontan refilled the glasses, and they drank, repeating the same toasts.

-- To His Highness!

-- To the army!

-- To Venus!

But Nana called for silence with a gesture. She raised her glass very high, she said:

-- No, no, to Fontan!... It is Fontan's feast day, to Fontan! to Fontan!

Then they drank a third time, they acclaimed Fontan. The prince, who had watched the young woman eat the comedian with her eyes, saluted him.

-- Monsieur Fontan, said he with his high politeness, I drink to your successes.

Meanwhile, the frock coat of His Highness was wiping, behind her, the marble of the toilet table. It was like a recessed background, like a narrow bath chamber, with the vapor of the basin and sponges, the violent perfume of the essences, mixed with the slightly sour tippling of the champagne. The prince and Count Muffat, between whom Nana found herself caught, had to lift their hands, so as not to brush her hips or bosom, at the least gesture. And, without a drop of sweat, Madame Jules waited in her stiff air, while Satin, astonished in her vice to see a prince and gentlemen in evening dress mix with disguised folk after a naked woman, thought to herself that smart people were already not so clean.

But, in the corridor, the tinkling of Father Barillot's bell was approaching. When he appeared at the dressing-room door, he remained startled, on seeing the three actors still in their second-act costumes.

-- Oh! gentlemen, gentlemen, he stammered, hurry up... They have just rung in the public foyer.

-- Bah! said Bordenave quietly, the public will wait.

However, after new salutes, as the bottles were empty, the comedians went up to dress. Bosc, having soaked his beard in champagne, had just removed it, and beneath that venerable beard the drunkard had suddenly reappeared, with his ravaged and wine-blued face of an old actor fallen into drink. He was heard, at the foot of the stairs, saying to Fontan, in his brandy voice, speaking of the prince:

-- Eh, I bowled him over!

There remained in Nana's dressing room only His Highness, the count and the marquis. Bordenave had moved off with Barillot, to whom he recommended not to knock without warning madame.

-- Gentlemen, you will permit, asked Nana, who began redoing her arms and face, which she tended especially for the nudity of the third act.

The prince took a place on the couch, with the Marquis de Chouard. Only Count Muffat remained standing. The two glasses of champagne, in that suffocating heat, had increased their intoxication. Satin, seeing the gentlemen shut themselves in with her friend, had thought it discreet to disappear behind the curtain; and she waited there, on a trunk, bored to pose, while Madame Jules went and came quietly, without a word, without a glance.

-- You sang your ronde marvelously, said the prince.

Then conversation was established, but in short phrases, cut by silences. Nana could not always answer. After passing cold cream with her hand on her arms and face, she spread the greasy white, with a corner of towel. For an instant she ceased to look at herself in the glass, she smiled gliding a glance toward the prince, without releasing the greasy white.

-- Your Highness spoils me, she murmured.

It was a whole complicated task, which the Marquis de Chouard followed with an air of beatific enjoyment. He spoke in his turn.

-- The orchestra, said he, could it not accompany you more softly? It covers your voice, it is an unpardonable crime.

This time Nana did not turn round. She had taken the hare's foot, she passed it lightly, very attentive, so arched above the toilet table, that the white roundness of her drawers jutted and stretched, with the little bit of shift. But she wished to show herself sensible to the old man's compliment, she stirred balancing the hips.

A silence reigned. Madame Jules had noticed a tear at the right leg of the drawers. She took a pin from her heart, she remained a moment on the ground, on her knees, busy around Nana's thigh, while the young woman, without seeming to know she was there, covered herself with rice powder, carefully avoiding putting any on her cheekbones. But, as the prince said that, if she came to sing in London, all England would wish to applaud her, she had an amiable laugh, she turned for a second, the left cheek very white, in the middle of a cloud of powder. Then she became suddenly serious; it was a matter of putting on the rouge. Again, her face near the glass, she dipped her finger in a pot, she applied the rouge under the eyes, spread it gently, to the temple. These gentlemen were silent, respectful.

Count Muffat had not yet opened his lips. He thought invincibly of his youth. His child's room was all cold. Later, at sixteen, when he kissed his mother each evening, he carried into his sleep the ice of that kiss. One day, passing, he had glimpsed, through a half-open door, a servant washing her face; and that was the only memory which had troubled him, from puberty to his marriage. Then he had found in his wife a strict obedience to conjugal duties; he himself felt a sort of devout repugnance. He grew, he aged, ignorant of the flesh, bent to rigid religious practices, having regulated his life on precepts and laws. And, abruptly, he was thrown into this actress's dressing room, before this naked girl. He who had never seen the Countess Muffat put on her garters, was assisting at the intimate details of a woman's toilet, in the disorder of pots and basins, amid that odor so strong and so sweet. All his being revolted, the slow possession with which Nana had been invading him for some time frightened him, recalling his readings of piety, the diabolical possessions which had rocked his childhood. He believed in the devil. Nana, confusedly, was the devil, with her laughs, with her bosom and her rump, swollen with vices. But he promised himself to be strong. He would know how to defend himself.

-- So, it is agreed, said the prince, very much at ease on the couch, you come next year to London, and we receive you so well that never again will you return to France... Ah! there, my dear count, you do not set enough store by your pretty women. We will take them all from you.

-- That will hardly bother him, murmured maliciously the Marquis de Chouard, who was venturing into intimacy. The count is virtue itself.

On hearing speak of his virtue, Nana looked at him so funnily, that Muffat felt a lively annoyance. Then this movement surprised him and angered him against himself. Why did the idea of being virtuous embarrass him before this girl? He would have beaten her. But Nana, in wishing to take a brush, had just let it fall; and, as she bent down, he precipitated himself, their breaths met, the unbound hair of Venus rolled onto his hands. It was a pleasure mixed with remorse, one of those Catholic pleasures which the fear of hell goads in sin.

At this moment, the voice of Father Barillot rose behind the door.

-- Madame, may I knock? They are growing impatient in the house.

-- Presently, answered Nana quietly.

She had dipped the brush in a pot of black; then, nose to the glass, closing the left eye, she passed it delicately between the lashes. Muffat, behind her, looked. He saw her in the glass, with her round shoulders and her bosom drowned in a pink shadow. And he could not, despite his effort, turn away from that face which the closed eye rendered so provocative, pitted with dimples, as if fainting with desires. When she closed the right eye and passed the brush, he understood that she belonged to him.

-- Madame, cried again the breathless voice of the caller, they are stamping their feet, they will end by breaking the benches... May I knock?

-- Oh, blow it! said Nana impatient. Knock, I don't care!... If I am not ready, well! they will wait for me.

She calmed, she added with a smile, turning toward these gentlemen:

-- It is true, one cannot even talk a minute.

Now her face and arms were done. She added, with her finger, two broad strokes of carmine on the lips. Count Muffat felt more troubled still, seduced by the perversion of powders and paints, taken with the disordered desire of that painted youth, the mouth too red in the face too white, the eyes enlarged, circled with black, burning, and as if bruised with love. Meanwhile Nana passed an instant behind the curtain to slip on the tights of Venus, after removing her drawers. Then, tranquil in impudence, she came to unbutton her little percale bodice, holding out her arms to Madame Jules, who passed the short sleeves of the tunic over them.

-- Quick, since they are getting angry! she murmured.

The prince, half-closed eyes, followed with a connoisseur's gaze the swollen lines of her bosom, while the Marquis de Chouard gave an involuntary nod. Muffat, so as to see no more, looked at the carpet. Besides, Venus was ready, she wore simply this gauze on the shoulders. Madame Jules turned around her, with her air of little wooden old woman, empty and clear eyes: and, briskly, she took pins from the inexhaustible ball of her heart, she pinned the tunic of Venus, brushing all those greasy nudities with her dried hands, without a memory and as if disinterested in her sex.

-- There! said the young woman, giving herself a last glance in the glass.

Bordenave was coming back, uneasy, saying the third act had begun.

-- Well! I'm going, she resumed. What a to-do! It is always I who wait for the others.

These gentlemen left the dressing room. But they did not take leave, the prince had expressed the desire to attend the third act, in the wings. Left alone, Nana was astonished, passing her looks around.

-- Where is she then? she asked.

She was looking for Satin. When she had found her again behind the curtain, waiting on the trunk, Satin answered her quietly:

-- Sure enough I didn't want to bother you, with all those men!

And she added that, now, she was going. But Nana kept her. Was she silly! Since Bordenave consented to take her! They would settle the affair after the show. Satin hesitated. There were too many machines, it was no longer her world. Yet she stayed.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”