Part 13

Meanwhile, the artists in their coats, their faces weary, were leaving one by one. Groups of men and women descended the little winding staircase, casting into the shadow the profiles of battered hats and crumpled shawls, a pallid ugliness of strollers who had wiped off their rouge. Upon the stage, where the wings and gratings were being extinguished, the prince was listening to an anecdote from Bordenave. He wanted to wait for Nana. When she at last appeared, the stage was black, and the fireman on duty, finishing his round, was moving a lantern about. Bordenave, to spare His Highness the detour through the Passage des Panoramas, had just had the corridor opened that runs from the concierge's lodge to the theater vestibule. And along this passage there was a sauve-qui-peut of little women, happy to escape the men who were loitering in the passage. They jostled one another, elbows tight, glancing backward, breathing freely only outside; while Fontan, Bosc, and Prullière withdrew slowly, mocking the faces of the serious men who paced the Galerie des Variétés at the hour when the little ones slipped away along the boulevard with sweethearts. But Clarisse above all was sly. She mistrusted La Faloise. Indeed, he was still there, in the box, in company with the gentlemen who persisted in sitting on Madame Bron's chairs. They all craned their necks. So she passed stiffly, behind a friend. These gentlemen blinked, bewildered by this tumble of skirts whirling at the foot of the narrow stair, despairing at having waited so long only to see them all fly off thus, without recognizing a single one. The litter of black cats slept on the oilcloth, against the mother's belly, beatific and with outstretched paws; while the big red tomcat, seated at the other end of the table, tail extended, watched the women escaping with his yellow eyes.

—If His Highness will be so good as to pass this way, said Bordenave, at the foot of the stairs, indicating the corridor.

A few supernumerary women were still pushing through it. The prince followed Nana. Muffat and the marquis came behind. It was a long narrow tube, caught between the theater and the neighboring house, a sort of pinched alley that had been covered with a sloping roof, in which glazed frames opened. A dampness oozed from the walls. Footsteps rang on the flagged floor, as in a vault. There was a lumber-room clutter there, a workbench on which the concierge gave a plane to the sets, a pile of wooden barriers that were set at the door in the evening to hold the queue. Nana had to lift her dress passing before a fountain-post whose poorly closed tap flooded the flags. In the vestibule they bowed. And when Bordenave was alone, he summed up his judgment of the prince with a shrug, full of disdainful philosophy.

—He's a bit of a boor all the same, he said, without further explanation to Fauchery, whom Rose Mignon was taking off with her husband, to reconcile them at her house.

Muffat found himself alone on the sidewalk. His Highness had tranquilly just handed Nana up into her carriage. The marquis had slipped off behind Satin and her supernumerary, excited, contenting himself with following these two vices, with the vague hope of some compliance. Then Muffat, his head on fire, wanted to walk home. All struggle had ceased within him. A flood of new life drowned his ideas and his beliefs of forty years. As he went along the boulevards, the rolling of the last carriages deafened him with the name of Nana, the gas jets made supple arms, white shoulders of Nana dance before his eyes; and he felt that she possessed him, he would have renounced all, sold all, to have her an hour, that very evening.

It was his youth at last awakening, a greedy puberty of an adolescent, suddenly burning in his coldness of a Catholic and in his dignity of a mature man.

VI

Count Muffat, accompanied by his wife and daughter, had arrived the day before at Les Fondettes, where Madame Hugon, who was there alone with her son Georges, had invited them to spend a week. The house, built toward the end of the seventeenth century, rose in the middle of an immense square enclosure, without an ornament; but the garden had magnificent shades, a succession of basins with running water, fed by springs. It was, along the road from Orléans to Paris, like a wave of greenery, a clump of trees, breaking the monotony of that flat country, where cultivated fields unrolled to infinity.

At eleven o'clock, when the second breakfast bell had gathered everyone together, Madame Hugon, with her good maternal smile, placed two big kisses on Sabine's cheeks, saying:

—You know, in the country it's my habit... It makes me twenty years younger to see you here... Did you sleep well in your old room?

Then, without waiting for an answer, turning toward Estelle:

—And this little one slept straight through too, did she?... Kiss me, my child.

They had seated themselves in the vast dining room, whose windows looked out on the park. But they occupied only one end of the large table, where they squeezed together to be more among themselves. Sabine, very gay, recalled her youthful memories, which had just been awakened: months spent at Les Fondettes, long walks, a fall into a basin one summer evening, an old chivalric romance discovered on a wardrobe and read in winter before a fire of vine-branches. And Georges, who had not seen the countess for some months, found her funny, with something changed in her face; while that pole of an Estelle, on the contrary, seemed even more withdrawn, mute and awkward.

As they were eating soft-boiled eggs and cutlets, very simply, Madame Hugon lamented like a housekeeper, recounting that the butchers were becoming impossible; she got everything from Orléans, they never brought her the cuts she asked for. Besides, if her guests ate poorly, it was their fault: they came too late in the season.

—It makes no sense, she said. I've been expecting you since June, and here it's mid-September... So you see, it isn't pretty.

With a gesture she showed the lawn trees beginning to yellow. The weather was overcast, a bluish vapor drowned the distances, in a melancholy softness and peace.

—Oh! I'm expecting people, she continued, it will be gayer... First, two gentlemen Georges has invited, Monsieur Fauchery and Monsieur Daguenet; you know them, don't you?... Then Monsieur de Vandeuvres, who has been promising me for five years; this year perhaps he'll decide.

—Ah well! said the countess laughing, if we have only Monsieur de Vandeuvres! He is too busy.

—And Philippe? asked Muffat.

—Philippe asked for leave, replied the old lady, but you will no doubt be gone from Les Fondettes when he arrives.

They were serving coffee. The conversation had fallen on Paris, and Steiner's name was pronounced. That name drew a slight cry from Madame Hugon.

—By the way, she said, Monsieur Steiner, that's the stout gentleman I met one evening at your house, a banker, isn't it?... There's a nasty man for you! Hasn't he bought a property for an actress, a league from here, over there, behind the Choue, in the direction of Gumières! The whole countryside is scandalized... Did you know that, my friend?

—Not at all, replied Muffat. Ah! Steiner bought a place in the neighborhood!

Georges, hearing his mother broach this subject, had lowered his nose into his cup; but he raised it and looked at the count, astonished at his answer. Why was he lying so flatly? For his part, the count, having noticed the young man's movement, threw him a glance of distrust. Madame Hugon continued to give details: the place was called La Mignotte; one had to go up the Choue as far as Gumières to cross by a bridge, which added a good two kilometers to the road; otherwise one got one's feet wet and risked a ducking.

—And what is the actress called? asked the countess.

—Ah! I was told though, murmured the old lady. Georges, you were there this morning when the gardener spoke to us...

Georges looked as if he were searching his memory. Muffat waited, turning a little spoon between his fingers. Then the countess addressed the latter:

—Isn't Monsieur Steiner with that singer from the Variétés, that Nana?

—Nana, that's it, a horror! cried Madame Hugon, who was growing angry. And they're expecting her at La Mignotte. I know all about it from the gardener... Isn't that so, Georges, the gardener said they were expecting her this evening.

The count gave a slight start of surprise. But Georges answered vivaciously:

—Oh! mamma, the gardener was talking without knowing... Just now the coachman said the opposite: nobody is expected at La Mignotte before the day after tomorrow.

He tried to assume a natural air, studying out of the corner of his eye the effect of his words on the count. The latter was again turning his little spoon, as if reassured. The countess, her eyes lost on the bluish distances of the park, seemed no longer to be in the conversation, following with the shadow of a smile a secret thought suddenly awakened in her; while, stiff on her chair, Estelle had listened to what was said of Nana, without a feature of her white virgin face having moved.

—My God! murmured Madame Hugon after a silence, recovering her good nature, I'm wrong to get angry. Everyone must live... If we meet this lady on the road, we'll just not bow to her.

And, as they left the table, she scolded Countess Sabine again for being so long desired that year. But the countess defended herself, throwing their delays onto her husband; twice, on the eve of leaving, the trunks packed, he had countermanded, speaking of urgent business; then he had decided all at once, at the moment when the trip seemed buried. Then the old lady recounted that Georges had likewise announced his arrival to her twice, without appearing, and that he had dropped in the day before yesterday at Les Fondettes, when she no longer counted on him. They had just gone down into the garden. The two men, to right and left of the ladies, listened to them, silent, hunched over.

—No matter, said Madame Hugon, placing kisses on her son's blond hair, Zizi is very nice to have come to shut himself up in the country with his mother... This good Zizi, he hasn't forgotten me!

In the afternoon she felt a worry. Georges, who immediately after leaving the table had complained of a heaviness in the head, seemed little by little invaded by an atrocious migraine. Toward four o'clock he wanted to go up and lie down, it was the only remedy; when he had slept until the next day, he would be perfectly well. His mother insisted on putting him to bed herself. But as she went out, he jumped up to give a turn to the lock, he pretended he was locking himself in so no one would disturb him; and he cried good night! till tomorrow, little mother! in a caressing voice, while promising to sleep straight through. He did not lie down again, clear-skinned, eyes bright, dressing again without noise, then waiting, motionless on a chair. When the dinner bell rang, he watched Count Muffat heading toward the salon. Ten minutes later, certain not to be seen, he slipped nimbly out the window, aided by a drainpipe; his room, on the first floor, looked out on the back of the house. He had thrown himself into a thicket, he left the park and galloped across the fields, in the direction of the Choue, empty-bellied, heart leaping with emotion. Night was coming, a fine small rain began to fall.

It was indeed the evening Nana was to arrive at La Mignotte. Since Steiner had, in May, bought this country house for her, she was from time to time seized with such a desire to install herself there that she wept; but each time Bordenave refused the least leave, sending her off to September, on the pretext that he did not intend to replace her with an understudy, even for one evening, in Exposition time. Toward the end of August he spoke of October. Nana, furious, declared she would be at La Mignotte on the 15th of September. Even, to defy Bordenave, she invited a heap of people in his presence. One afternoon, as Muffat, whom she resisted knowingly, was begging her at her house, shaken with shivers, she finally promised to be nice, but there; and to him too she indicated the 15th. Then, on the 12th, a need took her to slip away at once, alone with Zoé. Perhaps Bordenave, warned, would find a means to keep her. It amused her to plant him there, sending him a bulletin from her doctor. When the idea of arriving first at La Mignotte, of living there two days, without anyone knowing it, entered her brain, she hustled Zoé for the trunks, pushed her into a cab, where, very touched, she asked her pardon kissing her. It was only at the station buffet that she thought to warn Steiner by a letter. She begged him to wait until the day after next to join her, if he wanted to find her quite fresh. And, jumping to another plan, she made a second letter, where she implored her aunt to bring little Louis immediately. It would do baby so much good! and how they would amuse themselves together under the trees! From Paris to Orléans, in the carriage, she spoke of nothing but that, eyes moist, mingling flowers, birds and her child, in a sudden fit of maternity.

La Mignotte was more than three leagues away. Nana lost an hour hiring a carriage, an immense dilapidated calash that rolled slowly with a noise of scrap iron. She had at once taken possession of the coachman, a little taciturn old man whom she overwhelmed with questions. Had he often passed before La Mignotte? Then it was behind that hill? It must be full of trees, wasn't it? And the house, could you see it from afar? The little old man answered with grunts. In the calash, Nana danced with impatience; while Zoé, angry at having left Paris so quickly, held herself stiff and sulky. The horse having stopped short, the young woman thought they had arrived. She put her head out the door, she asked:

—Eh! are we there?

For all answer, the coachman had whipped the horse, which painfully climbed a slope. Nana contemplated with rapture the immense plain under the gray sky, where big clouds were piling up.

—Oh! look, Zoé, what grass! Is that wheat, all that?... My God! how pretty!

—One can see plainly madame is not from the country, the maid finally said with a pinched air. I knew the country too well, when I was with my dentist, who had a house at Bougival... Besides, it's cold this evening. It's damp, around here.

They passed under trees. Nana sniffed the smell of leaves like a young dog. Suddenly, at a turn in the road, she caught sight of the corner of a dwelling, among the branches. Perhaps it was there; and she started a conversation with the coachman, who still said no, with a shake of the head. Then, as they descended the other side of the hill, he contented himself with lengthening his whip, murmuring:

—There, over there.

She stood up, passed her whole body out the door.

—Where? where? she cried, pale, seeing nothing yet.

At last she made out a bit of wall. Then there were little cries, little jumps, a whole outbreak of a woman carried away by a vivid emotion.

—Zoé, I see, I see!... Get on the other side... Oh! there is, on the roof, a terrace with bricks. It's a greenhouse, over there! But it's very large... Oh! how happy I am! Look, Zoé, look!

The carriage had stopped before the gate. A small door opened, and the gardener, a tall thin man, appeared, cap in hand. Nana wanted to recover her dignity, for the coachman already seemed to be laughing inside, with his sewn-up lips. She restrained herself from running, listened to the gardener, very talkative that one, who begged madame to excuse the disorder, seeing that he had only received madame's letter that morning; but, despite her efforts, she was lifted off the ground, she walked so fast that Zoé could not follow her. At the end of the path, she stopped a moment, to embrace the house with a glance. It was a large pavilion of Italian style, flanked by a smaller building, which a rich Englishman had had built after two years' stay at Naples, and of which he had soon tired.

—I will show madame around, said the gardener.

But she had anticipated him, she cried to him not to trouble himself, that she would look around herself, that she preferred that. And, without removing her hat, she launched into the rooms, calling Zoé, throwing remarks at her from one end of the corridors to the other, filling with her cries and laughter the emptiness of that house uninhabited for long months. First, the vestibule: a bit damp, but that was nothing, one didn't sleep there. Very chic, the salon, with its windows open on a lawn; only, the red furniture was frightful, she would change that. As for the dining room, eh! the fine dining room! and what parties they would give in Paris, if one had a dining room of that size! As she went up to the first floor, she remembered she had not seen the kitchen; she came back down exclaiming, Zoé had to marvel at the beauty of the sink and the size of the hearth, where one could have roasted a sheep. When she had gone up again, her room especially enthused her, a room that a tapestry-maker from Orléans had hung with Louis XVI cretonne, tender pink. Ah well! one must sleep finely in there! a real boarding-school nest! Then four or five guest rooms, then magnificent attics; it was very handy for the trunks. Zoé, grumbling, throwing a cold glance into each room, lingered behind madame. She watched her disappear at the top of the steep attic ladder. Thanks! she had no wish to break her legs. But a voice reached her, distant, as if blown down a chimney flue.

—Zoé! Zoé! where are you? do come up!... Oh! you've no idea... It's fairy-like!

Zoé went up grumbling. She found madame on the roof, leaning on the brick railing, looking at the valley widening in the distance. The horizon was immense; but gray vapors drowned it, a terrible wind drove fine drops of rain. Nana had to hold her hat with both hands so it would not be carried off, while her skirts fluttered with the cracking of a flag.

—Ah! no, really! said Zoé, immediately withdrawing her nose. Madame will be carried off... What beastly weather!

Madame did not hear. Her head bent, she looked at the property below her. There were seven or eight acres, enclosed by walls. Then the sight of the kitchen garden took her wholly. She precipitated herself, bowled the chambermaid over on the stairs, stammering:

—It's full of cabbages!... Oh! cabbages as big as that!... And lettuces, sorrel, onions, and everything! Come quick.

The rain fell harder. She opened her white silk umbrella, ran in the paths.

—Madame will catch cold! cried Zoé, staying tranquilly under the porch awning.

But Madame wanted to see. At each new discovery, exclamations.

—Zoé, spinach! Do come!... Oh! artichokes! They're funny. Do artichokes flower then?... Look! what is that? I don't know that... Do come, Zoé, you perhaps know.

The chambermaid did not budge. Madame must really be frantic. Now the water fell in torrents, the little white silk umbrella was already all black; and it did not cover madame, whose skirt streamed. That hardly troubled her. She visited under the downpour the kitchen garden and the orchard, stopping at each tree, bending over each vegetable bed. Then she ran to throw a glance at the bottom of the well, lifted a frame to see what was underneath, absorbed herself in the contemplation of an enormous pumpkin. Her need was to follow all the paths, to take immediate possession of these things, of which she had dreamed formerly, when she dragged her worker's slippers on the pavement of Paris. The rain redoubled, she did not feel it, only desolate that day was falling. She no longer saw clearly, she touched with her fingers, to understand. Suddenly, in the twilight, she distinguished strawberries. Then her childhood burst forth.

—Strawberries! strawberries! There are some, I smell them!... Zoé, a plate! Come pick strawberries.

And Nana, who had squatted in the mud, let go her umbrella, receiving the shower. She picked strawberries, hands soaked, among the leaves. Meanwhile Zoé brought no plate. As the young woman stood up, she was seized with fear. It had seemed to her she saw a shadow glide.

—A beast! she cried.

But stupor rooted her in the middle of the path. It was a man, and she had recognized him.

—Why! it's Bébé!... What are you doing there, Bébé?

—Well! of course! replied Georges, I've come.

She remained dazed.

—So you knew of my arrival from the gardener?... Oh! the child! And he's soaked!

—Ah! I'll tell you. The rain caught me on the way. And then, I didn't want to go back up to Gumières, and crossing the Choue, I fell into a fine hole of water.

Thereupon Nana forgot the strawberries. She was all trembling and pitiful. That poor Zizi in a hole of water! She drew him toward the house, she spoke of making a big fire.

—You know, he murmured, stopping her in the shadow, I was hiding, because I was afraid of being scolded like in Paris, when I come see you without being expected.

She began to laugh, without answering, and placed a kiss on his forehead. Until that day, she had treated him as a kid, not taking his declarations seriously, amusing herself with him as with a little man of no consequence. It was a business to install him. She absolutely wanted a fire lit in her room; they would be better there. The sight of Georges had not surprised Zoé, accustomed to all encounters. But the gardener, who was bringing up wood, remained nonplussed on seeing this gentleman streaming with water, to whom he was certain he had not opened the door. They sent him away, they needed him no more. A lamp lit the room, the fire threw a great clear flame.

—He'll never dry, he'll catch cold, said Nana, seeing Georges taken with a shiver.

And not a man's trousers! She was about to recall the gardener, when she had an idea. Zoé, who was unpacking the trunks in the dressing room, was bringing madame linen to change into, a chemise, petticoats, a peignoir.

—But it's perfect! cried the young woman, Zizi can put all that on. Eh? you're not disgusted by me... When your clothes are dry, you'll take them again and go quickly, so as not to be scolded by your mamma... Hurry, I'm going to change too in the dressing room.

When, ten minutes later, she reappeared in a dressing gown, she joined her hands in delight.

—Oh! the darling, how nice he is as a little woman!

“Stories of the world, in your language.”