Part 16

As they went out, two shadows were sinking into the darkness of an alley. Every evening now, Fauchery and Countess Sabine left Daguenet to help Estelle prepare the tea. On the high road, the count walked so fast that his companion had to run to keep up. Out of breath, the latter kept showering him with the best arguments against the temptations of the flesh. The other did not open his mouth, swept along into the night. Arriving in front of the Mignotte, he simply said:

—I can do no more... Go away.

—Then may the will of God be done, murmured Mr. Venot. He takes every path to assure his triumph... Your sin will be one of his weapons.

At the Mignotte, they quarreled during the meal. Nana had found a letter from Bordenave, in which he advised her to take some rest, with an air of making fun of her; little Violaine was called back twice every evening. And, as Mignon again pressed her to leave the next day with them, Nana, exasperated, declared that she meant to take no advice. Besides, she had shown herself at table with a ridiculous stiffness. Madame Lerat having let drop a coarse word, she cried that, by God! she did not allow anyone, not even her aunt, to say dirty things in her presence. Then, she bored everyone with her good sentiments, a fit of stupid respectability, with ideas of religious education for Louiset and a whole plan of good conduct for herself. As they laughed, she had deep words, nods of a convinced bourgeoise, saying that order alone led to fortune, and that she did not want to die on the straw. These ladies, annoyed, cried out: impossible, they had changed Nana! But she, motionless, fell back into her reverie, her eyes lost, seeing rise the vision of a very rich and very bowed-to Nana.

They were going up to bed, when Muffat presented himself. It was Labordette who caught sight of him in the garden. He understood, and did him the service of getting Steiner out of the way and leading him by the hand, along the dark corridor, to Nana's room. Labordette, for such matters, was of a perfect refinement, very dexterous, and as if delighted to make others happy. Nana showed no surprise, only annoyed at Muffat's rage after her. One had to be serious in life, wasn't that so? It was too silly to love, it led to nothing. Then, she had scruples, because of Zizi's young age; truly, she had behaved in a not honest way. Good Lord! she was getting back on the right path, she was taking an old man.

—Zoé, she said to the maid, enchanted to leave the country, pack the trunks tomorrow when you get up, we're going back to Paris.

And she slept with Muffat, but without pleasure.

VII

Three months later, one December evening, Count Muffat was walking in the Passage des Panoramas. The evening was very mild, a shower had just filled the passage with a flood of people. There was a crush there, a painful and slow procession, squeezed between the shops. It was, under the panes whitened with reflections, a violent lighting, a flow of brightness, white globes, red lanterns, blue transparencies, gas footlights, watches and giant fans in lines of flame, burning in the air; and the motley of the displays, the gold of the jewelers, the crystal of the confectioners, the light silks of the milliners, flamed, behind the purity of the mirrors, in the crude stroke of light from the reflectors; while, among the painted rout of the signs, an enormous purple glove, far off, seemed a bleeding hand, cut off and attached by a yellow cuff.

Gently, Count Muffat had gone back up to the boulevard. He threw a glance at the roadway, then came back with little steps, skirting the shops. A humid and heated air put a luminous vapor in the narrow corridor. Along the flagstones, wet from the dripping of umbrellas, steps rang, continually, without a sound of voices. Promenaders, jostling him at each turn, examined him, their faces mute, blanched by the gas. Then, to escape these curiosities, the count planted himself in front of a stationer's, where he contemplated with profound attention a display of paperweights, glass balls in which landscapes and flowers floated.

He saw nothing, he was thinking of Nana. Why had she just lied once again? In the morning, she had written him not to come by in the evening, pretending that Louiset was ill, and that she would spend the night at her aunt's, watching over him. But he, suspicious, having presented himself at her house, had learned from the concierge that madame, precisely, was leaving for her theater. This astonished him, for she was not playing in the new piece. Why then this lie, and what could she be doing at the Variétés that evening?

Jostled by a passerby, the count, without being aware of it, left the paperweights and found himself in front of a fancy-goods window, looking with his absorbed air at a display of notebooks and cigar-cases, which all, in one corner, had the same blue swallow. Certainly, Nana was changed. In the first times, after her return from the country, she drove him mad, when she kissed him all over the face, on his side-whiskers, with catlike caresses, swearing to him that he was the beloved dog, the only little man she adored. He no longer feared Georges, kept by his mother at the Fondettes. There remained the big Steiner, whom he thought to replace, but about whom he dared not provoke an explanation. He knew him again in an extraordinary muddle of money, near being sold out at the Bourse, clinging to the shareholders of the Salines des Landes, trying to make them sweat a last installment. When he met him at Nana's, she explained to him, in a reasonable tone, that she did not want to throw him out like a dog, after what he had spent on her. Besides, for three months, he had lived in such a sensual bewilderment that, outside the need to possess her, he felt nothing very clear. It was, in the late awakening of his flesh, a childish greed which left no room for vanity or jealousy. Only one precise sensation could strike him: Nana was becoming less kind, she no longer kissed him on the beard. This worried him, he wondered what she had to reproach him with, like a man who ignores women. However, he believed he was satisfying all her desires. And he kept coming back to the morning letter, to this complication of lying, with the so simple aim of spending the evening at her theater. Under a new push of the crowd, he had crossed the passage, he was racking his brains in front of a restaurant vestibule, his eyes fixed on plucked larks and a large salmon stretched out in a window.

At last, he seemed to tear himself from this spectacle. He shook himself, raised his eyes, noticed that it was near nine o'clock. Nana would be going out, he would demand the truth. And he walked, recalling the evenings already spent in this place, when he took her at the theater door. All the shops were known to him, he found their odors again, in the gas-heavy air, the harsh scents of Russian leather, the vanilla perfumes rising from the basement of a chocolate maker, the musky breaths blown by the open doors of the perfumers. Also he no longer dared stop in front of the pale faces of the counter ladies, who looked at him placidly, as if acquainted. For an instant, he seemed to study the row of little round windows, above the stores, as if he saw them for the first time, in the crowding of the signs. Then, again, he went up to the boulevard, stood there a minute. The rain was falling now only in a fine dust, whose cold, on his hands, calmed him. Now, he was thinking of his wife, who was near Mâcon, in a château where her friend, Madame de Chezelles, had been very ill since autumn; the carriages, on the roadway, rolled in the middle of a river of mud, the country must be abominable in this ugly weather. But, suddenly seized with uneasiness, he went back into the stifling heat of the passage, he walked with long strides among the promenaders: the thought had come to him that, if Nana was suspicious, she would slip away by the Galerie Montmartre.

Thereupon, the count kept watch at the theater door itself. He did not like to wait in that bit of corridor, where he feared being recognized. It was, at the angle of the Galerie des Variétés and the Galerie Saint-Marc, a shady corner, with dark shops, a cordonnerie without customers, dusty furniture stores, a smoky, drowsy reading-room, whose hooded lamps slept, in the evening, in a green glow; and there was never there but well-dressed and patient gentlemen, roaming among what clutters an artists' entrance, the drunkenness of machinists and the rags of supernumeraries. In front of the theater, a single gas jet, in a frosted globe, lit the door. Muffat had for a moment the idea of questioning Madame Bron; then, the fear came to him that Nana, warned, would escape by the boulevard. He took up his walk, resolved to wait until they put him out to close the grilles, as had happened twice; the thought of going home to sleep alone wrung his heart with anguish. Each time that girls with loose hair, men with dirty linen, went out and stared at him, he came back to plant himself in front of the reading-room, where, between two posters pasted on a pane, he found again the same sight, a little old man, stiff and alone at the immense table, in the green blotch of a lamp, reading a green newspaper with green hands. But, a few minutes before ten o'clock, another gentleman, a big handsome man, blond, correctly gloved, walked also in front of the theater. Then, both, at each turn, threw each other an oblique glance, with a suspicious air. The count pushed as far as the angle of the two galleries, adorned with a tall panel of glass; and there, on perceiving each other, grave of mien, correct of bearing, he felt a shame mixed with fear.

Ten o'clock struck. Muffat, abruptly, thought that it was quite easy for him to make sure whether Nana was in her dressing-room. He went up the three steps, crossed the little vestibule daubed with yellow, then slipped into the courtyard by a door that simply latched. At this hour, the courtyard, narrow, damp as the bottom of a well, with its stinking privies, its fountain, the kitchen stove and the plants with which the concierge cluttered it, was drowned in a black vapor; but the two walls that rose up, pierced with windows, flamed: below, the property storeroom and the firemen's post, to the left the administration, to the right and above the artists' dressing-rooms. It was, along this well, like mouths of an oven opened on the darkness. The count had at once seen the panes of the dressing-room lit, on the first floor; and, relieved, happy, he forgot himself, eyes in the air, in the greasy mud and the faint stench of this back of an old Parisian house. Big drops fell from a broken gutter. A gas ray, slipped from Madame Bron's window, yellowed a bit of mossy pavement, a bit of wall eaten by the waters of a sink, a whole corner of filth encumbered with old buckets and cracked bowls, where a lean daphne greened in a pot. There was a creak of a casement fastener, the count fled.

Certainly, Nana was going to come down. He went back in front of the reading-room; in the sleeping shadow, stained with a night-light glow, the little old man had not moved, his profile broken on his newspaper. Then, he walked again. Now, he pushed his walk further, he crossed the great gallery, followed the Galerie des Variétés as far as the Galerie Feydeau, deserted and cold, sunk in a lugubrious obscurity; and he came back, he passed in front of the theater, turned the corner of the Galerie Saint-Marc, ventured as far as the Galerie Montmartre, where a machine sawing sugar, at a grocer's, interested him. But, at the third turn, the fear that Nana would escape behind his back made him lose all human respect. He planted himself with the blond gentleman in front of the theater itself, the two exchanging a look of fraternal humility, lit with a remaining distrust over a possible rivalry. Machinists, who went out to smoke a pipe during an intermission, jostled them, without either daring to complain. Three big girls, badly combed, in dirty dresses, appeared on the threshold, crunching apples, spitting the cores; and they lowered their heads, they remained under the effrontery of their eyes and the crudeness of their words, splashed, soiled by these hussies, who found it funny to throw themselves on them, pushing each other.

Just then, Nana was coming down the three steps. She turned quite white, when she caught sight of Muffat.

—Ah! it's you, she stammered.

The supernumeraries, who were snickering, grew afraid on recognizing her; and they remained planted in a row, with the stiff and serious air of servants surprised by madame in the act of misbehaving. The big blond gentleman had drawn aside, at once reassured and sad.

—Well! give me your arm, resumed Nana with impatience.

They went off gently. The count, who had prepared questions, found nothing to say. It was she who, in a rapid voice, told a story: she was still at her aunt's at eight o'clock; then, seeing Louiset much better, she had had the idea of coming down for an instant to the theater.

—Some important business? he asked.

—Yes, a new piece, she answered after hesitating. They wanted my opinion.

He understood that she was lying. But the warm sensation of her arm, strongly pressed on his, left him without strength. He had no longer either anger or resentment at his long wait, his only care was to keep her there, now that he held her. The next day, he would try to find out what she had come to do in her dressing-room. Nana, always hesitating, visibly prey to the inner working of a person who tries to pull herself together and take a resolution, stopped turning the corner of the Galerie des Variétés, in front of a fan-maker's display.

—Look! she murmured, it's pretty, that mother-of-pearl trimming with those feathers.

Then, in an indifferent tone:

—So, you're coming home with me?

—But of course, said he, astonished, since your child is better.

She regretted her story. Perhaps Louiset had a new crisis; and she spoke of going back to the Batignolles. But, as he offered to go there too, she did not insist. For an instant, she had the white rage of a woman who feels caught and must show herself gentle. At last, she resigned herself, she resolved to gain time; provided she got rid of the count toward midnight, all would arrange to her wish.

—It's true, you're a bachelor this evening, she murmured. Your wife doesn't come back till tomorrow morning, does she?

—Yes, answered Muffat a little embarrassed to hear her speak familiarly of the countess.

But she insisted, asking the time of the train, wanting to know if he would go to the station to wait for her. She had again slowed her step, as if very interested by the shops.

—Just look! she said, stopped again in front of a jeweler's, what a funny bracelet!

She adored the Passage des Panoramas. It was a passion that remained to her from her youth for the tinsel of the Paris article, false jewels, gilded zinc, cardboard passing for leather. When she passed, she could not tear herself from the displays, as at the time when she dragged her little girl's worn shoes, forgetting herself in front of a chocolate maker's sweets, listening to an organ play in a neighboring shop, taken above all by the loud taste of cheap knickknacks, necessaires in walnut shells, ragpicker's baskets for toothpicks, Vendôme columns and obelisks bearing thermometers. But, that evening, she was too shaken, she looked without seeing. It bored her at last, not to be free; and, in her sullen revolt, rose the furious need to do something stupid. A fine advantage to have gentlemen! She had just eaten up the prince and Steiner with childish caprices, without her knowing where the money went. Her apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann was not even entirely furnished; alone, the salon, all in red satin, was out of place, too ornate and too full. At this hour, however, the creditors tormented her more than formerly, when she had not a sou; a thing which caused her a continual surprise, for she cited herself as a model of economy. For a month, that thief Steiner found a thousand francs with great difficulty, on the days when she threatened to throw him out, if he did not bring them. As for Muffat, he was an idiot, he ignored what one gave, and she could not blame him for his stinginess. Ah! how she would have dropped all that world, if she had not repeated to herself twenty times a day maxims of good conduct! One had to be reasonable, Zoé said it every morning, she herself always had present a religious memory, the royal vision of Chamont, ceaselessly evoked and grown. And it was why, despite a trembling of contained anger, she made herself submissive on the count's arm, going from one window to another, amid the rarer passersby. Outside, the pavement was drying, a fresh wind that threaded the gallery swept the warm air under the glazing, startled the colored lanterns, the gas footlights, the giant fan, burning like a firework. At the restaurant door, a waiter was extinguishing the globes; while, in the empty and blazing shops, the motionless counter ladies seemed to have fallen asleep, eyes open.

—Oh! this love! resumed Nana, at the last display, coming back a few steps to grow tender over a biscuit spaniel, a paw raised before a nest hidden in roses.

They finally left the passage, and she would have no carriage. It was very fine, she said; besides, nothing hurried them, it would be charming to go home on foot. Then, arrived in front of the Café Anglais, she had a wish, she spoke of eating oysters, telling how she had taken nothing since morning, because of Louiset's illness. Muffat dared not cross her. He did not yet show himself with her, he asked for a private room, slipping quickly along the corridors. She followed him like a woman who knew the house, and they were about to enter a private room whose door a waiter held open, when, from a neighboring salon, where a tempest of laughs and cries rose, a man abruptly came out. It was Daguenet.

—Well! Nana! he cried.

Quickly, the count had disappeared into the room, whose door remained ajar. But, as his round back fled, Daguenet blinked, adding in a bantering tone:

—Whew! you're doing well, you're taking them at the Tuileries, now!

Nana smiled, a finger on her lips, to beg him to be silent. She saw him very far gone, happy nevertheless to meet him there, keeping a corner of tenderness for him, despite his dirty trick of not recognizing her, when he found himself with ladies of quality.

—What's become of you? she asked amiably.

—I'm settling down. Truly, I'm thinking of marrying.

She shrugged with an air of pity. But he, joking, continued, said that it was no life to gain at the Bourse just enough to give bouquets to the ladies, to remain at least a clean bachelor. His three hundred thousand francs had lasted him eighteen months. He wanted to be practical, he would marry a big dowry and end up prefect, like his father. Nana still smiled, incredulous. She indicated the salon with a movement of the head.

—Who are you with there?

—Oh! a whole crowd, said he, forgetting his plans under a puff of drunkenness. Imagine Léa telling about her trip to Egypt. It's a scream! There's a bathing story...

And he told the story. Nana lingered, complaisantly. They had ended by leaning back, one facing the other, in the corridor. Gas jets burned under the low ceiling, a vague kitchen odor slept between the folds of the hangings. At moments, to hear each other, when the salon's uproar redoubled, they had to bring their faces close. Every twenty seconds, a waiter, loaded with dishes, finding the corridor blocked, disturbed them. But, they, without interrupting themselves, shrank against the walls, calm, chatting as if at home, amid the racket of the diners and the jostling of the service.

—Just look, murmured the young man, showing with a sign the door of the room, where Muffat had disappeared.

Both looked. The door had little quiverings, a breath seemed to agitate it. At last, with an extreme slowness, it closed, without the least noise. They exchanged a silent laugh. The count must have a fine face, alone, in there.

—By the way, she asked, have you read Fauchery's article about me?

—Yes, _The Golden Fly_, answered Daguenet, I wasn't mentioning it to you, fearing to give you pain.

—Pain, why? It's very long, his article.

She was flattered that one occupied oneself with her person in the _Figaro_. Without the explanations of her hairdresser, Francis, who had brought her the newspaper, she would not have understood that it was about her. Daguenet examined her askance, snickering with his bantering air. Well, since she was pleased, everyone must be.

—Excuse me! cried a waiter, who separated them, holding a frozen bombe in both hands.

Nana had taken a step toward the little salon, where Muffat waited.

—Well! good-bye, resumed Daguenet. Go rejoin your cuckold.

Again, she stopped.

—Why do you call him cuckold?

—Because he's a cuckold, of course!

She came back to lean against the wall, deeply interested.

—Ah! she said simply.

—How, you didn't know that! His wife sleeps with Fauchery, my dear... It must have begun in the country... Just now, Fauchery left me, as I was coming here, and I suspect a rendezvous at his place for this evening. They've invented a trip, I believe.

Nana remained mute, under the blow of emotion.

—I suspected it! she said at last, slapping her thighs. I had guessed it, just from seeing her, the other time, on the road... If it's possible, an honest woman deceiving her husband, and with that blackguard Fauchery! He'll teach her some nice things.

—Oh! murmured Daguenet maliciously, it's not his first attempt. She perhaps knows as much as he does.

Then, she had an indignant exclamation.

—Truly!... What a pretty world! it's too dirty!

—Excuse me! cried a waiter loaded with bottles, separating them.

Daguenet brought her back, held her a moment by the hand. He had taken his crystal voice, a voice of harmonica notes which made all his success with those ladies.

—Good-bye, darling... You know, I still love you.

She freed herself; and, smiling, her words covered by a thunder of cries and bravos, whose the salon door trembled:

—Silly, it's over... But it doesn't matter. Come up one of these days. We'll chat.

Then, becoming very grave again, in the tone of a revolted bourgeoise:

—Ah! he's a cuckold... Well! my dear, it's annoying. Me, a cuckold has always disgusted me.

When she finally entered the room, she caught sight of Muffat, seated on a narrow divan, who was resigning himself, white of face, nervous of hands. He made her no reproach. She, all stirred up, was divided between pity and contempt. This poor man, whom a nasty woman deceived so indignantly! She had the urge to throw herself on his neck, to console him. But, all the same, it was just, he was an idiot with women; that would teach him. However, pity prevailed. She did not drop him, after eating her oysters, as she had promised herself. They stayed barely a quarter of an hour at the Café Anglais, and went home together Boulevard Haussmann. It was eleven o'clock; before midnight, she would well find a gentle means to dismiss him.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”