Part 2
But a slight tremor ran through the house. Rose Mignon had just entered, as Diana. Although she had neither the figure nor the build for the role—thin and dark, with the adorable ugliness of a Paris street urchin—she seemed charming, like a mockery even of the character. Her entrance aria, with its idiotic, tear-jerking lines where she complained of Mars, who was in the process of dropping her for Venus, was sung with a modest reserve, so full of roguish innuendo that the audience warmed up. Her husband and Steiner, elbow to elbow, laughed complacently. And the whole house burst out when Prullière, that beloved actor, appeared as a general—a Mars from the Courtille, plumed with a giant feather, dragging a sabre that reached his shoulder. He had had enough of Diana; she put on too much of a sour face. Then Diana swore to keep watch on him and take her revenge. The duet ended with a buffoonish Tyrolean song, which Prullière carried off very funnily, in the voice of an irritated tomcat. He had the amusing vanity of a successful leading man, and rolled the eyes of a braggart, which drew sharp feminine laughter from the boxes.
Then the audience grew cold again; the following scenes were found tedious. Barely did old Bosc, a foolish Jupiter, his head crushed beneath an immense crown, thaw the public for an instant, when he had a domestic quarrel with Juno over the account of their cook. The procession of gods—Neptune, Pluto, Minerva and the others—nearly spoiled everything. Impatience set in, a worrying murmur slowly grew, the spectators lost interest and looked about the house. Lucy was laughing with Labordette; Count de Vandeuvres stretched his neck behind Blanche's broad shoulders; while Fauchery, out of the corner of his eye, examined the Muffats—the count very grave, as if he had not understood, the countess vaguely smiling, her eyes lost, dreaming. But suddenly, in this unease, the applause of the claque crackled with the regularity of a firing squad. Heads turned to the stage. Was it Nana at last? This Nana was certainly making them wait.
It was a deputation of mortals, introduced by Ganymede and Iris—respectable bourgeois, all cuckolded husbands, come to present the master of the gods with a complaint against Venus, who was really inflaming their wives with too much ardour. The chorus, in a doleful and naive tone, broken by silences full of confession, greatly amused. A word went round the house: 'The cuckolds' chorus, the cuckolds' chorus'; and the word was to stick, they cried 'encore'. The choristers' faces were funny, they were found to have just the look for it, especially a fat one, his round face like a moon. Meanwhile Vulcan arrived, furious, asking for his wife, who had slipped away three days before. The chorus took up again, imploring Vulcan, the god of cuckolds. This Vulcan was played by Fontan, a comedian of roguish and original talent, who had a wildly fanciful swagger, as a village blacksmith, his flaming wig, his bare arms tattooed with hearts pierced by arrows. A woman's voice let slip, very loud: 'Ah! how ugly he is!'; and all laughed as they applauded.
A scene afterwards seemed interminable. Jupiter never finished assembling the council of the gods, to submit to it the petition of the cuckolded husbands. And still no Nana! Were they then keeping Nana for the lowering of the curtain? So prolonged a wait had ended by irritating the public. The murmurs began again.
—It's going badly, said Mignon, radiant, to Steiner. A fine row, you'll see!
At that moment, the clouds at the back parted, and Venus appeared. Nana, very tall, very buxom for her eighteen years, in her white goddess tunic, her long blonde hair simply loose upon her shoulders, descended towards the footlights with a tranquil assurance, laughing at the public. And she began her great aria:
When Venus prowls at evening...
From the second verse, they looked at one another in the house. Was it a joke, some wager of Bordenave's? Never had such a false voice been heard, carried with less method. Her director judged her rightly—she sang like a squirt. And she did not even know how to hold herself on stage; she threw her hands forward, in a swaying of her whole body, which was found improper and ungraceful. Ohs! were already rising from the pit and the upper gallery, they were whistling, when a voice like a young cock in the process of changing, from the orchestra stalls, flung with conviction:
—Very chic!
The whole house looked. It was the cherub, the runaway from school, his fine eyes wide, his blonde face inflamed by the sight of Nana. When he saw the world turn towards him, he went very red at having thus spoken aloud, without meaning to. Daguenet, his neighbour, examined him with a smile; the public laughed, as if disarmed and no longer thinking to whistle; while the young gentlemen in white gloves, also seized by Nana's shape, swooned and applauded.
—That's it, very good! bravo!
Nana, however, on seeing the house laugh, had begun to laugh. The gaiety redoubled. She was funny all the same, that fine girl. Her laugh dug a love of a little dimple in her chin. She waited, unabashed, familiar, entering at once on equal footing with the public, seeming to say herself with a blink of the eyes that she hadn't two pennies' worth of talent, but that it didn't matter, that she had something else. And, after addressing the conductor a gesture which meant: 'Let's go, old man!' she began the second verse:
At midnight, it is Venus who passes...
It was still the same vinegary voice, but now it scratched the public in just the right spot, drawing from it at moments a slight shiver. Nana had kept her laugh, which lit her little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, of a very pale blue. At certain rather lively verses, a daintiness turned up her nose, whose pink wings fluttered, while a flame passed over her cheeks. She continued to sway, knowing only how to do that. And it was no longer found ugly at all, on the contrary; the men levelled their glasses. As she finished the verse, her voice quite failed her; she understood she would never get to the end. Then, without concern, she gave a toss of the hip which traced a roundness beneath the thin tunic, while, her waist bent, her breast thrown back, she stretched out her arms. Applause broke out. Immediately she had turned, remounting, showing her nape where reddish hair made like the pelt of a beast; and the applause became furious.
The end of the act was colder. Vulcan wanted to slap Venus. The gods held council and decided they would go conduct an inquiry on earth, before satisfying the cuckolded husbands. It was there that Diana, surprising tender words between Venus and Mars, swore not to leave them from her sight during the journey. There was also a scene where Cupid, played by a twelve-year-old girl, answered all questions: 'Yes, mamma... No, mamma', in a whining tone, fingers up her nose. Then Jupiter, with the severity of a master who grows angry, shut Cupid in a black cabinet, giving him to conjugate twenty times the verb 'I love'. The finale was better liked, a chorus which the troupe and orchestra carried off very brilliantly. But, the curtain down, the claque vainly tried to obtain a recall; everyone, standing, was already making for the doors.
They shuffled, jostled, packed between the rows of seats, exchanging impressions. One word ran:
—It's idiotic.
A critic said it would need some handsome cutting there. The play mattered little, besides; they talked above all of Nana. Fauchery and La Faloise, out among the first, met Steiner and Mignon in the orchestra corridor. One stifled in that passage, narrow and crushed like a mine gallery, lit by gas lamps. They stayed an instant at the foot of the right-hand staircase, protected by the return of the rail. The spectators of the upper gallery came down with a continual noise of heavy shoes; the flood of black coats passed, while an usherette made every effort to protect from the pushes a chair, on which she had piled garments.
—But I know her! cried Steiner, as soon as he caught sight of Fauchery. For sure, I've seen her somewhere... At the Casino, I think, and she got herself picked up there, so drunk was she.
—As for me, I no longer know exactly, said the journalist; I am like you, I have certainly met her...
He lowered his voice and added, laughing:
—At La Tricon's, perhaps.
—Of course! in a foul place, declared Mignon, who seemed exasperated. It's disgusting that the public welcomes like that the first slut that comes along. There'll soon be no decent women in the theatre... Yes, I'll end by forbidding Rose to play.
Fauchery could not help smiling. Meanwhile, the tumble of heavy shoes on the steps did not cease; a little man in a cap said in a drawling voice:
—Oh! la, la, she's nothing skinny! There's something to eat there.
In the corridor, two young men, curled with the small iron, very correct with their turned-down collars, were quarrelling. One repeated the word: Foul! foul! giving no reason; the other answered with the word: Stunning! stunning! disdainful also of all argument.
La Faloise found her very well; he risked only that she would be better, if she cultivated her voice. Then Steiner, who no longer listened, seemed to wake with a start. One had to wait, besides. Perhaps all would spoil in the following acts. The public had shown complaisance, but certainly it was not yet seized. Mignon swore the play would not finish, and as Fauchery and La Faloise left them to go up to the foyer, he took Steiner's arm, pushed against his shoulder, breathing in his ear:
—My dear, you'll see my wife's costume, in the second act... It's a pig!
Upstairs, in the foyer, three crystal chandeliers burned with a vivid light. The two cousins hesitated an instant; the glass door, thrown back, showed, from one end to the other of the gallery, a swell of heads which two currents carried away in a continual eddy. Yet they entered. Five or six groups of men, talking very loud and gesticulating, stuck fast in the middle of the shoving; the others walked in files, turning on their heels which beat the waxed parquet. To right and left, between columns of jasper marble, women, seated on red velvet benches, watched the flood pass with a weary air, as if languid from the heat; and, behind them, in tall mirrors, one saw their chignons. At the back, before the buffet, a pot-bellied man drank a glass of syrup.
But Fauchery, to breathe, had gone onto the balcony. La Faloise, who was studying photographs of actresses, in frames alternating with the mirrors, between the columns, finally followed him. They had just extinguished the gas footlights, at the theatre's pediment. It was dark and very fresh on the balcony, which seemed to them empty. Alone, a young man, wrapped in shadow, leaning on the stone balustrade, in the right-hand bay, smoked a cigarette, whose ember glowed. Fauchery recognised Daguenet. They shook hands.
—What are you doing there, my dear? asked the journalist. You hide in little corners, you who never leave the orchestra on first nights.
—But I'm smoking, you see, answered Daguenet.
Then Fauchery, to embarrass him:
—Well! what do you think of the debutante?... She's treated rather badly in the corridors.
—Oh! murmured Daguenet, men she won't have wanted!
That was all his judgement on Nana's talent. La Faloise leaned over, looking at the boulevard. Opposite, the windows of a hotel and a club were brightly lit; while, on the pavement, a black mass of customers occupied the tables of the Café de Madrid. Despite the late hour, the crowd crushed; they walked with small steps; people continually came out of the Passage Jouffroy; some waited five minutes before being able to cross, so long did the line of carriages stretch.
—What a movement! what a noise! repeated La Faloise, still astonished by Paris.
A bell rang long; the foyer emptied. They hurried in the corridors. The curtain was up and they came back in bands, amid the ill humour of spectators already seated. Each took his place, face animated and again attentive. La Faloise's first glance was for Gaga; but he remained surprised, on seeing near her the tall blond, who, a moment ago, was in Lucy's stage box.
—What is the name of that gentleman? he asked.
Fauchery did not see him.
—Ah! yes, Labordette, he finally said, with the same gesture of indifference.
The second act's decor was a surprise. They were in a barrier dance-hall, at the Boule-Noire, in the middle of Mardi Gras; rough louts sang a round, which they accompanied at the refrain by stamping their heels. This roguish excursion, unexpected, so cheered them that they encored the round. And it was there that the band of gods, led astray by Iris, who falsely boasted of knowing the Earth, came to conduct their inquiry. They had disguised themselves to keep incognito. Jupiter entered as King Dagobert, with his breeches reversed and a vast tin crown. Phoebus appeared as the Postilion of Longjumeau and Minerva as a Norman Nurse. Great bursts of gaiety greeted Mars, who wore an extravagant costume of Swiss Admiral. But the laughter became scandalous, when they saw Neptune clad in a smock, capped with a tall ballooning cap, love-locks stuck to his temples, dragging his slippers and saying in a thick voice: 'What d'ye mean! when a man's handsome, he must let himself be loved!' There were some oh! oh! while the ladies raised their fans a little. Lucy, in her box, laughed so noisily that Caroline Héquet silenced her with a light tap of the fan.
Thenceforth the play was saved, a great success took shape. This carnival of the gods, Olympus dragged in the mud, a whole religion, a whole poetry mocked, seemed an exquisite treat. The fever of irreverence seized the literary world of first nights; they trampled on the legend, they broke the antique images. Jupiter had a good face, Mars was done for. Royalty became a farce, and the army a joke. When Jupiter, suddenly in love with a little washerwoman, began to pinch a dishevelled cancan, Simonne, who played the washerwoman, launched her foot at the nose of the master of the gods, calling him so funnily: 'My fat papa!' that a mad laugh shook the house. While they danced, Phoebus paid bowls of mulled wine to Minerva, and Neptune enthroned himself amid seven or eight women, who regaled him with cakes. They caught the allusions, they added obscenities, the harmless words were turned from their sense by the orchestra's exclamations. For long, at the theatre, the public had not wallowed in more disrespectful stupidity. It rested them.
Yet the action advanced, amid these follies. Vulcan, as a smart fellow, all dressed in yellow, gloved in yellow, a monocle stuck in his eye, still ran after Venus, who finally arrived as a Fishwife, a handkerchief on her head, her bosom overflowing, covered in heavy gold jewellery. Nana was so white and so plump, so natural in this character strong of hip and mouth, that at once she won the whole house. They forgot Rose Mignon, a delicious Baby, with a wicker pad and a short muslin dress, who had just sighed the complaints of Diana in a charming voice. The other, that big girl who slapped her thighs, who cackled like a hen, gave off around her an odour of life, an all-powerfulness of woman, with which the public grew drunk. From this second act, all was permitted her—to hold herself badly on stage, not to sing a true note, to lack memory; she had only to turn and laugh, to carry off the bravos. When she gave her famous toss of the hip, the orchestra lit up, a heat rose from gallery to gallery to the flies. Also it was a triumph, when she led the dance-hall. She was at home there, fist at waist, seating Venus in the gutter, at the edge of the pavement. And the music seemed made for her suburban voice, a music of penny-whistle, a return of the Saint-Cloud fair, with sneezings of clarinet and capers of little flute.
Two pieces were again encored. The waltz of the overture, that waltz of roguish rhythm, had returned and was carrying away the gods. Juno, as a Farmer's Wife, pinched Jupiter with his washerwoman and boxed his ears. Diana, surprising Venus giving a rendezvous to Mars, hastened to indicate the place and hour to Vulcan, who cried: 'I have my plan.' The rest did not seem very clear. The inquiry ended in a final galop, after which Jupiter, out of breath, in a sweat, without crown, declared that the little women of earth were delicious and that men were all in the wrong.
The curtain fell, when, dominating the bravos, voices cried violently:
—All! all!
Then the curtain rose again, the artists reappeared, holding hands. In the middle, Nana and Rose Mignon, side by side, made reverences. They applauded, the claque pushed acclamations. Then the house, slowly, emptied by half.
—I must go salute Countess Muffat, said La Faloise.
—That's it, you'll present me, answered Fauchery. We'll go down afterwards.
But it was not easy to reach the balcony boxes. In the corridor, upstairs, they crushed. To advance, amid the groups, one had to shrink, slip by working the elbows. Leaning under a brass lamp, where a jet of gas burned, the fat critic judged the play before an attentive circle. People, passing, named him half-voice. He had laughed during the whole act, it was the rumour of the corridors; yet he showed himself very severe, spoke of taste and morality. Further on, the critic with thin lips was full of a benevolence which had a spoiled aftertaste, like sour-turned milk.
Fauchery searched the boxes with a glance, through the round bays cut in the doors. But Count de Vandeuvres stopped him, questioning him; and when he learned the two cousins were going to salute the Muffats, he indicated box 7, from which he was just coming out. Then, leaning to the journalist's ear:
—I say, my dear, this Nana, it's surely her we saw one evening, at the corner of the rue de Provence...
—Why! you're right, cried Fauchery. I was saying I knew her!
La Faloise presented his cousin to Count Muffat de Beuville, who showed himself very cold. But, at the name of Fauchery, the countess had lifted her head, and she complimented the chronicler on his articles in the Figaro, with a discreet phrase. Leaning on the velvet of the rail, she turned half-round, in a pretty movement of the shoulders. They talked an instant, the conversation fell on the Universal Exhibition.
—It will be very fine, said the count, whose square and regular face kept an official gravity. I visited the Champ-de-Mars today... I came back enchanted.
—They say one won't be ready, ventured La Faloise. There's a muddle...
But the count, in his severe voice, interrupted him.
—One will be ready... The Emperor wills it.
Fauchery gaily recounted that he had nearly remained in the aquarium, then under construction, one day he had gone there to find a subject for an article. The countess smiled. She looked at moments into the house, raising one of her arms gloved in white to the elbow, fanning herself with a slowed hand. The house, almost empty, dozed; some gentlemen, in the orchestra, had spread newspapers; women received, very much at ease, as at home. There was no longer but a murmur of good company, under the chandelier, whose clarity softened in the fine dust raised by the bustle of the interval. At the doors, men piled up to see the women remained seated; and they stayed there, immobile a minute, stretching the neck, with the great white heart of their shirt-fronts.
—We count on you next Tuesday, said the countess to La Faloise.
She invited Fauchery, who bowed. They spoke not of the play, the name of Nana was not pronounced. The count kept so icy a dignity, one would have thought him at some session of the Legislative Body. He said simply, to explain their presence, that his father-in-law loved the theatre. The box door had to remain open; Marquis de Chouard, who had gone out in order to leave his place to the visitors, straightened his tall old man's frame, his soft white face under a broad-brimmed hat, following with his troubled eyes the women who passed.
As soon as the countess had made her invitation, Fauchery took leave, feeling it would be improper to speak of the play. La Faloise left the box last. He had just glimpsed, in Count de Vandeuvres's stage box, the blond Labordette, squarely installed, conferring very closely with Blanche de Sivry.
—Ah! there, said he as soon as he rejoined his cousin, does this Labordette know all the women then?... There he is now with Blanche.
—But of course, he knows them all, answered Fauchery tranquilly. Where do you come from then, my dear?
The corridor had somewhat cleared. Fauchery was about to descend, when Lucy Stewart called him. She was at the very back, before the door of her stage box. One cooked in there, she said; and she occupied the width of the corridor, in company of Caroline Héquet and her mother, crunching pralines. An usherette talked maternally with them. Lucy scolded the journalist: he was nice, he came up to see the other women and didn't even come ask if they were thirsty! Then, dropping the subject:
—You know, my dear, I find Nana very well.
She wanted him to stay in the stage box for the last act; but he, escaped, promising to take them up at the exit. Below, before the theatre, Fauchery and La Faloise lit cigarettes. A gathering blocked the pavement, a tail of men descended from the perron and breathing the freshness of the night, amid the slowed rumble of the boulevard.
Meanwhile Mignon had just dragged Steiner to the Café des Variétés. Seeing Nana's success, he had begun to speak of her with enthusiasm, all while watching the banker out of the corner of his eye. He knew him; twice he had helped him cuckold Rose, then, the caprice past, had brought him back, repentant and faithful. In the café, the too-numerous customers pressed around the marble tables; some drank standing, hastily; and the broad mirrors reflected to infinity this crowd of heads, disproportionately enlarged the narrow room, with its three chandeliers, its moleskin benches, its turning staircase draped in red. Steiner went to place himself at a table in the first room, open onto the boulevard, whose doors had been removed a bit early for the season. As Fauchery and La Faloise passed, the banker detained them.
—Come take a bock with us.
But an idea preoccupied him; he wanted to have a bouquet thrown to Nana. Finally, he called a café waiter, whom he familiarly named Auguste. Mignon, who listened, looked at him with so clear an eye, that he was troubled, stammering:
—Two bouquets, Auguste, and give them to the usherette; one for each of those ladies, at the right moment, eh?
“Stories of the world, in your language.”