Part 25

The next day, when Georges found himself alone with Nana, François came up to ask if madame would receive Lieutenant Philippe Hugon. He turned quite pale and murmured:

"I suspected as much; Mama spoke to me about it this morning."

And he begged the young woman to send word that she could not receive him. But she was already rising, all aflame, saying:

"Why ever not? He would think I'm afraid. Ah well! we're going to have some fun... François, leave that gentleman in the salon for a quarter of an hour. Then you shall bring him to me."

She did not sit down again; she walked about, feverish, going from the mantelpiece mirror to a Venetian mirror hanging above an Italian casket; and each time she gave a glance, tried a smile, while Georges, limp on a sofa, trembled at the thought of the scene that was preparing. As she walked she let fall short phrases.

"That'll calm the lad, waiting a quarter of an hour... And then, if he thinks he's coming to a girl's, the salon will stagger him... Yes, yes, take a good look at everything, my fine fellow. It isn't trash, that'll teach you to respect the bourgeoise. There's nothing but respect left, for men... Eh? Is the quarter of an hour up? No, hardly ten minutes. Oh! we've time enough."

She could not keep still. At the quarter hour she sent Georges away, making him swear not to listen at the door, for it would be improper if the servants saw him. As he passed through the bedroom, Zizi ventured in a strangled voice:

"You know, he's my brother..."

"Don't be afraid," she said with dignity, "if he's polite, I'll be polite."

François was showing in Philippe Hugon, who was wearing a frock coat. At first Georges tiptoed across the bedroom to obey the young woman. But the voices held him back, hesitating, so full of anguish that his legs went weak. He imagined catastrophes, slaps, something abominable that would estrange him from Nana forever. So he could not resist the need to come back and press his ear against the door. He heard very badly; the thickness of the portières stifled the sounds. Yet he caught a few words spoken by Philippe, harsh sentences in which rang the words child, family, honor. In anxiety over what his darling would answer, his heart beat, deafening him with a confused humming. Surely she would let fly a "dirty boor!" or a "leave me in peace, I'm in my own home!" And nothing came, not a breath; Nana was as if dead in there. Soon even his brother's voice softened. He no longer understood, when a strange murmur finished by stupefying him. It was Nana sobbing. For an instant he was prey to conflicting feelings, to run away, to fall upon Philippe. But just at that minute Zoé entered the bedroom, and he moved away from the door, ashamed to be caught.

Calmly she was putting linen away in a wardrobe; while he, mute, motionless, leaned his brow against a pane, devoured by uncertainty. After a silence she asked:

"Is it your brother who is with madame?"

"Yes," answered the child in a strangled voice.

There was a fresh silence.

"And that worries you, doesn't it, Monsieur Georges?"

"Yes," he repeated with the same suffering difficulty.

Zoé did not hurry. She folded lace; she said slowly:

"You are wrong... Madame will settle that."

And that was all; they spoke no more. But she did not leave the bedroom. A good quarter of an hour more she moved about, without seeing the exasperation of the child, who grew pale with constraint and doubt. He cast sidelong glances at the salon. What could they be doing, for so long? Perhaps Nana was still weeping. The brutal fellow must have boxed her ears. So when Zoé at last went away, he ran to the door, again pressing his ear. And he remained aghast, his head quite lost, for he heard a sudden outburst of gaiety, tender voices whispering, stifled laughs of a woman being tickled. Moreover, almost immediately, Nana was seeing Philippe to the stairs, with an exchange of cordial and familiar words.

When Georges dared re-enter the salon, the young woman, standing before the mirror, was looking at herself.

"Well?" he asked, dumbfounded.

"Well, what?" said she without turning round.

Then, negligently:

"What were you saying? He's very nice, your brother!"

"Then it's settled?"

"Of course it's settled... Ah! what's come over you? One would think we were going to fight."

Georges still did not understand. He stammered:

"It had seemed to me I heard... You didn't cry?"

"Cry, me!" she cried, looking him fixedly. "You're dreaming! Why should I have cried?"

And it was the child who was disconcerted, when she made a scene with him for having disobeyed and stopped behind the door, spying. As she sulked, he came back, with caressing submission, wanting to know.

"So, my brother...?"

"Your brother saw at once where he was... You understand, I might have been a girl, and in that case his intervention was explained, on account of your age and your family's honor. Oh! I understand those feelings... But a single glance sufficed him, he behaved like a man of the world... So, don't worry, it's all over, he's going to reassure your mama."

And she continued with a laugh:

"Besides, you'll see your brother here... I've invited him, he'll come back."

"Ah! he'll come back," said the little one, paling.

He added nothing; they no longer spoke of Philippe. She was dressing to go out, and he watched her with his big sad eyes. No doubt he was very glad things had been arranged, for he would have preferred death to a rupture; but, deep within him, there was a dull anguish, a profound pain, which he did not know and dared not speak of. Never did he learn how Philippe reassured their mother. Three days later she returned to Les Fondettes, looking satisfied. That very evening, at Nana's, he started when François announced the lieutenant. The latter, gaily, joked, treating him as a young scamp whose escapade he had favored, and which meant nothing. He himself remained with a tight heart, not daring to move, blushing like a girl at the slightest words. He had lived little in the comradeship of Philippe, his elder by ten years; he dreaded him as much as a father, from whom one hides one's women stories. So he felt a shame full of unease, seeing him so free near Nana, laughing very loud, let loose in pleasure, with his fine health. However, as his brother soon presented himself every day, Georges ended by growing somewhat accustomed. Nana was radiant. It was a final settling in, in the full mess of gay life, a housewarming hung insolently in a hotel that was bursting with men and furniture.

One afternoon when the Hugon sons were there, Count Muffat came outside his regular hours. But Zoé having answered him that madame was with friends, he withdrew without wishing to enter, affecting the discretion of a gentleman. When he reappeared in the evening, Nana received him with the cold anger of an outraged woman.

"Monsieur," said she, "I have given you no reason to insult me... Do you hear! when I am at home, I beg you to enter like everyone else."

The count remained gaping.

"But, my dear..." he tried to explain.

"Because I had visitors, perhaps! Yes, there were men. What do you think I do with those men?... One parades a woman by taking on those airs of a discreet lover, and I will not be paraded, I!"

He obtained his pardon with difficulty. At bottom he was delighted. It was by scenes like this that she kept him supple and convinced. Long since she had imposed Georges on him, a kid who amused her, she said. She made him dine with Philippe, and the count showed himself very amiable; on leaving the table he took the young man aside and asked him for news of his mother. Thenceforth the Hugon sons, Vandeuvres and Muffat were openly of the house, where they shook hands as intimates. It was more convenient. Only Muffat still put some discretion into coming too often, keeping the ceremonial tone of a visiting stranger. At night, when Nana, seated on the floor on her bear skins, took off her stockings, he spoke amicably of those gentlemen, of Philippe especially, who was loyalty itself.

"That, it's quite true, they're nice," said Nana, remaining on the floor to change her shift. "Only, you know, they see what I am... A word, and I'd fling them out the door!"

However, in her luxury, amid this court, Nana was bored to death. She had men for every minute of the night, and money even in the drawers of her dressing table, mixed with combs and brushes; but that no longer contented her, she felt a sort of void somewhere, a hole that made her yawn. Her life dragged on unoccupied, bringing back the same monotonous hours. Tomorrow did not exist; she lived like a bird, sure of eating, ready to sleep on the first branch at hand. This certainty that she would be fed left her stretched out the whole day long, without an effort, asleep in the depths of this idleness and this conventual submission, as if shut up in her trade of girl. Going out only in a carriage, she lost the use of her legs. She returned to the tastes of a little girl, kissed Bijou from morning to night, killed time with silly pleasures, in her sole expectation of the man, whom she endured with an air of complaisant lassitude; and, in the midst of this abandonment of herself, she kept hardly anything but care for her beauty, a continual tending of herself, of washing, of perfuming everywhere, with the pride of being able to go naked at every instant and before anyone, without having to blush.

In the morning Nana rose at ten o'clock. Bijou, the Scottish griffon, woke her by licking her face; and then it was a five-minute plaything, the dog running across her arms and thighs, which wounded Count Muffat. Bijou was the first little man of whom he was jealous. It was not proper for a beast to put its nose under the covers in that fashion. Then Nana passed into her dressing room, where she took a bath. Toward eleven o'clock Francis came to do up her hair, pending the complicated coiffure of the afternoon. At luncheon, as she detested eating alone, she almost always had Madame Maloir, who arrived in the morning from the unknown with her extravagant hats, and returned in the evening into that mystery of her life about which no one troubled. But the hardest time was the two or three hours between luncheon and dressing. Usually she proposed a game of bezique to her old friend; sometimes she read the _Figaro_, where the theatrical gossip and world news interested her; even it happened she opened a book, for she prided herself on literature. Her toilette kept her till near five o'clock. Then only did she wake from her long somnolence, going out in a carriage or receiving at home a whole crowd of men, often dining in town, going to bed very late, to rise the next day with the same fatigue and begin again days always alike.

Her great distraction was to go to Batignolles to see her little Louis, at his aunt's. For a fortnight she forgot him; then came fits of rage, she hurried over on foot, full of a modesty and tenderness of a good mother, bringing hospital presents, tobacco for the aunt, oranges and biscuits for the child; or else she arrived in her landau, returning from the Bois, with toilets whose noise brought out the solitary street. Since her niece had been in greatness, Madame Lerat had not come down from her vanity. She rarely presented herself at the avenue de Villiers, affecting to say it was not her place; but she triumphed in her street, happy when the young woman came with dresses of four or five thousand francs, occupied the whole next day showing her presents and citing figures that stupefied the neighbors. Most often Nana kept her Sundays for the family; and those days, if Muffat invited her, she refused, with the smile of a little bourgeoise: impossible, she was dining at her aunt's, she was going to see baby. With that, this poor little man Louiset was always ill. He was going on three years, that made a fine lad. But he had had an eczema on the nape, and now deposits were forming in his ears, which raised fear of caries of the skull bones. When she saw him so pale, the blood spoiled, with his soft flesh, stained yellow, she became serious; and there was above all in her a sort of astonishment. What could this love have, to ruin itself thus? She, his mother, was so well!

The days when her child did not occupy her, Nana fell back into the noisy monotony of her existence, walks in the Bois, first nights, dinners and suppers at the Maison d'Or or the Café Anglais, then all public places, all spectacles where the crowd rushed, Mabille, the revues, the races. And she kept nonetheless that hole of stupid idleness, which gave her something like stomach cramps. Despite the continual whims she had at heart, she stretched her arms as soon as she was alone, in a gesture of immense fatigue. Solitude saddened her at once, for she found herself there again with the void and the boredom of herself. Very gay by trade and by nature, she became then lugubrious, summing up her life in this cry which returned without cease, between two yawns:

"Oh! how men bore me!"

One afternoon, as she was returning from a concert, Nana noticed, on a sidewalk of the rue Montmartre, a woman who trotted, with worn-out boots, dirty skirts, and a hat soaked by the rains. Suddenly she recognized her.

"Stop, Charles!" she cried to the coachman.

And, calling:

"Satin! Satin!"

The passersby turned their heads, the whole street looked. Satin had approached and was soiling herself yet more at the wheels of the carriage.

"Get in, my girl," said Nana calmly, mocking the world.

And she picked her up, she took her away, disgusting, in her light blue landau, beside her grey-pearl silk dress trimmed with chantilly; while the street smiled at the high dignity of the coachman.

Thenceforth Nana had a passion which occupied her. Satin was her vice. Installed in the hotel on the avenue de Villiers, washed, dressed, for three days she recounted Saint-Lazare, and the bother with the sisters, and those bastards of police who had registered her. Nana grew indignant, consoled her, swore to get her out of it, when she herself should have to go find the minister. Meanwhile, nothing pressed, they would surely not come fetch her at home. And afternoons of tenderness began between the two women, caressing words, kisses broken by laughs. It was the little game, interrupted by the arrival of the agents in the rue de Laval, taken up again on a tone of jesting. Then, one fine evening, it became serious. Nana, so disgusted at Laure's, now understood. She was quite upset, enraged; all the more because, precisely, on the morning of the fourth day, Satin disappeared. No one had seen her go out. She had slipped away, with her new dress, seized by a need of air, having the nostalgia of her sidewalk.

That day there was so rude a storm in the hotel that all the servants lowered their noses, without a word. Nana had nearly beaten François, who had not put himself across the door. She tried however to contain herself, she called Satin a dirty whore; that would teach her to pick up such filth from the gutter. In the afternoon, as madame shut herself in, Zoé heard her sob. Suddenly, in the evening, she asked for her carriage and had herself driven to Laure's. The idea had come to her that she would find Satin at the boarding table in the rue des Martyrs. It was not to get her back, it was to slap her face. Indeed, Satin was dining at a little table, with Madame Robert. On seeing Nana, she began to laugh. The latter, struck to the heart, made no scene, very sweet and very supple on the contrary. She paid for champagne, got five or six tables drunk, then carried off Satin, as Madame Robert was at the closets. Only in the carriage did she bite her, threaten her, next time, to kill her.

Then, continually, the same turn began again. Twenty times, tragic in her furies of a betrayed woman, Nana ran in pursuit of this slut, who flew off on a whim, bored by the comfort of the hotel. She talked of slapping Madame Robert; one day even she dreamed of a duel; there was one too many. Now, when she dined at Laure's, she put on her diamonds, sometimes taking Louise Violaine, Maria Blond, Tatan Néné, all resplendent; and, in the grease of the three rooms, under the yellowing gas, those ladies flaunted their luxury, happy to stagger the little girls of the quarter, whom they picked up on leaving table. Those days Laure, tight-laced and shiny, kissed all her world with an air of broader maternity. Satin nonetheless, amid these stories, kept her calm, with her blue eyes and her pure virgin face; bitten, beaten, tugged between the two women, she simply said it was funny, they would have done much better to get along. Slapping her advanced nothing; she could not cut herself in two, despite her good will to be nice to everyone. At last it was Nana who carried it, so much did she overwhelm Satin with tendernesses and gifts; and, for revenge, Madame Robert wrote to her rival's lovers abominable anonymous letters.

For some time Count Muffat had seemed preoccupied. One morning, very moved, he put before Nana's eyes an anonymous letter, where she, from the first lines, read that she was accused of deceiving the count with Vandeuvres and the Hugon sons.

"It's false! it's false!" she cried energetically, with an accent of extraordinary frankness.

"You swear it?" asked Muffat, already relieved.

"Oh! on whatever you wish... Look! on my child's head!"

But the letter was long. Then her relations with Satin were there recounted in terms of ignoble crudity. When she had finished, she smiled.

"Now I know where this comes from," said she simply.

And, as Muffat wanted a denial, she resumed with tranquillity:

"That, my wolf, is a thing which does not concern you... What can it matter to you?"

She did not deny it. He had words of revolt. Then she shrugged her shoulders. Where did he come from? It was done everywhere, and she named her friends, she swore that the ladies of the world did it too. In short, to hear her, there was nothing more common nor more natural. What was not true, was not true; thus, just now, he had seen how she grew indignant, regarding Vandeuvres and the Hugon sons. Ah! for that, he would have been right to strangle her. But what good to lie to him about a thing without consequence? And she repeated her phrase:

"What can it matter to you, come now?"

Then, the scene continuing, she cut it short in a harsh voice.

"Besides, my dear, if that doesn't suit you, it's very simple... The doors are open... There! you must take me as I am."

He lowered his head. At bottom he remained happy at the young woman's oaths. She, seeing her power, began to spare him no more. And, thenceforth, Satin was installed in the house, openly, on the same footing as those gentlemen. Vandeuvres had not needed the anonymous letters to understand; he joked, he sought quarrels of jealousy with Satin; while Philippe and Georges treated her as a comrade, with handshakes and very stiff jokes.

Nana had an adventure, one evening when, let down by that slut, she had gone to dine in the rue des Martyrs, without being able to lay hands on her. As she ate alone, Daguenet appeared; though he had reformed, he came sometimes, taken again by a need of vice, hoping not to be met in those dark corners of Paris's filth. So the presence of Nana at first seemed to embarrass him. But he was not a man to retreat. He advanced with a smile. He asked if madame would permit him to dine at her table. On seeing him jest, Nana took her grand cold air, and answered dryly:

"Sit where you please, monsieur. We are in a public place."

Begun on that tone, the conversation was droll. But, at dessert, Nana, bored, burning to triumph, put her elbows on the table; then, taking up the familiar form:

"Well! and your marriage, my little one, how goes it?"

"Not well," confessed Daguenet.

Indeed, at the moment of risking his suit with the Muffats, he had felt such coldness on the count's part that he had prudently abstained. It seemed to him a lost cause. Nana looked at him fixedly with her clear eyes, chin in hand, an ironic crease to her lips.

"Ah! I'm a rogue," she resumed slowly; "ah! the future father-in-law must be torn from my claws... Well! truly, for an intelligent lad, you're jolly stupid! How! you're going to make gossip to a man who adores me and who repeats everything to me!... Listen, you'll marry if I wish, my little one."

For an instant he had felt it well; a whole project of submission was growing in him. However, he still jested, not wishing to let the affair fall into seriousness; and, after putting on his gloves, he asked her, with strict forms, for the hand of Mademoiselle Estelle de Beuville. She ended by laughing, as if tickled. Oh! this Mimi! there was no way to keep a grudge against him. Daguenet's great successes with those ladies were due to the softness of his voice, a voice of musical purity and suppleness, which had earned him among the girls the nickname Velvet-Mouth. All yielded, in the sonorous caress with which he enveloped them. He knew this force, he lulled her with an endless rocking of words, telling her imbecile stories. When they left the boarding table she was all pink, vibrant on his arm, reconquered. As it was very fine, she sent away her carriage, accompanied him on foot to his door, then went up, naturally. Two hours later, as she dressed again, she said:

"So, Mimi, you care about this marriage?"

"Lord!" he murmured, "it's still the best I could do... You know I haven't the purse anymore."

She called him to button her boots. And, after a silence:

"My God! I, I don't mind... I'll use my pull for you... She's dry as a beanpole, that little one. But since it suits you all... Oh! I'm complaisant, I'll fix that for you."

Then, beginning to laugh, her throat still bare:

"Only, what will you give me?"

He had seized her, he was kissing her shoulders, in a surge of gratitude. She, very gay, quivering, struggled, threw herself back.

"Ah! I know," she cried, excited by this game. "Listen what I want for my commission... The day of your marriage, you'll bring me the gift of your innocence... Before your wife, do you hear!"

"That's it! that's it!" said he, laughing louder than she.

This bargain amused them. They found the story very good.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”