Part 34

In the evening, he brought the ten thousand francs. Nana pouted her lips, and he took a long kiss there, which consoled him for his whole day of anguish. What annoyed the young woman was having him constantly under her skirts. She complained to M. Venot, begging him to take her little boor off to the countess's; was their reconciliation then good for nothing? And she regretted having meddled in it, since he had fallen back on her all the same. On days when, in her anger, she forgot her interests, she swore she would play him such a filthy trick that he would never be able to set foot in her house again. But, as she shouted it, slapping her thighs, she might as well have spat in his face—he would have stayed, saying thank you. And so the scenes over money began again continually. She demanded it with brutality; there were rows about miserable sums, a hateful greed every minute, a cruelty in repeating to him that she slept with him for his money, not for anything else, and that it didn't amuse her, and that she loved another man, and that she was very unhappy to need an idiot of his sort! He was no longer even wanted at court, where they talked of demanding his resignation. The Empress had said: "He is too disgusting." That, at least, was quite true. So Nana repeated the word, to close all their quarrels.

--There! you disgust me!

By this time, she no longer restrained herself; she had won back complete freedom. Every day she made her round of the lake, striking up acquaintances there that unraveled elsewhere. It was the great parade, the parsley in the bright sunlight, the picking-up of famous tarts, displayed in the smile of tolerance and in the dazzling luxury of Paris. Duchesses pointed her out with a glance; enriched bourgeoises copied her hats; sometimes her landau, to get through, halted a line of powerful equipages—financiers holding Europe in their strongboxes, ministers whose thick fingers gripped France by the throat; and she was of that world of the Bois, she took a considerable place in it, known in all capitals, sought by all foreigners, adding to the splendors of that crowd the fit of madness of her debauchery, like the very glory and the acute enjoyment of a nation. Then, the liaisons of a single night, the continual passades of which she herself each morning lost the memory, carried her through the great restaurants, often to Madrid, in fine weather. The personnel of the embassies filed past; she dined with Lucy Stewart, Caroline Héquet, Maria Blond, in company with gentlemen murdering the French language, paying to be amused, taking them in the evening with orders to be funny, so blasé and so empty that they did not even touch them. And they called that "going on the spree"; they went home, happy in their scorns, to finish the night in the arms of some sweetheart.

Count Muffat pretended ignorance, when she did not throw the men in his face. Besides, he suffered much from the small shames of daily existence. The hotel in the avenue de Villiers became a hell, a madhouse, where derangements, at every hour, brought on odious crises. Nana came to blows with her servants. For a moment, she was very kind to Charles, the coachman; when she stopped at a restaurant, she sent him beers by a waiter; she chatted from inside her landau, cheered, finding it comical, amid the traffic jams, when "he was swearing at the pines." Then, for no reason, she called him an idiot. Always she quarreled over the straw, the bran, the oats; despite her love of animals, she found her horses ate too much. So, one settling day, when she accused him of robbing her, Charles lost his temper and called her a slut, crudely; surely his horses were worth more than she, they didn't sleep with everyone. She answered in the same tone; the count had to separate them and turn the coachman out. But that was the beginning of a rout among the servants. Victorine and François left, following a theft of diamonds. Julien himself disappeared; and a story went about, that monsieur had begged him to go, giving him a large sum, because he was sleeping with madame. Every week, new faces were seen in the servants' hall. Never had so much been wasted; the house was like a passage where the refuse of the employment agencies paraded in a gallop of massacre. Zoé alone remained, with her clean air and her sole care of organizing this disorder, until she should have enough to set herself up on her own account—a plan whose idea she had long been maturing.

And that was still only the avowable worries. The count bore the stupidity of Madame Maloir, playing bezique with her, despite her rancid smell; he bore Madame Lerat and her gossip, little Louis and his sad complaints of a child eaten by disease, some rottenness left by an unknown father. But he spent worse hours. One evening, behind a door, he had heard Nana furiously telling her lady's maid that a supposed rich man had just cheated her; yes, a handsome fellow, who called himself American, with gold mines in his country, a bastard who had gone off during her sleep, without leaving a sou, even carrying off a notebook of cigarette paper; and the count, very pale, had gone back down the stairs on tiptoe, so as not to know. Another time, he was forced to know all. Nana, infatuated with a café-concert baritone and left by him, dreamed of suicide, in a fit of black sentimentality; she swallowed a glass of water in which she had soaked a handful of matches, which made her horribly sick, without killing her. The count had to nurse her and undergo the story of her passion, with tears, oaths never again to attach herself to men. In her contempt for those pigs, as she named them, she could not however remain with a free heart, always having some sweetheart under her skirts, rolling into inexplicable fancies, into perverse tastes of the weariness of her body. Since Zoé was relaxing by calculation, the good management of the hotel was deranged, to the point that Muffat dared not push open a door, draw a curtain, open a cupboard; the tricks no longer worked, gentlemen trailed everywhere, one bumped into others at every instant. Now he coughed before entering, having nearly found the young woman at Francis's neck, one evening when he had just left the dressing room for two minutes to order the horses harnessed, while the hairdresser gave madame a last combing. These were sudden abandonments behind his back, pleasure taken in every corner, quickly, in chemise or full dress, with the first comer. She rejoined him all red, happy in this theft. With him, it bored her to death, an abominable chore!

In the anguish of his jealousy, the unhappy man came to be calm, when he left Nana and Satin together. He would have pushed her to that vice, to keep the men away. But, on this side too, all spoiled. Nana cheated Satin as she cheated the count, working herself into monstrous infatuations, picking up girls at the corner of the posts. When she came home in her carriage, she sometimes fell for a slattern seen on the pavement, senses taken, imagination let loose; and she had the slattern come up, paid her and sent her away. Then, in a man's disguise, there were parties in infamous houses, spectacles of debauchery with which she amused her boredom. And Satin, irritated at being continually dropped, threw the hotel into atrocious scenes; she had ended by taking an absolute empire over Nana, who respected her. Muffat even dreamed of an alliance. When he dared not, he unleashed Satin. Twice, she had forced her darling to take him back; while he showed himself obliging, warned her and stepped aside before her, at the least sign. Only, the understanding did not last long; Satin was cracked, too. Certain days, she broke everything, half dead, ruining herself with rages of anger and tenderness, pretty all the same. Zoé must have been putting ideas in her head, for she took her in the corners, as if she had wanted to recruit her for her great affair—that plan of which she still spoke to no one.

Meanwhile, singular revolts still straightened up Count Muffat. He who had tolerated Satin for months, who had ended by accepting the strangers, all that herd of men galloping across Nana's alcove, flew into a rage at the idea of being betrayed by someone of his world or simply of his acquaintance. When she confessed her relations with Foucarmont, he suffered so, he found the young man's treachery so abominable, that he wanted to challenge him and fight. As he did not know where to find seconds in such an affair, he applied to Labordette. The latter, stupefied, could not help laughing.

--A duel for Nana... But, dear sir, all Paris would laugh at you. One does not fight for Nana, it is ridiculous.

The count grew very pale. He made a violent gesture.

--Then, I will slap his face in the open street.

For an hour, Labordette had to reason with him. A slap would make the story odious; in the evening, everyone would know the true cause of the meeting, he would be the fable of the newspapers. And Labordette kept coming back to this conclusion:

--Impossible, it is ridiculous.

Each time, that word fell on Muffat, neat and cutting like a knife stroke. He could not even fight for the woman he loved; people would have burst out laughing. Never had he more painfully felt the misery of his love, that gravity of his heart lost in this jest of pleasure. That was his last revolt; he let himself be convinced, he thenceforth assisted at the parade of friends, of all the men who lived there, in the intimacy of the hotel.

Nana, in a few months, ate them greedily, one after the other. The growing needs of her luxury enraged her appetites; she cleaned a man with a bite. First, she had Foucarmont, who lasted not fifteen days. He dreamed of leaving the navy; he had amassed in ten years of travel some thirty thousand francs which he wanted to risk in the United States; and his instincts of prudence, even of avarice, were swept away; he gave all, even to signatures on accommodation bills, engaging his future. When Nana pushed him out, he was naked. Besides, she showed herself very kind; she advised him to go back on his ship. What was the use of persisting? Since he had no money, it was no longer possible. He must understand and be reasonable. A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to rot on the ground, of himself.

Then Nana took up Steiner, without disgust, but without tenderness. She called him dirty Jew; she seemed to assuage an old hatred, of which she was not well aware. He was fat, he was stupid, and she jostled him, swallowing double mouthfuls, wanting to finish the sooner with that Prussian. He, had dropped Simonne. His Bosphorus affair was beginning to decline. Nana precipitated the collapse by mad demands. For a month more, he struggled, working miracles; he filled Europe with a colossal publicity, posters, announcements, prospectuses, and drew money from the farthest countries. All that savings, the louis of speculators as the sous of poor people, engulfed itself avenue de Villiers. On the other hand, he had associated with a master of forges, in Alsace; there were, in a corner of the province, black workers of coal, steeped in sweat, who, night and day, stiffened their muscles and heard their bones crack, to suffice for Nana's pleasures. She devoured all like a great fire, the thefts of agio, the gains of labor. This time, she finished Steiner; she returned him to the pavement, sucked to the marrow, so emptied that he even remained incapable of inventing a new roguery. In the downfall of his banking house, he stammered, he trembled at the idea of the police. He had just been declared bankrupt, and the single word money bewildered him, threw him into a child's embarrassment, he who had moved millions. One evening, at her house, he began to cry; he asked her for a loan of a hundred francs, to pay his maid. And Nana, softened and cheered by this end of the terrible old boy who had been skimming the place of Paris for twenty years, brought them to him, saying:

--You know, I give them to you, because it's funny... But, listen, my little one, you are no longer of an age for me to keep you. You must find another occupation.

Then Nana, at once, took up La Faloise. He had long solicited the honor of being ruined by her, in order to be perfectly smart. That was what he lacked; a woman must launch him. In two months, Paris would know him, and he would read his name in the newspapers. Six weeks sufficed. His inheritance was in properties, lands, meadows, woods, farms. He had to sell rapidly, one blow after another. At each mouthful, Nana devoured an acre. The leafage trembling under the sun, the great ripe wheat, the golden vines in September, the tall grasses where the cows sank to the belly, all passed there, in an engulfment of abyss; and there was even a stream, a plaster quarry, three mills which disappeared. Nana passed, like an invasion, like one of those clouds of locusts whose flight of flame grazes a province. She burned the earth where she set her little foot. Farm by farm, meadow by meadow, she crunched the inheritance, with her gentle air, without even noticing it, as she crunched between her meals a bag of pralines placed on her knees. It did not matter; they were bonbons. But, one evening, there remained only a small wood. She swallowed it with an air of disdain, for it was not even worth opening the mouth. La Faloise had an idiot laugh, sucking the apple of his cane. Debt crushed him; he no longer possessed a hundred francs of income; he saw himself forced to return to the province to live with a maniac uncle; but it did not matter, he was smart, the Figaro had printed his name twice; and, his thin neck between the turned-down points of his false collar, his waist broken under a too-short jacket, he waddled, with parrot exclamations and affected languors of a wooden puppet who has never had an emotion. Nana, whom he annoyed, ended by beating him.

Meanwhile, Fauchery had come back, brought by his cousin. That unhappy Fauchery, at this hour, had a ménage. After breaking with the countess, he found himself in the hands of Rose, who used him as a true husband. Mignon simply remained the majordomo of madame. Installed as master, the journalist lied to Rose, took all sorts of precautions when he cheated her, full of the scruples of a good spouse desirous of settling down at last. Nana's triumph was to have him and to eat a newspaper, which he had founded with a friend's money; she did not flaunt it, on the contrary liked to treat him as a gentleman who must hide; and, when she spoke of Rose, she said "that poor Rose." The newspaper gave her flowers for two months; she had subscribers in the province; she took all, from the chronicle to the theater echoes; then, after having breathless the editorial staff, dislocated the administration, she satisfied a great caprice, a winter garden in a corner of her hotel, which carried off the printing works. Besides, it was simply to joke. When Mignon, happy in the adventure, ran to see if he could not stick Fauchery on her completely, she asked if he was making fun of her: a fellow without a sou, living on his articles and his plays—no, indeed! That silliness was good for a woman of talent like that poor Rose. And, mistrustful, fearing some treachery from Mignon, very capable of denouncing them to his wife, she dismissed Fauchery, who no longer paid her except in publicity.

But she kept a good memory of him; they had amused themselves well together at that idiot La Faloise. Never perhaps would they have thought of seeing each other again, if the pleasure of mocking such a cretin had not excited them. It seemed funny to them; they kissed under his nose, they made a spree to smash everything with his money, they sent him on errands to the end of Paris, to remain alone; then, when he came back, it was jokes, allusions he could not understand. One day, pushed by the journalist, she bet she would give La Faloise a slap; that very evening, she gave him a slap, then continued to beat him, finding it funny, happy to show how cowardly men were. She called him "her drawer of slaps," told him to step forward to receive his blow—blows which reddened her hand, because she did not yet have the habit. La Faloise laughed with his vacant air, tears in his eyes. This familiarity enchanted him; he found her stunning.

--You know, he said one evening, after receiving cuffs, very heated, you should marry me... Eh? we would be funny, the two of us!

It was not a word in the air. He had sneakily planned this marriage, taken with the need to astonish Paris. The husband of Nana, eh? what smartness! A rather cheeky apotheosis! But Nana blew him out in fine style.

--Me marry you!... Ah, well! if that idea tormented me, I would have found a husband long ago! And a man who would be worth twenty times you, my little one... I have received a heap of proposals. Look! count with me: Philippe, Georges, Foucarmont, Steiner, that makes four, without the others you don't know... It's like their refrain, all of them. I can't be nice, they immediately begin to sing: Will you marry me, will you marry me...

She worked herself up. Then she burst out with fine indignation:

--Eh! no, I don't want to!... Am I made for that machine? Look at me a bit; I would no longer be Nana, if I stuck a man on my back... And, besides, it's too dirty...

And she spat; she had a hiccup of disgust, as if she had seen widen beneath her the filth of all the earth.

One evening, La Faloise disappeared. It was learned a week later that he was in the province, at his uncle's, who had the mania of botanizing; he stuck his herbariums on him and ran the chance of marrying a very ugly and very devout cousin. Nana scarcely mourned him. She simply said to the count:

--Eh? my little boor, one less rival. You're jubilant today... But he was becoming serious! He wanted to marry me.

As he paled, she hung on his neck, laughing, pressing each of her cruelties into him with a caress.

--Isn't it? that's what bothers you, you! you can no longer marry Nana... When they are all bothering me with their marriage, you rage in your corner... Impossible, must wait till your wife kicks the bucket... Ah! if your wife kicked the bucket, how quickly you would come, how you would throw yourself on the ground, how you would offer me that, with the grand play, the sighs, the tears, the oaths! Eh? dear, that would be so good!

She had taken a soft voice; she teased him with an air of ferocious caressing. He, very moved, began to redden, returning her kisses. Then she cried:

--God's name! to think I guessed it! He has thought of it, he waits for his wife to croak... Ah, well! that's the limit, he's even more of a scoundrel than the others!

Muffat had accepted the others. Now he put his last dignity in remaining "monsieur" for the servants and the familiars of the house, the man who, giving the most, was the official lover. And his passion raged. He maintained himself by paying, buying very dear even the smiles, cheated even and never having his money's worth; but it was like a sickness gnawing him; he could not help suffering from it. When he entered Nana's chamber, he contented himself with opening the windows a moment, to chase the smell of the others, the effluvia of blonds and brunets, the cigar smokes whose acridness suffocated him. That chamber became a crossroads; continually boots wiped themselves on the threshold; and not one was stopped by the streak of blood barring the door. Zoé had kept a preoccupation with that stain, a simple mania of a clean girl, annoyed to see it always there; her eyes turned to it all the same; she no longer entered madame's without saying:

--It's funny, it doesn't go away... And yet enough people come.

Nana, who received better news of Georges, then convalescing at Les Fondettes with his mother, made each time the same answer:

--Ah! well, it takes time... It pales under the feet.

Indeed, each of those gentlemen, Foucarmont, Steiner, La Faloise, Fauchery, had carried off a bit of the stain on his soles. And Muffat, whom the streak of blood preoccupied like Zoé, studied it in spite of himself, to read, in its ever more pink effacement, the number of men passing. He had a dull fear of it; always he stepped over it, by a sudden dread of crushing something living, a naked member spread on the ground.

Then, there, in that chamber, a vertigo intoxicated him. He forgot all, the crowd of males who crossed it, the mourning that closed the door. Outside, sometimes, in the open air of the street, he wept with shame and revolt, swearing never to re-enter. And, as soon as the door fell back, he was taken again; he felt himself melt at the tepidness of the room, the flesh penetrated with a perfume, invaded with a voluptuous desire of annihilation. He, devout, accustomed to the ecstasies of rich chapels, exactly found his sensations of a believer, when, kneeling under a stained glass, he succumbed to the drunkenness of the organs and the censers. The woman possessed him with the jealous despotism of an angry God, terrifying him, giving him seconds of acute joy like spasms, for hours of frightful torments, visions of hell and eternal punishments. They were the same stammerings, the same prayers and the same despairs, above all the same humilities of a cursed creature, crushed under the mud of its origin. His desires of man, his needs of a soul, confounded themselves, seemed to rise, from the obscure depth of his being, like a single flowering of the trunk of life. He abandoned himself to the force of love and of faith, whose double lever raises the world. And always, despite the struggles of his reason, that chamber of Nana struck him with madness; he disappeared trembling in the all-powerfulness of sex, as he swooned before the unknown of the vast sky.

Then, when she felt him so humble, Nana had the tyrannical triumph. She brought, by instinct, the rage to abase. It was not enough for her to destroy things; she soiled them. Her so fine hands left abominable traces, decomposed of themselves all they had broken. And he, imbecile, lent himself to that game, with the vague memory of saints devoured by lice and who ate their excrements. When she held him in her chamber, the doors closed, she gave herself the treat of the infamy of man. First, they had joked; she gave him light slaps, imposed funny wills on him, made him lisp like a child, repeat ends of phrases.

--Say like me: "... and damn it! Coco doesn't care!"

He showed himself docile to the point of reproducing her accent.

--"... and damn it! Coco doesn't care!"

Or else she played the bear, on all fours on her furs, in chemise, turning with growls, as if she had wanted to devour him; and she even nibbled his calves, for fun. Then, rising:

“Stories of the world, in your language.”