Part 35

-- Come on, you, do a little... I bet you don't play the bear like I do.

It was charming all over again. She amused herself with him as a bear, with her white skin and her mane of reddish hair. He laughed, he too got down on all fours, growled, bit her calves, while she fled, affecting looks of terror.

-- Aren't we silly, eh? she would finally say. You have no idea how ugly you are, my puss! Ah well! if anyone saw you, in the Tuileries!

But these little games soon soured. It was not cruelty in her, for she remained a good girl; it was like a wind of madness that passed and grew little by little in the closed room. A lust unhinged them, threw them into delirious imaginings of the flesh. The old devout terrors of their sleepless night now turned into a thirst for bestiality, a fury to get down on all fours, to growl and bite. Then, one day, as he was playing the bear, she pushed him so roughly that he fell against a piece of furniture; and she burst into involuntary laughter, seeing a bump on his forehead. From then on, having acquired a taste for it from her trial with La Faloise, she treated him like an animal, whipped him, chased him with kicks.

-- Gee up then! gee up!... You are the horse... Go on, gee up! you dirty nag, will you move!

Other times, he was a dog. She threw her perfumed handkerchief to the end of the room, and he had to run and pick it up with his teeth, dragging himself on his hands and knees.

-- Fetch, Caesar!... Wait, I'll treat you, if you dawdle!... Very good, Caesar! obedient! good boy!... Beg!

And he loved his baseness, savored the pleasure of being a brute. He even aspired to sink lower, he cried:

-- Hit harder... Hoo! hoo! I'm rabid, hit me then!

She took a fancy, she insisted that he come one evening dressed in his full chamberlain's costume. Then there were laughs, mockeries, when she had him, in his finery, with the sword, the hat, the white breeches, the red cloth coat embroidered with gold, wearing the symbolic key hanging on the left skirt. This key above all amused her, launched her into a madcap whim of filthy explanations. Still laughing, carried away by disrespect for greatness, by the joy of abasing him under the official pomp of this costume, she shook him, pinched him, throwing at him: "Hey! go on, chamberlain!" which she finally accompanied with long kicks in the behind; and these kicks, she delivered them with such good heart in the Tuileries, in the majesty of the imperial court, throning at the summit, over the fear and prostration of all. That is what she thought of society! It was her revenge, an unconscious family grudge, bequeathed with the blood. Then, the undressed chamberlain, the coat spread on the floor, she shouted at him to jump, and he jumped; she shouted at him to spit, and he spat; she shouted at him to walk on the gold, on the eagles, on the decorations, and he walked. Crash! there was nothing left, everything collapsed. She broke a chamberlain as she broke a flask or a candy box, and she made of him a filth, a heap of mud at the corner of a post.

Meanwhile, the goldsmiths had failed their word, the bed was not delivered until around the middle of January. Muffat happened to be in Normandy, where he had gone to sell a last wreck; Nana demanded four thousand francs at once. He was not to return until the day after next; but, having concluded the business, he hastened his return, and, without even stopping by rue Miromesnil, went to avenue de Villiers. Ten o'clock was striking. As he had a key to a small door opening onto rue Cardinet, he went up freely. Upstairs, in the salon, Zoé, who was wiping the bronzes, stood aghast; and, not knowing how to stop him, she began to tell him at length that M. Venot, looking distraught, had been seeking him since the day before, that he had already come twice to beg her to send monsieur home, if monsieur went down to madame first. Muffat listened, understanding nothing of this story; then, he noticed her unease, and, seized suddenly by a jealous rage, of which he believed himself no longer capable, he threw himself against the bedroom door, where he heard laughter. The door gave way, both panels flew open, while Zoé withdrew with a shrug. Too bad! since madame was going mad, madame would manage alone.

And Muffat, on the threshold, gave a cry, before the thing he saw.

-- My God!... my God!

In its royal luxury, the new room shone. Silver quilting sowed bright stars over the tea-rose velvet of the hangings, that flesh-pink which the sky takes on fine evenings, when Venus lights up at the horizon, against the clear background of the dying day; while the gold cords falling from the corners, the gold laces framing the panels, were like light flames, loosened reddish manes, half covering the great nakedness of the room, which they heightened with voluptuous pallor. Then, opposite, it was the bed of gold and silver radiating with the new gleam of its chiseling, a throne broad enough for Nana to stretch out the royalty of her naked limbs, a Byzantine-rich altar, worthy of the omnipotence of her sex, and where she displayed it even then, uncovered, in a religious impudence of a feared idol. And, near her, under the snowy reflection of her breast, in the midst of her triumph as a goddess, wallowed a shame, a decrepitude, a comic and lamentable ruin, the Marquis de Chouard in his shirt.

The count had joined his hands. Shaken by a great shiver, he repeated:

-- My God!... my God!

It was for the Marquis de Chouard that the golden roses of the boat blossomed, clusters of golden roses opened among golden foliage; it was for him that the Amours leaned, the tumbled ring upon a silver trellis, with laughs of amorous roguery; and, at his feet, the Faun disclosed for him the sleep of the nymph weary of voluptuousness, that figure of Night copied from the famous nude of Nana, even to the too-strong thighs, which made her recognized by all. Thrown there like a human rag, spoiled and dissolved by sixty years of debauchery, he put a corner of charnel-house into the glory of the woman's resplendent flesh. When he had seen the door open, he had raised himself, seized by the terror of a senile old man; this last night of love struck him with imbecility, he fell back into childhood; and, finding no words, half paralyzed, stammering, shivering, he remained in an attitude of flight, his shirt hitched up over his skeleton body, a leg out of the covers, a poor livid leg, covered with gray hairs. Nana, despite her annoyance, could not help but laugh.

-- Lie down, bury yourself in the bed, she said, pushing him over and burying him under the sheet, like a filth that cannot be shown.

And she jumped to close the door. No luck, decidedly, with her little muff! He always turned up at the wrong moment. Besides, why had he gone to look for money in Normandy? The old man had brought his four thousand francs, and she had let him. She pushed the door panels shut, she cried:

-- Too bad! it's your fault. Does one come in like that? Enough of this, happy journey!

Muffat remained before this closed door, struck down by what he had just seen. His shiver grew, a shiver that rose from his legs into his chest and skull. Then, like a tree shaken by a great wind, he staggered, he fell to his knees, with a cracking of all his limbs. And, his hands desperately outstretched, he stammered:

-- It is too much, my God! it is too much!

He had accepted everything. But he could no longer, he felt at the end of his strength, in this darkness where man topples with his reason. With an extraordinary surge, his hands ever higher, he sought the sky, he called upon God.

-- Oh! no, I do not want to!... Oh! come to me, my God! help me, make me die rather!... Oh! no, not that man, my God! it is over, take me, carry me away, that I may see no more, that I may feel no more... Oh! I belong to you, my God! Our Father who art in heaven...

And he continued, burning with faith, and an ardent prayer escaped his lips. But someone touched him on the shoulder. He raised his eyes, it was M. Venot, surprised to find him at prayer before this closed door. Then, as if God himself had answered his call, the count threw himself on the little old man's neck. He could weep at last, he sobbed, he repeated:

-- My brother... my brother...

All his suffering humanity relieved itself in this cry. He bathed M. Venot's face with his tears, he kissed him, with broken words.

-- O my brother, how I suffer!... You alone remain to me, my brother... Take me away forever, oh! I beg you, take me away...

Then M. Venot pressed him to his breast. He too called him his brother. But he had a new blow to deal him; since the day before, he had been seeking him to tell him that Countess Sabine, in a supreme unhinging, had just run off with a department head of a large novelty store, a frightful scandal of which all Paris was already talking. Seeing him under the influence of such religious exaltation, he felt the favorable moment, and told him the whole affair at once, this flatly tragic end where his house was sinking. The count was not touched by it; his wife had left, that meant nothing to him, they would see later. And, seized again by anguish, looking at the door, the walls, the ceiling, with a terrified air, he had only this supplication:

-- Take me away... I can no longer, take me away.

M. Venot took him away like a child. From then on, he belonged to him entirely. Muffat fell back into the strict duties of religion. His life was struck down. He had given his resignation as chamberlain, before the revolted modesty of the Tuileries. Estelle, his daughter, brought suit against him, for a sum of sixty thousand francs, the inheritance of an aunt which she should have received at her marriage. Ruined, living narrowly on the remnants of his great fortune, he let himself be gradually finished off by the countess, who ate the disdained leavings of Nana. Sabine, spoiled by the promiscuity of this girl, pushed to everything, became the final collapse, the very rot of the hearth. After some adventures, she had returned, and he had taken her back, in the resignation of Christian forgiveness. She accompanied him like his living shame. But he, more and more indifferent, came to not suffer from these things. Heaven took him from the hands of the woman to put him into the very arms of God. It was a religious prolongation of Nana's voluptuousness, with the stammerings, the prayers and despairs, the humilities of a cursed creature crushed under the mud of its origin. At the back of churches, his knees chilled by the flagstones, he rediscovered his former enjoyments, the spasms of his muscles and the delicious upheavals of his mind, in a like satisfaction of the obscure needs of his being.

The evening of the break, Mignon presented himself at avenue de Villiers. He was growing accustomed to Fauchery, he ended by finding a thousand advantages in the presence of a husband at his wife's, left him the small cares of the household, relied on him for active surveillance, employed the money from his dramatic successes in the daily expenses of the house; and as, on the other hand, Fauchery showed himself reasonable, without ridiculous jealousy, as easygoing as Mignon himself about the opportunities found by Rose, the two men understood each other better and better, happy in their association fertile in all sorts of happiness, each making his hole side by side, in a household where they no longer constrained each other. It was settled, it worked very well, they rivaled one another for common felicity. Just then, Mignon came, on Fauchery's advice, to see if he could not take Nana's chambermaid from her, whose intelligence the journalist had appreciated as outstanding; Rose was in despair, she had been falling for a month on inexperienced girls, who put her in continual embarrassments. As Zoé received him, he pushed her at once into the dining room. At the first word, she smiled: impossible, she was leaving madame, she was setting up on her own account; and she added, with an air of discreet vanity, that every day she received proposals, these ladies disputed over her, madame Blanche had made her a golden bridge to get her back. Zoé was taking over La Tricon's establishment, an old project long brooded, an ambition of fortune where her savings were to pass; she was full of broad ideas, she dreamed of enlarging the thing, of renting a hotel and uniting there all comforts; it was even on this subject that she had tried to recruit Satin, a little beast who was dying at the hospital, so much was she wasting away.

Mignon having insisted, speaking of the risks one runs in business, Zoé, without explaining the nature of her establishment, contented herself with saying with a pinched smile, as if she had taken a sweet:

-- Oh! luxury goods always sell... You see, I have been in others' houses long enough, I want others to be in mine.

And a ferocity curled her lips, she would finally be "madame," she would hold at her feet, for a few louis, those women whose basins she had rinsed for fifteen years.

Mignon wanted to be announced, and Zoé left him a moment, after saying that madame had passed a very bad day. He had come only once, he did not know the hotel. The dining room, with its Gobelins, its sideboard, its silverware, astonished him. He familiarly opened the doors, visited the salon, the winter garden, went back into the vestibule; and this crushing luxury, the gilded furniture, the silks and velvets, gradually filled him with an admiration that made his heart beat. When Zoé came down again to get him, she offered to show him the other rooms, the dressing room, the bedroom. Then, in the bedroom, Mignon's heart burst; he was lifted, thrown into a tenderness of enthusiasm. This damned Nana stupefied him, he who nevertheless knew his business. In the midst of the house's collapse, in the leaking, in the gallop of massacre of the servants, there was a heap of riches nevertheless blocking the holes and overflowing above the ruins. And Mignon, facing this magisterial monument, remembered great works. Near Marseille, he had been shown an aqueduct whose stone arches spanned an abyss, a cyclopean work costing millions and ten years of struggle. At Cherbourg, he had seen the new port, an immense yard, hundreds of men sweating in the sun, machines filling the sea with blocks of rock, raising a wall where sometimes workers remained like a bloody pulp. But that seemed small to him, Nana exalted him more; and he rediscovered, before her work, that feeling of respect felt by him one evening of festival, in the château a refiner had had built, a palace whose unique matter, sugar, had paid for the royal splendor. She, it was with something else, a little foolishness one laughed at, a bit of her delicate nakedness, it was with this shameful and so powerful nothing, whose force shook the world, that all alone, without workers, without machines invented by engineers, she had just shaken Paris and built this fortune where corpses slept.

-- Ah! God's name! what a tool! escaped Mignon in his ravishment, with a return of personal gratitude.

Nana had gradually fallen into a deep sorrow. First, the encounter of the marquis and the count had shaken her with a nervous fever, in which there entered almost gaiety. Then, the thought of that old man leaving in a cab, half dead, and of her poor muff whom she would not see again, after having so exasperated him, caused her a beginning of sentimental melancholy. Then, she had grown angry learning of Satin's illness, disappeared for fifteen days, and in train of dying at Lariboisière, so much had madame Robert put her in a sorry state. As she was having the horses put to go see this little filth once more, Zoé had calmly given her her notice. Thereupon, she was in despair; it seemed to her she was losing a person of her family. My God! what would she become, all alone? And she begged Zoé, who, very flattered by madame's despair, ended by embracing her, to show she was not leaving angry with her; it had to be, the heart fell silent before business. But that day was the day of annoyances. Nana, taken with disgust, no longer thinking of going out, dragged herself in her little salon, when Labordette, come up to speak to her of an opportunity, magnificent lace, let fall between two phrases, apropos of nothing, that Georges was dead. She remained frozen.

-- Zizi! dead! she cried.

And her gaze, by an involuntary movement, sought on the carpet the pink stain; but it had finally gone, the feet had worn it away. Meanwhile, Labordette gave details: one did not know exactly, some spoke of a reopened wound, others told of a suicide, a plunge of the little one into a basin at the Fondettes. Nana repeated:

-- Dead! dead!

Then, her throat tight since morning, she burst into sobs, she relieved herself. It was an infinite sadness, something deep and immense by which she felt overwhelmed. Labordette having wanted to console her about Georges, she silenced him with her hand, stammering:

-- It is not only him, it is everything, it is everything... I am so unhappy... Oh! I understand, go on! they will say again that I am a rogue... That mother who grieves down there, and that poor man who whimpered this morning, before my door, and the others ruined at this hour, after eating their coins with me... That's it, hit Nana, hit the beast! Oh! I have a broad back, I hear them as if I were there: That dirty girl who sleeps with everyone, who cleans up some, who makes others die, who causes grief to a heap of persons...

She had to interrupt herself, suffocated by tears, fallen across a divan in pain, her head buried in a cushion. The misfortunes she felt around her, these miseries she had made, drowned her in a warm and continuous flood of tenderness; and her voice was lost in a dull plaint of a little girl.

-- Oh! it hurts, oh! it hurts... I cannot, it stifles me... It is too hard not to be understood, to see people set against you, because they are the stronger... Yet, when one has nothing to reproach oneself, when one has one's conscience for oneself... Well! no, well! no...

A revolt rose in her anger. She got up, she wiped her tears, walked with agitation.

-- Well! no, they will say what they want, it is not my fault! Am I wicked, me? I give all I have, I wouldn't crush a fly... It is them, yes, it is them!... Never did I want to be disagreeable to them. And they were hanging on my skirts, and today here they are snapping, begging, all posing for despair...

Then, stopping before Labordette, giving him taps on the shoulders:

-- Come, you were there, tell the truth... Was it me who pushed them? were they not always a dozen to fight to invent the biggest filth? They disgusted me, me! I held on not to follow them, I was afraid... See! a single example, they all wanted to marry me. Huh? a fine idea! Yes, my dear, I would have been twenty times countess or baroness, if I had consented. Well! I refused, because I was reasonable... Ah! I spared them, the filths and the crimes!... They would have stolen, assassinated, killed father and mother. I had but a word to say, and I did not say it... Today, you see my reward... It is like Daguenet whom I married off, that one; a starve-the-poor I made a position for, after keeping him free, for weeks. Yesterday, I meet him, he turns his head. Go on, pig! I am less dirty than you!

She had begun to walk again, she applied a violent punch to a guéridon.

-- God's name! it is not just! Society is badly made. They fall on women, when it is men who demand things... See! I can tell you that, now: when I went with them, wasn't it? well! it did not please me, not pleased at all. It bored me, honor bright!... So, I ask you if I have anything to do with that!... Ah! yes, they overwhelmed me! Without them, my dear, without what they made of me, I would be in a convent praying to the good God, for I always had religion... And damn! after all, if they left their coin and their skin there. It is their fault! I have nothing to do with it!

-- No doubt, said Labordette convinced.

Zoé introduced Mignon, Nana received him smiling; she had cried well, it was over. He complimented her on her installation, still warm with enthusiasm; but she let it be seen she had enough of her hotel; now, she dreamed of something else, she would clear out everything, one of these days. Then, as he gave a pretext for his visit, speaking of a performance for the benefit of old Bosc, nailed in an armchair by a paralysis, she was much moved, she took two boxes from him. Meanwhile, Zoé having said the carriage waited for madame, she asked for her hat; and, while tying the strings, she told the adventure of that poor Satin, then added:

-- I am going to the hospital... No one loved me like her. Ah! one is right to accuse men of lacking heart!... Who knows? I may perhaps no longer find her. No matter, I will ask to see her. I want to kiss her.

Labordette and Mignon smiled. She was no longer sad, she smiled likewise, for those two did not count, they could understand. And both admired her, in a collected silence, while she finished buttoning her gloves. She remained alone standing, in the midst of the heaped riches of her hotel, with a people of men beaten at her feet. Like those antique monsters whose dreaded domain was covered with bones, she set her feet on skulls; and catastrophes surrounded her, the furious blaze of Vandeuvres, the melancholy of Foucarmont lost in the seas of China, the disaster of Steiner reduced to living as an honest man, the satisfied imbecility of La Faloise, and the tragic collapse of the Muffats, and the white corpse of Georges, watched by Philippe, out of prison the day before. Her work of ruin and death was done, the fly flown from the filth of the faubourgs, bringing the ferment of social rots, had poisoned those men, merely by settling on them. It was well, it was just, she had avenged her world, the paupers and the abandoned. And while, in a glory, her sex rose and radiated over her stretched victims, like a rising sun lighting a field of carnage, she kept her unconsciousness of a superb beast, ignorant of her task, a good girl always. She remained stout, she remained fat, of a fine health, of a fine gaiety. All that no longer counted, her hotel seemed idiotic to her, too small, full of furniture that hindered her. A misery, simply to begin with. So she dreamed of something better; and she left in grand toilette to kiss Satin one last time, clean, solid, looking quite new, as if she had not been used.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”