Nana - Émile Zola (good books to read for young adults txt) 📗
- Author: Émile Zola
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few moments, and men in white gloves and official garb presented
themselves. They were still coming from the ball at the Ministry.
Fauchery jestingly inquired whether the minister was not coming,
too, but Nana answered in a huff that the minister went to the
houses of people she didn’t care a pin for. What she did not say
was that she was possessed with a hope of seeing Count Muffat enter
her room among all that stream of people. He might quite have
reconsidered his decision, and so while talking to Rose she kept a
sharp eye on the door.
Five o’clock struck. The dancing had ceased, and the cardplayers
alone persisted in their game. Labordette had vacated his seat, and
the women had returned into the drawing room. The air there was
heavy with the somnolence which accompanies a long vigil, and the
lamps cast a wavering light while their burned-out wicks glowed red
within their globes. The ladies had reached that vaguely melancholy
hour when they felt it necessary to tell each other their histories.
Blanche de Sivry spoke of her grandfather, the general, while
Clarisse invented a romantic story about a duke seducing her at her
uncle’s house, whither he used to come for the boar hunting. Both
women, looking different ways, kept shrugging their shoulders and
asking themselves how the deuce the other could tell such whoppers!
As to Lucy Stewart, she quietly confessed to her origin and of her
own accord spoke of her childhood and of the days when her father,
the wheel greaser at the Northern Railway Terminus, used to treat
her to an apple puff on Sundays.
“Oh, I must tell you about it!” cried the little Maria Blond
abruptly. “Opposite to me there lives a gentleman, a Russian, an
awfully rich man! Well, just fancy, yesterday I received a basket
of fruit—oh, it just was a basket! Enormous peaches, grapes as big
as that, simply wonderful for the time of year! And in the middle
of them six thousand-franc notes! It was the Russian’s doing. Of
course I sent the whole thing back again, but I must say my heart
ached a little—when I thought of the fruit!”
The ladies looked at one another and pursed up their lips. At her
age little Maria Blond had a pretty cheek! Besides, to think that
such things should happen to trollops like her! Infinite was their
contempt for her among themselves. It was Lucy of whom they were
particularly jealous, for they were beside themselves at the thought
of her three princes. Since Lucy had begnn taking a daily morning
ride in the Bois they all had become Amazons, as though a mania
possessed them.
Day was about to dawn, and Nana turned her eyes away from the door,
for she was relinquishing all hope. The company were bored to
distraction. Rose Mignon had refused to sing the “Slipper” and sat
huddled up on a sofa, chatting in a low voice with Fauchery and
waiting for Mignon, who had by now won some fifty louis from
Vandeuvres. A fat gentleman with a decoration and a serious cast of
countenance had certainly given a recitation in Alsatian accents of
“Abraham’s Sacrifice,” a piece in which the Almighty says, “By My
blasted Name” when He swears, and Isaac always answers with a “Yes,
Papa!” Nobody, however, understood what it was all about, and the
piece had been voted stupid. People were at their wits’ end how to
make merry and to finish the night with fitting hilarity. For a
moment or two Labordette conceived the idea of denouncing different
women in a whisper to La Faloise, who still went prowling round each
individual lady, looking to see if she were hiding his handkerchief
in her bosom. Soon, as there were still some bottles of champagne
on the sideboard, the young men again fell to drinking. They
shouted to one another; they stirred each other up, but a dreary
species of intoxication, which was stupid enough to drive one to
despair, began to overcome the company beyond hope of recovery.
Then the little fair-haired fellow, the man who bore one of the
greatest names in France and had reached his wit’s end and was
desperate at the thought that he could not hit upon something really
funny, conceived a brilliant notion: he snatched up his bottle of
champagne and poured its contents into the piano. His allies were
convulsed with laughter.
“La now! Why’s he putting champagne into the piano?” asked Tatan
Nene in great astonishment as she caught sight of him.
“What, my lass, you don’t know why he’s doing that?” replied
Labordette solemnly. “There’s nothing so good as champagne for
pianos. It gives ‘em tone.”
“Ah,” murmured Tatan Nene with conviction.
And when the rest began laughing at her she grew angry. How should
she know? They were always confusing her.
Decidedly the evening was becoming a big failure. The night
threatened to end in the unloveliest way. In a corner by themselves
Maria Blond and Lea de Horn had begun squabbling at close quarters,
the former accusing the latter of consorting with people of
insufficient wealth. They were getting vastly abusive over it,
their chief stumbling block being the good looks of the men in
question. Lucy, who was plain, got them to hold their tongues.
Good looks were nothing, according to her; good figures were what
was wanted. Farther off, on a sofa, an attache had slipped his arm
round Simonne’s waist and was trying to kiss her neck, but Simonne,
sullen and thoroughly out of sorts, pushed him away at every fresh
attempt with cries of “You’re pestering me!” and sound slaps of the
fan across his face. For the matter of that, not one of the ladies
allowed herself to be touched. Did people take them for light
women? Gaga, in the meantime, had once more caught La Faloise and
had almost hoisted him upon her knees while Clarisse was
disappearing from view between two gentlemen, shaking with nervous
laughter as women will when they are tickled. Round about the piano
they were still busy with their little game, for they were suffering
from a fit of stupid imbecillty, which caused each man to jostle his
fellow in his frantic desire to empty his bottle into the
instrument. It was a simple process and a charming one.
“Now then, old boy, drink a glass! Devil take it, he’s a thirsty
piano! Hi! ‘Tenshun! Here’s another bottle! You mustn’t lose a
drop!”
Nana’s back was turned, and she did not see them. Emphatically she
was now falling back on the bulky Steiner, who was seated next to
her. So much the worse! It was all on account of that Muffat, who
had refused what was offered him. Sitting there in her white
foulard dress, which was as light and full of folds as a shift,
sitting there with drooped eyelids and cheeks pale with the touch of
intoxication from which she was suffering, she offered herself to
him with that quiet expression which is peculiar to a good-natured
courtesan. The roses in her hair and at her throat had lost their
leaves, and their stalks alone remained. Presently Steiner withdrew
his hand quickly from the folds of her skirt, where he had come in
contact with the pins that Georges had stuck there. Some drops of
blood appeared on his fingers, and one fell on Nana’s dress and
stained it.
“Now the bargain’s struck,” said Nana gravely.
The day was breaking apace. An uncertain glimmer of light, fraught
with a poignant melancholy, came stealing through the windows. And
with that the guests began to take their departure. It was a most
sour and uncomfortable retreat. Caroline Hequet, annoyed at the
loss of her night, announced that it was high time to be off unless
you were anxious to assist at some pretty scenes. Rose pouted as if
her womanly character had been compromised. It was always so with
these girls; they didn’t know how to behave and were guilty of
disgusting conduct when they made their first appearance in society!
And Mignon having cleaned Vandeuvres out completely, the family took
their departure. They did not trouble about Steiner but renewed
their invitation for tomorrow to Fauchery. Lucy thereupon refused
the journalist’s escort home and sent him back shrilly to his
“strolling actress.” At this Rose turned round immediately and
hissed out a “Dirty sow” by way of answer. But Mignon, who in
feminine quarrels was always paternal, for his experience was a long
one and rendered him superior to them, had already pushed her out of
the house, telling her at the same time to have done. Lucy came
downstairs in solitary state behind them. After which Gaga had to
carry off La Faloise, ill, sobbing like a child, calling after
Clarisse, who had long since gone off with her two gentlemen.
Simonne, too, had vanished. Indeed, none remained save Tatan, Lea
and Maria, whom Labordette complaisantly took under his charge.
“Oh, but I don’t the least bit want to go to bed!” said Nana. “One
ought to find something to do.”
She looked at the sky through the windowpanes. It was a livid sky,
and sooty clouds were scudding across it. It was six o’clock in the
morning. Over the way, on the opposite side of the Boulevard
Haussmann, the glistening roofs of the still-slumbering houses were
sharply outlined against the twilight sky while along the deserted
roadway a gang of street sweepers passed with a clatter of wooden
shoes. As she viewed Paris thus grimly awakening, she was overcome
by tender, girlish feelings, by a yearning for the country, for
idyllic scenes, for things soft and white.
“Now guess what you’re to do,” she said, coming back to Steiner.
“You’re going to take me to the Bois de Boulogne, and we’ll drink
milk there.”
She clapped her hands in childish glee. Without waiting for the
banker’s reply—he naturally consented, though he was really rather
bored and inclined to think of other things—she ran off to throw a
pelisse over her shoulders. In the drawing room there was now no
one with Steiner save the band of young men. These had by this time
dropped the very dregs of their glasses into the piano and were
talking of going, when one of their number ran in triumphantly. He
held in his hands a last remaining bottle, which he had brought back
with him from the pantry.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” he shouted. “Here’s a bottle of
chartreuse; that’ll pick him up! And now, my young friends, let’s
hook it. We’re blooming idiots.”
In the dressing room Nana was compelled to wake up Zoe, who had
dozed off on a chair. The gas was still alight, and Zoe shivered as
she helped her mistress on with her hat and pelisse.
“Well, it’s over; I’ve done what you wanted me to,” said Nana,
speaking familiarly to the maid in a sudden burst of expansive
confidence and much relieved at the thought that she had at last
made her election. “You were quite right; the banker’s as good as
another.”
The maid was cross, for she was still heavy with sleep. She
grumbled something to the effect that Madame ought to have come to a
decision the first evening. Then following her into the bedroom,
she asked what she was going to do with “those two,” meaning
Bordenave, who was snoring away as usual, and Georges, who had
slipped in slyly, buried his head in a pillow and, finally falling
asleep there, was now breathing as lightly and regularly as a
cherub. Nana in reply told her that she was to let them sleep on.
But seeing Daguenet come into the room, she again
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