Nana - Émile Zola (good books to read for young adults txt) 📗
- Author: Émile Zola
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of intense labor. At Cherbourg he had seen the new harbor with its
enormous works, where hundreds of men sweated in the sun while
cranes filled the sea with huge squares of rock and built up a wall
where a workman now and again remained crushed into bloody pulp.
But all that now struck him as insignificant. Nana excited him far
more. Viewing the fruit of her labors, he once more experienced the
feelings of respect that had overcome him one festal evening in a
sugar refiner’s chateau. This chateau had been erected for the
refiner, and its palatial proportions and royal splendor had been
paid for by a single material—sugar. It was with something quite
different, with a little laughable folly, a little delicate nudity—
it was with this shameful trifle, which is so powerful as to move
the universe, that she alone, without workmen, without the
inventions of engineers, had shaken Paris to its foundations and had
built up a fortune on the bodies of dead men.
“Oh, by God, what an implement!”
Mignon let the words escape him in his ecstasy, for he felt a return
of personal gratitude.
Nana had gradually lapsed into a most mournful condition. To begin
with, the meeting of the marquis and the count had given her a
severe fit of feverish nervousness, which verged at times on
laughter. Then the thought of this old man going away half dead in
a cab and of her poor rough, whom she would never set eyes on again
now that she had driven him so wild, brought on what looked like the
beginnings of melancholia. After that she grew vexed to hear about
Satin’s illness. The girl had disappeared about a fortnight ago and
was now ready to die at Lariboisiere, to such a damnable state had
Mme Robert reduced her. When she ordered the horses to be put to in
order that she might have a last sight of this vile little wretch
Zoe had just quietly given her a week’s notice. The announcement
drove her to desperation at once! It seemed to her she was losing a
member of her own family. Great heavens! What was to become of her
when left alone? And she besought Zoe to stay, and the latter, much
flattered by Madame’s despair, ended by kissing her to show that she
was not going away in anger. No, she had positively to go: the
heart could have no voice in matters of business.
But that day was one of annoyances. Nana was thoroughly disgusted
and gave up the idea of going out. She was dragging herself wearily
about the little drawing room when Labordette came up to tell her of
a splendid chance of buying magnificent lace and in the course of
his remarks casually let slip the information that Georges was dead.
The announcement froze her.
“Zizi dead!” she cried.
And involuntarily her eyes sought the pink stain on the carpet, but
it had vanished at last; passing footsteps had worn it away.
Meanwhile Labordette entered into particulars. It was not exactly
known how he died. Some spoke of a wound reopening, others of
suicide. The lad had plunged, they said, into a tank at Les
Fondettes. Nana kept repeating:
“Dead! Dead!”
She had been choking with grief since morning, and now she burst out
sobbing and thus sought relief. Hers was an infinite sorrow: it
overwhelmed her with its depth and immensity. Labordette wanted to
comfort her as touching Georges, but she silenced him with a gesture
and blurted out:
“It isn’t only he; it’s everything, everything. I’m very wretched.
Oh yes, I know! They’ll again be saying I’m a hussy. To think of
the mother mourning down there and of the poor man who was groaning
in front of my door this morning and of all the other people that
are now ruined after running through all they had with me! That’s
it; punish Nana; punish the beastly thing! Oh, I’ve got a broad
back! I can hear them as if I were actually there! ‘That dirty
wench who lies with everybody and cleans out some and drives others
to death and causes a whole heap of people pain!’”
She was obliged to pause, for tears choked her utterance, and in her
anguish she flung herself athwart a divan and buried her face in a
cushion. The miseries she felt to be around her, miseries of which
she was the cause, overwhelmed her with a warm, continuous stream of
self-pitying tears, and her voice failed as she uttered a little
girl’s broken plaint:
“Oh, I’m wretched! Oh, I’m wretched! I can’t go on like this: it’s
choking me. It’s too hard to be misunderstood and to see them all
siding against you because they’re stronger. However, when you’ve
got nothing to reproach yourself with and your conscious is clear,
why, then I say, ‘I won’t have it! I won’t have it!’”
In her anger she began rebeling against circumstances, and getting
up, she dried her eyes, and walked about in much agitation.
“I won’t have it! They can say what they like, but it’s not my
fault! Am I a bad lot, eh? I give away all I’ve got; I wouldn’t
crush a fly! It’s they who are bad! Yes, it’s they! I never
wanted to be horrid to them. And they came dangling after me, and
today they’re kicking the bucket and begging and going to ruin on
purpose.”
Then she paused in front of Labordette and tapped his shoulders.
“Look here,” she said, “you were there all along; now speak the
truth: did I urge them on? Weren’t there always a dozen of ‘em
squabbling who could invent the dirtiest trick? They used to
disgust me, they did! I did all I knew not to copy them: I was
afraid to. Look here, I’ll give you a single instance: they all
wanted to marry me! A pretty notion, eh? Yes, dear boy, I could
have been countess or baroness a dozen times over and more, if I’d
consented. Well now, I refused because I was reasonable. Oh yes, I
saved ‘em some crimes and other foul acts! They’d have stolen,
murdered, killed father and mother. I had only to say one word, and
I didn’t say it. You see what I’ve got for it today. There’s
Daguenet, for instance; I married that chap off! I made a position
for the beggarly fellow after keeping him gratis for weeks! And I
met him yesterday, and he looks the other way! Oh, get along, you
swine! I’m less dirty than you!”
She had begun pacing about again, and now she brought her fist
violently down on a round table.
“By God it isn’t fair! Society’s all wrong. They come down on the
women when it’s the men who want you to do things. Yes, I can tell
you this now: when I used to go with them—see? I didn’t enjoy it;
no, I didn’t enjoy it one bit. It bored me, on my honor. Well
then, I ask you whether I’ve got anything to do with it! Yes, they
bored me to death! If it hadn’t been for them and what they made of
me, dear boy, I should be in a convent saying my prayers to the good
God, for I’ve always had my share of religion. Dash it, after all,
if they have dropped their money and their lives over it, what do I
care? It’s their fault. I’ve had nothing to do with it!”
“Certainly not,” said Labordette with conviction.
Zoe ushered in Mignon, and Nana received him smilingly. She had
cried a good deal, but it was all over now. Still glowing with
enthusiasm, he complimented her on her installation, but she let him
see that she had had enough of her mansion and that now she had
other projects and would sell everything up one of these days. Then
as he excused himself for calling on the ground that he had come
about a benefit performance in aid of old Bose, who was tied to his
armchair by paralysis, she expressed extreme pity and took two
boxes. Meanwhile Zoe announced that the carriage was waiting for
Madame, and she asked for her hat and as she tied the strings told
them about poor, dear Satin’s mishap, adding:
“I’m going to the hospital. Nobody ever loved me as she did. Oh,
they’re quite right when they accuse the men of heartlessness! Who
knows? Perhaps I shan’t see her alive. Never mind, I shall ask to
see her: I want to give her a kiss.”
Labordette and Mignon smiled, and as Nana was no longer melancholy
she smiled too. Those two fellows didn’t count; they could enter
into her feelings. And they both stood and admired her in silent
abstraction while she finished buttoning her gloves. She alone kept
her feet amid the heaped-up riches of her mansion, while a whole
generation of men lay stricken down before her. Like those antique
monsters whose redoubtable domains were covered with skeletons, she
rested her feet on human skulls. She was ringed round with
catastrophes. There was the furious immolation of Vandeuvres; the
melancholy state of Foucarmont, who was lost in the China seas; the
smashup of Steiner, who now had to live like an honest man; the
satisfied idiocy of La Faloise, and the tragic shipwreck of the
Muffats. Finally there was the white corpse of Georges, over which
Philippe was now watching, for he had come out of prison but
yesterday. She had finished her labor of ruin and death. The fly
that had flown up from the ordure of the slums, bringing with it the
leaven of social rottenness, had poisoned all these men by merely
alighting on them. It was well done—it was just. She had avenged
the beggars and the wastrels from whose caste she issued. And
while, metaphorically speaking, her sex rose in a halo of glory and
beamed over prostrate victims like a mounting sun shining brightly
over a field of carnage, the actual woman remained as unconscious as
a splendid animal, and in her ignorance of her mission was the good-natured courtesan to the last. She was still big; she was still
plump; her health was excellent, her spirits capital. But this went
for nothing now, for her house struck her as ridiculous. It was too
small; it was full of furniture which got in her way. It was a
wretched business, and the long and the short of the matter was she
would have to make a fresh start. In fact, she was meditating
something much better, and so she went off to kiss Satin for the
last time. She was in all her finery and looked clean and solid and
as brand new as if she had never seen service before.
Nana suddenly disappeared. It was a fresh plunge, an escapade, a
flight into barbarous regions. Before her departure she had treated
herself to a new sensation: she had held a sale and had made a clean
sweep of everything—house, furniture, jewelry, nay, even dresses
and linen. Prices were cited—the five days’ sale produced more
than six hundred thousand francs. For the last time Paris had seen
her in a fairy piece. It was called Melusine, and it played at the
Theatre de la Gaite, which the penniless Bordenave had taken out of
sheer audacity. Here she again found herself in company with
Prulliere and Fontan. Her part was simply spectacular, but it was
the great attraction of the piece, consisting, as it did, of three
POSES PLASTIQUES, each of which represented the same dumb and
puissant fairy. Then one fine morning amid his grand success, when
Bordenave, who was mad
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