“My goodness!” murmured she very softly to herself.
But a violent emotion seized upon all. Gaga, on a sudden, stated that it was Irma in person who was standing in front of the church. She recognised her perfectly; always upright, the minx, in spite of her age, and just the same eyes when she assumed her grand air. Vespers were just over. For an instant madame stood within the porch. She wore a silk dress of the colour of faded leaves, and looked very tall and simple, with the venerable countenance of an old marchioness who had escaped the horrors of the Revolution. In her right hand a bulky prayer-book shone in the sunshine; and she slowly traversed the open space before the church, followed by a footman in livery, who walked at a respectful distance behind her. The congregation was streaming out; all the Chamont folks bowed low as she passed them; an old man kissed her hand; a woman fell on her knees before her. She was a mighty queen, loaded with years and honours. She ascended the steps of her château and disappeared.
“That’s what one comes to when one is careful,” said Mignon, in a convinced manner, while looking at his sons as though giving them a lesson.
Then every one said something. Labordette thought her wonderfully preserved; Maria Blond called her an offensive name; whilst Lucy became quite angry, saying that one should ever respect old age—in short, they all agreed that she was something stupendous, and then rejoined the carriages. From Chamont to La Mignotte, Nana did not utter a word. She turned round twice to take a look at the château. Lulled by the noise of the wheels, she no longer felt Steiner by her side; she no longer beheld George seated in front of her. A vision rose from out of the twilight—madame still passing slowly along, with the majesty of a mighty queen, loaded with years and honours.
That evening George returned to Les Fondettes in time for dinner. Nana, more and more absent-minded and peculiar, had sent him home to ask his mamma’s forgiveness. It was indispensable, said she severely, seized with a sudden respect for family duties. She even made him promise not to return to her that night. She was tired, and he would only be doing his duty in showing obedience. George, very much bored by this moral lesson, appeared before his mother with a heavy heart, and hanging down his head. Luckily for him, his brother Philippe had arrived—a big soldier and a very lively fellow. This dispelled the storm that was impending. Madame Hugon contented herself with looking at him with her eyes full of tears; whilst Philippe, informed of what had occurred, threatened to bring him back by the ears if he ever returned to that woman. George, greatly relieved, slyly thought of a plan by which he might escape the next afternoon towards two o’clock, and arrange about his meetings with Nana.
During dinner, the guests at Les Fondettes seemed labouring under a certain embarrassment. Vandeuvres had announced his departure; he wished to take Lucy back to Paris, amused at the idea of carrying off this woman, whom he had known for ten years past without having felt the slightest desire for her person before. The Marquis de Chouard, his nose buried in his plate, was thinking of Gaga’s young lady; he recollected having nursed her on his knee. How quickly children grew up! She was really becoming quite a plump little thing. Count Muffat, his face very red, remained absorbed in reflection. He continually glanced at George. When dinner was over he went and shut himself in his room, complaining of a slight touch of fever. M. Venot had hastened after him; and upstairs there was quite a scene between them. The count had flung himself on the bed and was stifling his nervous sobs in the pillow, whilst M. Venot, in a mild tone of voice, called him his brother, and exhorted him to implore the divine mercy. He heard not, he had a rattling in his throat. All on a sudden, he jumped from the bed, and stammered,
“I am going—I can no longer resist—”
“Very well,” said the old man, “I will go with you.”
As they went out, two shadows were disappearing in the depths of a side-walk. Every night, Fauchery and Countess Sabine now let Daguenet help Estelle make the tea. On the high road, the count walked at such a pace, that his companion was obliged to run to keep up with him. Though short of breath, the old man did not cease offering him the best possible arguments against succumbing to the temptations of the flesh. The other never opened his mouth, but hurried onwards in the darkness. When he reached La Mignotte, however, he said,
“I can fight no more—leave me.”
“Then, God’s will be done,” murmured M. Venot. “He takes all means to assure his triumph. Your sin will become one of his weapons.”
At La Mignotte, a good deal of quarrelling went on during the repast. Nana had received a letter from Bordenave, in which he advised her to take plenty of rest, but in a way that showed he did not care a pin about her: little Violaine was called twice before the curtain every night. And, as Mignon again pressed her to leave with them all on the morrow, Nana, exasperated, declared that she was not in want of advice from any one. Besides, whilst at table, she had behaved in a most ridiculously strait-laced manner. Madame Lerat, having made use of a rather objectionable word, she cried out—hang it all! she would allow nobody, not even her aunt, to utter filthy expressions in her presence. Then influenced by an idiotic attack of respectability, she bored everyone with her goody-goody sentiments, with her ideas of giving little Louis a religious education, and a whole course of good behaviour for herself. As they all laughed, she made use of some very profound words, wagging her head like a worthy woman thoroughly convinced, saying that order alone led to fortune, and that she didn’t want to die on a dung heap. The other women, having had enough of it, protested. Was it possible! some one must have changed Nana! But she, immovable in her seat, relapsed into her reverie, her eyes gazing into space, and conjuring up a vision of a Nana very rich and very much bowed to.
When Muffat arrived, they were all just going up to bed. Labordette noticed him in the garden, and, understanding his object, rendered him the service of getting Steiner out of the way, and of leading him by the hand along the dark passage to the door of Nana’s room. Labordette, for this sort of jobs, had a most gentlemanly way, was very dexterous, and seemed delighted at conducing to another’s happiness. Nana showed no surprise, but merely felt bored by Muffat’s persistence. However, one must have an eye for business during life! It was stupid to love, it led to nothing. Besides, she had scruples on account of Zizi’s youth: she had really behaved disgracefully. Well! she would return to the right path, and go for the old fellow.
“Zoé,” said she to the maid who was only too delighted to leave the country, “pack the trunks the first thing to-morrow morning. We are going back to Paris.”
And she allowed Muffat to remain, though it caused her no pleasure.
CHAPTER VII
Three months later, one night in December, Count Muffat was walking up and down the Passage des Panoramas. It was a very mild evening. A shower had just driven a crowd of people into the Passage. There was quite a mob, and it was a slow and difficult task to pass along between the shops on either side. Beneath the glass roof, brightened by the reflection, there was a most fierce illumination, consisting of an endless string of lights—white globes, red and blue lamps, rows of flaring gas-jets, and monstrous watches and fans formed of flames of fire—burning without any protection whatsoever; and the medley of colours in the various shop windows—the gold of the jewellers, the crystal vases of the confectioners, the pale silks of the milliners—blazed behind the spotless plate-glass, in the strong light cast by the reflectors; whilst among the chaos of gaudily painted signs, an enormous red glove in the distance looked like a bleeding hand, cut off and fixed to a yellow cuff.
Count Muffat had strolled leisurely as far as the Boulevard. He cast a glance on the pavement, then slowly retraced his footsteps, keeping close to the shops. A damp and warm air filled the narrow thoroughfare with a kind of luminous vapour. Along the flagstones, wet from the drippings of umbrellas, footsteps reverberated continuously, without the sound of a single voice. The passers-by, elbowing the count at each turn, gazed at his impassive face, rendered paler
than usual by the glare of the gas. So, to escape from their curiosity, he went and stood in front of a stationer’s shop, where he inspected, apparently with profound attention, a display of glass paper-weights, containing coloured representations of landscapes and flowers.
But in reality he saw nothing. He was thinking of Nana. Why had she lied to him again? That morning she had written to tell him not to come to her in the evening, pretending that little Louis was ill, and that she would stay with him all night at 193 her aunt’s. But he, being suspicious, had called at her house, and had learned from the concierge that madame had just gone off to her theatre. It surprised him, for he knew that she had no part in the new piece. Why, then, that lie, and what could she be doing at the Variety Theatre that evening?
Pushed against by some passer-by, the count, without knowing he did so, quitted the paper-weights, and found himself in front of a window full of miscellaneous articles, and looking in his absorbed way at a quantity of pocket-books and cigar-cases, all which had the same little blue swallow painted on one of the corners. Nana was certainly altered. In the early days, after her return from the country, she used to send him mad when she kissed him on the face and whiskers, with the little playful ways of a kitten, swearing that he was her ducky darling, the only little man whom she adored. He no longer feared George, who was kept by his mother at Les Fondettes. There remained fat old Steiner, whose place he supposed he had taken, but he had never dared to ask a question on the subject. He knew that Steiner was in a great mess about money matters, and on the point of being declared a defaulter at the Bourse, and that his only chance was a rise in the shares of the Salt Works of the Landes. If he ever met him at Nana’s she would always explain, in a reasonable sort of way, that she had not the heart to send him off like a dog, after all he had spent upon her. Besides, for three months past, he, the count, had lived in the midst of a sort of a sensual whirlpool, outside of which he understood nothing very clearly but the necessity of possessing Nana. This late awakening of his flesh was like the gluttony of a child, which leaves no room for either vanity or jealousy. Only a precise sensation could strike him: Nana was not as nice as at first, she no longer kissed him on the beard. This caused him some anxiety, and, as a man ignorant of the ways of women, he asked himself what she could have to reproach him with. Yet, he fancied that he satisfied all her desires; and his thoughts returned to the letter of the morning, to that complicated lie, told for the simple object of spending the evening at her theatre. Jostled again by the crowd, he had crossed the Passage, and was racking his brain at the entrance to a restaurant, his eyes fixed on some plucked larks and a fine salmon, which were displayed in the window.
At length he seemed to tear himself from this spectacle. He pulled himself together, and, raising his eyes, noticed that it was close upon nine o’clock. Nana would soon be coming out, and he would insist upon knowing the truth; and he walked about, recalling to mind the evenings already spent in that place, when he used to call for her at the stage door of the theatre. He knew all the shops. He recognised their odours in the atmosphere laden with the stench of gas, the strong smell of Russian leather, the fragrance of vanilla which came from the basement of a dealer in chocolate, the whiffs of musk issuing from the open doors of the perfumers; and he no longer dared stop in front of the pale faces of the shop-women, who placidly surveyed him as an old acquaintance. One minute he appeared to study the row of little round windows above the shops, in the midst of the different signs, as though he saw them for the first time. Then he went again as far as the Boulevard, and stood there a little while. The rain now only came down in very fine drops, which, falling cold upon his hands, calmed him. Now his thoughts wandered to his wife, who was at a château near Mâcon, with her friend Madame de Chezelles, who had been very unwell ever since the autumn. The vehicles on the Boulevard rolled along in a river of mud. The country must be unbearable in such weather. But, this anxiety suddenly returning, he plunged once more into the stifling heat of the Passage, and walked with rapid strides past the loungers. The idea had just occurred to him that, if Nana had any doubts about his coming, she might make off by the Galerie Montmartre.
From that moment the count watched at the stage-door itself. He did not like waiting in that bit of a lobby, where he was afraid of being recognised. It was at the junction of the Galerie des Variétés and of the Galerie Saint-Marc,1 a nasty corner, with some obscure shops—a cobbler who never had any customers, dealers in musty furniture, a smoky reading-room in a state of somnolence, with its shaded lamps shedding a green light at night. Hereabouts one could always see gentlemen stylishly dressed, patiently wandering about amongst all that usually encumbers a stage-door—drunken scene-shifters, and painted hussies in gaudy rags. A single gas-jet, in an unwashed globe, lighted up the entrance. One moment Muffat had the idea of questioning Madame Bron, but then he feared that, should Nana hear of his being there, she might leave by the Boulevard. He resumed his walk, resolved to wait until he was turned out when the man shut the gates, as had already happened to him on two occasions.
The thought of going back alone filled his heart with anguish. Each time that any dressed-up girls, or men in dirty garments, came out and looked at him, he went and stood in front of the reading-room, where, between a couple of posters in the window, he always beheld the same sight—a little old man, sitting upright and alone at the immense table, in the green light of a lamp, reading a green newspaper which he held in his green hands. But a few minutes before ten o’clock, another gentleman—a tall handsome man, fair, and wearing well-fitting gloves, began also to wander about outside the theatre. Then every time they met, they mistrustfully gave each other a sidelong glance. The count walked as far as the junction of the two galleries, which was decorated with a tall mirror; and, seeing himself in it looking so solemn-faced, and with such a correct gait, he was seized with shame, mixed with fear.
Ten o’clock struck. Muffat suddenly remembered that it was easy enough for him to see if Nana was in her dressing-room. He went up the three steps, passed through the little hall besmeared with a coat of yellow paint, and reached the courtyard by a door that was only latched. At that hour the courtyard, narrow and damp like a well, with its foul-smelling closets, its water-tap, the kitchen-stove, and the plants with which the doorkeeper lumbered it, was bathed in a black mist; but the two walls which rose up, studded with windows, were ablaze with light. Below were the property-room and the firemen’s station, on the left the manager’s rooms, on the right and up above the dressing-rooms. On the sides of this well they looked like so many oven doors opening into darkness. The count had at once noticed a light in the window of the dressing-room on the first floor; and, feeling relieved and happy, he stood there in the greasy mud, looking up in the air, and inhaling the unsavoury stench at this back of an old Parisian house. Large drops were running down from a cracked water pipe. A ray of gaslight, from Madame Bron’s window, gave a yellow tinge to a bit of the moss-covered pavement, to the foot of a wall eaten away by the water from a sink, and to a heap of rubbish on which innumerable old pails and cracked pots and pans had been thrown together, with a saucepan in which a scraggy spindle-tree was vainly endeavouring to grow. There was heard the sound of a window opening, and the count hastened away.
Nana would certainly be coming out directly. He returned to the window of the reading-room. In the deep shadow, broken only by a faint glimmer like that of a night-light, the little old man could still be seen there with his face buried in his paper. Then the count walked about again, strolling rather farther off. He crossed the main gallery, and followed the Galerie des Variétés as far as the Galerie Feydeau, cold and deserted, and plunged in a lugubrious obscurity; and then he returned, and, passing before the theatre, ventured along the Galerie Saint-Marc as far as the Galerie Montmartre, where he watched a machine cutting up sugar in a grocer’s shop. But on his third turn, the fear that Nana might go off behind his back made him lose all self-respect. He went and stood wi
th the fair gentleman right opposite the stage-door, and they both exchanged a glance of fraternal humility, lighted up with a remnant of mistrust as to a possible rivalry. Some scene-shifters who came out to smoke their pipes during one of the acts shoved up against them, without either of them daring to complain. Three big girls, with tangled hair and dirty dresses, appeared in the doorway, eating apples and spitting out the cores; and the two men hung down their heads, and submitted to the effrontery of their stares and the coarseness of their remarks, consenting to be dirtied and bespattered by these hussies, who amused themselves by jostling against them as they roughly played together.
Just then Nana came down the three steps. She turned deadly pale as she caught sight of Muffat.
“Ah! it’s you,” she stammered.
The jeering girls became frightened when they recognised her; and they stood still in a row, erect and serious, like servants caught by their mistress when doing wrong. The tall fair gentleman had moved a little distance off, sad and reassured at the same time.
“Well! give me your arm,” resumed Nana abruptly.
They walked slowly away. The count, who had prepared a number of questions, could find nothing to say. It was she who, in a rapid tone of voice, related a long rigmarole—she had stayed at her aunt’s till eight o’clock; then, seeing that little Louis was a great deal better, she had had the idea of coming to the theatre for a short time.
“For anything particular?” asked he.
“Yes, a new piece,” she replied, after a slight hesitation. “They wanted to have my opinion.”
He knew that she lied. But the warmth of her arm, leaning heavily on his, left him without strength to say a word. His anger and his annoyance at having had to wait for her so long had disappeared; his sole anxiety was to keep her, now that he had her with him. On the morrow he would try and find out what she had been about in her dressing-room. Nana, still hesitating, and visibly a prey to the inward struggle of a person trying to regain her composure and to decide on a course of action, stopped, on turning the corner of the Galerie des Varietes, in front of a fan-maker’s window.