“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 rebelling 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.
Zoé 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 Zoé 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.
Chapter XIV
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 Mélusine, and it played at the Theatre de la Gaités, which the penniless Bordenave had taken out of sheer audacity. Here she again found herself in company with Prullière 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 after advertisement, kept firing the Parisian imagination with colossal posters, it became known that she must have started for Cairo the previous day. She had simply had a few words with her manager. Something had been said which did not please her; the whole thing was the caprice of a woman who is too rich to let herself be annoyed. Besides, she had indulged an old infatuation, for she had long meditated visiting the Turks.
Months passed—she began to be forgotten. When her name was mentioned among the ladies and gentlemen, the strangest stories were told, and everybody gave the most contradictory and at the same time prodigious information. She had made a conquest of the viceroy; she
was reigning, in the recesses of a palace, over two hundred slaves whose heads she now and then cut off for the sake of a little amusement. No, not at all! She had ruined herself with a great big nigger! A filthy passion this, which had left her wallowing without a chemise to her back in the crapulous debauchery of Cairo. A fortnight later much astonishment was produced when someone swore to having met her in Russia. A legend began to be formed: she was the mistress of a prince, and her diamonds were mentioned. All the women were soon acquainted with them from the current descriptions, but nobody could cite the precise source of all this information. There were finger rings, earrings, bracelets, a reviere of phenomenal width, a queenly diadem surmounted by a central brilliant the size of one’s thumb. In the retirement of those faraway countries she began to gleam forth as mysteriously as a gem-laden idol. People now mentioned her without laughing, for they were full of meditative respect for this fortune acquired among the barbarians.
One evening in July toward eight o’clock, Lucy, while getting out of her carriage in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, noticed Caroline Héquet, who had come out on foot to order something at a neighboring tradesman’s. Lucy called her and at once burst out with:
“Have you dined? Are you disengaged? Oh, then come with me, my dear. Nana’s back.”
The other got in at once, and Lucy continued:
“And you know, my dear, she may be dead while we’re gossiping.”
“Dead! What an idea!” cried Caroline in stupefaction. “And where is she? And what’s it of?”
“At the Grand Hotel, of smallpox. Oh, it’s a long story!”
Lucy had bidden her coachman drive fast, and while the horses trotted rapidly along the Rue Royale and the boulevards, she told what had happened to Nana in jerky, breathless sentences.
“You can’t imagine it. Nana plumps down out of Russia. I don’t know why—some dispute with her prince. She leaves her traps at the station; she lands at her aunt’s—you remember the old thing. Well, and then she finds her baby dying of smallpox. The baby dies next day, and she has a row with the aunt about some money she ought to have sent, of which the other one has never seen a sou. Seems the child died of that: in fact, it was neglected and badly cared for. Very well; Nana slopes, goes to a hotel, then meets Mignon just as she was thinking of her traps. She has all sorts of queer feelings, shivers, wants to be sick, and Mignon takes her back to her place and promises to look after her affairs. Isn’t it odd, eh? Doesn’t it all happen pat? But this is the best part of the story: Rose finds out about Nana’s illness and gets indignant at the idea of her being alone in furnished apartments. So she rushes off, crying, to look after her. You remember how they used to detest one another—like regular furies! Well then, my dear, Rose has had Nana transported to the Grand Hotel, so that she should, at any rate, die in a smart place, and now she’s already passed three nights there and is free to die of it after. It’s Labordette who told me all about it. Accordingly I wanted to see for myself—”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Caroline in great excitement “We’ll go up to her.”
They had arrived at their destination. On the boulevard the coachman had had to rein in his horses amid a block of carriages and people on foot. During the day the Corps Legislatif had voted for war, and now a crowd was streaming down all the streets, flowing along all the pavements, invading the middle of the roadway. Beyond the Madeleine the sun had set behind a blood-red cloud, which cast a reflection as of a great fire and set the lofty windows flaming. Twilight was falling, and the hour was oppressively melancholy, for now the avenues were darkening away into the distance but were not as yet dotted over by the bright sparks of the gas lamps. And among the marching crowds distant voices swelled and grew ever louder, and eyes gleamed from pale faces, while a great spreading wind of anguish and stupor set every head whirling.
“Here’s Mignon,” said Lucy. “He’ll give us news.”
Mignon was standing under the vast porch of the Grand Hotel. He looked nervous and was gazing at the crowd. After Lucy’s first few questions he grew impatient and cried out:
“How should I know? These last two days I haven’t been able to tear Rose away from up there. It’s getting stupid, when all’s said, for her to be risking her life like that! She’ll be charming if she gets over it, with holes in her face! It’ll suit us to a tee!”
The idea that Rose might lose her beauty was exasperating him. He was giving up Nana in the most downright fashion, and he could not in the least understand these stupid feminine devotions. But Fauchery was crossing the boulevard, and he, too, came up anxiously and asked for news. The two men egged each other on. They addressed one another familiarly in these days.
“Always the same business, my sonny,” declared Mignon. “You ought to go upstairs; you would force her to follow you.”
“Come now, you’re kind, you are!” said the journalist. “Why don’t you go upstairs yourself?”
Then as Lucy began asking for Nana’s number, they besought her to make Rose come down; otherwise they would end by getting angry.
Nevertheless, Lucy and Caroline did not go up at once. They had caught sight of Fontan strolling about with his hands in his pockets and greatly amused by the quaint expressions of the mob. When he became aware that Nana was lying ill upstairs he affected sentiment and remarked:
“The poor girl! I’ll go and shake her by the hand. What’s the matter with her, eh?”
“Smallpox,” replied Mignon.
The actor had already taken a step or two in the direction of the court, but he came back and simply murmured with a shiver:
“Oh, damn it!”
The smallpox was no joke. Fontan had been near having it when he was five years old, while Mignon gave them an account of one of his nieces who had died of it. As to Fauchery, he could speak of it from personal experience, for he still bore marks of it in the shape of three little lumps at the base of his nose, which he showed them. And when Mignon again egged him on to the ascent, on the pretext that you never had it twice, he violently combated this theory and with infinite abuse of the doctors instanced various cases. But Lucy and Caroline interrupted them, for the growing multitude filled them with astonishment.
“Just look! Just look what a lot of people!” The night was deepening, and in the distance the gas lamps were being lit one by one. Meanwhile interested spectators became visible at windows, while under the trees the human flood grew every minute more dense, till it ran in one enormous stream from the Madeleine to the Bastille. Carriages rolled slowly along. A roaring sound went up from this compact and as yet inarticulate mass. Each member of it had come out, impelled by the desire to form a crowd, and was now trampling along, steeping himself in the pervading fever. But a great movement caused the mob to flow asunder. Among the jostling, scattering groups a band of men in workmen’s caps and white blouses had come in sight, uttering a rhythmical cry which suggested the beat of hammers upon an anvil.
“To Ber-lin! To Ber-lin! To Ber-lin!” And the crowd stared in gloomy distrust yet felt themselves already possessed and inspired by heroic imaginings, as though a military band were passing.
“Oh yes, go and get your throats cut!” muttered Mignon, overcome by an access of philosophy.
But Fontan thought it very fine, indeed, and spoke of enlisting. When the enemy was on the frontier all citizens ought to rise up in defense of the fatherland! And with that he assumed an attitude suggestive of Bonaparte at Austerlitz.
“Look here, are you coining up with us?” Lucy asked him.
“Oh dear, no! To catch something horrid?” he said.
On a bench in front of the Grand Hotel a man sat hiding his face in a handkerchief. On arriving Fauchery had indicated him to Mignon with a wink of the eye. Well, he was still there; yes, he was always there. And the journalist detained the two women also in order to point him out to them. When
the man lifted his head they recognized him; an exclamation escaped them. It was the Count Muffat, and he was giving an upward glance at one of the windows.
“You know, he’s been waiting there since this morning,” Mignon informed them. “I saw him at six o’clock, and he hasn’t moved since. Directly Labordette spoke about it he came there with his handkerchief up to his face. Every half-hour he comes dragging himself to where we’re standing to ask if the person upstairs is doing better, and then he goes back and sits down. Hang it, that room isn’t healthy! It’s all very well being fond of people, but one doesn’t want to kick the bucket.”
The count sat with uplifted eyes and did not seem conscious of what was going on around him. Doubtless he was ignorant of the declaration of war, and he neither felt nor saw the crowd.
“Look, here he comes!” said Fauchery. “Now you’ll see.”
The count had, in fact, quitted his bench and was entering the lofty porch. But the porter, who was getting to know his face at last, did not give him time to put his question. He said sharply:
Erotic Classics I Page 175
