We are in a little set of lodgings
on the fourth floor in the Rue Veron at Montmartre.
Nana and Fontan have invited a few friends to cut their
Twelfth-Night cake with them. They are giving
their housewarming, though they have been only three
days settled.
They had no fixed intention of keeping
house together, but the whole thing had come about
suddenly in the first glow of the honeymoon.
After her grand blowup, when she had turned the count
and the banker so vigorously out of doors, Nana felt
the world crumbling about her feet. She estimated
the situation at a glance; the creditors would swoop
down on her anteroom, would mix themselves up with
her love affairs and threaten to sell her little all
unless she continued to act sensibly. Then, too,
there would be no end of disputes and carking anxieties
if she attempted to save her furniture from their
clutches. And so she preferred giving up everything.
Besides, the flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was plaguing
her to death. It was so stupid with its great
gilded rooms! In her access of tenderness for
Fontan she began dreaming of a pretty little bright
chamber. Indeed, she returned to the old ideals
of the florist days, when her highest ambition was
to have a rosewood cupboard with a plate-glass door
and a bed hung with blue “reps.”
In the course of two days she sold what she could smuggle
out of the house in the way of knickknacks and jewelry
and then disappeared, taking with her ten thousand
francs and never even warning the porter’s wife.
It was a plunge into the dark, a merry spree; never
a trace was left behind. In this way she would
prevent the men from coming dangling after her.
Fontain was very nice. He did not say no to anything
but just let her do as she liked. Nay, he even
displayed an admirable spirit of comradeship.
He had, on his part, nearly seven thousand francs,
and despite the fact that people accused him of stinginess,
he consented to add them to the young woman’s
ten thousand. The sum struck them as a solid
foundation on which to begin housekeeping. And
so they started away, drawing from their common hoard,
in order to hire and furnish the two rooms in the
Rue Veron, and sharing everything together like old
friends. In the early days it was really delicious.
On Twelfth Night Mme Lerat and Louiset
were the first to arrive. As Fontan had not yet
come home, the old lady ventured to give expression
to her fears, for she trembled to see her niece renouncing
the chance of wealth.
“Oh, Aunt, I love him so dearly!”
cried Nana, pressing her hands to her heart with the
prettiest of gestures.
This phrase produced an extraordinary
effect on Mme Lerat, and tears came into her eyes.
“That’s true,” she
said with an air of conviction. “Love before
all things!”
And with that she went into raptures
over the prettiness of the rooms. Nana took her
to see the bedroom, the parlor and the very kitchen.
Gracious goodness, it wasn’t a vast place, but
then, they had painted it afresh and put up new wallpapers.
Besides, the sun shone merrily into it during the
daytime.
Thereupon Mme Lerat detained the young
woman in the bedroom, while Louiset installed himself
behind the charwoman in the kitchen in order to watch
a chicken being roasted. If, said Mme Lerat, she
permitted herself to say what was in her mind, it
was because Zoe had just been at her house. Zoe
had stayed courageously in the breach because she was
devoted to her mistress. Madame would pay her
later on; she was in no anxiety about that! And
amid the breakup of the Boulevard Haussmann establishment
it was she who showed the creditors a bold front; it
was she who conducted a dignified retreat, saving
what she could from the wreck and telling everyone
that her mistress was traveling. She never once
gave them her address. Nay, through fear of being
followed, she even deprived herself of the pleasure
of calling on Madame. Nevertheless, that same
morning she had run round to Mme Lerat’s because
matters were taking a new turn. The evening before
creditors in the persons of the upholsterer, the charcoal
merchant and the laundress had put in an appearance
and had offered to give Madame an extension of time.
Nay, they had even proposed to advance Madame a very
considerable amount if only Madame would return to
her flat and conduct herself like a sensible person.
The aunt repeated Zoe’s words. Without doubt
there was a gentleman behind it all.
“I’ll never consent!”
declared Nana in great disgust. “Ah, they’re
a pretty lot those tradesmen! Do they think I’m
to be sold so that they can get their bills paid?
Why, look here, I’d rather die of hunger than
deceive Fontan.”
“That’s what I said,”
averred Mme Lerat. “‘My niece,’ I
said, ’is too noble-hearted!’”
Nana, however, was much vexed to learn
that La Mignotte was being sold and that Labordette
was buying it for Caroline Hequet at an absurdly low
price. It made her angry with that clique.
Oh, they were a regular cheap lot, in spite of their
airs and graces! Yes, by Jove, she was worth more
than the whole lot of them!
“They can have their little
joke out,” she concluded, “but money will
never give them true happiness! Besides, you know,
Aunt, I don’t even know now whether all that
set are alive or not. I’m much too happy.”
At that very moment Mme Maloir entered,
wearing one of those hats of which she alone understood
the shape. It was delightful meeting again.
Mme Maloir explained that magnificence frightened her
and that now, from time to time, she would come
back for her game of bezique. A second visit
was paid to the different rooms in the lodgings, and
in the kitchen Nana talked of economy in the presence
of the charwoman, who was basting the fowl, and said
that a servant would have cost too much and that she
was herself desirous of looking after things.
Louiset was gazing beatifically at the roasting process.
But presently there was a loud outburst
of voices. Fontan had come in with Bosc and Prulliere,
and the company could now sit down to table.
The soup had been already served when Nana for the
third time showed off the lodgings.
“Ah, dear children, how comfortable
you are here!” Bosc kept repeating, simply for
the sake of pleasing the chums who were standing the
dinner. At bottom the subject of the “nook,”
as he called it, nowise touched him.
In the bedroom he harped still more
vigorously on the amiable note. Ordinarily he
was wont to treat women like cattle, and the idea of
a man bothering himself about one of the dirty brutes
excited within him the only angry feelings of which,
in his comprehensive, drunken disdain of the universe,
he was still capable.
“Ah, ah, the villains,”
he continued with a wink, “they’ve done
this on the sly. Well, you were certainly right.
It will be charming, and, by heaven, we’ll come
and see you!”
But when Louiset arrived on the scene
astride upon a broomstick, Prulliere chuckled spitefully
and remarked:
“Well, I never! You’ve got a baby
already?”
This struck everybody as very droll,
and Mme Lerat and Mme Maloir shook with laughter.
Nana, far from being vexed, laughed tenderly and said
that unfortunately this was not the case. She
would very much have liked it, both for the little
one’s sake and for her own, but perhaps one
would arrive all the same. Fontan, in his rôle
of honest citizen, took Louiset in his arms and began
playing with him and lisping.
“Never mind! It loves its
daddy! Call me ‘Papa,’ you little
blackguard!”
“Papa, Papa!” stammered the child.
The company overwhelmed him with caresses,
but Bosc was bored and talked of sitting down to table.
That was the only serious business in life. Nana
asked her guests’ permission to put Louiset’s
chair next her own. The dinner was very merry,
but Bosc suffered from the near neighborhood of the
child, from whom he had to defend his plate. Mme
Lerat bored him too. She was in a melting mood
and kept whispering to him all sorts of mysterious
things about gentlemen of the first fashion who were
still running after Nana. Twice he had to push
away her knee, for she was positively invading him
in her gushing, tearful mood. Prulliere behaved
with great incivility toward Mme Maloir and did not
once help her to anything. He was entirely taken
up with Nana and looked annoyed at seeing her with
Fontan. Besides, the turtle doves were kissing
so excessively as to be becoming positive bores.
Contrary to all known rules, they had elected to sit
side by side.
“Devil take it! Why don’t
you eat? You’ve got plenty of time ahead
of you!” Bosc kept repeating with his mouth
full. “Wait till we are gone!”
But Nana could not restrain herself.
She was in a perfect ecstasy of love. Her face
was as full of blushes as an innocent young girl’s,
and her looks and her laughter seemed to overflow
with tenderness. Gazing on Fontan, she overwhelmed
him with pet names “my doggie, my
old bear, my kitten” and whenever
he passed her the water or the salt she bent forward
and kissed him at random on lips, eyes, nose or ear.
Then if she met with reproof she would return to the
attack with the cleverest maneuvers and with infinite
submissiveness and the supple cunning of a beaten
cat would catch hold of his hand when no one was looking,
in order to kiss it again. It seemed she must
be touching something belonging to him. As to
Fontan, he gave himself airs and let himself be adored
with the utmost condescension. His great nose
sniffed with entirely sensual content; his goat face,
with its quaint, monstrous ugliness, positively glowed
in the sunlight of devoted adoration lavished upon
him by that superb woman who was so fair and so plump
of limb. Occasionally he gave a kiss in return,
as became a man who is having all the enjoyment and
is yet willing to behave prettily.
“Well, you’re growing
maddening!” cried Prulliere. “Get
away from her, you fellow there!”
And he dismissed Fontan and changed
covers, in order to take his place at Nana’s
side. The company shouted and applauded at this
and gave vent to some stiffish epigrammatic witticisms.
Fontan counterfeited despair and assumed the quaint
expression of Vulcan crying for Venus. Straightway
Prulliere became very gallant, but Nana, whose foot
he was groping for under the table, caught him a slap
to make him keep quiet. No, no, she was certainly
not going to become his mistress. A month ago
she had begun to take a fancy to him because of his
good looks, but now she detested him. If he pinched
her again under pretense of picking up her napkin,
she would throw her glass in his face!
Nevertheless, the evening passed off
well. The company had naturally begun talking
about the Varietés. Wasn’t that cad
of a Bordenave going to go off the hooks after all?
His nasty diseases kept reappearing and causing him
such suffering that you couldn’t come within
six yards of him nowadays. The day before during
rehearsal he had been incessantly yelling at Simonne.
There was a fellow whom the theatrical people wouldn’t
shed many tears over. Nana announced that if he
were to ask her to take another part she would jolly
well send him to the rightabout. Moreover, she
began talking of leaving the stage; the theater was
not to compare with her home. Fontan, who was
not in the present piece or in that which was then
being rehearsed, also talked big about the joy of
being entirely at liberty and of passing his evenings
with his feet on the fender in the society of his
little pet. And at this the rest exclaimed delightedly,
treating their entertainers as lucky people and pretending
to envy their felicity.
The Twelfth-Night cake had been cut
and handed round. The bean had fallen to the
lot of Mme Lerat, who popped it into Bosc’s glass.
Whereupon there were shouts of “The king drinks!
The king drinks!” Nana took advantage of this
outburst of merriment and went and put her arms round
Fontan’s neck again, kissing him and whispering
in his ear. But Prulliere, laughing angrily,
as became a pretty man, declared that they were not
playing the game. Louiset, meanwhile, slept soundly
on two chairs. It was nearing one o’clock
when the company separated, shouting au revoir
as they went downstairs.
For three weeks the existence of the
pair of lovers was really charming. Nana fancied
she was returning to those early days when her first
silk dress had caused her infinite delight. She
went out little and affected a life of solitude and
simplicity. One morning early, when she had gone
down to buy fish in propria persona
in La Rouchefoucauld Market, she was vastly surprised
to meet her old hair dresser Francis face to face.
His getup was as scrupulously careful as ever:
he wore the finest linen, and his frock coat was beyond
reproach; in fact, Nana felt ashamed that he should
see her in the street with a dressing jacket and disordered
hair and down-at-heel shoes. But he had the tact,
if possible, to intensify his politeness toward her.
He did not permit himself a single inquiry and affected
to believe that Madame was at present on her travels.
Ah, but Madame had rendered many persons unhappy when
she decided to travel! All the world had suffered
loss. The young woman, however, ended by asking
him questions, for a sudden fit of curiosity had made
her forget her previous embarrassment. Seeing
that the crowd was jostling them, she pushed him into
a doorway and, still holding her little basket in one
hand, stood chatting in front of him. What were
people saying about her high jinks? Good heavens!
The ladies to whom he went said this and that and
all sorts of things. In fact, she had made a great
noise and was enjoying a real boom: And Steiner?
M. Steiner was in a very bad way, would make an ugly
finish if he couldn’t hit on some new commercial
operation. And Daguenet? Oh, he was
getting on swimmingly. M. Daguenet was settling
down. Nana, under the exciting influence of various
recollections, was just opening her mouth with a view
to a further examination when she felt it would be
awkward to utter Muffat’s name. Thereupon
Francis smiled and spoke instead of her. As to
Monsieur lé Comte, it was all a great pity,
so sad had been his sufferings since Madame’s
departure.
He had been like a soul in pain you
might have met him wherever Madame was likely to be
found. At last M. Mignon had come across him and
had taken him home to his own place. This piece
of news caused Nana to laugh a good deal. But
her laughter was not of the easiest kind.
“Ah, he’s with Rose now,”
she said. “Well then, you must know, Francis,
I’ve done with him! Oh, the canting thing!
It’s learned some pretty habits can’t
even go fasting for a week now! And to think that
he used to swear he wouldn’t have any woman
after me!”
She was raging inwardly.
“My leavings, if you please!”
she continued. “A pretty Johnnie for Rose
to go and treat herself to! Oh, I understand it
all now: she wanted to have her revenge because
I got that brute of a Steiner away from her.
Ain’t it sly to get a man to come to her when
I’ve chucked him out of doors?”
“M. Mignon doesn’t
tell that tale,” said the hairdresser. “According
to his account, it was Monsieur lé Comte
who chucked you out. Yes, and in a pretty disgusting
way too with a kick on the bottom!”
Nana became suddenly very pale.
“Eh, what?” she cried.
“With a kick on my bottom? He’s going
too far, he is! Look here, my little friend,
it was I who threw him downstairs, the cuckold, for
he is a cuckold, I must inform you. His countess
is making him one with every man she meets yes,
even with that good-for-nothing of a Fauchery.
And that Mignon, who goes loafing about the pavement
in behalf of his harridan of a wife, whom nobody wants
because she’s so lean! What a foul lot!
What a foul lot!”
She was choking, and she paused for breath
“Oh, that’s what they
say, is it? Very well, my little Francis, I’ll
go and look ’em up, I will. Shall you and
I go to them at once? Yes, I’ll go, and
we’ll see whether they will have the cheek to
go telling about kicks on the bottom. Kick’s!
I never took one from anybody! And nobody’s
ever going to strike me d’ye see? for
I’d smash the man who laid a finger on me!”
Nevertheless, the storm subsided at
last. After all, they might jolly well what they
liked! She looked upon them as so much filth underfoot!
It would have soiled her to bother about people like
that. She had a conscience of her own, she had!
And Francis, seeing her thus giving herself away,
what with her housewife’s costume and all, became
familiar and, at parting, made so bold as to give
her some good advice. It was wrong of her to
be sacrificing everything for the sake of an infatuation;
such infatuations ruined existence. She listened
to him with bowed head while he spoke to her with
a pained expression, as became a connoisseur who could
not bear to see so fine a girl making such a hash
of things.
“Well, that’s my affair,”
she said at last “Thanks all the same, dear
boy.” She shook his hand, which despite
his perfect dress was always a little greasy, and
then went off to buy her fish. During the day
that story about the kick on the bottom occupied her
thoughts. She even spoke about it to Fontan and
again posed as a sturdy woman who was not going to
stand the slightest flick from anybody. Fontan,
as became a philosophic spirit, declared that all
men of fashion were beasts whom it was one’s
duty to despise. And from that moment forth Nana
was full of very real disdain.
That same evening they went to the
Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre to see a little woman of
Fontan’s acquaintance make her debut in a part
of some ten lines. It was close on one o’clock
when they once more trudged up the heights of Montmartre.
They had purchased a cake, a “mocha,” in
the Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin, and they
ate it in bed, seeing that the night was not warm
and it was not worth while lighting a fire. Sitting
up side by side, with the bedclothes pulled up in front
and the pillows piled up behind, they supped and talked
about the little woman. Nana thought her plain
and lacking in style. Fontan, lying on his stomach,
passed up the pieces of cake which had been put between
the candle and the matches on the edge of the night
table. But they ended by quarreling.
“Oh, just to think of it!”
cried Nana. “She’s got eyes like gimlet
holes, and her hair’s the color of tow.”
“Hold your tongue, do!”
said Fontan. “She has a superb head of hair
and such fire in her looks! It’s lovely
the way you women always tear each other to pieces!”
He looked annoyed.
“Come now, we’ve had enough
of it!” he said at last in savage tones.
“You know I don’t like being bored.
Let’s go to sleep, or things’ll take a
nasty turn.”
And he blew out the candle, but Nana
was furious and went on talking. She was not
going to be spoken to in that voice; she was accustomed
to being treated with respect! As he did not
vouchsafe any further answer, she was silenced, but
she could not go to sleep and lay tossing to and fro.
“Great God, have you done moving
about?” cried he suddenly, giving a brisk jump
upward.
“It isn’t my fault if
there are crumbs in the bed,” she said curtly.
In fact, there were crumbs in the
bed. She felt them down to her middle; she was
everywhere devoured by them. One single crumb
was scorching her and making her scratch herself till
she bled. Besides, when one eats a cake isn’t
it usual to shake out the bedclothes afterward?
Fontan, white with rage, had relit the candle, and
they both got up and, barefooted and in their night
dresses, they turned down the clothes and swept up
the crumbs on the sheet with their hands. Fontan
went to bed again, shivering, and told her to go to
the devil when she advised him to wipe the soles of
his feet carefully. And in the end she came back
to her old position, but scarce had she stretched
herself out than she danced again. There were
fresh crumbs in the bed!
“By Jove, it was sure to happen!”
she cried. “You’ve brought them back
again under your feet. I can’t go on like
this! No, I tell you, I can’t go on like
this!”
And with that she was on the point
of stepping over him in order to jump out of bed again,
when Fontan in his longing for sleep grew desperate
and dealt her a ringing box on the ear. The blow
was so smart that Nana suddenly found herself lying
down again with her head on the pillow.
She lay half stunned.
“Oh!” she ejaculated simply, sighing a
child’s big sigh.
For a second or two he threatened
her with a second slap, asking her at the same time
if she meant to move again. Then he put out the
light, settled himself squarely on his back and in
a trice was snoring. But she buried her face
in the pillow and began sobbing quietly to herself.
It was cowardly of him to take advantage of his superior
strength! She had experienced very real terror
all the same, so terrible had that quaint mask of
Fontan’s become. And her anger began dwindling
down as though the blow had calmed her. She began
to feel respect toward him and accordingly squeezed
herself against the wall in order to leave him as
much room as possible. She even ended by going
to sleep, her cheek tingling, her eyes full of tears
and feeling so deliciously depressed and wearied and
submissive that she no longer noticed the crumbs.
When she woke up in the morning she was holding Fontain
in her naked arms and pressing him tightly against
her breast. He would never begin it again, eh?
Never again? She loved him too dearly. Why,
it was even nice to be beaten if he struck the blow!
After that night a new life began.
For a mere trifle a yes, a no Fontan
would deal her a blow. She grew accustomed to
it and pocketed everything. Sometimes she shed
tears and threatened him, but he would pin her up
against the wall and talk of strangling her, which
had the effect of rendering her extremely obedient.
As often as not, she sank down on a chair and sobbed
for five minutes on end. But afterward she would
forget all about it, grow very merry, fill the little
lodgings with the sound of song and laughter and the
rapid rustle of skirts. The worst of it was that
Fontan was now in the habit of disappearing for the
whole day and never returning home before midnight,
for he was going to cafes and meeting his old friends
again. Nana bore with everything. She was
tremulous and caressing, her only fear being that she
might never see him again if she reproached him.
But on certain days, when she had neither Mme Maloir
nor her aunt and Louiset with her, she grew mortally
dull. Thus one Sunday, when she was bargaining
for some pigeons at La Rochefoucauld Market, she was
delighted to meet Satin, who, in her turn, was busy
purchasing a bunch of radishes. Since the evening
when the prince had drunk Fontan’s champagne
they had lost sight of one another.
“What? It’s you!
D’you live in our parts?” said Satin, astounded
at seeing her in the street at that hour of the morning
and in slippers too. “Oh, my poor, dear
girl, you’re really ruined then!”
Nana knitted her brows as a sign that
she was to hold her tongue, for they were surrounded
by other women who wore dressing gowns and were without
linen, while their disheveled tresses were white with
fluff. In the morning, when the man picked up
overnight had been newly dismissed, all the courtesans
of the quarter were wont to come marketing here, their
eyes heavy with sleep, their feet in old down-at-heel
shoes and themselves full of the weariness and ill
humor entailed by a night of boredom. From the
four converging streets they came down into the market,
looking still rather young in some cases and very pale
and charming in their utter unconstraint; in others,
hideous and old with bloated faces and peeling skin.
The latter did not the least mind being seen thus
outside working hours, and not one of them deigned
to smile when the passers-by on the sidewalk turned
round to look at them. Indeed, they were all
very full of business and wore a disdainful expression,
as became good housewives for whom men had ceased to
exist. Just as Satin, for instance, was paying
for her bunch of radishes a young man, who might have
been a shop-boy going late to his work, threw her
a passing greeting:
“Good morning, duckie.”
She straightened herself up at once
and with the dignified manner becoming an offended
queen remarked:
“What’s up with that swine there?”
Then she fancied she recognized him.
Three days ago toward midnight, as the was coming
back alone from the boulevards, she had talked to him
at the corner of the Rue Labruyere for nearly half
an hour, with a view to persuading him to come home
with her. But this recollection only angered
her the more.
“Fancy they’re brutes
enough to shout things to you in broad daylight!”
she continued. “When one’s out on
business one ought to be respectfully treated, eh?”
Nana had ended by buying her pigeons,
although she certainly had her doubts of their freshness.
After which Satin wanted to show her where she lived
in the Rue Rochefoucauld close by. And the moment
they were alone Nana told her of her passion for Fontan.
Arrived in front of the house, the girl stopped with
her bundle of radishes under her arm and listened
eagerly to a final detail which the other imparted
to her. Nana fibbed away and vowed that it was
she who had turned Count Muffat out of doors with
a perfect hail of kicks on the posterior.
“Oh how smart!” Satin
repeated. “How very smart! Kicks, eh?
And he never said a word, did he? What a blooming
coward! I wish I’d been there to see his
ugly mug! My dear girl, you were quite right.
A pin for the coin! When I’m on with
a mash I starve for it! You’ll come and
see me, eh? You promise? It’s the
left-hand door. Knock three knocks, for there’s
a whole heap of damned squints about.”
After that whenever Nana grew too
weary of life she went down and saw Satin. She
was always sure of finding her, for the girl never
went out before six in the evening. Satin occupied
a couple of rooms which a chemist had furnished for
her in order to save her from the clutches of the
police, but in little more than a twelvemonth she had
broken the furniture, knocked in the chairs, dirtied
the curtains, and that in a manner so furiously filthy
and untidy that the lodgings seemed as though inhabited
by a pack of mad cats. On the mornings when she
grew disgusted with herself and thought about cleaning
up a bit, chair rails and strips of curtain would
come off in her hands during her struggle with superincumbent
dirt. On such days the place was fouler than ever,
and it was impossible to enter it, owing to the things
which had fallen down across the doorway. At
length she ended by leaving her house severely alone.
When the lamp was lit the cupboard with plate-glass
doors, the clock and what remained of the curtains
still served to impose on the men. Besides, for
six months past her landlord had been threatening to
evict her. Well then, for whom should she be keeping
the furniture nice? For him more than anyone
else, perhaps! And so whenever she got up in a
merry mood she would shout “Gee up!” and
give the sides of the cupboard and the chest of drawers
such a tremendous kick that they cracked again.
Nana nearly always found her in bed.
Even on the days when Satin went out to do her marketing
she felt so tired on her return upstairs that she
flung herself down on the bed and went to sleep again.
During the day she dragged herself about and dozed
off on chairs. Indeed, she did not emerge from
this languid condition till the evening drew on and
the gas was lit outside. Nana felt very comfortable
at Satin’s, sitting doing nothing on the untidy
bed, while basins stood about on the floor at her
feet and petticoats which had been bemired last night
hung over the backs of armchairs and stained them
with mud. They had long gossips together and
were endlessly confidential, while Satin lay on her
stomach in her nightgown, waving her legs above her
head and smoking cigarettes as she listened.
Sometimes on such afternoons as they had troubles to
retail they treated themselves to absinthe in order,
as they termed it, “to forget.” Satin
did not go downstairs or put on a petticoat but simply
went and leaned over the banisters and shouted her
order to the portress’s little girl, a chit
of ten, who when she brought up the absinthe in a
glass would look furtively at the lady’s bare
legs. Every conversation led up to one subject the
beastliness of the men. Nana was overpowering
on the subject of Fontan. She could not say a
dozen words without lapsing into endless repetitions
of his sayings and his doings. But Satin, like
a good-natured girl, would listen unwearyingly to
everlasting accounts of how Nana had watched for him
at the window, how they had fallen out over a burnt
dish of hash and how they had made it up in bed after
hours of silent sulking. In her desire to be always
talking about these things Nana had got to tell of
every slap that he dealt her. Last week he had
given her a swollen eye; nay, the night before he
had given her such a box on the ear as to throw her
across the night table, and all because he could not
find his slippers. And the other woman did not
evince any astonishment but blew out cigarette smoke
and only paused a moment to remark that, for her part,
she always ducked under, which sent the gentleman
pretty nearly sprawling. Both of them settled
down with a will to these anecdotes about blows; they
grew supremely happy and excited over these same idiotic
doings about which they told one another a hundred
times or more, while they gave themselves up to the
soft and pleasing sense of weariness which was sure
to follow the drubbings they talked of. It was
the delight of rediscussing Fontan’s blows and
of explaining his works and his ways, down to the
very manner in which he took off his boots, which brought
Nana back daily to Satin’s place. The latter,
moreover, used to end by growing sympathetic in her
turn and would cite even more violent cases, as, for
instance, that of a pastry cook who had left her for
dead on the floor. Yet she loved him, in spite
of it all! Then came the days on which Nana cried
and declared that things could not go on as they were
doing. Satin would escort her back to her own
door and would linger an hour out in the street to
see that he did not murder her. And the next
day the two women would rejoice over the reconciliation
the whole afternoon through. Yet though they
did not say so, they preferred the days when threshings
were, so to speak, in the air, for then their comfortable
indignation was all the stronger.
They became inseparable. Yet
Satin never went to Nana’s, Fontan having announced
that he would have no trollops in his house. They
used to go out together, and thus it was that Satin
one day took her friend to see another woman.
This woman turned out to be that very Mme Robert who
had interested Nana and inspired her with a certain
respect ever since she had refused to come to her
supper. Mme Robert lived in the Rue Mosnier,
a silent, new street in the Quartier de l’Europe,
where there were no shops, and the handsome houses
with their small, limited flats were peopled by ladies.
It was five o’clock, and along the silent pavements
in the quiet, aristocratic shelter of the tall white
houses were drawn up the broughams of stock-exchange
people and merchants, while men walked hastily about,
looking up at the windows, where women in dressing
jackets seemed to be awaiting them. At first Nana
refused to go up, remarking with some constraint that
she had not the pleasure of the lady’s acquaintance.
But Satin would take no refusal. She was only
desirous of paying a civil call, for Mme Robert, whom
she had met in a restaurant the day before, had made
herself extremely agreeable and had got her to promise
to come and see her. And at last Nana consented.
At the top of the stairs a little drowsy maid informed
them that Madame had not come home yet, but she ushered
them into the drawing room notwithstanding and left
them there.
“The deuce, it’s a smart
show!” whispered Satin. It was a stiff,
middle-class room, hung with dark-colored fabrics,
and suggested the conventional taste of a Parisian
shopkeeper who has retired on his fortune. Nana
was struck and did her best to make merry about it.
But Satin showed annoyance and spoke up for Mme Robert’s
strict adherence to the proprieties. She was
always to be met in the society of elderly, grave-looking
men, on whose arms she leaned. At present she
had a retired chocolate seller in tow, a serious soul.
Whenever he came to see her he was so charmed by the
solid, handsome way in which the house was arranged
that he had himself announced and addressed its mistress
as “dear child.”
“Look, here she is!” continued
Satin, pointing to a photograph which stood in front
of the clock. Nana scrutinized the portrait for
a second or so. It represented a very dark brunette
with a longish face and lips pursed up in a discreet
smile. “A thoroughly fashionable lady,”
one might have said of the likeness, “but one
who is rather more reserved than the rest.”
“It’s strange,”
murmured Nana at length, “but I’ve certainly
seen that face somewhere. Where, I don’t
remember. But it can’t have been in a pretty
place oh no, I’m sure it wasn’t
in a pretty place.”
And turning toward her friend, she
added, “So she’s made you promise to come
and see her? What does she want with you?”
“What does she want with me?
’Gad! To talk, I expect to be
with me a bit. It’s her politeness.”
Nana looked steadily at Satin.
“Tut, tut,” she said softly. After
all, it didn’t matter to her! Yet seeing
that the lady was keeping them waiting, she declared
that she would not stay longer, and accordingly they
both took their departure.
The next day Fontan informed Nana
that he was not coming home to dinner, and she went
down early to find Satin with a view to treating her
at a restaurant. The choice of the restaurant
involved infinite debate. Satin proposed various
brewery bars, which Nana thought detestable, and at
last persuaded her to dine at Laure’s. This
was a table d’hote in the Rue des
Martyrs, where the dinner cost three francs.
Tired of waiting for the dinner hour
and not knowing what to do out in the street, the
pair went up to Laure’s twenty minutes too early.
The three dining rooms there were still empty, and
they sat down at a table in the very saloon where
Laure Piedefer was enthroned on a high bench behind
a bar. This Laure was a lady of some fifty summers,
whose swelling contours were tightly laced by belts
and corsets. Women kept entering in quick procession,
and each, in passing, craned upward so as to overtop
the saucers raised on the counter and kissed Laure
on the mouth with tender familiarity, while the monstrous
creature tried, with tears in her eyes, to divide
her attentions among them in such a way as to make
no one jealous. On the other hand, the servant
who waited on the ladies was a tall, lean woman.
She seemed wasted with disease, and her eyes were
ringed with dark lines and glowed with somber fire.
Very rapidly the three saloons filled up. There
were some hundred customers, and they had seated themselves
wherever they could find vacant places. The majority
were nearing the age of forty: their flesh was
puffy and so bloated by vice as almost to hide the
outlines of their flaccid mouths. But amid all
these gross bosoms and figures some slim, pretty girls
were observable. These still wore a modest expression
despite their impudent gestures, for they were only
beginners in their art, who had started life in the
ballrooms of the slums and had been brought to Laure’s
by some customer or other. Here the tribe of
bloated women, excited by the sweet scent of their
youth, jostled one another and, while treating them
to dainties, formed a perfect court round them, much
as old amorous bachelors might have done. As
to the men, they were not numerous. There were
ten or fifteen of them at the outside, and if we except
four tall fellows who had come to see the sight and
were cracking jokes and taking things easy, they behaved
humbly enough amid this whelming flood of petticoats.
“I say, their stew’s very good, ain’t
it?” said Satin.
Nana nodded with much satisfaction.
It was the old substantial dinner you get in a country
hotel and consisted of vol-au-vent a
la financière, fowl boiled in rice, beans
with a sauce and vanilla creams, iced and flavored
with burnt sugar. The ladies made an especial
onslaught on the boiled fowl and rice: their
stays seemed about to burst; they wiped their lips
with slow, luxurious movements. At first Nana
had been afraid of meeting old friends who might have
asked her silly questions, but she grew calm at last,
for she recognized no one she knew among that extremely
motley throng, where faded dresses and lamentable hats
contrasted strangely with handsome costumes, the wearers
of which fraternized in vice with their shabbier neighbors.
She was momentarily interested, however, at the sight
of a young man with short curly hair and insolent
face who kept a whole tableful of vastly fat women
breathlessly attentive to his slightest caprice.
But when the young man began to laugh his bosom swelled.
“Good lack, it’s a woman!”
She let a little cry escape as she
spoke, and Satin, who was stuffing herself with boiled
fowl, lifted up her head and whispered:
“Oh yes! I know her.
A smart lot, eh? They do just fight for her.”
Nana pouted disgustingly. She
could not understand the thing as yet. Nevertheless,
she remarked in her sensible tone that there was no
disputing about tastes or colors, for you never could
tell what you yourself might one day have a liking
for. So she ate her cream with an air of philosophy,
though she was perfectly well aware that Satin with
her great blue virginal eyes was throwing the neighboring
tables into a state of great excitement. There
was one woman in particular, a powerful, fair-haired
person who sat close to her and made herself extremely
agreeable. She seemed all aglow with affection
and pushed toward the girl so eagerly that Nana was
on the point of interfering.
But at that very moment a woman who
was entering the room gave her a shock of surprise.
Indeed, she had recognized Mme Robert. The latter,
looking, as was her wont, like a pretty brown mouse,
nodded familiarly to the tall, lean serving maid and
came and leaned upon Laure’s counter. Then
both women exchanged a long kiss. Nana thought
such an attention on the part of a woman so distinguished
looking very amusing, the more so because Mme Robert
had quite altered her usual modest expression.
On the contrary, her eye roved about the saloon as
she kept up a whispered conversation. Laure had
resumed her seat and once more settled herself down
with all the majesty of an old image of Vice, whose
face has been worn and polished by the kisses of the
faithful. Above the range of loaded plates she
sat enthroned in all the opulence which a hotelkeeper
enjoys after forty years of activity, and as she sat
there she swayed her bloated following of large women,
in comparison with the biggest of whom she seemed
monstrous.
But Mme Robert had caught sight of
Satin, and leaving Laure, she ran up and behaved charmingly,
telling her how much she regretted not having been
at home the day before. When Satin, however, who
was ravished at this treatment, insisted on finding
room for her at the table, she vowed she had already
dined. She had simply come up to look about her.
As she stood talking behind her new friend’s
chair she leaned lightly on her shoulders and in a
smiling, coaxing manner remarked:
“Now when shall I see you? If you were
free ”
Nana unluckily failed to hear more.
The conversation vexed her, and she was dying to tell
this honest lady a few home truths. But the sight
of a troop of new arrivals paralyzed her. It
was composed of smart, fashionably dressed women who
were wearing their diamonds. Under the influence
of perverse impulse they had made up a party to come
to Laure’s whom, by the by, they
all treated with great familiarity to eat
the three-franc dinner while flashing their jewels
of great price in the jealous and astonished eyes
of poor, bedraggled prostitutes. The moment they
entered, talking and laughing in their shrill, clear
tones and seeming to bring sunshine with them from
the outside world, Nana turned her head rapidly away.
Much to her annoyance she had recognized Lucy Stewart
and Maria Blond among them, and for nearly five minutes,
during which the ladies chatted with Laure before passing
into the saloon beyond, she kept her head down and
seemed deeply occupied in rolling bread pills on the
cloth in front of her. But when at length she
was able to look round, what was her astonishment to
observe the chair next to hers vacant! Satin
had vanished.
“Gracious, where can she be?” she loudly
ejaculated.
The sturdy, fair woman who had been
overwhelming Satin with civil attentions laughed ill-temperedly,
and when Nana, whom the laugh irritated, looked threatening
she remarked in a soft, drawling way:
“It’s certainly not me
that’s done you this turn; it’s the other
one!”
Thereupon Nana understood that they
would most likely make game of her and so said nothing
more. She even kept her seat for some moments,
as she did not wish to show how angry she felt.
She could hear Lucy Stewart laughing at the end of
the next saloon, where she was treating a whole table
of little women who had come from the public balls
at Montmartre and La Chapelle. It was very hot;
the servant was carrying away piles of dirty plates
with a strong scent of boiled fowl and rice, while
the four gentlemen had ended by regaling quite half
a dozen couples with capital wine in the hope of making
them tipsy and hearing some pretty stiffish things.
What at present most exasperated Nana was the thought
of paying for Satin’s dinner. There was
a wench for you, who allowed herself to be amused
and then made off with never a thank-you in company
with the first petticoat that came by! Without
doubt it was only a matter of three francs, but she
felt it was hard lines all the same her
way of doing it was too disgusting. Nevertheless,
she paid up, throwing the six francs at Laure, whom
at the moment she despised more than the mud in the
street. In the Rue des Martyrs Nana
felt her bitterness increasing. She was certainly
not going to run after Satin! It was a nice filthy
business for one to be poking one’s nose into!
But her evening was spoiled, and she walked slowly
up again toward Montmartre, raging against Mme Robert
in particular. Gracious goodness, that woman had
a fine cheek to go playing the lady yes,
the lady in the dustbin! She now felt sure she
had met her at the Papillon, a wretched public-house
ball in the Rue des Poissonniers, where
men conquered her scruples for thirty sous.
And to think a thing like that got hold of important
functionaries with her modest looks! And to think
she refused suppers to which one did her the honor
of inviting her because, forsooth, she was playing
the virtuous game! Oh yes, she’d get virtued!
It was always those conceited prudes who went the
most fearful lengths in low corners nobody knew anything
about.
Revolving these matters, Nana at length
reached her home in the Rue Veron and was taken aback
on observing a light in the window. Fontan had
come home in a sulk, for he, too, had been deserted
by the friend who had been dining with him. He
listened coldly to her explanations while she trembled
lest he should strike her. It scared her to find
him at home, seeing that she had not expected him
before one in the morning, and she told him a fib
and confessed that she had certainly spent six francs,
but in Mme Maloir’s society. He was not
ruffled, however, and he handed her a letter which,
though addressed to her, he had quietly opened.
It was a letter from Georges, who was still a prisoner
at Les Fondettes and comforted himself weekly with
the composition of glowing pages. Nana loved
to be written to, especially when the letters were
full of grand, loverlike expressions with a sprinkling
of vows. She used to read them to everybody.
Fontan was familiar with the style employed by Georges
and appreciated it. But that evening she was so
afraid of a scene that she affected complete indifference,
skimming through the letter with a sulky expression
and flinging it aside as soon as read. Fontan
had begun beating a tattoo on a windowpane; the thought
of going to bed so early bored him, and yet he did
not know how to employ his evening. He turned
briskly round:
“Suppose we answer that young vagabond at once,”
he said.
It was the custom for him to write
the letters in reply. He was wont to vie with
the other in point of style. Then, too, he used
to be delighted when Nana, grown enthusiastic after
the letter had been read over aloud, would kiss him
with the announcement that nobody but he could “say
things like that.” Thus their latent affections
would be stirred, and they would end with mutual adoration.
“As you will,” she replied.
“I’ll make tea, and we’ll go to bed
after.”
Thereupon Fontan installed himself
at the table on which pen, ink and paper were at the
same time grandly displayed. He curved his arm;
he drew a long face.
“My heart’s own,” he began aloud.
And for more than an hour he applied
himself to his task, polishing here, weighing a phrase
there, while he sat with his head between his hands
and laughed inwardly whenever he hit upon a peculiarly
tender expression. Nana had already consumed
two cups of tea in silence, when at last he read out
the letter in the level voice and with the two or
three emphatic gestures peculiar to such performances
on the stage. It was five pages long, and he
spoke therein of “the delicious hours passed
at La Mignotte, those hours of which the memory lingered
like subtle perfume.” He vowed “eternal
fidelity to that springtide of love” and ended
by declaring that his sole wish was to “recommence
that happy time if, indeed, happiness can recommence.”
“I say that out of politeness,
y’know,” he explained. “The
moment it becomes laughable eh, what!
I think she’s felt it, she has!”
He glowed with triumph. But Nana
was unskillful; she still suspected an outbreak and
now was mistaken enough not to fling her arms round
his neck in a burst of admiration. She thought
the letter a respectable performance, nothing more.
Thereupon he was much annoyed. If his letter
did not please her she might write another! And
so instead of bursting out in loverlike speeches and
exchanging kisses, as their wont was, they sat coldly
facing one another at the table. Nevertheless,
she poured him out a cup of tea.
“Here’s a filthy mess,”
he cried after dipping his lips in the mixture.
“You’ve put salt in it, you have!”
Nana was unlucky enough to shrug her
shoulders, and at that he grew furious.
“Aha! Things are taking a wrong turn tonight!”
And with that the quarrel began.
It was only ten by the clock, and this was a way of
killing time. So he lashed himself into a rage
and threw in Nana’s teeth a whole string of
insults and all kinds of accusations which followed
one another so closely that she had no time to defend
herself. She was dirty; she was stupid; she had
knocked about in all sorts of low places! After
that he waxed frantic over the money question.
Did he spend six francs when he dined out? No,
somebody was treating him to a dinner; otherwise he
would have eaten his ordinary meal at home. And
to think of spending them on that old procuress of
a Maloir, a jade he would chuck out of the house tomorrow!
Yes, by jingo, they would get into a nice mess if
he and she were to go throwing six francs out of the
window every day!
“Now to begin with, I want your
accounts,” he shouted. “Let’s
see; hand over the money! Now where do we stand?”
All his sordid avaricious instincts
came to the surface. Nana was cowed and scared,
and she made haste to fetch their remaining cash out
of the desk and to bring it him. Up to that time
the key had lain on this common treasury, from which
they had drawn as freely as they wished.
“How’s this?” he
said when he had counted up the money. “There
are scarcely seven thousand francs remaining out of
seventeen thousand, and we’ve only been together
three months. The thing’s impossible.”
He rushed forward, gave the desk a
savage shake and brought the drawer forward in order
to ransack it in the light of the lamp. But it
actually contained only six thousand eight hundred
and odd francs. Thereupon the tempest burst forth.
“Ten thousand francs in three
months!” he yelled. “By God!
What have you done with it all? Eh? Answer!
It all goes to your jade of an aunt, eh? Or you’re
keeping men; that’s plain! Will you answer?”
“Oh well, if you must get in
a rage!” said Nana. “Why, the calculation’s
easily made! You haven’t allowed for the
furniture; besides, I’ve had to buy linen.
Money goes quickly when one’s settling in a new
place.”
But while requiring explanations he
refused to listen to them.
“Yes, it goes a deal too quickly!”
he rejoined more calmly. “And look here,
little girl, I’ve had enough of this mutual housekeeping.
You know those seven thousand francs are mine.
Yes, and as I’ve got ’em, I shall keep
’em! Hang it, the moment you become wasteful
I get anxious not to be ruined. To each man his
own.”
And he pocketed the money in a lordly
way while Nana gazed at him, dumfounded. He continued
speaking complaisantly:
“You must understand I’m
not such a fool as to keep aunts and likewise children
who don’t belong to me. You were pleased
to spend your own money well, that’s
your affair! But my money no, that’s
sacred! When in the future you cook a leg of
mutton I’ll pay for half of it. We’ll
settle up tonight there!”
Straightway Nana rebelled. She could not help
shouting:
“Come, I say, it’s you
who’ve run through my ten thousand francs.
It’s a dirty trick, I tell you!”
But he did not stop to discuss matters
further, for he dealt her a random box on the ear
across the table, remarking as he did so:
“Let’s have that again!”
She let him have it again despite
his blow. Whereupon he fell upon her and kicked
and cuffed her heartily. Soon he had reduced her
to such a state that she ended, as her wont was, by
undressing and going to bed in a flood of tears.
He was out of breath and was going
to bed, in his turn, when he noticed the letter he
had written to Georges lying on the table. Whereupon
he folded it up carefully and, turning toward the bed,
remarked in threatening accents:
“It’s very well written,
and I’m going to post it myself because I don’t
like women’s fancies. Now don’t go
moaning any more; it puts my teeth on edge.”
Nana, who was crying and gasping,
thereupon held her breath. When he was in bed
she choked with emotion and threw herself upon his
breast with a wild burst of sobs. Their scuffles
always ended thus, for she trembled at the thought
of losing him and, like a coward, wanted always to
feel that he belonged entirely to her, despite everything.
Twice he pushed her magnificently away, but the warm
embrace of this woman who was begging for mercy with
great, tearful eyes, as some faithful brute might
do, finally aroused desire. And he became royally
condescending without, however, lowering his dignity
before any of her advances. In fact, he let himself
be caressed and taken by force, as became a man whose
forgiveness is worth the trouble of winning. Then
he was seized with anxiety, fearing that Nana was
playing a part with a view to regaining possession
of the treasury key. The light had been extinguished
when he felt it necessary to reaffirm his will and
pleasure.
“You must know, my girl, that
this is really very serious and that I keep the money.”
Nana, who was falling asleep with
her arms round his neck, uttered a sublime sentiment.
“Yes, you need fear nothing! I’ll
work for both of us!”
But from that evening onward their
life in common became more and more difficult.
From one week’s end to the other the noise of
slaps filled the air and resembled the ticking of
a clock by which they regulated their existence.
Through dint of being much beaten Nana became as pliable
as fine linen; her skin grew delicate and pink and
white and so soft to the touch and clear to the view
that she may be said to have grown more good looking
than ever. Prulliere, moreover, began running
after her like a madman, coming in when Fontan was
away and pushing her into corners in order to snatch
an embrace. But she used to struggle out of his
grasp, full of indignation and blushing with shame.
It disgusted her to think of him wanting to deceive
a friend. Prulliere would thereupon begin sneering
with a wrathful expression. Why, she was growing
jolly stupid nowadays! How could she take up with
such an ape? For, indeed, Fontan was a regular
ape with that great swingeing nose of his. Oh,
he had an ugly mug! Besides, the man knocked her
about too!
“It’s possible I like
him as he is,” she one day made answer in the
quiet voice peculiar to a woman who confesses to an
abominable taste.
Bosc contented himself by dining with
them as often as possible. He shrugged his shoulders
behind Prulliere’s back a pretty fellow,
to be sure, but a frivolous! Bosc had on more
than one occasion assisted at domestic scenes, and
at dessert, when Fontan slapped Nana, he went on chewing
solemnly, for the thing struck him as being quite in
the course of nature. In order to give some return
for his dinner he used always to go into ecstasies
over their happiness. He declared himself a philosopher
who had given up everything, glory included. At
times Prulliere and Fontan lolled back in their chairs,
losing count of time in front of the empty table,
while with theatrical gestures and intonation they
discussed their former successes till two in the morning.
But he would sit by, lost in thought, finishing the
brandy bottle in silence and only occasionally emitting
a little contemptuous sniff. Where was Talma’s
tradition? Nowhere. Very well, let them leave
him jolly well alone! It was too stupid to go
on as they were doing!
One evening he found Nana in tears.
She took off her dressing jacket in order to show
him her back and her arms, which were black and blue.
He looked at her skin without being tempted to abuse
the opportunity, as that ass of a Prulliere would
have been. Then, sententiously:
“My dear girl, where there are
women there are sure to be ructions. It was Napoleon
who said that, I think. Wash yourself with salt
water. Salt water’s the very thing for
those little knocks. Tut, tut, you’ll get
others as bad, but don’t complain so long as
no bones are broken. I’m inviting myself
to dinner, you know; I’ve spotted a leg of mutton.”
But Mme Lerat had less philosophy.
Every time Nana showed her a fresh bruise on the white
skin she screamed aloud. They were killing her
niece; things couldn’t go on as they were doing.
As a matter of fact, Fontan had turned Mme Lerat out
of doors and had declared that he would not have her
at his house in the future, and ever since that day,
when he returned home and she happened to be there,
she had to make off through the kitchen, which was
a horrible humiliation to her. Accordingly she
never ceased inveighing against that brutal individual.
She especially blamed his ill breeding, pursing up
her lips, as she did so, like a highly respectable
lady whom nobody could possibly remonstrate with on
the subject of good manners.
“Oh, you notice it at once,”
she used to tell Nana; “he hasn’t the
barest notion of the very smallest proprieties.
His mother must have been common! Don’t
deny it the thing’s obvious!
I don’t speak on my own account, though a person
of my years has a right to respectful treatment, but
you how do you manage to put up
with his bad manners? For though I don’t
want to flatter myself, I’ve always taught you
how to behave, and among our own people you always
enjoyed the best possible advice. We were all
very well bred in our family, weren’t we now?”
Nana used never to protest but would
listen with bowed head.
“Then, too,” continued
the aunt, “you’ve only known perfect gentlemen
hitherto. We were talking of that very topic with
Zoe at my place yesterday evening. She can’t
understand it any more than I can. ’How
is it,’ she said, ’that Madame, who used
to have that perfect gentleman, Monsieur
lé Comte, at her beck and call’ for
between you and me, it seems you drove him silly ’how
is it that Madame lets herself be made into mincemeat
by that clown of a fellow?’ I remarked at the
time that you might put up with the beatings but that
I would never have allowed him to be lacking in proper
respect. In fact, there isn’t a word to
be said for him. I wouldn’t have his portrait
in my room even! And you ruin yourself for such
a bird as that; yes, you ruin yourself, my darling;
you toil and you moil, when there are so many others
and such rich men, too, some of them even connected
with the government! Ah well, it’s not
I who ought to be telling you this, of course!
But all the same, when next he tries any of his dirty
tricks on I should cut him short with a ‘Monsieur,
what d’you take me for?’ You know how to
say it in that grand way of yours! It would downright
cripple him.”
Thereupon Nana burst into sobs and stammered out:
“Oh, Aunt, I love him!”
The fact of the matter was that Mme
Lerat was beginning to feel anxious at the painful
way her niece doled out the sparse, occasional francs
destined to pay for little Louis’s board and
lodging. Doubtless she was willing to make sacrifices
and to keep the child by her whatever might happen
while waiting for more prosperous times, but the thought
that Fontan was preventing her and the brat and its
mother from swimming in a sea of gold made her so
savage that she was ready to deny the very existence
of true love. Accordingly she ended up with the
following severe remarks:
“Now listen, some fine day when
he’s taken the skin off your back, you’ll
come and knock at my door, and I’ll open it to
you.”
Soon money began to engross Nana’s
whole attention. Fontan had caused the seven
thousand francs to vanish away. Without doubt
they were quite safe; indeed, she would never have
dared ask him questions about them, for she was wont
to be blushingly diffident with that bird, as Mme Lerat
called him. She trembled lest he should think
her capable of quarreling with him about halfpence.
He had certainly promised to subscribe toward their
common household expenses, and in the early days he
had given out three francs every morning. But
he was as exacting as a boarder; he wanted everything
for his three francs butter, meat, early
fruit and early vegetables and if she ventured
to make an observation, if she hinted that you could
not have everything in the market for three francs,
he flew into a temper and treated her as a useless,
wasteful woman, a confounded donkey whom the tradespeople
were robbing. Moreover, he was always ready to
threaten that he would take lodgings somewhere else.
At the end of a month on certain mornings he had forgotten
to deposit the three francs on the chest of drawers,
and she had ventured to ask for them in a timid, roundabout
way. Whereupon there had been such bitter disputes
and he had seized every pretext to render her life
so miserable that she had found it best no longer to
count upon him. Whenever, however, he had omitted
to leave behind the three one-franc pieces and found
a dinner awaiting him all the same, he grew as merry
as a sandboy, kissed Nana gallantly and waltzed with
the chairs. And she was so charmed by this conduct
that she at length got to hope that nothing would
be found on the chest of drawers, despite the difficulty
she experienced in making both ends meet. One
day she even returned him his three francs, telling
him a tale to the effect that she still had yesterday’s
money. As he had given her nothing then, he hesitated
for some moments, as though he dreaded a lecture.
But she gazed at him with her loving eyes and hugged
him in such utter self-surrender that he pocketed
the money again with that little convulsive twitch
or the fingers peculiar to a miser when he regains
possession of that which has been well-nigh lost.
From that day forth he never troubled himself about
money again or inquired whence it came. But when
there were potatoes on the table he looked intoxicated
with delight and would laugh and smack his lips before
her turkeys and legs of mutton, though of course this
did not prevent his dealing Nana sundry sharp smacks,
as though to keep his hand in amid all his happiness.
Nana had indeed found means to provide
for all needs, and the place on certain days overflowed
with good things. Twice a week, regularly, Bosc
had indigestion. One evening as Mme Lerat was
withdrawing from the scene in high dudgeon because
she had noticed a copious dinner she was not destined
to eat in process of preparation, she could not prevent
herself asking brutally who paid for it all.
Nana was taken by surprise; she grew foolish and began
crying.
“Ah, that’s a pretty business,”
said the aunt, who had divined her meaning.
Nana had resigned herself to it for
the sake of enjoying peace in her own home. Then,
too, the Tricon was to blame. She had come across
her in the Rue de Laval one fine day when Fontan had
gone out raging about a dish of cod. She had
accordingly consented to the proposals made her by
the Tricon, who happened just then to be in difficulty.
As Fontan never came in before six o’clock,
she made arrangements for her afternoons and used
to bring back forty francs, sixty francs, sometimes
more. She might have made it a matter of ten
and fifteen louis had she been able to maintain
her former position, but as matters stood she was very
glad thus to earn enough to keep the pot boiling.
At night she used to forget all her sorrows when Bosc
sat there bursting with dinner and Fontan leaned on
his elbows and with an expression of lofty superiority
becoming a man who is loved for his own sake allowed
her to kiss him on the eyelids.
In due course Nana’s very adoration
of her darling, her dear old duck, which was all the
more passionately blind, seeing that now she paid for
everything, plunged her back into the muddiest depths
of her calling. She roamed the streets and loitered
on the pavement in quest of a five-franc piece, just
as when she was a slipshod baggage years ago.
One Sunday at La Rochefoucauld Market she had made
her peace with Satin after having flown at her with
furious reproaches about Mme Robert. But Satin
had been content to answer that when one didn’t
like a thing there was no reason why one should want
to disgust others with it. And Nana, who was
by way of being wide-minded, had accepted the philosophic
view that you never can tell where your tastes will
lead you and had forgiven her. Her curiosity
was even excited, and she began questioning her about
obscure vices and was astounded to be adding to her
information at her time of life and with her knowledge.
She burst out laughing and gave vent to various expressions
of surprise. It struck her as so queer, and yet
she was a little shocked by it, for she was really
quite the philistine outside the pale of her own habits.
So she went back to Laure’s and fed there when
Fontan was dining out. She derived much amusement
from the stories and the amours and the jealousies
which inflamed the female customers without hindering
their appetites in the slightest degree. Nevertheless,
she still was not quite in it, as she herself phrased
it. The vast Laure, meltingly maternal as ever,
used often to invite her to pass a day or two at her
Asnieries Villa, a country house containing seven
spare bedrooms. But she used to refuse; she was
afraid. Satin, however, swore she was mistaken
about it, that gentlemen from Paris swung you in swings
and played tonneau with you, and so she promised to
come at some future time when it would be possible
for her to leave town.
At that time Nana was much tormented
by circumstances and not at all festively inclined.
She needed money, and when the Tricon did not want
her, which too often happened, she had no notion where
to bestow her charms. Then began a series of
wild descents upon the Parisian pavement, plunges
into the baser sort of vice, whose votaries prowl in
muddy bystreets under the restless flicker of gas
lamps. Nana went back to the public-house balls
in the suburbs, where she had kicked up her heels
in the early ill-shod days. She revisited the
dark corners on the outer boulevards, where when she
was fifteen years old men used to hug her while her
father was looking for her in order to give her a hiding.
Both the women would speed along, visiting all the
ballrooms and restaurants in a quarter and climbing
innumerable staircases which were wet with spittle
and spilled beer, or they would stroll quietly about,
going up streets and planting themselves in front
of carriage gates. Satin, who had served her
apprenticeship in the Quartier Latin, used to
take Nana to Bullier’s and the public houses
in the Boulevard Saint-Michel. But the vacations
were drawing on, and the Quarter looked too starved.
Eventually they always returned to the principal boulevards,
for it was there they ran the best chance of getting
what they wanted. From the heights of Montmartre
to the observatory plateau they scoured the whole
town in the way we have been describing. They
were out on rainy evenings, when their boots got worn
down, and on hot evenings, when their linen clung
to their skins. There were long periods of waiting
and endless periods of walking; there were jostlings
and disputes and the nameless, brutal caresses of
the stray passer-by who was taken by them to some
miserable furnished room and came swearing down the
greasy stairs afterward.
The summer was drawing to a close,
a stormy summer of burning nights. The pair used
to start out together after dinner, toward nine o’clock.
On the pavements of the Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette
two long files of women scudded along with tucked-up
skirts and bent heads, keeping close to the shops
but never once glancing at the displays in the shopwindows
as they hurried busily down toward the boulevards.
This was the hungry exodus from the Quartier
Breda which took place nightly when the street lamps
had just been lit. Nana and Satin used to skirt
the church and then march off along the Rue lé
Peletier. When they were some hundred yards from
the Cafe Riche and had fairly reached their scene of
operations they would shake out the skirts of their
dresses, which up till that moment they had been holding
carefully up, and begin sweeping the pavements, regardless
of dust. With much swaying of the hips they strolled
delicately along, slackening their pace when they crossed
the bright light thrown from one of the great cafes.
With shoulders thrown back, shrill and noisy laughter
and many backward glances at the men who turned to
look at them, they marched about and were completely
in their element. In the shadow of night their
artificially whitened faces, their rouged lips and
their darkened eyelids became as charming and suggestive
as if the inmates of a make-believe trumpery oriental
bazaar had been sent forth into the open street.
Till eleven at night they sauntered gaily along among
the rudely jostling crowds, contenting themselves with
an occasional “dirty ass!” hurled after
the clumsy people whose boot heels had torn a flounce
or two from their dresses. Little familiar salutations
would pass between them and the cafe waiters, and at
times they would stop and chat in front of a small
table and accept of drinks, which they consumed with
much deliberation, as became people not sorry to sit
down for a bit while waiting for the theaters to empty.
But as night advanced, if they had not made one or
two trips in the direction of the Rue la Rochefoucauld,
they became abject strumpets, and their hunt for men
grew more ferocious than ever. Beneath the trees
in the darkening and fast-emptying boulevards fierce
bargainings took place, accompanied by oaths and blows.
Respectable family parties fathers, mothers
and daughters who were used to such scenes,
would pass quietly by the while without quickening
their pace. Afterward, when they had walked from
the opera to the gymnase some half-score times
and in the deepening night men were rapidly dropping
off homeward for good and all, Nana and Satin kept
to the sidewalk in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre.
There up till two o’clock in the morning restaurants,
bars and ham-and-beef shops were brightly lit up,
while a noisy mob of women hung obstinately round
the doors of the cafes. This suburb was the only
corner of night Paris which was still alight and still
alive, the only market still open to nocturnal bargains.
These last were openly struck between group and group
and from one end of the street to the other, just
as in the wide and open corridor of a disorderly house.
On such evenings as the pair came home without having
had any success they used to wrangle together.
The Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette stretched dark and
deserted in front of them. Here and there the
crawling shadow of a woman was discernible, for the
Quarter was going home and going home late, and poor
creatures, exasperated at a night of fruitless loitering,
were unwilling to give up the chase and would still
stand, disputing in hoarse voices with any strayed
reveler they could catch at the corner of the Rue
Breda or the Rue Fontaine.
Nevertheless, some windfalls came
in their way now and then in the shape of louis
picked up in the society of elegant gentlemen, who
slipped their decorations into their pockets as they
went upstairs with them. Satin had an especially
keen scent for these. On rainy evenings, when
the dripping city exhaled an unpleasant odor suggestive
of a great untidy bed, she knew that the soft weather
and the fetid reek of the town’s holes and corners
were sure to send the men mad. And so she watched
the best dressed among them, for she knew by their
pale eyes what their state was. On such nights
it was as though a fit of fleshly madness were passing
over Paris. The girl was rather nervous certainly,
for the most modish gentlemen were always the most
obscene. All the varnish would crack off a man,
and the brute beast would show itself, exacting, monstrous
in lust, a past master in corruption. But besides
being nervous, that trollop of a Satin was lacking
in respect. She would blurt out awful things
in front of dignified gentlemen in carriages and assure
them that their coachmen were better bred than they
because they behaved respectfully toward the women
and did not half kill them with their diabolical tricks
and suggestions. The way in which smart people
sprawled head over heels into all the cesspools of
vice still caused Nana some surprise, for she had
a few prejudices remaining, though Satin was rapidly
destroying them.
“Well then,” she used
to say when talking seriously about the matter, “there’s
no such thing as virtue left, is there?”
From one end of the social ladder
to the other everybody was on the loose! Good
gracious! Some nice things ought to be going on
in Paris between nine o’clock in the evening
and three in the morning! And with that she began
making very merry and declaring that if one could only
have looked into every room one would have seen some
funny sights the little people going it
head over ears and a good lot of swells, too, playing
the swine rather harder than the rest. Oh, she
was finishing her education!
One evening when she came to call
for Satin she recognized the Marquis de Chouard.
He was coming downstairs with quaking legs; his face
was ashen white, and he leaned heavily on the banisters.
She pretended to be blowing her nose. Upstairs
she found Satin amid indescribable filth. No
household work had been done for a week; her bed was
disgusting, and ewers and basins were standing about
in all directions. Nana expressed surprise at
her knowing the marquis. Oh yes, she knew him!
He had jolly well bored her confectioner and her when
they were together. At present he used to come
back now and then, but he nearly bothered her life
out, going sniffing into all the dirty corners yes,
even into her slippers!
“Yes, dear girl, my slippers!
Oh, he’s the dirtiest old beast, always wanting
one to do things!”
The sincerity of these low debauches
rendered Nana especially uneasy. Seeing the courtesans
around her slowly dying of it every day, she recalled
to mind the comedy of pleasure she had taken part in
when she was in the heyday of success. Moreover,
Satin inspired her with an awful fear of the police.
She was full of anecdotes about them. Formerly
she had been the mistress of a plain-clothes man,
had consented to this in order to be left in peace,
and on two occasions he had prevented her from being
put “on the lists.” But at present
she was in a great fright, for if she were to be nabbed
again there was a clear case against her. You
had only to listen to her! For the sake of perquisites
the police used to take up as many women as possible.
They laid hold of everybody and quieted you with a
slap if you shouted, for they were sure of being defended
in their actions and rewarded, even when they had taken
a virtuous girl among the rest. In the summer
they would swoop upon the boulevard in parties of
twelve or fifteen, surround a whole long reach of
sidewalk and fish up as many as thirty women in an
evening. Satin, however, knew the likely places,
and the moment she saw a plain-clothes man heaving
in sight she took to her heels, while the long lines
of women on the pavements scattered in consternation
and fled through the surrounding crowd. The dread
of the law and of the magistracy was such that certain
women would stand as though paralyzed in the doorways
of the cafes while the raid was sweeping the avenue
without. But Satin was even more afraid of being
denounced, for her pastry cook had proved blackguard
enough to threaten to sell her when she had left him.
Yes, that was a fake by which men lived on their mistresses!
Then, too, there were the dirty women who delivered
you up out of sheer treachery if you were prettier
than they! Nana listened to these recitals and
felt her terrors growing upon her. She had always
trembled before the law, that unknown power, that
form of revenge practiced by men able and willing
to crush her in the certain absence of all defenders.
Saint-Lazare she pictured as a grave, a dark hole,
in which they buried live women after they had cut
off their hair. She admitted that it was only
necessary to leave Fontan and seek powerful protectors.
But as matters stood it was in vain that Satin talked
to her of certain lists of women’s names, which
it was the duty of the plainclothes men to consult,
and of certain photographs accompanying the lists,
the originals of which were on no account to be touched.
The reassurance did not make her tremble the less,
and she still saw herself hustled and dragged along
and finally subjected to the official medical inspection.
The thought of the official armchair filled her with
shame and anguish, for had she not bade it defiance
a score of times?
Now it so happened that one evening
toward the close of September, as she was walking
with Satin in the Boulevard Poissonnière,
the latter suddenly began tearing along at a terrible
pace. And when Nana asked her what she meant
thereby:
“It’s the plain-clothes
men!” whispered Satin. “Off with you!
Off with you!” A wild stampede took place amid
the surging crowd. Skirts streamed out behind
and were torn. There were blows and shrieks.
A woman fell down. The crowd of bystanders stood
hilariously watching this rough police raid while
the plain-clothes men rapidly narrowed their circle.
Meanwhile Nana had lost Satin. Her legs were failing
her, and she would have been taken up for a certainty
had not a man caught her by the arm and led her away
in front of the angry police. It was Prulliere,
and he had just recognized her. Without saying
a word he turned down the Rue Rougemont with her.
It was just then quite deserted, and she was able to
regain breath there, but at first her faintness and
exhaustion were such that he had to support her.
She did not even thank him.
“Look here,” he said,
“you must recover a bit. Come up to my rooms.”
He lodged in the Rue Bergère
close by. But she straightened herself up
at once.
“No, I don’t want to.”
Thereupon he waxed coarse and rejoined:
“Why don’t you want to, eh? Why,
everybody visits my rooms.”
“Because I don’t.”
In her opinion that explained everything.
She was too fond of Fontan to betray him with one
of his friends. The other people ceased to count
the moment there was no pleasure in the business,
and necessity compelled her to it. In view of
her idiotic obstinacy Prulliere, as became a pretty
fellow whose vanity had been wounded, did a cowardly
thing.
“Very well, do as you like!”
he cried. “Only I don’t side with
you, my dear. You must get out of the scrape
by yourself.”
And with that he left her. Terrors
got hold of her again, and scurrying past shops and
turning white whenever a man drew nigh, she fetched
an immense compass before reaching Montmartre.
On the morrow, while still suffering
from the shock of last night’s terrors, Nana
went to her aunt’s and at the foot of a small
empty street in the Batignolles found herself face
to face with Labordette. At first they both appeared
embarrassed, for with his usual complaisance he was
busy on a secret errand. Nevertheless, he was
the first to regain his self-possession and to announce
himself fortunate in meeting her. Yes, certainly,
everybody was still wondering at Nana’s total
eclipse. People were asking for her, and old
friends were pining. And with that he grew quite
paternal and ended by sermonizing.
“Frankly speaking, between you
and me, my dear, the thing’s getting stupid.
One can understand a mash, but to go to that extent,
to be trampled on like that and to get nothing but
knocks! Are you playing up for the ‘Virtue
Prizes’ then?”
She listened to him with an embarrassed
expression. But when he told her about Rose,
who was triumphantly enjoying her conquest of Count
Muffat, a flame came into her eyes.
“Oh, if I wanted to ” she muttered.
As became an obliging friend, he at
once offered to act as intercessor. But she refused
his help, and he thereupon attacked her in an opposite
quarter.
He informed her that Bordenave was
busy mounting a play of Fauchery’s containing
a splendid part for her.
“What, a play with a part!”
she cried in amazement. “But he’s
in it and he’s told me nothing about it!”
She did not mention Fontan by name.
However, she grew calm again directly and declared
that she would never go on the stage again. Labordette
doubtless remained unconvinced, for he continued with
smiling insistence.
“You know, you need fear nothing
with me. I get your Muffat ready for you, and
you go on the stage again, and I bring him to you like
a little dog!”
“No!” she cried decisively.
And she left him. Her heroic
conduct made her tenderly pitiful toward herself.
No blackguard of a man would ever have sacrificed himself
like that without trumpeting the fact abroad.
Nevertheless, she was struck by one thing: Labordette
had given her exactly the same advice as Francis had
given her. That evening when Fontan came home
she questioned him about Fauchery’s piece.
The former had been back at the Varietés for two
months past. Why then had he not told her about
the part?
“What part?” he said in
his ill-humored tone. “The grand lady’s
part, maybe? The deuce, you believe you’ve
got talent then! Why, such a part would utterly
do for you, my girl! You’re meant for comic
business there’s no denying it!”
She was dreadfully wounded. All
that evening he kept chaffing her, calling her Mlle
Mars. But the harder he hit the more bravely she
suffered, for she derived a certain bitter satisfaction
from this heroic devotion of hers, which rendered
her very great and very loving in her own eyes.
Ever since she had gone with other men in order to
supply his wants her love for him had increased, and
the fatigues and disgusts encountered outside only
added to the flame. He was fast becoming a sort
of pet vice for which she paid, a necessity of existence
it was impossible to do without, seeing that blows
only stimulated her desires. He, on his part,
seeing what a good tame thing she had become, ended
by abusing his privileges. She was getting on
his nerves, and he began to conceive so fierce a loathing
for her that he forgot to keep count of his real interests.
When Bosc made his customary remarks to him he cried
out in exasperation, for which there was no apparent
cause, that he had had enough of her and of her good
dinners and that he would shortly chuck her out of
doors if only for the sake of making another woman
a present of his seven thousand francs. Indeed,
that was how their liaison ended.
One evening Nana came in toward eleven
o’clock and found the door bolted. She
tapped once there was no answer; twice still
no answer. Meanwhile she saw light under the
door, and Fontan inside did not trouble to move.
She rapped again unwearyingly; she called him and began
to get annoyed. At length Fontan’s voice
became audible; he spoke slowly and rather unctuously
and uttered but this one word.
“Merde!”
She beat on the door with her fists.
“Merde!”
She banged hard enough to smash in the woodwork.
“Merde!”
And for upward of a quarter of an
hour the same foul expression buffeted her, answering
like a jeering echo to every blow wherewith she shook
the door. At length, seeing that she was not growing
tired, he opened sharply, planted himself on the threshold,
folded his arms and said in the same cold, brutal
voice:
“By God, have you done yet?
What d’you want? Are you going to let us
sleep in peace, eh? You can quite see I’ve
got company tonight.”
He was certainly not alone, for Nana
perceived the little woman from the Bouffes with the
untidy tow hair and the gimlet-hole eyes, standing
enjoying herself in her shift among the furniture she
had paid for. But Fontan stepped out on the landing.
He looked terrible, and he spread out and crooked
his great fingers as if they were pincers.
“Hook it or I’ll strangle you!”
Whereupon Nana burst into a nervous
fit of sobbing. She was frightened and she made
off. This time it was she that was being kicked
out of doors. And in her fury the thought of
Muffat suddenly occurred to her. Ah, to be sure,
Fontan, of all men, ought never to have done her such
a turn!
When she was out in the street her
first thought was to go and sleep with Satin, provided
the girl had no one with her. She met her in
front of her house, for she, too, had been turned out
of doors by her landlord. He had just had a padlock
affixed to her door quite illegally, of
course, seeing that she had her own furniture.
She swore and talked of having him up before the commissary
of police. In the meantime, as midnight was striking,
they had to begin thinking of finding a bed.
And Satin, deeming it unwise to let the plain-clothes
men into her secrets, ended by taking Nana to a woman
who kept a little hotel in the Rue de Laval.
Here they were assigned a narrow room on the first
floor, the window of which opened on the courtyard.
Satin remarked:
“I should gladly have gone to
Mme Robert’s. There’s always a corner
there for me. But with you it’s out of the
question. She’s getting absurdly jealous;
she beat me the other night.”
When they had shut themselves in,
Nana, who had not yet relieved her feelings, burst
into tears and again and again recounted Fontan’s
dirty behavior. Satin listened complaisantly,
comforted her, grew even more angry than she in denunciation
of the male sex.
“Oh, the pigs, the pigs!
Look here, we’ll have nothing more to do with
them!”
Then she helped Nana to undress with
all the small, busy attentions, becoming a humble
little friend. She kept saying coaxingly:
“Let’s go to bed as fast
as we can, pet. We shall be better off there!
Oh, how silly you are to get crusty about things!
I tell you, they’re dirty brutes. Don’t
think any more about ’em. I I
love you very much. Don’t cry, and oblige
your own little darling girl.”
And once in bed, she forthwith took
Nana in her arms and soothed and comforted her.
She refused to hear Fontan’s name mentioned again,
and each time it recurred to her friend’s lips
she stopped it with a kiss. Her lips pouted in
pretty indignation; her hair lay loose about her, and
her face glowed with tenderness and childlike beauty.
Little by little her soft embrace compelled Nana to
dry her tears. She was touched and replied to
Satin’s caresses. When two o’clock
struck the candle was still burning, and a sound of
soft, smothered laughter and lovers’ talk was
audible in the room.
But suddenly a loud noise came up
from the lower floors of the hotel, and Satin, with
next to nothing on, got up and listened intently.
“The police!” she said, growing very pale.
“Oh, blast our bad luck! We’re bloody
well done for!”
Often had she told stories about the
raids on hotel made by the plainclothes men.
But that particular night neither of them had suspected
anything when they took shelter in the Rue de Laval.
At the sound of the word “police” Nana
lost her head. She jumped out of bed and ran
across the room with the scared look of a madwoman
about to jump out of the window. Luckily, however,
the little courtyard was roofed with glass, which
was covered with an iron-wire grating at the level
of the girls’ bedroom. At sight of this
she ceased to hesitate; she stepped over the window
prop, and with her chemise flying and her legs bared
to the night air she vanished in the gloom.
“Stop! Stop!” said Satin in a great
fright. “You’ll kill yourself.”
Then as they began hammering at the
door, she shut the window like a good-natured girl
and threw her friend’s clothes down into a cupboard.
She was already resigned to her fate and comforted
herself with the thought that, after all, if she were
to be put on the official list she would no longer
be so “beastly frightened” as of yore.
So she pretended to be heavy with sleep. She
yawned; she palavered and ended by opening the door
to a tall, burly fellow with an unkempt beard, who
said to her:
“Show your hands! You’ve
got no needle pricks on them: you don’t
work. Now then, dress!”
“But I’m not a dressmaker;
I’m a burnisher,” Satin brazenly declared.
Nevertheless, she dressed with much
docility, knowing that argument was out of the question.
Cries were ringing through the hotel; a girl was clinging
to doorposts and refusing to budge an inch. Another
girl, in bed with a lover, who was answering for her
legality, was acting the honest woman who had been
grossly insulted and spoke of bringing an action against
the prefect of police. For close on an hour there
was a noise of heavy shoes on the stairs, of fists
hammering on doors, of shrill disputes terminating
in sobs, of petticoats rustling along the walls, of
all the sounds, in fact, attendant on the sudden awakening
and scared departure of a flock of women as they were
roughly packed off by three plain-clothes men, headed
by a little oily-mannered, fair-haired commissary
of police. After they had gone the hotel relapsed
into deep silence.
Nobody had betrayed her; Nana was
saved. Shivering and half dead with fear, she
came groping back into the room. Her bare feet
were cut and bleeding, for they had been torn by the
grating. For a long while she remained sitting
on the edge of the bed, listening and listening.
Toward morning, however, she went to sleep again,
and at eight o’clock, when she woke up, she
escaped from the hotel and ran to her aunt’s.
When Mme Lerat, who happened just then to be drinking
her morning coffee with Zoe, beheld her bedraggled
plight and haggard face, she took note of the hour
and at once understood the state of the case.
“It’s come to it, eh?”
she cried. “I certainly told you that he
would take the skin off your back one of these days.
Well, well, come in; you’ll always find a kind
welcome here.”
Zoe had risen from her chair and was
muttering with respectful familiarity:
“Madame is restored to us at
last. I was waiting for Madame.”
But Mme Lerat insisted on Nana’s
going and kissing Louiset at once, because, she said,
the child took delight in his mother’s nice ways.
Louiset, a sickly child with poor blood, was still
asleep, and when Nana bent over his white, scrofulous
face, the memory of all she had undergone during the
last few months brought a choking lump into her throat.
“Oh, my poor little one, my
poor little one!” she gasped, bursting into
a final fit of sobbing.