Nanna by Emile Zola. - HTML preview

“It’s your turn now; try it a bit. I bet you don’t play bear Then when she felt how humble he was Nana grew tyran-like me.”

nously triumphant. The rage for debasing things was inborn It was still charming enough. As bear she amused him with in her. It did not suffice her to destroy them; she must soil her white skin and her fell of ruddy hair. He used to laugh them too. Her delicate hands left abominable traces and them-and go down on all fours, too, and growl and bite her calves, selves decomposed whatever they had broken. And he in his while she ran from him with an affectation of terror.

imbecile condition lent himself to this sort of sport, for he

“Are we beasts, eh?” she would end by saying. “You’ve was possessed by vaguely remembered stories of saints who no notion how ugly you are, my pet! Just think if they were were devoured by vermin and in turn devoured their own to see you like that at the Tuileries!” excrements. When once she had him fast in her room and But ere long these little games were spoiled. It was not the doors were shut, she treated herself to a man’s infamy.

cruelty in her case, for she was still a good-natured girl; it 374

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was as though a passing wind of madness were blowing beast. He longed to sink still further and would cry: ever more strongly in the shut-up bedroom. A storm of

“Hit harder. On, on! I’m wild! Hit away!” lust disordered their brains, plunged them into the deliri-She was seized with a whim and insisted on his coming ous imaginations of the flesh. The old pious terrors of their to her one night clad in his magnificent chamberlain’s cos-sleepless nights were now transforming themselves into a tume. Then how she did laugh and make fun of him when thirst for bestiality, a furious longing to walk on all fours, she had him there in all his glory, with the sword and the to growl and to bite. One day when he was playing bear cocked hat and the white breeches and the full-bottomed she pushed him so roughly that he fell against a piece of coat of red cloth laced with gold and the symbolic key furniture, and when she saw the lump on his forehead she hanging on its left-hand skirt. This key made her especially burst into involuntary laughter. After that her experiments merry and urged her to a wildly fanciful and extremely filthy on La Faloise having whetted her appetite, she treated him discussion of it. Laughing without cease and carried away like an animal, threshing him and chasing him to an accom-by her irreverence for pomp and by the joy of debasing him paniment of kicks.

in the official dignity of his costume, she shook him, pinched

“Gee up! Gee up! You’re a horse. Hoi! Gee up! Won’t him, shouted, “Oh, get along with ye, Chamberlain!” and you hurry up, you dirty screw?”

ended by an accompaniment of swinging kicks behind. Oh, At other times he was a dog. She would throw her scented those kicks! How heartily she rained them on the Tuileries handkerchief to the far end of the room, and he had to run and the majesty of the imperial court, throning on high and pick it up with his teeth, dragging himself along on above an abject and trembling people. That’s what she hands and knees.

thought of society! That was her revenge! It was an affair

“Fetch it, Caesar! Look here, I’ll give you what for if of unconscious hereditary spite; it had come to her in her you don’t look sharp! Well done, Caesar! Good dog! Nice blood. Then when once the chamberlain was undressed old fellow! Now behave pretty!”

and his coat lay spread on the ground she shrieked, “Jump!” And he loved his abasement and delighted in being a brute And he jumped. She shrieked, “Spit!” And he spat. With a 375

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shriek she bade him walk on the gold, on the eagles, on the arrived at Madame’s before going home. Muffat listened decorations, and he walked on them. Hi tiddly hi ti! Noth-to her without in the least understanding the meaning of ing was left; everything was going to pieces. She smashed her recital; then he noticed her agitation and was seized by a chamberlain just as she smashed a flask or a comfit box, a sudden fit of jealousy of which he no longer believed and she made filth of him, reduced him to a heap of mud at himself capable. He threw himself against the bedroom a street corner.

door, for he heard the sound of laughter within. The door Meanwhile the goldsmiths had failed to keep their prom-gave; its two flaps flew asunder, while Zoe withdrew, shrug-ise, and the bed was not delivered till one day about the ging her shoulders. So much the worse for Madame! As middle of January. Muffat was just then in Normandy, Madame was bidding good-by to her wits, she might ar-whither he had gone to sell a last stray shred of property, range matters for herself.

but Nana demanded four thousand francs forthwith. He And on the threshold Muffat uttered a cry at the sight was not due in Paris till the day after tomorrow, but when that was presented to his view.

his business was once finished he hastened his return and

“My God! My God!”

without even paying a flying visit in the Rue Miromesnil The renovated bedroom was resplendent in all its royal came direct to the Avenue de Villiers. Ten o’clock was luxury. Silver buttons gleamed like bright stars on the tea-striking. As he had a key of a little door opening on the rose velvet of the hangings. These last were of that pink Rue Cardinet, he went up unhindered. In the drawing room flesh tint which the skies assume on fine evenings, when upstairs Zoe, who was polishing the bronzes, stood dum-Venus lights her fires on the horizon against the clear back-founded at sight of him, and not knowing how to stop him, ground of fading daylight. The golden cords and tassels she began with much circumlocution, informing him that hanging in corners and the gold lace-work surrounding the M. Venot, looking utterly beside himself, had been search-panels were like little flames of ruddy strands of loosened ing for him since yesterday and that he had already come hair, and they half covered the wide nakedness of the room twice to beg her to send Monsieur to his house if Monsieur while they emphasized its pale, voluptuous tone. Then over 376

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against him there was the gold and silver bed, which shone there like the rag of something human which has been in all the fresh splendor of its chiseled workmanship, a spoiled and dissolved by sixty years of debauchery, he sug-throne this of sufficient extent for Nana to display the out-gested the charnelhouse amid the glory of the woman’s stretched glory of her naked limbs, an altar of Byzantine dazzling contours. Seeing the door open, he had risen up, sumptuousness, worthy of the almighty puissance of Nana’s smitten with sudden terror as became an infirm old man.

sex, which at this very hour lay nudely displayed there in This last night of passion had rendered him imbecile; he the religious immodesty befitting an idol of all men’s wor-was entering on his second childhood; and, his speech fail-ship. And close by, beneath the snowy reflections of her ing him, he remained in an attitude of flight, half-paralyzed, bosom and amid the triumph of the goddess, lay wallow-stammering, shivering, his nightshirt half up his skeleton ing a shameful, decrepit thing, a comic and lamentable ruin, shape, and one leg outside the clothes, a livid leg, covered the Marquis de Chouard in his nightshirt.

with gray hair. Despite her vexation Nana could not keep The count had clasped his hands together and, shaken by from laughing.

a paroxysmal shuddering, he kept crying:

“Do lie down! Stuff yourself into the bed,” she said, pull-

“My God! My God!”

ing him back and burying him under the coverlet, as though It was for the Marquis de Chouard, then, that the golden he were some filthy thing she could not show anyone.

roses flourished on the side panels, those bunches of golden Then she sprang up to shut the door again. She was de-roses blooming among the golden leaves; it was for him cidedly never lucky with her little rough. He was always that the Cupids leaned forth with amorous, roguish laugh-coming when least wanted. And why had he gone to fetch ter from their tumbling ring on the silver trelliswork. And money in Normandy? The old man had brought her the it was for him that the faun at his feet discovered the nymph four thousand francs, and she had let him have his will of sleeping, tired with dalliance, the figure of Night copied her. She pushed back the two flaps of the door and shouted: down to the exaggerated thighs—which caused her to be

“So much the worse for you! It’s your fault. Is that the recognizable of all—from Nana’s renowned nudity. Cast way to come into a room? I’ve had enough of this sort of 377

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thing. Ta ta!”

touched him on the shoulder. He lifted his eyes; it was M.

Muffat remained standing before the closed door, Venot. He was surprised to find him praying before that thunderstruck by what he had just seen. His shuddering fit closed door. Then as though God Himself had responded increased. It mounted from his feet to his heart and brain.

to his appeal, the count flung his arms round the little old Then like a tree shaken by a mighty wind, he swayed to gentleman’s neck. At last he could weep, and he burst out and fro and dropped on his knees, all his muscles giving sobbing and repeated:

way under him. And with hands despairingly outstretched

“My brother, my brother.”

he stammered:

All his suffering humanity found comfort in that cry. He

“This is more than I can bear, my God! More than I can drenched M. Venot’s face with tears; he kissed him, utter-bear!”

ing fragmentary ejaculations.

He had accepted every situation but he could do so no

“Oh, my brother, how I am suffering! You only are left longer. He had come to the end of his strength and was me, my brother. Take me away forever—oh, for mercy’s plunged in the dark void where man and his reason are sake, take me away!”

together overthrown. In an extravagant access of faith he Then M. Venot pressed him to his bosom and called him raised his hands ever higher and higher, searching for

“brother” also. But he had a fresh blow in store for him.

heaven, calling on God.

Since yesterday he had been searching for him in order to

“Oh no, I do not desire it! Oh, come to me, my God!

inform him that the Countess Sabine, in a supreme fit of Succor me; nay, let me die sooner! Oh no, not that man, moral aberration, had but now taken flight with the man-my God! It is over; take me, carry me away, that I may not ager of one of the departments in a large, fancy emporium.

see, that I may not feel any longer! Oh, I belong to you, my It was a fearful scandal, and all Paris was already talking God! Our Father which art in heaven—” about it. Seeing him under the influence of such religious And burning with faith, he continued his supplication, exaltation, Venot felt the opportunity to be favorable and and an ardent prayer escaped from his lips. But someone at once told him of the meanly tragic shipwreck of his house.

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The count was not touched thereby. His wife had gone?

and he had taken her back in a spirit of Christian resigna-That meant nothing to him; they would see what would tion and forgiveness. She haunted him as his living dis-happen later on. And again he was seized with anguish, grace, but he grew more and more indifferent and at last and gazing with a look of terror at the door, the walls, the ceased suffering from these distresses. Heaven took him ceiling, he continued pouring forth his single supplication: out of his wife’s hands in order to restore him to the arms

“Take me away! I cannot bear it any longer! Take me of God, and so the voluptuous pleasures he had enjoyed away!”

with Nana were prolonged in religious ecstasies, accomM. Venot took him away as though he had been a child.

panied by the old stammering utterances, the old prayers From that day forth Muffat belonged to him entirely; he and despairs, the old fits of humility which befit an ac-again became strictly attentive to the duties of religion; his cursed creature who is crushed beneath the mire whence life was utterly blasted. He had resigned his position as he sprang. In the recesses of churches, his knees chilled by chamberlain out of respect for the outraged modesty of the pavement, he would once more experience the delights the Tuileries, and soon Estelle, his daughter, brought an of the past, and his muscles would twitch, and his brain action against him for the recovery of a sum of sixty thou-would whirl deliciously, and the satisfaction of the obscure sand francs, a legacy left her by an aunt to which she ought necessities of his existence would be the same as of old.

to have succeeded at the time of her marriage. Ruined and On the evening of the final rupture Mignon presented living narrowly on the remains of his great fortune, he let himself at the house in the Avenue de Villiers. He was grow-himself be gradually devoured by the countess, who ate up ing accustomed to Fauchery and was beginning at last to the husks Nana had rejected. Sabine was indeed ruined by find the presence of his wife’s husband infinitely advanta-the example of promiscuity set her by her husband’s inter-geous to him. He would leave all the little household cares course with the wanton. She was prone to every excess to the journalist and would trust him in the active superin-and proved the ultimate ruin and destruction of his very tendence of all their affairs. Nay, he devoted the money hearth. After sundry adventures she had returned home, gained by his dramatic successes to the daily expenditure 379

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of the family, and as, on his part, Fauchery behaved sensi-give a pile of gold to have her back.

bly, avoiding ridiculous jealousy and proving not less pli-Zoe was taking the Tricon’s establishment. It was an old ant than Mignon himself whenever Rose found her oppor-project and had been long brooded over. It was her ambi-tunity, the mutual understanding between the two men tion to make her fortune thereby, and she was investing all constantly improved. In fact, they were happy in a partner-her savings in it. She was full of great ideas and meditated ship which was so fertile in all kinds of amenities, and they increasing the business and hiring a house and combining settled down side by side and adopted a family arrange-all the delights within its walls. It was with this in view that ment which no longer proved a stumbling block. The whole she had tried to entice Satin, a little pig at that moment thing was conducted according to rule; it suited admirably, dying in hospital, so terribly had she done for herself.

and each man vied with the other in his efforts for the com-Mignon still insisted with his offer and spoke of the risks mon happiness. That very evening Mignon had come by run in the commercial life, but Zoe, without entering into Fauchery’s advice to see if he could not steal Nana’s lady’s explanations about the exact nature of her establishment, maid from her, the journalist having formed a high opinion smiled a pinched smile, as though she had just put a sweet-of the woman’s extraordinary intelligence. Rose was in meat in her mouth, and was content to remark: despair; for a month past she had been falling into the hands

“Oh, luxuries always pay. You see, I’ve been with others of inexperienced girls who were causing her continual quite long enough, and now I want others to be with me.” embarrassment. When Zoe received him at the door he And a fierce look set her lip curling. At last she would be forthwith pushed her into the dining room. But at his open-

“Madame,” and for the sake of earning a few louis all those ing sentence she smiled. The thing was impossible, she said, women whose slops she had emptied during the last fifteen for she was leaving Madame and establishing herself on years would prostrate themselves before her.

her own account. And she added with an expression of Mignon wished to be announced, and Zoe left him for a discreet vanity that she was daily receiving offers, that the moment after remarking that Madame had passed a miser-ladies were fighting for her and that Mme Blanche would able day. He had only been at the house once before, and 380

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he did not know it at all. The dining room with its Gobelin sea with huge squares of rock and built up a wall where a tapestry, its sideboard and its plate filled him with astonish-workman now and again remained crushed into bloody ment. He opened the doors familiarly and visited the draw-pulp. But all that now struck him as insignificant. Nana ing room and the winter garden, returning thence into the excited him far more. Viewing the fruit of her labors, he hall. This overwhelming luxury, this gilded furniture, these once more experienced the feelings of respect that had silks and velvets, gradually filled him with such a feeling of overcome him one festal evening in a sugar refiner’s cha-admiration that it set his heart beating. When Zoe came down teau. This chateau had been erected for the refiner, and its to fetch him she offered to show him the other rooms, the palatial proportions and royal splendor had been paid for dressing room, that is to say, and the bedroom. In the latter by a single material—sugar. It was with something quite Mignon’s feelings overcame him; he was carried away by different, with a little laughable folly, a little delicate nu-them; they filled him with tender enthusiasm.

dity—it was with this shameful trifle, which is so powerful That damned Nana was simply stupefying him, and yet as to move the universe, that she alone, without workmen, he thought he knew a thing or two. Amid the downfall of without the inventions of engineers, had shaken Paris to its the house and the servants’ wild, wasteful race to destruc-foundations and had built up a fortune on the bodies of tion, massed-up riches still filled every gaping hole and dead men.

overtopped every ruined wall. And Mignon, as he viewed

“Oh, by God, what an implement!”

this lordly monument of wealth, began recalling to mind Mignon let the words escape him in his ecstasy, for he the various great works he had seen. Near Marseilles they felt a return of personal gratitude.

had shown him an aqueduct, the stone arches of which Nana had gradually lapsed into a most mournful condi-bestrode an abyss, a Cyclopean work which cost millions tion. To begin with, the meeting of the marquis and the of money and ten years of intense labor. At Cherbourg he count had given her a severe fit of feverish nervousness, had seen the new harbor with its enormous works, where which verged at times on laughter. Then the thought of hundreds of men sweated in the sun while cranes filled the this old man going away half dead in a cab and of her poor 381

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rough, whom she would never set eyes on again now that

“Zizi dead!” she cried.

she had driven him so wild, brought on what looked like And involuntarily her eyes sought the pink stain on the the beginnings of melancholia. After that she grew vexed carpet, but it had vanished at last; passing footsteps had worn to hear about Satin’s illness. The girl had disappeared about it away. Meanwhile Labordette entered into particulars. It a fortnight ago and was now ready to die at Lariboisiere, was not exactly known how he died. Some spoke of a wound to such a damnable state had Mme Robert reduced her.

reopening, others of suicide. The lad had plunged, they said, When she ordered the horses to be put to in order that she into a tank at Les Fondettes. Nana kept repeating: might have a last sight of this vile little wretch Zoe had just

“Dead! Dead!”

quietly given her a week’s notice. The announcement drove She had been choking with grief since morning, and her to desperation at once! It seemed to her she was losing now she burst out sobbing and thus sought relief. Hers a member of her own family. Great heavens! What was to was an infinite sorrow: it overwhelmed her with its depth become of her when left alone? And she besought Zoe to and immensity. Labordette wanted to comfort her as stay, and the latter, much flattered by Madame’s despair, touching Georges, but she silenced him with a gesture ended by kissing her to show that she was not going away and blurted out:

in anger. No, she had positively to go: the heart could have

“It isn’t only he; it’s everything, everything. I’m very no voice in matters of business.

wretched. Oh yes, I know! They’ll again be saying I’m a But that day was one of annoyances. Nana was thor-hussy. To think of the mother mourning down there and of oughly disgusted and gave up the idea of going out. She the poor man who was groaning in front of my door this was dragging herself wearily about the little drawing room morning and of all the other people that are now ruined when Labordette came up to tell her of a splendid chance after running through all they had with me! That’s it; pun-of buying magnificent lace and in the course of his remarks ish Nana; punish the beastly thing! Oh, I’ve got a broad casually let slip the information that Georges was dead.

back! I can hear them as if I were actually there! ‘That The announcement froze her.

dirty wench who lies with everybody and cleans out some 382

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and drives others to death and causes a whole heap of begging and going to ruin on purpose.” people pain!’”

Then she paused in front of Labordette and tapped his She was obliged to pause, for tears choked her utter-shoulders.

ance, and in her anguish she flung herself athwart a divan

“Look here,” she said, “you were there all along; now and buried her face in a cushion. The miseries she felt to be speak the truth: did I urge them on? Weren’t there always around her, miseries of which she was the cause, over-a dozen of ‘em squabbling who could invent the dirtiest whelmed her with a warm, continuous stream of self-pity-trick? They used to disgust me, they did! I did all I knew ing tears, and her voice failed as she uttered a little girl’s not to copy them: I was afraid to. Look here, I’ll give you broken plaint:

a single instance: they all wanted to marry me! A pretty

“Oh, I’m wretched! Oh, I’m wretched! I can’t go on like notion, eh? Yes, dear boy, I could have been countess or this: it’s choking me. It’s too hard to be misunderstood baroness a dozen times over and more, if I’d consented.

and to see them all siding against you because they’re stron-Well now, I refused because I was reasonable. Oh yes, I ger. However, when you’ve got nothing to reproach your-saved ‘em some crimes and other foul acts! They’d have self with and your conscious is clear, why, then I say, ‘I stolen, murdered, killed father and mother. I had only to won’t have it! I won’t have it!’” say one word, and I didn’t say it. You see what I’ve got for In her anger she began rebeling against circumstances, it today. There’s Daguenet, for instance; I married that chap and getting up, she dried her eyes, and walked about in off! I made a position for the beggarly fellow after keeping much agitation.

him gratis for weeks! And I met him yesterday, and he

“I won’t have it! They can say what they like, but it’s not looks the other way! Oh, get along, you swine! I’m less my fault! Am I a bad lot, eh? I give away all I’ve got; I dirty than you!”

wouldn’t crush a fly! It’s they who are bad! Yes, it’s they!

She had begun pacing about again, and now she brought I never wanted to be horrid to them. And they came dan-her fist violently down on a round table.

gling after me, and today they’re kicking the bucket and

“By God it isn’t fair! Society’s all wrong. They come 383

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down on the women when it’s the men who want you to she tied the strings told them about poor, dear Satin’s misdo things. Yes, I can tell you this now: when I used to go hap, adding:

with them—see? I didn’t enjoy it; no, I didn’t enjoy it one

“I’m going to the hospital. Nobody ever loved me as she bit. It bored me, on my honor. Well then, I ask you whether did. Oh, they’re quite right when they accuse the men of I’ve got anything to do with it! Yes, they bored me to death!

heartlessness! Who knows? Perhaps I shan’t see her alive.

If it hadn’t been for them and what they made of me, dear Never mind, I shall ask to see her: I want to give her a kiss.” boy, I should be in a convent saying my prayers to the good Labordette and Mignon smiled, and as Nana was no God, for I’ve always had my share of religion. Dash it, longer melancholy she smiled too. Those two fellows didn’t after all, if they have dropped their money and their lives count; they could enter into her feelings. And they both over it, what do I care? It’s their fault. I’ve had nothing to stood and admired her in silent abstraction while she fin-do with it!”

ished buttoning her gloves. She alone kept her feet amid

“Certainly not,” said Labordette with conviction.

the heaped-up riches of her mansion, while a whole gen-Zoe ushered in Mignon, and Nana received him smil-eration of men lay stricken down before her. Like those ingly. She had cried a good deal, but it was all over now.

antique monsters whose redoubtable domains were cov-Still glowing with enthusiasm, he complimented her on her ered with skeletons, she rested her feet on human skulls.

installation, but she let him see that she had had enough of She was ringed round with catastrophes. There was the her mansion and that now she had other projects and would furious immolation of Vandeuvres; the melancholy state of sell everything up one of these days. Then as he excused Foucarmont, who was lost in the China seas; the smashup himself for calling on the ground that he had come about a of Steiner, who now had to live like an honest man; the benefit performance in aid of old Bose, who was tied to his satisfied idiocy of La Faloise, and the tragic shipwreck of armchair by paralysis, she expressed extreme pity and took the Muffats. Finally there was the white corpse of Georges, two boxes. Meanwhile Zoe announced that the carriage over which Philippe was now watching, for he had come was waiting for Madame, and she asked for her hat and as out of prison but yesterday. She had finished her labor of 384

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ruin and death. The fly that had flown up from the ordure CHAPTER XIV

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 NANA SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED. It was a fresh plunge, an escapade, a flight into barbarous regions.

Before her departure she had treated herself to while, metaphorically speaking, her sex rose in a halo of a new sensation: she had held a sale and had made a clean glory and beamed over prostrate victims like a mounting sweep of everything—house, furniture, jewelry, nay, even sun shining brightly over a field of carnage, the actual dresses and linen. Prices were cited—the five days’ sale woman remained as unconscious as a splendid animal, and produced more than six hundred thousand francs. For the in her ignorance of her mission was the good-natured cour-last time Paris had seen her in a fairy piece. It was called tesan to the last. She was still big; she was still plump; her Melusine, and it played at the Theatre de la Gaite, which health was excellent, her spirits capital. But this went for the penniless Bordenave had taken out of sheer audacity.

nothing now, for her house struck her as ridiculous. It was Here she again found herself in company with Prulliere too small; it was full of furniture which got in her way. It and Fontan. Her part was simply spectacular, but it was was a wretched business, and the long and the short of the the great attraction of the piece, consisting, as it did, of matter was she would have to make a fresh start. In fact, three poses plastiques, each of which represented the same she was meditating something much better, and so she went dumb and puissant fairy. Then one fine morning amid his off to kiss Satin for the last time. She was in all her finery grand success, when Bordenave, who was mad after ad-and looked clean and solid and as brand new as if she had vertisement, kept firing the Parisian imagination with co-never seen service before.

lossal 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 385

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please her; the whole thing was the caprice of a woman countries she began to gleam forth as mysteriously as a gem-who is too rich to let herself be annoyed. Besides, she had laden idol. People now mentioned her without laughing, for indulged an old infatuation, for she had long meditated vis-they were full of meditative respect for this fortune acquired iting the Turks.

among the barbarians.

Months passed—she began to be forgotten. When her name One evening in July toward eight o’clock, Lucy, while was mentioned among the ladies and gentlemen, the strang-getting out of her carriage in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-est stories were told, and everybody gave the most contra-Honore, noticed Caroline