Count Muffat had slowly returned as far as the boulevard. He glanced out at the roadway and then came sauntering back along the shopwindows. The damp and heated ONE DECEMBER EVENING three months afterward atmosphere filled the narrow passage with a slight lumi-Count Muffat was strolling in the Passage des nous mist. Along the flagstones, which had been wet by Panoramas. The evening was very mild, and the drip-drop of umbrellas, the footsteps of the crowd rang owing to a passing shower, the passage had just become continually, but there was no sound of voices. Passers-by crowded with people. There was a perfect mob of them, elbowed him at every turn and cast inquiring looks at his and they thronged slowly and laboriously along between silent face, which the gaslight rendered pale. And to es-170
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cape these curious manifestations the count posted himself he was her own dear pet and the only little man she adored.
in front of a stationer’s, where with profound attention He was no longer afraid of Georges, whom his mother contemplated an array of paperweights in the form of glass kept down at Les Fondettes. There was only fat Steiner to bowls containing floating landscapes and flowers.
reckon with, and he believed he was really ousting him, He was conscious of nothing: he was thinking of Nana.
but he did not dare provoke an explanation on his score.
Why had she lied to him again? That morning she had writHe knew he was once more in an extraordinary financial ten and told him not to trouble about her in the evening, scrape and on the verge of being declared bankrupt on her excuse being that Louiset was ill and that she was go-
‘change, so much so that he was clinging fiercely to the ing to pass the night at her aunt’s in order to nurse him.
shareholders in the Landes Salt Pits and striving to sweat a But he had felt suspicious and had called at her house, final subscription out of them. Whenever he met him at where he learned from the porter that Madame had just Nana’s she would explain reasonably enough that she did gone off to her theater. He was astonished at this, for she not wish to turn him out of doors like a dog after all he had was not playing in the new piece. Why then should she spent on her. Besides, for the last three months he had been have told him this falsehood, and what could she be doing living in such a whirl of sensual excitement that, beyond at the Varietes that evening? Hustled by a passer-by, the the need of possessing her, he had felt no very distinct im-count unconsciously left the paperweights and found him-pressions. His was a tardy awakening of the fleshly instinct, self in front of a glass case full of toys, where he grew a childish greed of enjoyment, which left no room for ei-absorbed over an array of pocketbooks and cigar cases, all ther vanity or jealousy. Only one definite feeling could af-of which had the same blue swallow stamped on one cor-fect him now, and that was Nana’s decreasing kindness.
ner. Nana was most certainly not the same woman! In the She no longer kissed him on the beard! It made him anx-early days after his return from the country she used to ious, and as became a man quite ignorant of womankind, drive him wild with delight, as with pussycat caresses she he began asking himself what possible cause of offense he kissed him all round his face and whiskers and vowed that could have given her. Besides, he was under the impression 171
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that he was satisfying all her desires. And so he harked back ing the line of little round windows above the shops, as again and again to the letter he had received that morning though he had never noticed them before among the med-with its tissue of falsehoods, invented for the extremely simple ley of signs. Then once again he went up to the boulevard purpose of passing an evening at her own theater. The crowd and stood still a minute or two. A fine rain was now fall-had pushed him forward again, and he had crossed the pas-ing, and the cold feel of it on his hands calmed him. He sage and was puzzling his brain in front of the entrance to a thought of his wife who was staying in a country house restaurant, his eyes fixed on some plucked larks and on a near Macon, where her friend Mme de Chezelles had been huge salmon laid out inside the window.
ailing a good deal since the autumn. The carriages in the At length he seemed to tear himself away from this spec-roadway were rolling through a stream of mud. The coun-tacle. He shook himself, looked up and noticed that it was try, he thought, must be detestable in such vile weather.
close on nine o’clock. Nana would soon be coming out, But suddenly he became anxious and re-entered the hot, and he would make her tell the truth. And with that he close passage down which he strode among the strolling walked on and recalled to memory the evenings he once people. A thought struck him: if Nana were suspicious of passed in that region in the days when he used to meet her his presence there she would be off along the Galerie at the door of the theater.
Montmartre.
He knew all the shops, and in the gas-laden air he recog-After that the count kept a sharp lookout at the very nized their different scents, such, for instance, as the strong door of the theater, though he did not like this passage savor of Russia leather, the perfume of vanilla emanating end, where he was afraid of being recognized. It was at the from a chocolate dealer’s basement, the savor of musk corner between the Galerie des Varietes and the Galerie blown in whiffs from the open doors of the perfumers. But Saint-Marc, an equivocal corner full of obscure little shops.
he did not dare linger under the gaze of the pale Of these last one was a shoemaker’s, where customers never shopwomen, who looked placidly at him as though they seemed to enter. Then there were two or three upholster-knew him by sight. For one instant he seemed to be study-ers’, deep in dust, and a smoky, sleepy reading room and 172
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library, the shaded lamps in which cast a green and slum-and down in front of the stage door. Thereupon at each berous light all the evening through. There was never any-successive turn the pair treated each other to a suspicious one in this corner save well-dressed, patient gentlemen, sidelong glance. The count walked to the corner of the who prowled about the wreckage peculiar to a stage door, two galleries, which was adorned with a high mirror, and where drunken sceneshifters and ragged chorus girls con-when he saw himself therein, looking grave and elegant, gregate. In front of the theater a single gas jet in a ground-he was both ashamed and nervous.
glass globe lit up the doorway. For a moment or two Muffat Ten o’clock struck, and suddenly it occurred to Muffat thought of questioning Mme Bron; then he grew afraid that it would be very easy to find out whether Nana were lest Nana should get wind of his presence and escape by in her dressing room or not. He went up the three steps, way of the boulevard. So he went on the march again and crossed the little yellow-painted lobby and slipped into the determined to wait till he was turned out at the closing of court by a door which simply shut with a latch. At that the gates, an event which had happened on two previous hour of the night the narrow, damp well of a court, with its occasions. The thought of returning home to his solitary pestiferous water closets, its fountain, its back view ot the bed simply wrung his heart with anguish. Every time that kitchen stove and the collection of plants with which the golden-haired girls and men in dirty linen came out and portress used to litter the place, was drenched in dark mist; stared at him he returned to his post in front of the reading but the two walls, rising pierced with windows on either room, where, looking in between two advertisements hand, were flaming with light, since the property room and posted on a windowpane, he was always greeted by the the firemen’s office were situated on the ground floor, with same sight. It was a little old man, sitting stiff and solitary the managerial bureau on the left, and on the right and at the vast table and holding a green newspaper in his green upstairs the dressing rooms of the company. The mouths hands under the green light of one of the lamps. But shortly of furnaces seemed to be opening on the outer darkness before ten o’clock another gentleman, a tall, good-look-from top to bottom of this well. The count had at once ing, fair man with well-fitting gloves, was also walking up marked the light in the windows of the dressing room on 173
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the first floor, and as a man who is comforted and happy, Montmartre, where a sugar-chopping machine in front of he forgot where he was and stood gazing upward amid the a grocer’s interested him awhile. But when he was taking foul mud and faint decaying smell peculiar to the premises his third turn he was seized with such dread lest Nana should of this antiquated Parisian building. Big drops were drip-escape behind his back that he lost all self-respect. There-ping from a broken waterspout, and a ray of gaslight slipped upon he stationed himself beside the fair gentleman in front from Mme Bron’s window and cast a yellow glare over a of the very theater. Both exchanged a glance of fraternal patch of moss-clad pavement, over the base of a wall which humility with which was mingled a touch of distrust, for it had been rotted by water from a sink, over a whole cornerful was possible they might yet turn out to be rivals. Some of nameless filth amid which old pails and broken crocks sceneshifters who came out smoking their pipes between lay in fine confusion round a spindling tree growing mil-the acts brushed rudely against them, but neither one nor dewed in its pot. A window fastening creaked, and the the other ventured to complain. Three big wenches with count fled.
untidy hair and dirty gowns appeared on the doorstep. They Nana was certainly going to come down. He returned to were munching apples and spitting out the cores, but the his post in front of the reading room; among its slumbering two men bowed their heads and patiently braved their im-shadows, which seemed only broken by the glimmer of a pudent looks and rough speeches, though they were hustled night light, the little old man still sat motionless, his side and, as it were, soiled by these trollops, who amused them-face sharply outlined against his newspaper. Then Muffat selves by pushing each other down upon them.
walked again and this time took a more prolonged turn At that very moment Nana descended the three steps.
and, crossing the large gallery, followed the Galerie des She grew very pale when she noticed Muffat.
Varietes as far as that of Feydeau. The last mentioned was
“Oh, it’s you!” she stammered.
cold and deserted and buried in melancholy shadow. He The sniggering extra ladies were quite frightened when returned from it, passed by the theater, turned the corner they recognized her, and they formed in line and stood up, of the Galerie Saint-Marc and ventured as far as the Galerie looking as stiff and serious as servants whom their mis-174
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tress has caught behaving badly. The tall fair gentleman of the show in a fan seller’s window.
had moved away; he was at once reassured and sad at heart.
“I say, that’s pretty,” she whispered; “I mean that mother-
“Well, give me your arm,” Nana continued impatiently.
of-pearl mount with the feathers.” They walked quietly off. The count had been getting ready Then, indifferently:
to question her and now found nothing to say.
“So you’re seeing me home?”
It was she who in rapid tones told a story to the effect
“Of course,” he said, with some surprise, “since your that she had been at her aunt’s as late as eight o’clock, child’s better.”
when, seeing Louiset very much better, she had conceived She was sorry she had told him that story. Perhaps Louiset the idea of going down to the theater for a few minutes.
was passing through another crisis! She talked of return-
“On some important business?” he queried.
ing to the Batignolles. But when he offered to accompany
‘Yes, a new piece,” she replied after some slight hesita-her she did not insist on going. For a second or two she tion. “They wanted my advice.”
was possessed with the kind of white-hot fury which a He knew that she was not speaking the truth, but the woman experiences when she feels herself entrapped and warm touch of her arm as it leaned firmly on his own, left must, nevertheless, behave prettily. But in the end she grew him powerless. He felt neither anger nor rancor after his resigned and determined to gain time. If only she could get long, long wait; his one thought was to keep her where she rid of the count toward midnight everything would happen was now that he had got hold of her. Tomorrow, and not as she wished.
before, he would try and find out what she had come to her
“Yes, it’s true; you’re a bachelor tonight,” she murmured.
dressing room after. But Nana still appeared to hesitate;
“Your wife doesn’t return till tomorrow, eh?” she was manifestly a prey to the sort of secret anguish that
“Yes,” replied Muffat. It embarrassed him somewhat to besets people when they are trying to regain lost ground hear her talking familiarly about the countess.
and to initiate a plan of action. Accordingly, as they turned But she pressed him further, asking at what time the train the corner of the Galerie des Varietes, she stopped in front was due and wanting to know whether he were going to 175
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the station to meet her. She had begun to walk more slowly Steiner’s, too, with her childish caprices, and yet she had than ever, as though the shops interested her very much.
no notion where her money went. Even at this time of day
“Now do look!” she said, pausing anew before a jeweler’s her flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was not entirely fur-window, “what a funny bracelet!”
nished. The drawing room alone was finished, and with its She adored the Passage des Panoramas. The tinsel of the red satin upholsteries and excess of ornamentation and Article de Paris, the false jewelry, the gilded zinc, the card-furnirure it struck a decidedly false note. Her creditors, board made to look like leather, had been the passion of moreover, would now take to tormenting her more than her early youth. It remained, and when she passed the shop-ever before whenever she had no money on hand, a fact windows she could not tear herself away from them. It which caused her constant surprise, seeing that she was was the same with her today as when she was a ragged, wont to quote her self as a model of economy. For a month slouching child who fell into reveries in front of the choco-past that thief Steiner had been scarcely able to pay up his late maker’s sweet-stuff shows or stood listening to a mu-thousand francs on the occasions when she threatened to sical box in a neighboring shop or fell into supreme ecsta-kick him out of doors in case he failed to bring them. As to sies over cheap, vulgarly designed knickknacks, such as Muffat, he was an idiot: he had no notion as to what it was nutshell workboxes, ragpickers’ baskets for holding tooth-usual to give, and she could not, therefore, grow angry picks, Vendome columns and Luxor obelisks on which ther-with him on the score of miserliness. Oh, how gladly she mometers were mounted. But that evening she was too would have turned all these folks off had she not repeated much agitated and looked at things without seeing them.
to herself a score of times daily a whole string of economi-When all was said and done, it bored her to think she was cal maxims!
not free. An obscure revolt raged within her, and amid it One ought to be sensible, Zoe kept saying every morn-all she felt a wild desire to do something foolish. It was a ing, and Nana herself was constantly haunted by the queenly great thing gained, forsooth, to be mistress of men of posi-vision seen at Chamont. It had now become an almost retion! She had been devouring the prince’s substance and ligious memory with her, and through dint of being cease-176
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lessly recalled it grew even more grandiose. And for these those days wish to be seen about with her he asked for a reasons, though trembling with repressed indignation, she private supper room and hurried to it along the corridors.
now hung submissively on the count’s arm as they went She followed him with the air of a woman familiar with the from window to window among the fast-diminishing crowd.
house, and they were on the point of entering a private The pavement was drying outside, and a cool wind blew room, the door of which a waiter held open, when from a along the gallery, swept the close hot air up beneath the neighboring saloon, whence issued a perfect tempest of glass that imprisoned it and shook the colored lanterns and shouts and laughter, a man rapidiy emerged. It was the lines of gas jets and the giant fan which was flaring Daguenet.
away like a set piece in an illumination. At the door of the
“By Jove, it’s Nana!” he cried.
restaurant a waiter was putting out the gas, while the moThe count had briskly disappeared into the private room, tionless attendants in the empty, glaring shops looked as leaving the door ajar behind him. But Daguenet winked though they had dropped off to sleep with their eyes open.
behind his round shoulders and added in chaffing tones:
“Oh, what a duck!” continued Nana, retracing her steps
“The deuce, but you’re doing nicely! You catch ‘em in as far as the last of the shops in order to go into ecstasies the Tuileries nowadays!”
over a porcelain greyhound standing with raised forepaw Nana smiled and laid a finger on her lips to beg him to be in front of a nest hidden among roses.
silent. She could see he was very much exalted, and yet At length they quitted the passage, but she refused the she was glad to have met him, for she still felt tenderly offer of a cab. It was very pleasant out she said; besides, toward him, and that despite the nasty way he had cut her they were in no hurry, and it would be charming to return when in the company of fashionable ladies.
home on foot. When they were in front of the Cafe Anglais
“What are you doing now?” she asked amicably.
she had a sudden longing to eat oysters. Indeed, she said
“Becoming respectable. Yes indeed, I’m thinking of get-that owing to Louiset’s illness she had tasted nothing since ting married.”
morning. Muffat dared not oppose her. Yet as he did not in She shrugged her shoulders with a pitying air. But he 177
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jokingly continued to the effect that to be only just gaining up to the walls and, amid the uproar of the supper party enough on ‘change to buy ladies bouquets could scarcely and the jostlings of the waiters, chatted as quietly as if they be called an income, provided you wanted to look respect-were by their own firesides.
able too! His three hundred thousand francs had only lasted
“Just look at that,” whispered the young man, pointing him eighteen months! He wanted to be practical, and he to the door of the private room through which Muffat had was going to marry a girl with a huge dowry and end off as vanished.
a prefet, like his father before him! Nana still smiled in-Both looked. The door was quivering slightly; a breath credulously. She nodded in the direction of the saloon: of air seemed to be disturbing it, and at last, very, very
“Who are you with in there?”
slowly and without the least sound, it was shut to. They
“Oh, a whole gang,” he said, forgetting all about his exchanged a silent chuckle. The count must be looking projects under the influence of returning intoxication. “Just charmingly happy all alone in there!
think! Lea is telling us about her trip in Egypt. Oh, it’s
“By the by,” she asked, “have you read Fauchery’s ar-screaming! There’s a bathing story—” ticle about me?”
And he told the story while Nana lingered complaisantly.
“Yes, ‘The Golden Fly,’” replied Daguenet; “I didn’t men-They had ended by leaning up against the wall in the corri-tion it to you as I was afraid of paining you.” dor, facing one another. Gas jets were flaring under the
“Paining me—why? His article’s a very long one.” low ceiling, and a vague smell of cookery hung about the She was flattered to think that the Figaro should concern folds of the hangings. Now and again, in order to hear itself about her person. But failing the explanations of her each other’s voices when the din in the saloon became hairdresser Francis, who had brought her the paper, she louder than ever, they had to lean well forward. Every few would not have understood that it was she who was in seconds, however, a waiter with an armful of dishes found question. Daguenet scrutinized her slyly, sneering in his his passage barred and disturbed them. But they did not chaffing way. Well, well, since she was pleased, everybody cease their talk for that; on the contrary, they stood close else ought to be.
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“By your leave!” shouted a waiter, holding a dish of iced too! He’ll teach her some pretty things!” cheese in both hands as he separated them.
“Oh, it isn’t her trial trip,” muttered Daguenet wickedly.
Nana had stepped toward the little saloon where Muffat
“Perhaps she knows as much about it as he does.” was waiting.
At this Nana gave vent to an indignant exclamation.
“Well, good-by!” continued Daguenet. “Go and find your
“Indeed she does! What a nice world! It’s too foul!” cuckold again.”
“By your leave!” shouted a waiter, laden with bottles, as But she halted afresh.
he separated them.
“Why d’you call him cuckold?”
Daguenet drew her forward again and held her hand for
“Because he is a cuckold, by Jove!” a second or two. He adopted his crystalline tone of voice, She came and leaned against the wall again; she was pro-the voice with notes as sweet as those of a harmonica, foundly interested.
which had gained him his success among the ladies of
“Ah!” she said simply.
Nana’s type.
“What, d’you mean to say you didn’t know that? Why,
“Good-by, darling! You know I love you always.” my dear girl, his wife’s Fauchery’s mistress. It probably She disengaged her hand from his, and while a thunder began in the country. Some time ago, when I was coming of shouts and bravos, which made the door in the saloon here, Fauchery left me, and I suspect he’s got an assigna-tremble again, almost drowned her words she smilingly tion with her at his place tonight. They’ve made up a story remarked:
about a journey, I fancy.”
“It’s over between us, stupid! But that doesn’t matter.
Overcome with surprise, Nana remained voiceless.
Do come up one of these days, and we’ll have a chat.”
“I suspected it,” she said at last, slapping her leg. “I Then she became serious again and in the outraged tones guessed it by merely looking at her on the highroad that of a respectable woman:
day. To think of its being possible for an honest woman to
“So he’s a cuckold, is he?” she cried. “Well, that IS a nui-deceive her husband, and with that blackguard Fauchery sance, dear boy. They’ve always sickened me, cuckolds have.” 179
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When at length she went into the private room she no-room as of old, with its rosewood furniture and its hang-ticed that Muffat was sitting resignedly on a narrow divan ings and chair coverings of figured damask with the large with pale face and twitching hands. He did not reproach blue flowers on a gray background. On two occasions Nana her at all, and she, greatly moved, was divided between had thought of having it redone, the first in black velvet, feelings of pity and of contempt. The poor man! To think the second in white satin with bows, but directly Steiner of his being so unworthily cheated by a vile wife! She had consented she demanded the money that these changes a good mind to throw her arms round his neck and omfort would cost simply with a view to pillaging him. She had, him. But it was only fair all the same! He was a fool with indeed, only indulged in a tiger skin rug for the hearth and women, and this would teach him a lesson! Nevertheless, a cut-glass hanging lamp.
pity overcame her. She did not get rid of him as she had
“I’m not sleepy; I’m not going to bed,” she said the mo-determined to do after the oysters had been discussed. They ment they were shut in together.
scarcely stayed a quarter of an hour in the Cafe Anglais, The count obeyed her submissively, as became a man no and together they went into the house in the Boulevard longer afraid of being seen. His one care now was to avoid Haussmann. It was then eleven. Before midnight she would vexing her.
have easily have discovered some means of getting rid of
“As you will,” he murmured.
him kindly.
Nevertheless, he took his boots off, too, before seating In the anteroom, however, she took the precaution of giv-himself in front of the fire. One of Nana’s pleasures con-ing Zoe an order. “You’ll look out for him, and you’ll tell sisted in undressing herself in front of the mirror on her him not to make a noise if the other man’s still with me.” wardrobe door, which reflected her whole height. She
“But where shall I put him, madame?” would let everything slip off her in turn and then would
“Keep him in the kitchen. It’s more safe.” stand perfectly naked and gaze and gaze in complete In the room inside Muffat was already taking off his over-oblivion of all around her. Passion for her own body, ec-coat. A big fire was burning on the hearth. It was the same stasy over her satin skin and the supple contours of her 180
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shape, would keep her serious, attentive and absorbed in has taken the form of a nervous exaggeration of the sexual the love of herself. The hairdresser frequently found her instinct. She has shot up to womanhood in the slums and standing thus and would enter without her once turning to on the pavements of Paris, and tall, handsome and as su-look at him. Muffat used to grow angry then, but he only perbly grown as a dunghill plant, she avenges the beggars succeeded in astonishing her. What was coming over the and outcasts of whom she is the ultimate product. With man? She was doing it to please herself, not other people.
her the rottenness that is allowed to ferment among the That particular evening she wanted to have a better view populace is carried upward and rots the aristocracy. She of herself, and she lit the six candles attached to the frame becomes a blind power of nature, a leaven of destruction, of the mirror. But while letting her shift slip down she and unwittingly she corrupts and disorganizes all Paris, paused. She had been preoccupied for some moments past, churning it between her snow-white thighs as milk is and a question was on her lips.
monthly churned by housewives. And it was at the end of
“You haven’t read the Figaro article, have you? The this article that the comparison with a fly occurred, a fly of paper’s on the table.” Daguenet’s laugh had recurred to sunny hue which has flown up out of the dung, a fly which her recollections, and she was harassed by a doubt. If that sucks in death on the carrion tolerated by the roadside and Fauchery had slandered her she would be revenged.
then buzzing, dancing and glittering like a precious stone
“They say that it’s about me,” she continued, affecting enters the windows of palaces and poisons the men within indifference. “What’s your notion, eh, darling?” by merely settling on them in her flight.
And letting go her shift and waiting till Muffat should Muffat lifted his head; his eyes stared fixedly; he gazed at have done reading, she stood naked. Muffat was reading the fire.
slowly Fauchery’s article entitled “The Golden Fly,” de-
“Well?” asked Nana.
scribing the life of a harlot descended from four or five But he did not answer. It seemed as though he wanted to generations of drunkards and tainted in her blood by a cu-read the article again. A cold, shivering feeling was creep-mulative inheritance of misery and drink, which in her case ing from his scalp to his shoulders. This article had been 181
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written anyhow. The phrases were wildly extravagant; the which consisted of swinging to right and left, her knees unexpected epigrams and quaint collocations of words went apart and her body swaying from the waist with the per-beyond all bounds. Yet notwithstanding this, he was struck petual jogging, twitching movements peculiar to an orien-by what he had read, for it had rudely awakened within tal dancer in the danse du ventre.
him much that for months past he had not cared to think Muffat sat looking at her. She frightened him. The news-ab