CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CAPTAIN BURLE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BECAILLE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
NANA
by Émile Zola
CHAPTER I
At nine o’clock in the evening the body of the house at the Theatres
des Variétés was still all but empty. A few individuals, it is true,
were sitting quietly waiting in the balcony and stalls, but these were
lost, as it were, among the ranges of seats whose coverings of cardinal
velvet loomed in the subdued light of the dimly burning luster. A
shadow enveloped the great red splash of the curtain, and not a sound
came from the stage, the unlit footlights, the scattered desks of the
orchestra. It was only high overhead in the third gallery, round the
domed ceiling where nude females and children flew in heavens which had
turned green in the gaslight, that calls and laughter were audible
above a continuous hubbub of voices, and heads in women’s and workmen’s
caps were ranged, row above row, under the wide-vaulted bays with their
gilt-surrounding adornments. Every few seconds an attendant would make
her appearance, bustling along with tickets in her hand and piloting in
front of her a gentleman and a lady, who took their seats, he in his
evening dress, she sitting slim and undulant beside him while her eyes
wandered slowly round the house.
Two young men appeared in the stalls; they kept standing and looked
about them.
“Didn’t I say so, Hector?” cried the elder of the two, a tall fellow
with little black mustaches. “We’re too early! You might quite well
have allowed me to finish my cigar.”
An attendant was passing.
“Oh, Monsieur Fauchery,” she said familiarly, “it won’t begin for half
an hour yet!”
“Then why do they advertise for nine o’clock?” muttered Hector, whose
long thin face assumed an expression of vexation. “Only this morning
Clarisse, who’s in the piece, swore that they’d begin at nine o’clock
punctually.”
For a moment they remained silent and, looking upward, scanned the
shadowy boxes. But the green paper with which these were hung rendered
them more shadowy still. Down below, under the dress circle, the lower
boxes were buried in utter night. In those on the second tier there was
only one stout lady, who was stranded, as it were, on the
velvet-covered balustrade in front of her. On the right hand and on the
left, between lofty pilasters, the stage boxes, bedraped with
long-fringed scalloped hangings, remained untenanted. The house with
its white and gold, relieved by soft green tones, lay only half
disclosed to view, as though full of a fine dust shed from the little
jets of flame in the great glass luster.
“Did you get your stage box for Lucy?” asked Hector.
“Yes,” replied his companion, “but I had some trouble to get it. Oh,
there’s no danger of Lucy coming too early!”
He stifled a slight yawn; then after a pause:
“You’re in luck’s way, you are, since you haven’t been at a first night
before. The Blonde Venus will be the event of the year. People have
been talking about it for six months. Oh, such music, my dear boy! Such
a sly dog, Bordenave! He knows his business and has kept this for the
exhibition season.” Hector was religiously attentive. He asked a
question.
“And Nana, the new star who’s going to play Venus, d’you know her?”
“There you are; you’re beginning again!” cried Fauchery, casting up his
arms. “Ever since this morning people have been dreeing me with Nana.
I’ve met more than twenty people, and it’s Nana here and Nana there!
What do I know? Am I acquainted with all the light ladies in Paris?
Nana is an invention of Bordenave’s! It must be a fine one!”
He calmed himself, but the emptiness of the house, the dim light of the
luster, the churchlike sense of self-absorption which the place
inspired, full as it was of whispering voices and the sound of doors
banging—all these got on his nerves.
“No, by Jove,” he said all of a sudden, “one’s hair turns gray here.
I—I’m going out. Perhaps we shall find Bordenave downstairs. He’ll give
us information about things.”
Downstairs in the great marble-paved entrance hall, where the box
office was, the public were beginning to show themselves. Through the
three open gates might have been observed, passing in, the ardent life
of the boulevards, which were all astir and aflare under the fine April
night. The sound of carriage wheels kept stopping suddenly; carriage
doors were noisily shut again, and people began entering in small
groups, taking their stand before the ticket bureau and climbing the
double flight of stairs at the end of the hall, up which the women
loitered with swaying hips. Under the crude gaslight, round the pale,
naked walls of the entrance hall, which with its scanty First Empire
decorations suggested the peristyle of a toy temple, there was a
flaring display of lofty yellow posters bearing the name of “Nana” in
great black letters. Gentlemen, who seemed to be glued to the entry,
were reading them; others, standing about, were engaged in talk,
barring the doors of the house in so doing, while hard by the box
office a thickset man with an extensive, close-shaven visage was giving
rough answers to such as pressed to engage seats.
“There’s Bordenave,” said Fauchery as he came down the stairs. But the
manager had already seen him.
“Ah, ah! You’re a nice fellow!” he shouted at him from a distance.
“That’s the way you give me a notice, is it? Why, I opened my Figaro
this morning—never a word!”
“Wait a bit,” replied Fauchery. “I certainly must make the acquaintance
of your Nana before talking about her. Besides, I’ve made no promises.”
Then to put an end to the discussion, he introduced his cousin, M.
Hector de la Faloise, a young man who had come to finish his education
in Paris. The manager took the young man’s measure at a glance. But
Hector returned his scrutiny with deep interest. This, then, was that
Bordenave, that showman of the sex who treated women like a convict
overseer, that clever fellow who was always at full steam over some
advertising dodge, that shouting, spitting, thigh-slapping fellow, that
cynic with the soul of a policeman! Hector was under the impression
that he ought to discover some amiable observation for the occasion.
“Your theater—” he began in dulcet tones.
Bordenave interrupted him with a savage phrase, as becomes a man who
dotes on frank situations.
“Call it my brothel!”
At this Fauchery laughed approvingly, while La Faloise stopped with his
pretty speech strangled in his throat, feeling very much shocked and
striving to appear as though he enjoyed the phrase. The manager had
dashed off to shake hands with a dramatic critic whose column had
considerable influence. When he returned La Faloise was recovering. He
was afraid of being treated as a provincial if he showed himself too
much nonplused.
“I have been told,” he began again, longing positively to find
something to say, “that Nana has a delicious voice.”
“Nana?” cried the manager, shrugging his shoulders. “The voice of a
squirt!”
The young man made haste to add:
“Besides being a first-rate comedian!”
“She? Why she’s a lump! She has no notion what to do with her hands and
feet.”
La Faloise blushed a little. He had lost his bearings. He stammered:
“I wouldn’t have missed this first representation tonight for the
world. I was aware that your theater—”
“Call it my brothel,” Bordenave again interpolated with the frigid
obstinacy of a man convinced.
Meanwhile Fauchery, with extreme calmness, was looking at the women as
they came in. He went to his cousin’s rescue when he saw him all at sea
and doubtful whether to laugh or to be angry.
“Do be pleasant to Bordenave—call his theater what he wishes you to,
since it amuses him. And you, my dear fellow, don’t keep us waiting
about for nothing. If your Nana neither sings nor acts you’ll find
you’ve made a blunder, that’s all. It’s what I’m afraid of, if the
truth be told.”
“A blunder! A blunder!” shouted the manager, and his face grew purple.
“Must a woman know how to act and sing? Oh, my chicken, you’re too
STOOPID. Nana has other good points, by heaven!—something which is as
good as all the other things put together. I’ve smelled it out; it’s
deuced pronounced with her, or I’ve got the scent of an idiot. You’ll
see, you’ll see! She’s only got to come on, and all the house will be
gaping at her.”
He had held up his big hands which were trembling under the influence
of his eager enthusiasm, and now, having relieved his feelings, he
lowered his voice and grumbled to himself:
“Yes, she’ll go far! Oh yes, s’elp me, she’ll go far! A skin—oh, what a
skin she’s got!”
Then as Fauchery began questioning him he consented to enter into a
detailed explanation, couched in phraseology so crude that Hector de la
Faloise felt slightly disgusted. He had been thick with Nana, and he
was anxious to start her on the stage. Well, just about that time he
was in search of a Venus. He—he never let a woman encumber him for any
length of time; he preferred to let the public enjoy the benefit of her
forthwith. But there was a deuce of a row going on in his shop, which
had been turned topsy-turvy by that big damsel’s advent. Rose Mignon,
his star, a comic actress of much subtlety and an adorable singer, was
daily threatening to leave him in the lurch, for she was furious and
guessed the presence of a rival. And as for the bill, good God! What a
noise there had been about it all! It had ended by his deciding to
print the names of the two actresses in the same-sized type. But it
wouldn’t do to bother him. Whenever any of his little women, as he
called them—Simonne or Clarisse, for instance—wouldn’t go the way he
wanted her to he just up with his foot and caught her one in the rear.
Otherwise life was impossible. Oh yes, he sold ’em; HE knew what they
fetched, the wenches!
“Tut!” he cried, breaking off short. “Mignon and Steiner. Always
together. You know, Steiner’s getting sick of Rose; that’s why the
husband dogs his steps now for fear of his slipping away.”
On the pavement outside, the row of gas jets flaring on the cornice of
the theater cast a patch of brilliant light. Two small trees, violently
green, stood sharply out against it, and a column gleamed in such vivid
illumination that one could read the notices thereon at a distance, as
though in broad daylight, while the dense night of the boulevard beyond
was dotted with lights above the vague outline of an ever-moving crowd.
Many men did not enter the theater at once but stayed outside to talk
while finishing their cigars under the rays of the line of gas jets,
which shed a sallow pallor on their faces and silhouetted their short
black shadows on the asphalt. Mignon, a very tall, very broad fellow,
with the square-shaped head of a strong man at a fair, was forcing a
passage through the midst of the groups and dragging on his arm the
banker Steiner, an exceedingly small man with a corporation already in
evidence and a round face framed in a setting of beard which was
already growing gray.
“Well,” said Bordenave to the banker, “you met her yesterday in my
office.”
“Ah! It was she, was it?” ejaculated Steiner. “I suspected as much.
Only I was coming out as she was going in, and I scarcely caught a
glimpse of her.”
Mignon was listening with half-closed eyelids and nervously twisting a
great diamond ring round his finger. He had quite understood that Nana
was in question. Then as Bordenave was drawing a portrait of his new
star, which lit a flame in the eyes of the banker, he ended by joining
in the conversation.
“Oh, let her alone, my dear fellow; she’s a low lot! The public will
show her the door in quick time. Steiner, my laddie, you know that my
wife is waiting for you in her box.”
He wanted to take possession of him again. But Steiner would not quit
Bordenave. In front of them a stream of people was crowding and
crushing against the ticket office, and there was a din of voices, in
the midst of which the name of Nana sounded with all the melodious
vivacity of its two syllables. The men who stood planted in front of
the notices kept spelling it out loudly; others, in an interrogative
tone, uttered it as they passed; while the women, at once restless and
smiling, repeated it softly with an air of surprise. Nobody knew Nana.
Whence had Nana fallen? And stories and jokes, whispered from ear to
ear, went the round of the crowd. The name was a caress in itself; it
was a pet name, the very familiarity of which suited every lip. Merely
through enunciating it thus, the throng worked itself into a state of
gaiety and became highly good natured. A fever of curiosity urged it
forward, that kind of Parisian curiosity which is as violent as an
access of positive unreason. Everybody wanted to see Nana. A lady had
the flounce of her dress torn off; a man lost his hat.
“Oh, you’re asking me too many questions about it!” cried Bordenave,
whom a score of men were besieging with their queries. “You’re going to
see her, and I’m off; they want me.”
He disappeared, enchanted at having fired his public. Mignon shrugged
his shoulders, reminding Steiner that Rose was awaiting him in order to
show him the costume she was about to wear in the first act.
“By Jove! There’s Lucy out there, getting down from her carriage,” said
La Faloise to Fauchery.
It was, in fact, Lucy Stewart, a plain little woman, some forty years
old, with a disproportionately long neck, a thin, drawn face, a heavy
mouth, but withal of such brightness, such graciousness of manner, that
she was really very charming. She was bringing with her Caroline Hequet
and her mother—Caroline a woman of a cold type of beauty, the mother a
person of a most worthy demeanor, who looked as if she were stuffed
with straw.
“You’re coming with us? I’ve kept a place for you,” she said to
Fauchery. “Oh, decidedly not! To see nothing!” he made answer. “I’ve a
stall; I prefer being in the stalls.”
Lucy grew nettled. Did he not dare show himself in her company? Then,
suddenly restraining herself and skipping to another topic:
“Why haven’t you told me that you knew Nana?”
“Nana! I’ve never set eyes on her.”
“Honor bright? I’ve been told that you’ve been to bed with her.”
But Mignon, coming in front of them, his finger to his lips, made them
a sign to be silent. And when Lucy questioned him he pointed out a
young man who was passing and murmured:
“Nana’s fancy man.”
Everybody looked at him. He was a pretty fellow. Fauchery recognized
him; it was Daguenet, a young man who had run through three hundred
thousand francs in the pursuit of women and who now was dabbling in
stocks, in order from time to time to treat them to bouquets and
dinners. Lucy made the discovery that he had fine eyes.
“Ah, there’s Blanche!” she cried. “It’s she who told me that you had
been to bed with Nana.”
Blanche de Sivry, a great fair girl, whose good-looking face showed
signs of growing fat, made her appearance in the company of a spare,
sedulously well-groomed and extremely distinguished man.
“The Count Xavier de Vandeuvres,” Fauchery whispered in his companion’s
ear.
The count and the journalist shook hands, while Blanche and Lucy
entered into a brisk, mutual explanation. One of them in blue, the
other in rose-pink, they stood blocking the way with their deeply
flounced skirts, and Nana’s name kept repeating itself so shrilly in
their conversation that people began to listen to them. The Count de
Vandeuvres carried Blanche off. But by this time Nana’s name was
echoing more loudly than ever round the four walls of the entrance hall
amid yearnings sharpened by delay. Why didn’t the play begin? The men
pulled out their watches; late-comers sprang from their conveyances
before these had fairly drawn up; the groups left the sidewalk, where
the passers-by were crossing the now-vacant space of gaslit pavement,
craning their necks, as they did so, in order to get a peep into the
theater. A street boy came up whistling and planted himself before a
notice at the door, then cried out, “Woa, Nana!” in the voice of a
tipsy man and hied on his way with a rolling gait and a shuffling of
his old boots. A laugh had arisen at this. Gentlemen of unimpeachable
appearance repeated: “Nana, woa, Nana!” People were crushing; a dispute
arose at the ticket office, and there was a growing clamor caused by
the hum of voices calling on Nana, demanding Nana in one of those
accesses of silly facetiousness and sheer animalism which pass over
mobs.
But above all the din the bell that precedes the rise of the curtain
became audible. “They’ve rung; they’ve rung!” The rumor reached the
boulevard, and thereupon followed a stampede, everyone wanting to pass
in, while the servants of the theater increased their forces. Mignon,
with an anxious air, at last got hold of Steiner again, the latter not
having been to see Rose’s costume. At the very first tinkle of the bell
La Faloise had cloven a way through the crowd, pulling Fauchery with
him, so as not to miss the opening scene. But all this eagerness on the
part of the public irritated Lucy Stewart. What brutes were these
people to be pushing women like that! She stayed in the rear of them
all with Caroline Hequet and her mother. The entrance hall was now
empty, while beyond it was still heard the long-drawn rumble of the
boulevard.
“As though they were always funny, those pieces of theirs!” Lucy kept
repeating as she climbed the stair.
In the house Fauchery and La Faloise, in front of their stalls, were
gazing about them anew. By this time the house was resplendent. High
jets of gas illumined the great glass chandelier with a rustling of
yellow and rosy flames, which rained down a stream of brilliant light
from dome to floor. The cardinal velvets of the seats were shot with
hues of lake, while all the gilding shone again, the soft green
decorations chastening its effect beneath the too-decided paintings of
the ceiling. The footlights were turned up and with a vivid flood of
brilliance lit up the curtain, the heavy purple drapery of which had
all the richness befitting a palace in a fairy tale and contrasted with
the meanness of the proscenium, where cracks showed the plaster under
the gilding. The place was already warm. At their music stands the
orchestra were tuning their instruments amid a delicate trilling of
flutes, a stifled tooting of horns, a singing of violin notes, which
floated forth amid the increasing uproar of voices. All the spectators
were talking, jostling, settling themselves in a general assault upon
seats; and the hustling rush in the side passages was now so violent
that every door into the house was laboriously admitting the
inexhaustible flood of people. There were signals, rustlings of
fabrics, a continual march past of skirts and head dresses, accentuated
by the black hue of a dress coat or a surtout. Notwithstanding this,
the rows of seats were little by little getting filled up, while here
and there a light toilet stood out from its surroundings, a head with a
delicate profile bent forward under its chignon, where flashed the
lightning of a jewel. In one of the boxes the tip of a bare shoulder
glimmered like snowy silk. Other ladies, sitting at ease, languidly
fanned themselves, following with their gaze the pushing movements of
the crowd, while young gentlemen, standing up in the stalls, their
waistcoats cut very low, gardenias in their buttonholes, pointed their
opera glasses with gloved finger tips.
It was now that the two cousins began searching for the faces of those
they knew. Mignon and Steiner were together in a lower box, sitting
side by side with their arms leaning for support on the velvet
balustrade. Blanche de Sivry seemed to be in sole possession of a stage
box on the level of the stalls. But La Faloise examined Daguenet before
anyone else, he being in occupation of a stall two rows in front of his
own. Close to him, a very young man, seventeen years old at the
outside, some truant from college, it may be, was straining wide a pair
of fine eyes such as a cherub might have owned. Fauchery smiled when he
looked at him.
“Who is that lady in the balcony?” La Faloise asked suddenly. “The lady
with a young girl in blue beside her.”
He pointed out a large woman who was excessively tight-laced, a woman
who had been a blonde and had now become white and yellow of tint, her
broad face, reddened with paint, looking puffy under a rain of little
childish curls.
“It’s Gaga,” was Fauchery’s simple reply, and as this name seemed to
astound his cousin, he added:
“You don’t know Gaga? She was the delight of the early years of Louis
Philippe. Nowadays she drags her daughter about with her wherever she
goes.”
La Faloise never once glanced at the young girl. The sight of Gaga
moved him; his eyes did not leave her again. He still found her very
good looking but he dared not say so.
Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra
attacked the overture. People still kept coming in; the stir and noise
were on the increase. Among that public, peculiar to first nights and
never subject to change, there were little subsections composed of
intimate friends, who smilingly forgathered again. Old first-nighters,
hat on head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and kept exchanging
salutations. All Paris was there, the Paris of literature, of finance
and of pleasure. There were many journalists, several authors, a number
of stock-exchange people and more courtesans than honest women. It was
a singularly mixed world, composed, as it was, of all the talents and
tarnished by all the vices, a world where the same fatigue and the same
fever played over every face. Fauchery, whom his cousin was
questioning, showed him the boxes devoted to the newspapers and to the
clubs and then named the dramatic critics—a lean, dried-up individual
with thin, spiteful lips and, chief of all, a big fellow with a
good-natured expression, lolling on the shoulder of his neighbor, a
young miss over whom he brooded with tender and paternal eyes.
But he interrupted himself on seeing La Faloise in the act of bowing to
some persons who occupied the box opposite. He appeared surprised.
“What?” he queried. “You know the Count Muffat de Beuville?”
“Oh, for a long time back,” replied Hector. “The Muffats had a property
near us. I often go to their house. The count’s with his wife and his
father-in-law, the Marquis de Chouard.”
And with some vanity—for he was happy in his cousin’s astonishment—he
entered into particulars. The marquis was a councilor of state; the
count had recently been appointed chamberlain to the empress. Fauchery,
who had caught up his opera glass, looked at the countess, a plump
brunette with a white skin and fine dark eyes.
“You shall present me to them between the acts,” he ended by saying. “I
have already met the count, but I should like to go to them on their
Tuesdays.”
Energetic cries of “Hush” came from the upper galleries. The overture
had begun, but people were still coming in. Late arrivals were obliging
whole rows of spectators to rise; the doors of boxes were banging; loud
voices were heard disputing in the passages. And there was no cessation
of the sound of many conversations, a sound similar to the loud
twittering of talkative sparrows at close of day. All was in confusion;
the house was a medley of heads and arms which moved to and fro, their
owners seating themselves or trying to make themselves comfortable or,
on the other hand, excitedly endeavoring to remain standing so as to
take a final look round. The cry of “Sit down, sit down!” came fiercely
from the obscure depths of the pit. A shiver of expectation traversed
the house: at last people were going to make the acquaintance of this
famous Nana with whom Paris had been occupying itself for a whole week!
Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down among
occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech. And amid this swooning
murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra struck up the
small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm bubbling with
roguish laughter. The public were titillated; they were already on the
grin. But the gang of clappers in the foremost rows of the pit
applauded furiously. The curtain rose.
“By George!” exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away. “There’s a man
with Lucy.”
He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the
front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying. At the back of this
box were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline’s mother and the
side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light hair and an
irreproachable getup.
“Do look!” La Faloise again insisted. “There’s a man there.”
Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he
turned round again directly.
“Oh, it’s Labordette,” he muttered in a careless voice, as though that
gentle man’s presence ought to strike all the world as though both
natural and immaterial.
Behind the cousins people shouted “Silence!” They had to cease talking.
A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches of heads,
all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to topmost gallery.
The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in Olympus, a pasteboard
Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the throne of Jupiter on the
right of the stage. First of all Iris and Ganymede, aided by a troupe
of celestial attendants, sang a chorus while they arranged the seats of
the gods for the council. Once again the prearranged applause of the
clappers alone burst forth; the public, a little out of their depth,
sat waiting. Nevertheless, La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one
of Bordenave’s little women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with
a great scarf of the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her
waist.
“You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on,” he said to
Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him. “We tried the
trick this morning. It was all up under her arms and round the small of
her back.”
But a slight rustling movement ran through the house; Rose Mignon had
just come on the stage as Diana. Now though she had neither the face
nor the figure for the part, being thin and dark and of the adorable
type of ugliness peculiar to a Parisian street child, she nonetheless
appeared charming and as though she were a satire on the personage she
represented. Her song at her entrance on the stage was full of lines
quaint enough to make you cry with laughter and of complaints about
Mars, who was getting ready to desert her for the companionship of
Venus. She sang it with a chaste reserve so full of sprightly
suggestiveness that the public warmed amain. The husband and Steiner,
sitting side by side, were laughing complaisantly, and the whole house
broke out in a roar when Prullière, that great favorite, appeared as a
general, a masquerade Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging
along a sword, the hilt of which reached to his shoulder. As for him,
he had had enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him,
he averred. Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to
be revenged. The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prullière
delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat. He had about
him all the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman whose
love affairs prosper, and he rolled around the most swaggering glances,
which excited shrill feminine laughter in the boxes.
Then the public cooled again, for the ensuing scenes were found
tiresome. Old Bosc, an imbecile Jupiter with head crushed beneath the
weight of an immense crown, only just succeeded in raising a smile
among his audience when he had a domestic altercation with Juno on the
subject of the cook’s accounts. The march past of the gods, Neptune,
Pluto, Minerva and the rest, was well-nigh spoiling everything. People
grew impatient; there was a restless, slowly growing murmur; the
audience ceased to take an interest in the performance and looked round
at the house. Lucy began laughing with Labordette; the Count de
Vandeuvres was craning his neck in conversation behind Blanche’s sturdy
shoulders, while Fauchery, out of the corners of his eyes, took stock
of the Muffats, of whom the count appeared very serious, as though he
had not understood the allusions, and the countess smiled vaguely, her
eyes lost in reverie. But on a sudden, in this uncomfortable state of
things, the applause of the clapping contingent rattled out with the
regularity of platoon firing. People turned toward the stage. Was it
Nana at last? This Nana made one wait with a vengeance.
It was a deputation of mortals whom Ganymede and Iris had introduced,
respectable middle-class persons, deceived husbands, all of them, and
they came before the master of the gods to proffer a complaint against
Venus, who was assuredly inflaming their good ladies with an excess of
ardor. The chorus, in quaint, dolorous tones, broken by silences full
of pantomimic admissions, caused great amusement. A neat phrase went
the round of the house: “The cuckolds’ chorus, the cuckolds’ chorus,”
and it “caught on,” for there was an encore. The singers’ heads were
droll; their faces were discovered to be in keeping with the phrase,
especially that of a fat man which was as round as the moon. Meanwhile
Vulcan arrived in a towering rage, demanding back his wife who had
slipped away three days ago. The chorus resumed their plaint, calling
on Vulcan, the god of the cuckolds. Vulcan’s part was played by Fontan,
a comic actor of talent, at once vulgar and original, and he had a role
of the wildest whimsicality and was got up as a village blacksmith,
fiery red wig, bare arms tattooed with arrow-pierced hearts and all the
rest of it. A woman’s voice cried in a very high key, “Oh, isn’t he
ugly?” and all the ladies laughed and applauded.
Then followed a scene which seemed interminable. Jupiter in the course
of it seemed never to be going to finish assembling the Council of Gods
in order to submit thereto the deceived husband’s requests. And still
no Nana! Was the management keeping Nana for the fall of the curtain
then? So long a period of expectancy had ended by annoying the public.
Their murmurings began again.
“It’s going badly,” said Mignon radiantly to Steiner. “She’ll get a
pretty reception; you’ll see!”
At that very moment the clouds at the back of the stage were cloven
apart and Venus appeared. Exceedingly tall, exceedingly strong, for her
eighteen years, Nana, in her goddess’s white tunic and with her light
hair simply flowing unfastened over her shoulders, came down to the
footlights with a quiet certainty of movement and a laugh of greeting
for the public and struck up her grand ditty:
“When Venus roams at eventide.”
From the second verse onward people looked at each other all over the
house. Was this some jest, some wager on Bordenave’s part? Never had a
more tuneless voice been heard or one managed with less art. Her
manager judged of her excellently; she certainly sang like a squirt.
Nay, more, she didn’t even know how to deport herself on the stage: she
thrust her arms in front of her while she swayed her whole body to and
fro in a manner which struck the audience as unbecoming and
disagreeable. Cries of “Oh, oh!” were already rising in the pit and the
cheap places. There was a sound of whistling, too, when a voice in the
stalls, suggestive of a molting cockerel, cried out with great
conviction:
“That’s very smart!”
All the house looked round. It was the cherub, the truant from the
boarding-school, who sat with his fine eyes very wide open and his fair
face glowing very hotly at sight of Nana. When he saw everybody turning
toward him he grew extremely red at the thought of having thus
unconsciously spoken aloud. Daguenet, his neighbor, smilingly examined
him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and no longer anxious to
hiss; while the young gentlemen in white gloves, fascinated in their
turn by Nana’s gracious contours, lolled back in their seats and
applauded.
“That’s it! Well done! Bravo!”
Nana, in the meantime, seeing the house laughing, began to laugh
herself. The gaiety of all redoubled itself. She was an amusing
creature, all the same, was that fine girl! Her laughter made a love of
a little dimple appear in her chin. She stood there waiting, not bored
in the least, familiar with her audience, falling into step with them
at once, as though she herself were admitting with a wink that she had
not two farthings’ worth of talent but that it did not matter at all,
that, in fact, she had other good points. And then after having made a
sign to the conductor which plainly signified, “Go ahead, old boy!” she
began her second verse:
“’Tis Venus who at midnight passes—”
Still the same acidulated voice, only that now it tickled the public in
the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to give a
little shiver of pleasure. Nana still smiled her smile: it lit up her
little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were of the
clearest blue. When she came to certain rather lively verses a delicate
sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, the rosy nostrils of which
lifted and fell, while a bright flush suffused her cheeks. She still
swung herself up and down, for she only knew how to do that. And the
trick was no longer voted ugly; on the contrary, the men raised their
opera glasses. When she came to the end of a verse her voice completely
failed her, and she was well aware that she never would get through
with it. Thereupon, rather than fret herself, she kicked up her leg,
which forthwith was roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent
sharply backward, so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and
stretched her arms out. Applause burst forth on all sides. In the
twinkling of an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the
stage, presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators’ gaze, a neck
where the red-gold hair showed like some animal’s fell. Then the
plaudits became frantic.
The close of the act was not so exciting. Vulcan wanted to slap Venus.
The gods held a consultation and decided to go and hold an inquiry on
earth before granting the deceived husband satisfaction. It was then
that Diana surprised a tender conversation between Venus and Mars and
vowed that she would not take her eyes off them during the whole of the
voyage. There was also a scene where Love, played by a little
twelve-year-old chit, answered every question put to her with “Yes,
Mamma! No, Mamma!” in a winy-piny tone, her fingers in her nose. At
last Jupiter, with the severity of a master who is growing cross, shut
Love up in a dark closet, bidding her conjugate the verb “I love”
twenty times. The finale was more appreciated: it was a chorus which
both troupe and orchestra performed with great brilliancy. But the
curtain once down, the clappers tried in vain to obtain a call, while
the whole house was already up and making for the doors.
The crowd trampled and jostled, jammed, as it were, between the rows of
seats, and in so doing exchanged expressions. One phrase only went
round:
“It’s idiotic.” A critic was saying that it would be one’s duty to do a
pretty bit of slashing. The piece, however, mattered very little, for
people were talking about Nana before everything else. Fauchery and La
Faloise, being among the earliest to emerge, met Steiner and Mignon in
the passage outside the stalls. In this gaslit gut of a place, which
was as narrow and circumscribed as a gallery in a mine, one was
well-nigh suffocated. They stopped a moment at the foot of the stairs
on the right of the house, protected by the final curve of the
balusters. The audience from the cheap places were coming down the
steps with a continuous tramp of heavy boots; a stream of black dress
coats was passing, while an attendant was making every possible effort
to protect a chair, on which she had piled up coats and cloaks, from
the onward pushing of the crowd.
“Surely I know her,” cried Steiner, the moment he perceived Fauchery.
“I’m certain I’ve seen her somewhere—at the casino, I imagine, and she
got herself taken up there—she was so drunk.”
“As for me,” said the journalist, “I don’t quite know where it was. I
am like you; I certainly have come across her.”
He lowered his voice and asked, laughing:
“At the Tricons’, perhaps.”
“Egad, it was in a dirty place,” Mignon declared. He seemed
exasperated. “It’s disgusting that the public give such a reception to
the first trollop that comes by. There’ll soon be no more decent women
on the stage. Yes, I shall end by forbidding Rose to play.”
Fauchery could not restrain a smile. Meanwhile the downward shuffle of
the heavy shoes on the steps did not cease, and a little man in a
workman’s cap was heard crying in a drawling voice:
“Oh my, she ain’t no wopper! There’s some pickings there!”
In the passage two young men, delicately curled and formally
resplendent in turndown collars and the rest, were disputing together.
One of them was repeating the words, “Beastly, beastly!” without
stating any reasons; the other was replying with the words, “Stunning,
stunning!” as though he, too, disdained all argument.
La Faloise declared her to be quite the thing; only he ventured to
opine that she would be better still if she were to cultivate her
voice. Steiner, who was no longer listening, seemed to awake with a
start. Whatever happens, one must wait, he thought. Perhaps everything
will be spoiled in the following acts. The public had shown
complaisance, but it was certainly not yet taken by storm. Mignon swore
that the piece would never finish, and when Fauchery and La Faloise
left them in order to go up to the foyer he took Steiner’s arm and,
leaning hard against his shoulder, whispered in his ear:
“You’re going to see my wife’s costume for the second act, old fellow.
It IS just blackguardly.”
Upstairs in the foyer three glass chandeliers burned with a brilliant
light. The two cousins hesitated an instant before entering, for the
widely opened glazed doors afforded a view right through the gallery—a
view of a surging sea of heads, which two currents, as it were, kept in
a continuous eddying movement. But they entered after all. Five or six
groups of men, talking very loudly and gesticulating, were obstinately
discussing the play amid these violent interruptions; others were
filing round, their heels, as they turned, sounding sharply on the
waxed floor. To right and left, between columns of variegated imitation
marble, women were sitting on benches covered with red velvet and
viewing the passing movement of the crowd with an air of fatigue as
though the heat had rendered them languid. In the lofty mirrors behind
them one saw the reflection of their chignons. At the end of the room,
in front of the bar, a man with a huge corporation was drinking a glass
of fruit syrup.
But Fauchery, in order to breathe more freely, had gone to the balcony.
La Faloise, who was studying the photographs of actresses hung in
frames alternating with the mirrors between the columns, ended by
following him. They had extinguished the line of gas jets on the facade
of the theater, and it was dark and very cool on the balcony, which
seemed to them unoccupied. Solitary and enveloped in shadow, a young
man was standing, leaning his arms on the stone balustrade, in the
recess to the right. He was smoking a cigarette, of which the burning
end shone redly. Fauchery recognized Daguenet. They shook hands warmly.
“What are you after there, my dear fellow?” asked the journalist.
“You’re hiding yourself in holes and crannies—you, a man who never
leaves the stalls on a first night!”
“But I’m smoking, you see,” replied Daguenet.
Then Fauchery, to put him out of countenance:
“Well, well! What’s your opinion of the new actress? She’s being
roughly handled enough in the passages.”
“Bah!” muttered Daguenet. “They’re people whom she’ll have had nothing
to do with!”
That was the sum of his criticism of Nana’s talent. La Faloise leaned
forward and looked down at the boulevard. Over against them the windows
of a hotel and of a club were brightly lit up, while on the pavement
below a dark mass of customers occupied the tables of the Café de
Madrid. Despite the lateness of the hour the crowd were still crushing
and being crushed; people were advancing with shortened step; a throng
was constantly emerging from the Passage Jouffroy; individuals stood
waiting five or six minutes before they could cross the roadway, to
such a distance did the string of carriages extend.
“What a moving mass! And what a noise!” La Faloise kept reiterating,
for Paris still astonished him.
The bell rang for some time; the foyer emptied. There was a hurrying of
people in the passages. The curtain was already up when whole bands of
spectators re-entered the house amid the irritated expressions of those
who were once more in their places. Everyone took his seat again with
an animated look and renewed attention. La Faloise directed his first
glance in Gaga’s direction, but he was dumfounded at seeing by her side
the tall fair man who but recently had been in Lucy’s stage box.
“What IS that man’s name?” he asked.
Fauchery failed to observe him.
“Ah yes, it’s Labordette,” he said at last with the same careless
movement. The scenery of the second act came as a surprise. It
represented a suburban Shrove Tuesday dance at the Boule Noire.
Masqueraders were trolling a catch, the chorus of which was accompanied
with a tapping of their heels. This ’Arryish departure, which nobody
had in the least expected, caused so much amusement that the house
encored the catch. And it was to this entertainment that the divine
band, let astray by Iris, who falsely bragged that he knew the Earth
well, were now come in order to proceed with their inquiry. They had
put on disguises so as to preserve their incognito. Jupiter came on the
stage as King Dagobert, with his breeches inside out and a huge tin
crown on his head. Phoebus appeared as the Postillion of Lonjumeau and
Minerva as a Norman nursemaid. Loud bursts of merriment greeted Mars,
who wore an outrageous uniform, suggestive of an Alpine admiral. But
the shouts of laughter became uproarious when Neptune came in view,
clad in a blouse, a high, bulging workman’s cap on his head, lovelocks
glued to his temples. Shuffling along in slippers, he cried in a thick
brogue.
“Well, I’m blessed! When ye’re a masher it’ll never do not to let ’em
love yer!”
There were some shouts of “Oh! Oh!” while the ladies held their fans
one degree higher. Lucy in her stage box laughed so obstreperously that
Caroline Hequet silenced her with a tap of her fan.
From that moment forth the piece was saved—nay, more, promised a great
success. This carnival of the gods, this dragging in the mud of their
Olympus, this mock at a whole religion, a whole world of poetry,
appeared in the light of a royal entertainment. The fever of
irreverence gained the literary first-night world: legend was trampled
underfoot; ancient images were shattered. Jupiter’s make-up was
capital. Mars was a success. Royalty became a farce and the army a
thing of folly. When Jupiter, grown suddenly amorous of a little
laundress, began to knock off a mad cancan, Simonne, who was playing
the part of the laundress, launched a kick at the master of the
immortals’ nose and addressed him so drolly as “My big daddy!” that an
immoderate fit of laughter shook the whole house. While they were
dancing Phoebus treated Minerva to salad bowls of negus, and Neptune
sat in state among seven or eight women who regaled him with cakes.
Allusions were eagerly caught; indecent meanings were attached to them;
harmless phrases were diverted from their proper significations in the
light of exclamations issuing from the stalls. For a long time past the
theatrical public had not wallowed in folly more irreverent. It rested
them.
Nevertheless, the action of the piece advanced amid these fooleries.
Vulcan, as an elegant young man clad, down to his gloves, entirely in
yellow and with an eyeglass stuck in his eye, was forever running after
Venus, who at last made her appearance as a fishwife, a kerchief on her
head and her bosom, covered with big gold trinkets, in great evidence.
Nana was so white and plump and looked so natural in a part demanding
wide hips and a voluptuous mouth that she straightway won the whole
house. On her account Rose Mignon was forgotten, though she was made up
as a delicious baby, with a wicker-work burlet on her head and a short
muslin frock and had just sighed forth Diana’s plaints in a sweetly
pretty voice. The other one, the big wench who slapped her thighs and
clucked like a hen, shed round her an odor of life, a sovereign
feminine charm, with which the public grew intoxicated. From the second
act onward everything was permitted her. She might hold herself
awkwardly; she might fail to sing some note in tune; she might forget
her words—it mattered not: she had only to turn and laugh to raise
shouts of applause. When she gave her famous kick from the hip the
stalls were fired, and a glow of passion rose upward, upward, from
gallery to gallery, till it reached the gods. It was a triumph, too,
when she led the dance. She was at home in that: hand on hip, she
enthroned Venus in the gutter by the pavement side. And the music
seemed made for her plebeian voice—shrill, piping music, with
reminiscences of Saint-Cloud Fair, wheezings of clarinets and playful
trills on the part of the little flutes.
Two numbers were again encored. The opening waltz, that waltz with the
naughty rhythmic beat, had returned and swept the gods with it. Juno,
as a peasant woman, caught Jupiter and his little laundress cleverly
and boxed his ears. Diana, surprising Venus in the act of making an
assignation with Mars, made haste to indicate hour and place to Vulcan,
who cried, “I’ve hit on a plan!” The rest of the act did not seem very
clear. The inquiry ended in a final galop after which Jupiter,
breathless, streaming with perspiration and minus his crown, declared
that the little women of Earth were delicious and that the men were all
to blame.
The curtain was falling, when certain voices, rising above the storm of
bravos, cried uproariously:
“All! All!”
Thereupon the curtain rose again; the artistes reappeared hand in hand.
In the middle of the line Nana and Rose Mignon stood side by side,
bowing and curtsying. The audience applauded; the clappers shouted
acclamations. Then little by little the house emptied.
“I must go and pay my respects to the Countess Muffat,” said La
Faloise. “Exactly so; you’ll present me,” replied Fauchery; “we’ll go
down afterward.”
But it was not easy to get to the first-tier boxes. In the passage at
the top of the stairs there was a crush. In order to get forward at all
among the various groups you had to make yourself small and to slide
along, using your elbows in so doing. Leaning under a copper lamp,
where a jet of gas was burning, the bulky critic was sitting in
judgment on the piece in presence of an attentive circle. People in
passing mentioned his name to each other in muttered tones. He had
laughed the whole act through—that was the rumor going the round of the
passages—nevertheless, he was now very severe and spoke of taste and
morals. Farther off the thin-lipped critic was brimming over with a
benevolence which had an unpleasant aftertaste, as of milk turned sour.
Fauchery glanced along, scrutinizing the boxes through the round
openings in each door. But the Count de Vandeuvres stopped him with a
question, and when he was informed that the two cousins were going to
pay their respects to the Muffats, he pointed out to them box seven,
from which he had just emerged. Then bending down and whispering in the
journalist’s ear:
“Tell me, my dear fellow,” he said, “this Nana—surely she’s the girl we
saw one evening at the corner of the Rue de Provence?”
“By Jove, you’re right!” cried Fauchery. “I was saying that I had come
across her!”
La Faloise presented his cousin to Count Muffat de Beuville, who
appeared very frigid. But on hearing the name Fauchery the countess
raised her head and with a certain reserve complimented the
paragraphist on his articles in the Figaro. Leaning on the
velvet-covered support in front of her, she turned half round with a
pretty movement of the shoulders. They talked for a short time, and the
Universal Exhibition was mentioned.
“It will be very fine,” said the count, whose square-cut,
regular-featured face retained a certain gravity.
“I visited the Champ de Mars today and returned thence truly
astonished.”
“They say that things won’t be ready in time,” La Faloise ventured to
remark. “There’s infinite confusion there—”
But the count interrupted him in his severe voice:
“Things will be ready. The emperor desires it.”
Fauchery gaily recounted how one day, when he had gone down thither in
search of a subject for an article, he had come near spending all his
time in the aquarium, which was then in course of construction. The
countess smiled. Now and again she glanced down at the body of the
house, raising an arm which a white glove covered to the elbow and
fanning herself with languid hand. The house dozed, almost deserted.
Some gentlemen in the stalls had opened out newspapers, and ladies
received visits quite comfortably, as though they were at their own
homes. Only a well-bred whispering was audible under the great
chandelier, the light of which was softened in the fine cloud of dust
raised by the confused movements of the interval. At the different
entrances men were crowding in order to talk to ladies who remained
seated. They stood there motionless for a few seconds, craning forward
somewhat and displaying the great white bosoms of their shirt fronts.
“We count on you next Tuesday,” said the countess to La Faloise, and
she invited Fauchery, who bowed.
Not a word was said of the play; Nana’s name was not once mentioned.
The count was so glacially dignified that he might have been supposed
to be taking part at a sitting of the legislature. In order to explain
their presence that evening he remarked simply that his father-in-law
was fond of the theater. The door of the box must have remained open,
for the Marquis de Chouard, who had gone out in order to leave his seat
to the visitors, was back again. He was straightening up his tall, old
figure. His face looked soft and white under a broad-brimmed hat, and
with his restless eyes he followed the movements of the women who
passed.
The moment the countess had given her invitation Fauchery took his
leave, feeling that to talk about the play would not be quite the
thing. La Faloise was the last to quit the box. He had just noticed the
fair-haired Labordette, comfortably installed in the Count de
Vandeuvres’s stage box and chatting at very close quarters with Blanche
de Sivry.
“Gad,” he said after rejoining his cousin, “that Labordette knows all
the girls then! He’s with Blanche now.”
“Doubtless he knows them all,” replied Fauchery quietly. “What d’you
want to be taken for, my friend?”
The passage was somewhat cleared of people, and Fauchery was just about
to go downstairs when Lucy Stewart called him. She was quite at the
other end of the corridor, at the door of her stage box. They were
getting cooked in there, she said, and she took up the whole corridor
in company with Caroline Hequet and her mother, all three nibbling
burnt almonds. A box opener was chatting maternally with them. Lucy
fell out with the journalist. He was a pretty fellow; to be sure! He
went up to see other women and didn’t even come and ask if they were
thirsty! Then, changing the subject:
“You know, dear boy, I think Nana very nice.”
She wanted him to stay in the stage box for the last act, but he made
his escape, promising to catch them at the door afterward. Downstairs
in front of the theater Fauchery and La Faloise lit cigarettes. A great
gathering blocked the sidewalk, a stream of men who had come down from
the theater steps and were inhaling the fresh night air in the
boulevards, where the roar and battle had diminished.
Meanwhile Mignon had drawn Steiner away to the Café des Variétés.
Seeing Nana’s success, he had set to work to talk enthusiastically
about her, all the while observing the banker out of the corners of his
eyes. He knew him well; twice he had helped him to deceive Rose and
then, the caprice being over, had brought him back to her, faithful and
repentant. In the cafe the too numerous crowd of customers were
squeezing themselves round the marble-topped tables. Several were
standing up, drinking in a great hurry. The tall mirrors reflected this
thronging world of heads to infinity and magnified the narrow room
beyond measure with its three chandeliers, its moleskin-covered seats
and its winding staircase draped with red. Steiner went and seated
himself at a table in the first saloon, which opened full on the
boulevard, its doors having been removed rather early for the time of
year. As Fauchery and La Faloise were passing the banker stopped them.
“Come and take a bock with us, eh?” they said.
But he was too preoccupied by an idea; he wanted to have a bouquet
thrown to Nana. At last he called a waiter belonging to the cafe, whom
he familiarly addressed as Auguste. Mignon, who was listening, looked
at him so sharply that he lost countenance and stammered out:
“Two bouquets, Auguste, and deliver them to the attendant. A bouquet
for each of these ladies! Happy thought, eh?”
At the other end of the saloon, her shoulders resting against the frame
of a mirror, a girl, some eighteen years of age at the outside, was
leaning motionless in front of her empty glass as though she had been
benumbed by long and fruitless waiting. Under the natural curls of her
beautiful gray-gold hair a virginal face looked out at you with velvety
eyes, which were at once soft and candid.
She wore a dress of faded green silk and a round hat which blows had
dinted. The cool air of the night made her look very pale.
“Egad, there’s Satin,” murmured Fauchery when his eye lit upon her.
La Faloise questioned him. Oh dear, yes, she was a streetwalker—she
didn’t count. But she was such a scandalous sort that people amused
themselves by making her talk. And the journalist, raising his voice:
“What are you doing there, Satin?”
“I’m bogging,” replied Satin quietly without changing position.
The four men were charmed and fell a-laughing. Mignon assured them that
there was no need to hurry; it would take twenty minutes to set up the
scenery for the third act. But the two cousins, having drunk their
beer, wanted to go up into the theater again; the cold was making
itself felt. Then Mignon remained alone with Steiner, put his elbows on
the table and spoke to him at close quarters.
“It’s an understood thing, eh? We are to go to her house, and I’m to
introduce you. You know the thing’s quite between ourselves—my wife
needn’t know.”
Once more in their places, Fauchery and La Faloise noticed a pretty,
quietly dressed woman in the second tier of boxes. She was with a
serious-looking gentleman, a chief clerk at the office of the Ministry
of the Interior, whom La Faloise knew, having met him at the Muffats’.
As to Fauchery, he was under the impression that her name was Madame
Robert, a lady of honorable repute who had a lover, only one, and that
always a person of respectability.
But they had to turn round, for Daguenet was smiling at them. Now that
Nana had had a success he no longer hid himself: indeed, he had just
been scoring triumphs in the passages. By his side was the young truant
schoolboy, who had not quitted his seat, so stupefying was the state of
admiration into which Nana had plunged him. That was it, he thought;
that was the woman! And he blushed as he thought so and dragged his
gloves on and off mechanically. Then since his neighbor had spoken of
Nana, he ventured to question him.
“Will you pardon me for asking you, sir, but that lady who is acting—do
you know her?”
“Yes, I do a little,” murmured Daguenet with some surprise and
hesitation.
“Then you know her address?”
The question, addressed as it was to him, came so abruptly that he felt
inclined to respond with a box on the ear.
“No,” he said in a dry tone of voice.
And with that he turned his back. The fair lad knew that he had just
been guilty of some breach of good manners. He blushed more hotly than
ever and looked scared.
The traditional three knocks were given, and among the returning
throng, attendants, laden with pelisses and overcoats, bustled about at
a great rate in order to put away people’s things. The clappers
applauded the scenery, which represented a grotto on Mount Etna,
hollowed out in a silver mine and with sides glittering like new money.
In the background Vulcan’s forge glowed like a setting star. Diana,
since the second act, had come to a good understanding with the god,
who was to pretend that he was on a journey, so as to leave the way
clear for Venus and Mars. Then scarcely was Diana alone than Venus made
her appearance. A shiver of delight ran round the house. Nana was nude.
With quiet audacity she appeared in her nakedness, certain of the
sovereign power of her flesh. Some gauze enveloped her, but her rounded
shoulders, her Amazonian bosom, her wide hips, which swayed to and fro
voluptuously, her whole body, in fact, could be divined, nay discerned,
in all its foamlike whiteness of tint beneath the slight fabric she
wore. It was Venus rising from the waves with no veil save her tresses.
And when Nana lifted her arms the golden hairs in her armpits were
observable in the glare of the footlights. There was no applause.
Nobody laughed any more. The men strained forward with serious faces,
sharp features, mouths irritated and parched. A wind seemed to have
passed, a soft, soft wind, laden with a secret menace. Suddenly in the
bouncing child the woman stood discovered, a woman full of restless
suggestion, who brought with her the delirium of sex and opened the
gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was smiling still, but her
smile was now bitter, as of a devourer of men.
“By God,” said Fauchery quite simply to La Faloise.
Mars in the meantime, with his plume of feathers, came hurrying to the
trysting place and found himself between the two goddesses. Then ensued
a passage which Prullière played with great delicacy. Petted by Diana,
who wanted to make a final attack upon his feelings before delivering
him up to Vulcan, wheedled by Venus, whom the presence of her rival
excited, he gave himself up to these tender delights with the beatified
expression of a man in clover. Finally a grand trio brought the scene
to a close, and it was then that an attendant appeared in Lucy
Stewart’s box and threw on the stage two immense bouquets of white
lilacs. There was applause; Nana and Rose Mignon bowed, while Prullière
picked up the bouquets. Many of the occupants of the stalls turned
smilingly toward the ground-floor occupied by Steiner and Mignon. The
banker, his face blood-red, was suffering from little convulsive
twitchings of the chin, as though he had a stoppage in his throat.
What followed took the house by storm completely. Diana had gone off in
a rage, and directly afterward, Venus, sitting on a moss-clad seat,
called Mars to her. Never yet had a more glowing scene of seduction
been ventured on. Nana, her arms round Prullière’s neck, was drawing
him toward her when Fontan, with comically furious mimicry and an
exaggerated imitation of the face of an outraged husband who surprises
his wife in FLAGRANTE DELICTO, appeared at the back of the grotto. He
was holding the famous net with iron meshes. For an instant he poised
and swung it, as a fisherman does when he is going to make a cast, and
by an ingenious twist Venus and Mars were caught in the snare; the net
wrapped itself round them and held them motionless in the attitude of
happy lovers.
A murmur of applause swelled and swelled like a growing sigh. There was
some hand clapping, and every opera glass was fixed on Venus. Little by
little Nana had taken possession of the public, and now every man was
her slave.
A wave of lust had flowed from her as from an excited animal, and its
influence had spread and spread and spread till the whole house was
possessed by it. At that moment her slightest movement blew the flame
of desire: with her little finger she ruled men’s flesh. Backs were
arched and quivered as though unseen violin bows had been drawn across
their muscles; upon men’s shoulders appeared fugitive hairs, which flew
in air, blown by warm and wandering breaths, breathed one knew not from
what feminine mouth. In front of him Fauchery saw the truant schoolboy
half lifted from his seat by passion. Curiosity led him to look at the
Count de Vandeuvres—he was extremely pale, and his lips looked
pinched—at fat Steiner, whose face was purple to the verge of apoplexy;
at Labordette, ogling away with the highly astonished air of a horse
dealer admiring a perfectly shaped mare; at Daguenet, whose ears were
blood-red and twitching with enjoyment. Then a sudden idea made him
glance behind, and he marveled at what he saw in the Muffats’ box.
Behind the countess, who was white and serious as usual, the count was
sitting straight upright, with mouth agape and face mottled with red,
while close by him, in the shadow, the restless eyes of the Marquis de
Chouard had become catlike phosphorescent, full of golden sparkles. The
house was suffocating; people’s very hair grew heavy on their
perspiring heads. For three hours back the breath of the multitude had
filled and heated the atmosphere with a scent of crowded humanity.
Under the swaying glare of the gas the dust clouds in mid-air had grown
constantly denser as they hung motionless beneath the chandelier. The
whole house seemed to be oscillating, to be lapsing toward dizziness in
its fatigue and excitement, full, as it was, of those drowsy midnight
desires which flutter in the recesses of the bed of passion. And Nana,
in front of this languorous public, these fifteen hundred human beings
thronged and smothered in the exhaustion and nervous exasperation which
belong to the close of a spectacle, Nana still triumphed by right of
her marble flesh and that sexual nature of hers, which was strong
enough to destroy the whole crowd of her adorers and yet sustain no
injury.
The piece drew to a close. In answer to Vulcan’s triumphant summons all
the Olympians defiled before the lovers with ohs and ahs of
stupefaction and gaiety. Jupiter said, “I think it is light conduct on
your part, my son, to summon us to see such a sight as this.” Then a
reaction took place in favor of Venus. The chorus of cuckolds was again
ushered in by Iris and besought the master of the gods not to give
effect to its petition, for since women had lived at home, domestic
life was becoming impossible for the men: the latter preferred being
deceived and happy. That was the moral of the play. Then Venus was set
at liberty, and Vulcan obtained a partial divorce from her. Mars was
reconciled with Diana, and Jove, for the sake of domestic peace, packed
his little laundress off into a constellation. And finally they
extricated Love from his black hole, where instead of conjugating the
verb AMO he had been busy in the manufacture of “dollies.” The curtain
fell on an apotheosis, wherein the cuckolds’ chorus knelt and sang a
hymn of gratitude to Venus, who stood there with smiling lips, her
stature enhanced by her sovereign nudity.
The audience, already on their feet, were making for the exits. The
authors were mentioned, and amid a thunder of applause there were two
calls before the curtain. The shout of “Nana! Nana!” rang wildly forth.
Then no sooner was the house empty than it grew dark: the footlights
went out; the chandelier was turned down; long strips of gray canvas
slipped from the stage boxes and swathed the gilt ornamentation of the
galleries, and the house, lately so full of heat and noise, lapsed
suddenly into a heavy sleep, while a musty, dusty odor began to pervade
it. In the front of her box stood the Countess Muffat. Very erect and
closely wrapped up in her furs, she stared at the gathering shadows and
waited for the crowd to pass away.
In the passages the people were jostling the attendants, who hardly
knew what to do among the tumbled heaps of outdoor raiment. Fauchery
and La Faloise had hurried in order to see the crowd pass out. All
along the entrance hall men formed a living hedge, while down the
double staircase came slowly and in regular, complete formation two
interminable throngs of human beings. Steiner, in tow of Mignon, had
left the house among the foremost. The Count de Vandeuvres took his
departure with Blanche de Sivry on his arm. For a moment or two Gaga
and her daughter seemed doubtful how to proceed, but Labordette made
haste to go and fetch them a conveyance, the door whereof he gallantly
shut after them. Nobody saw Daguenet go by. As the truant schoolboy,
registering a mental vow to wait at the stage door, was running with
burning cheeks toward the Passage des Panoramas, of which he found the
gate closed, Satin, standing on the edge of the pavement, moved forward
and brushed him with her skirts, but he in his despair gave her a
savage refusal and vanished amid the crowd, tears of impotent desire in
his eyes. Members of the audience were lighting their cigars and
walking off, humming:
When Venus roams at eventide.
Satin had gone back in front of the Café des Variétés, where Auguste
let her eat the sugar that remained over from the customers’ orders. A
stout man, who came out in a very heated condition, finally carried her
off in the shadow of the boulevard, which was now gradually going to
sleep.
Still people kept coming downstairs. La Faloise was waiting for
Clarisse; Fauchery had promised to catch up Lucy Stewart with Caroline
Hequet and her mother. They came; they took up a whole corner of the
entrance hall and were laughing very loudly when the Muffats passed by
them with an icy expression. Bordenave had just then opened a little
door and, peeping out, had obtained from Fauchery the formal promise of
an article. He was dripping with perspiration, his face blazed, as
though he were drunk with success.
“You’re good for two hundred nights,” La Faloise said to him with
civility. “The whole of Paris will visit your theater.”
But Bordenave grew annoyed and, indicating with a jerk of his chin the
public who filled the entrance hall—a herd of men with parched lips and
ardent eyes, still burning with the enjoyment of Nana—he cried out
violently:
“Say ‘my brothel,’ you obstinate devil!”