after she had lavished the most energetic promises of fidelity on
Muffat Nana kept the Count Xavier de Vandeuvres for the night. For the
last fortnight he had been paying her assiduous court, visiting her and
sending presents of flowers, and now she gave way not so much out of
sudden infatuation as to prove that she was a free woman. The idea of
gain followed later when, the day after, Vandeuvres helped her to pay a
bill which she did not wish to mention to the other man. From
Vandeuvres she would certainly derive from eight to ten thousand francs
a month, and this would prove very useful as pocket money. In those
days he was finishing the last of his fortune in an access of burning,
feverish folly. His horses and Lucy had devoured three of his farms,
and at one gulp Nana was going to swallow his last château, near
Amiens. He seemed in a hurry to sweep everything away, down to the
ruins of the old tower built by a Vandeuvres under Philip Augustus. He
was mad for ruin and thought it a great thing to leave the last golden
bezants of his coat of arms in the grasp of this courtesan, whom the
world of Paris desired. He, too, accepted Nana’s conditions, leaving
her entire freedom of action and claiming her caresses only on certain
days. He was not even naively impassioned enough to require her to make
vows. Muffat suspected nothing. As to Vandeuvres, he knew things would
take place for a certainty, but he never made the least allusion to
them and pretended total ignorance, while his lips wore the subtle
smile of the skeptical man of pleasure who does not seek the
impossible, provided he can have his day and that Paris is aware of it.

From that time forth Nana’s house was really properly appointed. The
staff of servants was complete in the stable, in the kitchen and in my
lady’s chamber. Zoé organized everything and passed successfully
through the most unforeseen difficulties. The household moved as easily
as the scenery in a theater and was regulated like a grand
administrative concern. Indeed, it worked with such precision that
during the early months there were no jars and no derangements. Madame,
however, pained Zoé extremely with her imprudent acts, her sudden fits
of unwisdom, her mad bravado. Still the lady’s maid grew gradually
lenient, for she had noticed that she made increased profits in seasons
of wanton waste when Madame had committed a folly which must be made up
for. It was then that the presents began raining on her, and she fished
up many a louis out of the troubled waters.

One morning when Muffat had not yet left the bedroom Zoé ushered a
gentleman into the dressing room, where Nana was changing her
underwear. He was trembling violently.

“Good gracious! It’s Zizi!” said the young woman in great astonishment.

It was, indeed, Georges. But when he saw her in her shift, with her
golden hair over her bare shoulders, he threw his arms round her neck
and round her waist and kissed her in all directions. She began
struggling to get free, for she was frightened, and in smothered tones
she stammered:

“Do leave off! He’s there! Oh, it’s silly of you! And you, Zoé, are you
out of your senses? Take him away and keep him downstairs; I’ll try and
come down.”

Zoé had to push him in front of her. When Nana was able to rejoin them
in the drawing room downstairs she scolded them both, and Zoé pursed up
her lips and took her departure with a vexed expression, remarking that
she had only been anxious to give Madame a pleasure. Georges was so
glad to see Nana again and gazed at her with such delight that his fine
eyes began filling with tears. The miserable days were over now; his
mother believed him to have grown reasonable and had allowed him to
leave Les Fondettes. Accordingly, the moment he had reached the
terminus, he had got a conveyance in order the more quickly to come and
kiss his sweet darling. He spoke of living at her side in future, as he
used to do down in the country when he waited for her, barefooted, in
the bedroom at La Mignotte. And as he told her about himself, he let
his fingers creep forward, for he longed to touch her after that cruel
year of separation. Then he got possession of her hands, felt about the
wide sleeves of her dressing jacket, traveled up as far as her
shoulders.

“You still love your baby?” he asked in his child voice.

“Oh, I certainly love him!” answered Nana, briskly getting out of his
clutches. “But you come popping in without warning. You know, my little
man, I’m not my own mistress; you must be good!”

Georges, when he got out of his cab, had been so dizzy with the feeling
that his long desire was at last about to be satisfied that he had not
even noticed what sort of house he was entering. But now he became
conscious of a change in the things around him. He examined the
sumptuous dining room with its lofty decorated ceiling, its Gobelin
hangings, its buffet blazing with plate.

“Yes, yes!” he remarked sadly.

And with that she made him understand that he was never to come in the
mornings but between four and six in the afternoon, if he cared to.
That was her reception time. Then as he looked at her with suppliant,
questioning eyes and craved no boon at all, she, in her turn, kissed
him on the forehead in the most amiable way.

“Be very good,” she whispered. “I’ll do all I can.”

But the truth was that this remark now meant nothing. She thought
Georges very nice and would have liked him as a companion, but as
nothing else. Nevertheless, when he arrived daily at four o’clock he
seemed so wretched that she was often fain to be as compliant as of old
and would hide him in cupboards and constantly allow him to pick up the
crumbs from Beauty’s table. He hardly ever left the house now and
became as much one of its inmates as the little dog Bijou. Together
they nestled among Mistress’s skirts and enjoyed a little of her at a
time, even when she was with another man, while doles of sugar and
stray caresses not seldom fell to their share in her hours of
loneliness and boredom.

Doubtless Mme Hugon found out that the lad had again returned to that
wicked woman’s arms, for she hurried up to Paris and came and sought
aid from her other son, the Lieutenant Philippe, who was then in
garrison at Vincennes. Georges, who was hiding from his elder brother,
was seized with despairing apprehension, for he feared the latter might
adopt violent tactics, and as his tenderness for Nana was so nervously
expansive that he could not keep anything from her, he soon began
talking of nothing but his big brother, a great, strong fellow, who was
capable of all kinds of things.

“You know,” he explained, “Mamma won’t come to you while she can send
my brother. Oh, she’ll certainly send Philippe to fetch me.”

The first time he said this Nana was deeply wounded. She said frigidly:

“Gracious me, I should like to see him come! For all that he’s a
lieutenant in the army, Francois will chuck him out in double-quick
time!”

Soon, as the lad kept returning to the subject of his brother, she
ended by taking a certain interest in Philippe, and in a week’s time
she knew him from head to foot—knew him as very tall and very strong
and merry and somewhat rough. She learned intimate details, too, and
found out that he had hair on his arms and a birthmark on his shoulder.
So thoroughly did she learn her lesson that one day, when she was full
of the image of the man who was to be turned out of doors by her
orders, she cried out:

“I say, Zizi, your brother’s not coming. He’s a base deserter!”

The next day, when Georges and Nana were alone together, Francois came
upstairs to ask whether Madame would receive Lieutenant Philippe Hugon.
Georges grew extremely white and murmured:

“I suspected it; Mamma was talking about it this morning.”

And he besought the young woman to send down word that she could not
see visitors. But she was already on her feet and seemed all aflame as
she said:

“Why should I not see him? He would think me afraid. Dear me, we’ll
have a good laugh! Just leave the gentleman in the drawing room for a
quarter of an hour, Francois; afterward bring him up to me.”

She did not sit down again but began pacing feverishly to and fro
between the fireplace and a Venetian mirror hanging above an Italian
chest. And each time she reached the latter she glanced at the glass
and tried the effect of a smile, while Georges sat nervously on a sofa,
trembling at the thought of the coming scene. As she walked up and down
she kept jerking out such little phrases as:

“It will calm the fellow down if he has to wait a quarter of an hour.
Besides, if he thinks he’s calling on a tottie the drawing room will
stun him! Yes, yes, have a good look at everything, my fine fellow! It
isn’t imitation, and it’ll teach you to respect the lady who owns it.
Respect’s what men need to feel! The quarter of an hour’s gone by, eh?
No? Only ten minutes? Oh, we’ve got plenty of time.”

She did not stay where she was, however. At the end of the quarter of
an hour she sent Georges away after making him solemnly promise not to
listen at the door, as such conduct would scarcely look proper in case
the servants saw him. As he went into her bedroom Zizi ventured in a
choking sort of way to remark:

“It’s my brother, you know—”

“Don’t you fear,” she said with much dignity; “if he’s polite I’ll be
polite.”

Francois ushered in Philippe Hugon, who wore morning dress. Georges
began crossing on tiptoe on the other side of the room, for he was
anxious to obey the young woman. But the sound of voices retained him,
and he hesitated in such anguish of mind that his knees gave way under
him. He began imagining that a dread catastrophe would befall, that
blows would be struck, that something abominable would happen, which
would make Nana everlastingly odious to him. And so he could not
withstand the temptation to come back and put his ear against the door.
He heard very ill, for the thick portières deadened every sound, but he
managed to catch certain words spoken by Philippe, stern phrases in
which such terms as “mere child,” “family,” “honor,” were distinctly
audible. He was so anxious about his darling’s possible answers that
his heart beat violently and filled his head with a confused, buzzing
noise. She was sure to give vent to a “Dirty blackguard!” or to a
“Leave me bloody well alone! I’m in my own house!” But nothing
happened—not a breath came from her direction. Nana seemed dead in
there! Soon even his brother’s voice grew gentler, and he could not
make it out at all, when a strange murmuring sound finally stupefied
him. Nana was sobbing! For a moment or two he was the prey of
contending feelings and knew not whether to run away or to fall upon
Philippe. But just then Zoé came into the room, and he withdrew from
the door, ashamed at being thus surprised.

She began quietly to put some linen away in a cupboard while he stood
mute and motionless, pressing his forehead against a windowpane. He was
tortured by uncertainty. After a short silence the woman asked:

“It’s your brother that’s with Madame?”

“Yes,” replied the lad in a choking voice.

There was a fresh silence.

“And it makes you anxious, doesn’t it, Monsieur Georges?”

“Yes,” he rejoined in the same painful, suffering tone.

Zoé was in no hurry. She folded up some lace and said slowly:

“You’re wrong; Madame will manage it all.”

And then the conversation ended; they said not another word. Still she
did not leave the room. A long quarter of an hour passed, and she
turned round again without seeming to notice the look of exasperation
overspreading the lad’s face, which was already white with the effects
of uncertainty and constraint. He was casting sidelong glances in the
direction of the drawing room.

Maybe Nana was still crying. The other must have grown savage and have
dealt her blows. Thus when Zoé finally took her departure he ran to the
door and once more pressed his ear against it. He was thunderstruck;
his head swam, for he heard a brisk outburst of gaiety, tender,
whispering voices and the smothered giggles of a woman who is being
tickled. Besides, almost directly afterward, Nana conducted Philippe to
the head of the stairs, and there was an exchange of cordial and
familiar phrases.

When Georges again ventured into the drawing room the young woman was
standing before the mirror, looking at herself.

“Well?” he asked in utter bewilderment.

“Well, what?” she said without turning round. Then negligently:

“What did you mean? He’s very nice, is your brother!”

“So it’s all right, is it?”

“Oh, certainly it’s all right! Goodness me, what’s come over you? One
would have thought we were going to fight!”

Georges still failed to understand.

“I thought I heard—that is, you didn’t cry?” he stammered out.

“Me cry!” she exclaimed, looking fixedly at him. “Why, you’re dreaming!
What makes you think I cried?”

Thereupon the lad was treated to a distressing scene for having
disobeyed and played Paul Pry behind the door. She sulked, and he
returned with coaxing submissiveness to the old subject, for he wished
to know all about it.

“And my brother then?”

“Your brother saw where he was at once. You know, I might have been a
tottie, in which case his interference would have been accounted for by
your age and the family honor! Oh yes, I understand those kinds of
feelings! But a single glance was enough for him, and he behaved like a
well-bred man at once. So don’t be anxious any longer. It’s all
over—he’s gone to quiet your mamma!”

And she went on laughingly:

“For that matter, you’ll see your brother here. I’ve invited him, and
he’s going to return.”

“Oh, he’s going to return,” said the lad, growing white. He added
nothing, and they ceased talking of Philippe. She began dressing to go
out, and he watched her with his great, sad eyes. Doubtless he was very
glad that matters had got settled, for he would have preferred death to
a rupture of their connection, but deep down in his heart there was a
silent anguish, a profound sense of pain, which he had no experience of
and dared not talk about. How Philippe quieted their mother’s fears he
never knew, but three days later she returned to Les Fondettes,
apparently satisfied. On the evening of her return, at Nana’s house, he
trembled when Francois announced the lieutenant, but the latter jested
gaily and treated him like a young rascal, whose escapade he had
favored as something not likely to have any consequences. The lad’s
heart was sore within him; he scarcely dared move and blushed girlishly
at the least word that was spoken to him. He had not lived much in
Philippe’s society; he was ten years his junior, and he feared him as
he would a father, from whom stories about women are concealed.
Accordingly he experienced an uneasy sense of shame when he saw him so
free in Nana’s company and heard him laugh uproariously, as became a
man who was plunging into a life of pleasure with the gusto born of
magnificent health. Nevertheless, when his brother shortly began to
present himself every day, Georges ended by getting somewhat used to it
all. Nana was radiant.

This, her latest installation, had been involving all the riotous waste
attendant on the life of gallantry, and now her housewarming was being
defiantly celebrated in a grand mansion positively overflowing with
males and with furniture.

One afternoon when the Hugons were there Count Muffat arrived out of
hours. But when Zoé told him that Madame was with friends he refused to
come in and took his departure discreetly, as became a gallant
gentleman. When he made his appearance again in the evening Nana
received him with the frigid indignation of a grossly affronted woman.

“Sir,” she said, “I have given you no cause why you should insult me.
You must understand this: when I am at home to visitors, I beg you to
make your appearance just like other people.”

The count simply gaped in astonishment. “But, my dear—” he endeavored
to explain.

“Perhaps it was because I had visitors! Yes, there were men here, but
what d’you suppose I was doing with those men? You only advertise a
woman’s affairs when you act the discreet lover, and I don’t want to be
advertised; I don’t!”

He obtained his pardon with difficulty, but at bottom he was enchanted.
It was with scenes such as these that she kept him in unquestioning and
docile submission. She had long since succeeded in imposing Georges on
him as a young vagabond who, she declared, amused her. She made him
dine with Philippe, and the count behaved with great amiability. When
they rose from table he took the young man on one side and asked news
of his mother. From that time forth the young Hugons, Vandeuvres and
Muffat were openly about the house and shook hands as guests and
intimates might have done. It was a more convenient arrangement than
the previous one. Muffat alone still abstained discreetly from
too-frequent visits, thus adhering to the ceremonious policy of an
ordinary strange caller. At night when Nana was sitting on her
bearskins drawing off her stockings, he would talk amicably about the
other three gentlemen and lay especial stress on Philippe, who was
loyalty itself.

“It’s very true; they’re nice,” Nana would say as she lingered on the
floor to change her shift. “Only, you know, they see what I am. One
word about it and I should chuck ’em all out of doors for you!”

Nevertheless, despite her luxurious life and her group of courtiers,
Nana was nearly bored to death. She had men for every minute of the
night, and money overflowed even among the brushes and combs in the
drawers of her dressing table. But all this had ceased to satisfy her;
she felt that there was a void somewhere or other, an empty place
provocative of yawns. Her life dragged on, devoid of occupation, and
successive days only brought back the same monotonous hours. Tomorrow
had ceased to be; she lived like a bird: sure of her food and ready to
perch and roost on any branch which she came to. This certainty of food
and drink left her lolling effortless for whole days, lulled her to
sleep in conventual idleness and submission as though she were the
prisoner of her trade. Never going out except to drive, she was losing
her walking powers. She reverted to low childish tastes, would kiss
Bijou from morning to night and kill time with stupid pleasures while
waiting for the man whose caresses she tolerated with an appearance of
complaisant lassitude. Amid this species of self-abandonment she now
took no thought about anything save her personal beauty; her sole care
was to look after herself, to wash and to perfume her limbs, as became
one who was proud of being able to undress at any moment and in face of
anybody without having to blush for her imperfections.

At ten in the morning Nana would get up. Bijou, the Scotch griffon dog,
used to lick her face and wake her, and then would ensue a game of play
lasting some five minutes, during which the dog would race about over
her arms and legs and cause Count Muffat much distress. Bijou was the
first little male he had ever been jealous of. It was not at all
proper, he thought, that an animal should go poking its nose under the
bedclothes like that! After this Nana would proceed to her dressing
room, where she took a bath. Toward eleven o’clock Francois would come
and do up her hair before beginning the elaborate manipulations of the
afternoon.

At breakfast, as she hated feeding alone, she nearly always had Mme
Maloir at table with her. This lady would arrive from unknown regions
in the morning, wearing her extravagantly quaint hats, and would return
at night to that mysterious existence of hers, about which no one ever
troubled. But the hardest to bear were the two or three hours between
lunch and the toilet. On ordinary occasions she proposed a game of
bezique to her old friend; on others she would read the Figaro, in
which the theatrical echoes and the fashionable news interested her.
Sometimes she even opened a book, for she fancied herself in literary
matters. Her toilet kept her till close on five o’clock, and then only
she would wake from her daylong drowse and drive out or receive a whole
mob of men at her own house. She would often dine abroad and always go
to bed very late, only to rise again on the morrow with the same
languor as before and to begin another day, differing in nothing from
its predecessor.

The great distraction was to go to the Batignolles and see her little
Louis at her aunt’s. For a fortnight at a time she forgot all about
him, and then would follow an access of maternal love, and she would
hurry off on foot with all the modesty and tenderness becoming a good
mother. On such occasions she would be the bearer of snuff for her aunt
and of oranges and biscuits for the child, the kind of presents one
takes to a hospital. Or again she would drive up in her landau on her
return from the Bois, decked in costumes, the resplendence of which
greatly excited the dwellers in the solitary street. Since her niece’s
magnificent elevation Mme Lerat had been puffed up with vanity. She
rarely presented herself in the Avenue de Villiers, for she was pleased
to remark that it wasn’t her place to do so, but she enjoyed triumphs
in her own street. She was delighted when the young woman arrived in
dresses that had cost four or five thousand francs and would be
occupied during the whole of the next day in showing off her presents
and in citing prices which quite stupefied the neighbors. As often as
not, Nana kept Sunday free for the sake of “her family,” and on such
occasions, if Muffat invited her, she would refuse with the smile of a
good little shopwoman. It was impossible, she would answer; she was
dining at her aunt’s; she was going to see Baby. Moreover, that poor
little man Louiset was always ill. He was almost three years old,
growing quite a great boy! But he had had an eczema on the back of his
neck, and now concretions were forming in his ears, which pointed, it
was feared, to decay of the bones of the skull. When she saw how pale
he looked, with his spoiled blood and his flabby flesh all out in
yellow patches, she would become serious, but her principal feeling
would be one of astonishment. What could be the matter with the little
love that he should grow so weakly? She, his mother, was so strong and
well!

On the days when her child did not engross attention Nana would again
sink back into the noisy monotony of her existence, with its drives in
the Bois, first nights at the theater, dinners and suppers at the
Maison-d’Or or the Café Anglais, not to mention all the places of
public resort, all the spectacles to which crowds rushed—Mabille, the
reviews, the races. But whatever happened she still felt that stupid,
idle void, which caused her, as it were, to suffer internal cramps.
Despite the incessant infatuations that possessed her heart, she would
stretch out her arms with a gesture of immense weariness the moment she
was left alone. Solitude rendered her low spirited at once, for it
brought her face to face with the emptiness and boredom within her.
Extremely gay by nature and profession, she became dismal in solitude
and would sum up her life in the following ejaculation, which recurred
incessantly between her yawns:

“Oh, how the men bother me!”

One afternoon as she was returning home from a concert, Nana, on the
sidewalk in the Rue Montmartre, noticed a woman trotting along in
down-at-the-heel boots, dirty petticoats and a hat utterly ruined by
the rain. She recognized her suddenly.

“Stop, Charles!” she shouted to the coachman and began calling: “Satin,
Satin!”

Passers-by turned their heads; the whole street stared. Satin had drawn
near and was still further soiling herself against the carriage wheels.

“Do get in, my dear girl,” said Nana tranquilly, disdaining the
onlookers.

And with that she picked her up and carried her off, though she was in
disgusting contrast to her light blue landau and her dress of
pearl-gray silk trimmed with Chantilly, while the street smiled at the
coachman’s loftily dignified demeanor.

From that day forth Nana had a passion to occupy her thoughts. Satin
became her vicious foible. Washed and dressed and duly installed in the
house in the Avenue de Villiers, during three days the girl talked of
Saint-Lazare and the annoyances the sisters had caused her and how
those dirty police people had put her down on the official list. Nana
grew indignant and comforted her and vowed she would get her name taken
off, even though she herself should have to go and find out the
minister of the interior. Meanwhile there was no sort of hurry: nobody
would come and search for her at Nana’s—that was certain. And thereupon
the two women began to pass tender afternoons together, making
numberless endearing little speeches and mingling their kisses with
laughter. The same little sport, which the arrival of the plainclothes
men had interrupted in the Rue de Laval, was beginning again in a
jocular sort of spirit. One fine evening, however, it became serious,
and Nana, who had been so disgusted at Laure’s, now understood what it
meant. She was upset and enraged by it, the more so because Satin
disappeared on the morning of the fourth day. No one had seen her go
out. She had, indeed, slipped away in her new dress, seized by a
longing for air, full of sentimental regret for her old street
existence.

That day there was such a terrible storm in the house that all the
servants hung their heads in sheepish silence. Nana had come near
beating Francois for not throwing himself across the door through which
Satin escaped. She did her best, however, to control herself, and
talked of Satin as a dirty swine. Oh, it would teach her to pick filthy
things like that out of the gutter!

When Madame shut herself up in her room in the afternoon Zoé heard her
sobbing. In the evening she suddenly asked for her carriage and had
herself driven to Laure’s. It had occurred to her that she would find
Satin at the table d’hôte in the Rue des Martyrs. She was not going
there for the sake of seeing her again but in order to catch her one in
the face! As a matter of fact Satin was dining at a little table with
Mme Robert. Seeing Nana, she began to laugh, but the former, though
wounded to the quick, did not make a scene. On the contrary, she was
very sweet and very compliant. She paid for champagne made five or six
tablefuls tipsy and then carried off Satin when Mme Robert was in the
closets. Not till they were in the carriage did she make a mordant
attack on her, threatening to kill her if she did it again.

After that day the same little business began again continually. On
twenty different occasions Nana, tragically furious, as only a jilted
woman can be ran off in pursuit of this sluttish creature, whose
flights were prompted by the boredom she suffered amid the comforts of
her new home. Nana began to talk of boxing Mme Robert’s ears; one day
she even meditated a duel; there was one woman too many, she said.

In these latter times, whenever she dined at Laure’s, she donned her
diamonds and occasionally brought with her Louise Violaine, Maria Blond
and Tatan Nene, all of them ablaze with finery; and while the sordid
feast was progressing in the three saloons and the yellow gaslight
flared overhead, these four resplendent ladies would demean themselves
with a vengeance, for it was their delight to dazzle the little local
courtesans and to carry them off when dinner was over. On days such as
these Laure, sleek and tight-laced as ever would kiss everyone with an
air of expanded maternity. Yet notwithstanding all these circumstances
Satin’s blue eyes and pure virginal face remained as calm as
heretofore; torn, beaten and pestered by the two women, she would
simply remark that it was a funny business, and they would have done
far better to make it up at once. It did no good to slap her; she
couldn’t cut herself in two, however much she wanted to be nice to
everybody. It was Nana who finally carried her off in triumph, so
assiduously had she loaded Satin with kindnesses and presents. In order
to be revenged, however, Mme Robert wrote abominable, anonymous letters
to her rival’s lovers.

For some time past Count Muffat had appeared suspicious, and one
morning, with considerable show of feeling, he laid before Nana an
anonymous letter, where in the very first sentences she read that she
was accused of deceiving the count with Vandeuvres and the young
Hugons.

“It’s false! It’s false!” she loudly exclaimed in accents of
extraordinary candor.

“You swear?” asked Muffat, already willing to be comforted.

“I’ll swear by whatever you like—yes, by the head of my child!”

But the letter was long. Soon her connection with Satin was described
in the broadest and most ignoble terms. When she had done reading she
smiled.

“Now I know who it comes from,” she remarked simply.

And as Muffat wanted her denial to the charges therein contained, she
resumed quietly enough:

“That’s a matter which doesn’t concern you, dear old pet. How can it
hurt you?”

She did not deny anything. He used some horrified expressions.
Thereupon she shrugged her shoulders. Where had he been all this time?
Why, it was done everywhere! And she mentioned her friends and swore
that fashionable ladies went in for it. In fact, to hear her speak,
nothing could be commoner or more natural. But a lie was a lie, and so
a moment ago he had seen how angry she grew in the matter of Vandeuvres
and the young Hugons! Oh, if that had been true he would have been
justified in throttling her! But what was the good of lying to him
about a matter of no consequence? And with that she repeated her
previous expression:

“Come now, how can it hurt you?”

Then as the scene still continued, she closed it with a rough speech:

“Besides, dear boy, if the thing doesn’t suit you it’s very simple: the
house door’s open! There now, you must take me as you find me!”

He hung his head, for the young woman’s vows of fidelity made him happy
at bottom. She, however, now knew her power over him and ceased to
consider his feelings. And from that time forth Satin was openly
installed in the house on the same footing as the gentlemen. Vandeuvres
had not needed anonymous letters in order to understand how matters
stood, and accordingly he joked and tried to pick jealous quarrels with
Satin. Philippe and Georges, on their parts, treated her like a jolly
good fellow, shaking hands with her and cracking the riskiest jokes
imaginable.

Nana had an adventure one evening when this slut of a girl had given
her the go-by and she had gone to dine in the Rue des Martyrs without
being able to catch her. While she was dining by herself Daguenet had
appeared on the scene, for although he had reformed, he still
occasionally dropped in under the influence of his old vicious
inclinations. He hoped of course that no one would meet him in these
black recesses, dedicated to the town’s lowest depravity. Accordingly
even Nana’s presence seemed to embarrass him at the outset. But he was
not the man to run away and, coming forward with a smile, he asked if
Madame would be so kind as to allow him to dine at her table. Noticing
his jocular tone, Nana assumed her magnificently frigid demeanor and
icily replied:

“Sit down where you please, sir. We are in a public place.”

Thus begun, the conversation proved amusing. But at dessert Nana, bored
and burning for a triumph, put her elbows on the table and began in the
old familiar way:

“Well, what about your marriage, my lad? Is it getting on all right?”

“Not much,” Daguenet averred.

As a matter of fact, just when he was about to venture on his request
at the Muffats’, he had met with such a cold reception from the count
that he had prudently refrained. The business struck him as a failure.
Nana fixed her clear eyes on him; she was sitting, leaning her chin on
her hand, and there was an ironical curve about her lips.

“Oh yes! I’m a baggage,” she resumed slowly. “Oh yes, the future
father-in-law will have to be dragged from between my claws! Dear me,
dear me, for a fellow with NOUS, you’re jolly stupid! What! D’you mean
to say you’re going to tell your tales to a man who adores me and tells
me everything? Now just listen: you shall marry if I wish it, my little
man!”

For a minute or two he had felt the truth of this, and now he began
scheming out a method of submission. Nevertheless, he still talked
jokingly, not wishing the matter to grow serious, and after he had put
on his gloves he demanded the hand of Mlle Estelle de Beuville in the
strict regulation manner. Nana ended by laughing, as though she had
been tickled. Oh, that Mimi! It was impossible to bear him a grudge!
Daguenet’s great successes with ladies of her class were due to the
sweetness of his voice, a voice of such musical purity and pliancy as
to have won him among courtesans the sobriquet of “Velvet-Mouth.” Every
woman would give way to him when he lulled her with his sonorous
caresses. He knew this power and rocked Nana to sleep with endless
words, telling her all kinds of idiotic anecdotes. When they left the
table d’hôte she was blushing rosy-red; she trembled as she hung on his
arm; he had reconquered her. As it was very fine, she sent her carriage
away and walked with him as far as his own place, where she went
upstairs with him naturally enough. Two hours later, as she was
dressing again, she said:

“So you hold to this marriage of yours, Mimi?”

“Egad,” he muttered, “it’s the best thing I could possibly do after
all! You know I’m stony broke.”

She summoned him to button her boots, and after a pause:

“Good heavens! I’ve no objection. I’ll shove you on! She’s as dry as a
lath, is that little thing, but since it suits your game—oh, I’m
agreeable: I’ll run the thing through for you.”

Then with bosom still uncovered, she began laughing:

“Only what will you give me?”

He had caught her in his arms and was kissing her on the shoulders in a
perfect access of gratitude while she quivered with excitement and
struggled merrily and threw herself backward in her efforts to be free.

“Oh, I know,” she cried, excited by the contest. “Listen to what I want
in the way of commission. On your wedding day you shall make me a
present of your innocence. Before your wife, d’you understand?”

“That’s it! That’s it!” he said, laughing even louder than Nana.

The bargain amused them—they thought the whole business very good,
indeed.

Now as it happened, there was a dinner at Nana’s next day. For the
matter of that, it was the customary Thursday dinner, and Muffat,
Vandeuvres, the young Hugons and Satin were present. The count arrived
early. He stood in need of eighty thousand francs wherewith to free the
young woman from two or three debts and to give her a set of sapphires
she was dying to possess. As he had already seriously lessened his
capital, he was in search of a lender, for he did not dare to sell
another property. With the advice of Nana herself he had addressed
himself to Labordette, but the latter, deeming it too heavy an
undertaking, had mentioned it to the hairdresser Francis, who willingly
busied himself in such affairs in order to oblige his lady clients. The
count put himself into the hands of these gentlemen but expressed a
formal desire not to appear in the matter, and they both undertook to
keep in hand the bill for a hundred thousand francs which he was to
sign, excusing themselves at the same time for charging a matter of
twenty thousand francs interest and loudly denouncing the blackguard
usurers to whom, they declared, it had been necessary to have recourse.
When Muffat had himself announced, Francis was putting the last touches
to Nana’s coiffure. Labordette also was sitting familiarly in the
dressing room, as became a friend of no consequence. Seeing the count,
he discreetly placed a thick bundle of bank notes among the powders and
pomades, and the bill was signed on the marble-topped dressing table.
Nana was anxious to keep Labordette to dinner, but he declined—he was
taking a rich foreigner about Paris. Muffat, however, led him aside and
begged him to go to Becker, the jeweler, and bring him back thence the
set of sapphires, which he wanted to present the young woman by way of
surprise that very evening. Labordette willingly undertook the
commission, and half an hour later Julien handed the jewel case
mysteriously to the count.

During dinnertime Nana was nervous. The sight of the eighty thousand
francs had excited her. To think all that money was to go to
tradespeople! It was a disgusting thought. After soup had been served
she grew sentimental, and in the splendid dining room, glittering with
plate and glass, she talked of the bliss of poverty. The men were in
evening dress, Nana in a gown of white embroidered satin, while Satin
made a more modest appearance in black silk with a simple gold heart at
her throat, which was a present from her kind friend. Julien and
Francois waited behind the guests and were assisted in this by Zoé. All
three looked most dignified.

“It’s certain I had far greater fun when I hadn’t a cent!” Nana
repeated.

She had placed Muffat on her right hand and Vandeuvres on her left, but
she scarcely looked at them, so taken up was she with Satin, who sat in
state between Philippe and Georges on the opposite side of the table.

“Eh, duckie?” she kept saying at every turn. “How we did use to laugh
in those days when we went to Mother Josse’s school in the Rue
Polonceau!”

When the roast was being served the two women plunged into a world of
reminiscences. They used to have regular chattering fits of this kind
when a sudden desire to stir the muddy depths of their childhood would
possess them. These fits always occurred when men were present: it was
as though they had given way to a burning desire to treat them to the
dunghill on which they had grown to woman’s estate. The gentlemen paled
visibly and looked embarrassed. The young Hugons did their best to
laugh, while Vandeuvres nervously toyed with his beard and Muffat
redoubled his gravity.

“You remember Victor?” said Nana. “There was a wicked little fellow for
you! Why, he used to take the little girls into cellars!”

“I remember him perfectly,” replied Satin. “I recollect the big
courtyard at your place very well. There was a portress there with a
broom!”

“Mother Boche—she’s dead.”

“And I can still picture your shop. Your mother was a great fatty. One
evening when we were playing your father came in drunk. Oh, so drunk!”

At this point Vandeuvres tried to intercept the ladies’ reminiscences
and to effect a diversion,

“I say, my dear, I should be very glad to have some more truffles.
They’re simply perfect. Yesterday I had some at the house of the Duc de
Corbreuse, which did not come up to them at all.”

“The truffles, Julien!” said Nana roughly.

Then returning to the subject:

“By Jove, yes, Dad hadn’t any sense! And then what a smash there was!
You should have seen it—down, down, down we went, starving away all the
time. I can tell you I’ve had to bear pretty well everything and it’s a
miracle I didn’t kick the bucket over it, like Daddy and Mamma.”

This time Muffat, who was playing with his knife in a state of infinite
exasperation, made so bold as to intervene.

“What you’re telling us isn’t very cheerful.”

“Eh, what? Not cheerful!” she cried with a withering glance. “I believe
you; it isn’t cheerful! Somebody had to earn a living for us dear boy.
Oh yes, you know, I’m the right sort; I don’t mince matters. Mamma was
a laundress; Daddy used to get drunk, and he died of it! There! If it
doesn’t suit you—if you’re ashamed of my family—”

They all protested. What was she after now? They had every sort of
respect for her family! But she went on:

“If you’re ashamed of my family you’ll please leave me, because I’m not
one of those women who deny their father and mother. You must take me
and them together, d’you understand?”

They took her as required; they accepted the dad, the mamma, the past;
in fact, whatever she chose. With their eyes fixed on the tablecloth,
the four now sat shrinking and insignificant while Nana, in a transport
of omnipotence, trampled on them in the old muddy boots worn long since
in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or. She was determined not to lay down the
cudgels just yet. It was all very fine to bring her fortunes, to build
her palaces; she would never leave off regretting the time when she
munched apples! Oh, what bosh that stupid thing money was! It was made
for the tradespeople! Finally her outburst ended in a sentimentally
expressed desire for a simple, openhearted existence, to be passed in
an atmosphere of universal benevolence.

When she got to this point she noticed Julien waiting idly by.

“Well, what’s the matter? Hand the champagne then!” she said. “Why
d’you stand staring at me like a goose?”

During this scene the servants had never once smiled. They apparently
heard nothing, and the more their mistress let herself down, the more
majestic they became. Julien set to work to pour out the champagne and
did so without mishap, but Francois, who was handing round the fruit,
was so unfortunate as to tilt the fruit dish too low, and the apples,
the pears and the grapes rolled on the table.

“You bloody clumsy lot!” cried Nana.

The footman was mistaken enough to try and explain that the fruit had
not been firmly piled up. Zoé had disarranged it by taking out some
oranges.

“Then it’s Zoé that’s the goose!” said Nana.

“Madame—” murmured the lady’s maid in an injured tone.

Straightway Madame rose to her feet, and in a sharp voice and with
royally authoritative gesture:

“We’ve had enough of this, haven’t we? Leave the room, all of you! We
don’t want you any longer!”

This summary procedure calmed her down, and she was forthwith all
sweetness and amiability. The dessert proved charming, and the
gentlemen grew quite merry waiting on themselves. But Satin, having
peeled a pear, came and ate it behind her darling, leaning on her
shoulder the while and whispering sundry little remarks in her ear, at
which they both laughed very loudly. By and by she wanted to share her
last piece of pear with Nana and presented it to her between her teeth.
Whereupon there was a great nibbling of lips, and the pear was finished
amid kisses. At this there was a burst of comic protest from the
gentlemen, Philippe shouting to them to take it easy and Vandeuvres
asking if one ought to leave the room. Georges, meanwhile, had come and
put his arm round Satin’s waist and had brought her back to her seat.

“How silly of you!” said Nana. “You’re making her blush, the poor,
darling duck. Never mind, dear girl, let them chaff. It’s our own
little private affair.”

And turning to Muffat, who was watching them with his serious
expression:

“Isn’t it, my friend?”

“Yes, certainly,” he murmured with a slow nod of approval.

He no longer protested now. And so amid that company of gentlemen with
the great names and the old, upright traditions, the two women sat face
to face, exchanging tender glances, conquering, reigning, in tranquil
defiance of the laws of sex, in open contempt for the male portion of
the community. The gentlemen burst into applause.

The company went upstairs to take coffee in the little drawing room,
where a couple of lamps cast a soft glow over the rosy hangings and the
lacquer and old gold of the knickknacks. At that hour of the evening
the light played discreetly over coffers, bronzes and china, lighting
up silver or ivory inlaid work, bringing into view the polished
contours of a carved stick and gleaming over a panel with glossy silky
reflections. The fire, which had been burning since the afternoon, was
dying out in glowing embers. It was very warm—the air behind the
curtains and hangings was languid with warmth. The room was full of
Nana’s intimate existence: a pair of gloves, a fallen handkerchief, an
open book, lay scattered about, and their owner seemed present in
careless attire with that well-known odor of violets and that species
of untidiness which became her in her character of good-natured
courtesan and had such a charming effect among all those rich
surroundings. The very armchairs, which were as wide as beds, and the
sofas, which were as deep as alcoves, invited to slumber oblivious of
the flight of time and to tender whispers in shadowy corners.

Satin went and lolled back in the depths of a sofa near the fireplace.
She had lit a cigarette, but Vandeuvres began amusing himself by
pretending to be ferociously jealous. Nay, he even threatened to send
her his seconds if she still persisted in keeping Nana from her duty.
Philippe and Georges joined him and teased her and badgered her so
mercilessly that at last she shouted out:

“Darling! Darling! Do make ’em keep quiet! They’re still after me!”

“Now then, let her be,” said Nana seriously. “I won’t have her
tormented; you know that quite well. And you, my pet, why d’you always
go mixing yourself up with them when they’ve got so little sense?”

Satin, blushing all over and putting out her tongue, went into the
dressing room, through the widely open door of which you caught a
glimpse of pale marbles gleaming in the milky light of a gas flame in a
globe of rough glass. After that Nana talked to the four men as
charmingly as hostess could. During the day she had read a novel which
was at that time making a good deal of noise. It was the history of a
courtesan, and Nana was very indignant, declaring the whole thing to be
untrue and expressing angry dislike to that kind of monstrous
literature which pretends to paint from nature. “Just as though one
could describe everything,” she said. Just as though a novel ought not
to be written so that the reader may while away an hour pleasantly! In
the matter of books and of plays Nana had very decided opinions: she
wanted tender and noble productions, things that would set her dreaming
and would elevate her soul. Then allusion being made in the course of
conversation to the troubles agitating Paris, the incendiary articles
in the papers, the incipient popular disturbances which followed the
calls to arms nightly raised at public meetings, she waxed wroth with
the Republicans. What on earth did those dirty people who never washed
really want? Were folks not happy? Had not the emperor done everything
for the people? A nice filthy lot of people! She knew ’em; she could
talk about ’em, and, quite forgetting the respect which at dinner she
had just been insisting should be paid to her humble circle in the Rue
de la Goutte-d’Or, she began blackguarding her own class with all the
terror and disgust peculiar to a woman who had risen successfully above
it. That very afternoon she had read in the Figaro an account of the
proceedings at a public meeting which had verged on the comic. Owing to
the slang words that had been used and to the piggish behavior of a
drunken man who had got himself chucked, she was laughing at those
proceedings still.

“Oh, those drunkards!” she said with a disgusted air. “No, look you
here, their republic would be a great misfortune for everybody! Oh, may
God preserve us the emperor as long as possible!”

“God will hear your prayer, my dear,” Muffat replied gravely. “To be
sure, the emperor stands firm.”

He liked her to express such excellent views. Both, indeed, understood
one another in political matters. Vandeuvres and Philippe Hugon
likewise indulged in endless jokes against the “cads,” the quarrelsome
set who scuttled off the moment they clapped eyes on a bayonet. But
Georges that evening remained pale and somber.

“What can be the matter with that baby?” asked Nana, noticing his
troubled appearance.

“With me? Nothing—I am listening,” he muttered.

But he was really suffering. On rising from table he had heard Philippe
joking with the young woman, and now it was Philippe, and not himself,
who sat beside her. His heart, he knew not why, swelled to bursting. He
could not bear to see them so close together; such vile thoughts
oppressed him that shame mingled with his anguish. He who laughed at
Satin, who had accepted Steiner and Muffat and all the rest, felt
outraged and murderous at the thought that Philippe might someday touch
that woman.

“Here, take Bijou,” she said to comfort him, and she passed him the
little dog which had gone to sleep on her dress.

And with that Georges grew happy again, for with the beast still warm
from her lap in his arms, he held, as it were, part of her.

Allusion had been made to a considerable loss which Vandeuvres had last
night sustained at the Imperial Club. Muffat, who did not play,
expressed great astonishment, but Vandeuvres smilingly alluded to his
imminent ruin, about which Paris was already talking. The kind of death
you chose did not much matter, he averred; the great thing was to die
handsomely. For some time past Nana had noticed that he was nervous and
had a sharp downward droop of the mouth and a fitful gleam in the
depths of his clear eyes. But he retained his haughty aristocratic
manner and the delicate elegance of his impoverished race, and as yet
these strange manifestations were only, so to speak, momentary fits of
vertigo overcoming a brain already sapped by play and by debauchery.
One night as he lay beside her he had frightened her with a dreadful
story. He had told her he contemplated shutting himself up in his
stable and setting fire to himself and his horses at such time as he
should have devoured all his substance. His only hope at that period
was a horse, Lusignan by name, which he was training for the Prix de
Paris. He was living on this horse, which was the sole stay of his
shaken credit, and whenever Nana grew exacting he would put her off
till June and to the probability of Lusignan’s winning.

“Bah! He may very likely lose,” she said merrily, “since he’s going to
clear them all out at the races.”

By way of reply he contented himself by smiling a thin, mysterious
smile. Then carelessly:

“By the by, I’ve taken the liberty of giving your name to my outsider,
the filly. Nana, Nana—that sounds well. You’re not vexed?”

“Vexed, why?” she said in a state of inward ecstasy.

The conversation continued, and same mention was made of an execution
shortly to take place. The young woman said she was burning to go to it
when Satin appeared at the dressing-room door and called her in tones
of entreaty. She got up at once and left the gentlemen lolling lazily
about, while they finished their cigars and discussed the grave
question as to how far a murderer subject to chronic alcoholism is
responsible for his act. In the dressing room Zoé sat helpless on a
chair, crying her heart out, while Satin vainly endeavored to console
her.

“What’s the matter?” said Nana in surprise.

“Oh, darling, do speak to her!” said Satin. “I’ve been trying to make
her listen to reason for the last twenty minutes. She’s crying because
you called her a goose.”

“Yes, madame, it’s very hard—very hard,” stuttered Zoé, choked by a
fresh fit of sobbing.

This sad sight melted the young woman’s heart at once. She spoke
kindly, and when the other woman still refused to grow calm she sank
down in front of her and took her round the waist with truly cordial
familiarity:

“But, you silly, I said ‘goose’ just as I might have said anything
else. How shall I explain? I was in a passion—it was wrong of me; now
calm down.”

“I who love Madame so,” stuttered Zoé; “after all I’ve done for
Madame.”

Thereupon Nana kissed the lady’s maid and, wishing to show her she
wasn’t vexed, gave her a dress she had worn three times. Their quarrels
always ended up in the giving of presents! Zoé plugged her handkerchief
into her eyes. She carried the dress off over her arm and added before
leaving that they were very sad in the kitchen and that Julien and
Francois had been unable to eat, so entirely had Madame’s anger taken
away their appetites. Thereupon Madame sent them a louis as a pledge of
reconciliation. She suffered too much if people around her were
sorrowful.

Nana was returning to the drawing room, happy in the thought that she
had patched up a disagreement which was rendering her quietly
apprehensive of the morrow, when Satin came and whispered vehemently in
her ear. She was full of complaint, threatened to be off if those men
still went on teasing her and kept insisting that her darling should
turn them all out of doors for that night, at any rate. It would be a
lesson to them. And then it would be so nice to be alone, both of them!
Nana, with a return of anxiety, declared it to be impossible. Thereupon
the other shouted at her like a violent child and tried hard to
overrule her.

“I wish it, d’you see? Send ’em away or I’m off!”

And she went back into the drawing room, stretched herself out in the
recesses of a divan, which stood in the background near the window, and
lay waiting, silent and deathlike, with her great eyes fixed upon Nana.

The gentlemen were deciding against the new criminological theories.
Granted that lovely invention of irresponsibility in certain
pathological cases, and criminals ceased to exist and sick people alone
remained. The young woman, expressing approval with an occasional nod,
was busy considering how best to dismiss the count. The others would
soon be going, but he would assuredly prove obstinate. In fact, when
Philippe got up to withdraw, Georges followed him at once—he seemed
only anxious not to leave his brother behind. Vandeuvres lingered some
minutes longer, feeling his way, as it were, and waiting to find out
if, by any chance, some important business would oblige Muffat to cede
him his place. Soon, however, when he saw the count deliberately taking
up his quarters for the night, he desisted from his purpose and said
good-by, as became a man of tact. But on his way to the door, he
noticed Satin staring fixedly at Nana, as usual. Doubtless he
understood what this meant, for he seemed amused and came and shook
hands with her.

“We’re not angry, eh?” he whispered. “Pray pardon me. You’re the nicer
attraction of the two, on my honor!”

Satin deigned no reply. Nor did she take her eyes off Nana and the
count, who were now alone. Muffat, ceasing to be ceremonious, had come
to sit beside the young woman. He took her fingers and began kissing
them. Whereupon Nana, seeking to change the current of his thoughts,
asked him if his daughter Estelle were better. The previous night he
had been complaining of the child’s melancholy behavior—he could not
even spend a day happily at his own house, with his wife always out and
his daughter icily silent.

In family matters of this kind Nana was always full of good advice, and
when Muffat abandoned all his usual self-control under the influence of
mental and physical relaxation and once more launched out into his
former plaints, she remembered the promise she had made.

“Suppose you were to marry her?” she said. And with that she ventured
to talk of Daguenet. At the mere mention of the name the count was
filled with disgust. “Never,” he said after what she had told him!

She pretended great surprise and then burst out laughing and put her
arm round his neck.

“Oh, the jealous man! To think of it! Just argue it out a little. Why,
they slandered me to you—I was furious. At present I should be ever so
sorry if—”

But over Muffat’s shoulder she met Satin’s gaze. And she left him
anxiously and in a grave voice continued:

“This marriage must come off, my friend; I don’t want to prevent your
daughter’s happiness. The young man’s most charming; you could not
possibly find a better sort.”

And she launched into extraordinary praise of Daguenet. The count had
again taken her hands; he no longer refused now; he would see about it,
he said, they would talk the matter over. By and by, when he spoke of
going to bed, she sank her voice and excused herself. It was
impossible; she was not well. If he loved her at all he would not
insist! Nevertheless, he was obstinate; he refused to go away, and she
was beginning to give in when she met Satin’s eyes once more. Then she
grew inflexible. No, the thing was out of the question! The count,
deeply moved and with a look of suffering, had risen and was going in
quest of his hat. But in the doorway he remembered the set of
sapphires; he could feel the case in his pocket. He had been wanting to
hide it at the bottom of the bed so that when she entered it before him
she should feel it against her legs. Since dinnertime he had been
meditating this little surprise like a schoolboy, and now, in trouble
and anguish of heart at being thus dismissed, he gave her the case
without further ceremony.

“What is it?” she queried. “Sapphires? Dear me! Oh yes, it’s that set.
How sweet you are! But I say, my darling, d’you believe it’s the same
one? In the shopwindow it made a much greater show.”

That was all the thanks he got, and she let him go away. He noticed
Satin stretched out silent and expectant, and with that he gazed at
both women and without further insistence submitted to his fate and
went downstairs. The hall door had not yet closed when Satin caught
Nana round the waist and danced and sang. Then she ran to the window.

“Oh, just look at the figure he cuts down in the street!” The two women
leaned upon the wrought-iron window rail in the shadow of the curtains.
One o’clock struck. The Avenue de Villiers was deserted, and its double
file of gas lamps stretched away into the darkness of the damp March
night through which great gusts of wind kept sweeping, laden with rain.
There were vague stretches of land on either side of the road which
looked like gulfs of shadow, while scaffoldings round mansions in
process of construction loomed upward under the dark sky. They laughed
uncontrollably as they watched Muffat’s rounded back and glistening
shadow disappearing along the wet sidewalk into the glacial, desolate
plains of new Paris. But Nana silenced Satin.

“Take care; there are the police!”

Thereupon they smothered their laughter and gazed in secret fear at two
dark figures walking with measured tread on the opposite side of the
avenue. Amid all her luxurious surroundings, amid all the royal
splendors of the woman whom all must obey, Nana still stood in horror
of the police and did not like to hear them mentioned any oftener than
death. She felt distinctly unwell when a policeman looked up at her
house. One never knew what such people might do! They might easily take
them for loose women if they heard them laughing at that hour of the
night. Satin, with a little shudder, had squeezed herself up against
Nana. Nevertheless, the pair stayed where they were and were soon
interested in the approach of a lantern, the light of which danced over
the puddles in the road. It was an old ragpicker woman who was busy
raking in the gutters. Satin recognized her.

“Dear me,” she exclaimed, “it’s Queen Pomare with her wickerwork
shawl!”

And while a gust of wind lashed the fine rain in their faces she told
her beloved the story of Queen Pomare. Oh, she had been a splendid girl
once upon a time: all Paris had talked of her beauty. And such devilish
go and such cheek! Why, she led the men about like dogs, and great
people stood blubbering on her stairs! Now she was in the habit of
getting tipsy, and the women round about would make her drink absinthe
for the sake of a laugh, after which the street boys would throw stones
at her and chase her. In fact, it was a regular smashup; the queen had
tumbled into the mud! Nana listened, feeling cold all over.

“You shall see,” added Satin.

She whistled a man’s whistle, and the ragpicker, who was then below the
window, lifted her head and showed herself by the yellow flare of her
lantern. Framed among rags, a perfect bundle of them, a face looked out
from under a tattered kerchief—a blue, seamed face with a toothless,
cavernous mouth and fiery bruises where the eyes should be. And Nana,
seeing the frightful old woman, the wanton drowned in drink, had a
sudden fit of recollection and saw far back amid the shadows of
consciousness the vision of Chamont—Irma d’Anglars, the old harlot
crowned with years and honors, ascending the steps in front of her
château amid abjectly reverential villagers. Then as Satin whistled
again, making game of the old hag, who could not see her:

“Do leave off; there are the police!” she murmured in changed tones.
“In with us, quick, my pet!”

The measured steps were returning, and they shut the window. Turning
round again, shivering, and with the damp of night on her hair, Nana
was momentarily astounded at sight of her drawing room. It seemed as
though she had forgotten it and were entering an unknown chamber. So
warm, so full of perfume, was the air she encountered that she
experienced a sense of delighted surprise. The heaped-up wealth of the
place, the Old World furniture, the fabrics of silk and gold, the
ivory, the bronzes, were slumbering in the rosy light of the lamps,
while from the whole of the silent house a rich feeling of great luxury
ascended, the luxury of the solemn reception rooms, of the comfortable,
ample dining room, of the vast retired staircase, with their soft
carpets and seats. Her individuality, with its longing for domination
and enjoyment and its desire to possess everything that she might
destroy everything, was suddenly increased. Never before had she felt
so profoundly the puissance of her sex. She gazed slowly round and
remarked with an expression of grave philosophy:

“Ah well, all the same, one’s jolly well right to profit by things when
one’s young!”

But now Satin was rolling on the bearskins in the bedroom and calling
her.

“Oh, do come! Do come!”

Nana undressed in the dressing room, and in order to be quicker about
it she took her thick fell of blonde hair in both hands and began
shaking it above the silver wash hand basin, while a downward hail of
long hairpins rang a little chime on the shining metal.

 CHAPTER XI

One Sunday the race for the Grand Prix de Paris was being run in the
Bois de Boulogne beneath skies rendered sultry by the first heats of
June. The sun that morning had risen amid a mist of dun-colored dust,
but toward eleven o’clock, just when the carriages were reaching the
Longchamps course, a southerly wind had swept away the clouds; long
streamers of gray vapor were disappearing across the sky, and gaps
showing an intense blue beyond were spreading from one end of the
horizon to the other. In the bright bursts of sunlight which alternated
with the clouds the whole scene shone again, from the field which was
gradually filling with a crowd of carriages, horsemen and pedestrians,
to the still-vacant course, where the judge’s box stood, together with
the posts and the masts for signaling numbers, and thence on to the
five symmetrical stands of brickwork and timber, rising gallery upon
gallery in the middle of the weighing enclosure opposite. Beyond these,
bathed in the light of noon, lay the vast level plain, bordered with
little trees and shut in to the westward by the wooded heights of
Saint-Cloud and the Suresnes, which, in their turn, were dominated by
the severe outlines of Mont-Valerien.

Nana, as excited as if the Grand Prix were going to make her fortune,
wanted to take up a position by the railing next the winning post. She
had arrived very early—she was, in fact, one of the first to come—in a
landau adorned with silver and drawn, à la Daumont, by four splendid
white horses. This landau was a present from Count Muffat. When she had
made her appearance at the entrance to the field with two postilions
jogging blithely on the near horses and two footmen perching motionless
behind the carriage, the people had rushed to look as though a queen
were passing. She sported the blue and white colors of the Vandeuvres
stable, and her dress was remarkable. It consisted of a little blue
silk bodice and tunic, which fitted closely to the body and bulged out
enormously behind her waist, thereby bringing her lower limbs into bold
relief in such a manner as to be extremely noticeable in that epoch of
voluminous skirts. Then there was a white satin dress with white satin
sleeves and a sash worn crosswise over the shoulders, the whole
ornamented with silver guipure which shone in the sun. In addition to
this, in order to be still more like a jockey, she had stuck a blue
toque with a white feather jauntily upon her chignon, the fair tresses
from which flowed down beyond her shoulders and resembled an enormous
russet pigtail.

Twelve struck. The public would have to wait more than three hours for
the Grand Prix to be run. When the landau had drawn up beside the
barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she were in
her own house. A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and Louiset with
her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering with cold despite
the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of ribbons and laces the
child’s poor little face looked waxen and dumb and white in the open
air. Meanwhile the young woman, without troubling about the people near
her, talked at the top of her voice with Georges and Philippe Hugon,
who were seated opposite on the front seat among such a mountain of
bouquets of white roses and blue myosotis that they were buried up to
their shoulders.

“Well then,” she was saying, “as he bored me to death, I showed him the
door. And now it’s two days that he’s been sulking.”

She was talking of Muffat, but she took care not to confess to the
young men the real reason for this first quarrel, which was that one
evening he had found a man’s hat in her bedroom. She had indeed brought
home a passer-by out of sheer ennui—a silly infatuation.

“You have no idea how funny he is,” she continued, growing merry over
the particulars she was giving. “He’s a regular bigot at bottom, so he
says his prayers every evening. Yes, he does. He’s under the impression
I notice nothing because I go to bed first so as not to be in his way,
but I watch him out of the corner of my eye. Oh, he jaws away, and then
he crosses himself when he turns round to step over me and get to the
inside of the bed.”

“Jove, it’s sly,” muttered Philippe. “That’s what happens before, but
afterward, what then?”

She laughed merrily.

“Yes, just so, before and after! When I’m going to sleep I hear him
jawing away again. But the biggest bore of all is that we can’t argue
about anything now without his growing ‘pi.’ I’ve always been
religious. Yes, chaff as much as you like; that won’t prevent me
believing what I do believe! Only he’s too much of a nuisance: he
blubbers; he talks about remorse. The day before yesterday, for
instance, he had a regular fit of it after our usual row, and I wasn’t
the least bit reassured when all was over.”

But she broke off, crying out:

“Just look at the Mignons arriving. Dear me, they’ve brought the
children! Oh, how those little chaps are dressed up!”

The Mignons were in a landau of severe hue; there was something
substantially luxurious about their turnout, suggesting rich retired
tradespeople. Rose was in a gray silk gown trimmed with red knots and
with puffs; she was smiling happily at the joyous behavior of Henri and
Charles, who sat on the front seat, looking awkward in their
ill-fitting collegians’ tunics. But when the landau had drawn up by the
rails and she perceived Nana sitting in triumph among her bouquets,
with her four horses and her liveries, she pursed up her lips, sat bolt
upright and turned her head away. Mignon, on the other hand, looking
the picture of freshness and gaiety, waved her a salutation. He made it
a matter of principle to keep out of feminine disagreements.

“By the by,” Nana resumed, “d’you know a little old man who’s very
clean and neat and has bad teeth—a Monsieur Venot? He came to see me
this morning.”

“Monsieur Venot?” said Georges in great astonishment. “It’s impossible!
Why, the man’s a Jesuit!”

“Precisely; I spotted that. Oh, you have no idea what our conversation
was like! It was just funny! He spoke to me about the count, about his
divided house, and begged me to restore a family its happiness. He was
very polite and very smiling for the matter of that. Then I answered to
the effect that I wanted nothing better, and I undertook to reconcile
the count and his wife. You know it’s not humbug. I should be delighted
to see them all happy again, the poor things! Besides, it would be a
relief to me for there are days—yes, there are days—when he bores me to
death.”

The weariness of the last months escaped her in this heartfelt
outburst. Moreover, the count appeared to be in big money difficulties;
he was anxious and it seemed likely that the bill which Labordette had
put his name to would not be met.

“Dear me, the countess is down yonder,” said Georges, letting his gaze
wander over the stands.

“Where, where?” cried Nana. “What eyes that baby’s got! Hold my
sunshade, Philippe.”

But with a quick forward dart Georges had outstripped his brother. It
enchanted him to be holding the blue silk sunshade with its silver
fringe. Nana was scanning the scene through a huge pair of field
glasses.

“Ah yes! I see her,” she said at length. “In the right-hand stand, near
a pillar, eh? She’s in mauve, and her daughter in white by her side.
Dear me, there’s Daguenet going to bow to them.”

Thereupon Philippe talked of Daguenet’s approaching marriage with that
lath of an Estelle. It was a settled matter—the banns were being
published. At first the countess had opposed it, but the count, they
said, had insisted. Nana smiled.

“I know, I know,” she murmured. “So much the better for Paul. He’s a
nice boy—he deserves it.”

And leaning toward Louiset:

“You’re enjoying yourself, eh? What a grave face!”

The child never smiled. With a very old expression he was gazing at all
those crowds, as though the sight of them filled him with melancholy
reflections. Bijou, chased from the skirts of the young woman who was
moving about a great deal, had come to nestle, shivering, against the
little fellow.

Meanwhile the field was filling up. Carriages, a compact, interminable
file of them, were continually arriving through the Porte de la
Cascade. There were big omnibuses such as the Pauline, which had
started from the Boulevard des Italiens, freighted with its fifty
passengers, and was now going to draw up to the right of the stands.
Then there were dogcarts, victorias, landaus, all superbly well turned
out, mingled with lamentable cabs which jolted along behind sorry old
hacks, and four-in-hands, sending along their four horses, and mail
coaches, where the masters sat on the seats above and left the servants
to take care of the hampers of champagne inside, and “spiders,” the
immense wheels of which were a flash of glittering steel, and light
tandems, which looked as delicately formed as the works of a clock and
slipped along amid a peal of little bells. Every few seconds an
equestrian rode by, and a swarm of people on foot rushed in a scared
way among the carriages. On the green the far-off rolling sound which
issued from the avenues in the Bois died out suddenly in dull
rustlings, and now nothing was audible save the hubbub of the
ever-increasing crowds and cries and calls and the crackings of whips
in the open. When the sun, amid bursts of wind, reappeared at the edge
of a cloud, a long ray of golden light ran across the field, lit up the
harness and the varnished coach panels and touched the ladies’ dresses
with fire, while amid the dusty radiance the coachmen, high up on their
boxes, flamed beside their great whips.

Labordette was getting out of an open carriage where Gaga, Clarisse and
Blanche de Sivry had kept a place for him. As he was hurrying to cross
the course and enter the weighing enclosure Nana got Georges to call
him. Then when he came up:

“What’s the betting on me?” she asked laughingly.

She referred to the filly Nana, the Nana who had let herself be
shamefully beaten in the race for the Prix de Diane and had not even
been placed in April and May last when she ran for the Prix des Cars
and the Grande Poule des Produits, both of which had been gained by
Lusignan, the other horse in the Vandeuvres stable. Lusignan had all at
once become prime favorite, and since yesterday he had been currently
taken at two to one.

“Always fifty to one against,” replied Labordette.

“The deuce! I’m not worth much,” rejoined Nana, amused by the jest. “I
don’t back myself then; no, by jingo! I don’t put a single louis on
myself.”

Labordette went off again in a great hurry, but she recalled him. She
wanted some advice. Since he kept in touch with the world of trainers
and jockeys he had special information about various stables. His
prognostications had come true a score of times already, and people
called him the “King of Tipsters.”

“Let’s see, what horses ought I to choose?” said the young woman.
“What’s the betting on the Englishman?”

“Spirit? Three to one against. Valerio II, the same. As to the others,
they’re laying twenty-five to one against Cosinus, forty to one against
Hazard, thirty to one against Bourn, thirty-five to one against
Pichenette, ten to one against Frangipane.”

“No, I don’t bet on the Englishman, I don’t. I’m a patriot. Perhaps
Valerio II would do, eh? The Duc de Corbreuse was beaming a little
while ago. Well, no, after all! Fifty louis on Lusignan; what do you
say to that?”

Labordette looked at her with a singular expression. She leaned forward
and asked him questions in a low voice, for she was aware that
Vandeuvres commissioned him to arrange matters with the bookmakers so
as to be able to bet the more easily. Supposing him to have got to know
something, he might quite well tell it her. But without entering into
explanations Labordette persuaded her to trust to his sagacity. He
would put on her fifty louis for her as he might think best, and she
would not repent of his arrangement.

“All the horses you like!” she cried gaily, letting him take his
departure, “but no Nana; she’s a jade!”

There was a burst of uproarious laughter in the carriage. The young men
thought her sally very amusing, while Louiset in his ignorance lifted
his pale eyes to his mother’s face, for her loud exclamations surprised
him. However, there was no escape for Labordette as yet. Rose Mignon
had made a sign to him and was now giving him her commands while he
wrote figures in a notebook. Then Clarisse and Gaga called him back in
order to change their bets, for they had heard things said in the
crowd, and now they didn’t want to have anything more to do with
Valerio II and were choosing Lusignan. He wrote down their wishes with
an impassible expression and at length managed to escape. He could be
seen disappearing between two of the stands on the other side of the
course.

Carriages were still arriving. They were by this time drawn up five
rows deep, and a dense mass of them spread along the barriers,
checkered by the light coats of white horses. Beyond them other
carriages stood about in comparative isolation, looking as though they
had stuck fast in the grass. Wheels and harness were here, there and
everywhere, according as the conveyances to which they belonged were
side by side, at an angle, across and across or head to head. Over such
spaces of turf as still remained unoccupied cavaliers kept trotting,
and black groups of pedestrians moved continually. The scene resembled
the field where a fair is being held, and above it all, amid the
confused motley of the crowd, the drinking booths raised their gray
canvas roofs which gleamed white in the sunshine. But a veritable
tumult, a mob, an eddy of hats, surged round the several bookmakers,
who stood in open carriages gesticulating like itinerant dentists while
their odds were pasted up on tall boards beside them.

“All the same, it’s stupid not to know on what horse one’s betting,”
Nana was remarking. “I really must risk some louis in person.”

She had stood up to select a bookmaker with a decent expression of face
but forgot what she wanted on perceiving a perfect crowd of her
acquaintance. Besides the Mignons, besides Gaga, Clarisse and Blanche,
there were present, to the right and left, behind and in the middle of
the mass of carriages now hemming in her landau, the following ladies:
Tatan Nene and Maria Blond in a victoria, Caroline Hequet with her
mother and two gentlemen in an open carriage, Louise Violaine quite
alone, driving a little basket chaise decked with orange and green
ribbons, the colors of the Mechain stables, and finally, Léa de Horn on
the lofty seat of a mail coach, where a band of young men were making a
great din. Farther off, in a HUIT RESSORTS of aristocratic appearance,
Lucy Stewart, in a very simple black silk dress, sat, looking
distinguished beside a tall young man in the uniform of a naval cadet.
But what most astounded Nana was the arrival of Simonne in a tandem
which Steiner was driving, while a footman sat motionless, with folded
arms, behind them. She looked dazzling in white satin striped with
yellow and was covered with diamonds from waist to hat. The banker, on
his part, was handling a tremendous whip and sending along his two
horses, which were harnessed tandemwise, the leader being a little
warm-colored chestnut with a mouselike trot, the shaft horse a big
brown bay, a stepper, with a fine action.

“Deuce take it!” said Nana. “So that thief Steiner has cleared the
Bourse again, has he? I say, isn’t Simonne a swell! It’s too much of a
good thing; he’ll get into the clutches of the law!”

Nevertheless, she exchanged greetings at a distance. Indeed, she kept
waving her hand and smiling, turning round and forgetting no one in her
desire to be seen by everybody. At the same time she continued
chatting.

“It’s her son Lucy’s got in tow! He’s charming in his uniform. That’s
why she’s looking so grand, of course! You know she’s afraid of him and
that she passes herself off as an actress. Poor young man, I pity him
all the same! He seems quite unsuspicious.”

“Bah,” muttered Philippe, laughing, “she’ll be able to find him an
heiress in the country when she likes.”

Nana was silent, for she had just noticed the Tricon amid the thick of
the carriages. Having arrived in a cab, whence she could not see
anything, the Tricon had quietly mounted the coach box. And there,
straightening up her tall figure, with her noble face enshrined in its
long curls, she dominated the crowd as though enthroned amid her
feminine subjects. All the latter smiled discreetly at her while she,
in her superiority, pretended not to know them. She wasn’t there for
business purposes: she was watching the races for the love of the
thing, as became a frantic gambler with a passion for horseflesh.

“Dear me, there’s that idiot La Faloise!” said Georges suddenly.

It was a surprise to them all. Nana did not recognize her La Faloise,
for since he had come into his inheritance he had grown extraordinarily
up to date. He wore a low collar and was clad in a cloth of delicate
hue which fitted close to his meager shoulders. His hair was in little
bandeaux, and he affected a weary kind of swagger, a soft tone of voice
and slang words and phrases which he did not take the trouble to
finish.

“But he’s quite the thing!” declared Nana in perfect enchantment.

Gaga and Clarisse had called La Faloise and were throwing themselves at
him in their efforts to regain his allegiance, but he left them
immediately, rolling off in a chaffing, disdainful manner. Nana dazzled
him. He rushed up to her and stood on the carriage step, and when she
twitted him about Gaga he murmured:

“Oh dear, no! We’ve seen the last of the old lot! Mustn’t play her off
on me any more. And then, you know, it’s you now, Juliet mine!”

He had put his hand to his heart. Nana laughed a good deal at this
exceedingly sudden out-of-door declaration. She continued:

“I say, that’s not what I’m after. You’re making me forget that I want
to lay wagers. Georges, you see that bookmaker down there, a great
red-faced man with curly hair? He’s got a dirty blackguard expression
which I like. You’re to go and choose—Oh, I say, what can one choose?”

“I’m not a patriotic soul—oh dear, no!” La Faloise blurted out. “I’m
all for the Englishman. It will be ripping if the Englishman gains! The
French may go to Jericho!”

Nana was scandalized. Presently the merits of the several horses began
to be discussed, and La Faloise, wishing to be thought very much in the
swim, spoke of them all as sorry jades. Frangipane, Baron Verdier’s
horse, was by The Truth out of Lenore. A big bay horse he was, who
would certainly have stood a chance if they hadn’t let him get
foundered during training. As to Valerio II from the Corbreuse stable,
he wasn’t ready yet; he’d had the colic in April. Oh yes, they were
keeping that dark, but he was sure of it, on his honor! In the end he
advised Nana to choose Hazard, the most defective of the lot, a horse
nobody would have anything to do with. Hazard, by jingo—such superb
lines and such an action! That horse was going to astonish the people.

“No,” said Nana, “I’m going to put ten louis on Lusignan and five on
Boum.”

La Faloise burst forth at once:

“But, my dear girl, Boum’s all rot! Don’t choose him! Gasc himself is
chucking up backing his own horse. And your Lusignan—never! Why, it’s
all humbug! By Lamb and Princess—just think! By Lamb and Princess—no,
by Jove! All too short in the legs!”

He was choking. Philippe pointed out that, notwithstanding this,
Lusignan had won the Prix des Cars and the Grande Poule des Produits.
But the other ran on again. What did that prove? Nothing at all. On the
contrary, one ought to distrust him. And besides, Gresham rode
Lusignan; well then, let them jolly well dry up! Gresham had bad luck;
he would never get to the post.

And from one end of the field to the other the discussion raging in
Nana’s landau seemed to spread and increase. Voices were raised in a
scream; the passion for gambling filled the air, set faces glowing and
arms waving excitedly, while the bookmakers, perched on their
conveyances, shouted odds and jotted down amounts right furiously. Yet
these were only the small fry of the betting world; the big bets were
made in the weighing enclosure. Here, then, raged the keen contest of
people with light purses who risked their five-franc pieces and
displayed infinite covetousness for the sake of a possible gain of a
few louis. In a word, the battle would be between Spirit and Lusignan.
Englishmen, plainly recognizable as such, were strolling about among
the various groups. They were quite at home; their faces were fiery
with excitement; they were afready triumphant. Bramah, a horse
belonging to Lord Reading, had gained the Grand Prix the previous year,
and this had been a defeat over which hearts were still bleeding. This
year it would be terrible if France were beaten anew. Accordingly all
the ladies were wild with national pride. The Vandeuvres stable became
the rampart of their honor, and Lusignan was pushed and defended and
applauded exceedingly. Gaga, Blanche, Caroline and the rest betted on
Lusignan. Lucy Stewart abstained from this on account of her son, but
it was bruited abroad that Rose Mignon had commissioned Labordette to
risk two hundred louis for her. The Tricon, as she sat alone next her
driver, waited till the last moment. Very cool, indeed, amid all these
disputes, very far above the ever-increasing uproar in which horses’
names kept recurring and lively Parisian phrases mingled with guttural
English exclamations, she sat listening and taking notes majestically.

“And Nana?” said Georges. “Does no one want her?”

Indeed, nobody was asking for the filly; she was not even being
mentioned. The outsider of the Vandeuvres’s stud was swamped by
Lusignan’s popularity. But La Faloise flung his arms up, crying:

“I’ve an inspiration. I’ll bet a louis on Nana.”

“Bravo! I bet a couple,” said Georges.

“And I three,” added Philippe.

And they mounted up and up, bidding against one another good-humoredly
and naming prices as though they had been haggling over Nana at an
auction. La Faloise said he would cover her with gold. Besides,
everybody was to be made to back her; they would go and pick up
backers. But as the three young men were darting off to propagandize,
Nana shouted after them:

“You know I don’t want to have anything to do with her; I don’t for the
world! Georges, ten louis on Lusignan and five on Valerio II.”

Meanwhile they had started fairly off, and she watched them gaily as
they slipped between wheels, ducked under horses’ heads and scoured the
whole field. The moment they recognized anyone in a carriage they
rushed up and urged Nana’s claims. And there were great bursts of
laughter among the crowd when sometimes they turned back, triumphantly
signaling amounts with their fingers, while the young woman stood and
waved her sunshade. Nevertheless, they made poor enough work of it.
Some men let themselves be persuaded; Steiner, for instance, ventured
three louis, for the sight of Nana stirred him. But the women refused
point-blank. “Thanks,” they said; “to lose for a certainty!” Besides,
they were in no hurry to work for the benefit of a dirty wench who was
overwhelming them all with her four white horses, her postilions and
her outrageous assumption of side. Gaga and Clarisse looked exceedingly
prim and asked La Faloise whether he was jolly well making fun of them.
When Georges boldly presented himself before the Mignons’ carriage Rose
turned her head away in the most marked manner and did not answer him.
One must be a pretty foul sort to let one’s name be given to a horse!
Mignon, on the contrary, followed the young man’s movements with a look
of amusement and declared that the women always brought luck.

“Well?” queried Nana when the young men returned after a prolonged
visit to the bookmakers.

“The odds are forty to one against you,” said La Faloise.

“What’s that? Forty to one!” she cried, astounded. “They were fifty to
one against me. What’s happened?”

Labordette had just then reappeared. The course was being cleared, and
the pealing of a bell announced the first race. Amid the expectant
murmur of the bystanders she questioned him about this sudden rise in
her value. But he replied evasively; doubtless a demand for her had
arisen. She had to content herself with this explanation. Moreover,
Labordette announced with a preoccupied expression that Vandeuvres was
coming if he could get away.

The race was ending unnoticed; people were all waiting for the Grand
Prix to be run—when a storm burst over the Hippodrome. For some minutes
past the sun had disappeared, and a wan twilight had darkened over the
multitude. Then the wind rose, and there ensued a sudden deluge. Huge
drops, perfect sheets of water, fell. There was a momentary confusion,
and people shouted and joked and swore, while those on foot scampered
madly off to find refuge under the canvas of the drinking booths. In
the carriages the women did their best to shelter themselves, grasping
their sunshades with both hands, while the bewildered footmen ran to
the hoods. But the shower was already nearly over, and the sun began
shining brilliantly through escaping clouds of fine rain. A blue cleft
opened in the stormy mass, which was blown off over the Bois, and the
skies seemed to smile again and to set the women laughing in a
reassured manner, while amid the snorting of horses and the disarray
and agitation of the drenched multitude that was shaking itself dry a
broad flush of golden light lit up the field, still dripping and
glittering with crystal drops.

“Oh, that poor, dear Louiset!” said Nana. “Are you very drenched, my
darling?”

The little thing silently allowed his hands to be wiped. The young
woman had taken out her handkerchief. Then she dabbed it over Bijou,
who was trembling more violently than ever. It would not matter in the
least; there were a few drops on the white satin of her dress, but she
didn’t care a pin for them. The bouquets, refreshed by the rain, glowed
like snow, and she smelled one ecstatically, drenching her lips in it
as though it were wet with dew.

Meanwhile the burst of rain had suddenly filled the stands. Nana looked
at them through her field glasses. At that distance you could only
distinguish a compact, confused mass of people, heaped up, as it were,
on the ascending ranges of steps, a dark background relieved by light
dots which were human faces. The sunlight filtered in through openings
near the roof at each end of the stand and detached and illumined
portions of the seated multitude, where the ladies’ dresses seemed to
lose their distinguishing colors. But Nana was especially amused by the
ladies whom the shower had driven from the rows of chairs ranged on the
sand at the base of the stands. As courtesans were absolutely forbidden
to enter the enclosure, she began making exceedingly bitter remarks
about all the fashionable women therein assembled. She thought them
fearfully dressed up, and such guys!

There was a rumor that the empress was entering the little central
stand, a pavilion built like a chalet, with a wide balcony furnished
with red armchairs.

“Why, there he is!” said Georges. “I didn’t think he was on duty this
week.”

The stiff and solemn form of the Count Muffat had appeared behind the
empress. Thereupon the young men jested and were sorry that Satin
wasn’t there to go and dig him in the ribs. But Nana’s field glass
focused the head of the Prince of Scots in the imperial stand.

“Gracious, it’s Charles!” she cried.

She thought him stouter than formerly. In eighteen months he had
broadened, and with that she entered into particulars. Oh yes, he was a
big, solidly built fellow!

All round her in the ladies’ carriages they were whispering that the
count had given her up. It was quite a long story. Since he had been
making himself noticeable, the Tuileries had grown scandalized at the
chamberlain’s conduct. Whereupon, in order to retain his position, he
had recently broken it off with Nana. La Faloise bluntly reported this
account of matters to the young woman and, addressing her as his
Juliet, again offered himself. But she laughed merrily and remarked:

“It’s idiotic! You won’t know him; I’ve only to say, ‘Come here,’ for
him to chuck up everything.”

For some seconds past she had been examining the Countess Sabine and
Estelle. Daguenet was still at their side. Fauchery had just arrived
and was disturbing the people round him in his desire to make his bow
to them. He, too, stayed smilingly beside them. After that Nana pointed
with disdainful action at the stands and continued:

“Then, you know, those people don’t fetch me any longer now! I know ’em
too well. You should see ’em behind scenes. No more honor! It’s all up
with honor! Filth belowstairs, filth abovestairs, filth everywhere.
That’s why I won’t be bothered about ’em!”

And with a comprehensive gesture she took in everybody, from the grooms
leading the horses on to the course to the sovereign lady busy chatting
with with Charles, a prince and a dirty fellow to boot.

“Bravo, Nana! Awfully smart, Nana!” cried La Faloise enthusiastically.

The tolling of a bell was lost in the wind; the races continued. The
Prix d’Ispahan had just been run for and Berlingot, a horse belonging
to the Mechain stable, had won. Nana recalled Labordette in order to
obtain news of the hundred louis, but he burst out laughing and refused
to let her know the horses he had chosen for her, so as not to disturb
the luck, as he phrased it. Her money was well placed; she would see
that all in good time. And when she confessed her bets to him and told
him how she had put ten louis on Lusignan and five on Valerio II, he
shrugged his shoulders, as who should say that women did stupid things
whatever happened. His action surprised her; she was quite at sea.

Just then the field grew more animated than before. Open-air lunches
were arranged in the interval before the Grand Prix. There was much
eating and more drinking in all directions, on the grass, on the high
seats of the four-in-hands and mail coaches, in the victorias, the
broughams, the landaus. There was a universal spread of cold viands and
a fine disorderly display of champagne baskets which footmen kept
handing down out of the coach boots. Corks came out with feeble pops,
which the wind drowned. There was an interchange of jests, and the
sound of breaking glasses imparted a note of discord to the high-strung
gaiety of the scene. Gaga and Clarisse, together with Blanche, were
making a serious repast, for they were eating sandwiches on the
carriage rug with which they had been covering their knees. Louise
Violaine had got down from her basket carriage and had joined Caroline
Hequet. On the turf at their feet some gentlemen had instituted a
drinking bar, whither Tatan, Maria, Simonne and the rest came to
refresh themselves, while high in air and close at hand bottles were
being emptied on Léa de Horn’s mail coach, and, with infinite bravado
and gesticulation, a whole band were making themselves tipsy in the
sunshine, above the heads of the crowd. Soon, however, there was an
especially large crowd by Nana’s landau. She had risen to her feet and
had set herself to pour out glasses of champagne for the men who came
to pay her their respects. Francois, one of the footmen, was passing up
the bottles while La Faloise, trying hard to imitate a coster’s
accents, kept pattering away:

“’Ere y’re, given away, given away! There’s some for everybody!”

“Do be still, dear boy,” Nana ended by saying. “We look like a set of
tumblers.”

She thought him very droll and was greatly entertained. At one moment
she conceived the idea of sending Georges with a glass of champagne to
Rose Mignon, who was affecting temperance. Henri and Charles were bored
to distraction; they would have been glad of some champagne, the poor
little fellows. But Georges drank the glassful, for he feared an
argument. Then Nana remembered Louiset, who was sitting forgotten
behind her. Maybe he was thirsty, and she forced him to take a drop or
two of wine, which made him cough dreadfully.

“’Ere y’are, ’ere y’are, gemmen!” La Faloise reiterated. “It don’t cost
two sous; it don’t cost one. We give it away.”

But Nana broke in with an exclamation:

“Gracious, there’s Bordenave down there! Call him. Oh, run, please,
please do!”

It was indeed Bordenave. He was strolling about with his hands behind
his back, wearing a hat that looked rusty in the sunlight and a greasy
frock coat that was glossy at the seams. It was Bordenave shattered by
bankruptcy, yet furious despite all reverses, a Bordenave who flaunted
his misery among all the fine folks with the hardihood becoming a man
ever ready to take Dame Fortune by storm.

“The deuce, how smart we are!” he said when Nana extended her hand to
him like the good-natured wench she was.

Presently, after emptying a glass of champagne, he gave vent to the
following profoundly regretful phrase:

“Ah, if only I were a woman! But, by God, that’s nothing! Would you
like to go on the stage again? I’ve a notion: I’ll hire the Gaîté, and
we’ll gobble up Paris between us. You certainly owe it me, eh?”

And he lingered, grumbling, beside her, though glad to see her again;
for, he said, that confounded Nana was balm to his feelings. Yes, it
was balm to them merely to exist in her presence! She was his daughter;
she was blood of his blood!

The circle increased, for now La Faloise was filling glasses, and
Georges and Philippe were picking up friends. A stealthy impulse was
gradually bringing in the whole field. Nana would fling everyone a
laughing smile or an amusing phrase. The groups of tipplers were
drawing near, and all the champagne scattered over the place was moving
in her direction. Soon there was only one noisy crowd, and that was
round her landau, where she queened it among outstretched glasses, her
yellow hair floating on the breeze and her snowy face bathed in the
sunshine. Then by way of a finishing touch and to make the other women,
who were mad at her triumph, simply perish of envy, she lifted a
brimming glass on high and assumed her old pose as Venus Victrix.

But somebody touched her shoulder, and she was surprised, on turning
round, to see Mignon on the seat. She vanished from view an instant and
sat herself down beside him, for he had come to communicate a matter of
importance. Mignon had everywhere declared that it was ridiculous of
his wife to bear Nana a grudge; he thought her attitude stupid and
useless.

“Look here, my dear,” he whispered. “Be careful: don’t madden Rose too
much. You understand, I think it best to warn you. Yes, she’s got a
weapon in store, and as she’s never forgiven you the Petite Duchesse
business—”

“A weapon,” said Nana; “what’s that blooming well got to do with me?”

“Just listen: it’s a letter she must have found in Fauchery’s pocket, a
letter written to that screw Fauchery by the Countess Muffat. And, by
Jove, it’s clear the whole story’s in it. Well then, Rose wants to send
the letter to the count so as to be revenged on him and on you.”

“What the deuce has that got to do with me?” Nana repeated. “It’s a
funny business. So the whole story about Fauchery’s in it! Very well,
so much the better; the woman has been exasperating me! We shall have a
good laugh!”

“No, I don’t wish it,” Mignon briskly rejoined. “There’ll be a pretty
scandal! Besides, we’ve got nothing to gain.”

He paused, fearing lest he should say too much, while she loudly
averred that she was most certainly not going to get a chaste woman
into trouble.

But when he still insisted on his refusal she looked steadily at him.
Doubtless he was afraid of seeing Fauchery again introduced into his
family in case he broke with the countess. While avenging her own
wrongs, Rose was anxious for that to happen, since she still felt a
kindness toward the journalist. And Nana waxed meditative and thought
of M. Venot’s call, and a plan began to take shape in her brain, while
Mignon was doing his best to talk her over.

“Let’s suppose that Rose sends the letter, eh? There’s food for
scandal: you’re mixed up in the business, and people say you’re the
cause of it all. Then to begin with, the count separates from his
wife.”

“Why should he?” she said. “On the contrary—”

She broke off, in her turn. There was no need for her to think aloud.
So in order to be rid of Mignon she looked as though she entered into
his view of the case, and when he advised her to give Rose some proof
of her submission—to pay her a short visit on the racecourse, for
instance, where everybody would see her—she replied that she would see
about it, that she would think the matter over.

A commotion caused her to stand up again. On the course the horses were
coming in amid a sudden blast of wind. The prize given by the city of
Paris had just been run for, and Cornemuse had gained it. Now the Grand
Prix was about to be run, and the fever of the crowd increased, and
they were tortured by anxiety and stamped and swayed as though they
wanted to make the minutes fly faster. At this ultimate moment the
betting world was surprised and startled by the continued shortening of
the odds against Nana, the outsider of the Vandeuvres stables.
Gentlemen kept returning every few moments with a new quotation: the
betting was thirty to one against Nana; it was twenty-five to one
against Nana, then twenty to one, then fifteen to one. No one could
understand it. A filly beaten on all the racecourses! A filly which
that same morning no single sportsman would take at fifty to one
against! What did this sudden madness betoken? Some laughed at it and
spoke of the pretty doing awaiting the duffers who were being taken in
by the joke. Others looked serious and uneasy and sniffed out something
ugly under it all. Perhaps there was a “deal” in the offing. Allusion
was made to well-known stories about the robberies which are winked at
on racecourses, but on this occasion the great name of Vandeuvres put a
stop to all such accusations, and the skeptics in the end prevailed
when they prophesied that Nana would come in last of all.

“Who’s riding Nana?” queried La Faloise.

Just then the real Nana reappeared, whereat the gentlemen lent his
question an indecent meaning and burst into an uproarious fit of
laughter. Nana bowed.

“Price is up,” she replied.

And with that the discussion began again. Price was an English
celebrity. Why had Vandeuvres got this jockey to come over, seeing that
Gresham ordinarily rode Nana? Besides, they were astonished to see him
confiding Lusignan to this man Gresham, who, according to La Faloise,
never got a place. But all these remarks were swallowed up in jokes,
contradictions and an extraordinarily noisy confusion of opinions. In
order to kill time the company once more set themselves to drain
bottles of champagne. Presently a whisper ran round, and the different
groups opened outward. It was Vandeuvres. Nana affected vexation.

“Dear me, you’re a nice fellow to come at this time of day! Why, I’m
burning to see the enclosure.”

“Well, come along then,” he said; “there’s still time. You’ll take a
stroll round with me. I just happen to have a permit for a lady about
me.”

And he led her off on his arm while she enjoyed the jealous glances
with which Lucy, Caroline and the others followed her. The young Hugons
and La Faloise remained in the landau behind her retreating figure and
continued to do the honors of her champagne. She shouted to them that
she would return immediately.

But Vandeuvres caught sight of Labordette and called him, and there was
an interchange of brief sentences.

“You’ve scraped everything up?”

“Yes.”

“To what amount?”

“Fifteen hundred louis—pretty well all over the place.”

As Nana was visibly listening, and that with much curiosity, they held
their tongues. Vandeuvres was very nervous, and he had those same clear
eyes, shot with little flames, which so frightened her the night he
spoke of burning himself and his horses together. As they crossed over
the course she spoke low and familiarly.

“I say, do explain this to me. Why are the odds on your filly
changing?”

He trembled, and this sentence escaped him:

“Ah, they’re talking, are they? What a set those betting men are! When
I’ve got the favorite they all throw themselves upon him, and there’s
no chance for me. After that, when an outsider’s asked for, they give
tongue and yell as though they were being skinned.”

“You ought to tell me what’s going to happen—I’ve made my bets,” she
rejoined. “Has Nana a chance?”

A sudden, unreasonable burst of anger overpowered him.

“Won’t you deuced well let me be, eh? Every horse has a chance. The
odds are shortening because, by Jove, people have taken the horse. Who,
I don’t know. I should prefer leaving you if you must needs badger me
with your idiotic questions.”

Such a tone was not germane either to his temperament or his habits,
and Nana was rather surprised than wounded. Besides, he was ashamed of
himself directly afterward, and when she begged him in a dry voice to
behave politely he apologized. For some time past he had suffered from
such sudden changes of temper. No one in the Paris of pleasure or of
society was ignorant of the fact that he was playing his last trump
card today. If his horses did not win, if, moreover, they lost him the
considerable sums wagered upon them, it would mean utter disaster and
collapse for him, and the bulwark of his credit and the lofty
appearance which, though undermined, he still kept up, would come
ruining noisily down. Moreover, no one was ignorant of the fact that
Nana was the devouring siren who had finished him off, who had been the
last to attack his crumbling fortunes and to sweep up what remained of
them. Stories were told of wild whims and fancies, of gold scattered to
the four winds, of a visit to Baden-Baden, where she had not left him
enough to pay the hotel bill, of a handful of diamonds cast on the fire
during an evening of drunkenness in order to see whether they would
burn like coal. Little by little her great limbs and her coarse,
plebeian way of laughing had gained complete mastery over this elegant,
degenerate son of an ancient race. At that time he was risking his all,
for he had been so utterly overpowered by his taste for ordure and
stupidity as to have even lost the vigor of his skepticism. A week
before Nana had made him promise her a château on the Norman coast
between Havre and Trouville, and now he was staking the very
foundations of his honor on the fulfillment of his word. Only she was
getting on his nerves, and he could have beaten her, so stupid did he
feel her to be.

The man at the gate, not daring to stop the woman hanging on the
count’s arm, had allowed them to enter the enclosure. Nana, greatly
puffed up at the thought that at last she was setting foot on the
forbidden ground, put on her best behavior and walked slowly by the
ladies seated at the foot of the stands. On ten rows of chairs the
toilets were densely massed, and in the blithe open air their bright
colors mingled harmoniously. Chairs were scattered about, and as people
met one another friendly circles were formed, just as though the
company had been sitting under the trees in a public garden. Children
had been allowed to go free and were running from group to group, while
over head the stands rose tier above crowded tier and the light-colored
dresses therein faded into the delicate shadows of the timberwork. Nana
stared at all these ladies. She stared steadily and markedly at the
Countess Sabine. After which, as she was passing in front of the
imperial stand, the sight of Muffat, looming in all his official
stiffness by the side of the empress, made her very merry.

“Oh, how silly he looks!” she said at the top of her voice to
Vandeuvres. She was anxious to pay everything a visit. This small
parklike region, with its green lawns and groups of trees, rather
charmed her than otherwise. A vendor of ices had set up a large buffet
near the entrance gates, and beneath a rustic thatched roof a dense
throng of people were shouting and gesticulating. This was the ring.
Close by were some empty stalls, and Nana was disappointed at
discovering only a gendarme’s horse there. Then there was the paddock,
a small course some hundred meters in circumference, where a stable
help was walking about Valerio II in his horsecloths. And, oh, what a
lot of men on the graveled sidewalks, all of them with their tickets
forming an orange-colored patch in their bottonholes! And what a
continual parade of people in the open galleries of the grandstands!
The scene interested her for a moment or two, but truly, it was not
worth while getting the spleen because they didn’t admit you inside
here.

Daguenet and Fauchery passed by and bowed to her. She made them a sign,
and they had to come up. Thereupon she made hay of the weighing-in
enclosure. But she broke off abruptly:

“Dear me, there’s the Marquis de Chouard! How old he’s growing! That
old man’s killing himself! Is he still as mad about it as ever?”

Thereupon Daguenet described the old man’s last brilliant stroke. The
story dated from the day before yesterday, and no one knew it as yet.
After dangling about for months he had bought her daughter Amelie from
Gaga for thirty thousand francs, they said.

“Good gracious! That’s a nice business!” cried Nana in disgust. “Go in
for the regular thing, please! But now that I come to think of it, that
must be Lili down there on the grass with a lady in a brougham. I
recognized the face. The old boy will have brought her out.”

Vandeuvres was not listening; he was impatient and longed to get rid of
her. But Fauchery having remarked at parting that if she had not seen
the bookmakers she had seen nothing, the count was obliged to take her
to them in spite of his obvious repugnance. And she was perfectly happy
at once; that truly was a curious sight, she said!

Amid lawns bordered by young horse-chestnut trees there was a round
open enclosure, where, forming a vast circle under the shadow of the
tender green leaves, a dense line of bookmakers was waiting for betting
men, as though they had been hucksters at a fair. In order to overtop
and command the surrounding crowd they had taken up positions on wooden
benches, and they were advertising their prices on the trees beside
them. They had an ever-vigilant glance, and they booked wagers in
answer to a single sign, a mere wink, so rapidly that certain curious
onlookers watched them openmouthed, without being able to understand it
all. Confusion reigned; prices were shouted, and any unexpected change
in a quotation was received with something like tumult. Occasionally
scouts entered the place at a run and redoubled the uproar as they
stopped at the entrance to the rotunda and, at the tops of their
voices, announced departures and arrivals. In this place, where the
gambling fever was pulsing in the sunshine, such announcements were
sure to raise a prolonged muttering sound.

“They ARE funny!” murmured Nana, greatly entertained.

“Their features look as if they had been put on the wrong way. Just you
see that big fellow there; I shouldn’t care to meet him all alone in
the middle of a wood.”

But Vandeuvres pointed her out a bookmaker, once a shopman in a fancy
repository, who had made three million francs in two years. He was
slight of build, delicate and fair, and people all round him treated
him with great respect. They smiled when they addressed him, while
others took up positions close by in order to catch a glimpse of him.

They were at length leaving the ring when Vandeuvres nodded slightly to
another bookmaker, who thereupon ventured to call him. It was one of
his former coachmen, an enormous fellow with the shoulders of an ox and
a high color. Now that he was trying his fortunes at race meetings on
the strength of some mysteriously obtained capital, the count was doing
his utmost to push him, confiding to him his secret bets and treating
him on all occasions as a servant to whom one shows one’s true
character. Yet despite this protection, the man had in rapid succession
lost very heavy sums, and today he, too, was playing his last card.
There was blood in his eyes; he looked fit to drop with apoplexy.

“Well, Marechal,” queried the count in the lowest of voices, “to what
amount have you laid odds?”

“To five thousand louis, Monsieur le Comte,” replied the bookmaker,
likewise lowering his voice. “A pretty job, eh? I’ll confess to you
that I’ve increased the odds; I’ve made it three to one.”

Vandeuvres looked very much put out.

“No, no, I don’t want you to do that. Put it at two to one again
directly. I shan’t tell you any more, Marechal.”

“Oh, how can it hurt, Monsieur le Comte, at this time o’ day?” rejoined
the other with the humble smile befitting an accomplice. “I had to
attract the people so as to lay your two thousand louis.”

At this Vandeuvres silenced him. But as he was going off Marechal
remembered something and was sorry he had not questioned him about the
shortening of the odds on the filly. It would be a nice business for
him if the filly stood a chance, seeing that he had just laid fifty to
one about her in two hundreds.

Nana, though she did not understand a word of what the count was
whispering, dared not, however, ask for new explanations. He seemed
more nervous than before and abruptly handed her over to Labordette,
whom they came upon in front of the weighing-in room.

“You’ll take her back,” he said. “I’ve got something on hand. Au
revoir!”

And he entered the room, which was narrow and low-pitched and half
filled with a great pair of scales. It was like a waiting room in a
suburban station, and Nana was again hugely disillusioned, for she had
been picturing to herself something on a very vast scale, a monumental
machine, in fact, for weighing horses. Dear me, they only weighed the
jockeys! Then it wasn’t worth while making such a fuss with their
weighing! In the scale a jockey with an idiotic expression was waiting,
harness on knee, till a stout man in a frock coat should have done
verifying his weight. At the door a stable help was holding a horse,
Cosinus, round which a silent and deeply interested throng was
clustering.

The course was about to be cleared. Labordette hurried Nana but
retraced his steps in order to show her a little man talking with
Vandeuvres at some distance from the rest.

“Dear me, there’s Price!” he said.

“Ah yes, the man who’s mounting me,” she murmured laughingly.

And she declared him to be exquisitely ugly. All jockeys struck her as
looking idiotic, doubtless, she said, because they were prevented from
growing bigger. This particular jockey was a man of forty, and with his
long, thin, deeply furrowed, hard, dead countenance, he looked like an
old shriveled-up child. His body was knotty and so reduced in size that
his blue jacket with its white sleeves looked as if it had been thrown
over a lay figure.

“No,” she resumed as she walked away, “he would never make me very
happy, you know.”

A mob of people were still crowding the course, the turf of which had
been wet and trampled on till it had grown black. In front of the two
telegraphs, which hung very high up on their cast-iron pillars, the
crowd were jostling together with upturned faces, uproariously greeting
the numbers of the different horses as an electric wire in connection
with the weighing room made them appear. Gentlemen were pointing at
programs: Pichenette had been scratched by his owner, and this caused
some noise. However, Nana did not do more than cross over the course on
Labordette’s arm. The bell hanging on the flagstaff was ringing
persistently to warn people to leave the course.

“Ah, my little dears,” she said as she got up into her landau again,
“their enclosure’s all humbug!”

She was welcomed with acclamation; people around her clapped their
hands.

“Bravo, Nana! Nana’s ours again!”

What idiots they were, to be sure! Did they think she was the sort to
cut old friends? She had come back just at the auspicious moment. Now
then, ’tenshun! The race was beginning! And the champagne was
accordingly forgotten, and everyone left off drinking.

But Nana was astonished to find Gaga in her carriage, sitting with
Bijou and Louiset on her knees. Gaga had indeed decided on this course
of action in order to be near La Faloise, but she told Nana that she
had been anxious to kiss Baby. She adored children.

“By the by, what about Lili?” asked Nana. “That’s certainly she over
there in that old fellow’s brougham. They’ve just told me something
very nice!”

Gaga had adopted a lachrymose expression.

“My dear, it’s made me ill,” she said dolorously. “Yesterday I had to
keep my bed, I cried so, and today I didn’t think I should be able to
come. You know what my opinions were, don’t you? I didn’t desire that
kind of thing at all. I had her educated in a convent with a view to a
good marriage. And then to think of the strict advice she had and the
constant watching! Well, my dear, it was she who wished it. We had such
a scene—tears—disagreeable speeches! It even got to such a point that I
caught her a box on the ear. She was too much bored by existence, she
said; she wanted to get out of it. By and by, when she began to say,
‘’Tisn’t you, after all, who’ve got the right to prevent me,’ I said to
her: ‘you’re a miserable wretch; you’re bringing dishonor upon us.
Begone!’ And it was done. I consented to arrange about it. But my last
hope’s blooming well blasted, and, oh, I used to dream about such nice
things!”

The noise of a quarrel caused them to rise. It was Georges in the act
of defending Vandeuvres against certain vague rumors which were
circulating among the various groups.

“Why should you say that he’s laying off his own horse?” the young man
was exclaiming. “Yesterday in the Salon des Courses he took the odds on
Lusignan for a thousand louis.”

“Yes, I was there,” said Philippe in affirmation of this. “And he
didn’t put a single louis on Nana. If the betting’s ten to one against
Nana he’s got nothing to win there. It’s absurd to imagine people are
so calculating. Where would his interest come in?”

Labordette was listening with a quiet expression. Shrugging his
shoulders, he said:

“Oh, leave them alone; they must have their say. The count has again
laid at least as much as five hundred louis on Lusignan, and if he’s
wanted Nana to run to a hundred louis it’s because an owner ought
always to look as if he believes in his horses.”

“Oh, bosh! What the deuce does that matter to us?” shouted La Faloise
with a wave of his arms. “Spirit’s going to win! Down with
France—bravo, England!”

A long shiver ran through the crowd, while a fresh peal from the bell
announced the arrival of the horses upon the racecourse. At this Nana
got up and stood on one of the seats of her carriage so as to obtain a
better view, and in so doing she trampled the bouquets of roses and
myosotis underfoot. With a sweeping glance she took in the wide, vast
horizon. At this last feverish moment the course was empty and closed
by gray barriers, between the posts of which stood a line of policemen.
The strip of grass which lay muddy in front of her grew brighter as it
stretched away and turned into a tender green carpet in the distance.
In the middle landscape, as she lowered her eyes, she saw the field
swarming with vast numbers of people, some on tiptoe, others perched on
carriages, and all heaving and jostling in sudden passionate
excitement.

Horses were neighing; tent canvases flapped, while equestrians urged
their hacks forward amid a crowd of pedestrians rushing to get places
along the barriers. When Nana turned in the direction of the stands on
the other side the faces seemed diminished, and the dense masses of
heads were only a confused and motley array, filling gangways, steps
and terraces and looming in deep, dark, serried lines against the sky.
And beyond these again she over looked the plain surrounding the
course. Behind the ivy-clad mill to the right, meadows, dotted over
with great patches of umbrageous wood, stretched away into the
distance, while opposite to her, as far as the Seine flowing at the
foot of a hill, the avenues of the park intersected one another, filled
at that moment with long, motionless files of waiting carriages; and in
the direction of Boulogne, on the left, the landscape widened anew and
opened out toward the blue distances of Meudon through an avenue of
paulownias, whose rosy, leafless tops were one stain of brilliant lake
color. People were still arriving, and a long procession of human ants
kept coming along the narrow ribbon of road which crossed the distance,
while very far away, on the Paris side, the nonpaying public, herding
like sheep among the wood, loomed in a moving line of little dark spots
under the trees on the skirts of the Bois.

Suddenly a cheering influence warmed the hundred thousand souls who
covered this part of the plain like insects swarming madly under the
vast expanse of heaven. The sun, which had been hidden for about a
quarter of an hour, made his appearance again and shone out amid a
perfect sea of light. And everything flamed afresh: the women’s
sunshades turned into countless golden targets above the heads of the
crowd. The sun was applauded, saluted with bursts of laughter. And
people stretched their arms out as though to brush apart the clouds.

Meanwhile a solitary police officer advanced down the middle of the
deserted racecourse, while higher up, on the left, a man appeared with
a red flag in his hand.

“It’s the starter, the Baron de Mauriac,” said Labordette in reply to a
question from Nana. All round the young woman exclamations were
bursting from the men who were pressing to her very carriage step. They
kept up a disconnected conversation, jerking out phrases under the
immediate influence of passing impressions. Indeed, Philippe and
Georges, Bordenave and La Faloise, could not be quiet.

“Don’t shove! Let me see! Ah, the judge is getting into his box. D’you
say it’s Monsieur de Souvigny? You must have good eyesight—eh?—to be
able to tell what half a head is out of a fakement like that! Do hold
your tongue—the banner’s going up. Here they are—’tenshun! Cosinus is
the first!”

A red and yellow banner was flapping in mid-air at the top of a mast.
The horses came on the course one by one; they were led by stableboys,
and the jockeys were sitting idle-handed in the saddles, the sunlight
making them look like bright dabs of color. After Cosinus appeared
Hazard and Boum. Presently a murmur of approval greeted Spirit, a
magnificent big brown bay, the harsh citron color and black of whose
jockey were cheerlessly Britannic. Valerio II scored a success as he
came in; he was small and very lively, and his colors were soft green
bordered with pink. The two Vandeuvres horses were slow to make their
appearance, but at last, in Frangipane’s rear, the blue and white
showed themselves. But Lusignan, a very dark bay of irreproachable
shape, was almost forgotten amid the astonishment caused by Nana.
People had not seen her looking like this before, for now the sudden
sunlight was dyeing the chestnut filly the brilliant color of a girl’s
red-gold hair. She was shining in the light like a new gold coin; her
chest was deep; her head and neck tapered lightly from the delicate,
high-strung line of her long back.

“Gracious, she’s got my hair!” cried Nana in an ecstasy. “You bet you
know I’m proud of it!”

The men clambered up on the landau, and Bordenave narrowly escaped
putting his foot on Louiset, whom his mother had forgotten. He took him
up with an outburst of paternal grumbling and hoisted him on his
shoulder, muttering at the same time:

“The poor little brat, he must be in it too! Wait a bit, I’ll show you
Mamma. Eh? Look at Mummy out there.”

And as Bijou was scratching his legs, he took charge of him, too, while
Nana, rejoicing in the brute that bore her name, glanced round at the
other women to see how they took it. They were all raging madly. Just
then on the summit of her cab the Tricon, who had not moved till that
moment, began waving her hand and giving her bookmaker her orders above
the heads of the crowd. Her instinct had at last prompted her; she was
backing Nana.

La Faloise meanwhile was making an insufferable noise. He was getting
wild over Frangipane.

“I’ve an inspiration,” he kept shouting. “Just look at Frangipane. What
an action, eh? I back Frangipane at eight to one. Who’ll take me?”

“Do keep quiet now,” said Labordette at last. “You’ll be sorry for it
if you do.”

“Frangipane’s a screw,” Philippe declared. “He’s been utterly blown
upon already. You’ll see the canter.”

The horses had gone up to the right, and they now started for the
preliminary canter, passing in loose order before the stands. Thereupon
there was a passionate fresh burst of talk, and people all spoke at
once.

“Lusignan’s too long in the back, but he’s very fit. Not a cent, I tell
you, on Valerio II; he’s nervous—gallops with his head up—it’s a bad
sign. Jove! Burne’s riding Spirit. I tell you, he’s got no shoulders. A
well-made shoulder—that’s the whole secret. No, decidedly, Spirit’s too
quiet. Now listen, Nana, I saw her after the Grande Poule des Produits,
and she was dripping and draggled, and her sides were trembling like
one o’clock. I lay twenty louis she isn’t placed! Oh, shut up! He’s
boring us with his Frangipane. There’s no time to make a bet now;
there, they’re off!”

Almost in tears, La Faloise was struggling to find a bookmaker. He had
to be reasoned with. Everyone craned forward, but the first go-off was
bad, the starter, who looked in the distance like a slim dash of
blackness, not having lowered his flag. The horses came back to their
places after galloping a moment or two. There were two more false
starts. At length the starter got the horses together and sent them
away with such address as to elicit shouts of applause.

“Splendid! No, it was mere chance! Never mind—it’s done it!”

The outcries were smothered by the anxiety which tortured every breast.
The betting stopped now, and the game was being played on the vast
course itself. Silence reigned at the outset, as though everyone were
holding his breath. White faces and trembling forms were stretched
forward in all directions. At first Hazard and Cosinus made the running
at the head of the rest; Valerio II followed close by, and the field
came on in a confused mass behind. When they passed in front of the
stands, thundering over the ground in their course like a sudden
stormwind, the mass was already some fourteen lengths in extent.
Frangipane was last, and Nana was slightly behind Lusignan and Spirit.

“Egad!” muttered Labordette, “how the Englishman is pulling it off out
there!”

The whole carriageload again burst out with phrases and exclamations.
Everyone rose on tiptoe and followed the bright splashes of color which
were the jockeys as they rushed through the sunlight.

At the rise Valerio II took the lead, while Cosinus and Hazard lost
ground, and Lusignan and Spirit were running neck and neck with Nana
still behind them.

“By jingo, the Englishman’s gained! It’s palpable!” said Bordenave.
“Lusignan’s in difficulties, and Valerio II can’t stay.”

“Well, it will be a pretty biz if the Englishman wins!” cried Philippe
in an access of patriotic grief.

A feeling of anguish was beginning to choke all that crowded multitude.
Another defeat! And with that a strange ardent prayer, which was almost
religious, went up for Lusignan, while people heaped abuse on Spirit
and his dismal mute of a jockey. Among the crowd scattered over the
grass the wind of excitement put up whole groups of people and set
their boot soles flashing in air as they ran. Horsemen crossed the
green at a furious gallop. And Nana, who was slowly revolving on her
own axis, saw beneath her a surging waste of beasts and men, a sea of
heads swayed and stirred all round the course by the whirlwind of the
race, which clove the horizon with the bright lightning flash of the
jockeys. She had been following their movement from behind while the
cruppers sped away and the legs seemed to grow longer as they raced and
then diminished till they looked slender as strands of hair. Now the
horses were running at the end of the course, and she caught a side
view of them looking minute and delicate of outline against the green
distances of the Bois. Then suddenly they vanished behind a great clump
of trees growing in the middle of the Hippodrome.

“Don’t talk about it!” cried Georges, who was still full of hope. “It
isn’t over yet. The Englishman’s touched.”

But La Faloise was again seized with contempt for his country and grew
positively outrageous in his applause of Spirit. Bravo! That was right!
France needed it! Spirit first and Frangipane second—that would be a
nasty one for his native land! He exasperated Labordette, who
threatened seriously to throw him off the carriage.

“Let’s see how many minutes they’ll be about it,” said Bordenave
peaceably, for though holding up Louiset, he had taken out his watch.

One after the other the horses reappeared from behind the clump of
trees. There was stupefaction; a long murmur arose among the crowd.
Valerio II was still leading, but Spirit was gaining on him, and behind
him Lusignan had slackened while another horse was taking his place.
People could not make this out all at once; they were confused about
the colors. Then there was a burst of exclamations.

“But it’s Nana! Nana? Get along! I tell you Lusignan hasn’t budged.
Dear me, yes, it’s Nana. You can certainly recognize her by her golden
color. D’you see her now? She’s blazing away. Bravo, Nana! What a
ripper she is! Bah, it doesn’t matter a bit: she’s making the running
for Lusignan!”