Nana by Émile Zola (top 100 novels of all time .txt) 📕

mine, a

naval officer, Monsieur de Foucarmont by name. I invited him.”

 

Foucarmont bowed and seemed very much at ease, for he added:

 

“And I took leave to bring one of my friends with me.”

 

“Oh, it’s quite right, quite right!” said Nana. “Sit down, pray.

Let’s see, you—Clarisse—push up a little. You’re a good deal

spread out down there. That’s it—where there’s a will—”

 

They crowded more tightly than ever, and Foucarmont and Louise were

given a little stretch of table, but the friend had to sit at some

distance from his plate and ate his supper through dint of making a

long arm between his neighbors’ shoulders. The waiters took away

the soup plates and circulated rissoles of young rabbit with

truffles and “niokys” and powdered cheese. Bordenave agitated the

whole table with the announcement that at one moment he had had the

idea of bringing with him Prulliere, Fontan and old Bosc. At this

Nana looked sedate and remarked dryly that she would have given them

a pretty reception. Had she wanted colleagues, she would certainly

have undertaken to ask them herself. No, no, she wouldn’t have

third-rate play actors. Old Bosc was always drunk; Prulliere was

fond of spitting too much, and as to Fontan, he made himself

unbearable in society with his loud voice and his stupid doings.

Then, you know, third-rate play actors were always out of place when

they found themselves in the society of gentlemen such as those

around her.

 

“Yes, yes, it’s true,” Mignon declared.

 

All round the table the gentlemen in question looked unimpeachable

in the extreme, what with their evening dress and their pale

features, the natural distinction of which was still further refined

by fatigue. The old gentleman was as deliberate in his movements

and wore as subtle a smile as though he were presiding over a

diplomatic congress, and Vandeuvres, with his exquisite politeness

toward the ladies next to him, seemed to be at one of the Countess

Muffat’s receptions. That very morning Nana had been remarking to

her aunt that in the matter of men one could not have done better—

they were all either wellborn or wealthy, in fact, quite the thing.

And as to the ladies, they were behaving admirably. Some of them,

such as Blanche, Lea and Louise, had come in low dresses, but Gaga’s

only was perhaps a little too low, the more so because at her age

she would have done well not to show her neck at all. Now that the

company were finally settled the laughter and the light jests began

to fail. Georges was under the impression that he had assisted at

merrier dinner parties among the good folks of Orleans. There was

scarcely any conversation. The men, not being mutually acquainted,

stared at one another, while the women sat quite quiet, and it was

this which especially surprised Georges. He thought them all smugs—

he had been under the impression that everybody would begin kissing

at once.

 

The third course, consisting of a Rhine carp a la Chambord and a

saddle of venison a l’anglaise, was being served when Blanche

remarked aloud:

 

“Lucy, my dear, I met your Ollivier on Sunday. How he’s grown!”

 

“Dear me, yes! He’s eighteen,” replied Lucy. “It doesn’t make me

feel any younger. He went back to his school yesterday.”

 

Her son Ollivier, whom she was wont to speak of with pride, was a

pupil at the Ecole de Marine. Then ensued a conversation about the

young people, during which all the ladies waxed very tender. Nana

described her own great happiness. Her baby, the little Louis, she

said, was now at the house of her aunt, who brought him round to her

every morning at eleven o’clock, when she would take him into her

bed, where he played with her griffon dog Lulu. It was enough to

make one die of laughing to see them both burying themselves under

the clothes at the bottom of the bed. The company had no idea how

cunning Louiset had already become.

 

“Oh, yesterday I did just pass a day!” said Rose Mignon in her turn.

“Just imagine, I went to fetch Charles and Henry at their boarding

school, and I had positively to take them to the theater at night.

They jumped; they clapped their little hands: ‘We shall see Mamma

act! We shall see Mamma act!’ Oh, it was a to-do!”

 

Mignon smiled complaisantly, his eyes moist with paternal

tenderness.

 

“And at the play itself,” he continued, “they were so funny! They

behaved as seriously as grown men, devoured Rose with their eyes and

asked me why Mamma had her legs bare like that.”

 

The whole table began laughing, and Mignon looked radiant, for his

pride as a father was flattered. He adored his children and had but

one object in life, which was to increase their fortunes by

administering the money gained by Rose at the theater and elsewhere

with the businesslike severity of a faithful steward. When as first

fiddle in the music hall where she used to sing he had married her,

they had been passionately fond of one another. Now they were good

friends. There was an understanding between them: she labored hard

to the full extent of her talent and of her beauty; he had given up

his violin in order the better to watch over her successes as an

actress and as a woman. One could not have found a more homely and

united household anywhere!

 

“What age is your eldest?” asked Vandeuvres.

 

“Henry’s nine,” replied Mignon, “but such a big chap for his years!”

 

Then he chaffed Steiner, who was not fond of children, and with

quiet audacity informed him that were he a father, he would make a

less stupid hash of his fortune. While talking he watched the

banker over Blanche’s shoulders to see if it was coming off with

Nana. But for some minutes Rose and Fauchery, who were talking very

near him, had been getting on his nerves. Was Rose going to waste

time over such a folly as that? In that sort of case, by Jove, he

blocked the way. And diamond on finger and with his fine hands in

great evidence, he finished discussing a fillet of venison.

 

Elsewhere the conversation about children continued. La Faloise,

rendered very restless by the immediate proximity of Gaga, asked

news of her daughter, whom he had had the pleasure of noticing in

her company at the Varietes. Lili was quite well, but she was still

such a tomboy! He was astonished to learn that Lili was entering on

her nineteenth year. Gaga became even more imposing in his eyes,

and when he endeavored to find out why she had not brought Lili with

her:

 

“Oh no, no, never!” she said stiffly. “Not three months ago she

positively insisted on leaving her boarding school. I was thinking

of marrying her off at once, but she loves me so that I had to take

her home—oh, so much against my will!”

 

Her blue eyelids with their blackened lashes blinked and wavered

while she spoke of the business of settling her young lady. If at

her time of life she hadn’t laid by a sou but was still always

working to minister to men’s pleasures, especially those very young

men, whose grandmother she might well be, it was truly because she

considered a good match of far greater importance than mere savings.

And with that she leaned over La Faloise, who reddened under the

huge, naked, plastered shoulder with which she well-nigh crushed

him.

 

“You know,” she murmured, “if she fails it won’t be my fault. But

they’re so strange when they’re young!”

 

There was a considerable bustle round the table, and the waiters

became very active. After the third course the entrees had made

their appearance; they consisted of pullets a la marechale, fillets

of sole with shallot sauce and escalopes of Strasbourg pate. The

manager, who till then had been having Meursault served, now offered

Chambertin and Leoville. Amid the slight hubbub which the change of

plates involved Georges, who was growing momentarily more

astonished, asked Daguenet if all the ladies present were similarly

provided with children, and the other, who was amused by this

question, gave him some further details. Lucy Stewart was the

daughter of a man of English origin who greased the wheels of the

trains at the Gare du Nord; she was thirty-nine years old and had

the face of a horse but was adorable withal and, though consumptive,

never died. In fact, she was the smartest woman there and

represented three princes and a duke. Caroline Hequet, born at

Bordeaux, daughter of a little clerk long since dead of shame, was

lucky enough to be possessed of a mother with a head on her

shoulders, who, after having cursed her, had made it up again at the

end of a year of reflection, being minded, at any rate, to save a

fortune for her daughter. The latter was twenty-five years old and

very passionless and was held to be one of the finest women it is

possible to enjoy. Her price never varied. The mother, a model of

orderliness, kept the accounts and noted down receipts and

expenditures with severe precision. She managed the whole household

from some small lodging two stories above her daughter’s, where,

moreover, she had established a workroom for dressmaking and plain

sewing. As to Blanche de Sivry, whose real name was Jacqueline

Bandu, she hailed from a village near Amiens. Magnificent in

person, stupid and untruthful in character, she gave herself out as

the granddaughter of a general and never owned to her thirty-two

summers. The Russians had a great taste for her, owing to her

embonpoint. Then Daguenet added a rapid word or two about the rest.

There was Clarisse Besnus, whom a lady had brought up from Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer in the capacity of maid while the lady’s husband had

started her in quite another line. There was Simonne Cabiroche, the

daughter of a furniture dealer in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, who

had been educated in a large boarding school with a view to becoming

a governess. Finally there were Maria Blond and Louise Violaine and

Lea de Horn, who had all shot up to woman’s estate on the pavements

of Paris, not to mention Tatan Nene, who had herded cows in

Champagne till she was twenty.

 

Georges listened and looked at these ladies, feeling dizzy and

excited by the coarse recital thus crudely whispered in his ear,

while behind his chair the waiters kept repeating in respectful

tones:

 

“Pullets a la marechale; fillets of sole with ravigote sauce.”

 

“My dear fellow,” said Daguenet, giving him the benefit of his

experience, “don’t take any fish; it’ll do you no good at this time

of night. And be content with Leoville: it’s less treacherous.”

 

A heavy warmth floated upward from the candelabras, from the dishes

which were being handed round, from the whole table where thirty-eight human beings were suffocating. And the waiters forgot

themselves and ran when crossing the carpet, so that it was spotted

with grease. Nevertheless, the supper grew scarce any merrier. The

ladies trifled with their meat, left half of it uneaten. Tatan Nene

alone partook gluttonously of every dish. At that advanced hour of

the night hunger was of the nervous order only, a mere whimsical

craving born of an exasperated stomach.

 

At Nana’s side the old gentleman refused every dish offered him; he

had only taken a spoonful of soup, and he now sat in front of his

empty plate, gazing silently about. There was some subdued yawning,

and occasionally eyelids closed and faces became haggard and white.

It was unutterably slow, as it always was, according to Vandeuvres’s

dictum. This sort of