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

cost millions of money and ten years

of intense labor. At Cherbourg he had seen the new harbor with its

enormous works, where hundreds of men sweated in the sun while

cranes filled the sea with huge squares of rock and built up a wall

where a workman now and again remained crushed into bloody pulp.

But all that now struck him as insignificant. Nana excited him far

more. Viewing the fruit of her labors, he once more experienced the

feelings of respect that had overcome him one festal evening in a

sugar refiner’s chateau. This chateau had been erected for the

refiner, and its palatial proportions and royal splendor had been

paid for by a single material—sugar. It was with something quite

different, with a little laughable folly, a little delicate nudity—

it was with this shameful trifle, which is so powerful as to move

the universe, that she alone, without workmen, without the

inventions of engineers, had shaken Paris to its foundations and had

built up a fortune on the bodies of dead men.

 

“Oh, by God, what an implement!”

 

Mignon let the words escape him in his ecstasy, for he felt a return

of personal gratitude.

 

Nana had gradually lapsed into a most mournful condition. To begin

with, the meeting of the marquis and the count had given her a

severe fit of feverish nervousness, which verged at times on

laughter. Then the thought of this old man going away half dead in

a cab and of her poor rough, whom she would never set eyes on again

now that she had driven him so wild, brought on what looked like the

beginnings of melancholia. After that she grew vexed to hear about

Satin’s illness. The girl had disappeared about a fortnight ago and

was now ready to die at Lariboisiere, to such a damnable state had

Mme Robert reduced her. When she ordered the horses to be put to in

order that she might have a last sight of this vile little wretch

Zoe had just quietly given her a week’s notice. The announcement

drove her to desperation at once! It seemed to her she was losing a

member of her own family. Great heavens! What was to become of her

when left alone? And she besought Zoe to stay, and the latter, much

flattered by Madame’s despair, ended by kissing her to show that she

was not going away in anger. No, she had positively to go: the

heart could have no voice in matters of business.

 

But that day was one of annoyances. Nana was thoroughly disgusted

and gave up the idea of going out. She was dragging herself wearily

about the little drawing room when Labordette came up to tell her of

a splendid chance of buying magnificent lace and in the course of

his remarks casually let slip the information that Georges was dead.

The announcement froze her.

 

“Zizi dead!” she cried.

 

And involuntarily her eyes sought the pink stain on the carpet, but

it had vanished at last; passing footsteps had worn it away.

Meanwhile Labordette entered into particulars. It was not exactly

known how he died. Some spoke of a wound reopening, others of

suicide. The lad had plunged, they said, into a tank at Les

Fondettes. Nana kept repeating:

 

“Dead! Dead!”

 

She had been choking with grief since morning, and now she burst out

sobbing and thus sought relief. Hers was an infinite sorrow: it

overwhelmed her with its depth and immensity. Labordette wanted to

comfort her as touching Georges, but she silenced him with a gesture

and blurted out:

 

“It isn’t only he; it’s everything, everything. I’m very wretched.

Oh yes, I know! They’ll again be saying I’m a hussy. To think of

the mother mourning down there and of the poor man who was groaning

in front of my door this morning and of all the other people that

are now ruined after running through all they had with me! That’s

it; punish Nana; punish the beastly thing! Oh, I’ve got a broad

back! I can hear them as if I were actually there! ‘That dirty

wench who lies with everybody and cleans out some and drives others

to death and causes a whole heap of people pain!’”

 

She was obliged to pause, for tears choked her utterance, and in her

anguish she flung herself athwart a divan and buried her face in a

cushion. The miseries she felt to be around her, miseries of which

she was the cause, overwhelmed her with a warm, continuous stream of

self-pitying tears, and her voice failed as she uttered a little

girl’s broken plaint:

 

“Oh, I’m wretched! Oh, I’m wretched! I can’t go on like this: it’s

choking me. It’s too hard to be misunderstood and to see them all

siding against you because they’re stronger. However, when you’ve

got nothing to reproach yourself with and your conscious is clear,

why, then I say, ‘I won’t have it! I won’t have it!’”

 

In her anger she began rebeling against circumstances, and getting

up, she dried her eyes, and walked about in much agitation.

 

“I won’t have it! They can say what they like, but it’s not my

fault! Am I a bad lot, eh? I give away all I’ve got; I wouldn’t

crush a fly! It’s they who are bad! Yes, it’s they! I never

wanted to be horrid to them. And they came dangling after me, and

today they’re kicking the bucket and begging and going to ruin on

purpose.”

 

Then she paused in front of Labordette and tapped his shoulders.

 

“Look here,” she said, “you were there all along; now speak the

truth: did I urge them on? Weren’t there always a dozen of ‘em

squabbling who could invent the dirtiest trick? They used to

disgust me, they did! I did all I knew not to copy them: I was

afraid to. Look here, I’ll give you a single instance: they all

wanted to marry me! A pretty notion, eh? Yes, dear boy, I could

have been countess or baroness a dozen times over and more, if I’d

consented. Well now, I refused because I was reasonable. Oh yes, I

saved ‘em some crimes and other foul acts! They’d have stolen,

murdered, killed father and mother. I had only to say one word, and

I didn’t say it. You see what I’ve got for it today. There’s

Daguenet, for instance; I married that chap off! I made a position

for the beggarly fellow after keeping him gratis for weeks! And I

met him yesterday, and he looks the other way! Oh, get along, you

swine! I’m less dirty than you!”

 

She had begun pacing about again, and now she brought her fist

violently down on a round table.

 

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

women when it’s the men who want you to do things. Yes, I can tell

you this now: when I used to go with them—see? I didn’t enjoy it;

no, I didn’t enjoy it one bit. It bored me, on my honor. Well

then, I ask you whether I’ve got anything to do with it! Yes, they

bored me to death! If it hadn’t been for them and what they made of

me, dear boy, I should be in a convent saying my prayers to the good

God, for I’ve always had my share of religion. Dash it, after all,

if they have dropped their money and their lives over it, what do I

care? It’s their fault. I’ve had nothing to do with it!”

 

“Certainly not,” said Labordette with conviction.

 

Zoe ushered in Mignon, and Nana received him smilingly. She had

cried a good deal, but it was all over now. Still glowing with

enthusiasm, he complimented her on her installation, but she let him

see that she had had enough of her mansion and that now she had

other projects and would sell everything up one of these days. Then

as he excused himself for calling on the ground that he had come

about a benefit performance in aid of old Bose, who was tied to his

armchair by paralysis, she expressed extreme pity and took two

boxes. Meanwhile Zoe announced that the carriage was waiting for

Madame, and she asked for her hat and as she tied the strings told

them about poor, dear Satin’s mishap, adding:

 

“I’m going to the hospital. Nobody ever loved me as she did. Oh,

they’re quite right when they accuse the men of heartlessness! Who

knows? Perhaps I shan’t see her alive. Never mind, I shall ask to

see her: I want to give her a kiss.”

 

Labordette and Mignon smiled, and as Nana was no longer melancholy

she smiled too. Those two fellows didn’t count; they could enter

into her feelings. And they both stood and admired her in silent

abstraction while she finished buttoning her gloves. She alone kept

her feet amid the heaped-up riches of her mansion, while a whole

generation of men lay stricken down before her. Like those antique

monsters whose redoubtable domains were covered with skeletons, she

rested her feet on human skulls. She was ringed round with

catastrophes. There was the furious immolation of Vandeuvres; the

melancholy state of Foucarmont, who was lost in the China seas; the

smashup of Steiner, who now had to live like an honest man; the

satisfied idiocy of La Faloise, and the tragic shipwreck of the

Muffats. Finally there was the white corpse of Georges, over which

Philippe was now watching, for he had come out of prison but

yesterday. She had finished her labor of ruin and death. The fly

that had flown up from the ordure of the slums, bringing with it the

leaven of social rottenness, had poisoned all these men by merely

alighting on them. It was well done—it was just. She had avenged

the beggars and the wastrels from whose caste she issued. And

while, metaphorically speaking, her sex rose in a halo of glory and

beamed over prostrate victims like a mounting sun shining brightly

over a field of carnage, the actual woman remained as unconscious as

a splendid animal, and in her ignorance of her mission was the good-natured courtesan to the last. She was still big; she was still

plump; her health was excellent, her spirits capital. But this went

for nothing now, for her house struck her as ridiculous. It was too

small; it was full of furniture which got in her way. It was a

wretched business, and the long and the short of the matter was she

would have to make a fresh start. In fact, she was meditating

something much better, and so she went off to kiss Satin for the

last time. She was in all her finery and looked clean and solid and

as brand new as if she had never seen service before.