________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER III
The countess Sabine, as it had become customary to call Mme Muffat
de Beuville in order to distinguish her from the count's mother, who
had died the year before, was wont to receive every Tuesday in her
house in the Rue Miromesnil at the corner of the Rue de Pentievre.
It was a great square building, and the Muffats had lived in it for
a hundred years or more. On the side of the street its frontage
seemed to slumber, so lofty was it and dark, so sad and conventlike,
with its great outer shutters, which were nearly always closed. And
at the back in a little dark garden some trees had grown up and were
straining toward the sunlight with such long slender branches that
their tips were visible above the roof.
This particular Tuesday, toward ten o'clock in the evening, there
were scarcely a dozen people in the drawing room. When she was only
expecting intimate friends the countess opened neither the little
drawing room nor the dining room. One felt more at home on such
occasions and chatted round the fire. The drawing room was very
large and very lofty; its four windows looked out upon the garden,
from which, on this rainy evening of the close of April, issued a
sensation of damp despite the great logs burning on the hearth. The
sun never shone down into the room; in the daytime it was dimly lit
up by a faint greenish light, but at night, when the lamps and the
chandelier were burning, it looked merely a serious old chamber with
its massive mahogany First Empire furniture, its hangings and chair
coverings of yellow velvet, stamped with a large design. Entering
it, one was in an atmosphere of cold dignity, of ancient manners, of
a vanished age, the air of which seemed devotional.
Opposite the armchair, however, in which the count's mother had
died--a square armchair of formal design and inhospitable padding,
which stood by the hearthside--the Countess Sabine was seated in a
deep and cozy lounge, the red silk upholsteries of which were soft
as eider down. It was the only piece of modern furniture there, a
fanciful item introduced amid the prevailing severity and clashing
with it.
"So we shall have the shah of Persia," the young woman was saying.
They were talking of the crowned heads who were coming to Paris for
the exhibition. Several ladies had formed a circle round the
hearth, and Mme du Joncquoy, whose brother, a diplomat, had just
fulfilled a mission in the East, was giving some details about the
court of Nazr-ed-Din.
"Are you out of sorts, my dear?" asked Mme Chantereau, the wife of
an ironmaster, seeing the countess shivering slightly and growing
pale as she did so.
"Oh no, not at all," replied the latter, smiling. "I felt a little
cold. This drawing room takes so long to warm."
And with that she raised her melancholy eyes and scanned the walls
from floor to ceiling. Her daughter Estelle, a slight, insignificant-
looking girl of sixteen, the thankless period of life, quitted
the large footstool on which she was sitting and silently came
and propped up one of the logs which had rolled from its place.
But Mme de Chezelles, a convent friend of Sabine's and her junior by
five years, exclaimed:
"Dear me, I would gladly be possessed of a drawing room such as
yours! At any rate, you are able to receive visitors. They only
build boxes nowadays. Oh, if I were in your place!"
She ran giddily on and with lively gestures explained how she would
alter the hangings, the seats--everything, in fact. Then she would
give balls to which all Paris should run. Behind her seat her
husband, a magistrate, stood listening with serious air. It was
rumored that she deceived him quite openly, but people pardoned her
offense and received her just the same, because, they said, "she's
not answerable for her actions."
"Oh that Leonide!" the Countess Sabine contented herself by
murmuring, smiling her faint smile the while.
With a languid movement she eked out the thought that was in her.
After having lived there seventeen years she certainly would not
alter her drawing room now. It would henceforth remain just such as
her mother-in-law had wished to preserve it during her lifetime.
Then returning to the subject of conversation:
"I have been assured," she said, "that we shall also have the king
of Prussia and the emperor of Russia."
'Yes, some very fine fetes are promised," said Mme du Joncquoy.
The banker Steiner, not long since introduced into this circle by
Leonide de Chezelles, who was acquainted with the whole of Parisian
society, was sitting chatting on a sofa between two of the windows.
He was questioning a deputy, from whom he was endeavoring with much
adroitness to elicit news about a movement on the stock exchange of
which he had his suspicions, while the Count Muffat, standing in
front of them, was silently listening to their talk, looking, as he
did so, even grayer than was his wont.
Four or five young men formed another group near the door round the
Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who in a low tone was telling them an
anecdote. It was doubtless a very risky one, for they were choking
with laughter. Companionless in the center of the room, a stout
man, a chief clerk at the Ministry of the Interior, sat heavily in
an armchair, dozing with his eyes open. But when one of the young
men appeared to doubt the truth of the anecdote Vandeuvres raised
his voice.
"You are too much of a skeptic, Foucarmont; you'll spoil all your
pleasures that way."
And he returned to the ladies with a laugh. Last scion of a great
family, of feminine manners and witty tongue, he was at that time
running through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite which
nothing could appease. His racing stable, which was one of the best
known in Paris, cost him a fabulous amount of money; his betting
losses at the Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number
of pounds, while taking one year with another, his mistresses would
be always devouring now a farm, now some acres of arable land or
forest, which amounted, in fact, to quite a respectable slice of his
vast estates in Picardy.
"I advise you to call other people skeptics! Why, you don't believe
a thing yourself," said Leonide, making shift to find him a little
space in which to sit down at her side.
"It's you who spoil your own pleasures."
"Exactly," he replied. "I wish to make others benefit by my
experience."
But the company imposed silence on him: he was scandalizing M.
Venot. And, the ladies having changed their positions, a little old
man of sixty, with bad teeth and a subtle smile, became visible in
the depths of an easy chair. There he sat as comfortably as in his
own house, listening to everybody's remarks and making none himself.
With a slight gesture he announced himself by no means scandalized.
Vandeuvres once more assumed his dignified bearing and added
gravely:
"Monsieur Venot is fully aware that I believe what it is one's duty
to believe."
It was an act of faith, and even Leonide appeared satisfied. The
young men at the end of the room no longer laughed; the company were
old fogies, and amusement was not to be found there. A cold breath
of wind had passed over them, and amid the ensuing silence Steiner's
nasal voice became audible. The deputy's discreet answers were at
last driving him to desperation. For a second or two the Countess
Sabine looked at the fire; then she resumed the conversation.
"I saw the king of Prussia at Baden-Baden last year. He's still
full of vigor for his age."
"Count Bismarck is to accompany him," said Mme du Joncquoy. "Do you
know the count? I lunched with him at my brother's ages ago, when
he was representative of Prussia in Paris. There's a man now whose
latest successes I cannot in the least understand."
"But why?" asked Mme Chantereau.
"Good gracious, how am I to explain? He doesn't please me. His
appearance is boorish and underbred. Besides, so far as I am
concerned, I find him stupid."
With that the whole room spoke of Count Bismarck, and opinions
differed considerably. Vandeuvres knew him and assured the company
that he was great in his cups and at play. But when the discussion
was at its height the door was opened, and Hector de la Falois made
his appearance. Fauchery, who followed in his wake, approached the
countess and, bowing:
"Madame," he said, "I have not forgotten your extremely kind
invitation."
She smiled and made a pretty little speech. The journalist, after
bowing to the count, stood for some moments in the middle of the
drawing room. He only recognized Steiner and accordingly looked
rather out of his element. But Vandeuvres turned and came and shook
hands with him. And forthwith, in his delight at the meeting and
with a sudden desire to be confidential, Fauchery buttonholed him
and said in a low voice:
"It's tomorrow. Are you going?"
"Egad, yes."
"At midnight, at her house.
"I know, I know. I'm going with Blanche."
He wanted to escape and return to the ladies in order to urge yet
another reason in M. de Bismarck's favor. But Fauchery detained
him.
"You never will guess whom she has charged me to invite."
And with a slight nod he indicated Count Muffat, who was just then
discussing a knotty point in the budget with Steiner and the deputy.
"It's impossible," said Vandeuvres, stupefaction and merriment in
his tones. "My word on it! I had to swear that I would bring him
to her. Indeed, that's one of my reasons for coming here."
Both laughed silently, and Vandeuvres, hurriedly rejoining the
circle of ladies, cried out:
"I declare that on the contrary Monsieur de Bismarck is exceedingly
witty. For instance, one evening he said a charmingly epigrammatic
thing in my presence."
La Faloise meanwhile had heard the few rapid sentences thus
whisperingly interchanged, and he gazed at Fauchery in hopes of an
explanation which was not vouchsafed him. Of whom were they
talking, and what were they going to do at midnight tomorrow? He
did not leave his cousin's side again. The latter had gone and
seated himself. He was especially interested by the Countess
Sabine. Her name had often been mentioned in his presence, and he
knew that, having been married at the age of seventeen, she must now
be thirty-four and that since her marriage she had passed a
cloistered existence with her husband and her mother-in-law. In
society some spoke of her as a woman of religious chastity, while
others pitied her and recalled to memory her charming bursts of
laughter and the burning glances of her great eyes in the days prior
to her imprisonment in this old town house. Fauchery scrutinized
her and yet hesitated. One of his friends, a captain who had
recently died in Mexico, had, on the very eve of his departure, made
him one of those gross postprandial confessions, of which even the
most prudent among men are occasionally guilty. But of this he only
retained a vague recollection; they had dined not wisely but too
well that evening, and when he saw the countess, in her black dress
and with her quiet smile, seated in that Old World drawing room, he
certainly had his doubts. A lamp which had been placed behind her
threw into clear relief her dark, delicate, plump side face, wherein
a certain heaviness in the contours of the mouth alone indicated a
species of imperious sensuality.
"What do they want with their Bismarck?" muttered La Faloise, whose
constant pretense it was to be bored in good society. "One's ready
to kick the bucket here. A pretty idea of yours it was to want to
come!"
Fauchery questioned him abruptly.
"Now tell me, does the countess admit someone to her embraces?"
"Oh dear, no, no! My dear fellow!" he stammered, manifestly taken
aback and quite forgetting his pose. "Where d'you think we are?"
After which he was conscious of a want of up-to-dateness in this
outburst of indignation and, throwing himself back on a great sofa,
he added:
"Gad! I say no! But I don't know much about it. There's a little
chap out there, Foucarmont they call him, who's to be met with
everywhere and at every turn. One's seen faster men than that,
though, you bet. However, it doesn't concern me, and indeed, all I
know is that if the countess indulges in high jinks she's still
pretty sly about it, for the thing never gets about--nobody talks."
Then although Fauchery did not take the trouble to question him, he
told him all he knew about the Muffats. Amid the conversation of
the ladies, which still continued in front of the hearth, they both
spoke in subdued tones, and, seeing them there with their white
cravats and gloves, one might have supposed them to be discussing in
chosen phraseology some really serious topic. Old Mme Muffat then,
whom La Faloise had been well acquainted with, was an insufferable
old lady, always hand in glove with the priests. She had the grand
manner, besides, and an authoritative way of comporting herself,
which bent everybody to her will. As to Muffat, he was an old man's
child; his father, a general, had been created count by Napoleon I,
and naturally he had found himself in favor after the second of
December. He hadn't much gaiety of manner either, but he passed for
a very honest man of straightforward intentions and understanding.
Add to these a code of old aristocratic ideas and such a lofty
conception of his duties at court, of his dignities and of his
virtues, that he behaved like a god on wheels. It was the Mamma
Muffat who had given him this precious education with its daily
visits to the confessional, its complete absence of escapades and of
all that is meant by youth. He was a practicing Christian and had
attacks of faith of such fiery violence that they might be likened
to accesses of burning fever. Finally, in order to add a last touch
to the picture, La Faloise whispered something in his cousin's ear.
"You don't say so!" said the latter.
"On my word of honor, they swore it was true! He was still like
that when he married."
Fauchery chuckled as he looked at the count, whose face, with its
fringe of whiskers and absence of mustaches, seemed to have grown
squarer and harder now that he was busy quoting figures to the
writhing, struggling Steiner.
"My word, he's got a phiz for it!" murmured Fauchery. "A pretty
present he made his wife! Poor little thing, how he must have bored
her! She knows nothing about anything, I'll wager!"
Just then the Countess Sabine was saying something to him. But he
did not hear her, so amusing and extraordinary did he esteem the
Muffats' case. She repeated the question.
"Monsieur Fauchery, have you not published a sketch of Monsieur de
Bismarck? You spoke with him once?"
He got up briskly and approached the circle of ladies, endeavoring
to collect himself and soon with perfect ease of manner finding an
answer:
"Dear me, madame, I assure you I wrote that 'portrait' with the help
of biographies which had been published in Germany. I have never
seen Monsieur de Bismarck."
He remained beside the countess and, while talking with her,
continued his meditations. She did not look her age; one would have
set her down as being twenty-eight at most, for her eyes, above all,
which were filled with the dark blue shadow of her long eyelashes,
retained the glowing light of youth. Bred in a divided family, so
that she used to spend one month with the Marquis de Chouard,
another with the marquise, she had been married very young, urged
on, doubtless, by her father, whom she embarrassed after her
mother's death. A terrible man was the marquis, a man about whom
strange tales were beginning to be told, and that despite his lofty
piety! Fauchery asked if he should have the honor of meeting him.
Certainly her father was coming, but only very late; he had so much
work on hand! The journalist thought he knew where the old
gentleman passed his evenings and looked grave. But a mole, which
he noticed close to her mouth on the countess's left cheek,
surprised him. Nana had precisely the same mole. It was curious.
Tiny hairs curled up on it, only they were golden in Nana's case,
black as jet in this. Ah well, never mind! This woman enjoyed
nobody's embraces.
"I have always felt a wish to know Queen Augusta," she said. "They
say she is so good, so devout. Do you think she will accompany the
king?"
"It is not thought that she will, madame," he replied.
She had no lovers: the thing was only too apparent. One had only to
look at her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting so
insignificant and constrained on her footstool. That sepulchral
drawing room of hers, which exhaled odors suggestive of being in a
church, spoke as plainly as words could of the iron hand, the
austere mode of existence, that weighed her down. There was nothing
suggestive of her own personality in that ancient abode, black with
the damps of years. It was Muffat who made himself felt there, who
dominated his surroundings with his devotional training, his
penances and his fasts. But the sight of the little old gentleman
with the black teeth and subtle smile whom he suddenly discovered in
his armchair behind the group of ladies afforded him a yet more
decisive argument. He knew the personage. It was Theophile Venot,
a retired lawyer who had made a specialty of church cases. He had
left off practice with a handsome fortune and was now leading a
sufficiently mysterious existence, for he was received everywhere,
treated with great deference and even somewhat feared, as though he
had been the representative of a mighty force, an occult power,
which was felt to be at his back. Nevertheless, his behavior was
very humble. He was churchwarden at the Madeleine Church and had
simply accepted the post of deputy mayor at the town house of the
Ninth Arrondissement in order, as he said, to have something to do
in his leisure time. Deuce take it, the countess was well guarded;
there was nothing to be done in that quarter.
"You're right, it's enough to make one kick the bucket here," said
Fauchery to his cousin when he had made good his escape from the
circle of ladies. "We'll hook it!"
But Steiner, deserted at last by the Count Muffat and the deputy,
came up in a fury. Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and
he grumbled huskily:
"Gad! Let 'em tell me nothing, if nothing they want to tell me. I
shall find people who will talk."
Then he pushed the journalist into a corner and, altering his tone,
said in accents of victory:
"It's tomorrow, eh? I'm of the party, my bully!"
"Indeed!" muttered Fauchery with some astonishment.
"You didn't know about it. Oh, I had lots of bother to find her at
home. Besides, Mignon never would leave me alone."
"But they're to be there, are the Mignons."
"Yes, she told me so. In fact, she did receive my visit, and she
invited me. Midnight punctually, after the play."
The banker was beaming. He winked and added with a peculiar
emphasis on the words:
"You've worked it, eh?"
"Eh, what?" said Fauchery, pretending not to understand him. "She
wanted to thank me for my article, so she came and called on me."
"Yes, yes. You fellows are fortunate. You get rewarded. By the
by, who pays the piper tomorrow?"
The journalist made a slight outward movement with his arms, as
though he would intimate that no one had ever been able to find out.
But Vandeuvres called to Steiner, who knew M. de Bismarck. Mme du
Joncquoy had almost convinced herself of the truth of her
suppositions; she concluded with these words:
"He gave me an unpleasant impression. I think his face is evil.
But I am quite willing to believe that he has a deal of wit. It
would account for his successes."
"Without doubt," said the banker with a faint smile. He was a Jew
from Frankfort.
Meanwhile La Faloise at last made bold to question his cousin. He
followed him up and got inside his guard:
"There's supper at a woman's tomorrow evening? With which of them,
eh? With which of them?"
Fauchery motioned to him that they were overheard and must respect
the conventions here. The door had just been opened anew, and an
old lady had come in, followed by a young man in whom the journalist
recognized the truant schoolboy, perpetrator of the famous and as
yet unforgotten "tres chic" of the Blonde Venus first night. This
lady's arrival caused a stir among the company. The Countess Sabine
had risen briskly from her seat in order to go and greet her, and
she had taken both her hands in hers and addressed her as her "dear
Madame Hugon." Seeing that his cousin viewed this little episode
with some curiosity, La Faloise sought to arouse his interest and in
a few brief phrases explained the position. Mme Hugon, widow of a
notary, lived in retirement at Les Fondettes, an old estate of her
family's in the neighborhood of Orleans, but she also kept up a
small establishment in Paris in a house belonging to her in the Rue
de Richelieu and was now passing some weeks there in order to settle
her youngest son, who was reading the law and in his "first year."
In old times she had been a dear friend of the Marquise de Chouard
and had assisted at the birth of the countess, who, prior to her
marriage, used to stay at her house for months at a time and even
now was quite familiarly treated by her.
"I have brought Georges to see you," said Mme Hugon to Sabine.
"He's grown, I trust."
The young man with his clear eyes and the fair curls which suggested
a girl dressed up as a boy bowed easily to the countess and reminded
her of a bout of battledore and shuttlecock they had had together
two years ago at Les Fondettes.
"Philippe is not in Paris?" asked Count Muffat.
"Dear me, no!" replied the old lady. "He is always in garrison at
Bourges." She had seated herself and began talking with
considerable pride of her eldest son, a great big fellow who, after
enlisting in a fit of waywardness, had of late very rapidly attained
the rank of lieutenant. All the ladies behaved to her with
respectful sympathy, and conversation was resumed in a tone at once
more amiable and more refined. Fauchery, at sight of that
respectable Mme Hugon, that motherly face lit up with such a kindly
smile beneath its broad tresses of white hair, thought how foolish
he had been to suspect the Countess Sabine even for an instant.
Nevertheless, the big chair with the red silk upholsteries in which
the countess sat had attracted his attention. Its style struck him
as crude, not to say fantastically suggestive, in that dim old
drawing room. Certainly it was not the count who had inveigled
thither that nest of voluptuous idleness. One might have described
it as an experiment, marking the birth of an appetite and of an
enjoyment. Then he forgot where he was, fell into brown study and
in thought even harked back to that vague confidential announcement
imparted to him one evening in the dining room of a restaurant.
Impelled by a sort of sensuous curiosity, he had always wanted an
introduction into the Muffats' circle, and now that his friend was
in Mexico through all eternity, who could tell what might happen?
"We shall see," he thought. It was a folly, doubtless, but the idea
kept tormenting him; he felt himself drawn on and his animal nature
aroused. The big chair had a rumpled look--its nether cushions had
been tumbled, a fact which now amused him.
"Well, shall we be off?" asked La Faloise, mentally vowing that once
outside he would find out the name of the woman with whom people
were going to sup.
"All in good time," replied Fauchery.
But he was no longer in any hurry and excused himself on the score
of the invitation he had been commissioned to give and had as yet
not found a convenient opportunity to mention. The ladies were
chatting about an assumption of the veil, a very touching ceremony
by which the whole of Parisian society had for the last three days
been greatly moved. It was the eldest daughter of the Baronne de
Fougeray, who, under stress of an irresistible vocation, had just
entered the Carmelite Convent. Mme Chantereau, a distant cousin of
the Fougerays, told how the baroness had been obliged to take to her
bed the day after the ceremony, so overdone was she with weeping.
"I had a very good place," declared Leonide. "I found it
interesting."
Nevertheless, Mme Hugon pitied the poor mother. How sad to lose a
daughter in such a way!
"I am accused of being overreligious," she said in her quiet, frank
manner, "but that does not prevent me thinking the children very
cruel who obstinately commit such suicide."
"Yes, it's a terrible thing," murmured the countess, shivering a
little, as became a chilly person, and huddling herself anew in the
depths of her big chair in front of the fire.
Then the ladies fell into a discussion. But their voices were
discreetly attuned, while light trills of laughter now and again
interrupted the gravity of their talk. The two lamps on the chimney
piece, which had shades of rose-colored lace, cast a feeble light
over them while on scattered pieces of furniture there burned but
three other lamps, so that the great drawing room remained in soft
shadow.
Steiner was getting bored. He was describing to Fauchery an
escapade of that little Mme de Chezelles, whom he simply referred to
as Leonide. "A blackguard woman," he said, lowering his voice
behind the ladies' armchairs. Fauchery looked at her as she sat
quaintly perched, in her voluminous ball dress of pale blue satin,
on the corner of her armchair. She looked as slight and impudent as
a boy, and he ended by feeling astonished at seeing her there.
People comported themselves better at Caroline Hequet's, whose
mother had arranged her house on serious principles. Here was a
perfect subject for an article. What a strange world was this world
of Paris! The most rigid circles found themselves invaded.
Evidently that silent Theophile Venot, who contented himself by
smiling and showing his ugly teeth, must have been a legacy from the
late countess. So, too, must have been such ladies of mature age as
Mme Chantereau and Mme du Joncquoy, besides four or five old
gentlemen who sat motionless in corners. The Count Muffat attracted
to the house a series of functionaries, distinguished by the
immaculate personal appearance which was at that time required of
the men at the Tuileries. Among others there was the chief clerk,
who still sat solitary in the middle of the room with his closely
shorn cheeks, his vacant glance and his coat so tight of fit that he
could scarce venture to move. Almost all the young men and certain
individuals with distinguished, aristocratic manners were the
Marquis de Chouard's contribution to the circle, he having kept
touch with the Legitimist party after making his peace with the
empire on his entrance into the Council of State. There remained
Leonide de Chezelles and Steiner, an ugly little knot against which
Mme Hugon's elderly and amiable serenity stood out in strange
contrast. And Fauchery, having sketched out his article, named this
last group "Countess Sabine's little clique."
"On another occasion," continued Steiner in still lower tones,
"Leonide got her tenor down to Montauban. She was living in the
Chateau de Beaurecueil, two leagues farther off, and she used to
come in daily in a carriage and pair in order to visit him at the
Lion d'Or, where he had put up. The carriage used to wait at the
door, and Leonide would stay for hours in the house, while a crowd
gathered round and looked at the horses."
There was a pause in the talk, and some solemn moments passed
silently by in the lofty room. Two young men were whispering, but
they ceased in their turn, and the hushed step of Count Muffat was
alone audible as he crossed the floor. The lamps seemed to have
paled; the fire was going out; a stern shadow fell athwart the old
friends of the house where they sat in the chairs they had occupied
there for forty years back. It was as though in a momentary pause
of conversation the invited guests had become suddenly aware that
the count's mother, in all her glacial stateliness, had returned
among them.
But the Countess Sabine had once more resumed:
"Well, at last the news of it got about. The young man was likely
to die, and that would explain the poor child's adoption of the
religious life. Besides, they say that Monsieur de Fougeray would
never have given his consent to the marriage."
"They say heaps of other things too," cried Leonide giddily.
She fell a-laughing; she refused to talk. Sabine was won over by
this gaiety and put her handkerchief up to her lips. And in the
vast and solemn room their laughter sounded a note which struck
Fauchery strangely, the note of delicate glass breaking. Assuredly
here was the first beginning of the "little rift." Everyone began
talking again. Mme du Joncquoy demurred; Mme Chantereau knew for
certain that a marriage had been projected but that matters had gone
no further; the men even ventured to give their opinions. For some
minutes the conversation was a babel of opinions, in which the
divers elements of the circle, whether Bonapartist or Legitimist or
merely worldly and skeptical, appeared to jostle one another
simultaneously. Estelle had rung to order wood to be put on the
fire; the footman turned up the lamps; the room seemed to wake from
sleep. Fauchery began smiling, as though once more at his ease.
"Egad, they become the brides of God when they couldn't be their
cousin's," said Vandeuvres between his teeth.
The subject bored him, and he had rejoined Fauchery.
"My dear fellow, have you ever seen a woman who was really loved
become a nun?"
He did not wait for an answer, for he had had enough of the topic,
and in a hushed voice:
"Tell me," he said, "how many of us will there be tomorrow?
There'll be the Mignons, Steiner, yourself, Blanche and I; who
else?"
"Caroline, I believe, and Simonne and Gaga without doubt. One never
knows exactly, does one? On such occasions one expects the party
will number twenty, and you're really thirty."
Vandeuvres, who was looking at the ladies, passed abruptly to
another subject:
"She must have been very nice-looking, that Du Joncquoy woman, some
fifteen years ago. Poor Estelle has grown lankier than ever. What
a nice lath to put into a bed!"
But interrupting himself, he returned to the subject of tomorrow's
supper.
"What's so tiresome of those shows is that it's always the same set
of women. One wants a novelty. Do try and invent a new girl. By
Jove, happy thought! I'll go and beseech that stout man to bring
the woman he was trotting about the other evening at the Varietes."
He referred to the chief clerk, sound asleep in the middle of the
drawing room. Fauchery, afar off, amused himself by following this
delicate negotiation. Vandeuvres had sat himself down by the stout
man, who still looked very sedate. For some moments they both
appeared to be discussing with much propriety the question before
the house, which was, "How can one discover the exact state of
feeling that urges a young girl to enter into the religious life?"
Then the count returned with the remark:
"It's impossible. He swears she's straight. She'd refuse, and yet
I would have wagered that I once saw her at Laure's."
"Eh, what? You go to Laure's?" murmured Fauchery with a chuckle.
"You venture your reputation in places like that? I was under the
impression that it was only we poor devils of outsiders who--"
"Ah, dear boy, one ought to see every side of life."
Then they sneered and with sparkling eyes they compared notes about
the table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs, where big Laure Piedefer
ran a dinner at three francs a head for little women in
difficulties. A nice hole, where all the little women used to kiss
Laure on the lips! And as the Countess Sabine, who had overheard a
stray word or two, turned toward them, they started back, rubbing
shoulders in excited merriment. They had not noticed that Georges
Hugon was close by and that he was listening to them, blushing so
hotly the while that a rosy flush had spread from his ears to his
girlish throat. The infant was full of shame and of ecstasy. From
the moment his mother had turned him loose in the room he had been
hovering in the wake of Mme de Chezelles, the only woman present who
struck him as being the thing. But after all is said and done, Nana
licked her to fits!
"Yesterday evening," Mme Hugon was saying, "Georges took me to the
play. Yes, we went to the Varietes, where I certainly had not set
foot for the last ten years. That child adores music. As to me, I
wasn't in the least amused, but he was so happy! They put
extraordinary pieces on the stage nowadays. Besides, music delights
me very little, I confess."
"What! You don't love music, madame?" cried Mme du Joncquoy,
lifting her eyes to heaven. "Is it possible there should be people
who don't love music?"
The exclamation of surprise was general. No one had dropped a
single word concerning the performance at the Varietes, at which the
good Mme Hugon had not understood any of the allusions. The ladies
knew the piece but said nothing about it, and with that they plunged
into the realm of sentiment and began discussing the masters in a
tone of refined and ecstatical admiration. Mme du Joncquoy was not
fond of any of them save Weber, while Mme Chantereau stood up for
the Italians. The ladies' voices had turned soft and languishing,
and in front of the hearth one might have fancied one's self
listening in meditative, religious retirement to the faint, discreet
music of a little chapel.
"Now let's see," murmured Vandeuvres, bringing Fauchery back into
the middle of the drawing room, "notwithstanding it all, we must
invent a woman for tomorrow. Shall we ask Steiner about it?"
"Oh, when Steiner's got hold of a woman," said the journalist, "it's
because Paris has done with her."
Vandeuvres, however, was searching about on every side.
"Wait a bit," he continued, "the other day I met Foucarmont with a
charming blonde. I'll go and tell him to bring her."
And he called to Foucarmont. They exchanged a few words rapidly.
There must have been some sort of complication, for both of them,
moving carefully forward and stepping over the dresses of the
ladies, went off in quest of another young man with whom they
continued the discussion in the embrasure of a window. Fauchery was
left to himself and had just decided to proceed to the hearth, where
Mme du Joncquoy was announcing that she never heard Weber played
without at the same time seeing lakes, forests and sunrises over
landscapes steeped in dew, when a hand touched his shoulder and a
voice behind him remarked:
"It's not civil of you."
"What d'you mean?" he asked, turning round and recognizing La
Faloise.
"Why, about that supper tomorrow. You might easily have got me
invited."
Fauchery was at length about to state his reasons when Vandeuvres
came back to tell him:
"It appears it isn't a girl of Foucarmont's. It's that man's flame
out there. She won't be able to come. What a piece of bad luck!
But all the same I've pressed Foucarmont into the service, and he's
going to try to get Louise from the Palais-Royal."
"Is it not true, Monsieur de Vandeuvres," asked Mme Chantereau,
raising her voice, "that Wagner's music was hissed last Sunday?"
"Oh, frightfully, madame," he made answer, coming forward with his
usual exquisite politeness.
Then, as they did not detain him, he moved off and continued
whispering in the journalist's ear:
"I'm going to press some more of them. These young fellows must
know some little ladies."
With that he was observed to accost men and to engage them in
conversation in his usual amiable and smiling way in every corner of
the drawing room. He mixed with the various groups, said something
confidently to everyone and walked away again with a sly wink and a
secret signal or two. It looked as though he were giving out a
watchword in that easy way of his. The news went round; the place
of meeting was announced, while the ladies' sentimental
dissertations on music served to conceal the small, feverish rumor
of these recruiting operations.
"No, do not speak of your Germans," Mme Chantereau was saying.
"Song is gaiety; song is light. Have you heard Patti in the Barber
of Seville?"
"She was delicious!" murmured Leonide, who strummed none but
operatic airs on her piano.
Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had rung. When on Tuesdays the number
of visitors was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself.
While directing a footman to clear a round table the countess
followed the Count de Vandeuvres with her eyes. She still smiled
that vague smile which slightly disclosed her white teeth, and as
the count passed she questioned him.
"What ARE you plotting, Monsieur de Vandeuvres?"
"What am I plotting, madame?" he answered quietly. "Nothing at
all."
"Really! I saw you so busy. Pray, wait, you shall make yourself
useful!"
She placed an album in his hands and asked him to put it on the
piano. But he found means to inform Fauchery in a low whisper that
they would have Tatan Nene, the most finely developed girl that
winter, and Maria Blond, the same who had just made her first
appearance at the Folies-Dramatiques. Meanwhile La Faloise stopped
him at every step in hopes of receiving an invitation. He ended by
offering himself, and Vandeuvres engaged him in the plot at once;
only he made him promise to bring Clarisse with him, and when La
Faloise pretended to scruple about certain points he quieted him by
the remark:
"Since I invite you that's enough!"
Nevertheless, La Faloise would have much liked to know the name of
the hostess. But the countess had recalled Vandeuvres and was
questioning him as to the manner in which the English made tea. He
often betook himself to England, where his horses ran. Then as
though he had been inwardly following up quite a laborious train of
thought during his remarks, he broke in with the question:
"And the marquis, by the by? Are we not to see him?"
"Oh, certainly you will! My father made me a formal promise that he
would come," replied the countess. "But I'm beginning to be
anxious. His duties will have kept him."
Vandeuvres smiled a discreet smile. He, too, seemed to have his
doubts as to the exact nature of the Marquis de Chouard's duties.
Indeed, he had been thinking of a pretty woman whom the marquis
occasionally took into the country with him. Perhaps they could get
her too.
In the meantime Fauchery decided that the moment had come in which
to risk giving Count Muff his invitation. The evening, in fact,
was drawing to a close.
"Are you serious?" asked Vandeuvres, who thought a joke was
intended.
"Extremely serious. If I don't execute my commission she'll tear my
eyes out. It's a case of landing her fish, you know."
"Well then, I'll help you, dear boy."
Eleven o'clock struck. Assisted by her daughter, the countess was
pouring out the tea, and as hardly any guests save intimate friends
had come, the cups and the platefuls of little cakes were being
circulated without ceremony. Even the ladies did not leave their
armchairs in front of the fire and sat sipping their tea and
nibbling cakes which they held between their finger tips. From
music the talk had declined to purveyors. Boissier was the only
person for sweetmeats and Catherine for ices. Mme Chantereau,
however, was all for Latinville. Speech grew more and more
indolent, and a sense of lassitude was lulling the room to sleep.
Steiner had once more set himself secretly to undermine the deputy,
whom he held in a state of blockade in the corner of a settee. M.
Venot, whose teeth must have been ruined by sweet things, was eating
little dry cakes, one after the other, with a small nibbling sound
suggestive of a mouse, while the chief clerk, his nose in a teacup,
seemed never to be going to finish its contents. As to the
countess, she went in a leisurely way from one guest to another,
never pressing them, indeed, only pausing a second or two before the
gentlemen whom she viewed with an air of dumb interrogation before
she smiled and passed on. The great fire had flushed all her face,
and she looked as if she were the sister of her daughter, who
appeared so withered and ungainly at her side. When she drew near
Fauchery, who was chatting with her husband and Vandeuvres, she
noticed that they grew suddenly silent; accordingly she did not stop
but handed the cup of tea she was offering to Georges Hugon beyond
them.
"It's a lady who desires your company at supper," the journalist
gaily continued, addressing Count Muffat.
The last-named, whose face had worn its gray look all the evening,
seemed very much surprised. What lady was it?
"Oh, Nana!" said Vandeuvres, by way of forcing the invitation.
The count became more grave than before. His eyelids trembled just
perceptibly, while a look of discomfort, such as headache produces,
hovered for a moment athwart his forehead.
"But I'm not acquainted with that lady," he murmured.
"Come, come, you went to her house," remarked Vandeuvres.
"What d'you say? I went to her house? Oh yes, the other day, in
behalf of the Benevolent Organization. I had forgotten about it.
But, no matter, I am not acquainted with her, and I cannot accept."
He had adopted an icy expression in order to make them understand
that this jest did not appear to him to be in good taste. A man of
his position did not sit down at tables of such women as that.
Vandeuvres protested: it was to be a supper party of dramatic and
artistic people, and talent excused everything. But without
listening further to the arguments urged by Fauchery, who spoke of a
dinner where the Prince of Scots, the son of a queen, had sat down
beside an ex-music-hall singer, the count only emphasized his
refusal. In so doing, he allowed himself, despite his great
politeness, to be guilty of an irritated gesture.
Georges and La Faloise, standing in front of each other drinking
their tea, had overheard the two or three phrases exchanged in their
immediate neighborhood.
"Jove, it's at Nana's then," murmured La Faloise. "I might have
expected as much!"
Georges said nothing, but he was all aflame. His fair hair was in
disorder; his blue eyes shone like tapers, so fiercely had the vice,
which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed and stirred
his blood. At last he was going to plunge into all that he had
dreamed of!
"I don't know the address," La Faloise resumed.
"She lives on a third floor in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the
Rue de l'Arcade and the Rue Pesquier," said Georges all in a breath.
And when the other looked at him in much astonishment, he added,
turning very red and fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment
and conceit:
"I'm of the party. She invited me this morning."
But there was a great stir in the drawing room, and Vandeuvres and
Fauchery could not continue pressing the count. The Marquis de
Chouard had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet him. He
had moved painfully forward, his legs failing under him, and he now
stood in the middle of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking,
as though he had just come out of some dark alley and were blinded
by the brightness of the lamps.
"I scarcely hoped to see you tonight, Father," said the countess.
"I should have been anxious till the morning."
He looked at her without answering, as a man might who fails to
understand. His nose, which loomed immense on his shorn face,
looked like a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down. Seeing
him such a wreck, Mme Hugon, full of kind compassion, said pitying
things to him.
"You work too hard. You ought to rest yourself. At our age we
ought to leave work to the young people."
"Work! Ah yes, to be sure, work!" he stammered at last. "Always
plenty of work."
He began to pull himself together, straightening up his bent figure
and passing his hand, as was his wont, over his scant gray hair, of
which a few locks strayed behind his ears.
"At what are you working as late as this?" asked Mme du Joncquoy.
"I thought you were at the financial minister's reception?"
But the countess intervened with:
"My father had to study the question of a projected law."
"Yes, a projected law," he said; "exactly so, a projected law. I
shut myself up for that reason. It refers to work in factories, and
I was anxious for a proper observance of the Lord's day of rest. It
is really shameful that the government is unwilling to act with
vigor in the matter. Churches are growing empty; we are running
headlong to ruin."
Vandeuvres had exchanged glances with Fauchery. They both happened
to be behind the marquis, and they were scanning him suspiciously.
When Vandeuvres found an opportunity to take him aside and to speak
to him about the good-looking creature he was in the habit of taking
down into the country, the old man affected extreme surprise.
Perhaps someone had seen him with the Baroness Decker, at whose
house at Viroflay he sometimes spent a day or so. Vandeuvres's sole
vengeance was an abrupt question:
"Tell me, where have you been straying to? Your elbow is covered
with cobwebs and plaster."
"My elbow," he muttered, slightly disturbed. "Yes indeed, it's
true. A speck or two, I must have come in for them on my way down
from my office."
Several people were taking their departure. It was close on
midnight. Two footmen were noiselessly removing the empty cups and
the plates with cakes. In front of the hearth the ladies had re-
formed and, at the same time, narrowed their circle and were
chatting more carelessly than before in the languid atmosphere
peculiar to the close of a party. The very room was going to sleep,
and slowly creeping shadows were cast by its walls. It was then
Fauchery spoke of departure. Yet he once more forgot his intention
at sight of the Countess Sabine. She was resting from her cares as
hostess, and as she sat in her wonted seat, silent, her eyes fixed
on a log which was turning into embers, her face appeared so white
and so impassable that doubt again possessed him. In the glow of
the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner of her lip
became white. It was Nana's very mole, down to the color of the
hair. He could not refrain from whispering something about it in
Vandeuvres's ear. Gad, it was true; the other had never noticed it
before. And both men continued this comparison of Nana and the
countess. They discovered a vague resemblance about the chin and
the mouth, but the eyes were not at all alike. Then, too, Nana had
a good-natured expression, while with the countess it was hard to
decide--she might have been a cat, sleeping with claws withdrawn and
paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous quiver.
"All the same, one could have her," declared Fauchery.
Vandeuvres stripped her at a glance.
"Yes, one could, all the same," he said. "But I think nothing of
the thighs, you know. Will you bet she has no thighs?"
He stopped, for Fauchery touched him briskly on the arm and showed
him Estelle, sitting close to them on her footstool. They had
raised their voices without noticing her, and she must have
overheard them. Nevertheless, she continued sitting there stiff and
motionless, not a hair having lifted on her thin neck, which was
that of a girl who has shot up all too quickly. Thereupon they
retired three or four paces, and Vandeuvres vowed that the countess
was a very honest woman. Just then voices were raised in front of
the hearth. Mme du Joncquoy was saying:
"I was willing to grant you that Monsieur de Bismarck was perhaps a
witty man. Only, if you go as far as to talk of genius--"
The ladies had come round again to their earliest topic of
conversation.
"What the deuce! Still Monsieur de Bismarck!" muttered Fauchery.
"This time I make my escape for good and all."
"Wait a bit," said Vandeuvres, "we must have a definite no from the
count."
The Count Muffat was talking to his father-in-law and a certain
serious-looking gentleman. Vandeuvres drew him away and renewed the
invitation, backing it up with the information that he was to be at
the supper himself. A man might go anywhere; no one could think of
suspecting evil where at most there could only be curiosity. The
count listened to these arguments with downcast eyes and
expressionless face. Vandeuvres felt him to be hesitating when the
Marquis de Chouard approached with a look of interrogation. And
when the latter was informed of the question in hand and Fauchery
had invited him in his turn, he looked at his son-in-law furtively.
There ensued an embarrassed silence, but both men encouraged one
another and would doubtless have ended by accepting had not Count
Muffat perceived M. Venot's gaze fixed upon him. The little old man
was no longer smiling; his face was cadaverous, his eyes bright and
keen as steel.
'No," replied the count directly, in so decisive a tone that further
insistence became impossible.
Then the marquis refused with even greater severity of expression.
He talked morality. The aristocratic classes ought to set a good
example. Fauchery smiled and shook hands with Vandeuvres. He did
not wait for him and took his departure immediately, for he was due
at his newspaper office.
"At Nana's at midnight, eh?"
La Faloise retired too. Steiner had made his bow to the countess.
Other men followed them, and the same phrase went round--"At
midnight, at Nana's"--as they went to get their overcoats in the
anteroom. Georges, who could not leave without his mother, had
stationed himself at the door, where he gave the exact address.
"Third floor, door on your left." Yet before going out Fauchery
gave a final glance. Vandeuvres had again resumed his position
among the ladies and was laughing with Leonide de Chezelles. Count
Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard were joining in the conversation,
while the good Mme Hugon was falling asleep open-eyed. Lost among
the petticoats, M. Venot was his own small self again and smiled as
of old. Twelve struck slowly in the great solemn room.
"What--what do you mean?" Mme du Joncquoy resumed. "You imagine
that Monsieur de Bismarck will make war on us and beat us! Oh,
that's unbearable!"
Indeed, they were laughing round Mme Chantereau, who had just
repeated an assertion she had heard made in Alsace, where her
husband owned a foundry.
"We have the emperor, fortunately," said Count Muffat in his grave,
official way.
It was the last phrase Fauchery was able to catch. He closed the
door after casting one more glance in the direction of the Countess
Sabine. She was talking sedately with the chief clerk and seemed to
be interested in that stout individual's conversation. Assuredly he
must have been deceiving himself. There was no "little rift" there
at all. It was a pity.
"You're not coming down then?" La Faloise shouted up to him from the
entrance hall.
And out on the pavement, as they separated, they once more repeated:
"Tomorrow, at Nana's." _
Read next: CHAPTER IV
Read previous: CHAPTER II
Table of content of Nana
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
