CHAPTER VIII

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_ CHAPTER VIII

We are in a little set of lodgings on the fourth floor in the Rue
Veron at Montmartre. Nana and Fontan have invited a few friends to
cut their Twelfth-Night cake with them. They are giving their
housewarming, though they have been only three days settled.

They had no fixed intention of keeping house together, but the whole
thing had come about suddenly in the first glow of the honeymoon.
After her grand blowup, when she had turned the count and the banker
so vigorously out of doors, Nana felt the world crumbling about her
feet. She estimated the situation at a glance; the creditors would
swoop down on her anteroom, would mix themselves up with her love
affairs and threaten to sell her little all unless she continued to
act sensibly. Then, too, there would be no end of disputes and
carking anxieties if she attempted to save her furniture from their
clutches. And so she preferred giving up everything. Besides, the
flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was plaguing her to death. It was
so stupid with its great gilded rooms! In her access of tenderness
for Fontan she began dreaming of a pretty little bright chamber.
Indeed, she returned to the old ideals of the florist days, when her
highest ambition was to have a rosewood cupboard with a plate-glass
door and a bed hung with blue "reps." In the course of two days she
sold what she could smuggle out of the house in the way of
knickknacks and jewelry and then disappeared, taking with her ten
thousand francs and never even warning the porter's wife. It was a
plunge into the dark, a merry spree; never a trace was left behind.
In this way she would prevent the men from coming dangling after
her. Fontain was very nice. He did not say no to anything but just
let her do as she liked. Nay, he even displayed an admirable spirit
of comradeship. He had, on his part, nearly seven thousand francs,
and despite the fact that people accused him of stinginess, he
consented to add them to the young woman's ten thousand. The sum
struck them as a solid foundation on which to begin housekeeping.
And so they started away, drawing from their common hoard, in order
to hire and furnish the two rooms in the Rue Veron, and sharing
everything together like old friends. In the early days it was
really delicious.

On Twelfth Night Mme Lerat and Louiset were the first to arrive. As
Fontan had not yet come home, the old lady ventured to give
expression to her fears, for she trembled to see her niece
renouncing the chance of wealth.

"Oh, Aunt, I love him so dearly!" cried Nana, pressing her hands to
her heart with the prettiest of gestures.

This phrase produced an extraordinary effect on Mme Lerat, and tears
came into her eyes.

"That's true," she said with an air of conviction. "Love before all
things!"

And with that she went into raptures over the prettiness of the
rooms. Nana took her to see the bedroom, the parlor and the very
kitchen. Gracious goodness, it wasn't a vast place, but then, they
had painted it afresh and put up new wallpapers. Besides, the sun
shone merrily into it during the daytime.

Thereupon Mme Lerat detained the young woman in the bedroom, while
Louiset installed himself behind the charwoman in the kitchen in
order to watch a chicken being roasted. If, said Mme Lerat, she
permitted herself to say what was in her mind, it was because Zoe
had just been at her house. Zoe had stayed courageously in the
breach because she was devoted to her mistress. Madame would pay
her later on; she was in no anxiety about that! And amid the
breakup of the Boulevard Haussmann establishment it was she who
showed the creditors a bold front; it was she who conducted a
dignified retreat, saving what she could from the wreck and telling
everyone that her mistress was traveling. She never once gave them
her address. Nay, through fear of being followed, she even deprived
herself of the pleasure of calling on Madame. Nevertheless, that
same morning she had run round to Mme Lerat's because matters were
taking a new turn. The evening before creditors in the persons of
the upholsterer, the charcoal merchant and the laundress had put in
an appearance and had offered to give Madame an extension of time.
Nay, they had even proposed to advance Madame a very considerable
amount if only Madame would return to her flat and conduct herself
like a sensible person. The aunt repeated Zoe's words. Without
doubt there was a gentleman behind it all.

"I'll never consent!" declared Nana in great disgust. "Ah, they're
a pretty lot those tradesmen! Do they think I'm to be sold so that
they can get their bills paid? Why, look here, I'd rather die of
hunger than deceive Fontan."

"That's what I said," averred Mme Lerat. "'My niece,' I said, 'is
too noble-hearted!'"

Nana, however, was much vexed to learn that La Mignotte was being
sold and that Labordette was buying it for Caroline Hequet at an
absurdly low price. It made her angry with that clique. Oh, they
were a regular cheap lot, in spite of their airs and graces! Yes,
by Jove, she was worth more than the whole lot of them!

"They can have their little joke out," she concluded, "but money
will never give them true happiness! Besides, you know, Aunt, I
don't even know now whether all that set are alive or not. I'm much
too happy."

At that very moment Mme Maloir entered, wearing one of those hats of
which she alone understood the shape. It was delightful meeting
again. Mme Maloir explained that magnificence frightened her and
that NOW, from time to time, she would come back for her game of
bezique. A second visit was paid to the different rooms in the
lodgings, and in the kitchen Nana talked of economy in the presence
of the charwoman, who was basting the fowl, and said that a servant
would have cost too much and that she was herself desirous of
looking after things. Louiset was gazing beatifically at the
roasting process.

But presently there was a loud outburst of voices. Fontan had come
in with Bosc and Prulliere, and the company could now sit down to
table. The soup had been already served when Nana for the third
time showed off the lodgings.

"Ah, dear children, how comfortable you are here!" Bosc kept
repeating, simply for the sake of pleasing the chums who were
standing the dinner. At bottom the subject of the "nook," as he
called it, nowise touched him.

In the bedroom he harped still more vigorously on the amiable note.
Ordinarily he was wont to treat women like cattle, and the idea of a
man bothering himself about one of the dirty brutes excited within
him the only angry feelings of which, in his comprehensive, drunken
disdain of the universe, he was still capable.

"Ah, ah, the villains," he continued with a wink, "they've done this
on the sly. Well, you were certainly right. It will be charming,
and, by heaven, we'll come and see you!"

But when Louiset arrived on the scene astride upon a broomstick,
Prulliere chuckled spitefully and remarked:

"Well, I never! You've got a baby already?"

This struck everybody as very droll, and Mme Lerat and Mme Maloir
shook with laughter. Nana, far from being vexed, laughed tenderly
and said that unfortunately this was not the case. She would very
much have liked it, both for the little one's sake and for her own,
but perhaps one would arrive all the same. Fontan, in his role of
honest citizen, took Louiset in his arms and began playing with him
and lisping.

"Never mind! It loves its daddy! Call me 'Papa,' you little
blackguard!"

"Papa, Papa!" stammered the child.

The company overwhelmed him with caresses, but Bosc was bored and
talked of sitting down to table. That was the only serious business
in life. Nana asked her guests' permission to put Louiset's chair
next her own. The dinner was very merry, but Bosc suffered from the
near neighborhood of the child, from whom he had to defend his
plate. Mme Lerat bored him too. She was in a melting mood and kept
whispering to him all sorts of mysterious things about gentlemen of
the first fashion who were still running after Nana. Twice he had
to push away her knee, for she was positively invading him in her
gushing, tearful mood. Prulliere behaved with great incivility
toward Mme Maloir and did not once help her to anything. He was
entirely taken up with Nana and looked annoyed at seeing her with
Fontan. Besides, the turtle doves were kissing so excessively as to
be becoming positive bores. Contrary to all known rules, they had
elected to sit side by side.

"Devil take it! Why don't you eat? You've got plenty of time ahead
of you!" Bosc kept repeating with his mouth full. "Wait till we
are gone!"

But Nana could not restrain herself. She was in a perfect ecstasy
of love. Her face was as full of blushes as an innocent young
girl's, and her looks and her laughter seemed to overflow with
tenderness. Gazing on Fontan, she overwhelmed him with pet names--
"my doggie, my old bear, my kitten"--and whenever he passed her the
water or the salt she bent forward and kissed him at random on lips,
eyes, nose or ear. Then if she met with reproof she would return to
the attack with the cleverest maneuvers and with infinite
submissiveness and the supple cunning of a beaten cat would catch
hold of his hand when no one was looking, in order to kiss it again.
It seemed she must be touching something belonging to him. As to
Fontan, he gave himself airs and let himself be adored with the
utmost condescension. His great nose sniffed with entirely sensual
content; his goat face, with its quaint, monstrous ugliness,
positively glowed in the sunlight of devoted adoration lavished upon
him by that superb woman who was so fair and so plump of limb.
Occasionally he gave a kiss in return, as became a man who is having
all the enjoyment and is yet willing to behave prettily.

"Well, you're growing maddening!" cried Prulliere. "Get away from
her, you fellow there!"

And he dismissed Fontan and changed covers, in order to take his
place at Nana's side. The company shouted and applauded at this and
gave vent to some stiffish epigrammatic witticisms. Fontan
counterfeited despair and assumed the quaint expression of Vulcan
crying for Venus. Straightway Prulliere became very gallant, but
Nana, whose foot he was groping for under the table, caught him a
slap to make him keep quiet. No, no, she was certainly not going to
become his mistress. A month ago she had begun to take a fancy to
him because of his good looks, but now she detested him. If he
pinched her again under pretense of picking up her napkin, she would
throw her glass in his face!

Nevertheless, the evening passed off well. The company had
naturally begun talking about the Varietes. Wasn't that cad of a
Bordenave going to go off the hooks after all? His nasty diseases
kept reappearing and causing him such suffering that you couldn't
come within six yards of him nowadays. The day before during
rehearsal he had been incessantly yelling at Simonne. There was a
fellow whom the theatrical people wouldn't shed many tears over.
Nana announced that if he were to ask her to take another part she
would jolly well send him to the rightabout. Moreover, she began
talking of leaving the stage; the theater was not to compare with
her home. Fontan, who was not in the present piece or in that which
was then being rehearsed, also talked big about the joy of being
entirely at liberty and of passing his evenings with his feet on the
fender in the society of his little pet. And at this the rest
exclaimed delightedly, treating their entertainers as lucky people
and pretending to envy their felicity.

The Twelfth-Night cake had been cut and handed round. The bean had
fallen to the lot of Mme Lerat, who popped it into Bosc's glass.
Whereupon there were shouts of "The king drinks! The king drinks!"
Nana took advantage of this outburst of merriment and went and put
her arms round Fontan's neck again, kissing him and whispering in
his ear. But Prulliere, laughing angrily, as became a pretty man,
declared that they were not playing the game. Louiset, meanwhile,
slept soundly on two chairs. It was nearing one o'clock when the
company separated, shouting au revoir as they went downstairs.

For three weeks the existence of the pair of lovers was really
charming. Nana fancied she was returning to those early days when
her first silk dress had caused her infinite delight. She went out
little and affected a life of solitude and simplicity. One morning
early, when she had gone down to buy fish IN PROPRIA PERSONA in La
Rouchefoucauld Market, she was vastly surprised to meet her old hair
dresser Francis face to face. His getup was as scrupulously careful
as ever: he wore the finest linen, and his frock coat was beyond
reproach; in fact, Nana felt ashamed that he should see her in the
street with a dressing jacket and disordered hair and down-at-heel
shoes. But he had the tact, if possible, to intensify his
politeness toward her. He did not permit himself a single inquiry
and affected to believe that Madame was at present on her travels.
Ah, but Madame had rendered many persons unhappy when she decided to
travel! All the world had suffered loss. The young woman, however,
ended by asking him questions, for a sudden fit of curiosity had
made her forget her previous embarrassment. Seeing that the crowd
was jostling them, she pushed him into a doorway and, still holding
her little basket in one hand, stood chatting in front of him. What
were people saying about her high jinks? Good heavens! The ladies
to whom he went said this and that and all sorts of things. In
fact, she had made a great noise and was enjoying a real boom: And
Steiner? M. Steiner was in a very bad way, would make an ugly
finish if he couldn't hit on some new commercial operation. And
Daguenet? Oh, HE was getting on swimmingly. M. Daguenet was
settling down. Nana, under the exciting influence of various
recollections, was just opening her mouth with a view to a further
examination when she felt it would be awkward to utter Muffat's
name. Thereupon Francis smiled and spoke instead of her. As to
Monsieur le Comte, it was all a great pity, so sad had been his
sufferings since Madame's departure.

He had been like a soul in pain--you might have met him wherever
Madame was likely to be found. At last M. Mignon had come across
him and had taken him home to his own place. This piece of news
caused Nana to laugh a good deal. But her laughter was not of the
easiest kind.

"Ah, he's with Rose now," she said. "Well then, you must know,
Francis, I've done with him! Oh, the canting thing! It's learned
some pretty habits--can't even go fasting for a week now! And to
think that he used to swear he wouldn't have any woman after me!"

She was raging inwardly.

"My leavings, if you please!" she continued. "A pretty Johnnie for
Rose to go and treat herself to! Oh, I understand it all now: she
wanted to have her revenge because I got that brute of a Steiner
away from her. Ain't it sly to get a man to come to her when I've
chucked him out of doors?"

"M. Mignon doesn't tell that tale," said the hairdresser.
"According to his account, it was Monsieur le Comte who chucked you
out. Yes, and in a pretty disgusting way too--with a kick on the
bottom!"

Nana became suddenly very pale.

"Eh, what?" she cried. "With a kick on my bottom? He's going too
far, he is! Look here, my little friend, it was I who threw him
downstairs, the cuckold, for he is a cuckold, I must inform you.
His countess is making him one with every man she meets--yes, even
with that good-for-nothing of a Fauchery. And that Mignon, who goes
loafing about the pavement in behalf of his harridan of a wife, whom
nobody wants because she's so lean! What a foul lot! What a foul
lot!"

She was choking, and she paused for breath

"Oh, that's what they say, is it? Very well, my little Francis,
I'll go and look 'em up, I will. Shall you and I go to them at
once? Yes, I'll go, and we'll see whether they will have the cheek
to go telling about kicks on the bottom. Kick's! I never took one
from anybody! And nobody's ever going to strike me--d'ye see?--for
I'd smash the man who laid a finger on me!"

Nevertheless, the storm subsided at last. After all, they might
jolly well what they liked! She looked upon them as so much filth
underfoot! It would have soiled her to bother about people like
that. She had a conscience of her own, she had! And Francis,
seeing her thus giving herself away, what with her housewife's
costume and all, became familiar and, at parting, made so bold as to
give her some good advice. It was wrong of her to be sacrificing
everything for the sake of an infatuation; such infatuations ruined
existence. She listened to him with bowed head while he spoke to
her with a pained expression, as became a connoisseur who could not
bear to see so fine a girl making such a hash of things.

"Well, that's my affair," she said at last "Thanks all the same,
dear boy." She shook his hand, which despite his perfect dress was
always a little greasy, and then went off to buy her fish. During
the day that story about the kick on the bottom occupied her
thoughts. She even spoke about it to Fontan and again posed as a
sturdy woman who was not going to stand the slightest flick from
anybody. Fontan, as became a philosophic spirit, declared that all
men of fashion were beasts whom it was one's duty to despise. And
from that moment forth Nana was full of very real disdain.

That same evening they went to the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre to see
a little woman of Fontan's acquaintance make her debut in a part of
some ten lines. It was close on one o'clock when they once more
trudged up the heights of Montmartre. They had purchased a cake, a
"mocha," in the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin, and they ate it in bed,
seeing that the night was not warm and it was not worth while
lighting a fire. Sitting up side by side, with the bedclothes
pulled up in front and the pillows piled up behind, they supped and
talked about the little woman. Nana thought her plain and lacking
in style. Fontan, lying on his stomach, passed up the pieces of
cake which had been put between the candle and the matches on the
edge of the night table. But they ended by quarreling.

"Oh, just to think of it!" cried Nana. "She's got eyes like gimlet
holes, and her hair's the color of tow."

"Hold your tongue, do!" said Fontan. "She has a superb head of hair
and such fire in her looks! It's lovely the way you women always
tear each other to pieces!"

He looked annoyed.

"Come now, we've had enough of it!" he said at last in savage tones.
"You know I don't like being bored. Let's go to sleep, or things'll
take a nasty turn."

And he blew out the candle, but Nana was furious and went on
talking. She was not going to be spoken to in that voice; she was
accustomed to being treated with respect! As he did not vouchsafe
any further answer, she was silenced, but she could not go to sleep
and lay tossing to and fro.

"Great God, have you done moving about?" cried he suddenly, giving a
brisk jump upward.

"It isn't my fault if there are crumbs in the bed," she said curtly.

In fact, there were crumbs in the bed. She felt them down to her
middle; she was everywhere devoured by them. One single crumb was
scorching her and making her scratch herself till she bled.
Besides, when one eats a cake isn't it usual to shake out the
bedclothes afterward? Fontan, white with rage, had relit the
candle, and they both got up and, barefooted and in their night
dresses, they turned down the clothes and swept up the crumbs on the
sheet with their hands. Fontan went to bed again, shivering, and
told her to go to the devil when she advised him to wipe the soles
of his feet carefully. And in the end she came back to her old
position, but scarce had she stretched herself out than she danced
again. There were fresh crumbs in the bed!

"By Jove, it was sure to happen!" she cried. "You've brought them
back again under your feet. I can't go on like this! No, I tell
you, I can't go on like this!"

And with that she was on the point of stepping over him in order to
jump out of bed again, when Fontan in his longing for sleep grew
desperate and dealt her a ringing box on the ear. The blow was so
smart that Nana suddenly found herself lying down again with her
head on the pillow.

She lay half stunned.

"Oh!" she ejaculated simply, sighing a child's big sigh.

For a second or two he threatened her with a second slap, asking her
at the same time if she meant to move again. Then he put out the
light, settled himself squarely on his back and in a trice was
snoring. But she buried her face in the pillow and began sobbing
quietly to herself. It was cowardly of him to take advantage of his
superior strength! She had experienced very real terror all the
same, so terrible had that quaint mask of Fontan's become. And her
anger began dwindling down as though the blow had calmed her. She
began to feel respect toward him and accordingly squeezed herself
against the wall in order to leave him as much room as possible.
She even ended by going to sleep, her cheek tingling, her eyes full
of tears and feeling so deliciously depressed and wearied and
submissive that she no longer noticed the crumbs. When she woke up
in the morning she was holding Fontain in her naked arms and
pressing him tightly against her breast. He would never begin it
again, eh? Never again? She loved him too dearly. Why, it was
even nice to be beaten if he struck the blow!

After that night a new life began. For a mere trifle--a yes, a no--
Fontan would deal her a blow. She grew accustomed to it and
pocketed everything. Sometimes she shed tears and threatened him,
but he would pin her up against the wall and talk of strangling her,
which had the effect of rendering her extremely obedient. As often
as not, she sank down on a chair and sobbed for five minutes on end.
But afterward she would forget all about it, grow very merry, fill
the little lodgings with the sound of song and laughter and the
rapid rustle of skirts. The worst of it was that Fontan was now in
the habit of disappearing for the whole day and never returning home
before midnight, for he was going to cafes and meeting his old
friends again. Nana bore with everything. She was tremulous and
caressing, her only fear being that she might never see him again if
she reproached him. But on certain days, when she had neither Mme
Maloir nor her aunt and Louiset with her, she grew mortally dull.
Thus one Sunday, when she was bargaining for some pigeons at La
Rochefoucauld Market, she was delighted to meet Satin, who, in her
turn, was busy purchasing a bunch of radishes. Since the evening
when the prince had drunk Fontan's champagne they had lost sight of
one another.

"What? It's you! D'you live in our parts?" said Satin, astounded
at seeing her in the street at that hour of the morning and in
slippers too. "Oh, my poor, dear girl, you're really ruined then!"

Nana knitted her brows as a sign that she was to hold her tongue,
for they were surrounded by other women who wore dressing gowns and
were without linen, while their disheveled tresses were white with
fluff. In the morning, when the man picked up overnight had been
newly dismissed, all the courtesans of the quarter were wont to come
marketing here, their eyes heavy with sleep, their feet in old down-
at-heel shoes and themselves full of the weariness and ill humor
entailed by a night of boredom. From the four converging streets
they came down into the market, looking still rather young in some
cases and very pale and charming in their utter unconstraint; in
others, hideous and old with bloated faces and peeling skin. The
latter did not the least mind being seen thus outside working hours,
and not one of them deigned to smile when the passers-by on the
sidewalk turned round to look at them. Indeed, they were all very
full of business and wore a disdainful expression, as became good
housewives for whom men had ceased to exist. Just as Satin, for
instance, was paying for her bunch of radishes a young man, who
might have been a shop-boy going late to his work, threw her a
passing greeting:

"Good morning, duckie."

She straightened herself up at once and with the dignified manner
becoming an offended queen remarked:

"What's up with that swine there?"

Then she fancied she recognized him. Three days ago toward
midnight, as the was coming back alone from the boulevards, she had
talked to him at the corner of the Rue Labruyere for nearly half an
hour, with a view to persuading him to come home with her. But this
recollection only angered her the more.

"Fancy they're brutes enough to shout things to you in broad
daylight!" she continued. "When one's out on business one ought to
be respecifully treated, eh?"

Nana had ended by buying her pigeons, although she certainly had her
doubts of their freshness. After which Satin wanted to show her
where she lived in the Rue Rochefoucauld close by. And the moment
they were alone Nana told her of her passion for Fontan. Arrived in
front of the house, the girl stopped with her bundle of radishes
under her arm and listened eagerly to a final detail which the other
imparted to her. Nana fibbed away and vowed that it was she who had
turned Count Muffat out of doors with a perfect hail of kicks on the
posterior.

"Oh how smart!" Satin repeated. "How very smart! Kicks, eh? And
he never said a word, did he? What a blooming coward! I wish I'd
been there to see his ugly mug! My dear girl, you were quite right.
A pin for the coin! When I'M on with a mash I starve for it!
You'll come and see me, eh? You promise? It's the left-hand door.
Knock three knocks, for there's a whole heap of damned squints
about."

After that whenever Nana grew too weary of life she went down and
saw Satin. She was always sure of finding her, for the girl never
went out before six in the evening. Satin occupied a couple of
rooms which a chemist had furnished for her in order to save her
from the clutches of the police, but in little more than a
twelvemonth she had broken the furniture, knocked in the chairs,
dirtied the curtains, and that in a manner so furiously filthy and
untidy that the lodgings seemed as though inhabited by a pack of mad
cats. On the mornings when she grew disgusted with herself and
thought about cleaning up a bit, chair rails and strips of curtain
would come off in her hands during her struggle with superincumbent
dirt. On such days the place was fouler than ever, and it was
impossible to enter it, owing to the things which had fallen down
across the doorway. At length she ended by leaving her house
severely alone. When the lamp was lit the cupboard with plate-glass
doors, the clock and what remained of the curtains still served to
impose on the men. Besides, for six months past her landlord had
been threatening to evict her. Well then, for whom should she be
keeping the furniture nice? For him more than anyone else, perhaps!
And so whenever she got up in a merry mood she would shout "Gee up!"
and give the sides of the cupboard and the chest of drawers such a
tremendous kick that they cracked again.

Nana nearly always found her in bed. Even on the days when Satin
went out to do her marketing she felt so tired on her return
upstairs that she flung herself down on the bed and went to sleep
again. During the day she dragged herself about and dozed off on
chairs. Indeed, she did not emerge from this languid condition till
the evening drew on and the gas was lit outside. Nana felt very
comfortable at Satin's, sitting doing nothing on the untidy bed,
while basins stood about on the floor at her feet and petticoats
which had been bemired last night hung over the backs of armchairs
and stained them with mud. They had long gossips together and were
endlessly confidential, while Satin lay on her stomach in her
nightgown, waving her legs above her head and smoking cigarettes as
she listened. Sometimes on such afternoons as they had troubles to
retail they treated themselves to absinthe in order, as they termed
it, "to forget." Satin did not go downstairs or put on a petticoat
but simply went and leaned over the banisters and shouted her order
to the portress's little girl, a chit of ten, who when she brought
up the absinthe in a glass would look furtively at the lady's bare
legs. Every conversation led up to one subject--the beastliness of
the men. Nana was overpowering on the subject of Fontan. She could
not say a dozen words without lapsing into endless repetitions of
his sayings and his doings. But Satin, like a good-natured girl,
would listen unwearyingly to everlasting accounts of how Nana had
watched for him at the window, how they had fallen out over a burnt
dish of hash and how they had made it up in bed after hours of
silent sulking. In her desire to be always talking about these
things Nana had got to tell of every slap that he dealt her. Last
week he had given her a swollen eye; nay, the night before he had
given her such a box on the ear as to throw her across the night
table, and all because he could not find his slippers. And the
other woman did not evince any astonishment but blew out cigarette
smoke and only paused a moment to remark that, for her part, she
always ducked under, which sent the gentleman pretty nearly
sprawling. Both of them settled down with a will to these anecdotes
about blows; they grew supremely happy and excited over these same
idiotic doings about which they told one another a hundred times or
more, while they gave themselves up to the soft and pleasing sense
of weariness which was sure to follow the drubbings they talked of.
It was the delight of rediscussing Fontan's blows and of explaining
his works and his ways, down to the very manner in which he took off
his boots, which brought Nana back daily to Satin's place. The
latter, moreover, used to end by growing sympathetic in her turn and
would cite even more violent cases, as, for instance, that of a
pastry cook who had left her for dead on the floor. Yet she loved
him, in spite of it all! Then came the days on which Nana cried and
declared that things could not go on as they were doing. Satin
would escort her back to her own door and would linger an hour out
in the street to see that he did not murder her. And the next day
the two women would rejoice over the reconciliation the whole
afternoon through. Yet though they did not say so, they preferred
the days when threshings were, so to speak, in the air, for then
their comfortable indignation was all the stronger.

They became inseparable. Yet Satin never went to Nana's, Fontan
having announced that he would have no trollops in his house. They
used to go out together, and thus it was that Satin one day took her
friend to see another woman. This woman turned out to be that very
Mme Robert who had interested Nana and inspired her with a certain
respect ever since she had refused to come to her supper. Mme
Robert lived in the Rue Mosnier, a silent, new street in the
Quartier de l'Europe, where there were no shops, and the handsome
houses with their small, limited flats were peopled by ladies. It
was five o'clock, and along the silent pavements in the quiet,
aristocratic shelter of the tall white houses were drawn up the
broughams of stock-exchange people and merchants, while men walked
hastily about, looking up at the windows, where women in dressing
jackets seemed to be awaiting them. At first Nana refused to go up,
remarking with some constraint that she had not the pleasure of the
lady's acquaintance. But Satin would take no refusal. She was only
desirous of paying a civil call, for Mme Robert, whom she had met in
a restaurant the day before, had made herself extremely agreeable
and had got her to promise to come and see her. And at last Nana
consented. At the top of the stairs a little drowsy maid informed
them that Madame had not come home yet, but she ushered them into
the drawing room notwithstanding and left them there.

"The deuce, it's a smart show!" whispered Satin. It was a stiff,
middle-class room, hung with dark-colored fabrics, and suggested the
conventional taste of a Parisian shopkeeper who has retired on his
fortune. Nana was struck and did her best to make merry about it.
But Satin showed annoyance and spoke up for Mme Robert's strict
adherence to the proprieties. She was always to be met in the
society of elderly, grave-looking men, on whose arms she leaned. At
present she had a retired chocolate seller in tow, a serious soul.
Whenever he came to see her he was so charmed by the solid, handsome
way in which the house was arranged that he had himself announced
and addressed its mistress as "dear child."

"Look, here she is!" continued Satin, pointing to a photograph which
stood in front of the clock. Nana scrutinized the portrait for a
second or so. It represented a very dark brunette with a longish
face and lips pursed up in a discreet smile. "A thoroughly
fashionable lady," one might have said of the likeness, "but one who
is rather more reserved than the rest."

"It's strange," murmured Nana at length, "but I've certainly seen
that face somewhere. Where, I don't remember. But it can't have
been in a pretty place--oh no, I'm sure it wasn't in a pretty
place."

And turning toward her friend, she added, "So she's made you promise
to come and see her? What does she want with you?"

"What does she want with me? 'Gad! To talk, I expect--to be with
me a bit. It's her politeness."

Nana looked steadily at Satin. "Tut, tut," she said softly. After
all, it didn't matter to her! Yet seeing that the lady was keeping
them waiting, she declared that she would not stay longer, and
accordingly they both took their departure.

The next day Fontan informed Nana that he was not coming home to
dinner, and she went down early to find Satin with a view to
treating her at a restaurant. The choice of the restaurant involved
infinite debate. Satin proposed various brewery bars, which Nana
thought detestable, and at last persuaded her to dine at Laure's.
This was a table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs, where the dinner
cost three francs.

Tired of waiting for the dinner hour and not knowing what to do out
in the street, the pair went up to Laure's twenty minutes too early.
The three dining rooms there were still empty, and they sat down at
a table in the very saloon where Laure Piedefer was enthroned on a
high bench behind a bar. This Laure was a lady of some fifty
summers, whose swelling contours were tightly laced by belts and
corsets. Women kept entering in quick procession, and each, in
passing, craned upward so as to overtop the saucers raised on the
counter and kissed Laure on the mouth with tender familiarity, while
the monstrous creature tried, with tears in her eyes, to divide her
attentions among them in such a way as to make no one jealous. On
the other hand, the servant who waited on the ladies was a tall,
lean woman. She seemed wasted with disease, and her eyes were
ringed with dark lines and glowed with somber fire. Very rapidly
the three saloons filled up. There were some hundred customers, and
they had seated themselves wherever they could find vacant places.
The majority were nearing the age of forty: their flesh was puffy
and so bloated by vice as almost to hide the outlines of their
flaccid mouths. But amid all these gross bosoms and figures some
slim, pretty girls were observable. These still wore a modest
expression despite their impudent gestures, for they were only
beginners in their art, who had started life in the ballrooms of the
slums and had been brought to Laure's by some customer or other.
Here the tribe of bloated women, excited by the sweet scent of their
youth, jostled one another and, while treating them to dainties,
formed a perfect court round them, much as old amorous bachelors
might have done. As to the men, they were not numerous. There were
ten or fifteen of them at the outside, and if we except four tall
fellows who had come to see the sight and were cracking jokes and
taking things easy, they behaved humbly enough amid this whelming
flood of petticoats.

"I say, their stew's very good, ain't it?" said Satin.

Nana nodded with much satisfaction. It was the old substantial
dinner you get in a country hotel and consisted of vol-au-vent a la
financiere, fowl boiled in rice, beans with a sauce and vanilla
creams, iced and flavored with burnt sugar. The ladies made an
especial onslaught on the boiled fowl and rice: their stays seemed
about to burst; they wiped their lips with slow, luxurious
movements. At first Nana had been afraid of meeting old friends who
might have asked her silly questions, but she grew calm at last, for
she recognized no one she knew among that extremely motley throng,
where faded dresses and lamentable hats contrasted strangely with
handsome costumes, the wearers of which fraternized in vice with
their shabbier neighbors. She was momentarily interested, however,
at the sight of a young man with short curly hair and insolent face
who kept a whole tableful of vastly fat women breathlessly attentive
to his slightest caprice. But when the young man began to laugh his
bosom swelled.

"Good lack, it's a woman!"

She let a little cry escape as she spoke, and Satin, who was
stuffing herself with boiled fowl, lifted up her head and whispered:

"Oh yes! I know her. A smart lot, eh? They do just fight for
her."

Nana pouted disgustingly. She could not understand the thing as
yet. Nevertheless, she remarked in her sensible tone that there was
no disputing about tastes or colors, for you never could tell what
you yourself might one day have a liking for. So she ate her cream
with an air of philosophy, though she was perfectly well aware that
Satin with her great blue virginal eyes was throwing the neighboring
tables into a state of great excitement. There was one woman in
particular, a powerful, fair-haired person who sat close to her and
made herself extremely agreeable. She seemed all aglow with
affection and pushed toward the girl so eagerly that Nana was on the
point of interfering.

But at that very moment a woman who was entering the room gave her a
shock of surprise. Indeed, she had recognized Mme Robert. The
latter, looking, as was her wont, like a pretty brown mouse, nodded
familiarly to the tall, lean serving maid and came and leaned upon
Laure's counter. Then both women exchanged a long kiss. Nana
thought such an attention on the part of a woman so distinguished
looking very amusing, the more so because Mme Robert had quite
altered her usual modest expression. On the contrary, her eye roved
about the saloon as she kept up a whispered conversation. Laure had
resumed her seat and once more settled herself down with all the
majesty of an old image of Vice, whose face has been worn and
polished by the kisses of the faithful. Above the range of loaded
plates she sat enthroned in all the opulence which a hotelkeeper
enjoys after forty years of activity, and as she sat there she
swayed her bloated following of large women, in comparison with the
biggest of whom she seemed monstrous.

But Mme Robert had caught sight of Satin, and leaving Laure, she ran
up and behaved charmingly, telling her how much she regretted not
having been at home the day before. When Satin, however, who was
ravished at this treatment, insisted on finding room for her at the
table, she vowed she had already dined. She had simply come up to
look about her. As she stood talking behind her new friend's chair
she leaned lightly on her shoulders and in a smiling, coaxing manner
remarked:

"Now when shall I see you? If you were free--"

Nana unluckily failed to hear more. The conversation vexed her, and
she was dying to tell this honest lady a few home truths. But the
sight of a troop of new arrivals paralyzed her. It was composed of
smart, fashionably dressed women who were wearing their diamonds.
Under the influence of perverse impulse they had made up a party to
come to Laure's--whom, by the by, they all treated with great
familiarity--to eat the three-franc dinner while flashing their
jewels of great price in the jealous and astonished eyes of poor,
bedraggled prostitutes. The moment they entered, talking and
laughing in their shrill, clear tones and seeming to bring sunshine
with them from the outside world, Nana turned her head rapidly away.
Much to her annoyance she had recognized Lucy Stewart and Maria
Blond among them, and for nearly five minutes, during which the
ladies chatted with Laure before passing into the saloon beyond, she
kept her head down and seemed deeply occupied in rolling bread pills
on the cloth in front of her. But when at length she was able to
look round, what was her astonishment to observe the chair next to
hers vacant! Satin had vanished.

"Gracious, where can she be?" she loudly ejaculated.

The sturdy, fair woman who had been overwhelming Satin with civil
attentions laughed ill-temperedly, and when Nana, whom the laugh
irritated, looked threatening she remarked in a soft, drawling way:

"It's certainly not me that's done you this turn; it's the other
one!"

Thereupon Nana understood that they would most likely make game of
her and so said nothing more. She even kept her seat for some
moments, as she did not wish to show how angry she felt. She could
hear Lucy Stewart laughing at the end of the next saloon, where she
was treating a whole table of little women who had come from the
public balls at Montmartre and La Chapelle. It was very hot; the
servant was carrying away piles of dirty plates with a strong scent
of boiled fowl and rice, while the four gentlemen had ended by
regaling quite half a dozen couples with capital wine in the hope of
making them tipsy and hearing some pretty stiffish things. What at
present most exasperated Nana was the thought of paying for Satin's
dinner. There was a wench for you, who allowed herself to be amused
and then made off with never a thank-you in company with the first
petticoat that came by! Without doubt it was only a matter of three
francs, but she felt it was hard lines all the same--her way of
doing it was too disgusting. Nevertheless, she paid up, throwing
the six francs at Laure, whom at the moment she despised more than
the mud in the street. In the Rue des Martyrs Nana felt her
bitterness increasing. She was certainly not going to run after
Satin! It was a nice filthy business for one to be poking one's
nose into! But her evening was spoiled, and she walked slowly up
again toward Montmartre, raging against Mme Robert in particular.
Gracious goodness, that woman had a fine cheek to go playing the
lady--yes, the lady in the dustbin! She now felt sure she had met
her at the Papillon, a wretched public-house ball in the Rue des
Poissonniers, where men conquered her scruples for thirty sous. And
to think a thing like that got hold of important functionaries with
her modest looks! And to think she refused suppers to which one did
her the honor of inviting her because, forsooth, she was playing the
virtuous game! Oh yes, she'd get virtued! It was always those
conceited prudes who went the most fearful lengths in low corners
nobody knew anything about.

Revolving these matters, Nana at length reached her home in the Rue
Veron and was taken aback on observing a light in the window.
Fontan had come home in a sulk, for he, too, had been deserted by
the friend who had been dining with him. He listened coldly to her
explanations while she trembled lest he should strike her. It
scared her to find him at home, seeing that she had not expected him
before one in the morning, and she told him a fib and confessed that
she had certainly spent six francs, but in Mme Maloir's society. He
was not ruffled, however, and he handed her a letter which, though
addressed to her, he had quietly opened. It was a letter from
Georges, who was still a prisoner at Les Fondettes and comforted
himself weekly with the composition of glowing pages. Nana loved to
be written to, especially when the letters were full of grand,
loverlike expressions with a sprinkling of vows. She used to read
them to everybody. Fontan was familiar with the style employed by
Georges and appreciated it. But that evening she was so afraid of a
scene that she affected complete indifference, skimming through the
letter with a sulky expression and flinging it aside as soon as
read. Fontan had begun beating a tattoo on a windowpane; the
thought of going to bed so early bored him, and yet he did not know
how to employ his evening. He turned briskly round:

"Suppose we answer that young vagabond at once," he said.

It was the custom for him to write the letters in reply. He was
wont to vie with the other in point of style. Then, too, he used to
be delighted when Nana, grown enthusiastic after the letter had been
read over aloud, would kiss him with the announcement that nobody
but he could "say things like that." Thus their latent affections
would be stirred, and they would end with mutual adoration.

"As you will," she replied. "I'll make tea, and we'll go to bed
after."

Thereupon Fontan installed himself at the table on which pen, ink
and paper were at the same time grandly displayed. He curved his
arm; he drew a long face.

"My heart's own," he began aloud.

And for more than an hour he applied himself to his task, polishing
here, weighing a phrase there, while he sat with his head between
his hands and laughed inwardly whenever he hit upon a peculiarly
tender expression. Nana had already consumed two cups of tea in
silence, when at last he read out the letter in the level voice and
with the two or three emphatic gestures peculiar to such
performances on the stage. It was five pages long, and he spoke
therein of "the delicious hours passed at La Mignotte, those hours
of which the memory lingered like subtle perfume." He vowed
"eternal fidelity to that springtide of love" and ended by declaring
that his sole wish was to "recommence that happy time if, indeed,
happiness can recommence."

"I say that out of politeness, y'know," he explained. "The moment
it becomes laughable--eh, what! I think she's felt it, she has!"

He glowed with triumph. But Nana was unskillful; she still
suspected an outbreak and now was mistaken enough not to fling her
arms round his neck in a burst of admiration. She thought the
letter a respectable performance, nothing more. Thereupon he was
much annoyed. If his letter did not please her she might write
another! And so instead of bursting out in loverlike speeches and
exchanging kisses, as their wont was, they sat coldly facing one
another at the table. Nevertheless, she poured him out a cup of
tea.

"Here's a filthy mess," he cried after dipping his lips in the
mixture. "You've put salt in it, you have!"

Nana was unlucky enough to shrug her shoulders, and at that he grew
furious.

"Aha! Things are taking a wrong turn tonight!"

And with that the quarrel began. It was only ten by the clock, and
this was a way of killing time. So he lashed himself into a rage
and threw in Nana's teeth a whole string of insults and all kinds of
accusations which followed one another so closely that she had no
time to defend herself. She was dirty; she was stupid; she had
knocked about in all sorts of low places! After that he waxed
frantic over the money question. Did he spend six francs when he
dined out? No, somebody was treating him to a dinner; otherwise he
would have eaten his ordinary meal at home. And to think of
spending them on that old procuress of a Maloir, a jade he would
chuck out of the house tomorrow! Yes, by jingo, they would get into
a nice mess if he and she were to go throwing six francs out of the
window every day!

"Now to begin with, I want your accounts," he shouted. "Let's see;
hand over the money! Now where do we stand?"

All his sordid avaricious instincts came to the surface. Nana was
cowed and scared, and she made haste to fetch their remaining cash
out of the desk and to bring it him. Up to that time the key had
lain on this common treasury, from which they had drawn as freely as
they wished.

"How's this?" he said when he had counted up the money. "There are
scarcely seven thousand francs remaining out of seventeen thousand,
and we've only been together three months. The thing's impossible."

He rushed forward, gave the desk a savage shake and brought the
drawer forward in order to ransack it in the light of the lamp. But
it actually contained only six thousand eight hundred and odd
francs. Thereupon the tempest burst forth.

"Ten thousand francs in three months!" he yelled. "By God! What
have you done with it all? Eh? Answer! It all goes to your jade
of an aunt, eh? Or you're keeping men; that's plain! Will you
answer?"

"Oh well, if you must get in a rage!" said Nana. "Why, the
calculation's easily made! You haven't allowed for the furniture;
besides, I've had to buy linen. Money goes quickly when one's
settling in a new place."

But while requiring explanations he refused to listen to them.

"Yes, it goes a deal too quickly!" he rejoined more calmly. "And
look here, little girl, I've had enough of this mutual housekeeping.
You know those seven thousand francs are mine. Yes, and as I've got
'em, I shall keep 'em! Hang it, the moment you become wasteful I
get anxious not to be ruined. To each man his own."

And he pocketed the money in a lordly way while Nana gazed at him,
dumfounded. He continued speaking complaisantly:

"You must understand I'm not such a fool as to keep aunts and
likewise children who don't belong to me. You were pleased to spend
your own money--well, that's your affair! But my money--no, that's
sacred! When in the future you cook a leg of mutton I'll pay for
half of it. We'll settle up tonight--there!"

Straightway Nana rebelled. She could not help shouting:

"Come, I say, it's you who've run through my ten thousand francs.
It's a dirty trick, I tell you!"

But he did not stop to discuss matters further, for he dealt her a
random box on the ear across the table, remarking as he did so:

"Let's have that again!"

She let him have it again despite his blow. Whereupon he fell upon
her and kicked and cuffed her heartily. Soon he had reduced her to
such a state that she ended, as her wont was, by undressing and
going to bed in a flood of tears.

He was out of breath and was going to bed, in his turn, when he
noticed the letter he had written to Georges lying on the table.
Whereupon he folded it up carefully and, turning toward the bed,
remarked in threatening accents:

"It's very well written, and I'm going to post it myself because I
don't like women's fancies. Now don't go moaning any more; it puts
my teeth on edge."

Nana, who was crying and gasping, thereupon held her breath. When
he was in bed she choked with emotion and threw herself upon his
breast with a wild burst of sobs. Their scuffles always ended thus,
for she trembled at the thought of losing him and, like a coward,
wanted always to feel that he belonged entirely to her, despite
everything. Twice he pushed her magnificently away, but the warm
embrace of this woman who was begging for mercy with great, tearful
eyes, as some faithful brute might do, finally aroused desire. And
he became royally condescending without, however, lowering his
dignity before any of her advances. In fact, he let himself be
caressed and taken by force, as became a man whose forgiveness is
worth the trouble of winning. Then he was seized with anxiety,
fearing that Nana was playing a part with a view to regaining
possession of the treasury key. The light had been extinguished
when he felt it necessary to reaffirm his will and pleasure.

"You must know, my girl, that this is really very serious and that I
keep the money."

Nana, who was falling asleep with her arms round his neck, uttered a
sublime sentiment.

"Yes, you need fear nothing! I'll work for both of us!"

But from that evening onward their life in common became more and
more difficult. From one week's end to the other the noise of slaps
filled the air and resembled the ticking of a clock by which they
regulated their existence. Through dint of being much beaten Nana
became as pliable as fine linen; her skin grew delicate and pink and
white and so soft to the touch and clear to the view that she may be
said to have grown more good looking than ever. Prulliere,
moreover, began running after her like a madman, coming in when
Fontan was away and pushing her into corners in order to snatch an
embrace. But she used to struggle out of his grasp, full of
indignation and blushing with shame. It disgusted her to think of
him wanting to deceive a friend. Prulliere would thereupon begin
sneering with a wrathful expression. Why, she was growing jolly
stupid nowadays! How could she take up with such an ape? For,
indeed, Fontan was a regular ape with that great swingeing nose of
his. Oh, he had an ugly mug! Besides, the man knocked her about
too!

"It's possible I like him as he is," she one day made answer in the
quiet voice peculiar to a woman who confesses to an abominable
taste.

Bosc contented himself by dining with them as often as possible. He
shrugged his shoulders behind Prulliere's back--a pretty fellow, to
be sure, but a frivolous! Bosc had on more than one occasion
assisted at domestic scenes, and at dessert, when Fontan slapped
Nana, he went on chewing solemnly, for the thing struck him as being
quite in the course of nature. In order to give some return for his
dinner he used always to go into ecstasies over their happiness. He
declared himself a philosopher who had given up everything, glory
included. At times Prulliere and Fontan lolled back in their
chairs, losing count of time in front of the empty table, while with
theatrical gestures and intonation they discussed their former
successes till two in the morning. But he would sit by, lost in
thought, finishing the brandy bottle in silence and only
occasionally emitting a little contemptuous sniff. Where was
Talma's tradition? Nowhere. Very well, let them leave him jolly
well alone! It was too stupid to go on as they were doing!

One evening he found Nana in tears. She took off her dressing
jacket in order to show him her back and her arms, which were black
and blue. He looked at her skin without being tempted to abuse the
opportunity, as that ass of a Prulliere would have been. Then,
sententiously:

"My dear girl, where there are women there are sure to be ructions.
It was Napoleon who said that, I think. Wash yourself with salt
water. Salt water's the very thing for those little knocks. Tut,
tut, you'll get others as bad, but don't complain so long as no
bones are broken. I'm inviting myself to dinner, you know; I've
spotted a leg of mutton."

But Mme Lerat had less philosophy. Every time Nana showed her a
fresh bruise on the white skin she screamed aloud. They were
killing her niece; things couldn't go on as they were doing. As a
matter of fact, Fontan had turned Mme Lerat out of doors and had
declared that he would not have her at his house in the future, and
ever since that day, when he returned home and she happened to be
there, she had to make off through the kitchen, which was a horrible
humiliation to her. Accordingly she never ceased inveighing against
that brutal individual. She especially blamed his ill breeding,
pursing up her lips, as she did so, like a highly respectable lady
whom nobody could possibly remonstrate with on the subject of good
manners.

"Oh, you notice it at once," she used to tell Nana; "he hasn't the
barest notion of the very smallest proprieties. His mother must
have been common! Don't deny it--the thing's obvious! I don't
speak on my own account, though a person of my years has a right to
respectful treatment, but YOU--how do YOU manage to put up with his
bad manners? For though I don't want to flatter myself, I've always
taught you how to behave, and among our own people you always
enjoyed the best possible advice. We were all very well bred in our
family, weren't we now?"

Nana used never to protest but would listen with bowed head.

"Then, too," continued the aunt, "you've only known perfect
gentlemen hitherto. We were talking of that very topic with Zoe at
my place yesterday evening. She can't understand it any more than I
can. 'How is it,' she said, 'that Madame, who used to have that
perfect gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, at her beck and call'--for
between you and me, it seems you drove him silly--'how is it that
Madame lets herself be made into mincemeat by that clown of a
fellow?' I remarked at the time that you might put up with the
beatings but that I would never have allowed him to be lacking in
proper respect. In fact, there isn't a word to be said for him. I
wouldn't have his portrait in my room even! And you ruin yourself
for such a bird as that; yes, you ruin yourself, my darling; you
toil and you moil, when there are so many others and such rich men,
too, some of them even connected with the government! Ah well, it's
not I who ought to be telling you this, of course! But all the
same, when next he tries any of his dirty tricks on I should cut him
short with a 'Monsieur, what d'you take me for?' You know how to
say it in that grand way of yours! It would downright cripple him."

Thereupon Nana burst into sobs and stammered out:

"Oh, Aunt, I love him!"

The fact of the matter was that Mme Lerat was beginning to feel
anxious at the painful way her niece doled out the sparse,
occasional francs destined to pay for little Louis's board and
lodging. Doubtless she was willing to make sacrifices and to keep
the child by her whatever might happen while waiting for more
prosperous times, but the thought that Fontan was preventing her and
the brat and its mother from swimming in a sea of gold made her so
savage that she was ready to deny the very existence of true love.
Accordingly she ended up with the following severe remarks:

"Now listen, some fine day when he's taken the skin off your back,
you'll come and knock at my door, and I'll open it to you."

Soon money began to engross Nana's whole attention. Fontan had
caused the seven thousand francs to vanish away. Without doubt they
were quite safe; indeed, she would never have dared ask him
questions about them, for she was wont to be blushingly diffident
with that bird, as Mme Lerat called him. She trembled lest he
should think her capable of quarreling with him about halfpence. He
had certainly promised to subscribe toward their common household
expenses, and in the early days he had given out three francs every
morning. But he was as exacting as a boarder; he wanted everything
for his three francs--butter, meat, early fruit and early
vegetables--and if she ventured to make an observation, if she
hinted that you could not have everything in the market for three
francs, he flew into a temper and treated her as a useless, wasteful
woman, a confounded donkey whom the tradespeople were robbing.
Moreover, he was always ready to threaten that he would take
lodgings somewhere else. At the end of a month on certain mornings
he had forgotten to deposit the three francs on the chest of
drawers, and she had ventured to ask for them in a timid, roundabout
way. Whereupon there had been such bitter disputes and he had
seized every pretext to render her life so miserable that she had
found it best no longer to count upon him. Whenever, however, he
had omitted to leave behind the three one-franc pieces and found a
dinner awaiting him all the same, he grew as merry as a sandboy,
kissed Nana gallantly and waltzed with the chairs. And she was so
charmed by this conduct that she at length got to hope that nothing
would be found on the chest of drawers, despite the difficulty she
experienced in making both ends meet. One day she even returned him
his three francs, telling him a tale to the effect that she still
had yesterday's money. As he had given her nothing then, he
hesitated for some moments, as though he dreaded a lecture. But she
gazed at him with her loving eyes and hugged him in such utter self-
surrender that he pocketed the money again with that little
convulsive twitch or the fingers peculiar to a miser when he regains
possession of that which has been well-nigh lost. From that day
forth he never troubled himself about money again or inquired whence
it came. But when there were potatoes on the table he looked
intoxicated with delight and would laugh and smack his lips before
her turkeys and legs of mutton, though of course this did not
prevent his dealing Nana sundry sharp smacks, as though to keep his
hand in amid all his happiness.

Nana had indeed found means to provide for all needs, and the place
on certain days overflowed with good things. Twice a week,
regularly, Bosc had indigestion. One evening as Mme Lerat was
withdrawing from the scene in high dudgeon because she had noticed a
copious dinner she was not destined to eat in process of
preparation, she could not prevent herself asking brutally who paid
for it all. Nana was taken by surprise; she grew foolish and began
crying.

"Ah, that's a pretty business," said the aunt, who had divined her
meaning.

Nana had resigned herself to it for the sake of enjoying peace in
her own home. Then, too, the Tricon was to blame. She had come
across her in the Rue de Laval one fine day when Fontan had gone out
raging about a dish of cod. She had accordingly consented to the
proposals made her by the Tricon, who happened just then to be in
difficulty. As Fontan never came in before six o'clock, she made
arrangements for her afternoons and used to bring back forty francs,
sixty francs, sometimes more. She might have made it a matter of
ten and fifteen louis had she been able to maintain her former
position, but as matters stood she was very glad thus to earn enough
to keep the pot boiling. At night she used to forget all her
sorrows when Bosc sat there bursting with dinner and Fontan leaned
on his elbows and with an expression of lofty superiority becoming a
man who is loved for his own sake allowed her to kiss him on the
eyelids.

In due course Nana's very adoration of her darling, her dear old
duck, which was all the more passionately blind, seeing that now she
paid for everything, plunged her back into the muddiest depths of
her calling. She roamed the streets and loitered on the pavement in
quest of a five-franc piece, just as when she was a slipshod baggage
years ago. One Sunday at La Rochefoucauld Market she had made her
peace with Satin after having flown at her with furious reproaches
about Mme Robert. But Satin had been content to answer that when
one didn't like a thing there was no reason why one should want to
disgust others with it. And Nana, who was by way of being wide-
minded, had accepted the philosophic view that you never can tell
where your tastes will lead you and had forgiven her. Her curiosity
was even excited, and she began questioning her about obscure vices
and was astounded to be adding to her information at her time of
life and with her knowledge. She burst out laughing and gave vent
to various expressions of surprise. It struck her as so queer, and
yet she was a little shocked by it, for she was really quite the
philistine outside the pale of her own habits. So she went back to
Laure's and fed there when Fontan was dining out. She derived much
amusement from the stories and the amours and the jealousies which
inflamed the female customers without hindering their appetites in
the slightest degree. Nevertheless, she still was not quite in it,
as she herself phrased it. The vast Laure, meltingly maternal as
ever, used often to invite her to pass a day or two at her Asnieries
Villa, a country house containing seven spare bedrooms. But she
used to refuse; she was afraid. Satin, however, swore she was
mistaken about it, that gentlemen from Paris swung you in swings and
played tonneau with you, and so she promised to come at some future
time when it would be possible for her to leave town.

At that time Nana was much tormented by circumstances and not at all
festively inclined. She needed money, and when the Tricon did not
want her, which too often happened, she had no notion where to
bestow her charms. Then began a series of wild descents upon the
Parisian pavement, plunges into the baser sort of vice, whose
votaries prowl in muddy bystreets under the restless flicker of gas
lamps. Nana went back to the public-house balls in the suburbs,
where she had kicked up her heels in the early ill-shod days. She
revisited the dark corners on the outer boulevards, where when she
was fifteen years old men used to hug her while her father was
looking for her in order to give her a hiding. Both the women would
speed along, visiting all the ballrooms and restaurants in a quarter
and climbing innumerable staircases which were wet with spittle and
spilled beer, or they would stroll quietly about, going up streets
and planting themselves in front of carriage gates. Satin, who had
served her apprenticeship in the Quartier Latin, used to take Nana
to Bullier's and the public houses in the Boulevard Saint-Michel.
But the vacations were drawing on, and the Quarter looked too
starved. Eventually they always returned to the principal
boulevards, for it was there they ran the best chance of getting
what they wanted. From the heights of Montmartre to the observatory
plateau they scoured the whole town in the way we have been
describing. They were out on rainy evenings, when their boots got
worn down, and on hot evenings, when their linen clung to their
skins. There were long periods of waiting and endless periods of
walking; there were jostlings and disputes and the nameless, brutal
caresses of the stray passer-by who was taken by them to some
miserable furnished room and came swearing down the greasy stairs
afterward.

The summer was drawing to a close, a stormy summer of burning
nights. The pair used to start out together after dinner, toward
nine o'clock. On the pavements of the Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette
two long files of women scudded along with tucked-up skirts and bent
heads, keeping close to the shops but never once glancing at the
displays in the shopwindows as they hurried busily down toward the
boulevards. This was the hungry exodus from the Quartier Breda
which took place nightly when the street lamps had just been lit.
Nana and Satin used to skirt the church and then march off along the
Rue le Peletier. When they were some hundred yards from the Cafe
Riche and had fairly reached their scene of operations they would
shake out the skirts of their dresses, which up till that moment
they had been holding carefully up, and begin sweeping the
pavements, regardless of dust. With much swaying of the hips they
strolled delicately along, slackening their pace when they crossed
the bright light thrown from one of the great cafes. With shoulders
thrown back, shrill and noisy laughter and many backward glances at
the men who turned to look at them, they marched about and were
completely in their element. In the shadow of night their
artificially whitened faces, their rouged lips and their darkened
eyelids became as charming and suggestive as if the inmates of a
make-believe trumpery oriental bazaar had been sent forth into the
open street. Till eleven at night they sauntered gaily along among
the rudely jostling crowds, contenting themselves with an occasional
"dirty ass!" hurled after the clumsy people whose boot heels had
torn a flounce or two from their dresses. Little familiar
salutations would pass between them and the cafe waiters, and at
times they would stop and chat in front of a small table and accept
of drinks, which they consumed with much deliberation, as became
people not sorry to sit down for a bit while waiting for the
theaters to empty. But as night advanced, if they had not made one
or two trips in the direction of the Rue la Rochefoucauld, they
became abject strumpets, and their hunt for men grew more ferocious
than ever. Beneath the trees in the darkening and fast-emptying
boulevards fierce bargainings took place, accompanied by oaths and
blows. Respectable family parties--fathers, mothers and daughters--
who were used to such scenes, would pass quietly by the while
without quickening their pace. Afterward, when they had walked from
the opera to the GYMNASE some half-score times and in the deepening
night men were rapidly dropping off homeward for good and all, Nana
and Satin kept to the sidewalk in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre.
There up till two o'clock in the morning restaurants, bars and ham-
and-beef shops were brightly lit up, while a noisy mob of women hung
obstinately round the doors of the cafes. This suburb was the only
corner of night Paris which was still alight and still alive, the
only market still open to nocturnal bargains. These last were
openly struck between group and group and from one end of the street
to the other, just as in the wide and open corridor of a disorderly
house. On such evenings as the pair came home without having had
any success they used to wrangle together. The Rue Notre Dame de la
Lorette stretched dark and deserted in front of them. Here and
there the crawling shadow of a woman was discernible, for the
Quarter was going home and going home late, and poor creatures,
exasperated at a night of fruitless loitering, were unwilling to
give up the chase and would still stand, disputing in hoarse voices
with any strayed reveler they could catch at the corner of the Rue
Breda or the Rue Fontaine.

Nevertheless, some windfalls came in their way now and then in the
shape of louis picked up in the society of elegant gentlemen, who
slipped their decorations into their pockets as they went upstairs
with them. Satin had an especially keen scent for these. On rainy
evenings, when the dripping city exhaled an unpleasant odor
suggestive of a great untidy bed, she knew that the soft weather and
the fetid reek of the town's holes and corners were sure to send the
men mad. And so she watched the best dressed among them, for she
knew by their pale eyes what their state was. On such nights it was
as though a fit of fleshly madness were passing over Paris. The
girl was rather nervous certainly, for the most modish gentlemen
were always the most obscene. All the varnish would crack off a
man, and the brute beast would show itself, exacting, monstrous in
lust, a past master in corruption. But besides being nervous, that
trollop of a Satin was lacking in respect. She would blurt out
awful things in front of dignified gentlemen in carriages and assure
them that their coachmen were better bred than they because they
behaved respectfully toward the women and did not half kill them
with their diabolical tricks and suggestions. The way in which
smart people sprawled head over heels into all the cesspools of vice
still caused Nana some surprise, for she had a few prejudices
remaining, though Satin was rapidly destroying them.

"Well then," she used to say when talking seriously about the
matter, "there's no such thing as virtue left, is there?"

From one end of the social ladder to the other everybody was on the
loose! Good gracious! Some nice things ought to be going on in
Paris between nine o'clock in the evening and three in the morning!
And with that she began making very merry and declaring that if one
could only have looked into every room one would have seen some
funny sights--the little people going it head over ears and a good
lot of swells, too, playing the swine rather harder than the rest.
Oh, she was finishing her education!

One evenlng when she came to call for Satin she recognized the
Marquis de Chouard. He was coming downstairs with quaking legs; his
face was ashen white, and he leaned heavily on the banisters. She
pretended to be blowing her nose. Upstairs she found Satin amid
indescribable filth. No household work had been done for a week;
her bed was disgusting, and ewers and basins were standing about in
all directions. Nana expressed surprise at her knowing the marquis.
Oh yes, she knew him! He had jolly well bored her confectioner and
her when they were together. At present he used to come back now
and then, but he nearly bothered her life out, going sniffing into
all the dirty corners--yes, even into her slippers!

"Yes, dear girl, my slippers! Oh, he's the dirtiest old beast,
always wanting one to do things!"

The sincerity of these low debauches rendered Nana especially
uneasy. Seeing the courtesans around her slowly dying of it every
day, she recalled to mind the comedy of pleasure she had taken part
in when she was in the heyday of success. Moreover, Satin inspired
her with an awful fear of the police. She was full of anecdotes
about them. Formerly she had been the mistress of a plain-clothes
man, had consented to this in order to be left in peace, and on two
occasions he had prevented her from being put "on the lists." But
at present she was in a great fright, for if she were to be nabbed
again there was a clear case against her. You had only to listen to
her! For the sake of perquisites the police used to take up as many
women as possible. They laid hold of everybody and quieted you with
a slap if you shouted, for they were sure of being defended in their
actions and rewarded, even when they had taken a virtuous girl among
the rest. In the summer they would swoop upon the boulevard in
parties of twelve or fifteen, surround a whole long reach of
sidewalk and fish up as many as thirty women in an evening. Satin,
however, knew the likely places, and the moment she saw a plain-
clothes man heaving in sight she took to her heels, while the long
lines of women on the pavements scattered in consternation and fled
through the surrounding crowd. The dread of the law and of the
magistracy was such that certain women would stand as though
paralyzed in the doorways of the cafes while the raid was sweeping
the avenue without. But Satin was even more afraid of being
denounced, for her pastry cook had proved blackguard enough to
threaten to sell her when she had left him. Yes, that was a fake by
which men lived on their mistresses! Then, too, there were the
dirty women who delivered you up out of sheer treachery if you were
prettier than they! Nana listened to these recitals and felt her
terrors growing upon her. She had always trembled before the law,
that unknown power, that form of revenge practiced by men able and
willing to crush her in the certain absence of all defenders.
Saint-Lazare she pictured as a grave, a dark hole, in which they
buried live women after they had cut off their hair. She admitted
that it was only necessary to leave Fontan and seek powerful
protectors. But as matters stood it was in vain that Satin talked
to her of certain lists of women's names, which it was the duty of
the plainclothes men to consult, and of certain photographs
accompanying the lists, the originals of which were on no account to
be touched. The reassurance did not make her tremble the less, and
she still saw herself hustled and dragged along and finally
subjected to the official medical inspection. The thought of the
official armchair filled her with shame and anguish, for had she not
bade it defiance a score of times?

Now it so happened that one evening toward the close of September,
as she was walking with Satin in the Boulevard Poissonniere, the
latter suddenly began tearing along at a terrible pace. And when
Nana asked her what she meant thereby:

"It's the plain-clothes men!" whispered Satin. "Off with you! Off
with you!" A wild stampede took place amid the surging crowd.
Skirts streamed out behind and were torn. There were blows and
shrieks. A woman fell down. The crowd of bystanders stood
hilariously watching this rough police raid while the plain-clothes
men rapidly narrowed their circle. Meanwhile Nana had lost Satin.
Her legs were failing her, and she would have been taken up for a
certainty had not a man caught her by the arm and led her away in
front of the angry police. It was Prulliere, and he had just
recognized her. Without saying a word he turned down the Rue
Rougemont with her. It was just then quite deserted, and she was
able to regain breath there, but at first her faintness and
exhaustion were such that he had to support her. She did not even
thank him.

"Look here," he said, "you must recover a bit. Come up to my
rooms."

He lodged in the Rue Bergere close by. But she straightened herself
up at once.

"No, I don't want to."

Thereupon he waxed coarse and rejoined:

"Why don't you want to, eh? Why, everybody visits my rooms."

"Because I don't."

In her opinion that explained everything. She was too fond of
Fontan to betray him with one of his friends. The other people
ceased to count the moment there was no pleasure in the business,
and necessity compelled her to it. In view of her idiotic obstinacy
Prulliere, as became a pretty fellow whose vanity had been wounded,
did a cowardly thing.

"Very well, do as you like!" he cried. "Only I don't side with you,
my dear. You must get out of the scrape by yourself."

And with that he left her. Terrors got hold of her again, and
scurrying past shops and turning white whenever a man drew nigh, she
fetched an immense compass before reaching Montmartre.

On the morrow, while still suffering from the shock of last night's
terrors, Nana went to her aunt's and at the foot of a small empty
street in the Batignolles found herself face to face with
Labordette. At first they both appeared embarrassed, for with his
usual complaisance he was busy on a secret errand. Nevertheless, he
was the first to regain his self-possession and to announce himself
fortunate in meeting her. Yes, certainly, everybody was still
wondering at Nana's total eclipse. People were asking for her, and
old friends were pining. And with that he grew quite paternal and
ended by sermonizing.

"Frankly speaking, between you and me, my dear, the thing's getting
stupid. One can understand a mash, but to go to that extent, to be
trampled on like that and to get nothing but knocks! Are you
playing up for the 'Virtue Prizes' then?"

She listened to him with an embarrassed expression. But when he
told her about Rose, who was triumphantly enjoying her conquest of
Count Muffat, a flame came into her eyes.

"Oh, if I wanted to--" she muttered.

As became an obliging friend, he at once offered to act as
intercessor. But she refused his help, and he thereupon attacked
her in an opposite quarter.

He informed her that Bordenave was busy mounting a play of
Fauchery's containing a splendid part for her.

"What, a play with a part!" she cried in amazement. "But he's in it
and he's told me nothing about it!"

She did not mention Fontan by name. However, she grew calm again
directly and declared that she would never go on the stage again.
Labordette doubtless remained unconvinced, for he continued with
smiling insistence.

"You know, you need fear nothing with me. I get your Muffat ready
for you, and you go on the stage again, and I bring him to you like
a little dog!"

"No!" she cried decisively.

And she left him. Her heroic conduct made her tenderly pitiful
toward herself. No blackguard of a man would ever have sacrificed
himself like that without trumpeting the fact abroad. Nevertheless,
she was struck by one thing: Labordette had given her exactly the
same advice as Francis had given her. That evening when Fontan came
home she questioned him about Fauchery's piece. The former had been
back at the Varietes for two months past. Why then had he not told
her about the part?

"What part?" he said in his ill-humored tone. "The grand lady's
part, maybe? The deuce, you believe you've got talent then! Why,
such a part would utterly do for you, my girl! You're meant for
comic business--there's no denying it!"

She was dreadfully wounded. All that evening he kept chaffing her,
calling her Mlle Mars. But the harder he hit the more bravely she
suffered, for she derived a certain bitter satisfaction from this
heroic devotion of hers, which rendered her very great and very
loving in her own eyes. Ever since she had gone with other men in
order to supply his wants her love for him had increased, and the
fatigues and disgusts encountered outside only added to the flame.
He was fast becoming a sort of pet vice for which she paid, a
necessity of existence it was impossible to do without, seeing that
blows only stimulated her desires. He, on his part, seeing what a
good tame thing she had become, ended by abusing his privileges.
She was getting on his nerves, and he began to conceive so fierce a
loathing for her that he forgot to keep count of his real interests.
When Bosc made his customary remarks to him he cried out in
exasperation, for which there was no apparent cause, that he had had
enough of her and of her good dinners and that he would shortly
chuck her out of doors if only for the sake of making another woman
a present of his seven thousand francs. Indeed, that was how their
liaison ended.

One evening Nana came in toward eleven o'clock and found the door
bolted. She tapped once--there was no answer; twice--still no
answer. Meanwhile she saw light under the door, and Fontan inside
did not trouble to move. She rapped again unwearyingly; she called
him and began to get annoyed. At length Fontan's voice became
audible; he spoke slowly and rather unctuously and uttered but this
one word.

"MERDE!"

She beat on the door with her fists.

"MERDE!"

She banged hard enough to smash in the woodwork.

"MERDE!"

And for upward of a quarter of an hour the same foul expression
buffeted her, answering like a jeering echo to every blow wherewith
she shook the door. At length, seeing that she was not growing
tired, he opened sharply, planted himself on the threshold, folded
his arms and said in the same cold, brutal voice:

"By God, have you done yet? What d'you want? Are you going to let
us sleep in peace, eh? You can quite see I've got company tonight."

He was certainly not alone, for Nana perceived the little woman from
the Bouffes with the untidy tow hair and the gimlet-hole eyes,
standing enjoying herself in her shift among the furniture she had
paid for. But Fontan stepped out on the landing. He looked
terrible, and he spread out and crooked his great fingers as if they
were pincers.

"Hook it or I'll strangle you!"

rhereupon Nana burst into a nervous fit of sobbing. She was
frightened and she made off. This time it was she that was being
kicked out of doors. And in her fury the thought of Muffat suddenly
occurred to her. Ah, to be sure, Fontan, of all men, ought never to
have done her such a turn!

When she was out in the street her first thought was to go and sleep
with Satin, provided the girl had no one with her. She met her in
front of her house, for she, too, had been turned out of doors by
her landlord. He had just had a padlock affixed to her door--quite
illegally, of course, seeing that she had her own furniture. She
swore and talked of having him up before the commissary of police.
In the meantime, as midnight was striking, they had to begin
thinking of finding a bed. And Satin, deeming it unwise to let the
plain-clothes men into her secrets, ended by taking Nana to a woman
who kept a little hotel in the Rue de Laval. Here they were
assigned a narrow room on the first floor, the window of which
opened on the courtyard. Satin remarked:

"I should gladly have gone to Mme Robert's. There's always a corner
there for me. But with you it's out of the question. She's getting
absurdly jealous; she beat me the other night."

When they had shut themselves in, Nana, who had not yet relieved her
feelings, burst into tears and again and again recounted Fontan's
dirty behavior. Satin listened complaisantly, comforted her, grew
even more angry than she in denunciation of the male sex.

"Oh, the pigs, the pigs! Look here, we'll have nothing more to do
with them!"

Then she helped Nana to undress with all the small, busy attentions,
becoming a humble little friend. She kept saying coaxingly:

"Let's go to bed as fast as we can, pet. We shall be better off
there! Oh, how silly you are to get crusty about things! I tell
you, they're dirty brutes. Don't think any more about 'em. I--I
love you very much. Don't cry, and oblige your own little darling
girl."

And once in bed, she forthwith took Nana in her arms and soothed and
comforted her. She refused to hear Fontan's name mentioned again,
and each time it recurred to her friend's lips she stopped it with a
kiss. Her lips pouted in pretty indignation; her hair lay loose
about her, and her face glowed with tenderness and childlike beauty.
Little by little her soft embrace compelled Nana to dry her tears.
She was touched and replied to Satin's caresses. When two o'clock
struck the candle was still burning, and a sound of soft, smothered
laughter and lovers' talk was audible in the room.

But suddenly a loud noise came up from the lower floors of the
hotel, and Satin, with next to nothing on, got up and listened
intently.

"The police!" she said, growing very pale.

"Oh, blast our bad luck! We're bloody well done for!"

Often had she told stories about the raids on hotel made by the
plainclothes men. But that particular night neither of them had
suspected anything when they took shelter in the Rue de Laval. At
the sound of the word "police" Nana lost her head. She jumped out
of bed and ran across the room with the scared look of a madwoman
about to jump out of the window. Luckily, however, the little
courtyard was roofed with glass, which was covered with an iron-wire
grating at the level of the girls' bedroom. At sight of this she
ceased to hesitate; she stepped over the window prop, and with her
chemise flying and her legs bared to the night air she vanished in
the gloom.

"Stop! Stop!" said Satin in a great fright. "You'll kill
yourself."

Then as they began hammering at the door, she shut the window like a
good-natured girl and threw her friend's clothes down into a
cupboard. She was already resigned to her fate and comforted
herself with the thought that, after all, if she were to be put on
the official list she would no longer be so "beastly frightened" as
of yore. So she pretended to be heavy with sleep. She yawned; she
palavered and ended by opening the door to a tall, burly fellow with
an unkempt beard, who said to her:

"Show your hands! You've got no needle pricks on them: you don't
work. Now then, dress!"

"But I'm not a dressmaker; I'm a burnisher," Satin brazenly
declared.

Nevertheless, she dressed with much docility, knowing that argument
was out of the question. Cries were ringing through the hotel; a
girl was clinging to doorposts and refusing to budge an inch.
Another girl, in bed with a lover, who was answering for her
legality, was acting the honest woman who had been grossly insulted
and spoke of bringing an action against the prefect of police. For
close on an hour there was a noise of heavy shoes on the stairs, of
fists hammering on doors, of shrill disputes terminating in sobs, of
petticoats rustling along the walls, of all the sounds, in fact,
attendant on the sudden awakening and scared departure of a flock of
women as they were roughly packed off by three plain-clothes men,
headed by a little oily-mannered, fair-haired commissary of police.
After they had gone the hotel relapsed into deep silence.

Nobody had betrayed her; Nana was saved. Shivering and half dead
with fear, she came groping back into the room. Her bare feet were
cut and bleeding, for they had been torn by the grating. For a long
while she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, listening and
listening. Toward morning, however, she went to sleep again, and at
eight o'clock, when she woke up, she escaped from the hotel and ran
to her aunt's. When Mme Lerat, who happened just then to be
drinking her morning coffee with Zoe, beheld her bedraggled plight
and haggard face, she took note of the hour and at once understood
the state of the case.

"It's come to it, eh?" she cried. "I certainly told you that he
would take the skin off your back one of these days. Well, well,
come in; you'll always find a kind welcome here."

Zoe had risen from her chair and was muttering with respectful
familiarity:

"Madame is restored to us at last. I was waiting for Madame."

But Mme Lerat insisted on Nana's going and kissing Louiset at once,
because, she said, the child took delight in his mother's nice ways.
Louiset, a sickly child with poor blood, was still asleep, and when
Nana bent over his white, scrofulous face, the memory of all she had
undergone during the last few months brought a choking lump into her
throat.

"Oh, my poor little one, my poor little one!" she gasped, bursting
into a final fit of sobbing. _

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