La Faloise laughed in an idiotic way as he sucked the knob of his walking-stick. Debts were crushing him down; he no longer possessed a hundred francs of income. He saw himself obliged to go back to the country and live with a maniacal uncle. But that did not matter; he was a swell. The “Figaro” had twice printed his name; and with his skinny neck rising out of his collar slightly turned down in front, his waist encased in a waistcoat a great deal too tight, he swaggered about, uttering exclamations like a parrot, and affecting the languors of a wooden puppet that has never had an emotion. Nana, whom he irritated immensely, ended by beating him.
Fauchery, however, had returned, brought by his cousin. The unfortunate Fauchery at this time had become quite a family man. After breaking off with the countess, he found himself in the hands of Rose, who treated him as a real husband. Mignon simply remained madame’s major-domo. Installed as master, the journalist used to lie to Rose, and, whenever he deceived her, had to take all sorts of precautions, full of the scruples of a good spouse desirous of at length settling down. Nana’s triumph was to hook him and to devour a newspaper he had started with the money of one of his friends. She did not openly go about with him. She took a delight, on the contrary, in treating him as a gentleman who must conceal his movements; and whenever she spoke of Rose, she would say “that poor Rose.” The newspaper supplied her with flowers for a couple of months. She had subscribers in the country. She took everything, from the leading article to the theatrical notes. Then, after wearing out the editors, dislocating the management, she satisfied one of her big caprices—a winter garden in a corner of her mansion—which carried off the printing establishment.
It was merely by way of amusement, however. When Mignon, delighted with what was taking place, hastened to see if he could not fix Fauchery on her for good, she asked him if he was poking fun at her—a fellow without a sou, living on his articles and his plays; not if she knew it! Such stupidity was only worthy of a woman of talent like that poor Rose; and, full of mistrust, fearing some underhand dealing on Mignon’s part, who was quite capable of denouncing them to his wife, she dismissed Fauchery, who for some time had only been paying her in advertisements.
But she remembered him with pleasure; they had amused themselves so much together with that idiot La Faloise. They would never perhaps have thought of being together again, if the pleasure of humbugging such a fool had not excited them. It seemed to them so funny. They would embrace each other under his nose, they lived the merriest possible life at his expense, they would send him on some errand to the other end of Paris, whenever they wanted to be alone together; then, when he returned, they would make jokes and allusions that he was unable to understand. One day, incited by the journalist, she bet that she would give La Faloise a slap in the face; that very evening she did so, then continued to beat him, finding it amusing, and delighted at being able to show what cowards men were. She called him her slapping machine, told him to come up and receive his slaps, slaps which made her hand quite red, because she was not yet accustomed to the exercise. La Faloise laughed in his idiotic way, with his eyes full of tears. This familiarity delighted him; he thought it grand.
“You don’t know,” said he one night, very excited after receiving a shower of blows, “you ought to marry me. Eh! shouldn’t we make a jolly couple?”
It was not an empty remark. He had slyly projected this marriage, seized with a mania for astonishing Paris. Nana’s husband—eh! what an effect! A rather grand apotheosis! But Nana snuffed him out in fine style.
“I marry you! Well! if I’d been worried with any such idea I could long ago have found a husband! And a man who would be worth twenty such as you, my little fellow. I have received no end of proposals. Come reckon them up with me: Philippe, George, Foucarmont, Steiner, there’s four, without counting the others whom you don’t know. They all sing the same chorus. I can’t be nice with them without they at once start off singing: ‘Will you marry me? will you marry me?’ ” She was becoming excited. Then she burst out indignantly, “Well! no, I won’t! Was I ever made for such a life as that? Look at me. I should no longer be Nana if I saddled myself with a husband. And, besides, it’s too disgusting.”
And she spat on the ground, she hiccoughed with disgust, as though she saw all the filth of the earth spreading beneath her.
One night La Faloise disappeared. A week later it was stated that he was in the country with his uncle, who had a mania for botanising; he mounted his specimens, and stood a chance of marrying a cousin who was very ugly and extremely devout. Nana did not weep for him much. She merely said to the count,
“Well, my little muff! that’s another rival the less. You’re in high feather to-day. But he was becoming serious; he wanted to marry me.”
As he turned pale, she laughingly put her arms round his neck, thrusting each of her cruelties into him with a caress.
“And it’s that which bothers you, isn’t it? You can’t marry Nana. Whilst they’re all trying to get me to marry them, you’re chafing all alone in your corner. It’s not possible, you must wait till your wife croaks. Ah! if your wife was to croak, wouldn’t you just hasten to me—wouldn’t you just throw yourself at my feet and offer me everything, all the usual style, with sighs, and tears, and protestations? Eh, darling! it would be so nice!”
Her voice had become soft, she fooled him with an air of ferocious cajolery. He, deeply moved, blushed as he returned her embraces. Then she cried,
“Damn it all! to think that I guessed right! He has thought of it, he’s waiting till his wife croaks. Ah, well! this is too much—he’s a bigger scamp than the others!”
Muffat had accepted the others. Now he made it a last point of dignity to remain the “master” with the servants and the frequenters of the house—the man who, giving the most, was the official lover. And his passion became madder than ever. He kept his place by paying, buying even smiles at fabulous prices, often robbed and never receiving his money’s worth; but it was like a disease that was devouring him, he could not help suffering from it. When he entered Nana’s bed-room, he contented himself with opening the windows for a minute, so as to get rid of the odours left by the others—the effluvia of both dark and fair, the cigar smoke, the staleness of which nearly suffocated him. The room was becoming a public square; boots of all kinds were continually being wiped on the threshold, and not one was arrested by that bloody mark which barred the entry. Zoé was greatly worried by that stain, merely a tidy girl’s mania. She was annoyed at always seeing it there; her eyes were attracted to it in spite of herself. She never entered madame’s room without saying,
“It’s funny it doesn’t go away; yet a great many people come here.”
Nana, who had been receiving better news of George, then in a state of convalescence at Les Fondettes with his mother, each time made the same reply:
“Ah, well! you must give it time. It’s gradually becoming paler beneath the footsteps.”
And, indeed, each one of the gentlemen—Foucarmont, Steiner, La Faloise, Fauchery, and the others—had carried away a little of the stain on the soles of their boots. And Muffat, who was worried as much as Zoé by the mark of blood, studied it in spite of himself, to read, as it were, in its rosier and rosier effacement, the number of men who passed there. He had a secret dread of it, always stepping over it through a sudden fear of crushing something living—a naked limb lying on the floor.
Then in that room an unconquerable feeling intoxicated him. He forgot all—the mob of other men who passed through it, the mourning that barred the door. Outside, at times, in the open air of the street, he would shed tears of shame and indignation, and swear never to return there; and the moment he had passed the threshold, he was recaptured. He felt his will give way in the warmth of the apartment; his flesh penetrated with a perfume, overpowered by a voluptuous desire of annihilation. He, devout and used to the rapturous feelings enkindled by the contemplation of gorgeous shrines, experienced exactly the same sensations of a belie
ver, as when, kneeling in some church, he became entranced by the sounds of the organ and the perfume of the incense. The woman ruled him with the jealous despotism of a god of anger, terrifying him, giving him seconds of joy, acute as spasms, for hours of frightful torments, of visions of hell and everlasting damnation. It was always the same stutterings, the same prayers, and the same despondencies, especially the same humilities of an accursed creature crushed beneath the mud of his origin. The desires of his flesh, the requirements of his soul, mingled and seemed to rise from the obscure depths of his being, like a single blossom of the tree of life. He abandoned himself to the power of love and faith, whose double lever animates the world. And always, in spite of the struggles of his reason, Nana’s room filled him with madness. He shiveringly succumbed to the all-powerfulness of her sex, the same as he felt lost before the vast unknown of heaven.
Then when she found him so humble, Nana’s triumph became tyrannical. She instinctively had a rage for debasing everything. It was not sufficient for her to destroy things; she polluted them. Her delicate hands left abominable traces behind them; they decomposed by their mere touch all that they had broken. And he, idiot that he was, lent himself to this sport, with the vague remembrance of saints devoured by lice, and who eat what they had voided. When she had him in her room, with the doors fastened, she would feast herself with the sight of man’s infamy. At first it was merely fun. She would give him little slaps and make him do comical things, such as lisping like a child, repeating ends of sentences.
“Say it like me, ‘And dash it all! Coco doesn’t care!’ ”
He would be obedient even to imitating her accent.
“And dash it all! Coco doesn’t care!”
Or she would do the woolly bear, on all fours on the fur rugs, in her chemise, and turning round and round and grunting, as though she meant to eat him up; and she would even bite his calves, just for fun. Then she would get up and say,
“Now it’s your turn. I bet you won’t do the woolly bear as well as me.”
It was charming. She amused him as a bear, with her white skin and her golden mane. He laughed, he also went on all fours, he grunted and bit her calves, whilst she hopped about, pretending to be greatly frightened.
“Aren’t we stupid, eh?” she would end by saying. “You’ve no idea how ugly you look, my dear! Ah, well! if they could only see you now, at the Tuileries!”
But these little games soon took an ugly turn. It wasn’t through cruelty on her part, for she still remained a good-natured girl; it was like a breath of madness, which passed and increased little by little in the closed room. A lewdness seemed to possess them, and inspire them with the delirious imaginations of the flesh. The old devout frights of their night of wakefulness had now turned into a thirst for bestiality, a mania for going on all fours, for grunting and biting. Then one day, as he was doing the woolly bear, she pushed him so roughly that he fell against a piece of furniture; and she broke out into an involuntary laugh as she saw a bump on his forehead. From that time, having already acquired a taste for it by her experiment on La Faloise, she treated him as an animal, goaded him and pursued him with kicks.
“Gee up! gee up! you’re the horse. Haw, gee! dirty jade! move along quicker than that!”
At other times he was a dog. She would throw her scented handkerchief to the other end of the room, and he had to go and pick it up with his teeth, crawling along on his hands and knees.
“Fetch it, Cæsar! I’ll give you the stick if you’re not quick! Good dog, Caesar! pretty, obedient fellow! Now, beg!”
And he delighted in his baseness, and relished the enjoyment of being a brute. He aspired at falling still lower—he would cry out,
“Hit harder! Bow wow! I’m mad, hit away!”
She was seized with a caprice. She insisted on his coming one evening arrayed in his gorgeous chamberlain’s costume. Then she laughed and ridiculed him when she had him in his court dress, with the sword, and the hat, and the white breeches, and the scarlet cloth dress coat bedizened with gold, and the symbolical key hanging over the left-hand tail. This key especially amused her, and filled her with a mad fancy for filthy explanations. Always laughing, and carried away by a disrespect for greatness, and by the delight of vilifying it beneath the official pomp of that costume, she shook him and pinched him, and kept exclaiming, “Eh! get along, you chamberlain!” ending by accompanying her words with kicks behind; and she heartily meant those kicks for the Tuileries, for the majesty of the imperial court, throning herself on high, over the fear and the prostration of all. That was what she thought of society! It was her revenge—an unconscious family grudge, bequeathed with the blood. Then, the chamberlain having undressed, his coat spread out on the floor, she cried to him to jump, and he jumped; she cried to him to spit, and he spat; she cried to him to walk over the gold, over the eagles, over the decorations, and he walked. Slap! bang! there was nothing left—all had collapsed. She demolished a chamberlain as easily as she broke a scent-bottle or a comfit-box, and she turned him into a lump of filth—a heap of mud at a street corner.
The goldsmiths, however, had not kept their word. The bedstead was not delivered until towards the middle of January. Muffat at the time was in Normandy, where he had gone to sell a last remnant of the wreck. He was not expected back until two days later; but, having settled his business, he hastened his return, and without even calling at the Rue Miromesnil, he went to the Avenue de Villiers. Ten o’clock was striking. As he had the key of a little door opening on to the Rue Cardinet, he entered without being noticed. Upstairs, in the parlour, Zoé, who was dusting some bronzes, was struck with amazement; and, not knowing how to detain him, began telling him a long story about M. Venot, who, in a most agitated state of mind, had been seeking him since the day before; that he had already called there twice, and implored her to send the count at once to him if he came to madame’s first. Muffat listened to her without understanding anything of the rigmarole; then he noticed her confusion, and seized suddenly with a jealous rage, of which he no longer thought himself capable, he rushed against the door of the bed-room, from whence issued sounds of laughter. The door gave way and flew open, whilst Zoé retired shrugging her shoulders. So much the worse! As madame was going mad, madame must get out of the mess by herself.
And Muffat, on the threshold, uttered a cry at the sight before him.
“My God! my God!”
The newly decorated room was resplendent in its regal luxury. Silver buttons strewed the tea rose velvet hangings with shining stars. It was the rosy colour of flesh which illuminates the sky on fine nights, when Venus sparkles at the horizon on the light background of the expiring day; whilst the cords of gold hanging down at the corners, the gold lace framing the panels, were like bright flames, or loose switches of red hair, half covering the great nudity of the room, the voluptuous paleness of which they enriched. Then, opposite, was the gold and silver bedstead, which shone with the new brightness of its chasings—a throne large enough for Nana to stretch the royalty of her naked limbs—an altar of a Byzantine richness, worthy of the all-powerfulness of her sex, and on which at this very moment she displayed it, uncovered, and in the religious immodesty of a dreaded idol. And, near her, beneath the snowy reflection of her bosom, in the midst of her goddess-like triumph, sprawled a shameful and decrepit object, a comical and lamentable ruin, the Marquis de Chouard in his night-shirt.
The count joined his hands. Seized with a great fit of trembling, he repeated, “My God! my God!”
It was for the Marquis de Chouard that the golden roses of the boat flowered—bunches of golden roses blooming amidst the golden foliage; it was for him that the cupids, dancing in a circle against the silver trellis, leant forward with a laugh of amorous sauciness; and it was for him that the faun at his feet uncovered the sleeping nymph, wearied with voluptuousness—that figure of Night, copied from Nana’s celebrated nudity, even to the too amply developed thighs, which would cause everyone to recognise her. Th
rown there like a piece of human rubbish, corrupted and shattered by sixty years of debauchery, the marquis appeared as a corner of a charnel-house, surrounded by the glory of the woman’s dazzling flesh. When he saw the door open he raised himself up, seized with the fright of a paralytic old man. This last night of licentious-ness had smitten him with imbecility, he had fallen into his second childhood; and, no longer able to find his words—half paralysed, stuttering, shivering—he remained in an attitude of flight, his night-shirt rucked up over his skeleton of a body, one leg outside the clothes—a poor, livid leg covered with grey hairs. Nana, in spite of her annoyance, could not help laughing.
“Lie down—get under the clothes,” said she, pushing him back and covering him with the sheet, like some bit of dirt one does not wish to be seen.
And she ran to close the door. She had really no luck with her little muff!—he was always putting in an appearance at an awkward moment. And why, too, did he go off to seek for money in Normandy? The old fellow had brought her four thousand francs, and she had let him have his way. She pushed the door to again, and cried,
“So much the worse! it’s all your fault. That’s not the way to enter a room! There, that’ll do. Good-bye!”
Muffat stood in front of that closed door, utterly crushed by what he had just seen. His fit of trembling increased—a trembling which ascended from his legs to his chest and to his head. Then, like a tree caught in the hurricane, he staggered and fell on his knees, cracking in all his limbs; and, despairingly holding out his hands, he muttered,