by Emile Zola
One morning that he observed Foucarmont leaving her house at a rather peculiar hour, he sought an explanation. She at once flew into a passion, tired of his jealousy. She had already, on several occasions, been very nice. For instance, the night when he had caught her with George she had been the first to make it up, admitting her fault, loading him with caresses and pretty words, to help him get over it; but at length he bored her with his obstinacy in not understanding women, and she roughly said,
“Well! yes, I’ve been Foucarmont’s mistress. What next? Eh! that puts your hair out of curl, my little muff! ”
It was the first time she called him “little muff” to his face. He remained bursting with rage at the brazenness of her avowal; and, as he clinched his fists, she walked towards him, and looked him straight in the face.
“Now, that’s enough, do you hear? If it doesn’t please you, just oblige me by going off. I won’t have you kicking up a row in my house. Understand that I intend to be free to do as I like. When a man pleases me, I’ll have him here. Exactly, that’s what I mean. And you must make up your mind at once: yes or no, the door is open.”
She had gone and opened the door. He did not go. So now it became her way of attaching him to her all the more; for nothing at all, at the least quarrel, she gave him his choice, accompanied by some of the most abominable reflections. Ah, well! she would always be able to find some one better than he, she had only too many people to choose from; one could pick up men outside, as many as one wanted, and fellows who were not such ninnies as he, whose blood boiled in their veins. He bowed his head, he waited for better times, when she would be in want of money; then she became caressing, and he forgot everything—a night of love compensated for the tortures of a week. His reconciliation with his wife had made his home unbearable. The countess, cast off by Fauchery, who was once more completely under Rose’s influence, sought forgetfulness in other amours, in the attack of the feverish anxiety of her forty years, ever nervous, and filling the house with the exasperating commotion of her mode of living. Since her marriage, Estelle no longer saw her father. This skinny and insignificant looking girl had suddenly developed into a woman with an iron will so absolute that Daguenet trembled before her; now he accompanied her to church, converted, and furious with his father-in-law, who was ruining them with an abandoned female. M. Venot alone remained affectionate towards the count, whilst biding his time. He had even succeeded in gaining access to Nana; he frequented the two houses, where one often came across his continual smile behind the doors. And Muffat, miserable in his own home, driven from thence by dulness and shame, preferred rather to live amidst the insults of the Avenue de Villiers.
Soon, only one question remained between Nana and the count; that of money. One day, after formally promising to bring ten thousand francs, he had dared to present himself at the appointed time empty-handed. For the previous two days, she had been exciting him with endless caresses. Such a breaking of his word, so many endearing little ways wasted, threw her into an abusive rage. She became quite white.
“Eh! you’ve no money? Then, my little muff, return to whence you came, and quicker than that too! What a sordid wretch! and he was going to kiss me! No money, no anything! you understand!”
He entered into some explanations. He would have the money the day after the morrow. But she interrupted him violently.
“And my bills that are coming due! They’ll seize my goods, whilst his lordship comes here on tick. Now, just look at yourself! Do you think I love you for yourself? When one has a mug like yours, one pays the women who are willing to put up with you. Damnation! if you don’t bring me the ten thousand francs to-night, you sha’n’t even so much as suck the tip of my little finger. Really! I must send you back to your wife!”
That night he brought the ten thousand francs. Nana held out her lips. He took a long kiss, which consoled him for all his day of agony. What annoyed the young woman was always having him attached to her skirts. She complained to M. Venot, imploring him to take her little muff to the countess. Their reconciliation did not appear to have been of much use and she regretted having had anything to do with it, as he was for ever at her back. The days when, blinded by anger, she forgot her interests, she swore to play him such a dirty trick that he would never again be able to come near her. But while she blackguarded him, slapping her thighs meanwhile—she might even have spat in his face—he would have remained and thanked her. Then they had continual quarrels about money. She roughly demanded it. She abused him in regard to the most miserable sums, odiously greedy every minute, delighting in cruelly telling him that she only tolerated him for his money and for nothing else, that she didn’t care for him, that she loved another, and that she was very unfortunate in having to do with such an idiot as he! They did not even want to have him any longer at court, where there was a talk of requesting him to send in his resignation. The Empress had said, “He is too disgusting.” That was very true. And Nana always repeated the words as a parting shot in their quarrels.
“Really! you are too disgusting!”
She no longer put the least constraint upon herself now, she had regained complete liberty. Every day she took her drive in the Bois round the lake, forming acquaintances there which became more intimate elsewhere. It was the great angling match for men, the baiting in the full light of day, the hooking by illustrious harlots, beneath the smile of toleration and the dazzling luxury of Paris. Duchesses drew each other’s attention to her, the wives of wealthy tradesmen copied her bonnets; at times her landau, when striving to pass, would arrest a long string of grand equipages, containing financiers holding all Europe in their cash-boxes, and ministers whose big fingers were half throttling France; and she formed a part of this world of the Bois. She occupied an important position there, known by the people of every capital, greatly in demand with all foreigners, adding the mad fit of her debauchery to the splendours of that crowd like the very glory and keen enjoyment of a nation. Then the intimacies of a night—mere birds of passage, of which she herself lost all recollection on the morrow—would take her to the grand restaurants, often to the Café de Madrid, when the weather was fine. All the staff of the embassies defiled there; she dined with Lucy Stewart, who murdered the French language, and who paid to be amused, taking the girls at so much an evening, with instructions to them to be funny, while they themselves were so sick of everything and so worn out that they never even touched them. And the girls called it going on the spree. They returned home delighted at having been treated with such disdain, and finished the night with some lover of their choice.
Count Muffat pretended to be ignorant of these goings on, when Nana did not tell him of them herself. He suffered, too, a great deal from the disgraces of his daily existence. The mansion in the Avenue de Villiers was becoming a regular hell, a mad-house in which sudden crazes at all hours of the day led to the most odious scenes. Nana had arrived at the point of battling with her servants. At one time she was especially good to Charles, the coachman. Whenever she stopped at a restaurant, she sent him out refreshments by the waiters; she would talk to him from inside her landau, highly amused, thinking him very funny as he roundly abused the other drivers whenever there was a block in the street. Then, without rhyme or reason, she completely changed and treated him as a fool. She was always wrangling about the straw, the bran, and the oats; in spite of her love for animals, she considered that her horses ate too much. So at length, one settling day, as she accused him of robbing her, Charles flew into a passion, and bluntly called her a strumpet; her horses, anyhow, were worth more than she, they did not let everyone muck them about. She retorted in a similar style, and the count was obliged to separate them and turn the coachman off the premises.
But this was only the beginning of a general stampede of the servants. Victorine and François went off, after the discovery of a robbery of diamonds. Even Julien disappeared, and a story was circulated that the count had implored him to go, giving him at the same time a lar
ge sum of money, because madame had taken a great fancy to him. Every week fresh faces were seen in the servants’ hall. Never had there been such waste; the house was like a passage through which the scum of the servants’ registry-offices defiled in a massacring gallop. Zoé alone kept her place, with her neat look and her only anxiety of organising the disorder, so long as she had not saved sufficient to settle down on her own account, a plan which she had been working at for a long time past.
And yet those were only the avowable cares. The count bore with Madame Maloir’s stupidity, playing at bezique with her, in spite of her rank odour. He put up with Madame Lerat and her cackling, and with little Louis and his doleful complaints of a child devoured by disease—some putrefaction bequeathed by an unknown father. But he had to endure other things far worse. One night, behind a door, he had heard Nana furiously telling her maid that a pretended rich man had just taken her in. Yes, a handsome fellow, who said he was American, and owned gold mines in his own country—a mean vagabond who had gone off whilst she was asleep, without leaving a sou behind, and even taking a packet of cigarette papers away with him; and the count, very pale, had crept downstairs again on tiptoe, so that he might feign ignorance of the occurrence. On another occasion he was obliged to be aware of everything. Nana, infatuated with a singer at a music-hall, and forsaken by him, wanted to commit suicide in a fit of gloomy sentimentality. She swallowed a glass of water in which she had soaked a handful of matches, and was horribly ill in consequence, but did not die. The count had to nurse her and listen to the story of her passion intermingled with tears and oaths never to care for men again. In her contempt for the pigs, as she called them, she could not, however, keep her heart free, having always some sweetheart about her skirts, and indulging in the most inexplicable caprices, through the depraved tastes of her wearied body.
Since Zoé relaxed her supervision to meet her own ends, the good management of the household had disappeared to the extent that Muffat dared not open a door, draw a curtain, or look into a cupboard. The machinery no longer worked. Gentlemen were hanging about everywhere; at every minute they were knocking up against each other. Now, he invariably coughed before entering a room, having almost found the young woman with her arms round Francis’s neck one evening that he had left the dressing-room for a couple of minutes to order the carriage, whilst the hairdresser was giving a few finishing touches to madame’s hair. It was for ever sudden abandonments behind his back—pleasures snatched in odd corners, quickly, and in her chemise or in her most gorgeous costumes, with whoever happened to be with her. Then delighted with her robbery, she would rejoin him, looking very red in the face. With him there would have been no pleasure; he was such an abominable nuisance!
In the agony of his jealousy, the unhappy man had reached the state of feeling easy whenever he left Nana and Satin alone together. He would have encouraged her in this connection for the sake of keeping the men away. But on this side also everything went wrong. Nana deceived Satin, the same as she deceived the count, having a rage for the most monstrous crazes, picking up girls from the street corners. When returning home in her carriage, she would at times become enamoured of some strumpet caught sight of on the pavement, her senses inflamed, her imagination kindled; and she would take the woman with her, then pay her and send her away. At other times, disguised as a man, she would frequent houses of ill repute, and witness spectacles of debauchery, which helped her to forget her weariness; and Satin, annoyed at being continually forsaken, would disturb the house with the most atrocious scenes. She had ended by gaining complete mastery over Nana, who respected her. Muffat even thought of allying himself with her. When he did not dare to do anything himself, he would set Satin to work. Twice she had made her darling take him back; whilst he showed himself very obliging, giving her a word of warning or making himself scarce at the least sign.
Only the understanding did not last long; for Satin too was cracked. On certain days she would smash everything, feeling half dead, ruining what little health she had left in excesses of anger or of dissipation, looking pretty though, in spite of all. Zoé probably set her off; for she took her into corners, as though she wished to gain her over in the interests of that grand business of hers, that plan of which she had never yet spoken to anyone.
Singular fits of revolt, however, still took possession of Count Muffat. He who had tolerated Satin for months past, who had ended by accepting strangers, all that troop of men galloping through Nana’s bedroom, became enraged at the idea of being deceived by any of his friends, or even acquaintances. When she owned to him her intimacy with Foucarmont, he suffered so much, he considered the young man’s treachery so abominable, that he wished to provoke him to a duel. As he did not know whom to ask to be his seconds in such an affair, he consulted Labordette. The latter was so astounded, that he could not refrain from laughing.
“A duel about Nana! But, dear sir, all Paris would laugh at you. No one could fight for Nana; it would be too ridiculous.”
The count became very pale. He made a violent gesture. “Then I will strike him, in the street before every one.”
For an hour Labordette had to reason with him. A blow would make the story odious; by the evening every one would know the real cause of the meeting—he would be the laughing-stock of the newspapers. And Labordette kept returning to this conclusion.
“Impossible, it would be too ridiculous!”
Each time these words fell upon Muffat sharp and clean like the blow of a knife. He could not even fight for the woman he loved; every one would split their sides with laughing. Never before had he so painfully felt the misery of his love, that solemn feeling of his heart lost in that fooling of pleasure. This was his last revolt; he let himself be convinced. From that time he assisted at the procession of his friends, of all the men who lived there in the privacy of the mansion.
In a few months Nana devoured them greedily, one after the other. The increasing requirements of her luxury whetted her appetite, she cleaned a man out with the craunchbe of her teeth. First, she had Foucarmont, who did not last a fortnight. He had dreamed of leaving the navy. In ten years of a seafaring life he had saved some thirty thousand francs, which he wanted to risk in the United States; and his prudent and even miserly instincts were silenced—he gave all, even his signature to accommodation bills, thus affecting his future. When Nana turned him adrift, he was penniless. However, she showed herself very kind-hearted—she advised him to return to his ship. What was the use of being obstinate? As he had no money left, he could not possibly remain with her. He ought to understand that and be reasonable. A ruined man fell from her hands like ripe fruit, to rot on the earth all by himself.
Next, Nana tackled Steiner without disgust, but also without love. She called him a dirty Jew. She seemed to be gratifying an old hatred which she could not very well explain to herself. He was fat, he was stupid, and she turned him about, taking double mouthfuls, wishing to have done with the Prussian all the quicker. He had given up Simone. His Bosphorus speculation was already in jeopardy. Nana hastened his downfall by the most lavish expenditure. For a month still he struggled, performing miracles. He covered Europe with a colossal publicity—posters, advertisements, prospectuses—and extracted money from the most distant countries. All those savings, the louis of the speculators the same as the sous of the poor people, were swallowed up in the Avenue de Villiers. He had also gone into partnership with an iron-founder in Alsace. There were there, in a corner of the country, workmen black with coal dust, bathed with perspiration, who, night and day, tightened their muscles and heard their bones crack, to supply the means for Nana’s pleasures. She devoured all like a great fire—the thefts at the Bourse, the earnings of labour.
This time she finished Steiner. She returned him to the pavement, sucked to the bone, so emptied that he remained even incapable of inventing a fresh roguery. In the collapse of his banking establishment he went crazy; he trembled at the name of the police. He was made a bankrupt; and t
he mere word “money” bewildered him, threw him into a childish state of embarrassment—he who had handled millions. One evening when with her, he burst out crying. He asked her to lend him a hundred francs to pay his servant; and Nana, affected and amused by this ending of the terrible old man who for twenty years past had been skimming the Paris market, brought him the money, saying,
“You know, I give ’em you because it’s funny; but listen, my little man, you’re not of an age for me to keep you. You must seek some other occupation.”
Then Nana at once started on La Faloise. He had for a long time been soliciting the honour of being ruined by her, so as to be a perfect swell. That was what he was in want of; he must have a woman to bring him out. In two months Paris would know him, and he would read his own name in all the newspapers. Six weeks sufficed. His inheritance consisted of landed estates, fields, pastures, woods, and farms. He had to sell them rapidly, one after the other. At every bite Nana devoured an acre. The foliage frizzling beneath the sun, the rich ripe corn, the golden vines in September, the tall grass in which the cows buried themselves up to their shoulders—all went as though engulfed in some abyss; and there were also a stream, a lime quarry, and three windmills which disappeared. Nana passed like an invading army—like one of those clouds of locusts whose flight destroys a whole province similar to a flame of fire. She burnt the earth wherever she placed her tiny foot. Farm after farm, meadow after meadow, she nibbled up the inheritance in her pretty way, without even noticing what she was about, just the same as she would craunch up a bag of burnt almonds, placed on her knees, between her meals. It was a matter of no consequence; they were merely sweeties. But one night there only remained a small wood. She swallowed it with a disdainful air, for it was really not worth the trouble of opening one’s mouth for.