Erotic Classics I

by Various Authors

  He had adopted an icy expression in order to make them understand that this jest did not appear to him to be in good taste. A man of his position did not sit down at tables of such women as that. Vandeuvres protested: it was to be a supper party of dramatic and artistic people, and talent excused everything. But without listening further to the arguments urged by Fauchery, who spoke of a dinner where the Prince of Scots, the son of a queen, had sat down beside an ex-music-hall singer, the count only emphasized his refusal. In so doing, he allowed himself, despite his great politeness, to be guilty of an irritated gesture.

  Georges and La Faloise, standing in front of each other drinking their tea, had overheard the two or three phrases exchanged in their immediate neighborhood.

  “Jove, it’s at Nana’s then,” murmured La Faloise. “I might have expected as much!”

  Georges said nothing, but he was all aflame. His fair hair was in disorder; his blue eyes shone like tapers, so fiercely had the vice, which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed and stirred his blood. At last he was going to plunge into all that he had dreamed of!

  “I don’t know the address,” La Faloise resumed.

  “She lives on a third floor in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the Rue de l’Arcade and the Rue Pesquier,” said Georges all in a breath.

  And when the other looked at him in much astonishment, he added, turning very red and fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment and conceit:

  “I’m of the party. She invited me this morning.”

  But there was a great stir in the drawing room, and Vandeuvres and Fauchery could not continue pressing the count. The Marquis de Chouard had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet him. He had moved painfully forward, his legs failing under him, and he now stood in the middle of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking, as though he had just come out of some dark alley and were blinded by the brightness of the lamps.

  “I scarcely hoped to see you tonight, Father,” said the countess. “I should have been anxious till the morning.”

  He looked at her without answering, as a man might who fails to understand. His nose, which loomed immense on his shorn face, looked like a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down. Seeing him such a wreck, Mme Hugon, full of kind compassion, said pitying things to him.

  “You work too hard. You ought to rest yourself. At our age we ought to leave work to the young people.”

  “Work! Ah yes, to be sure, work!” he stammered at last. “Always plenty of work.”

  He began to pull himself together, straightening up his bent figure and passing his hand, as was his wont, over his scant gray hair, of which a few locks strayed behind his ears.

  “At what are you working as late as this?” asked Mme du Joncquoy. “I thought you were at the financial minister’s reception?”

  But the countess intervened with:

  “My father had to study the question of a projected law.”

  “Yes, a projected law,” he said; “exactly so, a projected law. I shut myself up for that reason. It refers to work in factories, and I was anxious for a proper observance of the Lord’s day of rest. It is really shameful that the government is unwilling to act with vigor in the matter. Churches are growing empty; we are running headlong to ruin.”

  Vandeuvres had exchanged glances with Fauchery. They both happened to be behind the marquis, and they were scanning him suspiciously. When Vandeuvres found an opportunity to take him aside and to speak to him about the good-looking creature he was in the habit of taking down into the country, the old man affected extreme surprise. Perhaps someone had seen him with the Baroness Decker, at whose house at Viroflay he sometimes spent a day or so. Vandeuvres’s sole vengeance was an abrupt question:

  “Tell me, where have you been straying to? Your elbow is covered with cobwebs and plaster.”

  “My elbow,” he muttered, slightly disturbed. “Yes indeed, it’s true. A speck or two, I must have come in for them on my way down from my office.”

  Several people were taking their departure. It was close to midnight. Two footmen were noiselessly removing the empty cups and the plates with cakes. In front of the hearth the ladies had re-formed and, at the same time, narrowed their circle and were chatting more carelessly than before in the languid atmosphere peculiar to the close of a party. The very room was going to sleep, and slowly creeping shadows were cast by its walls. It was then Fauchery spoke of departure. Yet he once more forgot his intention at sight of the Countess Sabine. She was resting from her cares as hostess, and as she sat in her wonted seat, silent, her eyes fixed on a log which was turning into embers, her face appeared so white and so impassable that doubt again possessed him. In the glow of the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner of her lip became white. It was Nana’s very mole, down to the color of the hair. He could not refrain from whispering something about it in Vandeuvres’s ear. Gad, it was true; the other had never noticed it before. And both men continued this comparison of Nana and the countess. They discovered a vague resemblance about the chin and the mouth, but the eyes were not at all alike. Then, too, Nana had a good-natured expression, while with the countess it was hard to decide—she might have been a cat, sleeping with claws withdrawn and paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous quiver.

  “All the same, one could have her,” declared Fauchery.

  Vandeuvres stripped her at a glance.

  “Yes, one could, all the same,” he said. “But I think nothing of the thighs, you know. Will you bet she has no thighs?”

  He stopped, for Fauchery touched him briskly on the arm and showed him Estelle, sitting close to them on her footstool. They had raised their voices without noticing her, and she must have overheard them. Nevertheless, she continued sitting there stiff and motionless, not a hair having lifted on her thin neck, which was that of a girl who has shot up all too quickly. Thereupon they retired three or four paces, and Vandeuvres vowed that the countess was a very honest woman. Just then voices were raised in front of the hearth. Mme du Joncquoy was saying:

  “I was willing to grant you that Monsieur de Bismarck was perhaps a witty man. Only, if you go as far as to talk of genius—”

  The ladies had come round again to their earliest topic of conversation.

  “What the deuce! Still Monsieur de Bismarck!” muttered Fauchery. “This time I make my escape for good and all.”

  “Wait a bit,” said Vandeuvres, “we must have a definite no from the count.”

  The Count Muffat was talking to his father-in-law and a certain serious-looking gentleman. Vandeuvres drew him away and renewed the invitation, backing it up with the information that he was to be at the supper himself. A man might go anywhere; no one could think of suspecting evil where at most there could only be curiosity. The count listened to these arguments with downcast eyes and expressionless face. Vandeuvres felt him to be hesitating when the Marquis de Chouard approached with a look of interrogation. And when the latter was informed of the question in hand and Fauchery had invited him in his turn, he looked at his son-in-law furtively. There ensued an embarrassed silence, but both men encouraged one another and would doubtless have ended by accepting had not Count Muffat perceived M. Venot’s gaze fixed upon him. The little old man was no longer smiling; his face was cadaverous, his eyes bright and keen as steel.

  “No,” replied the count directly, in so decisive a tone that further insistence became impossible.

  Then the marquis refused with even greater severity of expression. He talked morality. The aristocratic classes ought to set a good example. Fauchery smiled and shook hands with Vandeuvres. He did not wait for him and took his departure immediately, for he was due at his newspaper office.

  “At Nana’s at midnight, eh?”

  La Faloise retired too. Steiner had made his bow to the countess. Other men followed them, and the
same phrase went round—“At midnight, at Nana’s”—as they went to get their overcoats in the anteroom. Georges, who could not leave without his mother, had stationed himself at the door, where he gave the exact address. “Third floor, door on your left.” Yet before going out Fauchery gave a final glance. Vandeuvres had again resumed his position among the ladies and was laughing with Léonide de Chezelles. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard were joining in the conversation, while the good Mme Hugon was falling asleep open-eyed. Lost among the petticoats, M. Venot was his own small self again and smiled as of old. Twelve struck slowly in the great solemn room.

  “What—what do you mean?” Mme du Joncquoy resumed. “You imagine that Monsieur de Bismarck will make war on us and beat us! Oh, that’s unbearable!”

  Indeed, they were laughing round Mme Chantereau, who had just repeated an assertion she had heard made in Alsace, where her husband owned a foundry.

  “We have the emperor, fortunately,” said Count Muffat in his grave, official way.

  It was the last phrase Fauchery was able to catch. He closed the door after casting one more glance in the direction of the Countess Sabine. She was talking sedately with the chief clerk and seemed to be interested in that stout individual’s conversation. Assuredly he must have been deceiving himself. There was no “little rift” there at all. It was a pity.

  “You’re not coming down then?” La Faloise shouted up to him from the entrance hall.

  And out on the pavement, as they separated, they once more repeated:

  “Tomorrow, at Nana’s.”

  Chapter IV

  Since morning Zoé had delivered up the flat to a managing man who had come from Brébant’s with a staff of helpers and waiters. Brébant was to supply everything, from the supper, the plates and dishes, the glass, the linen, the flowers, down to the seats and footstools. Nana could not have mustered a dozen napkins out of all her cupboards, and not having had time to get a proper outfit after her new start in life and scorning to go to the restaurant, she had decided to make the restaurant come to her. It struck her as being more the thing. She wanted to celebrate her great success as an actress with a supper which should set people talking. As her dining room was too small, the manager had arranged the table in the drawing room, a table with twenty-five covers, placed somewhat close together.

  “Is everything ready?” asked Nana when she returned at midnight.

  “Oh! I don’t know,” replied Zoé roughly, looking beside herself with worry. “The Lord be thanked, I don’t bother about anything. They’re making a fearful mess in the kitchen and all over the flat! I’ve had to fight my battles too. The other two came again. My eye! I did just chuck ’em out!”

  She referred, of course, to her employer’s old admirers, the tradesman and the Walachian, to whom Nana, sure of her future and longing to shed her skin, as she phrased it, had decided to give the go-by.

  “There are a couple of leeches for you!” she muttered.

  “If they come back threaten to go to the police.”

  Then she called Daguenet and Georges, who had remained behind in the anteroom, where they were hanging up their overcoats. They had both met at the stage door in the Passage des Panoramas, and she had brought them home with her in a cab. As there was nobody there yet, she shouted to them to come into the dressing room while Zoé was touching up her toilet. Hurriedly and without changing her dress she had her hair done up and stuck white roses in her chignon and at her bosom. The little room was littered with the drawing room furniture, which the workmen had been compelled to roll in there, and it was full of a motley assemblage of round tables, sofas and armchairs, with their legs in air for the most part. Nana was quite ready when her dress caught on a castor and tore upward. At this she swore furiously; such things only happened to her! Ragingly she took off her dress, a very simple affair of white foulard, of so thin and supple a texture that it clung about her like a long shift. But she put it on again directly, for she could not find another to her taste, and with tears in her eyes declared that she was dressed like a rag-picker. Daguenet and Georges had to patch up the rent with pins, while Zoé once more arranged her hair. All three hurried round her, especially the boy, who knelt on the floor with his hands among her skirts. And at last she calmed down again when Daguenet assured her it could not be later than a quarter past twelve, seeing that by dint of skimping her words and skipping her lines she had effectually shortened the third act of The Blonde Venus.

  “The play’s still far too good for that crowd of idiots,” she said. “Did you see? There were thousands there tonight. Zoé, my girl, you will wait in here. Don’t go to bed, I shall want you. By gum, it is time they came. Here’s company!”

  She ran off while Georges stayed where he was with the skirts of his coat brushing the floor. He blushed, seeing Daguenet looking at him. Notwithstanding which, they had conceived a tender regard the one for the other. They rearranged the bows of their cravats in front of the big dressing glass and gave each other a mutual dose of the clothes brush, for they were all white from their close contact with Nana.

  “One would think it was sugar,” murmured Georges, giggling like a greedy little child.

  A footman hired for the evening was ushering the guests into the small drawing room, a narrow slip of a place in which only four armchairs had been left in order the better to pack in the company. From the large drawing room beyond came a sound as of the moving of plates and silver, while a clear and brilliant ray of light shone from under the door. At her entrance Nana found Clarisse Besnus, whom La Faloise had brought, already installed in one of the armchairs.

  “Dear me, you’re the first of ’em!” said Nana, who, now that she was successful, treated her familiarly.

  “Oh, it’s his doing,” replied Clarisse. “He’s always afraid of not getting anywhere in time. If I’d taken him at his word I shouldn’t have waited to take off my paint and my wig.”

  The young man, who now saw Nana for the first time, bowed, paid her a compliment and spoke of his cousin, hiding his agitation behind an exaggeration of politeness. But Nana, neither listening to him nor recognizing his face, shook hands with him and then went briskly toward Rose Mignon, with whom she at once assumed a most distinguished manner.

  “Ah, how nice of you, my dear madame! I was so anxious to have you here!”

  “It’s I who am charmed, I assure you,” said Rose with equal amiability.

  “Pray, sit down. Do you require anything?”

  “Thank you, no! Ah yes, I’ve left my fan in my pelisse, Steiner; just look in the right-hand pocket.”

  Steiner and Mignon had come in behind Rose. The banker turned back and reappeared with the fan while Mignon embraced Nana fraternally and forced Rose to do so also. Did they not all belong to the same family in the theatrical world? Then he winked as though to encourage Steiner, but the latter was disconcerted by Rose’s clear gaze and contented himself by kissing Nana’s hand.

  Just then the Count de Vandeuvres made his appearance with Blanche de Sivry. There was an interchange of profound bows, and Nana with the utmost ceremony conducted Blanche to an armchair. Meanwhile Vandeuvres told them laughingly that Fauchery was engaged in a dispute at the foot of the stairs because the porter had refused to allow Lucy Stewart’s carriage to come in at the gate. They could hear Lucy telling the porter he was a dirty blackguard in the anteroom. But when the footman had opened the door she came forward with her laughing grace of manner, announced her name herself, took both Nana’s hands in hers and told her that she had liked her from the very first and considered her talent splendid. Nana, puffed up by her novel role of hostess, thanked her and was veritably confused. Nevertheless, from the moment of Fauchery’s arrival she appeared preoccupied, and directly she could get near him she asked him in a low voice:

  “Will he come?”

  “No, he did not want to,” was th
e journalist’s abrupt reply, for he was taken by surprise, though he had got ready some sort of tale to explain Count Muffat’s refusal.

  Seeing the young woman’s sudden pallor, he became conscious of his folly and tried to retract his words.

  “He was unable to; he is taking the countess to the ball at the Ministry of the Interior tonight.”

  “All right,” murmured Nana, who suspected him of ill will, “you’ll pay me out for that, my pippin.”

  She turned on her heel, and so did he; they were angry. Just then Mignon was pushing Steiner up against Nana, and when Fauchery had left her he said to her in a low voice and with the good-natured cynicism of a comrade in arms who wishes his friends to be happy:

  “He’s dying of it, you know, only he’s afraid of my wife. Won’t you protect him?”

  Nana did not appear to understand. She smiled and looked at Rose, the husband and the banker and finally said to the latter: