Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [118]
But she was unable to continue. In a terrible passion he threw her full length on the floor, and raising his heel, was about to crush her face to silence her. For the moment she had an awful fright; but he, blinded, and as though mad, left her, and rushed helplessly about the room. Then the choking silence he maintained, the sight of the internal struggle which shook his frame, brought tears to her eyes. She felt a mortal regret; and curling herself up before the fire, so as to cook her right side, she undertook to console him.
“I assure you, darling, I thought you knew of it. Otherwise, I would certainly not have spoken. Then, after all, perhaps it isn’t true. I’m not sure of anything. I merely heard it—people talk about it; but that proves nothing, does it? Ah! really now, you’re very stupid to be put out about it. If I was a man, I wouldn’t care a tinker’s curse for any woman! Women, my boy, high or low, are all the same—all loose fish; it’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.”
She went in for abusing women in general, so as to make the blow less hard to bear; but he did not listen to her, he did not hear her. Whilst stamping about, he had somehow or other managed to get on his boots and his overcoat. For a moment longer he wandered about the room; then, with a last rush, as though he had only just discovered the door, he disappeared. Nana felt very much put out.
“Well! ta ta!” she continued aloud, though all alone. “He’s polite, he is, when he’s being spoken to! And I, who was sweating away to make it up again with him! Anyhow, I was the first to hold out my hand. I made quite enough excuses, I think! Besides, he shouldn’t have stopped here annoying me!” However, she remained displeased with herself, scratching her legs with both hands; but she at length muttered consolingly,
“Oh! dash it! It isn’t my fault that he’s a cuckold!”
And, roasted on all sides, as hot as a quail just removed from the spit, she jumped into bed, after ringing for Zoé to usher in the other one, who was waiting in the kitchen.
Outside, Muffat continued to hurry on. Another shower had just fallen. He slipped along the greasy pavement. As he mechanically looked up in the air he saw large black clouds floating rapidly across the moon. At that hour the Boulevard Haussmann was almost deserted. He passed by the scaffoldings of the new Opera-house, keeping in the shadow and stammering disconnected sentences. The girl lied. She had cruelly invented that to annoy him. He ought to have crushed her head when he had it beneath his heel. It was too shameful. He would never touch her nor see her again; if he did, he would indeed be a cur. And he drew a long breath of relief at his deliverance. Ah! that stupid naked monster, cooking like a goose, drivelling about all that he had respected for forty years past! The clouds had cleared away from the moon, which now lighted up the empty street. He was seized with fear and burst into sobs, suddenly giving way to despair, as though he had been precipitated into illimitable space.
“Oh! heaven!” he stammered, “all is over, there is nothing more.”
Along the Boulevards a few belated pedestrians were hurrying home. The count tried to compose himself. The girl’s story kept perplexing his heated brain; he wished to examine it calmly. That very morning the countess was to return from Madame de Chezelles’s château. There was nothing to have prevented her returning on the previous evening, and passing the night with that man. He now recalled certain things that had occurred during their stay at Les Fondettes. One night he had found Sabine wandering about among the trees, and she was so agitated that for some time she was unable to answer him. That man was there, then. Why should she not be with him now? The more he thought of it, the more it seemed to him possible. He ended by thinking it only natural, and even inevitable. Whilst he had been taking off his coat at a harlot’s his wife had been disrobing herself in a lover’s bedchamber; there was nothing