Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [124]
“There!” said she, pointing to him with a tragic gesture.
Muffat, who was prepared for almost anything, indignantly resented the affront.
“Strumpet!” he stammered.
But Nana, already in the bedroom, returned to have the last word.
“Strumpet, indeed! Then what about your wife?”
And, turning on her heel, she loudly banged the door after her and bolted it. The two men, left alone, looked at each other in silence. Zoé then entered the room. She did not hurry them off, but talked very sensibly to them. Like a reasonable being, she thought madame had behaved very foolishly. However, she took her part. Her mania for that wretched stroller wouldn’t last long. All they had to do was to wait till she had got over it. They then withdrew. They had not uttered a word. Outside on the pavement, moved by a sort of fraternal feeling, they silently shook hands; and, turning their backs on each other, and dragging their legs along, they went off in opposite directions.
When Muffat at length returned to his house in the Rue Miromesnil, his wife had just arrived there. They both met on the broad staircase, the sombre walls of which diffused an icy chill around. Raising their eyes, they beheld each other. The count was still in his muddy clothes, and his face had the frightful pallor of a man returning from a surfeit of vice. The countess, blear-eyed, with her hair all dishevelled, and looking thoroughly exhausted by a night passed in the train, seemed scarcely able to keep awake.
CHAPTER VIII
It was in the Rue Véron, at Montmartre, in a little apartment on the fourth floor. Nana and Fontan had invited a few friends to partake of their Twelfth Night cake.aq They had only got settled three days before, and intended having a house-warming.
Everything had been done hastily, in the first ardour of their honeymoon, without any fixed intention of their living together. On the morrow of her grand brawl, when she had so energetically sent the count and the banker about their business, Nana felt that she had got herself into a fine mess. She saw her position at a glance. The creditors would invade her anteroom, interfere in her love affairs, and talk of selling her up if she was not reasonable. There would be endless quarrels and constant worries, just to keep a few sticks of furniture from their grasp. She preferred to let all go. Besides, she was sick of her apartment in the Boulevard Haussmann. It was unbearable with its great gilded rooms. In her infatuation for Fontan, her dream of her girlhood returned to her—of the days when she was apprenticed to the artificial flower-maker, and longed for nothing more than a pretty bright little room, with a wardrobe of violet ebony with a glass door, and a bed hung with blue rep.ar In two days she sold everything that she could safely remove—nick-nacks, jewels, and the like—and disappeared with about ten thousand francs, without saying a word to the landlord—a perfect header, and not a trace remaining behind. That accomplished, there was no fear of having any men dangling about her petticoats. Fontan was very nice. He didn’t say “no,” he let her do as she liked—in fact, he behaved altogether like a regular chum. He possessed about seven thousand francs, and agreed to put them with Nana’s ten thousand, although he had the reputation of being miserly. That seemed to them something solid to start housekeeping on. And they commenced thus, each taking what he or she required out of the common fund, furnishing the two rooms in the Rue Véron, and sharing everything alike. At the beginning this kind of life was simply delicious.
On Twelfth Night, Madame Lerat was the first to arrive, with little Louis. As Fontan had not returned, she ventured to express her fears, for she trembled to see her niece renouncing fortune.
“Oh! aunt, I love him so much!” cried Nana, pressing her hands prettily across her breast.
These words produced an extraordinary effect on Madame Lerat. Her eyes moistened.
“That’s right,” said she in a convincing manner;