Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [132]
“But look, that’s she!” said Satin, pointing to a photograph placed in front of the clock.
Nana studied the portrait for a minute. It represented a very dark woman, with a long face, and lips smiling discreetly. One would at once have said, a lady of fashion, but more reserved.
“It’s funny,” murmured she, at length, “I’ve certainly seen that face somewhere. Where, I no longer recollect; but it could not have been in a respectable place. Oh! no, it was decidedly not in a respectable place;” and she added, turning towards her friend, “So she made you promise to come and see her. What does she want with you?”
“What does she want with me? Why, to have a chat, no doubt; to be a little while together. It’s mere politeness.”
Nana looked at Satin straight in the eyes, then she slightly smacked her tongue. Well, it didn’t matter to her. However, as the lady was a long time in coming, she declared that she would not wait any further, and they both went away.
On the morrow, Fontan having told Nana that he would not be home to dinner, she started off early to find Satin, in order to treat her to a feast at a restaurant. The selection of the restaurant was a weighty affair. Satin suggested various places, all of which Nana thought abominable. At last she induced her to try Laure’s. It was an ordinary in the Rue des Martyrs, where the charge for dinner was three francs a-head. Tired of waiting until the time when it began, and not knowing how to occupy themselves in the streets, they went to Laure’s fully twenty minutes too soon. The three rooms were still empty. They seated themselves at a table in the room where Laure Piedefer sat throned behind a high counter. Laure was a person about fifty years old, of a most massive figure, which was kept in shape by the aid of tightly laced stays and waist-bands. A number of women quickly began to arrive, and, standing on tip-toe, and leaning over the piles of little salvers filled with lumps of sugar, they kissed Laure on the mouth with tender familiarity; whilst the fat monster, with moist eyes, tried to divide her attentions, so as not to occasion any jealousies. The maid who waited on the guests, unlike her mistress, was tall and scraggy, with an emaciated look about her, and black eyelids, beneath which her eyes were lighted up with a sombre fire.
The three rooms rapidly filled. There were about a hundred customers, disseminated according to the hazard of the tables, most of them about forty years old, enormous in size, overloaded with flesh, and with faces bloated by vice; and mingling with this assemblage of turgid breasts and stomachs, were a few slim, pretty girls, looking still ingenuous in spite of their brazen gestures—beginners, picked up at low dancing establishments, and brought by some of the customers to Laure’s, where the multitude of big, flabby women, thrown quite into a flutter by the sight of their youth, jostled one another, and formed a court around them, like a crowd of anxious old boys, while treating them to all sorts of dainties. As for the men, they were few in number—ten or fifteen at the most—and they all looked very humble amidst the overwhelming shoal of skirts, with the exception of four fellows, who had merely come to see the show, and who joked about it very much at their ease.
“It’s very good, their stew, isn’t it?” asked Satin.
Nana nodded her head with an air of satisfaction. It was a solid dinner, such as used to be given in country hotels—volau-vent, stewed fowl and rice, haricot beans with gravy, and iced vanilla cream. The ladies went in especially for the stewed fowl and rice, almost bursting in their stays, and slowly wiping their lips. At first, Nana was afraid of meeting some of her old acquaintances, who might have asked her stupid questions—but she grew more easy as she noticed no one she knew amongst that very mixed crowd, in which faded dresses and