Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [152]
“Yes, perhaps it’s stupid of me, but I was desirous of your esteem. At present we’ve explained matters, and if we ever meet each other anywhere, we, at least, won’t look like a couple of fools—”
He seemed on the point of interrupting her.
“Let me finish what I have to say. No man—do you hear?—no man has ever had anything to reproach me with. Well, it vexed me to begin with you. We all have our honour, my pet.”
“But that’s not it!” he exclaimed, violently. “Sit down and listen to me.”
And, as though he feared she might go away, he pushed her on to the only chair. He walked about, his agitation increasing. The little dressing-room, close and full of sunshine, had a moist, warm atmosphere, and not a sound from outside reached it, except the canary’s piercing roulades, which, in the pauses, seemed like the distant trills of a flute.
“Listen,” said he, standing before her, “I have come to take you back. Yes, I want to begin again. You know it well, so why do you talk to me like this? Tell me—you consent?”
She held down her head, and was scratching with her nail the red coloured rush seat, which appeared to be bleeding beneath her; and, seeing him so anxious, she did not hurry herself. At length she raised her face, now become serious, while to her eyes she had managed to give an expression of sadness.
“Oh! impossible, little man. Never again will I live with you.”
“Why?” stuttered he, as a twinge of intense suffering passed over his countenance.
“Why? well!—because—it’s impossible, that’s all. I don’t wish it.”
He looked at her ardently for a few seconds longer. Then, bending his legs, he knelt on the floor. She looked annoyed and contented herself by adding.
“Oh! don’t be a child!”
But he was already behaving as one. Fallen at her feet, he had seized her round the waist, which he squeezed tightly, with his face between her knees, which he was pressing against his breast. When he felt her thus, when he felt again the velvet-like texture of her limbs beneath the thin material of her dress, his frame shook convulsively; and shivering with fever, and distracted, he pressed harder against her, as though he wished to become a part of her. The old chair creaked. Sighs of desire were stifled beneath the low ceiling, in the atmosphere rendered foul by stale perfumes.
“Well! and what next?” said Nana, letting him do as he pleased. “All this will not help you, when I tell you it’s not possible. Dear me! how young you are!”
He became quieter, but he remained on the ground. He did not let go of her, and he said, in a voice broken by sobs,
“At least, listen to what I came to offer you. I have already seen a mansion near the Pare Monceau. I would realise all your desires. To have you all my own I would give my fortune. Yes! that would be the only condition—all my own, you understand me! and if you consent to be mine alone, oh! I should wish you to be the most admired, and also the richest—carriages, diamonds, dresses—”
Nana proudly shook her head at each offer. Then as he continued, as he talked of settling money on her, not knowing what more to lay at her feet, she seemed to lose patience.
“Come, have you finished mauling me about? I’m good-natured, I let you do it for a minute, because you seemed so upset; but there now, that’s enough, isn’t it? Let me get up; you’re tiring me.”
She shook him off. When she rose, she said: “No, no, no—I won’t.”
Then he regained his feet painfully, and having no strength left, he dropped on to the chair, leaning against the back, his face buried in his hands. Nana in her turn, walked about. For a moment she looked at the stained wall-paper, the greasy dressing-table, all over that dirty hole, bathed in the pale sunlight. Then stopping in front of the count, she spoke without the slightest emotion.
“It’s funny how rich people suppose they can have everything for their money. Well! but if I won’t? I don’t care a pin for your presents. You might give me all Paris, and I would say ‘no,’ and always ‘no.’ It isn’t very clean in here, as you see.
Well! I should think it lovely,