Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [154]
“Well—what! Fauchery isn’t the devil!” repeated Nana, feeling her way, wishing to find out how things were between the husband and the lover. “It’s easy enough to get over Fauchery. He is at bottom a very decent fellow, I assure you. Well! it’s understood; you’ll tell him it’s for me.”
The mere idea of such an undertaking was revolting to the count.
“No, no, never! cried he.
She waited. This phrase came to her lips, “Fauchery can refuse you nothing”; but she felt that it would be rather too strong an argument to use. Only she smiled, and her smile, which was a peculiar one, seemed to speak the words. Muffat, glancing up at her face, lowered his gaze again, and looked pale and embarrassed.
“Ah! you’re not at all obliging,” murmured she at length.
“I cannot!” said he in a voice full of agony. “Everything you wish; but not that, my love—oh! I pray you!”
So she did not waste any more time in arguing. With her little hands she bent back his head; then stooping forward, she pressed her lips to his in one long embrace. A thrill passed through his frame. He started beneath her; his eyes were closed, his reason gone. And she raised him from his seat.
“Go,” said she, simply.
He walked, he moved towards the door; but as he was about to leave the room, she took him once more in her arms, and, looking up at him meekly and coaxingly, she rubbed her cat-like chin against his waistcoat.
“Where is the mansion?” asked she, in a very low voice, in the confused and laughing way of a child returning to some good things it would not at first look at.
“In the Avenue de Villiers.”
“And are there any carriages?”
“Yes.”
“And lace, and diamonds?”
“Yes.”
“Oh! how kind you are, my ducky! You know, just now, it was because I was jealous; and this time, I swear to you, sha‘n’t be like the first, for now you know what a woman requires. You give me everything, don’t you? Then I sha’n’t want to have anything to do with any one else. Look! they’re only for you now!—that, and that, and that!”
When she had pushed him outside, after stimulating him with a shower of kisses on his face and hands, she stood a moment to take breath. Good heavens! what a stench there was in the dressing-room of that untidy Mathilde! It was warm in there, just like a room in the south of France with the winter sun shining upon it; but, really, it smelt too much of stale lavender water, and of other things not very clean. Nana opened the window. She looked out as before, and examined the glass roof of the Passage to pass the time away.
Muffat staggered down stairs with a buzzing in his ears. What was he to say? how could he enter into this matter, which was none of his business? As he reached the stage he heard sounds of quarrelling. They were finishing the second act. Prullière was in a fury because Fauchery had wished to strike out one of his speeches.
“Strike them all out then,” cried he, “I would rather you did that! What! I haven’t two hundred lines, and now some of those are to be taken away! No, I’ve had enough of it; I throw up my part.”
He pulled out of his pocket a crumpled little memorandum and turned it over in his trembling hands, as though about to throw it on to Cossard’s knees. His injured vanity convulsed his pale face, his lips being tightly compressed, and his eyes on fire, without his being able to conceal that internal revolution.
He, Prullière, the idol of the public, to perform a part of two hundred lines!
“Why not make me bring in letters on a salver?” resumed he, bitterly.
“Come, Prullière, do be pleasant,” said Bordenave, who humoured him on account of his influence on the people in the boxes. “Don’t begin your complaints again. We will find you some good effects. Eh, Fauchery? you’ll introduce some effects for him.