Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [175]
“Why! said she, ”it’s Queen Pomaré with her wicker cashmere!”
And whilst the wind beat the fine rain in their faces, she told her darling Queen Pomaré’s history. Oh! she was a superb woman once, and drove all Paris mad with her beauty. She had such go, such cheek, used the men like animals, and often had grand personages weeping on her stairs! Now, she had taken to drink, the women of the neighbourhood amused themselves by giving her absinthe; and in the streets the urchins followed her, throwing stones—in short, a regular smash-up—a queen fallen into the mire! Nana listened, feeling very cold.
“You’ll just see,” added Satin.
She whistled like a man. The rag-picker, who was under the window, raised her head and showed herself in the yellow light of her lantern. There appeared in that bundle of rags, beneath a big handkerchief in tatters, a scarred, bluish face, with the toothless aperture of the mouth and the flaming loopholes of the eyes; and Nana, in front of this frightful old age of a courtesan drowned in alcohol, beheld in the darkness the vision of Chamont—that Irma d’Anglars, the retired prostitute loaded with years and with honours, ascending the steps of her château, surrounded by a prostrate crowd of villagers. Then as Satin whistled again, amused at the old hag who could not see her, she murmured in an altered tone of voice,
“Leave off—the police again! Let’s go away, quick, my darling.”
The sound of footsteps returned. They closed the window. On turning round, Nana, shivering and with her hair all wet, on beholding the room, remained, as it were, struck with astonishment, as though she had never seen it before and had entered some unknown place. She found the atmosphere so warm, so perfumed, that she experienced a pleasant surprise. The wealth piled up around the ancient furniture, the gold and silk stuffs, the ivory, the bronzes, all seemed reposing in the rosy light of the lamps; whilst from the now hushed house there arose the sensation of a great luxury—the solemnity of the grand drawing-room, the comfortable amplitude of the dining-room, the peacefulness of the vast staircase, with the softness of the seats and carpets. It was like an abrupt expansion of herself, of her requirements of domination and enjoyment, of her wish to possess everything merely to destroy it. Never before had she felt so strongly the power of her sex. She glanced slowly around her, and then said with an air of grave philosophy,
“Well! all the same, one is right in availing oneself of every opportunity when one is young!”
But Satin was already rolling about on the bear-skins of the bed-room and calling her.
“Come quick! come quick!”
Nana undressed herself in the dressing-room. To be ready quicker, she took her thick light hair in both hands, and shook it over the silver basin, whilst a shower of long hair-pins fell from it, ringing a chime on the shining metal.
CHAPTER XI
On that Sunday, beneath the cloudy sky of one of the first warm days of June, the race for the Grand Prize of Paris was to be run in the Bois de Boulogne. In the morning the sun had risen enveloped in a reddish mist; but towards eleven o’clock, at the moment when the first vehicles reached the Longchamps racecourse, a wind from the south swept the clouds before it. Long flakes of greyish vapour passed slowly away, whilst patches of dark blue sky gradually showed larger and larger from one end of the horizon to the other. And in the bursts of sunshine which kept appearing through the breaks in the clouds, everything sparkled abruptly—the green turf, which was little by little being covered by a crowd