Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [187]
“Five thousand louis, sir,” replied the bookmaker, also speaking low. “That’s good, isn’t it? I must admit that I’ve lowered the price. I’ve laid the odds at three to one.”
Vandeuvres looked greatly annoyed. “No, no; I won’t have it. Put it back at two to one at once. I will never tell you anything again, Maréchal.”
“Oh, but what can that matter to you now, sir?” resumed the other, with the humble smile of a confederate. “I had to attract the people so as to place your two thousand louis.”
Then Vandeuvres made him give over; but, as he went away, Maréchal, recollecting something, regretted that he had not questioned him respecting his filly’s rise in price. He was in a pretty mess if the filly had a chance, for he had taken two hundred louis about her, laying fifty to one against.
Nana could not make anything out of the words whispered by the count, but she did not dare question him again. He seemed more nervous than ever, and abruptly placed her under the care of Labordette, whom they found waiting at the entrance to the weighing place.
“You must take her back,” said he. “I have something to attend to. Good-bye.”
And he went inside. It was a narrow apartment, with a low ceiling, and almost filled with a big weighing machine. It was like the room where luggage is weighed at a small suburban station. Nana was again greatly disappointed. She had figured to herself a very vast affair—a monumental apparatus for weighing the horses. What! they only weighed the jockeys! Then there was no need to make such a fuss about it. Seated in the scales, a jockey, looking an awful fool, with his saddle and harness on his knees, was waiting till a stout man in an overcoat had taken his weight; whilst a stable lad, at the door, held the horse, Cosinus, around which the crowd gathered, silent and wrapped in thought.
They were clearing the course. Labordette hurried Nana, but he returned a few steps to show her a little fellow talking to Vandeuvres apart from the others.
“Look, there’s Price,” said he.
“Ah! yes, he rides me,” she murmured with a laugh.
She thought him very ugly. To her all the jockeys looked like fools, no doubt, said she, because they were not allowed to grow. That one, a man of forty, had the appearance of an old, dried-up child, with a long, thin face, looking hard and death-like and full of wrinkles. His body was so knotty, so reduced, that the blue jacket with white sleeves seemed to cover a piece of wood.
“No,” she resumed as they moved away, “you know he isn’t my fancy.”
A mob still crowded the course, the wet trodden grass of which looked almost black. The crowd pressed in front of the boards, placed very high up on iron posts, which exhibited the numbers of the starters, and with raised heads, greeted uproariously each number that an electric wire, communicating with the weighing place, made appear. Some gentlemen were ticking their racing cards; Pichenette having been scratched by his owner, caused a slight commotion. Nana, however, simply passed by on Labordette’s arm. The bell was ringing persistently for the course to be cleared.
“Ah! my friends,” said she as she re-entered her landau, “it’s all humbug, their enclosure.”
Everyone about her applauded her return. “Bravo, Nana! Nana is restored to us!” How stupid they were! Did they think her one to give them the slip? She returned at the right time. Attention! it was going to begin. And the champagne was forgotten, everyone left off drinking. But Nana was surprised to find Gaga in her carriage, with Bijou and little Louis on her knees. Gaga had come there for the sake of being near La Faloise, though she pretended that she had done so because she so longed to kiss the baby. She adored children.
“Ah! by the way, and Lili?” asked Nana. “It’s she, is it not, in that old fellow’s brougham over there? I’ve just been told something that isn’t very creditable.”
Gaga assumed a most grieved expression of countenance.
“My dear, it has made me quite ill,” said she woefully. “I cried so much yesterday, I was obliged