Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [194]
It was not till the Tuesday that Nana felt quite recovered from the emotions of her victory. She was talking that morning with Madame Lerat, come to give her news of little Louis, who had been unwell ever since his outing. She was highly interested in an event which at that moment was occupying Paris. Vandeuvres, warned off all the race-courses, his name withdrawn the same night from the list of members of the Cercle Imperial, had on the morrow set fire to his stable, and had been burned with his horses.
“He told me he would,” the young woman was saying. “Ah! the young fellow was a regular madman. It gave me such a fright last night when I heard of it! You see he might very well have murdered me one night; and, besides, oughtn’t he to have told me about his horse? I should, at least, have made my fortune! He said to Labordette that if I was let into the secret I would at once tell my hairdresser, and a host of other men. How very polite! Ah, no! really, I can’t regret him much.”
After thinking the matter over, she had become furious. At that moment Labordette entered the room. He had been collecting her winnings for her, and brought her about forty thousand francs. That only added to her ill-humour, for she ought to have won a million. Labordette, who pretended to be very innocent in the matter, boldly forsook Vandeuvres altogether. Those ancient families were all done for; they always came to grief in a ridiculous manner.
“Oh, no!” said Nana; “it is not ridiculous to set oneself afire like that in a stable. I think he ended grandly. Oh! you know, I’m not defending his affair with Mérachal. Now, that was ridiculous. When I think that Blanche had the idiocy to pretend that I was the cause of it all! I said to her, ‘Did I tell him to steal?’ I suppose one may ask a man for money without driving him to commit a crime. If he had said to me, ‘I’ve nothing more,’ I should have rejoined, ‘Very well, we’d better part.’ And that would have been the end of it.”
“No doubt,” observed the aunt gravely. “When men become obstinate, it is so much the worse for them!”
“But as for the closing scene—oh! it was indeed grand!” resumed Nana. “It seems that it was terrible; the thought of it makes my flesh creep. He got everybody out of the way, and shut himself inside, with some petroleum. And it blazed away—ah! it must have been a sight! Just fancy, a big place like that nearly all of wood, and full of hay and straw! The flames, they say, rose nearly as high as steeples. The best part was the horses, who didn’t want to be roasted. They were heard kicking and flinging themselves against the doors, and uttering cries like human beings. Some of the people there nearly died from fright.”
Labordette gave a low whistle of incredulity. He did not believe in Vandeuvres’s death. One person swore that he had seen him get out through a window. He had set fire to his stable in a fit of madness, only as soon as it began to get warm, it probably brought him to his senses again. A man who behaved so stupidly with women, so empty-headed, was not capable of dying in such a grand style.
Nana’s illusions were dispelled as she listened to him; and she merely made this remark,
“Oh! the wretch! it was such a grand ending!”
CHAPTER XII
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