Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [200]
“Well! and how is this dear child?” said he familiarly to Muffat, whom he treated as the husband. “The deuce! she has been talking!”
The doctor was a handsome man, still young, and had a superb connection in the world of gallantry. Very gay, always laughing like a comrade with the ladies, but never departing from his professional position, he charged monstrous fees, which invariably had to be paid with great punctuality. He would trouble himself to call for the least thing. Nana often sent for him two or three times a week, always trembling at the thought of death, and anxiously telling him of every little ache and pain, which he cured whilst amusing her with gossip and funny stories. All the women adored him. But this time the complaint was serious.
Muffat withdrew, deeply affected. He had no other feeling but that of compassion, at seeing his poor Nana so weak. As he was leaving the room, she beckoned him back, and offered her forehead to be kissed; then, in a low voice, with a playfully menacing air, she whispered:
“You know what I told you you might do. Make it up with your wife, or I shall be angry!”
Countess Sabine had wished her daughter’s marriage contract to be signed on a Tuesday, to inaugurate the restoration of her town-house, the paintings of which were scarcely dry, by a grand party. Five hundred invitations had been sent out, a few in all the different sets. On the morning itself, the upholsterers were still putting up some of the hangings; and, at the time of lighting the chandeliers, towards nine o’clock, the architect, accompanied by the countess who was enraptured, was giving his final instructions.
It was one of those charming spring parties. The warm June evening had enabled the two doors of the drawing-room to be thrown wide open, and the ball to be carried even on the gravel paths of the garden. When the first guests arrived they were fairly dazzled, as the count and countess greeted them at the door. It was difficult to recall the room of bygone days in which lingered the icy recollection of old Countess Muffat—that antique apartment, full of devout severity, with its solid mahogany furniture in the style of the Empire, its yellow velvet hangings, its greenish ceiling saturated with dampness. Now, in the entrance vestibule, mosaics set off with gold shone beneath the tall candelabra; whilst the marble staircase unrolled its finely-chiselled balustrade. Then the drawing-room was resplendent with Genoa velvet hangings, and a ceiling embellished with a vast painting by Boucher,bc which the architect had purchased for one hundred thousand francs at the sale of the château of Dampierre. The crystal chandeliers and candelabra illuminated a profusion of mirrors and costly furniture. One could have said that Sabine’s easy-chair—that solitary seat covered with crimson silk, and the softness of which used to seem so much out of place—had extended and multiplied until it filled the entire house with a voluptous indolence, a keen enjoyment, which burned with all the intensity of latent fires.
The dancing had commenced. The orchestra, placed in the garden in front of one of the open windows, was playing a waltz, the sprightly rhythm of which arrived softened and subdued from the open air. And the garden spread itself out in a transparent shadow, lighted up by Venetian lanterns, with a purple tent for refreshments erected at the edge of the lawn. This waltz—the saucy waltz of the “Blonde Venus,” which