Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [204]
This expression of opinion caused M. Venot to smile. However, he did not explain himself respecting the young bride. Closing his eyes, as though to withdraw from the conversation, he again hid himself in his corner behind the skirts. Madame Hugon, in the midst of her absent-minded weariness, had overheard a few words. She joined in, and as she addressed herself to the Marquis de Chouard, who had come to greet her, thus concluded with her tolerating air:
“You ladies are too severe. Existence is already so bad for everyone. Eh! my friend? we ought to forgive a great deal in others, when we wish to be ourselves worthy of pardon.”
The marquis remained embarrassed for a few moments, fearing an allusion to himself. But the good lady had so sad a smile, that he soon regained his composure, and said,
“No, certain faults deserve no pardon. It is by such complaisances that society totters on its foundations.”
The ball had become more animated than ever. Another quadrille gave a kind of gentle swing to the floor of the drawing-room, as though the old house had staggered beneath the commotion of the merry-making. Now and again, in the mixed paleness of the faces, there stood out a woman’s countenance, carried away by the dance, with sparkling eyes and parted lips, and the full light of a chandelier shining on her white skin. Madame du Joncquoy declared that the count and countess must have been out of their senses. It was madness to squeeze five hundred people into a room that could scarcely hold two hundred. Why not have the contract signed on the Place du Carrousel at once? It was the result of new manners, Madame Chantereau said. In her younger days such solemnities took place in the bosom of one’s family; now one must have a mob, the whole street being freely allowed to enter. Unless one had such a crush, the entertainment would be considered quiet and uneventful. One advertised one’s luxury, one introduced into one’s abode the very scum of Paris; and there was nothing more natural if such promiscuousness ended by corrupting the home. The two ladies complained that they did not know more than fifty of the persons present. How was it so? Young girls in low-neck dresses displayed their bare shoulders; a woman wore a golden dagger stuck in her chignon, whilst the body of her dress, embroidered with jet black beads, looked like a coat of mail; another was being smilingly followed about, her skirts so tight fitting that they gave her a most singular appearance. All the luxury of the close of the winter season was there, the world of pleasure with its tolerations, all that which the mistress of a house picks from her acquaintances of a day, a society where great names and great infamies elbowed each other in the same appetite for pleasure. The heat was increasing, the quadrille unrolled the cadenced symmetry of its figures amidst the overcrowded rooms.
“The countess is stunning!” resumed La Faloise at the garden door. “She looks ten years younger than her daughter. By the way, Foucarmont, you can give us some information. Vandeuvres used to bet that she had no thighs worth speaking of.”
This affectation of cynicism bored the other gentlemen. Foucarmont contented himself with replying,
“Consult your cousin, my boy. He’s just coming this way. ”
“Yes! that’s an idea,” cried La Faloise. “I’ll bet ten louis that her thighs are good.”
Fauchery was indeed just arriving. As an intimate friend of the house, he had passed through the dining-room so as to avoid the crush at the doors. Taken up again by Rose at the beginning of the winter, he now divided himself between the singer and the countess, feeling very wearied, not knowing how to break off with one of the two. Sabine flattered his vanity, but Rose amused him more. The latter, too, entertained a genuine affection for him, a tenderness of really conjugal fidelity, which grieved Mignon immensely.
“Listen, we want some information,” said La Faloise, squeezing his cousin