Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [215]
“Zoé! Zoé! come quick. Make him leave off. It’s absurd, a child like that! He’s killing himself now! and in my house, too! Did anyone ever see such a thing?”
He frightened her. He was all white, and his eyes were closed. The wound scarcely bled at all, there was only a little blood which trickled from under the waistcoat. She had nerved herself to pass over the body, when an apparition caused her to draw back. Opposite to her, by the open door of the parlour, she beheld an old lady advancing, and she recognised Madame Hugon, terrified, unable to account for her presence. She continued to step back; she still wore her bonnet and gloves. Her terror became such that she attempted to defend herself in a hesitating voice.
“Madame, it was not I, I swear to you. He wanted to marry me, I said ‘no,’ and he’s killed himself.”
Madame Hugon slowly approached, dressed in black, with her pale face and white hair. In the carriage the thought of George had left her, and Philippe’s sin had alone occupied her mind. Perhaps that woman could give some explanations to the judges which might cause them to be more lenient; and her intention was to implore her to bear witness in her son’s favour. Downstairs the doors of the mansion were wide open. She hesitated at the staircase, with her poor legs, when, suddenly, shouts of fear had directed her steps. Then, upstairs, she beheld a man lying on the floor, his shirt stained with blood. It was George—it was her other child.
Nana kept repeating, in an idiotic way: “He wanted to marry me. I said ‘no,’ and he’s killed himself.”
Without a cry, Madame Hugon stooped down. Yes, it was the other one, it was George. The one dishonoured, the other dead. It did not surprise her, in the downfall of her whole existence. Kneeling on the carpet, ignoring the place where she was, noticing no one, she looked fixedly in George’s face, she listened with a hand upon his heart. Suddenly she uttered a faint sigh. She had felt his heart beat. Then she raised her head, examined the room and the woman, and seemed to recollect. A fire lighted up her vacant eyes. She was so grand and so terrible that Nana trembled as she continued to defend herself, over that corpse which separated them.
“I swear to you, madame—if his brother was here, he could explain.”
“His brother is a thief, he is in prison,” said the mother harshly.
Nana remained transfixed, gasping for breath. But why all that? The other had robbed—they were mad then, in that family! She ceased struggling, no longer seeming to be in her own house, but leaving Madame Hugon to give her own orders. Some of the servants had at last hastened to the spot; the old lady insisted on having George, insensible as he was, taken to her carriage. She would remove him from that house, though it killed him. Nana, with a stupefied gaze, watched the servants carrying that poor Zizi by his legs and shoulders. The mother followed behind, quite exhausted now, leaning on the furniture, as though sunk into the nothingness of all she loved. On the landing she sighed and turning round, said twice,
“Ah! you have done us much harm! You have done us much harm!”
That was all. Nana seated herself, in her stupor, with her gloves still on her hands, and her bonnet on her head. The house relapsed into a dull silence, the carriage had just gone off; and she remained immovable, without an idea, her head all buzzing with what had just transpired. A quarter of an hour later, Count Muffat found her in the same place. But then she eased herself with a great flow of words, telling him of the misfortune, repeating twenty times the same details, picking up the scissors smeared with blood, to imitate Zizi’s gesture when he stabbed himself. And she seemed especially anxious to prove her innocence.
“Come now, darling, was it my fault? If you were Justice, would you condemn me? I never told Philippe to steal, that