Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [216]
And she burst out crying. Her nerves were highly unstrung, which rendered her weak and doleful, and deeply moved with an immense sorrow.
“You, too, you don’t seem very pleased. Ask Zoé, now, if I’m at all to blame. Zoé, speak; explain to the count—”
For some few minutes the maid, having fetched from the dressing-room a towel and a basin of water, had been rubbing the carpet to get rid of a stain of blood, whilst it was still wet.
“Oh, sir!” she declared; “madame is quite broken-hearted!”
Muffat was greatly affected, feeling stunned by the drama, his thoughts full of that mother weeping for her two children. He knew her great heart; he saw her in her widow’s weeds, pining away all alone at Les Fondettes. But Nana’s despair increased. Now, the picture of Zizi, lying on the floor, with a red spot on his shirt, put her quite beside herself.
“He was so pretty, so gentle, so caressing! Ah! you know, ducky, it’s so much the worse if you don’t like it. I loved him, the baby! I can’t control myself; it’s stronger than I am. And then it can’t matter to you now. He is no longer here. You have what you wanted; you may be quite sure of never catching us together again.”
This last idea overwhelmed him with such regret that he ended by trying to console her. She must bear up. She was right; it was not her fault. But she stopped him to say,
“Listen, you must run and bring me news of him. At once! I insist! ”
He took his hat and went off to obtain news of George. When he returned, at the end of three quarters of an hour, he beheld Nana leaning out of the window anxiously awaiting him; and he called to her from the pavement that the little fellow was not dead, and that they even hoped to save his life. Then she changed at once to a great joy. She sang, danced, and thought life beautiful. Zoé, however, was not satisfied with her cleansing. She kept looking at the stain, and saying each time she passed,
“You know, madame, it hasn’t gone away.”
And in fact, as it dried, the stain appeared a pale red on one of the white ornaments of the carpet. It was on the very threshold of the room, like a line of blood barring the way.
“Bah!” said Nana, happy once more, “the footsteps will wear it away.”
By the morrow Count Muffat had also forgotten the incident. When in the cab on the way to the Rue Richelieu, he had sworn never to return to that woman. Heaven gave him a warning. He looked on Philippe’s and George’s calamity as foreboding his own ruin. But neither the spectacle of Madame Hugon in tears, nor the sight of the youth consumed with fever, had had the power to make him keep his oath; and from the short moment of emotion caused by the drama, all that remained to him was the secret joy of being rid of a rival, whose charming youth had always exasperated him. He now experienced an exclusive passion, one of those passions of men who have had no youth. He loved Nana with a necessity always to know that she was his alone—to hear her, to touch her, to be under the influence of her breath. It was an attachment which had got beyond the mere gratification of his senses, and had reached the purer feeling—an anxious affection, jealous of the past, dreaming at times of redemption, of pardon bestowed, both of them kneeling before God the Father. Each day religion regained some of its ascendeney over him. He again practised going to confession and communicating, struggling unceasingly, mingling his remorse with the joys of sin and of penitence. Then, his spiritual director having permitted him to wear out his passion, he had made a habit of that daily damnation, which he redeemed by bursts of faith, full of a devout humility. He very naively offered to heaven, as an expiatory suffering, the abominable torment he endured. This torment continued to increase. It raised his calvary of a believer, of a grave and profound heart,