Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [223]
“Well, my little muff! that’s another rival the less. You’re in high feather to-day. But he was becoming serious; he wanted to marry me.”
As he turned pale, she laughingly put her arms round his neck, thrusting each of her cruelties into him with a caress.
“And it’s that which bothers you, isn’t it? You can’t marry Nana. Whilst they’re all trying to get me to marry them, you’re chafing all alone in your corner. It’s not possible, you must wait till your wife croaks. Ah! if your wife was to croak, wouldn’t you just hasten to me—wouldn’t you just throw yourself at my feet and offer me everything, all the usual style, with sighs, and tears, and protestations? Eh, darling! it would be so nice!”
Her voice had become soft, she fooled him with an air of ferocious cajolery. He, deeply moved, blushed as he returned her embraces. Then she cried,
“Damn it all! to think that I guessed right! He has thought of it, he’s waiting till his wife croaks. Ah, well! this is too much—he’s a bigger scamp than the others!”
Muffat had accepted the others. Now he made it a last point of dignity to remain the “master” with the servants and the frequenters of the house—the man who, giving the most, was the official lover. And his passion became madder than ever. He kept his place by paying, buying even smiles at fabulous prices, often robbed and never receiving his money’s worth; but it was like a disease that was devouring him, he could not help suffering from it. When he entered Nana’s bed-room, he contented himself with opening the windows for a minute, so as to get rid of the odours left by the others—the effluvia of both dark and fair, the cigar smoke, the staleness of which nearly suffocated him. The room was becoming a public square; boots of all kinds were continually being wiped on the threshold, and not one was arrested by that bloody mark which barred the entry. Zoé was greatly worried by that stain, merely a tidy girl’s mania. She was annoyed at always seeing it there; her eyes were attracted to it in spite of herself. She never entered madame’s room without saying,
“It’s funny it doesn’t go away; yet a great many people come here.”
Nana, who had been receiving better news of George, then in a state of convalescence at Les Fondettes with his mother, each time made the same reply:
“Ah, well! you must give it time. It’s gradually becoming paler beneath the footsteps.”
And, indeed, each one of the gentlemen—Foucarmont, Steiner, La Faloise, Fauchery, and the others—had carried away a little of the stain on the soles of their boots. And Muffat, who was worried as much as Zoé by the mark of blood, studied it in spite of himself, to read, as it were, in its rosier and rosier effacement, the number of men who passed there. He had a secret dread of it, always stepping over it through a sudden fear of crushing something living—a naked limb lying on the floor.
Then in that room an unconquerable feeling intoxicated him. He forgot all—the mob of other men who passed through it, the mourning that barred the door. Outside, at times, in the open air of the street, he would shed tears of shame and indignation, and swear never to return there; and the moment he had passed the threshold, he was recaptured. He felt his will give way in the warmth of the apartment; his flesh penetrated with a perfume, overpowered by a voluptuous desire of annihilation. He, devout and used to the rapturous feelings enkindled by the contemplation of gorgeous shrines, experienced exactly the same sensations of a believer, as when, kneeling in some church, he became entranced by the sounds of the organ and the perfume of the incense. The woman ruled him with the jealous despotism of a god of anger, terrifying him, giving him seconds of joy, acute as spasms, for hours of frightful torments, of visions of hell and everlasting damnation. It was