Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [224]
Then when she found him so humble, Nana’s triumph became tyrannical. She instinctively had a rage for debasing everything. It was not sufficient for her to destroy things; she polluted them. Her delicate hands left abominable traces behind them; they decomposed by their mere touch all that they had broken. And he, idiot that he was, lent himself to this sport, with the vague remembrance of saints devoured by lice, and who eat what they had voided. When she had him in her room, with the doors fastened, she would feast herself with the sight of man’s infamy. At first it was merely fun. She would give him little slaps and make him do comical things, such as lisping like a child, repeating ends of sentences.
“Say it like me, ‘And dash it all! Coco doesn’t care!’ ”
He would be obedient even to imitating her accent.
“And dash it all! Coco doesn’t care!”
Or she would do the woolly bear, on all fours on the fur rugs, in her chemise, and turning round and round and grunting, as though she meant to eat him up; and she would even bite his calves, just for fun. Then she would get up and say,
“Now it’s your turn. I bet you won’t do the woolly bear as well as me.”
It was charming. She amused him as a bear, with her white skin and her golden mane. He laughed, he also went on all fours, he grunted and bit her calves, whilst she hopped about, pretending to be greatly frightened.
“Aren’t we stupid, eh?” she would end by saying. “You’ve no idea how ugly you look, my dear! Ah, well! if they could only see you now, at the Tuileries!”
But these little games soon took an ugly turn. It wasn’t through cruelty on her part, for she still remained a good-natured girl; it was like a breath of madness, which passed and increased little by little in the closed room. A lewdness seemed to possess them, and inspire them with the delirious imaginations of the flesh. The old devout frights of their night of wakefulness had now turned into a thirst for bestiality, a mania for going on all fours, for grunting and biting. Then one day, as he was doing the woolly bear, she pushed him so roughly that he fell against a piece of furniture; and she broke out into an involuntary laugh as she saw a bump on his forehead. From that time, having already acquired a taste for it by her experiment on La Faloise, she treated him as an animal, goaded him and pursued him with kicks.
“Gee up! gee up! you’re the horse. Haw, gee! dirty jade! move along quicker than that!”
At other times he was a dog. She would throw her scented handkerchief to the other end of the room, and he had to go and pick it up with his teeth, crawling along on his hands and knees.
“Fetch it, Cæsar! I’ll give you the stick if you’re not quick! Good dog, Caesar! pretty, obedient fellow! Now, beg!”
And he delighted in his baseness, and relished the enjoyment of being a brute. He aspired at falling still lower—he would cry out,
“Hit harder! Bow wow! I’m mad, hit away!”
She was seized with a caprice. She insisted on his coming one evening arrayed in his gorgeous chamberlain’s costume. Then she laughed and ridiculed him when she had him in his court dress, with the sword, and the hat, and the white breeches, and the scarlet cloth dress coat bedizened with gold, and the symbolical key hanging over the left-hand tail. This key especially amused her, and filled her with a mad fancy for filthy explanations. Always laughing, and carried away by a disrespect for greatness, and