Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [229]
“It’s not only him, it’s all, it’s everything. I’m very unhappy, Oh! I know! they’ll again say that I’m an abominable woman. That mother who is weeping there, and that poor man who was moaning this morning at my door, and the others who are all ruined, after having squandered their sous with me. That’s right, give it to Nana, give it to the beast! Oh! I’ve a broad back, I can hear them as though I was there. That dirty strumpet who entices everyone; who clears out some, and kills the others; who causes pain to no end of people—”
She was forced to interrupt herself; suffocated by her tears, she had fallen in her anguish across a sofa, with her head buried in a cushion. The misfortunes she felt around her, those miseries that she had caused, enveloped her in a warm and continuous flow of sensibility; and her voice became lost in the plaintive accents of a little girl.
“Oh! I suffer—oh! I suffer. I cannot, it’s stifling me. It’s too hard not to be understood, to see everyone put themselves against you, because they’re the strongest. Yet, when one has nothing to reproach oneself with, when one has a free conscience—well, no! well, no—”
Her anger changed to indignation. She got up, wiped her eyes; and paced agitatedly about the room.
“Well, no! they may say what they like, it isn’t my fault! Am I cruel? I give all I have—I wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s they; yes, it’s they! I never wanted to be unpleasant to any of them. And they were always hanging about my skirts, and now they croak, or beg, and all pretend to be in despair.”
Then, stopping in front of Labordette, and tapping him on the shoulders, she continued,
“Come now, you were there, speak the truth. Was it I who led them on? Weren’t there always a dozen exerting themselves to invent something more abominable than the others? They disgusted me! I held myself aloof so as not to follow in their wake, I was afraid. Here’s an instance—they all wanted to marry me. A nice idea! Eh! yes, my dear fellow, I might have been twenty times a baroness or a countess if I had consented. Well! I refused, because I was reasonable. Ah! I preserved them from many detestable actions and many crimes! They would have stolen, murdered, killed father and mother. I had but to say a word, and I didn’t say it. To-day, you see my reward. It’s like that Daguenet whom I got married—a half-starved wretch whose position I made, after keeping him for nothing for weeks together. Yesterday, I met him; he turned away his head. Well! go to the devil, pig! I’m not so foul as you are!”
She was walking about again; she violently banged her fist down on a small round table.
“Damn it all! it’s not just! Society is badly constructed. The women are abused, when it’s the men who are entirely to blame, they expect such things. Listen! I can tell you now—in all I’ve ever had to do with men, well! I never had the least pleasure—no, not the least. They always bored me, on my word of honour! So, I ask you now if there’s any fault of mine in all this? Ah, yes! they almost badgered me out of my life! Without them, my dear fellow, and what they’ve made me, I should be now in a convent praying, for I’ve always been religious. And, hang ’em! after all, if they have left their money and their skin, it’s their own fault! I’ve nothing to do with it!”
“Of course,” said Labordette, convinced.
Zoé ushered in Mignon. Nana received him smiling; she had had a good cry, but now it was over. He complimented her on her abode, still warmed with enthusiasm; but she soon let him see that she had had enough of her mansion. Now she was dreaming of something else—she would get rid of it all, one fine day. Then, as he mentioned as a pretext for his visit a benefit performance to be given for old Bosc, who was tied to his chair by an attack of paralysis, she expressed a great deal of sorrow, and took two boxes. Zoé, however, having said that the carriage was waiting, she asked for her bonnet; and as she tied the strings, she related the story of poor Satin’s mishap, then added: