Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [27]
The spectators had already risen from their seats, and were hastily making for the doors. The authors were named, and there was a double call in the midst of a thunder of applause. The cry, “Nana! Nana!” re-echoed again and again. Then, before the house was fairly empty, it became quite dark. The foot-lights were turned out, the lights of the gasalier were lowered, and long grey coverings were drawn over the gilding of the balconies; and the heat and the noise suddenly gave place to a death-like stillness, and an odour of dust and mildew. At the door of her box stood the Countess Muffat, wrapped in her furs and gazing into the darkness, as she waited for the crowd to pass away. In the passages the jostled attendants were fast losing their senses among the piles of cloaks and other garments. Fauchery and La Faloise had hurried to see the people come out. In the vestibule several gentlemen were waiting in a row, while down the double staircase descended two interminable and compact processions.
Steiner, led away by Mignon, was one of the first to leave. The Count de Vandeuvres went off with Blanche de Sivry on his arm. For a moment, Gaga and her daughter seemed embarrassed, but Labordette hastened to secure them a cab, and gallantly saw them into it. No one noticed Daguenet leave. As the youngster fresh from college, with his cheeks all aglow, bent upon waiting at the stage door, hastened to the Passage des Panoramas,p the gate of which he found closed, Satin, loitering on the pavement, came and grazed him lightly with her skirts; but he, quite broken-hearted, roughly declined her advances, and disappeared in the crowd, with tears of powerless longing in his eyes. Some of the spectators, lighting cigars, went off humming the song—“When Venus takes an evening stroll.” Satin had returned to the Café des Variétés, where Augustus was allowing her to eat the lumps of sugar left by the customers. A stout man, who was greatly excited, having just quitted the theatre, at length took her off into the darkness of the now gradually hushed Boulevard.
The crowd still continued to pour down the double staircase. La Faloise was waiting for Clarisse, and Fauchery had promised to escort Lucy Stewart, with Caroline Héquet and her mother. They now arrived, monopolising a whole corner of the vestibule to themselves, and laughing loudly, just as the Muffats passed, looking very frigid. At that moment Bordenave, opening a little door, appeared, and obtained from Fauchery a distinct promise of a notice. He was covered with perspiration, his face as red as though he had had a sunstroke, and looking intoxicated with success.
“Your piece will run for two hundred nights at least,” said La Faloise, obligingly. “All Paris will visit your theatre.”
But Bordenave, his rage getting the better of him, indicated, with a rapid movement of his chin, the crowd that filled the vestibule—that mob of men with parched mouths and sparkling eyes, still inflamed with their passionate longing for Nana—and violently exclaimed:—
“Say my brothel, can’t you? you pig-headed animal!”
CHAPTER II
The next morning at ten o’clock, Nana was still sleeping. She occupied, in the Boulevard Haussmann, the second storey of a large new house, the owner of which was content to let to single ladies, in order to get his plaster dried. A rich merchant from Moscow, who had come to spend a winter in Paris, had installed her there, paying two quarters’ rent in advance. The rooms, too large for her, had never been completely furnished; and a gaudy