Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [30]
“Ah! it’s you. You will go to Rambouillet to-day?”
“I came for that,” replied the aunt. “There is a train at twenty past twelve. I have time to catch it.”
“No, I shall only have the money this afternoon,” said the young woman, stretching herself, her breasts rising as she did so. “You will have some lunch, and then we will see.”
Zoé whispered, as she brought her a dressing-gown, “Madame, the hairdresser is there.”
But Nana would not retire into her dressing-room. She called out:
“Come in, Francis.”
A gentleman, very stylishly dressed, pushed open the door. He bowed. Just at that moment Nana was getting out of bed, her legs quite bare. Without hurrying herself, she held out her arms, so that Zoé could pass the sleeves of the dressing-gown on to them; and Francis, quite at his ease, waited in a dignified manner, and without looking away. Then, when she had seated herself, and he had passed the comb through her hair, he spoke:
“Madame has, perhaps, not yet read the papers? There is a very good article in the ‘Figaro.’ ”
As he had the paper with him, Madame Lerat put on her spectacles, and read the article out loud, standing in front of the window. She drew up to her full trooper-like stature, her nostrils contracted each time she came to an adjective exceptionally gallant. It was a notice of Fauchery’s, written directly after leaving the theatre—two very warm columns, full of witty but unkind remarks, so far as regarded the actress, and of a brutish admiration for the woman.
“Excellent! excellent!” kept repeating Francis.
Nana didn’t care a button for the chaff about her voice! He was a nice fellow, that Fauchery; all the same, she’d pay him out for his pleasant little ways! After reading the article a second time, Madame Lerat abruptly declared that all the men had the devil in the calves of their legs; and she refused to explain further, satisfied with having made this racy allusion, which she alone was able to understand. Meanwhile Francis had finished fastening up Nana’s hair. He bowed and said,
“I shall have my eye on the evening papers. The same time as usual, I suppose—at half-past five?”
“Bring me a pot of pomatums and a pound of burnt almonds from Boissier’s!” Nana called after him across the drawing-room, just as he was shutting the door.
Then the two women, left alone, remembered that they had not kissed each other, so they cordially embraced one another on the cheek. The article had rather excited them. Nana, until then only half awake, again felt all the fever of her triumph. Ah! Rose Mignon must have spent a very pleasant morning! As her aunt had not been to the theatre, because, as she said, all emotion upset her stomach, she began to relate the events of the evening, the recital intoxicating her as though Paris itself had crumbled beneath the applause. Then, suddenly interrupting herself, she asked, with a laugh, if anyone would ever have expected as much in the days when she dragged her blackguard little person about the Rue de la Goutte d’Or. Madame Lerat shook her head. No, no; no one could ever have foreseen it. She spoke in her turn in a grave tone of voice, and calling her her daughter. For wasn’t she her second mother, now that the real one had gone to join the papa and the grandma. Nana, greatly affected, was on the point of shedding tears. But Madame Lerat said that by-gones were by-gones, and very filthy by-gones too! things