Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [41]
“Are you unwell, my dear?” asked Madame Chantereau, the wife of an iron-founder, seeing the countess shudder slightly and turn pale.
“Oh, no, not at all,” replied the latter, with a smile. “I felt rather cold. This room takes such a long time to get warm!” and she looked along the walls, and up to the ceiling. Her daughter, Estelle, a young girl of sixteen, skinny and insignificant-looking, got up from the stool on which she was sitting, and came and silently replaced on the top of the fire one of the logs which had rolled off. Madame de Chezelles, one of Sabine’s convent friends, but five years younger than she, exclaimed:
“Well! I should like to have a drawing-room like yours! You, at least, are able to receive. In modern houses the rooms are no bigger than boxes. If I was in your place—”
She spoke thoughtlessly, with animated gestures, explaining that she would change the hangings, the seats, everything; then she would give balls to which all Paris would long to be invited. Behind her, her husband, a judge, listened with a grave face. It was said that she deceived him, and openly, too; but every one forgave her, and received her all the same, because, so the report ran, she was mad.
“Oh, Léonide!” Countess Sabine, with her faint smile, contented herself with murmuring. A slight shrug of the shoulders completed her thought. It was not after having lived in it seventeen years that she would think of altering her drawing-room. Now, it would remain the same as her mother-in-law had wished it should be during her life-time. Then, resuming the conversation, she observed, “I have been told that we shall also have the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Russia.”
“Yes, it is announced that there will be great festivities,” said Madame du Joncquoy.
The banker Steiner, recently introduced into the house by Léonide de Chezelles, who knew every one, was conversing seated on a sofa between two windows. He was questioning a deputy,w from whom he was cunningly trying to extract some news relative to a stock exchange affair of which he had an inkling; whilst Count Muffat, standing in front of them, was listening in silence, looking blacker than ever. Four or five young men formed another group near the door, surrounding Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who, in a hushed voice, was relating to them some adventure, rather improper, no doubt, for they were all making great efforts to smother their laughter. All alone, in the middle of the room, a stout man, the head of a department at the Ministry of the Interior, was ponderously seated in an arm-chair, asleep with his eyes open. But one of the young men having seemed to throw doubt on Vandeuvres’s story, the latter raised his voice, and exclaimed:
“You are too sceptical, Foucarmont; you will spoil all your pleasures.”
And with a laugh he moved towards the ladies. The last of a great race, effeminate and intelligent, he was then devouring a fortune with the rage of an appetite that nothing could appease. His racing-stable, one of the most celebrated of Paris, cost him an enormous sum; his losings at the Imperial Club amounted each month to a most unpleasant number of louis; his mistresses every year, good or bad, relieved him of a farm and several acres of meadow or forest land, making quite a hole in his vast estates in Picardy.
“You do well to call others sceptical, you who believe in nothing,” said Leonide, making room for him beside her. “It is you who spoil your pleasures.”
“Exactly,” he replied. “I want others to profit by my experience.
But he was made to stop. He was scandalizing M. Venot. Then, some of the ladies moving, disclosed to view, on a sort of sofa-chair, a little man of sixty, with bad teeth and a cunning smile. He was installed there just as though he were at home, listening to every one and never uttering a word. With a gesture he notified that he was not scandalized. Vandeuvres assumed his most dignified