Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [42]
It was an act of religious faith. Léonide herself appeared satisfied. The young men at the end of the room no longer laughed. It was a strait-laced place, and they did not amuse themselves much there. A coldness had passed over all. In the midst of the silence arose the sound of Steiner’s snuffling voice, the deputy’s discretion having ended by putting the banker in a rage. For a few minutes Countess Sabine looked into the fire, then she renewed the conversation.
“I saw the King of Prussia last year, at Baden. He is still full of vigour for his years.”
“Count Bismarckx will accompany him,” said Madame Du Joncquoy. “Do you know the count? I lunched with him at my brother’s, oh! a long time ago, when he was representing Prussia at Paris. I cannot understand such a man achieving the great success he has.”
“Why?” asked Madame Chantereau.
“Well! I scarcely know how to tell you. He does not please me. He has a brutish look, and is ill-mannered. Besides, for myself, I think him stupid.”
Then everyone talked about Count Bismarck. The opinions were very divided. Vandeuvres knew him, and asserted that he was a hard drinker and a good player. But, at the height of the discussion, the door opened and Hector de la Faloise appeared. Fauchery, who accompanied him, approached the countess, and bowing, said, “Madame I did not forget your gracious invitation.”
She greeted him with a smile and a kind word. The journalist,after shaking hands with the count, stood for a moment like a fish out of water, in the midst of the company of whom he only recognised Steiner. Vandeuvres, having turned round, came and greeted him; and, happy at the meeting, and seized with a desire to be communicative, Fauchery at once drew him aside, saying in a low voice:
“It’s for to-morrow; are you going?”
“Of course!”
“At midnight at her place.”
“I know, I know. I’m going with Blanche.”
He wished to escape to rejoin the ladies and give another argument in Count Bismarck’s favour. But Fauchery detained him.
“You will never guess what invitation she has asked me to deliver.”
And he slightly nodded his head in the direction of Count Muffat, who at that moment was discussing the budget with the deputy and Steiner.
“It can’t be!” said Vandeuvres, amazed, but at the same time highly amused.
“On my honour! I had to swear I would bring him. I have called partly on that account.”
They both had a quiet laugh, and then Vandeuvres, hastening to rejoin the ladies, exclaimed,
“I assure you, on the contrary, that Count Bismarck is very witty. For instance, he made one night, in my hearing, a most delightful pun—”
La Faloise, however, having overheard the few rapid words exchanged in a low voice between the two friends, looked at Fauchery, hoping for an explanation which came not. Whom were they talking of? What was going to take place the next day at midnight? He stuck to his cousin wherever he went. The latter had gone and sat down. Countess Sabine especially interested him. She had often been talked about in his presence. He knew that, married when she was only seventeen, she would then be thirty-four, and that ever since her marriage she had led a sort of cloistered existence between her husband and her mother-in-law. In society, some said she was as cold as a devotee, but others pitied her as they recalled her merry laughter, her big, sparkling eyes, in the days before she was shut up in that old house. Fauchery examined her and hesitated. One of his friends, a captain who had been recently killed in Mexico, y had imparted to him after dinner, on the eve of his departure, one of those brutal secrets which the most discreet men let out at certain moments. But Fauchery’s recollection of the matter was very vague; they had both dined well that evening, and he had his doubts as he watched the countess, dressed in black, with her quiet smile, in the middle of that old-fashioned drawing-room. A lamp placed behind her detached her sharp profile, that of a plump brunette,