Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [67]
The other night, at Peters’s? She did not remember it at all. First of all, what night? And when the little fair-haired fellow told her the day, Wednesday, she recollected that she had supped at Peters’s on the Wednesday, but she had invited no one, of that she was almost certain.
“But yet, my girl, if you did invite them,” murmured Labordette who began to have doubts on the subject, “you were perhaps a little bit on.”
Then Nana laughed. It was possible, she couldn’t say. However, as the gentlemen were there, they had better come in. And so it was settled. Many of the new comers found friends of theirs amongst those in the drawing-room, and the squabble ended in a general hand-shaking. The little fair-haired fellow with the sickly appearance bore one of the greatest names of France. Besides, they announced that several others were following them; and, true enough, the door opened every minute to admit men with white kid gloves and in their most official get-up. They all came from the ball at the Ministry of the Interior. Fauchery jokingly inquired if the minister himself would not soon arrive; but Nana, very much annoyed, replied that the minister visited people who were certainly not as good as she. What she did not mention was a hope she entertained—that of seeing Count Muffat enter in the midst of all the others. He might have altered his mind; and, as she conversed with Rose, she kept watching the door.
Five o‘clock struck. The dancing had ceased. The players alone stuck to their cards. Labordette had given up his seat, and the women had gone back into the drawing-room. The somnolence that accompanies a prolonged dissipation hung heavily over all in the dull light of the lamps, the charred wicks of which gave a reddish hue to the globes. The women had reached that maudlin state when they feel the desire to relate their own histories. Blanche de Sivry talked of her grandfather the general, whilst Clarisse invented quite a romance about a duke who had seduced her at her uncle’s, where he had come to hunt the wild boar; and each, with her back turned, kept shrugging her shoulders, and asking if it was possible to tell such crammers. As for Lucy Stewart, she quietly avowed her humble origin, and talked freely of the days of her youth, when her father, the porter on the Northern Railway, used to treat her to an apple turnover on a Sunday.
“Oh! I must tell you!” suddenly exclaimed little Maria Blond. “There’s a gentleman living opposite to me, a Russian, in short a man who’s awfully rich. Well, yesterday I received a basket of fruit—oh! such a basket of fruit!—some enormous peaches, grapes as big as that, something really extraordinary at this time of the year. And in the middle of all, six bank notes of a thousand francs each. It was the Russian. Of course I sent all back again, but I was rather sorry to do so, because of the fruit! ”
The other women looked at each other trying not to smile. Little Maria Blond possessed rare cheek for her age. As if that sort of adventures happened to such hussies as she! They all felt a great contempt for each other. Many were furiously jealous of Lucy on account of her three princes. Ever since Lucy had taken to riding on horseback of a morning in the Bois de Boulogne, which had been the starting-point of her great success, they had all been seized with a violent mania for learning to ride.
The day was about to break. Nana no longer watched the door, having lost all hope. Every one was bored to death. Rose Mignon had refused to sing the “Slipper,” and was curled up on the sofa, where she was whispering with Fauchery, whilst waiting for Mignon, who had already won about fifty louis from Vandeuvres. A stout, distinguished-looking gentleman, wearing a decoration, had, it is true, just recited “Abraham’s Sacrifice,” in Alsatian patois,aj spiced with a certain amount of profanity;