Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [70]
Blanche lazily roused herself. This time the banker’s bloated face turned pale with annoyance at the idea of being accompanied by that fat girl, who would be in his way. But the two women were already leading him off, and repeating:
“You know, we must see the cows milked.”
CHAPTER V
The “Blonde Venus” was being performed for the thirty-fourth time at the Variety Theatre. The first act had just ended. Simone, got up as a washerwoman, was in the green-room, standing before a mirror placed between the two doors that opened on to the passage leading to the dressing-rooms. She was all alone, and, lighted by the naked flames of the gas-jets on either side, was occupied in improving her make-up by passing a finger under her eyes.
“Do you know if he’s arrived yet?” asked Prullière, who entered in his costume of a Swiss admiral, with his long sword, his high boots, and his immense plume.
“Whom do you mean?” said Simone, without disturbing herself, and laughing at the glass so as to see her lips.
“The prince.”
“I don’t know, I’m going down. Ah! so he’s coming. He comes, then, every day! ”
Prullière walked up to the fire-place, which faced the mirror, and in which a coke fire was burning; two gas-jets were flaring away on either side. He raised his eyes and looked at the clock and the barometer, placed to the right and the left, and accompanied by gilded sphinxes in the style of the Empire. Then he buried himself in a vast high-backed arm-chair, the green velvet of which, worn and soiled by four generations of actors, had here and there turned to a yellowish hue, and he remained there immovable, his eyes vaguely gazing into space, in the weary and resigned attitude of actors accustomed to the “waits” between their cues. Old Bosc had just made his appearance, coughing and shuffling his feet, and wrapped in an old yellow box-coat, which had slipped off one shoulder and displayed King Dagobert’s laminated golden cassock. For an instant, after having placed his crown on the piano, without saying a word, he angrily stamped his feet, looking all the while, however, a thoroughly good-natured fellow, with his hands slightly shaking from an over-abuse of alcohol, whilst a long white beard gave a venerable appearance to his inflamed tippling-looking face. Then, as the silence was broken by a shower of rain and hail striking against the panes of the large square window which looked on to the court-yard, he made a gesture of disgust.
“What beastly weather! ” he grunted.
Neither Simone nor Prullière moved. On the walls four or five pictures, landscapes, and a portrait of Vernet the actor, were gradually turning yellow through the beat of the gas. On the shaft of a column a bust of Potier, one of the old glories of the Variety Theatre, looked on with its empty eyes. But there suddenly arose the sounds of a voice. It was Fontan, in his second act dress, that of a stylish young man, clothed all in yellow, and with yellow gloves on his hands.
“I say!” he cried, gesticulating, “don’t you know?—it’s my saint’s-day to-day.”
“Is it now, really?” asked Simone, going up to him with a smile, as though attracted by his long nose and his big comical mouth. “Were you, then, christened Achilles?”
“Exactly! And I’m going to tell Madame Bron to bring up some champagne, after the second act.”
For a moment past a bell had been heard tingling in the distance. The prolonged sound died away and then returned; and, when the bell finally left off ringing, a cry resounded which went up and down the staircase and was lost in the passages : “The overture’s on for the second act! The overture’s on for the second act!” This cry at length approached the green-room, and a pale little man passed before the doors shouting at the top of his shrill voice: “The overture’s on for the second act! ”
“The deuce! champagne!” said Prullière, without seeming to have noticed the row. “You are going it fine.”
“Were I you, I’d have it sent in from the café,” slowly observed old Bosc, who had seated himself