Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [75]
“So,” resumed the doorkeeper, when she had finished serving the supers, “it’s the little dark fellow over there that you want to speak to?”
“No, don’t be absurd!” said Simone. “It’s the thin one sitting beside the stove—the one your cat’s snuffing the trousers of.”
And she led La Faloise into the hall, whilst the other gentlemen, though half suffocating, appeared as resigned as ever, and the supers stood drinking on the stairs, indulging among themselves in a good deal of noisy drunken horse-play. Upstairs, Bordenave was yelling at the scene-shifters, who were still engaged in changing the scenery. They were such a time; it was done on purpose; the prince would receive some of it on his head.
“Now then! shove away—all together!” exclaimed the chief of the gang.
At length the drop scene at the back was raised, and the stage was free. Mignon, who had been watching for Fauchery, seized this opportunity of continuing his delicate attentions. He caught him up in his strong arms, crying out, “Take care! that pole almost fell on you.”
And he carried him off, and even shook him before placing him on the ground again. Fauchery turned pale as the workmen roared with laughter, his lips quivered, and he was on the point of giving vent to his passion, whilst Mignon went on in a most good-natured sort of way, slapping him affectionately on the shoulder almost hard enough to double him up, and saying each time, “You know I am very anxious about your health! By Jove! I should be in a fine way if any accident happened to you!”
But a whisper passed from mouth to mouth, “The prince! the prince!” And every one looked towards the little door that gave access to the auditorium. At first one could only see Bordenave’s round back and his butcher’s neck, as he puffed and blowed and bent himself double in a series of obsequious bows. Then appeared the prince, tall and strong, wearing a fair beard, his complexion of a deep rose colour, and looking altogether like a solid man about town, whose well-shaped figure was discernible beneath an irreproachably fitting overcoat. He was followed by Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard. The corner of the theatre where they were was very dark, and they almost disappeared among the big ever-moving shadows. To speak to this son of a queen, the future inheritor of a throne, Bordenave had adopted the tones of a lion-tamer’s voice trembling with a pretended emotion. He kept saying:
“If your Highness will kindly follow me—Will Your Highness deign to pass this way? Your Highness, please to take care—”
The prince did not hurry himself in the least; on the contrary, he waited and watched the scene-shifters with a good deal of interest. A float had just been lowered from the flies, and the row of flaring gas-jets, encompassed in wire net-work, shed a brilliant light upon the stage. Muffat, never having been behind the scenes of a theatre before, was especially lost in astonishment, and was seized with an unpleasant sensation, a vague repugnance mixed with fear. He looked up towards the flies, where other floats, the gas-lights of which were turned down, appeared like so many constellations of little blue stars in all the chaos of the light wooden frame-work, and the ropes and pulleys of different sizes, of the hanging-stages, and the back-drops spread out aloft, looking like immense cloths hung out to dry.
“Let go!” suddenly exclaimed the head scene-shifter.
And the prince himself was obliged to warn the count. One of the drop-scenes