Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [76]
“Your Highness overwhelms me,” Bordenave was saying, still continuing to bow. “The theatre is not large; we do the best we can. Now, if Your Highness will deign to follow me—”
Count Muffat had already moved off in the direction of the passage leading to the dressing-rooms. The rather sharp incline of the stage surprised him, and his uneasiness was to a great extent caused by these boards, which seemed to move beneath his feet. Through the open trap-doors he could see the gas-lights burning beneath. It was quite an underground world, with deep and obscure abysses, from which arose the sound of men’s voices, and the musty smell peculiar to cellars. But, as he passed along, a slight incident detained him. Two little women, dressed for the third act, were conversing together before the peep-hole of the curtain. One of them, leaning forward and widening the opening with her fingers, so as to see better, was looking round the house.
“I see him,” she suddenly exclaimed. “Oh! what a mug!”
Bordenave, awfully scandalized, only restrained himself with difficulty from kicking her behind; but the prince smiled, looking delighted and excited at having overheard the words, whilst he gazed tenderly on the little woman, who didn’t care a fig for His Highness. She laughed impudently. However, Bordenave at length induced the prince to follow him. Count Muffat, all in a perspiration, removed his hat. What inconvenienced him most was the closeness of the atmosphere, which had become overheated and, so to say, thick, and in which hovered a very strong smell—that odour of behind the scenes, stinking of gas, the glue of the scenery, the mouldy dirt in out-of-the-way corners, and the unwashed bodies of the female supers. In the passage the oppressiveness increased. The stench of dirty water, the perfume of scented soaps, escaped from the dressing-rooms, mingled now and again with the poisonous exhalations of foul breaths. As he passed, the count rapidly glanced up the staircase, struck by the sudden flood of light and warmth which descended upon him. From above came sounds of people washing, laughing, and calling to one another, a great noise of opening and shutting of doors, emitting feminine odours, the musk of the make-up mixed with the smell of perspiring heads of yellowy-red hair. He did not linger, but hastened his footsteps, almost flying under the emotion caused by this sudden glimpse of a world hitherto unknown to him.
“Well, a theatre is a curious place, is it not?” observed the Marquis de Chouard, with the delighted manner of a man finding himself once more at home.
But Bordenave had at length reached Nana’s dressing-room at the end of the passage. He coolly turned the door handle; then, standing aside, said, “If Your Highness will please to enter.”
There was a cry of a woman taken by surprise, and one saw Nana, naked to the waist, run and hide herself behind a curtain, whilst her dresser, who had been occupied in drying her, was left standing with the towel in her hands.
“Oh! how stupid it is to enter a room like that!” exclaimed Nana from her hiding-place. “Don’t come in; you see very well you cannot come in!”
Bordenave seemed put out by this bashfulness. “Don’t run away, my dear; there is not the slightest necessity for doing so,” said he. “His Highness is here. Come, don’t be a child.” And, as she refused to appear, being slightly startled still, though, nevertheless, already beginning to laugh, he added, in a grumpy, paternal tone of voice,