Bewildered by her piercing outcry, Steiner stopped short. m.u.f.fat's unexpected presence annoyed him, for he feared an explanation and had been doing his best to avoid it these three months past. With blinking eyes he stood first on one leg, then on the other, looking embarra.s.sed the while and avoiding the count's gaze. He was out of breath, and as became a man who had rushed across Paris with good news, only to find himself involved in unforeseen trouble, his face was flushed and distorted.

"Que veux-tu, toi?" asked Nana roughly, using the second person singular in open mockery of the count.

"What--what do I--" he stammered. "I've got it for you--you know what."

"Eh?"

He hesitated. The day before yesterday she had given him to understand that if he could not find her a thousand francs to pay a bill with she would not receive him any more. For two days he had been loafing about the town in quest of the money and had at last made the sum up that very morning.

"The thousand francs!" he ended by declaring as he drew an envelope from his pocket.

Nana had not remembered.

"The thousand francs!" she cried. "D'you think I'm begging alms? Now look here, that's what I value your thousand francs at!"

And s.n.a.t.c.hing the envelope, she threw it full in his face. As became a prudent Hebrew, he picked it up slowly and painfully and then looked at the young woman with a dull expression of face. m.u.f.fat and he exchanged a despairing glance, while she put her arms akimbo in order to shout more loudly than before.

"Come now, will you soon have done insulting me? I'm glad you've come, too, dear boy, because now you see the clearance'll be quite complete.

Now then, gee up! Out you go!"

Then as they did not hurry in the least, for they were paralyzed:

"D'you mean to say I'm acting like a fool, eh? It's likely enough! But you've bored me too much! And, hang it all, I've had enough of swelldom!

If I die of what I'm doing--well, it's my fancy!"

They sought to calm her; they begged her to listen to reason.

"Now then, once, twice, thrice! Won't you go? Very well! Look there!

I've got company."

And with a brisk movement she flung wide the bedroom door. Whereupon in the middle of the tumbled bed the two men caught sight of Fontan. He had not expected to be shown off in this situation; nevertheless, he took things very easily, for he was used to sudden surprises on the stage.

Indeed, after the first shock he even hit upon a grimace calculated to tide him honorably over his difficulty; he "turned rabbit," as he phrased it, and stuck out his lips and wrinkled up his nose, so as completely to transform the lower half of his face. His base, satyrlike head seemed to exude incontinence. It was this man Fontan then whom Nana had been to fetch at the Varieties every day for a week past, for she was smitten with that fierce sort of pa.s.sion which the grimacing ugliness of a low comedian is wont to inspire in the genus courtesan.

"There!" she said, pointing him out with tragic gesture.

m.u.f.fat, who hitherto had pocketed everything, rebelled at this affront.

"b.i.t.c.h!" he stammered.

But Nana, who was once more in the bedroom, came back in order to have the last word.

"How am I a b.i.t.c.h? What about your wife?"

And she was off and, slamming the door with a bang, she noisily pushed to the bolt. Left alone, the two men gazed at one another in silence.

Zoe had just come into the room, but she did not drive them out. Nay, she spoke to them in the most sensible manner. As became a woman with a head on her shoulders, she decided that Madame's conduct was rather too much of a good thing. But she defended her, nonetheless: this union with the play actor couldn't last; the madness must be allowed to pa.s.s off!

The two men retired without uttering a sound. On the pavement outside they shook hands silently, as though swayed by a mutual sense of fraternity. Then they turned their backs on one another and went crawling off in opposite directions.

When at last m.u.f.fat entered his town house in the Rue Miromesnil his wife was just arriving. The two met on the great staircase, whose walls exhaled an icy chill. They lifted up their eyes and beheld one another.

The count still wore his muddy clothes, and his pale, bewildered face betrayed the prodigal returning from his debauch. The countess looked as though she were utterly f.a.gged out by a night in the train. She was dropping with sleep, but her hair had been brushed anyhow, and her eyes were deeply sunken.

CHAPTER VIII

We are in a little set of lodgings on the fourth floor in the Rue Veron at Montmartre. Nana and Fontan have invited a few friends to cut their Twelfth-Night cake with them. They are giving their housewarming, though they have been only three days settled.

They had no fixed intention of keeping house together, but the whole thing had come about suddenly in the first glow of the honeymoon.

After her grand blowup, when she had turned the count and the banker so vigorously out of doors, Nana felt the world crumbling about her feet.

She estimated the situation at a glance; the creditors would swoop down on her anteroom, would mix themselves up with her love affairs and threaten to sell her little all unless she continued to act sensibly.

Then, too, there would be no end of disputes and carking anxieties if she attempted to save her furniture from their clutches. And so she preferred giving up everything. Besides, the flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was plaguing her to death. It was so stupid with its great gilded rooms! In her access of tenderness for Fontan she began dreaming of a pretty little bright chamber. Indeed, she returned to the old ideals of the florist days, when her highest ambition was to have a rosewood cupboard with a plate-gla.s.s door and a bed hung with blue "reps." In the course of two days she sold what she could smuggle out of the house in the way of knickknacks and jewelry and then disappeared, taking with her ten thousand francs and never even warning the porter's wife. It was a plunge into the dark, a merry spree; never a trace was left behind. In this way she would prevent the men from coming dangling after her. Fontain was very nice. He did not say no to anything but just let her do as she liked. Nay, he even displayed an admirable spirit of comradeship. He had, on his part, nearly seven thousand francs, and despite the fact that people accused him of stinginess, he consented to add them to the young woman's ten thousand. The sum struck them as a solid foundation on which to begin housekeeping. And so they started away, drawing from their common h.o.a.rd, in order to hire and furnish the two rooms in the Rue Veron, and sharing everything together like old friends. In the early days it was really delicious.

On Twelfth Night Mme Lerat and Louiset were the first to arrive. As Fontan had not yet come home, the old lady ventured to give expression to her fears, for she trembled to see her niece renouncing the chance of wealth.

"Oh, Aunt, I love him so dearly!" cried Nana, pressing her hands to her heart with the prettiest of gestures.

This phrase produced an extraordinary effect on Mme Lerat, and tears came into her eyes.

"That's true," she said with an air of conviction. "Love before all things!"

And with that she went into raptures over the prettiness of the rooms.

Nana took her to see the bedroom, the parlor and the very kitchen.

Gracious goodness, it wasn't a vast place, but then, they had painted it afresh and put up new wallpapers. Besides, the sun shone merrily into it during the daytime.

Thereupon Mme Lerat detained the young woman in the bedroom, while Louiset installed himself behind the charwoman in the kitchen in order to watch a chicken being roasted. If, said Mme Lerat, she permitted herself to say what was in her mind, it was because Zoe had just been at her house. Zoe had stayed courageously in the breach because she was devoted to her mistress. Madame would pay her later on; she was in no anxiety about that! And amid the breakup of the Boulevard Haussmann establishment it was she who showed the creditors a bold front; it was she who conducted a dignified retreat, saving what she could from the wreck and telling everyone that her mistress was traveling. She never once gave them her address. Nay, through fear of being followed, she even deprived herself of the pleasure of calling on Madame.

Nevertheless, that same morning she had run round to Mme Lerat's because matters were taking a new turn. The evening before creditors in the persons of the upholsterer, the charcoal merchant and the laundress had put in an appearance and had offered to give Madame an extension of time. Nay, they had even proposed to advance Madame a very considerable amount if only Madame would return to her flat and conduct herself like a sensible person. The aunt repeated Zoe's words. Without doubt there was a gentleman behind it all.

"I'll never consent!" declared Nana in great disgust. "Ah, they're a pretty lot those tradesmen! Do they think I'm to be sold so that they can get their bills paid? Why, look here, I'd rather die of hunger than deceive Fontan."

"That's what I said," averred Mme Lerat. "'My niece,' I said, 'is too n.o.ble-hearted!'"

Nana, however, was much vexed to learn that La Mignotte was being sold and that Labordette was buying it for Caroline Hequet at an absurdly low price. It made her angry with that clique. Oh, they were a regular cheap lot, in spite of their airs and graces! Yes, by Jove, she was worth more than the whole lot of them!

"They can have their little joke out," she concluded, "but money will never give them true happiness! Besides, you know, Aunt, I don't even know now whether all that set are alive or not. I'm much too happy."

At that very moment Mme Maloir entered, wearing one of those hats of which she alone understood the shape. It was delightful meeting again.

Mme Maloir explained that magnificence frightened her and that NOW, from time to time, she would come back for her game of bezique. A second visit was paid to the different rooms in the lodgings, and in the kitchen Nana talked of economy in the presence of the charwoman, who was basting the fowl, and said that a servant would have cost too much and that she was herself desirous of looking after things. Louiset was gazing beatifically at the roasting process.

But presently there was a loud outburst of voices. Fontan had come in with Bosc and Prulliere, and the company could now sit down to table.

The soup had been already served when Nana for the third time showed off the lodgings.

"Ah, dear children, how comfortable you are here!" Bosc kept repeating, simply for the sake of pleasing the chums who were standing the dinner.

At bottom the subject of the "nook," as he called it, nowise touched him.

In the bedroom he harped still more vigorously on the amiable note.

Ordinarily he was wont to treat women like cattle, and the idea of a man bothering himself about one of the dirty brutes excited within him the only angry feelings of which, in his comprehensive, drunken disdain of the universe, he was still capable.

"Ah, ah, the villains," he continued with a wink, "they've done this on the sly. Well, you were certainly right. It will be charming, and, by heaven, we'll come and see you!"