Nana, The Miller\'s Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille

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FOUR SHORT STORIES

By Emile Zola


CONTENTS:

NANA

THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER

CAPTAIN BURLE

THE DEATH OF OLIVIER BACAILLE




NANA

by

Emile Zola



CHAPTER I


At nine o'clock in the evening the body of the house at the Theatres des
Varietes was still all but empty. A few individuals, it is true, were
sitting quietly waiting in the balcony and stalls, but these were lost,
as it were, among the ranges of seats whose coverings of cardinal
velvet loomed in the subdued light of the dimly burning luster. A shadow
enveloped the great red splash of the curtain, and not a sound came from
the stage, the unlit footlights, the scattered desks of the orchestra.
It was only high overhead in the third gallery, round the domed ceiling
where nude females and children flew in heavens which had turned green
in the gaslight, that calls and laughter were audible above a continuous
hubbub of voices, and heads in women's and workmen's caps were ranged,
row above row, under the wide-vaulted bays with their gilt-surrounding
adornments. Every few seconds an attendant would make her appearance,
bustling along with tickets in her hand and piloting in front of her a
gentleman and a lady, who took their seats, he in his evening dress,
she sitting slim and undulant beside him while her eyes wandered slowly
round the house.

Two young men appeared in the stalls; they kept standing and looked
about them.

"Didn't I say so, Hector?" cried the elder of the two, a tall fellow
with little black mustaches. "We're too early! You might quite well have
allowed me to finish my cigar."

An attendant was passing.

"Oh, Monsieur Fauchery," she said familiarly, "it won't begin for half
an hour yet!"

"Then why do they advertise for nine o'clock?" muttered Hector, whose
long thin face assumed an expression of vexation. "Only this morning
Clarisse, who's in the piece, swore that they'd begin at nine o'clock
punctually."

For a moment they remained silent and, looking upward, scanned the
shadowy boxes. But the green paper with which these were hung rendered
them more shadowy still. Down below, under the dress circle, the lower
boxes were buried in utter night. In those on the second tier there was
only one stout lady, who was stranded, as it were, on the velvet-covered
balustrade in front of her. On the right hand and on the left, between
lofty pilasters, the stage boxes, bedraped with long-fringed scalloped
hangings, remained untenanted. The house with its white and gold,
relieved by soft green tones, lay only half disclosed to view, as though
full of a fine dust shed from the little jets of flame in the great
glass luster.

"Did you get your stage box for Lucy?" asked Hector.

"Yes," replied his companion, "but I had some trouble to get it. Oh,
there's no danger of Lucy coming too early!"

He stifled a slight yawn; then after a pause:

"You're in luck's way, you are, since you haven't been at a first night
before. The Blonde Venus will be the event of the year. People have been
talking about it for six months. Oh, such music, my dear boy! Such a
sly dog, Bordenave! He knows his business and has kept this for the
exhibition season." Hector was religiously attentive. He asked a
question.

"And Nana, the new star who's going to play Venus, d'you know her?"

"There you are; you're beginning again!" cried Fauchery, casting up his
arms. "Ever since this morning people have been dreeing me with Nana.
I've met more than twenty people, and it's Nana here and Nana there!
What do I know? Am I acquainted with all the light ladies in Paris? Nana
is an invention of Bordenave's! It must be a fine one!"

He calmed himself, but the emptiness of the house, the dim light of
the luster, the churchlike sense of self-absorption which the place
inspired, full as it was of whispering voices and the sound of doors
banging--all these got on his nerves.

"No, by Jove," he said all of a sudden, "one's hair turns gray here.
I--I'm going out. Perhaps we shall find Bordenave downstairs. He'll give
us information about things."

Downstairs in the great marble-paved entrance hall, where the box office
was, the public were beginning to show themselves. Through the three
open gates might have been observed, passing in, the ardent life of the
boulevards, which were all astir and aflare under the fine April night.
The sound of carriage wheels kept stopping suddenly; carriage doors were
noisily shut again, and people began entering in small groups, taking
their stand before the ticket bureau and climbing the double flight of
stairs at the end of the hall, up which the women loitered with swaying
hips. Under the crude gaslight, round the pale, naked walls of the
entrance hall, which with its scanty First Empire decorations suggested
the peristyle of a toy temple, there was a flaring display of lofty
yellow posters bearing the name of "Nana" in great black letters.
Gentlemen, who seemed to be glued to the entry, were reading them;
others, standing about, were engaged in talk, barring the doors of the
house in so doing, while hard by the box office a thickset man with
an extensive, close-shaven visage was giving rough answers to such as
pressed to engage seats.

"There's Bordenave," said Fauchery as he came down the stairs. But the
manager had already seen him.

"Ah, ah! You're a nice fellow!" he shouted at him from a distance.
"That's the way you give me a notice, is it? Why, I opened my Figaro
this morning--never a word!"

"Wait a bit," replied Fauchery. "I certainly must make the acquaintance
of your Nana before talking about her. Besides, I've made no promises."

Then to put an end to the discussion, he introduced his cousin, M.
Hector de la Faloise, a young man who had come to finish his education
in Paris. The manager took the young man's measure at a glance. But
Hector returned his scrutiny with deep interest. This, then, was that
Bordenave, that showman of the sex who treated women like a convict
overseer, that clever fellow who was always at full steam over some
advertising dodge, that shouting, spitting, thigh-slapping fellow, that
cynic with the soul of a policeman! Hector was under the impression that
he ought to discover some amiable observation for the occasion.

"Your theater--" he began in dulcet tones.

Bordenave interrupted him with a savage phrase, as becomes a man who
dotes on frank situations.

"Call it my brothel!"

At this Fauchery laughed approvingly, while La Faloise stopped with his
pretty speech strangled in his throat, feeling very much shocked and
striving to appear as though he enjoyed the phrase. The manager had
dashed off to shake hands with a dramatic critic whose column had
considerable influence. When he returned La Faloise was recovering. He
was afraid of being treated as a provincial if he showed himself too
much nonplused.

"I have been told," he began again, longing positively to find something
to say, "that Nana has a delicious voice."

"Nana?" cried the manager, shrugging his shoulders. "The voice of a
squirt!"

The young man made haste to add:

"Besides being a first-rate comedian!"

"She? Why she's a lump! She has no notion what to do with her hands and
feet."

La Faloise blushed a little. He had lost his bearings. He stammered:

"I wouldn't have missed this first representation tonight for the world.
I was aware that your theater--"

"Call it my brothel," Bordenave again interpolated with the frigid
obstinacy of a man convinced.

Meanwhile Fauchery, with extreme calmness, was looking at the women as
they came in. He went to his cousin's rescue when he saw him all at sea
and doubtful whether to laugh or to be angry.

"Do be pleasant to Bordenave--call his theater what he wishes you to,
since it amuses him. And you, my dear fellow, don't keep us waiting
about for nothing. If your Nana neither sings nor acts you'll find
you've made a blunder, that's all. It's what I'm afraid of, if the truth
be told."

"A blunder! A blunder!" shouted the manager, and his face grew purple.
"Must a woman know how to act and sing? Oh, my chicken, you're too
STOOPID. Nana has other good points, by heaven!--something which is as
good as all the other things put together. I've smelled it out; it's
deuced pronounced with her, or I've got the scent of an idiot. You'll
see, you'll see! She's only got to come on, and all the house will be
gaping at her."

He had held up his big hands which were trembling under the influence of
his eager enthusiasm, and now, having relieved his feelings, he lowered
his voice and grumbled to himself:

"Yes, she'll go far! Oh yes, s'elp me, she'll go far! A skin--oh, what a
skin she's got!"

Then as Fauchery began questioning him he consented to enter into a
detailed explanation, couched in phraseology so crude that Hector de la
Faloise felt slightly disgusted. He had been thick with Nana, and he was
anxious to start her on the stage. Well, just about that time he was in
search of a Venus. He--he never let a woman encumber him for any
length of time; he preferred to let the public enjoy the benefit of her
forthwith. But there was a deuce of a row going on in his shop, which
had been turned topsy-turvy by that big damsel's advent. Rose Mignon,
his star, a comic actress of much subtlety and an adorable singer, was
daily threatening to leave him in the lurch, for she was furious and
guessed the presence of a rival. And as for the bill, good God! What a
noise there had been about it all! It had ended by his deciding to print
the names of the two actresses in the same-sized type. But it wouldn't
do to bother him. Whenever any of his little women, as he called
them--Simonne or Clarisse, for instance--wouldn't go the way he
wanted her to he just up with his foot and caught her one in the rear.
Otherwise life was impossible. Oh yes, he sold 'em; HE knew what they
fetched, the wenches!

"Tut!" he cried, breaking off short. "Mignon and Steiner. Always
together. You know, Steiner's getting sick of Rose; that's why the
husband dogs his steps now for fear of his slipping away."

On the pavement outside, the row of gas jets flaring on the cornice of
the theater cast a patch of brilliant light. Two small trees, violently
green, stood sharply out against it, and a column gleamed in such vivid
illumination that one could read the notices thereon at a distance, as
though in broad daylight, while the dense night of the boulevard beyond
was dotted with lights above the vague outline of an ever-moving crowd.
Many men did not enter the theater at once but stayed outside to talk
while finishing their cigars under the rays of the line of gas jets,
which shed a sallow pallor on their faces and silhouetted their short
black shadows on the asphalt. Mignon, a very tall, very broad fellow,
with the square-shaped head of a strong man at a fair, was forcing a
passage through the midst of the groups and dragging on his arm the
banker Steiner, an exceedingly small man with a corporation already in
evidence and a round face framed in a setting of beard which was already
growing gray.

"Well," said Bordenave to the banker, "you met her yesterday in my
office."

"Ah! It was she, was it?" ejaculated Steiner. "I suspected as much. Only
I was coming out as she was going in, and I scarcely caught a glimpse of
her."

Mignon was listening with half-closed eyelids and nervously twisting a
great diamond ring round his finger. He had quite understood that Nana
was in question. Then as Bordenave was drawing a portrait of his new
star, which lit a flame in the eyes of the banker, he ended by joining
in the conversation.

"Oh, let her alone, my dear fellow; she's a low lot! The public will
show her the door in quick time. Steiner, my laddie, you know that my
wife is waiting for you in her box."

He wanted to take possession of him again. But Steiner would not quit
Bordenave. In front of them a stream of people was crowding and crushing
against the ticket office, and there was a din of voices, in the midst
of which the name of Nana sounded with all the melodious vivacity of its
two syllables. The men who stood planted in front of the notices kept
spelling it out loudly; others, in an interrogative tone, uttered it as
they passed; while the women, at once restless and smiling, repeated
it softly with an air of surprise. Nobody knew Nana. Whence had Nana
fallen? And stories and jokes, whispered from ear to ear, went the round
of the crowd. The name was a caress in itself; it was a pet name, the
very familiarity of which suited every lip. Merely through enunciating
it thus, the throng worked itself into a state of gaiety and became
highly good natured. A fever of curiosity urged it forward, that kind
of Parisian curiosity which is as violent as an access of positive
unreason. Everybody wanted to see Nana. A lady had the flounce of her
dress torn off; a man lost his hat.

"Oh, you're asking me too many questions about it!" cried Bordenave,
whom a score of men were besieging with their queries. "You're going to
see her, and I'm off; they want me."

He disappeared, enchanted at having fired his public. Mignon shrugged
his shoulders, reminding Steiner that Rose was awaiting him in order to
show him the costume she was about to wear in the first act.

"By Jove! There's Lucy out there, getting down from her carriage," said
La Faloise to Fauchery.

It was, in fact, Lucy Stewart, a plain little woman, some forty years
old, with a disproportionately long neck, a thin, drawn face, a heavy
mouth, but withal of such brightness, such graciousness of manner, that
she was really very charming. She was bringing with her Caroline Hequet
and her mother--Caroline a woman of a cold type of beauty, the mother a
person of a most worthy demeanor, who looked as if she were stuffed with
straw.

"You're coming with us? I've kept a place for you," she said to
Fauchery. "Oh, decidedly not! To see nothing!" he made answer. "I've a
stall; I prefer being in the stalls."

Lucy grew nettled. Did he not dare show himself in her company? Then,
suddenly restraining herself and skipping to another topic:

"Why haven't you told me that you knew Nana?"

"Nana! I've never set eyes on her."

"Honor bright? I've been told that you've been to bed with her."

But Mignon, coming in front of them, his finger to his lips, made them
a sign to be silent. And when Lucy questioned him he pointed out a young
man who was passing and murmured:

"Nana's fancy man."

Everybody looked at him. He was a pretty fellow. Fauchery recognized
him; it was Daguenet, a young man who had run through three hundred
thousand francs in the pursuit of women and who now was dabbling
in stocks, in order from time to time to treat them to bouquets and
dinners. Lucy made the discovery that he had fine eyes.

"Ah, there's Blanche!" she cried. "It's she who told me that you had
been to bed with Nana."

Blanche de Sivry, a great fair girl, whose good-looking face showed
signs of growing fat, made her appearance in the company of a spare,
sedulously well-groomed and extremely distinguished man.

"The Count Xavier de Vandeuvres," Fauchery whispered in his companion's
ear.

The count and the journalist shook hands, while Blanche and Lucy entered
into a brisk, mutual explanation. One of them in blue, the other in
rose-pink, they stood blocking the way with their deeply flounced
skirts, and Nana's name kept repeating itself so shrilly in their
conversation that people began to listen to them. The Count de
Vandeuvres carried Blanche off. But by this time Nana's name was echoing
more loudly than ever round the four walls of the entrance hall amid
yearnings sharpened by delay. Why didn't the play begin? The men pulled
out their watches; late-comers sprang from their conveyances before
these had fairly drawn up; the groups left the sidewalk, where the
passers-by were crossing the now-vacant space of gaslit pavement,
craning their necks, as they did so, in order to get a peep into the
theater. A street boy came up whistling and planted himself before a
notice at the door, then cried out, "Woa, Nana!" in the voice of a tipsy
man and hied on his way with a rolling gait and a shuffling of his old
boots. A laugh had arisen at this. Gentlemen of unimpeachable appearance
repeated: "Nana, woa, Nana!" People were crushing; a dispute arose at
the ticket office, and there was a growing clamor caused by the hum of
voices calling on Nana, demanding Nana in one of those accesses of silly
facetiousness and sheer animalism which pass over mobs.

But above all the din the bell that precedes the rise of the curtain
became audible. "They've rung; they've rung!" The rumor reached the
boulevard, and thereupon followed a stampede, everyone wanting to pass
in, while the servants of the theater increased their forces. Mignon,
with an anxious air, at last got hold of Steiner again, the latter not
having been to see Rose's costume. At the very first tinkle of the bell
La Faloise had cloven a way through the crowd, pulling Fauchery with
him, so as not to miss the opening scene. But all this eagerness on the
part of the public irritated Lucy Stewart. What brutes were these people
to be pushing women like that! She stayed in the rear of them all with
Caroline Hequet and her mother. The entrance hall was now empty, while
beyond it was still heard the long-drawn rumble of the boulevard.

"As though they were always funny, those pieces of theirs!" Lucy kept
repeating as she climbed the stair.

In the house Fauchery and La Faloise, in front of their stalls, were
gazing about them anew. By this time the house was resplendent. High
jets of gas illumined the great glass chandelier with a rustling of
yellow and rosy flames, which rained down a stream of brilliant light
from dome to floor. The cardinal velvets of the seats were shot
with hues of lake, while all the gilding shone again, the soft green
decorations chastening its effect beneath the too-decided paintings of
the ceiling. The footlights were turned up and with a vivid flood of
brilliance lit up the curtain, the heavy purple drapery of which had all
the richness befitting a palace in a fairy tale and contrasted with the
meanness of the proscenium, where cracks showed the plaster under the
gilding. The place was already warm. At their music stands the orchestra
were tuning their instruments amid a delicate trilling of flutes, a
stifled tooting of horns, a singing of violin notes, which floated forth
amid the increasing uproar of voices. All the spectators were talking,
jostling, settling themselves in a general assault upon seats; and the
hustling rush in the side passages was now so violent that every door
into the house was laboriously admitting the inexhaustible flood of
people. There were signals, rustlings of fabrics, a continual march past
of skirts and head dresses, accentuated by the black hue of a dress coat
or a surtout. Notwithstanding this, the rows of seats were little by
little getting filled up, while here and there a light toilet stood out
from its surroundings, a head with a delicate profile bent forward under
its chignon, where flashed the lightning of a jewel. In one of the boxes
the tip of a bare shoulder glimmered like snowy silk. Other ladies,
sitting at ease, languidly fanned themselves, following with their gaze
the pushing movements of the crowd, while young gentlemen, standing
up in the stalls, their waistcoats cut very low, gardenias in their
buttonholes, pointed their opera glasses with gloved finger tips.

It was now that the two cousins began searching for the faces of those
they knew. Mignon and Steiner were together in a lower box, sitting side
by side with their arms leaning for support on the velvet balustrade.
Blanche de Sivry seemed to be in sole possession of a stage box on the
level of the stalls. But La Faloise examined Daguenet before anyone
else, he being in occupation of a stall two rows in front of his own.
Close to him, a very young man, seventeen years old at the outside, some
truant from college, it may be, was straining wide a pair of fine eyes
such as a cherub might have owned. Fauchery smiled when he looked at
him.

"Who is that lady in the balcony?" La Faloise asked suddenly. "The lady
with a young girl in blue beside her."

He pointed out a large woman who was excessively tight-laced, a woman
who had been a blonde and had now become white and yellow of tint, her
broad face, reddened with paint, looking puffy under a rain of little
childish curls.

"It's Gaga," was Fauchery's simple reply, and as this name seemed to
astound his cousin, he added:

"You don't know Gaga? She was the delight of the early years of Louis
Philippe. Nowadays she drags her daughter about with her wherever she
goes."

La Faloise never once glanced at the young girl. The sight of Gaga moved
him; his eyes did not leave her again. He still found her very good
looking but he dared not say so.

Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra attacked
the overture. People still kept coming in; the stir and noise were on
the increase. Among that public, peculiar to first nights and never
subject to change, there were little subsections composed of intimate
friends, who smilingly forgathered again. Old first-nighters, hat on
head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and kept exchanging salutations.
All Paris was there, the Paris of literature, of finance and of
pleasure. There were many journalists, several authors, a number of
stock-exchange people and more courtesans than honest women. It was
a singularly mixed world, composed, as it was, of all the talents and
tarnished by all the vices, a world where the same fatigue and the same
fever played over every face. Fauchery, whom his cousin was questioning,
showed him the boxes devoted to the newspapers and to the clubs and
then named the dramatic critics--a lean, dried-up individual with
thin, spiteful lips and, chief of all, a big fellow with a good-natured
expression, lolling on the shoulder of his neighbor, a young miss over
whom he brooded with tender and paternal eyes.

But he interrupted himself on seeing La Faloise in the act of bowing to
some persons who occupied the box opposite. He appeared surprised.

"What?" he queried. "You know the Count Muffat de Beuville?"

"Oh, for a long time back," replied Hector. "The Muffats had a property
near us. I often go to their house. The count's with his wife and his
father-in-law, the Marquis de Chouard."

And with some vanity--for he was happy in his cousin's astonishment--he
entered into particulars. The marquis was a councilor of state; the
count had recently been appointed chamberlain to the empress. Fauchery,
who had caught up his opera glass, looked at the countess, a plump
brunette with a white skin and fine dark eyes.

"You shall present me to them between the acts," he ended by saying.
"I have already met the count, but I should like to go to them on their
Tuesdays."

Energetic cries of "Hush" came from the upper galleries. The overture
had begun, but people were still coming in. Late arrivals were obliging
whole rows of spectators to rise; the doors of boxes were banging; loud
voices were heard disputing in the passages. And there was no cessation
of the sound of many conversations, a sound similar to the loud
twittering of talkative sparrows at close of day. All was in confusion;
the house was a medley of heads and arms which moved to and fro, their
owners seating themselves or trying to make themselves comfortable or,
on the other hand, excitedly endeavoring to remain standing so as to
take a final look round. The cry of "Sit down, sit down!" came fiercely
from the obscure depths of the pit. A shiver of expectation traversed
the house: at last people were going to make the acquaintance of this
famous Nana with whom Paris had been occupying itself for a whole week!

Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down among
occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech. And amid this swooning
murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra struck up the
small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm bubbling with
roguish laughter. The public were titillated; they were already on the
grin. But the gang of clappers in the foremost rows of the pit applauded
furiously. The curtain rose.

"By George!" exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away. "There's a man
with Lucy."

He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the
front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying. At the back of this box
were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline's mother and the
side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light hair and an
irreproachable getup.

"Do look!" La Faloise again insisted. "There's a man there."

Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he
turned round again directly.

"Oh, it's Labordette," he muttered in a careless voice, as though that
gentle man's presence ought to strike all the world as though both
natural and immaterial.

Behind the cousins people shouted "Silence!" They had to cease talking.
A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches of heads,
all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to topmost gallery.
The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in Olympus, a pasteboard
Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the throne of Jupiter on the
right of the stage. First of all Iris and Ganymede, aided by a troupe of
celestial attendants, sang a chorus while they arranged the seats of
the gods for the council. Once again the prearranged applause of the
clappers alone burst forth; the public, a little out of their depth, sat
waiting. Nevertheless, La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one of
Bordenave's little women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with a
great scarf of the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her waist.