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Updated: May 3, 2025
"What d'you mean?" he asked, turning round and recognizing La Faloise. "Why, about that supper tomorrow. You might easily have got me invited." Fauchery was at length about to state his reasons when Vandeuvres came back to tell him: "It appears it isn't a girl of Foucarmont's. It's that man's flame out there. She won't be able to come. What a piece of bad luck!
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."
This affectation of cynicism bored the other gentlemen, and Foucarmont contented himself by saying: "Ask your cousin, dear boy. Here he is." "Jove, it's a happy thought!" cried La Faloise. "I bet ten louis she has thighs." Fauchery did indeed come up. As became a constant inmate of the house, he had gone round by the dining room in order to avoid the crowded doors.
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.
"It will be very fine," said the count, whose square-cut, regular-featured face retained a certain gravity. "I visited the Champ de Mars today and returned thence truly astonished." "They say that things won't be ready in time," La Faloise ventured to remark. "There's infinite confusion there " But the count interrupted him in his severe voice: "Things will be ready. The emperor desires it."
In the first carriage Maria Blond and Tatan Nene were lolling backward like a pair of duchesses, their skirts swelling forth over the wheels, and as they passed they cast disdainful glances at the honest women who were walking afoot. Then came Gaga, filling up a whole seat and half smothering La Faloise beside her so that little but his small anxious face was visible.
Nana then became the avenger; the girl born among the social filth of the faubourgs; the golden fly sprung from the rottenness below, that was tolerated and concealed, carrying in the fluttering of its wings the ferment of destruction, rising and contaminating the aristocracy, poisoning men only by alighting upon them, in the palaces through whose windows it entered; the unconscious instrument of ruin and death fierce flame of Vandeuvres, the melancholy fate of Foucarmont, lost in the Chinese waters, the disaster of Steiner, reduced to live as an honest man, the imbecility of La Faloise and the tragic ruin of the Muffats, and the white corpse of Georges, watched by Philippe, come out of prison the day before, when the air of the epoch was so contaminated that she herself was infected, and died of malignant smallpox, caught at the death-bed of her son Louiset, while Paris passed beneath her windows, intoxicated, possessed by the frenzy of war, rushing to general ruin.
Gaga behaved meltingly because she had felt the young man's knee gently placed against her own. He was blushing hotly and lisping as elegantly as ever. She weighed him at a glance. Not a very heavy little gentleman, to be sure, but then she wasn't hard to please. La Faloise obtained her address. "Just look there," murmured Vandeuvres to Clarisse. "I think Gaga's doing you out of your Hector."
He's a gone coon!" La Faloise disdainfully rejoined. "He jolly well choused himself, he did, if he thought he could make us sit up with his roast-meat story! Not a soul mentions it now. Blotted out, done for, buried that's what's the matter with Vandeuvres! Here's to the next man!" Then as Steiner shook hands with him: "You know Nana's just arrived. Oh, my boys, it was a state entry.
But Georges grew excited and answered with an "I can tell, sir!" which set them all laughing. In a word, as Steiner put it, it was all a very funny kettle of fish! The buffet was gradually invaded by the crowd, and, still keeping together, they vacated their positions there. La Faloise stared brazenly at the women as though he believed himself to be Mabille.
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