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Updated: June 1, 2025
Vandeuvres was very nervous, and he had those same clear eyes, shot with little flames, which so frightened her the night he spoke of burning himself and his horses together. As they crossed over the course she spoke low and familiarly. "I say, do explain this to me. Why are the odds on your filly changing?" He trembled, and this sentence escaped him: "Ah, they're talking, are they?
"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.
But Vandeuvres turned and came and shook hands with him. And forthwith, in his delight at the meeting and with a sudden desire to be confidential, Fauchery buttonholed him and said in a low voice: "It's tomorrow. Are you going?" "Egad, yes." "At midnight, at her house. "I know, I know. I'm going with Blanche."
He seemed in a hurry to sweep everything away, down to the ruins of the old tower built by a Vandeuvres under Philip Augustus. He was mad for ruin and thought it a great thing to leave the last golden bezants of his coat of arms in the grasp of this courtesan, whom the world of Paris desired.
Labordette hurried Nana but retraced his steps in order to show her a little man talking with Vandeuvres at some distance from the rest. "Dear me, there's Price!" he said. "Ah yes, the man who's mounting me," she murmured laughingly. And she declared him to be exquisitely ugly. All jockeys struck her as looking idiotic, doubtless, she said, because they were prevented from growing bigger.
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.
When she drew near Fauchery, who was chatting with her husband and Vandeuvres, she noticed that they grew suddenly silent; accordingly she did not stop but handed the cup of tea she was offering to Georges Hugon beyond them. "It's a lady who desires your company at supper," the journalist gaily continued, addressing Count Muffat.
Then, too, Nana had a good-natured expression, while with the countess it was hard to decide she might have been a cat, sleeping with claws withdrawn and paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous quiver. "All the same, one could have her," declared Fauchery. Vandeuvres stripped her at a glance. "Yes, one could, all the same," he said. "But I think nothing of the thighs, you know.
From Vandeuvres she would certainly derive from eight to ten thousand francs a month, and this would prove very useful as pocket money. In those days he was finishing the last of his fortune in an access of burning, feverish folly. His horses and Lucy had devoured three of his farms, and at one gulp Nana was going to swallow his last chateau, near Amiens.
Georges, who could not leave without his mother, had stationed himself at the door, where he gave the exact address. "Third floor, door on your left." Yet before going out Fauchery gave a final glance. Vandeuvres had again resumed his position among the ladies and was laughing with Leonide de Chezelles.
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