He abandoned himself to the power of love and of faith, those twin levers which move the world. And despite all the struggles of his reason this bedroom of Nana’s always filled him with madness, and he would sink shuddering under the almighty dominion of sex, just as he would swoon before the vast unknown of heaven.
The fly that had flown up from the ordure of the slums, bringing with it the , had poisoned all these men by merely alighting on them. It was well done–it was just. She had avenged the beggars and the wastrels from whose caste she issued. And while, metaphorically speaking, her sex rose in a halo of glory and beamed over prostrate victims like a mounting sun shining brightly over a field of carnage, the actual woman remained as unconscious as a splendid animal, and in her ignorance of her mission was the good-natured courtesan to the last dermes vs medilase.
“He’s gone then?” she asked the maid who presented herself.
“Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul went away not ten minutes back. As Madame was tired, he did not wish to wake her. But he ordered me to tell Madame that he would come tomorrow.”
As she spoke Zoe, the lady’s maid, opened the outer shutter. A flood of daylight entered. Zoe, a dark brunette with hair in little plaits, had a long canine face, at once livid and full of seams, a snub nose, thick lips and two black eyes in continual movement.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” repeated Nana, who was not yet wide awake, “is tomorrow the day?”
“Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul has always come on the Wednesday.”
“No, now I remember,” said the young woman, sitting up. “It’s all changed. I wanted to tell him so this morning. He would run against the nigger! We should have a nice to-do dermes!”
“Perhaps Madame has not seen the papers. There’s a very nice article in the Figaro.”
He had brought the journal. Mme Lerat put on her spectacles and read the article aloud, standing in front of the window as she did so. She had the build of a policeman, and she drew herself up to her full height, while her nostrils seemed to compress themselves whenever she uttered a gallant epithet. It was a notice by Fauchery, written just after the performance, and it consisted of a couple of very glowing columns, full of witty sarcasm about the artist and of broad admiration for the woman reenex cps.
“Excellent!” Francis kept repeating.
