Domestic fiction; Married women -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Working class women -- Fiction
Nana was being modest, because she thought it nice on such a day. She
continued to look at the presents on the chest of drawers, affectedly
lowering her eyelids and pretending not to understand her father’s
naughty words. But the zinc-worker was an awful plague on the nights
when he had had too much. Poking his face right against her neck, he
said:
“I’ll give you white dresses! So the finery tickles your fancy. They
excite your imagination. Just you cut away from there, you ugly little
brat! Move your hands about, bundle them all into a drawer!”
Nana, with bowed head, did not answer a word. She had taken up the
little tulle cap and was asking her mother how much it cost. And as
Coupeau thrust out his hand to seize hold of the cap, it was Gervaise
who pushed him aside exclaiming:
“Do leave the child alone! She’s very good, she’s doing no harm.”
Then the zinc-worker let out in real earnest.
“Ah! the viragos! The mother and daughter, they make the pair. It’s a
nice thing to go to church just to leer at the men. Dare to say it
isn’t true, little slattern! I’ll dress you in a sack, just to disgust
you, you and your priests. I don’t want you to be taught anything worse
than you know already. _Mon Dieu!_ Just listen to me, both of you!”
At this Nana turned round in a fury, whilst Gervaise had to spread out
her arms to protect the things which Coupeau talked of tearing. The
child looked her father straight in the face; then, forgetting the
modest bearing inculcated by her confessor, she said, clinching her
teeth: “Pig!”
As soon as the zinc-worker had had his soup he went off to sleep. On
the morrow he awoke in a very good humor. He still felt a little of the
booze of the day before but only just sufficient to make him amiable.
He assisted at the dressing of the child, deeply affected by the white
dress and finding that a mere nothing gave the little vermin quite the
look of a young lady.
The two families started off together for the church. Nana and Pauline
walked first, their prayer-books in their hands and holding down their
veils on account of the wind; they did not speak but were bursting with
delight at seeing people come to their shop-doors, and they smiled
primly and devoutly every time they heard anyone say as they passed
that they looked very nice. Madame Boche and Madame Lorilleux lagged
behind, because they were interchanging their ideas about Clump-clump,
a gobble-all, whose daughter would never have been confirmed if the
relations had not found everything for her; yes, everything, even a new
chemise, out of respect for the holy altar. Madame Lorilleux was rather
concerned about the dress, calling Nana a dirty thing every time the
child got dust on her skirt by brushing against the store fronts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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