Эмиль Золя
Four Short Stories By Emile Zola
Such a tone was not germane either to his temperament or his habits, and Nana was rather surprised than wounded. Besides, he was ashamed of himself directly afterward, and when she begged him in a dry voice to behave politely he apologized. For some time past he had suffered from such sudden changes of temper. No one in the Paris of pleasure or of society was ignorant of the fact that he was playing his last trump card today. If his horses did not win, if, moreover, they lost him the considerable sums wagered upon them, it would mean utter disaster and collapse for him, and the bulwark of his credit and the lofty appearance which, though undermined, he still kept up, would come ruining noisily down. Moreover, no one was ignorant of the fact that Nana was the devouring siren who had finished him off, who had been the last to attack his crumbling fortunes and to sweep up what remained of them. Stories were told of wild whims and fancies, of gold scattered to the four winds, of a visit to Baden-Baden, where she had not left him enough to pay the hotel bill, of a handful of diamonds cast on the fire during an evening of drunkenness in order to see whether they would burn like coal. Little by little her great limbs and her coarse, plebeian way of laughing had gained complete mastery over this elegant, degenerate son of an ancient race. At that time he was risking his all, for he had been so utterly overpowered by his taste for ordure and stupidity as to have even lost the vigor of his skepticism. A week before Nana had made him promise her a chateau on the Norman coast between Havre and Trouville, and now he was staking the very foundations of his honor on the fulfillment of his word. Only she was getting on his nerves, and he could have beaten her, so stupid did he feel her to be.
The man at the gate, not daring to stop the woman hanging on the count’s arm, had allowed them to enter the enclosure. Nana, greatly puffed up at the thought that at last she was setting foot on the forbidden ground, put on her best behavior and walked slowly by the ladies seated at the foot of the stands. On ten rows of chairs the toilets were densely massed, and in the blithe open air their bright colors mingled harmoniously. Chairs were scattered about, and as people met one another friendly circles were formed, just as though the company had been sitting under the trees in a public garden. Children had been allowed to go free and were running from group to group, while over head the stands rose tier above crowded tier and the light-colored dresses therein faded into the delicate shadows of the timberwork. Nana stared at all these ladies. She stared steadily and markedly at the Countess Sabine. After which, as she was passing in front of the imperial stand, the sight of Muffat, looming in all his official stiffness by the side of the empress, made her very merry.
“Oh, how silly he looks!” she said at the top of her voice to Vandeuvres. She was anxious to pay everything a visit. This small parklike region, with its green lawns and groups of trees, rather charmed her than otherwise. A vendor of ices had set up a large buffet near the entrance gates, and beneath a rustic thatched roof a dense throng of people were shouting and gesticulating. This was the ring. Close by were some empty stalls, and Nana was disappointed at discovering only a gendarme’s horse there. Then there was the paddock, a small course some hundred meters in circumference, where a stable help was walking about Valerio II in his horsecloths. And, oh, what a lot of men on the graveled sidewalks, all of them with their tickets forming an orange-colored patch in their bottonholes! And what a continual parade of people in the open galleries of the grandstands! The scene interested her for a moment or two, but truly, it was not worth while getting the spleen because they didn’t admit you inside here.
Daguenet and Fauchery passed by and bowed to her. She made them a sign, and they had to come up. Thereupon she made hay of the weighing-in enclosure. But she broke off abruptly:
“Dear me, there’s the Marquis de Chouard! How old he’s growing! That old man’s killing himself! Is he still as mad about it as ever?”
Thereupon Daguenet described the old man’s last brilliant stroke. The story dated from the day before yesterday, and no one knew it as yet. After dangling about for months he had bought her daughter Amelie from Gaga for thirty thousand francs, they said.
“Good gracious! That’s a nice business!” cried Nana in disgust. “Go in for the regular thing, please! But now that I come to think of it, that must be Lili down there on the grass with a lady in a brougham. I recognized the face. The old boy will have brought her out.”
Vandeuvres was not listening; he was impatient and longed to get rid of her. But Fauchery having remarked at parting that if she had not seen the bookmakers she had seen nothing, the count was obliged to take her to them in spite of his obvious repugnance. And she was perfectly happy at once; that truly was a curious sight, she said!
Amid lawns bordered by young horse-chestnut trees there was a round open enclosure, where, forming a vast circle under the shadow of the tender green leaves, a dense line of bookmakers was waiting for betting men, as though they had been hucksters at a fair. In order to overtop and command the surrounding crowd they had taken up positions on wooden benches, and they were advertising their prices on the trees beside them. They had an ever-vigilant glance, and they booked wagers in answer to a single sign, a mere wink, so rapidly that certain curious onlookers watched them openmouthed, without being able to understand it all. Confusion reigned; prices were shouted, and any unexpected change in a quotation was received with something like tumult. Occasionally scouts entered the place at a run and redoubled the uproar as they stopped at the entrance to the rotunda and, at the tops of their voices, announced departures and arrivals. In this place, where the gambling fever was pulsing in the sunshine, such announcements were sure to raise a prolonged muttering sound.
“They ARE funny!” murmured Nana, greatly entertained.
“Their features look as if they had been put on the wrong way. Just you see that big fellow there; I shouldn’t care to meet him all alone in the middle of a wood.”
But Vandeuvres pointed her out a bookmaker, once a shopman in a fancy repository, who had made three million francs in two years. He was slight of build, delicate and fair, and people all round him treated him with great respect. They smiled when they addressed him, while others took up positions close by in order to catch a glimpse of him.
They were at length leaving the ring when Vandeuvres nodded slightly to another bookmaker, who thereupon ventured to call him. It was one of his former coachmen, an enormous fellow with the shoulders of an ox and a high color. Now that he was trying his fortunes at race meetings on the strength of some mysteriously obtained capital, the count was doing his utmost to push him, confiding to him his secret bets and treating him on all occasions as a servant to whom one shows one’s true character. Yet despite this protection, the man had in rapid succession lost very heavy sums, and today he, too, was playing his last card. There was blood in his eyes; he looked fit to drop with apoplexy.
“Well, Marechal,” queried the count in the lowest of voices, “to what amount have you laid odds?”
“To five thousand louis, Monsieur le Comte,” replied the bookmaker, likewise lowering his voice. “A pretty job, eh? I’ll confess to you that I’ve increased the odds; I’ve made it three to one.”
Vandeuvres looked very much put out.
“No, no, I don’t want you to do that. Put it at two to one again directly. I shan’t tell you any more, Marechal.”
“Oh, how can it hurt, Monsieur le Comte, at this time o’ day?” rejoined the other with the humble smile befitting an accomplice. “I had to attract the people so as to lay your two thousand louis.”
At this Vandeuvres silenced him. But as he was going off Marechal remembered something and was sorry he had not questioned him about the shortening of the odds on the filly. It would be a nice business for him if the filly stood a chance, seeing that he had just laid fifty to one about her in two hundreds.
Nana, though she did not understand a word of what the count was whispering, dared not, however, ask for new explanations. He seemed more nervous than before and abruptly handed her over to Labordette, whom they came upon in front of the weighing-in room.
“You’ll take her back,” he said. “I’ve got something on hand. Au revoir!”
And he entered the room, which was narrow and low-pitched and half filled with a great pair of scales. It was like a waiting room in a suburban station, and Nana was again hugely disillusioned, for she had been picturing to herself something on a very vast scale, a monumental machine, in fact, for weighing horses. Dear me, they only weighed the jockeys! Then it wasn’t worth while making such a fuss with their weighing! In the scale a jockey with an idiotic expression was waiting, harness on knee, till a stout man in a frock coat should have done verifying his weight. At the door a stable help was holding a horse, Cosinus, round which a silent and deeply interested throng was clustering.
The course was about to be cleared. 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. This particular jockey was a man of forty, and with his long, thin, deeply furrowed, hard, dead countenance, he looked like an old shriveled-up child. His body was knotty and so reduced in size that his blue jacket with its white sleeves looked as if it had been thrown over a lay figure.
“No,” she resumed as she walked away, “he would never make me very happy, you know.”
A mob of people were still crowding the course, the turf of which had been wet and trampled on till it had grown black. In front of the two telegraphs, which hung very high up on their cast-iron pillars, the crowd were jostling together with upturned faces, uproariously greeting the numbers of the different horses as an electric wire in connection with the weighing room made them appear. Gentlemen were pointing at programs: Pichenette had been scratched by his owner, and this caused some noise. However, Nana did not do more than cross over the course on Labordette’s arm. The bell hanging on the flagstaff was ringing persistently to warn people to leave the course.
“Ah, my little dears,” she said as she got up into her landau again, “their enclosure’s all humbug!”
She was welcomed with acclamation; people around her clapped their hands.
“Bravo, Nana! Nana’s ours again!”
What idiots they were, to be sure! Did they think she was the sort to cut old friends? She had come back just at the auspicious moment. Now then, ‘tenshun! The race was beginning! And the champagne was accordingly forgotten, and everyone left off drinking.
But Nana was astonished to find Gaga in her carriage, sitting with Bijou and Louiset on her knees. Gaga had indeed decided on this course of action in order to be near La Faloise, but she told Nana that she had been anxious to kiss Baby. She adored children.
“By the by, what about Lili?” asked Nana. “That’s certainly she over there in that old fellow’s brougham. They’ve just told me something very nice!”
Gaga had adopted a lachrymose expression.
“My dear, it’s made me ill,” she said dolorously. “Yesterday I had to keep my bed, I cried so, and today I didn’t think I should be able to come. You know what my opinions were, don’t you? I didn’t desire that kind of thing at all. I had her educated in a convent with a view to a good marriage. And then to think of the strict advice she had and the constant watching! Well, my dear, it was she who wished it. We had such a scene – tears – disagreeable speeches! It even got to such a point that I caught her a box on the ear. She was too much bored by existence, she said; she wanted to get out of it. By and by, when she began to say, ‘‘Tisn’t you, after all, who’ve got the right to prevent me,’ I said to her: ‘you’re a miserable wretch; you’re bringing dishonor upon us. Begone!’ And it was done. I consented to arrange about it. But my last hope’s blooming well blasted, and, oh, I used to dream about such nice things!”
The noise of a quarrel caused them to rise. It was Georges in the act of defending Vandeuvres against certain vague rumors which were circulating among the various groups.
“Why should you say that he’s laying off his own horse?” the young man was exclaiming. “Yesterday in the Salon des Courses he took the odds on Lusignan for a thousand louis.”
“Yes, I was there,” said Philippe in affirmation of this. “And he didn’t put a single louis on Nana. If the betting’s ten to one against Nana he’s got nothing to win there. It’s absurd to imagine people are so calculating. Where would his interest come in?”
Labordette was listening with a quiet expression. Shrugging his shoulders, he said:
“Oh, leave them alone; they must have their say. The count has again laid at least as much as five hundred louis on Lusignan, and if he’s wanted Nana to run to a hundred louis it’s because an owner ought always to look as if he believes in his horses.”
“Oh, bosh! What the deuce does that matter to us?” shouted La Faloise with a wave of his arms. “Spirit’s going to win! Down with France – bravo, England!”
A long shiver ran through the crowd, while a fresh peal from the bell announced the arrival of the horses upon the racecourse. At this Nana got up and stood on one of the seats of her carriage so as to obtain a better view, and in so doing she trampled the bouquets of roses and myosotis underfoot. With a sweeping glance she took in the wide, vast horizon. At this last feverish moment the course was empty and closed by gray barriers, between the posts of which stood a line of policemen. The strip of grass which lay muddy in front of her grew brighter as it stretched away and turned into a tender green carpet in the distance. In the middle landscape, as she lowered her eyes, she saw the field swarming with vast numbers of people, some on tiptoe, others perched on carriages, and all heaving and jostling in sudden passionate excitement.
Horses were neighing; tent canvases flapped, while equestrians urged their hacks forward amid a crowd of pedestrians rushing to get places along the barriers. When Nana turned in the direction of the stands on the other side the faces seemed diminished, and the dense masses of heads were only a confused and motley array, filling gangways, steps and terraces and looming in deep, dark, serried lines against the sky. And beyond these again she over looked the plain surrounding the course. Behind the ivy-clad mill to the right, meadows, dotted over with great patches of umbrageous wood, stretched away into the distance, while opposite to her, as far as the Seine flowing at the foot of a hill, the avenues of the park intersected one another, filled at that moment with long, motionless files of waiting carriages; and in the direction of Boulogne, on the left, the landscape widened anew and opened out toward the blue distances of Meudon through an avenue of paulownias, whose rosy, leafless tops were one stain of brilliant lake color. People were still arriving, and a long procession of human ants kept coming along the narrow ribbon of road which crossed the distance, while very far away, on the Paris side, the nonpaying public, herding like sheep among the wood, loomed in a moving line of little dark spots under the trees on the skirts of the Bois.
Suddenly a cheering influence warmed the hundred thousand souls who covered this part of the plain like insects swarming madly under the vast expanse of heaven. The sun, which had been hidden for about a quarter of an hour, made his appearance again and shone out amid a perfect sea of light. And everything flamed afresh: the women’s sunshades turned into countless golden targets above the heads of the crowd. The sun was applauded, saluted with bursts of laughter. And people stretched their arms out as though to brush apart the clouds.
Meanwhile a solitary police officer advanced down the middle of the deserted racecourse, while higher up, on the left, a man appeared with a red flag in his hand.
“It’s the starter, the Baron de Mauriac,” said Labordette in reply to a question from Nana. All round the young woman exclamations were bursting from the men who were pressing to her very carriage step. They kept up a disconnected conversation, jerking out phrases under the immediate influence of passing impressions. Indeed, Philippe and Georges, Bordenave and La Faloise, could not be quiet.
“Don’t shove! Let me see! Ah, the judge is getting into his box. D’you say it’s Monsieur de Souvigny? You must have good eyesight – eh? – to be able to tell what half a head is out of a fakement like that! Do hold your tongue – the banner’s going up. Here they are – ‘tenshun! Cosinus is the first!”
A red and yellow banner was flapping in mid-air at the top of a mast. The horses came on the course one by one; they were led by stableboys, and the jockeys were sitting idle-handed in the saddles, the sunlight making them look like bright dabs of color. After Cosinus appeared Hazard and Boum. Presently a murmur of approval greeted Spirit, a magnificent big brown bay, the harsh citron color and black of whose jockey were cheerlessly Britannic. Valerio II scored a success as he came in; he was small and very lively, and his colors were soft green bordered with pink. The two Vandeuvres horses were slow to make their appearance, but at last, in Frangipane’s rear, the blue and white showed themselves. But Lusignan, a very dark bay of irreproachable shape, was almost forgotten amid the astonishment caused by Nana. People had not seen her looking like this before, for now the sudden sunlight was dyeing the chestnut filly the brilliant color of a girl’s red-gold hair. She was shining in the light like a new gold coin; her chest was deep; her head and neck tapered lightly from the delicate, high-strung line of her long back.
“Gracious, she’s got my hair!” cried Nana in an ecstasy. “You bet you know I’m proud of it!”
The men clambered up on the landau, and Bordenave narrowly escaped putting his foot on Louiset, whom his mother had forgotten. He took him up with an outburst of paternal grumbling and hoisted him on his shoulder, muttering at the same time:
“The poor little brat, he must be in it too! Wait a bit, I’ll show you Mamma. Eh? Look at Mummy out there.”
And as Bijou was scratching his legs, he took charge of him, too, while Nana, rejoicing in the brute that bore her name, glanced round at the other women to see how they took it. They were all raging madly. Just then on the summit of her cab the Tricon, who had not moved till that moment, began waving her hand and giving her bookmaker her orders above the heads of the crowd. Her instinct had at last prompted her; she was backing Nana.
La Faloise meanwhile was making an insufferable noise. He was getting wild over Frangipane.
“I’ve an inspiration,” he kept shouting. “Just look at Frangipane. What an action, eh? I back Frangipane at eight to one. Who’ll take me?”
“Do keep quiet now,” said Labordette at last. “You’ll be sorry for it if you do.”
“Frangipane’s a screw,” Philippe declared. “He’s been utterly blown upon already. You’ll see the canter.”
The horses had gone up to the right, and they now started for the preliminary canter, passing in loose order before the stands. Thereupon there was a passionate fresh burst of talk, and people all spoke at once.
“Lusignan’s too long in the back, but he’s very fit. Not a cent, I tell you, on Valerio II; he’s nervous – gallops with his head up – it’s a bad sign. Jove! Burne’s riding Spirit. I tell you, he’s got no shoulders. A well-made shoulder – that’s the whole secret. No, decidedly, Spirit’s too quiet. Now listen, Nana, I saw her after the Grande Poule des Produits, and she was dripping and draggled, and her sides were trembling like one o’clock. I lay twenty louis she isn’t placed! Oh, shut up! He’s boring us with his Frangipane. There’s no time to make a bet now; there, they’re off!”
Almost in tears, La Faloise was struggling to find a bookmaker. He had to be reasoned with. Everyone craned forward, but the first go-off was bad, the starter, who looked in the distance like a slim dash of blackness, not having lowered his flag. The horses came back to their places after galloping a moment or two. There were two more false starts. At length the starter got the horses together and sent them away with such address as to elicit shouts of applause.
“Splendid! No, it was mere chance! Never mind – it’s done it!”
The outcries were smothered by the anxiety which tortured every breast. The betting stopped now, and the game was being played on the vast course itself. Silence reigned at the outset, as though everyone were holding his breath. White faces and trembling forms were stretched forward in all directions. At first Hazard and Cosinus made the running at the head of the rest; Valerio II followed close by, and the field came on in a confused mass behind. When they passed in front of the stands, thundering over the ground in their course like a sudden stormwind, the mass was already some fourteen lengths in extent. Frangipane was last, and Nana was slightly behind Lusignan and Spirit.
“Egad!” muttered Labordette, “how the Englishman is pulling it off out there!”
The whole carriageload again burst out with phrases and exclamations. Everyone rose on tiptoe and followed the bright splashes of color which were the jockeys as they rushed through the sunlight.
At the rise Valerio II took the lead, while Cosinus and Hazard lost ground, and Lusignan and Spirit were running neck and neck with Nana still behind them.
“By jingo, the Englishman’s gained! It’s palpable!” said Bordenave. “Lusignan’s in difficulties, and Valerio II can’t stay.”
“Well, it will be a pretty biz if the Englishman wins!” cried Philippe in an access of patriotic grief.
A feeling of anguish was beginning to choke all that crowded multitude. Another defeat! And with that a strange ardent prayer, which was almost religious, went up for Lusignan, while people heaped abuse on Spirit and his dismal mute of a jockey. Among the crowd scattered over the grass the wind of excitement put up whole groups of people and set their boot soles flashing in air as they ran. Horsemen crossed the green at a furious gallop. And Nana, who was slowly revolving on her own axis, saw beneath her a surging waste of beasts and men, a sea of heads swayed and stirred all round the course by the whirlwind of the race, which clove the horizon with the bright lightning flash of the jockeys. She had been following their movement from behind while the cruppers sped away and the legs seemed to grow longer as they raced and then diminished till they looked slender as strands of hair. Now the horses were running at the end of the course, and she caught a side view of them looking minute and delicate of outline against the green distances of the Bois. Then suddenly they vanished behind a great clump of trees growing in the middle of the Hippodrome.
“Don’t talk about it!” cried Georges, who was still full of hope. “It isn’t over yet. The Englishman’s touched.”
But La Faloise was again seized with contempt for his country and grew positively outrageous in his applause of Spirit. Bravo! That was right! France needed it! Spirit first and Frangipane second – that would be a nasty one for his native land! He exasperated Labordette, who threatened seriously to throw him off the carriage.
“Let’s see how many minutes they’ll be about it,” said Bordenave peaceably, for though holding up Louiset, he had taken out his watch.
One after the other the horses reappeared from behind the clump of trees. There was stupefaction; a long murmur arose among the crowd. Valerio II was still leading, but Spirit was gaining on him, and behind him Lusignan had slackened while another horse was taking his place. People could not make this out all at once; they were confused about the colors. Then there was a burst of exclamations.
“But it’s Nana! Nana? Get along! I tell you Lusignan hasn’t budged. Dear me, yes, it’s Nana. You can certainly recognize her by her golden color. D’you see her now? She’s blazing away. Bravo, Nana! What a ripper she is! Bah, it doesn’t matter a bit: she’s making the running for Lusignan!”
For some seconds this was everybody’s opinion. But little by little the filly kept gaining and gaining, spurting hard all the while. Thereupon a vast wave of feeling passed over the crowd, and the tail of horses in the rear ceased to interest. A supreme struggle was beginning between Spirit, Nana, Lusignan and Valerio II. They were pointed out; people estimated what ground they had gained or lost in disconnected, gasping phrases. And Nana, who had mounted up on the coach box, as though some power had lifted her thither, stood white and trembling and so deeply moved as not to be able to speak. At her side Labordette smiled as of old.
“The Englishman’s in trouble, eh?” said Philippe joyously. “He’s going badly.”
“In any case, it’s all up with Lusignan,” shouted La Faloise. “Valerio II is coming forward. Look, there they are all four together.”
The same phrase was in every mouth.
“What a rush, my dears! By God, what a rush!”
The squad of horses was now passing in front of them like a flash of lightning. Their approach was perceptible – the breath of it was as a distant muttering which increased at every second. The whole crowd had thrown themselves impetuously against the barriers, and a deep clamor issued from innumerable chests before the advance of the horses and drew nearer and nearer like the sound of a foaming tide. It was the last fierce outburst of colossal partisanship; a hundred thousand spectators were possessed by a single passion, burning with the same gambler’s lust, as they gazed after the beasts, whose galloping feet were sweeping millions with them. The crowd pushed and crushed – fists were clenched; people gaped, openmouthed; every man was fighting for himself; every man with voice and gesture was madly speeding the horse of his choice. And the cry of all this multitude, a wild beast’s cry despite the garb of civilization, grew ever more distinct:
“Here they come! Here they come! Here they come!”
But Nana was still gaining ground, and now Valerio II was distanced, and she was heading the race, with Spirit two or three necks behind. The rolling thunder of voices had increased. They were coming in; a storm of oaths greeted them from the landau.
“Gee up, Lusignan, you great coward! The Englishman’s stunning! Do it again, old boy; do it again! Oh, that Valerio! It’s sickening! Oh, the carcass! My ten louis damned well lost! Nana’s the only one! Bravo, Nana! Bravo!”
And without being aware of it Nana, upon her seat, had begun jerking her hips and waist as though she were racing herself. She kept striking her side – she fancied it was a help to the filly. With each stroke she sighed with fatigue and said in low, anguished tones:
“Go it, go it!”
Then a splendid sight was witnessed. Price, rising in his stirrups and brandishing his whip, flogged Nana with an arm of iron. The old shriveled-up child with his long, hard, dead face seemed to breath flame. And in a fit of furious audacity and triumphant will he put his heart into the filly, held her up, lifted her forward, drenched in foam, with eyes of blood. The whole rush of horses passed with a roar of thunder: it took away people’s breaths; it swept the air with it while the judge sat frigidly waiting, his eye adjusted to its task. Then there was an immense re-echoing burst of acclamation. With a supreme effort Price had just flung Nana past the post, thus beating Spirit by a head.
There was an uproar as of a rising tide. “Nana! Nana! Nana!” The cry rolled up and swelled with the violence of a tempest, till little by little it filled the distance, the depths of the Bois as far as Mont Valerien, the meadows of Longchamps and the Plaine de Boulogne. In all parts of the field the wildest enthusiasm declared itself. “Vive Nana! Vive la France! Down with England!” The women waved their sunshades; men leaped and spun round, vociferating as they did so, while others with shouts of nervous laughter threw their hats in the air. And from the other side of the course the enclosure made answer; the people on the stands were stirred, though nothing was distinctly visible save a tremulous motion of the air, as though an invisible flame were burning in a brazier above the living mass of gesticulating arms and little wildly moving faces, where the eyes and gaping mouths looked like black dots. The noise did not cease but swelled up and recommenced in the recesses of faraway avenues and among the people encamped under the trees, till it spread on and on and attained its climax in the imperial stand, where the empress herself had applauded. “Nana! Nana! Nana!” The cry rose heavenward in the glorious sunlight, whose golden rain beat fiercely on the dizzy heads of the multitude.
Then Nana, looming large on the seat of her landau, fancied that it was she whom they were applauding. For a moment or two she had stood devoid of motion, stupefied by her triumph, gazing at the course as it was invaded by so dense a flood of people that the turf became invisible beneath the sea of black hats. By and by, when this crowd had become somewhat less disorderly and a lane had been formed as far as the exit and Nana was again applauded as she went off with Price hanging lifelessly and vacantly over her neck, she smacked her thigh energetically, lost all self-possession, triumphed in crude phrases:
