He and Gervaise turned slowly round the dancers; there were three rows of sightseers packed close together, whose faces lighted up whenever any of the dancers showed off.
As Coupeau and Gervaise were both short, they raised themselves up on tiptoe, trying to see something besides the chignons and hats that were bobbing about.
The cracked brass instruments of the orchestra were furiously thundering a quadrille, a perfect tempest which made the hall shake; while the dancers, striking the floor with their feet, raised a cloud of dust which dimmed the brightness of the gas.
The heat was unbearable.
“Look there,” said Gervaise suddenly.
“Look at what?”
“Why, at that velvet hat over there.”
They raised themselves up on tiptoe.
On the left hand there was an old black velvet hat trimmed with ragged feathers bobbing about — regular hearse’s plumes. It was dancing a devil of a dance, this hat — bouncing and whirling round, diving down and then springing up again.
Coupeau and Gervaise lost sight of it as the people round about moved their heads, but then suddenly they saw it again, swaying farther off with such droll effrontery that folks laughed merely at the sight of this dancing hat, without knowing what was underneath it.
“Well?” asked Coupeau.
“Don’t you recognize that head of hair?” muttered Gervaise in a stifled voice.
“May my head be cut off if it isn’t her.”
With one shove the zinc-worker made his way through the crowd.
Mon Dieu! yes, it was Nana!
And in a nice pickle too!
She had nothing on her back but an old silk dress, all stained and sticky from having wiped the tables of boozing dens, and with its flounces so torn that they fell in tatters round about. Not even a bit of a shawl over her shoulders.
And to think that the hussy had had such an attentive, loving gentleman, and had yet fallen to this condition, merely for the sake of following some rascal who had beaten her, no doubt!
Nevertheless she had remained fresh and insolent, with her hair as frizzy as a poodle’s, and her mouth bright pink under that rascally hat of hers.
“Just wait a bit, I’ll make her dance!” resumed Coupeau.
Naturally enough, Nana was not on her guard.
You should have seen how she wriggled about!
She twisted to the right and to the left, bending double as if she were going to break herself in two, and kicking her feet as high as her partner’s face.
A circle had formed about her and this excited her even more. She raised her skirts to her knees and really let herself go in a wild dance, whirling and turning, dropping to the floor in splits, and then jigging and bouncing.
Coupeau was trying to force his way through the dancers and was disrupting the quadrille.
“I tell you, it’s my daughter!” he cried; “let me pass.”
Nana was now dancing backwards, sweeping the floor with her flounces, rounding her figure and wriggling it, so as to look all the more tempting.
She suddenly received a masterly blow just on the right cheek.
She raised herself up and turned quite pale on recognizing her father and mother.
Bad luck and no mistake.
“Turn him out!” howled the dancers.
But Coupeau, who had just recognized his daughter’s cavalier as the scraggy young man in the coat, did not care a fig for what the people said.
“Yes, it’s us,” he roared.
“Eh? You didn’t expect it.
So we catch you here, and with a whipper-snapper, too, who insulted me a little while ago!”
Gervaise, whose teeth were tight set, pushed him aside, exclaiming,
“Shut up.
There’s no need of so much explanation.”
And, stepping forward, she dealt Nana a couple of hearty cuffs.
The first knocked the feathered hat on one side, and the second left a red mark on the girl’s white cheek.
Nana was too stupefied either to cry or resist.
The orchestra continued playing, the crowd grew angry and repeated savagely,
“Turn them out!
Turn them out!”
“Come, make haste!” resumed Gervaise.
“Just walk in front, and don’t try to run off. You shall sleep in prison if you do.”
The scraggy young man had prudently disappeared.
Nana walked ahead, very stiff and still stupefied by her bad luck.
Whenever she showed the lest unwillingness, a cuff from behind brought her back to the direction of the door.
And thus they went out, all three of them, amid the jeers and banter of the spectators, whilst the orchestra finished playing the finale with such thunder that the trombones seemed to be spitting bullets.